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Alien Rope Burn posted:Save vs. Pedophila. I do like that they at least have "well I guess if you were already gay this insanity would turn you straight." That could have gone worse, like "You become super-ultra double gay like Carl in 5th period history!"
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May 19, 2014 19:48
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Interesting how specific the berserk percentage is - why 72% rather than a more round number?
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May 19, 2014 19:54
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Once you start asking why something's the way it is in a Rifts book, that's a rabbit hole with no end in sight.
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May 19, 2014 19:59
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hectorgrey posted:Interesting how specific the berserk percentage is - why 72% rather than a more round number? What amazes me is how unplayable a lot of characters become after a single roll on these charts, and crazies are expected to a few to a half-dozen. Bear in mind the only change that newer games had was a removal of the sexual deviation section, so even without that, the first result is that loud noises cause a character to pee themselves and go into a fetal position. A character can end up blind 89% of the time they're under pressure. And then there's being in a homicidal rage 24/6. Oh, and that "save vs. insanity"? It's 12 or higher on a d20 unless your class or high Mental Endurance gives you bonuses, which means most characters will have a worse than even chance of failing it!
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May 19, 2014 20:27
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It's telling that you could actually become a necrophiliac from looking at zombies in D&D in 2004 but even RIFTS had abandoned that poo poo for decades. (Bonus awful points for D&D: it can also make you transsexual.)
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May 19, 2014 20:29
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I'm still waiting for my tongue piercing to give me all sorts of evil wizard powers.
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May 19, 2014 20:31
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Rulebook Heavily posted:It's telling that you could actually become a necrophiliac from looking at zombies in D&D in 2004 but even RIFTS had abandoned that poo poo for decades. EDIT: To clarify Alien Rope Burn is missing a ton of the weirder stuff from the Palladium system like the autistic magic class. MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 20:51 on May 19, 2014 |
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May 19, 2014 20:40
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Halloween Jack posted:I'm still waiting for my tongue piercing to give me all sorts of evil wizard powers. I have to wonder how Monte's magnum opus hasn't gotten clamped onto the very nipples of this thread.
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May 19, 2014 20:46
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The real joke is that the bit I quoted isn't even from the Book of Vile Darkness but Unearthed Arcana. It's open source.
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May 19, 2014 20:51
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Save vs. Pedophila. Being a psychiatrist is apparently on par with inescapable berserker rage! Who knew?
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May 19, 2014 21:25
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Green Intern posted:Being a psychiatrist is apparently on par with inescapable berserker rage! Who knew? It's so tongue in cheek that they forgot to include any line that says "hahaha don't we have fun here? No look the character only thinks they are a psychiatrist and is actually crazy."
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May 19, 2014 22:01
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I have a friend who wants to play Mekton Zeta and i'm trying to dissuade them from doing so. I could have sworn there was a Mekton Zeta review in here explaining why its awful. Am I looking in the wrong spot??
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May 19, 2014 23:35
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Strength of Many posted:I have a friend who wants to play Mekton Zeta and i'm trying to dissuade them from doing so. I could have sworn there was a Mekton Zeta review in here explaining why its awful. Am I looking in the wrong spot?? Someone started and abandoned one in the previous thread, but it was lost with the archives server.
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May 19, 2014 23:38
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ThisIsNoZaku posted:Someone started and abandoned one in the previous thread, but it was lost with the archives server. Well poo poo. Now i'll have to actually learn the mechanics to explain why its a bad game.
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May 19, 2014 23:40
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Save vs. Pedophila.  The other one being Central Casting. Strength of Many posted:Well poo poo. Now i'll have to actually learn the mechanics to explain why its a bad game. EDIT: Or your mech just being completely disabled. Or destroyed. And unless you're massively better than the enemies you're facing, you WILL get crit eventually. Zereth fucked around with this message at 02:36 on May 20, 2014 |
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May 20, 2014 02:34
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I've heard rumors that Siembieda was cribbing from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for his insanity lists, but after further research, I realised the DSM removed homosexuality as a "mental disorder" back in the early seventies, so that'd have to be a dusty-rear end copy he'd have been hanging onto if that's the case. Either way, I'm pretty sure Palladium has attempted to avoid further blunders by choosing to ignore that homosexuality exists entirely. I'm trying to remember if it's ever come up in one of their books, and I don't think it has. Central Casting's author, on the other hand, came out as a transsexual, and presumably her thoughts on the matter have changed. As for Mekton, yeah, I remember "winning" by building a comparatively cheap mech-murdering helicopter with a rapid-firing gun and taking all the points I had saved (by not worrying about arms, legs, expensive power sources, etc.) and just putting them into maneuverability and speed. Building a rad mech was a horrible trap when I could dance out of their range and had a +20 to dodge on a d10 when they though they were hot stuff with a 1d10+10 or the like. It'd work better if you ban personal mecha construction and just have setting-based designs, but it's still just a "Dex supremacy" combat system.
