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BiggerJ posted:Just discovered that Continuum's lost GM guide was found and scanned in 2015. Holy poo poo. Has anyone read it? From a quick skim it looks pretty solid actually, but I don’t have the context to really judge it.
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# ? May 25, 2020 15:15 |
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# ? Apr 23, 2024 22:17 |
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GimpInBlack posted:I don't know how much of it was lazy saga authors vs. just the reality of travel in early medieval Scandinavia, but yeah. Yggdrasil even points out that the inland terrain is so nasty (at least in Norway and Svithjod--Denmark's islands are much easier to trek across) that, even if the straight-line overland route is much shorter, it probably won't be any faster than sailing, and by sailing you're far more likely to actually reach your destination. Oh, I don't mean lazy, more 'we just need a quick scene shift because the journey isn't important and people need to get here'. It's a silly thing but I always like it when stuff remembers just how much easier water travel was than overland stuff. Though I don't think you could make a game like this without that.
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# ? May 25, 2020 15:29 |
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Night10194 posted:Oh, I don't mean lazy, more 'we just need a quick scene shift because the journey isn't important and people need to get here'. Yeah, that's one of those details that tends to help separate settings written by someone who actually understands the pre-modern world from the ones that... well, aren't. Like a functional understanding of how money and wealth actually worked in the past. Yggdrasil gets about halfway there on that second point, talking about how silver-by-weight is the common exchange medium and currency is basically unknown... then proceeds to give prices for goods in the Equipment chapter in "silver pieces," with prices that don't even match the example exchange rates at the beginning of the chapter. It also prices a spear at the same price as a sword, which... y'know, I don't need a rigorously detailed breakdown of iron age economics and the value of iron as related to the rise and fall of the Merovingian trade routes or whatever, but... just LOL.
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# ? May 25, 2020 16:03 |
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I'm also fine with 'we got wizards and poo poo, it's easier to travel overland because of the wizards and poo poo', as long as a setting kind of knows it's doing it and doesn't pretend it's actually a gritty simulation of the past while doing that. You want your magic lightning trains, well, if we could build those we totally would have.
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# ? May 25, 2020 16:07 |
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I don't think Further Information was ever "lost," exactly? It's just extremely out of print like Continuum is. I have a copy.
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# ? May 25, 2020 16:28 |
BiggerJ posted:Just discovered that Continuum's lost GM guide was found and scanned in 2015. Also if I ever have to explain why prices are like they are in an RPG I'm making, my plan is "Because Dungeon Depot corporate set them at that price"
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# ? May 25, 2020 22:39 |
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I'm trying to figure out where Hleidra is meant to be. Like Haven is quite clearly Copenhagen, but I can't think of any Danish towns or cities that would phonetically sound like Hleidra or anything like it. Unless it's a really hosed up way to spell Hilleroed or something similar.
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# ? May 25, 2020 22:42 |
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PurpleXVI posted:I'm trying to figure out where Hleidra is meant to be. Like Haven is quite clearly Copenhagen, but I can't think of any Danish towns or cities that would phonetically sound like Hleidra or anything like it. Unless it's a really hosed up way to spell Hilleroed or something similar. A google search of the name pointed me towards Lejre.
