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Barudak posted:Lastexodus.com was supposed to complement this book and give you your metaplot updates from there, no need for setting books. In fact, even if they printed any of the listed “Upcming Products”, none of those books are adventures or story content. Somehow, this book contains 18 pages of pure metaplot backstory and 40 pages of setting detail and a set of throw-away, single paragraph-long suggestions for possible alternate campaign plots at the back of the book are more playable than the INTERACTIVE STORY ARC the game is named after. I got curious because I couldn't remember seeing anything of worth on lastexodus.com when I first got the book (shortly after release). Sure enough, the Wayback Machine confirms it...  That's from May 16th. Skarka's involvement makes all deadlines impossible. So if you got the book at release, you had none of the promised updates for over a month. The next update is post-9/11 (Wayback captured it in November 2001), and includes a link to the Red Cross and this pop-up:  I vaguely remember the site having advertisements for upcoming books in the meantime (and no metaplot updates), but I can't find any direct evidence of that.
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Oct 17, 2017 11:43
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gradenko_2000 posted:So you're never going to go temporarily insane from passed SAN checks until you're literally seeing Cthulhu in the flesh, and in most cases you can still roll low enough on the SAN loss to avoid the temporary insanity. The table leaves out the 1d6/1d20 class of monsters, like Star Spawn and Shoggoths.
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Oct 17, 2017 12:00
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Joe Slowboat posted:Do you have a sense of which of them are worthwhile? I have a group that's considered playing for that Old World charm, especially Brets, and I'd love to know if the Bret quickstart or the Duchy of the Damned adventures are worth poking at. The Bret Quickstart is probably the worst one, since it's 'get led around by the nose, fight a guy eventually, then NPCs do everything'. Honestly, the actual official campaign isn't that bad. Paths of the Damned doesn't seem terrible, just sort of average. I also can't speak on adventure quality quite as much because I very rarely use pre-made adventures for my groups. I think, reading the official campaign closely, one of the problems with a lot of the official stuff is that they assume you're creating characters with full randomization and so it's harder to design adventures for them. You have no idea what the party's composition is going to be like, etc. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 12:22 on Oct 17, 2017 |
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Oct 17, 2017 12:19
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LatwPIAT posted:The table leaves out the 1d6/1d20 class of monsters, like Star Spawn and Shoggoths.
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Oct 17, 2017 12:24
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Ya, I hate how some games posit that anything that ever happened in history is a result of supernatural stuff. Like, can't you just have vampires or whatever be a little more aware that something is going down on the cusp of WWI and get more nervous about protecting themselves? Or werewolves going despondent about the prospects of canned sunshine appearing suddenly on their doorstep and digging ever deeper caves to hide? Mages making a magical doomsday clock that would warn them of MAD being triggered? Fairies trying to ward a forest from possible radiation and fallout? E: dunno if anyone said this already, but starfinger's power weapons look really loving stupid. Why can't you just make a regular light axe or light halberd, why do you need to make it a stupid three-flame array? How bad would it be to a make a starfinger lile game/universe where AK-47s exist? Also, how much of sacred cow/necessity is it to have a melee character class in a Stafinger/Star/Mindjammer game? JcDent fucked around with this message at 12:54 on Oct 17, 2017 |
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Oct 17, 2017 12:50
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JcDent posted:Ya, I hate how some games posit that anything that ever happened in history is a result of supernatural stuff.
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Oct 17, 2017 13:18
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JcDent posted:
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Oct 17, 2017 13:22
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Mors Rattus posted:The Kinori are adorable and cool. Pity the Greys seem to be handled way, way less well. the Kinori just wanted to be wizard-bros with homo sapiens and chill. the book never explains what they were running from in their home dimension that caused their exodus to Earth, but it's clear they're just glad to have found another hospitable planet with native species that weren't immediately hostile. it's possible they may have tried to backstab humans later along, but they had peaceful co-existence for nearly 4500 years before the Greys showed up, so my guess is things would have stayed on an even keel. to me, there's pretty a pretty clear "nature=good / science=bad" undertone to the whole metaplot. the Kinori are intended to represent an idealized society of noble savages (Hermetic arcana is just their tribal magic after all) and the Greys are a pretty clear allegory for European imperialism and "civilizing the savages" and the white man's burden and etc. and based on the body of work that Cook has since produced, I don't think this is a disingenuous reading of subtext. I also get a strong sense that the Greys are a stand-in for the U.S. military industrial complex, in as much as they are alien outsiders with a massive technological advantage that decide to muscle their way into the affairs of other nations uninvited, then cause a series of predictable gently caress-ups with their careless application of future tech, and then they zip off to the stars more or less unscathed when their plans fall apart with catastrophic consequences. the indigenous people are left holding the bag and the Greys get to act like nothing they did was their fault and then move on to the next global gently caress-up (and boy do they seem to cause them left and right)
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Oct 17, 2017 13:42
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gradenko_2000 posted:I'm speaking specifically for Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition, and in that game, if you lose 5 or more SAN in one SAN check, you're in danger of suffering a temporary insanity. You make an INT roll, and if you pass the roll, you become temporarily insane. Ah, this is the mistake I was making. Somehow I got the two rules mixed up and thought it was 'if you lose 5 or more Sanity in a reasonable interval you check for Temporary Insanity'. Somehow I mixed it up with Indefinite. Well, that makes a hell of a lot more sense.
