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Geist rules, when you're done with it That Old Tree, do yourself a favor and skim the 1e core book and see how much stuff that's great in 2e isn't there in the first edition including rules for interacting with your Geist in any way, or having anything at all to do or any conflicts baked into the setting.
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Sep 20, 2019 01:58
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Hostile V posted:Mama's pretty dope but the ending drags quite a lot.
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Sep 20, 2019 02:16
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:Geist rules, when you're done with it That Old Tree, do yourself a favor and skim the 1e core book and see how much stuff that's great in 2e isn't there in the first edition Holy crap on the spoilers. I'd say especially the second but both are kinda crazy.
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Sep 20, 2019 02:21
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Zhyhyzak started out her life destroying a pussy, and resolved to spend the rest of her life destroying pussies. I think the fact that she wears weird dominatrix outfits but isnt even slightly interested in being seductive is a unique twist on the usual 'evil dominatrix' trope. Also, i would like to marry her.
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Sep 20, 2019 04:14
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HONEY CAN YOU SWEEP THE TRASH INTO THE WYRMMAW WE'RE EXPECTING THE TZIMISCE FOR DINNER AT SEVEN
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Sep 20, 2019 04:47
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1994 Toyota Celica posted:HONEY CAN YOU SWEEP THE TRASH INTO THE WYRMMAW I would absolutely watch this sitcom.
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Sep 20, 2019 04:54
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That Old Tree posted:
Dang, high praise indeed. Looking forward to following along and hearing your thoughts!
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Sep 20, 2019 09:41
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No bones about it!
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If you enjoy geist I would definitely reccomend expiration date. It's such a very CoD book
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Sep 20, 2019 12:12
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I like ZrkZrk's portrait in the WW Wikia, but it's not that sfw to put here.
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Sep 20, 2019 13:41
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Night Horrors: The Tormented Part 13: Who Can Take A Sunrise, Sprinkle It With Dew  Cover it with choc'late and a miracle or two Stan Wigg was never a great alchemist. He had a lovely garage lab and a messy divorce thanks to his "disgusting hobby" taking up all his time and leaving none for his husband. He managed to luck into a formula for granting immense strength, and he managed to use it exactly once. He knocked over a jewelry store. That's when men in suits showed up and made him an offer he couldn't refuse. He has joined Amalgama, Ltd now, if reluctantly, and he's found that it's not as profitable as you might think. He'd dreamed of becoming a supervillain immune to the law, but now he's stuck on the corporate ladder, working to make new elixirs so his bosses can rake in money he never sees. He used his works to improve his abilities and came up with a plan, smuggling out a large stash of supplies. He's set up a new lab in an abandoned roller skating rink on an old road no one uses any more. He swore to never again be someone else's pawn, and has instead become a fairly wealthy man in the alchemical black market. Stan is a pale, unimpressive man from England, but while he's scruffy and years out of fashion, his mind is sharp and he has a knack for survival and passing blame. While he can make himself physically potent, he's a coward and prefers to do business through layers of cutouts and minions. He never deals directly with Prometheans, or 'the raw stock' as he calls them, if he can help it, and if he feels danger is coming, he skips town immediately. He hates Amalgama for using him, but even he admits he learned a lot from them. They were more mob than company, and he's adapted their tactics in protection rackets, intimidation and bribery. He's also happy to make deals with supernatural beings that want alchemical mixtures and sometimes hires them as muscle. He talks a lot about making money, and while he's got quite the income, his cravings are honestly more important to him. At first, using his concoctions was a necessary evil to help protect him against Amalgama thugs or angry Prometheans. That's still true, technically, but Stan's an addict now. Stan uses his product regularly, though out of practicality most of it is actually given to his minions and hirelings to buff them up. They use precision hit-and-run tactics to grab their victims before they can fight back. If a throng catches them by surprise - or worse, Stan - then they'll have a much easier time. Stan's got more than just his magic, though. He knows a lot about Amalgama and their operations, and their thugs are after him. Their global presence as a corporation makes avoiding them harder than he'd expected, though he's done well so far. His entire business relies on secrecy, and its visible arms receive only the minimum required information to function. He loves being free of obeying laws and loves to gloat whenever he avoids trouble by shoving someone