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Dawgstar posted:That would probably tie into why only the male robot-furries can knock up the organic female furries. There is no god in this dark future. Only the Egyptian pantheon but *sexy*.
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May 26, 2019 01:52
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Zeus all turning into a swan but getting really annoyed because everyone beat him to it and then some.
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May 26, 2019 01:58
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I feel like while Lunars was throwing the creepshow out the back of the truck HSD was running after to catch it.
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May 26, 2019 02:00
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Even in a sci-fi setting they designed for themselves from the ground up they can't explain how their economic plans would work without a literal magic box that generates infinite money from nothing
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May 26, 2019 02:37
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megane posted:Even in a sci-fi setting they designed for themselves from the ground up they can't explain how their economic plans would work without a literal magic box that generates infinite money from nothing The best part is that the infinite-money box was a solution to an inflation crisis.
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May 26, 2019 02:45
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It's hilarious to me that Eclipse Phase 2e is nowhere to be seen and the shameless furry knockoff has had its 2e come out first.
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May 26, 2019 02:49
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I try not to make presumptions about the furry fandom because it's something I don't know and therefore can't judge. But HSD's tangled attempts to explain everything that just make it creepier remind me a bit of Bill Holbrook's comic strips- notably Kevin and Kell, which is about a furry world where carnivores hunting herbivores has become a corporate business, and Safe Havens which is about.... ? .... but is actually currently about terraforming Mars. Both of these strips feature an insane amount of twisted logic and attempts to detail and justify things that ultimately don't bear any scrutiny. Like Kevin & Kell's morality is hosed because they keep saying the carnivore hunting is a natural part of life except when they break the vaguely defined rules but also if the herbivores are too militant fighting back that's also wrong, and there's all sorts of cross-species weirdness and DNA changing oh and also all his strips are in some weird multiverse so characters have moved back and forth and changed species as a result and loving TIME TRAVEL comes up at some point... And HSD's attempts to define the specific circumstances under which the furries can breed and whether furry robots can also breed just put me right back in that mindspace.
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May 26, 2019 03:09
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First and foremost, needlessly complicated plot-wank and aligning of the stars is a central habit of a lot of nerds regardless of whether or not they're into the furry fandom. HSD is no less outrageous and no less uncommon than the people on alt-history sites who come up with detailed timelines where Walt Disney is elected instead of Nixon and timelines where people try to condense every single good to bad sci-fi B-movie involving space truckers into a single cohesive world and timeline. This just feels worse because it goes into reproductive stuff to an outrageous degree and is priding itself on relentless and above all else immutable internal consistency. Second they're actually in the process of adopting Mars in Safe Havens to prevent it from being exploited by greedy capitalists because now there's a spare Earth and because Mars is a sapient being. The logic there is because it's a new planet entirely after terraforming so they can adopt it. This isn't bad because of Holbrook's furry leanings and predilictions. This is bad because Bill Holbrook has been running this strip since the early 90s on the internet and is incredibly Old Internet compounded by his love for never letting everything stop and his fetishes for pregnancy, being subservient to corporate power and raising children. In conclusion: rigid and stupidly complex writing and structuring only stands out in furry works because the furry works already stand out for being full of upright talking anthros and more common mainstream geek plot rambling is something we're all just incredibly used to.
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May 26, 2019 03:29
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megane posted:Even in a sci-fi setting they designed for themselves from the ground up they can't explain how their economic plans would work without a literal magic box that generates infinite money from nothing
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May 26, 2019 05:02
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I'm actually offended by the designer's tryhard attitudes, By now there exist many many good systems that you could just graft the elevator pitch of HSD to and start getting your shameful wank on.
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May 26, 2019 05:32
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 Rifts Coalition Wars 4: Cyber-Knights, part 2- "'Yes,' says Sir Thorpe, the Native American Cyber-Knight and Erin Tarn's friend and protector, 'that is Erin Tarn, and your Emperor will reward you greatly for her capture ... alive.'" I originally had a quote with the r-word, but shifted it over recent requests. That's right! I've been censored! That's censorship! The internet tells me how these things work! Cyber-Knights So, Cyber-Knights are good guys, you all. Really just swell fellas. They'll protect the underdog, paint a fence, or rescue a treeborne kitten. (No exaggeration; those are examples.) This is supposed to emphasize what humble, awesome, relatable dudes they are, but it also makes them seem like tremendous marks. "Gosh, the Coalition guys blew up all my lovely fence! Can you help me out, Mr. Knight?!" "Why, forsooth, I'll help you build thine fence, Mr. Finn!" And everybody loves them but it doesn't go to their head because they're great guys. Even assholes like the Simvan think they're great guys, and only harass Cyber-Knights to save face because they're huge tsunderes. They're not threatening you because they like you, Sir Cyberlot, gosh! Even though the Coalition has sneered at them, they generally have avoided direct conflict with the Cyber-Knights as too much trouble. However, sometimes there are young guns who see Cyber-Knights as their personal Mount Everest to walk all over. Similarly, most monsters dread or hate Cyber-Knight intervention, and no doubt shake their fists over meddling do-gooders. Apparently, the main campaign that has taken the Cyber-Knights' attention is fighting the vampires of the former region of Mexico - keeping them from spreading north, as well as working to smuggle humans out of the vampire nations. However, most are aware that, alone, they'll never be able to overthrow the vampires. However, many Cyber-Knights have now come from the Mexican people, inspired by their efforts south of the Rio Grande. There's also the weird claim that Reid's Rangers (the anti-vampire crusaders from Rifts World Book 1: Vampire Kingdoms) was founded by "rogue Cyber-Knights" which... no, it wasn't, going back and reading it.  