Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
Chernobyl Peace Prize
May 7, 2007

Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

I feel like a lot of conversation around Hunter: the Vigil misses the presentations in fiction (including Horror Recognition Guide, a great short story collection its own right and for my money the best piece of in-universe material put out for an RPG), where we all talk about the capital-c Conspiracies with their tiered powers and magical/psychic poo poo, but then the fiction is about 2-5 people trying to figure out (or one person trying to figure out after the fact based on all their friends being dead) what the hell the weird thing even is, what's going on, is this going to kill me for looking at it, and so on.

It's reminiscent of old Hunter in that way: the game's mechanics (beyond Tactics, which are cool in their way even if some of them do create a water-breathing mermaid issue) tilt towards "and here's the powers some people, maybe, could possibly, ever, get" but then presentations of what actually happens in the universe is no blood-note rays, no Lucifuge fireballs, and a whole lot of investigation and depression.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

SirPhoebos
Dec 10, 2007

WELL THAT JUST HAPPENED!

Night10194 posted:

The issue for Vigil for me is that I'm not nearly as interested in shotgunning nWoD vamps as oWoD ones, because the nWoD ones just feel like a pack of sad little parasite mobsters. I also really like the element in Reckoning's pitch of 'You are a new thing and the monsters are surprised as hell you exist', as well as the revolutionary undertones. I like the idea of the Hunter as someone who upsets the status quo; it's a nice twist on the norm for the men and women in long coats and wide brimmed hats.

That's why I wanted to write up Reckoning; it's the seed of a game that I would really enjoy, mired by being...well, a 90s White Wolf game. The very elements that make it something I want to play (drag the oWoD's monstrous masters of the earth off their thrones, punch dracula, remind the melodrama of the oWoD of all the people it murders) are the elements that ensured it would never be the game I'd actually want, which I find interesting.

E: Basically, I feel like Reckoning's big draw is the fact that the monsters do rule the earth. They are the status quo. You are the cell of people who have been pushed to the point that you will try to do something about it. Vigil...well, it's a lot harder to get at that when you have TFV and VASCU and a thousand Conspiracies running around. Not to say VASCU aren't great; they are. Just it's a very different feel.

But isn't nWoD a toolbox setting to begin with? It doesn't seem like it would be difficult to make a Vigil campaign where all the oWoD nonsense is the backstory, Hunter Compacts have only recently been formed, but we're using nWoD rules to make the campaign goals achievable*

*I'm assuming nWoD is better at this, which I realize is a pretty big assumption since it's still written by White "IT'S NOT DIFFERENT AT ALL!" Wolf.

Tibalt
May 14, 2017

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

What's a water-breathing mermaid issue?

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

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

SirPhoebos posted:

But isn't nWoD a toolbox setting to begin with? It doesn't seem like it would be difficult to make a Vigil campaign where all the oWoD nonsense is the backstory, Hunter Compacts have only recently been formed, but we're using nWoD rules to make the campaign goals achievable*

*I'm assuming nWoD is better at this, which I realize is a pretty big assumption since it's still written by White "IT'S NOT DIFFERENT AT ALL!" Wolf.

I also really just wanted to talk about Storyteller because it's a hilariously terrible system.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

Tibalt posted:

What's a water-breathing mermaid issue?

When there are no mechanics for something you should obviously be able to do. Like a game not specifying that mermaids can breathe both air and water.

Daeren
Aug 18, 2009

YER MUSTACHE IS CROOKED

Tibalt posted:

What's a water-breathing mermaid issue?

By mechanically defining water-breathing powers as something you can purchase and opt into and not making it a default where it makes sense, all of a sudden you need to spend character creation resources on letting your mermaid breathe water.

Tactics sorta fall in the same problem slot feats do, because by making "hit the werewolf with a truck" or "act really drunk to lure a vampire into an ambush" a Tactic, it implicitly implies you can't do either of those things unless you have the Tactic, when the normal rules should (and do!) cover both of those situations.

efb but it's another problem along the same lines, also

Night10194 posted:

I also really just wanted to talk about Storyteller because it's a hilariously terrible system.

