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Getting strong "ending of Final Fantasy 7 (the first one)" vibes from that Naturalist move.
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Jan 14, 2021 04:58
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The Smoking Ruin Part 14: Overview of Urvantan’s Tower, part 1 I noted the many dangers that threaten the Long Homians from inside the Lost Valley, but the book’s second adventure Urvantan’s Tower starts with an external threat arriving in the valley. A large armed company of around 100 people- 20 or so of which are beastmen- are spotted entering the valley by the wardens. They carry a banner with the depiction of a Manticore on it and are armed, armored, and many appear to be heavily scarred. Frightened of these outsiders, the elders meet and decide to dispatch Danbar to go ask help, not from the nearby Grazelanders (who might revoke some of their privileges and make them back into serfs) but from Queen Leika Black-Spear, whom they decide is politically the best option. Leika is far enough away that she is the least likely to make any permanent demands of Long Home but culturally close enough that she would send help. Leika sends the PCs to head to the valley and take stock of things; they may help Long Home at their own discretion but any further aid must come with the True Ford elders’ promise of fealty to Leika. The adventure starts with the PC’s arrival in the valley with Captain Danbar. Alternatively, a small sidebar allows the PCs to be residents or visitors of Long Home, but then they must survive an encounter with the armed company and either escape or surrender. It’s nice that the alternative start is included, but it’s left to the GM to plan the encounter and deal with the fallout. So who are the people arriving in the valley? Well, as shown by their banner they call themselves the Company of the Manticore, and they are a mercenary company who have spent the last few years in the service of the Lunar Empire fighting against Sartarite rebels. They got their start as just a beastman company of around 20-30 centaurs and minotaurs, but with the recent liberation of Sartar and failing success of the Lunars they managed to incorporate two more mercenary bands into their group: a group of Esrolian skirmishers and a Tarshite heavy infantry corps both lost their leaders and a significant amount of soldiers in the liberation and agreed to throw their lots in with the Beastmen thanks to the charismatic recruiting of their leader: the centaur Koros, son of Ironhoof. Now Koros has used the increased manpower of the company to demand that King Pharandros of Tarsh grant them land, as was promised by their mercenary contract, and Pharandros has “granted” them the Lost Valley as a way of getting rid of them. As Pharandros sees it: either the Company of the Manticore can pacify the Lost Valley and bring it into the Lunar Empire- in which case great, they’ll start paying taxes; or the Valley denizens kill Koros and he no longer has to deal with an annoyance. Win-win for Tarsh. This is also how Pharandros “dealt” with the Western mercenary and demigod Sir Eithilrist: he “granted” Ethilrist a piece of land in the Grazelands that was not Lunar territory. This would bite Pharandros in the rear end: Ethilrist was powerful enough to conquer the place and clever enough to cut a deal with the Feathered Horse Queen that would see the Grazelanders push into Tarsh and sack the city of Dunstop with Ethilrist’s help. Seems like Pharandros either didn’t learn a lesson or doesn’t think Koros is as powerful as Ethilrist - and he’s right. Koros, like Ethilrist, is descended from a god, but Ironhoof reincarnates into mortal bodies each time he is summoned and his paternity grants no special powers. Besides that, the Company is not nearly at its full strength; after being beaten by the Sartarites most of its members are injured or missing arms/armor. Koros himself has lost both his lower body protection and his allied spirit. While Danbar is off fetching the PCs, the Company marches right into the valley and proclaims that it is now Lunar territory and they will be collecting taxes. The elders try to negotiate with them, but the Company attacks their delegation, killing Senior Elder Barrelmaker and capturing several other elders. If the players are from the valley, they have to live through this assault and either flee or surrender. The leaderless True Ford quickly surrenders and the Company moves the majority of their forces in to garrison the town while the rest head off to siege Wolf’s Head Fort, where the 40-person year-round militia members are still holding out. When the PCs finally arrive, the Company’s banners fly above True Ford and company patrols are traveling from farmstead to farmstead collecting tribute from the people, though killings have eased up by order of Koros.  The Company of the Manticore attack the elders. I hope that manticore gets a heal spell cast on him. That’s the situation when the PCs arrive with Danbar. They can do a little scouting to determine some of this stuff, but Danbar should dissuade them from trying to do anything drastic yet. Danbar himself is rather indecisive and doesn’t know himself what should be done, and after the party does a little scouting and discussion they should be interrupted by a horn blast coming from the wilderness. Danbar recognizes it as one of his wardens horns echoing from “near Urvantan’s tower.” Following it takes the party to a gully where a small group of six Mercenary skirmishers have trapped two wardens. This should be an easy fight; the skirmishers are all lightly armored and bound to surrender once one or two die and they determine that they are now the ones trapped and surrounded in the gully. Once they surrender, the skirmishers can be questioned and are not very tight lipped, they will gladly spill the beans about the Company, its leaders, and its goals. One little detail that I appreciate is that the book takes the time to name each skirmisher and warden even though none of them are very important characters in the adventure and most adventures in any system would simply leave them as undifferentiated non-speaking NPCs. It turns out that the wardens were hiding Elder Maroftoor the Stout in the gully, who managed to escape the Company’s massacre thanks to the warden’s intercession. As a reminder, Maroftoor is an initiate of Issaries, the main cattle rancher in the valley, and advocates for opening the valley up to the outside world. At this point he kind of wants to just surrender and let the Company take over, but doesn’t want to say this around the wardens or the PCs, recognizing them as (probably) anti-Lunar military types. He can fill in the party on what’s happened while they’ve been gone. Rather than broach the surrender immediately, he has one plan to try first: request the help of Elder Urvantan, who has been absent for several weeks. This isn’t unusual to the villagers; Urantan often disappears for months at a time to work on one of his projects, but Maroftoor reasons that things have gotten bad enough that they should try barging into his tower and interrupting whatever he’s doing in there. That’s what he and the wardens were here to do before they got spotted by the Company. There’s just one problem: the tower has disappeared, and been replaced by the oddly shaped hill that the villagers dug it out of seventy years ago. Maroftoor hands the PCs a key to the tower that he received from a servant of Urvantan and asks them to investigate the grounds