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Not, mind you, that Archaon in AoS runs all of Chaos. A lot of major names don’t answer to him, like Korghos Khul or the majority of the Beastmen. E: they also introduced a way of curing Chaos Warrior-level corruption - anyone slain by Ghal Maraz has all Chaos purged from their soul in death, and this is relevant when the afterlife is a physical place you can go. E2: which doesn’t do much if you were a poo poo to begin with, but there’s a small Stormcast host of former Chaos Warriors, the Redeemed, who all have stories like ‘I was a hero of my people, but got captured and tortured for ten years until it broke me and I accepted Chaos’ and then got taken out by the Stormcast leader that wields Ghal Maraz. Mors Rattus fucked around with this message at 20:25 on May 18, 2020 |
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May 18, 2020 20:20
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It's kinda funny that GW has spent more time talking about, and detailing his ideology rather than his character. Scourge of Fate deals with a Chaos Knight wanting to join Archaons Varanguard and spends quite a bit talking about how selling out to a specific Chaos God is a sign of weakness and how much Archaos followers do to actually flip the gods the bird. At one point they're conducting the opening ritual for an honest to the gods jousting tournament (one part I loved about the book) wherein a number of sacrifices are made and all of them involves the sacrifices getting their head smashed just to spite Khorne.
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May 18, 2020 20:25
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Cooked Auto posted:It's kinda funny that GW has spent more time talking about, and detailing his ideology rather than his character. Scourge of Fate deals with a Chaos Knight wanting to join Archaons Varanguard and spends quite a bit talking about how selling out to a specific Chaos God is a sign of weakness and how much Archaos followers do to actually flip the gods the bird. Nothing changes if you decide Archaon is a sock puppet jointly controlled by the non-Rat Chaos Gods at any given moment, really. Korghos Khul is, IMO, more fun because while he’s fairly big standard Khornite, he has goals and motivations and rivalries.
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May 18, 2020 20:27
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yeah i ate babies, like, literally consumed the flesh of newborns. did it for weeks. we had like, eigthy tv dinners so i didn't really have to. just was like, hey fjord watch me eat this baby! and i did, but he didn't watch so i did it again. kind of was this running joke, in between the blood wars and weekly genocides. good times. but anyways i got hit in the head with a big golden hammer so im in heaven now, its cool i was really actually good but i touched an evil rock too much. those, goddamn evil rocks. so, you're a saint of some kind? sounds cool i guess.
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May 18, 2020 20:29
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Yeah I think they have missed the mark abit with Archy in this case. Hopefully they might go back and cover him a bit better but I think the current main nemesis in AoS right now is Nagash with Chaos playing second fiddle somewhat.
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May 18, 2020 20:30
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Tiler Kiwi posted:yeah i ate babies, like, literally consumed the flesh of newborns. did it for weeks. we had like, eigthy tv dinners so i didn't really have to. just was like, hey fjord watch me eat this baby! and i did, but he didn't watch so i did it again. kind of was this running joke, in between the blood wars and weekly genocides. good times. but anyways i got hit in the head with a big golden hammer so im in heaven now. so, you're a saint of some kind? sounds cool i guess. Funnily enough most Stormcast don’t like the decision, no, and are constantly sending messages back to Sigmar like ‘why did you do this, what if they backslide’ while the Redeemed are basically all in on ‘okay, boys, we have to do the worst, most difficult jobs they can find for us so we can prove we aren’t actually awful’
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May 18, 2020 20:32
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its just sort of a contrived thing, like, i don't think the hammering is probably necessary for someone to decide to be better; it sort of gets into the problem where a bad guy that was nominally good but got tortured or ~corrupted~ can be fixed but a dude that just, never actually had a chance in that they were just raised bad and hosed up is just "inherently bad" or something and thus can never be made good. its at least maybe more like that age old problem in criminal justice with determining what constitutes intent, or just certain theology where essentially being born in the wrong part of the world condemns you to hell, but ~corruption~ stuff falls into that kind of dumb morality-as-a-jersey thing you see in DnD and runs into the same sort of issue where you have to ask "hey, if corruption makes you evil, and they're all corrupt, isn't it super hosed up to treat them like poo poo since they literally had no choice in this?", among other issues. e: its something im sure the writing excuses like, "oh only evil people aren't corrupted so they're guilty but the good ones are just controlled by bad mutation magic or ~insanity~" or some other thing. im sure there's a term for that kind of writing, but its usually some tangled nash of things to ensure some contrived genre thing is maintained at all costs. Tiler Kiwi fucked around with this message at 20:46 on May 18, 2020 |
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May 18, 2020 20:40
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Cooked Auto posted:a bit talking about how selling out to a specific Chaos God is a sign of weakness The Chaos Gods are noted in the Slaves to Darkness tome like those who play hard to get. Chaos Warriors who don't devote themselves tend to get rewards from the gods to try and entice them to their side.
