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Daeren posted:magical musical genre So either he completely ignores eastern contributions to the genre or he explicitly calls out Yoko Kanno as some kind of Nth-dan Archmagus, right? Halloween Jack posted:Considering what Brucato is cool with, I can't guess what he considers "black magick." Literally throwing fireballs at people or summoning Cthulhu, I guess.
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Jan 22, 2018 22:07
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Kurieg posted:So either he completely ignores eastern contributions to the genre or he explicitly calls out Yoko Kanno as some kind of Nth-dan Archmagus, right? Are you disputing this unambiguous fact, sir?
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Jan 22, 2018 22:29
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Feinne posted:Are you disputing this unambiguous fact, sir? No. But there's a line between "Yoko Kanno is an amazing composer and musician with fingers in a lot of genres" and "Gabriella Robin's babblings are actually eldritch word-runes used to fuel Kanno's
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Jan 22, 2018 22:41
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Yoko Kanno is an amazing plagiarist
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Jan 22, 2018 22:54
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After some oChangeling author claimed Loreena McKennit was an extra-magical sidhe or something, I've been really leery about these kinds of inserts.
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Jan 22, 2018 23:04
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All my favourite female celebrities are magical and my waifus and get +1 vs. undead.
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Jan 22, 2018 23:08
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Bieeardo posted:After some oChangeling author claimed Loreena McKennit was an extra-magical sidhe or something, I've been really leery about these kinds of inserts. I'm pretty sure that was Brucato.
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Jan 22, 2018 23:10
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that's also just hardcore oChangeling fans in general
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Jan 22, 2018 23:12
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MollyMetroid posted:Yoko Kanno is an amazing plagiarist Oh Jesus, someone else who's come to that realization.
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Jan 22, 2018 23:13
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The more one hears about oChangeling, the more one realizes it was better that nChangeling just completely start over from scratch
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Jan 22, 2018 23:15
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Robindaybird posted:The more one hears about oChangeling, the better for it that nChangeling just completely start over I've seen some speak well of C20. Sadly it was developed by Matt McFarland so... yeah...
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Jan 22, 2018 23:18
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Halloween Jack posted:Considering what Brucato is cool with, I can't guess what he considers "black magick." Literally throwing fireballs at people or summoning Cthulhu, I guess. He is also
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Jan 22, 2018 23:22
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Kurieg posted:I'm pretty sure that was Brucato. I think I'm going to cry. Robindaybird posted:The more one hears about oChangeling, the more one realizes it was better that nChangeling just completely start over from scratch The original softcover edition had some interesting worldbuilding, but things took a Turn.
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Jan 22, 2018 23:30
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ive been around the internet a while and like, seen otherkin werewolf groups, vampires, whatever. but for the most part they dont take a literal RPG system as the basis of their beliefs and go off of if not mythology than their image in popular culture at large oChangeling on the other hand has a ton of people claiming to be seelie and unseelie chlurichans IRL or some bullshit, and that i think is entirely a product of how it was written, because GUESS WHAT YOU COULD BE A SIDHE TOO wink wink i mean werewolf and mage had that too a little bit but for the most part if you were a werewolf you fuckin knew about it, and mage it straight out tell you that they're all making it up as they go along anyway, and that just doing whatever works is good too
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Jan 22, 2018 23:38
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The first otherkin I discovered really, really thought that they were Garou. I remember being at a big SCA event, when one of the friends I played Changeling with approached me with a lovely idea that someone had: We take on the personae of our Changeling characters, who are pretending to be us, who are of course in SCA drag. I just stared at him.
