|
Battle Mad Ronin posted:Does the book generally do a good job of explaining Wises, Traits and Circles? A significant number of people have had this reaction to burning wheel, but I’ve always been completely puzzled by it. The book seems pretty clear to me I guess? Edit: I suspect it has less to do with the book itself and more to do with people who already are vaguely aggravated by the existence of games mechanically different enough from Dungeons and Dragons to not be immediately understood being called idiots by the game dev on twitter for no immediately understanding his game. Like the game explains itself better than D&D has since moldvay basic, but everyone knows how to play D&D and no one knows how to play Burning Wheel. jakodee fucked around with this message at 20:40 on Mar 31, 2019 |
#
?
Mar 31, 2019 16:47
|
|
|
|
| # ? Dec 4, 2024 03:08 |
|
|
Rand Brittain posted:The main problem with the Bureaucracy system, which as far as I know the new devs haven't figured out a favored solution for either, is figuring out how to make it so that having an Excellency doesn't protect you from making stupid decisions. The easy way is to have your Bureaucracy score entitle you to warnings that you're about to make a terrible decision, but not actually prevent you from going through with it. Here's what you can do, here are the likely attendant consequences, here's how it COULD go badly wrong due to factors entirely outside your control but won't NECESSARILY. WARNING: this action cannot be undone. Continue y/n?
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2019 18:12
|
|
|
 RPG supplements that just offer lists of new equipment walk a fine line. Some offer more of the same gear, with perhaps some added fluff about the economy of the setting. Much more often, these supplements provide equipment superior to what was found in the core book, breaking several important mechanics in the process. Surprisingly, Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0.’s first equipment supplement, Chromebook, doesn’t have the powercreep that I remember. It’s still there, but it’s not to the same extent as later books. The first Chromebook makes up for lack of game-breaking items by just being very badly written.  The 4 Chromebooks for CP2020 each contain a wide variety of new equipment and other things to spend money on. They’re written as in-setting shopping catalogs. I have a pretty high tolerance for fluff writing on gear, as long as the rules to use these items are still present. Frequently, the stuff in Chromebook 1 fails to clear that bar. I normally avoid going into who contributed to a book I review beyond the publisher. But apparently one of the contributors is reading this review as I post. To this person (and any others that later stumble on this review) I want to say “hi” and that I’m sure this was a valuable learning experience and that you went on to write a lot better stuff in the 30 years since this book. The book’s credits do break out which parts each person contributed to, but I won’t give the specific names, simply to avoid the possibility of some jerk connecting a real name with a forums’ ID. Part 1: Gadgets It’s probably a bad idea to start any book with a chapter that has “miscellaneous” in the title. While disheartening, it is accurate; the first section of Chromebook 1 contains personal (and non-personal) items that aren’t weapons, cyberware or vehicles. There are 41 items listed in this section The only items that rise above being miscellaneous are the cyberdecks. There are three of them for sale, and two of them are a lot cheaper than what the deck construction rules specify. However they aren’t cheap enough for a starting Netrunner to be able to purchase it and the cyberware and programs to use them. Two of the cyberdecks are hands-free - one being a helmet, the other built into a camo-suit. The third one comes with a fax machine!    one of these things is not like the other Speaking of which, there’s a lot of paleofuture items As an example, here’s what a Cyberpunk character would have to buy in order to get the same functionality of a real life smart phone:
 That’s 1730eb total. Meanwhile, I did a quick google check and as of 3/27/19, a Galaxy S9 costs $599.99 before any discounts. Are there any ridiculous prices in the opposite direction? Well I won’t give too big a spoilers, but one of the sections in this supplement is Housing. Aside from the cyberdecks, there are five items here that provide bonuses: DPI Smartsticks (+1 to Play Drums), Speedholster (+1 to Initiative when making a fast draw), Advanced Alarm Removal Kit (+1 to Electronic Security), the IR Combat Cloak (opponents get -5 to Notice if using IR) and the Digital Weapon Uplink (+2 to unjam a smartgun). That last one is notable because RAW you don’t need to make a skill check to unjam a weapon; it just takes 1d6 turns to do so. But the most useful item isn’t any of the above. Instead I would give that distinction to Detcord High Explosive. It costs 900eb for a pack of 10 meter high explosive wire that can cut through up to 40SP. This is the sort of item that has a lot of creative potential. On the flip side, there’s gadget that feel like it was created after a player managed to short-circuit a Referee’s carefully prepared story. The Auto-Punchout makes non-Netrunners impervious to Anti-Personnel programs, but it carries a huge penalty that prevents actual Netrunners from using it themselves (-5 to Initiative). Then there’s equipment that will almost never come up in a campaign, let alone be something players would actually buy. There’s a 1000eb Office Communication Suite, which is a Futuredesk (comes with a fax machine!) There’s a Digital Recording Studio that costs 12,000eb, which stood out to me because I remembered from the Rockerboy role description that the “advent of digital porta-studios and garage laser-disk mastering” was an important part of enabling Rockstars to operate independently of record studios. But so far all they got to make records is something that costs all their beginning funds. The diving suit from The Abyss is available for 6,000eb. Lastly there’s a suit of medieval armor available for 3,500eb, or 10,500eb for something really fancy. It’s stats are awful (SP 14, EV 6).  My award for “Most Useless Item” goes to the Power Grid Solar Electric Panel. It provides 110 EV on a sunny day. There are no rules for electricity usage in this game, but here’s a solar panel for 100eb, plus an extra 25eb if you want an extension cord. Next Time: He Triiiiied To Kill Me With A Forklift, Òle! SirPhoebos fucked around with this message at 23:34 on Mar 31, 2019 |
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2019 22:09
|
|
|
Part 2: Vehicles There’s one thing that I’ll give the Vehicle section is that the art matches the writing. Which is to say that it looks like it was drawn in the back of a grade-school notebook. Not all of the problems here are the fault of the writer of this section. The core vehicles rules themselves are poorly written, and the stats for vehicles in the main book have to be pieced together from disparate information - and that’s when it’s actually available. To get full vehicle combat rules, a group has to use a 1st Edition supplement. It won’t be until Maximum Metal that the rules for vehicle combat and stats get updated. With the excuses out of the way, it’s time to tear this trash apart.  The first vehicle is the Bensen Cascade, an “ultra fast sport hover”. It doesn’t fly, but it still floats off the ground a little. It’s difficult to control, which for other vehicles in CP2020 means there is a penalty to skill checks with this vehicle. The Cascade does things differently: a driver needs a Drive skill of 8 or higher in order to drive it. What happens if someone of lower skill tries to drive one?  The Cascade has a top speed of 260mph, but no operating range is given. It has a limited autopilot that can make up to 10 turns. The Cascade can jump up to 3 meters to clear obstacles, but a Skill check of 20 is needed to avoid scraping the ground. Which either does nothing or will probably total the vehicle, depending on how you interpret the crashing rules. SP 12, SDP 40. Costs 58,000 eb.The BMW 9018 is a hybrid limo/sports car. It has a top speed of 210 mph (no range), SP 24, SDP 90. It has space for six (unclear if that includes the driver). It cost 100,000 eb, and “it doesn’t have options, they ask you what you want, then they build it.” This is meant to be for luxury accoutrements (including a SegAtari cybergame system,  ), but I’m sure some group tried to get as many heavy weapons onto a limo as possible for a flat cost.The Harley-Davidson Thundergod is, well, a Harley. It costs 4,640 eb, and a cyberlink upgrade can be added for 950 eb. SDP 35, no armor. It has an operational range of 600 km, but no top speed. If you’re not going to put how fast a vehicle goes, then why bother?  