|
A lot of writers seem to write their books like they GM their games. They aren't even necessarily bad GMs; they have a style of game they like to run and want others to be able to do the same. Problem is, when they run their own games, their players know the kind of game the GM wants and are willing to play along so everyone at the table enjoys themselves; but when they write their books, instead of relying on a social contract to keep their games at the scale they like them, they end up instituting a bunch of rules to do it for you that just straitjacket the whole experience and prevent people from running the games they like to play. It doesn't help that a lot of these writers got into RPGs when a particularly rough and restrictive GMing style was even more common and haven't moved on. I don't know, I feel a lot of these people would just go "Yeah, go for it" if you told them you didn't like an aspect of their game and wanted to change it (NOTE: not all of them), but that doesn't come across in text. On the other hand, some of them are so ignorant, mean, or both that they probably shouldn't be telling other people what to do anyway so  You can't really defend the first type of person without inadvertently defending the second, given that you generally can't go up and ask them and those categories can overlap, and that makes the whole issue hard to grapple with. I won't defend them on the garbage they put out, though; Rule Zero only goes so far.
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 18:31
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 24, 2024 06:32 |
|
|
Or even a 'soldier' who was a clerk. Or a computer toucher. Or a mechanic. Someone who is literally military trained but their actual job is surprisingly mundane and they only go to the firing range once or twice a year. There's some rich character potential in that character who's nominally a soldier but isn't infantry, much less any kind of special forces badass, suddenly finding themselves in a warzone of sorts.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 18:36
|
|
|
Night10194 posted:I also really like the idea of a recruit who's never deployed or a national guardsman who all the other Hunters treat like they've got to be a super badass since they're A SOLDIER, that would be a great protagonist. Had one of my players run something similar, but instead it was a small-town cop. The only thing she'd ever used her gun for was to put down deer that got hit by cars (and it was inspired a lot initially by Marge from Fargo). It was great.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 18:39
|
|
|
Now I want to play some stolen valour weirdo who'll never admit he never even seen an army base and has to now force himself to fill those very big shoes he made for himself.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 18:43
|
|
|
Paul Blart: Vampire Hunter
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 19:14
|
|
|
Poland Spring posted:Paul Blart: Vampire Hunter YES
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 19:27
|
|
|
The funny thing is, their counter example of a round-heeled attourney is probably way more mechanically powerful than the Navy SEAL they're contrasting them with. Like, an attourney is absolutely gonna have a ton of useful contacts, resources, and skills for finding horrible poo poo, talking to people, getting information, and possibly even getting the cops to handle the situation instead of them. The ex-SEAL is liable to spend like 95% of every session in the party van sitting on his hands if he knows what's good for him.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 19:39
|
|
|
Fivemarks posted:The same kind of brain damage that thinks working with Zak S, or that using real life anti-LGBT pogroms in Georgia as a plot point are good ideas. Different White Wolf. This was from the original goofy 90s company, while that was the IP being resurrected by unrelated people who bought it out and had a superfan of the 90s version resurrect it, somehow making it worse. It's a saga!
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 19:58
|
|
|
Night10194 posted:Oh, they'll look mostly the same! Just with a few extra scars. My pleasure, it was a fun way to spend some time and stay motivated. Johan was honestly the one I had the hardest time getting down, and about 70% of the mental effort I put into his portrait was resolving the tension between "he is a burly Hams man, he should have a giant mustache" and "he is a spy, he should be clean shaven and use several different disguise mustaches." ~the creative process~
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 20:00
|
|
|
It also makes me realize I've never really described them at all beyond 'Sif is huge'. It's the weirdest thing. I've always struggled with actually describing characters physically. I find dialogue and actions and internal life much easier to write than physical appearances or visuals.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 20:05
|
|
|
grassy gnoll posted:"he is a spy, he should be clean shaven and use several different disguise moustaches." I love the mental image of a Master Warhams Spy preparing himself for The Big Caper by opening a small case of disguise moustaches (ranging from Le Petit Brett to The Full Imperial Wizard With Double Sideburns), and then holding them up to a portrait of the target and trying to judge them in a mirror. "Hmmm, the Half-Horseshoe or the Double Chevron?"
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 20:26
|
|
|
 Heart: The City Beneath 08 - The rest of the mechanics So, on to actually playing Heart. We've gone over the core mechanics, we've seen the tools players can use to interact with the system, but what else is there to see?  Rolling and Healing Heart, like Spire before it is goal-orientated - you're not rolling to see if you succeed on an action; the roll is to see how well you do in relation to your current goal; it's subtle, but the idea is to look at what you want to do first, then how your character's skills best apply to the task. The GM is responsibly for setting the stakes - the difficulty (Standard/Risky/Dangerous/Impossible), as well as the possible consequences in terms of Stress. If there's no reason to be mores specific, the latter is based on the Tier - how deep you are in the City Below. The GM is encouraged to make the difficulty and consequences apparent up-front so that players go in knowing the risks. After a brief foray once more into Fallout - which I talked about a few posts ago - we go into healing it (and stress). In general, this is either done through class abilities - serveral classes can remove one or more types of stress, and some, more major abilities can remove or downgrade fallout - or through resting or buying services from a Haunt. Haunts are locations found in Landmarks (the more static, unchanging parts of the City Below), which can be used to buy equipment or remove forms of stress; but this inevitably requires the expenditure of Resources. The amount of stress recovered is limited by the dice type of the resources you have at hand, and the dice type of the Haunt itself - a ramshackle shelter set up as a doctor's office might be listed as (d6 Blood, d6 Mind), and so could never heal more than d6 stress per visit. Ongoing fallout (i.e. fallout with a long-term effect) can be removed; either a d6 resource spent for Minor fallout, or a