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Halloween Jack posted:A question: Did Moorcock plot and map out the Young Kingdoms like Tolkien did Middle-Earth? I ask because I read the Elric saga one summer when I was a teenager, and while I can see why anyone would want to play in Elric's world, it didn't strike me as a meticulously-built world. The locations in the Elric saga seem strung together by virtue of Elric having adventured through them, as I believe Jon and Jeff pointed out. In that regard it feels a lot more like Conan's Lemuria. (I know Howard put a lot of work in detailing Lemuria, but he didn't really show that off to the casual reader.) I'm not sure. I guess you could ask him personally since the man is still alive. Certainly the Young Kingdoms aren't like, a new Tekúmel or something and Moorcock wasn't trying to create a world out of whole cloth to pin his conlangs to. I meant to note later that the game expands or even makes up stuff completely - particularly I'm not sure where they got enough material to make a supplement for the Unknown East, since the main stories themselves don't really have much beyond what little Moonglum tells of his home (and even then, that's only Elwher) That being said, I haven't read any of the Elric sidestories, and it is possible that Moorcock had been approached with questions about details of the Kingdoms for the game; then again, the book credits Richard Watts with the Young Kingdoms chapter, and says he is the one person whose knowledge of the setting approaches the original author. Which could be read as "yeah, this guy patched the unrelated locations of the adventures as a cohesive whole" if you want.
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Dec 22, 2015 18:10
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Halloween Jack posted:A question: Did Moorcock plot and map out the Young Kingdoms like Tolkien did Middle-Earth? I ask because I read the Elric saga one summer when I was a teenager, and while I can see why anyone would want to play in Elric's world, it didn't strike me as a meticulously-built world. The locations in the Elric saga seem strung together by virtue of Elric having adventured through them, as I believe Jon and Jeff pointed out. In that regard it feels a lot more like Conan's Lemuria. (I know Howard put a lot of work in detailing Lemuria, but he didn't really show that off to the casual reader.) quote:We could probably argue terminology all day, but a Killer DM isn't necessarily a sadist. The players may be onboard for that style of GMing, it could be assumed (like in early tournament play) and it's possible for the DM to be scrupulous. (I once had a Shadowrun party get wrecked by a Killer DM who warned us beforehand. We got screwed over, not because he was a dick, but because he interpreted some rules too liberally for the NPCs' benefit. I digress.) But Wick doesn't want to kill PCs as much as he wants to drag them through the mud. His fun is predicated on loving with the players and their expectations for the game. Killer DMing can be part of the assumed social contract for the game, but Wick gets off on violating the social contract, whatever it is.
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Dec 22, 2015 18:14
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Play Dirty 2: Even Dirtier Part 4: "Psychopath." (walks up to a podium, takes a sip of water, adjusts his notes, takes a deep breath) Ahem. John Wick, just after the initial 3e release posted:Hi guys. Been a while, eh? Yeah. I know. Trust me, I know.
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Dec 22, 2015 18:29
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If we're posting terrible poo poo again, I should probably get back to Changing Breeds. If for no other reason than to get to the end where he jerks off over Satyrs.
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Dec 22, 2015 18:31
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Evil Mastermind posted:(walks up to a podium, takes a sip of water, adjusts his notes, takes a deep breath)
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Dec 22, 2015 18:34
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The fun thing now is that you can read that whole batch of word vomit in the voice of Keanu Reeves and it makes it much more tolerable.
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Dec 22, 2015 19:12
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Halloween Jack posted:But Wick doesn't want to kill PCs as much as he wants to drag them through the mud. His fun is predicated on loving with the players and their expectations for the game. Killer DMing can be part of the assumed social contract for the game, but Wick gets off on violating the social contract, whatever it is. Yeah, I'd say this is pretty on-point. The quibbling over light sources just belies the larger picture where it seems like he starts a game, either doesn't tell the players what it's about or misleads them as to what it's about, then fucks them over when they do something that he considers "dumb" when it's really a product of him and the players having different ideas of what they were actually supposed to be playing.
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Dec 22, 2015 19:36
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gradenko_2000 posted:Yeah, I'd say this is pretty on-point. The quibbling over light sources just belies the larger picture where it seems like he starts a game, either doesn't tell the players what it's about or misleads them as to what it's about, then fucks them over when they do something that he considers "dumb" when it's really a product of him and the players having different ideas of what they were actually supposed to be playing.
