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Maxwell Lord posted: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.
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Apr 22, 2020 07:28
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Joe Slowboat posted:The Bloodborne soundtrack is listed as a major Spire inspiration/play aid. Yeah, Spire suffers a bit from being slightly less focused, and the Heart just originally being part of the main setting. Especially given that 90% of the time, Ministers have no reason to go down below Derelictus and actually engage with any of the real weirdness.
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Apr 22, 2020 07:41
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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 Wait are they just taping normal guns to their stumps? That thing clearly has a normal trigger to be operated by human fingers, with no mechanisms to activate it. Nevermind, proceed with this 
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Apr 22, 2020 08:19
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I for one am extremely glad that they do not have human fingers. Please do not let there be art where they have human fingers.
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Apr 22, 2020 11:53
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Zereth posted:Just finish the core stuff, maybe? How much of that was left? Oh, you think they’re going to not explain how horses can use guns. Nah, this gets way dumber,
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Apr 22, 2020 12:29
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Mors Rattus posted:Oh, you think they’re going to not explain how horses can use guns. I was specifically not thinking about how the horses use guns on account of the fact that I don't actually want to know.
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Apr 22, 2020 12:39
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In fact looking at it again the gun barrels are protruding past the end of their stumps (that's not what hooves look like) so they can't even walk on that foot when NOT trying to aim.
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Apr 22, 2020 12:46
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Aethyron posted:I for one am extremely glad that they do not have human fingers. Please do not let there be art where they have human fingers. Oh boy, you're in for a treat.
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Apr 22, 2020 13:28
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Maxwell Lord posted: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 The idea of the space elevator isn't about achieving space travel, for what it's worth, it's about making surface-to-orbit travel cheap. It takes a lot of energy to launch stuff out of a gravity well into space, and that means expensive. The lure of the beanstalk is that while the megastructure itself would be incredibly expensive and hazardous, it would also make hauling stuff from surface to orbit incredibly cheap rather than needing to use rockets or transporters or what have you. Whether this would actually wind up being true is anyone's guess, but it's certainly the kind of logic that would appeal to RAM.
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Apr 22, 2020 14:12
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Flail Snail posted:Oh boy, you're in for a treat. I'm imagining human fingers folded under their not-hooves, like the legs of an isopod.
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Apr 22, 2020 14:16
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I'm not hearing you, I'm safe under my blanket where there are no mutant fash ponies.
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Apr 22, 2020 14:19
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Roan baffles me on a fundamental level. Do they want to keep to the spirit of the cartoon but also you're playing ponies who bust up narcotic rings planted by foreign agents? Does their brain not shred itself in twain from the tonal dissonance?
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Apr 22, 2020 14:24
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What is it with ponies and libertarians? You'd think you'd see the occasional communist weirdo into this poo poo, but with ponies on the internet it's fash all the way down.
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Apr 22, 2020 14:24
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LazyAngel posted:Yeah, Spire suffers a bit from being slightly less focused, and the Heart just originally being part of the main setting. Especially given that 90% of the time, Ministers have no reason to go down below Derelictus and actually engage with any of the real weirdness. I find this line of criticism very weird, tbh. The sourcebook focuses on the city being a forced melting pot of weirdness, giving a vast sampler of places and things. It's the GM that decides where the focus will be, but the locations are there to be used if needed. I've co-ran a campaign entirely focused around the weirdness around the Heart, where the conflict between having to survive these eldritch interferences and trying to be good revolutionaries ended up being a narrative throughline, and we never went above the Red Row, but that doesn't make the upspire locations redundant or useless.
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Apr 22, 2020 14:28
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LupusAter posted:I find this line of criticism very weird, tbh. The sourcebook focuses on the city being a forced melting pot of weirdness, giving a vast sampler of places and things. It's the GM that decides where the focus will be, but the locations are there to be used if needed. I've co-ran a campaign entirely focused around the weirdness around the Heart, where the conflict between having to survive these eldritch interferences and trying to be good revolutionaries ended up being a narrative throughline, and we never went above the Red Row, but that doesn't make the upspire locations redundant or useless. That's fair; I just found it can be a bit tricky focussing on some of the weird without splurging out into everything; it does make it a bit harder to keep to a consistent tone.
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Apr 22, 2020 14:47
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Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Thousand Thrones The Gang Travels Kislev First, the customary 300 EXP an adventure for our protagonists has some significant effects. Shanna finishes Crime Lord and scampers directly into Master Thief. She can finally upgrade her Agi again! And by the end of the campaign she'll have maxed it at 89%. Ain't no catchin' Shanna Applebottom if she doesn't want to be caught. Oleg finishes Vampire Hunter and enters his true final form, right as they go after a Witch: He is a Witch Hunter now. Being a dwarf ranger, he keeps his stylish hood and resists the urge of the giant human hat. That's for elfs who go native like Liniel from Paths of the Damned. He also has 3 attacks. Sif doesn't have much else to do, and while she doesn't use her bow often she masters its use, getting to 70% BS. She also has Mighty Shot and Rapid Reload. She can put 3 arrows downrange in a flash better than most elves, and she mostly treats archery as a hobby. Champions are awesome at fighting. Johan maxes his WS at 57 (respectable) and grabs his own third attack. He'll always be the 'secondary' fighter compared to Oleg and Sif, but Johan's actually kind of a badass now. If he catches someone by surprise he can do some serious damage. Syphan grabs Wrestling, Flail, and uses a little house-rule of mine where Pit Fighter can take Street Fighter in place of Parrying Weapons. This is because Parrying Weapons are kind of sad outside of the Swordbreaker and because c'mon, it should be possible to learn to punch the poo poo out of people as a Pit Fighter. Syphan has now completed her transformation into a wizard-martial artist. Katarine maxes her WP and Int at 60 and 51 (her actual Heal test is now 81% base) and learns to use the sacred Longbow common to Rhyan and Taalite warrior-priests. She's still probably the worst fighter on the team, but she's not here for her combat abilities, she's here for her healing and support and social skills. Rose just gets smarter. Rose is the smartest member of the party BY A SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT. The cute magical raccoon is the Speedwagon to Syphan's JoJo, dispensing constant narration and exposition. She gets treats in return, which she would find demeaning, but she really likes treats. The book suggests 'stalling' the PCs with more red herrings if they detected that Chapter 7 was a red herring, or hitting them with extra combats to wound and slow them down. Schwalb, is that you? It is! I remember this horseshit from Forges! It also has a sidebar on what to do if the PCs have gotten sick of the campaign due to Chapter 7: The answer is to hit them with more random encounters until they get the hint and get back on that railroad, goddamnit. "This could be perceived as heavy handed." Gee, you don't think. On their way north, our heroes actually pass by the great Karak Kardin in the World's Edge Mountains. Oleg asks the team to stop a short time to recover, but also so he can leave word about everything that's happened with his people. This isn't his Hold, but he knows what a Runebearer can do, and the word will get out. All this fuckery about the Crusade and the vampires and all? The Thanes and Kings should probably know about it and as a Ranger it's his duty to report what happens in the surface world. Karak Kardin would be a cool place for a side adventure, since it's the location of the great Shrine of Grimnir and the sacred city of the slayer cult, who have kept the city from ever once falling. There's no suggestion to have an adventure there, but for our narrative purposes the team spends a few days there, with Oleg reporting on everything that's happened to some of the Thanes and the elf being made somewhat unwelcome (by which I mean forced to drink dwarven beer, which they expected to floor her, not quite realizing Syphan has the constitution of a somewhat sickly dwarf). This helps explain why they don't stay quite as hot on the tail of Karl. They wouldn't deny Oleg the chance to do his duty, and they deserve a decent beer and a short rest for once. After a short and probably really interesting interlude with the dwarfs, they also pick up any last gear they need. Specifically, they've put Shanna in full plate. Dwarf-made plate. She has Sturdy. This has no penalties for her. Their tiny halfling thief is walking around covered in steel without making a sound, toting an automatic crossbow. This is good. Moving on, there's a bunch of suggestions to once again put Terror in Talabheim in the middle of everything, or throw in other published adventures, but the heroes are beyond that now. While it would be hilarious to watch them curbstomp all the low-level material in Plundered Vaults, I'll be covering that after this. There's a lot of Gossip tests to uncover rumors about where the Crusade went, but A: The team is very good at Gossip and can do this easily and B: We know where it's going. They're heading into Kislev, right as late fall is setting in. Kislev gets no real coverage and is described as a 'rude and thoroughly uncivilized land'. We've read Realm of the Ice Queen and in fact know Kislev is a rad place where you can have the saber fight from The Deluge get interrupted by hellvikings. It getting absolutely no real screen time or flavor in this adventure is both par for the course (look how dull Altdorf was) and a shame. Our heroes draw near to the town of Zhidovsk, a town they cannot do anything to help and that will be extremely dead by the end of this adventure, and this is where the actual adventure kicks in. The heroes first come across a small band of refugees, Crusaders who have since left the crazy, doomed Crusade and who are fleeing through the snow for...anything, really. They're pursued by a Witch Hunter who believes (correctly) one of the refugees is a mutant, so he intends to burn the entire band alive. The four refugees are described as wicked and low-character men who don't really have any purpose in the story besides to tell the PCs they're close to their target and for Ham the mutant to have a belly button that shits maggots. Hi, Schwalb. The refugees are 'vicious men' who will 'betray and murder the PCs at the first opportunity' if the heroes let them come along or try to help the starving, mostly unarmed and helpless people. I'd like to see them loving try; Syphan could handle all 4 of them unarmed. Sif could do it unarmed and unarmored. Them turning on the PCs is considered a serious threat, somehow, despite them being ragged 1st tiers with no real weaponry or gear. It's more of the general 'trying to help anyone will just get you slapped' stuff. Similarly, if the PCs abandon them, make a -20 Int test for their leader Frank. If he succeeds, he realizes the PCs were in the Crusade and manages to convince the Hunter to go after them as revenge. Phineas Vanderhoff is also treated like a super terrifying opponent. He's another dick Hunter who has nothing to do with the Cult of Sigmar; he's a freelance bounty hunter who has found that in his line of work, most of the most valuable bounties are mutants and cultists. So he's gotten into Witch Hunting, dresses like one, and claims to be one to terrify quarries into surrendering. Plus, he likes the burning and the killing and the torturing and this gives him the excuse. Herr Vanderhoff won't be much of a loss for the world once he gets on the wrong end of The Thousand Crowns in a few pages. He's accompanied by 4 minor brutes about on par with the Lahmian thugs from earlier in the campaign, just worse equipped. Even if they were 'only' at 2500 EXP or so, the party could definitely handle Phineas and his minions. It's also possible for the heroes to encounter the Hunter first and get recruited to be his brutes (his brutes are dead from a Beastman battle if they run into him first) with him promising pay to run down the refugees. Phineas is treated as a serious fight, and I suppose he is; he's WS 62, has another of those Superior Swords that's +10% WS, has full plate, etc. But the team is 3rd tier. When he tells them he intends to burn everyone behind them, they tell him to gently caress off and find some real witches instead of hunting down starving refugess. Sif implies he's too much of a coward to fight anything that can fight back and that's why he's hell for leather on going after refugees. He calls her a mutant, saying she is a 'woman of uncommon and unnatural size', accuses Syphan of being a witch (actually correct, sort of), and swears that Katarine must be touched by Slaanesh. Things degenerate quickly. Soon enough, Phineas Vanderoff's career has come to an end at the hands of a Norsewoman's morning star and his brutes are dead or running. They take his nice sword as a trophy to give to Katarine. Fighting him is treated as a very stupid thing, but think about it; it's a very winnable fight where the enemy has amazing gear you can take. Johan also takes the man's excellent coat. A long, black coat with a red Cathayan silk lining? Stylish as heck, and it's his color. Next, the heroes encounter the dreaded Black Ice, a terrible wolf-like daemon that has held the entire town of Zhidovsk in his thrall. This demon is used to threaten the town into sacrificing a girl to the Black Witch every generation or so, so she can have a semblance of a body while she's trapped in her eternal mud puddle/hellwomb. It's meant to be a terrifying encounter, though it will not immediately attack and in fact can lead the PCs to Zhidovsk or even all the way to the Black Witch if they're mounted and chase it on horseback. Yes, you can skip all of Chapter 8 if you have horses and pursue the demon. No, this doesn't change anything about the strict time limit on Chapter 9; it's assumed that you not wasting a week in Zhidovsk just means things move faster. However, as soon as they see a Demon (and make their Terror tests), Syphan casts Banishment. She's ahead of it in the initiative order, after all. It also only has a 38 WP to her 70. She obliterates it on the WP vs. WP test, and chains of light wrap around the beast and drag it back to hell with a confused wurfle. Even if she hadn't done this, Black Ice is absolutely pathetic; he's a 1 attack, SB 4, TB 4 WS 51 W 17 unit whose only real trick is an ice breath he can use once per 4 rounds to do Damage 4 Ignores Armor in a cone. They'd have shot him to death before he could escape if Syphan hadn't expelled him back to hell instantly and destroyed him. Next up comes our evil temptress hag who mind controls men to make them her sex slaves. Hooray! It's bingo at last! She picks out an 'attractive human male' (Johan) to lead into her shack and mind control, which takes a WP-10 to resist. Johan has a 71% WP and Resistant to Magic. When Shabrak the Hag tries to grab him, he just kind of looks at her like 'really'? She's described in loving detail as an ugly old woman with a blue tongue who smells like poo poo, and the hero she mind controls is told to do everything he can to be close to and protect her and tell the party to come to her house with him. She failed to do this. If they follow, she serves them a lovely dinner, which is all an illusion (it's all muddy, filthy poo poo-water and grubs) and she spends the whole time trying to make out with the controlled PC, who can't resist. Oh boy. Fun times. If the PCs realize she's some kind of black-magic using witch (maybe even suspecting she's The Black Witch) and fight her, it's described as a fool's errand...despite the fact that she's an unsupported Mag 2 Wizard who can't do anything if you aren't a male human for her to intoxicate. PCs taken by Shabrak's spell can only be snapped out of it by killing her or by Charm/Intimidate-10 by their allies. The heroes realize this is a crazy mind control witch because Syphan casts her anti-illusion spell as soon as they reach her hut. She is pissed off at elf wizard and attacks, and gets the one weakness of all wizards: A volley of ranged fire from Sif, Syphan's magic, Shanna and Oleg's crossbows, etc and just kinda drops in an instant. Unsupported wizards with no mooks and Mag 2 are not bosses, WHFRP! They have never been boss fights, they will never BE boss fights! Also, you know, sexual assault humiliation filth witch feels like some further Magical Realm poo poo after the 'PCs gotta hack through that sphincter, get really covered in all that filth that then maybe gives them filth-pox that explode in poo poo to humiliate them' in Chapter 5. There's also a fight with a Chaos Troll in some standing leyline stones, but eh. Nothing interesting happens and they can handle a lone Chaos Troll easily. None of these encounters are hard (well, Phineas can be pretty dangerous, but you also don't really have to fight him) but they're all treated as terrifying and near impossible. Meanwhile earlier you were meant to fight 12 well trained warriors and a loving vampire multiple adventures back and with far fewer character resources. I genuinely don't get what's with Schwalb's sense of balance or encounter design. He seems to think fights balance out based on how icky the enemy is in description, and like all Hams writers massively overvalues just putting 'demon' or 'wizard' on something. Meanwhile he's happy to drown the heroes in 'mundane' enemies who will kick their asses. And man does his work love Save or Dies and Mutation tests; that's still ahead in Chapter 9. They also encounter a Strigany caravan driving a Strigoi vampire to soccer practice (I mean, the Womb of the Black Witch). The PCs join up with them for the last leg of the journey because why not, and the Strigany tell them NOT to look inside the wagon where they hear unfortunate chewing sounds at all hours. If they look in the wagon, they see 'two once beautiful and alluring maidens' who were forced to gorge on human flesh until they turned into hideous ghouls, accompanying a giant, muscular mutated Strigoi woman. Hmm. More 'once beautiful' women forced