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I only have the first book of it, but for that much, Scion's voodoo didn't bother me too much. It had the least hookerized goddesses out of the available pantheons, anyway.
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May 8, 2015 05:48
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theironjef posted:I only have the first book of it, but for that much, Scion's voodoo didn't bother me too much. It had the least hookerized goddesses out of the available pantheons, anyway.
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May 8, 2015 05:57
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Has there been an F&F review of Talislanta? The OSR Google+ community I visit linked a site that has all of it for free and it talks of the series with a sort of old-school reverence, but I know nothing about the game.
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May 8, 2015 05:57
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theironjef posted:I only have the first book of it, but for that much, Scion's voodoo didn't bother me too much. It had the least hookerized goddesses out of the available pantheons, anyway. That's because the Aztecs and Norse were too busy eating up most of the offensiveness; the Loas weren't great but at least they weren't actively offensive most of the time. E: I've read some Talislanta, and it's interesting. The culture stuff is dense as hell, the magic stuff is pretty interesting. The system is...weird. Mors Rattus fucked around with this message at 06:10 on May 8, 2015 |
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May 8, 2015 06:08
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Any specifics on how the presentation of Aztec pantheon was offensive? I'd gotten that sense from secondhand comments, but unlike with the Norse pantheon there was no one like Rulebook Heavily to delineate exactly why things were offensive.
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May 8, 2015 06:14
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Well, for one, the obsession with blood sacrifice, death and filth. They are made to look like evil, terrible, monstrous people all the time. From the White wolf wiki: "Tlazoltéotl: Goddess of filth, she hopes to expose the darkest secrets within everything." Tlazolteotl was a goddess of sin and purification. The cleansing of filth as well as the actual stuff. But that's basically stripped away - as are many of the positive aspects of the Aztec gods in favor of BLOOOOOOD. It also ignores anything related to the Mexica and other Nahuatl-speaking indigenous people that still exist. Not that erasing them is rare, of course.
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May 8, 2015 06:25
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Mors Rattus posted:That's because the Aztecs and Norse were too busy eating up most of the offensiveness; the Loas weren't great but at least they weren't actively offensive most of the time. To be fair the Japanese pantheon was completely full of geishas and anime developers too.
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May 8, 2015 06:37
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I never actually read the Kami or Celestial Bureaucracy stuff, but I am the opposite of surprised. Scion is a Bad Game.
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May 8, 2015 06:38
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gradenko_2000 posted:Has there been an F&F review of Talislanta? The OSR Google+ community I visit linked a site that has all of it for free and it talks of the series with a sort of old-school reverence, but I know nothing about the game. http://projects.inklesspen.com/fatal-and-friends/wapole-languray/talislanta/ I did one a while back, the images are all long gone though. I got all the mechanics and petered out during the fluff chapters. 4e at least is a rock-solid fairly rules light RPG, with the Magic system being very similar to Ars Magica style stuff. Setting's pretty standard Earth Culture with Fantasy Twist type stuff. The Not!Mongols are also Not!Klingons, the Wise Native Shaman types are shapeshifters, One of the classes is basically Vulcan Sherlock Holmes, there's Magic Ninja's in Not!China, etc. I like it. The only downside I'd say is the character creation, which is basically picking from one of a ton of totally-imbalanced Templates that you don't really modify. On one hand, if your players LOVE min-maxing characters this will literally NOT WORK. On the other hand, this means that each race is actually different, instead of being mechanically identical with One Neat Trick. Ur (8-Foot tall Not!Orcs) are legit just straight combat terrors, Cymrilians (WIZARDS!) are just flat the best Mages in the game, etc. Powergamers will hate it. I recommend sticking with 4e, 5th feels really amateur and fan-boyish in comparison.
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May 8, 2015 06:39
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Mors Rattus posted:I never actually read the Kami or Celestial Bureaucracy stuff, but I am the opposite of surprised. what's worse is Scion has so much potential, but between the broken mechanics and the really bad treatment of the gods, it's a pile of fail. I think that's worse then just a bad game with bad ideas. In the right hands, playing godkids in urban fantasy versus modernized monsters would've been loving amazing.
