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Barudak
May 7, 2007

When I picked the class whose ability is to influence small crowds of people I definitely picked it so i could kick that crowds rear end

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Selachian
Oct 9, 2012

I'm sure the Rockerboys-as-combat-guys is tied back to the punk aesthetic, where musicians doubled as hardass street brawlers who could kick the poo poo out of you with their Doc Martens (or at least tried to present themselves that way).

Young Freud
Nov 26, 2006

Alien Rope Burn posted:

The Cyberpunk sheet (and really, the whole book) had a very "made on Mac" feel to it.

Which, you know, I'm pretty positive it was, but it's kind of an early example of layout programs really coming into play in RPG publishing.

You ain't seen nothing until you start going through the splatbooks, especially the Chromebooks. Lots and lots of clip art and vector-drawn icons.

SirPhoebos
Dec 10, 2007

WELL THAT JUST HAPPENED!

Selachian posted:

I'm sure the Rockerboys-as-combat-guys is tied back to the punk aesthetic, where musicians doubled as hardass street brawlers who could kick the poo poo out of you with their Doc Martens (or at least tried to present themselves that way).

It would be even better if their core skills Rockerboys backed this combat-focus up
it does not

Barudak
May 7, 2007


Dark Revelation is a d20 system RPG by Chris Constantin and Jason Cable Hall and edited by Joe Amon and published in 2014. Set in a twice post-apocalyptic world, it asks players to make their way in this hostile but still rebuilding landscape. It is available for free along with a host of expansion material and the developers blog



Part 1: But First We’re Going to Talk About Another Game At Length

Dark Revelation is billed, and copyright by its creators, as a “Hodgepocalypse” focusing on a world where the apocalypse let all manner of things not originally from this world trundle into it and become real. Ranging from the dead rising from the ground to magic in its many forms to cats running factories to produce anime for no-one its all here. Sort of, anyway. We’ll get to that.

Before we dive into this review I have to cover off on something in a bit of detail. This game is based on the d20 license, and it permeates everything to do with how you experience this product. If you aren’t familiar with what d20 license is, it is an agreement that allows other publishers to use certain Dungeons and Dragons 3rd edition materials, copyright words, and rules, even in for profit works, so long as the publishers comply with the terms of the d20 license agreement. This means the rules of Dark Revelation are just as dense as Dungeons and Dragons 3rd edition which pushes Dark Revelations to over 400 pages.


The game uses photographs for mood rather than specifics which I dig

The real issue here isn’t the length per se though, it’s what copying the d20 rules does to your book layout and useability. If not familiar with the Dungeons and Dragons 3rd Edition system, it is an extremely rules heavy game that requires no less than three several hundred page starter books in order to actually play. That issue, therefore, crops up here as well where after 400 pages of reading you have no real direction for what an adventure looks like, quite a substantial bit of setting details, or how magic works at all.

If you want to do something as simple as, say, fight something with the characters you build using the core book you need to download and read Dark Revelations - The Roleplaying Game - Monster Manual: & Book of Danger. That is also exactly how the title of the book appears in the google store, and yes that is a really confusing place to have a colon and ampersand next to each other. You might think that maybe all the monsters accidentally fell out and all that’s left is the danger but it’s the exact opposite actually, the book only contains monsters and not a hint of non-monster based danger. At least the title is correct inside the book.

Compounding this problem of many books to play the game is the devs have a fairly active blog where they publish additional content and errata regarding the works. It is an odd thing to say but the devs being so active and producing so much material for their game has made it difficult to use and understand what the game is about and how it should feel and play. Since this game is a passion project and based on the d20 license there isn’t a great solution for the devs. It might be worth investigating releasing a book of just the setting/low level monsters/character creation/an adventure or two to help people get a mindset for the full product or people already familiar with the d20 system.

In addition, the amount of d20 in this book is going to impact how this review will work. Given that d20 is used across a variety of books and is publicly available, I’m not going to cover large portions of the rules. If, as far as I can tell, the rules are identical to the core d20 material I’m going to skip it. This means that despite this book being over 400 pages there isn’t going to be nearly as much to cover as you might think.

Now to talk about something different than d20, editing. I know Joe Amon is the only editor of this book and that this isn’t a paid product, but as a person who does a quite a bit of proofreading and intelligibility checking as part of their work I can’t let these things go uncommented on. On the very first page of the book there are attributions for the roles of “Layout and Typesetting” and “Illustrations” with no names following them just blank space. With a start like that is should be no surprise that the book is littered with typos, spelling errors, and inconsistent formatting and as we will see in the lore section next time this will make very straightforward things very difficult to parse.

Next time: We’ll finally start discussing the book and talk about how the world ends. Then, how it ends again.

Barudak fucked around with this message at 07:18 on Feb 19, 2019

Hostile V
May 31, 2013

Solving all of life's problems through enhanced casting of Occam's Razor. Reward yourself with an imaginary chalice.

:magical:

mllaneza
Apr 28, 2007

Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1993-1952




Young Freud posted:

The Fixer will be hilarious, considering the reality is that we got Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort instead of super-cool infodealers.

The Fixer is my favorite cyberpunk-esque class/archetype/whatever. Back in college a buddy of mine pulled off a successful session of CP2020 with 12 players in the room by leveraging my Fixer as a sort of co-GM. I got a briefing up front and then was turned loose to deal with any PCs who came into my bar looking for info or a gig. I set up in one corner of the dorm rec room, declared it to by my characters booth in the club, and rotated the various groups of PCs through to make deals, swap intel, and offer jobs. The actual GM floated in the room and kept stirring poo poo up, and resolving combat. We put our heads together every half hour or so to make sure we were on the same page. At the end of the night, the only successful group came to me with a briefcase full of half a million NuYen or whatever CP2020 used for currency worth of drugs. I offered them 50k NY split three ways. They took it and eagerly dived into the gear lists; I pulled in 450k gross for the evening.

Fixers are fun to play. Let them go nuts and use them as co-GMs whenever you can.

LatwPIAT
Jun 6, 2011

Alien Rope Burn posted:

The Cyberpunk sheet (and really, the whole book) had a very "made on Mac" feel to it.

Which, you know, I'm pretty positive it was, but it's kind of an early example of layout programs really coming into play in RPG publishing.

Very likely.

Pondsmith prototyped Night City in SimCity on an Apple II. (The city's designed to be as inefficient and crime-ridden as possible!)

Wrestlepig
Feb 25, 2011

my mum says im cool

Toilet Rascal


Thus Spoke Aroaleta posted:

... and under moss and roots, under the trails of crawlers and wrigglers, there are caverns basking in the gloom of the underworld; there thrive implings and the bone pale; there the blight grows on rocky walls and abominable shells; there the weepers walk in the Halls of a Thousand Tears, round and round a well about to overflow ..

MONSTERS

If the spooky giant forest wasn't enough of a threat, it is infested with terrifying monsters and dread beings of death and darkness, and the peoples around it are tough and desperate. Unfortunately they made a real bad decision about how to do this and made enemies build like PCs on pretty much every level. This really fucks up enemy and encounter design badly. It's common to have enemies designed like PCs, and the issues that causes are well known. They have different economies in all aspects, and different values. The worst part is that they have the same statistical rules: they're in a range between 5 and 15, and have the same derived stats like their HP, so enemies have very few hit points like the players do. It doesn't really let the game do the classic trick of the 90s games that made this mistake and inflate the numbers to get around it. They do have access to different abilities most players won't have, but none of them in the core book are able to inflate their health beyond 18, so they stack armor, which makes armor ignoring abilities ridiculously useful compared to a lot of the multiple attack abilities or most mystical blasts.* At the higher end, most monsters look pretty much the same because there's only a few ways to inflate the numbers, so everything feels like it's kludged together. It just warps the balance of the game, and it's bizarre that they had this weird simulationist setup while they also made it so the GM doesn't roll.