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Jan 22, 2018 23:55
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 quote:Well, it took seven years to bring the book to fruition, but Powerchords: Music, Magic & Urban Fantasy is finally done. Welcome back. Consider today our Behind the Music episode. As mentioned last time, Brucato wrote a three part dissection of what went wrong with Powerchords when it finally came out, and I actually read it before I ever opened the book up. It was a particularly enlightening read in a few different ways, as I'm sure you'll see for yourselves. You're free to read the actual posts yourselves; I'll be going over the highlights here. In addition, I'll be picking some observations out of his updates to the project over the years, and the comments on them. Right off the bat we get the correct realization of the big problem: quote:The biggest mistake on my end involved pitching a project I had not yet written. Because Aaron Acevedo (who proposed that we do “a quick little project” together, using the brand-new-at-that-time Kickstarter platform) and I were new to crowdfunding, neither of us realized that such projects should never be launched until at least the initial work is already completed. I'm actually pretty forgiving to him learning this lesson the hard way. A lot of much bigger names had to as well - Onyx Path's biggest albatross for three years was Exalted 3e, after all, and he did his Kickstarter three years before that one. It's one of those things that, especially in the early years of Kickstarter, was an invisible landmine. Now, you might say that he was an experienced writer that should have known the scope of his project and pitched its budget and development time correctly. To which the answer is, he did! It was entirely reasonable to publish a 50,000 word book in the time and price he set. Except he made one of the other classic early Kickstarter death sentence blunders: Death By Backer Bonuses. quote:Half-expecting maybe a dozen backers at the higher tiers, I promised bands and characters to sponsors at certain levels of the project. Instead, I got over two dozen sponsors at those levels, and needed to deliver on what I had promised to provide. That promise alone accounted for almost 30,000 words of material in the final book… and it would have been even longer than that if everyone who backed the project at that level had given me bands and characters to put into the book. He's hardly the only person to dramatically underestimate the popularity of backer content additions. Many a video game developer has ended up with a millstone the size of Russia around their neck because of that. As for people not getting back to him...dude, it was a seven year dev process. A few of them may very well be dead. At least so far the mistakes are largely naive Kickstarter mistakes right? quote:Beyond that predicament, though, I realized once I began writing the book that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCVV0xbL3_0 quote:Speaking as someone who has loved music his entire life, and whose personal involvement in musical culture reaches at least as far back as my temp-roadie gig for the Four Tops during a weekend festival in 1982, Powerchords is the passion-project I didn’t realize I wanted to do until after I’d started writing it. Inspiration poured out of me once the writing began, and the more research I conducted – research that has included reading several hundred books on the subject with no end in sight – the more I wanted to write. That writing began in October, 2010; by the following spring, I had well over 50,000 words of material and had only just begun to scratch the itch that arrived once Powerchords took shape. Also, none of those words included any of the characters or bands I had promised to my backers. At least he sent out a poll to his backers asking if they wanted more before he committed fully to scope bloat, but...consumers will always say they want more for what they paid. Y'see, Brucato has been noted before to have serious verbosity issues. (And let me tell you in advance, Powerchords is no different). He's also the sort that very much does not like to make cuts of anything he's written - he'll freely admit how hard it is for him. Mage: the Ascension's 20th anniversary edition was largely penned by him, and he takes pride in its wordcount pre-editing being 650,000 words. I'm pretty sure he's the only one involved with that project who does, considering that the final form of the book was still big enough to crush small animals on the way down from a coffee table and must have had a printing cost measured in arms and legs. Oh, yeah, speaking of which. quote:Part of the rewards promised to Powerchords supporters included a full-color copy of the finished book – a rewards-tier I had foolishly budgeted at the $50.00 level and above. Thanks to an unexpected level of support, I wound up needing to deliver over 60 copies of that book. Given the growing word-count, and the rising cost of printing, I realized that I was liable to be spending more to print and deliver the book than I had netted from the campaign to begin with. Oops indeed. Weird how basically the exact same thing happened to Mage a few years later, minus the t-shirts...but we'll get to that. (You