|
What the hell is this Middenarde drama?
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2018 15:51
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 26, 2024 20:11 |
|
|
The author asked PurpleXVI to review (critique?) it for him, which he did in this thread, and we discovered it to be an RPG which spectacularly undermined its own grimdark premise in a hundred different, hilarious ways. The author was Unhappy. I still reckon that if he'd leaned into what he'd created we'd have a brilliant comedy game of peasant Exalted, but it looks like he's closed down as much of that as he can. E: The review starts here, and it's an amazing read. Make sure to check the whole thread so you get everyone's contributions. potatocubed fucked around with this message at 16:11 on Jun 4, 2018 |
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2018 16:04
|
|
|
potatocubed posted:The author asked PurpleXVI to review (critique?) it for him, which he did in this thread, and we discovered it to be an RPG which spectacularly undermined its own grimdark premise in a hundred different, hilarious ways. The author was Unhappy. Literally threatened to sue the Inklesspen archive, which is why it isn't on there. Phrased it as "libelling his trademark," i.e. "what if someone reads that this thing I've put on Kickstarter is actually a hot pile of garbage and then won't buy it." Was also extremely unwilling to take any sort of critique. But yes, read the review. It's kind of staggering. I tried to quote some of the best commentary at the start of my posts, just to make sure they got archived as well because some of it's funnier than what I wrote in the posts.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2018 16:14
|
|
|
PurpleXVI posted:Literally threatened to sue the Inklesspen archive, which is why it isn't on there. Phrased it as "libelling his trademark," i.e. "what if someone reads that this thing I've put on Kickstarter is actually a hot pile of garbage and then won't buy it." Was also extremely unwilling to take any sort of critique. But yes, read the review. It's kind of staggering. I tried to quote some of the best commentary at the start of my posts, just to make sure they got archived as well because some of it's funnier than what I wrote in the posts. Just to check is this the same game where you could raise the dead by just rolling them down a hill?
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2018 16:22
|
|
|
JcDent posted:Idk, how do you call it when you donxt consider yourself racist, but still engage in some of the racist mores without malicious intent? Pre-woke? racism comes in many forms and just because this isn't literally stormfront doesn't mean it isn't hella racist it is hella racist stop trying to defend it
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2018 16:27
|
|
|
Hunt11 posted:Just to check is this the same game where you could raise the dead by just rolling them down a hill? Because the writer doesn't know what joules(or maybe it was watts) are, yes. Honestly to me that pales compared to the poorly-phrased "stealth" knacks that made you could hide an entire river. Or a castle. Or a country. Depending on your reading of the knack.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2018 16:29
|
|
|
O wow. Thanks for the context ; definitely going to read the whole thing from the beginning.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2018 16:46
|
|
|
I vaguely remember something about using animal handling to train a birdswarm? I think I know why he wants you to review it. Kurieg fucked around with this message at 17:05 on Jun 4, 2018 |
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2018 16:58
|
|
|
Kurieg posted:I vaguely remember something about using animal handling to train a birdswarm? There was no restriction on this. Any skill. I think you couldn't teach them the Knack you needed to train them in the first place this way, though.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2018 17:19
|
|
|
Zereth posted:You could train animals in a skill. However, worth noting is that it's one of those games where social skill at a certain stage translates to mind control, and also that carrying capacity was a skill. The game was also ENTIRELY skill-based, so there's literally no difference between a trained fighter with Swordskill IV and a pigeon with Swordskill IV.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2018 17:28
|
|
|
Mors Rattus posted:racism comes in many forms and just because this isn't literally stormfront doesn't mean it isn't hella racist I don’t think Jc’s trying to defend it so much as lacking the vocab to differentiate specifically between a game actively pursuing a racist agenda (like Myfarog) and a game created with a background of institutional and cultural racism (like Degenesis). Harmful cultural stereotypes come from ignorance and unrecognized bigotry, but without generalizing too much, I think Americans are a lot more used to spotting that and having the language to differentiate between subtle and blatant racism, than Europeans who don’t live in multiethnic enclaves.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2018 17:39
