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NutritiousSnack posted:You know, they could have avoided all this and had the same effect if he were just trying to bring her back from death with no mention of hell or have her die any way they wanted and just be stuck in a Deadland or something. By popular demand posted:I'm guessing that there was no CSA apologia though. For what it's worth, one thing I noticed in the 1930s spinoff setting Deadlands Noir is that for its "Companion" book they had different writers do four major cities of the setting. Kenneth Hite wrote the Chicago chapter, and taking a page from the Last Sons he dispensed with the default "post-racial" setting assumption and Deconstructed the South. Get it, because instead of Reconstruction it's...okay, I'll show myself out. Although Noir still has a standing Confederacy, there was still a Great Migration north of black sharecroppers. In the Chicago chapter, a huge segment of the black population hated said country, and a popular black-run newspaper in Chicago was banned in publication down South. The CSA Embassy in Chicago is also very unpopular in the city by said residents. Great Migration, Chicago Chapter posted:That growth did not come without pangs. Urban poverty exploded, infant mortality skyrocketed. Offal and chemicals turned the river into a fizzy murk; coal smoke filled the air. Labor unions marched for the eight-hour day, fiery preachers called for reform and socialism, gangs warred over turf and protection, anarchists set off bombs and assassinated Pinkertons, and the big bosses cracked everyone’s heads in riot after riot. Despite all this, however, Chicago’s booming prosperity became a magnet for the black population in the Confederacy. Black sharecroppers poured North during Confederate President Wilson’s brief “New Opening” policy, seeking better jobs in Northern factories, which were plentiful during the war, and better race relations—which proved more elusive. White fear of the “Great Migration” triggered the worst riot of them all in 1919, which nearly burned the whole South Side to the ground, led to Federal intervention, and killed dozens of people. Nobody knows how many; the white administration didn’t want to find out, and bulldozed burned-out buildings over bodies without excavation. Chicago Entries posted:Chicago Defender: An entirely black-run and written weekly tabloid, the Defender covers Bronzeville and the other black neighborhoods of the city, exposing corruption and racism wherever it finds them. Staunchly reform Republican and hardline anti-Confederacy, the Defender never shies away from a fight. The KKK was also a thing in the Confederacy during the late 20s to early 30s. The CSA President at the time tried to reign them in, but this caused him to hurt in the polls: CSA Presidents 1913-1956 posted:1929-1932 — Oscar Underwood: A prominent anti-KKK campaigner, Underwood has the misfortune of holding office at the onset of the Great Depression in the CSA. In an attempt to combat the effects of the Depression on the South, Underwood makes several attempts to expand the power of the central Confederate government. Some were successful, most were not. Regardless, a combination of radical, often racist, opposition and the effects of the Depression limits him to a single term. Part of me wonders how much of this is Pinnacle trying to go "yeah, a modern Confederacy still wouldn't be great for African-Americans" without out and out saying "sorry we f'ed up on this." Versus Hite doing some subtle opposition. Libertad! fucked around with this message at 02:17 on Feb 8, 2019 |
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Feb 8, 2019 02:13
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Robindaybird posted:King had that pretty nasty car crash after the first book, iirc - it definitely had a major effect on his writing. And suddenly all his books changed from being about an author with substance abuse problems, to stories about an author with substance abuse problems who got hit by a van. I secretly like him, and have met him*, but he is 100% hilarious garbage. *HIs daughter is my girlfriend's minister.
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Feb 8, 2019 06:04
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Battle Century G is relatively simple, it's probably my favorite right now. This is a goon made game! The author posted in a predecessor of this thread. Maybe this one too; I don't remember who it is.
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Feb 8, 2019 06:11
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 Rifts World Book 23: Xiticix Invasion, Part 9: "Hell, I dun been a workin' for the Coalition for purty near thirty year, I tink." CS Operations in Xiticix Territory So, the Coalition has been trying to gather intel in Minnesota and Manitoba for around a decade - partly to prepare for war against Tolkeen, but also the Xiticix. As mentioned, they have outposts set up to maintain their "Holding Action". The Xiticix campaign leads to an "exciting" new possibility: maybe a player could play an undercover Coalition agent who's one of the people gathering intel! But remember the Coalition has super-loyal people and you can't just go betraying the Coalition. Rifts World Book 23: Xiticix Invasion posted:Even CS undercover agents who have grown to care about the people they are using or associating with (most of whom would be considered dissidents and Enemies of the States), will remain loyal to the Coalition States. If forced to pick sides, the CS will win 99 out of a hundred times. However, they are likely to bend the rules, make allowances, and even try to help "friends" on the wrong side of the law. Oh, you want to be like Finn, like in Star Wars? Sorry, that's just not realistic or fun. However, it mentions that the Lazlo campaign will expose some Coalition soldiers to seeing nonhumans and spellcasters being heroic and minds will be blown. However, the Coalition focuses on a process they call "reclamation" for soldiers that show signs of this, and will explain that it's just the result of wartime stress and disorientation. They'll stress that it's perfectly okay... as long as you reiterate the party line. Those who insist in defying Coalition propaganda may be forced to undergo "orientation" to overcome the "trauma". Of course, others will see magic and freak out and decide it needs to double die. Meanwhile, some find new respect for D-Bees and wizards and just quietly tuck that away, and make small differences where they can. But they don't just walk away from the fascist Coalition military. That'd be troublingly moral. Fort Barron We get a writeup of two outposts, complete with maps and point-by-point descriptions of their contents. Rifts World Book 23: Xiticix Invasion posted:14. Power Armor Storage Bay. Man, this book must have been hurting for content, because it feels like a good third has been filler of various sorts. It's just been flailing since the conclusion of the Lazlo war writeup to just throw anything at the wall, including... maps of walls. This particular base has bunch of Skelebots to try and counter potential swarm attacks. Largely, this is support for local intelligence operations. The commander also has authority to hire freelancers (i.e. PCs) for various jobs. However, they might screw over the PCs when done, not paying them, particularly if