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Best siren: 
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Dec 29, 2018 20:36
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After a hiatus of some months, the F&F archive is once more up to date. I marked 25 writeups as 'abandoned'. Some of them may well have been complete, but lacked any obvious 'The End' marker for me to be sure. Feel free to let me know if I have unjustly libeled you. inklesspen fucked around with this message at 22:40 on Dec 29, 2018 |
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Dec 29, 2018 22:12
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Cythereal posted:In my homebrew setting, sirens are a harmless species of saltwater manatee that nest in rocky shoals and shipwrecks, so their singing - which they do to attract mates and declare territory - warns sailors away from dangerous areas of shoreline. They're much beloved by sailors and killing one is said to curse the ship. The classicist Emily Wilson has a twitter thread about how there's nothing in the Greek text of the Odyssey that makes the sirens out to be sexually alluring--that's all from later translators. It's sort of the inverse of our current discussion--unfuckable women are monsters, and women of terrible desire must be using sex, right? But Homer's sirens are just extremely knowledgeable. https://twitter.com/emilyrcwilson/status/970406691375378432?lang=en
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Dec 29, 2018 22:14
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Holy crap, that was a heck of a read.
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Dec 29, 2018 23:21
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Alien Rope Burn posted:[*]Momus, the False Atlantean: A tattooed Maxi-Man (the top-end magically tattooed slaves with the silliest name, as some may recall) designed to look like a True Atlantean Undead Slayer good guy. He's a manufactured heel, which is a fun idea. This provides an interesting twist on the old "players are hired by treacherous backstabber to get themselves killed" concept - the PCs are set up to be jobbed to the ruler's shiny new badass in order to demonstrate to the populace how badass he is. They may or may not be aware of this.
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Dec 29, 2018 23:30
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inklesspen posted:After a hiatus of some months, the F&F archive is once more up to date. The SenZar review is completed, the book just ended on kind of a low note compared to the cool starter stuff so it didn't get an amazing end.
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Dec 30, 2018 00:06
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Leraika posted:Kamigakari is about people granted exceptional power when they're infused with shards of the weapons and tools of the gods. It might be what you're looking for. Thanks, I'll check it out. PurpleXVI posted:Encroachment could be a great stand-in for "you're about to become a superpowered villain instead of a superpowered hero because of your own inherent flaws!" that Exalted tried to push but fails at so hard in every loving edition. I like Godbound, but it kind of goes too far in the other direction to really scratch my exalted itch, in terms of level of crunchiness. My group likes it on its own merits though, just not as much when going for wacky balanced combat. 3e exalted isn't terrible, we played a campaign of it and enjoyed it. But there are some big stumbling blocks I'd rather have something a little more tightly designed to work with. The bloated charm trees were a pain to keep track of, and the multiple variations of dice alteration (bonus dice, differing doubling success target numbers, automatic successes, changing difficulty numbers, etc.) were obnoxious to keep straight or compare without modeling. "Simplified NPCs" are still more convoluted than things like DND 4e, using RAW. It mostly just made it a lot slower than I'd like for online play. At a rough approximation, we're running DND 4e right now, and can get through 2-3 fights in the same time it used to take us to do one in Exalted 3e. I'd ideally like something with the speed and decent balancing of 4e, but with a little more of the goofy mix of effects you get from exalted charms. And then I'd like a pony and a red wagon.
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Dec 30, 2018 00:38
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While Exalted does have a lot of combat emphasis I've found the system shines when you do only have one fight at most per session, and this was also true in 2e for a much more muted ''shines.' There's a ton of non-fighting stuff Exalts can focus on, and ideally every player will have a variety of interests outside that arena. My multi-year 2e campaign (Solars only and post 2.5 rebalance) had trade wars, religious disputes, intrigue, and emotional drama taking up much more time than combat, with action scenes punctuating things with big set pieces. Anything that's not a wild setpiece or extremely character-meaningful I would simplify down to an opposed check or two (where that cuts off will depend hugely on the degree of combat skill the players invested in, but if they haven't invested much in combat, it means combat should only happen to them when things go very wrong for them).
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Dec 30, 2018 01:02
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There's a fan translation of Kamigakari running around, but it's uh... kind of Double Cross tier in terms of coherency. A professional translation has been kickstartered and looks promising, but who knows how that'll turn out.
