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 CHAPTER TWO: SANITARIUM (EAST) Or By The Pricking of My Thumbs, Something Metaplot This Way Comes Let's just repost the map here for clarification. All things considered, this is a pretty short book and we're most of the way through it already.  The sanitarium is heavily warped by the long-term presence of Daniel's pet Reality Cancer. While it's not immediately visible, there is something sinister and wrong beneath the walls of the hospital that only gets worse the closer one gets to Daniel. Characters who have been sacrificed and rescued are all dropped off in a bunch of different places depending on how many people who have been captured.   I'll explain it later but you basically don't want more than 2 people to be captured. Immersion Therapy and Circulation Therapy have a chance of flat-out killing the people dropped off here and the Lab...has problems, which one can immediately surmise due to the fact that it's a loving phrenology lab.  The door is unlocked and it's easy to leave the room. Scrawled on the wall is a message left behind by a previous occupant.   The two Monitors that bring people here and give food and medicine to the patients are under the control of Daniel's power. They were trying to subdue him when the Reality Cancer first appeared and ever since they've been bound to his will. If you're spotted by the Monitors, they'll try to force you back into 29 with force if necessary. So you're supposed to sneak out of this area, except:  G-Unit blunders into the room from the outside, the Monitors raise their tentacle arms and rush forward...and immediately keel over and shut down. Womp womp.  The day room is empty. The only thing you can do here is use the shards of broken glass as improvised weapons if you're particularly hard-pressed for tools.  Originally intended for art projects completed by the patients, now they're home to an amateur Bodies exhibit. Despair check! These aren't actually any of the patients, they all came from prisoners outside of the asylum who were snatched and turned into "statues". Who did this? Nobody knows and the book ain't saying.  The records room's facilities are still running perfectly fine and if the players want they can bring up information on Bishop or some of the other characters they haven't met yet like The Surgeon. There is definitely a dossier file for Daniel which has been placed by one of the computers to be loaded but hasn't been inserted. This is how the players can learn more about him (though lemme tell you: if they miss this, they're going to learn anyway).  ProLordFlies? HMM. I WONDER WHAT THAT COULD BE/MEAN.  Getting into the pharmacy requires Access 2 or Hacking. The patients weren't able to get in here but the events of Perdition did lead to some destruction and breakage. There is a veritable bounty of medication to be found here, stuff from antiseptics to antipsychotics to burn cream. The haul of medication to be found is 17 doses of Cardiolax and 10 doses of Tranq...but there is something very stupid and tricky afoot. 7 of the bottles of Cardiolax are actually doses of Frenzy, these bottled sealed back on Terra. The only way to tell the difference between the intentionally misleading bottles and the real deal are that there's a "P:LF" stamped on the inside of the cap. HMM I WONDER WHAT THAT COULD MEAN. Also define bottle. This makes it sounds like Cardiolax comes in both liquid form for administering injections (as we have basically seen in the past with syringes and such) but it can also come in, like, an Advil bottle. The other thing of note is that the party can take some samples of iodine triarylmethane, an antiseptic used in the sanitarium to prepare for surgery. Why would you take these samples? Because.  This man was one of the patients who was used as a sacrifice and has been stuck in the east wing since, unable to escape. This depression, mixed with his paranoia, has lead him to immediately attempt suicide if he's not restrained. Failing to administer medical care means he bleeds out in 1d3 minutes and causes a Despair check. Fortunately for him, this is not the first time Doc has seen a patient self-harm and she knows a thing or two about staunching the bleeding ASAP. He's not particularly thankful for it, but he will warn the group that there are weird, malicious patients in Area 36 and 38 and that there are men who live behind the walls who are watching and waiting for everyone to die. You know, that standard chestnut that's being kicked around through the adventure.  The studio is where patients were allowed to make art to express their thoughts, but now it's home to a handful of artists who ignore food, water and sleep to paint the scenes they see in their dreams. They're encouraged by the Scuttling Impossibilities who are hanging out with them, whispering both encouragement and criticism to get the work done right. The patients ignore the party and the Impossibilities will only attack if the artists are attacked. Fortunately there's no requirement to roll a Despair or Insanity check here so that's nice.   Oh no, Psycho Nurses. Who could have seen this coming. Who, I ask you, who. Their weapons count as shivs, which is weird, and they're looking away from the party. You can just sneak past them with an opposed Wits check but if that's failed then they'll attack and try to restrain the players for surgery.   Fortunately...they really suck at fighting. Unfortunately they have Quickness. Once the Nurses are dealt with, the area can be looted. Scalpels and sharp medical implements can be taken to be used as four shivs and there are enough actual medical supplies to be salvaged to assemble three first aid kits. There's also a wheeled laundry cart that smells awful. Opening it reveals human limbs and literal shaved skullcaps that are moldering and rotting, forcing a Despair check. The moral of the story is: if it smells awful and is in an abandoned sanitarium, probably don't open it.  When Daniel was first institutionalized, his first doctor liked to collect medical curios and items of junk science to decorate his office. The doctor had many posters and manuals about phrenology and outdated 19th century neuroscience that fascinated Daniel and sparked an interest in a long-discredited medical pseudoscience clung to by racists and quacks. The thing he liked the most was the idea that you could control someone by altering their brain...something he wants to apply to himself. There's a part of Daniel's subconscious that is horrified of what he's become, working against him like a left hand while the right has no idea and Daniel is willing to carve out a part of his brain to stifle internal rebellion. Enter #5259270, The Surgeon.   In his former life, the Surgeon was a renowned brain surgeon who was selected by the PTM to become head of surgery in a distant colony. The boredom of colonial life mingled with Space Madness and became a full-blown psychotic break. When a resupply ship came to drop off food and goods, the crew found that the Surgeon had slaughtered the entire colony by systematically subduing them and surgically removing their brains. He allowed himself to be arrested and brought back to Terra for sentencing, claiming that the voices told him to kill them all. When Perdition occurred and the Surgeon was released, Daniel convinced him of the virtues of phrenology by trepanning the man and giving him a taste. Ever since then he’s been a steadfast supporter of Daniel and has been using the sacrifices as test subjects to self-educate on phrenology through cranial vivisection. This brings us to the current patient: a sane convict who was ambushed and captured by inmates to be used as a test subject. He’s strapped to the gurney with leather restraints and iron bands, head fastened in place with a brace. The top of his skull is already gone and his brain is exposed as the squad interrupts the “procedure”. The Surgeon smiles and tells his assistants to attack G-Unit. If they hadn’t already subdued the Nurses, the Nurses would be alerted to the situation and join in the fight. Fortunately despite the assistants being armed with scalpels…there are six members of G-Unit and three of them and they use the same Insane Patient stats. Beth, Soapbox, Ice Queen, Tama and Pincushion focus on the Surgeon when they’re all gone as Doc performs the greatest procedure of her life so far: undoing the damage the Surgeon has done to the “patient”. Because she has both medical supplies and Medical Knowledge, she’s able to perform the operation by doing her best to prevent the possible infections caused by using rusty tools, reattach his skullcap, seal it in place and then stitch his scalp back on (all to the soundtrack of angry women kicking the poo poo out of a maniac). He’s freed as the Surgeon is left bleeding and bound on the floor of the operating theater. Regardless of how this shakes out, the crowd watching the surgery won’t join in, satisfied to watch whatever goes down.  