ever wonder why Kickstarters don't do t-shirt reward levels anymore? They will sink you every time.) To skip over a whole lot of words, his other big mistake was not correctly budgeting for failed backer payments and the fact that you have to pay taxes on income via Kickstarter, leaving him a thousand dollars in the hole of his budget. The budget he made for a project that eventually increased in scope by 350%. After dividing the payments to his artists, graphic designers, "final editor" (again, we'll get to that one), and models (who he promised payment in full color print books), he found himself in a position where he needed several thousand dollars to actually finish paying people and afford the print run. So he agreed to write M20. And neglects to mention in this post-mortem that he proceeded to write so much for it that he nearly drove his employers into the exact same fate of project death by printing costs, if it wasnt for editors with chainsaws. Yeah, this is about where the sympathy wears off, despite him attempting to garner it via his collaborators. In short, a bunch of horrible poo poo happens to his editors and graphic designers he declines to elaborate on out of respect for them, which drags out the project for another year because he "would have been an ogre to demand that they finish the project while those things were going on" - and also didn't have any money to replace them. It's here, though, that it's clear that some of the delay was not the fault of poo poo Happens: quote:After almost three years of delays, Sherry stepped back in to finish the project. For that near-final stretch, we fit our work-parties in whenever our busy schedules gave us time to do so. Once again, this process ran slowly, in part because Sherry and I hand-designed every single page of Powerchords – a notable departure from the usual practice in RPG graphic design. Generally, a gaming book is laid out within a specific template; text and illustrations get dropped into pre-set configurations, and the majority of the work involves tweaking the final layout to catch errors and suit the text and images as closely as possible. Sherry, Sheena and I, in contrast, created Powerchords’ look and feel from the ground up. There was no template to follow because we made it up as we went along, and then tweaked it until it suited what we wanted to see. You see this? DON'T loving DO THIS. First of all, there's a time and place for artisanal bespoke handcrafted .pdfs, and it's not when you're four years late on a project and several thousand dollars in the hole. Second of all, this is laughably reductive of template work, and implies it's innately inferior to just winging it when trying to do that in any professional graphic design or layout job would get you killed. Lastly, templates are there not just to provide consistency and speed things up, they're there to save your rear end when you screw up. Not if, when. I would bet money there was at least one moment of frustration and delay in the process of creating Powerchords that could have been completely avoided with a template - and the fact that he didnt have the file crash or corrupt and completely explode at least once leaving him back at square one is more of a miracle than I think he realizes. This is in fact a good time for a little tangent out of the post-mortem into the updates. quote:The least-fun, least-sexy, least-creative and yet absolutely essential stage of a large book like Powerchords involves making an index for that book. And although there are programs that can hash together a quick index of dubious accuracy and limited utility, I create the indexes for my books by hand... a tedious, time-and-labor-intensive task, but one that gives me the index I want, not the index I can kinda sorta live with. If any of you happen to hear wet, agonized, strangled screams, that'd be most of the professional copywriters and editors on this forum having a stroke at the same time. Poor bastards probably just got over Exalted 3e's layout fiasco too. For those unacquainted with the sane human being version of editing and indexing, this is solidly in "I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul" territory. So, it should be abundantly clear by now that it was not merely external factors that slowed the process down, that Brucato is ultimately the root of this project being a lumbering overscoped behemoth, and is almost willing to fully admit that while only halfway understanding how. We're not done with the post-mortem yet, though, so maybe it'll have some more self-reflection... quote:I understand the frustration our sponsors have felt regarding the book’s many delays. Trust me, no one has been more frustrated about than I have been. Some folks, though, have accused me of “stealing from my fans,” as if the dozens of PDFs and illustrations and updates I have posted over the last six years were somehow magically conjured up without cost or effort by the people involved. ooor we get him using his collaborators as human shields against criticism. quote:Folks want to be annoyed with me for taking so bloody long and being such a loving perfectionist? That’s fair. I accept that. But to imply that the hundreds – hundreds – of hours of skilled labor that Sandi, Sherry, Bryan, Sheena, James, Ace, Valerie, Eli