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May 18, 2020 20:42
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Tiler Kiwi posted:its just sort of a contrived thing, like, i don't think the hammering is probably necessary for someone to decide to be better; it sort of gets into the problem where a bad guy that was nominally good but got tortured or ~corrupted~ can be fixed but a dude that just, never actually had a chance in that they were just raised bad and hosed up is just "inherently bad" or something and thus can never be made good. For this it seems to be more treated as ‘once you let Chaos in it actively forces you into terrible acts that break down your sense of morality’ and Ghal Maraz wipes those away. The Redeemed are literally trying to prove that yes, it’s hosed up to treat people corrupted this way as poo poo. It’s rough going.
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May 18, 2020 20:45
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Tiler Kiwi posted:its just sort of a contrived thing, like, i don't think the hammering is probably necessary for someone to decide to be better; it sort of gets into the problem where a bad guy that was nominally good but got tortured or ~corrupted~ can be fixed but a dude that just, never actually had a chance in that they were just raised bad and hosed up is just "inherently bad" or something and thus can never be made good. People born into a Chaos Corrupted Society could just as easily be freed by the Hammer. (Of which there is only one.) We also do have examples of people born into Chaos Societies that are not fully corrupted by it. Normally they die, run away, or most likely just end up embracing it eventually. Even leaders of Chaos Tribes are not necessarily beyond redemption until they devote themselves. An example is given where a Stormcast fought alongside a Chaos Chieftain in an mutual enemies situation. The two actually hit it off quite well, and got along. The Stormcast also tried to convince the Chieftain to leave the worship of the Chaos Gods over the adventure, and they parted on good terms. Much later they encountered each other again, but the Chieftain had fully devoted himself to one of the gods, and was at that point pretty much an irredeemable psycho. But the Stormcast still felt bad he had to kill him, and wished he had done more to try and get him off his path.
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May 18, 2020 20:55
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Night: Loving these write-ups, I also enjoyed the Homeworld reference for the space marines.
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May 18, 2020 20:56
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im more going at it since, imo, evil corruption as a convention is pretty silly and ends up being a way to make bad people good or good people bad without having to worry about issues like character motivation or moral relativism. its a really awkward way to try to thread the line between "they were forced to do x so its not their fault/they never really had a choice or had a choice that was stacked against them in a way the good guys never had to deal with" and "but its kind of their fault anyways so don't feel bad if you stab them" but its really just mind control wearing a silly moustache just let the bad guys be bad guys Tiler Kiwi fucked around with this message at 21:03 on May 18, 2020 |
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May 18, 2020 20:57
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Regiment Creation is both amazingly fun to do, while also being a huge trap. Almost all the cool flavor or interesting special gear with quirks you're seeing on all those guys? Out the window as soon as play begins. Except the buggies for the wannabe Orks, those will be useful. And would've been better if they'd taken the option where they all drive AT-STs instead as those have much better weapons and can have enclosed cockpits.
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May 18, 2020 20:58
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MonsterEnvy posted:The Chaos Gods are noted in the Slaves to Darkness tome like those who play hard to get. Chaos Warriors who don't devote themselves tend to get rewards from the gods to try and entice them to their side. In this case it's more the main character considering those who join one of the paths to be weakwilled chumps.  Also found the bit about the sacrifices: 
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May 18, 2020 21:13
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I wonder when GW writers started deciding that somehow 'No, I'm like...too cool for Chaos' was something that would make Chaos characters seem cooler. And why they think it works when the character is there, in a Chaos Warband, just a Chaos Undecided one.