The morgue requires Access 1 or Hacking to get in. Dead patients (natural causes, failed lobotomies etc.) were brought here for storage before cremation. There’s nothing in here but dead people; the patients and Surgeon were unable to access the morgue and these are all pre-Perdition bodies. This area only exists to be a supply of corpses for Devourers to inhabit if they have to manifest.  “Immersion Therapy” is…not the current form of Immersion Therapy you might be thinking of where a patient is slowly exposed to the source of their fear. In this case, immersion therapy refers to throwing a bound patient into dark ice water to make something in their brains fire from the sensation. Unsurprisingly this lead to some deaths by drowning or hypothermia and was generally ineffective. If nobody was kidnapped here, this area is empty. If they were, hooboy.  Despair check! Prowess check to unmask yourself. Prowess check to get the weight off your foot; the chain has a Prowess of 12. You can survive underwater for 1 turn per point of Prowess. If you’re still underwater when those turns are up, instant death from drowning. Do not pass go, do not collect 200 smokes. This is awful and unnecessarily lethal.  If nobody was brought here from the Wicker Man, this room just has a single nonverbal patient who hangs out by the controls in a state of quiet giggling and drooling. The centrifuge is a Circulating Swing, a primitive attempt at curing insanity and suicidal tendencies by spinning people around a bunch and exposing them to g-forces. Unlike Immersion Therapy, this was actually a thing in the 19th century and god only loving knows why it’s on this space ship. There’s nothing else to this room unless you ended up here thanks to the Custodians:  This is the room where they find Angelique who is strapped into the machine, passed out as it spins. Waking up in the machine forces a Despair check as it starts to spin slowly before picking up speed. There are two ways out of this situation. First, the victim can try to break the restraints on the arms, legs and heads with an Opposed Prowess Check where the restraints have 10 Prowess. If successful, the victim is kind of just…flung out of the chair to safety. Alternately they can scream to the nonverbal patient and make three Social checks: first to get his attention, then to get him to stop the arm and then to get him to undo the restraints. Neither of these are…great ways to get out of the machine and that’s because of Further Mechanics. The first three rounds are spent spinning with no effect. After that, each round forces a Prowess check where failure means you pass out. Succeed and there’s a +1 penalty to the next roll, cumulative. You could put Soapbox or Doc in that chair and they’d have a hell of a time of getting out one way or the other. If you pass out, that’s it, you have three minutes for someone else to switch off the chair or you die. This is just so much worse than the Immersion Therapy room because there’s just less of a chance to get out due to the steps needed. Angelique, for example, failed her check pretty early because she’s got a poor Prowess score. They do succeed in rescuing her before it’s too late, but she’s very dizzy, very sore and needs a minute to puke her guts up.  The psychobaric chambers are basically a dentist chair in a cylindrical chamber where the patient is secured and bombarded with stimulus to create an aversion response. The rooms are completely sealed off from the outside, creating a soundproof barrier. Pincushion pretty easily recognize where they are and feels the dread in the pit of his stomach associated with these machines.  There are still patients in the machines to boot. Looking in through the holes reveals men and women in straightjackets cuffed to the machines, catatonic with mouths flecked with drool or vomit. Because the machines have been running, these patients have been repeatedly causing manifestations; every four hours they gain 1 point of Insanity so every other day one of them causes a Demon to appear. This is the source of all of the Scuttling Impossibilities in the area and it can’t be shut off. Probing Pincushion for info is pointless because he wasn’t a technician, just a recipient of the treatment. The patients are all condemned to die a slow, horrible death from starvation as they occasionally summon something monstrous…unless G-Unit can stop Daniel. Stopping Daniel and getting rid of the Reality Cancer will stop the machines from working because he told them to.  These cells are mostly empty like in the west wing but they can still be searched. Unlike the west wing, these cells don’t have anything to offer the players because the occupants were high risk patients and weren’t allowed to have much. The GM can roll on the table below for what is found.  Because G-Unit is getting closer to Daniel and the Cancer, reality is fraying at the seams and things go from a low-key hum of sinister to full-bore supernatural.  Any time the party passes into an area marked with an asterisk, that’s Area 44. Passing over an asterisk spits them out on the other side of another asterisk, the warping of space and time going unnoticed and placing them someplace different. The Reality Cancer’s effect on the area is that time and space are folding and causing things to go in the wrong direction, making them loop and get lost. Fortunately, Ice Queen has Sixth Sense which gives her the chance to make a Wits check (whoo Wits 10) to overcome the obstacle. Once she figures out what’s wrong, the phenomenon ceases to function and the area is left “normal” again.  One of the paintings made by the patients back in the East Wing Cells, placed her to break up text. Area 45 is home to a temporal warp where the party finds themselves reliving something that had just happened. This forces an Insanity check. If it was a regular random event that caused a DGI check, there’s no second check. If it’s combat, you run combat again like a brand new fight.  Meet the new Demon this book has to offer, the Seers. You might think that the Seers are the Observers. They aren’t. You’re encouraged to convince the players that the Seers are the Observers. All they do is stare at the squad before running away or getting chased away. SEERS  Seers manifest by crawling out of nothingness to form a mob of the little fuckers. They’re about the size of a hand, small and weak and easily kicked.  They’re not meant to be an enemy you fight. Their main existence is to observe stuff and relay the info back to the local Demons (in this case they report to the Reality Cancer). They’re annoying and really just cause possible Insanity gain. I have nothing to really say about them because they’re a useless little addition and the moment G-Unit finds them they keel over and die because, again, they don’t have a proper stat block.  This is identical to Area 38 and ohhh boy here is my favorite part. So, for starters, this is the dumbest, most try-hard thing. In a nutshell, Daniel has used his powers to make the patient’s brain fit the phrenology chart, completely reworking his grey matter so that phrenology actually works. The main reason he’s forcing G-Unit to perform this little stunt is to see just how viable it would be to use on his own meat to get rid of his subconscious. The rules of the game are as follows:
