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Bieeanshee
Aug 21, 2000

Not keen on keening.


Grimey Drawer
I get the feeling that 'guns to butter' spell is both a play on 'hammering swords into ploughshares' and the old guns vs butter economic model, like the Magic Bullet is probably a nod and wink to Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories.

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Doresh
Jan 7, 2015

Comrade Koba posted:

Delta Green is what the Cthulhy Mythos would be like if it'd been written by a competent writer instead of H.P. Lovecraft.

Intriguing.

theironjef posted:

Here is an Afterthought for you guys, hopefully you want to discuss favorite campaign settings with us.

If you think the Forgotten Realms are overexplained, you will hate Aventuria from The Dark Eye. It's older, maybe 1/4 the size, and it never really had to share the writers' attention with another setting.

As for my favorite settings, I'm more of a sandbox guy, and Stars Without Number just has a nice backdrop where you can include just about any flavor of sci-fi and it still makes sense.

For "proper" settings, I'd go for Tenra Bansho Zero (which is a bit like Warhammer 40k if you'd replace the ridiculous pauldrons with Akira Kurosawa) and Double Cross (which is not only a neat supers setting, but also the closest to World of Darkness I'm willing to go).

quote:

Stereotypes
Man: Bulbous and deaf are these. They could not hear the sound of the Web singing from their actions if it was as loud as the Bells of Saint Michael’s. However, they are fun to watch.
Mages: Invest your days toward the Fates, or do not. Dabbling in the sticky oil of the Universe is a game only for children and suicidal flies.
Vampires: For all that they have a delicious sense of style, they completely lack the manners to know when they should leave the party.
Werewolves: Does doggie want to play in the big sticky net? Good boy!

The last one reminds me of a parody stereotype table I made for Princess: The Hopeful.

Fossilized Rappy posted:


Killer Penguin (113 Point Template)
Hello, best creature in Technomancer. :allears:

I call this a gross understatement. They're one of the best in general.

Doresh fucked around with this message at 23:49 on Dec 29, 2015

Josef bugman
Nov 17, 2011

Pictured: Poster prepares to celebrate Holy Communion (probablY)

This avatar made possible by a gift from the Religionthread Posters Relief Fund
Who after the 19th century spells "muslims" with an o and an e?

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
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Josef bugman posted:

Who after the 19th century spells "muslims" with an o and an e?

Could be worse, it could be spelled Mohammadans.

Count Chocula
Dec 25, 2011

WE HAVE TO CONTROL OUR ENVIRONMENT
IF YOU SEE ME POSTING OUTSIDE OF THE AUSPOL THREAD PLEASE TELL ME THAT I'M MISSED AND TO START POSTING AGAIN

TombsGrave posted:

I figure Wick would just throw a hissy and quit and write an extremely inaccurate story about how a bunch of powergaming jerks couldn't sufficiently immerse themselves in worlds of his creation.

As for settings: Unknown Armies is the only setting I can think of that I'd run basically unchanged, either in terms of specifics or in presumptions about game structure. UA hits this sweet spot for me where it does everything I wanna do as hard as I wanna do it. For most other settings I find myself tweaking things to one degree or the other, usually in favor of giving the PCs a bit more agency/ability to kick rear end, or making the setting less complex/more streamlined 'cause politics is generally not my bag.

Unknown Armies is so good it infected my worldview for awhile, and I want to tell everyone about it 'cause it's so awesome. Over the Edge sounds good too, and Mage: The Ascension is a close second. To actually play, I think I'd enjoy Feng Shui or 7th Sea.

Halloween Jack
Sep 11, 2003

La morte non ha sesso
What actually impresses me the most about Unknown Armies is not the campaign setting, specifically, but how straightforward the system is and how it encompasses pretty much everything that's in the setting. Most 90s-00s modern supernatural games can't say that.

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 4, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!

theironjef posted:

Here is an Afterthought for you guys, hopefully you want to discuss favorite campaign settings with us.