and our models put into those excerpts, those updates, those illustrations and samples of the book, somehow constitute “theft”? That’s insulting as gently caress. So by the by, nobody I saw in any of the comments on his updates or kickstarter called him a thief directly, though I may have missed one. It was primarily one guy in particular every so often getting more and more irate about seven years going by, with repeated stretches of months without any update. This level of detonation, though? This attempt to paint it as a noble effort struck down by unexpected chaos, after fully admitting in the first part it was primarily his fault for mismanaging the poo poo out of the Kickstarter, reads a lot more like trying to cover his rear end and repair a bruised ego than an explanation. It's also so wildly unprofessional to be hostile to your backers - your 100 backers of a 5,000 dollar project - after they've stuck through a seven year development process, and writing off leaving them out of the loop by dropping updates as "oh gently caress it its pointless" that it's actually a little awe inspiring. I highlighted that bit of possessive language because it sits...uncomfortably with me, for reasons I think you'll understand by the end of the review. Though, it's a good segue into one of the other things: that his language towards his collaborators in the update posts was often considerably less charitable. quote:Update 120: In Layout...Still. quote:Just commissioned some more art from Tess Fowler, to replace one of the original artists who has not come through on his end of this project. Mage 20 is almost to edit, and the Powerchords editor has asked for more time to finish up. quote:I needed to jostle one editor last week because they'd barely started reading the manuscript I'd sent out over two months ago. quote:Sorry about the delays. Editors are being really slow. Considering that I am eyeballs-deep in Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary, this isn't too bad at the moment, but I really want to hop on this thing the moment Mage is turned in. (End of July.) quote:Update 114: Still Waiting On Artwork... It's understandable to be very frustrated with a project that's going like this, and to have that bleed out a bit, but...I don't know. Something sits badly with me about poo poo like this. With that, though, we've gone over the whole post-mortem and Kickstarter itself. I may have missed some details in the updates/comments/whatever, but this post is already incredibly dense with poo poo to take in and talk about. Brucato undeniably got hit with a lot of Unknown Unknowns, I will not deny that, and that can certainly kill a Kickstarter stone dead. I'm legitimately pretty amazed that this book came out at all after reading through everything. But, he seems to only bring up his own screwups in order to get them out of the way so he can talk about how unfair everything else was to the project. He could, at any time, have cut his losses, published what he originally promised to publish, taken the hit, and had some portion of a hundred people mad at him, depending on how good the mea culpa was. He's already promised to sell excess material he refused to just cut in further books - why not just make the initial book economical, and offload a lot more into those expansion splats that'll reach a wider audience once you've filled your obligation? Pride? Perfectionism? Sunk cost fallacy? It certainly set one hell of a stage for me before I even opened the book, and let me just say the book itself reads exactly like the result of a project like this would. Next time: we open the Ark of the Covenant itself. Daeren fucked around with this message at 00:02 on Jan 23, 2018 |
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Jan 22, 2018 23:58
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 BLUE TRAIN, BLACK NIGHT – PART TWO Perfect Strangers There's a lot to keep track of in this scenario, but the book does a pretty good job of laying things out for the keeper. Each passenger is assigned a number and a compartment. The first half of the carriage is double-berths, while the latter half is single-berths. Each double-berth shares a bathroom with its neighbour – the doors are designed so that while one door is unlocked, the door to the other compartment can't be opened. As such, passengers are expected to keep their washroom door locked whenever it's not in use. There's also a chair down one end of the carriage for the conductor to sit on at night. The view from there lets him see the entire carriage at all times. The full list of passengers is as follows:  1. Luigi Martinelli A middle-aged opera basso on his way back from a season in Constantinople. He is very loud and boisterous and finds himself very amusing. He is familiar with Cavollaro and will be appalled if he finds out what's happened to her. Because of his size, he has difficulty getting into the top bunk and asks to be allowed the bottom; politeness here might save an investigator's life when assassins come knocking. He is a loud snorer and his companion must make a Hard POW roll to get a good sleep. Notable skill: Be Pompous 55  3. Jack Gatling A high-powered American journalist who primarily writes gossipy editorials. He's here in search of his latest story, in