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SenZar SenZar! On the one hand, it's surprising that such a semi-legendary "bad game" hasn't been reviewed here when FATAL, Synnibarr and plenty of others have, on the other hand, it's not surprising considering how drat hard it is to find. It's out of print, no one stocks it(except, as it turns out, one used paperback copy found on Amazon.It. Thank you, Italy) and there's no .PDF version to buy on DriveThruRPG or similar. So it's actually kind of hard to track down. Anyway, the cover is... I wanna say pretty goddamn 90's. I also kind of want to know who the hell THE BRÜNE is, to deserve a pseudonym while everyone else goes by their real names. On the first page of the book, where everyone else is capitalized normally he, she or it is also in ALL CAPS. Seem to have been a primary artist for the game, as far as I can tell. If you can believe it, SenZar also has a pretty hefty flock of playtesters(credited, anyway), somewhere close to 80. And, as a charmingly 90's touch, all of the creators' "how to get in touch" email addresses are @aol.com. That's totally going to date the book even if nothing else gave it away. Then we've got an index, which actually seems sensibly organized! Though I instantly notice that the combat heading isn't just boring old "combat," it's "COMBAT!!!" Someone really got excited about that part. After the index, there's a brief intro, where the creators tell us that they created SenZar because they HAD TO, presumably as a result of some Dwarf Fortress-esque fey mood(or fell mood, more likely.). Then they go on about how they're going to change the face of RPG's forever. Also keep in mind that I'm transcribing all quotes from the book, since I have it as a physical copy, so I apologize for any typos that slip through. SenZar posted:The underlying theme of The SenZar System is that nothing is impossible when imagination is concerned. Seems like that should be the case in all alleged FRP games, huh? Well, it isn't. First, in most so/called FRP games, the PC begins as a total dweeb, unable to survive even the most basic encounters. Those fortunate few who do manage to weasel their way through encounters then are rewarded with slow, demeaning "level-making"; "fixed" and often immutable statistics which remain with them for the life of their character; and shoddy, effete magick items. Progression is slow, often tortuous, as they struggle to achieve the upper ranks of their chosen professions. And, once--and if--they manage to reach that apex of power, they very often have little or nothing to look forward to, no pot of gold at the end of that long, black rainbow. Well, that's quite a rant there. It's usually always a "good" sign when the intro to a game starts by taking shots at all those other, badwrong games that don't do things the fun and correct way(even if it might be warranted critique of some games), and even more fun when you've got terms like "effete" being slung around like insults. That just makes me wonder if I'm going to see "fag" or "queer" in the book used as an insult somewhere. Isn't that great? SenZar posted:Well, that's not the case at all in The SenZar System, where no wimps are allowed! Players have the prerogative to determine their PC's attributes, without the humiliating "random die roll" to determine them for them. Fate Points can be used to "edit" crappy die rolls, such as failed Saves or missed hits, as well as to boost the PC's Attributes. Players are encouraged to make their PCs as powerful as possible, to hoard each and every thing that they possibly can, for only then will they be able to progress as far as the ranks of The Immortals, when an entirely new "game" will begin--that of "The Dragon's Game," wherein Immortals contest for ultimate power. You can just sense the BECMI trauma here, can't you? What was the first game to start using Fate points of some sort, anyway? SenZar is 1996 game, and apparently the first edition of WFRP was from 1986, did it have Fate points? I know the second edition did, but that's a 2005 game. I'm just curious whether SenZar, for all its garbage, was actually relatively early to embrace a mechanic that wasn't awfully common back then, but is more or less accepted now as a way of giving players more agency. I also apologize for all these quotes, at this point I'm going to end up transcribing the entire loving book, but it feels like there's constantly some sort of gold here. And I'm not even into the first actual chapter yet. SenZar posted:In The SenZar System, we freely use the term "Creator" (known in other FRP games as the "GM," "Game Judge," "Dungeon Master," "Keeper," or "The Dude Who Runs The Game"). The term "Creator" is not intended to be blasphemous. Not at all. There's enough ignorance, prejudice and fear in "The Real World" as it is, and we do not intend to perpetuate such idiocy in any way, shape or form. The author's just really cannot shut up, though. Like, I think I've rarely ever read a book with this sort of conversational tone before. It feels like everything needs to be dragged off on a tangent five times as long as it needs to be. SenZar posted:We use the male pronouns "he, him and his" in The SenZar System to represent the he/she/it pronominal spectrum (otherwise known as the "he did what? scatological spectrum). Sure, we're guys, and using "guy-terms" is what guys normally do, but you'd have to agree that "he" is a lot less scary than exclusively employing some generic, androgynous term like "it" or "one." Occasionally the use of the authorative "we" is employed, but this is not intended to promote some Ayn Rand-esque nightmare of "one-ness" or "selflessness" as in her thought-provocative opus, "Anthem." "We" use "we" because more than one "he" wrote this book! Silly pronouns! You know, I think the last thing I would have expected from SenZar was Ayn Rand praise before we were even in the first goddamn chapter. I'm not even going to comment on that loving mess with the pronouns. What the hell have I gotten myself into? Next time: The actual content
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Mar 14, 2018 16:27
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That SenZar tirade comes off as super defensive. Like somebody murmured something about their pronoun choice - or, more likely, they imagined that somebody might do that - and they just flew off the loving handle about it. That's the reaction of a guy who knows he's probably in the wrong, or at least unjustified, but refuses to change anyway for no reason other than nerdrage stubbornness.