where the tower used to be. After the PCs are done asking questions about Urvantan and the valley, Danbar and the wardens will take Maroftoor and any captive skirmishers to a hidden warden camp and wish the PCs luck finding Urvantan. So where is the tower? Well, it’s exactly where it used to be, it’s just covered by an illusion of Urvantan’s own devising. This sounds like it should be obvious and easy for anyone to find, the True Fordians especially, but remember that in Glorantha illusions are a temporary reality. You can walk all over the hill and you’re not going to fall through an illusory fake hill or something. Until the illusion is dealt with it’s a real, solid hill. Dispelling the illusion is as simple as noticing an oddly shaped tree and putting the key in a keyhole located in a knot on the trunk. No rolls are necessary to find the tree, which is another nice little bit of game design I appreciate. The PCs have to find the keyhole to continue on with the adventure so the writers aren’t going to waste anyone’s time with a mandatory search check or something. Turning the key dispels the illusion and reveals the tower underneath, with a first floor entrance having been excavated out of the hillside. Trying to enter through that door summons a guardian spirit that Urvantan has bound to keep out unwanted visitors. The spirit asks them their identities and can either be negotiated with or fought to gain entrance. Fighting is not recommended, the spirit is made out of fire and can manifest flaming swords into the mortal realm. On top of that there’s two other guardian spirits in the tower that this will anger. Much better to try to convince it to let you in, which is helped by the fact that it can be fast talked at double the PC’s skill chance. After the spirit is dealt with, the PCs have an opportunity to “re-lock” the tower from the inside, and the GM should take note if they do, as it will lead to an encounter on the way out of the tower if they leave the bare tower open for the Company of the Manticore to find. Next: We’ll finish up with the overview in the next post before going to the playthrough as the adventure is shorter than the Smoking Ruin and this update is mostly background stuff.
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Jan 15, 2021 04:15
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Are people waiting on a new thread to keep posting or am I good to double post my next Runequest update in here?
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Jan 22, 2021 02:36
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Nanomashoes posted:Are people waiting on a new thread to keep posting or am I good to double post my next Runequest update in here? I'm waiting on confirmation any of these are getting backed up on account of inklesspen not getting updated, to know if I have to go back and back up my own manually.
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Jan 22, 2021 02:42
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The Smoking Ruin Part 15: Overview of Urvantan’s Tower, part 2 Urvantan’s tower has five floors to it. The first floor is a basement where food and drink are stored along with a small cloakroom for guests. Also there is a magic mirror containing a guardian spirit that will only appear if the party fought the spirit at the entrance, otherwise it will remain dormant. Heading up the staircase brings you to floor two, which is Urvantan’s living quarters, containing a bed, table, desk, stove, etc. There are also some useless papers lying around written in Western, which no PC is likely to read or write. This floor has a third guardian spirit, which has been given orders not to allow people upstairs. If any of the guardian spirits are angered, all three can fight together, and if the gate spirit is engaged and starts losing it will fall back to the second floor and try to fight alongside the other two spirits. Luckily for the party, the second floor spirit is also intelligent and can be reasoned with, and also it has a pretty big desire to let the party through and explore the upper floors, as it has not seen Urvantan for several weeks and it is starting to believe that something has happened to him. No roll is even necessary to get past it if the party talks to it and explains that they are peaceful and just there to find the sorcerer. Another unnecessary roll is avoided and the adventure gets another good game design check from me. So what exactly has happened to Urvantan? Well, the party will find out quickly after reaching the third floor, which is his laboratory. While the floor is empty, if the party makes any loud noise or just spends too long there it will alert a group of Black Arkati who have Urvantan imprisoned on the fourth floor. You see, the tower itself was constructed by Arkat in the first age and functions as a portal to the god time. Urvantan has spent the last seventy years investigating the thing and just a month or two ago he managed to figure it out, getting access to the god time. At the same time, he also tripped some age old wards that Arkat had placed on the thing, and alarm bells went off in the tower of Black Arkat that someone was loving with the god time. Arkati are explicitly against western-wizard-god-time-fuckery, so they dispatched a team of assassins, who posed as friendly scholars and got invited into the tower by Urvantan. After he showed them the portal, they swiftly defeated him and were about to kill him when they were stopped by the leader of their company, Zindaulo. Zindaulo is a partial illuminate and has started to believe that wizard-god-time-fuckery is actually really cool, and wants to use the tower as a free access point to the god time where he can start powerleveling by running heroquests constantly. In order to exploit this, he bound Urvantan to a rack and has been siphoning off Urvantan’s magic points, keeping Urvantan unconscious. Here we are introduced to a pair of new skills in the system: Illumination and Martial Arts. Like older editions, Illumination functions as a % that the character gets a chance to roll under once a year until they succeed and become illuminated, after which the % matters for “various illumination powers” to be described in the later GM book (which is still not out at the time of this writing). Martial Arts is a cool one, it’s a separate % skill from your Punch or Kick that makes any successful unarmed attack deal double damage if it also rolls beneath your Martial Arts skill. We also get a writeup for the cult of Black Arkat in case any players want to join it later or if they want to make an Arkati character, the cult trains Martial Arts, Illumination, and Sorceries.  