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FMguru posted:I got the sense that they wanted to make a pirate game, saw how straight-historical RPGs traditionally did in the marketplace, cast around for a gamer-friendly "hook", and settled on applying a thin patina of furry to their game. theironjef posted:Huh, the book has a sidebar where the author talks about purchasing the old license for Furry Bandits. Both games are by the same authors, or at least have credits all over the web for being the authors of both books. But - I don't think one has to assume fursploitation. After all, this is a hobby practically founded on lack of genre awareness (hey, D&D). Writers misunderstanding the genre they're writing for (and are avowed fans of) is such a perennial aspect of this hobby that I'm not sure you have to attribute malfeasance to it.
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 Mark Rein·Hagen's Exile •Part Three: The Great  It should probably go without saying that a late 90's game being developed by White Wolf staffers divides the important players of the setting into •Androgynes• HTML Draft posted:We used to see the beautiful people of the Androgyne on Diadar, lounging in the gardens, performing on the spool dramas, officiating at the Ceremonies. They were the creatures of artifice and desire, genetically engineered for elegance and sensitivity -- arguably, the most wondrous of the Exotic species. Their very faces entranced us, disturbed our sleep with strange, hot dreams. More beautiful, more desirable than human. PDF draft posted:Apart from their roles as mediators; a talent that can possibly be attributed to their exceptional communication skills and obvious physical beauty, the Androgyne spend much of their energy in artistic pursuits. As objects of beauty themselves, they hold art in all its forms in high regard. The most famous media stars, models and actors have all been Androgyne.  PDF draft posted:Anyone who has had close contact with Androgyne can attest to their natural allure. As part of their physiology, they produce a wide array of complex pheromones that they use to carefully manipulate the emotional states of those around them as well as accentuate the reactions their appearance engenders in others. There has been much evidence to support the theory that their pheromones possess an addictive quality. The more you time you spend with an Androgyne, the more time you wish to spend with them. They are doppelgangers of a sort, yet their shape-shifting abilities are limited to sexual characteristics and minor appearance changes. They can intuitively and subtly alter their appearance to more closely resemble their target's conception of the perfect mate. This often leads to almost sacred bonding between mates.  Well. Moving on...•Sark Saron• Only mentioned in the PDF, so maybe excised in the later setting drafts? In any case, PDF Draft posted:On the distant world of Sarkon, the Sark'Saron were born, the result of a genetic experiment to create the perfect soldier. The Sark'Saron are the oldest of the exotics, their birth lying far back in the dim reaches of perhaps the second aeon. No records are known to exist that detail the earliest creation and implementation of the Sark'Saron, but the evidence of their origins can be found in their DNA: they are a genetic construct, an uplifted race derived from some long lost reptilian species. Who created them and how they were made remains a mystery. Overall, a pretty  race.•Starborn (Reisir)• PDF Draft posted:There are few Exotic races within the Hegemony that elicit as much speculation and wonder, as the Reisir: the Starborn. Possibly the natural evolutionary outcome of humanity's expansion into the stars, they have become especially suited to an extra-planetary existence. Starborn musculature is light, yet highly flexible. Their skeletal structure has been replaced with cartilaginous tissues but, they are considerably more durable than their slight frames would suggest. They are so well adapted to the rigors of space that they are capable of enduring exposure to hard vacuum for up to ten minutes with their reflective skins being temperature withholding and radiation resistant. They have hairless, smooth skinned bodies with long limbs and large eyes, resembling in many ways pearlescent skinned children. Yeah, there's some overlap with Mass Effect's Quarians there, but there's still a few differences. For one thing, everyone in the setting gets fetishwear space gimpsuits they almost never take off!  Anyway, they're initially descended from a single lineage and tend to consider each other family, and have a procedure that can change most human races into Starborn if you wanted to be a pearl-skinned space kid. For some reason they also have wide rage of speech, and... PDF draft posted:Their names are long intricate songs of ancestry and heraldry, combining their ultra and sub-sonic speech with coruscating colour patters radiated from the sacs of bioluminescent organelles located on either side of their head. Next time: More Syndics! Do you want a job?
