|
Anniversary posted:I thought adepts couldn't use charging rituals? Or at least not safely, because they violate the principles upon which adept magic is based and knowing that you could get significant charges out of a ritual is literally mind breaking. the birthday ritual is presented more as "a story you hear occasionally in the underground, but that nobody can prove actually works". in general you can't be an adept and an avatar, it's one or the other. in-setting, everyone that has tried to do both has immediately gone completely bugfuck crazy. the 2E book about adepts mentions that there's been rumors of a ritual that can allow anyone to gain charges for as long as human beings have been around, and it's entirely possible no such thing has ever existed but it's just one of those persistent "facts" that everyone inexplicably believes
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 14:21
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 20, 2024 04:55 |
|
|
Freaking Crumbum posted:the birthday ritual is presented more as "a story you hear occasionally in the underground, but that nobody can prove actually works". in general you can't be an adept and an avatar, it's one or the other. in-setting, everyone that has tried to do both has immediately gone completely bugfuck crazy. For various degrees of crazy (looks at The Freak, who seems surprisingly functional, considering). And I'll try and source what caused me to think that. e: Just checked the 3e book and it looks like what y'all have been saying is exactly what it says. Maybe I'm misremembering something from 2e or just completely misinterpreted this header. Anniversary fucked around with this message at 14:42 on Nov 6, 2018 |
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 14:29
|
|
|
The Freak was kind of put out there as the exception that proves the rule. In the same way that UA itself repudiates the cosmology of Vampire and its imitators--where the real history of the world is a history of supernatural creatures manipulating things from behind the scenes--the Freak is sort of a parody of the way people powergame in those games, by playing some ungodly hybrid of different splats that has all the powers. The Freak is functional because it has nothing to live for besides maintaining its position, getting more power, and occasional casual sex. It's a deeply miserable person. Greg Stolze posted:Things the Freak can do that you can't: Go into a gunfight bare-handed and confident. Shift appearance. Make money rapidly by selling psychic surgery. Kill with minimal effort.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 15:48
|
|
|
I'm really digging these writeups. The setting of this game seems real dope, with almost a Dark Souls sorta vibe, as often as that phrase is repeated these days. There's something melancholy and terrifying to the artwork and to the idea of an entire nation moving across the mountains fleeing an undead curse only to wind up in a complex web of societies built on the ruins of an ancient empire, along with a sprawling and barely understood forest full of mysteries and dangers. A lot of fantasy has stopped being interesting to me lately, but Symbaroum is definitely catching my attention.
|
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 16:45
|
|
|
Alright we’ve got one last update of the Adventure book before I do some more example characters and broken combos for an update. I’ll then move on to Aberrant. Chapter 8: Heroes and Villains We start with the Aeon Society. We get a description of who they are and an idea of what they do, without getting a detailed stat block. Pretty much any of these NPCs can do what you need them to when it comes down to it. Maxell Anderson Mercer: The founder of the Aeon Society, he’s the stereotypical genius badass pulp protagonist. He and his friend Michael Donighal were the two closest people to Hammersmith’s machine when it blew up, and it had some… strange results. Max was knocked out by the explosion, and woke up surrounded by the Aeon Society, in 1942. Including an older version of himself. Mercer’s able to travel through time, and spent quite some time exploring it before returning to six months after the experiment failed. He’s got a bunch of Background Enhancements and skills, but his main mechanic is his Chronal Awareness. He can travel through time, but especially easily to certain key times in history that also relate to the Inspired. There’s no real system for it, if you need him to be able to do something he can do it as long as it’s wibbly-wobbly timey wimey stuff (including speeding up and slowing down the personal time of