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It's one of the curious things about WHFRP: There really isn't any Imperialism/Colonialism the way we understand it. Trying to do that to the New World would have problems. Lizard shaped ones. The Dark Elfs probably did it to the residents of Not America, but it's not really mentioned or talked about. Everyone is kind of tied down to their normal sphere of influence and maybe squabbling with geographical neighbors by needing to be ready for existential wars with hellvikings and legions of the dead.
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May 4, 2020 19:53
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Night10194 posted:It's one of the curious things about WHFRP: There really isn't any Imperialism/Colonialism the way we understand it. Trying to do that to the New World would have problems. Lizard shaped ones. The Dark Elfs probably did it to the residents of Not America, but it's not really mentioned or talked about. Everyone is kind of tied down to their normal sphere of influence and maybe squabbling with geographical neighbors by needing to be ready for existential wars with hellvikings and legions of the dead. A big part of that is probably Fantasy England not existing on account of the British Isles being a mysterious realm of fog, and Fantasy Spain being relegated to "Uh, it's next to Fantasy Italy", and Fantasy Africa... Does the African continent not exist in the Warhammer Fantasy setting or am I just forgetting something? Edit: anyway my point is that the areas doing the colonization and the areas being colonized during the Age Of Exploration/Colonization don't really exist in the setting and it wasn't a big part of the HRE's thing like it was for Western Europe. Tibalt fucked around with this message at 20:16 on May 4, 2020 |
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May 4, 2020 20:11
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It does, but they've never really done anything with it beyond Araby and some mention of a Lizardman colony in South Not-Africa that lost the ability to make Saurus and is made up entirely of Skinks.
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May 4, 2020 20:13
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Night10194 posted:It does, but they've never really done anything with it beyond Araby and some mention of a Lizardman colony in South Not-Africa that lost the ability to make Saurus and is made up entirely of Skinks.
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May 4, 2020 20:19
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Well, Norsca has New World colonies. They are in a constant state of about to be destroyed by any one of Lizardmen, vampires, Dark Elves and Amazons.
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May 4, 2020 20:31
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Actually what our group did with the Amazons. The first Norse colony at Skeggi (Named for Skeggi Finebeard, great explorer) tried to take some golden tablets. It didn't go well. The Jarl's wife (with him dead, she became Jarl) hit on just giving them back as the solution to the siege. The Skink Priest leading it was so surprised someone finally listened and just returned the tablets that they had a talk, and in the end, the Amazons (named for the nearby river) decided to join the Great Plan under a technical provision that mercenaries and security personnel could be hired at a Skink Priest's discretion. Things grew from there. But we gave them an actual state, because an Aztec-Norwegian fusion state that the Lizardmen use as a buffer (Hey, look here! All the trading and stuff you could want is here on the coast, do not come inside, do not bother the temples) was too much fun not to play with.
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May 4, 2020 20:36
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So inspired by the writeups i'm going to run some of the more interesting plundered vaults stuff while I'm waiting on the rerelease of Death on the Reik. Reading it and having run a lot of 4th editon recently I notice they really rebalanced the economy between editions, Full plate costs 400 Gold Crowns, a pistol 100GC and a basic handweapon 10GC 2nd edition Full plate costs 30GC, a pistol 8GC and a handweapon 1GC in 4th edition. Eyeballing it, I think dividing quest rewards value of treasure by somwhere between 5 (the lower scores) to 10 (where you get massive reward) should do it.
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May 4, 2020 21:43
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Yeah, a crown is like 10x as much in 4e. A single crown buys a significant amount of gear, let alone food or drink, and 4e mostly uses the silver shilling as the 'standard' coin for adventurers rather than crowns. E: I'm not quite sure what to suggest doing with the rewards in Plundered Vaults as a conversion, since you also have to account for PCs losing any unspent money they didn't spend time to put in the bank/bury at a crossroads between adventures. But Plundered Vaults is generally a big overgenerous, something I never thought I'd say about a Hams adventure book; the team really should not have 4 members in full plate when they're just barely finishing Tier 1. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 21:58 on May 4, 2020 |
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May 4, 2020 21:51
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I actually quite like the (optional) 4E idea as well that between adventure arcs, after buying equipment/upgrades etc the party are assumed to blow all their cash on having a good time and begin the next adventure penniless again. Especially as I am definitely a "I can't be bothered to track this poo poo" DM when it comes to the party's day to day living expenses.
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May 4, 2020 21:57
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 Dungeons & Dragons has been borrowing concepts from a wide variety of media since its founding. The advent of the OGL let fans insert their own preferences beyond the tastes of Wizards of the Coast employees, so it was natural that we’d get a product that is a Jojo’s Bizarre Adventures reference and with some Persona influences too. The Channeler is a class centered around a person whose internal psyche manifests as a spectral entity formed from a forgotten memory. Also known as phantasms, the origins of said entities are unknown, and most channelers are self-taught due to the rareness and lack of knowledge of their existence in wider communities. Phantasms take a variety of forms and roles, usually in relation to the memory responsible for their existence. The Channeler’s role is either that of a ‘magical martial’ or specialized spellcaster depending upon their specific kind of phantasms. The class has a d8 Hit Die, is proficient Wisdom and Charisma saves, only simple weapons and no armor or shields, and chooses two skills from a rather diverse list: you have your physical options such as Acrobatics and Athletics but also all of the social skills and some ‘knowledge’ ones such as Investigation, Nature, Perception, and Survival. The Channeler seems a bit squishy, but their phantasm does much of the grunt work. Phantasms are unique extraplanar incorporeal aberrations which are naturally invisible* and tethered to the Channeler in a ball and chain way which limits how far they can be separated. They can move no more than 5 feet from the Channeler barring one specific Aspect, but they automatically move an equal amount whenever the Channeler does. The Channeler’s own body counts as their native plane of existence which they shunt back to in the event of out of bounds movement, banishing effects, etc and can be summoned and dismissed as a bonus action and normal action respectively. Phantasms have quite a bit going for them: they use the Channeler’s proficiency bonus and Charisma for attack and damage rolls, being invisible means that they have advantage on attack rolls in most circumstances, and they are immune to all conditions and damage types save for force damage and magical bludgeoning/piercing/slashing attacks. They do not have their own hit points, and all damage is transferred to the Channeler; this makes AoE effects quite dangerous as the Channeler can end up taking double damage, but given that most AoE spells have an energy type in which the phantasm is immune this is not as common as one thinks. *save to Channelers and creatures with Truesight, and can be outlined with invisible-countering spells. The phantasm’s AC and that of the Channeler’s is the same (12/13/14 + Channeler’s Wisdom modifier depending upon the Aspect type) when the latter is not wearing armor, and while they have their own senses the Channeler can perceive through their phantasm by becoming deaf and blind themselves for the duration. Phantasms have no will of their own and more or less act at the behest of the caster, meaning that in some cases the channeler must transfer an ‘action’ of their own to order them to do something. The Channeller’s other major feature is their Soul Dice, a number of d8s equal to their level which represent calling upon inner reserves to push themselves beyond their normal limits. Up to 3 Soul Dice (dependent upon level) can be spent at once, and the Channeler adds their Charisma modifier to the result. By default this number is added to the damage dealt by a