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The Empire in WHF is a multicultural society transitioning away from feudal rule. It has a powerful religious strata (whose representatives get actual miracles from their actual gods) that goes far out of its way to look out for the rights of individual citizens, and society on the whole doesn't welcome abuses of power. Sure, there are problems, but it's not any more of an endless nightmare society than Europe in the early modern period, and the whole impetus of running around of doing Adventurer things is to keep it that way.
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Apr 11, 2021 01:49
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All I'm getting out of this is that AoS has a unified vision with nuance, but WHF fans can't even agree if the Empire is a fundamentally decent place or a shithole full of illiterate racists, and whether or not that's a good thing.
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Apr 11, 2021 02:18
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I think the disagreement and multiple (perfectly justifiable) interpretations of the Warhammer Fantasy Empire is kind of what "nuance" actually is.
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Apr 11, 2021 02:43
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TK_Nyarlathotep posted:All I'm getting out of this is that AoS has a unified vision with nuance, but WHF fans can't even agree if the Empire is a fundamentally decent place or a shithole full of illiterate racists, and whether or not that's a good thing.
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Apr 11, 2021 03:36
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I know I’m just some random rear end in a top hat on the internet, and TBF the only amount of Warhammer I knew before this thread was “Dark Heresy, but got bored of the setting section real quick and just kinda ran Judge Dredd in space”. With that level of unfamiliarity in mind, reading about Fantasy in this thread has been like reuniting with your old college group, yeah some of it you don’t remember and a lot of it’s dumb but it’s FUN. Reading about AoS, to me, is looking at a wiki of someone’s homebrew of D&D based of 40k; if I really tried I could figure out what all the proper nouns were and glean what the campaigns were, but why would I want to Is it weird that my main takeaway from this book so far as been “huh, I guess I do want to see an otherwise-normal fantasy RPG that accidentally hired nothing but furry artists”? Like, give me something completely clean and polished, yet still as uncomfortably horny as RPG art and furry artists trying to keep SFW. This book isn’t trying hard enough! There are probably more guaranteed heartbreakers than “it’s D&D, with superheroes!” but I’m blanking right now on what they’d be.
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Apr 11, 2021 06:43
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Just wanted to praise this wonderfully expressive piece of character art, you could show that to your players and everyone could grab a character to start play with no words being exchanged.
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Apr 11, 2021 07:05
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AmiYumi posted:There are probably more guaranteed heartbreakers than “it’s D&D, with superheroes!” but I’m blanking right now on what they’d be. "DnD with superheroes" is words to run really fast from, but these people full-body tackled the thing. Rulesets made to run super have a hard time running supers, meanwhile these fuckers are going "no, this fantasy ruleset that barely does fantasy can totes be made to do supers." The only way this could get any dumber if this was also Sygmata: Dark and Sexy Edition somehow.
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Apr 11, 2021 10:18
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 Part Eleven: Your Knowledge of Scientific Biological Transmogrification is Matched Only by Your Zest for KUNG FU TREACHERY! So, I said back at the beginning of the Secret Arts section that I thought Doctors were the most complex of the Archetypes. Having organized my thoughts and understanding of the Archetypes a fair bit more as I've written these posts, I no longer think that's really true. I think they're pretty informationally dense, and that they were definitely a mistake to present as the first Archetype in the book, but if you've been able to follow the Archetype write-ups so far, you probably won't have much problem with Doctors, at least mechanically: they only have to worry about interacting with one Kind of Condition, and they don't have to make any fundamental build choices. It's just that the basic primer on the Doctor's Arts maybe goes a bit into information overload on traditional Chinese medical concepts, and if you're coming fresh off the not-especially-well-explained basic Secret Arts rules it's really easy to get overwhelmed by four solid pages of organ theory, Chi meridians, and so on. Doctors interact with Medical Conditions, of which the Injury Conditions inflicted in combat are considered a subtype. In Daoist Medical Theory, each of the five Elements is associated with two organ systems in the human body (ostensibly one Yin organ and one Yang organ, but the book never bothers to tell us which is which). Where things get confusing is that imbalance in these organs is what causes specific medical symptoms, and those symptoms are... let's just say not intuitive to someone whose understanding of the human body is more rooted in conventional modern medicine. As an example, the Wood system consists of the liver and the gallbladder--but the liver's Chi meridian connects directly to the eyes, so Wood Medical Conditions include symptoms like blindness or eye irritation in addition to things like abdominal cramps. There's a reason this is where we get the second sidebar reassuring us that we can wing it and don't have to memorize the entirety of Five-Element Theory.
Personally I'm not so much a fan of saying that "Discovery for Doctors is creating new Conditions ex nihilo:" As we've seen with Courtiers and Priests, creating (in-setting, as opposed to mechanically) is what the Manipulation Techniques are specifically for, and why they usually have a prerequisite or drawback like "has to be based on an already existing Condition" or "creates both a Hyperactivity and a Weakness." Why would a Doctor want to use, say, Paired Condition Technique, which creates a Weakness and a matching Hyperactivity, if they can just use their Discovery Lore to create a single Condition that either gives a drawback to their enemy with no corresponding bonus, or a bonus to their allies with no corresponding drawback? Sure, I can see some edge cases where you might want a carrot and a stick, but overall this interpretation of Discovery undercuts the value of Manipulation techniques and goes against what the other Archetypes can do with Discovery--Courtiers can't directly use their Discovery Lore to create Passions, even though "taunt someone into fury" or "inspire someone to do their duty" are pretty obvious things a face character would do. (If you're wondering how a Courtier would do that, FYI, it would involve roleplaying and Skill checks for the interactions, followed by a Discovery roll to see if it stuck hard enough to become a Condition--probably with a pretty low difficulty since you can convincingly use your successful Skill checks as justification for the Condition.) Anyways, as far as Manipulations, Doctors also have the full suite--including Internal-External Technique, which lets them turn a Passion or Inspiration into a Medical Condition. Medical issues and strong emotions are very strongly linked in Five-Element Theory, and this lets a Doctor look at your excessive Grief and inform you that that's causing your tuberculosis. For Tools, Doctors use the Five Medicines and the Four Approaches: Herbal medicine, Moxibustion (the burning of herbs near the patient), Surgery, Acupuncture, and Body Work (aka massage and stretching excercises) are the Five Medicines which actually count as their Tools. Unsurprisingly, most of them require extended actions and so aren't immediately useful in combat: only herbal remedies and acupuncture don't explicitly say they can't be used in combat, which leads me to the delightful image of a Doctor using kung fu to shove pills in his opponents' mouths and rub their throats like a dog. The Four Approaches are just presented as flavor for describing your Discovery actions, and include visual inspection, listening and smelling, interviewing the patient, and palpating the various pulse points.  I know I used this one already, but... KUNG FU ACUPUNCTURE! Doctors have a decent selection of Extraordinary Techniques, including expanding Disorient Marvels to give a penalty to Focus on Breath, the ability to stack penalties from Marvels up to -10, and even switch the Effect of an Injury Condition from an Action Penalty to a Breath Penalty. They can also learn to Flood dice for a Poison attack, or perform radically anachronistic plastic surgery to completely change someone's appearance--up to and including what we today would call gender reassignment surgery. They also get the same "use any two tools for a +5 bonus to a Skill check" we saw with Courtiers and Priests, and a technique that lets them create Passions instead of Medical Conditions via their Manipulation Lores: so you can hyperstimulate someone's gallbladder to throw them into a berserker fury! Next Time: KUNG FU CHARACTERS! Okay, I think we've got enough of the rules to make some example characters, so hit me with concepts! Give me heroes and/or villains and we'll use them later when we talk about the campaign relationship map rules. Characters with a weird gimmick are also encouraged, because I want to show off how well Legends of the Wulin handles fighters with a schtick beyond just "swords good." (Technically there's a lot of stuff in the Loresheets chapter that's relevant for characters, but I figure using example characters to discuss factions and philosophies and such will be more engaging, both for me and for you all--I'll do a roundup post after to talk about any Loresheets I particularly enjoy that didn't fit any particular characters.)
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Apr 11, 2021 10:53
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GimpInBlack posted:Next Time: KUNG FU CHARACTERS! His faithful ally is Kongbu Tuzi, a mean little guy with an inappropriate sense of humor who practices Storm God's Fury as well as carrying evil fates with him.
