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sexpig by night
Sep 8, 2011

by Azathoth

Kurieg posted:

Well now that the new thread's up I'll ask the thread what I can review next(of the books I have to review).


Hengeyokai: Shapeshifters of the East. Part of the "Year of the Lotus", where White Wolf tried to introduce Asian counterparts of all of their game lines. It's mostly hilariously racist junk with the occasional good idea that would be salvaged later by a different writing team in a different book. It was reviewed before but got dropped partway through.


Apocalypse I referenced this one a lot in my TB:COG review because the Tribe Falls scenarios are pretty bad. but the rest of the book varies from merely Okay to pretty good, if occasionally hard to parse.


This may be more ambitious, but I've got a collection of the various Werewolf Breed Books, and I could review those as well... Yes, Including Nuwisha Pants?

Oh my goodness can I just vote 'both one after the other'? Both are so delightfully terrible for their own unique reasons. How ever can an rpg fan pick between racism and stupid mary-sues and metaplot hamfistedness?

I guess Shapeshifters of the East is a better bet because I think it's a bit harder to find now than the assorted end of game books.

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sexpig by night
Sep 8, 2011

by Azathoth
Hey guys I'm gonna start a metal band named Storm Piss, look for our first album to drop soon, it's called Piss Connoisseur and will feature our no doubt quickly iconic song Pretty Meat Pussy. It's only going to be sold at Hot Topic.

sexpig by night
Sep 8, 2011

by Azathoth
Fianna had a lot of dumb 'Oi faith and begorah aren't the magical emerald isles just pure magic and whimsy' poo poo in it. It's far from the peak of racism in White Wolf but I know a few Irish people who got annoyed at it.

Also I'm almost positive in some book a Fianna implied the REAL tragedy of the English occupation was the ~magic if Ireland~ got damaged or something.

sexpig by night
Sep 8, 2011

by Azathoth
Gonna make an aquatic hero called The Horse Shoe Crab for my next super-hero game.

sexpig by night
Sep 8, 2011

by Azathoth
Black Furies was written, I believe by James and Ellen Kiley, who most notably wrote the Gangrel vampire clan book, one of the early and extremely weak ones with very little use even for diehard Gangrel players, and Sins of the Blood, a book that was about the taboos of vampire culture and basically had little use beyond 'oooh be a super creepy vampire'.

Also despite apparently having a woman as a co-writer it constantly uses a view of feminism Reddit would be proud of, so yea, we're in for a treat.

sexpig by night
Sep 8, 2011

by Azathoth
Let's be honest, the process for making Werewolf clans has been 'what culture can we poorly appropriate to make white middle class nerds feel like they're getting an 'outsider perspective' on complex issues, like magic spirits and spider-monsters.'

I'm positive 1st ed Werewolf's writer room had a big dartboard with assorted cultures and ethnicity of the world.

They musta hit 'natives' like five times, but goddamn if they were going to defy the will of the darts.

sexpig by night
Sep 8, 2011

by Azathoth
Yea Dragons is seen as one of the best 'it's like (game) BUT WITH ASIA' because the people, you know, researched the cultures a decent amount and made a strong effort to show that the 'Asia' we think of is actually a combination of generations of vastly different people developing right in eachother's back yards, for better or for worse. It's one of those things where liberties are taken, but the core history and culture is respected, and that's what's important.

As usual, in WoD Mage gets the lion's share of awesome poo poo.

sexpig by night
Sep 8, 2011

by Azathoth

Qwo posted:

MAOCT looks amazing and I want it in my life right now.

Middle School me would've friggin loved it. Well, adult me would friggin love it.

My group has been gaming together, in various forms, for a long time, we've played games ranging from diceless roleplay experiences to just pure Double Dragon style beat em ups with no reason beyond 'gently caress those monsters'.

I feel confidant that if I ask any of them what's the one RPG we can bring to a deserted island for some unknown reason, MAOCT is going to be if not the answer, in the top contender spot for the answer.