phantasm’s attack, but certain types of Phantasms and Manifestations can let the Channeler add it to the result of certain skill checks and at 14th level to the results of a saving throw. Soul Dice are recovered all at once during a long rest, or half their Channeler level rounded down 1/day during a short rest. Phantasmal Aspects represent the 3 different types of Phantasms a Channeler can manifest. Its type is chosen at character generation, after which point it cannot be changed. They all have their own features which are gained as the Channeler levels up, but one universal feature is granting proficiency in an additional saving throw at 13th level related to said Aspect (or one of the PC’s choice if they’re already proficient). In the case of the Iron Myrmidon and Harmonic Magician they have particular class features which cause them to become visible (wielded weapons and spellcasting respectively) but at 11th level they can use said features while remaining invisible. The Chronos Avenger represents a memory regretting a past error or yearning for something long since past, and has time-related abilities ranging from being able to reform a broken object by rewinding time, temporarily freezing time via a ‘time slip’ to take another turn’s worth of actions, Extra attacks with the phantasm’s unarmed strikes and spike-throwing ranged attacks, the ability to attack a third time as a bonus action, a scrying window that can only see up to 10 days into the past, and a 20th level capstone where their bonus turn time slip ability can be triggered as a reaction even in a Timestop spell or similar effects. The Iron Myrmidon comes from a memory of safety and protection, or at least the desire for it. It has abilities related to this, such as being able to manifest hovering shields which can grant +2 AC to an ally, the expenditure of Soul Dice at 7th level to reduce damage dealt to said ally by that amount, the ability to telekinetically move metal objects via magnetism and turning metal objects into natural magnets, a phantasmal arsenal where the phantasm can proficiently wield and use existing weapons and store them in an extradimensional storage space,* the ability to turn into a mobile platform that can hold up to 1,500 pounds of weight* but can also mow down opponents effortlessly via selective incorporeality and deal damage, turn into a 5 foot translucent cube that is immune to all forms of damage and conditions save a disintegrate spell, and a 20th level capstone ability where they can shoot out all of their extradimensional weapons at once in a spinning field that does selective damage to all within a 10 foot radius. *and an infinite number of weight beyond that, but loses the ability to move until they’re under 1.5k pounds. The Harmonic Magician is formed from a memory of discordant voices and sounds of some unknown yet important event, and is the “spellcaster” option for Channelers. Although the weakest aspect physically and lacking Multiattack, it is relatively untethered and can move freely independent of the Channeler up to 60 feet distant. Its main class feature is granting the Channeler access to actual spells and cantrips, drawing from its own class list of spells up to 5th level, and the aspect is similar to a familiar in that the Channeler can cast spells through them. Other features include the ability to spend Soul Dice to increase the damage dealt or healed with spells, converting Soul Dice to spell slots, an audible magic sonar which outlines invisible creatures to the Channeler and can disrupt concentration spells as a more focused single target attack, can record ritual-friendly spells as rituals onto magical plates even if it’s from other class’ spell list, and as a 20th level capstone ability can have the Channeler and the Aspect cast the same spell twice at the same time but with only one slot. The class-specific spell list for the Harmonic Magician is a rather broad assortment. It’s got many energy-based and AoE damage dealing spells, but has quite a bit of utility magic such as Charm Person, Invisibility, Leomund’s Tiny Hut, and the like. Combined with the ritual casting plates, the Harmonic Magician is by far the most versatile Aspect for the Channeler class. Manifestations are personalized expressions of the Channeler’s memories beyond just their Aspects, shaped to encourage exemplary abilities in certain fields. The Channeler gains 2 Manifestations at 2nd level, a third at 5th and another every 2 levels up to 9th, at which point they gain 1 every 3 levels up to a maximum of 8 at 18th level. They’re similar to feats in that you either have them or you don’t, and there’s a list of general Manifestions plus a few specific to certain Aspects. I won’t go over all of them, but there’s a few which allow you to add Soul Dice results to various skills: Acrobatics and Athletics for peerless athletes, Investigation and Perception for savvy-eyed individuals, etc. There are Soul Dice options for other effects such as healing touch or adding to an ally’s saving throw results, albeit in the non-skill cases they are usually limited based on a short or long rest independent of how many Soul Dice you have remaining. Some non-Soul Dice Manifestations include automatically disengaging from opponents whenever you Dash and gain a bonus 10 feet while doing so, the ability to let your Phantasm pick up and manipulate objects,* increasing the reach of your Phantasm’s attacks by 5 feet as your bonus action, and one where your phantasm can emit a telepathic alarm whenever a non-designated creature comes within 30 feet of you. *But not activate magic items or use weapons unless they have features specifically allowing this. The Aspect-specific Manifestations are keyed to said Aspects’ strong suits, such as the Chronos Avenger treating their attacks as magical or increased uses of time slip, or the Harmonic Magician reducing the conversion cost of Soul Dice to spell slots or using its magical sonar to perfectly imitate any sound the Channeler heard within the past 24 hours. Our book ends with a handy-dandy cheat sheet guide, and a list of FAQs at the end for situational rules and effects:  Existing Class Comparisons: The Channeler’s role in the party is dependent upon whether or not they choose Harmonic Magician as their Aspect. Otherwise they are by default a mostly-martial build albeit acting through a summoned proxy. They’re a bit of a glass cannon in this regard, as while they are capable of getting a high Armor Class with the right Aspect and Manifestations their rather average d8 hit die and inability to use magical armor or shields limits their defense unless they choose Iron Myrmidon. That the Chrono Avenger’s natural attacks are not counted as magical save via a Manifestation tax is a point against its favor. The Harmonic Magician is akin to a Paladin, Ranger, or Warlock in that they have spell slots but do not go up to 9th level. They feel a bit closest to Wizards in terms of blasty/utility mix, and they can make for a nice “minor arcanist” in a pinch. While they may not get the continual short rest recharge rate of warlocks or the sheer power of post-5th slots, the use of Soul Dice can make them cast said minor magics much more often over a typical adventuring day. Final Thoughts: In terms of general utility the non-Harmonic Aspects have some neat tricks but are rather situational, and in terms of scouting the natural invisibility of said Aspects are limited given they have to be adjacent to the Channeler at all times. The right Manifestation can easily break 5th Edition’s bounded accuracy with the expenditure of Soul Dice, but given it’s typically 2 related skills means that said Channeler will not be an all-purpose skill monkey unless they spend most of their Manifestation choices on such options. The Harmonic Magician turns the Channeler into a capable spellcaster, and the ability to burn Soul Dice for spell slots means that they aren’t at risk of running out of spells anytime soon at mid-to-high levels. That their Aspect can go much farther and deliver spells through it is great for scouting and guerilla warfare purposes, not to mention that the “vague sounds” is much broader in terms of potential lost memories than the regret/nostalgia/safety shtick of the other two Aspects. Join us next time as we see Matthew Mercer try his hand at converting the Witcher to D&D with the Blood Hunter class!
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May 4, 2020 23:51
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Night10194 posted:Actually what our group did with the Amazons. The first Norse colony at Skeggi (Named for Skeggi Finebeard, great explorer) tried to take some golden tablets. It didn't go well. The Jarl's wife (with him dead, she became Jarl) hit on just giving them back as the solution to the siege. The Skink Priest leading it was so surprised someone finally listened and just returned the tablets that they had a talk, and in the end, the Amazons (named for the nearby river) decided to join the Great Plan under a technical provision that mercenaries and security personnel could be hired at a Skink Priest's discretion. Things grew from there.
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May 5, 2020 00:25
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Nessus posted:I remember Terry Pratchett doing something loosely similar in Strata... Huh. Looking it up, I've never read any of his non-discworld work. I should find that book.
