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Evil Mastermind posted:I don't think we've ever seen anything as pretentious as THE SECRET FIRE (tm). Then pardon my spelling error. It has been a while since I bathed in its glory.
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Apr 19, 2015 20:43
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Doresh posted:Then pardon my spelling error. It has been a while since I bathed in its glory. Likewise; mainly because whenever I go back to my review all I can see are my spelling errors and bad writing. 
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Apr 19, 2015 20:52
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Evil Mastermind posted:I don't think we've ever seen anything as pretentious as THE SECRET FIRE (tm). I had forgotten about that turd pile. Why must you remind me!?!
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Apr 19, 2015 21:45
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Kai Tave posted:When people talk about games that use made-up fantasy alphabet soup words for common things and then refuse to explain what the hell they're talking about, they're talking about Secret of Zir'an. The equipment section is full of poo poo like that with lists of gobbledigook for sale that the book refuses to elaborate on expect by inference, and not always very well. I think honestly I have no bigger pet peeve with fantasy settings(or sci-fi, but it happens less regularly there) than when they rename stuff just to be unique. I mean, yes, great, it's a ghoul, I'm not going to be awed by the fact that you're calling it a gul instead. That? That's a vampire. No, it's not a loving "fampyr," it's a vampire. It drinks blood and it charms/dominates dudes, melts in the sun, it's a loving vampire.
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Apr 19, 2015 22:50
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Genius: The Transgression, Inspiration, Obligation, and Mania Time for a lot of crunch! What does Inspiration do for you mechanically? Quite a lot, actually. First, it determines your maximum Mania and how much Mania you can spend in one turn. More dots in Inspiration, more Mania. Second, it determines the number of dots in non-favored axioms you can buy. Favored axioms can be bought to any level, but for the other five your maximum number of dots is limited to the number of dots of Inspiration you have. If you somehow have more dots in a non-favored axiom than you have dots of Inspiration (say, by losing dots of Inspiration or changing foundations), you don't get the benefit of the excess axiom dots until your Inspiration grows to match. Third, through unspecified self-experimentation or sheer power of Inspiration and/or insanity, at Inspiration 6 or higher a genius can increase their attributes and skills past the normal human maximum of five dots. Fourth, when targeted by supernatural effects, a genius adds their Inspiration to the relevant stat to resist. Finally, geniuses never suffer penalties from unfamiliar application of a skill due to Inspiration - a genius with the Drive skill is equally adept at driving cars, motorcycles, semis, planes, starships, etc. Graph time! Genius posted:Inspiration | Stat Maximum | Max Mania | Max Mania/turn | Jabir Penalty Jabir is the genius' sperg mechanic I've referred to before. Genius posted:As a genius grows more powerful, his Inspiration shines out of him to illuminate the world. This can be a Unmada and Illuminated crunch! Genius posted:Certain actions, like engaging in Deep Inspiration or transferring excessive Mania to oneself, trigger an Mania crunch! Stuff you can do with Mania: Genius posted:● Enhance Mental Attributes. Mania is, among other things, pure intellectual and creative energy. Every point Personally, I think a lot of these clash pretty badly with the nature of Mania and Inspiration. Inspiration is flatly supernatural and what geniuses do explicitly is not true science or engineering. Yet somehow they have a special affinity for all forms of genuine technology. I appreciate that it's invariably destructive to the machine in question, but I think it's still a case of the writers trying to have their magic/tech cake and eat it, too. How do you recover Mania? A number of ways. First, geniuses regain one point of Mania every day because they're "constantly thinking and scheming." Unmada, however, do not. More will be explained in their crunch section later, but Unmada actually lose a point of Mania every day. Genius posted:Research: I like these, no complaints. They're thematically appropriate and work to encourage thematic mad scientist behavior. We're now briefly given some uninteresting rules for transferring Mania and functionally they're simple. Geniuses can freely share Mania with each other but run into trouble if they start to receive more Mania than they can normally deal with per turn. Obligation now crops up again, and it's still the morality stat. While fundamentally insane, most geniuses feel some sense of duty to the rest of the world to do something with their gifts. A genius who truly cares for nothing but herself and her work becomes Illuminated. Genius posted:Obligation Transgression Sucks to be you, AI researchers and especially transhumanists. The Progenitors are boned. And a few last bits of crunch for this part. Genius posted:Benefits of Obligation:
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Apr 19, 2015 23:11
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Going a month without human contact is equivalent to premeditated murder? WTF?
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Apr 19, 2015 23:29
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PurpleXVI posted:I think honestly I have no bigger pet peeve with fantasy settings(or sci-fi, but it happens less regularly there) than when they rename stuff just to be unique. I mean, yes, great, it's a ghoul, I'm not going to be awed by the fact that you're calling it a gul instead. That? That's a vampire. No, it's not a loving "fampyr," it's a vampire. It drinks blood and it charms/dominates dudes, melts in the sun, it's a loving vampire. I don't even mind that poo poo because at least it's obvious that "ghul" is just a slightly different spelling of "ghoul," like that's fine. It's when you decide to call a thunder axe a "dundregash" that you've completely left comprehensibility behind.
