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I wanna have one of these as a familiar so bad in a game now.
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Oct 8, 2018 15:40
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Of course we would go from "a wizard did it" to "toy breeds."
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Oct 8, 2018 15:42
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If you don't treat your wonderful catbird as a precious pet, whether it's a toy breed or a giant riding beast that rips Chaos Warriors in half, I don't know why you'd even have one.
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Oct 8, 2018 15:51
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:I imagine this has probably been posted before in this very thread, but the Owlbear, along with a lot of other classic D&D monsters, was basically Gygax's table's interpretation of these beautifully lovely plastic toys: drat, I had a set like that as a kid. Or at least a version of it. I distinctly remember it included bullette, rust monster, pterodactyl and the two legged armadillo. No owlbear though.
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Oct 8, 2018 16:05
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Night10194 posted:If you don't treat your wonderful catbird as a precious pet, whether it's a toy breed or a giant riding beast that rips Chaos Warriors in half, I don't know why you'd even have one. Just remember that on a failed Handle Animal check, your catbird starts an adventure.
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Oct 8, 2018 16:36
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ChaseSP posted:I wanna have one of these as a familiar so bad in a game now. It captures the majestic stature of a cat and the pissed-off face of a sparrow perfectly, I love it.
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Oct 8, 2018 16:38
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The storm has a name... - Let's Read TORG Part 22b: The Lights In The Sky Are Friends So let's start talking about aliens. Chapter 1 of the book is The Cosm of the Akashans, and already we're running into trouble because the way they set up the home of the Akashans isn't consistent with the terminology up to this point. Right up front we're told that the Akashans are from another galaxy, but nothing says that galaxy isn't part of Core Earth's reality. Now, a cosm has been defined from day one as a single reality. On top of that, there's nothing in the book about the Akashans having trans-dimensional travel capabilities. So I don't know why they come from a "cosm" apart from the designers wanting to give them their own axioms and world laws. Well, regardless, let's get into it. quote:The Genesis of the Star Sphere The Akashans hail from the Star Sphere, a galaxy far, far away that is host to about 500 individual alien species. The Akashans are the ones in charge, though, and refer to the various species they've made contact with as "client races". As a species, the Akashans are over ten millenia old. They began rising to prominence when they were visited by a race called the Mohani, who took an interest in the fledgling race and began shaping their development. They taught the Akashans the need for balance, gave them technology, and helped them learn about reality mechanics. quote:The Mohani referred to themselves as pultaak, a word which can be roughly translated as "caretakers." The Mohani explained that they took it upon themselves to uplift the Akashans, because the purpose of those with knowledge is to pass it on to make others' lives better. This leads to what may be the most 90s RPG sentence ever: "The Mohani often expressed the hope that one day the Akashans could become the pultaak for other civilizations." With that line of gobbledegook delivered, the Mohani informed the Akashans of the existence of stargates and vanished mysteriously from the backstory, never to be heard from again. Not knowing what happened to the Mohani, the Akashans decided that they were ready to move out to the stars. And thus began the true Akashan empire.  What this all probably looked like in the author's head. In keeping with a realm book's terrible organization, we now get a description of what an Akashan actually looks like. They average about six feet tall, with features that resemble Mayan Indians to the point where they superficially look like humans. The only real difference is that their body temperature is about 32 degrees F, so they're very cool to the touch. They have a natural lifespan of about 100 years, and a notable percentage have psychic abilities. Those with actual psioncs are highly valued in Akashan society, but at the same time have to deal with the kind of predjudices you'd expect against people who can read your mind. The Akashans are governed by the High Council, the leader of which is known as the Rotan. The Rotan's job is to be final word on rulings, after considering the balance of all arguments involved. And there are arguments. The High Council does not decide things through votes, but via debate and an appeal to the Rotan, whose decision is always final. The Rotan is not elected, but chosen by all Council members. Being Rotan is a job for life, unless he's doing such a bad job everyone agrees to oust him. The current Rotan is Ulka, and it was ultimately his decision to answer the Signal Fire and head to Core Earth. It was, admittedly, a choice made out of desperation, and he's well aware all the problems caused by the Akashan's arrival are a result of this decision. Along with the High Council, non-Akashans are represented by the Kyat, a sort of sub-council comprised of representatives of the client races. They represent the interests of the various non-Akashan races...at least, that's how it looks from the outside. In reality, the Kyat aren't allowed to get involved with major Council discussions and have no say in anything of actual import. The Kyat was specifically formed to placate the client races and make it look like they had a say in the governance of the Star Sphere, but for the most part people (at least, non-Akashan people) think the Kyat actually matter as part of the governmental process. The Akashans have also created a unified economy across the Star Sphere, the basic unit of which is a small crystal called the ciara, so at least we're not using credits. But given their dominance of space travel and control of government, the Akashans as a people are pretty well off. Sadly, the same can't be said for the client races; while the Akashan lifestyle is one based around the pursuit of art, science, and leisure, the client races are the ones who do all the actual work. quote:This is not a situation that sits well with some younger Akashans. They believe that the isolationist tendencies of their race, combined with assured wealth, have turned their elders into naive, detached leaders incapable of handling a crisis. Many point to the predominance of alien crews on Akashan vessels and alien laborers performing essential services as signs of a gradual erosion of their society. Huh. That is honestly not something I expected to see in a 90's Torg setting book. Law and order in the Star Sphere is enforced by the Monitors, although it's not exactly right to think of them as cops or a military force. The Monitors were originally intended as a defensive force to deal with the kinds of threats you run into while exploring space (pirates, hostile aliens, and so on). They eventually evolved into a first-contact task force, and now their job is to protect the inhabitants of the Star Sphere from internal and external threats.  