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Terrible Opinions posted:It just seemed like it a very similar character, and might have been an writer going "wait Percival has a wife, but he's also not supposed to have sex. Time to find replace wife for sister." Maybe Percival's just bad at women?
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Nov 14, 2020 04:49
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Ratoslov posted:Maybe Percival's just bad at women? Honestly, a lot of the Percival stories are like that, especially the later ones. The idea was that he was raised alone in the woods by his mother, who was afraid he'd become a knight and get killed, like his father and brothers. So, while he's virtuous and good, he also is naive and has no social skills at all, and that ends up getting him into trouble.
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Nov 14, 2020 05:07
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Epicurius posted:...he's virtuous and good, he also is naive and has no social skills at all, and that ends up getting him into trouble. percival himbo
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Nov 14, 2020 05:14
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TK_Nyarlathotep posted:percival himbo Many knights are himbos
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Nov 14, 2020 05:57
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Most if not all knights lack the emotional intelligence of a true himbo, only reaching the heights of hot dipshit.
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Nov 14, 2020 06:38
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I'm getting Son Goku vibes from him.
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Nov 14, 2020 07:03
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The story of Sir Gareth includes him getting cockblocked. After a bunch of adventures (that start with him washing dishes), he ends up getting engaged to this noblewoman. They then decide to have sex. So this knight shows up while they're in the bedroom together. Gareth kills and throws him out the window, but loses enough blood he passes out. So the next night he's better, and they're in the bedroom, and the knight shows up again. This time, Gareth cuts his head off, but loses enough blood he passes out. Same thing the next night, where Gareth cuts him into little pieces. The fourth night, when the Knight shows up again, Gareth finally starts to realize there's probably something going on here. Turns out the knight was sent by the lady's sister, who used a magic salve to heal the knight each time because she didn't want the lady to lose her virginity before marriage. Gareth and the lady say "Well, you could have just said something." and agree to wait. Gareth then goes on to get a magic ring that lets him change the color of his armor, save 30 grieving widows, and then gets mortally wounded by his brother Sir Gawaine, who didn't recognize him (but fortunately, he had the lady with the salve) You also have Sir Balan and Sir Balin, who are twin brothers who, both in disguise, end up killing each other at the same time, only to realize what they did as they lay dying. So that's sad. There's also Sir Caradoc and his son Sir Caradoc, which I'm not even going to get into right now (There's adultery, farm animals, enchantment, beheading, and a snake that just won't let go of an arm involved)
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Nov 14, 2020 09:01
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Balin’s entire story is “this man is a giant fuckup who is incredibly good at violence and incredibly bad at everything else, especially knowing when not to violence.”
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Nov 14, 2020 11:26
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Mors Rattus posted:Balin’s entire story is “this man is a giant fuckup who is incredibly good at violence and incredibly bad at everything else, especially knowing when not to violence.” Look what else are you going to do when some invisible rear end in a top hat kills the guy you're protecting? And the Lady of the Lake had his sister murdered so of course he had to behead her. Balin knighted properly at every circumstance! The circumstances were just such that knighting did...stuff. A lot of stuff. Bad stuff.
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Nov 14, 2020 15:22
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Epicurius posted:Gareth then goes on to get a magic ring that lets him change the color of his armor The first historical record of a gamer.
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Nov 14, 2020 16:19
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Glamour is the real endgame, after all.
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Nov 14, 2020 17:37
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The Camelot Project posted:Balin's misfortune lasts to his final act, combat with his brother, whom he doesn't recognize. In the battle, both are fatally wounded. Ironically, this battle was fated from the first appearance of Balin in Malory's version of the story, when he proves himself to be "a passynge good man" by removing a sword that a lady has been forced to wear and thus, because he wins a second sword becoming known as The Knight with Two Swords. After achieving this test of virtue, he decides to keep the sword even after being warned that if he does so he will slay the man he loves most in the world and bring about his own destruction. Unwilling to believe this prophecy, he keeps the sword and seals the doom of his brother and himself. Hmm on the one hand, slaying the man I love most, on the other hand TWO SWORDS. Truly a gamer.
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Nov 14, 2020 21:59
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So, basically, here's the story of Sir Caradoc Shortarm (aka, Caradoc the Younger). There's this knight called Caradoc the Elder, the King of Nantes, and he's married to a woman named Ysave. Everything is doing fine until this knight named Eliavres shows up. Eliavres is also an enchanter. So Eliavres and Ysave fall in love with each other. So, to trick Caradoc the Elder, the knight turns a dog, a pig, and a horse, into women, and while Caradoc the Elder is fooling around with them, Eliavres and Ysave have an affair. They have a kid, named Caradoc the Younger. So, then, Caradoc the Younger (Sir Caradoc from now on) becomes part of Arthur's court, and one day, this strange knight shows up (It's Elavres). He says, basically, "I have a deal. Somebody cut off my head and a year later, I'll cut off his head". (This apparently happened all the time back then. The same thig happened to Sir Gawaine). Caradoc agrees, and cuts off Eliavres's head. Since Eliavres is an enchanter, this doesn't kill him...he just sticks his head back on. A year later, Elavres comes back to do the same thing to Caradoc. But then he realizes it's his son, and so he can't do it, and he tells Caradoc that he's his father. Later on, Caradoc and his friend decide that the whole "enchantment and affair" thing wasn't cool. So they tell Caradoc the Elder, who locks Ysave in a tower and makes Eliavres have sex with a dog, a pig, and a horse, and then lock them both up in a tower (The dog, pig, and horse all have kids, one with a dog head, one with a pig head, and one with a horse head, and their names are Guinalot, Tortain, and Lorigal, in case you're curious,) At this point, Eliavres decides he wants revenge on Sir Caradoc, so he casts a spell that just makes this serpent coil around Sir Caradoc's arm. Caradoc can't get it off, no matter what he tries. Caradoc then saves a woman named Guignier and they fall in love. After that, Caradoc and Guignier's brother go to Eliavres and say, "Look, can you do something about the snake?" Eliavres feels guilty about the whole "cursing your son with a a poisonous snake" thing, and tells him how, and Guignier, her brother, and Caradoc kill the snake (it involves Caradoc sitting in vinegar, which is poisonous to snakes, making it unwind and try to wrap around Guignier), but because of the poison, his arm shrivels up. So then Caradoc and Guignier go back to Camelot and get married, but Caradoc is paranoid about the whole adultery situation given his whole family situation, so there's this chastity test involving either this magic drinking horn or a magic cloak, and of all the women of the court, Guignier is the only one to pass it. Arthur is so impressed that the wife of one of his knights actually managed to pass the test, he makes Sir Caradoc an earl.