people for to beat their asses). Whitley Styles: His father ran a gross exploitative company in India, and some locals took offense. Unfortunately for all involved, those locals were the villains from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Whitley was kidnapped and brainwashed into becoming a deadly assassin, eventually killing his own father. Max Mercer rescued him some time after that, and was able to bring him back to his senses. In the mean time, his father’s partner had stolen the company. He struggles against that douchebag and the murderous cultists who still want to kill him for his betrayal. He’s a powerful Mesmerist and a bad motherfucker in a fight. He’s also one of the characters who will live long enough to be important in Aberrant. Professor Benjamin Franklin Dixon: This dude lives hard and sciences hard. At the urging of his future wife and shortly thereafter future ex-wife he signed on to assist Dr. Hammersmith, which is how he became Inspired. He’s a stalwart with Mad Scientist and some others, and he’s considered the world’s most talented scientist (which is why his ex-wife who we’ll meet later is also his Nemesis). Cleaning up the booze and vomit from the plans for some amazing invention amuses me. Danger Ace: Real name Jake Stefanowski, he’s one of the world’s most skilled pilots. And adding to that, he has entirely supernatural talent for not getting dead. He’s a daredevil with all those Knacks for doing hilarious vehicle stunts and Death Defiance. He’s so bad at dying he manages to still be alive to be known as Jake Danger, Aberrant Hunter in the future. Crackshot: Annabelle Lee Newfield is the daughter of some awesome circus people and deadly as hell. She was invited at the age of 14 to join the Society both because she’s one of the deadliest motherfuckers on the planet and also because the next member we’ll meet was being super lovely and Mercer wanted to prove that women can be just as awesome as men. She gets off this train we call life violently shortly before WW2 but that’s how it goes sometimes. She’s a daredevil with things like Lightning Reflexes, Trick Shot, and Universally Deadly along with Ability Mastery in Archery, Firearms, and Athletics, but she min-maxed at life so she’s a bit behind in other things. Safari Jack Tallon: The douchebag who provoked Crackshot’s invitation. He’s the stereotypical Great White Hunter, and he’s old as gently caress. He’s got some exotic remedies he takes daily that give him the equivalent of Optimized Metabolism, and he’s a daredevil with a wide array of Knacks, skills, and Backgrounds. While he’s racist as gently caress in theory, he doesn’t actually view the less developed world as not deserving of respect. He thinks the civilized world could learn just as much from them as they could benefit from better technology. Doctor Primoris: Also known as Michael Donighal, he goes by Doctor Primoris as much to be lovely to everyone else’s nicknames as to showboat how awesome he thinks he is. He got at least as much exposure to the Hammersmith accident as Mercer, and as a result he’s crazy powerful. In the end his differences with the Aeon Society will cause them to break apart, as he eventually decides his own goals are incompatible with theirs. He’s a stalwart in theory, but he displays psychic knacks as well as dynamic. Mercer thinks he’s holding back and is right, because Primoris is actually a Nova, as far above a stalwart as a stalwart is above a normal human. We’ll be hearing much more about him under an even more melodramatic alias in Aberrant. Now for major characters who aren’t affiliated with the Aeon Society. Some of them are villains, some aren’t. The Ubiquitous Dragon: This guy’s basically Fu Manchu, and also the dark mirror to Max Mercer. While Mercer believes everybody is fundamentally good and has hope for the future, The Dragon believes everyone is corrupt and aims to prove it by taking advantage of the flaws in his enemies to rule the world. His father was an honorable man who’d once worked for a cruel warlord. When the warlord tracked his former advisor down, he killed him and took his son as his own. This proved to be a mistake, as his efforts to turn the boy into a man as terrible as has father had been good succeeded extremely well and he naturally turned on the warlord. Now he runs the Dragon’s Coil Tong, and one way or the other has become a powerful Stalwart. He’s got a special Knack called the Curse of Many Dragons, which lets him create weak duplicates of himself to literally be in multiple places at once. This is one of the very few times you’ll see an actual Nova power