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Xiahou Dun posted:I'm actually pretty impressed with it so far. I mean this is a fair assessment, I absolutely do look at Warhammer(40k and Fantasy both) and if it's anything more than a small skirmish engagement it feels like it's going to require a hell of a lot of number-wrangling, book-keeping, etc. and if nothing else the lessened variety of units and conditions keeps this more sane. I do feel like most of these games would be vastly improved by just having a 1:1 translation to a computer version without making them real-time, stop doing that, no, get your hands away from the drat code, if for nothing else than simplifying all the rules-remembering and unit status stuff. Though I guess that would impact some company's sales of little pewter men and tiny paint cans(while at the same time vastly improving their sales to people who do not care for collecting and painting little pewter fellas).
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Mar 9, 2022 14:01
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They don't sell metal figures any more, that's way too expensive.
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Mar 9, 2022 14:47
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Something I discovered a while ago is that a large chunk of the LOTR wargame figures are still in metal. In particular a lot of the older stuff, even if there is also resin ones mixed into that as well.
Cooked Auto fucked around with this message at 14:54 on Mar 9, 2022 |
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Mar 9, 2022 14:51
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Cooked Auto posted:Something I discovered a while ago is that a large chunk of the LOTR wargame figures are still in metal. In particular a lot of the older stuff, even if there is also resin ones mixed into that as well. There's even some Skaven units that are still metal only, according to GW's site. Including the ratling gun!
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Mar 9, 2022 16:16
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PurpleXVI posted:I mean this is a fair assessment, I absolutely do look at Warhammer(40k and Fantasy both) and if it's anything more than a small skirmish engagement it feels like it's going to require a hell of a lot of number-wrangling, book-keeping, etc. and if nothing else the lessened variety of units and conditions keeps this more sane. We're 100% in agreement on everything you're saying, and all the pain-in-the-rear end tedium is one of the reasons why I've only ever gotten to the periphery of wargaming as hobby, despite being a really big fan of the general idea of sitting around and having my little barbie-mans fighting and learning cool history stuff. Just adding that a lot of these problems, in the specific example of this game, are pretty dang mild compared to the genre as a whole. If you're willing to grade on the curve of wargaming, TSOTF is actually doing a lot of abstraction to avoid minutia, and I think it should get credit for that even if it's still got way more bullshit cruft than most sane people would be willing to put up with. And yeah, I actually conceptually am pretty down with all of the bullshit little numbers and widgets in games like this and think it's fun to get into them, but I absolutely loathe keeping track of them. It's one of the big reasons I'm interested in digital tabletop resources : if someone ever invented a game that integrated with a computerized service to keep track of all the stupid stuff a la Gloomhaven Helper (and did it well), I'd be right there in line for it. Finally, yes, give me more turn-based computer strategy games. I've suffered through so many Heroes of Might and Magic games just because of how rarely that itch gets scratched!
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Mar 9, 2022 16:54
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Xiahou Dun posted:Finally, yes, give me more turn-based computer strategy games. I've suffered through so many Heroes of Might and Magic games just because of how rarely that itch gets scratched! 
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Mar 9, 2022 17:03
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THE SWORD AND THE FLAME PT 8: THE MORALE PHASE This is the end of the core rules explanation, the last of our four phases. We’ve moved, we’ve fired, we’ve fought melees, now we check morale.  MAJOR MORALE Remember back in the primordial mists of the setup phase, when we designated one of our leaders as the senior leader of our entire force? What happens if that guy dies, or gets captured? On that turn, and on every turn after that, a force without a senior leader rolls 2D6 in the morale phase. If the sum of the dice is below the target number listed on the morale table, there’s no issue. If the result is higher, that side’s units can’t move during the movement phase. They can change formation and facing, so you still deal out cards for initiative as normal. This roll is overtop of whether or not an individual unit has a leader. So if you lose your senior leader but a platoon still has its sergeant, that unit is subject to the results of the 2D6 roll, but doesn’t need to dice again to move when its own card comes up. Whereas if a unit is leaderless AND their senior leader is dead, they suffer the results of the 2D6 roll and have to roll leaderless to-move again on their own turn.  The rules say killed or captured, meaning that wounded leaders can still command their troops. Units fleeing toward the board edge continue to flee on this phase. You can attempt to rally them when you activate them, even though they can’t move. Notice that the morale values for Boer, British, and Egyptian units are reduce if their wounded fall into the hands of the enemy, with a further variation depending on who they were captured by. European (and apparently European trained) soldiers in this period had an expectation that enemies captured by a “civilized” force would be held until the end of the conflict and then exchanged, while those captured by a “primitive” force might be tortured, executed or enslaved rather than ransomed. Dervishes, Pathans and Zulus don’t suffer morale penalties if their wounded get captured or killed, presumably they have no expectation of modern medical care or survival after an incapacitating wound. I'm not in love with this mechanic, but I think it reflects an important reality of frontier warfare. The invading imperial force is responsible for evacuating casualties, sometimes across supply lines spanning a whole continent. The indigenous force has no such difficulty. CRITICAL MORALE Units have to test critical morale on the turn they lose half their figures, or any unit that takes casualties from fire while it has the “shaken” status (failed to stand and fight in close combat, or lost a close combat). Critical morale is rolled on the same morale table as the other morale states. If you pass, there aren’t any consequences (though remember that shaken units still have to rally on their own movement activation before they can move). If the unit fails critical morale, it’s routed. Moves 4D6 toward the nearest board edge for the rest of the game. There are no rules for rallying routed units, they’re out of the game. PINNED MORALE Remember in the last phase, how units that failed to close into hand to hand combat in the close combat phase fell prone and got the “pinned” condition? Those guys rally now, using the same table posted above. Notably, pinned units check morale in the morale phase, rather than during movement activation (like shaken units do). If they pass morale, they can move and act normally (though standing up takes their movement). If they fail, they can’t move or fire.  The big improvement you could make to this section is just testing all the various morale states at the same time, rather than spreading them across different phases of the game turn. So shaken units rally in the morale phase, instead of when you activate them in the movement phase by turning over their card. The only morale rules you’d keep in other phases are the close to combat and stand and fight tables, since those need to be resolved after movement but before melee. PurpleXVI posted:Man, TSOTF sounds like an awful lot of book-keeping and rolling. It feels pretty clunky. Xiahou Dun posted:Like, yeah it is a bunch of cruft and clunk and book-keeping, but it's actually much more stream-lined than Warhammer as of the last time I played that. (Melee combat is one roll per side per exchange with one of like 2-3 target numbers, vs. Warhammer's 2 separate stats with multiple rolls to hit and wound, then with saves and yada yada...) Xiahou Dun posted:I'm sure some truly awful stuff is coming down the pike, both in terms of rules and "historically" "accurate" racism
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Mar 9, 2022 19:20
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mellonbread posted:According to Wikipedia, there was a fantasy variant called "Awaken The Storm!" (source is a dead link) released in 2007. I can easily imagine how you'd use the card system to simulate "armor saves", letting guys in full plate shrug off hits if the casualty card is a club, or requiring face cards to deal damage. Yeah, the core game mechanics here are pretty decent I think. The, uh, 'racially loaded' historical material for the setting is what's putting me off.
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Mar 9, 2022 22:55
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It seems like it was pretty progressive and aware for its time. Which is still pretty wince-inducing for the 2020s, but they were trying.
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Mar 10, 2022 01:38
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PurpleXVI posted:I do feel like most of these games would be vastly improved by just having a 1:1 translation to a computer version Oh, you mean Field of Glory? Because I feel like the Field of Glory video games hew very closely to the source material with some computer-powered changes. Sure, saying that this blob of 8 dudes represents 250 dudes isn't much more different than giving a unit 250 HP, but it's still better than saying that this blob of 8 represents 250 dudes, ~30 of whom will die in an attack (or not, it's abstract). It's also uses movement squares, which IIRC isn't often seen in TT gaming.
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Mar 11, 2022 06:46
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Infinity RPG: Ariadna Space Cowboy USAriadna is bold, brash, stubborn and loud. No matter what, the USAriadnans are determined to survive, at any cost. They are the western line against the Antipodes and the most vocal voice against galactic interference. They tend to be very independent and have little love for Rodina, either. The land, likes its people, tends to be extreme. They range from hot southern deserts to frozen northern forests, and the wilderness along their borders is some of the most dangerous on the planet. Every citizen learns some wilderness survival because they may well need it, and their heroes are often survivalists, cowboys and roughnecks. The USAriadnans look at their past, though, and try to outdo it - to be more American than America ever was. They know that George Washington wasn't perfect, and neither was Old Man Ross - but they're the heroes of USAriadna anyway, and the goal is to be like them but better. Indeed, the idea that things should always be getting better is core to the USAriadnan outlook on life. They tend to get stuck on the first impressions they have of people and things, assuming they'll generally be like that but moreso in the future. They also have a tendency to nitpick and point out flaws in their friends, in theory trying to help them improve on those things. Other Ariadnans refer to this as USArrogance, but the USAriadnans insist it's not cruel or mean - it's helpful. USAriadna tends to focus less on family lineage and class and more on the great men and women of the past as role models. They idolize the American Constitution, the founders of the USA, and the original colonial founders of Dawn as the creators of the ultimate democracy. They hold that the ideals of freedom and American democracy are worth dying for, and jingoistic patriotism is extremely common. The flag is a near constant in USAriadnan cities and towns - both the old American one and the USAriadnan one. It is the goal of every USAriadnan to do something worth remembering, to make themselves one of the patriotic heroes of the nation, and often their methods are tied to their family history, though not always. Military families expect their kids to join up and to do brave deeds, while a farming family on the frontier expects their kids to hold on to their land and outwit any bandits or Antipodes - but excellence is always key. Being excellent and inspiring is key, and military leaders often use their fame and glory to earn power. USAriadnan fashion is obsessed with tradition and idolizing the past, more than anywhere else on Ariadna. The stereotype is a cowboy in a bomber jacket with a gun, and...well, the stereotype's not all that inaccurate.USAriadnan fashion tends to cycle through various classical high points in American culture, and cowboy fashion is an old standby, especially around Deadwood, though so is greaser fashion. The nation's capitol, MountZion-The Wall, is probably the most fortified city on the planet, possibly short of Mat' but nowhere else. Outside the country, it's mostly referred to as MountZion, as named by the original explorers, but inside Ariadna, it's The Wall, the barrier at the edge of Ariadnan territory and first defense against the Antipodes of the west. It was originally a series of connected hilltop forts, ten miles long. The Wall is still crewed constantly, and it's not uncommon to hear the guns start firing at roving Antipode groups or raiders that get too close. Signs radiate out in all directions, warning people what the gun ranges are. This is considered all the courtesy needed to justify the shooting. The Antipodes know it as the Wall With Teeth, and most Antipodes believe it's the center of human civilization on the planet, not Mat'. Most Antipodes are contemptuous when talking about it, possibly due to their distaste for the USAriadnan Devil Dogs, and most tribes have stories about battles they've had where humans fled behind the wall to cower from their might. These days, the Wall is divided into six major areas, each of which has a job but also serves as a city district. Each is usually split into a civilian section and a military one, and civilians are expected to support the military efforts in exchange for their wider latitudes and freedoms, while those living in military sections typically have more restricted actions and often act as if they're soliders even if they aren't actually in the military. Fort Patton, AKA the Steelworks, is the part of the city that manufactures most of the USAriadnan heavy armor and vehicles, and friendly street races between civilians and military are common. Fort Eisenhower is the city's comms hub and probably the richest part of it, housing ranking officers and major politicians. Its streets are mostly brickwork in the colonial style, and public art is common. Fort Lazarus is more commonly called Fort Custer, as it's been burned down by enemy attack twice - once by Antipodes in the First Offensive, and second by PanO missile strikes. Despite efforts to rebuild, the area is still partially in ruins and doing very badly economically. It's where the poor tend to live, along with the majority of the city's Wulver and Dogface populations. (Who usually are part of the poor anyway.) Fort Yeager is the main airfield and landing site for the city, as well as the central headquarters for both the USAriadnan Air Force and the Wright Co Package Company that handles most of the nation's shipping. Fort Grant is the city's entertainment district, home to many casinos and theatres and advertising billboards. It's also got one of the oldest and most expansive film libraries on Dawn, with monthly film festivals to celebrate both classic American films and the thriving USAriadnan film industry. For MacArthur, the last of the major districts, is industrial, mostly making guns, ammo, missiles and similar. It's easily the most heavily fortified and dangerous of the six neighborhoods. While security is quite high, past incidents of sabotage have caused the Rodinans to station a diplomatic delegation and some Kazak soldiers in the district, which has led to many USAriadnan complaints about foreign occupation and quartering. People are not happy. While the other nations largely focus on various cities rather than territorial divisions, USAriadna has split itself into six territorial states, and state pride is a big deal to them. That various state traditions are even more anachronistic than the national ones often makes offworlders assume that USAriadnans are kind of dumb, which is a very bad mistake. For one, it's an easy way to get yourself beaten up in a barfight, but for another, the USAriadnans are eminently practical when it comes to matters of business, science and the military - they're just weird. The states themselves divide starkly between the northern states and southern ones, which roughly split along the cultural lines of north and south in the US back on Earth. The southern states have most of the good farmland and textile manufacturing, while the northern ones have most of the factories and industry. They get along better than their old Earth counterparts, though, as long as they're not arguing about whose traditions are cooler. Jackson is the poorest of the southern states, with relatively few modern technological comforts and worse farmland than the others. They used to get by on mining, but poverty's on the rise since their mines started drying up. They refuse to take "handouts" from their neighbors, which means there's been a lot of unrest as basic goods are starting to hit shortages. The state capitol is Gracetown, a quaint little city known for its simple values and generally peaceful culture...and its firm control over USAriadna's Teseum trade. It's a city where many soldiers move to retire, and the gentle, peaceful mood it projects is because the locals are just generally tired of fighting, not unable to do it. They are renowned for being very