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Nov 15, 2020 00:20
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Epicurius posted:(The dog, pig, and horse all have kids, one with a dog head, one with a pig head, and one with a horse head, and their names are Guinalot, Tortain, and Lorigal, in case you're curious,) Please tell me they go on adventures!
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Nov 15, 2020 00:49
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Ratoslov posted:Please tell me they go on adventures! There's no evidence they don't! But they're only in one source, the Life of Caradoc/First Continuation of Perceval, so sadly, the adventures of Guinalot, Tortain, and Lorigal are of yet unknown.
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Nov 15, 2020 01:00
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You don't need Mordred to collapse Camelot, it probably would've fallen on it's own due to all the dipshits running around having affairs with everyone's wives and pissing off enchanters. Poor Arthur was basically managing a herd of stupid, randy cats.
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Nov 15, 2020 01:02
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In many ways, Camelot was just chivalry’s version or recording Rumors.
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Nov 15, 2020 01:25
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Tibalt posted:From what I understand, you've got French/Continental versus English/Welsh versions of the Arthurian legends, and then within that they were treated like the way public domain characters are today - sometimes Lancelot is tragic character who loves the wife of the man he's loyal to, sometimes his name is a pun on how much he, you know, loves Arthur's wife. Yeah, the earlier stuff is Welsh and Gaelic and is mostly about the knights going on adventures for Arthur (whom some scholars consider a sort of comic or satirical figure because the knights do everything). The later stuff is French and adds in a lot of the high drama and romance along with characters like Lancelot.
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Nov 15, 2020 01:47
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It’s important to remember all of this is built on seventy intertwined layers of fanfic. Arthuriana is fanfic the whole way down, it’s very hard to do it wrong.
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Nov 15, 2020 02:26
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Terrible Opinions posted:The Imperium being sexist shitheads would be okay, if all the other factions posed an alternative. After all they are the fascist theocracy, you know the bad guys. In theory we have more gender equal tau, but only one lady gets a name and model. The orks are asexual canonically but heavily male coded. Chaos is almost all dudes for no reason at all. Etc etc. That's why I backed this: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/40emperor/azadi-death-front I'd been thinking about doing a Kill Team force for when in-person gaming opens again, and these minis check off several boxes for me. And we've got a 3D printer at work, so hey, cheap army. This is the current state of the art in "what space marines should be like", aka any Astartes should make John Wick look like Gomer Pyle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7hgjuFfn3A And so is this, an audio book used as the basis for a fan video. This person got hired by GW to do official animated series, and it's an adaption of one of the best 40k novels, enjoy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUplioG2DC4&t=40s I've done the basic ground work for a PbtA Deathwatch game because they're so absurdly competent and deadly that a narrative system is required: ... what do you do ? Kill everything How do you do that ? is the basic gameplay cycle.
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Nov 15, 2020 03:52
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Yeah, I have only two quibbles with Astartes, one of which is pure JcDent-Brand Brain Worms, the other is that the Marines in Astartes aren't fancy enough - but that's the creator's fluff for the dudes in the video, they're Chapter No Fancy. Death of Hope goes way the gently caress in the other direction of fancy, even going too far (esp. when it comes to Horus Heresy, when your regular Marines weren't fancy lads), but it the fights there are extremely lacking - none of the finesse, fury, lighting-fast violence of Astartes. Also? Made by a reactionary, though the real in-his-own-words evidence lies in reddit posts I don't care to look up. Also, his sound design sucks.
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Nov 15, 2020 08:27
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There are a couple fancy marines in Astartes, but yeah the guys in the field are all business.
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Nov 15, 2020 08:50
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It turns out Camelot is a silly place.
