|
oriongates posted:Sadly, the Diesel would be disqualified by still being alive. Some might also argue that he lacks the enduring fame necessary to qualify as an Icon, but I would never dream of saying that.
|
#
?
Sep 3, 2015 09:08
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 16, 2024 09:59 |
|
|
Rifts Dimension Book 3: Phase World Sourcebook Part 8: What you’ve been waiting for...the guns! Every Rifts book has a catalog section where you get a long list of toys you can buy. Mostly weapons, and generally there’s one or two that are clearly superior choices to the others given the way stats are handled. Phase World has tried to insert a little more interest with the way that beams/plasma/shields/phase tech all interact though it’s kind of a bandaid on an arterial geyser. They also gave each of the weapon types distinct visual themes and descriptions of their effects so you can tell good guy lasers from bad guy ion pulses or whatnot. We open with more Naruni guns: expensive and heavy, but good damage if you like having to buy your ammo from a corporation evil enough to put off the splugorth. The NE-6 “Magnum” is--well I’ll just quote it. quote:The NE-6 uses a revolver cylinder instead of a magazine for this popular plasma cartridge weapon. The revolver action is easier to maintain and fix, so this “magnum” is popular among colonists, spacers, runners, outlaws and pirates. These guns also appeal to some romantic humans who still remember the legends of the “Old West” from a time when humans still dwelt on the mythical planet Earth. The core book stated pretty forthrightly that humans don’t know their origin in Phase World. The NE-6 does 1d4x10 damage per shot, has 6 shots, takes a melee round to reload unless a 200 credit speed loader is used and regular ammo costs 20 credits. Oh, and it weighs six pounds.  ayup, just like back out on the range I don’t do the other guns individually but that one was special. This section suffers a bit from being written half exclusively for Phase World and half for the potential Earth Market so you get mixed references like that, or guns made to use ‘standard e-clips’.
 we’re not nearly done yet
That’s it for the guns themselves. Now we get explosives. K-HEX explosives are a new thing made from “Killaryte”, these are Killaryte High Explosives. Apparently it’s a super-rare crystal created by the same geological process as those which create oil and coal, only this makes an organic compound that EXPLODES. The crystals are ten times more unstable than nitroglycerin so have fun with that. Somehow Naruni Enterprises have stabilized this mess enough to make something transportable. K-HEX products include plastique cubes, explosive ammo, an entire line of missiles and a new micro-missile (italics theirs). Killaryte used to be a local liability but now it’s valuable. Shortly before revealing their new discovery, NE acquired mining rights to a bunch of it on the cheap. Thus far, nobody else has managed to stabilize it. One pound of the natural crystal does 2D4x10 MDC to a 50ft radius and even a loud noise has a 20% chance of setting it off. When you make it into bombs though, it’s all nice and stable and useful. K-HEX plastique cubes do 1d6x10 to a 20 foot area (note: the killaryte crystal said radius, this one says area.) They do half damage then thrown, but double when shaped to focus the blast on a target. 1000 credits a pound. I wonder if space cocaine is cheaper? NE-10G Grenades do 4d6 frag or 6d6 HE and since there’re no rules about armor penetration or whatever there’s no reason to take frag unless you really can’t afford the 500 versus 400 credit price tag for each. NE-20G microgrenades are fun-sized versions of the above that do 3d6/4d6.  not trying to be suggestive but...if i saw this out in the wild, missile would not be my first guess Naruni Enterprises has also developed superior missile guidance systems. These missiles are +5 to strike and +4 to dodge and can attack twice per melee. These guidance systems at 15,000 credits to the cost of each missile. Let’s hear it for military procurement. Micro-missiles are roughly the size of a magic marker and can be bought in ‘smart’ versions that are +4 to strike instead of +5 as above but they can track through crowds and other nastiness. Armor-piercing only, 6d6 damage, 1600 credits for a normal missile or 8000 for the smart kind. Compatible with the NE-28R wrist-mounted micro-launcher. 50,000 credits to carry around two of those tiny missiles.  fisto would like his glove back The NE-800R is their Missile Assault System. More with the micro-missiles, so 6d6 MDC with a 16 missile payload for 80,000 credits. Can do volleys of up to four missiles. These micro-missiles would be an interesting touch, especially for urban combat with explosives that evade obstacles and hopefully civilians. They’re very expensive though. There’s also all the other regular missile grades done in K-HEX, with mini-missiles starting at 1d4x10 MDC all the way up to long range Armor Piercing or Heavy HE doing 4d6x10, and all of these cost twice as much as their conventional kin. They don’t really do much more damage, if any, honestly--1d4x10 is more or less the ‘minimum’ an explosive usually does in Rifts. So the Naruni have some new guns and bombs. Some of them are sort of interesting like the crowdpleasing micromissiles, others are just another listing of damage numbers. I’ll cover other weapons-makers in the next post.
|
|
#
?
Sep 3, 2015 15:08
|
|
|
After the PCs carefully double-check how fast they can operate the elevator and get out of the ancient temple somehow beneath an active mine, they explicitly have a bit of free time to wrap up their affairs in Diamond Lake. It doesn't say why they need to wrap it up, but I'll go ahead and spoil it: now that they've just pinged level 5, and 3rd level spells are on the table, they've sort of outgrown the place. So... that's, what, Roger's roleplay with Tirra? The party has no reason to kill Smenk, unless kidnapping a familiar is a hangin' offense these days. The backdrop information provides lots and lots of people and places, but it doesn't overlap with the adventuring portion so we ended up skipping it. Oh, well. Plenty of material there could be stolen if you wanted, though; the jockeying mine managers and corrupt mayor could be their own low-level campaign if you don't level up so quickly. Most of the rest is just names and details, which is its own source of aid for some DMs. It can be nice to not have think up your own memorable quirks. Age of Worms, Encounter at Blackwall Keep  Once the party has wrapped things up and generally relaxed after their three-fold murder spree, Allustan contacts his protege, Wally, asking him and those two weird friends of his to accompany him. Allustan is ready to do some exposition, and he's happened to be on his way to visit a friend of his, a battlemage who's in a little fort run by the Free City. The PCs get on the road with Allustan, who starts monologuing. The stuff they looted from the tomb of Zosiel proves that the Cairns were graves for the Wind Dukes of Aaqa, who fought the ancient demon known as the Queen of Chaos using the Rod of Seven Parts. In totally 100% unrelated and never to intersect news, the friend he's going to see has been telling him about weird undead filled with green worms. You know, like that one they dragged out of the necromancer's tower and the Ebon Triad were talking about. Well, no matter how wordy Allustan is, the road is 40 miles long, so it takes a couple of days. And we have... random encounter table!  Dom shakes out the d100s for a couple of encounters. And gets... 21 and 18. No encounters. Well, that was exciting. The under 75 results are effectively nothing, unless the PCs decide to steal and/or purchase stuff from those they meet. Or convert to St. Cuthbert. The combat encounters are pretty dull, too, given that they have a friendly level 8 wizard backing them up. Allustan is played up here to be as friendly and nice as possible. C'mon, everyone, just like the guy already. Blackwall Keep comes close. The PCs find hints of a battle ahead. Roger scouts ahead, and finds eight groups of five lizardfolk apiece encircling the fort's tower, beseiging it. That's sort of a "defeat in detail" banner. Luckily, they also have a friendly level eight wizard with them who can  bastard. Anyway, the eight groups of five are actually six groups of five (  ), two of which are a cut above the average of the other four, with the assistance of a class level NPC. The PCs rout the seige, eventually, and slip into the Keep to meet with the guards still alive in there. There's no loot here, just the three levels of the tower, the roof, and a door that was padlocked shut and then nailed shut. Cleo insists the locals tell them what happened with that, and reluctantly the guards spill the story: two years ago, they started working on an escape tunnel, but their wizard turned into some weird undead that's a little tough for 1st level NPCs, so they just locked it in there. Cleo demands that they pry it open, and eventually gets her way. A SPAWN OF KYUSS launches itself at them! It's not too hard to see why they're lauded as 'unkillable' zombies even though they really aren't. 4 HD, fast healing 5, fear aura, disease, spawn-creating mechanic... not a meek opponent. They only really have one weakness, beyond the usual "undead" package of weaknesses. And, wouldn't you know it, Cleo had a readied action to cast Remove Disease on it. Once they get hit by Remove Curse or Remove Disease, they turn into just normal zombies, which turns a CR 5 foe into pathetic cannon fodder. What a lucky break, Cleo. This saved the heroes from coming back here later to find the spawn is killing the fort and already has two more of itself created. Well, time to chase down the lizardfolk, because it turns out that not everyone is in the Keep. The lizardfolk managed to take a couple of prisoners, including Allustan's friend, the sorceress Marzena. Guess we should get that seen to, too. The lizardfolk go two days deep into a bog, with the PCs forced to make Survival checks regularly. Also random encounters!  