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Cythereal posted:Come to think of it, I suppose part of the grog backlash against Blue Rose and the genre of fantasy it represents is that Romantic Fantasy, in general, is very cognizant of being fantasy. The world wouldn't work like that, of course not. The point here is to imagine a world where it does. Where you can make that kind of difference with a magical singing voice, and where you're accepted and lauded for who you are. It's not about hard facts or logic, or "If you think about it rationally..." Its more the certain type of nerd that heard the phrase "sufficiently advanced technology" and wants to turn all magic, everywhere, into industrialized engineering using game theory on the rules of reality, with a technocratic mindset pushing aside frivolous "emotional" thoughts in favor of "logical" ones. Ronwayne fucked around with this message at 19:56 on Apr 9, 2021 |
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Apr 9, 2021 19:51
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JcDent posted:Also, on RM front: so No Budget rule means that if you budget 10 bounty for 16 bounty run, you can't spend that 6 bounty (after you return) on medical care and such - only retirement and buying better gun/skills? Without my book in front of me: you budget out a figure each for Sustenance (fixed), Upkeep (choice), and Incidentals (choice). Anything not budgeted into that is expected to go into retirement, and Upkeep includes personal improvement/new gear. If you need to pull from those "expected savings" to cover a budgeted deficit, you can, but it forces a stress check since your "earnings" are going away (even though you're still using them, not losing them; it's "bad luck" eating away at your savings for getting out). So, you can always make up for a deficit, but it's gonna hurt to run deficits frequently.
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Apr 9, 2021 19:54
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Josef bugman posted:This is whole post is interesting, but I want to focus in on this bit. Don't most stories involve the experiencing of those emotions in some way? If the story is one of continual triumph there is very little that actually goes into those stories? That’s just it, though. “Involve” may not be the right word; I mean those works focus almost entirely on those emotions at the expense of everything else. That’s what I’m getting at when I say positive emotions have to be framed as exceptional: these works must focus on isolation, alienation, and dissatisfaction for them to be taken seriously. While the broader critical world claims to prize emotional expression (and they sort of do), they prefer works that explore extremely fine variations on those emotions than those that touch on powerful things like joy or rage or any kind of love that isn’t qualified. Things that don’t match that paradigm are dismissed out of hand. Many books actively and deliberately reject even basic story structure in favor of that fine exploration as a philosophical position, something critics tend to like. It sounds like a weird way to write, but like with grog communities online, these folks are so insulated from the outside world that it seems perfectly logical. To earn respect in critical circles, you basically have to have an MFA, a position in a university English department or a respectable literary magazine, and personal connections to other members - none of which are bad in and of themselves, mind. But these groups often end up profoundly isolated from the outside world and make judgments based on ideas that make perfect sense if you buy into their extremely specific lines of logic and are completely ridiculous otherwise. Which also sounds kind of familiar. In fairness, as a reader and a writer I like big (if complicated) emotions and happy endings, and those are very much personal preferences. My big philosophical issue is that they tend to assume that those elements disqualify something as a work of art, which means they dismiss things that have enormous meaning and value to me and millions of others on principle without bothering to engage with them, something I really don’t like.
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Apr 9, 2021 20:02
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Night10194 posted:Blue Rose 2e An Orcish swashbuckler who carries a huge great warhammer but otherwise treats it at all times as a rapier, right down to all the traditional swashbuckling tropes, is hilarious. Especially if they wear proper 17th-century adventuring attire with slashed sleeves and a ruff. "...how did she carve a Z on all their chests..." "Just don't ask."
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Apr 9, 2021 20:25
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Loxbourne posted:An Orcish swashbuckler who carries a huge great warhammer but otherwise treats it at all times as a rapier, right down to all the traditional swashbuckling tropes, is hilarious. Especially if they wear proper 17th-century adventuring attire with slashed sleeves and a ruff. What did you think that little spike on the end of most fantasy warhammers is for?
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Apr 9, 2021 20:26
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Age of Sigmar: Lumineth Realm-Lords Act of God Act 3 opens back at the Blackpit Realmgate. Nagash has been having a very bad time lately, with his Mortarchs all loving up to various degrees and Arkhan getting blown the hell up permanently. However, we will note that when Arkhan fled Ymetrica, he left a small force of Ossiarchs there - the Mortis Praetorians. The aelves thought they won and this was nothing to worry about, really. There were several clashes with the Praetorians in the ensuing weeks, generally successfully for the Lumineth. Eventually, a great storm of death magic formed over the Blackpit, however, darkening the sky and tearing the colors of rot through the clouds. Nagash himself, Supreme Lord of the Dead, emerged to the field, determing to have his vengeance. The aelven forces guarding the Blackpit were annihilated utterly. The mountains themselves cracked and whitened under his touch, as he drained the life from them. The good news was that most of the Ymetrican forces that had fallen to Arkhan and the Praetorians were not present. Bad news is that's because most of them had PTSD and were seeking treatment with the Cathallar sisterhood of the Elthondu Widows in the Great Daixo River basin. When the Blackpit erupted, the Elthondu Cathallars found their emotional control shattered by a sudden wave of terror, and the Ymetrican soldiers knew their fears had been realized. The Elthondu seers prophesied that Avalenor would fall. Broken and scarred as they were, the Ymetrican forces prepared to move out. Vanari riders were sent out to Zaitrec, Iliatha and Xintil to seek reinforcements, knowing they were probably already too late. It wouldn't, they reckoned, take more than a few days for Nagash to take control of Avalenor and the power of the mountains. Still, they had to try. The Ymetrican forces were slow to move through the mountains, though, as they were ordered to reserve their aetherquartz for the battle and were still suffering from the grief and fear that had overwhelmed them. They prayed to their gods, Teclis and Tyrion, to come and save them. Just one problem: neither one was in Hysh at the time. Teclis had retreated to the Uhl-Gysh following rumors of Archaon attacking it. Tyrion...well, no one knew where Tyrion was. He'd left on a quest he refused to discuss, heading in the direction of Ymetrica's Pit of Cathartia. In his place, Lyrior Uthralle took up the banner. The fortressezs Tor Amun, Tor Ilidreth and Tor Glimris were emptied, their garrisons marched towards Mount Avalenor. When the assembling Vanguard of Tyrion arrived at the Blackpit, they saw that Nagash had gathered an orb of ghosts so large that it was as if a second moon sat in the sky. They shrieked in constant agony, and Lord Regent Uthralle considered having the thing fired on with massed cleansing magic, but the Cathallar Weeping Veil stopped him, revealing that the souls in the orb were those of aelves who had died in the Shyish campaign. Destroying them so would render them eternally bound in a purgatory of emptiness. Nagash was using the aelves own reverence for their dead against them - and they couldn't stop it. They marched on, but soon received a message from the Alarith - the Mountain King Avalenor was cracking and crumbling, his spiritual statue weakened like old clay. Ellania and Elliathor, newly returned from Chamon with the Alarith survivors, realized what this meant: the mountain itself was in dire peril, and Nagash had to be making his stand there, for nothing else could bring down such a powerful aelementor, much less from afar. The armies went into an even higher speed, regardless of how exhausting it would be. Only their extensive training kept them from collapsing as they ran up the mountain paths. They found the aelementiri shrines shattered and burned out, the skins of their guardians draped over broken wood and trees of bone. The Ossiarchs had struck by night, blocking the trails with bone barricades made from the defenders they had slaughtered. The Alarith forces that had come from Chamon fought with a vengeful fury to smash through these, burning with hatred against the atrocities done to their fellows. The Vanari remained focused, supporting them and ensuring that the Ossiarchs they killed were shipped back down the mountain so they could not be recovered and used in the coming battles. It had been a tactic they learned facing Horrk Venzai and Arkhan, and it had proven to be Arkhan's undoing. Ossifector Xaramos, who had commanded the Praetorians left in Ymetrica, proved a far less cunning foe. He was a capable general, but faced with the resupply problems the aelves had forced on him, he had chosen to attack the local Flesh-Eater Court, demanding a tithe of bone from them and binding them to his service. His forces had prepared a rudimentary fortress of flesh and bone from which to raid the Lumineth, but they'd found slim pickings - the aelves burned the bones of their dead to ash by magic rather than let them be captured. The fortress was cannibalized to build new bodies for his soldiers, and for a time they held firm . The problem is that they scorned the Flesh-Eaters, treating them as fools and expendable shock troops who were too unpredictable to be really useful. Xaramos was certain that Abhorrant Archregent Gorstane Mortevell, the Bright Emperor, would pay his tithe - he was, after all, loyal to Nagash. He would fight the aelves at Nagash's command. Arkhan had told Xaramos it'd be easily handled. Arkhan was wrong. At first, the tithe was paid simply. Ghoul King Varshorn, a servant of Gorstane, was no Nagash-worshipper, but he saw the Ossiarchs as allies and helped them fight. While Arkhan was still around, he had even personally fought alongside them. He and Xaramos had formed an uneasy respect, though no friendship, during the sack of an Elthondu river town. And the Flesh-Eaters had plenty of bones lying around in their lairs, so for a while, Varshorn was happy to hand them over. As the Praetorians began to lose ground in the days leading up to Nagash's arrival, though, things changed. Xaramos grew ever more desperate and demanded ever more bone to reinforce his army. He had the crude structures and bone sculptures of Varshorn's court torn down and rebuilt - a grave insult to the grandeur of the Ghoul King. Varshorn became enraged and refused to pay any tithe whatsoever, inviting the Ossifector to a banquet to negotiate a more equitable arrangement. Xaramos decided his solution would be to attend and kill everyone present, using their bones instead. In his haste, he forgot to scout the mountains, and his assault was counterattacked by the winged ghouls of the court, Varshorn's "Pegasus Knights." The two forces tore each other to bits, and Varshorn personally tore Xaramos' head off and consumed his soul gem. This left the Praetorians both without a general and without their most skilled Mortisan. While Varshorn understood it only imperfectly, he had performed a key act in helping the Lumineth against Nagash. As the Lumineth reached the summit of Avalenor, they only managed to do so due to the massively thinned ranks of the Mortis Praetorians, who even with Nagash's aid had been unable to recover from the logistical starvation of bone and souls they had been left with in the wake of Varshorn's counterattack. Even so, they had to burn through much of their aetherquartz simply to survive the waves of terror flowing from the dark magic N agash invoked. One by one, the Cathallars collapsed during the climb. The stone grew brittle under their feet, and only the Alarith proved able to continue, drawing determination from the mountain spirit. Even they wavered when they reached a plateau to find a herd of pale, starving Ymetrican Longhorns, the totemic symbols of their temple, who in peacetime were effectively immortal due to their sheer toughness. On Avalenor, they were fading quickly, sick and starving. The Stonemages killed them to end their suffering, their anger renewed against Nagash. The Alarith went ahead to try and disrupt Nagash's plans until the Vanari could arrive. Their rage kept them going faster now, though the Scinari mages among the rest of the armor feared they were being led into a trap, especially with no Cathallars around to help them maintain clarity of thought. The Alarith didn't care. They knew they would die fighting Nagash, but they needed revenge. They had to save the Mountain King if they could, even at the cost of their own lives. The winds themselves howled in fear, the spirits of the air heading out to deliver the tortured cries of the Mountain King and to beg for aid. The other nations sent what forces they could towards Ymetrica, but none knew if they would arrive in time - save one group. The soldiers of the nation of Helon knew they would be on time, for the winds themselves carried them at the command of their leader, Harantio the Galerider, who had sensed Nagash's arrival with his magic. As the Alarith climbed, the forces of Helon sent the winds to aid them, to buoy them up whenever they slipped or seemed to falter. The Hurakan descended from the sky to join their mountain cousins for the battle. And they