This has 13 hit points. I've read that post about dungeon world too but that game doesn't have Two Handed Force Master on it

Monsters don't totally follow the same rules as humans though. They get access to special Monstrous Abilities, to represent physical features like acid blood, a ghostly form, wings or general number increases like Robust. The amount of experience you give enemies is based on their desired strength with a pretty basic CR system. This also brings up another issue with the ability system where every ability costs the same despite varied power levels. The Raw number increases like Robust and Berserk cost the same as flavorful abilities that don't synergise with other abilities like Poison Spit. It's at least easy enough to upgrade and customize them.

That said, the actual monsters are very cool. There's a Monster manual with some crazy stuff in it as well as the super high-powered monsters, but I don't have it and it's probably full of spoilers, but the book has some great sample monsters to threaten your players with, along with a lot of good plot hooks.

Elves, are said to have arrived in Davokar at the creation of the forest, and are committed to guarding it at all costs with the Iron Pact. They have forms that correspond with the seasons: They are born as mischievous Spring Elves that people often call faeries, and then fall into dormancy to awaken as Summer Elves, who are your most standard ones. If they survive constant guerilla warfare in an evil forest for a couple of centuries, they sleep and awaken as Autumn Elves, who work as leaders and start making use of witchcraft. There are very few Winter Elves that exist, mainly their Prince Eneano, and there are theories about godlike beings beyond that. They're really nasty ranged attackers that are vulnerable to getting rushed, but if you get ambushed you're in serious trouble.

Trolls are big scary humanoids at least ten feet tall. Although there are stories about (aka Are) troll civilizations under Davokar with all sorts of stuff going on, most people only see the starved and mindless Rage Trolls. These can be a threat, but sometimes older and smarter Liege Trolls form them into gangs. Worse than that are the Arch-Trolls, which are huge, violent and intelligent, with mystic powers and alchemy. Fortunately, these ones are more sane, and can often be dealt with like people, or beaten by tricks or a competition

The barbarian legends about Troll-Mother Ognyx are very popular. They are thrilling, frightening and always end with the vicious and violent death of the taboo-breaking human.

Human Adversaries are common. There's writeups for cultists, criminals, rangers, treasure hunters, inquisitors (both official and self-taught maniacs) and barbarians. This shows an interesting problem where the game assumes sometimes that you're playing as Ambrians, since there's no rules for knights or anything. The enemies around are pretty typical, but the absence of enemies not as associated with the forest are indicative of a trend that pops up in the adventures more. I'll get to that later since it's not relevant, and each of these has a good bit of flavor in the description so it's not really fair. I also really like the note on different setups from different barbarian clans, like tribes that tame bears and trolls, or the Gaioans who love poison and throw spiders at people.

quote:

TREASURE HUNTERS
We make up many names for those we love; the same is true for the ones we detest. Call them treasure-hunters, fortune-hunters, explorers or grave robbers – many are the Ambrians who put their lives at risk in the hope of finding riches in the ruins of old Symbaroum. Nowadays most people have realized the foolishness in challenging Davokar singlehandedly, which is why almost everyone travels with at least four companions. But the composition of the groupings may of course vary considerably, from being made up of a handful of former peasants scratching for precious metals in the forest outskirts to disciplined expeditions led by Ordo Magica or some ambitious nobleman. The plunderers described below are of the brutish kind – groups of individuals who have managed to scrape together enough coin to buy an Explorer’s License and ventured into the woods hoping to find the mother lode. As they have risked everything they own, and maybe even taken loans from some shady moneylender, they are not likely to abandon their dig-site without a fight. For that reason it is probably true that in the outskirts of Davokar treasure-hunters are killed by competitors as often as they are by beasts, elves or local barbarians.

Spiders are one of the greatest threats of Davokar. Even the Ambrians have legends about the war against the Spider King and his host of monstrous spider-people, and giant spiders and toad monsters descended from the bestial monarch. Their threat was so great the barbarian clans united and drove them into the darkest parts of the forest. There's lots of spiders, but they rarely get bigger than a human and aren't organized, although their territories are spreading outwards. They have a lot of venom and web-related abilities, which makes them a threat to PCs of any power level.


sup

There's a few normal-ish Predators listed as well. Mare-Cats are pack-hunting hairless felines with poisonous bites that sneak into villages and attack people, and the Baiagorn are big angry bear-like creatures that some barbarians tame as war animals. Greatest of all listed is the Aboar, a semi-mythical piglike being some say is related to Trolls. There's stories about it attacking villages, but even more accounts of it watching people from a distance with a calm intelligence. The Vajvodi barbarians hunt it every winter in a heroic quest, and I'd put my money on the Aboar's tusks. There's also scary flying creatures like swarms of Violings, said to be made when crows feast on Abomination corpses and are imbued with malice and cunning, or man-sized Dragon-flies that can swallow a goblin whole and impersonate the cries of a human child Interestingly, most forest creatures are afflicted with some corruption from the darkness of the forest.

There's no confirmed existence of Dragons beyond barbarian legends, crazy people who went really deep into the forest, and designs on symbar artifacts, but there are great serpents people say are related somewhat. Most common are the Kanaran, great snakes that constrict their prey and use them as a shield, and the Lindworm pictured above, which is a terrifying and intelligent Wyrm that can enthrall people or tear them apart in it's mouth. the Gaioan barbarians are said to worship an especially old one called Grandfather Lint, and refuse any invitations by Ambrian scholars to meet him. I'm sure they're not up to anything.

Next time: We get Metal with Abominations and the Undead

*spells that don't target defense are still very good. for instance, the witch can reliably defeat a primal blight beast by turning it into a frog and having the ogre smash it because they forgot to put on an enemy stat modifier for that spell. maybe its the translation but the game needs an edit pass

Wrestlepig fucked around with this message at 11:22 on Feb 19, 2019

Cooked Auto
Aug 4, 2007

If you will not serve in combat, you will serve on the firing line!




Young Freud posted:

You ain't seen nothing until you start going through the splatbooks, especially the Chromebooks. Lots and lots of clip art and vector-drawn icons.

Not to mention one of the later edition books where all the interior art photos of various dolls unless I'm misremembering.

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!

Young Freud posted:

You ain't seen nothing until you start going through the splatbooks, especially the Chromebooks. Lots and lots of clip art and vector-drawn icons.

I remember Dream Park.

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
Bad RPG book art is something else. There's a point where you're probably better off just not having any.

Wrestlepig
Feb 25, 2011

my mum says im cool

Toilet Rascal


I am running out of these things, aroleta please speak again posted:

“... and remember from which roots this verdant beauty springs; even the richest crop feeds on decay, and never before has any harvest been as lush, or any soil as black, as the one in the shadowy halls of Davokar.”

FORCES OF CORRUPTION

Many say the world of Symbaroum is dying. Some mutter it in street corners and church-prisons, some scream it from the pulpit as the sun sets, and some say it with a smile at heroes who presume to stand against it. Despite the best efforts of some who claim to know why, whatever affliction the world is suffering from is growing stronger. Corruption twists the living into monstrosity and the laws of life and death break down, sending nations fleeing. Symbaroum was the greatest source of this, and whatever they did may have doomed everyone.


