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Mors Rattus posted:Was he Sigmar Jesus that got ganked by Snikch but then came back for the End Times? Yes, Valten was the Sigmar incarnation, but Karl Frans ends up being the avatar of Sigmar in End Times (Sigmar's godly essence had been trapped in the realm of magic, specifically Heavens.) I remember that I was excited that End Times was going to be a Nagash story at first.
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Oct 24, 2017 00:38
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Night10194 posted:Yes. In WHFRP his death is currently being used as a rallying cry by Luthor Huss, crazy religious rebel, as the church of Sigmar considers having another disastrous schism because the Empire can't get enough of those sweet, sweet own goals. Getting killed by Deathmaster Snikch is definitely cooler than by Archaeon too.
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Oct 24, 2017 02:25
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Feinne posted:Getting killed by Deathmaster Snikch is definitely cooler than by Archaeon too. What I do for my personal games is really lean into the fact that he wasn't anyone special at all, just an 18 year old blacksmith caught up in a huge war and religious schism he didn't understand, handed the hammer of God and told to kill the dark lord. He didn't succeed, but he got close, and not making GBS threads himself in terror and actually standing and fighting with no special powers and just a magic hammer to lean on makes the guy way braver than him actually being Sigmar Reborn. It turns it into a tragedy about someone caught in something way bigger than themselves, and who is still being used by others after his death, instead of a dumb bland superhero fighting a dumb bland supervillain. Besides, for the RPG, that's always felt like an actual theme. That it's about a bunch of people who don't seem to be anyone special who just need a little luck and time to become surprisingly heroic. We'll get to it when I get to the official campaign, but one of the PCs I made for that is just a Peasant from Kislev. She's no-one 'special'. Except she has decent stats (and a 40 base Fellowship) and it turns out Peasant starts you out with some social, outdoors, crafting, and stealth skills and a special ability to run like hell in chase scenes. When you look at all the 'commoner' classes, most of them start with the assumption that actually the average Old Worlder working a 'low skilled' job has a lot of skills and talents, in their way. You live in a rural community in a world with Beastmen in it, you gotta learn to survive the odd random encounter. The completely 'ordinary' person in WHFRP is by no means helpless or stupid and I've decided to take that as intentional in my games. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 02:32 on Oct 24, 2017 |
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Oct 24, 2017 02:28
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Mors Rattus posted:So a half-elf and a half-orc have a kid together and that kid marries a halfling. "You're not my real granddad!"
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Oct 24, 2017 02:32
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Night10194 posted:What I do for my personal games is really lean into the fact that he wasn't anyone special at all, just an 18 year old blacksmith caught up in a huge war and religious schism he didn't understand, handed the hammer of God and told to kill the dark lord. He didn't succeed, but he got close, and not making GBS threads himself in terror and actually standing and fighting with no special powers and just a magic hammer to lean on makes the guy way braver than him actually being Sigmar Reborn. It's a shame GW is total poo poo because Valten would be pretty cool if that were canon. Also it leads me to imagine the final portion of it where the Deathmaster has been engaged to kill him, gets there, takes him out, and is like 'lol what that was just a regular guy why the hell did they bother sending me?' And yeah if a collection of random village militia weren't enough to deal with the occasional zombies or some ungor or poo poo there wouldn't still be said villages. Feinne fucked around with this message at 03:12 on Oct 24, 2017 |
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Oct 24, 2017 03:10
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Night10194 posted:Yes. In WHFRP his death is currently being used as a rallying cry by Luthor Huss, crazy religious rebel, as the church of Sigmar considers having another disastrous schism because the Empire can't get enough of those sweet, sweet own goals. I may be misreading it but I kind of get a Sunni/Shi'ite schism vibe with the legitimacy of Karl Franz vs. Valten. Valten being chosen by Sigmar and Karl Franz being chosen by the electors.
