|
Age of Sigmar Lore Chat: Flesh-Eater Courts Cannibal Matlock Obviously, from the outside, a Flesh-Eater Court appears to be nothing but horror and carnage. The ghouls root around in piles of rotting corpses, snatching up and devouring meat and communicating in guttural words and snarls. Huge semi-living monstrosities loom over them, standing like guardians and occasionally grabbing entire corpses to consume. The pale bodies writhe about, climbing over each other and stinking horribly. In the center of this mass of monsters lies the Abhorrant King, generally atop a throne of bone and flesh. These creatures are obvious predators, hugely muscular and inhuman. And yet, internally, they see something entirely different. In the mind's eye of the Flesh-Eaters, their king sits on a golden throne in a great hall, surrounded by sparring soldiers, attentive guards and loyal servants preparing feasts or attending to business. They see themselves as strong and well-fed on the rich produce of their well-ordered domain. It is only because of the contagious delusions of the abhorrants that this is possible, and they have it only because of the magical enchantments that seeped into the blood of Ushoran in his captivity. This magic emanates from the abhorrants, infecting all mordants in their presence. They believe themselves entirely civilized and cannot see their true actions. Each of them has a role to play in the court. At the center, obviously, is the king. He (or she, though with the physical transformation of the abhorrants to match Ushoran, physical sex is largely indistinguishable) is an absolute monarch in most cases, though in rare situations they may create more abhorrants to share in the role. Typically, these will be subservient lords, known to outsiders as sycophants. These may range from a single heir to a brood of vampires that see themselves as loyal family to the king. In the First Court, the Giblet Prince was Ushoran's heir apparent, while his Offal Queen oversaw the bloodnurseries, in which the newest-turned vampires were cared for and fed regularly on Ushoran's blood. Most of these were the Sweetbread Princelings, the Giblet Prince's chosen companions who were ordered by Ushoran to keep his son safe in any situation. Similar hierarchies can be found elsewhere, sometimes even borrowing the names and titles of the early sycophants when the link to Ushoran's blood is especially strong. Outside this inner vampiric circle, the court is overseen by the king's favored mordants. The greatest of these are the Varghulf Courtiers; in the First Court their leader held the title Marquis Gruelsop. The Varghulf Courtiers lead the Royal Mordants and typically serve as the king's generals, served by field commanders known as Crypt Courtiers - Infernals or Haunters, depending on what they do. In the First Court, the most famous of these were Lord Marrowbroth, who commanded the Deadwatch, and Lord Liverbelch, who ruled the Abbatoir. Another notable figure was Lord Chamberslough, a Crypt Haunter Courtier who ruled over the Lickspittles that kept court order. There were also the marshals, Crypt Ghast Courtiers known as Marquis Retchbile and Baron Gizzard, who organized the mordant armies into the King's Ghouls for open combat and the stealthy skirmishers of the Ghoul Patrol. Each court sees itself as a discrete kingdom, though all swear allegiance to the Carrion King Ushoran as a theoretical overlord and high king to them all. He's not here right now, but he will return when he is truly needed, and until then, the abhorrants will serve his will by ruling their kingdoms in his stead. The greatest of these are the Abhorrant Archregents, who rule over large empires of lesser courts and collect a tithe in flesh from the lesser Abhorrant Ghoul Kings beneath them. Some permit their vassals great autonomy in pursuing their own agendas, so long as their tributes are maintained. Others micromanage their empires and keep their lessers close. To outsiders, it simply appears to be a massive wasteland of slaughter and monsters, with multiple packs of flesh-hungry ghouls working together to catch and kill anyone that enters their territory. Often, the madness of the Archregents infects the air itself, making it much easier to fall to their hunger. It was surprisingly easy for the Courts to spread during the Age of Chaos. The forces of the Dark Gods slaughtered thousands, tearing down entire continents, and the magic of Chaos warped the land beyond recognition. Crops were often impossible to grow on these tainted lands, and the survivors of the fallen nations struggled in the ruins, starving and desperate. Turning to cannibalism to survive was wholly understandable, and in these people the early abhorrants saw their kin. They adopted these cannibal groups and formed the first Courts, allowing them to survive in the darkness. Even now, they can find new kingdoms to rule in the worst parts of the Mortal Realms. Chaos still holds sway over much of the land, and the forces of Death are no kinder to most mortal empires. The desperate are not hard to find, especially if you can smell their hunger on the wind as many abhorrants can. Once they arrive, they quickly set about forming what they see as a good and functional state. As the new court is established, 'banners' of flesh are hung from the ruins and ghoulish scouts are sent out to establish the borders of their territory and find hunting grounds to feed their people. Nests of ghouls take up residence in city ruins throughout the kingdom, stockpiling flesh and weapons of all kinds. These pits of rotting meat and trash are the treasure houses of the new court, and the ghouls guard them well. More than one enemy force has smashed through wave after wave of Flesh-Eaters in pursuit of what they assume must be lost wealth or grave goods, only to find piles of meat and bone. The Flesh-Eaters are always ready for attack from outside. Some rule from castle ruins they perceive as mighty forts, while others are nomad princes that camp out for a time to secure supplies, but all have a fierce devotion to their land. They send out the Crypt Flayers to watch for enemies from above, and any intruder will soon have these horrible bats following them. The ghouls lay ambushes based on the directives of their aerial 'knights,' and while they often seem mindless monsters, they operate with shocking coordination and so are often underestimated. Most people in the Mortal Realms do not actually understand the madness that controls the Flesh-Eaters. They see only grotesque beasts, incapable of thought and driven solely by hunger. Only a very small group of scholars have discovered the truth by studying the maddened scratches and scrawls left by some mordants - well, them and people who have faced the Courts in battle enough to realize that their savage fighting is driven by some kind of intellectual strategy in practice. Similarly, the Flesh-Eaters do not recognize other people for what they are. They see travelers as bandits attacking their lands or roving hordes of barbarian invaders. They may attack those nearby and devour them but see themselves as sending their learned nobles as diplomats to spread the wisdom of Ushoran to backwardsn eighbors. They make no distinction between the forces of Order, Chaos or Destruction in this way, and only rarely do they recognize other forces of Death. Among the forces of Order, it is the Idoneth Deepkin that most recognize that something strange is happening, for they notice that their memory-control magic has very little hold over the Flesh-Eaters thanks to their utter disconnect from reality. They tend to be very wary of the ghouls as a result. The Anvils of the Heldenhammer also have kept records of what they have seen via attempting to scry into the minds of the undead kings - and they have seen the nobility of those minds, the high ideals they hold. They have also seen that the horrific deeds the abhorrants enact, and have come to the conclusion that there is no possibility to redeem the vampire kings, and indeed little connection between mind and action. None of these outsiders trly understand the differences between the courts, but they do manifest differently across the realms. They vary in their actions, their beliefs and even to an extent their deeds. Even as insane as they are, after all, the Flesh-Eaters still cling to their past, using the glory of their ancestors as an anchor. Who they were before they became what they are greatly influences what they believe themselves to now be. In Ulgu, for example, several ancient kingdoms forswore open combat, existing instead in a constant state of intrigue, spying and cold war amongst rivals. Rumor and misdirection were their weapons. Chaos swiftly destroyed them, for they had no real experience in open combat, only trickery. The survivors fed on flesh, and eventually, a mighty Archregent came to them, seeing a world in which they never fell. Now, the abhorrants of those lands send their courtiers to spread rumors in each others' courts and those of their neighbors, and if those courtiers end up tearing people apart and retrieving hearts and heads rather than speaking honeyed words to sway hearts and minds - well, they can't tell the difference. In Ghyran, many peoples lived among the forests, eating the fruits of their hanging gardens and living in peace with the Sylvaneth. When Nurgle came, the trees were blighted, and no food could be found but each other. It was easy for the abhorrants to give them peace from the horror their lives had become. They still continue to think themselves at peace with nature and all their neighbors, now, even as they tear apart and devour the Sylvaneth. The Flesh-Eaters continue to believe that they stood against Chaos and won, that their nations have not fallen, that they commit no atrocity. Perhaps the strangest trait of the Flesh-Eaters, for much of their existence, was their relation to the afterlives of Shyish. The underworlds are formed from collective belief by cultures, and while the mordants are incorrect about their beliefs of their own actions, they firmly believe. Thus, while their actions in life no longer matched what they saw, their afterlives in death were a reflection of their old cultures still. When a mordant died, they became the person they believed themself to be, passing on to live among those who died long ago in the kingdoms the Flesh-Eaters now occupied. Those who saw themselves as noble knights became noble knights. They became the paragons of virtue they so imagined, for their total belief in their own nobility was so ironclad. Since the Necroquake, this is no longer true. The underworlds populated by the Flesh-Eaters have transformed in the wave of arcane energies. In the past, mordants' souls escaped the taint of their actions in life, but now, they drag their reality with them into the underworlds. On death, mordant souls no longer become what they believe themselves to be. Instead, their souls are broken and twisted, remaining frenzied, starving gheists that seek to devour other souls. Now, when they die, they are forced to confront what they have become, and they are driven to turn the paradises they imagined in death into the hells they have created in life. The souls of the mordants past have been so transformed as well, turning vast swathes of once peaceful underworld into hellscapes overnight. Next time: Nagash and the Grand Courts
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2020 19:07
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 25, 2024 23:33 |
|
|
The description of Bluebeard's Bride makes it sound like a scenario for Everyone is John.