I like the pseudo impressionist Paint/sketchy art the game does, and it's perfect for making the abominations look unreal

There are two categories of monster defined by Corruption: Abominations and the Undead. Abominations, also known as Blight Beasts by every non-ambrian, are what happens when a living being is overloaded with corruption and turns into a monster, driven entirely by dark, destructive impulses. Although the wizards and inquisition research whatever abominations they can find, the only common thread beyond corruption is that they want to hurt humans. they wish for humans to ache, to suffer, preferably to die. And they wish this with such a passion that nothing else matters. You cannot reason or communicate with an abomination. The abomination lives for the destruction of mankind, one individual at a time. Most Blight Beasts are twisted forms of animals and people, and manage to retain some of their nature. Although most of them rampage and kill everything it can find, some human-sourced ones retain enough intelligence to form cults around themselves and hide out in society. The worst abominations are the Primal Blight Beasts, which are known only in scarce reports of pure Abominations, birthed from the Corruption itself, that so alien and hateful that they embody the opposite of nature. The theories about them state that they are born from puddles of acidic magic in the most corrupt places, or the marrow of the World Serpent that either formed Symbaroum or was defiled by its emperor. As the antithesis of Existence, I don't think they care. They're terrifying mechanically with every big numbers ability, acid blood and corrupting attacks, and could easily kill an unprepared higher-level party.

Undead
Death is not as absolute as it once was. The lands Ambria left are plagued with mindless corpses that stood up again and pathetically echoed their actions in life, farming barren fields and wandering empty streets, and even in Ambria and Davokar the dead rise again. The undead of the region are not mindless, and can often be talked to or reasoned with. The grand-master of the wizards categorically denies accusations from the inquisitors that they have specialists trying to do so, but thanked them for the idea, since an undead Symbar wizard would know some incredible secrets.* The most common undead are Dragouls, semi-sentient zombies driven by a hunger for flesh and blood. The Barbarians are not used to this new sort of undead but the Ambrians slaughtered thousands of them in the war, so dragoul threats cause both alliances and tension as barbarians either ask for help or blame the southerners for them. another common form of undead are Frostlights, deathly cold wisps said to be stillborn children looking for warmth.

Less common are the Necromages, improperly buried sorcerers from the times of Symbaroum. They're spectral shapeshifters that can overpower the minds of weak-willed beings and attack your Resolute stat instead of health. The book states that they often appear as colorless reflections of the person looking at them. There's also Cryptwalkers: Your standard Barrow-wight or Mummy that hunts down those who disturb its rest. They're actually not that scary because they dual-wield and that sucks against armor, but they take no damage from non-magical sources and can paralyse you with the chill of the grave.


Symbaroum haunts everything in the forest. sometimes more obviously than others.

One point worth noting is that the undead are all super-corrupt, but can still be sentient. This fact has not gone unnoticed in the setting.

Next time: The Introductory Adventure

*we actually got close to pulling this off but liches are notorious for disliking people stealing from them, her brain had rotted and nobody spoke her language. well we have loremaster master now so better luck this time

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

Emerald Empire: From Sea to Shrining Sea

Every shrine is designed to reflect the spirit enshrined within, and you can learn a lot about a spirit from its shrine. You can find shrines pretty much anywhere, because spirits can be pretty much anywhere. Multiple shrines may share grounds or even be part of a Shinseist temple, or they may be in the homes of samurai. The main thing is that all shrines have a shintai, an object or natural feature that may contain and house a spirit. Some shintai are made by shugenja, but most are natural features such as ancient trees (oaks, especially, are known for housing kodama tree spirits), waterfalls or in one case, Sengen Mountain, home to the Fortune of the same name. For natural features, a shrine is usually built nearby to draw focus to the natural wonder the spirit lives in.

Some things are nearly universal to shrines. The torii arch will mark the shrine’s entrance, where normal crosses over to sacred. Going through the arch helps prepare the mind and body for purification. Visitors must enter via the torii arch, and some shrines put up fences to ensure there’s no other way in. Sometimes the path will go under multiple arches. Torii are usually built out of blessed wood, but can be made of stone or plated in rare metal. Often they’re deliberately simple, just two columns capped in two horizontal beams. The simplest are just the columns, with the lintel beams replaced by a blessed rope. Torii can also be highly elaborate and decorative. If painted at all, they are almost always bright red, to repel evil spirits. Beyond them is the honden, the most sacred building of the shrine. It is where the shintai is kept, along with the sacred artifacts. The honden is the home of the spirit of the shrine, and only priests, shrine keepers, shugenja and the Emperor may enter a honden. Others might accidentally offend the spirit. Sometimes, the honden will be built into the shrine’s worship hall or set into a natural feature, such as a cave or pond. Rural shrines may not have a honden, such as the Shrine of the Ki-Rin or the Shrine to Sengen. In such cases, a statue or similar object will fulfill the same role.

The main worship hall, or haiden, is where ceremonies are held. Typically it will be connected to the honden by a hallway, large shoji screen or other such thing. Usually, the haiden will have a main hall and several smaller inner shrines for visitors to worship privately, often with icons of local Fortunes and ancestors. Some may also incorporate defensive structures like ramparts, escape tunnels or other things, especially shrines to Hachiman or Bishamon, or rural shrines whose wealth risks bandit raids. Nearby, most shrines have a bell tower, or shoro. These are lucky buildings, because bells repel evil spirits. Most are barely towers at all, no more than two stories tall, and some are incorporated into the main entrance gate, as in the Shrine to Hotei, or built into one-story cages, as in the Amaterasu Shrine of the Moshi family.

Shrine keepers live in communal living quarters on the grounds, using shoji screens to make modular rooms, and priests often have their own single-room houses elsewhere on the grounds. These tend to be simple and sparse, to avoid distracting them from their devotions. Shrines may also include a library, a dojo and a kitchen. Rarely, they may have guest quarters, but most often guests may not enter a shrine at night, especially during the Hour of the Ox, when night spirits are most active. Fortunists hold that the twilight hour is when the borders with the Spirit Realms are at their weakest, so many shrines try to get people to leave at sunset. When they must host people, it is usually either in the bell tower (because spirits avoid the bell) or in the living quarters of the shrine keepers.

Many shrines have a stage, because performances to entertain the spirits are a part of daily life. Here, the shrine keepers dance or sing or put on plays. In larger shrines, the blessed stage may even be a fully equipped No theater. Just about all will also have a cleansing pavilion, called a chozuya, where guests may purify themselves before entering the shrine’s main areas. This will usually just be a shallow well with a roof, but may incorporate a stream or other natural water source. Shrines also usually have gardens for meditation, which will reflect the enshrined spirit. Martial spirits prefer rock gardens, while nature spirits like flowers, ancestors prefer sand, and so on. Shrines to the Seven Fortunes often make their gardens resemble the landscapes of the spirit realms, to make the Fortune feel more at home. There may also be a reflecting pool, symbolizing the illusory nature of the world. These are very hard to clean but very popular. They will reflect the entire shrine, but the merest ripple will make the reflection vanish entirely, as a reminder that the Spirit Realms are always present. Shrines also usually have guardian statues in the form of animals. They usually sit at the entrance, but may also be found on roofs, in corners or standing at the peak of curved bridges. They scare off unwelcome spirits and protect against curses. Many are held to come to life when evil ghosts appear, to fight them. The animal used varies by region, but the most common are the komainu lion-dogs, foxes (especially at Inari shrines) and boars.

