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Speaking of Iron Kingdoms and a hosed-up economy, here's a curious bit of trivia from the old D&D Iron Kingdoms era: Guns used to cost hundreds of gold pieces, from the 200 gp small pistol all the way to the Widowmakers' massive Vanar Liberator worth 725 gp. The ammunition costs varied by the caliber as well; One round for a small pistol could go for as little as 6 pieces of gold while the Vanar might cost a whopping 18. For reference, the infamous wealth by level table recommends 900 gold pieces for the stalwart second-level adventurer. Hope you didn't want to make a Widowmaker, because after paying for that Vanar you only have the dough for four shots. All this for a gun that did 2d8+2 damage every third round. Oh, and old IK gun rules required you to roll a skill check to reload your gun. If you flubbed it badly, the ammunition would be ruined and you'd have to try again. Siivola fucked around with this message at 16:10 on Jan 1, 2015 |
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Jan 1, 2015 16:07
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I don't really remember the IK 3.5 rules (wasn't playing RPGs back then) but I imagine how terrible must have been to be a warcaster and having to deal with 3.5's arcane spell failure chances.
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Jan 1, 2015 16:25
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Like most "fightery" wizards I'm pretty sure they could ignore it.
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Jan 1, 2015 17:50
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You'd think, but actually the Warcaster prestige class doesn't help with the spell failure at all. It just gives proficiency in Warcaster armor. It's a property of the armor that negates the penalty. A funny thing about the Warcaster class. They've got two abilities, Warcaster Focus and Journeyman Training. Warcaster Focus is just a very fiddly implementation of the tabletop mechanic, the interesting one is Journeyman Training: It's not a single ability, but instead a collection of abilities you unlock at the DM's discretion during the roughly six to twelve months of military training it takes to be a Warcaster. I sort of want to do a proper review of the Character Guide now, because turns out I've never actually read it. It's just full of these rules that do their darndest to really get into the nitty-gritty of the setting, but come with no actual guidelines how you're supposed to actually, y'know, use them in a game.
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Jan 1, 2015 18:42
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Siivola posted:A funny thing about the Warcaster class. They've got two abilities, Warcaster Focus and Journeyman Training. Warcaster Focus is just a very fiddly implementation of the tabletop mechanic, the interesting one is Journeyman Training: It's not a single ability, but instead a collection of abilities you unlock at the DM's discretion during the roughly six to twelve months of military training it takes to be a Warcaster. All of this pales in comparison to the fiddleyness of the Healing/raise Dead rules, and the magic item/mechanika rules. I understand that trying to reconcile the god/soul fluff in 3.5 was hard but the result they got is pretty insane. For starters: divine casters can only heal (10+wis)XCaster Level HP a day before they have to start rolling on the "pain of healing" table. And that's assuming that the target is within 1 step of the Healer's god's alignment. If that's not true then there's a 15% chance per step of difference that you'll not only use up part of your allotment but your god will just refuse to pay the karmic bill and force you to roll anyway. If they're diametrically opposed (LN/CN, for instance, something that will happen more often than you'd like) Well gently caress you. This is in addition to the fact that Menoth refuses to heal anyone who doesn't worship him, and requires a roll at +3 ANY TIME you heal someone who doesn't worship Menoth. Cyriss, Devourer Wurm, Dhunia, and Thamar hate Menoth similarly and will force a +3 roll. Nyssor and Scyrah refuse to heal anyone who isn't an elf without a +2 roll. Also if you have selected the death domain your god refuses to pay any karmic debt and you have to roll at at least a +1 bonus every single time. And what happens if you roll badly on these pain tables? Anywhere from the cleric losing all his spells for the rest of the day, the god turning the amount that would be healed into damage for the cleric and target instead. The cleric permanently losing 1d4 wisdom. The target instead being infested with an overwhelming disease that deals 2d4 con temp damage and is so virulent that it continues to be spread 1d6 days after overcoming it. Seriously there's a ton of con damage on this table which to me basically translates to "No, you don't heal him, he dies instead." And then you get to deal with the terrible raise dead rules. Specifically, don't. Not only is raise dead a 9th level spell in a world with no resurrection or true resurrection. Finding a cleric even willing to cast it costs a giant pile of gp. and a roll on the % table to see if they'll cast it. Then a % chance to see if the spell will work. and then unless you got the literal pope to cast the spell for you a 1d8 roll for both the caster and the target where most of the caster results are "you will never cast spells again for some reason or another" and the target results are mostly "you are now unplayable and wish for death" Honestly I wish they had just stuck to their guns and said "No you can't raise people from the dead" rather than "Well maybe if you're super super lucky in magical fairy land you can."
