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mellonbread posted:HOW TO HOST A DUNGEON - PART 5: ALIENS I really like your reviews of this- have you thought about doing a Lets Play of it? I really enjoy reading these stories and need to buy this. Mors Rattus posted:Age of Sigmar Lore Chat: Stormcast Eternals I also really like this review. Thank you for spending the time writing it- it really amplifies and justifies my: warning rant : utter disgust of this setting. I dislike the characters, I dislike the world, I hate what they did the old world and everything in the new one sounds bad, clichéd , bad writing, bad characters, bad plots and no where for players to actually do anything. Why play an adventure when the STORMCAST ETERNAL ARE ETERNALLY ON THE CASE. Though I could see being a force for Chaos because fighting these guys would actually be a challenge because they are both super heroes and seem to have no flaws or interesting personality's. Nothing ever changes but its also more fascist that ever before. The world is both infinite and tiny with no borders, restrictions or limits to spread out and yet the world is so small and monochrome. I didn't think GW could make the new world worse, but turns out, they did.
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Aug 9, 2020 03:24
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Comstar posted:I also really like this review. Thank you for spending the time writing it- it really amplifies and justifies my: warning rant : utter disgust of this setting. I dislike the characters, I dislike the world, I hate what they did the old world and everything in the new one sounds bad, clichéd , bad writing, bad characters, bad plots and no where for players to actually do anything. Why play an adventure when the STORMCAST ETERNAL ARE ETERNALLY ON THE CASE. Though I could see being a force for Chaos because fighting these guys would actually be a challenge because they are both super heroes and seem to have no flaws or interesting personality's. Nothing ever changes but its also more fascist that ever before. The world is both infinite and tiny with no borders, restrictions or limits to spread out and yet the world is so small and monochrome. Same. Mors, you've been spending a lot of time and energy going into great detail about a group of fictional people who, despite having women in their ranks, manage the impressive feat of being even more boring and fashy than Space Marines.
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Aug 9, 2020 03:30
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If that’s your takeaway, more power to you, I guess?
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Aug 9, 2020 04:15
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Don't get how you could seem them as more fashy given how much less fashy they are.Comstar posted:
I don't really understand how you can come to this conclusion, like I seriously don't understand how you can come to this conclusion after reading the soulbound review and stormcast lore. Like I can understand this part "I dislike the characters, I dislike the world, I hate what they did the old world" But none of the rest. MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 04:30 on Aug 9, 2020 |
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Aug 9, 2020 04:21
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Soulsbound made me consider the setting as a place beyond "Games Workshop IP Smashup (TM)" and made me interested in the game. Despite the obvious artificiality of the world from its unfortunate real-world inception, there's obviously been a lot of work done to make it a lived-in place usable for RPGs. The Stormcast book just began to exhaust me. I actually like goofy sci-fantasy military orders (and I'm a huge fan of the FFG Deathwatch books and fluff), but the Stormcast book just felt like a maniacal march of superlatives. There are definitely some cool bits there (long dead ghosts recreated as Stormcast and still kinda nervous about their ultimate fates was really cool!), but I totally understand people coming out the other end soured on Stormcast and the AoS setting.
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Aug 9, 2020 05:52
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B2: Keep on the Borderlands -- Part 3: The Wilderness Of all the parts of this module, this is the one I know least what to do with. It’s got a fair number of custom rules, and I’m not sure to what extent they all add up. The module comes with a map of the wilderness surrounding the Keep and the Caves, numbered with the locations of the Keep, the Caves, four non-Caves points of interest, and the Cave of the Unknown. There’s a big old road connecting the Keep and the Caves, although the Caves are set off from the road by about a half-hours walk worth of forest. The module doesn’t seem entirely clear to me on how easy the Caves are supposed to be to find. Presumably they aren’t trivial to locate, since the book talks a bit about how the players are likely to find trouble as they attempt to find it. When I’ve run it, I ruled that there are a few NPCs in the Keep who know where the caves are and can be hired by the PCs as guides, but that the general location of the caves (about two days east along the road) is pretty well-known. This approach does have a downside, though, which I’ll get to in a bit. Adventures Outside the Keep There’s a little bit of advice on wilderness travel before it launches into the various sites of interest. A fair amount of it is what-you-would-expect filler (there’s a map), but there are a few interesting things going on here. Caves of the Unknown: There’s a site marked “Caves of the Unknown” on the map, and the GM is supposed to design their own dungeon to be placed here. That’s pretty cool, and meshes well with the idea of this as a bridge for new GMs to help them transition to creating their own content. If the GM hasn’t had the chance to do this yet the module advises them to prevent the players from finding it due to “a magical illusion”. Overland Movement Speeds: You can move three squares on the wilderness map in one hour by default, or two in the forest, or one in the fens. This means that it takes around 15 hours of travel to get to the Caves from the Keep by road, which feels like a lot. I don’t think I ever noticed these rules before, so I’ve pretty much always just said it took 3-4 hours to get there or back. I may have been underselling the wilderness part of this game. Camping Rules: Or not. There are explicitly no random wilderness encounters in this module, unless you’re sleeping within six tiles of one of the four sites marked on the map. There’s a cool little mechanic for that (you roll a d6 and if you get the equivalent of your distance from the camp or higher they find you), but it does mean that most of the map is just a big sprawling void of gameplay. This gets weirder, because none of the four sites are anywhere near the path to the Caves. Three out of the four are actually across a big honking river to the south, and the fourth is dead north of the Keep. None are within six tiles of the road that connects the Caves and Keep.If the PCs have even the lightest clue of where the Keep is (far to the northeast) there’s basically zero chance they would ever happen on any of these by chance. There are also some rules for standing watch, tracking food, foraging, and some advice that the GM just tells the PCs not to bother foraging and go back to the Keep instead if they run low on food. Going Off-Map: If the party gets so lost they go fully off the map provided by the module, the GM is advised: ”Gygax” posted:If the party attempts to move off the map, have a sign, a wandering stranger, a friendly talking magpie, or some other “helper” tell them that they are moving in the wrong direction.  