 Because Daniel is an rear end in a top hat and likes loving with people, he’s hinted that the C organ is what should be removed. In reality, what you want to remove is the E organ, the Hunger organ. The problem isn’t that the patient was unimaginative but that he ate children.  But we’re going to use the alternate rule and instead of them performing brain surgery on a child-eating cannibal or another PC (god why would you even do this), they’re performing the surgery on our good buddy Werewolf. More specifically, Doc is performing the surgery in what is now the greatest procedure of her life so far. I would imagine that this would require removing both the Phagos organ and the Manicos organ to help poor Werewolf come to his senses so he can live a life of no longer eating people while naked. Succeeding the surgery or killing the patient results in being able to leave the area.  Also here is a very important thing I have figured out: if Doc was so inspired and motivated to (and she’s not, she’s a rational lady who already has enough guilt issues and this is something she definitely wouldn’t want to do), she could remove the patient’s brain and he wouldn’t die. To wit:
 This is one of the biggest signs of there being a gigantic problem with time and space thanks to the Reality Cancer. The pit is 100 feet deep, literally cannot fit in the space where this is and has random gravity fluctuations and wack-rear end Scooby Doo doors. You have to get to the bottom to progress and it’s a Reflexes check to climb down in 10 foot increments. That’s right baby, it’s time for ten straight rolls! Fail the roll and you roll on the chart below.  Fortunately they’re all armed with rope for climbing. Unfortunately having to roll a Reflex check ten times with a 20% chance of your character no longer existing in this zone of reality and a 30% chance of death by fall damage is relentless bullshit. This is the hardest challenge to date and runs a very real risk of wiping the party; Tama and Pincushion end up bruised and contused and require some brief medical attention before they can continue.  It also gets An Art.  Wits check with a penalty!  Now punch the mirror until it takes 10 points of damage.  Oh no, a secret passage. Who could have seen this coming. Who. My jaw is dropped. On the floor even. Nobody else in the sanitarium knows that these passages are here; the patients obsessed with the Observers are just blindly conjecturing or half-right but don’t actually know. The following areas have no bearing on the adventure and are just a thick dollop of metaplot smeared on the bread. Area 50 is home to the tunnels behind the scenes. These tunnels just run behind all of the rooms, tight corridors with emergency lights that run behind the mirrors in Area 15 and Area 42.  The chair is still warm. Looking through the security discs will reveal some of the most recent and important scenes relevant to the sanitarium.  The stuff here can be looted, netting the party lab coats with P:LF stenciled on the breast, goggles, a clipboard and the ability to salvage stuff from the recording equipment.  Educated Wits check! This is a force field, a experimental form of one that was rumored to be experimented with back on Terra. Anything that touches it gets dealt 1d6 electrical damage and bounces off. There is absolutely no way through the force field and this is basically where the passage ends. What the players don’t and won’t know is that the force field can’t be penetrated by the Demons. The people behind it are completely protected from the dangers of the Nether and this was intentionally designed to be here behind the walls of the sanitarium.  Insanity check! If you have any Despair, Despair check or you literally can't go any further. The Fortress is a pocket dimension made by Daniel's mind and given stability by his pet Reality Cancer. If the bond between them is broken, this whole place goes poof. It follows very real rules of gravity and physics, and any wounds incurred here are real. A bridge leads from 49 into the Fortress possible where five rooms ("Towers") await for the party to venture into to earn the right to face Daniel in combat.  Some Guy at the gates of the Fortress of Impossibility. There are more hints about what's to come in further modules and also of a ~deeper lore~ and I think I've harped enough on them. Join me NEXT TIME when G-Unit becomes a squad of Psychonauts and kicks in the doors of the theater of the mind. I feel like I'm forgetting something, though. Oh! Right. 
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Aug 2, 2017 09:50
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G-unit is too good for this poo poo. They're like a squad of actual protagonists dumped into something for personality-less interchangeable victims.
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Aug 2, 2017 13:41
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Metaplot, ew. When has metaplot been good for a gameline? Aside from tempting people to buy more books to find out when happens next? That aside, I do have to ask: anyone around here heard of Fireborn? Yet another RPG about suddenly realising you're a glorious supernatural being, only this time you are reincarnated dragons. Uses a weird system called Dynamic D6, and mostly curious if anyone has actually had any experience with it. Otherwise, I offer to write it up after a bit of real life gubbins is sorted.
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Aug 2, 2017 14:34
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Terratina posted:Metaplot, ew. When has metaplot been good for a gameline? Aside from tempting people to buy more books to find out when happens next? There's a really good episode of System Mastery about it.
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Aug 2, 2017 14:36
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Thank ye kindly.
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Aug 2, 2017 14:47
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Young Freud posted:Here's another thing: it doesn't say that you can't multiple cyberorgans either. While the title says Cyberorgans, the text reads as a single organ, so you could get multiple organs like a cyberheart, cyberlungs, cyberkidney, cyberappendix, etc. so you could repeat ad infinitium the cyberorgan/shock buffer trick. And then you get a KO damage result and get knocked unconscious anyway regardless of how much shock damage you could still take! 
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Aug 2, 2017 15:57
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theironjef posted:I have toyed for a while with reviewing some 40k novels, because in the many, many, many dedicated threads it already has, chat always ends up turning to the novels about the Chapter Master type guys and I can't see them as anything but Saturday morning cartoon characters where every one has a color and a single personality trait and spend their time emptily threatening each other and learning lessons about not sharing. Best part is it's always big fans and readers describing it so they seem to miss this. It's always like "It was super awesome that time the Blue one taught the Red and Green a lesson about trusting unverified information channels when he helped them narrowly evade Purple's trap." Strip off the layers of gunporn and homoerotic posturing and they're basically the cast of Strawberry Shortcake in there. JcDent posted:I think the new book says that women are taken by Inquisition, Administratum and SoBs (duh?) while Commissariat , TEMPESTUS REGISTERED TRADEMARKS and Navis Nobilite take the men. Or, since we're talking about Space Orphanage Of The Virtuous Dead, girls and boys. In a fictional universe that hit closer to home for our political reality, the Imperium wouldn't hesitate to make women soldiers and workers because it wouldn't be economically efficient to cut its workforce in half. Terratina posted:Metaplot, ew. When has metaplot been good for a gameline? Aside from tempting people to buy more books to find out when happens next? The new WoD probably handles "metaplot" better than anything else I've seen, insofar as A.) the narrative of certain sourcebooks (like the Vampire clanbooks) are connected without that affecting your campaign, and B.) sourcebooks present different possibilities for the ST to pick and choose from.
