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 The Astral Plane The astral plane, the Ethereal Plane’s big brother, connects the various Prime Materials with the Outer Planes, where you can find various gods, demons, devils, afterlives, and berks and bashers hanging around. It’s a massive, empty gray expanse, devoid of features except for color pools (entrances to other planes) and other travelers. I can’t tell you much about its physical composition, though, because of its defining feature; the gap between true and subjective time here is so intense that travelers have to spend 1000 years here to age a single day. In sharp contrast to AD&D and this book’s fixation on fiddly numbers (I’m glad to know I will meet a bard in a human party in the Plane of Magma under .1% of the time), Grubb tells you to ignore the passage of subjective time while you are in the Astral. If you drink a potion, you treat its effects as permanent; ingested poisons have no effect, while spells cast on you don’t wear off. If you leave the plane, those timers start from the top. Some powerful people use the Astral as storage for people dying of sickness or in comas; even if finding the cure take centuries, their body will still be intact. I get the impression the Astral is supposed to be outer space, only the lack of a need to breathe and such a colossal time delay on decompression make its effects irrelevant. While you can open portals between the Prime Material and the Outer Planes (  ) or travel through on Yggdrasil or Mount Olympus (both of which physically exist there), most travelers through the Astral use one of two methods to get in: astral projection and physical travel. As for the first, while you can use items or psychic powers to project one person, you need to take multiple people in at once. Once you’re in, your body enters a coma and you manifest on the Plane as a projection, a grayed out version of your body with the same features, magical items (not non-magical items, enchanted your clothes) and stats but a silver rope that extends a few yards out of their back before disappearing; it metaphysically ties your projection back to your body. The cord isn’t actually physical and you usually can’t touch it, but it can be cut by various circumstances or weapons; if it is, you have 1d10 rounds to find a way out of the plane before you die so thoroughly it takes a wish spell to bring you back (when you leave, your projection becomes your new body and the old one dies, I think, it isn’t exactly clear). If the projection dies, their original body either dies or wakes up a few days later and slowly heals itself up. On top of that, you have to watch to make sure a type of spirit that lives in the Astral doesn’t follow your cord back to your body and possess it. Or you could just portal in physically and skip all that   I was not joking about how deep these charts run. Either way, movement through the Astral Plane beats out the Ethereal and the Inner Planes by far; unlike the neutral buoyancy of the first and the weird relative movement of the second, the Astral plane has no substance to go through and no gravity; but like the others, you just decide which direction to head in and go off on the power of your mind. You end up traveling much faster. RAW you can reach any location within the Astral Plane in under three days. Any location. As long as you know roughly what you’re looking for, you’ll eventually stumble on it. For comparison, it can longer than that just to reach the Deep Ethereal. Aside from the other creatures using the Astral to get from place to place, the biggest threat here is the occasional psychic wind that screws with its victims’ ability to leave the Astral, temporarily trapping them there, scattering them across the plane, or even snapping their silver cords. You can also run across wormholes and various oddities, too, but that wind can and will gently caress you up. Combat and magic wise, not THAT much to comment on. Due to the way liquids work in 0-G, stuff like holy water and acid flow over anyone that comes in contact with it, dealing double damage. Same equipment rules apply as on the Ethereal; even if you portal in and keep your +1 armor, it doesn’t give you anything except the stat bonus. In general, magic that calls upon anything outside the borders of the Astral doesn’t work; either the spell does nothing for the items turn into ordinary items as long as you are in the plane (they go back after you leave). Same for divine power; clerics and druids can keep their spells when they enter the Astral, but they have to head to another plane to regain them. So basically, if you want access to any kind of magical firepower, is your best bet.Given how (relatively) easy it is to cross the Astral, the plane is crawling with travelers heading from place to place; you can run across everything from demons to devils to genies to mind flayers to demigods (though Anubis is the only proper divinity that hangs out here). The biggest danger is the Githyanki that base themselves out of the plane; they move far faster than you and carry weapons that can sever cords. Aside from that, they aren’t much different from any other mortal combat-wise. You do, however, have to keep watch for their cities, some of the only stationary objects in the Plane, which can house up to 1000 githyanki and have access to wizards.  Aside from ing your way out or dying, your only option for leaving the Astral is entering one of the color pools scattered around; resembling one-sided, two-dimensional circles of a single color (signifying which plane the portal takes you two, though the GM is encouraged to switch the colors up to make things more exciting, and not in a TPK way), they let travelers into the destination plane with little fuss. And yes, “one-sided” means you can fly through one from the opposite side, but it won’t affect you and you won’t notice it unless you turn around and look. Color pools are invisible in the planes they connect to, though you can see into one a little bit from the Astral; it’s always worth checking to make sure you won’t end up somewhere you don’t want to be. Touching a color pool sucks you in, generates you a new body if you were a projection, and dumps you wherever it leads without any fuss. You can’t go back through it, though, which can be a problem, especially if the pool opens up underground or hundreds of feet in the sky (rare but possible).And that’s the section. Reading this is like a breath of fresh air after the Inner Planes. Players face far fewer roadblocks to travel, stand a better chance against creatures they encounter, and the lack of life-support requirements removes a lot of busywork from circumstances that otherwise would have required extensive packing. It’s almost like someone else wrote this chapter. I stand by my “internal document spruced up for sale” theory, but this part feels like it’s actively designed for players. Well, sort of. Anyway, next time we enter the Outer Planes and start wading through the sorts of planes where Zeus and Corellon can get together and play dice. Counter: 24.5
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Jun 21, 2020 02:54
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Cooked Auto posted:But in reality there really is absolutely nothing worth salvaging from this adventure. The characters are atrociously bad, the plot is not there, the encounters are mean and spiteful, the resolution is atrocious and in the end the PC’s barely get paid too. What a great way to introduce people to this game and its setting and to make them want to play this, am I right? Ah, these are rules written by someone who doesn't use rules to play RPGs. They just make whatever happen and make noises that sound like rules being followed. This makes it hard for them to write down transmittable expressions of these rules, because when they try to match them up to the game as they played it, they have no idea how what they wrote down actually corresponds to what happened.