A huge spider (78) attacks the party and they crush it. Eventually the PCs get to the lizardfolk lair. Wally is amenable to the other two's suggestion of taking this one sneaky rather than massacring everything, so the party slips in, kills an assassin vine the lizardfolk keep rooted to their compost pile, and get ambushed by a very specific lizardfolk patrol. This patrol has one lizardfolk who's infected by Kyuss worms, and a handy Remove Disease from Cleo saves his life! The rest of the lizardfolk tell them to move another room or two on and see their hermaphrodite shaman, Hishka. (Side note is that this is largely meant to make things worse in a "why didn't you know better by being psychic?" way; although this can be done, it's more likely that the PCs would kill the lizardfolk, get blamed as more worms crawl from his body to try to attack other lizardfolk, and have an extermination situation on their hands.) Hishka is guarding Allustan's friend Marzena and a redshirt guard. It'll trade both for the PCs getting rid of the current leadership and trying to broker peace with the Free City's leadership because, hey, something's been attacking the tribe's eggs and Hishka, at least, wants to make peace and avoid getting everyone killed. The two leader lizardfolk are a barbarian and a fighter, and both are quite vulnerable to will-based save-or-loses. Well, that was solved with a minimum amount of massacre. However, there's more that can be done; the lizardfolks' eggs are being protected by some unusually buff kobolds, courtesy of a dragon named Ilthane that the tribe made a deal with, but thanks to things no one in the party could have known except for Dom (and Cleo), now the tribe realizes that Ilthane was the cause of their woes and why isn't this something the party can easily find out?  Also, keep an eye on these images; you can see the same characters repeated throughout the campaign--yes, these are the players of the people at Paizo as they did this. Nice to see the continuity, though. Anyway, the PCs are talked into going to kill the kobolds and help rescue the eggs. Ilthane's "dragon egg" is the centerpiece of the room of lizardfolk eggs, but, surprise, it's filled with Kyuss worms and more Kyuss-themed monsters! The PCs get to try to save the lizardfolk eggs from getting eaten/turned into weird undead, and thus prove their friendship to the lizardfolk. Hooray! Now, with reptilian friends behind them and two saved captives to return, the heroes return to Blackwall Keep to wait for Allustan to eventually get back. Except he's not going to come back, he's just going to send soldiers and otherwise hang out in Diamond Lake. Thanks, dude. "Part Three," Dom intones. "Terror Below!" At this point he actually reads it and realizes, oh, hey, Cleo already stopped this part before it started by getting rid of that one Spawn of Kyuss. Already solved! Anyone remember what the point of this adventure was? Oh, right, it was to take Allustan to meet Marzena, except he gave up and went home. So the PCs take Marzena to Allustan, instead, and he asks Marzena if there was anything she can add about these weird undead. The answer turns out to be "not really". There's just a few more of them seen in the distance while in the wilderness sometimes. Allustan has another bright idea about now: he'll have the PCs go to the Free City and ask a sage named Eligos about them! No, he's not going anywhere. The PCs are successful enough gofers that he's not going to rouse himself much now. Honestly, this issue and the next one are sort of 'filler'/setup as we get the PCs leveled up enough for the main threats. After that, things get into what I recall being the cool section of the campaign. But I'm trying not to spoil myself! Let's see if it holds up to my memories from ten years ago. ZeeToo fucked around with this message at 18:02 on Sep 3, 2015 |
|
#
?
Sep 3, 2015 17:59
|
|
|
Can't wait for that Adventure Path to get serious.occamsnailfile posted:Hindi--weirdly--yes. Huh, and to think about of all the back-and-forth discussions about releasing a commented version of Mein Kampf now that the copyright is expired and Bavaria can no longer keep the book out of Germany... And now for something completely different: The Dark Eye  Introduction Hello, hypothetical non-German roleplaying enthusiast! I'm sure you have a lot of questions about The Dark Eye. No worries, we'll tackle them one at a time! What is The Dark Eye? The Dark Eye aka Das Schwarze Auge is Germany's roleplaying game No. 1. Since its debut in 1984, it has become our D&D: The huge, dice-flinging juggernaut dominating the market. No other game is quite as popular or as garnered quite as many grognards - not even D&D itself (especially not after WotC abandoned the German market shortly after the first batch of 4e books; not sure what was up with that). Currently, The Dark Eye is in its 4th edition (or rather 4.1, but we're getting ahead of ourselves) and has been there since 2001, making it the longest-running edition of TDE so far. A 5th edition is likely to come out by the end of the year. If its that big, how come I've never heard about it? Depends. If you were a PC RPG gamer in the 90s, chances are you might have come across a little trilogy called "Realms of Arkania", which was nothing other than the "Northland Trilogy", a PC adaption of 3rd edition TDE. "Realms of Arkania" was apparently chosen for the international release because it sounded better or something. (There were also a few translations of the giant library of TDE novels released under that title, but don't ask me which. I'm not into roleplaying novels.) Fun fact: If you've ever played the first Divine Divinity or Sacred, let it be known that both games (or at least their engines) were at some part of their development lifes supposed to be yet another adaption (with Sacred originally going to be an adaption for Armalion, TDE's miniatures skirmish wargame). At least Divine Divinity retained a little easter egg in the form of a grave from that time. More recently, there has been quite the catalogue of TDE video games, from more direct adaptions like Drakensang and Blackguards to point-and-click adventures. If the rumors are to be true, there is supposed to be an official TDE movie coming this winter. Seeing how sparse informations about this movie are*, it is anyone's guess whether this movie will actually happen, or if it will be as memorable as the first official D&D movie. *) The only plot synposis I could find a year or so was that it was going to be about a newly-discovered continent, which is like making a Forgotten Realms movie without the Forgotten Realms. Suffice to say, the enthusiams is a bit limited. Interesting. But what about the name? What is this Dark Eye? Dark Eyes (since there's more than one) are essentially a cross between a Palantir and an Immovable Rod. Crafted out of a fallen meteor, these orb-shaped artifacts become fixed in place and allow its owner to gaze through time and space (though most Eyes are very limited in scope, usually only allowing to see a couple places in the present). So is the metaplot about fighting for control over these Dark Eyes? Like some kind of Dragon Ball without the collecting part? Not really. Dark Eyes play a surprisingly little role in the overarching story. They're just something major NPCs happen to own. Then why is it called The Dark Eye? Well, it was originally supposed to be called Aventuria after the main setting, but that apparently didn't sound marketable enough. So Dark Eye it was. Weird. Anyways, what about this Aventuria? Well, its the main setting of the game, with at least 90% of all TDE products dedicated to it. To keep it short for now, Aventuria is your typical fantasy affair with humans, elves, dwarves and orcs. Instead of the eternal Middle Ages, Aventuria is set in a Renaissance era without gunpowder. Of course, there are more primitive regions - of note being two countries that actually seem to be eternally stuck in the Middle Ages, making the the laughing stock of the continent. On the magical side of things, Aventuria is run by something the writers call "fantastical realism" - aka "magic follows clear rules and can't do everything (except when one of our major NPC wizards goes off the rails)". The setting is low fantasy in the sense that PCs are never required to arm themselves to the teeth with magical equipment like their D&D counterparts. There are however a few things preventing me from calling this a true low fantasy setting (though more on that later). A very odd quirk about Aventuria is its size. See, your standard fantasy RPG setting has this monolithic, gigantic continent that doesn't even completely fit on its iconic map, leaving only one side of the map (usually the left) free for a bit of ocean. Aventuria on the other hand is about 1/4 of Europe. Mind you, this isn't strange per se since Europe has seen plenty of weird stuff over the centuries. And it cuts down on having to use teleport spells and other shenanigans. What is strange is that Aventuria still follows the standard fantasy RPG setting convention of including every climate zone known to man. There is a houserule of sorts around that just doubles the contintent's size, which makes this whole deal a bit more