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Thuryl posted:In fairness, there are some places where it cribs pretty directly from Eva, like that one monster of the week that attacks in exactly the same way as the 12th Angel. That's more a surface detail than a core thematic element, but it's the kind of thing that people notice. I will say sending someone into an illusion to communicate or gently caress with them isn't unique to either series or even mecha, but I'll cede the point because it no doubt played some influence just because of Evangelion cultural footprint. But in that, the angel is trying to communicate and understand Shinji, and humanity as a whole. In RahXephon, it was to distract him long enough to bring him back to Tokyo Jupiter and for his mother to try to convince him to go home/test how far Haruka's and humanity had influenced him. The revelations that Ayato gets are from his second soul, the outside world trying to contact him, or the Dolem trying and failing to placate him, then getting frustrated and cutting through his bullshit and admit he lusts after Haruka.
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Mar 12, 2019 10:53
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NutritiousSnack posted:I will say sending someone into an illusion to communicate or gently caress with them isn't unique to either series or even mecha, but I'll cede the point because it no doubt played some influence just because of Evangelion cultural footprint. But in that, the angel is trying to communicate and understand Shinji, and humanity as a whole. In RahXephon, it was to distract him long enough to bring him back to Tokyo Jupiter and for his mother to try to convince him to go home/test how far Haruka's and humanity had influenced him. The revelations that Ayato gets are from his second soul, the outside world trying to contact him, or the Dolem trying and failing to placate him, then getting frustrated and cutting through his bullshit and admit he lusts after Haruka. I mean, the whole "the ground turning black and everything sinking into it" visual effect was pretty distinctive. I can't really see that as anything other than a deliberate reference, even if the context is different. Thuryl fucked around with this message at 11:40 on Mar 12, 2019 |
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Mar 12, 2019 11:15
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Emerald Empire: Welcome To Hell Forest While places of mischievous but overall benevolent spirits are one kind of forest, others are infested by kansen, as Jigoku works to corrupt all things. In the dying of the light each evening, a time known as omagatoki, the spirit realms are unbound and free to roam, and these dark forests become horrors. Underneath the Tower of Kalet is the Dreamer’s Forest, a Tainted stronghold of the kansen. Every evening, the woods seek victims. The kansen wish to escape, and many maho-tsukai would love to get into the forest to bargain with them. The Unicorn maintain a barrier that goes both ways. Each night, the priests must walk the deep trench that has been dug around Dreamer’s Forest, chanting and waving their wands to purify the land. The path is dotted with komainu statues that sit in pairs, back to back. As the priests approach, these statues growl, then fall silent in recognition of allies. Weak spots are fortified by lesser talismans that must be replaced each time they are triggered. The Traitor’s Grove in Scorpion lands is no less dangerous – the imprisoned ghosts sealed into the trees will wreak great evil on anyone they can, languishing as they do in constant torment. And even the Phoenix clan struggle to manage the dangers of their woods. While most of the Isawa Forest is peaceful, in its depths lies Mori Kuroi, the Dark Forest. The kami are not corrupted, but they were long ago traumatized by some forgotten encounter with humans. They use illusions to drive travelers into danger or even directly attack them. All attempts by the Phoenix shugenja to calm the kami have failed, and they refuse to even voice what has made them so enraged. This is the worst that can happen when the woodlands are mistreated, and the Phoenix protect it as an example of what should never happen, for any forest could become like the Mori Kuroi. Shinomen Forest is larger than some entire clan territories, large enough that it covers multiple different ecosystems. It is ancient and unbreakable, with humanity never truly piercing its depths. It was there before the Five Ancient Races and it will outlast the Empire. Even the ancient towers built within it by some lost civilization are dwarfed by the trees, both in size and age. The air does not move and always carries the musty scent of decay. The trees grow far larger than their species should, and the forest’s mood can shift without warning. The Shinomen is not like the Mori Kuroi or the Dreamer’s Forest – it is not an evil place that aims to trap mortals. It just doesn’t care about humanity, and nor do most of the beings that live within it. It is also home to one of the stranger races of Rokugan – the nezumi ratfolk, who are not spirits of Chikushu-do, but are not animals, but are not one of the Five Ancient Races. They walk like men, have their own language and culture. Individual nezumi have short lives, but due to their patient Rememberers, their cultural memory stretches farther than humanity has existed. Shinomen Rumors posted:
In the eastern part of the forest, the ground is made of a porous black stone left from the volcanic birth of the Spine of the World. Hemlock is common, and the needles of the plants rot into a gross slime. Onibi, floating orbs of blue fire, drift across the ground in great numbers by twilight. In the west, it grows softer and is mostly broad-leafed trees. Maples are an ill omen, for their red leaves outside of fall are a symbol of blood. In the north, the forest is hilly, with many streams, and is dominated by evergreens. In the winter months, there is often snow. Frozen lakes by summer or thawed lakes in winter are caused by spirits. The southern forest is full of fruit trees of all kinds, baiting in travelers. However, it is said that any mortal that eats of the fruit of these trees is trapped by the spirits, unable to ever leave the Shinomen. Immense camphor trees sit amongst them, their branches wide enough to build houses on. On the eastern border lies the black Shadowland Marshes, a corrupted and festering blot of mud full of cypress and mangrove. This is the site where, centuries ago, a Shadowlands army was destroyed by mysterious, serpentine guardians they awoke, and the tainted souls of the monsters still writhe in the muck, corrupting all nearby. Rules Posted In A Shinomen Logging Hut posted:
Our NPC is Iht-Zyk, Nezumi Forager. She’s a small, clever nezumi who has carefully learned the lessons of the Tattered Ear tribe’s Rememberers. She is a skilled forager, but has grown ambitious after meeting humans. She ran into a Crab logging camp on the eastern border of the Shinomen, and they found her as interesting as she found them. While unable to speak each other’s language, they shared their food and she brought them wild nuts for several days. She found an elder among the Tattered Ear who could teach her human language, and while she studied it, she found love and became mother of several pups. Her loving nature extends to all creatures that lack the Taint of the Shadowlands, and she is immediately friendly to anyone she meets, caring more for their safety than her own. If she spots a wound, she will attempt to soothe the injured party by stroking their arm, treating them as one of her own pups. She may seem like a pushover, but she is an extremely skilled survivalist and guide. Adventure seed: The PCs are trying to get through the Shinomen Forest, but find their path blocked by a cypress tree. They look around and realize the land itself has changed on them – they have passed through the spirit world and into the Shadowlands Marshes. They hear a voice crying for help, and a nezumi scurries out, with two pups strapped to her back. She begs them for aid in broken Rokugani, seeking the PCs’ help in finding her third child. In return, she will lead them out of the woods. Without the aid of Iht-Zyk, the trip will surely be much more dangerous, and she can help them avoid dangers like the