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Sorry this is taking me a while. Like I said, I've got a couple of broken fingers I'm typing around.gourdcaptain posted:Savage Worlds. Decent system, godawful layout and organization. Seriously, why is character creation before what any of it means? And equipment is very early for some reason too. And just... agh, it takes forever to find anything in Deluxe edition. Partly, I think this comes from tradition. Savage Worlds has adapted a lot from its nineties RPG roots, but you can definitely see the signs in parts like this and equipment.  Chapter One: Characters Here we get into character creation. To its credit, the book does try to explain what certain terms mean as it goes through, but I'd prefer if it had also laid out things like the core mechanic of the game before asking you to pick stat points The first step is picking your race. It lets you know what humans get--one free edge--but otherwise tells you to check the race section. The next step is picking your traits. Traits are your attributes (think ability scores in D&D) and your skills. They're measured in die steps from d4 to d12. Attributes start at d4 and you get five points to start with (unless you take hindrances). You could put them all at d6, raise one to d12 and one to d6, or however you want to go. Skills start at d4-2, and it costs a point to raise them to d4. You get 15 points to spend. Like a lot of games, skills have linked attributes; for example, Intimidation is linked to Spirit, and Fighting is linked to Agility. This just affects how much the skills cost. It costs one point per die type to raise a skill as far as its linked attribute, and two after that. So if you have a d6 Agility, it costs two points to raise your Fighting to d6, but four points to raise it to d8. The attribites are fairly balanced. Agility and Smarts don't do a ton compared to the other attributes, but they have the most skills. Strength affects how much you can carry, what weapons you can use, and your melee damage. Spirit helps you recover from the shaken condition, resist fear, and has a smattering of useful skills. Vigor us straight up your "don't die" skill. There really isn't a single god stat. On the other hand, thanks to the math behind the game, you're not completely gimped even with a d4 Vigor. One thing I wish they would do in Savage Worlds Black is to talk about the math of the system. It would help people making their characters to understand what those numbers actually mean. I'll talk about it more once we get to the mechanics. Next we get derived statistics. These are things you don't buy directly, but which are affected by other parts of your character. Charisma is a bonus to persuasion. It's 0 unless a hindrance or edge modifies it. Pace is 6" for humans, again barring an edge or hindrance affecting it. That's 6" on the game mat; you're assumed to be using minis, figure flats, or some other sort of marker). Each inch represents 2 yards in-game. Parry is half your fighting die plus two (so a d6 gives you a 5 parry), and it's how hard it is to hit you in melee. Finally, Toughness is half your Vigor plus two, and it's how much damage you can take before it affects you. The next step is Edge and Hindrances, though Hindrances go first. They're the sort of flaws and feats you see in other systems. You can take up to one major and two minor hindrances at character creation. Taking all three gives you four points to spend. Two will buy you an edge or an attribute increase, one will give you an additional skill point or $500 in spending money. I have some issues with this system which I'll talk about when we get to the individual hindrances and edges. We now come to the gear step. It refers us to the gear section and tells us we have $500 to spend by default, unless our GM or setting book says otherwise. There are also edges and hindrances that affect this. Finally, you come up with a background for your character. There follows a section on roleplaying that amounts to "Play interesting characters and try new things every so often; that goes for GMs too." It also includes a plug for Andy Hopp's Low Life, which I appreciate. It's probably the single weirdest setting in Savage Worlds. There's a section on Archetypes, which are 0-XP pre-built characters. These are a nice spread of different concepts from ace, to mage, to investigator. The only thing they need the players to fill in are their hindrances and background. They're all built under the assumption that the players will pick all the one major and two minor. There are eleven races in Explorer's Edition, though these serve more as examples than anything else. They include the standard fantasy races (elves, dwarves, etc.), androids, atlanteans, and the very on-the-nose avions, rakashans, and saurians. These are followed by a guide for making your own races, which is really what they want you to do. There are abilities that range from +3 to -3. They're kind of like the hindrances and edges, but they're mostly mechanical and don't have quite the problems that that system has. It's helped that the races are generally designed with a setting in mind. Races are supposed to balance out to a net +2. As an example, dwarves get a free d6 in Vigor (+2), low-light vision (no penalties for anything less than complete darkness, +1), but are slow, with a 5 pace instead of 6 (-1). You can have more extreme abilities, like a d8 in an attribute (which can go up to d12+2 in normal advancement). Next we have Skills. Generally, you don't roll for regular stuff. You don't roll to drive your car or to change a lightbulb. It's only when you're under a time crunch ir there's a significant chance of failure that you should roll. There's a note that if a character is using a skill in a way that they're not familiar with and it's dramatically appropriate, they might take a -2 to their rolls. I don't necessarily hate this rule, but I'd like some examples of how they intended it to be used. Regardless, I've never seen it in play. Common Knowledge rolls are for things that don't really need skills. Things like basic geography, operating a common piece of equipment, etc. The player just makes a basic Smarts roll. They may get a +2 or a -2 depending on how well it fits their background. The actual knowledge skill should only be used for things that will have impact on the game. There are 23 skills total. The list could probably do with some changes. Boating, driving and piloting are all very campaign dependant. Gambling is a descrete skill mostly because it was in Deadlands. As written, it's useful for making money with a minigame. Throwing is generally not that useful outside of settings with regular access to grenades. Notably, they removed the old Guts skill, which was used to resist fear. This is another artifact of the Deadlands setting. It's now been relegated to an optional setting rule, with Spirit doing the job. Persuasion's the primary social skill. It can improve how people react to you. You add your Charisma when you roll it. Charisma's a bit of an issue. It's possible to boost it to a ridiculous +6 as a first level character (and +8 one advance later). Even a +2 is pretty huge in this system, so it can make the Persuasion skill effectively automatic. Overall, the skill system isn't bad. It can do with a little cleaning up, which they did in Flash Gordon (combining for example, climbing, swimming and throwing into Athletics), but it's overall serviceable. I like the way they linked the skills to attributes. A high-strength, low-agility character can be as good as anyone at lockpicking, but it costs them more. It also lets you come out of the gate already really good in your chosen field. It's perfectly possible to start off with a d12 in your primary skill, even if the attribute isn't that high. We've reached Hindrances, and this is probably my least favorite part of the system. The big issue with Hindrances is that they do completely different things. Some are basically things players are going to do anyway, while others are really harsh mecnaically. For example, Heroic means you like to help people out and generally act like a good guy. It's worth the same as being Blind, which gives you a -6 to nearly all physical tasks (any that rely on vision) and a -2 on social tasks (from not being able to read people). You also have Enemy and Wanted, which are basically "This either doesn't do anything, or makes my character the focus of the game for a while." You can also get Bennies for roleplaying your Hindrances. We'll talk about Bennies later, but they're basically your Fate Points, so this is kind of a big deal. You can roleplay being Loyal to get a Benny, but you can't really do the same with, say, One-Armed or Lame. The roleplaying Hindrance is only ever an issue when you want it to, and you get rewards when it is. To be fair, the game is up front about this, acknowledging that some hindrances are just there as roleplaying aids (you'll play a character differently if he has Loyal instead of Mean on his sheet), but it doesn't really offer any solutions for the issue. Personally, I just give everyone the points and ask them to pick a couple of personality flaws. If they create complications in game from it, great! I'll give them Bennies. Otherwise, it's just background. Edges are basically feats. You have Background, Combat, Leadership, Power (associated