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Aug 2, 2017 17:02
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It's interesting how much of a difference it makes when something is highlighted by a setting versus handwaved. Grail Knights actually all being Bret Noble Men and the Lady/system intentionally stepping in at that level to ensure it is a big red 'Something Is Up Here' flag after how a woman/peasant/foreigner can do the job fine (even getting the special knight virtues just fine) at all other points in the knightly progress. It's a question to be answered or excepted by a group/story because it's abrupt and intentionally highlighted. Compare to Marines, where it's just 'all men, stop asking questions, stick to canon damnit' (not that my group ever did). Of course some of this comes from being RPG vs. Wargame fluff (RPGs are more about edge cases and mysteries) and also GW fanatically demanding FFG run everything by them for canon 'authenticity' when writing about their golden boy cash cow. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 17:20 on Aug 2, 2017 |
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Aug 2, 2017 17:17
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Okay, so beyond the medieval Wicker Man village plagued by a werewolf in the depths of a forest inside the mental ward of a prison spaceship flying through Hell, we pass through Escher's Relativity, and now we've reached David Bowie's castle from the Labyrinth. Okay. Also it's a Lord of the Flies reference. And most of the "horror" is just that mental health science was loving awful in the 1800s and this spaceship from the future somehow has mental health science treatments from the 1800s. megane fucked around with this message at 17:24 on Aug 2, 2017 |
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Aug 2, 2017 17:19
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We really ought to be asking ourselves why "How come women can't join the SS?" is the principal feminist complaint against Warhammer 40,000.
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Aug 2, 2017 17:26
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 Witch: Fated Souls Part Three: More Fates Heks The Heks are the most social of Fated. They make their bargain with a Devil, what most people immediately think of when they hear the word demon, and the Devils are complete dicks. They crawl inside their Heks’ psyche when they give them their power, and at the same time give them a taste of what’s coming for them after death. It’s painful, miserable, and the Heks barely remembers any of it - but it usually makes the Heks try to live it up while they can. Heks are the only Fated to gain a familiar, a small animal they believe houses their soul. They believe that their Devils only get their soul when they die. Familiars appear to be normal animals, but they stay with the Heks until the Heks dies - even if the familiar is killed, it’s only temporary. The weakness of the Heks is that they suffer from either nightmares, giving them a rough time when they sleep, or insanity—and this is called out in the text as not being a real world mental illness. (The example Heks fluff text talks about how the individual writing it must make a written report every three hours, at quarter past; they won’t leave their house on a Monday, can only buy vegetables on Tuesday and craves a steak, and so on.) It’s…kind of nice to see a game include this kind of “insanity” and call out explicitly that no, real mental illness doesn’t work this way. The Heks spells are Curse and Telekinesis. Holy poo poo, spells with names that actually tell us something about what they do! Anyway. Lich Lich (noted as being both the singular and plural term) like knowledge, study, and information gathering. Their demon is called a Preta, and when they become Fated the Preta takes out their heart and places it in a phylactery. From then on unless the phylactery is destroyed, the lich will live forever…though the body continues to decay or decompose. The Preta tend to choose wood or porcelain vessels for the phylactery—a safe is too difficult to destroy and they want it to be able to be destroyed. Lich then get to study…whatever they want, forever. Mostly this tends towards each Lich becoming an expert on their chosen subject, whatever that may be—from mythology to the origin of dance to whatever else. While you might imagine from this that the average Lich spends their time in libraries for centuries on end, most of them prefer to do their own legwork and are rather adventurous.  If a Lich takes fatal damage, their body falls apart and their spirit goes back to their phylactery, until they make a new bargain with their Preta to restore their body to…livable…form. This is usually just as bad a deal as the one made to gain the power in the first place, if not worse. They otherwise can’t die unless their phylactery goes…and of course, they are ugly and take social penalties for it, increasing every 5 years. No McDonald’s drive thru for an ancient Lich! (And they do still need to eat and drink.) Lich spells are Lumiére and Enlever. Seers Seers are an interesting Fate. They were all wiped out in the middle ages by hunters (a threat, I might add, that continues even into modern times, though this is the first time I mention hunters—it’s not the first time the book does), and their demons, the Amit, were so badly weakened by this that for a long time no new Seers were created. Then something happened that tore loose the prison plane that the souls of the lost Seers were trapped in, and they got loose. Most of them took the opportunity to pass on to whatever comes naturally after death - freedom? - but some of them were unable to do so. These trapped souls occasionally find new hosts—bodies on the brink of death, so close that their rightful souls have already left. The Seer soul entering the body restores it to life and full health. The individual now possessing the Seer soul has no idea any of this has happened…until the Amit find them. The Amit would prefer to tear the souls loose and devour them on the spot, but there are rules, and one of those rules is that a soul cannot be taken without a bargain being made for it—and so they grant the Seers power. They gain the ability to see the future, and they also gain the ability to control creepy crawlies, which they gain an affinity with. They are tainted by their brush with the underworld, and gain a physical deformity - a scaled hand, a snakelike tail, etc. When normal humans see it, they are disgusted, and recoil from it, providing social penalties.  Seers don’t actually control their visions of the future, and sometimes gain memories of their past life. When they’re getting (or suffering, more accurately) a vision, they may faint or have a seizure or whatever else - decide on it before the game, and that’s what happens. Seer spells are Oculus and Brutalis. Next time: Sósyé and Yokai
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Aug 2, 2017 17:26
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megane posted:Okay, so beyond the medieval Wicker Man village plagued by a werewolf in the depths of a forest inside the mental ward of a prison spaceship flying through Hell, we pass through Escher's Relativity, and now we've reached David Bowie's castle from the Labyrinth. Okay. There's also what's probably a reference to A Clockwork Orange in the aversion therapy.
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Aug 2, 2017 17:27
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Halloween Jack posted:We really ought to be asking ourselves why "How come women can't join the SS?" is the principal feminist complaint against Warhammer 40,000. It's more 'Why can't women be part of one of only three or so groups in this setting that are given any agency or focus' regardless of what they represent. It's also interesting to to consider how the early marines were just roided up condemned criminals exposed to heavy brainwashing to make them 'space knights' and how that slowly morphed into 'heroic overman' and what that said about the progression of 40k away from being satire and into sincere 'yes the fascist madmen are awesome' stuff with most current writers.
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Aug 2, 2017 17:32
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This spirit world business in Rifts completely messes with Rifts' cosmology (such as it was) and seems like somebody was reading an old Manual of the Planes that still referred to the "Happy Hunting Ground." I mean Rifts has long acknowledge the existence of some form of soul, but not really discussed specifics of afterlife other than for people who get soul-devoured, and thus presumably don't have one. "Technology doesn't work there" --so like, bow and arrow? How do humans hunt the spiritually possessed imported game? Do you just have the shaman tie a couple feathers on something and say a cryptic prayer so you can shoot your gun? Would that offend the extremely-sensitive spirits? Really these 'spirits' are wound up way too tight and humans are probably better off staying out of their reach.