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Oct 24, 2017 03:34
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:I may be misreading it but I kind of get a Sunni/Shi'ite schism vibe with the legitimacy of Karl Franz vs. Valten. Valten being chosen by Sigmar and Karl Franz being chosen by the electors. Though Karl embraced Valten and declared him the Empire's champion to defuse civil war the *first* time Huss tried to start one. As I've said before, I know Huss is supposed to be a good guy. He's got all the Good Guy signifiers for a GW work (like being very loud) but the dude is a stupid rear end in a top hat.
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Oct 24, 2017 03:37
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Alien Rope Burn posted:
Why does this even have to exist? What does it really it add to the game? I'm all for keeping the fantasy races in, but there doesn't need to be some extensive backstory to them. They could have just gone the Warhammer 40K route and just made them exist as space alien races without having to tie this into Golarion world setting. Speaking of all the talk on Golarion or whatever, who really plays in Pathfinder's world setting at all? I've always thought people just used this as a base set of rules and homebrewed the setting, like what people did with D&D before Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Eberron, etc. The Starfinger review is basically the first I've even heard of the Pathfinder setting.
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Oct 24, 2017 04:21
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Young Freud posted:Why does this even have to exist? What does it really it add to the game? I'm all for keeping the fantasy races in, but there doesn't need to be some extensive backstory to them. They could have just gone the Warhammer 40K route and just made them exist as space alien races without having to tie this into Golarion world setting.
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Oct 24, 2017 04:23
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Close enough. Hostile V posted:Realtalk, give me the bleachlings, I've always generally disliked gnomes and Pathfinder's gnomes are no exception, making them dour and stoic would be a welcome personality change from the bog-standard d20 gnome personality of "I'm a gnome" along with the optional personality trait of "tee hee aren't I whimsical and a tricksy stinker". Have you heard of dwarves?  That being said, I always found the notion that there are three different races of small people who are "essential" to D&D to be one of its weirder quirks. Young Freud posted:Why does this even have to exist? What does it really it add to the game? Paizo is inherently conservative - in the design and writing sense, mind. I presume people who run the APs use Golarion, really, since the APs are one of Pathfinder's major features. I feel like "future Golarion" is a creative albatross, but that's why I don't make the big RPG bucks. If there are big RPG bucks? The living wage RPG bucks. ^ and yeah, Pathfinder Society is a big deal.
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Oct 24, 2017 04:26
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Between Pathfinder Society and it being the setting for their Adventure Path products, which is literally what allows Paizo to stay in the black I'd say a majority of Pathfinder players actually use Golarion rather than homebrew, if only because the game line is designed around encouraging exactly that.
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Oct 24, 2017 04:34
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Nessus posted:I think Paizo makes a lot of money (somehow or other) on their living-world stuff. So a lot of people, basically. Pre-written adventures sell really well for reasons I didn't understand until I was both working a job *and* going to school.
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Oct 24, 2017 04:35
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I'm a massive fan of pre-fab adventure paths, if only because pulling monsters into appropriate piles is theoretically done for me already. Not related but an update from earlier today: I can confirm the 2 inside the letter "O" of "Obsidian The Age of Judgement" is not supposed to be read as part of the title and instead just denotes you have a second edition copy of the game. I can also confirm I have also somehow bought another Heaven vs. Hell Heartstaker game that was published in 2001 pre 9/11.
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Oct 24, 2017 04:40
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I mean I still prefer writing my own stuff but like, I get it now.
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Oct 24, 2017 04:41
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Alien Rope Burn posted:That being said, I always found the notion that there are three different races of small people who are "essential" to D&D to be one of its weirder quirks. Don't forget that depending on the edition, there's at least two types of halflings, two to three types of gnomes(four if you count the deep gnomes), and two to three types of dwarves(depending on whether you count the deep dwarves or not, and probably more in some settings. I always tend to ignore that they've got any subraces when I actually any of them.