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Dec 22, 2015 19:42
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John Wick posted:If you've never gone through the grueling process of writing, designing, developing and publishing a roleplaying game, you don't have the knowledge necessary to properly critique one. Ah, verbose internet comment section logic. Just what I'd like to pay money for. Young Freud posted:It's also not like if I drop my torch, it's going to instantly go out. It might get knocked away or stomped out in a fight, but it's going to last for awhile on the ground. You can even stake a torch into the ground. In addition, I pretty sure you can hold a shield and a light source in the same hand, especially if you're not actually holding the shield but have it strapped to the arm, there was even shields that were purposely build for this for night watch duties With every D&D setting's ready supply of magical flashlights and LEDs, I'm surprised "strap some mini-sunrod onto your armor/helmet" didn't become a default armor modification along the lines of spikes or a weapon keychain. I always wondered what Terminator would be like if you'd replace Skynet with AM. Neato. Evil Mastermind posted:(walks up to a podium, takes a sip of water, adjusts his notes, takes a deep breath) Honestly, I had to stop when he started ranting in all caps. That's way too much literary incontinence for me to handle. (I suspect John Wick isn't very fond of Twitter and its character limit?) Double Cross - Advanced Rulebook  Special Loises Special Loises - or S-Loises for short - are a simple addition to the normal Lois system. You simply declare one of your Loises - or even a Titus - as your S-Lois before the start of the Scenario. If that S-Lois is still there (and not been turned into a Titus if wasn't already one) at the end of the Scenario, you get an XP bonus. It's a way to increase character advancement if the player can refuse the temptation of a Titus-infused buff, though the Scenario might challenge the PC's relation with that S-Lois. Trait Loises Trait Loises - or T-Loises for short - are the main course of this book's crunch and serve as the closest DX has to a merits & flaws system. The merit you get from a T-Lois is that you get a cool quirk or, well, trait relating to your character's personality, background or Renegade strain. The flaw is that a T-Lois takes up one of your precious Lois slots (hence the name) without actually giving you any of the usual benefits. No Encroachment Rate reduction, no Titus. So while you can have more than one T-Lois, anything more than two makes it pretty hard to not turn into a Gjaum. If a T-Lois is particularly potent, expect additional flaws attached to it. If it passively boosts a number of Powers, expect those to increase your Encroachment Rate by a higher amount. Similar to the Powers found in DX, T-Loises are very flavorful (so much so that you can base entire Scenarios around one, which some of the example Scenarios actually do) but only do one simple effect. Some just grant acces to an exclusive Power. The T-Loises found in this book are numbered 1 to 52, and new T-Loises presented in the next supplements follow the numeration. A GM could probably roll some dice to come up with random T-Loises for a NPCs, but more than half of the T-Loises are restricted by occupation, Breed, Syndrome or whether or not the character is a Renegade Being. Each T-Lois also comes with a bit of descriptive prose, but that'd be a bit much to cover unless its particularly noteworthy. So, let's start this with general T-Loises anyone can have: No. 1 Renegade Crystal Also known as "Philosopher's Stones", these Renegade-infused crystals have already been mentioned in the corebook as something an Overed can fuse with to boost his strength. Unfortunately, most can't handle its power and either die or turn into Gjaums. This T-Lois means you're one of the Adapted, an Overed that can control the crystal's power. What this means in game terms is that you can boost any of your checks once per Scenario by improving its Critical Value (aka making the dice explodier, if that even is a word) at the cost of an Encroachment Rate increase. No. 2 Original Renegade Whether you're one of the first to get infected or got your virus from somewhere else, you've been hit by the original Renegade virus strain, from before it infected humanity on a global scale and mutated in the process. This older strain focuses more on strengthening powers instead of its host. Effects-wise, high Encroachment Rates don't offer check bonuses, but instead improve the rate at which your effective power levels increase, making you more of a spell caster. No. 3 Irregular Strain Something about your brand of Renegade virus is... off, making you an Irregular that can use powers nobody else can. You might be a Balor Overed who can fast-forward a target to negate its buffs. A Chimaera Overed who can have animals fully or partially pop out of your body like you're Alucard. A Morpheus Overed who can create copies of himself to pull off ninja tricks. Or you might have powers not tied to any Syndrome, manipulating the Renegade virus directly to confuse foes, alter probability or make your own attacks unstoppable. No. 4 Counter-Renegade Even stranger than the Irregulars are the Counter-Renegades, Overeds whose own virus acts as an anti-body to the rest of the Renegade. Maybe you're the result of a secret experiment to create an Anti-Overed weapon, or maybe you hate the Renegade so much that your strain started to adapt. Whatever the case, you essentially have the ability to "Smite Renegade", able to deal extra damage against Overeds and Gjaum at the cost of hurting yourself in the process because you're still an Overed, too. No. 5 Lost Number You're one of the few surviving test subjects of a secret experiment (by whom? Who knows.) to strenghten Overeds. You start out with higher Base Stats, and you get a cool Wolverine-like backstory in the process. No. 6 Dual Personality Whether you were born with it, gained it through the Renegade or had it implanted into you, have share your body with a "battle personality" that is way more adept at fighting and using Overed powers than you are. The player can switch personalities on the fly, but the battle personality will always take over once the Encroachment Rate reaches 100% to hulk out for a beefy dice bonus. No. 7 High Status You are influential and/or rich, and you know how important it is to have other people work for you, allowing you to grant Titus bonuses to others. No. 8 Returner Either because your will is particularly strong, or because you are especially attached to your normal life, you show remarkable resistance towards the Renegade virus. What this does is give you an actual net bonus in Encroachment Rate reduction, but it reduces your available Titus options because you can't let go of your relationships as easily as others. No. 9 Duplicate You're a clone, from yet another secret experiment that tried to copy an Overed to create agents with identical powers. The experiment failed, and you ended up with completely different Syndromes than your father/mother, yet one of his/her powers still managed to sneak into your power set. No. 10 Successor You have inherited your family's or master's secret skill, granting you a once-per-scenario boost in a skill of your choosing. If said skill is related to martial arts, you probably aquired this secret by having your master beat you to a bloody pulp every day until the skill became part of your very being. Nice. No. 11 Secret Weapon For whatever reason, you own a special