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Tsilkani posted:So, with grassy gnoll covering the Infinity miniatures game, I figured I'd dig out my copy of the Infinity RPG and cover it. Grassy gnoll is doing a pretty good job with the lore overview; does everyone want me do go over the timeline at the start of the book, which is pretty much the same info, or should I just go right to the rules? The rules are fun do the rules. *takes 3 Heat to roll 5d20*
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Oct 18, 2018 06:14
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I love the bit where Ulricans are all about great hair.
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Oct 18, 2018 08:05
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Ghost Leviathan posted:I love the bit where Ulricans are all about great hair. That's just a viking thing to do, and since Ulricans are the closest we're getting to good vikings in the setting...
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Oct 18, 2018 09:16
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JcDent posted:That's just a viking thing to do, and since Ulricans are the closest we're getting to good vikings in the setting... I was thinking that, I remember hearing there were medieval screeds lamenting how those swarthy vikings with their clean hair are sweeping good English ladies off their feet or whatever. But it's funny to picturing a bunch of vikings going full shampoo commercial. A lot about religion makes sense when you realise things like kosher, halal and cleanliness rituals are basically early health and safety regulations codified into religion.
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Oct 18, 2018 09:35
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By the way, on real life traps you wouldn't want to find in a dungeon: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3785167&pagenumber=1208&perpage=40#post488936919
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Oct 18, 2018 10:07
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Josef bugman posted:Okay, does it go into how exactly he did this because that is loving incredible. I'm kinda glad they didn't because that's my next campaign right there. Lie, cheat, swindle, and bullshit your way into doing good and getting rascally drunk. That's a one-way street to fuckin' sainthood.
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Oct 18, 2018 12:30
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Tsilkani posted:So, with grassy gnoll covering the Infinity miniatures game, I figured I'd dig out my copy of the Infinity RPG and cover it. Grassy gnoll is doing a pretty good job with the lore overview; does everyone want me do go over the timeline at the start of the book, which is pretty much the same info, or should I just go right to the rules? I'm glossing over a ton of stuff because there's just so many poorly-written words in the tabletop books. If there's something you feel is worth covering, go for it; if it'll save you some time, skip it.
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Oct 18, 2018 13:04
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Ranald seems like a pretty chill dude tbh.
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Oct 18, 2018 13:35
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Well, a pretty chill person. (I love that 4e made Ranald explicitly everything-fluid.) But yeah, Ranald just wants you to be clever, daring and unwilling to put up with assholes. E: and to avoid violence, because violence isn't clever.
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Oct 18, 2018 13:41
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One of the nice things about the Ranaldan faith is they already operate in 'crews'. So you can make an RPG party out of a priest and a couple lay worshipers who happen to be the rest of a heist crew, or the refugees they've rescued, or whatever and basically be a traveling congregation that is also an adventuring party.
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Oct 18, 2018 13:56
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I really appreciate the WHF reviews, before this I was under the impression the game line was "WH40k, but with magic swords instead of chainswords" instead of a pretty rad setting with an extremely rad take on a trickster god.
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Oct 18, 2018 14:40
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Fantasy has always had much better writing than 40k, and WFRP has never even gotten the chance to examine some of the coolest parts of the setting, like the Tomb Kings or the Lizardmen.
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Oct 18, 2018 14:43
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Mors Rattus posted:Fantasy has always had much better writing than 40k, and WFRP has never even gotten the chance to examine some of the coolest parts of the setting, like the Tomb Kings or the Lizardmen. There's actually one Tomb Kings based mini-campaign, about a Chaos Cult frantically trying to keep a Tomb Prince sealed while he tries to trick the PCs into letting him go or something. It also contains a bunch of extra dungeon rules about what kinds of horrible poo poo and lethal guardians you could run across, plus curse rules, I think. I haven't read it yet but I can get a copy.
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Oct 18, 2018 14:50
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I'm just saying, WFRP has never gotten to talk about Settra or Lord Kroak and both of those are a travesty.
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Oct 18, 2018 15:10
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I like how Ranald is non-violent God of Republicanism as well. Khorne should be the violent god of Republicanism. More skulls for the skull thr- err, Madame Guillotine!
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Oct 18, 2018 15:56
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Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Tome of Salvation I'm a different kind of Ulrican. I'll be giving a speech later, but you should ask any questions now; I might have to leave town in a hurry after. Priests wander for many reasons. It's important to talk about them because, let's face it, you're probably not going to play a group RPG campaign about staying in one place and tending to a temple (though of course, you could). The Wandering Life section is specifically about bridging the gap between a traditional life of prayer and a life of wandering, getting into fights, and stealing treasure. Some priests take a Wandering Vow, releasing them from the obligation to a single congregation in return for spreading their faith and tending to the needs of communities with no temple. This is perhaps the most respectable reason to be a wandering priest, and there are entire orders of Imperial friars who go from town to town and perform blessings for those who have no temple to their God. Spreading the faith, founding new temples, etc in your wake as you go about and fight rat people and goatmen is certainly an option for an orthodox adventuring priest. Some wandering priests aren't missionaries, but rather Manaanites, Myrmidians, etc whose congregations wander as it is; a Manaanite who plies the river Reik and or the Sea of Claws would hardly be unorthodox, nor would a Myrmidian following and ministering to a free company. Some priests travel and wander out of penance, cast out of their original temple and trying to make up for their sins. These could be matters of heterodoxy and heresy, or they could be something simple, like never having told the temple you used to be a thief. A priest may also have suffered a sudden downturn in their luck, and decided that they have somehow offended their Gods; people in the Empire generally operate on the older principle that if you are afflicted with terrible luck and sickness you must have offended the Gods whether you know you did or not. So a priest wandering on penance may be doing so because of misfortunes that cause them to believe they sinned despite not knowing how they sinned. For some, this attempt to redeem themselves can turn into an entire lifestyle as a wandering priest (or, in extremes, a flagellant). Naturally, some are also seeking something important. Verenans are the most common sort of seeker-priests, always looking for some ancient codex or scrap of lore, but anyone could be seeking some sort of important relic or macguffin. It might even be on behalf of