The Shiva is the first vehicle in this book to have full stats. (  ) It’s got a top speed of 250 kph on city streets, but can go over 260 kph on a race track. No other vehicle has these two rating. The Shiva’s range is 400 km (gotta love flipping back and forth between metric and imperial) and has 35 SDP, no armor. It’s very maneuverable, so “reduce DIFF of all maneuvers by 5”. If only there was a more concise way to state this...benefit  There’s a warning against taking off too fast with a passenger in back, even though we have no rules for acceleration. Also, the drawing shows an enclosed motorbike. It costs 8,000 eb, and “interface plugs can be added easily”. No further explanation given (a vehicle price is normally doubled if it has a cyber interface). The Pedicab is a partially motorized bike used for an ultra-cheap cab. (1.5 eb/mile. Heavy people pay extra). It can go 25 mph, down to 15 mph if fully loaded (no word on what that is). If going downhill it can go faster, and when properly motivated (such as by a gunfight), it can get to 30 mph. Pedicab drivers are “wonderful sources of information, if properly tipped”. A Pedicab has SDP 15, but there’s only a 75% gunfire will do only cosmetic damage (ie doesn’t actually protect rider or passenger). There’s no rules on how far the Pedicab can be ridden, but let’s be honest: this isn’t something players are going to be using for any extended length of period. The Pedicab costs 1,200 eb. The Ambunaught is an ambulance. It also has no reason to exists because the game has Trauma Team AV-4s as a setting staple. I can only assume that a Referee didn’t think Aerodynes would have enough widespread availability, so there needed to be a ground alternative. But then we this line: “Next year’s model is supposed to float”. WE ALREADY HAVE FLYING AMBULANCES, STOP DOWNGRADING THE SETTING! Sorry The Ambunaught doesn’t even have any weapons for Kool-Aid Man entrances. It’s just an ambulance. It goes up to 72 mph on flat roads, 30 mph on rough terrain (no range), has 120 SDP and 40 SP. Costs 76,000 eb.  The Arasaka Riot-VIII is a riot van, available for rent to any government or corporation that needs a few extra boots. It has a crew of two and can carry 8 riot police. The Riot-VIII has a top speed of 120 mph (no range), SDP 200, and SP 30. The troops only have 75% coverage, which feels like a serious loving design flaw. The Riot-VIII has two armaments. The first is a water cannon turret with a range of 30 meters (10 meters for steam), and it’s up to the Referee as to what it actually does so as to “keep them an unknown factor”. Thanks, book. The other weapon is a grenade launcher mounted on the cab (even though it’s drawn in the back) with a 300 meter range and carries 18 rounds. The Riot-VIII has a satellite uplink to let corporate boards micromanage riot police. It costs 250,000 eb, but there’s no information on what it costs to rent. Which was the main reason this vehicle is in the Chromebook. To be clear, if this were a modern game, I wouldn’t care about stuff like whether a book specifies how far a vehicle goes or what it costs to rent one for a day. But when you have an old, granular RPG like Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0., and you write a supplement that has the conceit of being an in-setting advertising magazine, then you owe it to the reader to stick to that premise.  The GM Hyundai Worker Bee is an automated forklift, but it can also be manually operated. It has two robot arms to load and unload cargo. “They are found in those industrial facilities Cyberpunk PC’s are so fond of breaking into.” Top speed 25 mph, ? range, SDP 60 and SP 25. We’re told how much they can lift, but that’s not why anyone would use a Bee. What they’re going to do is attack someone with those arms. But we get no rules for how much damage they do.  The bee costs 6,000 eb.Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0. doesn’t really know what to do with helicopters. On the one hand the setting has moved on to superior Aerodyne technology. But helicopters have a recognizability factor, especially when CP2020 wants to be Cyber-Vietnam. So we keep seeing helicopters presented as “budget options”. The Bell Spy-Eye 18 is a news helicopter. Although unarmed, it has defensive systems to avoid getting blown up. The Spy-Eye has a -30% vs missile hit. Top speed 280 mph, range ?, SDP 65, SP 12. “Maneuverability is high compared to other choppers (-2 from all maneuver rolls)”. The standard maneuverability modifier for Copters is 0, so I’m guessing this is some THAC0 type nonsense. The Spy Eye costs 206,000 eb.  The Sikorsky-Mitsubishi Dragon is a (supposedly) heavily armored combat helicopter. How heavily armored? “Choose any 8 heavy weapons from the Solo of Fortune and Cyberpunk books to arm it.”  The heavy weapons in the core book are still man-portable weapons, like a single-shot missile launcher or a 20mm cannon that fires one bullet a round. And Solo of Fortune is a 1st edition supplement. Weapons in 1st edition normally didn’t list damage, instead you were supposed to look it up based on the type of ammunition used. The table for looking up damage wasn’t reprinted in CP2020, so a Referee has to piece together the damage for many of the heavy weapons. And for the few weapons that do have damage values, it’s immediately obvious that the way damage is determined changed between editions (damage in 1st edition decreased at longer range). The Dragon has a top speed of 350 mph loaded and 420 mph unloaded, a range of ?, SDP 400, 90 SP. This would be a sheer headache to fight with personal arms (at least until the next Chromebook  ). The Dragon doesn’t carry troops or cargo (despite being drawn like one). It costs 2.5 million eb. The AV-9 is a modular Aerodyne with three different suites that can be fitted in and out by crews between missions. There’s a command center (no idea what it does), a troop transport (doesn’t say how many troops it carries), and finally it has a gunship module. Unlike the Dragon, this entry actually lists what the AV-9 is armed with. Unfortunately, it doesn’t give a standard weapon stat block. Instead it tells us to look up a weapon from the core book but change a few stats. It’s hard to follow because important information is mixed with stuff not necessary to run combat. It’s also really unclear what comes with each module, because some weapons are part of the frame. The AV-9 has a top speed of 400 mph, range of 400 miles, SDP 180 and SP 45. It costs 1.3 Million.  The Punknaught are three to four AV engines, a bunch of guns, and a whole lot of scrap kit-bashed together into a makeshift armored vehicle. Construction takes “from a week to a month”. The Punknaught can fit 2 weapons per engine. “Each ‘unit’ has an SDP of 60 to 80”, implying this vehicle has separate hit locations. The parameters for creating a Punknaught are extremely vague, except that it’s entirely up to the Referee what the exact stats are - including weapons available. That restriction feels like a big kick in the junk for any Tech trying to play their role as advertised. I was going to complain about the book not even providing an example of a Punknaught, but after the last two entries, it’s probably for the best. Next Time: Pull My Finger! SirPhoebos fucked around with this message at 23:24 on Mar 31, 2019 |
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2019 23:21
|
|
|
Forklift rules that do not allow you to use the forklift for combat are very lacking. As we all know, Forklifts are very dangerous and cool. As our German friends will tell us: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DILjd69C0o
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2019 23:32
|
|
|
SirPhoebos posted:Weapons in 1st edition normally didn’t list damage, instead you were supposed to look it up based on the type of ammunition used. Oh poo poo, guess I know where Neotech got that from then because that's a big thing I'm seeing as I'm going through the N2 rule book. Speaking of which, spent all week writing up entries so I should probably start posting them soon since I have a pretty decent backlog by this point. The ranged combat section is a loving doozy. Although I haven't rolled up a sample character yet, which I probably should do.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2019 00:26
|
|
|
As required by the Internerd Compact of '91: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mK2jFO_DaRQ
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2019 00:28
|
|
|
That vehicles section is what you get when you pay a guy at the FLGS. I fully agree that what got printed should have been thrown in my face accompanied with "Finish the stats dumbass !" The stats issue didn't occur to anybody,e specially me. That said, I tried to make up a selection of stuff the players would want like the Cascade and the Shiva, stuff they'd run into like the pedicabs or worker bees, or stuff the GM could use like a terrifying helicopter gunship or an ambulance that could bust through a wall to save the day. The Punknaught just needed more love, but I was writing to space and had to try to balance fluff and crunch. e. I will note that the Punknaught was used in a short adventure published in Challenge magazine. That was really nice to see, I'm proud of that nonsensical pile of junk and jet engines. mllaneza fucked around with this message at 03:51 on Apr 1, 2019 |
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2019 03:40
|
|
|
Uh you do you but you basically just auto-doxxed yourself. Also unconnected but yes Torchbearer explains things, but it's gonna be a bit cause everything is complicated. No update tonight because I'm getting drunk and missing my ex. I'm not gonna get too much into the Burning Wheel discussion since I never read the original and got the big fancy editions later as a gift after I knew Mouse Guard and Torchbearer, but it still seemed reasonable?
