|
PurpleXVI posted:So are the wormholes literally just a subterranean ecosystem or are they meant to be like, an alternate dimension of sorts once you go deep enough? ONe of the other reasons is that the survivors of Atlantis/Mu/Shangri-La/you get the picture are down there.
|
#
?
Sep 25, 2021 20:29
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 25, 2024 02:40 |
|
|
MonsterEnvy posted:Body 3 is good for a melee build. It's good enough, but not anything to write home about. quote:The Player Vampire Lords are also noted as being the weakest of their kind. The Bestiary Vampire Lord for example is a B5, M7, S4. Maybe something that is clearly weaker than a Lord should be called something else than a Lord is my point. Just "Vampire" or "Vampire Noble" would work just fine.
|
|
#
?
Sep 25, 2021 21:06
|
|
|
Soulbound: Champions of Death Economies of Death As we enter the Equipment chapter, we note that while most creature comforts are not particularly meaningful to the majority of undead, they do still have and require goods. Nagash orders the construction of tons of weaponry, because he's waging war on all of reality, for example. The forges of Nagashizzar, Gothizzar, Nulahmia and similar places are never silent. Blades, siege weapons and more pour from them endlessly. Many are enchanted, either by the nature of their wielders in the case of the Nighthaunt, or deliberately. Many of the weapons of Death are cursed, haunted or even just very cold all the time. Still, not everything the dead create is meant for war. While a simple Deathrattle can't appreciate culture, any sapient undead can, and the undead civilizations have produce much in the way of history, music, literature and art. This art is often morbid or grotesque by the standards of non-Shyishan peoples, and bone and flesh are often ingredients in it, but this is still self-expression. Most undead have relatively little interest in wealth and commerce, lacking such petty needs as food and water. Even the vampires have relatively little use for just collecting gold or shiny jewels - art is grander, blood more useful. Barter and trade do not generally follow the same tendencies as in living lands. However, mortal cities still exist in Shyish, and resources are still required in some undead dominions, especially the Ossiarch Empire. Thus, limited trade between living and dead does happen, especially if that trade can be weaponized against a powerful foe or strengthen useful bonds. There are several major currencies in favor among the various peoples of Death, and their relative value fluctuates based on where you happen to be. Bone-based Ossiarch currencies are easy to find in a Deathrattle kingdom but not very useful, so they can often be traded at half their usual price, while Aqua Ghyranis will go further and be of more use in a living city. Aqua Ghyranis itself provides no benefit to the lifeless, and consuming it is actually extremely unpleasant for them. However, it does still retain practical use in dead-controlled lands by counteracting the taint of Chaos and allowing the land to sustain a living population, should Nagash or the local ruler want that. So you can still generally use Aqua Ghyranis as a currency - it just isn't useful as a healing potion for undead PCs, and they rarely keep it long unless using it for trade. The state currency of the Ossiarch Empire is Purebone, and acquiring more of it is the primary job of the legions. The Ossarchs have a list of many species that are considered useful to the Mortisans, which are then reworked by necro-alchemy into all kinds of goods. Hollow bones from birds are useful in lightweight constructions, leviathan bones make good walls, and so on. The majority of Ossiarch bone material, however, is human. Human bone is widely sought for its malleable nature and easy supply, and because even the Flesh-Eaters and Deathrattle can be subjected to the bone-tithe if near the Empire, Purebone is commonly found anywhere that Ossiarchs are. Purebone is not all bones, though. It is officially defined as bone harvested only from mortals that perished in the prime of life and were neither sick nor tainted by Chaos corruption. As a general exchange rate, one digit of Purebone is worth one drop of Aqua Ghyranis, a full Purebone limb is worth about one phial, and a full Medium-sized skeleton of Purebone is worth a sphere. A Medium-sized skeleton of Purebone can be used in a necromantic ritual by any Ossiarch to restore their own damaged innate armor during a Rest or when they Take a Breather. Spiceblood is the common currency of the Soulblight Gravelords. A vampire can survive on blood from animals or willing donors, but it doesn't taste nearly as good as when you drink blood infused with various emotions and exotic spices. You can make good money supplying a vampire's favorite kind of blood, and so peasants in the vampire lands will often trade in variously flavored bottles of blood (collectively, Spiceblood), which they use to pay taxes so their masters don't eat them. One vial of Spiceblood is worth approximately one drop of AG. A goblet of Spiceblood is worth about one phial, and a full bottle of Spiceblood is worth about a sphere. When a vampire uses The Hunger to heal during a Rest, they may drink a full bottle of Spiceblood in place of draining a fresh corpse. Grave Coins are a rarer currency. These are taken from burial rituals - it's very common in Shyish for burials to require a coin be entombed somehow with the corpse, possibly on the eyes, under the tongue, over the heart or in the shoes. After several years lying with a corpse or in a place of Amethyst-infused soil, these coins absorb trace necromantic power. This makes them cursed items that slowly sap the life of living beings that handle them, but it also makes them very, very useful for certain spellcasters. They are also usable as payment to various ghostly guides and psychopomps to ferry souls across the sea or to hire them to perform various monotonous tasks related to their time alive. A single clipping of a Grave Coin is worth about a drop of AG, while a full coin is worth about a phial, and ten coins is about a sphere. Anyone with a Lore of magic that has affinity for Shyish (such as the Lore of Amethyst or any of the ones in this book) can get a bonus to a Channelling roll by draining all of the power out of a whole Grave Coin, but this causes the coin to dissolve into dust. Not all places in Shyish use any of the above currencies. Most Flesh-Eater courts don't, for example, and will only want to trade for lots and lots of meat, if you're lucky. Some skeletons and ghosts just don't really like money that much and prefer barter of goods worth equivalent amounts or the swearing of oaths of mutual benefit. Barter is fairly common throughout Death's domains, and the swearing of oaths of service is also common, as the underworlds are full of dangers that one might ask a stranger to take care of in exchange for aid, as well as many other quests - the regaining of lost memories, reconciliation with one's descendants or living relatives, that sort of thing. The Necroquake has also infused many mundane items with magic, and in Shyish this most commonly means objects symbolic of death - death masks, hourglasses, shrouds, artifical skulls. These can often be traded to necromancers or Mortisans for various goods, or used as raw material in necromantic crafts. The book notes that most the goods it presents are not available in the Cities of Sigmar - these are things made by the undead for the undead, and generally they're mostly available in cities run by Death. Nadirite is particularly common in the Ossiarch Empire, while cursed weapons are more common in Deathrattle kingdoms, and of course you can find all kinds of dark magic and evil things in the markets of Nagashizzar. Cursed is a new weapon trait. Anyone who takes damage from a Cursed weapon gets a Defence penalty that lasts until they next Rest and pray for aid or until they make a Devotion roll as an action to break the curse, whicever comes first. It doen'st stack, though - once you're hit by the curse, that's it, more curses won't make it worse. Nadirite is a weapon and armor trait, representing being made from special alchemically treated metal or bone, enchanted by the Mortisans. Ossiarchs may add the Nadirite trait to any of their starting weapons, even if they're not specially noted as such (for example, if you're making a custom archetype). Nadirite gear all has the Magical trait, and any time you roll a 6 on an attack roll when using a Nadirite weapon, you reduce the target's Mettle by 1 until the end of their next turn, though that doesn't stack - it just works, once per round. Now, let's look at some new gear! Ageless Garb: This is pretty cheap, but not easy to find. A lot of undead don't really go in for fashion, see - most ghouls don't really wear real clothes in their normal state, and most wights will settle for whatever old uniform they had when they were laid to rest. The Ossiarchs just don't do clothing in general. However, the Soulblight are a major exception, especially in places like Nulahmia, where high fashion is practically a form of armor in the political arena. Still, vampire clothing is often anachronistic, reflecting styles that were in vogue when the vampire was turned, or may incorporate the furs of monstrous prey or armor designed to evoke predatory imagery. Whatever the outfit, turning it into Ageless Garb requires necromantic enchantments that ward off rot and natural deterioration, ensuring the outfit is always fresh and in full glory despite its age or treatment. Alternatively, some vampires prefer to animate skeleton tailors and have them focus their entire unlife on wardrobe maintenance. Boneplate: This armor is exclusive to the Ossiarch Bonereapers. It's rare and moderately expensive, and it is designed to augment their already impressive bone frames for additional defense. Boneplate is creaeted by the Mortisans as overlapping bone plates in emulation of metal armor, but is fused directly to the Ossiarch's skeleton, so that they can never be surprised or taken off guard. It permanently increases their innate Armor by 1, which can be repaired the same way as before. However, it is incompatibnle with Ebon-Wrought Armor, the other primary Ossiarch armor augmentation. Bone Club: These are not something you usually need to buy, but if you wanted to, finding a bone heavy enough to withstand frequent use as a weapon would be a moderate expense but not hard to do. They deal decent damage and are Crushing. Most of them are taken from the limbs of dead monsters. However, a ghoul can take time during a Rest to reshape and "reforge" the bone's shape, removing the Crushing trait and replacing it with the Piercing or Slashing trait, or vice versa. The change is permanent until you next reshape the thing. Mostly, this just means your basic weapon can be altered to use the most useful damage type for your Talent picks - it's still a basic weapon. Chill Dagger: These are rare and expensive blades, mostly found in the hands of the Myrmourn Banshees. They don't deal particularly notable damage, and they're just Piercing and Subtle, like most daggers. However, they do glow brightly when exposed to magical energies - and that plays into the reason they're usually assigned to the Myrmourn. When you attack with one on the same turn that you have successfully unbound a spell, it deals double damage and ignores non-magical armor. Death Knell: Rare and expensive, these are heavy two-handed weapons. Specifically, giant maces topped with a bell, primarily found in the hands of the Extollers, ghosts whom Nagash curses for having spoken heresies against him in their lives as spiritual leaders. They ring when used to kill, and that sound terrifies and rips at the souls of the living. It also has an incidental use in serving as a beacon for the Grimghast Reapers, a blind but violent brand of ghost who use the sound to find new victims. The first time a Death Knell kills someone ach turn, all non-Undead creatures in Short range take 1 Armor-ignoring damage. Deathlance: Easy to find but moderately expensive, these are basic, decent damage Piercing weapons in terms of stats. However, like the lances of mortal cavalry, they excel when used by mounted fighters. Most mortal lances break on impact, but Deathlances are reinforced by necromancy, allowing them to endure countless charges. When used as part of a mounted Charge, their base damage increases to be better even than two hander damage. Dread Falchion: These rare and expensive weapons can only be used by Large or bigger wielders. They are Slashing two-handers with commensurate damage, and they're also have Nadirite and Rend traits. Each is a massive sword enchanted by necromantic energies, and they're primarily found in the hands of the Necropolis Stalkers - at least, the ones that prefer wielding two of them to using four normal weapons at once. Dread Halberd: These are similarly expensive, similarly rare, and similarly only able to be used by Large or bigger wielders, but also require Body 5+ to handle properly. They hit hard, being two-handers, and also have Cleave, Reach and Nadirite traits, plus both Piercing and Slashing. Their design is based on the weapons of the original Scions Praetoris, combining a speartip, axe head and anti-cavalry reverse hook, to be able to face any danger. They're just much bigger now and made out of Nadirite. Ebon-Wrought Armor: Another set of Ossiarch-only equipment, like Boneplate...but it's rather more expensive and much, much harder to find. It's mostly given to the Morghasts Archai at Nagash's direct instruction. Because their design has sufficient protection against physical attacks already, it is designed instead to turn aside magic by having souls forged into the metal itself. It's very rare for anyone else to be given the stuff, and like Boneplate it is incorporated directly into the bones of the Ossiarchs that get it. It causes their innate armor to be doubled against spells and Magical attacks, and gives a bonus die to all rolls to resist spell effects. It is, of course, not compatible with Boneplate. Fallen Kingdom's Banner: You can't really buy these much, though if one was for sale it'd only be moderately expensive. They're pretty much, well, flags and banners from ancient kingdoms and empires that usually don't exist any more or which have become Deathrattle kingdoms. They require a free hand to carry, and they are a valid charge for a Grave Guard's Duty Beyond Death. On top of that, once per combat a Grave Guard carrying one can instantly regain a Mettle as a free action by holding up the banner and shouting an ancient battle cry. Ghastflails: Rare but not all that expensive, these are heavy chains that can only be wielded by Nighthaunt...and typically they don't get a choice in the matter. These, rather, are intended as punishments for Spirit Torments and Chainghasts who died in captivity but failed to ask Nagash for mercy as they did. These are actually spectral manifestations of dread and despair, but they have the side effect of allowing the wielder to fire their own negative emotions as spectral blasts. They can be used as decent damage melee Crushing weapons with Cleave, or as decent damage medium-range Crushing blasters. Mortality Glass: Extremely rare and somewhat expensive, you probably can't buy one of these easily. They are hourglasses filled with grave-sand, and each time a bit of the realmstone falls, it means somewhere, somehow, a mortal is dying. Turning the glass over can disrupt the flow of time, either