else into its path. Unfortunately, this means a lot of folks are very mad at him for betraying them. Stan also keeps one thing secret even from his closest associates: his therapist. See, Stan doesn't care about ethics, but he does find the idea that he might be addicted to something worrying. That therapist has now been dragged into the world of supernatural crime, and Stan doesn't really care about the shock he's given her. He'd prefer not to kill her if at all possible, but if it's that or get compromised, he'll do it. Stan will sell to literally anyone, even the Prometheans he attacks for parts. It's all business, and if he can make a buck selling Vitriol back its former owners, then hey, why not. Prometheans can, if they can stomach it, turn to him for Vitriol, Pyros, potions or other alchemical goods via the black market. Rumors of Stan's secrets have been getting out, too - specifically, the ones he's given to Joanna DiMaria, his therapist. Her confidential notes contain vast amounts of information on the Candyman, as Stan is known in criminal circles. She'd never share them, but someone's stolen them and made a copy anonymously. They contain information on Stan's addiction and character...but the moment he realizes someone's making use of them, he's going to kill Joanna, as she won't be able to convince him she didn't betray him. Also, Stan's working with the Ordo Dracul. He's sharing notes with them on a project to mix Vitae with alchemical reagents to make new things, including using Promethean experimentation. Stan and the Ordo didn't, despite persistent rumor, make a Promethean vampire, but they tried. What they actually ended up making was a Pandoran monster that superficially resembled a vampire. Just one problem: neither Stan nor his Ordo friends can control the thing. But hey, practice makes perfect, right? Next time it'll work. They just need more test subjects. Stan is clever and very cunning but not a genius, and is otherwise unremarkable as a human. He's a skilled crafter and a decent scientist, but his real skills are in crime, sneaking and gathering information off the street. His allies in the alchemist, supernatural criminal and drug dealer communities make him dangerous, though, and he's pretty wealthy. His alchemical concoctions are primarily focused around improving mental or physical abilities and impersonating other people.  NAME IT AND CLAIM IT Trevor Dinh once saw a wheel of flame and eyes that gave him prophecy: his own preordained death at the hands of a monstrous and yet divine created being. He begged for guidance, but the vision vanished. Until then, Trevor had been a corrupt local politician, succeeding on the strength of his illegal blackmail on foes. The qashmal's power, however, awakened in him a sixth sense for Pyros and changed everything. He took it as a sign of his own rebirth as the messiah of the Divine Fire's gospel. He has gathered a cult, the Order of the Ineffable Flame, to seek its truth. What did the Fire want, what shape would the world have once it achieved its Great Work? He has vowed to find out and cause it - and, well, convince the Divine Fire that's better for it alive than dead. The Order conspires to influence politics and economic issues. People join it in search of meaning, but those that stick around tend to be the ones that get off on its false humility and humble-brag chosen one theology. Prometheans are venerated as figureheads and vehicles of ambition in the rise through the Order's ranks, though Trevor and the true believers do in fact think the Created are closer to the Divine Fire than humanity. Most Prometheans have no desire at all for religious veneration, however, and Trevor's teachings say the Order are the Principle's truest disciples, meant to shepherd the chosen and bring about the world's destiny. If that happens to benefit the Order...well, why wouldn't God care for its own? Trevor is a stocky but dignified Vietnamese-American man in his early 40s. He's a skilled leader with cutthroat instincts honed in politics. He recruits from those who want guidance that's vague enough that he can fill in the blanks with dogma, especially among those who have wealth and power. He is a true believer in his own bullshit, but that only makes him more dangerous, especially as he's more than happy to manipulate the Prometheans he worships in order to change his preordained fate. Trevor is able to sense Pyros and follow it to its source, a gift he believes was granted him by the Principle, though it's unclear if that's true or it was just a side effect of the qashmal's visitation. To Prometheans, he is deferent and even reverent, but he's happy to subtly nudge them into doing what he wants. The prophecy the qashmal gave him has made a domino effect of destruction. Trevor and his cult are slowly destroying themselves and twisting Pilgrimages to their own ends. Everything they do ends in tragedy. It isn't deliberate, of course. Trevor may be ruthless, but he genuinely believes the Created are agents of divinity, and he's generous to them when it suits him. Trevor made a life out of gathering dirt on his political foes and blackmailing them. He does the same now, just in the name of the Principle. One of his ex-cultists, Barbara Lovett, questioned Trevor's methods after she became friends with a Promethean and learned about their Pilgrimage. She soon got fired from her job and removed from her position in the Order, with strict instructions to never speak to another of the chosen, or else. Whenever Trevor brings in a Promethean, Disquiet inevitably means the cult betrays them or treats them badly