Area Map Encounter Areas Here are the four points of interest listed on the map. Mound of the Lizard Men: A bunch of “exceptionally evil” lizardmen. They’re nocturnal and don’t mess with people during the day unless their mound is distrubed. 7 males, 3 females, 8 children, and 6 eggs. The males attack if you get too near, and the females defend the nest if you try to enter it. This leads to a whole hosed up rabbit-hole I’ll talk about in a bit--I really don’t like how this module tries for ‘naturalism’ by having a bunch of monster women and kids everywhere. Spiders’ Lair: Two spiders (I assume giant?) and an elf skeleton with a magic shield. Raiders’ Camp: About a dozen “chaotic fighters” spying on the Keep. They have some pocket change and a cask of wine. They don’t seem to be related to the Caves at all. I could see them being interesting if there was a chance they waylay you on the road each time you travel or something, but as is they’re pretty much just a random encounter with no treasure you only find by walking in the opposite direction of the Caves. The Mad Hermit: A crazy 3rd level Thief with a pet mountain lion, who lives in a tree. He pretends to be a holy man living in isolation (and might even believe it), but will attack the party unprovoked at a random time, calling for help from his cat. He has some gold, a potion of Invisibility, and a +1 dagger under his bed. This is the only encounter the PCs might conceivably run into while looking for the Caves of Chaos (although they’d have to be really lost to do so), and is also probably the most interesting of the wilderness encounters. That isn’t really saying a lot, though. And that’s it for the wilderness section. These all pretty much feel like filler. I could see some Keep NPC giving the PCs a quest to deal with one of them, but given that none of them really have any ties to the Caves, the Keep, or any other encounter they just feel like a distraction from what’s interesting about the module. 3 females, 8 children, and 6 eggs: where things get indefensible The lizardmen having women and children is just the first instance of something this module is going to be doing a lot. This module loves dividing up monsters into male warriors and female civilians, as well as having a ton of humanoid children running around. I am not a fan of this for a whole bunch of reasons--there’s the obvious sexism, but also it means that you kick off a mini refugee crisis every time you clear out a cave. Unless you just butcher the women and children, which. . .well, I’ll let these Gygax quotes speak for themselves (from a Q&A forums thread about D&D in general, and isn’t specifically about this module). TW: Gary Gygax being just mind-blowingly racist, genocide apologia, endorsement of slavery Gygax posted:Paladins are not stupid, and in general there is no rule of Lawful Good against killing enemies. The old adage about nits making lice applies. Also, as I have often noted, a paladin can freely dispatch prisoners of Evil alignment that have surrendered and renounced that alignment in favor of Lawful Good. They are then sent on to their reward before they can backslide. loving yikes. A lot of this write-up has been me trying to figure out the module’s original intended playstyle, but that raises Big loving Questions when what you find is poo poo like this. What do you even do when you find out that the father of D&D (and, by extension, the father of both tabletop and digital RPGs in general) was not only pretty pro-war crime in his RPG work, but also actively drew positive comparisons between RPG war crime and real-world genocide? I don’t have a great answer for this. Okay, so if looking for the intended original playstyle on the topic of how to handle lizardman children isn’t going to take us anywhere good, how do we salvage things? Pretty much no matter what, I’d just cut the children out of the module when I run it wholesale--that lack of agency or ability to survive on their own really just leads to nothing good. I’d also run the male/female divide as a “warrior/civilian” split, without the division of labor being gendered. I’m still not sure if there’s anything interesting to be added by having noncombatant monsters. What happens when you kill all the warriors--do you just tip your hat to them and move onto the next cave? That’s awkward. Do they fight back, or run to bring over humanoids from other factions? Then you pretty much just need to butcher them--I don’t see the benefit to differentiating them from the warriors. Do you take them as prisoners of war? What would you even do with them afterwards? Hold them in PoW camps? Do prisoner exchanges with the Goblin Empire? Take them back to the Keep, just to be hung and buried in a mass grave? The implication of having noncombatants also just makes the whole module a lot more sinister-feeling. If the Caves of Chaos are a staging ground for goblins, orcs, and chaos cultists to make raids into human territory, then a bunch of adventurers going into them and pushing them back (while pocketing their treasure) makes perfect sense. If the Caves of Chaos are just a goblin village on the edge of goblin territory, then going into the caves and killing everyone just becomes home invasion. I can almost justify noncombatant orcs as just being the support staff to the orc soldiers, but if there are kids running around I’ve got nothing. I don’t even think there are any children listed anywhere in the Keep. The more I think about it, the less I can justify having noncombatant monsters in the game--I just can’t think of anything fun to do with them, and I can think of a lot of ways they’d derail the game in deeply unfun ways. I’d probably just cut them out wholesale and maybe replace them with half their number in warriors. I’m trying to come into this module with a “let’s try it RAW” attitude, but this is just too much. On that bad tasting note, next up is the Caves of Chaos themselves. I’m honestly unsure how long it’ll take to get through them; although there are 64 rooms in the dungeon, they follow some extremely clear and regular patterns. I guess we’ll see next time.
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Aug 9, 2020 05:52
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WOW. Just, holy-loving-poo poo-what WOW.
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Aug 9, 2020 06:08
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Ithle01 posted:WOW. Just, holy-loving-poo poo-what WOW. Yeah. I had heard people call him racist recently for the "nits make lice" quote, but didn't fully appreciate just how explicitly, truly, undeniably real-world racist his statement was until writing this up. Like, it's not even a "some fantasy races are just irredeemably evil" statement you could bad-faith claim has nothing to do with the real world--he's just straight up saying that the reason it's lawful good to kill orc prisoners and children in D&D is because it was real life lawful good to massacre native american women and children. Honestly, I'm still digesting just how hosed up it was. It's leaving a real bad taste
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Aug 9, 2020 06:55
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Did the various edition remakes of Keep of the Borderlands...deal with that? I think the Hackmaster version gets rid of the children at any rate. As an unrelated question...what do STORMCAST ENTERNAL do if their enemy surrender? Do they take prisoners and try to..re-educate them? Slavery? Put everyone to death? Conscript them into the eternal army?