I played Masquerade as a teenager long before I was a turbo nerd about mechanics game designer. One session being entirely a three and a half hour long combat scene that in-game was two rounds (about six seconds) long was one of my first real experiences with the idea that a game can put disproportionate amounts of effort and attention into something it is really not good at.

Daeren fucked around with this message at 16:21 on Jul 10, 2019

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003

La morte non ha sesso
Edit: A-ha, I was right!

Feats don't have to run into that problem, but they inevitably did, because literally dozens of fly-by-night companies were cranking out infinite sourcebooks in a finite design space. So most of the feats were incredibly samey, or bullshit that "allowed" you to do stuff you should be able to do with skill checks.

Night10194 posted:

The issue for Vigil for me is that I'm not nearly as interested in shotgunning nWoD vamps as oWoD ones, because the nWoD ones just feel like a pack of sad little parasite mobsters.
Not to keep beating the same drum, but yeah...in the CoD, you'd demonstrably be doing more good for the world if you used your skills and powers to take out the Sackler family. Whereas the background of V:tM has ancient monsters that will wipe out the human race even faster than climate change.

Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 16:22 on Jul 10, 2019

SirPhoebos
Dec 10, 2007

WELL THAT JUST HAPPENED!

Night10194 posted:

I also really just wanted to talk about Storyteller because it's a hilariously terrible system.

So how does nWoD compare to oWoD mechanically?

Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that
The term is actually Air Breathing Mermaid, and it's an invented example. Imagine you have a game about playing merfolk. It's built around adventures undersea and interactions with the mysterious world above the waves, and has powers and abilities that let your mermaids have different capabilities related to the aquatic environment and the mer-society and talents for combat and other such things. It's successful enough to get a second book, with plenty of new traits and options for your character. Except one of these traits is "Air Breathing", allowing you to breath air as easily as water.
Before that trait was printed, people probably just assumed merfolk could breath air. But as soon as it's printed as a trait you have to buy, anyone who doesn't buy the trait can't breath air anymore. More generally, it applies to the problem that by defining a system or cost for doing X, characters now have to use X to do that thing. D&D 3.X was particularly infamous for this. If you print a feat that says "If you attack while dropping on an enemy, get +2 to hit and +1d6 damage per ten feet you fell", then anyone WITHOUT that feat can't get a bonus for doing a drop attack.

Josef bugman
Nov 17, 2011

Pictured: Poster prepares to celebrate Holy Communion (probablY)

This avatar made possible by a gift from the Religionthread Posters Relief Fund

Halloween Jack posted:

Right now, they're just a mutual aid network. If they ascended to the level of a Conspiracy, they'd have the most powerful Endowment of all: the immortal science of dialectical materialism!

Imagine a red fist crushing a vampire forever.

Also yes I have realised that when even dnd looks more fun to plan out than you are perhaps some of the internal stuff needs changing.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

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

SirPhoebos posted:

So how does nWoD compare to oWoD mechanically?

I have no idea, since I've never played any of them. I have enough other games on my plate that I wasn't especially interested in looking up nWoD to actually play.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

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

SirPhoebos posted:

So how does nWoD compare to oWoD mechanically?

Significantly better, though not without its own issues.

Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that

SirPhoebos posted:

So how does nWoD compare to oWoD mechanically?

I've played a lot of nWoD, but only a little bit of oWoD. Furthermore, oWoD has several editions, so it's possible that my experiences are no longer correct

Similarities:
Both have 9 attributes and a spread of skills. When performing an action, you total up your Attribute+Skill and roll that many d10s and count successes.

oWoD:
You have a variable target number. Any dice that show above this number count as a success, with 1s counting as -1 success. You need to get a certain number of successes to succeed, based on the difficulty of the action.
Attributes are: Strength, Dexterity, Stamina, Wits, Perception, Intelligence, Charisma, Manipulation, Appearance

nWoD:
Fixed target number, you need an 8-10 to get a success. Any dice that show a 10 are a success and let you roll an additional die (this can continue indefinitely). Rather than rolling against a number of needed successes, you typically always need 1 success. However, difficult situations are represented by a penalty to your dice pool. 5+ successes are an "Exceptional Success" and frequently have special bonuses.
Attributes are: Strength, Dexterity, Stamina, Wits, Resolve, Intelligence, Presence, Manipulation, Composure


There are lots of other little differences as well, such as how willpower works or the exact skill list, but those are the big ones. I personally find nWoD to work a lot better, as I find it simpler. Neither is really a great system, but it mostly works.