they have a D-Bee or magic-user around. However, they usually are fair to racists, because birds of a feather and all. One group of magic ethnics they do tolerate locally are Native Americans, mainly because they A) don't take their magic seriously, figuring it's just "primitive spiritualism" and B) they see them as little threat locally. Though this would be frowned upon officially, locally they have less oversight. We get a writeup for the local commander, Major Samuel Haim, who is apparently a masterful tactician, but decided he hated politics and got a field post to avoid getting promoted into generalship. (The notion of the Coalition soldier who's a soldier's soldier who just wants to stick to fighting with his troops is one we see a fair deal.) He actually doesn't particularly hate D-Bees or magic, but is loyal to the Coalition because he thinks they're the best hope at preserving humanity. It turns out he's so popular and cool that only 2% of this troops don't like him! (Sure, sounds legit.) He approves of the Lazlo invasion, but not cynically - he really just thinks Lazlo has a better shot at pulling it off. He's more concerned about what comes after, which will likely to be him dealing with remnants of Tolkeen, a conflict which he has no taste for. He's the kind of Coalition guy that gets to be Unprincipled (the loosest "good" alignment) because he's good deep down and is just following orders.   Boomhauer's just following orders too, I tell you what. Orion Greenfeld gets a writeup, the Coalition informant who has given us so much psuedorural jibber-jabber that you've only gotten a taste of. Now, I'm going to give you the whole plate. Rifts World Book 23: Xiticix Invasion posted:"Hell, I dun been a workin' for the Coalition for purty near thirty year, I tink. Dey not as bad as people say, at least not if you ain 't a D-Bee or wizard or sumting. No siree. Not dot I got anyting 'gainst D-Bees or mages. Sum o' my best friends ain't been completely human, an' I met my share of mages who dun alright by me. 'Course, ya gotta watch dot kind of talk 'round dem soldier boys, if ya know what I mean. He's a old wilderness guide who tells tall tales and is *sigh* loved by all the soldiers and is mysterious but is a great guy. A real great guy. He's an 11th level... poo poo. quote:Trapper-Woodsman O.C.C.: An 11th level Trapper-Woodsman! Whooooohooo! Yeeeehaaw! Put that in your cup and slug it! Also he gets to be Unprincipled even though he's worked for fascists as an informant because it's not like he personally does anything wrong, he just helps prop up the merciless wheel of intolerance, oppression, and genocide. But you can't hold him responsible for that, obviously. I don't really need to describe the six straight pages of itemized maps that follow. Unless you're doing a siege scenario or something, or playing it as a dungeon where you're just door-to-door killing Coalition, I'm not sure what the point is. Fort Perrion A smaller outpost near the Xiticix land that focuses largely on developing and executing small-scale covert ops against the bugs. One of your very PCs could be a secret Coalition agent for these guys? But maybe let's not. There's no particular personalities or history here and half the writeup is just lists of vehicles and percentage breakdowns of troop types. So if you need to know that there are 38.4 EOD Specialists located here, it's got you covered. Man, you've gotta feel sorry for that .4 EOD Specialist. I don't know what that entails but it must be tragic. Heroes & Hardcases of the Xiticix Invasion We then get some small independent NPC groups in the Xiticix area. We are in full filler funtime. The Wild Pack is a Coalition troop that was sent to capture a Psi-Stalker murderer who led them into Xiticix territory. Though the Psi-Stalker was killed by the bugs, so were a number of the troops' dog boys. Seeking revenge against the Xiticix, they have "neglected" to report the Psi-Stalker's death, instead pretending to be hunting the murderer down while really doing a one-unit war against the bugs. Their leader is Commander Jess Helgeland, a Coalition Psi-Stalker who is... Principled? The strictest good alignment? Am I loving reading that right? Are there no evil Coalition soldiers in this book? The three dog boys written up who follow her are Principled / Unprincipled / Principled. They also have some associates like two Spider Tribe Psi-Stalkers (Anarchist) and a rogue Kill Hound (Aberrant), who aren't technically Coalition so they're allowed to be ungood, I guess.   Greot Hunter and a Burster. What? I'm out of tiny text jokes. Manitoba & Company are freelancers for the Coalition who work at performing operations against the Xiticix, but spend their time between missions as bandits. Though feared, they don't get along too well and things will probably end in blood. They have a Hyperion Juicer (the speedster-optimized Juicers), a Greot Hunter, a Burster, and a ex-Coalition power armor pilot. They don't seem to have any particular leadership or direction other than being mercs and thieves. They have names, I guess? They're all just jerks of varying flavors, though. The Lazlo Triad is made up of three heroes aiming to fight the Xiticix - are they independent? Do they work for Lazlo? ... not much is clear here. Actually, it turns out they have four associates for a total of seven, so they're more like The Lazlo Heptad, but I guess that's not as good for branding. There's a Fire Dragon Hatchling, a Cyber-Knight, and a Ley Line Walker. What are you supposed to do with them? Are there any story hooks or really... anything beyond just having them fight bugs? No. No, there is not. Conclusion Well, this book felt stretched to the limit. Though it's often obvious when a Palladium book had fluff shoved in at the end to round out a page count - usually marked by a new vehicle without any specific name, or some redundant writeup, or whatever, this really just felt like Siembieda was getting paid by the word. He wasn't, but trying to stretch an 17-page article from The Rifter into a 160-page book feels like a real mistake. Maybe if they'd used the old sourcebook format, did this as like a 96 page book, it could have been relatively focused and tight. Instead you get chunks of wholly pointless text like this: Rifts World Book 23: Xiticix Invasion posted:Scorched Earth  Here's the infuriating part, the part I realized as I was thinking about the stretched sections of this book. Is... there something they could have covered that they didn't? Something that would have been more interesting than pages of Xiticix hive layouts? And it came to me. And it's so simple, so frustrating to realize. They could have covered Lazlo. That's it! This was a metaplot book about Lazlo. About Lazlo at war. And in case you think you might have missed something, no. Lazlo has never been officially covered in detail, ever. Here we are, talking about a war, where one of the military forces is nearly entirely undefined. We know some things about Lazlo, about their leadership and ideals, but we've never seen the place. Rifts World Book 20: Canada said that Lazlo would be covered in a book soon. This was their chance! And it was blown. To this day, nearly two decades later, it still hasn't been detailed save for some unofficial material in The Rifter. And the Xiticix are still boring. They have no personality, except when Siembieda