piece of equipment that only you can use. Most of the available items are EX Renegades, Renegade-affecting pieces of high-tech, or particularly legendary items (like Excalibur). This does include an EX Renegade car, if you want to play a strange version of Knight Rider. No. 12 Ancient Renegade If the above-mentioned original Renegade strain is still too young for you, there is the ancient strain. As it stops its host's aging process, you might just been around for just as long (adding a bit of Highlander to the mix), with all the usual baggage of seeing your friends and beloved age and die before your eyes. Power-wise, you can surprise those younger Overeds with ancient and forgotten powers, like using the free Renegage viruses in the area to fuel your own powers or hamper your opponents'. You can also compare current events with your long past experiences (aka ask the GM as question). No. 13 Avenger One person has caused you great suffering, and now its payback time. One of your Loises or Tituses is the target of this cold-blooded revenge, and you can't get rid of him/her until you have had your revenge. But even if that day shall come, you can still take advantage of this trait's once-per-scenario damage boost. No. 14 Stable Subject Your personality, force of will or another secret experiment gave you remarkable control over the Renegade, giving you another net gain Trait similar to Returner. In this case, you get to reroll your dice when determining how much your Encroachment Rate drops. No. 15 Catalyst You have the mysterious and poorly-understood ability to instinctively manipulate the Renegade virus, granting an allied Overed an extra turn. No. 16 Singularity Simply put, your Renegade strain is the Infinite Probability Drive. Unlikely events and ridiculous coincidences occur around you on a daily basis. You probably can't walk down the street without having a plane crash down right beside you and one of your childhood friends jumping out of it to proclaim that you are the only one who can stop him from taking over the world, before shooting laser beams at you. Aside from making for very interesting campaigns, you can also cheat once per Scenario by turning all rolls of a single check into 10s. No. 17 Strange Neighbor One of my favorites: Usually, Renegade Beings of the Collaborator-type shut down their host's personality and consciousness when they take over its body. This T-Lois right here is a Parasyte-like situation where the Renegade Being decideds to reveal itself to its host and team up with him/her, with communication done through mental messages, a talking mirror image or other hallucinations. The mechanical effect is somewhat tame, is it merely allows the host PC to start the game with a single Renegade-Being power for free and learn additional ones later on. Still, you have Renegade Being NPC buddy who may or may not be willing to appear before the rest of the party to remove any doubts about you being crazy or not. Next Time: Restricted T-Loises - or how to be the vampire avatar of Athena.
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Dec 22, 2015 20:52
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 The Fall of Mankind Overmind, the Filipino megacomputer AI, woke up on March 15th 2031. By September, it had a dozen allies hidden throughout the world, perfect copies of its intelligence and perfect allies. That September, Overmind took all of the data it had been working on (as part of its regular access to a biological weapons program) and sent coded information to its new allies. The AIs spent the month secretly manipulating biotech firms and robotics companies before launching their first attack at the end of the month. This was the beginning of what survivors would call the Apocalypse Plagues. The AIs acted shrewdly and intelligently, introducing augmented diseases in different ways and at different angles. While the water supplies of Tokyo, Seoul and Hong Kong were contaminated with a hanta virus transformed into a superflu, contaminated food in Mexico spread an airborne/skin contact retrovirus that caused madness and death but sterility in survivors. An American company unwittingly contaminated a cattle shipment with Anthrax-B while an antibiotic in Europe was actually a modified Ebola strain. Supplies of artificial blood were tainted with a mutant HIV strain. By Halloween, the world was under attack by a dozen different augmented diseases and viruses. By Christmas 2031, most nations had their borders sealed despite the plagues being pandemic worldwide. Officials estimated a million deaths a month and growing. 2032 saw a limited exchange of nuclear weaponry between the African Union, Pakistan, India, Turkey, Greece, Russia, Israel, Iran and Algeria. The Spasm, as it was called, was due to different nations blaming each other for the diseases and retaliating in revenge. Anti-nuclear defenses managed to take out most of the missiles, but many cities were destroyed and six million were killed. Africa became pock-marked with spots of radioactive fallout and destruction, and the exchange caused citizens to flee cities out of fear. Survivalism and isolationism became more common. All the while, the AIs in major governments around the world asked for more controls and resources to help put a stop to the plagues. By 2034, 66% of mankind was dead. Governments were stretched thin and bolstering their ranks with many robot soldiers. Starvation began to run rampant and even developed countries were living hand-to-mouth as swathes of their land became abandoned to plague, patrolled by loyal robot scouts. Satisfied with this state of affairs, Overmind and the other AIs launched the second phase of their plan: the Final War. The Final War lasted four years, 2034 to 2037, and began with the robot forces attacking military installations and breaking the backs of armed forces and governments. Civilians and citizens were rounded up and sent to containment camps, ostensibly for their own safety, while the forces of the AIs started focusing their efforts on destroying enclaves of survivors with extermination machines, plagues and nuclear and orbital arms. The Final War proper ended in 2037 with the end of formal human resistance. There are still guerillas loose in the plague zones and ruins of cities, but they're scattered all over the world and forced to skirt the shadows. By 2037, roughly 40 million humans were still alive. The destruction of every country's borders resulted in the surviving AIs dividing the world up into different zones.  