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jakodee posted:The Burning Wheel did some pretty cool stuff with players being able to influence each other with it’s “Duel of Wits” subsystem. Basically each of two players (one of which can be the GM playing an NPC) decide what concessions they want from the other party and engage in a mini game influenced by their skills and stats that results in either a total concession from one party or, more often, a compromise from one or both parties. The system, if I remember correctly, cannot force your character to believe anything, only to honestly promise to do try to do it to the best of your ability. My concern with Burning Wheel's Duel of Wits (and all of its subsystems, really) is the huge number of skills available. A successful master debater seems like they'd need a ton of skills for different situations, and figuring out which ones to take would be a task in and of itself. There's also the standard issue of all of these skill points coming out of the same overall pool- if you're a master debater you're probably going to be useless when a fight breaks out, and if you're a paragon swordsman you're not going to do much during a duel of wits other than shout encouragement from the background.
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Mar 27, 2019 15:20
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Just Dan Again posted:My concern with Burning Wheel's Duel of Wits (and all of its subsystems, really) is the huge number of skills available. A successful master debater seems like they'd need a ton of skills for different situations, and figuring out which ones to take would be a task in and of itself. There's also the standard issue of all of these skill points coming out of the same overall pool- if you're a master debater you're probably going to be useless when a fight breaks out, and if you're a paragon swordsman you're not going to do much during a duel of wits other than shout encouragement from the background. IIRC there’s really only a few skills you need for Duel of Wits, everything else is just for FoRKing in as a bonus e: also the way skill advancement works, getting completely stomped is how you get better at a thing. Torchbearer works similarly & my group will occasionally throw a test to someone who doesn’t even have the skill so that they’ll eventually be good at it Berkshire Hunts fucked around with this message at 15:41 on Mar 27, 2019 |
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Mar 27, 2019 15:38
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Exalted 3rd Edition: The Power of Cookie Clicker So, how do you actual do medicine to help people? For wounds, without magic, there’s not a lot doctors can do. You can make a Medicine roll to stop bleeding, but that’s about it. Mundane medicine just can’t make healing go better. Disease, however, can be a thing. It’s not fast – you need one hour per day of the disease’s Interval, and may require access to various treatments, which would increase Difficulty if you didn’t have them. At the end of each treatment, you roll Medicine, and the sick person can use your roll in place of their resistance roll if they roll worse than you did. Doctors can also treat poison with remedies and antivenoms, which takes access to those and around an hour. Once that’s done, they roll Medicine with a difficulty based on the poison’s severity, and each threshold success reduces the poison’s duration by one interval. Only the best poison treatment does anything, though, if you get multiple. You can do this as a combat speed action, but at +2 difficulty. However, all of this assumes the doctor knows the cause of the problem. Sometimes it’s obvious, but when it isn’t, treating without diagnosing first increases Difficulty. Diagnosis is a Medicine roll, either Perception or Intelligence, and takes a few minutes. Rushed into combat time, it can be done at increased difficulty. Lore does…a thing. One thing. One thing. It allows you to Introduce Facts. If a character has Lore 3+ and a relevant specialty or backstory, once per scene they can attempt to do so. The player says what fact they want to introduce, and if the ST doesn’t veto it, they then roll Lore at a Difficulty set by the ST. If they succeed, the fact is true and their character knows or discovers it. Once a fact is introduced, it cannot be contradicted. It is true. Period. This is different than rolling to know a thing – in those cases, the ST tells you the answer. For Introducing Facts, the player says the answer and then rolls to make it true. Further, any character with Lore 3+ or Lore 1+ and a relevant specialty may declare that they think something the ST introduces is suspect and reflexively roll Lore to see if they can tell. Success means they notice the thing is false, but not why. If they roll with enough successes to have Introduced a Fact, they not only know the thing is false, but also why it is false. However, in all cases, the ST decides what the PC is able to learn this way, and may tell you that, in fact, the thing you are doubting isn’t actually false. I don’t actually like the Introduce Facts roll because it is explicitly siloed behind Lore, so your master martial artist can’t Introduce Facts about martial arts without having Lore 3 and a relevant specialty. I really think it should just be a general thing you can do, with Lore being able to do it for any field. And now we find the elephant in the room: Crafting. Crafting is a very complex minigame. Every type of crafting is a project, and there are four types: Basic Projects: Making simple mundane goods. These are cheap and easy to make. Cook a meal, shoe a horse, forge a hammer. Major Projects: Significant efforts of your trade. Make a quality sword, cook a banquet, sculpt a statue. Superior Projects: Either a large-scale construction such as a warship or palace, or making a mystical artifact such as a daiklaive or magic suit of armor. Legendary Projects: Mighty magical artifacts on the scale of the First Age, difficult even for Twilights. To perform crafting projects, you need to keep track of your Project Slots and your Crafting Experience. Which is called Experience despite functioning in no way like Experience Points do in any other part of the system. You can only maintain a certain number of projects at any given time, as determined by how many project slots you have, but finishing projects generates Crafting Experience which is used to fuel other projects. There are several kinds of Crafting Experience: Silver Experience Points, or sxp, which are earned by finishing Basic Projects and are used to fuel Major Projects. Gold Experience Points, or gxp, which are earned by finishing Major Projects and are used to fuel Superior Projects. White Experience Points, or wxp, which are earned by finishing Superior Projects and are used to fuel Legendary Projects. My understanding is that the only reason these are all xp is that White Points would be WP, which is always used for Willpower. When you finish a crafting project, you check to see if you have triggered any of three Basic Objectives. For each one you met, you gain Crafting Experience, with amounts determined by the type of project. The Objectives are: 1. Finishing the project causes another character to gain or strengthen an Intimacy towards you. 2. Finishing the project produces a clear gain for you, such as payment or the earning of a new ally. 3. Finishing the project upholds, furthers or protects one of your Intimacies. Further, at the end of any arc, you gain 3 SXP for every Craft you have at 3+ which was used to complete a project during the arc, 5 SXP for each Craft you have at 5+ which was used to complete a project during the arc, and 5 GXP per Artifact created successfully during the arc. You also have 3 types of project slots: Major Slots, which can hold a Major Project. Superior Slots, which can hold a Superior Project. Legendary Slots, which can hold a Legendary Project. A project occupies its slot until it is either completed or failed. Normally, you have only 3 Major Slots. You may, however, spend Crafting Experience to temporarily obtain other or greater slots. Basic Projects do not require any slots. They just take an appropriate amount of time and then you make a Craft roll. They are free to perform at any time. Successful completion gives 2 SXP per objective triggered, or 3 SXP per objective if your roll was at least 3 successes more than you needed. A Basic Project usually takes only a few minutes, or a few hours tops. You just need an appropriate Craft skill and materials. Major Projects require you to have the materials and Craft skill as before, but because the resources involved will be more significant, they also require a Major Slot. If all of your Major Slots are