strangling fudoshi vines, the poison tsumunagi eels and the nukarumi, a filth-covered ghost found in the Shadowlands. Tracking the pup leads to a group of goblins surrounding a mud mound topped by a white-blossomed apple tree. An ethereal stag charges around the tree, and the pup has climbed into the branches. The PCs may join the stag in protecting the nezumi pup. If they fail, the pup will fall from the tree onto the stag’s back, and it will flee into the forest, because the authors aren’t going to subject you to the death of tiny baby rat person. If this happens, Iht-Zyk is grateful that a spirit is at least protecting her child, and will go back to hunt for the pup after leading the party out. If the goblins are defeated, the stag will stand aside and allow Iht-Zyk to reclaim her pup. She will not just lead the PCs out of the Shinomen, she will also speak of their heroism to the Tattered Ear, who will surely become loyal allies. There is also an in-character letter written from a patrol guard, Shinjo Kazue, at Shinomen Watchtower, about the bizarre snake ruins in the forest. They are unlike any architecture used by Rokugani, and must be immensely old due to the dirt and plant growth over them. They depict people with the features of snakes, and there is even a temple containing blasphemously serpentine depictions of Amaterasu. While the author has heard of a Snake Clan eradicated centuries ago for dishonor and blasphemy, they don’t believe the ruins were made by any human, and thinks they probably predate the Empire itself. Egg shells have been discovered recently – the broken remnants of something hatching. They resemble snake eggs, except they’re bigger than any snake known to exist. Next time: Ruins
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Mar 12, 2019 13:25
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OvermanXAN posted:The Mesoamerican idea is RahXephon, because of course the writers of AdEva are physically incapable of having an original idea. It's not about blood sacrifices but its imagery is heavily based on mesoamerican stuff. So not actually Mesoamerican at all, of course. Were I to ever do something like this, I'd center it around the actual themes of Mesoamerican - specifically Aztec - mythology. Whose key element, and the whole reason for the blood sacrifices, is that the gods battle and bleed and die in their eternal fight against evil, and if the gods falter or die, evil will go out and the sun will die. Just as the gods give of their blood, humans must give of their blood to keep the gods alive so they can continue the fight and give the human world their blessings and gifts. An actual Mesoamerican mythology themed story would be about sacrifice, an eternal war against an enemy that can never truly be vanquished. The defenders of humanity must always fight, and always bleed, and others must bleed for them.
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Mar 12, 2019 14:23
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Is the SPOOKY ANCIENT SNAKE CLAN actually elaborated on at some point? Because I have to admit I don't particularly remember them from reading L5R stuff, unless it's a reference to nagas, but I thought they were all amphibians hiding out in the oceans.
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Mar 12, 2019 15:18
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PurpleXVI posted:Is the SPOOKY ANCIENT SNAKE CLAN actually elaborated on at some point? Because I have to admit I don't particularly remember them from reading L5R stuff, unless it's a reference to nagas, but I thought they were all amphibians hiding out in the oceans. The Snake Clan were a Phoenix offshoot who got corrupted by a Shadowlands spirit. It was particularly ghastly in that it could possess you or something just by hearing it or somebody it had taken over talk. If I remember right the entire minor clan was wiped out in a single night.
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Mar 12, 2019 15:34
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The Snake Clan are that, yeah, but Kizue is correct - the ruins are not Snake Clan. They are naga. The naga are awakening in the Shinomen Forest, and it's their ruins that she found. The naga are amphibious, but they've always been associated with the Shinomen in L5R.
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Mar 12, 2019 15:46
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Adeptus Evangelion You gotta have blue hair. I was going to write them up but they aren't at all important or interesting. They're 'we hate the UN and are terrorists' 'we love Jesus and are terrorists' 'we love angels and are terrorists', and finally 'Wait you're making loving children fight cosmic horrors? You bastards! Find some adults to do it!' as the only interesting group. The Concerned Parents' Alliance is just a political action committee that protests the use of child soldiers. They want to find a way to stop the pilots having to fight, and they want an explanation of why the UN is making kids pilot the giant robots. You could get a decent subplot out of that since it's founded in actual concern for the characters' wellbeing and it's kind of a reasonable objection when the general public knows jack and poo poo about Evas except that they exist. Instead, we're getting into the 'Apocrypha'. This is a bunch of random rules, concepts, and lectures from the designers and as you might imagine it's a huge loving mess. Our first talk is on the subject of Angel Hybrids, or 'Playing Rei'. In the last edition, you could take Angel Hybrid as an asset, with it bringing with it total fear immunity (but an inability to Frenzy or anything like that, though your Eva could still berserk) and the inability to drop below 40 Synch at the cost of having a Dark Secret. The book says they removed it from this edition because putting it in the player material made players think it was up to THEM if they wanted to play as a weird Manufactured with alien DNA in them, when it's really all up to the grand GM's vision. Players shouldn't have say in the main plot and concepts of a campaign, they are not the kinds of grand authors who could pull off themes. Instead of the basic package, because they want to make sure an Angel Hybrid is super special, they give a bunch of different abilities and tells you can give them. Now, the Angel Hybrid isn't in the PC book, so the only way a player who isn't familiar with the show even knows it's a thing is if the GM tells them (assuming they don't read the GM book, which it insists they not do). It costs 15 Depth and gives you some weird advantages and disadvantages; you can adjust your Synch (up or down) by d10 a round, or you might have +20 Ego, you might have vague plot visions, or you might be harder to kill (does not apply to robot). The Synch Ratio one even reduces Ego damage by 1 per instance, so it's probably the best option. The Tells are stuff like 'immune to Psychology, including Fear', or 'All Int skills are Basic, -5 to Per or Fel', 'Int and Per equal Ego' (which is actually kind of interesting), 'You have Sadistic because you're a sociopath' (with all the normal issues that brings), etc. Now, here's the really bad part. You also begin with a GM-determined 'do you know you're an Angel Hybrid'. If you don't, you get no real benefits from being one until you know. If you know, you get your full abilities. If you know and someone else does, they're after you. If you're known to everyone, someone is after you and you get -5 Fel. Also, the GM chooses all of this. So the GM can pick out a player, tell them they can take Angel Hybrid on their Manufactured, and then tell them they have Sadistic and have to play it out. That, obviously, has the potential to go incredibly loving wrong and is another example of how badly this game handles GMing. This game is intentional in making the GM Power Trip a part of the game. You know, that lovely thing most TT players have run into at least once and really don't want to deal with. Combined with The Implication, this is not good. The next bit is the S2 Organ. An S2 Organ is something that apparently powers the Angels, and something Unit 1 developed after it ate one of the angels. In V2, getting S2 Organs let you ignore the power system but also introduced something where if your Eva goes berserk it doesn't go to sleep automatically and