My scientific analysis: it's weird. Now it's time to get into the details of Akashan philosophies. I know most of you are probably rolling your eyes at the idea of having to deal with yet another pointless setting detail, but the fact of the matter is that the Akashan belief system is very important to their society as a whole, to the point that their society is based around it. The philosophy/religion (it has elements of both) of the Askashans is known as Zinatt, and can best be described as the need to achieve balance in all things. quote:For every creation, there is a destruction, and every being has creative and destructive energies within him. Akashansdo not believe that any tool (psionics, weaponry, etc.) is inherently good or evil, but that its place in the order of things is determined by how it is used. To be fair, though, it's established that Aperios and the Nameless One are real, so I guess you have to give the Akashans a bit of credit here. Zinatt is composed of two different philosophical camps: Aka, which is the more isolationist, and Machu Coar, which believes that the Akashan's purpose is to be caretakers of the "lesser races". Note that this is a little different than the alignment system I brought up in the opening post, but in the interest of not throwing a million concepts around I'll leave that stuff for later. Followers of Aka are known as "Akites", and are the larger of the two camps. Akites believe that the Akashans have no right to interfere with societies outside the Star Sphere, no matter how much help they can provide. They don't believe that the Akashan's own precursor race handed down a manifest destiny that had to be fulfilled, or even that their precursors benefited from that help in the first place. This has led to a very isolationist mindset: the Akashans should worry about the Akshans, everyone else is on their own. The rise of the Cohamgaz virus has only made this mindset worse, to the point where Akite extremists have begun blowing up ships belonging to client races, on the basis that they might be carriers. It's interesting to point out that most of the richest and most powerful Akashans are Akites, as are a large portion of the High Council. The only reason they agreed to answer the Signal Fire was desperation. Machu Coar is a relatively new camp, having formed after the Akashan's first failed contact with Earth at Machu Pichu. Followers of Coar see the Akashans as steward to the lesser developed species (i.e., everyone who isn't an Akashan), and that it's their duty to sweep in bearing the gifts of higher civilization. quote:Extremist elements within the Machu Coar had, at one time, advocated the outright conquest of those worlds that were destroying their environments and retarding their own development. The idea was that Akashans would manage the planet until the native race had advanced sufficiently to be able to manage on their own and the imbalances they had created had been corrected. This was tried with mixed success 1500 to 2000 years ago, but was the first program to fall out of favor after the disaster on Earth. The rise of the Cohmagaz has resulted in a growth in popularity for the Coar. They claim that the Akites, and by extension the High Council, is out of touch with the people, and that the Akites are willing to throw the client races under the bus if it meant stopping the plague. Recent evidence (as well as the lighting of the Signal Fire) has boosted support for the Coar, and it's becoming more prevalent with younger Akashans. It should be pointed out that not everyone in the Star Sphere belongs to one of these camps. Those who follow neither are assumed to be followers of "pure Zinatt", and as such have achieved a sort of balance between the other two camps. Which is to say, they're not political extremists. This (again) plays into the alignment system we'll see in a few chapters. But enough about depressing political stuff! Let's talk technology. As has been stated before, the Akashans are a very technologically advanced race. Their precursors, the Mohani, utilized what we'd think of as "modern" technologies, but the Akashans found it very off-putting due to its inherent artificiality. This eventually led to the Akashans developing biotechnology during their Fourth Industrial Revolution. This was also the point where the Akashans developed space travel, but interstellar travel didn't start until the Mohani revealed the existence of stargates to them. All Akashan technology now is based around biotech, up to and including their spaceships. Akashan biotech is designed as much around aesthetics as functionality. Akashan biotech is more plant-like than meat-based, although their ships have a sort of aquatic appearance to them. Akashan ships are solar-powered, and while they can last for a very long time, they can't handle inter-system flight without the use of stargates. The stargates were (presumably) created by the Mohani. They're not so much "gates" as holes in space that can only be detected via psionic abilities. The stargates are connected to each other in an established network, and traveling from one gate to the next takes about a week. The last part of the chapter is about the client races. Or, to be more precise, four of the client races. And while they're kind of neat, they suffer the Torg problem of secondary races being sort of shuffled into the background and forgotten about after being introduced. First up are the Lorbatt, who look like two-meter tall beetles. They stand upright, using their front four legs as arms, and are capable of excreting a strong glue-like substance as well as the solvent for said substance. They're also violent as gently caress; Lorbatt will fight with anyone and everyone (including each other) just for the hell of it. They're strict carnivores that operate in a caste system based on the leadership of hive-queens, the most honored caste being warriors. The Lorbatt were quite a ways along on conquering the Star Sphere before the Akashans were picked to be the One True Masters, and as such the Lorbatt are very rebellious against Akashan leadership. The fact that the Akashans spread the Cohmgaz virus to the Lorbatt homeworld didn't exactly help relations either. The High Queen has decreed that anyone carrying the virus should be executed on sight, regardless of species, location, or situation.  What're you lookin' at, pinky? Next up are the Gudasko. quote:Gudasko are humanoid creatures which average two meters in height. They are covered with a smooth, tight skin which ranges in color from the purest white to pale violet. Their hair, which covers the sides of their heads and lightly coats the rest of their bodies, is bristly and white. Next we have the Larendi, the obligatory bird people. The Larendi are a migratory species who don't go in for personal possessions, and have an inherent hatred of technology that would harm the environment. And...that's pretty much it for these guys. Last up are the Draygakk. Draygakk are "large dragon-like humanoids" that resemble the edeinos, only scalier, with bone ridges and no tails. The Draygakk are actually a very placid species until riled, at which point they erupt in berserker frenzies. The Draygakk homeworld is "Tes-Klick-Aah", which isn't pronounced like that; it's a series of hisses, clicks, and exhalations. The Draygakk are very curious about other races, and as such have taken advantage of Akashan space travel to set up scientific outposts throughout the galaxy. Now, while those are interesting races, only the Lorbatt keep popping up throughout the book. All these races are playable, but it's a huge pain in the rear end to create them. -- Well, there we go. Not much to say here, except god drat Torg loved its silly names. NEXT TIME: Sarila is.