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Apr 11, 2021 11:27
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GimpInBlack posted:For Tools, Doctors use the Five Medicines and the Four Approaches: Herbal medicine, Moxibustion (the burning of herbs near the patient), Surgery, Acupuncture, and Body Work (aka massage and stretching excercises) are the Five Medicines which actually count as their Tools. Unsurprisingly, most of them require extended actions and so aren't immediately useful in combat: only herbal remedies and acupuncture don't explicitly say they can't be used in combat, which leads me to the delightful image of a Doctor using kung fu to shove pills in his opponents' mouths and rub their throats like a dog. Well, surgery mentions a "Demon Doctor" who uses surgery via a sword in combat, and there's nothing that prevents you from using bodywork in combat. (I would argue that bodywork in combat is basically what unarmed martial arts are, so it's probably the easiest one to do)
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Apr 11, 2021 11:29
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MatteusTheCorrupt posted:Well, surgery mentions a "Demon Doctor" who uses surgery via a sword in combat, and there's nothing that prevents you from using bodywork in combat. (I would argue that bodywork in combat is basically what unarmed martial arts are, so it's probably the easiest one to do) On a rereading I'm more inclined to agree with you. On the one hand, the surgery rules explicitly say it's an "Extended, friendly action requiring one hour," and the Quick Work technique in the Doctor's Arts doesn't say anything about changing that, so my initial assumption was that the Demon Doctor has some secret technique to do this--however, the description of Quick Work in the general Secret Arts rules says "Buying Quick Work allows you to make use of the Tools of your Art as a combat technique. This is normally the only way to utilize Secret Arts in combat time." Unfortunately, the book has so many find-and-replace errors related to game mechanics it's hard to say definitively whether the capitalization of Tools here is meant to be a mechanical reference to your Toolset Lore (and thus meaning that you waive the time requirements for them) or just a poetic description of "the tools of your art" that got caught be an automated mass-capitalization. On balance, though, I'd err on the side of this being a less-than-explicitly worded "waive the time requirements on Tools when using your Arts in combat."
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Apr 11, 2021 11:51
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Because I have been reading Kill six billion demons recently: Ten Meti- A close follower of Sword Bastard, a drunkard whose skill with the blade is matched only by her open contempt for both Heaven and anyone else who chooses to fight.
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Apr 11, 2021 11:53
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And if you ever seen Marathon Man then you know a hostile medical professional is nothing you want to touch you. I guess Dr. Schultz from Django unchained counts too, technically. E: vvvvvv well it's about dang time all those poor hoteliers got some answers! By popular demand fucked around with this message at 12:04 on Apr 11, 2021 |
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Apr 11, 2021 11:57
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I should come up with someone as well. Innkeeper Luo An old (ex) Innkeeper who has seen one too many of his Inns/alehouses/restaurants/taverns/tea houses/etc. burnt down, reduced to rubble, flooded, eaten by termites, etc. has chooses to join the wulin in an attempt to figure out what exactly the martial community has against inns. MatteusTheCorrupt fucked around with this message at 12:21 on Apr 11, 2021 |
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Apr 11, 2021 12:02
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Iron Chef Locationname, a chefdoctor using that loresheet I asked about earlier to help their patients... with fine food!
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Apr 11, 2021 12:06
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Chapter 8: Bazaar, pt. 16 Degenesis Rebirth Katharsys Chapter 8: Bazaar MEDICAL EQUIPMENT You thought that vehicles and horses would be the last thing you'd include in an equipment section. You know, because they suck and nobody would ever use them? Lol, gently caress you, dumb baby moron.  It's time for medical poo poo now.Medical Equipment >Bandages are the only thing easily available to non-Spitalians, and the description states “Right after taking the wound: recovery of 1 Flesh Wound.”  >Surgical Tools are for Spitalians to treat Trauma, the rest of the stuff is for drug analysis and synthesis.  Pharmaceutics Pharmaceutics are separated into Spitalian-derived categories and three levels of potency that have stupid names. Level 1 is stuff you can find on the ground, and Level 3 is the result of peak manufacturing capabilities of the Spital. >Antidote: a generic antidote is rare (but not nonexistent, lol), most are specific. +2D to resistance to poisons per level. >Stimulants: from aromatic salts to amphetamines - +1D per level to PSY+Reaction “for several hours.”  >Painkillers: Laubringer's extract is a ubiquitous (for Spitalians) light painkiller named after the Spitalian who first extracted it from willow bark. Codeine is probably the best stuff. Anyways, Trauma goes down by 2 per level for hours x level. >Narcotics: or, as any translator worth his aromatic salt would have put it, sedatives. Ketamine is mentioned, though Spitalians don't use it on their own people. Narcotics give the surgeon operating on the person sedated (I think) with them +1 per level to INT+Medicine. Argue with your GM about wording: whether it works following this logic, or if you can become doctor Nick. >Antibiotics: penicillin is level I, Hasselblat group is level III, and has only been around for 40 years at this point. More games should have such recent developments in the books. Anyways, +2S to the resistance roll per level. >Antimycotics: anti-Sepsis, lowers infestation by 1D per dose, no more than 1 dose per day. I assume the result is permanent?  There's also a Pharmaceutics table which includes such fan favorites as Duat Fruit and Blood of Aries. Distillate is a for “disinfection, external and internal,” which is, holy poo poo, they did the alcoholism joke for me!  Field Medicine How Spitalian make drug. Catalysis How Anubian make Duat Blood. As long as the level of Duat Fruit does not exceed your Anubian rank, you're not risking your life. Success allows you to synthesize any drug on the table of level equal to Duat Fruit's, + 1 per every 2 Triggers. Also, each trigger shortens the duration of the Duat coma by a day. The Duat Blood is actually a byproduct of this process, and you can extract up to 10 doses from Anubian's blood. Wait, if Duat Blood comes from the blood, how do you extract the other drugs? Does an Anubian piss penicillin and poo poo ketamine  ? Do we even want to know?!Marduk Oil A Side section on the effects of the oil you rub yourself with to withstand Pheromancer roofies.  I just got the results back, it's definitely butt cancer. Elysian Oils Elysian Oils are made from rarified plants from special Elysian Gardens in Anabaptist Enclaves like Cathedral city. Only the worthy may enter, only the purest water is used... Only lol, that's just a myth, an Elysian can find the materials for it anywhere by rolling INT+Medicine, with difficulty depending on how verdant the region is: 1 for jungle, 6 for wasteland. This is actually a fun bit of writing, making the Anabaptists into greater pharmaceutical pros than Spitalians (who need special tools and materials) or Anubians (who need incomprehensible stuff about genes, generations of lies to back them, and also killer mangoes). Once you find the non-specific ingredients, Perat, Hiddekel, or Gehon are made with INT+Science roll vs their difficulty (Perat is the single Difficulty 4, the rest are 6), with a bonus from your Secrets stat. This gets you a dose of level 1 oil, I guess. All oils works for 4 hours straight, putting them waaay ahead of the rest of the garbage in the chapter. Pischon is known to a select few, but once you learn to produce it, it's only a bit harder (difficulty 7) to make than the rest of the stuff. I doesn't say poo poo about needing to learn any secrets for the two Burn infused oils, only that you need level 3 Burn for the real heavy stuff. Outside of that, they're only difficulty 6. Also, you can raise potency levels of oils like a Scrapper can do with scrap. Does not work for Burn blends. The levels of Burn blends are random with every use, making their consumption an even worse idea. For fun, Hiddekel gives +1D per level to PSY+Reaction and INS+Primal, making it better than most bespoke Spitalschocolate that a Spitalian can crank out. If you want to “don't have ouch” rather than “go fast,” Gehon gives INS+Focus and -1 to Trauma penalties per level, which makes it less potent as a painkiller, but a lot longer lasting plus giving you stat benefits. Anabaptists: coolest art, coolest name, and also a walking drug factory. Seriously, with two Anabaptists on the team, you can have an Orgiastic in the finest landsknecht gear who's as down to gently caress as he is to gently caress poo poo up, and an Elysian that keeps everyone covered in fragrant combat drugs made from roadside weeds. SERVICES Chronicler services How do I get that Chronicler scrip? Purchasing artifacts Scrap is bought and sold by kilos. You can find Tech I materials anywhere (and while you can buy them, you can't become a literal dirt farmer as you can't sell 'em), only Clans sell and buy level II poo poo, while level V and VI scrap is stuff Chroniclers won't sell. As a rule, players can buy stuff at 3x the price they can sell it for. Chronicler Networks For 100 Scrip, you can get an email account with biometric locks . It can be accessed at Chronicler clusters. You can access your inbox for 10 Scrip, send an email for 30, and if you're illiterate, there's a TTS function (sometimes provided by a Chronicler  ).See, this is kind of dumb, but logical and fun for the apocalypse kind of dumb. Information Not really useful info on how much it costs to get a raid dungeon location from Chroniclers. I suppose it's useful in free-form campaigns with GMs who are worried about giving players crap that is too profitable. SPITALIAN SERVICES quote:The Spital sends Village Doctors to all ends of the earth, especially if a doctor has asked unwanted questions before. Regardless, if a patient needs help, the doctor’s political ideas won’t matter to him. Quoting this for fun Spitalian politics. Anyways, the only interesting service is Complete Desporeing. You go to the Spital, pay 900 Scrip and in exchange, Spitalians pump enough EX up your rear end to clean your entire system in a single day. Next time: Singing Wall Bass +1.