megane fucked around with this message at 17:15 on Mar 14, 2018 |
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Mar 14, 2018 17:11
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I already have a deep and abiding hatred of the SenZar guy and want to throw bars of soap and deodorant at him.
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Mar 14, 2018 17:17
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1. SenZar off to a roaring trash fire. Thanks for putting up with it, PurpleXVI 2. I also want to show appreciation for hectorgrey's write-ups - the original 3.0 edition is a fascinating distinct entity if you examine it closely against 3.5
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Mar 14, 2018 17:21
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Mors Rattus posted:Hey guys, throw me a concept for a pre-Visitation Scion. I'm getting back into my review now that...well, some questions I had weren't answered by Hero, so I have to discuss the problems that weren't addressed now. First concept I like gets made for chargen section. Scott Steiner, visited by Hercules just before the main title match.
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Mar 14, 2018 17:26
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Ratoslov posted:I already have a deep and abiding hatred of the SenZar guy and want to throw bars of soap and deodorant at him. But I want to put that soap in a sack and wallop all of SenZar's authors with it
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Mar 14, 2018 17:26
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I don't remember reading something in a while that made me  quite like that last bit.Is there a version of where the eyes get bigger like in  ?
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Mar 14, 2018 17:27
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Holy poo poo SenZar, what an acceleration from “what is this” to “I hate this”
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Mar 14, 2018 17:28
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I suppose the Ayn Rand bit is hardly that unexpected when the rest of it has been ACQUIRE! HOARD! TAKE! so far?
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Mar 14, 2018 17:32
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Night10194 posted:I suppose the Ayn Rand bit is hardly that unexpected when the rest of it has been ACQUIRE! HOARD! TAKE! so far?
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Mar 14, 2018 17:35
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Green Intern posted:Holy poo poo SenZar, what an acceleration from “what is this” to “I hate this” Ah, yes, more masculinity is what RPGs need. If it’s role playing for the current millennium, it aged pretty poorly.
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Mar 14, 2018 18:04
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That first bit is so bizarre. It's almost like the TTRPG version of "dirtbag left" - the game design philosophy is basically something right off The Forge's early period, except injected with not-actually-ironic sexism and other assholery because "gently caress you don't tell me what to do!" This game's already gone flying off the cliff at a hundred miles per hour. The rest of this review is going to be the five hundred foot plunge on its way to impact the rocks below in a fiery explosion.
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Mar 14, 2018 18:06
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I actually have a copy of SenZar I bought ages ago at a hole-in-the-wall RPG store. Oddly, though, I never thought to review it. Not being available in PDF might be a factor, because there's just so much insane text in the book you'd need an easy c&p to do it justice. It's a shame that the official site is long dead because there used to be a "we're the authors, here's how awesome we are because we did all these AMAZING physical feats" blurb there.