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Jan 1, 2015 20:40
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Evil Mastermind posted:Hey, are we doing a new thread for 2015? Are archives still broken? if so it's probably not a great idea.
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Jan 1, 2015 22:47
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Prison Warden posted:Are archives still broken? if so it's probably not a great idea. I'm pretty sure that got fixed a while back. I'm able to see the first thread through the link in the OP.
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Jan 1, 2015 22:51
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Existing archived threads still work, it's the archiving of new threads that was broken. I'm not sure if it's been fixed or not.
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Jan 1, 2015 22:54
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Kurieg posted:Existing archived threads still work, it's the archiving of new threads that was broken. I'm not sure if it's been fixed or not. Oh, I didn't know that was the case. Never mind, then.
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Jan 1, 2015 22:55
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Kurieg posted:Honestly I wish they had just stuck to their guns and said "No you can't raise people from the dead" rather than "Well maybe if you're super super lucky in magical fairy land you can." Can't a ton of the guys in the war game Rez folks as long as part if the nut still exists?
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Jan 1, 2015 23:17
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It's usually only a Cryx or Cyriss ability. Both of whom have rather firmly given a middle finger to Menoth and the cycle of souls anyway. Cryx is all undead units and other things animated by souls. Cyriss is mostly people who have ripped out their own souls and put them into containers to animate robots.
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Jan 1, 2015 23:33
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Mors Rattus posted:Can't a ton of the guys in the war game Rez folks as long as part if the nut still exists? The Reclaimer of Menoth can. But he's kind of the closest thing to a Menoth mouthpiece there's (more like actpiece I guess, he can't speak), closest to the Harbinger. But we're talking about the guy who went into hell, got something, and came back. Other casters that can do this are either necromancers (Cryx), working with constructs (Cyriss) or just really deep into the Wurm cult (Morvahnna)
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Jan 2, 2015 07:51
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The High Reclaimer is loving metal as poo poo. He gets pulled into the afterlife and loving punches/flexes his way out in the name of god. So cool.
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Jan 2, 2015 07:59
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Reclaimers in general are supposed to be walking one way conduits to urcaen for protectorate souls to ensure that no-one comes along and does tegleshy things to them. The high reclaimer personally traveled to the afterlife and asked God himself if it would be okay if, from time to time, he put the souls back so he can win the earthly war. God said okay but only sometimes. (Once per battle and only a maximum of seven)
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Jan 2, 2015 09:03
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Back on April 15, 2013, I started something big. Very big. Possibly too big. But now, it's time to revisit and revise, to remember and reword, and to finish what I started over a year and a friggin' half ago. But to do that, we need to go back to where it all began... The Storm Has A Name - Let's Read TORG  Part 1: tl;dr TORG. Man...TORG. Where the hell do I start with this? TORG was a huge game line in the early to mid 90's, back in the day where boxes sets were still a Thing and having a ton of supplements was not just expected but was the standard way of doing things. I've said many times in the past how it's the epitope of 90's design both mechanically and in terms of the metaplot. It's the poster child for setting bloat. It had great ideas handled in a really bad way. It’s the culmination of rules-as-physics (and metaphysics) Hell, a large part of the metaplot didn't even happen in-game, it happened in a novel trilogy that came out before the game itself did because, as you'll see, the game designers really wanted to be writers. It has Jeff Mills, the worst NPC ever. But I'm getting ahead of myself. The hardest thing about talking about TORG is that there's no easy "in". It's a huge, sprawling, heavily entangled mess. It's a mess I admittedly love, it's one of my favorite settings ever, but everything in both the crunch and fluff is so heavily intertwined it's ridiculous. TORG is the embodiment of "rules as physics", because the setting has a lot of