slowing foes or speeding up fellow undead. The Guardians of Souls are said to be able to unlock even more powers from them, but if so, those aren't listed here. Instead, we just get the rules for basic use - as an action, you can turn the glass and choose either to give a Speed penalty to all mortals in Short range or a speed bonus to all Nighthaunt in Short range. Either way, it lasts until the start of your next turn. Mortisan's Tools: These would be cheap if you could buy them, but most places will not have them in stock, and all Mortisans already have some. What's in a given kit varies - it will always have some soul-chamber flasks, which glow grimly when a soul is inside them, and a number of small bones from the worthy dead. Some Mortisans who favor alchemical methods will also have measuring scales, soul-lenses and various concoctions. Others, like the Anadirian Boneshapers, consider the work more an art than a science and will carry sculpting tools, files and various brushes. Either way, you need some kind of set of Mortisan's tools to perform the Sculpt Bone or Refine Armaments Endeavors. More on those later. Nadirite Battle-Shield: These are rare and moderately expensive weapons. They don't do a ton of damage, even though they're two-handers, but they are Nadirite, and they do still require Large size or bigger to wield. They are gigantic segmented shields that can be used to bludgeon foes as well as block attacks, and like the Dread Halberds, their design is based on the ancient fighting stile of the Scions Praetoris. Now, they are most often seen in the hands of the Immortis Guard. Like a normal shield, they increase Defence on top of being usable as a weapon, and if one ever deals more damage to someone than their Body, it knocks the victim Prone. Nightmare Lantern: You can't buy these, period. Each one is lit from the Flames of Nagashizzar to serve as a lure for spirits and a tool to empower them. They are usually held by Guardians of Souls atop long staffs, to serve as batteries of necromantic power. The wielder can use an action to fane the flames of the lantern. If they do, all Nighthaunt within Short range get sizable bonus damage on all attacks until the start of the wielder's next turn. Reaper Scythe: These are rare and expensive weapons. They only deal moderate damage, despite being two-handers, but have Cleave. They are empowered by the frequent association of scythes with death in many cultures, granting them a constant grave chill. They are frequent weapons among the Nighthaunt, particularly by Cairn Wraiths, and their chill can touch the soul. Anyone damaged by a Reaper Scythe has to make a Determination roll or be Frightened until the end of their next turn - which makes them quite handy for Cairn Wraiths despite their slightly less good damage than most two handed weapons. Scrimshaw Tools: Cheap, easily available. These are used to perform engravings on bone, tusks or teeth - all popular arts among the undead. The underworld of Anadiria is particularly famous for its artistic, passionate culture, and powerful undead aristocrats often serve as patrons for their art, morbid though it may be. While a Mortisan can use magic to shape bone, others rely on needles and similar fine tools to inscribe images and words on bone, often coloring it with a set of pigments as well. Wights and certain Bonereapers, especially among the Ivory Host, will even perform scrimshaw on their own bodies, much as mortals might get tattoos, though this can sometimes be more about ritual or rank designation than art. Soulbound undead who fear losing their individuality especially love to scrimshaw their own bones as a wayof standing out. To do bone scrimshaw, you can do a Crafting roll during a Rest to decorate bone equipment or undead bone. If you succeed, you've made something that looks cool and eye-catching. While carrying, wearing or being successful scrimshaw, you get a bonus to all rolls made to impress people who "hold death in high regard." Scrollwriting Kit: Also cheap and easy to find. Bookbinding is relatively rare among the dead because Nagash likes papyrus and has made it the traditional form of recording necromantic spells, bone-tithe contracts and his own decrees. Some speculate this is due to his ancient origins and that he enforces it as a way of demonstrating his own cultural dominance. A scrollwriting kit therefore comes with a lot of spare pages, glue to attach them together and ink that is designed to resist wear from frequent handling and re-rolling, along with primarily bone replacement rollers. The Ossiarch Gnosis Scrollbearers have developed a respected art of calligraphy designed for use on papyrus, and skilled calligraphy is quite impressive in many Death-aligned cultures. If you own one of these when you use a Create Spell or Offer Contract Endeavor, you reduce the Complexity of rolls by 1 because of...tradition and cool calligraphy, I suppose. Shacklegheist Chains: Expensive and very rare weapons, these are heavy, high-damage two-handers with Cleave. Specifically, they are gigantic padlocks on a heavy chain attached to a keyring, which you swing around like a flail. They're the signature weapon of the Spirit Torments of the Great Oubliette, and they're designed to capture souls. Anyone slain by a blow from the Shacklegheist Chains has their soul drained into it with the snap of the lock. Only the Spirit Torment's own keys can free an imprisoned soul, and most will not do so until they arrive for whatever punishment Nagash has devised. Sigil of Death: Moderately expensive, easy to get. These are typically large battle standards, which are common sights among Wight forces and the Ossiarchs, who refer to bearers as Necrophoroi. These standards are just as inspiring to the dead as they might be to the living. When you bear a Sigil of Death, you can hold it up as an action. If you do, you choose either to give a bonus to all Soul rolls made by undead in your Zone or a penalty to all Soul rolls made by non-undead in your Zone. Either way, it lasts until the start of your next turn. Soulcleaver Greatblade: Expensive and rare, these are high-damage, two-handed Nadirite blades. Unlike most Ossiarch weapons, it can be wielded by normal-sized people, and indeed, these are most often found among the Mortek rank and file, held in the hands of their elite champions. Each blade is hand crafted and intricately carved, representing a gift of honor for distinguished service. Any time one of them deals a Wound, the Wound's severity is increased from normal. Soultrap Gem: Cannot be purchased. These are black gems made from fused grave-sand, and their purpose is to protect the soul-amalgams of the Ossiarch Bonereapers. Inside them, one can view a swirling mass of bound spirits, unified together by necromantic linkage. These gems are usually sealed within the protective bone casing of the Ossiarch's body, and when one falls, the gem can be retrieved and placed in a new body to bring that Ossiarch back to unlife. Sword of Stolen Hours: Also can't be purchased. It is a moderate damage weapon with Rend, and can only be wielded by Nighthaunt. Generally, only a Knight of Shrouds will have one, as they are given out when one is created after death. They steal the souls of those they slay to heal the wielder, and each one is designed to remind the wielder of their own irredeemable nature and dishonor. When the wielder kills a non-Minion foe with the blade, they heal Toughness based on their Soul. Next time: Artifacts of Power and new Endeavors
|
|
#
?
Sep 25, 2021 21:55
|
|
|
The Maze of the Blue Medusa - A Retrospective, part 16 - The Wrap-Up So we've gone through all 304 rooms in the Maze of the Blue Medusa. What do we do with that? If run "straight," using either Lamentations or another, more palatable OSR system, I think it's pretty clear at this point that a party of adventurers would simply meander around briefly, touch something, and die. Even if they avoid the random traps, hateful NPCs, and un-parseable art objects, if they enter the Gallery then they'll immediately lose all of their provisions with no way to resupply. As folks have pointed out in the thread, and as I've complained about in these very posts, there's just too much random crap in the Maze. Even important NPCs whose impacts are scattered throughout the dungeon may have no motivation, a motivation they won't reveal, or a motivation determined by rolling on a table. It's just too difficult to actually get at anything interesting or meaningful. Scattered throughout are little hints of more interesting stories, and that's what I've collated here: Potential Plots: Lizard People They once ruled the Maze's environs, and apparently their descendants are trying to forge a new empire based on misunderstood information from their past. We don't have any information about the current empire other than that it has floating libraries and knows some amount of time-magic. If we got some idea of what the lizard people were really interested in, some idea of what values their culture has, then you could make the Chameleon-Women the PCs. The Maze, if cut down quite a bit and with actual clues included in place of its more stupid rooms, could be a source of knowledge that would allow a party of lizard people protagonists to course-correct the new empire. Nyctopolis It sounds like the old lizard capital is now a darkness-themed nightmare city that summons demons to do their dirty work in opposition to the Medusa. If you wanted antagonists, here you go- folks who won't listen to the Medusa and want to undo what good she's managed to work with her powers. You'd need to give them an actual motivation and clear up some of the confusion around the reptile timeline, of course, since despite all of the pages devoted to them we can't really tell what they want. Having a clear antagonist faction in place of the million random annoyances on the random encounter table could help keep the narrative focused enough for players to actually understand it. Liches The book sometimes acts like the three Liches are a big problem that needs to be solved, but that Psathyrella has trouble solving herself. The Dead Wedding and the Gardens could each showcase one of the three (The Lying Lich and the Loving Lich, respectively), but the Laughing Lich just seems to be an annoyance. Part of his description says that he could provide explanations to the PCs, but the other part says to have him only be helpful for as long as the real-life players can amuse the GM out-of-character. He doesn't really have a story that hangs off of him like the others. If you could tie him into the Archive's other denizens in some way you could make him interesting, but that would require any of the lizard-person mummies to have any kind of character motivation other than "continue doing what they're doing right this minute." Chronia Chronia wants some stuff, like a cure to her condition or some clothes that will never rot away. There are some solutions to the latter tucked away (though of course it's a poison pill that requires the PCs to torment a golem), but much more interesting is her aborted relationship with the Medusa. The Crack Beast is clearly the reason why the two stopped talking, since it needs Chronia to be depressed and self-destructive to keep taking advantage of her immortality-granting blood. There needs to be a way for PCs to discover that Crack Beasts are bad news without becoming a victim themselves, and then to get Chronia and the Medusa back in touch with each other. Honestly that's straightforward enough that it ought to be an introductory adventure. You could meet Chronia, see the Crack Beast, see another Crack Beast clearly being a bad guy a little later, meet Psathyrella, tell her about Chronia's Crack Beast, and then be the go-betweens that get them together. Then with Chronia and the Medusa back on speaking terms they could send you off to help the other Torn sisters find peaceful existences of their own. That'll bring you into conflict with at least one lich, and you've got a campaign on your hands. Crucem Capilli A dragon lady who wants to free Dendrasothol and will, in so doing, destroy the maze. Rather than just being a source of meaningless treasure in exchange for gathering art objects (and a possible source of a party wipe if she decides she doesn't like you on a random table roll), she could actually help set up some tension! If she just tells the PCs her mission, and tries to recruit them, then the PCs will be opposed to the Medusa by default but not on a deep moral level. They can decide later on which of their obligations to remain faithful to, and agonize over that as much as they want to. Another thought is that she could be the Nuclear Option for different issues in the dungeon- she's talked up as so powerful that just her moving through the Maze could destroy it, so why not turn that to a positive use? When the PCs run into something they decide they just can't handle, they can call on Crucem Capilli to solve the problem. She destroys a whole section of the dungeon, but does remove the problem. It's not super elegant, but nobody is paying me for this so I'm fine with presenting you all with a first draft of the idea. Elatior and the Bondye Reparate So there's a whole island up there and the book gives it less space than the swords on the Medusa's walls. What's more, the only named NPC from Elatior is written to be extremely annoying to work with. The folks there are apparently nice but they think the PCs are demons from Hell, so turning it into something useful is entirely up to the GM and the players. I think it'd be fun to flesh out, since I like to think I have a basic level of respect for human beings and don't want to write off a whole culture as a dumb misunderstanding, but ultimately that's beyond the scope of this set of thoughts. Elatior and the Bondye Reparate deserve better than this book, and anybody who plays through this book deserves a better set of expectations for setting up a base of operations and resupply than "figure it out, GM." Having a staging area would also make it even vaguely possible to do an extensive exploration. Old-school dungeon crawling requires frequent trips back up to town- it would be super uncommon for a party of adventurers to just live in the dungeon for weeks, and it's impossible to do so in the Maze since there is very little food or potable water or safe shelter to be had. Spend another page talking about Elatior and a few less words talking about how the inhabitants won't talk to the players and you've taken a big step in turning a death trap into a usable adventure. The Dead Wedding While this area has plenty of problems, it probably has the closest thing to a storyline in this whole dungeon. The trouble is that there still isn't much in the way of motivation, either for the NPCs or PCs. The Lying Lich is tucked away in one corner. She's the mother of two NPCs, one of whom killed everyone at the wedding and manipulates their golden ghosts to punish a wicked world. The trouble is, as ever, that neither the Lich nor her sons will ever talk to a PC in a straightforward manner. Every NPC and monster in this area needs to have its annoyance factor toned down (fewer possessions, fewer save-or-sucks), and their motivations need to be made more clear. A GM would also have to motivate the PCs somehow- off the top of my head, you could make Tyko (the ghost boy) at least semi-verbal or able to provide illustrations so he can give the players clues. You'd have the Lying Lich's lies be explicitly focused on getting the players to destroy Torcul (the big gold