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In all seriousness you make a good point about meat cells being, uh, real and that's why currently the real work for quality of life improvements (and horrible unethical corporate decisions) can be found in biotech. Nature has already provided us with a solidly tested model of delivery and construction and since the dissemination of CRISPR technology and deeper analysis of DNA and genes, biotech has been making serious strides. We're nowhere near the transhumanist pipe dream of everyone (white cis dudes) being post-singularity powerhouses but stem cell experiments and gengineering are doing solid medical work these days. So why don't transhumanists really embrace biotech? It's because biotechnology still dies. It's not clean and it requires upkeep. Biotech may constantly reproduce and replicate itself and replace itself (like cells do) but it's still beholden to the limits of the flesh. It's not as resilient, it's not as fancy-dancy, it's not as sleek and shiny and cool. A damaged chassis will spark and leak coolant. A damaged torso bleeds and you make weird gurgling noises. These are people who are fundamentally more interested in a scenario where they're freed from the "tyranny" of flesh because some of these fleshly concerns are beneath them now, they just want an excuse to not engage with the flesh further. This isn't counting the people I know who have a solid reason for wanting cybernetic transhuman tech over biotech. I know folks with pain conditions and dysphoria and long-term health issues or disability that just want to stop worrying about that or change their quality of life or accessibility. I'm specifically talking about people who would go all-in on Soylent because food is a prison. I'm talking about people who would get a full-replacement chassis after brain uploading and then never do the robot equivalent of bathing and self-care (maintenance) because these things are beneath them now, now they can focus on being a being of intelligence inside of a static body that "needs no care". And that's why it's a pipe dream more than biotech, because people buy into the premise of "change your life and DO NOTHING to keep that new quality of life!" vs. the more plausible reality of "you're going to have to take some supplements to feed your biotech". If transhuman technology was a gun, biotech would be long-arms and shotguns used for hunting and home defense and modern transhumanism as proselytized by techbros would be like open-carrying an AR-15 at a Walmart. In short people want change without effort and consistently changing your own habits and the bad parts of the transhumanism actively and gleefully embrace that mindset and that's why biotech doesn't take off as much.
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Aug 18, 2019 22:32
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Night10194 posted:But souls are for stupid people, of course. Only an idiot would believe there's an immutable self that exists beyond your body. "We need to put our faith... in science!"
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Aug 18, 2019 22:49
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Kobolds Ate My Baby!: Part III – The Rest of the Character Sheet Skills Skills are the extra things your kobold has learned besides obeying King Torg, fighting, and eating. Each one is attached to a stat, which is the number you want to roll less than or equal to when using that Skill. While in previous editions your kobold simply got to pick one skill from each stat's list, in KAMB: In Color!!! your kobold gets a number of Skills equal to their Ego, max six*. They remain ADHD little buggers who can't focus enough to min-max, so you must take one skill from under each stat's list before you can take a second one from the same stat. Now, this section has been a bit of a clusterfuck in that I had to look through three different editions of the book to double-check (there is an example of skill use in play, but it isn't actually helpful) and finally discover that I've been running the game "wrong" this whole time. How Skills work RAW: Skills represent what your kobold can do at all, and attempting an action your kobold doesn't have a Skill for results in automatic failure unless you can convince the Mayor to let you substitute another Skill at the same Difficulty. How I thought Skills worked: Skills are what your kobold can do at standard Difficulty, and trying to do something outside their wheelhouse is going to be harder and result in a KHDC for being a filthy little cheater unless you can convince the Mayor to let you substitute another Skill, possibly at the same Difficulty, possibly not. I guess it's a common enough reading, because it's not clear at all in KAMB: In Color!!! that's how it works. The Midnight Massace GM ran it that way, even. Anyway. There are two more subcategories of Skills; "Dangerous!" Skills have been around since the beginning, and represent Skills too powerful for kobold hands. As I mentioned before, these are the Skills that always result in a KHDC on use, but usually don't require a roll - they just work. These are marked with an exclamation point at the end of the Skill. The other category, "Everykobold", is new - it only applies to the Extraneous Skill of Cook, which every kobold must take or start with another KHDC. While thematically appropriate, this rule doesn't need to exist IMO - kobolds have few enough Skills as it is, either give them all Cook or don't, there are loads of skills under Extraneous that can make for a funnier game if players get to choose freely. *unless your kobold's Ego is five exactly, in which case you get seven Skills and a KHDC for cheating  More kobolds to break up all the words The Skills I'll append a character sheet to the end of this post, but to call out a few of the Skills in particular: Duel! represents a kobold that actually knows how to fight, and can be used to make an opponent re-roll their attack against you at the cost of a KHDC. Fear! is tied in with kobold religion; they worship Vor*, the big red god of kobolds and anger (fair - imagine having to watch over these little bastards for eternity, you'd get pretty mad too). A kobold with the Fear! skill is actually capable of self-preservation and limited introspection, and can add their Cunning and Agility together to avoid danger, but take a KHDC because Vor hates cowards and kobolds being alive. Lackey! means your kobold served an evil wizard long enough to learn a spell, which gets rolled later. Spells