their cult rather than for purely personal reasons. Included here are those who wander for purely worldly reasons; it might not be a cult matter for a Priest of Sigmar to seek out the Chaos Lord who killed his parents years ago, but the cult might not object and the God likely won't. Priests are still people, so looking for relatives or trying to help out their families or friends are also common reasons to be out and about seeking for something. Some priests wander because they don't have a temple or congregation anymore. The Storm of Chaos saw Archaon's armies specifically target the priesthoods and their temples, because he was an ex-Sigmarite who was extremely mad about his old religion (and all Old World religions). Many northern and eastern towns suffered damage, or lost their temples. If you're the last surviving priest from a sacked town in Hochland or Ostland, what do you do? You wander until you can find another temple to take you in, or you spend your time protecting refugees and seeing to their spiritual needs. Some of these priests continue to wander under a vow of penance for ever allowing such harm to come to their temple and their congregation, while others travel only long enough to find a new place to preach. And, of course, some are wandering because they're rogue. Heterodox or heretical priests or priests of small and radical new sects are often on the move because if they don't keep ahead of the mainstream cult, they'll be squished. Some of these rogues aren't even unorthodox, but rather fell afoul of some sort of personal conflict during the politicking inherent in the priesthoods. It can be awkward for a temple to deal with a rogue priest who is still able to use miracles, as this is usually taken as a sign of divine legitimacy. The cults are not actually the sole authorities on their Gods, despite what they would tell you, and thus there are many small, wandering sects of unorthodox belief who worship their Gods differently without drawing divine disfavor. The life of a rogue priest trying to found their own sect is certain to be exciting, if very dangerous. Cults also rely on lay worshipers, people who are unusually drawn to a specific God but not to the extent that they become a priest. These people help clean, cook, do the chores, guard the temple, donate their earnings to its upkeep, and spread the word of the Gods. The Old World's cults would fall apart without their lay worshipers, many of whom work for very reduced wages or donate their labor as a sacrifice to the Gods. Temples employ lay worshiper guards because temples are usually wealthy places that know better than to trust the Gods entirely with security. They also know that there are occasional bouts of religious strife (Verenans, for instance, would really rather have enough guards to keep the occasional Sigmarite zealot from burning their books) and that temples tend to be targets of Chaos cults, who hate them as a serious theological adversary. Larger temples will be able to employ templar knights for these jobs, but a rural or small town temple (or a poorer city temple) may have to resort to simply arming some of the more trustworthy locals and deputizing them as Temple Guardians. We get a class for this; they're a 1st tier that can go on to a military or religious career. They're not great fighters (lacking a second starting Attack) but they get Dodge, Strike Mighty, Strike to Stun, and the very rare Stout Heart (+10% to Fear saves of all kinds), so they're brave and reasonably competent and social. You could certainly do worse for a start. Temples also employ servants, for the same reason anyone else does; these are the bulk of lay-workers in a temple, joining the Initiates in keeping the building clean and proper and the staff fed and clothed. Upkeeping the appearance of a temple is very important, after all. Overseeing this is the Cult Attendant, a general class for deacons and administrators. These are the administrators and organizers of the laity, and the class is a social/management class that is excellent at commerce and diplomacy in the name of trying to herd cats and keep the temple from falling apart. They investigate mundane corruption like missing collections boxes, they keep everything running, and they try to stay unseen so that the congregation credits the priest with the smooth running of the local cult; most pride themselves on being unnoticed. Many temples of Sigmar and Shallya have taken up a tradition of sacred music. Sigmarites absolutely adore the spectacle and sound of a glorious choir singing in harmony about the wonders of the Empire and its greatest Emperor, and a temple with a grand choir can become wealthy and famous very quickly. Conservatories are common in Imperial cities, training cantors and choristers as the temples compete to hire the best musicians. The Cantor is a good way for an Entertainer or Minstrel to get their foot in the door of religion; it's actually a very quick 2nd tier class for an ex-Entertainer and can go directly into Priest afterwards. They're charming and learn a lot about music and religion, obviously, and get a unique talent where their music can boost divine magic's casting rolls. A large choir of proper Cantors can make any religious blessing rite much easier on a temple. The other value of the class is social; you can make a lot of money and a very respectable career writing hymns. There are also lay-scholars hired as instructors for the Initiates. The Catechist is not necessarily a priest, but they certainly train them. This is a way to get into the religious track from the academic ones, and again, it's actually a pretty quick second tier for a Student or Scholar who wants to dip into religious education. Annoyingly, they can't actually exit into Priest, and Students can already become Initiates, so Catechist is honestly kind of a waste of a class. They can't all be winners, I suppose. Still, if you wanted to stat up the humorless monk yelling at your Initiate I suppose it's not a waste to have the class. We also get a long and interesting section on statting up generic priest NPCs of all of the faiths, adding and removing talents and stats to reflect the different sorts of people called to the various Gods in case you really quickly need an NPC priest. This is a nice resource for a GM, and it goes all the way from Initiate to Anointed Priest. If you need quick stats for any of the religious professionals PCs encounter at random, they're here. Along with tables you can roll on if you really want to randomly determine why a priest is traveling or some little details about them. Next Time: Ugh, do I have to talk about the silly Hams Crusades? I suppose I do.
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Oct 18, 2018 16:37
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 Ariadna Units Ariadna is a big faction. It’s got four sectorials (sort of) and the vanilla option. It’s also meant to appeal to nationalism in large countries, to better sell the product, so it’s very heavily supported. This is gonna be a long post. Generic Ariadna lists feature high Physique values, trend toward but don’t guarantee high WIP scores, and run high order lists. Ariadna armies are great at murdering things, run the best camouflage game in Infinity, and are generally crap at specialist options. Remember, these guys are still decades behind the times on top of coming from the space equivalent of a third-world nation - they get very few doctor and engineer choices, almost no hackers, and extremely limited TAG and TAG-like choices. You will be feeding at least part of your army into a meat grinder to accomplish your objectives. The Force de Reponse Rapide Merovingienne is an old, old list, and it hasn’t been well-kept up. Space France was the first faction to be pseudo-squatted, where production of their models is ended and their rules support is given one last small update. The FRRM was originally themed around mobility options, since they’re intended to be the Ariandnan internal forces - in a crisis, they get there fast and wait for heavier troops to catch up. With the advent of new rules and gimmicks over the years that the French haven’t gotten, they fell back on their other schtick, which is mercenary troops. FRRM is the only way to have more than one hacker (not hacker type, literally one soldier) in an Ariadna list. They’re also the only sectorial to have native access to a TAG, although it’s definitely not the top of the line machine. Caledonia are close-combat specialists with a ton of smoke. They’re also particularly bereft of specialist