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9: Argle bargle, foofaraw, hey diddy hoe diddy no one knows No, that's not a really lazy post title. That's actually a quote from the book: That should already tell you a ton about the design of magic in Shadowrun. There's a ton of stuff that works reliably but nobody really understands why because we can't be bothered to write a back story. Oh, and people who can use magic are incredibly rare. Yes, it's one of those settings. Just take Awakening at a priority other than E and suddenly everyone you meet will be like, hey, wow, who would have expected a mage to show up? Also the Magic chapter is 44 pages long. By comparison, the Matrix is 26, vehicles are 6, and even regular combat is 22. Yes, it's one of those systems, too. There's several different ways of being a mage, and we already talked about the simplest one: Physical Adepthood. This means that you channel magic purely through your own body and use it to increase your physical abilities. For each point of Magic you have, you get a Power Point, and you then spend the power points on adept powers; some have variable costs. You can wait before you decide what power to buy, but we don't know if you can trade them back again (or how long it takes to make the decision, so you could technically leave a bunch of Power Points free and then arm up at the last second). All spellcasting can produce Drain, which is the same as what technomancers called Fading two updates ago. It's regular damage resisted with Body+Willpower; if the unresisted damage is less than or equal to your Magic, it's Stun, otherwise it's Physical. What the vast majority of adept "powers" actually do is to let you trade Magic points for physical stats at some exchange rate. Namely:
As I mentioned before, this tends to result in the situation where almost any physical character is just better if they're made as an adept who instantly cashes in their Magic points for numeric boosts and then never mentions Magic again. If you don't want to do that, though, there's actual effects too. Well, actually, there's.. stuff that gives you Edge!
Before you get too excited (you were getting excited, right? right?) remember than this still counts towards the cap of gaining 2 Edge per combat round. And then finally, gasp, actual powers:
And that's it for Physical Adepts. Next step: actual magic. This is divided into three categories: Sorcery (actually casting spells), Conjuring (summoning up spirits), and Enchanting (making magic items). You can be a regular magician who can gain all three magical skills; or you can be an Aspected Magician who can only gain one of those skills but gets an extra point of Magic at character generation. The one advantage of buying Magic points with the priority stat, rather than adjustment points, is that it determines the number of spells you start with.. but Conjuring and Enchanting Aspected mages don't cast spells, so they have no reason to care. If you want to be a Physical Adept as well as a regular mage, you can do that, but you have to split your Magic points. You can also choose whether you're a Hermetic or a Shamanic mage, but all this changes is which stat (Logic or Willpower) you use as part of casting, so you choose the one you're highest in. Done. Bear in mind, nothing else in the game gets to pick a stat this way. So, let's sling some sorcery. You pick a spell - which will specify a casting threshold; roll Sorcery+Magic to see if you cast it right; then roll Willpower+your chosen stat to resist the drain. For +2 extra drain, you can add a point of base damage value to a combat spell; and for +1 extra drain, you can increase the radius of an area spell by 2 metres. Again, no-one and nothing else gets to customise risks on the fly in this way. So, let's get into the actual spells.
You're probably seeing a theme by now. Yea, don't expect it to change. Next up, we have detection spells; they give you, or someone else you touch, the ability to get more information about something.
Yay! Let's break every investigation adventure wide open! The bad guys would never have thought to hide their clues from a mage, they're rare, remember! Next up, healing! Antidote heals toxins, Cleansing Heal heals HP and Corrosive, Cooling Heal heals HP and Burning, Heal heals just HP, Stabilize removes all Overflow damage, Warming Heal heals HP and Chilled. Increase Attribute and Increase Reflexes boost your or your buddy's attributes by up to +4, but aren't listed as applying the augmented maximum, so you can go hog wild, and Reflexes boost increases Initiative Dice as well without limit - but they increase their Drain Value by their net hits, so if you're a good caster you can unexpectedly drain yourself to death; Resist Pain directly reduces the damage penalty modifiers; and Reduce Attribute is not a bloody Health spell and should not be in this section. Illusions! Yes, more choice for you! Why would we ever stop giving cool stuff to casters? Love, love, share, share!
