|
Cease to Hope posted:this is pretty close to the premise of Superman Red Son which is okay I guess Not really. I will be the first to say that Soviet Russia had major issues, but in terms of installing vile beliefs into the youth it is nowhere close to what you would get in the south at the time or Weimar Germany.
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2019 03:48
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 25, 2024 10:48 |
|
|
Cease to Hope posted:this is pretty close to the premise of Superman Red Son which is okay I guess That's about how I'd rate the quality of Red Son. It does, however, rely on the idea that somewhere under the lobotomies and Stalinism, Soviet Superman has valuable and even utopian ideals. Nazi Superman would not, at all, have any worthwhile underlying philosophy any more than Confederate Superman would. There's a real difference between 'authoritarian communism' and 'literally any variant of Nazism or ideological dedication to chattel slavery' in regards to how they can be presented or discussed. e: To be clear, Red Son is not actually a cape comics version of a debate about the relative value of socialism and democracy, which ends with the invention of democratic socialism - even though that is sort of there in the conflict between Lex Luthor and Comrade Superman. It's mostly an excuse to have Capitalism Batman and Superlobotomies, neither of which are particularly valuable in my eyes. Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 03:52 on Mar 11, 2019 |
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2019 03:49
|
|
|
Joe Slowboat posted:...That Michael guy is really transparently 'Superman if he landed in the South and was raised to support slavery' which is a terrible idea already. Like, nobody is in the market for 'Superman lands in Weimar Germany, is raised as a Nazi' and for good loving reason.
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2019 03:50
|
|
|
Evil Mastermind posted:That was an issue of Multiversity; Kal-EL's rocket lands in Nazi Germany, he wins the war for the Reich. The idea was that he realized (far too late) that he was working for the bad guys and was now secretly working with the last remnants of rebellion.
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2019 03:53
|
|
|
Hunt11 posted:Not really. I will be the first to say that Soviet Russia had major issues, but in terms of installing vile beliefs into the youth it is nowhere close to what you would get in the south at the time or Weimar Germany. okay, but mark millar obviously disagrees. he doesn't have anything to say about the soviet union in particular, it's just a stand in for authoritarian cults of personality in general
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2019 03:54
|
|
|
Cease to Hope posted:okay, but mark millar I don't think we need go any further with this statement.
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2019 03:58
|
|
|
Nessus posted:Why not heat-vision the Fuhrer, declare yourself Fuhrer, and dissolve the entire mess? That would seem to be the thing to do, but perhaps Kal-Heil had read too much of Erin Tarn.
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2019 04:00
|
|
|
 Part 7b: Where the cover is made up and the Cool Stat doesn’t matter It’s time to see how our two heroes fare in this game. For all of the rolls I give, you can either append “except for the one-in-ten chance that the character trips over their own leg like a doofus” to every check (I’ll put a * where its most pertinent), or assume that the fumble rules are ignored. I’ve thrown around a lot of numbers earlier for Jamie and Kim, so let’s get all the information into one spot: First up for this test will be Jamie
Rifle: +23 (+24/+25 at long/extreme with telescopic sight) Notice: +26 (+27 for visual) * Stealth: +17 Wrestle: +13 * Demolitions +10 Sternmeyer CG-13 * 5d6 (regular or AP) * 90 rounds/48 ROF * VR * 400m RUN 15 * LUCK 3 * BTM -5 * Save 12 Head 17/24 * Torso 19 * R.Arm 19 * L.Arm 19 * R.Leg 12 * L.Leg 12 I mentioned there’s a sample adventure in the back with “stat blocks” for three tiers of goons. It’s clear that these were written for 1st ed - there’s no way to have a base Reflex over 10 even with cybernetics. Also they list out the possessions of these goons, instead of the relevant stats. After doing the calculations myself, here are their important stats. Basic Goon
Notice: +10 * Melee +14 Karate +12 * Athletics +14 Stealth +9 Sternmeyer Heavy Pistol * 3d6 * 8 rounds/2 ROF * VR * 50m Rippers * 1d6+5 (knife AP) * no ammo * no range RUN 18 * LUCK ? * BTM -4 * Save 10 Head 7/14 * Torso 18 * R.Arm 18 * L.Arm 18 * R.Arm 18 * L.Leg 0 * R.Leg 0 Elite Goon
Submachinegun: +16 * Notice: +12 Melee +14 * Karate +12 Athletics +15 * Stealth +9 Sternmeyer Heavy Pistol * 3d6 (AP) * 8 rounds/2 ROF * VR * 50m Arasaka Minami 10 * 2d6+3 * 40 rounds/20 ROF * VR * 200m Rippers * 1d6+5 (knife AP) * no ammo * no range RUN 18 * LUCK ? * BTM -4 * Save 10 Head 7/14 * Torso 18 * R.Arm 18 * L.Arm 18 * R.Arm 18 * L.Leg 0 * R.Leg 0 Super Goon
Notice: +11 * Karate: +14 Athletics: +14 * Stealth +6 RUN 24 * LUCK ? * BTM -5 * Save 12 Head 25 * Torso 29 * R.Arm 18 * L.Arm 18 * L.Leg 0 * R. Leg 0 Instead of making up an after-action report (as I originally intended), I’m just going to describe various encounters with the different levels of goons. First let’s look at what pre-battle rolls would be like. None of the goons have taken Stealth, while Jamie has +27 to Notice. Even in the most convoluted gotcha scenarios, Jamie’s Notice is so high that she can make near-impossible Notice checks 7 out of 10 times. In contrast, Jamie has a 5 point advantage on her Stealth checks compared to the goons’ notice, so she’s able to set ambushes pretty consistently. Finally, Jamie is almost always going to go first. Here’s how all the rules comes together for Jamie: The CG-13 has a range of 400m, which means close range for it is 100m, or almost the length of a football field. So except for really long distance combat, Jamie is trying to beat a 15 when she’s already starting with a +23 bonus. Making called shots to the head reduces the bonus to +19, but even then, Jamie is always* going to be making the roll even at medium range (200m). But the prefered engagement range is going to be close, because that’s going to let her take advantage of the CG-13’s ROF. At close range firing a full burst, an attacker gets +1 to his roll for every 10 rounds fired, and you can hit multiple targets at once. And when attacking at Full Burst, each target hit takes 1 bullet for every point of success over the target number (up to the rate of fire/# targets). And the only consistent way for a defender to raise the difficulty is to move, and for this core book, the most that gives does is give the attacker -2. Jamie will be hitting her targets with 7 to 16 bullets to the face, guaranteed*. Let’s put her against 8 elite goons. Jamie fires at full auto, hitting every goon with 6 bullets, each bullet doing 5d6 damage (average 17-18). Elite goons have 7 SP frontal facial armor and -4 BTM, but damage to the head that penetrates armor does double damage. If Jamie is using regular rounds, then on average she’s causing 16 to 18 points of damage to the head per hit. Even if the goons were in nylon helmets (10 SP in front), the damage they’d be taking averages from 10 to 12. And if Jamie was using AP rounds, then the average damage is 8 to 9. In all these cases, the average damage is enough to blow the elite goon’s head off, and Jamie is making 6 hits. And even if she rolls poorly, taking six shots to the face will put any target deep in the negative category. Now how does Jamie do against