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I gotta admit, so far Nightlife seems... kind of neat? Less janky than Vampire, at least.
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Sep 3, 2021 21:18
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PurpleXVI posted:I gotta admit, so far Nightlife seems... kind of neat? Less janky than Vampire, at least.   I don’t even have any good skills. You know, like bat karate skills, dragon skateboard skills, computer hacking skills. Girls only like guys who have great skills! Part 3: Skills (specify type) Nightlife uses a pretty simple skill-based, percentile roll system. So of course they muck it up by having an insanely long list of skills, many with no clear indication of what they loving do. Not since Immortal have I seen such a list of absolutely useless skills, fussily subdivided into as many separate skills as possible. The skill system also showcases a serious balance problem: drat near everything uses DEX or INT. STR is only used for a few combat skills, WILL and PER get a few skills here and there, and only 2 skills are tied to ATT. The game also has an unusual way of handling skills at character creation. Instead of getting a flat number of points, you get a pool of 20d10 to assign to various skills. Yes, skills are randomly rolled. You don’t have to assign all your dice before rolling any of them. So you can decide you want the Diplomacy skill, roll a d10, and keep assigning dice depending on how good you want to be and how well you roll. On the other hand, this can lead to throwing good dice after bad, so to speak. Skills are divided into three categories: Combat, Archaic, and General. The “Archaic” section is where I start losing my temper. Combat Skills are the most mechanically interesting. The melee weapon skills are Club (which includes axes), Knife, Spear, and Sword. All are based on the average of STR and DEX. The ranged weapon skills are Bow, Pistol, Rifle, Submachinegun, Heavy Weapons, and Throwing. All are based on DEX except Heavy Weapons, which is based on INT. Honestly, given some of the other nitpicky skills, I’m surprised they didn’t make separate skills for shotguns and automatic rifles. There’s also a “Special Weapon” skill if you want to use some exotic martial arts weapon. The There’s also a Breakaway skill for escaping grapples, and a Quick Draw skill you can test to draw and attack in the same round. Both are based on DEX. There are 4 different skills for unarmed combat. Most of them allow for some “special maneuvers.” Trying a Special Maneuver imposes a -20 penalty, but if you succeed you do your damage plus some extra effect. Hand-to-Hand (DEX) is a basic fighting skill which can be used to attack, grapple, or “any other maneuver the CP approves of,” but it has no built-in Special Maneuvers. Every PC starts with this skill at base DEX for free. Hard Martial Arts (average STR and DEX) is just flat-out better than Hand-to-Hand. It doubles your base HTH damage and has one Special Maneuver: Knockdown. If you succeed, your enemy takes damage and has to make a test to avoid being knocked down. Downed characters lose a turn getting up, and any attacks against them get a bonus. Soft Martial Arts (DEX) is even better than Hard Martial Arts. It also doubles your base HTH damage and has two Special Maneuvers. Throw does the exact same thing as Knockdown. Hold allows you to do damage and grab your opponent, then automatically damage them every turn without making attack rolls. The only reason to choose Hard Martial Arts over Soft is if you’re one of the Kin who gets a fat STR bonus. Streetfighting (DEX) is a different animal. It also doubles your base HTH damage, plus it can be used with improvised weapons like chains and broken bottles. It has 3 Special Maneuvers. Sucker Punch forces your enemy to make a FIT roll or be stunned for a turn. Low Blow forces a FIT roll to avoid taking a penalty to skill rolls for 1d10 turns. Throat Punch is similar to Low Blow: the penalty is smaller but lasts twice as long.  Archaic Skills are where it starts getting ridiculous. There are several skills here with practical applications, like Blacksmithing, Hunting, Tracking, and Trapping. You could use the first to make special weapons that attack other Kins’ Flaws, and the other skills can be used for hunting and tracking two-legged prey and setting booby traps. (Would I combine them into one skill? Definitely.) If you’re a sick gently caress, I guess you could take the Torture skill. There are also some skills that are relevant to Kin society, like Kin Etiquette and Kin Lore. But then there are skills that are just worse versions of other skills: Court Etiquette is the skill of medieval court politics, which can sub for Kin Etiquette at a -10 penalty. Why? Since all PCs are presumed to be less than a century old, it will only ever be a NPC skill. It also implies that the elder Kin have some kind of quasi-feudal society, like in Vampire. As you'll see in later chapters, they definitely don't. Then there are a bunch of loving useless skills that only exist for “roleplaying.” Writing something on a character sheet and never doing anything with it isn’t roleplaying! I’m talking about Farming here, folks. I’m talking Charioteering. Motherfucking Heraldry and Manuscript Illumination. Heraldry, they say, is useful if your PC is a Ren Faire nerd or runs one of those companies that sell coats of arms. Who gives a poo poo? I didn’t even know they had that poo poo in 1990. Anyway. Brewing, Tanning, Taxidermy, and “Archaic Musical Instrument” are skills in this game. Yeah, I bet Samantha X plays the lute. There are two Fishing skills! Two! There’s a Fishing skill and in parentheses it says (specify net or line). I am traumatized by this. General Skills are just as bad. Let’s start with the vehicular skills: Driving, Motorcycle, Bicycle, Skateboards, and Skating. Woah, slow down there, Nightlife! Don’t you think ice skating and roller skating should be separate skills? Every type of Aircraft is a separate skill, too. And last is my favourite, Boats (specify power or sail). A separate skill for sailing! So you can join the New York Yacht Club! And then you can snort some coke and blow your brains out! gently caress you! Speaking of Wall Street businessmen, may they all die in agony, Administration, Business, Criminal Business, High Finance, and Law are separate skills. But when will you roll them, and for what? Do you want to be the party’s computer nerd? I hope you set some skill dice aside, because Computer Operations, Computer Programming, Communications, Cryptography, Electronics, Security