eventually. He convinced an Unfleshed that she would be nothing without him and would lose her Azoth if she left. She was a slave for months until her throng found her and took her back, and Trevor only survived by calling favors from the cops to run the Prometheans out of town on false charges. He has told no one of his prophesied death, as he is determined to change the Principle's mind and doesn't want a martyr narrative. The closer he gets to death, the more Pyros works through him to warp the area, though he is unaware of this. If a Centimanus taught him to control it, he would became an even greater threat. Prometheans that buy into Trevor's message believe that he channels the Principle in a way that even qashmallim cannot. It tends to take a while for them to realize he's fake, because he certainly doesn't know it himself, and his powers support the illusion. None of his Promethean figureheads have completed their Pilgrimages, but the rumors that he can lead them to the New Dawn persist, even though at least one has become Centimanus. The main reason the rumors persist is that some of his pet projects vanish, largely due to Torment. Many believe he has agents in the FBI, CIA or other groups; Trevor does, in a sense, have agents or at least significant pull in some government agencies and secret organizations in the US, Canada and parts of Europe and Asia. Largely, this is because his influence is growing among impressionable, needy people whose careers he coopts. He's not particularly interested in controlling world affairs, though if he got enough Promethean patsies he might consider it. Trevor's Centimanus follower is a dupe driven off her Pilgrimage by Trevor's manipulation. She's caught up in the downward spiral that the Cult doesn't realize is its true nature. She needs help but doesn't know how to ask for it, and Promethean rumor has some thinking she's the one running the cult rather than the cult controlling her. Trevor is smart, strong-willed and very, very manipulative. He's not a combatant by any stretch, but he employs people who are. He has friends in high places in government and a number of secret societies like the Freemasons, and he's wealthy. His cultists are always on hand to defend him from threats, and may have a Promethean on hand to help as well. You can, side note, play a member of the Order. Ineffable Flame Initiation is a Mystery Cult Initiation merit. It starts off by teaching initiates about Pyros, and then gives out the power to brand objects or people with a touch (either physically or invisibly) and track the brand. After that, they learn to perform automatic writing by channeling Pyros through their minds, then how to sense Pyros and read auras of those they sense this way, and the final level (which only Trevor has at present) causes Trevor to exacerbate Flux when he gets wounded, spreading Disquiet, Wastelands and Firestorms the closer he gets to death. However, learning the merit also causes mental disturbances at higher levels due to Pyros warping you. (Trevor's is that he enters a fugue state when reminded of his looming death.) Next time: Qashmallim.
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Sep 20, 2019 14:51
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cool and timely! i am super excited to see how you present everything, because i did do some digging through wikis yesterday anyway and without greater context, it basically just read like a list of arbitrary powers and abilities
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Sep 20, 2019 14:52
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Is there an F&F or a resource somewhere which goes through the World of Darkness metaplot/setting in a consistent or ordered way? There has been a lot of oWoD jargon used in the last few pages and I have no idea what any of it means and how entities in the oWoD interact with each other.
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Sep 20, 2019 15:39
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MinistryofLard posted:Is there an F&F or a resource somewhere which goes through the World of Darkness metaplot/setting in a consistent or ordered way? There has been a lot of oWoD jargon used in the last few pages and I have no idea what any of it means and how entities in the oWoD interact with each other. poorly they're all supposed to be in the same setting, but their cosmologies are all written by different people and are in some respects mutually exclusive. crossovers in the old days were usually a matter of choosing which type of supernatural the chronicle would focus on kludging the others as needed it was strictly possible to run an avengers team, or have your vampires take on the Technocracy, or get your wizards tied up in werewolf apocalypse nonsense, but there's always going to be friction between the different supernaturals' conception of the universe and their origins which Mage would say is working as intended, since reality is subjective
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Sep 20, 2019 15:43
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Also the problem of differing power tiers meaning either.you deal with using multiple handbooks or try and make a unified one for your multisplat party.
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Sep 20, 2019 15:50
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You also have vital stats in each game line that don't apply to other characters. How much Banality does a vampire have? This created the very weird situation where vampire PCs were bound to be more humane than mages and werewolves, because Humanity.