options. Hope you like punching faces, because that’s about all you’re going to be doing. The British are secretly the Scots, down to models in kilts, because the nerds at Corvus Belli liked Braveheart a lot. There’s also the SAS, for reasons. USARF is well-armored and slow. While strictly speaking they have a lot of options, the most optimal choice you can take is to have a defensive fireteam in your backfield, a couple of inferior infiltrating grunts to shake stuff up in the midfield, and as many Foxtrot camo infiltrating forward observers as you can manage to get stuff done. Space America runs the lightest on werewolves and heaviest on bikers. The Tartary Army Corps (TAK) are the space Russians, and along with the new ALEPH sectorial, the most recent group to be released. TAK are good at most things, and may or may not be OP. Time will tell. The CEO has a pretty big boner for the space Russians, since his PC in the tabletop campaign that created the Infinity fluff was one of the Cossacks. What a concidence that this character now has a brand new model and ruleset to go with the new sectorial. In fairness, TAK has been teased since the beginning of the game, so I get why Russian-havers were excited. I just don’t care that much. Ariadna has a shitload of light infantry. The only group that could rival them would be Haqq, if Haqq had the SKU support Ariadna did. As it stands, if you want to drown your enemy in cheap orders, you’ve come to the right place.  Line Kazaks, Metro, Volunteers Generic line infantry in Ariadna are internally comparable. They don’t have great stats, but they’re cheap. Some of them can inferior infiltrate, but they’re not as good at it as Grunts.  Kazak doctor, Dozer, Wardriver, 112 Behold, your specialist choices. Ariadna is really, really limited when it comes to specialists. None of them are particularly great shakes, they all cost more than your typical line infantry by a decent to substantial margin, and you don’t get a lot of them. Wardrivers in particular run about as much as it would cost you to take two machinegunners in a line infantry group, for a really lackluster loadout and stats. There are named characters that can fill some of these roles, but you’ll pay a premium for them, and they’re still really squishy. FRRM can take a Nomad line infantry hacker, which isn’t great, but still better than the wardriver. Fluff-wise, they’re about what you’d expect. The 112 is a combination forest service ranger and fireman, who occasionally get conscripted into the army. Presumably someone keeps drawing unflattering cartoons in their barracks about antipodes stealing 112 Smith’s picnic basket. Dozers are probably the best pick out of this bunch, and that’s because of the toys they can bring. One has a giant glue bazooka, with limited uses but infinite potential for hilarity. The other lets you take what passes for Ariadnan remotes. Ordinarily, you’d need a hacker or a TAG to take remotes. Well, Ariadna doesn’t have those, so it has an engineer option with a remote controller for what’s basically a giant armored toy car with rockets.  Traktor Muls have Baggage, so you can replenish your limited-ammo weapons out of the backpacks someone’s thoughtfully slung in the rocket backdraft. Muls come in minesweeper, artillery, and total reaction versions.  FRRM Paracommando, USARF Airborne, Van Zant Ariadna is in a weird place as far as airborne troops. Every faction has some kind of Airborne Deployment profile, but they’re usually meant to drop into place on a point on the board their user selects, then scatter off; pretty straight forward stuff. Ariadna AD units work by different rules. In general, AD works a little like Hidden Deployment, but you have more control over where you place your troops, and there’s a roll involved. Dawn paratroopers don’t hold with that jet pack and jump ship nonsense and content themselves with diving out of planes, then gently wafting down amid antiaircraft fire, like real men. This means they come in off the table edge, rather than an arbitrary point on the board.  Deployment zones can shift around, but this is your basic AD key. At the beginning of a game, Parachutists will pick one table edge segment, write that down, and everybody with that skill comes in from that table edge for the rest of the game. You can’t pop out in your deployment field, so our Paracommando could come in anywhere off segment 1, 2, 3, or 4, or the non-deployment zone parts of 5 and 8. Van Zant is the named paratroop infantry, and he gets to AD: Tactical Jump. Instead of picking a segment at the beginning of the game, he can elect to use any segment of his choosing at any time, which typically means he shows up behind your deployment zone and starts murdering anyone you left in a vulnerable position. Watch your back or McConaughey will get you. If you really need an extra order on him, Van Zant comes in Executive Order flavor, which means that when he appears on the board, he immediately becomes your Lieutenant. It also means that your LT is now your opponent’s number one target, so exercise due caution. Paras and Airborne can be your LT, but since they start off board, your whole army would start the game in Loss of Lieutenant. Don’t do that. Otherwise, they’ve got reasonable stats and gear, but cost about three times as much as your average rifleman.  Spetznaz are evil little bastards. For about the same cost as other AD troopers in the faction, you could instead pick these guys, who are much deadlier in hand to hand, a bit better shots on average, and get to ignore the to-hit penalty for their target being in cover. The parachutist versions can have a big shotgun or a rifle, or you can take the Ambush Camouflage versions with a sniper rifle or AP HMG. Ambush Camo is another good shell game strategy. When you deploy your Spetznaz, they go on the table as a marker. As per regular camo, they have to tip their hand or get discovered before your enemy can do anything to them. You also get to put down a second camo marker as a decoy. With ambush camo and the prevalence of camouflage markers in the faction in general, it’s not uncommon for an Ariadna deployment to consist of a handful of models and a dozen or more camo markers. It’s not a happy sight to see across the table.   Loups-Garou are less useful than you’d hope, but they do have the look down. Those are some bitchin’ models, and they all date from before the advent of CAD sculpting. They’re most notable for their preponderance of special ammo. Weapons get very granular in this game, and once you get over the rather large hurdle of learning what the hell all the special snowflake names mean, there’s utility to it. Loup-Garou get stun grenades and viral rifles. Stun special ammo forces your target to make two BTS rolls for each hit you score with an attack. Failing either or both BTS rolls won’t cause a Wound, but botching even one will force your model into the Stunned state. Stunned models can’t attack, period, and they take a -3 modifier to every roll they make that isn’t BTS or ARM. Stun sucks to be hit with, and it’s enormous fun when you foil someone else’s plans with a flashbang. Other types of special ammo are relatively straight forward. AP halves a target’s ARM value; Double-action causes two ARM rolls for each successful hit, each of which can cause a wound; Explosive is the same as DA, but it causes three rolls; Nanotech targets BTS instead of Armor; and Shock will instantly kill a one-Wound model outright, no passing Unconscious, no revive rolls allowed. Loups-Garou are the FRRM SWAT team. Apart from the regular kind of emergencies, like active shooters, hostage situations, and maladjusted teenagers, the Loup-Garou mission includes handling violent dog-faces. In the proudest traditions of the Gendarmerie, the dog-face containment strategy is to shoot them dead, on the spot, with incredibly powerful weapons. See, Ariadnan werewolves are immune to standard special ammo. Stun doesn’t bother them, Explosive doesn’t get extra dice against them, even being set on fire doesn’t work. But exotic ammunition does. Exotic ammo types get pretty wild fast. Electromagnetic ammo targets BTS, halves it, and on a successful attack Isolates its target, as well as Immobilizing them if they’re a machine. Viral isn’t quite that bad, but it’s still extremely potent, and it’s perfect for clearing out models that otherwise get a second chance at life, like things with Dogged or No Wound Incapacitation, that let them keep on fighting after they’d normally drop dead. Viral makes your target roll BTS twice to resist damage, even if the first roll knocks them out. If they go straight to dead, that’s it, and no skill in heaven or on earth will save them. Viral ammo is generally the purview of Haqqislam geneticists or Tohaa biological horrors, as it’s a wide-spectrum viral agent with ripper nanites blended in. That’s an entirely reasonable thing for police to have.   