It's one of those games that is just so drat charming while still managing to show why being a kid sucked too, it has such a healthy blend of whimsy and real emotion that it's really hard to not love it.

sexpig by night
Sep 8, 2011

by Azathoth
This thread and the old one have produced some great things, be they writing, art, or just reviews of obscure games that got people interested in the line, but I'm pretty sure BEAR SLUG is the current winner for 'best thing in the thread'.

sexpig by night
Sep 8, 2011

by Azathoth
Please tell me the Ring of Warmth grants protection against cold magic or something, and it's there because Region B is to frost monsters what Region A was to fiendish?

sexpig by night
Sep 8, 2011

by Azathoth
Yea in Eberron necromancy is less 'KILL THE ABOMINATION' and more 'dude get your gross skeleton hand out of my grill, it's nasty'. They're not exactly loved and respected by most, but until they actually do evil poo poo with necromancy they're not treated any different than other creepy mages.

Eberron is the best, I'll always be bummed in 4th ed it only got a couple books due to their silly 'THREE BOOKS PER SETTING NO MORE NO LESS" thing.

sexpig by night
Sep 8, 2011

by Azathoth
Yea, I could write up the Pentex book if none of the other WoD people here want to, but spoiler alert I unironically love it because as others have said, oWoD Werewolf works best when it's Captain Planet with an only slightly more hosed up value system.

sexpig by night
Sep 8, 2011

by Azathoth
Yea in some book there's some really good writing where a Glass Walker straight says 'look Wyld is about the perfection of natural life, not about being a magic chaos force, it doesn't matter if a city park is carefully planned as long as the nature it gives shelter to is honored'.

Glass Walkers and Bone Gnawers are some of the cooler parts of old Werewolf.

sexpig by night
Sep 8, 2011

by Azathoth
Wait, Bone Gnawers don't get love, even though they're constantly the dudes protecting the lower classes (protect the helpless...) and often based out of things like women's shelters and all, because their connections 'cost a lot' but Glass Walkers, Gordon Geko the werewolf, who also have connections that cost a lot, get the respect?

edit: Also unless I'm forgetting something isn't the 'cost' of Gnawers using their contacts for others stuff like 'go give that hobo a burger' or 'volunteer at a soup kitchen' kinda stuff?

sexpig by night
Sep 8, 2011

by Azathoth
Please say Ryuutama has been translated to english like Golden Sun Stories is being.

sexpig by night
Sep 8, 2011

by Azathoth
As a new fan to Exalted I'd love an overview.

Also, AEG had a ton of books that were basically {ONE WORD CONCEPT} and if I'm remembering rightly they all sucked terribly.

sexpig by night
Sep 8, 2011

by Azathoth
Unveiled Threats would be a great little break kinda thing. If you're going to avoid talking about the multi-page breaks of just 'this gun is cool, this gun is cool, this gun is slightly cooler' then I'm sure you can bang it out in a couple posts, but the stuff worth focusing on is totally insane.

sexpig by night
Sep 8, 2011

by Azathoth
I've been waiting for so long for The Violator. It's maybe the worst thing in the entire line, it has literally no reason to exist in the book, not even able to hide behind the 'well it's HORROR, duh!' like the fish-rape adventure because it's so over the top stupid there's no way any group who 'encounters' it doesn't just go 'what the gently caress is wrong with you, Jerry, we close the door and walk away never to speak of this again'.

sexpig by night
Sep 8, 2011

by Azathoth

Rulebook Heavily posted:

I posted this in the old thread, gonna post it again.


:golfclap:


:downsbravo:

Welcome to the epitome. This is what the authors did: double down and write a goddamn Nazi Rape Machine.