with the magic system), Professional, Social, Weird, Wild Card, and Legendary Edges. Edges have prerequisites. Generally these are based on your Traits (Agility d8, or Stealth d6, say) and your Rank. Rank is like your level. Every 20 XP you get, you reach a new Rank. Starting characters are Novices. Background Edges used to only be allowed at character creation. However, they're now allowed at any point. These are things like being Rich, Noble, Ambidextrous, or a naturally Fast Healer. You also have the Arcane Backgrounds, which are basically how you do magic. Combat Edges are your "I Fight Good" options. These range from being harder to hit, getting extra attacks in a round, being harder to hit, or ignoring penalties for certain actions. Leadership Edges generally give bonuses to "people under your command." Expect to have a talk with yous players over exactly what that means. It doesn't need to be an issue, and shouldn't be, but it can be. Personally, I turn it into a bard or warlord style "buff your friends" thing in my games. Power Edges give you more magic powers and points to spend on them. Professional Edges are generally ones that make your skills better. These are things like Assassin (get more damage when you sneak up on someone), Ace (get bonuses for handling vehicles), or McGyver (rig little devices from scrap, grow a terrible mullet). They technically tend to be more "expensive" in terms of prerequisites, but those are generally things you'd want to have anyway if you were taking the edges. Social Edges are about getting along with others. You can become more Charismatic, resist Intimidation or Taunt, pass out Bennies to your friends, or have Connections to lean on. Weird Edges are things that verge onto the supernatural or just plain strange. Get an animal companion, become tougher when you're drunk, or always have just the right tool for the job. Wild Card Edges are only available to Wild Cards. Annoyingly, this comes before the book explains what Wild Cards are. For now, just know that all Player Characters and particularly important NPCs are called Wild Cards and get certain benefits. There are three Wild Card Edges, and they all get special benefits when a player draws a joker for their initiative. Did I mention that initiative is card-based? Well, it is. Legendary Edges require a character to be Legendary. This is basically the Savage Worlds equivalent to Epic Level, though the power level's a lot lower. You can get followers or a sidekick, increase a trait pasts d12, or boost derived trats past their associated trait. Finally we come to advancement, where the whole "rank" thing is explained. As I said earlier, every 20 XP is a new rank. You start at Novice, then comes Seasoned, Veteran, Heroic, and Legendary at 80 experience points. Every five XP you can get an Advance. That lets you do one of the following: Buy an Edge, raise an Attribute, raise two Skills up to their linked Attribute or one up above it, or buy a new Skill at d4. You can only raise an Attribute once per rank. You can, of course, start at higher rank if the game requires it. If you die, your replacement character is supposed to start with one fewer Advance than the previous one. I've never had a GM who actually used that rule, but at least it's better than the previous one, where you started with half the XP. Once you hit Legendary, advancement slows a little. You get an Advance every ten XP, and you can raise an Attribute every other Advance. At that point, you're fairly incredible at whatever you specialized in, and you're just getting broader in your abilities, so it still feels pretty good being a Legendary character. Finally, there's a summary of character creation, lists of the Skills, Hindrances, and Edges, and that's it. I generally like the character creation system for Savage Worlds, but I agree with gourdcaptain that it would be far better done if they'd explain the basic game rules first so players knew what they were getting into. I also wish they'd just dump the hindrance system in favor of something more like FATE aspects. The big thing I like is that it's very difficult to make a character who outright sucks. Even with a d4 in a skill, you've got about a two in three chance of succeeding at basic tasks. It does a good job of providing baseline competency. While I slowly type up the Gear section, why don't I get some character suggestions so you can see what this looks like as a process? For that matter, suggest a race and I'll show that system off as well.
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May 1, 2018 19:40
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JackMann posted:While I slowly type up the Gear section, why don't I get some character suggestions so you can see what this looks like as a process? For that matter, suggest a race and I'll show that system off as well. Old Man Henderson, because old person with a shotgun is basically the mechanically best character Piell fucked around with this message at 21:38 on May 1, 2018 |
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May 1, 2018 21:34
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darthbob88 posted:I'd think most crime games would allow that. I know Blades in the Dark does; players can take a little bit of harm, then explain that they bribed this guard a week ago or whatever. The Flashback mechanic is so good. You get to plan, but you also get to go "a-ha! I was prepared for this!" as well as retcon any gently caress ups, like not interrogating a guy because you killed him when asking him a question would be really useful.
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May 1, 2018 21:47
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JackMann posted:While I slowly type up the Gear section, why don't I get some character suggestions so you can see what this looks like as a process? For that matter, suggest a race and I'll show that system off as well. Since you brought up Low Life, show that off and stat up a Cremefillian.  Yes folks, Low Life is a game where you can play as a sentient Twinkie.
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May 1, 2018 21:55
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Kurieg posted:Well, I mean, you can do that in Continuum, but you have to travel back into the past to create that coincidence otherwise you implode. It turns out Continuum was the Homestuck rpg all along.
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May 1, 2018 23:47
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JackMann posted:The attribites are fairly balanced. Agility and Smarts don't do a ton compared to the other attributes, but they have the most skills. Strength affects how much you can carry, what weapons you can use, and your melee damage. Spirit helps you recover from the shaken condition, resist fear, and has a smattering of useful skills. Vigor us straight up your "don't die" skill. There really isn't a single god stat. On the other hand, thanks to the math behind the game, you're not completely gimped even with a d4 Vigor. My experience of Savage Worlds has been that Strength is kind of a dump stat if you're not a melee fighter and don't use the encumbrance rules, and also that the encumbrance rules are really harsh if you do use them, especially if you want to wear armour. quote:Persuasion's the primary social skill. It can improve how people react to you. You add your Charisma when you roll it. Charisma's a bit of an issue. It's possible to boost it to a ridiculous +6 as a first level character (and +8 one advance later). Even a +2 is pretty huge in this system, so it can make the Persuasion skill effectively automatic. My houserule for this was to make Persuasion an opposed roll against the target's Spirit, modified by their own Charisma; high-Charisma characters can still persuade most people most of the time, but it gives the GM a few more ways to push back within the system rather than just having to either let a character persuade people or veto it. (Not really a big fan of how two of the Edges that give you Charisma bonuses are directly linked to physical attractiveness, either, even if they try to justify it by saying it's appropriate for the genre they're aiming for.) The Hindrance system is kinda interesting in how it plays out in practice. There's a sidebar that basically says "the game assumes everyone will take the maximum allowed number of Hindrances, so please feel free to do that", and all the Hindrances that give you a mechanical disadvantage also give a compensating mechanical advantage, but they're not all very well balanced (Elderly is super good if you don't care about ever raising your Strength or Vigor above d4, while the benefits of Blind and Young really aren't worth the cost at all). quote:Leadership Edges generally give bonuses to "people under your command." Expect to have a talk with yous players over exactly what that means. It doesn't need to be an issue, and shouldn't be, but it can be. Personally, I turn it into a bard or warlord style "buff your friends" thing in my games. SW makes some deceptively odd assumptions about how it's going to be played. One sidebar talks about how players are supposed to have a bunch of allied NPCs following them around a lot of the time, and in my experience the game really does work better if you follow that advice, but it's not something that's easy to work into every campaign.