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Dec 30, 2018 01:49
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Volo's Guide to Monsters: Hags: Dark Sisterhood Part 2 Previous Entry Roleplaying a Hag Even when a hag act friendly toward adventurers, inside she is a twisted fey creature, and she doesn’t care about what anyone else thinks or wants. She might casually comment about how a visitor would fit in her cauldron or make a blunt sexual comment about a guest. When mortals visit a hag, the experience should be nerve-wracking, uncomfortable, and risky; "at any point the hag might lose her temper and decide to pull out someone’s fingernails with her iron teeth." Hags look upon younger creatures from the perspective of a bad-tempered grandparent who no longer cares what anyone thinks — "set in her ways, free to speak her mind, and not afraid to bring down punishment if pushed too far." Hags enjoy messing with other people’s lives. Any time a hag agrees to help someone, the bargain includes a price to be paid, plus a hidden plan by which she sets the mortal up to fail, or a way that she gains leverage (whether over the deal-maker or someone else). When a hag is shown an unusual spell, a rare magic item, or a person who has a odd magical gift, "she will sniff it, shake it, listen to it, taste it, murmur odd statements to herself, and mentally place a value on the merchandise." Hags aren’t subtle about showing their interest, and one might snatch away the offering so she can examine it more closely, even if this makes her interest more obvious. If she doesn’t have anything else like it, or can think of a use for it, or if having it means a rival can’t get her hands on it, she’ll value the offering highly. A visitor who offers a desirable item is more likely to get a fair deal, or at least likely to suffer less when the true price of the deal is revealed. When a hag’s life is threatened, she will pretend to be helpless if she thinks it will spare her life or buy her time to retaliate or escape. She’ll use dangerous treasures as bribes, not telling about their curses or side effects. "She will lie and deceive and try to turn her enemies against each other, playing up their guilt and fear and jealousy to tear them apart from the inside. She is older, smarter, and more shrewd than any mortal who dares to threaten her." Hags always prefer to talk and bargain rather than confront someone with violence; they reserve their aggressive outbursts for situations where they are overwhelmingly more powerful (such as when attacking children) or have an unfair advantage (such as when their enemy is asleep). Because although a hag can always resort to attacking with her claws, if it comes to that then something has gone very wrong with her plans. Hag Personality Traits We now have tables for hag traits. Our hag's traits are: Personality Trait d8 1 I have made subtle insults into an art form. Hag Ideal d6 2 Community. Loneliness is the path to madness. That is why I have minions to keep me company. (Lawful) Hag Bond d8 4 I owe a great favor to a hag grandmother. Hag Flaw d6 3 I have an allergy to a creature (such as cats or ravens) or a substance (such as apples or blood) that is important to my work. Hag Names Hags have whimsical names, often with a dark twist. Hags give their daughters a name that the girl keeps during her childhood, but upon gaining her full hag powers the daughter chooses her own name, which might or might not relate to her birth name. Some hags use different names in different guises, but still prefer their original name as their favorite. Hags always have a title followed by a first name, or a first name followed by a last name. It is randomly determined for the table whether a hag has a title or a last name. Our hag has a last name as decided by coin flip. d12 12 d12 10 Our hag's name is Zilla Toestealer Weird Magic Over the course of their lifetime, a hag typically discovers or creates several unusual ways to use magic. The weird magic that hags can call upon comes in a number of forms and with various means of activation. Even those who have read scholarly books about hag lore can’t predict what a particular hag is capable of. A grandmother or some other hag of great age and renown might know unique rituals that can temporarily or permanently alter or transform a creature, bring back the dead for a limited time, rewrite memories, or siphon emotions. Even a hag without lofty status is likely to have strange, single-use items that don’t emulate common spells or even follow the normal rules of magic. It is advised to check out the charms section of the DMG for ideas of what a hag might be able to do. If you want a hag to use a weird object of this sort in a combat situation, they are best provided with an item that produces a CR appropriate spell effect when the hag uses it. The effect might aid her or attack her enemies. "For example, a green hag (CR 3) might smash an ornate hand mirror, producing a cloud of glass shards that damages creatures like cloud of daggers (a 2nd-level spell). She might instead uncork a bottle of wasps that surround her and stitch up her wounds with their stingers, healing her as cure wounds (cast as a 2nd-level spell)." Or she could take a mummified toad from her pocket and throw it into her cauldron, which immediately spews out inky blackness equivalent to darkness (a 2nd-level spell)." Alternatively you can come up with utterly new effects as what a hag can do with these items are limited only by imagination. A hag carefully uses weird magic because the items in her repertoire are often impossible to duplicate or replace. To reflect