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Sep 20, 2019 15:59
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1994 Toyota Celica posted:poorly I mean, you sometimes don't even need multiple splats interacting for that.  In oVamp half of the vampire clans' mythologies were mutually exclusive, I think there were maybe two that could actually both have happened. And considering that several of them were actually borne out, like, supernatural stuff that would only have made sense if they were true, were true at the same time, either the truth was weirder than anyone postulated or the Mages were right all along.1994 Toyota Celica posted:it was strictly possible to run an avengers team, or have your vampires take on the Technocracy, or get your wizards tied up in werewolf apocalypse nonsense, but there's always going to be friction between the different supernaturals' conception of the universe and their origins Also entities in oWoD interacting with each other could go in one of two ways. For instance, let's say you're running an oVamp game and want your vamps to hang out with some werewolves. You can either take the werewolf enemy entry in the oVamp books and use that, especially since it boils everything down to operating on oVamp rules so you're not messing around with Werewolf special rules and energy sources at the same time as Blood and vampire special rules. OR, you could crack open oWolf and stat up a full Werewolf from there and then hate yourself because you've just overcomplicated things massively. Of course, that's the rules-wise interacting. In practice the splats, while ostensibly in the same world, really aren't meant to get anywhere near each other for the most part. They aren't involved in each others' metaphysical conflicts(except vaguely, like how the Technocracy would probably love to snuff out Werewolves and Vampires only marginally less than they want to end/brainwash the Mages, and I think Werewolves see Vampires as being kind-of-sort-of related to the Wyrm), they have vastly different power levels and there are lots of fiddly rules interactions that no one ever really bothered to write out or rule on if you were really running a fully-statted Mage next to, say, a Werewolf and a Mummy. Not to mention how many of the game lines were kind of stillborn compared to the others. Wraith, Mummy and Demon got effectively zero love from day one, for instance. There's no consistent or ordered way to look at the setting, honestly, only splat-by-splat, because it was never designed with an overarching order or fundamental truth in mind.
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Sep 20, 2019 16:01
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Mummy was originally a supplement for Vampire, and I have no idea why they were spun off into their own product line, with a completely burn-it-down-and-rebuild-it new mythos that nobody asked for. I may eventually review M:tR out of spite.
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Sep 20, 2019 16:03
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Halloween Jack posted:Mummy was originally a supplement for Vampire, and I have no idea why they were spun off into their own product line, with a completely burn-it-down-and-rebuild-it new mythos that nobody asked for. I may eventually review M:tR out of spite. quote:I have no idea why they were spun off into their own product line, with a completely burn-it-down-and-rebuild-it new mythos that nobody asked for. as the unifying concept. God what a mess, always.
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Sep 20, 2019 16:06
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I could almost be tempted to play a game of Insatiate alchemists (aka 'those assholes' to Prometheans) but I just don't have the patience for a system this granular, nor for all those splatbooks.
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Sep 20, 2019 16:10
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What I mean is, Mummies were originally a breed apart from the standard WoD formula. Your PCs have been crossing between the mortal and spirit worlds for thousands of years. There were also no splats, just political factions with no mechanical differences between them. When they made Mummy: the Resurrection, they decided that the metaplot origin should be all the Mummies getting blown to astral smithereens. Now Mummies are people who became monsters last week, with splats, like every other White Wolf game. I've never met anyone who could argue that the game had any reason to exist, even for people who were already WoD junkies.
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Sep 20, 2019 16:14
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Halloween Jack posted:What I mean is, Mummies were originally a breed apart from the standard WoD formula. Your PCs have been crossing between the mortal and spirit worlds for thousands of years. There were also no splats, just political factions with no mechanical differences between them. Yeah no that's super hosed up and weird. Just post imo
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Sep 20, 2019 16:16
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I admit I've always been baffled by the sheer amount of mythmaking WW/OPP thinks the concept of 'being a nine foot killing machine in an urban fantasy world where turning into a nine foot killing machine is awkward, now manage your nature and the world you live in' needs in both versions of Woof. Also Hunter (oWoD) just had monsters have simplified stat sets and a single unified source of magic mojo that they all just fed differently. Which makes sense, since they're meant to be your monster manual. It naturally encourages the ST not to keep to this, but to instead buy the other books and stat everything up fully instead.
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Sep 20, 2019 16:17
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Set is both real and divine. Y'all "Cainites" just a bunch of dummies.
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Sep 20, 2019 16:23
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Set's dead, baby. Set's dead.
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Sep 20, 2019 16:33
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NuWoof mythology and setting is good for playability because it's mostly a long list of interesting things and ways to hunt rather than just 'I guess we're either slaughtering innocent humans or being shot at with silver bullets again.'
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Sep 20, 2019 16:46
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Yeah, I legit love the Father Wolf mythology because it's present, relevant and gives you cool things to fight.
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Sep 20, 2019 16:48
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NuWoof even encourages different tribes in a pack for a variety of Sacred Hunts.
