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PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!
So wait, just to be sure, in Thoughts of Darkness the big bad is The High Master and Lyssa is the architect of the whole mess... and by the time the party arrives to the fight, he's already been psychically melted down by the Elder Brain and no longer exists, and shje just... doesn't really show up? This is loving stupid.

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By popular demand
Jul 17, 2007

IT *BZZT* WASP ME--
IT WASP ME ALL *BZZT* ALONG!


Please shut up about sausage condiments until Hot Dog: The Condimenting gets reviewed ktnx.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

Everyone posted:

Isn't the whole point of all those different strongly favored condiments to destroy the taste because hot dogs are pretty much made from the gross/garbage meats?

"Hey Steve, what should I do with all these pig anuses?"

"Just stick 'em in the hot dog maker. With all the crap people slather on those things nobody'll even notice."

This is why you should be eating certified kosher hot dogs, which have strict cleanliness regulations to meet to get the cert.

Falconier111
Jul 18, 2012

S T A R M E T A L C A S T E

By popular demand posted:

Please shut up about sausage condiments until Hot Dog: The Condimenting gets reviewed ktnx.

Big Mad Drongo
Nov 10, 2006

mellonbread posted:

Nice to know New Yorkers aren't the only people who take widely available dishes and try to recast them as some exotic local specialty, then violently object to others enjoying them the "wrong way"

If you don't do this, can you truly say you love your hometown?

90s Cringe Rock posted:

Hey, I learned about the exciting Chicago-Greek dish of "literally just a slab of halloumi or something, fried, then doused in booze and set on fire" from this post and it sounds amazing. The red hot cheese is nothing new, but setting it on fire (and dousing the flames with lemon apparently?) is a nice gimmick addition than I am excited to try as an excuse to cook more halloumi and similar cheeses.

This is the one upside of regional food bragging, if it weren't for my friends in New Haven talking up clam pizza I would have never tried it, and it turned out clam pizza is actually really good!

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.

Catching up, but this guy sounds like Waluigi, and I can only consider that making it all the better

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

That’s Skragrott, btw.

SkeletonHero
Sep 7, 2010

Skeleton War 2020

By popular demand posted:

Please shut up about sausage condiments until Hot Dog: The Condimenting gets reviewed ktnx.

Any given Doobie's menu item would be a great Discipline name.

Three dots in Doobiest Maximas and five dots in Fries.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Call of Cthlhu 5th Edition

Get me the budget increase or everyone learns why you know Attract Fish

Nowhere is the 80s design of Call of Cthulhu more apparent than in the magic system. Magic in CoC is goddamn weird. It's thematically really important; there's a whole section about how magic is meant to represent the 'true' physics of the universe while what we think of as sane and rational is local. Magic is also set up to take resources and weird rituals, in ways that discourage PCs from truly becoming 'mages'. Any PC can try to use magic, assuming you have a high enough Pow to give you enough MP, but in the hands of PCs, magic seems mostly intended to be a dangerous tool of last resort. You turn to the weird ritual when you have no other options, trying to piece it together out of evil tomes and then light all the candles in the right order as something horrible tries to bust through your wards before you can banish it back to whatever hell it crawled out of.

Magic is also clearly meant to be a set of weird and scary powers for enemies. There's a bunch of crazy and evil spells that let enemy sorcerers do things like eat people to maintain their youth, or replace their skin with magic armor, or pull out their own organs and then transplant them into another person to control both bodies. With enough ominous figures chanting on the Devil's Reef, you have the power to summon a wave that will sink a coast guard cutter and send the players aboard it scrambling. Most magic takes rituals and preparation; there's no 'throw a fireball' type stuff outside of a few spells of attack, which are mostly more useful in enemy hands than PC ones. This is because most magic like that will match current MP against current MP on the 'resistance table'. The resistance table is a simple way of saying 'at equal numbers, 50-50 odds, for every 1 point difference, 45-55, 40-60, etc'. And that happens after spending points to cast. So if I was Pow 16 and my opponent, the evil sorcerer Raymond Burrows, was Pow 21 (evil sorcerers often have 'unseemly' Pow stats), I'd start out with 16 MP and he'd have 21. So my base chance to pester him with something that matches MP on resistance would be 25%. Now I have to spend the MP to cast my spell before I make that check. If it costs 5 or more, Lord Burrows simply gets to laugh at my pathetic sendings. But if he wants to gently caress with me he's got way better odds.