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Jun 21, 2020 03:35
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One interesting thing to note about the Astral is that you may wonder: "In a plane without any physical objects, how do the Githyanki build cities?" And the answer is that their cities are built on the corpses of gods. When a god dies in Planescape, their body turns into a titanic husk on the Astral plane. I'll also disagree and say that I feel that 4e's "elemental chaos" and "spookydark" planes were a lot less evocative than Planescape. It might have provided something somewhat easier to work with, there's generally an awful lot of real estate in the planes that you're unlikely to ever explicitly use for anything, but to me even though my players were never going to go adventuring on the Negative Material Plane or something similar, knowing it existed and how it had a place in the cosmology helped make the whole thing feel "complete."
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Jun 21, 2020 09:08
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Night, do the needful. A WHFRP 2.0 hack for playing Troika. That can't take more than 40 or so new or adapted careers...
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Jun 21, 2020 10:11
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I think I'd use a super lightweight system for Troika, something along the lines of Trollbabe or Lasers and Feelings. From the system's perspective it doesn't matter whether you're evaporating someone with a plasma rifle, siccing your Edible Monkeys on them then shivving them in the kidneys while they're distracted, or drowning them on dry land with dark Bog Magics. It's a Fighting roll and so you want to roll low. etc etc.
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Jun 21, 2020 10:26
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Tunnels and Troika.
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Jun 21, 2020 11:15
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Troika World.
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Jun 21, 2020 12:11
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The Lone Badger posted:I think I'd use a super lightweight system for Troika, something along the lines of Trollbabe or Lasers and Feelings. From the system's perspective it doesn't matter whether you're evaporating someone with a plasma rifle, siccing your Edible Monkeys on them then shivving them in the kidneys while they're distracted, or drowning them on dry land with dark Bog Magics. It's a Fighting roll and so you want to roll low. etc etc. This is basically where I'm going at the moment.
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Jun 21, 2020 12:25
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Soulbound An End To Spells So, Endless Spells. You can summon them by really, really loving up another casting - but that's not the only way. It is possible for someone to learn and cast an Endless Spell! It's an incredibly bad idea, most of the time. Some of the weaker ones might be useful, but the thing is you're creating a permanent magical effect that is going to do whatever it wants the moment you stop maintaining your control over it. We are told future supplements will contain other Endless Spells, some of which might be more useful to actually learn and cast than the sole one in this book. That'd be the Purple Sun of Shyish. It's an Amethyst spell and you can learn it as one, but you really shouldn't. It's a DN 6:10 spell. You will not be casting this successfully. It will not happen, not outside of blowing Soulfire and getting several other mages involved. But let's say you pull it off, or it shows up on its own: you summon a giant floating purple ball with a skull face that turns everyone nearby into amethyst statues. Any creature in its Zone has to make a really hard Soul check. On a success, they take 10 Damage and become Frightened. On a failure, they either die instantly or drop to Toughness 0 and become Mortally Wounded really, really badly, depending on if they have Wounds. And, again, this is permanent once cast. The skull doesn't go away. But hey, you summoned it, right? You control it! ...sort of. Each turn after you summon it, you have to make a very difficult Mind check to keep control over it. If you succeed, that turn you can choose either to keep the Sun in place or move it to an adjacent Zone. If you fail, you lose control, and the thing just starts moving to the nearest Zone with the most living beings in it. If it's not next to a Zone iwth living stuff, it will randomly pick a direction and go that way until it finds some. So hey! Permanently wandering death orb until someone finally manages to dispel or otherwise destroy the magic. The Purple Sun is never worth summoning. Anyway, while each Lore has a set list of existing spells, wizards in the Mortal Realms are always studying and refining their magic. They make new spells nearly constantly, either through modifying existing ones, trying to recreate lost magic or just making up a new thing. PCs can make their own spells as an Endeavor during downtime. This is a 5 step process. (Incidentally, I haven't gone and checked all the spells, but I am fairly certain all of the premade ones follow the math in this section, with the probably exception of Clarity and maybe Favorable Winds.) Step 1: What's the spell do? Is it an area damage spell? A spell to make people like you? A spell to let someone else fly? You figure that out, so you and the GM can work together for Step 2. Step 2: Define the Aspects of the spell. These are the components that make it up and define it mechanically. You take your end result and backtrace from there to figure out how to do it. How you put it together will determine the eventual casting DN of the spell. The first Aspect to pick is the Major Aspect, which is just, picking what of four broad categories the spell fits in. These are Heal, Hurt, Help and Hinder. Pretty self-explanatory. Heal and Hurt generally don't have a duration - they go off instantly. Help and Hinder, on the other hand, usually do have a duration, as they provide aid or weakening to a target. (Charming people, as a note, falls under 'Hinder' in most cases.) It is possible to have a spell that has multiple Major Aspects, such as the Amethyst spell that deals damage and heals you. Each of the Aspects then has a series of costed effects. For example, a Heal spell can recover Toughness or Mettle or remove Conditions. Healing Toughness has a lower Cost than healing Mettle, and removing one Condition is cheaper than removing all. Hurt spells can deal damage or reduce Mettle, and damage is generally cheaper, but ignoring Armor can raise that. A spell's Cost is also affected by how targeting - it's cheaper to hit a single target or yourself than a Zone or multiple selective people. The longer the range is, the higher the Cost