polite...and also very, very outspoken about their political views, just couched in the language of good etiquette. Madison is a considerably less well off city, considered to be the backwaters of the backwaters, renowned mostly for crime and seediness. Its locals are stereotypes as thieves and killers, though in truth, they're generally just poor. The city was built on a Teseum mine that went dry very early, and it survives now on coal and cattle, but a full fifth of the population is on some form of welfare. Drug addiction is a common problem, which hasn't really helped with the crime trouble. Newport is a generally nicer city, but more heavily militarized. It's basically a military base that grew into a town, but it's also home to the Nimitz Naval Academy and the Farragut Shipyards, which bring in sailors and naval officers from across the planet to study the latest in naval tactics and techniques. It's also a common vacation spot for active soldiers due to its nice beaches. Unfortunately, it has a violent reputation - the various branches of the military tend to get into fights pretty often, and it's also the home of the USAriadnan military's football and Dog Bowl teams and frequent site of their championship matches, which get pretty rowdy. The state of Jefferson sits north of the hot Velasco Desert, named for the leader of the first scouts to return from it alive. It is terrifically hot during the day, with dangerous animals such as the Dust Trail Rattler or the large, venomous lizard known as the Desert Dragon. The state's culture is firmly tied to the Old West, in large part thanks to the influence of the city of Tombstone, and is also home to one of the most important sites in the nation: the Fathers' Memorial at Plisqibi Dam, which simultaneously serves as a hydroelectric power plant for the state and a giant memorial to the founding colonists marked by giant statues carved with the deeds and popular sayings of each hero. The Memorial is one of the few places the Antipodes and will not approach. Most humans believe it's due to the turbines humming, but others believe it's because the Antipodes consider it one of humanity's sacred places and are trying to offer their respect, and this seems more likely. Tombstone is a marvel of technology, and all the moreso for the fact that it looks like an 1800s Old West town...if one with electric lighting and a defensive force with modern weapons to hold off Antipode raiders. The locals, however, very much dress the part of cowpokes and are plenty mean if they feel like it. The city was originally made as a travel stop for miners hunting for teseum, but the dangers of the landscape led the settlers to develop much the same survival strategies as were used in the American West, and they chose to play up the lifestyle. The city's mystique drew in more and more people interested in 24-hours-a-day cowboy LARPing...including the general lawlessness and violent social order. Dueling under the noonday sun quickly became a common and accepted method of solving disputes, and day drinking while gambling at bars became a staple. Tombstone is split by Main Street, and most businesses exist along that street, which is unpaved and has a pair of wooden boardwalks for people to walk on. The town is generally coated in a thin layer of dusty sand, and while mining vehicles and other modern tech exist, it does little to help the feeling you've stepped directly into the past. Surrounding Main Street are the four main neighborhoods of the city - Wayne, Eastwood, Rogers and Elliott. Wayne and Eastwood are the rich ones and also home to most of the bars and casinos. Rogers is largely industrial, with a lot of teseum processors and ore refinement facilities. The ore refined there is then sent off towards The Wall. Elliott, on the other hand, is the main military center for Tombstone. All soldiers are required to wear standard uniforms on duty, but they're allowed desert kit for it, which means extra water rations and special survival gear for the desert. There's also a special Tombstone rule - they're allowed Americolt Peacemakers on top of their normal sidearms. Because of course they are. The actual capitol of Jefferson is Truman, a city known for its firebrands and political activists - for any cause at all. Radical environmentalists, separatists, doomsday cults...anything, really. It's rumored to be full of offworlder spies trying to encourage USAriadnan revolution against the Rodinan regime by appealing to their loudest and angriest, but as yet no one has found any proof, and not for lack of searching. Unidentified space vehicles have been reported in the region, but it could just be local UFO kooks as easily as actual offworld landings. Truman's also the epicenter of USAriadnan Christian revivalism, with many, many churches belonging to either old Earth Christian sects or new ones developed on Ariadna, like the Rossists or the New Ariadnan Church of Christ. Truman is somewhat more settled and developed than most other Jeffersonian towns and cities, and while the various preachers and religious form a sizable minority in the local government, the real political power is with its farmers. They're the cause of a lot of the local resentment of Rodina and to a lesser extent the other nations - they resent that so much of what they make is shipped off outside USAriadna but that they see little of the profits. Truman's farms are massive affairs, tended to by huge groups of farmhands housed in large barracks. This makes them a frequent target of Antipode attacks, as they consider the massive wheat fields a dangerous change to the environment and also very creepy. The USAriadnan Senate is debating what should be done - and more specifically, how big a garrison they need to send to defend the farms. The state of Lincoln is the heart of northern production, in large part because its factories have been massively reworked over the last decade with offworld tech. The governor has sworn to use the new factories to send USAriadnan manufacturing ahead of everyone else on the planet, and it's not helped the state's reputation for arrogance that is built on their philosophical dedication to speaking their mind. The capitol is Centerville, imaginatively named for its location in the state, and it's mostly known for making a lot of stuff and being covered in pollution and smog and for being obsessed with combat sports like Dog Bowl and Aristeia!, along with illegal fight clubs. (The clubs are officially banned, but there's a deal between them and the cops that essentially lets them ignore that, as they bring in a lot of income to the city.) The town of Franklin is famous as the hometown of Old Man Ross and the birthplace of the Line Rangers, and even now it has a reputation for producing amazing soldiers. The 1st Line Ranger Regiment operates out of Ross Army Base and also run the main Ranger training center, which simulates the harshest possible environmental conditions it can. About half of each class has to repeat the course at least once, and about 2% wash out entirely. The focus is on resilience and overcoming obstacles rather than combat skill, and the end result is a solid and powerful infantry that care more about persevering past failure and never giving up than obsessing over perfection, which has led them to succeed even when the odds seem against even their survival. The other notable city we get is Springfield, which was burned to ash in the First Antipode Offensive. It was left as a ruin for quite a while, but then the Senate declared it'd be rebuilt as a modern technological utopia. And...about half of it is, because that's how much of it got built before funding ran out, and the city was faced with a massive deficit as it tried to finish its own construction. A small government contractor, Bracco Limited, stepped in to bail them out by buying the local Dog Bowl team, which has brought a ton of money into the city recently along with a new stadium. Construction is back on the menu - and so is a massive influx of athletic hopefuls seeking to join the football and Dog Bowl teams. Those who can't cut it or run out of money often get hired on by Bracco as muscle, and the company is almost the de facto government due to their wealth and influence. The state of Kennedy is the center of trade and agriculture and was the battleground for a lot of the Separatist War's battles. The Rodinans invaded it, and the local garrisons held out until the rest of the country could organize and come to their rescue. While they eventually lost, Kennedy's defense remains legendary to USAriadna, and the locals have adopted the Golden Bear as a symbol of resistance to tyranny and their dedication to freedom. Most of their fellow USAriadnans believe the state's primarily still coasting on their reputation from the Wars, but the locals insist that their work in maintaining commerice is vital to the nation's survival. The center of that trade is the city of 4 Tracks, named for the road system it's built on. It is both the commercial hub and the strategic bottleneck of the nation - everything going in or out of USAriadna must ultimately pass through there. For all that Merovingia considers itself the planet's economic powerhouse, if the trade through 4 Tracks suffers, so does the entire planetary economy. There's a sizable Merovingian minority living in the city as a result of their frequent trade caravans, and the place is also very useful for letting the USAriadnan government move spies and other assets around without anyone but whoever they bribe to help knowing. Our other notable town is Fairview, home of the last Coca Cola factory in the universe. And also to a bunch of other tech companies and a massive airport, so it's actually a fairly important travel hub, but has little of interest to note besides, y'know, Coke factory. Roosevelt is the state that most considers itself the inheritors of the American South, with a strong traditionalist mindset and an obsession with honor, grace and etiquette. Its citizens consider themselves to be far classier and more genteel than their fellows, a bastion of Southern pride and, to at least some extent, chauvinism. (Most notably around the sexes - men are expected to be honorable and knightly, women to be graceful and above reproach.) The capital, Tara, is the strongest expression of these beliefs. It is a very widely laid out city, with wide country estates and plantations surrounding it and a nearby forest of great beauty. The locals consider themselves the noble knights of USAriadna...and also are some of its most racist when it comes to Antipodes, Wulvers and Dogfaces, who are distinctly unwelcome anywhere near the city. Washington is one of the wealthiest of the six states, in large part due to military defense contracts and financial corporations. Its cities tend to be well defended and technologically advanced compared to those of other states, and it's easily the most diverse and friendly to outsiders. It certainly has its share of xenophobes, but also the largest immigrant population of anywhere in USAriadna, as well as the largest Dogface population. That's not to say it's all welcoming, though. It's home to Deadwood, after all, a city in the middle of a largely Antipode-controlled forest. The city is raided frequently, but the tough survivalists and cowboys that make their home there have always managed to drive them off. Everyone in Deadwood is armed, and it's led to duels as a frequent method of dispute resolution. They're not as big into cowboy cosplay as the folks in Tombstone, but they're close. Unlike most towns under heavy Antipode threat, they aren't actually all that racist against Dogfaces, and the local Dog Bowl team, the Deadwood Dukes, are very popular. Lunar Hills is another example of Washington's acceptance of Dogfaces - it began as a ghetto meant to keep early Dogfaces for study, but it's grown into a thriving city with a majority Dogface population and one of the top research centers on the entire planet when it comes to Dogface medicine and biology. Indeed, it's got one of the only hospitals in the Human Sphere that specializes in treating the needs of Dogfaces and Wulvers, and they've produced several key discoveries that have helped with control of transformation and biologically driven rage. The state capitol is Riverside, the second largest city in USAriadna and the unofficial second capitol. It's built in a planned grid with heavy bunker defenses around it and several antiair guns, since it was made to withstand years of siege, just in case. Its population isn't as big as it is, mind - there's plenty of empty homes for immigrants. The real power is in its waelth and political influence, which it has in outsize proportion to its population. Riverside is a common stop on election tours for those looking to earn the support of lobbying groups or fundraisers. It's also home to the tallest and most secure building in USAriadna: the Hamilton Financial Group Tower, built with a teseum-laced frame. Hamilton Tower is huge, but it's actually less iconic than its neighbor, the Government Plaza, which is the diplomatic center of USAriadna and where foreign dignitaries come to stay - MountZion is just a bit too...martial, really. With the construction of the Tower, the old Chamber of Commerce building has been turned into a massive hotel and convention center for diplomats and government officials passing through the city, and it's frequently got O-12 officials and other offworlders staying there on business. Next time: The Exclusion Zone
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Mar 11, 2022 19:13
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Torchbearer Second Edition What kind of game is this? Who is this game for? Scholar's Guide posted:Torchbearer is a roleplaying game of desperate adventure. In the game, players take on the role of fortune-seeking adventurers. To earn their fortune, they must explore forlorn ruins, brave terrible monsters and retrieve forgotten treasures. Scholar's Guide posted:Torchbearer is a roleplaying game. It’s about making difficult choices, and it involves exploring the world and your character through the game rules and systems. First, an introduction on who the hell is writing this. I've been playing Torchbearer 2E for about a year now as a player, and have GMed a few sessions both online and IRL. I missed the boat on TB1E and I'm not really into OSR games. I play a lot of games and love trying new ones, but since I started playing TB I haven't really looked back. So this is a reviw by somebody who really likes the game, just FYI. I'm going to talk about the books themselves, the mechanics of the game, how those mechancis influence roleplay, and some final thoughts on the game. Organization The first thing you notice about Torchbearer is the books themselves. Why are there two? (Or four if you get the GM set) Why are they small? Hey, nice gold edge! Opening the books you quickly realize these are not written in the way you've come to expect from games like D&D. If you know nothing about Torchbearer and started reading through these, you might think it the work of a madman. There is a logic to the organization of the books, though. Broadly, they are
Once you interalize this organizational scheme, it becomes a little less confounding when you need to look up how something works. In practice, however, this leaves a bit to be desired. If you're running the game and need the camp procedure on hand, you can reference the procedure in the SG while players pore over the DH while they figure out what they want to do, but as soon as they decide to do something, you'll probably need to reference the DH for what skills can help or for counting up the factors for the obstacle value. In tabletop play you'll want multiple copies at the table. Information is repeated in some places and missing in others, or just spread out from where you would expect it to be. In short, the organization of the game isn't great. Torchbearer is also pretty bad at teaching itself. The rulebooks are written in a very conversation tone, with flavor text and mechanics intermingled. Reading the books is like being shown a photograph of a vast,complex machine at rest, with gears and pistons sticking out in every direction whose function are very hard to make sense of until you see the machine in action. Then the purpose and function of all those little fiddly bits comes into focus. This is a game you really have to play to learn. The Mechanics Mechanically, Torchbearer is a very simple system with seemingly endless exceptions and asterisks. It's a d6 dice pool system with some possible rerolls. After the players have narrated their characters doing something that the GM decides requires a test, the GM informs the players which skill is being tested and what the obstacle value is (shortened to just Ob) Then the players (yes, players) assemble the dice pool. One player leads the test while the rest have the option of providing help in the form of an additional die. The leading player may optionally expend resources to gain more dice. Once the pool is assembled, the player leading the test rolls it, and tallies up successes, defined as a 4, 5, or 6 on a d6, and if they meet or exceed the obstacle, the test is a success and they get what they want. A starting character receiving help from their party might roll 5 dice and need 2 or 3 successes. At higher levels, the dice pool can swell to over 20 and the obstacles can get as high as 15 (this is very rare and usually player-elected, rather than GM-imposed). Failure is where things get both more interesting and vastly more complex. For players, the roll isn't over unless they want to accept the failure (we'll talk about why this can be a good thing later). The player can still try to pass by expending resources gained through play, called Fate and Persona. If they have a relevant Wise they can reroll a single failure by expending a Fate point, or for a Persona point they can reroll all failures. Regardless of wises, any 6s can be exploded by paying a Fate point, with furthers 6s also exploding. If the test was an opposed test and the player only tied the Ob, they have the option of doing a tiebreaker roll to try to pass. Once the results of the roll have been tallied, the test is either a Pass or a Fail. The player marks the result of the test (for advancement purposes) and then the GM narrates the result. In the case of a Pass, the players succeed at what they