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Mar 14, 2018 18:32
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Oh man I've been waiting for SenZar to get reviewed. For the longest time I thought it and Synnibar were the same thing but it looks like this gonna be bad in a whole other way from Synnibar. I am surprised at the appearance of fate points though. The earliest game I can think of off hand that had something like that was Adventure (I really should finish that F&F someday) with the Inspiration mechanic that allowed "dramatic editing" which I thought was pretty nifty back in the days of knowing nothing else but D&D 3.0.Comrade Gorbash posted:That first bit is so bizarre. It's almost like the TTRPG version of "dirtbag left" - the game design philosophy is basically something right off The Forge's early period, except injected with not-actually-ironic sexism and other assholery because "gently caress you don't tell me what to do!" lol
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Mar 14, 2018 18:34
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Doing a little research; Fudge came out in 1992 and had "Fudge points" three years before SenZar came out.Serf posted:Oh man I've been waiting for SenZar to get reviewed. For the longest time I thought it and Synnibar were the same thing but it looks like this gonna be bad in a whole other way from Synnibar.
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Mar 14, 2018 18:42
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Serf posted:Oh man I've been waiting for SenZar to get reviewed. For the longest time I thought it and Synnibar were the same thing but it looks like this gonna be bad in a whole other way from Synnibar. I am surprised at the appearance of fate points though. The earliest game I can think of off hand that had something like that was Adventure (I really should finish that F&F someday) with the Inspiration mechanic that allowed "dramatic editing" which I thought was pretty nifty back in the days of knowing nothing else but D&D 3.0. JB007 was a terrific game, way ahead of its time. I really need to review it for this thread.
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Mar 14, 2018 18:42
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FMguru posted:JB007 was a terrific game, way ahead of its time. I really need to review it for this thread. I would love to read this review, as I keep hearing how good and ahead of its time it was but have never seen a copy to read myself. And 1983 is old - that's Basic Set territory, a good five years before AD&D 2nd Edition, which was my 'old game' introduction. I've since read other games of the 90s and even late 80s, but not much in the early 80s that isn't D&D.
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Mar 14, 2018 19:03
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FMguru posted:The first-ever appearance of Fate Points was as an optional rule in the 1980 TSR spy game Top Secret. You had a pool of Fortune Points that you could spend to nullify the effects of a die roll that would have killed you (provided you came up with a just-about-plausible justification for it). The 1983 James Bond 007 RPG had a really sophisticated way of using Hero Points to bump up your die rolls (and reduce enemy levels of success). That sounds pretty interesting, and also a great mechanic for the setting. A James Bond game should have some way of improbably avoiding death at the last second and that seems like an good solution. I wonder why more games didn't have the fate points mechanic.
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Mar 14, 2018 19:10
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I don't think TSR worked all that hard at promoting its non-D&D games, and a lot of interesting stuff fell by the wayside.
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Mar 14, 2018 19:11
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Serf posted:That sounds pretty interesting, and also a great mechanic for the setting. A James Bond game should have some way of improbably avoiding death at the last second and that seems like an good solution. I wonder why more games didn't have the fate points mechanic. I would venture that the wargaming heritage of early RPGs made it difficult to break into the mindset of a "purely narrative" mechanic.
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Mar 14, 2018 19:16
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Serf posted:That sounds pretty interesting, and also a great mechanic for the setting. A James Bond game should have some way of improbably avoiding death at the last second and that seems like an good solution. I wonder why more games didn't have the fate points mechanic. Halloween Jack posted:I don't think TSR worked all that hard at promoting its non-D&D games, and a lot of interesting stuff fell by the wayside.
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Mar 14, 2018 19:16
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gradenko_2000 posted:I would venture that the wargaming heritage of early RPGs made it difficult to break into the mindset of a "purely narrative" mechanic. FMguru posted:Their 1984 Marvel Super Heroes game also had a metagame/plot-point mechanic (called Karma)
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Mar 14, 2018 19:24
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I know the main reason SenZar got infamous in the indie RPG scene was because their attempts at self promotion backfired and brought them hate and notoriety. I don't know precisely what went down, but I'm now pretty confident I could hazard a guess.
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Mar 14, 2018 19:32
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FMguru posted:Their 1984 Marvel Super Heroes game also had a metagame/plot-point mechanic (called Karma) Didn't it have a rule where if you kill somebody, everyone in your supergroup lost Karma (possible all of it, I don't remember)? I remember a sidebar explaining that this is why superheroes don't kill, and that this is why the X-Men need to keep a close eye on Wolverine.
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Mar 14, 2018 19:34
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Hostile V posted:I know the main reason SenZar got infamous in the indie RPG scene was because their attempts at self promotion backfired and brought them hate and notoriety. I don't know precisely what went down, but I'm now pretty confident I could hazard a guess.