Systems, and Surveillance are separate skills. Of course, a game like this is going to involve lots of dirty deals and criminal stuff. Don’t forget to invest in Counterfeiting, Demolitions, Disguise, Explosives, Forgery, Gambling, Lying, Mimic, Smuggling, Stealth, Streetwise, and Tailing. Yes, you need both Disguise and Mimic to impersonate someone’s appearance and mannerisms. Yes, Demolitions and Explosives do exactly the same thing. I think this skill list is so long that the writers just forgot. Okay, this is getting exhausting. I’ll just play the party’s cleric healbot, you say! Cool, you just need Medicine, Pharmacology, First Aid, and CPR. That’s right, CPR is a separate skill from First Aid. No, they don't say if undead Kin have a heartbeat. Hold on. Okay. I checked the bathroom mirror and I haven’t actually chewed my lower lip off yet. Remember that Acrobatics skill I mentioned? It’s not listed. There is a Juggling skill, though, which lets you do juggling tricks and does everything the Throwing weapons skill does. Neat! But what about the actual nightlife in Nightlife? This game is also about art, music, and carefully ripped designer jeans, right? The skill list has you covered. There’s Acting, Art (specify type), Cooking, Dancing, Fashion Sense, Mime, Musical Instrument (specify type), Musical Style (specify type), Photography Singing, Songwriting, and Stage Presence. Does that mean that when you play music, you have to roll for both your instrument and style? It doesn’t say! We do know what the Fashion Sense skill does, though--a successful test temporarily improves your ATT by as much as 3 points! Putting a bunch of points into a skill, so you can get a +3 bonus to the 2 skills that are actually tied to ATT. Very elegant game design here. But I have to hand it to ‘em--this is a game that knows it’s set in New York City, the Big Apple, the City That Never Sleeps! I’m Drainin’ ‘ere! And there are several skills that are just about living in the city. Every PC is presumed to know their own neighbourhood intimately, but every other borough requires a separate City Knowledge skill. There’s a Scavenging skill for digging in the dustbins, and a Parking skill. Yes, this is a separate skill from Driving and City Knowledge. You use it to find a parking space. There are some weird ones with specific effects. An Ambidexterity lets you use gear in your off-hand at no penalty. Fear Resistance increases your WILL check against fear effects. Memory Training is used to recall things that your PC could or should remember but the player forgot. The rest are too boring to even mention, but you can just imagine. Social skills like Diplomacy and Intimidate? Sure. Are there academic skills like Science and History, where each field is a separate skill? You betcha. Is every language a separate skill? Yep, and Linguistics too. And there are Profession, Trade, and Other macro-skills for anything these obsessive freaks forgot. (specify type) (specify type) (specify type) (specify type) (specify type) (specify type) (specify type) (specify type) (specify type) (specify type) (specify type) (specify type) Next Chapter: (specify type) Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 19:04 on Sep 24, 2021 |
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Sep 3, 2021 21:26
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It's janky, but in different ways. Really loving different ways.
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Sep 3, 2021 21:33
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HOW DID YOU DO THIS did you cut the the skill list down from 107 to like 20 or what
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Sep 3, 2021 21:41
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Halloween Jack posted:
I'm sorry, all I can think of is how loving great this is. This is the BEST poo poo.
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Sep 3, 2021 21:50
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Halloween Jack posted:HOW DID YOU DO THIS Ahahahahahahaha!...Yes.
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Sep 3, 2021 22:13
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Nightlife posted:Bats are more versatile than birds, with superhuman hearing and the ability to bite people BEHOLD THE POWER FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE *turns into a bat* *tries swooping in* *gets swatted aside* *gets entangled in Manitou's wild hair* †gets eaten by a cat†
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Sep 4, 2021 05:34
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JcDent posted:BEHOLD THE POWER FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE It's true what they say, vampires have risen from the grave, the crypt and the tomb, but never from the cat.
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Sep 4, 2021 05:41
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Halloween Jack posted:Next Chapter: (specify type) I salute both your service and your LP-writing craftsmanship 
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Sep 4, 2021 05:45
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Postmortem and Fixing Degenesis Degenesis Rebirth Primal Punk POSTMORTEM When I started the Fatal and Friends review of Degenesis: Rebirth more than four years and a month ago, I had no idea where it would take me. I definitely had no inkling that it would take so long, but for that one I can only blame myself.  Back then, all I knew about Degenesis was some great (and/or titty) art, a post apocalyptic setting set in Europe, and that it was about weird future wasteland factions fighting an implacable mutating threat from beyond the stars.  Turns out, it's all about learning that all of the human factions suck, and you're only there to observe how various parts of meme Musk's conspiracy collapse on themselves.  That was a disappointment, especially since the true nature of where the game devs want you to go is hidden from you in the first book, Degenesis: Primal Punk. Sure, Recombination Group is mentioned a bunch of times, but there's very little to hint at the conceit that the entire world is spinning on the top of Gerome Getrell's dick. So all the forward facing fluff about working against fearsome odds, overcoming adversity and mistrust to fighting an external enemy about to devour humanity? All of that is forgotten in second book, Katharsis. Both Katharsis and the published adventures are a lot more interested in petty politics you can't influence in any way and slap fights of meta narrative characters that you can only observe. Awesome.  