|
|
|
Pieces of Peace posted:...Europeans who don’t live in multiethnic enclaves. I think your idea of how white Europe is, is badly distorted. During any given day at work, I've got Asian, Middle Eastern and African customers. In fact it's a surprise if I don't have any. More white people, certainly, but it's not like we're sheltered from other ethnicities. Unless you're getting at something else with us not living in "multi-ethnic enclaves." Not to mention that racism and etc. are very much at the forefront of the current European "dialogue," if you will.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2018 17:46
|
|
|
PurpleXVI posted:I think your idea of how white Europe is, is badly distorted. During any given day at work, I've got Asian, Middle Eastern and African customers. In fact it's a surprise if I don't have any. More white people, certainly, but it's not like we're sheltered from other ethnicities. Unless you're getting at something else with us not living in "multi-ethnic enclaves." Not to mention that racism and etc. are very much at the forefront of the current European "dialogue," if you will. Also, look at historical paintings. Europe has always been home to lots of varying ethnicities, mostly coming across the Mediterranean or up through the Balkans.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2018 17:51
|
|
|
PurpleXVI posted:I think your idea of how white Europe is, is badly distorted. During any given day at work, I've got Asian, Middle Eastern and African customers. In fact it's a surprise if I don't have any. More white people, certainly, but it's not like we're sheltered from other ethnicities. Unless you're getting at something else with us not living in "multi-ethnic enclaves." Not to mention that racism and etc. are very much at the forefront of the current European "dialogue," if you will. Not to mention what's considered "White" and "Acceptable" people has very wildly changed over the years, read anything a bigot from England wrote about the Irish up to the late 19th century, it's pretty comparable to how a white bigot in the American South wrote about blacks - the Potato Famine was pretty much a passive genocide on England's part - where they could've done much to alleviate the mass starvation going on, but refused to lift a finger. Even in America, Irish weren't considered "White" until after WW2, and Italians and Greeks were looked down upon well into the 60s for being "Swarthy" but were considered a step up from Hispanics.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2018 18:09
|
|
|
Also, the definition of a given ethnicity can change tremendously over even a relatively short time period--or how the Irish, Polish, and Italians became white Americans. If one looks at the language used about Irish immigrants especially in the 19th century, it sounds very similar to how people with names like "O'Reilly" talk about Latin American immigrants now, just with more audible monocle popping. The shifting of ethnicity represents a frequent problem for sci-fi settings since it is very difficult to escape your readers' time and place entirely. All too often you end up with things like Degenesis or 40K with its lily white universe and space-misogyny and the writers claim "No it's diverse you see because we flipped the script and now the white people are the oppressed ones" or "humans don't care about race anymore, it's about fighting the xenos and your social class" or something.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2018 18:17
|
|
|
Robindaybird posted:Not to mention what's considered "White" and "Acceptable" people has very wildly changed over the years, read anything a bigot from England wrote about the Irish up to the late 19th century, it's pretty comparable to how a white bigot in the American South wrote about blacks - the Potato Famine was pretty much a passive genocide on England's part - where they could've done much to alleviate the mass starvation going on, but refused to lift a finger.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2018 18:25
|
|
|
Robindaybird posted:Yeah, I keep going around in circles trying to reinvent the drow to wipe out that implication (made worse that some official art don't depict them with pitch-black or blue-back skin, but dark brown-ish real skin tones), and felt like honestly the best solution is just toss them out completely and start over. I was going back to reread that Middenarde review and came across this. I think we finally found a way to do it, thanks to Spire. I love the new Drow.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2018 20:12
|
|
|
Was Middenarde the game where a bird can own you so hard you can go unconcious?
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2018 20:16
|
|
|
I think people are getting thrown because the Africans are not presented as a PURE EVIL WAVE OF CONQUEST, but the circumstances and descriptions of the whole situation are still racist. What's the African equivalent of "Orientalism"?