were doing. Torchbearer doesn't really do anything different here. In the case of a failure the GM has two options. The first is called a Conditional Success. The player succeeds in their action as though they had rolled a Pass result, but also gain a Condition decided by the GM. Conditions are penalties the players accrue during play that they must recover from when they have downtime. Maybe they pick the lock, but they get frustrated doing so and gain the Angry condition. The GM's second option is called a Twist. This is a new narrative element the GM introduces that usually the players must deal with immediately. Maybe picking the lock failed and accidentally set off a poison cloud trap and now everyone in the vicinity must test Health or fall victim to the effects of the poison cloud. So that's it for how the dice work. Torchbearer is a collection of interlocking systems, however, and those bear explanation as well. Game Phases Broadly, the game is divided into Phases that alternate who leads the narrative action. The meat of the game is the Adventure Phase, where the players voice their actions and the GM wears them down with tests to overcome the obstacles they face. Eventually, the player characters will be hungry, tired, miserable, filthy, and unable to safely continue (conditions can kill you, after all). At that point, the players will usually decide to make camp. The Camp Phase is a shorter, player-driven time-out where the players expend Checks** to do whatever it is they need to do. Maybe they cook a meal for everyone, one player treats the injury of another, and so on. Once they're out of checks, camp ends and it's back to the Adventure Phase. Eventually, the players characters will have either all died or reached the end of the dungeon they're in and collected or lost all of the loot. When that happens, they'll usually want to return to town, leading to... The Town Phase! This phase is similar to Camp, in that it is player-driven, but while the costs for camp are up front (you must have checks to spend to even enter camp), the costs for Town are at the end. The players will have access to some number of activities they can do while in town based on what type of town they're in (a Remote Village doesn't have a bustling marketplace, for example, so many items and gear will be unavailable). Town is where the adventurers blow off steam, brag about their exploits in the tavern, refresh and resupply, attend to personal business, and track down their next lead. Each of these activities has a Lifestyle cost associated with them. After the mandatory lodging selection (sleeping in the gutter being an option) and doing whatever it is they want to do in town, the players must make a Resources test with an Ob equal to their total lifestyle cost. Resources is an Ability that starts at 0, so in order to even attempt this roll the players must cash in the treasure they collected on the adventure for dice in the town phase, which I think is a nice mechanical way to enforce the conceit of the game. ** Checks are gained when a player elects to take a penalty on a test, so that it can be spent in Camp later on. One check equals on camp activity. Advancement There are two primary ways to improve your character: their level, and their skills. Skills advance by performing tests of them. Players track how many times they've passed and how many times they've failed. Once they have a number of passes equal to their current rating and fails equal to one less than that, their rank in the skill goes up by one and the passes and fails reset. Your characters level is increased by spending Fate and Persona (more on these later) and then going to town. When you level up you simply choose one of the two level benefits for your class, which mostly take the form of letting you break the rules in certain circumstances. They can be quite powerful, and because the game doesn't lock Skills to Class, and class level benefits are mutually exclusive, two characters of the same class can be built wildly differently. The Roleplay "Boy that sure was a dry and sober explanation of mechanics that definitely made me want to play the game!", you're probably thinking. But please, indulge me a minute more. You see, all of the weird little exceptions to the mechanics of the game all serve a very important purpose: to facilitate roleplaying. I mean, that is what we're here for, right? Let me back up. Torchbearer is a class-based RPG with an open skill system - anyone can learn any skill. The classes all have different mechanics, but all interact with the game system the same way, so how do you make characters actually feel different? The answer is... lots of little fiddly bits. Wait, don't go! I promise it'll come together! The first thing I want to talk about is Wises. Wises are areas of knowledge a character has. You start with 1 or 2 and can have up to 4. They're things like 'Book-wise' and 'Politics-wise' and 'Troll-wise', and can be anything really. These are the things your character has special knowledge or experience with. With a wise that's relevant to a test you make, you may reroll failures. That's big! Probably only your character in the party can do that, because that's the thing they know about. Wises make you better at doing the stuff your character knows about. The other thing (narratively relevant) wises let you do is Aid your companions (legally distinct from Help). Instead of using one of your skills to provide an extra die to the player making the test, you can instead Aid with your wise. Normally when you help and the roll fails, you're on the hook for the consequences of failure (the twist or condition, as mentioned). If you used your Wise, you're exempt. The rogue with Traps-wise knows to back up before the poison-cloud trap goes off, "I told you not to touch that!" It's a great way to reinforce, in the narrative, your character's special knowledge of the Wise. The next thing is Traits. Traits are your character's personality, and just like in real life your personality can be a double-edged sword. Traits are things like 'Foolhardy' or 'Thoughtful' or 'Fiery' or 'Driven'. When you are called upon to make a roll, you have the option of using a trait to help you or to hurt you. A Thoughtful character might take extra care when doing something dangerous, or that trait could lock them up with analysis paralysis. Mechanically this manifests as either a bonus die in the pool or a Check to spend in camp later, but a player can only do this if they can narrate how the trait helps or hurts them. You actually have to roleplay how the trait comes into play, and if you can't make a convincing case, you can't use it. The Nature Aside posted:Nature is something that comes from your character's Stock and describes the normal folk of that Stock. Each Stock gets three descriptors that describe what its folk are good at. Humans are good at Demanding, Boasting, and Running, for example. If whatever it is you're doing, in the narrative, can be described by any one of your nature descriptors, it is "within your nature," if not it is "outside your nature." On a roll, you can spend Persona to "channel" your nature, gaining a number of dice equal to your current nature, which can be a pretty substantial bonus. Actions outside your nature have an additional cost, but you can still do it. Nature also allows you to help in cases where you otherwise wouldn't be able to. So Nature is something that can inform roleplay by filling in what characters are just naturally good at by virtue not of who they are, but of what they are. quote:
The System Mastery Aside posted:Yes, Torchbearer embraces the idea of system mastery, or the idea that for your character to be effective in the game you as a player must understand the mechanics of the system in detail. Skilled players will set easily-accomplishable Goals and have Instincts that are likely to come up. They know how to describe their actions in ways that aligns with skills their characters possess, and how to use those skills to influence the narrative to a degree less experienced players may not. Taken together, we have mechanical representations for your character's personality (the good and the bad), body of knowledge, the stock they come from, and the things that drive them. To succeed in the game, you cannot simply interact with its mechanics and not engage in roleplay. The rules prevent you from doing that. I kinda like that. Describe to Live Just as a brief aside, the game straight up tells you this on page 19 of the Dungeoneer's Handbook: quote:Once you have a plan, you describe your character’s actions in response to the game master’s narration. Tell the game master what your character does, touches, manipulates, etc. The Fiddliest of Bits: Inventory Management The focus on desperate adventurers eking out a meager existence comes with some overhead: you actually have to track the resources your characters are scrounging for. You will be expected to track how many torches you have left, which container your spellbook is in, what's in (and on!) each of your character's hands, and so on. The rations in your pack are competing for space with the gold you find and the gear you need to help you do things. A starting character can have up to 20 inventory slots on their character sheet and the game concerns itself a great deal with which item is in which slot. And because inventory space is at such a premium players are constantly looking for ways to get more of it. If this sounds like a lot of bookkeeping to stress over... well it is. But it's stress in service of the narrative. You track all of this stuff because anything on your character sheet is fuel for the GM to wear the party down. Gear can and will be lost or destroyed. That rope you were banking on? A rat chewed through it while you made camp, it's worthless now. Failed to pay your bills on the way out of town? The guard searches you and confiscates your Thieves' Tools, and so on. You would be forgiven for thinking Torchbearer tracks everything, but that's not the case. The justification for such a cramped inventory system (believe me, you always want more space) is that adventurers are assumed to also be carrying all of the gear necessary to perform the skills they have training in. Hunters have what they need to make snare traps, Scholars have a pen and paper to take notes and write scrolls, and cooks have all the pots and pans necessary to make a meal in camp. So the items you actually spend time tracking (should) have an increased narrative importance. We track lengths of rope because rope is broadly applicable to a wide range of activities. Torches are the group's ticking clock, as are food and water, and the loot we seek competes for space with things that help us survive. When you're safely futzing about in the dungeon players are free to pass items back and forth all they want, but as soon as the temperature is dialed up and the group is "under pressure," what's on your character sheet is what the situation is. Get caught with your sword sheathed and your hands full when the hobgoblins ambush the party. Stumble into the lair of a giant spider right as the torch goes out. The party is scaling a rock wall, but the rope gives way. In circumstances like this, the party is scrambling to get to safety and everything is on the line. Do you drop the sack of loot to draw your weapon? Can you get a torch lit before the spider sets upon you? Do you let go of the rope to grab your companion's hand before they fall? In play these are interesting and dramatic moments. The narrative circumstances provide context for the GM to decide the consequences of failure, and the party's equipment makes a compelling target, both for the immediate narrative consequences and for the longer-term strain it puts on th party. If BIGs are the player telling the GM what their characters want from the game, their inventory tells the GM what they have to lose. So the verdict on the inventory system is it's a fair bit of work, but there is a payoff. In play, you're constantly worried about the group's resources, constantly aware of who is holding the light, who has enough light, how can we keep the loot secure, and so on. The things the characters in the game are concerned with are the things the players playing the game are concerned with. The mechanics support the theme of the game as one of desperate adventurers scrambling toward the next big score, so it gets a win in my book. Campaign Play Going off the rules of the DH and SG, Torchbearer is a narrowly focused game about adventurers in dungeons having a bad time. Towns are just quick pitstops to resupply en route to the next dungeon and the focus is on the dungeon and getting to it and home safely. That's fine, and my understanding is this is what 1E focused on almost exclusively, but that's not going to be enough to fill everybody's cup. Some people want more in the world. More characterful towns, more involvement within the world outside forgotten holes in the ground. In short, some people want a campaign world. That's where the Loremaster's Manual (or LMM) comes in. The Loremaster's Manual is full of all the rules you need for campaign play that would just clutter the other books. Skills like Butcher, Tanner, and Smith are skills that don't help much in a dungeon and so don't really have a place in the Dungeoneer's Guide, but they're very useful for the moments in between towns and dungeons. The book has rules for establishing home bases that can optionally graduate into full-on towns, advanced travel rules, more things to do in town, etc. Each of the book's chapter could get its own write-up but I've only actually used a bit of it and who really has time for all that. The important thing is 2E now enables campaign play while sticking to its core theme as a resource-management dungeon-delver. Conflict Avoidance Techniques I've neglected to mention one of Torchbearer's core features thus far, and for good reason: I think it's kinda bad. You see, rolling a single skill test isn't the only way to resolve situations. There's a longer, more involved system called Conflicts that the game uses for longer encounters, anything from boss fights to running away from ogres to convincing bandits to work with you instead of against you. The basic system is this: players decide their goal for the conflict (e.g. kill the BBEG, convince the crowd of something) and roll Disposition (basically HP) and assign points to the players involved in the conflict and decide what weapons they're going to use. Your actions in the conflict are limited to four types: Attack, Defend, Feint, and Maneuver, with two skills assigned to two actions each. The GM narrates the actions of the opposing party, and then the players need to try to figure out which actions that narration maps to and try to counter it, with actions chosen in sets of 3, revealed simulataneously. The roll that takes place depends on the pairing of party and enemy, but generally, the winner will recover Disposition, or the loser will lose Disposition. Turns are taken in this fashion until one side falls to zero disposition, at which point the conflict is over and compromises are made. Normally the players will have taken some damage, and so will need to concede something to accomplish their goal, or maybe fall just short of accomplishing their goal. Depends on the narrative. In a Kill conflict the actions are relatively straightforward, but what does it mean to Manuever in a Convince conflict, vs a Feint? What does it meant to Defend in a Drive Off Conflict? Then you have to kind of disguise the action you've selected in the language of the narrative - after all, we're roleplaying here! not just engaging mechanically! As a player, you have to listen to the GM very closely and try to discern which of the combat actions they're describing so you can correctly counter them. It's a weird step back from the close focus on the narrative into this minigame of action narration and personally I don't think it works very well. Fortunately (  ) the game provides some guidance in the Scholar's Guide: just don't use them! with some warnings about it throwing off the reward economy if you do (in my experience this greatly depends on how your particular group plays the game and isn't really an issue).So conflicts suck, don't use them. That's my advice. Problem is, much of the game was written with them in mind, which brings me to my next (final? who knows) point... Eh, the GM will figure it out Torchbearer's conversational tone and ocassional vague wording mean the GM will need to make some decisions about how to do things in their game. Rather than having tight technical language to describe exactly what players can and cannot do, the game gives players broad tools to impact the narrative. GMs will need to make judgement calls on most things. This is a "rulings, not rules" kind of game. If you rip out conflicts the bar is higher. Most class level benefits, weapons and armor were written with the conflict system in mind, so if you take that out you need to replace it with something else. Many effects are described in terms of their mechanical impact on a conflict, so those will need some other mechanical description. So even a strict rules-as-written approach (which isn't even really possible in this game) will require some GM desision making. You just have to be on board for that with Torchbearer. What this means is that every table of Torchbearer is going to be run a little differently, down to the mechanics. In Conclusion Does this need a conclusion? If you got this far you're probably at least somewhat interested in the game and I encourage you to check it out. I really like it, but there is a learning curve and the low-powered fantasy setting isn't everyone's cup of tea. I guess the thing I'll highlight is my feeling about the two online games I'm playing in right now. One is Torchbearer 2E and the other is... well it doesn't really matter, it's a different fantasy RPG that's not a D&D derivative. I'm finding myself less engaged in the other game because the mechanics don't feel impactful. We're rolling to see what we see, and just gaming the system when it comes to attacking bad guys. The dice don't feel important. In contrast, in my Torchbearer game, every single roll is interesting. There are stakes, real consequences for failure, and something will happen to move the story forward. It feels like it really matters when the dice come out, and I like that.
