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There goes my dream of roleplaying an owl fursona. This game is so specist  (I might go for a hedgehog, but if Slenderowl exists, there is a possiblity that we will run into Sonic.exe too) It's a good thing the writer kept his priorities straight so we know too little about Venus, robots and technology, but do know enough about furry loving and the absurd speed at which their population grows. And can you even nuke a whole planet? Even if all this fantastic technology, that's a lot of mass to explode. Unless their 3D printers can print death stars, I guess. SpiritOfLenin posted:The gently caress is that blue thing in the last picture? A ginger dinosaur lady? LatwPIAT posted:To be fair, any piece of writing involving something political or historical will necessarily present a political bias in one way or another. If I were to write a moderate-position RPG where the anarchist communes all failed, and the libertarian tax-havens all sank and turned into Somalia, I'd be taking the political position that anarchism and libertarianism are bogus. Which, if you're a libertarian or anarchist, would be a position in extreme opposition. On the more moderate, when we talk of ideological garbage with a political bent, I could crack open the GURPS Basic Set and find the rule that says that torture actually works, and works better if you're brutal about it - and, if someone will lend me their copy, I can in turn crack open Delta Green: Targets of Opportunity and point to the rule that says that torture tends to produce false confessions. Eclipse Phase' superhappyfuntime collectivist anarchism, and HSD's utopian libertarianism just fall outside the norm. Instead of saying they have a "conservative bent" or a "liberal approach", we say they're filled with "ideological garbage", ignoring that the moderate position, too, is just ideological. Maybe it's just the combination of having a noticable bias that being to blue-eyed about it, solving the world's problems with deceptively simple solutions. Doresh fucked around with this message at 16:56 on Jan 11, 2015 |
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Jan 11, 2015 16:53
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It's good to see that even in the posthuman an-cap future 
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Jan 11, 2015 16:55
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Doresh posted:And can you even nuke a whole planet? Even if all this fantastic technology, that's a lot of mass to explode. Unless their 3D printers can print death stars, I guess. Though knowing this game the crystals would just convert the sun which would basically be the worst possible thing that could happen to all life in the solar system.
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Jan 11, 2015 16:57
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Kurieg posted:Also I choked on my pop when I saw Slenderdog, it's so amazingly blatant it's stupid. And I missed showing you all the dumbest poo poo I could possibly find within the realm of RPG's.
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Jan 11, 2015 17:08
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quote:The solution was a deceptively simple program developed by a 17 year old ferret on a bet Of course a 17-year-old came up with the ultimate solution to the world's economic problems. I'm honestly amazed they didn't start using bitcoins.
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Jan 11, 2015 17:08
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Evil Mastermind posted:Of course a 17-year-old came up with the ultimate solution to the world's economic problems. I'm honestly amazed they didn't start using bitcoins. I was expecting that to be the big reveal as well. I'm almost disappointed for them not going all the way.
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Jan 11, 2015 17:10
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Doresh posted:A ham-fisted Idiot Savant mutant could also be fun. Does that one even have a flaw if you never plan to have more than 6 INT in the first place? Doresh posted:Well, at least they keep their 9/11 influence as a historical footnote. Could be worse, like exploding mutants. SpiritOfLenin posted:The gently caress is that blue thing in the last picture?
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Jan 11, 2015 17:10
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Fossilized Rappy posted:I'm going to guess she's some manner of reptile, because the random yellow splotches seem to be an attempt to evoke scales. Between the lizard-ish scales and her eyes, my guess is that she's supposed to be part chameleon, even though she's lacking everything else that might make her look chameleon-y, like their creepyweird little splithands, their horns or the REALLY weird way their eyes actually look. But yes, she's standing around looking clueless, unprotected, while people right next to her are wearing full-body protective suits and the place apparently merits armed guards(in the background). Also the artist got lazy with the X-Ray which apparently just shows a spine and nothing else. I also can't tell if that's tentacles bursting out of the dead furry or the artist not knowing how organs and intestines actually look. 50-50 odds of either.