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May 18, 2020 21:23
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Night10194 posted:I wonder when GW writers started deciding that somehow 'No, I'm like...too cool for Chaos' was something that would make Chaos characters seem cooler. Well it's not too cool for Chaos it's just Undivided Chaos trying to make themselves more of a thing.
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May 18, 2020 21:26
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I dunno, reading Scourge of Fate made me consider Chaos more interesting as a faction that I might've done before. To me it as always been this evil in the distance, at least when it comes to Fantasy, manifested by daemons and cultists and big dudes in armor. And then I read Scourge and suddenly it had a sense of life to it and just offered a neat look at how things ticked for them as well.
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May 18, 2020 21:28
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Cooked Auto posted:I dunno, reading Scourge of Fate made me consider Chaos more interesting as a faction that I might've done before. To me it as always been this evil in the distance, at least when it comes to Fantasy, manifested by daemons and cultists and big dudes in armor. And then I read Scourge and suddenly it had a sense of life to it and just offered a neat look at how things ticked for them as well. I really liked the part in the book were Vanik's young standard bearer expresses doubt about the whole Path to Glory and pointless wars thing. And that Vanik was actually fairly understanding of the kid.
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May 18, 2020 21:32
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Night10194 posted:I wonder when GW writers started deciding that somehow 'No, I'm like...too cool for Chaos' was something that would make Chaos characters seem cooler. It works way better with the Beastmen, where most are Chaos Undivided but don’t, like, try to make deals with the gods. They just look down on god-worshippers for not getting TRUE Chaos, not like WE do, with our rocks and animal heads.
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May 18, 2020 21:32
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MonsterEnvy posted:I really liked the part in the book were Vanik's young standard bearer expresses doubt about the whole Path to Glory and pointless wars thing. And that Vanik was actually fairly understanding of the kid. Vanik's squire was a great part because he was essentially just struggling to survive in the blasted hellscape that is Varanspire and more or less done with this poo poo already.
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May 18, 2020 21:35
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Cooked Auto posted:Vanik's squire was a great part because he was essentially just struggling to survive in the blasted hellscape that is Varanspire and more or less done with this poo poo already. When you have to eat food and drink water to live the whole render the earth to dust thing is a problem.
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May 18, 2020 21:38
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wiegieman posted:When you have to eat food and drink water to live the whole render the earth to dust thing is a problem. Or get exposed to Nurgle fortresses and Slaaneshi Flesh/Tentacle forests.
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May 18, 2020 21:44
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I've always considered them petulant losers that sold themselves out for power, to a bunch of idiot rear end in a top hat dieties with rocks for brains, because they couldn't hack it. Theyre fantasy script kiddies, using hacks and calling themselves xXxslayermonger420xXx before taking a canonball to the face since no amount of ill conceived power can fix the simple incompetence that is the prerequisite for thinking a 0.00001% at daemonhood was a good bet to take. I think that, more than anything is the root of their uncoolness. They're intrinsically pathetic, the antithesis of cool. Even the lowest gobbos that decide to nut up, take shrooms, and charge at dudes with a long pointy sticks are bigger badasses than any chaos following wanker going off about how inevitable death is. All the pseudo-gnostic philosophy can't get them over that hump. The writers problem is that they try to emphasize their coolness, or power, or eeeeeevil, or corruption, and fail to capitalize on the fact that they're a faction of beaten down losers who only join up out of desperation or sheer damned idiocy, and then who just end up basically zombies due to evil chaos brain worms I guess. e: also that the faction is just an arbitrary powerful plot device. All the contrivences exist to allow a Good Guy faction that has to engage in blameless (or better yet, morally grey but _strictly necessary_) heroic militaristic struggle where Hard Men Make Hard Choices because chaos is designed to be singularly motivated to piss in everyone's cheerios and nothing else. it was less pronounced in whf but in 40k and aos its front and center stage. Tiler Kiwi fucked around with this message at 22:18 on May 18, 2020 |
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May 18, 2020 21:46
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The regimental creation system is great, Night. The mental image of the red shirts and the not-capitalized space marines just staring in horror when the Munitorum throws them into a warzone alongside the orkaboos and the minions is more entertaining than the vast majority of Guard-focused fiction in 40k.