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# ? May 25, 2020 22:59 |
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Subgods of Autochthonia The comic before this chapter features a kid in a factory daydreaming about boning down with an Alchemical on the production line before somebody wakes him up. It appears a god sent it to him as a reward for his worship. Alright. Autochthon was the greatest inventor in history. Not even his greatest successors could hope to match his breadth of knowledge and sheer mental processing power. But he was never perfect. When he set up the spiritual hierarchy within his body as he prepared to leave Creation, he wanted a system of deities more flexible, efficient, and loyal than the one he already seen collapsing back in Creation. The fact that the section frames itself by enumerating each of his mistakes tells you how successful that effort was. All Primordials (including Autochthon) have multiple souls. Autochthon had nine, eight advisors plus a core personality. Before departing Creation, the core took the eight satellite personalities and placed two key bindings on their behavior: they could never put anything above the needs of Autochthon as a whole, not even themselves, and they needed to unanimously agree to create any new major spirit. He also basically set them up as a pantheon of individual personalities instead of a bunch of motivations before going to sleep because re-hauling his interior left him all tuckered out. In typical Autochthonian fashion, both of those decisions backfired. On the one hand, while they remain scrupulously loyal to Autochthon, each of these Divine Ministers (his former souls) thinks they are the only smart/motivated/still loyal member of the group and spars with the others for control. As none of them trust each other enough to risk changing the balance of power, Autochthon’s spiritual hierarchy hasn’t been updated in centuries, leaving everything increasingly stagnant and unstable. They’ve all even formed cults that suck prayers away from Autochthon, reasoning they know how to use that power better than their rivals. On top of this, Autochthon rigged up his humans’ religious system to focus on him instead of his components, which developed into a system of mutual disdain; humans usually worship Autochthon first and view the Divine Ministers and their subordinates as aspects of the Maker instead of independent beings, while the Ministers and lesser gods dislike humans and see them as inferiors whose only redeeming feature is that they offer scraps of power (the book compares the relationship to that between prostitutes and their clients). It’s a deeply dysfunctional system that allows Blight zones to spread unchecked as various gods squabble over authority, and it leaves every spirit that succumbs to corruption without a successor to take over and bring things under control. At the top of this hierarchy sits the eight Divine Ministers, Autochthon’s former component souls, now deities in their own right. They have no stats since giving setting NPCs stats is a recipe for disaster. Each embodies and manages a part of Autochthonia that corresponds to their former driving motivation. I’ll be honest: I struggle to tell them apart. I’m not sure why, I think it’s the names. I’ll see if I can keep track through the rest of the review. The Divine Ministers Domadamod, Debok Moom, Runel, Kek’Tungsssha…
…Noi, Mog, Kadmek, and Ku, with the Core hanging above them Now that I’ve written that out, I understand the differences between them way better. Funny how that works. And now we enter the closest thing this book has to a bestiary. Below the Divine Ministers sit a series of “subroutines” (spirits). Upon creation each spirit is assigned to the service of one of the Ministers, and since any Minister gaining a powerful new servant can shift the balance of power between paranoid beings no one’s made any new major spirits in centuries. Autochthonia being Autochthonia, spirits are organized in a three tier system (technically, there’s a fourth tier that contains the Divine Ministers, though no one really bothers with that) based on their power and influence. The highest are Gamma Class, powerful gods with a great deal of freedom to act. They act as a mixture of advisors, assistants, and direct subordinates to the Divine Ministers, with the given example being Mog’s spymaster, a spirit powerful enough to start his own cult on the down-low. Betas are fully intelligent and often important, but they lack the freedom to act and broad influence that characterizes gammas, usually managing a specific purview. The book presents two examples, the goddess of prophecy and of the god of teaching magic (not using it, he sucks at that). At the bottom rest the Alphas, a mixture of minor gods in charge of specific places and “mechanical gods” that perform menial duties; if the Divine Ministers are the board of directors, Gammas are VPs and middle managers, and Betas are store or shift managers, Alphas work minimum wage. Some alphas are animating intelligences, spirits created by humans as part of manufacturing objects (yes, AIs, though they tend to be somewhat unstable and not very smart), while others are minor gods of very specific places or ideas. The book gives the example of the spirit assigned to oversee a specific water purification plant. Then we transfer into the local inorganic equivalent of fauna, though the distinction between these robots and spirits is fuzzy. They even use the same tier system. The weakest ones are biomechanoids, essentially animal species with specific assignments in Autochthon’s body such as passive information gathering for the gods or performing on-the-spot repairs (including on unfortunate humans in the area). Above them are Custodians, larger robots designed to fulfill some specific