d8 for Major fallout. Critical fallout is usually the end of a character, but it is possible in some circumstances to downgrade it to Major fallout for a d8 resource, if you can get to a Haven with an appropriate Haunt quickly enough. As ever, all of this is in the service of telling a story; fallout is often the opportunity to throw a spanner in the player's plans, complicating them, but not preventing them. Combat Like Spire, combat in Heart is presented as any other situation - not just a series of Kill rolls. There's only a couple of special rules to consider; outnumbered players increase the size of the stress dice they suffer, and out-ranging your enemies can put you in a position of safety, reducing the difficulty of rolls, or negating some of the potential stress they inflict. Likewise, initiative is fairly fast and loose. Generally, the GM will just choose who acts at any one time, based on what makes the most sense, and NPCs are purely reactive; they don't get turns, they just react to what the players do (and may attempt to take advantage of any delays). Options are presented for alternative methods; going round the table in turn, or a player-driven initiative order. Bonds Bonds are another mechanic that has survived from Spire, although as there's less of an emphasis on social manipulation and contacts in the City Below, they're somewhat reduced in scope. In Heart, Bonds represent srong relationships with someone (or something) - not necessarily a positive relationship, but not an antagonistic one. Characters can have up to three at any one time, and they act as stress sinks - you can transfer d8 stress to the Bond whenever you visit them. Unfortunately bonds can suffer fallout too - Minor represents minor tasks you need to help them with, Major bond fallout indicates they, or your relationship with them is in serious trouble. Critical bond fallout removes the bond (and may have further repercussions). As an optional rule you can also get a bond to do stuff for you. They'll take the stress, and roll based on their expertise, and how close the job is to where they live. The basic use of bonds here is absent in Spire - you just used them to do stuff for you, and the fallout rules are a bit clearer in Heart. Then again, in Heart they're mostly used as stress-dumps, whereas in Spire it was much easier to get rid of stress. Exploration So this is what players will be doing a lot of; exploring (newly-unknown) territory, carving paths between scattered points of safety, and delving into the nightmarish unknown. As the Heart itself is a rift where reality itself breaks down, the landscape tends to be pretty fluid, changing behind your back. The pressure of a larger group of people; of their thoughts, beliefs and desires can calcify or scar a place into being more stable - the longer a place is lived in, or the more times a route is followed, the slower or less the likelyhood of changes. Landmarks are these islands of stability in the City Below and can be used for navigation (insomuch as one can navigate the Heart). Havens are Landmarks that are home to a stable, and at least non-hostile population - this is most often where the party will be able to get rid of unwelcome amounts of stress, heal, re-stock and generally try to forget their predicament. A journey between two Landmarks is called a Delve, and is statted out a bit like an opposing NPC;  This is the example given in the book - there aren't any other pre-generated delves as the character of each tends to lean heavily on the Landmarks at either end. Tier is how deep (from 0 to 4) the delve takes place, and a given delve may well bridge two Tiers as you go ever deeper. This determines the general difficulty, although sometimes a delve will be easier or harder - having a lower or higher Stress that will be inflicted if the players don't roll well enough. The Resistance of a delve is an abstraction of how hard-going it is, as well as simply how long it is. The Domains are usually those of the landmarks at either end, and affect what domains players need for those extra dice on their Delve rolls; progress through a given delve is generally a sequence of Delve rolls, although other skills may come into play as usual. Successful rolls inflict stress against the delve's resistance - d4 if you're doing it without gear, but usually d6 or d8 for decent or particuarly good gear - and when this reaches 0, you get to the other end. Events are the triggers for rolls against the delve; usually the GM will use them to flavour the rolls required, or to create the obstacles the players need to circumvent. Characters can also perform actions that make the journey easier or harder - such as fighting a clutch of monsters - taking these kinds of risk grant Boons, which inflict additional stress on the delve (up to d12 if the players are really clever). Likewise, resting for extended periods, carrying out rituals or getting side-tracked to harvest resources can generate Banes, which remove stress on the delves as the party take more time than necessary, and supplies start to run low. Finally, Connections are harder tasks that will either incur a significant Bane, or bring the party into conflict with something dangerous. Acheiving this, however, and completing the delve, renders it much more stable and much less dangerous; letting people and goods travel between Havens with relatively little risk. Spire has no such mechanics, but you can quite easily see how the Delve rules could be applied to any long group endeavour, like casing a joint or gathering blackmail on an authority figure... The Map There's a template for this at the back of the book - a blank hex grid, where landmarks and the delves between them should get filled in as a record of the campaign. It's not recommended that the GM pre-plan this too much; it's better to create and evolve it through the course of play (it can also provide a handy source of plot hooks as needed). If you really want to go all the way, RR&D will be selling a pad of maps and landmark/delve stickers soon. Next: GM Advice, and the World of Heart
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 20:57
|
|
|
Ratoslov posted:The funny thing is, their counter example of a round-heeled attourney is probably way more mechanically powerful than the Navy SEAL they're contrasting them with. Like, an attourney is absolutely gonna have a ton of useful contacts, resources, and skills for finding horrible poo poo, talking to people, getting information, and possibly even getting the cops to handle the situation instead of them. The ex-SEAL is liable to spend like 95% of every session in the party van sitting on his hands if he knows what's good for him. back in high-school or early college my friends and I played exactly one game of Hunter and my optimizer friend's character was a banker (or maybe accountant) with the background that gives you an arsenal maxed out justified by him having a job and old-money connections that allowed him to buy poo poo loads of decommissioned war surplus goods. If you needed a hand grenade or machine gun circa 1975 he was your go to guy. LazyAngel posted:That delve sounds like the Warrens from Darkest Dungeon.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 21:52
|
|
|
Darkest Dungeons + high Insight Bloodborne is very close to Heart's aesthetic (albeit it tends to use the words 'red', 'warm' and 'glistening' a bit more).