into mutating into hideous monsters? Been awhile. If they flee, the vamp doesn't pursue. If they fight, the Coachmen draw pistols, the vamp herself attacks, and the ghouls join in. The vamp is pretty weak for a vamp (only a little stronger than the mook Strigoi back in Chapter 2) and unarmored. She is also not vulnerable to sunlight, another sign of a loser vampire who can't handle having classical weaknesses because the author can't be bothered to account for them. Our team naturally peeks in the wagon because hideous chewing noises, sighs at the sight inside, draws weapons, and soon there's a pile of ash, two dead ghouls, and two surrendering coachmen. The book also expects players will somehow get split up by these encounters, as some flee and some try to fight, and rubs its hands together and tells the GM to 'resist butchering them for now' and just harass them to Zhidovsk. This whole section is just...weird. It assumes players are (despite being third tier) very stupid, very weak, and very, very cowardly. After all this random violence, and with a heavy snowfall starting around them, the heroes finally make it to Zhidovsk. They've been traveling through the Oblast for weeks, and the possibility of something fresh to eat and an actual bed (and the need to gather information) get them to go along with the hooks and go to the village. They find the town is stuffed with vampires' Black Coaches as the vampires arrive to argue about who should get to go up into the mountains and get tricked and murdered by the Witch, as well as ragged remnants of the Crusade of the Child that slowly stream into town. It's also in the middle of preparing a festival; one which will sacrifice a young maiden named Anya, something that has gotten the local Shallyan missionary into suicidal depression and made her try to send word to the Winged Lancers for help. This will do nothing, and soon she'll kill herself in graphic detail while the Winged Lancers just murder everyone in town. Oh, did I spoil the ending? I did, because there's nothing you can do about any of it, and skipping Zhidovsk would've lost nothing of value. This is basically all going to be a lightly interactive cutscene with a lot of mean-spirited violence and gleeful descriptions of people dying in pain. I think it's the mean-spirited nature of it all that annoys me so much. If PCs can't do anything about anything, you rule out PCs being motivated for too long by anything but material gain. Yet you also expect PCs will take on missions like this that promise no pay for amazing danger. You can't have that cake and eat it. It'd be one thing if PCs were cynical mercenaries regularly strung along by promises of The Big Score that they never really seem to get. There isn't even a promise of such things here. I've tried to write the Thousand Crowns engaging in good faith with the adventure, struggling to come up with reasons to keep going that fit their characters. Really, the only motive that seems to stick around in this adventure is 'winning the adventure'. Your characters keep going because the GM won't let you do anything else and you're trying to win. Which is kind of lovely. The Thousand Crowns themselves are just trying to get to Karl and get him themselves, so they can rescue him from this bullshit and maybe try to find a way to teach him to control his powers so this Crusade insanity doesn't kill anyone else. Yes, PCs save the world from the Black Witch in the good ending, but up until recently they didn't even know there was a Black Witch, and they still might not know depending on what they did with the Seer. Her total lack of presence in the plot precludes her having a character or being a motivating factor. Similarly, the constant violence is very...assumed. Take the insane guy back in the Nurglite temple. It's just assumed you murder him and move on if you're smart. There's no sympathy for victims, no ability to mourn, no sense any of the constant suffering is any kind of tragedy. It's just all treated as gleeful splatterhouse violence. Which also limits its ability to have any impact, and would also hurt the players' ability to actually roleplay. Once players stop trying to help anyone, stop engaging with anything because learning only hurts them and swinging away is the best solution, and just kinda trudge to the end, who is having fun? What sorts of interesting encounters can you use at that point? It's fitting this will all end with a 75 room dungeon crawl, because that's the only kind of 'encounter' it's been conditioning players towards engaging with at all this whole time. FUN TIMES. Next Time: Cutscene Village Night10194 fucked around with this message at 13:43 on May 5, 2020 |
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Apr 22, 2020 15:53
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ah but don't you see if the players get to win then they might assume it's some sort of fairy-tale world where happy things happen all the times and elves dance around mushroom circles, they must be reminded of how grimdark and bleak it is because then they will see the world like I, an intellectual, do... For real though it's like it was written by a 15-year-old who listens to heavy metal.
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Apr 22, 2020 16:55
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Big Mad Drongo posted:What is it with ponies and libertarians? You'd think you'd see the occasional communist weirdo into this poo poo, but with ponies on the internet it's fash all the way down. My guess? Bronies love a cartoon for children but toxic masculinity makes them insecure about it so they go out of their way to associate it with inappropriate poo poo. People less influenced by toxic masculinity who like the children's cartoon aren't motivated to write alternate history stories about ponies at war.
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Apr 22, 2020 17:31
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Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Thousand Thrones Chapter Content Warning The Second Hey, guess who's coming back? It wasn't just Sexual Assault Filth Witch, but our more general old friend Sexual Menace As A Plot Device. So the general outline of what happens in the village is that Tobias's Chaos Organ has become a big sickness spreading filthmonster and gotten into the village well, where it will kill most of the remaining Crusaders and poison the town, so they'll try to give up a girl to the Witch to stop her. She'll instead be stolen by a fat, evil old man who covets her for a captive bride. The first thing that happens in the village is the PCs learning that an evil dog has been seen around, and maybe it's the terrible BLACK ICE! Their explanations that they killed the poo poo out of Black Ice in a single round won't be believed by anyone, because the sickness is a sure sign the real Black Ice is around even though the dog is just a normal dog with bits glued to it by the fat evil merchant to induce another sacrifice so he can kidnap a bride for himself. I really didn't miss Sexual Menace as a Plot Device. It was nice not having it around. Vampire search parties are also out looking for Karl, and the PCs can easily learn Karl headed into the mountains, to places people are not supposed to go. However, with rapidly spreading sickness in the village, the Thousand Crowns wonder if maybe that Ruprecht rear end in a top hat whose clock they still haven't punched is around. A simple Heal test tells Katarine that the talk about the water supply 'tasting bad' also means there's something nasty down there. Because an elf can be lowered into the well easily, Syphan volunteers to go set whatever it is on fire. This leads to a one-on-one fight between Syphan and the Chaos Organ. There is no real anticipation of what happens if they do this; the Organ is always supposed to rise dramatically on day three and cause the festival of the sacrifice to go crazy and lots of people to die, even though there's mechanics that tell the PCs the thing is in the water. It's actually a tough fight for a lone Syphan; it isn't Demonic, so she can't just Banish it. But after dodging and parrying a moment while she summons her claws and her Radiant Sentinel, the team hears a bunch of magical chanting from the well and then a lot of loud splattering sounds, then sees an awful lot of fire as she makes drat sure she burns every scrap of it with Fireballs to purify the water. She climbs back out a minute later, cheerfully announcing 'Job's done'. The PCs can talk to the surviving Crusaders, but this mostly gets them useless information and Toughness tests against...can you guess? What's the ONLY MOTHERFUCKING disease in this? NEIGLISH. loving. ROT. Lesser diseases too, but I remember the Core Book describes Neiglish Rot as an exceedingly rare disease that should be used sparingly. The heroes also stop in the local store, both because Piotr Tormorov seems really intent on sacrificing someone to She Who Must Not Be Mentioned and because they figure the general goods store is a good place to go. Piotr's ugliness is described in great detail, and he's offering great prices because he plans to kidnap Anya and run for Praag so everything must go. Since he's a major part of the town council, too, they figure they'll tell him they killed Black Ice and the Chaos Organ that was causing everything. He doesn't listen, because again, his whole plan is to use this as an excuse to sexually menace a beautiful girl and make her his captive bride. They've also Gossiped around and found out Piotr often had designs on Anya already. Because it will change nothing, the heroes have, by now, figured out that this is all bullshit because it's transparently bullshit. They already killed the demon and the thing causing the sickness, after all. And Katarine is really familiar with people like Piotr. She asks him if he understand that everything points to him being a cultist who has set up a false sacrifice by spreading plague in the village. That they are experienced Witch Hunters (in a way, this is true) who can make that charge stick with the council. They advise him to tell the Council he set the dog up, and