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Aug 9, 2020 07:02
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LeSquide posted:Soulsbound made me consider the setting as a place beyond "Games Workshop IP Smashup (TM)" and made me interested in the game. Despite the obvious artificiality of the world from its unfortunate real-world inception, there's obviously been a lot of work done to make it a lived-in place usable for RPGs. Understandable. Stormcast is probably the most Vanilla of the books. They have their appeal, but are not for me. (Though I would not mind playing one in Soulbound.)
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Aug 9, 2020 07:02
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Comstar posted:
Depends on the Stormhost. Most accounts of this are normally them treating the surrendering enemy well. The Knights Excelsior and Celestial Vindicators probably would not accept the surrender. On the Gygax thing, that quote when I first read it soured him for me quite a bit. I still hold a fair amount of respect for him for helping pioneer RPGs and I love his world of greyhawk, but he's not someone that needs to be worshiped. MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 07:13 on Aug 9, 2020 |
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Aug 9, 2020 07:09
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Comstar posted:Did the various edition remakes of Keep of the Borderlands...deal with that? I think the Hackmaster version gets rid of the children at any rate. To be clear, the hosed up quote is from a 2005 Q&A on Dragonsfoot--a full 26 years after B2 was first published--and wasn't directly referring to B2 itself. I am curious how the reprints handled this, as well, though.
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Aug 9, 2020 07:16
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MonsterEnvy posted:Depends on the Stormhost. Most accounts of this are normally them treating the surrendering enemy well. The Knights Excelsior and Celestial Vindicators probably would not accept the surrender. A while back I read Ender's Game. It was a pretty good book not completely to my taste. Even so, Orson Scott Card is still a pretty terrible human being. Andrew Carnegie, Nelson Rockefeller and others were kind of awful people, too. But there's a History Channel series about them titled, "The Men Who Built America." You don't necessarily need to be a good person to be a "Great" person. All this to say, "Thank you, Gary G for helping to create a past-time that I deeply enjoy. Now, kindly take your opinions about Native Americans and genocide and shove them up the rear end of your own rotting corpse."
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Aug 9, 2020 07:43
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I mean if we could remove everything Carnegie or Rockafeller did that'd probably be a net positive on America. "Built America" either means killing natives or killing union members and both of those had nothing but negative effects on present day life.
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Aug 9, 2020 07:56
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Everyone posted:A while back I read Ender's Game. It was a pretty good book not completely to my taste. Even so, Orson Scott Card is still a pretty terrible human being. Similar thoughts to mine yeah.
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Aug 9, 2020 08:14
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So my How to Host a Dungeon (free version) game ran for 18 turns of the Monster + Villainy Ages, with ultimately a resurgent Dwarven Empire establishing itself over the dungeon with a substantial lower class of lizardmen and kobolds, an allied dragon in the depths, and a morlon-powered magma economy providing a flow of tax treasure. There are scattered wild monsters beyond imperial control, from cave wolves infesting the old underground highway's eastern access point to antlings and ooze warring over the ruins of the abandoned Dwarven city from the Age of Civilization, Old SpiteNails. It seems gameable in a number of areas - not necessarily the whole map, though I think a story of a draconic uprising against the Dwarven elite would be a pretty fun one. But descending into the Old City for loot or forgotten Dwarf-tech, fighting cave wolves on the highway, and dealing with the various subject peoples would all be functional, and I could see delving down into these dungeons and finding the remains of the various eras of its history. From the bone-piles in the old city drinking hall, where the first Emperor Waspdog the Pectoral drove out the ogre that had terrorized the nomads and morlons of the region, to the weird magical wreckage left behind by the wizard who serves the Dwarves (and is currently constructing a phylactery using the magic taken from them), the whole thing feels interesting and lived-in.
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Aug 9, 2020 08:18
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OtspIII posted:To be clear, the hosed up quote is from a 2005 Q&A on Dragonsfoot--a full 26 years after B2 was first published--and wasn't directly referring to B2 itself. I am curious how the reprints handled this, as well, though. Oh wow, so he can’t even blame it on the cocaine at that point.
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Aug 9, 2020 08:41
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The sad thing about Invisible Sun is that sometimes it touches on something that could be cool. Like, if you had TRUESPIDERS with the ability to spiderize anything as a defensive ability, they'd fit in perfectly well in a bunch of other, better-written, creepy conspiracy games. Mirrors being "parasite dimensions" could also be interesting. If it wasn't every mirror(because then you'd have a real problem with bodies of water), but perhaps that every mirror had the potential to become one, you could be a gang of Anti Mirror Activists hunting parasite mirrors, diving into their sub-dimensions and vanquishing them, maybe chasing down negaverse mirror clones escaped into the real world, etc. OtspIII posted:To be clear, the hosed up quote is from a 2005 Q&A on Dragonsfoot--a full 26 years after B2 was first published--and wasn't directly referring to B2 itself. I am curious how the reprints handled this, as well, though. I think this is the first time I've ever heard the quote actually sourced.  Also yeah, having non-combatants sometimes makes sense, but usually if that's the case, it's also not going to be a source of berserk warriors hunting everyone nearby. It's going to be a home that the sapients dwelling there will defend if someone fucks with their fields or attacks them. It appeals to my sense of having a functioning, believable universe that sometimes the players encounter farmers, smiths, artisans, homemakers, children, etc. among other species than their own, but you'd have to be a real sociopath to put a bunch of unarmed civilians and children there with the expectation that the players would just casually cut them down and loot their corpses. PurpleXVI fucked around with this message at 09:17 on Aug 9, 2020 |
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Aug 9, 2020 09:13
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Comstar posted:I also really like this review. Thank you for spending the time writing it- it really amplifies and justifies my: warning rant : utter disgust of this setting. I dislike the characters, I dislike the world, I hate what they did the old world and everything in the new one sounds bad, clichéd , bad writing, bad characters, bad plots and no where for players to actually do anything. Why play an adventure when the STORMCAST ETERNAL ARE ETERNALLY ON THE CASE. Though I could see being a force for Chaos because fighting these guys would actually be a challenge because they are both super heroes and seem to have no flaws or interesting personality's. Nothing ever changes but its also more fascist that ever before. The world is both infinite and tiny with no borders, restrictions or limits to spread out and yet the world is so small and monochrome. I don't see it tbh. This seems to be based on pure dislike. To borrow a term from 1984 it seems more like bellyfeel than anything else. I don't disagree with the sentiments necessarily and I would personally prefer to not play Soulbound, but it doesn't seem "fasc" as it were. They aren't empire building, they aren't talking about purity, there is not a huge swathe of anti-intellectualism or a misogynistic steak a mile wide etc. PurpleXVI posted:Mirrors being "parasite dimensions" could also be interesting. If it wasn't every mirror(because then you'd have a real problem with bodies of water), but perhaps that every mirror had the potential to become one, you could be a gang of Anti Mirror Activists hunting parasite mirrors, diving into their sub-dimensions and vanquishing them, maybe chasing down negaverse mirror clones escaped into the real world, etc. There is a place like that in Sunless sea! It's very very cool.