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Apr 19, 2015 23:31
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:I had forgotten about that turd pile. Why must you remind me!?! Because that review is still my magnum opus and probably the best thing I've ever written. 
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Apr 19, 2015 23:34
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How does Genius feel about 'off-label' uses of the Axioms? F'rex, using the space-travel axiom to drop big rocks on something (duplicating the effect of the blow-things-up axiom).
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Apr 19, 2015 23:38
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Kai Tave posted:When people talk about games that use made-up fantasy alphabet soup words for common things and then refuse to explain what the hell they're talking about, they're talking about Secret of Zir'an. Well now I may not disagree but a little Thriddle told me you might have forgotten about Skyrealms of Jorune, and them's dysho words. Get your muadras and boccords up, cause it's open gytherin season and I've got a condrij for some scragger. Kolovisondra. Tauther. Gire of Sillipus.
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Apr 19, 2015 23:43
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The Lone Badger posted:How does Genius feel about 'off-label' uses of the Axioms? F'rex, using the space-travel axiom to drop big rocks on something (duplicating the effect of the blow-things-up axiom). It tells you that that would be Katastrofi because that's for blowing stuff up and shut up.  It addresses the same idea if you try to use Metatropi to do things like turn people to stone.As a DM I'd certainly allow it, but Genius is of the opinion that each axiom has a specific function and anything that would accomplish that function should therefore fall under that axiom. quote:Going a month without human contact is equivalent to premeditated murder? WTF? The idea is that going without human contact slowly drives you mad from the corrosive, alien power of Inspiration. A mad scientist who goes hermit goes batshit very quickly, while the relatively sane geniuses stay active in the community - if only the mad scientist community.
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Apr 19, 2015 23:43
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Cythereal posted:The idea is that going without human contact slowly drives you mad from the corrosive, alien power of Inspiration. A mad scientist who goes hermit goes batshit very quickly, while the relatively sane geniuses stay active in the community - if only the mad scientist community. Nah, I can understand that leading to being more and more dehumanized, but it feels like the time you're self-isolating should either be longer at higher levels or revised to be lower levels. Like "one week without human contact" should be more like Obligation 10, instead of mid-way through the list. I can even think 6 would be more like living a year like a hermit.
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Apr 19, 2015 23:50
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theironjef posted:Well now I may not disagree but a little Thriddle told me you might have forgotten about Skyrealms of Jorune, and them's dysho words. Get your muadras and boccords up, cause it's open gytherin season and I've got a condrij for some scragger. Kolovisondra. Tauther. Gire of Sillipus. Are you having a stroke? Do we need to call someone? 
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Apr 19, 2015 23:51
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Kai Tave posted:I don't even mind that poo poo because at least it's obvious that "ghul" is just a slightly different spelling of "ghoul," like that's fine. It's when you decide to call a thunder axe a "dundregash" that you've completely left comprehensibility behind. If you feel like being pedantic you can argue that 'ghul' is the more correct term; ghoul, after all, is the anglicized form of the word, which transliterates into ghul from Arabic. Not, mind you, that ghouls as encountered in D&D have much relation to a ghul. But there's an actual linguistic thing going on there, where dundregash is just random syllables. I do enjoy when fantasy decides to shove punctuation into nouns, though. I get to pretend it's tongue clicks.
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Apr 19, 2015 23:51
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Mors Rattus posted:If you feel like being pedantic you can argue that 'ghul' is the more correct term; ghoul, after all, is the anglicized form of the word, which transliterates into ghul from Arabic. I'm still waiting for someone to take the big plunge past apostrophes and dashes and put an # in there. Evil Mastermind posted:Are you having a stroke? Do we need to call someone? Isho am! Sholari anyone can see that! Bronth!
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Apr 19, 2015 23:55
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The general rule for making up fantasy languages and vocabularies is: unless you are a learned professor of languages or philology who has dedicated your life to the field (JRR Tolkien, MAR Barker), don't.
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Apr 19, 2015 23:57
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In case you're wondering, by the way, the actual written symbol for a tongue-click is the exclamation mark. If you see that in a word, it means 'click your tongue'. It is found mostly in the !Kung language, but a few others. (There are a few other symbols, but ! is the big one.) An apostrophe usually means a glottal stop.
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Apr 20, 2015 00:00
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theironjef posted:Isho am! Sholari anyone can see that! Bronth! Oy! Check the barmy way this addle-cove's rattlin' his bone-box!
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Apr 20, 2015 00:00
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Ratpick posted:
Oh, hey, I had that game. Except in the first edition the annoying grey watermark behind the text is actually printed in black on two of the pages, making them completely unreadable and meaning they had to be put on the website..