What doesn't help is that the books are both badly written and badly written. The former is just about what a mess all of it is to read. A partial credit goes to the lazy translator, who displayed an utter lack of finesse when porting this into English, but the lion's share of blame goes to the writers who felt it more important to be evocative and cool rather than present a coherent and easy read. The style and tone jumps all over the place, and it's full of tiny details that conform with a teen's understanding of hardcore writing: “play it like you've got a pair”-level stuff filtered through translator from edgy German to lovely English. And we already hint at the latter: the writing is just bad, because what the author (probably Marko Djurdevic himself) considers to be edgy has dulled its blade fifteen years ago. It's just tiresome. It's an endless parade “you believe that people think about anything other than themselves? How naiive, kid” that was exhaustive in White Wolf, appeals to the worst type of Warhammer 40,000 fan, and speaks, ironically, of lack of maturity. The same goes for all the shock value pedophilia and fat people having sex stuff (seriously, it's cropping up constantly) – you'd think they were consulted by Shane Dawson or some other early 2000s “comedian.” But let's go back to the messy writing. You know where this sort of flaw is extra damaging? In describing a game's rules. Even if you discount the lack of focus and direction (you shouldn't), the rules are very badly written and laid out. It's a pain to get through it all. There are questionable decisions (why have the starting basic bitch Cult tiers when you're unlikely to ever consciously stay there instead of leveling up), an obvious disparity in attention (compare the trees for, say, Clanners and Helvetics) and just plain ol' boring bad game design (Potentials that give no mechanical benefits rubbing elbows that has an undeniable mechanic backing, a high lethality game having long and involved PC creation, etc.). That isn't very surprising, as Degenesis devs left a lot of proof demonstrating that they don't know how their game works - including the example character that they saddle with a useless potential they know he can't use right now. This extends to Embargo, the intro adventure, which combines bad game design (combined-tests-or-die stuff), inability to understand your own system (like how easy optimized characters can own Blacksmith et al), Babby's First Offending The Squares exercises (“here's a dumb gross (fat) pedophile – we hope you like him!”) and lack of any idea how satisfying narratives work (fight this person you have no reason to fight against, then save him for no reason, then fight some other dude you've never met, the end). Oh, and let's not forget this: there are no regular human NPC stats, only for campaign-boss level types.. This is an insane design decision to make in any game.  Is there anything good about Degenesis? The art. SIXMOREVODKA is a successful art studio, and it's evident in the pages of Degenesis. Only a few art pieces don't work, and even if the cheesecake is silly when you think about it (I don't know if anything can top the Usudi that wrapped phone cord around his waist to stop his permanent boner from flopping around), it's all of high quality. Just don't think too much about how the information is laid out – or how badly it is written. Of course, terrible shock rape games tend to have a following. And while Degenesis' acolytes did not prevent the game from having to go free-to-play to get some desperate buy-in, we've all heard the reports about the Discord hugbox they have going. Nothing better than a community of sycophants to keep a lovely author from ever improving himself or his craft.  So that's Degenesis: Rebirth, and the Degenesis: Rebirth Fatal and Friends review. Both of them are too long; neither of them are as funny as they want to be. But at least I changed over the years – goon shouting at me helped – while the newest Degenesis content shows that it has no desire to improve. But can it be improved?, FIXING DEGENESIS  NONE CAN STOP THE CRUSADE OF THE MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL I'm gonna split a hair here: Beast is not worth fixing because its mere concept is dumb and harmful, and everything that flows from there would be tainted by it even if it wasn't written by sex pests. There's a core to Degenesis that is salvageable, but to do that, you'd have to eject everything you find in Katharsys. The rules laid out in that book suffer not only from being unclear and unbalanced, but also of the ol' “super detailed combat rules, anything else – just wing it” curse we know and love from DnD. You'd think a game about traversing Space Mushroom infested wastelands would have a more detailed survival section, maybe Clocks or tying everything into a Patrol-like timer. No, there's nothing like that, but you can do basic currency conversion to make Tech III scrap into Tech IV scrap.  The fluff in Katharsys just makes everything worse, both by shifting attention to Getrell and his entrepreneur Discord drama, making GBS threads up all the Cults you know, and loving up AMSUMOs. So when I think about fixing Degenesis, I'm thinking about fixing it like a product you somehow won the rights to via some convoluted German court intrigue - and not for a GM who wants to run it. For a GM, the best thing to do is to read Primal Punk once, write down anything you remember, and then use those notes as the setting bible for your game of Risus, GURPS, or Savage Worlds. Now, if you were a game designer who defeated Marko Djurdevic in a duel and gained the rights to Degenesis due to Necromonger law stating that you keep what you kill, here's what you'd need to do: *Remember that grim dark is best used sparingly. A world that is just poo poo is not something people will want to fight to save. Characters who are just a succession of power hungry assholes aren't endearing. Nobody should be made to work with pedophiles and sex pests. The more airtight you try to make the situation where that is supposed to happen, the more obvious it is that you care more about exposing players to pedophile NPCs than making a good game. *Better yet, just leave all the sex stuff off screen for the individual groups to decide. Don't even make sly implications. Especially don't make sly implications. *Narrow down the scope. Marko shows the signature flaw of amateurs and fanboys: he wants everything. He spread game's attention molecule-thin, trying to cover all of Europe and part of Africa, all in one book. This means that there's a bajillion things fighting for your attention