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2018 20:29
|
|
|
Kavak posted:I think people are getting thrown because the Africans are not presented as a PURE EVIL WAVE OF CONQUEST, but the circumstances and descriptions of the whole situation are still racist. What's the African equivalent of "Orientalism"? That and, y'know, the pattern of absolute cultural, religious and racial tone deafness that has been portrayed through the entire book (Anabaptists, the thing with the 'Jehammadans', etc) that combine into this giant loving ball of racism
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2018 20:30
|
|
|
Mors Rattus posted:That and, y'know, the pattern of absolute cultural, religious and racial tone deafness that has been portrayed through the entire book (Anabaptists, the thing with the 'Jehammadans', etc) that combine into this giant loving ball of racism I'm gonna be honest, I haven't read any of Degenesis since like the first post, so I wouldn't know.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2018 20:32
|
|
|
Kavak posted:I'm gonna be honest, I haven't read any of Degenesis since like the first post, so I wouldn't know. yeah the thing is this poo poo isn't new, it's basically walls of boring or incomprehensible text with bastions of extremely weird racism or anti-religious poo poo throughout
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2018 20:34
|
|
|
The Anabaptist thing really seems like they knew about the historical radicals and just flat out didn’t know or bother to find out that there are more moderate sects are still around.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2018 20:34
|
|
|
Kemper Boyd posted:Was Middenarde the game where a bird can own you so hard you can go unconcious? Sadly no, only humans can do that. But the bird CAN convince you to sell everything you own, or lift you into the stratosphere and drop you from there, or forge swords.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2018 20:49
|
|
|
Degenesis? The game that took 4chan by storm? Racist?  Edit: The authors just tore up bread and thew it into the pond. How were they to know it'd be eaten up by things that walk and quack like ducks? Speleothing fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Jun 4, 2018 |
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2018 21:14
|
|
|
Speleothing posted:Degenesis? The game that took 4chan by storm? Racist?  So it's not a given that something that's popular over there is actually terrible. It deserves a closer look, but it's not a 100% thing. Sadly Degenesis seems to be, at best, a case where the developers became enamored of their aesthetic and executed it in a shallow way and without self reflection. And it might be something worse.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2018 21:26
|
|
|
occamsnailfile posted:Also, the definition of a given ethnicity can change tremendously over even a relatively short time period--or how the Irish, Polish, and Italians became white Americans. If one looks at the language used about Irish immigrants especially in the 19th century, it sounds very similar to how people with names like "O'Reilly" talk about Latin American immigrants now, just with more audible monocle popping. Now I want to read a short story set in the 23rd century about a racist talk show host named Albert Gutierrez complaining about how all these Lithuanian immigrants are ruining America. As for Degenesis, I have to admit that I'm a sucker for stories where real-life groups like Africans or American Indians become imperialistic assholes to Europe. The thing is, that only really works in alternate history worlds. Doing that in works set in the future simply raises too many questions and makes the whole thing resemble racist conspiracy theories about immigration.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2018 22:00
|
|
|
MightyMatilda posted:As for Degenesis, I have to admit that I'm a sucker for stories where real-life groups like Africans or American Indians become imperialistic assholes to Europe. The thing is, that only really works in alternate history worlds. Doing that in works set in the future simply raises too many questions and makes the whole thing resemble racist conspiracy theories about immigration. Yeah, it's just a reflection of poo poo like the Orientalistic Japan Taking Over the World fears, and the genre of black man making it with white women - all boogeymen of scared racists.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2018 22:27
|
|
|
Pieces of Peace posted:I don’t think Jc’s trying to defend it so much as lacking the vocab to differentiate specifically between a game actively pursuing a racist agenda (like Myfarog) and a game created with a background of institutional and cultural racism (like Degenesis). Thank you, that's exactly what I meant. MightyMatilda posted:Now I want to read a short story set in the 23rd century about a racist talk show host named Albert Gutierrez complaining about how all these Lithuanian immigrants are ruining America. That would be fantasy story, because there will be, like, two Lithuanians left by that point. We don't breed much, but we sure love killing ourselves. Anyways, back to editing Post Two of "Kangelu in Belgium..."