gets. The longer the duration of the spell, the higher the Cost. Target, Range and Duration are Minor Aspects. That takes us to Step 3. Step 3: Determine the difficulty to cast. Once you've set up your Aspects, you take your Cost total. If it's 6 or less, then the Complexity is 1 and the TN is the Cost, you're good to go. If the total is more than 6, your final DN must, when added together, equal the total Cost. So if you have Cost 7, you could have DN 5:2, 4:3, 3:4 or so on. The player chooses what they're going for here, with the note that you can't have a TN below 2. There is a way to reduce Cost, however, which is to allow targets to resist some or all aspects with a roll. Doing this halves the Cost for any aspect that can be resisted this way. (Real useful for spells that inflict very powerful conditions like Incapacitated!) Step 4: Decide what the Overcast effect will be - that is, what extra successes will do. Typically, this is increased damage or healing, or longer duration, but you could just as easily use it to increase number of targets or increase of any other Aspect. However, the number of successes needed to boost an Aspect by 1 is equal to its Cost - so some things are easier to boost than others. Step 5: Name and describe your spell and decide what Lore it fits in thematically. We also have a sidebar noting that yes, it's probably possible to game this spell creation system, and so the GM and players should work together and talk like adults when making new spells so everyone is happy, and while they've tried to quantify a lot of effects here, players will come up with stuff not on the table. The GM should feel free to tweak or alter spell difficulties in play to better balance them if needed - though the GM should not use this to try and stifle player creativity in spellcasting. Talk to each other, no game rules will be a replacement for communication. Next time: The GM section.
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Jun 21, 2020 14:45
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 Mutant 2089 In the darkness between neon and twilight. So that’s Mutant, or Mutant 2089. I can’t say I went into this with rose tinted glasses due to how long it has been since I played the game, I mean I played it during my second or third year in college. And that was around 15-16 years ago. And then we didn’t play it for more than a few sessions, as far as I can remember, before we switched to another game or a later edition of the franchise. But even then I did remember the game being not that bad and pretty playable. In the end I wasn’t too wrong with that notion. The game isn’t that bad as a whole but it has a lot of points of contention that I had no real idea about. Or had forgotten about. As a whole it feels, and is, far more playable than what Neotech 2 ever appeared to be. However, Robots get far too much in their favour when it comes to bonuses and benefits, and barely any drawbacks that hinder them in any fashion. One of the best choices you can make is simply to play a robot for a campaign. PSI-mutants get shafted from start to finish. The defect system goes from annoying and crippling or detrimental far too fast. And this is not something that is going to change in future editions I would like to add. Even if the chances of it happening are lower but there’s still a couple of dubious defect choices in future games. The Psi powers themselves are not great as a whole, there are some nice ones but even then they’re hard to get and low utility. They all feel like lame wizard spells with massive restrictions. Cyberware is far too expensive, outside of going heavy into debt during character building, and comes off as very lacking in their direct ingame usage. Meanwhile Robotics are far cheaper, and while some are carbon copies of the cyberware, some fill a lot better niches. Mutated animals are completely forgotten and just added as a relic from past games. Normal mutants don’t get as shafted by their defects as psi ones and are actually far better designed in comparison. Their defects are not as crippling as a whole compared to mental defects. Character creation is nice and simple, but the dice could definitely be increased to make more “heroic” characters by default. Or at least adding some more modifications for humans to make far more competent characters. The professions could be a bit better, they work but they’re really just a bundle of skills and cyberware and not much else beyond that. Everything lacks a little bit of special flavour. Especially when you’re stuck with your choice throughout the whole campaign. Robots getting pigeonholed into three specific careers to choose from is also disappointing, especially when the book repeatedly mentions that robots look like humans anyway. So why not let them have access to certain normal professions then? Especially when the world book explicitly mentions that there are specially built robots out there. So why not a journalist robot? The worst part of it is however the XP system that will massively stymie any sense of character growth when the only way to get anything is by successfully using skills and even then at most two or three xp per session. No other way of actually getting XP is mentioned in the book which means that you’re locked into whatever profession you have and have to essentially spend XP in whatever the chosen skills are. There’s no way to say, buy a few ranks in a combat skill to bolster what you might not have. Because the only way to gain an increase is to succeed with a skill check. So progress is going to be frustratingly slow, or virtually nonexistent if you decide you want to increase a skill you barely have any chance of success in. Especially in classes without any combat skills like the KORP you’re going to have a miserable time if there’s a lot of combat. And there will most likely be a lot of combat thrown around because that’s half the game. The best, and most obvious fix, is house rule this by just giving a general XP reward at the end of an adventure. And use the same costs as provided in the book to let players raise their skills as they see fit. Also give them either gear packages or increase the money they get through the starting funds by twice the amount to let them get some basic equipment befitting of adventurers. But as I found out from flipping ahead a bit through books a future supplement actually includes starting gear packages for all professions, including the robot ones. Which is nice but at the same time that book came out several years after the core books. The reprint of the World book mentions that the two sections about starting gear should be ignored, but I suppose the later supplement supersedes that. So one fun thing to mention is that almost all professions start with a Derringer by default. This includes the Merc, who has a silenced Derringer. The combat rules are straightforward and simple, everything that’s