guy) and disable the Golden Engine permanently, rather than being randomly generated. And you'd have Torcul actually have some kind of plot or plan that extends beyond having killed a bunch of people hundreds of years ago so there's actually a reason to oppose him. As written, there's basically no reason to interact with anything in this area other than a vague possibility of treasure, and it's way too arbitrary and lethal to get much satisfaction out of that. The Gardens- Xanthoceras, Aelfedred, and Zamia Step one in fixing this is obviously to not be a huge creep. No grope-monsters, no mandatory amorous encounters, none of that. Step two is to figure out what this area's deal actually is. A lot of the rooms seem like they're messed up from a lack of water, while others seem like they're messed up from the Loving Lich's emotions causing things to grow out of control, but there's not much rhyme or reason to it. You'd need to either totally separate the "not enough water" story from the "Lich and Witch locked in combat over the corpse of a magical queen" story, or make solving one the condition of accessing the other- as it is, the two ideas blur together and contribute to how much of a mess this section is. I'd probably set up the "not enough water, and yet some things seem forced to grow anyway" idea as the initial mystery, then when the players have killed Carnifex and fixed the pipes they'll be able to access the part of the Gardens where Aelfedred and Xanthoceras are in their stalemate. I'd also make it possible to access the rooms where you can learn about Xanthoceras' personality and discover his phylactery from the part of the dungeon he lives in, without having to chance it on a secret passage that might kill you or a huge detour through an unrelated area. I'm actually ok with Xanthoceras being a creep who wants to force Zamia to marry him- that's classic baddy territory from fairy tales. Aelfedred being Zamia's protector, despite being weird and having annoying Oku minions, also works out pretty well I think. Everybody just needs to have more character and a clear motivation so that the players can actually figure out what they want to do. Zamia should also have some agency in this rather than being a literal corpse getting groped by plants, and her ghost meandering around could easily provide that rather than having it be petrified hundreds of rooms away. Kitchen Sink Areas The Gallery Basically, gently caress the Gallery. It's fifty rooms with no story, and the insane hunger effect guarantees that no party will be able to actually spend any time in it to investigate the piles and piles of random objects. If you want to say that the Maze is partially an art gallery that the Medusa created to impress Chronia, you could just mention that there is art in a lot of the rooms. And if you wanted to make it hard to steal, you could describe it as being petrified into the walls by the Medusa's powers so it can't just be made off with. The Cannibal Critics aren't worth trying to salvage, so just turn the art objects into a list of random weird crap you can stick in an adventure and leave the rest on the cutting room floor. The Reptile Archive gently caress this area, too. All it really does is call attention to the fact that despite there being lizard people everywhere from multiple empires, we don't really know anything about them. They're just cunning enemies that we're given little hints about. The hints are neat (floating libraries, touch-statues, reversal magic), but I can come up with cryptic ideas by cracking open a book at random. Without substance, they're just more noise. The area contains two potential solutions to problems and one villain. The solutions are the Grimspindle, which could be used to make clothes for Chronia, and Torgos Zooth's missing kids. The villain is See-me-no-more. Any of those things could be plucked out of here and put somewhere else in the dungeon. The Archives are another whole section that you could turn into a tabble of weird junk and it would lose nothing. The Almery Bit of a broken record at this point, but yet again gently caress this area. Torgos Zooth is here, and if he had any personality rather than a list of powers he could be an interesting patron or antagonist for the group. The piles and piles of odds and ends in the various rooms could be another chunk of random table results rather than a series of interconnected rooms. Rip out Room 253 and its fun foreshadowing device for a separate adventure (maybe as a follow-up from the "save the Torn sisters" idea from earlier) and you've salvaged the only thing of value out of these fifty rooms. The third Torn Sister is here, and she gets the shortest shrift as well as the smallest picture. For whatever reason the Medusa uses her as a living prison for Zygmunt, who could become a mega-powerful Lich of Revelation, but the Medusa doesn't need her for that. She could just turn the guy's ghost into stone and let Charity Torn live a more normal life. Charity is the sister least hazardous to be around, since her powers only take full effect if she kisses someone, so in a better adventure she'd probably be the one who could more readily explain things to the players before they actually meet the Medusa. That's all I've really got for her, though. Zygmunt seems like he could be interesting in a campaign that actually interacted with the remnants of the Triarchy in some way. Maybe some characters would want to banish him permanently, while others would want to put him back on the throne. As-is he's just kind of here. The Cells This section is a random table's worth of weird NPCs rather than of weird traps and bits of scenery, but ultimately this area has the same fate as the other kitchen sink areas. No real story, no real reason to be invested, just a bunch of random people you probably won't get to talk to. The Medusa gets several pages of her own and at the end you still don't really understand her deal. I can kind of make one up from the bullet points we get and the little glimpses of her personality you can glean from the stuff in the dungeon. But I, the GM, should have a clear picture of her so I can parse those hints out to my players. I shouldn't be having to do detective work to figure out the NPC who's on the cover of the book actually is. Conclusions So where does this leave us? Let's do some simple math. The Maze has seven areas of various size. Four of them (the Gallery, Archive, Almery, and Cells) could be turned into lists of random things rather than as interconnected rooms. Two of them (the Gardens and the Dead Wedding) have potential stories that would have to be drawn out like wisdom teeth. And one (the Halls) introduces a couple of NPCs but is still full of random unconnected junk that just gets in the way. On the balance the Maze is more of a frustration than an RPG book. Running it straight will just kill PCs for no profit. Running it without the meaningless death traps and with all of the NPCs being less cryptic could make it playable, but still simply too large and too confused for any kind of proper narrative to be developed. To get a proper campaign out of it, you'd have to rip the whole thing apart and re-construct it yourself. And if you're going to do that, why pay money and cleave to someone else's words rather than make something you really love? This has been a long, exhausting road and I'm glad to be at the end of it. Thanks to all those who've interacted with the review, particularly Wapole Languray, whose early encouragement was one of the things that made this review happen at all. Not sure when I'll next write an F&F, but if I do it'll almost certainly be something I actually like!
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2021 18:07
|
|
|
Soulbound: Champions of Death Great Treasures of the Dead So, artifacts! These are things you can't make and which are generally hard to get ahold of. Some can't be bought by any means, while others are just extremely rare and often expensive. Artisan's Key: This one you can't buy. They are only produced in the underworld of Anadiria, and only since its conquest by the Ossiarchs. The underworld was a place of artists and creative people, and many of them were taken and used in the creation of Mortisans. The underworld continues to be a place of artistry, but now dedicated to the necrotopian ideals of Nagash. The capital, Gazari, is home to an annual competition of bone-based art, from tiny miniatures to giant war machines. The Artisan's Key is the prestigious award of the competition, serving as a symbol of master craftsmanship. If you're a Mortisan and you have one, you get a bonus to all opposed rolls to interact with other Ossiarchs when status is important. Also, all Ossiarchs will assume you have legendary artistic skill, and your creations will be more highly prized and expensive. Balefire Brazier: These are more common than most artifacts - just hard to find, not near impossible - but they're quite expensive. These torches burn endlessly from a seemingly inexhaustible supply of corrupted realmstone. The smoke drifts out towards the living and smells utterly terrible, choking those who breathe it in. The pain of the scent is even more terrible for spellcasters, who actually find it so agonizing that it can induce temporary catatonia. Larger versions of the braziers are mounted on Corpse Carts for battle, but sometimes, Nagash will hand the smaller ones out to a champion going to fight wizards. You can light or extinguish the brazier as an action. While it's lit, anyone in Short range except the user is Poisoned until they move out of Short range. Also, any spellcasters (again, except the user) within Medium range of the lit brazier are Stunned until no longer in Medium range. Bloodseeker Chalice: These are quite hard to get and very expensive. They are mostly found in the hands of the Sanguinarchs, as vampires obsessed with the perfect blood taste are called. These drinking vessels are enchanted to preserve the mystic residue of all blood that has ever been in them, mixing it into the flavor of whatever blood gets put in now. This produces an exquisite taste, and drinking from a Bloodseeker Chalice is a transcendant experience for a vampire. Many Sanguinarchs would die before giving up their chalices. Whenever a vampire with a chalice kills a Champion or Chosen with a melee attack, they can fill the chalice with the victim's blood as a free action. Once per battle, a vampire can down a full chalice as a free action. If they do, their Mettle refills to cap. Book of Nagash: You can't buy these. The originals, of course, are the Nine Books and are the greatest compendiums on necromancy ever made, written long ago in the World That Was. The originals are either destroyed or in Nagash's hands, depending on where in the timeline you are, but there's been thousands of reproductions made in the millennia since their creation. These lesser duplicates lack the raw power of the originals, but they are no mere books all the same. The secrets they contain are extremely potent. If you have a Book of Nagash, whenever you perform the Learn Spell Endeavor, you can study from it to learn two spells instead of one, but can only select spells from the Common list, the Lore of Amethyst or one of the new Lores from this book. Also, if you are holding a Book of Nagash, once per turn you may unbind a single spell or cast one spell from the above lores as a free action. Coat of Forbidden Heartbeats: These are only moderately expensive but exceptionally hard to get, because they're super illegal. They appear as a tattered long coat, and Nagash utterly despises them because of the power they contain. When worn by an undead, they allow the wearer to feel all of the physical and emotional sensations of life. The heart restarts, the senses of touch and taste return in full, any lost capacity for mercy or kindness returns. These coats also often allow the wearer to recover the memories of their life, even after countless years. For many wearers, the coats become a terrible burden, as they make it clear how monstrous undead existence can buy and how different the wearer now is from their fellows. Stories of wearers going on self-destructive rampages against their former undead comrades are not rare, which is one reason that Nagash has outlawed them. The main reason, though, is they encourage rebelliousness, which Nagash hates above all. Corpse Candle: These exceptionally rare and expensive tools are the symbols of Reikenor the Grimhailer, the ghost who serves as Nagash's personal executioner. Their tallow is rendered from corpse fat and grave-sand, granting them great power when the wick is snuffed. Essentially, they allow for the stealing of innate essence and redirecting it into magical power, and they are mostly found in the hands of Reikenor's chosen servants. You can spend an action to light the candle, and once lit, nothing can put it out but another action on your part. When you spend an action to put out the candle, you choose one target in Short range, who takes damage based on their Soul, then choose an ally in Short range, which can be yourself That ally gets a bonus to their next Channelling roll based on the Soul of the target damaged. (It doesn't say the damage ignores Armor but it probably should.) Decrepit Coronet: These are extremely rare, especially outside ghoul lands, though only moderately expensive. They are crowns made from bone and sinew, frequently worn by the rulers of Morgaunt courts, their favored vassals, and any Flesh-Eaters attempting to emulate their chivalry. Their grossness does mean that outsiders rarely wnat to put them on...but anyone wearing one is going to be seen by any normal ghoul as a senior and respected member of their society, worthy of great respect. The wearer gets a bonus on all social rolls to gain the service or allegiance of Flesh-Eater ghouls, and all allied ghouls in Short range of the wearer get a bonus to Melee - including the wearer, if they are one. However, non-ghouls that wear the coronet are Poisoned for as long as they wear it, because...it's a hideous and somewhat diseased bone-and-sinew crown. Also, they get a penalty to all Guile rolls to interact with non-ghouls while wearing it, but a bonus to Intimidation rolls. Heartseeker Ring: Very rare and somewhat expensive. These rings are designed to help those seperated from their friends and loves by death - a problem that is infamous in the Shyishan underworlds. The rings are able to help even if you can no longer remember what it is you seek, in fact, and many legends surround their use - some romantic stories of living warriors seeking out fallen comrades, some grim tales of undead pirates endlessly chasing the treasure they failed to get in life. Most of them end in ironic tragedy. When you wear a Heartseeker Ring, a small, thin line appears in the gem, poiting you in the direction of your truest heart's desire. It will direct you around impassable obstacles, too! It can't tell you what you're actually going for, though, nor how far away it is. If what you desire is impossible, it will point you at a god, relic or other power capable of making the impossible happen. Mindblade: Very rare and exceptionally expensive. These are weapons created as an offshoot of the development of Nadirite. They're very rare, mostly found in the hands of the Stalliarch Lords command staff as a reward for their conquest of Equuis Main. These weapons sow confusion in their victims, functioning as high-damage Nadirite blades with an additional effect. Anyone who takes damage from a Mindblade gets a penalty to