this fact, a hag should be able to use weird magic only once or twice per encounter in her lair, or only once per encounter if she is elsewhere. "A hag who is expecting a fight might be better prepared and able (or willing) to use weird magic one additional time per encounter." If a hag is faced with mortal peril, all thoughts of conserving her resources vanish — she will use any weird magic at her disposal if it helps her stay alive. After all, a hag that’s not dead has a virtually limitless lifetime to replace what was spent. "No matter how hard it was to acquire that jar of death slugs, or that book on how to invoke the razor wind, or the runestone containing the three syllables for crystallizing blood, it is better to use such things than to risk death by not doing so." Mounts and Vehicles Many stories say hags using strange, enchanted creatures and objects for travel, and most of those stories are accurate. Instead of the usual horse or pony, a hag might ride astride a giant pig, a goat, or a cow. It’s not unknown for a hag to use a sentient creature as a mount, perhaps as the result of a bargain that creature struck with her. A hag that wants to humiliate a mortal hero might require that hero to serve as her mount for a year as part of fulfilling her bargain. The giant raven that carries a hag aloft could be in actuality one of the hag’s victims transformed because that individual tried to go back on its deal with her. The horse like fiends known as nightmares are particularly popular with night hags. Some hags prefer nonliving conveyances, and their imagination knows no bounds. A hag might happily animate and upgrade any sort of object she can tailor for the purpose, "such as a clay statue, a huge woven basket, a cauldron, a butter churn, a giant bird’s nest, a mortar and pestle, or a tombstone." Usually only the hag that obtained or created them can use her mounts and vehicles. They obey only her commands, and their magic responds only to her will. If a hag allows any other creature to use one of them as part of a bargain, she must be expecting a great return on her investment.  Next Time: Hags: Dark Sisterhood part 3
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Dec 30, 2018 02:48
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Did they explain the reproductive cycle of hags yet? There are a couple of references to daughters, did I miss where they explain that?
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Dec 30, 2018 03:32
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Tibalt posted:Did they explain the reproductive cycle of hags yet? There are a couple of references to daughters, did I miss where they explain that? It's in the monster manual and mentioned a little later here. Here the relevant sections Volo's Guide to Monsters posted:Hags make more hags by snatching and devouring human infants, birthing daughters who turn into hags on entering the thirteenth year of their lives. Fortunately for humanity and the rest of the world, such an occurrence is rare. They literally eat babies. MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 03:50 on Dec 30, 2018 |
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Dec 30, 2018 03:47
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Given the folklore that inspired hags in D&D also has male equivalents most of the time, why aren't those included in RPGs? While yes the old women were more common, it is kinda hard to frame Koschei or similar old men in the woods as anything but the male version of the same trope.Hell Freddy Kruger is more or lese a movie version of a D&D night hag.
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Dec 30, 2018 03:52
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A friend of mine ran a game with a hag where half the players took to her as the only sane person they'd met all week, the other half acknowledged that she'd eat them given half a chance. The fun part is that those aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. I think it goes back to the Baba Yaga, who can be a terrifying villain or a quite generous benefactor depending on her own unknowable whims and purposes.Terrible Opinions posted:Given the folklore that inspired hags in D&D also has male equivalents most of the time, why aren't those included in RPGs? While yes the old women were more common, it is kinda hard to frame Koschei or similar old men in the woods as anything but the male version of the same trope.Hell Freddy Kruger is more or lese a movie version of a D&D night hag. I think a lot of the male ones got turned into different fantasy archetypes like liches. (you very rarely if ever see a female lich. I think probably because you can't put tits on them)
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Dec 30, 2018 03:55
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Terrible Opinions posted:Given the folklore that inspired hags in D&D also has male equivalents most of the time, why aren't those included in RPGs? While yes the old women were more common, it is kinda hard to frame Koschei or similar old men in the woods as anything but the male version of the same trope.Hell Freddy Kruger is more or lese a movie version of a D&D night hag. Koschei is actually in D&D. He is a man who made a deal with Baba Yaga to do the whole put his soul in a pin inside an egg etc thing. But Baba Yaga betrayed him and gave their location away resulting in his death. After which he went to the Abyss his soul becoming a Demon Lord called Kostchtchie the Prince of Wrath. He blamed Baba Yaga's betrayal as the whims of a woman and as a result him and his cult are incredible misogynists.