wants to indulge his NPC revenge checkbox, then they want revenge. And that's not to say you can't have a story about a faceless horde. You totally can. But don't spend over 80 pages of a 160 page book talking about them and their mandible shapes. If they have no distinct motivation, no distinct identities, no distinct personalities, they're just bullet-catchers, just a disaster like a tidal wave or plague. Like a zombie invasion, the story will come in people's reactions to the crisis. Not the Xiticix itself. Worse yet, while they come in massive numbers and waves, they're strong enough that they're the equal of many PCs - they can even gain levels! No amount of detail can really paper over some of the basic conceptual issues. It's far from the worst Rifts book, it's reasonably functional and does what it set out to do. It's just what it does just isn't that interesting. And it's not just me that thinks this. I peeked ahead at future books to find out what becomes of this Lazlo-Xiticix Plot. The Lazlo-Xiticix War isn't acknowledged at all. It's discarded. I figured the Lazlo war was to take them out of commission for the next part of the metaplot. But no. loving seriously, I just read half a book discussing events that don't happen. And it even contradicts the timeline as being "105 P.A." when that'll be a past date within two books! There's a rumor that the extermination of the Xiticix will happen and be considered canon at some point in the plot... ... when the Lazlo book comes out. Thanks, Siembieda. You keep on failing forward. THE END. CANADA WILL RETURN IN RIFTS WORLD BOOK 22: FREE QUEBEC.
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Feb 8, 2019 06:40
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Midjack posted:This is a goon made game! The author posted in a predecessor of this thread. Maybe this one too; I don't remember who it is. That is really cool to hear.
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Feb 8, 2019 06:56
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Good to know that I can still go to Rifts for my helping of Nazi apologia after I fill my plate up with slaver apologia.
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Feb 8, 2019 06:59
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The obvious master-stroke with the CS would be that it was revealed that this Prosek cat is actually a D-Bee or is somehow or other starting a bunch of purges to harvest souls for the Nightbane or something.
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Feb 8, 2019 08:04
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The first Palladium post-apocalypse game, After the Bomb, had an "Empire of Humanity" that clearly inspired the Coalition. The head of the Empire of Humanity would, despite his persecution of mutant animals, would turn out to be a superpowered mutant himself. The Coalition have never had any comparable twist.
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Feb 8, 2019 08:48
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Kaza42 posted:This is actually one reason why Tactical Marines were bad for a few editions of the 40k wargame. There were just so many weapons that could pierce 3+ armor, many of which also ignored cover, that marines would often be just as fragile as guardsmen in practice. Of particular note to my army (Imperial Guard) was a tank configuration whose main weapon hit a large area, had just enough strength to kill a marine on a 2+, ignored standard marine armor and ignored cover. It could literally kill a squad of marines a turn, and this was far from an isolated example. Eldar and Chaos both had similar marine-killer weapons, and probably other factions I'm forgetting about IIRC the Vespid auxillaries for the Tau specifically have Marine-killer weapons, though I heard they're too fragile to be particularly useful. Mind you, kind of a thing with the Tau is you're supposed to used combined arms tactics with them iirc.
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Feb 8, 2019 11:30
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Alien Rope Burn posted:The first Palladium post-apocalypse game, After the Bomb, had an "Empire of Humanity" that clearly inspired the Coalition. The head of the Empire of Humanity would, despite his persecution of mutant animals, would turn out to be a superpowered mutant himself. This is true. Erik Wujcik made the Empire of Humanity explicitly as an antagonist for PCs to fight and never bothered with skill packages or anything so you could play them (since he figured you were here for the mutant animals anyway), but it would be understatement to say Wujcik is a games developer who is streets ahead of Kevin. I still wonder if the success of TIE Fighter didn't lead to the CS becoming playable. Everybody was suddenly all about playing the Empire or its equivalent.
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Feb 8, 2019 13:30
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Dawgstar posted:I still wonder if the success of TIE Fighter didn't lead to the CS becoming playable. Everybody was suddenly all about playing the Empire or its equivalent. I believe the Coalition has been playable out of the core since the beginning, in 1990, and TIE Fighter came out in 1994.
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Feb 8, 2019 13:40
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That Old Tree posted:I believe the Coalition has been playable out of the core since the beginning, in 1990, and TIE Fighter came out in 1994. Well, the thinking was Coalition War Campaign came out in 1996 and it had everything in it for your own fascist games at home.
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Feb 8, 2019 13:59
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That Old Tree posted:I believe the Coalition has been playable out of the core since the beginning, in 1990, and TIE Fighter came out in 1994. Back when Rifts came out, even with the stat blocks, there was little reason to play as CS when you had stuff like Crazies, Juicers, 'Borgs, C-Knights, and Glitter Boys. And, even if you did play something like a Psi-Stalker, Dog-Boy or, the more likely scenario, a SAMAS pilot, there was the assumption that you went rogue and deserted or gone "native", like the book suggested to you. However, with few exceptions, CS gear tended to be better than most of the available stuff to characters not Juicers, Borgs, and Glitter Boys, which is why you had SAMAS pilots very often. A good example was the Dead-Boy armor, which offered protection comparable to the Bushman but with less penalty, or their laser rifles, which was half as light as the civilian generic laser rifle. Also, the fact of civies and mercs getting caught in Dead-Boy armor essentially being a death sentence if caught by CS forces kinda played something into that. This mattered less and less with future splatbooks, but if you had a limited number of those supplements, it would obviously start painting a picture. There's also that the Long-designed Dead-Boy armor is somewhat iconic, especially in the juvenile Blood-Skull era of '90s fandom. It's a problem that Killzone has, where the bad guys have a more consistent look than the heroes, who are largely forgettable. I'm thinking that if anyone makes a fascist faction in a game now, they need to make them as dorks as possible to keep them from being cool.