full, you may spend 5 SXP to gain a new Major Slot, which vanishes once the project in it ends. Typically, a Major Project takes between several hours and several days to complete, or even several weeks. To finish one, you must spend 10 SXP and then make a Craft roll. If you fail, it will cost another 10 SXP to try again after a small amount of time to bring things back on track. Successful completion gives 2GXP and 1SXP per objective, or 3GXP and 1SXP per objective if your roll was at least 3 successes more than you needed. Superior Projects only actually have rules for Artifact creation, despite the note that they might also represent largescale projects like architecture. The only note on those is that they should be treated as 2 or 3 dot Artifacts at ST discretion. To make an Artifact, you must have Lore 3+, Occult 3+, a relevant Craft at 4+ and also Craft (Artifacts) at 1+. You must also have quality tools and plenty of magical materials and, usually, exotic ingredients. Also, you need a Superior Slot. No one has those by default, but you can purchase one by fusing together Major Slots equal to the rating of the Artifact you want to make and spending an equal amount of GXP. (So if you want an Artifact 5, you have to buy two temporary Major Slots, then fuse them all together into one Superior Slot, for a total of 10 SXP and 5 GXP.) Once the project is over, all slots revert back to normal. Depending on the number of Artifact dots, there are minimum time requirements. It takes at least 6 weeks to make an Artifact 2, 3 months for Artifact 3, a year for Artifact 4, and 2 years for Artifact 5, all assuming you are working several hours every day on the project. Once you are ready to finish, you must spend 10 GXP and roll the lower of your highest relevant Craft or Craft (Artifacts) as an extended roll. You have six Difficulty 5 rolls in which to gather the requisite amount of successes – ranging from 30 for an Artifact 2 to 100 for Artifact 5. You roll once per 10 GXP spent, with no set interval. If any roll botches, the project is ruined. Failure to complete the artifact within 6 rolls also means the project is ruined. Either way, gotta start over from scratch. If the intended artifact is one-of-a-kind, as almost all of them are (including all artifact weapons), you can never attempt that specific Artifact again, though you could try to make a different sword. Successful completion, as long as you accomplish at least one Basic Objective, gives WXP based on the Artifact’s value, ranging from 3 for Artifact 2 to 9 for Artifact 5. Further, for every roll you didn’t need to make, you gain double the Artifact’s rating in GXP – so if you finished an Artifact 3 in 3 rolls instead of all 6, you get 5 WXP (for Artifact 3) and 18 GXP (for 3 unused rolls). No bonus for multiple objectives. Legendary Projects are those that create N/A-scale Artifacts. On top of all the normal requirements of a Superior Project, you must have Lore 5, Occult 5, Craft (Artifacts) 5, a relevant Craft at 5, and a shitload of magical materials and mystic scholar assistants. To begin, you must spend 5 WXP to create a Legendary Slot, but it doesn’t have to fuse any lesser slots. It just goes away when you finish, success or failure. It works exactly per a Superior Project, except that it takes 10 years of labor, each roll costs 10 WXP to make, and you need 200 total successes. Successful completion, as long as you accomplish at least one Basic Objective, gives 10 WXP, and you roll a free, costless Craft Excellency at your full possible value; for each success, you gain 1 GXP, and for each die that doesn’t succeed, you get 1 SXP. No bonus for multiple objectives. You will note the sheer numbers involved; without the use of Charms, Superior and Legendary Projects are essentially impossible. This is very much deliberate, and DBs are not meant to be able to achieve Legendary Projects even with Charms. (Lunars will also have a lot of trouble with it.) Next time: More cookie clicker, and also boats.
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Mar 27, 2019 16:08
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Just Dan Again posted:My concern with Burning Wheel's Duel of Wits (and all of its subsystems, really) is the huge number of skills available. A successful master debater seems like they'd need a ton of skills for different situations, and figuring out which ones to take would be a task in and of itself. There's also the standard issue of all of these skill points coming out of the same overall pool- if you're a master debater you're probably going to be useless when a fight breaks out, and if you're a paragon swordsman you're not going to do much during a duel of wits other than shout encouragement from the background. Even if you aren’t very good at debating you can still usually gain a compromise, or I use the non-skill based strategy parts of the system to gain an advantage. Also your farmer or knight or what-have-you getting verbally destroyed is the first step in the path to being able to argue with god himself.
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Mar 27, 2019 16:34
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I can understand the design intent behind Exalted 3E's crafting system (curtail a lot of the abuses of the previous edition), but as implemented it is still just this mess of bookkeeping for its own sake. It's so focused on reacting to the past that it can't think forward. Notably, try contrasting it with what Godbound uses for "using Dominion" (aka crafting and crafting-adjacent things). This is very bolted-down because the entire system runs on being fantasy accountants (as opposed to the fantasy actuaries of D&D), while Godbound's is a lot more loose because it doesn't care about the PCs getting up to wacky hijinks so long as they all do. And in fact, unlike here, Godbound actually wants you to keep spending your Dominion because that's one of the things necessary to level up!
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Mar 27, 2019 17:34
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The Solar craft charmset has a combo that lets you roll literally thousands of dice which obviously completely breaks everything and it wasn't a very robust system to begin with. I like the three criteria to prevent you from sitting in a cave making 1000 swords, but otherwise it's kinda piss.Ithle01 posted:If people have a problem with losing some agency over their character they should probably play a different game? I don't mean that to be a dick, I mean, it as actual advice because it's been in the game since the beginning and is a fully intended part of the game experience. Exalted is fairly up-front about all of this and even tells you so at character creation. So if you have a problem with social influence being used against you then don't play Exalted. The tricky part is making that happen in a good way without pissing people off and Exalted has consistently failed to deliver on this, 3rd edition is no exception. It's not a surprise why so many Exalted hacks use Fate. Yeah! Some people will accept nothing less than inviolable control of their characters and that's fine! But a game that doesn't give you that isn't a bad game per se, just a bad fit for that player. Monsterhearts 2 is a great game mechanically and the only way to not have your character be turned on by the Turn Someone On move is to be asexual, and then it turns into the Shut Someone Down move instead. You are constantly told how your character feels about things. Pendragon tries to force you to act in accordance with your traits if they are 16 or above, the 16 Cruel guy will be a shithead more often than he isn't and the 18 Cowardice guy will run away all the time (use your free 16 on Valorous). Burning Wheel's social system doesn't tell you how to feel, but it does tell you what you believe. This doesn't make them bad games intrinsically. Whether the systems are handled well or not is a different matter, but the idea itself isn't terrible. jakodee posted:Even if you aren’t very good at debating you can still usually gain a compromise, or I use the non-skill based strategy parts of the system to gain an advantage. Also your farmer or knight or what-have-you getting verbally destroyed is the first step in the path to being able to argue with god himself. Burning Wheel is a game that has the following advice for when a roll is out of your reach: either lobby for advantage, try and fork as many things as you can and try your very best to get the amount of dice needed, or Look the GM square in the eye, roll your dice and without even looking at them go "I fail, your move" and then work towards levelling up the skill so that one day you will destroy the motherfucker that sold you some magic beans. Burning Wheel is good.
