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Night10194 posted:Alright, I don't really like the Cyberpapacy for a variety of reasons (many of them being that I've developed a strong dislike of Torg from the reviews) but the Senior Citizen is pretty goddamn great. Torg is the poster child for "awesome concepts, implemented badly".
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# ? Feb 10, 2015 22:38 |
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# ? Oct 4, 2024 05:31 |
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It really is. I love all the cosms (except for Living Land) but the anti-Pope and Moebius are the best. I am also a big fan of one of the [REDACTED] cosms because it was so loving bizarre to see something like that just show up.
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# ? Feb 10, 2015 22:55 |
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:I am also a big fan of one of the [REDACTED] cosms because it was so loving bizarre to see something like that just show up.
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# ? Feb 10, 2015 22:58 |
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FMguru posted:Can I interest you in some magic Incan space trees? Just got a shipment in. Hey now...spoilers.
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# ? Feb 11, 2015 00:15 |
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theironjef posted:The whole low-g, high-g thing reminds me of reading Heroes Unlimited where the Alien world table had both as options as the planet your character was from, and both resulted in a character that was stronger and tougher than an Earth character. I remember thinking that basically meant we Earthicans got a poo poo deal on planet selection. Realistically, an individual from a High-G planet going to one of lower G would be like humans going to the moon. While it would take them less force to do the things they're normally used to, they'd be utterly awkward at it since there'd be such a large control gap. Additionally, unless they're going to run into muscle and bone degen in the long terms and depending on the density of their atmosphere, respiration problems in the short terms (akin to altitude sickness).
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# ? Feb 11, 2015 01:17 |
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The SPI game Universe actually modeled that in its hellscape of Environ skills That was a penalty to various skills depending how far off you were from your home gravity. (that character is from this post in the build a Character thread) Humbug Scoolbus fucked around with this message at 01:41 on Feb 11, 2015 |
# ? Feb 11, 2015 01:35 |
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Babe Magnet posted:never stop posting knockoff Vault Boy Doresh posted:Are there any restrictions in terms of family size? I can see that one be a bit weird if their family is the biggest around, while yours basically consists of you and a few buddies. Night10194 posted:Alright, I don't really like the Cyberpapacy for a variety of reasons (many of them being that I've developed a strong dislike of Torg from the reviews) but the Senior Citizen is pretty goddamn great.
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# ? Feb 11, 2015 01:40 |
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Hello again, viewers! I am here with my good friend Bundaberg Mutiny. Yes, the polar bear has an eyepatch. Between the two of us, we're going to tackle the next episode of 3:16 Carnage Amongst The Stars, or CATS for short. No relation, probably. Chapter five: Flashbacks This is, as mentioned before, one of the key (and honestly pretty cool) mechanics in the game. As mentioned before, you're supposed to enter the game with fairly generic characters who as yet lack real personality. You develop this in play by using Flashbacks. After everyone rolls their dice in combat to determine their actions, anybody can leap in to declare a Strength or Weakness. If someone declares a Weakness, then nobody can play a Strength (it's silent on whether they can play a Weakness). If somebody plays a Strength, nobody else can play a Strength, but others can still play a Weakness (generally only a good idea in PvP combat). Either way, when it's confirmed that you get to play your Strength or Weakness, you get to give a short description of what this flashback is - write an apt name for it on your sheet and cross its box out as used. Describe the flashback to your past, and how it relates to this situation, without droning on like an Exalted stunt. Then, if it's a Strength, YOU WIN THE ENCOUNTER. All Threat Tokens are removed, and you get to roll Kills for your weapon at its best range. The encounter is over. If it's a Weakness, you lose the encounter, but on your own terms. You are out of the combat, so you avoid anything that will happen to anyone in that turn. You remove one Threat Token, and if any tokens remain, everyone else continues as normal. You have to narrate it as a loss, and caused by some defect - you don't get to narrate it as a victory. The example is your character being left alone because they're known as a sociopath, so the monsters swarm them, cover them in web and carry them off to their lair. So the next encounter is obviously "Now we go rescue Bill" (or isn't - whatever). I don't know if "I'm a coward, I run away" is acceptable, or it has to be that extreme. They then remind us that the final Weakness for everyone is automatically "Hatred for Home". Now honestly, they should push people towards this more, and make a bigger deal about it. The idea is that by the end, you actually hate Terra and you're never going back. You're addicted to violence, or perhaps you're completely aware about how full of poo poo they are, that the perfect world thing is all propaganda and that you are an undesirable element of which they wanted to dispose. Anyway, I like this idea. I'm not saying I'll steal it to put in every game I run, it works specifically for this game. But it does work at all (and yes, works by completely disregarding the normal rules of the game as regards weapon ranges, turn order, success/fail based on the dice and all that). Chapter six covers missions. It mentions the GM should plan them. That's a good idea, and nothing new. "Name the planet, and make some brief notes on the kind of world and creatures". Then some rough ideas "but hold them lightly". Because it acknowledges that players are likely to take things in another direction, and the GM shouldn't be too wedded to their plans. That's good advice. Where we're going, we don't need rails! After that, it talks about how you have to match the fiction to the encounters. You know what would be nice? If they put more effort into doing that so you didn't have to all the work there. Missions start with briefings - the GM plays a Senior Officer (who should be uncaring and unsympathetic). If a player is of high enough rank, they can in fact do that - either the GM hands them the briefing notes and they tell everyone else, or just lets them invent the mission. Basic objectives are then given, like "Go to place X and establish a landing point". The various encounters then sort of springboard from each other - the first encounter lets the players know what the Special Ability of the aliens is on this planet, and the results of any given encounter will determine what is going to happen for the next one. The number of Threat Tokens for an entire planet is [PCs x 5]. Or x4 if you find it's too much of a grind and want shorter sessions. They then suggest the number of encounters (and how to distribute the Threat Tokens between them) across the entire mission. It's pretty good advice, over all. Pretty similar to how various versions of D&D suggest an adventure have X number of encounters of Challenge Rating (level), (level-1), (level+1) and so on, or X number of Minion fights, Y number of Elite + Normal fights, Z number of Solo fights and one proper boss. Or an XP pool to be divided amongst fights. What I'm saying is, it isn't revolutionary, but it's good advice that not all games think to do, and they suggest a decent breakdown. They also mention Field Promotions: when the most senior ranking PC dies during a mission, the next-highest ranked PC is immediately promoted up to that rank. Roll NFA tests for ties, of course. This is in addition to other promotions that happen later. They then discuss basic mission types - scouting, investigating, rescuing, capturing (or holding terrain). Extermination of all life forms is just a sort of given, it's what happens while you're doing your actual missions. Tune in next day/week/whatever, where we talk about what happens between missions!
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# ? Feb 11, 2015 02:13 |
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FMguru posted:Can I interest you in some magic Incan space trees? Just got a shipment in. Are you sure that's what they're talking about? Because it could be also be Hellraiser Terminator. But, no, I'm pretty sure it's Hot Rods Of The Gods.
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# ? Feb 11, 2015 22:39 |
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FMguru's right, and it's actually dumber than The Love Below. e: I am bad at reading today. Evil Mastermind fucked around with this message at 22:54 on Feb 11, 2015 |
# ? Feb 11, 2015 22:51 |
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Fossilized Rappy posted:It doesn't specifically say, but I assume that you have to be part of one of the existing Families that gets listed in the Southwest Wasteland Guide. Phew, I was worried there for a sec. quote:Heartily agreed. I've usually seen cyperpunk only associated with the youthful, so I do love the idea of old man cyborgs fighting the good fight against tyranny.
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# ? Feb 12, 2015 20:17 |
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Look up a book called 'A Generation Removed' by Gary Wolfe. He also wrote 'Who Censored Roger Rabbit?' and 'Killerbowl'.