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Oct 8, 2018 19:23
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I'd like to thank Evil Mastermind for getting me into TORG Eternity and reminding me that I probably would not especially enjoy the original edition very much. It is funny that if wanted to talk to a friend who didn't game about, say, D&D they could understand what you mean by 'dragon,' 'goblin,' 'paladin' or whatever. However if you talked about TORG and told them that the ravagons were guarding the stelae they'd bop you on the head for wasting their time with nonsense talk.
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Oct 8, 2018 19:53
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Torg is another one of those settings that's very intriguing from the outset, but the moment you try to engage with the details and the mechanics, it's like the authors are screaming "gently caress off!" and slamming the door in your face.
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Oct 8, 2018 20:01
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Oct 8, 2018 20:02
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I think Feng Shui's biggest innovation wasn't mook rules but being a mashup setting that was like 'gently caress yeah, bring a gatling gun to a wuxia move in 69 AD, bring techno-cyborgs to victorian adventures, have a kung fu dude throw a cyber-monkey out the window, loving do it!' instead of 'you tried to mix genres in our genre mixing game, get hosed!' E: Also the Potoo+Pallas Cat Catbird is the ultimate familiar. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 20:07 on Oct 8, 2018 |
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Oct 8, 2018 20:03
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Night10194 posted:I think Feng Shui's biggest innovation wasn't mook rules but being a mashup setting that was like 'gently caress yeah, bring a gatling gun to a wuxia move in 69 AD, bring techno-cyborgs to victorian adventures, have a kung fu dude throw a cyber-monkey out the window, loving do it!' instead of 'you tried to mix genres in our genre mixing game, get hosed!' That said, yes oTorg handled it terribly because it was trying to weld 90's RPG design to REALISM, and as such made it very punishing. Torg Eterity still has disconnects and such, but it's nowhere near as punishing.
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Oct 8, 2018 20:14
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It's less a specific problem with Torg and more that every single one of these kinds of games seems to do the same thing. Though I think a major reason you don't see more mixed-genre mashup games in the 90s is that sense of 90s 'realism', which would demand every genre have its own ruleset and make mixing them a nightmare, when that kind of game is much more suited to looser and more narrative systems. E: Like, if the Torg reboot actually finds a way to make the whole 'disconnect' and limited ability to project your original self into other realities interesting, good. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 20:20 on Oct 8, 2018 |
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Oct 8, 2018 20:17
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The alternate gryphon post went bad, fast Except for Potoophon, that's kinda cool. And the kiwimunk writeup was neat. Night10194 posted:I think Feng Shui's biggest innovation wasn't mook rules but being a mashup setting that was like 'gently caress yeah, bring a gatling gun to a wuxia move in 69 AD, bring techno-cyborgs to victorian adventures, have a kung fu dude throw a cyber-monkey out the window, loving do it!' instead of 'you tried to mix genres in our genre mixing game, get hosed!' What If Sucker Punch Didn't Suck RPG
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Oct 8, 2018 20:22
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Night10194 posted:It's less a specific problem with Torg and more that every single one of these kinds of games seems to do the same thing.
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Oct 8, 2018 20:25
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I still say it's basically Kingdom Hearts. Complete with incomprehensible plot.
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Oct 9, 2018 01:46
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yes
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Oct 9, 2018 05:56
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FFRRPG 3e Part 16: Round 1, FIGHT! I will assume the party knows what Mind flayers do(Being they are heading to the elder brain), but not Rune Golems. This fight being an introduction to their gimick in preperation for the Elder Brain fight. (But somehow our blue mage never learned stare or matra magic, shrug.) We begin with initiative for each combatant. The three Mind Flayer's get 14, 19, 11 The Three Rune golem's gem 13, 6, 12 Our heroes get 11(Overman), 26(Godna), 23(Snorb), 17(Hildebrand), Sir Phoeboes(12) Init Order Godna (26) Snorb (23) Mind Flayer (19) Hildebrand (17) Mind Flayer (14) Rune Golem (13) Sir Phoebes (12) Rune Golem (12) Mind Flayer (11) Overman (11) Rune Golem (6) BEGIN! Godna immediately begins charging lullaby, let's end this before it begins. Snorb does what he can, he casts Poison Gas. 1Hit, 69Miss, 95Miss, 25Hit, 90HIT!, 32Hit While snorb did miss the mind flayers, poisoning the rune golems will make this go a lot faster. Godna's lullaby now goes off. 2Hit!, 47Hit!, 61Miss, 25 Hit, 100 Miss, 97 Miss. And in one turn the fight has been decided with the 19, and 14 init mind flayers asleep hildebrand goes before the last and can go for a silence strike. Hildebrand's Turn, he charges up a silence strike to use on the awake mind flayer, this is their last chance to shut it down before it can try it's mass confuse attack! His attack roll 32, 34, 39. He silences the Mind Flayer but just barely manages to not turn it to stone. It also takes 205 damage. It is now Sir Phoebes, said white mage's turn, they cast brave on the dragoon. Because, Really, why WOULDN'T you want 25% more damage during mop up. The second rune golem goes....and the GM remembers Sir Phoebes is immune to silence. So Silence hildebrand is the best option here. 34, 50 no silence. 105 damage. Our silenced mind flayer gets to go, he tries to get some tentacle action going on Hildebrand. 43 that hits, He takes 36 damage, huh armor was relevant. Overman Jumps. Poison damage hits the first mind flayer and the three rune golems. Hildebrand: 132 hp Mind Flayer #1: Asleep(3), Poisoned, 888hp Mind Flayer #2: Asleep(3) Mind Flayer #3: Silenced(3), 781hp Rune Golem #1: Asleep(3), Poisoned, 1901hp Rune Golem #2: Poisoned, 1901hp Rune Golem #3: Poisoned, 1901hp You know what, you know that point in a 4e encounte where half the enemies are dead and so the gimick is broken, and the other half are bloodied and you just say "Can we skip this?". This is that point, it's round one. gently caress this game, I'm not playing this poo poo, you've seen what combat looks like. You can probably tell where it's going. The party lands save or sucks on the enemy or they die horribly to save or sucks themselves, Overman is currently hitting damage cap with his next 3 jumps and that would kill 1.5 of the Rune Golems, the poison will do as much damage as he does. Damage is a CHORE to slog through the enemies massive hp pool. And if the enemies had I:Seal being immune to silence, sleep and stone? Well the party is basically just dead right there aren't they? gently caress this, let's review a GOOD FF game..... WhitemageofDOOM fucked around with this message at 12:04 on Oct 9, 2018 |