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May 8, 2015 07:47
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Mors Rattus posted:It is very hard to think of an RPG that has done voudoun or any similar religion all that well. Or any game in general, I think, besides Gabriel Knight. Gabriel Knight was amazing, though.
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May 8, 2015 07:51
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Robindaybird posted:what's worse is Scion has so much potential, but between the broken mechanics and the really bad treatment of the gods, it's a pile of fail. I think that's worse then just a bad game with bad ideas. Scion has a good high concept. That's all I will say for it. But good concepts are a dime a dozen. It is executed poorly on every conceivable level. Consider: your power stat is your Legend. One of the example NPCs is a prophet with his own talk radio show. Scion never talks about how the mundane world reacts to literal demigods.
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May 8, 2015 07:56
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:GURPS: Voodoo did it better than most. GURPS authors seem to do as much research as the rest of the industry put together.
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May 8, 2015 08:28
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The Lone Badger posted:GURPS authors seem to do as much research as the rest of the industry put together. True. Just one of the reasons I really like GURPS.
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May 8, 2015 10:26
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GURPS and Ars Magica are the only RPGs I know of that have bibliographies instead of inspiration lists.
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May 8, 2015 10:28
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Mors Rattus posted:Well, for one, the obsession with blood sacrifice, death and filth. They are made to look like evil, terrible, monstrous people all the time. While it's incredibly lovely to erase real people existing today and it's bad writing for a game about gods to describe the gods badly, any kind of take on the Aztec gods as good guys would be fairly hard.
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May 8, 2015 12:46
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MonsieurChoc posted:While it's incredibly lovely to erase real people existing today and it's bad writing for a game about gods to describe the gods badly, any kind of take on the Aztec gods as good guys would be fairly hard. Mortal Kombat 10 of all games manages it. Huitzilopochtli/Buluc is a war god through and through, but he's honorable, intelligent, and doesn't love war for its own sake. His chief problem is that he has a serious temper.
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May 8, 2015 13:20
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Funny thing - if you can't manage to make them at least arguably sympathetic and good, you probably shouldn't make them a base PC group. (And it's not as hard as it sounds - the human sacrifices were largely volunteers...and, of course, certain prisoners of war, yes, but still. There were reasons for it - it wasn't just, you know, random bloodthirst. Sacrifice is a major theme of Aztec folklore, and the gods sacrificed themselves for the world and for humans. Viewing them as bad guys because of sacrifice is stupid. They were big good - and now we have to emulate them! Turns out that involves some death. See, the Aztec view was that everything drew from the same source - life. The gods died so others might live. Sacrificial victims died so others might live. The real world doesn't have cackling evil priests.)
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May 8, 2015 13:27
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The fact that they really believed in their sacrifices doesn't really make it any less hosed up, though. I mean, one fo the reasons the Aztec Empire fell was because they'd pissed off everyone else by kidnapping their population in huge numbers to fuel their sacrifices. I mean, obviously it's not that simple, but reading about it would make anyone raised in modern time at least a little weirded out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice_in_Aztec_culture#Tlaloc
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May 8, 2015 14:03
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hectorgrey posted:True. Just one of the reasons I really like GURPS. I hate the system, but love the sourcebooks. Also Maztica did a decent job of handling Mesoamerica and most of it's here: https://web.archive.org/web/20100429144428/http://www.wizards.com/dnd/files/tsr1066.zip https://web.archive.org/web/20100429144428/http://www.wizards.com/dnd/files/tsr9333.zip https://web.archive.org/web/20100429144428/http://www.wizards.com/dnd/files/tsr9340.zip https://web.archive.org/web/20100429144428/http://www.wizards.com/dnd/files/tsr9349.zip Humbug Scoolbus fucked around with this message at 14:38 on May 8, 2015 |
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May 8, 2015 14:33
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Robindaybird posted:what's worse is Scion has so much potential, but between the broken mechanics and the really bad treatment of the gods, it's a pile of fail. I think that's worse then just a bad game with bad ideas. I agree so much. I love the idea of a modern pantheon, and Scion seems good as long as you don't look at it too closely. Unfortunately when you do you find all sorts of poo poo seeping out from the cracks.