believable. Odd. Are there more settings than Aventuria? There are. And since information about them is either sparse to begin with or won't be covered by me in greater details, let's have a rundown of them all! First up, all of these alternative settings are set in Ethra (an anagram for Earth, just like how the German name Dere is an anagram for Erde), the same world/planet were Aventuria can be found. Myranor Also known as the Gyldenland by the Aventurians and seen as this mythical continent to the far west from which most Aventurian humans originally came from, Myranor is in fact your monolithic, gigantic continent that doesn't even completely fit on its iconic map (though this time the ocena is on the right side). The lands of Myranor are dominating by a thousands of years old Empire that has seen much, much better days. Its also a lot more on the high fantasy side, with airships, flying cities, lionmen, dudes with four arms and more powerful wizards employing a freeform magic system unheard of in Aventuria. Myranor is the settings that gets the most love after Aventuria, with an actual product line. It was even used as a testbed for the 4th edition rules. Tharun Probably the oddest setting around, it's a hollow world found inside of Dere (or more specifically a pocket dimension that can be reached by going deep enough). Tharun is a world ruled by nine Gods who kidnap mighty warriors from various worlds and time periods to duke it out for their enjoyment. Originally intended as the setting for the 1st edition's expert rules (including rules for high level play and a ridiculous level of new crunch, like different hit zones for every kind of creature), this setting as seen little exposure, sporting a gap of 25 years between individual products. Giantland Another gigantic continent directly to the east. It is in fact connected with Aventuria on its northeastern edge, but the mountain ranges there are too ridiculously huge and dangerous to cross. Reaching the continent by ship is also hard due to cliffs and rough weather, leaving it pretty much unexplored despite being right next to Aventuria. All that's really known about this continent is that there's something called the "Diamond Sultanate", and a couple fishmen that may or may not be planning an invasion or something. Having never had an official product dedicated to it, this setting is largely left for the fanbase to write stuff about. Uthuria An odd continent to the far south, there is even less known about this one aside from weird tales about sulfur seas. Another continent for fan material. So it essentially boils down to "Fantasy Renaissance without guns" or some kind of Not-Talislanta? Yep, pretty much as far as official publications are concerned. Then how do you actually play this game? A very good question. I'll go over the rules in more details later, but I think I have just enough space here to explain the core principles. TDE uses d20s for action resolution and d6s for weapon damage. Sure, there are very rare cases with damage so high it requires d20s, but d6s are so synonymous with damage in TDE that the game just drops the "6" when referring to damage (so you have a "2d+2" instead of "2d6+2"). Action resolution is strictly roll-under. If it weren't for the game's skill system, TDE might've probably went for percentile dice. Why is that so? Well, a skill check is actually a series of 3 stat checks, usually rolled at once with different-colored d20s. Your skill rank is used as a pool of points with which to reduce any die rolls that comes up as too high. As long as your pool doesn't drop into the negatives, you have passed the check, and any leftover points in the pool determine the quality of your success. Having your rank turn negative due to modifiers or it being that crappy to begin with, you add this negative value to each of the the rolls. Sucks to be you. One one hand, this system is a logical expansions of the stat usage (as skills are a combination of your aquired knowledge and inherent abilities), on the other hand, it's a bit hard to gauge your success chances, with a single bad roll being able to ruin a low-ranked adventurer's day. There's also this weird problem that modifiers are reversed for stats and skills (as modifiers for stats are added to the roll for stats, and added to the rank for skills), which never fails to not be confusing. Still there's hope 5th edition might finally unify this. I've heard modifiers are finally always applied to the roll(s), making negatives universally good and positives universally bad. Combat is handled more like stat checks however, despite having weapon skills. Ranks in these skills are used to boost your base Attack and Parry values, which are your stats to roll under during combat to hit or not getting hit. Once you're hit, you roll damage (ranging from 1d for a knive and 3d+3 for a ridiculous, three-headed flail; high strength adds to damage, but not nearly as noticably as in D&D), subtract the target's Armor Protection (ranging from 1 for padded clothes to 12 for oldschool knight armor that is way too expensive and cumbersome for PC usage). Anything left after this goes to the opponents Life Points (of which as 4th edition character has around 20-40ish, with 35ish being normal for most warrior dudes). If you think TDE suffers from the same problems as early editions of BESM (namely that the attack and parry rolls have nothing to do with each other and that combat can take quite a while), you're absolutely right. Though at least in TDE, characters run out of defense actions much sooner, so strength in numbers is where it's at. And of course these are only the most basic combat rules. As in every grognard's favorite game, there are plenty of bells and whistles that slow combat down without actually fixing the underlying attack/parry problem. But we'll get to that later. And with this rough overview, I bid you all farewell, till next time... Next Time: Let's talk some more about PC choices for Aventuria! Doresh fucked around with this message at 22:25 on Sep 3, 2015 |
|
#
?
Sep 3, 2015 22:19
|
|
|
Well, I'm excited for this one. I've heard rumours about TDE for years. I understand it has its own grognardy fanbase complete with edition wars. Doesn't Ulisses Spiele, the same company that owns Torg, own TDE as well? Was the last edition published in English, and are they planning an English release of the new one?
|
|
#
?
Sep 3, 2015 22:22
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:Well, I'm excited for this one. I've heard rumours about TDE for years. If you're around this long, it's impossible to not run into such wars. I think 4th edition got an English version of the base boxed set, but that's about it to my knowledge. It seems they're aiming for a more serious offensive with the 5th edition however. I just hope the amount of books required is less insane than in 4th edition. With the current 4th edition hardcovers, you need 4 books (chargen stuff, combat stuff, magic stuff, divine stuff) just to have the full range of character options and rules, or rather 5 books because all the magic spells are in their own book*. And people say D&D requiring 3 books is crazy. (Of course, there's the basic version of the rules, but that one only offers two kinds of spellcasters and no clerical stuff) *) Earlier editions managed to fit all the supernatural stuff in one boxed set, and early 4th edition put magic and spells in one boxed set. Talk about bloat. Doresh fucked around with this message at 22:40 on Sep 3, 2015 |
|
#
?
Sep 3, 2015 22:35
|
|
|
Considering their new release strategy, you will need even more books now than ever before. BTW, 5th Edition was released August 7th. And while a vanishingly small percentage better than 4.1, it´s not enough. It therefor remains Bureacracy 2.0.
|
|
#
?
Sep 4, 2015 09:30
|
|
|
Doresh posted:Dark Eye I remember playing Blackguards a couple years back. I wanna say that was based on this system. I really wanted to like the game, because some of my tertiary knowledge of TDE made it pretty appeal. Unfortunately that game was a slog. Happy to see your write-up though!
|
|
#
?
Sep 4, 2015 14:15
|
|
|
Mr.Misfit posted:Considering their new release strategy, you will need even more books now than ever before. BTW, 5th Edition was released August 7th. And while a vanishingly small percentage better than 4.1, it´s not enough. It therefor remains Bureacracy 2.0. Now that was embarassing to miss. And it seems I'll stick to my long-term plan of using Fantasy Hero for more consistency and easier usage. ZorajitZorajit posted:I remember playing Blackguards a couple years back. I wanna say that was based on this system. I really wanted to like the game, because some of my tertiary knowledge of TDE made it pretty appeal. Unfortunately that game was a slog. Happy to see your write-up though! Yeah, that one was based on 4.1 (with possible changes applied to streamline the tactical RPG experience). You can tell that this and Drakensang are TDE adaptions because they use pregens that you may or may not be able to slightly alter before the start of the game. Fully-featured character creation like in D&D video games would drive more casual buyers insane. At least the hardcore fans would get a neat automated character generator.
|
|
#
?
Sep 4, 2015 17:07
|
|
|
ZorajitZorajit posted:I remember playing Blackguards a couple years back. I wanna say that was based on this system. I really wanted to like the game, because some of my tertiary knowledge of TDE made it pretty appeal. Unfortunately that game was a slog. Happy to see your write-up though! Blackguards 2 was much better though, and the adventure games Chains of Satinav and Memoria were really good.
|
|
#
?