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Mar 13, 2022 14:53
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I'm glad the book touching on something that I think a lot of Space! exploration doesn't mention: A violent frontier drives the local culture insane, and its weirdness and violence continues generations after its 'settled'. It also brings up something I've noticed as a real life Texan: In absence of any meaningful cultural roots elsewhere, a lot of times you're just going to start making poo poo up and taking it very seriously. https://twitter.com/cd_hooks/status/966519007238066176 https://twitter.com/cd_hooks/status/966519170660732928 Ronwayne fucked around with this message at 21:16 on Mar 13, 2022 |
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Mar 13, 2022 15:47
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Thank you for articulating one of the things that really troubled me about TB2E- that organizational structure. I've read TB1E and I was still kind of confused trying to figure out how 2E was actually intended to work. The photograph of a machine analogy was really apt. What made it more frustrating for me was how badly the intro adventure in the two core books seems to introduce a lot of the concepts that you need to understand to play the game. It's next to impossible to avoid any of the combat, at least by my read, and conflicts can be so punishing if they go badly that this seemed like a major misstep. There wasn't enough room for players to be clever or come up with alternate ways to accomplish things. At the same time, reading it is a huge slog as there are just so many little details or instructions sketched out. I'd hoped the sample adventure would help me assemble all of the pieces of that big complex machine and it just wasn't equipped to do that for me.
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Mar 13, 2022 15:49
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Wow, I had heard about Torchbearer but I had never looked through the rules and it absolutely sounds like something my regular group would never touch and I really wouldn't blame them.
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Mar 13, 2022 16:01
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Just Dan Again posted:Thank you for articulating one of the things that really troubled me about TB2E- that organizational structure. I've read TB1E and I was still kind of confused trying to figure out how 2E was actually intended to work. The photograph of a machine analogy was really apt. Thanks. I probably should have included something about that adventure (The Dread Crypt of Skoegenby). All of your points are sound, it is a bad introductory adventure for many reasons. The ones in the Cartographer's Compendium are much more usable to teach and learn the game (I recommend The Tower of Stars).
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Mar 13, 2022 16:10
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There's something interesting to Torchbearer's approach to system mastery. Most games with roleplaying rewards (XP for "this trait caused problems" or similar) do this implicitly - if you're familiar with the game and genre, you are more likely to know how to "game" it and pick things that will come up. What's unique - as far as I know - is the framing Torchbearer uses, openly encouraging you to make narrative/character choices on your sheet for purely gamist reasons. I think that's a microcosm of the somewhat-unusual Burning Wheel design school, which is like if 3.5e D&D was relentlessly focused on specific kinds of roleplay instead of combat. I can't think of another game that approaches crunch -for-narrative like this.
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Mar 13, 2022 19:43
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I went through a phase a few years ago where my group was playing way more Torchbearer (1e and then later 2e) than anything else, and it's a really weird beast. It has probably the tightest system I've ever experienced in a RPG, with both the good and bad things that come from that. As someone who mostly does OSR stuff, it's extremely uncanny--resembling old school play superficially, while being almost the least OSR thing I've ever played on a design philosophy level. My experience is that the game sets up an extremely complex and thought-through system of resource management, and that experienced play tends to be all about riding the rhythms of it as expertly as possible--you're trying to balance successes that accomplish your goals against failures that you need to level up stats against checks that you need to recover from conditions against a really stingy inventory system against the fact that every single roll you ever make progresses the attrition clock. It can feel really good when you get the hang of it, and it's clearly really well thought through and intentionally designed, but it's super opaque and unintuitive to learn. It honestly almost feels like a board game that uses narrative framing as interstitial tissue. I will say that I loved the way it used Instincts. Literally every die roll you make (even things that would be perception/insight/history/etc checks in D&D 5e) progresses the clock that burns out your torches and food, but if you have an Instinct you get to do the action for free whenever it becomes relevant. It really did make my characters feel focused and specialized in a way that few other RPGs have succeeded at
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Mar 13, 2022 20:21
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"Rules written in a conversational style that's fun to read but a nightmare to reference" and "GM and player facing information scattered across multiple books in a way that makes sense according to the internal logic of the author, but makes looking up mechanics a hassle" are both issues with UA3 as well, and probably many other games. I think rules authors, especially indie rules authors, know on some level that most people reading their game will never actually get a group together and play it. So they prioritize the book being easy and fun to read over it being actually useful as a rules tutor and reference document.
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Mar 14, 2022 02:08
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At a certain point it becomes a more freeform CYOA novel. This is not a condemnation, just saying.
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Mar 14, 2022 02:14
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Yeah, the way I gather from the FnF, Torchbearer could really use an editor unwilling to take any of the gam dev poo poo, esp. mixing flavor and rule text. But that's just indie games in general: woefully lacking in feedback that wasn't from Friends of the Dev. Hire A Technical Editor For Chain Of Command 2E challenge
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Mar 14, 2022 12:05
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THE SWORD AND THE FLAME PT 9: OPTIONAL RULES, EXAMPLES OF PLAY Last post, we finished the four phases that make up a game turn in The Sword and the Flame. What comes next are some optional mechanics, and an example of play from the book. OPTIONAL RULES There are a few of these. I’ll discuss them and then make a recommendation whether you should actually use them or not. Victoria Crosses are the highest award a British soldier can receive. You use them in campaign games, where you expect the same unit to show up more than once. In order to be eligible for a VC, a British figure must be the only survivor of a fight against six or more enemies, and the British have to win that fight. The last Briton standing has a chance to get the medal at the end of the game. Roll a D6. If the figure is an officer, the award is issued on a 5 or 6. If he’s an enlisted man, he only gets the VC on a 6.  When you award a Victoria Cross, you paint a little yellow blob on the recipient’s torso, where they pin the medal. That guy gets a +3 bonus in hand to hand combat from now on. I think this is a good rule. I’d augment it by giving Native forces their own battle honors in campaign play. A Zulu unit could get a “washing their spears” buff after they win a hand to hand combat for the first time. Pathans could upgrade more of their troops to firearm users by looting weapons from dead British figures. Limited Ammunition is how you blunt the British firepower advantage and force the player to make interesting tactical decisions. Start by rolling 2D6 for each firearm or cannon equipped unit in a force with modern weaponry (Boers, British, Egyptians) and 1D6 for every firearm or cannon unit on the Native side. Divide that result by the number of units on your side equipped with firearms, and that’s how many “fire units” each unit gets. That means a modern force has on average enough ammo for seven rounds of shooting (average of 2D6) and the typical indigenous force has enough for four rounds (average result of a D6 is 3.5, rounds up to 4). Every time a unit shoots, regardless of how many figures actually roll dice, you use up one fire unit. When a unit runs out of fire units, it can’t fire anymore. The rules say you can track this using a unit record sheet (included in the reference section), but also suggests just using matchsticks or coins or something to track how much ammo they have left. I definitely suggest using objects. It’s more tactile and doesn’t require you to write stuff down. You could even put the matchsticks in a little matchbox behind each unit, so that the other player couldn’t see how many rounds your troops had left. Good rule overall, but I’d reduce the amount of ammo available to the British. An average of seven rounds of shooting is a lot, especially if you don’t have many units on the table. Reducing the value makes firing, waiting for an opportune moment, or meeting a charge with bayonets a more interesting choice. Transferring Ammunition is something that imperial forces can do using pack animals or carrying stuff by hand. A pack animal and handler can carry a fire increment, or you can do the job using four infantrymen or two cavalrymen. Ammo carriers are key figures, projectile weapons only hit them on face cards. Zulus, Dervishes and Pathans don’t have logistical infrastructure for ammo distribution and therefore can’t transfer ammo using these rules. Decent rule if you’re using the limited ammo rules, especially if you have a bunch of pack mule figures painted up. Maybe you could let the Native forces loot ammunition from defeated British units, provided they’ve got compatible weapons (indigenous forces often took British rifles to replace their own smoothbore muskets and matchlocks). Volley and Independent Fire is a rule that builds on the limited ammo rules and forces drilled troops to balance ammunition expenditure vs inflicting the maximum amount of damage they can. Volley fire is the default firing mode, with the unit’s officers coordinating the fire of weapons at regular intervals. A round of volley fire uses the base firing rules and expends one unit of ammunition. Independent fire is where you let all the soldiers acquire targets and shoot as fast as they’re able to. It increases the unit’s fire output but also uses more ammunition. Independent fire gives you a +2 to your chance to hit (raise all target numbers by 2) but used two units of ammunition instead of one. I like this rule because it presents an interesting decision. I’m not sure the +2 bonus is appropriate though. Maybe drop it to +1, or even offer no bonus for independent fire and inflict a penalty to volley fire. Torturing Prisoners is an option for Dervishes, Pathans or Zulus. Any wounded imperial fighter who falls into their hands can be tortured for information. Every turn during the morale phase, you ask a question and roll a D6 to see if the prisoner answers truthfully, dies, answers the question and dies, or just doesn’t answer. If the dice say the prisoner answers the question, then the answer must be truthful. The rules text says that the results of this interplay must be kept confidential, indicating that the torture rules can’t be used without a third party acting as an umpire for the table. Either that, or the players are meant to do RPG style separation of in-character and out of character knowledge. I have no clue if the use of torture by these forces to extract information was a reality of frontier warfare, or just a stereotype based on period accounts. Putting aside the reliability of torture for extracting information, the mechanics are a little questionable. If I wipe out a British unit as the Native player, I’m going to have a ton of prisoners to deal with, since 50% of my firing and 16% of my close combat hits are going to inflict wounds. Do I get to roll a D6 for each one, just a huge fistful of information every turn? The sample questions the book gives for asking during torture are odd. “Who is your senior leader?” makes complete sense, since that’s secret information that exists in every game - which figure did you designate as commander in chief? The others are less general purpose. “Where and when are your reinforcements due to arrive” and “what is your objective?” imply scenario based play, arranged by a scenario author and umpire, with limited information available to both sides. They also raise the question of whether a captured private soldier would even know this stuff. Pure theorycrafting, but you could use this mechanic like the Truthtrance card from the Dune board game. Ask a yes/no question about the player’s intentions in the immediate future, and treat their answer as binding. If you ask “are you planning on attacking the barracks next turn” and they answer “yes” then they HAVE to attack the barracks. The problem with the Truthtrance card is that, as much fun as this is, it’s also the cause of neverending rules arguments. I think you can ignore the torture rules in 99% of game scenarios. Special Troop Types have been mentioned earlier in the review, but I’ll recap them here.
Unit Record Cards give you a way to consolidate all your stat blocks in one place for each unit. I don’t think most of the bookkeeping functions on the cards are strictly necessary, since ammo and casualties can be tracked on the table rather than on paper. Here are a couple example cards.    Filled out Having a unit’s entire stat block in one place is modern gaming convention. I suspect most TSATF players today (it’s still popular at cons) use some form of these cards. Personalized Rosters are a supplement to the unit cards for campaign play. They have no mechanical effect, but they let you list the names of the figures in a unit, all the battles they’ve participated in, and their eventual fate (wounded, killed, mentioned in dispatches for heroic acts, etc). Unfortunately, these are the only campaign rules we get. They suggest a mode of campaign play where replacements are cycled into a unit to replace losses, as long as that unit isn’t totally destroyed in battle. Encouraging players to pull damaged units back rather than waiting for them to be annihilated.   Filled out SAMPLE GAME: THE BATTLE OF CHAMLA VALLEY Here we go, an example of play!  The scenario is simple: a 20 man British infantry platoon under the command of “Lieutenant Rigby” has been ordered to recon an outpost in the Indian-Afghan border region (remember there was no Pakistan in 1878). The book gives us a turn by turn report of the action, mixing narrative with rules descriptions. The text suggests we assume that a turn lasts 15 minutes in the game world, regardless of how long it takes in real life. That means that turns one, two and three constitute 45 minutes of marching down the road to the outpost. On turns four and five, the British swap from column to open order formation, deploying their troops to search the rock outcroppings on either side of the road. The text says that one of the two formations is commanded by the Lieutenant, while the other is under the command of Sergeant Mulvaney. Nothing in the rules text suggested that the British could split up their units into little sub-units like this, using an NCO to command half the platoon. I think it makes sense for a small game where the British only control one unit, but it should be explained in the rules text.  On turn six, a twenty man Pathan unit stands up out of the rock outcroppings and fires at the approaching British. The Pathan unit is likewise split in half, with ten men on each side of the road. So you don’t need an NCO to divide up like this. The rules say the British lose several men to musketry and thrown spears from the first round of Pathan firing. The rules text previously said that spears can only be used while closing into hand to hand combat, but the Pathans aren’t doing that here, just firing normally. The British use the next movement turn to pull back out of range of the spearmen and assume a close order formation, in case they get charged. They exchange fire with the Pathan rifles, losing more men but giving better than they get in return. The Pathans test morale due to suffering 50% casualties, fail, and rout.  At this point Rigby only has 70% of his men combat effective, but advances on the outpost anyway, determined to carry out his mission. He detaches a scout and send the guy up to the outpost to scan it for hostiles, covered by the rest of the platoon’s rifles. The scout spots ten Pathan spearmen on the walls of the building, and is promptly skewered by a volley of spears in return - meaning the Pathan player drew a key figure card when resolving fire. Ten Pathan musketeers emerge from a nearby defile and advance on the British, firing a devastating volley. Again, we’ve got units split into smaller units for maneuverability.  Because the British force carried its wounded that turn, fully half their surviving combat effective troopers weren’t able to return fire, seriously hampering their damage output. Further exchange of gunfire reduces the British to below 50% of their effective strength, but Lt. Rigby holds it together with a successful morale test. That lasts until the next turn, when a second morale test by the British fails and Rigby’s troops grab the wounded and rout, ending the game. Based on this example, it’s not clear to me whether you’re supposed to test critical morale every turn after you take 50% casualties, or just on turns where you take additional losses.  This example of play has illuminated my understanding of how the author imagined the game being played, but raises as many questions as it answers, in places where it either contradicts the core rules or introduces new mechanics. It didn’t include a hand to hand fight, which would have illustrated the game’s most mechanically dense subsystem. That’s going to do it for this update. Next post, we’ll go through the epilogue, errata, and wrap up the review. mellonbread fucked around with this message at 15:30 on Mar 22, 2022 |
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Mar 14, 2022 20:12
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The optional rules are mostly good but I twitch horribly at those torture rules. Aside from the arguments they strike me as a one-way trip to some very ugly table dynamics. I don't think I'd ever allow that even in scenario play. I don't want to play the kind of scenario where it is included in the rules.