a trio of super goons? This guy is meant to be an end boss, and even here I beefed him up (I gave him a heavier SMG). However, he’s got so much armor that once you account for all the penalties his impressive skills sink like a rock. Since the super goons are using SMGs they need to get within 50 meters before getting into close range, and they move 24 meters a turn. That’s fast, but not fast enough. Let’s assume one gets to shoot before Jamie-how does he do? Well if he tries to fire at full auto, he’s only got a 10% chance to hit. Instead he does a three round burst. If he tries to make a headshot (say Jamie is behind cover), he’s got a 40% chance of making the hit. Let’s give it to him, and he hits with two bullets. If the bullets are AP, then Jamie is taking just one point of damage on average. Of course if the goon gets lucky, a headshot from this gun has a chance to OHKO Jamie. For this example let’s say the damage rolls are somewhat better than average and Jamie’s taken enough damage to be seriously injured. Even with a -2 to her attack, Jamie is going to bullseye all three of her opponents with 5 to 14 bullets. Since the super goons have more facial armor and BTM, she’s doing on average 1 to 2 points of damage, but with on average 9 hits, Jamie is going to do more than enough damage to incapacitate all three targets, and it’s pretty likely Jamie will get an insta-kill with two if not three of her attackers. Alternatively, Jamie can shoot the super goon’s legs. Each bullet will do about 3 to 4 damage on average, and with the sheer volume of hits the super goon will probably be dropped deep into mortally wounded and probably blow their leg off. Here’s one final scenario. While Jamie excels at fighting at ranged, the super goon looks built to engage in hand-to-hand as much with guns (though armor fucks this up). So let’s have him teleport right next to Jamie, and give him first attack. What can super goon do with his mastery of karate? Well he can perform a kick, doing 1d6+11 damage. That seems impressive, but Jamie has skinweave and a -5 BTM. Even at max damage, super goon only does 1 point of damage, and nothing is stopping Jamie from blowing him to bits on her turn. He can disarm Jamie, which will require her to pick up her gun before using it. Making two actions imposes a -3 penalty, but since Jamie is at point blank range, the penalty is meaningless. Super goon’s best option is to put Jamie in a hold. That will let the super goon do choke damage, but again this maxes out at 1 point every turn. But what can Jamie do about it? Well Jamie took wrestling as her martial arts because of the huge bonus to escaping holds. After about two turns Jamie will break the hold, pick the gun up if it was disarmed, and turn super goon into swiss cheese. Even when things go pretty poorly for Jamie, she is much more likely than not capable of soloing (pun not intended) what is meant to be an end-of-scenario opponent, or even a few of them at a time. The only way to challenge Jamie using just the core book is to build an opponent exactly like her, at which point it becomes a question of who wins initiative. That takes care of Jamie, but what about Kim?
Notice: +9 * Thai Kick Boxing: +8 H&K MP 11 * 4d6+1 (regular or AP) * 30 rounds/20 ROF * ST * 200m RUN 15 * LUCK 5 * BTM -3 * Save 8 Head 25 * Torso 25 * R.Arm 25 * L.Arm 25 * R.Leg 25 * L.Leg 25 To start, Kim is always losing initiative to both the elite and super goon, and will almost always go after even the basic goon. We’ll start with the super goon, since I think that’ll be the quickest. At medium range, super goon has an 80% chance to hit Kim with a 3 round burst, double Kim’s odds to do the same. If he hits, he does on average 1 point of damage after SP and BTM. Unlike Jamie, Kim has to worry about Stun/Shock saves as soon as he takes the slightest damage. Meanwhile, the best Kim can hope for is to hit the legs and roll max damage, blowing it off. Otherwise super goon gets to close range in two rounds, and then does a full auto attack. Kim will take 3 to 12 hits*, the majority of which will pass through his armor, and Kim will probably fail a Stun/Shock save and pass out. Unless they’re using AP rounds for their SMGs, Kim actually has a significant range advantage on the elite goon. An elite goon would have to move for 2 turns to get in range while Kim can take 3-round bursts each round and land a hit every time*. Even once they get in range, a majority of the AP pistol rounds won’t penetrate Kim’s armor. But every shot that does get through forces a Stun/Shock save. Kim probably has a good chance of the taking a single elite goon, but facing more than one is more than he can handle. A fight between Kim and regular goons would be comical. None of the goon’s weapon can penetrate Kim’s armor, but Kim doesn’t have the skill to reliably kill the goon quickly. In isolation, the goons would have to dogpile Kim, and by now I think I’ve made my larger point and I don’t really want to figure out how many are needed to beat Kim. I would guess 4. In conclusion combat is basically a solved problem in the core book. There are some tricks you can do with explosives, but the primary strategy is going to be firing at full auto with an assault rifle and blowing heads off a football field away. These rules are pretty complicated, but they’re nowhere near as dense as the Netrunning rules, and I’m not looking forward to that. But before we get to that, we got to talk about doctors. Doctors, and drugs. Next Time: General Hospital SirPhoebos fucked around with this message at 04:34 on Mar 11, 2019 |
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2019 04:08
|
|
|
Poor Kim. He has such a fun character concept, too.
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2019 04:17
|
|
|
When I finish my current tabletop game project I am absolutely going to start work back on the AU Southern setting where the South just gets its poo poo kicked in forever because of Civil War Shenanigans that I started in like 2015 in response to Unhallowed Metropolis and Deadlands.
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2019 05:25
|
|
|
Joe Slowboat posted:That's about how I'd rate the quality of Red Son. It does, however, rely on the idea that somewhere under the lobotomies and Stalinism, Soviet Superman has valuable and even utopian ideals. Nazi Superman would not, at all, have any worthwhile underlying philosophy any more than Confederate Superman would. There's a real difference between 'authoritarian communism' and 'literally any variant of Nazism or ideological dedication to chattel slavery' in regards to how they can be presented or discussed. I thought the joke was that Lex Luthor basically invents communism under a different name to counter communism because capitalism falls apart under pressure.
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2019 07:25
|
|
|
Man, I must have run into so many house rules. First, IIRC, the way it was handle in my group was bursts couldn't be called shot, for the most part. Bursts were for saturation fire or concentrated fire, you could only do called shots if you were basically exercising precision shooting (namely with a semi-automatic or single shot mode) due to recoil. Not that would stop Jamie, she'd just snipe-shot everyone. Secondly, armor degraded after each hit, no matter if it penetrated or not, so you could whittle down a heavily-armored opponent. Stuff like the .22 mini-gat submachinegun or other high-rof, low-damage combat staplers were a good way to sandblasting armor away. There's probably others I'm forgetting (like cover adding SP to personal armor instead of rerolling locations if under cover).