Add in that casting spells costs Sanity, and you have another reason the San 0 and extremely evil Lord Burrows is going to try to gently caress with me with magic but I'm in trouble if I try to do the same. He doesn't give a poo poo about the San cost, he's an NPC already. He's probably already 'permanently insane', as becoming a cultist is discouraged for PCs who hit 0 Sanity unless the player suggests it, but certainly possible. So he can't flip out (can't lose 5 Sanity in one cast if you have 0 Sanity, taps head), can't go Indefinitely Insane from using magic, and he's got a 21 Pow so he's got more mojo to play with and resist spells with. Plus, as the book suggests, Sorcerers and evil wizards often get extra Pow from their patrons, or just from being willfully ruthless and evil.

Now, note, PCs can gain Pow, too. You might make a devil's bargain for it (this is a bad idea) like a Sorcerer but this is unlikely. You can get extra Pow at PC creation by trading 10 points of maximum Sanity (from 99, at start) for +1 Pow per 10, since you're weird but extremely sturdy in specific ways. You can also get d3 Pow by successfully using a Pow or MP match spell on an enemy, then rolling over 5xCurrent Pow like an experience check. Or by getting a 01 on a Luck check and then doing the same. As you can see, PCs are unlikely to gain crazy Pow scores.

The truly weird thing about magic is just how many exact, fleshed out spells there are. I get the sense that every adventure that culminated in an extremely specific ritual to destroy some dread horror got added to the spell list, because this is 80s design. You can't just have 'a scene where we do the ritual', it needs fully fleshed out rules in the same mold as all the other spells. And of course, the fiction says the Deep Ones grant people good fishing, so there has to be an Attract Fish spell. Magic doesn't really have a specific design to it, so much as it's a grab bag of every time someone had an evil sorcerer or desperate Investigator do a rite in their game or adventure.

Magic will always, always hurt a PC, though. Magic costs a lot of Sanity. A lot. And remember losing 5 or more on one roll will send you into fits, so that 20 point Shriveling you pulled off by fueling it with an Elder Thing wizard crystal that cost you 10 Sanity to cast? Yeah, you go nuts after you blast the monster. Those numbers also count for purposes of driving you Indefinitely Insane. The spellcasting example even shows Harvey Walters, Perpetual Hero of the Mythos (I love Harv, he's the example character for everything and he's just this sensitive, nerdy, overweight 1920s intellectual who is Doing His Best) going crazy as he summons a magic hell-bat to take him to land from being stuck on a rock in the middle of the north Atlantic (his madness then induces a lifelong love of bats). Because when you're tossing d6s and d8s and d10s of Sanity, you got really good odds of flipping out. Plenty of magic also permanently drains Pow, so use that stuff only when it's an emergency.

The way magic is full of spells with full rules for stuff that your evil enemy sorcerer should probably be doing off screen or simply in order to drive the plot leaves the grimoire feeling pretty overstuffed, though. I don't really need full spellcasting costs and stuff for a serial killer who eats the dead to stay young; that's just the mystery the PCs will be investigating. I don't need to know they get 1 month of life per Siz point of human flesh they eat, etc. That's not really relevant to the adventure that 'occult cannibalistic serial killer' is going to cause. But it's about 50% of the magic chapter. It's detailed, thematically important, and a goddamn mess. Hence calling it the most 80s of all of Call of Cthulhu.

Next Time: The GMing Advice

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

Night10194 posted:

Magic will always, always hurt a PC, though. Magic costs a lot of Sanity. A lot. And remember losing 5 or more on one roll will send you into fits, so that 20 point Shriveling you pulled off by fueling it with an Elder Thing wizard crystal that cost you 10 Sanity to cast? Yeah, you go nuts after you blast the monster.

To be fair, this feels extremely on-point thematically.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Cythereal posted:

To be fair, this feels extremely on-point thematically.

Oh, very. I actually like the 'magic is a thing you use at the culmination of the plot as a last resort if nothing else works' aspect. PCs trying to keep under control as all is madness around them and they hope they got the ritual right while holding off a hell monster is a cool as hell final setpiece for an adventure and fits the tone perfectly.

I just need way less 'Attract Fish'.

Xiahou Dun
Jul 16, 2009

We shall dive down through black abysses... and in that lair of the Deep Ones we shall dwell amidst wonder and glory forever.



