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Halloween Jack posted:The trends created by Pennywise and Annabelle have taught me that when you try to make ordinary things scary, it's a hit-or-miss prospect. 
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Nov 19, 2019 22:40
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I Am Just a Box posted:I have never heard this more common modern usage, only the usage where it means "very." Is this a regional usage or am I just old? Maybe it’s a UK thing? I’ve always thought of “it’s quite good” as meaning a more guarded recommendation than “it’s good”.
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Nov 19, 2019 22:48
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hyphz posted:Maybe it’s a UK thing? I’ve always thought of “it’s quite good” as meaning a more guarded recommendation than “it’s good”. Well, for whatever it's worth, if "quite" has shifted into a meaning of "kinda" instead of "very" (though as I said I've never seen it used this way myself), this shift in usage hasn't yet made it into the dictionary. The Oxford English Dictionary, dictionary.com, and merriam-webster.com all give its meaning as exclusively indicating completeness or extremeness of the associated adjective, never as diminishing it. (e: And yes, certainly to me "quite good" is a stronger recommendation than just "good", not a weaker one.) Jerik fucked around with this message at 23:06 on Nov 19, 2019 |
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Nov 19, 2019 23:02
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Wow. Ok. I’ll have to recheck a ton of stuff I’ve said then.. (Edit: apparently this is a topic of discussion and Merriam-Webster gives both meanings?) Oh, mentioning Little Fears reminded me of the Reddit “RPG horror story” in which someone wanted to run Little Fears PbP, asked the players to make characters offline, and every player independently came up with a kid who was a warped abuse or trauma survivor and wanted to join the monsters. Campaign cancelled. hyphz fucked around with this message at 23:11 on Nov 19, 2019 |
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Nov 19, 2019 23:06
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hyphz posted:Oh, mentioning Little Fears reminded me of the Reddit “RPG horror story” in which someone wanted to run Little Fears PbP, asked the players to make characters offline, and every player independently came up with a kid who was a warped abuse or trauma survivor and wanted to join the monsters. Campaign cancelled. I feel like this is symptomatic of Little Fears itself at least as much as it is of the players in question.
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Nov 19, 2019 23:21
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hyphz posted:(Edit: apparently this is a topic of discussion and Merriam-Webster gives both meanings?) Huh? Where are you seeing that? All the definitions in the entry on merriam-webster.com are intensifying. merriam-webster.com posted:Definition of quite Are you looking in a printed dictionary? What does it say? I've seriously never heard "quite" used in a diminishing sense, and I'm curious in what contexts it might be used that way.
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Nov 19, 2019 23:40
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Jerik posted:Huh? Where are you seeing that? All the definitions in the entry on merriam-webster.com are intensifying. It was from https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/3452/ambiguity-of-quite, where it's argued that #3 is actually a diminutive meaning (ie, it's only "to a limited extent" - a considerable extent, yes, but still a limited extent) A British English teacher on that thread confirmed what I've always thought - that quite is intensifying when used with an adjective that cannot take "very" (quite insane, quite correct) and diminishing when used with an adjective that can take "very" (quite strong, quite good). The idea that it's a Britishism is kind of borne out by the strange difference between the second and third versions where "quite" propagates one from the other, because the second version had a British publisher and editor (James Wallis, in fact, who also wrote the Visions of Sugar Plums adventure) while the third was published and edited in the US. Maybe I should just stop saying it..
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Nov 20, 2019 00:22
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Nobody on that stackexchange page claims "quite" ever has a diminutive meaning, only that in some contexts its meaning isn't absolute. "To a considerable extent but not completely" is still an intensifier; that the "quite" in "quite strong" doesn't mean "completely" or "absolutely" doesn't mean "quite strong" still isn't stronger than just "strong". But anyway, I won't argue about this further; it's an off-topic tangent that's gone on for longer than it should. (For which I admit I'm primarily to blame... sorry.) To post something back on topic for the thread, I just wanted to say that I haven't abandoned the Deities & Demigods review; it's just been delayed by various factors perhaps the most important of which was the destruction of my laptop screen. (And I've learned my lesson about purchasing a Best Buy protection plan, viz., don't.) I have a new laptop now, though, and while this week may be busy with work I hope to finally have the next part of the review up by early next week at the latest.
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Nov 20, 2019 00:57
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Halloween Jack posted:The trends created by Pennywise and Annabelle have taught me that when you try to make ordinary things scary, it's a hit-or-miss prospect.
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Nov 20, 2019 03:39
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Today I found out that more than one person in the world played hit video game Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure.
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Nov 20, 2019 04:30
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Leraika posted:Today I found out that more than one person in the world played hit video game Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure. The evil queen is pretty memorably silly.
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Nov 20, 2019 04:43
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Leraika posted:Today I found out that more than one person in the world played hit video game Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure. But it is like even if Cornet was commanding the little bastards from Puppet Master, they are not supernally creepy just because they are little wooden men! The Achewood comic nails it, as it so often does.
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Nov 20, 2019 04:59
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Hard to update to modern digital era. Your smart phone is already evil; can you do an evil porg?
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Nov 20, 2019 06:05
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Leraika posted:Today I found out that more than one person in the world played hit video game Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure. I'm still not sure how I feel about the ending.
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Nov 20, 2019 06:47
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I Am Just a Box posted:I have never heard this more common modern usage, only the usage where it means "very." Is this a regional usage or am I just old? I've seen "quite" meaning "kinda" mainly from British sources. The only definition I ever heard was "very" growing up. edit: Ah there was a whole page of people talking about this that I missed.
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Nov 20, 2019 07:40
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Halloween Jack posted:I'm sober, and I'm still way too mad about this stupid game, and I may have to do a brief review just to piss on it from a great height. I'd totes be up for reading that.
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Nov 20, 2019 08:04
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Leraika posted:Today I found out that more than one person in the world played hit video game Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure. A couple of years back there was even an LP of it which included goon submitted covers of various songs. Although I don't think the LP got all that far in the game but the covers were a treat.