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Dec 30, 2018 03:59
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Ghost Leviathan posted:I think a lot of the male ones got turned into different fantasy archetypes like liches. (you very rarely if ever see a female lich. I think probably because you can't put tits on them) The DMG actually has a female tiefling lich.  It was originally planned to be a night hag and the zombies larva. But was changed because tiefling liches have not been portrayed much. The most notable female lich I can think of in D&D is Valindra. An Elf Lich who has been around since 3e who serves as the initial primary villain of the Neverwinter MMO and most recently as a potential villain or ally in Tomb of Annihilation. MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 04:14 on Dec 30, 2018 |
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Dec 30, 2018 04:11
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When pondering my current 13th Age game, I decided that if I was going to use hags, they were just statblocks for a particular type of corrupted mage in my setting and not necessarily gender-specific. I feel like that's an archetype that suddenly becomes much more interesting if they weren't always necessarily monstrous.
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Dec 30, 2018 04:14
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Ghost Leviathan posted:A friend of mine ran a game with a hag where half the players took to her as the only sane person they'd met all week, the other half acknowledged that she'd eat them given half a chance. The fun part is that those aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. I think it goes back to the Baba Yaga, who can be a terrifying villain or a quite generous benefactor depending on her own unknowable whims and purposes. Funny enough I don't think Baba Yaga is actually a hag in D&D with the exception of 4e which had her as a hag archfey. The other editions I think largely just listed her as a powerful witch.
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Dec 30, 2018 04:18
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MonsterEnvy posted:The most notable female lich I can think of in D&D is Valindra. An Elf Lich who has been around since 3e who serves as the initial primary villain of the Neverwinter MMO and most recently as a potential villain or ally in Tomb of Annihilation. Vol in Eberron. Half-elf, half-dragon lich who created an entire religion about humanism and self-actualization and vampirism, and clocks in as one of the most powerful NPCs in the setting.
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Dec 30, 2018 04:40
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Cythereal posted:Vol in Eberron. Half-elf, half-dragon lich who created an entire religion about humanism and self-actualization and vampirism, and clocks in as one of the most powerful NPCs in the setting. Thanks. My Eberron knowledge is not great though I do remember Vol. Though it's funny that that two notable female liches that start with a V.
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Dec 30, 2018 05:04
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 Rifts World Book 21: Splynn Dimension Market, Part 6: "Two thirds are thwarted and driven back from whence they came before they can get away with loot or succeed in their mission, and manhunts in Atlantis are 96% successful (75% elsewhere on Rifts Earth and 50% in other dimensions)."  "Hey! I'll be your friendly guide to R'lyeh!" Life Outside the Market Next, we get some generalities on the city itself. Most of the city is made up of residential areas for minions of the Splugorth. We're told they live "very normal lives", but it's pretty unclear how it functions as a city - are the huge families of Kydians and Kittani all just military? Who works the factories? The restaurants? Who fixes the mega-cable? We're told slaves do the cleaning, but... in any case, Kydians and Kittani make up most of the city population. Slavers live in the rivers in their youth until being turned into floating skull barges, Metzla have their own "hives", and Altara Warrior Women are forced into a military structure to try and control them from birth. Where do the Sunaj set their kip down? Nobody knows. Yep, 6,000 of them and they've been perfectly able to keep their home secret in a city of millions. Sure, sounds feasible. Despite being filled with eeevil creatures, apparently crime within the city is minimal because everybody loves the Splugorth so much. Most of the actual disruptions come from shoppers and tourists, interdimensional raiders robbing the market, and the "Liberated Underground" freeing slaves. The wide variety of ley lines across the city makes it vulnerable to interdimensional bandits, and even though they're patrolled by minions, Ley Line Walkers can use their powers to remote view and case targets, as well as perform unseen communication. Because of the high amount of ley line usage, it's hard for local authorities to track any such "illicit usage". This is actually a pretty neat extrapolation of what the ley line walker can do, and it's nice to see Atlantis given a weakness... even if it's implied to be inconsequential. We get a loooong bit on how the minions are super-loyal because of the Splugorths' godlike power, how races like the Kydians and Kittani were saved from certain doom by them, and how they shower their minions with side benefits like authority and satisfying their lust for battle. But if they love battle so much, why don't they marry it? In any case, it goes on how they have trillions of minions and how badass and magical and enhanced they... they are... y'know... and...  The Authorities Huh? What? Oh, right, let's talk about the important monsters in the city.    The stars of CSI: Atlantis.