were not alone. Teclis, too, came from the sky. He realized what Nagash was planning - he was going to sacrifice the soul of Avalenor itself to destroy the power of Hysh and link it to the Nadir. Teclis descended to the field to face Nagash personally, just as Nagash wanted. The two banter for a while about Nagash's theft of magic from the elves of the World That Was, and of the harm Teclis had caused to Tyrion in the past. Teclis notes that Tyrion is facing a foe much deadlier than Nagash, which is...interesting. (Nagash is certain there is no such thing.) Nagash tries to blast Teclis, but Teclis teleports away from him, and Celennar appears to fight at his side. They duel with magic and physical force, each trying to destroy the other and unleashing insane amounts of magic. Celennar releases the music of the spheres, preventing any other sound from being uttered, so that Nagash cannot work his spells. Nagash locks Cellnar in a prison of bone, threatening to crush them to death, and the music breaks as the pain rushes through the lunasphinx. Teclis falls into Nagash's trap by countering a spell cast at Celennar, which explodes and forces the lunasphinx to discorporate and return to the moon. Nagash draws on the power of the Shyish Nadir to overpower Teclis with raw magic, conjuring a swarm of beetles to consume him from within and a blast of death magic to tear him apart from without. His mind is assaulted by images of his own death, over and over, hoping to break him. Teclis channels his inner calm, summoning the light of Hysh to banish the spirits assaulting him, and has a moment of genius. He reworks his spells to attack - but he doesn't target Nagash. Instead, he unleashed the purifying light of Hysh on the Nine Books of Nagash, which had been key to the death god's apotheosis in the World-That-Was. They burn up, and Nagash's attack falters as he screams in rage. The mountain's flanks begin to crumble, unleashing avalnches below, and Nagash returns to assaulting Teclis, who focuses on channeling the power of the sky into his own mind, wiping fear from it and entering a trance so that he can have mental peace and understand how to win. He seals the magic Nagash has unleashed into a sphere around the duel, then forms a forcefield to protect himself...which Nagash teleports into, moving to a sword fight. Nagash, who is right now a gigantic bone monste armed with the reality-cutting lbade Zefet-nebtar, is by far the better melee combatant, and Teclis begins to rot from within. He solves this issue by flaring Hyshian magic out his eyes, burning Nagash - but to little avail. Nagash disarms Teclis and prepares to unmake him utterly. Teclis' calm is broken, and he realizes he's probably going to lose. Meanwhile, the Alarith and Hurakan are assaulting the Ossiarch fortress on Avalenor. The Praetorians have built a wall out of Lumineth and ghoul corpses, which is proving very hard to break through thanks to the soul magic buinding them together. The Lumineth are disgusted by it, and the Ossiarch Mortisans are actually pretty upset, too, as they consider it crude and unworthy as a construction. But it's working, and giving the Ossiarch a chance to fire artillery at the aelves without much response. Many aelves die in the assault - but at this moment, the Hurakan join the fray. They come in from above, knocking away the artillery fire, but are unable to tear the Ossiarchs from the wall - their feet have been fused to the ramparts so they can't be knocked off. The Ossiarchs begin to falter, though, as Nagash starts draining their souls to empower himself against Teclis. Those that don't die from this focus on defense, but are being picked off by Hurakan arrows. The Lumineth aggression is paying off. The Scinari call forth roads of light, bringing in more reinforcements - Spirits of the Mountain who have traveled from across Ymetrica to help protect their king. Unfortunately, their advance is delayed by the attacks of Archregent Mortevell's ghouls, who have decided to attack the 'false angels' they see the Lumineth as. The ghouls scramble up the mountainside like spiders, heading for the Spirits of the Mountain. The spirits are far more powerful, and many ghouls are burned to ash by their lasers, but they can't keep going quickly. Worse, Mortevell joins the battle and destroys one of the spirits personally before Harantio and the Hurakan windmages are able to throw him off the mountainside. The saving grace? The Deadwatch of Starfang Mont, the elite forces who served Varshorn, are not present. While the ghouls have the weight of numbers, they don't have enough. Several Spirits of the Mountain are able to make it through the hordes and join the Alarith on the peak, tearing down the corpse wall. The Mortisans are destroyed, ending one of the power flows heading up to Nagash. The Ossiarch reserve forces come out...but suddenly, six of the nearby mountain peaks light up brighter than the sun. The ghouls fall back at the light, but Teclis, high above, is struck not by fear but by wonder. He realizes what's going on. On each peak there is a massive arcane device - a set of aetherquartz focusing lenses, which have just emerged from six portals opened by the Celennar. The lunaphinx recorporated and went to get help, see - and since Teclis personally saved the Free City during the Necroquake, Arcoblade Lazerne of the Collegiate Arcane was happy to answer. He has restructured the Greater Luminarks of Xintil to draw power from Celennar, focusing lunar energy to fire six giant lasers directly at Nagash. It is not the aelves but human ingenuity that keeps Teclis alive. The lasers blast directly through Nagash's skull. Teclis calls on the aetherquartz that all of the Lumineth are carrying, reflecting the Luminark lasers through them to add a thousand tiny new lasers to the assault. He calls on the lessons he learned fighting Slaanesh to bind Nagash and drop him down to the peak. The Ossiarchs rush to protect their master, but the Spirits of the Mountain cannot be stopped. They charge in to smash Nagash over and over with their gigantic hammers, stomping on the Ossiarchs as they do. Nagash is trapped by the bindings Teclis has laid on him and can't resist. His physical form is shattered to pieces, and his spirit flees to the Blackpit. Teclis absorbs the power of the Luminark lenses and levitates them into the sky, forming an aerial constellation with them in the form of Danathroir, the aelven rune of banishment and protection. Teclis takes all the energy he'd been channeling to fight Nagash and refocuses it into a gigantic spell of purification. The Necroquake's curse is broken across the entire Mortal Realms, sending a blazing flash of light through everywhere. It's not totally clear what this means, but I think Teclis just de-inverted the Shyish Nadir. If not, he has at least greatly weakened the power of Shyish that had been flowing through the Mortal Realms since the Nadir's formation. The aelves celebrate their victory, but it has come at the cost of many aelven lives. Teclis is still awash with necrotic energy, and while he's pulled off the biggest win against Nagash in ages, he's going to need time to recover. He goes to his sanctum and uses some magic mirrors to contact Alarielle, but he's still struggling with the memories of terror and death that his duel left him with. Alarielle warns him that what he's done is going to have massive repercussions - and not all of them are good. Nagash is, of course, going to seek revenge. Again. Obviously. That doesn't worry Teclis - Nagash is going to have to build a new body for himself at the least and will be greatly weakened for some time. Alarielle also notes that the speed with which Teclis weakened the power of Death is goign to cause a backlash. Life follows death and death follows life in an eternal cycle. Teclis thinks she means hope and progress, but Alarielle clarifies - no, just life. For good and bad. (For example: dangerous monsters are life, as is Nurgle.) Teclis explains that pride is what doomed Nagash, having thought he defeated Celennar and considering the power of humanity to be utterly beneath him. Alarielle sarcastically notes that it's good the Lumineth have completely overcome their own pride; Teclis refuses to acknowledge her sarcasm. She also notes that she helped him in his time of need, invoking the statue of Lileath he carries on his staff to grant him some of her own serenity. Teclis thanks her and admits that without that, he would have died. Alarielle then notes that the war is continuing, and she has more ways to fight than Teclis realizes. The two agree that in alliance, they will achieve great things, and Teclis worries briefly about Slaanesh again, but has yet to realize he's found a way to get some of his power out of the Uhl-Gysh. End result of all this? The Nine Books are gone. For good. Nagash is stuck without a body for an undefined amount of time. The Necroquake is officially over forever and cannot be restarted. A bunch of humans with a laser gun saved a god. Oh, and a lot of aelves are dead, but Avalenor the Mountain King is not. Next time: Alumna and Helon, Nations of Tyrion
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Apr 9, 2021 20:29
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Night10194 posted:Blue Rose 2e You know, I feel like Antwerps would fit right in with this setting.
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Apr 9, 2021 20:39
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Obligatum VII posted:You know, I feel like Antwerps would fit right in with this setting. I will forever quietly adore QFG.
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Apr 9, 2021 20:40
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Cythereal posted:What did you think that little spike on the end of most fantasy warhammers is for? A whole new meaning to body piercings.
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Apr 9, 2021 20:41
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Loxbourne posted:An Orcish swashbuckler who carries a huge great warhammer but otherwise treats it at all times as a rapier, right down to all the traditional swashbuckling tropes, is hilarious. Especially if they wear proper 17th-century adventuring attire with slashed sleeves and a ruff. Remember that Pinpoint Attack was balanced to let Experts keep up. A normal rapier/dagger (any 'light' melee blade) does d6+1+Strength+Modifiers. A 2h warhammer does 2d6+3+Str+Modifiers. Add the extra d6 and the swashbuckler Orc is going to be kicking some serious butt. Plus they'd still get all the other tricks Experts are meant to use to keep up in a fight. Don't underestimate Orcish Fencing. E: Normally an Expert that wants to go high melee damage is using a staff (because of course, elegant two-handed staff is a totally viable main melee weapon in this system, why wouldn't it be?). That does d6+3+Str+Modifiers. The difference is considerable! Fighting Weapons are better for a reason. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 21:08 on Apr 9, 2021 |
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Apr 9, 2021 21:06
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Sledgehammer Fencer is a good counterpart to the Muscle Wizard.
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Apr 9, 2021 21:09
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Only ever referring to gay sex as "sledgehammer fencing" from now on
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Apr 9, 2021 21:19
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Another fun thing: While Rhydan cannot use weapons (unless you are a Rhy-Ape, at which point you can! Their entire power is 'has hands'), there is nothing saying they cannot use armor, and a Rhydan Warrior still automatically gets the Armor talent at Novice like all Warriors. So now you can imagine The Fox in a jaunty little hat and armored coat and cape. E: This also opens up that 'Panzerbjorn' is a character option.
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Apr 9, 2021 21:24
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This is making me want to read The Belgariad again. It's not quite Romantic Fantasy in the usual sense, but it hits a lot of the same notes, and to me has the hilarious bit where Destiny - the self-aware will of the cosmos - is itself an important character and comes across like an exasperated DM losing patience with its players when Garion starts crying about how he doesn't want to be the chosen one. 
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Apr 9, 2021 21:30
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Falconier111 posted:That’s just it, though. “Involve” may not be the right word; I mean those works focus almost entirely on those emotions at the expense of everything else. That’s what I’m getting at when I say positive emotions have to be framed as exceptional: these works must focus on isolation, alienation, and dissatisfaction for them to be taken seriously. While the broader critical world claims to prize emotional expression (and they sort of do), they prefer works that explore extremely fine variations on those emotions than those that touch on powerful things like joy or rage or any kind of love that isn’t qualified. Things that don’t match that paradigm are dismissed out of hand. Many books actively and deliberately reject even basic story structure in favor of that fine exploration as a philosophical position, something critics tend to like. It sounds like a weird way to write, but like with grog communities online, these folks are so insulated from the outside world that it seems perfectly logical. To earn respect in critical circles, you basically have to have an MFA, a position in a university English department or a respectable literary magazine, and personal connections to other members - none of which are bad in and of themselves, mind. But these groups often end up profoundly isolated from the outside world and make judgments based on ideas that make perfect sense if you buy into their extremely specific lines of logic and are completely ridiculous otherwise. Which also sounds kind of familiar. What's always strange to me about this is that 'critical circles' like this are, themselves, completely independent of academic circles about literature. I'm in a graduate program in Literary Studies and this sort of literary criticism is extremely not the area of interest, even though I can recognize the basic strokes.