at once - and you can't do them all justice at the same time. Games Workshop can't do it for tabletop Warhammer 40,000, and you're not a billion-worth company with ostensibly four decades of game design experience. *Limit yourself to Borca. If you don't feel like weird post apocalyptic Germany can't carry a main setting book by itself, you're a broken man and you have forgotten the face of your father. You can start by considering a Borca-local psychonaut. *Clearly lay out what life is like and what tech level is available to most people your characters will meet. *Limit the playable Cults to a handful you care about. Spitalians, Chroniclers, Helvetics, Anabaptists are all good, weird choices. Give each cult two specializations path each, put a lot of effort into balancing them out, and you're good. *Really consider what Cults deserve to be playable, and which ones don't. Judges would need a lot of work to make them work (heh), Apocalyptics are basically damned to be antagonists, Scrappers and Clanners are a stretch to call a Cult, and I'm not sure you can verisimilitudiously adventure around with weird pale troglodytes who hate the surface world and love the meme daddy. Push comes to shove, come up with your own Clans for later books/regions. *Leave the other regions (don't call them Cultures, we don't need any more noun-sense) for expansion books so that you could give them the love they require. *Once you're ready to tackle Africa, hire some sensitivity readers at the very least. Scrap basically everything that exists now, because it's annoying, makes little sense (where did all the Arabs go anyways), and reverse racism is still racism. Don't have Anubians be fooling those SUPERSTITIOUS SAVAGES for their ancient conspiracy. Replace Scourgers with some sort of African Nations legacy organization, like an African non-rear end in a top hat, light infantry version of Helvetics. *Hybrispain will need something else going for it than just Reconquista 2. *Even if you limit yourself to North Africa, it deserves to have more distinct territories than just “Africa.” *Just... just don't make the rest of the world be dead? It was one of the most disappointing of the BIG SECRET reveals. It just makes the setting that much smaller and boring. *Scrap the “Getrel the meme puppit-master” poo poo, both as a meta narrative focus and as a thing. If you want ancient conspiracies, don't have them be 90% of the base of the current society. Rather show how a bunch of ancient assholes had plans upon plans that crashed into each other, and in the present day, they're mostly interesting as a source of tech you can take and turn against the shrooms. *Have “uniting humans against psychic Shroomjacks” be the central focus of the game and the goal of the characters. Degenesis, like many metaplot kitchen sink settings, suffers from “what do players do now” syndrome, so give them an explicit direction to work towards. *Flesh out the smaller organizations to be less one-note. Like make Pneumancers have two things going for them instead of just shooting steam guns. *Remember when I said that a GM should just read Primal Punk once, write out what they remember, and then go from there? It's kind of similar here when it comes to wider fluff, as a lot of characters and characterization are dumb stuff about starting civil wars as a power grab or being a sex pest. *Have splats expand and flesh out the world rather than moving some approved narrative forward. *Scrap the game engine. What's there isn't special enough to be worth the effort to save. Decide what you want from lethality standpoint and then work on it. High lethality? Get something with simple and fast chargen. Dangerous, but not immediately lethal? You can afford greater complexity when generating character. *Integrate adventuring as tightly as fighting – or just make fighting less detailed to fit with the rest of the game. *Start the character at exciting Cult rank that immediately gives them access to whatever passes for their signature ability. *Balance out character ranks against each other. This means both giving broad competences, and stuff like not giving Hellvetics the best weapon and armor and then bending backwards to nerf them via stuff that makes you groan and roll eyes. Maybe Helvetics get fairly good low-maintenance reservist rifles which are closer to FAL and G3 of yore than some losstech machinegun – then you won't have to invent lore why they get only two rounds per month to fire. *Toss out all the existing adventures, they have nothing going for them. Make the introductory scenario be about fighting the Shroom. *Have stats for regular NPC types you're likely to encounter and fight, oh my Go- Yes, this would all be a titanic amount of work. But would it all be worth it? Probably not. DEGENESIS!  gently caress off with ending the book on that quote
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Sep 4, 2021 08:02
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Halloween Jack posted:
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Sep 4, 2021 08:04
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Congrats on finishing off Degenesis, looking forward to when you'll be reviewing the next supplements they're releasing.  (please don't review any more supplements, don't hurt yourself)
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Sep 4, 2021 08:11
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I will absolutely not be reviewing any more Degenesis. Next thing I'll do is a game from that one itch.io bundle which I hope will be good.
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Sep 4, 2021 08:25
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JcDent posted:Postmortem and Fixing Degenesis I guess it depends on what you think Beast's core concept is. If it's "playing weird monsters that don't easily fit into other splat categories (Vampire/Werewolf/etc)" than I think Beast is salvageable. If it's "playing weird monster types who want/have to be loving abusive assholes to other sentient beings" than it's not. I admit that it's been a long while since I even looked at Beast, but from what I recall the main fix for it would be to expand the "feeding" aspect to include ways that don't explicitly harm other people, emotionally or otherwise. You could even say that those ways aren't as "satisfying" as the harmful ways and that a majority/solid minority of Beasts tend to be predatory assholes because those are Bad Guys who like to do things the "easy" way. I will say that I do like that there's no "sweet spot" for Hunger and that all states have advantages and disadvantages.