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Jan 11, 2015 17:15
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PurpleXVI posted:Also, since it's an Eclipse Phase ripoff, it needs some obligatory horror elements. Now, where Eclipse Phase relied on the potential annihilation of humanity at the hands(or pseudopods, possibly) of a rampant, techno-organic virus with powers that broke the laws of physics itself, HSD one-ups them by going for something way more scary. Something way more sinister. Something way more... fowl. Sorry, I meant foul. No, wait, I meant fowl because their SCARY THING is owls. loving owls. Apparently when trying to make owldudes, they hosed something up and the only one that grew to maturity loving murdered everyone in sight, scrawled something sinister on the wall and then snuck away. And of course that meant everyone gave up on making owl guys ever again. It's, like, they're the Lost from Eclipse Phase. Only owls. And also, instead of being caused by a megacorp trying to cut profits on the child care on an understaffed project run by an arrogant scientist who doesn't understand parenting using untested technology that was also TITAN-infected two years before the setting started, it happened 300 years ago for ~reasons~ and nobody has tried to do it again-but-better. PurpleXVI posted:We got more horrors in store for you, though, now I give you... FIAT CURRENCY! Reading that gives me a headache, and the only things I can really think are: a) If the megacorps don't like the inflation, why do they keep printing money? That's what the fear about fiat currencies is all about; being backed by nothing, there's nothing stopping you from printing more. (Hell, not that anything stops you from printing money in a currency backed by gold, except your honest word. You just run into problems the moment people start making more withdrawals than you can back up. Likewise, the only thing stopping fiat currencies from being printed into runaway inflation is the honest word of the people doing the printing.) b) All those investments based on projected growth rates sound like a recipe for a stock market crash. PurpleXVI posted:The book clearly has informed us that a few thousand individuals is not enough to continue a species, because a few thousand humans survived the war and they died out(unless the humans just plain chose not to breed and elected to die out as penance for their sins), hence the first generation, second generation, and refugee generations of Vectors have all died out or almost so(remember, only the third generation can actually interbreed despite being different types of animals). This means we've got 10000(even if we assume the third generation can gently caress everyone and knock them up, even outside their own generation, that's, what, twenty-thousand, max? Fifty-thousand if we're super generous with refugees?) individuals who have somehow managed to gently caress their way up to three billion individuals in 400 years. And a society which, on a relatively virgin planet, has managed to boom its loving infrastructure and agriculture absurdly enough to sustain them all. Captains of industry, totally believable science. The growth rate itself is not outside human norms; to go to 3 billion from a starting population of 20,000-50,000 corresponds to a yearly growth rate of ca. 2.7-3%, which is not unprecedented in human populations. Taking mean age of childbearing among Whether this is feasible when you also have to terraform the planet and build all the industry from the ground up is another question,
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Jan 11, 2015 17:16
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I like how the Libertarian fur-topia includes what is basically a welfare system. Capitalism works great when everyone has free money that automatically covers the cost of living! Also it seems like they're taking an odd line in the sand not allowing owl PCs. Way to alienate your customer base!
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Jan 11, 2015 17:27
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Fossilized Rappy posted:Nope! It's great for a dumb brute build, no real downsides. I was thinking that maybe it's supposed to be a reptile, without having any actually reptilian features, but ignored the possibility because, you know, she doesn't look reptilian in any way.