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2019 07:46
|
|
|
Ghost Leviathan posted:I thought the joke was that Lex Luthor basically invents communism under a different name to counter communism because capitalism falls apart under pressure. You're assuming more political coherency than that series had, IMO. Luthor-ism is 'like communism, and like capitalism, but synthesizing the two properly' and at no point do we actually get an image of communism in the series that isn't Comrade Superman's authoritarian philosopher-king nonsense. It's not actually a politically insightful, or even ironic, work.
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2019 07:53
|
|
|
plus mark millar is the kind of guy who is prone to respond to any even mildly clever interpretation of his work with, "oh yeah, that's what i meant all along, you nailed it"
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2019 07:59
|
|
|
Libertad! posted:The Viscountess: Lady Samantha, the Sixth Viscountess Savory of Sudbury, is our sole villain for the American Revolution era. She’s basically an evil non-powered Wonder Women: she’s into S&M, uses a whip as her primary weapon, and heavily relies on seduction and blackmail to get what she wants. Her archenemy was Joseph Clark, who earned her undying enmity as one of the few men who wouldn’t sleep with her. After the American Revolution she began to fall from grace: some say she ended up in a loveless marriage and raised 3 daughters to follow in her footsteps, others say she eventually ended up in an asylum for “the ailments of Venus,” which was a real-world made-up mental illness for women who expressed an interest in sex. I don't know which is worse: the obvious misogyny or just how cliché the misogyny is. Like, come on. My lesbian brain is checking out and going "all yours, sis" to my feminist brain here. That shouldn't be possible!
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2019 08:57
|
|
|
I just think that he finds FemDom attractive but is way way too repulsive a person to actually have some nice kinky fun with consenting people ergo: all women are either chaste or sex maniacs. it's not an uncommon psychological defence unfortunately. E:VVVV Yeah that's the one I was thinking of. By popular demand fucked around with this message at 10:45 on Mar 11, 2019 |
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2019 10:29
|
|
|
By popular demand posted:I just think that he finds FemDom attractive but is way way too repulsive a person to actually have some nice kinky fun with consenting people ergo: all women are either chaste or sex maniacs. It's got a name, the Madonna-Whore complex, and it's very common.
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2019 10:36
|
|
|
Joe Slowboat posted:You're assuming more political coherency than that series had, IMO. Luthor-ism is 'like communism, and like capitalism, but synthesizing the two properly' and at no point do we actually get an image of communism in the series that isn't Comrade Superman's authoritarian philosopher-king nonsense. It's not actually a politically insightful, or even ironic, work. Hostile V posted:When I finish my current tabletop game project I am absolutely going to start work back on the AU Southern setting where the South just gets its poo poo kicked in forever because of Civil War Shenanigans that I started in like 2015 in response to Unhallowed Metropolis and Deadlands.
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2019 10:52
|
|
|
Adeptus Evangelion Pen Pen, No! So, in the show Evangelion, something called Second Impact happened. It was really bad. It annihilated the entire continent of Antarctica. Just gone. There's a reason we're on Tokyo 3, and it's because Tokyo 1 is underwater and I'm not entirely sure what happened to Tokyo 2. Within the context of the show, this is partly to show that we really want to avoid 'Third Impact', partly to show that these conspiracy chucklefucks that make up some of the adult cast of the story are responsible, partly because some shots of old flooded Tokyo are cool, and partly to explain why the UN is somehow in charge of the world. Also, Eva was made in the 90s; UN In Charge Of The World wasn't that uncommon in the 90s. You do find out a little about what happened; the Katsuragi Expedition tried a 'contact experiment' with what they thought was the progenitor of humankind. It wasn't. It was Adam, the progenitor of angels, and he was real pissed about being woken up and so turned into some kind of giant of light (which obviously resembled an Eva) and somehow the big red spear got involved (I think) and then Antarctica exploded. This is why a penguin lives with Shinji. He is a refugee. Still, in the original background, the exact political situation that leads to the UN (and the doomsday cult conspiracy) being in power is vague, because it isn't that important to the story. The story isn't really about political maneuvering. Can you guess what AdEva's going to give us a bunch of? And that it's all going to be really bad? When it's left more vague, you can buy 'poo poo got hosed on a scale unimaginable in human history, people band together to try to rebuild, Japanese boy takes in a hyper-penguin to do his part'. Bam, that's backstory, on to the real story. When you add in a ton of direct detail, you have a lot more room for poo poo to be laughably wrong. And totally irrelevant to the kind of story Evangelion is trying to tell. Hell, it would even be pretty irrelevant to 'Giant Robot X-COM', and the more I've been writing this review the more I wish The Game Nise Asuka Thinks She's Playing existed because I would play the hell out of Giant Robot X-COM. Also, this next section includes nothing about The Conspiracy because this is the Player Book and players shouldn't see any of those kinds of details about your setting! They need to be surprised. There's no mention of SEELE at any point in the player handbook anymore; this is a marked change from V2, because what's the point in hiding SEELE when most of your players have probably seen Eva? So anyway, we get more details on the exact effects of Second Impact and they officially hit a 'I'm calling bullshit on recognizable human society existing' point. According to the book, the explosion stressed the planet's mantle so bad the Yellowstone Caldera erupted and the force knocked the planet into a new orbit. Not to mention the loss of the entire southern polar ice cap. Tsunamis wrecked the entire global south and drowned Australia, coastal cities throughout the planet were lost, and '2 billion people died in the first 19 hours'. The 'panicked human locust swarm of refugees' from the worst affected regions caused terrible wars. India and Pakistan exterminated one another entirely with WMDs for reasons, removing the entire Indian subcontinent according to the authors. The book claims that the wars of Second Impact destroyed 'London and Tokyo 1' but that while Russia, China, and the US all went to war for various reasons no-one actually pulled out the ICBMs. I'm just shaking my head at the refugee 'locust swarms'. Seeing that poo poo was hosed, Europe turned over all its armies to the UN for...reasons. Then the UN