are hilarious, make sure at least one person takes Lackey! so things at the table get rowdy. Lift ties into the equipment rules - kobolds have a right paw and a wrong paw, and can keep track of one item in each before their head starts to hurt - and allows your kobold equivalent of Atlas to carry more items at a time than any kobold was every meant to. Speak Human lets your kobold speak one word of human-ese per point of Ego. Choose wisely and/or for maximum hilarity; I usually allow "OHMIGAWD" as one word. Wiggle is great, fuzzy little dog people should all Wiggle. Wrassle can explicitly be used to turn combat time into dinner time with anything that your kobold can fit into its oversized mouth. *yeah I know, little orange eating machines worshipping Vore, it was written 20 years ago before that was a thing Edges, Bogies, and Other Little Bits Filling out character creation (before getting to equipment), we have +Edges and -Bogies. Yeah, merits and flaws. Every kobold starts with a couple of both which are just inherent kobold features, then rolls on a random table for one more of each (that can roll a result of "you don't have one of these"). Every kobold has refined senses, pointy little teeth and claws, and a mind too small for fear. +Bark Like A Kobold is a solid party game feature that every kobold gets, which lets you lower the Difficulty of any roll you're about to make by barking and growling and making noise - which must be bigger and better and louder than the previous time to count, so things get rowdy pretty quick. -Tastes Like Kobold is one of the other ones every kobold has, which just means animals and monsters will take notice of wounded kobolds because they smell so darn tasty. The randomly-rolled +Edges and -Bogies are decent, with a special shout-out to the doofiness of +Winning Smile: humans find your kobold adorable, and won't attack as long as you the player are making a big goofy smile. And now that we're done with all that, here's what a blank KAMB: In Color!!! character sheet looks like:  I am almost positive you can buy big pads of these, and hoo doggie are you gonna need 'em. Next time: Audience participation!
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Aug 19, 2019 00:13
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 Our next chapter, The GM and the Rules is.. well, probably one of the worst so far, and that's saying something. It falls into the unfortunately-common pattern in this kind of book of having a long series of disconnected paragraphs, and many of them don't really say anything. Knowing the rules says that the GM should understand the spirit of the rules in order to make consistent rulings, even if not the letter. Fair enough. Half a page. Cheating is one of the worst written sections on the topic I've seen, though. It starts by summarising the point of view that the GM can cheat, but the players can't, apparently because "the players need to make decisions for their characters based on an understanding of how the world works". I thought that was more of an argument against the GM cheating than the players doing so, but nobody's paying me to make major changes to D&D, so hey. It then mentions that Numenera encourages the players to alter things in the name of the story and includes the GM intrusion game mechanic, and that this shows that Monte is on the side of allowing the GM to cheat, even though if it's been made into a game mechanic it's not cheating any more. Unfortunately this is then followed by a paragraph saying that he "completely understands" the viewpoint that the GM shouldn't cheat because the players need consistency. In fact, it's expressed much better than the previous one: "if climbing up the roof of a house is easy one day and dangerously difficult the next, how can a player determine if that's something they want to do?... [The players] won't know how things work, and that will make them reluctant to try anything." You'd think there'd be a follow-up describing how to balance the two or find which the players prefer, but there isn't. The section just ends. House Rules says that if you want to make house rules, make sure everyone knows them and make sure the players are down with them. Logic and Believability takes a half-and-a-bit pages to say that when you have to make on-the-spot decisions about how things work, you should make sure they're believable. You can involve the players in this, but bear in mind that "players are motivated to have their characters succeed and be safe.. in other words, they're biased. Hopefully you are not." .. Um, aren't I motivated to that, then? And no, it doesn't address the elephant in the room of "what's not believable if you're a wizard?" Game Balance starts with clarifying that game balance isn't the same as believability, and can't be read outside of the context of an individual game - for example, you can't say that a knife dealing 4 points of damage is balanced or not if you don't know how the damage scaling in the game works. It's followed by a discussion on your fly spell and my handgun about the issues involved in balancing two things that might be completely different. There's a brief discussion of mathematical balance which is immediately thrown out with the statement "as a GM, don't do this", and then the bizarre statement: quote:A player is likely to make the choice that appeals to them, pay whatever price is attached, and move on. Go with your gut, and if your decision proves to be problematic later, change it. Whaaaaaaaaarrgh? Yes, the player may make the choice that appeals to them, but then they'll be upset if it turns out to be outright worse than the other choice. And if you're going to change choices later on that basis, then you're violating exactly the same consistency that was specifically mentioned as being important in the last section. Ugh. There's then a section on Fairness which basically says, it's completely subjective and it's not worth trying to balance depth against breadth and so we go for the cop out: quote:Think of it as adjusting the equalizer settings on your speakers when you listed to music. If it sounds to you and you're turning knows without hearing any difference, stop doing it. You're wasting your time. And if it doesn't sound good to me, what then? Oh. End of section. Instead, there's a section on Asymmetrical Gaming which mentions that actually you can play with wildly different power levels provided, uh, "no character equals or outshines someone else's strength". That's.. kind of.. game balance.. isn't it? Then, Balancing