Each gameline also has plenty of differences in their old/new specific systems. Vampire is the most similar, and it's still pretty distinct past the surface level

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003

La morte non ha sesso

SirPhoebos posted:

So how does nWoD compare to oWoD mechanically?
Much better, on the whole. Difficulty is static, and dice pools are smaller in general. The botch rules are not nonsense that messes up the whole dice mechanic. There are clearer guidelines to getting bonuses from equipment and situational advantages.

Combat is much simpler because you do not roll to hit, roll to dodge, roll for damage, roll for soak. Your to-hit and damage are rolled into one, and the target's defense/armor subtracts from your roll. This is the biggest strike against nWoD combat: the system is inarguably better, but the simplicity does make it feel like you're just slinging dice at someone until they drop.

The worst thing about nWoD/CoD mechanically is that they still apparently don't playtest stuff, especially combat stuff, so there are still crap options. However, one major improvement is that there are very few things that give you multiple actions, and they're mostly "you can attack multiple targets once each."

Kaza42 posted:

D&D 3.X was particularly infamous for this. If you print a feat that says "If you attack while dropping on an enemy, get +2 to hit and +1d6 damage per ten feet you fell", then anyone WITHOUT that feat can't get a bonus for doing a drop attack.
The example that always sticks in my mind is a feat from XCrawl: It's a social feat that lets you dodge a difficult interview question by just changing the subject. You know, something you should be able to do by roleplaying and rolling Bluff.

(I like that they have feats specifically for doing a promo interview with "Mean" Gene Otyugh, but they had no actual ideas for what to do with that.)

Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 16:55 on Jul 10, 2019

Tibalt
May 14, 2017

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

It'll never not piss me off how oWOD would modify the dice pool AND the Target Number AND the number of successes.

Quick, you can use one dice pool with 7 dice and a TN 8 and you need 2 Succcesses OR you can use this other dice pool with 5 dice and a TN 6 and you need 3 Successes.

Luckily you'll have more than enough time to program your T-83 before it gets to your turn.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

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

Tibalt posted:

It'll never not piss me off how oWOD would modify the dice pool AND the Target Number AND the number of successes.

Quick, you can use one dice pool with 7 dice and a TN 8 and you need 2 Succcesses OR you can use this other dice pool with 5 dice and a TN 6 and you need 3 Successes.

Luckily you'll have more than enough time to program your T-83 before it gets to your turn.

The best part is there's no rhyme or reason behind them, AND you also subtract any 1s from your successes so that throws the math off even further. Like there's no 'this represents X, this represents Y' and no thought put into what they'll actually do to the chances of success or failure. Just removing the need to subtract 1s and removing variable TNs would do a lot for making the system easier to work with and I'm glad to hear nWoD was able to recognize that much, at least.

There's a long list of example tests in Hunter and they're loving all over. Completely random stuff will suddenly be TN 8 or 9, stats and skills get mixed around constantly and whimsically, no-one can ever tell what Appearance is supposed to be for, etc etc.

Stephenls
Feb 21, 2013
[REDACTED]
And don't forget the occasional Difficulty 10 roll, which in ones-subtract-successes land always had a precisely equal chance of succeeding or botching no matter your dice pool.

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003

La morte non ha sesso
Stop me if I've told you this one before: I recently watched the documentary about Vampire, and I was flabbergasted when they got to the part about Requiem and the reaction to it. They not only talked about it like it was a total commercial failure, they said that people didn't like Requiem because it was so rules-focused.

