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Let’s see, you’re in a dank corner of the internet, on a forum, and you’re low level. Let me draw a card… okay, looks like you run into The Deck of Encounters Set One: Introduction The Deck of Encounters, Set One posted:The road rounds a bend. A glitter catches your eye. There's something in the ditch, and it looks like gold… This thing came out in 1994, about a year before wee elementary school-age me got into the game through the Introduction to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons box set (a reissue of First Quest). I not only owned this deck, I used it in the terrible campaign that I ran for years for my brother and a couple of our friends. This era in general is extremely nostalgic to me, and I’m interested in seeing what kind of random encounters TSR thought would improve an AD&D campaign. My expectations are not high. The lead designer was Colin McComb, who would later put his Philosophy BA to work as one of the co-creators of Planescape. The credited additional designers were Dustin Browder (who worked on What are the first cards? Well, they have credits and information on how to use the deck itself. Let's go over them. 1. Using These Cards, 1 of 3 The introduction to the deck begins by claiming you can use these cards as random encounters, incorporate ones you like in a longer campaign, or use them "to design an entire campaign." That's a mighty tall claim, Deck of Encounters. What kind of campaign can we build out of these cards? A terrible one, I suspect. It goes on to explain that you can sort the cards as you like - by danger level, climate, terrain, type of problem, etc. Fair enough. It notes that some cards are two- or three-parters, though it doesn't really explain how that works. (It depends; some are essentially one encounter split across two cards, and some are intended to be a first encounter and then a later follow-up.) And finally, Using These Cards, 1 of 3 posted:It is recommended that you read the cards, so you can be sure to select only the appropriate cards for your game. Very important advice. I recall doing exactly that back in the day: going through the cards and sorting out the ones I wanted to use. As such, after looking at each card, I’ll be deciding to keep it in my theoretical random encounter deck, or to pass on it… or occasionally to put it forth to you, the jury, to pass judgement on. 2. Using These Cards, 2 of 3 This card explains the reference categories. Danger level (low is for levels 1-4, medium for 5-9, high for 10+), climate (they note it's mostly "temperate" because that's where most D&D campaigns are set), Terrain (forest, rough terrain, mountains, dungeon, urban, arctic, etc.), Attribute ("how the encounter would best be resolved," oddly labeled by ability score: "Strength indicates combat, Charisma indicates negotiation, and so forth." There are no encounters that should be solved through Constitution), Encounter (monster, device, or NPC), XP value, and "Additional Info" (where to look for more information on the topic - nine times out of ten, this is labeled MM for Monstrous Manual.) All of these would be a lot more useful if they were positioned on the tops of the cards so you could see them clearly while flipping through the deck. Color-coding would have helped, too. As it is, you can sort them out into piles beforehand, but it’s pretty awkward to find, say, a medium-level arctic encounter if you haven’t organized them very well ahead of time. 3. Using These Cards, 3 of 3 The designers note that you can expand upon an encounter - if the PCs are really curious about where those ghouls came from that were wandering around in the city after dark, make up a necromancer who's terrorizing the city from within or whatever. Sound advice! The next paragraph suggests that if the players are "obsessing on a single encounter" and ignoring your awesome adventure that you have planned, you should just cut off the story line. "For example, you could decree that the ghouls... were the unnatural byproduct of the graveyard and leave it at that." Bonus overbearing DM points for use of the word "decree."  (Of course, if I was a good-intentioned PC, I might respond, "drat, graveyards randomly spawn undead? Someone's got to do something about this! Let's ransack every graveyard in the area and crush all the skulls! We'll be doing a public service!") Cards 4 through 12 These are simply cards that demonstrate the icons for terrain, difficulty, and so on, and then the checklists themselves. Tune in next time for our first real batch of encounters! Dallbun fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Oct 17, 2017 |
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Oct 17, 2017 20:38
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Oh god, I just found my box of those stupid things the other day.
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Oct 17, 2017 20:45
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Just gonna make a deck full of random challenges but not allocate my possible challenges evenly. This product is going to be great!
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Oct 17, 2017 21:02
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Bieeardo posted:Oh god, I just found my box of those stupid things the other day. Same! Though I might have volume 2.
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Oct 17, 2017 21:05
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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. It did seem likely that they were angling for low-key positive probability shifts rather than Luck as a Superpower. If someone has full access to the Ringworld materials I think that would be an interesting review. I don't have the materials or else I would do it.