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Nov 15, 2020 10:31
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Age of Sigmar Lore Chat: Ossiarch Bonereapers We're Huge But Have No Guts The greatest assault forces of the Ossiarchs are immense creatures, twice as tall as the standard Morteks. They are referred to collectively as the War Giants of Ossia, designed without any need to replicate human anatomy and limited only by the tensile strength of reconstructed bone and the needs of their tactical role. While a Mortek Guard superficially resembles a normal human skeleton, the elites of the Bonereapers have no such limitation. The most infamous are the Necropolis Stalkers, considered the ultimate expression of the Mortisan arts. Each ne has four faces on their immense artificial skull, and their duty is to serve as shock troopers. They have four arms, each of which wields one of a dizzying variety of weapons, and unlike most Ossiarchs, they do not favor a solid, implacable and somewhat slow fighting style. Stalkers move with blinding speed, have absolutely zero chill and can most often be found screeching wildly as they leap through the air to attack. Typically, a Necropolis Stalker while wield a spirit blade, usually eight feet in length, in each of their upper arms, designed to cut humans in half in a single blow. Their lower armors typically hold nadirite parrying daggers, though they're only daggers if you're as big as a Stalker. In the hands of a mortal they're similar to bastard sword. For those forged from the souls of warriors that preferred heavier weapons, there ae also dread falchions, which are empowered by enough necrotic energies to cut through stone with only the hissing shriek of...well, essentially a lightsaber powered by ghosts. Each face of a Stalker's skull is imbued with the soul of a potent warrior of the past. The four legendary fighters within each Stalker combine into a four-part gestalt mind, wich each aspect able to assume control of the body as needed. Because each one was chosen from specialized weaponmasters, each one is able to focus on a specific fighting style. The skull rotates to bring the face of the leading aspect at any moment around to face the foe, allowing the Stalker to shift from total defense to total offense in the blink of an eye with no loss of specialized skill. Their skulls, called the Quadrarch Mask, are considered the masterpieces of the bonecrafters. (Bonecrafters require a very specific combination of materials to produce the material from which the Bonerapers are made. They use the bones of birds for lightweight parts that still require some strength, while dense behemoth bone is useful for large constructs. Fish cartilage and the bone of sea mammals are heavily used in the construction of Ossiarch ships and artillery, for their ability to flex. However, the majority of their bone is human. It's the perfect balance of sturdy but easy to get - duardin bone is tougher, but duardin have smaller numbers, and aelf bone is flexible but aelves breed very slowly. Orruk bone is coarse and porous, and also has the problem of spontaneous fungal blooms if not carefully prepared. Human souls are also preferred over others - complex enough to provide a lot of use, spirtiual enough to allow for specialist construction, but malleable and easily carved up.) Anyway, back to the four-souled Stalkers. The first aspect, that of the blade-strike, is selected from the souls of aggressive but very controlled swordsmen, who then get further optimized towards offensive combat and rate of attack. They are designed to fight many lesser foes at once. Their counterpart is the blade-parry aspect, a soul that draws on fencers for their mastery of reaction time, economgy of motion and counterattacks. They are used against more skilled foes, keeping the Stalker going longer. Against armored foes, they use the third aspect, that of precision. The precision aspect is patient and focused, watching the enemy's defenses and opening them up before landing a single deadly blow. The final aspect is the destroyer, built from the souls of berserkers and frenzied killers, drawing on their hatred and lust for murder to commit to full offense without a care for the strength of the foe. When not fighting, the Necropolis Stalkers stand guard over the Necropolises of the Ossiarchs, hunting for infiltrators and spies in fast, small packs. They are very hard to evade and truly enjoy tearing apart those who try. The Immortis Guard stand as the defensive specialists of the Ossiarchs, bodyguards and chargebreakers. They ensure that no mere mortal can get at their Mortisan creators to threaten them or interfere in their sacred duties. They wear tall helms and carry heavy shields as well as having a thick bone exoskelton. They feel no pain, and are more than willing to step into the path of any attack to defend their masters. Their shieldwalls are some of the sturdiest in the realms, and their dread halberds are held braced to impale anyone that would get near them, then toss them aside and scythe into the ranks behind. the original Immortis Guard were created using the souls of the Scions Praetoris, Katakros' personal bodyguards. Each of these mortals was among the tallest and strongest of his vassals in life, and were famous for using their shields not only to defend but to attack, bludgeoning foes and smashing through obstacles. They did this with only one arm, for their other hand held a weapon to impale those sent reeling by their shield bashes. They have become only stronger in death, having been given four arms to fight with rather than two. When they go on the counterattack, they still use thosse same tactics of shield bash and killing impalement, though, and they've withstood the force of even orruks and ogors at their best.  The Mortek Crawler is a siege weapon designed by Orpheon Katakros himself. It's very efficient and is both a machine and an undead construct. It resembles a catapult, but it can do so much more. It's self-powered and driven by the soul-slurry within it, allowing it to reload and fire itself in seconds without need for an artillery team. It walks to war on dozens of bone legs, similar to a centipede. (It's not especially fast, but it needs no horse to pull it.) It can fire on the move without loss of accuracy, as it adjusts itself to its own movements. Its winch is powered by a bone wheel containing a low-ranking Mortisan, who serves both to help provide some of the physical tension required and also serves as a spotter that can call out weak spots or identify command structures for the weapon itself. The Mortisan also decides which ammunition should be loaded and when to fire. Mortek Crawlers primarily use three kinds of ammo, each optimized for a specific kind of enemy. The first kind is the cauldron of torment, a hollow artifact containing souls which were deemed too tormented by pain and madness of war to be useful in animating a Bonereaper. These tortured souls shriek as their cauldrown smashes into the enemy, releasing the ghosts to drive their victims mad with fear. The second is a cursed stele that is inscribed with death hexes, which grow stronger whenever the Crawler is attacked. These huge blocks land with massive force, and on impact their curse is discharged, firing off vengeful black-green flames at anyone nearby. The final kind of ammunition is a culster of magical skulls. These skulls bathe in the energies of the Shyish Nadir, then are shipped out to battle. Each one is so stuffed full of amethyst magic that they glow with a black and smoeky aura even to normal vision. Those struck are subject to massive amounts of necromantic energies, killing them in horrible agony as both body and soul are struck.  