as a dynamic Knack rather than a mega-attribute enhancement, since this is clearly the Clone power. The King of the World: While the King of the World is real, it’s also a misnomer. Because, as it happens, it’s actually a Queen. She’s the Lady Argentine de Winter, and she’s thieved and connived and used the political influence and money of her family to weasel her way into the heart of crime in the Old World. She’s a mesmerist with pretty much everything you could need to be sneaky along with a psychic version of Sex Symbol because major characters don’t give a poo poo about the rules. She’s also got all the backgrounds you’d expect for being Crime Queen. Mister Saturday: This gentleman used to be Dr. Hammersmith’s butler. He managed to scheme his way into become Hammersmith’s sole heir and moved the whole lot of it brick by brick back to Haiti. He rules through fear of his ‘black magic’ and is super mysterious in his aims. It’s also an open mystery if he had something to do with the explosion of Hammersmith’s machine. His self-portrayal is as a Robin Hood like figure robbing from the West to give to the Caribbean, but he’s also a major part of the criminal underworld. He’ll pretty much work with anyone, though, especially if you’ve got money. He’s maybe the strongest mesmerist alive, with almost every Knack. He also has a super-science concoction that can raise zombies, because voodoo. The Lone Gunman: Scalper Dutch is an old dude with six-shooters who’s noted as ‘the meanest bastard you’ll ever run across.’ He’s a mercenary and when he’s not working on someone else’s dime he roams around being a crusty old fucker who hates everyone. He’s super focused on being the scariest gunfighter you can be as a daredevil and gets to use Untouchable while armed. The Czar: A greasy Russian noble who runs the Ponatowski Foundation in secret. He fled the Russian Revolution with a whole bunch of treasures stolen from Nicholas, including Princess Anastasia. He’s trying to undermine the Soviet Union while keeping a close hand on the Princess so that he can become the true Czar (she’s starting to get restless, though he’s not wrong that she’d be in danger if her existence was revealed). He’s got lots of resources and Inspired agents, but he’s not Inspired himself. The Machinatrix: Dr. Dixon’s ex-wife, Hephaestia Geary-Wexler. She’s attempting to create intelligent machines, which she calls the Sanguine Prometheus. She wants to create a world run by machines, so humans can enjoy a lifestyle free of care. She’s also crazy as an outhouse rat and willing to sell her inventions to anyone, whether it’s the Aeon Society or their enemies. She’s a stalwart with similar knacks to Dixon, and also has done medical super-science on herself to gain new Knacks. Manifest Destiny: Former Sentator The Jaguar Queen: A legend made real, “Ocelotl” is supposedly the illegitimate child of an Aztec queen who escaped into the spirit world and became the immortal bride of the jaguar. The truth of what the hell is going on with her is left up to the Storyteller but she’s a badass stalwart. The Turk: An Imam who, after witnessing the Hammersmith experiment, turned from peace to attempts to destroy the West. He used to be friends with Safari Jack Tallon. He’s a mesmerist with mind control powers that he uses to create assassins that strike at Western culture because he fears what it will create next. Master of the Inner Earth: His real name is Hammond Barnes, and he’s a real piece of poo poo. He’s a failed fiction writer who came up with an elaborate and lovely history of the supposed Inner Earth. After his wife left him (for his increasing obsession with his writing), he started believing the Inner Earth was real. And unfortunately, after the Hammersmith experiment the wrong person believing something that isn’t true very strongly can sometimes wish that thing into existence. He vanished from his home and reappeared in the caves of the “Inner Earth”, where he used his stalwart powers to assist the people of that world. Unfortunately, he’s crazy as hell and now rules as dictator. He’s opposed by our next character… The Mighty Gar, Lord of the World Below: Gar’s part of the tribe that Hammond Barnes oppresses, and he was Inspired after falling wounded into a cave filled with crystals supercharged with Telluric energy. Traveling with his dire world Tak, he works to unite rebels from his own tribe with the Neanderthals they were battling (as it happens because there wasn’t enough food in their area of the caves). He’s a stalwart the equal of his nemesis, and theirs will be the battle for Inner Earth. Tyrant of the Skies: Doctor Zorbo (actually kind of correctly) believes that human development will destroy the world. While he originally merely worked to create more sustainable ways for humans to live, he was unhinged by his exposure to Z-rays and now tries to solve overpopulation and over-industrialization by force. He’s got Death Balloons and wants to steal the crystals from the Inner Earth to power sky cities. He’s a mesmerist with a bunch of fun knacks and super science stuff, including a goddamn sky fortress. The Sun Disk Made Flesh: Probably the youngest Inspired, the supposed “Queen Nefertiti” is usually Emma Nazir, daughter of Egyptologists. Unfortunately an evil rear end cult kidnapped her and a bunch of other kids, most of whom they vaporized with a giant sun laser as you do. When she lived through it (because she’s got Body of Bronze), they decided she was Queen Nefertiti reborn. They returned her after using hypnosis to make her sneak out of boarding school to return to the Hidden Pyramid, and they keep working her over to try and make her spend more and more time as ‘Nefertiti’. She doesn’t know she has any powers at all when she’s Emma, though she still does. The Intrepid Investigator: The archetypical reporter, Sarah Gettel always seems to show up just in time to report on whatever crazy poo poo is going on. She’s a daredevil with absolutely no Knacks, just some Background enhancements and a whole lot of chutzpah. We get rules on Extras and stat blocks for some common things you might encounter, and that’s it except for an appendix with equipment. Next time I’ll make some characters.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 17:39
|
|
|
If I ever ran Adventure! I'd definitely have Hammond Barnes as a villain so my heroes could beat up the proto-Sad Puppies.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 18:12
|
|
|
Oh boy, is that Divis Mal? I remember Divis Mal. People always lament that he's the only part of Aberrant anyone remembers but he's memorable because the guy was like every single thing you can do wrong with writing a setting NPC. Like the platonic ideal of lovely setting NPCs.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 18:22
|
|
|
Ron Howard: It was Divis Mal.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 18:23
|
|
|
Night10194 posted:Oh boy, is that Divis Mal? Who was the other incarnation of maximum 90's comic books from Abberant. Had the skull mask, wielded spears/swords, was hilarious bullshit from start to finish. Edit: Found him, and ho boy! Way worse than I remembered. quote:There was a time when the man named Klaus Kleisner was a happy and well-adjusted engineer designing automobile chassis for Daimler-Benz. That time ended when he met a beautiful American woman named Erica Ellis. Ellis told Kleisner that she “wasn’t dating,” but the two spent a great deal of time together and over the space of several months, she began staying most nights at his comfortable home outside of Munich. https://www.writeups.org/totentanz-aberrant-rpg/ Deptfordx fucked around with this message at 19:59 on Nov 6, 2018 |
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 19:53
|
|
|
Night10194 posted:I remember Divis Mal. People always lament that he's the only part of Aberrant anyone remembers but he's memorable because the guy was like every single thing you can do wrong with writing a setting NPC. Like the platonic ideal of lovely setting NPCs. What happened with them?
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 19:58
|
|
|
Josef bugman posted:What happened with them? He's an impossibly powerful character who has every power in the game, and there's a big adventure where he goes up against the other impossibly powerful character of the setting and just...turns his powers off and wins instantly while your PCs do, uh, I'm not clear on what. Also he caused the Novas and also is basically the leader of the 'Novas are the only people who matter, humans are irrelevant' Teratagen who are pretty much just Nova nazi types no matter how they try to dress it up. You're still expected to believe he's a clever man who isn't evil. His final action in the setting is to descend, obliterate the secretary general of the UN for no reason, and then make a speech saying Novas are too cool to exist in this reality so he's made them their own universe and then they fly off to it and leave. E: Basically, he's the main character of Aberrant, which is one of the worst sins you can commit with a setting NPC regardless of all the other dumb poo poo.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 20:02
|
|
|
Counterpoint: Everybody loves Elminster. 