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May 5, 2020 00:31
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Night10194 posted:Huh. Looking it up, I've never read any of his non-discworld work. I should find that book. I love Pratchett's work absolutely, but I would still call Strata 'OK.' It's a very early Pratchett work.
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May 5, 2020 02:41
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Mors Rattus posted:Well, Norsca has New World colonies. There are also a few other colonies in the New World. There's a penal colony in the Southlands, where prisoners are pretty much just shipped to die (it's not particularly pleasant). There are also Port Reaver (founded by the deposed pirate king of Sartossa in Tilea) and Swamp Town, founded by settlers from Port Reaver. The Lizardmen mostly ignore them until they get too obnoxious, then they invade, kill some people and burn some stuff down and go back home. Joe Slowboat posted:I love Pratchett's work absolutely, but I would still call Strata 'OK.' It's a very early Pratchett work. Strata was very much a Ringworld parody, so if you like Ringworld, you'll like Strata. If you don't, you're probably not going to get as much enjoyment out of it. Epicurius fucked around with this message at 03:33 on May 5, 2020 |
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May 5, 2020 03:30
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Epicurius posted:Strata was very much a Ringworld parody, so if you like Ringworld, you'll like Strata. If you don't, you're probably not going to get as much enjoyment out of it. That would do it then, I never got into Ringworld.
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May 5, 2020 05:32
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GimpInBlack posted:Thing is, it's not actually hard to improv this game. I mean, coming up with a challenge on the fly isn't really any more work-intensive than establishing the stakes of an action roll in Blades in the Dark, for example. You're just coming up with a good, great, and bad outcome, and maybe an idea for an extra problem the player could take on in exchange for a bonus die. This certainly works well for some people, but establishing the stakes of an action roll in BitD is the most work-intensive part of BitD. Improvisation and creating an appropriate fiction are skills not everyone have, and BitD is very light on frameworks to help that process along.
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May 5, 2020 08:41
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LatwPIAT posted:This certainly works well for some people, but establishing the stakes of an action roll in BitD is the most work-intensive part of BitD. Improvisation and creating an appropriate fiction are skills not everyone have, and BitD is very light on frameworks to help that process along. I don't disagree with any of these points--I was specifically responding to BinaryDoubts' statement that they felt the game wasn't for them, an improv-heavy GM, because it seems to require having a ton of prep work done beforehand. My point wasn't that anyone could run Solo Ops as a purely improv game, just that, if you're comfortable running improv games in general, Solo Ops isn't really any harder to improv than something like BitD. But I can see how my initial post wasn't clear!
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May 5, 2020 09:00
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Night10194 posted:Actually what our group did with the Amazons. The first Norse colony at Skeggi (Named for Skeggi Finebeard, great explorer) tried to take some golden tablets. It didn't go well. The Jarl's wife (with him dead, she became Jarl) hit on just giving them back as the solution to the siege. The Skink Priest leading it was so surprised someone finally listened and just returned the tablets that they had a talk, and in the end, the Amazons (named for the nearby river) decided to join the Great Plan under a technical provision that mercenaries and security personnel could be hired at a Skink Priest's discretion. Things grew from there. Has anyone written a ..good...source book for Amazons? I keep looking for one but the D20 ones I found did not have good reviews. (Also, I never knew this was the review thread till about a week ago! I am really impressed by them all).
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May 5, 2020 09:29
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Night's Black Agents: Solo Ops Part Seven: Conspiracy Theory The original Night's Black Agents featured a pretty big, pyramidal conspiracy of vampiric influence, with the delightful name of "the Conspyramid." While there's nothing stopping you from doing that in a Solo Ops game, it's probably a bit overkill--the main reason for the 5-4-3-2-1 hierarchical structure of the Conspyramid is so that a diverse group of agents can bring their various specialist skills to bear in terms of finding vectors to attack the conspiracy. You don't really need that in Solo Ops, and the advice mentioned back in the last update about how many elements a player can keep track of at once applies here, too--so unless your player is really into the "red string on a corkboard" aspect of investigation, it's probably better to go for a smaller, more intimate conspiracy. Unfortunately, while the book tells us we don't need to use the original Night's Black Agents Conspyramid structure, it doesn't really tell us what a conspiracy "structure" should look like, beyond saying that it's a network of spies, servants, corporations, and other minions the vampires control. There's always a vampire at the top of the conspiracy (with the Linea Dracula, one assumes that there are two conspiracies at work, one headed by Count Dracula and one by John Dracula, but the book never really gives us a clear map of the "default" conspiracy). Depending on the scale/tone of your game, there may be other vampires or other assorted monsters farther down the conspiracy, but most of its monsters are human, and probably don't even know they work for an ancient bloodsucking monster. The book gives some pretty good advice on how to generate ideas for elements of the conspiracy based on a few parameters: Age: If your vampires have been around since time immemorial, the higher-up nodes in the conspiracy are probably things like ancient cults, secret societies, and the like, and probably has fingers in pies all over the globe. More recent vampiric arrivals might control specific bloodlines of mortal servitors, medieval knightly orders, or the like, and are probably more limited in geographic scale. Goals: If your vampires are purely interested in maintaining their own wealth, privilege, secrecy, and food supply, they probably suborn fairly pragmatic elements: politicians, journalists, intelligence organizations, and the organs of capitalism. If their goals are, shall we say, somewhat loftier, like performing a ritual to awaken Zalmoxis the Vampire God and cover the world in night eternal, they'll probably have cults, amoral archaeologists, and maybe mineral-prospecting companies that can find Zalmoxis's buried temple-tomb with their ground-penetrating radar. Of course, vampires being vampires, any conspiracy is going to need a way to supply victims, untraceable wealth, blackmail, and any special needs dictated by particular vampiric weaknesses, so you can never go wrong with human trafficking rings, drug cartels, smugglers, and shipping companies (for those no-questions-asked shipments of Transylvanian graveyard dirt). The Supernatural: Going too heavy on the supernatural can undermine the real-world espionage feel, but if the vampires have any occult assets, whether that's other supernatural servants, assigns that float around the conspiracy as troubleshooters, or the Scholomance, they're probably significant enough to warrant a slot to themselves. Extraneous: Not every node in the conspiracy has to directly relate to the vampires and their grand plan. Conspiracies often have vestigial organs that are no longer relevant--controlling the Hungarian Communist Party in the 1940s was probably a great idea, now, maybe not so much, or a debased cult created specifically to generate blackmail on the wealthy elite of the Disraeli government might still trundle on with the descendants of once-influential famiies growing increasingly irrelevant in the modern era. Of course, you don't have to entirely map out the conspiracy before the game starts--but it is a good idea to have at least a couple of high-level nodes (so you can drop veiled hints of their involvement throughout