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unseenlibrarian posted:They added another gunslinger Art of War in a recentish kickstarter update, that one being for crossovers from the "Western" setting of Terra. (It's both Western as it's inspired by Europe and the US and and also Western as in there are cowboys.) I know the Kickstarter stuff is supposed to be available for purchase to nonbackers eventually, is there any date on that?
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Dec 9, 2015 00:28
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mycot posted:I know the Kickstarter stuff is supposed to be available for purchase to nonbackers eventually, is there any date on that? Don't think so. Even the stuff backers got was like pre-layout rough drafts.
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Dec 9, 2015 01:56
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Wow, I'd completely forgotten I'd written that. I don't bust out the term "mental masturbation" often, but it's what comes to mind with Immortal. There's a thing where in Vampire, it makes some sense that you might want to use alternative terms. One, a lot of the terms around vampirism - vampire, bite, suck, drain - are about equally likely to evoke goofball references as much as horror. Two, it does underline the whole theme of secrecy and hidden knowledge. Of course, some of the terms chosen are pretty questionable and the formula has gotten worn out now that it's been applied from everything from elves to frankensteins to devils, but there's at least some logic behind it. Immortals, on the other hand, don't have to deal with cultural baggage like Lugosi or The Count, nobody would understand what the loving they're talking about, and I guess they want to be secret but it's not like they have as much of a stake in it. It's just a means to try and manufacture gravitas, where more words = more gravitas.
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Dec 9, 2015 16:06
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Doresh posted:Well, it is always good to hear that people can at least partially grow out of the 90s. Curiously, the first page of the original edition is an in-character note saying "I've organized all these jargon words at the bottom of each page as a guide for new Immortals!" But the idea that the rulebook is some Immortal's journal is immediately abandoned. The new edition actually maintains the "this is a guide for newly-awakened Immortals" conceit throughout, and is a lot better for it. Alien Rope Burn posted:Immortals, on the other hand, don't have to deal with cultural baggage like Lugosi or The Count, nobody would understand what the loving they're talking about, and I guess they want to be secret but it's not like they have as much of a stake in it. It's just a means to try and manufacture gravitas, where more words = more gravitas. Immortal gets compared to Highlander a lot, though it's much too complex to be a blatant ripoff like Legacy. Anyway, one of the reasons Highlander works is that it uses plain English and doesn't have a voluminous mythology behind the action, which is why words like reverie and conclave are so jarring when they show up in games like Legacy and Immortal. One of Vampire's most confusing legacies is that it actually had three glossaries of in-character jargon: one that most Kindred use most of the time, one for the stuffy old Grampa Munsters, and one for vulgar gutter slang. Games like Immortal and Everlasting took this as a cue to not only have literally hundreds of jargon words, but to have 4 or 5 words that mean the same thing. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 17:39 on Dec 9, 2015 |
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Dec 9, 2015 16:59
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Immortal is the true thinking man's RPG. Also reminds me a bit of German Officialese using what appears to be germanized English words because they make you sound more professional or something.Alien Rope Burn posted:
So instead of the blast shield going down as soon as even the vaguest hint of an enemy appears on the radar, it waits until after the glass has been broken, spelling doom for the pilot who either dies through glass shards, whatever projectile managed to pierce through the glass, various explosions and the all the lovely water and pressure eager to say hello? I guess these designs were heavily influenced by civilian exploration mini-subs, but they're not really supposed to fight against anything. unseenlibrarian posted:Don't think so. Even the stuff backers got was like pre-layout rough drafts. Oh well, as long as the draft will finally include the mass combat rules for true Wartetsubo 40k, I can wait. EDIT: Fun fact: Tenra's Wild West continent was hinted at in the reports of a Kongohki who was launched into space with a missile. Doresh fucked around with this message at 17:44 on Dec 9, 2015 |
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Dec 9, 2015 16:59
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Yeah, Immortal always felt like a bait-and-switch for people looking to swing swords to the sound of Queen but get a game where you play color-coded singing magical otherkin instead.
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Dec 9, 2015 18:35
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Halloween Jack posted:I also don't know of any other game with a Timeline that covers 65,000,000 years. Maybe Fading Suns?
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Dec 9, 2015 19:22
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Yeah, Immortal always felt like a bait-and-switch for people looking to swing swords to the sound of Queen but get a game where you play color-coded singing magical otherkin instead. It may be that I'm in the middle of reading Imajica, but that last part sounds suspiciously like something Barker would work into the background of one of his stories.
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Dec 9, 2015 21:03
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Tasoth posted:It may be that I'm in the middle of reading Imajica, but that last part sounds suspiciously like something Barker would work into the background of one of his stories.