Fighting monsters with monsters. The Tolkeen conflict, however, has given them their first major internal struggle. The Cyber-Knights are supposed to remain neutral for the most part, and so the large number that have shown up to aid Tolkeen are essentially rogue. This is a major issue because most people are unaware of this, meaning the Coalition now is likely to label all Cyber-Knights as enemies of the state. Furthermore, the dark turns that Tolkeen has taken is likely to taint their reputation even though many knights have worked to curb the sorcerers' excesses. Moreover, the internal conflict has driven a lot of doubt and bitterness into the organization as a whole. Their leader, Lord Coake, has spoke against fighting in Tolkeen- seeing Tolkeen as corrupted and a lost cause. In keeping with the narrative so far, he's presented as almost certainly being in the right side of history, for better or worse. The struggle of the Cyber-Knights in the war will be to hold to their ideals and struggle against the monsters working for Tolkeen (both literal and figurative). We're told a fair number will become "Fallen Knights", whether disillusioned and fallen from the path, or turned to outright eeevil. However, Coake takes the more "positive" note that this is the tough lesson they need to be shaken out of their complacency and driven to new heights of being gooder dudes. I'm sure the people being herded into literal Death Camps by the Coalition or getting tortured by Black Faeries are glad some of the Cyber-Knights get to walk the moral high road. Like, has he not even considered he might be able to do good against both sides? An Erin Tarn Experience Yep, it's some more  Erin Tarn , endangering her peers once again.See, she was leaving Tolkeen after an academic conference shortly before the war, accompanied by her volunteer Cyber-Knight bodyguard, Sir Thorpe, and a young fanboy named Alan Vanhook. They were just chilling and making comedy on the road, but then ran into a Coalition patrol... not noticing them until they were twenty feet away. I see Sir Thorpe was disearning his unpay. One of the soldiers starts to suggest something, but before he can identify Tarn audibly, Sir Thorpe speaks up and confirms that, yes, this was the famous Erin Tarn, and yes, she did have a major price on her head. I see Sir Thorpe is angling to lose his nonbonus. In any case, Thorpe challenges the entire Coalition unit, complete with power armor, to duel him with only his "Psi-Sword and Psi-Tomahawk", and then proceeds to trade insults with the Coalition soldiers. This is, apparently, what a bodyguard does.  Rifts Coalition Wars 4: Cyber-Knights posted:"Yes, you could," comes the stoic replay from Sir Thorpe, the fingers of his left hand twitching ever so slightly, "but I am surprised. I thought the technocrat soldiers of the great Coalition Army would leap at a chance to prove their superiority over one, lone Cyber-Knight. But I understand. Fear can make a man into a child. I have seen it many times — especially among the Coalition." Rifts Coalition Wars 4: Cyber-Knights posted:"Enough!" snaps their leader as he eyeballs the Cyber-Knight. We then get a full page of narration as he flips out and slices the Coalition soldiers up nonlethally in a way you really can't do in the rules, and then gets that kind of badass moment where he makes the enemy think he's going to execute them but then doesn't so he can get both the convenient combination of psychological suffering out of his foes before riding off on his moral high horse. It's seemingly him just picking a fight with them so that  A blow so well struck, it never happens in the story. Anyway, the whole story is supposed to be a demonstration of everything a Cyber-Knight does - psychic weapons, has built-in cyber-armor, and a new twist and retcon. You see, this book gives them a series of buffs, but the biggest is this big secret they apparently now have: Rifts Coalition Wars 4: Cyber-Knights posted:Erin smiled and settled in for a story. Rifts Coalition Wars 4: Cyber-Knights posted:"Cyber-Knights gain a sort of mystical ability as they master their martial arts and grow with experience. One such ability is a unique rapport with technology. An awareness of combat weapons and machinery. Some believe this ability is a psychic power similar to Tele-Mechanics, but it is very different. You see, the experienced Cyber-Knight can so tightly focus on the combat at hand, that he can reach out with his mind and senses to touch the machines around him. He can feel the gun turret charging before it fires. He knows when a weapon is pointed at him and when a targeting computer has him in its cross-hairs. Likewise, he can feel a suit of power armor, robot, or 'Borg sneaking up behind him or zooming down from above."  "You see, when the writer favors you, you don't have to wear M.D.C. armor to survive!" "I see..." Yep. From this point forward, Cyber-Knights have anti-tech fu. Is it psychic? Magic? Cybernetic? Well, no, it's some kind of vague Eastern tech-whispering mysticism. And that'll serve them well in this event!... only, you know, most of their main foes aren't technological. Their main enemies are the demons of the Calgary Rift and the vampires of the South, not the Coalition or any other technologically-oriented force. Still, it's part of a series of buffs that'll make them at least a better class than they were, and more competitive after forty books of expansion bloat and power creep. Speaking of which, let's get to that. Next: Secret origins. Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 06:11 on May 26, 2019 |
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May 26, 2019 06:05
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Look man. When you're a heroic knight of justice, you can't just go off getting involved in fighting genocidal aggressors willy nilly. It could hurt your reputation. You have to consider that. I'm pretty sure the Coalition has laws against fighting it, after all, and Knights have to obey all those, right?
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May 26, 2019 06:17
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By popular demand posted:I'm actually offended by the designer's tryhard attitudes, By now there exist many many good systems that you could just graft the elevator pitch of HSD to and start getting your shameful wank on. I'm still not sure what the actual game premise is. There are some baddies I guess but it's all very late-90s "we don't know what you're supposed to do here".