the game) and a low-level node (so the player has a target for early operations). All in all, I really wish there was a little more guidance here--the conspiracy map is supposed to be the player's primary motivator and action-generator, and while there's some good advice on coming up with ideas for specific elements in the conspiracy, there's almost nothing on how they fit together or how to structure them. This section weighs in at slightly less than a page once you account for the sidebar telling you why it doesn't use the Conspyramid structure, and IMO that's just not enough. This is the first section of the book where I feel like you really need to refer back to the original Night's Black Agents to understand what's going on here. Blowback Now it's time to talk blowback. We've already learned that blowback scenes are consequences of players taking time during an operation, here we get the specific mechanics for it. Firstly, depending on the pacing of the story and what makes narrative sense, the blowback can either happen during the downtime (e.g. "after hours of poring over manuscripts, you finally find the journal of the 17th century vampire hunter Alfonso Piretti--but before you can really dig into it, you hear the unmistakable sound, off in the stacks, of someone quietly chambering a round") or get worked into a later scene ("you're meeting your contact in the hotel bar, when you notice three beefy goons with suspiciously-baggy sport coats moving in from the lobby"). It is, however, generally acknowledged as a dick move to have the blowback prevent the player from doing whatever they took time to do in the first place. When blowback happens, the Director has a menu of possible scenes. There are a bunch of generic Heat and Shadow blowback scenes in this section, with escalating intensity based on the player's score, and chances are good you'll have a few additional options from Blowback Problems the player has accrued. You only choose one blowback scene per chunk of time taken, though, and it's up to you whether to go for the most extreme option or give the player a break. Likewise, while blowback scenes are usually about creating a threat and increasing tension, clever players can absolutely leverage them for additional clues--the classic example is knocking out the goons sent to kill you and interrogating them, but you're encouraged to roll with the player if it makes sense. Operations & Challenges Next we roll into the obligatory "designing adventures" section. It's all solid advice, but honestly if you've read an RPG rulebook in the last 15 years or so you've read some variation of this section, so I'm mostly going to gloss over it. Suffice to say it leans even harder into the "prepared adventure" philosophy we've seen so far--I forgot until reading it just now that even the sidebar on improvising content is framed entirely from the perspective of "what to do if the player goes off-script in an unexpected way" rather than "here's how to run a game with minimal prep." One piece of structure advice I've found useful in my own mystery games, whether GUMSHOE related or not, is the breakdown of clues into a few categories: Core clues are those that lead directly toward completing the operation--whether that's the location of the vampire's lair, the suspicious payments to the head of the Romanian SRI, or the discovery of the ritual to exorcise a demon from your contact. These are the ones that players must acquire to keep the investigation moving. Alternate clues lead to optional avenues of investigation. They might yield actionable intel, useful Contacts or gear, or the like, but aren't required to move the operation forward. Pipe clues are clues that don't provide any answers by themselves, but when combined with another clue found elsewhere, give a complete picture. The fact that Janosz always smells like roses might just seem like a weird character quirk, until you learn that the scent of roses confounds a vampire's ability to enter your mind--does that mean Janosz is planning a move against his vampiric master? Leveraged clues are somewhat similar, in that they're clues that give you additional information when you confront NPCs with them. Having proof of those bribe payments means you can lean on the Senator for information about who he works for, or finding the old regimental portrait from 1867 reveals that the Major has, apparently, been in HM Royal Marines for a century and a half. The section on designing challenges is much the same--solid advice, but largely stuff I expect the audience of this F&F is familiar with. I do appreciate that one of the sample difficulty ranges for challenges is "You don't know who you're dealing with," for those moments when you want to let the PCs absolutely clown on some chumps to remind them that yes, they are in fact stone-cold badasses. There's also a bit about playing Contacts as the GM that is about what you'd expect ("don't reduce the player to a passive spectator, but if they enjoy playing chessmaster and calling the shots from a high-rise office while their hand-picked team pulls off a heist, that's cool too"), and some advice on when and how a Contact might betray the player. Finally, there's a section on Patrons, which amounts to "the player might not be a freelance spy, they might work for some shadowy group that uses them as a weapon against the vampires." Useful for players that prefer to have their objectives given to them, but otherwise not a lot of weight here. Rounding out the chapter is a collection of example challenges, one for each General ability except Driving, which serves as an example of a multi-challenge linked chase scene comprising four separate challenges (depending on their rolls, players will only actually engage with 2-3 of them). Particular highlights include Athletics and its "fight the Spetznaz assassin for the last parachute as the plane crashes" and Preparedness and its "why yes, I do have a goddamn shoulder-mounted SAM launcher to deal with that escaping helicopter." The rest aren't generic exactly, but they're broad enough that with minimal alteration you could drop them into your own game, or just use them as benchmarks and inspiration for your own challenges. Next Time: If it felt like I was rushing through this update a little, that's because, well, I was. Partly because I don't have a lot to say about fairly boilerplate adventure-construction guidelines without just restating the entire chapter, but partly because, now that we've finished the game mechanics, it's time to move on to the part I'm really excited about : the adventures of Leyla Khan. Now, Leyla has a backstory, in that she's a former MI6 agent who fell under the sway of a vampire lord, served as his personal assassin for several years, and has recently broken free of his control at the cost of most of her memories--but as far as her actual characterization goes, that's left up to the player. So, thread, it's time for a vote on what kind of spy Leyla will be. This will influence the starting Mastery Edges I pick for her and generally how I "play" her throughout the adventure. (We'll do a vote before each adventure, so we won't necessarily be locked into one style for the rest of this F&F; Leyla is still figuring herself out, after all.) On Alpha Protocol, we called these approaches the "three JBs," so tell me thread, is Leyla Khan like:
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May 5, 2020 12:16
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Jason Bourne
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GimpInBlack posted:Now, Leyla has a backstory, in that she's a former MI6 agent who fell under the sway of a vampire lord, served as his personal assassin for several years, and has recently broken free of his control at the cost of most of her memories--but as far as her actual characterization goes, that's left up to the player. So, thread, it's time for a vote on what kind of spy Leyla will be. This will influence the starting Mastery Edges I pick for her and generally how I "play" her throughout the adventure. (We'll do a vote before each adventure, so we won't necessarily be locked into one style for the rest of this F&F; Leyla is still figuring herself out, after all.) On Alpha Protocol, we called these approaches the "three JBs," so tell me thread, is Leyla Khan like:
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May 5, 2020 12:34
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Voting for Bourne.
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May 5, 2020 12:49
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James Bond so you can kill Marburg in Rome.