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Oct 17, 2017 14:07
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Nessus posted:He was quoting a sort of benchmark guide table more than a comprehensive one. I think a shoggoth is more terrifying than Tsathogua even though the latter is sort of a "god" and the former is basically just Ditto from Pokemon all grown up. My point was more that you can get hit by Temporary Insanity on a successful SAN roll at the "monster" level and not just at the encountering-Great-Cthulhu-in-the-flesh level.
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Oct 17, 2017 14:36
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LatwPIAT posted:My point was more that you can get hit by Temporary Insanity on a successful SAN roll at the "monster" level and not just at the encountering-Great-Cthulhu-in-the-flesh level. This is correct, and I stand corrected.
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Oct 17, 2017 14:38
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Hostile V posted:Anyway KidNight sure is more of this and KidSurreal...I actually like because it's a good kind of weird. Ugh. That one scenario is what happens when some rear end in a top hat who thinks he's clever watches Home Alone once too often. And I'm glad that Kidsurreal takes a different turn. I'd hate to think of it as Naked Lunchroom. Fingers crossed for something more like The Odyssey (not that one).
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Oct 17, 2017 14:41
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DigitalRaven posted:I got curious because I couldn't remember seeing anything of worth on lastexodus.com when I first got the book (shortly after release). Sure enough, the Wayback Machine confirms it... Thanks for confirming that there was never an actual way to play the metaplot they just spent 6 pages defining and telling you you cant interrupt. The book claims you were supposed to be able to upload your characters and campaign notes to the website, so thats what I assume those dead links are. It is never made clear but the feeling I get is that the story was planned to change based on aggregate player choices. If its ok, Id like to include your notes in the next update.
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Oct 17, 2017 14:42
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Barudak posted:**The game uses Casablanca as an example of a one-shot story. It uses a different example, obviously, for ongoing narratives like it is trying to cultivate. First one to guess correctly gets a shoutout in the next section. Is it the X-files? The gently caress? this game sounds... good?
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Oct 17, 2017 14:47
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JcDent posted:E: dunno if anyone said this already, but starfinger's power weapons look really loving stupid. Why can't you just make a regular light axe or light halberd, why do you need to make it a stupid three-flame array? Too bad the Starfinger devs aren't as original as a 15-year-old 3.0 supplement.
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Oct 17, 2017 14:50
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Barudak posted:Thanks for confirming that there was never an actual way to play the metaplot they just spent 6 pages defining and telling you you cant interrupt. The book claims you were supposed to be able to upload your characters and campaign notes to the website, so thats what I assume those dead links are. It is never made clear but the feeling I get is that the story was planned to change based on aggregate player choices. The dead links in the first one are to announcements/descriptions (going by the link URLs), there was no means of uploading characters or campaign notes. Feel free to include whatever, it's all good.
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Oct 17, 2017 15:38
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DigitalRaven posted:The dead links in the first one are to announcements/descriptions (going by the link URLs), there was no means of uploading characters or campaign notes. Thanks. Why am I even surprised at this point that they botched their website and included none of the features they promised in the book?
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Oct 17, 2017 15:42
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Bieeardo posted:Ugh. That one scenario is what happens when some rear end in a top hat who thinks he's clever watches Home Alone once too often. KidNight is just "yo what if Kid World of Darkness".