players and GM says that players and NPCs shouldn't have the same rules. This seems to be because NPCs and monsters are disposable, but the example given is one of an NPC being better than a PC, which surely isn't really justified by disposability? Um. Balancing Challenges starts with the good point that there should be a balance between easy, regular, especially hard, and impossible challenges in order to make the characters have a chance to feel powerful and the world complete. But that's followed by: quote:In some gaming styles, the GM never gives any of this much thought. The challenges are what they are. If the PCs enter the lair of a powerful dragon and pick a fight, they all die. They should have known better. This is the "sandbox" approach... I've never heard "sandbox" used to mean that before. Plus, of course, the GM would have to give this thought because they designed the sandbox; if there's a dragon then the GM put the dragon there (unless you're running from a module, I suppose). It's then added that every part of the encounter should be considered part of the balance - that is, an encounter where the PCs are ambushed at night is different from the PCs ambushing the same creatures during the day.. which means that you can't set the balance of a challenge without knowing what the players are going to do, or fudging it live, at which point you're just deciding on the fly.. look, I give up. This is totally the opposite of anything I've learned about this stuff. Resolving tasks and determining difficulty is our next section. The first section, Don't Roll Every Time contains this gem: quote:Some GMs have a motto that says, “When in doubt, have the player roll the dice.” That’s a dangerous position, I think. You want to take more responsibility for resolving tasks than that. You want the ability to say, “Okay, that just happens” or “No, that can’t happen” using logic. To use a silly example, if the PC says they want to walk across the room, and then rolls the die but rolls abysmally, now you’re put in a position where you feel compelled to explain how they failed to walk across the room. Likewise, if they say, “I launch an arrow at the moon” and then roll as high as the die will allow, are you expected to say that the arrow struck the moon? And if not, why did the player roll? If there's an easy logical resolution like that then why the flying gently caress would the GM consider themselves 'in doubt'? I mean, that just seems like some kind of catastrophic misunderstanding of that phrase. Graduated Success and Failure is something I'm sure I don't have to explain here. It says that you could maybe consider creating multiple difficulty thresholds and giving bonuses for rolls high above the given result, or giving partial successes for ones just below. The partial successes aren't in the form of PbtA style tradeoffs, though; the examples are that a PC who rolls a near miss to track some bandits could establish that something came down the path recently but they don't know if it was bandits (isn't that kind of useless then?) and a PC who rolls a near miss to build an electronic key to open a door might get an electronic key that works intermittently (in other words it now depends on GM fiat, thanks a bunch) Encouraging player creativity gives the very common advice on allowing players' creative solutions to work, but "you don't have to let them succeed.. the not-so-straightforward solution might end up being as hard or harder than the straightforward one, but you have to be ready to adjudicate the idea no matter what". Fair enough, I suppose, but basically already in the GMing section of every mainstream RPG I've ever seen. So... yea. More or less a chapter that makes some very well-known points that are correct but not really very valuable, and massively confuses some others. What have we to look for in the next chapter, Being a dynamic GM? We shall see. (I'll tell you what it doesn't contain, though: any statement of what a "dynamic" GM is, since everything in the chapter actually refers to being a "great" GM.)
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Aug 19, 2019 00:13
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Kobolds Ate My Baby!: Part IV – Audience Participation I know we aren't done with equipment and stuff yet, but that's all randomly rolled anyway so participation is irrelevant. Let's make some example kobolds! Give me a concept, and a stat-line or four 2D6 rolls. And then, tell me what stupid thing they were doing that was one KHDC too many. 
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Aug 19, 2019 00:18
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Night10194 posted:The extent to which futurism and all this junk reconstructs religious ideas, but with some technobabble thrown in so it isn't 'religious' and is instead 'rational', is legit fascinating.
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Aug 19, 2019 00:19
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Ruddyfur Behave, 6, 9, 4, 7. Tried to run for mayor of a nearby town on the campaign platform of "I am cute and will revitalize the baby-eating economy in this town".
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Aug 19, 2019 00:32
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hyphz posted:You can involve the players in this, but bear in mind that "players are motivated to have their characters succeed and be safe.. in other words, they're biased. Hopefully you are not." .. Um, aren't I motivated to that, then? And no, it doesn't address the elephant in the room of "what's not believable if you're a wizard?" The only thing I can think about this is like a PbtA Principle where if the fiction and mechanics demand that they get hurt and die, then you have to be honest and they get hurt and die, but I think that's giving Monte Cook too much benefit of the doubt on this one. hyphz posted:Instead, there's a section on Asymmetrical Gaming which mentions that actually you can play with wildly different power levels provided, uh, "no character equals or outshines someone else's strength". That's.. kind of.. game balance.. isn't it? This could be one character is 10 at fighting and one is 10 at wizarding so make them both equally useful in the story or it could be someone at 10 fighting and someone at 100 wizarding is fine as long as the wizard never tries to hit a thing with a sword as good as the other guy which ain't great and considering this is the guy responsible for third edition D&D I'd tend towards it being the latter. This book sucks.