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Apr 9, 2021 22:20
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Falconier111 posted:That’s just it, though. “Involve” may not be the right word; I mean those works focus almost entirely on those emotions at the expense of everything else. That’s what I’m getting at when I say positive emotions have to be framed as exceptional: these works must focus on isolation, alienation, and dissatisfaction for them to be taken seriously. While the broader critical world claims to prize emotional expression (and they sort of do), they prefer works that explore extremely fine variations on those emotions than those that touch on powerful things like joy or rage or any kind of love that isn’t qualified. Things that don’t match that paradigm are dismissed out of hand. Many books actively and deliberately reject even basic story structure in favor of that fine exploration as a philosophical position, something critics tend to like. It sounds like a weird way to write, but like with grog communities online, these folks are so insulated from the outside world that it seems perfectly logical. To earn respect in critical circles, you basically have to have an MFA, a position in a university English department or a respectable literary magazine, and personal connections to other members - none of which are bad in and of themselves, mind. But these groups often end up profoundly isolated from the outside world and make judgments based on ideas that make perfect sense if you buy into their extremely specific lines of logic and are completely ridiculous otherwise. Which also sounds kind of familiar. Ahhh the primary emotional state of the protagonists involve suffering as an end itself? Like misery porn but more high brow? Saying that though the problem shifts from "what is art" to "what is good art". Just because a work creates a strong feeling does not mean it is good literature, but I doubt there is any one particular "standard" as it were.
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Apr 9, 2021 22:22
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Josef bugman posted:Ahhh the primary emotional state of the protagonists involve suffering as an end itself? Like misery porn but more high brow?
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Apr 9, 2021 22:38
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Nessus posted:The issue as far as I can tell is not so much that these particular books are held as Art, it is that some books are held as Art and others as Genre Trash, when often the books held as Art are just as much of an arbitrary genre as the Genre Trash. This exalts arbitrary details of the books in the first category and gets in the way of analysis of the books in the second category. I imagine it also has real consequences in terms of things like "what gets published or promoted." The actual term is not really 'art' but literature, and these works are 'literary fiction' - itself a specific genre, one that attempts to commodify and reproduce the category of 'literature' as such. The result is that you get a genre that is focused intensely on the texture of language, the psychological depth of characterization, and the exposure of social ills or neuroses through those methods. This, then, rather incestuously becomes the standard by which new works in the genre are judged. There are good works of 'literary fiction' but the genre as a whole isn't any better than any other genre, but has a sort of general aura of Being Literary from which it benefits in the critical eye. Jonathan Franzen, already mentioned, is a great example of bad literary fiction - but he's so perfectly 'literary fiction' in a genre sense that he gets a ton of positive critical attention. E: also, the 'exposure of social ills or neuroses' is rarely going to include the expression of ideas for change, radical critiques, etc. Because literary fiction is not particularly interested in those for genre reasons; that would make the book a polemic, a screed, political. As opposed to 'insightful' or 'incisive' or 'emotionally real.' There's some real bourgeois ideology at work there, which makes sense, given literary fiction has itself become a very effective marketing framework (Franzen makes a lot of money off writing, as far as I can tell). Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 22:43 on Apr 9, 2021 |
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Apr 9, 2021 22:41
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So, what I am gathering here is that 'literary fiction' is the written form of 'Oscar Bait'. Does that kind of sum it up? Literary fiction also sounds like it has an additional layer of pretension, but that might be reading too much into it.
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Apr 9, 2021 23:34
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Nessus posted:The issue as far as I can tell is not so much that these particular books are held as Art, it is that some books are held as Art and others as Genre Trash, when often the books held as Art are just as much of an arbitrary genre as the Genre Trash. This exalts arbitrary details of the books in the first category and gets in the way of analysis of the books in the second category. I imagine it also has real consequences in terms of things like "what gets published or promoted." Oh absolutely. The problem is that "genre trash" may have as many problems as Art books. It's just hard to quantify both sets of them in an objective way I suppose.
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Apr 10, 2021 00:45
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Imagine oscar bait that everyone in your graduate program is dedicating their entire writing careers to reproducing, to the detriment of their identity, well-being, and ability to empathize with non-academy-writers. Everyone of your peers, your superiors (all veteran academics / authors in the genre), and every prestigious publisher, reviewer, or critic is saying you have to write like this. It's not so much pretension as it is a genre horrifically fused with a subculture of literary elites.
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Apr 10, 2021 00:45
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Josef bugman posted:Oh absolutely. The problem is that "genre trash" may have as many problems as Art books. It's just hard to quantify both sets of them in an objective way I suppose. I can almost guarantee I had more fun reading 40k books (the good ones, not the bad ones) last month while I was supposed to be working than the people reading Art books, and let me tell you, those are the very yardstick for genre trash.
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Apr 10, 2021 00:59
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tokenbrownguy posted:Imagine oscar bait that everyone in your graduate program is dedicating their entire writing careers to reproducing, to the detriment of their identity, well-being, and ability to empathize with non-academy-writers. Everyone of your peers, your superiors (all veteran academics / authors in the genre), and every prestigious publisher, reviewer, or critic is saying you have to write like this. It doesn’t help that, like many elitist subcultures, its members are often profoundly hypocritical about what and who they let into their clubhouse. These folks have a deep disdain for popular art that they generally apply in the most  way possible. I had one as my professor who professed an appreciation for Nathaniel Hawthorne, the man who built his career in part on writing about witches an a journey to the afterlife; a lot of them also seemed to like classic rock for some reason, which wasn’t exactly a genre produced without an eye towards mass consumption. But popular fiction? Monstrous. In a very real sense, magical realism exists to let them embrace speculative fiction they like without admitting they’re speculative fiction; better to invent an entire new category than admit their category system is inadequate. Their appreciation for art is so deeply tied into their preconceptions that it’s hideously difficult for them to wrap their heads around the limits of their worldview.
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Apr 10, 2021 01:32
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 Back in 2014, I ran a campaign known as Arcana High. The pitch was that the PCs were students at a world-renowned magical academy, but ended up inheriting relics which allowed them to transform into the Secret Swords, a team of masked heroes from times of yore. I’ve gone on to GM many other campaigns from then on, but even seven years later it is one of my most memorable campaigns. I used the Pathfinder system with the caveat that every PC must have levels in a full or partial spellcasting class, and the Secret Sword relics automatically granted Big Six bonuses along with anti-divination and disguise abilities to better maintain a secret identity. Topping this all off was my own feat-like progression of special abilities derived from superhero tropes. For this I drew influence from magical items rather than class features, so as to at once reduce the Christmas Tree effect while also allowing for meaningful progression. Furthermore, I had a more focused sense of what I wanted the game to be; I knew that things in Pathfinder got crazy past 12th level, so I sought to keep things in the setting (including the larger threats) within this scale while still doing my best to emulate “larger than life” adventures. In all but the final arc PCs still had regular concerns of balancing school life with magical vigilantism. And while they were talented enough to handle themselves, several ‘mid-level’ NPC allies they made along the way could still usefully contribute in smaller ways to their adventures. While I’d like to think that I did an adequate job with the tools that I had, if I were to run Arcana High again I would not use Pathfinder or a D&D system for that matter. Even back then I realized that I was fighting against the rules in order to better fit genre constraints. Which naturally make me concerned about how Supers & Sorcery handles this, and for an Edition that is notably lower-powered than Pathfinder. Most superhero RPGs in general are not class-based, instead providing a point-based toolkit to build one’s character. Secondly, the power levels of superheroes vary wildly depending on the characters in question and genre. Thirdly, the limitations of race mean that choosing more exotic options are out of the question unless you’re using a 3rd party supplement or starting at a higher level. You can’t expect to run a D&D Superhero game without someone asking at some point if they can play as a dragon, or maybe even a Treant that sounds like a monotone Vin Diesel. Fourth, the reliance upon Vancian rest refresh rates and accumulation of spells and items means that it’s harder to emulate a single-themed character like the Flash or one who’s not a gadget-user, in that you’re bound to pick up tangential abilities over time. There’s also the fact that the core abilities of many superheroes are at-will features, and the pacing between battles and damage recovery don’t play well in the endurance run dungeon crawl that is D&D. Fifthly, one trick pony character types often boil down to martials making repeat attacks rather than something more interesting. For example, if I were to emulate the Hulk in Champions, Masks, or Mutants & Masterminds, the systems in place easily let my character pick up something big and throw it, pick up someone else and wield them as a weapon, let them stomp the ground and create a shockwave, use super-strength to leap really far, and various other effects beyond just punching someone hard. The RPGs in question all do this very differently, but the martial/caster divide is notably absent in superhero media for a variety of reasons. And then of course there is Godbound, which is an OSR version of Exalted that does away with many D&D tropes in order to better emulate the “PCs are divine heroes” flavor. Last but not least, superheroes as a genre are incredibly broad. Even from the same publisher and era, they have very different set-ups and aspects. Peter Parker’s comics mostly detail an otherwise normal young man whose down-to-earth worries of schooling, his job at the Daily Bugle, and Aunt May help emphasize his grounded nature of a “Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.” The X-Men focuses on themes of prejudice and the fear of humanity being upstaged by hyper-evolved mutants, with said mutants trying to find their place in a hostile world. Then there’s the Silver Surfer, a space-traveling artificial life form who has trouble relating to Earth at all and often acted as a voice of reason against our petty, backwards ways during the Silver Age of Comics. Each of these characters have different levels of power, but strong attempts at emulating their comics into RPG form will result in very different systems and settings unless one goes for a ‘generic’ approach. With all that being said, I find combining superhero aesthetics with 5th Edition to be a tall order. Supers & Sorcery doesn’t seem to be aping any specific ‘style’ of superhero as mentioned above, instead billing itself in the broadest terms possible. As such this puts it on the level of something like the “build your own genre” of Champions vs. the more focused RPGs such as Masks. And even games such as Champions have the sense to put Spider-Man and Superman on different power tiers. More so than Pathfinder, Bounded Accuracy leads to a smaller power curve, closer to the “street level” than cosmic level that some superheroes can attain. I get that 5e compatibility sells books as a publishing strategy, but that doesn’t necessarily speak to the strength of the system. Throughout this review I’m going to be keeping the above in mind. Sorry if that ended up as a bit of a rant. But I wanted to outline what I feel Supers & Sorcery has to contend with, and what the likeliest questions would-be readers are going to have about the stories one can make in its world.  