Accuracy, a penalty to all Mind rolls and automatically acts last in Initiative order. These all last until combat ends, and the Initiative penaly overrides any magic or effect that would alter Initiative order. Mortis Reliquary: Very rare, moderately expensive. These are made out of the bodies of liches, who truly mastered Necromancer and conquered death...well, mostly conquered, since...they got fuckin' killed and placed in reliquaries. Many of their disciples fight over the bodies, and some are eventually placed at the core of Mortis Engines to fly into battle, but others are broken up into several smaller, more portable reliquaries to harness their power. Any spellcaster in Short range of a Mortis Reliquary gets a bonus to Channelling rolls to cast Amethyst or Deathmages spells. Also, once per day, you can spend an action to open the reliquary and unleash the necromantic power within, causing 5 Armor-ignoring damage to all living creatures in Short range. Scrying Pool: Very rare, moderately expensive. These are used by vampires who practice haruspicy, draining blood and entrails into the pool to perform divinatory rituals. Such pools are too big carry into battle, but they can be installed on a Coven Throne, which as we know is a kind of floating battle platform for aristocratic vampires. If you don't have one of those, you probably want to keep your pool in a house or carried as part of an army's baggage train, filling it as you can to foretell the future. Once per day, when you refill a Scrying Pool with fresh blood, you can ask a single question related to a specific target, goal, event or course of action. You cannot ask about the past - only the present or future. The GM will answer truthfully in the form of subtle ripples and reflections in the pool. (Examples given: a skull image may mean a target is going to die soon, a change in swirling blood direction may mean a reversal of fortunes.) Stuff that is still in flux is especially prone to cryptic answers. Skinthief's Raiment: Also very rare, moderately expensive. These are long coats similar in appearance to the Coats of Forbidden Heartbeats, but far less illegal. They do not grant the feelings of life - just the appearance of it, hiding your undead status. They are made out of flayed mortal skins, though this is concealed by the same illusions as the wearer. When you put it on, you take on the appearance of a living being of your choice, which must be of the same Size as you, and which cannot be a specific real being. Anything that can pierce illusions automatically sees through it, as can an Awareness roll if you give reason for someone to be suspicious. Anyone who wins that roll is immune to that Raiment's illusion afterwards - you'll need a new one to fool them again. Unholy Lodestone: Rare, but not as rare as most of this stuff, and also relatively cheap. These are most frequently seen in the hands of the Corpsemasters that serve Nagash and stand somewhere between normal Deadwalkers and actual people with agency of their own. They are malevolent tricksters in Shyishan folklore, tempting necromancers with promises of eternal life and then watching them until they die and are sealed within a Mortis Reliquary. The Unholy Lodestone is their trademark, a black iron bell that is suspended from a Corpse Cart driven by the Corpsemaster. They can lure in necromantic magic, and sometimes they are given to champions of Nagash...though not often. If you cast an Amethyst or Deathmages spell within Short range of the Lodestone, you may choose to add your Soul in bonus dice by tapping into the power swirling around it. However, if you do, you take a Minor Wound after the spell is cast. Also, if you're Mortal, the first time you tap into an Unholy Lodestone each battle, you have to roll on the How Has Death Marked You Table and permanently accept the result. A lot of core Endeavors are going to be limited for undead PCs unless and until the community you're in decides to accept you as a member - it's not going to be easy for a ghoul to go shopping in Brightspear. However, there are ways around this - wearing a disguise and making a simple Guile roll may do for an area you don't plan to spend much time in, for example. And likewise, living PCs may have the same troubles in, say, the Ossiarch Empire. And in some places where living and dead mingle, everyone can do everything. It's all based on what's narratively appropriate in any given location. Ossiarchs, like Stormcast, have a specific Endeavor they must always take during downtime. Theirs is Collect Bone-Tithe, which must always be their first Endeavor in each downtime. (Unless their body got destroyed, in which case they don't get an Endeavor but instead use the time getting a new body constructed for them.) Let's look at the new Endeavors! Some are limited in who can take them, but not all. Blood Starve: Vampire only. You purposefully deprive yourself of blood. Soulbound vampires may feel less hunger than normal, but they still feel a desire to feed. For whatever reason, you aren't partaking - possibly for moral reasons, possibly as part of an Avengorii ritual. Until your next downtime, you get a bonus to Melee when using your unarmed attacks. If you take this Endeavor for two consecutive downtime periods without drinking any blood in between, you also gain the Manifest Nightmare Talent for free. (Which you can do multiple times, since it can be taken multiple times.) Collect Bone-Tithe: Ossiarch only. You spend your time collecting, measuring and cataloguing bones. This may involve exhuming graves or excavating fossils, or it may be going to subjects of the Empire and demanding bones. If you're working with a Binding of Order, you may be doing this to allay suspicions, or you may be doing it because you're cut off from the legions and need to maintain a personal stockpile because you can't get repairs normally. Whatever reason, if your innate Armor is damaged when you do this, it is restored to its full capacity. Deathly Obsession: You spend your time in singleminded pursuit of absolute perfection in a single discipline. This is especially common among undead, given their long unlives, but its not restricted to them. When you do this, you pick a skill in which you have both Training and Focus. Until your next downtime period, you can spend a Mettle to double both Training and Focus in that skill at once. Deny Reality: Ghoul only. You reject the reality that being Soulbound has revealed to you. You can, with effort, re-embrace the curse of delusion that lies on you, even outside combat. You spend your downtime hiding from the truth, possibly spending time among other ghouls and otherwise pretending you're still a noble knight in a noble reality. Until your next downtime, you reduce the difficulty of all Determination and Devortion rolls, but increase the difficulty of all Awareness and Intuition rolls. Eulogise: You put on a big show of funereal pageantry for another undead. This is not uncommon in Death-aligned cultures, and funeral reenactments are a matter of pride and vanity, similar to birthday parties, because you get to hear someone talk all about how cool you were and all the great past deeds you've done. When you take this Endeavor, you pick an undead party member and put on a show of appreciating them. (You may also choose to, as a player, make some art about them - a picture, a speech, a song, a poem, whatever.) Your eulogy should emphasize their deeds and expertise in a specific skill. Until your next downtime period, the chosen undead party member gets +1 Focus when using that skill. Face Reality: Ghoul only. You have perceived the true reality beyond your curse-borne delusions, and you have decided to focus effort and thought into extending it even to the times when your delusion is strongest - when you get violent. You spend your time confronting your memories for what they really are, making amends to people as best you can, grounding yourself in reality or otherwise performing exercises to help you resist the lure of the curse. Your delusion cannot be fully banished forever, but you can get rid of it for a time. Until your next downtime period, you do not reduce your Mind when your Delusions of Grandeur bonus takes effect. However, because doing this shakes you to the core of your being, you get a penalty to opposed Soul rolls during this time. False Superstition: You spend your time making up false stories about yourself. This is especially a common hobby of vampires, who often make up new vampiric weaknesses for people to believe in. When you do this, you select a nearby enemy faction who you want to convince of this new, false superstition. You then make three Entertain or Guile rolls over the course of a week, aiming for ten or more successes. This represents you spreading rumors and maybe even showing off your "weakness." If you suceed, all enemies from the chosen faction who have Mind 2 or less believe the superstition. When you face them in combat, they will always waste their first action trying to harm you with an object or chant which they will find does nothing useful. This effect lasts until someone survives long enough to tell the others it's fake. Feast: Ghoul or Vampire only. You are overwhelmed by your unnatural hunger and decide to indulge it, abandoning subtlety and pretense. You spend your time gorging yourself however you can, invigorating your body but leavinhg you detached from mortal thought. Until your next downtime, you get +2 Wounds on your Wound track, but get a penalty to all social rolls. Find Purpose: Grave Guard or Black Knight only. You need a purpose to exist for, and while you have more drive than most skeletons and can still act without one, you like having it. You spend the week seeking out a new target for your Duty Beyond Death or Eternal Hunt. You and the GM work together to integrate your new purpose into the story and why your PC feels drawn to it. No rolls needed - you just redefine your Talent's focus. Forge Construct: Mortisan only, and you need another full soultrap gem to do it. This is building a new body for your Ossiarch buddy! It's not hard because it's what Mortisans...do. It does, however, take time. No rolls, but you spend the downtime gathering materials, refining them and making the new body, then fusing it with the gem. When you do this, you can choose to make it to the same specs as their old body or make alterations. This can be purely cosmetic, but if the player that controls the Ossiarch you're making the body for wants, they may choose to swap any one of the following Talents for any other on the list: Loyal Companion (Kavalos Steed), Harbinger of Death, Shield of Nagash, Additional Arms. Also, you can't make a new body for yourself. Fuse Soul: Ossiarch only. You can incorporate new souls into your soultrap gem. Usually, this is used by the Empire to integrate new languages or customs in order to better deal with their new vassals, but it can also be simply to bolster your own resolve. When you do this, you choose a recently dead person whose bones you have on hand. You incorporate parts of their knowledge and identity into yourself, gaining a temporary level of Training or Focus in a skill that person had, plus a new Short-Term Goal based on their dying wish. You cannot form new Goals until you complete this one, but you can get XP from fulfilling Goals you already had. Once you complete the nnew Goal, the soul fragment fully belnds into your amalgam and you lose the temporary Training or Focus unless you spend XP to make it permanent. Non-Ossiarchs are allowed to take this Endeavor if somehow affected by some invasive spiritual presence, such as the aftereffects of being possessed or incorporating the soul of a now-dead member of the Binding, should the GM agree it's appropriate. Gather Sycophants: Vampire only. A lot of people want to be vampires and will help you out for the theoretical promise of maybe being one someday! Also a lot of vampires are just really charismatic and good at convincing the weak-willed to listen to them. You need to collect 8 successes on three rolls over the course of a week - the first an Intuition roll to indentify potential candidate, and the next two Guile rolls to convince them. If you manage it, then once at any point in the next adventure, you may reveal that one of your sycophants works or lives nearby and can help you out. Sycophants have moderate power but never enough for them to be satisfied, and they are permanently Charmed by you until they learn you can't or won't turn them into a vampire. Guard: You decide to protect a person or place with singleminded dedication. (This is most common among wights, who tend not to get bored easily.) You pick something important to you and make three Awareness rolls over the course of a week, patrolling or consulting with other guards and aiming for at least eight successes. If you manage it, then you learn about every possible Rumor, Fear or Threat which may endanger what you're guarding. If you fail, you learn nothing. Hex: You decide someone has hosed up hard and deserve no rest even in death, taking it on yourself to trap them in a curse. This is an extended Arcana or Theology roll, aiming for 8 successes in 3 rolls over the course of a week. You may automaticaly succeed by bargaining with a deathly power, but this increases the Doom by 1. If you succeed and the target dies before your next downtime period, their soul does not go where it normally would. Instead, they become a Nighthaunt, gain the Ethereal and Lifeless traits, and are bound permanently to either the place they died or another significant location to them. You work with the GM to determine what if any ironic punishment is inflicted on them and if they become a specific subtype of ghost. The GM may choose to make the rolls harder is someone else already has claim on their soul, and in some cases it may be impossible, such as for Soulbound targets or Daemons. Intrigue: Ghoul or Vampire only, this means getting enmeshed in the politics of the local Flesh-Eater court or Soulblight dynasty. You dip your toe into centuries of courtly politics, making three Guile rolls over the week and aiming for 8 successes as you scheme, spread gossip and pretend to be surprised by things. If you succeed, you learn a secret of some high-ranking member of your social circle which you may use to manipulate them later. If you fail, you learn nothing but have a good time. If you fail by 3 or more, though, you are a boor and are alienated from undead high society, gaining a penalty to all opposed rolls to interact with the court in question until your next downtime period. Join Community: You spend your time convincing a local community that hates or fears you to accept you as a member of society - anything the size of a single city or smaller. This is an extended Determination roll, with your success target equal to 8+Doom, but you can reduce it slightly by having achieved Goals to help the community in the past. You get three rolls over the course of the week, and if you succeed, you become an accepted if not necessarily liked fixture - they may not be y our friends, but they accept you exist and do good things for them, and you will not need to hide your nature or take penalties to do normal Endeavors there in the future. If you fail by 3 or more, you get a mob on your rear end and suffer a Lasting Wound. Next time: M through Z. Well, U.
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2021 18:57
|
|
|
Just Dan Again posted:The Maze of the Blue Medusa - A Retrospective, part 16 - The Wrap-Up Thanks for bringing us along on the tour!