metaphysics that are modelled in the actual game mechanics, and in a few cases the metaphysics informed the game mechanics themselves. Dammit, I'm getting ahead of myself again. Hell, I haven't even talked about what the game's about yet. Let's start with the basics. TORG was first released by West End Games in 1990, and is a multi-genre game about an invasion of Earth by multiple alternate realities in an attempt to drain the world of "possibility energy", allowing the man who organized the invasion in the first place to ascend to multiversal godhood. (Oh, and in case you're wondering, the game is called TORG because in early development it was called "That Other Roleplaying Game" and the acronym stuck.) The core of TORG was a boxed set that came with three books (the core rules, the Worldbook that barely described all the different realities, and a starter adventure), a cool looking d20, and a custom deck of 160 cards that were needed to play the game.  The Torg die. I still have mine. The TORG line ran for about 5 years, and ended up with just over 50 books on top of the core set. Over half of them were adventures, which were all tied into the overall metaplot and caused a lot of the problems that arose in the later years of the line. In addition, there was a monthly newsletter you could subscribe to that had updates of what was going on in the metaplot, adventure seeds, and so on. And that raises another problem: I can't talk too much about the mechanical side of things without giving you folks at least a base understanding of the setting and metaplot. So let's start there... FAIR WARNING: There is a lot of backstory here, and most of it won't make sense until we get to other parts of the system later. Just bear with me.  The cover of the boxed set and core rulebook. Pictured: Dr. Hachi Mara-Two and Father Christopher Bryce, two of the characters from the novels quote:Legends. They speak of The Place, in the Time of Nothing. The Void was alone in The Place, possessed by an unending hunger but unable to sate it. Then Eternity entered The Place, full of dreams and possibilities locked within its infinite instant with no method of release. Void and Eternity met, and The Maelstrom was formed. And thus the multiverse was created. A central idea of TORG is that the core building block of a reality (or "cosm"), the fundamental unit of energy, is the Possibility. Possibilities are what allow worlds to grow and change, what allow people to find their own destinies and shape the world around them. But every world could also potentially have a Darkness Device: an ancient artifact that could steal possibilities from the world and give them directly to its owner, who would become the High Lord of that world. The High Lord could then take that energy and use it to travel to other realities, raiding other worlds for their possibility energy. One of these High Lords was a figure known only as "The Gaunt Man". He was the High Lord of the world of Orrorsh; an alternate Earth where the Victorian empire never ended, and controlled a world beset by monsters and horrors out of nightmares. The Gaunt Man's overall goal was to become the Torg, and in pursuing this goal he spent centuries travelling through the multiverse, finding other worlds and stripping them of possibilities. Once he had enough possibility energy, we would only need a large amount of physical energy (of the "major geological catastrophe" variety) to complete his transformation into the Torg and attain control of the multiverse. The physical energy would be easy; a large enough act of destruction would take care of that. The hard part was finding enough possibility energy. He could drain worlds as he found them, but that was time consuming even for an immortal like himself. Then, in his travels, he discovered Earth. Earth was unique in The Gaunt Man's travels because it had more possibility energy than any world he'd ever encountered. This one world alone could finally provide him with the needed energy to become the Torg, but this power was also an incredible disadvantage to him. Through the use of a Darkness Device it was possible to create "maelstrom bridges" between two realities, allowing High Lords to send invading armies from one reality to another. However, it's a multiversal law that two realities cannot exist in the same place at the same time. When one reality invades another, the invader "pours in" like oil poured into water. Then there is a contest of realities, in which possibility energy surges from the invading cosm, then from the defending cosm, then back to the invading cosm, until one reality is triumphant; either the defending reality pushes the invader back to its own dimension, or the attacking reality overwrites the defending one. High Lords can use their Darkness Devices to sustain and absorb the surge from the defending cosm, preventing their reality from being pushed back. But because Earth had so much possibility energy, the defensive surge from Earth would be too large