Your typical Black Arkati There fourth floor has only 2-3 Arkati guarding Urvantan’s unconscious, bound body. They can summon elementals as backup, but the fight is not that hard. The Arkati are solid combatants with 75-80% in all their offensive skills, but have only average HP and low armor. Another easy fight is fine, especially in this system where everything is lethal. The PCs can then free Urvantan and heal him, though Urvantan will be unable to do anything until he has a bit of time to recuperate, so the party will have to finish clearing his tower of the Arkati before speaking to him. Up on the fifth floor is Arkat’s Gate, which is currently activated. The party can move beyond it into the God Time, where they emerge onto the fifth floor of an identical tower. Only in this one, Zindaulo is arguing with one of his subordinates. That subordinate is Vroluxa DeArne, a member of a disgraced Esrolian noble house. The DeArnes were exiled from Nochet and Vroluxa grew up on the Shadow Plateau, becoming a trollfriend and initiate of Argan Argar. The troll->Arkat path is pretty easy to follow, though Vroluxa is not a full member of the House of Black Arkat just yet, and lacks the cult tattoos. Both Vroluxa and Zindaulo can be negotiated with, and either allied with or killed. Vroluxa makes a nice ally, though she wants to execute Urvantan for the aforementioned wizard-fuckery; and Zindaulo makes a better villain in my eyes, as he is pro-wizard-fuckery. Zindaulo also has a nice amount of magic items, including 18 MP of god’s blood crystals and an enchanted steel rapier, which will sell for a pretty penny even if your players can’t use it. Even if you make friends with one or both, neither really want to get involved in the Long Home dispute, and will require a good amount of bribery (which again, Vroluxa would care more about because she’s a former mercenary. I’m saying you should make friends with Vroluxa here, folks). Once the two quarrelling Arkati are dealt with, the party can return to Urvantan and talk with him. Urvantan is an incredibly powerful character and a good example of a high level sorcerer in the system. He has over 100 MP, an incredible amount of magic items (most of which he made himself), and knows something like 15-20 spells. It’s interesting that many of these spells he only knows at a low %, likely supplementing the cast chance with a long ritual preparation time for spells that are not very time sensitive. He will offer his help with freeing the town of True Ford, to be given when the adventurers fire a flaming arrow in the air. He won’t say more about his plans because they involve god-time-wizard-fuckery, and due to his caste restrictions once he has said something to a non-Zzaburi he cannot change it (no “negotiating or bargaining”) so that’s the end of that. As an NPC I like Urvantan a lot, he has weird and interesting lore, he’s incredibly powerful but his power mostly lies in casting non-combat spells and forging items so he doesn’t overshadow your PCs, and he works great outside the adventure as a questgiving npc or even as a party sponsor. After laying out his plan, he heads through the gate and into the Gods time. After freeing Urvantan a scouting party from the Company of the Manticore comes around looking for the tower. They’re being guided by Hawarin Moonsister, but she’s still conflicted about her role helping a bunch of invaders. In a nice bit of mechanics and story intersecting, her passions even reflect this: her loyalty to Long Home is equal to her loyalty to the Lunar Empire. She knows the site of Urvantan’s tower, but if the illusion is up she won’t lead the scouts there. If the PCs locked the tower behind them, they can skip the encounter entirely. The encounter itself isn’t statted per-se, because this is the point where the adventure opens up and becomes far more freeform. The Company itself is listed in its own section, with different stats for several different kinds of troops along with leaders and people of interest. The GM can easily pull their stats and design a group of a reasonable enough size that will challenge whatever the PCs have. At this point the party is free to enact whatever kind of plan they want to deal with the Company itself, with the plans eventually culminating in a battle of True Ford where Urvantan shows up to help. This portion of the adventure resembles the later parts of Terror in Talabheim a lot, where the protagonists have to fight a resistance battle against an occupying invader. There are two different side sections here, one for internal factions and one for external. Internally the players can try to buddy up with any local faction, such as the Trollkin, Telmori, or Elves. They can also try to flip Hawarin Moonsister to their side, and things are complicated by the fact that Elder Maroftoor will sell them out if the occupation lasts long enough. Externally the party can try to contact the Grazelanders or the Colymar, though each faction will have different demands in exchange for their aid that the party will have to get Maroftoor or Danbar to swear to. One possibility that isn’t mentioned but that I think is a natural idea for the players to have is to go through the Gate of Arkat to enact a heroquest without needing a community to pray them into the god time, which was Zindaulo’s entire plan for the gate in the first place. Depending on how you want to run the adventure there’s room for at least two or three extra sessions in here. The book even tries to pitch it as possibly an entire campaign, though that may oversell things a bit. The chapter on Long Home is incredibly useful at this point. However your party wants to play the occupation, it will eventually end in a battle of True Ford where Urvantan shows off all of his mystical powers. Once the party gives him the signal, he’ll manifest himself in the town from the god plane, making him effectively immortal as long as his MP holds out. And remember, he has over a hundred MP. Urvantan will cast powerful fire sorceries that could possibly swing the battle for the party even if they don’t try to get any allies and just sneak into town and free the villagers instead. If the GM wants to challenge the party more, he’s weak to missile weapons, as he’s unarmored and has low Dodge. Depending on the preparations and strategies of the party, there battle can play out many ways, though the book sketches a general outline and gives a couple different suggestions of how things can be run (granularly or with a single battle roll) and how they can play out. Things should eventually result in a duel or skirmish against Koros, and his death or surrender will decide things. Koros isn’t a slouch in combat either. He hits hard, he’s decently armored, and he has solid skill percentages in all of his attacks. As an individual combat he’s not nearly the death sentence that Vamargic is to a party, though. See, someone in the adventure line can actually design a decent boss. One thing that makes him easier is that his allied spirit was actually killed in the fighting in Sartar and he hasn’t had a chance to get a new one. One thing that I like about many of the Company of the Manticore fights when it comes to their design is that they’re explicitly not meant to be fought at full strength. The book points out over and over that these people are wounded and tired and will often be missing arms or armor or even have crippling injuries, so the GM can tune fights however they want and this makes it far more believable that a beginner party can fight off a mercenary band. On the other hand, if your party is more advanced or goes to great lengths to get backup the Company can be brought up to full strength and be more than a match for them. Should the party be successful, they get honorary eldership, are each granted a hide of land in the valley and a house in the village, and whoever sent them on the quest (likely Leika) will give them a 100L bounty on top of whatever ransoms they secure. Overall I love this adventure, it is smartly designed, it helps GMs a lot by making itself easy to adjust, and allows for a lot of player creativity and expression. On top of that it provides good jumping off points and solid characters for future adventures. Props all around, if you are going to run one adventure in the system, I’d make it Urvantan’s Tower. Next: So how would I play it, were I an entire party of players? Let’s find out.