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Apr 20, 2015 00:07
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Cythereal posted:Also, any suggestions for improving the review in general? I'd probably quote less, but that could just be an aesthetic thing; you certainly do have an issue with having to break up blocks of text, but I think more succinct and amusing quotations would probably serve better. I generally tend to save quoting for "just so you don't know I'm making this poo poo up", though sometimes I overdo it too. The Play Dirty review I did probably overquoted, but that was loaded with "just so you don't know I'm making this poo poo up", sooo. It's always a tricky judgment call, but I'd usually rather hear an author's smirky summary than a full block of original text.
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Apr 20, 2015 00:49
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Mors Rattus posted:In case you're wondering, by the way, the actual written symbol for a tongue-click is the exclamation mark. If you see that in a word, it means 'click your tongue'. It is found mostly in the !Kung language, but a few others. (There are a few other symbols, but ! is the big one.) An apostrophe usually means a glottal stop.
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Apr 20, 2015 00:50
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I'd probably quote less, but that could just be an aesthetic thing; you certainly do have an issue with having to break up blocks of text, but I think more succinct and amusing quotations would probably serve better. I generally tend to save quoting for "just so you don't know I'm making this poo poo up", though sometimes I overdo it too. The Play Dirty review I did probably overquoted, but that was loaded with "just so you don't know I'm making this poo poo up", sooo. It's always a tricky judgment call, but I'd usually rather hear an author's smirky summary than a full block of original text. Fair enough, I've mainly been resorting to big quotes for crunch-heavy stuff and more descriptive original writing for fluff. Unfortunately, this is the crunch-heavy part of Genius, but I'll try more original writing next if no one's interested in the details of how everything works mechanically.
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Apr 20, 2015 00:55
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That reminds me, I forgot to ask how my Log Horizon F&F was. It didn't generate quite as much of a response, so idk if I was doing anything right or wrong. I want to do another F&F at some point of some other games, but I want to up my RPG reviewing game.
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Apr 20, 2015 04:27
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Xelkelvos posted:That reminds me, I forgot to ask how my Log Horizon F&F was. It didn't generate quite as much of a response, so idk if I was doing anything right or wrong. I want to do another F&F at some point of some other games, but I want to up my RPG reviewing game. I thought it was pretty good myself. You hit the relevant notes, got across information well and succinctly, used it to tie into the setting, and in general sold the game pretty well. I have read worse F&F write-ups to be frank. And I personally recall there was a decent handful of people talking about it as well, so I'd say it did generate a response.
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Apr 20, 2015 05:25
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Xelkelvos posted:That reminds me, I forgot to ask how my Log Horizon F&F was. It didn't generate quite as much of a response, so idk if I was doing anything right or wrong. I want to do another F&F at some point of some other games, but I want to up my RPG reviewing game. Yeah, it was a solid review, the reason it might not have gotten a super huge amount of response is the lack of stuff to mock, tt wasn't any pretentious designer's weirdo fetish baby, and possibly people not being too familiar with the source material.
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Apr 20, 2015 08:11
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I think that's about it, really. Log Horizon struck me as an adequate execution of a not-entirely-unheard of concept but it wasn't full of sidebars about how it's great to gently caress dogs or libertarian space furries, and on the opposite end of things nothing about it seemed completely amazingly awesome, so there's just not much to say about it.
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Apr 20, 2015 08:24
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Adventure Fantasy Game, part 2 In part 1, we covered the core mechanic, character generation, and basic combat. Experience and Character Growth AFG makes it clear right off the bat that it does not use experience points. Instead, it relies on three things: 1. Practical use of skills, as we've seen in the core mechanic's EXPERT and MASTER progression 2. Accomplishments, which we've covered in character generation as short statements that a player writes down as something that they want their character to strive for 3. Plundering, which is the more traditional method of looting dungeons Plundering quote:A typical way to gain a level playing AFG is to get your character's party to recover treasures and bring them to a safe place. Recovering treasures from dangerous places is one of the main tropes of the fantasy and adventure genres. Dungeons contain Treasure Troves (capitalized, as in that's a specific in-game mechanic). If a party enters a Holding (again, a keyword) that is equal or higher level than they are, and they recover a Treasure Trove from it, and they bring the Trove out to safety, the party members all gain a level. Every significant place that the players adventure in should have anywhere from one to three Holdings. Each Holding should have a Treasure Trove, whether it's a powerful magical item, or a plot-critical MacGuffin, or even just a ton of gold, but also that each Holding should have its share of encounters such that a Treasure Trove should only ever be gained with "considerable work from the players". It's mentioned throughout this section that whatever you do with the Experience/Growth rules, the point is that players