maybe they'll drop the plague charge. Maybe. He still might come out of this without seeing the pyre. The terrified man promises to do so, and Sif stays behind with Oleg (he is the Witch Hunter, after all) to make absolutely sure he does while the others visit the Shallyan shrine. Hanna the Shallyan is a woman who has been losing her faith ever since she heard about what the Storm did to her home town of Wolfenburg in Ostland. She is yet another person who had good intentions for the world and wanted to help people, so naturally it's beaten her down. She was also creeped on intensely by Piotr, but he 'could not stand all her talk of mercy' and decided he'd sexually menace Anya instead. She's filthy and always drunk now, planning to kill herself, because she's so upset that she's failing the girl Anya. Anya is her friend and comes to cry on the Shallyan's shoulder about how her family might make her marry Piotr, you see. Because our heroes are actual heroes and have already dealt with the plague beast, they tell her about it. And tell her about Piotr's plans. Katarine stays with the Shallyan to keep her company and try to help her not do anything to hurt herself while the others go to keep gathering information. Hannah has already sent her note to the Winged Lancers, but maybe the team can do something about it after she confesses that fact to Katarine. Especially as they'll keep her from killing herself in despair. This leads them to Olav, the Purveyor of Destiny. Olav is an ex-Kossar who has been trying to stop the sacrifices, and who has gone insane in the process. He thinks it's foretold that great heroes, champions, will come to save the village from the Black Witch. This is totally talk Syphan is super interested in, and Olav is absolutely sure Magic Elf Martial Artist is one of those roles that's positively dripping with destiny. Rose thinks this is silly, Syphan doesn't listen. The old man presents the heroes with information on exactly where to find the Witch, since they're obviously the destined champions who will save Anya and stop the sacrifices. They're into killing evil Chaos monsters, even if this Witch doesn't seem to have much to do with them, and who knows? Maybe she's next on the long line of people trying to kidnap Karl. He's been searching the mountains about where Olav says the Witch is, according to rumors. Might as well take the horror out and stop it claiming sacrifices and terrorizing the town. He will always have worthless but meaningful items for each PC, as if destiny put them there; the GM is allowed to say carrying one of the destined items actually does give you an extra Fortune point, or make them powerless. In Syphan's case, he presents her with a pair of rough, fingerless leather fighting gloves, which she recognizes as being made from the hide of the ferocious Naggarond War Moose. THIS IS CLEARLY DESTINY. He even has a new little ushanka for Rose to replace her wizard hat with, in case she's cold. She grudgingly accepts, still protesting this is silly. Meanwhile Johan meets a Von Carstein in the local bar. Valin Von Carstein isn't interested in eating anyone, and thinks all this stuff is nonsense. He was dragged up here by his family and is sulking like a teen brought along on a family vacation he thinks is bullshit. Johan recognizes a valuable source when he sees one, and gets to chatting up the personable vamp. Johan is able to impress the man, who tells him at length about the five Bloodlines and what they're doing here. If a PC impresses Valin, he's meant to try to visit later and turn them into a vampire (with or without their permission) because he thinks they're cool and all cool people should be Von Carsteins. Johan won't be anywhere nearby for that, and if he was, Valin would find he was walking into more than he bargained for in that matter. Valin is pretty suspicious of the fact that the vamps have all been called here; he knows Karl didn't do it, and he doesn't think any of the locals would send word. He suspects the Witch, making him the smartest vampire since Lord d'Trois. Naturally he talks of the Lahmians as 'whores', because we're still keeping track of Bingo. He also mentions the Lahmians might have gotten some mortals to watch over the boy back in Marienburg; the last possible hint of any involvement of Selena. Finally, Shanna checks out the vampire camp. She can do this safely both because she's able to sneak well, and halflings taste terrible. Because I'm writing up my own stuff anyway, and it would make sense given Valin mentions it, Shanna is surprised to find their original employer Selena among the camp. Confronting her about the matter, Shanna figures since she paid on time and generally didn't gently caress with the group, it would only be professional to warn her that it looks extremely like she's walking into a very stupid trap by Chaos. The heroes are still operating under the assumption Ruprecht is their main villain (Maybe this Witch is his minion) so Shanna explains about him, the necklace, etc. Sofia and Theodora didn't share any of that with Selena, so she listens to the halfling, thanks her for her 'loyalty' and tells her if the team ever needs work in Marienburg she'll be around, hands her a small chest of the party's back-pay, and decides to get the hell out of dodge. Sure, Shanna just saved a vampiress, but a boss who pays on time is worth the risk. Normally, there's really nothing to do in the vampire camp. It's just a good place to get killed. Players can 'try to sow dissent', especially if Valin is their ally, but given how little the vampires do in Chapter 9 or the conclusion of Chapter 8, there's no reason. There's up to 20 danged vamps here (d5-1 of each Line) and a Blood Dragon is one of the few things that can beat Sif in a straight fight still (she might win, but Blademaster reducing her attacks by 1 hurts). Shanna's little sub adventure is there, like all my writeup for this chapter, to give an actual reason to be there. Normally, none of what the PCs do matters. Things proceed apace, the sacrifice will go ahead, the Organ will emerge from the well to eat many of the children at the ceremony, the Black Ice shows up to menace the town for having Scooby Dooed a false Black Ice, Hannah kills herself (but also fails to kill herself. For some reason they want to give you the detail that she tried to hang herself, failed, fell, broke her leg, and was wailing piteously for help while she bled out in agony and no-one heard. Which is weird. This is what I mean when I say this poo poo is just mean-spirited), then 30 high level Winged Lancers show up and kill everyone in the village while the PCs flee. Now, the Winged Lancers have told themselves they'll do this even if the village looks fine, since it's obviously subtly corrupted, and they're too many and too powerful to fight off, so in the 'normal' adventure, even if the PCs stopped the organ or whatever the Lancers still kill everyone (and the PCs if they try to stop them) rendering everything worthless. Also it seems Piotr pretty much always gets away with Anya OR she gets killed by Black Ice normally. Since none of this matters to the overall outcome of the adventure? In our version, there is no Festival; they've unmasked Piotr and he's ridden out of town on a rail for his crimes in trying to get a poor peasant girl killed/sacrificed on the chance he could kidnap her. With no festival happening, and with the Chaos Organ dead, and most importantly with Hannah alive, she goes out with the team to meet the Winged Lancers to explain what's happened. The Lancers settle for blaming the foreigners, and set out to drive off the vampires and Crusaders from the town; that might go badly, or most of the Vamps might decide not to gently caress around with a large rota of extremely well armed and armored troops who are attacking them in daylight and gently caress off. They also saved Anya the peasant girl and helped Hannah through her mental health crisis, because they have a Priestess of Rhya who is supposed to do exactly that kind of work. Note it doesn't change anything about the plot to have written all this stuff with the heroes engaging with the plot and making a difference. They still had adventures and gathered information exactly as Zhidovsk is supposed to get them to within the broader plot. They're still headed off for the Womb of the Black Witch for the final dungeon crawl, to save Karl, kill this thing, and hopefully meet Ruprecht and kill what they think is the mastermind behind all this bullshit because the Witch must just be some last minute new minion for the established villain. Which version sounds more likely to get players to engage? The one where their actions matter, or the one where after doing whatever in the town for a bit a mass of powerful NPCs butcher everyone with no recourse and send them fleeing into the woods, nothing they do mattering YET AGAIN? I write this stuff partly for my amusement but also because I think it provides a good contrast; in one version, the characters actually get to play their characters, do their things, have amusing or interesting encounters, and affect the plot. In the other, this whole town is a pointless cutscene about misery and death. And so Chapter 8 comes to a close. Now, the heroes will face the final bullshit in the Hellwomb I promised you so long ago. Get ready for the exciting (?) conclusions of Robert J. Schwalb's Wild Ride as they face Chapter 9, The Womb of the Black Witch. Next Time: The Final Goop Dungeon
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Apr 22, 2020 17:42
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Night10194 posted:Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Thousand Thrones Two things. First, I think the PCs deserve a Fate Point for sussing out the irrelevance of this BS and avoiding it. Second, this adventure campaign (except for the one bit and the second bit that detours into a much, much better adventure campaign) is utter poo poo. Literally in multiple cases. However, it kind of justifies its existence simply due to the PCs in it. I love these characters. I'd read an actual Warhammer novel (series) about Sif, Johan and the rest.