might wander off or try to go stargazing. It represented a point in your campaign where you were no longer really bound to your Base of Operations and could start intercepting angels elsewhere. That wasn't represented by the show (until the MPEvas, which had no need of umbilicals) but it did make for a fun moment to change up gameplay. The designers of 2.5 hated that idea and instead wrote it up that the S2 Organ is entirely a matter of GM Fiat, as is what it does, rather than something you attain by research or eating an angel. They have a big boldface 'Getting an S2 organ is a contract with the player that they will be more important when Third Impact happens and will have an important role in your ending!' which is definitely something to hand out by fiat alone in a group game, good plan AdEva. Also, the GM doesn't have to tell you what the organ will even do. Again, all this GM Vision!!! bullshit makes me mad. We also get some bad rules for prototype giant shotguns, chainsaws, and flamethrowers, all of which are bad on purpose to explain why they didn't enter full production. Good to know, AdEva, I'm happy to have some worthless prototype weapon stats as an explanation for why my PCs don't use them. Good use of page space. There's also rules for an Eva to carry a huge backpack with an anti-matter generator to refuel their buddies, and also for it to explode like an N2 mine if an angel targets it, so eh. They also introduce a new Trait that you get if you play one of the scenarios where you get mentally assaulted by an angel. Cold Blooded (X) (Where X is how well you played along with the GM's VISION!!!) gives you X free Ego/Insanity damage per session, blocking that many points before you start taking damage to either. That's a really useful trait. Don't you want to play along with your GM's Vision so you get those delicious in-game bonuses? A deep player would play along. They might even be able to write a theme. loving creepy bastards. There's also some really bad, awkward rules for fighting in space, which aren't even especially useful without the old S2 system. I had a big fight in orbit when I was running, but I never would have run such a thing without unlimited Eva power. There's a shitton of rules for the orbital fighting, but they're unlikely to come up and they're really annoying. Much like the rules for underwater fighting. It's almost like DH isn't a particularly flexible combat system that definitely wasn't made for trying to fight in vacuum or the Marianas Trench. Next we get to one of the dumbest things in the book. So, in V2, you learned Weapon profs and such like anyone else as a pilot, right? You spend all your time using your brain to fight like a soldier in a 40m tall deathbot, you pick up how to shoot a gun. The authors hated the 'action pilots' that developed from them being on par with a DH Acolyte on the ground, and so stripped the pilots of any weapon profs because as we know, a 14-16 year old could never learn to use a rifle, especially not as a child soldier. They then give an 'on foot' armory for enemies and the Ops Director (since pilots don't know how to use any of these weapons) full of significantly stronger-than-DH Autogun weapons. When I had on-foot trouble pop up when I was running back in the day, I just used basic d10+3 Autoguns because why wouldn't I? They want everything to be d10+6 at least. But that's not the dumb part; I understand not wanting the pilots to be able to be hardened killers on the ground. I can't imagine Shinji Ikari kicking someone's rear end (Nise Asuka, on the other hand...) so fair enough if that's how you want to play. The thing that bugs me is A: The Implication still exists and so I'm instantly suspicious of any attempt to make the pilots totally helpless and dependent on either the OD or other adults and B: Why provide all this material that the majority of players won't get to interact with at all unless it's trying to kill their PCs? The guns being so powerful also makes it very easy to die in any on-foot danger that pops up. The other thing that's dumb as poo poo? Their generic terrorist mook? 65 BS. And this is in DH1e, so full auto gives +20 and range is probably giving +10. UN Spec Ops are 75%. Those are scores even the mighty OD can't really reach. So even if the intent is to have the badass OD swoop in with their gun and protect the pilots, they'll get gunned down by the armored supersoldiers they're up against because in trying to wank about how much better a 'real' soldier is than the pilots, they made them better shots than loving fluff Space Marines. Hell, the 'lesser angel' kaiju-spawn thing is WS 85%! The enemies are all so turbo-charged that even the Mighty OD is just going to get pasted. I know Misato got her ticket punched by UN SpecOps in End of Eva, but c'mon guys! At those kinds of stats, it's hard for the PCs to even have a scenario where they're running away from the terrorists with guns or whatever. It's just nuts, and betrays more lack of understanding of the base system they're even working with. What is even the intent of these guys except to please the idiots in the game's community who always whined about how the kids were 'too good' of soldiers compared to 'real operators'? (There were definitely those types). Next we get a bunch of minor house-rules, like 'You roll an Eva per pilot then each pilot picks theirs from the pool', or 'Base of Operations gives a bonus' (I thought it already did? It definitely did in the player book), or '01 or 100 cause a huge critical success or failure', or 'no power restrictions so you can fight anywhere anyway'. The last one is one I want to call out: "Individual Players get bonus fate for roleplaying that pleases the GM." I am a great enemy of 'the mechanical Roleplaying Award' even in contexts where I don't suspect it's going to be used for manipulation or coercion. I find they usually end up being 'the most extroverted player gets rewards' even when they're written against that. I like rewards to be earned on a consistent basis and as a full group; even if you're going to hand them out subjectively it's better if 'meta awards' like Fate and EXP are per group rather than per player. But here? I really don't want this game having awards for pleasing the GM. And that's the Apocrypha. Next time, join me as we get into what they think are cool pre-made adventures. If you know me, I'm not very fond of pre-mades in the best of times, but I do see an important role for them: They're a great teaching tool for a new GM. They can do a lot to set expectations of play, show a GM what a 'standard' game is going to flow like, and help teach them what kinds of modifiers and rulings are 'standard' for a game. Done badly, a terrible Intro Adventure can really taint a game's first mechanical impression, like it did in WHFRP2e and Dark Heresy. Just guess how good the pre-made/sample scenario prompts will be for this game! Next Time: Just itching to kill men
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Mar 12, 2019 16:48
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On the subject of fixing AdEva, I like the idea of the Ops Director as a GMPC that the players invest in. Conventional forces seem like they should just be a fictional justification for the OD's support abilities. You could, for example, invest in conventional forces that are there to evacuate people who got caught outside and otherwise mitigate your collateral damage.Barudak posted:And again, Shinji is a fuckload tougher than people give him credit. I mean dude nearly suffocates to death while trapped in a parallel dimension and the only reward he has to look forward to is sleeping in a lovely apartment before somebody wakes him up and yells at him to get back in the robot and face some other horrific form of possible death while being constantly told any mistake he makes will doom all mankind and nobody tells him a god drat thing about whats going on. NutritiousSnack posted:Evangelion is about how Shinji and the other pilots/NERV members don't love themselves, because they're mentally broken people put in a self destructive environment with only a few bright spots, and about Shinji in particular learning to love himself and humanity, despite he and humanity in general being lovely and learning to deal with the fact that the only thing that could improve is him and how he deals with it.