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# ? Feb 12, 2015 21:02 |
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Jovian Chronicles Second Edition RPG Player's Handbook Chapter 5: Living in Space Everyday Technology Thanks to the colony's temporary isolation and the now ongoing Cold War, technology advances in the last couple years have been mostly focused on the military side of things. Not only have things slowed down for normal people, but it has gotten very crowded for people living on orbital stations, easily eclipsing anything seen on Earth. We're talking about population densities of 7,500 to over 20,000 people per kmē. I hope claustrophobia has gone extinct in the future. With so many other people around, it has become mandatory for an orbital guy to stay clam and wait patiently in line as to not cause total chaos. Seasons and daylight cycles are still a thing in space, though they are artificially simulated and controlled to the inhabitant's liking. (He said, imagining a Goth station that is always cold and dark.) Living quarters are obviously pretty cramped, with a single 5x3 m room being the average (parking facilities are rented separately). The book explains that even with all sorts of foldable and multi-purpose furniture, there just isn't enough space for a laundry list of weapons, clothes and other stuff. Players need to put priorities on what their PC keeps stored away, unless he really likes sleeping on a stash of weapons, or a piano. If you're players like hoarding loot, they better have access to a merchant ship (or really any ship with a big enonugh cargo bay). The limited space also means that not everyone will own everything required for a proper household (like spices and stuff), making it pretty common to borrow things from neighbours. Those O'Neill Cylinders we've heard before are pretty nifty. They use rotational gravity to make the entire interior surface habitable - or rather half of it; the other half is used for windows. An artificial hollow world of sorts. Like the Not-Side-7 of this Not-Gundam. Asteroid colonies are kind of a mess, with random modules protruding all over the place, and nomads generally don't mind having the inside be full of wires. Most asteroid colonies try to have a gravity wheel or centrifuge to keep people in shape (which is why Lightworlders and ZeeGees can still reach normal physical values), but not every has one. Living there for too long makes it hard to impossible to adapt back to normal gravity. Smaller orbital stations usually do offer at least partial rotational gravity, but they just don't have the space for the kind of planet-like environments you can have with an O'Neill Cylinder. Their interior is a lot closer to the ship from 2001. Most of these smaller stations are not purely for living, but tend to serve military, trading and other purposes. Space Travel Flying a spaceship can be a bit hard to wrap your head around. Not only do you navigate in a 3-dimensional space, but everything inside that space is constantly moving and rotating around stuff. Flight computers are mandatory here. To make things easier to manage, things are generally parked in orbits around an interstellar body, be it a planet or the sun. The Mercurian stations for example have a synchronized orbit around the sun that ensures they're always in Mercury's shadow. To avoid collisions and general chaos, regions near a planet are designated as a space traffic control(STC) zone. Trying to enter such a zone requires the spaceship to call the nearest STC station and follow their instructions. A bit like air traffic on Earth, overseen by the United Solar Nations Space Navigation Authority (SpaceNav). Some regions are restricted, usually because of military testing (there be mecha prototypes), scientific research or natural hazards. Refueling is done at "cyclers", automated (though sometimes maintained by nomads) asteroid stations orbiting the sun or a planet. They require an access code to use. With their large territory, the Jovians have the largest amount of cyclers. The military version of the cycler also comes with ammo and supplies. Naturally, these ones also come with sensor and self-defense systems. Travelling as a passanger is a lot like buying a ticket for a airplane, except you also need medical documents to rpvoe that you're fit for low-G travel. Prices depend on the distance travelled, your cargo, your own mass if you're to fat and the class you like to use (they go from the First Class with its own private suit down to the Sleeper Class who spend the journey in a hibernation pod, kinda like in the 5th Element). This section of course comes with its own table and guidelines to figure everything out. Transporting cargo is very similar, with the cost depending on distance, the gargo's mass and its type. We also learn about the Hanson Circuit, and automated transit system using large booster sleds used for cheap travel between the Jovian states. There's also stuff about Extra-Vehicular Activity (EVA), which amounts to your usual airlock shenanigans (though it notes that space stations prefer a lower-than-Earth pressure to eliminate those decompression phases) and some general stuff about rescue and salvage missions. More interesting is the section of space racing, including exo-amors and solar sails. We also find out that ships can use laser cannons for emergency communications. Funky. And no space section in a hard sci-fi book would be complete without talk about the various ways you can die in space, with the main dangers being decompression, fire and radiation. There's also mention how the various nations deal with evacuations. O'Neill Cylinders are like the Titanic in that there aren't enough lifeboats for everyone. Should your cylinder need to be evacuated, you're probably boned. Economy The solar system's economy separates each solar nation into its own exchange region, largely due to the distances and time delay in communication. There are credits as the universal currency, but every nation has its own currency as well: Mercury has Ration Points, Venus, has Yen (of course), CEGA and the Moon has the Dollar, Orbitals use SHAREs, Jovians use the Franc (so they're French?), and the two Mars nations each have their own variation of the Mark (just like post-war Germany). Belters use whatever they like most, but they prefer bartering. There's an exchange rate table in case you don't just go with credits for everyone. A lot is done digitally, but there are still proper bills. In terms of stocks, Jupiter's the biggest one around. There's also some general stuff on manufactoring, resource collection and mining, but it's nothing too fancy. Law Space stations suck for criminals, as everyone is known by a lot of other people and there's little place to hide your activities. Every settlement and station has its own laws, and they generally don't use juries because those take too much time. I'll just summarize each nations' particular legal shtick:
There's a short section on black markets, but it's your usual affair. Same with piracy and smuggling. Well, this really wasn't as long as I feared. Some sections are very obvious, but there's some nice background information to be found. Next Time: Weapons & Equipment for everyone! How much do you wanna bet that the guns take a nosedive in lethality when converted to d20 stats?