Night10194 posted:

Oh, very. I actually like the 'magic is a thing you use at the culmination of the plot as a last resort if nothing else works' aspect. PCs trying to keep under control as all is madness around them and they hope they got the ritual right while holding off a hell monster is a cool as hell final setpiece for an adventure and fits the tone perfectly.

I just need way less 'Attract Fish'.

Don't kink shame.

Dallbun
Apr 21, 2010
A higher-level spell slot may be sacrificed in favor of

The Deck of Encounters Set Two Part 49: The Deck of Linear Fighters vs Quadratic Wizards

244: Guild War, Part 1 of 3
This city is “large enough to support a fighters’ guild and a mages’ guild,” and the former hires the PCs to obtain a copy of a rare second-level spell called Quimby’s enchanting gourmet. By any means, they don’t really care. They’ve got their own dual-classed fighter-mages, but their identities are known and the two guilds are feuding, so they still can’t get the spell easily themselves. The PCs will be paid 250 gp each, and training is offered for fighters when they’re ready to gain a level.

Okay, so what heist shenanigans is this card suggesting? Well, the guild just flat-out sells 1st and 2nd-level spells to wizards for 500 gp per spell per level, but that’s not financially profitable. Or they could try to sneak into the library and steal it from the wizard locked case, which at least sounds slightly more entertaining.

Also the wizard guild’s spokesperson is named Nina Flashfire. Good stage name for someone going on the pro fireball competition circuit.

245: Guild War, Part 2 of 3
So the mages’ guild found out about the fighters stealing their poo poo (or illegally filesharing it). They’re not upset at the PCs, and indeed hire them to steal the Sword of Mitnik, a flametongue that hangs over the mantel in the fighters’ dining hall! A flametongue, nice! They’re offered 300 gp or a scroll with a 1st-or 2nd-level spell each, but if I’m a PC, I’m scheming how we can steal the sword, blame it on the wizards, and jet.

If the PCs can submit a detailed plan, the wizards will provide scrolls of invisibility, knock etc. There’s a little bit of details on how the PCs might get to the dining hall, but they’re short and confusing.

246: Guild War, Part 3 of 3
There’s a small park halfway between the mages’ and fighters’ guild, which is where the PCs have been instructed to turn over the sword. (Why… would you do that… out in public… close to the fighters’ guild?) But then ten pissed fighters come out to fight, the five mages fight back, and the PCs are stuck in the middle. They can help either side, if for some reason they care about any of these assholes, and make friends and enemies accordingly.

AD&D tactics question. A fight between ten fighters (8xF5, 2xF8, light crossbows, short swords, and good nonmagical armor, HP 29 or 56) and five mages (3xW5, 2xW9, the ninth-level ones have wands of frost, HP 12 or 28, spells not listed). They start at opposite ends of a park of indeterminate size. Who wins and why is it the spellcasters?

Anyway, I don’t know. There’s potential here, I suppose, if I’m expecting the PCs to be self-interested outsiders. I suppose I can keep. Not sure about this climactic setpiece combat, though - I would hope the fighters would have a better revenge plan than “charge across a park!”


247: Breakout!
The PCs are in a small village with a “powerful retired fighter” for a sheriff. One of the PCs is framed for being in league with an evil church. Forged documents are produced to show them planning murder. Bribery, threats, or legal appeal will not work. “They must help the PC to break out or he’ll be dead by dawn.”

The sheriff and the “alert but not powerful” (F3) guards each have a key. There are six other prisoners: two thieves, a mage, and three fighters, who will be grateful if they’re freed as well.

Why is this happening? No reason is given. I’m not going to run this if I don’t understand the motivation of the key NPC. Pass.


248: Sloshed
A bunch of drunk soldiers try to pick a fight with the PCs. Lots of insults, basically. If a fight does break out, another, more sober patrol of soldiers will join in out of solidarity.

“If weapons are drawn, the soldiers grapple with the PCs. They do not want a bloody fight; they just want to pound some snooty adventurers.” Yes, grappling with the dangerous adventurers with likely-magical weaponry, that’s a great idea. Well, some of them are drunk, I guess.

Reasonable, but uninteresting. I think I’m just not interested in playing it out unless this ties into sone larger theme in the campaign. Pass.

Falconier111
Jul 18, 2012

S T A R M E T A L C A S T E

Xiahou Dun posted:

Don't kink shame.

:nws:https://www.etsy.com/listing/727714933/zixrya-the-sexy-pinup-deep-one-cthulhu:nws:

By popular demand
Jul 17, 2007

IT *BZZT* WASP ME--
IT WASP ME ALL *BZZT* ALONG!