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 20:13
|
|
|
Josef bugman posted:What happened with them? We'll learn all about him when talking about Aberrant but he's basically got nearly unlimited power and his character traits are an admixture of every single way someone characterizes their Original Character Do Not Steal. He's the kind of douchebag that even when most of the poo poo he's in favor of is largely backed up by the facts of the situation you don't want to give him the satisfaction of being right. Like he's largely responsible for most of the bad poo poo that happens to turn Aberrant into Trinity because, more than anything, he knows more about how being a nova 'works' than anyone and barely even parcels out that information to the people who agree with him, much less to everyone else. Basically novas are all turning into strange transhuman things because the human body can't handle the energies they channel. If you try and FIGHT turning into a strange transhuman thing because you don't like being all tentacle-y and on fire or whatever then your aberrations are much more likely to manifest as you going crazy as an outhouse rat, which was already likely because you've grown a huge new organ in your loving brain. Divis Mal has figured out a way to channel nova evolutionary power and allow them to change in a more safe and controlled way than usual while also repairing things that are going wrong (like again going loving crazy) but it's both difficult and requires you to give up on trying to just be a human with superpowers. Which, again, is not something that is sustainable given a LOT of the damage in the Aberrant War ends up coming from novas who have gone insane from excessive Taint that they have no way of handling. The one nice thing about Aeon Continuum metaplot is that the games literally tell you to ignore any of it that doesn't work for you. And the Trinity ones at least try to give you actual things you actually do instead of being a bunch of text boxes that get read to you then some major setting character does something cool oh look how cool he is. Like you fight an Aberrant in one of them, and it's not some bullshit 'oh he's incomprehensibly powerful good thing NPC x is here to save you', you just kill the rear end in a top hat because he's tough but they're not loving gods. Feinne fucked around with this message at 20:20 on Nov 6, 2018 |
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 20:14
|
|
|
Deptfordx posted:Counterpoint: Everybody loves Elminster. Bullshit they do. Alongside that, I kind of understand now why people dislike the guy. Also, I like to imagine that Max Mercer is played by Matt Mercer because he's a good bean.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 20:14
|
|
|
Night10194 posted:He's an impossibly powerful character who has every power in the game, and there's a big adventure where he goes up against the other impossibly powerful character of the setting and just...turns his powers off and wins instantly while your PCs do, uh, I'm not clear on what. I forget, but it was something actually important, while the fight between the famous guys in the background is more of a pissing contest, I believe. quote:You're still expected to believe he's a clever man who isn't evil. His final action in the setting is to descend, obliterate the secretary general of the UN for no reason, and then make a speech saying Novas are too cool to exist in this reality so he's made them their own universe and then they fly off to it and leave. I'm pretty sure it was intentional that he ends the official timeline by making a big speech that means nothing, obliterating a random politician so you know he's serious, and then takes his ball and goes home to another universe because he completely failed to accomplish anything he wanted to do in this one. I don't think Aberrant is completely successful in the way it portrays the Teragen, because White Wolf can't help but love anything that's pointlessly edgy, but I think they handled Divis Mal fairly well, in that he's vastly powerful and never, ever gets anything he wants. Also he has ARMS????? which was a much bigger deal in that time period.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 20:14
|
|
|
Night10194 posted:He's an impossibly powerful character who has every power in the game, and there's a big adventure where he goes up against the other impossibly powerful character of the setting and just...turns his powers off and wins instantly while your PCs do, uh, I'm not clear on what. Watch. They get to watch.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 20:17
|
|
|
Josef bugman posted:Bullshit they do. 