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Mar 27, 2019 17:49
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EthanSteele posted:
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Mar 27, 2019 17:55
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Imagine having your PC spend ten years and countless resources on building a thing and then as she's hammering in the last nail the entire thing disintegrates down to the foundations.
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Mar 27, 2019 17:57
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I tried reading those crafting rules like 3 times and my eyes just slid right off them. Jesus christ.
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Mar 27, 2019 17:58
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megane posted:Imagine having your PC spend ten years and countless resources on building a thing and then as she's hammering in the last nail the entire thing disintegrates down to the foundations.
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Mar 27, 2019 18:01
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The secret is that it is in fact cookie clicker, but all the automation lives in Solar Charms. Even the DB and Lunar crafting sets are irritatingly numberwang because the entire base system is numberwang cookie clicker.
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Mar 27, 2019 18:03
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That Old Tree posted:That's better, but even for Fate in general, Exalted, Exalted-adjacent, or not, I hate that refusing a Compel costs a Fate point. I much prefer it being purely "do/suffer something bad but in-character, get a reward" and leave it at that. I sort of get where you're coming from, but aspect compels are part of the game and part of your character. They don't come out of thin air: if the GM compels your alcoholism to make you drink to deal with stress, it's because you put Recovering Alcoholic on your sheet and you told the GM that's what you want to play. You get to do it too, and you can even put aspects on npcs to make them taggable.
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Mar 27, 2019 18:04
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Exalted 3rd Edition: Cookie Clicker On Boats Suppose you wanted to repair something instead of make a new thing. This works essentially the same way – repairing something simple is a Basic Project, a broken sword is a Major, and a broken Artifact is Superior or Legendary. However, the ST may choose to set the goal number lower than for making the thing outright, depending on how badly damaged it is, and likewise may reduce the minimum time requirements, likewise based on severity of damage. Further, unlike Superior or Legendary Projects to make an Artifact, there’s no Terminus – you can keep trying to fix the thing until you manage it, however long it ends up taking. Repairing larger structures, such as a ship or manse, however, will require a series of Major Projects, as you work to repair each room or element of the structure, one by one. These repairs typically take hours or days. You can also restore Hull to damaged ships at a cost of one Major Project per restored Hull point. Repair projects also provide lesser rewards. A Basic repair gives 1 SXP per objective triggered, a Major repair gives 1 GXP per objective triggered, a Superior repair gives (Artifact’s rating – 1) WXP, and there is no Crafting Experience reward for a Legendary repair – the fixed Artifact N/A is the reward there. Some projects are designed First Age Artiface; these are wonders that relied on the massive magical infrastructure of the First Age to create or operate, magic that is long since lost. The ability to create or repair anything deemed First Age Artiface (which Future Mors notes that the new devs gave an actual definition to, that being ‘anything which, if it were widely available, would warp the setting from what we’d like it to be by default’) follows similar rules, but with additional requirements. First, they require the Craft (First Age Artifice) ability, which you cannot learn unless you have Lore 5, Occult 5, Craft (Artifacts) 5 and can perform at least Terrestrial Circle Sorcery. Second, regardless of dot rating, all costs are in WXP. Third, any attempt to finish the project or make a repair roll will require a Sorcerous Project to design key components. That won’t get explained or defined for another 200 pages. Artifact 2-3 require Terrestrial Circle workings, Artifact 4-5 require at least one Celestial Circle working (and the rest Terrestrial), and Artifact N/A would require at least one Solar Circle working and multiple Celestial Circle workings. We also get a sidebar now on how large-scale construction projects and manses work ruleswise, rather than back in…the actual spot where we were told they were done. Non-magical large-scale constructions require no special Craft or Lore ratings, just the relevant one, and will typically be treated otherwise as an Artifact 2 for purposes of points. They also have no Terminus – you can keep rolling to make them as much as you want, and the ST assigns how long you have to work before you can start making finishing rolls. Manses follow the same rules as Artifact creation, except that they use Craft (Geomancy) in place of Craft (Artifacts), and the only relevant mundane Craft is Craft (Architecture). A 3-dot manse requires a year of work and has goal number 50, while a 5-dot manse requires 2 years and goal number 100. In theory, a Solar might attempt to raise an N/A-rated Manse atop an N/A-rated Demesne, which would follow the Legendary Project rules except using Craft (Geomancy) in place of Craft (Artifacts). Last up for the rules chapter: Sail. Normal sailing is just like any other rolls – roll a Sail pool against an ST-set difficulty to do a thing. However, this changes when combat happens. Ships operate on a different combat engine than anything else. They have a set of traits – Speed, which is added to any rolls to get places, and can vary with conditions. Speed 0 is a ship in a dead calm and no oars, and it goes up for each variable that will help it. Maneuverability does absolutely nothing outside combat, but is added to all combat Sail rolls. Hull is a ship’s HP bar. When it runs out, the ship is dead in the water. Also, if the ship’s crew has an average Sail score of 4+, you get +2 to all Sail rolls. That last sentence? The only role crew plays. The big issues with Sail are twofold. First, it’s a single-player game. The only person on a ship that matters is the guy in charge. Second, though it won’t come up immediately, is that Artifact ships exist below the N/A level and are so much better than normal ships that it is literally impossible for a normal ship to beat them. Oh, right, and the fact that pretty much all Sail rolls are the same roll – Wits+Sail. Those are the only two stats that matter for sailing. The entire game of Sail in combat is that you roll this pool to build a pool of Momentum, then roll this pool and spend Momentum to do actual stuff that does things, like attacking or ramming or hiding or making boarding actions. No matter what you’re doing, it’s always Wits+Sail+Maneuverabiltiy, and it either does nothing but gain Momentum or spends Momentum in order to get out of a fight, do (minimal) damage or initiate a boarding action, which just goes to regular combat with possibly a few small modifiers, like ‘the enemy starts prone’ or ‘the enemy gets a one-turn Defense penalty.’ The best mundane ships listed in the book have a total of 4 points of Hull, all of which of course inflict wound penalties on the ship when filled, and have at best Maneuverability +2. Suffice to say that Artifact ships are significantly better than that. Next time: Mors dives into CHARM HELL, but spares you the worst of it.