Even people who hate Requiem know that that's bullshit. Hell, the biggest complaint I heard about the system was that it was simpler and obviously better-balanced, but that they missed being able to play superpowered characters in a fiddly system with lots of moving parts.

I don't know why the interviewees couldn't just admit that people reacted negatively when they chucked a decade-plus of accumulated lore into the dustbin of history.

Stephenls
Feb 21, 2013
[REDACTED]
I'm not sure one should put much stock in that documentary.

LatwPIAT
Jun 6, 2011

Halloween Jack posted:

Stop me if I've told you this one before: I recently watched the documentary about Vampire, and I was flabbergasted when they got to the part about Requiem and the reaction to it. They not only talked about it like it was a total commercial failure, they said that people didn't like Requiem because it was so rules-focused.

Even people who hate Requiem know that that's bullshit. Hell, the biggest complaint I heard about the system was that it was simpler and obviously better-balanced, but that they missed being able to play superpowered characters in a fiddly system with lots of moving parts.

I don't know why the interviewees couldn't just admit that people reacted negatively when they chucked a decade-plus of accumulated lore into the dustbin of history.

I think it might be because the documentary is basically the brainchild of Ericsson, and the nVampire didn't do so well in the Scandinavia-Germany scene and especially not in the Scandinavian-German LARP scene as oVampire did.

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003

La morte non ha sesso
I did get the impression that the whole thing was largely the work of a LARP scene that was, among other things, bitter about being cast aside.

Chernobyl Peace Prize
May 7, 2007

Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

Halloween Jack posted:

The worst thing about nWoD/CoD mechanically is that they still apparently don't playtest stuff, especially combat stuff, so there are still crap options. However, one major improvement is that there are very few things that give you multiple actions, and they're mostly "you can attack multiple targets once each."
The subhead-worst thing about nWoD/CoD is an equal parts layout and mechanics issue: Conditions.

For those unaware, Conditions are ways of codifying all those fiddly little "hey that guy's capital-c Cursed now," "oh poo poo my leg's broken," "i'm really sleepy" things into quick narrative-with-maybe-some-mechanical-weight labels you can slap on your character. It's a neat idea and solves some mechanical complications, in theory.

The implementation, potentially worst in Geist 2e (which is a good game! but their handling of Conditions sucks!), is condition bloat for things like the powers. The Curse power says that it inflicts the Cursed condition on a target, and then you can add more stuff to it as you go. The power write-up itself does not say what Cursed does, the Conditions section at the back of the book does. The Marionette power says that it inflicts the Marionette condition, etc. Repeat this for most of their powers. The end result is a sparsely-worded, nonsensical-without-cross-referencing chapter on the cool powers you have, and a back matter listing of all of those base Conditions, without any of the power context provided by the other section.

LatwPIAT
Jun 6, 2011

Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:

The implementation, potentially worst in Geist 2e (which is a good game! but their handling of Conditions sucks!), is condition bloat for things like the powers. The Curse power says that it inflicts the Cursed condition on a target, and then you can add more stuff to it as you go. The power write-up itself does not say what Cursed does, the Conditions section at the back of the book does. The Marionette power says that it inflicts the Marionette condition, etc. Repeat this for most of their powers. The end result is a sparsely-worded, nonsensical-without-cross-referencing chapter on the cool powers you have, and a back matter listing of all of those base Conditions, without any of the power context provided by the other section.

I think 'worst implementation' should go to Demon, where all Demons have a Persistent Condition on them based on their Y-splat, and they can choose to resolve this Persistent Condition in one of two ways to activate supernatural powers. It's a Persistent Condition that isn't a Condition in any meaningful sense and doesn't follow the rules for how Persistent Conditions work.

Though I also must admire Vampire, where Mesmerize inflicts the Mesmerized Ccondition, but half the rules are on the Mesmerized power and half the rules are on the Mesmerized Condition, so you have to reference both every time. Not to mention the bizarre design under which the Awe power makes targets "awed", but "awed" is not a Condition, despite being a condition.