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 22:08
|
|
|
LazyAngel posted:Darkest Dungeons + high Insight Bloodborne is very close to Heart's aesthetic (albeit it tends to use the words 'red', 'warm' and 'glistening' a bit more). The Bloodborne soundtrack is listed as a major Spire inspiration/play aid. Honestly, as a lover of Bloodorne and Spire, I wish they'd cut down the Bloodborne in Spire and kept the blood plagues for Heart.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 22:13
|
|
|
System Mastery just covered Darwin's World which means I never have to (except for when I did as a joke). Thanks Jef and Jon for continuing to bring us quality podcasts all these years. https://systemmasterypodcast.com/2020/04/21/darwins-world-system-mastery-172/
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 23:32
|
|
|
Dawgstar posted:Honestly I think the Aberrant "YOU ARE NOT THE AVENGERS" is peak WW fun police. Even as they explicitly have a team in the setting that wears uniforms and fights big villains and saves people from giant disasters. I'll disagree with that a little bit. One point that gets made about Team Tomorrow is that their fights/interventions are pretty heavily curated in ensure that that have at least a two to one advantage over the total number of other Nova combatants to make they don't get their asses handed to them on TV. In one adventure there's a huge battle between Mega-Novas, Caestus Pax and Divis Mal, but the adventure takes some pains to note that the battle is background, setting more than anything else, like a situation with the PCs in a forest fire or hurricane. The action and decisions on how things play out is very much in the hands of the PCs. I really liked that about the game. One of the cooler aspects of it that that just because you had "sooper-powerz" it didn't mean you were forced to don spandex and go fight super-villains. The world was bigger than that and had a lot more options available. Everyone fucked around with this message at 03:44 on Apr 22, 2020 |
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2020 02:06
|
|
|
Everyone posted:I n one adventure there's a huge battle between Mega-Novas, Caestus Pax and Divis Mal, but the adventure takes some pains to note that the battle is background, setting more than anything else, like a situation with the PCs in a forest fire or hurricane. The action and decisions on how things play out is very much in the hands of the PCs. I really liked that about the game. One of the cooler aspects of it that that just because you had "sooper-powerz" it didn't mean you were forced to don spandex and go fight super-villains. The world was bigger than that and had a lot more options available. The game tried to make you feel bad if that's what you wanted to do, though. Which is the problem.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2020 02:10
|
|
|
Hey, I'm feelin kinda bad about abandoning Invisible Sun. I do wanna finish it, but it's also as of now over 2000 pages of text with the supplements they keep cranking out, and honestly it's kind of boring textwise as the entire thing is basically wastedpotential.pdf But y'know what we haven't had recently? A good horrorshow F&F. A real honest to god gently caress you terrible nightmare product. Something that physically hurts to look at. So prepare yourselves because motherfucker unlimited is coming down the tracks. 
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2020 02:14
|
|
|
Big Mad Drongo posted:I think the key here is that Hams has a very clear progression system that guides you from scullery boy to superspy embedded within the mechanics themselves.The class switching/tiering mechanic is a brilliant. All the player has to do is come up with the why and how. I think another key factor is thst you don't have to be a specially trained badass to have useful skills. Oh you're a servant? Then you must know how to dodge flying crockery and how to pass beneath notice. A student dropout? You can read, and the anatomy lectures you did attend probably make you a better doctor than anyone else the PCs are going to find. Etc etc.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2020 02:19
|
|
|
Loxbourne posted:I love the mental image of a Master Warhams Spy preparing himself for The Big Caper by opening a small case of disguise moustaches (ranging from Le Petit Brett to The Full Imperial Wizard With Double Sideburns), and then holding them up to a portrait of the target and trying to judge them in a mirror. I suspect that facial hair is one of the primary factors in the success or failure of Old World espionage. 
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2020 02:21
|
|
|
 WHAT THE gently caress IS THIS This is a motherfucking brony-made My Little Pony but in Alt History Urban Fantasy 1950's. Do you want disturbing art of cartoon horses? Do you enjoy Libertarianism? Do you wanna know about all the gun-companies that make pony-compatible firearms and what innovations they brought to the pony arms industry? Do you wanna see 21 motherfucking fan submitted My Little McCarthyist Pony OC's? Welcome to loving Roan. Strap in, our intro is an in-universe newspaper that prints alternately in color and black and white.  A Species Divided; A Nation United posted:A Species Divided; A Nation United This newspaper just says a bunch of poo poo we learn elsewhere, but I'll cover the content for your edification: We learn that Roan, which is Pony America, is 100 Years Old. There was something called the Aether War (AKA Not-WWII) and everything is a horse pun.  President Pony Other nations include Canida (Dog Canada/Britain its sorta both), Falconigrad (Gryphon USSR), and some country of Dragons that goes unnamed. The various kinds of magical pony variants we will learn of later were made by Magical Nukes and therefore are literal mutants. Pony George Washington was named, not fooling, "Gauge Jet Chase".  Pony Heroin is literally called SALTZ and is in the form of sugar cubes. It is illegally snuck into your food and drinks by dastardly communist infiltrators to addict the population of Ponymerica. Thankfully the feds will protect us!  Have a page of animal puns and disturbing world building:  There is going to be so much art, because this book for some reason has like 20 artists credited. I hope you enjoy disturbing pony art, because we got a lot coming!
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2020 02:34
|
|
|
Wapole Languray posted:This is a motherfucking brony-made My Little Pony but in Alt History Urban Fantasy 1950's. Do you want disturbing art of cartoon horses? Do you enjoy Libertarianism? Do you wanna know about all the gun-companies that make pony-compatible firearms and what innovations they brought to the pony arms industry? Do you wanna see 21 motherfucking fan submitted My Little McCarthyist Pony OC's? I don't! I did not want to see those things at all! This is going to be a wonderful shitshow.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2020 02:45
|
|
|
Wapole Languray posted:This is a motherfucking brony-made My Little Pony but in Alt History Urban Fantasy 1950's. Do you want disturbing art of cartoon horses? Do you enjoy Libertarianism? Do you wanna know about all the gun-companies that make pony-compatible firearms and what innovations they brought to the pony arms industry? Do you wanna see 21 motherfucking fan submitted My Little McCarthyist Pony OC's? NO PERSON WANTS THIS. But now I must have it. StephenColbertGrasping.gif.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2020 02:47
|
|
|
OK I'm gonna give them a point for the "Illiterate? Write for free help!" one. e: Also the overall white wolf "gently caress YOU for wanting to do COOL poo poo with your ABILITIES!" attitude was incredibly stale even in the 90s. I genuinely think they just kind of were going by rote from Vampire at that point. It was at least more or less internally consistent in the various World of Darkness splats. But then, it was the 90s, and I suppose it was less stale at the time.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2020 02:49
|
|
|
Why do Bronies always go in the precise opposite direction to everything the source material was about?