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Oct 9, 2018 12:01
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FFRRPG 4e Part 1: Wait there's a 4e?! Apparently yes. And you are saying it's good? Better than d6 from a cursory glance. Cursory glance? It was released while I was reviewing 3e, so my in depth analysis of this is totally blind kids. Apparently my sheer glaring at my old shame brought it from the bowels of nothingness into reality. So ready to do this? I am. It starts with the standard RPG stuff, I'm ignoring that. It goes into design principles, yes it is up and center with them. I'll bullet point. * Recreate the "feeling" of old jrpgs: 8-32 bit and nostalgia get priority. * Group Focus: The group isn't just the GM. * Avoid downtime: Self evident. * Quick Production: Make it faster rather than having every possible option. * Create 2 Games: Old school rpgs had a hard divide between exploration and combat, so this game has a hard divide between non-combat and combat. They use entirely different systems. * Tabletop: The game has to be playable on a tabletop unlike what the original design team went off to do which they proudly proclaimed required a computer. Then we have Group Creation, wait group creation? YEP! GROUP CREATION! Step 1) Choose traits: Choose what kind of heroes your group are. (This is awesome.) Step 2) Choose name: Your party has a cool name, obviously. Step 3) Choose roots: Choose how your party formed. Step 4) Create the evil: What is the current main antagonist, this probably will change over the course of the caimpaign. Step 5) Generate Destiny: You get 4 destiny points, however unlike ffd6 these are ONLY a non-combat currency, i just wonder why it's in group creation. Now let's go over the Traits. first off TELLS HOW YOUR PARTY GETS EXP. Did you not take monster hunters? Then random encounters don't give exp. Did you take treasure hunters? Then act like old school D&D characters and take everything not bolted down...then take the bolts. Each trait has a way it gets exp, a way the party can spend destiny(The good), and a thing they can't do WITHOUT spending destiny(The Bad). But The Bad is always "Turn down being the heroes you are" so it's more a loss of destiny than spending. Monster hunter: You get XP from murdering monsters, You can spend Destiny to know or discover stuff about monsters, You can't have non-hostile encounters with monsters unless you spend destiny. Sense of Duty: You work for some person or organization and get XP for helping them, You spend destiny to receive help from them, You can't tell them to piss off from a mission unless you spend destiny. People's Hero: You get XP by serving the proletariat I mean protecting the people, You spend destiny to receive help from them, You can't refuse a request for help from the humble masses unless you spend destiny. Relic's from the Past: You love old magic or technology you get XP for finding it, You spend destiny to figure out how this poo poo WORKS, You must take the horrible cursed relic unless you spend destiny. (That....is hilarious.) Mercenary: You are in it for the Gps and you get XP for getting paid and finding treasure, You spend destiny to have black market contacts in loving dungeons man, No one will think of you as anything but a treasure hound when they know your intentions unless you spend Destiny. Nemesis: See the evil you get XP for fighting the evil kind of keeps the evil alive a LOT longer, You can spend destiny to escape your nemesis pretty much no matter what, If you try to use destiny to make a plan against them though well they know how YOU work and it costs an extra point. (I'd prefer spending destiny not to punch in their smug face.) Protege: You have something precious something worth protecting you get XP for protecting(Protege really?), You can spend destiny to reroll tasks involving doing so, If it dies if you fail you lose all your destiny. Reputation: Instead of D&D you are playing Mazes&Minotaurs it's glory for XP baby!, You can spend destiny to have your reputation proceed you, You have to spend destiny to pretend to not be that famous guy who you definitely aren't. Then is character Creation 1) Choose a name: duh. 2) Choose traits and quirks: You see those 3 group traits? You can replace one with your own trait....your sidequest if you will. Then you pick 3 quirks which are defining non-combat features, races are under quirks, as is intuitive magic. Quirks let you spend destiny on task checks after a roll, or they might cause you trouble generating destiny. 3) Choose your Jobs: Each character has a primary job and a secondary job, the secondary jobs come from their OWN LIST, thus preventing combination explosion as the secondary jobs are designed around being combined while the primary jobs are designed as "This is what I do." Just as an example there is no Primary job Tank, there are two Secondary job Tanks. 4) Spend XP to increase your stats: This is weird. Your stats are....Earth, Air, Fire & Water. They generally overlap to Str/Con, Dex, Int/Mag, Cha/Mag, but not entirely. I'll explain how stats work later but you spend XP to increase your stats, and the sum of your stats determines your level for anything that is based on level(such as hp/mp and ability tracks). (Standard starting characters have 200xp) 5) Assign Skills: You get 1 skillpoint per 3 levels, but a skill point is a MUCH bigger deal. You can't have more skills total in a stat's associated skills than your stat level. 6) Aquire your abilities: Get the level 1 abilities from your job and subjob. 7) Buy your starting gear: 200gp. 8) Finishing touches: Calculate your hp/mp, check over your quirks, that sort of things. Past this is mechanics, and here I stop till next time when we cover....all of non-combat.