It's a mess.

Libertad!
Oct 30, 2013

You can have the last word, but I'll have the last laugh!

Rosemont posted:

Can you only target people with Lockjaw? Or could a Sei, say, cast it on a crocodile to keep it from biting a party member?

Here's the source of the rules text.

quote:

This simple yet effective spell causes the jaw muscles in the chosen target to clench, making the person incapable of speech. Lockjaw also makes its target unable to speak or eat solid foods. The inability to speak prevents the target from casting spells with verbal components or using magic items with command words. The target can attempt a new saving throw every day, and once the save succeeds, the target has thrown off the effect of the spell.
Remove paralysis will also counter lockjaw.
Material Component: A rusty nail.

As a bite attack is quite clearly a form of "eating" for many monsters, I'd rule it as yes. Granted I can see some pedantic gamer going "you can bite something without eating it" but yeah.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

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

Sig: Manual of the Primes
The Land of Drugs



Alucina, by Whitney “Strix” Beltran
Beliefs
We are not really here.
We are guided by invisible music.
There are no barriers between the living and the dead.

Alucina is a loud, bright place of strange patterns and distinctive noise. Being there is like being more awake than you have ever been, with all your senses constantly screaming for attention. The air crackles with power – electrical and magical. It is sweet and hot and wet, which according to the locals is due to the presence of their ancestors. The locals move to sounds that only they can hear – well, they and any who eat their foods and drink their drinks. It is a world both alive and dead, for when an Alucinian dies, their soul remains within their body. They just keep going on, their body now dead but still moving. After death, sometimes they vanish for a time, and if so, when they return they are recognized as elders. The bodies of the elders do decay, but it is a slow, dry decay that mummifies them. For this reason, the Alucinians are considered some of the wisest of peoples of the planes, for their collective memory and experience is very long indeed – longer than must like to think about.

Alucina is a warm, vivid world of many ecosystems. Most of the plants, if combined correctly, will produce hallucinogenic visions – as will other things, not limited to food or drugs. It is possible to walk into a vision entirely by accident, as one might step into a puddle. This is actually quite dangerous for the unprepared, as the visions may draw you away from the baseline reality and leave you unable to find your way back. The world is full of depth, hidden behind visions, and the more time you spend there, the easier it is to tell on what levels others are experiencing reality. They may be physically near you, but most of the locals see and hear things visitors cannot, operating on deeper levels than visitors ever reach. The deeper you go, the less touch you have with physical reality, and it becomes very difficult to communicate between these levels of experience, making conversation with the locals often puzzling, as they tend to be high as balls.

The deeper you go, the easier it is to hear the music that suffuses the prime. The music is like a kind of background radiation, louder the more you sink into the depths of the world. It is a complex, beautiful music that can be almost hypnotic, formed from the voice of all life on Alucina intermingling. It draws listeners closer to the world, giving them a sense for how things will act, how they feel and think. The locals say this understanding is why song exists, and why they cherish their songs so much – the songs of the local people serve as a counter to the natural music of the prime, keeping everything from collapsing into a single unified point.

Alucina is not really a unified hegemony. Instead, it is divided into the Yachacs – Drum Yachac, Stone Yachac, Feather Yachac, Patcha Yachac and many more. Some Yachacs are secret, forbidden to be revealed to outsiders. The Yachacs freely intermix with each other – they are not nations, but rather groups whose membership is advertised by identifying symbols, tattoos, colors or articles of clothing. It is possible for a local to belong to multiple Yachacs, though they do not discuss with outsiders how this works, beyond that an individual selects their Yachac or Yachacs during late adolescence. Which Yacacs you belong to influences every aspect of life, from what foods you can eat to what cloth you may use to what rituals you perform to what songs you learn – which is most important. Songs are what keep Alucinian society going. Each song is magical, curated carefully over generations, and they serve as guides for the locals to move in and out of the music of Alucina and the altered states that it controls. Songs can lead you deeper in or back out to normal reality, saving your life as needed. The best songs can even reveal the truths of mysteries you never realized. Needless to say, songs are carefully guarded. You may hear snatches of them played on instruments like drums or bells, or bits being hummed, but it is exceptionally rude to ask to be taught a song without express offer of teaching first.