to be handled by Orrorsh alone. The invasion would be repelled and the bridge destroyed almost as soon as the invasion started. Unwilling to let such a little thing as certain defeat stop him when he was so close to his goal, The Gaunt Man researched and experimented for years to come up with a plan: invade Earth with multiple realities at once. In his travels, he had come across other "Possibility Raiders", other High Lords who used their own Darkness Devices to travel to and conquer other worlds. The problem was determining how many allies he wanted to bring to the invasion. He needed help, true, but he also wanted to ensure he was sharing his power with as few "allies" as possible, as well as making sure they were people he could easily manipulate. At the same time, he needed to have enough realities invade that Earth's reality couldn't effectively push back against all of them at once. He determined that an invasion force of seven realities would be optimum, and set out to gather his invasion force:
 Clockwise from the left: 3327 (a.k.a Ryuchi Kanawa), Uthorion, Baruk Kaah, Cyberpope Jean Malraux I, The Gaunt Man, and Dr. Mobius The invasion took years to plan, but one of the advantages of being bonded to a Darkness Device is effective immortality. The High Lords sent advance agents ahead through smaller bridges called "dimthreads" (that only exist for moments and would not cause major disturbances in Earth's reality). These agents were able to keep their home realities wrapped around themselves, and subtly prepared Earth for their masters' invasion. The Gaunt Man led the attack, dropping a maelstrom bridge into Indonesia and bringing with him an army of monsters, horrors, and unwitting British armed forces. As Orrorshian reality slowly overwrote Earth's reality in Indonesia, technology started to break down as the rules of a "Victorian" reality took hold. Dangerous storms surrounded the islands as Earth's reality fought back against the invading cosm. To the outside world, all that anyone knew was that Indonesia was being buffeted by what looked like a giant hurricane and communication with the were cut off. Before the world governments could investigate, however, Baruk Kaah attacked. Kaah had chosen North America for his invasion; where the Gaunt Man employed subtlety he used brute force. Three bridges dropped from the Living Land: one in New York, one in Sacramento, and one in Fort Providence in Canada. Kaah sent thousands of edinos down the bridges, as well as other, more alien races he'd conquered. As the Living Land's primitive reality overwrote Earth's, thousands upon thousands of Earth's inhabitants were "transformed" to the new cosm, forgetting their old lives and becoming followers of Baruk's Kaah's fanatic religion: the worship of the Goddess Lanala. The Living Land now covered the east and west coasts of the United States and a large part of Canada. Canadian and US forces were caught completely unprepared, and adding to the chaos the American president and vice-president were in New York when the invasion happened, and were at ground zero for the bridge's landing. There was no choice but to declare them dead. The few survivors found it almost impossible to fight back, because of another important fact: each reality has different "rules" as to what is and isn't possible. In the reality of the Living Land, what we think of as "modern technology" simply does not work. Gunpowder will not fire, engines will not run, matches won't even light when struck. Not only that, but some concepts are not possible either. The Living Land is a primitive world where there is no farming, no industry, and very little social structure beyond the tribe. The Earth military in the Living Land found themselves unable to remember concepts like "the chain of command", or even "minutes". They were defeated the instant they tried to fight back. Aysle was the next to invade, dropping several bridges onto England and Scotland, covering northern Europe almost entirely with the new reality. The United Kingdom was suddenly overrun by vikings, giants, dragons, and wizards as technology died and was replaced with magic. The False Papacy invaded France next, changing the country into a despotic theocracy and dragging the technology and social levels of central Europe down to their level: one where the power of the Church was absolute and technology was forbidden. Pope Malraux did not come to Earth personally to oversee the invasion, a decision that would ultimately change his reality at its most fundamental levels. Tharkold was to invade northern Russia next, but it was here that the Possibility Raiders met their first setback. In order to safely invade another reality, devices called stelae needed to be set up in the reality that was to be invaded. Stelae are set up in threes, forming a triangle. When a bridge is dropped inside this triangle, the stelae would become empowered and create a barrier that served two purposes. First, it created a wall that prevented the