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Mar 14, 2018 19:41
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Kaza42 posted:Didn't it have a rule where if you kill somebody, everyone in your supergroup lost Karma (possible all of it, I don't remember)? I remember a sidebar explaining that this is why superheroes don't kill, and that this is why the X-Men need to keep a close eye on Wolverine. Something like that. And Karma wasn't just your plot points, it was also your experience, which meant it felt really bad to spend it on anything.
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Mar 14, 2018 20:02
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senrath posted:Something like that. And Karma wasn't just your plot points, it was also your experience, which meant it felt really bad to spend it on anything. This is one of the dumbest, most hoarder-instinct button-pressing mistakes in game design and it annoys me that it still happens.
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Mar 14, 2018 20:04
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wiegieman posted:This is one of the dumbest, most hoarder-instinct button-pressing mistakes in game design and it annoys me that it still happens.
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Mar 14, 2018 20:09
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Scion: Origin: How To Make A Man This has been slow in coming because I've been trying to figure out some of the rules and hoped that Hero would clarify them. It didn't! So there's some...problems here. We'll get into those. Origin-level characters are usually presumed to be pre-Visitation Scions, but can be Legendary critters, mortal sorcerers or other such things. Until a Scion receives their Visitation and is granted power by the gods, they're still just human beings - normal, but a little stronger, luckier or greater. Most Scions never receive their Visitation, and as a result never really solve the mystery of their parentage. These are folk heroes, dealing with their heritage but never truly wielding its blessings. However, they can and do still engage with things of Legend in a way most mortals can't. The game provides a few pre-made characters, but we'll be eliding over them, except to note that they're a very diverse cast. Eric Donner, Pre-Visitation Scion of Thor, muscle car enthusiast and blue-collar football star, is from 1e. The rest are not: Emanuel Montero, Pre-Visitation Scion of Xiuhtechutli, raised as a wealthy and privileged son of luxury but aware that something within him is incredibly old and wishes to come out. Hassan al-Hakim, Pre-Visitation Scion of Loki, a masterful Iraqi doctor now struggling to regain his qualifications in DC while driving a cab. (His father is one of his regulars, though he has not revealed himself yet.) Rashmi Bhattacharya, Pre-Visitation Scion of Agni, who was raised by a cult of her father to be the perfect servant for the god, whom she has never met. And Rhiannon Jernigan, a Pre-Visitation Scion of Brigid, military brat and ex-combat medic EMT who is at her best when trying to save people. So, chargen. As in any White Wolf or Onyx Path game, we start with character concept and associated god or pantheon. quote:A local politician preparing for a tough fight in a special election is suddenly visited by Zeus, who announces that he's his father. quote:Probably Pluto. We're going with these. After deciding our concepts, we need to pick Deeds - one short-term, one long-term and one Band-term. A Deed is kind of a character goal and kind of an OOC personal goal. They're the story beats you really want to hit, the things that will show and grow and change your PC's Legend. Achieving Deeds is the job of the entire table, no matter whose it is. Yes, always watch for chances to do your Deeds, but also watch for chances for other PCs to do theirs. If every PC manages their short-term Deed in a session, everyone gets 1 XP. You can also fail at Deeds - but at Origin level, the only consequences for loving up like that are to your pride. Short-Term Deeds are achievable within one session - maybe a scene you want to see, a power you want to use or some cool moment. Long-Term Deeds take an arc, usually, and are related to a Path. These are declarations of how your PC will grow or change. Band-Term Deeds are selected by the entire party - each PC has the same one, and they're a group Deed that the entire group wants to achieve over the course of a whole season. So for ours, we'll have our politician, Saieed Madavi, select "Convince someone to vote for me" as his Short-Term and "Fix the local traffic problems" as his Long-Term. Our primatologist, Jane Eun-Sook has "Fight someone" as her Short-Term and "Convince the local monkeys to stop stealing from the temple" as her Long-Term. Their Band-Term is decided by their party: "Rebuild the local temple so people have better access to the gods." Now, we select our Paths. We have three: Origin, which is our background, Role, which is our area of expertise, and Society or Pantheon, which is our connection to a group or pantheon, either positive or negative. Paths have a short description (which is basically a FATE Aspect), three associated Skills that fit the Path, a set of people that function as social contacts, and a Condition that will apply if we invoke the Path too often. Saieed's Origin Path is "Came Up From Nothing", with its Skills being Athletics, Empathy, and Subterfuge. Understanding