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Nov 20, 2019 12:30
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Forbidden Lands: Part 3 Apparently the devs published errata that completely changes some of the important stuff in that last chapter. So, as a quick aside, the GM doesn't get Willpower at all now, which is a blessing because I'm too lazy to want to tally up all that poo poo every session to see how much Willpower I get or track its use. NPCs can only activate their kin/profession talents once per round and it is suggested only be done "when dramatically appropriate". I don't like how vague this is since it doesn't really help inexperienced GMs, who might not get that "dramatically appropriate" probably translates to "don't spam the fighter talent that ignores all armor", since this change does seem like it is meant to try and make combat a bit less lethal and fiddly since talents are very swingy and health points very low. Also, the Goblin kin talent changed to only work at night/sufficiently dark places, but gave them darksight to compensate. Weird change but whatever. Combat Fights in this game start off with everyone involved drawing one card from a deck of ten (the game requests you use their own custom deck for this, but you can just yank out a suite from your ol' 52-card deck if you don't care to purchase that) to determine initiative; after everyone has drawn, you go in order from 1 all the way to 10, and that's your round. The game does say that if you have more combatants involved than cards to group all combatants under one card draw, but due to how combat works in this game, you probably don't want to be doing this often since it will usually slaughter anyone that isn't in full plate if you throw that many enemies at them. Surprise attacks lets those who pull it off draw two cards and pick which one they want for initiative, and also prevent an enemy from defending themselves (which can be very loving nasty if combined with a talent that ignores armor). Player characters can swap initiatives with each other at the beginning of a round, which helps if you have a strategy that involves someone getting into a good position first. Combat actions are divided into slow and fast. You can either do one slow action and one fast action, or two fast actions. Slow actions are generally all rolled and are generally attacks/spellcasting/trying to persuade the orc to not club you to death, with fast actions being more defensive in nature or things like drawing a new weapon, moving, getting up from prone, and so on. Zones are where combat takes place, and range from areas only a few paces wide to something as big as 25 meters, and are connected by segments. Zones have modifiers such as cramped (heavy weapons take penalties), rough (have to roll successfully on a Move check to move through or into it, or else fall down), and dark/foggy (ranged attacks penalized). Range is done in a more generalized band system rather than D&D style measuring; it starts out at what's arm length away from you, goes to what you can reach by moving a few steps, to basically the entire length of a zone, and then all the way to as far as the eye can see. Always got to respect a game that doesn't force you to draw up a map every time a fight starts, especially in one that encourages random encounters. If you decide that combat is going poorly, you can roll Move to Flee so long as no enemy is at arm's length with you, with success meaning you get away and are out of the fight for now and failure meaning you're stuck and possibly in an even worse position than you started in. Close combat runs off Strength+Melee, and there's some really cool things to this that set it apart from a lot of other OSR/OSR styled stuff. Weapons determine the type of attacks you can do, and these attacks do better or worse depending upon how a target defends itself. Weapons with the Blunt or Edged keyword do Slash attacks, which are easy to dodge, granting the defender a bonus to dodge. Pointed weapons can Stab, which are harder to parry with weapons but easy to parry with shields. If you are unarmed, you can Punch/Kick/Bite, which does poorly against parrying, or Grapple, which predictably sends both of you to the ground and keeps your enemy pinned and lets the grappler do special grapple attacks that cannot be dodged or parried. One success on an attack roll means it hits and does the weapon's damage to the opponent's Strength, with additional successes adding one damage per success. Dodging and parrying (fast actions that can be used on your opponent's turn, but there are talents that let you perform a free parry and dodge available that really increase your odds of survival) remove successes from the opponent's roll one for one. When you dodge, you will fall prone unless you take a penalty to the roll in order to remain standing. Parrying is dependent on your weapon; shields are naturally great at it, but weapons without the Parry tag (things like Axes, Warhammers, and so on) take a penalty. A successful hit inflicts your weapon damage + bonus successes on the roll to your enemy's Strength, who can then roll their armor rating to remove some damage, with 6s removing damage and 1s damaging your armor rating. Helmets add armor and have a neat feature where if you take a critical hit that instantly kills you, you can roll the helmet's armor rating and if it gets one success, it breaks and downgrades the critical to a concussion. There are a few other notable actions you can do, such as Feinting (a slow action that swaps your initiative card with an opponent's, no roll required), Shoving (using a shield or weapon with the Hook keyword to knock someone down), Disarming, and this really goofy thing called Swing Weapon. Only heavy weapons can be Swung, which is a fast action that is done immediately before a Slash or Stab attack that increases the damage done by one. The way I'm reading this, you're doing some kind of goofy Legend of Zelda-style sword spin in order to do more damage, and I'm so very there for it. In order to get out of arm's length range with an opponent, one has to roll Retreat; on success or failure, you move to near, but failure lets the opponent make a free attack on you. In addition to all this, there is an optional system (well, optional if someone isn't playing a Fighter, who has a talent dependent on this system) that adds even more depth to close combat, called hidden combinations. The game comes with a deck of cards that represents an action such as dodging, attacking, shoving, and so on. When you get in close combat, the attacker and defender each pick two cards (or one, if an action was spent on something else such as dodging/parrying an attack or moving to attack) and lay them face down. You then reveal these cards to show what action the attacker and defender perform, attacker going first. If the defender chooses something other than dodge/parry, the attacker inflicting one point or more of damage will cancel out that first card's action. Pretty interesting if the players actually make use of things like Shoving or what not to actually throw a wrench into a fight, but if they just like rolling Attack/Defend at all times, there's not much surprise as to what each attack is going to be and this system doesn't do anything for marksmen. Ranged combat is far less exciting, but that's the trade-off for being at a safe distance. A ranged fighter, in order to attack, must ready their weapon and aim first, which are both fast actions (loading a crossbow is a slow action, but it can come pre-loaded to a fight) unless you have a talent that makes readying a free action. A ranged shot can be dodged (same rules as before) or parried by either a shield or a weapon with parrying if its wielder has rank 2 in an associated talent with it (so if you want to do that cool thing Geralt of Rivia does in The Witcher series where he cuts arrows in half with his sword, this game is for you). Range affects accuracy; the further you are, the more -1s to your skill dice you get per range band, and point blank range is a hideous -3 to attack unless you're firing your weapon at a prone or otherwise helpless person, in which case you get a cool +3. Finally, there is Social Conflict. This is usually done out of combat, but hey, if you want to persuade a bandit to stop robbing you while its happening, go for it. You roll Manipulation if the GM judges you have a logical stance or have good leverage to bargain with, and the opponent rolls Insight. If you beat their Insight roll, they either agree to do what you ask (but they can ask for something in return) or immediately try to attack you with physical violence. Additional modifiers are applied based on how well you conducted your argument, your fame relative to theirs, and so on. Damage in this game usually always goes to Strength, but all your other Attributes can take damage over time, mostly from pushing or fear attacks aimed at Wits. When you hit 0 in an Attribute, you are Broken. Being broken in Strength results in you falling prone and only being able to crawl, and also forces a roll on the critical injury table appropriate to what Broke you (save for Pushing, which never inflicts critical injuries); blunt criticals will usually inflict broken bones upon your character, slashing damage will take a limb on occasion, and being impaled doesn't do wonders for your internal organs and blood supply. If your Agility is Broken, you have the same effects as being broken in Strength, minus the critical injury. Wits Breaking prevents you from doing anything but running away, and forces a roll on the mental injury crit table, which inflicts mostly non-permanent bouts of insanity or fear. Empathy being Broken means you have a complete emotional breakdown; you either curl up into a ball and cry profusely, or reenact that scene from The Room where Tommy Wiseau wrecks his room and throws a TV out the window. A character who wants to kill someone usually must perform a Coup de Grace, unless said character is a beast or monster with no Empathy. You have to *fail* an Empathy roll to do this, and even when that happens, you must spend a point of Willpower if you're a PC and take one damage to your Empathy; killing people in cold blood is really hard to do save for those with a specific Talent. Mostly this serves to keep players alive after they have lost a fight; the game itself recommends that killing your players is a boring thing to do as GM and that having things like their opponents robbing them of critical supplies after beating them down so on is much more interesting story-wise. Characters heal attribute damage by sleeping or by having someone use Heal or Performance on them. Critical injuries that aren't permanent and are non-lethal have a timer on them for how many days it takes to heal from it, which can be shortened by successful Healing rolls; lethal critical injuries must be successfully treated before their timer runs out or that character dies. Conditions also exist to complicate matters; most of these are based on basic needs, such as being Hungry, Thirsty, Sleepy, or so on, and inflict nasty penalties for not indulging in these things and will eventually kill the player, as well as things like Poison and Disease that will likely kill the player even faster. Next time, we talk about magic and how sorcerers are the worst.