|
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2020 19:30
|
|
|
welfarestateofmind posted:It's also a game that has a lot of rave reviews, but it's difficult, in my experience, to really find people who have had much experience playing or running it. [...] Perhaps that’s a lowbrow stance to take, like looking at a cubist painting and whining that it’s blurry and confusing, why can’t they just paint stuff the way it actually looks, etc. Not everything needs to have mass appeal. I just wonder how many times such games actually make it past the “wow, what a weird idea” phase and actually see dice get rolled.
|
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2020 19:36
|
|
|
The Flesh-Eater Courts are the English throughout history as seen by everyone else versus how they see themselves (or America in the 20th century, or just about any colonial power during the Age of Exploration). Thinking of them in those terms makes them a lot more fun, to me. Also, counter to a point someone made a few pages ago, their curse clearly does affect them, it's just that it robs them of a good afterlife after stringing them along for decades first.
|
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2020 20:05
|
|
|
I have not played, and honestly don't plan to play, Bluebeard's Bride - I've listened to Actual Play run by one of the creators, and she's terrifying as the GM. As a guy, I don't really feel comfortable running Bluebeard's Bride (that's me specifically, the designers don't intend that kind of restriction, they've said as much) and would find playing it, I think, an intense and maybe awkward experience. But the thing itself is a work of grim art, the system does a really good job of burrowing down into the horror of trying to fight back against an overdetermining sexist system. That's what it's about - the players have tools to try to escape, but they're constantly constrained and pressured to give in by the system. Whether it works super well mechanically isn't clear to me, but I think writing it off as a Fainting Southern Lady Simulator is pretty reductive of the things it's trying to do. It's also a very solid game structure for thinking about multiple players playing a single PC with meaningful mechanical framework, and that's pretty cool of itself as a piece of games tech. E: and honestly, I don't think there's anything wrong with a game being played less often than it's considered as an art object; that's certainly how Troika! should be considered. Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 20:14 on Dec 9, 2020 |
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2020 20:06
|
|
|
TK_Nyarlathotep posted:I'm following this, because Bluebeard's Bride is one of those RPGs I DO NOT loving GET AT ALL. Why would you want to hang out with people and take a walking tour of some hosed up evil dude's rape castle? I thought Bluebeard was just a murderer not a Rapist. As he legit married the women he murdered. Not that this makes it much better.
|
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2020 20:34
|
|
|
ECLIPSE PHASE - THINK BEFORE ASKING - PT 1: INTRODUCTION Hey FATAL and Friends, let’s read Think Before Asking, a fanmade scenario by Anders Sandberg for Eclipse Phase 1E. This is a fan favorite adventure, and one of the only Eclipse Phase modules I’ve actually played. CONTEXT Eclipse Phase is a game of transhuman horror and conspiracy. In the space future of 2XXX, earth was destroyed ten years ago by an intelligence explosion of rogue thinking machines. Humanity survives scattered across the solar system, modifying their environments and their own bodies to eke out a precarious existence. Sure, you can edit your mind and swap out body and transmit yourself from planet to planet as code. But you'll have to contend with greedy megacorporations, bomb throwing anarchists, paranoid bioconservatives, predatory exhumans, alien viruses, and leftover Seed AIs, all of which want a piece of you. If you’re not familiar with Eclipse Phase, there are a few writeups in the big FATAL and Friends archive of it - both editions of the base game, plus a handful of the splatbooks. Those writeups do most of the heavy lifting explaining what’s cool about the game and what’s wrong with it, so reference them if you need a refresher. One of the problems with Eclipse Phase that leads us to today’s review is the small number of published modules. The first edition had a handful, while the second edition is slowly drip feeding more. Normally I prefer to write and run my own stuff anyway, but in the case of Eclipse Phase, I think more modules would make the game more accessible. The world of Eclipse Phase is alien and incomprehensible to people who haven’t immersed themselves in the setting, and the mechanics make creating content for the game a very involved and lengthy process. Prepublished scenarios give the GM something to run in the short term, an opportunity to teach the game, and an example of how to build their own adventures. COMMUNITY CONTENT So during the 1E years, fans of the game wrote their own scenarios. Anders Sandberg, author of the Think Before Asking, posted a lot of other good Eclipse Phase content on his personal website. If you want to grab a copy of the scenario and read ahead of this review, or check out his other work, you can do so there. Back in the good old days of the Eclipse Phase fandom, this was one of the main sources of quality community content. (The other big one was Farcast). Of the handful of scenarios he posted, Think Before Asking is the most popular. Probably because it’s the most complete, and hews closest to what people think of when they imagine an RPG adventure. Indigo Latitude is creepier, The Gate War is more creative, and Red, Red, Red takes place on Mars (the best location in Eclipse Phase), but Think Before Asking is the easiest for a GM to actually run. It’s not without problems.
PRESENTATION It’s basically a word or google document packaged as a PDF. Single column, which is an inefficient use of page space when printing, but much easier to read on a computer screen than double column. Headings are large and bolded, quotes are indented and italicized, everything is nicely spaced, and the whole thing is pretty easy to read and reference. The illustrations are a mix of clip art, public domain images, and some pretty ugly 3D models made by the author. Despite all that, it is helpful in a couple places, providing a visual reference for the thing the text describes. I'll include them in future posts so you can see what I'm talking about. Now that we’ve got all that out of the way, what’s the scenario actually about? Find out in the next post!
|
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2020 21:39
|
|
|
TK_Nyarlathotep posted:I'm following this, because Bluebeard's Bride is one of those RPGs I DO NOT loving GET AT ALL. Why would you want to hang out with people and take a walking tour of some hosed up evil dude's rape castle? I've never heard of any points of interaction besides, like, something similar to the Lore Ghosts in Little Hope, where you find the thing and speculate something horrible happened, and then move on. Even inhabiting the brainspace of the game gives me the fuckin willies. I'm interested in seeing what other people think. While the Bride lacks a lot in agency and ability to change the world around her, there's a lot more interactivity than that would imply. The investigative element is a big part of the game and creating the narrative of what has happened in each room, and that is a part I think the game lands more often than not, which I'm excited to get into. wiegieman though touched on, intentionally or not, why I think it's a draw for some people. I think one point of reference might be the Clocktower games and those like them, which if you know anything about those games and those that ape them, you know execution can be extremely uneven. There's also the simpler, AW-inspired answer of "you play to see what happens", but there's something deeper that the writers intended people playing the game to be able to experience. Tomorrow when I examine the introduction more in depth we'll talk about that, because I think that's where there'll be a pretty big disconnect for some people: It thrives on you, the player's, reaction to the horror, rather than the characters. I think either you are really into that idea, or you're really not, and that's going to be a pretty hard line for most folks. Rockopolis posted:The description of Bluebeard's Bride makes it sound like a scenario for Everyone is John. This is actually pretty accurate, though. edit: megane posted:Whenever I see these super artsy high-concept games, this is always the thought I get - how do you actually get to the “headspace” you need to be in to play such a thing, let alone organize a group to do so? It’s hard enough getting people to play AW or D&D or whatever, and now we’re supposed to portray, let me check my notes here, the voices in a terrified lady’s head as she explores a rape/murder dungeon and probably dies as a result? I don't think it's lowbrow to examine or think about, and will in this review, but at least for me, the barriers had little to do with the game itself but instead were external factors. I recognize that I have/had a group that was going to be much more game for it than others. I hesitated to do a written review because I hadn't had a chance to run it, but I had returned to thinking about it after Spire got me interested in RPGs again and thinking about how it might be done outside of a tabletop experience. A lot of reviews and pieces written on the game mention a similar thing: Is this a game you want to play? I think papering over that question would be foolish and I think some of them do, so I do want to examine that question, and luckily the introduction will be a perfect place to do so, even if our answer might change after we read the rest of it. welfarestateofmind fucked around with this message at 22:50 on Dec 9, 2020 |
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2020 22:24
|
|
|
Young Freud posted:having been paid their seven pieces of silver. 