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May 22, 2014 19:14
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Both games are by the same authors, or at least have credits all over the web for being the authors of both books. FMguru posted:I got the sense that they wanted to make a pirate game, saw how straight-historical RPGs traditionally did in the marketplace, cast around for a gamer-friendly "hook", and settled on applying a thin patina of furry to their game. In my limited experience (I played Jadeclaw a few times) most furry gamers just want to play spacemans, but furries, or dungeonmans, but furries, etc. They aren't interested in the literary science fictional route of asking what happens in a society that has a multitude of sentient species, but some are technically predators and only the lions can be king of Furtopia. My friend bought and ran Jadeclaw just because the idea of "What if your wuxia mans was a wuxia tiger mans?" was appealing and the system seemed novel. He was actually kind of mortified when he realized that the book used "furry" as an all-encompassing pronoun.
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May 22, 2014 19:21
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Halloween Jack posted:Yeah, if anything, I'd assume the opposite--they liked furries, no one had done a furry pirates game yet, engage! Honestly I would figure as much as well, and from that determine that most furry gamers are just playing Pathfinder and Fate and so on, except their characters are fursonas. That's why I was expecting more from Furry Pirates, because I figured this was the furry game for furries that want their fur situation to matter more. Like, imagine if it was called "Gay Pirates" and had a picture of the SS Manhandler on the cover, and the subtitle was "Gay Adventures in the Swashbuckling Age of Gay Piracy." Well I'm bi myself, and a lot of the characters I play in games are gay. But if I was going to be playing a game called "Gay Pirates" I'd want to get special powers for being a bear as opposed to an otter, because holy crap, it's the whole point of the game! Just like in Furry Pirates, where I would want special powers for being a bear, as opposed to an otter.
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May 22, 2014 19:44
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Halloween Jack posted:Yeah, if anything, I'd assume the opposite--they liked furries, no one had done a furry pirates game yet, engage! ARB mentioned D&D as not hewing particularly close to its source genre, but it did at least have, y'know, rules for wizards and dragons and magic swords and elves and poo poo.
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May 22, 2014 19:49
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Side note: I noticed Wikipedia categorizes Palladium's After the Bomb as part of "furry fandom". 
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May 22, 2014 19:54
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Halloween Jack posted:Is "wine and godhead" tramshumanism really much of a thing in gaming, though? Eclipse Phase is very much concerned with horror and the parts of its setting that aren't post-scarcity, Shock is, I suppose, more about getting along in an egalitarian society. I can't think of any games off the top of my head that concern themselves with epic-scale transhumanism where the technology is so advanced that it's indistinguishable from magic, like the Dancers at the End of Time, Lord of Light, or Jodorowsky's work. (There's a Metabarons roleplaying game, but you don't play as the Metabarons.) theironjef posted:Like, imagine if it was called "Gay Pirates" and had a picture of the SS Manhandler on the cover, and the subtitle was "Gay Adventures in the Swashbuckling Age of Gay Piracy." Well I'm bi myself, and a lot of the characters I play in games are gay. But if I was going to be playing a game called "Gay Pirates" I'd want to get special powers for being a bear as opposed to an otter, because holy crap, it's the whole point of the game! Just like in Furry Pirates, where I would want special powers for being a bear, as opposed to an otter. Asimo fucked around with this message at 20:01 on May 22, 2014 |
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May 22, 2014 19:58
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theironjef posted:Sure. Your stats range from 6 to -6, with lower numbers being better. I just need to hop in here and point out that it is, in fact, the exact opposite and Jef is actually a big dumb idiot that smells like a butt and looks like a butt and is probably a butt. Jesus, man, it's like you don't even care enough to memorize the stupid rules of the bullshit games we review.
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May 22, 2014 20:12
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I think the main thing is that there's a difference between a game having animal people in it and being defined as 'furry'. But if you've got dog-people and bear-people and cat-people and they're all exactly the same as humans odds are you screwed up somewhere in your game design process.
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May 22, 2014 20:16
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Grnegsnspm posted:I just need to hop in here and point out that it is, in fact, the exact opposite and Jef is actually a big dumb idiot that smells like a butt and looks like a butt and is probably a butt. Was it higher numbers better? I could have sworn it was lower. Whatever, it perversely doesn't actually affect the math at all. Also I only smell like a butt because I am a butt. I never chose to be a butt or not. Words hurt, man.
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May 22, 2014 20:27
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Yeah, the whole point of the positive or negative value was adding together the two things (So a +2 stat and a -4 modifier skill to get a -2 check) and then taking the absolute value of that and then rolling that value plus 3 and then taking either the best 3 rolled if value was positive or worst 3 rolled if it was negative. That system was way more complicated than it needed to be.