invading reality from pushing back directly against the invading realm, allowing the High Lord to establish footholds. Second, the area inside the triangle described by the stelae would transform to the invading reality, taking on that reality's rules. Inhabitants would have their possibility energy striped, and would transform to the new reality. They would forget their old lives, their old world, and would become effective inhabitants of the new cosm. This is why the more "primitive" realities invaded first. As these realities overwrote Earth's, the lower technological levels would cause Earth's technology to stop working. A military assault rifle would not work at all in Asyle, not because it hadn't been invented in that reality yet, but because that reality didn't support that level of technology at all. In extreme cases, the assault rifle might actually physically transform into something appropriate, like a crossbow. Moments before the Tharkold bridge dropped, a Russian task force attached to the government’s psychic research project had discovered the location of one of Tharkold's stelae, thanks to the precognitive Katrina Tovarish. She led Captain Nicolai Ondarev to the location of the stelae just as the bridge began to drop. Destroying the stelae broke the circuit and allowed Earth's reality to fight back. Not only was the bridge destroyed and the invading force repelled, the resulting surge of Earth's energy travelled back up the connection to Tharkhold itself, wreaking havoc on that reality for years afterward. The sudden surge of energy from Earth pushed hard against the cosms that had already invaded, and it seemed as if Earth could destroy the invaders after all. The High Lords hurried to readjust and bolster their holdings against the sudden reversal of fortunes. Four realities were not enough to stand against Earth's possibilities. Then the Nile Empire invaded. Dr. Mobius landed in Egypt, and the Nile Empire quickly spread over northern Africa, transforming it into a realm of two-fisted heroes, shadowy villains, ancient magic, and lost treasures. Dr. Mobius expanded recklessly into the deserts and quickly turned his attentions to conquering Israel and the Sudan. Seeing that the High Lords were now capable of winning, 3327 finally dropped his maelstrom bridge in Japan. Unlike the other High Lords, however, 3327 didn't go in for flashy effects. He dropped his bridge inside a skyscraper his corporation had purchased as part of the attack preparations. All the people of Earth knew was that the Kawana Corporation and its CEO Ryuchi Kanawa (3327 himself) were a new major financial power. The invasion of Japan was so subtle, the Nippon Tech reality so similar to Earth's, that it would be about three years before anyone even realized that Japan had been invaded. Now six realities invaded Earth, leaving everything in a rough sort of equilibrium. The Gaunt Man was ready to become Torg when the second major setback occurred. Every living being in a cosm contains possibility energy. Most are only capable of having one possibility, one major change in their lives. These "ords" are the people who become transformed when they enter new realities, and are unable to fight back. Some, however, are capable of more. When faced with a true moment of crisis, some people are able to draw more possibilities from their world. They can keep their reality around them in a sort of "bubble", allowing them to accomplish things not possible by the local reality. They can fight the invaders on their own terms. The High Lords call them "Stormers", based on the storms that are created when two realities clash. The heroes prefer to call themselves Storm Knights. The large amount of possibility energy on Earth created an inordinate amount of Storm Knights. In addition, Storm Knights from the invading realities joined the fight, trying to stop the High Lords from destroying Earth as they had so many worlds before. One group of Knights managed to face two of the High Lords directly. As Pope Malraux descended his maelstrom bridge into France, ready to present himself as their savior, he was confronted between realities by a survivor of the cyberpunk reality Kandara. As she fought him, she managed to use her technology to show Malraux her high-tech reality; one of common cybernetics and where computer networks were integrated into everyday life. Malraux, ever the fanatic, saw this as a vision from God Himself, and the vision was so powerful it actually altered his personal reality. When he arrived in France, he used his Darkness Device to alter his home cosm's technology levels, bringing it from the printing press to cybernetics in a matter of weeks. He went on to declare that cybernetics were the body of Christ, and that the Internet was the realm of God. He was physically transformed as well; half of his body was replaced with “divine” cybernetics. He was now the Cyberpope, and his realm mixed futuristic technology with medieval mindsets. And thus was formed the