somehow convinced Russia that it could keep Eastern Europe if it joined and turned over its army. There's no talk of how a victorious China (they took over almost all of their neighbors and became even more of a superpower) was convinced to sign up. The US signed up so that the UN would 'take care of the South American problem' because South America was A: Pretty hosed up from the explosion of a continent and B: Has of course remained a lawless savage mad-max hellhole and keeps sending those 'locust' swarms. Seriously, you can read a lot into the authors' politics from all of this. Anyway, look at how much less plausible this is than the barebones 'some awful poo poo happened, we came together and empowered the UN so we don't all starve to death'. Plus, that had the value of obviously being minor backstory rather than getting a detailed explanation of how it happened. Here, we've got WWIII happening in a post-apocalyptic world but somehow the shattered western Europeans (who should already have been part of NATO and thus were already an international alliance) handing the UN their armies and somehow that makes the UN a superpower that makes Russia back down and do the same? They don't even bother talking about why China would bother, especially as China was doing really well in their backstory. China survived the Impact well, had a fully intact army, was expanding its borders, and then just...stops and hands everything to the UN, too. Oh, they explain China later: China suffered a revolution while in the midst of taking over its neighbors and the communist party somehow fell despite China at the same time having one of the most intact and powerful militaries and states in the world. Then they were invaded by and humiliated by the UN and completely crushed and made to be subservient. All without any WMD use. The UN then turned around and told all territory China took over that it had to be part of China now and helped China put down any pro-independence protests. The UN is kind of bipolar like that I guess. China also bought the rights to re-colonize Australia because they need more space. The most important part of China for Eva is that the UN outsources all the manufacturing of Eva weaponry to China. None of the rest of this ridiculous Tom Clancy bullshit where China is at once a superpower that takes all its neighbors and at the same time a weak nation easily humiliated by a western military alliance actually matters to the giant robot punching. Oh also China nuked Tokyo because Japan looked like it wanted to save its wonderful friends the Koreans. Of course. Russia did what Russia do and took the opportunity to attack Eastern Europe. MAD kept anyone from using nukes (aside from what happened to Tokyo and somehow London? I don't even know who nuked London. They just say London was nuked 'from beneath its streets' so, uh, I guess SEELE did London for Reasons? Had to destroy the magic mace that is the Queen I guess) during all this WWIII Clancy bullshit, because no-one is going to miscalculate or panic while the entire world is falling apart and at war. Russia would have taken over all of Europe but was stopped by severe famine. Russia then joins the UN for no real reason but because they have to for the plot to work. Later they imply Russia is reliant on the UN for food, which is a slightly better reason, but still. Also, they gave up their nuclear deterrent to the UN and has become the UN's space agency. The US lost its president (to being assassinated by SEELE for reasons), its coasts, and the giant loving super volcano erupting. Then the 'locust swarm' from Mexico showed up and the US ended up (if you read between the lines a little) enslaving the refugees to rebuild (they mention rebuilding was enabled by the camps of 'cheap Mexican immigrants' after all). It shifts the economy back to industry, booms, fixes itself, and then when the damage is fixed, somehow this causes a massive '22% drop in GDP' that economically destroys the nation? I would think having rebuilt everything would lead to better times. You can then use all the stuff you rebuilt, book. Your entire economy doesn't just collapse the minute you don't need to build more roads anymore; now you move the economy to using those roads to move goods and people. The US has shining coastal cities rebuilt with systems of dikes to reclaim the land and kept clean of the riffraff, and then sad bundles of refugees and the unemployed elsewhere. Also it made Canada join it. Take that, War of 1812! Also there's no explanation of why or even really if the US joined the UN. They just kind of did. Like Russia. They'll later claim it's all The Conspiracy, but c'mon. Germany's doing well and 'totally could have beaten Russia on its own'. France is being France and has become a major center of the new UN. England is 'efficiency arising from tragedy' with its new 'England First' policies and dead royal family. A nationalistic England, that cares about England and England alone, has rebuilt its nation, it's strength, and its pride!!! What was this written by, a Brexiteer? Israel destroyed the Middle East with 'the Samson Option', going crazy with nukes as it collapsed in the early post-Impact chaos so that the authors don't have to write a Middle East at all. Any surviving countries like Turkey shoot refugees on sight. Central and South America are mad max hellscapes. Libya is stable and intact, as is Egypt (lol). Africa 'was never in the best of shape to begin with' and is even worse now. Saudi Arabia somehow survived the generic 'The Middle East is Nuked' plotline with its 'hyper competent defensive forces' and again, lol. And, that's AdEva's version of the backstory. Tell me, does that add anything to your game of FEELINGS and ROBOT FISTFIGHT? No. Not only is it stupid (and pretty revealing of both the profound ignorance and politics of the authors) but it's all just a pointless distraction. Second Impact matters mostly as something to set the stakes, to tell you that the last time people hosed around with the stuff NERV and SEELE gently caress around with an entire continent exploded and it caused a new global order. We don't need all of this terrible Clancyfic wank, because the point of the Impact isn't 'oh man let's have some awesome milwank wars!!!' but rather 'The previous generation hosed the world pretty hard' and 'Also don't gently caress around with Adam, nothing good happens'. The details don't loving matter you dumb nerds! But you know, it's only going to get worse from here. Because you see, that was the end of the Player Book. Next time, join me as we get into the deep secrets of the GM's Guide (which again, is necessary to run the game at all, so I'm counting them both as one book for review) and we get into The Game Asuka Has Actually Signed Up For. Next Time: Terrible GMing advice and The Implication Night10194 fucked around with this message at 15:17 on Mar 11, 2019 |
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2019 14:52
|
|
|
The stench of /pol is strong in that writing.
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2019 15:15
|
|
|
being offensive enough to interest is honestly the best thing I can say about this unwanted garbage.