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May 2, 2018 00:15
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  The Grand Duchy of Dornig, also known as the Domain of the Princes, is an expansive forest kingdom in Midgard's northwest. It is flanked by the oceanic Neidar Straits to the north and the reavers who prow its waters, the Wasted West and Ironcrags to the southwest and south, and the Blood Kingdoms of Morgau, Doresh, and Krakovar to the south and east. In spite of being surrounded by dangerous lands Dornig's been stable for most of its history thanks to the oversight of its Beloved Imperatrix Regia Moonthorn Kalthania-Reln vann Dornig. One of the elder elves who refused to follow the Great Retreat, she carved her kingdom out of a tiny barony and brought stability to the turbulent, fractious times in the near-500 years that followed. The great noble houses of the Duchy are her descendants either by blood or marriage. I should note that Dornig's majority population is human, with the upper classes having higher than normal amounts of elves and elfmarked. This is because most of the elven population left during the Great Retreat, but the human majority more or less chose to preserve cultural elements of their rulers in contrast to the Septime cities or western magocracies. The biggest examples manifest in favoring elven blood in its rulers, the most popular religion being the Church of Yarila and Porevit which pays homage to the many-faced elf deity, and the fact that Dornigfolk are multi-lingual in both Common and Elven. The elves who did not or could not make the Retreat were members of the lower classes and social outcasts among their own people (the Imperatrix an exception) and either became small barons in what would become the Grand Duchy or retreated to their own communities in the River Court of the Arbonnesse. Humans in Dornig number around 3 million, elfmarked two hundred thousand, and actual elves less than 10,000. For some reason I really like this touch. Too many fantasy worlds treat culture as being immutable and inseparable from one's heritage. It plays around with the "elves as a dying race" concept by making their society not really gone so much as inexorably changed as it now lives on in the adoption of a younger, dominant culture. The use of elves as an "elder race ruler" for a human culture, that is also non-human in influence, is far more approachable to gamers than being ruled by cyclopean aliens or other equally distant precursors. METAPLOT: Things are about to get a lot more interesting in Dornig now that the Imperatrix has fallen into a coma which no mundane medicine or magic seems able to heal. Her body is still alive and taken care of in the city of Reywald, but her soul lives on as a white deer (a form she could project to scout the forests). Unable to return to her physical form for unknown reasons, she is trying to lure warriors from both Allain and Dornig to repel the Dread Walker Y'gurdraketh. Unfortunately the Black Prince of the shadow fey and other evildoers seek to hunt this White Hare as a prized trophy. And that's not counting the three noble houses and church struggling to fill the power vacuum. or the two aspirants seeking the Copper Sphinx Throne! Dornig's socio-political structure is a feudal collection of lesser noble holdings of varying size and rank who pledge loyalty to the Imperatrix or the three Major Houses. Otherwise all other land within its borders are the Imperatrix's private holdings. The actual boundaries are almost impossible to keep track of due to the ever-shifting nature of favors and land deeds, and more than a few mapmakers literally went insane in this pursuit. The Imperial Court has the final word on governmental affairs, but rely on the three Houses Major for advisory capabilities along with smaller vassals for tribute. The Court in question was mobile and used to move between the three largest cities. This purpose was threefold: to prevent invaders from seizing a capital too easily, for propaganda purposes to show that the Imperatrix's reach is not confined to a single city, and to encourage good behavior and bolster the local economy by gracing a city for a time. Conversely it is used to punish disfavored Houses by denying this. But alas, Her Beloved Majesty lies in Castle Grauburg of Reywald, which as the years pass looks to be Dornig's unofficial capital. We then cover the members of the Imperial Court as well as other high-ranking figures of the Duchy. There's quite a few of them, but some are explained later on, particularly the 3 major houses so I'm going to include a fraction of people instead of the whole list. There's the sleeping Imperatrix, who was a fair and just Chaotic Good ruler who's also the highest-level NPC in the Worldbook (bard 10/rogue 10/wizard 10)*; the crooked Lord Arcane Heronimus Abysin Aldous-Donner, an elfmarked wizard who's the ruler in the Imperatrix's stead and monitors arcane and magical affairs as part of his original job; Saintmistress Rowanmantle, the high priestess of the Church of Yarila and Porevit whose relationship with the Northlander barbarian settlements in Donnermark puts her at odds with House Aldous-Donner; Kalvora Moonsong, a full-blooded elf from the Summer Lands who wishes to claim the sleeping Imperatrix's throne and has the bloodline to prove it; and Queen Urzula of Krakova, leader of the refugees of that nation who's gathering what allies she can in the Duchy. *This seems frankly unnecessary on account that nobody else breaches the level 20 cap. We also cover religion in Dornig, which is dominated by the Church of Yarila and Porevit. The faith has a hierarchical system of government based out of a Twinned Cathedral, and supplementing this faith are various Gods common in the Crossroads regions. We have a sidebar on the Lords Arcane, a semi-secret government agency of arcane spellcasters headed by Heronimus Aldous-Donner. Their goals are to retrieve magical items and secrets from the ruins in the Arbonesse forests (and "unofficially" in the Tomierran forest), deal with and consult on magical threats, and wear rings which grant magical powers depending on appropriate roles and missions. METAPLOT: There's a recent revival in the worship of other elven deities due to the return of elves from the Summer Lands. Baccho, god of poetry, revels, and wine is quite popular but there are rumors connecting him to the Dread Walker which shown up on Arbonnesse's borders. The mother goddess Holda is gaining in popularity, and given her hierarchy above Yarila and Porevit is a growing concern to Saintmistress Rowanmantle and the Church. As you can tell, one of Dornig's major themes is political intrigue and alliances. There's even a minimalist system later to encourage PCs gaining their own baronies. A lot of the conflict and adventure opportunities are less dungeon-delving and more domain management or helping out a faction to gain favors, territory, etc. This is not exactly my cup of tea as I don't feel that this is Pathfinder/5th Edition's strong suit, and the barony-building is a bit too restrictive, but we'll get to that later. The shadow roads of Dornig are well-maintained and reliable, and more commonly known as fey roads. Every major city has well-secured portals controlled by the ruling House which can take all manner of sizes and forms. The shadow fey are doing their best to claim as many roads as possible within and without Dornig, but the Imperatrix made a deal with them to not bother her Court or traveling groups smaller than 20 people. What this means is that the shadow roads of Dornig are a safe, well-known, and popular means of travel provided that you're in the good graces of the appropriate House. Now we get to the cities of the Grand Duchy. They are the central locations for a Major House's government, surrounded in turn by subordinate baronies and vassals which connect to the main city by fey roads. The Houses who control Hirschberg, Reywald, and Bad Solitz are known as the Major Houses for their power and influence, while three "crown" cities have respective exceptions: Donnermark is a Northlander colony, Salzbach is technically autonomous but under charter of the Imperatrix, while Courlandia is not in Dornig proper and instead situated on a peninsula north of Niemheim and east of Krakovar. Hirschberg is the most industrialized city in Dornig thanks to its position as a trade haven and is managed by House Hirsh-Dammung. Prince Octabian Hirsh-Dammung is an old warrior of Perun who agitates to move the Imperatrix's body back to Castle Reln. The city long ago exhausted the nearby hills of ore for its forges, and now these caves are inhabited by all manner of unsavory beings. This prompted more active mines to open up farther along the sprawling territory. Most buildings are three or four story affairs, with residential space on the upper levels and tradecraft on the bottom. The city's proximity to the Ironcrag canton of Grisal and the vampire-ruled territory of Krakovar necessitates a large standing army. The Imperatrix's old home of Castle Reln is currently empty and well-maintained by the Hirsh-Dammung family, although some of its passages and wings remain sealed for centuries and likely have new, unknown occupants from the fey roads. Reywald is a beautiful city built around a lake and managed by House Aldous-Donner. Princess Lyndosa Aldous-Donner is the older sister of the current Regent of Dornig who often sleights her sibling by sending spies and adventurers to steal precious magical treasure from the Arcane College. Being home to the current Imperatrix's Court and the Twinned Cathedral, is sees all manner of well-to-do ambassadors and nobles, and Princess Aldous-Donner is looking for any reason to move the Court out and rule in peace. Whether it's by finding a cure or staging a "state funeral" matters not. The city's Arcane College is tasked with aiding armed forces in times of war and helping the Treasury of Antiquities recover elven magic from the ruins of the nearby Arbonesse forest. The High Platz in in Grauberg Castle holds the Imperatrix's sleeping form, and all manner of healers both legitimate and not can be found here waiting in a long queue. The lower halls are filled with well-wishers who hope for the Imperatrix's speedy recovery, so the place is always crowded. Halflings and gnomes are a common servant class and have their own neighborhood called Little Reywald. Considering that gnomes cannot go outside Niemheim before Baba Yaga's forces track them down, this seems like a bit of a plot hole unless House Aldous-Donner has something to keep away the witch or Halivimar the Charred's sproutlings are growing throughout the city. The book does not infer either option, so I have to wonder what's up with that.  