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Jan 22, 2021 11:28
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 Buck Rogers XXVc: The 25th Century  No Humans Allowed: "But the cover!" "We're allowed to have one." When I reviewed the box set, I noted that one thing that was missing was a “bestiary”, a collection of stats for typical enemies you might encounter. There were rules for making Gennie NPCs and it was easy enough to mock up a 1st-level goon or whatever (one hit die, THACO 20, AC by whatever they’re wearing, damage by whatever gun you give ‘em), but it was notable. This is partly why I’m skipping ahead so far, since the game really didn’t get a proper bestiary until near the end. No Humans Allowed was published in 1992, and with Hardware (which I don’t have) is one of the last books published for the line. One of the benefits of this is they were able to include a lot of gennies that appeared in other modules and supplments, though there are plenty of originals as well. It’s a paperback, runs 128 pages, and retailed for $15.00 in 1992 (so a little under $30 now.) I got it for $13.50. And just to point this out, scroll back up, and look at the cover. What’s missing there? So yeah there appears to have been a slight attempt at rebranding with the last couple of books, just labelling them with “XXVc”. The general feeling about this game is that it likely failed because people associated “Buck Rogers” with the campy 1979 TV series, and maybe just with goofy space opera in general, in an era of RPGs dominated by cyberpunks and vampires. They didn’t stop using the license at all, the Dille Family Trust still gets credited with the trademarks, but it was easy enough to just not reference the comic strip characters. (Of course, it’s not like this worked- the line was cancelled with a few products still solicited, and 1993 saw the Buck Rogers High Adventure Cliffhangers game.) But anyway, here we are at No Humans Allowed, written by Dale “Slade” Henson. It’s actually quite a bit more than a Monster Manual, and there’s a lot of stuff to go through before we get to the creature listings. Some of it is of questionable utility, to be sure, and it’s honestly built so that the least-useful deep lore is in the front, so we gotta dig through that first. NEXT: A Brief but Complicated History of Genetic Engineering
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Jan 22, 2021 21:57
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Age of Sigmar Lore Chat: Lumineth Realm-Lords Slightly Less Ridiculous Hats  The Shining Companies is the common name used to refer to the Vanari legions, thanks to their bright armor and shiny gear, much of which glows. For example, the Vanari Auralan Wardens form up in pike blocks, and their pikes can emit bright light. They push forward to the best position on the battlefield, then plant themselves and hold for a charge. Those who attack them are quickly impaled, cut free and set aside in a wall of corpses that forms around the Wardens. They are patient, baiting enemies into attack and refusing to move as their allies pepper the enemy with magic and arrows. It isn't rare for enemies to charge simply to escape the rain of attacks, trusting in their numbers to carry them. It rarely works. What the Lumineth lack in population, they make up for in unity, after all. They've had to - it was a lack of unity that nearly killed them, and since the Reinvention, they have worked hard to set aside all rivalries. The Auralan Wardens are the most obvious sign of it, standing in perfect, unified formation. "Auralan" literally means "luminous host," and its name is derived from the fact that each Warden's spear is enchanted, made with a tip of sunmetal bathed in Hyshian light for centuries. The Wardens may speak an arcane phrase and channel the sunmetal's power through their aetherquartz to cause the spear-tips to burn white-hot, enough to pierce through practically any armor. They train extensively to master the timing of activation, so that the enemy has no chance to dodge aside or halt their charge. The Auralan Wardens don't believe in stealth or camouflage. Not for themselves, anyway. They shine as brightly as possible, dazzling foes with their unified movements. This is where the "shining company" name comes from. When they're lit up, it is practically impossible for most snipers or marksmen to get a good bead on them, and looking at them through a magnifier lens or magical vision enhancement is a good way to get blinded for a while. Their leaders tend to be the eldest among them, with the right to command use of aetherquartz. Their aetherquartz usually takes the form of a jewel in their helmet, weapon or armor, and when invoked, it makes them glow even more, channeling their power through their weapon handles and their shining armor and robes. It makes them appear as transcendent beings of light for the brief period of the invocation, and many less advanced enemies have chsoen to flee rather than face such creatures, especially if they already have an innate weakness to Hyshian energies, as many Chaos and Death forces do. Even if they stand and fight, the bright glow makes aiming very hard, even at close range. The Vanari Auralan Sentinels, meanwhile, focus on ranged combat. The Lumineth like ranged combat, as it proves their superior skill without requiring them to get messy and covered in blood or caught up in a slow melee. They practice bow archery, as the bow is a noble weapon among the Lumineth, for it can pierce the skies and fall like a ray of sunlight, granting a relatively clean death. Aelves just like that poo poo. The Lumineth have developed the bow beyond what most others consider required, developing dozens of kinds of bow and even more kinds of arrow. The most successful of these is the triple-string arcbow, which has a curvature and pull weight allowing two different uses. It can be used for direct fire, launching arrows with massive force and causing the shafts to flex and counterflex in mid-air to add punch to the blow. It can also be used for indirect fire, causing a graceful arced trajectory that dips sharply and unexpectedly, thus circumventing defenses to strike at vulnerable spots. The High Sentinel that commands each of these units also