role, such as oil filtration or local defense, and beyond them are Destroyers, machines designed to do exactly that on a large scale. Each Destroyer is unique and can call upon a wide variety of powers and Charms. The example Destroyer is the animating spirit of a sonic cannon. Next up are elementals, and… Have I mentioned this book is a bit disorganized? They pick this point to describe the Elemental Poles, how they work, and what kind of spirits live there. While I could go into detail now, when I get to the setting book I’ll just have to go back and recontextualize everything anyway. I’ll describe the elementals then. The last group described here are gremlins, which receive no examples; any of the above spirits and robots could run into a blight zone and get gremlinized. Rumor has it that even the Divine Ministers might be susceptible to corruption, though there’s no reasonable way to confirm it. Next up are various Charms available to Autochthonian spirits, including one that lets you eat other spirits and gain health and another that turn someone into a crystal (the victim can be revived with sufficiently powerful magic if it gets to them within 24 hours). But instead of ending here the chapter veers into a discussion of Drones, humans possessed by Autochthon’s spirit. They don’t answer to the Ministers, mortal authorities, or anyone else; they seem to follow orders from Autochthon himself somehow. The spirits find this unnerving, but since it seems genuine and they frequently show up to help the Ministers out, they don’t cause a fuss. Drones lack free will or volition, being controlled by a being incomprehensibly more powerful than them. However, they can pull from variety of powerful abilities ranging from being immune to environmental hazards to electrocuting anything that touches them, live longer than normal, and can be released from service and return to normal life, bringing extensive magical and technical knowledge with them. The takeaway here? Autochthonia is what happens when a machine goes for 5000 years without maintenance. Next up is character creation, power stats, and for me the single biggest surprise in the book. Falconier111 fucked around with this message at 04:43 on May 27, 2020 |
# ? May 26, 2020 03:41 |
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I'm pretty sure the kid is daydreaming about Runel, not a random alchemical? But I haven't read that in a while. Also, one thing worth noting: The cannibalism isn't unique to that one cult, the entirety of Autochthonian society considers cannibalism an acceptable act when the food runs out. That's why the God of Recycling oversees it, since burial practices are generally 'return the body to the nutrient vats' anyways, cannibalism is just a faster and slightly more selfish approach - since the nutrients don't return to the circulatory system of Autochthon, they're kept in the Nation that, uuuuh, produced them. A lot of Autochthonia's charm and alienation comes from these kinds of cultural and moral differences between any other society and Autochthonian society. E: Oh, and one of the Nations has widespread 'preserve your dead family members... as candy!' as a cultural quirk. Or at least I remember it being like preserving them in honey, they could just be made into Grandpa Jerky. It's considered, again, a selfish act by other Nations, but this is the one that faces food shortages the most often, so it's a brutal pragmatism as well as a burial practice. Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 04:52 on May 26, 2020 |
# ? May 26, 2020 04:48 |
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The writers of the other chapters of Alchemicals mentioned being extremely unhappy with Chapter 2, which mostly talks about how the spiritual hierarchy of Autochthonia sucks and makes the Divine Ministers sound like miserable people you probably don't want anything to do with, in a book that was mostly trying really hard to make Octet culture something you could have warm feelings for.
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# ? May 26, 2020 05:04 |
Joe Slowboat posted:E: Oh, and one of the Nations has widespread 'preserve your dead family members... as candy!' as a cultural quirk. Or at least I remember it being like preserving them in honey, they could just be made into Grandpa Jerky. It's considered, again, a selfish act by other Nations, but this is the one that faces food shortages the most often, so it's a brutal pragmatism as well as a burial practice.
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# ? May 26, 2020 05:20 |
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Autocthonia sounds like it’s another inevitably hosed setting like the prison ship in Abandon All Hope.
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# ? May 26, 2020 05:30 |
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Oh, since the next chapter is character creation, I should poll the thread. Does anyone have any ideas for a character they’d like me to try and make?
Falconier111 fucked around with this message at 05:56 on May 26, 2020 |
# ? May 26, 2020 05:32 |
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Midjack posted:Autocthonia sounds like it’s another inevitably hosed setting like the prison ship in Abandon All Hope. One of the potential ways it can go is featured in a different sourcebook as the Locust Crusade, where Autochthonians break the Seal and invade Creation for raw materials and spare souls.
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# ? May 26, 2020 05:36 |
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Falconier111 posted:Oh, since the next chapter is character creation, I should poll the thread. Does anyone have any ideas for a character they’d like me to try and make? Cyborg DJ who keeps the populace in line with the power of beats.