this case evidence of an illicit affair between the Baron of Blackpool and the Dona Margarita. If the investigators attract his interest, he will not let up, especially if they're rich or famous. Gatling sends his stories via telegram and news about them can arrive before the train does. He's a nuisance and rarely sleeps, but he might be able to give the investigators valuable information about the movements of other passengers. Notable skill: Stealth 70  These pictures are arranged as scattered documents around the borders of the pages. Here's Sir Harrow's in full. 5. Sir Robert Harrow, Bart. An extremely British gentleman in his mid-forties. He's quick to regale any investigator, particularly his compartment-mate, with stories of his adventures. He's also a boorish lout and has set his eyes on the lovely ladies in the neighbouring compartment. He stays up all night smoking and reading, occasionally hammering on the adjoining door in a disgusting attempt to seduce his neighbours. Notable skill: Make Up Amusing Story 65  7. Elena Costanza A beautiful and mysterious Mediterranean woman who keeps to herself. She is actually a British spy who has spent the last two years working in Constantinople. A captured Brother was interrogated and let slip that there's a plan to assassinate the King of England's son, so she's on the case. If the team helped Rutherford, she's heard of them; otherwise she'll ally herself with them when she finds out they chase the same foe. Despite Sir Harrow's behaviour, she sleeps soundly through the night. The book recommends her as a replacement for an investigator who bites it early. Notable skill: Codes and Ciphers 45   9/10. The Count and Countess Henri Mathieu and his wife Emmanuelle, the Count and Countess de Bruessy. An elegant pair of nobles who are dogged by an entirely accurate rumour that Emmanuelle is pursuing an affair with a handsome German industrialist – something she does with her husband's knowledge and consent. They do have their reputation to consider, and to that end are trying to avoid the attention of Gatling. Notable skills: Evaluate Wine 88, Take What Pleasure Comes 95  11. Kurt Groenig The handsome German industrialist sleeping with the Countess. He is a skilled and ruthless businessman who built Groenig Fabrikat back to its former glory after its post-War collapse. He has absolutely fallen in love with the Countess, but fears that she's just manipulating him. Notable skill: Afternoon Dalliance 89  12. Rama Ho-Tet A mysterious Egyptian antiques dealer and occultist. He prefers to avoid small-talk, but if the investigators can connect with him he'll prove to be an extremely knowledgeable ally, even familiar with the legends of the Sedefkar Simulacrum. He's another recommended replacement for a dead investigator. Notable skill: Cthulhu Mythos 6  14. Lord Margrave The Baron of Blackpool, a snobby Englishman with a love of butterflies. Gatling is absolutely right in his suspicion that Margrave is having an affair with del Garda, but he misses the forest for the trees. Margrave has been selling bits of his estate to the del Gardas for years and is hoping to get it back through marriage. He'd rather be caught in a romantic scandal than a financial one, though he hopes to avoid both. Notable skill: Collect Stamps 48  15. La Dona del Garda That 'n' is supposed to have a little squiggle above it but I've been avoiding spelling foreign words properly this entire review and I'm not gonna stop now. The Dona has been a widow ever since she poisoned her husband three years ago, but God help her, she's actually fallen in love with the Baron. This is possibly because he's so lacking in charm she doesn't suspect an ulterior motive. Notable skill: Wear Black 67  16. Danton Szorbic A small fat man in spectacles. Contrary to his appearance, he is – barring Makryat and the investigators – the most dangerous individual on the train. A skilled assassin, he has been hired by one of Groenig's competitors to take him out. The plan at the moment is to do him in at Trieste and try to frame the de Bruessys, but as things get weird on the train he'll adapt his plan to take advantage of that. Notable skill: Smuggle Weapons 90 Next time: bon voyage!
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Jan 23, 2018 00:04
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C20 was actually pretty good, although it made some serious mistakes, mostly involving how it allotted its wordcount (various authors did heroic work making all the Gallain playable in the space allotted, but they're so compressed that it wasn't worth it).
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Jan 23, 2018 00:04
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Daeren posted:DON'T loving DO THIS. I hate that this and the indexing garbage are not what I'm going to loathe most about this book.
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Jan 23, 2018 00:05
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MollyMetroid posted:Yoko Kanno is an amazing plagiarist In the era of people actually being called out for being awful sexmonsters a foible that tarnishes who deserves credit for an artistic work instead of whether that artistic work is inherently tainted by being created by a rapist is something I can kinda live with.