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May 5, 2020 13:02
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 New general abilities for The Wars include: Artillery Battlefield (keeping yourself alive in the middle of a mass combat; as with Fighting and Composure, you don't want to skimp here) Driving Morale (useful for restoring other people's Composure and treating shock cards) Scrounging Traps and Bombs Besides these, The Wars characters also have Athletics, Composure, Fighting, First Aid, Health, Mechanics, Preparedness, Riding, Sense Trouble, and Sneaking as general abilities, and these too operate as they did in Paris. Having both Preparedness and Scrounging seems a bit redundant to me. While combat is handled the same as in Paris, The Wars has a different combat table:  Difficulties and the Toll are lower, and The Wars's soldiers are better at killing than Paris's art students, but it's also harder to run away from a fight. PCs are also allowed to Hunker Down once per scenario to refresh their Battlefield and Athletics pools, temporarily finding shelter to snatch a moment of rest, trade stories about their sweethearts back home, or wonder what this damned war is really about. Other than these changes, however, the rules for investigations, tests, fighting, shock and injury, etc., are the same as they were in Paris. The Wars includes a new table of hazards, including such things as Giant Squid Attacks the Lifeboats, Inside a Structure When Bombers Take It Out, and You Show Fright, Inviting the Mockery of Fellow Soldiers, and a new set of shock/injury cards appropriate to these dangers. The remainder of the book is background and campaign design information. The War is being fought between two sides, the Loyalists (the players' side) and the Enemy. The GM can select whatever European countries they want for each side, although France should be among the Loyalists. If you played Paris and the PCs had friendly relations with a non-French person during that campaign, that person's country can be on the Loyalist side. Based on these decisions, the GM draws a battle line across a map of Europe – and then moves it back a short distance towards France, representing the fact that the Loyalists are on the defensive and have lost territory. During the timeline of The Wars, America remains neutral under the rulership of Emperor Hildred Castaigne (see Chambers's story “The Repairer of Reputations,” as well as the next book, Aftermath). The exact issue that sparked the War is up to the GM to determine. Maybe the Loyalists are democracies and the Enemy are authoritarians or monarchists – or maybe it's the other way around. Laws does, in a sidebar titled “Not Everything Has to Have Hitler In It,” warn against the temptation to bring in alternate-world versions of Hitler or any high-ranking Nazis – he feels it's better to keep a certain philosophical distance between the fictional Continental War and our world's real European wars. The GM also determines what the Yellow King's interest in the war is. Is it a proxy battle between him and his enemies (whoever they may be)? Or perhaps it's a war of succession between the King and one or both of his daughters, or perhaps the Carcosans are simply feeding off the death and misery produced by the war, and want to drag it out as long as possible. Or maybe a major villain from your Paris campaign is involved in spurring the war somehow. Military technology in The Wars is just slightly different from the real world, thanks to the influence of Carcosa. Weapons tend to be elaborately carved and decorated with patriotic symbols in Belle Epoque style, emulating organic shapes. Radio has not been discovered; instead, the PCs are assigned a boitenoire, which is basically a wireless fax machine/typewriter, to stay in touch with their commanders. Instead of tanks, the battlefield is menaced by stalkers (giant multi-legged war machines), and aircraft are designed to look insect- or batlike. Besides normal bullets, small arms can also fire discourager rounds (which implant a psychic suggestion against crossing battle lines), quisling rounds (the same, except they suggest you betray your superiors), white-sky rounds (which implant a suggestion against attacking Carcosan creatures), or suppurator rounds (which produce horrifying diseased wounds that leak black goo). Weird weapons like these are powerful, but have a psychic cost (I.e, possible shock hazards) for both the user and the target, so overusing them can be a short trip to shell shock. Enemies for The Wars campaigns include enemy soldiers, Carcosan creatures drawn to the battlefield, and warspawn – monsters created by the intersection of battlefield horror and Carcosan influence. These include such beasties as the whatsisname, which attempts to join your unit while psychically persuading you to remember it as a beloved comrade, or swarms, masses of animals – birds, rats, dogs – melded together into one crawling carpet of fur and bones and teeth. Also included is a chapter of People, one-paragraph thumbnail sketches of various NPCs for the players to interact with, including commanding officers, fellow soldiers, civilians, and enemies. Next comes a discussion of how to design scenarios for The Wars and different campaign premises. Even though the PCs won't usually be directly on the front lines, Laws explains that they should never feel that they can move freely around the war zone without danger, and should never be certain that a person or place will be the same if they leave it and then return. He suggests including "hazard scenes," where the PCs face enemies or danger without a chance to obtain clues; even a peaceful trip back to headquarters can be interrupted by artillery fire or enemy bombers. As the campaign ramps up, the threats the PCs face can get weirder and weirder: hungry ghosts, psychic mines, former companions returning as undead. The eventual endpoint of a The Wars campaign should be figuring out how to end the war. This can involve occupying (or successfully defending) Paris, killing the villain who's provoking the war, stopping an Enemy super-weapon, or finding a way to banish the Carcosans back to their own planet/dimension/time. The book concludes with a scenario, “A Feast for Wolves,” where the PCs witness an aircraft crash that leaves many friendly soldiers dead. But when they visit the crash site, the bodies are gone. Perhaps the villagers in the nearby town of Gevaudan might know what happened to them...
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May 5, 2020 13:46
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Oh boy is this the Beast of Gevaudan? I have had fun with that thing in the past!
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May 5, 2020 14:34
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Yeah, the villagers are a cannibal cult that worships the Beast. I'd rename the village if I ran that adventure, because it gives the game away way too early. Although it does highlight the challenge of running mystery/investigation scenarios in a war zone setting. With most groups in my experience, all the GM has to do is say, "You notice that the villagers seem surprisingly well-fed and healthy," and the players will be demanding to know if they can call in an airstrike.
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May 5, 2020 15:20
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Voting for Bourne because I feel like that one is the best fit from the look of things. Although some sort of scenario where she has twenty four hours to stop the vampire conspiracy before turning into a vampire would be interesting, but for now yeah, Bourne it is.Selachian posted:Yeah, the villagers are a cannibal cult that worships the Beast. I'd rename the village if I ran that adventure, because it gives the game away way too early. The problem is one of players engaging with the game on its own premise and yeah that's an issue with some people in games like this. My favorite player is a guy who always rolls with the punches and never backs down from anything because he makes it fun to GM stuff like this. Ithle01 fucked around with this message at 15:25 on May 5, 2020 |
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May 5, 2020 15:22
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Voting Bauer because moral ambiguity is for cowards
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May 5, 2020 15:38
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Froghammer posted:Voting Bauer because moral ambiguity is for cowards  
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May 5, 2020 15:50