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# ? May 26, 2020 05:38 |
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Midjack posted:Autocthonia sounds like it’s another inevitably hosed setting like the prison ship in Abandon All Hope. Autochthonia is hosed in the absence of any real changes, but the difference is that the people are mostly reasonable, the Nations are all coming to terms with how hosed things are, and there are real possibilities that could save the world. The big change that's explicitly supported is opening the Seal of Eight Divinities and directly extracting resources from Creation, because one major reason Autochthonia is hosed is resource depletion. It's a generation ship that's been going for 5,000 years or more, and things have run out or broken down. Waking up Autochthon at least a little would be another top-down change that would seriously improve the situation for the Eight Nations, and you can do that - you just need to fight your way past the Eight Ministers, possibly literally, to breach the greatest taboos of your people and speak with your God. Even just significant reforms could make serious improvements across the board: Improving the relationships between humans and spirits, ending the costly international wars that drain resources, and embarking on radical new programs in the Nations themselves could all do great things for Autochthonia. The Nations aren't taking it sitting down either; a number of them have major projects intended to fix things, like an attempt to open the Seal (Project Razor). Now, some of those projects are not going to help (at least one Nation is weighing the possibility of full-scale invasion of another Nation to take their resources) but some of them could set big things in motion. And you could fix the ghost issue! It would actually be possible to significantly alleviate the soul shortage for a while by finding a way to help all the ghosts through the recycling system. Souls are ultimately the most restricted resource in Autochthonia, and in the very long run it seems inevitable that the Seal of Eight Divinities will need to be opened to acquire more souls, but that's generation ships for you, they can't actually go on forever without any external input. Someday, Autochthon will have to be talked into waking up and doing things again, or else receive an injection of materials and souls from Creation. Or both, ideally. Even without radical change, Alchemicals becoming cities helps heal Autochthon's blight, at least a little bit - one plot hook suggests Alchemical cities function like prosthetic organs in Autochthon's dying body, bringing new living Essence into his theotectonic system. You could potentially, very slowly, fight back the infection with an aggressive, coordinated international project of targeted city-creation, but a lot of the social reforms and international peace accords mentioned above would be necessary as well. Plus you'd have to deal with the Viator of Nullspace, Apostate Alchemicals, and all the other final boss material TTRPGs throw at you.
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# ? May 26, 2020 05:42 |
Exalted, for all its many problems, has almost always had a basic thesis of "All this bad poo poo is happening.. but you can be the hero that beats the challenge!"Falconier111 posted:Oh, since the next chapter is character creation, I should poll the thread. Does anyone have any ideas for a character they’d like me to try and make?
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# ? May 26, 2020 05:57 |
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Humble nutrient vat worker who has developed a stirring-stick based martial art of incredible power and subtlety.
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# ? May 26, 2020 05:58 |
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The Lone Badger posted:Cyborg DJ who keeps the populace in line with the power of beats. The question remains: Voice of the Man, or Voice of the People? Midjack posted:Autocthonia sounds like it’s another inevitably hosed setting like the prison ship in Abandon All Hope. No, actually. While everything is kind of hosed and coasting towards destruction, the setting has a billion different ways to measurably and permanently change things. Clear out a blight zone? Autochthon’s body grows over untainted injuries, so now you have a place for your city to harvest rare metals from. Fix the Ewer of Souls? No more stillbirths and society is viable in the long term again. Given how interconnected and favor- based Autochthonian society is both among humans and spirits, every achievement nets you friends and influence you can use elsewhere, so assemblies seem like they snowball quickly. Basically every issue can conceivably be solved by PCs. Worst case they pop the Seal and flee into creation. The issue is less that you can’t fix everything and more that there’s so much to fix, but then that’s how you make a long campaign viable. Basically, what Joe Slowboat said. E: Night10194 posted:Humble nutrient vat worker who has developed a stirring-stick based martial art of incredible power and subtlety. Confirmed for one of their past lives.