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Feb 8, 2019 14:15
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If we compared game designers to bands, Erik Wujcik is the Buddy Holly of game design. What he produced was original, innovative (hell he did indy games decades before they were a thing), and cut down before we were done with him. The fact he managed to make several palladium supplements that were freaking amazing speaks volumes. I kinda wish we existed in the alt timeline, where he was hanging out with Kenneth Hite and Robin D. Laws instead of KS, because I imagine what he would have created with them would have been amazing. ********************************* As for xiticix world book, never has a book bored me terribly. Worse, this was the expansion of a rifter article that had already done the interesting parts. I think I've gotten more use out of the cs forts then anything else in the book (mainly because it's fun when using it to say for your military organization "it's not in the budget.)" :p but yeah, this should have been Lazlo's book. add a kingsdale like map, list out a paragraph or two of key movers and shakers with a plot hook, and bammo, you now have something to work with. If you want to go for bonus points, go for New Lazlo as well. ********************************* Man, all this deadlands talk has made me curious. I think I want to do the black sheep amongst black sheep: Deadlands d20. 
shades of eternity fucked around with this message at 14:47 on Feb 8, 2019 |
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Feb 8, 2019 14:44
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Erik Wujcik wrote the DM advice in AMBER, so let's not get too carried away with praise.
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Feb 8, 2019 15:37
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Ghost Leviathan posted:IIRC the Vespid auxillaries for the Tau specifically have Marine-killer weapons, though I heard they're too fragile to be particularly useful. Mind you, kind of a thing with the Tau is you're supposed to used combined arms tactics with them iirc. This is true. Per the points, and the actual cost of the mini's, fielding a full unit isn't worthwhile. They're a decent glass canon though if you look outside the points value and fun to bring out since no one uses them and no one really knows what they are because of that.
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Feb 8, 2019 16:32
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Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Old World Bestiary Of all the creatures in this world, they are the eldest. Minotaurs are fairly simple and our narrators don't have a lot to say about them. They're big, they're tough, and they're very dangerous. This is mostly true in gameplay; you can't take a Minotaur lightly but most Beastman forces PCs encounter will only have one. 2nd tier fighters can handle them well enough, and a 1st tier party can bring one down on their own. One thing that does come across from the narration is that some Minotaurs are much smarter than others, touched by the Dark Gods, and these are the ones that become much more skilled and dangerous. The other important thing is that Minotaurs tend shrines and 'holy' places for Chaos. When the Minotaurs talk about themselves, they say it's because they have everything Chaos wants in a person. They're big, they're strong, and they eat people. They say they'll sometimes go to war for the other, smaller Beastmen rather than tending their holy shrines and waiting for prey to come to them, but only when the lesser Beastmen fear them. Otherwise, they're happy to eat them, too. Minotaurs are also sometimes picked out and Marked as actual Champions of Chaos, and those ones are the ones to watch out for (you make these by giving Careers to a Minotaur's base stats, or by rolling one up with Tome of Corruption). Still, besides the plot hook about them being Chaos's shrine-tenders, there isn't much to say for the beefy boys. More interesting by far are Dragon Ogres. This book gives more on the Dragon Ogres than ToC, and they're fascinating. They're huge beings, with four-legged lizard torsos and then a massive human-like torso coming out of it, and they live in the mountains and cluster around thunderstorms to feed off getting hit with lightning. The Common View of them is about the lightning-feeding and mountain-living; stories of people seeing them waking up en-masse and crawling to the summits to greet a great storm, or a story about an arrogant Heavens wizard who thought his lightning magic could kill them (it cannot, it only makes them stronger). There's also a bit from an Imperial general saying that the forces of Chaos only ever seem to call on Dragon Ogres when a campaign actually matters to them. He also likens fighting one to fighting a fully armored knight attached to their horse and with thousands of years of experience. They're quite dangerous. The Scholar's Eye is especially interesting, and comes from a Tzeentch sorcerer who has studied under them. He claims they are the very first intelligent life of this planet, evolving well before the Old Ones even arrived. They and the Dragons both predate the Old Ones, which I've always suspected might be why the Old Ones made lizards as their primary servitor race on this planet. The Dragon Ogres call themselves Shartaks, and not a single one has been born since they bargained with Chaos for true immortality; that was the hidden cost of their eternity, never being able to have children. This is why Chaos is so 'careful' with them; it can't get more. The largest of the Shartaks are called Shaggoths, and are the eldest of their species, having been ancient when the bargain was made. Shartaks now spend centuries asleep, their spirits roaming the world in dreams as they study the roll of ages until another great storm comes, the lightning invigorating them and waking them and sending them the God's demands that they serve. He speaks of them with genuine respect, which is very unusual for a Tzeentch Sorcerer, and says that his tutor among them was one of the greatest beings he ever met. His master told him that to the Shartak, the dreams are what matter now, and the waking world is an annoying intrusion, an obligation they have to fulfill. The Shartaks hate to be called on often, almost as if they regret their pact with Chaos, and it treats them as something it cannot afford to throw away lightly. Their Own Words section is also really interesting. One is an ancient Shaggoth talking about how little the cause of Chaos means to him, lamenting that he has to wake and deal with this, and especially lamenting that more of his kind will inevitably die in the process. He just sounds old, and tired, and bored with existing. He wonders whether his people ever really had a choice, or if they were just tricked and dragged into this as all