Don't worry. That's about all. There's just Animate or Shape (Metal, plastic, stone, or wood); Armor, Elemental Armor, Mystic Armor or Vehicle Armor; Control Actions or Thoughts, creating Darkness or Light.. Look, you get the bloody picture by now. Sorcerers get carte blanche to mess with every single aspect of the game. There's even a sorcerer spell that increases the Matrix stats of a device, just to really piss the hacker off. Alright, I was going to do magic in one post, but Sorcerers I guess are just so goddamn awesome that they're getting an update all to themselves. Next time: conjurers and enchanters. And more sorcerers. What, you thought we were done?
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# ? Oct 16, 2019 20:00 |
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# ? Apr 19, 2024 20:44 |
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Phys Adepts loving rocked in 4e. Not sure about 5e since I never looked at the magic rules for that edition.
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# ? Oct 16, 2019 20:17 |
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Invisibility has always been the most broken spell in SR because it's an effective encounter or problem skipper unless the GM goes to extreme lengths to negate it. The lead designer for SR has a massive boner for what is essentially Magicrun. Pretty sure PhysAdepts were a borderline must take in 5 as well. In the campaign I played the power gamer of the group always tended to go for them regardless of concept otherwise.
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# ? Oct 16, 2019 20:24 |
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In theory--and yes, the game lays out its setting's theories--magick is balanced by having hard limits on what it is and isn't, and what it can and can't do, unlike D&D. In practice, they ignore it all the time, and magick can do really powerful stuff anyway. The "Analyze Device" spell in particular grinds my gears. It's less offensive than a 1st edition spell called Fix, which fixes broken things. According to the way magick works in Shadowrun, a gadget-fixing spell or even a lockpicking spell should be impossible. Because spells manipulate energy. Magick itself isn't intelligent and doesn't know things or solve problems. It can't give you skills you don't have, or perform technical work that you don't know how to do. Now, you could maybe summon an urban spirit that knows how to do it for you, because spirits are sentient creatures.
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# ? Oct 16, 2019 20:58 |
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Halloween Jack posted:In theory--and yes, the game lays out its setting's theories--magick is balanced by having hard limits on what it is and isn't, and what it can and can't do, unlike D&D. In practice, they ignore it all the time, and magick can do really powerful stuff anyway. also don't Magic and Technology Hate each other and thus a spell that fixes a mechanical device be like.. No?
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# ? Oct 16, 2019 21:17 |
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I like the idea of having a setting where all magic is exclusively based on summoning some kind of entity that knows how to solve whatever problem you're facing, and being a wizard is halfway between being a switchboard operator and being in the mafia.
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# ? Oct 16, 2019 21:30 |
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Technology (as far as I know as of 3e) isn't like a fundamental Platonic force in the Shadowrun setting, so not exactly. Practically, magic and technology don't interface well, for a lot of reasons that are rationales for game balance. Like, you can't industrialize the production of magical goods because only a magician can craft them, and in most cases only a magician can use them anyway. Beyond that, magic "hates" technology in the same sense that large quantities of energy hate fragile electronics. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 21:48 on Oct 16, 2019 |
# ? Oct 16, 2019 21:34 |
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:I like the idea of having a setting where all magic is exclusively based on summoning some kind of entity that knows how to solve whatever problem you're facing, and being a wizard is halfway between being a switchboard operator and being in the mafia. Sorcerer.
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# ? Oct 16, 2019 21:43 |
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:I like the idea of having a setting where all magic is exclusively based on summoning some kind of entity that knows how to solve whatever problem you're facing, and being a wizard is halfway between being a switchboard operator and being in the mafia. Later versions dropped that in place of a Vancian system (of weak spells with well defined and unchanging behavior). Later versions kind of sucked. High-level play in the Dying Earth RPG had wizards who compelled djinn-like spirits called Sandestins to do all their work for them (when they weren't arguing over the precise wording of their indenture agreements).
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# ? Oct 16, 2019 21:50 |
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Wow, sounds like they nerfed the hell out of good ol' Killing Hands.