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2019 04:56
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:Another common one I see is "I am the fifth or sixth child of a noble family, I'm looking to get enough fame and wealth to own my own land since nothing is left for me in the family inheritance." I think that's exactly another one that Gary Gygax himself reccomended as a potential PC origin; it neatly explains why you have the training and equipment of a fighting-man, illusionist or whatever and you're using it to go into deathtrap tombs and dragon's lairs for all the gold you can grab. For similar reasons, that and the other one are also pretty common origin stories for protagonists in all manner of adventure fiction and fairy tales going back centuries. Often they have some fancy heirloom or another, like a secret cure-all medicine or something. (Pendragon explicitly emulates this kinda thing with the Luck Tables)
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2019 07:49
|
|
|
quote:Warning #1 Bill Coffin posted:... and then, he decided, he was going to do this great big, six part, Rifts sourcebook series called the Siege on Tolkeen, and he's like "Bill, you're my boy, you're going to help me write this." And I went, "No, man, I don't know about this, Kevin, I'm not really a Rifts writer." And he's like "Nonono, trust me, they'll love it, work with me on this." And I said, "Look, Kev, I mean, one of the big successes of a lot of your game worlds is the fact that..." - and this is true, if you look at most Palladium product - "... the game's settings are all built on this notion of unresolved conflict. There's always this war that's about to start. An evil that's about to break loose." quote:Some parents may find the violence, magic and supernatural elements of the game inappropriate for young readers/players. We suggest parental discretion. Bill Coffin posted:And the glory of that, see, especially, that approach, versus White Wolf, where a lot of these games have this very discretely defined metaplot that had an actual ending in kind of took the freedom out of the hand of the players. With a lot of Palladium games, their settings are set up such that players could really interface them very, very well on their own terms. You could take this and run in your own direction very well. The games can give you explicit permission to do that. And the Siege on Tolkeen was a direct violation of that compact with the players, I felt. So I had a really hard time swallowing this whole thing. And, frankly, Rifts- I've never even played Rifts. I'm not a Rifts writer, like, I don't know this game system, so. quote:Please note that none of us at Palladium Books® condone or encourage the occult, the practice of magic, the use of drugs, or violence. Bill Coffin posted:So what Kevin wants to do is he wants to have this story- this big series of sourcebooks that basically resolves this massive metaplot that much of the core game has hinged upon. Long story short, a lot of fans didn't really take it that well. They didn't really like the books a whole hell of a lot, there were certain parts about them they liked, certain parts about them they didn't like, and Kevin and I clashed a whole lot on what to do with this because... frankly, I wasn't feeling the project, I really shouldn't have been on it, but Kevin wanted me there, he had nobody else to write it with him. We had a lot of strife over that thing. After that, things were never quite the same.  Rifts Coalition Wars 1: Sedition - "Ironically, when one sees through the philosophical smoke screen and sociological propaganda, it is geography that's the real villain." Let's recap. To understand the Tolkeen plot, we have to go back to the original Rifts book where Tolkeen is described in "Minnesota, a place under siege!", with the Coalition making the first scouting and skirmishes against Tolkeen. Erin Tarn basically writes it off even at the time, though, for the Coalition to battle the Xiticix bug-men to the Northwest. This would be reaffirmed in Rifts Sourcebook, which emphasizes the war will begin soon. As Rifts focuses on different locations around the world, Tolkeen gets forgotten for a bit, but does return in Rifts Mercenaries, which slates a "Siege on Tolkeen" series for 1995. (It gets released in 200.) It presents it as a potential work opportunity for mercenaries, if problematic. Similarly, the conflict is referenced once again in Rifts World Book 10: Juicer Uprising, but it's not until the utter trainwreck of Rifts World Book 11: Coalition War Campaign that it really came back into the spotlight. With formal declarations of war against Tolkeen and Free Quebec, as well as a new army, the Coalition is poised to make their attack. Rifts Sourcebook 4: Coalition Navy gives us their aquatic forces, and Rifts World Book 13: Lone Star gave us more on mutant animals and the so-called "Xiticix killer". Rifts World Book 22: Free Quebec detailed the war between the main Coalition states and Free Quebec... which finally brings us to....  Wait. The warning wasn't done? quote:Warning #2 Oh. I'm so sorry. quote:Some parents may find the barriers of good taste breached by feeble attempts at satire, humor and spoof. We suggest parental discretion! I'm going to keep you waiting on Coalition Wars a little while longer. quote:Please note that none of us at Palladium Books® condone or encourage anybody to take themselves or anything too seriously. Good natured fun is ... well ... fun! I realized where we were at with The Rifter and well... quote:Serious gamers turn back, now! Do not read any more!! Palladium has this crazy idea that games are "entertainment" - and that they are supposed to be fun and sometimes downright silly! A potential resources for cutting-loose and being goofy with friends once in a while and a way to have a few good laughs. If there ever was a time to do this, now is the time. quote:Read on at your own risk. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!! Only through pain can we be made pure.  The Rifter 9½, part 1: "Draw the kind of violence or shameless sexist material that Palladium is too timid and socially conscious to print itself." Yes, it's time for Palladium jokes about Palladium jokes. That's how far down the rabbit hole I've gotten. Of course, given the size of the exit, getting out of the rabbit hole is the bigger dilemma. So, this is The Rifter™ Number Nine in a Half, subtitled A once in a Millennium April Fool's Spectacular & Collector's Item at one point, Y2K April Fools' Spectacular at another, and The Silly Side of the Palladium Megaverse®... so, you know. We have Palladium. Going for humor. Some of it is cute. Some of it is awful. Some of it will be outright offensive. None of it is actually by Wayne Smith. Instead, it's credited to fictional characters, but I'll just be putting the actual names of the writers next to each article, so   That cover's one of the funnier bits. We then get an editorial titled From the Desk of Wayne Smith™ in which the editor of The Rifter explains how to get your articles into the magazine: bribery, liquor, and flattery. It's a cute joke that wears awfully thin over the course of three-quarters of a page. It's not actually written by Wayne Smith. Then, we get to Palladium News, Info, & Coming Attractions. Typically, this is where Siembieda fills up space with announcements of coming releases and recent appearances in a nicely space-filling catalog format. This time around, the opening news is Palladium Books sold to the famous Ferkelberger family. It's funny because Ferkelberger is a dumb name and he's a rich jerk!... I think... anyway, I think that's the joke. Pretty sure... no... yeah, that's... that's the "joke". Kevin and Maryann Siembieda have retired to Borneo. The Rifter 9½ posted:"It's really very nice here," said Maryann Siembieda, "although those wild men can get pretty obnoxious sometimes." Next, its revealed that Kevin Siembieda & Steve Jackson are one and the same, and reveals that he's also acquired White Wolf, Wizards of the Coast, Kenzer & Co., Dream Pod Nine... "and others". Siembieda claims that "Steve Jackson" was just a pen name that got so popular that he led a double life. And that's why releases are so late. Also it turns out he's Steven Wieck of White Wolf and Jolly Blackburn, as taking on other identities "became an obsession, the ultimate roleplaying game". There were actual rumors of Palladium buying out other companies or vice versa running around on the internets at the time, and it's lampooning those. It was funnier at the time? Maybe?  The original version of this was really pixelated. It looks better shrunk down. The preview of Siege on Tolkeen makes fun of comics by promising clones, new team line-ups, changing everything... etc. The Cyber-Knights get taken over by "Doctor Pepperheimer", which is funny because he has a dumb name that sounds like a soda! Joseph Prosek II is replaced with "his fun-loving clone" Lenny, which is also funny because Lenny is a dumb name! And there's some... uncomfortably sexist humor about the Coalition suddenly dressing up in pink ballerina costumes instead of skull armor, or "Is Erin Tarn really a man!?"  The Rifter 9½ posted:And hey, if you hate it, a year or two from now we'll change it all back just like the comics do, and everything will be fine until the next great event. Yeah baby! We have preview of The Palladium "Super" Third Edition (that is, their fantasy game)... The Rifter 9½ posted:... will introduce a revolutionary new game system the new owners fondly call, "Tell the freakin' story, we don't need drat rules in our way." This is another brain-child of [ Wow, Coffin predicted Monte Cook's routine about a year early... though, actually, it's poking with surprising sharpness at Palladium alumnus Erick Wujcik's game Amber Diceless Role-Playing, which used similar claims. We then get an ad for a Rifter credit card that earns you 1 XP per dollar spent through it. "The Power to Purchase the Megaverse®." Well, that'd be the only practical way to could get a 15th level character in Palladium. Next: I'm pretty sure Synnibarr did it first.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2019 08:51