 "It wasn't the hoverplanes, it was... thievery killed the beast." Lastly, we get details on D-Squad, which is the dedicated anti-raider force they use. Despite the supposed success of raiders, we're told here that the majority of them are stopped, and a majority of that get hunted down and captured or killed. So, like, the actual chance for a raid's success drops to about 10%? I thought Atlantis was having a hard time with this sort of thing... ... well, they'll at least have a harder time next update. Next: Freedom is now EXTREME!
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Dec 30, 2018 06:50
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Ghost Leviathan posted:I think a lot of the male ones got turned into different fantasy archetypes like liches. (you very rarely if ever see a female lich. I think probably because you can't put tits on them) Wrong, every female lich has huge titties
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Dec 30, 2018 06:58
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Skellybones posted:Wrong, every female lich has huge titties Your avatar seems to show an example.
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Dec 30, 2018 07:00
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Joe Slowboat posted:While Exalted does have a lot of combat emphasis I've found the system shines when you do only have one fight at most per session, and this was also true in 2e for a much more muted ''shines.' Exactly! You can just say that this fight is a difficulty 2 melee test because you're fighting a guy who is pretty good but still a chump compared to you so we don't have to bust out the full system right now because its not important enough for anyone to risk losing their life over. Everyone in Exalted can fight because its a wuxia game and kung fu can solve all sorts of problems, but a lot of people don't see that 4 out of 5 Solar castes do a thing and then have combat as a secondary focus and think that maybe the Dawn should do something similar and have a secondary focus they can use when running around and applying swords to problems isn't appropriate. You have a bunch of non-caste favoured abilities! Pick something that isn't fighting so you can join in with everyone else! But that falls under the general sorting out expectations between everyone around the table. A Dawn in one game i saw had a Limit Trigger of "Whenever I solve a problem with violence" which is incredible. Burning Wheel has the Fight! rules, but it also has the Bloody Versus rules, for when sequencing out a fight isn't appropriate but someone should be getting hurt.
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Dec 30, 2018 07:55
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Why the hell haven't these assholes taken over the entire planet already?
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Dec 30, 2018 11:09
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Skellybones posted:Wrong, every female lich has huge titties Here's the Proof :p
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Dec 30, 2018 13:06
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Lastly, we get details on D-Squad, which is the dedicated anti-raider force they use. Despite the supposed success of raiders, we're told here that the majority of them are stopped, and a majority of that get hunted down and captured or killed. So, like, the actual chance for a raid's success drops to about 10%? I thought Atlantis was having a hard time with this sort of thing... It is only in hindsight I realize that everything in Rifts - written by Kevin or not - has to be excessively omni-competent to the point of absurdity even when supposedly facing down apocalyptic nightmares. It's like reading about kids talking about their imaginary tree forts.
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Dec 30, 2018 13:27
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Ratoslov posted:Why the hell haven't these assholes taken over the entire planet already? I like this question both as a specific request for info and also just as a rhetorical question you can ask about almost anything. It is very xen.