Uh, I like too many, but let's go with:

Settings I Like As-Is: Planescape, New World of Darkness, Marvel Comics, Double Cross, Autoduel

Settings I'd Love to Fix: Exalted, Rifts, Legend of the Five Rings, Illuminati University

Settings I Admire From Afar: Unknown Armies, Glorantha, Mystara

Of course, the best settings are the ones I've made, but nobody cares about those! Just wait! I'll shove them down your throats someday!

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

theironjef posted:

Here is an Afterthought for you guys, hopefully you want to discuss favorite campaign settings with us.

Castle Falkenstein and Brave New World. The first is a Prisoner of Zenda inspired fantasy universe with non-annoying steampunk flourishes and one of the most amazing uses of fluff text ever. The other is a superhero version of Deadlands at its core with a fascinating political background.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

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Alien Rope Burn posted:

Uh, I like too many, but let's go with:

Settings I Like As-Is: Planescape, New World of Darkness, Marvel Comics, Double Cross, Autoduel

Settings I'd Love to Fix: Exalted, Rifts, Legend of the Five Rings, Illuminati University

Settings I Admire From Afar: Unknown Armies, Glorantha, Mystara

Of course, the best settings are the ones I've made, but nobody cares about those! Just wait! I'll shove them down your throats someday!

Apropos of nothing, you should run a VASCU game.

My personal favorite settings are Ars Magica and nWoD. Planescape is also p. great but as time has gone on I've realized that I never want to play it if it means having to interact with D&D rules. I am also really fond of Through the Breach and Legends of the Wulin.

I like reading about Glorantha, and at one time I enjoyed Exalted but have since moved on to a view that it needs to be dead and buried and the world can find another, better ancient anime/wuxia game.

Fossilized Rappy
Dec 26, 2012

Bieeardo posted:

I get the feeling that 'guns to butter' spell is both a play on 'hammering swords into ploughshares' and the old guns vs butter economic model, like the Magic Bullet is probably a nod and wink to Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories.
That's pretty neat! It's always fun to learn little references outside of the ones I know from my comfort zones.

Josef bugman posted:

Who after the 19th century spells "muslims" with an o and an e?
I was curious about which spelling GURPS Arabian Nights uses and when it was printed in comparison, since I forgot. It has Muslim and was written in 1993 as opposed to GURPS Technomancer's 1999. So I'll assume it's just one of David Pulver's variety of idiosyncrasies. :shrug:

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy
This is going to be really obscure, but setting material I've actually used in games are the Dissidents in Darland, which is basically Fantasy Weimar Germany, and The New World

I like Glorantha from afar, but there's just so much material to it that it's hard to get caught up.

Delta Green I will second as an excellent setting.

I also like the Chaos Scar as one of the later 4e settings, although I've only just begun to scratch the surface of it.

Josef bugman
Nov 17, 2011

Pictured: Poster prepares to celebrate Holy Communion (probablY)

This avatar made possible by a gift from the Religionthread Posters Relief Fund
I would love to see Glorantha get even slightly into the mainstream. It'd be wonderful if KoDP became the next 5 nights at Freddie's and more people became interested in it.

And yeah there is a lot of stuff, what we need is a kind of map like this one:



To show people what bits are where.

Josef bugman fucked around with this message at 00:48 on Dec 30, 2015

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!



In the one game of Delta Green I played, we had two hours of masturbating over a gear list followed by a furtive attempt at investigation, concluded with a running poo poo-show of a gun battle that was more hilarious than anything due to the involvement of Insects from Shaggai.

Bacon In A Wok
Jan 27, 2014

Josef bugman posted:

I really want to see Wick try and flail about in Glorantha.

With our luck, it would probably look something like this:

quote:

I can't stand Heroquest.

The best example of a Heroquest, in our real world? Stonehenge. Half a dozen generations worth of some unwashed illiterate oldster conning a whole bunch of unwashed illiterate youngsters into shoving around huge rocks all season, just so the oldster knows where the sun is going to come up on one particular arbitrary day of the year. And that's at best; far more likely is that your oldster spends too much time and sweat conning you and not enough attention on the neighbors, and as a result you get butt-stroked by a spear one fine day and sold into slavery. So when my mates asked me to run a game of Heroquest anyway, I knew just saying 'no' wasn't going to be enough. I knew I had to to Play Dirty.