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Aug 9, 2020 09:15
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Josef bugman posted:There is a place like that in Sunless sea! It's very very cool. The writing in Sunless Sea occasionally is, unfortunately it's all attached to Sunless Sea's gameplay.
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Aug 9, 2020 09:18
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Josef bugman posted:
Missing out it's a good game system.
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Aug 9, 2020 09:36
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OtspIII posted:Yeah. Over on RPGnet someone dug up a 1987 book, Role-Playing Mastery. He talked about an adventure idea of his that is a murder mystery in 1920s Los Angeles...where Fu Manchu is instigating a diabolical plot to make it so that "all non-Caucasians rule the globe." It's not something that can have plausible denial, like a single nation like China or something, but explicitly every not-white person getting together to make whites second-class citizens. Really makes the dogwhistling an airhorn. There was also a term used around 2005 in regards to what real-world culture the Flan in Greyhawk were supposed to be: quote:I have had no input in regards to the WoG since 1985, so you will need to direct your comments and questions to wizards. The term "Hamitic" was discredited by the 1960s on account that it was used as a pseudoscientific explanation as to why "advanced structures" existed in Africa: a subgroup of Caucasians living there who weren't 'devolved' like sub-Saharans. A while ago when I first stumbled upon that last quote, I figured it was a case of an old man who never bothered to update his personal vocabulary, and given that the Flan were a prominent group in Greyhawk who also had "non-barbarous" kingdoms, I figured it was a sort of old-timey way to be progressive. But in light of the various other quotes of his, it does not look very good. Libertad! fucked around with this message at 11:10 on Aug 9, 2020 |
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Aug 9, 2020 10:22
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JcDent posted:Chapter 8: Bazaar, pt. 5 i have to say this is one of the dumbest items i've ever seen. why would you attach a massive heavy grinder to your gun? they already had a gun that fires out a spray of scrap and gravel irl, it was called a blunderbuss and you just put the scrap and gravel in the front of it with some gunpowder
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Aug 9, 2020 12:41
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If I'm not mistaken that handle can't even turn all the way around the grinder.
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Aug 9, 2020 13:03
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There's a gun like that in Fallout and I'm gonna guess that will not be the last time this comparison could be drawn.
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Aug 9, 2020 13:06
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Considering the directions Gygax helped 'inspire' RPGs in, I don't think he deserves any respect whatsoever. Considering how much of modern RPG development is hosing off his race-war based slime from the hobby. Not to mention that he clearly never improved. I could understand someone writing something racist as poo poo in the 70s, but when it extends into the 2000s someone clearly never learned better.
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Aug 9, 2020 13:22
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Nessus posted:There's a gun like that in Fallout and I'm gonna guess that will not be the last time this comparison could be drawn.  The Fallout 4 designers at least had the sense to place the crank so it can spin freely.
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Aug 9, 2020 13:32
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Comstar posted:Did the various edition remakes of Keep of the Borderlands...deal with that? I think the Hackmaster version gets rid of the children at any rate. Surrender isn’t really discussed because...wargame, but character-wise it seems like most Stormhosts would accept surrender and treat prisoners decently. The Celestial Vindicators and Knights Excelsior seem like the exceptions here.
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Aug 9, 2020 14:20
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I did get a copy of the 25th anniversary edition of Keep on the Borderlands for my Psych final, and I know in that version, the unarmed women would automatically grab the kids and run off if the PCs come in looking threatening. Not great but less implicit 'you're suppose to kill them all'.