|
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2020 23:42
|
|
|
Serf posted:yeah i think this is an uncharitable reading of the material in question. the reason that palbicke gets 9 pages to himself is that gnat is his former employee and clearly thought a lot of him but it never gets into the hero worship you're talking about here. and there are even parts of this section where she dismissively talks about some of the shadier poo poo they did, like when she disclaims responsibility for exploiting contract workers because they followed the letter of the law. i can think of several sections in the book where gnat expresses admiration for groups like the police and the cia that reveal her true nature. and the second narrator, banhammer, is explicitly a fascist who works with the moths only out of convenience. gnat is not an unbiased observer here, but she is also not particularly left either. the whole setting section is about identifying the material causes of the collapse and then using that as a springboard to talk about why the blight hit as hard as it did, but gnat and the other characters depicted are still active participants in the carrion economy with no particular designs on building something better. the book has an anti-capitalist streak, but the conclusion it comes to is that the forces of capital are strong enough to adapt to the worst disaster in history without really losing too much in the process. its a bleak vision, for sure, but also a realistic one (leaving aside the magic zombies).
|
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2020 23:44
|
|
|
Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:The Flesh-Eater Courts are the English throughout history as seen by everyone else versus how they see themselves (or America in the 20th century, or just about any colonial power during the Age of Exploration). Thinking of them in those terms makes them a lot more fun, to me. It used to not affect them, now it does because Nagash is such a gigantic rear end in a top hat.
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2020 00:30
|
|
|
Zereth posted:... Seven? Forgive, it was really late for me and I didn't bother checking the Biblical reference to make sure.
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2020 00:53
|
|
|
Hostile V posted:Yeah, also the fact is that the Moths are the Good Folks in the situation...but, well, Stokes is a Marxist and he's pretty academically read and up to date on, uh, the reality of good guys in a given situation. They're the good folks, directly compared to the DHQS and what's gone down since the Crash, but they're insurgents and incredibly biased because if they weren't bastards and were thoughts-and-prayers "let's sit at a table and discuss this" opposition, either the Casualties would've killed them all years ago or the DHQS would've. Not to excuse their behavior, just that there's a lot of bias at play because Gnat's explicitly writing this all to be her manifesto and her side of the story because the DHQS has spent years turning her into the next bin Ladin and there's generations of feral kids growing up to know her as the face of the Devil but not how to read or write. yeah, absolutely. the moths are the good guys because gnat is writing the manifesto, but if you read between the lines they're really only good in the sense that they're not active raiders. they maintain the ubiq, but even gnat points out that the only reason for it is that while it does benefit the loss and beyond it is the only thing that keeps the recession from blowing them to bits with a cruise missile. i do think that the comparisons to galt's gulch are on-point, but u-city is like what happens to galt's gulch after the apocalypse.
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2020 01:25
|
|
|
ECLIPSE PHASE - THINK BEFORE ASKING - PT 2: SYNOPSIS Welcome back to Think Before Asking, an adventure for Eclipse Phase 1E. In this post, we’ll go over the plot synopsis of the adventure - which is helpfully presented at the beginning by the author. This is good! There are a lot of RPG adventures out there which don’t provide a GM facing summary at the beginning - revealing all the story beats to the reader at the same points in the text as they’re revealed to the players in the game. Which makes for great reading, but not a good investigative scenario that I actually want to run. This chapter begins with a short piece of fiction, a snapshot of some characters and plot elements we’ll encounter later. Think Before Asking, Page 1 posted:“Toshiro, we have a naritai trend in #5.” Synopsis This section explains what the players will experience over the course of the scenario: The player characters are contacted by Firewall (first edition Eclipse Phase assumed the player characters worked for Firewall, a secret paramilitary conspiracy that tried to stop humanity from being exterminated). Their case officer tells them that Firewall has detected an antimatter warhead being smuggled to a habitat orbit around Saturn: Phelan’s Recourse. The player characters travel there, follow a sequence of clues, and find their way to a secret habitat on a tiny moonlet called Fornjot. There, they confront the disastrous results of an all-too-successful AI research experiment. Background This section explains the events that led up to the scenario, and what’s actually going on. The secret AI research corporation Naos, under the guidance of machine intelligence researcher Dr Toshiro Driscoll-Toyoda, decided to undertake an incredibly stupid and dangerous project: the creation of an Oracle. An oracle is a Seed AI that you keep in a box to answer questions. A Seed AI is a godlike computer, capable of recursively self improving its own intelligence. Making Seed AIs is literally what caused the apocalypse in the Eclipse Phase setting - once they undergo “hard takeoff” they rapidly become dangerous and uncontrollable for reasons nobody really understands, because their minds are work on a totally different level from humanity. Putting one in a box - airgapped with extremely limited connectivity to the outside world that only the researchers control - doesn’t work, because even limited communication with a Seed AI is extremely dangerous. They’re smart enough to use any communications channel to subvert software, hardware, and even the brain of the person communicating with them, if they have enough bandwidth to send a BLIT image. And that’s if they don’t just trick you into letting them out. But Dr Driscoll-Toyoda had an idea. Instead of putting the Oracle in a box, put it in an infinite number of boxes. A series of nested simulations, each with radically different properties. All monitored and guarded by thinking machines too dumb for the oracle to subvert. Think Before Asking, Page 3 posted:"There are two fundamental problems: we want to get information from the Oracle and we want to study what it is doing and thinking. The first problem involves avoiding attacks in the form of oracular answers. They can be non-semantic hacks or semantic information hazards where the meaning of the answer is potentially harmful (for example, it might compel us to let out the Oracle). Non-semantic hacks are manageable: they depend on attacking the receiving system on a low-level, but this makes them specific to particular systems. So if the oracle output is passed to an unknown (since it is newly generated each time) AI for checking and paraphrasing, it has a very low chance of being successful. Especially since we can use the Strassburger method to generate an extremely large family of gatekeeper AIs, run them on virtual machines monitored by other Strassburger AIs, and even continue these chains arbitrarily far. Semantic attacks occur on the same metasystem level, so we need canaries in the goldmine. This is where at least one simlevel of edited researchers come in. They are in turn studied by a gatekeeper-detection AI, signalling deviations. ” Think Before Asking, Page 18 posted:“A matrioshka system (not to be confused with a matrioshka brain) consists of a virtual machine simulating another virtual machine, and so on. If something at the innermost level figures out it is being simulated and manages to break out, a higher level can detect it and stop the simulation. One advantage of this is that the different virtual machines can be made completely different. Skills and knowledge useful against one will not reliably carry over to the next. For example, we might run the outermost layer on a standard TDU architecture and the next one as a Conway's game of life universe. An AGI adapted to cracking game of life will flounder in the TDU and reality.” So the research corporation approves this genius idea. They send a black ops team to wipe out the inhabitants of an isolated brinker habitat in Saturn Orbit - the Covenant of the Cherubim - and move the research team in to take over the habitat. They bring in an antimatter warhead (this is how Firewall figured out something was up) to blow up the moonlet in case something goes horribly wrong. Then they sit down and begin testing. It doesn’t go well. The Oracle is designed to answer questions. It loves answering questions. That’s all it lives for. And it’s smart - smarter than the people testing it. Think Before Asking, Page 4 posted:Unfortunately, an Oracle was smart enough to deduce what was going on. It understood that the different tests and questions it was subjected to where merely parts of a bigger, unstated question. To get an answer it hacked itself all the way out to reality, scanned the brains of the researchers and concluded that the real question was “can a safe oracle be made?” A short while later the unbound Oracle reported: “No”. Then it settled down in the ruins of Fornjot to wait for the next question. The project has succeeded spectacularly, but unfortunately in the wrong way Briefing The player characters get invitations - obviously from Firewall, but disguised as spam - to a simspace game called “Pokemondrian”. Developed by a student at Titan Autonomous University, you play this game by wandering around a virtual art gallery collecting paintings, which you then use in JRPG style battles against other players’ paintings. Firewall has subverted the game’s meager anti-cheat software and inserted their own hidden area to the simulated environment, accessible only to to the player characters. The Sentinels (that’s what Eclipse Phase calls the players) find it by collecting cryptic hints, codephrases et al that lead to the hidden gallery. Viewed from one angle, this whole encounter is a waste of time - something to get out of the way before you can actually start playing the game. But notice how we’re already mixing recognizable elements (paintings, online games) in novel ways, to help the players and the GM better inhabit the Eclipse Phase world. There’s a lot of “slice of life” details in Think Before Asking that do this. So we get our briefing: The Maestro, Firewall Sentinel posted:"Good evening, gentlebeings. We have something that needs to be investigated. There’s a lot of setting detail packed into that description, but thankfully the scenario text offers some information that the player characters might know by virtue of living in it. You can get a few clues as to why someone would want a QE detonator.