Top - Grunts; Bottom - Marauders USARF is a little different in that it doesn’t have a standard light infantry line trooper. Instead, Grunts are Medium Infantry, which have a 4-2 Movement range. A lot of American models are MI, even. Grunts aren’t great - BS 11, PH 11, WIP 12, and still just one Wound. They are, however, ARM 3, which is pretty drat high for medium infantry, and preposterous compared to your average line trooper. Grunts are really meant to be bundled up in a fireteam, put on top of some cover, and act as a huge durable roadblock. Put your doctor of choice behind them lying prone to revive any of them that get shot for extra fun times. See that one up front with the flamethrower? That’s the Inferior Infiltrating Grunt. Grunts are not mobile by nature (ho ho commentary). But if you can sink a PH roll of 8 or less, the II Grunt must start in the enemy half of the table outside their deployment zone. A 40% chance isn’t great, but for 11 points and .5 SWC a pop, you can take two of these guys and just chuck ‘em at your opponent. If they don’t stick the landing, oh well. If they do, you put an ARM 3 model in cover, with a heavy flamethrower, near an objective or a chokepoint they have to use. Marauders are the same statline as Grunts, but one point fightier, and they deploy a little further up the table by default. They’re two or three times as pricey as Grunts.  The overwhelming majority of USARF models came out after Corvus Belli switched to CAD sculpting. While they get some extremely sharp details out of their process, sometimes they use CAD to take shortcuts in production. Other times, they just get lazy. USARF has a real problem with a lot of samey-looking units on the table. Reduce both those images back down to thumbnails and take a look at them from a few feet away from your monitor. Can you distinguish them in any way but their coloration? What if I told you there was a heavy infantry variant that was just as bad? In conclusion, space America is a land of lacking contrast.  There is a named character Grunt, Rosalind Munroe. They almost made her cool. Give it a think for a few moments; try and anticipate what a bunch of Spanish dorks wrote, given only that slice of information. Let’s see how you did: Rosie has a generic backstory where SOC recruited her out of space-Leavenworth because she punched her superior officer and called him a chickenshit. Rosie joined the army because her mother and grandmother are of course Riveters, described as the veritable bedrock of USAriadnan society, the productive hardass side of matronliness. The fluff then goes on to describe Rosie’s work as not half-asssed, but “whole-assed, even double-assed!” The whole passage is ostensibly written in the voice of Roger Van Zant, because of course we need a big macho man to tell us that women can be cool. Winning contestants, please send me your self-addressed stamped envelope to receive your no-prize. Anyway, Rosalind has a cool model, even if she’s wearing heeled combat boots.  Tankhunters Gofusky and Gallantnikov Tankhunters are meant to deal with armored threats, which really means TAGs and heavy infantry in a game with no tanks. You’ve got AP rifles and autocannons, but the actual one to take is the AP HMG gunner. Compare and contrast early hand-sculpted models with modern CAD sculpted pieces.  Highlander Greys hail from a tradition reaching back to regiments that fought at Waterloo. Unlike most of the heavy infantry in the game, Ariadnan HI typically can’t be hacked, since they’re just big guys in big armor, rather than power armored space marines. Also unlike other HI, they’re only ARM 3. They do have smoke, however, which is nice, even if they get their vision blocked by it as well. Greys also come equipped with T2 boarding shotguns and rifles, and AP HMGs, to represent how The particular Grey featured above is curious because it’s sort of an experiment Corvus Belli is running. Infinity models traditionally come in a box or blister pack, and only with the pieces they need for WYSIWIG assembly. A lot of models use the same core body, but have different arm or head sets to give them a different look. This is taking the same basic idea, but giving you a choice of which set for the same profile you’d like, which is cool and something I really enjoy. No word yet on if this trend will continue into the future, unfortunately. Greys can also form a special fireteam with…  Moramers, the other Caledonian HI unit. Moramers look great, and just aren’t good enough to justify their cost. They’re merely decent stats-wise, they don’t have any particular special abilities beyond being ARM 5, but they’re also BTS zero - anything with a BTS attack kills the hell out of your 30+ point model. They’re MOV 4-2, like the crappier Haqq heavy infantry, but they do have better weapons, comparable to the Grey’s loadouts.  Legally distinct from the Mormaer sculpt, the Veteran Kazaks are Line Kazaks, all grown up and given a major power boost. Vet Kazaks are a little weak in Ballistic Skill, but otherwise extremely effective combatants. They get AP or T2 rifles with flamethrowers or AP HMGs, for a very inexpensive 37 to 47 points, some of which get to ignore negative range modifiers to hit. They also come with a dearth of fireteam options. In addition to forming a core link of five of these guys, making them very killy and very hard to put down, you can attach three of them to a team of two Frontoviks, a recently-released combat engineer profile. That way you get the same firepower at a discount, plus two specialists to tag along with you to push buttons and fix anything that goes wrong with the Vet Kazaks. Perhaps most important, Veteran Kazaks are Wildcard units, and can join any fireteam in TAK. If there’s room, they can join up. Give them four Line Kazak friends for about the price of your Vet Kazak and get all the fireteam bonuses you could ask for.  Margot and Duroc What if Van Zant, but twice and meaner? Equipe Mirage-5 consists of Margot Berthier and Angelo Lafayette Duroc, the human and the dog-face respectively. Margot bounced around the FRRM forces as a highly-capable special operative until the rest of her team was wiped out. Duroc, meanwhile, is called out as not just an incredibly violent werewolf, but a Corsican. Shocking! Duroc worked for some mobsters and got the order to kill Margot, she beat him senseless, and now they have a Beauty and the Beast thing going. I particularly like them because you can paint them up like the Boss and Naked Snake. Margot and Duroc deploy as a team, but act independently, unlike many other team-styled units in the game. Margot’s a Moblot, the FRRM heavy infantry option. She’s about as good as a Grey, with the same armor and one Wound, but she’s shock immune and carries around a light grenade launcher. Duroc is one point of CC less fighty than your average werewolf, and still carries around two template weapons and smoke grenades. Margot and Duroc have AD: Airborn Infiltration, so they still have to pick a part of the table edge to walk in off of, but they pick it when they jump. You don’t want either of them rampaging around your back line and eating your order generating line infantry, and you especially don’t want the both of them doing it at the same time. The team is a lot pricier than Van Zant, at a nice 69 points and 2 SWC.  Chasseurs, SAS, Foxtrots, Scouts What makes Ariadna competitive, more than any other factor, is the prevalence of cheap camo infiltrating specialists. For about 250 points in a vanilla list, if you were really so weirdly inclined, you could take ten of these guys, each capable of accomplishing most missions, some with terrain boosts, some with longer range weapons, some with antipersonnel mines, and all able to deploy up the board in enemy territory as camo markers. That’s not counting irregular models with similar abilities or named characters. Nomads, an army with an vast variety of units and cheap toys, can get seven equivalents for 150 points, but two of them are irregular orders. You’d never do either of the above things outside of a gimmick list, but you could, is the thing. Ariadna gets high-quality infiltrators at dirt-cheap prices, and they can cherry pick exactly which variety they want. I particularly recommend the Chasseurs; Foxtrots may be a little cheaper, but Chasseurs get Sixth Sense level 1, so they get to ignore surprise attacks, and they also come equipped with a rifle/flamethrower/mine set, so you can really force your opponent to make bad decisions in their reactive turn. They’re all spooky high-speed low-drag operators in the fluff. Can’t win ‘em all, sadly.  