Sep 4, 2015 18:35
|
|
|
I got Drakensang in hopes of some fun Baldur's Gate-like action. don't get drakensang
|
|
#
?
Sep 4, 2015 19:22
|
|
|
Mors Rattus posted:I got Drakensang in hopes of some fun Baldur's Gate-like action. I'm also pretty sure Drakensang created some grognard outrage because the game featured spell-slinging skeletons. There are no spell-slinging skeletons in TDE. Doresh fucked around with this message at 00:25 on Sep 5, 2015 |
|
#
?
Sep 5, 2015 00:23
|
|
|
I remember trying to play Star Trail when I was a kid. I stress 'try'.
|
|
#
?
Sep 5, 2015 00:50
|
|
|
Count Chocula posted:You're assuming a distinction between 'dreams' and 'reality' that I'm not sure is appropriate to a game about Surrealists. The rules suggest the typical RPG binary of a distinct-but-connected physical realm and a supernal/astral/metaphysical world. The nature of how the realms connect is open to interpretation, and you can pull some tricks by being physically in the dream realm (and vice versa), but they're presented as distinct locations. Likewise, reality as as locked-in-place as it is during any other Lovecraftian game. Although Yithian cults and tomes of forbidden knowledge aren't the highlight of the setting, they get mentions and sidebars (coming later). In general though, they don't get any special Dreamhounds treatment. It's more "if your players are scared away from the Dreamlands, they can still go on adventures. You like mi-go and Deep Ones, right?" It's not the most inspirational part of the book.
|
|
#
?
Sep 5, 2015 01:06
|
|
|
Doresh posted:I'm also pretty sure Drakensang created some grognard outrage because the game featured spell-slinging skeletons. There are no spell-slinging skeletons in TDE. During the very first iteration of Drakensang there was a bug allowing a skeleton to walk into the Praios-temple of a bigger city. This brought out grog rage, because as everyone knows, a temple of the god of light (who btw. also of course hates the undead as does the god of the dead [whis is even more bizzare but this was retconned some years ago so hey]) and the highest of the gods has twice sacred grounds. Because simply sacrifying the ground once wasn´t enough....argh....and the grog rage led to angry people at the main convention of Ulisses Spiele, the RatCon (don´t ask) back when Drakensang was only just released and the grogs were ....ANGRY....xD Not to mention magicians with thousands of magic points and and and....oh grogs...never change =)
|
|
#
?
Sep 5, 2015 02:09
|
|
|
ZorajitZorajit posted:I remember playing Blackguards a couple years back. I wanna say that was based on this system. I really wanted to like the game, because some of my tertiary knowledge of TDE made it pretty appeal. Get Cheat Engine, it makes the game much more tolerable when you and your friends are walking gods. langurmonkey posted:Blackguards 2 was much better though  It helps that the MC of Blackguards 2 is loving cool as hell. Wish they'd got new characters instead of the old gang, though.
|
|
#
?
Sep 5, 2015 03:38
|
|
|
Mr.Misfit posted:During the very first iteration of Drakensang there was a bug allowing a skeleton to walk into the Praios-temple of a bigger city. This brought out grog rage, because as everyone knows, a temple of the god of light (who btw. also of course hates the undead as does the god of the dead [whis is even more bizzare but this was retconned some years ago so hey]) and the highest of the gods has twice sacred grounds. Because simply sacrifying the ground once wasn´t enough....argh....and the grog rage led to angry people at the main convention of Ulisses Spiele, the RatCon (don´t ask) back when Drakensang was only just released and the grogs were ....ANGRY....xD Pretty sure those guys were the target audience, though, 'cause let me tell you, that game just loving throws you in the deep end of the lore and mechanics and does not bother to explain poo poo.
|
|
#
?
Sep 5, 2015 05:06
|
|
|
Bieeardo posted:I remember trying to play Star Trail when I was a kid. I stress 'try'. Man, me and my brothers spend countless times creating new parties and see how long we'll last before falling prey to diseases, swamp baboons, ogres or the dreaded goblin or orc Zerg rush. Or that dickish group of knights. It was pretty much our Oregon Trail. Mr.Misfit posted:During the very first iteration of Drakensang there was a bug allowing a skeleton to walk into the Praios-temple of a bigger city. This brought out grog rage, because as everyone knows, a temple of the god of light (who btw. also of course hates the undead as does the god of the dead [whis is even more bizzare but this was retconned some years ago so hey]) and the highest of the gods has twice sacred grounds. Because simply sacrifying the ground once wasn´t enough....argh....and the grog rage led to angry people at the main convention of Ulisses Spiele, the RatCon (don´t ask) back when Drakensang was only just released and the grogs were ....ANGRY....xD To be fair, Praios (or at least his church) hates magic with a loving passion, and every good god of death has a thing or two against undead. There's also the part of undead being animated by demonic energy (with said energy usually coming from the god of death's nemesis). Still, it's pretty ridiculous to go that mad over a bug. Did they expect TDE's lore to be somehow hard-coded into the game engine itself? And now I remember why I avoid most conventions. Mors Rattus posted:Pretty sure those guys were the target audience, though, 'cause let me tell you, that game just loving throws you in the deep end of the lore and mechanics and does not bother to explain poo poo. True, but I suppose a hypothetical person with no prior knowledge of any kind of d20 system would have similar problems with the mechanics of your typical D&D video game adaption (especially the more crunchy ones based on 3.X with their feats and skill points). If you're the biggest RPG IP around, it seems safe to assume that people are already sorta familiar with you. Doresh fucked around with this message at 08:58 on Sep 5, 2015 |
|
#
?
Sep 5, 2015 08:48
|
|
|
Regarding TDE/DSA, what would be the best and cheapest way to get ahold of the original German rulebooks? I don't care much about editions, so used copies would be fine too. EDIT: Holy poo poo. Looking through German eBay, what I believe is the 4th edition rulebook is priced at around 150€. Is that normal? Comrade Koba fucked around with this message at 09:42 on Sep 5, 2015 |
|
#
?
Sep 5, 2015 09:37
|
|
|
Speaking of video games based on The Dark Eye, I recall that one of the games, Shadows Over Riva I think, was actually fully translated into Finnish, voice-acting included. It was really weird, because Finnish translations of video games were completely unprecedented at that time. Maybe the series was somehow really popular in Finland to merit a translation? Anyway, I remember it dimly: I wandered off from the main game area, got ambushed by orcs in a forest, half of my party died and the rest lost all of their limbs or something. Great game.
|
|
#
?
Sep 5, 2015 09:42
|
|
|
Comrade Koba posted:Regarding TDE/DSA, what would be the best and cheapest way to get ahold of the original German rulebooks? I don't care much about editions, so used copies would be fine too. I'm sadly not familiar in the field of the German used copy market. I just buy the PDFs or "fresh" books from stores. After a quick look at eBay, it seems those are actually limited editions of the 5th edition core book. Not sure why you would want to pay that much for something that will most likely become a bit useless in and of itself because of tons of errata that will most likely appear. I'm also hesitant when it comes to TDE "core" books, as the 4th edition's base boxed set and later hardcover book are completely useless once you get any of the other books. No point in paying 150+ bucks for something you will probably never touch once the "real" books get released. Ratpick posted:Speaking of video games based on The Dark Eye, I recall that one of the games, Shadows Over Riva I think, was actually fully translated into Finnish, voice-acting included. It was really weird, because Finnish translations of video games were completely unprecedented at that time. Maybe the series was somehow really popular in Finland to merit a translation? Not sure about Finnland. AFAIK, any attempts to push TDE to other markets haven't been that successful so far. And this seems to be normal for the Realms of Arkania trilogy. They might appear like open-world sandboxes on first glance, but wandering aimlessly around without following the main plot seems to trigger a bunch of random encounters with very good TPK potential. Doresh fucked around with this message at 11:27 on Sep 5, 2015 |
|
#
?
Sep 5, 2015 11:01
|
|
|
I'm hype for hearing more about TDE, is it legit likely/possible for PC's to die of random infections like tetanus after an ordinary swordfight where they take some minor wounds?
|
|
#
?