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2021 19:06
|
|
|
Mors Rattus posted:Fallen Kingdom's Banner: You can't really buy these much, though if one was for sale it'd only be moderately expensive. They're pretty much, well, flags and banners from ancient kingdoms and empires that usually don't exist any more or which have become Deathrattle kingdoms. They require a free hand to carry, and they are a valid charge for a Grave Guard's Duty Beyond Death. On top of that, once per combat a Grave Guard carrying one can instantly regain a Mettle as a free action by holding up the banner and shouting an ancient battle cry. Things to play if I ever get into Soulbound: Knight-Questor Flying Sniper Knight The Night Lord Elf Tree Ghost Teleporting Molotov Lizard Irredentist Grave Guard Wights are cool as poo poo, shame about the soul explosion stuff
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2021 20:02
|
|
|
I know my first Soulbound character is going to be a Knight-Questor at least.
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2021 20:14
|
|
|
 Part 12: These Shoes are Three Hundred loving Dollars This is sort of the last update for the Nightlife rulebook. It probably seems abrupt, but after the section on Wormholes, it’s just tables, indexes, and a couple rough maps--you know, GM screen stuff. The one thing of interest is the Shopping List. Nightlife has no abstract wealth system, so the prices of weapons and designer clothing are listed in dollar amounts, along with vehicles, musical instruments, gadgets, and rent in Manhattan. As for weapons, well, Nightlife is a game on the cusp of the 80s and 90s. It has a ludicrously long list of guns. But it doesn’t have convoluted rules for guns: they do damage based on caliber, and the only other difference is magazine capacity and whether or not it’s automatic. You can buy “Teflon bullets” and “exploder bullets” that ignore armour and do extra damage, respectively. It’s a bit of gun nerd culture that’s very of its time.  There’s a list of a few dozen vehicles, mostly luxury or sport cars and motorcycles, again with exact prices. But this game has no rules for vehicles whatsoever! There’s a list of vehicle options, including safety features, armor, and electronics that are laughably primitive. But again, there are no rules for any of this stuff!  Oh, and this game with its loving pukeworthy 80s skill system, where they want you to buy separate piloting skills for different types of boats and planes? Not even the word “Boat” with a price next to it. You hate to see it! There are price lists for A/V equipment and computers, including such mundane articles as fax machines. Nightlife just casually posits itself as a cyberpunk game by saying that 8 out of 10 people in the 90s will have some kind of cutting-edge hand-puter. That is, clunky 90s PDAs. Very much in line with the aesthetic vision of Cyberpunk 2019 and the first edition of Shadowrun.  The fun part is the clothes. And accessories, which get their own separate category. The prices listed are outrageous in 2020 dollars, let alone 1990 dollars, because it assumes everything the PCs wear is either haute couture or involved enough talent and effort that it might as well be. If you wear a suit, it’s Valentino Couture with an Alan Flusser tie and pocket square. If you wear ripped jeans, you bought Gloria Vanderbilt by Murjani jeans and ripped them. If your accessories aren’t name brand, you bought them from an unsung genius at a deathrock swamp witch market that only meets by the light of the full moon.   That’s the end of the Nightlife core rulebook, but I’m not done. You see, Bradley McDevitt was never able to secure the rights to Nightlife and publish a fourth edition, so he released 40-odd pages of house rules and background writing for free. Called Street Velocity, I believe it was only published on some Yahoo Group for the game back in the 00s. I’ll finish my review of that next time. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 21:12 on Jan 10, 2022 |
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2021 21:10
|
|
|
 Zak S. is a piece of poo poo who’s entire reputation is built on three works that anybody cares about. The first is Vornheim, which says it’s a city kit but is instead like 5 pages of vague ideas and 4 terrible dungeons. It’s so thin that it’s hard to even talk about and incredibly boring cause he doesn’t have time to be offensive, just vague and weird. The second is Maze of the Blue Medusa which is a poorly made bloated rambling megadungeon of every idea Patrick Stuart and Zak Badhaircut had barely edited together. It is probably worth talking about, but it's so bloated and random that most of the discussion would be “Look at this poo poo, it sucks!” ad nauseum. The third is this. A Red and Pleasant Land is a setting and two big rear end dungeons for Legend of the Flame Princess, a game that can’t decide if it wants to be a D&D clone or an Early Modern Horror Game built on D&D’s rotting corpse. It’s made by a libertarian rear end in a top hat, 90% of the content for it is edgelordy gore porn and player slaughter dungeons, it has at least one other module that’s based around inflation porn and cannibalism, and only ever mattered cause it’s the first D&D retroclone to have layout not from the mid 80’s. A Red and Pleasant Land is awful, but awful in a new exciting way for Zak. It’s totally coherent, functional, and well put together. It’s a middle ground between Vornheim and Medusa and is three times as coherent. For this it sucks even worse because there’s hints of something good in there, buried in the trash. To make it good would require Zak to both not be in violint love with every stupid idea he has, and be willing to stop being innovative and shocking at every turn, so it will never be good. The basic concept of a Red and Pleasant Land is one cool idea married to a stupid aesthetic that he definitely feels is very clever but isn’t. At its core, A Red and Pleasant Land is about a stalemated war between Not Elizabeth Bathory and Not Vlad Dracula over a chunk of non-specific Eastern Europe. This would be a very good idea for a grim dark fantasy sort of campaign, playing mercenaries or spoilers in this Vampire war. This would mean Zak didn’t have the idea to then instead make the entire thing an Alice in Wonderland pastiche. Random bits of the Wonderland books are ripped out and stuck on that vampire war framework, along with a bunch of other random weird poo poo that doesn’t actually matter or fit the theme. What do Vampire civil wars and Alice and Wonderland have in common? Jack poo poo! You’re either dealing with Vampire Horror Tropes, Alice in Wonderland poo poo, or Random Dumb Zak Brainchilds and they basically don’t mesh at all.  This is the map of the setting. See the two castles labeled Castle Cachtice and Castle Poenari? Those are the only two bits of this map that in any way matter. Everything else is basically blank randomly generated content. There is EXPLICITLY no information about any other location on the map, they’re all just evocative names you have to use to do something with yourself. This is a nearly 200 page book, and he couldn’t bother to think up even a sentence about the half dozen named places on his map. Also everything on the map, and in the world of the setting, is made up of regular squares on a grid. Old school game navigation is pretty much universally done on a hexgrid. Nobody uses square grids. Does Zak just hate drawing curves?  This is the introductory text, it is intentionally vague. The Red King is Dracula, the Queen of Hearts is Bathory, the whole dream reality warping is basically ignored for the rest of the book, and also “Unreason” here means everyone’s an rear end in a top hat and he has some stupid physics fuckery mechanics in the dungeons to annoy everyone.  This is just here to give you the tone of this book since I won’t be directly quoting it much. Zak is an rear end in a top hat, and I’m going to enjoy tearing this poo poo apart.
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2021 22:01
|
|
|
What... is with the sidebar about using the book to kill animals? Is that meant to be funny?
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2021 22:57
|
|
|
Tag yourself, I'm the $75 mouse
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2021 23:28
|
|
|
Speleothing posted:Tag yourself, I'm the $75 mouse Hey, in the old days you could pay $3000 for a 10mb hard drive or $1500 for 64kb of memory, there was a time when these prices were reasonably accurate to the real world!
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2021 00:08
|
|
|
PurpleXVI posted:What... is with the sidebar about using the book to kill animals? Is that meant to be funny? I'm pretty sure that's a joke. It's "You can either use the book as written, you can use parts of it you find useful, you can use it for inspiration, or if you don't want to do any of that, you can use it for something unrelated, like killing small animals".
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2021 00:16
|
|
|
Soulbound: Champions of Death Learn How To Wear Modern Hats Memorialize: All things will eventually fade into eternity, and being undead means getting used to the fact that people you know die, and eventually they die again or turn to Chaos or break into bits. Things just fall apart sometimes, and...well, memory is all you have left to assuage the grief. You can do spend your time creating a sculpture or other physical marker of something you have lost - a person, a nation, whatever. It can be whatever size or shape you want as long as it has significance to you. Once between each downtime period from now on, when the Binding is out of Soulfire, you may visit the memorial and recover 1 Soulfire. Also, other people with a personal connection to whatever you were mourning will be attracted to the memorial, allowing you to meet new potential allies if you vist it frequently. Modernise: You spend your time studying up on how poo poo has changed since you died or were otherwise gone from a place for a while. This is an extended Intuition test, aiming for 8 successes over three rolls in the period of a week to learn more about the society around you. If you succeed, you get a bonus to opposed rolls to connect with or understand people from the region you studied, and you can also update your outfit and mannerisms to draw less attention to yourself if you want. Living PCs can still make use of this to understand unfamiliar cultures and new environments. Very handy. Mortal Pleasures: You pursue mundane joys. Perhaps you attempt to appreciate the taste of food, the warmth of sun on your skin, the feeling of a thrill. Whatever the case, you are making a concerted effort to appreciate these things and take note of every moment of them. This is an extended Determination test, aiming for 8 successes in 3 rolls over the course of week to avoid losing hope or taking the pleasures for granted. If you succeed, you feel a depth of sensation the kindles true joy in your heart. The Binding recovers 1 Soulfire, which can take it over cap. If you fail, however, you become morose and depressed and cannot use Determintation Training or Focus on any rolls until your next downtime. Offer Contract: Ossiarch only. You seek out someone to make a deal with them, preparing a magically enforced contract. This is an extended set of three Guile or Intimidation rolls, aiming for 8 successes over the course of a week. Typically it's used to convince a potential vassal settlement to sign onto the Empire, but it doesn't have to be, and the GM can alter the target you're aiming for based on how appealing your offer is. If you succeed, both sides are now bound by the contract's terms. If either you or they break the contract, the other knows immediately, and any magical punishments described within the contract are immediately carried out. (Typically, for vassalage contracts, this is instant death of the signee that breaks it.) Praise Nagash: You must have the Blessed (Nagash) Talent, and you spend your time preaching about and offering praise to the Supreme Lord of the Undead, making three Devotion rolls and aiming for 8 succeses over a week. If you suceed, then until your next downtime period, you can apply your Devotion Training and Focus to Death Tests, as Nagash prefers his faithful remain alive longer to send the unfaithful to meet him. However, each time you pass a Death Test while you have this bonus, you must kill a mortal being, whose soul goes to Shyish instead. If you don't, then during your next Rest, Nagash uses his tie to you to instantly kill you in your sleep. If you fail the roll to praise Nagash properly, you receive a Lasting Wound as he curses you for your improper worship. Nagash is a dick. Refine Flavours: Vampire only. You make an effort to develop and harvest blood of particularly fine vintage, spiced by excellent emotional resonance and fine health. This is an extended Crafting test, with 3 rolls aiming for 8 successes over a week. If you succeed, you produce three goblets of fine blood. After making a social roll against a vampire, you may give or share a goblet of fine blood with them to get 2 free bonus successes on the roll. Refine Armaments: Requires the Ossified Armaments Talent and Mortisan's tools. You are able to spend time refining and shaping bone into amazing weapons. You must start with a weapon made using Ossified Armaments, and from there make an extended Crafting test, with three rolls over the course of a week. The number you need to hit is based on what you want to add. You always add the Magical trait if you succeed, plus one of Penetrating, Reach, Restraining or Rend, in order of increasing difficulty. If you fail, the weapon remains as it was. Reminisce: You spend your time thinking about the past and reliving old memories. This is an extended Lore test, with three rolls aiming for 8 successes over the course of a week as you think about thigns and talk with anyone around who might also want to do so. If you succeed, you make a connection or realize some important detail that you missed in the past. You choose one Long-term Goal and work with the GM to figure out how your realization gets you closer to achieving it. If you fail, you remember some details wrong and just come up with a somewhat less accurate but more dramatic retelling of your past. Rest in Peace: You spend your downtime doing literally nothing. You just bury yourself, basically, pretending to be dead while lying in a coffin or tomb. You emerge rested...but also tempted to remain in a state of deathly peace. The Binding recovers all Soulfire, but until your next downtime, if you fail a Death Test, you immediately die regardless of how many Death Tests you've made so far. Rob Grave: You go and find some dead people to dig up. Many cultures bury their dead in great honor, and their souls make their way to Shyish but their bodies remain where they are, often buried with treasures of the past. Finding and robbing a grave, including your owng grave, requires three Might or Stealth rolls over the course of a week, depending on how the grave is protected. Your target is by default 10 successes, but may go up if the grave is especially guarded. If you succeed, you dig up a relic of Exotic availability or lower, and while it is rusty and filthy, it's still functional. If it was your grave, you work with the GM to decide what you were buried with; if it's someone else's the GM figures it out (but it should be something useful). If you fail, you suffer a Lasting Wound. Seek Past Life: Actually, this is the same one Stormcast get! It's just, any undead can do it, seeking out information and working with the GM to figure out what their past life was like, what they were like before their death, even details they may have forgotten about how they died. Even if you remember all that, you might seek out your descendants or the remnants of your old culture. (And if you're an Ossiarch, you probably have at least a dozen past lives you could seek, if not more.) Seethe: You spend all your time thinking about the injustices done to you and finding someone to blame for them. You name a character and describe why exactly you hate that person so much, spending your week focusing on how you hate them. Oh, how you hate them. You now gain a bonus on opposed rolls against that character, you get a bonus to Melee and Accuracy when attacking them, and the Complexity of any spell you cast targeting them decreases by 1. This lasts as long as, once per session, you bring up exactly how much you hate that person, and ends when you go a session without doing so. Sow Weakness: You spend your time skirmishing w ith people, ambushing supply trains and otherwise weakening the strength of an area. You pick one area that is large enough to take about a day to travel across a - a forest, some ruins, a few hills, whatever. You then get three rolls over a week, aiming for 8 total successes. The first is either a Survival or Stealth roll to identify and track your targets, and then two Weapon Skill or Ballistic Skill rolls to ambush them. If you succeed, the target's martial control over the region is substantially weakened, and you become familiar with the local terrain, including areas where people might retreat or hide in. Until your next downtime, you get a large bonus on opposed rolls to track or ambush living beings in the chosen area, and if you successfully track or ambush a target, they become Frightened of you until you escape. Before your next downtime period, at one combat involving the people you went after, the GM should reduce the number of Warriors that would be involved based on your Training and Focus in Weapon Skill or Ballistic Skill, representing the guys you already took out. Unify Believers: You decide to start a cult. The book assumes to Nagash, but strictly speaking this works for any kind of cult or secret society. This is an extended roll aiming for one hundred total successes. Fortunately, you do not need them all at once. In one week, you can make three rolls of Guile or Devotion. Your total successes persist across multiple Endeavors, so you note them down. The total determines the size and influence of your cult in this particular region. You name it and come up with at least one subtle identifier for it - a tattoo, a specific piece of clothing or jewelery, a code phrase or gesture, whatever. At ten total successes, you have managed to form a small cult that is spread rather thin. You probably have a personal relationship to most members and they are most likely working class people. At 30 successes total, your cult is growing. It's still mostly working class, but you have a few members with some influence, like business owners or ship captains. At 60 successes, your cult is quite powerful and you're more likely to run into cultists during your adventures in the region. At 100+ successes, your cult has become a large organization in its own right. You no longer know all members in it and have to rely on the identifying markers you set up. Your cult has a reputation locally and probably has significant social power, with at least one member in a position of great influence, such as a seat on a city's Grand Conclave. If your cult gets any bigger, it's likely to schism or develop subfactions and it's probably being investigated by someone at this point. Whenever you take a Unify Believers Endeavor, you can ask your cult for help in things where sheer numbers or access to its specific resources might be helpful. They will achieve what you ask, but the method is out of your hands entirely. Also, if the cult gets too big or powerful, someone might get upset - and the book notes that Nagash really doesn't like when his minions become potential threats to him and is likely to send people to kill you if that happens. Next time: Dark Rituals