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 20:17
|
|
|
Dawgstar posted:Watch. They get to watch. Which brings up the other problem with the guy, beyond the 'But what if that magic hitler had him some ideas and was actually secretly right (but very stupid about it, being a hitler)?' edgelord bullshit. What the hell do you do with him in a game? He's just an impossibly powerful (and annoying) magic hitler who doesn't tell anyone anything. He's not going to be your mentor, your players are likely to hate him and want to put him through a wall, etc.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 20:19
|
|
|
You know, My Hero Academia had a very clever way of dealing with your Superman-Goku fighting your Darkseid-Cell. They basically functioned as backdrop and occasional monkey wrench for your main party.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 20:24
|
|
|
Night10194 posted:Which brings up the other problem with the guy, beyond the 'But what if that magic hitler had him some ideas and was actually secretly right (but very stupid about it, being a hitler)?' edgelord bullshit. The really funny thing is that even if you're playing a Teragen character he's not going to be your mentor because he's either too busy being in a cocoon because maybe this time Max-senpai will notice him or he's going to be off intentionally not being around because in spite of founding the organization he for the most part finds its members and their goals petty because he's Too Cool For School. There's a whole bunch of backstabbing by the Shittiest Guy In The Teragen (which is no mean feat) that he could easily stop and doesn't not even because he likes the guy, which he doesn't, but because he believes in poo poo being shaken up just for its own sake. Also when we get to Aberrant soon the important thing to remember is that everyone's pretty lovely in their own way, there are no good guys because this is the late 90s and White Wolf and crawling in my skin, these aberrations they will not heal. The whole setting continues to remind you why you're justified in capping the gently caress out of these assholes in Trinity. Feinne fucked around with this message at 20:28 on Nov 6, 2018 |
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 20:26
|
|
|
Which is the other problem: The whole point is supposed to be a 'twist' where they 'flip the script' and make the hiding out weird mutant guys who believe that becoming inhuman and embracing something other than humanity are correct while the shiney UN superteam people are all evil and pawns and blah blah because 'it's not a normal comic book setting'. Except they forget to actually flip the loving script the same way they do with stuff like Beast so the Teragen are basically just a bunch of stupid assholes led by an exceedingly stupid magic hitler who absolves himself from them by not actually leading them or doing anything. E: Lol, I was about to put in an edit adding in 'Basically it had a terminal case of the 90s and Old White Wolf' before you did.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 20:30
|
|
|
Some of the worst posters on the OPP Exalted forum before it got cleaned up somewhat subscribed to the position that Divis Mal became the creator-primordial Malfeas in Exalted. At least one of these posters considered the Angry Kronus Equivalent Malfeas to be the rightful ruler of the setting.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 20:56
|
|
|
Maybe I'm remembering this wrong, but weren't the Aberrant developers really insistent (and indignant) that their game was not a superhero game? In spite of the fact that it didn't do anything that hadn't been done in "Iron Age" comics like Watchmen, Squadron Supreme, or lots of stuff from Valiant and Wildstorm and 2000AD.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 21:05
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:Maybe I'm remembering this wrong, but weren't the Aberrant developers really insistent (and indignant) that their game was not a superhero game? In spite of the fact that it didn't do anything that hadn't been done in "Iron Age" comics like Watchmen, Squadron Supreme, or lots of stuff from Valiant and Wildstorm and 2000AD. There were long screeds about how no-one would put on silly costumes and do conventional superheroics when they could get a merchandising deal. Just above the picture of Divis Mal in his glowing breastplate and flowing supervillain cape, posing in front of his devil statue.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 21:08
|
|
|
Joe Slowboat posted:Some of the worst posters on the OPP Exalted forum before it got cleaned up somewhat subscribed to the position that Divis Mal became the creator-primordial Malfeas in Exalted. I mean, 'rightful' is kind of a weird word to use for anyone in Exalted.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 21:18
|
|
|
Mors Rattus posted:I mean, 'rightful' is kind of a weird word to use for anyone in Exalted.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 21:20
|
|
|
Mors Rattus posted:I mean, 'rightful' is kind of a weird word to use for anyone in Exalted. And yet they insisted that actually the angriest, most radioactive hell-emperor available had the right to rule the universe, on the basis of divine command theory ethics. I'm very glad I don't read anything by those posters anymore. Exalted really attracts some wild frameworks of interpretation. Edit: Which acid-robot-man-god, I can think of a few, some of whom absolutely don't deserve happiness (Looking at you, Viator of Nullspace.)