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2020 03:26
|
|
|
"A nation reborn," "answer the call of duty to defend your nation," "to reclaim what was stolen," libertarianism and anticommunism... This is going to be straight up "libertarianism is just fascism with a new coat of paint" with cartoon ponies, isn't it. These are fash ponies. I Am Just a Box fucked around with this message at 03:49 on Apr 22, 2020 |
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2020 03:43
|
|
|
I Am Just a Box posted:"A nation of ponies reborn," "answer the call of duty to defend your nation," "to reclaim what was stolen," libertarianism and anticommunism... This is the trainwreck we deserve.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2020 03:49
|
|
|
Wapole Languray posted:Hey, I'm feelin kinda bad about abandoning Invisible Sun. I do wanna finish it, but it's also as of now over 2000 pages of text with the supplements they keep cranking out, and honestly it's kind of boring textwise as the entire thing is basically wastedpotential.pdf 
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2020 03:57
|
|
|
The Lone Badger posted:Why do Bronies always go in the precise opposite direction to everything the source material was about?
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2020 04:01
|
|
|
I Am Just a Box posted:"A nation reborn," "answer the call of duty to defend your nation," "to reclaim what was stolen," libertarianism and anticommunism... Given that it seems like a big part of the setting involves the War on Drugs being a COMMUNIST PLOT, this is very likely the case. Most traditional libertarians are all about illegal drugs, even if they're of a much more racist Ron Paul variety. It's really only Nazis-draped-in-the-American-Flag style of Libertarians like Molyneux who view drugs as 'degenerate' things to be banned. Granted with the love of McCarthy they could be a generic conservative trying to avoid the label in favor of something which seems more progressive, but given that the GOP is the Party of Trump and pretty much fascist, well... Libertad! fucked around with this message at 04:29 on Apr 22, 2020 |
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2020 04:23
|
|
|
Nessus posted:I think to a certain extent this is just forcing a thing they like into the pattern of another thing they like, with a healthy garnishing of wanting to reify certain forms of masculinity at random intervals. I'm also aware there was some kind of epic-length fanfiction cycle about The Ponies, But It's Fallout, so this is probably connected to that. It's also a common way for nerds to engage with child-focused pop culture without being made fun of (or thinking themselves ridiculous) for playing with a child's things - by transforming the kid-pop thing into an adult thing by slathering a thick layer of gritty realism over it. Superheroes are for kids, but superheroes with rape and serial killers are definitely an adult thing for adults that are appropriate for an adult (like me) to post fanfic and argue on message board about. Or Harry Potter or MLP or Dora The Explorer or whatever. Of course, doing this usually destroys whatever was interesting about the original material in the first place, and misses the point entirely. "What if Superman, but he's a power-mad rear end in a top hat?" is a dumb, boring idea because the whole point of Superman is that he is a genuinely nice and kind person who is always working for the greater good despite havign the power of a god at his disposal. There's a lot of overlap between this and the closely-related Unoriginal Nerd Idea #2: "What if the good guys are actually the bad guys, and vice versa. OH DID I JUST BLOW YOUR MIND?!?!"
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2020 04:24
|
|
|
Man, this has nothing to do with ponies and I am so loving glad about it. Chapter 2.5: Princes of Camet Since I cut this part out to save room on the last post (a good decision), I’ll dedicate this one to showing off the six princes I rolled up for this region. As the players will spend more time interacting with/planning to overthrow these characters than anyone else, each one needs an extensive writeup. That’s what this update is. Each Prince has their various values listed next to their names in order of generation (the ones with descriptive names are results from the personality tables) and includes diplomatic relationships below, with redundant entries removed. Man, that sentence sounds technical for something that involves no math.  Every principality (in this region) is named after its ruler’s title (except for the Patrician, who rules the Free City). Each principality’s label sits outside its borders; when I generate communities, I’ll need that space inside it. Count Dieter von Leibwald (Bandit, Imperial (Vampire), Fifth Career, By My Command, Kill the Mutant, I Wouldn’t Expect You to Understand, Open Book, catchphrase, zero courtiers): before he came to power, Dieter von Leibwald had a reputation as a particularly skilled swordsman and bandit who challenged travelers to single combat, robbing those he defeated and killing those who refuse to fight him. After he killed the previous count in a duel and came to the throne, his secret came out; Dieter came not from the Empire, but from Sylvania. He is a vampire. Granted, he’s about as weak as vampires come; he’s been known to lose fights against mortals, never come out in daylight, and refuse to transform, but you can only drain so many prisoners of blood (as is the standard death penalty in the county) before people stop questioning you. In spite of his undeath, Dieter’s managed to establish diplomatic relations with the other princes of Camet, and though no one likes him, he’s proven to particularly like hunting Chaos and doesn’t seem interested in spreading the curse – and by Border Princes standards, that makes him a lot better neighbor than many ordinary people. Visitors will find him arrogant, condescending, and deeply unnerving in person; without the need to hide what he is, Dieter enjoys playing up the vampire stereotype as a tool of fear. However, aside from his constant threats to drink his subjects dry (which he never follows through on), he’s proven himself a competent protector of his principality, attacking monsters and raiders on his own and driving them off, and he has no interest in expending the lives of his subjects to expand his territory or attack other princes. As such, his subjects, while still unhappy being under the thumb of an undying monster, consider him one of the best Counts they’ve ever had – which says a lot about the Border Princes.