other followers of Chaos are. In the end, he sounds ready to die and talks of how facing someone who could kill him is the only waking thing that makes him feel alive. The other is a younger Dragon Ogre admiring the new inventions of humans and praising their inventiveness. He sounds genuinely amused and impressed, and excited to try his axe versus these new 'gun' things. That gets at something I notice about Hams immortals: There's a lot of emphasis on how the world actually changes over time and how they no longer recognize it when they come to it. A hundred years isn't that long to an elf, or vampire, or Dragon Ogre, but in a hundred years an awful lot can happen. The world moves at the pace of years and decades, no matter how many centuries you live. I love the Dragon Ogre section, even if this is nearly all the flavor they get in the line, because I really like the idea of a people who have been ensnared by Chaos so long that they've realized it's pointless. Slowly dying out one death in battle at a time, clinging to their world of dreams and sometimes teaching people what they've seen over the entire history of the setting. There's a lot you can do with that. The Chorfs are also good, though they got considerably more attention in ToC. What's interesting here is what people have to say about them. A dwarf loremaster calls them the greatest shame, the worst aspects of dwarfs without any of the good. A people who 'would make the world a smokey darkness, where hope and cheer are crimes.' Kinear gives us a gleeful description of how yes, even the dwarfs can fall, which he phrases as warnings against the pervasive nature of Chaos but which you can tell is really just him bragging about how no-one is immune to it. Much of the description of them focuses on how they're everything dwarfs are, just...on the other side. Where dwarfs make friends, they make slaves. Where dwarfs honor their word, the Chorfs write twisting contracts full of traps. There's also a lot of focus on their embracing magic, and their willingness to use greenskin allies, specifically the Hobgoblins (Mongol wolf-riders, basically, we'll get to them). The Scholar's Eye also introduces Waldemarr, Scholar of Nuln. He'll be around with us a long time, and he's simply a reasonably learned scholar who knows a lot about monsters. He tells the story of how the Chorfs gene-spliced the Black Orcs, bigger, stronger, more disciplined Orcs (think Uruk-hai), to try to have a controlled subspecies of slavemasters to rule over and direct their Greenskin slaves. It didn't work, with the Black Orcs rebelling and becoming part of the normal Greenskin fight pile. The only thing that saved the Chorfs from their own former slaves was the betrayal of the Hobgoblins, who remained loyal to their dwarf masters, and the exact nature of how they betrayed their fellows and saved the Chorfs is unknown. The Chorfs' own descriptions are dripping with bitterness. They spit on the Ancestor Gods as not 'real' Gods, nothing that could actually protect them when the Tong were breaking down their gates. They spit on their cousins for refusing their pleas for aid during their hour of need. They call the normal dwarfs traitors for refusing to help them, and justify their service to Hashut, the God of Darkness, by saying they simply did what they needed to do to survive. They exalt in the many inventions they've managed since they embraced magic and demonology, and await the time when they will show their hidebound cousins what they've learned. It's blood that greases the wheels of Hashut's great machines, after all. Chorfs still rule as one of the other better peoples of Chaos. Finally, we get Daemons. The Common View, interestingly, actually knows about Daemonic Instability. It's common knowledge among soldiers that if you can manage to hold together and withstand the first charge, daemons can lose their grip on the world and get dragged back to hell even if you don't kill them outright. Captain Schultz urges that you have to avoid giving in to fear and stick together; if you stay united you can beat them. If anyone runs, you're probably dead. We're also introduced to another major narrator, Elke Rabe, a Camp Follower for a Stirland regiment. She mentions that the trauma of fighting daemons makes soldiers eager for companionship after, and the scale of death usually makes for good looting and scavenging...just pray to all the Gods your regiment wins its tussle. This actually maps to how Daemons play out in game. They've got a ton of offense, but not much staying power. Instability is also more powerful in 2e than any other incarnation of Hams RP: A daemon that fails to inflict Wounds and that takes a Wound in melee has to save with WP or die instantly. If you can hold out, they will melt away. Rikkit'tik, who has been sadly absent for too long, pipes up with 'powdered ithmilar suspended in hellflower oil' as your solution to all daemon problems. Thanks, Rikkit'tik! Pike talks about how daemons are (supposedly) able to draw on the secret desires of mortals, and in proper highly orthodox Sigmarite fashion, advises a life of total self denial and asceticism or a life dedicated to constant combat against them as the only real ways to defend yourself from their corruption. This would be a lot more biting if daemons didn't mostly just kill people and act like crazy automatons, but you know. We've got to pretend Chaos is more than it is sometimes. Drakar focuses on the daemons of Tzeentch, talking about how burning down orphanages or rousing 'lazy beastmen' with forest fires makes Flamers fun. He's very fond of Horrors for how they reproduce when killed, and he'll consistently admire anything that seems 'infinite' or that regenerates; he thinks it reflects the way Chaos gets to magic up infinite armies any time it wants. The actual 'own words' for daemons could have been interesting, but eh. It's a Horror talking about 'oh you can't fight us, we're your hopes and dreams and humanity' (which is partly true-ish, but so are a lot of other things, like the other human Gods, or the Winds of Magic, etc). The Daemonette gives a generic 'oh I'm so sexy and you can't resist let me stab you a bunch' speech. The Plaguebearer just sings a bunch of disease names. And I'm sure you can guess what the Bloodletter says. It's BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD. He loses points for forgetting to throw in SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE. If anything, it's a nice affirmation of how predictable and boring lesser daemons are. And with that, we're done with Kahyoss. And on to the closest thing to a Greenskin book we ever got. Next Time: Da Orcs!
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Feb 8, 2019 17:13
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Ah, Dragon Ogres. Something that could be interesting if literally anywhere, ever gave them more than a page and a half, at most.