should only advance if they're done something significant. Finally, this section comes with a footnote: quote:If you are wondering if this makes AFG an heist-oriented game then, dear reader, you are perfectly right. Accomplishments If you recall, back in Character Creation I mentioned that while characters have Levels, they also have Tiers: quote:Level 1 to 3 = Tier 1 And that Tiers are important because your Fighting Capacity in combat is [Tier - 1] The way this works is that while Plundering will increase your levels, you can only advance to the highest level of your tier via Plundering. In order to get to the next Tier, you have to fulfill one of the Accomplishments you wrote down when you created your character. Advancing to Tier 2 might entail a pilgrimage to the holy city of a character's faith, or perhaps gaining street cred within the setting's large, sprawling imperial capital. Advancing to Tier 3 could be gaining ownership of a plot of land (OSR's Name level, essentially), and so on. The game also mentions that players will eventually use up all of the initial Accomplishments they wrote down, and so they should form new ones as the need arises, as well as to further serve as guides for a campaign's development as it evolves. The game also acknowledges that since only three Accomplishments are needed to get to the fourth and final tier, the group can use Accomplishments to trigger other sorts of rewards as well, particularly in the realm of increasing one's stats. It also mentions that the Accomplishments that players write down and seek out can steer the tone and flavor of the game, and that the GM should make full use of these as plot points. A player that wants to avenge his father's death at the hands of a Mad Baron can serve as inspiration for the GM to make a Mad Baron archvillain right then and there. Finally, players that manage to get to the very end of progression as level 12, tier 4 characters can undertake Endgame Accomplishments, which is when they cross into becoming the stuff of legends. Accomplishments of this scale should be things like uniting the Seven Kingdoms and actually becoming the Emperor, or turning an entire mountain into the vast sprawling capital, or becoming the Greatest Sorceror of all time, or communing with the gods and serving as their personal Prophet, and other such feats. Holdings and Treasure Troves (I had originally intended to cover spells next, but I'm going to go into Holdings instead since it was mentioned in the Plundering section) quote:Holdings are not the only places where adventures, combat with monsters and treasure-hunting happens. They are, however, the only places that hold treasure that confers an experience level when successfully plundered. A Holding's physical space is best described as a cohesive, stylistically recognisable and circumscribed set of locales. Holdings can be the entirety or portions of castles, forts, dungeon levels, hideouts, ruins, crypts, cairns and lairs: it's possible to have Holdings within Holdings. The writing continues to be very honest about its genre tropes: entering a Holding should be a deliberate transition, with the most common one being a special dungeon door, while an outdoor holding might cause a sudden shift in the surrounding foliage, light level, and wildlife noise. Such transitions are necessary in order to telegraph to the players that they are now in "Exploration mode" to find Treasure Troves and that hostile encounters might ensue. At this point we get to some guidelines: * A Holding should be as the same level as the players, or higher. * The monsters in the Holding should be of the same level as that of the Holding (and by extension of the players). * There's a table listing how many monsters there should be for a Holding of any given level. A level 1 Holding should have 7d6 residents, and then it goes down by roughly 1d6 per level, until Tier 4 Holdings only have 1d6 residents, ostensibly to reflect that by then the players should be tackling few-but-individually-very-strong Dragons, Frost Giants, Liches and the like * At the end of every Holding there should be a Treasure Trove, containing [Level ^ 2 * 3d6 * 10] thalers (AFG's currency) worth of Treasure. 20-70% of the Trove's value should directly be in thaler coins, while the rest should be in valuable goods * Each Trove should also have a single Special Item that the GM can roll for via table Remember that since combat consists mostly of Hits and Fighting Capability, Holdings should be fairly straightforward to fill out with monsters: A level 1 Holding might have 30 skeletons with 1d6 Hits each and 0 FC, spread out over a bunch of rooms, culminating in an encounter with a 2d6 Hit/1 FC Necromancer at the very end. Reskin the skeletons as goblins and the necromancer as a warchief. The game even presents an example where a castle is split up into three different Holdings. Finally, from the Special Item section: First, do a 1d6 roll to determine what kind of item it is: 1 gives you a Plot Device, or an item that has a marginal monetary value but is critical to advancing the plot of the setting 2 gets you a valuable trinket worth 2d6 * 100 thaler 3-5 gets you a Magical Item 6 gets you a Great Item from a d66 table. Examples: quote:Magic Broom. Can be ridden by two people and fly at 100'/round. A rider must spend 1 Mana for each hour of travel. By now you might be wondering why I haven't posted any art from the book. That's because there isn't any. On a personal note, this is my first time doing this kind of write-up, so any feedback would be appreciated
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Apr 20, 2015 11:34