 Patrician Abele Columbino (Merchant, Tilean, Third Career, Marvel at My Wondrousness, My Word Is My Bond, Let’s Get to Business, Black Sheep, Uncontrollable Appetite, Eight Courtiers) and Capt. Lorenzo Bibino (Mercenary, Tilean, Third Career, It Must Be Mine, Kill the Mutant, Honestly You’d Embarrass a Snotling, Act of Virtue, Bizarre Temper, One Courtier): Abele Columbino and Lorenzo Bibino both began life in the Tilean city of Trantio, Abele as the son of the prominent Columbino merchant family and Lorenzo as a street urchin who enlisted young in a mercenary company. They met in their youth when Abele accompanied a delegation sent to hire Lorenzo’s company. Despite the fact that Lorenzo was Abele and Lorenzo might be the happiest rulers in the Border Princes, between ruling (relatively) stable realms and sharing a loving and healthy relationship. This fact does not make them nice or good. If anything, they are the cruelest rulers in Camet, more interested in maintaining control then Dieter, less interested in keeping a good image than Abelard or Shashank, and more proactive in keeping power than Hatshep. However, the two keep each other in check enough to prevent either from crossing the line too far. When visited, the two often play bad cop, worse cop; Lorenzo will lead with his characteristic foul mouth and grow even louder upon hearing profanity from someone else (a personal quirk he’s cultivated), while Abele will play hardball with visitors implying they’d get an even worse deal by dealing with Lorenzo. Since it’s common knowledge that will Abele collects silver coins from across the world, visitors usually bring a few to make negotiations easier. Both of them are more reasonable than they appear; while Lorenzo wants power and Abele once prestige, neither feel taking advice compromises their goal and talking back (without swearing) is as likely to gain the respect as it is to pass them off. For all their power and influence, however, one major issue stalks them; the Columbinos have located Abele and are watching him for signs of greater ambition. If he was to gain enough influence to try to return to Trantio, he would throw their lines of inheritance act into chaos and weaken the house, and they’d rather assassinate him than let that happen. Lorenzo’s weakness goes a bit deeper; he runs a small network of halfway houses for what we would recognize as transgender and intersex children on the run from their parents. If someone were to discover and threaten them, they’d have Lorenzo by the metaphorical balls; he wouldn’t quite give up his life or position to protect them, but he’d compromise his own power to a large degree as long as he can keep those houses open.
Marquise Shashank Espeaux (Politician, Border Princes, First Career, for the Love of the Children, What’s That?, You Have Our Permission to Rise, Chaos Cultist, Compulsion, 10 Courtiers): Of the various children and grandchildren of the original Marquise of Camet, only one survived the Siege of Castle March, a lesser son who settled in the isolated western hills of Camet and claimed the Marquis title. Shashank is his granddaughter, a wildly-rare fourth-generation ruler just recently come to the throne after her father’s death from food poisoning (as far as anyone can tell, an actual, natural death). Intimately aware of her status as the newest and least-experienced prince in Camet, Shashank has taken great lengths to establish a reputation as a cunning manipulator, one that’s already taken root. Unlike her father, who spent most of his reign trying (and failing) to expand, Shashank has successfully favored soft power and influence, and in time she may well come to dominate Camet diplomatically – if her secret doesn’t consume her first. As human as she seems, Shashank is in fact the product of Tzeentchian sorcery. After realizing they were both infertile, her parents turned to a cult within their principality’s border for help; they agreed in return for protection and patronage, and ever since disguised cultists have dominated the March’s internal affairs. Despite the corruption in her blood, Shashank has no interest in serving Chaos, but she values continuing the family line above escaping the cult’s influence; if she has to, she will shelter them within her borders until her death. She deliberately avoids the cult as much as possible and has taken to publicly briefly praying to any divinity that will listen, but neither of those things have helped her situation. If someone was to drive out the cult without realizing her connection to it, she’d owe them a great debt and likely work them in to her already-overstuffed court; if she believed they knew about that connection, she’d support their efforts until they succeeded in gutting it and then have them quietly murdered. If someone was to reveal that secret, both her and the March would probably be destroyed unless in her desperation she properly falls to Chaos; killing a Chaos cultist powerful enough to control a principality might be the only thing Abelard and the Tilean could cooperate on, while her own subjects would quite likely rise up in horror. The March is a ticking time bomb; depending on what happens next it may peacefully unite the region or doom its western half to destruction.
 Prince Abelard de Mont Casteaux (Knight, Bretonnian, Fifth Career, This Power Is Mine, Save the Children, We’re All Friends Here, Foul Murderer, Religious Fanatic, Five Courtiers): Prince Abelard has ruled the largest and most influential principality in Camet for over 15 years, having left his old life as a petty knight in Bretonnia behind over a decade before. Outliving countless assassination attempts and perilous battles, Abelard has built a functioning state complete with a legal code and a (minuscule) bureaucracy for solving minor disputes between settlements and collecting taxes. Visitors to his court – and it is a court, even if it’s located in a small castle near his capital with only five advisors and a few servants – find him a gregarious and humble man who nevertheless never fails to impose his will on any situation he is involved in. Despite the ongoing war against the Tilean princes, Orcish and Chaotic incursions, and the standard threat of unexpected death that characterizes politics in the Border Princes, Abelard only faces two real issues. The first, and the most obvious, is that Abelard is getting old. The powerlust that brought him to the throne is growing dull as he ages and his failure to consider an heir early on has come to bite him. While he only cares so much for his principality as anything other than a path to power, Abelard has accepted his eventual death and has no desire to leave behind a pathetic legacy. His twin daughters, his only children, have proven unfit for the throne; one has devoted herself to the Lady of the Lake and spends her days praying to be made a Grail Maiden (even though Grail Maidens don’t work like that) and the other is so dissolute she’s barely fit to walk in a straight line, let alone rule a principality. In theory, he’d be open to appointing his successor, but they’d have to walk the delicate line between impressing him and not threatening him or his family. The other issue has followed him almost his whole life, and in fact caused his exile from Bretonnia. Abelard is a cannibal. He acquired a taste for human flesh at some point when fighting for his liege lord in a petty war in his homeland and that lord exiled him when he discovered Abelard had been eating the infant children of his peasants; even for Bretonnian nobility, that was too much to bear. Abelard has since cleaned up his act – not only is he horrified by what he did in his homeland, he now has a genuine soft spot for the welfare of children that endears him to his subjects. But he never lost the habit. It’s an addiction he satisfies by eating parts of criminals he executes (as far as anyone knows, he likes killing his enemies in private), and if his secret got out, he’d probably lose his crown to hungry neighbors and usurpers riding a wave of popular disgust.