Supers & Sorcery is just as much a settingbook as it is one of crunch. It centers on the city of Beacon, a bustling fantasy metropolis sitting at the nexus of a bunch of planar gateways home to all sorts of people. Various neighborhoods are themed around the various Ages of Comic Books, or designations of popular tropes and trends of real-world superhero tales. Golden Age is the emerging WW2 genre with strong influences from pulp predecessors, Silver Age is more light-hearted with sci-fi themes, Bronze Age is gritty antiheroes, ninjas, and...wait, the author is confusing Bronze Age with Iron Age. The Bronze Age of Comics was in the 70s, when the genre took a more mature turn with the unshackling of the Comics Code Authority. It was strongly marked by social change, such as more superheroes of color, more explicit left-wing political commentary, and the ‘powering down’ of some of the more ridiculous Silver Age antics. The Iron Age was post-Watchmen, which was more mature in the sex and violence sort of way. The Modern Age is thus defined in this book as a super-vague timeframe which combines elements of the previous Ages. There’s also a full-page Dedication to Chadwick Boseman, talking about the actor’s influence in the superhero genre.  Chapter 1: Character Options The first few chapters of Supers & Sorcery focus on the player-focused side of options. We get two new races thrust upon us: the Chloryfolk, who are a race of sapient music-loving plants. Their base traits include +2 Wisdom, being able to rest faster to spend Hit Dice while maintaining contact with sunlight, and proficiency with the Performance skill and 2 musical instruments. They have 6 subraces reflective of their native region along with +1 to an appropriate ability score; for example, Aquatic grants the ability to breathe underwater and a swim speed along with speaking with undersea life. The other race is the Gnobold, a rare and new species in Beacon who are all the children of a gnomish-kobold couple and effectively an extended family. They gain +2 Dexterity, have Darkvision, advantage on all mental saves vs magic, limited telepathy in the form of mumbling, and advantage on attack rolls when within 5 feet of an ally. The two subraces include Anointed Gnobold, which grants +1 Wisdom and the ability to grant the attack roll and magic save advantages to adjacent allies 1/rest, and Craft Gnobold which grants proficiency with tinker’s tools and land vehicles but can also make a kit-bashed simple mechanical device during a short rest. Origins reflect your PC superhero’s Origin Story, aka the source of their powers. The setting of Beacon has 4 major sources of superpowers: alien heritage, magic, science, and extraordinary skill. You get 6 Origin Points to spend as you wish among the categories, and gain 3 more at 11th level. Each source has a small list of abilities ranked from 1-4 points. Most of the features are rather minor things at 1-2 points (learn 1-3 cantrips, bonus language, darkvision and nonflight speed, etc), although features in the 3-4 range tend to be more significant (flight speed, resistance to 2 energy damage types, bonus spells, Expertise as per a Bard or Rogue, etc). *But one specific new source of powers, arkwave energies, are not listed among them, and are in fact part of the new Archon class. I feel that this is an oversight, and this isn’t the first time I’ve seen things in this book that could use a second editing pass. The book is rather vague as to whether Origins are meant to work in tandem or as a replacement for Races and Backgrounds. Normally one would think that they add onto it, but as the book brings up the idea that the GM can use them as replacements, it thus begs the question. Honestly Origins have some nice features, but cannot really make up for the ability score bonuses and features that races provide, much less the bonus skills and equipment of backgrounds. This is one of the weaknesses of 5th Edition: in Pathfinder, one could play as a monstrous race by using their Challenge Rating as a rough baseline for their effective level, and there’s an unbalanced yet weighty system for creating new races. For Godbound, race doesn’t really matter, and the Words of divine power one gains access to are broad and powerful enough to replicate a wide variety of concepts. And in actual superhero RPGs, the benefits of species are bought as superpowers just like anything else.  The Archon is the new class for Supers & Sorcery. They are the product of supernatural arkwaves which spread across Beacon every 20 years.* Archons are capable of instilling other people with superpowers, making them a valuable commodity. They feel a strong pull towards some ideal or virtue, which also manifests in the forms their powers take. *the book notes that they spread farther than the city, among all the worlds of the Ring of Virtue. The Archon has 1d8 Hit Die, is proficient in light armor, simple weapons, alchemy kits, Constitution and Charisma saves, and chooses three skills from a list of mostly physical and charismatic choices along with some cerebral ones such as Arcana, History, and Nature. At 1st level they are immune to disease, their Strength and Constitution scores cannot be reduced by any means, 1/rest they can enhance their senses to grant advantage on the next Investigation or Perception check made in an hour, and can communicate telepathically with intelligent creatures within 60 feet. At 2nd level they gain a Warlockesque progression of Empowerments which are special abilities they can temporarily grant to others. They also get a Presence Attack which is an at-will ranged ability that deals 2d6 force damage +1d6 every 2 levels afterwards. Alternatively (and this is a permanent decision) an Archon can instead make their Presence Attack a melee one, gaining proficiency with martial weapons and use Charisma modifier for the attack and damage of all weapon attacks, along with +1d6 to +4d6 bonus force damage made with such attacks depending on their level. At 3rd level they choose one of 3 Principalities which serve as subclasses, while at 5th level they can spend a reaction to reduce oncoming damage by half their Presence Attack die (or the choice of gaining Extra Attack instead for more martial builds). 6th level they gain temporary hit points after a long rest, and at 9th level they can cast Spiritual Weapon as a bonus action but at the cost of having their Presence Attack damage halved. Their later class features are more utility in nature: at 10th they gain enhanced movement of at-will flight, parkour (Dash as bonus and advantage on Acrobatics/Athletics), or teleportation whose uses are limited by short rest. At 13th they can speak and understand all languages, at 15th gain proficiency in Strength saving throws (Intelligence if already proficient), at 17th can grant their enhanced movement to an ally, at 18th can use their Charisma score in place of a die roll result 1/long rest, and at 20th level they can Empower two creatures at once with the same use and can also permanently Empower others. The Principalities represent common feel-good virtues. Hope allows the Archon to summon mirror-image echoes which have telepathic contact, and grant various boons such as advantage on saves vs charm/frighten conditions to nearby allies, the echoes becoming automatically Empowered when an ally is Empowered, and gain advantage on attack rolls and bonus damage when fighting next to allies. Compassion is all about defense and healing, granting a limited use healing touch which restores hit points equal to the Presence Attack die, advantage on Medicine checks and effectively always having a healer’s kit on hand, can grant temporary hit points to nearby allies 1/long rest, and can end a variety of negative Conditions on allies benefitting from the healing touch. Principality of Justice are offensively focused, performing criticals with Presence Attacks on 19-20, the ability to push away and knock prone opponents if the Presence Attack is the variant melee option, count as one size category larger when it’s advantageous to the Archon, can create a gravity-warping ark field that can grapple multiple opponents and impose disadvantage on all attack rolls made against nearby targets 1/long rest, and a suicide ark bomb that deals AoE damage if the Archon is dropped to 0 hit points 1/long rest. Empowerments are abilities which are learned as the Archon levels up. They start with 2 at 2nd level and gain 2 more at 5th, 11th, and 17th level and gain a final 9th Empowerment at 20th level. There are 20 Empowerments to choose from and their respective durations differ: most last for 1 minute, but others can last for 10 minutes or even hours. They include things such as having a creature treat their weapon attacks as magical, advantage on initiative rolls, gaining a special ranged elemental attack, resistance vs a certain damage type, flight, limited regeneration, and alternate forms such as etherealness, increased/reduced size, and shapeshifting into a CR 1 or lower creature of the Beast type. Archons cannot empower themselves, only others. As a class the Archon feels odd to me. They seem to be the setting’s “special shtick” a la Eberron’s Artificer in that they are a reflection of a societal archetype. But in terms of superheroes they are a bit limited in being an “energy blaster” as their primary capability. Which in the world of Dungeons & Dragons is also the most common magic-user archetype for beginning players, which doesn’t really wow me. The granting of special abilities to allies is a nifty one, although as the Archon cannot Empower themselves there're only so many superhero archetypes they can emulate. Speaking of which, there is one new subclass for every PHB class, each one’s features being an obvious callout to some notable Marvel/DC character. Path of Growth Barbarian turns into the Hulk. When you rage you increase 1 size category along with enlarged personal equipment, reach, and +1d4 bonus damage as the initial feature. They can eventually grapple creatures of any size, gain advantage on Intelligence checks in interactions with Large and larger-sized creatures,* gain advantage on attacks vs smaller creatures, and the capstone ability imposes the Frightened condition on hostile creatures that start their turn within 10 feet of them. *which is weird as Intelligence skills are more or less internal, i.e. what the characters knows vs what they can cause other creatures to do. Unless it’s meant to make them more easily identify giant monsters? Either way strange wording College of Soundwaves Bard manipulates raw sound for a variety of purposes. They begin with resistance to thunder damage, learn the Thaumaturgy cantrip but can only use the booming voice feature if learned in this way, and gain proficiency in Persuasion or Insight. They also can spend Bardic Inspiration to subtract from a creature’s attack roll or add to a target’s saving throw roll if a hostile creature uses a verbal component spell within 60 feet. Later features include 2d6 to 4d6 bonus damage on all spells and attacks that deal thunder damage, can let a limited number of creatures within the AoE of said attacks auto-succeed on relevant saves as well as suffering no damage, and the capstone ability lets them create a sphere of silence at will and can mess with a target’s action economy by messing up their inner ear orientation by causing dizziness. The Emotion Domain Cleric is an empath, capable of sensing and manipulating emotions. Their bonus spells are mostly buffs and debuffs (fear, confusion, calm emotions) along with some utility (zone of truth, locate creature). They initially gain proficiency with Insight and Persuasion and can grant temporary hit points to allies during a short rest by expending spell slots, Their later features include a Channel Divinity that can instill indifference or enragement (6th level) in a target, impose disadvantage on the saving throws of a target that attacked them, and their capstone ability allows them to spend a reaction to make an attacking target autofail a relevant roll.  Circle of the Mark Druids focus on a more specific kind of shapeshifting, honing the abilities of a particular animal type. They choose a specific CR 1 or lower Beast as their ‘mark,’ which grants additional features on top of the normal Wildshape boons when the druid takes their form. Such options include +1 AC, gaining an alternate movement speed based on the creature's form, certain minor senses (darkvision or advantage on Perception), or dealing bonus damage with natural weapons equal to Wisdom modifier on top of Strength/Dexterity. They also have Animal Friendship and Speak with Animals prepared as bonus spells, and their later features include improving their base traits (more AC, better movement, blindsight, etc), the ability to gain one creature-specific special ability of another wildshape form when shaped into their Mark, and their capstone ability grants them a bonus trait as well as the ability to cast Conjure Fey 1/long rest that takes the form of a pack of animals of the Marked beast. The Super Martial Archetype is basically a poor man’s Superman. Your initial ability grants you Super Strength which...grants advantage on Strength checks and can add double your Strength modifier to attacks made with weapons while grappling. At 7th level you gain Super Vision which...grants you double proficiency on Insight and Perception. At 10th level you gain Super Speed which...lets you cast haste 1/short rest. 15th is Super Flight, where you gain a flying speed equal to your walking speed. At 18th you gain an at-will ability to use a reaction and reduce any form of damage by 1d10 + half Fighter level. Way of the Steel Strike Monk turns you into a cyborg...no wait, it just gives you a magitech arm. You initially gain proficiency with tinker’s tools and an artifact which grafts onto or replaces a limb. You need to maintain said artifact daily or it suffers an Exhaustion-like Disrepair that gets worse over time.