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Oct 24, 2017 04:50
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PurpleXVI posted:Don't forget that depending on the edition, there's at least two types of halflings, two to three types of gnomes(four if you count the deep gnomes), and two to three types of dwarves(depending on whether you count the deep dwarves or not, and probably more in some settings. And yet even when you combine all the varieties of the three, they still won't outnumber the sheer around of variant elves in the setting. And technically three types of halfings, but it's understandable no one wants to think of the Kender.
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Oct 24, 2017 05:29
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The other thing about doing the adventure paths is... Even if you didn't start out caring about Golarion, when you've done an adventure path and like, saved a part of the world, suddenly like, the novels or fictions about that part have a resonance with you. Even though it's not a real place, it's your place. It's like how you might feel about a city you lived in previously but don't anymore--there's this sense of place there that isn't just garnered through reading the gazetteer of the Inner Sea region of Golarion. Numeria's easy to go and dismiss as "barbarians meets crashed spaceships and lots of weird futuretech sword and planet" region, but if you play Iron Gods, it's a place you know a lot of characters and locations from, and those are places you're now fond of. It's exactly the same effect that makes the Sword Coast such a popular part of the Forgotten Realms--it's where the video games were.
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Oct 24, 2017 06:12
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The Gap seems like in theory a clear invitation for 'Make up whatever the hell history you want, with your old PCs now being gods, kings and heroes or whatever' but that feels like it's assuming way too much imagination and player agency than typically expected of Pathfinder.
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Oct 24, 2017 07:23
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 tStarfinger Core Rules Part #26: "If we could do for space opera what Shadowrun did for cyberpunk, I’d be thrilled." (James Sutter, Starfinger Creative Director, Gnome Stew interview.) Presented without comment.  Wait. Rifts? Really?  Next: The review at the end of the universe.
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Oct 24, 2017 09:51
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Everyone's enjoying your Rifts read-through. RPG inspiration notes are loving weird when they're just a big list like that, something more like Breakfast Cult's 4-5 things tells you so much more about what to expect.
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Oct 24, 2017 10:13
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I also see SLA Industries, Torg, and Valhalla. Those first two are headscratchers above and beyond the list's general incoherence, but that third one...ugh.  Excepting those, the list just reads like all the scifi material that the authors have heard of with little thought as to any emergent themes the corpus presents as a whole. And at least half of those have basically nothing to do with the business of being fantasy actuaries (IN SPACE) beyond existing in the same really broad genre. It's like lumping together The Iliad with Kobolds Ate My Baby.
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Oct 24, 2017 10:13
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And that makes me want to run The Illiad in Kobolds Ate My Baby.
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Oct 24, 2017 10:33
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Regarding Starfinder's conversion notes for Pathfinder: * it designates Wisdom as the intended Key Ability Score for Monks, which is just a load of bullshit because you're only reinforcing the MAD-ness of the class * I have to raise my eyebrows as well to Paladins getting Charisma and Barbarians getting Constitution * the conversion at least gets rid of 2 skill points/level classes (such as Fighters), upgrading them to 4 skill points/level if converted * Monk unarmed damage has its own small paragraph on how to convert because it doesn't fit with Starfinder's "damage naturally goes up by level via weapons" design
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Oct 24, 2017 10:57
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2001, because what this elfgame in spaaaaace needs is deep introspection into mortality and transhumanism.
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Oct 24, 2017 11:04
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NGDBSS posted:I also see SLA Industries, Torg, and Valhalla. Those first two are headscratchers above and beyond the list's general incoherence, but that third one...ugh.
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Oct 24, 2017 11:06
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NGDBSS posted:I also see SLA Industries, Torg, and Valhalla. Those first two are headscratchers above and beyond the list's general incoherence, but that third one...ugh. Which Valhalla are we talking about?
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Oct 24, 2017 11:09
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I call bullshit on that whole list of inspirational media. It’s great that James Sutter just put down his Netflix queue and GoodReads lists, but it’s useless in actually being inspirational for Starfinger. Like really, how’s this game remotely inspired by anything from The Expanse, EVE Online, Westworld and Traveller except in the most general of vaguely spacey, vaguely futuristic terms?