|
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2018 08:47
|
|
|
Cultures: Africa, pt. 2 Degenesis Rebirth Primal Punk Chapter 2: Cultures You guys asked if there's Orientalism But For Africa? Well, Wikipedia has just the thing for that, though I don't know if you can say it outloud. Wikipedia also implies that there are Albanophiles and Estophiles, which I refuse to believe is true. Anyways, back to Africa. Ancestors Sub-section time! Basically, the Africans believe the spirits to be everywhere, and they can take residence wherever they want. If there are no Anubians around, the Scourgers are the next best thing they have to a priest. They tell you stuff like how to apologize to the spirits for felling a tree and so on. Paw Swipe Not long after the rebuilding, the Spanish Conquistadors (what, not mercenaries?) came, burning poo poo from Gibraltar to Tripol. Pour one out for reverse racism: Paw Swipe posted:The Africans understood: The white man would never let them live in peace. In his heart, war and greed burned and would always be hotter than reason and love. Only chained, the white man would pose no more danger. The Scourgers pushed the (Hybri)Spaniards back to Hybrispania... and we all know what happened next. Three With the invaders pushed back and white slave labor in relative abundance, the cities were rebuilt. It also solved the question of African unity once and for all: Three posted:The Mande, Yoruba, Fulbe, Bantu and all the countless other African people and tribes unified –quicker and stronger than any emissary could have madethem. They discovered common traits in their languages, laughed about the same jokes now, and proudly spoke about their tribes’ history and rules. The Fulbe explained their codex, the Pulaaku, which is based on the three pillars of self-restraint, honesty and wisdom. Other tribes recognized a very similar law of three in their stories and legends. Had they all been blind and deaf to their siblings over the centuries? Folks, you know me. I'm neither extremely woke, nor radical. However, even I can see that this is some magical writing there. It's probably the worst handwave in the African section, and it's already built on handwaves! Anyways, the Lion was adopted as the symbol of Africa. It has three virtues that correspond to the pillars of the Pulaaku, and which can be found in three distinct groupings of people: the Neolibyans are the heart that gives him strength, the Scourgers are the claws, and Anubites are the soul. This principle spread from Gibraltar to Cairo in days, and even tribes in Central Africa that had never heard of the cults adopted it. Some say it's the dead ancestors awakening to lead the people in unity.  Three posted:Maybe they're wrong. Psychovores The book says it's Psychovores. In Dhoruba, the Primer-plant jungles grow: they produce hexagonal and octagonal leaves, the fruits are strange to chew (and poisonous), and the barest scratch from a thorn will start a necrotic infection that will eath through the flesh and make the bone crumble. So it's somewhat nastier than your typical tropical jungle. Or a jungle where most fruits bear white phosphorous. The proximity of Psychovores dilutes language barriers, throwing them back to some “primordial language that still somehow retains coherency.” There are also whispers in the air that compel people to do stuff, which, I guess, is some sort of Psychovore psychic phenomenon. Psychovores posted:All language barriers are breaking down. Africa unites, but the multitude of cultures and tribes is diluted by the plants’ influence. drat YOU, PLANT-ERNET!  However, the Psychovores are spreading fast, reaching even into the Mediterranean. Entire villages are displaced. People says that there's no place for man in the new jungle. The Anubites disagree and keep mounting expeditions to gather herbalist stuff. Resistance Some more strange stuff related to Psychovores: sometimes, people just up and leave to go into the jungle. They are rarely ever seen again. Sometimes folks are found in the center of a circular patch of dead vegetation. Those circles eventually collapse and the plantlife regains lost ground, while foundlings – who are not only Africans, but also some white skinned, almond-eyed folks – always run away into the jungle. The Africans try to keep the jungle back by burning the plants and salting the earth, but the Psychovores fight back, evolving sturdier strains and even every-sidescoller-platforming-game-ever shooting plants. The Africans understand: time to get some Spitaliers up in this bitch. For some reason, they are referred to as “the old enemy” at least once – yet I don't think we've read anything about actual clashes between Spitaliers and Africans. If anything Spitaliers don't seem to give a poo poo about Cult/Culture warfare, being laser focused on tacling Primer instead. Resistance posted:Charged by Tripol’s Bank of Commerce and guarded by African mercenaries, doctors explore the Psychovore fields, working from the city of Qabis. In their neoprene suits they approach them, force the plants to adapt with toxins, make notes and research. An arms race has begun. Emphasis mine; their editor must not have known much about this “style” thing. Next time: take me down to Tripol city, where the Dinar is gold and the girls are pretty JcDent fucked around with this message at 05:11 on Jun 6, 2018 |
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2018 09:07
|
|
|
Speaking of Africa, it would be cool if a knowledgeable person did reviews of the Middle East, South America, Caribbean, and Africa books for 7th Sea 2e.