And finally, we have the huge, slow and cheery-looking Gothizzar Harvesters. Each one is bilt with many limbs, designed to tear apart infantry formations and collect their bodies for use after battle. They are both resource collectors and linebreakers, though for the Ossiarch command it is the latter use that is usually most prominent. However, because their huge, cavernous rear ribcage is is so full of amethyst energies and raw materials, they also are very useful for Mortisans nearby, and thus are considered exceptionally valuable by the entire command structure, despite their relatively low rank. The Harvesters are disgusting yet efficient in their fighting methods, cutting foes apart with their primary limbs and huge jaws, then using their many subsidiary arms to grab the remains and pass them hand over hand to the rib-basket on their back. They are typically followed everywhere by crows, ravens and other carrion birds that come to feast on the slick gore still left on the bones, and the rearmost arms often haev to shoo the birds away (or, in some cases, grab them and tear them apart to be added to the pile). This back-mounted mass grave is meant to be used after battle at construction nodes and Mortisan strongholds, but in times of need, a Mortisan can just use them fresh off the back. The massive bitey skull of the Harvester can also vomit forth necromantic fireballs formed of the tortured soul-remnants of its victims, and it has a long prehenisle spain that trails behind it. This was intended to gather bodies, but it also can be used as a bludgeoning weapon against foes, smashing them to bits and trying to eat parts of their soul. The real power of the creation, however, lies in its arms. Some are built with rune-inscribed scythes on the ends of their primary arms to better sever soul from body (along with things like arms and heads), while others end in huge spiked clubs, each full of liquid Chamonite so that they properly push the soul out of the victim's bdoy. The End! Up next, pick: Order (Cities of Sigmar, Daughters of Khaine...for now, anyway, Fyreslayers, Idoneth Deepkin, Lumineth Realm-Lords, Seraphon, Sylvaneth) Chaos (Beasts of Chaos, Blades of Khaine, Disciples of Tzeentch, Hedonites of Slaanesh, Maggotkin of Nurgle, Skaven, Slaves to Darkness) Death (Flesh-Eater Courts, Nighthaunt) Destruction (Ogor Mawtribes, Orruk Warclans, Sons of Behemat)
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Nov 15, 2020 17:18
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Disciples of Tzeentch, please.
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Nov 15, 2020 18:48
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I want to see what the Ogres got to in the
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Nov 15, 2020 18:57
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MARIA IN THREE PARTS - Part 4: The Adventure Begins It took us four parts, but we’re finally ready to read the scenario itself. SUMMARY Maria in Three Parts, Page 18 posted:A Blue Line helper (see sidebar) goes missing, and the players must find her. The helper was split into three parts by an artifact, one for each passion, and now some unnatural entities are after her. Worse, her triplets are wreaking havoc at the local hospital. Meanwhile, the demon responsible is on its way to kill a local Blue Line leader. BACKGROUND Maria Menchaca is a washed up beat cop, fired after a questionable shooting involving an agrimancer and his basement full of stone animals. Now she does favors for “Blue Line” - a cabal of police officers aware of the supernatural. (The text never explains what Blue Line’s relationship with the Occult Underworld is - X Files truth seekers exposing conspiracies? Delta Green style assassins covering up unnatural crimes? A protection racket, shaking down occult criminals for magic items? The text says there’s more info in the third book of the UA3 core set, but I’m not digging up my copy to look). Maria was a great source of information on the supernatural, always answering Blue Line’s questions accurately. That’s because she was secretly summoning demons, bribing them to give her knowledge by letting them possess the bodies of men she lured to her house. Her latest trick, the demon Fancy Pants, pulled a fast one on her. It convinced her to try on the Del Rubio Necklace, a magic artifact that split her into three different people, each representing a different facet of her personality. The demon escaped in the chaos, and is now hunting for Detective Renee Jefferson, intent on hurting her to “punish” Maria. There are a few other backstory details that won’t ever come up in play, like the specific argument the Demon used to convince Maria to put the necklace on. PART 1: WHERE’S MARIA Maria in Three Parts, Page 18 posted:Before starting the scenario, ask the players to read aloud or summarize any parts of their characters’ backgrounds that they are willing to share. This helps the players realize and assign the relationships stats between the characters. Whatever, they all have a link to Detective Jefferson in their backstory, and she sends them all the following message: ““Blue Line needs your help. Call me ASAP.” Then the players call her, and she tells them they need to go to Maria’s House and check on her - initiating the adventure. The players arrive at the house at the same time. There are police, fire, etc. The side of the house is blown open by an explosion. Getting into the house requires either coercing the first responders with a roll (like Connect or Status), or using a spell (Serious Demeanor or Stock Wardrobe). Maria is nowhere to be found, but the NPCs will tell the players that three identical women were recovered from the blast scene and taken to the hospital. If the players explore the house, they find two areas of interest
The scenario text says from this point, the players can either go find Maria or Detective Jefferson. If they don’t know what to do, Jefferson calls them and tells them to find Maria and bring her to the police station. They can hear gunshots in the background. Then the line goes dead. The house is a nice little setpiece that shows the GM how to set a scene and gives some examples of how the players can use their skills and magic powers. Reading the rest of the module, the intent is clearly that the players visit the hospital first, then go after Detective Jefferson. However, the gunshots on the phone call seem to encourage the party to split up and tackle both at the same time - the four characters can go in two groups of two. The scenario text is silent on this possibility. 2: WELCOME TO ST. MATTIS HOSPITAL The most likely destination for the players is the hospital. There are three Marias running around inside, all raising hell. Each has a diamond necklace with one diamond and two empty sockets, hinting at what’s going on. As creatures spawned from Maria’s passion, each of the three Marias creates a psychic field that imprints her emotions on everyone around her. The three Marias are Fear, Noble and Rage, mirroring the three Passions player characters have. Chasing each one down is a little mini-encounter that explores a different rules concept. Recombining the Marias is easy - just slap them together and they fuse on their own, in a burst of light that deals a small amount of damage and provokes stress tests from everyone in the radius. They feel a compulsion to merge when they see each other, but since they’re scattered across the hospital, you have to drag them around to make it happen. EMERGENCY ROOM The introductory area to the hospital, where the three Marias were brought. The text suggests some encounters with Fear, Rage or Noble influenced people who interacted with the Marias, but suggests sidelining these if the scenario is already taking too long. The NPCs also have clues about where the Marias went.