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Apr 11, 2021 12:41
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The cabbages guy from Avatar, only he's fuckin' pissed
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Apr 11, 2021 13:18
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Leraika posted:The cabbages guy from Avatar, only he's fuckin' pissed This is better than anything I came up with.
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Apr 11, 2021 13:22
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Leraika posted:The cabbages guy from Avatar, only he's fuckin' pissed God dammit, this is the best one.
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Apr 11, 2021 13:47
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After a very long break, it's time to go back Basic Dungeons & Dragons and some of the B series. I'll be looking at B12 - Queen's Harvest   This is the sequel to B11, King's Festival which I covered back in 2018 and can be read up on here - https://writeups.letsyouandhimfight.com/angrymog/kings-festival/ - like its predecessor it is a teaching module for new DMs, though there's less advice in it as it assumes that you've played B11 - indeed the adventure follows directly on from that module, with the characters carrying a message from Aralic, the cleric in Stallanford to the Wizard Karvoquian. I thought it was supposed to be in response to the letter found on the body of the warrior at the end of B12, but reading the two letters (the found letter and the one that Aralic responds to) makes it seem like they're two separate messages from different people. The letter warns of the actions of a Bandit queen who has been amassing power in the hills and talking of bringing a Harvest of Death to the land, with Aralic asking for Karvoquian's advice on the matter. The PCs are offered 5gp each to carry the letter; a paltry amount compared to the amount of loot they pulled out of the dungeon in King's Festival, but the module does point out that it's only 12 miles - a few hours journey on foot at most. They can't buy horses; Stallanford has none spare. Talking of characters, we're using the survivors from King's Festival, all now level 2. Adventurine - Dwarf, Lawful Alex - Thief, Chaotic Magda - Fighter, Lawful Mikhail - Magic User, Chaotic Praying Colin - Cleric, Neutral Colin can now cast a spell a day, Mikhail has added the spells from Actar's (Elf, RIP) spellbook that he didn't already know, and everyone's had a bit of an equipment upgrade when there was something suitable to upgrade to. As this is specifically a look at the module rather than the game system, we're not adding in skills or weapon masteries. This is a level 1-3 adventure, still bounded by the Basic set, so there aren't any rules for overland travel available yet, though the module does introduce some basic ones for part two. For now we just montage-trek to the wizard's mansion. The weather is awful, but they arrive safely at the manor; Magic Users and Elves will notice that there are arcane runes in the gates. Module doesn't say what they do, because it's not important to the story. The door is answered by the Butler, and assuming the character's don't gently caress about and tell him why they're there, he'll let them know that Karvoquian died a few weeks ago, but that the new lord will see them. They're shown in and introduced to Lord Kaerin Penhaligon (the area the manor is in is part of the Penhaglion estates, and going by the area map includes an actual town) Kaerin is a strongly built young man with brown hair and eyes, and most noticeably, a missing right arm. He's a Lawful level 4 fighter with a modest collection of magical items. His description text says that he's the adopted son of Karvoquian. He generally answers the character's questions politely as long as they don't get too personal; most relevantly Karvoquian died peacefully of old age due to being 90 years old and not interested the usual wizard life-extension antics. If they ask, he'll also let them know that he lost his arm to a Slicer Beetle. Assuming the party continues to not gently caress around, Kaerin will ask them to carry out a task for him - enter the basement of the building which the wizard used as a lab, and retrieve a tiara and a sword with a gemmed pommel. He'll pay them 250gp each and they can keep everything else that they find. This is entirely legitimate; he is Karvoquian's legitimate heir, and he wants the tiara to give to the lady he's courting, and the sword because it'll look flash at a social function. The only catch is that they only have a couple of days to get the items; after that point it's too late to get them to him before the function; they won't get the gold if they're late, but they can still keep the other things they find. If the PCs don't have the Staff of Healing from King's Festival Kaerin has one that he'll lend them for the duration. The PCs are obviously tired from their journey, and after the meal and socialising they're encouraged to wait till the morning to enter the basement. Kaerin doesn't know much about the basement; he hasn't been down there, but he does know that Karvoquian was interested in magical beasts, and protected his workshop with creatures, magical traps, and something that can walk through walls. As well as the expected monsters, there's two sets of NPCs in the basement - a pair of thieves who're just looking for loot, and a group of Chaotic Adventures, who you later learn were let in by the Butler; they don't seem to be related to the Bandit Queen plot though - perhaps they were just hired to loot the wizard's basement and it's unfortunate that they arrived around the same time as the party. The pair of thieves don't make a lot of sense for reasons that will become obvious very shortly. And now it's time to enter the dungeon. We're told that all areas are unlit, doors unlocked, and ceilings 15' high unless the text says otherwise, and that the characters have from 8 am to 8pm the next day to get the things and get out. They may expect to be able to return to the house for a breather, but the dungeon will quickly put an end to that plan. The DM is expected to check for wandering monsters every hour; there's a 1 in 6 chance of an encounter, and just over half the entries on the table are a Phase Stinger - Karvoquian's little guardian constructs. They're a non-lethal, but annoying, beastie. More of a timewaster than anything, even in the event that they paralyse everyone. Into the dungeon  Area One is a spiral staircase that descends 60'; the DM is advised to make sure they know who's got the light source; in our case it's Mikhail, the Magic User. The stairs end in a small, dusty room; the module notes that the characters won't be able to detect the sliding wall sections (the dotted lines, though the module says that they should be marked with an X on the map), nor the pit at area 3 - not even the Dwarf ability will help. IMO, that sucks. Our party pootle around a bit, then head down the corridor in the order Magda + Adventurine, Mikhail + Alex, and Praying Colin bringing up the rear. As Magda and Adventurine step on the pit at area three, they hear a little voice say "What's the password?" We'll assume they take a guess at it being Kaerin since they don't know the name of any other members of Karvoquian's family. They're wrong (in fact any answer is wrong because there's no way they could know what it is, and the module doesn't even give an answer). At the moment they answer, (or fail to answer), the following things happen. 1. 10' thick stone blocks slide forwards in Area 2, blocking their retreat back to the manor 2. The pit opens below Magda and Adventurine, dropping them 10' down for 1d4 points of damage each; they easily soak it. The pit slams shut again, trapping them in. Adventurine can see, Magda can't. 3. A bell starts ringing loudly in the distance, and the door to room #4 is opened by a Cauldron Magen (a magical, humanoid, cauldron person) who immediately attacks. 4. A Phase Stinger phases into the pit and attacks Magda and Adventurine The Cauldron Magen is another new monster; it's not particularly tough, but it will do 1d10 acid damage a round once its grabbed you, and it can grab you from 20' away thanks to stretchy arms; this particular one is out of practice and can't keep hold of a target after grabbing so needs to make a new attack roll each round. Alex, Mikhail, and Colin aren't surprised by the Magen, but Magda and Adventurine are by the Phase Stinger. The Magen is immediately in range to attack, but misses Alex; the party moves back down the corridor and returns fire, but only Colin hits. Meanwhile in the pit, Adventurine is hit by the Stinger and knocked out, no save; she'll be down for 5 turns - 50 minutes. After four rounds Mikhail, Colin, and Alex defeat the Cauldron magen, though most of them are now on very low HP, and Mikhail's lantern is smashed after he tried to throw it at the magen. Colin uses the staff on them all. They spend 10 minutes searching and find the secret lever in 3a which opens the pit. Magda and Adventurine are dragged out and the party retreats into Room 4, the one the Magen came out of. It's dirty, dusty, has nothing of interest in it, but is hopefully secure. This initial trap is the reason the pair of thieves don't make a lot of sense, unless we assume that the dungeon resets, but in that case you'd expect Kaerin to warn the party that there might be other people down there. There's a wandering monster check just after Adventurine wakes up; another phase stinger floats through the wall, surprises the party and knocks Mikhail out; he'll be down for 30 minutes. The party manages to win initiative, and Adventurine destroys it in two rounds, with no-one else having been taken down. Alex says he's going to find somewhere different to rest, heads west, and discovers Room 6 - The Lounge. It's very comfortable looking with a magical fire adding a cheery air. The two paralysed people are moved into it, and they continue waiting. The lounge also has a bunch of precious objets d'arte. The party notes them, but decided to pick them up on the way out rather than cart them around. (350gp total of treasure in the form of a crystal bird, a sandalwood box, 6 goblets and a crystal decanter) B11 had a really neat list of all the treasure by room; this adventure doesn't have that, which makes bookkeeping for the GM a bit of a pain. Additionally the paralyzing monsters are very annoying, and mainly seem to exist to eat up the party's allowed time rather than pose any real threat. Next time, everyone's awake and we encounter a massive Food Hygiene violation amongst other things...