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Sep 4, 2021 14:14
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Age of Sigmar: Soulblight Gravelords Blood Out Vampire Lords are the martial champions of the Soulblight. They are as strong as ten mortals together, as fast as an aelven blademaster, instinctively able to command necromantic magic, and viciously cunning in their tactics. Many have innate magic that renders them even more dangerous, such as the power to boil blood with a word or the ability to turn into mist. Shyishian magic flows out of their bodies constantly, and their willpower bolsters the strength of undead fighting around them. They grow only more dangerous with age, as they hone their skills at combat and magic. Most are able to defeat entire military units on their own, grabbing tasty-looking soldiers and draining them dray in moments. While many Vampire Lords spend their times of peace in the lap of luxury, when battle calls they don the sharply bladed armor and head out, follow3ed by bat swarms and bearing the symbols of their line. Some prefer to lead from behind, empowering their forces with magic. Others, especially those of the Ghurish dynasties that rule several tribes, fight at the head of every battle. The rarest and most battle-focused raise Zombie Dragons to ride into battle. These mounts are able to lay waste to massive amounts of enemies on their own, and also provide a good way to keep watch over the entire battlefield and draw attention to the rider at once, showing off for anyone that survives to witness them. Prince Vhordrai of the Kastelai is one of these, mounted on the zombified drake Shordemaire and armed with the Bloodlance. He is widely understood to be the greatest of all vampiric knights by virtue of his skill, though his lineage is not so grand as some. It is said that he has fought and defeated members of every species that ever existed, and he leads the Kastelai out from the Crimson Keep most of the time, slaughtering the enemies of Nagash or whatever dynasty hired them today. Many even outside his dynasty venerate him as the pirest example of vampiric warfare, and they often seek to join the soldiers of the Crimson Keep. Vhordrai thinks himself more a prisoner than a conqueror, however. After the Battle of Black Skies, in which Archaon slew Nagash, he attempted to rebel and end his master's tyranny over all undead once and for all. He seized the corpse of the Great Necromancer and headed for Yulghuan, a corrupted realmgate that led into the Realm of Chaos. He was sure if he could hurl Nagash's bones there, the Dark Gods would tear the lich-god apart for good, and he was probably right. However, Arkhan the Black intervened, calling on all the might available to him. It was a fierce battle, and Vhordrai nearly won, but Arkhan proved too much for him. Vhordrai was sealed into a coffin of realmstone for most of the Age of Chaos, freed only when Nagash returned to life and bound him instead to the Crimson Keep. Should Vhordrai remain outside the castle walls for more than a full day, he will die an agonizing and final death - a reminder from Nagash of the price of rebellion. Now, Vhordrai serves as the Fist of Nagash, destroying his master's foes because he has little else he can do. He hates the job and hates Nagash even more, but he does at least enjoy the fighting. For some time, he has kept his rage private, seeing no way to achieve his own freedom. With Nagash's physical form now destroyed, though, Vhordrai sees opportunity. It will not be easy to find a route to freedom from the curse binding him, especially since he can't go out personally to seek it. It will be even harder to ensure Nagash is destroyed forever. But Vhordrai has learned nothing if not patience, and he is willing to wait as long as it takes now that hope has returned to him. He just has to be sure it'll work - he won't risk angering Nagash a second time unless he thinks he has an excellent reason to do so.  The Blood Knights are those vampiric warriors who devote themselves to the study of combat - the favored soldiers of Vhordrai and the Kastelai, but found everywhere. They ride the undead Nightmares into battle, wearing thick and scalloped armor as they do. Their role is to ride at the front of the army, charging into the foe to break them with overwhelming force. Other vampires often think them reckless and arrogant, but they make full use of their nature to make their work as safe for themselves as they can. They are able to direct their mounts with total precision, and a Nightmare is immune to pain and fear that would strike a normal horse. Thus, they can easily trample over entire ranks of warriors without slowing down. The Blood Knights drink in the great gouts of lifeblood that spray over them, invigorating them after the charge and pushing them to greater heights of violent majesty. Often, groups of Blood Knights will form themselves up into noble households or nomadic orders, each maintaining their own martial traditions. Legend among some of them claim that the first Blood Knight forever purged himself of the maddened Soulblight hunger by drinking the blood of a ruler of dragons, and so many Blood Knights use the dragon as a heraldic symbol to recognize his legendary skill. Notable groups of Blood Knights pursue different agendas. The Order of the Bloody Rose seeks nothing but battle, and they will happily work even with the living if it gives them more chance to fight. The Brethren of the Wofl Rampant have sworn their loyalty to Radukar, and so they hunt those mortals foolish enough to flee or rebel against Ulfenkarn. Both lack much in the way of scruples or honor codes beyond obeying sworn oaths, though other Blood Knights consider themselves to be dedicated to martial honor and seek to master their hunger as a display of self-control. It depends on what kind of person you're dealing with, really. Vargheists, on the other hand, are monsters through and through. They were once normal Soulblight vampires, but their minds were worn down by hunger and pain, and in losing themselves to the beast within, they became that beast without as well. Their talons and fangs sharpen and extend, to better tear apart their prey. They fly on batlike wings between attacks, hunting always for the delicious, steaming blood they love. They form packs led by more potent examples of their kind, called Vargoyles. They are prone to attack any living being they find, for hunger rules them, but they do retain the intellect of a vampire. More civilized Soulblight see them as horrible things, worthy of disgust and disdain, but often with an underlying sense of fear from the knowledge that while a proper vampire may make a show of personhood, they are far closer to the Vargheists than they'd dare to admit. Blood starvation is a frequent form of torture and punishment among the Soulblight dynasties, and this is where a lot of Vargheists end up coming from. A vampire deprived of blood for too long a period will be overwhelmed by their predatory hunger, devolving into the frenzied state of the beast. Others, however, seek out the transformation as a way of embracing their true nature. This is most common among the Avengorii, though the mas'ranga transformation ritual has been adopted by a number of other Ghurish bloodlines. The Legion of Blood also maintains a fairly large number of Vargheists, because Neferata thinks it's funny to watch vampiric nobles debase and transform themselves in pursuit of her love or favor. She often maintains small packs of Vargheists to tear apart those that piss her off on command. We get a sidebar on the nature of the Soulblight curse itself. Many superstitions surround it, and Shyishian mortals are prone to making up stories to explain the strange things they or their ancestors witnessed. However, there's often very little true knowledge of the nature and weaknesses of vampires rather than simple superstitions. What knowledge does exist is often won by hard battle thanks to vampire hunting groups such as the Silver Circlet or the Hawthorns...and even they can be misled by cunning undead spreading lies. What is clearly known is that almost all vampires wer eonce human - it's not totally clear why, and some say it is because of a curse on humanity, while others argue it's just because vampires prefer to turn those similar to them, so since they started out all human, they stuck that way. Others claim that longer-lived species just don't have the same drive to pursue immortality, since they already have something close. On the other hand, Necrosian legend states that at least one aelf has become a vampire, possibly more. Each underworld and village of Shyish often has its own lore about vampires and how to ward them off or fight them. These stories vary wildly and are typically apocryphal and useless. Vampires are not destroyed by the light of Hysh, though many find it deeply irritating and uncomfortable and so will blot it out with clouds of magical darkness or huge bat swarms. They don't need permission to enter any home, even royal ones, and they will not be stopped by scattered seeds of any kind or by flowering water...as a group. Lesser, weaker vampires are sometimes vulnerable to certain warding traditions, most notably the taking of a straw doll and hammering it upside down to a door using a silver nail or the wearing of many week-old ash sprigs. Also, the only way to kill a vampire permanently is utterly destroy their physical body. If even a tiny bit of flesh remains, the vampire may eventually reform over time. Of course, killing a vampire and obliterating their corpse is easier said than done, and even when they do retreat into their lairs to sleep, their skeletal guards never tire. Next time: What if a bunch of us got on a big carriage and posed dramatically while riding it into battle?