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 21:21
|
|
|
Tibalt posted:The acid robot man-god deserves to happy, okay! You're going to have to be more specific there
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 21:21
|
|
|
Joe Slowboat posted:And yet they insisted that actually the angriest, most radioactive hell-emperor available had the right to rule the universe, on the basis of divine command theory ethics. Well, I mean, IF we accept that divine right is a viable framework in Exalted, then yes, the Primordials are the rightful rulers of the world, by divine right as its creators and overdeities. It's just, uh, they were manifestly lovely for everyone.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 21:22
|
|
|
Mors Rattus posted:You're going to have to be more specific there
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 21:25
|
|
|
Tibalt posted:The one that invested some of his followers with divine power as part of a poorly conceived plan to avoid doing any work. that doesn't help narrow it down any
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 21:38
|
|
|
Night10194 posted:There were long screeds about how no-one would put on silly costumes and do conventional superheroics when they could get a merchandising deal. To say nothing of Team Tomorrow, the group that was filled with impossibly good-looking people who all wore uniforms they individually customized and were basically indistinguishable from superheroes as they tackled natural disasters and Teragen attacks, although they were NOT superheroes because they.... uh... had sex? Some of them were maybe jerks? I don't know. The line was never drawn very clear. Dawgstar fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Nov 6, 2018 |
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 21:40
|
|
|
Funny how Aberrant came out just two months after The Authority.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 21:40
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:Funny how Aberrant came out just two months after The Authority. I think it would be interesting to make a superhero-style game whose thesis was essentially that Magneto was Right and that you have to burn down most of the established power structures for everyone's benefit, but it runs into three big challenges: A. You have to have some kind of coherent setting which is not a total shitbag in the aftermath, even if you frame it so not-Magneto was an OK egg and the Man started the fight B. You have to create a super-powers game which allows for a range of concepts to be cool C. You have to figure out "where" in the setting you put things. Is the story about tearing down The Man, or is it about what you make afterwards?
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 21:52
|
|
|
Mors Rattus posted:that doesn't help narrow it down any They eventually turned into giant cities?
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 21:52
|
|
|
Tibalt posted:The divinely powered foot soldiers were split into 5 arbitrary groups? okay that last one has finally managed it yeah that dude had depression e: also it was six arbitrary groups for him Mors Rattus fucked around with this message at 22:10 on Nov 6, 2018 |
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 21:53
|
|
|
Dawgstar posted:To say nothing of Team Tomorrow, the group that was filled with impossibly good-looking people who all wore uniforms they individually customized and were basically indistinguishable from heroes as they tackled natural disasters and Teragen attacks, although they were NOT superheroes because they.... uh... had sex? Some of them were maybe jerks? I don't know. The line was never drawn very clear. Yeah but they worked for the UN which was trying to sterilize Novas because the normies were jealous and they just wanted to be famous maaaan! It's kind of hilarious because given how Aberrant went, pretty much anyone who was like 'we need ways to defend ourselves from Novas' was 100% right.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 21:59
|
|
|
Night10194 posted:Yeah but they worked for the UN which was trying to sterilize Novas because the normies were jealous and they just wanted to be famous maaaan! It is kind of a shame - at the time 'superhero conspiracy' didn't feel like a played-out genre and certainly there wasn't anything like the setting in an RPG - but for all that WW would go on about how their elite SWAT units would not bust in your door for playing your game wrong in their other lines Aberrant is one of the most tone-policing games I've run across.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 22:02
|
|
|
Half the reason I remember it is because none of the games of Aberrant I played in ever actually used the original premise. My old high school/early college group loved making fun of it.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 22:07
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 20, 2024 04:55 |
|
|
Nessus posted:I think it would be interesting to make a superhero-style game whose thesis was essentially that Magneto was Right and that you have to burn down most of the established power structures for everyone's benefit, but it runs into three big challenges: Aberrant was very much in tune with the Dark Age superhero comics of the preceding 15 years. But they were, y'know, still superhero comics, even if protagonists were also celebrities or spies or cops or gangsters. Which makes White Wolf's disdainful hipster stance very funny. Edit: Idunno that it's fair to call The Authority a ripoff of Moore, since it was Ellis basically following up on the shakeups he and Moore had made to the Wildstorm universe. I see a lot more precedent for The Authority in Squadron Supreme and maybe even New Universe than in Moore's superhero work. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 22:26 on Nov 6, 2018 |
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2018 22:12
|
|