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Jan 11, 2015 17:28
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LatwPIAT posted:The growth rate itself is not outside human norms; to go to 3 billion from a starting population of 20,000-50,000 corresponds to a yearly growth rate of ca. 2.7-3%, which is not unprecedented in human populations. Taking mean age of childbearing among Yeah, exactly, I went over the numbers with someone else after I made the post to see whether my statement was totally absurd. It's feasible, but not so much in line with what we'd generally consider a "happy" society of well-educated, economically well-off individuals with low child mortality and generally, well, "Western" behavior. It's also not accounting for the fact that literally every breeding member of the population is a lab experiment that was cobbled together pretty much on the fly, and who the gently caress knows how many of their kids, despite their supposedly being genetically compatible, are going to come out with five legs and zero heads. Or just. Gaaaaaaaaaaaah. If you start remembering all the things that might actually complicate their reaching those three billions, then Jesus Christ we're talking clowncar vaginas from day one to offset all the stillborn, the colonists that abscond to Venus and the Moon(until it gets eaten up by slendermen), all the people who might simply elect not to have children(I mean, again, it's trying to seem like a very happy "Western" state, and plenty of people in the West are choosing to have only one, or no, kids), all the potential injuries and casualties during high-intensity terraforming and infrastructure construction, unless you handwave it all with
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Jan 11, 2015 17:28
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Hi guys I had a new idea for a drawing, in this one I am in the hospital being treated for space plague, and the crystal treatment is causing my hands to grow extra-long and claw-y, and I don't like it because it hurts and I am scared to have extra long clawlike hands. My doctor is anthro Twilight Sparkle and she is recommending I receive additional crystal infusions. Anyway I hope you liked my drawing.
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Jan 11, 2015 17:38
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Kurieg posted:Though knowing this game the crystals would just convert the sun which would basically be the worst possible thing that could happen to all life in the solar system. All life that is not a fusion-powered crystal Slenderman-ripoff. I call this an improvement over a furry society based on monopoly money. SpiritOfLenin posted:I was thinking that maybe it's supposed to be a reptile, without having any actually reptilian features, but ignored the possibility because, you know, she doesn't look reptilian in any way. Maybe the artist who drew this isn't actually a furry. Think about it: She's mostly human, the two guys besides her are just dudes with futuristic hazmat gear (with cat ears), and the only fully-visible furries are far in the background and that rotten corpse. Fossilized Rappy posted:You say that now, but wait until we get into the Southwest Wasteland Guide (the Game Master's Guide). There's a class that has an ability named "Atom Akbar".  (I presume the class also gets a +2 bonus for piloting planes - except when they want to land.) Doresh fucked around with this message at 17:45 on Jan 11, 2015 |
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Jan 11, 2015 17:42
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I thought about it for all of five minutes and it would have been simpler to have the proto-furries be a group of humans who exiled themselves and rejected the human form because of their distaste for society. Have them journey out past the asteroid belt, tie in some intentional/mostly accidental modification of their germ line and leave them in the outer system for a 100+ years. Then have them come back after Humanity manages to starve itself out by failing to stop climate change before mass famines hit that starve out the system's population. Now the PC characters have some form of tragedy tied to them because they ignored the species while it died a horrific death and you still get to have an Earth that is a wasteland, just no nukes necessary. That would open up different character ideas to play as (wanderers, those that try to pick up the pieces, etc.) and require less time/stupidity to achieve. But then again, I am putting more thought into a project that is 'Eclipse Phase without humans and human-like characters'.
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Jan 11, 2015 17:42
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Does there even need to be a furry EP? Like, regular EP let's your ego upload into animal morphs by default.
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Jan 11, 2015 17:48
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LatwPIAT posted:That said, I have never seen a libertarian utopia in fiction that wasn't full of plot holes, obvious oversights, and every problem brushed over with "that just doesn't happen". In fact, I haven't seen a libertarian utopia period. :V The thing about bias is that the more your position corresponds to how things have shaken out in the real world the less extreme and pulpit-pounding you're going to sound. A setting where libertarian micronations fail and flounder may be the result of the author choosing to take a stance, but it's hardly a wacky one compared to "strip mining the planet and fiat currency will save the day!"
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Jan 11, 2015 17:48
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In that picture, not only the guards in the background are carrying rifles - they are also carrying swords on their backs.