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Apr 22, 2020 18:20
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Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Thousand Thrones It Wishes It Was The Darkest Dungeon The final dungeon is one of the worst parts of this campaign. It isn't quite as bad as Chapter 5 overall, but this should be the big climax. In Ashes of Middenheim, the Knight Fight was off in balance but the players confronting Leibnitz has actual weight because they know who he is and he has been loving THEM for the last several sessions. Actually getting to lay hands on the prick has some actual catharsis. The Black Witch, by contrast? What do we know about her? She lived in Praag, but it got taken over by Chaos and so her switch got flipped to Chaos Champion, then she got her head caved in with a hammer, crawled off into the mountains, and died. Now she haunts the mountains and plots to return. What does that tell us about her? What's she want? Why does she want it? Aside from 'she is about to destroy the world with a swarm of hellspiders and powers taken from eating a magic child' (and the players don't know about the hell spiders) the PCs have no real stakes in fighting her. For our narrative, they actually think she's another minion of Ruprecht, because he's the only villain they actually know about and he seemed to be orchestrating the whole Chaos side of the plot. Ruprecht IS actually here. He's searching for Karl to try to steal him back and finish his plan, annoyed Tobias hosed everything up. He's no friend of the Witch but trying to play them off against one another just gets the players killed so that detail is irrelevant. He'll just be a minor boss fight later. Also, despite being a big dick full scale finished all the careers Chaos Sorcerer Lord, he's lacking something critical to prevent him being killed by the true enemy of all Warhammer Wizards (being shot to death on round 1): He somehow doesn't actually have a suit of Chaos Armor. You know, the incredible divine full plate that lets a Chaos Sorcerer still use magic unhindered while being AV 5. One of the biggest mechanical advantages they can have that can make them into final boss types. He's missing it. He tries to ally with the PCs when he meets them; they have to attack him to start the fight right away. If they don't work with him, or if they do, he'll try to murder them when they're busy with something else, using them to clear part of the dungeon for him. Best to just shoot the fat gently caress when you find him. Plus, our heroes still think he's the main villain, so when they find him, they're going to try to waste him. He does know the Armor spell and will start off a fight casting it, and he does have 4 minor demons backing him up (though Plaguebearers are pretty meh minor demons, with their only real threat being the disease checks you make after the fight if they wound you at all) but I learned the hard way with Alakreiza the Sunderer (a Sorcerer Lord in one of my games): Never, ever rely entirely on 'they can cast Armor' because when they lose Initiative, poo poo happens. Ruprecht is slower than the PCs. Especially Syphan, who can hit him 3 times for Damage 4 with Fireball. It is extremely likely that when they encounter Ruprecht Hahn, the team just fills him with arrows, fireballs, and bolts and he drops immediately, then they clean up his buddies. But I'm getting ahead of myself. This update is about setting up the Hellwomb and its absolute bullshit little cheap shot special rules. First, our heroes have their final bookkeeping. Shanna maxes her Agi at 89. Oleg maxes his WS to 76. Katarine picks up Charm+20, Dodge Blow +10, and +5 WS. Johan maxes his Agility to 72 and buys Concealment+10. Syphan finishes Pit Fighter and goes into Veteran in time to buy +10 Dodge. Sif learns Two Handed and adds a Halberd to her huge array of weaponry, and is almost done with Champion. Rose maxes her Int. She is now the smartest raccoon in the universe. They are as prepared for the last struggle as they can be. The problem is the last struggle revolves around having a shitload of Toughness. Every single hour you spend in the final dungeon (and you have a 5 hour time limit or the Witch kills Karl and starts birthing thousands of spiders) you test Toughness or mutate (the book is eager to point out you should have Tome of Corruption to make mutation interesting). Any time the PCs take a single Wound while in here, they ALSO check for Mutation. Any wounding hit. ANY. Any time they use a healing draught or otherwise drink or eat anything (so if a player says they need a moment to take a drink for flavor, they get smacked) they test for Mutation. Also, all Casting Rolls (this includes your enemies) get 2 extra dice that ONLY count for miscasts. So Syphan can't really use her magic easily the entire final dungeon. Neither can Katarine. This also leads to the hilarious possibility that someone like Ruprecht pulls out his Dark Magic Talent, 5 Casting Dice (He's got Malign Sorcerer so he's Mag 5), and rolling 8 dice, completely turbofucks himself and explodes. Now I tell you, players do find it hilarious when that happens; I once had a Tzeentch Prince try to use Dispel Mortal on a PC, fail (spell went off, character saved against the instant-kill), and roll a 4 dice miscast where he accidentally banished himself instead of the knight he was trying to destroy. So it might be hilarious if that happens to Ruprecht or the Black Witch. But it still really sucks for anyone who put a ton of PC resources into being a wizard or priest to be unable to use magic much in the final dungeon. As you might imagine, there's a lot of combat in the final dungeon. Potentially less if the PCs try to avoid as much as possible (which they should), but there will be fights. Every fight having taking a wound potentially be a save or die for a 75 room dungeon crawl is a loving terrible idea. If that wasn't enough, you also roll for 'random events' every d10x10 minutes, 'when you get bored', or if any combat takes more then 3 turns. These range from the filthy organic dungeon making GBS threads on a PC to debuff them (oh boy) to the floor trying to dissolve their feet and debuffing movement until it's healed, to extra mutation tests for everyone, to the walls vomiting on a PC to make them vomit everywhere, to being randomly teleported and separated, to everyone just taking damage (which if it causes Wounds, also causes Mutation tests!). You will probably be able to complete this dungeon. You will almost certainly be heavily mutated by the end and there's effectively nothing you can do about it expect hope to get lucky and reserve all your Fortune for rerolling the Mutation tests. Your goal in the dungeon is to get 3 keys and break into the final area to confront the Witch before she kills Karl and eats the 5 idiot vampires she's lured to herself. You have 5 hours. You do not have an indicator there is a strict time limit. There are also false keys, and the main hint they're false is that they're aligned to a Chaos God instead of Undivided and none of the False Keys are guarded. If you use a false key on the final door, guess what. Mutation. Can't save against that one, either. Anyone carrying multiple false keys also has to check against you guessed it mutation. Anyone carrying a false key out of the dungeon makes a Tough-10 or Mutate. Schwalb loves mutation as much as he loves poo poo. To manage the time, you're meant to have a timer on hand. You should time the players in real time as they go through the dungeon, stopping the clock for combat encounters since they take longer. So players don't just have 5 in-game hours, they have 5 real-time hours for this 75 room dungeon crawl. Any time spent roleplaying, talking, or thinking? Penalty. Shut up and get to work. There are also triggered events where a magic demon tries to possess a PC invisibly when they get the first key, or two Random Events happen when they get the 2nd, and Ruprecht appears when they get the third. Meanwhile, at each hour, stuff happens. The vampires slowly find the inner sanctum, Karl is possessed (that happens at 4 hours to go, so PCs probably won't prevent it, but they don't need to; they have another way out of that when they confront the Witch). Ruprecht starts finding free keys if you take too long, which can get you the keys if you kill him and take them. At 0 hours, the players lose the campaign. This is not a very good way to run a dungeon, but then this is a really bad dungeon. Look, I don't really like dungeon crawls at the best of times. I have a poor spatial sense and sense of direction, and it makes constructing dungeons in the classic way a nightmare for me as a GM. But I also just find them dull. Crawling through a large mostly plotless area and making maps just isn't very interesting to me. Getting all 3 keys isn't a matter of solving a maze faster; the PCs will have to go through the majority of the dungeon's encounters to do that anyway and will also have to take them to and unlock the final encounter room anyway. There aren't a lot of environmental hints to get the heroes the keys as they go, so they mostly just stumble along, facing all kinds of monsters and environmental traps (like usual, don't touch anything) until they meet the mandatory encounters (The Mother, Maiden and Crone) guarding the keys. Encounter design varies wildly. Sometimes it's vampires or tons of Chaos champion type foes. Sometimes it's a single Daemonette who is somehow treated as a threat. I debated how much detail to go into with the dungeon, but you know, let's just highlight some of the sorts of encounters you have and the mandatory ones. The first Mandatory Encounter is The Mother, a young woman sacrificed to the Witch ages ago. She is held to the walls by tongues and begs the PCs to kill her. If they do, they get the key and she comes back to life later. There's also a key held in mucus that is a false key, there for players who aren't eager to murder tied up women. Our heroes realize the key is false, and Syphan's magical sense (while a huge risk since it can cause Insanity here, or could if Insanity wasn't an optional rule, haha, suckers!) confirms this whole thing is a trick. They're forced to stab the helpless woman to make her bleed the key because there's nothing else you can do. In the Gallery of War, they encounter to huge Warbands fighting one another to the death. Khornates and Tzeentch worshipers have found this place, and they slowly diminish in number as the hours pass until they kill one another entirely. Anyone who enters the fighting 'will almost certainly die, but have fun'. This is the majority of encounters in here: Just don't touch anything, don't bite on any hooks, and you can probably get through with minimum trouble. The less you play the game, the better this section goes; you'll only hit a few unavoidable traps. Perception is also critical to spotting and avoiding most traps throughout the dungeon. A party that just tries to move as fast as possible and engage with nothing has the best chance. I should also note the writing for all the traps is all 'oh, and the PCs who touch it get to suffer and man isn't it fun that we the GMs get to spring this on them?' when again, a smart party has already learned not to play. Don't try to take items, don't try to do anything in the dungeon, just...walk away from everything you can and hope you roll well on Mutation. The Maiden is an insane beautiful woman who screams in agony if you try to take her out of her room, because of course. If they actually look at her face, it's been eaten out by maggots. Spooky. All you have to do here is break her mirror, and it turns into the second key. There's nothing really to these encounters so far, they're just trying to be scary and show off some more brutalized women. One of the other random encounters? It's Father Johannes! He's not actually dead. Johannes has been captured after following Karl down here, trying to help. The PCs can free him, and because they've tried to save Karl at every turn, he tells them Karl is a puppet of Chaos and he was wrong, and they must kill the boy. If they'd tried to kill the boy, Johannes would tell them he was Sigmar and they must save him. It shifts based on what you've done. There's no actually saving Johannes; whatever you do, he'll be eaten alive by mutant monsters in a bit unless you actually drag him with you the whole dungeon and somehow keep the fat man alive. The heroes being heroes, they still try to leave him in one of the designated safe rooms after helping him down from where he's being tortured. He'll still die, but they did what they could. The final mandatory encounter is the Crone. She's tied up with spider webs and it takes immense strength to reach her. Trying to burn the webs will kill her and the key, but she'll be raised in a few minutes so you can try again. Sif is insanely strong. Sif pushes her way to the last imprisoned woman, who is still sane enough to hope the PCs killing the Witch will save her. The Crone tells Sif 'Thrust her bones into the blackness to kill her and save us all!', which is actually the easiest way to kill the Witch eventually. So thanks, Crone. All 3 women will die horribly when the Witch does, naturally. The heroes have all 3 keys and have struggled through enough bullshit. They have one last important encounter before Ruprecht, then the climax. For the other rooms, just imagine an endless procession of 'if you touch anything or fail per, bad things happen.' and mostly avoidable or minor combat encounters. Next Time: The Hell Spiders, Ruprecht Hahn, and the End of a Thousand Thrones.
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Apr 22, 2020 19:05
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Aethyron posted:I for one am extremely glad that they do not have human fingers. Please do not let there be art where they have human fingers. 