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Dec 30, 2018 18:20
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Ratoslov posted:Why the hell haven't these assholes taken over the entire planet already? The authorial explanation is that they're not interested in getting in fights with all the other major powers that would take notice if they tried to seize Earth, like various pantheons or demon lords, and that it'd be very hard to hold Earth due to the number of rifts. Splynncryth already has several other (undetailed) worlds conquered. He prefers to basically keep Atlantis as a fruitful trade center and... vacation home, more or less. And just bear in mind "trillions" refers to the Splugorth as a whole, presumably, and not just Splynncryth. That being said, Atlantis is enormously overblown when it comes to numbers of any sort, and it's unclear how to meaningfully oppose them.
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Dec 30, 2018 19:10
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I always figured that the sheer number of interdimensional armies situated across the planet invited them to stay in their playsets.
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Dec 30, 2018 20:49
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Terrible Opinions posted:Given the folklore that inspired hags in D&D also has male equivalents most of the time, why aren't those included in RPGs? While yes the old women were more common, it is kinda hard to frame Koschei or similar old men in the woods as anything but the male version of the same trope.Hell Freddy Kruger is more or lese a movie version of a D&D night hag. There was basically a male version of hags in I think 3rd edition? Basically boys turned into literal Grendals then used as either enforcers or cheap labor.
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Dec 30, 2018 20:56
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tankfish posted:There was basically a male version of hags in I think 3rd edition? Basically boys turned into literal Grendals then used as either enforcers or cheap labor. Yep. 3E Forgotten Realms had Hagspawn - big, dumb, misshapen brutes. It was a plot point in Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer that one of your companions is a hagspawn who's quite handsome and intelligent, eventually revealed to be because he was the product of a forbidden affair: his parents actually loved each other, and that marked him and made him different from normal hagspawn.
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Dec 30, 2018 21:32
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Bieeanshee posted:I always figured that the sheer number of interdimensional armies situated across the planet invited them to stay in their playsets. More or less. Also Splynncryth is the kind of Master Manipulator™ that can be justify all sorts of nonsense under being a vaguely sadistic schemer causing vague chaos for his own enjoyment. "Oh, have I been betrayed? How deliciously evil! I am amused!", he burbles, as he puts his pinky tentacle against his unlip.
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Dec 30, 2018 22:56
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Alien Rope Burn posted:More or less. They do like to post his reaction to the latest WORLD-ENDING THREAT but it's invariably 'Splynncryth knows all about it but has decided to let somebody else do something about it and if worse comes to worse he'll just leave.'
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Dec 30, 2018 23:59
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Rifts World Book 21: Splynn Dimension Market, Part 7: "The noble warrior woman is yet another offspring of the incredibly fertile and virile Zeus."  Mega-Liberty! The Liberated Underground So, it turns out the Splugorth aren't entirely unopposed in their slaving ways - though they've been successful in suppressing most resistance, the Liberated Underground has been a persistent thorn in their side. Mind, not much more than a thorn, but they consistently perform raids to free slaves, tags Atlantean sites with mocking graffiti, and generally embarrass Splynncryth.  "Yes, this is a towel around my neck. It's very important I know where it is." Unlike organizations before them, they have highly competent leadership, a variety of powerful allies and benefactors, and a dedicated membership of thousands. We get a quick run-down of their leadership:
 Warrior Princess. The Vampire Kingdoms can't agree on much, but they were already working to undermine the Splugorth on account of their "kill all vampires" policy. So when the vampires and the LU met, they forged an uneasy alliance. They share information, and sometimes the vampires provide cover for slave escapes. The vampires have agreed to avoid feeding on "innocent" people when working with them, but the alliance could easily collapse. In addition, if Splynncryth becomes convinced of a serious vampire infestation, that'll lead to a crackdown that'll make things pretty hard on the LU. Oh, and for the record, Kydians and Kittani can become vampires, but they have the same stats as human ones. Another problematic alliance is the Naut'Yll, who provide safe haven for aquatic slaves- or so they say. It turns out they've just largely re-enslaving them instead, and the LU would be horrified to find out. You'd think they'd be fast allies with the Symbiote Liberation Front (from Rifts World Book 12: Psyscape), but the SLF is more interested in just blowing up the Splugorth's poo poo than slave liberation. The two have worked together at times, but not terribly often.  Liberator, not Terminator. Though they have a fair amount of support, the LU relies largely on light and mobile weaponry. They keep secret stashes of low-quality weapons on Atlantis itself they regularly move around, and their main force has extremely high-end stuff. The Underground is mostly made up of D-Bees, Humans, and True Atlanteans in that order, as well as a fair number of members from Splugorth slave races.  Wearing button-fly levis, no doubt. Lastly, we get details on their leadership.