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Mar 12, 2019 16:50
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Halloween Jack posted:NGE coincided with a years-long trend of geeks being frustrated with "emo" protagonists. Like if you are ever sad or upset about anything, you are "emo," especially if you're male. It was a really toxic cultural trend, as bad as any part of Gamergate now but in a more low-key way. Weakness is a deeply underrated part of character writing in genre fiction. Actual weakness, not random dysfunction. Actual vulnerability, emotional or otherwise. Not the exploitative 'oh she's so vulnerable and needs to be protected' sort, naturally. Male emotional vulnerability does not get covered nearly enough.
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Mar 12, 2019 16:56
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Its the lovely apartment Shinji has that always gets me in Eva. They have this child who is absurdly ridiculously valuable to them and they provide him the absolute minimum quality of life to function because they know hell do what they ask since literally all of humanity is at stake. The above is something that despite having 1200 subsytems AdEva doesnt capture at all because I dont think the designers understand what actual themes mean and how one designs narrative and sets to be part of them.
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Mar 12, 2019 17:27
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Barudak posted:Its the lovely apartment Shinji has that always gets me in Eva. They have this child who is absurdly ridiculously valuable to them and they provide him the absolute minimum quality of life to function because they know hell do what they ask since literally all of humanity is at stake. We saw what they think themes mean. The theme is puppets, so put an actual literal puppet in there, to show your theme of puppets. Also you better bet every single adventure idea has got its own lovely subsystem attached!
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Mar 12, 2019 17:33
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Night10194 posted:Also you better bet every single adventure idea has got its own lovely subsystem attached! Goddamit.
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Mar 12, 2019 17:36
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Barudak posted:Goddamit. Never, ever have I seen writers with such a lust for lovely half baked subsystems. They have surpassed their origin in FFG's 40kRP utterly and loving hell, Rogue Trader was basically made of lovely subsystems. I almost admire its purity, and then I remember I have to keep cutting these loving wastes of pages down and trying to convey them without wasting nearly as much time as the authors and I get angry at the 500+ pages of badly edited horseshit all over again.
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Mar 12, 2019 17:42
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Night10194 posted:Never, ever have I seen writers with such a lust for lovely half baked subsystems. 
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Mar 12, 2019 17:44
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Halloween Jack posted:You've never heard of Gary Gygax? I do not think even he was this bad. His prose was just worse.
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Mar 12, 2019 17:46
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Emerald Empire: What Came Before The memories of past inhabitants and the pain of decay suffuse ruins, giving each its own distinct atmosphere and personality. Stone ruins usually remain strong despite their disrepair, often left by abandoned castles or estates. They crumble but remain as landmarks and refuges, and a village may even be built around old walls, giving the ruins new purpose. Wooden ruins can be darker, for they decay and rot. Rotting shrines and temples typically go with tranquility and grace, though, as their priests would. Mighty, majestic trees often grow from them, and travelers can sense the serenity even once all manmade things are gone. The oldest ruins, of course, are packed earth or burial mounds, barely distinguishable from nature landscapes. They tend to be subtle, unknowable and ancient. Even a burial mound need not be evil, though – the dead may just sleep and dream, awakening only if disturbed or given offerings. Few of these mounds remain after Iuchiban’s defiling, though, between him and his Bloodspeakers raiding them for corpses. The spirits of some ruins, usually lost villages, want little more than a simple offering. Others have stronger demands, or worse ones – they may seek to force villagers to live there, to give up blood, or even to bury bodies in violation of Imperial law, that the spirits may have company. Forgotten ruins often become detached from Ningen-do, flowing into the spirit realms, with the more benign approaching Yume-do or Chikushu-do, the resentful ones approaching Sakkaku…but for most, the flow is towards Gaki-do, as the ruins yearn to belong to something. Their hunger sucks out the life and energy of mortals, demanding ever more attention. Token offerings will usually keep a benign ruin satisfied or even earn small boons, but any lapse can cause the spirits to misbehave all over again, usually in greater intensity than before. Continuous attention over time may settle a ruin into slumber, at least, and some architects have even managed to make new things on pacified ruins, integrating the old spirits into a new place. This is best done with caution, as the ruin spirits may well continue to cause trouble. A good architect will hire a priest or monk to offer a cleansing before getting to work, and a blessing when finished. Heimin tend to avoid ruins if they can, fearing them as a source of tragedy and monsters. However, they will frequently tell stories about any nearby ruins, which may be as much fiction as fact. The wise traveler can use these tales to find useful truth, if they are good at sorting out the false legends. Often, it is the unhappy stories that are most true. Vanished people, those that return from the wilderness changed, or those afflicted by an unexplained depression, mania or hallucinations are all good signs that a supernatural element is involved somewhere. This supernatural power is a reason that most clans value ruins, or at least respect them as dangers. If a ruin can remember the past, a priest might be able to plead with the spirits there for lost history and knowledge, or even rebuild the place as a shrine to gain valuable treasures or relics. Of course, magic isn’t the only reason to care. A ruin of the clan’s own history is a sign of despair and ash, as a good building is a sign of pride. The Crane think they are ugly eyesores, to be cleansed, purified and cleared away. The Lion look at their own ruins as symbols of failure. The Crab see them as an insult to their architectural skill. For the Dragon, they are places of power, to be tamed or forced to serve. Reclaiming a wild ruin and remaking it under a clan banner shows commitment to history and allows it to be made a whole place once again. Indeed, restoring ruins has in the past entirely reenergized clans that were on the point of falling into irrelevance. Further, ruins can be sources of literal treasure – documents, jewels, weapons. They might provide clues about a family inheritance