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Jan 23, 2018 00:08
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That's probably the first time I've seen a mea culpa turn into a "tua culpa". Good job brucato.Feinne posted:In the era of people actually being called out for being awful sexmonsters a foible that tarnishes who deserves credit for an artistic work instead of whether that artistic work is inherently tainted by being created by a rapist is something I can kinda live with. Also it's like, a few songs specifically from cowboy bebop, which was entirely about aping musical styles, where she leaned a bit too heavily on a common leitmotif. "Want it all back" is probably the only one I've heard that really twigs me as "she did something bad here". But the GITS:SAC, Aquarion, and Wolf's Rain soundtracks show off her chops enough that it seems more like a fluke rather than a pattern of behavior.
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Jan 23, 2018 00:29
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Speaking of anime, I'd love to run Blue Train, Black Night as a Baccano!-esque EVERYTHING GOES WRONG ON A TRAIN BADLY type deal. It'd probably be less amusing when the non-immortal, non-lunatic PCs probably end up dead though.
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Jan 23, 2018 00:34
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Down With People posted:He very explicitly a) doesn't know about the Duke of York thing and b) knows that the Brits aren't what they used to be, so what the gently caress. Of course, if he stayed right at home to replace Ataturk or hosed off to Russia your investigators might not give a gently caress. Your investigators are a party of ride-or-die monarchist Englishmen, right? Heh, I vaguely pitched Horrient to my gaming group tonight and got five quick ideas for PCs. Only one of them even speaks English as their first language - a German, a Russian, a Serbian, an Indian (as in, from India, she's the native English speaker), and whatever the polite singular for a person from China is. Doubtful we'll go forward with actually getting the books and playing with it, but it's been a lovely writeup.
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Jan 23, 2018 00:59
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Feinne posted:In the era of people actually being called out for being awful sexmonsters a foible that tarnishes who deserves credit for an artistic work instead of whether that artistic work is inherently tainted by being created by a rapist is something I can kinda live with. Theft is absolutely not as bad as rape. But I'm also not okay with theft. Especially as a content creator myself, I would be furious if someone took my work, made a couple of changes, and sold it as theirs without crediting or paying me. Also that's kind of an odd thing to decide to strawman about. "Yeah, sure, this person stole, but she didn't RAPE anyone" what is even your loving point. Kurieg posted:Also it's like, a few songs specifically from cowboy bebop, which was entirely about aping musical styles, where she leaned a bit too heavily on a common leitmotif. "Want it all back" is probably the only one I've heard that really twigs me as "she did something bad here". But the GITS:SAC, Aquarion, and Wolf's Rain soundtracks show off her chops enough that it seems more like a fluke rather than a pattern of behavior. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOy3AuB5PtI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yupIJUbFNFg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOy3AuB5PtI It's not just a few songs, and they're not just specific to Cowboy Bebop.
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Jan 23, 2018 01:11
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MollyMetroid posted:Theft is absolutely not as bad as rape. I agree it's not right to make heavy use of the work of others and not give them even the slightest credit. I was just joking that it was refreshing for someone whose work I in principle enjoy to turn out to just be a thief instead of a wide-awake nightmare.
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Jan 23, 2018 01:30
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Kurieg posted:That's probably the first time I've seen a mea culpa turn into a "tua culpa". Good job brucato. Oh man I ain't heard that weird song from Wolf's Rain where the nobles are all spinning around in forever, now I have to go find that again. Oh right, it's called Heaven's Not Enough and it's by Steve Conte. I forget that about once a year. theironjef fucked around with this message at 02:24 on Jan 23, 2018 |
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Jan 23, 2018 02:22
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Man, this Powerchords retrospective overview has me thinking about the Order of the Stick Kickstarter, which had such success and stretch goal creep that Rich Burlew is still fulfilling bonus comics, stickers and other assorted bits literally like a decade later. And from what I have heard, he’s not making a thin dime on it and refuses to do so. (He does have a chronic illness and also suffered a pretty serious sliced thumb, so some of the delay is understandable). Brucato bragging about bespoke pages is mind boggling.