is always assigned ownership of a scryhawk. These birds fly high in the air and allow the High Sentinel to see through their eyes, serving as spotters that allow for identification of foes even at extreme range. By having these special bird spotters, the Auralan Sentinels are able to rain down attacks with terrifying accuracy at normally impossible distances. Their specialty tactic is to fire arrows at such an angle that they appear to be falling from the sun above, striking the enemy from angles they can't look directly at. For cavalry, there's the Vanari Dawnriders, who ride out upon the extremely pretty stallions of the Xintilian plains. Xintilian horses form a strong bond with their riders, instinctively sensing what each other will do just before it happens. They fight as one in battle, and each horse is given a unique name, chosen by having the rider press their forehead to their horse's forehead and waiting for sudden inspiration. (This apparently works out fairly well.) When not at war, the Dawnriders spend most of their time riding around the Xintilian wilds and beaches, being picturesque and bonding with their horses as they race through the surf, the ruins of old cities and the forested lands. They like races, and while they spend all that time doing nothing that's very useful, it's allowed because the bond between horse and Dawnrider is considered tactically valuable and important as well as beautiful, as the two keep each other alive even when they really, really shouldn't be. When the Dawnriders form up as a unit, they resemble a speeding blur of light. They are able to travel through even the most entangled terrain with ease, leaping over broken statues and corpses much as they leap over fallen trees at home. They draw on the legends of great riders of the Age of Myth, seeking to emulate their heroism by taking on vastly numerically superior foes. They wield sunmetal lances that blaze with light and they prefer to charge at full gallop into enemy formations. When they activate their aetherquartz, their lances become superheated, burning away the bodies of those impaled upon them and leaving only ash. They move with terrifying precision, able to maintain formation even at full speed, striking at the enemy and then racing away, only to arc around for another charge. Next time: The Mountain Bulls
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Jan 22, 2021 23:36
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We are getting new Lumineth tomorrow. Some of which could best be described as Roo Riders
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Jan 23, 2021 01:10
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MonsterEnvy posted:We are getting new Lumineth tomorrow. Some of which could best be described as Roo Riders
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Jan 23, 2021 02:10
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Talas posted:The Roo Rides look awesome, also the new mounted Lord is soooo amazing. Oh, and there's a new chapter of the lore with Broken Realms: Teclis with the Lumineth taking on the armies of Nagash. Agreed on the Roos. I am also looking forward to Broken Realms: Teclis as I really enjoyed Broken Realms: Morathi and the changes it brought to the setting.
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Jan 23, 2021 05:18
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Maxwell Lord posted:
This book, among having one of the most... unique enemy listings I've seen in five-and-a-halfish editions of Dungeons & Dragons*, fixes a minor but notable problem I mentioned with the XXVc game line earlier in this thread. *I'm counting First -> Second -> Third -> 3.5e -> Fourth -> Fifth. Your count may vary.
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Jan 23, 2021 06:47
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Mors Rattus posted:"Auralan" literally means "luminous host," and its name is derived from the fact that each Warden's spear is enchanted, made with a tip of sunmetal bathed in Hyshian light for centuries. The mass industries of war must demand forest like swathes of terrain dedicated to saturating sun metal tips for replacements and for new spears altogether. Mors Rattus posted:The most successful of these is the triple-string arcbow, which has a curvature and pull weight allowing two different uses. It can be used for direct fire, launching arrows with massive force and causing the shafts to flex and counterflex in mid-air to add punch to the blow. It can also be used for indirect fire, causing a graceful arced trajectory that dips sharply and unexpectedly, thus circumventing defenses to strike at vulnerable spots. As opposed to regular bows, which are capable of one or the other  Not a fan of the new mounted lord, the mount looks too much like the roo lizard, but is supposed to be some gazelle thing. Ofc, it's all nothing compared to the new anime fox archer char.
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Jan 24, 2021 07:37
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JcDent posted:The mass industries of war must demand forest like swathes of terrain dedicated to saturating sun metal tips for replacements and for new spears altogether. Probably stick one in their roofs. And crazier things have happened, like planting trees in anticipation of building ships with them 100 years later.
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Jan 24, 2021 08:25
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JcDent posted:The mass industries of war must demand forest like swathes of terrain dedicated to saturating sun metal tips for replacements and for new spears altogether. e: Not that that one is particularly bizarre, comparatively speaking.
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Jan 24, 2021 08:46
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Nessus posted:You know, this is a good point, and a good excuse for completely bizarre things like "a forest of giant poles of stone in this desert plain for no discernible loving reason." Also small families of pillarkeeps doing minimal maintainance like keeping birds from nestin on the poles or reporting if idiots keep stealing them or whatnot. Paid a small stipend and doing subsistance living on the land, the like.