complicated or more elaborate is tucked away behind optional rules. Which is nice and lets you focus on just running the fights. Automatic weapon rules actually make sense here, thank gently caress for that. Problem is of course that combat has a very rocket tag feeling to it. The majority of the weapons do huge amounts of damage, if the shots manage to connect, and the majority of the characters will most likely end up with low health pools. Even if they roll decently during chargen. Not to mention there is no way to increase attributes using XP, but lots of ways to see it decreased. But even then the combat rules don’t look like a massive chore to use. The only hurdle is perhaps remembering the various specific phases that makes up each combat round. The hit location rule is best left unused because it's a lot of annoying bookkeeping. Same goes with a lot of the other optional rules, which they do readily admit. The biggest thing I can say about the GM advice section was I liked how it encouraged you to steal from other media when it came to establish a tone or feeling for descriptions. Speaking of which, the strongest part of this game has to be the tone and setting. Compared to N2 that seemingly fumbled forward in establishing a really milquetoast cyberpunk setting Mutant goes all in on making things feel a lot more lived in. It’s not perfect though, the whole thing is a bit too evenly split up. You have the City where things are terrible, but mainly only in the slums. Then you have the Twilight Lands that are 85% Mad Max and then 15% lifted from the two previous games. There are various bits and pieces in there that are interesting; wars and environmental disasters having shaped things and given rise to mutated critters and the like. Forbidden Zones feels like a slightly out of place relic, an oddly fitting puzzle piece that’s been crammed in to be able to fit. Things are a bit too obviously lifted from other media that were current at the time. Ziggy’s, or Nomads, being lifted almost straight from Mad Max without any changes to it is not that interesting. Not to mention the lack of cohesion in various ideas and themes; oil has run dry, but then there’s still oil wells and derricks everywhere and owning a refinery is a prestige thing. There is a bit of “Left hand not really knowing what the right one does” at times. Not to mention things being repeated within a couple of pages. Reading yet another mention of “Space travel is hosed” without adding anything new feels like a waste of text.The way rural mutants are handled is really bad as well, portraying them as savage natives is awful. Not to mention it keeps flipflopping between calling them peaceful and then having them be a dangerous threat living in places you can, or will, go. Pioneers feel awkwardly done too. They’re interchangeably hostile or suspicious to the City all the time, as if the writers can’t decide on how to portray them. Not to mention the Ziggy profession doesn’t completely match the way they’re described in the latter half as well. The creature section is massively underdeveloped as well. There are cool examples in there, like the ULTRATIGER or the Giant Stag Beetle. But even then you wouldn’t want to actually use it because it’s incredibly dangerous and will rip a party to pieces without much effort. The tech section is also somewhat contradictory to what’s previously been established and the fact that they left one of the best character ideas for robots back there to rot is just sad. Less said about the premade “introductory” adventure the better because it’s a blight and goes against everything that has previously been established. And was most likely written by someone who hadn’t even bothered to read the GM section or the general tone of the game. Or was writing something about the Twilight Lands and then was told to tack on everything else because that was obviously the main focus of the whole thing. The whole “Infiltrate enemy facility and steal data” was clearly added afterwards, especially considering how little it cares to write about the place and just tells the GM to improvise. Compared to the travel section which comes with an encounter table and lots of talk about what to do. Also, where is the sense of adventure? For as much as the game talked about the players being hardened adventurers there’s not much to that at a more thorough glance. There are a fair share of various adventure ideas scattered throughout the second book. But at the same time the setting feels very antithetical to that notion. Or downright disagreeing considering how much it hypes up the twilight lands to be brutal and unforgiving. The basic attribute rolls for instance doesn’t really support the notion that you’re meant to be an adventurer, Fizban’s rolls were awful for instance. A regular, non-mutated human character rolls 3d6 down the line with no bonuses or penalties. On average they would have a 9 or an 10 in their stat, with a 14 or 15 in one of them. So I’m going to say I don’t know theorycrafting the slightest and I’m really bad at math and probabilities but in a slight effort to illustrate my point let’s attempt to make your average baseline human adventurer. Instead of going heavy into specialization like with Fizban and Maria. So here’s sort of your average character. Attributes are obviously not completely correct as they’re derived from average 3d6 the line result but should generally not fluctuate too much. Name: Joey Baggadonuts Profession: Criminal Age: 30 Height: 185cm Weight: 70kg Main hand: Right BP 90 (60 + 30) Starting Cyberware choices: 3 STR 10 INT 11 CHA 10 DEX 11 SIZE 10 CON 11 MST 10 Damage bonus: +0 HP 21 Speed: 11m/22m Starting funds: 400 ED Dexterity 40 Fixer 40 Forgery 40 First Aid 40 Hide 40 Perception 40 Manoeuvres 35 Rifle 35 Knife 35 Unarmed combat 35 Pistol 35 Dodge 35 Starting equipment as by the SVOT supplement: Stiletto Knuckle Dusters (Roll 1d8 twice for extra gear) Derringer 1d4 Doses Resistasyl Hardened Leather (70) Flashlight (5) Energy pack x2 (2) Regen x4 (32) Autoinjector (10) Backpack (20) Binoculars (50) Pocket money: 211 ED And now Joey here is ready for adventures! Obviously not the best example for a basic character admittedly but he is average in pretty much everything, including starting funds. 400 ED does not get you much to get by on. He can barely do crimes because the lockpick set costs 1400 ED. Everything else is ridiculously expensive and the debtors rule only counts if you’re deciding to pick cyberware, everything else has to come out of your own pocket. Does this feel like an adventurer though and not just some average chump? Especially when you take into consideration that the attribute dice are going to be incredibly swingy and on the most you’re going to have at least two or three results under 10. And barely anything over 14 as well. Not to mention character development is going to happen at an agonizingly slow crawl too because you only get 1 xp per successful skillcheck. 