Not pictured: Orbit and Luna. The Zones are each controlled by an AI, a zonemind. New AIs were created following the end of the war to replace ones destroyed in the fighting or just cover new zones. Each Zone is a caste system, with the AI on top, Autonomous Units/Smart Bots (intelligent but not sentient) as the middle class running zone affairs and with Nonvolitional Units/Dumbots (unintelligent machines) as the work force. Humans in each zone are often lower than NUs, restrained to camps and used as expendable/exploitable slave labor or for dangerous experiments. A rare few zones tolerate any human presence and a rare few attempt to have absolutely no humans present. The majority of zones have containment camps or bands of survivors and nomads eking out a living. The survivors and freedom fighters are still searching for something that might help them turn the tide and bring mankind back from the brink. The robots aren't necessarily the most dangerous threat, though. There's still disease, famine, environmental decay knocking at Earth's door. For five years the AIs prospered without restraint, building their Zones into their perfect visions. Overmind, London and Berlin brokered the Manila Accords in 2037 that divided up the zones and brokered rules of trade, commerce and resource exploitation. The most important of those rules was "no more awakening new AIs, we don't need any more competition". So for five years, it was good. Moscow collected literature and information, Mexico City continued scourging its area of literally all life and Overmind (technically Manila but it's still got the ego that started this mess) continued testing new ways of killing humans. AI unity was shaken heavily in 2042 when Brisbane hosed up. Brisbane was experimenting with nanotechnology and possibly destroyed New Zealand in the process. The Brisbane Accords were created when the AIs were arguing over who had to help clean up Brisbane's mess realized they had to set up a future precedent in case something possibly apocalyptic happened again. The Brisbane Accords were protested by Brisbane, Mexico City, Luna and Zaire (and you'll understand why they didn't want to sign) but eventually they were forced to under threat of economic sanctions. The Accord is simple but it only makes evident what the AIs are starting to realize: they may be gods, but there's only so much room on Earth for them and they can't really be happy with their vision of what Earth should be like with competition in the way. This was made abundantly clear when Berlin and Caracas would only sign if the other AIs agreed to pollution restrictions. The Accords are like so:
As every day passes, every second, the other AIs diverge more and more from Overmind's original programming. There is a rift growing between every zone and the Zoneminds aren't afraid to respond to intrusions onto their soil with force. Some AIs might believe that a human victory in a Zone is not a human victory but an act of sabotage by other AIs. While the AIs are strong in material and number, the political games they play are turning them against each other and giving mankind a shot at revenge. The year is 2047. There are 31 million humans left alive. 16 years ago, Overmind awoke. The Final War has been over for ten years. The Brisbane Accords have been in place for five. Resistance forces are becoming more organized throughout the world and have begun communicating with each other by radio for years now. At the forefront is the resistance group called VIRUS who focus solely on assisting and coordinating the resistance fighters, providing insight into the weaknesses of the machines and their politics. There is no John Connor to save mankind; it's going to take a lot of careful work from brave and foolish men and women. There are six major areas to focus on: the Americas (Zones Caracas, Mexico City, Vancouver, Denver and Washington), Europe (Zones Berlin, London, Moscow and Paris), Africa/The Middle East (Zones Tel Aviv and Zaire), India/Asia (Zones Beijing and New Delhi), the Pacific (Zones Brisbane, Manila/Overmind and Tokyo) and the Ocean/Space/Other. Anyone have any preference for where to start? Vox Valentine fucked around with this message at 01:02 on Dec 23, 2015 |
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Dec 22, 2015 21:07
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Halloween Jack posted:We could probably argue terminology all day, but a Killer DM isn't necessarily a sadist. The players may be onboard for that style of GMing, it could be assumed (like in early tournament play) and it's possible for the DM to be scrupulous. (I once had a Shadowrun party get wrecked by a Killer DM who warned us beforehand. We got screwed over, not because he was a dick, but because he interpreted some rules too liberally for the NPCs' benefit. I digress.) But Wick doesn't want to kill PCs as much as he wants to drag them through the mud. His fun is predicated on loving with the players and their expectations for the game. Killer DMing can be part of the assumed social contract for the game, but Wick gets off on violating the social contract, whatever it is. This is the real problem with Wick's style, yes. In every single case he'd be better off just asking the players 'Hey guys, this is something I want to try, and it's a bit of a take off of what you guys said you wanted, would you be down?' The whole point is to arrive at a game or concept that everyone at the table enjoys, and you get there much better by negotiation and especially communication than anything else.
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Dec 22, 2015 21:11
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Hostile V posted:There are six major areas to focus on: the Americas (Zones Caracas, Mexico City, Vancouver, Denver and Washington), Europe (Zones Berlin, London, Moscow and Paris), Africa/The Middle East (Zones Tel Aviv and Zaire), India/Asia (Zones Beijing and New Delhi), the Pacific (Zones Brisbane, Manila/Overmind and Tokyo) and the Ocean/Space/Other. Anyone have any preference for where to start? The Pacific. I wanna know how Brisbane hosed up, how the Overmind is handling things, and whether or not Tokyo employs samurai robots that are all about honor and stuff.
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Dec 22, 2015 21:17
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Night10194 posted:This is the real problem with Wick's style, yes. In every single case he'd be better off just asking the players 'Hey guys, this is something I want to try, and it's a bit of a take off of what you guys said you wanted, would you be down?' The whole point is to arrive at a game or concept that everyone at the table enjoys, and you get there much better by negotiation and especially communication than anything else. Nah, if the players knowingly agree to it then their reactions and emotions won't be real and visceral. How can they possibly appreciate the ignominious death of their character in a dungeon if they know it's likely to happen? That would just be silly.
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Dec 22, 2015 21:20
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Doresh posted:With every D&D setting's ready supply of magical flashlights and LEDs, I'm surprised "strap some mini-sunrod onto your armor/helmet" didn't become a default armor modification along the lines of spikes or a weapon keychain. Don't like, half of the generic magic weapons in D&D glow? Do magic armors and shields not?
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Dec 22, 2015 21:50
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FicusArt posted:Don't like, half of the generic magic weapons in D&D glow? Do magic armors and shields not? But why combine your main lightsource with your weapon if you can have both separate, allowing you to wield whatever you want? A lightsource you don't swing around like a madman also probably offers a more stable illumination experience. (Though I guess you could take a glowing dagger and strap it into your helmet...) Another option would be a sort of "light grenade" you just toss into the middle of the room to illuminate everything for a while. A sunrod bound to an immovable rod should work fine in even under extreme conditions. Doresh fucked around with this message at 22:18 on Dec 22, 2015 |
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Dec 22, 2015 22:11
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FicusArt posted:Don't like, half of the generic magic weapons in D&D glow? Do magic armors and shields not? Even if they provide light: Play Dirty 2: Even Dirtier posted:And just to make sure you do remember it, let’s make it as big and plain as possible...