Cascade Jones fucked around with this message at 11:41 on Oct 24, 2017 |
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Oct 24, 2017 11:32
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Cascade Jones posted:I call bullshit on that whole list of inspirational media. It’s great that James Sutter just put down his Netflix queue and GoodReads lists, but it’s useless in actually being inspirational for Starfinger. Like really, how’s this game remotely inspired by anything from The Expanse, EVE Online, Westwood’s and Traveller except in the most general of vaguely spacey, vaguely futuristic terms? "In the same way we did with Pathfinder, we’re trying to be all things to all people, which is normally a recipe for disaster."
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Oct 24, 2017 11:35
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Well, Destiny is appropriate, given it's also a soulless mess of a setting.
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Oct 24, 2017 11:38
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I'm guessing NGDBSS is referring to cyberpunk visual novel VA-11 HALL-A, which infamously has (out of many characters) an android that works as a child prostitute. It got some critical acclaim here and there, but was pretty divisive for a number of reasons. I don't want to derail the thread with it, but it's a thing.
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Oct 24, 2017 11:50
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Cascade Jones posted:I call bullshit on that whole list of inspirational media. It’s great that James Sutter just put down his Netflix queue and GoodReads lists, but it’s useless in actually being inspirational for Starfinger. Like really, how’s this game remotely inspired by anything from The Expanse, EVE Online, Westworld and Traveller except in the most general of vaguely spacey, vaguely futuristic terms? They included Blindsight. After coming up with reheated tedious garbage like Starfinger, I'm surprised they could write the title of the book without their pants spontaneously combusting.
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Oct 24, 2017 11:52
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Alien Rope Burn posted:
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Oct 24, 2017 11:56
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You know what that giant list of inspirations is reminding me of? Haven.
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Oct 24, 2017 11:58
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Also considering some of the art is 'FFG 40k art with just enough to avoid copyright violations filed off' (FFG's 40k art, and later on, fluff, is, incidentally, one of the best parts of the RPGs) I'm not surprised to see that in the inspiration list, either. Seriously, for all the poo poo I could give the system, FFG did pretty much everything else about the 40k games really well.
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Oct 24, 2017 12:01
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Kavak posted:You know what that giant list of inspirations is reminding me of? Need to see if Louis Porter Jr did freelance work for Paizo on this . City of Violence.
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Oct 24, 2017 12:01
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Night10194 posted:Well, Destiny is appropriate, given it's also a soulless mess of a setting. I think Destiny at least understands that the setting exists in order to allow people to interact with the game. It's just a series of justifications for shooting various kinds of alien in the face. The setting for Starfinger exists to sell products. Planetary guides, prestige classes, adventure paths, starship floorplans, etc. etc. ad infinitum. It's a soulless mess because Paizo plan to sell people a soul one $20 sourcebook at a time.
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Oct 24, 2017 12:07
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I'm guessing NGDBSS is referring to cyberpunk visual novel VA-11 HALL-A, which infamously has (out of many characters) an android that works as a child prostitute. It got some critical acclaim here and there, but was pretty divisive for a number of reasons.
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Oct 24, 2017 12:08
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Zereth posted:Even ignoring that part, a game where you, to the best of my knowledge, play a bartender, who very much does not go on adventures, and just mixes drinks and talks to people, seems like a very poor thing to list as inspiration for D&D In Space. Eagerly awaiting the Starfinder splat for the Bartender class that mixes drinks which resolve people's emotional traumas and hangups. Fighting a group of space orcs? Just serve them some beers and have them talk about how institutionalized racism is what's driving them to attack random adventurers.
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Oct 24, 2017 12:35
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gradenko_2000 posted:Regarding Starfinder's conversion notes for Pathfinder: But is the unarmed damage still garbage because one of the Paizo devs (SKR?) has an incredibly stupid hate-on for monks being "overpowered," like every 14 year old in 2000 who couldn't properly analyze the math?
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Oct 24, 2017 12:41
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Presented without comment.
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Oct 24, 2017 13:26
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