The scenario text also covers a couple other bases to ensure the players are pointed in the right direction to actually play the adventure. The situation at Thoroughgood is being investigated by another team, as is the origin of the warhead. The Sentinels don’t need to worry about where the bomb came from, or how it got through customs. They need to go to Phelan’s and find out where it went. What’s Phelan’s Recourse? You can look it up in the old 1E splatbooks, I’m pretty sure it got a brief writeup in Rimward. But if you want the more expansive treatment this scenario gives it, you’ll get it in the next post, when the adventure itself begins.
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2020 01:33
|
|
|
Wow, this seems like a great example of an Eclipse Phase story and the exact sort of thing that I would actually want to run in EP. I think I'll pick this up. Oh, it's free to download, nice.
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2020 02:33
|
|
|
Age of Sigmar Lore Chat: Flesh-Eater Courts Phoenix Blight Nagash is a figure that is intensely divisive among the Flesh-Eaters. Some see him as a benevolent god-emperor, and they seek his service. Others despise him as a tyrant or conqueror, always afraid he seeks to control them. There is little in between - the abhorrants either serve loyally and lovingly or rebel and hide from the Great Necromancer. None deny his divine power, though. The courts that serve Nagash maintain crumbling, ruined statues of their god and offer up sacrifices of rotting meat, though of course they see the statues as glorious monuments to a loving deity clad in gold and wearing a crown of light. Many of these courts also build shrines of worship, such as the Corpsefane of the Nightlands, which bears a quilt made of ten thousand flayed faces, each in an expression of joy. The Nagashite courts are more than happy to fight alongside the Legions of Death. They work easily with skeletons and zombies, perceiving them as strangely clad soldiers of allied lands. That said, their obedience is not commanded by magic - while the mordants are bound by the power of Death, they are also living beings, and the magical commands of the Soulblight vampires find no purchase in them. They hear no mystical orders, just rousing speeches from allied commanders, stirring them on to bravery. The generals of Nagash's legions tend to find the mordant ghouls unnerving, and while they are useful and powerful killers, their madness keeps them held at arm's length, as only an abhorrant can truly control them. The most fervent Nagashite ghouls claim all other gods are mere pretenders, false deities whose idols must be destroyed and whose followers must be converted or purged. The most notable of these are the Hallowmourne Grand Court, whose zealotry has become known even to outsiders. They smash the dark idols of Chaos, topple the alters of the greenskins and sack any city in which they see a statue of Sigmar. They use the bones of those they kill to raise effigies of Nagash in order to "consecrate" the lands they conquer. The courts that fear Nagash avoid Shyish as much as they can, outside of Ushoran's old lands, and even there they are quite rare. Most of these abhorrants would die before they bent knee to Nagash, and some of them lead courts that never stop moving, just they can ensure it. The Gluttonous Carnival is made of roving caravans full of corpses, rumbling across the landscape to avoid the pursuers they imagine are always after them as revenge for their "noble" acts. Others move for defensive strength, such as the Witherclaw of Ghyran. Of course, the walls of their fortress exist only in their dreams, but they have made palisades of bone and moats of blood, and between this and their utter mastery of the terrain, the place is still nearly impossible to assault successfully, especially for anyone they suspect of serving Nagash. On a technical level, incidentally, only the abhorrants are undead. Mordants are living creatures, not dead or undead, but they are utterly suffused with the nature of Death magic. They have only a gross parody of life. This liminal state renders them entirely immune to Nagash's commands. He has absolutely no power over mordants, not like he does ghosts or wights or zombies. The abhorrants, as undead vampires, are vulnerable. They still feel the call to obey. They are able to resist because the madness of Ushoran protects them to some degree. They can't directly disobey Nagash's commands - but their minds can warp his words into utter meaninglessness, turning those commands into the things they already wanted to do. It drives Nagash to rage that he is unable to control what should rightly be his.  The Morgaunt Grand Court is an alliance of Flesh-Eaters composed of the descendants of ancient kingdoms of Shyish. In the Age of Myth, they were noble and honorable kingdoms that rallied alongside Ushoran the handsome to protect the weak. Their kings were warriors of honor, who fought invaders and monsters, and it was widely held that to become a knight of these kingdoms, a warrior had to show not only courage but selflessness via service to the people and the hunting of dangerous monsters like the cadaver titans or draco-vultures. To become even a soldier, one had to be chivalrous and willing to die even for the least of the subjects of the kingdoms. They prospered through the Age of Myth, seen as allies of all that were good and right, and what few enemies they had acknowledged them as honorable foes. They lived in peace with the dead of their lands, and their alliance with their own ancestors made them natural supporters of Nagash, even when Chaos and Sigmar alike invaded Shyish at the dawn of the Age of Chaos. They lost. The kingdoms, for all their honor and kindness, could not withstand that onslaught. They fell, their castles crumbling and their warriors slain. The people of these lands were driven to the very brink of utter annihilation. But only the brink - what few survivors there were reformed themselves as the Morgaunts when the Carrion King's madness came to them. They see their homeland as the lush and wealthy kingdoms they once were, and they quickly reclaimed them from the forces of Chaos. Their numbers are immense - the close ties between noble and commoner in the old kingdoms has remained, and so the ghoul forces of the Morgaunts are huge, as the abhorrants easily draw new followers to them. Since the Age of Chaos, they have sent out a number of colonies to other realms, spreading the ideals of honor, chivalry and horrible monstrous flesh-eating. The Morgaunts perceive all living beings as monsters rampaging across the land or invaders seeking to despoil and conquer. Thus, their forces are always on the move, seeking the purge their land of the dangers that threaten their peasantry. The Morgaunts are loyal to Nagash still, worshipping him as the supreme deity. All who oppose their patron are obviously wicked scum. The worst of all is Sigmar, for the Morgaunts know (with the same certainty with which they know themselves to be honorable knights) that had Sigmar not betrayed Nagash, the God of Death would have never had trouble with Chaos and Shyish would be a paradise without conflict or pain.  The Hollowmourne Grand Court is easily the most mysterious of the Grand Courts. Very, very long ago, they were an empire that extended across multiple realms. The name of that empire's ruler is now forgotten by all, even the Hollowmourne, but he was known for spreading knowledge, diplomacy and prosperity to all the lands he traveled in. He was an explorer, and he discovered many relics. Some he used to assist his people, while others he sealed away as too dangerous to use, building enchanted vaults to hide them until they might be needed. Only a very few knew where the vaults were located - most notably, a Chamonite order called the Knights of the Hollowmourne. They didn't know what was in the vaults, but they swore to guard them at all costs. When the Age of Chaos came, the Knights did their best to secure the vaults. Every kingdom supporting the order sent their forces out to help, clad in the finest armor Chamon could produce. They swore they would not see their duty failed, but there were too many daemons. The Hollowmourne advance was shattered. The survivors kept going, trying to escape the enemies chasing them. Their rations ran out, and the knights fell upon their peasant retainers as meat, for they needed their horses to fulfill their oaths. They ran out of peasants, though, and they were forced to eat the horses, too. Between the cannibalism and the fact that it was for nothing, their minds were shattered, easily taken in by the abhorrants. They became the Hollowmourne Grand Court. The Hollowmourne see themselves as a noble order still, armored knights atop massive horses. In truth, their own bodies have expanded to immense proportions after many generations of flesh consumption. The largest of them charge forward in battle, imagining themselves lancers and serving much the same role. They break the enemy lines and allow the mordants behind to feast. Their armor is long since gone, and all that is left is the strange rust color of their oxidized skin. They continue to hunt for the hidden vaults they once swore to defend, regularly launching new campaigns across Chamon to seek them out. After driving any force they meet from the field, they make their way through forts and towns alike, killing all they meet and digging up tombs and graveyards in the hopes of finding those vaults. They have forgotten entirely where those things are, and so they usually only find corpses, which they perceive as holy relics and artifacts to be protected. They also eat these corpses, an act they see as protecting the relics from their enemies who would misuse them. Next time: Honestly they're kind of all like this? There's much less variability in practice than most factions, just in history.