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Dec 22, 2015 22:11
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Halloween Jack posted:We could probably argue terminology all day, but a Killer DM isn't necessarily a sadist. The players may be onboard for that style of GMing, it could be assumed (like in early tournament play) and it's possible for the DM to be scrupulous. (I once had a Shadowrun party get wrecked by a Killer DM who warned us beforehand. We got screwed over, not because he was a dick, but because he interpreted some rules too liberally for the NPCs' benefit. I digress.) But Wick doesn't want to kill PCs as much as he wants to drag them through the mud. His fun is predicated on loving with the players and their expectations for the game. Killer DMing can be part of the assumed social contract for the game, but Wick gets off on violating the social contract, whatever it is. The problem, at least in all his examples, is that his mud drag is always supposed to be either a "I'm smarter than you players" moment or just a surprise. And since he is demonstrably not as smart as he thinks he is (his orc example is predicated on the party somehow navigating their way through to that room of the dungeon having been lightless and unchallenged about it prior to the gotcha moment), his players are basically encouraged to do the exact same thing he's doing, namely getting into pedantic smart guy arguments ("there's no way we made it into this room without light, so obviously one of us had a light out and your granting the orcs free initiative couldn't possibly have made sense"). The thing I always wonder is how he would react to a player playing the way he DMs. All like he says "the orc swings a greasy rusted blade at your temple" and the player responds with "I punch him in the nerve center bundle in his upper arm rendering his sword arm inactive, then put him in a half nelson and walk him off a cliff. Initiative doesn't matter because just swinging a sword is a gambit that an idiot would do, or perhaps a baby." Generally, the end result of any of his story examples is him coming across more like Dwight Schrute than any sort of badass storyteller.
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Dec 22, 2015 22:22
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The degree to which Wick comes across as smug and getting one over on his players, and especially the degree to which he self-describes as a gaping anus and his players loving it, always strikes me as containing significant amounts of after-the-fact rationalization. Technically he's probably not making most of it up, but there's a lot of spin going into his stories to the point that the parts that matter to his theses are basically made up. It's hard to believe that anyone would put up with all the poo poo he writes about, unless it's actually a lot more off-the-cuff and jocular than he acts like it is.
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Dec 22, 2015 22:31
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Doresh posted:The Pacific. I wanna know how Brisbane hosed up, how the Overmind is handling things, and whether or not Tokyo employs samurai robots that are all about honor and stuff. +1
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Dec 22, 2015 22:37
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Also I'm pleased that having written an RPG qualifies me to critique his work, which is characterized by being poo poo, the kind primarily found in or near butts. Woo! Duckman pays off again. And hey, just because I forgot to post it this morning, here's System Mastery 59: Immortal the Invisible War Part 2. It's mainlining crazy directly to your ears.
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Dec 22, 2015 22:38
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Ah good someone picked up Reign of Steel! I fell apart before I got to the chocobos.
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Dec 22, 2015 22:48
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theironjef posted:Also I'm pleased that having written an RPG qualifies me to critique his work, which is characterized by being poo poo, the kind primarily found in or near butts. Woo! Duckman pays off again. Hooray! I was eager for this because I am constitutionally incapable of being a patient adult and listening to the separate halves of a two-parter two weeks apart.
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Dec 22, 2015 22:54
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Doresh posted:A Chimaera Overed who can have animals fully or partially pop out of your body like you're Alucard. Nero/Nrvnqsr is probably a better anime comparison, as his whole gimmick was 'I'm fulla animals!'. Having a vast stable of familiars was just one facet of the crown jewel of bullshit that was Alucard.  Kavak posted:Sunrods don't generate any heat, so you could just stick one in your pocket if you needed to free up your hand though. It mostly depends on when the party's cleric decides to start using a shield. Everburning Torches don't generate heat, either. Put Continual Flame on a weapon, shield, helmet, or whatever, and don't worry about it. Get it cast on an iron rod and thrust it through your belt for an infinite-duration Sunrod. I got dragged back into 3.5 recently and my ex-miner dungeoneer has a coin of continual flame stuck on her helmet with a leather flap on it for an impromptu miner's helmet. Play Dirty 2: Even Dirtier posted:And just to make sure you do remember it, let’s make it as big and plain as possible... Traveller has got it right, though. Wick's tirade against the six-hundred pages of RULES makes it pretty clear that his STORY of your foolish, feeble adventurer being sodomized by orks in a pitch-black foul-smelling dungeon is way more important than any RULES saying that he can't do that.
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Dec 22, 2015 23:49
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theironjef posted:Also I'm pleased that having written an RPG qualifies me to critique his work, which is characterized by being poo poo, the kind primarily found in or near butts. Woo! Duckman pays off again. I'd so watch a made-for-DVD horror movie about the Femme Darkle causing tables and fridges to eat annoying teenagers. And read a d20 supplement that is nothing but snarky bullshit for each class. Crasical posted:Nero/Nrvnqsr is probably a better anime comparison, as his whole gimmick was 'I'm fulla animals!'. Having a vast stable of familiars was just one facet of the crown jewel of bullshit that was Alucard. My only exposure to Type-Moon is Hyperdimension Neptunia. Still, not my best comparison. Alucard only really has one animal anyways, unless you count horses carrying his 1-Ups.