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Mar 27, 2019 18:07
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Dungeons: The Dragoning: 7.5 Edition Races of the Great Wheel I could cover stats, but let's be real: I already covered those back in the section on Character Creation. The only thing the stat chapter adds is a lot of wasted page space on having good old White Wolf 'Here's what a 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 look like' blurbs. Also, you can normally only get stats to 5, but some Exalted or people with legendary traits can get stats to 6. You're also told to pick your dots entirely on 'what you imagine your character is like' because the White Wolf and/or 7th Sea voice is stronger than the other developers in this section. Did you know a PC with 5 strength 'can lift 650 pounds?' I didn't! Or that a 5 Dex means you move primarily via blackflips and are 'awesome'? Stats matter a lot. If you're familiar with Roll and Keep, generally kept dice are the single most important part of a check, and outside of weapon skills your kept dice are decided primarily by your stats. This means that having a 5 in a skill and a 1 in a stat means you're going to generally suck next to someone with a 5 in the stat and a 1 in the skill. Stats are (again, outside of weapon skills) so much more important than skills it isn't funny. And given skills cost a full half of what stats do, this is something of an issue for the advancement rules. However, also remember you'll usually be limited in what skills and stats you can raise by your class. Multiclassing is both possible and probably necessary at some point; Kim, for instance, can never raise his Weaponry skill (and remember, attack skills are the ONE TIME skills matter massively more than stats) without multiclassing out into a fighting career (which he can do freely, due to how he assigned his starting dots). Those free dots you get at the start? You should really set yourself up for multiclassing if you ever want to, otherwise you have to spend time in one of the lovely 'enable multiclassing' classes like Ratcatcher. But that's a tangent for later; there are so many goddamn interlocking subsystems here that it's hard to talk about a single subject without coming up with stuff that it interacts with that I need to mention. For now, let's get on to the actual PC Races of the game. You are, intentionally, meant to pick your Race mostly because you like the bonuses it gives; they all have fluff but you're told that as a Hero, you can be whatever because you're such an exceptional person anyway. Who is going to stop you? If you're a Vampire (half) Demon (half) Chaos Space Marine (Tiefling), anyone who tries to tell you you can't run an orphanage for underprivileged children because you're supposed to be Evil is going to be in for it. By the same token, if you decide your Elf is going to be exactly how Elfs be, no-one is going to complain because they can probably back up their elfing (possibly by being Elfbot 7000 and made of pure mithril, programmed with the desire to be the perfect Elf). I actually like this bit; I'm always fond of RPG adventurers as weirdos and unusual cases who have a lot of room to be whoever they wish. So, first up on the list is Aasimir. Aasimir are Space Marine Loyalists. That's it, really, I could stop there. But they pick out promising members of other races and shove their divine blessing into them to turn them into Aasimir, who are all big, usually have glowing hair, and usually have glowing eyes, too. Aasimir are heavily indoctrinated (unless you broke free) to be the champions of the Blessed Pantheon. They can be men, women, and they might've come from any species, and whether or not you turned into one as an honored hero or you were indoctrinated by fascists is up to you. They get +1 to Command and Ballistics, +1 to Wisdom or Con, and start the game with Jaded and Fearless because AND THEY SHALL KNOW NO FEAR. Also Size 5. They're big boys and big girls. Dark Eladrin are just Dark Eldar from 40k, just replace 'trying to buy off Slaanesh eating us' with 'sworn to Lloth the Spider Goddess'. Which is weird, because Slaanesh is in this game as a God you can pick and Lloth isn't. They take slaves, they constantly seek greater emotional highs, they're your bog standard evil torture space elf. +1 Cha or Dex, Size 3, +1 Deceive and Forbidden Lore and can make little bubbles of darkness sometimes. Darkness from their SOUL. They really get into what's the problem with this race section; nobody's got a twist on what they are, at all. They're all just 'That Guy, From That Other Thing'. Dragonborn are the Imperium of Lizard, shattered in the Tiamet Heresy. They're big lizard guys who used to have a big Imperium under Bahamut, until that caught fire and exploded due to Tiamet (they should have called upon Marduk, patron God of Babylon. He could have sorted that poo poo way easier). They wander around and get into fights while reminding everyone they used to be something. They get +1 to Str or Cha, +1 to Command and Intimidate, they're Size 5, and they can use their face as a Flamer occasionally. Eladrin are 40k Eldar but also Mass Effect Quarians. They fly around in vagabond world-ships. They are psychic space elves whose shipborne life makes them fragile and who don't believe in the afterlife, though the bit about Slaanesh eating all of them is dropped because Slaanesh (and all the Chaos guys) are meant to be more ambiguous and less overtly villainous here. Daemons and warp creatures (because of course this setting has 40k daemons) like eating them. They are +1 to Wis or Int, +1 to Academic Lore and Arcana, Size 3, and can teleport once per scene (2 times at 3rd level, 3 at 5) as a half action. Elfs are Elfs with souls weighed down by gravity according to the Eladrin (Oh, Zeon, you whacky space fascists). These are Elfs who live the traditional, non-space-based elf life style of being condescending dicks and lecturing others about things. There's really nothing to say about Ground Elfs. They're just there because you need at least three (3) types of Elf as mandated by regulation. Size 3, +1 to Wis or Dex, +1 Perception and Charm, and can occasionally reroll missed Weaponry or Ballistics tests. Gnomes are, as per usual, tiny people who struggle to differentiate themselves from dwarfs or hobbits. Gnomes here were a servant race of the Syrenth, designed to fix their poo poo and be janitors. They love to innovate, but they were designed