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Sep 20, 2019 16:57
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PurpleXVI posted:In practice the splats, while ostensibly in the same world, really aren't meant to get anywhere near each other for the most part. They aren't involved in each others' metaphysical conflicts(except vaguely, like how the Technocracy would probably love to snuff out Werewolves and Vampires only marginally less than they want to end/brainwash the Mages, and I think Werewolves see Vampires as being kind-of-sort-of related to the Wyrm) Vampires reeked of the Wyrm, and the 'lupines' would shred you if you left the safety of Chronicle City X. Unless you were Gangrel, maybe. Then Werewolf came out and it had city-dwelling tribes, which just made things even more awkward. I think vampires were considered to be very high Banality, due to their stasis. Except for Malkavians, because purple monkey cheese.
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Sep 20, 2019 16:57
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Bieeanshee posted:Vampires reeked of the Wyrm, and the 'lupines' would shred you if you left the safety of Chronicle City X. Unless you were Gangrel, maybe. Then Werewolf came out and it had city-dwelling tribes, which just made things even more awkward. i don't know if it was canon but my high school group explained it like "woofs don't go into cities because of the wyrm, and woofs will straight clown on your average blood sucker, so the blood suckers learned to stay in cities as a natural defense against having to deal with woofs." also it seemed like the city dwelling tribes tended to be the ones that were maybe the bad guys, or at least not as opposed to working with the wyrm, so they're traitors anyway and you're totally justified tearing them apart
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Sep 20, 2019 17:30
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Dawgstar posted:NuWoof even encourages different tribes in a pack for a variety of Sacred Hunts. Yeah, that's one of the better changes from first to 2nd edition. In first edition the game said that Tribes mostly hated eachother and loathed to interact while simultaneously presenting all these multi-tribe packs. Freaking Crumbum posted:i don't know if it was canon but my high school group explained it like "woofs don't go into cities because of the wyrm, and woofs will straight clown on your average blood sucker, so the blood suckers learned to stay in cities as a natural defense against having to deal with woofs." Yeah, Vampire's "Lupines" as statted were ridiculous. They had max physical stats which doubled in were form, had every physical discipline at near max dots, infinite blood points, and probably some thaumaturgy. They were the scary beat stick the ST used when they wanted to get the players back in line. Kurieg fucked around with this message at 17:43 on Sep 20, 2019 |
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Sep 20, 2019 17:37
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vampires were banality 10 for reasons that were never really fully explained
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Sep 20, 2019 17:47
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"Banality" was an extremely childish concept in the first place, and if you weren't a Changeling, it was almost entirely to your benefit to be treated as if you had Banality 10. In Old Changeling, the most important part of NPC Banality was that it makes it harder to cast spells on them. Changeling's cantrip system is extremely hosed. It was meant to be flexible without being as universal as Mage, but in practice having both Arts (your spells) and Realms (what you can cast spells on) means more stuff you have to spend XP on before you can do anything. Getting a spell to work typically cost a fuckton of Glamour. The system treated Glamour like Blood Points, but a vampire getting blood is way, way easier than a Changeling getting a few points of Glamour.
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Sep 20, 2019 18:01
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Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 1st Edition Post 8: Gamemastering The GM section contains most of the nuts and bolts of the game system, including the very detailed rules for traps, line of sight, fire, etc. I should also note 'setting stuff on fire' has a full half page of rules devoted to how to set things on fire, what can be set on fire, how players might improvise incendiaries, and how to put yourself out. The people writing this understand this aspect of player characters, at least; they're always trying to set things on fire. Coincidentally, setting your enemies on fire is quite effective since only AV, not TB, applies to flames. And you take 2d4 damage a round while on fire and need to reduce it to 0 to actually go out, with allies helping you try to beat out the flames giving an extra 1 DR each (+1 for you spending your turn trying to do so). Do not be on fire. It is very distracting. Curiously this is true in 2e, as well, where you took d10 wounds with no AV OR TB while on fire. 4e's fire is even more dangerous, since Being On Fire can stack and the more stacks of On Fire you're suffering the worse everything gets. At no point in Fantasy was being on fire ever something to take lightly. Compare to WH40KRP, where it was quite possible to become immune to being on fire, since you reduced fire damage by TB. Self-immolating Space Marine/Techpriest/Ork was a common joke special effect. Anyway, I digress: What's important isn't the specific rules for setting stuff on fire, but rather that they're a good indicator of what a lot of the mechanical meat of the GMing chapter is like. It's tons and tons of subsystems. You remember Rik'tikk's stuff