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Oct 17, 2017 15:49
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Kurieg posted:The gently caress? this game sounds... good? the opening is really gonzo, but remember, this is all supposed to have happened thousands of years before the game actually starts. now, if they had instead decided to make the main setting take place during the war between Kinori, Greys, humans, and the Host, that would have been a much more awesome campaign setting. you could certainly do that yourself, but at that point you're not playing Dark*Matter any more. by the time the players can get involved in the game, all of that awesome poo poo has long since passed. however! the entire premise of the overarching Alternity metaplot (of which Dark*Matter is a subset) is that every Alternity campaign setting is occurring simultaneously (albeit in different dimensions and timelines) and one recommended style of play in the core Alternity book is that the players are intergalactic tourists that hop between timelines and dimensions and get to briefly interact with whatever poo poo is happening in each campaign setting before warping off to another setting. essentially a combination between spelljammer and quantum leap, and if you played Alternity under that premise, the game becomes 100% more interesting than if you try to play just the Dark*Matter campaign setting with a completely straight face. edit: my high school homebrew Alternity campaign literally did what is mentioned above. the game started in the Alternity version of Gamma*World, and when the players had gotten bored with loving around there, I had them find the means to travel to other Alternity settings. needless to say, a bunch of Gamma*World refugees make for quite a fish-out-of-water scenario when they warp into the Dark*Matter setting. I also decided that common races all had the same ancestors, so (for example) the Kinori were also the T'sa from core Alternity and they were also the Sleeth from Gamma*World and they had all just become displaced between different dimensions / timelines. Freaking Crumbum fucked around with this message at 16:38 on Oct 17, 2017 |
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Oct 17, 2017 16:33
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Nessus posted:Louis Wu was balanced out by being extremely depressed, while Speaker was of course going to dominate most combat encounters that didn't resort to variable swords or similar. Teela, well, let's not talk about Teela right now. Teela's arc ends in tragedy and the creature that helped engineer her going "huh, I guess luck isn't genetic after all" though. e: I guess Niven backed down from it later? Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 16:44 on Oct 17, 2017 |
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Oct 17, 2017 16:41
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Nessus posted:Louis Wu was balanced out by being extremely depressed, while Speaker was of course going to dominate most combat encounters that didn't resort to variable swords or similar. Teela, well, let's not talk about Teela right now.
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Oct 17, 2017 17:02
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Halloween Jack posted:I would like to see a sci-fi game that took technology beyond the "posthumanism" of even Eclipse Phase and all the way to the "indistinguishable from magic" phase. I don't know much about Niven in particular, but something like Known Space, Moorcock's Dancers at the End of Time, Jack Kirby's Fourth World, and Alan Moore's Miracleman...the closest stuff I can immediately think of is Ashen Stars and maybe Mark Rein-Hagen's unpublished Exile. Isn't this Numenera?
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Oct 17, 2017 17:04
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Cythereal posted:Isn't this Numenera? More that it's what Numenera thinks it is.
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Oct 17, 2017 17:11
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Cythereal posted:Isn't this Numenera?
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Oct 17, 2017 17:15
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Evil Mastermind posted:More that it's what Numenera thinks it is.
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Oct 17, 2017 17:15
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FMguru posted:In an era beyond time, at the edge of comprehending, where the singularity is news old as dust, all of posthumanity can be described as one of three phenotypes - The Fighter, The Rogue, and The Wizard. THERE CAME A TIME WHEN THE OLD GODS DIED! Then everyone just ran around doing D&D poo poo with a thin veneer of technomagic on it.
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Oct 17, 2017 17:20
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Yes! This god has many forms, all undying and each with unique personality and all run from an existential shadow that blots their mind of their past as they travel across many dimensions of reality. Yes! This is legally distinct from Planescape:Torment Behold, a beast made of the folding of the nature of collective will into a dimension where all beings are not one as it creates shadowy psuedopods of people into your memory. It attacks as though a tier 3 nano.
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Oct 17, 2017 17:31
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Halloween Jack posted:No, Numenera is Dying Earth But Crap. I'm thinking of a game where you'd need a rather abstract system of measuring things as a matter of course because every character would be nigh immortal and have Godlike power as a matter of course. Though now that I think of it, the Dying Earth RPG at the Rhialto (godlike arch-wizard) level might be able to handle it. Maybe a hack of Amber Diceless/Lords of Gossamer & Shadow?
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Oct 17, 2017 17:31
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Mankind spread across the stars, and when there were no more stars to claim, we set our will against the boundaries of reality and identity. But though we cast off our bodies, shaped the fabric of galaxies to suit our whim, became something our old selves wouldn't even have comprehended, one truth remained, a pattern etched into our souls that a billion years of progress and evolution could not expunge: casters rule, and fighters drool.
megane fucked around with this message at 17:40 on Oct 17, 2017 |
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Oct 17, 2017 17:38
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Teela's arc ends in tragedy and the creature that helped engineer her going "huh, I guess luck isn't genetic after all" though. Niven went back and forth on Teela and her implications for humanity, but he definitely decided that Known Space had a distinct endpoint that would be lame to write about and focused instead on the Ringworld-era stuff. I'm not a huge fan of the Sigmund Ausfeller/Fleet of Worlds books, though.