You know, in the spirit of Lovecraft.
[/quote]

Gah Pickman's Model wasn't scary because of the picture, it was scary because the entire point was that his subjects were real! It was supposed to make you think that maybe the 'insane artists' you occasionally see aren't insane at all. How can you right a Cthulhu RPG and not get even the base idea of why his stories were scary?

sexpig by night
Sep 8, 2011

by Azathoth

Young Freud posted:

I'd go ahead and replace the Mary Sue Not Drow with Deep Ones allied with humanity. The Deep Ones realized they were in the same pond as we are and made a deal with the governments of the Earth, exchanging tech for surrogate mothers for their offspring. And, of course, everyone's weirder out by the deal.

This is a really good idea since there is plenty of writing showing Deep Ones aren't near as stupid as the slaves to The Old Gods, and have a much more pragmatic view of the world. That'd be some great roleplay too because there'd always be that undertone of 'ok you're just our buddies until the world gets unfucked, then you're going to try to eat us or whatever you fish monsters do with humans who don't want to bone down'.

Plus you have Y'ha-nthlei as their major city right by Devil's Reef, so no need to, you know, throw the not-black-people in the Dominican Republic.

gently caress now I want to play a Deep One fighting The Old Gods.

sexpig by night
Sep 8, 2011

by Azathoth
Someone get on the Kickstarter train and get the rights to translate this, I'm positive it'll go as well as Golden Sun Stories did.

sexpig by night
Sep 8, 2011

by Azathoth
Yea I wish we could revive Lovecraft to have him just go off on CTech people for ruining his work in every way.

And then show him the black president just to really gently caress him up.

sexpig by night
Sep 8, 2011

by Azathoth
Carlita is an example of 'doing a cool NPC right' that White Wolf really needed to frame or something to not forget. She has a hosed up past, but one the PCs can easily relate to, she's a rising star but, you know, actually rising and not just given the keys to the kingdom sight unseen, and she has an important job but it's not 'end of the world if she fails' important.

sexpig by night
Sep 8, 2011

by Azathoth
I don't think I read England, but I did read Africa, and holy poo poo was that bad.

sexpig by night
Sep 8, 2011

by Azathoth
Hell Freezes Over!

I love Pinnacle, and I love Weird War 2 for Savage World, but goddamn they learn nothing from their past.

sexpig by night
Sep 8, 2011

by Azathoth
Deadlands Noir loving rules.

Edit: Actually no, Day After Ragnarok, I've seen it a lot but never actually got it.

sexpig by night
Sep 8, 2011

by Azathoth
Yea changeling is best described as 'magical domestic/child abuse survivors prove their abusers wrong'.

sexpig by night
Sep 8, 2011

by Azathoth
There's a reason in most interpretations War is either an ancient general in powerful looking armor with like, one imposing weapon, that or if they want to make him modern they just put him in a suit and tie like a PMC head or something.

That War looks so goofy I can't imagine him scaring anyone.

sexpig by night
Sep 8, 2011

by Azathoth

Father Wendigo posted:

This just unintentionally became my favorite write up for any monster in an RPG. It's just so bouncing-off-the-wall silly I can't NOT love it!

Plus, how could you not love someone with a smile like this?



He looks like he belongs in those old Bacon Bites commercials.

"Baaaacon!"

sexpig by night
Sep 8, 2011

by Azathoth
My group actually really digs the GoT game. I mean it helps that we're huge dorks that view noble parlays and backstabbing as something fun to focus on. The game kinda breaks super hard if everyone wants to be sword dude, though, since it's just a race to see who can write the right talents down first.

sexpig by night
Sep 8, 2011

by Azathoth
I'm now sad that the final encounter in the dungeon isn't Master Cylinder. You've made Tomb of Horrors even more of a disappointment somehow.

sexpig by night
Sep 8, 2011

by Azathoth

Ratoslov posted:

That's incredibly stupid, even for oWoD. How did it even get published?

There was literally no quality control or communication.

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sexpig by night
Sep 8, 2011

by Azathoth
My group tried to play Naruto D20 but it was so clunky we just got Ninja Crusade instead.

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