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Aug 19, 2019 01:01
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Hostile V posted:In all seriousness you make a good point about meat cells being, uh, real and that's why currently the real work for quality of life improvements (and horrible unethical corporate decisions) can be found in biotech. Nature has already provided us with a solidly tested model of delivery and construction and since the dissemination of CRISPR technology and deeper analysis of DNA and genes, biotech has been making serious strides. We're nowhere near the transhumanist pipe dream of everyone (white cis dudes) being post-singularity powerhouses but stem cell experiments and gengineering are doing solid medical work these days. So why don't transhumanists really embrace biotech? Speaking as a bio nerd (and one that will work with bio for a living, albeit NOT genetic engineering), the biotech side of transhumanism is equally loving stupid and abusive of the science; just to name one particularly annoying thing CRISPR is hideously overhyped, and is only accurate by comparison to the predecessors - that Chinese professor that genetically engineered those two baby girls deserved whatever gawdawful thing the Chinese government did to him, because I would be very surprised if they made 50, and totally unsurprised if they didn't make 20. loving idiot breakdanced through their loving genomes, and that's before that the genotype is associated with an increased rate of death from the flu. StratGoatCom fucked around with this message at 03:00 on Aug 19, 2019 |
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Aug 19, 2019 02:51
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StratGoatCom posted:Speaking as a bio nerd (and one that will work with bio for a living, albeit NOT genetic engineering), the biotech side of transhumanism is equally loving stupid and abusive of the science; just to name one particularly annoying thing CRISPR is hideously overhyped, and is only accurate by comparison to the predecessors - that Chinese professor that genetically engineered those two baby girls deserved whatever gawdawful thing the Chinese government did to him, because I would be very surprised if they made 50, and totally unsurprised if they didn't make 20. loving idiot breakdanced through their loving genomes, and that's before that the genotype is associated with an increased rate of death from the flu.
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Aug 19, 2019 03:08
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StratGoatCom posted:Speaking as a bio nerd (and one that will work with bio for a living, albeit NOT genetic engineering), the biotech side of transhumanism is equally loving stupid and abusive of the science; just to name one particularly annoying thing CRISPR is hideously overhyped, and is only accurate by comparison to the predecessors - that Chinese professor that genetically engineered those two baby girls deserved whatever gawdawful thing the Chinese government did to him, because I would be very surprised if they made 50, and totally unsurprised if they didn't make 20. loving idiot breakdanced through their loving genomes, and that's before that the genotype is associated with an increased rate of death from the flu.
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Aug 19, 2019 03:26
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StratGoatCom posted:Speaking as a bio nerd (and one that will work with bio for a living, albeit NOT genetic engineering), the biotech side of transhumanism is equally loving stupid and abusive of the science; just to name one particularly annoying thing CRISPR is hideously overhyped, and is only accurate by comparison to the predecessors - that Chinese professor that genetically engineered those two baby girls deserved whatever gawdawful thing the Chinese government did to him, because I would be very surprised if they made 50, and totally unsurprised if they didn't make 20. loving idiot breakdanced through their loving genomes, and that's before that the genotype is associated with an increased rate of death from the flu. The current state of the art? Yeah... I would not care for some hack trying to stuff baby genomes into the CRISPR drawer. Accuracy of current technology aside (and the sheer complexity of human genomes. There's way more involved than just nucleotide base sequences.), there's also the fact that genes don't really work the way people think. There's not really a 'gay gene' or a 'smart gene' or a 'live longer' gene or 'have an elephant trunk' gene. Even something as seemingly simple as skin color relies on a number of intertwined genes and the resulting system they create that manages skin and its pigmentation. Genes don't make things happen like that. They're not computer code. They code the proteins that under the correct conditions assemble into complex molecular machinery that when permitted to operate (by an array of environmental and biological triggers and inhibitors) will take a place in larger, more complex systems that hopefully digest food into raw materials. Or, I dunno, let you play elfgames. An amateur 'biohacker' trying their hand at it is only likely to create misery and horror. If it has any noticeable effect at all. Still, it's infinitely more plausible that one could make an elf (sans magic) than becoming a 'perfect metal god' in the future.
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Aug 19, 2019 03:28
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Hostile V posted:If transhuman technology was a gun, biotech would be long-arms and shotguns used for hunting and home defense and modern transhumanism as proselytized by techbros would be like open-carrying an AR-15 at a Walmart. I wouldnt' describe it that way because It's more like the future they envision is actually fiction and they're either delusional, grifting, or some hosed up combination of both.
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Aug 19, 2019 03:35
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All that said I would like more transhuman crazy future poo poo that's about biopunk just because I think it would be cool. Custom engineered organisms and weird creatures and odd biological forms would be way cooler than more robit bodies. And really, that's all any of this is likely to be, fiction and aesthetics.