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Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Defenders of the Forest How To Train Your Dragon So the section on woodland critters and plants is mostly boring outside of the fact that every elf can apparently use Charm Animal to acquire deeply loyal Companions who can be called to your side at any time with a WP test. Giant Eagles, Elven Steeds, etc. Warhawks and Steeds are the most common, because you can ride a magic birb and fire arrows at people from the Warhawk and because as Mors put it here, 'elfs run Horse Tindr'. I object a little to some of the flavoring of this stuff because most of it is put in terms of how this makes the creature much better at responding to your desires. You get an extra Fortune Point to use on Ride checks, you can call them to do what you want, etc etc. The fluff talks a little about it being a two way street, but beyond some token talk about that it's like it usually is when someone is depicted as 'in tune with nature'. Nature does whatever they say. I'm down with the idea of a character being able to get excellent results by genuinely partnering with their fabulous steed or magic birb. Actually caring for and taking care of and bonding with your cool horse or flying mount so that you're a team is fun. But there's something about the way it's all 'they can sense your desires and needs and do whatever you wish' that tends to feel off in this. I remember getting the same sense when I saw Avatar, where the crazy blue catmen were 'bonding' by, uh, inserting a tentacle into the nervous system of an animal to make it do whatever they wanted. It sure tends to seem like harmony with nature ends up with the biped in total command in these kinds of generic fantasy nature hero settings. Oh, also, you can Bond with a Forest Dragon. Don't worry, it's fairly hard (it isn't that hard)! You need two -20 tests in a row and oh my the elf with a good Fel now has a dragon partner. You take a permanent -5% to Fel for doing this (you get a little dragony) and gain 1 IP (you start to dress like a dragon I guess) but now you have a dragon. You take -20 on WP to 'call' them to yourself. The thing is, dragons are full sentients. They're not animals! They're certainly not 'magical animals' who only 'fulfill their role' in the ecosystem (eating Chaos stuff, according to the book, since they can't easily be corrupted. Galrauch the Traitor would like a word, from both his heads and his immense lair up in the north near the Gate). They also get a batshit powerful breath weapon compared to standard dragons: A mass of 'corrosive, stinging, toxic gas' that does Damage 6 *unreducable* (So just straight 7-16 Wounds) to a large area for anyone who fails Tough-10. They get -10 S and T since they're more serpentine and lithe, but +10 Agi and +1 Mv. If one of your PCs gets a dragon and becomes a dragon rider, well, that's that then. Now, I've had a dragon show up as an ally in a game before. At extremely high levels, they're not as insanely powerful as you'd think. Rendiga of the Blazing Sun wasn't that crazy, but that was being compared to a just about maxed out Questing Knight and a Sorceress (characters with like 6500 EXP each) with a bunch of crazy powers and a retinue of powerful allies, and they had to kick the hell out of her before recruiting her for their mad quest to kill the first Chaos Dragon anyway. But it's the kind of thing you plan out carefully and don't put down until very far into a game (and specifically a very high power one, with more magical items and stuff than usual). Like the 'd100 years later, you pop out of the forest', getting a dragon buddy should be a major campaign goal, not the kind of thing you do with two -20 Fel tests. These kinds of subsystems tend to accidentally reduce what should be rad campaign climaxes or objectives to a dry couple of skill tests. You can also get a truly mighty wardeer, which is excellent and less likely to break everything while being an extremely powerful aid to a high level character. The Great Stags may be recognizable to anyone who has played Total Warhams, because elven deer cavalry are terrifying. The deer is also a total badass if you can get one as a buddy, having 2 attacks, 24 Wounds, SB 5, TB 4, and WS 55. And their horns are magical, and if they make a guarded attack, can Snare people like a whip. I'm definitely going to just use these stats for one for the mount for a future Asrai boss, so hey, it's another bit I'm actually going to use later from this book so it wasn't a total loss. If you see the holy White Stag, you get 2 bonus Fortune Points for the day because it's good luck. Also, they are so majestic that all their allies get Stout Hearted (Well, elfs only) and +10 on Fear tests. Fear the deer. Naiads are just Dryads who try to seduce people into ponds and offer 'exceptionally attractive males (Fel 60+)' a kiss for information. The kiss loses you in time and space if you fail WP. It's our old friend, sexy trap lady monster. Also Fel being treated directly as physical attractiveness rather than general presence, charisma, and ability with people (which may include looking good, sure, but it's more than that). Someone who raises Fel isn't just like, learning fabulous new hair care techniques or else Sigmarite Priests would never be able to raise the stat. Oh, and Naiads also get +10 to their own Fellowships over a normal Dryad because they're wearing wet t-shirts. No, really, the text focuses on their 'clinging, wet veils' 'accentuating the curves of their body' and the rule is called Female Form. Really guys. Really. Oh and they'll seduce women by pretending to be a young child crying for help instead of using sex, because 'no woman can resist this'. Dryads do the same. C'mon, book! I said you weren't that offensive at the beginning, stop proving me wrong with your dumb 'sexy' trap monsters. They also talk a bit about Dryad Hitler (Drycha the Branchwraith), who is meant to be a possible campaign villain. She wants to wake up the most racist trees in the forest, drive out the elfs so they have to fight the humans for territory and die, and then follow up with the entire wood marching on the human world to end them. PCs probably do not want her to do this. Oh, and in the plants section elfs get an easy, relatively common cure for the Neiglish Rot specifically that only works on elfs. No checks really required, just eat this plant and you'll poo poo the rot right out with no complications over 1d10 days (-5% to all stats while you recover from the purging). They also get a plant that actually cures mutations, exactly the same way. To get THAT one you have to pluck it unseen from a sleeping Treeman. This is at least a difficult and dangerous task. This one actually works on anyone. But it's pretty hilarious that the elfs are just handed an easy way to negate the constant bullshit of Neiglish Rot that won't work for anyone else. My guess is the people who write these kinds of elf books really don't like the thought of their Hot Elfs growing multiple limbs or anything. Not that I mind Neiglish Rot getting dumpstered, I hate that poo poo as it is (and our hardworking friend Third Tier Shallyan needed a break), but it being elf only is a little dickish. An actual mutation treatment that actually takes a fairly difficult quest to get is an actual good thing to add to the game, though. Having a few difficult, have-an-adventure-while-hiding-things means to help PCs potentially get out of extremely unwanted mutations would not have been amiss. Also, every monster/enemy in this section gets a 'combat behavior' table where you roll a d10 to see what they do each round. Most of the options are not Swift Attack, so using this to give them a combat AI will generally significantly weaken enemies. It reminds me a little of 13th Age, which reminds me of how bullshit 13th Age's Woodsy Elfs were, too. Also, attacks are all named stuff like 'Prancing Beauty' and 'Graceful Charge'. Finally, we get Zoats. Zoats seem to be a 1e callback, as does this book mentioning Gnomes as tricky little assholes who help out the Wood Elfs. I am not sure why anyone who has managed to get the standard fantasy Gnome out of their setting as Warhammer did would want them back, but Zoats are potentially interesting. They feel a little like uncorrupted Dragon Ogres. Big, centauroid lizard people that the 1e book claimed might be related to Slaan. They walk about with enormous staves tipped with huge runic mace heads, which banish the poo poo out of Chaos Demons and undead (WP test or die for those enemies if struck with one, counts as magic, and non-Zoats could potentially use one). They hide in the woods and spend their time de-powering Warpstone and trying to clean up magical unexploded ordinance. They'll occasionally approach elfs or PCs to quietly ask for help in these matters. They can also neutralize any spell tossed at them by just making a WP test as long as they have their mace. They're mysterious and unusual, and mostly helpful (though they're dangerous as hell if crossed, being competent physical fighters with natural armor, magic defense, and Mag 4 casters with lots of nature magic if pissed off). Then they spoil it by just saying 'they're just waiting for everyone else to die off so they can have the Age of Zoats, and so are trying to keep the lights on until that happens'. C'mon, book! You almost had an interesting and mysterious creature, then you just said exactly what they all want and that they're cryptic because they're quietly trying to get everyone killed. Dangit, Defenders of the Forest. Oh, also, you can tell a rabbit is a chaos tainted rear end in a top hat if he doesn't warn you of danger. I just thought I'd share that bit. Rabbits that don't sprint dramatically across your path to warn you a predator is coming? Chaos assholes. Next Time: Wrapping Up The Magical Forests
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May 5, 2020 15:52
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Bourne
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May 5, 2020 15:58
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An uncorrupted dragon ogre is a great idea for a campaign. But this book really, really loves to explain every potential mystery.