about exactly which substances are most lethal to each species during the Old World Bestiary? Yeah, that's almost certainly a reference to the Poison subsystem, which includes specific toxins that are specifically lethal to specific species. Interestingly, poison is actually less lethal because of the level of detail at play here; it takes multiple 'doses' to kill you, usually. And you save against each dose, suffering effects based on how much you saved by. You also get a specific roll based on the average of your Intelligence and a chance to notice poison to realize your meal is poisoned. This is interesting because it makes it much more likely you'll suffer some sort of effect compared to 2e's simpler 'one save' poisoning, but also much less likely to actually die outright. And even in 2e, you saved against poison, then suffered the effects, which usually had enough of a lead time where you realized you were poisoned for someone to use Heal or (if you had our heroic friend the 3rd Tier Shallyan, hardest working lady in Warhams) cast a spell or use an Antitoxin kit to let you reroll your save (which you also probably used Fortune on in the first place), so it still sort of worked out to a similar number of chances to not die. What I'm getting at here is all of these detailed subsystems at least relate to things that are likely to come up in play, even if they're overly complicated compared to later editions. This is the general mechanical theme of 1e: It's very concerned with playing out and having subsystems for almost every dramatic occurrence. Which makes the game complicated, but at the same time, multiple chances for a player to survive an event like 'assassins slip poison into your wine' does add something to the game and is definitely going to come up in a game featuring murder and intrigue. The large number of subsystems also gives them space to make the huge range of Skills matter to adventuring; knowing how to cook is more useful when it also comes with knowledge of how to detect and cover up the taste of poison! While I prefer the simpler system in 2e, at least 1e usually does something with its complexity. Insanity is exactly as terrible as it is in 2e, and for the same reasons. Insanity systems are usually pretty offensive treatments of mental health issues, but on top of that, it's also basically 'retire your PC, unless you know our hardworking friend the Shallyan' since most of the effects are very crippling. Some are actually beneficial, though; you can end up Fearless from going crazy. This is actually the only way to get Fearless in 1e! It isn't a Talent/Skill yet. Similarly, Fear and Terror work exactly like in 2e. Fear in 1e and 2e is notably less dangerous to you than in 4e, since it just slows you down or takes up turns until you overcome it. GMing also includes lots on random encounters, dungeon crawling, and how to construct scenarios. It also advises the GM to be stingy with Fate Points, but to remember a Fate Point is a guarantee of survival. When a PC spends one, they get out of whatever happened to them, and they get out of it alive. Plenty of stories have twists where the hero tumbles over a ledge after losing a battle with their rival only to wash up at a friendly village, barely alive, after all. Your PCs should get the same benefits, until they run out of 'cheat death' points. Interestingly, this is all Fate does in 1e. Fortune Points for rerolls, extra actions, etc don't come about until 2e, and I think they were one of its big improvements to the game because it gives you a nice extra set of decisions to make and resources to manage. Even as simple death-protection, though, Fate Points are a simple and easy way to let players lose without ending the game and I appreciate them for that. Similarly, GMing has a ton on character advancement, because with Fate, you're kind of intended to have a decent chance to survive and move up. You might die quickly, like our buddy the T2 unarmored elf with very few Fate, but you also had pretty good odds of making it. What really stands out to me is that RAW, you are expected to shoot up like a rocket in power compared to 2e or 4e. First, every Advance is +10 in a stat (or +1 Wounds, Attacks, Str, Tough, or Movement) or a Skill. All Advances are still 100 EXP. You are, however, expected to earn about 100-300 EXP a session, depending on how much you accomplish. Maybe more if it's especially long or important. Compare that to the general 100 per session in 2e, and then note that 2e awards half as many stat points per advance bought. You also had more options for jumping your Career track; namely, any Basic Career that you could have started on in your general 'class' of Careers is available to you as an exit. Also, you didn't actually have to finish your current Career unless you were a spellcaster or the GM said you did. So it was entirely possible to roll something lovely like Servant, but then because you were a Warrior, spend your first 100 earned EXP to exit right into Squire or something to reflect how you'd moved on in your life. Heck, the example character is a Prospector who uses her first 100 EXP to buy straight into Scout instead of staying in Prospector. The idea is that she was a miner and prospector, yeah, but now she's an Adventurer and buys into an adventuring career that's on her exits. 