Dallbun posted:

Guild War

I want the players to just rob the two dumb guilds blind, heist movie style.

Fantastic Foreskin
Jan 6, 2013

A golden helix streaked skyward from the Helvault. A thunderous explosion shattered the silver monolith and Avacyn emerged, free from her prison at last.

Xiahou Dun posted:

Don't kink shame.

https://youtu.be/yz2DYaMJ4ss

Big Mad Drongo
Nov 10, 2006

Xiahou Dun posted:

Don't kink shame.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0hNnhBhdMo

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
Warhammer would be a lot better embracing the cartoonishness. It's the best thing about Skaven. I still have an urge to make a IG army that's the Imperium's own GI Joe. (IG Joe, obviously)

Winklebottom
Dec 19, 2007

Ghost Leviathan posted:

Warhammer would be a lot better embracing the cartoonishness. It's the best thing about Skaven. I still have an urge to make a IG army that's the Imperium's own GI Joe. (IG Joe, obviously)

I'd say they have, at least somewhat (in AOS). Gloomspite Gitz are probably the most cartoony thing they've done (and also the best thing they've done in years).

Omnicrom
Aug 3, 2007
Snorlax Afficionado


Speaking of Harvey Walters, the Arkham horror card game just released a starter deck led by him. So you can, if you wanted, use him as your personal investigator in that game. Amusingly, he actually has a pretty good willpower score in the game.

The Arkham horror card game is also I think the only Cthulhu game where magic is depicted gameplay wise is fairly safe and reliable, oddly. There are a lot of spells in AH that have a chance of a negative side effect, and there's a decent theme that Mystics are playing with fire or performing spells that require certain sacrifices, but even the dangerous magic is consistent and but there's a lot of magic and magical objects that you can put in your deck that are completely safe, reliable, and useful.

Of course half of that is this is a cooperative, mechanically rigorous card game. Call of Cthulhu is an RPG with the skill-based character creation system and by that nature it can justify the idea that magic is extremely dangerous and not something you want to do lightly (or ever at all if you can help it), whereas the Arkham horror card game is a game where one of the five factions is "mystic" with the assumed game style of putting down spells and using them to solve problems.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Arkham Horror is also way more about a nun with a sawed off shotgun blowing Yig the Serpent Lord's head off at the last moment to save the universe.

Which is great.

NGDBSS
Dec 30, 2009






Oh, when did they add a nun character?

90s Cringe Rock
Nov 29, 2006
:gay:
Arkham Horror (The Card Game) is about Jenny Barnes Phryne Fisher solving mysteries by being smart, flirty, and carrying a gun. As seen here.

I know there are other investigators, but

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

NGDBSS posted:

Oh, when did they add a nun character?

I don't know, this is just how a friend described it to me ages ago and it stuck in my mind.

I think she may've been in the board game rather than the card game, perhaps.

Ithle01
May 28, 2013

PurpleXVI posted:

So wait, just to be sure, in Thoughts of Darkness the big bad is The High Master and Lyssa is the architect of the whole mess... and by the time the party arrives to the fight, he's already been psychically melted down by the Elder Brain and no longer exists, and shje just... doesn't really show up? This is loving stupid.

The High Master shows up in one fight where he hits you with an Ultrablast that stuns you even on a successful save and then he takes the magical stick he wants and teleports away. Lyssa also appears in that fight, but it's one you're supposed to run away from (literally infinite reinforcements) and she'll let you leave after slapping you around a bit. You fight her a second time in the third room of the labs and she'll probably throw down with gusto there, but she's a vampire so it's fairly likely she mist-forms away if it goes badly for her. Her stats aren't actually that high despite being an elder vampire the PCs are mostly at full power and she's really not up to the challenge of fighting a full party of 15th level characters even with some drow bodyguards (if it weren't for her level drain the drow would be far more dangerous).

That's about it and yes both of them are supposed to be the mastermind's behind this adventure's plot. You have no idea if the plot actually succeeds in the end because you immediately fight the elder brain. Maybe the High Master succeeds? Maybe it doesn't? You have no idea because even with Drassak in the High Master's body and the rod with you the fight is doomed to fail because of how insanely outmatched you are. All the rod does is buy you 1d4+3 rounds of not stabbing yourself before the elder brain cracks the shield it projects like a peanut shell. In any event the elder brain knows of the scheme and doesn't really care, it assumes it'll either squish the High Master or use it to become a vampire-elder brain illithid.