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May 5, 2020 16:36
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 I want to talk about RoleMaster, but I want to talk about it on my own terms, so this will not be in order, and probably won't be comprehensive. RoleMaster began as a way for (A)D&D players to bolt-on an additional level of "realism" onto their combat, primarily by introducing critical hits, which didn't explicitly exist in D&D's rules at the time of RM's conception, as well as changing things like separating "AC from dodging" from "AC from thick armor", and differentiating weapon types versus armor types (D&D actually already did something like this as early as the Greyhawk supplement, but RM goes farther). ___ RM's basic die roll is a d100. If the player gets a 95 or higher, they take that result, roll again, and add the outcome of the new roll to the previous result. If the second roll is also a 95 or higher, they roll again, and so on. If the player gets a 5 or lower, they take that result, roll again, and subtract the outcome of the new roll from the previous result. If the second roll is also a 5 or lower, they roll again, and so on. RM calls this "open-ended rolls", but I suppose nowadays we'd call them "exploding dice". ___ To make an attack in RM, a player makes an open-ended d100 roll, adds their "Offensive Bonus" to the result, subtracts the target's "Defensive Bonus" from the result, and then the result is cross-referenced against an attack table corresponding to the weapon used. Here's an example - the attack table for short swords:   The columns, ranging from 20 on the far-left to 1 on the far-right, represent Armor Types. AT1, on the far-right, represents bare skin and normal clothing. AT2 is robes, AT3 and AT4 are hides. AT5 is a leather jerkin, with AT6 to AT8 representing heavier/more reinforced kinds of "soft leather" armor. AT9 to AT12 represent "rigid" leather armor, with AT12 specifically referring to leather made from fantastical animals such as dragons or giant crabs. AT 13 to AT16 represent chain mail, and then AT 17 to AT20 represent plate armor. The rows, starting from 150 down to 39, represent the final result of the attack roll. Anything less than what's on the table assumes to damage is dealt at all. So, if a player with a short sword attacks a target wearing a leather jerkin, and they get a result of 66, cross-referencing column AT5 with row 66 gives us a result of "6". In RM terms, that means the player deals 6 points of damage against the target's "Concussion Hits", which is RM's term for Hit Points. You might notice that, in column AT20, even the lowest possible result still inflicts 1 point of damage, but in column AT1, no damage is inflicted until at least a result of 70. Further, in column AT20, the first damage result to include letters is row 135 with a result of "5AS", but in column AT1, even a result as low as row 80 already includes letters, as in "10AK". Those letters represent critical hits, which we will get to in a minute, but the point here is that wearing plate armor makes a character relatively easier to hit, but the actual damage dealt by those hits will be much less, compared to wearing little-to-no armor allowing one to avoid/evade damage altogether, but sustaining more damage whenever a hit does manage to land. Now, here's the bottom half of the war hammer attack table, to underscore another point:  In this war hammer table, row 50 against AT20 (again, that's plate mail) deals 3 damage, and row 100 deals 8 damage. If you go back to the short sword table, row 50 deals just 1 damage, and row 100 deals just 3 damage. That's another sop to "realism" - a blunt weapon deals more damage against plate armor than a slashing weapon would, because of the properties of smashing into plate versus trying to pierce it. ___ Now we come to critical hits. Going back to the short sword table, an attack result of row 80 against AT1 gives us a result of "10AK". That means the attack will deal 10 damage, and then the attack gets to roll on the A column of the K critical hit table. The A stands for the severity of the critical hit, with A being the least severe/least damaging results, and it scales up from B through F. K stands for "Krush", and the other critical types are [S]lash, [P]uncture, [G]rapple, [U]nbalance, and [T]iny. Here's the Krush critical table:   Given the result of 10AK, the attacker would make another open-ended d100 roll, and cross-reference the result against the A column. A roll of 63 says: quote:Blow to foe's forearm. +5 hits. Foe is stunned 1 rnd. Add +20 to your next swing The "stunned" condition in RM means that the target cannot attack for that many rounds, and they can only parry with half of their Offensive Bonus. Sidebar: Parrying posted:Parrying is a mechanic in RM where a player can choose to subtract part or all of their Offensive Bonus, and add it instead to their Defensive Bonus. Finally, the attacker gets a bonus of +20 to their next attack. Now that we've established that an attack roll is d100 + OB + DB, and that a positive result is generally a successful hit, adjusted for the weapon used versus the type of armor, we should talk about how OB and DB are obtained/computed. RM has an entire whole game bolted onto it, but I think the easiest way to grasp how this works is to look at their conversion notes for AD&D. First, here's the stats conversion chart:  If you're a Fighter with 16 Strength, you should have 15 OB right off the bat. A Fighter gets +5 OB per level, clerics and thieves get +3 OB per level, and magic-users get +1 OB per level. Anything granting a +1 to attacks, such a magical sword +1, adds +5 to OB. Weapon proficiency/specialization would also fall into this. Anything granting a +1 to damage, adds +1 to OB (and does not add to the damage results directly, since higher attack roll results from increased OB increases the damage yielded from the table look-ups anyway) For DB, it's pretty easy: any +1 to AC from D&D's Dexterity, or spells, or added by magical armor +1, is a +5 to DB. The armor itself does not influence DB, because whether you're wearing leather armor or plate armor adjusts your AT, instead. This is what I was talking about in the parrying sidebar - a Fighter with 14 Dexterity is going to have a DB of 5 and nothing else, and that DB is not going to increase over time, but they do instead get +5 OB with every level, so shifting that OB over to DB by parrying is the only way that they can avoid getting hit, and get better at avoiding getting hit, over time. This relationship also creates situations where high-level Fighters can either parry so much that they can always overcome a low-level attacker's OB, or they can have high DB from parrying while still having OB to spare, or both. And without getting into the nitty-gritty of RM's whole-rest-of-the-game, this kind of OB/DB scaling relationship still exists. Finally, in terms of hit points, the conversion is that if you're playing with how many hit points AD&D gives players, all damage results from RM should be halved, rounded down. In our example of a 10AK attack result, with a crit result of 63, the total of 15 concussion hits would instead be reduced to 7 HP in D&D terms. Minutia: Things I've skipped over in the course of simply describing the "core gameplay loop", if you are playing the full RM game: * There is an 11-phase turn order, and a dedicated initiative system. I can go over it in detail if people are interested, but it would consume a whole post all by itself. * Wearing heavy armor imposes a "maneuver mod", which essentially acts as a penalty to everything you do that you have to roll for. This almost certainly inspired the "armor check penalty" mechanic from D&D 3rd Edition, but the key difference there is that RM gives characters a skill with every type of armor that will let them reduce the penalty. * Shields give a DB bonus * There are tables of various OB and DB modifiers, including: ** DB bonuses for being behind cover ** OB bonuses for flanking and stealth ** OB penalties for having lost 25/50/75% of one's total concussion hits ** OB penalties for moving within the same turn, proportion to the amount of one's full movement allowance that was used ___ A final word: I've already talked about how important parrying is, but in a broader sense, because getting hit carries with it a chance to get a critical result that causes a stun, or a "cannot parry" condition, or a "cannot act" condition, and because losing concussion hits by itself can already impose an OB penalty, the game can be very "death spiral"-y, where being injured first may well put someone on the back foot enough to decide the outcome of the fight in the long term. ___ Up next: Spell Law
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May 5, 2020 16:38