Bad Solitz is perhaps the least hospitable city environment-wise and is managed by House vann Rottsten. Located in the Tonder Alps, a great wall surrounds the valley nestling Bad Solitz's inhabitants. The Archon Court of the elven empire favored it as a location spot for its mud baths. Now its fertile ground produces some of the best winery in the Grand Duchy. No volcanic eruptions have plagued the region during the entirety of the Imperatrix's reign, which is of great concern to the locals now that she's in a coma. Bad Solitz's other claim to fame is a vibrant artistic community and the largest library in the country. Said center of learning has a rivalry with the Great Library of Friula for who has the greater collection of lore. The nobility lives in apartments rather than castles or keeps, with more than a few secret doorways and hidden galleries connecting them together. The van Rottstens do not have a good reputation as far as nobles go: their family patriarch was literally dragged into the gates of Hell by summoned devils, and his illegitimate son Dimitor took the Houe's reigns at the tender age of six (and was also a level 6 Aristocrat at the time in the 2012 edition). Not one to let the threat of hellfire scare them away, the vann Rottstens are involved in all manner of backroom deals and not above making overtures to the Blood Kingdom or Grisal. METAPLOT: Demalla Ravensblood was the ruling regent in Dimitor's stead, but when Dimitor came of age at 16 she disappeared and nobody can find her body or contact her spirit. Dimitor's official story is that she's making a pilgrimage to Ishadia, but many suspect the spoiled teenager to be behind her death. Donnermark is a port city whose inhabitants share similarities with the lands and culture of the Northlands. In fact, they are the descendants of the crew of Hakon, a plundering viking who sought to raid Dornig. He gave a good fight and established a colony on the northern beaches, but the Imperatrix's forces were ultimately victorious. Instead of executing him, she invoked the wergild to make Hakon and his descendants pay for the damages. In exchange they gained control of the settlement that became known as Donnermark along with managing maritime trade. Now the people of the city are between worlds: viewed as barbarous and uncouth by the Houses, but too soft and foreign by Northlanders. Yorick Hakonsson is seeking to marry off his daughters to a great House, but neither find the idea appealing and would rather go on adventures. The Free City of Salzbach lairs in southeast Dornig near the Ironcrag Mountains. It was home to a fourth branch of the Imperatrix's family before abominations from the Wasted West demolished the town. With the fall of the House came lots of political friction over who inherits what territory...which was rendered a moot point when said land was being made uninhabitable by monsters. The Imperatrix stepped in and offered baronies to any group able to drive back the abominations. This offer worked in recruiting many capable men-at-arms, and now Salzbach is ruled by guilds who elect their leader in lieu of a House. METAPLOT: The position of lord guildmaster suffered a high turnover rate within the last 10 years. Three died of unknown causes, two were found guilty of corruption and executed, one married into nobility and had to step down, and one fled the country for Zobeck with several bags full of embezzled jewels. The current lord guildmaster is Michoda Swanne, whose company is barely better than a thieves' guild who sells "discovered artifacts." Now Salzbach is a den of thieves and the most well-to-do citizens have their homes guarded by private armies. The agents of the Lords Arcane heavily monitor this city as a result. The Barony of Courlandia is on a peninsula to the east of Krakovar. In the years of upheaval following the Great Retreat, the Imperatrix called in a favor from a red dragon adventuring partner known as Zennalastra to take control of affairs. Unwelcome among the Mharoti dragon lords, she relished the opportunity to set herself up as the Red Queen. Ever since she ruled the province as a benevolent tyrant. Retired adventurers make up her personal bodyguards, who more than have their hands full in keeping up with their flying mistress as she hunts bison on the plains or dives for whales in the Niedar Straits. Krakova's occupation has been on her mind as of late; although the vampires currently give her a wide berth the dragon struck up an unlikely alliance with Queen Urzula to gain informational advantages on her new neighbors. Other Cities include 11 other Houses and their territories. They are typically elfmarked and more rarely humans awarded territory by either the crown or three major Houses. The deed is not inheritable and lasts only for the lifespan of the recipient. However, good service can extend this into a proper feudal lineage where one's land can be inherited by offspring. Some of the more interesting houses include House Fratzon, looking over the merchant city of Gemport. The Fraztons swear fealty to the vann Rottstens, but may break away from this family due to Dimitor's unreasonable demands and other Houses seek to fund a rebellion. House Mervant holds the smallest territory in Dornig, specifically one tavern in Salzbach known as the Serpent's Ward. Merv VI is the first woman to inherit the title, and her tavern is a favored location by exiles and runaways. Hose Rhodewaldt has dubious elven heritage, whose ruling noble Magrave Jannis Rhodewaldt is the only elfmarked family member. He seeks to fund further discovery of elven geneology and hopes to marry his heirs into the larger family. His wife is a spy for the vann Rottstens who wish to add his territory to their holdings. If he dies, she'll be regent until the sons come of age. Jannis is aware of this but has no definite proof of treachery at the moment. Gaining a Dornitian Barony  We have a discussion on Dornig holiday festivals and social seasons, the greatest of which occur during the winter months. Such occasions are accompanied by presentations of new songs and plays along with masquerade balls and feasts among the nobility. During this time various Houses mingle, so there's intense competition in settling scores and making alliances; although duels are outlawed they still occur, and Saintmistress Rowanmantle prepares healing spells in the rare event of assassinations (but only for the benefit of the Major Houses). A peculiar tradition in Dornig banquets is the position of salt shakers in the middle of the table. A person's seating arrangement indicates social status the closer they are to the host, while those "below the salt" are seat-warmers to make the hall seem less empty. But how can the PCs interact with this? Well we now get to the nitty-gritty details for how a player can gain a barony in the Grand Duchy! The requirements are actually rather steep: only humans, elves, or elfmarked can be granted a deed, they must be level 10 or higher, and are recommended to have a Charisma 15 or better (never below 9). If using the Status optional rules they must have at least a 20. Beyond mechanical requisites, they must have the favor of a Major House or the Imperatrix to grant the deed, which is gained by valuable service and deeds within the Barony (foreign deeds do not count). An oath of vassalage must be made during court season to the Imperatrix or her representative the Lord Arcane via a geas spell. So what do you gain for this? Well there's no hard and fast rules, but you get a castle, keep, or manor next to a community with some form of agricultural industry along with a fey road gate connecting to other towns. You can lose a title for failing to turn a modest profit on the land in tax revenue, not providing soldiers to the army for times of conflict, not providing your talents to the Imperatrix or sponsoring Major House, as well as committing crimes against the Grand Duchy such as treason or spying for foreign powers. We get a one-page description of common complications and adventure hooks to give to a PC baron, ranging from peasant uprisings, nearby monster-filled dungeons, political corruption, and contested land grabs from nearby nobles. There isn't really much in the way of sample revenue generated or mechanical benefits, but Pathfinder has extensive kingdom-building rules already. There are some 3rd-party supplements for kingdom/domain management in 5th Edition, but I do not know of anything in the way of official material beyond the gp cost for stronghold buildings during Downtime. Swords & Wizadry already has domain management built into its classes by 9th level. So if you're playing Pathfinder or Swords & Wizardry you already have a useful set of tools for managing a barony. If you're playing 5th Edition...well, let's hope that Strongholds & Followers turns out to be a good book! Forests of Dornig  Although the Grand Duchy claims territory of the remnants of the empire of