Rifts World Book 21: Splynn Dimensional Market posted:A dark haired, fair skinned woman of incredible beauty and strength. With her M.D.C. flesh and divine parentage, even a century of harsh living conditions has not marred her beauty and youthful appearance. Good to know. Next: So, you wanna be a slave? Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 18:14 on Jan 1, 2019 |
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Dec 31, 2018 05:59
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Double Cross The Stage of History! One of the other interesting things about DX and its approach to setting up a game is that the setting is left pretty blank. There are the contours of ideas, and prompts for ideas, and there's more information on macguffins, plans, etc in the other books, but this is not going to be the kind of setting where half or more of every book is history and fluff. It does this fairly well; what you get is enough to build a story on without the oppressive metaplot of something like Aberrant. The Renegade Virus, which has the most anime rear end possible name for an evil virus, is a virus that hates humans and infects humans to give them superpowers and try to take them over. If it takes them over, it turns them into an even bigger superpowered dick called a Gjaum. A Gjaum may look totally human and may not even know it's a Gjaum. It also might go all Akira. Anime viruses are playful and mysterious things, just ask Umbrella. This virus has been running around causing superhuman mayhem for 20 years, give or take, when your game is assumed to begin. Governments all over the world are facing a crisis of terrorism and paranormal incidents that they can't explain as superhumans run amok. A scientist named Dr. Alfred Caudwell started out warning the world's governments and telling people about the Renegade Virus, and got them to form the Universal Guardian Network, the UGN, to try to keep this stuff in check, study the Renegade, and promote harmony between humans and Overed. The idea behind recruiting and sending Overed to kill Overed is that while you could get one from out of Warding range with a cruise missile, firing cruise missiles at Tokyo is not a sustainable solution. Sending in some superpowered teenagers probably causes less collateral damage. Probably. Depends on how many Salamandra you recruit. Caudwell also warned the world of an organization called the False Hearts, a group of Overed and Gjaums who believe that mankind should be ruled and controlled by Overed on the basis of 'we can shoot flaming bees out of our hands and you cannot'. Caudwell did a good job of getting everything set up, the UGN was gaining international acceptance even as it was kept off the public record, and the strange paranormal incidents started to calm down on account of superpowered secret agents kicking the poo poo out of them in back alleys. Then, 10 years ago, Caudwell had an incident with a superpowered lab monkey (they don't say what happened exactly, just that an animal in animal testing went berserk) and there were no survivors. Without him around to be Professor X, things started to change at the UGN. Ever since Caudwell supposedly got his face ripped off by a lab animal, the UGN has gone harder and harder towards militarization and enforcement and de-emphasized research and reconciliation. They've become ever more focused on monopolizing the power of the Overed for themselves, with tremendous political and financial benefits for the UGN top brass. Young Overed are strongly pressured to join. Then Caudwell came back, hijacking every TV in Japan to announce he was now a member of the False Hearts terrorist organization, that he was going to force the world to acknowledge the existence of Overed, and that he was going to personally burn down the entire UGN. People think his broadcast was some kind of crazy prank, since the UGN did everything it could to convince them this was some silly TV hijacking trick. The UGN, meanwhile, are terrified. Not only is returned Caudwell an extremely powerful Overed himself but he's their founder. He knows a lot about all of the hidden hidey holes of the organization. It didn't help that he proved his strength by burning down a couple regional branch offices as a demonstration. Worse, some of the UGN's own started to leave to go join the 'beloved' founder, reasoning he must have a good reason to oppose the UGN. I tell you all this because this is how DX does its story: You'll note there's no firm reason behind what Caudwell is doing. Is he taken over by the Renegade Virus? Is he a misguided extremist? Is he just using the False Hearts as a convenient way to correct the UGN and stop its slide into authoritarian conspiracy? Is he magic Hitler? Is he going to be your final boss, or are you going to switch sides halfway in and have him for a mentor? All of these things are left open. There's enough of a story to suggest reasons and plots, but there's no firm 'this is what Alfred J. Caudwell wants' because what Alfred J. Caudwell wants is to be a setting element for a GM to play with (and to burn the existing UGN to the ground, that part is firmly established). They don't even tell you his actual powers, just that they should be