THE AUTHORITIES The presence of the Marias provokes the Authorities, who appear in the three areas where the triplets have dispersed to. The Authorities are the universe’s mechanism for removing magickal beings that harm the fabric of reality. They appear in pairs of powerful or important looking people, and attack by stretching their arms out to grab the offending entity. The arms can detach and crawl around on the ground like snakes. If they grab someone, they pull them into an embrace, kiss them, and disappear from reality, taking the target with them. They’re easy to kill, but inevitably respawn. They chase after individual Marias, but leave her alone once the players start recombining her. (There’s a magic spell listed in the appendix that can banish them, but the only way to get it is from Maria AFTER you restore her three parts - at which point the Authorities leave anyway) THE PSYCH WARD The psych ward is a section of the third floor. It appears empty when the players enter, because all the staff and patients are hiding from terrifying hallucinations. Patent records at the nurse’s station show that Fear Maria is in room 309. As they explore the psych ward, the characters all see hallucinations related to their Fears, provoking Level 4 Stress tests. The example given is for Ellen, who sees an injured soldier dying in a place she can’t reach. The text reiterates the rules for failed stress tests: fight, flee or freeze. It reminds the GM that The Warrior identity and the Fulminaturge’s spells can protect players from failed saves. Fear Maria is hiding under the bed in room 309. She wants to merge with the other Marias, but is afraid she’ll hurt someone if she leaves the room. She’s got a 65% chance to Coerce Helplessness, and will use this to convince players she should be left under the bed. Maria herself is pretty hard to coerce, she’s well hardened against everything vs Helplessness, and has a 55% chance to resist attacks to that. I think the players might have to physically drag her out of the room. If the players get Maria out of the room, they’re confronted by The Authorities - dressed as WW1 soldiers this time. They can be DPSed to death, outrun, or locked in a room. ADMINISTRATION As the players enter this area, the PA system informs them of a “code silver” in the billing department. That’s hospital-speak for a violent patient raising hell. The secretary at the front desk is beaten to a pulp. The offices beyond have two dead security guards, who shot each other under Rage Maria’s influence. One of their guns is missing, indicating she’s now armed and dangerous. There’s an accountant hiding under one of the desks, traumatized and hiding. Vince can bring her out of the fugue with Therapy, but this is a trap - she attacks the players if they don’t either show her ID or escort her out of the hospital - both of which alerts Rage Maria that they’re coming. Rage Maria is in Payroll Manager Arturo Reyes’ office. She beat him senseless over the hospitals’ price gouging, but as he comes round, he grows angrier and angrier. The scenario text offers a few options for subduing Rage Maria. Coercion might work, as long as they don’t threaten violence - which automatically provokes a fight. Subduing Maria physically is tricky. The scenario text says she fights back using the security guard’s pistol. I’m not sure how this works mechanically. In order to use a gun, you need an Identity that Provides Firearms Attacks. Maria has one of those on her full character sheet - Beat Cop, giving her a 55% chance to deal between 1 and 55 damage with a gun. This should make her incredibly loving dangerous, except the rules text also says that Rage Maria has “the same stats as the real Maria but the identity [Rage Maria] is the only one she has.” The Rage Maria identity doesn’t Provide Firearms Attacks, just subs for Struggle at 65%. So can she use the gun? I’m throwing this one out to the thread. However the players resolve all that, a pair of Authorities show up on the way out, dressed as local cops. NICU Noble Maria went to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. The place is deserted, because Noble Maria lured all the new mothers and staff and so on into the employee lounge. Noble Maria stands on a plastic chair, giving the crowd an inspiring speech about altruism and overcoming adversity. First she tells all the sick babies and their mothers what a great job they’re doing. If the players wait and listen, she goes into detail about her own scheme to lure men into her basement and let demons possess their bodies. The audience doesn’t seem to notice. You can Coerce Maria down off the chair, physically wrangle her out of there, etc. Same as the others. The catch is, she has the power to turn the crowd against you and start a Riot. Riots are one of Unknown Armies’ answers to “what happens when I violate the Masquerade?” Blowing holes in peoples’ conception of reality makes them angry and violent. In this case the scale is a bit smaller. When Maria sics the crowd on you, there’s a 25% chance they’re too entranced by her speech to do anything, a 25% chance they gently escort you out of the room, and a 50% chance they get violent. If they do attack, she stops them before they kick your character to death. At the end of the encounter, two armed hospital security guards show up. These are real guards, but the pair of Catholic Bishops who come in behind them are Authorities. MARIA MADE WHOLE All three of the encounters can be cheesed if the players have a Maria (or two) already with them - the other Marias abandon their weird behavior and merge willingly (if sadly). The complete Maria is pretty upset about what happened, and tells the players that the demon she summoned (Fancy Pants) is probably on his way to kill Detective Jefferson. The module text gives you two options here.