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The storm has a name... - Let's Read TORG Part 12b: Economic realities  Chapter Two is about The Cosm, which means we're going to learn about how Marketplace wound up in its current situation. The creation myth of the world of Marketplace has, in fact, been made illegal by the worlds' government as part of the banning of the former global religion. The world was originally called Gokuraku, and was a "verdant, abundant world" where there was no real concept of need. Everyone was able to have what they wanted, and there was no real concept of "greed" or self-ambition as we think of it. quote:All of this changed, according to the legend, when a villager named Weng-Ju scaled a mountain peak and discovered a great valley, cut in two by a sparkling river. All about him he could see trees heavy with golden chestnuts, thickets filled with wild figs and almonds. Never before had he seen such beauty, and of a sudden a dark thought crept into his mind: no one else but he could truly appreciate the wonder of this place, so no othereyes must be allowed to look upon it. That's the legend, anyway. But before we get to that, we run headlong into Standard Torg Disorganization and now we're learning about the Geography and Environment. Modern-day Marketplace, like most of the invading cosms, is fairly similar to Core Earth. It has smaller landmasses spread out over its surface, a similar climate, and so on. But the expansion of the corporations has even had an effect on this.  This is a different world, all right. Due to a rapidly expanding population, the landmasses are not only completely covered by megaplexes, the giant cities have actually had to start building out over the oceans on raised platforms. All available land has been covered by the megacities; there is no "natural" land left. No forests, no mountains, no beaches. Everything has been paved flat and built on. There's barely any wildlife left as well; at most you'll see wild "domesticated" animals like dogs in the back alleys. This, of course, has had a terrible effect on the environment. The heavy reliance on industrialization has caused extreme global warming. Summers are long, and winters have large temperature swings. In fact, there's so little difference between the seasons now the only way to tell them apart is by the changes in temperature and rainfall. The megaplexes themselves are the ultimate urban nightmare sprawl. Giant skyscrapers and run-down buildings crowd together along narrow streets, and even though "hover cars" exist, few can afford them so the streets are constantly clogged with traffic. The environment outside of the megaplexes is a wreck. The extreme climate changes combined with the heavy polution from non-stop industrialization mean that the air and water are pretty much destroyed. A thick smog hangs over most of the planet's surface, and the oceans are toxic slurries The near-total destruction of the environment has been "dealt with" by creating sealed-off environments in most of the world. Large chunks of megaplexes (that are owned and lived in by the wealthy) are enclosed, UV-shielded, have water filtration, and are climate controlled. The poorer sections of the megaplexes, however, aren't as lucky. quote:Water pollution is no less severe, with industrial waste pumped daily into the rivers and seas. Apartment These abysmal living conditions are only seen as business opportunities by the corporations. There's a huge market for anti-polution devices, air filtration masks, and UV-resistant clothing. And if people don't want to buy? Well, then the "lower classes" problem pretty much takes care of itself. quote:Hanwa, in the arctic zone, is the most challenging continent upon which to live, but also the safest, for few of the burakumin can survive for long outdoors and thus the level of street crime is low. The nest section is The History of Marketplace, and covers the actual history of the cosm. For the most part, Marketplace's historical development was roughly the same most places on Core Earth. There was the give-and-take between the main cities and the rural areas, each supporting the other. There were wars of various sizes that led to an extended period of peace. And that's where things started to go bad. The extended peace made the various corporations that had been profiting off the various wars nervous; war stimulates the economy, and without major conflicts it was beginning to stagnate. A coalition of arms dealers hired numerous ronin flare up minor border conflicts and bribed government officials to fan the flames of hostility. It wasn't long before small conflicts sprang up and and the money started rolling in again. Thus were private corporate intelligence services born. Things escalated into another world-wide war, with the mutitions companies raking it in and pulling the strings behind the scenes. Then something happened that was beyond even the companies' wildest dreams. quote:But the war had a happy side effect the companies had not anticipated - weakened by public outcries against the war, governments began to topple, and the people turned to successful businessmen to rule in the place of politicians and kings. Any corporate executive who was hired to run the coallition of governing companies would invariably favor his old company in "govenment" matters. This would lead to people from rival corporations hiring freelance ninjas (and eventually bringing them onto the payroll) to eliminate the leader so they could place their own stooge in his place. This cycle repeated so much it led to bloody corporate warfare across the land, and resulted in a summit between the major CEOs. Realizing that there was no way to have one person in charge be completely neutral, and that each corporation had a stranglehold on its own territory, they reached a descision: the corporations took direct control of the government, disolved all national borders, and started a one-world government run by the three largest corporations at the time. The first thing the new Triad did was institute a worldwide change that tied the larger culture to their control. quote:The three firms instituted a system in which names were replaced by numbers which, along with a retina scan, served as an access code for computer banking and shopping, as well as entrance to buildings throughout the cosm. Without a number and a known retina pattern, it is virtually impossible to accomplish anything in Marketplace (the numbers consist of four digits followed by seven decimal places, i.e. 3327.7257901, but most people are commonly referred to by the £rst four digits only). Ignored in all of this, for the most part, were the world's social ills, which had resulted in more and more people turning to the religion of Palan. When 3327 got his seat on the Triad, he instituted the First Article of Incorporation: quote:"Whereas, citizens of Marketplace have the inalienable right to own property; And now we learn about the Government. Since I've talked way too much about the background of the cosm that you can't easily go to in-game, I'll just sum up here. The Triad consists of the CEOs of the three most powerful corporations in Marketplace. There's no elections or anything; Triad membership is determined by company profits and holdings. The current members of the Triad are:
 The Triad in a rare face-to-face meeting The will of the Triad is enforced by Marketplace Security, who act as "law enforcement", but whose real job is to maintain the interests of the corprorations. MarSec has actually gotten so powerful they're almost autonomous now, but thanks again to the Law of Intrigue the larger it gets the more traitors from rebel groups start showing up. Regardless, MarSec tends to treat the lower classes with a "shoot first, ask questions never" policy. One of MarSec's main jobs is enforcing one of Marketplaces most important laws: corporations must produce profits. If a corporate executive does something that causes his company to dip into the red, it's quite common for that executive to bankrupt himself to counter the corporate loss. If he fails, then MarSec steps in. The executive is informed by a MarSec agent that he has dishonored both himself and the firm, and is given 24 hours to redeem himself by generating enough profits to make up the loss, at which point he must commit suicide as the price of his failure.  And don't even think about asking for a gold watch. At which point MarSec stacks the deck against the poor bastard. He's immediately escorted from the building to his apartment (away from his files), all his personal possessions are confiscated to be given to his successor at the company, and he is then padlocked into his apartment and a guard is placed on the door. It's at this point that the executive will be informed that his number and retnal pattern have been erased from the system. He's ultimately cut off from any legal access to methods of generating profit. If the executive doesn't kill himself in the 24-hour stewing period, MarSec will do it for him...unless the guy can escape pursuit. MarSec denys all rumors that this has happened, of course. (It's worth pointing out that even 3327 is subject to this rule; if he ever failed to make a profit, MarSec would be fully empowered to hunt him down and kill him. They'd probably succeed, too, since Daikoku will drop 3327 like a hot potato should he fail to earn.) And from here we bounce to Money and Economy. The base monetary unit in Marketplace is the credit, and only exists in digital form. One credit is worth about $2 or ¥240. All banking is done via computer, and means that every transaction made is closely monitored by the corporations. quote:Under this system, a banking transaction would work like this: 2730 wishes to remove cr~dits from his account to purchase a jeweled dagger. He enters his number into a terminal and submits to a retina scan of his right eye. When the computer determines that the retina pattern matches that logged in 2730' s file, it will inquire about the nature of the transaction. The next section is just the names of the largest corporations, but forgive me for skipping it because it's pretty must just a list of names. Instead, I'll talk about Maelstrom Markets. Maelstrom Markets are a way that 3327 has managed to draw profits not only from other cosms, but from other Marketplace corporations. As stated previously, there is literally no place left to build on Marketplace. This means that it's impossible to create new markets anywhere in the world since everyone's under the thumbs of the corporations. When 3327 discovered Daikoku and learned of other realities, he assembled other CEOs and announced that his research teams had "accidentally" broken the transdimensional barrier. Now they could access new worlds, create new markets, and all they had to do was send operatives to these new world, set up the The next section is about 7710, 3327's protege, but since this is another plot point that's immediately forgotten you'll forgive me for skipping it. We also get a bit on ninjas, but it boils down to "see next chapter", but for now all you need to know is that every corporation pretty much has its own ninja clan working for it, but there are also freelancers. Now it's time to learn about Life in Marketplace. Marketplace operates under a pretty rigid social class sysem defined by the enconomic system. At the top of the heap are the "upper classes", the people making 50k credits or more a year, and have the best living conditions. The middle class is defined as people making between 15k to 40k ($30k to $80k) and make up the bulk of Marketplace's population. Below them are the lower middle class (10k credits or less a year), and take the economic position of "doing the jobs nobody else wants to do". Interestingly, the lower middle class generates the most MarSec agents, ninja, and ronin. Below the lower middle class are the burakumin; the homeless and hopeless who have no way to rise above their station. Due to being forced to live outside the climate controlled areas, a large percentage of the burakumin are phsyically deformed or suffering from mental illnesses. Recently, the burakumin have begun to form an organization called the Shiki in order to forcefully defend themselves against MarSec forces. Foudned by an executive who actually resigned of his own free will and renounced his number for a name, and began organizing the more capable burakumin into a fighting force in an attempt to overthrow the corporations.  