|
|
|
 Neotech 2 Part 1: Where it all begins. The year is 1999, the world is slightly freaking out about the coming millennium and the Y2K bug that threatens to plummet the world into darkness. By this point Cyberpunk 2020, the second edition of the R. Talsorian Games title, has been out for nine years. The third edition of Shadowrun came out the year before as well. Meanwhile in Sweden, a company called Neogames releases the second edition of their system Neotech at the tail end of the year. Simply called Neotech 2 or N2.  The best version I could find of the core rulebook cover. It also sets the precedence of the level of quality when it comes to interior art. The previous version of the game came out in 1993.  The cover of the first edition. Tagline translation: “Roleplaying in (a) high tech and brutal world”. It should be noted that they weren’t first with releasing a domestic cyberpunk themed RPG. That award goes to Target games with their release of the second edition of Mutant in 1989. Only one year after Cyberpunk 2013 took the rpg world by storm and started the whole genre. This version takes place in a dystopian, post-apocalyptic cyberpunk themed world, where massive corporations rule everything in gigantic cities. The whole thing very much inspired by Judge Dredd alongside the cyberpunk genre in general. It’s dark, dystopian future stood in stark contrast to the previous editions radiation-created craziness with mutated talking animals and exploration of ruins of the past. Something that would return to the game much, much later down the line. Nowadays that version is referred as “New Mutant” or “Mutant 2089” to differentiate it from the first edition.  The tagline reads: “An action role playing game in a dark future” Three years prior to the the release of N2 Neogames released the first edition of Eon. A fantasy RPG set in the world of Mundana and would ultimately be their most popular game. Spawning three edition under Neogames and a fourth edition under another company in 2014. The fourth revised edition under another developer still sees books being released for it. Now Eon is a system somewhat notorious in Swedish RPG circles for its fondness of tables and complicated rules to simulate realism. That is something we’ll see appear in Neotech 2 as well. A lot.  N2-130 > Hit table for firefights. I’m going to be honest here and say I have never actually had the chance to play this game before. My only memories of it is finding the core rulebook as a boy in a toy store that also decided to sell some RPG books on the side but I never really had a chance to flip through it. I vaguely remember thinking the cover looked cool back then. I’ve certainly been aware of the games existence after that point. But even then I’ve never really had a chance to get any massive exposure of its system and quirks. Even if I did had PDF scans on my computer for a while at some point. So it was mostly on a whim, and partially inspired by the Cyberpunk 2020 readthrough, that I decided to dig up a copy of the rules and give it a readthrough. This means you can’t really expect any great insights in how various rules interact with each other. Beyond a sense of growing horror as I go through this as I’m not the biggest fan of games that feature large amounts of crunch or wants to simulate realism. Because this game is really big on the realism aspect. Something which is established as early as the preface written by the founder of Neogames: Neogames posted:“It is with great pleasure that we can now present the long-awaited second edition of Neotech. Although the first edition was a hobby project, it received a reception that was above all expectations. With a more professional second edition, my co-authors and I have had the opportunity to correct some shortcomings and also made great improvements to both rules and background material. Any quoted text is translated by me (with some help by google translate) into English from Swedish so pardon any grammatical inconsistencies. In fact pardon for any inconsistencies in general when it comes to terminology and so on. I honestly have no idea what’s up with the comment about genetic manipulation. Not completely sure if this is some reaction to it being too prevalent in previous cyberpunk or sci-fi RPGs or it’s simply the opinion of the founder himself. But at the same time the focus on realism stands at odds with the later stated vision of N2 being intended as an action-thriller game. Where the emphasis is more on action and cooler tech. That is an an approach I feel will be actively hampered by the strive for accurate realism within the rules. I wouldn’t call this a heartbreaker in a sense since a number of people were involved in both writing and developing the game. But at the same time it’s obviously a love child of the founder with the way he talks about the rules having an “almost optimal balance”. But more on that I suppose when we reach the combat rules.. Although I can’t help but to chuckle at the phrase “action and violence films” because it feels incredibly archaic in a way. Something belonging more to the mid 80’s rather than the late 90’s that is also on the cusp of the new millenium as the preface is dated 31st of October 1999. Should be mentioned that a third edition of the game was kickstarted successfully last year. With a release slated for the end of this year. Going by a newpost for March of this year it seems that they’ve made the classic crowdfunded mistake of being overly ambitious with everything they wanted to do with the game. A fair warning, a lot these posts are going to be rather long because this game is dense when it comes to rules. Interior art, or “art” to be more precise, is scarce a lot of the time and there is just pages of text and tables. Next Time: Of Dice and Cybermen
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2019 10:37
|
|
|
Part 3: Cyberware Chromebook 1 adds 36 new Cyberware items to destroy your character’s soul with. Are any of them worth it? The most universally useful is the Lifesaver Skinweave. Characters with this enhancement advance Death Levels once every four minutes as opposed to once every minutes. This greatly improves the odds of a Trauma Team saving a character that falls into a coma. It costs 4,500 eb, plus 1,000 eb in maintenance each time a character sustains a wound higher than critical. Even with the high cost, it’s a must-have for anyone that wants to do a long-term campaign. HC=(1d6/2)+1.  The Skate Foot is pretty useful for anyone that wants to be a melee combatant. It’s a heavy investment-not for the cyberlimb option itslef (440 eb, 1d6 HC each), but for the pair of cyberlegs. In return you get 20 MA, which means you can move 60 meters in a round. Having a pair of cyberlegs also synergizes well with kicking someone to death. The Skate Foot requires Skating or Athletics, but no actual skill check is required. Athletics is also used for throwing grenades so it’s not a waste. The one nitpick I have is that they screw up the conversion to mph. There’s the Forked Tongue AudioVox implant that gives a +1 to Persuasion/Seduction rolls. It costs 350 eb and 2 HC, meaning it completely eclipses the Mr. Studd implant from the corebook. Finally, there’s the Wearman Mark II, because someone realized it was dumb to have Humanity Cost for purely decorative cyberware. The original Wearman was a cyberaudio option that let you listen to the radio or albums loaded from the chipware socket. The Mark II can be added without cyberaudio and has no Humanity Cost (it costs 200 eb, which is nothing). So that’s four pieces of cyberware I would recommend at some level. As for the rest... There’s a cyberhand, which just replaces the hand instead of the whole arm. It costs 750 eb and 1d6 HC. The cyberhand can have one arm option or 4 finger options. That brings us to the cyberfingers. These are fun little tools, but since each one chips away at a character’s Humanity, they’re less likely to be bought instead of something that provides a greater overall benefit like hydraulic rams.  There are a few cyber weapons that range from pathetic to ‘will be used once for great effect and then everyone will take the defense against it’. On the pathetic end, we got the Derringer cyberhand option that I swear sounds like something straight out of Ninjas and Superspies. There’s a Cyberwhip that can be used to strangle opponents, but it leaves the attacker exposed and also with no way to get away if they need to. The Mace Hand actually has a reasonable HC cost (3) and does decent damage, but the modified hand has -2 to REF checks, which I assume includes attacks with the hand itself. The Gang Jazzler can immobilize an opponent for minutes if not outright kill in one hit, but once it’s used everyone is going to be getting Skinweave (it can’t affect armor higher than 3). The Flashbulb is a high strobe light installed in the base of a cyberarm palm and can stun a group of people for 1d6 minutes. Afterwards everyone is going to include anti-dazzle in their cyberoptics or goggles. There’s even an Optishields add on that explicitly has anti-dazzle included.  