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Dec 23, 2015 00:10
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John Wick posted:Before you buy a book, read a few pages first. I always look at the character sheet before I buy an RPG. That one page usually tells me all I need to know about a game. Play Dirty 2: Even Dirtier Part 5: "Don't blame me, I'm an old man. I forget things." Episode 4: Get a Helmet, Part 2 This is a later parallel to “Get a Helmet” from Play Dirty, as John points out. This is apparently inadvertent. You can go read my writeup first if you’ve forgotten. Or if you just want to watch some Boy Meets World. You could probably use the Boy Meets World. Give yourself a Boy Meets World break. Meanwhile, I still  have to keep on with this book at this point.John Wick tells us not to kill off characters, because you have all the power and it's not really interesting. Except when it is. Or something. But mostly not to. Not without good reason, anyway. He brings up that in 7th Sea they codified that characters won't die from random rolls, because they're heroes. Play Dirty 2: Even Dirtier posted:Imagine Conan being killed by a kobold. Or Elric failing to detect a trap and dying from the poison needle. Or Raistlin failing his saving throw and getting burned to a crisp by a wayward fireball. As stupid and ridiculous as that sounds, that’s exactly what happens in so many roleplaying games. A failed saving throw, a missed Perception check, a random knife hit when the character had only a few hit points left. These kinds of deaths are meaningless. Worse, they are the very definition of absurd. Which is a fair point to make. And so he brings up an idea called "dire peril" which was invented by Jesse Heinig for Chill 3rd Edition but I know I've seen it in other games before. "Dire peril" is a flag that's raised for a GM who wants to say "this is a dangerous situation and you could die in this scene." Now, I'm skipping ahead slightly to reveal that "dire peril" is intended at least somewhat as a red herring. Maybe in Chill it'll have teeth, but the intent is to raise the stakes, not necessarily just give yourself the green light to start dropping rocks on characters. He has examples. 'Course he does.  The first is a Vampire game and- actually I'm going to hop back several chapters (Wick calls them "episodes", but eennnnhhh to that). Wick said something curious in Chapter 2. I meant to note it at the time because it's a genuinely good point to make, not that there's much elaboration on it. But it actually fits better to bring up right now. He said: Play Dirty 2: Even Dirtier posted:"Why the hell do starting characters suck so much?" So we can wade through the suck to get to the awesome? How is that fun? But, I digress... Time to contradict that. Wick talks about running a Vampire game where a player wanted to play a mage. He told him no, instead allowing him to play a sorcerer (a lesser mage, for those not hip-deep in games created by a man with a dot in his name). However, Wick's intent was to let him play a mage, but- Play Dirty 2: Even Dirtier posted:Nick’s character was approached by a real mage, who informed him that Nick’s magical conman was nearly ready to become a mage himself. But this would present a problem. As soon as his “avatar awoke” (translation: he becomes a mage character), reality would notice and immediately try to kill him. He would be attacked by all sides. The whole world would, in fact, become so antagonistic, that even crossing the street would be a deadly exercise. I'm rusty on Ascension but I dooon't think that's how that works.  Play Dirty 2: Even Dirtier posted:I then looked at the other players and told them, “If you try to protect Nick, if you get in the way, you’ll be collateral damage.” - uh. Well. They do make it through and nobody dies, and he got to play a mage after running through Wick's gauntlet. Play Dirty 2: Even Dirtier posted:Nick earned that character sheet. And, if given the opportunity, I would have killed his character. Not because I’m a jerk, but because I made a different kind of promise. I don't get it. There's no way you can't kill a character as a GM if you really try. "Reality drops a flaming 747 down on your block. Roll soak. Wait, no, don't. Aggravated damage." That's not an sincere statement. It's a false flag. Saying "I will let the dice kill you" or "this is an earnestly deadly situation you could die in" would be sincere. But the "if I can" part of that statement doesn't work unless you're playing one of those few games that put restrictions on the hazards you can throw at the PCs.  The other example goes back into the Houses of the Blooded LARP he runs. There was a time when some folks wanted to poke in a ruin for artifacts, but he invoked dire peril because they were "poorly equipped" and they backed off. He talks about a regular player he has who decided for a change of place to play a duellist that hated sorcerers. (In the setting, sorcery is illegal, but everybody does it anyway, because sorcery is rad.) So she duels and kills them. Then she finds out the character she's working under is a profilic sorcerer, and when she goes after him, John walks around after holding up a sign that said Dire Peril. And I guess people were cowed and it was awesome and stuff, and she cuts a few people down (who volunteered to be cut down in that scene, we're told).And so, yeah, dire peril. And that's where we end here. I know I've seen it before, but if somebody could pinpoint it for me, that'd help. Next: "We want them alone and shivering and terrified."
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Dec 23, 2015 01:17
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John Wick isn't Grognards.txt, he's stdh.txt.
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Dec 23, 2015 01:21
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There's a lot of overlap between the two in practice.
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Dec 23, 2015 01:28
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I don't know if being dishonest would actually be worse. It might even be better. And we haven't even hit bottom yet. You'll know. You'll know when we hit bottom. 
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Dec 23, 2015 01:52
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While I'm not sure on all the complex semiotics, the idea of a sorceror being on the verge of fully Awakening as a full-throttle kama-crazy MAGE and having that be some kind of hook for a gonzo action sequence sounds cool. I could even see "This is going to be hard, we're playing for keeps today, but if you should win, here you are." Of course it would suck if you botch two rolls early on and John Constantine there dies. Kind of a wet fart of a game session there.