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May 22, 2014 20:33
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Kurieg posted:But if you've got dog-people and bear-people and cat-people and they're all exactly the same as humans odds are you screwed up somewhere in your game design process. Yeah, I wouldn't argue that at all, it's pretty . I just wouldn't presume the authors were necessarily trying to crank out a book to just try and squeeze furs of their hard-furned furbucks.
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May 22, 2014 20:41
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Really, I'd be more willing to assume they're just bad game designers rather than having some exploitative intent, yeah. Occam's razor, etc. 
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May 22, 2014 20:44
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Yeah, I wouldn't argue that at all, it's pretty Furbucks made me think it would be a furry themed Starbucks. Which made me look up if someone had already done that. Which led me to find that "furbucks" was the currency in a Furby based video game. Which made me wonder if anyone made a Furby RPG. Which of course someone has. This is the rabbit hole of the internet.
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May 22, 2014 20:47
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The end result, regardless of their intent, is a book that's poisonously boring to read and doesn't seem like it'd be a lot of fun to play. You'd be better served playing any other game and then just reading a nice book about historical pirates later. I think the problem they were going to run into is that neither of their premises (pirates, furries that don't act animal-y) are things that you can't easily get out of lots of other games. D&D would make for a great game of Furry Pirates. Just reskin your race as a furry, set the game on a pirate ship, and you're all set. Then you also don't have to deal with their obtuse stats and skills and easily gamed resolution mechanics. The title sounds like they're offering something unique, but the end result is "exceptionally bad rules taped to a bare-bones campaign setting." ^^^ Well we're reviewing that then.
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May 22, 2014 20:48
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There was a 3.5 book that included rules for playing Anthropomorphic whatevers, from mice all the way up to beluga whales. They even had various bonuses for the different races, if you were a wolf person you still had scent and trip. If you were a bear person you had improved grab. If you were a whale person you had an absolutely ludicrous strength score. And there were a couple of races in the various dragon magazines including a race of Wolf people that ride Wolves that hunt Werewolves for being too Wolfy. They were called the Lupin.
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May 22, 2014 20:52
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I have to wonder: has there ever been a good game about pirates? Particularly one with good rules for sailing and boats?
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May 22, 2014 20:53
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Grnegsnspm posted:This is the rabbit hole of the internet. This made me check to see if there was a Watership Down RPG, which there is, and it's really old, like 1976 old, and is called Bunnies & Burrows. So we're reviewing that.
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May 22, 2014 20:54
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7th Sea? Although I don't know about the sailing.
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May 22, 2014 20:55
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Wasn't 7th Sea pretty good before it moved to d20?
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May 22, 2014 20:55
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Kurieg posted:Wasn't 7th Sea pretty good before it moved to d20? It was a flagship (OH HO!) system for many intolerable 90's concepts, chief sin among them being spend exp as cool benny points ie do cool things or advance.
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May 22, 2014 20:59
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What's the consensus on Exalted Sail charms? I guess they only abstract the concept of sail as a travel mechanic, where we're more or less talking about ship to ship combat. I dunno, I couldn't care less about trying work out broadsides or tacking into the wind or any of the arcane stuff inherent to one ship fighting another, especially since it sounds like the sort of thing that would rapidly become the DM having a long argument with the one player on the ship that makes ship rolls.
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May 22, 2014 21:01
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Mr. Maltose posted:It was a flagship (OH HO!) system for many intolerable 90's concepts, chief sin among them being spend exp as cool benny points ie do cool things or advance.
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May 22, 2014 21:02
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I have to wonder: has there ever been a good game about pirates? Particularly one with good rules for sailing and boats? Flashing Blades, Privateers and Gentlemen, 50 Fathoms...
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May 22, 2014 21:03
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Kurieg posted:There was a 3.5 book that included rules for playing Anthropomorphic whatevers, from mice all the way up to beluga whales. They even had various bonuses for the different races, if you were a wolf person you still had scent and trip. If you were a bear person you had improved grab. If you were a whale person you had an absolutely ludicrous strength score. The lupin were one of several anthro races introduced into D&D's "Known World," along with the rakasta (catpeople) and tortles (guess).