* But using the artifact with a Flurry of Blows allows the monk to add both their Strength and Dexterity modifiers to damage, and can cast Light but only on their artifact. Their later features include the ability to spend ki points to cast Acid Arrow, Scorching Ray, or Shatter and can increase the effective level by spending more ki points. They can also learn to cast Protection from Energy 1/rest, and their capstone ability lets them store up to 6 unused ki points into their artifact during long rests and can spend a reaction to cast one of their spells as an opportunity attack when a creature would provoke such an attack. *wow as though being a poor man’s Iron Man wasn’t cool enough! Oath of Gesh Paladins are Aquamen clones of all things. They make an oath to the Lord of Water, and are tasked with protecting the seas and their ecosystems. Their bonus spells are mostly utility and nature themed (create or destroy water, misty step, dominate beast, etc) and their Channel Divinity can let them add Charisma on top of Strength for melee attack rolls, advantage on Strength to push objects, and can impose disadvantage on attack rolls targeting adjacent allies. Their later features include an aura that grants resistance to cold damage and can move freely in water without penalty, casting Insect Plague that takes the form of a moray eel swarm, and their capstone ability can summon a CR 8 or less Water Elemental. Evenfall Rider Rangers were attacked by a vampire or werewolf, partially gaining their abilities but also a burning desire for justice/vengeance against the species that wounded them so. They gain vampires and lycanthropes as bonus favored enemies, add 1d6 damage once per turn on all weapon attacks, gain darkvision, and gain Find Steed as a known spell. However, they are saddled with a curse depending on whether they’re a partial vampire or lycanthrope that activates on a failed Wisdom save once every 4 days or full moon respectively. Vampires gain an overwhelming urge to feed upon blood, while lycanthropes must hunt for prey and gain 1 level of exhaustion.* Later features include gaining bonus known spells depending on type (suggestion, invisibility, vampiric touch, and the like), gaining advantage on grapple checks vs vampires and lycanthropes and against the Charmed condition, can take half or no damage from AoE effects on failed and successful saves, and their capstone abilities cause all CR 5 and lower Court of Empty Night members to be afraid of the Ranger, and a bonus spell (confusion or faithful hound). Their final capstone ability lets them make 3 bonus weapon attacks 1/long rest when attacking a foe with 25% or fewer HP total (Ranger always knows the percentage of all targets) and stuns them if they’re still standing. *What is up with archetypes imposing penalties now?! Gatekeeper Rogues learn how to teleport for a player-defined reason (choose your choice of comic book logic upon gaining the archetype) and find novel uses for it. They initially can teleport anywhere within the 5 foot reach of a target whenever they hit with a melee weapon and this doesn't count against their movement. Their later features let them cast Blink, Misty Step, Dimension Door, and eventually Plane Shift and Teleport a limited amount of times per day (fewer times for higher level spells). They can use Dimension Door against unwilling and grappled opponents, inflicting Sneak Attack damage automatically when teleported in such a manner. So umm...where’s that at-will teleport? I don’t expect it to be like the spell, but even short-range jumps are pretty iconic! Heck there are official PHB archetypes that let you do this outside of combat! Red Right Hand Sorcerer Bloodlines are born as one of two surviving twins, possessed of the uncanny ability to absorb luck from others and use it for themselves as a result of fiendish influence. They initially can speak Abyssal, Infernal, gain double proficiency on all Charisma checks with fiends, and as a reaction can impose disadvantage on a single roll of a target within 60 feet a limited number of times (CHA modifier) per long rest. Their later features include the ability to spend Sorcery Points to add +1 to +3 to a spell attack roll,* 1d4 to 5d4 bonus damage,** or +1 to +3 Save DC of a spell*** 1/long rest. They can later take the form of a bat-winged demon, imposing the Frightened condition on nearby hostile targets, and their capstone ability lets them spend 7 Sorcery Points to grant additional features to said demonic form such as ignoring Frightened condition immunity, gaining flight speed, and a broad GM Fiat “perform acts of basic magic without expending a spell slot.” *nice! **cool! ***that’s overpowered! I’m unsure of what comic book character this bloodline’s based. It feels closer to something you’d find in a regular D&D setting.  Warlocks with the Cosmic Light Otherworldly Patron are chosen by a powerful figure to enforce justice in the multiverse via the wielding of arkwave light energy. Their expanded spell list is mostly utility and defense-focused (daylight, flame strike, spirit guardians, etc), and their initial features grant them advantage on saves vs the Frightened condition and can deal 1d4 bonus force damage on their first attack made after the condition ends for every round that it lasted. Later features grant them a 30 foot flying speed (this kicks in early in comparison to other subclasses, at 6th level), immunity to inhaled toxins, resistance to force damage and immunity to the Charmed condition, and their Capstone Ability (appropriately-named A Corps of Your Own) lets them summon 10 illusory copies 1/long rest when they cast Eldritch Blast, and each one can make a single 1d12 force damage attack while also granting the warlock effect line of sight of everything within the illusory copies’ senses. We also get a new Pact of the Ring for Warlocks with this subclass, granting them a magical ring that can be replaced via a 1 hour ritual. It grants the warlock the ability to turn their Eldritch Blasts into sustained forms up to 10 cubic feet in size, and can be maintained indefinitely and deal said cantrip’s damage to all who touch them (but otherwise can’t do anything else besides damage). Higher levels let them maintain more such shapes, and at 17th level can form it into a single construct. A Green Lantern Corps patron is a cool idea, but I cannot help but feel that they would make a more appropriate Paladin. Additionally, said superhero’s core feature of being able to make energy objects isn’t replicable with said class and Pact. There’s no mention of if said Eldritch Blast shapes can sustain a certain level of weight, to what degree they are transparent for cover purposes, and if said shapes can mimic the function of ‘real’ objects. Wizard School of Logomancy is devoted to the magic of words, and also has more traditional stage magic aesthetics; so it’s Zatanna. The initial features include the ability to ‘reverse’ the damage type of a cast spell (acid becomes poison, fire becomes cold, etc) and deals 1d4 to 1d12 bonus damage depending on wizard level when cast in such a way, and can teleport as part of their movement and leave an illusory double behind that is mistaken for the caster on a failed Intelligence save. Later features include the ability cast spells without somatic components provided they have an immediate casting time,* attempts at Counterspelling the wizard’s spells require an opposed Insight/Deception check in order to work, can deflect hostile spells back at the caster by speaking the verbal components backwards, and their capstone ability lets them create an AoE hallucination that imposes a variety of damaging debuffs based on a random roll of the target’s perception (wrapped in chains and submerged in water, being sawn in half, etc). *the rules do not have an ‘immediate’ casting time. They’re separated into actions, or by minutes/hours for longer casting times. There are four new Spells in this chapter. Heroic Landing is like Feather Fall but generates an AoE shockwave attack upon landing; Ice Cube is a cold-based version of Fireball but with a cube-shaped AoE; Twin Powers Activate has to be cast by 2 people with knowledge of the spell, transforming one of them into a CR 5 or less Beast, the other into a CR 5 or less Elemental. Finally, X-Ray Vision allows one to see up to 15 feet through objects and barriers but is blocked by common metal and lead. Alter Egos are Super & Sorcery’s backgrounds, representing common civilian identities. There’s 12 of them, and quite a few have highly similar if not identical skill and equipment lists to PHB ones, albeit renamed to be specific to Beacon-specific institutions and trades. Some of the more interesting ones include Beacon Herald Reporter (choice of knowledge-based skill proficiencies, proficient with Forger’s Kit, and access to library and old newspaper archives), Lamplighter (city watch, Thieves’ Tools or Gaming set, plus choice of History, Insight, Investigation, or Persuasion, along with various minor favors from people due to local contacts), Mogul (come from a rich family or came into wealth, one tool proficiency of choice, Insight & Persuasion, and can craft magic items in 1/3rd the time when making use of company resources), and Shattered Son (anti-establishment group, gain Sleight of Hand & Stealth, proficiency in Disguise Kit & Thieves’ Tools, and knowledge of fast and discrete routes, a hidden safehouse, and patrol routes of law enforcement). This chapter ends with two Feats. Resolute requires one to have 13 or higher Constitution, but allows one to immediately regain hit points upon reaching 0 hit points by spending half their remaining Hit Die; this is a limited-use ability, and unlike rest-based refresh rates for PCs is recharged on a 5 or 6 on a d6 roll every long rest, more akin to monster abilities. The other feat, Super Flight, increases one’s Dexterity by 1 and a flight speed equal to one’s base walking speed. The ability to fly (and swim, burrow, and other unconventional movements) indefinitely is one of the most common abilities in superhero comics. However, it does raise the question of former class features which grant flight. There’s also a number of magic items that grant a similar ability, ranging from Uncommon to Rare. As flight from S&S’s new classes are often gained at higher levels, and don’t add to existing movement rates nor does this feat, it does beg the question of what happens if this feat becomes superfluous or tradable when the class feature is gained.  Chapter 2: Sidekicks A mere 3 pages long, this chapter hardly qualifies for the title. Owing to how so many superheroes have constant companions, sidekicks are an optional system for NPC allies which players can level up and build like PCs but with special rules. Sidekicks level up congruently to PCs, but at a halved rate. Instead of using typical classes they have Sidekick levels but can gain proper class levels after their 3rd sidekick level. Sidekick levels are notably weaker than real classes, with a mere d6 Hit Die, a starting proficiency bonus of +1, and limited proficiency in a single language, skill, tool, and simple weapon. At levels 2 through 10 they gain their choice of a single benefit such as more individual weapon/armor/tool proficiencies, ability score increases, cantrips or 1st-level spells, and proper class features of a real class equal to half their level. Their proficiency bonus grows to +2 at 3rd level and +3 at 10th level. I gotta say, these rules are rather underwhelming. I’ve seen better rules in Matt Colville’s Strongholds & Followers for NPC allies that can grow alongside party members. And although they're much newer releases, the Sidekick rules from the official Tasha's Cauldron of Everything and Spheres of Power/Might’s expansion do the same thing but better. There Sidekicks are inferior to true PCs, but have more notable increases over the course of play. Chapter 3: Variant Rules At 2 pages this section’s even shorter than Sidekicks! Six new rules are provided to give a more superheroic feel for 5e games, and thus an intended higher level of power. The first rule allows PCs to spend the Hit Die to add the rolled result (no CON modifier bonus) to d20 rolls, damage rolls, and even to subtract the result of an enemy’s successful saving throw vs one of their attacks/spells/etc. Another rule allows the spending of Inspiration to cast a spell at a slot one level higher or to gain access to a class feature 2 levels higher for an undetermined amount of time. A third rule allows PCs to voluntarily take on levels of Exhaustion to gain advantage on attack rolls/saving throws or +5 to a single ability score for 3 rounds. Or to cause a target’s successful save to auto-fail. The fourth rule causes a “knockback” effect on critical hits where targets are flung through the air and fall prone as well as taking bonus damage if they come into contact with a solid surface. A fifth rule causes PCs to be able to take an instant short rest whenever they change into or out of their costumed identity, and long rests whenever they foil a supervillain’s plot. The final rule takes the Minion system from 4th Edition where enemies designated as “mooks” have only 1 hit point but their stats are otherwise unchanged. A lot of these rules tend to give static increases to abilities vs more thematic changes. I do like the one-hit Minion idea, although some need work like the Inspiration use having a specific duration. Another thing I would’ve liked is a kind of scalable table of magnitude for higher power levels of superheroes, like the Hulk and Superman being able to lift entire buildings. For example at Tier 1 (1st-4th) you are street-level crime fighters and use the base guidelines for D&D, but at Tier 4 (17th-20th) you can blow up asteroids with your fists. Thoughts So Far: The new material has left me unimpressed and only reinforced my concerns that Superhero D&D is better off using another ruleset in order to properly emulate genre conventions. The sample class archetypes are at once too unbalanced and too restrictive at emulating the diversity of character archetypes that are part and parcel of superhero fiction. Although there were attempts at opening things up in regards to race and origin, the inability to play actual monsters and more fantastical creatures (conceptually similar if not mechanically identical) that you’d expect in Superhero D&D is another point against its favor. Join us next time as we cover the setting proper in Part 2: A World of Heroes! Libertad! fucked around with this message at 00:50 on Apr 11, 2021 |
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Apr 10, 2021 01:40
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You could honestly almost stop at 'they try to have a neighborhood for each genre of superhero' as far as analysis of 'is the setting portion going to work'. Trying to blend genre-bending portal fantasy with D&D 5e is a hard ask at the best of times, putting it in a supers game is insanity.