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Mar 14, 2022 20:35
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Infinity RPG: Ariadna Colonialism! The Exclusion Zone refers to all territory on the main continent of Dawn that has not yet been taken over by the Ariadnans. More than half of the planet is in the Exclusion Zone, though most of that is uninhabitable to humans due to a mix of harsh weather and dangerous Antipodes in the area. It is officially open to exploration and scientific research by other nations of the Human Sphere. It is a constant reminder of the threat of off-world colonizers, and for many willing to break the law, a treasure of mining wealth to be claimed with illegal digs. Illegal mines are fairly rare, and only a few have been discovered, but their mere existence is enough that most Ariadnan officials assume any activity in the Exclusion Zone is probably a cover for mining. The portrayal of Teseum mining on Dawn in Mayacasts tends to have a huge positive spin on it - high tech equipment, safe and protected mines thanks to local soldiers, and heroic miners bravely producing the materials needed to fight the Combined Army and making massive amounts of money while doing it. ALEPH actively encourages these portrayals with ad funding, in fact, to help push the war effort. They are, however, pretty dang exaggerated. Mining is generally messy, disorganized and dangerous. While various outposts do offer top-grade equipment, they have all had to be designed to be easily evacuated and abandoned because of the dangers. After rockslides destroyed Yu Jing's Prosperous Dream settlement, everyone's had to go with extreme caution and care. Even legally permitted mining in the Exclusion Zone must be done very carefully. Legal mines already have a lot of worry about, let alone wildcat mines. Every camp must be tightly defended, often relying on multiple layers of fencing and sensor grids. First, this keeps the dangerous wildlife and local Antipodes out. While Antipodes are known to be intelligent, most nations prefer not to deal with them and treat them with more callousness and less respect even than many Ariadnans. Indeed, many conflicts have broken out between Antipode tribes and offworld miners and their TAG defenses. Secondly, the miners usually want to keep curious Ariadnans out, too. Rodina tries to discourage people from exploring in the Exclusion Zone, but mining outposts are one of the few places most Ariadnans can learn more about offworld life, and it's also not rare for miners to sneak out and try to meet up with Merovingian traders or Irmandinho smugglers to sell technology and offworld goods in exchange for high quality food. And of course the final reason for high security is the threat of sabotage by other nations - even if they don't piss off the Antipodes or Ariadnan authorities, miners have to worry about their competitors trying to ruin their gear or steal their mining maps. The various mining companies are cutthroat about this stuff, and while the mercenaries and security teams they hire are paid well, they have to be constantly vigilant for raiders and saboteurs from other mines. Mining is a common profession on Dawn, and it does pay exceptionally well, but it's also very dangerous and hard work. In its raw state, teseum resembles a silver ore, and it's usually found near cobalt and iron. No one's sure what makes it so common on Dawn and not other worlds, but hey, them's the breaks. The market for it is constantly in flux, but a few pounds of Teseum a day is going to ensure a steady profit almost no matter what fluctuations come. The trick is that most of the best mines have already been found and claimed, and any Teseum they output belongs to the mine owner, not the miners. Fixed wage mining is much less lucrative than staking your own claim. Caledonian mines are generally owned by nobles, and those of Merovingia and USAriadna are owned by corporations. Rodina's government owns all of its mines by law. So a lot of miners never see the profits of their work. There's also big differences in practice between Ariadnan operations and the offworlder mines in the Outer Crescent. Ariadnan miners are required to operate under environmental protection laws, so while they try to maximize profit, they have government inspectors coming in to ensure they're minimizing the harm they deal to the environment. Cave-ins and dust-related work injuries are still common, but by doing this they make things somewhat safer and also avoid angering the Antipodes, who consider the destruction of Dawn's environment to be an act of war and would use polluting mines as a reason to restart their offensives. In the Outer Crescent, Ariadnan law doesn't apply. Companies instead report to their controlling nation, and most of them prefer strip mining, using massive machinery to tear out huge chunks of ground. It's very profitable but very toxic, often poisoning local lakes and streams with runoff and causing massive smog clouds. The Rodinan government continues to protest this to O-12, but as yet, the international community refuses to pass any laws that would change these mining operations in the Exclusion Zone. Ecoterrorist groups frequently attempt sabotage, which tends to piss off O-12, especially when they have Ariadnan backing and thus risk the various treaties. Despite the pollution and dangers, the frontier remains romanticized by the USAriadnans and Caledonians especially. For offworlders, the idea that half of the planet or more is unmapped and uncontrolled is often terrifying. Exploreres set out to push the boundaries of human knowledge of Dawn each day, finding new places to settle or mine, and even the sophisticated offworld settlements are just outposts in a massive wilderness that covers multiple continents and has never been fully explored. One of the biggest and most permanent of these settlements is Abdera, an island base that is the closest to a central point for offworld miners to gather and relax. Its architecture is largely repurposed interstellar shipping containers or prefab designs, so it looks pretty ugly, but the locals are very lively. The majority are PanO, generally from Acontecimento or Paradiso, and PanO-Ariadna fusion cuisine is common. The city has a reputation as neutral territory, and many Ariadnan and O-12 officials use it as a backchannel meeting ground away from prying eyes. It's unfortunately caused the place to become more dangerous, in fact, as crime targeting government officials is on the rise, likely caused by spies. Noviy Cimmeria is technically unowned, but it's a region that is heavily Rodinan insofar as it has any residents at all. Older Rodinan miners often try to scam younger explorers by selling them the coordinates of supposed Teseum, gold or diamond veins out in the region. In truth, most of Noviy Cimmeria is small outposts, a lot of them abandoned due to failure, and most who head out there lose everything rather than striking it rich. Some even die, because the region is cold, desolate and hard to get supplies out to thanks to heavy snow and frequent subzero temperature. Yu Jing spends the most on exploring Noviy Cimmeria now, as well as sending survey teams out across much of the planet in search of Teseum. Their base in the region is Yaochi, which maintains communications and contact with the bases in the Snark Lands, with a secondary focus in Kurage Station, a Japanese settlement that Yu Jing set up to give them a place to send potential dissidents on Shentang. Kurage is now, unsurprisingly, a gathering place for Kempeitai operatives, who use its remote location to hide from the Imperial Agents. The most important Ariadnan settlement in the Exclusion Zone is Volkstrana, which is not a mining operation. Rather, it's a monitoring and research base that tracks the Antipodes and attempts to develop new understanding and methods to deal with them, both by diplomacy and by force. Researchers there are currently working to expand their understanding of the trinary mind of the Antipodes, hoping to develop new technologies to better allow Antipode controllers to communicate with their subjects. The small city is heavily fortified, with most of the entrances into it requiring passage through guarded trenches to prevent Antipodes from getting inside. The Snark Lands are heavily controlled by Yu Jing, and mostly used for bioscience research. The Ariadnans have tended to leave the area alone in the past - it's just not profitable to focus on, and the Snarks are weird. Most of the landmass is home to small Yu Jing outposts dedicated to research of the local wildlife and weird atmospheric phenomena that occur on the continent. The main base is Yashan City, named for a mythical Chinese mountain, and it serves as a shelter from the floods that fill up the local floodplains in the rainy season. The area takes its name from the Ariadnan Snark, which is a smallish ape-like creature that is somehow able to blur light around its own skin. Yu Jing's researchers - and really, anyone interested in studying the Snark - generally hope to reproduce the ability to create advanced camouflage on par with ALEPH's inventions. Helios System is the notable for most of its local traffic being foreign despite its independence from the other nations. Ariadna maintains a small space fleet and set of satellites, but the majority of the ships in the system and most of its commercial satellites are owned and operated by galactics seeking trade. The system is still mostly unexplored, as the Ariadnan space program still isn't doing very much, and many corporations would love to take advantage of the planets and asteroid fields, but getting a permit to survey isn't easy. O-12's Ariadna Stellar Trade Commission is deliberately labyrinthine, but that and the lack of power projection from Ariadna itself has put the system largely in control of pirates and corporate vessels operating illegally, because no one can really stop them. The planet of Tithonus was originally believed to just be a useless molten rock, but it has grown in importance recently thanks to the interest of Andlestar, a corporate research firm that wants to use the place to test new metamaterials and technologies that can take advantage of the molten surface to generate power. As yet, Andlestar has produced very little success in doing so, but despite this, they appear to have bottomless funding to throw at Ariadna in exchange for access to the planet. Ushas is the main focus of Ariadna's space program, used to test launch systems and atmospheric gear. Its surface is covered in meteor craters, and while it has valuable minerals, it's much harder to mine than either Dawn itself or the nearby asteroids, so it's mostly been ignored. Saranyu is a cold planet made mostly of iron and rock. It was one of the first planets claimed by offworld powers during the Commercial Conflicts, and is now used as a base by both Yu Jing and PanO forces, serving as one of their big trade centers in the system. Both nations have heavily armed their bases and will not permit Ariadnan vessels to approach, so no one can say for sure what military assets they're hiding there. The Armstrong Belt is better known to Ariadnans as the Heroes' Grave thanks to a lot of explorers dying in it. However, it's rich in iron, cobalt and frozen hydrogen, so it's been a focus of space industry. The problem is that it's full of micrometeor storms, its asteroids are often unstable, and pirates have taken up residence in it. Still, while it's dangerous, there's a lot of money to be made there. Out beyond it is Albina, a gas giant with a heavily charged, stormy atmosphere. All probes that have attempted to enter its atmosphere have been rendered useless by the massive static charge, and what few survive that are usually destroyed by the winds. That said, the planet's intense electromagnetic radiation is great cover for ships trying to hide in its orbit. Last, we have Eostres, an extremely lucrative planet that has given hope to those seeking peace and mutual profit with the galactics. Ariadna's government leases out the right to mine it for methane, helium and hydrogen, and the Nomads and Haqqislam have both established huge trade satellites and outposts in its orbit and atmosphere. The workers on these stations are permitted to travel freely to Ariadna for three days each month, which has helped encourage trade between their home nations and ARiadna and built strong diplomatic ties. Our final bit of interest in the region is the Tereshkova Belt, AKA New California if you ask the Ariadnans. It's the site of a massive Teseum rush. PanO detected large quantities of the stuff during early surveys, but the Ariadnans declared it off limits to foreign mining. This has been largely ignored, as the belt is far too large for Ariadna to maintain any control over, especially since none of their fleet is really able to patrol it and the O-12 treaties do not cover it. The mining rights in the belt have remained a massive issue for Ariadna and their relations with the rest of the Human Sphere, especially because they're stuck relying on a single, very overworked O-12 ship to get any information on what's even happening in it. Worse, all the various mining facilities are fully aware of the one O-12 observer ship and publicly share information on its movements and activities, so it has provided absolutely no deterrent to mining the belt whatsoever. Next time: Life as a Merchant
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Mar 16, 2022 13:46
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Is the write up website still being updated? Maybe I'm going to the wrong site, but it says it hasn't been update since last year.
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Mar 16, 2022 15:49
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Not currently no, assumably real life got in between. That and there's a lot of updates that need to be trawled through and then cleaned up and properly formatted.
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Mar 16, 2022 15:56
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It usually happens in large batches a few times each year, is my impression.
