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hyphz posted:Oh, I remember that book. The one snag was that the roles were defined in the story/movie/adventure/whatever and because of the bidding system, it was possible you'd lose the auction and end up with a completely mismatched role. Even in the starting scenario make your big buff strongman actor, lose the role auction and end up as a kung-fu ballerina with now barely-average stats in Strength and Agility because the role and actor didn't stack anywhere. Capfalcon posted:...So you can figure out where you went so right? The concept definitely sounds like a nice idea for a roleplaying game. Just needs a better system with rules for getting typecast, remakes/reboots, starring in movies that just exist to exploit obscure German tax laws, and getting a bidding bonus because the director just so happens to be your wife/husband. (And wasn't Hong Kong Action Theater the only iteration of pre-BESM3e Tri-Stat where opponents actually compare their MoS of their attack and defense rolls? That's at least something.) Alaois posted:Yo this is from like fuckin 8 pages back or so, but I'm pretty sure you're talking about me, and you're vastly overstating what happened. Diaz put out a stupid "weh my art sucks everyone compliment and validate me" pity party tweet, I thought it'd be funny to respond with actual criticism, he threw a hissy fit and blocked me, but not before screencapping my tweet to complain about it for another 2 tweets. It was one of his followers who decided I was an art teacher(???????????? I am the furthest thing from an art teacher you can find) and nobody doxxed me. Oh well, the internet loves to exaggerate a bit.
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# ? Oct 29, 2015 16:56 |
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# ? Dec 6, 2024 07:55 |
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Doresh posted:The concept definitely sounds like a nice idea for a roleplaying game. Just needs a better system with rules for getting typecast, remakes/reboots, starring in movies that just exist to exploit obscure German tax laws, and getting a bidding bonus because the director just so happens to be your wife/husband. Yeah, if the defender's roll was lower than their DCV but had a lower margin of success than the attacker, they took half damage. Also, the stat costs got higher as the stat increased rather than being a flat cost per stat point, so that also kinda helped things from getting out of hand. Damage was also universally lower than BESM2, so fights didn't become rocket tag. Bidding for roles was probably the worst thing about it, and it was made worse by the fact that your bidding points were also your fate points and your XP.
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# ? Oct 29, 2015 17:14 |
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Lynx Winters posted:Yeah, if the defender's roll was lower than their DCV but had a lower margin of success than the attacker, they took half damage. Also, the stat costs got higher as the stat increased rather than being a flat cost per stat point, so that also kinda helped things from getting out of hand. Damage was also universally lower than BESM2, so fights didn't become rocket tag. Bidding for roles was probably the worst thing about it, and it was made worse by the fact that your bidding points were also your fate points and your XP. Yeah, now I remember that from Tri-Stat dx. Scaling stat costs sound good and all (especially since they are hilariously underpriced), but I'm not sure how this works if you stat stats from different sources.
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# ? Oct 29, 2015 18:30 |
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[ Edit: sorry, accidental phone post! Nimsim fucked around with this message at 23:02 on Nov 1, 2015 |
# ? Oct 30, 2015 16:47 |
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I heartily disagree, and furthermore,
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# ? Oct 30, 2015 17:14 |
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Interesting if true.
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# ? Oct 30, 2015 17:26 |
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Spoiler that poo poo man.
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# ? Oct 30, 2015 18:19 |
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Is this some sort of inside joke?
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# ? Oct 30, 2015 21:08 |
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Mr.Misfit posted:Is this some sort of inside joke? It was until right now. ]
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# ? Oct 30, 2015 21:41 |
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theironjef posted:It was until right now. Thank Jesus Christ.