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Apr 10, 2021 01:55
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Falconier111 posted:It doesn’t help that, like many elitist subcultures, its members are often profoundly hypocritical about what and who they let into their clubhouse. These folks have a deep disdain for popular art that they generally apply in the most I disagree, thoroughly: Magical realism exists to embrace the writing of nonwhite folks who don't have the same specific genre hangups they do. Magical realism is not 'speculative' fiction, which is a particular genre formation within Anglophone literature (I guess you could call Borges' 'speculative' fiction) which is itself, sadly, a terminology created to differentiate Good Genre from Bad Genre. Every genre is deeply tied both to a market and to a set of conventions and valuations; we see this in the treatment of fantasy by science fiction fans and theorists, as well as in the treatment of SFF by literary fiction types. Literary fiction is also very much a function of the post-WWII fiction market, because it's an attempt to codify 'literariness' and package it to consumers - all of the works that literary fiction looks to as its inspirations were not literary fiction but existed in their own genres. You might call it a bastardization of the Modernist novel, but boilerplate litfic is rarely experimental the way Modernists were. Now, all that being said: There's some very good litfic out there (Barbara Kingsolver, for example), and there's even hybrid works like Susanna Clarke's Piranesi that engage with literary fiction from the standpoint of other genres. But the genre as a whole is no better nor worse than any other genre, and its fans and scholars are a good deal more myopic about it. E: Red Right Hand Sorcerers sound like they must be Hellboy-inspired, but the powers have nothing to do with Big Red.
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Apr 10, 2021 01:55
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megane posted:But how has no one made a Deer Leader pun yet You start with Deer Leader and end up with Benito Mooselini.
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Apr 10, 2021 02:15
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Midjack posted:You start with Deer Leader and end up with Benito Mooselini. I think the Red Right Hand people are supposed to evoke Raven from Teen Titans.
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Apr 10, 2021 02:26
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Joe Slowboat posted:I disagree, thoroughly: Magical realism exists to embrace the writing of nonwhite folks who don't have the same specific genre hangups they do. Magical realism is not 'speculative' fiction, which is a particular genre formation within Anglophone literature (I guess you could call Borges' 'speculative' fiction) which is itself, sadly, a terminology created to differentiate Good Genre from Bad Genre. All of this is entirely fair, especially because I forgot about magical realism’s roots and kinda implied litfic critics defined/created that genre and that is absolutely not the case. I’m speaking as someone whose experiences with magical realism are extremely limited, since I stick to sci-fi/fantasy in my casual reading and my literary education focused on literary fiction. What I will say, however, is that the academy often believes magical realism is litfic with fantastical elements. Like, I saw that term applied by professors to works that were white as gently caress and very litfic in outlook but had ghosts and poo poo in them. The name gets used to preserve the gap between “realistic” and “genre” by setting up a compromise position... Which is actually pretty colonialist if you think about it. The fact that literary fiction is ultimately designed to move copies is a fact that will never not cause them cognitive dissonance. E: people talk about how gamers new to the hobby often try to houserule DnD into oblivion to make it fit other genres rather than look for something new. This book seems designed specifically for sale to that demographic. Falconier111 fucked around with this message at 02:33 on Apr 10, 2021 |
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Apr 10, 2021 02:26
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I heard tell romantic fantasy was being discussed and happen to have in my hands a pdf that is quite appropriate. Fresh from digital pre-order to your page, it’s time for Thirsty Sword Lesbians Alright so you’re probably asking at this point what the gently caress you’re getting into here. So it’s pretty much exactly what it says on the tin, and it’s cool as hell. The first thing to be said is that this game has the core DNA of something like Apocalypse World of Monsterhearts (indeed the Monsterhearts creator is credited as a development consultant and they directly credit a superhero game called Masks that is also clearly a branch of PBtA). Since I’ve talked about Monsterhearts 2.0 and have a copy in front of me as well, that’s what I’ll be comparing it to most directly when it's relevant. So this is a game about angsty disaster lesbians going around having awesome sword duels and fighting against the forces of toxic oppression. Let’s quote exactly from the game what you do: + Change the world for the better by acting with integrity and compassion + Fight when something is worth fighting for + Redeem or seduce adversaries + Make out, dance, and carouse + Solve problems with courage, wit, and style + Deliver zingers and bon mots + Make lasting friends and enemies And if any of that sounds incredible, then this is definitely for you. We’ve got some important stuff before we get to any rules. First, the player’s agenda: Bring the Action, Feel Deeply and Powerfully and Often, Be Excited About the Other PCs and Shared Stories, and Stand for Justice and Liberation. I feel like those directives kind of speak for themselves. So, we now get a section on flirting and zingers, and namely that you do not in fact have to actually be good at those things for your character to be. The book reminds you that this is a collaboration between the players and GM, so you should feel free to call upon the table to come up with some good ideas. They also have a simply darling list of ideas that is best read for yourself (buy this game it owns). There’s some further discussion on this coming up, so let’s move on. Now for the Safety and Consent section, again and vitally before the rules. So their first emphasis is that the rules can only tell you what circumstances your character faces, never what they do. Second, it’s noted that the mechanics also work well as a substitute when things are uncomfortable. For example, sometimes your character needs to flirt and you just want to roll a Move for it because playing it out isn’t something you’re feeling up to. Finally, they bring up the idea of Safety Tools. We’ll go into some details of what they suggest but one key thing is that everyone gets an XP if anyone uses a safety tool (even if it’s just making sure everyone is comfortable or if anyone needs a break). Before the discussion of specific safety tools, I’m just going to share the next header: No Fascists or Bigots Allowed. A hard rule that more games could use. They give a link to a good core safety toolkit, which I will provide here: bit.ly/ttrpgsafetytoolkit. The first concept they present is that of the palette, a set of concepts you want to include and specifically exclude from the game. This is done as a group before the first session, to make sure everyone’s on the same page. This is both to get an idea what people are excited to do, and to get an idea what people absolutely do not want to have in their game. The list should be able to be added to anonymously and people should be able to change it as they think of new things. The second tool is the Check-In Card, something you can use to pause play and make sure everyone’s doing okay. Whether someone seems uncomfortable, a subject is getting sensitive, or it’s just been a while since people had a break this is something you can use to indicate it. Simple and easy. The X Card is something I distinctly remember from Monsterhearts’ suggested Safety Tools, and is something you can pull out to hard stop on something going on. There’s some additional nuance suggested to this clarifying of boundaries, where something can be a Line, Veil, or Condition. So for example you might just need something not to be in the story at all, while something else can be present but not something you deal with directly. They make it clear you never need to justify or explain why you want something gone, and in general that the goal is to keep players comfortable. Thus ends the preamble, which leads us to the core mechanics. This will again be familiar if you’re familiar with PBtA games. When you Make a Move, you roll 2D6 and apply whatever modifiers come into play (usually adding a stat, for example). There’s three possible outcomes once the dice come into play: Up Beat: On a 10+, that’s called an Up Beat. You achieve what you want without serious complication, or possibly discover a useful positive fact or opportunity. Many moves will further clarify the mechanical effects of an Up Beat. Mixed Beat: On a 7-9, you succeed but at some cost or complication. You might also discover a risky opportunity. Again, many moves will have some specifics of what happens mechanically when you have a Mixed Beat. Down Beat: On a 6-, the GM takes over narration and adds a complication by making a GM Move. So one thing they note here is that you pointedly do not necessarily fail at the action you set out to do just because you rolled a Down Beat. Sometimes for example you succeed, it just doesn’t work out the way you thought it was going to. You also mark experience when you roll a Down Beat, so there’s plenty of reason to throw dice down even when you’re using a low stat. The Stats, by the way, are: + Daring: Skill at arms and forcefulness + Grace: Elegance, poise, and agility + Heart: Emotional awareness and expression + Wit: Cleverness and knowledge + Spirit: Metaphysical power and integrity The mechanic of taking a number forward, basically getting a bonus to your next roll within a context, remains a thing. Similar persistent effects are noted as +x ongoing. Okay, so health is actually very different in this than something like Apocalypse World or Monsterhearts. Because you don’t have a health track, strictly speaking. Instead, there are five core Conditions, each of which corresponds to a core Move. These Conditions are Angry, Frightened, Guilty, Hopeless, and Insecure. Each gives a -2 ongoing penalty to the Move they’re tied to if you have them, and if you would take a sixth Condition when you’ve got all five you’re Defeated and unable to act further for the scene for whatever reason. When the scene ends you’ll still have all five Conditions, but you’ll no longer be Defeated at least. We’ll talk about which Move corresponds with which Condition when we cover the Moves. Clearing Conditions can be done in a few ways. Moves can help you do so, though generally not from yourself. There’s even a generic Move, Emotional Support, that is mostly for this purpose. The other way to deal with Conditions is to take a Destructive Action. If you do undertake the appropriate action, you clear the Condition at the end of the scene. Each Condition has its own: + Angry: Break something important to you or someone you care about + Frightened: Run away and leave something important behind + Guilty: Sacrifice something important to you just to hurt yourself + Hopeless: Lose yourself in escapism when you should be doing something important + Insecure: Take rash action to confront the object of your jealousy or prove your worth These are all pointedly lovely things to do and not even as effective as getting help from others, and yes that’s on purpose. NPCs are also Defeated by taking Conditions. The GM decides how many Conditions it takes to Defeat an enemy, depending on how powerful they are. They also introduce an idea here that we’ll talk about in more detail in the GM section that particularly powerful enemies might trigger a GM Move when they take a Condition. Strings are a thing, similar to Monsterhearts. They represent emotional influence over a character, and come into play in certain Moves. Further, if you ever have four Strings on someone you learn something important about them that even they don’t know. Their player comes up with something and shares it with you, then you clear all but one of your Strings and gain 2 XP. This is called a String Advance. The GM also gets one generic String for each PC to use on their own Moves. NPCs can also earn Strings, which are treated as normal except that they don’t get String Advances. PCs receive XP from a number of sources. As mentioned rolling a Down Beat, getting a String Advance, and using safety tools are sources of XP. Moves can also let a PC mark XP, though this only happens once per Move per scene. Advances cost 5 XP if you’re running an ongoing game, and 3 XP for single-session games. When you fill up the XP you just get it, no need to hold off. Your first five Advances come from a set list of choices, with two each of ‘Take another move from your playbook’, ‘Take a move from any playbook’, and ‘Add 1 to a stat (max of 3)’. Your sixth Advance philosophically comes with your character either resolving the emotional conflict of their playbook and Living Happily After or having that conflict be eclipsed by a new conflict and Switching to a New Playbook. The first retires that character from play. In the second you essentially start over as a new playbook, keeping your Strings, Conditions, any narrative elements that make sense, and one of your old playbook’s Moves. We’ll pick this up next time with a discussion of TSL's Basic Moves.
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Apr 10, 2021 02:42
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I had no idea they had made a Locked Tomb RPG already. 