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Feb 8, 2019 17:58
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Mors Rattus posted:Ah, Dragon Ogres. Something that could be interesting if literally anywhere, ever gave them more than a page and a half, at most. I use them pretty often because they're cool as hell. I play them as dramatically playing up their injuries and falling back from fights, talking about 'oh no, we have served our obligations but the enemy is just too strong, we must retreat oh dark gods'. Letting them retreat helped save a wing of a big battle in the Amazon campaign I did. E: It's hilarious how they get more character in their page and half here than the Lesser Demons get in dozens across several books, though. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 18:06 on Feb 8, 2019 |
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Feb 8, 2019 18:03
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Dawgstar posted:I still wonder if the success of TIE Fighter didn't lead to the CS becoming playable. Everybody was suddenly all about playing the Empire or its equivalent. I think it goes farther back than that, to the toy lines of the 1970s and 1980s really just introducing the idea of playing the bad guy as acceptable. (Not to say it's unacceptable per se, but really pushing the notion of having two valid play sides.) I'll probably talk about it more in a future review, but TIE Fighter already came out of that mindset, I think. The problem is when those bad guys are given a more "mature" context and suddenly the bad guys aren't just trying to abstractly conquer the world, but also are crystal-clear genocidal ideologues modeled after real-life war criminals... that problems emerge. Yes, Cobra Command and Galactic Empire are both to different extents inspired by the fascism of World War II, but with the most objectionable bits scrubbed out. Some continuities try and jam then back in, yes, but at the base levels of the franchise they tend towards generic powermongering - not much different than purely generic baddies like Megatron or Skeletor. All of which were treated as "valid for play" by the existence of their toy lines. SirPhoebos posted:Erik Wujcik wrote the DM advice in AMBER, so let's not get too carried away with praise. Wujcik was important in a number of ways; he was innovative for his time, and pushed a lot of interesting stuff systemically, even if he was hobbled by Palladium's core mechanics. Stuff like Amber Diceless, BIO-E, and stuff like Transdimensional TMNT's time loops were all really interesting. And he was imaginative and almost always had weird, interesting ideas in his books, and really was a shot of lifeblood on a lot of early Palladium material. Amber was part of the dawn of early "indie" and story-focused gaming, and games like Fate owe it a huge debt. That all said, a lot of his writing hasn't aged well. He gives both good GM advice and bad GM advice, as he pushed for a confrontational, punishing GM style that crystallized in the form of Amber Diceless as the ultimate mother-may-I game. You could also argue a lot of his success was on the back of licenses - his big games were TMNT and Amber, after all, but Ninjas & Superspies and Beyond the Supernatural exist generally in the hinterlands of the Palladium line. Moreover, there's a thread of Asian stereotyping in his works that, while clearly unintentional, likely inspires a full-body cringe from many these days. Writers aren't just necessarily good or bad, and Wujcik's positive legacies outweigh the negative ones in my opinion, but at the same time I couldn't recommend any of his games as-is anymore.
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Feb 8, 2019 19:54
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I think it goes farther back than that, to the toy lines of the 1970s and 1980s really just introducing the idea of playing the bad guy as acceptable. (Not to say it's unacceptable per se, but really pushing the notion of having two valid play sides.) I'll probably talk about it more in a future review, but TIE Fighter already came out of that mindset, I think. The problem is when those bad guys are given a more "mature" context and suddenly the bad guys aren't just trying to abstractly conquer the world, but also are crystal-clear genocidal ideologues modeled after real-life war criminals... that problems emerge. Yes, Cobra Command and Galactic Empire are both to different extents inspired by the fascism of World War II, but with the most objectionable bits scrubbed out. Some continuities try and jam then back in, yes, but at the base levels of the franchise they tend towards generic powermongering - not much different than purely generic baddies like Megatron or Skeletor. All of which were treated as "valid for play" by the existence of their toy lines. The nerdy quest for 'maturity' in an ocean of blood and 'justified' genocide or fascism is goddamn everywhere in this hobby (and nerdy grimdark in general). Though it seems like it's gotten less prominent of late.
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Feb 8, 2019 19:58
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A rite of passage into adulthood and a certain social class was a big motivator for young men to join imperial armies. British India and the Congo, for example.