Cyberpapacy. These Knights then fought Uthorion, driving him from Lady Ardinay's body and leaving Aysle without a High Lord. Although Lady Ardinay is on the side of good and has allied herself with Earth, she is still bound to the Darkness Device, and it still whispers to her, tempting her with the power to "fix" everything. It wasn't long before this group of Storm Knights confronted the Gaunt Man himself. The Gaunt Man is an ancient foe, unable to be killed by normal means. Instead, the Knights used an artifact called The Heart of Coyote to trap him in a pocket dimension, where he is caught in an endless cycle of creation and destruction. His body is eternally and painfully being ripped to shreds, only to be reformed so he can be destroyed again. The invasion force has lost its head, and now the High Lords see opportunities for themselves to take the Gaunt Man's place. Which brings us to the Near Now. With the Gaunt Man gone, the remaining High Lords scramble for territory and power in an attempt to become the Torg. The American government is in disarray, with a temporary government being set up in Dallas. America and Europe have lost their abilities to be major financial and technological world powers, leaving Japan and Russia to pick up the slack, nobody knowing that the now-largest financial power is run by a Possibility Raider. Dr. Mobius continues to expand, threatening Iran and Saudi Arabia with bizarre creations of weird science. Berlin finds itself a major world player as the just-reunited Germany is the only thing standing between Russia and the Cyberpapacy. And the Kawana Corporation sells to all sides, motivated solely by profit, nobody on Earth realizing that they're actually just another invading force. This is the world of Core Earth. And it is in need of heroes. --- Okay. You see that huge chunk of text I just wrote? That's just a hair over 3,000 words. And that's the setup for the setting, and the minimum you need to know about what's going on so the rest of what I'm going to tell you makes sense. And that's all stuff that happened in the novel trilogy before the "game" actually starts. Technically speaking the box set takes place about three months after the end of the trilogy, where everything I just told you about happens. And I haven't even touched on how possibility energy works. Or world laws. Or axioms. Or disconnecting and reconnecting. Or the Everlaws. Or eternity shards. Or Tolwyn of House Tankred. Or the Signal Fire. Or the logarithmic scale. Or the newsletter. Or Malcolm Kain. Or spell design. Or glass ninjas. Yeah. 90's design. Strap in, kids. NEXT TIME: We actually crack open the rulebook!
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Jan 2, 2015 16:18
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And I still love TORG. It is a horribly/wonderfully crunchy game with some extremely clever mechanics (Drama Deck, Possibilities) and a batshit awful magic/weird science system.
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Jan 2, 2015 16:43
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Oh yeah, I love how the Drama Deck works for the most part by letting people control the narrative a bit and keeping people on their toes in combat, and Possibilities are pretty much the forerunners of concepts like Fate points, but the rules that glue everything together are...well... And yes,
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Jan 2, 2015 16:50
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Some of my first games were for WEG's Masterbook system, which I believe was a stripped-down version of Torg's system made into a universal one. Like a lot of 90s systems, it's not awful but is too fiddly and crunchy for its subject matter--Tales from the Crypt and Tank Girl really don't demand a list of dozens of skills. I love the idea of playing an Egyptian 20s pulp hero leveling his guns at Victorian vampires, but the idea of using Masterbook for it and stacking on rules for how powers work in conflicting realities is just  . I'd still rather do that than try to play the Palladium system straight, though.
Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 16:56 on Jan 2, 2015 |
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Jan 2, 2015 16:53
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I'm going through a few of the Torg newsletters; I'd forgotten there's one near the end of the line where they flat-out tell the GM that they're being given an uber-powerful NPC with the express purpose of railroading PCs to where you want them to go. And despite the fact that she's basically cosmically powered and unbeatable, they still gave her a stat block. 90's design!
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Jan 2, 2015 16:54
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I was quite fond of the first stab at TORG, so I'm looking forward to this. It was a game I (somehow?) never heard of outside the F&F context, so I"m really eager to see more of the strange crunch and cool cosms.