Sep 5, 2015 20:08
|
|
|
PurpleXVI posted:I'm hype for hearing more about TDE, is it legit likely/possible for PC's to die of random infections like tetanus after an ordinary swordfight where they take some minor wounds? Yes, you can get yourself nasty infections at the end of any day you have untreated wounds of a certain severity (with a threshold that can easily be hit with just one fight). There's also a kind of fever you mostly only get for lying inside the temple of two of the main pantheon's gods working as a very annyoing debuff. Not sure what's up with that. You can also die through petrification as the result of touching an undead, or staying somewhere were a basilisk has passed through. (Basilisks in this setting are ultra-dangerous monster snakes that can turn entire regions into a dead wasteland just by hanging around. It's like a walking nuclear reactor that can also insta-petrify you if you get too close, though chances are you've already gotten yourself some fantasy cancer long before you actually see the drat thing. They're also 100% immune against magic because this is totally not supposed to be the TDE version of the tarrasque. I'm not even sure why they even bothered with a writeup and a mini-game involving killing the thing with a mirror (after which you - of course - have to wait weeks before its body and gaze become completely safe). These things are so rare they're essentially myths. Though there's supposedly a bunch of them just over the mountain range separating Aventuria from that other continent. Now that sounds like a fun discovery for the whole party.) Doresh fucked around with this message at 23:02 on Sep 5, 2015 |
|
#
?
Sep 5, 2015 22:51
|
|
|
Kavak posted:Sometimes the shifters represent the popular (Western) idea of an animal, and sometimes not. The reason both happen is flurp durp fart this book is loving dumb. FATAL & FRIENDS: flurp durp fart this book is loving dumb.
|
|
#
?
Sep 6, 2015 04:24
|
|
|
Doresh posted:
I will lay odds this is because a lot of seventies fantasy fiction often tried to do a thing where they crossed real physics with magic so basilisks and medusas and other 'turn a dude to stone' stuff caused a burst of hard radiation because of a whole lot of carbon turning to silicon. Like this got used as an explanation for cursed troll-gold in a viking story; the troll got killed by being exposed to sunlight and turned to stone, his hoard was irradiated, oops. I blame early fanzines circulating the idea around.
|
|
#
?
Sep 6, 2015 06:25
|
|
|
 A Game About Assholes Rummaging Around In Town Note: For transparency measures, I received a complementary copy from the author for review purposes. If you hang out at the Something Awful Trad Games forums, you might know him as Covok. The meta concept of an "adventuring society" has not gone unnoticed in the realms of parody and satire. The Red Dragon Inn focuses on the inns and taverns where dungeon-delvers gather and their drunken hijinks, Recettear focuses on the life of an item shop owner digging her way out of debt, and the sample game in RPG Maker detailed the life of a monster goblin who sought to become a proper Boss. Dungeon Bastards is a rules-lite table-top RPG which follows a similar path. The focus of the game is on a group of sociopathic and probably inebriated adventurers back in town and up to no good. It emphasizes poorly thought out shenanigans and belligerent conflicts. Think of the Rat Queens comic and you're probably close to the mark. The writing style is intentionally vulgar in imitation of the play style: quote:You play Dungeon Bastards by sitting around with friends and bullshitting about being cool people. The Losers play their self-insert fantasies while that Dickbag plays the hosed up world they live in and the shitbags they share it with. There are quite a few products which are written this way in an attempt to be edgy, most notably more than a few in-character White Wolf stories and such. I feel that its success can vary wildly depending on the reader: it's done more for humor's sake as opposed for a "poo poo sucks" grimdark narrative, although in this case I feel that it works in that the PCs are intended to be macho adventurers with more bark than brains, so the text comes off as how they'd actually talk in-game. [center]The Rules[/center] Dungeon Bastards uses six-sided dice for its resolution system. There are Moves in the game which trigger depending on the enfolding scenarios (sort of like Apocalypse World system) and you roll a number of dice depending on your Stats and relevant Skills (which add two extra dice when they come into play). Every 5 on a die counts as one success, every 6 two successes. Competitive Moves have people subtract their successes from their opponents before resolving it, while passive Moves require 1 to 4 successes depending on their difficulty. There are four Stats and are relatively all-encompassing, including Brains, Fists, Guts, and Mouth, and correspond to the abilities you imagine them to. The Moves Be it fighting, getting high, bullshitting someone, or even getting hurt, the Basic Moves are more or less universal for the scenarios for this type of game and provide a good format for expanding beyond. When you gain successes, you can spend them as points to gain additional benefits in narrating the scene. For example: quote:gently caress All Y'All! Spend successes for bonus stuff. It's a fine idea, but some moves have narrations which are better than others. quote:Time To Beat Some rear end If none of them get away, wouldn't this practically allow you to take one or more of them as a prisoner? I assume that the idea is that without the prisoner narration, they'll be too beaten/dead to be of use for whatever you want them for or you have to flee the scene due to the city watch, but I can see some groups raising this in play. "But I took them all out single-handedly?! Why can't we just pick one up and haul 'em off?!" So, what happens when you roll poorly and things don't go so well? That's where BULLSHIT comes in. The Bullshit Meter serves as a player character's health, and represents accumulated humiliation, exhaustion, and injury over time. When the Meter gets full and they fail again, they either die or "say gently caress this and leave the group like a little wimp." Either way, they're out of the game and the player needs to create a new character. Or they can permanently decrease the Stat of their choice by one and reduce their Bullshit Meter by one. However, this can only be done once it's full to avoid PC loss, so it prevents casual use of Stat drain as a "healing" option. Thoughts: The resolution system is quite simple, with no real variance and a reliance on narrating things out instead of setting benchmarks. This works very well for the beer-and-pretzels game Dungeon Bastards is going for. Character Creation, Dickbag, and Conversation Starters Beyond the simple name, you assign a 3, 4, 5, and 6 to the Stats of your choice, and write down 3 Skills. The player writes their objective they want to perform while in town, and then they pass their character sheet off to the player on their left, where they write down how they feel about that character and how they met. The Dickbag is the Game Master in Dungeon Bastards, and this section has the typical advice for running the game. It's rather simple, but beyond the obvious (give stats only to people who matter, don't be creepy or engage in power fantasies, etc), it explains that one Move should equal one scene so that the game isn't bogged down in die rolls, and to try for an even mix of tasks so nobody feels left out. Also, PCs who get the same number of successes end up at a stalemate (Well, It Could Have Gone Worse) and nobody takes a hit to the Bullshit Meter. Conversation Starters is an adventure generation table. As the game only uses d6s, two six-sided die are rolled, one represent the tens digit and the other the ones digit. You still get 36 results from this, and range from the petty ("An army is laying over in town and taking all the beer! This can't stand!") to the more standard adventure scenarios ("An Elder God has tracked you down for revenge. Fucker is a killer at parties.") Dungeon Bastards ends with a sample character sheet, a picture of a drunkard getting hauled off as he says "Now Go and Play Already!" and a back-cover blurb. Final Thoughts: Dungeon Bastards is a short and easy to learn pick-me-up game with an interesting idea. It's cheap enough that price isn't much of a concern, either, and the spin on the "muderhobo" stereotype of adventurers is something many players are well-acquainted with that they can easily imagine the type of game it encourages. If you're interested it's for sale on Drive-Thru RPG and RPGNow for $2.50.
|
|
#
?
Sep 6, 2015 06:32
|
|
|
Lol, this sounds a bit like fantasy Saints Row.unseenlibrarian posted:I will lay odds this is because a lot of seventies fantasy fiction often tried to do a thing where they crossed real physics with magic so basilisks and medusas and other 'turn a dude to stone' stuff caused a burst of hard radiation because of a whole lot of carbon turning to silicon. Like this got used as an explanation for cursed troll-gold in a viking story; the troll got killed by being exposed to sunlight and turned to stone, his hoard was irradiated, oops. I blame early fanzines circulating the idea around. Actually, that radiation bit was just a comparison on my part, seeing how the effect was pretty similar (with the main difference being that basilisk radiation can create deserts). It's most likely pure magic stuff. Bear in mind that the creators of TDE couldn't bring themselves to include gunpowder into their setting that is definitely advanced enough for it. No way they're going to bring up something even more advanced. (Though there was once an adventure dealing with what was obviously aliens, but that one was quickly banned out of canon.)
|
|
#
?