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Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Defenders of the Forest Elf Only End There's a full adventure presented here where you get involved with a Grail Damsel in training who wants to bring her eternally-kept-a-child brother and a bunch of other kidnapped children back with her. This is potentially interesting, but nothing especially interesting is done with it and the whole adventure is spent on how whimsical and magical keeping children in eternal bondage and indoctrinating the girls to help spread your political agenda and subvert their home nation is. You also get full game stats for Morghur/Cyanthir to use as a campaign boss, which is actually kind of neat. Their version is a dangerous badass with WS 63, SB 4 TB 4, Mag 5, 3 Attacks, 31 Wounds, but light-ish armor. Anyone coming within 16 yards suffers a mutation test. Actually killing him permanently would require some kind of Ritual (killing him with magic makes him take longer to respawn, killing him with an arrow or sword makes it easy on him) and his magic items both increase miscast chance for all his enemies and make it so anyone miscasting who rolls a double on the check for miscast result is instantly killed by being turned into a Chaos Spawn. He can also summon Beastmen as a full action, though it takes d10+2 rounds for them to arrive so if he was going to go down to being swarmed before doing that it isn't going to help him. More useful if he uses that when he's already got backup and he's just trying to augment them. He's also got an 81% Channeling and a +20 Channel skill, so he'll always be Channeling. Oh, and he knows 4 entire Arcane Lores. Beasts, Shadows, Death, and the entire Lore of Chaos. He's definitely not someone to take lightly, though heroes can beat those numbers. He's extremely unlikely to unsupported. He's also best engaged at range. I like Morghur. He's a genuinely scary Beastman, which can be kind of rare for Beastmen. In general I've actually kind of come around on them as enemies; they can be basic jobbers, sure, but once your players try to fight them on their turf and you start bringing out the legendary Beastlords like Morghur, they can actually work pretty well as enemies. Similar for them being major campaign enemies for Woodsy Elf games. They're a good fit! Both are heavily based around skirmishing and ambush, so you have the party and their targets playing cat and mouse while the Beastmen try to get a melee ambush in and the elfs try to stay at range and dictate the fights as they pick off enemies. They can certainly serve as basic enemies for lower tier PCs, but on the scale WHFRP takes place at and in their own territory, they can actually be really dangerous and fun to deal with. Oh, you also get rules for incredibly huge house-sized spiders that goblins ride like war elephants, if that's your thing. It should be your thing! It's cool. They're mean as hell, though, and their poison does 'd10xDegrees of Failure on Tough-10 Wounds' which is, uh, a lot. That's a very odd way to do poison damage and will quickly scale out of control on a single bad roll. They're insanely hard to kill, having 8 attacks, 45% WS, SB 5, TB 6, and 3 AV everywhere with 64 Wounds. No Unstoppable Blows, though, and no defensive skills. The text claims they're pests that followed the Old Ones' ships. The EDF may be required to sort out spiders of such size and power. One thing I notice about this book is it follows the 1e approach to the Old Ones, where their terraforming and creation of life is pretty front and center and just treated as a normal part of the setting, rather than the later Warhams fluff that mostly downplays them. There's a strong yearning for 1e here, and it's not surprising that you get a lot of 1e stuff translated directly to 4e considering one of the main authors from this book continued to work on 4e. While I like the Old One stuff, I don't think it should be especially prominent; it should be left as mysteries for GMs and players who want to play around with it rather than being a major point in setting fiction. Most people know Hams as a setting about rat catchers and mismatched buddies having crazy fantasy adventures. For the most part adventures in WHFRP just don't happen on a scale where ancient aliens would be relevant, whether they existed or not. Oh, Hornburg also put in a big reference to the Chapter 7 Thousand Thrones Deep Lore with his talk about 'trees of hope' and 'the ascension of Sigmar and Myrmidia', and looking it up, yeah, that's entirely his invention and not a reference to something else. Seeing how much it popped up in campaign expansions and now this suggested it was an original creation he was very proud of. Continue ignoring the terrible chapter 7 in TTT. So, why cover this? It's an unofficial book. It isn't very good. Well, partly, it was fun and funny to do so. Partly? I find badly written fantasy elfs fascinating. Elfs are just a magnet for bad fantasy writers. And the writers here are bad, bad fantasy writers. Plus, this is bad in the same way the DEEP LORE in TTT was. There's a ton of information here. There's TOO MUCH information here. Yet paradoxically there's still too little. Because all the information is focusing on grand setting mysteries and big revelations; things the GM has in their notes that likely never come up for the players. Not only do these close off paths and wreck the atmosphere of a lot of the mysteries they talk about since they answer them immediately, but in giving us stuff like 'the exact origin of the Loren' they're NOT giving us stuff that makes it helpful for playing a variety of woodsy elfs. In fact, it does the opposite. The elfs here offer the writers a trap where they want to make elfs as powerful as they 'should' be, and they want to make elfs good and kind and just the best. Except the elfs can't be allowed to have social conflicts, the elfs have no internal dissent, the elfs have no failings actually presented as failings. Not only does that fail to make them sympathetic the ways the writers hope to make them, it also stands out next to everyone else in the setting, including the setting's OTHER ELFS. What makes Hams Elfs fun? It's that they're messy. They're not a series of monocultures where every elf type has their own 'racial' hat and culture. There's no evil black-skinned drow; Druchii are extremists who followed one half of a succession struggle that never fully resolved and then diverged as a nation. The Asrai (and later the 4e Eonir) are the survivors of a colonial collapse who built their own different cultures and nations out of the ashes. The High Elfs of Ulthuan are bickering political animals with their own injustices and messes and struggles and alternate cultures. None of them are monocultures at all! They have nations and diverse political and religious ideas, like everyone else. They come from different material and cultural backgrounds. They gently caress up! Sometimes, they do exactly the right thing and actually save the world, too! You can imagine writing the Asur of Ulthuan struggling with their attraction to crazy reactionary 'elfs are the best' politics vs. the fact that they really need the rest of the world and it needs them. Or the Eonir struggling with being enclosed by an increasingly powerful Empire and what they'll do to maintain relations. Or the Asrai having the Bretonnian Question come home to roost, or what happens if Malekith dies and Naggarond catches fire. There are a ton of plots you can do both within the elf nations and in their interactions with other countries. But this book doesn't give a gently caress about all those things that makes Hams Elfs cool and fun. It makes them completely bog standard Complete Book of Elfs style D&D Wood Elfs. All the ambiguity is treated as non-existent, despite remaining in the text, which just makes the elfs look more like jerks. They're a bunch of 'perfect' assholes that the text pushes on you as heroic and wonderful whimsical fae protagonists. They're just The Best, and true defenders of the world, with the best weapons, the best magic, the best powers, and a society where there's no room for plots because everyone knows their place and no-one makes mistakes. When bad things happen, it's because those 'lesser races' were stupid or forest spirits were crazy. Their powerful lords don't have personality or intention, just lists of magic powers. Even if you wanted to make them otherworldly, you'd want to describe what they do. Let the players and GM decide their character from their deeds. Everything that makes an Hams Elf good is out the window, and in return you have standard fantasy elfs that don't enable plots or diverse characters. All you can do is be the keen-eyed ranger or powerful wizard, typecast forever by lovely fantasy writers. You get nothing about culture, nothing about texture, just more powers and 'roleplaying' tips on how to be the same goddamn insufferable elf we've seen in every fantasy setting since nerds first started aping Tolkien. And the contrast this provides with the normal setting writing is fun to think about, so I thought I'd share it. Now, back to your regularly scheduled expedition to Mousillon. The End
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May 5, 2020 17:17
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GimpInBlack posted:Night's Black Agents: Solo Ops Bourne
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May 5, 2020 17:29
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I don't know why but the rival to Count Dracula being named John Dracula really cracks me up. John Dracula. (And I vote for Bourne!)
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May 5, 2020 17:38
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Goddamn this Dracula stuff is making me wish I still had my copy of Alpha Protocol. Such a weird game, such a flawed game in so many ways, but I loved it so drat much.
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May 5, 2020 17:41
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Night10194 posted:Goddamn this Dracula stuff is making me wish I still had my copy of Alpha Protocol. Such a weird game, such a flawed game in so many ways, but I loved it so drat much. I was gonna go "oh, hey, it's still on Steam! just get it there!" but apparently it got removed last year. But also yes, while the gunplay, level design and stealth had their issues, the storytelling was very solid and few other games have impressed me by being so good at offering genuine choices that matter and aren't just simple good/evil decisions.
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May 5, 2020 17:49
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It was a game that got the fundamental pleasure of stealth/espionage: Going into a situation knowing something you're not supposed to know, that the person you're dealing with doesn't know you know. Oh, and it also actually let you get tricked if you were foolish. Like in Moscow. You could do that whole thing and never even notice you got played.
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May 5, 2020 17:50
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Night10194 posted:It was a game that got the fundamental pleasure of stealth/espionage: Going into a situation knowing something you're not supposed to know, that the person you're dealing with doesn't know you know. It also features yours truly as the voice of G22, though I suspect that had less to do with its cult favorite status.
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May 5, 2020 18:31
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