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Jan 23, 2018 02:43
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theironjef posted:Oh man I ain't heard that weird song from Wolf's Rain where the nobles are all spinning around in forever, now I have to go find that again. Oh right, it's called Heaven's Not Enough and it's by Steve Conte. I forget that about once a year. But yes, Conte and Kanno have a fairly prolific collaboration history. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QVBCgAIGmc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkiEuIgkCCs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeBiD71EJN4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiumBwlr-CU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKAeG8fy1fg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vcrb6365GsQ And that's only what I could find on Youtube.
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Jan 23, 2018 03:04
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Cythereal posted:Heh, I vaguely pitched Horrient to my gaming group tonight and got five quick ideas for PCs. Only one of them even speaks English as their first language - a German, a Russian, a Serbian, an Indian (as in, from India, she's the native English speaker), and whatever the polite singular for a person from China is. I could be wrong but I believe that technically "a Chinese" is correct for that but sounds awkward, so you'd use "a Chinese man" or "a Chinese woman".
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Jan 23, 2018 05:36
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senrath posted:I could be wrong but I believe that technically "a Chinese" is correct for that but sounds awkward, so you'd use "a Chinese man" or "a Chinese woman". I feel like the right answer is to make it a running joke, where people ask that very question and the party answers 'we call them <character name>'.
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Jan 23, 2018 16:31
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Feinne posted:I feel like the right answer is to make it a running joke, where people ask that very question and the party answers 'we call them <character name>'. Or call them a badass, since the back of the napkin character concept was a veteran of the Boxer Rebellion - on the Chinese side.
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Jan 23, 2018 19:22
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Cythereal posted:Or call them a badass, since the back of the napkin character concept was a veteran of the Boxer Rebellion - on the Chinese side. Wow, all this cthulhu crap's gotta be like an extended holiday to them.
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Jan 23, 2018 20:22
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Considering what history has in store for China past 1930s, he'll remember Cthulhu times with fondness for peaceful days long past.
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Jan 23, 2018 20:42
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JcDent posted:Considering what history has in store for China past 1930s, he'll remember Cthulhu times with fondness for peaceful days long past. "Cthulhu may have been a horrifying monster from outer-space, but at least he wasn't a communist." That almost sounds believable.
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Jan 23, 2018 22:14
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JcDent posted:Considering what history has in store for China past 1930s, he'll remember Cthulhu times with fondness for peaceful days long past. To be honest, the entire pitched crew was a bunch of hardcases: German WW1 veteran, now affiliated with a Communist Freikorps Chinese mechanic turned soldier, veteran of the Boxer Rebellion Russian socialite and businesswoman exiled from Russia during the Revolution due to her connections to the Russian nobility (specialty: rare antiquities) Serbian archaeologist and college professor who may or may not be a past (or current) member of the Black Hand Indian scholar and naturalist educated in England, now an outspoken advocate of Indian independence
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Jan 23, 2018 23:17
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Cythereal posted:To be honest, the entire pitched crew was a bunch of hardcases:
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Jan 23, 2018 23:33
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Nessus posted:ACT 1: Who Gets Purged First A bunch of fuckin' cultists is who.