or hidden heritage due to genealogical records, surviving descendants hidden in local villages or proof of a lost title on lands. The ruins’ secrets may also be revealed to foes that approach with proper offerings, if the ruins are not controlled. While a haunted ruin may only threaten local heimin, it takes stout will and mind to fight off or appease the spirits. If left alone, the haunting may spread, ruining the peace of a local woodland or village. Cultists may even end up drawn to the unchecked power. Samurai also seek out ruins in search of esoteric answers, for everyone knows that a ruin is tied to the spirit realm and can grant knowledge if you are careful. Even without spirits around, a ruin might grant wisdom – if nothing else, it’s a great place to meditate on the ephemeral nature of life. Wild animals often make their home in ruins, coexisting with local ghosts or spirits most of the time. (The exceptions are spirits of deep hunger, rage or pain, which may draw the ruin towards Toshigoku. Animals avoid these.) Spirits often influence the animals, using them as guardians or servants, which an attentive traveler might notice. A troll or other monsters might even take up life in a ruin, haunted or not, in order to be isolated from humans. In some such cases, the troll will rebuild part of the ruins as a labyrinth, to give them the advantage if anyone comes after them. Troll culture provides a pattern to these mazes, of circles within circles, based on the design of their ancient cities. Naga lairs and cities are also hidden from humans, and these cities have usually fallen to ruin. Naga ruins are usually carved directly into mountain or cliff stone, with many geometric patterns in their carvings, images of naga life and depictions of celestial bodies. There will never be stairs or ladders, so most humans tend to not be able to get to any but the base floor of the cities. Any naga that happen to not be in hibernation can easily avoid human intrusion by ascending or descending the specially carved spirals cut into columns or the stone protrusions on the walls. The Temple of the Burned Monk lies near the ronin village Nanashi Mura, on the Dragon border. Warriors with unresolved thoughts test their discipline there by meditating overnight in the ruined temple. A long time ago, a monk refused to surrender to bandits, so they burned him and the temple. The monk sat calmly and silently as the place turned to ash. The bandits rode off, leaving the local villagers alone, for their bloodlust had been sated. When the villagers emerged to clean things up, they found the monk alive, if covered in soot, and the place smelled of flowers, not smoke. However, the moment someone touched him, the monk turned to ash, according to local legend. The story spread, and a ronin decided to prove her bravery was equal to the monks, inadvertently beginning a Nanashi Mura tradition. When a ronin needs to show they have the discipline to serve and the control to obey orders, they meditate for one night in the temple grounds. Most encounter nothing, but find it calms their tempers. Some meet the ghost of the monk, rededicating themselves to Enlightenment. A few flee in fear and disgrace, never to be seen again. The original ronin emerged with new purpose. She shaved her head, renamed herself Hasu, and became a wandering monk that fought bandits and spirits in order to help the powerless and oppressed. From the exterior, the temple appears bare and empty. Only a few support beams remain, scorched black. The plot is surrounded by stones placed by local villagers, both to show respect and to ensure the temple’s spirit doesn’t disturb the village. Sometimes, they will leave a stool or mat in the plot, but most villagers haven’t the nerve to cross the boundary, thanks to the smell of burnt wood, the sounds of chanting or whispers of fear, darkness and fire. The Dragon Clan’s leaders aren’t sure how to feel about the place. One good bushi has disappeared after visiting, but another, after a night in the temple, inspired a band of ronin to swear themselves to the Dragon. Discussions about the ruins and the village of Nanashi Mura have offered ideas ranging from burning the village down entirely to officially bringing it into the clan’s holdings, and the leadership of the clan is deadlocked, so there are no current plans to raze, purify or rebuild the site at all. Our NPC is Kaiu Tsuneko, aka Shibito. Tsuneko always felt constrained by her family’s history. Her work didn’t fit tradition, so she decided to study not only Kaiu architecture but the ancient works of prehumen civilizations. Each discovery only fuels her desire to learn more and more about weirder and older ruins, and unsurprisingly she has entirely abandoned her family labors to go exploring. While she was once merely interested in construction techniques, her health and luck have gotten worse since encountering something near Morikage Toshi. She won’t discuss it for fear of supernatural retribution, and she has been disowned by the Kaiu, her name stricken from their records. Despite this, some of her family want her back, as long as her delusions can be cured. The local villagers call her Shibito, and she considers this and Kaiu Tsuneko to both be her names now. She believes the dead remember things she needs to know about old buildings, and she spends more time with them now than the living. She is emaciated and pale, her hair long and uncared for, and unless she’s found an offering at a grave or shrine recently, she’s usually forgotten to eat and drink. She has little concern for most people and can usually be found talking to herself, or possibly spirits. While she is extremely weird, she remains a scholar, and will happily talk to anyone that can teach her something about spirits, architecture, history or craftwork. Adventure seed: A lost Crane samurai, Kakita Sakura, has been spotted in Dragon lands. Once refined, she is now loud and foul-mouthed, prone to emotional displays, and refuses to go home. The Dragon want to know why, and her lord believes her possessed by a spirit, seeking her return for purification. The locals of Nanashi Mura will tell the PCs that Sakura spent a night in the Temple of the Burned Monk to prove her bravery. At the ruins, Shibito is hanging out and will only tell the PCs what she knows if they can stay overnight. The night is full of terrifying visions, but in the morning, Shibito says she witnessed Sakura’s purity and is certain she achieved Enlightenment. She then points the group to a Crane village named Musume Mura. In the village, the PCs find Sakura secretly training the locals to fight and tutoring the heimin in the tenets of the Perfect Land Sect. The PCs must decide how to deal with her. Should she die to avoid rebellion? Can she be returned to the Dragon or Crane? Is she in fact Enlightened? Next time: The Forgotten Village
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Mar 12, 2019 17:57
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I still don’t get why the “pilots don’t get weapon proficiencies” thing is supposed to make any sense. Eva units are supposed to control and feel like your own body, the training we see in the show is VR training with a rifle, why wouldn’t the pilots know how to use one? They aren’t action heroes because they’re still noodley teens who don’t want to kill humans, not because they’ve never touched a gun.