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Jan 11, 2015 17:53
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I'm not much of a surgeon but why would you put a mirror above the operating table? That dude looks like he's freaking out looking at his own face.
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Jan 11, 2015 18:06
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Baofu posted:I'm not much of a surgeon but why would you put a mirror above the operating table? That dude looks like he's freaking out looking at his own face. Well if the Cardassian otherkin doctor's expression is anything to go by, she's purposely trying to terrify her patient.
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Jan 11, 2015 18:09
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I'm fairly certain he is dead considering his injuries and how the guy is manipulating the arm.
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Jan 11, 2015 18:13
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Covok posted:I'm fairly certain he is dead considering his injuries and how the guy is manipulating the arm. The picture is so poorly drawn it's hard to tell. And who knows? Maybe skullfaced wolfmen (Or is he a Man-Bat?) are a distinct race.
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Jan 11, 2015 18:18
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The storm has a name... - Let's Read TORG Part 7: It's magic, I Okay. This is going to suck. Magic. Oh lord, Torg magic. Throughout the whole game line, there are seven main categories of player powers: magic, miracles, martial arts, pulp powers, cybernetics, psionics, and biotech. Martial arts are pretty much unique to Nippon Tech, and only Nile Empire characters can get access to pulp powers. Cybernetics can come from either the Cyberpapacy or Tharkold. Biotech and psionics will come from a cosm that was introduced later in the line, which I'm keeping secret for now. Magic and miracles, however, are universal to pretty much every realm. They're so universal, in fact, they each have their own axioms. And like anything tied to an axiom, there can be hard limits on what's available in a given realm. For the most part, magic and miracles are possible in every realm with a few exceptions. Nippon Tech has very low Magic and Spiritual axioms, and the Living Land has a Magic axiom of 0, meaning that no magic is possible there at all. And yes, magic and miracles are possible on Core Earth all of a sudden; the axioms support them, it's just that people didn't know that. Or something. And just for the record, magic and miracles are two separate things. They have separate mechanics, so are referred to as magic and miracles in the text. Let's start with magic. Oh good christ Torg magic. Casting spells in Torg is a loving mess. To start with, spells come in four different categories:
Every magic spell in the game falls into at least one of these four categories, and some spells can fall under more than one type. So you could have a spell that conjures something (conjuration), then flings it at a target (apporation). The game describes these as the "verbs" of spells, and that's as good a description as any. Each of these magic styles is a separate skill in the game. There's an alteration magic skill, an apportation magic skill, and so on. If you start the game as a caster, one of these is more than likely your tag skill, and you can buy the others with the skill adds you get during character creation. The game then explains that a caster doesn't just make his spells up (spell creation rules will come later in the Aysle book), but that spells were created by other people ages ago and stored in grimoires. Yup, you need a spellbook. quote:To cast a spell from a grimoire requires only the skill necessary for the most important component of the effect. Secondary effects may be subsumed under the spell at the time of its design, but are not necessary to cast the spell. For example, altering a small sphere into a fireball is the most important element of a fireball spell; moving the fireball is secondary. The magician who designed the spell would have to take into account the problems of moving it (apportation) and accuracy (divination) as well as the initial alteration, but once designed and placed in a grimoire these effects are "built in"; the only skill the caster need furnish is alteration. Now, that's a little more complex than it needs to be, but still manageable, right? I mean, even if a spell falls under more than one skill it looks like you only need the one to cast it, right? Wrong. There's a second factor to spells beyond the skill needed to cast it: arcane knowledges. Remember how the skills were referred to as the "verbs" of the spell? Arcane knowledges are the nouns and modifiers. They determine what the spell will look like and what it can affect. When you make your character, you get 12 extra skill adds that can only be used to by knowledges and spells. That's right, arcane knowledges are technically skills, can't be used untrained, and cost just as much as normal skills to improve. However, unlike all the other skills in the game, arcane knowledges aren't based off a stat. You just use the flat skill ranks. So what are the arcane knowledges? Glad you asked! quote:The Essences