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Dec 9, 2015 21:11
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 Part 23: "The standard skill does NOT include medicines derived from the oceans and seas, likewise, the sea holistic knowledge does NOT include most of the land herbs and plants (only a handful of the very most basic and common items)." Underwater Skills Let's compare and contrast:
Worse, there's "Undersea Farming" even though there's no "Farming" skill. There's "Undersea Salvage" but no "Salvage" skill. We're now told that even though buying "Fishing" twice increases it to a professional level in the core, it turns out you need the "Advanced Fishing" skill to fish commerically. That's right. If you want to know all about fishing, that's three skill picks. You have Marine Biology, which requires three other skills as well, making it effectively four skill picks to take. gently caress the skill section.  Oooops... Some XP tables and house ads wrap up the page count. It's interesting to note that they advertise for the upcoming Rifts World Book 12: Psyscape by CJ Carella, but it turns out he would leave Palladium long before that book was released. As a result, it would actually be delayed by roughly a year as they got another writer and manuscript, not coming out until after World Book 16. Yes, 12 came after 16.This means the summary provided is highly inaccurate. It promises the hidden community of Psyscape (yup) and a danger moving them to act (yup). However, the advert for Psyscape also promises classes like the Astral Warrior (nope), Psi-Filer (nope), Mirage Weaver (nope), Gate Maker (nope), and Psyche Killer (nope). It talks about pushing forward a plot with the Federation of Magic (nope) and Coalition States (nope). It promises art by RK Post (nope), Wayne Breaux (yup), and Vince Martin (nope). Finally, it says it'll be 160 pages (yup) and $16.95 (yup). Most of their other ads are for existing books at the time of this printing, but it's amusing to see what they originally intended for that book. What is a "Psi-Filer", anyway? Would they bring the powers of the mind to bureaucracy? The world will almost certainly never know.  "Where are we now?" "I don't know, I don't think this place is in the book!" The Bottom of the Sea There are a few things missing in this book. First, Lemuria is referenced constantly, but as mentioned before, won't be described for nearly two decades. Second, it's heavily implied the Coalition have a navy, but not described. That'll come in Rifts Sourcebook Four: Coalition Navy two years later, and it has all the skullboats your little heart desires. If your heart desires those things, anyway. Also, it has crab men, but tells us we can't play them because it'd be too hard to play them because they can't stay on land forever. In a game where you can play a whale. This is a fun setting on the surface, but the problem with reading Rifts books is that actually going in depth will often take all the enthusiasm out of your sails. Playing dolphins helping out an ancient US submarine fight noncanonthulu seems like it could definite make for a rad game, but it requires you to discard a lot of the details to make it work. A lot of the vehicles honestly have cool designs but then Siembieda's formulaic design work makes them very similar and dull mechanically. The deeper you go, the less stuff makes sense. This is honestly one of the more intriguing and original Rifts books, but it doesn't have a lot of deep thought to the implementation. Hope you enjoyed the review! If I ever get to Coalition Navy, though, I may require an intervention. Next: We're comin' up to shore and I have to get all this indexed on the wiki. Next book? Weeaboos rejoice. Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 23:49 on Dec 20, 2015 |
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Dec 10, 2015 18:30
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"Sea holistic medicine" is amazing.
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Dec 10, 2015 18:58
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"Coming up next, Kevin Trudolphin with natural sea cures "they" don't want you to know about!"
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Dec 10, 2015 19:04
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That Old Tree posted:"Sea holistic medicine" is amazing. Isn't it, though? The kicker is because so much the damage in the game is M.D.C., it's pretty useless. I'm willing to presume this sort of nonsense works in a game where magic works (though why it isn't magic in the first place is puzzling), but it's not going to come into play unless you give the PCs an illness to cope with. Granted, Rifts has no real rules for nonmagical illness, so you'd just have to wing it.
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Dec 10, 2015 19:14
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Granted, Rifts has no real rules for nonmagical illness, so you'd just have to wing it. Flipper it, more like.
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Dec 10, 2015 21:08
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JackMann posted:"Coming up next, Kevin Trudolphin with natural sea cures "they" don't want you to know about!" Kevin Swimbieda. 
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Dec 10, 2015 22:59
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That art is so rad it makes me want to play RIFTS. Or another game in the same setting with the same art.
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Dec 11, 2015 07:57
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Count Chocula posted:That art is so rad it makes me want to play RIFTS. Or another game in the same setting with the same art. What would the stats be? I guess PPE (psi/magic), MDC (super weaponry), but where from there? I think it'd all need to preserve as many random acronyms as possible and enforce alignment roleplay
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Dec 11, 2015 08:26
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Nessus posted:Frankly I almost think you could do a PBTA hack for RIFTS that could let you use most of this material. Just have moves that let you derive advantage from nitpicky bullshit in the rules texts if you can spin it right. Isn't Kevin Siembieda super paranoid and sue-happy about any possible conversions from his own system?