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Jan 2, 2015 17:39
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Evil Mastermind posted:I'm going through a few of the Torg newsletters; I'd forgotten there's one near the end of the line where they flat-out tell the GM that they're being given an uber-powerful NPC with the express purpose of railroading PCs to where you want them to go. And despite the fact that she's basically cosmically powered and unbeatable, they still gave her a stat block. Huh, I thought it was Deadlands that did that, not Torg. Oh, the Metaplot, bane of RPG design.
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Jan 2, 2015 18:09
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A lot of games did it, it's notable the designers of Planescape knew what happened when you stat something: Players will wanna kill it. They left the Lady Statless for this very reason - also to help keep her origins a mystery.
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Jan 2, 2015 18:20
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Eldad Assarach posted:And that's After The Bomb. Palladium's first ever post-apocalyptic game, and now a sneaky way for them to keep the BIO-E system. Rough round the edges, but that's Palladium for you. I'd love to cover more of the TMNT stuff given infinite time. The last review didn't even get into the background / adventure material, which is too bad, because it's the most F&Fey part of the book. Few other games include parodies of Animal Farm, Care Bears, and ninja sparrows named after Russian premiers.
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Jan 2, 2015 18:29
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Robindaybird posted:A lot of games did it, it's notable the designers of Planescape knew what happened when you stat something: Players will wanna kill it. They left the Lady Statless for this very reason - also to help keep her origins a mystery. Weirdly, I find if something is statless my players' desire to discover its stats and kill it increases monumentally, because it marks something the setting doesn't think you're 'supposed' to murder.
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Jan 2, 2015 18:49
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Robindaybird posted:A lot of games did it, it's notable the designers of Planescape knew what happened when you stat something: Players will wanna kill it. They left the Lady Statless for this very reason - also to help keep her origins a mystery.
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Jan 2, 2015 18:52
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Robindaybird posted:A lot of games did it, it's notable the designers of Planescape knew what happened when you stat something: Players will wanna kill it. They left the Lady Statless for this very reason - also to help keep her origins a mystery. Interestingly, Stone (from Deadlands) wasn't presented as a railroading NPC. He's more of an overhanging threat who works directly for the Reckoners. The Torg NPC, on the other hand, this is the NPC's description: quote:What does this mean to your campaign? Essentially, REDACTED can be used to a) keep your player characters from having too easy a time of it in adventures and b) keep them from wandering off the map. After REDACTED has appeared out of nowhere a few times and kicked the crap out of them, they’ll learn to head in the other direction. For further fun, this NPC, who is a major metaplot-point, wasn't introduced or handled in a published adventure. Her introduction (and how it tied into the metaplot) was done as the culmination of an adventure that appeared solely in the newsletter. This was a huge problem with Torg later down the line: they assumed everyone was buying and reading everything. And this was in the mid-90's, where you couldn't just go to an internet forum or wiki to see what you missed. So many important events happen in the newsletter or in a novel, and when these events influence or intersect books in the main line, they never told you where said event happened, or never gave you a brief summary in case you missed it. They just brought up the event or NPC or whatever like it was common knowledge. Evil Mastermind fucked around with this message at 20:02 on Jan 2, 2015 |
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Jan 2, 2015 19:56
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Evil Mastermind posted:This was a huge problem with Torg later down the line: they assumed everyone was buying and reading everything. And this was in the mid-90's, where you couldn't just go to an internet forum or wiki to see what you missed. So many important events happen in the newsletter or in a novel, and when these events influence or intersect books in the main line, they never told you where said event happened, or never gave you a brief summary in case you missed it. They just brought up the event or NPC or whatever like it was common knowledge. It's really hard to overstate just how much the RPG industry treated their products as just ancillary goods to get you to buy and read the novels after the success of Dragonlance in the mid-1980s.
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Jan 2, 2015 20:14
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It's a valid marketing strategy to give your product line a "don't want to miss a thing" vibe. But eventually it becomes inaccessible and people will give up on you in frustration...even dedicated fans, who will feel like you're thumbing your nose at people who don't have the money and time for every single product.