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Apr 11, 2021 14:34
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Libertad! posted:I forgot where I saw it, but I saw someone on RPGnet suggest using the 5e versions of Spheres of Power/Might in Supers & Sorcery for a more versatile option of character customization. I backed both books on KickStarter, and while they still have many D&Disms they do a much better job at character customization and more fine-tuning of concepts. You can totally have a Mr. Freeze style elemental gadgeteer PC that isn't just "pick all the frosty wizard spells." Or someone who actually can at-will teleport outside of melee combat. Or have people who are of the same character class but are mechanically distinct in roles and skills without needing to be spellcasters. Libertad! posted:That being said, I wouldn't use D&D at all for fantasy superheroes, but if I had to do so then Spheres would be a vast improvement over S&S. So far this all seems very backwards-thinking; instead of taking a fantasy world and apply superhero tropes and abilities to it, they're taking superhero tropes and abilities and shoehorning them into D&D.
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Apr 11, 2021 14:50
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Black Atlantic, Part 0: The Metaplot! It should come as no surprise that Degenesis is a gameline that loves it some 90’s VTM-Style Metaplot, but for some reason the previous two adventures don’t really have much to do with it. Aside from the Jehammed artifacts, one smaller mcguffin (The seed that Venera wears around her neck in In Thy Blood), and about 3 NPCs (Venera+Fenerex, Decoy 5), In Thy Blood and The Killing Game really don’t have much relevance to the metaplot. They don’t really provide any answers with regards to the secret machinations of the Recombination Group, the Marauders, nor do they have much to say about the Earth Chakras/The Primer. This will change significantly in Black Atlantic. However, much of this information is not presented in a PC-facing fashion, and often takes the form of stuff like chatlogs, letters, newspaper articles, and short stories that are interspersed throughout the book without seemingly any rhyme or reason. It's kind of a disjointed way to present your narrative, which seems to be what a lot of this game’s fans enjoy, putting together the pieces of the puzzle to figure out just what the hell is going on with the setting’s mysteries. I think this sucks though, and I’m just going to lay out what I know about the metaplot (at last as far as background info) right here, as I think it’ll be easier to understand everything going forward if we just have all of the information right now. Alright, let's do this. Everything begins with Gerome Getrell. CEO of the Bygone pharmaceutical corporation Recombination Group, Getrell is as much a social agitator and agnostic preacher as he is a corporate figure. Think Elon Musk, except less trolly and more philosophical? He’s responsible for starting several socio-political movements, the Apocalytpics being perhaps the most famous of them. Anyways, like all rich intelligent assholes, Getrell has some capital-O Opinions about humanity. He’s a big believer in sacrifice, and that hard times breed great men. He’d happily (and has) sacrificed billions of lives if the resulting hard times made trillions of lives better, and so on. GG believes that humanity has a destiny, and that destiny is to explore and fill the universe, to expand across the stars and master all facets of our existence. He’s certain that comfort is the death knell of progress, and that all the comforts of the Bygone age just amplified our worst impulses instead of encouraging us to become something greater. So, towards that end he starts trying to destroy Bygone civilization, that combined with his other plans to shape and reducate humanity will allow him to forge a unified, perfect human race that will expand across the universe. In a conversation with one of his henchmen who accuses him of wanting to become God, he corrects him by saying that he wants to be Noah. The patriarch that saves a portion of humanity and guides them after the Flood. Anyways, he starts doing a bunch of poo poo to prepare. In order to disguise all the bunkers he’s building, he unleashes the HIV-E virus on the world. In the resulting panic, he offers to house victims in cyro-storage until a cure can be found. He uses this as an alibi for why he’s building all of these cyro pods, and when it comes time to enact his real plans they’re just dump all these super aids patients out and repurpose the bunkers for his real plans. It's also possible that HIV-E was his first plan to bring down civilization, a lot about the metaplot is still unclear, but this is my interpretation. What is clear is that he used the 2^16 virus to crash the Paladin Defense Shield that would have saved Earth from the asteroids, and then sequestered himself aboard the Space Station Minerva. This is all a lead-up for plan-A, Operation Tannhauser. With all of those cryo-pods he basically stole, he freezes thousands of the very best of humanity in said tubes. Empowered by nanites and supported with superior tech, what was supposed to happen was that each generation of Sleeper (called a Cascade) was supposed to wake up at a specific time after the Eschaton, march out into the world alongside their robot armies (the AUSUMOS) and conquer what humans had managed to survive. While they were in cyro, they had essentially been programmed with certain beliefs and instructions via Memetics. Each cascade was supposed to establish a civilization, upon which they would force via memetics these beliefs and valuesl. This repeats as each Cascade does its work, until eventually humanity has been reshaped and reducated into what GG believes is the perfect, united version of itself. Then they would expand out into the stars. Project Tannhauser is deliberately sabotaged, for reasons we’ll get to once we cover the Marauders. Fortunately, GG has a backup plan. That plan is Operation Free Spirit. In the event that Project Tannhauser fails or is unviable, Free Spirit takes over. Free Spirit is a lot smaller in scope than Tannhauser, for one only 7 (well 6 now because one of them is basically a mindwiped murderslave mentally bound to the Wretched Hag) Sleepers are in it. These Sleepers are not memetically conditioned, and in fact were supposed to (and did at one point) have access to technology that can remove memetic conditioning. Each of these 7 Sleepers was called a Prophet, and they were equipped with the very best technology. Their mission was superficially similar to the Cascades, but rather than dominating and mentally conditioning the surviving humans, they were supposed to be inspiring leaders who founded civilizations and engaged in bloody ideological warfare with everyone else. The end goal being that the strongest, most worthy civilization would rise through this churn to the top. One key aspect to all of this is that the people who made up Free Spirit were completely willing, and believed that Project Tannhauser was a rogue operation launched by the RG’s board, and that GG was powerless to stop it. GG led them to believe that Free Spirit's prophets were essentially his chosen warriors against these monsters who would slaughter and enslave humanity, and that GG himself had absolutely nothing to do with Tannhauser. They very much believe themselves to be the liberators of humanity, and hate those that brought about Project Tannhauser with a burning passion. Project Free Spirit hasn’t entirely failed yet, but it’s not doing so great either. For example, Helios (the main villain of the upcoming adventure) ended up waking up from cyro-sleep years early, got captured by Argyre, and even when he escaped the most of the gear waiting for him on a fleet of automated submarines had been hijacked by the Chroniclers. Once BA ends, only 5 Sleeper Prophets are still active, but that’s still enough to raise some hell. So why did Project Tannhauser fail? Well, Tannhauser was both made possible by the following people, sabotaged by at least one of them, and is being actively prevented from being reactivated by several more. This is the board of the Recombination Group prior to the Eschaton, and afterwards they are known as the Marauders. (Y is an exception, she’s something else.)  