 I don't what to know which knowledge this is. All told, there are 24 arcane knowledges, and 4 magic skills. That's 28 skills you have to keep track of if you're a spellcaster. Why? Because every spell has a skill and arcane knowledge, and if you don't have both at the right total level you can't cast the spell. So if a metal-moving spell is "apportation/metal 17", your apportation magic and metal skills need to total up to at least 17 or you can't cast the spell. Oh, but we have a few things we still need to talk about before we actually hit learning how to cast spells. Because this is Torg, and god loving forbid we have character abilities that don't have ridiculous mechanics to validate them. Like the Principle of Definition, which states that a subject cannot be under the influence of more than one "active" spell with the same knowledge at a time, with "active" defined as any spell that's still got some duration left on it. When someone is under the influence of an ongoing spell, then is the target of a second spell, then the spells actually have to duke it out to see which one remains in effect. Each spell has a strength equal to its casters' magic skill, and the spells roll off against each other. Whichever spell gets the highest total sticks around. So if you're under the influence of a Strength spell (folk knowledge), you couldn't also be under the effect of an Understand Language spell because that's also based off the folk knowledge. You can get around this with the idea of Synonymous Knowledges, which involves having multiple definitions of a single knowledge. If a fire mage had three definitions of "fire", he could keep three active fire spells running on himself at once. This is useful, and would have been more useful if they'd explain how you actually went about doing this. Apart from saying they have to be learned, there's no example of, say, what three different definitions of fire means in-character. Anyway, a character starts with zero spells. You have to use those bonus 12 points you got for arcane knowledges and spells to buy new spells one-for-one, and later on you have to spend a Possibility to learn a new spell and put it in your grimoire. Finally! Spellcasting! To cast a spell, you generate a total using the appropriate magic skill, and try to beat the difficulty of the spell. If you make it, the spell goes off. Before you start going "wait, that's it? We had to go through all that for 'beat the spell's difficulty'?", hold on. This is Torg. Nothing is that simple. Just because you successfully cast the spell doesn't automatically mean it actually goes off. Between the skill roll and the effect of the spell is the speedbump of backlash. Backlash is the "resistance" of the spell, and you have to check it regardless of whether or not you made the skill roll. Once you determine the success or failure of the you then take your skill total (or your Mind stat if you're casting a spell out of your grimoire, whichever's higher) and compare it to the spell's backlash value. If your total is less than the backlash, then you take the difference and apply it to the Damage Table to see how much you get hurt; unlike normal damage, the damage isn't reduced by Toughness. If you get knocked out or killed, then the spell doesn't go off even if you made the initial spellcasting roll. Yes, it's possible to successfully cast a spell but not have it go off. Because balance or something. Damage taken from backlash is actually mental damage, which is exactly the same as normal damage with two fun kickers: 1. When you're KO'd by mental damage, you lose the arcane knowledge used to cast the spell for 24 hours. 2. If suffer wounds from mental damage and go above "heavily wounded", you lose the spell's arcane knowledge and magic skill for 24 hours. On top of that, you can't be healed below "wounded" status until you get the skills back. So if you manage to cast the spell and not blow your head off, the spell happens. The bonus generated in the initial casting roll is applied to part of the spell's effect. This varies from spell to spell and is listed in the spell's stat block. Those of you whose eyes haven't glazed over yet will have noticed the "casting from the grimoire" bit up there. It's possible to actually cast spells on the fly, making up a whole new spell on the spot. The way you do this is by buying the Aysle sourcebook, because that's where the rules are. Also mentioned but actually put off to that book are the focus item rules (casting a spell into an object) so I guess we'll worry about those later. Some spells have to be cast impressed, which is a sort of Vancian pre-casting available at magic axiom 17 (Asyle's magic axiom is 18, and is the only