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Feb 8, 2019 20:05
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Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Old World Bestiary Oi! You lookin' at my choppa? It strikes me I almost never use Orcs in Fantasy. Part of this, I suspect, is they're a lot less necessary. The rest of the setting has more of a sense of humor about itself, and so they don't occupy the same 'only guys who remember to have fun' niche they do in 40k. The other reason? This is pretty much all the material you get on them in 2e. No-one in Fantasy really has any idea where the giant green guys came from, or why they do what they do. They like fighting, they like taking things from people, they like enslaving people, and they like eating people. They can be found in warbands all through the Old World, and probably everywhere else besides. They aren't at all linked to Chaos, though GW liked to try to make them into Chaos's lackeys, so much as they just really like breaking poo poo because it's there and nobody's broken it yet. Sometimes that puts them on the same side, until they notice them spikey boys ain't broken yet and seem to think they'z the orcs bosses and the rest is history. Our first commentator on them is Schultz, and again, he's got gameplay actionable advice from his experience as a merc. Orcs aren't so much dumb as completely undisciplined. They're always looking for an excuse for a fight, and something as simple as telling one his mate was looking at him funny can and will start an internecine brawl in addition to the orcs trying to fight you, too. They also don't really do ranged weapons besides basic bows. Or complex unit maneuvers. Their gear is also crude hunks of sharpened iron and slabs of metal armor, not well forged plate and swords. At the same time, they're bigger than you and tougher than you, and they don't like to back down from a scrap. You'll probably fight orcs if they show up in a plot, because that's sort of all they do, so direct advice on how they handle in combat is helpful to a GM or player. Hob the Farmer feels the same, saying the Orcs are worthless beasts that just rob and kill. Most Imperials hate them with an especial passion, because Sigmar did (they did kill his mom and force him to fight a ton of grueling wars against them). A traveling merchant points out that what orcs really want is dominance, though. Lots of the tribes in the Darklands to the east will accept tribute to show that a humie knows their place rather than a fight, because they still like treasure (to show off that they earned it by being so tough) and gifts of food or weapons; he points out no caravans would ever get through from Cathay if they had to fight every Orc tribe on the way. We also meet Heinrich Malz, a High Priest of Verena and another of our learned commentators. He tends to take a rather judgemental role on the monsters of the world, describing Orcs as what would happen if you gave a bunch of squabbling toddlers superhuman strength and the ability to wield weapons. Orc culture is based entirely around strength, with the weak bowing before the strong and taking something from someone being the only truly praiseworthy way to get it. Orcs worship two Gods, Gork and Mork, who are everything an Orc wants to be. They're big, fierce, brave, and more importantly, lucky. Orcs actually acknowledge the role of luck in everything and think it's great to take risks and get lucky; that's kind of a neat little detail. No Orc really prays to their Gods; praying means you're weak and can't do it yourself. Instead they give them tribute, as the biggest and baddest bosses, and try to be like them. Rikkit'tik would like to add that you should use Nightshade or whatever else you'd use on a human. Double the dose. Triple it if you're after a Warboss. An Orc lives to fight, and their warband will be shaped by their Warboss, the biggest Orc in the pack. He's in charge because he's biggest, but sometimes the biggest is also the smartest; Orcs can be surprisingly cunning because they don't do anything but war and there's nothing dishonorable or weak about using cunning tricks or skillful moves to win. Winning and taking things is what's honorable. Orcs just often don't bother because they don't feel like they need to, and they're really enthusiastic about their work. After all, crushing someone nice and direct scares their mates and shows how much stronger you are, and if you do that, everybody knows you're the biggest. Even when a Boss is cunning, they might try to stick to simpler tactics because their Boys aren't. Trying to pull off a complex feint in a battle when both regiments you're using to do it are yelling at each other about being cowards and possibly getting into a brawl over it might not work! Might be better to just go for something more direct. Our Dwarf Loremaster from the Chorf bit, Gialar Kunst, would like to chime in to give his highly educated opinion that boils down to 'gently caress Orcs, the sooner we kill them all the better!' Dwarfs may have lost their empire to a mixture of idiot frog disaster, Greenskins, and Nazi Rats, but they mostly blame the Greenskins and want every last one of them dead. The Own Words for the Orcs are an Orc cook describing what all the other races taste like and how the fun of roasting a dwarf's beard off makes up for how bad they taste, a normal Orc Boy yelling at one of his buddies and getting into a fight, and a Warboss promising that one day they're going to crush every last human and eat them all, then the world will belong to the Orcs. After all, if they take EVERYTHING, that guy's gonna be the baddest and biggest boss ever, right? I'm going into a little more detail with these guys because again, this is sort of the only material on them in the line. The Orcs are supposed to be a big part of the setting, but they've always struggled a little more to stand out in Fantasy compared to 40k where the setting desperately needed anyone who remembered to be comic relief. And end of the day, they're pretty simple. They want to fight you or rob you. That's about it. Their other issue is that they kind of share space with Beastmen as marauders out to destroy things just to destroy them, and Beastmen are a lot easier to throw at lower level PCs because they aren't nearly as tough. Next Time: Gobbos, Squigs, and more Night10194 fucked around with this message at 20:43 on Feb 8, 2019 |
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Feb 8, 2019 20:41
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The nice thing about Warhammer Orcs is that they're basically completely incapable of any unfortunate implications. Orcs and goblins just kind of happen, and they don't seem to be able to tell that, for example, sexes are a thing.
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Feb 8, 2019 21:18
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Night10194 posted:Orc culture is based entirely around strength, with the weak bowing before the strong and taking something from someone being the only truly praiseworthy way to get it. Given this, you'd think they'd be used for pointed political commentary more often. (Yes, I remember that 40k warboss named after Thatcher.)
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Feb 8, 2019 21:19
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With Orcs you really have to sell their enormity and their nature as an unstoppable force. They're not like beastmen, who are just disposable pawns and really cowards when things aren't going their way. The Green Tide is bigger than you, it's stronger than you, there's more of them, and they don't stop for anything. The ground shakes when they shout at you, and shakes harder when they charge. They won't run when you kill some of them like the beastmen, because all you're doing is confirming that today will be fun.
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Feb 8, 2019 21:21
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Mors Rattus posted:The nice thing about Warhammer Orcs is that they're basically completely incapable of any unfortunate implications. Orcs and goblins just kind of happen, and they don't seem to be able to tell that, for example, sexes are a thing. They also literally don't understand the concept of non-combatants because they don't know why the hell anyone wouldn't want to fight. Fighting is the best thing ever, why would some people stay out of it? Though with the Fantasy ones there's more emphasis on 'they'll accept tribute' when it comes to people who absolutely can't fight back. E: Also, to the above, that's nice for a TT wargame. It doesn't work great for a 3-6 person party. The enormity is part of what makes them harder to use in the RPG, not least of which because running combats with tons of enemies slows down the game quite a bit when each of those enemies is really tough, unlike Skaven clanrats, or won't break like Gors. Even high tier characters can take a long time to chew through a swarm of Boys. And mechanically, Orcs big thing is being tough. They get solid DR, but they don't actually hit that hard. You'll be tunneling through that meatwall for awhile. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 21:39 on Feb 8, 2019 |
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Feb 8, 2019 21:22
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wiegieman posted:With Orcs you really have to sell their enormity and their nature as an unstoppable force. They're not like beastmen, who are just disposable pawns and really cowards when things aren't going their way. The Green Tide is bigger than you, it's stronger than you, there's more of them, and they don't stop for anything. The ground shakes when they shout at you, and shakes harder when they charge. They won't run when you kill some of them like the beastmen, because all you're doing is confirming that today will be fun. Even then, all of that describes the Warriors of Chaos, too.