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Mar 17, 2022 19:43
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Infinity RPG: Ariadna Trade Remade Capitalism actually died out briefly on Ariadna, so we get a brief history of how it was reborn. See, in the early colonization, existence was brutal and dangerous, and money was simply useless. Technology was too valuable to sell, and most people were too focused on survival to care about money. People instead survived by barter, basic trade deals and banditry, though bandits usually got killed pretty quickly by Rodinan soldiers or local communities. The Ariadnan Depression was terrible and nearly killed the colonies, but it started a lot of traditions, and made it clear that while they might distrust or hate each other, the various nations had to engage in trade and barter if they were to survive, and that trade routes would be necessary to culturally and socially link communities...though as often as not, the negotiations would break down into conflict. The trade ceremonies that developed then still see some use today, however, particularly among the Caledonians, who consider them a way to get past wariness and are, after all, nearly as wary of each other as they are of outsiders. It might surprise people that the Space Russians are the ones who preserved market commerce on Ariadna more than anyone else, though the Merovingians have certainly been its strongest practitioners. The Rodinans, see, have always planned ahead, and they knew that one day, money would become the main medium of exchange again. (In fact, the ruble has been the only currency on the planet to remain continuously in circulation in some form for the entire colonial history, which has made it the de facto chief currency of the planet.) For the Cossacks, this is a point of pride and patriotism, a claim to civilization even when all others were barbaric, though a minority of generally frowned on historians claim it's more a result of luck and corruption than actual planning, saying that the wealthy refused to give up currency even when it was useless because it helped them with blackmail and control. It was about keeping power, not foretelling the return of modern trade. Whatever the case, the Rodinans convincing the other nations to adopt the stanitsa system did solidify trade between various settlements, which helped rebuild the economy and end the Depression. Trade and the use of money returned, and the traditions forged in the Depression helped rebuild the network of commerce. Teseum was discovered soon after, and both tech and industry were revolutionized on Dawn. This is when the Merovingians came to the forefront of merchant dealings, viewing trade as essentially a way to fight battles without hurting others or being hurt - though it definitely earned them a reputation for ruthlessness and trickery. With that rise in trade came the Age of Exploration, the repair of diplomatic ties and the rise of joint ventures. The Merovingians worked to coordinate it all, partially in order to gain dominance and partially because they thought it was a good idea. Commercial Agents of Merovingia forged new roads, funded new ships and set up new caravans to ensure that international trade would never falter - and that the Merovingians would always be the richest. They excelled in all markets except Teseum, which Caledonia dominated by virtue of natural resources. The various nations instituted their own currencies, and Merovingia used that to establish new stock markets in Marianneburg. It had to shut down during the Separatist Wars, but as those ended and trade resumed, it also started up again. Each nation seemed to have an economic role - Teseum production in Caledonia, management of policy and currency in Rodina, food and wood production in USAriadna, and management of the trade network by Merovingia. The Contraband Wars threatened to destabilize it, but when the galactics arrived, these roles actually became more solid, not less. Little has changed since the establishment of the Ariadnan Interstellar Commerce Act, which was intended to stabilize the planetary economy against the potential catastrophic collapse threatened by galactic markets. The only real challenge now is enforcement, but fortunately for everyone, the Caledonians have shown little interest in working with offworlders seeking Teseum. On the other hand, the Merovingians want to connect their stock market to Maya, and they're starting to become willing to use their Commercial Agents to contact offworlders rather than going through Cossack diplomats. Things are becoming uncertain again, and the value of offworld tech has to be weighed against the value of tradition and history. Trade will - and must - continue, either way, and Merovingia intends to be at its forefront. Merovingian trade is sometimes considered a bloodless war for control over the Ariadnan Council, and certainly they've made sure that almost no major business happens that they aren't somehow part of or at least aware of. Every major highway or transit center has an office for Commercial Agents, as do many minor ones. Often, they double as customs officers and border inspection, as a service provided by the Merovingians to everyone else. This is allowed because it keeps the Merovingian military widespread, able to police the roads but unable to come together as a major threat. (The fact that this helped lose the Separatist Wars means Merovingia has made some effort to deal with the problem, but they don't make a big show of it.) It keeps transport of goods free-flowing and pretty fast, ensuring that everywhere on the planet is connected and supplied. There's an equally voluminous set of documentation tracking all this - every shipment is catalogued on departure, listing intended route and destination. Not filing this paperwork comes with heavy fines, because the Commercial Agents need to know where everything is at all times. The whole system was intended to cut down on how many inspections would be needed, though it's meant that unregistered shipments have been a problem since it was implemented. The Commercial Agents have acquired offworld tech in the form of scanners, security devices and new measurement tech that has reduced the problem of smuggling, but they can't eliminate it, and must still make some amount of physical inspections, especially off the main routes. The Merovingians have a reputation for haughtiness and pride, and in many ways it's because they have found it's easier to act with authority, assurance and confidence when dealing with a lot of towns and villages with their own cultures and traditions, who often dislike a relative outsider showing up to regulate their trade. In major cities and travel hubs, they often much more extensive offices, with their work supported by local cops and military or by the FRRM, with the former being much more common outside Merovingia - most other nations do not like having foreign troops on their soil. In small towns, though, you usually only have a single delegate or Commercial Agent, though Merovingia tries to ensure they at least get regular visits from caravans. That they're present at all is often a sign of great diplomatic skill, given how xenophobic some settlements can be. The Commercial Agents don't control all trade, though - they just oversee it to maintain awareness of trade movements and ability to intervene if necessary. Most internal trade in each nation happens with little if any influence from the Commercial Agents, and indeed little consultation with them whatsoever. It's only international trade that they get involved in. The Merovingians aren't super happy about that - they claim it's part of what makes smuggling a huge problem - but everyone else has told them they don't care. It should also be noted that the Merovingians are rarely involved in the actual trade deals - they just want to know that they're happening and when, so they can track the results, the web of influence that spreads out from each deal and impacts on the stock market. This is a lot of what a Commercial Agent spends their time on - well, that and doing business for themselves. Commercial Agents do a lot of jobs - one might be a traveling merchant, examining the flow of goods in the network, making new trade deals and seeking adventure, while another is a customs inspector in a nice office, and a third is a stockbroker. Advancement is earned by skill in business, and for those without that skill, there's plenty of desk work and clerical duties that need taking care of. Stock market postings and caravan leadership are the jobs for real up-and-comers, though. Trade caravan work these days is very comfortable, designed for efficiency and profit and very precisely timed to ensure everything arrives right on time and cargo doesn't get backed up or stuck waiting. Maintaining that requires immense numbers of staff - transport pilots, administrators, logistics officials, security, teamsters. It's often difficult work, especially the manual labor parts or the maintenance work on the infrastructure...but especially security, because they have to deal with Antipode raiders and human bandits looking to get rich quick. The Merovingians run the trade routes, but everyone benefits from them. Each nation makes a ton of money in taxes and gets a ton of jobs out of it - most workers in the trade network are locals, employed by the Merovingians to maintain the local highways and similar. Commercial Agents also offer their services as deal brokers and negotiators for hire, and it's seen as just a fundamental part of their culture - Merovingians make deals, Caledonians brawl, Kazaks prize order, USAriadnans farm. It's what they do. Many are quite eager to get access to galactic markets these days, seeing them as a new opportunity to get very, very rich. There's been a lot of trade barriers put in place to keep Ariadna from being overwhelmed, but it's clear they won't and can't last forever. They've decided to prepare for the day when trade opens up for real, and some Commercial Agents now operate on an interplanetary scale, with permission to establish trade outposts in any system that they can get a good deal out of. They have learned very fast that Yu Jing and PanO are going to play dirty, and they now do the same, often brokering deals based on the potential for favorable trade when the Ariadnan Interstellar Commerce Act is repealed, regardless of if it ever will be. It is unclear if they intend to actually uphold those promises. Obviously, while the Act is in place, the Commercial Agents can't start importing goods or setting up import routes of any kind. What they can do is explore the Human Sphere to find buyers of Ariadnan goods and set up export agreements, however. This is a job that requires personnel, much like managing Dawn's trade networks, and it also requires spacecraft. Exports are significantly less restricted, and while bringing stuff to Ariadna can be a nightmare of red tape, it's much, much easier to ship it out. Right now, that means the good money is in hiring offworlder shipping and mercenaries, just like the Merovingians hire local engineers and teamsters to manage their on-planet network. It will take decades for Ariadna's own shipping to be able to catch up, after all, to say nothing of getting their military widespread enough to operate as offworld security. Most offworld trade is done with the Nomads and Haqqislam. It's not quite accurate to say the Ariadnans are friendly with those nations - they're not really friendly with any galactics. They are, however, happy to work with them in an effort to get a leg up on the superpowers. The Nomads and Haqq attemot to honor the terms of the Ariadnan Interstellar Commerce Act by largely dealing in technology and services rather than physical goods, though. PanO and Yu Jing are much more willing to break the act's terms, but both very much want to control the Ariadnan markets and political power with debt gained by selling advanced tech and goods. The Cossacks refuse to allow this so far, but PanO and Yu Jing are more and more willing to go around Rodina to get deals made, and the Merovingians are certainly interested in more direct trade and economic dominance. It may not be long before something breaks. Next time: Trade Mechanics
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Mar 17, 2022 21:00
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  In The Musical Vein, Part 4: Hematech In this chapter, the PCs finally confront the organization behind the kidnappings. It starts with the abduction of Lucrezia B. If the PCs are too lazy to help out at the Lester Jukes Memorial Clinic, they’ll have to follow up on leads after Lucrezia doesn’t come back one night. If they help her out, they’ll be eyewitnesses to the abduction. As usual, the PCs are waiting in the wings while Lucrezia goes out trolling for “volunteers.” She sees a woman she seems to recognize–and as she starts to leave, the woman sprays something in her face. A couple of moonsuits emerge from the shadows and blow her loving head off with repeated shotgun blasts. They throw her body in the van and speed off. In most Nightlife scenarios, the bad guys lose and the plot moves forward even if the PCs fail. But like their last encounter with the moonsuits, the PCs can’t save Lucrezia. If they try, they’ll get hit with a smoke grenade containing the same stuff that hit Lucrezia: LSD. The PCs go on the worst acid trip ever–I’ve only done it once so I have no basis for comparison–and wake up to find nothing but Lucrezia’s purse and gallons of blood on the sidewalk. Vesalius will ask the PCs to find her, if they haven’t resolved to do it already. Toast and Yngvar are both willing to join the PCs if they need some muscle. All they have to do is, y’know, track down the evil organization that we’ve been calling “moonsuits” until now. This is another situation that popped up once or twice in America After Dark: while the adventure is mostly on rails, sometimes the lead to the next stage isn’t obvious at all. The PCs have a few options: first, they may have already chased a van full of moonsuits back to their headquarters in Long Island. They could also trace the license plates, especially if they have a Data Haunt on their side--Toast knows a few. (The book doesn’t mention it, but if you already ran America After Dark, the computer geek they befriended is an obvious choice.) In the very unlikely event that they captured one of the moonsuits, they can make them talk. A dead moonsuit is just as useful–their suits contain a GPS device that could be traced to the source. Another option is tracing Emile’s phone calls–the possibility of interrogating Emile isn’t raised, even though it seems like the most obvious option. Once the PCs identify Hematech as the source of the attacks, a competent hacker could break into their systems and access some secret data, including their schedule and a complete map of the facility. But unless they have a Data Haunt on their side, they probably have no way of finding Hematech's public-facing mainframe. The PCs will probably have to go in blind.  As far as the public is concerned, Hematech is a legitimate manufacturer of biomedical products. They do $350 million in revenue each year, and thousands of people across the world owe their lives to Hematech’s research. Only a relative handful know that their life-saving treatments come from government-funded and ludicrously unethical experiments on humans and Kin. We’ll get into that later. Hematech’s operation is small for such a profitable company. Their main facility on Long Island consists of a small office building connected to a single large warehouse, about the size of a football field. Security is tight: the fencing is topped with razor wire, dogs and guards patrol the grounds, and security cameras are placed at every entrance and exit. The only cover is a few bushes scattered here and there. The hardest part is getting into the building. (During the daytime, the number of cars in the parking lot makes it clear that a daylight raid is not an option, even if none of the PCs are strictly nocturnal.) Kin don’t show up on video cameras, but dead dogs and guards do. Nightlife doesn’t go in for mechanistic, old-school dungeoncrawling, except when it does. There are 6 guard dogs. Killing one on camera has a 10% chance of being noticed, which increases every combat turn the bodies are left in view. Their best bet is to make a dash for the office door, and the best way to get in is with Edges. Once inside, the security system is visible and can be disarmed with an Electronics roll or by getting the code from a guard. It’s easy enough to just open a panel and disconnect it, but that will silently alert the guards. If the alarm is activated, the moonsuits lurking deeper in the facility will come to reinforce the guards. There are usually 4 guards. If the PCs have tangled with the moonsuits, there are 8. There’s a 20% chance of encountering a Wandering Monster whenever the PCs enter a new area, until all the guards are eliminated. Fortunately, the security guards are just that. Their pistols are loaded with anti-Kin rounds, sure, but they also have a 25% chance of being asleep when the PCs encounter them. They don’t get cool armour, but each of them has a keycard that will open any door in the building. Inside the office building, the PCs will find a Lobby appropriate for a successful biotech firm. Wood paneling, leather furniture, live houseplants, and glass cases showcasing Hematech’s products. The lobby leads directly to the President’s Office, which is just as luxuriously appointed. Besides the TV, stereo, dartboard, magazines, liquor, and other stuff rich people do at work instead of working, there are only two items of interest here. The first is a computer. With a skill roll to bypass the password login, the PCs can access a lot of secret information in the mainframe computer downstairs. Most of the really good stuff is only accessible down in the labs, though. The other is a paperweight. It appears to be a sort of snowglobe, containing a red crystal surrounded by sand. Daemons will immediately sense that the sand is ground flint. Enjoy your Pet Rock/Daemon until we revisit this later. Down the hall from the lobby is the Security Desk. There will always be a guard here, but he’s probably reading Soldier of Fortune with his feet propped up, giving the PCs time to take him out before he hits the alarm button under the desk. From here, the array of cameras gives the PCs a clear view of what’s happening in various locations around the city. It’s a great tool for coordinating takedowns of the guards and the moonsuits. An electronic map gives a clear overview of the motion sensors and infrared beams designed to thwart Kin infiltration into various parts of the facility. This gives them a +50 bonus to avoid traps for the rest of the “dungeon!” A nearby door leads to the Staff Offices, where actual work is done and the furniture isn’t as nice. Besides some World’s Greatest Dad coffee cups and other personal effects that underline the banality of evil, there’s not much of interest here besides employee records. Finally, the staff offices connect to the Production Facility, a warehouse made of prefab aluminum. The first things the PCs will notice are the Culture Tanks. Thirty feet high and forty feet across, they look a lot like the fermentation tanks used in breweries. An exact number isn’t given, but they take up most of the space in the warehouse. The base of each tank holds computer monitoring equipment, manual controls, and pipelines leading directly to the loading dock. The culture tanks artificially produce organic medical products like blood plasma, insulin, interferon, and streptokinase. There are automated controls at the foreman’s office down by the loading dock and manual controls on the tanks. If the PCs just want to gently caress with Hematech and create some havoc, they can drain the tanks. Draining all of them will fill the room 10’ high. The mix of fluids includes insulin and streptokinase, which breaks down organic tissue. It’s not sulfuric acid, but don’t go swimming in it. The flood will drain out in a matter of minutes unless the PCs shut the floor drains.  