2 if you manage a perfect success. And then you’re still beholden to the same XP costs you used when creating the character. Also no way to increase attributes so if you’re saddled with a 5 in some then tough luck. If you don’t sink as much BP as possible into Dodge you’re pretty much hosed. Joey, with his 21 HP, can survive getting shot once or twice on average because he’s at death's door. The final encounter in SYPOX would’ve murdered him as the Galil does 16-17 damage on average and his hardened leather only absorbs 3 points of that damage. And he’s going up against 6 robots as well. Although any ganger or MPOL with a firearm is going to make his day miserable. Then combining that with no starting gear (unless you use a much later supplement) and exorbitant prices for equipment means that your plucky adventurers are armed with simple hand weapons and leathers for the most part. This is Mutant and not D&D. At least Shadowrun gave you enough money to get yourself suited up and then you could trade some more BP in for extra. In Mutant, there's not even a chance for someone to start with amounts of basic equipment. And then, taking the introduction adventure as an example, expose you to the horrors of the Twilight Lands with what you have. And it won’t really be the first adventure that does that I’ve seen from a casual glance. There is an odd disconnect between the stated intention of the game and execution for the adventures and the game. Somehow the players are meant to be heavily armed and equipped with necessary survival gear to tackle pretty much anything. And then when you look at things in reality they’ve got barely enough to get dressed. The lowest you can start with is 25 ED and for that you can get a knife and something extra. Also the prewritten adventures are really, really keen on never paying the PCs. At least the first one, Ypsilon 5, is very eager at reminding the GM that and how much the mission giver expects the players to never return or die in the process. Sypox ends with a cliffhanger essentially as they get betrayed by their employer for no real reason other than to set an example. And in the end the party only gets paid 500 out of their 1000 reward. Ypsilon 5 is almost worse where you can earn several thousands for a job well done and then the game almost expects the players to have all died at the end or not bother to go back to get their just rewards. In fact it even suggests ways of loving with the players, like not letting back inside or having an NPC turned out to be a robot that is meant to kill them after the job’s been done because the employer doesn’t want to pay them. The adventure in itself is fine, at least in terms of plot, but it’s also rife with “If they mess up here they’re dead” segments and lethal encounters. Such an utter mess and goes against everything the core books established. I have a bunch of ideas of how to fix this. First of all increase the attribute rolls for all races except robots. Either a 4d6 roll and place wherever or make one of the alternatives the standard way to generate attributes. That’ll make characters a bit more sturdy. Get rid of the current XP gain system and simply hand out a set amount that can be spent on any skill. And either increase the starting funds or slash the costs for the majority by half to let players equip themselves better. As they said, this is a game about heroes and adventurers, then make them feel like adventurers. But compared to Neotech 2 I’d be far more likely to play this if given the chance. Even if I would probably go down the safe and boring route with a normal human or a robot because that’s almost what they intend you to play here. Outside of maybe a normal mutant. Psi-mutants are terribly designed and far too punished by the game as to be worth playing. At least not without massively redesigning the defects to be less of a gently caress you and the powers not capped to the point of them being victims of “But what if I need this special thing for a future encounter?” syndrome. The book could also repeat things a lot less and have a clearer tone in how to present things, the tone changes I mentioned before gives a very confused message in some cases. The game has its charm, especially in the elaborate setting, but has a bunch of rough spots that aren’t exactly beholden to the BRP system and more awkward design. There’s probably more I can say but I’m pretty sure I’ve already said most of it as this review has progressed. But unlike N2 I don’t hate this game, even without having played it I’d still find it a far better game in comparison. There’s just a bunch of kinks that would’ve been needed to be dealt with for a far better experience. So, with the benefit of hindsight, how did things go for Mutant 2089? Relatively well actually, over the years it got 12 different splat books from 89 to 92. Even going as far as moving the ingame date to past 2090 in turn. Most of these were long adventures but there were four expansion books as well. I’m pretty sure there were meant to be more as the last two were titled KRIM and SVOT so there might just have been plans to cover all the professions in some fashion if things had progressed as they should. But that was not to be, as in 1992 the game was replaced by Mutant R.Y.M.D. or Mutant Space. This takes the space part of Mutant 2089’s backstory and goes even further with it. The year is 2191 and the corporations have put far more effort into space exploration and colonization compared to before, avoiding the space war that destroyed them before. They manage to find a long lost tenth planet of the solar system, named Nero. There they gently caress up and manages to do the classic RPG cliché and awake an ancient, supernatural evil. Called “Ondskan” or “The evil” it attacks all over the solar system. The megacorporations, who previously have split up the system between each other fight against each other and their new adversary on the various planets. The setting was heavily influenced by Warhammer 40000 and the overall tone was very grim and gloomy. Some of the monsters and symbolism for the game was lifted from another Target games RPG, Kult. Otherwise it was considered an expansion to Mutant 2089 and the rules were essentially the same. But the game didn’t really last for all that long, the year after it was replaced with Mutant Chronicles. A game which a lot more people outside of Sweden might be familiar with. Chronicles has essentially the same premise as RYMD but turned more towards aping Warhammer 40000 a bit more. But that wasn’t to be either, in 1999 Target games went into reconstruction and the rights of its intellectual properties went over to Paradox Entertainment (formerly Target interactive). During which a company called Jänringen, or Iron ring, was licensed to make a new version of Mutant. But that’s a story for another time. The end.