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Aug 9, 2020 15:12
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Age of Sigmar Lore Chat: Stormcast Eternals I Am Spartacus Gavriel Sureheart was, in life, Grub, a slave and child of slaves in thge Khornate stronghold of Ratspike. The main industry there was competitive arena fighting, and by fighting I mean "give a bunch of slaves weapons and compete to kill as many slaves as possible." Grub was a miserable child whose job was to take buckets of blood from the arena, take them to the walls and pour them out through tubes in the fortress's gargoyles, because Ratspike's commander liked the phrase "blood flows like water." He was whipped often, and he often felt his fellow slaves' spirits were broken. However, he spent ten years of his life training, watching and studying the warriors in the arena, practicing with his mop and bucket alongside some of his fellow slaves who seemed stronger of will. When he came of age he was hurled into the arena as fodder, the Khornate overlords not realizing he and his cadre of slaves had true skill. For the week after his debut, he and his fellows killed many Khornate challengers, culminating in Grub spearing Ratspike's kin and leading a slave rebellion that helped many escape the fortress. Grub was not one of them - he and the other leaders of the rebellion were hunted down and executed during the night of the escape. As the axe removed his head, however, Sigmar snatched Grub up and took him to Azyr, Reforging him into Gavriel. His fighting skills remained excellent, with spear and with sword, and he has proven an exceptional Lord-Celestant, leading a full brotherhood of Stormcast to take down tyrants wherever he can find them. Gavriel hates few things more than slavery and oppression, and his memories of his mortal life are strong, so it shouldn't really be surprising that he has found his calling in freeing slaves and ending tyranny.  Vandus Hammerhand is the Lord-Celestant of the Hammers of Sigmar, a legend among the Stormcast. He was the first of them to be Reforged, and his Warrior Chamber was the first to strike at Chaos in Aqshy. He was, in life, Vendell Blackfist, a blacksmith and leader of the Direbrand Tribe, and the skills he learned leading his tribe have been easily repurposed to refining and shaping the traditions of his Stormcast subordinates. Under his veneer of duty and service, however, he hungers for vengeance against the warlord Korghos Khul. In the early Age of Chaos, Vendell and his tribe were conquered, along with most of the Flamescar Plateau, by Khul's Goretide. Had Vendell not taken great efforts to save them from despair, the Direbrand would have been entirely wiped out. Vendell was an old man, but still skilled in battle, and when the Goretide came, he led the Direbrand warriors from his smithy, fighting his way through the Khornate mob to challenge Korghos Khul himself...not that Khul noticed. Instead, Khul just killed his sons with his reality-carving war axe, removing them from the world entirely, and then kicked the poo poo out of Vendell, killing him. In the instant of death, Sigmar seized his soul to be Reforged, proven worthy by his defiance of the Lord of Slaughter. Since then, he has been Vandus Hammerhand, and he has worked hard to put his duty before his anger. His leadershup skills have earned great respect and he is trusted by Sigmar himself, even as he is plagued by visions of his nemesis. Vandus fought alongside Thostos Bladestorm in the recovery of Ghal Maraz from Anvrok. He ahd is Dracoth Calanax are renowned for their immense skill, and until they reached Mount Kronus on that mission, Vandus had never died. Unfortunately, Archaon was waiting for him, and Vandus was cleaved in half for his defiance, his soul damaged by Archaon's hand as it returned to Azyr. Since then, his visions have grown ever stranger, and even Calanax, his greatest friend, is not always calm around him. However, the insights his visions grant him - visions of a strange energy being he calls the Lightning Man - helped him foresee the formation of the Shyish Nadir. His warning to Sigmar kept the Necroquake from being totally devastating - just mostly. Vandus really, really wants to kill Korghos Khul, especially now that Khul's blood moon, the Orb Infernia, is hanging in the sky. However, he sees himself as a Hammer first, and he must do his duty in protecting the Free Peoples and ensuring they are safe before he can pursue his personal revenge. It is not an easy decision for him, but he has made it consistently, again and again, because he believes he must stand as an example to the Stormcast.  Now we're into specific types of Stormcast. Liberators are the most frequent warriors of the Redeemer Conclaves. They are ferocious, heavily armored foot soldiers chosen for their strong sense of justice, and their name comes from their refusal to accept tyranny and oppression. They typically use a warhammer and a tower shield in battle, and their patience is legendary. They form shield walls to endure attack until the enemy gets close, then strike with all their power. A few prefer swords to hammers, especially among the Celestial Vindicators, who often even forgo the shield for another sword. These Liberators are less patient, moving in quickly to attack in a storm of blades. A retinue often also has a veteran wielding a grandblade or greathammer, to take on foes who can absorb more punishment than the rest. The Liberators form the backbone of the Stormcast armies, both for their tenacious defense and their symbolism as those most dedicated to freeing the mortal peoples from slavery. They are rarely drawn from noble or privileged backgrounds, and most of them are ordinary men and women who, in life, took up arms against their oppressors. Now, they continue that fight against Chaos and Death wherever they can. The most famous retinues are always those most dedicated to defense. The Hammers of Sigmar, for example, are renowned for freeing the Emberkin from servitude to the Goretide, while the Hallowed Knights freed thousands of human slaves from the Skaven warlord Twiskskien. The Sequitors form the line for the Sacrosanct Chambers, however. They can channel the storm into their sigmarite weapons, and they strike with the force of thunder. They do not see themselves as true mages - their studies are only just beginning, even if they are more potent than most mortals could hope for. Their armor burns with electrical power, and their weapons glow blue with Azyrite energies. A glow forms around them in battle, building up to coronas of lightning. Their weapons are the key to this - most favor a stormsmite maul and a soulshield, similar in appearance to the arms of the Liberators but able to channel magical energies. They move fluidly from defense to attack by changing which tool is empowered and made to glow by aetheric magic. The soulshield, while energized, can turn aside even ghostly blades and daemonic attacks, while an infused stormsmite maul causes explosions of lightning with each blow. The strongest Sequitors instead wield stormsmite greatmaces, each of which was laid against Ghal Maraz itself for a full night and day, receiving some of its divine power. Their impact is able to tear through nearly anything, burning flesh and chitin to ash.The Sequitors are not intended to engage with mortal foes - their destructive power is intended to be wielded against gheists, daemons and other creatures of ethereal nature. The stormsmite weaponry is more than able to banish these creatures, should they fall in battle. The Judicators serve as the arrows of Sigmar. They form up behind the ranks of the Liberators, firing off thunderous arrows and crossbow bolts. Their weapons are long-ranged and very fast, and more importantly, the Judicators are able to sense the taint of Chaos, and their perceptions are raised to supernatural levels, allowing them to easily pierce lies. The Judicators of the Knights Excelsior saw through the deceptions of the vampiric Lord von Drecht during a parley, turning his ambush on him