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Oct 9, 2018 12:46
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When I saw those HP scores, I immediately clocked out, and that was a few posts ago.
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Oct 9, 2018 13:03
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JcDent posted:When I saw those HP scores, I immediately clocked out, and that was a few posts ago. I do not blame you, at all.
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Oct 9, 2018 13:07
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I was not particularly impressed by 4e, but hopefully it's improved since I last played it. I'll talk about that as you go, maybe. As for d6, a post will be up in the next few days.
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Oct 9, 2018 16:47
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Leraika posted:I was not particularly impressed by 4e, but hopefully it's improved since I last played it. I certainly am! Also i guess it's just the most recent release came out during my review, I legit did not know it existed until near the end. But most importantly, none of us have to look at 3e anymore!
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Oct 9, 2018 17:56
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Fun fact! Through a series of bizarre circumstances, the guy behind FFRPG 4e found me on some rather obscure social media channels. He wanted people (namely one of my good friends, but I was within earshot) to look over 4e. The'revised edition' came out amidst some my many complaints about the original edition's layout, but I don't think there's any massive changes aside from layout, I haven't gotten a chance to look at it yet. I haven't played Returners 4e but I've looked at most of the combat stuff and I'm... less than enthused about the way it does stuff, and the Crystal Levels are really weird. But I can chime in here and there.
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Oct 9, 2018 18:13
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Didn't somebody here say that the lesson of Final Fantasy combat is that only playing a party would be really interesting, as the individual characters don't have many meaningfully different options? It feels like that's still the case.
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Oct 9, 2018 18:27
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FFXIV being an MMO does a fairly good job of trying to make individual classes interesting, but yeah overall the series give each class a pretty limited toolbox
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Oct 9, 2018 19:05
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Halloween Jack posted:Didn't somebody here say that the lesson of Final Fantasy combat is that only playing a party would be really interesting, as the individual characters don't have many meaningfully different options? It feels like that's still the case. I think the answer is to not get caught up in one class=one character and treat them how the games do. Every game that uses the classes themselves after FF3 let's characters mix&match some way. And the games with clearly defined character roles also let's those characters move out of their nitch(notably with the exception of white/black mages.) and cross class in some way, Job+Job is probably the actual way to make you feel like an FF Character and not an FF Job.
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Oct 9, 2018 19:17
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FFRRPG 4E Part 2: Non-combat For reference: Any time i mention the rules, I am using the simplified rules, Because the game seems built around them and the complicated rules feel like an artifact for people who want the old system. I will mention the difference when we come to the explanation themselves. Challenges aka skill rolls Whenever your GM calls for a skill roll they declare a difficulty, probably between 3 and 7. You roll a d10 if you get that or higher you win, for each point you have in a skill you roll an extra die. So if you have strength 2 and you are trying to be strong, roll 3d10 if any equal or exceed the difficulty you succeed. A challenge should have A) A chance for success or failure: No rolling to tie your shoes. B) A meaningful consequence for failure: No rolling to pick a lock if you can keep retrying until you do it. C) An impact on the story: No rolling just to ride a chocobo cross country, roll to ride a chocobo out of a burning castle. You may choose to fail at a challenge whenever you wish. Destiny Points Unlike d6 which probably(almost explicitly) inspired these, you only use destiny out of combat. You get destiny with the following things. If a quirk is annoying you get 1 destiny, if a quirk is a serious hardship requiring a hard or multiple challenge 2 destiny, if a quirk causes inescapable consequences 3 destiny. Any time the party succeeds on a significant goal related to their traits the GM may hand out points along with the exp. Any time you choose to forfeit a challenge related to one of your quirks you get a destiny. You spend destiny on the following things. If you have a quirk related to the roll you can spend 1 destiny for +2, or 2 destiny for +4 this is after the roll. So you won't waste destiny. You can spend 4 destiny to do a feat of heroism, something humanly impossible. This is where you hold up a house with your glorious muscles, or turn a raging river threatening to sweep the party away into ice and save them. You can spend 1 destiny to walk up to random NPCs and get relevant Info. What, it's final fantasy. You can spend 7 destiny to have some miraculous reversal of fortune bail your butts out, if you happen to DIE but the rest live this only costs 4. You can spend 10 destiny to survive despite it being impossible or bring someone back from the dead. Aspects....I mean quirks Every character has three quirks, the main uses of these(gaining and spending destiny) have been covered. Races are quirks, letting you spend points for things they are good at in the fluff, and getting it for things they are bad at. (Thus you may continue to have a party of magical midgets.) Intuitive magic is under the quirks, incase you wanted to use your magic skill for more than magic lore. (Why yes i would like illusion magic.) There are some other magically quirks like bottomless pockets, lycanthrope or visions. There is also more normal quirks like arrogant, honest, compulsive liar(I AM THE MOON! stuff is what are SUPPOSED to be doing even.), Naive idealist, uncommon beauty, etc. Overall, the non-combat system is pretty solid for what it wants to do. I can't really fault it. If you are going to fault the game, it will probably be in every other section which focuses on combat. WhitemageofDOOM fucked around with this message at 19:50 on Oct 9, 2018 |
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Oct 9, 2018 19:41
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Oh, right, the simplified rules! drat, I can't believe I forgot about that.  Yeah, the original version of Returners 4e actually used the more complicated rules with no Simplified Rules variant. I actually asked the dude who made it why he used d100s instead of a d10 system. I think the response was they went back and forth on it but they went with the more complex rules for a base to hew closer to the old system. The simplified rules are way, way better and I mentioned to him the whole system seems like it could work with d10s and not miss a step. I didn't realize that made it into revised edition, I think revised came out like a week after we had that conversation. Dude works fast.