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2021 00:21
|
|
|
Speleothing posted:Tag yourself, I'm the $75 mouse
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2021 01:11
|
|
|
Speleothing posted:Tag yourself, I'm the $75 mouse I'm the 600 bucks obligatory Neuromancer reference.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2021 01:35
|
|
|
 I. A Guide to the Place of Unreason This is the general setting info and it’s all terrible. Let’s get into this nonsense. So the main conflict is between the Red King Vlad Vortigen and the Heart Queen Elizabeth Bathyscape. Yes these names are awful, moving on. They both dreamed somehow the setting into creation, turning an otherwise normal bit of Not Eastern Europe into what we’re about tolearn about. They hate each other for some reason that’s never really explained and are embroiled in the “Slow War”. “The land is still hidden from the West by the Terrible Goblin Wood, still hidden from the East by the Carpathian Mountains, and now from the gods by the gods’ own disgust. For not only has every kind of creation and creature been abused by the blasphemies and sorceries of the unfathomable war, but every force, law, lesson and explanation ever decreed by those above and those beneath. Meaning is meaningless and there are never any reasons. There are, however, monsters you can kill, some of whom have stuff. So your players may want to go there. Thus this book. “ Thanks Zak. If this sounds confusing and stupid, it is. Zak thinks things are way more clever than they are, which is mostly dumb and annoying. So one of the worst bits of this mess is what the setting looks like:  Zak uses a ridiculous amount of purple prose to try and explain “The entire land is stone skyscrapers with garden-parks for roofs.” That’s it. Every building is all interconnected and have balconies and doorways, and underground is a ton of subfloors and dungeons and corridors. The entire map is one big interconnected building that’s overgrown with greenery. It takes a page to communicate that information because the writing is being clever, and spends a long time trying to explain how directions work in this world with the conclusion they don’t, which doesn’t stop him writing sentences like: “For example, if someone said “Start in square 15 dash 87. Climb 16 feet down into the crocodile pit, find the rectangular window, climb through it. Walk an even number of steps or until you see something orange, drink the blood of a mother or small ape, walk in any direction at any speed for nine minutes, strike the gazebo, then sleep. When you awake you’ll be in the Virgin’s Pantry,” then they would be telling the truth, and describing the most reliable route.“ Besides the Red King and Heart Queen there’s also the Pale King and Colorless Queen. They’re also vampires. The Pale King is random monkeycheese humor bullshit, and the Colorless Queen are Fish-Vampires. Your characters should come from outside the land, called Voivodja, but every way to get in is stupid. One way he suggests is that you crawl through a mirror into this world portal-fantasy style. This is stupid cause it breaks the entire complicated system of the whole dualistic mirror universe I’ll explain in a bit further down this update. You have to rewrite a lot of established stuff to make that work, so it’s a stupid idea for Zak to suggest. You can also travel physically which is him going “IDK make up your own super brutal wilderness hexcrawl or something” ignoring that there’s 0 reason for any sane adventurer to ever come to this lovely hellhole place. You can wind up here via dungeon gateway getting you transported here, or through a magical gate in a city, or… etc. etc. Basically if your players don’t want to hexcrawl to this place, magically teleport them there. Also once they’re there you have to trap them so they can’t just leave, that’s super important cause they will 100% want to loving leave. So Voivodja is split into four types of location: the Interiors which is a “Make your own dungeon” insides, the Gardens which are battlefields and… gardens, the Forests where the only living humans in the land live in hidden villages, and The Castles. Everything but the Castles is given no detail at all, and the Castles are fully statted out dungeons. The Quiet Side of the Looking Glass This is an awful stupid thing that is important for one of the two big dungeons, but is never consistently portrayed or explained and exists to drive the GM insane. So, in this setting mirrors are portals between the “War Side” which is where all the crazy vampire wonderland poo poo is, and the “Quiet Side” which is… well it’s not really coherent. See by implication the Quiet Side should be like… a normal fantasy or historical realm. It’s even suggested that in the bit about how to get to Voivodja. But then the first fact about it established is “It is said The Quiet Side contains equivalents of almost everyone and everything on The War Side”. The exception is Vampires, as they don’t cast reflections. And later bits make it very clear, especially in one of the dungeons, that the Quiet Side is a reversed but otherwise exact replica physically of the world. Okay… so why is there a giant dream palace on the other side of the mirror when it was made by vampires that don’t exist over there? There are explicitly people living on the Quiet Side, but they're given no detail. In fact no detail is given about what the Quiet Side is like at all except that… there’s humans there. The rules for the Quiet Side are: Humans have a duplicate there, who live normal lives that seem incompatible with living in an overgrown fantasy megacity. They live even if the War Side equivalent is killed by vampires. If you go over to the Quiet Side you merge with your twin and so can never meet your double. Clerics have no magic on the Quiet Side. You can only exist in the Quiet Side for 10xWisdom in seconds before you go permanently insane, or you can make yourself pass out and only awaken when brought through a mirror. The Red King and his three Brides can freely enter the Quiet Side for 120 seconds, and the Heart Queen can if someone Bloody Mary’s her over. Vampires explicitly hunt people from the Quiet Side for food, but since only four Vampires can enter the mirrors, I have no idea how you get eaten by them. Are Quiet Side people just really gullible and climb through magic mirrors at the prompting of loving vampires on the regular? Orb Loc This is a stupid name for hidden human villages. They get two paragraphs, they’re scared, huddled villages in the forests. Generic gothic horror villages, that’s it. There may or may not be a secret order of militant faithful called the Sisters of Merciful Fate who want to wipe out the vampires but I don’t know I guess maybe they exist or not I won’t say. Children in Wells No I have NO idea why this is a thing. I should note that the editor of this book is James Raggi, the creator of LotFP and Zak’s Bestest Buddy so I assume he wouldn’t ever think to suggest cuts of any sort! Anyway this is a stupid concept. There’s wells all over the place, and in them are children. These wells have some edible foodstuff in them, for they are treacle wells or marshmallow wells or cheese wells or whatever the gently caress else not water wells silly. The Children will not leave the wells, but hate the food. If you give them new food, they’ll trade y ou… random junk that begins with a letter of the alphabet based on the substance they eat but not really. Treacle wells give stuff that begin with M and “malignized adrenocortical cells” wells provide things that start with G. Customs and Events More random things, but at least this is… vaguely useful and flavorful? It’s not random starving children giving you mallets from wells in exchange for a ham sandwich. There are Banquets and Feasts, because vampires everything is made of flesh and blood and live people are always eaten with marmalade this is an important fact and in fact in one of the dungeons is a pile of corpses smeared with marmalade. Battles are typical medieval stuff. It says a lot of things are and are not true about the battles, like they sometimes do and do not have a point, and may be planned or random depending on times maybe some of the time I guess. Players can have affects on battles by doing things. Croquet is the favorite sport of the Heart Queen. She does all diplomacy during games, cannot refuse requests from someone who beats her at croquet, she makes up rules randomly where breaking them means she kills you, play is not voluntary, games last days cause technically the entire land is the playing field and for some reason they can hide the wickets in dungeons and poo poo, and for some reason hedgehogs watch the games disdainfully. No, there is no more detail on the croquet hating hedgehogs. There’s a page of dueling rules, which is mostly pretty much an OK subsystem for doing formal duels using old D&D style rules. I honestly have nothing bad to say because it’s also kind of nothing burger. There’s some stupid flavor, like children duel from the tops of ponies (EVERYONE IS A VAMPIRE), if it’s for the honor of a lady both parties must fight with their left eye closed, etc. For some reason he says that these insane vampires in a pocket reality in the remotest regions of Not-Eastern Europe only accessible by magic portal or long dangerous trek… also have connections to foreign powers and engage in international intrigue and the vampires are minor world powers. This is a stupid justification to steal monsters from this book and put them in other adventures. Marriages are stupid cause Zak and Vampires. Marriages among vampires are not valid unless the partners kill an enemy vampire in fair combat during the wedding. This must be arranged ahead of time. Vampires are also polygamous and so can have many many bloodfights at once. Kidnapping brides or grooms to sabotage weddings or for ransom are common, and are said to be a thing adventurers are hired to do. Except of course everyone is a vampire so why would they talk to humans instead of eating them? Trials are bullshits and nonse. The Red King rules arbitrarily, and drops you into a pit of mome raths (pigs) or crocodiles depending on if you’re guilty or innocent. The Heart Queen … educates her lawyers in Vornheim so buy the Vornheim City Kit to learn about the laws they learn and know! BUY MY BOOK! THE OTHER ONE! The Pale King uses jousts and duels abut does complicated and in-depth interviews of all parties ahead of time, and the Colorless Queen just feeds you to eels if she thinks you did a thing. The last part of this section is a concept so offensively stupid I’m just reproducing it in whole.  I’m done, next time more about the setting, hooray! Wapole Languray fucked around with this message at 05:55 on Sep 27, 2021 |
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2021 03:17
|
|
|
Wapole Languray posted:Anyway this is a stupid concept. There’s wells all over the place, and in them are children. These wells have some edible foodstuff in them, for they are treacle wells or marshmallow wells or cheese wells or whatever the gently caress else not water wells silly. The Children will not leave the wells, but hate the food. If you give them new food, they’ll trade y ou… random junk that begins with a letter of the alphabet based on the substance they eat but not really. Treacle wells give stuff that begin with M and “malignized adrenocortical cells” wells provide things that start with G. The treacle one is M for molasses. I don't know what the G is. You're right. This setting book is really stupid.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2021 03:30
|
|
|
Wapole Languray posted:The rules for the Quiet Side are: Humans have a duplicate there, who live normal lives that seem incompatible with living in an overgrown fantasy megacity. They live even if the War Side equivalent is killed by vampires. If you go over to the Quiet Side you merge with your twin and so can never meet your double. Clerics have no magic on the Quiet Side. You can only exist in the Quiet Side for 10xWisdom in seconds before you go permanently insane, or you can make yourself pass out and only awaken when brought through a mirror. The Red King and his three Brides can freely enter the Quiet Side for 120 seconds, and the Heart Queen can if someone Bloody Mary’s her over. What possible use is this supposed to be for? How many words and pages are spent telling you that you basically can't go to a place you wouldn't want to go to anyway where there appears to be nothing of value? Is there any suggestion in the book what to do with this? quote:Butt Buddy Please don't.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2021 03:43
|
|
|
the Croquet-hating hedgehogs are likely reference that like how flamingos are the mallets, hedgehogs are the balls in Alice in Wonderland. but yeah, so much of the poo poo that tried to (Badly) mimic the whimsy of Wonderland is things that would be absolutely atrocious to try to keep track of and incredibly unfun to play. Not to mention you can't just slam two completely different genres (Hammer Horror and Wonderland) together without actually thinking about it.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2021 03:53
|
|
|
Robindaybird posted:the Croquet-hating hedgehogs are likely reference that like how flamingos are the mallets, hedgehogs are the balls in Alice in Wonderland. Zak always struck me as lifting from American McGee's Alice a videogame from 2000 that was a sick and totally twisted FPS of Alice In Wonderland. quote:The game's premise is based on the Lewis Carroll novels Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871), but presents a gloomy, cruel and violent version of the setting. The game centers on the novels' protagonist Alice, whose family is killed in a house fire years before the story of the game takes place. After several years of treatment in a psychiatric clinic, the emotionally traumatized Alice makes a mental retreat to Wonderland, which has been disfigured by her injured psyche. I remember Old Man Murray having a lot of fun kicking it around, back in the day.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2021 04:02
|
|
|
Alice in Wonderland is already clever and weird, full of surreal set-pieces and dreamlike reimaginings of standard fantasy ideas. Trying to give it a subversive twist is like trying to write a parody of a Weird Al song.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2021 05:05
|
|
|
megane posted:Alice in Wonderland is already clever and weird, full of surreal set-pieces and dreamlike reimaginings of standard fantasy ideas. Trying to give it a subversive twist is like trying to write a parody of a Weird Al song. You’ll just get Normal Al! https://youtu.be/e4wFviI79VA
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2021 05:53
|
|
|
That Old Tree posted:What possible use is this supposed to be for? How many words and pages are spent telling you that you basically can't go to a place you wouldn't want to go to anyway where there appears to be nothing of value? Is there any suggestion in the book what to do with this? As far as I can tell it's used as a puzzle and stealth element in one of the dungeons in this book. Also deleted that bit, just wrote that automatically wasn't thinkin.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2021 05:56
|
|
|
The worst thing about REDPLES is knowing that much of the art is based on life drawings of women we now know Zak has probably abused. 