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May 20, 2014 04:32
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Central Casting's author, on the other hand, came out as a transsexual, and presumably her thoughts on the matter have changed.
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May 20, 2014 04:50
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Alien Rope Burn posted:so that'd have to be a dusty-rear end copy he'd have been hanging onto if that's the case.
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May 20, 2014 04:55
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Alien Rope Burn posted:As for Mekton, yeah, I remember "winning" by building a comparatively cheap mech-murdering helicopter with a rapid-firing gun and taking all the points I had saved (by not worrying about arms, legs, expensive power sources, etc.) and just putting them into maneuverability and speed. Building a rad mech was a horrible trap when I could dance out of their range and had a +20 to dodge on a d10 when they though they were hot stuff with a 1d10+10 or the like. It'd work better if you ban personal mecha construction and just have setting-based designs, but it's still just a "Dex supremacy" combat system. And the same stat applies to every single attack of defense you can do in a mech/vehicle, so you want to max that.
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May 20, 2014 04:59
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Rifts Sourcebook Three: Mindwerks - Part Four: "The panther gets its name from the fact that it is comparatively small, fast and silent — an excellent prowler and stalker." Mindwerks Robots Wait, wasn't Mindwerks into implants, cybernetics, and cameras, in about that order? How did they design a bunch of military war robots? Well, there's no explanation, but here's the M-1000 Panther  All thruster, no engine. Looks nothing like a cat. It's a floating defense robot, and not terribly smart. Most are used to guard the Mindwerks facility, a few are used for abduction and extermination, and a few are used to aid with repairs and similar tasks. Its optics have a range of 2000 feet, worse than human sight, but it can record information. It's mildly tough, has weaksauce head lasers, mini-missiles, lugs around handheld weapons, and can rocket around at 400 MPH. Oh, and it's ridiculously sneaky, despite being a gleaming bulbous robot with jets coming out of its rear end. M-1200 Lion Assault Robot  The platypus of robot design. Also looks nothing like a cat. It's the fightier version of the M-1000. Is a little tougher and about half as fast as the M-1000. It has a dinky lasers, a passable ion cannon and railgun, mini-missiles, and hand-held weapons. It can also swim really well, since its hover jets are waterproof, I suppose. M-1400 Tiger  Alternately, the "Shredderbot". Looks only vaguely more like a cat than the rest. This is designed as a "hunter/killer" bot. Bear in mind Siembieda doesn't know what hunter/killer means in a military context, so it just means "aggressive soldier", really. It's actually kind of fragile, and is a slower runner than its hovering counterparts, but has head lasers and head ion cannon, mini-missiles, stretchy claws, and handheld weapons. Oh, and it can pick locks with its finger blades... somehow. M-1600 Bear  More like a bulldog... or elephant...? Doesn't look much like a bear. This is actually a giant robot piloted by a Mindwerks employee, and is actually really drat tough, but is slow for a robot. It can fire various grenades, mini-missiles, has lasers in its face, a "triple weapon" in its arm (laser/ion/particle), laser knuckles, smoke dispenser, and a vibro-blade in its arm. It doesn't deal out a lot of punishment for its size, outside of dumping mini-missiles at foes, but it's smaller counterparts can do the same thing. And that's the last robot. You'd think with all the brodkil flunkies these would be superfluous... oh, wait. They are superfluous. I have to wonder, given the designs' Mechanoid-like appearance, if they're unused robot designs from Rifts Sourcebook Two: The Mechanoids. Mindwerks Weapons  Bad guy guns. Despite not having any weapon engineers of note, any background as arms manufacturers, or a particularly large staff in general, Mindwerks has its own line of weapons. They even have their own proprietary E-Clip standard, and their weapons can't use regular E-Clips without modifying the guns. 