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Apr 22, 2020 19:27
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I Am Just a Box posted:My guess? Bronies love a cartoon for children but toxic masculinity makes them insecure about it so they go out of their way to associate it with inappropriate poo poo. People less influenced by toxic masculinity who like the children's cartoon aren't motivated to write alternate history stories about ponies at war. A friend showed me footage from a con where the audience was watching an episode that hadn't been aired yet, and there was a mix of mostly kids and probably their parents and also some The Bronies. One in fact at like every line would massively overreact to everything with "Holy loving poo poo!" or similar until people were just staring at him more than the cartoon they were watching until he was finally asked to leave. The whole thing reeked of 'I know I am watching a children's show BUT I AM MATURE LOOK HARD.'
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Apr 22, 2020 19:30
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Okay I gotta ask, is there like... any way to handle mutation risks in a good way in WFRP or WH40k RPG's? If the mutations were sidegrades and socially damaging with most people, I could see it, but it feels like every single mutation roll is a potential save-or-die because it might get you an unhideable mutation that makes every human in the setting try to kill you or it might get you a mutation that penalizes you in a way that makes your character concept unplayable. Like, randomly rolling a mutation at chargen? Fine, you can wrap your character concept around it. Randomly rolling one in play? The only way I could see handling it would be rolling up a multiple-choice of non-character-destroying mutations behind the sheet, and taking the player aside to say: "Would you be okay taking one of these mutations? If so, pick the one you prefer to work with. If not, we'll pretend you made the save I rolled for you because I am not an rear end in a top hat."
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Apr 22, 2020 19:56
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Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Thousand Thrones The Giant Space Witch From Nowhere PurpleXVI posted:Like, randomly rolling a mutation at chargen? Fine, you can wrap your character concept around it. Randomly rolling one in play? The only way I could see handling it would be rolling up a multiple-choice of non-character-destroying mutations behind the sheet, and taking the player aside to say: "Would you be okay taking one of these mutations? If so, pick the one you prefer to work with. If not, we'll pretend you made the save I rolled for you because I am not an rear end in a top hat." This is basically what my group had to decide on for when they're up in the Chaos Wastes in our current game, because otherwise it's much too easy to just render a character unplayable just because of the location of the campaign. Yeah, I know, I'm going at a crazy pace but goddamnit it's time to finish this fight. First, the heroes finally encounter the Witch's actual plan: The Abomination Spiders. There's a huge teaming nursery of eggs. If they gently caress with them in any way, the spiders start hatching and the dungeon gets flooded with extra combat encounters with fairly weak but annoying poisonous giant spiders. Remember any wounds cause Mutation so you want to avoid fights. This is the only way to discover her plan to make a huge self-sustaining army of mutant hellspiders. If you've learned Schwalb by now, though, you know not to touch anything or engage with anything or try to learn more about the plot than the minimum you need. Letting the spiders out doesn't just cause trouble for you, it also causes their army to plague all of Kislev and possibly the Empire, so even if you kill the Witch you probably hosed it. Because you didn't learn lesson 1: DO NOT ENGAGE. Our heroes leave this, and move on. Passing by the huge chamber of mutants where you can fight 329 mutants if you want (they don't attack if you don't). They pass by a swirling gate directly into the Realm of Chaos; this is how you destroy the Witch's remains and exterminate her forever if you're too late and Karl has been eaten (you could also fight her, but this is considered impossible). It causes shitloads of mutations to any character who gets close enough to toss the remains, which you find in the final battle room you needed the 3 boss keys for. Shanna can get close safely; she's a halfling. No mutation can touch her. After those last few details, they come face to face with the man they think is the mastermind, Ruprecht Hahn. He's a huge, fat slug-faced monster, mutated beyond all belief and bearing multiple magic items of Nurgle. He tries to tell them he needs their help, that they have to destroy the Witch before her spiders kill everything and leave nothing to be sick. He's also swearing at how all his magic can't seem to break the seal on the doors until he sees the heroes' keys. They have a few minutes of back and forth; they'd better. They accuse him of causing all of this. The Crusade is his fault. Karl's constant kidnappings are his fault. The lovely dungeon in Villa Hahn is his fault. He tries to tell them it was all the Witch, and he's just trying to stop her (He's trying to get Karl and continue his plan). Finally, he tells them to hand over the keys or face the joyful wrath of Nurgle, and to be invited to the festering cauldron of disease. In return, they draw their weapons and open fire. Before he or his demon allies can act, he takes 3 arrows from Sif, 2 bolts from Oleg, 2 bolts from Shanna, an aimed shot from Katarine's longbow, and despite the risk, Syphan uses a Power Stone they found earlier in the dungeon (it's a treasure item that lets you roll +2 casting dice) to cast the AoE Banishment spell, thinking this is their main villain. Miraculously, she only gets a minor miscast and causes all the non-existent plants within a few meters to die. Her spell also instantly vaporizes all 4 demons. He may be TB 6, but he's not able to handle 8 hits at once with no armor. As the projectiles bury themselves in his flesh, one of Oleg's is deep enough to be a fury and punches out his throat, killing the dark wizard. The team nods grimly as they watch him gurgle and fall, and Sif asks why Syphan never did the crazy giant pillar of demon obliterating light before as Rose tries to explain what a Power Stone is. They've taken out the mastermind. Time to get into the lockup, face this 'Witch' minion of his, waste her too, get Karl, and get the gently caress out of here! The team has no idea they're going into the actual final boss. There's a short chamber of exposition because they forgot they didn't really introduce the main villain, showing the heroes images of her life and her joy at being a Champion of Chaos. By the time they push through it, the five Vampires (Sofia (should be Theodora, but they know Sofia better), Wilhelm, and...uh...identical replacements for the 2 they killed and Lydia, the one they never met.) are locked in Karl's gaze, unable to do anything. A black aura surrounds the boy, trying to possess the weeping and terrified child as the Black Witch's essence tries to force its way into him and turn him into a vessel she can drink the vampires with. The heroes realize this is the moment all this BS was leading up to. Normally, the ways to defeat the Witch are simple. Destroy one of the vampires she needs (leads to a fight with all 5 vampires, which probably kills the PCs, though honestly this team could possibly win that) to foil the ritual. Try to kill Karl (the evergreen option) which causes the vampires to try to protect him, but if he's killed and the PCs fight through his aura, they win. Though the Witch doesn't die. The vamps will also stop attacking and leave. They can fight the Witch if they were too late and she's manifested as a big sexy murder lady by eating Karl, but 'she will almost certainly destroy them' since she has a tuned up version of Karl's aura and very high stats (all her stats are 88, plus 32 Wounds, 3 attacks, 5 Mag, immunity to stun/poison, regeneration of 1 point per turn, and a 5 point deflection AV aura). Honestly, she's still more beatable than the author thinks, but the Aura is a problem. They can grab her remains from this room and drag them back to the portal to the Realm and throw them in, killing her instantly. Or they can convince Karl this isn't his mother with a Charm-30 (With a 10-30 point modifier depending on their arguments), a +20 modifier if they were his friends, and a -20 if they ever tried to murder him. If they succeed, they convince the boy to resist her. She's promised him love, normalcy, a family, an ordinary life. She's convinced him she's his mother and she can take all his problems away. If they succeed, he uses his aura on HER, telling her to 'go away'. This flings her into the dark portal and kills her instantly. So I can show off all three of the interesting options, and because I think it's more dramatic, we'll be showing off a mixture. Katarine runs to Karl's side and takes his hand, telling him she'll get him away from here, back to sane places where crazy people aren't killing each other over him. She pleads with the boy to look around himself and realize where he is, how this thing is using him just like the Crusaders and the Cultists and all these Vampires have tried to. She asks if the black aura surrounding him really seems like his mother. He blinks a moment and says 'No'. Enraged, the Witch manifests as best she can and summons her spirit to try to drive off the interlopers, so I can show off what her stats look like if she confronts the team. Shanna yells to Johan to remember what the Crone said, and he finds the bones, tossing them to the halfling. They run off to try to kill this thing for good while Sif walks forward, cracking her neck. You see, she actually has decent odds of soloing the Witch, and she can definitely keep her busy. And she won't be alone. While Oleg goes to cover Johan and Shanna (suspecting guardians will come after them), Syphan cracks her knuckles and joins Sif, and Katarine steps up between the monster and the child. The Witch stares incredulously, asking if they really intend to approach rather than run away. Sif shrugs and mentions she can't beat the poo poo out of a monster nearly as well unless she gets close. The Witch does d10+10 damage per hit. She's mean as hell on that front. But what's she lacking that makes this doable? She's accurate, she hits hard, she has a lot of wounds, she has a LOT of DR. But she lacks Unstoppable Blows, so Sif can Parry one attack at 93% and Dodge another at 70%, rather than being at 63 and 70. Sif also has a lot of Wounds. Syphan can block up to 3 blows a turn, too, once she has her sentinel up. Plus, these are PCs. They're probably low on Fortune, but might have one or two points left, which can be spent for extra active defenses. It will take the Witch a few rounds, and Katarine is in the back to heal them. Meanwhile, they Outnumber her, giving both heroes +10% to WS. If the whole team was ganging up on her, they'd be even better off. The whole 'split off' thing? Partly to make this a fight! The *real* threat is the Witch has Lore of Chaos (base book) and 5 Mag. Word of Pain is a Damage 8 Armor Ignore that causes a WP save or be Stunned one turn. Word of Pain (and maybe Burning Blood against Syphan, for 5 Damage 4 hits Syphan can't dodge) are the Witch's trump cards, but she suffers the same Chaos Dice issue the heroes do. The Witch also actually goes first, with that 88 Agi. She can also Dodge one attack at 88% each turn, though she lacks a free-parry option. The Witch starts it off with Word of Pain, trying to shake the two heroes as they make their walkup. And sure, it goes off, but she also suffers a 3 die miscast and catches on fire. She'll be taking d10 unsaveable wounds per round until she makes a half-action Agi test to put it out. They mistake this for some kind of magic power aura. She also slams them with a full 10 on the damage die, doing 13 Wounds to Syphan and 11 to Sif, which is a nasty start. Katarine rushes in to heal 8 to Syphan, as both resist Stun. The Witch takes 10 Wounds herself, though, and she can't afford that kind of fire. Syphan summons her claws (avoiding miscasts, luckily) and Sif takes her big round of swings. And Furies. For 11 Wounds on the first swing, 3 wounds on the second, as the Witch just narrowly Dodges the third, staring in surprise at how badly she's bleeding. She puts out the fire, then realizes almost all her spells are full actions. Except Burning Blood, which she tries on the big Norsewoman since Katarine healed Syphan. 