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Sep 4, 2021 14:58
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And so with all the grace and appeal of a wet fart Degen is finally boarding a disgusting raft to parts unknown. I'll just repost my finest observation of this nominally an RPG. By popular demand posted:Degenesis feels like it keeps stopping to ask "are you triggered yet you lib snowflake?!" Every 5 minutes .
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Sep 4, 2021 15:06
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Tulul posted:So what you're saying is that Blood Dragons should carry cannons that they shoot backwards, so they can hit the enemy with their sword faster. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cp6vvsCb_SE
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Sep 4, 2021 18:44
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PurpleXVI posted:Congrats on finishing off Degenesis, looking forward to when you'll be reviewing the next supplements they're releasing. I'll probably end up doing the next big plot book they put out, but that won't be until 2022 sometime. They're putting out small sourcebooks currently, but most of those are rather forgettable. The Exalters book might be interesting though.
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Sep 5, 2021 03:10
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Finally, Degenesis is over, and Regenesis can begin. I'm sorry you had to go through all that.
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Sep 5, 2021 07:12
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can't wait for Demegadrive.
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Sep 5, 2021 09:35
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That's the Megadrive32x/CD 'Tower of Power' That combination DeMegadrive'd the whole consumer base.
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Sep 5, 2021 10:36
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Finally, Degenesis is over, and Regenesis can begin. While I'd point to your RIFTS FnFs as an inspiration, I clearly didn't learn any of your conciseness that allowed you to shovel that much turd that fast
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Sep 5, 2021 20:37
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Thanks for your tireless work on that one JcDent.
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Sep 6, 2021 03:06
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Congratulations on finishing Degenesis. It sure was a thing.
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Sep 6, 2021 03:11
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The Necromancer 1 oz. absinthe 1 oz. elderflower liqueur 1 oz. Lillet blanc 1 tsp. gin 1 oz. lemon juice  Part 4: Humanity, Experience, and Wrapping Up Character Creation After Abilities, Edges, and Skills, the last mechanical parts of character creation are Connections and Possessions. Connections are contacts, and they’re very similar to the Contact rules in Shadowrun. A Connection can be anybody that it’s useful to know, and they’ll do “whatever a casual friend would do for a person,” so mostly just information and business connections. Examples include bartender, taxi driver, drug dealer, traffic cop, and district attorney, and some supernatural ones like elementals. Connections don’t have different costs, and they limit the abuses of this by saying that only one of your Connections should be a powerful figure like an “Elder Kin” or a Wall Street banker. Your Connections are randomly determined: roll 1d10 and get between 1 and 6 contacts. Possessions are simpler yet. You get $3,000 plus 1d10 times $1,000 dollars. Also like Shadowrun, this game expects you to keep track of all your weapons, ammo, vehicles, clothes, useful gear, monthly rent, and the deli sandwich you just ate in exact dollar amounts. This game has a truly decadent list of clothes you can buy ( no illustrations, sadly) that I will get into later. And the very last part is your “Personal Profile." This is really basic stuff like your name and age and what you look like. But there are some interesting considerations here. As for Age, you’re assumed to be less than a century old. The big one is Name--a Kin might have several or none at all. Consider Daemons, who were never human to begin with. They have a name in their own language (Malzielzebub or something like that), a “street name” that other Kin know them by, and a mortal alias. Kin who live off-the-grid might only go by their street name and leave their mortal identity behind. But a long-dead Ghost can just stick with their birth name if they feel like it. Oh, and those street names? Golgotha. Tiger X. Chilly Billy. WO Babylon. Crucial Jo E. Shady Babe. Sunny Daze. Spider Deb. Trixie 13. Gretchen Viscera. Yeah. They’re mostly like that. Other parts of the profile include Physical Description, Favored Mode of Dress, Background, and Goals. These are all given about equal weight! There’s no notion of starting the character creation process with a detailed backstory or “character concept.” Maybe you were a divorced accountant before you became a Vampyre, but now your name is Vincent Blackheart and you wear leopard-print jeans and cowboy boots and sunglasses at night. Your goal is to get some of that red cocaine from Blade 2. The last thing you need to note here is your Faction. There are several political factions at work in New York City. The default PC faction is The Commune, who believe in living-and-let-living in secret among humankind. Nightlife doesn’t make any pretense that a mixed-faction game is a good idea. Other factions include The Complex, Kin organized crime syndicate, Red Moonrise, the loony monster terrorist gang, and The Morningstar Corporation, who will be familiar to anyone who watched Angel.  The truth is that playing downright evil Kin is a pointless endeavour, thanks to the Humanity rules. Nightlife doesn’t use the concept of Humanity to explore some Gothic drama of damnation or redemption. It’s an XP system! But while you can’t accuse Nightlife of being “pretentious” that way, these rules flat-out encourage you to be a compulsive do-gooder. PCs have Humanity, which starts at 50, and Max Humanity, which starts at 100. Humanity goes up and down a lot. Feeding, even from a willing victim who suffers no real harm, costs Humanity. Most Edges have an activation cost of 1 or 2 Humanity, sometimes more. So maintaining your Humanity means living a double life among humankind, being a vigilante do-gooder, or both. Nightlife actually has excellent layout, but they made the mistake of burying the Humanity rewards and penalties table in the GM chapter. It’s not strict, like the Karma system in Marvel Super Heroes, but it nonetheless encourages you to be a rock’n’roll superhero.  