cosm where this is possible). Spells that have to be cast impressed are "cast" in advance, generating a total and figuring backlash as normal. However, the spell's effect doesn't happen until the caster releases it. When you release the spell, you generate a new bonus number to determine the spell's effect(so you kind of have to cast it twice), but you don't have to check again for backlash and the spell goes off even if you fail the second roll. Not that it really matters, because only two spells in the core book have to be cast impressed: "conjured fireball" and "cleanse". You can impress a number of spells equal to the sum of your conjuration magic adds and your state knowledge. On the plus side, impressed spells never fade unless you "clear" one out to make room for a different spell. From there, we get almost a whole page about illusion magic. quote:Illusions are magical "cheats," ways of conjuring reality without expending the energy necessary to create the full reality. Illusions can run the gamut from fully illusory (merely a sensory impression of the object "conjured") to almost real (there is some reality conjured, but not the whole amount). Illusions "borrow" possibility energy from those around them who believe in the illusion, and thus become more real over time (the amount of possibility energy taken from a believer is minute — no energy is lost by those who believe). This effect is temporary, though — as soon as the belief ceases (either because the believers leave the area or because someone becomes convinced that the object is an illusion), the illusion vanishes as well. Which is the trade-off; illusions are easier to cast, but have the slight disadvantage of winking out of existence if someone goes "wait, hold on..." But since there's only one illusion spell in the core book, again we can pretty much ignore this for now. There's one last thing before we finally get to the actual spells, and that's The Primary Rule of Magic. It's a long-rear end thing about how magic isn't technology and therefore doesn't follow the same rules and blah blah blah. quote:Magic is not physics, or chemistry, or biology. It is a distinct discipline with its own rules. Magic works by extending the will of the spellcaster, interweaving it with nature and coming up with a result. The primary rule of magic is a spell will have no positive effect without being willed by the caster; negative or non-effects are generally a result of insufficient control and will. This doesn't mean a goddamn thing. It's completely irrelevant to the game, because it's not something anyone cares about. There's no real conflict between magic and technology; if you wanted to enchant an assault rifle you can do it without any real problems apart from trying to wrap your head around the enchanting rules (which are, again, in the Asyle book). There are 36 spells in the core book, and they're pretty much the standard issue list of mage tricks; fireballs, feather fall (called "floater", tee hee), mage light, open locks, stat boosts, and so on. The Worldbook that came with the boxed set and acted as the "lite" sourcebook for all the cosms had another 10, so your options were pretty limited until you bought the Aysle or Orrosh sourcebooks, or bought "Pixaud's Practial Grimoire", which had over 150 new spells.  This is long as hell, so let's break up the wall of text. Anyway, all the spells have the same statblock format, so let's take a look at the basic attack spell in the game: quote:Bullet First, every spell has an axiom level. Casting spells above your axiom can cause a contradiction. The backlash and difficulty we've already covered. The effect value is the mechanical part of the spell. For an attack spell, that's damage; bullet is about as powerful as a 9mm. Bonus to tells you where to put the bonus generated by the initial casting roll; in this case it's added to the effect value. Range and duration are self-explanatory, and include the values from the Value Table in case you need to convert them for some reason. Combat spells have to have a cast time of 3 or less to be used in combat, and a cast time of 4 to be used on a friendly target if you want the effect to take place on the same round you cast it. Anything with a cast time higher than 23 can't be cast in one go. Lastly, there's Manipulation, which is used for the spell manipulation rules which are, again, in the Aysle sourcebook. So let's put this all together. I'm playing a mage from Aysle with an apportation magic of 15 and a metal knowledge of 2, which is possible for a freshly-made character. I want to cast Bullet on a possibility-rated guy with a dodge skill of 12 and a Toughness of 9. First I have to make sure I'm within my axioms. For the sake of this example let's say I'm in Nippon Tech, which has a magic axiom of 2. My magic axiom is 18 and the spell's is 7. That's a one-case contradiction, so I better not roll a 1 or I'll disconnect. The difficulty of Bullet is 11. I roll a d20 and get a 9. I look that up on the bonus