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May 18, 2020 21:57
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is q a chaos god; a 532 page forum debate cut down by the inquisitors in its prime
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May 18, 2020 22:00
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Tiler Kiwi posted:is q a chaos god; a 532 page forum debate cut down by the inquisitors in its prime Now, Diablo - THAT is a chaos god, right down to the bullshit evil radiation rock.
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May 18, 2020 22:05
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"kill puppies for satan: a Warhammer Fantasy/40k Chaos Sourcebook".
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May 18, 2020 23:58
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I confess that when I read through Only War i drew up a heavily min-maxed regiment. And came up with fluff to justify every choice. Then threw them in the garbage for being low-rent store-brand Space Marines.
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May 19, 2020 02:49
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The Minmax unit I plan to make after I finish the cooks has a tremendous power. Every single Guardsman in it is a techpriest. E: The innocuous sentences 'Every soldier in this Regiment counts as both an Enginseer and a Guardsman for purposes of advancement and prerequisites' and 'All have the Mechanicus Implants Talent' do so, so much work at making a Skitarii unit loving nuts. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 02:54 on May 19, 2020 |
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May 19, 2020 02:52
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Night10194 posted:The Minmax unit I plan to make after I finish the cooks has a tremendous power.
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May 19, 2020 02:55
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It's perfectly reasonable for a Techpriest Army to be called the Optimizers! The Omnissiah loves that stuff! Though hilariously I actually can't make them broken exactly the same way as the 'example' Techpriest Army because the Crimson Guard blatantly break the gear rules to all effectively have Light Power Armor and 'Integrated Lasrifles' with infinite ammo that are superior to bolters as a basic standard issue and a super special ultra combat knife. There is no Regiment Type that starts with any of that and they completely ignored any of the construction rules to do it, which is about as hilarious as the 'example ship' in RT being of a class that wasn't a ship chassis in the rules. I bet I can do better anyway. I will take it as a challenge. E: gently caress me, I forgot about the pistol flamer that's stronger than a heavy flamer and does 2d10 while you're on fire from it and also has loving corrosive. Corrosive is 'does d10 damage to someone's AV at the location hit, with any spillover being unreducable wounds'. As a Flamer, it will always hit the same location. As a pistol, it can (and is even meant to be) dual wielded, and since it's a 'gauntlet', it doesn't even take up a hand, leaving the hand free. I could have started any of these Regiments with one of those, too. For reference, Corrosive is so strong that when I was giving the Death Robots in Norwegians Vs. The Death Robots one of their superweapons, the Nano Rifle was effectively just a Lasgun with Corrosive and it still wrecked super badass PCs' poo poo. Corrosive is nothing to gently caress with and they just hand you a pistol that takes up no hands, does it, does super-on-fire, and hits harder than a heavy weapon. This is what we're in for with Only War. I won't be able to stop myself referring to Death Robots vs. Norwegians during and around this review, because it was using the same kind of base system and was meant to be a high powered game about taking on a demigod crazy dark gold wizard in a sci-fi future for a world based on Myth the Fallen Lords, and his insane death robots were significantly less insane than an FFG Techpriest. Mind this was because I rewrote all the gear and gave each type of weapon actual strengths and weaknesses and toned down some of the numbers (Railguns were good against robots and vehicles, Plasma was great against flesh and undead, Particle Weapons were all-rounders, Lasguns were mook weapons that were still superior to the hunting rifles and old SMGs and poo poo the protagonists started with, etc etc) but c'mon! The demigod was less crazy than a Techpriest. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 03:22 on May 19, 2020 |
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May 19, 2020 03:01
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GimpInBlack posted:Night's Black Agents tries to take that system and put enough meat on its bones to turn it into a full-on action thriller--an effort that, in my opinion at least, it can't quite pull off. It adds "tactical" considerations in the form of lots of fiddly effects and optional subsystems that just clutter the game up. My own long-abandoned attempt to F&F the core book, many years and many threads ago, stalled out at the point of talking about the mechanics, because they're just not that interesting. Over the years, I've toyed with the idea of hacking Blades in the Dark to run it, but never really got around to it. Which is a shame, because the premise of Night's Black Agents is great, and The Dracula Dossier is one of the most mind-bogglingly fascinating campaign structures I've ever seen for a tabletop RPG. Hey dude, I'm in exactly the same boat as you. Night's Black Agents setting of Super Spies v Vampires is really cool The Dracula Dossier is fricking awesome NBA clue finding mechanics are decent NBA other mechanics are.... workable So I've been spending the last couple of days doing just what you did and look at hacking Blades in the Dark (which seems a pretty solid fit thematically and mechanically) to fit the Night's Black Agents universe. It would be really cool to compare notes if you're interested? I'm at a very preliminary stage, but more eyes are always a good thing at any point in the process! NBA: Solo Ops looks interesting as well, I haven't got or read it. Your breakdowns are very helpful too, so thank you.