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Aug 2, 2017 17:39
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Someday I want to see one of these 'tech doesn't work' settings being so literal that it's just a succession of massively swole folks fistfighting lions.
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Aug 2, 2017 17:41
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Man, that's a pretty raw deal for the Lich.
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Aug 2, 2017 17:44
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Terratina posted:Metaplot, ew. When has metaplot been good for a gameline? Aside from tempting people to buy more books to find out when happens next? Orpheus was good.
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Aug 2, 2017 17:46
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In a sense all of the Fated have pretty raw deals going on. The Lich get the biggest benefit (immortality) at the cost of the nastiest overt downside. The others are just as bad in their own ways, though--at the end of the day, if you don't do anything to stop it, your soul belongs to a demon and you're going to face a very, very miserable eternity... Edit to add regarding Orpheus's goodness: Orpheus WAS good. It was also very, very limited--six books total, planned from start to finish at the outset. Most metaplot wasn't that tight.
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Aug 2, 2017 17:48
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The Djinn seem to make out okay - three wishes for yourself, and your choice of wishes to grant for others.
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Aug 2, 2017 17:55
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I didn't mention and should have - if you wish for your soul or any other Fated's soul...you're not comin' back.
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Aug 2, 2017 18:07
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Yeah but where does their soul go? I thought they didn't have a demon.
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Aug 2, 2017 18:08
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It goes to the Quiet. I...don't remember exactly what that means. Let me just... Looks like...oblivion.
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Aug 2, 2017 18:10
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Ah. Personally that doesn't sound too bad to me, given the possibility of being owned by demons for eternity, but maybe that's just me.
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Aug 2, 2017 18:11
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The trouble is that for the Djinn, if someone nearby has a wish, you can feel it sort of tingling. Like, it's not oh hey I can choose to grant wishes, it's more like...oh hey there's a wish I am going to have to grant this now. Not really an optional thing. I'm explaining it poorly.
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Aug 2, 2017 18:12
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I can't believe I forgot Orpheus. It's sort of the exception that proves the rule--White Wolf made it after they'd faced the reality that you shouldn't launch new game lines with the assumption that they'll just sort of go on until they don't, and that you can taper off releases before they become unprofitable and without making your fans mad online.
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Aug 2, 2017 18:14
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MollyMetroid posted:The trouble is that for the Djinn, if someone nearby has a wish, you can feel it sort of tingling. Like, it's not oh hey I can choose to grant wishes, it's more like...oh hey there's a wish I am going to have to grant this now. Not really an optional thing. Or rather, the game has no mechanics presented to back that up yet and it is in a fluff bit that I skipped because the fluff is full of grammar errors, as I mentioned earlier.
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Aug 2, 2017 18:17
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Halloween Jack posted:In a fictional universe that hit closer to home for our political reality, the Imperium wouldn't hesitate to make women soldiers and workers because it wouldn't be economically efficient to cut its workforce in half. Oh, the women are free to be basically anyone else, just not Space Marines (because Emperor engineered it that way and No Female Space Marines (in 40K) is my weird hill to die on. I'm also willing to die on No Male SoB hill, which is adjacent, but much smaller), Commissars or Navis Nobilite (the officers), and I have issues with the last two. Aside for the Scions book being needlessly cruel and stupid about things (All Scions (human operators operating operationally) need a painful memory deleting drug for their transformation into Scions just cuz AND THE STOCKS ARE RUNNING OUT NOOOO), I'm really not against female Commissars (and countless horny nerds are already voting with their wallets at Wargame Exclusive et al) while a female space officer in a strapping uniform is such an entrenched trope that I would not want to go away from 40K. And Vasquez is the reason why we need more female Guardsmen. And for Guardsmen to look more like Colonial Marines rather than movie Mobile Infantry. EDIT: Wait, I think I might have been wrong. I took a glance at the book and in the two places they mention selection, they don't mention Navis. Now how did I get this brainfart... JcDent fucked around with this message at 20:21 on Aug 2, 2017 |
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Aug 2, 2017 20:09
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JcDent posted:Oh, the women are free to be basically anyone else, just not Space Marines (because Emperor engineered it that way and No Female Space Marines (in 40K) is my weird hill to die on. I'm also willing to die on No Male SoB hill, which is adjacent, but much smaller), Commissars or Navis Nobilite, and I have issues with the last two. Aside for the Scions book being needlessly cruel and stupid about things (All Scions (human operators operating operationally) need a painful memory deleting drug for their transformation into Scions just cuz AND THE STOCKS ARE RUNNING OUT NOOOO), I'm really not against female Commissars (and countless horny nerds are already voting with their wallets at Wargame Exclusive et al) while a female space officer in a strapping uniform is such an entrenched trope that I would not want to go away from 40K. The Ciaphas Cain books already canonized women commissars. Cain specifically notes that as many as a third of the Imperial Guard's fighting forces are all-women regiments, and that most all-women regiments have women attached as their commissars, tech-priests, and other specialists. The lady commissar cadet in the book featuring Cain and a bunch of his commissar students is even the most competent of the bunch.
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Aug 2, 2017 20:21
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Cythereal posted:The Ciaphas Cain books already canonized women commissars. Gaunt's Ghost also feature female Commissars for that part. But yeah, less said about the fluff in the Scion codex the better.
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Aug 2, 2017 20:30
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JcDent posted:Oh, the women are free to be basically anyone else, just not Space Marines (because Emperor engineered it that way and No Female Space Marines (in 40K) is my weird hill to die on. I'm also willing to die on No Male SoB hill, which is adjacent, but much smaller), Commissars or Navis Nobilite (the officers), and I have issues with the last two. Aside for the Scions book being needlessly cruel and stupid about things (All Scions (human operators operating operationally) need a painful memory deleting drug for their transformation into Scions just cuz AND THE STOCKS ARE RUNNING OUT NOOOO), I'm really not against female Commissars (and countless horny nerds are already voting with their wallets at Wargame Exclusive et al) while a female space officer in a strapping uniform is such an entrenched trope that I would not want to go away from 40K. okay
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Aug 2, 2017 20:41
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Cooked Auto posted:Gaunt's Ghost also feature female Commissars for that part. Well, the 33rd Alphic Hydras are funny at least.