chart for a result of -1. Adding that to my apportation magic gives me a total of 14. That beats the difficulty, but is 2 less than the backlash value. Looking that up on the Combat Results Table gives me a result of "O1", so I take 1 shock and an "O" result. That's fine, let's assume I'm still up so the spell goes off. I add the bonus generated by my roll to the spell's Effect of 15 for a total of 14. That beats the target's dodge 12 (barely), so I take the final effect total (14) subtract the target's Toughness (9) for a final result of 5. Looking that up on the Combat Results Table gives me "O2", so that's 2 shock and an O. Just for the record, if I had rolled a 1, then I not only would have disconnected, I would have taken a backlash result of 15, which is "3Wnd KO 5"; or 3 wounds, a KO, and 5 shock. Assuming I would have survived that (and about the only way I could would be to be uninjured to begin with or spend some Possibilities), I'd lose access to apportation magic and metal for 24 hours, couldn't be healed below wounded in that timeframe, and would still need to get a 17 with my reality skill to reconnect while I was in Nippon Tech. -- So there we are. Spellcasting, Torg style. And once again, it's way more complex than it needs to be because the designers feel that they have to back all the game concepts up with more math or long-rear end theories because they think we care. They leave no room for anything even resembling suspension Bear in mind, this isn't the complete magic system. The rest of it is in the Aysle sourcebook, which has stuff like inherent magic, eight pages of fluff about a lecture on the theory of magic because you care, casting on the fly, and tweaking spells. Just wait until we get to spell creation. Ooooh, you just loving wait. NEXT TIME: Miracles! They're as bad as magic, just in a different way!
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Jan 11, 2015 18:20
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Evil Mastermind posted:Casting spells in Torg is a loving mess. As opposed to the simple, tight mechanics for everything else, obviously. Torg in general seems to be a terrible mess of boring and dumb.
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Jan 11, 2015 18:26
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Kavak posted:It's like the guy that keeps posting idiotic "attention-based" economic theories in D&D had a baby with a sovereign citizen. You're gonna have to be more specific than that. There's a lot of those folks out there.
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Jan 11, 2015 18:57
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Night10194 posted:Torg in general seems to be a terrible mess of boring and dumb. Eh, it seems to have a lot of really interesting ideas, but completely botched mechanics and subpar writing.
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Jan 11, 2015 18:57
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fool_of_sound posted:Eh, it seems to have a lot of really interesting ideas, but completely botched mechanics and subpar writing. Roleplaying_games.txt
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Jan 11, 2015 19:00
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Torg is the very epitome of 90s game from what I've seen so far. Salvageable concept, but not in the current form. That's more what I meant. Dimension hopping craziness with PCs turning into stuff that fits wherever they go if they're not careful but having a limited ability to break the rules? Definitely not a bad base concept. Just everything about the execution is terrible.
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Jan 11, 2015 19:01
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I am a grog and a simulationist and even I think the Torg system of spell-casting is easily the worst part of the entire game. Nothing else even comes close to the confusion and fury this one system creates mostly because so much of it is loving unnecessary and is mathematician wank bait.
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Jan 11, 2015 19:01
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Night10194 posted:Torg is the very epitome of 90s game from what I've seen so far. Told ya. Humbug Scoolbus posted:I am a grog and a simulationist and even I think the Torg system of spell-casting is easily the worst part of the entire game. Nothing else even comes close to the confusion and fury this one system creates mostly because so much of it is loving unnecessary and is mathematician wank bait. I'm still going to try creating a spell when I get to the Asyle book.
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Jan 11, 2015 19:11
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The thing that gets me about the spellcasting is that it seems to go "well, sure, you can cast this spell, but you really shouldn't until you have more ability. Okay fine you want to cast it sure. take half your health in damage. Don't say we didn't warn you."