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# ? Oct 31, 2015 15:48 |
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Rifts World Book Seven: Underseas posted:Warning! You know, I just realized I don't just copy and paste these intros. I copy them down by hand every time. Rifts World Book Seven: Underseas posted:Violence and the Supernatural Granted, sometimes these warnings are slightly different, too. They're not always exactly the same. Rifts World Book Seven: Underseas posted:The fictional World of Rifts® is violent, deadly, and filled with supernatural monsters. Other dimensional beings, often referred to as "demons", torment, stalk and prey on humans. Other aliens life forms, monsters, gods and demigod, as well as magic, insanity and war are all elements in this book. I wonder what a Rifts book really has to warn people about, though? Rifts World Book Seven: Underseas posted:Some parents may find the violence and supernatural elements of the game inappropriate for young readers/players. We suggest parental discretion. I guess "Warning! Faulty mechanics and grammatical errors" might not have the same ring about it. Rifts World Book Seven: Underseas posted:Please note that none of us at Palladium Books® condone or encourage the occult, the practice of magic, the use of drugs, or violence. Things they do condone and encourage: bad editing, using 1981-era rules, and an excess of skulls in mecha design. Part 1: "There are so many cool and bizarre things one can put in the underwater realm of Rifts© that we could easily fill three books and still have more ideas." So! This is Rifts World Book Seven: Underseas. It's actually the sixteenth book in the game line, and was the fourth book C.J. Carella worked on for the line. No book goes without Siembieda's two cents, of course, and there are some notable concepts from Steve Sheiring (Lemuria, Gene-Splicers), Kevin Long (the Triax Navy), and Julius Rosenstein (???). We get an introduction apologizing for delays, claiming that they were going to do this in 1993 when they handed it to unnamed writers, but that "The ideas seemed pedestrian and didn't have the flavor or magic of Rifts." The magic of Rifts. This book later claims this vehicle is used by a particular race, only the guy in front clearly isn't of that race, so he's just a convenient D-Bee ally. Rifts! So, as Kevin is wont to do, he rolled up his sleeves to write the book himself!... which he didn't have the time to manage, so CJ comes up and is like "hey, I could contribute and take some of the weight off your shoulders". And, then, a real insight into the writing process at Palladium: Rifts World Book Seven: Underseas posted:As it approached my designated time to write Rifts Underseas, Kevin Long started to submit concept drawings for various submarines, ships and armor. "Do you think you might include Triax and the NGR in this book?" he asked. "I might ... yeah, probably;" I mumbled. "Good," he said with a grin, "what do you think of these?" and he laid before me a pile of incredible sketches. Granted, letting Long draw whatever he wanted was probably a good policy for Siembieda to maintain. Similarly, there's a real artist-leading-the-writer feel to parts of this book, with Vince Martin and Randy Post playing a big part in the concepts tying this book together. A critter not actually statted in this book. He notes that there will be a follow-up book called Rifts Lemuria written by Steve Sheiring in 1996. Sheiring would go on to not only fail to write the book, but to rob Palladium, and the project would lie fallow until finally seeing release in 2012, sixteen years after its projected release, and eighteen years and twenty-five World Books after Underseas. A slight delay! Next: Return of the Tarn.
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# ? Oct 31, 2015 17:20 |
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Halloween Jack posted:Masterbook is a pretty fiddly loving system derived from TORG, though thankfully not nearly as fiddly as TORG itself. The only thing it really has going for it is a unified action resolution chart that actually handles different kinds of damage and advantage/disadvantage in action scenes in a pretty elegant way. I might do a brief review of it on the way to reviewing one or two of the games that used it, but it's a pretty boring set of rules. Man, I really need to get back to the Torg review...
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# ? Oct 31, 2015 17:33 |
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I always did love that cover. The statting of the guys on it (and many other things in it) were a point where I really started feeling that artist-leading vibe from Rifts books. I was really excited for Underseas. I mean, cool magical cyborg undersea adventures! The only thing that could be better for high school me would be a book about Japan!
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# ? Oct 31, 2015 19:25 |
Are there stats for Pod Six?
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# ? Oct 31, 2015 20:38 |
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quote:[...][...] You have to hand it to them, despire their awful interior, that cover is is really frikkin metal. And why, oh why is it always that great art goes together with really bad writing?
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# ? Nov 1, 2015 00:56 |
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Mr.Misfit posted:You have to hand it to them, despire their awful interior, that cover is is really frikkin metal. Kevin Sembieda understands that books are judged by their covers and budgets appropriately.
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# ? Nov 1, 2015 01:08 |
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Kai Tave posted:Kevin Sembieda understands that books are judged by their covers and budgets appropriately. It's why Siembieda has John Zeleznik's phone number on speed dial in case he needs a book cover post-haste.
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# ? Nov 1, 2015 01:13 |
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I hope Rifts has an Aquaman class.Alien Rope Burn posted:He notes that there will be a follow-up book called Rifts Lemuria written by Steve Sheiring in 1996. Sheiring would go on to not only fail to write the book, but to rob Palladium, and the project would lie fallow until finally seeing release in 2012, sixteen years after its projected release, and eighteen years and twenty-five World Books after Underseas. Time is relative.
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# ? Nov 1, 2015 01:15 |
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Are they still making Rifts books?
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# ? Nov 1, 2015 02:15 |
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Believe it or not (87% chance to believe), they are!
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# ? Nov 1, 2015 03:43 |
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So has anyone actually ran a Rifts game? I had the books once upon a time but a cat barfed all over them thats my rifts story
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# ? Nov 1, 2015 04:41 |
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Back in high school we ran/played several Rifts games though none of them lasted a very long time. In adulthood, no, no, we don't do that anymore.