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Oct 17, 2017 21:14
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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. This is the target setting for Farflung, a PbtA riff by Sanguine. Might be your cuppa. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/196384/FARFLUNG-SciFi-RolePlay-After-Dark
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Oct 17, 2017 22:21
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I kinda don't get the appeal of that. I mean, singularity is called that because its effects are unimaginable... so wouldn't your campaign still end up kinda mundane, like how Numenera is D&D For /r/atheism IFLS Fanclub? Like, unless you're playing with your nerd quantum scientist friends, how do you build a campaign about bending muon-quantum wave to improve offset kinetic modulation in Bettelgeuse Dyson Swarm?
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Oct 17, 2017 23:19
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JcDent posted:I kinda don't get the appeal of that. I mean, singularity is called that because its effects are unimaginable... so wouldn't your campaign still end up kinda mundane, like how Numenera is D&D For /r/atheism IFLS Fanclub? Like, unless you're playing with your nerd quantum scientist friends, how do you build a campaign about bending muon-quantum wave to improve offset kinetic modulation in Bettelgeuse Dyson Swarm?
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Oct 17, 2017 23:55
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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. As the title suggests, Sufficiently Advanced aimed to do something like this. I own a copy but only skimmed it once or twice so I'm not sure how well it works but it seems to come close. It also has an "uncomfortable Roma stereotype" civilization, among other questionable design choices.
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Oct 18, 2017 00:14
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 Unknown, GenCon Q&A Transcript posted:Will the Core Rulebook contain monsters, or will they be in a separate book later? Jason Keeley, Starfinger Design Team Member, GenCon Q&A Transcript posted:In a separate book later. We will have that First Contact Free RPG Day product available to even before Starfinder comes out, so you'll still have a couple of monsters. And also we know, as Owen mentioned earlier, that there's a philosophy where you can grab the (Pathfinder) Bestiary, plop it open, and run the monster that you find there. Starfinger Core Rules Part #19: "The [Starfinger] Adventure Path, the first volume of which will come out in August at the same time as the Core Rulebook, will also have a Bestiary section just like the Pathfinder Adventure Path does, so right out of month 1 you'll have some new monsters, and every volume of the AP will have a selection of new monsters and new aliens and such." (Credit: Jason Keeley, Starfinger Design Team Member, GenCon Q&A Transcript)  Afflictions This is mainly describing four things: curses, diseases, and poisons. Curses have a single effect and require a specific condition be met to be removed (or just having a friendly Mystic with remove affliction). Diseases come in two types: physical and mental, and each has a 7-step series of status effects depending on how far along you are. Similarly, poisons have six types, one for each attribute, but with only 5-steps. And with both diseases and poisons, hitting the last step kills you. Some really deadly versions of either might skip steps. Drugs work like a low-level poison, but a failed Fortitude save can result in the addiction "disease" being inflicted as well. Poisons and diseases require medical card to basically stop the progression and start reversing the steps... or you can just cast remove affliction, though doing so requires a caster level check equal to the normal DC of the effect + 4... but also lets you skip a lot of the steps in recovery. Being cured requires a number or successful consecutive saves while being treated, though most poisons only require one save. In general the DCs of afflictions doesn't see the escalation other systems do, going from DC 12 to DC 20. For curses, we have:
It's a bad mechanic. Actually dealing with the curse solutions is almost always too much trouble to worry about, and it's better to turn to magic to resolve the issue. Magic is, of course, the desired solution to all these problems. Disease can really be divided into two types: fleeting and punishing. (Those are my terms, not Starfinger's.) Cackle fever, devil chills, filth fever, leprosy, mindfire, red ache, and shakes are all just fleeting ones - varying in type and DC, and a potential pain if you're got a bad fort save, but ultimately treatable given some downtime. The punishing diseases, however, are much worse, because if not swiftly treated (once again, preferably with remove affliction), they can have permanent penalties. And by permanent, of course, Starfinger doesn't mean actually mean the definition of the word - "lasting or remaining without essential change". Permanent means "you need magic to fix this". Namely, restoration, another Mystic spell. The punishing diseases are:
Speaking of which, let's talk about drugs! Drugs provide a minor benefit with the cost of addiction and penalties (the first tier of the "disease" they represent). You have to fail the save against addiction to get the benefit, however, but you can voluntarily fail if you really want it. The listed drugs are:
Yes, some drugs can certainly be dangerous. They are. But this is some Reefer Madness-level rules, where one hit of a death stick, one failed save, and you're risking death. There's no point for a PC to bother with these short of having them inflicted forcibly on them somehow, but how often does that happen in genre fiction outside of drug scare films? And what's more, most of the prices for drugs are farcical. 22,000 cr for a single dose of megaopiate, a drug you have to take every day to avoid going into withdrawal? That's the cost of three cars. Meanwhile, the lost of a remove affliction spell is 1,000. Even if you presume it takes two or three spell treatments, that's worth it. There's no economy in drugs other than hyperleaf, and even that's only for the rich at around 3000 credits a month. John, Expounded Universe podcast posted:My name is Elan Sleazebaggano, and I looove death sticks. In any case, we have poisons left. Poisons usually just require 1 save to recover from, maybe 2 for really lethal ones. The big issue is their frequency usually being 1/round, sometimes with truncated progression tracks. They aren't too interesting to talk about, though. Black Lotus Extract is the deadliest, killing you after four failed DC 20 saves and requiring two successful saves to recover from. Shadow Mist and Ungol Dust each inflict a permanent weakened state after a single failed save unless you have a restoration spell handy. Green Lotus Extract is your mind control drug, with enough failed saves putting somebody in a state where they effectively can't resist social skills. And so on. With so much of these relying on the party having remove affliction or restoration to recover from or survive, you may wonder if there's any technological equivalent. Well, there are antitoxins that at least give a saving throw bonus against poisons, but unless you've taken that in advance, all it may do is save you from dying, but not save you from sucking. More pointedly, there's a the regeneration table, which works as a remove affliction, restoration, and raise dead, all in one. However, it's less portable than a spell, because it's a table. It's more expensive, at 45,000 credits. And- Starfinger Core Rules posted:As a result of its need to perfectly attune itself to one creature suffering one exact set of ailments and the expenditure of its quantum state particles, a regeneration table functions only once and is then inert and useless. You know how much it costs to get a Mystic to cast all those three spells in a row? 13,000 credits. Basically, this is a whole subsystem that's fixed by one class and one class only, and if you don't have a Mystic around, you get severely punished. Oh, and as a curiosity, the space culture of Starfinger is no better at curing diseases or poisons than the fantasy culture of Pathfinger. Possibly worse, given there are fewer classes that can effectively treat them.  How to Read Stat Blocks Lastly, we finish the GM section with "how to read a stat block", which is of dubious usage given this book only contains a single monster stat block, but sure, here it is. The only thing that's really new to d20 other than sections detailing with Starfinger-specific traits (resolve points, EAC, KAC, etc.) is an "aura" entry (for persistent area effects from a creature). Interestingly, monsters now only have ability modifiers, not scores. (Scores were obviously still completely necessary for PCs, tho.) This is a section of the book only put in so you can understand supplemental material. It's not worth a thing on its own, because... We get one statblock as an example, and a pointedly useless one: the "Space Goblin Monark" at CR 20, a space goblin technomancer with nearly 400 hp that does around 67 damage with each hit of its "quantum dogslicer", can teleport between planets, charm people, robotify people, spit acid, is invisible- It's like a parody of 3.5 monster stats. I'm not entirely sure how serious this is supposed to be. It's also actually unusable even beyond its ridiculous numbers and abilities - it has a number of powers and effects that are never described in the book, like an "unnatural aura", "light sensitivity", or "earth glide". So, ultimately, we have an entire section that's relatively useless unless you pick up a book like the Alien Archive, since that's the only antagonist statblock we get. Owen K.C. Stephens, Starfinger Design Lead, Gencon Q&A Transcript posted:For the Core Rulebook, we already want everything that goes in the campaign book, everything that goes in a core rulebook, everything that goes into a system for starship combat. Ultimately there's only so much room for this thing if we don't want it to end up being 50 pounds and 5,000 pages. This is the solution we came up with that we all worked very, very hard on, so that we could give you the monsters you need, allow you to play on day 1, but not give you a book that you can't carry. The final book is 525 pages and 3.7 pounds, for the record. We just hit page 421. I feel like it's a peculiar form of insanity carried the genes of D&D that makes a designer believe, with a straight face, that 525 pages is not enough space for a complete game. Those rules for deadly space pot? That spell that turns people into suffering robots? The fourteen pages of sample character builds I didn't even mention because who could possibly give a ysoki's rear end? That poo poo was necessary. Also, the designers were straight-up honest about it, why is the book adverted as... well, I'm probably not done with that dead horse just yet. But I wish I was. Next: Mind the gap.