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# ? Feb 12, 2015 22:25 |
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Doresh posted:Phew, I was worried there for a sec. I've been trying to develop a cyberpunk heartbreaker recently where one of the lifestylers are essentially elderly Gen-Xers and Milennials, propped up by cyber and drugs, pissed off that they never got the future they were promised: gently caress jetpacks, where's my Social Security and Medicare?
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# ? Feb 13, 2015 00:59 |
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Young Freud posted:I've been trying to develop a cyberpunk heartbreaker recently where one of the lifestylers are essentially elderly Gen-Xers and Milennials, propped up by cyber and drugs, pissed off that they never got the future they were promised: gently caress jetpacks, where's my Social Security and Medicare?
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# ? Feb 13, 2015 04:10 |
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pkfan2004 posted:I am unironically in love with that idea and would want to subscribe to your newsletter. Hopefully I'll get something finished this year on it. The game engine is essentially Open D6 with some tweaks and twerks and I want to keep the game open that anyone can use it like a toolset, so writing has been loose and the world is explained through the gameplay elements, but the challenge is that I've really been trying to do all the art on my own since I wanted to use the experience to pump up my portfolio and, man, is it hard to flesh out even minor things like logos and incidentals.
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# ? Feb 13, 2015 04:34 |
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Open D6 really needs more love, and this is a pretty nifty idea. And man, I hope you don't have that problem of delaying everything because you constantly come up with new/altered stuff. That's driving me nuts for my potential magical girl parody setting/story thing <_<
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# ? Feb 14, 2015 15:52 |
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Doresh posted:Open D6 really needs more love, and this is a pretty nifty idea. It really does and I've been listening to a lot of the complaints in this thread and on System Mastery about some of the games and finding solutions. I like the idea of the Wild Die, for instance, but agree that it shouldn't be a total gamekiller. One of my ideas is to give players a choice in how it affects them, especially in regards to common tasks like combat. For instance, roll a 1 on the Wild Die during a dodge test, a player can either choose to drop the highest die (and with some traits giving multiple Wild Dies, that would mean dropping an exploded die), or roll on random location. or, roll a Wild Die 1 on a soak test, and you have to choose between dropping a high die (which could kill you) or taking an impairment. I think it's largely once I figured out the probability curve for Open D6, it appealed to my simulationist tendencies without getting bogged too heavily into Phoenix Command levels while still allowing for a lot of narrative input. Ironically, what got me into Open D6 was doing conversions from RIFTS into TORG (where the Revised & Expanded edition had conversions to Open D6) and liking what I came up with: stuff like the Glitter Boy ended up turning out as tough as an M1 Abrams tank (which considering it's a 9 foot humanoid robot, that's good enough), hand lasers were equivalent to .50 calibers MGs, and even if the maximum armor value for environmental armor was super high thanks to MDC, an average human could still be injured by normal assault rifles, just not as much. Everything was more powerful than normal weapons, but not immune or too devastating. Doresh posted:And man, I hope you don't have that problem of delaying everything because you constantly come up with new/altered stuff. That's driving me nuts for my potential magical girl parody setting/story thing <_< I do, but most of the player lifestyles/"races", augmentations, gear, and skills are pretty much finished and I'm using an already established system (with it's own roots in stuff like TORG). It's really fluff that I need to sit down and iron out. I'd really like to talk more about this, and kinda wish there was a heartbreaker thread I can discuss more of this and probably motivate me more. BTW, here's some art work (in progress)...