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Nov 20, 2019 13:09
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I actually really like the idea of having to fail an Empathy roll to kill someone who's already on the ground and no longer a threat.
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Nov 20, 2019 15:16
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Just Dan Again posted:I've seen "quite" meaning "kinda" mainly from British sources. The only definition I ever heard was "very" growing up. From Full OED (entry shortened): quote:quite, adv., adj., and int. So yea, it's a UK thing.
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Nov 20, 2019 15:40
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“Quite” can be used to mean “not very” in the same way that “bless your heart” can be used to mean “gently caress you.” “Oh, yes, she’s quite pretty, I suppose...”
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Nov 20, 2019 16:22
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Spire and Black Magic and Strata Post 5: Better With Elves So since a prior review covered a general outline of Spire very well, I'd like to focus on the bits that landed or didn't land for me. For the most part, the stuff that didn't land is much more a matter of personal taste; I feel like the game's material can get a little too excited about all the magic cosmic horrors and lose a bit of the focus on revolution, but that's taste and it's easy enough to rewrite. It was easy enough to rewrite because Spire does a really good job of being loose enough, but defined enough; that's a hard balance to hit in an RPG. For example: You know there's technological progress and things don't stay the same forever in Spire's world. How much you want to focus on that, how fast it moves, how industrialized the world is, all of that is easy to change up depending on what you want to focus on. For instance, I like the idea of the war Spire is fighting off in the south being a brutal trench war that's raising food prices and dragging young elves off by the thousands to die for a cause they don't care about (the enrichment of the aelfir), creating material conditions for a revolution. The material on the war in the south and the exact prosecution of it is loose enough that I can do that easily, but there's still enough evocative stuff on what's going on down there to get you going. Which is also one of the reasons the various 'this isn't quite to my taste' bits don't bother me much; they're intentionally easy to shift around and it's easy to change up what you focus on with how the setting is written. You want drow noir? It's easy. You want steampunk that remembers the punk part? Easy. Crazy cosmic horror poo poo? The game is really excited about crazy cosmic horror poo poo so that's probably the easiest game of all to do. Also, when the game has to nail a foundational setting element like the aelfir, it does it really well. The aelfir are an amazingly well done antagonist for a game about shadowy revolution, and so I'd like to take some time to look at why they work, how they get players excited for fighting them, how they still keep to the theme of 'everyone you deal with is or was a person', and why they're an excellent balancing act between supremely powerful but surprisingly vulnerable. The aelfir come from far to the north. They not only love the cold, there are indications they can't actually maintain their stability and sanity if they overheat; there's a story about an aelfir diplomat sent to a hot land to negotiate a treaty who overheated to the point that she was lashing out violently at everything she could until her own bodyguards put her to death. It's not as dramatic as drow and sunlight, but aelfir who can't cool off will go nuts. They have immensely powerful magic, and united their people around the worship of a new pantheon of solar deities about 400 years ago, shunning and discarding their old Gods to worship Father Summer, Mother Winter, Sister Spring, and Brother Harvest. They conquered Destera (the land Spire sticks out of) and the Spire 200 years ago, seizing it from its original drow rulers. Ever since, they've moved in, built a magical winter wonderland on the top, and begun ruthlessly and brutally exploiting the drow population to enrich themselves. The aelfir commandments are: Always wear a mask in public, and the more it conceals, the better. Pay respects to the Solar Pantheon, not the weak Old Gods who were helpless before them. Take regular ice baths to cool the blood and ease the mind. Never lower yourself before a member of another race and sully your majesty. Make beautiful things and improve them; nature is made better by an aelfir. The last two are obviously the most important, but we'll be getting to the first, too. The aelfir are a culture completely obsessed with dominance and artistry. They despise the natural world; a tree is just something created at random, there's no beauty or artistry in something you just found growing out of the ground. These are people who refer to gardening as 'a good day's subjugation' because an aelfir garden is focused on contraptions and devices to force the plants to grow in the directions and paths the aelfir want them to. Almost every aelfir is obsessed with being an artist, because their society tells them to think about everything in terms of art. At the same time, most aelfir are hacks. They're a people obsessed with beauty, but most of them have no real sense of aesthetics and just go for shock value or extravagance or a long-winded explanation of why whatever they did is secretly really deep if you just got it. Their entire regime is also founded on ethnonationalist racial supremacy, so there's that, too. Their entire culture is shockingly, completely racist, to the point that rejecting racism has become an aesthetic movement among some radical young aelfir simply because it is the most novel artistic statement they can think of (Strata has a ton of good material on the aelfir like that). They are also completely miserable. For the most part, aelfir don't really do the concept of 'friendship'. They live heavily atomized lives, where the individual is mostly without deep relationships and heavily isolated even though they spend most of their time around others. The mask-wearing tradition is a big symbol of this. Aelfir always wear masks, though they keep a 'true mask' on their person that represents what they think of as their actual face. The mask is only removed in private worship of the Gods. Masks are such an important part of their identity that they'll often speak to the mask instead of the person wearing it. They are deeply afraid of actually showing any degree of emotional vulnerability outside of theatrics. Their culture is so full of face-saving dances and oblique insults that most aelfir have no idea where they stand, but most of them just 'assume they're above average and it all mostly works out' (again, Strata's sections on High Society are wonderful). Every single aelfir is expected to act like a high lord, no-one really says anything directly, all of them are constantly trying to outdo one another with conspicuous consumption and 'radical' displays of hackery and art, and in the end every single one of them is terrified that there's some important rule they're forgetting when the fact is none of them actually know the 'rules' of their social mores or etiquette and they're all making it up as they go along. Also, 10% of the most powerful aelfir in the Spire are actually humans or drow who can 'pass' with a mask on. Because it's really goddamn easy to infiltrate a society where making it up as you go but doing it with confidence can get you very far. This is an espionage-focused setting where the main enemy always wears masks. Similarly, the aelfir are in a position of strength that has convinced them no-one is ever going to be able to really rise against them. To the point that some aelfir fund resistance movements entirely as an art piece, expecting they can never get anywhere anyway. They control the flow of capital, they're extremely rich, they have huge mercenary armies of humans (and drow colonial troops/police), they have tremendously powerful magic, and they have an ideology that tells them no-one else can ever truly be a threat to their betters. In short, the aelfir are powerful, in control, dangerous, and much of their casual cruelty stems from knowing they can get away with it. The Durance placed on drow can see a PC used for all sorts of tasks before they became a PC, up to and including being a trained assassin or having been kept as a 'pet' because they were considered an art object. Who their master then lets loose after the required 4 years of service. Same for their colonial troops. And many of their police. Think about that; their beloved tradition intended to remind drow of their place under the aelfir's boots (the Durance is your price for being 'permitted' to still live in Spire) creates large numbers of people who know the affairs of their old lords, may have military or police training, and who may have been left