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Egregious Offences posted:
I am an Classic Traveller fan (surprise surprise), and I think Mongoose's version is excellent.
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Jan 22, 2014 18:04
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I always wanted to know more about Traveller, because it seems there are so many hotly-debated editions that it's confusing, and less easy to sort out than the progression of D&D editions. Is it really true that some people "played" Traveller more to use the charts and tables to generate systems, worlds, and cultures without actually using them?
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Jan 22, 2014 18:07
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Down With People posted:Dishawis is a Twit Considering his idea of winning an internet slapfight is accusing someone of being gay and casting curses, this seems par for the course. Apparently the Unbound version of his gamebook is even more special!
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Jan 22, 2014 18:30
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Something slightly different, my goon buddy and I review old dead RPGs as a podcast. We just put up episode 11, which is covering Haven - City of Violence. Check it out if you're bored at work, especially for the batshit Skyrealms of Jorune and Ghostbusters RPG systems. http://systemmasterypodcast.com/2014/01/22/system-mastery-11-haven-city-of-violence/
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Jan 22, 2014 19:01
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theironjef posted:Something slightly different, my goon buddy and I review old dead RPGs as a podcast. We just put up episode 11, which is covering Haven - City of Violence. Check it out if you're bored at work, especially for the batshit Skyrealms of Jorune and Ghostbusters RPG systems. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa  Keep that toxic poo poo away from me you son of a bitch!
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Jan 22, 2014 19:40
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No no, we know. That game was messed up. Straight up hyper-realism as imagined by the brain of the kind of guy that would have an uninformed and yet deeply held opinion about which shape of ninja star is best.
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Jan 22, 2014 19:49
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It gets better, this is Louis and what he loves... I have met Louis and he talks and acts exactly how you expect him too...
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Jan 22, 2014 19:50
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:It gets better, this is Louis and what he loves... No that makes it way worse. We took his belief that hiding on Rome Island is nearly impossible as a sign that he is pretty drat racist.
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Jan 22, 2014 19:51
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Sweet Jesus I know...
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Jan 22, 2014 19:53
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So I gather that the author of Haven loves complicated d20 games, but where is Rome Island and what does it have to do with racism?
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Jan 22, 2014 19:56
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Halloween Jack posted:So I gather that the author of Haven loves complicated d20 games, but where is Rome Island and what does it have to do with racism? It's the in-game island neighborhood where all the black people live. The gist of it is that the game has a "streetwise" ability that governs your ability to blend in in a given neighborhood. Downtown is relatively easy, Rome Island is "nearly impossible". theironjef fucked around with this message at 20:18 on Jan 22, 2014 |
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Jan 22, 2014 20:04
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Hey, he upgraded to d20 Modern! http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse.php?cPath=1308_576 Guys? Guys?
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Jan 22, 2014 20:08
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:Hey, he upgraded to d20 Modern! http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse.php?cPath=1308_576 Oof no thanks. We did an OGL thing a few weeks back, the Everquest D20 RPG. Surprisingly tolerable given that double nut-punch for parents.
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Jan 22, 2014 20:10
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All his stuff is hackwork to be honest. He's up there with Gary Skarka in the full of themselves and clueless gamedev hall of fame.
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Jan 22, 2014 20:12
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We'd never heard of him or his games. Bought it (like we try to do for all of these reviews) off the used shelf at the FLGS. The fact that he's credited for like 9 of the 11 jobs in the making of the book promised some highfalutin' crazy, and the fact that the DM in this game is called G.O.D. sealed the deal.
theironjef fucked around with this message at 20:18 on Jan 22, 2014 |
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Jan 22, 2014 20:15
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theironjef posted:We'd never heard of him or his games. Bought it (like we try to do for all of these reviews) off the used shelf at the FLGS. The fact that he's credited for like 9 of the 11 jobs in the making of the book promised some highfalutin' crazy, and the fact that the DM in this game is called G.O.D. sealed the deal.
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Jan 22, 2014 20:20
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Halloween Jack posted:Pfft. I bet he's not even an Illumination Administer. He's certainly bigger than a Briefing Officer, but probably smaller than a Sholari.
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Jan 22, 2014 20:22
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Halloween Jack posted:I always wanted to know more about Traveller, because it seems there are so many hotly-debated editions that it's confusing, and less easy to sort out than the progression of D&D editions. Wikipedia breaks it down pretty well: Classic Traveller, MegaTraveller and Mongoose Traveller use the system I described in my post, Traveller TNE (the new era) uses some weird d20 roll under system, and Traveller 4 and Traveller 5 use a roll under system where you roll more d6s to change the difficulty. Then there's GURPS and HERO Traveller, who use their respective systems.