only to fix things, not build things, so their innovations are generally useless crackpot poo poo that explodes. If you're a PC Gnome, maybe the poo poo you build doesn't explode. They get +1 to Fel or Int, +1 to Craft and Academics, Size 3, and a free Weapon and Armor prof of their choice. Halflings are considered an infestation of shifty little criminals, having none of the original Tolkienesque traits in this grimdark space future. They steal, they knife, they scamper. If they get money, they blow it on not working as much as possible. They hate honesty or labor. They get +1 to Int or Fel, +1 to Larceny and Deceive, Size 2 (If you get hit, you're loving dead), and get to calculate their Static Defense entirely on 6xDex+10 instead of involving Wisdom, giving them Wisdom as a dump stat. Humans are the Mass Effect Alliance (Renegade Version) but also the Imperium of Man, defined by their love of eagles and skulls and their HUMANITY FIRST attitude. Humans are dynamic and spreading faster than all the other hidebound races and they're a big up and coming galactic power and if you can think of a cliched HUMANITY gently caress YEAAARRRR line it's in their description somewhere. They get +1 to any stat of their choice, +1 to any two skills of their choice, they get an extra Hero Point, and they're Size 4. Orks iz made fer fightin' n' winnin', same as always. Much like the 40k Orks are just the Fantasy Orcs given big guns to play with, the DtD Orks are the same as the other two. They haven't been changed or adapted at all because they sort of don't need to be, they fit in fine wherever. Interests include Krumpin', Fightin', and Lootin'. They get +1 to Strength or Willpower, +1 to Intimidation and Scrutiny (what?), Size 5, and they heal Level HP at the start of every fight by yelling WAAAAAAAGH. That's their thing. Don't take it from them. Squats are space dwarfs, and definitely were not killed off by GW, no sir. They are innovators and builders, driven by their love of making poo poo to make cooler poo poo. While gruff and drunk, they are not hidebound like normal dwarfs. A short, bearded people, fond of drink and industry. They get +1 to Con or WP, +1 to Crafts and Common Lore, Size 3, and the awesome ability to count their Size 2 points higher for purposes of damage reduction. This means they get the benefits of small size while taking a hit like an Ork or Aasimir. Shine on, you beardy little diamonds. Tau are Tau from 40k, obviously. Cut off from most of the Great Wheel, small and isolated Empire. They're also Cathay from 7th Sea 1e, even having the wall of fire and the orientalism. They are still heavily communal and believe in their Greater Good. Their technology is 'clean, but actually terrible and inefficient, focused on looks' because you're not allowed to be better than the Catholic Space Nazis at anything in base 40k and that must change here. They get +1 to Int or Composure, +1 to Common Lore and Persuade, Size 4, and whenever they Dodge a melee attack they can immediately move half their Withdraw and get out of melee. Tieflings are Chaos Space Marines. The Ruinous Powers grab people and turn them into huge demon people at random, for fun. That makes a Tiefling. They're usually murderous dicks and enjoy living based on their whims and hugeness. There's not much more to them, much like there's not much to CSMs. They get +1 to Dex or Con, +1 to Intimidate and Weaponry, Size 5, and reroll any damage dice that roll a 1. There's no specification that you only reroll the die once, either; RAW you could interpret this to 'reroll all 1s on damage, all the time'. Also, Weaponry is a much better skill to be good at than Ballistics because guns generally kind of suck due to a lack of Swordsman Schools, while melee rocks. And that's all our species for Fanfic: The Game. A few try to do some kind of twist on their concept, but it's half-hearted. They're really just pretty dull, a collection of references and nothing else. They're not even funny, which is unfortunately common in this, a comedy game. Next Time: More Collections of References
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Mar 27, 2019 18:15
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It is my contractual requirement to note that neither Bahamut nor Tiamat is a dragon, and aren't even from the same mythology. Tiamat is the primordial ocean, she's from Babylon. She is an ocean, but mad. Bahamut is a fish from medieval Islamic cosmology. He has a giant bull that stands on top of him, which has a giant emerald tablet on top of it, which has an angel standing on top of it, who holds the globe of the Earth in place so It doesn't swing around wildly.
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Mar 27, 2019 18:50
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Why does Exalted have as many subsystems as AdEva? Nothing says epic mythological conflict like cookie clicker.
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Mar 27, 2019 18:54
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No surprise that the dwarfs in a /tg/ project are cool and awesome and largely without flaw.
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Mar 27, 2019 19:26
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DtD Spoiler: The lack of Fightan' schools for guns is resolved in the expansion book. They are called Gun Kata. With Aasimar and Teiflings, while they're basically Space Marines, they're also a touch of their D&D namesake in that the former are touched just a little by the Blessed Pantheon which they're meant to serve and the latter are touched by the Ruinous ones. The Eladrin are also named after a D&D race and are basically a chaotic good elf subrace from a plane called Arborea. Since Elves in DtD are meant to be the hippie forest kind, Eladrin basically play at high space elf instead mixed with a Mass Effect counterpart. Another Mass Effect mash-up race or two will show up in the expansion book as well. Mors Rattus posted:It is my contractual requirement to note that neither Bahamut nor Tiamat is a dragon, and aren't even from the same mythology. Blame D&D and Japan.
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Mar 27, 2019 19:48
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Leraika posted:No surprise that the dwarfs in a /tg/ project are cool and awesome and largely without flaw. There's a setting in the Japanese RPG, Alshard, that does them one better and makes them high flying, rock music loving, drunken blacksmiths.