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Jan 23, 2018 23:45
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BLUE TRAIN, BLACK NIGHT – PART THREE Day One The first leg of the trip is pretty chill. The investigators will have the opportunity to start playing Spot-The-Mehmet and getting to know their fellow travellers. If they broach the subject, no-one is willing to swap compartments with anyone. The Express offers a variety of newspapers including London publications from no more than three days ago; investigators who read these will find out about a mysterious disappearance in Islington. More on that when we finally get home. Night One Mehmet tries to poison the investigators. This is actually a poo poo idea, since it arouses the team's suspicions and might give them a hint as to where to look, but the poor bastard's probably freaking out a little here. He arranges – with great difficulty - for a carafe of water poisoned with antimony (colourless and odourless) to be delivered to their table at dinner. I'd give the investigators a Know roll here if they forget that water prior to this point has always been delivered to them in sealed bottles. Anyone who drinks the water suffers nausea and cramps within the hour, eventually taking 1D10 damage if they don't managed to regurgitate the poison. Science (Chemistry) on either the jug or the vomitus detects the poison. If someone dies here, the train is delayed two hours at the Turkish border while cops come aboard and question everyone. 11:25PM Makryat-as-Soucard sneaks off the train near the border and sends a telegram to the Brothers in Svilengrad, calling for assistance. Anyone watching the windows sees him do that; they can bribe the clerk to find out what he sent, but Mehmet has an 85% chance to see them do that. If he reckons he's been caught, he makes plans to take a new skin. 12:01AM The train continues to Sinekli. Investigators who accuse Soucard of the poisoning are going to need to back that up with significant evidence. False accusations turn the Chef de Brigade against the team, and he will be on the lookout for an excuse to throw them off the train. 12:40AM If Mehmet thinks the Soucard identity has been compromised, he goes for one of the single travellers – the book recommends del Garda – killing them and stealing their skin. He then sneaks into an investigator's compartment and places Soucard's skin in there. The book makes a big deal out of how the investigators might catch Mehmet dumping the Dona's body out the window but confusingly doubles back on that, pointing out that the scenario could be ruined by a thorough police investigation at the stop so it might be better to not let them witness that. Why bring it up in the first place then? If the investigators have gotten in the Chef de Brigade's good books, he'll be willing to open up forbidden areas of the train to the team when Soucard goes missing. Since no body is discovered, the train goes on normally, with another conductor taking Soucard's place. Of course, this assumes that the team's first response to finding the skin is to dump it out the window. If they hold onto it, it's evidence, police come on board, yada yada yada, skip this bit. 3:20AM Anyone who's up and about around this time notices Countess de Bruessy leaving Groenig's compartment. If they tell Gatling about this he side-eyes the Countess at breakfast; thereafter she totally ignores the whole team. If someone's watching the platform, they'll see a group of Turks board in second-class; Mehmet's Brothers. Fortunately, the Bulgarian police are on the lookout for Turkish nationalists riling up people on the border. If the investigators dob the Brothers in and succeed on a Luck roll they're detained and miss the train. Otherwise, Mehmet makes contact with them and sets them on the investigators. They take out anyone who's stupid enough to go for a solo pre-dawn stroll. Seems unlikely, but if someone in the group does that they probably deserve to die.  Day Two The train arrives in Sofia. Wolves reminiscent of Fenalik's Children pace the sides of the train. If the investigators have been attacked in some way, Costanza makes contact with them and offers an alliance. 11:15AM Gatling jumps off the train and sends a telegram, in this case about de Bruessy's affair with Kroenig. Again, the Brothers will snuff out any schmuck who leaves the train alone. 12:48PM The book assumes that by now, someone's been attacked and possibly killed by the Brothers, but since they avoid making obvious attacks on the train I don't know how likely that is. In any case, they've got more time to look study the people on the train. If Mehmet's still wearing Soucard, Listen lets them overhear staff complaining that he's not doing his job. If he's switched to del Garda, they might overheard Margrave asking why he's getting the cold shoulder, or Spot Hidden to notice how clumsily he's put on her make-up. 2:28PM If the Brothers fail to kill another investigator or if Mehmet feels like del Garda is compromised, he switches skins. Him and his crew kill and skin Margrave in a train station bathroom. Mehmet puts on Margrave and slaps his own face red while one of the Brothers disguises as del Garda. The fake del Garda leaves the station in a taxi while Margrave!Mehmet loudly complains about lovers quarrels. This takes Gatling by the balls – Margrave invites the journalist to take a private interview with him later tonight. Gatling brags about the interview with his compartment-mate. He ignores any warnings they might give him. Next time: Baba Yaga! And more skin!
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Jan 24, 2018 02:08
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I knew from prior reviews that Brucato was a real nutter, but the obstinate devotion to far-outdated publishing techniques is a new dimension of  . Just in that update the man sounds like he's the long-lost identical twin (but raised by perpetually baked hippies) to Kevin Siembieda of all people.
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Jan 24, 2018 02:11
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 12:45 |
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I've heard that Siembieda did layouting by hand (is that the right term?), and that he was so good and so fast at it that it was still better than the alternative, but do we know if he still does that in TYOOL 2018?
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Jan 24, 2018 04:38
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