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Mar 12, 2019 17:58
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AmiYumi posted:I still don’t get why the “pilots don’t get weapon proficiencies” thing is supposed to make any sense. Eva units are supposed to control and feel like your own body, the training we see in the show is VR training with a rifle, why wouldn’t the pilots know how to use one? They aren’t action heroes because they’re still noodley teens who don’t want to kill humans, not because they’ve never touched a gun. It's because the idea of the pilots actually fighting back in a dangerous situation makes them less helpless and this game has a lot of weird power games designed to make players helpless before the GM and others. I used to hang out with some of the developers ages ago (9-10 years, I can't remember exactly), and there was also a vocal group within the community that hated the idea of the pilots being at all good at fighting or anything next to 'real' soldiers, too. The usual milwank types (and often the players who wanted to play the super special Adult Pilot who is totally a Tier 1 high speed low drag Operator who will show these angsty kids what a MAN can do). But mechanically, you have to make the pilots okay at fighting or the game's combat gameplay isn't going to work. So the 'solution' was to make the pilots completely helpless outside of the Eva by stripping their weapon profs (normally, the lack of profs is actually good as it removes an EXP drain from the weapons system that always plagued 40kRP) and giving 'real soldiers' impossibly huge stats. As you say, the better approach is just 'the pilots don't want to kill anyone, and will only fight back in the worst of emergencies'. But instead we got this, and supposedly the super awesome OD who will save them, except that the stats on the enemies are such that no, the OD will not. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 18:09 on Mar 12, 2019 |
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Mar 12, 2019 18:05
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Barudak posted:Its the lovely apartment Shinji has that always gets me in Eva. Are you talking about the one at NERV or the one he gets when he moves in with Misato, because if it's the former she lost it over that too. Halloween Jack posted:This doesn't come up as often, but there's an unmistakeable theme in NGE of society exploiting children and neglecting them as human beings. Shinji is a dropout, Asuka is an overachiever, and Rei is literally a product. Good point! Like a lot of Anno's stuff they was/is a pretty direct take on the faults of socitey and he really focused on that when he wasn't talking about depression or interacting with others NutritiousSnack fucked around with this message at 18:14 on Mar 12, 2019 |
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Mar 12, 2019 18:11
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Night10194 posted:It's because the idea of the pilots actually fighting back in a dangerous situation makes them less helpless and this game has a lot of weird power games designed to make players helpless before the GM and others. I used to hang out with some of the developers ages ago (9-10 years, I can't remember exactly), and there was also a vocal group within the community that hated the idea of the pilots being at all good at fighting or anything next to 'real' soldiers, too. The usual milwank types (and often the players who wanted to play the super special Adult Pilot who is totally a Tier 1 high speed low drag Operator who will show these angsty kids what a MAN can do). But mechanically, you have to make the pilots okay at fighting or the game's combat gameplay isn't going to work. So the 'solution' was to make the pilots completely helpless outside of the Eva by stripping their weapon profs (normally, the lack of profs is actually good as it removes an EXP drain from the weapons system that always plagued 40kRP) and giving 'real soldiers' impossibly huge stats. because if there is anyone in EVA who can totally hold their own in a firefight it is *checks notes* Misato
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Mar 12, 2019 18:15
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Hey she beat those soldiers with assault rifles and Kevlar in End of Evangelion.... Wait.
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Mar 12, 2019 18:19
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Barudak posted:And again, Shinji is a fuckload tougher than people give him credit. I mean dude nearly suffocates to death while trapped in a parallel dimension and the only reward he has to look forward to is sleeping in a lovely apartment before somebody wakes him up and yells at him to get back in the robot and face some other horrific form of possible death while being constantly told any mistake he makes will doom all mankind and nobody tells him a god drat thing about whats going on. It's why the "Shinji get in the drat robot" meme is so strange. He does get in the robot. Sure, he initially refuses but then less than 1 minute later says he'll do it because there's an injured girl that is going to be forced to do it instead. He even knows she got injured while piloting the drat robot and he still does it.
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Mar 12, 2019 18:19
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Shinji is quite rational about being nervous to fight in a biological/mechanical abomination to fight something that just by its existence shits on much of what we understand about the world.
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Mar 12, 2019 18:27
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Adeptus Evangelion The thrilling action thrills So the 3 Action scenarios are really 'fighting something other than an angel'. One is 'have a dumb fighting robot tournament with other branches of NERV'. One is 'The children, who are not normally used for this, must now kill hundreds of men with a detailed 'make conventional forces have any kind of chance against the AT field' subsystem' (I know Asuka does so in End of Eva but everything about the fluff in this game has been just champing at the bit to turn the Evas loose on normal people as it is), and 'play as a bunch of NERV agents doing infantry work in the aftermath of or during the last angel fight'. Curiously, the PC team all have normal DH level stats, so it's undermined by the horrible mechanical imbalance between the NERV agents and that 65% BS super-terrorist hyperwarrior up above. Operation Thunderdome is the stupidest of these, wherein the NERV branches have set to arguing about whose robot can beat up whose robot like the various commanders were also spoiled children playing with action figures. It should happen during 'an unusually long period with no angelic attack'. At the very least it all takes place in a simulator, so there are no actual stakes but also no-one is blowing up dozens of buildings just to show off. They have three whole events for your 'tournament arc', because of course, each with their own rules of engagement and prizes for winning. First you have a basic fight with one another's squads. Then you have one on one rounds. Then a free-for-all. The winner of the basic fight gets a 'Good Quality' weapon trait from DH (despite your weapon upgrades being a pool of gear you can select for each battle rather than owned weapons; this reward actually doesn't work with the current system). The winner of the one on one elimination rounds gets a free Upgrade Point. Same for the Last Man Standing. There's some fluff about how organizing the prizes starves millions of people because they cost so much. This entire thing is dumb as poo poo. Obviously, this exists so that your players can trying their 'builds' against each other and against other Evas. The problem is this system is not designed for 'PVP'. For one, a Pointman or ATT is a support class, so they're probably going to get their poo poo kicked in by Skirmishers and Berserkers. Fighting other Evas just means you're going to have the same AT Field issues as you do when you fight angels; guns are still going to require you to