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May 19, 2020 07:24
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tanglewood1420 posted:Hey dude, I'm in exactly the same boat as you. TBH, I literally only got as far as thinking "huh, the score/downtime/blowback/score loop of Blades maps really well to the espionage genre, and as far as I know nobody's done a Forged in the Dark superspy game. Maybe I should do that someday." I figure you could use the backgrounds in NBA as a good basis for playbook concepts, and crew sheets could cover whether your group is, like, a CIA black ops team, a Mission: Impossible style disavowable cell operating without oversight, an Archer-style freelance intelligence service, or a bunch of ex-spies on a mission like Ronin or NBA. That's about as much work as I did before Solo Ops came along and did pretty much everything I wanted for NBA mechanically.
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May 19, 2020 08:17
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GimpInBlack posted:TBH, I literally only got as far as thinking "huh, the score/downtime/blowback/score loop of Blades maps really well to the espionage genre, and as far as I know nobody's done a Forged in the Dark superspy game. Maybe I should do that someday." I figure you could use the backgrounds in NBA as a good basis for playbook concepts, and crew sheets could cover whether your group is, like, a CIA black ops team, a Mission: Impossible style disavowable cell operating without oversight, an Archer-style freelance intelligence service, or a bunch of ex-spies on a mission like Ronin or NBA. That's about as much work as I did before Solo Ops came along and did pretty much everything I wanted for NBA mechanically. Ah okay, seems like I've gone a bit further down the road (though not much). My conception of the crew books was more along the lines of Bond/Mission Impossible gadgets, guns and explosions John Le Carre's George Smiley style tradecraft sleuths Vampire conspiracy theorists who were proven right and have some kind of mechanical advantage vs vampires, but are worse at the regular spy stuff (how exactly is TBD) One cool idea I'm kicking around is that the crew playbooks aren't just how you 'level up' abilities and skills that make your characters more mechanically effective (as in Blades), but also as a way to learn more about both the conspiracy (who, what, where) and the nature of Vampires. So Ops (aka scores) don't earn Coin, but instead Intel which you spend in downtime using investigative skills a la NBA to narratively research what can kill these Vampires, which factions are infiltrated by them and so on. So you could complete a Op raiding a Hospital laboratory in Bucharest and spend the intel from that Op to buy some 'turf' which reveals a Bane or Block. You can even delegate what that Bane or Block is to the players, so the everyone is collaboratively building the Vampires in the campaign together, not just the GM. Likewise, the more Intel you have the more ability you have to convince non-believers that Vampires are real and get them to help you out, so you can spend Intel on creating new contacts, acquiring assets and so on. Of course, those contacts can be turned by the conspiracy, especially if you don't pay your 'upkeep', whatever that ends up being. Anyway, at least if someone else had a similar idea there must be something to it, which is reassuring if nothing else. 
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May 19, 2020 08:30
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tanglewood1420 posted:Ah okay, seems like I've gone a bit further down the road (though not much). Oh, making the crew playbooks represent the subgenre of spy story you're playing is a great idea! I like that a lot, it's a great way to get everybody's buy-in on the specific tone you're aiming for.