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Oct 18, 2017 00:39
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How the gently caress do you not have a complete core game in 525 pages.
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Oct 18, 2017 00:42
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Night10194 posted:How the gently caress do you not have a complete core game in 525 pages.
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Oct 18, 2017 00:51
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Night10194 posted:How the gently caress do you not have a complete core game in 525 pages. Out of curiosity I decided to look up how long some actual complete-in-one-book(defined as 100% playable with one single book, even though there might be supplements with useful info and more statblocks) RPG's I own are. Godbound, Deluxe Version: ~250 pages. Eclipse Phase: ~400 pages. All Flesh Must Be Eaten: ~230 pages. Fading Suns: ~300 pages. Even bad ones like Hc Svnt Dracones don't go beyond 400 pages. Looking at D&D, 2e AD&D runs about 700 pages if you combine the PHB and MM, the two books I'd say are absolutely necessary for play, and 3rd and 5th edition aren't far away from that. All of them with the PHB at about 320 pages... How are these 525 pages spent with Starfinder? Eclipse Phase and Fading Suns are more or less 50% setting, that eats up a ton of it. AFMBE and Godbound are large parts statblocks and rules... from the review so far I feel like simply a huge part of Starfinder is endless lists of spells and equipment, with relatively little in terms of setting or fluff. How are they managing to jam 200 extra pages into the core book without "finishing" the game in one go? And if the book's as short on fluff as it feels, what's all the extra garbage they're jamming in there compared to a D&D PHB?
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Oct 18, 2017 01:02
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WHFRP2e is a fully complete game in core and it's only 248 pages. All the other stuff is gravy (though again, its Bestiary is awesome and totally worth getting), the game is feature complete and pretty detailed in less than half the page-length of Starfinger. Even has solid rules for how to take a basic Goblin or Orc or Beastman and make them into a boss monster in the core book if you want. E: gently caress, include the entire Old World Bestiary and you're still at 391 pages.
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Oct 18, 2017 01:05
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Some of this is probably typesetting and layout. The 2E PHB did not meaningfully change content but it was re-laid out and produced a longer book between "the one with a charging cavalier on the cover" and "the one with a barbarian kicking open a door on the cover." The earlier edition was prettier too.
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Oct 18, 2017 01:12
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PurpleXVI posted:Out of curiosity I decided to look up how long some actual complete-in-one-book(defined as 100% playable with one single book, even though there might be supplements with useful info and more statblocks) RPG's I own are. Apocalypse World 2e: 304 pages. Blades in the Dark: 328 pages. Fragged Empire: 386 pages. And for generic systems: GURPS 4e: Two books at ~600 pages total. 3e was a single book at 275 pages; 4e is that plus the first two rules compendiums from 3e. Savage Worlds: 194 pages, $10 Fate Core: 308 pages. Fate Accelerated: 48 pages. $5. I can't imagine anyone arguing that any of those games aren't "feature complete". Even the generic ones really only require you to come up with a setting, and give a lot of base support for attaching the rules to it. Only GURPS 4e has a really "large" page count, and that's because it's the 3e core and two supplements, spread across two new books.
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Oct 18, 2017 01:18
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Red Markets is the only game I currently own that is A: long as hell and B: is completely readable and contained within itself that tops 400+ pages at 497 PDF pages. Granted, the first 170 pages are all immersive world building and can be skipped but of the rest you get 180 pages of solid rules, items, character generation, mechanics and examples of play and all the rest are for the GM to help them get a feel for the game, provide advice and provide premade encounters that are flexible yet surprisingly crunchy. You could pretty easily split this book into three books of setting, player's guide and GM guide but despite its size it's got a good flow and doesn't strive for realism or other d20 hangups. Like for real it's probably one of the few times I've seen a book be this long but also be wholly complete and also accessible and smoothly flowing. Starfinger not coming close with only 30 more pages is disgusting and to me it's just a clear sign that Paizo is too drat high on their own supply and their claims of greatness and grandeur ARB discussed quite nicely in the Pathfinder review.
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Oct 18, 2017 01:21
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So, IS there any actual fluff in Starfinger? The review makes it sound like it's just an SRD with competent but generic art.