To say that you're adventure is the better one is an understatement. The Illithiad might have some D&D nonsense in it, but it certainly plays the cosmic high fantasy angle very well and probably better than most other adventures that try to do so. This reminds me of a Spelljammer adventure I have in the basement. In that one the PCs discover the existence of the space werewolf empire and go on a quest to destroy a man who has conquered three crystal spheres with an orb full of subjugated gods.

Chernobyl Peace Prize
May 7, 2007

Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

Thoughts of Darkness seems like an adventure written to give high-level AD&D adventurers a Horror Challenge while ignoring that high-level adventure is about leveraging your strengths to succeed at higher and higher stakes and gaming horror is about triage against your own weaknesses. Diablo getting a Darkest Dungeon DLC lookin rear end adventure.

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

Ithle01 posted:

To say that you're adventure is the better one is an understatement. The Illithiad might have some D&D nonsense in it, but it certainly plays the cosmic high fantasy angle very well and probably better than most other adventures that try to do so. This reminds me of a Spelljammer adventure I have in the basement. In that one the PCs discover the existence of the space werewolf empire and go on a quest to destroy a man who has conquered three crystal spheres with an orb full of subjugated gods.

Okay, so, I would strongly request that you review this one, because it sounds interesting.

Falconier111
Jul 18, 2012

S T A R M E T A L C A S T E

Ithle01 posted:

This reminds me of a Spelljammer adventure I have in the basement. In that one the PCs discover the existence of the space werewolf empire and go on a quest to destroy a man who has conquered three crystal spheres with an orb full of subjugated gods.

Holy poo poo, what? That sounds like the archetypal Spelljammer adventure.

By popular demand
Jul 17, 2007

IT *BZZT* WASP ME--
IT WASP ME ALL *BZZT* ALONG!


He'll surprise the party coming back to his house earlier than expected and demanding loudly to know who let the gods out!

Ithle01
May 28, 2013
Sorry, I was wrong, it's twelve spheres and it's less an adventure than a possible campaign setting that had to fit into a single adventure module. The module begins by pointing out that they're trying to crunch something equivalent to the Dragonlance saga into 64 pages. It ends with a massive space battle between the inhabitants of the three aligned spheres (Krynn, Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms) against the werewolf empire. I'll knock something together this weekend.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

Gonna be honest, with that lineup I think I’m on Team Jacob.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Yeah, the woofs can only do good by defeating Standard D&D Campaign Setting Product and introducing them as vassal states to the Spacewoof Empire.

FMguru
Sep 10, 2003

peed on;
sexually

Night10194 posted:

vassal states to the Spacewoof Empire.
Did someone say "Spacewoof Empire"?



Hell yes.

Omnicrom
Aug 3, 2007
Snorlax Afficionado


NGDBSS posted:

Oh, when did they add a nun character?

She was in the base set of the 2e Board Game. They're bringing her over into the card game in October's expansion (along with A student/deep one hybrid, a fisherman/deep one hybrid, James Bond but a woman from the 1920s so more awesome, and a famous stage magician who learned actual magic). Note that said nun can't actually use a sawed off shotgun because she's insufficiently Roguish. So for the record you can be a monster killing Nun with one or more of a Machete, a magical cursed blade, a magical non-cursed blade, a Shotgun, a .45 Thompson, a Flamethrower, or a Yithian Lightning Gun. However you cannot be a monster killing Nun with a Switchblade, Garrote Wire, Different kind of .45 thompson, .41 Deringer, Fancy looking Flintlock, or Sawed Off Shotgun.

Arkham Horror is way Pulpy to its benefit. If you run into The King in Yellow, you absolutely can light him on fire and you better believe that does something. The real challenge is not whether or not you can beat Hastur with a flamethrower because you totally can, the real thing you have to be worrying about is whether you have enough fuel in the tank to do it, and if you don't then thankfully the person playing your priest buddy can provide you with some blessed gasoline the deals bonus damage because that's a card you can play.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

I admit I'd play the hell out of a Mythos RPG that effectively recreated the feel of the Arkham card games. Probably more than I'd play CoC, but then I have a hard time finding the Mythos scary or mysterious at all since it's so familiar after being used over and over again by every nerd thing under the sun and that undermines what CoC is going for pretty hard.