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Apr 10, 2021 02:48
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wiegieman posted:I can almost guarantee I had more fun reading 40k books (the good ones, not the bad ones) last month while I was supposed to be working than the people reading Art books, and let me tell you, those are the very yardstick for genre trash. You see, a 40k book guarantees something exciting will happen even if its dumb as poo poo. This tends to put it ahead of the stuff about english professors contemplating affairs while grilling a single portabello mushroom.
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Apr 10, 2021 03:32
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Loxbourne posted:An Orcish swashbuckler who carries a huge great warhammer but otherwise treats it at all times as a rapier, right down to all the traditional swashbuckling tropes, is hilarious. Especially if they wear proper 17th-century adventuring attire with slashed sleeves and a ruff. Fancy hammer is pretty good, but how about a magic bear swashbucker who elegantly fights with his massive paws?
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Apr 10, 2021 04:03
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Josef bugman posted:You don't know any of the people in the old fashioned warhammer lore who is a shitfarmer either. I think that there was perhaps one or two books done on none "named characters" in the old world, otherwise it was the exact same sort of "bash armies against each other" that we get in AoS. The shitfarmers in classic Warhammer aren't the fiction people books are written about; they're starting (0XP) WFRP Player characters who are shitfarmers in ways that no first level D&D PC has ever been. While there's no official shitfarmer starting career the iconic WFRP starting career is the ratcatcher (with a small but vicious dog) and there are about three dozen other starting careers in any edition of WFRP including things like highwayman and peasant. And the entire game is about the rise of the characters from shitfarmer to Judicial Champion, Duke, Wizard Lord, or Hero of the Empire. This isn't just snippets - it's effectively a major game that has been there since the very earliest years of the setting even if it slipped to the side. The difference with Soulbound is that rather than starting as a shitfarmer who has (for whatever reason) had enough of shitfarming you start out as someone special, blessed by the gods and given respect wherever you go. Shitfarmers are background characters.
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Apr 10, 2021 04:03
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Falconier111 posted:All of this is entirely fair, especially because I forgot about magical realism’s roots and kinda implied litfic critics defined/created that genre and that is absolutely not the case. I’m speaking as someone whose experiences with magical realism are extremely limited, since I stick to sci-fi/fantasy in my casual reading and my literary education focused on literary fiction. What I will say, however, is that the academy often believes magical realism is litfic with fantastical elements. Like, I saw that term applied by professors to works that were white as gently caress and very litfic in outlook but had ghosts and poo poo in them. The name gets used to preserve the gap between “realistic” and “genre” by setting up a compromise position... Which is actually pretty colonialist if you think about it. I've definitely run into MFA types who used 'magical realism' to mean 'I want to write about non-realist things but without any consideration for the genres that already do that, and with a certain degree of intense stylistic myopia' and it was, shall we say, frustrating! My area of interest in grad studies is SFF, how the genre operates, and in particular how it's legible or not legible to other modes of reading (particularly academic/critical reading). So this is all near and dear to my heart. And yeah, litfic being a publishing category and a moneymaker is the one thing the 'litfic establishment' cannot admit to themselves, really, even though in academia it's totally a known quantity.
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Apr 10, 2021 04:21
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Night10194 posted:So now you can imagine The Fox in a jaunty little hat and armored coat and cape. This is but fodder for the common philistine; cat armor is where it's at:    
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Apr 10, 2021 05:30
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I backed this game and actually have a hardcopy of it. At the moment though, I'm running a Weapons of the Gods Campaign and the amount of player fuckery with loresheet purchases has been an absolute high point.
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Apr 10, 2021 05:34
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Mors Rattus posted:End result of all this? The Nine Books are gone. For good. Nagash is stuck without a body for an undefined amount of time. The Necroquake is officially over forever and cannot be restarted. A bunch of humans with a laser gun saved a god. Oh, and a lot of aelves are dead, but Avalenor the Mountain King is not. Huh. I did not expect that. After 40K stopped anything of consequence seemingly to happen after the 13th Crusade, I couldn't credit GW with doing something like that. Props for that. Not Mad Props, (as we're still getting armies and powers coming out of nowhere "because it's magic"), but Props for that.
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Apr 10, 2021 05:35
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Comstar posted:Huh. Note quite out of nowhere. It's built up a fair bit in the books itself.
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Apr 10, 2021 06:36
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The Killing Game, Day 3 We’re on the home stretch now folks. The assault on Toulon doesn’t begin until 6am, so the PCs have 2-3 hours after the negotiations with the Black Flock and Hamza to get some much needed rest. The assault has been planned, but there’s no mention made of the PCs having any input or anything. They’re been around and have seen quite a lot of fairly important stuff, and there’s a lot of good intel that the PCs could provide. Sadly, like most instances of PCs affecting the plot in these modules, that’s something you as a GM will have to work for yourself as the text offers no help in that regard. Anyways, the PCs are sent a shore with Hamza, Orma, Callisto, a bunch of Apocalytpics/African Scrappers, and for some reason I cannot loving fathom, Mirage. Why you chose to bring the most valuable prisoner you have with you along into a loving warzone, instread of leaving her chained aboard a ship she could not escape, boggles my mind. It is now 7:07am The war party lands ashore near LOrage, the Spitalian field hospital in Cour Argent. Mirage starts a verbal altercation with Orma, calling him a lapdog, in response an Apocalyptic calls her a slut.  Would it surprise you if I said that SMV was far too comfortable with gendered sexual insults?Then, basically out of nowhere, an Iron Brother who was trying to hide bursts out from under a nearby tarp, gets shot by an Apocalyptic npc, and falls into a bunch of barrels and crates making a bunch of noise. This noise draws the attention of the Spitalians you might have saved on day 0. They’ve returned to their hospital and armed themselves with Splayers (flamethrowers). They demand you all disarm/lower your weapons. The situation can get ugly here. The leader of the Spitalians has no idea what’s really going on, and is understandably worried that a Chronicler (close allies to the Spitalians) has been obviously taken captive by a bunch of Apocalyptic pirates and Scrappers. It does say in a sidebar that if the PCs have helped the Spitalians earlier, they can calm the situation down with a CHA+Conduct (4) roll. However, the proceeding scenes only work if everything goes to poo poo, and provides no guidance for what might actually happen. Here’s what happens. Mirage screams for help, pulls away from her two captors, and starts booking it towards the Spitalians. (maybe you shoulda left in in prison you dumb fucks) Then an Apocalytpic goes to shoot her with a revolver. The PCs can stop the shot with a PSY+Reaction (3) roll, they manage to knock the gun aside if successful and it does not hit Mirage. However, the bullet ricohets and gutshots a Spitalian, who dies like a punk. A vicious fight then breaks out, while the PCs are ordered to run down Mirage. The next few scenes involve the chase in some fashion. She only breaks away if the situation with the Spitialians gives her an opening, so what do you do if she doesn’t? What do you do if a PC had the forethought to do something like handcuff her to him? I guess you re-write half of this goddamn chapter. It is now 8:16am Mirage runs a lot, she’s got 6D for her BOD+Athletics so your beefy guy in the party should have little trouble keeping up. What happens next is fuckin comical. She leads you down an alley near the Refinery, when someone sticks out their leg and trips her. She faceplants right into concrete, before being put into a headlock by none other than General Zoe of the Resistance! She’s got some soldiers with her, who all level their rifles at the PC’s heads. This next bit sucks, and once again I can say I hate this book and how it’s written. What ends up happening is that shortly after the PCs run into Zoe, Hamza and Co pop up. They get into an argument over Mirage. Zoe wants to exchange her for the rights to the city, while Hamza wants her for other reasons and is not willing to give up said city, and nobody is willing to budge. So Callisto has some Apocalytpics quietly flank the Resistance and shoot them all. All the PCs can do we’re told, is to dive for cover so they don’t get shot. It's more of the watch the powerful npcs talk at each other while the PCs listen from the sidelines bullshit that plagues these 90’s metaplot style books. While there’s nothing explicitly stopping the PCs from getting involved, the text itself doesn’t really seem to concern itself with what your players might want or do here. And I think that sucks, I really do. I’m also not really fond of poo poo like this.  For some reason Zoe gets shot but doesn’t bite it, and the PCs are the only ones close enough to notice her dragging Mirage out through the one remaining free exit, and it leads towards the palace she had claimed to liberate yesterday. There’s a chase but no rolls are required, because they catch up Zoe at a crossroads thanks to our old friend, GM Fiat. Zoe hates you because apparently you’re mercenaries getting in the way of a free Franka or whatever, despite never having actually been formally hired as such. Hell, aside from a general bounty on Rattler and some admittedly good loot you’ve found (and storehouses you could potentially loot later), nobody has really promised the PCs anything. At this point Zoe is crazy and can’t be reasoned with, although you can use a CHA+Conduct (4) roll to buy more time. It doesn’t say what you’d want to buy time for though. She’ll try to kill a PC with an aimed shot, only for Mayor Vericon to come out of nowhere and shoot one of her hands with a tiny pistol. Suprise suprise, Mirage takes the opportunity to book it yet again. You could fight Zoe if you want, but she wants the Mayor dead more so you could probably just book it. It is now 9:11am. Yep.  This writing is dogshit. Half the time it calls for skill rolls (and then often forgets to include a result of a failure of that skill roll), and then half the time it just narrates the PCs actions for them. I know I’ve said that before several times, but goddamn! Anyways they’re at Hamza’s palace now. There’s a whole lotta dead bodies and garbage is strewn about, and the PCs have Mirage who still can’t stop talking poo poo. Hamza, Orma, and Callisto show up with a bunch of troops right after they catch her, and you are all let inside the walls by the literal six Resistance troops who are left. Hamza barks out some orders to gather food and such, while He and Mirage get into it yet again. He asks if all this carnage was worth it, and she replies that any number of bodies is worth the price of bringing back the super internet. Hamza also orders some Apocalytpics to look for his brother Nephraim, before asking the PCs to join him on the inner wall above the entrance gate. I actually like the beginning of this first part. Hamza directly thanks the characters for their help and staying by his side throughout all of this, and even asks the PCs to be his ambassadors to the other cults, he wants to avoid another war like this. There’s a lot a good GM could do with this, a powerful patron to hand out rewards and quests is pretty useful. Were I in this position, I would first suggest to Hamza that maybe you stop the wholesale pillagining of the land you’re colonizing, and that you also may also want to consider stopping the enslavement of people as punishment for power outages. That might go a long way to preventing the rise of another Iron Brotherhood. While you’re up on the walls, Hamza and the PCs will see incoming ships from Perpignan and Montipellier. If you look back at the palace, you can make an INS+Perception (3) roll to notice the reflection of a sniper’s scope aboard a nearby overwatch platform. Before you have any time to process this, a pirate comes running down from the core steps screaming “BOMB BOMB.” It is now 10:10am Rewind a few hours, and the Hellvetic deserter and sapper (Baptiste, works for Rattler) lined bombs along the walls in the vault underneath the palace. When the pirates went in looking for Nephraim, boom! There’s a big explosion, the characters and Hamza get tossed around a bit, etc. Then the Sniper they may or may not have seen, starts opening up. His name is Hexell, and he’s also one of Rattler’s men. We’re told that nothing short of artillery could dislodge him from his firing position, and he’s well prepared to fire his rifle all day. He uses the chaos to start shooting every Apocalyptic he sees, and yes this includes PCs. If he misses, he gets frustrated and keeps trying to kill that one person. You can make a roll to divert his salvos away from wounded Apocalytpics in the Atrium, but given that they’re all thieving, murdering scum, why would you bother? If you fail the roll to notice him, Hamza just points him out, tosses you his rifle, and orders you to go take him out. There is a route that leads to him that does have plenty of cover thankfully. Getting there involves repelling down the wall via a nearby chain, this requis a BOD+Athletics (2) roll. It’s a 20 meter fall, so failure means taking 40 damage, instant death for anyone really. Better spend Ego for some auto-successes here. Once you get down the wall, you can use it as cover to remain unseen and your approach to the Temple of the Ancestors, from there you can get to the Overwatch platform. While they’re hidden from the sniper, they see Sabata (the other Black Flock leader) run up the steps of the south gate screaming that “He” is here. And then she and all of her fellow Apocaltypics suffer from sudden hole-in-face syndrome. Moving to help them means stepping into the sniper’s sightlines, so the PCs say gently caress that and keep moving towards the temple. It is now 11:11am. ”This fuckin’ book” posted:A naked Anubian lies in the grass in front of the characters. Raped and strangled. Her hair has been torn out in handfuls, bruises cover her slim body, and a rope is fastened around her slender neck Flies buzz around irritably as the characters approach the initiate. Look at how fuckin’ cool and edgy and dark we are you guys, we’re so mature we can handle rape unlike you little babies. Look at how much depth this raped corpse adds to our game.  