Kami shrines are usually fairly simple and often built around specific landscape features that serve as the shintai. This might be as simple as a lantern at the foot of a waterfall or a tiny replica of a larger shrine. The marker for the sacred space is almost always a yorishiro, an object which attracts and pleases kami and other good spirits. These will usually blend with the surroundings, preserving their natural harmony. Kami shrines are often remote and have no torii arches or purification basins, but sometimes they are incorporated into larger shrines, often to the Fortunes. Fortunist shrines tend to be the most consistent and similar, though still with variance by clan. The Greater Fortunes have shrines throughout Rokugan, but each has a primary shrine, from which all others to that Fortune derive their teachings and layout. Fortunist shrines are often the largest of all, sometimes rivaling temples in size, and they always have at least one torii and a honden to contain the shintai. The shintai is usually an object once held by the Fortune, or at lesser shrines, sometimes an icon of them. A path or stair will lead to the torii arch, and most of the other structures will be within an enclosed square space. Fortunist shrines attempt to be unobtrusive among their natural surroundings, often with creeks passing through them or built around a sacred oak or stone, or even carved into a mountainside. Shrines to the Seven Great Fortunes are often incorporated into smaller shrines, usually in the form of tiny, shrine-shaped, birdhouse-like structures that contain miniature versions of everything a normal shrine would have.

All major shrines will have a small space devoted to ancestral worship, usually an empty altar onto which visitors will place an ancestor’s shintai. Said shintai are usually wooden tablets carved with the ancestor’s name. Every samurai family will also maintain an ancestral shrine in their grounds, either in a quiet place or directly in the home. These shrines are small and humble and contain likenesses of the ancestor, usually in the form of statues or paintings. They will also contain at least one object that belonged to that ancestor, which attracts the ancestor’s presence. Great Clan families also maintain shrines to their founders. These are the grandest ancestral shrines and often very similar to Fortunist ones in layout and features. Shrine attendants will seek to embody the philosophies of the family founder and emulate them. The largest of these shrines, of course, are to the clan founders and, naturally, the Shrine of the Hantei.

Some families also keep a kamidana, a miniature household altar to a kami or Fortune. These will be kept in a small alcove in the home that is just big enough to kneel or on a shelf, and will include small sculptures, charms, blessing ropes and often a tiny, humble shintai. Most Rokugani homes do not have kamidana, as samurai and peasants both usually reserve these spaces for ancestral shrines. However, urban shugenja often find a kamidana useful so that they can commune with the kami without having to go visit the city shrines. Samurai that work closely with shugenja or are very reverent of the kami, such as the Shiba family of the Phoenix or the Mirumoto family of the Dragon, also often have kamidana in their homes. Kamidana can also be found on boats, especially Mantis ones, so that sailors can still worship the Fortunes.

Next time: The Shrine of the Ki-Rin and Benten Seido

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

Alien Rope Burn posted:

I remember Dream Park.

The art in Dream Park was mainly done by Charlie Bates, who later became a storyboard artist for CSI and then the Line Editor at White Wolf where he also wrote Aeon/Trinity and Mummy: The Resurrection.

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003

La morte non ha sesso
I have no idea how well Symbaroum did saleswise, but it seems like it was doomed to get lost in the flood of people publishing their Forgotten Realms heartbreaker during the D20 craze. It's much, much better than the baseline level of quality for that lot, though.

Cooked Auto posted:

Not to mention one of the later edition books where all the interior art photos of various dolls unless I'm misremembering.
Cyberpunk 3.0 is infamously full of black-and-white (well, black-and-green) photos of Pondsmith's GI Joe collection.

But really? It's better than the Poser art in the few sourcebooks that were released.

Ghost Leviathan posted:

Bad RPG book art is something else. There's a point where you're probably better off just not having any.
Poser is that point.

Snorb
Nov 19, 2010

Cooked Auto posted:

Not to mention one of the later edition books where all the interior art photos of various dolls unless I'm misremembering.

That's Cyberpunk v.2.0.3.0. One of the more disappointing books I've ever bought, along with BESM d20.

Cooked Auto
Aug 4, 2007

If you will not serve in combat, you will serve on the firing line!




Halloween Jack posted:

I have no idea how well Symbaroum did saleswise, but it seems like it was doomed to get lost in the flood of people publishing their Forgotten Realms heartbreaker during the D20 craze. It's much, much better than the baseline level of quality for that lot, though.

Not sure it's been brought up before but Symbaroum first came out in Swedish in 2014. The English translated version came out 2015 or 2016. So it's not an old game by any large stretch.

Halloween Jack posted:

Cyberpunk 3.0 is infamously full of black-and-white (well, black-and-green) photos of Pondsmith's GI Joe collection.

That's the one I remember seeing at some point.
Also yes, Poser art is honestly bottom tier when it comes to RPG interior art. Feels like you could make a thread just for bad RPG book covers and art. I know at least a couple of good ones.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Old World Bestiary

Servants of the Great Maw

First we get Fenbeasts. Fenbeasts are weird. The common view talks about a strange man covered in woad paint and tattoos being followed around by a decaying bunch of plant matter hiding itself in a big cloak. The locals in an Imperial town were going to run him out of town until he and his monster stopped a Beastman raid cold. And that's really what Fenbeasts are. They're weird swamp monster constructs that seem to have a link to the crazy stone circles and old pre-historic faiths of the Reik Basin. The one thing that's clear in all the descriptions here, and there aren't many because these are a pretty minor part of the setting, is that they're constructs and they require a master or else they'll just stand in place and kill anything that gets close to what they're guarding. They're big guys, usually significantly larger than a human, but they're slow, clumsy, and not enormously dangerous to a prepared party no matter how much the fluff talks them up.

The most curious link they have is to Albion. Albion doesn't come up much in Hams, but it's a small island out in the great ocean to the west that's constantly covered in fog and rain, inhabited by primitive human tribes and a ton of those Ogham Stone circles. It is the land of mysterious druids and if I remember right, only ever came up in a campaign that awarded a bunch of sci-fi 'magic items' or something. Still, the rituals that create these things seem to come from Albion, or at least they survive in Albion while the Colleges have lost them. They're often associated with undead, and the fluff hints necromancers might be figuring out how to make swamp-things, but otherwise they're just a random swamp monster. Not much to see here.

There's considerably more on Ogres. The Common View quote for them is a peasant complaining about them eating everything and tromping through his fields as a company of Ogre mercenaries goes to join the Imperial army, wondering what the hell Karl Franz needs those for. This is one of the reasons I'm always a little sad we never got playable Ogre rules; they're everywhere, they're mercenaries, and they're happy to fight for the Empire as long as they're fed. Ogres are big. Really big. Huge, muscular, fat human-like people who like to tromp around the world getting into fights and eating new cuisine (and enemies). The scholar Waldemarr talks about how they're a very status-conscious people, too. An Ogre's wealth, girth, scars, and achievements dictate everything about how they fit into their society. Might makes right, but Ogres are more competitive than rapacious; it's generally considered better among Ogres to accept a challenge and lose doing your best rather than refuse it outright, and their society is full of challenges. They love to sing (though it sounds horrible to most other peoples), they love to wrestle, and above all else, they love to eat.

Schultz also pops up to tell us he's had Ogre soldiers in his company before, and they're not dumb at all at their chosen trade. People think they're stupid because Ogres are always looking for gold, food, and opportunities for glory, but Ogre mercs usually know what they're doing. They're too tough to die easily, their size gives them a lot of confidence, and their culture encourages not backing down in a fight; you add those things to the sort of experience you get when you're big enough to survive a few fights and you end up with huge men and women who do, in fact, know how to stay in formation and flank a line. He does warn that while paying them is important, feeding them is even moreso. Never let food supplies run out with Ogres in your company, or they'll start eating the pack horses, or worse.