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2019 15:42
|
|
|
Adeptus Evangelion You Must (Not) GM Like This This is probably the worst part of the entire game. The GM's book is a huge disaster of a book, even worse than the Player's Guide. The Player's Guide has some hidden creepy implications and basically everything about that backstory/setting fluff (I certainly did 9 years ago; I checked my copy of V2 and the awful fluff is still there. I mostly just ignored that bit I suppose), but it's mostly a bunch of wank about subsystems and badly written rules. A reasonable person could ignore/miss much of that and make a character like our version of Auska expecting to play Giant Robot X-COM and maybe have a twist where their boss turns out to be evil. The GM's guide (and experiences with the game itself when played outside of the people I know and trust as my regular group) are why I say this game is actually creepy as hell. First, we get an archaic warning about 'No! No players in here! This is GM country, for powerful and great GMs!' One of the things I hate about this book is the implication that GMing is a position of power or privilege, the status of a great creator/author who has a Vision they're going to show to the players. There's a lot of keeping secrets from your players here, a desire to surprise them with sudden twists in premise and setting. There's an idea that the GM is telling a super important, deep, and mature story, and their vision matters. For instance, they say you shouldn't stick too close to Eva because even if your players aren't familiar with the series, they could figure out all your twists by watching it and then what would you be left with? This says a lot about how they view writing. And of course, the characters can't get along; this is Eva. Now, on one hand, that's true. But there's something about the way they promote the negative relationships and flaws of the characters that just sets my teeth on edge. There's a constant 'you're being a bad GM if people are comfortable' implication in their writing about GMing that goes counter to all good GMing sense. In essence, the writers don't understand the difference between portraying dysfunctional characters and having a dysfunctional table. At all points, you're urged to make things worse, promote conflict, and especially promote unhealthy relationships and power dynamics that translate badly into group play. And you do this all without any talk of safety mechanisms. I use the example of Monsterhearts as an example of a better version of this kind of play because it's a game concerned with keeping a table from being uncomfortable while playing Love Disasters. It's similarly game about adolescent protagonists making terrible mistakes in the face of stressful situations and angst. And more importantly, it's got a bunch of safety rails on it, like the way no-one can Turn Your Character On without your consent. No-one can just roll dice to demand you want to gently caress them. Meanwhile, here, we've got the constant implication that lots of Social Skills are going to get used on PCs the same way they're used on NPCs; multiple Assets provide bonuses against being Charmed, Unshippable exists, and then there's stuff like Asuka's 'Make a WP to disobey any order from a NERV officer'. Now a reasonable person might assume that means Asuka is going to have a dramatic moment later where she has to make WP or else she'll turn on her friends or something, who will then have to beat her robot and rescue her from mind control or something. That's why she has it; in her case it would be a reasonable player taking that to build in a plot hook about conspiracies. But the way the game is written that's probably not how it ends up. Now, I've talked a lot about Implication here; maybe I'm overreacting, right? Maybe it's all just awkward fan writing. No. See, under the 'Mood and Lethality' section, they talk about how to properly GM this game, the players will have to accept 'A certain degree of sexual imagery' in among the normal wank about horrific fates for PCs and 'hopelessness'. The only thing to assess about that is if it's 'hurting player interest in the game'; your goal, according to this GM's guide, is solely to keep them playing your game, not to address actual concerns or discomfort at the table. Here's a direct quote: "If the players come to you with serious concerns about the direction events are taking, you should consider your options. Don't allow yourself to be bullied into a direction contrary to your plans." It talks about maintaining some awareness of 'OOC consequences' but only in the context that if you kill off PCs or something their player might be bored and leave the game. It's entirely about how to keep the players in your loving magical realm. One of my players, on re-reading the books and talking about all this with me (years after playing the game together), articulated it best. What bugged him was the sense that all of the power games and things are through implication, and only really come to the fore when you read the GM's guide and see their attitude about how to handle worries about sexual imagery or themes, or other serious concerns about a game's direction. It knows what it's doing and it keeps it hidden in The Implication, because then you get a character like Nise Asuka taking what they think is a plot hook and then turns into horrible magical realm bullshit at the table. This is borne out by my experience, wherein I made a PC for an ongoing group, designed the backstory and everything, and then when I came in and was already part of the game, was only then informed the party's adult pilot was in a pedophilic relationship with my PC's daughter. Or the guy who was in one of my games who later asked me why 'the girls weren't liking his PC' and asked me as GM to use my position to make the game a harem anime for his male pilot since the rest of the squad were girls (played by, you know, actual players). I ejected the guy, sure, but what he thought I was going to do for him as a GM said a lot, especially in concert with that other experience. So yeah, I'm not being too harsh on this. Stuff like the implementation of the OD, the constant insistence on making the pilots more helpless, the poor WP stats, the existence of Unshippable, etc all implied a lot. But the GMing chapter saying 'Don't be bullied out of your vision!!!' and solely treating player concerns as 'how do you keep them in your game so you can keep being DEEP to them' is the final nail in the loving creepy coffin. Everything that's come before makes the focus on 'surprising' players really sinister. Now, a reasonable group of healthy players and GMs are not going to automatically turn this game into awfulness. But what pisses me off is that the GMing advice and previous structure of the game definitely enables and encourages doing so, thinking it makes the game 'deep' for people to be uncomfortable. On a less creepy level, the GMing advice just isn't good GMing advice. For instance, on 'keeping players interested', it's all about how much plot you give them, not about paying attention to what they want out of the game. If I had Shinji and Nise Asuka as PCs in my game, I'd want to have a talk with them about differing expectations and how both could have a good time playing the nervous normal kid and the wannabe supersoldier. You could navigate those two PCs concepts and make a game they'd both enjoy with some work. Instead, the focus here is on who gets plot spotlights, when, and how you should give more plot time to the people more interested in your game but not so much that the people who were already bored check out. Also, you should totally give the OD a kid NPC to play too so they can always be playing the game while also having their own solo adventures on the side, because God knows they're not awkward enough for a group yet. There's also a bunch on how to pace out the campaign and advancement, with the goal of making sure players only actually get their high level abilities late in a campaign. It's mostly boring. The emphasis on 'keeping players' over 'happy players' is also really, really bad from a GMing standpoint. The goal of GMing is not to inflict your grand vision on your players. It's to enable your friends having a good time and exploring ideas while doing something creative. Yes, I like to try to tell stories I think are worthwhile when I GM. I write about stuff I think matters, silly elfgames or no. But if a player came to me and told me 'I really don't like this theme and it makes me uncomfortable' I would be happy to discuss how we can remove it from the game or alter the course of events. This is a collaborative medium and your players have a say in what they're participating in. Because my players are my goddamn friends, and hurting my friends so I can pretend I wrote the great American novel in an elfgame is loving stupid. You can deal with tragic, horrific, and awful things in an RPG without actually making people uncomfortable and unhappy OOC. If you're writing about abusive relationships, depression, isolation, and the things Eva is actually about, you better goddamn well put some safety rails on your game because you're going to need them. Not talk about 'not being bullied' out of your 'vision' for events. In short, gently caress AdEva. The best part is the rest of the GMing advice is going to be a laundry list of telling us the writers don't know a goddamn thing about writing or storytelling, so that 'grand vision' they gotta not be bullied out of isn't even going to be interesting. Next Time: Window Dressing
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2019 16:08
|
|
|
IIRC about my Eva lore, Tokyo-2 got lost in something called the Valentine War, where newly-developed N2 warheads were first used in a minor exchange between nuclear powers over February 16th, 2002.
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2019 16:24
|
|
|
I want to stress here for anyone that has played a 'normal' AdEva game that didn't go to creepytown: That is completely possible, and even what will probably happen if you're a reasonable group with reasonable adults. I've run that game. Twice. My objection is that everything written here enables Magical Realm bullshit going down in the worst way possible, and that I have seen Magical Realm bullshit go down within this game before when I dealt with people not a part of my normal trusted group.
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2019 16:31
|
|
|
A Good Group Won't Do That is the sister excuse to A Good GM Can Fix It.
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2019 16:42
|
|
|
megane posted:A Good Group Won't Do That is the sister excuse to A Good GM Can Fix It. Oh, I know. Why I advise staying the gently caress away from this game. It is not worth dealing with. The fact that I am 2 for 2 on Magical Realm Bullshit outside of my normal group with that game says as much. What I mean is more that's an extension of what I talk about in the update; the game hides the poo poo it's planning. To the extent that a normal group might miss it. But that actually makes the 'use the game as a coercive' aspect even worse, because of the entrapment element. Sure, I walked out of that game where they were like 'BTW the adult pilot's loving your daughter' but there's often social pressure not to, or the (foolish, but understandable) urge to try to solve an out of game problem like 'hey this is really not what I signed up for' with in-game solutions. It's why toxic gaming environments can thrive. The focus on 'keep the players' only makes it even worse.