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Jan 22, 2014 21:38
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Egregious Offences posted:Wikipedia breaks it down pretty well: Classic Traveller, MegaTraveller and Mongoose Traveller use the system I described in my post, Traveller TNE (the new era) uses some weird d20 roll under system, and Traveller 4 and Traveller 5 use a roll under system where you roll more d6s to change the difficulty. Then there's GURPS and HERO Traveller, who use their respective systems. TNE uses the same system Twilight:2000 2.0, Cadillacs and Dinosaurs RPG, and Dark Conspiracy used.
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Jan 22, 2014 21:43
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Christ, Twilight 2000. A lovely game where your character could die or end up crippled by radiation/chemical exposure before even character generation was over.
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Jan 22, 2014 21:48
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theironjef posted:Something slightly different, my goon buddy and I review old dead RPGs as a podcast. We just put up episode 11, which is covering Haven - City of Violence. Check it out if you're bored at work, especially for the batshit Skyrealms of Jorune and Ghostbusters RPG systems. Do you have an RSS feed for the podcast that I can plug into my podcast reader? This is right up my alley.
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Jan 22, 2014 21:55
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Evil Mastermind posted:Do you have an RSS feed for the podcast that I can plug into my podcast reader? This is right up my alley. We absolutely do! http://feeds.feedburner.com/systemmasterypodcasts
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Jan 22, 2014 22:06
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Egregious Offences posted:Wikipedia breaks it down pretty well: Classic Traveller, MegaTraveller and Mongoose Traveller use the system I described in my post, Traveller TNE (the new era) uses some weird d20 roll under system, and Traveller 4 and Traveller 5 use a roll under system where you roll more d6s to change the difficulty. Then there's GURPS and HERO Traveller, who use their respective systems. I seem to recall somebody doing a nice post on Traveller somewhere in TG that summarized how Traveller was very innovative but also a product of the predominant influences of its time, i.e. militarism, empires in space, and little or no transhumanism.
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Jan 22, 2014 22:09
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I've been getting the urge to do another review, and after looking through my collection I think I've found something sufficiently obscure/weird to write up. Ladies and gentlemen, might I interest you in Fairy Meat? The origin of the game (as best as I can remember, this was nearly 15 years ago*) comes from a Knights of the Dinner Table comic - yes, the guys that would go on to make Hackmaster. One of the storylines in the strip involved a GM deciding to mess with one of the players in his group who, like everyone in the strip, was "that guy" - in this case, "that guy" being the one who only ever runs female pixie-fairy PCs in a hack-&-slash game who contribute nothing to the party. The GM decides to run an adventure around "Fairy Meet", when all the fairies in the campaign world meet up to blah blah the whole thing was actually just a set-up by wild elves to concentrate all of the campaign world's fairie-kind into one place and then feast upon their magically-delicious flesh. For whatever reason, the idea stuck, and they ended up making an actual game out of "Fairy Meat", the 1:1 scale minis game of cannibal fairies. Each of the 5 books covers one of the different groups/factions, with the core rules covering the savage and meat-crazy Wild Fairies. The writing across the line was always firmly conversational, with numerous asides about not being creepy or sperging out because hey you're playing a minis game about cannibal fairies. It's a weird little game, and trying to get people to play it was always nearly impossible. Next post: setting fluff and backstory! *holy poo poo, I'm old AmiYumi fucked around with this message at 17:35 on Jan 26, 2014 |
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Jan 22, 2014 22:34
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Good news, thanks to not having classes today, I've had time to roll up a character for my next post. Probably going to be this weekend. 