I let them have what they wanted... at first, anyways. Let them stat up their characters, describe their hill-tribe, set the scene with Lunars sword-waving threateningly near the borders... and told them the tribe's wise man knew of a Heroquest that could make everything right. (Not the tribe's Trickster. When you Play Dirty, you gotta be subtle about it.) They spent four, five sessions running around, gathering all the bits and pieces they needed to make the Heroquest come off, performed the ritual...

... and it did. Jack. poo poo.

So of course the wise man told them they must have done something wrong, better start over from scratch. Only now the Lunars are closer, so the tribe'll need to pull up stakes and move deeper into the hills, make hard choices about who goes and who gets left behind, great stuff. That ate up another two or three sessions. Second try at the Heroquest, you guessed it, bupkis again. And now it's not just the Lunars, but a band of angry Ducks (and as an aside, seriously? Ducks) and maybe a couple of Trolls sniffing around the edges, too. So the tribe's got to huddle in an all-out swamp before the Heroquest can even be tried again.

After the third go-around of this, I spilled the beans. The whole 'Heroquest' business was a fraud. Always had been. And then I popped the question: "How are you going to get out of this?"

Maybe if they'd had the nerve to think of an answer, we could have had an interesting game. But at least they know not to ask me to run a game I don't want to run.

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 4, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!

Mors Rattus posted:

I like reading about Glorantha, and at one time I enjoyed Exalted but have since moved on to a view that it needs to be dead and buried and the world can find another, better ancient anime/wuxia game.

VASCU? You forget all my eyerolling during the slasher review? (I secretly like it but not all of the implementation, basically.)

As for Exalted, yeah, I hear that. I've been torn at this point as to whether or not this is the year I sell off my Exalted 1e and 2e collection based on 3e, and it it's pretty close to complete; I'm only missing most of the novels, but from the two I read, I'm cool with that.

RocknRollaAyatollah
Nov 26, 2008

Lipstick Apathy

Halloween Jack posted:

It's kinda sad how literally every take on Carcosa is better than Derleth's. Even all the dumb irrelevant stories in A Season in Carcosa.

Derleth is the only writer I know of who could completely mess up a well known Lovecraft alien race on top of it all being in a serious story that had multiple Edgar Allen Poes.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

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Alien Rope Burn posted:

VASCU? You forget all my eyerolling during the slasher review? (I secretly like it but not all of the implementation, basically.)

As for Exalted, yeah, I hear that. I've been torn at this point as to whether or not this is the year I sell off my Exalted 1e and 2e collection based on 3e, and it it's pretty close to complete; I'm only missing most of the novels, but from the two I read, I'm cool with that.

...yeah, actually, I totally did forget. What problems do you have with Teleinformatics? I think with Chronicles out, they could be easily reworked to better fit the new Investigation rules and poo poo, but the basic premise of 'the FBI has a team of psychics trying to arrest supernatural criminals' is just the best.

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 4, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!
Mostly my eyerolling was "and this type of slasher is called X and does Y usually because of Z" World of Darkness-isms. Not that such'd be hard to change, but it felt a little weird trying to make serial killers more predictable.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

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Alien Rope Burn posted:

Mostly my eyerolling was "and this type of slasher is called X and does Y usually because of Z" World of Darkness-isms. Not that such'd be hard to change, but it felt a little weird trying to make serial killers more predictable.

Oh, sure. That part is pretty goofy.

But that's not the part I asked you to run! VASCU is a Hunter group, while they hunt serial killers, they also hunt down any magic criminal.

Simian_Prime
Nov 6, 2011

When they passed out body parts in the comics today, I got Cathy's nose and Dick Tracy's private parts.

LornMarkus posted:

Sadly the campaign talk was kind of a wash for me because I never played/read about Planescape. On the other hand, thanks for that random clip in the Q&A because I'd completely forgotten I really liked that song and that movie.