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May 26, 2019 07:04
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Maxwell Lord posted:I'm still not sure what the actual game premise is. There are some baddies I guess but it's all very late-90s "we don't know what you're supposed to do here". e: But with Bitcoin.
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May 26, 2019 07:47
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Youre supposed to get mad rutty with bitcoin, but as a robot catgirl
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May 26, 2019 08:14
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I'm honestly thinking that bloody FATAL had a more coherent idea of what it's trying to be. No judgement yet on which is the more Fake edit: Much like the V.I Lenin power station of Chernobyl, HSD is built of two competing designs that should not be combined. The result is probably just as toxic.
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May 26, 2019 08:24
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You're supposed to have the kind of "adventures" that bitcoin early adopters used to tell one another breathlessly in their private forums - you meet a incredibly sexy girl and explain bitcoin to her, and use it to buy a drink and also to buy her out of slavery to an owl-man with a tape recording of a human voice (seriously? That's just the most pathetic wanking fantasy yet, ooooh all hybrid girls swoon for my voice). Then she turns out to be a robot. But that's okay, you can still have sex and impregnate her.
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May 26, 2019 09:39
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Too many moving parts. You'll have to keep a well updated setting bible just for all the myriad player species, not to mention the Buttcoin daily fluctuations.
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May 26, 2019 10:11
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You have to travel to the ruins of post-Furred Impact Earth in order to recover the final Dogecoin wallet. Why? So you can corner the market and buy a neo-Lambo, of course!
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May 26, 2019 10:39
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PurpleXVI posted:Meanwhile, Earth turns into a giant evil space crystal. No, really. This is the future Marianne Williamson wants
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May 26, 2019 11:37
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So which were the rogue Cyber-Knights that founded Reid's Rangers, I wonder? The evil Necromancer or the four-armed doctor with a passion for vivisection?
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May 26, 2019 12:25
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Nessus posted:the ruins of post-Furred Impact Earth You magnificent bastard 
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May 26, 2019 13:40
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Everything posted about HSD so far is an abomination, but... and I hate that I'm about to say this... there's something in there I'm stealing for every game I run in the future. For no good, rational reason, all owls are now evil. I'm leaving out hybridization, evil universe glyphs, science, magic, all that. Just every owl is now evil. They hate, and are in turn hated.
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May 26, 2019 13:56
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IshmaelZarkov posted:Everything posted about HSD so far is an abomination, but... and I hate that I'm about to say this... there's something in there I'm stealing for every game I run in the future. Okay Don Bluth.
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May 26, 2019 14:09
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Just go read about the Strix. People have been afraid of owls long before HSD.
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May 26, 2019 14:53
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Fangs at the Gate: How Am Lunar Lunar character creation differs from Solar and Dragon-Blood chargen rather more than they differ from each other, because Lunars are attribute-based rather than ability-based. Also, they only have three and a half castes - Full Moon, Changing Moon, No Moon and Casteless. When making a Lunar, you also choose their spirit shape, which is their special animal self, and their Tell, which is a distinctive physical trait that is present in all forms they take. This can be a scar, a tattoo, a hair coloring, a subtle supernatural trait like a giant shadow, or even a mutation, though it doesn't give you anything free - if your Tell is a mutation, you paid for the mtuation with background points. Each Caste has three possible Caste Attributes. Full Moon have the physicals, Dexterity, Stamina and Strength. Changing Moons have the socials, Appearance, Charisma and Manipulation, and No Moons have the mentals, Intelligence, Perception and Wits. You pick two of these to be your Caste Attributes. Casteless do not get Caste Attributes at all. You then pick two Favored Attributes of your choice. At least one Caste or Favored attribute must be in your primary dot-spending category (Physical/Social/Mental) and at least one must be in your secondary...unless you're Casteless, in which case only one Favored has to be in your primary and that's it. Lunars get increased points to spend on Attributes compared to other Exalts, and are almost certain to have at least one at 5 dots. They do not get decreased points to spend on Abilities, but will be focusing much less on them in general because their Charms are based on Attribute scores, not Ability scores, so it is usually less important for them to raise their Abilities a lot. You also choose if you have a Solar Bond. At chargen, you may decide one of three things: 1. You definitely have a Solar/Abyssal/Infernal bondmate. Or 2. you definitely don't have one. Or 3. you let the GM decide. Any of these is legitimate; certain Lunar Charms care about your bondmate if you have one but generally speaking it's not a huge deal to have or not have one. Lunars, like Solars, have a Limit Trigger, though theirs are somewhat different. Beyond all this, their chargen is pretty much the same as everyone