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Oct 18, 2017 01:24
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To be fair the Dungeon Master's Guide almost always has the candy you knock out of all the piñatas in the Monster Manual, which is an essential part of D&D. In any case, Starfinger is roughly about 11 pages of introduction, 230 pages of character creation and advancement, 28 pages of starship creation, 89 pages of various conflict rules, 58 pages of magic, 8 pages of GM advice (most of which is actually character advancement), 76 pages of setting material, 8 pages of Pathfinder conversion guidelines, and the rest of miscellany like glossary and the bibliography and character sheets. Give or take 2 pages here and there since I didn't count out all the double-page spreads with little or no text, of which is 30 pages of just art. We're through most of the rules at this point and the setting material starts tomorrow. In any case my point is that if I said with most gamers that "I have a new RPG, but it's 525 pages.", there would be mumblings of heartbreakerism and headshaking. If I said it was over 525 pages, you'd think I was mad. This is all, of course, a point a certain infamous game designer made about Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition way back in 2000 as well, so it's hardly a new point to make. But I find it always fascinating to realize that we've accepted this as normal and just kind of shrug at it, then wonder why the hobby isn't bigger than it is. I feel a game like Fragged Empire is an very intimidating book to recommend as it is and that's, what, not even 400 pages?
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Oct 18, 2017 01:35
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The Last Exodus is 196 pages and doesnt include what the goal of the game is, its spell list is “examples”, includes a total of about 20 items and 8 monsters, and forgot to include the part of its conflict resolution system that makes it work so frankly Starfinger is looking good. Still, what % of Starfinger is spells?
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Oct 18, 2017 01:41
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We still taking 'Ongoing Narrative' guesses on Last Exodus? Because it's either Blade or The Matrix. Those were both edgy, gritty, leather clad things at the time. P.S. A setting set after a messiah figure came back, spent thirty years trying to make the world a better place, got fed up with a handful of assholes ruining it for everyone, going back to their heaven and then dropping the apocalypse on the world would be interesting. You can even tie in other, non-related divinities trying to clean up the mess because they had no clue the apocalyptor was actually doing anything.
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Oct 18, 2017 01:44
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On the other hand, you also have Exalted 3e, at 686 (633 if you don't count the list of backers and index) which will - in theory - be supported by a bunch of other huge splatbooks for the other Exalt types and setting detail.
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Oct 18, 2017 01:58
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Kaza42 posted:On the other hand, you also have Exalted 3e, at 686 (633 if you don't count the list of backers and index) which will - in theory - be supported by a bunch of other huge splatbooks for the other Exalt types and setting detail. Exalted is in general a bit of a weird case since the enemies, after a certain power level, are the PC splats. Which means that in order to have a playable game, you need multiple splatbooks, even in 2nd edition Exalted, despite the absence of a proper "monstrous manual" or similar equivalent. 400 pages for the corebook, 240 for Lunars, 240 for Dragonbloods, 240 for Sidereals, 260 for Fae... probably about the same Abyssals and Infernals which I can't scrounge up at the moment. Theoretically you could do with just the corebook, and have the players fight nothing but mortals, animals and other Solars. But I'd say you definitely need the corebook, Lunars and Dragonbloods to be able to run a game. And then one of the "antagonist" splats, Sidereals, Abyssals, Infernals or Fae, so...1120 pages? Oh and then they released 200 loving pages of errata to try and unfuck the mess they'd made somewhat, which are pretty vital to fixing some of the more blatant screwups. But since that probably wasn't intended from the get-go, it likely doesn't count.
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Oct 18, 2017 02:33
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Tasoth posted:We still taking 'Ongoing Narrative' guesses on Last Exodus? Because it's either Blade or The Matrix. Those were both edgy, gritty, leather clad things at the time. Entries don't close until I put up the next post, which should be a little later tonight.
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Oct 18, 2017 02:43
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CoC 7th Edition is about 450 pages, but there's a cut down player's guide if you're not going to be the one running the game. What were the page counts on the World of Darkness books, old and new?
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Oct 18, 2017 03:20
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Kavak posted:What were the page counts on the World of Darkness books, old and new? The VtM 20th Anniversary edition is the one I have to hand, and it's about 520-something. But that's basically enough to play the game, in any case, since the primary antagonists of a Vampire campaign are likely to be other vampires and the selection of non-vamp NPC's statted in the book. And, mind you, the 20th Anniversary version adds in a bunch of stuff from various supplements, like alternate morality paths, alternate clan bloodlines and a whole slew of minor clans that weren't in the original corebook.