There’s no guidance for what happens here if you get two parts together, but one part gets killed or zapped away by the Authorities. Presumably two-part Maria goes through the rest of her life without the missing Passion?  Once you get Maria squared away, or if you go straight to find Detective Jefferson instead of going to the hospital, you advance to 3: IT’S HER DAY OFF Renee told the players to bring Maria to the police station, but she’s not there herself. She’s at home, tied up by the demon Fancy Pants, who broke into her house. He doesn’t like police. It’s amusing to him, to torture a cop. The demon is possessing a portly boomer in a Hawaiian shirt. In reality, he’s the vengeful spirit of an anarchist who blew himself up while trying to assassinate President William McKinley. Sounds like an ok guy, if you ask me. As a demon, he’s very good at bargaining with humans. He offers the players all kinds of stuff to leave him alone:
But let’s say the players want to get rid of the demon. GETTING INTO A FIGHT The players can beat up Fancy Pants’ human host to stop him. He basically always goes first, since his Demonic Urge of 65% is higher than all but a couple of the pregens’ skills and identities. He fights by injecting entropy into the combat, causing other participants to screw up and hurt each other when they try to get him. There’s no description of how to get him out of the possessed body - whether he leaves if he’s beaten unconscious, whether the only way to banish him is to kill the guy, or if there’s some kind of ritual that needs to be performed on the unconscious host to send him home. Speaking of rituals, there’s also RITUAL MAGIC If the players learned the ritual to summon The Authorities from Maria, they can do so here. The Authorities will join the fight on the side of the player characters, trying to grab the demon (and his human host) and remove both from existence. It doesn’t say so in the rules text, but Ellen’s .45 Caliber Exorcism ability would also be really useful here - just blast the demon with a magic bullet and he leaves the old guy’s body. It takes a Significant Charge though, and there’s no indication on the pregen sheets whether Ellen has one preloaded (it takes too long to generate during the course of the scenario). WHAT NEXT Module sez Detective Jefferson is fine, “unless the players wasted too much time in the house”. Does that mean her house, or Maria’s house? The adventure doesn’t hold the players to a strict timetable anywhere else - the Authorities don’t show up to grab the Marias until after the players show up. This is the one case where you’re encouraged to kill an NPC offscreen to punish the players for goldbricking. If the players haven’t been to the hospital yet, Jefferson suggests they go there. The book doesn’t say she accompanies them, but it would be cool if she did, in the same way Maria can help the players if they pick her up first. 4: ALL’S WELL THAT (MOSTLY) ENDS WELL The text provides outcomes for a variety of end-states.
Once you have all that stuff out of the way, you also get to do CHARACTER IMPROVEMENT Every Identity that a player rolled and failed during the game session improves by D10 percent. And that's it. That's Maria in Three Parts.  CLOSING THOUGHTS Strangely, Maria in Three Parts was never released for free as a PDF. You can pick up the physical book for a song at any game store that does Free RPG Day (unless they threw their pile out), but the digital version will run you five USD. I don't think it was a successful product either way - I've never talked to anyone else who's read it. I’m interested to hear what people with more UA3 experience think of it. I’ve only played a few sessions of the full game. There are a lot more flaws here than I remember - both in the scenario, and in the module’s utility at teaching Unknown Armies. The pregens are unfinished, the rules aren’t consistent, and the sidebars constantly reference the corebooks for explanation. As though someone who just picked up the free RPG day module at a game store would have access to them. And yet, I still recommend Maria in Three Parts as an introduction to Unknown Armies 3E. It captures what the game is really about - lovely people with creepy powers doing gross favors for weird strangers in an occult underworld where nothing as it seems. It has fun characters with enough flavor to hold the players' attention, and just enough detail to show the group what kind of world they're supposed to create if they ever go on to the full game.
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Nov 15, 2020 19:35
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It's easier to play through than Bill in Three Parts was, at least.
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Nov 15, 2020 20:09
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Mors Rattus posted:
Cities of Sigmar Or Sons of Behemat
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Nov 16, 2020 01:19
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I second Cities of Sigmar, we've had far too many Proper Nouns and it would be nice to get back to some relative sanity.
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Nov 16, 2020 02:29
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The Smoking Ruin Part 1: Introduction The Smoking Ruin & Other Stories is an adventure book and supplement for Chaosium’s Runequest Glorantha system [AKA Runequest 4th Edition], which Wrestlepig did a Fatal & Friends for here. It was released in December 2019, a little over a year after the tragic death of series creator Greg Stafford, and along with the upcoming Cult Compendium will likely be his last writing credit ever. Clocking in at around 200 pages, the book is divided into six sections. Two of these sections are dedicated to setting details and history; three of them are lengthy, multi-session adventures; and one is basically a random encounter table. I bought the book soon after release because I was on a bit of a Glorantha kick with the intention to just run one or two of the adventures and call it quits there. I wound up running an almost year-long campaign of Runequest based on the events of those adventures, set mostly in the settings presented in the book and with most of the important NPCs. I was really impressed with just how much of the weirdness of the setting they were able to cram into a very small part of it, as well as how much detail we get about the complex histories of the locations we visit. Not all that information is applicable during the actual adventures, but it does mean that even after you’ve run the adventures themselves there are still tons of plot hooks and little details that can be used as a jumping off point for future fun. However, there's also a lot more that I wish they included in it, and it does rub against some of the rough edges of the system (if you’ve read Wrestlepig’s writeup of the core book, well, combat is even more swingy and lethal here). It can take a bit of work for a GM to smooth things out and fill in some gaps, but my overall opinion on the book is very positive. Next: The history of The South Wilds. You know, the part of Glorantha with The Actual Dragon Pass in it? Where the gods made the Great Compromise? Wait, how have we not had a book on this place before? Nanomashoes fucked around with this message at 03:28 on Nov 16, 2020 |