with a lot of grievances against their old masters. And it happens to everyone! Every drow has to do this from 16-20, at least, and the prison-industrial complex mostly assigns people to do more Durance. Many aelfir who keep a drow 'pet' genuinely think they're being very kind to the drow, letting them be near an aelfir all the time, and don't realize that their handmaiden/manservant may well be plotting how to get them killed. Oh, yes, a major part of their art is that anything and everything should have an aelfir in it. You see, aelfir are the best thing that exists, the most perfect being. So a landscape is boring, but you put an elf in a landscape, and now it's art. The aelfir are an excellent mixture of fantastical elements with a pretty realistic portrayal of the social structures of colonialism and empire. That's the whole reason they work so well. At the same time, they have real vulnerabilities; that youth movement against racism (on the grounds of it being the most out-there and dadiast idea they could conceive) has the potential to be converted against them. The masks and dance of indirect socialization, the constant competition to be the most elfy elf and the most extravagant, and their sort of disorganized disinterest in day to day governance all give you real routes to start breaking down doors and maybe making progress on defeating the regime, as does their extensive reliance on collaborators and mercenaries that might be made into double agents or convinced to back down. At the same time, the Paladins can always show up. The Paladins are aelfir who aren't a joke, at all. They're the heavily armed and armored elf SWAT teams that come down on you if you really gently caress up. They're death cultists, devoted to Brother Harvest, and equipped with a mixture of magical golden plate armor and repeating rifles/shotguns. And sun-based flashbangs, which is very bad for drow. They're there to remind you that as silly as the lords and ladies can seem, they've got some real teeth to them. Also, I really do like how the game handles there being 'good' aelfir. There are genuinely decent aelfir and people who reject the culture of exploitation and racism they were brought up in. They're very rare, because most people are strongly moved by the constant bombardment of racist propaganda and other large social forces that act on them. It's more likely you meet an aelfir who is willing to be kind within the system they live in, without being willing to take the step of actually opposing the system, since they as a demographic benefit immensely socially and economically from how things are right now. Or an aelfir who just thinks it's exciting to play at revolution. But those other two can still fund you, or help you, and maybe through a mixture of blackmail and persuasion, you might be able to convince them to actually join you. If not, take their money and run. Similarly, while Spire wants you to ask yourself questions about 'is what we're doing right now the right thing to do', it never denies that rebellion against this oppressive system is moral. You are right to want to fight the aelfir and free yourself from being treated as a resource to be exploited. You might question what lengths you can or should go to for that, but the fundamental urge to rebellion is built into the story and there's no hand-wringing about 'what if the system is actually okay'. The cop you shot was still a person; no-one in Spire is really denied personhood or treated as just a thing to be shot in the head. But the forces driving you to shoot that cop are very real and there's no getting around the fact that this is going to involve violence. Because the system bearing down on you is already violence. And so, by having a solid core antagonist, Spire immediately makes its primary conflict really interesting, while also writing in plenty of cracks in their power that can let you make progress. The whole thing wouldn't be nearly as compelling without the aelfir in it, which they'd probably be happy to hear about. Also, they still have enough flex room that you can easily make them your own thing; for instance, I really like having them parroting a lot of 19th century Colonialist thought about 'civilizing' as part of their 'we are made to improve the world and it will be better when an aelfir is done with it' ideology. But the core concept for them is solid, and as the game's own authors say, having a good villain is one of the most important steps in having a compelling story. Spire has a great one, and that starts it off right. Next Time: The Drow
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Nov 20, 2019 16:51
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Rand Brittain posted:“Quite” can be used to mean “not very” in the same way that “bless your heart” can be used to mean “gently caress you.” I think that's 100% context and tone of voice and has nothing to do with 'quite' itself.
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Nov 20, 2019 18:28
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Forbidden Lands: Part 4 Magic This will be a quick one before we get into the fun stuff of traveling and strongholds. To recap, spellcasting professions (the druid and the sorcerer) have talents that allow them to cast, each rank unlocking access to all spells of that rank for that discipline. You spend Willpower to cast a spell, which automatically succeeds, rolling dice equal to the Willpower spent. Each Willpower spent increases the power level of the spell by one, and can result in an even more potent spell if those dice rolled land on 6s, with each success adding further to the power level. However, if you get any 1 whatsoever on your dice, or if you cast a spell one rank above your own, you suffer a magical mishap. These range from just annoying things like permanent cosmetic changes (perhaps casting a botched Blood Magic spell causes your eyes to become permanently bloodshot, or a mistake on Stoneshaping causes your skin to become gray) or becoming hungry, to things like your bones breaking or the classic Warhammer Fantasy-style mishap of a demon yanking your caster into its alternate dimension. You roll a new character if that happens; the old character will come back in d66 days, but perhaps it would have been for the best that they didn't. In any case, you can do a few things to mitigate the chances of a magical disaster. Ingredients (which are really common stuff like candles, rocks you carved runes into, animal claws, drops of your own blood, and so on) increase a spell's power level by one, but the spell will consume that ingredient unless it says it can be reused. If you cast a spell of lower rank than your current spellcasting rank, you can roll one less dice to a minimum of zero, preserving your power level and lowering your chance of miscasting (as well as overcharging, but oh well). Casting a spell from a grimoire lowers its rank by one, but it takes a while to inscribe and you always need the book handy (basically you need a fast action to open it up to your casting diagram or whatever). Basically, this and the fact that magical talents absolutely must be learned from a tutor does a lot to make casters a valuable member of the party, but without completely overshadowing the Fighter and the other combat professions. Every caster gets access to general spells, which are fairly generic spells such as Sense Magic, Dispel Magic, Obscure Magic, and so on. The most interesting of these is Bind Magic, a rank 3 spell which is fairly helpful and allows you to stuff magic into an object to create a magical artifact or trap. You can make it permanent if you like by spending 5 willpower to cast, but you've got a fairly high chance of magical mishap if you spend that much. Other than that, it's all fairly standard stuff that every caster, druid or sorcerer alike, will find handy. Druid Spells Healing is said to best the most popular magic among druids, unsurprisingly, both for its ability to mend wounds in nature and also because peasants love to have their poxes cured. The rank 1 spells are all fairly unexciting but life-saving; Cleanse Spirit heals Wits and Empathy points equal to its power level and Healing Hands does the same for Strength and Agility, although the druid can't cast these for their own benefit; if the druid gets shot, guess you better find another druid or hope they can dig out the arrow with the Heal skill. Nature's Cure heals poison and disease, and the druid can self-cast this thankfully. At rank 2, a druid can Banish Demons and cast Purge Undead, which both deal damage to Strength equal to power level to each specific enemy. They also get a nifty spell, Mend Wounds, that cures critical injuries. Rank 3 lets you Resurrect someone (which will damage the lucky Lazarus's Empathy by 1 permanently if successful, since they've seen some poo poo in the Great Beyond), force someone to do something for you via you filling his brain with good vibes, and control the weather. Not exactly sure how those last two are Healing, but I doubt the druid is complaining much. Shapeshifting is mostly utility based. Rank 1 spells