Rikkit'Tik suggests a paste of ground glass and mandrake, hidden in the strongest tasting food. There will always be food.

Ogres are also usually hired as guards. They love working for merchants, because merchants usually have a lot of money, and a lot of money translates into a lot of food. Similar, merchants love hiring Ogres because for the most part, they're good at their jobs and they're scary as hell, which means it's less likely the Ogre is actually going to need to smash anything. We get a long anecdote from a thief about how if you want to distract an Ogre guard, don't bribe them. Cook something nearby that smells good enough that it becomes an affront to their God not to come and eat it. Because it is, in fact, the central tenant of their religion that you eat what life gives you. In their own words, an Ogre soldier wonders why he'd ever bother farming and making bread when his current trade lets him get gold and meat and as much as he can drink. All he needs from life is his job and a dog on a stick.

I suspect the reason we never got playable Ogres, despite them fitting into the fiction fine, is that they'd be sort of hard to balance. One of the big traits of Ogres mechanically is they're monstrous infantry so to speak. So they have multiple attacks to represent how huge and smashy they are. I'd personally have started a playable PC Ogre at base 1 attacks anyway, but even then the stats they're good at (Strength and Toughness) are the most carefully controlled stats in the system, too. It's the kind of thing I'm sure we'd have gotten eventually if 2e had been produced for longer.

Giants are actually really interesting, because they're miserable. Old Hob the Peasant mentions the time he met one in the Common View. It stomped on up out of the forests, stopped in front of him as his fieldhands were all running away, and stood there swaying and drunk for a moment before asking him directions to Talabheim. When he told it it was on the right road, off it went with a polite thank you. The biggest, most consistent trait of Giants is that they're always drunk if they can help it. Always. Conscious thought 'seems painful to Giants', and there are several theories presented as to why. Waldemarr the scholar theorizes they're in pain from a mixture of their size and the immense growing pains of becoming so big so fast when they're children. Essentially, he thinks they suffer from all the problems of human gigantism, but on a truly massive scale and with the addition of gravity making them suffer for their sheer size and bulk. With such physical pain, he theorizes they use alcohol as a self-medicating anesthetic.

Giants often fight as mercenaries, because it's one of the ways they can keep themselves fed and drunk. They don't care who they eat, and they're often too drunk to care who they're fighting or who they're fighting for. The Greenskins love to hire them, because they're big and being bigger is obviously extremely cool. We get an Orc Warboss talking about how his lads were losing a battle until the giant he'd hired went on over and got a little carried away. Apparently they like to jump up and down when they get excited and that was enough to sort the battle (and most of his boys, but it was funny, so he thinks it's fine).

Rikkit'tik says that whatever you use, use a goddamn lot of it.

The Giants have the most interesting 'Our Own Words' so far outside of the Dragon Ogres. One of them says he drinks to ease the cold, because he can never find enough material to actually properly cover himself up and keep the wind and rain and weather from making him miserable. But another references the fact that the Giants used to have an entire civilization. The Giant tells the interviewer they used to 'shake the mountains' and that their civilization has been trampled by insects and left to slowly die in obscurity, thought of as nothing but monsters by the little races. He says that's the real, secret reason they drink or turn to the Dark Gods. To forget what they've lost and will never get back.

It's really interesting that the Giants are what they are, rather than 'just' big dumb monsters. I really appreciate the general theme that most of the 'dumb monsters' aren't dumb at all. Giants are just drunk, depressed, and in pain all the time; they aren't actually stupid.

Next Time: Why didn't they just take the Eagles to Mordor

By popular demand
Jul 17, 2007
Probation
Can't post for 13 hours!
I'm really getting in to this approach to relatable monster races, when I'm getting back to running some fantasy I'm cribbing this.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

When a whole bunch of the critters in setting are 'actually you probably could talk to this.' it makes for a lot more options in both writing and gameplay. Both Giants and Ogres are still quite dangerous, but they're not unreasoning monsters like Chaos beasts.

Dawgstar
Jul 15, 2017

You could even talk to (most) Skaven if you wanted to, although that's tricky for a number of reasons related to their psychology. At least appearing you're in a position of strength, for a start. Also the Nurglitch fanboys probably won't have much to say.

By popular demand
Jul 17, 2007
Probation
Can't post for 13 hours!
Now I need to play a wandering battle therapist.
:psydwarf:

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

Cooked Auto posted:


That's the one I remember seeing at some point.
Also yes, Poser art is honestly bottom tier when it comes to RPG interior art. Feels like you could make a thread just for bad RPG book covers and art. I know at least a couple of good ones.

with that cringey witch game and space prison being the bar none worst as it's not just poser art but poser art that was badly traced and colored.

Cooked Auto
Aug 4, 2007

If you will not serve in combat, you will serve on the firing line!




Robindaybird posted:

with that cringey witch game and space prison being the bar none worst as it's not just poser art but poser art that was badly traced and colored.

I'm torn between untouched poser art or that being the bottom of the barrel. Almost leaning towards the former because with the latter you're showing at least some effort other than just snapping off a screenshot and using that.

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003

La morte non ha sesso
This isn't a fair fight, because the two traced Poser games you mentioned are both creepy as hell.

Cyberpunk 3.0 isn't creepy, even if NuCybe sounds like a Bluetooth-enabled sex toy.

Tibalt
May 14, 2017

What, drawn, and talk of peace! I hate the word, As I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee

I am enjoying the Synbarum write up, it seems like one of the better takes on Dark Fantasy.

I'm not a huge fan of Ravenloft.

Young Freud
Nov 26, 2006

Halloween Jack posted:

Cyberpunk 3.0 is infamously full of black-and-white (well, black-and-green) photos of Pondsmith's GI Joe collection.

But really? It's better than the Poser art in the few sourcebooks that were released.

Poser is that point.

I remember that. I think I heard that the whole Dollpunk fiasco happened because either Pondsmith or the art director thought they could make things more realistic by using 12" dolls and putting them under a lo-rez and static filter, the idea being that it looked like surveillance camera footage.

But yeah, the whole Poser art stuff in the later books I'll put on the art director. I know Pondsmith was pursuing CGI work for v3.0, he tried to get one of my friends involved. But, the big downside for Poser art is that the bar is so low for entry that anyone can work with it and render it, without knowing the basics like layout, blocking, lighting, etc. and most rendering, to pull off right, also requires some photography knowledge, so you have stuff like lens length, depth of field, etc. You can pull off some phenomenal work with Poser or DAZ, it's just that most people getting into it don't know the basics, so it's a matter of running before learning how to walk, so there's a lot of trips and falls on display.

The sad bit is the previous two editions of Cyberpunk had some great art in it. I think the single person who made that lineup believable was Scott Ruggels, who had some background in industrial design and firearms that he could crib to make things feel real and believable. Like I can still see stuff that he did actually appearing now.

Humbug Scoolbus posted:

The art in Dream Park was mainly done by Charlie Bates, who later became a storyboard artist for CSI and then the Line Editor at White Wolf where he also wrote Aeon/Trinity and Mummy: The Resurrection.

I know Tim Eldred did a lot on that, too. But, I've probably talked about this before, R. Talsorian in the '90s is like a whos-who of guys who would make their name in animation: Mike Jackson of Reboot fame; Sam Liu, whose Nagel-inspired work is heavily in the 2013 edition, later worked as character designer on Young Justice and a few of the JL animated movies; Eldred, who currently works on Earth's Mightiest Avengers...

I mean, it's no Shadowrun, which knocked it out of the park with early work from Tim Bradstreet and Alex Ross in their first edition.