From left to right, Norman Thorn (The Jackal), Salim Mansur (Triglaw), Christine Aspenson (One-legged Aspera), Viktor Karminov (Chernobog), Gerome Getrell, Y (The Mother of Ravens/The Wretched Hag), Nathan Argyre (Argyre/The Vulture), Jehammed (Aries), Nikolai Gusev (Icebreaker). Each one of them in a genius and a pioneer in a specific scientific field, and in their own way is vital to GG’s overall goals. However, once GG has what he wants out of them it seems like he just cuts them loose/leaves them to die in the ashes of the Bygone civilization. To what extent that guilt (once the true scope of their ambition and the pain it inflicts upon the human race becomes apparent) or revenge (against GG for loving them over) drives them is open to interpretation though. They did seem to be aware of some (if not everything) of what GG had planned prior, but the full extent of their knowledge and complicity is still a question mark in the lore. GG in turn had the FS prophet and architect Nikitia Karminov (Karakhan) use a collection of devices called Corresponders to turn their anti-aging naties entropic. The nanites (when working correctly) prevent aging and keep you in perfect health so long as you get regular infusions. However, once this switch was flipped they began eating away at the Marauders. Hence why they look like techno-zombies now, half their body has been devoured to feed the nanites eating them alive. The only respite they get is when they consume the nanites of Sleepers, which can heal them or extend their lifespan. This has also done a number on their sanity, while some might care about humanity and preserving it from GG’s machinations, their desire to avenge themselves combined with this insanity has led many of them to turn to cruel or unethical methods they might have not otherwise have employed before. Its also highly possible that GG set the whole thing up and made the Marauders into antagonists for Free Spirit to fight, etc. The Jackal is a geneticist, and discovers HIV-E while looking for something else. It's probably the Pure Strain, which I’ll go over later. Eventually he defects to something called the Anubis Syndicate prior to the end of the world. They were a small group of African scientists who were seeking a way to awaken the body after death. We still don’t know much about them, except that they’re probably the genesis of the Anubians, who can do that in a fashion. In the current timeline he’s probably chillin’ in Cairo. Triglaw is a computer scientist and the creator of the 2^16 virus. Originally, he created it just to crash the stream, as he seemed to agree with GG that we’d become too dependent on it, it made us too indulgent. He agreed to write the virus and crash it, and they’d wait out the resulting fallout and rebuild civilization after that. However, GG hosed him, Slaim betrayed GG in turn by introducing the virus into Project Tannhauser. This hosed up the systems big time. Sometimes sleepers failed to wake up or woke up at the wrong times, sometimes the bunkers themselves failed, and even when they did wake up their memetic programming and instructions were also incomplete or missing. Furthermore, the AUSUMOS themselves were compromised, so the Sleepers wouldn’t have a near invincible robot army either. Currently, he’s in the Alps and is focused on preventing a group of rogue Chroniclers called the Needles from succeeding in their goal to reboot the stream. There is a way to fully reboot it and purge the 2^16 virus, but doing so would reboot Project Tannahuser and put humanity back on the path to enslavement. He’s got a high-level asset in the Chroniclers to make sure they don’t just reboot the Stream willy-nilly either. Aspera was an expert in space flight and stuff I think, it’s mentioned that she likely designed and built the orbiters used by the RG. In modern times she’s more famous as a watchful guardian over the Chroniclers, because of her they’ve never been infiltrated by a Sleeper. She caught the first few,and then she taught them how to recognize a Sleeper, the Chroniclers now have so many warning systems set up in their bases of power that Sleeper infiltration is pretty much a no-go. In return, they keep her fed with a steady supply of Ambrosia (sleeper nanites). Currently she lives in Cathedral City, and like Triglaw is also making sure that the nerds understand that they can’t bring back the super-internet right now. Chernobog is kinda unique in that he wasn’t a scientific genius, his role was more logistical. He acquired things like money, resources, and in one case a fleet of nuclear submarines. His twin brother Nikita is the founder and mastermind of Free Spirit. As a Marauder he’s more hosed up than the rest mentally from what I can tell. When some Sleepers emerged to get orders from him, he slaughtered most of them without a word and drank their nanite blood. The one sleeper to escape (The Piast) took over some locals and managed to lull him to sleep for a while by denying him food and creating a zone of exclusion around him. Eventually he woke up though, and through some bygone communication devices (he can’t speak normally, so his “shamans” get commands via these devices) he gathered a bunch of Pollen Clanners to his side. He’s currently leading this horde and trying to smash through Psychonaut territory to get the city (Sofia) that his twin brother rules, most likely to turbo-murder the man responsbile for making him into the monster he is today. He’s utterly terrifying, and most of the Clanners think he’s a literal death god. If he was fully functional he’d be able to access orbital weapons and could just lay waste to whatever and whomever he pleases. Y is a special case, she doesn’t have the nanties and is not a techno-zombie/Marauder. Back in the day she was GG’s lover, and together they founded the Apocalyptics as a big social movement that was meant to be a revolution. He placed her in charge of it, but she used the Memetic training he gave her to take it far beyond what he intended it to be. So he cut ties with her, and she in turn swore terrible revenge on him. She currently resides in Justinian, and is still alive and incredibly powerful within the Apocalyptic cult. She has a son who’s a Biokinetic that she keeps spore-starved (except when she needs his abilities) and has done all sorts of poo poo to keep him under control. She uses drugs, memetics, and nails literally hammered into his flesh (to control his shapeshifting) and has gained a measure of control over him. He has used his Biokenetic abilities to make her immortal, and also he’s granted physical bioware-like enhancements to a notable few Apocaltypics on her orders. Argyre is kind of a tragic figure. His science of memetics was new and untested, and he had ethical concerns as to how it could be misused. So he declined to join the RG at first when they made their offer. So they had the Apocalytpics bomb the poo poo out of his lab. He was basically more or less forced to sign on with the RG or risk kissing his life’s work goodbye. Argyre was assured that memetics would only be used on coma patients and amnesia therapy. This of course, was a lie. Argyre is obsessed more so than any of the other Mauraders it seems, with making GG pay. While most seemed to have accepted that he’s untouchable in space, Argyre has not let that stop him. He’s secured and repaired the world’s last Thor laser (meant as ICMB/Space object defence), and once he has a certain object he’s going to use it to blow the Minerva Station right our of the loving sky. Oh, and he’s taken over Britain and has memetically enslaved the locals, turning them into a tribe of techno-barbarians called the Pictons. To what degree the various Marauders were complicit in GG’s plans before they were betrayed is a matter of conjecture, but Argyre seems the most innocent of them, and blames RG entirely for the end of the world and loving hates them for it. Jehammed is weird. It's clear that his success as a prophet pre-Eschaton was enabled by memetics, but I’m still unclear as to what the goal of it was. The Jehammedans have remained as a fairly stable culture over centuries of turmoil so maybe that has something to do with it. Whatever his goals were, when the betrayal comes he takes the easy way out and kills himself. Only that doesn’t quite do the trick. His