people, knowing when to run and a basic understanding petty crime were how Saieed survived until he got into politics. His Role Path is "Voice of the People", with Skills of Culture, Integrity and Leadership. His Pantheon Path is "Pluto's Prodigal Son". For Pantheon Path, we have to select two of the skills from the ones assigned to the Theoi, but can pick the third. Those two are Empathy and Persuasion, and we select Leadership for the third one. Jane's Origin Path is "Indiana Jane", with the Skills of Athletics, Survival and Close Combat. Her Role Path is "Action Scientist", with the Skills of Academics, Science and Survival. Her Pantheon Path is "Handsome Monkey Princess", which has the Shen skills of Academics and Leadership, and then Athletics as our choice. We now have to prioritize our Paths as Primary, Secondary or Tertiary. Each Skill in your Primary path gets 3 dots, each in your Secondary gets 2 and each in your Tertiary gets 1. If a skill would go over 5 this way, the dots instead flow into one of the other Path Skills. Every skill at 3 or more also gets a Specialty. We'll do this at the same time as the next step, Attributes, where we rank Physical, Mental and Social. All Attributes start at 1. We get 6 dots to spread among our primary choice, 4 on secondary and 2 on tertiary. We then pick our favored Approach (Force, Resilience or Finesse) and add 2 to all attributes that match that. If this would bring an attribute over 5, the extra dots are instead assigned to a stat in the matching Arena (Physical, Mental or Social). So, our characters now look like this: quote:Saieed Madavi, Rising Political Star quote:Jane Eun-Sook, Action Primatologist Next, we get to select Callings and Knacks. I'll get into Knacks more in the next post. However, Callings are basically broad Archetypes. At Origin level you only get one, rated at 1 dot, and for Pre-Visitation Scions, it must be from the list for their parent. You get one Knack, either generic or from your Calling. The game says it should be a Heroic Knack but I believe they're actually Mortal Knacks at this level. For Saieed, we have Judge, Leader and Liminal for Hades/Pluto, so we pick Leader and Perfect Poise as our Knack, which gives us Enhancement 2 to resist fear from supernatural sources, immunity to non-supernatural fear, and Enhancement 1 on Social rolls involving grace, poise, composure or poker face. Jane can take Liminal, Trickster or Warrior from Sun Wukong, and we go with Trickster. Her Knack is Smoke and Mirrors - once per scene, when she would be Taken Out, she may instead spend Momentum to negate the damage that'd do it, move one range band away from the attacker and leave behind a brief afterimage, which crumbles to dust in seconds. Finally, we get 5 dots to spend on Skills, one dot to spend on Attributes and either 2 Knacks or 4 dots of Birthrights. We'll go with 2 Knacks, as all Birthrights are in Hero. Wait for Hero for those. Note: We can only have one Knack active per session - so basically, each session, these characters would pick one of their 3 Knacks to have actually in place. Here's what they look like after all this: quote:Saieed Madavi, Rising Political Star quote:Jane Eun-Sook, Action Primatologist Next time: A Knack for It Mors Rattus fucked around with this message at 20:18 on Mar 14, 2018 |
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Mar 14, 2018 20:14
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Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Dark Heresy: Part 10 Catholic Space Nazis I imagine everyone here is, by nerd osmosis, a little more familiar with Warhammer 40k than they originally were with Fantasy. Most folks know about the soccer hooligan orks, the big lads in big shoulderpads who have had most of their personality surgically removed, the guardsmen who get killed by the dozen every time someone else needs to look cool, and all the screaming about heresy and flamethrowers. The big Space Marine in chunky power armor is (or rather, until Total Warhammer came out, was) a more common nerd symbol than the chap with slashed sleeves, a codpiece, and a halberd. I still think it merits mentioning that the opening paragraph of the Setting chapter has 'No matter how heroic your death or how great your life, one thing is certain: You will not be missed'. 40k relies entirely on bombast and a sense of enormous scale. Everything in 40k is as far over the top as it can get. An assault rifle? Hell no. We use a rocket launcher that fires 25mm RPG rounds that pierce to an optimal point and then explode to rip you apart. A sword? gently caress no, it's a chainsaw! Religion? Mostly done via flamethrowers! One of the problems of the setting, and one you're going to get a hell of a lot more of here in this book, is the way it slowly lost sight of the fact that the Imperium of Man, the main characters (let's be real, 40k is way more directly focused on the Imperium than Fantasy was on the Empire. Something like half the loving TT armies are different flavors of Imperials), are basically idiots. They were founded by a murderous warlord who sent his posthuman warbands out into the galaxy to kill and convert everyone they encountered, then riven apart in a crazy civil war because he was a very poor father. Ever since then, they've been struggling along on dogma and throwing vast waves of men at their problems while killing anyone who suggests that maybe banging their heads against the brick wall isn't going to lead to