|
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2018 16:15
|
|
|
Middenarde And so we resume the Middenarde... re-review? Middenarde posted:In Middenarde, no characters are intended to be “heroes” at their inception. In fact, most characters will not even be the master of their own destiny, and will have to struggle for their very survival. It’s likely that no one outside of their family and close friends even knows who they are or will remember them when they are gone. Like, LITERALLY, I cannot think of any other game that's gone through so much effort to establish that you shouldn't even be bothering to play the game. "You won't really get to make any decisions, nothing you do will matter, and no one will remember you when you inevitably fail. Have fun, kids!" He does follow up with "but wait! maybe your character will grow and eventually become something cooler! the odds of that are low, though." The character creation chapter is also, somehow, worse, since it makes an example character... but good luck browsing through all those paragraphs for the small amounts of info that are relevant to actually making your own. It doesn't even have the sort of summary at the end that White Wolf games had, which neatly lists how many points you have to spend in each category of your sheet.  This guy looks like he has no idea where he is, and also like he's about to take an arrow to the eye. The rules for playing the game, rather than starting off with how we fight people, or generally accomplish tasks, or maybe a skill list, decide to dive headfirst into the crafting rules instead. It was a mess before, and it's still a goddamn mess, except a slightly remixed mess. One major change, however, is "Luck" points. Basically, every character has an equivalent of Fate points, etc. that they can spend to improve the odds in their favour, EXCEPT, their Luck points' potential effects are modified by their "ancestry." We can be Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, Norse or Roman in ancestry. Each ancestry can spend their Luck points to add a point to a skill roll(but which skills are included vary per ancestry, Romans, for instance, can only improve their crafting.), and they have two additional things they can spend their Luck points on. Anglo-Saxons suck, to put it shortly, they can spend their Luck to gain an extra "half-turn" in combat, but the only thing you can do with a "half-turn" maneuver is shoving people, no actual attacks or other useful things, and they can recover health as though they rested for a full day, instantly(PS: It took me a ridiculous amount of loving time to find out where it said how much this actually was, since there's no appendix. It turns out to be a percentage of your total health. Where's your total health listed? Only, as far as I can tell, on the linked Google Docs spreadsheet with its 11 loving hit locations.) which is negligible. Celts, on the other hand, are pretty useful, since they get to multiply any damage done by 2 or 3(depending on the weapon). Nords are also garbage, since they can reflect half of any damage they take... which requires them to get hit, at which point they've probably lost a loving arm or something and are dead anyway. Absolute garbage. Meanwhile, Romans get to just completely no-sell any attack, negating all damage from it. The whole "add a point to a skill roll"-thing is also pretty minor since they're 3d6 rolls vs variable TN's and no ancestry gets to boost combat skills. And you start with all of one Luck point(also only noted on the loving spreadsheet, jfc you moron). Middenarde posted:Spent luck can only be replenished at the GM’s discretion and through character advancement, so do it wisely. So considering that you probably won't ever replenish your Luck except for gaining more as you level up, it really only makes sense to spend it on "certain" things like Celtic super-damage and Roman invincibility.  Why would he ruin the book with this poo poo when there's all the great watercolour art already? Middenarde posted:Regardless of whether they had enough to eat or drink, characters must also roll to avoid contracting malnutrition, a disease which is described in section 4.12. Add the malnutrition rating (MR) of every meal they ate together, rounded up, then subtract the penalties from whatever they drank, to get the malnutrition DC. I also just wanted to quote this because it feels downright offensive. It's like I'm looking into an alternate reality negaverse of inverse fun. Also, while trying to figure out how much falling damage could be negated by wearing full plate(since nothing says your armor doesn't apply to falling damage), I had to spend five minutes re-reading the armour table until I realized that the explanation of everything on the table was two pages away. Rather than, as previously, more or less on the same page. So congrats, Mr. Quill, you managed to make an equipment table hard to read. But in the end I did figure out that you need to be at least fifteen meters above the ground for a fall to be lethal(at twelve, it can only knock you unconscious, and below that it can't kill you). Add another six meters if you're wearing masterwork boots and land on your feet. Combat between two incompetent attackers but accomplished defenders can still lead to an infinite counter-attack loop that must look like some sort of incredibly sped-up dance-off. Actually attacking someone is still someone dense: For a normal, un-aimed attack, expect to roll to-hit, to-dodge(or block), to-damage(then spend time noting everyone's equipment damage resulting from it), roll to bleed/sever. So four rolls and up to five values(weapon, armor, health, bleed counters, adjustments for severed or destroyed body parts). Combat also still decides to use a completely different mechanic from the rest of the game, by having separate attack/block/dodge dice pools, rather than using the 3d6+modifier that everything else in the game uses. This is presumably for a reason and not just because the author is a moron. Overall, combat is mostly still the same, though, except for magic. But we'll get to magic. Skills are still dumb, for instance, you sense a dragon with your CAPACITY TO NOTICE THE SUPERNATURAL rather than, you know, hearing or seeing the giant loving lizard coming your way. The game explicitly says we shouldn't be rolling for