Thorn beneath the forest canopy, there are significant sections of wood which lay beyond the safe reaches of the Imperatrix or the Houses. The Arbonesse and Tomierran forests are primeval woodlands occupying the western Duchy, the latter holding the lost city of Thorn. METAPLOT: The Tomierran has been declared sacred ground by the Church of Yarila and Porevit, and thus no longer grante access to the Lords Arcane. Small communities of elves are popping up within the two forests in the form of small villages. They appear more or less overnight and its inhabitants act like they always been there. The borders between Midgard and the Summer Lands are murky in this region, so they may very well be right. Most elves in Midgard are either the shadow fey or live in the Arbonesse Forest. In the case of the latter, they are known as exiles who for various reasons could not or would not answer the Last Horn for the Great Retreat. They live in small subsistence-based communities which number no greater than a few hundred at most. Although they swear fealty to the Imperatrix, they are more or less autonomous and whose leadership is located among a series of white stone citadels known as the River Court. The Court is ruled by an elven wizard named Ulorian the First, whose power is waning as of late due to the influx of elves from the Summer Lands. The newcomers are tight-lipped as to the circumstances of their return, and the growing power of the Shadow Fey's Black Prince makes him wonder whether resistance or acquiescence is best for his people in the long run. Other interesting locations in the Arbonesse Forest include the Tilted Tower, once home to elven sorcerers who gave their lives to prevent the human magocracies from sinking their land entirely. Their mile-high structure now bends at an angle over the nearby shore. The Shadow Fey hold a nearby Court of Scandal beneath a barrow mound where they force prisoners to dance never-ending for them until they die or commit suicide...at which point their corpses are animated to continue the dance until they fall apart. A single golden throne sits unoccupied due to deep infighting, but legend says that one who can sit in it continuously for a year and a day will become ruler of all shadowy fey and lead a march to conquer the lands of their elven cousins. Finally there's the Gentle Rest, a rustic inn whose location continually shifts to be near travelers fleeing a great danger or on the brink of starvation. The Tomierran Forest is abandoned, unpopulated even by the new elven arrivals. It is a dangerous realm home to a rotting World Tree full of unrealized creatures due to the weaves of fate running threadbare. Warped fey and plants from elven experiments roam as free-willed former guardians along with elementals, owlbears, and perytons. The Forest attracts many treasure hunters in spite of its dangers, and in the past the Lords Arcane conducted official expeditions. Now the Church is in charge of guarding its borders, and looters caught must hand over their gains and share all that they learned. Lord Arcane Heronimus Abysin Aldous-Donner still lets "independent contractors" slip past ecclesiastical authorities in return for a portion of treasure. Looters will remain looters, so you may as well ensure that a portion of their ill-gotten gains fall into the Duchy's hands rather than a foreign trader's. The Ruins of Thorn are an eerie place. Abandoned meals are still warm, and mundane pets which should have died of old age still await their masters' return. Old runes and spells serve as magical traps, and in many areas time flows differently. An explorer may one day spend years surviving in Thorn only to leave and find out a day has passed. The lost Mithral Mines still hold entire caverns full of the precious metal, and explorers miraculously discover new hidden passages in the once-thought-completely-plundered ruins of the Raven Tower. Traps reset, buildings shift locations, and unknown tombs appear where there was but wilderness. Crows, ravens, and magpies infest the Tower and worshipers of Wotan consider it a holy site. There's a Stone Gallery near the Krakovan border containing basilisks and medusae, which has done little to turn away undead scouts. Finally, the wave-washed forests of Lost Arbonesse which sank during the Great Mage Wars hold many artifacts...provided that one can brave the ghosts and sahuagin lurking underneath the lightless waters. METAPLOT: The petrifying monsters were once a scourge in Krakova, to the point that the crown of that country threatened to take matters into their own hands if the Grand Duchy could not do the job. Now it looks like that point's moot on account of the vampires and all. We end our time in Dornig with a brief discussion on the Summer Lands, the plane of existence on the opposite side of Midgard. Here elves still rule and gnomes, goblins, and halflings are their servants. The royal court is overseen by a good-natured King Valeshi IX and whose wife Queen Haldifelli III has a great love of archery and ale. The Imperatrix of Dornig is one of their nine grand-children, and due to elven longevity the court's home to dozens upon dozens of great-grandchildren, great-great-grandchildren, and so on and so forth who serve various roles ranging from generals, nobles, and priests. Visitors to the Court will be ignored and sent on their way after a nice meal unless they are famous or have a great offering to give. The elves of the Summer Lands are deeply enmeshed in their own concerns and so do not have much time for idle visitors. Thoughts so far: My thoughts on the Grand Duchy of Dornig are mild. The realm is themed heavily towards adventure hooks involving the various noble families, and the barony rules will not kick off unless you have the right kind of party and are barred from lower-level PCs. In comparison to the Seven Cities and Wasted West there's not as much variety in sociopolitical setups or potential dungeon crawls. Many members of the Imperial Court and lords of the Major Houses are verging on the extremely high levels (14 to 19), so the ability of outsmarting/challenging them to combat is unlikely for PCs unless they're nearing the endgame point of D&D/Pathfinder. Leave the sea of trees behind as we set sail for the Northlands in our next chapter!
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May 2, 2018 01:27
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Kurieg posted:Well, I mean, you can do that in Continuum, but you have to travel back into the past to create that coincidence otherwise you implode.
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May 2, 2018 02:19
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cloooooooocks
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May 2, 2018 02:36
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Dedman Walkin posted:Since you brought up Low Life, show that off and stat up a Cremefillian. Finally I can play as Tofu from RE2.
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May 2, 2018 04:00
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Dedman Walkin posted:Since you brought up Low Life, show that off and stat up a Cremefillian. I can do that on the side, but they're not the greatest as a system example, since part of their schtick is that they break the normal character creation rules. Thuryl posted:My experience of Savage Worlds has been that Strength is kind of a dump stat if you're not a melee fighter and don't use the encumbrance rules, and also that the encumbrance rules are really harsh if you do use them, especially if you want to wear armour. Stength's a dump stat in more modern-to-futuristic settings where carrying capacity and melee starts to matter less. It's pretty useful for most other settings, if only so you can carry stuff. Thuryl posted:My houserule for this was to make Persuasion an opposed roll against the target's Spirit, modified by their own Charisma; high-Charisma characters can still persuade most people most of the time, but it gives the GM a few more ways to push back within the system rather than just having to either let a character persuade people or veto it. (Not really a big fan of how two of the Edges that give you Charisma bonuses are directly linked to physical attractiveness, either, even if they try to justify it by saying it's appropriate for the genre they're aiming for.) I like to halve the Charisma bonuses and give the feats something a little extra, like letting a Charismatic character use Persuasion for Tests of Will. I've heard of other people capping it at +4. Thuryl posted:The Hindrance system is kinda interesting in how it plays out in practice. There's a sidebar that basically says "the game assumes everyone will take the maximum allowed number of Hindrances, so please feel free to do that", and all the Hindrances that give you a mechanical disadvantage also give a compensating mechanical advantage, but they're not all very well balanced (Elderly is super good if you don't care about ever raising your Strength or Vigor above d4, while the benefits of Blind and Young really aren't worth the cost at all). Those are pretty much the only ones that come with a benefit. Other mechanical hindrances like Lame, One Arm, or Small are pure negatives. Thuryl posted:SW makes some deceptively odd assumptions about how it's going to be played. One sidebar talks about how players are supposed to have a bunch of allied NPCs following them around a lot of the time, and in my experience the game really does work better if you follow that advice, but it's not something that's easy to work into every campaign. Much like Gambling being a holdover from its roots in Deadlands, I think Command and the other Leadership Edges have their DNA in the Weird Wars games, which has the assumption that one character is likely higher ranking, and therefore commanding, the others.