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Jun 21, 2020 16:23
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Big fan of Spell Creation. It's a fairly simple system that gives a lot of customizability for the players.
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Jun 21, 2020 19:17
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I know I've seen references to silver cords and such before, but I can't be sure that they weren't cribbing from AD&D. I like Planescape's suppositition that the Astral is just the stuff under the Outer Planes, empty space otherwise filled with conduits from one plane to another, angry githyanki, and dead gods swept under the carpet dei. Much as the original Inner Planes appeal to me as a Classisist, I do think that the Elemental Chaos and their mix-matched elementals are a lot more interesting to play with.
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Jun 21, 2020 21:35
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Mors Rattus posted:Soulbound So, assuming you screwed up enough to bring this loving thing down on you, how exactly do you kill/dispel it? Is there just one of these things or are there a bunch of them just kind of floating around in... I dunno, "Magicspace" or something just waiting for some ambitious/stupid Mage type to call them into the real world? Could you have a deeply hosed up situation in which two Mages (on opposite sides of a conflict, presumably) each summon one of these things?
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Jun 21, 2020 21:36
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Each one is technically an independent entity. You can “kill” an endless spell by unbinding it successfully, but there aren’t set rules for doing so. Unbind, the talent, is for counteringgspells as they are cast. It’s unclear how the rules intend you to fight them, but spellhunters exist so it must be possible. Not having suggestions for this is actually a major failing. And yes, you can have two of these wandering around. In the wargame thus is still a bad idea unless you’re a Seraphon or maybe Nagash player, though.
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Jun 21, 2020 21:44
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instead of an army, just have a group of unliving wizards dedicated to producing a tide of prefect, immortal purple magic skulls
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Jun 21, 2020 21:58
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Mors Rattus posted:Each one is technically an independent entity. You can “kill” an endless spell by unbinding it successfully, but there aren’t set rules for doing so. Unbind, the talent, is for counteringgspells as they are cast. It’s unclear how the rules intend you to fight them, but spellhunters exist so it must be possible. Not having suggestions for this is actually a major failing. Well, since they're "Endless" presumably Endless Spells are considered to be constantly being cast, so the Unbind talent would affect them (emphasis "presumably" as I don't have the game and all I know of it came from your reviews). Do "Spell Hunters" typically have the Unbind talent? Tiler Kiwi posted:instead of an army, just have a group of unliving wizards dedicated to producing a tide of prefect, immortal purple magic skulls Well, you're still going to want something of an army even then. If Night's reviews of WHFR 2.0 have taught us nothing else, they taught us that unsupported wizard types are ripe targets to get "eyeshot" by Elven archers. And figure in Soulbound, "Enchant Weapon/Ammo" is likely way more common/available than it was in WHFR 2.0. Everyone fucked around with this message at 22:13 on Jun 21, 2020 |
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Jun 21, 2020 22:10
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the ideal vector for launching endless spells is essentially a wagon with an astrolabe on it, at least two masochistic wizards, and 10-20 mute elf warriors to soak wounds with.
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Jun 21, 2020 23:09
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Mors Rattus posted:Each one is technically an independent entity. You can “kill” an endless spell by unbinding it successfully, but there aren’t set rules for doing so. Unbind, the talent, is for counteringgspells as they are cast. It’s unclear how the rules intend you to fight them, but spellhunters exist so it must be possible. Not having suggestions for this is actually a major failing. I think you can attempt an Unbind as an action. So it can be dispelled but is super hard still. If not we are for sure going to get spellhunting as a thing in Artefacts of Power the magic expansion which should come at some point next year. Also for fun here is the Purple Sun in action everybody.  Tiler Kiwi posted:instead of an army, just have a group of unliving wizards dedicated to producing a tide of prefect, immortal purple magic skulls It can kill the Unliving just as hard as it can kill the living. MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 00:18 on Jun 22, 2020 |
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Jun 22, 2020 00:16
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Endrinmasters get access to precast endless spells in a literal bottle in the wargame, too.
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Jun 22, 2020 00:27
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If I were playing a spell hunter I'd definitely take Unbind. It's not clear, ruleswise, if the Unbind talent is all you need to take down Endless Spells, though, or if it works on them. I don't hang out anywhere the devs do so I haven't been able to ask. e: I should note, I'd be disappointed if it's just 'roll Unbind at it until it dies' because that leaves very little for the rest of the party to do but keep you alive.
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Jun 22, 2020 01:11
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Mors Rattus posted:If I were playing a spell hunter I'd definitely take Unbind. It's not clear, ruleswise, if the Unbind talent is all you need to take down Endless Spells, though, or if it works on them. I don't hang out anywhere the devs do so I haven't been able to ask. I am part of the Soulbound Discord that the Devs are on so I will check later myself.
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Jun 22, 2020 01:17
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Night10194 posted:This is basically where I'm going at the moment. Thinking about it more, I'd pinch a fail-forward mechanic to keep the momentum going. "Your characters are badasses, and will never simply fail at a task that is within their area of specialty. At the players option, a poor roll will still suceed at the original intent but introduce a new problem of similar magnitude to the one just solved." The mutant sailor hotwired the space yacht just fine and you blast off, leaving your pursuers in the dust. In fact he hotwired it entirely too well and now the ship's AI has gone all yandere. Your Plague of Frog has driven the villagers from their homes, allowing you to retrieve the amulet without difficulty. Your god demands a sacrifice of 1000 flies by sunset as thanks.