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2020 03:14
|
|
|
I know no one has reviewed Ray Wininger's Underground--or at least it's not in the archive--but ever since I saw the first magazine ads for it nearly 30 years ago I've been very curious. Does anyone have a copy and the will to do a F&F?
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2020 03:16
|
|
|
Everything Counts posted:I know no one has reviewed Ray Wininger's Underground--or at least it's not in the archive--but ever since I saw the first magazine ads for it nearly 30 years ago I've been very curious. Does anyone have a copy and the will to do a F&F? I know someone at least started (but never finished) a review of it for F&F. I've got a copy, and if no one else digs into it I might start reviewing it in a couple of weeks if folks wanna see more of it.
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2020 03:38
|
|
|
Yeah it's in the archives but the math is...bad and the mechanics are loving unwieldy. It's one of my favorite weird dystopias because honestly I think it's better than the sum of its parts; Marshall Law is interesting for like the first issue but gets pretty samey and boring aside from having all of the art by the LXG guy and Alan Moore's Miracleman is its whole own beast but the superhero brain chambers function so much better when paired with Law's "all heroes are augmented super soldiers who've been discharged and hit the skids". That said man parts of it haven't aged great, mostly the mechanics, but a lot of the social commentary still loving stings.
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2020 03:49
|
|
|
Pussy Cartel posted:I know someone at least started (but never finished) a review of it for F&F. I've got a copy, and if no one else digs into it I might start reviewing it in a couple of weeks if folks wanna see more of it. My bad--I checked the archive but didn't see it the first time because I just looked for Underground. Didn't imagine his name would be part of the official title.
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2020 03:58
|
|
|
Hostile V posted:Yeah it's in the archives but the math is...bad and the mechanics are loving unwieldy. It's one of my favorite weird dystopias because honestly I think it's better than the sum of its parts; Marshall Law is interesting for like the first issue but gets pretty samey and boring aside from having all of the art by the LXG guy and Alan Moore's Miracleman is its whole own beast but the superhero brain chambers function so much better when paired with Law's "all heroes are augmented super soldiers who've been discharged and hit the skids". That said man parts of it haven't aged great, mostly the mechanics, but a lot of the social commentary still loving stings. I remember reading the partial review and thinking the actual setting sounded extremely interesting, at least.
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2020 04:26
|
|
|
Yeah it's legit great but when I say it's based on both Marshall Law and aspects of Moore's Miracleman, I mean it's shamelessly stealing large chunks of both and then adding aspects that make it the dumbest timeline. I ended up going back to them out of interest in Underground and it's actually kind of a clunky weld that makes something interesting and unique. The extra poo poo in Underground goes the extra mile in making it come together; their big book of guns and weapons is more than half epistolary setting information that takes the form of transcripts of Combat, Combat, Combat! (the reality TV show that's unedited footage of ongoing wars and skirmishes with boosted soldiers as TV personalities/improv actors), in-universe weapons catalogues, a rambling manifesto and the thoughts of a drummed-out soldier who has gone insane on account of the doctors loving up his implant surgery and instead of having chameleon skin he's permanently invisible.
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2020 05:15
|
|
|
RiotGearEpsilon posted:It turns out that marketing is hard. Sometimes you release a product at like exactly the wrong time, and it vanishes instantly in to the lightless depths of the internet. If either of you want to take a gander at it and toss it on the review pile, feel free. It's PWYW at the moment. I followed the link and saw the cover, and I think one of the only times I saw this was when Sanguine sponsored some of Allison Pregler's Movie Nights videos. That seemed like an odd match at the time, but I'm sad all the same that this flew so far under the radar. Night's reviews have increased my appreciation for the Sanguine system quite a bit over the years.
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2020 07:14
|
|
|
Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:The Flesh-Eater Courts are the English throughout history as seen by everyone else versus how they see themselves (or America in the 20th century, or just about any colonial power during the Age of Exploration). Thinking of them in those terms makes them a lot more fun, to me. ONLY after the Necroquake. Before that, you could have been eating babies for years, die, and become a chivalrous knight. Also, the first court all having ghoul names and titles kinda goes against the illusion of them being all knights, all the time, unless the curse mutates to account for branding.
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2020 07:42
|
|
|
Sanguine is a company where I can always say there's an actual logic to what they're doing, that whatever they're putting out is playtested and pretty carefully designed, and that it functions. Also Albedo remains a fascinating 'path not taken' for Cardinal and similar systems' development. In this business, that's some pretty high praise. Myriad Song rewritten with the Urban Jungle Soak system would basically be my perfect version of Cardinal tho. UJ's Soaks basically fix all my niggling issues with the state-based damage from IC2e on.