impressive, so you can make him do whatever you think would be fun for players to interact with. Similarly, there's a section on 'building your Stage' where they tell you to design a sub-setting to be the stage of your adventures. They give an example of a Tokyo suburb with a nice public school, a crime infested industrial park, and a bunch of minor mundane details. The idea is to establish a little bit about a place before you play, then fill in details over repeated adventures in the same area. Start broad, fill in in play is the general philosophy of Double Cross's setting material and it works quite well. It also makes it a lot easier to rip all of this out and run a different setting entirely. As long as you've got superhumans with powers that can go wild on them, and powerful enemies who are stronger because they're willing to completely embrace the monstrous side of power, you can do it in Double Cross. The approach where they have jusssst enough detail to spark ideas and help serve as a guiderail for your powers, but enough wiggle room to do your own thing, makes it fairly easy. This flexibility is also enabled by the way the story is told through the game's mechanics, which is the primary reason I'm doing this review. All that stuff about Caudwell is potentially fun for adventures, yeah. But you already get a story through the game's mechanics: You've got Encroach, it goes up, you get stronger and stronger as things escalate, and eventually get to the point where you and your buddies can match the swaggering and powerful monster who completely gave in and went nuts. You grow in power and complexity even if you stay sane, and eventually your powers will be strong enough to match lesser villains one on one, even as you still have to work together to crush the really big guys. Your power set provides mechanical complexity and interesting decisions to make in combat and character building, but you also feel its impact through what it does in gameplay. When a Pure Solaris throws down an ultimate buff chain that gives the party +20 dice and -1 Crit Value at the critical moment, all the hype about their superpowers is revealed through the gameplay effects of their abilities. When your Exile-Chimera hits 100% Encroach and pulls out their big Divine Beast Attack with Sword of Life and does enough damage to rip today's boss fight in half, that shows off their abilities better than a ton of fluff about how awesome they are. Your experience with the actual game mechanics will often match what you hoped for. There's an actual sense of escalation and rising action during the plots, which is mechanically supported. No PC can just get one-shotted in the first exchange of blows, because A: That's not mechanically satisfying and B: That's not how a big anime super fight goes. Of course the bad guy put you through three buildings. And of course you got back up, cursing, with a bunch of cuts and a roughed up costume. Double Cross is a game where the Crunch is the Story. It couldn't be a rules lite or less complex game, because the rules and complexity are where it gets its genre emulation and its gameplay. Why else do you get massive one-time critical power boosts from shocking revelations about the supporting cast? This is a game where a changing relationship and a huge revelation powers your fight-ending hyper-combo. Of course you make up cool names and descriptions for your most often used power combos. Double Cross embraces its genre, and uses its rules to help you get into the same spirit. By knowing what it's trying to be, and doing that well, it uses a ton of mechanical complexity to make a game with strong theming and pacing that really is fun to play, if a bit exhausting to GM at times (due to the rolling system). Next Time: A word on pre-mades, possibly some example characters and villains
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Dec 31, 2018 17:19
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Rolling would probably work better with an app.
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Dec 31, 2018 21:41
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Oh, yes. One of my players is apparently working on programing Roll20 support for DX in his spare time. With any luck it'll be working when we finish blowing up a thousand shrieking rat nazis and get on to 'I swear this isn't Shadow Hearts.' DX.
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Dec 31, 2018 22:41
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Night10194 posted:Oh, yes. One of my players is apparently working on programing Roll20 support for DX in his spare time. With any luck it'll be working when we finish blowing up a thousand shrieking rat nazis and get on to 'I swear this isn't Shadow Hearts.' DX. Going to be reskinning encroachment as Malice, I assume?
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Jan 1, 2019 02:13
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OvermanXAN posted:Going to be reskinning encroachment as Malice, I assume? Absolutely. It's been Infection in Parasite Eve, Sin in Biblical Fanfic, and now it will be Malice here.
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Jan 1, 2019 02:24
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