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Aug 2, 2017 20:42
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 Rifts World Book 15: Spirit West, Part 14: "Nurturers are tiny, elegant, Native American women with long black hair."  Sparkleferret despises your cold, heartless civilization. Lesser Animal Spirit These are basically the citizenry of the Spirit Realm, most of which stay there and don't visit our world. Rifts World Book 15: Spirit West posted:Why they help Native Americans and other people who are close to nature and who seek a (relatively) peaceful co-existence with the natural world is also a mystery. uuuuugh I get it It notes they might help out Native Americans but generally won't fight their battles for them and tend to make themselves scarce when needed most. It's not recommended to have one as a PC because they tend to be passive and not remain long on this world, and apparently have a alien mindset of immortal playfulness. But you can play faeries, because pixies are hot. Their mental stats are pretty average and everything else tends to vary based on what they're materialized as. They tend to have a few minor spells around a nature theme, a few shamanistic spells, all sensitive psionic powers, and one physical psionic power. Nothing too devastating - most of their weirdness is covered by the general spirit rules.  Those with allergies to magic motes may want to steer clear. Lesser Plant Spirits So, these are like animal spirits, but even more passive and secretive... and we don't get much else on them. We get some rules for S.D.C. plants, as if that matters. Did you know a mushroom has 1d4 S.D.C.? You do now! Because of the weirdness of these rules, a tree spirit that manifests in physical form will often have an average of over 1000 M.D.C. Possessed plants can't move or announce if they are or are not Groot, but manifested plant-spirits can move around very slowly. They get some healing and sensitive psionic powers and well plant / elemental shamanistic spells as well. No mention of their suitability as PCs, but it seems like playing a magic mushroom would be relatively limiting. Still, I kinda like the idea of a little mushroom hopping after the other PCs... at least until getting hit by its first mega-damage attack and dying instantly with its 10 or so MDC. Man, you were almost cool, mushroom spirit! Side Murphy: This means 1 out of 6 times a perfectly natural mushroom can withstand a .22 bullet. Lesser Elemental Spirits These are essentially the agents of greater elementals and gods. Rifts World Book 15: Spirit West posted:Most Elemental Spirits are friendly and helpful as long as the Shaman or Native American they are associating with is honest and has a genuine need for them. yes yes yes I get it please stop So, these are spirits tha can possess some equivalent to their element (breeze, campfire, rock, etc.). It's still the classical Greek air / earth / fire / water elements, of course, because this is fantasy RPG. They can also take on specific forms like a bird (air spirits), predatory animal (fire spirits), "Female Native American" (water spirits), and "Male Native American" (earth spirits). They aren't immediately notable as spirits but the psychically sensitive, warlocks, elemental spirits, and other elementals can suss them out. These can't be summoned by warlocks unless uuuugh the warlock is Native American uuuugh but they'll treat warlocks kindly unless given a reason not to. Warlocks can't command them like they do normal spirits, though. They particularly see Elemental Shamans as sibilings as well. They're exceptional in every attribute, and fire and earth spirits get more MDC than they others. They get regenerate, can "speak the language of true elementals", and sense other elementals. Air spirits get various weather and air senses and immunity to weather effects. Earth spirits get mineral identification, resistance to kinetic damage, and can predict earth-based disasters. Fire spirits can identify temperature and locate fire, and are impervious to heat and fire (but vulnerable to cold). Water spirits detect water stuff and are immune to electricity, pressure, and cold. All of them get minor warlock magic for their element and vaguely themed pisonic powers (air = sensitive powers, fire = mind-controlling powers, water = healing powers, earth = physical powers).  Ramon Perez at least helps ease the pain. Great Little Ones So, these are spirits that resemble tiny Native Americans about a foot tall, so they're akin to faerie folk, only... vaguely Native American themed. Unlike other spirits, they're purely physical, because... we wanted to write them that way. But they're still spirits, or something? Rifts World Book 15: Spirit West posted:The Great Little Ones are steadfast friends of Native Americans, and supporters of humans in general, and often try to help and protect them whenever appropriate. i knooooow wait what Wait, did you say "in general"? You're okay, Great Little Ones. You're somewhat less racist than the rest of this spirit world! So, these at times apparently took the "Pure Ones" into the Spirit Realm along with the Nunnehi. They have three tribes: Hunters, Stone Throwers, and Nurturers. Some think they're ancestor spirits, but this notion will not be followed up on. Instead, their role seems to have been to teach Native Americans necessary survival skills, and so they have the special power to teach somebody a skill (at base level) in only 48 hours, but can only teach somebody a skill in this fashion once per year. So, despite their size, they're physically capable MDC creatures that are better at humans in everything but reaching for the top shelves. They're not very durable for MDC creatures, but will self-resurrect unless they're reduced below -60 MDC. They're naturally skilled at all wilderness things, can use bows, melee weapons, or tiny repeating rifles or flintlocks. They have some defensive psionic powers, a variety of spells (mostly sensory and concealment), and get a weapon table all their own (but the weapons aren't vastly different in damage compared to their full-size counterparts). And we get three types and three statblocks. We have the Hunters, which are sneaky hunters whose weapons can harm anything, even things that would normally be immune to their damage... but they don't do that much damage to begin with. Apparently they often go around secretly helping heroes by causing rock-slides, sabotaging or distracting enemies, and so on. They also apparently avenge animals injured or killed by careless or wasteful hunters, though their vengeance seems to amount to little more than harassment. The second type is the Stone Throwers, who are basically mighty mites (usually as "tall, muscular males"). They like throwing rocks and other large objects or hitting things with axes, and it specifically notes they can defy the laws of leverage. They tend to be more silent, serious, strong types. They have higher strength but aren't as universally capable as hunters, though they get over twice the MDC. They effectively can tame and ride any wild animal, have various spells (usually around concealment and defense), and some physical psionic powers. But they have the weakness that they lose their strength if lifted from the ground., The last type are the Rifts World Book 15: Spirit West posted:Nurturers are the most friendly and personable of the three tribes, even seeking out the companionship of inoffensive humans who are not of Native American ancestry and D-bees. s-scandalous They're much like hunters, but have the same animal affinity as the stone throwers. However, they get access to empathic and defensive psionic powers, all plant shaman spells, a variety of other spells, and can make a number of fetishes. They're weakened if they lose access to sunlight for more than a day. They also "have a great tolerance to alcohol equal to that of the Saloon Bum", which is a thing. These all seem to be based off the Iroquois Jogah or Jo-gä-oh, very loosely, with the Hunter tribe replacing a tribe that lived underground and protected people from poisonous snakes and things like that. Next: A culturally questionable rendition of Toy Story.