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Jan 24, 2021 09:10
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Probably stick one in their roofs. And crazier things have happened, like planting trees in anticipation of building ships with them 100 years later. Yeah, this would probably be the boring, rational explanation. Like a solar farm, but for spear tips.
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Jan 24, 2021 09:46
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If the idea was to make Age of Sigmar more like 40k but with different kinds of silly helmets, they really missed a point- kind of a big deal in 40k is infrastructure, the whole reason fights aren't just settled by spaceships and orbital bombardment is because there's Forge Worlds, agri-worlds, and other worlds and facilities absolutely crucial to various powers that they need to keep or take relatively intact.
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Jan 24, 2021 10:58
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Ghost Leviathan posted:If the idea was to make Age of Sigmar more like 40k but with different kinds of silly helmets, they really missed a point- kind of a big deal in 40k is infrastructure, the whole reason fights aren't just settled by spaceships and orbital bombardment is because there's Forge Worlds, agri-worlds, and other worlds and facilities absolutely crucial to various powers that they need to keep or take relatively intact. Look, while this thread gets tiresome with making GBS threads on 40K, I am fairly certain that "nobody ever thought of logistics, ever" is one criticism you can level at 40K all day. And the one time they did - writing that Tau ran out of ammo shooting so many Catachans sometime in 7e - was terrible.
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Jan 24, 2021 11:55
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Considering just how well managed the Tau empire is in comparison to just about everyone else I'm not seeing them running out of ammunition before just losing all their soldiers as those are in much more limited numbers.
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Jan 24, 2021 12:07
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By popular demand posted:Considering just how well managed the Tau empire is in comparison to just about everyone else I'm not seeing them running out of ammunition before just losing all their soldiers as those are in much more limited numbers.
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Jan 24, 2021 12:11
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Nessus posted:The enemy gets a vote too, the primitive 
By popular demand fucked around with this message at 12:19 on Jan 24, 2021 |
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Jan 24, 2021 12:17
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Ghost Leviathan posted:If the idea was to make Age of Sigmar more like 40k but with different kinds of silly helmets, they really missed a point- kind of a big deal in 40k is infrastructure, the whole reason fights aren't just settled by spaceships and orbital bombardment is because there's Forge Worlds, agri-worlds, and other worlds and facilities absolutely crucial to various powers that they need to keep or take relatively intact. Logistics have been super important in AoS. Creating trade and Resource centres is on of the main goals of the Alliance of Order. MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Jan 24, 2021 |
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Jan 24, 2021 17:54
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MonsterEnvy posted:Logistics have been super important in AoS. Creating trade and Resource centres is on of the main goals of the Alliance of Order.
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Jan 24, 2021 19:10
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I have a stats/mechanics question, it was inspired by reading the intro to the new GURPS thread but is really more applicable to dice mechanics in general. Like a moderate number of games I've read about here and elsewhere, GURPS uses the roll-under model, where your success for an action is dependent on how far under a target value you roll. I've only played modern D&D/D&D-adjacent stuff, but it just instantly feels intuitive to me that successes are generally defined by reaching or exceeding the target, "bigger is better" just feels natural for attacks and such. Something I've wondered about for a while and got reminded by that thread: is there some distinct difference that comes out statistically or mechanically in the roll-under model? Or does it effectively work out to be the same thing in practice, just with numbers going the other way. I haven't used it in practice so I don't know if it just comes down to the creators' random preferences.
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Jan 25, 2021 00:19
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Assistant Manager Devil posted:I have a stats/mechanics question, it was inspired by reading the intro to the new GURPS thread but is really more applicable to dice mechanics in general. Like a moderate number of games I've read about here and elsewhere, GURPS uses the roll-under model, where your success for an action is dependent on how far under a target value you roll. I've only played modern D&D/D&D-adjacent stuff, but it just instantly feels intuitive to me that successes are generally defined by reaching or exceeding the target, "bigger is better" just feels natural for attacks and such. Statistically roll under and roll over is the same as long as the numbers are chosen right, so rolling under 18 is the same as roll over 3 and vise versa, the big mechanical benefit to rolling under is that you can use increasing stats as raw target numbers without converting them to bonuses or something, for example in a percentage system. A lot of people think it's far easier to just sum up stats and bonuses to a target number and roll under that rather than having the gm come up with one and then roll and add the bonuses later to see if you succeed. But statswise the is nothing you can do with one that you can't with the other.
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Jan 25, 2021 00:45
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Hel posted:the big mechanical benefit to rolling under is that you can use increasing stats as raw target numbers without converting them to bonuses or something, for example in a percentage system. A lot of people think it's far easier to just sum up stats and bonuses to a target number and roll under that rather than having the gm come up with one and then roll and add the bonuses later to see if you succeed. Thanks, I guess that's something I really need to play in person to get a feel for.
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Jan 25, 2021 03:43
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I'm thinking about doing a look at the Mongoose version of 2300 AD, with some dives back into the old 80's version and 2320 AD if I feel that it'd be appropriate.Would that be a thing people are interested in?
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Jan 27, 2021 16:44
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yes 
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Jan 27, 2021 16:51
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That would actually be pretty cool, I've been interested in that line for a while.