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May 19, 2020 08:53
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 Buck Rogers XXVc: The 25th Century Medicine and Power: Be Sure To Pack A Can of Skin Medicine in the 25th century boils down to “We can cure anything, but it’ll cost ya.” The genetic revolution has made it possible to track down and treat just about anything, including most cancers, and hereditary diseases are easily phased out with manipulation. Organ transplants are common, and even vat-grown replacement limbs are a thing. Of course it’s all quite expensive, but they don’t list costs for major surgeries- in the event that a PC needs something of that nature, the GM has to work that out. (Fortunately I don’t see that coming up often in this system, there’s no real “needs a new kidney” status.) But it can be assumed that healthcare in the future is at least as stratified as it is today. Now on to the stuff the PCs can use! The Autosurgery is a very useful, very expensive tool. For 1,000 credits, you get a 2 foot cube that unfolds into a computer, video scanner, and set of electronic arms that can be programmed to perform surgery. It can do very basic stuff automatically, like setting a broken arm, putting a patient under, stitching and cleaning a wound, etc., but an actual doctor or medic is needed to perform specialized stuff. Not quite a full on Medibot but close. A Drug Fabricator is another fun device which lets you synthesize almost any drug you need, in pill or vial form, in anywhere from a minute to an hour. It does take some programming finesse to enter a new drug formula into the system’s memory but this is at GM’s discretion. It’s 500 credits for the machine, but 1000 for the necessary chemical supplies (which last for around 50 doses of most stuff.) It can’t synthesize drugs that don’t exist yet, and it can’t synthesize certain drugs that resist duplication. What are those? Well, read on. The two big wonder drugs of the age- and the ones you can’t get from a machine- are Gravitol and Lifextend. Gravitol, as I’ve covered before, is manufactured exclusively in the lowlands of Venus, derived from plants native to the area. You take a single half-ounce dose every 30 days to counteract the negative effects of a zero-gravity environment. Without it, you lose a point of Strength and Constitution every 30 days, becoming incapacitated if it ever reaches 2. However, every 15 days in gravity of .5 or greater lets you restore 1 point of each so long as you exercise and remain active. Anyway, Gravitol’s 50cr a dose, and considering a dose lasts a month that’s pretty reasonable. (It honestly probably isn’t worth tracking in-game, unless you come up with some situation where the PCs would have a hard time getting their hands on any and have to spend months on end in zero-G.) Lifextend is another Lowlander export. As the name implies, it’s basiclly an anti-aging drug- one dose a day means that for that day, you basically don’t age- poisons are broken down, cells replenish faster, etc. So it’s only significant if you take it regularly over a long period. And every single dose costs 100cr. So this is really only available to the super-rich, reinforcing the tiered health care system. This game just won’t stop with the social commentary. There are two major drawbacks- one is that eventually the drug loses its potency and you’re not functionally immortal; your maximum life expectancy with the drug is around 150. (Normal is 90 in the 25th Century.) The second is that it does nothing to protect the brain, so senility, dementia, etc. are all still problems. This section finishes off with a brief overview of other medical advancements. Basic OTC drugs we have now, like painkillers and antihistamines, now work in minutes and way more effectively. There’s no point curing the common cold when you can have a drug that completely suppresses all symptoms for two weeks. Most wounds short of a severed artery can be treated with a synthetic skin spray, which also includes coagulant and disinfectant. Burns are easily treated with a salve or spray-on liquid which shares properties with the synthetic skin. The section on Power Sources is very brief. Solar power is captured by various mirror systems throughout the system, most notably the Mariposas of Mercury, and then turned into microwave energy for transmission via satellites. The whole “broadcast power” thing is probably the single most implausible tech in the game, even with how weird the gene manipulation gets, but it’s worthwhile to have Mercury be as important a player as it is. Chemical ignition is the second category of energy; while fossil fuels have been rendered inefficient and obsolete by now, some arcologies and many smaller buildings are powered by chemical reactors. Most of the rocketships use nuclear fusion converters, which are actually sort of a hybrid- a fission reactor is used to superheat gases and liquids, turning them into plasma, which then gets put in a magnetic bottle which is bombarded by electrons, making the atoms fuse. You know what, sure, fine, it sounds sciencey enough. The full process is only done outside of a planet’s gravity well, though, for fear of the magnetic bottle getting disrupted by gravitational fields- the ship can also run on just the fission reaction, with the plasma vented out the back of the ship. No doubt there are many conspiracy theories as to what the bright streaks of gas in the sky really are. We’re halfway through the book! And next time, we start on the really fun stuff: WEAPONS!