The most guarded songs are personal songs. A personal song is unique to each Alucinian, and is also called an ikara. They encompass someone’s identity, and sharing an ikara is the most intimate act an Alucinian native can perform. Visitors rarely have ikara themselves, having never had need to develop them, but a great way to earn respect and trust is by sharing pieces of favored childhood tunes or other songs of personal meaning. Many Alucinians also wear wooden masks, typically bearing ghoulish designs. This is intended to help the living and the ancestral dead feel at ease with each other and blend in. While it is not safe to assume anyone wearing a mask is dead, it is also unsafe to assume they aren’t. Outsiders often prize Alucinian masks for mystical powers they are believed to possess, and so like the songs, they are sometimes stolen and sold for high prices off-world.

The greatest danger to visitors of Alucina is the chance of getting lost in a vision without a song to save you. While this is not physically dangerous, remaining out of touch with reality for an extended period can often lead to permanent madness. Because of this, the locals maintain constant drumming at specific waypoints around the plane, to help people focus and find their way out of unwanted visions. Secondly, the foods and drinks can be dangerous if underestimated – combined with the ease of visions, their effects can be tapped to enable even deeper trance states, and it is vital to take their power seriously. Anything bitter-tasting or brown in color, especially, should be treated with respect. Of course, these are also what tend to bring visitors to Alucina in the first place; few visit if they aren’t interested in exploring altered states.

The songs of Alucina cannot be learned for the asking, but it is essential to learn at least one if you plan to remain on the prime for an extended period. The easiest way to earn permission to learn one is to give a gift of deep personal value. If you don’t care about losing it, they aren’t going to want to teach you one of their sacred songs for it. If you gave something you cared deeply about, however, it is likely that the locals will return the gift by offering to teach you a song as a show of welcome. Insincere gifts, however, bring trouble.

The other main reason to head to the prime is knowledge. The ancestors know many things dating back hundreds or even thousands of years, and they tend to enjoy being asked for advice if approached with respect. They – and the prime itself – can also be relied on as teachers of musical magic. The world seems to draw forth the inner talents of musical practitioners, allowing them to unlock their true abilities. It is also a good place to seek psychic therapy, though such healing can be violent and painful. Alucina provides ineffable answers to unaskable questions, written in the movements of the world and the music of the prime…as long as you remember the limits of your mortal form and avoid being trapped in vision and song.

The locals are not xenophobic, but they hate absolutely nothing more than song thieves – outsiders that come to raid their secrets and sell them on the planes. Being mistaken for a song thief or getting caught up in the schemes of one is extremely dangerous, for it will earn the wrath of nearly any Alucinian you meet…and their song magic can be potent indeed, honed over centuries of unlife. The plane is believed to be very close to the Plane of Lore, given how much forbidden and secret knowledge is found there, and the Plane of Justice, due to the presence of the ancestors. It is somewhere between the Plane of Life and the Plane of Death, but it is very difficult to figure out which one it’s closer to.

Next time: Crystalia, by Alex Roberts

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

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

Libertad! posted:

Here's the source of the rules text.


As a bite attack is quite clearly a form of "eating" for many monsters, I'd rule it as yes. Granted I can see some pedantic gamer going "you can bite something without eating it" but yeah.

A human can, but a crocodile can't! If a croc bites something, it's going to try to swallow it simply because its jaws are designed in such a way that it's very hard for it to do anything else.

Dawgstar
Jul 15, 2017

One other drawback - but not one I think they made in the documentary - for CWoD to NWoD is that initially NWoD had very few books that were fun to just read. As much as we rightfully poke fun at the fluff of the CWoD, a lot of people - myself included - bought a bunch of the books just to read. Even the recently reviewed Hunter: The Reckoning had two of my favorites with the Hunter's Survival Guide and The Walking Dead (no relation). For my money you didn't start to get stuff like that for NWoD until the Reqiuem Clanbooks which are a treat and probably CWoD's fluff in its final form.