allow you to talk with animals, give yourself the vision of a hawk, and most amusing of all, give yourself cat mindset in order to gain automatic successes on a Stealth roll. Rank 2 lets you command a natural beast of Strength up to twice your power level; for reference, the Strength of a bear is a whopping 14, so you'd need 7 Willpower to control one of those. Things like wolves and horses have more reasonable scores like 4 Strength. You also get an attack that can't be defended against and deals damage equal to power level, and a spell that increases your movement rate by 1+power level, which is rather ridiculous in combat since it means you can just zip right through something like 3 zones a round. Rank 3 lets you turn into an animal of Strength two times that of the Willpower spent, lowering your Wits and Empathy to 1 in the process, and also gives access to a spell that induces an animalistic emotional state (the game says stuff like "the laziness of a cat" or "the rage of a boar", but this probably just means whatever the caster wants). It's all fairly useful, although not as greatly useful as Healing. Awareness deals with boosting your perception, both natural and extrasensory. Rank 1 lets you create a light in the dark as well as see and hear far away things clearly and through darkness and fog. Rank 2 lets you scry locations, each power level extending the range up until it reaches out of the hex you're currently in on the map, see the past in a location, or ask the GM which decision is the wisest in a dilemma. These are all fairly dependent on GM generosity, since it says the visions produced by these spells are "fragmented", which is a crapshoot, but that's how it always is with these kinds of spells in any game. Rank 3 lets you perform a divination about the future of yourself or someone around you (again, subject to however much the GM feels generous at the time), ask the GM a yes or no question (isn't this already handled by that rank 2 spell or divination?), and read minds. I wish they had tried to something cooler with the physical senses, all the future sight spells seem to step on each other's toes. Sorcerer Spells Symbolism is crowd control focused, inflicting nasty debuffs on enemies. The rank 1 spells let you force someone to run to where you place a symbol (can be very funny if you place something like a bear trap there beforehand), do a fear attack against someone, or paralyze them to get rid of their combat actions. Rank 2 lets you blind someone, create an illusion, or do the classic Jedi mind trick (it's literally called Mind Trick, even). Rank 3 lets you mind control someone, create a rune that stores Willpower for later use, and create a portal. The first use it lists is extremely dangerous, being that you open a world to other worlds which demons will usually slip through and start slaughtering everyone nearby, and the second use is very useful, allowing you to teleport anywhere within the Forbidden Lands. Why wasn't that listed first? Anyway, this discipline is pretty drat useful and I like the flavor behind it, since the ingredient used for every spell is a rune of that spell inscribed on things like rocks or parchment, so your sorcerer is always busy scratching down horrible sigils and what not during downtime. Stone Song is a dwarven magic, invented to help them fulfill their god's task of building up the earth, but it has spread outside of their clans since its fairly useful. All its ingredients are musical instruments or fists full of dirt and rocks, which is fun, but none of them have the resusable tag, so I just imagine that you wind up smashing your lyre or drums at the end of every Stone Song performance. Wouldn't be proper dwarf behavior otherwise. Rank 1 lets you summon a dust cloud to hide in (but only on a mountain or cave hex), stun a sentient target by screaming loud at it and damage its Agility, and talk to a mountain to duplicate the effect of that druid spell where you see the past but only on a mountain or cave. Don't exactly like to see spells treading on each other's feet like this, honestly. Rank 2 lets you shape stone into stairs, doors, and so on, throw a storm of rocks at a guy as a ranged attack, and destroy stone fortifications or structures. Rank 3 lets you conjure an Earthquake, which sounds cool but mostly just does the same poo poo the ranged attack and the stone-destroying spell, but I guess you can use it on wooden walls and buildings if you want to terrorize peasants for some reason. Iron Song lets you shape metal, which is cool and can create weapons with with big gear bonuses (up to 3), as well as just do useful stuff like bend prison bars or break into secure safes. Finally, you get to summon a golem, which lasts for about six hours and gets Strength and Agility equal to the power level, or you can summon multiple golems if you wish. Sadly, it's only doable on a mountain or cave hex. I always get annoyed with poo poo like this, since it feels overly restrictive in most cases; I hate it when a game is so insistent on telling you when or where you can cast your cool spells or not, and some of it doesn't even make sense. Why can't you conjure a dust cloud in any other location with any amount of dirt? Blood Magic is a grab-bag of various effects. Rank 1 spells do stuff like letting you ignore all damage from extreme temperatures and fire, and also inflict a strong emotional state on a character (making that rank 3 druid spell in shapeshifting kinda useless). Rank 2 lets you bind a demon, transfer attribute points between willing or unwilling participants within close range, and make someone's blood so hot he catches fire (pretty loving metal). Rank 3 conjures up a few temporary Willpower points equal to twice the power level, lets you curse someone with pain from absolutely anywhere in the world so long as you know their name and where they are (if you want to troll an important NPC, this is the way to do it), and remove someone's soul and stick it in an object (which can be permanent or only stop on a certain condition if it reaches power level 3), but thankfully that last one can be dispelled if required. It's worth it for Immolate alone, which is an amazingly strong attack that ignores armor and does extra damage to boot by setting the guy on fire. The other stuff is less spectacular, but at least it's not completely useless if you're not in the right map hex. Death Magic is the final school, and allows you to perform necromancy. Rank 1 has a spell, Befoul, that spoils food if you want to be really petty, but otherwise is fairly useless. Chill of the Grave freezes someone, inflicting cold damage once per round up to the spell's power level, but doesn't work on monsters for some reason (I guess monsters just have warm blood?). Contaminate lets you give someone at arm's length a disease and has the ingredient of "a sick animal", so I'm imagining that this is less a spell and more just you slapping your enemy with a dead marmot with rabies or something similarly wacky. Finally, you get an attack that targets Empathy by making you really scary; kinda confusing since usually that kind of stuff targets Wits, but it's a new effect so I can't complain much. Rank 2 gives you an attack that basically crushes someone's heart from the inside as well as the ability to speak with the dead. The latter is based on GM fiat, in that the dead can flat out refuse to answer, which is rather annoying. You do get Raise the Dead, which is fun, letting you summon undead and give them fun traits depending on how much you put into the spell such as making a smarter zombie or just summon multiple zombies in bulk. Rank 3 gives a ritual that lets you kill all the vegetation and animal life (including humans) in a small area around you and harvest their life force for Willpower, so it's best for your party to be elsewhere while you do this. Terror is that rank 1 spell but does damage to both Empathy and Wits at the same time, and finally, you get a curse that ages someone 10 years per power level. This is absolutely useless on elves, naturally, but is a rude way to kill an already elderly person and can reduce a character's attributes if they age up too high. In summary, I just hate that a lot of magic steps on the toes of other spells in ways that don't make sense. While I get that you probably want an attack spell for most disciplines, I get annoyed that some things are basically exactly the same across disciplines and that these things can rob otherwise unique-feeling things from their schools, especially in ways that make those spells feel inferior; after all, why feel excited for a spell at rank 3 that does the same thing as a rank 1 spell of another discipline? It all feels rather rushed and I hope that they try a bit better with any future magical talents that they might add. I do enjoy the spellcasting rules, since it makes the player weigh their options and decide whether it''s better to do a strong spell and risk blowback, or play it safe and spend valuable willpower on something that might not do all that much. It's just a shame that it wasn't as exciting as it could be.