Wizard-Empress Hatshep I (Wizard, Border Princes, Fourth Career, Give Me Liberty or Give Me a Moment to Run Away, Follow Your Instructions, Strange Hobby, Phobia, Six Courtiers): Hatshep is an enigma; she was born in Camet (in her current capital, in fact), but vanished before she hit 10 years old. Her parents believed she’d been killed in a raid. When she returned years later, not only was she alive, but she’d somehow gained the trappings and knowledge of a junior Celestial Wizard (even though she can’t bear the sight of anything painted in that order’s midnight blue). She tells no one how she gained her knowledge or why she returned, though she’s loud enough about her power that she seems unconcerned of rumors getting back to the Empire (her past is left to the GM). Whatever her past looks like, shortly after returning Hatshep took up employment under Abelard and served him loyally for years before getting ahead of herself and claiming a stretch of land near the place of birth as her own. She has since learned to regret her decision. She declared independence by accident (she claimed a village as her own instead of Abelard’s, which he couldn’t allow) and does not have the skill or experience necessary to stay afloat. If she can make it through the next few years she will harden into a proper Border Prince, but as of now she desperately wishes she were anywhere else. Hatshep may well be the only ruler in the Border Princes who wants to be deposed, just as long as she can survive the experience; she would be loyal (and a lot more careful) serving under anyone smart enough to peacefully replace her. That’s if they can figure that fact out, though. If her enemies were looking to undermine her more efficiently, they wouldn’t have to play mind games, just check her basement. Hatshep And with that, we finally finished prince generation. Next up is actually looking at the territory they rule.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2020 04:46
|
|
|
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Thousand Thrones Let's Talk Deepest Lore You know the big reason all the Deepest Lore about Nagash being a God and poo poo rubs me the wrong way in this chapter? It isn't just that it feels off from what I know of the setting and kind of out of left field. It's because it's all completely irrelevant AND it's not conveyed to the players in the slightest. The book assumes your PCs are going to be super into doing some weird DaVinci code spinoff (it's extremely clearly inspired by that garbage book) when they effectively have no reason to. There's all kinds of art they're supposed to go out of their way to look at, and a painting they're supposed to care about about Sigmar at 'the Tree of Hope' or whatever, and there's no actual in-character reason for them to care. None of it is even required to finish the scenario. Hell, for our purposes, they're just going to finish the scenario at the first opportunity because our heroes are extremely likely to suss out they've been duped as soon as they rescue Ahmed, which you can do very early. It assumes you take him with you the rest of the way to Sylvania because you're...invested, I guess? Or maybe you think they must also have Karl? Actual character motivations here are super unclear, so The Thousand Crowns will basically just save Ahmed and move on; it's much easier to write. But don't think that gets you out of having to read all this horseshit! I did, so now it's coming to you. In general, lots of the 'DEEPEST LORE' in these adventures isn't conveyed to the players in any kind of way that would make them care, because it's written by like 8 different authors. The only important part of this adventure for the plot is it's the first time the heroes ever actually get a hint the Black Witch is even a thing, and then only if they gave that seer who misdirected them their real names. For purposes of my narrative, our heroes didn't, because it's way funnier if she's exactly as much of a nonentity to them as she is in the overall plot despite being the main villain, but otherwise as you carefully manage coaching rates and exact distances of travel and chase, she sends dreams to try to learn more about what the PCs want and get them more firmly invested in moving away from Karl so she can snatch him more easily. Our heroes ignore the magic dreams because they don't give their full real names to shady seers (Syphan and Rose warned them it's a bad idea. It takes a WP check for a character to lie to her, but look at their Spy) and catch up with the kidnappers at the first opportunity, in the small town of Hermsdorf. Their enemies are posing as charcoal burners dragging their 'son' around, but the heroes know what's what and talk their way into the inn (Charm-10 to convince the innkeeper these people are villains). They'll try to bolt if they realize they're under attack, but the heroes also have two good stealth characters and there's a '50% chance the assassin-priest of nagash is asleep'. "Loud noises will rouse Farouk", but they talked their way in and have a lockpicker. Two of them. They stack up on the doorway like an early modern SWAT team and then pick and breach the door, Syphan flashbanging the room to keep up the comparison. Farouk the Assassin-Priest is fairly dangerous, and will spend most of the fight trying to run with Ahmed normally, since he's mostly supposed to get away here (though he can be stopped). Unfortunately for him, he also doesn't have any real armor, and he and his men have been jumped by a team of competent experienced resistance veterans. 3 weak disciples with only daggers and WS 30 don't help the WS 63 3 Attack SB 4 TB 4 Assassin much. They remind you 'Farouk has a Fate Point so he can auto-escape potentially' but gently caress that. Our heroes are in NO MOOD. He ends up on the wrong end of a tag-team of Sif and Johan as the others take out his disciples, and even if the rear end in a top hat got away he wouldn't have had a chance to grab the kid. The heroes having had their cool breach and clear moment, they go to rescue Karl only to find it's Ahmed the little Strigany teen. Still, saving a kid is always worthwhile, but they also quickly realize they've been had. They take the weird art object of Sigmar at the Tree of Hope because it might be worth something, tell Ahmed they'll drop him where it's safe with a little money, and jet. Katarine reminds them Karl kept saying he wanted to go to Kislev...maybe he gave them the slip to do that. They have to get to him as soon as possible! Had they not done all this, things would have gotten way more complicated. The game assumes you'll torture the disciples (there's actually a lot of assumption PCs will use torture surprisingly often, which is a little eeehhhhh) and they'll tell you to get to Sylvania to catch Farouk and his stuff before he hands over the kid to The Dark Master. The Dark Master is Lydia von Carstein, a boring Carstein vampiress whose only major character trait is being immune to the sun. You can always suss out a bad vampire by 'lol no sun'. The heroes are also expected to for some reason spend a lot of time helping out at a Myrmidian temple along the way so they can study a fresco that might be PART OF THE PUZZLE. What puzzle? The DaVinici poo poo that leads to the 'power words'. If you're doing the full adventure like a sucker, you do want to do this, not because it's interesting but because you get a FATE POINT if you solve all the art object puzzles. Also note the PCs are