easy, commonplace stuff, but half the descriptors for "easy" skill use is still stuff I would never demand a player roll for unless I wanted to harry them into quitting the game(literally, "running up a staircase" is an example). Cunning also still has the very D&D-esque reference to "pits of bubbling green acid" for its easy example. Also, by default, poor people have less integrity than the rich, simply because bribing people is measured in days of pay, and it's just a hard set rule that it happens. So as long as you can afford more than one day's wage for someone, you can bribe them. And for some reason we now have four perception skills. One for social perception(Psychology), one for magical perception(Attunement) and two overlapping general perception skills(Cunning and Vigilance). They also make up four of the six skills in the Mental skill category, making it more or less irrelevant. The fifth Mental skill is "Willpower," which requires a DC12 roll to "make a difficult decision." Does that mean I need to roll, as a player, if my character is going to make a difficult or painful situation, and the GM tells me that I don't get to make the decision if I fail it? The mind boggles. But lastly, we've got the part that he actually, really, majorly changed somewhat on my advice. Magic! The old D&D magic is mostly scrapped in favour of Witch Magic, Christian Magic, Heretic Magic and Satan Magic. Anyone can be a Witch simply by levelling up Attunement, presumably the limited number of witches is because the Witch/Hedge magic kind of sucks. It's a bunch of incredibly minor cantrips, stuff like "ignore malnutrition checks twice a week" or "gain a +1 to animal handling twice a day." If you expend three level-ups on Attunement, for instance, you get to do as much damage to a wooden door twice a day as you could just by hitting it with an axe. Or at six level-ups worth, you can make someone sterile! Really comforting to know, as some bandit buries a knife in your gut, that he's never going to have kids. Alternately, you can use Christian Magic, which allows you to collect Church Mana(tm), also known as Piety, by being a good guy. Access to Christian miracles is earned entirely by spending your Piety(of which you can gain two points a day), rather than level-ups, though each Christian spell still has a casting DC so some of them may be hard to pull off as a starting character. The only real limit here is that earning Piety is entirely turned over to GM fiat(good stuff is defined as "that which pleases God," no judgment on whether we're following the Old Testament, New Testament, the Pope's judgments or what. This really needs some more detailing, otherwise we're into Fantasy Wargaming territory), more or less, so it's not really a system we can game too easily. But technically, a good week of being incredibly faithful(earning our maximum of two points of Piety a day) and never sinning could give us the necessary worshipper rank to resurrect the dead or cause people to be dragged to hell by demons, the latter of which is based entirely on whether the victim can dodge the demons reaching out of Hell for them, not on whether they're a sinner or not. Heretic Magic is thinly refluffed Vancian casting, where the pagan deities don't give a poo poo who you are or what you do. As long as you know the necessary ritual of worship and worship appropriately when you wake up(and of course you have a limited number of gods you can pray to each morning...), you'll get access to their miracle until it's been used up to its limited number of applications! The Pagan gods kind of suck, though, for instance, Jupiter can allow us to throw a LIGHTNING BOLT... which does less damage than getting shoved out of a first-floor window. Seriously, it's all a bunch of useless garbage abilities that allow you to get a situational +1 to stuff or to shove someone without standing right next to them. And let's not forget Heimdall's AMAZING MIRACLE that lets you feel rested after only four hours of sleep. It's no wonder the Pagan deities are desperate for worshippers and being forgotten, God totally gives better return on worship in this setting. Lastly, we've got Satan Magic, which I had a long conversation with the author about prior to the publishing of the final version. It seems that he's completely ignored this and forged ahead anyway. Basically, all these demons are retarded and uninteresting. You summon them, you make a pact, and then they show up later to collect something that inconveniences or hurts you. At no point do they give a poo poo about, or try to endanger, your immortal soul. It's got all of the emotional and story-wise impact of calling a pizza and then paying with your credit card. You always know more or less exactly what you get, and what you give(aside from some minor stuff like when the demon is going to come to collect, in some cases). The main danger to summoning demons is that it's apparently the metaphysical equivalent of no longer having a hidden phone number, as you're going to get cold-called by every demon this side of the astral plane offering their services as soon as you've summoned your first one. Ultimately, though, no demon you summon is likely to ever be stronger than you, because their total number of skill ranks is always hard-capped based on the amount of ranks you had in Attunement when you summoned them, and nothing prevents your buddies from stabbing them in the brain when they come to collect on their bargain. The demons are entirely mortal, even if occasionally hard to damage. Demon summoning is, at least, useful, since you can summon a Drude to possess the King of England and have him give you a noble title and lands, for instance, then have the party's Church Wizard exorcise the demon afterwards, saving you from having to pay the bill. Literally only one type of demon, the Lilin, appear to have any actual interest in the summoner's soul and the eternal damnation of same. But ultimately their part of the contract tends to be a sort of Evil Genie thing where they request something that could be interpreted as something harmful if you're an rear end in a top hat, and, again, it's suggested that they just show up and try to kill you for no apparent reason. So, long story short, the final version of Middenarde more or less missed the point entirely and is still a shitshow. Don't buy this.