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May 2, 2018 05:46
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JackMann posted:Much like Gambling being a holdover from its roots in Deadlands, I think Command and the other Leadership Edges have their DNA in the Weird Wars games, which has the assumption that one character is likely higher ranking, and therefore commanding, the others.
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May 2, 2018 07:09
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Cultures: Franka, pt. 2 Degenesis: Rebirth Primal Punk Chapter 2: Cultures Souffrance This is the name of the French crater. The description makes it sound like it is a massively messed up bunch of broken mountains, frozen lava streams other such stuff. Apparently, even the spore carrying wind can hardly escape the valleys. There's a Pheromancer and human city there, but the paragraph just after it's mentioned is spent explaining that the crater is unstable and that termites have eaten through the rock, and blah blah blah, it's a bad place. Souffrance posted:People and waves of shimmering chitin buttons press through the canyons of mud buildings. Huts cuddle with the vents, encircling them up into heady heights. Some have crumbled and been deserted; dusty grass mats fly in the wind. Others are dark with wet building materials, from their roof openings, trails of smoke rise. If the human-Pheromancer interactions seem a lot more mundane and organized than one would expect from freaky space mushroom invader mutants, that's because they are. People don't stay in the crater for long. Many see this time as a spiritual experience, and they return to the villages to spread the wisdom of the Pheromancers (“mon ami, ze bugs are totally cool, oui?”). The others, well... 'Souffrance posted:Pheromancers mark their property with pheromone markers, enabling their emissaries to safely climb the crater wall and pass the insect barriers unchecked. Once they reach the crest, they worm into the cusps where the Pheromancer queens breed. I guess the implication there is that Pheromancer queens – likely fat to the point of immobility – snack on the humans after they bed them. Femme fatales that take after Black Widows and mantises to keep up with the bug theme, I guess. On the other hand... Untouchable This is a first person narration section. I'm glad they slapped in there in the main text and not in some side bar. Makes this book feel a lot more coherent  A guy is pushing himself through a tunnel in the rock, with only the scent and termites to guide him. I had never associated termites with France, but Franka is apparently lousy with them. The guy hates getting into the hole - presumably it was not made for him - but he has a reason to be there. Untouchable posted:There’s a whiff of honey-scented musk in my nose. She is very close. A pale body, surrounded by blackness; my prize, my treasure, my reward. She called, and I obey. The guy is here for some bug sex and chill! The next part might be a little icky for some people, so it's totally OK for you to not read any of the quotes from the "Untouchable" section. Untouchable posted:I wiggle closer, slap against soft matter and caress her. Her body is aglow, as if feverish. I tremble, but she does not mind. I can smell her smile when she pushes me towards her and guides my The bolded part makes this sound very much like some freaky hentai story.  Untouchable posted:I lick my lips. She likes that. Her fingers tousle my hair as I brush aside her ants. Very slowly, not wanting to hurt her, my lips caress her body, then my tongue pushes into festering pores, rummaging through sticky manna. My queen is satisfied, cuddles against me. She smells wonderful. For a moment I am her lover, not her slave. Then she falls asleep, and I leave her. I rejoin the ranks of children so willingly serving her. For a section called “Untouchable,” it sure involves a lot of touching! Anyways, I don't know what the “Spitaliers smile vainly” part was about in the previous section if the queens don't eat their consorts. Maybe Spitaliers just hate sex-havers (as one should). Geology This section gets a sidebar. Or a footnote. Whatever, I don't know what it's called. There's a great swamp in the heart of Franka and with no Macron The Sun King to drain it, the people live on rafts or on stilt houses. Is... is Franka inspired by Louisiana? Swamps, rafts, stilt houses, French-speakers. Will you be playing Caijuns vs. Pheromancers? Anyways, the ruins of the cities jut out of the water, so France is a good place for Last of Us-type urban sailing and exploration. The lands to the west are a deciduous forest, with mild climate and fertile soil – all things that aren't interesting to PCs. Back to the regular stuff! Marduk Oil So, this is confusing. The first paragraph implies that there are capital-u Untouchables that aren't affected by the Pheromones. Some pretend to be drones (regular, 'mone fiend people) because they want to stay with their families. Others join the resistance. The resistance Untouchables get into the phero-queen dens of iniquity with one goal: to collect Because it's a date-rape drug. Marduk Oil posted:The Neolibyans pay well and sell it on the scented oil market in Tripol for an inflated price. “One drop only, and a crone turns into a love goddess.”, the Africans laugh. None of them can afford Pheromancer oil. Some see it as an investment. Many a Neolibyan have woken up after his bridal night with an aching head and a dry mouth and looked at the naked body next to him in consternation. By then, the papers had been signed and brought to the Bank of Commerce’s vaults. The knot was tied. So outside of being the dream drug of all baraccudas out there, is there any other use for extract? Yes: the awesomely-named Anubites distil Marduk Oil from it. Paradoxically enough, rubbing the oil on your skin makes you more resistant to the pheromones. This is important both for young Neolibyans in Franka, and the resistance. Resistance People get annoyed with Pheromancers stealing their friends and loved ones, as well as the wasp storms, and bugs eating their fields. So, they fight. They slather themselves in Marduk Oil and go looking for servants of the Pheromancers. They glue live bugs to the end sticks and track the location of the Psychonauts via their movements. When they find one, well... Resistance posted:Side by side with the Spitalians, Frankans storm the mud cusps, throw phosphor grenades into ant tunnels and beat the bloated, pale bodies discharged from them to a bloody pulp. This is reaching somewhat 40K-levels of action. Then again, Pheromancers are like non-lethal Genestealers, so this might be apropos. Some time ago, they achieved a major victory. They threw an incendiary bomb into one of the main pherovents/termite towers and caused a chain reaction where an entire side of a spore field exploded. This unveiled a huge network of vents and ant trails (presumably in the field itself? The text doesn't make it clear whether it was something that was underground or not), which horrified the Frankans and scored the resistance a major recruitment victory. Next time: The city of a thousand torchbugs!
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May 2, 2018 09:22
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Halloween Jack posted:It's goddamn hilarious that someone finally made a RPG all about dealing seriously with time travel, and the method turns out to just be "keep a meticulous journal of everything your character does and get Punishment Points from the GM when you gently caress up." that poo poo is why the Continuum episode of Game Mastery is still my favorite. I'm still not convinced that anyone has ever actually played Continuum as written.
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May 2, 2018 09:37
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So did Iron Kingdoms Crossbow Woman finance her crossbow and awesome coat by squeezing out bug blackheads for the north African market?