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May 19, 2020 09:07
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tanglewood1420 posted:One cool idea I'm kicking around You two might be on to something, BitD would be great for superspies vs anything. Vampires, the Laundry, Mission Impossible, Bond, Austin Powers, Avengers, Cold War, all sortsa poo poo. Lean into one option, build the base mechanics, and then all the other settings are fluff and some mechanical customization. e. The crew book is exactly where defining the sub-genre happens. mllaneza fucked around with this message at 09:28 on May 19, 2020 |
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May 19, 2020 09:24
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I always miss the really old 1st edition Imperial Guard (slightly newer than the Rogue Trader Imperial Army) who pretty much had one heavy weapon- LASCANNONS. NOTHING BUT LASCANNONS. And Rough Riders. And I guess short range, miss a lot but hurts if you get hit by a long line of them lasguns. IG lined up like ACW infantry that have a chance of blowing up 1 in 6 shots. Basically the Guard army from the Compendium.
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May 19, 2020 11:14
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GimpInBlack posted:TBH, I literally only got as far as thinking "huh, the score/downtime/blowback/score loop of Blades maps really well to the espionage genre, and as far as I know nobody's done a Forged in the Dark superspy game. Maybe I should do that someday." I figure you could use the backgrounds in NBA as a good basis for playbook concepts, and crew sheets could cover whether your group is, like, a CIA black ops team, a Mission: Impossible style disavowable cell operating without oversight, an Archer-style freelance intelligence service, or a bunch of ex-spies on a mission like Ronin or NBA. That's about as much work as I did before Solo Ops came along and did pretty much everything I wanted for NBA mechanically. I briefly considered trying to hack BitD to let me play Person of Interest with the serial numbers filed off. However, I ran into the problem that BitD is a game that relies heavily on improvization and the players and referee flavouring abstract mechanics, and I have a broken brain that panics when I don't have rigid frameworks to support and encourage me. Trying to apply this to more people than me, I think that one of the major challenges a FitD spy game would face is that outside of like, James Bond/Mission Impossible, spy thrillers are a niche genre and most people might not be all that familiar with the tropes and conventions, so the game would have do a lot of heavy lifting in teaching the players or structuring the game to make the players think like spy thriller authors.
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May 19, 2020 11:34
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LatwPIAT posted:I briefly considered trying to hack BitD to let me play Person of Interest with the serial numbers filed off. However, I ran into the problem that BitD is a game that relies heavily on improvization and the players and referee flavouring abstract mechanics, and I have a broken brain that panics when I don't have rigid frameworks to support and encourage me. Trying to apply this to more people than me, I think that one of the major challenges a FitD spy game would face is that outside of like, James Bond/Mission Impossible, spy thrillers are a niche genre and most people might not be all that familiar with the tropes and conventions, so the game would have do a lot of heavy lifting in teaching the players or structuring the game to make the players think like spy thriller authors. That's certainly true, but it's also true of pretty much any game that aims to emulate a genre or setting people might not be super familiar with. Both NBA and Solo Ops have chapters on spy tradecraft, for instance, and the Leverage RPG has a whole section of grifts and con jobs. Even when it's wholly fictional, this kind of thing is really useful--Star Trek Adventures dedicates a few pages to how to come up with appropriately Star Trek-themed technobabble. For sure if I was going to make Spies in the Cold as an actual, commercially-released FitD espionage game, I'd include both player-facing and GM-facing advice on how to act like a spy and how to emulate the structure of spy fiction (that last part is actually something Blades already does pretty well, the cycle of "score -> downtime and planning -> next score" maps really well to NBA's "thriller structure" idea that "the reward for danger is new information, new information leads you into more danger").
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May 19, 2020 12:35
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