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Jan 27, 2021 17:42
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subject: fuckinnnnn SEMINAR!!! from: definitelyFriendComputer@deathleopards.irmrkt [b]SUP LOSER!!!  im am the computer!!! today were talking about a thing you'll like O R MAYBE NOT?? it's called a comic and itS FKN AWESOME!!!!!! first lets do the memetic thing thT kills you fif you look at it: click if ur loyal LMAO GOT EM!!!! okay so last time that stupid dipshit got killed a second time, which is good, cuz he suxx lmao. this time he's doing this???  is that a blaster mixed w/ a vibroblade or smth?? rly stupid lmao next we see smth that doesnt look like basically any version of alpha complex b4 this, which makes sense cuz nothing in this stupid comic looks like alpha complex at basically any time lmaooo  inm the computer and i say its treason thjat nobody in alpha complex looks this cool, get on it or get blasted nerdfkrs so teh armed forcres are shipping literal truckfuls of troubleshoompters agains a bunch of muties in a secotor in a bit that's almost fgooffy enough to be an actula moment in alpha complex life. neway, knging-r-thru-3 now (loser lmao) is being mandhandled by a super zealpous weirdo trobleshooter who throws him headlong into the battle (also the commies in this sequence are using ww2 stuff?? where tf did trhey get it for cheap enough to arm a whole plattalion??? old reckoning stuff is one thing but this is fkn ANCIENT reckoning shiz) anyeway the religulous zealot guy turns out to be lance-r-lot-3 (he's like that one guy! and he has the same clone number ats rthr!! wow!!!!). he has a lancelot delusion and gets all weird about king having the name he does, and this metaphor probly doesnt go anywhere. also i wish lance would gdets hit by a fkn maglev tube.  i, griend computer, genuinely have no fuckn idea what in the fk this is abotu and whoever made this should get fkn terminated on prinicpal. so lance keeps bein cray-cray in the membray and has them just run through the enemy fire like a test of faith or smth cuz he thinks king is a legendary chosen one whatever.yhtn then king fucknn flashes back to his past as a worl;d war 1 guy or whatever?? i doinnt??? and he says hes having dreams but hes awake when he comes back uhhh im copmputer so dreams are for communits or whatever, dont do them. he keeps havin visions of being a ww1 man which gives him thje strength he needs to throw a [s[dgraned[/s] grenamde at the enemy and survive a little longer before he dies atg the end of the issue cuz this gimmick is even more predictable than actually runnin ops as a trubleshooter, but waaaayyyyy less fun. anyway dipshit doo and dipshit dum piclk up a bunch of commie guns to go on the warpath and it wants us to think its badass but its so so dumb.  i wqish id been cloned w/o eyesz so i wouldnt have to read this crap. another one of those dumbn as hell avengers parodies shows up while they deepen into the enemy battlefield or w/e. in another remarkably actual-alpha-complex-like moment, they call for a tacnuke, which drops a huge fkn shell on the "revengers"...and pops open, releasin a bunch of bureaucrats who are there to verify and clear the paperwork to launch a tacnuke on this location. this level of comedy does not sustain for long. they get cornered by commies and blow a hole in the floor and go into a tunnel and we get straight up an entire page of boring unfunny marvel hero parodies and a hawman one???  what were ppl even DOING before 214 smh what happens next is an infodump even i, the gr8 friend computer, dont even feel fukin qualified to comment on. go back to being bleak. neway, king's gf from issue 1 shows up and just as they're about to fkn cuddle, he gets nabbed again by a guy in a smiley mask who jostles him to death, then takes it off and reveals...IT'S KING-R-THR-4!!! SHOACK!!!!! anyway this comic is awsom i give it an 11/10 bc it pisses off intsec with its existanxe lmao. plus some good violence in it. gpood to smoke synthyjayne to while listening to tool lmaoTRANSMISSION INTERRUPTED TRANSMISSION INTERRUPTED TRANSMISSION INTERRUPTED TRANSMISSION INTERRUPTED TRANSMISSION INTERRUPTED Citizen!  We'd like to extend a formal apology. Due to a technical error, all information regarding Treasonous Materials And You Seminar Lesson 4 of 7 has been [DELETED FOR SECURITY REASONS]. We would like to take this time to offer a 45% off coupon for your local Mind-Scrub Facility located at this address: [DELETED FOR SECURITY REASONS]. Attendance and expenditure of this coupon is mandatory and will be monitored, so be sure to verbally confirm that you wish to use coupon code "Hello Friendly Mind-Scrub Droid, I Would Like To Please Erase All Knowledge Of The Past 12 Hours And Flag Myself For Immediate Auto-Termination On Sight Of Any Cerebral Impulse Irregularities During The Post-Scrub Diagnostic Process" on check-out. USAGE OF COUPON CODE "Hello Friendly Mind-Scrub Droid, I Would Like To Please Erase All Knowledge Of The Past 12 Hours And Flag Myself For Immediate Auto-Termination On Sight Of Any Cerebral Impulse Irregularities During The Post-Scrub Diagnostic Process" IS COMPULSORY. FAILURE TO COMPLY WITH TIMELY USAGE OF COUPON CODE "Hello Friendly Mind-Scrub Droid, I Would Like To Please Erase All Knowledge Of The Past 12 Hours And Flag Myself For Immediate Auto-Termination On Sight Of Any Cerebral Impulse Irregularities During The Post-Scrub Diagnostic Process" IS PUNISHABLE BY A FINE OF 10,000CREDS AND UP TO 30 DAYS IN The Maximum Fun Chamber. Thank you for your cooperation. A makeup session for this missed opportunity will be retroactively charged to your account 11 hours ago and beamed into your mind via DreamOScope at 0300 Hourcycle on Daycycle 028. If you are not asleep by 2300 Hourcycle on Daycycle 027, Vulture Trooper agents specially trained in therapeutic techniques will be dispatched to your location. Thanks, and have a very pleasant day! 