Omnicrom
Aug 3, 2007
Snorlax Afficionado


Night10194 posted:

I admit I'd play the hell out of a Mythos RPG that effectively recreated the feel of the Arkham card games. Probably more than I'd play CoC, but then I have a hard time finding the Mythos scary or mysterious at all since it's so familiar after being used over and over again by every nerd thing under the sun and that undermines what CoC is going for pretty hard.

You're not alone, even in the context of CoC. It's worth pointing out that the best adventures in the core book of fifth (and sixth, that's the book I have) edition Arkham horror have nothing to do with the canonical beasties. The super well known and beloved haunted house scenario may not even have established gribblies showing up at all depending on how you run it.Some of the best and most interesting modules make up entirely new weird monsters with their own tics and quarks and ideas.

Arkham horror the card game is very much a game where you absolutely can win out over the mythos. It's not easy, victory isn't assured, it doesn't come cheap, you'll end up with some damage by the end of it, but you can win. Maybe not forever, maybe not for good, but you absolutely can shoot Nyarlathotep in the tentacle until he runs away and leaves the dreamlands behind.

Edit: Now I'm half tempted to try and write up the Arkham Horror LCG for the thread.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Honestly I'd be really interested. A cooperative card game is an interesting bit of design and very adjacent to RPGs.

Everyone
Sep 6, 2019

by sebmojo

Ithle01 posted:

Thoughts of Darkness, the end
On to the final showdown. With all the NPC missions completed you can go fight the elder brain. .

Or, you know, not.

I did notice something interesting which slightly elevates my opinion of this module (very slightly, but still). On page 47 is the sentence, "If the party refuses to accept Drassack's plan to attack the Lord and the High Master, he reluctantly gives up the quest and agrees to lead the party back to Barovia." He still wants the manual (so the party can still get to loot the treasure in the "Pit Cold Room), but apparently, "gently caress that poo poo. We need to get the hell out of here while we still can" is actually a valid response that pretty well gives every body a kind of happy ending because they're, you know, still alive.

Ithle01
May 28, 2013
In terms of rpgs aren't we just talking about Silent Legions? PCs can definitely go head to head with Mythos monsters and the make-your-own Mythos does a fair job of counteracting the stale canon.

Everyone posted:

Or, you know, not.

I did notice something interesting which slightly elevates my opinion of this module (very slightly, but still). On page 47 is the sentence, "If the party refuses to accept Drassack's plan to attack the Lord and the High Master, he reluctantly gives up the quest and agrees to lead the party back to Barovia." He still wants the manual (so the party can still get to loot the treasure in the "Pit Cold Room), but apparently, "gently caress that poo poo. We need to get the hell out of here while we still can" is actually a valid response that pretty well gives every body a kind of happy ending because they're, you know, still alive.

It does next to nothing to support this and at that point you're still stuck in the heart of Bluetspur. I guess if the DM wants they can just say 'okay wrap it up, adventure over' and move on and I would highly recommend the players do this because that's literally the best ending you can get in this crap module.

Ithle01 fucked around with this message at 22:33 on Aug 26, 2020

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NGDBSS
Dec 30, 2009






Omnicrom posted:

She was in the base set of the 2e Board Game. They're bringing her over into the card game in October's expansion (along with A student/deep one hybrid, a fisherman/deep one hybrid, James Bond but a woman from the 1920s so more awesome, and a famous stage magician who learned actual magic). Note that said nun can't actually use a sawed off shotgun because she's insufficiently Roguish. So for the record you can be a monster killing Nun with one or more of a Machete, a magical cursed blade, a magical non-cursed blade, a Shotgun, a .45 Thompson, a Flamethrower, or a Yithian Lightning Gun. However you cannot be a monster killing Nun with a Switchblade, Garrote Wire, Different kind of .45 thompson, .41 Deringer, Fancy looking Flintlock, or Sawed Off Shotgun.

Arkham Horror is way Pulpy to its benefit. If you run into The King in Yellow, you absolutely can light him on fire and you better believe that does something. The real challenge is not whether or not you can beat Hastur with a flamethrower because you totally can, the real thing you have to be worrying about is whether you have enough fuel in the tank to do it, and if you don't then thankfully the person playing your priest buddy can provide you with some blessed gasoline the deals bonus damage because that's a card you can play.
I looked her up and wow how did I forget Sister Mary. Probably because there are a lot of strange characters to that game and she's comparatively normal. My favorite was the gravedigger, William Yorick, even with his cripplingly low Speed. Did they rebalance Patrice Hathaway to be less overpowered or is she still as nuts as before?

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