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May 8, 2015 14:35
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Mors Rattus posted:Scion has a good high concept. That's all I will say for it. But good concepts are a dime a dozen. It is executed poorly on every conceivable level.
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May 8, 2015 15:20
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:GURPS: Voodoo did it better than most. Funny you should mention it. I mean that, it's genuinely funny, because GURPS Voodoo was written by... CJ Carella. Mind, I don't know if Kev wrote the Bahia section instead, or if they thought the difference was irrelevant to American readers, or what. After all, CJ definitely shows he's capable of much deeper research in GURPS Voodoo, even though it's deliberately simplified for gaming purposes.
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May 8, 2015 15:24
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Genius: The Transgression, Miscellaneous Rules First things first, Havoc! Havoc is Paradox from oMage. Mad science is not real science, and mortals interacting with wonders always results in Havoc checks, one per round the mortal does anything more than look at it - and even then, if the mortal looks at it and starts thinking about how it [can't] work, Havoc. If a mortal for whatever reason does not trigger Havoc - which is up to the DM - you've got a beholden or a new genius in the making. Now, simply seeing a wonder in action or using one on a mortal doesn't trigger Havoc - you're free to zap mortals with your ray gun or dump them in a healing vat - but physical contact of any kind does. A mortal can punch your mad science battlemech and make it fall apart. That's not an exaggeration. A dramatic failure on a Havoc check either turns the wonder permanently orphan (which I'll explain below) or outright destroys it. An ordinary failure turns the wonder into a violent orphan for the duration of the scene, and it will do anything it can to hurt, break, or otherwise attack everyone in the vicinity, especially the mortal who triggered the Havoc check. On a success, the wonder survives but acquires a new fault. Only on an exceptional success does the wonder have no ill effects. Intelligent wonders (Automata 4 and 5) and manes are somewhat more resilient to Havoc - they won't trigger Havoc checks from simple touch, but prolonged physical contact like active hand to hand combat, first aid, or feeling up will. Even so, a dramatic failure turns the wonder or mane permanently, incurably insane, and may kill them outright. Failures drive them temporarily violently insane, and so on and so forth. In short, keep wonders and manes the hell away from mortals if it's at all possible. This would also be one of the reasons why the Mane merit, letting you play as one, is such a problem. Particularly if you are by all appearances a normal human being. For a bit of good news, a mane inside their native bardo or Unmada field never rolls Havoc. Though Genius suggests Havoc checks for dramatic failures using wonders, so... Orphans All wonders have an owner, drawing their functionality from the Mania and Inspiration of the genius who created them. However, it's possible for wonders and manes to go rogue and have no owner. These are called orphans. There are five ways for this to happen. A dramatic failure during the construction of a wonder can turn it orphan, the wonder's creator may die (triggering all of their wonders to self-destruct or turn orphan, which Genius probably should have mentioned before now), a mane can leave or be taken from its home bardo, a genius can deliberately abandon and liberate a wonder (this is an Obligation-7 transgression), or an intelligent and willful wonder may go rogue of its own initiative if mistreated and abused. When this happens, the wonder in many ways becomes a living creature. Genius posted:When a wonder turns permanently into an orphan―not just temporarily―it twists and mutates, its form Skipping over a bunch of rules about intelligence and morality of orphans, all orphans face a fundamental problem: they require Mania to survive, but cannot generate Mania of their own. While they can perform integral abilities without using Mania (an orphan death ray needs no Mania to fire), all orphans face creeping degradation and eventual destruction unless they find a source of Mania. This can be the Calculus Vampire merit, a genius can tame an orphaned wonder, or the wonder can put itself into stasis. The Thesis This is how a genius increases their Inspiration. Genius posted:Different theses can vary enormously in scope, style, and approach. Though they are all designed to teach the In general, the Thesis is a rare moment of personal introspection, self-discovery, and self-actualization in the game line, putting aside wacky mad science adventures and sitting down to chew on the genius' insanity, vision, and inspiration. You're going down the rabbit hole, acting on and furthering your insanity to cultivate the alien energy of creativity that burns inside you. We get some rules for the Thesis, but Genius emphasizes that this is between the player and the DM, and may not be represented by a simple roll or series of such. I approve, and rather wish Genius emphasized more of this in its rules. Next up is a whole smorgasbord of rules for Beholden: how they can be created, how to use them for lab work or Dirty Work (i.e. making them your troupe of minions ala Mister Freeze's followers or the like), how to use them in large battles, etc. They're also creepy and disturbing as gently caress from an ethical standpoint: Genius posted:Beholden are interesting psychological studies. Though as intelligent, creative, and competent as they were Yeah, they're ghouls. But beware: Beholden are very likely to catalyze as geniuses themselves, and a mistreated Beholden is more than likely to catalyze as a Grimm... This is getting a bit long, so next time we'll cover among other things bardos: places and ideas brought into existence by their own disproof.