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# ? Feb 15, 2015 04:47 |
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Young Freud posted:BTW, here's some art work (in progress)... ... I'm not sure how I feel about this.
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# ? Feb 15, 2015 05:37 |
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They look like extras from Digital Devil Saga gently caress, now I really want an RPG based on that
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# ? Feb 15, 2015 06:11 |
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Evil Mastermind posted:... Scrap Dragon posted:They look like extras from Digital Devil Saga No joke, I've been going through Kazuma Kaneko's works like DDS and Maken X as well as JoJo's Bizarre Adventure for costuming ideas. Punks gotta turn this poo poo up to 11 these days.
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# ? Feb 15, 2015 06:21 |
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They're legit good; I was trying to make a joke. e: I did it badly.
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# ? Feb 15, 2015 06:34 |
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Evil Mastermind posted:They're legit good; I was trying to make a joke. Yeah, I wasn't sure what the complaint was about. I'll admit, the last one is really pushing the envelope. I even went through your post history in this thread to see if it was something about Open D6, since I brought it up.
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# ? Feb 15, 2015 06:57 |
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Young Freud posted:Yeah, I wasn't sure what the complaint was about. I'll admit, the last one is really pushing the envelope. I even went through your post history in this thread to see if it was something about Open D6, since I brought it up. Oddly enough, I think the last one of those three is probably my favorite. Guy just looks pretty cool.
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# ? Feb 15, 2015 08:29 |
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The last one definitely seems to have the strongest Shin Megami Tensei vibe going on.Young Freud posted:I think it's largely once I figured out the probability curve for Open D6, it appealed to my simulationist tendencies without getting bogged too heavily into Phoenix Command levels while still allowing for a lot of narrative input. Ironically, what got me into Open D6 was doing conversions from RIFTS into TORG (where the Revised & Expanded edition had conversions to Open D6) and liking what I came up with: stuff like the Glitter Boy ended up turning out as tough as an M1 Abrams tank (which considering it's a 9 foot humanoid robot, that's good enough), hand lasers were equivalent to .50 calibers MGs, and even if the maximum armor value for environmental armor was super high thanks to MDC, an average human could still be injured by normal assault rifles, just not as much. Everything was more powerful than normal weapons, but not immune or too devastating. Sometimes, it's the simpe dice pool mechanic that has the last laugh.
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# ? Feb 15, 2015 11:20 |
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Doresh posted:Sometimes, it's the simpe dice pool mechanic that has the last laugh. Less a dice pool mechanic and more having to do with opposed die rolls, since they have logarithmic scaling of probability. The reason I got back into TORG had a lot to do with Ray Winninger's Underground, which also had a logarithmic progression. If you're curious, I did my conversion based off something I noticed in RIFTS, especially in Merc Ops, where they stated out a .50 caliber heavy machinegun as 1D6 per 10-round burst. I just calculated the energy from such a burst then went around dividing everything in RIFTS by 6 and adding the difference in TORG/Masterbook/Open D6 value to that value of .50 BMG x 10. For instance, with the Glitter Boy, with a .50 BMG x10 doing something like 27 DV and 770 MDC/6 = 128, which has a value of 11. Adding those together (since adding values in TORG/Masterbook/Open D6 and Underground is like multiplying the numbers they represent), you get 38 or 12D+2, which is comparable to a heavy tank like an Abrams (33 total Toughness) or a Leopard 2 (31 TOU with a +2 for it's special spaced-armor ability vs. HESH rounds) in TORG. Although, I will admit, these are the late 80s versions of those tanks, the modern equivalents would be something in the high 30s, maybe going into TOU 40, thanks to increased armor protection, efficiency, and stuff like reactive armor paneling. Gun wise, a Wilks' Laser Pistol would have a DV 27 in TORG, which is about 3 points higher than Cyberpapacy laser pistol but not higher than the Space Aztec's hand blaster in a later TORG sourcebook. Likewise, the Coalition laser pistol as well as NG Super-Laser Pistol and the Heavy Ion Blaster do something like a DV 28, while laser rifles do something like DV 29. These numbers sound enormous, but even in TORG, they're survivable if you wearing high-tech body armor and/or have cyber-armor or huge toughness. It fits in with the "high-tech weapons and armor are loving dangerous to mess with" and "a Coalition deserter with a laser pistol is a God in the backwoods, let alone a Glitter Boy" that RIFTS has while still giving a chance to low-tech opponents instead of completely writing them off. I'm about to start seeing "Jesus Christ" posts following this, or post questioning my sanity doing this.