and forcing him to flee. They are supported by the Castigators of the Sacrosanct Chambers, who fire thunderbolts that detonate against ghostly foes that can bypass the normal armoring of the Stormcast. The enervating claws of undead spirits are some of the more dangerous things to the Stormcast and their souls, per the Sacrosanct Chambers, so a lot of effort has been put to taking such creatures out before they can strike. As they can ignore many normal weapons, the Castigators and their thunderhead greatbows are the answer. They are a mix of science and magic, resembling bulky crossbows of great size, which fire off bolts that are closer to maces. The heads are flasks bound in metal, and within the flasks burns the stormy breath of Stardrakes, created with the aid of those mighty beasts in great rituals. These energetic weapons are then attuned to the Castigators' souls. When fired, they can strike even the immaterial, the flasks shattering and exploding into a storm of charged crystal shards and aetheric energy, able to discorporate even daemons. The Vanguard-Raptors make up the Justicar Conclaves of the Vanguard Chambers. Each is an archer of great skill, peppering the enemy before their mobile allies strike on the wind. Theirs is not the massed archery of the Judicators, but instead support fire, meant to soften the foe and distract them before the hammer strikes. Those that favor rapid firepower and closer range use their hurricane crossbows fire bolts tiped in sigmarite, to better puncture even toughened flesh and hurl the enemy into chaos. For the more patient and stealthy, the longstrike crossbow allows battlefield sniping of key targets, forgoing mass fire for single devastating strikes. Their accuracy is said to come from the influence of the Aetherwing eagles that accompany them, serving as avian scouts and friends. Both the Raptors and their bird allies tend to be solitary beings that live apart from others, often favoring the high mountains of Azyr and avoiding cities. When they do descend from their perches, they don't remain long - the nests of the Aetherwings must always be watched and guarded, as part of the pact made with them. Next time: On thundering wings
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Aug 9, 2020 15:44
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In the “Wizards Three” series in Dragon Magazine, Mordenkainen and Elminster would gather in Ed Greenwood’s house to discuss The Deck of Encounters Set Two Part 31: The Deck of Banshees, Bulettes, and Even More Bugbears 157: The Haunting The PCs are in a town near a ruin that they’ve already “cleared out.” Rumor is that it has “become active” again, and the townsfolk are “having doubts about the prowess and ability of the PCs as adventurers.” What does it mean for the ruin to be “active”? Has anybody seen or heard anything specific? If they go investigate, they find fresh blood on a block of marble, and a grave that wasn’t there the last time. The card tries to dictate that investigating the ruin takes all day and the PCs have to make camp there, but I think you can just leave that choice to the players. Anyway, animals will become uneasy there toward nighttime, and a banshee will manifest around second watch and attack. Instead of dithering around, the card could have spent a few words to tell us why this evil elf woman died here. Maybe give her a name. Banshees are intelligent, you know. I am charmed that the townsfolk expect adventurers to provide some kind of ongoing service plan, and/or are trying to play off the PCs pride to get them to go risk their lives again on the town’s behalf. I’ll keep. 158: Treasure Hoard The PCs wander into a town, like they do. The townsfolk are very eager to tell them about a giant lizard guarding a huge treasure hoard in a cave nearby. They “deliberately omit” that it’s a basilisk to not scare the PCs off, but do admit that other groups of would-be monster slayers have gone and not returned. You jerks, those other groups might have been successful if they’d known what they were dealing with! You’re just lucky there’s no Sense Motive skill in 2nd Edition! Anyway it’s not like it’s going to be secret for long, since the PCs will encounter “remarkably realistic” statues of adventurer types in the winding tunnel before they reach the greater basilisk. The treasure horde comes to 30,000 gp of various coinage (including 2000 highly-portable platinum pieces!), and some generic gems and art objects that you’re going to have to pull out the DMG and roll for. Not sure about this one. It’s incredibly straightforward except for the villagers being assholes. Pass or maybe quest I guess, I’m just not inspired. 159: Deep Dark Caverns The PCs are travelling through a mountain pass and there’s a storm but hey, there’s a cavern that they can make it to to take cover in! How convenient! Siiiiiigh. Okay, what’s in the cave? Goblins? Bears? Close. Bugbears. Eight of them. They’ll ambush the PCs as they come in if they explore deeper into the cave before setting up camp, or attack the PCs at night if they didn’t explore deeper into the caves before setting up camp. Look, this kind of encounter is just… never going to be as cool as when The Hobbit did it. Pass. 160: Dark Raiders While camping, a couple bugbears come and throw spears at the PCs, then retreat. Their goal is to draw the PCs into an ambush - they hop a little ravine where more bugbears are hiding so that if the PCs do the same. Then a couple other bugbears are hidden nearby, so they can surround their foes. Eight bugbears total. They could well slaughter a bunch of low-level PCs, but it’s a “medium” encounter so I’m not too worried. Random attacking humanoids are not the most interesting thing, but at least the tactics aren’t uninteresting. Keep. 161: Search for Food The PCs have found a good place to camp in rough terrain. During the night, the horses get very agitated. They sense two bulettes approaching, although the PCs can’t feel tremors or anything. Oddly, the bulettes go away if the person on watch wakes up the rest of the party - I guess they can feel that there’s too much activity up there. Otherwise the horses get more and more upset until the bulettes come up from under the ground and try to eat them. I appreciate that the bulettes are simply hungry, are aiming for the horses, and will go away once they eat a couple. Keep. Dallbun fucked around with this message at 17:20 on Aug 9, 2020 |
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Aug 9, 2020 15:55
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Robindaybird posted:I did get a copy of the 25th anniversary edition of Keep on the Borderlands for my Psych final, and I know in that version, the unarmed women would automatically grab the kids and run off if the PCs come in looking threatening. ...I'm assuming you got that as a present for completing the final or something, but I'm trying to wrap my head around what kind of Psych final would involve a DnD adventure. (ps never meet your heroes)
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Aug 9, 2020 16:40
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Joe Slowboat posted:So my How to Host a Dungeon (free version) game ran for 18 turns of the Monster + Villainy Ages, with ultimately a resurgent Dwarven Empire establishing itself over the dungeon with a substantial lower class of lizardmen and kobolds, an allied dragon in the depths, and a morlon-powered magma economy providing a flow of tax treasure. There are scattered wild monsters beyond imperial control, from cave wolves infesting the old underground highway's eastern access point to antlings and ooze warring over the ruins of the abandoned Dwarven city from the Age of Civilization, Old SpiteNails. Reading this paragraph it struck me that a good way to do a multiplayer version of this on the forums would be for everyone to start with the same setup from the Civilization age, then go through the Monster & Villainy ages separately and post the after-action reports. It'd be fun to see the way the single seed could diverge into multiple stories.