L - Ratnik; R - Blackjack, and Grunt for scale These are not TAGs. They may be hackable, powered armor units carrying heavy weapons, possessing multiple wounds, and they’re probably a bad investment of your points, and they might not be able to fit through person-sized doors like a TAG, but they’re not TAGs, okay? TAGs let you take remotes, these guys don’t, QED. Blackjacks and Ratniks are sort of like the power loader from Aliens, if instead of a supremely cool setpiece that emphasized the triumph of proletarian and feminine power over chauvanistic militarism, it was kind of lovely. These not-TAGs aren’t really good enough to play with the big boys, so when they take a wound, their profile degrades.  That’s what that Lo-Tech A skill is. Lose your first wound, you drop down to the Battle Ravaged profile, like a variant GI Joe figure. You can’t get repaired in the field back to the full-power profile either. They’re kind of interesting models, if also gigantic pains in the rear end to assemble, but I’d rather get my jollies somewhere else. Blackjacks are meant to be the prototype for the Ratnik, and they’re a little less fighty for less of a points burden. These are both the fanciest technology Dawn has to offer, and not really that great a piece. Blackjacks are intentionally vague about how they came to get their name, which seems odd for the army’s showpiece bit of R&D, while Ratniks are described as like the Harley Davidsons of the battlefield, which is to say noisy and ridden by assholes.    Cameronian, Dog-Warriors, Devil Dogs Another pseudo-TAG option, werewolves are big bulky things that hurt people, often in melee. They all have about the same stat line, with Devil Dogs getting a little more armor and another gun option, but losing their regular grenades. Werewolves have an irregular order and an extremely impetuous order, coupled with a 6-4 MOV and smoke; they’ll hustle themselves up the board to try to close to melee, without a lot of care as to what gets in their way, be that opponents or difficult terrain. Dog Warriors are technically a better option than their counterparts, because Cameronians and Devil Dogs (ooah, sarnt) start in their werewolf forms and have two wounds, while Dog-Warriors begin as normal guys with a reduced profile. Sort of like an inverse Blackjack, when the Dog-warrior takes a wound, it’ll go bonkers and turn into a bigger, nastier form, and it gains two wounds, for a total of three. The Devil Dog’s little buddy works like an Auxbot, sans the flamethrower and with the ability to detect hidden units and mines. The Cameronian fluff is oddly specific to northern British life in the 80s, with a recruiting sergeant in a pub waxing philosophic about how there might be work in the mines, but if you really want to be free, you’d join the Army and see the world, and also be a terrifying monster. I assume there are several songs about this sad state of affairs by Space Christy Moore. The Dog Warriors are more of a breakdown of what a werewolf really is, but I will say the guy with the scars has some sweet Russian prison tattoos. The Devil Dog segment is a bastardized version of both the Marine Corps Hymn and the “the few, the proud, the Marines” advertisements, because even hundreds of years in the future when all of them have turned into murder-furries, Marines just won’t stop being loving Marines.  Wulvers are the red-furred stepchildren of Ariadna, looked down on even by the dog-faces. Same basic fluff, but it specifically calls out the notion that these guys are intended to run head-long into the enemy’s guns and try to take as many as they can out before they get cacked themselves. Smaller and less quick across the board, Wulvers are a little more expensive than most of the werewolves, since they get useful guns and know how to use them. The werewolves are a fire-and-forget way to block line of sight and annoy your opponent, while Wulvers are a little more like regular troopers.  Get out of here, S.T.R.E.L.O.K. Streloks are seriously just the guys from STALKER, down to the balaclava. We don’t have the fluff for them readily available, and damned if I’m sorting through the official forums to find it. Still, they managed to sculpt another lady wearing mostly-sensible armor. Irregulars and B-sides Ariadna doesn’t have quite the penchant for irregular troopers that Haqq does, or at least not for the same purposes, but they’ve got a fair bunch that occupy roles that’d ordinarily be used for regular soldiers. You get a discount for irregulars compared to normal folks because they don’t contribute their order to the army’s collective pool, while still being able to spend those regular orders if they need them. In what turns out to be a pretty decent implementation of how you’d use irregulars in an actual warzone, here they’re pretty handy to park them somewhere and let them do their own thing. Just expect them to be a drain on your resources if they end up being the right person in the right place at the wrong time.  Caterans are some old models. There was a brief push to have these really elaborate bases, like a little pre-made diorama. Some of the French units actually have rules about entrenching, and you’re meant to pop your model on and off the bigger diorama base to represent whether it’s dug in or not. Turns out that’s kind of a huge pain, since you need multiple models for one unit, you need to buy magnets, or you have to dump a fully-based model on top of another base like some sort of regretful Jenga tower. All that is to say that the model you see above is still Silhouette 2, just like every other average dude in these writeups. Caterans are limited camouflage models, which means once they reveal themselves, they can’t get back into the camouflaged state. They retain the general -3 camo mod to get hit, however, so if you post this guy on top of a midfield position in cover, he’s going to be really, really hard to dig out. You will take only the T2 sniper rifle version of this profile. Former soldiers fallen into brigandry, Caterans have been picked back up by the army either as a matter of honor, or because they got pinched by another clan and are being made to pay their debt to society on the front lines.  Texas Rangers but in space and armed with a bow. Hardcases are an entire unit constellation composed of that guy you know who went kinda Unibomber after high school, living out in an isolated cabin in the woods and hunting deer for most of his food and clothing. Hardcases get ambush camo, infiltration, and they can ignore rough terrain. They also have the first appearance of the Tactical Bow. Somewhere along the line, the Infinity inhabitants forgot how to suppress guns. If you sneak up on someone and plug them in the back of the head or sword them, it makes enough noise that anyone within a certain radius will be alerted to your presence and you’ll no longer be able to surprise them. Knives and Tactical Bows have the Silent keyword attached, however, so you can murder with impunity, as long as no one sees you doing it. Tac bows have Double Action ammo and count as anti-material weapons, so they can be used to destroy certain bits of scenery. How that squares with Silent is above my pay grade.  Technically I lied to you about the number of engineers in the Ariadna lists. Irhmandinos are kind of a warband unit, like the werewolves here or the mutts in Haqq; they’re irregular impetuous, cheap, they’ve got smoke, and they’re as good at close combat as they are bad at shooting. They’re also, by bizarre happenstance, fully capable of handling Engineer objectives, repairing your fallen robots, etc. They’re not bad engineers, though not the best in the game by any stretch, and the one you’ll want to take with a template weapon is only 8 points. These guys are probably worth at least a little of your time. Smugglers and thieves, Irmandinos slink along the rivers of Caledonia, selling bootleg scotch and stolen merchandise to whoever will take their trade. In addition to every one of them a genius with the duct tape and the percussive maintenance, they get the Booty and Scavenger skills.  