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003

La morte non ha sesso
My understanding is that Poser is a legit professional tool, but when real professionals use it, the result isn't something that makes you go "Ugh, it's that thing people use to make Sonic the Hedgehog vore porn."

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

Emerald Empire: Magical Space Horses

The Shrine of the Ki-Rin sits on a remote mountain in the western edge of Phoenix lands. It isn’t large, and would be easily missed if not for the gigantic torii arch which can be seen easily from anywhere nearby. Some say that the ki-rin still linger in small herds in hidden glades and rapids in the area, and those that seek their favor leave offerings at the shrine, hoping for a glimpse at the mysterious beings. Little is known of the history of the shrine’s founding. Local folklore claims that Lady Shinjo herself rested on the small cliff before she headed out of the Empire, and that as the sun set, she saw a ki-rin, one of the mysterious, horse-like beings of Tengoku. A statue has been erected on the site where this is said to have happened. The Ki-Rin’s Shrine is now a common destination of Unicorn pilgrims, marking an important place in the clan’s history, and they have brokered a longstanding agreement with the Phoenix to allow these pilgrims to visit the shrine as they please, even in times of strife and warfare, without need for travel papers.

The Shrine is about half a day out from Shiro Gisu in the mountains of the Asako-run provinces. It is a rough, forested and rocky climb around a network of rapids and valleys. Only the torii can be seen from a distance, and there isn’t a great road. The path is marked by stone lanterns, but guides are often needed to find them. At dawn or dusk, you might hear the taiko drums from the mountain peak. Eventually, though, the ground smooths out into a path as the air grows colder. The forest gives way to stone and single pines, and the path passes under a smaller torii and on to the huge arch at the rounded peak. Beyond this is a plateau that offers an amazing view of Phoenix lands and the Dragon Heart Plains. However, the shrine is not the elaborate and grand structure most expect from the Phoenix. It is a humble shrine, just a few buildings circling the plateau shelf. Most are living quarters, plus a single room administrative office. There is no worship hall, garden or honden. The shrine proper is just one statue, a marble ki-rin surrounded by flames, facing the Great Wall of the North Mountains. On the pedestal are carved the words ‘Look to the horizon, for the visions there are footsteps of the future.’ Offerings are left at the statue’s feet, generally sliced cabbage, polished acorns, dishes of sake and incense cones. The shrine keepers are few and close, led by the head priest Hinoki, a middle aged man only recently risen to his new rank. He is a peasant, but in charge of a fairly major shrine, which is a bit of a political balancing act. Recently, a new shrine keeper has arrived – Kaito Hinowa, a rustic member of the Kaito family. The Kaito are pledged to prevent spiritual imbalance in the shrines of the Empire, and their traditions have led Hinowa to the Shrine of the Ki-Rin. She believes the kami want her to remain there and protect it, and of course no priest would ever deny a Kaito’s offer of protection. Hinoki rather wishes he could, however, because while Hinowa is well-meaning, she has no experience with the shrine’s customs and has become something of a nuisance. He dares not turn away a samurai, but his patience is growing thin.

The ki-rin are one of the least understood mystical beings in Rokugan, as a note. They are believed to be native to Tengoku, but roam all the Spirit Realms in herds. Local folklore around the shrine suggests that they only appear to the most virtuous and most wicked, blessing the former and cursing the latter. Most commonly, the ki-rin appear in the form of a horse or deer wreathed in flame and smoke, with the head of a dragon and the tail of a tiger or ox. Some say they have a single horn from the forehead, while others say they have two backwards-pointed antlers. The Phoenix texts claim that ki-rin can gaze into mortal hearts and know their karma, and Unicorn folklore says that the ki-rin are so compassionate that they walk on air so as to avoid harming even a tiny blade of grass.

Ki-Rin’s Shrine Rumors posted:

  • The ki-rin appear to someone nearly every day, but only when they are alone.
  • Strange cloven tracks were discovered near the shrine. They were burned into the ground, leaving scorches on stone and embers in the soil. But the next day, no trace of them remained.
  • The border patrols from Shiro Gisu grow more frequent while Unicorn pilgrims are being shadowed by Shiba scouts. Effects from the rising tensions between the Phoenix and Unicorn are felt even here…

Utaku Takeko, Wistful Pilgrim, is our NPC. She is a young samurai, mere months past her gempuku and the youngest of six children. She feels lost and purposeless, and she has come to the Shrine of the Ki-Rin in hopes of spotting the legendary beast and finding inspiration in its divine majesty. Anyone that could show her a purpose to devote herself to would have her undying loyalty forever.

We get an example local festival: The Setsuban Festival. It’s actually celebrated throughout the Empire, a complement to the Setsubun Festival of spring. It is held in celebration of the shift from summer to autumn, for summer is the war season and so the evils made in summer must not be allowed to follow into autumn, tainting the crops. Across the Empire, shrines will symbolically summon ‘demons’ to focus the evil and ill will of the year, ‘slaying’ them in ritual performances by the priests to ensure summer’s evils die with them. The demons are, of course, just other priests in costume, their defeat just an act, but the festival is vital to the harvest. The Shrine of the Ki-Rin puts on the most elaborate Setsuban Festival, and in their festival, they put on the biggest kito display in Rokugan. Shugenja across the land travel to the shrine to compete in a massive tournament, with each offering up an artifact or scroll of teachings from their home dojo, temple, monastery or library. The shugenja then compete in ‘battles’ of invocation, displaying their power in order to terrify the summer demons. The winner receives all of the anted scrolls and artifacts, plus massive acclaim. Because losing one of your scrolls is a shame that no one can live down, most of the competitors in the tournament are one or more of confident, foolish and desperate.

Benten Seido is the largest and greatest of all of the Empire’s shrines to the Fortune Benten, located in the Crane lands. It is the first shrine to Benten ever made, as well. Like Benten, whose virtues are meant to be ignored by samurai, it is somewhat unusual. It was built to appease her after a Crane Champion forced his daughter to choose between her lover and her own life. She chose to die, leaping off a cliff over a raging river, but legend has it that a gust of wind rose from the river, carrying her back over the cliff and into her lover’s arms. The Champion saw this as the judgment of Benten and, despite his embarrassment, arranged their marriage and built the shrine to the Fortune in thanks for her intervention. Ever since, it has been a popular stop for love-struck pilgrims and artists seeking inspiration.

To reach the shrine, a pilgrim must head through Cold Wind Pass, up the easternmost of the Seikitsu Mountains. Despite its popularity, the road is not well maintained, covered in stones and weeds. This is deliberate, as the path to true love is never easy. The climb takes a full day and passes under a tunnel made of 108 torii built over the steep steps. Written confessions, flowers and discarded poetry litter the stairs, and reaching the top will bring you to a lake surrounded by maple and cherry trees. The wind smells of incense and the trees are full of birds. The bridge over the lake has no guardrails, and leads to the small island where the shrine is built. Benten Seido itself resembles a resort more than it does most shrines, in part because of the hot springs that feed the lake. The many visitors have also forced them to expand the guest halls, which now serve as a hotel in practice, which funds the shrine (as do the many coins thrown into the lake for wishes). The shrine buildings are made on uneven ground, connected by rope bridges and suspended flights of stairs, while the honden is a cave with a stream flowing through it, made from the melting ice of the highest peak of the Seikitsu range. The cold and hot water mixing forms a steamy fog that flows out of the cave. The shrine’s assistant priest, Kawana, is a very old man who is openly unhappy with the shrine’s pivot to commercialism, which he will complain about to anyone that will listen. He believes the hotel and hot springs taint the sacredness of the shrine. He is often found playing the biwa and reciting mantras outside the guest gardens, to remind guests that they’re in a shrine. The head priest is the orphan girl Tsubaki, whose position was given to her inexplicably at the instruction of the last head priest. While she’s only received basic shrine keeper training, she has proven to be an excellent shrine head. She is always joyful, patient and rather amused by Kawana’s anger about the commercial parts of the shrine; she calls him ‘grandfather’ exclusively.