Sep 6, 2015 08:28
|
|
|
D&D grogs've got nothing on TDE fans.
|
|
#
?
Sep 6, 2015 08:35
|
|
|
That's actually fairly close to the mythical basilisk. The thing was supposedly poisonous in the extreme, enough that its mere presence could create wastelands and kill rocks, even before getting to the lethality of its gaze.
|
|
#
?
Sep 6, 2015 08:50
|
|
|
The problem TDE had, has and always will have is the fact that it mainly advances plot by railroady adventure modules that are mostly written by people who don´t care or don´t know how the common adventuring player group works or why gaming should focus on them (Looking at Mondenkaiser, Jahr des Feuers/Borbarad,Phileasson). Whenever the player is allowed to partake, he is more like a tourist going through the steps and being allowed to sometimtes fight or be amazed at the events that happen in front of him. I could tell you stories. And I will. But over in Cat-Piss, when it´s time. The other problem is with the people writing it. You see, TDE is a game grown since it´s first incarnation to a beast of many heads and as such a pruning was in order, but they failed to even accomplish that because they didn´t dare to really change up anything important, which leads to 5th Edition being more closely to TDE 4.2 instead of a real new edition. But I was talking about the people writing about it. Well, first of all, many of the people writing for it, be it an adventuring module or something about fluff or rules, seem to do so within a dark chamber, unhindered by a greater authority or anyone telling them "this is stupid or doesn´t work in this game that way". Of course, in between you have the people who don´t care, leading to rules that simply don´t work or not once you start to combine them with another or modules where the players get to watch NPCs be amazingly stupid because the author is unable to think about any plot that in any way would be both intelligent and challenging. And beware not to make the players "heroes" as is stated on their character sheet. Oh no! After all, Hans-Franz, the local cobbler should be allowed to participate in the module just as well as MurderDeathKillMachine 9000. You can guess how well this works out...I have a fair amount of rant for this system within me and you need not worry, I will tell you all, as people in my gaming circle have tortured me with these gaming modules for years as it was the only game available in my town and it took me some years to fully learn the lesson of "no game is better than bad game". I like the way ZeeToo speaks about Age of Worms and since Doresh is already speaking about the rule books, would you be interested in walking through TDE modules the same way?
|
|
#
?
Sep 6, 2015 10:14
|
|
|
Bieeardo posted:That's actually fairly close to the mythical basilisk. The thing was supposedly poisonous in the extreme, enough that its mere presence could create wastelands and kill rocks, even before getting to the lethality of its gaze. Sounds pretty spot on. The TDE version is so deadly, it doesn't even fight when you attack it. It just looks you to death. Mr.Misfit posted:The problem TDE had, has and always will have is the fact that it mainly advances plot by railroady adventure modules that are mostly written by people who don´t care or don´t know how the common adventuring player group works or why gaming should focus on them (Looking at Mondenkaiser, Jahr des Feuers/Borbarad,Phileasson). Whenever the player is allowed to partake, he is more like a tourist going through the steps and being allowed to sometimtes fight or be amazed at the events that happen in front of him. I could tell you stories. And I will. But over in Cat-Piss, when it´s time. I think the only big story even where the heroes take center stage is that whole Borbarad (aka Not-Sauron) campaign. Then again, the final boss fight was heavily scripted in a way that A) all the PCs die (either during or after the fight) while trying to fend off Borbarad on different planes or existance (or something, it's confusing) and B) they can't lose because their spirits keep fighting on to whack Borbarad in the head with the legendary Sevenstroke (named so because it can kill anything with seven strikes or less). Can't have overpowered PCs that have been granted mythical abilities to run around messing with the overpowered NPCs. I have to compare release dates to be sure, but I think they borrowed the "dead heroes combine their strength with their lviing pals to one-shot the big bad" concept from Sailor Moon. quote:The other problem is with the people writing it. You see, TDE is a game grown since it´s first incarnation to a beast of many heads and as such a pruning was in order, but they failed to even accomplish that because they didn´t dare to really change up anything important, which leads to 5th Edition being more closely to TDE 4.2 instead of a real new edition. But I was talking about the people writing about it. Well, first of all, many of the people writing for it, be it an adventuring module or something about fluff or rules, seem to do so within a dark chamber, unhindered by a greater authority or anyone telling them "this is stupid or doesn´t work in this game that way". Of course, in between you have the people who don´t care, leading to rules that simply don´t work or not once you start to combine them with another or modules where the players get to watch NPCs be amazingly stupid because the author is unable to think about any plot that in any way would be both intelligent and challenging. And beware not to make the players "heroes" as is stated on their character sheet. Oh no! After all, Hans-Franz, the local cobbler should be allowed to participate in the module just as well as MurderDeathKillMachine 9000. You can guess how well this works out...I have a fair amount of rant for this system within me and you need not worry, I will tell you all, as people in my gaming circle have tortured me with these gaming modules for years as it was the only game available in my town and it took me some years to fully learn the lesson of "no game is better than bad game". The modules I've read seem to have a surprisingly high amount of combat considering that at least 2/3s of the careers available include stuff like carriage driver, juggler and bard (not the D&D version with spells and buffs, just a dude with an instrument). I know most of them are just there so that any NPC in the setting can be said to have been created the same ways as PCs, but that doesn't stop it from being a bit silly. quote:I like the way ZeeToo speaks about Age of Worms and since Doresh is already speaking about the rule books, would you be interested in walking through TDE modules the same way? Perhaps, but my collection is sadly not readily available, and I seem to have missed most of the real gems. Might've to buy some digital ones.
|
|
#
?
Sep 6, 2015 12:31
|
|
|
An error on my part, I meant if it would be ok if I walked through the TDE-modules, we don´t need to add to your burden with the modules as well, considering the amount of rules you have ahead of you 
|
|
#
?
Sep 6, 2015 13:06
|
|
|
Mr.Misfit posted:An error on my part, I meant if it would be ok if I walked through the TDE-modules, we don´t need to add to your burden with the modules as well, considering the amount of rules you have ahead of you I'd be really interested! I like campaign walk-throughs; I basically stole the format from the Cthulutech ones we had rather some time ago, for instance, and would be interested in more. Especially here, since I know gently caress-all about TDE but I'm curious how it differs in play.
|
|
#
?