|
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2018 17:42
|
|
|
They dumped the birdlords and future idea stealing, didn't they.
|
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2018 17:46
|
|
|
Night10194 posted:They dumped the birdlords and future idea stealing, didn't they.
|
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2018 18:04
|
|
|
Middenarde reminds me of Almogavers, another game where you play medieval mercenaries who, almost by design, are not going to be epic fantasy heroes. But Almogavers is well-researched, with a specific historical context. Middenarde is the epitome of that antique phrase, "neither fish nor flesh nor good red herring." It's a quasi-medieval game which is not really medieval in any way, and has no conceivable audience. It's rules heavy, with the aim of enforcing grim mundanity, but the rules produce bizarre and fantastical results in play. Most of the discussion of Middenarde ITT is devoted to this. It's supposed to be low magic, but the magic is Vancian casting with what are obviously D&D spells. It has a bunch of info on what life in a medieval city was like...in no particular nation or era of history. In conclusion, Middenarde is a land of contrasts. Here's the takeaway: whenever someone says they want to do "grim," "gritty," "low" fantasy, it's a huge red flag that they're operating from a cluster of notions and have no clear vision of what they want to do.
|
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2018 18:33
|
|
|
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: Realms of Sorcery I want to see some crazy wizbiz! Have you ever wanted to go to a magical school with a statistically significant (though not overly high) mortality rate, a high chance that at least one of your professors is evil, and felt that Hogwarts lacked the critical element of crippling student loan debt? Welcome to the Colleges of Magic! Realms of Sorcery is the magic sourcebook for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd Edition, and was one of the earlier sourcebooks for the game line. It contains a ton of history of magic in the Empire (and the wider world), plenty of speculation about the nature of magic and how it may relate to the metaphysics of the setting, a few passing theories about the Old Ones, and a story of a supreme state of elf-mind that almost destroyed reality out of shortsighted greed for power. It also contains rules for creating massive magical rituals, flavorful rules for the Winds of Magic slowly reshaping their users, extensive potion rules, and rules for the dwarf equivalent of wizardry: Runesmithing. Also has one of the few pretty decent pre-made adventures involving wine, warpstone, spontaneous combustion, and a vampire-on-ulrican-on-Italian brawl. We're in for a good time once we're past the mediocre intro fiction. Said intro fiction is the story of a young apprentice whose masters get all involved in trying to summon and study a demon, it kills everyone before running out of juice because aethyric beings like demons can't remain in reality long without fuel (which they often get by killing), and he steals the golden instruments and heads for the hills to try to get rich in the chaos. Don't summon demons. We were over that back in Tome of Corruption; never works out. Magic is an arcane and unnatural force that spills into this realm through the broken gate the Old Ones once used to travel the universe. Magic is primarily defined as a power of transmutability and change in the Warhammer context; unbound by spells (which order the change it is meant to invoke) it will tend to randomly change its surroundings (inducing mutation, among other things) before expending this unnatural energy and dissipating. Why magic works how it works, how it gets shaped into (and by) Gods and Demons and Chaos Gods is the subject of much debate in setting, with elves, humans, and others having many different opinions on the matter. Nearly everyone in the setting will acknowledge that they don't know the whole truth of the Aethyr, or Warp, or Void, or whatever they decide to call it this time, and it is instinctively known to all things that there are realms of magic and sorcery that exist concurrent to and beyond the physical world. Priests would usually tell you that there are multiple realms beyond the realm of the physical, like Morr's underworld or a Realm of Sigmar produced by the God's abiding grace and power. They would tell you that the Gods create these islands of order within the spiritual realm as places to work against the foul machinations of Chaos, and that places like the Realm of Morr will protect a dead mortal's soul from the depredations of the Chaos Gods. A wizard would be more likely to