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May 8, 2015 15:25
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Funny you should mention it. I mean that, it's genuinely funny, because GURPS Voodoo was written by... Carella was (he's out of the business now) one of the genuinely good designers. Unisystem (and even better, Cinematic Unisystem) is terrific. Shane Hensley is a good one, Matt Forbeck is another. Monte is good for setting design and concept even if his system's suck. Robin Laws, Stolze, Dettwiller, Tynes. I know the designers of FATE and PbTA and many of the other storygames are good, but I don't know them because I don't like that style of game so I haven't really bothered to learn their names. It doesn't mean I think they or their games are crap though.
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May 8, 2015 15:40
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Kurieg posted:I agree so much. I love the idea of a modern pantheon, and Scion seems good as long as you don't look at it too closely. Unfortunately when you do you find all sorts of poo poo seeping out from the cracks. But it was like: Everyone else, get a power which is possibly kind of themely for your pantheon or possibly sort of gross and offensive! Greeks, get out your dice buckets from Exalted.
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May 8, 2015 16:32
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FMguru posted:It was also perfectly timed. Gods in the modern world is hot hot hot and has been for a while (Neil Gaiman, those Percy Jackson novels, hell even Marvel's Thor franchise). But the execution was pants, both in the fluff and the crunch. "High concept is hot hot hot, execution is pants." is basically older White Wolf in a nutshell. I hear their newer stuff is better, but I've seen where they're going with that Beast thing. I think they just slip on a giant banana peel whenever they get near mythology.
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May 8, 2015 16:40
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Night10194 posted:"High concept is hot hot hot, execution is pants." is basically older White Wolf in a nutshell. I hear their newer stuff is better, but I've seen where they're going with that Beast thing. I think they just slip on a giant banana peel whenever they get near mythology. Based on my experience in running a superhero game, it is extremely easy to make Scion characters in Mutants and Masterminds and just keep the themely bits one wants.
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May 8, 2015 16:44
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Mors Rattus posted:Scion never talks about how the mundane world reacts to literal demigods. This was a thing I got caught up on when the game first came out. I really couldn't tell if you were supposed to revel in your new powers or try to keep your heritage hidden or what. I also couldn't tell what you were supposed to actually fight because the antagonist chapter was balls.
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May 8, 2015 16:45
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occamsnailfile posted:Based on my experience in running a superhero game, it is extremely easy to make Scion characters in Mutants and Masterminds and just keep the themely bits one wants. Yeah, I was just thinking that the best way to play Scion would be to adapt it to any decent superhero game and run from there.
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May 8, 2015 16:47
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MonsieurChoc posted:The fact that they really believed in their sacrifices doesn't really make it any less hosed up, though. I mean, one fo the reasons the Aztec Empire fell was because they'd pissed off everyone else by kidnapping their population in huge numbers to fuel their sacrifices. First: almost everyone they pissed off? Also worshiped those gods. These are the gods of Mexico (or at least, a decent chunk of Mexico), not just the Aztecs. The worst excesses of the latter-day Aztec Empire, obsessed with conquest and expansion, were horrifying, even though our knowledge of them is heavily filtered through the eyes of pagan-hating murderers who were eager to justify their brutalities. But they weren't the only people who worshiped these gods, and White Wolf has been cheeky enough with revisionism that they should have acted with utter glee when they looked at texts that suggest that the Aztecs engaged in active attempts to alter the religion of pre-Columbian Mexico for their own purposes. Third: The Norse murdered captured women and entombed them with male warriors, in the belief that the spirits of those women would become the warrior's concubines in the afterlife. But haha, that Thor, he's a wacky, lovable lunk, right? Yeah! Second: The Ancient Greeks left out so many children to die of exposure that the Ancient Egyptians launched rescue attempts and had an entire class of children named Copro-[blank], because they had adopted those children by rescuing them from poo poo piles the Greeks and Romans left them in. Somehow the Greek Gods in Scion are not depicted as child-murdering psychopaths.