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Nov 21, 2019 05:08
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Night10194 posted:Extremely good stuff about elves The aelfir approach to immortality is pretty wild too. I don't want to step on your review's toes, but I will say that it's yet another thing that offers plenty of opportunities for a band of enterprising Drow revolutionaries to screw a powerful aristocrat over while making that aristo somebody they really can't afford to gently caress with face-to-face. It also make me wonder how much (if any) inspiration the Spire team took from Steven Brust's novels. That setting also has entrenched, extremely powerful elves who kick a less magically powerful species in the teeth over and over again, who have a fairly blase attitude towards the undead lifestyle.
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Nov 21, 2019 05:34
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Just Dan Again posted:The aelfir approach to immortality is pretty wild too. I don't want to step on your review's toes, but I will say that it's yet another thing that offers plenty of opportunities for a band of enterprising Drow revolutionaries to screw a powerful aristocrat over while making that aristo somebody they really can't afford to gently caress with face-to-face. Oh, it gets even better: Not only will aelfir try to become immortal through the Undying process (you get your heart ritualistically removed so it can be treated regularly, which makes you undead but still conscious but cools your passions for life), but Strata adds that some of them don't trust this. So whenever some of the ancient elves are close to their normal 200+ year lifespan, they freeze themselves cryionically until a new life extending treatment is available, or until their family needs to briefly defrost them for advice. However, if someone fucks with the cooling on their containment system, you can end up with dozens of naked, confused elves from centuries ago stumbling into the street and asking why the hell they've been awoken without attendants. A wonderful way to mess with the aelfir. Strata's entire High Society section is basically pure gold and the book would be worth it for that alone.
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Nov 21, 2019 05:44
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I see they don't go for the budget option real world cryogenics do and just save the brain/head for dropping into a future super body.
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Nov 21, 2019 12:53
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Night10194 posted:they freeze themselves cryionically until a new life extending treatment is available, or until their family needs to briefly defrost them for advice. This reminds me of the Lucius Debeers miniplot in Deus Ex. "uhhhhhhhhh, yeah, grandpa, still no cure for that awful disease you've got, nope, no progress at all. say, what's the PIN code for your vault full of magic artifacts again? we're gonna use them to help research you a cure, honest!"
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Nov 21, 2019 13:10
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Ronwayne posted:I see they don't go for the budget option real world cryogenics do and just save the brain/head for dropping into a future super body. Budget options are for people who aren't aelfir.
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Nov 21, 2019 13:27
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If Techbroism is any indicator, massive hubris leads to thinking worse stuff is actually better stuff because  .I guess what I'm saying is we need the humans in Spire to do a repeat of the subway fiasco but convincing the Aelfir to cut their own heads off because it'll be really cool and we swear this body swapping ploy will all work.
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Nov 21, 2019 14:57
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Halloween Jack posted:I'm sober, and I'm still way too mad about this stupid game, and I may have to do a brief review just to piss on it from a great height. Don't make it brief, I want to see you whizz on it protractedly.
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Nov 21, 2019 15:10
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Spire and Black Magic and Strata Post 6: I am an elf and I'm digging a hole. The drow are just as well done as the aelfir, which is important, since you only play as drow. A few classes could easily be a human if you really wanted, but in general the game sticks completely to 'you are drow'. Drow in normal D&D settings are a terrible, embarrassing mess that draws on some really racist tropes for their origins. Here? The whole 'curse of Ham' style story about the aelfir cursing the wicked drow with their condition is mostly made up by the aelfir (most likely). No-one really knows what caused the drow to be burned by sunlight, or why they lay eggs and need magical spiders to help them tend them. There are plenty of theories, but the constant wars and the attempts by the aelfir to eliminate traditional drow culture hide the truth (so you can conveniently decide on it yourself). What's important is that the eggs need to be tended to carefully, and they need to be regularly fed with blood. The need to feed eggs means multiple people in a community will volunteer to donate and shift the burden of feeding; drow need to be very communal to successfully hatch their children, which extends to making them a fairly collective people in general. Similarly, drow can't actually see in the dark. They have decent night-sight, but they need a little light. The drow are shaped by their underground lifestyle, even as many of them live in covered cities and artificial constructions far from the traditional mountain homes and habitable cave networks these days. Light and sound give you away to predators deep in the dark, but you need them to communicate and to see where you're going; so the drow prize the idea of being cautious and vigilant. They're physically very drab; the book describes them as 'monochrome people', meaning a drow can be black, grey, or pure white. Same for their hair. No word on if they can have soft lavender eyes. Traditional drow society prizes six virtues above all else, with two symbolized by each of the aspects of their triune Goddess, the Damnou. Community, Tenacity, Vigilance, Grace, Sagacity, and Fury. Community doesn't just apply to one's own family and community; hospitality to any in need is a virtue in drow society (and like a lot of virtues, is hardly universally followed). Tenacity tells you to endure no matter what conspires against you; drow aren't supposed to just give up. Vigilance is about keeping an eye out and keeping informed. Grace is the most unusual of the virtues; it means revealing precisely what you mean to reveal and acting efficiently. Unlike the aelfir, the drow value efficiency and elegance, both in practical and artistic matters. Sagacity comes from studying what comes before, but coming to your own conclusions about it. Taking others' word on everything is hardly sagacious. And Fury means that when you do commit to bloodshed, do it decisively and without fear. Limye, the Lady of Moonlight, represents Tenacity and Community. She is also the only aspect of the Damnou the aelfir didn't outlaw, worshiped by the Lahjan (one of the PC classes). Grace and Vigilance come from Lombre, the dark side of the moon, the goddess of the Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress. And Sagacity and Fury belong to Lekole, the Red Moon. It's interesting that the war-goddess aspect is also the goddess of wisdom; I suspect the original idea was that you know why you're fighting and fight when you can do so without reservation. Grace is actually so important it gets its own sidebar. Grace isn't just efficiency or guile. It's knowing when to be truthful and when to lie, and why you would do either. After all, isn't some of etiquette just polite fiction? Sometimes, being diplomatic might prevent a war or other catastrophe, honest or not. To have Grace is to be able to navigate multiple social situations and obligations carefully, wasting no words, presenting the right face to the right audience, and working towards a greater good. I also like to take it as a desire for elegance. It makes a nice contrast with the extravagant aelfir. The other thing you'll note is none of the drow virtues have anything to do with drow superiority. The drow simply lack the same drive to elf-supremacy that the aelfir have, and this dates back to before they were a conquered people. They even have terms for 'basically this person counts as a drow' (shazin) which can apply to anyone who participates in their faiths and communities, whether they are human, gnoll, or even aelfir. One of the saints of Limye is an aelfir, after all; Hearts-Breath-Halting basically saved the worship of Limye when the aelfir were originally trying to purge all dark elf religion during the original conquest, and while she was burned at the stake for doing so, she has an entire holiday devoted to honoring her sacrifice and her work among the drow. Despite being vigilant and paranoid at times, the drow simply aren't that racist or exclusionary. After all, Grace is as much about being diplomatic and finding ways to get along as it is intriguing and stabbing people in the back. The other really important bit of unusual drow religion is the Midwives and the goddess Ishkrah. Ishkrah is