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# ? Oct 16, 2019 22:36 |
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PurpleXVI posted:I would be eager to review this, and not only because it would probably mean some people would burn me in effigy on their lawn, but because Nobilis has some good ideas that seem to get buried under the setting being a bit too... kitchen sinky. As someone who loves these games... You're fine? Like, I'm not gonna pretend these games don't have some serious jank and flaws
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# ? Oct 16, 2019 22:45 |
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Xelkelvos posted:I'd really like someone more familiar with D&D 5e to do an F&F of Wendy's Feast of Legend. Hm, it's been over a week since this post and no one's taken this on... I'm kind of considering tackling it myself, except that I'm in the middle of the 1E Deities & Demigods review, which has been going very slowly, and I want to get that done. On the other hand, much of the reason that review has been going so slowly is because of the research necessary, and that's something that wouldn't be an issue for Feast of Legend; I could probably knock out those posts relatively quickly between Deities & Demigods posts. Eh, what the hey; I guess if no one else comes forward in the next day or two and says they want to do it I'll go for it. (Honestly, there were other factors lately delaying the Deities & Demigods posts; I'd had the Egyptian Mythos posts almost done for a few weeks before they were posted, but then my laptop's screen cracked and was rendered useless, and then I had to go out of state for work (without a laptop, unfortunately), so events kind of conspired to make it difficult to post. I maybe also put some blame on the nWoD reviews here, because one thing that's been taking up a lot of my time recently is working on some projects I want to release through the DMs Guild, but now the nWoD reviews have piqued my interest in that and given me ideas for things I want to write for the Storytellers Vault too, so that means I've been having to read through the nWoD books to familiarize myself with the rules and lore... but anyway...) So, hm, I guess if anyone else has any interest in reviewing Feast of Legend, speak up by Friday, or I'll go ahead with it.
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# ? Oct 16, 2019 22:52 |
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In all seriousness Wendys' is a reprehensible company and giving them free advertisement for their free product is not a good idea. It's not the most interesting corporate-backed game out there.
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# ? Oct 16, 2019 22:57 |
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Yeah, I was originally planning to maybe take a stab at it but I can't read through it without cringing, and Wendy's is apparently significantly worse than I thought anyway, so I decided not to bother.
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# ? Oct 16, 2019 22:59 |
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Night10194 posted:Yeah, I was originally planning to maybe take a stab at it but I can't read through it without cringing, and Wendy's is apparently significantly worse than I thought anyway, so I decided not to bother. I said something similar to Xelkelvos at the time, and yeah, I was ignorant of the causes Wendy's and their executives push money towards. Dumb initial reaction to marketing, not worth feeding.
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# ? Oct 16, 2019 23:15 |
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Yeah, OK, never mind; disregard previous post. I won't bother with it, then. I also wasn't aware that Wendy's corporate was that awful... that's too bad; I actually like their burgers (though I think their social media presence is annoying). I'd ask what Wendy's had done that's so terrible, but I don't want to derail the thread; I guess I can do some research online and find out on my own.
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# ? Oct 16, 2019 23:19 |
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The short form: they profit off literal slavery, and also are like if Chik-Fil-A was less loud about their politics.
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# ? Oct 16, 2019 23:29 |
Jerik posted:Yeah, OK, never mind; disregard previous post. I won't bother with it, then. Wendy's, notably, did not do this
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# ? Oct 16, 2019 23:29 |
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Zereth posted:Most of the big chain fast food places joined up with some kind of thing about not using ingredients harvested with literal slave labor Yeah, I hadn't known about this before, but after making that last post I did do some web searching and found some articles on the matter. Wow. That's... really something. Guess I won't be buying any more of their burgers, at least not unless they make some serious changes.
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# ? Oct 16, 2019 23:56 |
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Cooked Auto posted:Invisibility has always been the most broken spell in SR because it's an effective encounter or problem skipper unless the GM goes to extreme lengths to negate it. Invisibility is rad because spells only need line of sight so you can make a wall invisible and laugh. In my experience PhysAdepts vs Not That always come down to how good is cyber vs not having cyber and how often you are going to be doing something that isn't your main deal. Theoretically having to give up something for the magic priority is also a thing but also no one is falling for that old chestnut and it turns out being hyper-specialised in the game that has always rewarded and incentivised hyper-specialising is really good. EthanSteele fucked around with this message at 00:04 on Oct 17, 2019 |
# ? Oct 17, 2019 00:00 |
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Also the UN and Ronald McDonald are bad guys working together with Ronnie as the lead villain backed by the Not-UN because the latter is a competitor and the former...publicly lambasted the company for tacitly supporting slavery.
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# ? Oct 17, 2019 00:05 |
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I'm getting the distinct impression that Shadowrun relates to RPG design mostly in the form of a cautionary tale.