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# ? Nov 1, 2015 04:43 |
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Banana Man posted:So has anyone actually ran a Rifts game? I had the books once upon a time but a cat barfed all over them thats my rifts story I sincerely hope you treated that cat royally for the rest of its life, for saving you.
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# ? Nov 1, 2015 05:32 |
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Nessus posted:Are there stats for Pod Six? Who cares? They was jerks. Doresh posted:I hope Rifts has an Aquaman class. Kind of! Banana Man posted:So has anyone actually ran a Rifts game? Yes.
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# ? Nov 1, 2015 06:14 |
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Banana Man posted:So has anyone actually ran a Rifts game? I had the books once upon a time but a cat barfed all over them thats my rifts story The story of my Titan cyberknight Dahmer and his mighty adventures literally lasted me from 9th grade to senior year.
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# ? Nov 1, 2015 06:46 |
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One of the guys I know at work is big into Rifts. However, I'm pretty sure it's mostly because he hasn't played any other RPGs. Like, not even D&D. I'm kind of thinking of getting him into my Savage Worlds game when he gets back from deployment.
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# ? Nov 1, 2015 06:53 |
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Kind of! Awesome! The Dark Eye Magic Spells As spells in TDE are essentially just another big ol' list of skills, casting them requires as a succesful check, with failure still costing you half the Astral Points it would've otherwise cost. Using anything but direct damage spells on a target adds the target's magic resistance (which is usually 0-3 for must guys and noticably higher for other spellcasters) to the check. Trying to affect multiple targets at once adds a penalty equal to the highest magic resistance plus the number of targets, so either everyone is affected, or nobody. Not particularly granular, is all I'm saying. A successful spell will usually have its effect and/or duration increased based on the Margin of Success, though the writers apparently weren't too sure just how they affect each spell. Pretty much every re-release of the Liber Cantiones (aka spellbook supplement, be it a single hardcover or a softcover in a boxed set) and the following errata tends to tinker around with the exact effect of MoS. (Warning: TDE spells are traditionally written in all caps, and I'll stick to it so you get the full TDE experience. The list is also not exhaustive, as I'v glanced over a lot of boring/uninteresting stuff.) Hexalogies TDE's fancy-pants name for elemental magic, because there are six elements (fire, water, air, ore, humus, ice). While each spell with the elemental tag can theoretically exist for each of the elements, in practice the overwhelming majority of these spell will default to one of the elements, with the other versions either only known to druids (and probably crystallomancers), being forgotten in the mists of time or straight up not existing at all. There are however magic research rules that - among other things - led you create a variant of an existing elemental spell with the element changed. This probably means that these spells do in fact exist in all possible variations, but the NPCs who came up with them kept them to themself to blindside potential adventuring parties. Metamagic A new system introduced in 4th edition allows spellcasters to boost their spells in various ways by adding penalties to their check. Things like increased range or duration, stuff you'd be familiar with if you know 3rd edition D&D. A neat addition to this comes in the form of spell modifications, which are little tricks and variations unique to the spell in question and also add to the overall check penalty. Penalties are overall pretty hefty, so don't go wild with this stuff. A kind of metamagic has existed long before 4th edition in the form of two spells: REVERSALIS REVIDUM reverses the effect of the next spell cast if it makes sense (like turning a buff into a debuff or vice versa, or turning an elemental spell into the opposing element), while INFINITUM EVERMORE makes spells with a duration last forever (if you can't already do that with the original spell). It should be noted that any spell with a permanent duration or effect requires the caster to sacrifice a fraction of the Astral Points spent permanently. This wasn't too much of an issue in older editions were your Astral Point pool increased with each level, and 4th edition just lets you buy back those "permanently" lost Astral Points (which doesn't count towards the maximum amount of additonal Astral Points you can buy, and is in fact the cheaper option). And while where at spell durations, spells that don't require constant concentration (of which there aren't a whole lot) last until they expire, with little the spellcaster can do to end them prematurely. Damage Spells While being a blaster in TDE is pretty flashy and awe-inspiring, it also kinda blows. There aren't really a whole lot of AoE damage spells, and their cost in Astral Points pretty much always equals the amount of damage they deal. Though while you can turn an attacking bandit into a pile of scorched bones, this can easily cost you around 2/3rds of your starting Astral pool. Though you can eventually buy that up to around 80 (provided to max out three stats, which costs a ton of XP and time to do), and there is technically no upper limit as spellcasters can perform a special mediation once per year that adds maybe 1 or 2 Astral Points permanently (which is probably the main excuse for metaplot NPCs to have essentially limitless Astral Points), you can't just blast a group of ogres into oblivion, let alone a dragon. What you can do however is soften up or finish off opponents. The other downside to "Spell costs equals damage" is that, since damage spells usually deal a handful of dice in damage, the exact cost is a bit unpredictable. What happens if you deal more damage than you have Astral Points left? Well, this usually means the spell fails outright, unless your skill rank reaches a certain level (from which point on the spell will just deal your remaining Astral Points in damage) or the damage depends on your Margin of Success (which also just uses your remaining Astral Points as a base, because failing your spell because you succeeded too well would be both incredibly silly and hilarious at the same time). (The only exception to the "cost equals damage" rule are spells cast by Borbaradian blood mages. They make separate rolls for damage and cost because Borbarad was apparently a big fan of randomness)