often treated as a little different from other Gods. Her magic is Occult, not Divine, and her followers are chosen from actual bloodlines who are born with spider-like mutations. Not every spider-blooded becomes a Midwife, but most do. She is a powerful and ancient ally of the drow that they bargained with when they couldn't bear children any longer, and she gave them the ability to produce the webbing and eggs that protect their unborn while they come to term. In return, she asked to meld some of the drow with her children, so her children could be beautiful like elves. Considering that Midwives have all kinds of powerful spider magic and their mutations and powers can make them insanely scary warriors, this was pretty much a mutual benefit kind of deal. Most people find the hatchery temples and clutch caves kind of frightening, and the Midwives have a fearsome reputation if anyone tries to gently caress with the eggs, but they do a really good job of being something that looks scary and weird but it really mostly about caring for defenseless children. The Order of Midwives extends this to a duty to the helpless and defenseless outside of the clutch-caves, too, and while they have spooky occult magic and scary mutations, they're basically spider-paladins. I love the Midwives as an example of 'looks weird and scary, actually generally very good'. The drow have a lot of that going on. Also note everyone in Spire goes beyond their 'traditional' religions. The city has a lot of Gods. A lot of Gods. The drow also have their problems; they're people, they're not meant to be perfect. And their imperfections and issues aren't portrayed as disqualifying them from being the protagonists. They have a right to defend themselves from the oppressive system that has descended upon them. For one, the drow Home Nations have been in civil war for a long time. This is partly because the traditional drow nobles are kind of dicks. Power and privilege can gently caress up your moral compass whoever you are; it's not unique to the aelfir. Many of the drow in Spire came here as refugees from the civil wars. Destera itself (the country Spire is in) was not only defeated, but the nobles of House Destera surrendered themselves in order to maintain their own privileges and retain some of their wealth and influence. The Home Nations' representatives fight amongst themselves in the Spire, trying to influence the city in ways that will make it easier to win back home. Many drow have completely given up (for understandable reasons) and just try to get by in the occupation as best they can. Some drow are active collaborators, rewarded handsomely for selling out. Most of the police are drow. Much of the army is, too. The whole city has a terrible crime problem, but that's less to do with it being a drow problem and more to do with it being a problem in a city with a massive divide between the rich and the desperate poor who have little recourse to protect themselves from criminals. Still, at the end of the day, once you read over the various drow Noble Houses and their nonsense? There's no mythic golden age for the drow to go back to. The poor were still oppressed and society was still stratified before the aelfir; it just wasn't quite as bad or as racially motivated. It's not hard to look at the Houses and hope that maybe the revolution will get rid of them, too. The drow make a good contrast to the aelfir, and a thorough reclaiming of a concept D&D never did well. They're oppressed and brutalized, though some of them live very well as either active collaborators or people who have managed to navigate through the new regime. They're unusual and interesting, but relatable enough to easily grasp and play. Their origins, biology, and unusual reproductive methods help shape their culture, but don't totally define it. Spire's drow are notably more cosmopolitan than others, because Spire is an international center. Also, women are traditionally the center of a drow family, but Spire's genders are relatively equal. Back in the Home Nations, it's traditional for a woman to take multiple husbands and wives; I like to take this as the drow using marriage in place of the practice of adult adoption. This bit comes from the description of the Duke of the North Docks, a Home Nations woman named Westfall, who has two husbands and a beloved human wife, which would be considered normal where she comes from. One other thing to note about Spire in general: LGBTQ is simply not considered a big deal in any of the cultures in Spire. Men marry men, women marry women, there's a specific noble title for non-binary individuals (Souvain), and nobody considers any of this unusual. There's plenty of other oppression in this setting, but nobody cares if you like men or women or both or identify as non-binary or anything else. The books do their best to be open and inclusive on that front, and I appreciate it. Next Time: The Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress Night10194 fucked around with this message at 17:53 on Nov 21, 2019 |
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Nov 21, 2019 16:45
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Spire and Black Magic and Strata Post 7: The Ministers of Our Hidden Mistress The Ministry is weird. They're really important to Spire, but they're also totally unnecessary. The 'Running the Game' section makes it pretty clear: The Ministry exists mostly to have a way to ensure players are all members of one faction and make up a single revolutionary cell. One of the problems I have with them is that the Ministry is simply over-written for a throwaway plot device like that. When the book talks about the Ministry, they have layers upon layers, ranks upon ranks, and every member like the PCs has been through a frankly pretty ridiculous initiation process that's pretty intrusive on a player's background and character. Let's have a look at the 6 rites of initiation (naturally, all named for the drow virtues), which the section on the Ministry says nearly every cell does in one form or another. The Rite of Tenacity has a prospective recruit locked up in a catacomb and left to hang among the dead for three days without food or water to demonstrate that they apparently don't die of dehydration easily. Fair enough, maybe this is a very extreme way of rooting out undercover cops or something, even though it's a bit insane. It seems like it's mostly a hazing ritual. The Rite of Fury has the initiate told to act exactly as their urges tell them to, to spend a night killing people they feel have done them wrong. Many Magisters (the Inquisitor-esque official/spymaster above a PC cell) will see the initiate drugged so they can't be inhibited in their frenzy. They also coincidentally hope the killings will ensure you can't go back to your old life. The issue with this is it seems like a really good way to instantly get your Ministry spotted. Crazed drug berserker killing sprees seem a little bit public, and like they maybe leave some evidence, especially when they're unplanned explosions of furious violence. Sure, blood in blood out and all that, but you'd think they'd just want you to commit a murder to make sure you're not a cop or something. The actual crazy drugged up killing spree part seems like a bad idea if you're doing this for every single committed agent you add to your organization. The Rite of Grace has you study an individual closely, kill them, and take their place. You're just assigned a target to do this with, and it has to be a target with close associates you will then have to fool. You're also supposed to gaslight the target for an extended period of time as you masquerade as them and ruin their reputation before you take over for them. The Ministry loving loves doing this kind of stuff, along with mind control magic. It doesn't seem especially productive, and seems like a pretty huge bottleneck for recruits; completely replacing another person's identity seems like a pretty big ask and a very difficult task, even if you're the sort of person who's cool with doing this. The book says Magisters usually make sure the person they picked wasn't 'an innocent' because most Ministers would balk at doing this otherwise, which seems like a weird bridge too far considering this is an extended harassment campaign followed by murder. The Rite of Vigilance has your Magister ask you to a meeting, hit you in the head with a rock, and lock you in the middle of a factory. You then have to hunt down the Magister to prove you're good at hunting spies even if you've recently been hit in the head with a rock. Fair enough, you could probably say this one is reasonable crazy fantasy training. The Rite of Community has you go to a group of drow you hate, try to make amends, and work with them for a lunar month to help them as best you can. You're permitted to do this as a secret benefactor if you really can't bear to apologize to a street gang you hated or whatever. Again, fair enough. The Rite of Sagacity sees you assigned to someone who knows about or deals with the cosmic horror elements of the setting, so you can learn about cosmic horror for a lunar month. Once again, this is pretty reasonable. You probably want to know that poo poo, as one of the best places you can hide out is the underspire (or the failed public transit system) if you really gotta shake some heat. Not to mention you need occultism to fight dirty sometimes. So three of the six are reasonable enough bits of training or community building, one is a weird hazing ritual, and