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2021 06:01
|
|
|
Sindai posted:I'm the three different kinds of printers, an absolutely vital choice for a group of urban monster folk. Your quest is to go to Circuit City and buy a printer so you can print out your zine about being an edgy vampire, but lo and behold, at Circuit City the salesperson is a demon who's using aggressive sales tactics! Can you resist the temptation to also buy a GAMING KEYBOARD?
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2021 06:01
|
|
|
Mors Rattus posted:Fuse Soul: Ossiarch only. You can incorporate new souls into your soultrap gem. Usually, this is used by the Empire to integrate new languages or customs in order to better deal with their new vassals, but it can also be simply to bolster your own resolve. When you do this, you choose a recently dead person whose bones you have on hand. You incorporate parts of their knowledge and identity into yourself, gaining a temporary level of Training or Focus in a skill that person had, plus a new Short-Term Goal based on their dying wish. You cannot form new Goals until you complete this one, but you can get XP from fulfilling Goals you already had. Once you complete the nnew Goal, the soul fragment fully belnds into your amalgam and you lose the temporary Training or Focus unless you spend XP to make it permanent. Non-Ossiarchs are allowed to take this Endeavor if somehow affected by some invasive spiritual presence, such as the aftereffects of being possessed or incorporating the soul of a now-dead member of the Binding, should the GM agree it's appropriate. One thing that keeps tripping me up is exactly how it works with souls in AoS. Is Nagash breaking them down into components like you would like recycling a soul, or does it just take souls and merges the components he likes to make a sort of networked soul, with the unfused parts of originals just sticking out of it like some sci-fi blob monster? Also, how can you fuse then soul of a dead Soulboun if they turned into magic background radiation on death? And I wonder if soul exploding wasn't introduced as a gameplay thing to prevent static bindings via the rest of the group always having a way to resurrect fallen buddues.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2021 06:08
|
|
|
FMguru posted:Zak always struck me as lifting from American McGee's Alice a videogame from 2000 that was a sick and totally twisted FPS of Alice In Wonderland.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2021 06:19
|
|
|
Warden posted:It's good enough, but not anything to write home about. Nahh, it's much funnier to have vampire petty nobility desperately clinging to a lofty title. Isn't a bad balance justification to have PCs include the strongest of the weak and the weakest of the strong. A grizzled skeleton sergeant and a new blood petty vampire noble sound like a great team.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2021 06:29
|
|
|
JcDent posted:One thing that keeps tripping me up is exactly how it works with souls in AoS. Is Nagash breaking them down into components like you would like recycling a soul, or does it just take souls and merges the components he likes to make a sort of networked soul, with the unfused parts of originals just sticking out of it like some sci-fi blob monster? So souls in AoS, how they work is that when a creature dies it's soul appears in Shyish though it's little more then just a wisp at that point. (Though it takes a while to arrive, Souls tend to linger around their bodies for a while before traveling to Shyish) The Soul will flow over to the Underworld that made the most sense with it's beliefs in life, new Underworlds manifesting as cultures think up afterlives, and vanishing as they are forgotten. Once the Soul arrives in it's underworld it will take form depending on the beliefs of what happens in that underworld. Most solidify into a spirit collectively known as the Unliving who are normally semisolid, but other then that just as they were in life. Eventually as time passes the unliving will fade and the Soul will pass on to some place even beyond Shyish that even Nagash does not know the nature of. However various things can happen to a soul before and after it makes it's journey. Nagash has various curses in place to catch souls and transform them into Nighthaunt Ghiests based on certain criteria, particularly easy now that all Souls come through Nagashizzar first before heading to their resting place. Nagash and his servants have also conquered many of the underworlds, and so souls that end up in places controlled by their forces are quickly brought into a different fold then they expected. For the Ossiarch's the Mortisan Soulreapers are generally responsible for capturing souls during and after a battle. The Soulreapers give the souls to the highest ranked of the Mortisans the Soulmasons, who then mold the souls into their desired form. Removing parts they don't like of a soul, and replacing them with or adding on parts they do from others, the stuff they don't wish to keep is then left to fade away (Basically they Frankenstein a soul). The new Gestalt souls they create are given to the Mortisan Boneshapers who place them in the Ossiarch bodies they design. Soulbound souls don't seem to shatter right away. There is seemingly a short amount of time before they do, which can be used to save them in a few ways.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2021 06:45
|
|
|
JcDent posted:One thing that keeps tripping me up is exactly how it works with souls in AoS. Is Nagash breaking them down into components like you would like recycling a soul, or does it just take souls and merges the components he likes to make a sort of networked soul, with the unfused parts of originals just sticking out of it like some sci-fi blob monster? Ossiarchs can't be Soulbound, it's that simple. Their weird frankensouls prevent the ritual from working on them. They try and cut out all the bad bits from an Ossiarch's soul, but they can miss bits or have to leave certain stuff inside to keep the soul useful, and that's where you get the few renegades.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2021 07:42
|
|
|
On top of everything else wrong with him Zak S. sucks at drawing maps. This is a boring bunch of blocks that doesn't suggest kingdoms at war or exciting places full of danger. It's mostly blank. Maze of the Blue Medusa just looked like a bunch of shapes. Like they're not useful nor do they inspire much. I love a good fantasy map, I don't even care if the geography makes no sense and you've got rivers going uphill or deserts next to swamps or whatever. Just give me cool places.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2021 09:05
|
|
|
JcDent posted:One thing that keeps tripping me up is exactly how it works with souls in AoS. Is Nagash breaking them down into components like you would like recycling a soul, or does it just take souls and merges the components he likes to make a sort of networked soul, with the unfused parts of originals just sticking out of it like some sci-fi blob monster? Ossiarchs are an amalgam of carved up, fragmented souls with parts removed - they can integrate other soul fragments with Fuse Soul, not entire souls. Likewise, the thing with a dead Soulbound is because Soulbound have their souls linked together, so while most of the soul explodes in death, a small fragment might remain behind, embedded into the other Binding members. Mors Rattus fucked around with this message at 12:50 on Sep 27, 2021 |
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2021 12:15
|
|
|
Soulbound: Champions of Death Zombie Raising For Fun And Profit Dark Rituals are a unique form of Endeavor. They are in theory usable by anyone that meets the requirements, but in practice most Order Bindings will probably not want to do the things required to make many of these happen, while a Binding of Death might see nothing wrong with solving a problem by killing a bunch of people to turn them into zombies or skeletons. You can perform a Dark Ritual whenever you'd do a normal Endeavor...but you can also do them during an adventure. They still take a week to complete, though, and if you do them during an adventure, anyone not taking part in the ritual doesn't get to do another Endeavor in the time - they can just help out by doing what needs doing, like defending the ritual site. All rituals have requirements, and one party member must meet all of them. That party member is considered the ritual leader and will be making the majority of the rolls. Other party members can contribute, however. Each ritual has contributory tasks that can help enhance its success - sometimes research that may help, sometimes things like hauling bodies. Once during the ritual, each party member can make a roll using one of the ritual's Contribution Skills and add their successes to the running total of the ritual leader. Alternatively, a party member can contribute by retrieving materials necessary for the ritual as a scene in the adventure. Every ritual requires some kind of materials or conditions to be performed, many of which are unlikely to be acquirable with money. If a ritual takes place during an adventure, the GM is free to interrupt it at any time between rolls to present extra challenges for the party to overcome. Someone might arrive to stop them, they might have to go have a fight to retrieve some materials, and so on. (During downtime uses of rituals, this doesn't happen because these are instead treated as Endeavors.) A ritual will automatically fail if its key materials are stolen or destroyed, if the ritual leader is absent for more than a day, or if the ritual leader is killed. Some rituals may have extra effects on failure besides not happening. Also, the GM may allow a ritual to happen faster than a full week by increasing the success requirements by 1 per day lower than a full week. Abhorrent Feast: The ritual leader must be an Abhorrent Ghoul. To perform the ritual, you need a suitable venue and at least one Medium corpse per guest, plus some entertainment. When you do this, the Abhorrent puts on a grand feast of welcome, a common activity among the Flesh-Eaters. The attendees will squabble over the "fine meats" on display while the Abhorrent sits in judgment. Their dark magic will extend through the ritual, cursing any mortals who take part and twisting them to share the cursed delusion, transforming them into ghouls serving the Abhorrent. This requires an extended Arcana roll, with successes based on the combined Soul of all mortal guests. The ritual leader gets three rolls, and other participants may perform Guile or Intimidation rolls to help trick or intimidate mortals into taking part or Crafting rolls to prepare the meat. If the ritual succeeds, all guests have their species changed to Ghoul and gain the Delusions of Grandeur and Lifeless traits, though unlike a Soulbound, their Mind penalty from Delusions of Grandeur is always active. The ghouls then form a new court around the Abhorrent leader, acting as befits members of a Flesh-Eater Court - they will defend their home, carry messages, even go to war in extreme situations. If the court believes the Abhorrent is not acting in ways fitting for a noble lord, they may rebel to depose them or spread unrest. If the ritual fails, all prospective court members immediately fall into a riot of uncontrolled cannibal hunger, ripping each other apart. This also happens if all members are not provided with at least one Medium corpse during each downtime period from now on. The Blood Kiss: The ritual leader must be a Soulblight vampire. To do the ritual, you're going to need a willing non-Minion mortal to turn, a secure location to do it in, and a bottle of Spiceblood per point of Toughness of the intended mortal. The actual details of the Blood Kiss are a frequent subject of speculation among curious mortals, sometimes even romanticized. The vampires keep its true nature in a shroud of mystery deliberately, to keep people from realizing how horrific it is. It is in fact a very blood and dangerous process with little resemblance to the kiss that it is called. The mortal subject is kept out of all sunlight for several days while being drained of blood. Their blood is replaced by new, cursed blood that burns them from within. It is quite painful, consuming them from within and twisting both body and soul. If they survive, they become a vampire. The ritual leader performs an extended Determination roll, with a difficulty based on how powerful the target is (easier for Warriors, then Champions, then Chosen) and success total based on their Toughness. Other participants can help by concealing evidence with a Guile roll or protecting the ritual site with an Intimidation roll. If the ritual succeeds, the subject's species changes to Soulblight Vampire and they gain the Lifeless and The Hunger traits. Whether the ritual succeeds or fails, the ritual leader takes a Lasting wound, as their own blood must be taken and mixed with the bottles of Spiceblood that are fed into the subject's veins. Vampires are advised to take the ritual very seriously and not use it lightly, as their fellows will very much not appreciate extra competitors, and those who turn too many people will find the rest of vampiric society turning against them. Grafted Corpse Companion: The ritual leader must have Training 2 in each of Medicine, Crafting, and Arcana. You're going to need two mortal donor corpses, plus a well-appointed lab. That's because you're a mad genius who's going to sew two corpses together to make a custom undead monstrosity. This is going to require quite a bit of surgery and experimentation. When you do it, you look at the two corpses' statblocks. The one with the highest Toughness is the primary corpse. If you have a Loyal Companion when you perform this ritual, they're going to leave and be replaced by your creation, by the way, so try not to have one. Stitching the corpses together is an extended roll with a success target based on the primary corpse's Toughness. The ritual leader's first roll is Medicine, the second is Crafting, and the third is Arcana. Other participants can help by rolling Beast Handling to shackle the new creature down until you establish control over it or Stealth to steal organs to help replace the less usable ones from the donor corpses. If you fail but you have a secure place to