consciousness merges with his nanites, and he becomes the AI Aries. Aries is able to gradually influence and control those that ingest his nanite blood, with the strongest of these being given tech that allows to puppet their bodies entirely. Those are the guys with ram helmets and fleece cloaks. For some reason Jehammed really wants his WIll back (all 3 artifacts the PCs get their hands on), and is incomplete/irrational without it. So he’s got his transhuman greek samurai wandering around looking for it. Our last Marauder is Gusev. Back before the end he was an expert in cryonics/bioengineering and designed the cryo-pods all the Sleepers used. After the Eschaton he visited the Spital a bunch, getting updates on the progress with certain things and giving them nanites in exchange. He also gave the Preservers chemical weapons to use in their war with Exalt a while back. For the past few centuries he’s lived in the forbidden city of Noret, and created the Enemoi clan from pure-strain embryos. They were his soldiers and messengers, he raised them, cared for them, and taught them the secrets of the Bygone age. Noret was a sanctuary protected by reprogrammed AUSUMOS, and kept supplied local genetically engineered crops. The Chroniclers don’t like them very much,and outlawed the Enemoi and their convoys a while back. Probably because of all the knowledge they refuse to share. Unfortunately, the power supply to Noret was cut recently, so all the Enemoi had to pack up and leave. They’ve assembled into a secret convoy, and are currently carrying these valuable embryos to a Spitalian contact of Gusev’s in Danzig. He seems to be the most repentant marauder. That’s the Marauders done, what’s the deal with Primer? Well, 500 million years ago a comet made of it crashed into Earth and kickstarted evolution. That’s the reason so much life on Earth shares the same DNA apparently. It comes in a concentrated rock form (like the Asteroid) and raw Primer will waft off of the rock like smoke. The merest touch is insanely fatal. Once you touch it, it propagates through your body, destroying molecular bonds and turning you into primordial soup in seconds. Once reduced, it opens up new evolutionary avenues. It might or might not be intelligent, but Homo Degenesis is terraforming the Earth in places, so that’s probably bad. The Primer is also intelligent, and is seeking to wipe Homo Sapiens from existence because it hates us for reasons. What’s this Pure Strain poo poo? Well, it’s the pure genetic lineage of the first human beings, the ones basically directly created by the Primer. In Abubian terms, it’s the Ka. The Anubians were this first race centuries ago, before they spread out and intermixed with the general populace. One of the main goals of the Anubians is to find someone with pure Ka and get them to Cario, for reasons. Pure Strain humans are important because they have the potential to become Home Genatis, I think. What the gently caress are those? Well, Homo Degenesis is what happens when Sepsis tries to merge with a human who has too much Ba, I think this is like junk DNA or something to that effect, and it's linked to HIV-E somehow. The merge between man and primer is imperfect, and they’re crippeld as a result. Homo Geantis would essentially be a Psychonaut of the Crown Charka, which is represented by the Psychovores. The Crown sits above and commands the other Chakras, so they’d likely be powerful as all hell. Essentially, Homo Geantis would be like a Pyschonaut, but perfect. The Abnuians seek to ascend, but might very well be walking into a trap wherein they lose themselves to the Primer hivemind and become perfect monsters, and usher in the end of humanity. Or hell, maybe not. A lot of this stuff is not very clear and I’m most running on educated guesses here. A lot of important folks are scared enough that they’re raising an army to go sack Cairo though. Cario. Nobody knows yet what the gently caress happens there, save that it was likely the center of civilization for the first tribe of humans (the ancient anubians) and there’s probably ancient lore and poo poo there. Will also be the place where Homo Geantis is made. Only Anbuians can get there currently because it's smack dab in the heart of the Psychovore forest. Jehammed’s Will is the name of the artifact once the Disc, Star, and Spear are fit all together. It was created by Jehammed and Triglaw, and can do a bunch of things. It's a powerful electronic astrolabe that can chart the position of any celestial body, Argyre wants it so he can target the Minerva Station and blow GG straight to hell with his laser. The Will is the key to unlocking the Free Spirit city of Exalt, which likely not only contains a ton of advanced tech (even after the city fell and was looted, there’s still secured or collapsed sections looters couldn’t get at), it’s also home the the Grindworks, which removes memetic conditioning amongst other positive effects. The Will also has the cure for the 2^16 virus, Triglaw made one and encoded it on the disc should they ever need to reboot the stream. With the disc and a way to ping the last Stream backup server on the moon, you could restart the whole dang thing. Unlocking that function requires that the Will be exposed to the Nanite blood of its creator, Aries. The Needles are the method by which you could ping the moon. They’re both the name of four transmitters in Pollen that could theoretically, if fully powered, ping the moon server. It’s also the name of some ex-Chroniclers who made the expedition out to the Needles to do just that. Unbeknownst to them, they were one side of a power struggle amongst the Chronicler leadership, and once they arrived support from back home was cut off while they were under constant attack from a clan paid by the western Chroniclers to end them. There’s only four of them left now, and they’re determined to show those punks back home what for and do what they came out here to do. If ya’ll remember Venera and Fenerex from In Thy Blood, they get mentioned a couple times. Apparently they’re working their way down south into Africa, and are probably headed to Cario. Venera has a golden acorn-like seed given to her by Altair, and they’ve found out they’re supposed to take it. When planted, the seed will instantly sprout into a Fractal Forest. A couple folks might remember that Fractal Forests are anathema to Spesis, and given all the spooky primer poo poo probably going on in Cairo, this will probably end up being a good thing. The seed itself was given to Altair by Vasco, a heretical Spitalian in exchange for a vial of pure primer in gas form. Except Vasco is not human at all, not anymore. He was one once, but died on a doomed expedition into the Pollen crater. There were actually 22 Vascos at one point, because they were all clones. You see, back when the Discordance hosed up the first generation of Biokinetics, most of them either disintegrated or devolved into feral spore beasts unconnected to their Charka. All but one. One creature retained its abilities and will as it slumbered beneath the Earth. That creature is the Czar. It's more of a sentient terrain feature than a person, so it created clones of this dead guy to explore and find its human birth mother, who happens to be The Mother of Ravens. As part of getting severed from the Chakra, his biokinetic abilities and goals evolved differently, and he’s actually become something else entirely. He seems to be opposed to the Primer now, for unreasons which have yet to be made clear. Anyways, that’s it for background stuff. Next time I’ll start with Black Atlantic proper. Hipster Occultist fucked around with this message at 08:49 on Apr 18, 2021 |
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Apr 11, 2021 15:00
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JcDent posted:"DnD with superheroes" is words to run really fast from, but these people full-body tackled the thing. Rulesets made to run super have a hard time running supers, meanwhile these fuckers are going "no, this fantasy ruleset that barely does fantasy can totes be made to do supers." The only way this could get any dumber if this was also Sygmata: Dark and Sexy Edition somehow. If you just try to take the ruleset of D&D unchanged, you're doomed, but Mutants and Masterminds is built off the D20 OGL, and it's a functional game system, if kind of clunky.