There are two enhanced versions of the TimesSquare Marquee cybereye option. There’s be an increased number of cybernetics that need some version of the TimesSquare to function, which just make me feel that it should have been a standard feature for cybereyes. There are three cyberware specifically for coping with outer space. As of this supplement, you had to go to a 1st edition book to get the base rules for outer space (Low Orbital). There are a couple of upgrades with really situational bonuses. One is the Pacesetter and Pacesetter 2000. These boost the character’s MA and BODY Stats by 1 and 2, respectively. Except for BTM and Death Save, which are the stats most characters care about. In fact there’s a Death Save penalty while using these. The other benefits from having those stats are are marginal. The Pacesetters have penalties for prolonged use, but combat won’t last long enough for these to matter. The Pacesetter 2000 is strictly better than the Pacesetter, and doesn’t even have a higher HC cost.  I need to give a mention to the Dodgeball cyberoptic upgrade. It’s like Targeting Scope but for Melee, giving the user +1 to Martial Arts, Brawling or Melee. There’s just one problem: in order to get the bonus, the user has to observe his opponent for thirty seconds, or 10 combat rounds. That’s an insane amount of time for combat to last. My pick for worst cyberware is LimbLink. One of the cyberarm options in the corebook is a pop-up gun. One would assume that if the same character had a Smartgun interface, the pop-up gun would get that benefit by default. Chromebook 1 thinks otherwise. The LimbLink gives the pop-up gun the +1 smart gun bonus. It costs 100 eb, 1 HC, and one of the four cyberlimb option slots. This is just a needless tax on characters that really want a gun to pop out of their arm. And it’s a cost that didn’t exist until this book. Oh, all of the cyberware in this book are missing Surgery Codes. Because who needs complete rules? Next Time: They just made it bigger
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2019 13:28
|
|
|
Exalted 3rd Edition: How Am Talk Words Linguistics starts off direct but not exciting. It has Charms to copy text generally, then perfectly forge it, or take Charms to hide what you are saying or writing behind a second, more innocuous discussion. Then we get the dice tricks, because of course we do. Then there’s Poetic Expression Style, which lets you communicate across language barriers via pantomime, but “does not allow for poesy” and also gives you a “3 success penalty” as, apparently, a logical result of that. Which…is definitely worth it, I’m sure. Then there’s one that lets you invent a new language understood by people who understand different languages you already know, but only you can speak it. There’s also Essence-Laden Missive, which forces the target to announce whatever you wrote out loud, and Voice-Caging Calligraphy, which prevents the target from being able to speak aloud whatever you wrote. Combining them is noted in a sidebar to do “You tell me.” At upper levels, Linguistics lets you copy magic encoded in written words, rewrite written text such that you can retarget or change any influence in it even if it’s magical, destroy a target’s ability to speak languages and replace it with a new language no one else speaks, mind control people to do the opposite of what they agree to do, read at three pages per second, or bind someone in place until you stop speaking. Perhaps most notable, however, is Cup Boils Over. This lets you make a letter that rolls Linguistics (with rerolled 6s). It only affects reads who have no Intimacies or “unintelligibly abstruse Intimacies” but who are not incapable of feeling emotions. They die if they read it. This Charm exists to explain why having Intimacies is good, and in doing so it is likely to make people annoyed at having to do this, while simultaneously locking off the ability to insult someone so hard they die, because this is it. There are 29 Linguistics Charms over 8 pages. Lore…oh boy. Lore does a lot of work. It is what you use to block out the Wyld’s effects for a time, preventing it from mutating people or things. It also expands what you can introduce facts about and gives bonuses to doing that. First Knowledge’s Grace lets you “ignore all penalties to teach someone” even if they are “medically incapable of learning,” which is the first time such a state has even been mentioned, or said penalties. It’s not until the Charm’s upgrade that teaching is given any mechanical weight, though, when you can spend XP to raise someone else’s stats. Lore is also used to lend out health, Essence or Willpower, for reasons. You can learn a Charm that lets you use Read Intentions on objects to determine their function, or on geography to get bonus dice to Survival or War. It can hand you free Evocations from your artifacts without having to pay XP for them, too. What else can Lore do? It can reduce damage! You can activate Force-Draining Whisper when hit by a Decisive Attack to reduce damage at the cost of your Initiative. Via Lore. Because…you know the secrets of reality, I guess? That’s how that works. But you’re here for the three page Charm: Wyld-Shaping Technique. This is the Charm that lets you pull just about anything you want out of the Wyld. You stand at the edge of the Wyld and roll Lore at it for a few minutes as an extended action. Each successful roll completes one phase, and depending on what you want, it may take multiple phases. Each phase means reactivating the Charm to dissolve and reshape the last phase. It can get pretty expensive – 15m1wp and 2xp per activation, and base Difficulty 5 on the roll, plus 1 for each phase after the first. You can fight while Wyld shaping, but not cast spells or other extended actions, and if you fail the roll or get knocked out, you lose any XP invested and the Wyld tries to kill you. You have to use it pretty much on top of the Deep Wyld, and it turns off Chaos-Repelling Pattern, rendering you vulnerable to Wyld mutation as you do it. Further, the longer you Wyld shape, the more Wyld critters will show up and try to kill you, because you’re loving up their house and making it some kind of real, permanent thing. So what can Wyld shaping make? Anything. Want more land? It can do that, starting with tens of square miles and expanding faster and faster the more phases you spend. If you spend at least three phases, there will be demesnes, or you can spend successes to generate them before that. After a few phases you can even get pretty specific in what the land looks like, rather than just generic land of the appropriate Direction. You can pull gold and silver out your rear end, or magical materials. With additional upgrade Charms you might be able to pull out Artifacts or Manses, pre-built for your convenience. The main thing is, you have to use multiple stages to visualize things in some kind of logical order. So if you want a fleet of ships, first you need to make water for them to exist in, say. You want people, they need a place to stand. And yes, you can just generate fully living people whole cloth here. Oh, and Lore also has Unstoppable Magnus Approach, which lets you trade Initiative for Willpower. Why? MAGNUS. There are 47 Lore Charms over 11.5 pages. Martial Arts gets skipped to be done later, so now, Medicine. Medicine lets you be good at weakening and curing diseases and helping people resist them, restoring wounds, perfectly diagnose people, heal crippling effects by punching them, remove pain and even give temporary health. The upper levels basically just give you the chance to do these things at lesser cost or with dice tricks. All of the cool poo poo you do with Medicine is at the beginning. Medicine didn’t excite the old devs, apparently. There are 23 Medicine Charms over 5 pages. Melee, on the other hand…most of the early stuff is dice tricks, because combat. It’s all about boosting your attacks and parries in the most direct way possible. It also can let you defend allies without having to stop attacking, counterattack whenever you get attacked, that kind of thing. Lots of dice tricks here and not a lot in the way of ‘you do an interesting thing’ so much as ‘you sword better.’ Just lots of swording better. Well, I guess there’s the tree that lets you telekinetically grab your sword if knocked away or summon it from anywhere, that one’s at least not a dice trick. There’s also stuff to let you attack multiple times, complete with discounts to boosting all of the attacks at once, motes-wise. Heavenly Guardian Defense is still here as the Melee perfect defense, but it is super expensive to use against anything that isn’t infinity damage unless all you’re looking for is the ability to parry unblockable attacks with your regular Parry. That’s fairly cheap. (The reason for the expense is it buys down damage one success at a time.) Also, in a decision that has never made sense to me but is carried over from past editions: the charms to teleport your sword to you are prereqs for the one that lets you create a sword out of your soul. Glorious Solar Saber generates an artifact weapon for you, which can have Evocations. Seems a bit weird to essentially make its prerequisites useless, though, since if you’re going in on the Glorious Solar Saber you are unlikely to be using a physical sword that you will need to teleport to yourself at any point. I like Glorious Solar Saber for doing something cool, though, rather than just dice tricks. It makes a glowy sword you can superheat to destroy mortal weaponry. There are 38 Melee Charms over 8 pages Next time: Occult, Performance, Presence, Resistance
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2019 14:10
|
|
|
Technically you invest XP to raise someone's stats, which people often miss — eventually you get all your XP back, which makes having a teacher in your party extremely powerful. (The really funny thing is that Solars aren't remotely obligated to actually know what they're trying to teach you, so they can do the Mr. Miyagi thing and train you in esoteric skills they don't actually possess via chores.)