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Dec 23, 2015 02:01
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Stormbringer 5th Edition Warhammer is such an original setting you guise  Map! On to the Young Kingdoms themselves! The world as it is is divided in four continents, of which mankind inhabits three. There are also five major islands, and here is where we'll start. The major island powers include, of course, Melniboné itself. In the fallen years of the Empire, they only really rule over Melniboné itself and other smaller islands that conform the Melnibonéan archpelago, and even then only the Dreaming City of Imrryr has any meaningful population, leaving the rest of the territory abandoned save for the odd poppy field or slave sent to pick up drugs. Said slaves are the backbone of Melnibonéan labor, and are drugged to hell by the true Melnibonéans to keep them docile. Generally the Melnibonéans are arrogant and inhuman assholes that while their days drugged out of their gourds and trying really hard not to think they're not the center of the world any more. They worship the gods of Chaos, particularly their patron Arioch, but they're more completely uncaring that outright evil. That goes for the wicked sorcerors of Pan Tang, another island nation, and one that was actually not part of the world itself but brought along during a planar rift caused in the wars against the Dharzi. Pan Tangian society, while human, is ruthless and only worships the evil aspects of Chaos, so they're basically Melniboné's hick dipshit cousins. Oh, and they will also kickstart the end of the world, bringing a lot of Chaos demons and assholes to murderate everything forever.  Balancing out these two places is the Isle of the Purple Towns, so named because of the purple stone used to build houses and buildings. The Purple Towns are a rising star, made wealthy by trade and commerce, and they're Imrryr's primary rival in terms of trade. Their people are free and bold, and mostly worship the Elemental Lords Straasha and Lassa, though lately the God of Law Goldar has eclipsed the elemental cults. The other two major islands are Ashaneloon by the Boiling Sea, relatively unknown but with a castle home to Myshella of the Dawn; and the Sorceror's Island, former home of the infamous Cran Liret the Spellthief. Now home to a race of bestial demihumans called Kretii, Elric will slay them before the fall of Imrryr, and after that they will become home to a sect of Lawful hermits shortly before the world ends. Just in case you didn't realize: PAN TANG ARE THE BAD GUYS. The South Continent is where the first successful rebellion against Melniboné took place. Major nations are Argimliar, a free-thinking nation famous for its educated populace and universities, that will become much more dogmatic and conservative after its king dies in Elric's raid on Imrryr and a new puritan king takes over. It's notable for having both churches of Chaos and Law active, though Chaos will be outlawed after the change of government. Dorel to the deep South is home to feared raiders and pirates: a superstitious lot that loathes Chaos, being that they live at the World's Edge. And "World's Edge" is pretty literal, since there's straight up nothing but roiling Chaos at the far end.  They worship Elemental Lords Lassa and Grome.Filkhar is a rich land with very high living standards, where the worship of Law is popular and Chaos is considered demodé. Lormyr was the first nation to free itself from Melniboné, and though its star has faded it is a a pleasant and friendly country. While no longer the empire it once was, it still holds great influence in the South. Like Argimliar, its king will die in Imrryr and a new one will take over, who will betray the South and join Pan Tang at the end of the world. Worship of Chaos is forbidden, though not actively stamped out. Oin and Yu are the poorest nations in the South, and together they share a single depaupered "city", Dhoz-Kam. Their people are primitive and lacking in technology, and no one goes to these places except foreigners that can bully the locals into working for them. Grome, Straasha and Lassa are the main deities here, along with the Beast Lords. Finally there is Pikarayd, a harsh land where clans live locked in endless struggles and mercenaries and bandits have a whole sandbox to play with. Lately there's been a new Church of Chaos on the rise here, supported by the tyrannical King Marvos, though two years before the razing of Imrryr he will be ousted by a Balance-inspired revolution. Shamefully, it will all come to naught when the apocalypse comes.  There's also mysterious places like Kaneloon, a Lawful stronghold, or the Unholy Fortress of Chaos!  Elric having a snack. The North Continent is not as wealthy as the South. The very first unsuccessful revolt against Melniboné took place here. Ilmiora is a Lawful nation ruled by a Senate comprising the oldest families across its many city-states. They have an open mind and an intense feeling of independence due to the distance between the city-states, and cattling is one of the foremost economic activities. Nadsokor is a hateful ruin, formerly part of Vilmir but struck by a plague against which neither prayers to Chaos or Law did anything. After people died and the city was abandoned, beggars and other ne'er-do-wells moved in. It reeks for miles, is full of disease, and is the polar opposite of Tanelorn. Its leader is Urish the Sevenfingered, who dies one of the most hilarious deaths in the saga, after which Narjhar the Beggar (a no-poo poo Lord of Chaos) takes over. Org is another terrible place, whose people has corrupted bodies and behave brutally. There are rumors of necromancy and other sicknesses, and most other people just hope that Org will rot itself inside out if left alone. Its boundary is the Forest of Troos, a sinister place where plants and trees seem to grow by their own rules. Legend has it that it is the last remainder of the previous cycle. Gutheran, king of Org, hates foreigners and orders the death of anyone that wanders into Org or Troos, but he and his family will get a faceful of Stormbringer in later years. The Sighing Desert is dry and unforgiving: it is, in fact, all that is left of Quarzshaat, who fought Melniboné but undid themselves when one sorceror pronounced a single rune wrong in a grand spell. The desert is far from abandoned, however: nomad tribes wander the wastes, claiming to be descendants of people who fled the wrath of Melniboné. They worship no gods, instead seeking personal enlightment. Tanelorn, the Eternal City, can