First I have to point out that there are some really poorly-considered inclusions on that list, like the -3 penalty for domestic violence. I appreciate that it goes out of its way to say that there’s no such thing as violence against private property and that “doing something bad” is a nebulous concept. There’s a built-in incentive to spend time living among humans and doing normal human things, like wearing a pleather bodycon to a heavy metal concert. And there are huge rewards for foiling evil schemes, killing villains to save civilians, and sparing the villain when they’re at your mercy. Hell, it reminds me of the Honor and Glory system in Street Fighter. So why do you want high Humanity anyway? First, a Humanity above 50 means you’re less affected by your Flaws. The second and most important reason is to spend it. Buying, improving, and using Edges costs Humanity. The last is that gaining Humanity improves your skills...which leads us to the Advancement Rules. After every session, you get 5d10 rolls to add to your Skills. Every 5 points of net Humanity gain scores you another d10 roll. If you end the adventure with Humanity higher than your Max Humanity, subtract 10 from the former to add 1 to the latter until it’s not. If your Humanity drops below zero, add 10 to Humanity and subtract 1 from Max Humanity until it’s not. If Max Humanity drops to zero, you’re an NPC loony monster. Max Humanity can’t go higher than the starting 100, but you’ll spend that to buy new Edges. There’s no in-setting explanation for why super powers cost Humanity, and I don’t think it’s necessary. Power alienates people from people. Next Chapter: Combat, Feeding, and Death! Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 19:05 on Sep 24, 2021 |
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Sep 6, 2021 05:21
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Night10194 posted:Congratulations on finishing Degenesis. It sure was a thing. If you ever get the F&F big again, you could always port your Myth stuff from your blog. I admit that I'm kind of addicted to that story now and am hugely excited about the DCL stuff coming up. I Flove that much like Karl, et al from Warhammer, Karoline's secret to staying sane and functional as a Fallen Lord is that she's a genuinely nice person who cares about other people.
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Sep 6, 2021 07:19
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Is she playing him like a guitar? Also it amuses me that there are two entries for stealing and both of them are un-penalized. But I gotta admit, I've definitely seen worse RPG morality schematics. I think my only issue with it, is that since it also serves as XP, it approaches... individualized XP rewards, which is a cursed bane of game design that should be staked and left for the sunrise.
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Sep 6, 2021 07:29
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The system greatly rewards hunting down bad people and also being highly sociable and helping but the addition of 'not killing when justified' lets you also play the redeeming angel who beats the tar of some bad guys and then lectures them on morality. And I love it. Also what are the numbers on going on feeding fasts to build up humanity and heal up occasionally? is it a valid way to lazily gain XP? By popular demand fucked around with this message at 09:12 on Sep 6, 2021 |
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Sep 6, 2021 09:09
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... Wait, did all PC Kin types need to feed? I don't remember Ghosts needing to, is that just free humanity for them?
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Sep 6, 2021 09:49
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By popular demand posted:The system greatly rewards hunting down bad people and also being highly sociable and helping but the addition of 'not killing when justified' lets you also play the redeeming angel who beats the tar of some bad guys and then lectures them on morality. Yo, word up, broskis, this your top boy Feed4Fuel, ready to carpe-loving-night with targeted fasting and hemo microdo- *Gets stabbed with a stake by every other vampire*
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Sep 6, 2021 10:13
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Everyone posted:If you ever get the F&F big again, you could always port your Myth stuff from your blog. I admit that I'm kind of addicted to that story now and am hugely excited about the DCL stuff coming up. Night's already repeatedly said he doesn't plan on picking up F&F things again and the fact that you keep on bothering him about it when he posts about completely unrelated things is probably not going to convince him to do so. edit to actually talk about fatal and friends: How well do the humanity rules work in practice? It seems like you only barely get enough to offset your feeding/existence but if they're tying it to advancement then that's an issue.
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Sep 6, 2021 12:47
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Leraika posted:Night's already repeatedly said he doesn't plan on picking up F&F things again and the fact that you keep on bothering him about it when he posts about completely unrelated things is probably not going to convince him to do so. Just looking at the math from the table, if you fast one day and then feed on an animal the next day, that's still a net gain of +1 Humanity. A lot of it depends on how badly "not feeding" fucks with your character otherwise. That +2 Humanity will be pretty small ball if your vampire or whatever blows a hunger/frenzy check and eats a kindergarten class. Meanwhile, if you stop, say a mugger/rapist without killing him, that's +15 Humanity right there (+3 stopping a threat to human community, +12 not killing even though justified). It seems like a system that rewards player creativity and initiative.
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Sep 6, 2021 14:02
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Everyone posted:Meanwhile, if you stop, say a mugger/rapist without killing him, that's +15 Humanity right there (+3 stopping a threat to human community, +12 not killing even though justified). It seems like a system that rewards player creativity and initiative.
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Sep 6, 2021 14:22
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Sucking Bezos dry is 15 (stopping a threat to human community) + 10 (killing to save lives of others) - 9 (draining dead an unwilling victim) Comrade Dracula*, welcome to the resistance *granted, this game isn't about just vampires, so you can also spooky spook or awoorip him in half.
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Sep 6, 2021 14:37
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YES! ZA RODINU TOVARICH!
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Sep 6, 2021 15:19
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Proletarians of all Kin, unite! You have everything to gain, but mostly Humanity!
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Sep 6, 2021 15:46
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Everyone posted:Just looking at the math from the table, if you fast one day and then feed on an animal the next day, that's still a net gain of +1 Humanity. A lot of it depends on how badly "not feeding" fucks with your character otherwise. That +2 Humanity will be pretty small ball if your vampire or whatever blows a hunger/frenzy check and eats a kindergarten class. The Humanity system actually works very well in practice. My players spent a lot of time considering whether they should just off an idiot or not.
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Sep 6, 2021 17:03
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Meanwhile the VTM party gets so busy with interaparty mundane drama that the bad guy managed to just sneak away.