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Jan 22, 2014 22:46
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If I want to do a different book eventually, I should get down and finish this own. So here we go, only two chapters to go. Charnel Houses of Europe Part 4: A Struggle for the Forsaken: Babi Yar  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babi_Yar Unlike the other chapters, Babi Yar wasn't the site of a Concentration Camp. It was a death pit. As the German army marching through Russia advanced, they reached Kiev. A few days after the city fell, in September 1941, NKVD saboteurs blew up the new local SS headquarter. In retaliation, the Nazis decided to kill all the Jews in town. They marched every Jewish person they could find, marched them to the nearby Babi Yar ravine and then simply slaughtered them with machine guns. For the next 24 months, the Nazis kept using the ravine as their execution field. In 1943, as the Russian army was gaining terrain and they were soon to reclaim the city, the Nazis attempted to hide what they had done and had prisoners dig up the mass graves and cremate the hundreds of thousands of rotten corpses before having them grind them up and scatterred. Learning that they were to be executed afterward, 15 of the 25 prisoners managed to escape, with the remaining being the last victims of Babi Yar. Yeah.  So, what went on the ghost side? Well, Babi Yar ravine is the site of a huge Nihil, a dangerous hole leading to the Labyrinth. For a while, the new wraiths were victims to the hordes of Spectres that would routinely get out of the ravine. Things changed when a group of former Red Army wraiths arrived to help, teeming up with the survivors to defend the new ghosts that kept showing up. Eventually, with the end of the war and the formation of the Covenant of the Millions, the Wraiths of Babi Yar organized themselves. The place is more like a way-station than a place where Wraiths live. The local wraiths are split into the two Circles: the Menders, made up of the dead of Babi Yar who try to find and help other survivors, as well as somehow heal the nearby Nihil, and the Fallen Comrades, who are mostly the Red Army soldiers who came back from the war and decided to protect nearby Wraiths from the horrors in the Ravine. Things have apparently been getting better in recent years (when the book was published, fifteen years ago or so) as the fall of communism has removed the official stance of ignorance of the massacre and so some healing has begun. There's a sidebar which explains that the wraithly authorities of Kiev don't really like the Babi Yar wraiths and consider them something like lepers, due in part to their habit of throwing into the Nihil the wraiths of their murderers. There's also a really creepy statue formed apparently out of the remains of dead nazis and collaborators. The chapter ends with NPCs and plot hooks, as usual. Diana Ryachev is one of the persons who died at Babi Yar. Her story is horrible. She's one of the menders now. Nikolai Dimitrius was a normal everyday policeman. When the Nazis had the Police help them kill all the Jews in Kiev, he couldn't take it and shot himself. He's now part of the Fallen Comrades. Captain Alexander Renko is the leader of the Fallen Comrades. Growing hearing stories of the glorious revolution against the Czar, he joined the war along with the other boys from Kiev wanting to be a hero. Instead he died. Having gathered the rest of the dead from his squad, he returned home only to find horrors waiting for him. He organized his troops to defend people from the Spectre, becoming a hero in death. Marta Karinska is a spectre, what remains of a bitter old woman who really hated the Jews, and can't let go of her hatred after death. Melki Sornokov was one of the prisoners who failed to escape at the end of Babi Yar. He really wasn't lucky. He part of the Menders now. Sergei Pravdovich was a journalist who was a witness to the events of Babi yar. For years, he fought in vain to try and get the communist government to recognize what happened in the ravine. He was eventually shipped to a gulag, where he died. The story hooks: - Nikolai wants the players characters help to find a woman he helped escape before his suicide, but Marta the spectre is sure to interfere. - Diana asks the PCs to help her follow a lead that might lead to her parents in the Kiev Necropolis, but the Kievan wraiths are suspicious as they believe the Babi yar wraiths want to blow up the place. - The ghost of Marta's kid is found, and debate begins on whether or not they should use the kid to draw out the old spectre. Which sides will the PCs choose? I didn't go into as much details with the NPCs as before, because goddamn they're depressing. Reading them once was enough. Next Time:loving Auschwitz. 
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Jan 22, 2014 23:29
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50 Foot Ant posted:Christ, Twilight 2000. That was 1st edition and Traveller would just squash you like a bug...
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Jan 22, 2014 23:32
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Down With People posted:We don't get to learn the basic mechanics until we are almost a third of the way into the book. Better than the half a book that White Wolf usually takes... Humbug Scoolbus posted:That was 1st edition and Traveller would just squash you like a bug... Wasn't Classic Traveller the only system that could actually kill your character during character creation? Choosing chargen options likely to kill your character was a legit way to get rid of a character with poo poo stats (2d6 in order) so you could gen a new one... hectorgrey fucked around with this message at 00:05 on Jan 23, 2014 |
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Jan 22, 2014 23:57
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Halloween Jack posted:Aren't void sabers like, anti-lightsabers that work the same way by sucking anything they touch into a void? A chartreuse void? Yeah there's some poo poo mentioned about how they're made of pure void, but gently caress it they're lightsabers. They're a little handle with a button you push and then it's a chartreuse sword that can cut through anything.
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Jan 23, 2014 01:44
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Halloween Jack posted:I always wanted to know more about Traveller, because it seems there are so many hotly-debated editions that it's confusing, and less easy to sort out than the progression of D&D editions. Look at this map. Look at this goddamn map. Scroll in. Different people will have different reactions, but I find that freaking beautiful.
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Jan 23, 2014 02:22
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:That was 1st edition and Traveller would just squash you like a bug... Yeah. I had both of them. Traveller was funny because to get even a shot at getting a decent ship at chargen you had to risk death bigtime.
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Jan 23, 2014 02:56
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InShaneee posted:Look at this map. Look at this goddamn map. Scroll in. Then scroll out as far as you can. Space owns.