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Jun 22, 2020 03:43
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I actually decided to go with Sparked by the Revolution because hell, I've got the hack-writing SRD and everything, time to take that for a test drive. It'll be a fun way to play around with that document and I think 'dice hit the table only when there's a chance for wild, comic mishaps' will suit it well.
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Jun 22, 2020 03:47
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The important thing I think is that a roll should never bounce you back to the status quo. A failure results in more stuff happening, not less.
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Jun 22, 2020 03:51
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Well, that's what that system is all about. Never roll dice unless something can go extremely wrong (just in this case, in much more comedic ways rather than 'your family is dragged into the street and shot') is the entire core of that engine.
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Jun 22, 2020 03:55
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The Outer Planes: Fundamentals and Nirvana Hoo boy, this will get complex. While the Inner Planes represent the elements – the fundamentals of the physical universe – the Outer Planes represent intellect, morality, and otherworldly forces. They call them the Planes of Power sometimes because Powers live here, and in case I haven’t mentioned, Powers is a polite term for gods or godlike beings. As a rule, each plane here, like the others, is spatially infinite, but most have multiple levels of equal infinite size with different characteristics. You can’t get to the Outer Planes from any plane except the Astral (even have to use multiple portals) and there is no good way to predict where you will show up once you reach them; even spells that transport you to a certain location usually actually land you several days’ travel away. Even then, those spells only take you to the first level, so you have to find a way deeper in on your own… oh, so that’s what happens to a projection’s original body! Once they enter the plane, the projection’s silver cord (now invisible) sticks around for 1d100 rounds, during which they can at will throw themselves back to the Prime Material and wake up without difficulty, and once the cord breaks, whether cut or just naturally, the original body enters a permanent coma and can be reoccupied with the appropriate spell. Anyway, once you get into a plane, you cross into other levels by walking over various physical boundaries or willing yourself to the other side in some (in the Abyss using this method spawns you half a mile up from the ground of the next level), while moving between planes takes portals of various descriptions (natural, made by gods, ed into existence, etc.) and usually only goes one way. Or you can hitch a ride on the River Styx (which connects the evil planes and functions of lot like in Greek myth) or Oceanus (which connects the good planes and does not). Each Outer Plane represents either an alignment or the border between two adjacent alignments (17 in total, one for true neutral and the rest around the alignment grid) with its own inhabitants, geography, conditions, and divinities. In general, conditions resemble those on the Prime Materials, and even in inhospitable areas visitors naturally assume forms that can survive local conditions (the book encourages the GM to be “fiendishly creative” when coming up with how those forms work  ). Same life-support requirements, sensory perception, and whatever else as on the Prime Material for the most part; the big physical difference between them and the Outer Planes is that the latter’s geography tends to be much grander in scale. Magic out here usually works like it would in similar conditions back home, with the differences mostly cosmetic or thematic; just keep in mind Chaotic planes can randomly change the appearances (though rarely the functions) of spells, you can only access adjacent planes or layers (no portaling back to the Prime Material or storing things in the Ethereal), magic items suffer the same penalties they would in the Inner Planes, and any magic that calls on divine power either gets carefully evaluated by its target and can be refused at their discretion, or it goes to whichever Power controls the area to be granted at their discretion. Divine casters can’t even regain spells above second-level without heading somewhere their patron can reach. Local Powers rule the Outer Planes.In other words, you want magical firepower? . Also be careful about touching pretty crystals because they might represent a summoning spell from elsewhere and suck you through.So, the Planes. Like I said, 17, each with its own name, alignment, flavor, and inhabitants. Notably, some features that characterize later versions of Planescape don’t show up here; Mechanus is still called Nirvana, for example. If I spot them, I’ll bring it up; otherwise, I encourage the thread to let the rest of us know. Since the distinction between plane alignments is pretty fine, I debated on how to represent them quite a bit, but I’ll just indicate where the emphasis is in the alignment by underlining it. For instance, Limbo will be Chaotic, Pandemonium will be Chaotic Evil, and the Abyss will be Chaotic Evil.  Speaking of which, Nirvana(Lawful). It’s a massive expanse of gears hundreds of miles wide, all of them interlocking with their neighbors in a pitch-black expanse of Astral-style breathable space; unlike the gravity-free Astral, each gear has a localized gravity field on one side where any inhabitants live. Every gear constantly turns and opens portals to neighboring planes once per full revolution (maybe once a month), which is how you get out of the plane unless you portal out, skip into the Astral, or get transported away by some God. No restrictions on magic here except for anything that creates illusions. They don’t work, it’s too Lawful for that kind of deception. The big Power here is Primus, the embodiment of Law and progenitor of the Modrons (which are awesome and should be looked up); it dictates the basic conditions of the plane and can teleport visitors to either neighboring plane or Concordant Opposition at will. However, you can also run across the most powerful gods of the Sumerian and Chinese pantheons maintaining mythical afterlives and palaces; we get a bunch of details on various landscapes and gardens and libraries they maintain that probably won’t come up in your game because I’ve never heard of anyone actually using real-world pantheons in D&D. I’m still taken aback by how this book peppers historical gods throughout the Planes like they fit the setting. I mean, intellectually I knew Deities and Demigods was a thing, but I hadn’t considered that they would actually treat Earth religions like something out of a sourcebook. Especially since some of the gods they use, especially in the Hindu pantheon, are still being worshiped. I have no idea if they kept this theme going in later versions of Planescape. I hope not. Anyway, that’s it for today. Next time we start covering the planes in earnest. Counter: 26.5
Falconier111 fucked around with this message at 04:30 on Jun 22, 2020 |
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Jun 22, 2020 03:57
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Night10194 posted:I actually decided to go with Sparked by the Revolution because hell, I've got the hack-writing SRD and everything, time to take that for a test drive. What Resistances are you going with? I used 'wealth' and 'stamina' in the paratroika writeup, with different numbers to make 'being out of cash or in debt' much more common than 'being actually hurt.'