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Nov 16, 2020 02:36
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The Smoking Ruin Part 2: The South Wilds The first section of the book gives a rough outline of the history and mythology of The South Wilds, the name for the area encompassing roughly Northern Beast Valley, Southern Tarsh, and the Southeastern Grazelands, with Dragon Pass sitting roughly in the center of it. Keep in mind that when I’m saying Dragon Pass I’m not referring to the geographical area of Dragon Pass, which people often use to cover all of Tarsh, Sartar, and the Grazelands. No, I mean the physical Pass itself, the little trail that winds its way over the backbone of the dragon Sh’Harkazeel, who is often thought to be a mountain range. Well, he is a mountain range, but he’s also a dragon. Dragons are weird like that. The south side of the mountains is decently forested, but the northern side is mostly just hills, grass, and scrubland, where the Grazelanders go to Graze their horses. They call it the Grazelands. Anyways, the most common and notable animals are bison, deer, wild horses, cougars, and eagles. Back during the dawn-- or if you’re one of those Grazelanders, back during the Glorious 100,000 year reign of Emperor Murharzarm-- the South Wilds were the center of Ernaldela, the most beloved land of the Earth Goddess Ernalda. Known as the Dragon’s Nest, they were watched over by the great mountain goddess Kero Fin. Kero Fin is Orlanth’s mother and also his birthplace, and the beginning and end of many of his great adventures. Orlanth’s son Vingkot became the leader of the Orlanthi and the first of their great kings, and the South Wilds became the home of one of Vingkot’s many sons, named Korol Kandoros, who built a palace at the site we now call the Smoking Ruin (although this is little known today), and founded his own Korolite tribe, which survived the Great Darkness under the leadership of King Heort, the second great Orlanthi king. After the Great Darkness was over, the Heortlings joined the World Council of Friends founded by Ezkankekko the Only Old One, son of the troll god of friendship Argan Argar. Rulership of the South Wilds was determined by possession of the Necklace of Uleria, goddess of love and beauty, which was given to whichever mortal could win the love of Kero Fin. The Gbaji wars placed the Wilds under troll rule, but they did little more than levy taxes on the Orlanthi until the Orlanthi befriended the Dragonnewts and founded the Empire of Wyrms Friends. Boy, what a disaster that was. The EWF angered the dragons and in retaliation the dragons killed them all and placed an invisible barrier around the South Wilds that killed any human that tried to cross. For the time being, the land was left to the Elder Races. This part of the history is directly relevant to one of the adventures in the book so we’ll cover it in detail later, but in short: Trolls eat the Elves, then are killed by the Beastmen. The Dragonewts are there and probably behind it all, the Ducks are there but are only behind a tree, to hide. The great Centaur King Ironhoof, son of Orlanth, is born around this time too. Humans eventually figure out ways to defeat the dragon’s barrier and return. In the north, Arim the Pauper leads a group of refugees away from the nascent Lunar Empire and founds the Kingdom of Tarsh. In the south, a one-armed son of Humakt sacrifices his life to end the barrier for good so that the Pure Horse people can enter, and the Grazelanders are born. They form a close alliance with both the Beastmen and the Tarshite dynasty, and get to work enserfing migrants to create a peasant class. The peasants don’t really like this, and eventually a compromise is reached where the Pure Horse people submit themselves to the leadership of the Feathered Horse Queen, who is chosen by the Earth Goddess that the peasants worship. In modern times there’s been a falling out between the Grazelanders and Tarsh, and they’re liking the Kingdom of Sartar to the east more and more. There’s very few permanent settlements in the South Wilds, probably because the two biggest populations are Beastmen, who are nomadic, and the Grazelanders, who are mostly nomadic. The biggest cities around are Duck Point, home of the ducks; Queen’s Post, the seat of the Feathered Horse Queen; and Wintertop Fort, the last Tarshite holdout against the Lunar Empire. All three of these are on the very edges of the South Wilds or even beyond it a little, so the place is very wild and untamed. People traveling there can expect a lot of bandit attacks, wild animal attacks, ancient ruins, old ghosts, draconic bullshit, and dinosaurs. The book then goes on to give each place of interest in the South Wilds a quick blurb. Each is around a paragraph long on average, although some get two and a few only have a single sentence. There is a disappointing lack of detail on most of these places, especially because this is the stuff that a GM really needs to run games set here. For example, the Feyghost Woods have two sentences to their name. Sentence 1: There’s ghosts in these woods, sentence 2: Nobody knows why. I’d really like to know why! They’re a large forest and your party is almost certainly going to have to pass through them at some point. If your players are curious about almost any point named on the map, you are going to have to do a great deal of work as a GM to really fill them out. The blurbs here are only jumping off points, and barely at that.  A view of the South Wilds. Next: The Wild Temple, a place important enough to have an entire chapter rather than a few sentences, and I am grateful. Nanomashoes fucked around with this message at 07:33 on Nov 16, 2020 |
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Nov 16, 2020 03:00
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Glorantha: the only setting were the lore dating back to the creation of the universe is actually important.
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Nov 16, 2020 07:47
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JcDent posted:Glorantha: the only setting were the lore dating back to the creation of the universe is actually important. A great deal of the fun of the Smoking Ruin adventure is untangling the history of the place and figuring out just how many times it changed hands. It's a lot! Managing to do so can get you some really good loot too. We're talking priceless relics from the Dawn, ghost allies, and the undying gratitude of multiple civilizations.