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Jan 2, 2015 20:23
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I've always thought (prayed) that statblock for the Lady was a bit of fan work, because I ran into it outside of any context and it seemed both stupidly fiddly and amazingly misguided. As for TORG, I ran into it not long after TSR used their dire Prism Pentad novels to forcibly reboot the setting and leave groups with a cool, powerful class that only one super-special NPC would ever possess because of editorial fiat. Using tie-in novels as back story, instead of a metaplotty eraser for your own party's triumphs, and from there offering a reason why the Ultimate Big Bad hasn't already won by the time the PCs have graduated from callow university professors and professional athletes to globe-trotting heroes was like a grope from God by comparison. Rules and cool fluff for things like pushing back the forces of evil and quantum rapacity were a thick layer of icing. The only other TORG supplement I got my hands on was Creatures of Tharkold, so I missed the proliferation of metaplot junk and avoided my heart being broken.
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Jan 2, 2015 20:23
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Isn't the way you fight the Lady (if you decide to do that because you're a madman) via changing Sigil? Alter the beliefs and general goals and culture of the place and perhaps risk undoing the Cage and you'll really piss her off/maybe defeat her, rather than stabbing her in the face?
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Jan 2, 2015 20:37
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Speaking of which, sadly the second two novels of the original trilogy seem to have been lost to the mists of time. I've only been able to find the first novel in PDF format, and it's...really not good.quote:The Gaunt Man ushered Thratchen in, shutting the door behind them. “Before we begin to search, Thratchen, you must do one thing for me.” e: I actually owned this when it first came out. It's how I got into the game line.
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Jan 2, 2015 20:43
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I'll try to find my copies for some dramatic readings.
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Jan 2, 2015 21:00
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I got into Shadowrun through the novels, but I make no apologies for appreciating Nigel D. Findley (RIP).
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Jan 2, 2015 21:03
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The only good thing to come out of the Prism Pentad series was it opening the way for Defilers and Preservers to add new power sources for wizards. They offered a sort of sidestep from the black and white defilers and preservers dichotomy, but almost always came with a cost to the wizard in quest.
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Jan 2, 2015 21:17
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Halloween Jack posted:I got into Shadowrun through the novels, but I make no apologies for appreciating Nigel D. Findley (RIP). Pouring a 40 for 2XS 
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Jan 2, 2015 21:26
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Weirdly, the Bloodshadows tie-in novels weren't all that bad, despite coming from the same company, but possibly it's easier for game fiction writers to write to the level of 'potboiler detective yarn with magic in'
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Jan 2, 2015 21:51
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Not quite the same thing, but the Rifts novel Palladium released was missing entire chapters. You had to sort of guess at what was going on with this long, rambling fiasco, which to be fair is pretty Rifts in and of itself.
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Jan 2, 2015 22:04
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Bieeardo posted:I've always thought (prayed) that statblock for the Lady was a bit of fan work, because I ran into it outside of any context and it seemed both stupidly fiddly and amazingly misguided.
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Jan 2, 2015 22:20
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FMguru posted:It's really hard to overstate just how much the RPG industry treated their products as just ancillary goods to get you to buy and read the novels after the success of Dragonlance in the mid-1980s. So White Wolf didn't invent that? I want to hear more.
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Jan 2, 2015 22:26
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FMguru posted:Sigil is the most valuable piece of real estate in the entire multiverse. It's the High Ground from which you can invade any and all other planes - inner, outer, elemental, prime material, whatever. Entire pantheons of gods have spent eternities wracking their brains to try and figure out how to overthrow the Lady and seize control of it, to no effect. None of them have ever come close to succeeding (and I'll bet that not a few of the Dead gods floating in the astral plane got that way because they tried to gently caress with Sigil). She's as far above Thor and Orcus and Asmodeus and Ra as those gods are above level 1 PCs. She's the last person in the entirety of D&D that should have a stat block. Well, aside from Ao. And his boss. 
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Jan 2, 2015 22:42
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