store your donor corpses, you can come back to it later or try to extend the ritual another week and keep going; you note down your success total and hope no one comes poking around. If you succeed, you animate the corpse and gain the Loyal Companion (This Thing You Just Made) Talent. It uses the primary corpse's statblock, but its type is changed to Undead and its role to Champion, altering Mettle and Wounds as necessary. It gains the Lifeless trait and loses all other traits except Nigh Unkillable (if it has it) and one other trait of your choice. It then gains one Trait and one attack from the secondary corpse, recalculating Melee, Accuracy and attack pool as needed. Haunt: The ritual leader must be a Nighthaunt. For the ritual, the main material you need is a suitable location to haunt. Your goal is to have your essence permeate the location and infuse it with dread. Typically, hauntings happen where a ghost died - shipwrecks, battlefields, and so on - or place where they spent much of their life, such as homes or lighthouses. However, since the Necroquake, tactical hauntings have been used to claim territory, filling whole kingdoms with dark mist and hostile feelings. You pick a location no larger than a large mansion. Over the duration, the ritual leader gets three Guile or Intimidation rolls, aiming for ten successes. The other participants can help by spreading rumors with Guile or desecrating the target location with Devotion. If you succeed, the ritual leader is now haunting the location. All living creatures must make a Determination roll when they see it or become Frightened of it until their next Rest. If the ritual leader is present, the roll is opposed by their Intimidation, though they can exempt anyone they want from having to roll. Rumors of the site will quickly start spreading through a surrounding area of roughly the size of a village or large neighborhood in a city. Until the ritual leader's next downtime period, they get a bonus to Intimidation rolls against anyone that's heard the rumors. Further, anyone that's heard the rumor begins any combat Frightened of the ritual leader and must spend an action to make a Determination roll against the ritual leader's Intimidation to remove it, which the ritual leader gets a bonus to. You can only haunt one place at a time, but previous hauntings remain morbid-looking and run down, just not supernaturally so. If you use multiple rituals to keep haunting the same location, the distance the rumors spread to may expand to spread over an entire city, kingdom, or even continent. Possess: The ritual leader must be a Nighthaunt. You're also going to need an unconscious mortal person. It's not actually common for ghosts to possess living people - it's very unpleasant, confusing and claustrophobic for both people involved. However, you can do it, and sometimes it's useful. The mortal target must have a combined stat total less than or equal to the ritual leader's. It's an extended Determination roll, with difficulty based on how powerful the target is and target successes based on their Toughness, similar to the Blood Kiss. Minions are not possible to possess - they just die if you try to. Other participants can recite ritual incantations with Arcana or Theology or can help keep the host tied down for the week of work with Might. If the ritual succeeds, you possess the target! While in possession of them, you use their stats for everything, including all traits and attacks, except Mind and Soul. You use your own for those, even if they're lower. You can only use your Talents if the host could feasibly do so. Also, you have access to the host's complete memory. However, you get a penalty to all social rolls to pretend to be the host, because they're fighting you all the while and it's extremely uncomfortable. When the possession starts and every week you remain in, you have to roll on the How Has Death Marked You table, permanently applying it to the host. Your possession ends when you spend an action to end it, when the host hits Toughness 0 or if you stay in for more than their Soul in weeks. When the possession ends, you are expelled from the body, become Stunned until the end of your next turn and take a Lasting Wound. Raise Horde: The ritual leader must have the Spellcasting (Lore of the Deathmages) Talent. You also are going to need corpses to raise as undead. As many corpses as you want undead soldiers at the end. Because, yeah, you're using necromancy to create a horde of zombies. This is probably the easiest ritual - your target is a single success, with three rolls of either Determination (if you're just asserting will over the dead) or Channelling (if you're relying on magical command). Other participants can help by rolling Might to exhume and retrieve bodies or Lore to find graves to rob. The reason you want more successes is that you can only reanimate a maximum number of zombies equal to your successes, which all then rise as Deadwalker Zombies under your command. The horde persists for as long as its membership survives, though, even between downtime periods, so you're going to want to keep track of how many you have. The GM may rule you're going to have to move somewhere else to find more corpses at some point...or you could just, y'know, make new ones. Mechanically, the horde is a Swarm that acts on their own Initiative in combat, following whatever the last order you gave them was. Typically, these hordes are too slow to keep up with a party during adventures, and also they're only good at simple orders, but they make excellent guards, labor or other such things when you aren't just using them to throw bodies at a battle or similar. Because of their use as laborers, the GM may allow you to earn 10 drops of Aqua Ghyranis per zombie at the end of each downtime period, provided you can find something to hire them out for. Also, because Deadwalkers are pretty fragile, the GM may decide that if you aren't taking care of them and attending to repairs, you will lose half of the ones you've got left during each downtime period. Raise Wight: The ritual leader must either be a Wight or have the Spellcasting (Lore of the Deathmages) Talent. You will also need an old and disquiet tomb and tools for exhuming the dead. That's because you're off to find the tomb of someone whose duty remains incomplete and are going to wake them up. Extant wights sometimes do this for companionship with those they knew in life, while necromancers tend to be ambitious sorts who want notorious historical figures to help them out. Either way, you're aiming for 12 successes on either a set of three Determination rolls to invoke their past relationship with you or Channelling rolls to just do some necromancy. Other participants can help by making Lore rolls to help find a suitable tomb and its history or Might rolls to help exhume the corpse within. If you succeed, you and the GM work together to define the new Wight's purpose in existence, ideally as a short phrase, and they rise as a Grave Guard. You get the benefits of the Contacts Endeavor with them, and they can help you out on adventures when their purpose aligns with yours. Otherwise, they're totally autonomous and have no obligation to obey you, though they're going to seek to do their duty regardless. Sculpt Bone: The ritual leader must be a Mortisan and have Mortisan's tools. You're going to also need enough bones to equal twice the mass of whatever you're making. See, according to the Principia Necrotopia, there is no more beautiful substance in existence than compacted bone. Raw bone may be brittle, but once necromantically refined, bone becomes solid and strong, gleaming like dull metal and aesthetically perfect. Therefore, it is the ideal material for just about anything, from city construction to furniture making to weapons manufacture. This is an extended Crafting test, aiming for successes based on what you're making - any Common item or simple structure like a chair or ladder is going for 8, while any Rare item or larger structure like a wall or small boat is aiming at 10, an Exotic item or large or especially complex creation like a watchtower or very intricate piece of jewelry aims at 12, a complex structure with moving parts like a bridge or carriage is going for 14, and something large and complete as a structure like a full building or beautiful monument has a target of 16. Other participants can help by gathering bone with Might or preparing it with Medicine. If you succeed, you take the bones and reshape them into what you want. You can perform the ritual multiple times to make larger or more complex things, building one component each time and elaborating on the design as you go. If you fail, the creation is subpar, flawed or incomplete in some way that requires you to scrap the entire thing and try again. Summon Spirit: The ritual leader must have Training 2 or Focus 2 in either Theology or Arcana. You're also going to need an area rich in Death magic, plus a significant object once owned by the ghost you're trying to conjure or their bodily remains. See, most souls do go to Shyish when they die, and they can be called forth from it. When you do this, you select one dead person whose soul normally resides in Shyish - it won't work on anyone who doesn't go to the underworlds in death, like the Stormcast, Sylvaneth, Soulbound, Idoneth or Daemons. Performing the ritual lets you make three Theology rolls to scour the appropriate afterlives with your ritual magic, aiming for 8 successes. The difficulty is decreased if you have Spellcasting (Lore of the Underworlds). Other participants can help you by protecting the ritual site with Intimidation or studying afterlives with Theology. If you succeed, the spirit you chose appears before you for a limited time and you may select one of several options to deal with it before it returns. If you fail, you find that the spirit is beyond your reach but still a person - they're just locked up tighter than you can get to or otherwise beyond your grasp at a distance, you're going to have to go to them. If you fail by 3 or more, you discover that the target you sought no longer exists - perhaps the Ossiarchs carved them up into fragments or they were consumed by the Shyish Nadir. As for what you can do if you succeed, your options are: You can trap the spirit before the ritual ends, as long as you have some magical means to do so like a soultrap gem or shacklegheist chains. While imprisoned, they can speak to you and are dimly aware of their surroundings, but they are not compelled to speak truthfully, and Nagash's servants may notice what you did and come for you eventually. You can question the spirit about their experiences in life and death, making a simple test with some relevant skill to impress them or convince them to speak to you, such as Weapon Skill to show off for a warrior or Devotion to convince someone who shares your faith. If you succeed, you can ask a number of questions equal to your successes, which they will answer truthfully to the best of their ability. If you fail, they cannot or will not speak before the ritual ends and they return. You can choose to soothe their torment, making a simple Guile roll to convince them of your good intent. If you succeed, it is easier to summon that spirit in the future and should you meet in person, they will try to help you. You also have some time to speak to them freely, though they are under no compulsion to answer questions or tell the truth. If you fail, they lash out at you before vanishing and you take a Lasting Wound. Lastly, you could torment them, making an Intuition roll to spot what they regret or fear. If you succeed, you use this knowledge to terrify or demoralize them, making them permanently Frightened of you and causing them to avoid you in the future if at all possible. If you fail, they instead swear vengeance on you, and the next time you fight undead, the spirit will show up to help them. Either way, that spirit will never answer your call again. Next time: Running undead games.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2021 12:49
|
|
|
Maxwell Lord posted:On top of everything else wrong with him Zak S. sucks at drawing maps. This is a boring bunch of blocks that doesn't suggest kingdoms at war or exciting places full of danger. It's mostly blank. Maze of the Blue Medusa just looked like a bunch of shapes. Like they're not useful nor do they inspire much. I love a good fantasy map, I don't even care if the geography makes no sense and you've got rivers going uphill or deserts next to swamps or whatever. Just give me cool places.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2021 13:49
|
|
|
Just Dan Again posted:This has been a long, exhausting road and I'm glad to be at the end of it. Thanks to all those who've interacted with the review, particularly Wapole Languray, whose early encouragement was one of the things that made this review happen at all. Not sure when I'll next write an F&F, but if I do it'll almost certainly be something I actually like!
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2021 14:06
|
|
|
There's a whole strain of bad world-building where you come up with a gimmick about the way things look without any thought at all as to the stories that take place on it or whether the gimmick matters at all to gameplay. (the world is a cube! You're inside a hollow sphere! All the trees are giant mushrooms! Birds don't exist! Giant megaliths everywhere! The sun is a lizard!) Zak seems to be caught up in that.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2021 18:45
|
|
|
This is a problem with the kind of "weird fantasy," "sword and planet," etc. that I love. It usually doesn't survive contact with an adventuring party. For example, if you drop players on Barsoom, they're going to connive to get body armour instead of swashbuckling in fetish gear like they're "supposed to." And they won't need the armour anyway, because they've connived to drop radium bombs on their enemies from the safety of an airship, instead of swashbuckling in fetish gear like they're "supposed to."
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2021 19:03
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 25, 2024 02:40 |
|
|
Wapole Languray posted:
Maybe because Through the Looking Glass is set on a chessboard, with the terrain Alice moves through divided into squares?
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2021 19:15
|
|