Despite the odds, not that kind of Booty. Booty is one of a number of skills in the game that lets you start out with a randomized piece of gear or trait that’s non-standard to your troop’s profile. On deployment, you roll on the chart to see what your model gets. Booty level 1 has things like +1 Armor or regular grenades, gets better with light flamethrowers grenade launchers, and can top out at things like +4 ARM or a monofilament close combat weapon. Booty level 2 gives access to better stuff, like a smart sniper rifle, an HMG, or a motorcycle. Scavenger lets you exercise more choice. Move your Irhmandino into base-to-base with an unconscious enemy, and pick one piece of gear or one weapon. Congratulations, that’s yours now, your guy has a TAG-mounted railgun, or now he’s a hacker, or he’s got TO camo. It’s also an attack, used to finish off said downed enemy, which can occasionally be a bonus objective for missions. There’s also the 45th Galwegians. They’re great at butchering guys in close combat, and crap at everything else. Irregular impetuous, smoke, etc. They get Berzerk, so they can take one on the chin to force you to take one on the chin too, and with Dogged, they won’t die until you kill them again or the end of the current turn. They may look strangely familiar to you, in fact.  Yep. Galwegins can also form a five-man fireteam in Caledonia, so long as you take  William Wallace (1270-ish to 1305), “Guardian of Scotland in the name of the King,” and subject of a wildly inaccurate film that nerds love for reasons I’ve never really been able to grasp. During the Ariadnan Commercial Conflicts, when the major powers were trying to carve up the planet for their own purposes, ALEPH created Wallace with PanO and Yu Jing input. The plan was to drop Wallace in from orbit, have him wander in from the wilderness, and let his force of personality and skill at arms either take over Caledonia, or enable it to get the upper hand on the other Ariadnan states. With sudden and violent upheaval in the Ariadnan political system, the powers that be hoped to knock them out of consideration for recognition by the space UN, the O-12. That done, the planet would be free for the picking. Because ALEPH is stupid, it dropped Wallace’s stealth capsule in via the north pole, ostensibly the hardest to detect because what idiot spends the delta vee for a polar orbit? Wallace’s capsule hit a severe polar storm on the way down, however, and veered hundreds of miles off course, deep into Antipode territory. The landing was rough, and Wallace took substantial head trauma that would have killed your baseline human. You guessed it, the head wound gave him amnesia and broke the communications hardware that let ALEPH whisper in his ear. Leaking goop from his head and totally unaware of who or where he was, Wallace stumbled through the wilderness, killing any Antipode that attacked him, until a group of hunters found him. Picture a Scottish man with a head wound, built like a brick shithouse and covered in hair, nude but for a few mutant wolf skins that he obtained with his bare hands, bumping into a group of locals out on the stalk for hyper-deer or whatever - they discover he’s completely lost his mind, but he’d be happy to have a drink and a warm fire. That’s Celtic as gently caress. The hunters took him back to their village, assuming he was an injured Cateran. Wallace healed incredibly quickly, which was good, since all the Antipodes he’d killed had friends, and they were bearing down on the village with revenge on their group minds. As they attacked, Wallace leapt from bed and rallied the townsfolk, displaying an inherent understanding of tactics and leadership. Wallace’s efforts enabled the townspeople to fight off the Antipode force that should have by all rights rolled right over them, but by the same token, Wallace was the reason the wolves attacked in the first place, so he had to answer to the council of all the clans. Imagine again, this lunatic with superhuman combat abilities, being called on the carpet by a bunch of old men, and the only response to any question about who he is and just what the hell he’s doing here he can muster is “I dunno.” Fortunately, the local Nomad trade mission had a representative in council that day, and they had previous experience when it came to stealing one of the Recreations. The Black Hand, the Nomad intelligence group, dispatched techs and agents in short order to pry all the ALEPH loyalty hardware out of Wallace’s head and fix him up. Wallace, for his part, wanted nothing to do with the AI overlord, and was perfectly happy to build a new identity in Caledonia. Wallace is a swaggering braggart, but he’s earned at least most of that braggadocio through deed. He’s a little less of an rear end in a top hat these days, as increasing experience and becoming a real boy have tempered the wild man in him. Rules-wise, William Wallace is Joan in a skirt. He’s less durable and a little less deadly, but still fully capable of killing most things in melee. He too has Inspiring Leadership, so all those irregular units I’ve covered? All regular orders now… in Caledonia. Inspiring Leadership has to be on your LT to take effect, and the only LT profile Wallace has is available in the sectorial. So he’s not as generally useful as Joan, but substantially more so in his niche. Still, he’s 35 points and no SWC. If you’re playing Caledonians, it is wildly in your best interest to take him. For vanilla, eh, maybe pick something else if you really have to stab somebody. Next: Finally, the Nomads. grassy gnoll fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Oct 18, 2018 |
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Oct 18, 2018 16:56
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So you can be a recreation that gets hit on a head with a rock and goes native. This is important information. E: Also, I can't help but picture ALEPH as some kind of very out of her depth nerd frantically scrambling around trying to use her love of trivia and mythology to be a God Computer, based on what we've seen so far.
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Oct 18, 2018 17:05
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 The First Seal Another translation issue...in all fact, the First Seal broken is Pestilence! There are two things that announce its entrance to the world. On January 19th, 2003, a previously unknown alliance of Middle Eastern fanatics launches a preemptive strike against Israel that catches everybody off guard including the rest of the Islamic world. An unidentified bioweapon was loaded into a sophisticated warhead of mysterious manufacture and fired at Jerusalem. This disease is so lethal it kills anyone that contracts it in seconds of inhalation. Destroying the city and because of the winds, the majority of the nation of Israel within minutes of the impact. The alliance that launched this are very unhappy to find out that this disease does not disperse, but remains as a contact poison on any surface it lands on, soaking into porous surfaces and remaining virulent. This 'unforeseen' action means that the disease is never clearly identified as no matter the level of protection, anyone who enters the former borders of Israel dies almost instantly. Over the next days, the winds carry this over Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon as well basically destroying them. Syria, Iraq, and Iran get slightly hit but are still functional. Pestilence's second attack is the creation of a special disease that targets anyone who has a SUC implant. As this is quite widespread this disease travels far and wide. The disease, nicknamed 'Gold', is not fatal but is incredibly painful and debilitating with a final symptom of bright yellow jaundice that gave the disease its common name. This disease was gruesome, agonizing, and completely incapacitating but not actually lethal. The only ones immune to it are those that never received the implant. The CDC is helpless because... quote:Finally, on January 23, the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta suffered Pestilence's coup de grace. In a display case deep in the center of the complex, a vial, which once contained the last smallpox culture on earth, was filled once again. In additions to those new hotnesses, Pestilence released some classics. Epidemics of Smallpox, Bubonic Plague, and Anthrax start hitting population centers around the world.
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Oct 18, 2018 18:50
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Pestilence being the first Rider is accurate, at least. ...to later translations. (It should be Conquest.)