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2019 16:49
|
|
|
Evil Mastermind posted:That was an issue of Multiversity; Kal-EL's rocket lands in Nazi Germany, he wins the war for the Reich. The idea was that he realized (far too late) that he was working for the bad guys and was now secretly working with the last remnants of rebellion. Yeah, that alt-u was introduced in Final Crisis and was probably one of the least clever and interesting things I've seen in a Grant Morrison comic. While part of the comic's point was Superman as a universal constant, it was a weary plot note done to prop up Dracula's Granddad or whoever as the main villain. "Ut oh, even Nazi Supes is no match for Dracula's Granddad!" Cease to Hope posted:plus mark millar is the kind of guy who is prone to respond to any even mildly clever interpretation of his work with, "oh yeah, that's what i meant all along, you nailed it" Pretty much. Red Son is a fine-lookin' book, but it's largely just "what if Dark Knight Returns only from Supes' point of view".
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2019 17:01
|
|
|
On one hand it's great there's a way to refer to the kind of overfetishistic / forcing the players into uncomfortable situation that happens with bad GMs and bad systems (Maid and AdEva), on the other hand it's depressing that we would need that shorthand.
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2019 17:06
|
|
|
Alien Rope Burn posted:Yeah, that alt-u was introduced in Final Crisis and was probably one of the least clever and interesting things I've seen in a Grant Morrison comic. While part of the comic's point was Superman as a universal constant, it was a weary plot note done to prop up Dracula's Granddad or whoever as the main villain. "Ut oh, even Nazi Supes is no match for Dracula's Granddad!" https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Earth-X
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2019 17:24
|
|
|
Young Freud posted:IIRC about my Eva lore, Tokyo-2 got lost in something called the Valentine War, where newly-developed N2 warheads were first used in a minor exchange between nuclear powers over February 16th, 2002. Tokyo-2 basically gets no air-time in the series. All that's really known is that it's in Matsumoto, and apparently it was built in 2002-2003? I think it's supposed to be the new national capital, but EvaWiki doesn't say anything to that effect so I'm probably wrong.
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2019 17:26
|
|
|
Emerald Empire: Rock The Dragon The Dragon Mountains are immense, even by the standards of mountains, and many would-be mountain climbers have returned home in embarrassment after just seeing their vast scale and realizing the audacity of what they had planned. The climb begins in the forests around the mountains, using tree roots and boulders to assist the climb. The woods are full of life, rich in deer, macaques, pheasants, hares, boar and leopards. However, they end abruptly, with the trees thinning out as the mountains rise ever higher, and the path becomes far more treacherous. A single misstep can kill, and in winter and spring, brittle ice and huge rivers of melt are common. However, the view is unmatched by anything in the entire Empire. Dragon Mountains Rumors posted:
Our NPC is Agasha Susumu, Scholar and Guide. He’s a small but wiry man with sloping shoulders and has begun going bald. He travels the Dragon peaks tirelessly, studying and experimenting with all kinds of herbs. He is tanned dark by the sun and is always happy to discuss his studies with anyone he meets. He also often works as a mountain guide, though he’s rather distractible and tends to ask the folks he’s guiding to wait while he heads up a cliff to get some interesting plant. He is happy to lecture on just about any subject (and will hint strongly to people that he’d like to), though botany is always his greatest love. Recently, he's been focused more on finding herbs than experimenting with them. When among his clanmates, he tends to start debates about the Perfect Land Sect, which he considers heretical; he’s very tired of his clan’s tolerance for them. If he had his way, they would be chased from the mountains by any means necessary to prevent their heresy from tainting the holy heights. From here, we’re off to the forests. Forests are alive, each unique, and surviving in them without understanding them is nearly impossible. However, the Empire relies on the forests heavily for lumber, which is vital to almost all activities. Everyone needs wood for something, and so the forests most be harvested. The Crane have many forests in their lands, and with the exception of Needle’s Eye Forest, Crane woodlands tend to be full of helpful spirits that allow them to harvest the wood as needed. Osari Mori is noted for its beauty and, hidden within a ring-shaped grove of sakura trees, Shizuka Toshi, the home of the Doji Diplomat School. In the south, Akagi Forest has silver-leafed bamboo groves, used by the Kakita duelists for the testing of sword blades and as sites for meditation. Other clans have more limited options. The Lion have only one forest, the Heart of Vigilance, and it has shrunk over the centuries due to logging. By care, restraint and reforestation, they’ve begun repairing the damage, and the Crab and Scorpion are even worse off. Few forests grow west of the Spine of the World except one – the ancient Shinomen Forest, which neither clan dares to provoke. Its spirits are wild, ancient and unpredictable, and the logging towns around the Shinomen are used to very strange events. Every so often, a settlement will just vanish, devoured by the forest. Even with such risks, however, wood must be taken. The Unicorn use it for yosegi, a form of woodcrafting that uses the Dragon’s Heart Forest trees to make wooden mosaics, using slats of wood from different trees to produce different colors, all without need for dyes. The Phoenix rely on the trees to produce the best parchment (e: yes, it's not parchment, but the book calls it that) in Rokugan, calling on kami to help them produce sacred scrolls when they use the marbling technique called suminagashi, which relies on the spirits to move the ink in a bath of water, soaking the design into the fibers of the paper. A forest’s personality is determined by the spirits that live there. While manmade satoyama groves tend to have little spiritual activity, they are simply lines of trees planted around field edges to prevent erosion and provide a minor wood source. They are felled while still young, because after a tree turns thirty, its grove will tend to gain some spirits. Kodama spirits prefer to live in mature trees, and loggers must always check to be sure they don’t cut down a kodama’s tree, for this will kill the spirit and curse the woodcutter. Kodama are a common form of forest kami, but not the only one. Many kami dwell within undeveloped nature, subtly affecting their mortal neighbors. While in normal lands, torii and temples are used to mark the presence of a kami’s shintai, a forest has no need. Everyone knows the wild woods are full of spirits, much like the mountains, and it would be insane to enter a forest without expecting them to do anything. Senkyo, the spirit realm, bleeds into Ningen-do, the mortal realm, in these wild places. The spirit beasts of Chikushu-do and Sakkaku are not rare in the forests, and the wary traveler will spot seemingly impossible trails, trees from distant places or strange weather when the spirits grow restless. Travelers may become lost in time or space, due to trickster spirits or simply the strange nature of the spirit realms. It is said that if you make the mistake of eating spirit food, you will be trapped forever. Needle’s Eye Forest in Crane lands is infamous for the Sakkaku spirits within it. In the full moon, the tricksters become so energetic that the trees themselves glow with the force of their presence. Fortunately, the spirits largely keep to themselves and can even be benevolent, if treated well. The Needle’s Eye was the childhood playground of Hantei XXIII, who was known to sneak out of the Imperial Palace to play with an ethereal silver fox. When he became Emperor, he declared the Needle’s Eye to be sacred, forbidden to be touched by loggers and hunters, and it has remained so to this day. In the south lies Kitsune Forest, where the Fox Clan share a similarly friendly coexistence with