else so far. Why, though, would you want to be Casteless? Well, among other things, costs. Lunars pay less to raise their Caste and Favored attributes, but in exchange for only having Favored, Casteless Lunars pay less than normal for all non-Favored attributes, both with chargen points and XP. Lunars begin play at Essence 1, like Solars do, at least by default. Besides the normal merits available to everyone, there's some new ones for Lunars only! Heart's Blood (1-4 dots, Story): This gives you access to additional animal shapes at chargen. Without it, all you have is your spirit shape. One dot gives you around six relatively weak animal shaoes, comparable to 1-dot Familiars, and two to three stronger ones, comparable to 2-dot familiars, all from a single biome. Two dots gives you 12 to 24 weak shapes, about six stronger ones, and one or two very powerful animal shapes, comparable to 3-dot Familiars, all from a single biome. Three dots is the same as two dots, but you get another 2-3 strong or very strong animals. For an extra dot on top of whatever you picked, you are no longer limited to a single biome. Stolen Faces (1-5 dots, Story): You have access to additional human shapes at chargen. Each dot gives either five human shapes of no particular significance, such as a farmer, local bandit, dockworker or street urching, or a single human shape whose social, economic or political status is valuable, such as a Dynast, a Guild merchant-prince, a revered elder or a favored member of royalty. Lunars also get some options for normal merits. A Solar mate can be taken as a 5-dot Ally, for exampl;e. You may also define an army given by Command as being beastfolk, which costs an extra dot but gives them Might 1. Moon-Touched Retainers cost two dots, and shahan-yas are usually 3-dot M<entors if they like you a lot. You can also take Silver Pact Backing. Then we get a bunch of new supernatural merits, to represent possible mutations! Antennae/Snaketongue (1, Innate): You must have the Enhanced Sense (Smell) Merit. You can use your antennae, snakelike tongue or similar to sense people by scent. You ignore all penalties for being unable to see characters in Close range as long as you can smell them. Bioluminescent (0 or 3, Innate): For zero dots, you glow equivalent to a Glowing-level anima banner, and can suppress this for a scene with a miscellaneous action. For 3 dots, you can also make a blinding flash once per scene with a Presence roll against the Awareness of anyone in Close range. Anyone that fails is blinded for a turn. Bounding Legs (3, Innate): You get +2 to all jumping-based rolls, but this applies to combat movement only if you jump at least one range band up or down. Burrower (2, Innate): You can dig via spadelike paws or similar. You get +2 on feats of strength related to tunneling or excavation, and you can take cover even in completely open terrain by using Athletics to dig into the soil or loose earth, gaining Light cover and concealment for stealth. Tunneling is too slow to do in combat, however, and if you want to move you have to get out of your foxhole. Carapace/Shell (2, Innate): You must have Unusual Hide 2+. You have bulky armor of bone, chitin, shell or similar. You double the soak bonus from Unusual Hide, but it counts as armored. You also get Hardness based on your Unusual Hide rating. However, you are always considered to be wearing medium armor, and get a -1 mobility penalty. Centaur (2, Innate): You must have Extra Limbs. You have a horse-like lower body or similar. You always get the benefits of fighting mounted and may make impaling attacks with lances. If you are ridden by someone, you give a +2 Speed Bonus. However, your Extra Limbs can only be used to boost movement actions. Because they're legs. Constrictor (3, Innate): You have clinging tentacles, a prehensile tail or similar. You lose no rounds of control in a grapple when attacked, but you still lose them if you take damage. You may spend a round of control to drag your foe even if you don't restrain them. (This is actually really good, easily one of the best of these.) Deadly Weaponry (1, Innate): You must have some form of the Claws/Fangs/Hooves/Horns merit. Yours are especially dangerous, gaining one of the Balanced, Chopping, Disarming, Flexible, Piercing or Smashing tags. If you have 4-dot weapons, you apply two tags instead. We get a sidebar noting that natural weapons are not considered unarmed for Martial Arts, but may be compatible if the GM says they're close enough to a style's weapons, such as claw-like talons for Tiger Style or spear-like tusks for White Reaper. Echolocation (3, Innate): You must have Enhanced Sense (Hearing). You can echolocate, which allows you to "see" via hearing out to Short range, ignoring all penalties for blindness, darkness and poor visibility or similar. However, you can't get color or fine detail, and solid obstructions such as walls block it. You may alternatively take this so it's only usable underwater, in which case it extends out to Medium range. Enhanced Toxin (Varies, Innate): You must have Venomous or Poisoned Body, and can take this multiple times. Each time, you get a bonus to your natural toxins, such as blinding Crashed foes, causing Crashed foes to lose Willpower and go insane due to hallucinogens rather than dealing damage, paralyizing crashed foes so they can't take move actions, making your poison extra potent so it lasts longer, or causing your poison to also spread a flesh-rotting disease. AMost of these cost 2 dots each, except hallucinogens, which cost 1 because they reduce your damage output. Entangling Limbs (3, Innate): You have grasping tentacles, hair or similar. You can flurry while grappling, and if you use a savaging attack to deliver a gambit, it's slightly easier. Extreme Adaptation (2, Innate): You must have Tempered by the Elements. You have thick blubber, a hump to store water, or similar. You get +2 to rolls against environmental hazards or poisons in the environment you are adapted to, and also reduce the damage of applicable environmental hazards. Fins (1-5, Innate): You get a bonus based on the merit rating to all movement rolls while swimming and ignore difficult terrain from poor swimming conditions. However, you get half your bonus as a penalty to all land-based movement, and at 3+ dots, all land is difficult terrain for you. Frightening Voice (2, Innate): You have a predatory growl or cry, allowing you to ignore penalties for flurrying threaten actions with attacks. Imposing Features (2, Innate): You have a majestic crest, plume or similar. Anyone that can see you has no Tie towards you gets -1 Resolve against your instill rolls to create a Tie towards you. Inhuman Visage (3, Innate): You must havE Hideous. You have distracting facial markings or an unreadable face, giving you +1 Guile. This bonus is removed against anyone that has spent at least a full season interacting with you or has a specialty relevant to understanding your mood. However, you get -1 to all rolls to instill positive Ties towards yourself or convince others you're being honest. Ink Sacs/Smokescreen (2, Innate): You can fire off a spray of ink, smoke or similar. Once per scene, when you make a disengage check, you can release this, and if successful, any enemy opposing your check is blinded until they clear their eyes as an action. Long Reach (3, Innate): Your limbs are unnaturally long or extendable. Your unarmed attacks or one of your natural weapons gets the Reaching tag, letting it attack at Short range by paying Initiative and taking a Defense penalty. Lure (1, Innate): You have a glowy lure, bushy tail or startling markings, allowing you make Larceny-based distract cambits at Close range, and whoever you are boosting with the distraction gains additional Initiative. Musical Voice (1, Innate): You have an inhumanly musical voice, like a songbird, snake rattle or trumpteing elephant. You reduce all penalties to your influence rolls from noisy environments, and your voice counts as an exceptional instrument and ignores all multiple target penalties for Performance-based inspire checks made through song. However, you get a penalty to disguising your voice or mimicing the voices of others. Natural Missile (2-5, Innate): You have acid spit, hair darts, a frog tongue or similar. It is a light weapon that is either Archery (Short) or Thrown (Short), your choice, Bashing and Natural. You may freely add the Subtle Tag, upgrade it to Lethal for oen dot, or extend its range to Medium for 2 dots. Natural Shield (2, Innate): You have bony plates, enfolding wings or similar. Your unarmed attacks or a natural weapon gain the Shield tag, and you ignore the DEfense penalty for flurrying a full defense action. Night Vision (2, Innate): Your eyes are adapted to darkness, halving all penalties for darkness or low light. Pheromones (1 or 3, Innate): You have pheromones. For 3 dots, anyone in Close range gets -1 Resolve against your inspire checks to make a specific emotion, chosen when you take this. For one dot, this only works on a single species. Prehensile Tongue/Trung (2, Innate): You have a trunk, tongue or similar that is a fully functioning limb, though an offhand one. It has light weapon traits, with the Bashing, Brawl, Disarming, Flexible, Grappling and Natural tags. Serpentine (4, Innate): You have a snake body instead of legs. You ignore all penalties for being prone, but get a penalty on jumping-based movement actions. Silent Movement (3, Innate): Your movements are muffled by some natural trait, giving a penalty to detect you purely by sound. Slippery (2, Innate): You secrete slime or mucus, giving +2 to oppose grapples or rescape restrains, but a penalty to establish control of grapples. Spinnerets (3, Innate): You can spin silk like a spider. Silk is exceptional equipment for weaving, climbing, making rope traps, swinging around and similar, as well as lifting or suspending heavy obects, and you can use them for this to make Craft-based feats of strength using Stamina or Craft to determine if you qualify for them. You may also make ranged web attacks. They are light weapons with the Bashing, Thrown (Short), Disarming, Flexible, Grappling and Subtle tags. If grappling outside Close range, you can only take restrain and drag actions, and the thread can be severed with a minor gambit to end the grapple. Thermal Vision (1, Innate): You must have Enhanced Sense (VBision). You can sense heat, making your bonus dice from Enhanced Sense into successes when using vision to detect something notably hotter or colder than the surroundings, such as an assassin in pitch darkness or a concealed zombie in a human crowd. Toxin Sacs (2, Innate): You must have venomous. You gain additional venom doses per day based on Stamina, and if you Join Battle with no doses left, you immediately gain one. Vibration Sense (1, Innate): You must have Enhanced Sense (Touch). You can sense vibrations, applying your Enhanced Sense bonus to all rolls with any sense to detect concealed characters within Medium range on the same surface as you, or four ranged bands if they are Legendary Size. Next time: Castes and caste powers.
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May 26, 2019 14:58
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By popular demand posted:Just go read about the Strix. They’re not what they seem, that’s for sure.
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May 26, 2019 15:44
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Dawgstar posted:So which were the rogue Cyber-Knights that founded Reid's Rangers, I wonder? The evil Necromancer or the four-armed doctor with a passion for vivisection? I mean, there's Sir Lazarious, their "general" who was a Cyber-Knight but was kicked out personally by Lord Coake for his brutal conduct. And though he has numerous followers, none of them are Cyber-Knights. So the only Cyber-Knight I can see amongst them was booted and lies about being a member of the order. That's the only place I can see confusion stemming from, but even so, it was a weird enough assertion to get noted.
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May 26, 2019 17:08
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I mean, there's Sir Lazarious, their "general" who was a Cyber-Knight but was kicked out personally by Lord Coake for his brutal conduct. And though he has numerous followers, none of them are Cyber-Knights. So the only Cyber-Knight I can see amongst them was booted and lies about being a member of the order. Oh, right. Didn't Laz have a dragon girlfriend and didn't particularly care what form she was in?