I'd say take a look at this awesome LP of Planescape: Torment by Shadow Catboy. In addition to covering the angles of one of the best PC RPGs ever, in many ways it captures the setting's flavor even better than the tabletop material.

http://lparchive.org/Planescape-Torment/

Simian_Prime
Nov 6, 2011

When they passed out body parts in the comics today, I got Cathy's nose and Dick Tracy's private parts.
Also going to say that despite my Planescape love, it's still neck-in-neck with Eberron. I like the fact that Eberron takes so many D&D troupes and turns them on its head, particularly since it's the first setting to outright say "there's no such thing as Always Chaotic Evil."

Halloween Jack
Sep 11, 2003

La morte non ha sesso
Dark Sun rules, but some of the little fiddly bits that incorporate it into AD&D2 (like penalties for a bone sword) are more trouble than they're worth. It fits very very well into 4e's ethos.

Green Intern
Dec 29, 2008

Loon, Crazy and Laughable

LornMarkus posted:

Sadly the campaign talk was kind of a wash for me because I never played/read about Planescape. On the other hand, thanks for that random clip in the Q&A because I'd completely forgotten I really liked that song and that movie.

Planescape allowed me the opportunity to do some ad-hoc Law and Order lawyering to get my party members declared not guilty after getting nabbed by the Harmonium, so it's alright with me.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

Halloween Jack posted:

Dark Sun rules, but some of the little fiddly bits that incorporate it into AD&D2 (like penalties for a bone sword) are more trouble than they're worth. It fits very very well into 4e's ethos.

4e's math is tight enough that they can just say "Here's what would happen if you didn't have magic items.. cause, you know, you aren't going to have any on Athas."

Crasical
Apr 22, 2014

GG!*
*GET GOOD

Alien Rope Burn posted:

Mostly my eyerolling was "and this type of slasher is called X and does Y usually because of Z" World of Darkness-isms. Not that such'd be hard to change, but it felt a little weird trying to make serial killers more predictable.

:raise: I felt like it worked, insofar as 'X type of Slasher that operates in Y way' is something that's easy to internalize because that's riffing clearly on existing horror cliches?

Lambo Trillrissian
May 18, 2007
Yes, more maps

Pieces of Peace
Jul 8, 2006
Hazardous in small doses.

Bacon In A Wok posted:

With our luck, it would probably look something like this:

Jesus christ John Wick is the very definition of the Dunning-Kruger Effect. This is exactly what some mouthy jackass who knows less than 1% of what he thinks he knows about anthropology would say. The closest real world analog to a heroquest is various cultures' shamanic rituals, which is completely unsurprising given that Greg Stafford is a practicing shaman.

And note the weasel-out of that last sentence, the STDH-version of "and then everyone called me a loving loser and went out for pizza."

Lemniscate Blue
Apr 21, 2006

Here we go again.

You cracked the code!

Bieeanshee
Aug 21, 2000

Not keen on keening.


Grimey Drawer
My big favourites have been mentioned, so I'll try to break newer ground. TORG. TORG really strikes me as what the Discworld eventually developed into, with its varying degrees of awareness of narrative causality and the rules that drive that set of secondhand dimensions... but in the most horribly earnest, anal-retentive way, like people discussing how peasant railguns have revolutionized warfare, without a trace of humour. I'd love to see the setting rebuilt in a way that ejects that cascading mess of Everlaws and scenarios that can only be won if certain cards are drawn in a specific order and made it a game about stories, rather than a game about being in a universe operated by the rules of a clunky 90s RPG.

Edit: I thought to say something about the Forgotten Realms, but no. Taking out Elminster and Friends would be cruelty for its own sake, and beyond that you need to dig really, really deep to find anything particularly original to salvage from that accretion of sidebars and mess.

Bieeanshee fucked around with this message at 04:23 on Dec 30, 2015

wdarkk
Oct 26, 2007

Friends: Protected
World: Saved
Crablettes: Eaten

Bacon In A Wok posted:

With our luck, it would probably look something like this:

Is this really his words, or you writing something in his voice? Because I can't loving tell.