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Nov 16, 2020 08:04
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Age of Sigmar Lore Chat: Cities of Sigmar The Cities of Sigmar, also called the Free Cities, are the mighty forces of mortal life. They are a mix of aelves, duardin, humans and more. These are the hands that build steam tanks, that tame and bind dragons, that go into battle armed with a halberd and a rifle. While they may lack the shining golden glory of the Stormcast, the armed forces of the Free Cities must be ready to fight Chaos tribes, greenskin armies and hordes of undead. They must weather the storms of magical power that plague the Mortal Realms, and they must deal with the ancient and powerful entities that they sometimes disturb in their pursuit of the simple needs of food, water and trade for their residents. Each city is a bastion of hope, a shining symbol of mortal civilization in a dangerous world. Each is defended by an allied Stormkeep that forms the heart of the city, and so they work closely with the Stormcast - but they are not wholly reliant on this alliance, and it would be foolish to consider the City forces weak. We've discussed in the past the process of founding a city, and how it begins with the Stormkeep and the sanctification of the land against Chaos taint, how the mages of the Collegiate Arcane work with the Stormcast to drive out arcane curses, how the Ironweld Arsenal and Dispossessed duardin clans work to build the cities from the ground up. Most of these cities are quite young, but they can still trace their history back to the Age of Myth thanks to the histories kept by the people of Azyrheim, the greatest city in the Realm of Heavens. They wrote about the ancient Jade Kingdoms and their living capital of Thyrassus, of the shining Duardin realm of Elixia in Chamon, and so on. Azyrheim's scholars obviously claimed to be the greatest of them, but at least they wrote all of it down. When the Age of Chaos came, most of those old cities fell, their long rivalries and ambitions stoked by the Dark Gods to make them weak when the hordes of Daemons came for them. Sigmar was forced to retreat to Azyr, and so Azyrheim survived and its numbers swelled with all the refugees Sigmar was able to save, but many more died to the forces of Chaos. At the time, Azyrheim was ruled by a senate that represented the largest factions and ethnic groups within the city, but even this was not safe from the taint of Chaos. Worshippers of the Dark Gods infiltrated the senate and caused a terrible civil war in the Eternal City. Luckily, they failed to seize control of Azyrheim, and in the aftermath, the senate was dissolved entirely and the cultists purged. Sigmar instead appointed a new council of mortals to rule in its place - 244 chosen from the greatest leaders among Azyrheim's peoples. Each of the 244 members of the new Grand Conclave was granted a title and a command. No bias was given by species, and the chosen were not selected for being politicians, but rather to emphasize a diversity of personal strengths. Their authority was granted across geographic, religious, ethnic and species lines in Azyrheim. For example, there were six High Artisans named - four duardin, one human, and one aelf. All six had completely equal privileges granted to command the engineering and construction of Azyrheim, regardless of who they were. All of the original Grand Conclave members understood that Sigmar had given them a chief duty over all: to unify and protect the many peoples of the Eternal City. They decreed that the Conclave must meet regularly, and Sigmar gave them a massive, hammer-shaped table to do so at, beneath a starmetal statue of himself that would serve as attendance in his own stead and allow them to draw on his wisdom. The members of the Grand Conclave are now called the Lords of the Heavenhall, and the building they meet in is the Heavenhall. They always number exactly 244, and on being selected to take up a position on the Conclave, each must swear to put aside all personal agendas and work for the betterment of the entire city. This has formed the model of governance for all of the Cities of Sigmar, founded as most are by Azyrite colonists. The exact number of members on a Grand Conclave varies, but there's always a few positions that are constant. There is always a High Arbiter in charge of the legal and justice systems, always High Artisans tasked with maintaining infrastructure and defensive fortifications, always a Magister to oversee the use and tracking of magic in the city, and always a Master Patriarch or Matriarch - the nominal governor and ruler of the city. It's a highly prestigious position, that last one, but also very difficult. The book doesn't say how new members of a Conclave are chosen; I would assume each city decides themselves how to do it. Anyway, when Sigmar eventually decided to go forth and fight Chaos with his Stormcast, he found that the people of Azyr refused to let him do it alone. They had been training and preparing for this day as much as he had - the Freeguild mercenaries had begun drilling as soon as it became clear that Sigmar was intending to act. The Aelvish Wanderers and the cult of the Ur-Phoenix swore themselves to pursuit of martial mastery in the hopes of reclaiming their old lands. The Dispossessed never stopped tracking their grudges or anticipating the chance to settle the score. They were united in the simple cause of reclaiming the world from the Dark Gods, and when Sigmar went to war, they all went with him. Next time: The Actual Cities
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Nov 16, 2020 18:41
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Unfortunately, it is highly unlike that Steamtank lore will be that they survived the destruction of the Old World, floated through the void, and then landed on the mortal realms long time before Sigmar.
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Nov 16, 2020 21:01
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CroatianAlzheimers posted:I've never played Pendragon. Is it good? *Kramering in* I'm sorry, did someone have Pendragon questions I would be happy to answer Pendragon questions, especially as relates to knights being enormous drama queens because all the kickass Arthuriana we know about today is mostly old Welsh adventure stories bolted on to the poo poo that French troubadours wrote in order to entertain French noble ladies who were paying for entertainment and are apparently the medieval equivalent of, like, the Supernatural fandom today
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Nov 16, 2020 21:46
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JcDent posted:Unfortunately, it is highly unlike that Steamtank lore will be that they survived the destruction of the Old World, floated through the void, and then landed on the mortal realms long time before Sigmar. Cities of Sigmar funny enough lets you play an all Steamtank army.
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Nov 16, 2020 22:04
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I'm on IRL year 3 of the Great Pendragon Campaign. Kill me.
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Nov 16, 2020 22:19
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tokenbrownguy posted:I'm on IRL year 3 of the Great Pendragon Campaign. Kill me. Wow, living the dream! You got past the nuckelavee!
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Nov 16, 2020 22:24
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