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2019 14:44
|
|
|
Mors Rattus posted:Perhaps most notable, however, is Cup Boils Over. This lets you make a letter that rolls Linguistics (with rerolled 6s). It only affects reads who have no Intimacies or “unintelligibly abstruse Intimacies” but who are not incapable of feeling emotions. They die if they read it. This Charm exists to explain why having Intimacies is good, and in doing so it is likely to make people annoyed at having to do this, while simultaneously locking off the ability to insult someone so hard they die, because this is it.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2019 14:57
|
|
|
Neotech 2 Part 2: Dare you enter my technological realm?  N2, a cyberpunk office meeting simulator. The book launches instantly into the standard spiel of “What is a roleplaying game?” that you see in all books. Talking about its a cooperative game and so on. The only real thing worth pointing out is that it mentions that the Game Master (or Game Leader if directly translated) is usually the one who owns the game. Which might not be correct every time. But even then I can give it points for pointing out the value of new GM’s starting with a low number of players. Generally recommending 3 to 5 players at most. Then it breaks down what a player and a GM is and what they do. I admit I like the parallel of the GM to a movie director at one point. But at the same time also emphasising the point that they’re not supposed to be their enemy. An aspect I feel might be lost in some cases based on all the horror stories you keep hearing. A sidebar highlights main rule about the GM is fully allowed to improve and ignore or alter any rule present in the book. Followed by another one listing the various abbreviations present in the rules, there are 42 of them in this case. Choice picks are Rate of Fire (Eldh), Intensity of Fire (El), firearm malfunction value (EAB) and Protection value (SKY). All of those will become relevant much, much later. Where things get dicey The game’s main resolution mechanic is built around D6’s (or T6’s as they’re usually called here). While the D10 does show up, it’s in a supporting role only to be used for D100 rolls. The primary mechanic is unlimited rolls (Ob in game terms). They can be best described as exploding dice but with a slight twist to them. For each die that comes up as a six it gets removed from the table and replaced with two more dice that you then proceed to roll. If any of those come up as a six they get replaced with two more, and so on. This continues until all the dice have been rolled and none of them come up as a six. While I’m not an expert when it comes dice mechanics, it feels as if this would produce some incredibly swingy results during game time. Turns out, yes. It does. Tulul posted:Spoiler alert: it does not make a pretty graph. The book starts talking about chance and difficulty when it comes to resolving rolls. But at the same time it doesn’t give any solid examples of how these rolls play out on the table. So I had to flip ahead towards the chapter about skills to be able to really understand how it works. I should mention I tried using the combat section at first. That was a very bad idea. The very first thing you will need to do in order to accomplish anything is to determine the difficulty of the action. It’s here the book provides us with our very first table listing all the difficulty levels: Very easy is Ob1D6 Easy is Ob2D6 Medium is Ob3D6 Hard is Ob4D6 Very hard is Ob5D6 The text makes mention on multiple occasions throughout that your most frequent roll while playing will most likely be Ob3D6 After that has been determined you need look at your chance to succeed, or the skill proficiency if you’re using one. The book mentions that you need to set that against the difficulty but what you really need to do is use the dice provided by the difficulty level to roll under or equal to it. If you roll above it the action has failed. Any dice result that ends in decimals are to be rounded downwards. But it then continues with saying that more accurate rounding methods can be used for distance, speed and weight calculations. Why is this a thing?! I feel decimals could’ve been truncated out of the system to avoid things like this all together. The last mechanically relevant part is a mention about modifications to rolls. While it includes the usual +1, -1 or x1 modifications. Perhaps most interesting is “[Attribute] -6 +2D6”. Wherein you first subtract the initial value from the attribute in question, then roll 2D6 and add the results onto that. If you didn't get that let me try to explain it a bit better: So we roll a six sided dice. It comes up as a 6. That dice gets removed and you roll two more dice. The roll ends if neither of those show up as six. But if one of them do you swap it out for two more and continue on. So for instance we get a 6 followed by a 5 and a 2, that means we've rolled 7 in total. What you then what to do is for that result to be below whatever skill you're using. Now let's say you have a 10 in the Administration skill and need to do an Ob1D6 check to find what dotted line you need to sign for something and you roll a 7. That means the skill check has succeeded. But if you then manage to get 11 or above as a result means that the check has failed. The difficulty comes from that you get to roll more dice as things get harder. Which in turn increases your chance to fail as the results will get higher as more dice show up as 6 and you need to reroll those. Reusing our previous example again we now have an Administration skill of 14 and we need to do out some transaction work. But we're also hung over from drinking the day before so what might have been a normal task suddenly gets upgraded to a hard one, so Ob4D6 dice need to be rolled. But let's also say then that we're having a really annoying co-worker distracting us with their inane prattle was we try to work so that adds another Ob1D6 to the roll so now we're rolling at Ob5D6. Even without any of the dice exploding get 17 on our roll which means we fail our check. If we downgrade the roll to an Ob4D6 we get 11 which means that the check has succeeded. The chance of success increases if the check is an Ob3D6 one more so. So getting more dice to roll in these situations is something you generally don't want. Should also be mentioned that there is no real upper cap to those either and certain things later on will really balloon the number of dice you need to roll to do things. Our cyberpunk vision™ With the basic rules explained, insufficiently in my meaning, the introduction goes on with talking about the updated second version. Although a lot it feels like page filler as it repeats itself about twice on the same page in different subsections about what the game allows you to do. But the main point this section harps about is the differences between Neotech 1 and 2. How the new second game allows for campaigns set at a higher level and how the focus has been partially moved from street level up to corporate level. Allowing for intrigues to be sophisticated and involve just more than street gangs and small time criminals. As a Shadowrun player I can see some parallels with that in a way. But the issue I have is that his part is very vague on details as to where the player characters exists in all of this. Shadowrun was quick to establish the basic core idea for what the PC’s are supposed to be doing, But there isn’t pretty much nothing about that in here. It does make mention that N2 PC’s have been granted more opportunities to exert their freedom and be more tied into the setting. But even then there’s no real mention what role they have to play in all of this. At most there is a small mention that the players can be more than just street-level low-lifes and be able to play someone living in a higher social strata and have more influence in the lives of themselves and others. It’s at this point we actually get a mention of what this game is all about. Albeit a brief one as it makes mention that the game takes place in the year of 2059, eight years after the first game. The text is rather quick to toot its own horn. It talks about a revolutionary new way to create adventures and integrate player characters into the setting. What that might entail remains to be seen as I’m going through this chapter by chapter more or less to preserve my sanity a bit. As mentioned previously the tone is, according to the writers, placed a bit more towards the techno-thriller genre with a focus on more action alongside cool gear and tech. But they also emphasize that the game is still playable as a more down-to-earth cyberpunk game with cybered up gangs that prowl alleys and abandoned parking garages. (Taken more or less verbatim from the book in this case.) But it’s when they continue on and start talking, or perhaps bragging, about their ultra lethal combat system that warnings bells are starting to ring The text proudly proclaims that the realistic combat system, a groundbreaker when it first came out, is even more lethal this time around. This is a trait the game shares with Eon as far as I’ve been able to find out. It also mentions that the hacking rules have been revised. But I get the feeling, due to the mention that they’re not meant to disturb the rest of the game, that they looked at the CP2020 rules and decided to do something different. I’m sure those will be a doozy to read. Next time: Oh my god, the tables. The tables! Cooked Auto fucked around with this message at 21:30 on Apr 1, 2019 |