This is not where they parked their car. The other group actively fighting against the corporations is Kashi. Kashi is a worldwide organization of militant ecoterrorists who want to destroy the corporations and try to fix the damage done to the world by unchecked industrialization. Unlike Shiki, Kashi actually operates heavily inside corporate culture, manipulating executives against each other and sabotaging climate control systems. Unfortuntely, they've also done a large amount of damage to the general population due to destroying the systems required to get clean air and water, or allowing defective products and medicines to be sold because a Kashi operative made important chemicals unavailable. Oh hey now we're talking about Ronin! Have I mentioned that these books aren't organized very well? There's not much here; ronin are just mercenaries, but going by the templates in the back of the book they still dress like samurai even though everything else is "modern day". Next up are mutants. These aren't the fun superhero mutants, though. Given the omnipresent pollution, lack of oversight on drug testing, and corporate sabotage, genetic mutations among the burakumin are disturbingly common. Yeah you might get super-strength, but you're more likely to get lesions in your brain. Mutants have pretty much been driven into the megaplex sewer systems, but it's not uncommon for one to completely snap and go on a killing spree. Which leads us logically to Law and Justice, of course. Laws are created by the Triad, approved by the corporations, and enforced by MarSec, end of sentence. It's a very Judge Dredd-ish situation, where technically there's trials to determine guilt, but 99% of the time MarSec is going to chase you down and put a bullet in your head for breaking the law. Especially since there's no prison system; housing, clothing, and feeding prisoners is deemed a drain on the economy. Minor crimes are punished by "exile" to the ranks of burakumin, while major crimes get the aforementioned bullet. 3327 has also begun using this "justice system" as a source of corpses for his gospog fields. We also get some info on The Sexes in Marketplace. Gender equality is the norm (and grew out of women working in munition factories during the big unnamed wars), but it's actually in a "both sexes are equally repressed" way due to how people are seen as just cogs in the machine. The megacorps actually mandate marriage and childbirth, and it's not uncommon for a marriage to be arranged as part of a corporate merger. Children are raised and taught inside the culture of their parents' corporation, often having more emotional loyalty to the company than to their parents.  Nope, nothing like Core Earth Japan at all. Fashion in Marketplace is pretty much the same as Core Earth's Japan. I don't know why there had to be a subheading on this. The last part of this chapter is about Religion, or the lack thereof. Before 3327 rose to power, organized religion was seen as just another tool used to manipulate the masses. In fact, it wasn't unknown for some corporations to work a worship of the company into its culture and preach that profits were the path to Heaven. quote:If the people were growing dissatisfied with this passive brand of religion, they didn't show it until the priests of Palan appeared. Where the order came from remains a mystery, but rumors of its origins have ranged from disaffected mega-corporate executives seeking spirituality to a vast plot by the Shiki to rally the lower classes. Unfortunately, the Palan leadership fell for it. The resulting massacre led to the death of 80% of the membership of the Palan religion, and drove the survivors underground. From there it mutated from full-blown religion to a secretive cult. They're not sitting on their haunches, either; they've learned of the Maelstrom Markets and have managed to destroy three bridges on their own. This has had the nice side-effect of causing Daikoku to think that maybe 3327 isn't as capable as it first thought. Palan priests have managed to sneak onto Core Earth, and are starting to make their presence known in the realm. Lastly, there's some stuff about adventuring in the cosm and two sample adventures but honestly who could care at this point. -- This chapter is just over 20 pages long. It talks all about the details of the cosm, which you can't easily get to, and it's the longest chapter in the book. I mean, I get that understanding how the homeworld got to the state it's in and the state it's in now will affect your understanding of the realm itself (where you're actually going to be playing), but come the gently caress on. This did not need to be this goddamn long. What's worse, there are some interesting things scattered here and there that could make things more interesting (like the Judge Dredd-style lawmen), but they stay focused on the boring details and let the actually cool stuff fly by. Hell, if I wasn't doing this read-through you you guys I never would have noticed that idea. Hopefully things'll go faster from here. At least it's only one book this time! NEXT TIME: Exciting new opportunities!
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Apr 20, 2015 19:07
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I think one of the big issues with the Marketplace is the whole "Law of Intrigue"-bit of the cosm which kind of eventually dooms any larger venture to collapse from the inside. Settings with built-in safeguards against anyone actually trying to change anything are usually a bad idea.
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Apr 20, 2015 19:24
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The art's not doing a good job at selling how lovely life is supposed to be for the average Marketplace citizen. I know they couldn't Google stuff like Kowloon and Manga cafe refugees are a more recent phenomenon, but the roads and streets are relatively uncrowded, and all the Shiki seem to have snazzy jackets and such. Totally off topic, but when did Akira come out in the west? Please tell me we get to the ninja clans next chapter  .PurpleXVI posted:Settings with built-in safeguards against anyone actually trying to change anything are usually a bad idea. That's not a game bug, it's a Metaplot feature. Kavak fucked around with this message at 19:33 on Apr 20, 2015 |
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Apr 20, 2015 19:26
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Kavak posted:The art's not doing a good job at selling how lovely life is supposed to be for the average Marketplace citizen. I know they couldn't Google stuff like Kowloon and Manga cafe refugees are a more recent phenomenon, but all the Shiki seem to have snazzy jackets and such. Totally off topic, but when did Akira come out in the west? This may be the first time someone on Something Awful is complaining that something isn't anime enough. quote:Please tell me we get to the ninja clans next chapter Torg really had no idea what the cool parts of its setting were.