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Aug 9, 2020 19:13
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 Chapter 3: History This chapter covers the history of the region in excruciating detail. The first section goes over what we covered in the last review and in fact it turns out Interstellar Wars ripped entire passages out of this book and reprinted them word for word. The big difference? That book portrayed the Eighth Interstellar War as a desperate struggle against the greatest fleet the Terran Confederation ever faced and Admiral Albadawi as a cunning raider earning glory by running the greatest commerce raiding campaign in history. Here it’s a curbstomp and Albadawi won every battle he fought. Aside from a few other differences, it’s so close that they lifted biographies out of the sidebars. Whatever. Anyway, for the rest of this review I’ll use the calendar the book uses, which uses the founding of the Third Imperium as year zero; for context, the Interstellar Wars took place around -2200. e: Forgot to mention something important. Many formerly Vilani worlds, especially those in the rimward portions of the Imperium,Saw their populations replaced by Solomani; this was rarely by policy, more a consequence of both the demographic aftermath of the Terran Plagues and cultural differences when it came to having children (Vilani still obeyed the old cultural imperatives that restricted childbirth, Terrans didn't care). By the fall of the Second Imperium, even those worlds still majority Vilani usually had an ethnically Solomani noble class.  Our story picks back up with the collapse of the Second Imperium, an event less political or military and more economic in nature. The economy shrunk so precipitously that maintaining fleets and interstellar states became impossible. The post-collapse era, the Long Night, came early but relatively lightly to the region; the region slipped out of Imperial control almost a century before the formal collapse date of -1776 (when the banks stopped honoring each other), but the last local successor government only disbanded its fleets in -1690, and a major trade organization (the Terran Mercantile Community) lasted through the period. Things bottomed out between -1400 and -1100 when interstellar trade became nearly impossible, but around the end of that period a few small states reemerged: the Dingir League, that Imperial successor reactivating itself; the Easter Concord, probably the largest in the region at maybe half a subsector; the Old Earth Union, reformed from the Terran Mercantile Community; and the Vegan Polity, which was the Vegans. All of these were in former Vilani territory; the worlds rimward remained isolated outside of border wars with each other and tence relations of various flavors with the Aslan and Hivers. Little changed for over 1000 years. The first Imperial scouts arrived in the region around 100 and the government had kicked off its policy of economic absorption by 200; by 600, all four of those states had joined the Imperium either voluntarily or through diplomatic pressure. Efforts to expand rimward, however, hit the twin barriers of Solomani cultures uninterested in the Imperial nobility system and bloody warfare between Solomani and Aslan out spinward; even these efforts came to a screeching halt during a long period of civil wars. Instead of directly absorbing these territories, the central government set up a Solomani Autonomous Region (granted a sphere of territory centered on Terra) ruled by followers of the emergent Solomani Movement that agreed to support Imperial rule but got to do what they want; they expanded and brought plenty new worlds in but also brutalized non-Solomani within their territory. The two cultures diverged further and further.  See, up till about the Civil Wars the Third Imperium had been dominated by a mostly Solomani aristocracy; they’d kept their identity intact across the former Imperium through the Long Night. The Solomani Movement was born from Solomani groups at court. However, as the civil wars died down around 700 Vilani finally made it to power and married into the Imperial family, sidelining Solomani nobles who favored the Movement and leading their ideological cousins in the Region to briefly try to declare independence (the Empress ended up renegotiating their charter as the Solomani Confederation). In the early 900s reports finally started reaching the capital on Solomani atrocities and the Imperial Navy started moving troops into put a stop to them, only to hit Solomani outrage that they’d violated their territorial integrity. In 940 the Imperium revoked their charter but failed to actually dissolve the Confederation; in 990, the two finally went to war. At first the Solomani Rim War went firmly in the Confederation’s favor, with Imperial troops quickly driven out of the region entirely; however, it stopped to consolidate and allowed the Imperium to gather up enough overwhelming force. Imperial fleets smashed through their Solomani equivalents (including a defense organized by their best Albadawi imitator, one Ivan Wolfe) and reached Terra in 1002. The resulting Imperial invasion was so bloody it exhausted the Imperial Army. The Solomani Navy lacked the strength to fight back; the Imperial Army lacked the strength to take further worlds. Both sides signed an armistice later that year, leaving the coreward quarter of the Confederation – and Terra – under effective Imperial control.  Wolfe was elected Secretary-General in 1004, the same year the Imperium chartered the Vegan Polity to serve as a local counterweight to a functionally independent Confederation. He established a new capital (well out of the play area), formed the Home Guard to blunt future invasions, and fostered peaceful relations with the Imperium; he also let factionalism and inter-world conflict rise to unprecedented levels. He left office eight years later after kicking off an era of tense peace between powers that’s lasted over a century: the Imperium treats the Confederation as a legitimate government and allows nonviolent Solomani Party cells to operate within its borders; in return, the Confederation offers those cells no support and discourages terrorism, even working with the Imperial government to foil terrorist attacks. And Solomani terrorism is a thing. Adherents of the Solomani Cause have a long history of launching bombings and assassinations against anyone they dislike in Imperial territory. Right now, though, violent terrorism is in decline; the most prominent terrorist group is something called the Brotherhood of Orion, which seems to do very little except occasionally claim responsibility for attacks and it’s not clear why everyone sees them as such a big threat. While the Solomani Movement remains the most common political ideology in the region, it’s recently come to face a new challenger: Authenticism. Based on a text published by a Solomani anthropology professor near the Imperial core, it advocates adherents identify some culture they’re descended from and adopt its lifestyle as a way of getting in touch with their roots and reaching self-fulfillment. So far so good, not too different from any other cultural revival movement. However, he also advocated a sense of cosmopolitanism and community among these communities. He viewed all cultures as inherently and equally worthy and he fostered a system of sort of competitive assistance; while Authenticists try to show off their connection to their own pasts through traditional clothing, foods, language, or the like, they also view helping Authenticists of other cultures get what they need to do the same as an even better way to score points. Today Authenticism is viewed as a common hobby across the Imperium among people interested in the past. However, in areas with significant Solomani influence, Authenticism is something more political; while Solomani Movement adherents identify with a single shared Solomani identity held above outsiders, Authenticists identify with single portions of their ancestry and view other cultures as equal. Every Solomani who adopts Authenticism robs the Movement of a potential member by breaking their connection to a pan-Solomani identity and discouraging the bigotry the Solomani Party thrives on. While at first Imperial authorities tried to suppress it as a destabilizing influence, these days they actively encourage it as an ideological counterweight within their borders.  And with that we finish the first three chapters and maybe a third of the book. The next chapter, maybe 3/5ths of the book is entirely subsector descriptions… oh god, those subsector descriptions 
Falconier111 fucked around with this message at 20:13 on Aug 9, 2020 |
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Aug 9, 2020 19:41
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I'm keen on Solomani right now because I'm working on Squadron Strike: Traveller Fleetbook 2, which covers the Solomani Rim War, plus some shenanigans with the Aslan trying to pick off territory while both Imperials and Solomani are busy. Fun fact about the timing of the war: the Solomani had to attack when they did, they had technological parity with the Imperium with both side fielding TL14 navies. The Imperium was starting construction on the first wave of TL15 fleet units, and the Solomani had to have a settled defensive position when those arrived in force. They didn't make it, so the Imperial counterattack came from fleets with a technological advantage over Solomani fleets out of position to offer a strong defense. The new Imperial units also had a uniformly higher thrust to go along with an electronic warfare advantage. We need playtesters ! We teach the game online ! No purchase necessary ! https://vtt.mikezekim.com/learn
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Aug 9, 2020 20:52
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Nessus posted:There's a gun like that in Fallout and I'm gonna guess that will not be the last time this comparison could be drawn. i think the one in fallout at least uses the crank to charge a battery, rather than uh grind rocks into powder to make them into worse ammunition?