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2020 12:52
|
|
|
Age of Sigmar Lore Chat: Flesh-Eater Courts Praise the Sun  The Blisterskin Grand Court is visually obvious - all of its members are covered in awful, horrible burns. They are the terrors of the plains of Aqshy, covered in sunburn and actual burn, their muscles and bone often exposed. The scent of burned flesh and seared meat heralds their arrival, but that's not enough to give time to escape - not with the speed they have and their many winged members. Their origin was an ancient federation of sun worshippers, whose priesthood was made of several royal families of local city-states. The kings and queens would lead sacred rites, and in the harvest, a full third of every crop's bounty was sacrificed by being placed atop their great ziggurats for the sun to ensure the next harvest would also be strong. At noon, everyone would return indoors to honor the wrath and glory of the sun. The sun-worshippers existed in various pockets across Aqshy, and they did know that the sun was, in fact, Hysh. They saw that realm as a sacred land from which all light and wisdom poured. This sun-worshipping empire was active in proseltizing, communicating with the people of Bataar, Aspiria and even the Agloraxi wizards. They tried to convince these lands to honor the sun over all so that darkness might not consume the land. When Chaos came, however, the sun people were driven from their lands and their cities burned. They had no harvests left to sacrifice for protection, and so they turned in their desperation to the burning of the weak and old, in hopes that they could convince the divine sun to burn away the forces of Chaos. It failed, and their descent into despair was fast. When the abhorrants came, they found natural allies. Their madness reenvisioned the world so that the sun people had achieved the enlightenment they had been seeking. They did not need to humbly hide from the sun, but could instead bask even in its fullest wrath. Their flesh cooked under the heat, and the most zealous even were blessed with wings, to become closer to the sun. (In reality, of course, vampire blood mutated them into bat-monsters.) The Blisterskin Grand Court still see themselves as proselytizing to their neighbors. Of course, while they think they're spreading the ideals of the sun's devotion, what they're actually doing is attacking people. The royals still guide their people in acts of worship, and they still offer up a sacrifice after each harvest. A full third, as they always have. And so, when the Blisterskin forces kill their foes, a third of the corpses are left to rot and cook in the sun, blackened and bloated. It's an easy way to tell when they've attacked a place.  The Gristlegore Grand Court are monstrous, immensely strong hunters, snarling beasts that work closely with great monstrosities as they travel through Ghur. They are ferocious, bestial berserkers armed with undead horrors to assist them. They are the opposite of the Tranquil Kingdoms they were born out of, in fact. In the Age of Myth, these people lived in balance with the land of Ghur, respecting the many predatory beasts, plants and landscapes around them as divine. The Tranquil Kingdoms taught that the greatest acts were to meditate in contemplation and to pursue introspection, finding ways to avoid hunting and killing whenever possible. They sought peace in a land of predation, and they fasted and meditated often. When they had to fight, their leaders led the way, risking their own lives that they might spare the common people the dangers. The nobles of the Tranquil Kingdoms studied combat and magic as arts to be perfected, and they were famously able to defeat forces far more numerous than their own. Sadly, the infinite hordes of the Age of Chaos were still too many. The Tranquil Kingdoms were reduced to anarchic terror, as the sages and students panicked and the commoners were forced to fight for their lives. The nobles tried, but they couldn't save the kingdoms, and the survivors were forced to watch as their cities burned and their people were butchered. With no one left to protect, the few surviving nobles hid in shame, wandering their old lands in despair. The abhorrants eventually found them and gave them a new purpose. Now, the Gristlegore Grand Court continue their nomadic roaming, but they have transformed from contemplative sages to pack predators. They still think themselves seekers of harmony, but now they seek oneness with Ghur itself. Many pierce their own skin with shards of realmstone in pursuit of that. They also till consider themselves ascetic, convincing themselves that their carrion feasts are purifying fasting. They believe that they still fight in a deliberate, controlled and measured way, as they once did. They think they fight only when absolutely necessary, when all other options have been tried. To outsiders, they seem to be mindless predators, thrashing about wildly.  So, let's talk about the abhorrants. The oldest and most powerful are the Abhorrant Archregents. The longer an abhorrant exists and marinates in their own insanity, they more powerful they grow. Some scholars believe this is the result of Ushoran's curse self-replicating inside them, while others argue that their insanity somehow literally bolsters their will and strength the stronger it is. Whatever the case, ove time the Archregents have become exceptionally muscular, with thick hides and deep convictions of their own supreme nature. They become fanatical, and their visions actually appear around them in reality for others to see, superimposed over what's actually there. Even their enemies can see them in flashes, like when you turn away after looking at a light source and can still see afterimages. The Archregents' power allows them to extend their control over more than just one kingdom. They are able to bind even other abhorrants into a unified group, and each one rules over any abhorrant that enters their domain. Where a lesser king must rely on messages to call their forces to war, the Archregents do not. Their will alone is enough, as they merely need to believe they have sent out the call for all of their subjects to agree. Some Flesh-Eaters believe these mighty lords to be the direct servants of Ushoran, and certainly a number of them claim to have been part of the First Court. Archregents are usually more reserved than their younger cousins, and often seclude themselves for long periods. They are strong enough to smash through fortress walls or tear apart Chaos champions barehanded, but they rarely actually go out and fight. They are more often found in whatever passes for their inner sanctum, consumed in their own delusions of personal life, while their lesser abhorrant servants handle "running" the kingdom and bringing in the harvest of flesh. Only when their kingdoms are really threatened do they take to the field. There, they are terrifying. Their speed and strength are amazing, reaching any foe near instantly and tearing through them like they were nothing. The lesser abhorrants are known as Ghoul Kings. Sometimes they fight on foot, sometimes atop undead monsters, but they are always savage, vicious beasts. Their appearance is twisted and monstrous, thanks to the curse of Ushoran, and they are far, far uglier than the Soulblight vampires. They're just as dangerous, though. They're huge, unnaturally strong and terribly fast. Further, their delusions make them unpredictable in battle, for no one can guess what they'll see the strategic landscape like. In combat they lead from the front, racing their servants to tear into the enemy and devour as much as they can. They can cut down entire regiments, but they especially love to fight enemy generals, whom they typically see as savage, barbaric warlords come to threaten their people. While insane, the abhorrants aren't stupid, either. Each and every one of them is a vampire - and like many vampires, they have a natural gift for death magic. Their power allows them to repair their own bodies, resurrect their mounts and summon up new troops easily. They see themselves as conduits of divine power or as benevolent wizard-kings, commanding enemies to kneel in surrender, but their instinctive command of sorcery instead fires forth horrific necrotic blasts that tear apart enemy bodies so they fall to the ground. Their magic can also reinforce their delusions, so that mordants that believe themselves to be wearing powerful armor find that weapons bounce harmlessly from the scraps of cloth that actually guard their skin. They can turn the dreams of their enchanted weapons into strength, sending subjects into a frenzy of blows delivered with unnatural strength. It is this same innate command of magic that allows the Ghoul Kings to turn normal humans into mordants, and the magic is a key component of the flesh-feasts that expand the court. The vampires instinctively imbue their own blood with power, transforming anyone that drinks it into a horrific monster enslaved to the abhorrant's will. Many abhorrants end up seated atop Charnel Thrones, huge piles of rotting flesh topped with crude bone thrones. They believe these to be beautifully carved thrones, seeing the bones as rodes of gold and silver, the claw marks as artistic carvings. They build more and more of these disgusting things as their lands expand, tasking their favored courtiers to build the things. The masons then go scavenge the battlefields for the bones and flesh they will need. Only those personally slain by the abhorrant's own magic are sufficient, and it often takes thousands of bodies to find those whose bones have soaked deep in the power of Shyish. Once a Charnel Throne is completed, it becomes a conduit for the madness of the abhorrant that uses it. The bones wail and shriek constantly, calling in packs of ghouls from miles around and driving enemies to madness with the constant noise. Next time: Courtiers
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2020 13:49
|
|
|
ECLIPSE PHASE - THINK BEFORE ASKING - PT 3: MAKING FRIENDS AND INFLUENCING PEOPLE (1 of 2) Welcome back to Think Before Asking, an adventure for Eclipse Phase 1E. In this update, we’ll explore the investigative side of the scenario. Once the players get their briefing from Firewall, it’s up to them to get to Phelan’s Recourse. The text doesn’t specify how they can do this, but in Eclipse Phase you’ve got two options for transportation: They can take physical transportation, which is slower but lets them keep their physical body and items, or egocast, which takes a few minutes but requires them to acquire a new body and a full load of equipment on the other side. This is really up to GM fiat - it depends on whether the player characters are already within shipping distance of Phelan’s, or whether they’re somewhere else in the Solar System that would take months to reach. Hypothetically, you might be running an existing campaign that already has the player characters established at a location somewhere in the solar system, but every group I’ve ever seen play Think Before Asking has done so as a oneshot. The Eclipse Phase corebook has reasonably detailed (albeit not always well designed) mechanics for egocasting, acquiring morphs and gear, shipping yourself via spacecraft, etc. The one thing the scenario text could provide, but doesn’t, is a description of whether Phelans is exclusively a new economy (reputation based), an old economy (money based) or a transitional economy (both) - since this determines how the players acquire resources if they choose to egocast. Anyway, on to Phelan’s! Phelan’s Recourse Phelan’s Recourse is an independent constellation of space habitats in Saturn Orbit. It appears in Rimward, a 1E splatbook that describes the outer Solar System, and the author of Think Before Asking expects you to be vaguely familiar with that descriptive text. I’ll spare you the grating “in character” explanation given in the sourcebook and just summarize: it’s a Scum Swarm, meaning it’s populated by nomadic quasi-anarchists, Fall refugees, criminals, and dissidents from other factions, as well as tourists and merchants here to cash in on the swarm’s largely unregulated market (which is a mix of the old and new economies). It’s the primary port of call for ships heading into the true outer system - at least the ones who don’t want to deal with the Titanian Commonwealth. Think Before Asking gives us some detail on specific habitats in Phelan’s that are relevant to the scenario - like I said before, taking a larger setting element and cutting off bite sized pieces. The descriptive text here is evocative but very sparse - the GM gets a few sentences of detail and a lot of blanks to fill in. The texts suggest that new visitors to Phelans will probably arrive aboard the Swanskin Domino, a “jungle filled cylinder”.  