Next: How to play a buttpuppet of Mindwerks.
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May 20, 2014 13:32
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We at System Mastery just finished reading and discussing Furry Pirates: Swashbuckling Adventure in the Furry Age of Piracy so we could bring it to you. Spoiler alert: The book sucks. Double secret spoiler alert: It's not because of furries.
theironjef fucked around with this message at 20:50 on May 20, 2014 |
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May 20, 2014 16:27
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That subtitle seems suspiciously superfluous. "Just in case you missed the title, this is what the game is about."
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May 20, 2014 16:31
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Alien Rope Burn posted:That subtitle seems suspiciously superfluous. "Just in case you missed the title, this is what the game is about."
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May 20, 2014 16:39
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Alien Rope Burn posted:That subtitle seems suspiciously superfluous. "Just in case you missed the title, this is what the game is about." I think it's overcompensation. Furries are largely an afterthought in this book. I never thought I'd want more furries.
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May 20, 2014 16:53
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theironjef posted:I think it's overcompensation. Furries are largely an afterthought in this book. I never thought I'd want more furries. Dear God...
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May 20, 2014 20:54
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Right? We were so excited to crack this thing open and start making fun of furries like the major leagues. Then we get in there and it's just dry pirate information and terrible rules, except they did a Find & Replace to change all instances of "man" with "furry" and added species to most of the famous historical figures of the time. Like there is nothing to make fun of outside of sperginess and a lack of drat furries. There's so little dedication to the genre conceit that the word furry is the word they use for the whole group of species. Not anthro, not just "man" like you see sometimes, but furry. "10 furries are needed to operate this cannon" etc. There's also like zero puns or jokes or plays on words and species. Nothing whatsoever about animal nature. The kings are all lions, but never once does he describe one as predatory, or mention that they are lions because lions are naturally kingly, or anything. They're all lions because there's no interracial breeding, so if one of the royals is a lion they have to all be, the end. *Note that neither of us at System Mastery is down with the fur-l. We were just really hoping for something weirder to make fun of than what we got. Like I would personally hope for a better game for furries than this. Those goofballs in their big suits need good gaming books too. theironjef fucked around with this message at 21:13 on May 20, 2014 |
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May 20, 2014 21:05
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FMguru posted:It's approaching "The Japanese Ghost Story game about Japanese ghost stories" levels of redundancy and repetitiveness and redundancy. Speaking of which, has anyone ever done Kaiden: A Japanese Ghost Story for these threads? Because I feel like it should be done even if it's not utterly terrible.
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May 20, 2014 21:23
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theironjef posted:Right? We were so excited to crack this thing open and start making fun of furries like the major leagues. Then we get in there and it's just dry pirate information and terrible rules, except they did a Find & Replace to change all instances of "man" with "furry" and added species to most of the famous historical figures of the time. Like there is nothing to make fun of outside of sperginess and a lack of drat furries. There's so little dedication to the genre conceit that the word furry is the word they use for the whole group of species. Not anthro, not just "man" like you see sometimes, but furry. "10 furries are needed to operate this cannon" etc. Well, there is Iron Claw. I'm not a furry, but I remember some people bringing it up and saying it was a good game.