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Oct 18, 2018 18:58
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FFRRPG 4e Part16: Fencer, Phalanx & Rune Knight Today we will be delving into to two of the more disappointing secondary jobs, one without a clear theme. The Fencer Level 1- You get !Arrow guard, which blocks ranged attacks this makes it the only thing to stop jutsu's yay. Specializations Lighting Strike: Opponents can't interrupt your actions, is this just interrupts or reactions too if it's just interrupts before your turn that's good. If it's no reactions well fencer is worthwhile just for how broke this is. Slim Target: Once per round you can drop your lowest init die instead a held die for a reaction, not that you should need to hold dice for reactions. Also gain Bows or Light Blades, as an extra equip goes pretty good. Swarm Attack: Gives !Swarmstrike, which inflicts poison.....ok. Level 19- Premptive Attack: You can set one of your iniative dice to 1 after rolling. Wind to armor, Water to M.Armor. Specializations Return fire: You succeed with arrow guard you can discard an initiative die to !Attack...why not just let me attack? Coverage: Use arrow guard when any ally is attacked, fine. False Weakness: When you succeed at arrow guard you can force the target to repeat the attack losing their next initiative die. That's interesting. I like that this is the improve arrow guard level. Level 35- Slippery: Increase the difficulty of spells at you by 2. Since their default difficulty is 0....ummmm....yeah. Specializations Divert Attention: You have vanish for the first 3 ticks of each round, this is weird. Not sure how to grade it or if it's on the right class. Just a Scratch: Ignore the extra effects of a crit 1/round. Level 50- Total Defense: You can postpone any number of actions. I am 100% certain you can do preposterously broken stuff with this, but i'd have to spend 49 levels as fencer. Specializations Water Dance: Each time you are attacked reduce your reactions difficulty by 1 to a minimum of 0+Enemy Stat. This resets at end of round. Lethal Precison: After rolling a crit on a non-spell attack that can't crit you can discard an initiative die to let it crit. Why isn't this on the dervish? Criticisms: You know, most of the secondary classes are good, then there is this smoking pile. Lemme quote. quote:Defensive job that believes that the best way of not dying is being out of the way of attacks. Level 1- Auto Strengthen (Speed) (Reduce all initiative dice rolled by 1.) Level 19- Change nothing Level 35- You begin each combat with a saved initiative die. Level 50- Steal Footwork from the rogue(ie get an extra initiative die at 10.) Behold a functional secondary job. Now if someone wants to be the guy who always goes first they know what to pick. The Phalanax Level 1- Impenetrable: You gain !Third eye, when hit with a melee attack roll earth vs. (4+Wind) to negate it. So block/parry but i can equip a two handed weapon. Specializations Martial Trainings: Choose two types of weapons: Heavy Weapons, Polearms, Medium Weapon & Shield(Why i have third eye?), Katana or Throwing Weapons. You can equip them. If this gave you heavy armor and the two handed weapons (Polearms, Heavy Weapons, and Katanas) I'd see the point. Excessive Force- Your crits break charges. Well this doesn't fit the theme at all. Willpower- You can use fire or earth for hp, and get +1 hp multiplier up to 5. Welp, best option. Level 19- Tireless: While hp is 25% or lower gain protect. Wind to Armor, Fire to M.Armor. Specializations Inspiring Courage: Tireless is now protectga. Preventive Defense: Tirless is active at 50% or lower. Bone breaker: ONCE PER ROUND at 25% or lower hp your !Attack does 150% damage. Yeah no, not touching this. Level 35- Unshakeable: You gain !Shield wall, which let's you absorb PHYSICAL attacks that target you and an ally, if you succeed you negate it, if you fail you take another 50%. Besides being kind of meh being it only works on group physicals this is ABSOLUTELY the wrong class. Specializations Runic Shield: You can shield wall spells and magical attacks, ah yes the specialization actually use your ability. Reinforced Shield: When you use !Shield Wall you get Strenghen(Armor) until end of turn. Level 50- Indestructible: When you gain a barrier status it lasts an additional round. Specializations !Scream: Reaction to negate any non-damaging portions of an attack. Uncontrollable: Gain the Slow(3) action !Meatbone Slash, which does your max hp or 999 whichever is less. Well that's a hell of an upgrade over life break. Criticisms: The planet will break before the guard, and you are the guard. That's the pitch, practice does not seem to pan out. While the idea is fine "Boost your defense sky high because no abilities are used on tanking" you get shield wall the worst tanking ability in the game, and the defense buff....isn't that great. Ugh return me to the world of good secondary jobs. Oh hi Rune Knight Level 1- !Runic: is a reaction, it eats spells and magical attacks, but importantly IS A REACTION so you will never eat your own teams spells. For some reason it only affects spells that hit you, but does count group spells. Specializations Magic Drain: When you !Runic a spell you get the mp cost added to you. I like how what seems a core feature isn't but a specialization of the ability. (I'm serious.) Runic Area: Use !Runic to protect anyone in the party. Offensive Runes: Use !Runic when a monster is targeted....this should just be combined with area. Exotic Runes: Use Wind or Water for !Runic, if you do reduce the difficulty by 1 to boot. Level 19- Spell Protection: While hp is 25% or lower gain shell. Wind to Armor, Fire to M.Armor. Specializations Protection Circle: Shellga. Enhanced Protection: At 50% or lower shell. Desperate Blow: Gain the quick magical action !Magic Ruin, sacrifice your shell while it's up for the rest of the encounter and if you hit reduce their mp by (Max Hp - Current hp)....hahaha yeah no. Not touching this. Level 35- Dispel Magic: Gain the Slow(1) action !Dispel Strike, an attack that removes all positive statuses from the target. Auto or SoS statuses are suppressed until end of round. Specializations Selective Dispel: You choose which statuses to end, positive or negative....ummmm that's really niche. Anti-Magic Zone: You may use an All version of dispel strike that does no damage. Also very niche(my enemies have all the statuses i have none) also should really be it's own action. Level 50- Return Magic: When you !Runic a spell discard an initiative die to cast it. Specializations Triple Magic: After being hit by a spell use the reaction !Triple magic, to cast it three times. This is ok, in that i use only one init die to counter magic with. !Spell Ruin: Pay 10% of your max mp to attack for 150% damage and the same to their mp.....Nope not insulting this, 150% weapon damage is a lot in this system and then this happens to wreck mp as well. Criticisms: The level 35 specializations are terrible, desperate blow blows. Like most secondary jobs the Rune Knight knows what it wants to do and just does it. WhitemageofDOOM fucked around with this message at 19:21 on Oct 18, 2018 |
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Oct 18, 2018 19:18
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grassy gnoll posted:Next: Finally, the Nomads. Yessss, my people. The only group willing to tell ALEPH to go gently caress itself.
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Oct 18, 2018 19:18
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:
And they missed the very real possible contamination of Ebola that did happen in the CDC - I'm surprised edgelord jesus came didn't go for 'vomit all your blood and die' disease.
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Oct 18, 2018 19:31
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I find Ariadna is just too dumb and all over the place, and my bar for that is pretty high.