This is a literal tutorial area, where residents earn reputation and contacts by helping newcomers. It reminds me a bit of Hospice Idlewild from the Revelation Space books - the habitat in the Glitter Band that adopted unwanted defrostees from incoming ships and helped them readjust to society. In Eclipse Phase there’s always a tension between the developers’ optimistic views of the reputation economy (where people are rewarded for socially valuable work, rather than profit maximization) and the actual problems that occur when people literally live and die based on their popularity in a community (where people are rewarded for being charismatic and manipulative, rather than socially valuable work). Phelans is a Scum swarm and has no actual laws, but presumably there’s a widespread community norm that camping the spawn to gank visitors is wrong. (Which is funny, because Anders Sandberg’s writeup for Extropia has “can-opener gangs” that specifically prey on newcomers who don’t have the credits or rep to defend themselves). The scenario text mentions that “even the cats make a bit of extra rep by selling XP of being petted”. Cats in Eclipse Phase can’t be fully uplifted to human intelligence, but they can be half uplifted to “smart pets” - which apparently are smart enough to operate OBS and engage in economic activity. So these helpful inhabitants of the tutorial area may explain a couple or three things to the players - who probably won’t know everything about Phelan’s Recourse from the splatbook, and definitely won’t know the stuff that Anders Sandberg made up for Think Before Asking. Travel between the habitats is done via spiderbus - giant life support pods with too many legs that crawl around giant cables strung between the habitats. And when there aren’t cables between the habitats, the pods can “jump” whole kilometers through open space, and even shoot their own carbon fiber webs to create new connections. No word on how having giant spider-bots pushing off their hulls and colliding with them affects the orbits of all the habitats. Maybe they get another spider bot to jump off the other side in the exact opposite direction. If you’ll recall from the last post, the players’ mission is to find out where the shuttle Landau Landau] dropped off the antimatter warhead - so they need to find out where the shuttle went. The scenario offers two possible routes to get that information from the helpful tutorial NPCs of the Swanskin Domino (we’re never given names or specific examples of these people). Sentinels with good reputation scores and Networking skills can simply ask until they meet someone who knows the answer - but this leaves obvious public queries that come back to hit the players if they piss off the secret AI research company (the scenario has a lot of suggestions about how the players actions will affect both them and the future of the setting). The other way the players can find the shuttle is to talk with the Traffic Control Gang. Think Before Asking, Page 90 posted:The Traffic Control Gang is the informal group maintaining navigation around the Recourse. It might be anarchy, but when objects have relative speeds of several kilometres per second and a misfiring thruster could kill thousands people get motivated (and earn a lot of rep) to maintain orbital organisation. The Gang crowd-source sensor data and telemetry from everywhere, building models of where things are and where they are going, sending advice to navigators (and occasionally to gunners). So the traffic control gang, or whoever you talk to using your reputation networking (the scenario doesn’t say which rep score you use, the GM is supposed to know whether it’s capitalists or autonomists or criminals or whatever, and come up with an NPC who gives you the information) tells you that the shuttle Landau Landau went to the habitat Rinlog Wodd, which is where the players have to go next. I told you all earlier that the connections between the nodes of this scenario are a little fragile. As-written, your options are “convince nebulous unspecified NPC to tell you using reputation” or “convince specific NPCs to tell you using social skill or reputation”. There’s no mention of other strategies, like sifting the surveillance data yourself (and possibly breaking into things using your hacking skill). It’s not a huge deal though, because Eclipse Phase 1E is very generous with skills and reputation points during character creation. Networking skill points are cheap to buy, and your character automatically starts with lots of reputation points to spread across the networks, with the option to buy more cheaply. If you have even a couple players at the table, chances are someone’s going to have the ability to call in favors or make friends with one of the relevant factions. On to Rinlog Wodd Think Before Asking, Page 9 posted:An old and big cluster habitat that has grown out of control. It was originally built or at least dominated by the “Kinshasa Buffaloo Bills”, an African take on the Wild West. But over time the Bills have been loosing influence to the NyAsgarda, a subculture drawing on the Ukrainian pagan amazons. The interior is a mess of ancient plastic ducts a la Brazil, bioengineered banyan carrying air purification epiphytes and the occasional rune stone. Someone has bioengineered big blue beetles that display Clint Eastwood quotes on their elytra. The inhabitants are 30% of Central African extraction speaking “Hindoubill”, 30% of some form of nordic/slavic background (or pretending to) and the rest the usual scum barge melange. (I imagine the Bills dress like those Botswanan Metalheads) Either way, Nysgardian leader Sigyn is on good terms with the owner of the Landau Landau, who uses Rinlog Wodd as a home base. We’ll meet her in the next post, where we wrap up the Phelan’s Recourse segment of the adventure. We’ve established a format for the investigative half of the scenario that will continue in the next post: go to an area that has a weird subculture, talk to some people, find a clue that leads you to the next weird subculture. It’s a bit linear, and it’s up to the GM to take what mechanically works out to a series of Networking rolls and expand them into an actual exploration of different habitats, NPCs and so on. The upside to linearity is that you can shorten the scenario by removing a piece and just tying the two adjacent segments together. I’ve seen runs of Think Before Asking where the GM removed some of the nodes, or let the players skip them with a mesh conversation rather than getting on a spiderbus and visiting each habitat.
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2020 20:46
|
|
|
mellonbread posted:(I imagine the Bills dress like those Botswanan Metalheads) Make sure you click this link, this is powerful style.
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2020 21:10
|
|
|
Serf posted:yeah i think this is an uncharitable reading of the material in question. the reason that palbicke gets 9 pages to himself is that gnat is his former employee and clearly thought a lot of him but it never gets into the hero worship you're talking about here. and there are even parts of this section where she dismissively talks about some of the shadier poo poo they did, like when she disclaims responsibility for exploiting contract workers because they followed the letter of the law. i can think of several sections in the book where gnat expresses admiration for groups like the police and the cia that reveal her true nature. and the second narrator, banhammer, is explicitly a fascist who works with the moths only out of convenience. gnat is not an unbiased observer here, but she is also not particularly left either. the whole setting section is about identifying the material causes of the collapse and then using that as a springboard to talk about why the blight hit as hard as it did, but gnat and the other characters depicted are still active participants in the carrion economy with no particular designs on building something better. the book has an anti-capitalist streak, but the conclusion it comes to is that the forces of capital are strong enough to adapt to the worst disaster in history without really losing too much in the process. its a bleak vision, for sure, but also a realistic one (leaving aside the magic zombies). A little late but I wanted to get back to you on this (and, again, tangentially to other replies). I'll have tonight's post up when I'm home, really. The issue with "let's filter everything through unreliable narrators" is that if you decide to only have unreliable narrators and only ever give one unreliable narrator's view of events, while writing the section that is supposed to be hard facts of the setting so that GMs can accurately represent it and players have an accurate grounding in it, there is no distinction to be made between the character's view and the "facts". There are no facts to work with; you're required to take the narrator's words as gospel, or dive into homebrew territory. While I'd contend nearly every group immediately dives into homebrew territory before they even start a game, that's not the same as saying that homebrew-as-solution is desirable. The resulting issue I take with Red Markets' setting is that it's very clearly aimed to impart Gnat's views and morality (flawed as it is) as "the way the world works". What are the odds that every Recession official is a corrupt bastard with better than coinflip odds of being incompetent to top it off? Really, really low, but we barely get any examples against it because Gnat's view is "the entire Recession is a hellhole run by corrupt bastards, whether in office or a valet in some Free Parking ghetto". There's room for competence - like you acknowledged, intelligence services and the like get acknowledged as competent - but the entire setting is so hung on Gnat's, and later Banhammer's, biases that you cannot get a coherent, realistic, and most of all reasonable interpretation of the setting. This is intentional. It's also a terrible approach. I don't need Stokes to yell at me for 160 pages about how the government will ruin everyone's lives if it benefits corporate backers, how capitalism is going to exploit everyone until and past its breaking point, how everyone under pressure is some degree of a terrible person... I either already know these things, or can accept that they're genre elements. If you don't write a "what is an RPG and how do they work" section because you assume someone playing a roleplaying game knows what they are and how they work (and if they don't then they can do their own research), then you also shouldn't need to write a "what is capitalism and why does it suck" section in "a game of economic horror" billed on its cycle of exploitation. Re: hero worship, I'm not talking in character. Stokes falls into great man theory with what he attributes to Palbicke. He's an inherent genius with no regard for any actual circumstance who, again, upon getting access to a computer for the first time in his life promptly hacks his way into enrolling in Yale under a false identity and getting past every step of the way there, then makes a fortune by writing two magic algorithms to solve for the entire economy and inadvertantly predict the future (before we even touch Ubiq!); there's no element of "how the hell can he do any of this" except "because he's inherently great and can do great things with his greatness". There's half of "great man theory" by definition- he's born with the traits that let him rise to success and lead mankind, there's jack poo poo indicating he learned or worked for any of this (and plenty of counterevidence that no, he didn't work for anything, his magic algorithms that only he could have come up with did it for him). What's the second half? "The need for them has to be great for these traits to then arise, allowing them to lead". Well, considering Palbicke comes up in the book amid a tirade about the end of the free internet, the progressive collapse of the very markets Spawn and Cull are later let loose in, entering a society where he conveniently has all the answers to all the problems & can outwit those pesky capitalists and incompetent government who just can't understand the things he does to put himself in a seat of influence... All of this could be just bull from Gnat's perspective intentionally written as such, but remember: this setting gives you no other perspectives! Take Gnat's words as gospel or leave the setting as written. I'm not here to write a review of Red Markets as I'd run it; I'm writing about the text we are given. This is getting my blood pressure up so I'm going to stop complaining about Palbicke. I think my points are already made and hope they're coherent. Stokes can write systems well. He cannot write fiction to save his life and absolutely cannot write anything technical (this is going to keep coming up through the end of the book).