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Aug 2, 2017 21:40
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Someday, somehow, I will actually get to Dark Heresy. I will never regret that I ran 40krp, if only for the Underhive/Techpriest game about an ex ganger doing archeology and trying to fix water filtration systems down in the gloomy tunnels of her old home, slowly making one world a little nicer. But 40krp is a mess and 40k is a very thin, empty setting trying to be loud enough to mask it.
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Aug 2, 2017 21:41
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occamsnailfile posted:"Technology doesn't work there" --so like, bow and arrow? How do humans hunt the spiritually possessed imported game? Do you just have the shaman tie a couple feathers on something and say a cryptic prayer so you can shoot your gun? Would that offend the extremely-sensitive spirits? Really these 'spirits' are wound up way too tight and humans are probably better off staying out of their reach. Presumably they got special dispensation to use stone age technology, but all of it is wrapped in a layer of "Well, humans can never understand the mysteries of the spirits *bigshrug*.", so who knows. The only reason it ever seems you'd want to visit the spirit world is to do spirit quests for shamans who need their level-by-level dispensation of spells, after which they can get the hell out. It's too much trouble to find to use as an escape route and there doesn't seem to much anything to find there but bossy gods and spirits, but I suppose you could go to beg some big spirit or god for favor. It's one of those game concepts without much actual use provided, like... a lot of what we'll see coming up. Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 23:08 on Aug 2, 2017 |
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Aug 2, 2017 22:55
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CHAPTER TWO STILL: THE FORTRESS OF IMPOSSIBILITY Or I Don't Know How I Can Outlast All of The Suffering, My Chances of Survival Seem Slender Out Here In This Zone of Dead Space Full of the Nether's ObsCure Resident Evils. Silent Hill. We're off the map now and deep in the Fortress of Impossibility, a realm where five towers must be approached and conquered. Daniel's blocked himself off from the squad with a literal locked door where five keys are needed to access him, each key hidden in a tower. The only thing standing between G-Unit and the keys are...videogame-style interactive cutscenes.  Yes, that's right. You have to trek through Daniel's memories and experience them yourself in order to earn the privilege of his boss fight. They can be done out of order but, like, why would you so I'll be doing them in numerical/chronological order. Also just a heads up: I know there's been a background content warning I threw up in the beginning, but CONTENT WARNING: if scenes and imagery of child abuse and verbal abuse will upset you, I might recommend you just keep scrolling.  Taking a look at the toys he's playing with reveals that they're similar to the village of the sanitarium, right down to a little holy man leading an angry mob towards a witch in a makeshift wicker man. The game assumes you'd want to investigate the sounds of splashing.  Quickly, mash X to try and save him! Oh wait you can't. You can't reach the younger memory of Daniel and after a moment the surface of the pond turns to glass as he continues to drown. The squad has three turns to act to try and save him. Every attempt that does 3+ points of damage causes the glass to crack but at the same time the person trying to break the glass takes 1 point of damage from psychic backlash. Crack the glass three times and it shatters...and he drowns anyway but a small silver key floats from his mouth to the surface. G-Unit shatters the glass immediately in the first round, all of them acting at once and sharing the pain. Letting him drown or failing to save him forces a Guilt check. This key is instead black and flecked with mud and corrosion and is found in the mud on the banks of the pond. Either key works fine for its intended duties and picking it up forces a Wits check to let the players know this key is Important and was deliberately placed here. This revelation gives everyone -1 Despair and they get to leave the tower. This near-death experience lead to Daniel unlocking his psychic potential and put his life on the course it lead to.  The door doesn't open. You can try peeking through the crack, though.  Trying to talk to Memory Ghost Dad results in no response because of the fact that he's a memory ghost. The main focus of interest are the pieces of art Daniel has been working on: crayon drawings of demons, coloring books, weird monsters. The art that stands out the most is a sentence scrawled on a piece of paper that the book says seems depressing and nihilistic in the face of his mother's death: "YOUR MIND CAN ONLY HURT, IT CANNOT HELP". Beneath the paper is a brass key which does another Wits check if you didn't get it yet. You'll keep doing this until you do get it. Touching the key summons the voice of Daniel who yells "you're not welcome here anymore! Get out - stay out of my mind!" and then they can leave. Despite his yelling and bluster, he doesn't do anything to actually stop them.  The squad is now locked inside of a giant dark closet like when Daniel's father stuffed him in the hall closet and locked him in there for hours on end. The door won't open further than the crack it's already opened to allow air to flow in. Sidling up against the closed door will let them hear what's going on outside. There's the constant ticking of a grandfather clock, a Wits check will let them pick up Daniel's father's drunken mumblings and a Lost Knowledge check will let them pick up the movie that's on the television (it's The Wicker Man).  The only way to get out is to explore the closet which has a collection of smaller doors lining the walls. This is where Daniel crams people who tried to kill him or escape and failed. Their belongings are all here as well, neatly tucked away in a literal corner of his mind. Time to open some doors!