1e is much heavier on the idea that you're exactly and professionally doing what your Career says on the tin than 2e, which still contains a fair bit of that. 4e is even heavier on it, since it ties directly to its income and status rules, and I'd say it's another example of 4e looking back to 1e. One of the reasons this is all interesting is the designers of 2e specifically talk about why they slowed advancement and made you need to finish careers to promote. The issue was that (especially combined with a paucity of long-term career tracks outside of these two) almost all PCs who survived would become Warriors or Wizards. Or both, if they made it that far. And when you're potentially advancing this quickly...well. Also notable: Neither 1e nor 4e actually require you to have all your trappings to promote; they just suggest you find the new trappings for your new career ASAP. This seems to have been another attempt to slow down promotions, or potentially to guide adventures towards making sure players get the stuff they need (2e does tell you to structure adventures and quests to help people get the gear their intended new careers will require) but given the 'players never get paid' brain spiders that afflict 2e adventure design, I much prefer the 'trappings for promoted careers are guidelines of what kind of gear you want' design over 'you must have them to promote'. Similarly, I actually like the 'career class' idea in 1e, specifically the way you can do an equivalent of the '200 out into another Basic' but for any Basic of your general type. I also think the 4 classes being directly related to adventuring works better than 4e introducing extra 'career classes'. Adding in Peasant, Burgher, Courtier, and Riverfolk as specific Classes with a bunch of Careers under them really just dilutes this concept. So yes, this is a place where I actually like what 1e's doing better than either of the future versions. The other interesting bit about GMing is that the GMing advice is mostly quite good, and especially good for being written 33 years ago. The GMing advice tells you to keep in mind that for all the mud and weirdness, this is still a heroic fantasy story and the players are still the main characters. Your job as the GM isn't to 'win' by killing them, it's to create interesting situations and challenges that make them make plans and use resources. Killing players too often will, as they say, lose you your gaming group. Especially if it's seen to be arbitrary. There's a lot of focus on the goal of the game being gaining power and money, but that's fairly normal for the time. And really, most WHFRP PCs do want to go up in stats and advance in their Careers, and almost all of them care about money, so it's hardly out of line with the stories you'll generally be doing with this game anyway. In general, it actually advises cheating your rolls a little to save the players. Especially if they actually did come up with a cool plan that would make for a good story and then beefed the roll at the exact wrong moment. Now I'm of two minds about this sort of thing; on one hand, yes, it's fine, on the other, it may be a sign the lethality of your game is a bit overtuned if you expect to need to save players from the dice often. I admit, I'm not a particularly harsh GM and I generally prefer stable casts; I've not had many player deaths in my campaigns, though I do see Fate burning from time to time. But that comes from balancing scenarios that way and doing things like interpreting the wording of Fury in 2e to be player-facing. If you're regularly having to toss dice rolls to save players, your dice might be too swingy on the bits aimed at the players. 2e is generally better about material not being able to one-shot you, outside of anything by Robert Schwalb, who seems to find save or dies some kind of tremendous thrill, which makes avoiding these sorts of situations easier. Seriously, Tome of Corruption is a huge outlier on that. Still, WHFRP 1e is not a book I expected to include 'Look, your players really want to be heroes, not just lowlives. Cut them a break sometimes, because you'll also discourage them taking risks and moving the plot along if they're pessimistic and feeling down.' That's not only good advice, it's a good explanation for why it's good advice; players who think they have a fair chance are players who come up with risky but interesting plans and adventures. Balance makes people take risks and drive stories in this kind of game, and that's a good reason to care about it! It also emphasizes over and over that the GM 'wins' when everyone has a good time playing. Good play is consistently equated to play that makes the table enjoy the game. Actual honest to god 'adversarial GMing is pointless, you need to be seen as fair and working with your players' is fantastic to see in a 33 year old game. I should also note that players mutating doesn't come up much in the core book and the only corruption system I can find applies to evil wizards and demonologists. At least in the core book, this doesn't seem to have been a major concern yet. I'm certain it got added in supplements, but it wasn't here day 1. Which is notable because of how much mutation and corruption ends up doing in later games in the line. The closest to it is that Demonologists lose Toughness when summoning demons, which they offset with drugs, but when they hit 0 Toughness they can no longer survive without the intervention of dark powers and thus become an NPC in thrall to the evil bargains they made. Given you have to choose to be that kind of wizard, this is not something that's going to happen to you at random. So yeah, there's the GM's side of the game's mechanical meat: A bunch of subsystems for lots of things that will happen to adventurers, that at least have some mechanical room for interesting things to occur, coupled with surprisingly fast advancement rules and surprisingly good GMing advice. Really, on the whole it's a decent GM's section, especially for its age. Next Time: The Old Old World
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Sep 20, 2019 18:24
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More rules based tabletop games need robust fire rules because you'll be drat sure your players will likely try fire as a solution to a or multiple problems.