Benten Rumors posted:

  • One of the enshrined relics in the sacred cave is the biwa Kakita crafted from a piece of driftwood, thereby “bringing the dead to life” and attracting the love of Doji herself. It is kept wrapped in cloth and almost never removed.
  • The priest Kawana was once a Kakita noble and a flagrant playboy. He left a trail of shattered hearts until something made him realize his cruelty. Ashamed of how he abused Benten’s blessings, he now lives a life of atonement at her shrine.
  • One of the shrine keepers is actually Benten in disguise, but no one is sure which one.

Suzume Hinagiku, Wayward Heart, is our NPC. She is a poor Sparrow Clan samurai who should be getting ready for a long life of adventure…which is why it’s rather confusing that she spends all her time sadly hanging out in the worship hall of Benten Seido, speaking to none. She smiles only rarely and wistfully, sighs often and deeply, and speaks only briefly if at all – quite unlike the endless rambling the Suzume are usually known for. She refuses to say why she has come to the shrine, but she refuses to leave, either.

We get an adventure seed! Governor Daidoji Haranobu’s son, Hisao, is to be married soon, and Haranobu is very proud. His son’s wife-to-be is a Seppun who will bring his house a lot of honor, so he has secured Benten Seido to be the wedding site at great expense. Unfortunately, the wedding has been delayed by nine straight days of rain. Haranobu is very distressed and is seeking skilled samurai to investigate what has so offended the spirits and how they might be appeased. High Priest Tsubaki will confirm that the storm is unnatural, and she thinks that Benten may be angry for some reason. She’s not sure why, though. Hisao, if questioned, will grudgingly admit that he feels nothing for Meiko, his bride, but is prepared to do his family duty regardless. He may, however, let slip that he has feelings for his childhood friend, Suzume Hinagiku, who has been moping around the area. Hinagiku, of course, wants to not speak of it at all, but it can be learned, with care and patience, that she wrote a love letter to Hisao a while ago and was rejected. Clever investigation and questioning or lying will allow the PCs to discover that Haranobu intercepted the letter and forged the reply scornfully rejecting Hinagiku. Now, Benten is incensed that Haranobu would dare to hold a loveless wedding at her shrine after such an act, and may well visit further misfortune on his family line for his audacity. Severing the marriage, however, would greatly insult the Seppun and make Haranobu and his family lose huge amounts of face. The PCs must decide if they are willing to risk dishonoring themselves and their patron by revealing the truth or if they can find some way to save the wedding.

Next time: The Shrine of the Willow-Healing Kami and DARK HERESY

Young Freud
Nov 26, 2006

Halloween Jack posted:

My understanding is that Poser is a legit professional tool, but when real professionals use it, the result isn't something that makes you go "Ugh, it's that thing people use to make Sonic the Hedgehog vore porn."

Weird thing is that the guys who did SFM porn probably have a better skillset than someone who started on DAZ/Poser, because, when working with that, you're doing headhacks (removing the head from a character model and splicing it onto a new, more anatomically-correct body), remeshing bodies (because even some base models are anatomically correct, they're still like Barbies and Kens), and rerigging (to get a lot of fluidity and elasticity in certain parts, more bones are added). A lot of effort goes into rework for something like that, while most DAZ/Poser artists just go out and buy them off a website like DAZ or Renderosity, load them into their program, load up some pose and call it a render.

Not that you're right. I love DAZ still because it's actual animation and posing is better than Blender or 3D Studio Max. And you can always import from other programs into DAZ. I mean, those aforementioned SFM porn guys are going into DAZ now mostly for the better animation tools and rendering, importing their rework figures from Blender and posing them there.

Cooked Auto
Aug 4, 2007

If you will not serve in combat, you will serve on the firing line!




Young Freud posted:

I mean, those aforementioned SFM porn guys are going into DAZ now mostly for the better animation tools and rendering, importing their rework figures from Blender and posing them there.

Also I think the program is getting a bit long in the tooth by this point.

In a way I'm amazed we haven't seen an RPG using SFM (or Gmod) pictures for interior art yet.

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!

Humbug Scoolbus posted:

The art in Dream Park was mainly done by Charlie Bates, who later became a storyboard artist for CSI and then the Line Editor at White Wolf where he also wrote Aeon/Trinity and Mummy: The Resurrection.

I didn't realize that; I played very briefly in a few games with him when I lived in Madison. Last I saw he was doing freelance work for Level 99 Games.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

Alien Rope Burn posted:

I didn't realize that; I played very briefly in a few games with him when I lived in Madison. Last I saw he was doing freelance work for Level 99 Games.

And he was going by Andrew Bates at that time. Alien, were you in the DMA? I was from 78-85, then 88-92 then 2001 until it disappeared.

Humbug Scoolbus fucked around with this message at 19:23 on Feb 19, 2019

Young Freud
Nov 26, 2006

Cooked Auto posted:

Also I think the program is getting a bit long in the tooth by this point.

In a way I'm amazed we haven't seen an RPG using SFM (or Gmod) pictures for interior art yet.

Probably because most of the assets for them are copyrighted to begin with. Not that stops people.

Cooked Auto
Aug 4, 2007

If you will not serve in combat, you will serve on the firing line!




Young Freud posted:

Probably because most of the assets for them are copyrighted to begin with. Not that stops people.

Yeah I admit that sorta slipped past my mind. :doh:

Wrestlepig
Feb 25, 2011

my mum says im cool

Toilet Rascal

Tibalt posted:

I am enjoying the Synbarum write up, it seems like one of the better takes on Dark Fantasy.

I'm not a huge fan of Ravenloft.

It’s one of the few dark fantasy games I’ve seen that doesn’t go overboard. Part of it’s the reverence it has for natural beauty, but they manage to put in dark stuff like brutal violence and war, imperialism, ptsd and discrimination along with classical fantasy stuff like cursed treasure, cosmic evil, the twilight of the gods and mysterious factional conflict without making it oppressive and unstoppable. It’s not afraid to have good people exist, as well. There’s a reformer priest in Thistlehold who feeds the poor and preaches love and understanding. In a lesser game he’d be a cultist or never succeed, but the game respects that enough to not go the easy way.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Wrestlepig posted:

It’s one of the few dark fantasy games I’ve seen that doesn’t go overboard. Part of it’s the reverence it has for natural beauty, but they manage to put in dark stuff like brutal violence and war, imperialism, ptsd and discrimination along with classical fantasy stuff like cursed treasure, cosmic evil, the twilight of the gods and mysterious factional conflict without making it oppressive and unstoppable. It’s not afraid to have good people exist, as well. There’s a reformer priest in Thistlehold who feeds the poor and preaches love and understanding. In a lesser game he’d be a cultist or never succeed, but the game respects that enough to not go the easy way.

This is a really, really important point to doing dark fantasy stuff well. You've got to avoid wallowing in it, and it's always good to see a setting that manages that.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Old World Bestiary

Freedom Eagle

Great Eagles are enormous birbs who live in the great mountains of the setting. The dwarfs don't like them, thinking they all spy for the elves and steal dwarven goats, but our other Common stories about them include them warning a Bretonnian knight of ambush and helping him deal with orcs, and a general impression from people who live in mountains that the eagles are actually quite intelligent. They're correct. Great Eagles are actually fully sentient, and some of them even know human languages. They're most fond of learning and speaking Eltharin, so they deal with elves the most. They also hate orcs, because orcs eat their goats; these Eagles love eating goats. Orcs also kill their chicks and break their nests, and Great Eagles are very devoted parents who will go to any lengths to protect their chicks.