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Aug 9, 2020 21:25
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juggalo baby coffin posted:i think the one in fallout at least uses the crank to charge a battery, rather than uh grind rocks into powder to make them into worse ammunition? I think there's a genuine disparity between the Mad Max-rear end maniac stuff in early Fallout or, well, Mad Max, and the grim gritty dadfeels realism school of postapocalyptica, and Degenesis definitely seems like it's leaning towards the latter. (This came up in one of the other threads recently!)
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Aug 9, 2020 21:28
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Nessus posted:True, I think there's a gun in Fallout that fires random garbage and there's another gun that you have some kind of a charger for. So this is clearly inspired by that without being exactly like that. I think it's a stylistic thing. The former aim for mood and entertainment over realism; they do (sometimes) care about having a realistic world, but the objective is telling a cool story and creating a cool aesthetic, with Fallout going retrofuturistic and Mad Max going all gonzo. The latter prize realism above fun as they're under the impression that realism is fun and that immersion directly causes enjoyment. But there's a reason it's pretty easy to think of settings that fall into the former category and hard to think of good ones that fall under the latter. If you choose to make something in your story realistic over making it interesting, by definition you've made your story less interesting.
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Aug 9, 2020 22:32
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Chapter 4: Worlds (Ultima and Suleiman Subsectors) Okay. Okay. So. This chapter goes one by one through every subsector in the Solomani Rim, summarizing affairs and each subsector, listing the details of every planet, and describing about half of them, often in depth. Some of these planet descriptions go on for pages. Others…  Yeah, I’m not summarizing that planet in the review. Covering every planet would be a  undertaking, so for the sake of my sanity I set a standard format for each subsector:
Ultima Subsector earned its name for its distance from anything important; it has relatively few garden worlds, sits on no trade routes, and just has nothing much going for it. The Vilani ignored it, the Solomani mostly ignored it, and the Imperium has only just started to try and develop it. The only thing it has is a general disinterest in the Solomani Movement. After all, they did nothing for Ultima. The Duke, Huang Qingguo, is an economist from a few subsectors trailing given the job in the hopes that he might be able to kickstart the economy, but as competent and motivated as he is, he just keeps running into roadblocks. 
The Suleiman Subsector is as prosperous as Ultima is not; the cluster of systems near its center formed an important part of the Easter Concord and they remain close and wealthy. So wealthy, in fact, that they have come under investigation for violating Imperial economic policy. The Duchess, Ariana Zabiyah hault-Karalan, is a political shark who cultivates a friendly, unassuming image; she’s the unofficial leader of the Resistance Houses in the sector and her inability to back down until she’s won has exacerbated the brewing economic controversy. Though it saw intense Terran colonization back in the day, locals had little affection for the Solomani government even at its height and it lacks much influence in the region. 
I’m gonna go ahead and call this. I will say, I like how each subsector has a unique plot hook and some of these worlds have clear plot hooks and others have hooks for shorter visits; it makes a nice variety as far as importance goes, lets GMs make some visits interesting as stopovers and others adventure or campaign settings. Next time, we do the next few subsectors 
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Aug 9, 2020 23:58
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Nessus posted:True, I think there's a gun in Fallout that fires random garbage and there's another gun that you have some kind of a charger for. So this is clearly inspired by that without being exactly like that. it'd be really easy to make the grinder into something less stupid and more fun though. make it a shotgun instead of a handgun, put the grinder in the stock and give it some mechanical benefit. people love scavenging and crafting in post-apoc games, and I know in fallout I have a lot more fun using the junky weapons like the laser musket than I do with the production stuff. like if you could grind up different materials for different benefits to the gun, that would be cool. maybe the standard shot is metal debris and gravel from the floor, and you have an infinite supply of that, but if you grind up rocks or metal or fancier materials you get modifiers to your damage. maybe there's even different teeth you can get to put in the grinder to cut the metal into meaner shapes and make people bleed or suffer penalties from being full of little splinters. its very hard to tell what anything actually does in degenesis, but it seems like the grinder is just another gun with a different type of themeing rather than something interesting. i have had a look at the book myself and the entire thing seems to be arranged with pure contempt for the reader so i really respect JcDent processing it into something comprehensible. degenesis seems like it suffers from having a whole shitload of ideas that it does nothing with. theres really cool poo poo like the palers and a bunch of the backstory, but they're underdeveloped mechanically because they're sharing space with dogshit like the apocalyptics. I don't understand why. if it was focused on the palers you could have a really neat game that was a combo of fallout and paranoia with weird psychic alien fungus stuff to fight.
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Aug 10, 2020 06:25
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