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Oct 17, 2017 17:55
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Halloween Jack posted:No, Numenera is Dying Earth But Crap. I'm thinking of a game where you'd need a rather abstract system of measuring things as a matter of course because every character would be nigh immortal and have Godlike power as a matter of course. Though now that I think of it, the Dying Earth RPG at the Rhialto (godlike arch-wizard) level might be able to handle it. You could probably do something with refluffed Nobilis
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Oct 17, 2017 17:55
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Teela's arc ends in tragedy and the creature that helped engineer her going "huh, I guess luck isn't genetic after all" though. The Ringworld RPG does try to mechanically model Teela's luck by making it possible for humans to have a POW stat much higher than 18 if they roll well during character generation. But it rarely has much effect on the game since it's still up to the GM when to allow Luck rolls and what they do.
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Oct 17, 2017 18:06
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Alien Rope Burn posted:As somebody that probably wrote up over fifty classes and hundreds of feats, it's a formula and you just do cargo cult design without thinking too hard about the underlying design principles. wiegieman posted:Literally all that's needed to make the Fighter a viable class is to go over feats and make them powerful enough to compete with spells -- which means that the 11-ish (plus bonuses) feats fighters get need to be as powerful and flexible as the 40-ish spells wizards get. That would be Changing Things though. ZorajitZorajit posted:But you would also need to allow Fighters to rewrite reality, break the action economy, change the fundamental way characters fight each other, and be so muscle-y that they can intimidate and seduce anyone they wish. This gets into core assumptions about how D&D works; noncasters engage with the mechanics, while spells often just bypass mechanics, often with no roll required. Like, maybe the biggest problem with the D20 system is that the casters basically aren't using it half the time. They're using a system where you spend a point (a memorized spell) to just get an effect you want, often without any rolls involved. You can't give Fighters something that is different from but equal to this kind of power. (I remember Cirno once wrote a long screed about how in 3e and even moreso in 5e, the rules are the physics of the universe, and the physics of the D&D universe are defined through spell effects.) Which is why 4e had to make everyone's class powers run off the same system. gradenko_2000 posted:I'd like to throw in that while Heroquest uses a d20, it's definitely not d20 design.
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Oct 17, 2017 18:09
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Yeah the issue is as stated, not having to use the same mechanics, and explicitly not having replacement mechanics for the ones wizards bypass, is forever untenable. There is no balancing that. If you dont roll casters only for your party someone at the table is wasting their time. I still remember laughing at someones story of their poorly optimized 3e character they played for a laugh being a bard with only non damage spells. Thats the opposite of underpowered you dolt!
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Oct 17, 2017 18:28
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Barudak posted:NVZ’s rambling article, as it turns out, is basically a cliche-salad. It’s about how the world is super dull and nothing interesting happens in it and everyone is a mindless drone and we were all promised super cool things like a world war and nuclear armageddon. Yes, the game compares “flying cars” equally with “nuclear armageddon” as things we were promised and denied by our lame real-world present*. In the last 3 paragraphs it finally sets up the premise of the game by saying that right now, thousands of messiahs are being born who will reshape the world. This is how I feel, writing all those words about the WoD as metaphor for middle-class white apathy at the End of History. TLE was there all the time! It's all that bullshit with no subtext, just presented as text.
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Oct 17, 2017 18:36
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I found arcana unearthed/evolved interesting because it had martial spells, probably because Monte had come to exactly the same conclusion as Jack. Unfortunately his brain was so poisoned by linear fighter-ness that all of the ‘spells’ were intensely boring stuff like “as a reaction gain four AC for four turns”.
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Oct 17, 2017 18:36
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I am pretty Into Glorantha, so I only have a couple problems with Heroquest: the fact that Hero Points are both a thing you spend to be more awesome and your XP, which you should never ever do because it flicks the hoarder switch, and the fact that there are never any hard and fast numbers for how an powerful a character should be -- they're always "difficult" or "very difficult" and the GM should be keeping track of the number of sessions to set the target for actions. They're easily solvable though.
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Oct 17, 2017 18:42
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Halloween Jack posted:You know how people wrote essays about how Marvel movies are just cheerleading for neocon fascism and the military-industrial complex, and then Marvel straight-up partnered with Northrop Grumman? I am going to spoil one of my favorite bits of setting detail just for you. One of the characters in game, who is white and from New York City, sides with our earthly reality against the heavenly order because earth has Oreos(tm).
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Oct 17, 2017 18:59
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wiegieman posted:I am pretty Into Glorantha, so I only have a couple problems with Heroquest: the fact that Hero Points are both a thing you spend to be more awesome and your XP, which you should never ever do because it flicks the hoarder switch, No idea why the writers never come up with that one. Carados fucked around with this message at 19:28 on Oct 17, 2017 |
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Oct 17, 2017 19:21
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wiegieman posted:I am pretty Into Glorantha, My man! Also this: Carados posted:This is always an easy homerule fix though- they become xp when spent. is a great idea and I am probably going to implement it into my game that I am running IRL.
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