 This is just all cutscene. Kick up your heels and watch.  Despair check. You end up outside the tower automatically with a gold key in your pocket.  Yes that's right, in the future they still use Zener card tests. The name of the game is "someone in the party has to do this Psychic Test to feel the pain I've felt". One of the players has to sit in the chair which is rigged to deliver a 1d6 damage electrical charge if you guess wrong. The GM rolls 1d6 to see what image it is and then the player has to pick an image from the list. Then the GM reveals the image they got. If the person in the hot seat has Psi Potential at all, any points of Psi Strength they have can shift their choice by 1 place for every 2 points they have. The way out of this scenario is to get three right...in a row or if someone dies from electrocution.  For once, it's Pincushion's time to shine. Casually taking a seat, every single time he picks the Star and then just shifts it to the right answer because he has Psi Strength 7 and can just shift his choice up to three spaces. Because Pincushion actually succeeded in this and has Psi Potential and Psi Strength, he automatically gains +5% Potential (which doesn't matter because he's already Awakened) and +1 Strength (which he enjoys quite a bit). For good measure he flips the bird as G-Unit leaves and grabs the marble key off the floor. Once the towers have been completed it's up to G-Unit to solve the greatest riddle of all: in which order do you put the keys into the magic brain door.   It's not like this is a safe thing, though. Every time they get it wrong the wind blows harder and after three failures the bridge collapses and the party is literally split up, teleported all over the ship. Module over, you're alone, gently caress you. Opening the door teleports the whole party to...THE CUBIC MAZE.  Behold, substandard art! BEHOLD, THE CUBIC MAZE!    Welcome to the final fight. PCs spawn on an asterisk space and Daniel spawns on the X. The maze is all white and featureless except for the big menacing walls. Each space is 5 feet but you move at half speed (so 3 spaces a round) because of the disorienting nature of the maze. Daniel is also limited to this...except when he wants to teleport up to six squares away from his current location through walls. Let's take a look at Daniel's stats.   Alright there are four things I want to focus on, the first of which being that his Extra Health Trait isn't working properly due to bad proofreading. Second is the fact that Pincushion is a stronger psychic than him but it's not like that really matters because Daniel has bullshit plot powers. The third thing is that he has 0 Insanity and that makes no sense; Demented Insight doesn't work and Insanity goes away with low Insanity. The fourth thing I want to focus on is a bit more...oblique. There is no way in hell Daniel is a boy. And I don't mean that in a gender identity sense, I mean there's no way he's any younger than 17, 18. He is, by all accounts, a young man at the very least and I utterly and sincerely hate that the game keeps treating him like a literal child because gently caress you this is so stupid. His mom dies when he's 9, he's abused when he's 10, he kills his relatives when he's 11, he's hospitalized when he's 12, throw five years on the Gehenna into the mix, he's loving 17 minimum. And the game never addresses this discrepancy because they're absolute rear end at chronological timelines and having a grasp of chain of events. The thing that makes me hate Daniel and this book the most isn't that they keep calling him A Child or A Boy and hammering on the Creepy Empowered Child trope, it's the fact that the official art of the fucker is very much "no he is actually a child, shut up". And this (intentionally?) ignorant insistence just drives me up the goddamn wall as a result, the cherry to the sundae of the hack writing of this book to me. Anyway let's take a look at his stupid wishes.  Yeah. Unless you have one of the tokens that represents something he fears or that triggers a reaction, his Wishes automatically hit. And boy howdy it's a good thing that they all have Extra Health. Having a token means that you can make an opposed Will check to just ignore his Wishes and they are awful and unfun. The other upside of the tokens is that he can't teleport and disengage from combat when around one. The way the fight functions is that Daniel will pick off the players one by one before they can regroup, his Insanity reduces damage received by 1 point and he'll use Demented Insight to add +1 to one roll to save his rear end.  In execution, Doc and Beth have Quickness and they have Barrier Buster rounds for their shotgun. Plus there are no rules saying that you can take multiple samples of the antiseptic which...I mean, G-Unit has their pockets full of stolen food and all the medicine they could take, why not take a shitload of antiseptic? Doc and Beth come across Daniel while he's in a Psychic Duel with Pincushion and because Daniel really isn't a child, neither of them will hesitate and they blow the would-be god-king in half.  Oh no a Reality Cancer. Insanity check.  The Reality Cancer runs the gently caress away and no I'm pretty sure it was all Daniel. Anyway, its plan was thwarted. It would have absolutely loved to have turned Daniel into a general of the army of the damned alongside Blade and Lucretia but G-Unit has put a stop to that. It just has to be satisfied with the damage it did to the sanitarium as it runs away. Because Daniel is dead and the Reality Cancer has fled, the Cubic Maze and Fortress of Impossibility begin to collapse as the pocket dimension starts to implode and G-Unit manage to get back to Area 49 in the nick of time. The damage to the sanitarium is extensive; the secret areas of 50-52 have collapsed and the whole area is just damaged further than it already was. So what have we accomplished here? G-Unit has trekked into Somewhere In Between and come out alive, dealing a blow to the sinister machinations of the Demons. More importantly, they have liberated the contents of an entire pharmacy and a pantry full of real food, giving them plenty of medical gear and supplies to find somewhere to hole up and lay low to recover from the events of this mission. The only grey to this silver cloud is that now Pincushion won't stop complaining about how the Demons picked someone who was inferior to his own power to act as a general for their army. The promise of cooking up a pot of pork and beans and cracking open tinned fruit is enough to shut him up. Rewards! Everyone gets 200 BP and loses 1d6 Despair. Further goal rewards are below.  And so ends a pretty boring book about a matryoshka doll of stolen plot points and settings wrapped up in a straightjacket. Overall this module is pretty easy up until the final fight which is a total pain in the rear end. G-Unit gets to rest on their laurels for a spell, adding God Slayer to their various accomplishments. Plus I've already figured out what their next character advancements will be: everyone except Ice Queen is taking Criminal Mastermind to make the party literally double in size. Shelling out the extra BP to override the requirements can be easily done due to the weird remainder of 70 points from their defense of Sanctuary and this module was more than enough to get them the 200-300 BP necessary to double the loving party. Plus I have a sworn duty to see how much I can make the system bend and break under the rules they've established (not hard for people taught by D&D 3.0). These newcomers (and Ice Queen) will be the stars of the next module because...I kinda made the core members of G-Unit way too good and the core thrust of the next module won't function properly because they can just murder their way through their problems. So come back and join me NEXT TIME for my absolute favorite module of this entire line, a module I love because it's so stupid and bad: LORDS OF THE DREAM CAGES, a module the creators straight-up say in the first few pages is based on the Marquis de Sade's The 120 Days of Sodom and the 1975 art horror film Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom and is marked as Mature on DTRPG as a result. G-Unit dares to enter their magical realm.  I love the holodeck. It's so bad. 
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Aug 2, 2017 22:59
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occamsnailfile posted:"Technology doesn't work there" --so like, bow and arrow? How do humans hunt the spiritually possessed imported game? Do you just have the shaman tie a couple feathers on something and say a cryptic prayer so you can shoot your gun? Would that offend the extremely-sensitive spirits? Really these 'spirits' are wound up way too tight and humans are probably better off staying out of their reach.
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Aug 2, 2017 23:15
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So, like, is there any payoff to the whole 'Daniel has known about Hell this whole time due to psychic, and there was clearly a project designed to encourage and bring about Hell, complete with forcefields that can keep out demons to allow the observers safety' thing that was going on there? Because it just seems like a wet fart.
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Aug 2, 2017 23:25
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Mors Rattus posted:So, like, is there any payoff to the whole 'Daniel has known about Hell this whole time due to psychic, and there was clearly a project designed to encourage and bring about Hell, complete with forcefields that can keep out demons to allow the observers safety' thing that was going on there? Because it just seems like a wet fart.
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Aug 2, 2017 23:50
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Hostile V posted:The former no because he's basically just a patient who got a lucky break, the latter...mostly yes. This whole reveal is meant to make the players realize that Perdition was basically planned to happen and it'll be a while before the metaplot arises again to pull the curtain back further. Ultimately, the ship was loaded up with 10 million prisoners and sent into this anomaly on purpose and it's unknown whether or not all of the colony stuff is a cover and who was aware of Project: Lord of the Flies.
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Aug 3, 2017 00:25
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 11:42 |
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Nessus posted:Is the moral gonna be that only by selling ten million convicts to Hell can you possibly make liberalism work?
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Aug 3, 2017 00:27
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