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May 22, 2014 21:06
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I have to wonder: has there ever been a good game about pirates? Particularly one with good rules for sailing and boats? I'm a fan of Honor and Intrigue.
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May 22, 2014 21:07
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7th Sea is a real mixed bag. It differentiates itself from other swashbuckling games by not being entirely horrible, but has a lot of bizarre design decisions, like "Making the setting so you can walk anywhere that matters and never really need a boat" or "We've been there before? gently caress sailing, I'm French, I can teleport". It can be pretty cool if you take a hammer to it. The boat rules are poo poo, though. Humbug Scoolbus posted:Flashing Blades, Privateers and Gentlemen, 50 Fathoms... I'm not too familiar with the first two! Never was that enamored with Savage Worlds' vehicle rules, but at least it puts in the effort? Don't know if 50 Fathoms does anything better with them. Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 21:16 on May 22, 2014 |
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May 22, 2014 21:08
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Selachian posted:and tortles (guess). Little chocolate tart guys?
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May 22, 2014 21:08
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Kurieg posted:There was a 3.5 book that included rules for playing Anthropomorphic whatevers, from mice all the way up to beluga whales. They even had various bonuses for the different races, if you were a wolf person you still had scent and trip. If you were a bear person you had improved grab. If you were a whale person you had an absolutely ludicrous strength score. Selachian posted:The lupin were one of several anthro races introduced into D&D's "Known World," along with the rakasta (catpeople) and tortles (guess).
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May 22, 2014 21:20
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Halloween Jack posted:drat man, you don't need third-party books or even Dragon articles to have 100 ways to play beast-people in D&D 3e. The half-dragon catgirl vote is a significant fraction of the 3e-specific fanbase. It wasn't a 3rd party book.  Behold the Onager, the anthropomorphic donkey that no one wanted.  It also had rules for loving bizarre stuff like having a centipede grafted to your head and being half gelatinous cube.
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May 22, 2014 21:30
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Kurieg posted:It wasn't a 3rd party book.
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May 22, 2014 21:33
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theironjef posted:What's the consensus on Exalted Sail charms? I guess they only abstract the concept of sail as a travel mechanic, where we're more or less talking about ship to ship combat. I dunno, I couldn't care less about trying work out broadsides or tacking into the wind or any of the arcane stuff inherent to one ship fighting another, especially since it sounds like the sort of thing that would rapidly become the DM having a long argument with the one player on the ship that makes ship rolls. I don't know about consensus, but they're typically terrible like every other "pretend there's a subsystem for it even though there isn't yet" part of the game. There are a few interesting tricks buried under a mountain of "+10 yards per second to ship's speed." Of course, the dangerous/difficult terrain, vehicle and mass combat rules were awful to begin with, so putting all that stuff on water hardly makes a difference.
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May 22, 2014 21:49
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Alien Rope Burn posted:7th Sea is a real mixed bag. It differentiates itself from other swashbuckling games by not being entirely horrible, but has a lot of bizarre design decisions, like "Making the setting so you can walk anywhere that matters and never really need a boat" or "We've been there before? gently caress sailing, I'm French, I can teleport". Privateers and Gentlemen and Flashing Blades were published by Fantasy Games Unlimited (FGU). I did a mostly finished review of their Villains and Vigilantes so maybe I should do Flashing Blades?
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May 22, 2014 21:57
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theironjef posted:This made me check to see if there was a Watership Down RPG, which there is, and it's really old, like 1976 old, and is called Bunnies & Burrows. So we're reviewing that. Yeah, it's a one of those novelty classics that has passed from the gaming consciousness, much like: 
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May 22, 2014 21:59
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Jef, try to find a copy of Alma Mater.
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May 22, 2014 22:03
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I've got a copy of GURPS Bunnies and Burrows around here somewhere. Of all the licenses they've done, I think that one's one of the strangest.
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May 22, 2014 22:13
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:Jef, try to find a copy of Alma Mater. I've heard of that! It's like high school the game, and it has some extremely on the nose examples of early 80s art and stereotypes throughout. Good call.
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May 22, 2014 22:17
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it's also one of the only games to be booted out of Gencon due to some NSFW art...
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May 22, 2014 22:19
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:Jef, try to find a copy of Alma Mater. no don't
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May 22, 2014 22:34
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Kurieg posted:It wasn't a 3rd party book. I've got that. I can see it from where I'm sitting here right now.
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