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Mar 27, 2019 19:54
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Xelkelvos posted:Blame D&D and Japan. Why are you blaming Japan for this? That's entirely on D&D
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Mar 27, 2019 20:13
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MollyMetroid posted:Why are you blaming Japan for this? That's entirely on D&D it was a final fantasy thing too granted, it was a final fantasy thing because it was a d&d thing
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Mar 27, 2019 20:20
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Dungeons: The Dragoning Original Characters So, being a Tiefling Bard or an Elf Wizard is boring, that's just normal D&D poo poo but in space and with eagles and skulls. It also doesn't have nearly enough subsystems for the subsystem God, so instead we're going to shove a third power source into your PC. It also doesn't reference enough other RPGs and fiction yet, so instead you're going to be Exalted. But not regular, boring Solar Exalted/Lunar Exalted/Alchemical Exalted/Abyssal Exalted/Dragon Blooded/Infernal Exalted (Unless you're an Atlantean or Werewolf or Promethean or Vampire or Paragon or Demonhost and wait poo poo). No, you're an Exalted from another property. Exalts of any kind are immune to most disease and poison, don't age, etc. The standard 'post-human' package. You're better than everyone else, and you can spend your Resource Stat on generic bonuses no matter what kind of Exalt you are. You can spend up to 1 Resource per round per Level of your character (So Kim can currently only spend 1 per turn), recovering from Stun, recovering from Daze, healing 1 HP, getting +1k0 to a test, or getting an extra Dodge or Parry (or other Reaction). The more you spend in a scene, the more obviously you're an Exalt. Our first Exalt is the Atlantean, who you'll recognize from Kim. Atlanteans are Mage and Solar Exalted at the same time, and such are probably the most arrogant people you could ever imagine. I suppose you could make them an Aasimir or Elf for some extra smug on top. They have the memories and soul of an ancient Syrne, reincarnated into a mortal form. They're generically good at stuff, remember a bunch of random poo poo about the ancient Syrneth (who will be serving as our generic sci-fi precursors), and are really good at magic. However, any spending of their resource stat causes them Paradox, which suddenly makes their magic have a bigger chance of miscasting. In their favor, they get a huge pool of Power Stat (Sorry, Gnosis). They get higher max skills in 3 skills of their choice, count those skills as 1 higher whenever dealing with Syrenth stuff, and then they get a shitload of D&D Metamagic. If you aren't going to use magic, being an Atlantean is useless to you. They can absolutely gently caress you up with their crazy wizbiz; their capstone is 'spend 1 Mote to cast a spell as a free action'. They can act like they're much higher level than they are when casting spells, and there's no cap on that that I can see; they can pretend they were Level 8 at max even though 5 is the normal maximum. When we get to the dice mechanics, this will be a much bigger deal. Even if for some reason you didn't take a magic using class for your Atlantean, you get a free Magic School that always counts as being 'in class' for you for being one. They are all about the wizbiz and Kim is going to be a master of the subtle and ancient Syrenth art of blowing poo poo up. Good thing for him both his Enchantment and Evocation magic (he'd get Enchantment eventually, he's a Bard) run off Bard Charisma! Other than that they're kind of boring, in that Solar Exalted way. You're just a generically excellent person with weird past memories who glows gold sometimes. The Chosen are the, uh, chosen of their God. So you'd better have picked a God you can tolerate. Chosen are all about their God. I am not entirely clear on if the 'Your power stat is capped to 1/2 your Devotion stat' thing for them replaces the 'your power stat is capped at your level' or if they can power-slam their Power Stat like mad. I'd guess it's probably an extra weakness instead. Like it or not, if you're a Chosen you're going to be dealing with the Alignment system. You can spend 1 Resource (these all have names, but gently caress that, they're all Power Stat/Resource Stat and I'm not giving them the dignity. I got proper nouns coming out of my ears already in here) to replace a die in your current check with your Devotion score (10s will not explode). You get bonuses on Alignment checks because your God gives you some slack. For their actual powers, you get Aura, which the game has not explained at all, equal to double your Faith. Aura is Magic DR, protecting against wizards and their ilk. They're defended from crits by their Devotion stat. They can hand out divine favor to others. They get Resource back for loving up and keeping bad rolls. Finally, they get to just flat out spend Resource for +10 to check results at capstone. They also get a shitload of Resource, having Power Stat+Devotion and restoring it all every day. They restore at the time of their choice, too, so you could come into a day full of God Juice and then spend it all on fight 1, pray up your mojo again, and then go into fight 2. Their powers are dull, but reasonably effective. A Demonhost (I know there's an extra A. I don't care) got eated by a demon, but didn't get eated all the way, and now they're both stuck in this body together and becoming increasingly demony. You and the Demon are now one superbeing, the demon riding you around to keep existing in the physical world, and you using the demon to keep yourself from dying. Just like an Atlantean, they get one Magic School of their choice free and added to their class whenever and wherever they go. If they spend Resource, they get +Power Stat to one of their magic school ratings for their next spell. They gain Resonance like the Atlantean gets Paradox, but eliminating it is way more likely to hurt them directly at a cost of 1 HP per miscast die. This can kill you. They also get natural weapons they can use to eat peoples' flesh and blood to regain Resource and get rid of Resonance. Instead of a bunch more metamagic, Demonhosts get a bunch of toughness abilities and the potential to take all stats to 6. They can fly around, they take Con+Power Stat less damage from everything that isn't magic or silver, they eventually take no Crit Effects besides Dead, and at capstone killing one just lets them reform a couple weeks later unless you have a rite to stick them in the Warp for good (and even then they can Burn a Hero Point to survive that the same way a normal character does being shot in the head). They work better for a war-wizard than a pure caster like the Atlantean; you can easily make a Demonhost who is mostly using their hyper-toughness to be a badass warrior but who still has their magic in their back pocket without it being nearly as much of a waste of potential as it is with the Atlantean. Next Time: All The Rest
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Mar 27, 2019 20:27
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Night10194 posted:Why does Exalted have as many subsystems as AdEva? 2E I don't think it was any worse but a lot of the rules stuff seemed to be focused on kind of consolidating and integrating what was in 1E. 3E was designed by an absinthe-maddened serial harasser and his hamster sidekick, no doubt giddy with joy at the prospect of creating BIGGER systems. Indeed I think it would be fair to say that 3E probably is, in many ways, closer to AdEva than to many other games, because it no doubt had a huge number of indirect sacred cows and was linked to the idiosyncratic preferences of the aforementioned personages. Also, while it's less fun than making GBS threads on Morke, I imagine they probably didn't want to obsolete all the published 1E/2E stuff by drastically changing the mechanical underpinnings of the game.
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Mar 27, 2019 22:05
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Nessus posted:Also, while it's less fun than making GBS threads on Morke, I imagine they probably didn't want to obsolete all the published 1E/2E stuff by drastically changing the mechanical underpinnings of the game. This part, actually, is emphatically untrue. And indeed most of the past stuff has been obsoleted and is entirely incompatible. Including stuff they themselves published for 2e. Infernals in particular has been heavily talked about as being mechanically (and thematically, but that should go without saying) as being burned to the ground and restarted fresh and entirely different.
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Mar 27, 2019 22:18
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Nessus posted:3E was designed by an absinthe-maddened serial harasser and his hamster sidekick, no doubt giddy with joy at the prospect of creating BIGGER systems. Indeed I think it would be fair to say that 3E probably is, in many ways, closer to AdEva than to many other games, because it no doubt had a huge number of indirect sacred cows and was linked to the idiosyncratic preferences of the aforementioned personages. I have been thinking the core book seems a bit fan-gamey while reading it. Didn't it also take for loving ever to produce? More time to add more subsystems, I guess.
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Mar 27, 2019 22:20
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Night10194 posted:I have been thinking the core book seems a bit fan-gamey while reading it. Didn't it also take for loving ever to produce? More time to add more subsystems, I guess. It did, and several important things were cut to make more space for Charms. Which I am currently drowning in, by the way, but don't worry, I am not gonna actually walk everyone through every charm in 200 loving pages
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Mar 27, 2019 22:21
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You make it sound like it's HERO system. Actually it feels like it's HERO system. 200 pages of discreet rules for superpowers that make character creation take 6 hours? That's just loving HERO, isn't it?