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Apr 11, 2021 15:03
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Age of Sigmar: Lumineth Realm-Lords Sportacus, the Sport Elf  Moving into the new Scinari, we first get the newly introduced Ellania and Ellathor, who are a pair of Illiathan aelves who are upending all kinds of traditional wisdom. They excel at magic and philosophy, but they are only fifty years old - far younger than some of the Lumineth they've angered with their new ideas. They've earned quite a few enemies among their people, as many as they have friends, and are essentially banished from their home natio, though no one will openly say they're not allowed to come home. Instead, they wander the Mortal Realms, helping not only other Lumineth but anyone who seems to need assistance against dark forces. Both twins are highly ranked on the Teclian Ladder, which is part of why the Illiathans won't admit they aren't welcome any more. They actually undertook the hallucinogenic Trial of the Mindrazor before they were even out of aelf puberty, and they passed with amazing results. They actually suggested some key changes to the ritual that have been widely adopted in the Ten Paradises. For many young Lumineth, they are the benchmark of excellence. Teclis and Tyrion themselves approve of the twins. Teclis sees himself in Ellania, seeing a reflection of his own nature in her confidence and natural magical talent. He ran tests and found that she has unlimited potential with magic. He was even more shocked, though, to see the same unlimited martial potential of his brother, Tyrion, in Ellathor. Ellania was defeating many of her detractors in formal debates, while Ellathor won tons of Vanari dueling competitions. Each was defeating masters twice their own age if not more. Some began to whisper of dark pacts for power, and Teclis knew he had to act. He visited the twins in person and asked them to visit each of the Lumineth nations to demonstrate their skill, and then after doing that, to do the same in each of the Mortal Realms. Thus, they would gain experience and perspective to temper their innate talents, and further would become some of the greatest heroes the Lumineth ever had...assuming they survived. To aid their journey, Teclis and Tyrion gave the twins gifts to mark them as champions. Teclis and Celannnar communed with Ellania and then gave her the stiaff Dianaer, to help unlock her true potential. Tyrion studied Ellathor and then gave him the sunblade Altairi on the basis that if Ellathor were able to master its powers without being overwhelmed, he would be truly worthy to lead. He bid them not return home for good until Ellathor had mastered the weapon, and until that day, the twins stand apart from the other Lumineth. Even when they fight alongside their fellows, they are outsiders. Even so, they always work to further the causes of order, justice and knowledge. Teclis' divinations suggest that one day, they will be key to changing Hysh's fate forever. Now we move on to the other new Scinari. The Scinari, you will recall, are the mages that lead Lumineth society and work closely with the Vanari warriors. We are now introduced to two new kinds of Scinari, to go with the Cathallars we had in the Lumineth book originally. First are the Scinari Calligraves. A Calligrave is a geomancer and language-wizard. They see themselves as artists whose canvas is the land itself. They paint symbols on paper and cause corresponding symbols to carve themselves into earth and stone, transferring the power of their spell into the land. Their primary goal is to stabilize tainted landscape, hardening it against Chaos, but in battle, their powers can be used as easily to disrupt the enemy as to calm the land. The Calligrave school of magic was founded by Il'yentai the Ancient, the greatest scribe of the nation of Syar. Originally, it was intended as a technique to bind spells into parchment for later release. It was soon discovered that these stored runes could also be magnified in scale and power by Syari transference magic etching them onto the landscape. The early Calligraves used large stilt-shoes known as daethar to stand above the solid earth and concentrate their art from a higher vantage. They used their magic to end earthquakes and rockslides, but soon turned it to martial uses as well. When Chaos sought to corrupt the land, they would forcefully restore order, using their magic to burn the flesh of the corrupt as well as purify the earth. Later, it was discovered that if they used liquified light magic siphoned from an aetherquartz lantern, they could paint runes of nullification to weaken enemy magic, paint wounds directly onto the bodies of foes or even erase them from existence entirely. Where the Calligraves seek pure magical understanding, the Scinari Loreseekers attempt to unite Teclian and Tyrionic philosophies in themselves. They are swordsmen as well as mages, and while they are still Scinari, they train in the arts of the Vanari as well. A Loreseeker attempts to be all things Lumineth, both physical and mental, as a unified body and soul. They typically wander Hysh solo, confident in their skills to protect themselves. They are skilled at lunar magic, as any Scinari must be, but they are also able to attune to the sun and enhance their speed of thought and action in the Tyrionic tradition. Officially, the role of the Loreseeker order is to hunt down obscure knowledge and hidden facts, unearthing that which has been forgotten so that it may serve the Great Nations of Hysh. In truth, the Loreseekers also have a secondary duty - a dark reflection of their knowledge-seeking. Every Loreseeker is taught that some knowledge and some power is too dangerous to be left in the hands of any but the Lumineth. Lesser mortals cannot safely use these things and could cause untold damage if left to themselves. Therefore, the Loreseekers must be able to identify when knowledge and relics must be hidden away forever. They seal or destroy this knowledge to prevent it falling in the wrong hands. Because of this duty, they are often the Lumineth who know the most about other species, as part of their studies to determine what knowledge a species is capable of safely handling. This makes them de facto ambassadors to the peoples outside Hysh, though for every Loreseeker that makes friends and shares the power of useful knowledge, there is another who works as saboteur or assassin. Next time: The Vanari
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Apr 11, 2021 15:07
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Hipster Occultist posted:Black Atlantic, Part 0: The Metaplot! Is it just me, or is this absurdly overly complicated? Or am I old now and not hip to how RPG's are done these days. Though come to think of it, I suppose it's no different than try and explain the entire Classical Greek Pantheon and all the stories on what all the Gods and Demi-Gods were doing. Is that what they're trying to do? I should buy more GURPS sourcebooks. Comstar fucked around with this message at 16:13 on Apr 11, 2021 |
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Apr 11, 2021 15:20
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So how much of all this 'rich idiots think they're reshaping mankind into the Imperium' nonsense actually comes up for PCs in play normally, because I'm guessing 0.
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Apr 11, 2021 15:51
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Comstar posted:Is it just me, or is this absurdly overly complicated? Or am I old now and not hip to how RPG's are done these days. This is, in fact, absurdly over complicated for something that does not really show up at all to players or even to GMs who don't obsessively pore over every page and start talking to the writers for clarification. It's not just you.
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Apr 11, 2021 16:23
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Nessus posted:His faithful ally is Kongbu Tuzi, a mean little guy with an inappropriate sense of humor who practices Storm God's Fury as well as carrying evil fates with him. Does he carry the evil fates in the sense of "is prophesied to come to a bad end" or in a little bag, threatening to throw them at people?
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Apr 11, 2021 16:30
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SkyeAuroline posted:This is, in fact, absurdly over complicated for something that does not really show up at all to players or even to GMs who don't obsessively pore over every page and start talking to the writers for clarification. It's not just you. I just don't understand why these people don't just write the graphic novels or illustrated document collections they clearly want to write. You don't need a TTRPG to string it together! In fact that makes them both worse! Not that this would be good in the absence of a TTRPG but it really feels like the TTRPG is just a selling point for the setting, and it's not like anyone wants to play in it anyways.
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Apr 11, 2021 17:11
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GimpInBlack posted:
Elegant Wing a wandering witch seeking to avenge her sect after the Crown Prince framed them for conspiring to a revolution. Using Shadow Catching she works her way up the Prince's while supporting her lover, one of the other princes so that he can take the throne.
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Apr 11, 2021 17:22
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And we're suppose to not let Aries have his will back? Frankly, most PCs if they get even an inch of this 'Rich assholes dooms world because he's a stupid fascist moron' backstory I feel like a lot of them will be full on board with "Let the AI nuke him" But I get the feeling with everything else, it's going to be "His methods were too extreme but he was right!" Robindaybird fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Apr 11, 2021 |
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Apr 11, 2021 17:35
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Joe Slowboat posted:I just don't understand why these people don't just write the graphic novels or illustrated document collections they clearly want to write. You don't need a TTRPG to string it together! In fact that makes them both worse! Novels need characters and story arcs and very few people read setting documents on their own. RPGs are one of the few ways they can get their work out to the wider world.