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Oct 18, 2017 03:40
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Spirit of '77 is 283 pages before KS thanks, but it's also that smaller size a lot of PBTA books are, it'd probably be more like 140 if it were laid out for full page text.
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Oct 18, 2017 03:43
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 Last Exodus the Interactive Story Arc of the Third and Last Dance is a roleplaying game from Synister Creative Systems published in 2001 and designed Sean and Joshua Jaffe. It’s a metaplot heavy, playing card deck using, religious themed urban grunge game. Unless I am otherwise notified it appears to be completely out of print with no digital versions available. Should this be incorrect I will update to include where it can be bought to give the original developers income. Part 3: Adventures in Page Lay-PLOT AND BACKSTORY-out Part 1 Here we are, finally at what the game is so proud of the Metaplot. Unlike other games of its ilk, there is no warning that this section is for Directors only or that players should only read select passages. No, this confusing, poorly laid out godawful mess is for everyone to read and it starts with probably the single worst laid out page in the book from a pure readability standpoint, but the book will make other less grievous unforced errors. Before we are six paragraphs into our setting details, the the commenters are interjecting. And I mean that literally, as they break into the columns where the story text is located. Worse, they are explaining a term that hasn’t occurred yet, and in this case, doesn’t occur until after the second of the commenter interjections. This happens constantly over these 18 pages and completely derails what little story flow there is.  Very smart poster Evil Mastermind would never layout a page this badly. The plot series other than Star Wars it mentions? James Bond Worse, TLE has a habit of forgetting that it is introducing new terms to you or that it’s using certain words at all. The words Midian* and Eden appear in the first sentence of the metaplot on page 14, but don’t get an actual definitions until pages 62 and 54 respectively. Midian doesn’t hardly gets referenced again until then, so it’s not like context clues can help you. Worse, TLE’s metaplot freely starts referring to characters by other names and assuming you inferred that they have another name. For example, the least jarring of these the name “Ahriman” is used interchangeably with “GODHEAD” in the text. It does thankfully, shortly after tell you they're the same person, but then chooses to use the names in the most annoying way possible. It will use GODHEAD for several paragraphs in a row, switch to a new story, and then begin using Ahriman exclusively before switching back again. Not all of these multi-names are made clear, and there were a couple of times in this story that I re-read some of these passages trying to figure out who previously unmentioned characters were before jumping ahead in the book to the setting section to find out it was just another name of an already mentioned character. The metaplot dump is structured into 3 major periods, called Dances, with no explanation as to why they’re called Dances other than the authors of TLE really liked Dream Theater**. There’s no overall timeline, but the game is constantly giving you dates in both BCE and it’s made up useless time-scale so it’s not a challenge to piece together but a little tedious. Amusingly, the game’s timeline tries to have a truly epic scope but ends up being absolutely hilarious when it claims the universe was formed 200 million years ago and then has the ovaries to say: “Clearly, this plays hell with your biblical genesis, beginning a good 200 million years before it starts” Anyway, this story is extremely convoluted despite almost nothing happening in it and not being very long. The entire metaplot of this game is only 18 pages which sounds like a lot but in a game that is 196 pages long and a genre where metaplots have a tendency to eclipse 30 or 40 pages it is genuinely brief. As is par for the course for this sort of 90s heartbreaker metaplot dumpster-fire, only about 3 of those plot pages will ever have any relevance to players sitting at a table. The whole reading experience is actively made worse because as mentioned before despite being 18 pages long it doesn’t tell you enough about the setting to play the game. You have to backsolve from the game’s rules to figure out how its setting is supposed to work, and I’m sure I did that wrong. So, instead of diving into the games metaplot in this update, I’m going to give you a setting summary that does not exist anywhere in game based on what I’ve gathered.
Lastly, let me include some digging by Digital Raven to round out the lack of thought put into the story of a game with the phrase INTERACTIVE STORY ARC in it’s title. 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… I promise, next time we’ll actually learn this game’s stupid, stupid story. Next Time: The Metaplot As She is Vomited Forth *The book changes the spelling of this word at seeming random to Median. Thanks, Gareth-Michael Skarka **If the first song introduced in this book gave it its title, the second song gave the book its genre inspiration. What film soundtrack is it from? Be the first to guess right for a shoutout. ***Fun Fact: The game explains this a scant 55 pages after introducing the term Barudak fucked around with this message at 06:14 on Oct 18, 2017 |
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Oct 18, 2017 04:15
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Gamma World 7E does it all in 160 pages. Though I guess cards add a few more.