prosperity and goodness forever. Now, playing as people trying to live and work inside of a fascist nightmare-state can be fun for gaming. But the book doesn't really remember this IS a nightmare state. There's a lot of 'Well this river of blood is a small price to pay!' and 'Men die so MAN endures!', and mind you, FFG is legitimately better at 40k fluff than GW is. There are still glimmers of humor and plenty of 'You know it sure is odd how you Inquisitor types end up fighting other Inquisitors who have gone crazy at least 50% of your job.' We begin with a description of the various big organs of the Imperium you're going to interact with, and an assertion that the Imperium is feudal at heart, based on a large set of rigid, inflexible hierarchies that in theory all work together towards the common goal of human galactic domination. In practice, the Imperium is too goddamn big for anyone to govern, the Inquisition has nearly unlimited power, and almost everyone is bugfuck crazy. The Arbites handle matters of planetary justice and cosplay Judge Dredd. The Adeptus Astra Telepathica make sure people herd their Psykers into death-ships so that the weaker ones can be fed to the comatose Emperor to keep the unsustainable sustained a little longer and the stronger ones can become PCs and explode game balance. The Adeptus Astronomica handle intersetllar communications and the giant Emperor-shaped soul-navigation beacon for FTL travel. The Custodes are a bunch of golden oiled supermen who watch over the Emperor's physical form back on Terra, and if your game is interacting with the Custodes something really interesting has probably happened. The Adeptus Mechanicus are the Techpriests of Mars, who absolutely follow a different religion but are so important to keeping everything working that everyone pretends this isn't the case as hard as they can. The Administratum is the enormous mass of nerds and middle managers that keep all the records of the Imperium, because it has to keep records, even though they fill entire planets with their scrolls and no-one ever reads the drat things. The Ministorum are the official church of the Imperium, dedicated to worshiping the Emperor as a God despite the fact that he was a new-atheist style 'haha sky wizard' type in life (primarily because he knew gods existed and hoped not worshiping any would kill them off). And finally, the Inquisition. The Inquisition was founded ages ago, shortly after the Emperor went down, and their job is to, uh, their job isn't very well defined and they like it that way. By being able to claim Inquisitorial purview in pretty much any and all cases, and with theoretically unlimited authority and the right to compel other Imperial citizens to do their bidding, as well as basically no oversight, the average Inquisitor is a powerful secret police tyrant unto themselves. You just work for one of these nutbars. We also get a section on the many types of worlds in the Imperium, which I believe is copy-pasted almost directly from an old 40k core book. In short, there are a lot of worlds in the Imperium. At least 1 million inhabited planets, ranging from paradise worlds with an idea of civil rights and functioning societies to insane massive human hives of hundreds of billions of people held in check by a large supply of Judge Dredds. One of the selling points of the setting is that, as I said, you're free to just make up your own setting, at which point 40k will claim that was 40k all along. If you looked in my old college notebooks you'd be able to tell exactly where lecture got boring because you'd see pages of notes on the planet of Hanza and its three primary Hives, and the history lying down in the dark underhive where the Techpriests are trying to piece together how to get at the ancient stashes of knowledge the pre-collapse colonists left behind and how to purge demonic evil from the ancient climate control system to make the surface livable again. That's how a 40k campaign usually goes: You write your own techno-feudal sci-fantasy setting and then it pretends its 40k. One of the other bugbears of the setting is its insistence that travel is nearly impossible, most people will never go to space, space travel will always be exceptionally difficult, and that every single ship is a massive multi-kilometer cathedral with an entire city in it. Nothing is ever small, and everything takes months or years or centuries to do. This makes popping your PCs down to a new planet of adventure this week a little bit awkward, and is mostly handwaved away despite the several pages devoted to it because going new places and solving mysteries is fun. Communication is also extremely difficult, relying on powerful psykers called Astropaths to send coded, dream-like messages to one another in ways that can be easily disrupted by space satan or other problems. Many worlds in the Imperium barely know the Imperium. Naturally, one of the core threats is This isn't just distasteful, it's *boring*. One of the fun parts over in Fantasy is watching the various weird peoples and countries all end up having to tolerate each other to work together when Chaos comes knocking. While that still happens a fair amount in 40k off the books, the whole gleeful fanatic purifiers of genocide thing just gets old. Your only 'sanctioned' interaction with a ton of stuff in the setting is 'chainsaws, flamethrowers, and rocket pistols.' Next Time: The people with the flamethrowers, chainsaws, and rocket pistols.