two are pretty nuts and feel like they'd really bottleneck Ministers and select for very specific kinds of people, which sort of goes against the pretty open character creation system. It isn't that this is dumb or bad or whatever, it's that it's intrusive in a way that undermines the Ministry's usefulness as a generic group the PCs exist as part of that gives them some structure. Similar for all the levels and ranks of service, or the way a lot of the Ministry fluff makes them out to have a lot of resources when it comes to watching the PCs and potentially loving them over, but nothing to give to actually back them up. They end up feeling like one of the places where the game's Dark Heresy influence is a little too strong, and while you can obviously change anything you want about them, I find them less useful for their stated purpose than just starting the game with 'you're all members of the resistance, people who intend to rise against the Aelfir; why are you here and why did you all form a cell?' The Ministry as a shared assumption in PC background made the game harder to write for me, rather than easier like they're intended. At the same time, I actually really like the Ministry as they are written; they work fine as an element of the setting. They feel about right for the priesthood of Lombre after 200 years of being banned in the wilderness: Full of pointless complications, obsessed with ferreting out the loyalty and fanaticism of their agents, and an obsessive target of the Solar Guard and the Paladins. It feels right for the aelfir to have a big, shadowy organization they're sure is the center of all resistance, where they think if they can just find the secret Weavers and the Mistress and put a bullet in their heads they can solve any and all drow unrest in the Spire. And players who aren't playing as Ministers having to reckon with the Ministry since it's the oldest and one of the most influential aspects of the general resistance to the aelfir is fine. Even if they think Ministers are loving lunatics. Especially if they think Ministers are loving lunatics. It's a small change, but I really find the game much easier to write if you toss the idea that players must start out as Ministers, even if you keep the Ministry. The other issue I have with them is they steal a lot of oxygen from other resistance organizations. I wish there were more potential routes to the resistance than the Ministry, but in general the biggest weakness of Spire is that it sometimes gets more focused on its (admittedly excellent) world than on the whole 'actually rebelling against the aelfir' aspect. This is where the Ministry being the assumed only game in town causes the game some trouble; if you don't want to use them you have to do a lot more legwork than you normally do to come up with new organizations. It's not a big deal, but one of the usual strengths in Spire's writing is that you can easily change a lot and still use the information in the book to a large degree; this is one place where it's more difficult, since it means you go against the assumed structure of a normal campaign. The main thing I would wish for in a second full Spire expansion, as a result of all the above, would be a book on revolution and resistance. I understand that there's two forces that keep it from being talked about in more detail in the core. One of them is that the game isn't interested in dictating the terms of your campaign, which is completely reasonable. The form your revolution takes is meant to be up to you. The other is that the game doesn't even really assume any sort of major revolution happens. It's perfectly happy for you to play a cell of Ministers who keep stopping this week's sinister plan or making incremental little gains as actual victory stays well out of sight. I'd love to see a book on the forms revolution could take in this setting, and some guidance and ideas about possible end-games and additional resistance factions. In part I want to see this because I really enjoy this line's writing, and I'd be interested to see what its own authors envision on the subject. It would also be a good excuse to put a faction system in there, which is the only real mechanical addition I think Spire could use. Some way to define the progress you're making as you try to take back the city street by street and district by district would be welcome, though that can certainly be handled entirely freeform and I recognize those kinds of systems are difficult to design. Next Time: Black Magic
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Nov 21, 2019 22:57
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Ronwayne posted:If Techbroism is any indicator, massive hubris leads to thinking worse stuff is actually better stuff because
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Nov 22, 2019 00:24
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The thing about Puppetland is I can see the potential in the basic game mechanics and the "you are puppets" setup and I think it would honestly be better without the Dark, Adult layer on top of it all. Imagine a game that's just childlike and fun, maybe even for kids, where you're puppets and puppetland is ruled by a mean old Punch, and no he isn't wearing a human being's face and his minions aren't made of skin, he's just the villain and you have to foil him! I'm no expert on the tropes of old-timey puppet shows but it seems like you could have some fun just working with these ideas and not the murder and Holocaust references or Puppet Hell. I guess it's just a sign of the times, that sort of thing seemed "mature" in the 90s.
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Nov 22, 2019 09:23
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I don't think it's actually possible to include Punch without going dark. The old Punch and Judy shows were, um something. e: like, a fundamental part of the Punch and Judy structure is 'Punch beats nearly everyone he meets to death with a stick.' Punch and Judy beating each other, and Punch harming their infant child - those are both also major parts. Mors Rattus fucked around with this message at 14:25 on Nov 22, 2019 |
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Nov 22, 2019 14:22
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It can be dark without being bizarre flesh puppets, though. Personally I’d have Punch be a miserable tyrant who has declared himself in charge of things after the puppeteer vanished (Punch locked him under the stage) and a major problem is the puppet theater breaking down: real fires instead of fake fire, mold, simple disrepair - puppet entropy has set in. Punch refuses to recognize this because he’s obsessed with somehow bringing puppets to life so he can be God.
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Nov 22, 2019 14:58
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I confess that being reminded of Spire indirectly reminded me of Puppetland because they both have that same feature Night mentioned: not a lot of focus on the actual goal of upsetting the status quo (either aelfir or Punch) or how it can be achieved, but a ton of world building that constrains it and thus makes things harder for muggins who actually runs the game. At least Spire avoids the dystopia-not-dystopia thing. (Also my phone corrected aelfir to “selfie” which made me think the aelfir should definitely be obsessed with pictures of themselves carefully posed with their masks just so.. given the “there should be an aelfir in all art” rule it makes a lot of sense too)
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Nov 22, 2019 15:03
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hyphz posted:I confess that being reminded of Spire indirectly reminded me of Puppetland because they both have that same feature Night mentioned: not a lot of focus on the actual goal of upsetting the status quo (either aelfir or Punch) or how it can be achieved, but a ton of world building that constrains it and thus makes things harder for muggins who actually runs the game. I wouldn't really say Spire's worldbuilding constrains your ability to run a rebellion or revolution, so much as it doesn't focus on it very much. To some extent I think this is because they'd rather give a start point than talk about an end-point, which is perfectly reasonable. I just think it can get a little lost in enjoying the cosmic horror aspects of the setting and forget about the revolution from time to time. It's simply having a lot of fun writing about a weird city in a fantasy world, and I'm happy to read those bits, too.
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Nov 22, 2019 15:39
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Sure, Spire’s setting is great - I was even building up a Realm Works database for it until it became clear I’d never be able to use or share it. What I meant by constraints is things like casually throwing in things like “spite’s babies can’t eat Punch”. I get that they’re trying to avoid a campaign end point like you say, but now we have established that Punch has arbitrary “protection magic” and it’s down to the GM to deal with how the PCs find out about this and try to get more information and try to work out how to defeat it with no other guidelines. Players will always try to problem solve, and good fictional protagonists will too; I think it’s a bit off for authors to not account for that.
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Nov 22, 2019 16:30
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