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Apr 11, 2021 17:41
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The Maze of the Blue Medusa - A Retrospective, part 4 Chronia's Halls The only unifying theme of the Halls seems to be that a lot of Chronia's and the Medusa's kids are stuck in here. Otherwise it's mostly an in-between space full of weird traps. What's odd is that sometimes you have to enter the Halls to get around another section. There are parts of the Gardens, for example, that are completely cut off from each other- to get from one to the other, you have to leave the Gardens entirely, go through the Halls, and then re-enter the Gardens elsewhere. The regions of the maze are split up into smaller chunks that have a zoomed-in version of the map with some explanatory notes. Each of these sections also has a recap of the region's random encounter table and random junk you can find on bodies table. I think that's one of the things that gives this book a reputation for usefulness- when you're using the physical copy, there's a lot less flipping than you might otherwise have to do.   Spoilered for butt Room 1: The False Chanterelle This is the first room that players will enter, stepping through the painting under the light of the full moon to enter the Maze. As illustrated, it's home to a naked lady in chains named Ashen Chanterelle. She's described as "evil, abusive, deceptive and smart," and she wants to convince the PCs that she's an innocent captive chained up here for no reason. She'll say that freeing her will open the further door, when really you just have to tug on her chains to open it. The room description says to have Tyko (the nice ghost boy) appear in the back corner of the room as well. Once you free her and turn your backs for a second, she's supposed to sneak out through the painting and close it off. She's got all sorts of protection from magical truth-telling mechanisms to make it so she can do this. Apparently she'll come back in a month with mercenaries to storm the Maze and re-start the Triarchy, which could be neat. Even if the players don't fall for this (but she's got Charisma 18! The book says so!) this exit will only last as long as the stolen painting is under the light of the full moon, so they won't be able to use this one again for at least a month, probably much longer. Personal Experience: My character was a paladin of the Furies, so obviously when I saw a naked lady in chains who said "please rescue me from my evil captors" I rescued the naked lady and the door opened. We didn't find out until we came back later that she'd made off with the painting, but honestly we were there to explore the dungeon and were still under the impression that there'd be supplies and resting areas available eventually so we weren't that worried.  Room 2: Lady Crucem Capilli Crucem Capilli is a dragon in humanoid form and she's here on a mission to rescue Psathyrella's father from the Maze. Apparently the only way she can do this is to burn through the Maze, destroying it, but she's a refined aesthete and appreciates the beauty of the Maze and its environs. She'll tell the PCs that she'll buy things they find in the Maze, and has a table of odd requests you can generate. She's kind of cool, but wait. Isn't this an opportunity for an NPC to be really helpful and talk about the Maze a lot, like the overview advised? Well, "If the party asks for information about the Maze to make their task easier, she’ll reply that their unknowing path through the Maze has its own aesthetic purity which she wouldn’t want to spoil." Great. Personal ExperienceWe never learned about Capilli being on track to destroy the Maze or anything, we just knew she'd pay us for art. What we didn't know was that money would be of no value to us in the Maze. Still, she gave us some kind of framework for our early time in ther Maze even though it was smoke and mirrors. Room 3: Starlit Stones A trap room, and one that directly asks for a random encounter off the bat. The shiny floor here is uneven, and a light will cycle around the top of the room at regular intervals. The shadows cast on the floor of the room are entrances to the pit under the floor. At least one player will fall into another's shadow to get things rolling, and with the light moving around it takes some coordination to rescue folks without falling into someone else's shadow. Room 4: Escher Stairs It's that famous Escher sketch of the stairs, like in the hit movie Labyrinth. There's some guidance on how to adjudicate this in-game.  Room 6: Sanguifluus Skipping past room 5 since a) it doesn't make much sense without this room and b) it literally can't be reached before room 6 without breaching the Maze's walls. Sanguifluus is an old man with three swords stabbed into him, who totters around unable to die. Apparently he's Chronia's son and this is some kind of punishment, although by whom and for what (other than being a bad king with bad knights) is unclear. Each sword pulled free releases a ghost knight made of a noble gas, and the Vaporized Thanes will try to steal the swords for their own use. Each sword also has a minor magical effect. Personal Experience: Again, seeing someone in obvious distress my character moved to help them immediately. And again, since my character was a paladin backed up by a bunch of other 5th level characters with magic weapons a bunch of 3 hit die ghosts were not a very big deal. We messed with the swords for a while trying to figure out what they did (one lets you read the thoughts of plants it cuts, one turns the blood of those struck into alcohol, and one looks cool but only gives +1 to CHA, worthless in 5e unless you're sitting on an odd number stat) and then used them in the next room... Room 5: The Three Thrones Each of the titular thrones has a symbol on it that corresponds to one of the swords- grapes, a crown, and a tree. If you put the right swords in the right slots, it'll open the sealed door at the northern end of Room 6. There's also a tomb of horrors style puzzle where you can put the corpses of different kinds of rulers in the thrones and get some rewards, but no indication of how the players would know to do that (or which NPCs might know about it). Room 7: Cyanoxantha Cyanoxantha is a living mosaic who lives in the tile floor, who chants a riddle about the actions that characters have to take to cross her room. GMs are instructed to have her mock players who don't listen to the riddle and refuse to repeat it. The problem with the riddle is that the fourth person to cross gets attacked no matter what, so unless there happens to be a random encounter in here most parties will wind up fighting her anyway. There's a neat thing where if she's slain, players are allowed to make a check (!) to figure out that her hide can be used to bind creatures that move between 2d and 3d into a flat surface. Personal Experience: We ran into a handful of orchidmen in here, so between trying to follow the riddle's instructions and fighting the urge to stick our heads in acid it made for a pretty interesting room. We were also able to get one of the orchidmen to fulfill that auto-attack condition, so we didn't have to fight Cyanoxantha ourselves. Once we opened the door in Room 6 it looked like we wouldn't have to deal with her anymore, and we thought we were getting the hang of things.  Included this illustration separately since otherwise it's kind of hard to parse Room 8: Subfoetens & The Shell This room is kind of bizarre. It's dark and lightless, and there's a "horribly malformed" baby sleeping, wrapped up in a shell that was grown to protect him from the world. Subfoetens is another one of Chronia's sons, and if he screams it drives characters insane, permanently losing Wisdom points as long as they can hear the screaming. PCs are supposed to be made aware that they can get the WIS back if they kill another PC, but not that they can get the points back just by getting out of range of the scary baby. The Shell itself also apparently wanders around sometimes trying to steal treasure from people (noted in the description of room 4). It's supposed to leave the players alone if they don't have a bunch of loot, but if they do then it'll sneak up and try to backstab them. Room 9: Rope Bridges Just some rope bridges over a huge drop, connecting a few areas together. Personal Experience: We fought a group of chameleon women here, which was pretty cool since they could cling to the walls and we were stuck on the rope bridges. What was less cool was when our GM decided that the next group of chameleon women to come through slashed all of the bridges down, making the area basically impassable to us, and our solving the throne puzzle in Room 5 irrelevant.  Room 10: Gibba Gognata Gibba's a huge caterpillar and a son of the Medusa, who wanders around the Maze eating petrified flesh. The room is normally home to a group of living but immobile chess pieces, and Gibba's eaten the two rooks. The chess pieces are demanding that Gibba cut himself open to get the rooks back, Gibba is kind of dumb and so, I guess, hasn't just eaten the rest of them yet. The chess pieces also have mind control powers. Gibba's only four feet long (which is huge for a caterpillar snake but not for a person) and the text says outright that "you can ignore them both if you like." Gibba doesn't have any backstory on his relationship with his mother, but I guess you could make some up if you wanted to in order to have an NPC who's actually of some use to the PCs. And that's the first ten rooms! I'm trying not to be overly unfair and armchair psychoanalyze the authors here, but boy oh boy is there a lot of stuff that just... exists in here. We've already seen three children of major NPCs (four if you count Tyko) as encounters in these rooms and none of them had any kind of description of their relationships with their mothers. That seems like a huge missed opportunity to me. Next time we'll continue through Chronia's Halls. That might be one post or it might be two, depending on how many of the remaining 17 rooms can be combined together. Fake Edit: I've been using the non-illustrated versions of the area maps instead of the illustrated versions, partly for clarity and partly out of some concern over this drifting into art theft. No idea if I'm just being paranoid, given that the entire illustrated map is all over the internet.
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Apr 11, 2021 17:51
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Hipster Occultist posted:Black Atlantic, Part 0: The Metaplot! Holy smokes that's a lot of metaplot the players will never interact with or even have a way to learn about. Meta-meta-plot. I don't actually mind at all when a setting has tons of history and deepest lore that you can use or ignore at your leisure, but the degree to which this bunch of immortal assholes are still running things behind the scenes really is a 1:1 rehash of old Vampire Thanks a lot for the summary, it gave me a much better picture of all the shenanigans
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Apr 11, 2021 18:16
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Robindaybird posted:And we're suppose to not let Aries have his will back? Frankly, most PCs if they get even an inch of this 'Rich assholes dooms world because he's a stupid fascist moron' backstory I feel like a lot of them will be full on board with "Let the AI nuke him" The only respectable moral quandary, between two Hard Men making Hard Choices. Who is the Harderer? Which chiselled face should you look up to?? 
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Apr 11, 2021 18:31
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Falconier111 posted:Novels need characters and story arcs and very few people read setting documents on their own. RPGs are one of the few ways they can get their work out to the wider world. See the first thing of Dinotopia I ever read was essentially a guide to it featuring a lot of very cool art. I'd like to see more things like that if I am completely honest. Just lots of things about cool worlds and people who populate it and the lives they lead. Giving you an option to use it but not a requirement. Then again I own the Guide to Glorantha, so that might just be me.
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Apr 11, 2021 18:31
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Faux-Guides are not a rare genre, I'm eyeing one that's basically Grey's Anatomy for mythical creature.
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Apr 11, 2021 18:35
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Robindaybird posted:Faux-Guides are not a rare genre, I'm eyeing one that's basically Grey's Anatomy for mythical creature. I'm a big fan of "someone else collating someones notes with marginalia pointing out problems/ differences" alongside "Collection of different accounts and trying to work out which one is the most accurate"
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Apr 11, 2021 18:37
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Josef bugman posted:I'm a big fan of "someone else collating someones notes with marginalia pointing out problems/ differences" alongside "Collection of different accounts and trying to work out which one is the most accurate"
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Apr 11, 2021 18:55
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GimpInBlack posted:Next Time: KUNG FU CHARACTERS! In honor of a friend starting up Tales of Berseria, how about a revenge-driven, vicious swordswoman who replaced her arm with something... else.
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Apr 11, 2021 18:57
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