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Oct 18, 2017 04:18
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Comrade Gorbash posted:I'm not a big fan of D&D horror, for the reasons others have mentioned, but I actually think Aliens is a model that could work. Not Alien though. Very specifically the second film. I'm behind on this thread, and I just came across this. I ran pretty much this exact scenario for Halloween back in my 3.5 days. Only everyone was level one, and I used housecats. Never-ending waves of housecats.
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Oct 18, 2017 04:18
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Carados posted:This is always an easy homerule fix though- they become xp when spent. Okay someone come up with a fix for "spending stats which are also your HP" and we can hack Numenera into a playable game
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Oct 18, 2017 04:28
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Nessus posted:You would think anyone with Brain 1 would come up with the idea that you use your gear/monster/whatever sections to provide a sampler platter and guidance on rolling your own, but what do I know. Okay, but to be fair you can only take Brain 1 after you've taken Spine 1, 2 and 3. That's a lot of feats to commit to.
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Oct 18, 2017 04:50
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Dallbun posted:The Deck of Encounters Set One: Introduction I remember when that came out, it looked like nothing so much as a hasty reaction to Magic: The Gathering’s utter takeover of game shops at the time.
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Oct 18, 2017 05:11
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Wait is Eden or Earth the dark world?
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Oct 18, 2017 05:33
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Carados posted:Wait is Eden or Earth the dark world? only one of those worlds has oreos, so it should be obvious
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Oct 18, 2017 05:34
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Carados posted:Wait is Eden or Earth the dark world? So Earth is supposed to be evil/bad (the game uses the term "spiritually dead) but as we'll see in the next update in addition to Oreos being a huge point in Earth's favor, Eden is colossally hosed up in ways Earth isn't and Eden's God is, arguably, massively eviler than Earth's. Oh, and the list of confirmed things that only exist on Earth and don't exist on Eden is three items long; Oreos, newspapers, and "the smell of sex".
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Oct 18, 2017 05:59
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Barudak posted:So Earth is supposed to be evil/bad (the game uses the term "spiritually dead) but as we'll see in the next update in addition to Oreos being a huge point in Earth's favor, Eden is colossally hosed up in ways Earth isn't and Eden's God is, arguably, massively eviler than Earth's. Fossilized Rappy fucked around with this message at 07:25 on Oct 18, 2017 |
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Oct 18, 2017 07:23
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eschaton posted:I remember when that came out, it looked like nothing so much as a hasty reaction to Magic: The Gathering’s utter takeover of game shops at the time. Ah, the Magic market panic, or, when people in charge of companies decide that it's collectible-ness the kids want, and not the game mechanics that have made Magic one of the most enduring physical products in the world.
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Oct 18, 2017 07:27
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Patrol is 206 pages Night's Black Agents is 233 pages. Trail of Cthulhu is actually slightly longer at 250 pages. Bubblegumshot clocks in at 274 pages with all the new mechanics, and The Fall of Delta Green backer draft is at 489 pages with all the setting material. Fellowship is 247 pages Rifts is only 258 pages, and the Ultimate Edition is 382 pages Twilight 2000 is about 282 pages D&D Rules Cyclopedia is 306 pages OSRIC (AD&D 1e retroclone) is 422 pages (which is kind of impressive considering they combined the PHB, MM, and DMG into one book) Rolemaster 2nd Edition comes close: 504 pages if you combine Arms Law, Claw Law, Spell Law, Character Law, Campaign Law, and Creatures & Treasures Phoenix Command is only 91 pages The Hand-to-Hand Combat System is another 54 pages The Advanced Rules are another 34 pages The Advanced Damage Tables are another 26 pages The Expansion supplement is another 34 pages That puts us at 239 pages, so we've got another 286 before we match Starfinder Adding in the Mechanized Combat System with 114 pages takes us to 353 total Adding in the High-Speed Pursuit System with 159 pages takes us to 512 total, that's still less than Starfinder!
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Oct 18, 2017 08:35
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The nigh-unprintable behemoth Chuubo's Marvellous Wish-Granting Engine clocks in at 576 pages, so it's actually bigger than Starfinger. Also a vastly superior piece of design.
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Oct 18, 2017 08:41
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