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# ? May 26, 2020 05:58 |
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I want to crib the whole 'reality is the body of a primordial Titan and the gods are bickering subsystems and the whole machine is in dire need of basic maintenance if not heavy repairs' setting but without the whole Exalted cruft. poo poo got potential.
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# ? May 26, 2020 06:55 |
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By popular demand posted:I want to crib the whole 'reality is the body of a primordial Titan and the gods are bickering subsystems and the whole machine is in dire need of basic maintenance if not heavy repairs' setting but without the whole Exalted cruft. I recommend reading The Book of the Long Sun by Gene Wolfe; it's a generation ship with a more Earthlike interior, but the setting is great and the local religion is extremely fun in that respect. I mean, I like Exalted, but I understand if you don't and Long Sun isn't particularly Exalted, while being a really fantastic setting and a good novel to boot. (I've been thinking about running games set in that setting for a while but can't actually settle on whether I'd want to run a nation game there or a personal level adventure.)
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# ? May 26, 2020 07:31 |
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Thanks, I'll check it out.
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# ? May 26, 2020 07:41 |
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By popular demand posted:Thanks, I'll check it out. I should note that the books are longer than the sun in question, but even just Nightside the Long Sun is a great read and the whole quartet is really quite fantastic. (Gene Wolfe in general is one of the best authors of the last century or so, and I'm personally exceptionally glad he wrote primarily SFF.)
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# ? May 26, 2020 08:15 |
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By popular demand posted:I want to crib the whole 'reality is the body of a primordial Titan and the gods are bickering subsystems and the whole machine is in dire need of basic maintenance if not heavy repairs' setting but without the whole Exalted cruft. Some real Demon: the Descent vibes off that. Falconier111 posted:
I'm running an Exalted game atm, and the Solar group has just entered Autochthon to try to get the Great Curse fixed, so this review could not have come at a better time for my research. Thanks!
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# ? May 26, 2020 09:29 |
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Night10194 posted:Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Plundered Vaults Very much a callback to earlier, but I'm doing my own weird roll-up playtest thing of trying to take one party through all of the WHFRPG adventures. Bizarrely I've actually somehow managed to roll not one but two "00s" in the three characters I've done so far. Gunter, our Dwarven Shieldbreaker, has a 50 in Toughness and Lauraen, our Wood Elf Kithband Warrior has a 49 in BS (Ballistic skill as well as a 40 in BSing (Fellowship). It amuses the hell out of me that it is completely possibly to start the game with the best non-magical distance weapon (Elfbow) while being unable to use it. Elves get Aethyric Attunement or SWG (Longbow) and Kithband Warrior, which starts with an Elfbow and is a beginning career. God, I almost want to do that, with the idea that somebody shoved an Elfbow into her hands and just said, "Figure it out as you go" but it would screw up her advancement something fierce. To maximize play ability, I plan to take these various characters through 3 first tier careers, 2 second and then 1 third or so. Lauren's careers will be Kithband Warrior, Hunter and then Bounty Hunter before entering Targeteer and going from there.
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# ? May 26, 2020 13:16 |
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By popular demand posted:I want to crib the whole 'reality is the body of a primordial Titan and the gods are bickering subsystems and the whole machine is in dire need of basic maintenance if not heavy repairs' setting but without the whole Exalted cruft. May I suggest Nibiru? It's Autocthonia without the Exalted.
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# ? May 26, 2020 13:34 |
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IshmaelZarkov posted:Some real Demon: the Descent vibes off that. You let them get into Autochthonia from the outside!? How dare you!?!? But yeah, is there anything in particular you’d like me to bring up in the course of the review?
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# ? May 26, 2020 14:03 |
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Falconier111 posted:You let them get into Autochthonia from the outside!? How dare you!?!? Solars: unfortunately more than once, no matter how much you wish otherwise, they swear they'll get it right this time.
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# ? May 26, 2020 14:16 |
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I actually decided to check out that Warhams Tilea fanbook. It wasn't too bad; I was just thinking the authors were decent but had perhaps forgotten they didn't need to slavishly include everything from Renaissance-era Italy when I suddenly ran into a reference to a remote castle with a strange beacon on the roof staffed by young wome...wwwwwaitasec. Yeah they just put Castle Anthrax from Monty Python in there. Just lifted it wholesale and stuffed it in there. Only now of course travellers who stop there return uplifted in body and spirit but with "a strange rash". loving nerds I swear.