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May 26, 2019 17:39
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Fangs at the Gate: It Me, Lunar Full Moon Caste Lunars are the bright light that pierces the dark, revealing unspeakable horror. Monsters may hide in the shadows, but the Full Moons hunt them down and drag them into the light of Luna's judgment. They are hunters and warriors without peer, the ultimate survivors, whose bodies are empowered by divine fury. No matter what shape they wear, they tear through their obstacles with power and grace. When the Lunars remade their castes, they knew there would be plenty of battle and bloodshed, and so they made the Full Moons a caste of warriors and killers, whose might, speed and endurance could defeat any foe and stop any attack. The Full Moons are often amazing combatants and generals. Those who choose to take this caste are often hunters, warriors, athletes, assassins, nomads or otherwise whose lives depend on physical power. Others strive for its warrior ideal as revolutionaries, generals or zealots. Many Full Moons have spirit shapes that reflect physical skill and ability or ferocity. Often they are predators, but they are no less at home in the bodies of prey animals of great size, endurance or fearlnesses, such as the aurochs and elephants. Their Caste Mark is a silver disk, and their anima banners begin as a steady and constant glow of white or silvery light around them that grows brighter and fiercer as they spend more Essence. They are associated with summer, the element of fire, the color white and the Maiden of Battles. Changing Moon Caste Lunars are ever showing different faces, much like the moon itself. They are tricksters who master the lessons of Luna by never being the same, trimphing over their foes with honeyed words, mysterious lies and pure animal magnetism. They are seducers, silver-tongued devils, inspiring leaders or tricky masters of lies and disguises. They slip through guards in the skin of beasts or trusted allies, infiltrate courts, whisper to their foes and turn them to friends. Their cunning, ingenuity and charm are no less deadly than blades. When the Lunars remade their castes, they knew it'd take subtlety and subterfuge to undermine the power of the Shogunate and Sidereals. Thus, they made the Changing Moons a caste of spies and tricksters to madden their foes and spread chaos wherever they went. Some are envoys, others sneak-thieves and spies. Those who choose their path are often diplomats, con men, chieftains or artists, or people drawn to divine trickery, like criminals, dissidents or misfits. Often, their spirit shape is a beast that symbolizes grace, beauty or cunning, such as cats, dolphins, birds or weasels. Their caste mark is a glittering silver crescent. Their anima banner shifts between bright silver, dark blue and shadowy purple, changing ever more rapdily as its grows in intensity. They are associated with spring, the element air, the color purple and the Maiden of Serenity. No Moon Caste Lunars are the darkness that hides mysteries. No one knows where the light of the moon goes on the new moon, and the shamans of Luna are seekers of such knowledge, uncovering the wisdom hidden in the dark. They are lorekeepers and storytellers that pass on wisdom, mystics that intecede with spirits for humanity. They travel the world and beyond, guide chieftains and princes. When the Lunars remade their castes, they knew they would never recreate the full glories of the lost First Age, so instead, they made the No Moons into mystics, shamans and witches to plumb the darkness of the Age of Sorrows and unearth the wisdom they would need to survive. They are sages, healers and sorcerers. Those that choose this path are often savants, philosophers, monks or seers. Others seek forbidden wisdom, having been heretics, visionaries or crafters whose curiosity outweighed their caution. The spirit shapes of the No Moons are often those that symbolize wisdom, mystery or the otherworldly, such as serpents, owls, raitons and beasts of the ocean depths. Their caste mark is an empty circle that glitters with silver light. Their anima banners are veils of dark blue and purple, with silver around their edges. As their intensity grows, the blues and purples become darker and the silver brighter. They are associated with winter, the element water, the color blue and the Maiden of Secrets. Casteless Lunars know that the full moon, new moon and all phases between are the same moon, each an aspect of Luna's glory. Thus, they have total protean potential, the freedom to decide what they will be. All Lunars Exalt with a caste, and while they may quickly receive the moonsilver tattoos that let them choose one, the Casteless period is always meaningfull. Some choose to remain Casteless even to the end of their lives, embracing its truth, or simply are not found by the Pact or refuse its gifts. The CAsteless are no single archetype - they are whatever they choose to be, lacking in focus yet able to contain all. Their anima banners and caste marks are inconstant, changing with the moon in colors of blue, purple, silver and white, more vibrant and intermingled as their power is spent. They are associated with autumn, the element wood, the color gray and the Maiden of Journeys. Lunar anima banners are similar to those of other Exalts. Once they reach Glowing level, however, their Tell becomes immediately obvious to anyone looking at them. At Burning, objects that come in contact with their anima may be left damp or warped, as if left exposed to the night air for days. All Lunars Can
So, shapeshifting rules! Before they can take a shape, a Lunar must consume its heart's blood in a special ritual called a sacred hunt. Lunars may enter a human or animal shape they have as a miscellaneous action, which requires them to commit 4m until they turn back. This can be flurried, but not with attacks. They may revert back to their true human form reflexively. Charms may refine or expand this ability. Lunars can only take human and animal shapes, not those of anything else, even magical beasts. What is the difference between an animal and a magical beast? A magical beast is anything that has intrinsic supernatural power, such as the ability of a fogshark to swim through mist. Beyond that, generally speaking, animals are those creatures which could plausibly exist in the real world, possibly in some prehistoric time. (Or giant versions of these; you can be a giant spider, after all, even if the square-cube law would disagree.) If a human or animal shape is mutated somehow, you gain those mutations while in that form, but it costs additional motes to take the form based on how many dots of mutations it has. Taking on an animal shape perfectly duplicates whatever animal you hunted (plus your Tell) and has special effects:
Taking on a human shape perfectly duplicates your prey's form; you cannot be told from them unless your Tell is spotted or an effect like Eye of the Unconquered Sun is used against you. However, human forms do not alter your stats in any way - you may appear to have huge muscles, but gain no Strength. You may be very beautiful, but you do not gain the poise and self-assurance to use a high Appearance value you don't actually have. You also gain none of their knowledge, memories or magical powers. You lose any mutations you would normall have unless granted by Charms or your Tell. To gain a form in play, you must perform a sacred hunt. To do this is simple: you declare your intention to take a specific human or animal's shape, then you hunt down and kill your prey. There is no minimum time requirement ofr the hunt, but you must declare your intention first - you can't sacred hunt someone you didn't declare a hunt on before the fight started. OThers may help you, but you must strike the killing blow yourself, either via an attack or indirectly by traps, poison or so on. Once the prey is killed, you may drink the blood that flows from their heart or nearest analogue to gain their form. When you perform this to take a human shape, you must form a Tie towards that person when the hunt ends, if you didn't have one already. You do not need to keep this Tie, but it reflects that taking a human form is not done lightly or without emotion. The GM may choose to elide over combat when it would not be meaningful or pose an obstacle. Charms may give alternative mans of sacred hunting, but all require preemptive declaration of intent. If you sacred hunt another Lunar and kill them as part of the hunt, you gain all human and animal shapes they possessed. If you hunt them via a Charm that does not require you to kill them, you take only the form they were in when the hunt ended. This is true of any human or animal that is able to shapeshift into other shapes as well, such as certain Moon-Touched. Next time: The Tell and other complications of shapeshifting
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May 26, 2019 17:45
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Dawgstar posted:Oh, right. Didn't Laz have a dragon girlfriend and didn't particularly care what form she was in? He finds both forms "equally wondrous", so you can certainly read into that if you like.