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Mar 14, 2018 20:47
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Evil Mastermind posted:Doing a little research; Fudge came out in 1992 and had "Fudge points" three years before SenZar came out. Since earlier iterations of the concept had varying names SenZar is probably the first ever use of the name “Fate Points” for the concept.
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Mar 14, 2018 20:54
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FMguru posted:Wraethuthu was the same thing - a little indie game that would have been quickly forgotten except for the comically overly-aggressive and belligerent marketing. wait wait i was around for the LEGENDARY GBS thread on this game but...I never heard mention about THIS. someone please elaborate, please tell us the story about the marketing for the most bizarre Horny On Main game there ever was
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Mar 14, 2018 21:08
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Wraeththu's release was greeted at RPGnet with a thread titled something like "Wraeththu: Most Pretentious Game Ever?" The author--"Gabriel Strange," whose parents definitely named him that--did not take this well. Not only did he deign to get into it with people on the forum, he started a thread of his own called "Wraeththu: Bring On The Clowns" to drag it out even further. That I remember all of this is not a testament to my sanity.
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Mar 14, 2018 21:18
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Halloween Jack posted:Wraeththu's release was greeted at RPGnet with a thread titled something like "Wraeththu: Most Pretentious Game Ever?" The author--"Gabriel Strange," whose parents definitely named him that--did not take this well. Not only did he deign to get into it with people on the forum, he started a thread of his own called "Wraeththu: Bring On The Clowns" to drag it out even further. Man, that “Bring On The Clowns” thread is good stuff!
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Mar 14, 2018 21:49
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I don't want to reread it again, so tell me, how long does it take for Gabby's "I'm not mad, I find this all very funny" veneer to burn away?
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Mar 14, 2018 21:50
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FMguru posted:TBF, it was 1984, and they were still working out the kinks in the system.
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Mar 14, 2018 21:58
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DalaranJ posted:Since earlier iterations of the concept had varying names SenZar is probably the first ever use of the name “Fate Points” for the concept. WHFRP 1st edition had Fate points too.
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Mar 14, 2018 22:01
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Halloween Jack posted:It's not pure coincidence that D&D comes out of the same American Midwest that produced a ton of hippie libertarian science fiction. This single sentence has caused so much to gel about Palladium and Siembieda and Rifts that's beenon the tip of my brain but could never quite cohere. It's been slowly coming together as I work on an upcoming review, but I feel like it's taken me this long to finally start to grasp what the hell Rifts' moral themes actually are and what attitudes underpin them.
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Mar 14, 2018 22:14
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My memories of those 1980s-era "your unspent do-cool-things points are your experience points" is that they were meant to force you to pay a price for your foolishness (or your unluckiness). A good player would have never gotten into a situation where they had to pay hero/fate/fortune/karma points to get out of a jam, so if you find yourself bleeding XPs in order to survive a tricky situation well that was the price you paid. Be smarter next time. Dumb as that seems to us now, it really was a step forward for empowering players - because it at least gave the player a chance to bail out of situation where earlier rules would have the GM take your character sheet and rip it up in front of you. It incentivized a certain higher level of risk-taking (you knew you could survive a bad decision, at the cost of future advancement, compared to the "rocks fall, everyone dies" fantasy Vietnam paradigm that earlier rules seemed to encourage.
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Mar 14, 2018 22:19
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Halloween Jack posted:I don't want to reread it again, so tell me, how long does it take for Gabby's "I'm not mad, I find this all very funny" veneer to burn away? By the third page, a suspicious unregistered guest had appeared and a mod told Gabriel that they could see IP addresses. Suddenly Gabriel was all 'gosh wow I have no idea who else would have all the same IP I'm on such a big network' or similar. Coining the Rhymes With Snak defense a decade and a half early!
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Mar 14, 2018 22:26
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