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# ? May 26, 2020 17:21 |
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Joe Slowboat posted:(I've been thinking about running games set in that setting for a while but can't actually settle on whether I'd want to run a nation game there or a personal level adventure.) Grab Legacy and do both ! There's even already a generation ship playset. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/242791/Legacy-Generation-Ship-Worlds-of-Legacy-1-PDF
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# ? May 26, 2020 17:56 |
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Loxbourne posted:loving nerds I swear. To be fair Gilbert's charge across the lava bridge at some confused, extremely inattentive Skaven was a direct call to Lancelot's approach to stab the poo poo out of a wedding. I am not without sin. It's too good a visual gag not to use.
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# ? May 26, 2020 18:06 |
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Loxbourne posted:I actually decided to check out that Warhams Tilea fanbook. It wasn't too bad; I was just thinking the authors were decent but had perhaps forgotten they didn't need to slavishly include everything from Renaissance-era Italy when I suddenly ran into a reference to a remote castle with a strange beacon on the roof staffed by young wome...wwwwwaitasec. I'm going to figure out some kind of career path that allows the Norscan Skald I rolled up to pilot an Ornithopter. Because.
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# ? May 26, 2020 19:59 |
Falconier111 posted:Oh, since the next chapter is character creation, I should poll the thread. Does anyone have any ideas for a character they’d like me to try and make? An Orichalcum Caste pundit who uses their nation's many vocal broadcasting facilities to blame everything upon the most horrible of all Voidbringers: those who want the disgusting system of DEMOCRACY.
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# ? May 26, 2020 20:33 |
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SunAndSpring posted:An Orichalcum Caste pundit who uses their nation's many vocal broadcasting facilities to blame everything upon the most horrible of all Voidbringers: those who want the disgusting system of DEMOCRACY. Can I request not this, we get enough of this IRL and while it’s always fun to see Jordan Peterson as a Seer of the Throne or whatever, Autochthonia doesn’t deserve this kind of shabby treatment for the literal first example character in depth :p I’m a bit protective of these Soviet Robot Superhero Exalted, they’re trying very hard.
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# ? May 26, 2020 21:25 |
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Joe Slowboat posted:Can I request not this, we get enough of this IRL and while it’s always fun to see Jordan Peterson as a Seer of the Throne or whatever, Autochthonia doesn’t deserve this kind of shabby treatment for the literal first example character in depth :p Well, the character’s already half written anyway so it’s too late for me to include it.
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# ? May 26, 2020 21:41 |
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Everyone posted:I'm going to figure out some kind of career path that allows the Norscan Skald I rolled up to pilot an Ornithopter. Because. Just do a stint in the Catrazzan Birdmen, it's right there as a second-tier career. Entries are Engineer, Mercenary, Targeteer, and Watchman. Amusingly the fluff says the Tileans have ornithopters mostly figured out, they just can't get the Dwarves to sell them the secret of ornithopter engines. Since the old tabletop sourcebooks were clear that orni engines are alcohol-fueled steam plants, I presume the Dwarves are just refusing to sell the Tileans the formula for the rotgut keg-bottom runoff they burn as fuel (hmm, plot potential here if the PCs phrase it that way and strike a mutually beneficial deal with e.g. Josef Bugman...)
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# ? May 26, 2020 21:43 |
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Given what actually high grade dwarfen beer can do, I'd be terrified of what they'd call rotgut.
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# ? May 26, 2020 21:45 |
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Night10194 posted:Given what actually high grade dwarfen beer can do, I'd be terrified of what they'd call rotgut. presumably something like this.
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# ? May 26, 2020 21:51 |
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# ? Apr 23, 2024 22:17 |
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Tiler Kiwi posted:presumably something like this. What's that from? It looks distinctly like Skaven.jpg. (Not enough Warpstone I guess)
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# ? May 26, 2020 23:06 |