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May 8, 2015 16:50
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theironjef posted:Yeah, I was just thinking that the best way to play Scion would be to adapt it to any decent superhero game and run from there. Alternatively you could run it in Nobilis, though it would feel a bit different.
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May 8, 2015 16:50
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From my understanding the excesses of the Aztec Empire came more from the Empire part than anything else, considering what Empires tended to do to their neighbors.
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May 8, 2015 16:51
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If you want "Scion but not terrible", Part Time Gods is the way to go.
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May 8, 2015 16:57
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BryanChavez posted:Second: The Ancient Greeks left out so many children to die of exposure that the Ancient Egyptians launched rescue attempts and had an entire class of children named Copro-[blank], because they had adopted those children by rescuing them from poo poo piles the Greeks and Romans left them in. Somehow the Greek Gods in Scion are not depicted as child-murdering psychopaths.
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May 8, 2015 16:58
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Terrible Opinions posted:Not gonna lie that sounds like a fairly good start to a game about murdering the Greek pantheon. You're rescued as an infant by the Egyptians and trained to destroy the city states you came from. This involves killing their patron deity. I would play the poo poo out of Revenge of the Exposed.
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May 8, 2015 17:02
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Night10194 posted:I would play the poo poo out of Revenge of the Exposed. And for this, you want Mythender. (EDIT: I haven't forgotten about Beyond the Wall, just got really busy. I'll try to start Further Afield this weekend.)
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May 8, 2015 17:11
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Terrible Opinions posted:Not gonna lie that sounds like a fairly good start to a game about murdering the Greek pantheon. You're rescued as an infant by the Egyptians and trained to destroy the city states you came from. This involves killing their patron deity. It'd be a better backstory for Kratos than the bog standard "GAH MY WIFE AND KID" thing he was stuck with in the game, that's for sure.
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May 8, 2015 17:22
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It started off as "GAH MY WIFE AND KID!" but the PSP games especially show that the entire greek pantheon deserves each and every stabbing that Kratos gave them. Persephone stole helios' chariot and tried to free Atlas from his imprisonment so she could collapse the world into Hades and end existence to get out of her marriage contract to the God. She then gave Kratos a shortcut into Elysium so that he would get out of her hair while she went through the business of murdering everything. He had to give up a paradise with his wife and child(Including a rather difficult button mashing prompt where you have to shove your daughter away while she's trying to hug you) and basically slaughter his way out of Elysium to make it back and stop Persephone. The god's response to this is "How dare you kill Hades' wife! You will suffer eternally for this(once we're done with you)" Ghost of Sparta doubles down on this by showing that Hades and Athena kidnapped Kratos' brother they were boys because they misinterpreted the prophecy that a "marked warrior would bring down Olympus"(Kratos later got tatoos in honor of his brother's birthmark) and rather than just imprison him or kill him they gave him to Thanatos to torture eternally for having the audacity to be a child of prophecy. Also Zeus put a curse on Kratos' mother that made her mutate into a gigantic monster if she ever tried to tell someone who Kratos' actual father was, so Kratos had to kill his mother at some point during the game. The Pantheon in God of War were a gigantic pile of dicks before Kratos opened up Pandora's Box, the box just made them worse.
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May 8, 2015 17:46
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I mostly read the horrifying fluff for the Scion line, but didn't Legend have some annoyingly ill-defined drawback that made people increasingly likely to become pawns of your developing personal myth?
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May 8, 2015 17:46
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