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# ? Oct 17, 2019 00:19 |
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Moonlit Knight posted:I'm getting the distinct impression that Shadowrun relates to RPG design mostly in the form of a cautionary tale. Not entirely. The single strongest element of Shadowrun is that the game puts front-and-center it's answer to 'So What Do You Do In This Game, Exactly?' It has lived where other games have died because every bit of lore and crunch is built with an eye towards the PCs being Freelance Assholes who Do Crimes For Money (And Sometimes Pro-Bono). Sure, they'll go off discussing the new monetary policies of the Corporate Court for a page, but they always swing back to discussing what kind of jobs that means for you, Johnny Chainsaw-for-a-Dick.
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# ? Oct 17, 2019 00:53 |
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Hostile V posted:Also the UN and Ronald McDonald are bad guys working together with Ronnie as the lead villain backed by the Not-UN because the latter is a competitor and the former...publicly lambasted the company for tacitly supporting slavery. I had to look this up and I can confirm, in an amazing instance of saying the quiet part loud, one of the bad guy aggressors in the sample adventure is named the United Clown Nations. They just get namedropped briefly so it can get camouflaged amidst the many mentions of the Ice Jester and blah blah frozen beef, but wow. I didn't expect that.
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# ? Oct 17, 2019 01:01 |
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Ratoslov posted:Not entirely. The single strongest element of Shadowrun is that the game puts front-and-center it's answer to 'So What Do You Do In This Game, Exactly?' It has lived where other games have died because every bit of lore and crunch is built with an eye towards the PCs being Freelance Assholes who Do Crimes For Money (And Sometimes Pro-Bono). Sure, they'll go off discussing the new monetary policies of the Corporate Court for a page, but they always swing back to discussing what kind of jobs that means for you, Johnny Chainsaw-for-a-Dick. This is very true. When I went through the Neotech 2 book there was essentially no clear cut answer to what the player characters are meant to do at any point. At best you had some vague allusions about things you could possibly do. But Shadowrun is very clear on that point from page one. The biggest issue with SR is that the rules are an absolute mess and any notion of balance can be thrown out of a window in many cases. Especially with magick involved.
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# ? Oct 17, 2019 01:06 |
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Cooked Auto posted:The biggest issue with SR is that the rules are an absolute mess and any notion of balance can be thrown out of a window in many cases. Especially with magick involved. And every iteration of the build-a-gun rules. Those things are completely cursed.
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# ? Oct 17, 2019 01:30 |
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Ratoslov posted:And every iteration of the build-a-gun rules. Those things are completely cursed. I go to bat for SR3 a lot, but even I can't on this one. The build-a-gun rules either get you a gun that's the same as something that exists for double the price, or you completely gently caress everything up and the advice for the GM on availability/street index stuff is "just make it up yourself" and only one of the options (the bullet-hose one) is really obvious whether that should be available at chargen or not. Going in with an eye for "ok, what's a gun that doesn't exist, but would make sense" like a super concealable shotgun that's for Tir na nOg special forces or something instead of just the most broken thing you can make can help, but its still garbo. Balance wise for SR (and a bunch of games actually) a lot of the time "balance" is that baseline competence is a low bar to clear and that being the Absolute Best at a thing doesn't change much for general performance. You can only kill a guy so much before it's overkill that you rolled 12 die instead of 6. That doesn't mean there's no point in having the bigger pool and being an Adept, it just means that when it comes to the standard shootman scenario, you're both killing a guy. The Adept shines in the trickshot, long distance, low-visibility scenario and you just bulldoze it through sheer number of die being rolled while the other guy is still putting on his tactical goggles (new from Renraku) before he can even approach the task. Obviously its different for each edition and even systems within each edition. Never gonna try and defend SR editing though, I only have experience with SR3 and 5, but both of them have some real nightmare passages for figuring out stuff. Core stuff in SR3 is fine, Fight, Sneak and Magic are easy enough to understand, but once Adjusted Barrier Rating gets in there I'm out. SR5.... well when the rules that are referenced exist its not so bad, unfortunately that appears to be a big hurdle.
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# ? Oct 17, 2019 03:02 |
Ratoslov posted:And every iteration of the build-a-gun rules. Those things are completely cursed.