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Sep 20, 2019 18:31
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ChaseSP posted:More rules based tabletop games need robust fire rules because you'll be drat sure your players will likely try fire as a solution to a or multiple problems. It's why I use it as the example of 'yeah they made a subsystem for everything, but this is a subsystem that's gonna get used, at least'. They even cover how players can make molotov cocktails because someone in the party is going to think of some kind of equivalent of petrol bombs, it's an inevitability.
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Sep 20, 2019 18:34
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Kurieg posted:Yeah, that's one of the better changes from first to 2nd edition. In first edition the game said that Tribes mostly hated eachother and loathed to interact while simultaneously presenting all these multi-tribe packs. There was an interesting ideological thing in the Hunting Grounds: Rockies book that had the two biggest alpha on opposite sides of 'just how far should one pack go to help another pack,' although the one who pushed 'every pack should be self-sufficient (and she wasn't wrong) didn't hate the idea of multi-tribal packs but more the idea of any pack interfering in another pack's territory. Although telling that the other alpha was probably more in the wrong was he felt the need to keep a single Bone Shadow around because that was the only member of the tribe he had in his pack and wanted to push his agenda so hard he was making her miserable because A) she was in her late teens (probably the PCs' age) and thus the youngest and feeling majorly out of place and B) couldn't even really interact with other Bone Shadows because they were afraid she was snooping for her Alpha when she just wanted somebody to talk to.
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Sep 20, 2019 18:36
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Halloween Jack posted:I don't really understand why the body-hopping shenanigans of Saulot, Tremere, and Tzimisce play such a big role in Gehenna. Tremere had the most lore-central position because being the Wizard-like clan in a roleplaying game gave them huge appeal for writers and readers, and the 'history' (as was told to me) was that all Tremere were actually just Tzimisce that ate their way up to Saulot so all three clans get circled around. The body-hopping part mostly feels like a way to keep the players from just offing the physical body with numberwang before going through the riddle of how to 'kill the soul'.
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Sep 20, 2019 19:06
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Night10194 posted:Insanity is exactly as terrible as it is in 2e, and for the same reasons. Insanity systems are usually pretty offensive treatments of mental health issues, but on top of that, it's also basically 'retire your PC, unless you know our hardworking friend the Shallyan' since most of the effects are very crippling. Some are actually beneficial, though; you can end up Fearless from going crazy. This is actually the only way to get Fearless in 1e! It isn't a Talent/Skill yet. Similarly, Fear and Terror work exactly like in 2e. Huh. I don't know much about Warhammer Fantasy, but this discussion of Fear, Terror, and Insanity immediately made me think of Ravenloft, with its Fear, Horror, and Madness checks. I wonder if there's any connection? Apparently WHFRP 1E came out in 1986, and the first Ravenloft boxed set in 1990, so at least chronologically it doesn't seem impossible that the former influenced the latter. Is there anyone here who's sufficiently familiar with both Warhammer Fantasy and Ravenloft to be able to say whether there's sufficient similarity between Warhammer's Fear/Terror/Insanity and Ravenloft's Fear/Horror/Madness to suggest that the latter may have taken inspiration from the former, or are they different enough that the similarity in terms is more likely to be coincidental?
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Sep 20, 2019 19:20
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The specific way they work in Hams has always been 'fear is bad, terror is worse'. In the RPGs, fear makes you freeze up, terror actually makes you run away and inflicts Insanity points if you fail the save. 4e made Fear a psychological trait rather than a basic part of the system, and tied it partly to size; if someone larger than you comes at you with hostile intent, you suffer fear and can break if you're still afraid when it comes closer to you. Specifically, if it advances on you. Not if it gets into melee, if it advances on you with hostile intent. This means horse-mounted foes cause fear. It also has some very unhappy implications for anyone playing a Halfling.
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Sep 20, 2019 19:29
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Halloween Jack posted:"Banality" was an extremely childish concept in the first place, and if you weren't a Changeling, it was almost entirely to your benefit to be treated as if you had Banality 10. In Old Changeling, the most important part of NPC Banality was that it makes it harder to cast spells on them. Personally I’d rather lose a few blood points than have some weirdo lock up my life’s work.
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Sep 20, 2019 19:30
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