get close, melee is still going to rule, etc, only now since you're in smaller one-on-one fights and all Nise Asuka is either going to clean the gently caress up if you have Positron Guns or she's going to get slaughtered if you don't. Evas are also (generally) quite fragile compared to an angel, and need to have weapons that output the damage to kill a hardened angel. As you might imagine, that means Eva scale firepower will blow away Evas. It's just going to be games of rocket tag with abilities and units not actually designed to fight one another. The book even admits actually playing all 3 events will be a slog that you won't want to do, and so suggests only actually playing out one or two. If you think the scenario you've written is so long and dull that it shouldn't be played out entirely, maybe you wrote a loving boring scenario. The next scenario is 'Storm the Front', wherein human forces attack your base with the intention of shutting NERV down for good. Maybe the UN finally figured out you're run by an insane doomsday cult that's trying to turn everyone to tang. Maybe terrorists somehow have an entire army. Maybe some unaligned state thinks it can steal your giant robots or someshit. There's a ton of wank over how professional and powerful a human army can be over the 'stupid' angels, and how it will be a new type of threat the pilots will have to meet very differently. If you guessed that means all this operates entirely on a different combat subsystem, YOU GOT IT. Is it overcomplex? You know it! Does it suck? Hell yeah! Would it be totally miserable to play and does it only exist to wank off about how your walking tank kills hundreds of guys? You better loving believe it! You get all kinds of rules for specialist units of elite or conscript infantry, all kinds of irrelevant abilities for them, and all kinds of fluff about how Commandos are the tierest onest of all operators to ever operate operationally! The only real thing the infantry try to do is get past your Evas and get into your base so they can start trying to take it over. Once they're in, you have a time-limit to finish up outside and then kool-aid man through the Geofront and start killing COD protagonists. This is even measured in time; once they're in, you've got 2 hours if they're conscripts, 1 hour if they're elite, etc and you can 'kill one unit per Eva per 5 minutes' once you bust down the wall. They get abilities like trying to sever your power cables, but nothing really solves one of the fundamental issues facing this scenario: There are no conventional units that mechanically threaten an Eva with a spread AT field. There are all kinds of special rules for the infantry to try to act against your Evas, but, uh, it's infantry trying to fight something the size of a building with a magical soul shield. And their heavy backup and tank support explicitly can't hurt you because it's all using the normal Conventional Forces rules. The only scenario (you better loving believe you roll for wargaming scenario) that actually poses a threat to the Evas is one where the enemy deploys Evas. The Jet Alone (nuclear conventional mech) or T-RIDEN-T (METAL GEAR) can show up at these fights, too, but they don't really have the Breach necessary to threaten you outside of the Jet Alone Prime and its magical radhammer. Also the enemy can have an N2 mine, and ugh it's just an ill-thought-out mess as an excuse to have the pilots shoot hundreds of people. There is, of course, no thought given to how murdering shitloads of people in a genuine military assault (or even having to kill other Eva pilots) might affect the teenager pilots psychologically or as characters. This is solely here for ACTION! If you win you get a ton of surplus. If you lose you die. Surplus isn't actually very useful anymore now that it isn't used for Research. So good job, hope you had fun with the boring military wank episode. This scenario loving sucks and doesn't even have enough mechanical support to run itself. The final Action Scenario used to be recommended in the core book as something to do back in V2. The NERV Tactical Unit goes out to run around in the middle of the latest kaiju battle to rescue downed pilots, save trapped civilians, etc. in order to get the players a refund on Collateral Damage and make their victory better if they succeed. Alternately, you play as these same adult soldiers having another important adventure for NERV as they try to clean out spies, stop terrorists from threatening the pilots, or otherwise have military adventures. To be honest, this isn't a bad idea for an occasional 'break' scenario during a campaign. The stakes are there; you're trying to save people or do important work. But you don't lose the campaign if they all die, because they're by nature a side party. Running through a crazy kaiju battle and dodging the Evas and the angel both to rescue people actually does kind of sound like fun every now and then. The problem is the Squad isn't very good. They're about mid-tier DH characters, and won't be able to compete with UN Special Forces or The Terrorist Hyperman. Also, all the scenarios for it are incredibly wishy-washy, to the point that the GM will be writing any adventures that occur here entirely themselves. There are suggested rewards, but nothing about what parameters count for achieving them. Enemy stats given are out of whack with the players' relatively weak PCs. This whole idea feels like it was balanced for the old V2 'on foot' stats, where enemies were much weaker before they decided they had to be Invulnerable To Pilots. As a result, while a promising side-story idea, the actual mechanical support just isn't there for this concept to work. Still, it's both the least stupid and the least terrible of these three stupid and terrible scenarios, so I guess that counts for something. Next time, though, we get to see what these idiots think makes for comedy Next Time: Behold, the kickmen
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Mar 12, 2019 19:10
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Mors Rattus posted:because if there is anyone in EVA who can totally hold their own in a firefight it is Makoto and Aoba of the bridge crew manage to hold off waves of JSSDF soldiers with a couple Russian submachineguns, grenades, and elevated position. NutritiousSnack posted:Hey she beat those soldiers with assault rifles and Kevlar in End of Evangelion.... Well, she was only in trouble when they brought out rocket launchers.
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Mar 12, 2019 19:29
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Nobody show the creators of AdEva Darling in the Franxx.
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Mar 12, 2019 19:47
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wdarkk posted:Nobody show the creators of AdEva Darling in the Franxx. Let's not even start that discussion.
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Mar 12, 2019 19:55
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If AdEva was done today I'm sure that would've been a massive influencer. But thankfully the game was made a couple of years before the series was made as I remember it.
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Mar 12, 2019 19:57
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wdarkk posted:Nobody show the creators of AdEva Darling in the Franxx.
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Mar 12, 2019 20:08
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NutritiousSnack posted:Good point! Like a lot of Anno's stuff they was/is a pretty direct take on the faults of socitey and he really focused on that when he wasn't talking about depression or interacting with others
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Mar 12, 2019 20:10
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Not to give AdEva credit for anything, but a game where all the PCs are Concerned Parents where they go around knocking on various battleships, super robot laboratories and NERV headquarters to give proper information on the physical, emotional and mental wellbeing and healthcare of the kids that go out and ride in robots is a pretty funny idea.