paying 7 GC a day, and these travels by coach take like 14 days. They were paid 10 GC each. They will not be reimbursed for their travel expenses at any point, despite the original promise. Hooray! Next they head to Siegfriedshoff, the town that is currently the HQ of the Knights of the Raven. The Knights of the Raven are Morrite splinter crusaders who want to burn down Sylvania. When they get to Siegriedshoff, they're forced by the Warhammer Cops (Hey, it's those fuckers again!) to stop for the night and come engage with the Abbey of Morr to learn more DEEP LORE that they again, don't really have a lot of reason to even be asking about. If they refuse, infinite Warhammer Cops will spawn and drive off/kill the PCs. I did not miss Warhammer Cops. The abbey is full of trials they have to take to get the priests to tell them about the Vampire Prophecies, which again ARE A RED HERRING and are COMPLETELY WRONG because the Vampires are being duped by the Black Witch. Literally everything they learn about in all this is irrelevant to the overall plot, but it takes up a lot of space here. They then get mistaken for soldiers sent from Marienburg to back up the Knights of the Raven and potentially get recruited to head into Sylvania. If they're honest, they're instead banished from town. There's lots of opportunities to take risks to sneak into the abbey library and read more DEEP LORE, but it all causes significant Insanity points if you're using IP, so as per usual your best policy is not to learn things and to just keep moving. There's also a subplot in Siegriefhoff if you're there for several days where the Skaven break in to try to steal stuff, first presaged by CHEESE THEFTS. The heroes can also potentially kill Rikk'tik from the Old World Bestiary during this little subplot. C'mon, Hornburg. Don't throw the awesome Clan Eshin Scholar away like that. The heroes would then go 6-7 more days at doubled coaching rates for being in Sylvania to get to Lydia Von Carstein's town, whether they have Ahmed or not. If they have Ahmed, Lydia will meet them and try to promise them money and tell them she's a good vampire who just wants a cute husband. If they kill her there, she'll turn into mist and escape for Kislev, so she can be one of the duped sacrifices in the final bit. She's also really easy to kill. She plans to eat the kid's soul to get Nagash powers because she thinks it will make her the Champion of Night and make the whole world bend towards vampire domination somehow. It does not work if she does, it just kills Ahmed. Ahmed was apparently born in this town and originally hid away with the Strigany to keep him away from Mannfred, so Lydia could eat him herself when he was a teenager after marrying him. There's a whole chain of events at the wedding where Raven Knights break in to try to kill both Lydia and Ahmed and the PCs have to decide if they'll save Ahmed. Like all Warhammer Knights, the Raven Knights are total badasses, though an equipped party might be able to stop the six of them now especially as they'll be busy with Lydia and her undead and a three way fight gives the heroes more of a chance. Though these knights all have 3 attacks because gently caress you, Raven Knight is a 3rd tier career so it's a solid mass of 6 3rd tier fighters in plate with longbows and sword and shield. PCs will eventually kill or rescue Ahmed, lots of stuff happens, none of it matters. There's also a ton of sidebars about more Deep Lore about the apotheosis of Sigmar, Myrmidia, and Nagash (Remember: NAGASH IS NOT A GOD. All of this is nonsense, and these prophecies are not correct because the Witch is just using them), and oh my God I don't care. All of this is undercut by the fact that not only does it try to cram an entire campaign's worth of sideplot in right here, none of it is relevant. ALL OF THIS, this ENTIRE ADVENTURE, is designed to waste time so the PCs are rushing to catch up with Karl in Kislev for the finale. The only thing worse than an entire adventure that exists to waste your time is one that's also overstuffed with its own bullshit Deep Lore that the players have no real reason to seek out or care about, because it's entirely out of left field and has very little to do with the adventure. Chapter 5 is and always will be the worst chapter in this nonsense, but 7 is real close. It's dull, overlong, stuffed with boring and meaningless exposition, and designed explicitly to waste the PCs' time with no real way to get around it unless they just give up on the adventure and go after Karl, which costs them nothing but coaching fees. You only get the bonus Fate Point if you fully engage and solve all the art puzzle boxes about Nagash being a God and blah blah, but gently caress it. Our heroes would rather just not bother. Now for the chapter that's mostly a cutscene, and then the extremely long dungeon crawl! Somehow this feels like they ran out of budget on the 3rd disc of an RPG that wasn't any good anyway. Next Time: The Thousand Crowns Watch Some Cutscenes
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2020 04:46
|
|
|
Hey guys you know what this incoherent and overstuffed campaign written by like 8 different authors and edited heavily by one guy while demanding lots of last minute changes from above to sell another sourcebook really needed? A long red-herring chapter where nothing important to the plot happens (making it the 2nd chapter of 9 like that) and that introduces it's own entire AU fanfiction's worth of Deep Lore exposition that has nothing to do with anything. loving HELL I hate Chapter 7. This is the first time they ever learn there's a Black Witch (not that they learn much, she doesn't have a lot of presence despite being the main villain), so her getting a little 'win' in while they realize she's there at all is okay enough. The issue is that if everything is just a red herring, why put this much loving detail into it all? If you're writing with the idea the Vampires are all being tricked by an overall mastermind, you don't really need to engage with the prophecies, the PCs just need to know 'there's a bunch of Vampires who think this is a thing, and it's put them on a collision course with us'. This whole thing is a tumor on a plot that is already dragging under the weight of too many random villains who all never get the time to establish presence, have any kind of relationship with the heroes, or even be the slightest bit memorable. Which is probably a function of having too many authors and too many demands from above but motherfucker if Chapter 7 isn't some serious overarching narrative writing crimes. And don't forget the entire Crusade of the Child that was supposed to be the narrative anchor of the entire campaign is dying off screen with no resolution to Nils and Johannes and Father Helmut, who was the closest thing to a recurring friendly NPC while all this is happening. They'll meet some ragged remnants of the Crusade in Kislev but otherwise the Crusade literally never amounted to anything and was just set-dressing to railroad and drag the heroes across the Empire while it camped outside various places and covered itself in poo poo. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 05:03 on Apr 22, 2020 |
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2020 04:54
|
|
|
Wapole Languray posted:Other nations include Canida (Dog Canada/Britain its sorta both), Falconigrad (Gryphon USSR), and some country of Dragons that goes unnamed. Didn't even use 'Stalliongrad'...