At one end of the tank room is an airtight door leading directly to the OSV Storage Room. As soon as the door opens, they’ll be greeted by the stench of a humid locker room and the sound of hundreds of people wheezing for air at once. The room is full of hundreds of skin bags–or as Hematech calls them, Organic Storage Vessels. The lighting shifts from deep red to ultraviolet. PCs will have to make a Fear Roll at the sight, sound, and smell of this hellish scene. The OSVs are stacked in 3 rows, 30 feet high. As in the tank room, there are catwalks accessing the 2nd and 3rd levels. All of the OSVs are connected to an intricate tracked system with a crane that allows them to be taken down and transported directly to the delivery vans, all without disconnected their life support systems. There’s also a Delivery Shaft with an elevator platform that lowers into to the underground Research Labs. If the PCs are able to act without interference, they can load intact skin bags into delivery vans and drive off with them. If they can’t figure it out, the foreman’s office contains manuals explaining everything. It’s a time-consuming process, but perhaps easier than cutting them free from their winches. Each OSV is tattooed with a barcode. Bar code readers, also found in the foreman’s office, identify each OSV and its purpose. For Kin, OSVs are a convenient source of lifeforce. For Hematech, they’re used to culture more biomedical products that can’t be grown in the big tanks. This includes bone marrow, antibodies, stem cells, and donor organs. They use Kin to incubate diseases that human OSVs can’t…like Nerve Rot. Hematech is deliberately spreading the Pox! Aura Sight will identify some of the OSVs as Kin. Vampyres are staked, and other Kin have a cage of silver, flint, etc. around what’s left of their brain to stop them from regenerating. If you remove these, the Kin will heal normally. If the PCs take time to look around, they’ll be able to identify Lucrezia B from her tattoo. Her barcode says that they’re using her to incubate fetal tissue for stem cell therapy, and she’s scheduled to be “sacrificed” in three days. The human skin bags are hosed. If it’s not clear at this point, they weren’t grown in a lab. They used to be people. Nothing can be done for them unless the PCs want to euthanize them, which will put a dent in Hematech’s operation. The Foreman’s Office looks like any other foreman’s office: battered furniture, heaps of papers, stuff pinned up all over the walls. The desk contains a bottle of whiskey and a 9mm pistol loaded with anti-Kin rounds. The office is stocked with bar code readers and contains manuals for dealing with the tanks and OSVs. There are also controls that can be used to manipulate the culture tanks. I suppose it’s possible to lure guards and moonsuits into the tank room before flooding it, but there’s no way to trap them in there. You could certainly flood the research labs by opening the tanks and the delivery shaft. The Loading Dock is divided in two by a concrete wall. One one side, pipes snaking out of the wall lead directly to the culture tanks. That’s right, they pipe insulin directly into tanker trucks. If the PCs want to gently caress up Hematech without making a mess inside, they can dump all the tanks directly into the parking lot. The other side is where they outfit the step vans used by the moonsuit capture teams. The PCs could load skin bags into vans and make off with them, I suppose. There’s room for five vans, plus a shop where they do all the detailing to disguise the vans. Stencils for Krispy Kreme, Good Humor, the NYPD and the Sewer Authority line the walls.  Assuming the PCs don’t just grab Lucrezia and bug out, they’ll want to take the elevator down to the Research Labs. You know that bonus to avoid traps I mentioned? It says that the labs are protected by motion sensors, lasers, etc. but there are no examples. This scenario doesn’t even come with a map! The labs are 20 feet underground, but everything is well-lit with clean bright surfaces. And there are science traps. The tone has definitely shifted from 80s Punk Horror to 90s Action Horror. The first section the PCs will encounter are the Experimentation Chambers. These are 10 cubical rooms, 15 feet to a side, made of stainless steel and tile with electronic locks. Each room contains monitoring equipment and various kinds of robotic tools for conducting horrible experiments on people. The rooms are almost impossible to break into without an Electronics skill roll. That doesn’t really matter, since the same red keycard carried by every guard in the building opens every door. Oh, and there’s nothing to steal anyway. Next are the Holding Cells. There are 50 cramped, uncomfortable cells. None of the prisoners are likely to live long, anyway. There are 5 healthy Kin, who aren’t described. There are also 22 Stage IV Nerve Rot victims, 18 sickly humans, and 5 humans who are healthy, but drugged. At this point, the PCs really have a moral conundrum on their hands. Freeing the healthy Kin is easy unless the City Planner wants it to be difficult. They probably don’t have time to heard the “zombies” to safety unless they can call on Toast, Comfrey, and company to crash the bus through the gates and make a jailbreak. As for the humans, well, they’re kinda screwed. They’re sick, they’re in an underground domestic black site, and most Kin would probably say that they’ve seen too much. It’s possible that the PCs could shepherd these people to safety, but that would probably bring down the wrath of any remaining guards and capture teams and lead to a mass slaughter in the parking lot. There’s no “boss monster” in this scenario, so if the PCs take out all the bad guys with time to spare, they could free everyone and get home before dawn. The prisoners will be homeless in the middle of Long Island, but they won’t be dead. The other complication is that the “healthy” humans have just been infected with Nerve Rot. These folks are drugged to the gills because they’re set to be released back onto the street. If the PCs have close contact with any of them, they will have a 93% chance of being infected. That would be really, really lovely, but any infected PCs will almost certainly catch the disease at Stage I and cure it by pigging out for a week or two. They’re the house band at the best Nerve Rot clinic in the world. They can go around speaking at schools. Next is the Control Center. The labs are set up like a wheel with the control center as its hub. (Can you freely travel from here to any other section? I guess so. Like I said, no map.) The desks here have a big spooky array of controls for everything from cameras to environmental control to the robotic dissection machine in the morgue. From here the PCs can see everything and everyone in the labs, and they can gently caress with the bad guys by messing with the temperature, even knocking people out with the Halon firefighting system that removes oxygen from a room. The Microbiology Lab is where they develop Nerve Rot and other diseases. The refrigerator contains experimental samples of the next versions of Nerve Rot. Destroying these samples would cripple their Nerve Rot project, but it’s very difficult to do so safely. If the vials are breached, anyone nearby dies in a few turns. If you fail a FIT roll, you die the True Death! This is the only Tomb of Horrors trap in the whole scenario. The vials aren’t actually that dangerous to transport–there’s a 1% chance of infection–but they’ll have to dispose of them in an ore smelter or an acid vat or something like that. The Morgue is a grisly sight. Human corpses in plastic bags hang from meathooks. Kin organs and tissues are proudly displayed in bottles and acrylic blocks. The largest display is the remains of an entire werewolf who has had his anatomy “exploded” and encased in plastic. At the center of the room is the dissection table, where cameras and robotics allow the researchers to perform autopsies, and vivisections, remotely. The Ready Room is an entire apartment devoted to the capture teams. There are kitchens, bathrooms, sleeping quarters, and an armory where they maintain their weapons, armour, and medical supplies. This would be a good time to talk about the enemies in this cyberdungeon. The men in moonsuits are humans with decent stats and great equipment. Their Batman armour gives them Armour 10 and they’re environmentally sealed. They lose that ability as soon as they take any damage, of course. They’re armed with automatic shotguns loaded with anti-Kin rounds. Not only that, some of them carry an infrared laser/maser rifle called the Little Mike. It does 35 damage, and it doesn’t just work on Kin. Vampyres and other kin vulnerable to sunlight take extra damage! What takes the edge off all this is that the moonsuits actually have pretty crap Combat Skills. Their high SP and Armour makes them tough, but they’re Herd. Kevlar doesn’t protect them from having their soul Drained out in an instant. So, back to the Ready Room. You finally get some loot! There are 6 moonsuits here, 6 Atchisson shotguns, and 6 Little Mikes. In my opinion, Nightlife modules are too light on stuff you can steal…but now they’re giving you superhero armour and rayguns. And it wouldn’t be an 80s/90s RPG without some gun porn. An Underground Garage is set up for maintaining the capture teams’ vans. An elevator platform leads directly up to the loading dock. This would make it easier to rescue the victims and make their escape. The last section of the research lab is the Computer Room. If the PCs come here as soon as possible, they’ll get all kinds of secret information that will tell them everything they need to know to get a 100% completion rating on this whole scenario. Here’s the odd bit: some of this info is on what Nightlife imagines is the late-90s Internet. A PC could hack into Hematech’s computers remotely with a modem and a skill check at -20. But they’d have to know the address, and they have no way to get it. If they were clever enough to enlist a Data Haunt, it’s just done. First, the PCs can find schedules and duty rosters. They’ll know the best time to attack (between midnight and 5:00am) and how many bad guys are there. Then there’s a complete map of the facility, including the secret labs. Third, they’ll find research notes and papers indicating that a scientist named Vasily Vrkolakich conducted the research that makes OSV’s possible. He gets royalties. All of the above can be accessed remotely or through the computers in the offices. The highest security stuff is all stored on disks and CDs in the computer room itself. We can finally dispense with calling these guys “moonsuits,” because they work for  Project Prometheus is a top-secret US government agency, operating directly under the National Security Council. (Target Alpha doesn’t know they exist, and when they find out, they’ll be absolutely furious.) Prometheus has a clear mission: discover the scientific basis for the Kin’s abilities, duplicate them, and then exterminate the Kin. Prometheus operates out of respectable front operations like Hematech. Researchers at the University of Utah are working on a “lycanthrope endocrine pump.” A military contractor in Seattle is studying invisibility. In Cleveland, another biomedical company researches powers like Mistform and Intangibility. A beauty clinic in California studies shapeshifting. I assume that the unproduced Destroy Prometheus would have featured a grand tour to shut down all these fronts, like the Sparkle labs in America After Dark. Let’s get into the Hematech Files. Through Hematech, Prometheus provides lifesaving medical treatments to some of the most powerful people in the country. Donor organs, stem cell therapy, you name it. This is why Prometheus is untouchable and can get whatever it wants. Money? No problem. A blank check to conduct illegal medical research? No problem. A busload of homeless people to experiment on? No problem. Wiping a small town in California off the map because they were harboring Kin? No problem. The Organic Sustenance Vessels that Uncle Vasily developed are Hematech’s medical miracle. The first ones were made from comatose patients who were organ donors and scheduled to be disconnected from life support. When they needed more, they started kidnapping people and murdering them. Some victims were chosen because they were a tissue match for one of Prometheus’ powerful patrons–or because they were a nuisance. The Nerve Rot Files tell us about Hematech’s other branch of research. Hematech is the only Prometheus front conducting biowarfare research, and if the PCs safely dispose of the Nerve Rot samples, they’ll be heroes. There’s plenty of scientific information on Nerve Rot that we’ve covered already. But the files will make two things very clear to the PCs. Nerve Rot doesn’t spread far on its own, since Kin-to-Kin and human-to-human transmission is extremely low. Hematech is creating the epidemic by kidnapping people, infecting them, and releasing them. Hematech doesn’t make any money from this, but it buys them that blank check to profit from illegal medical research. Nerve Rot can only be cultured in Kin OSVs. If the PCs free them, they’ll heal normally. The Capture Team Records are detailed files on all the victims in the holding cells and all the Kin OSVs. If the PCs read these, they’ll know to avoid the drugged-up Herd. Finally, there are Video Records of some of Hematech’s experiments stored on CDs. The first file shows a Werewolf strapped to an operating table. They’re forcing him to transform repeatedly by zapping him with a cattle prod. When he starts to break free, a robotic arm fires a silver dart into his heart. The second file shows a naked man strapped to a table, receiving an IV injection. Voiceovers identify the man as a destitute alcoholic provided by the HHS. They’re injecting him with Wyght blood. Because there’s still alcohol in his system, the Infection fails and the man dies in agonizing convulsions. The third file shows our old friend Bete Jammer. Remember her? She’s strapped to an operating table as her crystalline heart is surgically removed with a flint knife. The heart is encased in a mixture of plastic and ground flint while her body crumbles. That’s right, the president’s paperweight is the band’s EWI player. As far as I can tell, she’ll regenerate normally if her heart is freed from its flint casing. The fourth video shows a human and a Kin victim, both being infected with Nerve Rot. Since the Kin isn’t visible on camera, a crude CGI stick figure outlines their movements. Both victims quickly show advanced symptoms and the human dies coughing up blood. A voiceover indicates the experiment is a failure. They’re trying to develop a strain that will kill Kin quickly without affecting humans. The last video shows the entire process of Lucrezia being turned into an OSV. Thanks to the capture team, most of her head is already missing. The automated machinery severs her limbs, using wooden caps and garlic-infused sutures to stop the wounds from healing. The rest of her head is surgically removed as the remains of the brain are pushed into the chest cavity. If you really want to watch a video of a naked woman being butchered like an animal, have a blast. Going through all of this information could take an hour or two. There is some time pressure in this module, but the PCs probably have plenty of time to invade the complex, kill the guards, free the victims, and get all the information. Besides going through the files, the most time-consuming thing they can do is try to take intact OSVs with them. That’s the end of the module! I’ll close out with the Humanity rewards: If they get a load of what’s going on at Hematech and run away, they lose 10 Humanity. But come on, your PCs aren’t going to be cowards, are they? If they destroy the facility and euthanize the Kin, they’ll get a net +10 Humanity. This will hurt Prometheus without crippling their Hematech operation. If they just release the Kin OSVs from their “failsafes” and abandon them, they get +5 Humanity. This can serve as a diversion and will create some chaos at Hematech. If they just save as many Kin as possible and bug out, they get +15 Humanity. It’s humane, but neither Hematech nor Prometheus will suffer more than a minor setback. Taking the computer records and trashing the system is worth +7 Humanity. Passing along the information to Kin leaders will hurt Hematech. What if they accomplish more than one goal? It doesn’t seem that difficult for the PCs to do everything right in this scenario. There’s no listed reward for destroying the Nerve Rot samples, but I’d think that would net them the maximum +12 for “stopping a threat to the Kin community.” Getting some humans to safety would have to be worth something, too. Freeing Kin, freeing Herd, loving up the facility, stealing information, and destroying the Nerve Rot samples should be worth a fuckload of Humanity points. Even killing the guards and Prometheus squads can be worth a net Humanity gain, at the whim of the City Planner. The last update for In The Musical Vein will be a quick review of the scenario and some miscellaneous information from the back of the book. Sorry there weren't many pictures this time around! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og7u3sKuegM
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Mar 18, 2022 19:55
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Halloween Jack posted:In most Nightlife scenarios, the bad guys lose and the plot moves forward even if the PCs fail. But like their last encounter with the moonsuits, the PCs can’t save Lucrezia. If they try, they’ll get hit with a smoke grenade containing the same stuff that hit Lucrezia: LSD. The PCs go on the worst acid trip ever–I’ve only done it once so I have no basis for comparison–and wake up to find nothing but Lucrezia’s purse and gallons of blood on the sidewalk. I also suspect if the players know there's a lethal disease raging in the underworld, there's a good chance they'll be running around with gas masks and other HAZMAT gear (or the magical equivalent) to stop themselves getting infected, further allowing them to no-sell a hallucinogen grenade. Maybe you could just replace the acid grenade with a powerful electromagnetic emitter that temporarily scrambles the characters' nervous systems/ectoplasmic fields, allowing the bad guys to make a getaway. It would fit with the moonsuits' arsenal that they use later in the adventure. It could require an immense amount of electrical power and be charged by the van's engine/battery, to explain why everyone isn't walking around with one if it's such an effective weapon. I always enjoy the Nightlife posts and look forward to more of them. mellonbread fucked around with this message at 20:55 on Mar 18, 2022 |
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Mar 18, 2022 20:45
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Thanks! There's one more book to go. I agree that an EMP weapon is a better idea. They kinda realized that they wrote themselves into a bit of a corner with the "Say No To Drugs" rules in the corebook, so they had to explain why drugs are hard to weaponize. They tend to fall back on realism when they need to thwart clever solutions like that. And then there are laser rifles. The scenarios only occasionally mention how Edges like Intangibility and Mistform can mess with the whole setup. Like, Ghosts can definitely wall through walls, but floors? I guess so. Vampyres in Mistform can definitely get high, but not Ghosts, I don't think. If diseases can't affect them, I don't see why drugs would work.