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Dec 11, 2015 17:31
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Doresh posted:Isn't Kevin Siembieda super paranoid and sue-happy about any possible conversions from his own system? I imagine it would be very hard to sue someone for a homebrew they don't charge for.
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Dec 11, 2015 17:42
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theironjef posted:I imagine it would be very hard to sue someone for a homebrew they don't charge for. It's the effort that counts.
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Dec 11, 2015 17:51
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Kevin Siembieda doesn't want any material from RiftsTM or any other PalladiumTM games appearing anywhere on the Internet. I've heard he believes a lot of silly fallacies about how copyright law, such as the canard that D20 conversions will allow WotC to steal your intellectual property, and that allowing homebrew to proliferate on the Internet will erode and nullify Palladium's copyrights. (How do we know what he believes? I don't know; he may have said these things himself on his forums.)theironjef posted:I imagine it would be very hard to sue someone for a homebrew they don't charge for. The really disgusting thing is that Kevin treats Palladium like a religion. He spends pages in The Rifter exhorting his fanbase to evangelize Palladium, then does things like shutting down fansites and banning people from his forums for being insufficiently worshipful. Every now and then you will see a rant on the RPGnet forums or elsewhere wherein someone explains how they were the biggest Palladium fan for years, but after some recent incident they're finally done. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 18:08 on Dec 11, 2015 |
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Dec 11, 2015 17:59
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That's the issue - Rifts and Palladin may not have a lot to their name, but they got a lot cash then your average hobbyist, who may not understand copyright law that well either, so it's often much easier to just fold and walk away. And really, everything that comes up paints Kevin Siembieda as a man with a massive ego and believes himself to be far more talented and influential then he really is, I can only imagine what a nightmare it is to work for him.
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Dec 11, 2015 18:30
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Oh I'll fix his little wagon: Class: The Juicer Juicers burn bright and die young, like a candle with gasoline on it. Implanted with systems designed to keep a constant cocktail of drugs running through their system (not sure why they bother, kids these days seem to get this done by just going to parties), Juicers are faster, stronger, tougher, and meaner than just about anyone, except Bernice. Core Stat: Rage Core Mechanic: The Good: High, Strung - Twice per day, a Juicer can roll twice for any initiative check, and use the highest of the two results. If the Juicer actually wins with both rolls, he receives an optional +1 to any results of his action. The Bad: Bio-Over-Compensation - Opposing players may apply a -1 penalty to a Juicer’s attempt to perform gentle or slow tasks, carry on conversation, or enjoy nonviolent activities. The Ugly: Loose the Juice - The Juicer can turn any challenge roll into a combat roll, forcing the challenged character to roll Fight or Exercise - Second Amendment Rights instead of the skill they were planning to use. If the roll fails spectacularly, the Juicer gains 1 XP. Starting Feats: Anger Management (May apply -1 to personal Rage challenges), Getting Punchy (May apply -1 to challenges involving fisticuffs) Skills: Fighting at 2 and pick three from: Law Enforcement, Exercise - Second Amendment Rights, Sports, Drinking, Heavy Machine Operation, Recreational Drug Use theironjef fucked around with this message at 18:41 on Dec 11, 2015 |
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Dec 11, 2015 18:38
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I can already feel a disturbance in the Rifts copyright.
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Dec 11, 2015 20:16
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While it's already too much, there have "only" been a couple handfuls of C&D's from Palladium as far as I've ever heard. Kevin has said some weird, dumb poo poo about what he thinks copyright law means, usually on ancient threads on his forum. But in recent years he's mellowed/given up/no one gives a poo poo enough to create and support a Palladium fan site big enough for him to notice. It's basically random. There are sites out there that have been up for over a decade. Like many things Palladium, it appears whimsy is a key factor.
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Dec 11, 2015 23:06
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I did actually sort-of-vaguely like Immortal's idea of doing multiple skill checks at the same time and keeping them all on the same scale. So that if you're good at Perception and working out where things are, you're generally good at that whatever situation it is, unlike the issue you end up with in D20 and other games with combat/skill segregation where your Perception doesn't help you if you're shooting, and conversely being really good at shooting automatically makes you good at dealing with any possible circumstances that come up while you are shooting.