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Mar 12, 2019 20:10
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Adeptus Evangelion Behold, the Kickmen So, the last set of terrible ideas were all about ACTION SCENARIOS for HARDCORE BATTLE. Now we get something even worse: The creators' idea of comedy scenarios. Also each with a subsystem. Holy hell, you can write an adventure using the 300 pages of rules you already have, they don't all need subsystems! Sometimes I think these scenarios are less about inventing scenarios and more about inventing an excuse to write subsystems so they can get their name in the book's credits or something. But Jesus, the core book is already long and full of rules! How can they possibly need entirely new little subsystems for every goddamn adventure idea? Anyway, the comedy scenarios are predicated on the idea that there was a lot of silly poo poo in Eva, and there certainly was. Pen-Pen sits, lurking, unobserved, being a penguin. They claim that having some silly stuff happen will 'make it more cruel when you burn everything the players lover to cinders, and you want to be cruel, right'? If you're being cruel, you'll run these scenarios!  Comic relief is an important part of a grim or serious story. You need to have moments of levity or everything gets miserable. People make terrible jokes in awful situations. So there could be some value in writing some comic scenarios for your giant robot fighting teenagers and their issues. The problem is, you want to keep a consistent tone. You don't want to completely break the tone of your story, or derail the actual characters. You can have an AdEva adventure where the pilots have a day off, don't have to deal with anything horrifying, and go do something fun and get up to some light comic antics to show off their relationships and foibles. It would still tell you something about the characters, you can fit it into the world, and it would be a fun break. Or to give credit to the V2 version, you could take some of the old adventure seeds like "The pilots must navigate a high class state dinner because a Head of State wants to meet the people saving humanity; funding depends on the actions of a bunch of bored teenagers in badly fitting suits." That's a good comic scenario seed.Instead, the ideas presented here are just stupid. And not funny. Our first idea is that to test the robots, they want to have a dance off. In the robots. That's the entire scenario. I can't write that much about it. It's just a giant robot dance off, with a (you knew this was coming) complex subsystem for deciding how many risks you're going to take on Fellowship and Agility in order to dance better. You will naturally be mechanically punished if you don't have a three to six paragraph ridiculous description of your robot dance. There is encouragement for the players to actually physically perform their robot's dance for the webcam or in person at the table. Players who out-dance the others will receive small permanent boosts to Fellowship and Agility, while their NERV branch gets rewarded with slightly more funding. That's the entire adventure. It's all 'oh isn't it funny they're doing a dance, but in a robot'. Look, I know, Shinji and Asuka trained on DDR to dance-fight a splitting angel so they could drop kick both halves of its existence at precisely the same moment. They did that and it was cool. In many ways, Dance Like You Want To Win is the archetype for the fighting system in AdEva, where the pilots perform in synch and with aid from their conventional turrets and things to win a straight fight with the monster they're up against that week. This does not mean making the robots dance is an instant winner of a mission. This is just basic monkey-cheese 'oh man, they're robots and they're dancing'. The next isn't any better, because it's Robot Soccer (Football, but I'm an American so even though I like Football I'm going to be American about this). Yep, you get out there and try to Do Goals in your Evas. That's the adventure. You're sponsered by Fifa. Asuka has a vuvuzela, dating this scenario. 'The game lasts 90 minutes but for sanity's sake don't play every minute in gameplay' and jesus loving christ, there's an entire lovely mechasoccer subsystem. You collect Dominance Points and use them to power the Big Kicks (they are not called Big Kicks, but they should be) as you run around chasing a ball in a giant robot. If you do well you get some bonus funding from Fifa. That's it. That's the scenario. It's just "Giant Robot Soccer" out of nowhere. I could go into a lot of detail. I could tell you all the rules and modifiers for your Big Kicks as you try to Do Goals as the grand robot kickmen, but does anyone care? I submit to you, none of us care. No-one is going to play this. I'd wager almost no-one played it when it was first written. Up to 15 rounds of 'intense soccer action' in which you just play out dumb actions and the poor goalkeepers sit and wait to roll a parry check. They even say you should let your goalkeeper's player play with their DS at the table or something because nothing happens for the goalkeepers, it's all about the kickmen. This is just stupid as all hell, and again, it's not even funny. The joke is just 'robot soccer'. There's no actual comedy. Finally, your PCs get commissioned to endorse something. Someone wants the saviors of humanity showing off their product and NERV has funding issues. Your players will then perform a live 30 second take for the ad. Remember, a lot of this game was played entirely on IRC back in the day. Where that couldn't really be done anyway. "PCs are horrible little monsters, and this is doubly true for Adeptus Evangelion, where being an insufferable twat is part of the rules." is an unintentionally revealing statement made with the intent of playing it off as a joke; that really is about how they see their game. The judging rules talk about how 'if anyone is naked, something has gone horribly wrong' and 'judge the PCs performance based on how much it decreases your faith in humanity' and jesus this is forced. The results range from a tiny amount of surplus to making the company involved go bankrupt, giving you Dark Secret (Was In The Ad), and making your branch owe money. There is no mechanic for owing money. You also lose Ego Barrier for being terrible. Everything about this scenario is dumb. And again, not funny. So, that's three incredibly unfunny scenarios that don't fit into the tone or setting of almost any long-running game ranging from Giant Robot X-COM to Just Eva. That was a complete waste of everyone's time. And again, all of them had their own subsystem. That is going to continue. This is seriously one of the most painful parts of the book for me to handle, because holy poo poo is the entire Scenario section awful. Next Time: Oh, the drama of the subsystems.
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Mar 12, 2019 20:42
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Merilan posted:Not to give AdEva credit for anything, but a game where all the PCs are Concerned Parents where they go around knocking on various battleships, super robot laboratories and NERV headquarters to give proper information on the physical, emotional and mental wellbeing and healthcare of the kids that go out and ride in robots is a pretty funny idea. They're meant to be a minor comic relief terrorist organization or political opponent, but yes, playing Concerned Parents trying to help Super Robot Pilots would be great. And significantly funnier than any of their terrible ideas for comedy!
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Mar 12, 2019 20:43
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Classes: Nonna, Bubbe, Papaw, Coach,
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Mar 12, 2019 21:26
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Giant Robot Football would be a pretty cool game in and of itself. Now I think about it, a post-giant-robot-war game where the players have to find things to do with decommissioned horror-mechs could be all kinds of fun, and both light-hearted and surprisingly dark in tone if you assume everyone is a war veteran trying to readjust to civilian life, with one ear cocked for the sirens.
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Mar 12, 2019 21:28
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Night10194 posted:I don't think this ever came up explicitly in the show, the idea that Adam and Lillith are terraforming devices. Anyway, this is a dumb add-on plot point for a super item that is designed to help mankind eventually 'ascend' and become a proper powerful creation of the 'First Ancestral Race', and it actually explains the entire plot in exposition if someone can get at it. This is a stupid loving thing to put in an Eva game and I don't know why it's here besides the fact that the game's authors are hacks. That is from Anno-approved lore that was loredripped through computer terminals in one of the tie-in videogames. Naturally, in a fandom that's as starved for explanation as NGE, the high king nerdlords have taken it as gospel.
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Mar 12, 2019 22:03
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inklesspen posted:That is from Anno-approved lore that was loredripped through computer terminals in one of the tie-in videogames. Naturally, in a fandom that's as starved for explanation as NGE, the high king nerdlords have taken it as gospel. The whole Guidestone thing is, though? It seemed really unusually, uh, blunt. Being an alien laptop with Plot.docx on it and all.
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Mar 12, 2019 22:11
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This isn't a game, this is a concerted effort to take a viable group of good ideas and methodically destroy any chance of enjoyment or meaningful engaging play. Do we have an equivalent to the Hague International Court for war crimes? I'll testify!
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Mar 12, 2019 22:12
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By popular demand posted:This isn't a game, this is a concerted effort to take a viable group of good ideas and methodically destroy any chance of enjoyment or meaningful engaging play. Guess what ONE OF THE NEXT SUBSYSTEMS IS
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Mar 12, 2019 22:17
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