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Jan 11, 2015 19:14
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A large part of Torg seems to be the idea that you can't just let players do things without some sort of potential drawback or punishment.
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Jan 11, 2015 19:18
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Alright, so. Is magic in Torg actually worth it or can it just be generally replicated by mundane/technological means? I really gotta ask that when you consider that there is a Bullet spell and most of the time if you're ever gonna use bullets, you'll be in a Cosm that lets guns exist.
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Jan 11, 2015 19:19
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Green Intern posted:Why isn't that blue lady wearing proper PPE? She could contract Space Ebola!
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Jan 11, 2015 19:19
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pkfan2004 posted:Alright, so. Is magic in Torg actually worth it or can it just be generally replicated by mundane/technological means? I really gotta ask that when you consider that there is a Bullet spell and most of the time if you're ever gonna use bullets, you'll be in a Cosm that lets guns exist. Yes, there's spells with major effects like creating structures instantly, controlling foes, big destruction, turning people into animals, conjuring elementals, and so on. I just picked Bullet because it's an easy straightforward spell. For the most part the spells in the basic set are really simple stuff, your "level 1" spells. Flight, light/darkness, knock, stat boosts, lightning bolt, etc. The better spells don't come until the supplements.
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Jan 11, 2015 19:27
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Evil Mastermind posted:I'm still going to try creating a spell when I get to the Asyle book. I still twitch when I think about the superscience device diagrams from Nile Empire.
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Jan 11, 2015 19:32
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Bieeardo posted:I still twitch when I think about the superscience device diagrams from Nile Empire. I'm going to do that again too. Also, as an example of the spells available? Here's one of my faves from Pixaud's Practical Grimoire.  This can be cast on any inanimate object. You could launch a tank into the air, or cause a building to explode at it's foundation and start to lift into the air.
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Jan 11, 2015 19:34
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Night10194 posted:Torg is the very epitome of 90s game from what I've seen so far. Salvageable concept, but not in the current form. That's more what I meant. Dimension hopping craziness with PCs turning into stuff that fits wherever they go if they're not careful but having a limited ability to break the rules? Definitely not a bad base concept. Just everything about the execution is terrible. Humbug Scoolbus posted:I am a grog and a simulationist and even I think the Torg system of spell-casting is easily the worst part of the entire game. Nothing else even comes close to the confusion and fury this one system creates mostly because so much of it is loving unnecessary and is mathematician wank bait. Since Torg is one of the two current Bundle of Holdings, I saw a post about how it "Takes the concept of Rifts and fixes it". I'm not sure I can even agree with that, because at least Rifts is someone's 1e houserules so it's playable at least. Also, you can cast spells without your head exploding.
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Jan 11, 2015 19:39
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Yeah I'd have tuned out at the tables already but this seems like bullshit. Torg doesn't let you do ANYTHING without a drawback. At this point I'm waiting for furry rpg to update so we can see how many tables THAT has.
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Jan 11, 2015 19:49
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Doresh posted:Maybe it's just the combination of having a noticable bias that being to blue-eyed about it, solving the world's problems with deceptively simple solutions. That's it precisely. When it happens mechanically, it tends to be couched in assumption or received wisdom, like GURPS' interrogation skill turned to effective (but 'vile') torture or AD&D's biotruthy Strength caps. Unless the author is prone to Siembiedaesque editorialization, or you're a critical reader, it's probably going to get glossed over while you're sifting through the rest of the rules. If you're really generous, you might accept it as an expression of genre. Fluff from weird assumptions is fine, as long as you can back them up. Lots and lots of sci-fi is based on exactly that... but the author needs to show their work. When there's nothing there but 'this, then that' it's like reading a high school essay: leaps of faith that expose more of the author's assumptions than his actual thoughts or knowledge.
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Jan 11, 2015 20:46
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