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Dec 12, 2015 01:39
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Nessus posted:Frankly I almost think you could do a PBTA hack for RIFTS that could let you use most of this material. Just have moves that let you derive advantage from nitpicky bullshit in the rules texts if you can spin it right. It honestly wouldn't be hard to do a PbtA conversion. I wouldn't worry about the acronyms (and especially not the SDC / MDC divide); Rifts is not a game where the system is tied to any of the themes or setting, aside from the genuinely interesting PPE (Potential Psychic Energy, aka Mana) and ley line mechanics. The big thing with PbtA is that you'd probably dial it back to a subsection of the Rifts setting, or make the playbooks exceedingly broad archetypes, though the former would probably be able to get the feel better in my opinion. I've poked a little at a FATE implementation, and I'm hardly the only one, but I struggle to actually justify spending time working on it. (Then again, I do these reviews...) Robindaybird posted:And really, everything that comes up paints Kevin Siembieda as a man with a massive ego and believes himself to be far more talented and influential then he really is, I can only imagine what a nightmare it is to work for him. A good number of Palladium's old guard are his old gaming buddies who basically give him a pat on the back and a thumbs up to just about anything he does. Well, except for the one that robbed him and ran off. And why wouldn't they, really? I know some of them certainly pull their weight in things like shipping and whatnot, but I struggle at figuring at what (their chief editor) Alec Marciniszyn does for the company, because editing sure isn't part of it. Getting paid for decades despite complete incompetency seems like a pretty sweet deal. But then, competent people would tell him things he doesn't want to hear, I suppose. Edit: that's not to say there aren't any competent people at Palladium. There have been and are; there's only just so much that can be done in that kind of company atmosphere. That Old Tree posted:While it's already too much, there have "only" been a couple handfuls of C&D's from Palladium as far as I've ever heard. Yeah. I've always been interested in talking to somebody that's received one to get a look at the actual C&D letter, but often it's couched in "I had a friend that..". It's almost no doubt happened but it's very hard to find evidence or detail - and it's likely no such mailings have gone in a good long time. I think Bill Coffin's public shaming of Palladium did a lot to make them realize just how much damage bad blood could do to the company and has caused them to tread far more lightly on the internet than they used to.
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Dec 12, 2015 03:07
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Alien Rope Burn posted:It honestly wouldn't be hard to do a PbtA conversion. I wouldn't worry about the acronyms (and especially not the SDC / MDC divide); Rifts is not a game where the system is tied to any of the themes or setting, aside from the genuinely interesting PPE (Potential Psychic Energy, aka Mana) and ley line mechanics. It depends on what mood you want to encourage, of course, but in my PBtA Rifts game, the stats are all those dumb, obtuse abbreviations because that's part of the fun. You don't charm them by rolling +Cool, you roll +PB!
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Dec 12, 2015 03:36
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Exceedingly broad archetypes would work fine for Rifts, since most classes already *DO* fall into fairly broad classifications; You have Skilled (Rogue Scientist, Cyberdoc), Augmented (Juicer, Cyborg), Magical (Ley Line Walker, Warlock), Psychic (Mind Melter, Psy-Knight), Vehicle Specialist (Glitter Boys, Giant Robots, etc), and Mutant/D-Bee (Dog Boys, Psi-Stalker). That some playbooks would have crossover can be solved with some Archetype-hybridizing moves.
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Dec 12, 2015 03:45
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That Old Tree posted:While it's already too much, there have "only" been a couple handfuls of C&D's from Palladium as far as I've ever heard. Kevin has said some weird, dumb poo poo about what he thinks copyright law means, usually on ancient threads on his forum. But in recent years he's mellowed/given up/no one gives a poo poo enough to create and support a Palladium fan site big enough for him to notice. It's basically random. There are sites out there that have been up for over a decade. Like many things Palladium, it appears whimsy is a key factor. Aren't we also waiting for an official Savage Worlds adaptation, last I heard? Punting posted:Exceedingly broad archetypes would work fine for Rifts, since most classes already *DO* fall into fairly broad classifications; You have Skilled (Rogue Scientist, Cyberdoc), Augmented (Juicer, Cyborg), Magical (Ley Line Walker, Warlock), Psychic (Mind Melter, Psy-Knight), Vehicle Specialist (Glitter Boys, Giant Robots, etc), and Mutant/D-Bee (Dog Boys, Psi-Stalker). That some playbooks would have crossover can be solved with some Archetype-hybridizing moves. I hate to bring up stillborn projects, but one of my ideas was to come up with a "Not-Rifts" game that did something similar to this, although I actually separated the Glitter Boy from power armored mercs by making them Lost World Paladins and giving them some sort of special weapon, be it something like the Glitter Boy, a super truck-helicopter hybrid (or landmaster or battletruck), a super car, or a special bike. I think one of the abilities I was brainstorming is to sacrifice their chosen steed and be able to rebuild one, find one or regain another one in the next game session, to kinda keep with the theme (especially with RIFTS, where you stumble across Glitter Boys like mad through out game play). Young Freud fucked around with this message at 04:03 on Dec 12, 2015 |
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Dec 12, 2015 04:00
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Young Freud posted:Aren't we also waiting for an official Savage Worlds adaptation, last I heard? Yeah, but it's still pretty early so we can't honestly pronounce doom, yet. Though after the RoboTactics mess, I wouldn't begrudge anyone the prediction no matter the noise that gets made about Kevin being hands off (which is something I haven't heard).