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Aug 19, 2019 03:39
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Night10194 posted:All that said I would like more transhuman crazy future poo poo that's about biopunk just because I think it would be cool. Custom engineered organisms and weird creatures and odd biological forms would be way cooler than more robit bodies. And really, that's all any of this is likely to be, fiction and aesthetics. Do I have the RPG for you! thumps a copy of Hc Svnt Dracones on the table
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Aug 19, 2019 03:57
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Look I really like Panzer Dragoon, okay? It made a really strong impression on Young Night. It is also completely doable in Myriad Song with a little work because they're both based on similar aesthetic inspirations in part.
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Aug 19, 2019 03:59
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Update: Deniable Assets just dropped an update, so I need to do all my background reading again.
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Aug 19, 2019 04:00
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hyphz posted:Instead, there's a section on Asymmetrical Gaming which mentions that actually you can play with wildly different power levels provided, uh, "no character equals or outshines someone else's strength". That's.. kind of.. game balance.. isn't it? I think what Cook's getting at here is niche protection. Like, years and years ago I ran a game of Mutants and Masterminds for three players. Sir Fang was an unkillable melee combat monster. Flamethrower had flight, ranged attacks, and a positive Charisma modifier. And Tesla could do literally everything else through the ab/use of variable power pools. And this was fine! Tesla was fairly ineffective in a fight, and couldn't reliably fly or interact with human beings, but he was a phenomenal utility guy. His flexibility made him much more powerful than the other two, but no-one minded because they were each the best in their own areas of expertise. This isn't an ideal form of game balance, but it can work. It depends on the powerful player (the one with system mastery, usually) deliberately sitting back and letting other people have spotlight time.
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Aug 19, 2019 09:33
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Hey, Night10194, I guess I owe you thanks for all the Warhammer writeups - got me back into Hams and your Paths of the Damned reviews became a base for what is gearing up to be one of the more satisfying games I've GMd in years, and we're only two sessions into Forges of Nuln. I'm running the campaign in reverse order because it makes more sense too me to start bumbling around in Nuln, move on to Altdorf and end with a climactic battle against a Khornate Bloodthirster in the Temple of Ulric. But, let's not plan that much ahead, with those people's ability to veer off the path I won't be surprised if my players somehow end up sinking Lustria.. But anyway, thanks.
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Aug 19, 2019 09:43
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I'm glad you enjoyed it, I really enjoyed doing that writeup over all those years.
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Aug 19, 2019 13:02
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kommy5 posted:The current state of the art? Yeah... I would not care for some hack trying to stuff baby genomes into the CRISPR drawer. Accuracy of current technology aside (and the sheer complexity of human genomes. There's way more involved than just nucleotide base sequences.), there's also the fact that genes don't really work the way people think. There's not really a 'gay gene' or a 'smart gene' or a 'live longer' gene or 'have an elephant trunk' gene. Even something as seemingly simple as skin color relies on a number of intertwined genes and the resulting system they create that manages skin and its pigmentation. Genes don't make things happen like that. They're not computer code. They code the proteins that under the correct conditions assemble into complex molecular machinery that when permitted to operate (by an array of environmental and biological triggers and inhibitors) will take a place in larger, more complex systems that hopefully digest food into raw materials. Or, I dunno, let you play elfgames. Is it time for an Alpha Centauri quote? Yes, yes it is (it is always time), and it's something that the EP writers should read: Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, the last good transhumanist/singulatarian piece of fiction as it wasn't wrote by true believers posted:
I'm doubtful, personally, that genetic engineering will will ever get that accurate - it's one thing to piece together virii from bits brought off the deep web, those things have genome whose size in discrete genes can be counted on two hands, quite another to tinker with tetrapods. Also, words do not describe the sheer AM level loathing that the word 'biohacker' causes in me, as it aptly encapsulates the kind of silicon valley arrogance that transhumanism is made from. Imagine thinking you could be loving around with biochemistry or genes like it's a Raspberry Pi or other piece of techie shite like that. Imagine the arrogance. It's sheer  ; Those idiots who call themselves that regularly poison themselves, IIRC.Transhumanism, as a subculture today is pure  all the way down, and EP makes a good sample to jump off on and own it from.
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Aug 19, 2019 13:38
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we see the results of gene editing all the time, it's called cancer
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Aug 19, 2019 13:56
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juggalo baby coffin posted:we see the results of gene editing all the time, it's called cancer Or any virus. Look at me, I've biohacked my nasal passage to spew infective mucus! Glory to the influenza!
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Aug 19, 2019 14:11
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StratGoatCom posted:sheer AM level loathing I love your whole post, and this in particular.