Sep 6, 2015 16:37
|
|
|
Mr.Misfit posted:An error on my part, I meant if it would be ok if I walked through the TDE-modules, we don´t need to add to your burden with the modules as well, considering the amount of rules you have ahead of you We'll see if I have enough sanity left when I'm done XD The Dark Eye As some of these things might come up when describing the various character options, here are a little more informations about Aventuria I will probably go into more detail later. A little Aventuria crash course Since it will be Aventuria-only from now on, here's finally a glance at the map, right out of the 4.1 base book:  For a higher resolution and a first glance at the various realms, here's a political map:  And here's a streamlined summary of the political map I made just now:  Note that the map is a bit old. AFAIK, Hentailand and parts of Mordor don't exist anymore in the current metaplot Measurements Aventuria uses the metric system, renamed to sound more "historical". Meters are steps, kilometers are miles, kilograms are stones and tons are ashlars. Smaller measurements are usually come in multiples of 20 or 25 to make it less granular than the actual metric system. A stone for example equals 4 ounces. Time There are several kinds of calendars in Aventuria, but the most widely-used one has 12 months, each named after one of the twelve gods of the main pantheon. New Year's Eve is in Not-July (since that's the month of Praios, sun god and pantheon boss). As every month is exactly 30 days long, the last 5 days of each year (Aventurians don't believe in leap years) are called the Nameless Days (after the pantheon's big bad guy). Being born during these days gives you a pretty good chance of getting killed on the spot thanks to superstitions. There are also several ways in which the years are counted. The most important system is BF (for "Bosparan's Fall", in memory of the first empire founded by the settlers from Myranor), though the very young Hal count (named after the emperor who stopped the practice of changing the count with each new emperor) also sees plenty of use in official publications. Art I can't completely vouch for older editions (though the difference shouldn't bee too much to avoid grog outrage), but the art in TDE is generally very down to earth and historical. There's no ridiculous armor with ginormous pauldrons, hammers aren't anvils on a stick, and female adventurers don't really dress all that different from their male counterparts.  Maybe except for that swordwielding skirt lady over here. Character Creation This is where TDE changed the most. Earlier editions used a level-based race-as-class system (where one of the race classes was "not-viking") that increased Life Points by a random roll each level (which made high-level combat even slower) and where you don't just spend skill points to improve your skills directly, but rather gain several attempts to improve your skills, with different classes gaining more attempts in their preferred skill group. Stats were of course randomly rolled because why not. With 4th edition, TDE moved to a point-buy system where players pick a race, the culture you've grown up in, and one profession (aka the stuff you did before going adventuring), each step costing points based on how many goodies you gain from your race/culture/profession. This is actually a pretty neat addition to the race-and-class system - except TDE still has demihumans with several sub-races, instead of one race and several cultures. Improving a PC after character creation is done through the XP aka Adventure Points you gain. A character's level now only serves as a measurement for your overall experience and has no actual mechanics attached to it (though 4.0 made learning new skills more expensive the higher your level was as it became harder for you to learn new stuff). The main stats of TDE are Courage, Cleverness, Intuition, Charisma, Dexterity, Agility, Constitution and Physical Strength, with 10 being the human average and ranges generally being pretty D&D-ish. An additional pseudo-stat comes in the form of Social Status, which has an actual mechanic effect when trying to pass oneself off as someone from a lower/higher social status. Aside from Life Points, characters also have Stamina (which only really comes into play in unarmed combat or when the GM decides to use a couple optional rules that slow everything down even more) and Magic Resistence (a modifier to an enemy's mind control and polymorph spells). These derived attributes are around 50% stats and 50% modifiers based on your race, culture and profession. Spellcasters also have Astral Points as their mana pool, and Sanctified (aka TDE clerics) have Karma Points, whose starting value is solely based on how powerful the Sanctified's god is. The other derived attributes are purely for combat and include your initiatve and your base values for attack, parry and ranged combat. There also your Wound Threshold noting how hard it is to cause a wound (because this wouldn't be an overly crunchy game without your combat death spiral mechanic). For futher customization, you can buy yourself some Advantages, or you can get some additional points by getting Disadvantages. The latter happens significantly more often than the former, because the game is a bit stingy on starting CharGen points - especially in 4.0 when you had to buy up your Social Status from scratch, making already costly professions even more expensive (adding another 10 or so points to a 24+ point mage profession for example). 4.1 thankfully had every profession start at its minimum Social Status. But even in 4.1, you'll probably end up with tons of disadvantages because you want to spend the allowed maximum of 100 points (out of 110 starting points) on your stats, because not only do crappy stats really hurt you in the skill department, but no stat can ever be raised above 1.5x times its starting value, severally punishing you in the long run just because you didn't feel like playing as a money hungry sociopath with glass jaws who suffers from a severe case of claustrophobia and ADHD. Aside from Advantages and Disadvantages, there are also Special Proficiencies aka feats. Some of them are weaker version of Advantages because only Special Proficiencies can be gained after character creation. Once your CharGen points are spent, you calculate your starting Adventure Points to improve and gain skills (based on your Cleverness and Intuition, because giving everyone the same amount like with the CharGen points apparently made too much sense). Then you get some starting cash (based on your Social Status) to complement the stuff you gained from your profession and you're ready to go. Races & Cultures As humans are kind of in the majority in Aventuria, most of the races presented in TDE are humans, though a lot of them have the same stats, but different writeups because of their height, weight, hair and eye color. Middelrealmians The default European dudes who originally came from Myranor around 2,500 years ago and have since spread all over the continent. Their name is derived from the Middlerealm aka Garetia, your Holy Roman Empire analogue that is also the biggest country in Aventuria. Typical cultures include the Middlerealm itself (split into citiy and land folks, because its not like most cultures already come with several sub-cultures and variations), the very advanced Horasia (Not-France/Italy, with a more Spanish sub-region and a group of islands that is some kind of refuge for monsters from Greek mythology) and Fountland/Bornland (Not-Russia). If you like the Middle Ages more than the Renaissance, there are the realms of Andergast and Nostria. Both are poor and backwater countries that can't stand each other and frequently unleash their mighty armies. And by "mighty armies" I mean "peasants that have been rounded up to die for their lord". Tulamides The Arabic native humans of Aventuria. Their typical cultures are the Tulamidian City States aka Mhanadistan (Arabian Niiiiiiights~), Novadi (nomadic desert dudes based on the Tuareg) and South Aventuria, a region were slaves are cheap, money equals power (more than anywhere else), and gladiators fight to the death (gladiators in other parts of Aventuria are pretty much pro-wrestlers with swords). For more oldschool, savage Tulamides, there are the Ferkina living in various Tulamidian mountain ranges. The Novadi are probably the most unique Aventurian culture because they're monotheistic, worshipping a sleeping god called Rastullah. The rest of Aventuria is a bit confused about these fantasy Muslims, because nobody quite knows who this Rastullah is supposed to be in their own cosmology. The Tulamides of yore apparently got along pretty well with the first Middlerealmians, creating three vastly different cultures with a mixed heritage: Aranians (matriarchal Not-Persia/Turkey), Norbardians (Eastern Europe nomads that to my knowledge seem to avoid stereotypical gypsy traits) and Maraskani. Maraskani are pretty weird. They live on an island to the east, have traditional wood armor that looks suspiciously samurai-ish, and their two iconic swords are the Not-Katana and the Not-Nodachi. This might sound like some kind of Not-Japan without Asians (there are no Asian anaologues anywhere in Aventuria), but then you read on and find out that their iconic ranged weapon is a discus because their religion revolves around two god brothers throwing the world (which is disk-shaped according to their belief) to each other. And that their naming convention involves incorporation their entire biography into their name. It's like someone was too afraid of them being too original and just put some samurai stuff in there. Thorwalians Vikings. They are also immigrants from Myranor (which has its own brand of vikings) and are all-around viking-y. Unique traits include their iconic weapon, the Skraja (a double-headed axe with a long spike on top and a grip so short it makes me question the overall practically of the weapon) and their worship of Swafnir, a god whale that counts as a demigod despite being the son of two gods from the main pantheon (I guess each generation becomes weaker, like WoD vampires) and spends all day in an eternal duel with H'Ranga, the mother of all sea serpents. Because of their belief, it is generally not a wise idea to brag about being a whale hunter in their vicinity. Thorwalians - unlike the above two humans - actually cost CharGen points to pick because they gain bonuses to their physical stats. They also have a violent temper (which is a Disadvantage), and they are primary candidates for Blood Frenzy (another Disadvantage) for the whole going berserk shtick (which they themself call "Whale Wrath"). Because it's always fun to have the fighter in the party suddenly go apeshit and attack everyone within range. Closely related to Thorwalians are the Gjalskerlandians, a mix between Thorwalians and Norbardians - aka "Half-Arabic Eastern-European vikings". Except they're not vikings, but barbarians. They are also anti-Thorwalians because they hate the ocean and see Swafnir as the big bad of their savage religion. Another relative of the Thorwalians are the Fjarningers, a bunch of serious and angry Conan-like barbarians living in the cold north. Trolljaggers/-prongers/-toothers (I don't know the official English name for these guys) Barbarians on steroids who claim to have troll blood in them. They are always drawn in a very muscular, sinewy way that results in their entire body being covered in lines. Nivesi Not-Sami native Aventurians living in Not-Lapland. They're much more friendly than the Fjarningers, and their religion involves the worship of heavenly wolves. Forest People Native South Aventurians living in the jungle. Some are like native Americans, others are Not-Africans. They also invented the Aventurian equivalent to Kung-Fu. Dwarves TDE is probably the only game that actually penalizes dwarves for their short size. Sure, D&D reduces their movement, but at least they can use any medium-sized weapon just fine. TDE dwarves on the other hand have to craft weapons specifically for their tinier hands, which reduces the weapon's damage unless it is a polearm or a dwarven weapon (which already have the right size). Dwarven sub-races and cultures (seriously, why not just one dwarven race) are Anvil Dwarves (your typical dwarves who like to drink and fight), Ore Dwarves (serious, hard-working dwarves who shake their heads at their Anvil cousins), Brilliant Dwarves (artsy dwarves focusing on gem cutting and clockwork stuff) and Hill Dwarves (who despite their name are actually not-hobbits). Elves Your typical tree-hugging elves who originated from the same vaguely-defined world as fairies, giving them an ill-defined alien outlook on life that acts as a disadvantage making a lot of skills more expensive (which at least in 4.0 included skills elves are actually supposed to be good at). They can also speak with two voices at the same time, which is required to fully master their language. Elves are also the main reason TDE isn't quite low fantasy. See, in the race-of-class days of TDE, elves were a spellcaster class with additional bow and ranger skills. This carried over into 4th edition, making every elf a spellcaster no matter their actual profession. Artwork for elves is also a bit inconsistent. Sometimes they're drawn with elongated faces and non-black pupils. Other times they're just regular humans with pointy ears. Guess it depends on whether or not the artist wants to distinguish them from half-elves (which come shortly), though male elves tend to have a higher chance of being drawn more non-human. As with dwarves, we get ourself several sub-races: Meadow Elves (who live along rivers in northern Aventuria and have the most frequent contact with humans), Wood Elves (who live in one forest and generally want to be left alone), Firn Elves (Inuit elves living in the high north who also want to be left alone) and Veld Elves (nomadic elves who ride on horses and... that's about it). (There are also Night Elves, artificially created evil elves who live even higher up north and have appeared in like one adventure module or so. It's pretty unlikely to ever run into these guys, but at least they get more mileage on Myranor, were they are the dominant and probably only elf race.) Half-Elves Unsurprisingly, these guys usually have a Meadow Elf as the father or mother. Less squishy than normal elves, but not quite as tough as a human. When raised among elves, they gain full elven magic potential and the ability to talk with two voices. When raised under humans, they are usually trained to be a mage or other spellcaster, and they can pick those profession slightly cheaper because they are more magic-y. Picking a non-spellcaster profession turns the half-elf into a magic dilettante, a person whose untrained magic potential manifests into spell-like abilities. Orcs Also known as "blackpelts" because they're hairy instead of green-skinned, they live as nomads in the Orclands, a steppe surrounded by mountain ranges. They typically dress up in Mongol getup with more pelts. They also put lots of pelts on their iconic weapons, which includes a horseman's bow (for the whole Mongol shtick) and a scimitar with a wavy blade (which I assume is a way for them to brag about their weaponsmith know-how). Orcs are quite spiritual in that a tribe's chieftain is also considered to be the priest of their war god, ruling over the tribe with the shaman who acts as the priest of their death/magic god. They also have a proud warrior race guy shtick going on and would probably win the prize for being the biggest misogynists around. They see women as being barely above animals and don't even bother giving them names. Like with elves and dwarves, they have sub-races along with sub-cultures, but I can't be arsed to list them because I can't tell them apart. Just let it be known that some orcs are slightly more into trading than pillaging. Orcs found outside the Orcland have usually been banished from their tribe, or left behind after the big Waaaaaaagh! called the Orc Storm (the metaplot event that served as the backdrop for parts of the Realms of Arkania trilogy). They typically hang around with bandits. To the east of the Orcland is the Svellt Valley, a Middlerealmian region that has been annexed during the above Waaaaaaagh!. The orcs occupying the region have taken on some traits from the local population, making them more civilized. Playing as an orc isn't all that easy. Sure, they are tolerated in the north (usually), and they can live just fine in the south if they have enough money (nobody in South Aventuria cares who you are or what you do in your basement if you're rich enough), but wandering around in the middle of Aventuria gets you killed on sight. An odd hybrid race exists in the form of Holberkians, who are the offsprings of orcs and elves. They are not playable and use their magic abilities to be left alone. I suspect they appeared in like one adventure module, never to be seen again. They did appear in at least one Realms of Arkania game, though. Half-Orcs They exist in Aventuria, but are nowhere near as common as in D&D. The whole "getting killed on sight" thing is probably the main reason. Goblins Smaller and more numerous cousins of the orcs, who unlike orcs are highly matriarchal because births are a literal miracle to them. Living just about everywhere and oftentimes employing a bandit lifestyle, they are also killed on sight in most regions - except for one city in not-Russia were they have citizen status. Achaz Lizardmen who can be found in small numbers in almost every corner of Aventuria (except in regions that are too dry or cold for them), Achaz were originally the servant race of much more powerful dinosaurmen who ruled over Aventuria ages ago. Many Achaz have since regressed into a tribal structure, but some still live in the ruins of their former masters and have preserved some of their knowledge, allowing Achaz with magic potential to be trained in the art of Crystallomancy, a school of magic that uses various crystals and gems as catalyst for their spells (with the gem/crystal combination required depending on the spell) and is derived from the hilariously overpowered dragon magic. (Dragons in this setting have a relatively tiny pearl/gem inside their brain called a Carbuncle, which houses their essence and is such a potent catalyst that it replaces the need for other gems when using crystallomancy) Unlike typical D&D portrayals were lizardfolk are these brutish, monstrous humanoids, Achaz are actually very slender with very human proportions (aside from their tail and their head with its long snouth of course). Their iconic weapons include a polearm with a double-headed axe head (derived from a similar weapon used by frog-/dragonmen who still get a bestiary entry with statblocks and all despite being extinct for thousands of years) and a weird swiss army knife trident that doesn't look practical in the slightest and has an unpronouncable name (Achaz hate vowels). Achaz - whether they are tribal or not - have a certain Lovecraftian vibe to them, as their pantheon of dinosaur and lizard gods are these Eldritch beings that are better left undisturbed. The main job of their shamans/priests is to not draw the gods' attention, for they might just decide to destroy the world. Aside from being very picky when it comes to climate, Achaz have a very hard time in any culture. Most humans will think they're monsters, Thorwalians will most likely kill them on sight because they believe Achaz are the servants of H'Ranga (it probably doesn't help that H'Ranga is the general Achaz term for their Lovecraftian gods), and Dwarves will most likely kill them because they believe Achaz are the servants of dragons (dwarves and dragons don't get along at all). (There are couple other non-playable races, but I'll save them for the bestiary entry. I only made an exception with the Night Elves and Holberkians because they are closely tied to playable races). Next Time: Professions - or how to be a veteran prostitute. Or a warrior with a diploma in asskicking. Doresh fucked around with this message at 20:20 on Sep 6, 2015 |
|
#
?
Sep 6, 2015 18:44
|
|
|
Holberkians appear exactly once in one of early TDE adventure modules during what now is, in typical grog fashion, declared one of the classic campaigns of TDE, the ORCLAND-Trilogy, despite it´s many many....maaaaany failings (I should now, I played it and it sucked donkey balls) and in exactly one computer game, the third of the early TDE games Shadow over RIva where they played the role of the persecuted minority in the city that is blamed for all the ill happening. History!
|
|
#
?
Sep 6, 2015 19:46
|
|
|
.
|
|
#
?
Sep 6, 2015 20:12
|
|
|
Not gonna lie, that art is pretty good.
|
|
#
?
Sep 6, 2015 20:18
|
|
|
Kai Tave posted:Not gonna lie, that art is pretty good. Puffy sleeve fantasy germans are the best fantasy germans.
|
|
#
?
Sep 6, 2015 20:20
|
|
|
Kai Tave posted:Not gonna lie, that art is pretty good. I especially like the badass 4.0 boxed set covers (which I'll definitely track down to showcase in later posts). Some of the new 4.1 art in the base book is however a bit off in that it is drawn in a noticably different style than the 4.0 stuff. Nothing major though, just slightly more comic-y. (Except for the new bestiary cover. That thing blows.) Night10194 posted:Puffy sleeve fantasy germans are the best fantasy germans. Dude definitely has more style than the iconic 4th edition warrior:  I so hope this TDE movie will have a protagonist with the same majestic hair. Doresh fucked around with this message at 20:34 on Sep 6, 2015 |
|
#
?
Sep 6, 2015 20:32
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 16, 2024 09:59 |
|
|
Holy poo poo it's literally Guy Gardner with a sword.
|
|
#
?
Sep 6, 2015 21:10
|
|