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May 26, 2019 17:48
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I blame the HSD.
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May 26, 2019 18:31
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HSD in a nutshell:
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May 26, 2019 22:27
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Hc Svnt Dracones 2.0 The Furries Doom Themselves, Again. Twice. Venus So the furries casually terraform Venus. Supposedly it's a bit harder than Mars, but they still do it in the span of a hundred years or less. In the process, they gently caress everything up again, though in a slightly less grandiose way, albeit possibly a much stupider one, by creating the Exonymphs. Despite the name, this self-dooming is unrelated to loving. In the expanded version of the original core book, we were introduced to the Exonymphs which were a reasonably interesting concept and about the only art that didn't look like Furry Generic. Essentially, the furries, being morons, decided that creating an ecosystem balanced by all of the species of flora and fauna that they were apparently effortlessly able to rescue from Earth/replicate later, wasn't good enough. So they decided to make a species of bugs that would help do, you know, bug things, to the ecosystem, to keep it functioning. Swarms of little happy bugs that pollinated things and did... whatever it is that bugs do. Like drowning in people's drinks during the summer and buzzing annoyingly around while you're trying to sleep. A great service for all Vectorkind. But then some idiot scientist went "golly gee willikers I wonder what these bugs are talking about!!!!! how to find out............... I know! I'll make a human-sized one and talk to it!!!!!  "It steps out of the cloning chamber, looks at him, and promptly eats his head. Because that's what exonymphs do, they eat brains, in the process taking on physical and mental aspects of the victim. Occasionally this sadly also means taking on a moral code that involves guilt about eating sentient brains, so, that's kind of awkward. It's a shame that all their mechanics were utter hot dogshit in the original, though not much of a surprise. They were intended to be playable but appears to have no section in this book, either as enemies or PC's. So anyway the furries now have a rampant brood of intelligent, brain-eating shapeshifters on the loose just because they were too cool for bees. Aside form that Venus is just... another generic planet. It's a bit less densely populated than Mars but... considering that the unpopulated parts are literally just empty wastelands and the occasional town they built before realizing how few furries were coming to Venus, there's no reason to go there. Furrykind doesn't need the resources, there are no alien artifacts to scrape around for like Pandora Gates in Eclipse Phase or whatever. It's just an empty backlot that I guess is handy if you want to play an uninterrupted game of football.  I could absolutely avoid this artifacting, but this game's art doesn't even deservice that effort. Europa  As much as I hate myself for it, there's one part of this setting that I don't unequivocally hate, and that's Europa. One part of it is that I am a titanic sucker for creepy alien oceans. Ask me how many hours I've wasted on Subnautica despite having crippling thalassophobia. The other part is that it's the one corner of the Solar System that the vectors haven't just casually rolled over. They haven't terraformed this ball of ice into a giant jacuzzi. They aren't living happily in the oceans in pods and schools of sharkthings or dolphinthings. Instead, it's a horrible, alien environment that terrifies them, stymies them and contains the only alien artifact in the system that's not the result of idiot furries deciding magic alien glyphs were for sweet graffiti tags. It's also one of the few places in the solar system that actually has a described culture beyond "this one corporation is really big here," in that it being so alien and weird makes the locals a bit superstitious, and having Jupiter in the sky all the time also tends to trigger weird attacks of vertigo and the like because it's not a vista that a once-human brain was made to deal with on the regular. Basically the furries arrive, toss a bunch of engineered fish into the ocean to scout around. Fish find an alien artifact, check it out, become hijacked by it and become its mutant guardians, attacking everything that comes near to check out the artifact. Pretty spooktown. On top of that, though, the idiots had to make Europa even scarier. Again, this is DEEPEST LORE from the original, but essentially they found alien genetic material on Europa. Reasonably enough, they were like "sure let's try cloning this and see what we get." They got horrible giant aquatic lifeforms with lots of teeth that live off loving radiation. Their response was: "Awesome let's clone a bunch and unleash them in Europa's oceans to see what happens after harvesting a few novel genes for making giant living spaceships. "Ganymede, Io, Mercury THEY ARE SMALL AND THE PEOPLE LIVING THERE ARE REAL TOUGH OUTBACK LONER TYPES GRRRR ALSO THEY HAVE LITERALLY ZERO ADVENTURE HOOKS BECAUSE IT'S A POST-SCARCITY SOCIETY WHERE THE BITCOIN MINERS GUARANTEE YOU A LIVING AND A COUPLE BILLION CREATURES HAVE ALL THE RESOURCES OF THE ENTIRE SOLAR SYSTEM AT THEIR BECK AND CALL. Ahem. So who wants a serving of chargen? CRUNCH AHOY So, first things first, obviously, in an RPG about playing a fursona, we gotta pick the animal we're based on(yes, even if you're a robot animal), and at least there they provided a decent selection.  Of course, like two lines into describing the arduous process of picking the animal you most want to gently caress, they poo poo themselves in public again. quote:Playing your character as the paragon of their family is certainly allowed, but remember that Vectors are, at their core, human, and have had seven hundred years since their creation to iron out any particular social quirks associated with their breeds. They said this in the original, too. And it was bullshit there. Like extreme bullshit. Each species' unique quirk or ability was based on a stereotype about them, other species viewed them by their stereotypes, and all their species-specific quotes(you know, like the clan quotes in old Vampire the Masquerade) were based on stereotypes of how that animal would behave. After this little sidestep, the game goes on to describe the various "families" of animals and in the process completely annihilates my brain with its lovely editing for a few minutes until I understand what they're going for, because it's got subheadings for every "family" with unusual "orders." Like seals and raccoons, for Canidae(which seems like an EXTREME stretch), or hyena and mongoose for Felidae. Considering the extremely vague relations in these, at first I thought the editor just had a stroke doing these, until I remembered there was no editor, and that the author is an absolute fuckwit with no understanding of biology, and then it all made sense. PS lemurs are officially related to weasels now.  