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003

La morte non ha sesso
There is zero chance they would admit that a lot of people couldn't find anyone to play anything but D&D, so they remained a part of the fandom by buying the books just to read the lore. Not that there's anything wrong with that, per se.

Loxbourne
Apr 6, 2011

Tomorrow, doom!
But now, tea.

SirPhoebos posted:

I like one of the comments that was made in RPPR's review of Hunter: the Reckoning: that instead of being empowering, tragic or horrifying, the overall premise is comedic. "The moment a Hunter is Imbued and starts hearing the Messengers, it's accompanied by a slide whistle."

The dread and terrible TRUTH about the Hunters can now be revealed.

Rosemont
Nov 4, 2009

Libertad! posted:

Here's the source of the rules text.


As a bite attack is quite clearly a form of "eating" for many monsters, I'd rule it as yes. Granted I can see some pedantic gamer going "you can bite something without eating it" but yeah.

Yeah, I'd say yes for some monsters. It'd make the spell pretty handy if the party's warriors are getting chewed up one side and down the other.

EthanSteele
Nov 18, 2007

I can hear you
Lockjaw seems pretty straight forward on it just making someone's mouth locked shut. It's cured by Remove Paralysis. Implies to me there's no using your jaw at all and especially not for biting someone. Best you could get it getting your jaw locked open rather than shut and then pressing your teeth as hard as you can, but that's not really biting and sucks in other ways.

EthanSteele fucked around with this message at 23:50 on Jul 10, 2019

juggalo baby coffin
Dec 2, 2007

How would the dog wear goggles and even more than that, who makes the goggles?


Mors Rattus posted:

Sig: Manual of the Primes
The Land of Drugs



Alucina, by Whitney “Strix” Beltran
Beliefs
We are not really here.
We are guided by invisible music.
There are no barriers between the living and the dead.



this place seems like a real pain in the rear end to live in

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

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

juggalo baby coffin posted:

this place seems like a real pain in the rear end to live in

It's the land of 24-7 Ayahuasca Fairy Time, except with actual cosmic enlightenment. So...kinda, but not as bad as a lot of fantasy societies could be.

MadDogMike
Apr 9, 2008

Cute but fanged

EthanSteele posted:

Lockjaw seems pretty straight forward on it just making someone's mouth locked shut. It's cured by Remove Paralysis. Implies to me there's no using your jaw at all and especially not for biting someone. Best you could get it getting your jaw locked open rather than shut and then pressing your teeth as hard as you can, but that's not really biting and sucks in other ways.

I suppose depending on what control you have over your lips literally sucking could still be a go. Though now I wonder what would happen if you cast it on a Mind Flayer...

theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.

MadDogMike posted:

I suppose depending on what control you have over your lips literally sucking could still be a go. Though now I wonder what would happen if you cast it on a Mind Flayer...

Well facetacles may be eating apparati, but they aren't "jaws" as the spell states. Jaw is defined as the framework of the mouth in vertebrates. Depending on your DM it might stop the little beak in there?

Zereth
Jul 9, 2003



MadDogMike posted:

I suppose depending on what control you have over your lips literally sucking could still be a go. Though now I wonder what would happen if you cast it on a Mind Flayer...
The spell is clear: It makes them unable to speak or eat solid foods.

By popular demand
Jul 17, 2007
Probation
Can't post for 11 hours!
:cthulhu:Time to clean up the blender, brain shakes it is!

E: come to think of it, Brain Shakes is a good name for Koru disease:zombie:

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

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

I bet it ties their face tentacles into silly knots.

EthanSteele
Nov 18, 2007

I can hear you
Just gotta mush the food up, like when you have your jaw wired shut.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

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

Sig: Manual of the Primes
CRYSTALS



Crystalia, by Alex Roberts
Beliefs
What is done can never be undone.
Perfection is the only peace.
You can depend only on yourself.