the spirits of Chikushu-do and Sakkaku. Kitsune Forest was once part of the Ki-Rin clan’s land, when they rode out after the Day of Thunder. However, the remnant were too weak to fend off the Lion invasion that followed, and the Emperor himself intervened to declare them a Minor Clan, and thus under Imperial protection. The remnant, now the Fox Clan, were given the land around Kitsune Forest, taking on the name to reflect their new home. However, their luck didn’t really hold out. Hantei Genji had given them land he had no authority to give, for it was claimed by spirits. The Fox Clan had to adapt to the rules of the forest, and it was only with the aid of kitsune spirit-foxes that they survived at all. In return for the reverence of the Fox Clan, the forest spirits protect the clan now. Few forests are as beautiful as the Kitsune, which is full of dappled light, tiny flowers and flowing streams. The Fox Clan keep it clear of deadfalls and heals any sick trees, bringing forth a vibrant life among the plants and beasts. The plants form natural arches and patterns, and everything seems animated by a playful intellect. Travelers are watched at all times, but rarely feel threatened by it. The spirits can’t usually resist pranks, but their pranks tend to be mostly harmless, and if they are handled with good humor, the spirits tend to bestow gifts on their victims. (Which is mechanically reflected – if you’re in Kitsune Forest and weird poo poo happens, you can make a Theology check to figure out if it was a kitsune’s fault, and can spend Opportunity results to regain a Void by taking it in stride respectfully.) Villages near Kitsune Forest all know the story of the imikotoba, the forbidden words. Long ago, the spirits requested that humans avoid certain words. Death is referred to as “slumber,” illness as “rest,” tears as “salty drips,” blood as “pain sweat,” meat as “mushrooms,” and graves as “dirt piles.” Further, they forbid discussion of cutting, sawing, hacking or snapping, for it stressed the kodama. Kitsune Rumors posted:
Our NPC is Ha Iwa, Kitsune Spirit. He appears as an extremely androgynous human with a masculine voice, a long face, slanted brows, high cheeks and close-set eyes – a fox face, or kitsune gao. Occasionally his tail can also be noticed peeking out from under his green kimono. Iwa doesn’t usually try to pretend to be anything other than a kitsune, though – he enjoys shapeshifting and walking along tree branches without snapping them. When he speaks, he is formal in language but acts like a drunkard, breaking out into laughter at the slightest joke and encouraging flattery. He loves being the center of attention. If not indulged, he grows frustrated and his façade starts to crack, causing his form to take on more and more fox aspects. He becomes unnaturally loud in his rants about disrespect, and when he returns in full to his fox form, he punishes whoever has angered him. Adventure seed: The party is traveling through Kitsune Forest when a mysterious figure approaches. Anyone with any theological knowledge can tell the figure is a kitsune, but they aren’t even trying to hide it from anyone anyway. If asked for a name, they glance around obviously and offer up: Ha Iwa, literally ‘leaf rock’ and clearly taken from just the first poo poo the kitsune saw. Iwa insists the party play a game with him – hide and seek. He does not want to take no for an answer. If indulged, he changes into various forms to hide, though like any kitsune he cannot conceal his tail with shapeshifting. If the PCs play along and are respectful, he will reward them with gems – and while an offer of money may be insulting, turning him down is ill-advised. If the PCs refuse to play or otherwise anger Iwa, he will follow them wherever they go in the woods, pranking and tricking them incessantly – and some of his pranks may be quite dangerous to mortals. One of his favorite tricks is to impersonate members of the party and spread mistrust and animosity. Next time: Less friendly forests. Mors Rattus fucked around with this message at 20:33 on Mar 11, 2019 |
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2019 17:33
|
|
|
Parchment isn't made from trees.
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2019 17:49
|
|
|
Adeptus Evangelion It's a conspiracy So, what's this grand loving story you're going to tell, with its 'certain amount of sexual imagery' and all? What are these amazing secrets and twists the GM needs to keep from the players? The next chapter is going to be all about what the idiots writing this think are good writing prompts, cool alternate conspiracies, etc. If anything, everything here only makes me more angry at the sections before it, because loving hell, this is what they think is worthwhile plotting? So, obviously, we get SEELE. You know, I don't actually remember much about SEELE from the show. You know why I don't? Because they actually don't matter that much. Well, they do; they exist to drive the plot, and to further drive home that Gendo Ikari is a bastard and that Shinji's fervent desire for his father's approval is misplaced because the man should not be emulated nor admired in any way. SEELE is a mysterious council of mysterious conspirators who want mysterious things and who are clearly kind of a doomsday cult based on the idea of 'human instrumentality', a transcendent idea that eventually the individual and the AT Field will be done away with entirely and everyone will become a sea of tang that exists as a single grand gestalt consciousness. As far as I remember, no reason is ever given for this, but given the themes of isolation and loneliness in the original, a powerful group yearning for all people to become one even if that erases all currently understood human existence certainly makes sense. Here, the authors claim it's because SEELE thinks humanity has reached its 'evolutionary limit' and will stagnate and decline, so they have to transcend and loving hell. I don't think that was in the original, but if it was, I sure as hell don't remember it because I'm going to let you in on a secret: The Conspiracy's details aren't very important. They're an antagonistic force that drives the plot. We get a bunch on what each of the SEELE members might be, with one left generously open in case the GM wants to make up a conspirator. Next we get our Original Conspiracies, Do Not Steal. The first is the Eigenhart Initiative, who are completely generic transhumanists who broke off from SEELE over the whole 'tang' proposal. They were not excited about tang, they wanted to live forever with robot bodies and see future cars. They also 'believe mankind has reached the end of their evolutionary potential' because Transhumanism and Eugenics have History. Eigenhart relies on SEELE existing in a campaign, since they're explicitly a splinter off of SEELE, which means you'll have two conspiracies for your players to barely interact with. They want exactly the opposite of SEELE and want to instead strengthen rather than collapse the human AT Field, since they believe this will lead to ubermenschen who can each define their own existence as they see fit. A lot of terms get thrown out in their description because it used to be at the end of the main book, and was moved here before any of these terms are explained, so 'they want a handful of powerful Tabbris-like individuals' doesn't make any goddamn sense yet. I know what Tabbris is, sure, it's Kaworu (a human-like angel), but that ain't coming up for another hundred or two pages. Hell, I don't even think Adam or Lillith have come up at this point, either. Anywhere. Anyway, Eigenhart at least has a plausible campaign structure reason to exist, crazy as their plans are, too. They're there because there's a chance your players hack off SEELE, and given your players pilot giant robots that need a huge support structure to work, hey, look, alternate and competing conspiracy in case you need to run away and get someone else to maintain your robots. Which is a legitimate thing to have around, Eigenhart's actual goals are just so goddamn boring and generic, as is almost everything else about them. They're designed to provide a simple 'humanity gently caress yeah' technophilic group that players can end up defecting to, because the authors are definitely sympathetic to Eigenhart's overall goals. These two were the only two in V2. Eigenhart is generic but at least has a structural role it can