sasha_d3ath fucked around with this message at 21:42 on Jan 27, 2021 |
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Jan 27, 2021 21:38
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 Buck Rogers XXVc: The 25th Century No Humans Allowed The History of Genetics: Why Not Start With Turtles? There’s a brief introduction, which establishes that genetic engineering in the 25th century makes possible the creation of all sorts of lifeforms, suitable for habitation on pretty much all the known worlds. This is almost entirely an industrial process- gennies are bred to perform tasks for the major powers, mostly RAM. This naturally raises some questions about the morality of creating new life (sometimes intelligent) for the purposes of slavery, and while the book says they don’t take a major stand on this, the fact that it’s mostly the series villains doing this is notable. There follows some explanation of how the gennie profiles later in the book will work, which is basically like the AD&D Monster Manuals- you’ve got Climate, Frequency, No. Appearing, that sort of thing. The first proper chapter is a timeline of genetic engineering. The first paragraph says it starts in 1858 with Rudolf Virchow, but there’s a twist! It REALLY starts in 1611, with Kepler inventing the double convex microscope. Probably a late change. Anyway, we get a lot of historical stuff that really happened, Darwin publishes his theories, Mendel breeds some pea plants, etc., all the way up through 1988 when Philip Leder and Timothy Stewart got the first patent on an animal (the unfortunate “oncomouse”, bred to be susceptible to cancer for the purposes of oncological research.) The fiction starts in 1993, with Biofusion patenting a new form of algae after their last effort was sold. 1995 sees “the first complete mapping of human DNA”, which- I believe we’re still working on. (This version is at least fairly inaccurate.) We see cloned organs in 2004, and the first successful use in 2013, while 2012 heralds the first cloned human brain, though it’s not used in a transplant until 2054. (The recipient survives but has to be re-educated as though from birth. So, you know, it has its ups and downs. One little note here- the one major genetic engineering milestone anyone in the 90s heard about was Dolly the Sheep, the first mammal to be cloned. That happened in 1996. There’s no real equivalent milestone in the timeline- the first “higher life form” is in 2156, but that’s a gorilla, so that may specifically refer to primates. Honestly the realities of genetic engineering are too complex for me to wrap my head around so I’ll stop trying to compare the timeline with reality. Anyway, in the world of XXVc, genetic engineering hits a major snag in 2065 with a lot of people starting to question the ethics of it, until the gorilla cloning a half century later (which is done in secret on Mars.) The first attempt at a human clone is in 2172, but they die in gestation. In 2182 we see the first successful attempt (she lives for seventeen years before dying in a rocket crash), and the first official artificial life form, the Venusian Mud Turtle, is introduced in 2186. The following year we see the first geneticaly altered humans, and many firsts follow (including the introduction of the Delph.) The 23rd Century sees humans on the Inner Worlds start manipulating their genes to combat the effects of low gravity. In 2217 the System States Alliance tries to restrict genetic manipulation, but progress continues regardless, partly in secret. RAM creates the first terrines in 2268, and in 2275 they go to war. Once RAM wins the floodgates are open, we see the first Ringers, Stormriders, Spacers, and further variations on the Terrine, as well as some interesting animals we’ll see later. The most recent achievement is in 2455, when RAM creates the Terrine Mark II genotype (which we’ll see later) to try and hunt down the “Barneys” created almost two decades earlier. Their creator wins an award in a rushed ceremony, presumably the First Annual Simund Holzerhein Award For Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence. And that about sums it up. This was a tricky section to cut down but it’s a decent reference at least. Next time we’ll be looking at notable figures in the field! Some of whom are still alive! Maxwell Lord fucked around with this message at 10:10 on Jan 28, 2021 |
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Jan 28, 2021 09:52
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It's not the only problem but MAN the art of the Paranoia comic doesn't fit. It's trying to be 2000 A.D. and like Judge Dredd but in Dredd stories everyone knows poo poo's bad and sucks, again, the whole point of Paranoia is people are too afraid to say poo poo or think wrong and you have to pretend everything's okay even as it's falling apart in front of you.
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Jan 31, 2021 06:43
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TK_Nyarlathotep posted:subject: fuckinnnnn SEMINAR!!! This comic continues to hurt my brain.
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Jan 31, 2021 06:51
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The more I look at the paranoia comics the more confused I get. Been thinking for a while it was an inexplicable mishmash of Zap/Straight but the comics seem to have come out long before XP. I... don't get it, and I'm not sure whoever wrote the comic did either. E: Who is it for? Why is it? How? Arcanuse fucked around with this message at 04:05 on Feb 2, 2021 |
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Feb 2, 2021 04:00
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Arcanuse posted:The more I look at the paranoia comics the more confused I get. When was this comic again? I get the feeling the writer and the artist just weren't familiar with the material that much.
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Feb 2, 2021 08:09
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If the publishing dates here are any indicator; It looks like the comic ran from Nov 1991 to Aug 1992, so the tail end of second edition.
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Feb 2, 2021 10:45
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Any Paranoia art that isn't by Jim Holloway feels plain wrong.
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Feb 2, 2021 13:30
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Yeah the Paranoia novel I have (which I still can't believe was a thing) had a similarly bizarre tone. If I'm remembering right - haven't read it in years.
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Feb 2, 2021 14:00
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I rather like the style and writing in the Paranoia comic. Reads like if Phillip K. Dick wrote comedy. And the art complements the surreal tone nicely.
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Feb 2, 2021 16:00
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 17:04 |
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If you want to read good Paranoia style fiction, read Stanislaw Lem's Memoirs Found in a Bathtub. I'm almost certain it's the primary inspiration for the game.
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Feb 2, 2021 16:18
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