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Sep 6, 2021 17:06
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It definitely isn't a bad system to represent a bunch of creatures trying to hide in human society. Actions that would generally be considered healthy for normal people are encouraged whilst the opposite is punished.
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Sep 6, 2021 17:39
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Red Markets: a Game of Economic Horror Part 23: Long-Term Investments Yes, I'm still working on this. We’re nearly through. We’re going to go over campaign structure today. For a visual reference, Stokes was kind enough to include a half-page spread of the entire game loop as intended. Instead of retyping the whole thing I’ll just provide it as offered:  We’ve already gone over everything on this list except Enclave Generation, Vignettes, MBA Options, and the random tables. Today we’re just going to go over Enclave Generation and Vignettes (both are short), with MBA rules next time and a quick look at the tables to wrap up. Enclave Checklist The detailed enclave checklist is… pretty much just for the starting enclave, with the GM handling others. That works fine, considering RM isn’t really meant for a wandering traveler game and the negotiation rules & dependents incentivize a more settled lifestyle with journeys out. Most of the checklist is pretty common sense questions, but ones that are important nonetheless; Location goes into detail about the pre-Crash density, the landscape and climate, and agriculture, Defenses and Exports both get a lot of questions to follow them up… it’s pretty much exactly what you’re expecting to see. If it doesn’t affect the economy or the PCs’ direct way of life, it doesn’t come up, really. We get the example enclave of Troutfitt, the former headquarters and main shopping center of Trout Outfitters. Built like a giant concrete/plastic castle with slit windows and baroque murals on the outside walls, it’s a natural fortress against the casualties.  It also looks NOTHING LIKE THE DESCRIPTION in the official art for it. Yet another of the many art fuckups. Big exports are weapons, survival equipment, vehicles, water, and fish (from the decorative aquariums); imports are food, fuel, medicine, and electronics. Nothing surprising. Competition in Enclave Creation isn’t the taker teams that compete with you, but instead local powers that rival them; here it’s a DHQS FOB, the tunnels under the city of Feldspur, and Dracula’s Castle, a megachurch that turned to drinking Immune blood. Oh, and of course, they’re all ancaps and the main entrance/central market of Troutfitt is the Fountainhead, while “the Closet” is run by an elderly trans socialite running a “bohemian utopia”, because subtlety is a loving myth and this game is incapable of not beating you over the head with anything resembling a joke (even though it’s rarely funny). Use the sample questions. Remember to ignore every possible bit of setting you can. And please, god, don’t run a game out of Troutfitt. There’s also a quick aside about starting campaign sessions with news about recent action or inaction to make the world seem “living”, while exclusively revolving around the PCs’ actions or choice of inaction. Vignettes Here we go, Dependents finally get vignettes. If you read my Never Going Home review, I mentioned vignette rules there as well - they’re an idea that I really like for developing characters. Red Markets… kind of manages it, and definitely does better than NGH in that it constrains vignettes to specific themes that further the game. Every player gets one vignette with their Dependents, no matter how many you have (assuming no MBA rules are in play, because of course these rules that are constantly referenced across the past 400 pages still aren’t explained!). Plus, if PCs are considered Dependents of one another, you can treat a scene between them as a scene for each. So there’s a definite cap on how much you’re getting per session, especially with the short focus per scene. Potentially troublesome bit - other players always play the Dependents, not the Market. There’s a bit of example time given to making sure nobody plays a Dependent they’re uncomfortable with, and assigning roles versus fluidity, but there’s some characters no player is ever going to be fully comfortable playing, and the best option given is “uh, just play another dependent instead”. It works, I’m sure - I’d be interested in more play experience than just one or two APs to see how long these scenes run in practice to really see if they’re “ideal”, but it’s the best downtime vignette implementation I’ve personally read so far. You get to pick between three themes for your vignette; if it isn’t in a theme, you don’t get to do it. You can cope by engaging with your dependent while “PTSD-like reminders” creep in and potentially ruin the interaction; you can support your dependent by solving a problem for them whatever way’s appropriate, or you can engage with the community in a less overtly horror-themed method. There’s also a Bust rule that forces you to roll for what vignette type you get; depending on the dice results it’s anywhere from “no checks and you get a gift” to “several checks, healed only after the next job, because you have to do a side task to even qualify”, with everything but a critical success worse than the standard Humanity healing system. This is very solidly a “do not use this bust rule” for me, but if you really want a game where everyone is going to crack and go insane… be my guest, I guess. We get a sample interaction for each of the three vignette types, each with Half-Off the Taker dealing with his son Wes; they’re straightforward and explain the way it works well enough. One last Vignette type - when you fulfill a retirement milestone, you get another Vignette… where you don’t heal any Humanity and have to actually make a self-control check for putting up so much money in one go. The actual nature varies, but can be as significant as “your dependent is back in the Recession and safe now; you don’t have to pay their upkeep, and also you lose their bonuses”. Hefty! The rest of this section is just a recap of all of the mechanical bits of a session, from paying upkeep until you come back from the job. There’s some attention paid to repeating elements across multiple jobs, developing job lines, and the like here, but really, everything we’ve seen is already accounted for except Interludes. Interludes act like Vignettes that also don’t heal humanity; instead, they replace a combat encounter or other danger on travel with a roleplaying encounter (replacing an entire Leg). You only get one per job, but there’s zero reason to ever not use them! I’m gonna go ahead and skip ahead to the encounter tables briefly for Stokes’ examples of what Interludes can look like.  There’s also an “rear end in a top hat Coworkers” Bust rule included alongside the table, taking up an entire page to say “you could randomly roll how people react to interlude conversations and be absolute jackasses!”. It’s just offloading roleplay to the dice. You can do this without a dedicated rule taking up an entire page spread. Next time: MBA rules. Finally.
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Sep 6, 2021 19:00
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