Everything in Crystalia is soft pastel, though the landscape is hard and sharp-edged. Quartz, amethyst and other crystals erupt from the ground, filling the landscape. Neither plant nor animal lives on this prime – only the Crystalian primals, beautiful and fragile as dolls. It is hard to tell their cities from the landscape, for their architecture follows the same precise symmetries as natural crystal growths, and their artificial crystal lattices are no less perfect than natural ones. What reveals them is the humming produced by the inhabitants. Crystalians all vibrate, each at a particular frequency, to produce sounds of precise pitch and volume. Each city thus gains a unique soundscape from its inhabitants. Outside the cities are small crystal monasteries, mounted high on cliffs. Many choose to live out their lives in the quiet monasteries, where the hum is softer and more intermittent. Out on the outskirts of the prime, beyond the mountain cities, there are great valleys of broken, fragmented crystal which the wind grinds down to dust, sweeping them out into pastel crystal dunes. These deserts, while beautiful, are empty.

Language among the Crystalians is a matter of vibrational frequency, which they use to express thought, mood and intent. However, their verbal language is imprecise and difficult even for them to be communicate exactly with, and so it is considered very inappropriate to discuss matters of precision vocally. Math and science are exclusively the domain of writing and carving. This is exacerbated by the fact that Crystalians vibrate mostly involuntarily, requiring great effort on their part to control. There is great respect and awe for the rare monks that can will themselves to total silence. One important concept in their language is ‘broken’ or ‘shattered’ things. This refers not only to objects that no longer function, but to dead people, ended relationships and disproven ideas. Things “break” often in Crystalia, and the locals find it fascinating. They have no concept of repair or fixing what is broken.

Broken things (including the dead) are ground to a fine powder with precise ceremony and swept into the deserts. The Crystalians have a massive taboo against physical harm to anyone, and indeed do not even seem to grasp the concept of deliberately harming other people. They refuse to discuss the idea one being killing another except as a mistake. They also seem to reject the concept of physical intimacy. Crystalians grow from underground caverns, emerging into life intact, fully adult and physically perfect. Each takes centuries to form, but their fragility likely leads to both their extreme taboo against harming each other and their extreme fear of physical intimacy. It’s so easy for one of them to break.

Crystalian poetry is admired throughout the ‘verse, as their rhythmic, humming language combines music and spoken word easily. They believe that poems are incomplete if not performed, and performances are generally highly reverent and personal. Many attribute them healing powers, both physical and spiritual. The world is also famous for its trade goods. The Crystalians don’t really understand the concept of clothing or decoration, of course, and wear nothing on their crystalline forms. However, their mundane tools are made from precious gems, these being the most common resource on the prime, and are highly valued elsewhere. Diamonds are used to make writing tools, rubies and sapphires as part of construction. Rock salt is the most common mineral, but the locals consider it largely an annoying weed that grows everywhere and must be scraped off and sent to the deserts.

What the locals tend to value are objects of personal or spiritual significance. While many gems will not be missed, it is wise for visitors to learn toe recognize the ones people use as keepsakes – if stolen, these will be viciously pursued by the Crystalians. They have no weapons, of course, and will not physically harm you, but the sounds they make in anger are unbearable to hear for most other species, both physically and psychically. The locals consider food and excretion to be deeply disgusting, having no need of it themselves, and become terrified at the idea of hair falling off. They find hair amusing when it doesn’t fall off, but they panic and think you’re breaking if it does. It is considered exceptionally rude and inappropriate to ask to go to the desert.

The perfection of the crystal mountains and the tense peace that rules over the cities suggests Crystalia is close to the Plane of Order. The sharp, perfect fragility of the people also suggests closeness to the Plane of Ice. While the place is very beautiful, it is also utterly barren of most life. The Plane of Death is very close, and the Crystalians seem to be obsessed with the absolute nature of loss, valuing silence as the highest spiritual gift despite their vibrations being part of their basic life cycle.

Next time: Dimming Twilight, by Liz Chaipraditkul

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5