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# ? Feb 15, 2015 13:26 |
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Young Freud posted:I'd really like to talk more about this, and kinda wish there was a heartbreaker thread I can discuss more of this and probably motivate me more. This or this is effectively the heartbreaker thread.
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# ? Feb 15, 2015 15:20 |
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Young Freud posted:Yeah, I wasn't sure what the complaint was about. I'll admit, the last one is really pushing the envelope. I even went through your post history in this thread to see if it was something about Open D6, since I brought it up. No, I actually like the art (and am neutral on Open D6). I was more referring to the sexual nature of the pictures and failing to make a joke about it.
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# ? Feb 15, 2015 17:05 |
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Young Freud posted:I'm about to start seeing "Jesus Christ" posts following this, or post questioning my sanity doing this. I see myself doing stuff like this when doing conversions.
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# ? Feb 15, 2015 20:15 |
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Young Freud posted:BTW, here's some art work (in progress)... This is gorgeous. I love both the subject-matter and execution.
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# ? Feb 16, 2015 02:31 |
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Young Freud posted:BTW, here's some art work (in progress)... Her pants have a butt window. (the style is pretty cool but lol)
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# ? Feb 16, 2015 17:50 |
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I think her pants have a butt window for the same reason the guys have an everything window and prominent codpieces.
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# ? Feb 16, 2015 18:01 |
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We read Deliria: Fairy Tales for a New Millennium. It's about 170 pages of bullshit and whimsy in this book before you actually encounter a ruling of any kind. Assistance for this podcast provided by Pinnacle Strawberry Vokda. "It's way too sweet!"
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# ? Feb 16, 2015 18:36 |
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Night10194 posted:I think her pants have a butt window for the same reason the guys have an everything window and prominent codpieces.
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# ? Feb 16, 2015 18:42 |
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Night10194 posted:I think her pants have a butt window for the same reason the guys have an everything window and prominent codpieces. The razorgirl's clothing idea came a lot from club fashion, since her outfit is meant for both fighting and clubbing. It was also supposed to match with her open back, which, when I get back to finishing this piece, will have a bunch of glowing subdermal wire-work for her augmented reflexes. Edit: to be honest, I really think I should make more art work for this game instead of trying to explain myself. Have the work sort of explain it for me. Young Freud fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Feb 16, 2015 |
# ? Feb 16, 2015 19:22 |
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theironjef posted:
You didn't see Independence Day until after 2002?
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# ? Feb 17, 2015 01:45 |
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Plague of Hats posted:You didn't see Independence Day until after 2002? poo poo that was like 1994, wasn't it. I am not joking about the vodka, this was a late night one.
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# ? Feb 17, 2015 01:57 |
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No but for real though. Like a lot of vodka.
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# ? Feb 17, 2015 02:21 |
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You guys are a little poo poo at top-of-the-head dates anyway! That one just stuck out to me 'cause you usually at least get the right decade.
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# ? Feb 17, 2015 02:25 |
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# ? Oct 4, 2024 05:31 |
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Young Freud posted:The razorgirl's clothing idea came a lot from club fashion, since her outfit is meant for both fighting and clubbing. It was also supposed to match with her open back, which, when I get back to finishing this piece, will have a bunch of glowing subdermal wire-work for her augmented reflexes. That sounds hella rad, yeah. Please post it sometime
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# ? Feb 17, 2015 14:19 |