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Mar 27, 2019 22:23
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As I recall, the main issue with 2e crafting was that instead of having a lot of Charms needed to make high-end artifacts, there were very specific single ones that were basically necessary, and you either had them or you didn't. Also Wyld-Shaping Technique was insanely, crazy powerful, to the point that you were begging your ST for a stray pocket of Wyld you could fashion into untold wonders (if you were a Solar or an Infernal, if not piss off).
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Mar 27, 2019 22:45
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Mors Rattus posted:This part, actually, is emphatically untrue. And indeed most of the past stuff has been obsoleted and is entirely incompatible. Including stuff they themselves published for 2e. Yeah, they demonstrated an outright loathing for 2e. Which, though it has a lot of major flaws, is a very baby and bathwater approach to things.
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Mar 27, 2019 22:57
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e: how did this get here
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Mar 27, 2019 23:33
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Night10194 posted:I have been thinking the core book seems a bit fan-gamey while reading it. Didn't it also take for loving ever to produce? More time to add more subsystems, I guess. The number of subsystems stayed about the same between the 2014 leaked copy and the release copy. In fact, almost the entire book was the same except for a few clarifications in some charm text, the addition of some Integrity charms, and a rework of the evocation system. The evocation system was actually going to be even more ridiculous and then they sort of toned it down a bit from its original incarnation because it was a giant pain in the rear end. When they did they threw out almost all of the charms for it, which meant the ex3 core released with almost no support for artifacts. This was remedied by the first actual book release over a year later. edit: I just checked my documents folder and the artifact book was released just over two years after the core book pdf was distributed to backers. Two years. Just for reference, the leaked copy was 949 pages if I remember correctly (as a pdf without real book formatting). That's what they had to slim down. Ithle01 fucked around with this message at 02:59 on Mar 28, 2019 |
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Mar 27, 2019 23:44
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For extra hilarity on the evocations, one of the final stages of Holden and Morke's tenure was failing to get out said "quick release" book of artifacts in anything approaching timely fashion, mainly because Morke was proudly and publicly ripping up the systems and putting in a new even betterer one that was going to be so awesome, you guys. No real way to wager on it, being alt-history and all, but I'd bet if OPP hadn't fired them, we wouldn't even have DBs out yet, let alone Lunars in manuscript.
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Mar 28, 2019 01:33
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Leraika posted:No surprise that the dwarfs in a /tg/ project are cool and awesome and largely without flaw. I have just realized: They made the dwarfs into goddamn elves. As in, bad standard fantasy writer elves (super noble and good and have no drawbacks, mechanical or otherwise, while being The Best) That's a grudgin'.
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Mar 28, 2019 02:02
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Nessus posted:3E was designed by an absinthe-maddened serial harasser and his hamster sidekick, no doubt giddy with joy at the prospect of creating BIGGER systems. Indeed I think it would be fair to say that 3E probably is, in many ways, closer to AdEva than to many other games, because it no doubt had a huge number of indirect sacred cows and was linked to the idiosyncratic preferences of the aforementioned personages. While their success with each subsystem varies, I think it's pretty clear that "moar MORE" wasn't ~the vision~. What seems more likely is that someone (probably Mørke) had some particular favorites, whether it's a part of the game in general or just the specific idea he had for a part of the game, and that's why a given part is horrendously overwritten (Craft, Charms—and within Charms: Craft, Wyld-Shaping, weird persona-swapping powers). The base combat system is honestly pretty cool, the way battle groups works is good within that context, the basic idea of the social system is neat. I certainly won't say they're all "light", but most of them aren't monstrous, baroque love-letters to one or a couple writers' preoccupations.
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Mar 28, 2019 06:13
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The most egregious part of the Bureaucracy non-system is that the system already has a system for complex project management, but apparently making sandwiches is totally different from making sandwich shops.
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Mar 28, 2019 13:13
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Exalted 3rd Edition: I Am Sisyphus, And I Am In Hell Okay, so. Charms. These are your magic powers. I’ll explain how they work, but I will not be going Charm by Charm because I would claw my own eyes out. We are instructed that a Charm is basically just a game abstraction for a Solar’s incredible skill, harnessing Essence to tap into their mastery of action. They aren’t ‘real’ except in the way a martial artist might describe their techniques, in the context of the game itself. (With the actual exception of Martial Arts Charms, each of which is in fact a specific technique that must be learned and mastered.) Okay, sure. That’s fine. Charms come in trees – you need to pick up various prerequisites to get higher Charms, plus have appropriately high Ability scores (for Solars and DBs, anyway) and Essence rating. Rules-wise, all players must declare any Charms they are using (and the ST must as well, for any NPCs), though in combat they can use as many as they want within the bounds of general Charm use restrictions. Combos no longer exist and you are no longer limited to one Charm per round or whatever. Charms are declared before dice are rolled, and costs are paid before any rolls, too. Attackers declare their charms first, then defenders. Many charms may boost dicepools or static values. Solars cannot add more dice to a roll than their total Attribute+Ability pool for that roll, with the exception of things that specifically say they count as non-Charm dice. For static values, every +1 to the value counts as 2 added dice. If a Charm adds successes rather than dice, each success counts as two added dice unless specified as non-Charm. Specialties are not counted for calculating a Solar’s Charm dice-adding limits. Sorcery, Martial Arts Charms and other ‘universal’ magic or magic used by others to give out dice still count against these limits unless they explicitly say otherwise. We also get an order-of-operations note that says rerolls or things that remove numbers from a roll’s result happen before any other Charms that care about the numbers you rolled. Charms come in a few types. Simple Charms are activated as a combat action, with all normal timing for that. They can’t be put in a flurry, so they take up your entire action, and as a result you are limited to one per round. Typically, these actions count as using whatever Ability the Charm is from. Supplemental Charms enhance an action of some kind, almost always using the skill the Charm is for. You can use as many Supplemental Charms as you want during a round, as long as you have valid actions for them to enhance, but a specific Charm can only be activated to enhance an action once – you can’t use the same Charm five times on the same action. Reflexive Charms either cause a reflexive action or enhance some unrolled thing. Some might anticipate surprise attacks – and these can be activated even if the Solar isn’t aware of the attack until the Charm activates. You can use any Reflexive Charm at any time, but again, you can’t use them multiple times on the same thing. Generally speaking, they can only create or enhance actions of their associated Ability – so a Melee-based defensive Reflexive Charm can usually only enhance your Melee-based Parry. Permanent Charms provide a permanent, always-active enhancement, and never need to be activated. I’m not going to explain Keywords because…well, first of all, several Keywords don’t do anything. They’re just classification terms. Others do stuff, though – Mute means the Charm won’t add to your anima, for example, while Stackable means the Charm can be active multiple times simultaneously. Most Charms have only an instant effect, spending their motes and ending. Their effects might last, in the sense that the action they boost happens and remains happened, but the magic doesn’t. Others last longer. Any Charm that has a greater-than-instant duration ties up (“commits”) any Essence spent on it, unable to be regenerated by any means until the Charm ends. There is a sidebar on Charm design for Solars. It is not especially useful, given it takes half a page to try and define Solar themes and still can’t do it besides going ‘Solar themes are doing everything humans can do, better than anyone else.’ They do mention that Solars can’t use Charms to shapeshift, permanently alter their bodies to effortlessly perform various feats (because ‘effort’ is apparently part of their theme), cannot teleport and, of course, cannot do the two things that no Exalted magic can do: time travel or true resurrection of the dead. Also of note, introduced for this edition: Reset conditions. Some Charms can only be used once, and then must be reset somehow before they can be used again. One good change, also: Excellencies. These are generic dice-adders, and used to be a thing you had to purchase specifically. Now, a Solar automatically gets the Excellency for any Caste or Favored Ability they have any dots in, plus any Ability they have at least one Charm from. This is good! These Charms were extremely useful but also boring. No one got excited over having to buy them, but you absolutely needed them for anything you wanted to be good at. So now you just get them free as a Solar. Good. One good thing for Solars. Charm Layout is alphabetical by ability. Archery is first. It has several trees, but because the game removed the graphical representations of the charm trees to make room for more charms, I’d have to work out those flowcharts for myself. I am already in Hell. I refuse to dance for you. Instead I will note one “highlight,” Phantom Arrow Technique. Pay one mote reflexively to fire an arrow when you have no arrows! One mote is absolutely not worth an arrow. Once per scene you do get to use it to gain non-Charm bonus dice equal to an Intimacy’s strength for a shot, but after that you can’t use that attack again until you spend “significant effort in restoring or remembering the Intimacy” for positive or “has been reminded of the motivation for her ire” for a negative Intimacy. So once per scene you get a really good attack, except it's also once per you deal with this nebulous refresh condition? Also, at Essence 3+, you can, once per scene, render one of your arrows indestructible and unremovable. Whatever it hits, it is stuck in until you die. You can cut around it and remove the bit it’s stuck in, or destroy what it’s stuck in, but the arrow is stuck and indestructible. Only you or someone you give permission to can remove it. I’m…not sure what the point of this is. Other Archery charms include being able to insta-aim and get free successes on Decisive attacks, pulling a glowy bow out of your rear end which can grow giant wings to provide you cover, and being able to just keep making attacks until you miss or crash your target. Oh, and a sidebar tells us that, contradicting what the actual combat chapter said, you don’t need to aim at long range when casting a spell. Essence 3 also has a ton of ‘you shoot a really glowy arrow that has a bunch of dice tricks on it and if you kill someone with it you get to burn up their soul for benefits.’ There are a total of 26 Archery Charms over 6 pages. This does not include repurchases. Of them, the smallest is the final one and only Essence 5 one, which just boosts your attack damage by your Essence for 1m per shot. Athletics features…immediately on starting it, a Charm that doesn’t work per the rules, Monkey Leap Technique. See, it’s a 2m charm that lets you jump up or forward one range band automatically, no roll, as your movement for the turn. Except it’s Supplemental, and those aren’t allowed to create actions. Move, as an unrolled action, is enhanced by Reflexive charms. The Charm rules are very specific about that. But whatever, no one cares. This is not the most irritating Essence 1 Charm, that honor goes to Lightning Speed, which enhances a rush or test of speed…by adding an automatic success, fine, and then rerolling 5s and 6s on your dice, until none of your dice have 5s or 6s. This is the kind of fiddly, slow, dumb dice trick that a lot of Solar Charms do, and I hate it. It’s not that it’s mechanically bad – it’s not, it’s actually probably quite good – so much as it’s slow, overly fiddly, and not…fun. Also fun is the Charm that increases your Strength for a scene being followed by a much less efficient Charm to increase your Strength for a single roll at the cost of your successes on the roll, with a sidebar noting that the only reason it exists is if the first Charm is too slow – by which it means if you absolutely need strength this action, rather than maybe two or three actions from now and the rest of the scene. It is literally bringing up and creating a problem that, if it weren’t mentioned, would almost certainly never come up because most STs would never think of it. God, that’s all just in Essence 1. Athletics also has a ton of stuff that boosts any close combat attacks, because…it does, I guess, and Brawl and Melee were already too big? Essence 3 is a lot of ‘and also you get a ton more mote-efficiency but little actually interesting’ which is also kind of a constant with Solar Charms. A lot of their permanent upgrades are really boring ‘you are just better at numbers forever, no reason’ stuff or stuff that just makes prior charms obsolete. (Indeed, at Essence 5, you get a 1m1wp-cost Charm that makes the aforementioned instant-speed single-action strength booster entirely obsolete by letting you just…count as strong enough and also get double 7s on any single feat of strength). There are a total of 30 Athletics Charms over 5.5 pages. They tend to be smaller than Archery, see, by virtue of having a lot of permanent upgrades. Next time: Awareness, Brawl, Brawl Again, Bureaucracy
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Mar 28, 2019 13:49
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For a game that doesn't want to be an anime game apparently it sure has some anime rear end special attack names.
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Mar 28, 2019 13:57
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Ratoslov posted:The most egregious part of the Bureaucracy non-system is that the system already has a system for complex project management, but apparently making sandwiches is totally different from making sandwich shops. The main problem with the Bureaucracy system, which as far as I know the new devs haven't figured out a favored solution for either, is figuring out how to make it so that having an Excellency doesn't protect you from making stupid decisions. If a 3e system ever shows up, it's probably going to look more like the original Mandate of Heaven system everybody hated (because it was a badly-designed plot hook generator designed to look like a Bureaucracy system) than the Creation-Ruling Mandate system that came later. Except, hopefully, good.
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Mar 28, 2019 14:05
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Night10194 posted:For a game that doesn't want to be an anime game apparently it sure has some anime rear end special attack names. Oh man, if you think Monkey Leap Technique is anime, you ain't seen nothing yet. 2E charm names include Neighborhood Relocation Scheme, Titan-Straightening Method, and Eagle Fish Transition Prophecy.
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Mar 28, 2019 15:08
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I mean, "a plot-hook generator disguised as a Bureaucracy subsystem" sounds like a good thing, but I've never interacted with any version of Bureaucracy in any form in any game I've played.
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Mar 28, 2019 15:15
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