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Aug 19, 2019 14:21
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Aberrant d20 Edition Why was any of this helpful? I was inspired to do this writeup by the passages in Hunter: The Reckoning that kept talking about how the game's rules weren't really an important part of the game (despite it having a shitton of rules that took up a lot of the book) and you could just ignore them if you wanted. While I talked about it there, and I'm sure I've said it enough to make everyone here sick of it, mechanics are part of the fiction of an RPG. They're part of why you're playing an RPG instead of sitting with friends and collaboratively writing fiction with improvised dialogue. Even in very, very 'fiction focused' games, the mechanics are part of how you get that focus on the fiction; well-made PbtA games are still designed with mechanics that will reinforce their themes and help drive the fiction. Hunter's complete disregard for the role of its own mechanics explains a lot about why its mechanics were so poor. That brought to mind the separation between Storyteller Aberrant and d20 Aberrant for me. I have only ever played/run d20 Aberrant, but there already being a pretty good review of Storyteller Aberrant was enough to help me get a grasp on just how powerful Storyteller Aberrant Novas were. This was, thus, a perfect chance to really talk about a setting whose fluff was made for the Storyteller demigods but whose crunch was d20 shovelware by people who had no idea what makes a d20 character powerful. So here, you're being told Divis Mal is literally invincible, and that may've been true in the Storyteller version, but it's just not here. Oh, sure, a guy with like 12 Quantum and all the Megas and powers is dangerous and has very high numbers, but high numbers can be overcome in ways that the other system's super-powerful people couldn't be. A level 20 human character is still very powerful! Especially when you get Superscience in on the party, but that's just because Superscience is implemented without any thought as to how insanely powerful some of its options are. Really, the rest of the setting's mechanics are so full of caveats and limiters that Superscience is a huge outlier. Because the writers didn't understand d20, or action economy (most powers will remove your ability to multiattack; if my main options are pure damage anyway since there aren't many good disablers in Aberrant d20 I'd rather have claws, super strength, and 4 attacks), a Nova is lacking in the things that make d20 wizards and clerics so dangerous. So a Nova ends up being a human with higher stats and a few tricks and bonuses, especially because the power slots are so stingy and everything is tied to Feats that characters still don't get many of. Which then changes the entire tenor of the 'in universe' half of the book, which is all about how completely invincible and awesome Novas are but is also presented through the lens (mostly) of an in-universe reality TV network dedicated to hyping up Novas for ratings. So when I first read this book, because my first experience was the d20 version, my first impression was 'clearly Novas have really good publicity that makes them come off as more powerful than they really are'. My impression of the setting was one where people were so awed by the existence of superhuman powers that no-one had really noticed that, say, your average flying dude could be shot down by an attack helicopter. The world had changed and things were really interesting, and of course people were very excited by these sudden 'demigods' and wanted to know all about them, but I never got the impression that 3-6 Novas could knock over a nation the way you're meant to. And that was entirely a function of the in-universe fluff/unreliable/inconsistent narrators (hey there, WW) and the mechanics not backing up the hype at all. My impression of the game and my reading of its themes was completely different than intended because I read the version where Novas start out as 3rd level schlubs and Quantum Powers mostly suck. Because the mechanics matter! Aberrant d20 is not a good game. But it is a very, very different game, despite trying to be the same game. You even see it in the design; they directly try to port in Power Stats and a corruption meter and Backgrounds and all kinds of stuff right from Storyteller in ways that don't fit into the system no matter how much you use the crowbar. But it doesn't work, because the underlying system is very different, resources are much more hard-limited, characters are much more durable, and they really didn't understand how to even make pure damage useful. Seriously, 20d6 Fort Save for Half at Level 20 with a 3rd level power that does nothing but try to disintegrate people? That's what you replace a 6 Agg minimum kill-move with? That's the level you should be getting into Save or Dies if you want to simulate that power. Aberrant d20's differences in tone and how the mechanics make you read the fluff are an excellent example of just how much mechanics matter to the writing in an RPG; if you try to play out the Storyteller style's stories with the d20 system, you'll have a bad time. Same for the other way around. The d20 version is better for lower powered adventures or stories about the hype and awe of Novas (and how it might not match the reality), and that's fine. That's actually the sort of thing I'd want out of a conversion, because I'd want the game to be meaningfully different in another system. Otherwise, why are you bothering to convert, beyond it being 2004 and the first question after any genre is 'can I run it in d20?' in a lot of gaming circles (the answer is usually no, you should probably have a more focused system, because d20 was made for a different kind of game). And so that's Aberrant d20. Same terrible fluff as Storyteller, but with the added bonus of the Novas coming off as posing prima-donnas who don't have the power to back up their flashy costumes. Which ironically lends it better to 'realistic superheroes' than the original. In the original, the writers could whine about how nobody in their costumed world of superpeople would be a super-criminal, ignoring that someone with Nova powers could do that just because they felt like it. Novas' reputations being partly a product of flashy media campaigns and the awe of the new honestly works better for me as 'superman has a publicist' style superhero stuff. Aberrant has the same fundamental insecurity as Hunter, where the authors really want a cool superhero setting, but are also afraid to be caught reading comic books so they slather it in some rape and conspiracy and gore and try to play it all off as ironic and 'so much more REAL than that comic book nonsense, MAAAN'. Adding the issues of the d20 conversion to that ends up creating an even more incoherent and insecure setting, but it also creates a much better jumping off point for altering the original and ditching some of the hyperbole to write a story where the average superperson has an edge but isn't a huge deal. I had a lot of fun writing about a world where the average Nova is like, a super-chef or amazing guitarist or hyper-athlete and most of them never even think about seeing combat. It was a lot of fun to write about people dealing with Nova Crimes (by which I mean crimes committed by Novas, but also crimes committed against them, since Nova celebrities and things tended to be really rich and lucrative targets and since this was the d20 version, weren't unassailable) and doctors dealing with Aberration and trying to understand how all this happened. And I don't think I could have gotten that story out of the Storyteller version. The mechanics didn't really help, and this in no way means the d20 version is any good; I just found the way it changes the tone of the setting useful when I was playing it a long time ago. Mechanics matter. Mechanics will always matter. The fact that old WW thought they didn't and would talk about that at length in their games is part of the reason their games were such a goddamn mess. The End
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Aug 19, 2019 14:27
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Don't forget that the horrible torture computer death future is definitely going to come about because even though it's an infinitely low probability chance that it will happen. There's still a chance, and if you simulate enough realities then that becomes a 100% chance to occur. Except nothing is 100% guaranteed to happen, except simultorture, so give me your money. His understanding of probability irritates me.