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy

Where's the Good Shangri-La?

theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.

Simian_Prime posted:

Also going to say that despite my Planescape love, it's still neck-in-neck with Eberron. I like the fact that Eberron takes so many D&D troupes and turns them on its head, particularly since it's the first setting to outright say "there's no such thing as Always Chaotic Evil."

You know, I really dug Eberron too. I loved that they went all in with the new takes on the races in 4e, like that gnome city that was full of fey assassins trying to one-up each other. Notably Forgotten Realms responded to the new race takes by introducing subraces that were just the old ones, so meh.

Outside of D&D, I'd say my favorites remain the insane world of a (home balanced) Rifts Underseas and the post-apocalypse of 7th edition Gamma World's Gamma Terra.

FMguru
Sep 10, 2003

peed on;
sexually

REIGNING YOSPOS COSTCO KING

Simian_Prime posted:

I like the fact that Eberron takes so many D&D troupes and turns them on its head, particularly since it's the first setting to outright say "there's no such thing as Always Chaotic Evil."
It's instructive to compare Eberron to Wick's ideas about how to turn stale old D&D cliches on their head (the paladins are the bad guys and the orks are the good guys!!1! #wow #whoa)

Traveller
Jan 6, 2012

WHIM AND FOPPERY

And on the other hand, you just know what he would do to something like Blue Rose. Which would actually put him closer to certain kinds of grogs that he would otherwise deride for their zealotry in defending D&D.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

FMguru posted:

It's instructive to compare Eberron to Wick's ideas about how to turn stale old D&D cliches on their head (the paladins are the bad guys and the orks are the good guys!!1! #wow #whoa)

My favorite are the orc tribes who roam the fringes of the demon wastes killing anyone they come across. They're actually a sect of Paladins who think anyone who tries to enter or leave the demon wastes is probably evil and it's best to shuffle them off the mortal coil.

There's maybe three people outside of those tribes that know that, and they're all in the silver flame church, because the Orcs are actually worshipping their own weird tribal perversion of it. They just think it's better if everyone thinks they're evil psychopaths and not actually associated with them in any way.

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 4, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!

Pieces of Peace posted:

Jesus christ John Wick is the very definition of the Dunning-Kruger Effect. This is exactly what some mouthy jackass who knows less than 1% of what he thinks he knows about anthropology would say. The closest real world analog to a heroquest is various cultures' shamanic rituals, which is completely unsurprising given that Greg Stafford is a practicing shaman.

I have to point out before this gets legs that Bacon was just making poo poo up and that Wick actually really likes and respects old Chaosium and Stafford's work in particular.

JackMann
Aug 11, 2010

Secure. Contain. Protect.
Fallen Rib
It was just so uncannily Wickish.

Pieces of Peace
Jul 8, 2006
Hazardous in small doses.

Alien Rope Burn posted:

I have to point out before this gets legs that Bacon was just making poo poo up and that Wick actually really likes and respects old Chaosium and Stafford's work in particular.

drat, that was entirely too convincing. It just hit all the marks. I think in retrospect the hypothetical Wick actually admitting his players wouldn't be horrified-yet-thrilled and dancing in his puppetmaster hands was a giveaway.

echopapa
Jun 2, 2005

El Presidente smiles upon this thread.
I usually play in 13th Age’s gonzo fantasy setting and the Star Wars universe, but I’m interested in Warbirds (1920s celebrity sky pirates) and Tropicana (modern banana republic).

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Josef bugman
Nov 17, 2011

Pictured: Poster prepares to celebrate Holy Communion (probablY)

This avatar made possible by a gift from the Religionthread Posters Relief Fund

I was just meaning it as a brief example, unless the "racism/ colonialism" bits are meant to show what you think of Gloranthas cultures.


gradenko_2000 posted:

Where's the Good Shangri-La?

No idea, I found that ages ago in the Hot Modrons thread.

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