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Apr 20, 2015 19:33
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Evil Mastermind posted:This may be the first time someone on Something Awful is complaining that something isn't anime enough. Oh god no, I was just suggesting that they were going to use it as inspiration for at least the look of their street gangs. Evil Mastermind posted:Sorry to disappoint, but despite the fact that we get details on all the major megacorps, there's no details at all about ninja clans. That, or someone stopped them before they hit Orientalist Critical Mass.
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Apr 20, 2015 19:37
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Kavak posted:That, or someone stopped them before they hit Orientalist Critical Mass. Thing is, you can see evidence of "we don't get what the cool parts are" all over the place. I mean, Nippon Tech could have been "megacorporation culture + insane street gangs + Judge Dredd" because all those elements are there, and in a mix they become really gameable. But the only point that gets any focus is the first one. I mean, the Laws of Intrigue and Vengance means that the ol' megaviolence should be worse at street level. It should totally be "the upper classes live in luxury, the lower classes are in constant warfare, and in both cases your life is forfeit at the drop of a hat", but instead street-level culture gets zero text and the "MarSec is the law" gets so little mention I never noticed it until today.
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Apr 20, 2015 19:44
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To say nothing of the apparent lack of detail on the Palans. We know nothing about them except that they're anti-capitalist and have access to explosives enough to shut down bridges. Which is pretty cool, honestly. I am going to be disappointed when the PC option is presented but in my head these guys are Marxist/Buddhist mixes. Maybe they have Marxist miracles and cybernetic kung fu.
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Apr 20, 2015 19:53
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The whole thing makes even less sense from a game perspective. What are PCs going to be loving around with, boardroom meetings and stock reports or shooting it out with MarSec as they work to bring the whole awful system down? As racist as the ninja clans would've ended up being, the corporate espionage route is totally workable for a game. Coupled with the lack of organization, Torg comes across as an game line made entirely of first drafts.
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Apr 20, 2015 19:58
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Yeah, there's more space in the book describing how 3327 took out the Palan worshipers than there is detail about the religion itself. In fact, the part I quoted is pretty much all there is about the religion apart from one sidebar. Apparently the whole religion is "profit bad". Is there a central divine figure? Does it believe in spiritual beings? Is there a structure at all? Who knows!
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Apr 20, 2015 20:00
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Kavak posted:The whole thing makes even less sense from a game perspective. What are PCs going to be loving around with, boardroom meetings and stock reports or shooting it out with MarSec as they work to bring the whole awful system down? As racist as the ninja clans would've ended up being, the corporate espionage route is totally workable for a game. Coupled with the lack of organization, Torg comes across as an game line made entirely of first drafts. We get rules for that but nothing about ninjas beyond "there are ninjas".
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Apr 20, 2015 20:02
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Evil Mastermind posted:Both! There are actually rules for owning your own megacorp and engaging in economic corporate warfare. Why would I want to own a megacorp? There are guaranteed to be a ton of traitors in it, and I'm making an already lovely world worse unless I decided to scuttle the thing and spread as many corporate secrets to the people as I can. Do they give any advice on how to fit this stuff in an ongoing campaign? Can you have a megacorp outside Japan? Actually, do people know their realm's Laws? The axioms you can suss out by experimenting, but is the Law of Betrayal common knowledge or just a GM thing?
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Apr 20, 2015 20:08
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All I'm saying is that I'll be over here, with my buddy Chrome Monkey and his cybernetic extendostaff and his holy mantra that empowers people to seize the means of production from the hands of the wealthy and the corrupt.
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Apr 20, 2015 20:12
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Kavak posted:The art's not doing a good job at selling how lovely life is supposed to be for the average Marketplace citizen. I know they couldn't Google stuff like Kowloon and Manga cafe refugees are a more recent phenomenon, but the roads and streets are relatively uncrowded, and all the Shiki seem to have snazzy jackets and such. Totally off topic, but when did Akira come out in the west? The manga for Akira was released by Marvel's Epic line back in 1988, so it was already having a following back then by the time Torg came out. You also had Ridley Scott's Black Rain around the same time, so that was also likely an inspiration. Evil Mastermind posted:Thing is, you can see evidence of "we don't get what the cool parts are" all over the place. Yeah, one of the things I kinda like my Ayn Randian head-rewrite of Nippon Tech is that there's none of this bullshit "bankrupt the company, kill yourself". That's a literally a feature not a bug. With MarSec SOP, no one on Wall Street would probably be left alive. Bernie Madoff or Ken Lay committing hari-kiri on live television or getting their brains blown out by a death squad is what most people would consider justice. Real life with being rewarded for failure via the Peter Principle and "pump and dump" is a far more insidious.
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Apr 20, 2015 20:13
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