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Aug 19, 2019 14:33
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Also that a lot of transhuman thinking is again, along the same contours as eugenics. 'There is a superior state that exists, and has more value, based on its power/intelligence/strength of 5 gorillas robot body' isn't that different from 'If the right people and only the right people are allowed to have children there will be a better humanity' because they both proceed from the idea that an increase in power is desirable rather than focusing on the idea that personhood itself is the undiminished value of a human being. That same sort of thinking is also how you get stuff like Hunter: The Reckoning telling you to use the 'sheeple' as props, because only the radical magicmen and their monster enemies have any real personhood or value through their superior power and coolness.
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Aug 19, 2019 14:37
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So much of old White Wolf seems to be based around realizing a lot of old games are based on adolescent power fantasies and rejecting that, shouting "I'm an adult!!", and so you have the pushback mechanics in a lot of their games where any blatant power-seeking on the part of the player or character results in some punishment being levied against them. But at the same time they didn't really move far beyond the basic structure of RPGs at the time, which were still largely get powers get xp get more powers. And to be clear, I'm not condemning that kind of game. But eventually you had games that started to deal with their internal conflict better like Orpheus or Changeling: the Lost, where you might get new cool powers but you're in so deep that it's slightly academic. But a lot of early White Wolf games feel like the bait and switch of "here's this really cool thing!" and "actually it turns out it suuucks isn't that deep?!"
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Aug 19, 2019 15:02
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StratGoatCom posted:Is it time for an Alpha Centauri quote? I love Alpha Cent's quotes, you can piece together so much story and lore entirely from them. But yeah, even Alpha Cent was like 'and by the way this takes literally centuries of research to get to by the post-singularity space humans dedicated solely to amoral scientific advancement.'
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Aug 19, 2019 15:07
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Alien Rope Burn posted:So much of old White Wolf seems to be based around realizing a lot of old games are based on adolescent power fantasies and rejecting that, shouting "I'm an adult!!", and so you have the pushback mechanics in a lot of their games where any blatant power-seeking on the part of the player or character results in some punishment being levied against them. Even 1st edition CofD books lean pretty hard on "You're cool and that's literally the worst thing to happen to you except for potentially getting cooler." 2nd edition is better about it. Mors Rattus posted:I love Alpha Cent's quotes, you can piece together so much story and lore entirely from them. I happened to be watching an AC LP yesterday and the quote for advanced spaceflight is "Stop asking me 'We came here on a spaceship why don't we have satellite TV already!?', we came here on a spaceship, not a rocket launch pad with advanced smelting and metallurgical facilities and enough free roaming nitrates to launch a rocket into geostationary orbit." attributed to the war-like faction, rather than, say, the scientist or Lal.
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Aug 19, 2019 15:21
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Alien Rope Burn posted:So much of old White Wolf seems to be based around realizing a lot of old games are based on adolescent power fantasies and rejecting that, shouting "I'm an adult!!", and so you have the pushback mechanics in a lot of their games where any blatant power-seeking on the part of the player or character results in some punishment being levied against them. The thing is, they don't reject the adolescent power fantasies in the slightest. They just say they do. Most of the games still gleefully assign agency to those with more and greater power, the people with greater power just aren't the PCs. It's why I say it's insecurity; the games want to have pages and pages of magicman powers and tend to assign greater worth to the magicman (because they are cooler) but try to claim they're not about that. It's the same as all the 'flipping the script' stuff. If Aberrant's conceit was that people who mutate in body are the sane ones, who can remain empathic and caring and all while those who refuse to let their image be destroyed suffer from dark urges and hidden, internal darkness? That would be one thing. The weird mutants being the people who were able to let go of image and fame and remain able to care while the beautiful demigods who strut about TV are all going mad and going to push the world to the brink? That'd even be a solid theme about celebrity, image, and fame. But instead it's mostly there so they can talk about how Mal is right and the Null Manifesto is totes overall correct. They forget to actually flip the script, they just tell you the lovely wizard hitler is right about the setting's biotruths so what're you gonna do? Man the Aberrant War would be way cooler if it was all the weird tentacle people and stuff that everyone rejected as the obvious 'monsters' coming out of the woodwork to save the world from the pampered demigods.