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May 20, 2014 21:29
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 Mark Rein·Hagen's Exile Part One: An RPG history lesson It's been a while since I've done an F&F review, and like my prior few I'm going to go into the history of roleplaying games. Before, this involved reviewing games and supplements from the early 80's that most people have long since forgotten, but this time we'll be traveling into the exciting 90's! There's just one small problem... the game I'm going to be talking about never actually got released. To explain a bit, we'll need to give some history of White Wolf and Mark Rein·Hagen. Forgive me if this is incomplete, since I'm going off memory and what little remains on the web these days. Rein·Hagen and Jonathan Tweet (and later, Lisa Stevens) founded Lion Rampart in 1987, where they co-wrote and produced Ars Magica, a well-received game with several interesting game mechanics, such as players controlling multiple characters. Still, Lion Rampart struggled a bit like a lot of small RPG companies tend to and merged with Stewart Wieck's White Wolf Magazine, forming White Wolf Game Studio in 1990. The company still struggled for a bit until they released some small game that started a certain game line that apparently had some modest success. In 1998, after the World of Darkness was well-established, Rein·Hagen began work on a sci-fi RPG titled Exile. Here's where it... gets a bit strange. He actually started a non-profit organization called the Null Foundation to own the rights. To be honest I'm not... entirely sure what the point of it was, but at the time there was a bit of financial trouble at White Wolf and less than a year later Rein·Hagen left the company and took Exile and the Null Foundation with him*. *If anyone does have more information/gossip about what was going on behind the scenes, please feel free to elaborate. An interesting thing about the Null Foundation is that it had a rather large web presence for when it came out. For the kids in the audience here, 1996 was the era where you were probably connecting through dual-up to America Online or Compuserve, and the Google search engine wouldn't be released for another two years. So it was a pretty prominent presence! Of course, considering this was almost twenty years ago there's not much sign of it left, but archive.org still has a copy of the Null Foundation website if you want to give it look. In addition, the company had an official MUSH to RP in the setting (a text-based chat server, somewhere between a MUD and IRC chat), and in what's most important for this review, they actually put playtest rules up on their site to freely download. For various reasons that are mostly lost to history, the Exile RPG never actually got released. My suspicion is that Rein·Hagen had big expectations that were impossible to meet, considering the website notes they were looking for partners for a "computer-generated animated series", there's constant mentions about a Null Cosm implying that they were hoping for a WoD-style success, and other such... poor business decisions. Despite the RPG never getting a release, the Null Foundation eventually got folded into Rein·Hagen's new company "Atomaton, Inc" and in 2001 they released Z-G (as in, "zero gravity"), a game very loosely based on the concepts and setting. Specifically, a "collectible action figure game" which let you snap pieces onto the figures and collect... power cards and stuff to use them in not-quite-miniature gameplay.  Honestly, it wasn't a horrible idea... but considering it came out after the initial CCG rush when stores were already loaded with unsold merchandise it just didn't have a prayer. Not helping matters was the rise of collectible miniature games like Mage Knight that offered much more value for the money. To the best of my knowledge the company only ever released the initial two figures and the card booster pack, and Atomaton finally folded in 2003. So what the hell was Exile? Luckily, archive.org makes this part easy.  Quoting the website...null-f.org posted:Design Precepts To put it charitably, it's clear Rein·Hagen was going for what could be described as- Art Guidelines posted:Space Suits - Forget the bulky 'bubble head' space suits you always see. The Ulsters used in Exile are skin-tight, highly flexible and nearly untearable second skins. Think black latex fetish gear, painted with all sorts of wild and personalized designs.  This will get even more obvious once we get into the game itself.   (These were huge images on an 800x600 CRT display, really) You said something about a playtest draft? quote:*** Cover: Imagine a 7 X 10 spiral bound book book (sic) (bound on the short side) with a black plastic cover. Imprinted on it (or perhaps a holographic sticker attached to it) it the exile petroglyph and the word: ***  As mentioned earlier, the Null Foundation had a fairly large web presence for the era, and they tried to take advantage of this by Of course, it's important to keep in mind that the Exile playtest drafts can only be charitably be called a "complete game", and I'm pretty sure they're not actually playable as written. But this isn't a game review and it's something more of a history lesson, and as one of the handful of people who remembers this thing even existed I'm going to do my best here! Asimo fucked around with this message at 21:34 on May 20, 2014 |
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May 20, 2014 21:32
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Covok posted:Well, there is Iron Claw. I'm not a furry, but I remember some people bringing it up and saying it was a good game. I've literally never heard any real bad things about Ironclaw.
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May 20, 2014 21:43
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Meanwhile on the other end of the spectrum... 
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May 20, 2014 21:56
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To be fair, it'd be an easy way to handle the whole multi-species concept you see in a lot of fantasy worlds. Many fantasy games already have animal-based races, so as long as you avoid the worst excesses of the furry community, I can see some validity to the idea as long as it not a yiff parade. Hell, my first game was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness. But yeah, Ironclaw is the emblematic furry RPG, but I recall it being more hifalutin' than you'd expect. But it's been so long since I looked at it I couldn't tell you if it's any good. There was a FATAL & Friends writeup, but it was abandoned, then left in the archives, and then I guess the archives were exploded or something.  Of course, a lot of folks have covered Werewolf: the Apocalypse, which is a pretty popular furry game that's actually had mainstream success.