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# ? Oct 17, 2019 03:11 |
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Zereth posted:the "from scratch", or the advanced weapon customization? They go cyber-hand in spiked glove, because when you ask questions like 'I wonder what the most damaging shotgun I could make?' you don't stop at just making it from scratch, you customize it afterwards.
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# ? Oct 17, 2019 03:52 |
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I will accept gun customization only if you can go full Resonance of Fate.
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# ? Oct 17, 2019 04:01 |
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Omnicrom posted:I will accept gun customization only if you can go full Resonance of Fate. I previously presented this evidence to my GM as to why only allowing one add-on at each point was ridiculous but he didn't fall for it.
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# ? Oct 17, 2019 04:22 |
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Wendy's RPG hit me like my first hit of Alex Jones. Flip to any page and you get a harmless dose of crazy right entertainment. When I say down to read it front to stop I could not handle the amount of pandering and corporate jokes overloading my system, reprogramming my brain, giving ALL PRAISE TO THA YAAS QUEEEN MILADY I WILL SLAY THE UNITED NATION OF CLOWNS AND THE LOCAL UNION OF DEL TACOS FOR YOUR HONOR. It is an abyss that entices with dope art but burns the soul with capitalism brand worship. It got me.
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# ? Oct 17, 2019 04:30 |
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Omnicrom posted:I will accept gun customization only if you can go full Resonance of Fate. Jesus at first glance I thought this was a dungeon map.
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# ? Oct 17, 2019 11:28 |
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That Old Tree posted:Jesus at first glance I thought this was a dungeon map.
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# ? Oct 17, 2019 11:56 |
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So Physical Adepts have no way of duplicating high-end Wired Reflexes and getting bonus major actions then?
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# ? Oct 17, 2019 12:39 |
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Traditional Games › FATAL & Friends 2020: Argle bargle, foofaraw, hey diddy hoe diddy no one knows
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# ? Oct 17, 2019 14:17 |
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Ratoslov posted:Not entirely. The single strongest element of Shadowrun is that the game puts front-and-center it's answer to 'So What Do You Do In This Game, Exactly?' It has lived where other games have died because every bit of lore and crunch is built with an eye towards the PCs being Freelance Assholes who Do Crimes For Money (And Sometimes Pro-Bono). Sure, they'll go off discussing the new monetary policies of the Corporate Court for a page, but they always swing back to discussing what kind of jobs that means for you, Johnny Chainsaw-for-a-Dick. That’s fair. I was thinking of the actual mechanics, but I realize that “RPG design” isn’t very specific.
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# ? Oct 17, 2019 14:23 |
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90s Cringe Rock posted:the new ares predator gyg-x comes with integral smartlink and underbarrel dungeon It's just like I'm playing Disgaea all over again!
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# ? Oct 17, 2019 15:08 |
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Ratoslov posted:Not entirely. The single strongest element of Shadowrun is that the game puts front-and-center it's answer to 'So What Do You Do In This Game, Exactly?' It has lived where other games have died because every bit of lore and crunch is built with an eye towards the PCs being Freelance Assholes who Do Crimes For Money (And Sometimes Pro-Bono). Sure, they'll go off discussing the new monetary policies of the Corporate Court for a page, but they always swing back to discussing what kind of jobs that means for you, Johnny Chainsaw-for-a-Dick. And the format of 'this is on a BBS and runners chime in when they have something useful* to add' really helps for it, too. Like you'll get a page on how stocks work for the mega-corps and some runner will be like 'I CAN'T LOAD THIS INTO MY GUN WHY DO I CARE' and somebody will tell them because you can also, say, get paid in stock which can be sold to get money and money can be used for goods and services. *May not actually be useful. Or it's just Kain posting.
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# ? Oct 17, 2019 16:00 |
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# ? Apr 19, 2024 20:44 |
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KirbyKhan posted:Wendy's RPG hit me like my first hit of Alex Jones. Flip to any page and you get a harmless dose of crazy right entertainment. When I say down to read it front to stop I could not handle the amount of pandering and corporate jokes overloading my system, reprogramming my brain, giving ALL PRAISE TO THA YAAS QUEEEN MILADY I WILL SLAY THE UNITED NATION OF CLOWNS AND THE LOCAL UNION OF DEL TACOS FOR YOUR HONOR. Alright, well, this F&F is complete, great job.
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# ? Oct 17, 2019 16:09 |