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Oct 9, 2018 20:01
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Monathin posted:Oh, right, the simplified rules! drat, I can't believe I forgot about that. No joke, as i read the rules, I thought the game was DESIGNED around the simplified rules and the complicated "Base" rules were included as a throwback. Things like "Stat levels" are such a weird kludge, and the monster stat blocks only have the monster's stat level. WhitemageofDOOM fucked around with this message at 20:11 on Oct 9, 2018 |
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Oct 9, 2018 20:06
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No, yeah, I can't remember offhand whether the game was designed around the d10 Simplified Rules and backported or not, but only the d100 Base Rules were present in Returners 4e pre-Revised Edition. It was exactly as kludgey and weird as you're imagining.
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Oct 9, 2018 20:16
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 Infinity is a two-player tabletop wargame in 28mm scale, originally released in 2005. It's currently on its third edition. Infinity is a skirmish game, so your side might consist of between ten and twenty minis, with a playtime of around an hour and a half, depending on your familiarity with the rules. Infinity's publisher, Corvus Belli, hails from Vigo, Spain. CB was created when a bunch of dorks who watched Ghost in the Shell too many times decided to make their RPG campaign into a wargame, and the world hasn't been quite right since. I love this game. I originally bought into it because I just wanted to paint some nice models, and one of the army boxes was on sale off Miniature Market for dirt cheap. It turns out there's a game attached to the minis, and I've spiraled down a hole since then. I own armies for five of the eight main factions, and a giant list of stuff from the subfactions. But. "But" is the word I would use to encapsulate Infinity. For every genius idea the game has, there's something mindbogglingly stupid. You've got some of the best sculpts in the industry, but this one's painted so that this lady is going to war in her panties. The rules are intricate and thematic and surprisingly balanced, but they're written and translated into English in strange and inconsistent ways. The gameplay is cinematic and quick, but the learning curve might as well be a vertical wall. This unit is an interesting toolkit piece with a nuanced background and world-class painting and sculpting, but this unit is a Pokemon that cheats. The community as a whole is great and fairly non-toxic, but they're all dumb as hell, including me. And so on. I strongly encourage you to drop by the Infinity thread, where everyone but the ghost of Pierzak is welcoming and will be glad to help with any inevitable rules questions you might have. Come listen to us whine about the official forums. This game has too many moving parts and too many details to cover in its entirety, but I'm going to hit some key fluff and rules each update. Here's the basics.  Infinity is set 177 years into the future. Mankind has made it to space and spread out among the general neck of our galactic woods, and Earth is becoming something of a backwater in this shiny, cyberpunk future. Life is pretty good for almost everyone, on the whole. People live longer than we do, their cell phones are faster and smaller, and we didn't kill ourselves before we escaped the planet. If you're one of the privileged few, you may be eligible to have your mind backed up into a Cube, a memory stack that'll retain your personality if your body croaks or gets crit to death. FTL travel is possible via Humankind is not the only sentient thing in the universe. A central artificial intelligence, ALEPH, watches over most of humanity, operating the trans-planetary internet equivalent and generally keeping an eye on things; ALEPH is entirely not Friend Computer, We Swear. It turns out there's another megascale AI kicking around out there, the Evolved Intelligence. The EI and its minions, the You may have picked up by now that Infinity owes something of a creative debt to a lot of popular sci-fi properties. Lemme be straight with you: Infinity rips off a ton of stuff, but it does so in such a gleeful and wholesale fashion that I can't be that angry at it. Plus, it often does something interesting with its premises once it's done prying the former owners' fingers off. Bear with me.  Panoceania is the single biggest player on the scene. PanO is a post-national coalition of Indian, Brazilian, ANZAC, and other miscellaneous megacorporations. They've got the biggest guns, the newest technology, and the shiniest almost-post-scarcity dystopia. They've also got the Papacy, because this game was written by a Spaniard. As a playable faction, PanO has the most gadgets and they're generally better at shooting than their opponents, but they're not as good at accomplishing objectives because they're a society run by militaristic Steve Jobses.  Yu-Jing is, thanks to the tireless revolutionary efforts of Xi Jinping, not as ridiculous as it once was. Space China is the former PRC after it ate most of its neighbors following the decline of its rival nation-states. Yu-Jing operates under the auspices of a new Imperial bureaucracy, with modern state-capitalist kleptoracy in full swing. The State Empire is a persistent also-ran to PanO, and the two powers are constantly trying to knife each other in the back. On the table, Yu-jing is good at basically everything, but they're not necessarily standouts. They're exceedingly versatile, but if you run up against a canny opponent who can play to their own strengths, you could be in trouble.  The Nomads are the cyberpunkest of the cyberpunks and animeist of the animes in this cyberpunk anime game. The Nomads are people who, for one reason or another, dropped out of society, and eventually accumulated in one of three giant motherships roaming the wormhole network. Artists, philosophers and visionary scientists are as likely to join the Nomads as underworld criminals, burnouts and crackpot libertarians. Corregidor is a former prison colony, broken free from their erstwhile masters; they provide a lot of the military muscle of the Nomads, when they're not protecting striking workers. Bakunin is unsurprisingly an anarchist experiment gone wild, where the only rule is Thou Shalt Not Endanger the Ship. Tunguska bankrolls the whole thing, which they can easily afford on account of being the biggest illicit bank and data haven in the galaxy. The Nomad playstyle involves exploiting your units ability to synergize with each other and working as a combined-arms unit.  