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Feb 8, 2019 21:42
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Warhammer could really do with like five fewer implacable hordes of disposable mooks bent on conquest and destruction.wiegieman posted:The Green Tide is bigger than you, it's stronger than you, there's more of them, and they don't stop for anything. Tulane fanboy spotted. 
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Feb 8, 2019 21:57
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Cythereal posted:Even then, all of that describes the Warriors of Chaos, too. yeah but in a cool way
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Feb 8, 2019 22:05
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The Orcs are there because one of the keys to Hams Fantasy is that everything is the thing you've seen in another fantasy setting, just a bit different. I think that's actually really important to the setting; everything's recognizable on the surface just from knowing anything about the genre, and then opens up when you look into it more. Elves act how they do everywhere else. The setting just isn't in their corner the same way it usually is and people don't put up with it. Also the Dark Elves aren't a weird bunch of spider-worshiping bundles of unfortunate implications, they're just the ones who turned the polite racism of their cousins into all out crazy Canadian fascism. Dwarfs are what you expect from dwarfs, but with the twist that A: They kicked the poo poo out of the elves when they fought, and they had a good reason to fight, and B: They're actually surprisingly friendly no matter how much they pretend to be gruff as hell. The humans are knights in medieval stasis where the point is the medieval stasis is hosed up, 30 Years War Germans, etc. They're all things you can get at on the surface and then go deeper on to do more with. So on and so forth. You don't need a huge amount of investment to 'get' what's going on in the setting if you've done anything else with fantasy games and novels. So in that respect, it makes sense they've got Orcs, and they're just a crazy destructive force. Hell, with Orcs I'd say the twist is more there's no twist. Except maybe the part where they're genuinely happy being who they are and generally enjoy their lives.
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Feb 8, 2019 22:07
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Orcs do not need to change. They are already their Best Selves.
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Feb 8, 2019 22:24
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I'd argue that the Orcs are worth having in Fantasy just to contrast with other villains and to enable Goblins. Also if you didn't have them around you couldn't have the hilarity of sucker-punching Archaon. Yeah, they're not super interesting but they enable good moments and the few iconic ones are drat cool.
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Feb 8, 2019 22:31
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OvermanXAN posted:I'd argue that the Orcs are worth having in Fantasy just to contrast with other villains and to enable Goblins. Also if you didn't have them around you couldn't have the hilarity of sucker-punching Archaon. Yeah, they're not super interesting but they enable good moments and the few iconic ones are drat cool. Oh, they're fine as a setting thing. I just don't find much use for them in the RPG scale aside from the occasional sideplot. But that's always been their thing: They're really not for carrying a plot on their own, they're for a scene where a warboss responds to a vampire trying to swing a tree at him by demanding his aide get him his own tree, so they can duel with trees, because this seems like fun. That happened.
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Feb 8, 2019 22:36
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Night10194 posted:Oh, they're fine as a setting thing. I just don't find much use for them in the RPG scale aside from the occasional sideplot. But that's always been their thing: They're really not for carrying a plot on their own, they're for a scene where a warboss responds to a vampire trying to swing a tree at him by demanding his aide get him his own tree, so they can duel with trees, because this seems like fun.  I love your stories
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Feb 8, 2019 23:02
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Night10194 posted:Dwarfs are what you expect from dwarfs, but with the twist that A: They kicked the poo poo out of the elves when they fought, and they had a good reason to fight, and B: They're actually surprisingly friendly no matter how much they pretend to be gruff as hell. Dwarfs and halflings (and Elves, but they suck and that's the point) are actually representing the idea of what Toilkeen put out for them with the cavet that they represent what they do in a realtistic world. So humans, quite naturally, are enthusiastic allies of the reliable allies who always show up to help them even if they give them sass and provide a society that Dwarves tried of fighting for their own can happily live in. Everything that describes the Hobbit society means that when interacting with other cultures they wind thieves, cheats, or labor organziers trying to do the best job possible and getting noble cheapskates to actually pay the gently caress up, while in their own they are isolated socalists
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Feb 9, 2019 00:28
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Night10194 posted:Dwarfs are what you expect from dwarfs, but with the twist that A: They kicked the poo poo out of the elves when they fought, and they had a good reason to fight, and B: They're actually surprisingly friendly no matter how much they pretend to be gruff as hell. I like the idea that Dwarves have Yorkshire accents as well, scottish is used a bit too much and I am personally looking forward to playing a dwarf who sounds like Alan Bennett.
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Feb 9, 2019 01:36
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Night10194 posted:The nerdy quest for 'maturity' in an ocean of blood and 'justified' genocide or fascism is goddamn everywhere in this hobby (and nerdy grimdark in general). Though it seems like it's gotten less prominent of late. I'm in the middle of writing up Coalition Overkill, so hooo boy, there will be an opportunity to talk about that kind of thing. Ed: Hell, even Free Quebec tomorrow... there's going to be... a lot of opportunities.
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Feb 9, 2019 02:29
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I'm in the middle of writing up Coalition Overkill, so hooo boy, there will be an opportunity to talk about that kind of thing. That's one book I have never even cracked the cover on, so I'm looking forward to it. I can only imagine that however it's spun in the book, it's actually about Free Quebec wanting to go be fascist in their own way.
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Feb 9, 2019 04:05
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Dawgstar posted:That's one book I have never even cracked the cover on, so I'm looking forward to it. I can only imagine that however it's spun in the book, it's actually about Free Quebec wanting to go be fascist in their own way. I was given it a long time ago. It was a gift! Sorry, person who gave it to me, I may say mean things about it.
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Feb 9, 2019 04:19
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