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Jan 23, 2014 03:00
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hectorgrey posted:Wasn't Classic Traveller the only system that could actually kill your character during character creation? Choosing chargen options likely to kill your character was a legit way to get rid of a character with poo poo stats (2d6 in order) so you could gen a new one...
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Jan 23, 2014 03:04
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Empire Of Satanis: making a scarf out of an intestine Social Standing and Hideous Paradise Social Standing represents how high up your character is in Fiend society. It runs from 1 to 10, ranging from the lowliest slave to the Overfiend. Increments in SS are gifted to you directly by the Dark Gods as a reward for doing evil things. The more dickish and evil your behaviour, the more SS you get. You can also lose SS by failing or being humiliated in front of your peers. Your SS determines how many spells you can cast per hour. You can also spend SS to temporarily raise your attributes or the result of non-combat rolls. The biggest benefit to high SS is that you can boss around other members of your race with lower SS. Even better, if the Fiend isn't the same race as you, you can steal their magic skills and use them at their level, or even use up their spells-per-hour instead of yours. The big problem is that SS seems to be an easy-come-easy-go thing. If you use it, it's gone, and by the RAW that includes the huge drop in your reputation and status. In fact, having high SS is so good, you will likely never spend it if you can avoid it. Another problem with SS is Deformities. When you hit SS 6, you roll 1d6 and gain a Deformity from the following list: quote:1. Head grows larger, disproportional to the rest of the body. Curvature of the skull becomes more pronounced, revealing grotesque angles, ridges, and shapes. One eye swells up, the other shrivels down to pea. Great bat-like wings sprout, Fiend can fly in the air and through space. So let's say you roll a 3. You get a fuckload of ears, worms for legs and insect wings. What if you're playing a Rive-zella, and already have insect wings? Do you get a second set? Or how about a Vahs-vra? Do you think having worm legs instead of snake legs is going to be a huge difference in your life? Is this something Fiends are going to notice, that you're walking on worms instead of snakes? It feels like another mechanic that's poorly thought-out, but lets Dishaw come up with more scary monster descriptions, so it went into the book. Speaking of Dishaw trying to be scary, Hideous Paradise is really dumb. It represents how well your character has been following the Dark Way. It's tracked similar to SS, and you gain points when you do things that fit the Dark Way. What does that involve? quote:It can be had by writing a death poem to your best friend just before you entomb his sister alive; abandoning common speech for zombie-like groans whilst stalking a victim; dancing the goat’s dance by the lonely roadside until the carnival arrives; putting on an impromptu puppet show where the puppets rip the flesh with their little wooden teeth; summoning a spectral light to reveal the insides of those who approach without giving the Sign of Veech; making a scarf out of an intestine, decorating it with feathers and albino ears, and then naming it Nicodemus; building a video screen into your own stomach that replays the most awful moments from other people’s lives as it jabs steel wires into your flesh for your masochistic pleasure you sick, sick bastard!  So you do something evil, and you get a point of HP. You can then spend your points to create permanent changes in the world around you, such as: quote:Make towering basalt temples in their honor appear; turn all the metal within a mile of himself into large flesh eating maggots with writhing tongues erupting from their eyes (this would garner another HP point); change a lake of water into acid; turn all the humans in a town into big breasted, green tentacled Fiend women; or any combinations of reality warping. The bigger the change, the more points it costs. It can't affect Fiends, but Fiends can spend Hideous Paradise to reverse your effects. So there you go. Not one, but two powers where you're expected to act like a dick so you can act like a dick. Next: Magic! The secrets of Candy Land revealed!
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Jan 23, 2014 03:17
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It's kill puppies for satan but completely unironically.
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Jan 23, 2014 03:30
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Forums Terrorist posted:It's kill puppies for satan but completely unironically. Empire Of Satanis is about playing Satan, the great penis extension that Darrick Dishaw idolises. kill puppies for satan is about playing Darrick Dishaw. EDIT: Which makes me wonder if he's even read kill puppies for satan, and if he had enough self-awareness to see the abyss waving back.
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Jan 23, 2014 03:33
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Empire Of Satanis is the official GWAR RPG.
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Jan 23, 2014 03:35
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Kavak posted:Then scroll out as far as you can.  at the Core Route. I cannot loving believe that they named all the sector blocks along the way.
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Jan 23, 2014 03:42
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Kavak posted:Then scroll out as far as you can. Oh man. The Traveller Imperium is kinda small. Especially when compared to the Warhammer 40K Imperium. 
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Jan 23, 2014 03:51
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Down With People posted:Videodrome My god, he actually ripped off Videodrome for his lovely TTRPG, and most his evil is just petty or bizarre "Dance the goat dance"
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Jan 23, 2014 04:01
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