Haqqislam is another one of those exceedingly Spanish details in this game. Haqq is a surprisingly respectful portrayal of a semi-secularist Islamic revival from the mid-21st century. If you wanted to be a space Sufi, man, have I got a faction for you. The good feelings break down a little when you look at the subfactions, which posit a simultaneous caliphate, sultinate, brotherhood of assassins, and space-Barbary Pirates, but look - nobody's a loving suicide bomber. In the game, Haqq is big on high unit counts, with lots of light infantry and skirmishers, but not much in the way of heavy firepower. They also have the best doctors in the game; those guys in the header image for this part are here to pararescue the hell out of you.  Back before the collapse of the modern West, the remains of the US, Russian, British and French space programs put together humanity's first colony ship, the Ariadna, and launched it through a wormhole. It disappeared because the Tohha are assholes and nobody could figure out why. Turns out they didn't get Event Horizoned, but rather crashed on the planet Dawn and had to fend for themselves for a few decades, while the rest of the human race passed them by. The former first-worlders are now technologically backward, but toughened from years spent fending for themselves on a hell-planet populated by those triune wolf things from A Fire Upon the Deep. In play, Ariadna can't be beat at the camouflage game, and they combat their lower technical base (no hacking!) with being numerous and hard to put down (can't be hacked!).  ALEPH runs the Human Sphere, the general name for the human disaspora, to one degree or another. ALEPH runs on every computer available, it provides communications across the galaxy, and it's certainly respecting your privacy. ALEPH may or may not be attempting to reach apotheosis, but in the meantime, it's providing Future Google and occasionally looking out for our best interests. The creation of ALEPH lead to the original Nomads getting out of mainstream society and starting their own illicit internet, as well as a blanket ban on future AI research, because the boss doesn't like competition. ALEPH operational units can be hordes of drones, highly elite artificial lifeforms, human-like proxies for the AI itself, and other weird entities. ALEPH goes for elite lists and special snowflake rules in play.  The Combined Army are the mailed fist of the Evolved Intelligence, the setting's other evil AI. CA troops range from client species to allies of convenience to biomechanical vat-grown drone soldiers. The EI diplomatic corps, for instance, are jetpack close-combat soldiers. They're probably getting a new sub-faction shortly. Combined Army armies are really good! Expect to pay a lot of points for the privilege. If ALEPH goes for high firepower and dirty tricks, CA goes for higher firepower and dirtier tricks, like the Avatar of the EI, which is a giant stompy robot that leads your army. If you manage to kill it, which is harder than you'd think, its personality immediately jumps into another unit in your army, boosting its stats to equivalence with the Avatar.  The Tohaa are a mistake. Originally, their deal was that they showed up and were very mysterious, and they were able to use special rules exclusive to their faction. Well, the mystery's been increasingly revealed that they're a bunch of dickish aliens using humanity to fight as their proxies against the EI, with a strong suggestion that this isn't the first time they've sent another species to extinction for their own goals. Their special rules are either now more available to the other factions or are poorly considered, like Symbiomates, which is a piece of equipment that lets you go "neener neener neener, you didn't hit me." I can't honestly say they're out of balance - anything in Infinity can die and gently caress up your plans if you aren't careful - but they're not very fun to fight, they don't have a very interesting gimmick, and Flipswitch likes them.  The Non-Aligned Armies represent smaller factions, mercenary syndicates, and other oddities that won't fit well under a pre-existing faction. The Druze are a former Haqq unit, spun off into their own subfaction with some weird combined fireteams. The Japanese Secessionist Army came about from the game's latest event, where they broke out of Yu-Jing's control and became their own faction full of stereotypes. Ikari Company are evil bad-man mercenaries, largely consisting of JSA troops and some mercenary units, while StarCo are good nice-man mercenaries with a focus around named characters. So, some moderately interesting but highly derivative fluff. What about numbers? Broadly, you play Infinity by rolling d20s against a target number, trying to be equal to or under the TN. Let's take a look at typical profile.  The Fusilier: Cheap, reliable, expendable.  Infinity units have a lot of stats. We're not going to go over all of them, but assume the Fusilier is about as vanilla a unit as it gets. Let's say my Fusilier wants to shoot at an opposing model. If the enemy is unable to react for whatever reason - he's unconscious, he's been hit with a glue gun, he's not looking at my model, whatever - it's an unopposed test. I roll and hope I get under Ballistic Skill 12, or better still, exactly a 12, since that's a critical hit. This is the basic action in Infinity. There are often modifiers involved, most often in increments of plus or minus three to your attribute. I'm BS 12, and my opponent is in cover, so that's minus three to hit, so I need to roll a nine or less, but wait, I'm in an optimal range band, so I get plus six to hit with my shotgun, meaning I need to roll a 15 or less, and so on. You'll also roll varying numbers of dice based on your weapon, or if it's your turn. Speaking of: The biggest thing to recommend Infinity is the ARO system, short for Automatic Reaction Order. Take the example above, but this time my opponent is aware of my Fusilier's attack.   