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Aug 19, 2019 15:24
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its very important to have your gm pc dominate when writing a roleplaying game, especially if you're the type of person who gets mad about SJWs on twitter.
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Aug 19, 2019 15:29
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Alien Rope Burn posted:So much of old White Wolf seems to be based around realizing a lot of old games are based on adolescent power fantasies and rejecting that, shouting "I'm an adult!!", and so you have the pushback mechanics in a lot of their games where any blatant power-seeking on the part of the player or character results in some punishment being levied against them. 
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Aug 19, 2019 15:30
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Halloween Jack posted:The biggest flaw in White Wolf's narrative mechanics, and those of its many imitators, is that they mostly take the form of a big stick for the GM to beat you with when you're "rollplaying not roleplaying" And do that while existing in a very crunchy system that strongly encourages trying to build a character carefully so that you can actually do any of the things you want to do. E: One of the reasons I hate 'rollplaying not roleplaying' is that a lot of these systems demand/encourage some degree of system mastery to get to do things. It's not really optimizing or whatever when my goal is 'what do I actually need to be able to be a warrior, or a scientist, or a spy and actually have my character have a chance at succeeding at these things', but they actively try to discourage you asking those questions because that's 'rollplaying' by worrying about the mechanics. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 15:38 on Aug 19, 2019 |
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Aug 19, 2019 15:33
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Ah, but by analyzing the math, you've just proven that you're a rules lawyer, not a real roleplayer. The White Wolf devs could have balanced their mechanics, but then they'd be rules lawyers! You don't want rules lawyers writing a storytelling game, do you? Now, to get back to writing this sourcebook that's 3/4 in-character fiction printed in an illegible "handwritten" font...
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Aug 19, 2019 15:38
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Halloween Jack posted:Ah, but by analyzing the math, you've just proven that you're a rules lawyer, not a real roleplayer. The White Wolf devs could have balanced their mechanics, but then they'd be rules lawyers! You don't want rules lawyers writing a storytelling game, do you? Don't forget the incomprehensible intro fiction where the POV character is an unstoppable ubermench and has literally all the sex ever because we're a game for adults.
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Aug 19, 2019 15:41
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Night10194 posted:Man the Aberrant War would be way cooler if it was all the weird tentacle people and stuff that everyone rejected as the obvious 'monsters' coming out of the woodwork to save the world from the pampered demigods.
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Aug 19, 2019 15:42
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One of the reasons I held up Spire as an example of what they actually want (if they want what they say) when I was writing up Hunter is because 'What does it take to be a decent warrior?' is 'Have the Fight skill and maybe a Domain like Order so you're ex-military or police before you got radicalized'. By having such a binary thing, and having only a few skills and domains and having them all useful, they were free to make your actual class really flavorful and weird but also to let players just make a concept, plop down what that gives them, and bam, useful PC. Like 'I'm a Midwife but my Durance was in the army because they like forcing sacred caretakers to use their spider powers to fight for them and this kills off some Midwives' gets you a coherent, useful character. Or 'I'm a local priest, but I was forced to be a trained killer by my master in my Durance' gets you a Lahjan who knows normal Lahjan stuff but also has the surprise knife in the back trick he can pull off. Whatever background you took in Spire would make you good at the thing you wanted to be good at because it didn't have shitloads of granularity and so it was much easier to just throw down a concept that sounded cool and fly with it.
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Aug 19, 2019 15:44
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Night10194 posted:Also that a lot of transhuman thinking is again, along the same contours as eugenics. 'There is a superior state that exists, and has more value, based on its power/intelligence/strength of 5 gorillas robot body' isn't that different from 'If the right people and only the right people are allowed to have children there will be a better humanity' because they both proceed from the idea that an increase in power is desirable rather than focusing on the idea that personhood itself is the undiminished value of a human being.  'dI'm an autistic enbie; that poo poo gives me mondo hives for exactly that reason, as I'm something of a amateur historian; the whole reason 'Aspergers'' existed as a separate diagnosis is to sort out the 'good ones' from the ones of us that got gassed; I read about the kind of future that the EP lot are  over and honestly... why do NTs want to put themselves in the same situation as folks like me?I'm also reminded of the attitudes that drained swamps and caused flooding problems or destroyed the Aral sea, but applied to our own biology; if we tampered with germlines, we could do a lot of damage to ourselves and it would be a while before it was apparent. Imagine being an anarcho-transhumanist or other 'left' transhumanist. Imagine looking at grifter bullshit and cover for the rich enhancing themselves or the the latest thing DARPA came up with to kick the poo poo out of dirt farmers with janky AKs and thinking there's something to salvage there. Edit: Do recall that transhumanism as a name came about when eugenics got too radioactive, do recall. Edit: Mors Rattus posted:I love Alpha Cent's quotes, you can piece together so much story and lore entirely from them. Also, I'd rather play a Clanner then a AA type; Clanners earn a lot of points for being honest about what the hell they're about. StratGoatCom fucked around with this message at 16:16 on Aug 19, 2019 |
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Aug 19, 2019 15:46
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Aug 19, 2019 15:55
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