Anyways, Rattler and Callisto are inside the temple. Rattler has blown a chunk of Callisto’s calf off with his double-barreled shotgun, and is being all evil and menacing and poo poo. He goes on about how much the Apocalytpics suck for tearing him from his mama and turning him into a monster, and then reveals that Callisto is his biological sister. Then he attacks the PCs!  So this fight seems kinda hosed. It's hard for this system to do boss encounters, mostly because bosses have the same sort of ceiling that PCs have. Thus, most fights between a party and one npc tend to end pretty quickly. Damage is high, and HP is low. To get around this, Rattler has a few tricks up his sleeve. His “Rorchach” potential removes all sixes from the pool when he’s attacked. There are some potentials which will give you extra triggers on rolls, but Rorschach means that most PCs are not going to be able to get stuff like extra damage and Smooth Running to trigger. For someone like our Hellvetic PC who two-shot Factor earlier in the adventure, this is a pretty solid nerf to his Trailblazer. His second potential calls for a PYS+Faith/Willpower (4) roll, fail that and you botch if you have more 1’s than successes now. He’s got 11D to attack with his sawed-off shotgun, armor 2, passive defence of 2 (active 10’s), and 30 total wounds. This guy is a beast already. For some reason, he’s basically supernaturally fast on top of everything. Every round he rolls a contest of PYS+Cunning vs the PC’s PYS+Cunning, Rattler has the max of 12D for this. If Rattler wins, he can dodge the attack with AGI+Mobility which then causes the attack to hit one of the PC’s allies. The only way to stop him from dodging around like this we’re told, is for the PCs to use a cooperative action to surround him, and then one PC can take an aimed shot. If this fails, Rattler gets to instantly counterattack. If you get into melee with Rattler, he grabs you and uses you as a human shield. He has 10D to hold onto you, and you have to beat this in a BOD+Brawl/Force roll. I think I see what they were trying to go for here, they wanted a neat set piece fight against one target that felt like a drag-out, knuckle down fight against this really unsettling crazy guy. Unfortunately, I think it's just going to be frustrating rather than thrilling. Unless your combat stats are min-maxed to hell, his dice skew is really just going to poo poo all over your attempts to actually land hits on him, and I don’t think many players are going to enjoy that. Then again, most people don’t play these metaplot books anyways, they just read them on the shitter, so maybe it's not as big a problem as I’m making it out to be. We’ll just assume Rattler dies, and the PCs are able to make their way up to Hexell’s sniper perch without any more issues. Once confronted, Hexell makes no effort to defend himself. He simply starts laughing, points to a group of vie silhouettes standing on the roof below, and either falls off his tower or gets shot by the PCs. You should shoot him, because he has cool automatically polarizing goggles that you can take off of his corpse. If you look through the scope of the sniper rifle he left behind so thoughtfully, you’ll see that the five figures are Hamza, Orma, Mirage, Nephraim, and Baptiste. Nephraim is chained to Baptiste and looks pretty hosed up. It looks like Hamza is trying to negotiate for Nephraim, and an Empathy roll will tell you that Baptiste is having none of this. It is now 12:01pm I really, really hate this next bit. The book is all like, you’ve got one shot, one chance to kill this guy. You gotta wait for the perfect moment (when Baptiste looks in your direction) and then succeed on an AGI+Projectiles (5) roll. This instantly blows up Baptiste’s skull, but not all is well. You see the figures down below look up all the character all aghast, as Orma tries to use an iron bar to wrench the heavy iron collar away from Baptiste’s mangled skull. When it looks like that’s not going to work, Orma forcefully drags Hamza out of there. Nephraim does not get far, what with a broken leg and a dead man chained to him. This is when the PCs find out that Baptiste had a dead man’s switch. For those that read the last entry I did, the PCs actually found the locations of Baptiste’s bombs that he planted throughout the city, way back in the Firebird’s hideout. For some reason, the default narrative takes place in a universe wherein the PCs simply ignore those. This is bad, because right as the core hall explodes, the Module (the power plant that supplies power to the entire city) explodes in Ferralies, along with several other important sites in Terres Putain (like the Resistance camp) and Cour Argent. Basically everything of importance to the city is now a smouldering wreck, Toulon would basically have to be rebuilt from the ground up at this point. ”This fuckin’ book” posted:The Characters have sealed the fate of Toulon Yeah, I’m sure this revelation would go over about as well as warmed over turd. Thanks, you loving hacks.  I guess it’s time to head back down from the tower and take a look at the city the PCs “destroyed.” They’ll come across Hamza, Orma, Mirage, and a dead Nephraim in the courtyard. Hamza is pretty bummed, as you can guess. Hamza talks a little more poo poo at Mirage, who finally starts to realize what she’s done (massively overreact because she was in no way suited to be a diplomat) and actually shuts up for one. The PCs and Hamza have a moment where they lock eyes and realize they’ve been through a lot, have forged a bond stronger than steel, etc. I guess he’s cool with them unknowingly nuking his city? Then Decoy 5 literally comes out of nowhere and shoots Mirage in the head with a revolver. The Aristocrats! Epilogue Thousands are dead. The Scourgers and the Resistance are completely wiped out, so uh, better hope the Pheromancers don’t come calling. Hamza has to basically sell off all of his holdings in Africa to get fresh capital to rebuild Toulon, but he is determined to do so. Decoy 5 gets away (somehow) but is basically burned by the Cluster and they’re trying to have him killed in a way that cannot be traced to them. For that matter, they’re trying to scrub all traces of this fuckup leading back to them. This is a waste of time and effort, as Hamza already knows everything. The Neolybians start flooding the market with fake Drafts, while the Chroniclers start paying extra for missions into Africa, and when they meet in Franka all interactions are openly hostile. A bunch more poo poo happens that I can’t be bothered to type out, but if anyone is interested in the fate of a particular character for some reason I can provide that. A New Day You thought this was over, no, not yet! We still have a couple scenes to run. In the first of these, the PCs encounter a Jehemmadan man burying dead Scrappers down near the beach. A few local fisherman are none too happy with this (given what those Scrappers were responsible for) and start harassing this old man. If the characters wish to intervene, they’ll have to place themselves between the old man and the fisherman. The text does not ask for a roll to talk them down, merely stating that any indication of violence causes the old man to speak up finally. There’s been enough death in the past few days, and he is having none of this poo poo basically. That’s enough to get the fisherman to back off, and the man asks the PCs to help him dig the graves. He’ll share supper with the PCs, say a couple cryptic things, and then gives them a piece of the metaplot McGuffin before literally just walking off into the darkness. This part is just so superfluous and weird. This man has a name, stats, a full writeup in the major NPCs section. And this all he does, he shows up in the twilight hour of the adventure, literally just hands you a sacred artifact of his faith, and walks off. I cannot stress just how fuckin’ insane that is. Jehammed’s star is like the holy grail on crack for them, Adonai is kind of a weird place right now and maybe he’s tired of guarding it/looking for a safe place for it, but still. This last scene can only be run if the PCs retrieved the journal from Hurlant’s corpse a couple days ago. After opening the lock and translating its coded contents, they released the inventory list for a UEO supply bunker located right here in Toulon! Beneath the hills of Saint Chenil, lies a treasure of Bygone gear. Except nah. When the PCs get there, all they see are child-sized footprints a day old and a bunch of empty shelves. Sike! If the characters look for tracks outside, a nearby beggar will tell them that the old man and a horde of children carried away everything a while ago, if they bribe him with Dinars he’ll point them towards the Orphanage. There’s nothing of note really in the Orphanage itself, save for signs that all the children have fled. There is a ladder that leads down into a laboratory though, where they meet this charming old man.  The lab is full of weird chemicals, smells like powerful disinfectant, and is full of poo poo like vivisected drone bodies and organs stuffed in jars. Wachsmann is packing up his tools (with his back turned to the PCs who could have made successful stealth rolls when the text called for them like 3 sentences ago), when he calls out “show yourselves!” You can chat with him a bit, but he’ll only tell you that you’re too late to stop the children on their mission if you mention the UEO supply center. He won’t tell the PCs this, but he loaded up 350 children he’d trained as child soldiers onto a swamp cutter with all the supplies, and sent her henchman Opis along to act as their commander. They’ve been sent upriver into Souffrance. If the PCs try to stop him from leaving or save the child drone he has imprisoned, he’ll attack. He’s an Old School preservist basically Spitalian Preservists used to stop at nothing, full-on ends justify the means people and Wachsmann is one of the remaining few that still holds to that philosophy, hence the child soldiers.  These books do this a lot, they love describing these intense, cinematic fight scenes that the rules just do not support or even enable in any way. This is not going to be an epic fight. Wacshmann is an old man with -3D to most of his important fighting stat pools, he has 1 armor and 19 total wounds. Two shots from our Hellvetic will put this guy into the dirt before he has a chance to throw these chemicals that the book never bothers to give us stats for. Anyways, that's it for the scenes to be run in this book. Just a little more bookkeeping and we’re done! The disc the PCs were just handed is Jehammad’s Star, and it looks like this  It emits a low static when it's near the Disc the PCs got in the last adventure, and if placed together the Star magnetically slides into the recess in the disc and locks into place. While the Disc appears to be a receiver or amplifier, the Star appears to be an astrolabe, a piece of old technology capable of calculating coordinates of stellar bodies. There’s one more book in the trilogy, and thus one more piece to collect. In the middle there’s a spot for a needle-like piece. And that’s basically it, there’s some lead stuff for Black Atlantic, but I’m not going to cover that. All in all, much like the last adventure, The Killing Game is a railroaded mess. What’s worse is that these books are presented as a trilogy, but aside for like 1 npc and a macguffin that literally gets handed to you at the end, there’s no narrative threads that link In Thy Blood and The Killing Game. You could literally just have the disc and star fall from the sky along with a bunch of xp, and send your PCs right into Black Atlantic. If you’ve come to Degenesis to solve the setting mysteries and figure out what's going on with the Recombination Group and all of those weird techno-zombies and cyro-sleepers, (and the gross mutant + space evolution rock) that’s the book that will actually begin to touch on that stuff. Honestly, The Killing Game just comes across a profounding infuriating waste of time. Even if I had the wherewithal to untangle this narrative and make it into something a PC could play through, it’d wouldn’t be worth my time to do so. Hipster Occultist fucked around with this message at 08:11 on Apr 10, 2021 |
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Apr 10, 2021 08:09
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