Honorable mention goes to AEROFUGU VACUUM, another Drakonian spell that sucks the air out of a room-size area for a couple rounds, causing Stamina damage to anyone inside and really messing up air elementals. As this is an elemental spell, a crafty spellcaster PC could come up with an ore version to effectively demolish walls and buildings cleanly and easily. Save-or-Suck Spells There are quite a lot of those:
Knave Spells Just had to put these in their own list as they are exclusive to Knaves and benefit from the Knaves' ability to ignore Magic Resistances below a certain threshold they can increase with not-Feats. Most of these are Save-or-Suck spells that are both hilarious and useful. Knaves are also like Final Fantasy Blue Mages in that they can learn spells from other classes and have them instantly turn into Knave spells by just observing the spell often enough. Anyone else has to learn non-class spells normally (which usually requires to learn a whole new caster representation in the progress) and then spend months trying to tweak the spell to fit into your own representation.
And those are the most notable Knave spells. There are a few others for various kinds of pranks and disguises. Buff Spells
Other Helpful Spells
Anti-Magic These are as numerous as they are bland. They all amount to "Get rid of [summon or other magical effect]". A lot of these can be replaced by a REVERSALIS followed by the spell you want to get rid off. Elemental Utility Spells There are a couple spells that let you either turn into a specific element (to become the Human Torch, Iceman or The Thing) or let you walk or otherwise enter the element in question unhindered (to play Jesus, perform funky Wushi stunts or breathe underwater). Time Spells These ones are all very rare, very illegal and tend to attract the wrath of Satinav, the keeper of time - especially if you actually travel through time. Then again time travel in TDE runs under "The timeline almost always fixes itself" law, but he probably just doesn't want to take chances. Speaking of time travel, one can only travel back in time, not into the future, for it doesn't exist from your perspective yet.
Creation and Summoning Spells
Bottom Line Don't get too crazy on blaster spells. Instead focus on flashbanging people so your buffed-up fighter buddies can kill everyone. Also make a lot of cash with fine silk dresses. And knaves may be annoying, but man are they useful to shut down other casters. Next Time: Demons!
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# ? Nov 1, 2015 10:56 |
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Humus is an element? Sounds like a tasty world.
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# ? Nov 1, 2015 11:34 |
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chaos rhames posted:Humus is an element? Sounds like a tasty world. That would be hummus. Humus in TDE is just a fancy way to say "wood element".
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# ? Nov 1, 2015 11:47 |
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Nice work ruining my campaign, rear end in a top hat.
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# ? Nov 1, 2015 23:10 |
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Banana Man posted:So has anyone actually ran a Rifts game? I had the books once upon a time but a cat barfed all over them thats my rifts story I ran one for a couple months before I gave up on it. It was a campaign where they were going to fight a major bandit faction in Texas. The hook adventure was loosely based off The Seven Samurai/The Magnificent Seven, with them being hired as champions to defend cattle ranchers and farmers from an invasion by a bandit warlord with looted technology from a pre-Rifts cache. They would attack the homesteads in waves of technicals and gun trucks, which weren't MDC, which they found out they could shoot, setting off the truck's fuel tanks with a single laser blast and catch the whole truck-full of bandits on fire (who, while wearing MDC vests, would still get harmed from burning on their limbs and head as well as smoke inhalation). Or punch a truck at one point and send them flying. Then there was a biker wave and an elite wave. The big boss battle was the warlord was in a Glitter Boy armor disguised as a demon warrior, wielding a shield with rocket launchers and a dismounted 30mm GAU-8 Avenger, with the ammo drum on the back. I think he even had a sword, because I remember he got into a sword fight with the Crazy at some point. The Glitter Boy warlord also blew off the armor off the Juicer (I was going for the optional rule that PCs did not have MDC attacks against them blow-through when their armor was depleted, it sacrificed itself to save the character). I almost did it to prove to myself you could run mass combat with Rifts, since not only was it the players versus this horde, but also the townsfolk. I think I really had just wanted to try and do stuff. I know the game fell apart when I tried to continue to up the tension. For instance, I had a plan to get the characters out of their armor (or mostly out of it, so they'd have an Armor Rating and a chance to get hurt) and get into a melee fight with good, old-fashioned baseball bats and tire irons in a basketball court as an initiation into a gang so they could continue on to the tech cache, which was a Continuity of Government vault made from the remains of the Super-Conducting Super-Collider infrastructure. I think if I did it again, I would probably use a different system.