5 Damage 4 hits nail Sif, but Sif is DR 12. Even with 2 max damage rolls, the Witch only inflicts 4 more. Sif isn't even Heavily Wounded, though she's definitely in trouble. The two lay into their enemy after Katarine risks another miscast and buffs Syphan's Str by 20, and between the two of them and the fire damage, they rend the Witch apart. Sif beats the holy hell out of the monster and drives it back just enough for Syphan's last blow, which rolls a Fury as she punches the Witch's face to dust. Those stats were not enough. If they'd been at 'only' 3000 EXP or so, the whole party could have taken her; the real kicker would've been the -30 WP Aura to be able to fight her at first. Still, she's not nearly as invincible as the story thinks. Meanwhile, Shanna, the little halfling, resists the lure of Chaos and all its power, walking right up to the edge of the dark portal, and tosses the bones in. Behind her, Johan and Oleg are holding off the very first wave of spiders; it's more dramatic that way. The Witch is trying to claim she'll just reform and this victory will last but moments when she screams, her entire essence being rendered to nothing by Shanna's actions as Syphan and Sif fist bump and Katarine grabs Karl. The whole Womb begins to collapse around them as they sprint back to the safer world above. Spiders are dying everywhere as Katarine carries the terrified little boy out into the dawn, the heroes escaping the collapsing Womb. In the normal ending, at this point, if any PCs have any mutations, they 'feel the psychic pull to go north and become a Warrior of Chaos'. Otherwise, it suggests one more time they could just kill Karl, or I dunno, maybe save him. Our heroes knew what they were going in for, though. The little boy is sobbing, apologizing for what he almost did as confused vampires stumble out of the wreckage and slink into the night. Katarine takes his hand and tells him it's okay. He's just a kid. She'll take care of him now, and find some way to control his powers. She knows what the monster promised him, and that all he really wants is just a normal and happy life. Oleg remarks that witch thing didn't *seem* much like a minion compared to how easy Ruprecht went down. Shanna just says she's glad it's finally over, punting a dead spider into the lake. Syphan sets Rose on her shoulder, cleaning off her gloves after punching the poo poo out of an evil witch, as Sif tells the others she's found glory even if she didn't find much gold. Johan wonders if this is really over; Syphan says that throwing someone into the yawning gulf of unreality after beating the poo poo out of their physical form is one of the only things that works 10/10 times. The sun is finally coming up as the exhausted heroes make their way back to Zhidovsk, needing a stiff drink, a good meal, and a roof over their head before they begin the long journey back to the Empire. PCs who somehow kill the Black Witch get a massive 800 EXP and 2 Fate Points. This will factor into the final 'where are they now' afterwards, because we're getting an epilogue and a long 'how to fix this loving pile of an adventure'. Needless to say, I had to jazz up the final encounter because a single Charm Test to win the campaign is a little boring. The abused spouse they rescued in the beginning talking the kid out of the worst to help save the world is dramatic, but the others deserved to get to strut their stuff, too. The final encounter with the Witch is lacking because there's no connection to her. She's just a big pile of powers OR a couple cutscenes and a skill check kill. The Hall of Exposition to frantically try to introduce the main villain right before they fight her is not how you do it, Thousand Thrones. It's not how you do it at all. Next Time: The Last of the Heroes. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 20:43 on Apr 22, 2020 |
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Apr 22, 2020 20:13
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NO.
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Apr 22, 2020 20:30
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I Am Just a Box posted:My guess? Bronies love a cartoon for children but toxic masculinity makes them insecure about it so they go out of their way to associate it with inappropriate poo poo. People less influenced by toxic masculinity who like the children's cartoon aren't motivated to write alternate history stories about ponies at war. It's honestly a little sad. Back when the show was new, most people I saw (at least from the old SA thread and then the offsite forums once they were run off of SA) were embracing the show because it was a good, wholesome cartoon that was honestly refreshing to a bunch of irony-poisoned internet people. And the show was written smartly enough so as not to exhaust parents watching it that it didn't come off as overly childish. My gut feeling is that since it was a show about tolerance and inclusiveness, the fandom was extremely vulnerable to the geek social fallacies over not excluding people and accepting them as they are. Which unfortunately opens the door to a lot of repugnant people who start displacing the people who just wanted to enjoy a funny kids cartoon.
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Apr 22, 2020 20:50
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Nemo2342 posted:It's honestly a little sad. Back when the show was new, most people I saw (at least from the old SA thread and then the offsite forums once they were run off of SA) were embracing the show because it was a good, wholesome cartoon that was honestly refreshing to a bunch of irony-poisoned internet people. And the show was written smartly enough so as not to exhaust parents watching it that it didn't come off as overly childish. I think a part of it was a bunch of extremely awkward people discovering something they felt endorsed people accepting them as they were, barging into various spaces where they thought they could be their regular creepy selves, getting called out for being creepy, and withdrawing as a response, no self-awareness needed. Granted, pop culture was not kind to them, but instead of trying to fix their poo poo a lot of them decided the "tolerant" people they got burned by were hypocrites and closing their communities off. Also, bronies first emerged on 4chan right about when Gamergate was transitioning into the MRA movement, which meant they were perfectly positioned to get involved in one of the movements that would later coalesce into the alt right. And a bunch of people who thought tolerant people were hypocrites, with personal experience for them to appeal to? Perfect recruiting ground. I'm willing to bet that's part of why this creature carries that specific ideological bent; a lot of alt righties worship the free market but think they need a strong and militant government to protect it from any and all outside influences – and communism? The perfect enemy to hold that system together. Mix all that with right wing nostalgia, blend with RPG mechanics, and serve.
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Apr 22, 2020 21:56
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 Chapter 3: Inhabitants After the Colossus that was chapter 2, chapters 3 and 4 are relatively short, so they should go a bit faster. As far as 3 goes, principality generation takes up maybe four-fifths of the chapter with the remainder being stuff for character creation. It turns out I got the numbers wrong earlier in the review; instead of a village every square, you get maybe one village every four squares, and that’s in the most fertile regions. Most settlements end up under a prince’s control; they may be assholes, incompetent, or both, but they offer some military protection from the monsters and other princes that stalk the area, and that’s better than nothing. There are a few settlements that go it alone, but they are very much exceptions. You generally encounter three kinds of settlement in the Border Princes; towns, villages, and homesteads. Towns are rare; you can have a max of one per principality and they never show up outside of one without some force keeping them independent. They are distinguished by, unlike every other kind of settlement, not devoting most of their population to agriculture in some way; towns are couple-thousand-people-strong trade and manufacturing centers (they get one distinguishing feature per thousand people), the only ones in the region. Villages, averaging at about 150 people, show up much more frequently; they pop up pretty much everywhere they can access enough farmland to support them. However, most of them don’t have distinguishing features so the book doesn’t advise generating them in detail. The same goes for homesteads; an order of magnitude smaller than villages, they show up a few times per square, but the bulk don’t have distinguishing features either.  What sets important settlements apart – and what makes them worth generating – are a variety of special features the book presents in one of its customary fat charts. During principality creation you roll up the number of towns, villages, and homesteads (the first two are functions of the principality’s size while the last is just a d10 roll) that have said features, then roll up what sets them apart, possibly moving on to other gigantic charts. These features come in several flavors; economic resources, strongholds and chokepoints, and special features. Economic resources cover any kind of economic activity in general, whether resource harvesting, crafts, or trading. All settlements have some amount of all three; everyone can pull in agricultural products, make low-quality goods, and trade with visitors. What sets settlements with economic resources apart is their access to more or better stuff than everyone else.