The really interesting trait isn't their intelligence or size (they're often 30 feet across at the wings). No, the really interesting bit comes to us from Waldemarr the Scholar, again. The Empire is in possession of a few golden tablets stolen from Lustria that, when translated, specifically speak of the Great Eagles. They sound like design documents, and say the Eagles are to be heralds of the Old Ones, granted great power against the forces of darkness and intelligence so they could carry out their duties. Because that's another thing people have noticed about the Eagles: They are completely immune to mutation, and even though they're an intelligent race, there is no record of any Great Eagle ever going with the Ruinous Powers of Chaos. Waldemarr isn't sure he believes the tablets, but as he says, someone thought the story of the design of the Great Eagles was worth inscribing in solid gold thousands of years ago. And it's a known fact that the Eagles are completely immune to Chaos.

It's really started to stand out to me as I've worked through all these books that the Old Ones actually come up quite a bit. They're never a real focus of the setting, but they're always there. Just what they were trying to do and why (besides the obvious bit that they hated Kahyoss), and what happened to gently caress it up, is one of the big mysteries of the setting. There's certainly enough material and hints about them in 2e that you could build your own concept for them if you ever felt like having your 17th century germans and stuff run into ancient alien stuff, but they're also in the back enough that they never end up like the Syreneth of 7th Sea and risk taking over the setting. You'd have to actively decide to write a game about them to really have them come up beyond being a background mystery.

Giant Spiders don't really get much fluff. They're mostly a throwaway monster, so to speak, because c'mon you can't have fantasy without horrible giant spiders. Unlike normal spiders, they come in numbers. They hate you and want to suck out your fluids. They don't even get a full page to themselves, and it's mostly 'Fuuuuuuck these things!' and 'They ill like fire!'. They're usually the size of a very large dog, or a small horse. They generally have a paralytic venom and like to attack by ambush in heavy forest. In lean times they come out of the woods in swarms and attack livestock and people. They'd rather eat a cow than you, but they'll happily take a human if they think they can get away with it. The Hunter Pike is really freaked out about spiders and swears their corpses should be propped up to warn people that if you don't work on stamping out Chaos that's how you get huge loving spiders that work in packs. Rikkit'Tik suggests wyvern venom mixed with salt, but also includes instructions that any dead spiders' venom glands are to be brought to him for research.

Dragons don't figure as heavily in Hams as they do in other fantasy settings because there are very, very few of them awake at any one time. They're still a big deal, though. We get an account of a soldier who served alongside an elven prince that had a Dragon in his service. He says he saw the creature take a cannon shot without flinching, and that he had a sense of humor, enjoying throwing goblins into other goblins and seeing what mischief and explosions would happen when he did. Our first dwarf voice on Dragons (and we'll get several) is that they're a bunch of goddamn overgrown flame-spewing magpies who can't build shiney things for themselves and so steal them from dwarfs. In the eyes of the world, a hero who is capable of facing and killing a dragon is the greatest of heroes. Giles d' Breton's entire reputation was first built on having slain a dragon as a young man, after all, and even Sigmar struggled to do more than wound a truly ancient wyrm. We even get a memoir account by Felix Jaeger (of the Gotrek and Felix books) of facing one, and he calls it the second worst thing he ever faced, second only to a Greater Demon.

As an aside, they really are that dangerous, too. Even without any buffs, the very standard Dragon stats have them at 6 attacks at Damage 7 AP Impact, plus AoE Damage 8 breath, with 69 Wounds and DR 11. If your party takes down a goddamn Dragon you are some of the hardest people in Hams. You're really only going to accomplish it by action-economying one down with multiple high tier fighters or by playing as a Vampire Lord or Chaos Lord. Felix isn't wrong at all, Dragons are the second-hardest enemy in the game and probably the most dangerous things PCs are expected to actually beat with the combat system at some point.

We get an extensive Scholar's section on them, too, with our Light Mage buddy from a few other entries wondering if their fire is magical or not. The reason this might matter, of course, is that if it's magic a wizard can dispel it as it comes out. You cannot do this in game because there's no 'dispel as it's cast' system in 2e, unlike the wargame. A dwarf loremaster notes that Dragons' hoards are essentially giant Bower Bird nests: They're designed to attract mates. Dragons pile up treasure and fancy things in order to show off to others of their kind and try to have kids. I wonder if they do silly bird mating dances? I bet they do. They should. He says that in the past, dwarfs used to make things for dragons in return for their fire to forge some of the most powerful Master Runes. Unfortunately, lots of Dragons betrayed dwarfs, took the treasure, and didn't provide the fire for the runes, or burned dwarf holds and robbed them. This, he says, is why some of the runes are 'lost'. It isn't that they're actually lost, it's that the dwarfs won't work with the Dragons they need to forge them anymore due to all them grudgins.

Dr. Abolas, our Tzeentch Magus, talks about how the two-headed dragons of Chaos are all descendants of an original primordial Chaos Dragon. He also notes it shouldn't be a surprise that Dragons can fall; they're intelligent creatures like anything else, they can choose to make bad decisions. Chaos Dragons are not to be trusted, even by their allies, but that's sort of par for the course for Chaos because that's how it do. Vampires also love to raise Dragon's bones and bodies from the dead, because if you're a talented enough necromancer to control such a zombie/skeleton, you now have an incredibly powerful and hideous flying mount. Also, elves used to ride Dragons as a whole, particularly in the land of Caledor out in Ulthuan (Caledorans being known as the people elves find to be stuck up pricks, by the way). Most so-called Dragon Princes ride horses with Dragon decorations now, because most of the Dragons that live on Ulthuan are sleeping. There is a fear that if they all awaken and take to the sky again, it means the last battle with Chaos is nigh.

We get two very different opinions from the Dragons themselves. One mentions he was there when the Gates were built, and even claims to have helped the Old Ones in their labors. He then says that while he knows much of them (and other things), he doesn't feel any need to tell anyone because the only worthwhile thing humans and other do is make shiney things he can take for his lair sometimes. He's kind of a dick. The other talks about enjoying watching the smaller races go about their work and their lives, admiring the humans, elves, and dwarfs and their struggle to survive and build things in this world. He hopes his kind will be missed when they're eventually gone, and suspects this will be the case.

Dragons are odd. They're intelligent, individual, but also mostly irrelevant. There just aren't enough of them, and they feel like they lost their control of this world aeons ago. They were, after all, one of the original inhabitants of the world and were not created by the Old Ones at all; I can't imagine the planet being moved into a new orbit was particularly good for a species that adapted to living on an ice-ball. Hams Dragons are bystanders to its stories. Really, really powerful bystanders.

Next Time: The Majesty of the Catbird

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ZeusJupitar
Jul 7, 2009

Night10194 posted:

I can't imagine the planet being moved into a new orbit was particularly good for a species that adapted to living on an ice-ball.

This is clarified in, and I believe only in, the original setting gazetteer in the Fantasy Battle 3rd edition core book. When the Old Ones found the world, it was a lush jungle planet in the process of spiralling away from its sun. The Old Ones stopped the drift and pushed it back in to the optimum orbit. All subsequent telling of the story mention them warming the planet and that the original races were all reptiles, but miss the key point.

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