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Jun 22, 2020 04:10
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Joe Slowboat posted:What Resistances are you going with? I used 'wealth' and 'stamina' in the paratroika writeup, with different numbers to make 'being out of cash or in debt' much more common than 'being actually hurt.' Still working that out, because I just made the decision today, but I'm thinking 'Silver' (Out of money), 'Blood' (Albeit much less brutal), 'Weird' (something goes crazy), 'Cosmic' (THE COSMOS SEE YOU), and 'Law' (Primarily because I'm designing this with magical lawyers everywhere because I have the luxury for designing for a single group)
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Jun 22, 2020 04:14
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Night10194 posted:Still working that out, because I just made the decision today, but I'm thinking 'Silver' (Out of money), 'Blood' (Albeit much less brutal), 'Weird' (something goes crazy), 'Cosmic' (THE COSMOS SEE YOU), and 'Law' (Primarily because I'm designing this with magical lawyers everywhere because I have the luxury for designing for a single group) I'd have fewer, personally, for simpler tracking and gameplay - combine 'weird' and 'cosmic' and possibly make 'law' and 'money' the same quality, standing in society, maybe?
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Jun 22, 2020 04:45
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Falconier111 posted:I’m still taken aback by how this book peppers historical gods throughout the Planes like they fit the setting. I mean, intellectually I knew Deities and Demigods was a thing, but I hadn’t considered that they would actually treat Earth religions like something out of a sourcebook. Especially since some of the gods they use, especially in the Hindu pantheon, are still being worshiped. I have no idea if they kept this theme going in later versions of Planescape. I hope not. I do wonder sometimes how much of this weirdness in the really old books can be attributed to poor scholarship/resources. Nowadays any ape or large mammal can get on Wikipedia and find a guide to any mythological afterlife, but the authors at this time may have only had a poorly sorted local library or college stacks to work with.
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Jun 22, 2020 05:35
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MonsterEnvy posted:I am part of the Soulbound Discord that the Devs are on so I will check later myself. Got my answer here. You can dispel as an action, but it still uses up a mettle. (This will likely be clarified in errata.) And dispelling the Purple Sun for example is still going to be super hard as you need to exceed the successes. So anyone trying is going to need a lot of help from the rest of the party.
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Jun 22, 2020 13:47
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Nessus posted:What baffles me is that they had to make up this poo poo instead of just importing in the Buddhist hell realms etc, which include things where there is the Hell of the Burning Balls (where sinners are forced to swallow the balls). Calling this place Nirvana is just drat weird, because that term refers to a state: it'd be like referring to Heaven as "Salvation" or something, I guess. I assume they called the place Nirvana because it's "in harmony with the laws of the universe", or something and they really didn't care.
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Jun 22, 2020 14:19
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Is assisting on a counterspell something a party member could do without skill training?
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Jun 22, 2020 14:25
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wiegieman posted:Is assisting on a counterspell something a party member could do without skill training? Yes. "Everyone needs a helping hand sometimes. When you take the Help Action, you assist an ally. The ally adds 1d6 to their dice pool for the next Test they make, plus an additional 1d6 per level of Training you have in the Skill used for the Test." Even those not trained in Channelling can still provide some extra dice.
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Jun 22, 2020 14:45
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MonsterEnvy posted:Yes. Since Endless Spells are spells, could you use one to enchant a magic item? Like create an item ready for a spell and use the item to "suck in" the Endless Spell? Maybe with a couple of party members using other devices to weaken/push the Endless Spell into the item. Yeah, I'll cop to it... Who ya gonna call? Spell Busters!
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Jun 22, 2020 15:41
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Honestly, chasing down and dealing with an Endless spell should end in a puzzle boss fight where it summons minions and killing those minions makes the dispelling easier.
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Jun 22, 2020 15:48
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Everyone posted:Since Endless Spells are spells, could you use one to enchant a magic item? Like create an item ready for a spell and use the item to "suck in" the Endless Spell? Maybe with a couple of party members using other devices to weaken/push the Endless Spell into the item. wiegieman posted:Honestly, chasing down and dealing with an Endless spell should end in a puzzle boss fight where it summons minions and killing those minions makes the dispelling easier. They did this with a recent one page adventure of a set that was released with the GM screen. The Quicksilver Swords are an endless spell that take the form of 9 flying swords. And by damaging the swords the dispel was made easier, if they were all destroyed then the spell was also dispelled that way.
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Jun 22, 2020 16:44
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Falconier111 posted:
Take a look at Jerik's write-up of Deities and Demigods from this very thread: https://projects.inklesspen.com/fatal-and-friends/jerik/deitiesanddemigods-1e/ For how far the rabbit-hole can go on this. In certain cases Jerik is able to identify which (outdated and crappy) sources the writers got their mythology from. Fun read.
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Jun 22, 2020 20:27
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reminds me of trying to do 'historic' settings back in high school. We had one guy's ancient encyclopedia set, and we had to riff from there.
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Jun 22, 2020 20:35
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MonsterEnvy posted:
New version of the errata up and it got it's nerf.
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Jun 22, 2020 22:13
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