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2019 15:08
|
|
|
Xiahou Dun posted:Uh you do you but you basically just auto-doxxed yourself. Nah, that's not my real name in the credits.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2019 15:09
|
|
|
gourdcaptain posted:Is this likely ever to come up besides letting the writers feel smug about themselves? (And I mean the RL writers of the charm.) No.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2019 15:18
|
|
|
gourdcaptain posted:Is this likely ever to come up besides letting the writers feel smug about themselves? (And I mean the RL writers of the charm.) No, it more or less exists as a substitute for a sidebar saying "no, you can't escape the social influence system by not giving a poo poo about anything." I can't imagine it ever getting used.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2019 15:19
|
|
|
Cooked Auto posted:Meanwhile in Sweden, a company called Neogames releases the second edition of their system Neotech at the tail end of the year. Simply called Neotech 2 or N2.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2019 15:26
|
|
|
Yeah, a player buying it seems like a dodgy XP investiature as you need an NPC the GM intentionally allows it on, and the GM using it on a player would be a hell of a passive aggressive power move as opposed to just telling the player what your problems with their character are. So my old Exalted DM probably uses it.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2019 15:36
|
|
|
I do believe firmly in Cup Boils Over as a Linguistics finishing move, effectively. It doesn't actually function as a 'why you should have Intimacies' thing because there's almost no chance of ever running into a character with Cup Boils Over, but a PC with the charm can use it to kill NPCs whom they've backed into an impossible philosophical opinion. The thing is, it will never work on a character the players haven't done a number on socially already; you need to find a principle the character has that's philosophical or abstruse, then build that up and use it (or similar intimacies) to tear down any Intimacies that are ties to the actual world. When all someone cares about are their theoretical principles and ideals, you send them a 'Why not put the world in a bottle, Suoerman?' Letter and their soul falls out of their skull. By making this specifically fixed to 'intimacies that don't relate to the world' it means that it only works on characters who don't have any personal or irrational attachments left. A Deathknught who considers themselves a being of pure killing logic and compassion (a pretty common NPC in 2e, in my experience) or an Infernal who only cares about weird hell philosophy (ditto) are just a little Solar Socrates push from not caring enough about anything concrete that's this charm can convince their soul to pack up and go. I'm pretty sure this is not the intent of the original dev team, but honestly? A less smug reading of Cup Boils Over produces a really fun charm that feels like something out of The Dying Earth or a story Severian would repeat in the Book of the New Sun. E: Obviously, like a lot of very specific powers in RPGs generally, you should talk to your GM about this charm and whether the style of game you'll be playing will allow you to exchange letters with an enemy until you convince them to abandon all worldly connections for pure Idea, then spinkick their soul by showing them an internal contradiction in the ideals they now live for. Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 15:43 on Apr 1, 2019 |
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2019 15:40
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:The first edition is at least nostalgic. The second is just terrible CGI art. Friends don't let friends cover their game in Poser art. Jokes on you, that's not CGI. It's all photos. Some of them are even slightly photoshopped. I think the cover is the only one that gets any kind of CGI background to it. At least so far.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2019 15:52
|
|
|
In practice it ends up working as the final blow in a targeted harassment campaign of getting someone to isolate themselves from everyone and everything as you wither away their intimacies until you pen a letter that goes "No one loves you and you believe in nothing. You are a lamentable dust man." or if combined with the secret message charm then to all outsiders it looks like a very nice letter from a close friend. Except if you can so thoroughly manipulate someone's intimacies to end up in that state and they're powerful enough to warrant this approach then you're usually better off just making them your new best friend and have them do useful stuff for you until they die instead. But sometimes you just gotta kill a deathknight! The idea of it is neat and as a phenomena that exists and can happen in the game it's good. Some DBs or Sidereals are investigating a sudden death and then all the clues of isolation (strangely without paranoia) and repeated letters of complaint from Ms. A. Nathema from Berwick-upon-Tweed moaning about the latest plays and how they're corrupting the children all come together and it's an awful Solar back on their bullshit. Joe Slowboat posted:I'm pretty sure this is not the intent of the original dev team, but honestly? A less smug reading of Cup Boils Over produces a really fun charm that feels like something out of The Dying Earth or a story Severian would repeat in the Book of the New Sun. It's like something out of one of the inspirations for the game? Weird.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2019 15:52
|
|
|
mllaneza posted:That vehicles section is what you get when you pay a guy at the FLGS. I fully agree that what got printed should have been thrown in my face accompanied with "Finish the stats dumbass !" The stats issue didn't occur to anybody,e specially me. Out of curiosity, were you aware of the changes between editions when you submitted your vehicles?
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2019 16:06
|
|
|
Why yes, my point was that this particular odd interaction does successfully produce a genre-appropriate structure, in defense of a charm that the developers themselves were transparently uninterested in using that way (every example Holden gave when people asked about the charm on the OP forum was 'if a PC has gamed the Intimacies system' or 'if a character is Dream-Eaten or demon-infested'). Also, there's a use case for when a character is utterly dedicated to an ideology that you won't be able to talk them out of (especially with charms, a Defining Principle of 'Lay low the Anathema' is going to be hard to touch, or whatever). To turn that person into an ally, you'd need to get them not just away from that principle but via a ladder of ideas and ties that slowly erode it. However, if you can find a principle that's a more abstruse version of that (say, 'I will destroy what does not belong in this world') and raise that up, and tear down ties, you never have to approach the question of 'how do I walk these intimacies all the way from total opposition to me, to being my friend and minion' - you just need to find the flaw in their belief system and convince them to double down on it until they give up on friendship, love, and even enmity. Then they implode.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2019 16:08
|
|
|
Joe Slowboat posted:Why yes, my point was that this particular odd interaction does successfully produce a genre-appropriate structure, in defense of a charm that the developers themselves were transparently uninterested in using that way (every example Holden gave when people asked about the charm on the OP forum was 'if a PC has gamed the Intimacies system' or 'if a character is Dream-Eaten or demon-infested'). The funny thing: it explicitly doesn't work on the Dream-Eaten, because they can't care.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2019 16:17
|
|
|
I'm also not entirely sure that a game with Exalted's reputation coming from 2e really wants to mess around with 'Here's how to run a targeted harassment campaign where you cut someone off from everything and then they kill themselves'.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2019 16:19
|
|
|
Yeah as someone who has played a character that was THIS close to being targetable, Cup Boils Over owns The actual bad part of Linguistics is it's completely broken. A supernal Linguist can buy Double 7s out the gate so they cant iterate on their abilities and just win at everything forever if writes at all matter. That and Ling doesn't help poo poo-all with the most notable and mythical use of the pen, writing fiction!