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Oct 18, 2018 19:33
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What's the tone of The End? Are you just surviving in a lovely post-christpocalyptic world? Or can the remaining humans go "gently caress all this" and invade Heaven? I've really wanted to see "Salvation War, but actually well written" so I'd like to know how much I'm setting myself up for disappointment (unless you'd rather just save it for the review)
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Oct 18, 2018 19:57
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Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Tome of Salvation The Crusades and the Crusaders who fight them So. The Hams Crusades. This entire backstory event is terrible. We'll start with what happened, then we'll talk about why it's not good. So in the 1400s, while the Empire was falling into 3 Empires and all, the Sultan of Araby decided he wanted to come out of Warhams North Africa and conquer Warhams Spain, Estalia. He was very successful in this, taking many slaves and seizing Magritta, the (according to Estalians) birthplace of Myrmidia. The Bretonnian king Louis the Righteous decided he was going to assault the Sultan's armies before they reached Bretonnia. Remember: This is after the 1360 declaration by Empress Ottilia that Talabecland would no longer be part of the Empire, supported by the Ar-Ulric. The Empire is not a state at this point. Also remember we got a description of this from the document at the beginning of this very book saying none of the Empire's cults directly supported Louis's plan to attack Estalia; here in Chapter 10 we get a statement that the Empire stopped its civil war temporarily in order to send small numbers of knights from each Elector Count's armies to go fight alongside the Brets. They make a big deal of the army marching south to liberate Estalia, and how such selfless action is rare in the Old World's history. The evil sultan flees without even fighting them, leaving behind a dumb sheik sidekick to fortify Magritta and hold the crusaders for 8 years while his retreating army burns and enslaves much of Estalia ahead of the crusaders, who are so horrified by this that they swear vengeance and pursue into Araby. The Crusaders completely burn the northern city of Copher when they arrive, slaughtering almost the entire population, and the evil sultan hopes that will satisfy them. It does not, they fight across the desert and grow 'more convinced of their own righteousness by the trials they faced', and then meet the evil sultan in battle, where his forces are slaughtered because he's very evil and bad at leading armies. The knights 'used magic and common sense' to avoid dying of dehydration or exposure (again note: 900 years before the establishment of the Colleges). The Knights continue to plague Araby for generations, until they're certain they've killed every last one of the families and descendants of Jaffar's army, then go home. So let's talk about this. I am not an expert on the Crusades, but I know more than enough to know this is a pretty goddamn offensive way to do a pastiche of a tremendously complex and historically important series of religious wars. We have the heroic crusaders so enraged by the idea of Europeans being made slaves that they spend a century hunting every last slaver to the death, then going home to great glory after a fairly easily series of wars and adventures. And the whole thing exists entirely to go 'oh hey this is where most of these religious orders of knights were founded'. Firstly, none of this poo poo is necessary to have tons of religious orders of knights, especially given the enormous religiously-split three way civil war currently ending the Empire of Sigmar as a cohesive political entity, not to mention the regular incursions of hellvikings and dracula. Secondly, the actual crusades would have been a much better, more fitting sort of event for Hams' milieu, being that they were a complete and total goddamn mess. Where are my scheming Venetians getting the crusade to sack their rivals in Constantinople? Where are the Byzantines struggling to deal with the huge armies of foreign knights foraging across their lands? Where are the kings trying to use this mess to carve out an idea of legitimate statehood? Where is any of the massive goddamn mess that actually exists? Making the crusades a simple story where shining knights go and fight an evil sultan for awhile isn't just offensive, it's boring and doesn't fit the way the things human nations get up to in Hams are usually messy as hell. It also just doesn't fit into the polytheistic religious milieu very well. Why is this war specifically a religious war? The war against arabs instead of, again, the war against hellvikings who worship the devil? The book has no explanation. And again, does it really add anything? The Hams Crusades suck. They suck a lot. They're a lazy backstory event in the worst way. The book talks about how they were important to the formation of militant orders because they weren't a response to a religious disagreement but an 'unexpected political attack', except that, uh, the Empire gets unexpectedly attacked all the goddamn time. That's what all the vampire, rat nazi, and hellviking wars are. Why is it suddenly special and making everyone set aside their differences and come together for religious war when they get attacked by arabs? Anyway, crusades still happen, but they tend to happen for religious reasons, and they tend to be pointed at Chaos, Undead, or to spark civil unrest when one of the cults decides that another political entity is blasphemous. Sigmarites and Ulricans both love crusades, and while Myrmidians add a religious element to every war they go to, they do so so regularly that they don't bother to call it a crusade. We get a 3rd tier Crusader class, but it's a strictly shittier Knight of the Inner Circle and there's no reason to take it unless you're a Sergeant or Veteran, who can enter it to get onto a knightly track. We get a bit about how Crusaders tend to view what they do as a very violent form of pilgrimage, and that while the cults don't actually believe that a person can wipe away a life's worth of sin by donating heavily to a crusade, many nobles and knights believe you can and the cults don't correct them in order to be able to fund their armies. Next Time: Holy Orders of the Empire
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Oct 18, 2018 19:59
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ugh, the Crusades just...just pretend they never happened, the only good they did was be the cause of there being enough wealth to found all the knightly orders
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Oct 18, 2018 20:20
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Kaza42 posted:What's the tone of The End? Are you just surviving in a lovely post-christpocalyptic world? Or can the remaining humans go "gently caress all this" and invade Heaven? I've really wanted to see "Salvation War, but actually well written" so I'd like to know how much I'm setting myself up for disappointment (unless you'd rather just save it for the review) The first one. However, there are a few things that make it a lot more interesting such as who else is stuck on Earth with you...
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Oct 18, 2018 20:22
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Be fair, the Crusades also gave us the first historical case of a multinational corporation (complete with its own professional pmc) coming to blows with national governments.
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Oct 18, 2018 20:24
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Mors Rattus posted:ugh, the Crusades But like, they don't even need to be there for that. You have a massive religiously-themed schismatic civil war happening in the Empire! A reason for Ulricans, Sigmarites, and Taalites to all be creating orders of warriors! You have the loving Dracula War (Sorry, War of Blood) that happens to Estalia, wherein it's strongly implied Myrmidia herself actually killed the Lord leading the enormous vampire army. You have the repeated Chaos incursions. There are dozens of reasons for people to put more and more wealth towards funding elite units of holy knights. There's no need to even have the Crusades to explain where they all come from. Also if you're going to give me the crusades goddamnit Hams give me crazy corporate state Venice! E: Basically religious war is going to go a lot differently in a world where the devil has an army that wears uniforms that say 'THE DEVIL' on them and attacks you sometimes. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 20:30 on Oct 18, 2018 |
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Oct 18, 2018 20:26
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Night10194 posted:Also if you're going to give me the crusades goddamnit Hams give me crazy corporate state Venice! Isn't this Marienburg?
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Oct 18, 2018 20:37
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Cythereal posted:Isn't this Marienburg? They're Holland.
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Oct 18, 2018 20:38
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Venice exists, it's a huge ultra-fortified Dwarf harbor.
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Oct 18, 2018 20:43
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but yeah the Crusades are nonsense because none of the Classical or Imperial pantheons would actually back them
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Oct 18, 2018 20:44
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There's also very little reason given for the Bretonnians doing so, besides 'we want to make sure they don't attack Bretonnia next', which doesn't explain the long counter-invasion. The real reason is because the Bretonnians are French, and you can't have THE CRUSADES without the French. E: I mean Myrmidia was probably down for 'get rid of these people who are attacking you' and possibly 'attack them back' at least. But the Brets and Imperials, who are the bulk of the crusade, uh, didn't worship Myrmidia at the time.
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Oct 18, 2018 20:46
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I mean we've seen that Sigmarites are good at stirring up needless religious conflict, and you don't need to give Bretonnians a huge excuse to go off on an ill concieved quest to do something heroic, so Crusades aren't necessarily an out of nowhere idea, it's just my god this is the most half-assed and insulting way of doing them, to basically everyone involved. If you want to make it well intentioned and not have the Brets and Empire come off as assholes in the matter, sure, you can do that without portraying it as being heroic, or portraying the opposing side as horrible, incompetent slavers.
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Oct 18, 2018 20:54
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Sigmar is actually a fundamentally defensive god. Sigmarites are aggressive and belligerent, but they don't go a-conquering. Sigmar formed his Empire and that's what he'll keep, thank you very much. (I mean, they'd go for the Wasteland if they could but that's because the Wasteland is an Imperial secession.)
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Oct 18, 2018 20:55
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That's the other weird bit: The opening fiction even says 'none of the religious cults openly supported the crusades' and then down here in chapter 10, they're the origins of the Templar Orders outside of the White Wolves. We all know the real reason for this, of course: The Crusades stuff was probably written in the 80s and they just didn't bother updating it for this book, much like the weird, turbo-racist Hung section in ToC was apparently copy-pasted from a much older Chaos sourcebook into the RPG.
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Oct 18, 2018 21:15
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Halloween Jack posted:I find Ariadna is just too dumb and all over the place, and my bar for that is pretty high. They completely lost me at 'werewolf comes out of loving nowhere!'
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Oct 18, 2018 21:58
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 18:53 |
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Turns out Americans can't even colonize another solar system without slavery.
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Oct 18, 2018 22:06
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