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# ? Nov 2, 2015 00:55 |
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Young Freud posted:I think if I did it again, I would probably use a different system. Rifts in a nutshell.
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# ? Nov 2, 2015 03:44 |
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I sat through a Rifts combat once, a fight with some dudes against a bunch of those Xctxctcxctxtcx bug monsters that have a chunk of North America staked out and it was legitimately the most tedious goddamn thing I've ever witnessed.
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# ? Nov 2, 2015 05:58 |
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Kai Tave posted:I sat through a Rifts combat once, a fight with some dudes against a bunch of those Xctxctcxctxtcx bug monsters that have a chunk of North America staked out and it was legitimately the most tedious goddamn thing I've ever witnessed. You must have never seen or played HERO with optimized characters.
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# ? Nov 2, 2015 15:11 |
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Has anyone done Hero/Champions? I understand it involves a parallel universe composed entirely of six-siders.
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# ? Nov 2, 2015 15:16 |
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fool_of_sound posted:You must have never seen or played HERO with optimized characters. Hero is the system where I worked on a PC for 4 hours and had no idea if he'd be useful. I've never actually made it into a Hero campaign, but from the times I've been told to make a PC for it, it's one of my most hated systems.
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# ? Nov 2, 2015 17:50 |
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Night10194 posted:Hero is the system where I worked on a PC for 4 hours and had no idea if he'd be useful. I've never actually made it into a Hero campaign, but from the times I've been told to make a PC for it, it's one of my most hated systems. Yeah it's utterly impossible to make a decent character without substantial system knowledge, and impossible to make a character in a reasonable amount of time without the builder program. I've only played on one campaign of it, and it's pretty interesting in actual play, but the learning curve is so steep I'd pretty much never recommend it to someone who's never run it. e: Interesting with non-optimized characters, at least. Fights between optimized characters never end.
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# ? Nov 2, 2015 17:55 |
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Halloween Jack posted:Has anyone done Hero/Champions? I understand it involves a parallel universe composed entirely of six-siders. Yes. Ever see those bricks of 27 six-siders? It's all downhill from there. I'm told some people can run Champions combats quickly but I've never seen physical evidence of such a feat.
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# ? Nov 2, 2015 18:11 |
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Most of the well-known universal systems out there (not to mention superhero games) seem to me like an absolute shitshow if you just throw open the gates to your players and say "You have X points, make a character for a game in Y genre." IME this results in hours-long character creation, and the players are totally adrift when it comes to making characters who are effective, balanced, and suitable for the adventure the GM is running. It's at least mildly acceptable for something as broad as "Silver Age superheroes," although it's no guarantee of balance. But if you want the game to have much of an identity at all, handling character creation this way is practically requiring the players to write big chunks of the rulebook themselves, but in a hurry and with very poor communication. (Games involving vehicles or special weapons compounds the problem.) Palladium's rules are awful and unbalanced, of course, but at least you can read through the Morphus abilities and the psychic abilities and kinda know what the bounds of PC power are, what kinds of powers are appropriate, etc. If I tried to run Nightbane I would use a different system, but I wouldn't use, say, Mutants & Masterminds and tell the players "make psychic shapeshifting monster-people." VVV Edit: Hell man, I only know like 2 people offline who've played GURPS more than once, and just one guy who tried Rifts. But they're out there. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 18:41 on Nov 2, 2015 |
# ? Nov 2, 2015 18:26 |
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# ? Dec 6, 2024 07:55 |
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I've never actually known anyone who plays Hero is the thing. I mean, I know they exist given the prolific amount of sourcebooks that have been made for it, I know someone's gotta be buying them, I've just never actually met or gamed with anyone who was like "Oh yeah Hero, I used to play that" whereas it seems like most of the roleplayers I've encountered have at least one story about the time they were 12 and thought playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles would be a good idea.
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# ? Nov 2, 2015 18:38 |