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2019 16:22
|
|
|
Night10194 posted:I'm also not entirely sure that a game with Exalted's reputation coming from 2e really wants to mess around with 'Here's how to run a targeted harassment campaign where you cut someone off from everything and then they kill themselves'. I mean, I do remember how Holden got himself banned from this forum among other things. They weren't exactly being held back by any considerations of good taste. EDIT: Do people think I should post less on this? I'm kind of a mess on this topic so I'm worried I'm just vomiting words and my issues all over the thread without thinking.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2019 16:23
|
|
|
My snark wasn't aimed at you Joe Slowboat, sorry! It was more a general thing where people have pointed at charms and then wondered what it's about when it successfully recreates a thing from cited examples of inspiration.Night10194 posted:I'm also not entirely sure that a game with Exalted's reputation coming from 2e really wants to mess around with 'Here's how to run a targeted harassment campaign where you cut someone off from everything and then they kill themselves'. It don't think it does, other than when you're outrageously reductive as I was.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2019 16:24
|
|
|
Transient People posted:Yeah as someone who has played a character that was THIS close to being targetable, Cup Boils Over owns DBs have like, an entire selection of novel-writing charms, and I love them all. E: for the record I don't think of Cup Boils Over prep as harassment. More like winning an argument on a forum, but Solars can force hypocrites to face their internal contradictions then spontaneously combust. Why the original dev duo would have that fantasy, I'm sure I couldn't say, but it makes Socrates: Threat or Menace very doable as a Solar. Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 16:30 on Apr 1, 2019 |
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2019 16:24
|
|
|
Cooked Auto posted:Where things get dicey
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2019 16:27
|
|
|
Roll under with exploding dice sounds like a recipe for feel-bad.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2019 16:28
|
|
|
Exalted 3rd Edition: Wizard Powers Occult lets you do stuff like see invisible spirits, get a permanent radar that lets you know when to use the charm that lets you see spirits, attack immaterial beings, steal their Essence, force them to materialize and so on. Basically you get a lot of tricks to gently caress up spirits. It also gives you the ability to speak and understand Old Realm and other spirit languages, sense the use of sorcery, eat spirits to gain their power, remove possessing spirits or “malaises of the soul” which are entirely undefined in system terms, learn thaumaturgy cheaply, see through magical disguises or shapeshifting, astrally project into people’s minds and fight their minds…the examples on that one are entering a Raksha to retrieve a soul they ate, which is cool, and entering your Lunar mate to punch out their Derangements, which…suffice to say, that’s not how mental illness works, I’ve said my bit on that before. Also you can use this to force a spirit to possess people or inflict a “spiritual malaise” which apparently follow disease rules? Occult is also where you go to learn Sorcery. There are 36 Occult Charms over 7.5 pages. Performance! Performance divides up its Charms into stuff you can use for any performance and then specific types of performance. The general applicability ones are mostly dice tricks or mote-efficiency tricks, but Soul-Firing Performance is interesting – it lets your performance cause emotions that make people reconsider decisions they’ve already made, which effectively lets Decision Points be redone. That’s useful. You can also get a Charm that basically lets you interchange different types of performance for each other, so that you could get the effects of giving a speech by strumming your guitar. Other Charms force people to stop and not interrupt your performance, or let you call up illusionary backup dancers from your anima. And then there’s Demon-Wracking Shout, which has Prerequisites: ????, because you learn it randomly by seeing a demon or the ST says you can because past life memories. It lets you shout sonic blasts against demons. For specific performances, speechgiving and oratory is mostly about getting mobs riled up, boosting dice of people convinced by you, forcing people to have to act immediately on your words and similar. Music focuses on emotional inspiration to boost or penalize actions, singing to buff allies in battle, or otherwise buffing people with music. Dance, on the other hand, gives defense bonuses, emotional manipulation to draw out Intimacies, debuffing people’s Resolve or Guile and making people lust after you intensely and try to seduce you. Acting lets you falsify your intentions and beliefs. You can also grab ventriloquism and mimicry Charms. And then there’s the Sex Charms. Two of them. The first Sex Charm, Thousand Courtesan Ways, boosts your Appearance and lets you seduce people without needing to target an Intimacy. Also, you can make your actions and words “effortlessly erotic, subtly or overtly sensualizing her social influence actions.” This lets you use the roll both to do a seduction and whatever other social influence you were doing. The second one? Celestial Bliss Trick needs to be read to be believed. Because it is the Charm to make you do a gently caress better. Because you need a Charm for that. quote:The Exalt performs the body-mudra of sighs and whispers upon a lover, unleashing a torrent of unimaginable ecstasy. This intense lovemaking lasts at least three minutes, inducing a world-shaking climax in her partner. In the afterglow, the Exalt becomes the object of a temporary Defining Tie of lust that lasts for (Essence) weeks, and gains (Essence) automatic successes to social influence actions targeting her lover for the rest of the scene. That’s right. You gently caress them so good in those three minutes that now they lust after you on the same level as their core personal beliefs. Exalted! There are 36 Performance Charms over 7.5 pages. Presence! Presence is mostly dice tricks for instill and persuade actions, though I note that Harmonious Presence Meditation relies on you embodying “virility, magnetism and grace” which…well, I’m sure that’s real fun for non-masculine Solars, you do that anyway because there is no difference between fluff and mechanics! Natural language! Anyway that particular one gives bonus dice to any social influence action with any ability except Stealth. When the gently caress does Stealth roll social influence pools? I don’t know. Lots of dice tricks here, plus some stuff to buff people who are doing what you ask them to do. You can also get a really very good defense in the form of Majestic Radiant Presence, which forces people to pay Willpower to attack you at all. There is also one to make you sexier, Awakened Carnal Demiurge, which I note mostly because the name is incredibly horny and I’m so sick of this. Presence also covers being terrifying at people for dice tricks or debuffs in combat, especially battle groups, and lets you regain the costs of stuff your targets resist, or just loving brainwash people with preprogrammed instructions, which they then do not remember performing at all. That one is explicitly mind control. The one that forces even people that hate you to have to grovel at you isn’t, though, that’s just you being super charismatic. Also, you can take a Charm that lets you seduce people even for whom seduction by you is unacceptable influence, though thankfully a sidebar reminds us that PCs can always autodecline seduction if they want to. There are 24 Presence Charms over 5.5 pages. Resistance is mostly about tanking hits. You get all kinds of magic to reduce incoming damage in various ways, to gain extra health boxes, to self-heal faster…it also covers putting on armor really fast, wearing armor better, resisting poison and disease and trading Initiative for Essence. Its best combat self-heals rely on being Crashed to trigger, though, which can be nasty, or only being able to heal your -0 levels. On the other hand, you can get Resistance-based counterattacks, which presumably is you bouncing attacks off your glorious shiny skin or belly. It can also tank infinite damage. You can also learn Charms that pull glowy golden artifact armor out of your rear end, which can have Evocations, or you can take Charms to go into a berserker fugue. There are 26 Resistance Charms over 7 pages. Next time: Ride, Sail, Socialize, Stealth
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2019 16:37
|
|
|
I've started and stopped writing the update for magic in DtD like 3 times at this point. It's funny; I think it's the most miserable to review game I've worked on, because there isn't anything mechanically interesting to talk about, and it isn't awful in the way something like AdEva is. I think I might just call this one and get back to writing about something more fun. Like all I'll be doing is saying 'this is this pointless reference mechanically or textually, this is that pointless reference, they combine to make the game mostly unplayable' for another 15 chapters before getting to the fluff that is, again, nothing but pointless reference. There's enough misery in this thread already with Charm Hell. E: Yeah, I think rather than outright abandoning I'll just do a final wrapup post about why the system isn't worth going through in analytical detail and why it falls flat, then call it done. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 16:59 on Apr 1, 2019 |
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2019 16:45
|
|
|
NGDBSS posted:I'm confused here. You're rolling a dice pool, where each 6 just becomes +2 dice instead (assuming the Ob tag). And I presume you're counting successes and comparing them to some target. Let's see if I can explain this better. So we roll a six sided dice. It comes up as a 6. That dice gets removed and you roll two more dice. The roll ends if neither of those show up as six. But if one of them do you swap it out for two more and continue on. So for instance we get a 6 followed by a 5 and a 2, that means we've rolled 7 in total. What you then what to do is for that result to be below whatever skill you're using. Let's say you have a 10 in the Administration skill and need to do an Ob1D6 check to find what dotted line you need to sign for something and you roll a 7. That means the skill check has succeeded. But if you then manage to get 11 or above as a result means that the check has failed. NGDBSS posted:But how does difficulty work as a modifier? If you're trying to roll under a target number, isn't a 5 easier to hit than a 1? ("Very easy is Ob1D6" vs. "Very hard is Ob5D6") Or are your roll-under difficulties provided by something else? (And if so, what would the table of difficulty levels do?) The difficulty in this case is that you get to roll more dice as things get harder. Which in turn increases your chance to fail as the results will get higher as more dice show up as 6 and you need to reroll those. Reusing our previous example again we now have an Administration skill of 14 and we need to do out some transaction work. But we're also hung over from drinking the day before so what might have been a normal task suddenly gets upgraded to a hard one, so Ob4D6 dice need to be rolled. But let's also say then that we're having a really annoying co-worker distracting us with their inane prattle was we try to work so that adds another Ob1D6 to the roll so now we're rolling at Ob5D6. Even without any of the dice exploding get 17 on our roll which means we fail our check. If we downgrade the roll to an Ob4D6 we get 11 which means that the check has succeeded. So getting more dice to roll in these situations is something you generally don't want. Should also be mentioned that there is no real upper cap to those either and certain things later on will really balloon the number of dice you need to roll to do things. Hopefully that makes it more understandable. Not going to lie but even I struggled at wrapping my head around how the system worked in the beginning. By this point I know how the basic resolution mechanic works at least. Cooked Auto fucked around with this message at 17:27 on Apr 1, 2019 |
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2019 17:05
|
|
|
Solar Occult definitely wins the award for "most outshone by the other splats even if those other splats are definitely weaker."
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2019 17:26
|
|
|
|
| # ? Dec 4, 2024 03:08 |
|
|
Cooked Auto posted:Jokes on you, that's not CGI. It's all photos. That looks a lot like Photoshop stock photos, especially that corporate conference room with an Eurotiger pasted into the background.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2019 17:35
|
|