Line troops are pretty comparable across factions. Alguaciles, the target of my Fusilier, are the Nomad version. They're a little better at punching and dodging, but they're not as good at shooting. On my turn, I move my Fusilier up and fire at the enemy Alguacile. I'm in line of sight and she's facing me, so she gets to ARO - she can shoot back, or hit the dirt, or try to hack me, or any number of other reactions. This is equally applicable to anyone who can see me act, and is in a position to do something about it. Instead of the usual IGOUGO, you're constantly playing. It keeps the game moving faster, keeps players engaged, and it's also a really good reason not to run across an open field with an entire enemy army facing you with guns drawn. It's pretty fantastic, and while there's stuff to nitpick, AROs really make the game for me. The other significant detail about Infinity is its action economy. Again, there's not a traditional turn structure where I pick a unit to move, and then another, and then another, and once everybody's moved I'm done. Instead, each unit generates an Order, and you can spend that Order to act with that unit, or most times another unit. For instance, if I have five guys in a defensive position and I don't want them to move, and they're each generating a regular Order, I could spend all five of those Orders on a rambo unit and charge him up the board, shooting or double-moving or whatever else is situationally relevant. Some units only provide Order to themselves, and others have more than one Order. Finally, it's not a systemic thing, but Infinity does a superlative job with its rules distribution. Because they picked the most generic name possible, the Infinity website is https://www.infinitythegame.com/ You can download the rules, in their entirety, for free. You only need to buy a book if you want the fluff and the pretty pictures. The support is mostly great, too - the rulebooks are living documents, so if there's a balance change or new units introduced, all the changes get rolled into the latest file set. There's also an army builder that will link you to the game's rules wiki, so you can browse a particular faction's roster, check out a particular unit, and then look up a particular detail with a click or two. Their digital support is really excellent conceptually, but sometimes they introduce an FAQ listing that just makes things more confusing, or they didn't edit the copy well enough for Spanish-to-English issues, or they rushed the document to make a deadline, or some other drat foolish thing. They keep track of the army lists people create with the builder, so they know what's getting used and what's unloved for balance tweaks, but sometimes this is used as a reason to squat a subfaction. You can manage a tournament entirely with their provided framework, but sometimes it craps out for no good reason. Infinity is a game that could be a world-beater, if its developers could just resist the urge to shoot themselves in the foot every so often. Next: PanOceania.
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Oct 9, 2018 21:47
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Does Infinity have an RPG? It always seemed like a setting that felt like it wanted one.
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Oct 9, 2018 21:55
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The Combined Army are just the Combine from Half-Life with the serial number partially filed off, right?
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Oct 9, 2018 22:12
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The same design ethos as Malifaux but in space? Interesting. Also the inclusion of the token religious faction being Not Kneejerk lovely Muslims is a nice touch and makes some sense if the creators are from Spain.
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Oct 9, 2018 22:44
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Night10194 posted:Does Infinity have an RPG? It always seemed like a setting that felt like it wanted one. Well. As of January, you could buy your own copy of the Modiphus-published licensed Infinity RPG. The kickstarter for it launched September 16th of 2015, with a projected completion date of December of that year. Modiphus has been able to churn out kickstarters before, because they've got a basic engine they slap stuff onto, they fill out some background and change some details, and bam, completed project. It actually works pretty well for Infinity, because their 2d20 system isn't that far off the normal Infinity rules. Gutier "Interruptor" Rodriguez, CEO of Corvus Belli, is also the loremaster. If that sentence didn't fill you with dread, this will: Infinity is a published version of his campaign, and many named characters in the setting are NPCs or PCs from his tabletop campaign from back when. Imagine your typical GM obsessed with worldbuilding. He's got binders full of crap you don't care about, and he'll sure as hell correct you if you misspeak at the table. Now give him production control over a licensed product from his IP. The Kickstarter still isn't finished. Joe Slowboat posted:The Combined Army are just the Combine from Half-Life with the serial number partially filed off, right? Eh, in as much as any alien hegemony is. The EI's deal is that it wants your subservience and your processor cycles. The Tohaa are the ones with nefarious plans for the future of humanity, horrible mutating biomechanical equipment, and a story that will never come to a satisfying conclusion. Trust me, Infinity is not shy about letting you know when it's ripping something off.
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Oct 9, 2018 22:52
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Is the Ariadna book out, or did I imagine that? (One of umpty-nine splatbooks on the way.)
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Oct 9, 2018 23:17
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Joe Slowboat posted:The Combined Army are just the Combine from Half-Life with the serial number partially filed off, right?
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Oct 9, 2018 23:19
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I kind of love the idea of an AI superdeity whose entire mission statement for servitors is: 1. Obey orders when orders happen. 2. Mine bitcoin.
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Oct 9, 2018 23:27
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Night10194 posted:Does Infinity have an RPG? It always seemed like a setting that felt like it wanted one. I quite like a few of the things the Infinity RPG does: The core system is rolling 2d20 and counting successes, and you spend Good Points to gain extra dice - and if you don't have Good Points you can give the ST Bad Points to get more dice also. The result is that you can _usually_ succeed at any simple task no matter your skill, as long as you're willing to let more Bad Stuff happen. It's kind of a self-balancing pacing system, which is a very cool idea, It also recognizes that skill ratings in themselves are kind of boring, so every skill comes with a small list of perks you can buy. The perks are technically separate from the skill, but a lot of things in character generation give you 1 skill point and 1 perk, which is a good way to make getting skills a more interesting. It seems like a system that would be very fun and kinetic to play.
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Oct 10, 2018 02:06
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