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May 2, 2018 09:38
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JackMann posted:Those are pretty much the only ones that come with a benefit. Other mechanical hindrances like Lame, One Arm, or Small are pure negatives. There's also Obese (which is a pretty decent pick if you don't plan on taking Brawny), but yeah, now that I look at it, there are more purely disadvantageous ones than I remembered.
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May 2, 2018 11:38
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The best part of Continuum is when you slowly realize the author seems to really believe his pet theory.
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May 2, 2018 14:32
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MonsieurChoc posted:The best part of Continuum is when you slowly realize the author seems to really believe his pet theory. Please go on. (Also, what does that mean for companion game Narcisist?)
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May 2, 2018 15:04
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Joe Slowboat posted:Please go on. I believe the way they were reconciled is that the way time travel works in Continuum is true... if you're using their method of time travel., which Narcissists are not. A lot of the stuff about maintaining one timeline and if you don't you explode is an artificial limitation of the time travel implants they use, and is intended to make sure the time travel implants are developed without problems.
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May 2, 2018 15:10
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Joe Slowboat posted:Please go on. http://projects.inklesspen.com/fatal-and-friends/mors-rattus/continuum-roleplaying-in-the-yet/#22
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May 2, 2018 15:32
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 You must attack the word bastards who preach and teach evil godism and racism singularity lies, for any singularity brotherhood is mental slavery that desecrates family, village and tribal opposites. Americans are dumbass, educated stupid and evil singularity fools. I will wager $10,000.00 that within the Cubic embodiment of Nature, there are 4 simultaneous 24 hour days within a single rotationof Earth. Acknowledge the math below or go to hell.  4 Day Cube disproves 1 Day God.
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May 2, 2018 15:49
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Halloween Jack posted:
Honestly, those charts just seem like the equivalent of Vampire's "here's what myths are real" section rather than timecubey insanity. Within the game, the idea of a multiverse is wrong and there is instead a somehow consistent single timeline. The really dumb part comes when they want you to cut up and fold pages from the book to explain frag. Pages which, if I recall correctly, have rules on the back of them
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May 2, 2018 16:08
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Joe Slowboat posted:Please go on. Basically in universe, the multiverse theory is true, and that sort of time travel could work. But the people who rule at the end of our current timeline really do not want that information to get out, because they like being the rulers at the end of our timeline, so they created a heavily codified method of time travel that makes it very easy for them to keep people limited in their ability to flee through time, and keep them away from the eras of prehistory where they founded their empire.
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May 2, 2018 16:26
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Oh right, I remember now, Narcissists are the good guys. gently caress to history, gently caress to the time cops.
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May 2, 2018 16:40
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 Rifts Index & Adventures Volume Two, Part 8: "Mayfair's eyes are particularly captivating and he's considered an irresistible female magnet." feeemales Well, this is the end, not just to this review, but to this review format. I think if I do more audio content, it'll be in a different format, to say the least. It was an interesting experiment, but it's also a lot of work and it's time to put it to bed. Still, I'm really happy how this last part with the OBERMAX Imperative came out, probably because I break down very genuinely. It's the maddening process of trying to react to an adventure that does not trust the gamemaster or players with its beautiful narrative. Here's the full set of audio reviews done for Rifts, so I can be embarrassed by my amateurism for posterity: Rifts Index & Adventures Volume 1 Rifts Game Shield & Adventures The Rifter Preview Reading Rifts Index & Adventures Volume 2 And the complete set of links for this review! Click here for Part 1 of the review! Click here for Part 2 of the review! Click here for Part 3 of the review! Click here for Part 4 of the review! Click here for Part 5 of the review! Click here for Part 6 of the review! Click here for Part 7 of the review! Click here for Part 8 of the review! Review Notes:
 The eternal battle between missile and bear rages on. THE END (?)
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May 2, 2018 17:31
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I've been a lurker for several iterations of F&F, but haven't yet contributed anything, through a combination of crap writing skills and general laziness. However, there's a recently-kickstarted RPG that I backed that I figure needs all the exposure I can give it, so without further ado, I give you... Spire part 1  Spire is a fairly light RPG written by Grant Howitt and Chris Taylor, who together produce the Hearty Dice Friends podcast here in the UK. It's their first 'full' RPG, and they're mostly known for writing (very silly) one-page games (I think Honey Heist is the most well-known). Anyway, Spire is a noir/punk urban fantasy RPG, where the players are a cell of Drow revolutionaries seeking to overthrow the cruel (or just indifferent, or incapable of empathy) Aelfir overlords who conquered the titular Spire (a city of mysterious and/or dubious origin built into a spire two miles high) from the original dark-elven house that ruled it. It's far from black and white; most Aelfir aren't arbitarily cruel, and the populace make do pretty well, whereas the Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress who send the players their marching orders is as likely to disavow or burn the characters if it suits their goals. The Drow themselves are much as you'd expect; monochromatic skin, an adversion to the sun, a fungus-heavy diet and a thing for spiders. But the Drow of Spire are a gregarious, family-orientated people, and might well have been Aelfir in the first place, now labouring under a curse that drives them from the sun, whose light will blind drow eyes and blister their skin. They worship a triple goddess, the Danmou, and were the original (as far as anyone can tell) inhabitants of Spire. There are other Drow lands - the Homelands, but they're far away and wracked by civil war. Now the Drow of Spire must serve a Durance; four years of indentured labour, or be exiled from their home, and only the worship of Limye, Our Glorious Lady is permitted, with worship of the other two aspects of their traditional religion being forbidden. The Aelfir are cold, both metaphorically and literally, coming as they do from the ice-bound lands to the far north (and tend to go a bit... strange if they spend too much time in the heat). They are graceful, magical, and quite possibly don't even have the capacity for empathy with lesser beings. They worship a Solar Pantheon; Father Summer, Brother Autumn, Mother Winter and Sister Spring, and always go about masked (showing your bare face in Aelfir society is possibly the most despicable breach of etiquette imaginable). They see Spire as their rightful conquest, and a valuable staging point in their wars with the Gnoll empires to the south. Humans are the next most common inhabitants of the city, natural curiousity and cunning making them incorrigible tinkerers and engineers. Human scavengers rove through ancient arcologies of the long-dead Prokatakos civilisation for wierd and dangerous technologies and machinery. Their machines keep alot of Spire running, more or less. As for the city itself, no-one really knows who built it, or where it came from. It's an irreguarly-shaped, two-mile-high block of ancient stone that could be a fossilised primordial creature, a Prokatakos machine-city, a larval god, or maybe just a really big building. Next time: the rules and what you do with them
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May 2, 2018 22:08
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LazyAngel posted:Spire is a fairly light RPG written by Grant Howitt and Chris Taylor, who together produce the Hearty Dice Friends podcast here in the UK. It's their first 'full' RPG, and they're mostly known for writing (very silly) one-page games (I think Honey Heist is the most well-known). Pedantry correction! Their first 'full' RPG is probably Unbound, which was Kickstarted a few years before Spire and features art from the same artist.
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May 2, 2018 23:11
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Joe Slowboat posted:Oh right, I remember now, Narcissists are the good guys. gently caress to history, gently caress to the time cops. Although I think people overestimate the degree to which C*ntinuum actually likes the time cops. The closing fiction ends with Joan of Arc saying "well, I always knew that the meek would inherit the earth, but holy gently caress the meek are super annoying; Lord, what were you thinking?"
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May 2, 2018 23:47
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edit: nope
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May 3, 2018 01:47
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potatocubed posted:Pedantry correction! Their first 'full' RPG is probably Unbound, which was Kickstarted a few years before Spire and features art from the same artist. Good point (and I do have Unbound) - I'm just repeating their words for it. I think they consider Spire the first because it's tied to a specific setting, whereas Unbound was more of a toolbox.