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Dec 12, 2015 04:44
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That Old Tree posted:It depends on what mood you want to encourage, of course, but in my PBtA Rifts game, the stats are all those dumb, obtuse abbreviations because that's part of the fun. You don't charm them by rolling +Cool, you roll +PB!
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Dec 12, 2015 04:49
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I have a copy of an old White Wolf magazine from way, way, way back, that has an interview with KS in it. At one point he gets really indignant over some fly by night company (I think one Wizards of the Coast) claiming that their generic sourcebook is compatible with the Palladium system, among other games. Indignant enough that he sued, and came off as an enormous prick even then. A few years later, when the Internet began to strangle dialup BBSes, Siembieda apparently took one look at TSR playing whack-a-mole with 'netbook' authors and people using terms like 'AC' and 'HP' without 'permission', and poo poo a brick. Support, both official and unofficial, was basically through a third-party Palladium mailing list. Kevin or Maryann would drop in from time to time to levy a ruling on some rules question or another, and for the longest time the rule about Palladium stuff on the Internet was that there was none aside from the very sparse Palladium website. Mailing list discussions were fine, but anything that smacked of publishing was verboten. This changed at one point... I think maybe 95-96. Palladium did an about-face on fansites, but they required that every page that concerned mechanics for any aspect of the Palladium system had to have a solid paragraph of legal boilerplate attached as a footer, disclaiming that all of the acronyms, et alia were owned entirely by Palladium Games and used only with grudging permission. It came out to four or five lines at 640x480. These days, I can't be hosed to check. There's probably a note about it on their site somewhere still, but 99% of the old fansites are gone-- they were uploaded to student accounts, or made on Geocities, or the few megs of web hosting that ISPs offered as an incentive back in the day, and were quietly swept into the dustbin of history. I know some stuff from the early mailing list actually made it to print; someone used Werewolf: the Apocalypse as a very obvious template for their own werewolf-oriented Nightbane supplement shortly after Nightspawn was published, and many years later the same Tribes of the Moon popped up in a Rifter.
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Dec 12, 2015 05:37
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After seeing it mentionned so many times in this thread, I finally decided to try and listen to System Mastery. In chronological order, cause that's how I roll. I just started laughing out loud at the transformation table jokes (first episode Heroes Unlimited). This is a good start.
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Dec 12, 2015 06:54
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MonsieurChoc posted:After seeing it mentionned so many times in this thread, I finally decided to try and listen to System Mastery. In chronological order, cause that's how I roll. Welcome to the party! You're in for a fun ride!  I just donated to the Patreon this week. Money well spent!
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Dec 12, 2015 06:58
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"That's the speed of a bullet! You just shot me."
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Dec 12, 2015 07:05
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MonsieurChoc posted:After seeing it mentionned so many times in this thread, I finally decided to try and listen to System Mastery. In chronological order, cause that's how I roll. The one about Prime Directive, I think episode 4, is what hooked me. I love hearing about train wrecks.
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Dec 12, 2015 07:29
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MonsieurChoc posted:"That's the speed of a bullet! You just shot me." Man I have no idea what that joke was. Over the years we've basically switched from cursing for effect to being wacky for effect, but I think we're zeroing in on a good balance soon. Or I'm just in a good mood because we did an Afterthought intro today, and that's always my favorite part of the cycle. Man I just listened to this to figure out what that joke was, and am thrilled to remember how quickly we realized my cat wants to be on mic all the time. theironjef fucked around with this message at 08:21 on Dec 12, 2015 |
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Dec 12, 2015 07:35
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Oh my god. Listening to the first episode is just loving embarrassing. We have not found our footing at all yet there.
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Dec 12, 2015 09:19
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Grnegsnspm posted:Oh my god. Listening to the first episode is just loving embarrassing. We have not found our footing at all yet there. Still, you guys got into the groove ridiculously quick compared to most podcasts I'm familiar with.
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Dec 12, 2015 10:47
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