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Mar 19, 2022 06:06
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I've loved the concept of LSD grenades ever since I first played Team Fortress Classic. Not hugely effective, but hugely hilarious.
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Mar 19, 2022 10:32
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Wow, they managed to make an enemy I want to vaporize as much as anything you'd run into in C-Tech - and without resorting to loads of sexual assault. Just shows what a loving pile of dirtbag hacks C-Tech writers were.
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Mar 19, 2022 18:22
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Nightlife is so silly in some ways that it's easy for me to forget that it proudly wears the splatterpunk label. I'm always thrown for a loop when it gets downright nasty. I have some friends who want me to run Kult. Meanwhile, whenever I think about a campaign I'd like to run, I'm reflexively a few degrees more family-friendly than what I look for in e.g. horror movies. I don't want to be anyone's gaming horror story. I feel especially bad for Lucrezia because she reminds me of Dinah Cancer and Linnea Quigley.
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Mar 19, 2022 18:45
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Do they actually want you to get that detailed into the gore?
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Mar 19, 2022 18:52
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PurpleXVI posted:I've loved the concept of LSD grenades ever since I first played Team Fortress Classic. Not hugely effective, but hugely hilarious. In The Ballad of Halo Jones, there's Zenades. They cause people affected to enter a state of oneness with the world.
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Mar 19, 2022 19:09
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Those could just be regular grenades from that description.
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Mar 19, 2022 19:11
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Infinity RPG: Ariadna Tangible Asset Overall, the game notes, Assets and Earnings are intended to be abstractions that reduce bookkeeping. However, it may occasionally be necessary to specify what an Asset represents, especially if its value is in information or contacts rather than strict monetary value. One Asset could be any number of things, whose value might be wildly variable, such that a specific thing might be very valuable in some scenarios and near worthless in others. Therefore, we are warned that assigning a specific nature to any given Asset before using it can reduce their utility and make it harder to deal with different scenarios, though it also comes with the chance to personalize things and provide more flavor than the abstract units. Stuff that might, on Ariadna, be worth 1 Asset includes a bottle of Caledonian 10-year single malt, a bottle of straight USAriadnan bourbon or a medium-quality bottle of red Merovingian wine. Or it might be a USAriadnan "battle bag" containing various soldiers' necessities, or a blank Commercial Agent transaction book. Or it could be a low-quality Stetson, a decent but not exceptional kilt, or an ushanka made from some common fur. The trick to using predefined Assets this way then becomes convincing your negotiation partner that the Asset is worth what you say it is. Merovingian trade philosophy is that everything has a singular value which can be established to form your core focus in negotiation, and so in a trade figuring out what the individual value of each component is will help you massage and control the price. Does that have mechanical weight? Not really, but it means that you know your Assets are each worth 1 Asset, and your job is now to convince other people of this - the same as the abstraction method, but from the other direction. When running mercantile games, the GM may want to provide a less abstract system for purchasing as well - tracking Assets and purchasing gear is relatively easy by the main rules, but offers little opportunity to outperform and profit over rivals, after all. That said, setting up a trade-focus scenario has to be done carefully so that the players enjoy it and can benefit from it, though not necessarily materially - contacts and information are just as valuable as actual cash. The game provides some advice on how to help Momentum push towards achieving the various goals of a commercial scenario and how Heat spends might be used in a primarily nonviolent way, but it's all pretty vague advice. The first solid stuff comes when discussing the various roles a PC party might have in a trade-focused scenario or campaign. The Face is the party member who will be taking point in negotiations. They're going to do a lot of the talking and making most of the direct rolls related to negotiations, though they may well be assisted by the other PCs. You might change up who the face is depending on the scenario - a Commercial Agent, for example, will do well in trying to handle your average Teseum deal but probably won't be the best pick for black market purchasing of illegal goods. The Coordinator is there to make sure that everyone stays on task and knows what they need to be doing. They often remain apart from the negotiations, possibly even not physically present, to instead offer advice to other teammates as things happen. They're likely responsible for any tech required, like comms gear or quantronic searches, and will often be the ones double-checking data and verifying information. The Muscle is security - and security is always good in negotiations. People respect security and power. The Muscle's main job is to ensure the safety of the rest of the team, but they can often have a secondary role in intimidating the other parties involved, assisting them through distraction or subtle threats. It's usually a bad idea for those threats to become overt, however. The Chauffeur handles transport. Most deals are not done in the open, and often getting to the negotiation site will require a vehicle...and it's always smart to have a fast exit if the deal goes bad. The Chauffeur handles the vehicle, and often works closely with the Coordinator, who may be operating out of the vehicle as well. Chauffeurs may have some difficulty giving direct assistance to negotiations, but they are vital to have around when poo poo hits the fan, and they can often pull double duty as Coordinator or Muscle if required. They may also be in charge of securing any physical goods being negotiated over, keeping them safe while the deal is made. While Psywar is the most obvious arena of conflict in a deal, it isn't the only one. Warfare and physical combat are unlikely to happen if the deal goes off correctly, but if a trade goes bad, it may be the end result. It likely means the trade's completely unviable, at least for the near future, though. New deals might be offered after, but for now, it's about gunfire and escape. That said, you could go from combat into trade negotiations if you, say, take a hostage or seize vital gear to the enemy, or if you're negotiating a surrender's terms, from either side. Infowar is, naturally, kind of limited if your game is stuck on Dawn, but that just makes for more complications you can work with - finding Maya access may become a key part of the scenario. Using the internet as a medium for doing a deal or performing negotiations through avatars also offers a ton of chances to add depth to a negotiation, as both sides may be simultaneously negotiating and trying to hack each other to find leverage to use for the deal. Hacks can also be background tools - you might manipulate current or historic pricing data, for example, or find blackmail info on your trade partner. Still, Psywar is likely to be the main focus, and many negotiators prefer to be able to look their opposite number in the eye and read their physical reactions. Full social maps are often going to be involved in trade negotiations, allowing the entire party to get involved in gathering information, building up allies, or even just intimidating people to give a few bonus dice to the main negotiator. The GM is advised to reward players that take advantage of what they know about NPCs - if they learn that the guy they're working with loving loves coffee, and they go out of their way to get a rare blend, they should get some bonus Momentum for it. Similarly, providing gratuities or gifts might increase your Psywar damage. Custom modifiers should be pretty common in trade scenarios - you should be rewarded for thinking like a merchant and trying to cozy up to your trade partner and take advantage of their specific foibles. Of course, they don't all have to be positive - forcing a homebody to meet you on your turf might increase the GM's Heat pool, but in return might cause them to take bonus Resolve damage due to being unsettled. These tradeoffs should provide for a range of possible approaches, and players are encouraged to get creative. Running a full mercantile campaign introduces some new challenges. First off, everyone needs to be on the same page as to what the goal of the game is, to keep the group focused. This could be 'establish a new trade route between our home base and another city' or 'end the Ariadnan Interstellar Commerce Act' or what have you...or you could go for the open-ended goal of 'establish a new interstellar corporation to get rich or die trying.' The key is everyone should be on board with it and know what it is. Likewise, it's important to think about what factions are allowed for PCs. Single-faction games limit character options, but provide more of a reason for everyone to be working together - or even single-region games on Ariadna, like making sure all PCs are of Caledonian descent, to explain why they're all part of the same team. This can help define what kind of merchants they are and what the campaign's focus is. On the other hand, a multifaction game allows for wider character options and choices, but will require a greater explanation for why all these people have come together as part of one business venture. (It's often fairly simple to explain why a single offworlder is involved in an Ariadnan game or similar, though - one person, often running from the past, can easily get involved in a group from a different faction and get hired by someone else on the team. Similarly, a mixed faction group might be united by circumstances and some specific brilliant idea for making money.) Running a mercantile campaign is more involved than a specific scenario, for one major reason: logistics. Goods need to be moved physically around, and transportation isn't free. Of course, operating your own transports, while potentially costly, opens the avenue of side hustles involving transporting other goods or even people, which may help defray those costs. While the core book provides transport costs, the GM is free to alter these based on local conditions, and it should be noted that such costs are cumulative - the cost to get your goods to a spaceport does not include the cost to get those goods into orbit. The game tends to divide them into "small" or "large" goods - small being anything up to a box that takes two people to lift, and large being several pallets of stuff. Space and weight are major considerations for any mercantile group. Transports will have a maximum capacity for both, which the game abstracts into cargo units. One unit of large cargo is about 2 cubic meters and weighs about 2000 kilograms. (Small cargo has negligible weight and size for these purposes, though it still does have them and so has a cost to move per unit - it just doesn't take up abstract cargo space.) So how much stuff can you fit in a single cargo unit? There's a table of examples - one cargo unit can fit 10 Reloads, one suit of powered combat armor, two combat jump packs, a hundred survival rations, or five combi rifles. We also get a table with example cargo capacity for various vehicles - a small van or skimmer has 5 units of space, a large truck has 30, a standard shipping container usually has 15, a freight train has 2400, a cargo ship has 12000 containers on average or about 180000 units of space, a small interplanetary ship has about 750, big one has 2000. a small intersystem ship has at least 2400, and a large intersystem ship (read: a Circular, though they often have a bunch of other ships attached to them) has at least 5000. Besides cargo, you're going to want to also track expenses - fuel, lost or damaged goods, food, gifts to people, and so on. Yes, this is a lot of bookkeeping. That's what you're signing up for with a mercantile game - trying to make your numbers go up. The numbers are one of your main tracks of success versus failure, after all. You are going to want to negotiate a cushion on your deals to cover unforeseen expenses and market fluctuations - prices aren't a stable thing, and sometimes, poo poo goes wrong. Bandits steal your stuff, trains get derailed, ships go down. GMs shouldn't throw catastrophes at the PCs constantly, but they are definitely a real risk. Likewise, there are chances at unexpected profit - salvaging downed ships, positive price fluctuations, seizing stolen goods, discovering Teseum veins. The GM probably wants to set up a random table of positive and negative events weighted to various degrees, especially for a more open-ended game. All of this works either for Ariadnan or interstellar games, too - it's just a matter of the scale and specific challenges of the environment you're working in. These rules may also be incorporated into the rules for pirate games from the Haqq book, if you prefer to more meticulously track the capture and selling of plunder rather than the more abstracted version presented there. The game even suggests they may be viable for helping with a mercenary game, perhaps focusing around a wing of TAGs, since they require so much upkeep and maintenance, and so may want to track cargo more. (There is a recent book that goes into more detail there.) Next time: New gear
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Mar 20, 2022 14:12
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By popular demand posted:Do they actually want you to get that detailed into the gore?
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Mar 21, 2022 15:03
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Halloween Jack posted:But it's all in the spirit of 80s-90s punk horror films, not some self-serious torture porn about man's inhumanity to man. All I can think about now is how Tetsuo: The Iron Man fills both niches.
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Mar 21, 2022 15:46
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