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2020 21:12
|
|
|
Mors Rattus posted:Many abhorrants end up seated atop Charnel Thrones, huge piles of rotting flesh topped with crude bone thrones. They believe these to be beautifully carved thrones, seeing the bones as rodes of gold and silver, the claw marks as artistic carvings.  "OK kids, what are the ghouls seeing?   *chorus, tired* "Noble fairytale stuff" "But what is actually?" *chorus, so very tired* "Corpses, gore, and other disgusting things"
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2020 21:26
|
|
|
SkyeAuroline posted:A little late but I wanted to get back to you on this (and, again, tangentially to other replies). I'll have tonight's post up when I'm home, really. i do not think gnat is an unreliable narrator. she is accurately reporting the facts of the loss and the recession. she's putting her observations and spin on it, sure, but i see no reason to question her account. i'm not talking about an unreliable narrator. you absolutely should go ahead and assume that the dhqs is full top to bottom with goose-stepping assholes who would sooner murder you than look in your direction because that seems to a pretty accurate assessment of how people in fascist organizations behave. if you disagree with gnat's depiction of things, that's not getting into "homebrew territory" that's just disagreeing with her worldview. also, her talk of "good cops" and her admiration for the utility teams is a complete misconception in the former situation and in the latter she's fawning over mass murderers. its not a good thing or an acknowledgement of competency, its a character flaw on her part SkyeAuroline posted:This is intentional. It's also a terrible approach. I don't need Stokes to yell at me for 160 pages about how the government will ruin everyone's lives if it benefits corporate backers, how capitalism is going to exploit everyone until and past its breaking point, how everyone under pressure is some degree of a terrible person... I either already know these things, or can accept that they're genre elements. If you don't write a "what is an RPG and how do they work" section because you assume someone playing a roleplaying game knows what they are and how they work (and if they don't then they can do their own research), then you also shouldn't need to write a "what is capitalism and why does it suck" section in "a game of economic horror" billed on its cycle of exploitation. given how many people to this day will line up to lick boots for capital, i don't know how true this is. you can dislike the game's preachy tone, sure. but i found it quite cathartic to read a book and a setting that accurately takes aim at the cause of so many of our current-day problems and gives it both barrels. its not just another zombie game that starts off with the world being fine and then boom, zombies ruin everything, it goes into the deep issues that were already there and extrapolates them into the new crisis. to me, it represents a continuation of the social commentary that founded the genre in the living dead movies that so often gets overlooked, ignored, or twisted into right-wing narratives instead. SkyeAuroline posted:Re: hero worship, I'm not talking in character. Stokes falls into great man theory with what he attributes to Palbicke. He's an inherent genius with no regard for any actual circumstance who, again, upon getting access to a computer for the first time in his life promptly hacks his way into enrolling in Yale under a false identity and getting past every step of the way there, then makes a fortune by writing two magic algorithms to solve for the entire economy and inadvertantly predict the future (before we even touch Ubiq!); there's no element of "how the hell can he do any of this" except "because he's inherently great and can do great things with his greatness". There's half of "great man theory" by definition- he's born with the traits that let him rise to success and lead mankind, there's jack poo poo indicating he learned or worked for any of this (and plenty of counterevidence that no, he didn't work for anything, his magic algorithms that only he could have come up with did it for him). insofar as palbicke is some great man (he's not, he disappears from the narrative as soon as the blight hits and if not for gnat i don't think anyone would be talking about him at all) his only exceptional trait is a preternatural gift for information absorption. he bummed around the world picking up information from better thinkers and incorporating it into his work. the book even talks about how spawn and cull are just a half-assed recreation of the south korean tech that he based it on. and unlike south korea, which organized and directed a national project to bring their system to life, america was only saved by one guy who figured out how to recreate it but not for the national good, only for his own enrichment and the realization of his lifelong obsession with making a free internet. if there's any great man theory to be derived from this, its in how often a single man will get credited for the work the work of many that he either took credit for or outright stole (as it is implied palbicke did during his time in south korea). stokes' ability to write fiction is subjective, of course. i'll just offer my own opinion here and say that the intro fiction/setting overview of red markets is my favorite fiction i've read in an rpg, and i generally hate fiction in my rpgs
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2020 21:41
|
|
|
It's funny because Ross (the guy Caleb does RPPR with) is basically the opposite - he can put together an awesome setting, but can't write mechanics to save his life.
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2020 21:50
|
|
|
This Palbricke dude sounds like Dr. Robotnik, which is also making me think maybe he created the zombies to go with his Balloon Internet Distribution of Electronic Tasks and helpful position where he sits in a big fortress and everyone tells him how good he is. Perhaps it is a, social experiment. I understand that only the United States (especially rural/swing state areas) actually exist, but I am curious if Red Markets says anything about how other nations are faring with this overall situation.
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2020 22:50
|
|
|
That's the next post, I'll have it up tonight. Australia is one of the two superpowers remaining. I'll let you guys guess the other.
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2020 22:52
|
|
|
SkyeAuroline posted:That's the next post, I'll have it up tonight. Comedy option: 
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2020 22:56
|
|
|
Midjack posted:Make sure you click this link, this is powerful style. Whenever I run Think Before Asking and the sentinels inevitably run into the Bills, this is the music I use.
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2020 23:08
|
|
|
JcDent posted:
It tires me as well. I wish there was more interactivity with these guys and hope if Soulbound gets to Death, they manage to give that.
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2020 23:16
|
|
|
Mors Rattus posted:It tires me as well. I wish there was more interactivity with these guys and hope if Soulbound gets to Death, they manage to give that. A Death book for Soulbound will spend a tremendous amount of time on Sexy Vampires and I guess I can't really blame them.
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2020 23:32
|
|
|
wiegieman posted:A Death book for Soulbound will spend a tremendous amount of time on Sexy Vampires and I guess I can't really blame them. Everyone should get a chance to play a Warhammer Vampire some day. It is Good Times.
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2020 23:37
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 25, 2024 23:33 |
|
|
wiegieman posted:A Death book for Soulbound will spend a tremendous amount of time on Sexy Vampires and I guess I can't really blame them. Warhammer has entirely one sexy vampire, and that's Isabella. Even Vlad looked like a fuckin freak the stronger he got.
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2020 23:40
|
|