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2020 05:11
|
|
|
Angry Salami posted:Didn't even use 'Stalliongrad'...
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2020 05:23
|
|
|
Please. Pferdekrieg.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2020 05:30
|
|
|
Hunter's writers had the good idea that hey you should try to get out of the mindset of a typical RPG group but Holy poo poo do they overshoot the mark. Maybe early playtests had like everyone being an ex-Navy SEAL or something, that's the only rationale I can think of for "NO MILITARY CHARACTERS EVER".
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2020 06:17
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 24, 2024 06:32 |
|
|
 Buck Rogers XXVc: The 25th Century The Technology Book: Beanstalks and Other Fun Structures  The Technology Book weighs in at a slim 32 pages, half the size of the World Book. It mostly details equipment but talks about some broader stuff as well. The first 6 pages are all about habitation and making places for people to live in the 25th Century, so let’s go through all that.  Arcologies get the first entry. The arcology was an idea developed by the likes of Paulo Soleri and Buckminster Fuller, Soleri coining the term around 1969 per Wikipedia. It’s a huge enclosed megastructure holding a large population who live there, work there, shop there, basically need never leave.The original idea was kinda environmentalist, basically you build these huge enclosed, self-sufficient structures so that the surrounding environment can be left alone. In the 25th Century they were mostly used by the Russo-American Mercantile Combine to house the millions made homeless by the last big war- now those independent arcologies, still mostly under RAM control, are Earth’s only really organized communities. Of course the term also applies to things like the cities on Luna and Mercury, some of the big pyramids in Coprates Chasm, etc. Then we get to Terraforming. Because nobody has figured out how to travel beyond the Solar System in any reasonable length of time, humanity has to figure out how to best use the real estate they have. Some of this was covered in the World Book but there’s a lot more detail here. Mars was a three stage process. First they slammed “icesteroids” into the southern icecaps, creating tons of heat, and releasing both the water in the icecaps and in the asteroids themselves. Secondly, they drilled into dormant volcanoes to create eruptions, releasing more heat into the atmosphere, and capped those volcanoes to use as a heat source. They even found some water in underground aquifers while boring around the Valles Marineris, the main colony site. Finally, they introduced bio-engineered organisms that feed on the iron oxide that’s everywhere on Mars, excreting oxygen. All of this took place over a couple of hundred years. Mars now has two shallow seas, a number of canyons, some of which contain life, and big open plateaus where the desert runners live. The challenge with Venus was getting rid of the layers and layers of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, mostly CO2. They engineered a bacterium to feed on the CO2, and used icesteroids to create large seas. This brought the pressure and temperature down, but not quite enough. They subsequently introduced sulfur-eating bacteria into the cloud cover, thinning out the acid in the atmosphere and creating water, making cities viable in the clouds and on the highest plateaus. While continued seeding of CO2 and sulfur-eating organisms took place, the lowlands still remain too poisonous and high-pressure to be habitable by normal humans- hence, the Lowlanders. Despite Luna being mostly underground cities, the Lunarians have succeeded in being able to convert some lunar soil to its component gases via huge expenditures of energy (mostly solar). The deepest craters on the Moon now have air pressure equivalent to the highest peaks of the Himalayas on Earth, which doesn’t do much. In three hundred years there might be enough air for people to go outside without tanks, but at the same time it’s probably impossible for there ever to be free-standing water on the surface, so this is basically something the Lunarians are doing because they have the money to do so. In the meantime they’re happy enough with underground living. There’s a brief passage on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn but not much new information (though apparently RAM’s approach for Titan involved introducing bioengineered algae that produce oxygen into the air, then setting off fusion bombs to burn off the excess.) Sandwiched in this is a section on Spin Gravity, which (along with acceleration and gravitol) is one way to counter the problem of weightlessness in deep space. Spin something fast enough on its axis and you can create enough centrifugal force to stick people to walls. Of course, a ship or space station has to be a certain size for this to work, otherwise the coriolis effect means everyone gets thrown around sideways all the time. Some large spaceships (mostly battlers) have living spaces mounted on a separate rig surrounding the ship, so they can rotate and have gravity while the central hull is stable.  Orbital colonies are giant space stations which support large populations (in the hundreds of thousands.) They’re designed to be completely self-enclosed and self-sufficient, with gravity from rotation (hence most colonies are shaped like cylinders or donuts, though you can stack the torus-shaped ones on top of each other along a central axis), as well as an internal ecology with plants and animals. The first orbital colonies were all toruses, but later giant cylindrical colonies were built around Venus and Mars. Finally, in the Asteroid Belt, several rocks have colonies built into them- the smaller ones have been given spin to simulate gravity, but the largest asteroids actually have (very) low gravity. Some asteroids were also used to build the Mariposas around Mercury, since the rock makes for good protection against solar flares. Finally there’s a section on the Mars-Pavonis Space Elevator. A space elevator is one of the weirder ideas for achieving space travel, basically a giant beanstalk is built up out past the atmosphere. It’s way impractical and the consequences if it ever falls could be pretty cataclysmic but hey, it’s Mars, RAM’s got walkin’ around money. So they got a miles-long cable, attached it to Phobos, and lowered it down into the Martian atmosphere, using rockets to anchor it over Pavonis Mons, an extinct volcano which reaches several miles straight up (and is so wide that the upward slope is barely noticeable.) They attached elevators to the cable to directly transport stuff up and down at first, then later constructed a massive base at the bottom a stronger tether all the way up to the top. The whole process took over a century. (Something like this is in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars, and well, problems ensue.) That does it for the overviews for now, so next we’ll get into equipment listings, starting with Communications and Gadgets and Gear! Maxwell Lord fucked around with this message at 19:54 on Apr 22, 2020 |
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2020 06:24
|
|