fulfill (and a better writer could make something of their vision of the world being one of ultimate, separated, eternal loneliness). SEELE was always a plot element with some connection to some of the major central themes that mostly existed to drive action. We get two extra conspiracies in this book and they are both loving stupid. Charon is a group formed after a science experiment supposedly proved there was no afterlife and that souls just decay in the open after they die. Somehow, they have a plan to kill millions of people and then use those souls to construct an artificial afterlife, which will then suck in any other souls for as long as humans keep dying and give them a heaven. To do this they'll need a Pilot and their Eva, for reasons, who will also die and have their souls obliterated in the process. They will need to convert and court a willing PC pilot to do this. This is their entire thing. They exist to try to convince a PC to kill themselves and millions of people to make an afterlife because they got scared by some psuedoscience. This is dumb as all hell. Societas Eruditorium is even worse. They're...literally just generic techbros who think that a world ruled by 'the wisest' will be a technocratic paradise. They think the world is set up to discriminate against the best and smartest and that the small destroy the great while using the fruits of their labor because no! gently caress! Get out of here, Ayn Rand! This is not your home! They want to gain a stranglehold on Eva technology, build the creepy Mass Produced Evas, and use them to take over the world. That's it. They've got no plans for instrumentality, no plans for transhumanism, they're just a bunch of mad scientists who want to invent how they can cut the pilots out of the process and make unstoppable superweapons. They also control dozens of agents throughout NERV's disgruntled nerds, upset their genius is not being recognized and eager to make Nerd Paradise based around 'enlightened authoritarianism' and 'a golden age of REASON'. The GMing advice on them talks up how incredibly powerful and awesome this conspiracy is, and how you'll need to plan carefully, otherwise the nerds will be invincible because they are too smart for your players and have agents at every level and control all technology and loving hell this is dumb. Look, at least Eigenhart pretended to engage with the normal material at all. Idiot soul-wizards and The Techbros don't really have a place in a campaign. Not to mention there's no actual material put towards explaining how putting them in will shape a campaign. Do they replace SEELE? Are they side-villains? What is their actual purpose? What story do they tell? They're just assholes. We also get a bunch of suggestions for Alternate Second Impacts, but they're again just presented as twists without any consideration. 'Oh, it was actually an asteroid and woke the slumbering angels' or 'it was a plague' or 'there's a rift in spacetime at the pole' and again, none of these ask why that twist would be more interesting or what kind of story it enables. They're just twists for the sake of twists. Also, still no actual explanation of Adam and Lillith, so the suggestion of 'It was LILLITH at the pole!' doesn't really do much until the next section. Next Time: Pointless MacGuffins
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2019 17:51
|
|
|
Nessus posted:Are you looking at more like "Reconstruction was carried through successfully" or more like "a bitter residual Confederacy has dedicated itself to forever war and due to the mcguffin is able to avoid getting its poo poo stomped out by Grant"
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2019 17:51
|
|
|
Xiahou Dun posted:Parchment isn't made from trees. shhhhhh (you are correct - paper is, parchment is animal material. the book does not seems to know this.)
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2019 17:52
|
|
|
I... don't hate the Eigenhart Initiative. At the very least having your antagonist conspiracy be all "Can't get hurt if humans are fundamentally incapable of intimacy or vulnerability" works thematically in the hypothetical Monsterheart Eva game.
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2019 18:28
|
|
|
Tibalt posted:I... don't hate the Eigenhart Initiative. At the very least having your antagonist conspiracy be all "Can't get hurt if humans are fundamentally incapable of intimacy or vulnerability" works thematically in the hypothetical Monsterheart Eva game. If you take them and SEELE as two unhealthy end goals (total togetherness with no room for individual existence or self worth and total isolation to flee the fear of engagement) they work okay. What I meant when I said they're at least trying to work with the material if you squint.
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2019 18:37
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:I think some of this comes down to: some parts of the RPG experience shouldn't be boiled down to stats and mechanics. A while back, some friends and I were knocking around the idea of a Pacific Rim RPG, and one of the things we talked to death about was how to represent the Drift in tabletop terms - how well the two pilots are bonding and connecting, with each other and with the jaeger. What we ended up concluding was that not only could we not come up with a numbers-and-dice representation of that kind of stuff, to distill that down to just rolling the dice and numerical values was completely missing the point. Assign point values and effects to "Hey you're working together amazingly well!" and "Oh poo poo there's a problem!" sure, but the nuts and bolts of that should be personal role-playing between the players and their characters. DalaranJ posted:Honestly they should have just called the class Absolute Tactician as a nod to the fact that the T always had multiple definitions. AmiYumi posted:having a speaker that constantly played PRC propaganda**, another player rolling every “your Eva is just the worst” option on the tables (including the one where it’s made from two units that half-worked, duct-taped together) along with the randomly-rolled colors of the Mexican flag,
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2019 19:29
|
|
|
I can see the point of the soul wizards - AT fields are strongly implied to be souls, and the idea that 'actually souls are a physics event, and they can therefore end' also makes sense in the setting. However, their goal is just human instrumentality with extra steps. Gendo's whole deal is that he wants to be together with his wife in Instrumentality, which is a clear equivalent to Dante's higher heaven - all souls coming together in weird bio-god. Soul wizards are what happen if you approach human instrumentality (the total annihilation of personal boundaries, and therefore also individual death and fear) as a purely mechanical project of 'oh god I don't want to die.' A lot of transhumanist nerds are deeply unable to deal with existential nausea, and think 'find a way to exist forever as myself' is the most relatable possible motivation. This has something to do with depression, but not in a way that's aware of what instrumentality means in the original text. (Though, caveat, I have not seen EVA, I just have been friends with people who really like it and also really like it specifically as a story about depression and also kaiju, so I've learned a lot about it. When it comes out on Netflix, I'm planning to finally see it.)
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2019 19:36
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 25, 2024 10:48 |
|
|
Night10194 posted:What I mean is more that's an extension of what I talk about in the update; the game hides the poo poo it's planning. To the extent that a normal group might miss it. But that actually makes the 'use the game as a coercive' aspect even worse, because of the entrapment element. Yes, the game really does come across as specifically a trap to hook in players and then keep them at the table so the other players and GM have someone to use the sexual crap on. The text is aware that people won't want to play the game because of this. This makes that stuff about drip-feeding rewards and spotlight time come across as a crash course in setting up a cycle of abuse to prevent players from walking out. Ugh. gently caress the chans.
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2019 20:21
|
|