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May 20, 2014 22:07
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All I recall of Ironclaw was that it was a perfectly mediocre and completely forgettable fantasy heartbreaker... but with furry races and art. If it weren't for that latter part it would have been forgotten a decade ago. Okay, and also the hilariously copyright-infringing original cover. That was hard to forget.
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May 20, 2014 22:09
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I'm in a Myriad Song game, recently published by the Ironclaw creators with some of the same mechanical DNA (and at least one race of day-glo wolf people), and it is god-damned amazing. One of the better games I've played lately. Pretty much ideal for a Farscape-style campaign. (For a Farscape-style one-shot, look to Vast and Starlit instead.)
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May 20, 2014 22:37
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Alien Rope Burn posted:To be fair, it'd be an easy way to handle the whole multi-species concept you see in a lot of fantasy worlds. Many fantasy games already have animal-based races, so as long as you avoid the worst excesses of the furry community, I can see some validity to the idea as long as it not a yiff parade. Hell, my first game was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness. I only count something as a furry product if it either says furry on or in it, or if it uses that very distinct cartoony art style with the giant flat eyes either touching or just almost connected over a muzzle for every character. TMNT & Other Strangeness just has that picture of a hairy guy becoming a wolf in four easy steps, repeated in, what, like 15 books?
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May 20, 2014 22:41
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theironjef posted:I only count something as a furry product if it either says furry on or in it, or if it uses that very distinct cartoony art style with the giant flat eyes either touching or just almost connected over a muzzle for every character. I bring up Werewolf mainly because AFAIK it was pretty big with the furry community. I don't think it was the designer's intention, of course, but it had a certain appeal. (See also: Breedbook: Bastet.) (Once again, it was named Breedbook: Bastet.) theironjef posted:TMNT & Other Strangeness just has that picture of a hairy guy becoming a wolf in four easy steps, repeated in, what, like 15 books? Yeah, I wouldn't really consider it a furry game, though the thing is that TMNT came out around the same time the anthropomorphic comic movement was really becoming a thing, so there is some shared heritage. The Turtles had an appearance in Albedo Anthropomorphics, the anthology comic that was a massive influence on birthing furry fandom. Usagi Yojimbo even got its start in Albedo, and I wouldn't necessarily call that conventionally furry. Mind, there are TMNT RPG supplements like Mutants Go Hollywood or After the Bomb that have saucy cats and bunnies tucked in there, so it's not exactly furry but it's not 100% fur-free. (See also: Archie's Teenage Mutant Ninja Adventures comic books.)
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May 20, 2014 23:35
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I bring up Werewolf mainly because AFAIK it was pretty big with the furry community. I don't think it was the designer's intention, of course, but it had a certain appeal. (See also: Breedbook: Bastet.) Heh, Breedbook. My knowledge of White Wolf stuff is just abysmal.
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May 20, 2014 23:43
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I bring up Werewolf mainly because AFAIK it was pretty big with the furry community. I don't think it was the designer's intention, of course, but it had a certain appeal. (See also: Breedbook: Bastet.) Their intent wasn't to pander to the Furry Community the problem is that apparently not everyone got that memo and some line editors decided to give the writers they didn't particularly like enough rope to hang themselves with, culminating in Tribebook: Children of Gaia (revised) and the Rite of Clouds and Rain. It was literally the last thing the Author would ever write for White Wolf. Then in 2007 someone must have drunk all the drain cleaner in the building because they let Phil "Satyrblade" Brucato back in to write a NWoD Suppliment that panders to all those parts of the furry "culture" that we'd like to forget exist. Like hiding in plain sight at fur cons and taking 'feral lovers'.
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May 21, 2014 00:27
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Kurieg posted:Their intent wasn't to pander to the Furry Community the problem is that apparently not everyone got that memo and some line editors decided to give the writers they didn't particularly like enough rope to hang themselves with, culminating in Tribebook: Children of Gaia (revised) and the Rite of Clouds and Rain. It was literally the last thing the Author would ever write for White Wolf. Right, I'm not saying it was aimed at them, but something like Bastet pandered to people who like the idea of loving the wrong kind of pussy, and there's some unfortunate overlap in that regard.
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May 21, 2014 01:21
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Really, when you have a game that focuses around "and that spirit animal inside you is reeeeal (also bestiality is cool and natural)" it's kind of silly to think it wouldn't attract a certain... audience, regardless of whatever mythic themes you wanted to present.
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May 21, 2014 01:48
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