say these all exist within the same realm of the metaphysical, and that the Gods may well simply be a reflection of the better nature of mortal beings in the same way the Chaos Gods are a reflection of their hatred, lust, despair, and dickery. Most wizards are smart enough to refrain from going full New Atheist and claiming the Gods are merely a more seemly and very powerful form of demon, because the Gods can smite you. Most of these beliefs are true in part, though the exact admixture of truth and who you end up giving more weight to is up to an individual GM and their table. To talk about magic, we have to talk about what little is known of the Old Ones, those who came before. These are the creatures who, if the tales are true, moved the world from an orbit that had it as a frozen ice ball and turned it into a habitable planet for the common Old Worlder. The only remaining records of these beings comes from ancient, half-remembered mystery cults among the elves and glimpses of the great tablets of the Slaan in Lustria. It is unknown if the Old Ones themselves taught the first elves how to shape the tiny leakages of magic from their spectacular Gate of Heaven, or if the Slaan or another servitor race did the work instead. It is also unknown why they did so. It is said that the Old Ones were able to shape, create, and bind entities that the Old World would call Gods, and we get the implication from the story of a Chaos sorcerer who bargained for a glimpse of them that they may well have created life mostly as slaves and experiments rather than out of any sort of sense of benevolence, life which then invited Chaos into the world to liberate it and inadvertantly nearly destroyed itself and destroyed its creators (of course, consider the source). It's left open what the Old Ones wanted, why they did any of what they did, and what, exactly, happened to them. What matters is that the Gate of Heaven exploded and left a huge, gaping hole in reality that spilled raw change all over everything. The Great Collapse would have been bad enough if it had simply seen tides of devils and horrors marching south; it also featured all grounding and stability slowly beginning to drain from the world. Food could suddenly decide it didn't nourish. Air could change into something unbreathable. Mountains shifted like clay and the world's orbit wobbled dangerously as fundamental forces of reality buckled. Some degree of Chaos and Change is necessary for the world to function, according to some magisters, but when you have a tide of it things get ugly. This is also where we first get warpstone. As the intense power of change encountered the grounding of reality, it would sometimes cool and congeal under the pressure of existence and become a hardened, crystalline substance beloved of ratmen. Another important element of the Collapse is that this is where we first start to see the 'good' Gods in force. Whether they had always existed but never been so empowered before, or whether they are the creation of the dreams and desires of the peoples of the world suddenly springing to life to defend their creations in a time of reality crisis, we cannot say. Demons began to take nightmarish shapes based on the fears and legends of the people of the world, the minds of the mortals choosing the shape of their destroyer. What's interesting is that even in the midst of this nightmare, Chaos still began to solidify and conform to what it encountered in the realm of reality. Next Time: A Supreme State of Elfmind: Aenarion and Asuryan
|
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2018 19:11
|
|
|
Stealing the idea of demons cold-calling casters with MLM pitches.
|
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2018 19:22
|
|
|
I really want that Middengarde F&F up on the site. How much do I have to promise to the slam-dunk-fair-use legal defence fund for that to happen?
|
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2018 19:36
|
|
|
Subjunctive posted:I really want that Middengarde F&F up on the site. How much do I have to promise to the slam-dunk-fair-use legal defence fund for that to happen? If you want a handy index, this is the other site I uploaded it to: http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/index.html?post=618 It's straight up just the same as the SA formatting, but not as nice-looking.
|
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2018 19:43
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 26, 2024 20:11 |
|
|
Oh, I want it visible to the world and showing up in Google results to keep people from inadvertently buying it. That will be handy for my own amusement, though — thanks!
|
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2018 19:45
|
|