The actual sections for each "family" is intensely dull for the most part, though, being just a lovely recap of the ~exciting~ history of their creation and the author being an idiot. Again. quote:Canidae perhaps best exemplifies the Vector quandary: the fact that Vectors are not the animals they resemble but are humans rebuilt from the ground up. Each has their own personality, their own needs, wants, and dreams, and among the countless millions of Canidae members it’s impossible to begin assigning behavioral expectations to any one group without inevitably misrepresenting them. They are varied. "It's impossible to stereotype this vast and amazing cornucopia of dogs. But hang on just wait three lines and I'll do it anway. Also, if there are more of you, you're automatically less racist. Fact." It's like, dude, if you want the dogs to be stereotypically gregarious and unjudgmental, just write them as that, don't try to justify it with some sort of weird pseudo-sociology, because you're not smart or educated enough to do anything but embarrass yourself with these idiotic sweeping statements about group psychology. Also just to ensure that we have our full quota of Idiot Furry Mistakes on board. Remember when a misplaced digit during the creation of animal people meant that some of them, despite being basically a human fetus with bits grafted on, would emerge fully animal-bodied, i.e. in the case of a snake, as a wriggly scaled worm with no limbs or hands? So, before dying off out of embarrassment, the surviving human scientists made some genetic edits that would, over time, cure this plainly awful disorder. The Vectors, being rational actors wishing to minimize the suffering of their fellows in any way possible almost rioted the humans into early extinction because "THESE HORRIBLE ABOMINATIONS ARE OUR ~BRETHREN~ AND THEIR GENETIC DISORDERS ARE ~BEAUTIFUL~, NOT FLAWS" Which is probably a nice enough sentiment but I'm sure that every single Vector baby born without arms is likely slightly less appreciative of their fervor. Fuckwits. I also want to point out that we've three for three, by this point, on order/family stereotypes despite the intro saying they didn't exist. Dogs are cosmopolitan, seals are optimists and raccoons are loners. And let me just spoil you: it keeps loving happening and I hope the author has a stroke. quote:All Vector snakes are born Lateral. Reptilia’s production team certainly didn’t expect that result when other members of Reptilia all emerged normal, Maybe it's reading too much into things, but I'm starting to feel like maybe the author's pro-life or something. Like why else would you consider aborting fetuses with crippling, life-damaging deformities to be a "loss of life" when, based on the text, it would be entirely possible to just scrap 'em and cook up a new, un-damaged batch? I'm also going to repost this immensely dumb thing only because it's immensely dumb, it was in the original, too.  This is, by the way, 20 pages into chargen and not a single lump of actual mechanics to show for it. Not a single +1. We're gonna need to go for another 40 pages, around page 110, before we hit any mechanics. And oh boy they're a loving doozy. I'm happy to report that they have, in fact, gotten more stupidly complicated since the original in at least some ways. There's also some delightful new garbage art there, not just rehashes. NEXT TIME, WE TRY TO SUFFER THROUGH ANOTHER TIRESOME 40 PAGES OF THE EQUIVALENT OF A MECHA ENTHUSIAST TRYING TO DEFEND MECHS AS A GOOD IDEA IN A REALISTIC SETTING, BUT WITH FURRIES. OH GOD.
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May 26, 2019 22:57
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It's staggering how every single decision they make is not only the wrong one, but by far the worst possible choice. It's seriously Always Sunny levels of decision making.
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May 26, 2019 23:02
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I'm glad every designer corporate furry is provided with automated high-frequency trading algorithms for Bitcoin, because what could be a more stable economy than an endless sea of high-frequency Bitcoin trading? E: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3787375 Apparently high-frequency trading could just rip Bitcoin apart, but it's just not worth doing? Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 23:13 on May 26, 2019 |
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May 26, 2019 23:10
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Ronwayne posted:It's staggering how every single decision they make is not only the wrong one, but by far the worst possible choice. It's seriously Always Sunny levels of decision making. "No. No, we are not going to explain exactly how all these random animal people reproduce! Absolutely not, what are you thinking?" Title Card: "The Gang Explains How Animal People Reproduce"
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May 26, 2019 23:14
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I like the juxtaposition of ethics and the complete lack of ethics involved. They make space predators that are compelled to hunt, murder, and eat other people, and space godzillas... but the line, the line that must not be crossed, is preventing birth defects.
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May 26, 2019 23:24
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The Europa superfish thing is probably a third-hand 2001 reference, like many things in furry works are third-hand references to poo poo that was popular in the 90s. These creatures are boring. There are too many of them. Back in Ringworld the Kzinti would happily hunt and eat sentient beings, though this was more an "are willing to, and do not consider it a fundamental ethical breach" than a "compelled to do so by their ratcat nature." Hell, this almost sounds like a crossover. The Kzin Patriarchy runs into these weirdos and are completely baffled.
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May 27, 2019 00:41
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So, who are PCs in this setting? What do they do?
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May 27, 2019 00:46
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