 If you don’t pick up an economic resource, you get one of the other results on a table;
 A few careers. Once you’ve rolled all these out (and decided their names, there are several charts in an appendix for randomly rolling up place names of various types), you’re done building a principality. The next section covers character creation for the Border Princes, but for the most part it’s just a list of careers for players to choose. Not too much exciting here; there are special careers for swamp dwellers, long-distance traders, various flavors of religious weirdos, and so forth. It’s much shorter than the last section, and once you’ve read it, you’ve finished the chapter. I’ve gone ahead and rolled up Camet’s principalities, but I’ll try and keep this update short and sweet. I’ll go over some of the highlights in the next update. Falconier111 fucked around with this message at 22:33 on Apr 22, 2020 |
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Apr 22, 2020 22:30
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Given that there's a cute superintelligent animal narrating her fights and she tends to Transform in battle, I think Syphan might be a Magical Girl rather than a wytch-elf
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Apr 23, 2020 00:49
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Fun fact: By stats, Rose's 75% Int makes her officially smarter than Mannfred Von Carstein (70%). She could totally out nerd fight him.
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Apr 23, 2020 01:20
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The Lone Badger posted:Given that there's a cute superintelligent animal narrating her fights and she tends to Transform in battle, I think Syphan might be a Magical Girl rather than a wytch-elf Possibly, but this... quote:The team nods grimly as they watch him gurgle and fall, and Sif asks why Syphan never did the crazy giant pillar of demon obliterating light before as Rose tries to explain what a Power Stone is. ...makes me think this is more along the lines of a fantasy Mr. Peabody and Sherman Meanwhile, this... quote:Sif walks forward, cracking her neck. You see, she actually has decent odds of soloing the Witch, and she can definitely keep her busy. And she won't be alone. While Oleg goes to cover Johan and Shanna (suspecting guardians will come after them), Syphan cracks her knuckles and joins Sif, and Katarine steps up between the monster and the child. The Witch stares incredulously, asking if they really intend to approach rather than run away. Sif shrugs and mentions she can't beat the poo poo out of a monster nearly as well unless she gets close. ...made For Those About to Rock just start playing in my head.
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Apr 23, 2020 01:42
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One thing the game never does is give evil wizards miscast protection of any kind. Not even bosses. As you can see from the Black Witch catching fire and needing to spend time putting herself out (and effectively taking a 23 wound hit from the one round she was burning), this can be a problem when you throw around a lot of magic and are in a place with bonus miscast dice as a boss wizard. I have had enough super wizards explode to know to be careful about them. Also, it's genuinely interesting how much you can do with just Mag 2 (and a Familiar, or even just Mag 2) and that there's real value in 200ing out of Journeyman to mess around like Syphan did. It's fine to multiclass Hams Wizards. Fun, even. E: On a similar note, it's really weird and sad to me how bad Renegade Crowns' new Careers are. Not just that they aren't that interesting, but they just kinda suck mechanically. The Badlands Ranger is my number one of 'what the gently caress is this class doing'. Also note: Getting close to the dark portal to fling the bones in as anyone but Shanna would have been a terrible idea. It's -30 Tough and -30 WP or gain Mutation and Insanity basically every couple rounds if you aren't immune to that poo poo like she was. So yes, one of the best ways to win this campaign is to have a hobbit toss the macguffin to its destruction because only they can resist the corruption. Hobbits got history doin' that (sort of, Frodo did almost fail and was saved by the fact that he didn't murder Gollum) Night10194 fucked around with this message at 02:13 on Apr 23, 2020 |
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Apr 23, 2020 01:49
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 ROAN posted:Sometimes it is the world of adventure, driven by our imagination and built by our strangest circumstances that bring us to a What the hell made you want to combine a cartoon about cartoon ponies learning lessons about friendship in a pastel fantasy world, with media about real rear end humans shooting Nazi's??? Also this is a lie, as I previously stated, the world is more 1950's than 40's, and the bad guys are the Not-USSR, so gently caress if I know where this "inspiration" disappeared to. Anyway, you want to see a sexy flapper horse?  The Ponies of Roan ROAN posted:The streets are thick with many colorful species, celebrating Roan’s 100th Independence Day, the mass majority of which are ponies. Various species and flavors of speech all brought together for this momentous occasion. This is the character creation chapter, and therefore is mostly boring as hell to go over but we get to learn exactly how many types of stupid mutant horse we can be, and there's a ton more weird pony art. Race Yes, it is uncomfortable that Type Of Pony is called Race. Also uncomfortable is that this is also literally a racist system where these different pony types are divided into weird caste-systems and personality is genetic. Roadies These are what we'd call "Normal". They're just standard My Little Ponies with no magically induced mutations. Their things are they're good at physical stuff, and take less damage than other types of cartoon horse. Roadies are really generic. They're tough and no-nonsense but warm and friendly. They come in earth-tones and red coloration. They're farmers and hicks. Roadies sounds like an ethnic slur when paired with the concept of "race". Pegasi They got bird wings, can fly, are dexterous, but are fragile. They're lazy, aloof, carefree and skittish. They're adrenaline junkies too. They have pastel and "sky" colored pelts. They literally live in magical cloud cities they make with magical cloud manipulation. Unicorns Wizard horses. They're good at magic, can telekinetically lift things, and are bougie assholes. They're smart and absent minded and curious. Their description has the phrase "the geek is strong with them" in it. They come in "sky colors" like blue and purple and white and black. Nocturnes Goth Vampire Ponies. Not joking: They have bat wings, fangs, and are nocturnal. They have good senses and can see in the dark, and also fly. And are super strong. They're vampire ponies. They come in cool colors like black and purple and white. They are fructivores because Bats. Zebras They're fuckin' Zebras. They're good at Social Stuff. They're businessmen and public speakers and storytellers and such. Their homeland is called the Zebrican Dominion, and I don't know what real world nation they're an expy of because I'd assume something in Africa but their descriptions aren't very racist as they're mostly Good Capitalist Traders who are Very Hard Working and Charismatic. Kelpies Fish Horses. They're smart and can swim in the water real good. They're emotionally unstable and are inventors and scholars and look they're like all mad scientists and poo poo. They've got wild and unsettling mood swings but that's just how they are and they're so smart and inventive and build cool poo poo like GUNS.  So I'm not going over the system at all. Why? Because who cares. It uses Ubiquity, a generic RPG system found in a few other games, most famously Hollow Earth Adventures. Ubiquity is fine, it's kind of boring but it works ok. Standard Stat+Skill dice pool system, success counting resolution, you can look it up in a better game if you care. I don't. I'm here for the setting not the dull generic RPG system they stapled it to.   God seeing cartoon horses hold guns will never not be hilarious. Now, I should note I am skipping all of the combat and mechanics and magic chapters. That's because they're boring, and also have the best art in the game! Yes, really. The artists who did most of the work in these chapters were competent if dull and drew ponies doing various activities in a fine style that is not at all worth mocking. I'm not here to make fun of people who drew normal commissioned pony art for this game. I'm here to mock people who drew hilarious or awful pony art for this game. Anyway next time we cover Equipment so we can learn how a horse shoot a gun.
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Apr 23, 2020 04:12
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Why would the technology of magic horses that have no hands look exactly like human technology, defined by all these hands we have. Wouldn't you just call the telekinetic wizards when you need hands.
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Apr 23, 2020 04:26
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The forelimb on that pony flying a plane is somehow very frightening to me.
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Apr 23, 2020 04:27
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HOW IS HE GRIPPING IT THEY HAVE NO HANDS
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Apr 23, 2020 04:27
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I am now aware of at least three unrelated examples of grimdark racist anarcho-libertarian scifi My Little Pony fanfiction. And not even little throwaway joke examples, I mean serious published material tens of thousands of words long, each. I don't know how to feel about the life choices that have led me here.
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Apr 23, 2020 04:44
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What the hell is the third? This thing is right in front of us, and I've heard of the Fallout one. How many of these loving things are there?
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Apr 23, 2020 04:57
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Leraika posted:The forelimb on that pony flying a plane is somehow very frightening to me. Remember, hoofs aren't hands, they're FINGERS.
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Apr 23, 2020 06:18
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