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May 3, 2018 07:11
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I picked up a copy of Masks of Nyarlathotep at a secondhand store for review the other day. But I'm not all that familiar with Basic Roleplay/Call of Cthulhu editions to consider as a base. My copy is from 2010, apparently the "Fourth Edition" but the sixth printing. Would this use CoC 6E, or am I mistaken?
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May 3, 2018 07:24
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NGDBSS posted:I picked up a copy of Masks of Nyarlathotep at a secondhand store for review the other day. But I'm not all that familiar with Basic Roleplay/Call of Cthulhu editions to consider as a base. My copy is from 2010, apparently the "Fourth Edition" but the sixth printing. Would this use CoC 6E, or am I mistaken?
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May 3, 2018 07:28
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NGDBSS posted:I picked up a copy of Masks of Nyarlathotep at a secondhand store for review the other day. But I'm not all that familiar with Basic Roleplay/Call of Cthulhu editions to consider as a base. My copy is from 2010, apparently the "Fourth Edition" but the sixth printing. Would this use CoC 6E, or am I mistaken?
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May 3, 2018 08:02
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How much changed between editions? I remember hearing that 7E's changes weren't just trivial (which riled up a few grogs), but beyond that I've only seen the 6E book when I played it in 2011.
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May 3, 2018 08:07
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Cultures: Franka, pt. 3 Degenesis: Rebirth Primal Punk Chapter 2: Cultures Parasite It's Paris. “Parasite” is just a cutesy, bug-related name for Paris (just like "Souffrance" is French for "suffering") . Like much of central Franka, it was hosed over by flooding. People still tried clinging to the city, laying down stepping stones in the water and building bridges when those weren't enough. However, this is now bug country, with some buildings transformed into multi-species hives. Inexplicably, some faded posters and even cups remain on tables, presumably undisturbed in the 500 hundred years since the Eschaton. Or maybe the city was abandoned a little more recently? Anyways, the Eifel Tower is at the centre of it all, with Clanners and Spitalians both sending expeditions to root out the secrets of the city. Close to the Tower, firebugs act like sentries, marking intruders with oily discharge before flying away.  Under Water The Seine is big and strong, fed by the melting snow in the Alps (probably not the glaciers, though – those hardily could have survived the impact of the asteroids). Clanners use the Seine to sail into the heart of Paris/Parasite. They drop the anchor, swim ashore, run through the marker bugs and throw pesticide bombs, killing wasps in their millions. The surviving bugs pursue them to the shore where the the Clanners shake off the pheromone trail via the ingenious tactic of “just dive into the water, lol.” I don't know what these attacks are meant to accomplish, aside from making the pesticide-industrial complex richer. Spiders This is a side section about Spitalian-bread Echein (Greek for "posessor") spiders that are immune to spores. Spitaliars use those to keep their Spitals free of bugs. They also export these bugs to the resistance, which uses them to kill bugs near Parasite. However, once marker bugs get stuck in the net, the spider gets turbo-hosed by wasps. You'd think the whole "we bred an animal immune to Sepsis" thing would be a much bigger deal, but eh. Ziggurats The first Ziggurat was found by Spitalians and Anabaptists near Bassham. A six-step pyramid more than fifty feet high (feet? In my Euro game!?), it was covered in Sepsis and bugs. This was the control center of Bassham. A goony Pheromancer Markurant only left his throne when the winds scattered his Anabaptists threw him into a fire, making some 16th century ancestors really proud. Soon, they started discovering more of the Ziggurats, build in swamps, on the sides of mountains and other places where no sane man would build a thing. However, there's a method to this madness: mapped out, the Ziggurats mark the corners of a giant Chakra symbol. Bugs stream between them along the imaginary lines of the symbol, eating plant life and transporting it to Eifel Tower. Ziggurat posted:Could it be they see the tower as ... a Ziggurat too? Naw, I'm sure it's nothing   This ziggy seems a little more high fantasy than the description would imply. Routing Hubs Once people finish building a Ziggurat for their goony, musky overlord, their start building a city around it. Much like an Age of Empires base, buildings and farms rise around Ziggurats. The people tend to their fatso lord, giving him food and making him clothing. In return, this poo poo happens: Routing Hubs posted:They offer him fruit and vegetables, weave wreaths of swamp reed for him, and implore him to call them to him to the Ziggurat’s top. They want to feel his body, softly crack his glands with their teeth, and feel the fragrant discharge on their tongue. That sound you hear is every pimple-popper fetishist you know tripping on their boner while rushing to ask you to run a Degenesis campaign in Franka. Anyways, the goonmancer directs the vermin away from the fields, and those farms flourish, as apparently bugs are the only thing that can impact harvest. But if someone or something displeases the Pheromancer, he unleashes a wave bugs that simply overwhelms any resisting settlement and eats anything organic. According to Spitalian intel, Ziggurats are hubs and Pheromancers the switchmen in a huge network of bug traffic, splitting and merging swarms whenever needed. Routing hubs posted:The flood has already destroyed independent Frankan settlements, Spitalian camps, and Anabaptist deployment points. Each culture has a different name for a base, because it more game-like that way. Swarm Attack The free Frankans have developed ways to fight the bug hordes! Kids know to count termites to see if their activity is unusual. The farmer can tell termites from ants and know dozens of other species. Couriers take sighting information to special outposts. The resistance goes to work once they triangulate that swarms are approaching a certain region. A very confused paragraph tells us that farmers are supplied with pheromone infused rags. These buoys (beacons would be a more natural word here) are usually kept isolated and under water. But when the bugs come, they're taken out, unwrapped and placed in strategic spots to divide the swarm. Spitalians jump into action with insecticide while Anbaptists cleanse and purge with fire. People even set forests abalaze and flood valleys, because they're hardcore like that.  The bugs are still stupid critters controlled by pheromones and not a psionic swarm, so they get confused by these tricks and defeated in detail. In the end, what stragglers remain are beaten to death with wet rags. Next time: one weird trick to make your swarm immune to pheromone buoys - the Spitaliers hate it!
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May 3, 2018 08:12
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NGDBSS posted:How much changed between editions? I remember hearing that 7E's changes weren't just trivial (which riled up a few grogs), but beyond that I've only seen the 6E book when I played it in 2011.
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May 3, 2018 08:16
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NGDBSS posted:How much changed between editions? I remember hearing that 7E's changes weren't just trivial (which riled up a few grogs), but beyond that I've only seen the 6E book when I played it in 2011. 7E made a bunch of changes (the most visible of which was the stats going from a D&D style 3-18 to a Rolemaster-esque 1-100) and require some back-converting to make pre-7E adventures run-able.
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May 3, 2018 08:21
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It's the biggest change they've made to the system and it's convertible by basic division. Basic RPG has probably changed the least of any supported RPG system.
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May 3, 2018 08:21
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Degenesis strikes me as both over-explained and very hard to comprehend at the same time. It's like the whole is lost in the many details, and at the end you can't see the wood for all the trees.
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May 3, 2018 08:58
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Battle Mad Ronin posted:Degenesis strikes me as both over-explained and very hard to comprehend at the same time. It's like the whole is lost in the many details, and at the end you can't see the wood for all the trees. Yeah, it feels like it's approaching explaining the gameworld from the wrong end. Starting with all the fiddly little details and eventually working up to telling us exactly what the overarching thing is and what all the broad battle lines and organizations are.
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May 3, 2018 09:03
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