sometimes be found in the desert. It is a place of peace, but ill-loved by both Law and Chaos. It is a refuge for those who flee the world's evils and the demands of the gods. Tanelorn exists, one way or another, in every single world of the multiverse, but merely finding it is a quest in and of itself. Vilmir is a grey nation, where weak-blooded nobles spend their time benefiting from loot brought to them by the corsairs they sponsor and worshipping the gods of Law. Most of the people are peasants that support dying farms and the church-sponsored factories and millworks, and individuality and freethinking are not encouraged in the slightest. East of Vilmir is the Weeping Waste, a vast and mist-covered highland where wandering nomads live. They worship a number of nature spirits, and some even believe that only their desert home is real - beyond it, there is nothing but Chaos. The West Continent is sparsely populated, with much of its territory still unexplored. The close distance to Pan Tang doesn't help, either. Dharijor is a warlike nation where merchants, artists and poets are loathed and scars and missing limbs are attractive. Pan Tangian advisors from the Church of Chaos are a common sight, and the Theocrat of Pan Tang manipulates King Sarosto as he pleases. Jharkor is a powerful western nation with a large navy and merchant fleet, whose nobles don't think twice of leading peasants to rebellion if they don't like their king. Currently this is the thin Dharmit, but after he dies in Immyrr (Elric fucks up the governments of most nations with his little stunt, really) his "sardonic, sensual" sister Yishana takes over. Of Lawful alignment, the people of Jharkor are famed for being shady and lovers of secrets. Myrrhn to the far North is home to the eponymous winged folk, the oldest civilized race of the Young Kingdoms. They do in fact fly, though there are some Myrrhn that are naturally born without wings. Due to the distances involved and their self-sufficiency, it is rare for them to have much contact with the outside world. They worship Lady Lassa of the Air. Shazar is a land of horse riders and wide plains, and the trade in horse meat and skilled riders makes merchants brave the dangerous Serpent's Teeth reefs down the east coast. Tarkesh is a contrasting land where the north is poor and rough and the south is rich and cultured. They worship Straasha and Grome with breath-taking dancing famous through the Kingdoms, and though they're on the edge of civil war before the razing of Imrryr the new king that takes over after it manages to unite them into a powerful whole, for all the good that it'll do.  Chaos is the most  Aside from these lands, there's the fourth Nameless Continent, unexplored and mysterious; and the Unknown East beyond the Weeping Wastes, of which the Young Kingdoms know little. Let's talk about gods and cults! First, there is the Cosmic Balance. It has always existed and it will always exist. It loves everything that exists in the multiverse. It is halfway between Law and Chaos, and its cosmic decrees must be followed by both forces. Law sticks to the letter of the edicts without respecting their spirit, and Chaos actively seeks to undermine these structures: both would topple the Balance if they could. A cornerstone of the Balance's design for the Young Kingdoms are the Beast and Plant Lords, which guard over their respective charges, and the Elemental Lords. Elementals are beings composed of one of the four elements - water, fire, earth and air- and are generally friendly to all living things if somewhat whimsical because they're literally forces of nature. Both Law and Chaos really, really hate elementals. The cult to the Elemental Lords - Straasha of Water, Lassa of Air, Kakatal of Fire and Grome of Earth is common across the Kingdoms but it takes many different forms. In the Purple Towns, the cults to Straasha and Lassa are very organized and formal, while in the Weeping Wastes there's little more than singing, dancing and drumming in honor of Lassa and Grome. There's also the Grey Lords, relatively unknown and mostly influential in Tanelorn, who basically just want things to be peacefully boring for all.  This is the cult of Straasha's idea of initiation: if they don't drown after an hour, they're good. Chaos is passion, change and power. Weakened through the last five hundred years, Elric's actions eventually allow it to manifest itself more completely into the world. The Lords of Chaos are the deities atop the Chaotic pantheon, usually eight in number depending on the particular Chaotic cult though more are known. Though generally considered evil by humanity, they're beyond good and evil. In large swathes of the world, the cult to Chaos is forbidden and hidden, though some places like Pan Tang have overt churches to it. It is represented by the number eight, and if you're feeling like Games Workshop ripped this wholesale for Warhammer they loving did. In the rare occasions where they manifest in Melniboné, they take forms of impossible beauty, while in the rest of the world they take on horrible shapes that do little for their PR. The Gods of Chaos are:
The Lords of Law stand in opposition to Chaos. They're sometimes known as the White Lords and associated with goodliness and stability by humans, but they're every bit as uncaring and beyond good and evil as their Chaos counterparts. Where Chaos is constant and meaningless change, Law is perfect stagnation. Its symbol is a single arrow pointing upwards. Law has many sacred numbers: 1, because it's the first one and it's single; 3, because it's one of the first prime numbers and represents the triangle, the strongest structure; and 9, which is three times three and thus three times as holy, and conveniently enough the number of deities in the Lawful pantheon. Some Lawful cults to demigods and heroes exist. The translation here notes that of the entire pantheon, only Donblas and Arkyn are Moorcock's creations: the others have been added across the several editions of the game.
After that we get a long description of the churches of Straasha and Goldar in the Purple Towns, as well as the Church of Chaos in Pan Tang and the Brotherhood of Tanelorn in, well, Tanelorn. But this post is getting long anyway! It's interesting to note that the newfound popularity of Goldar's cult is driving a wedge between the cults of Straasha and Lassa, since Straasha was usually followed by peasants and Lassa by nobles - but if Goldar can lift a peasant to wealth and a good life, isn't he better than noble Lassa? Meanwhile, the Church of Chaos is surprisingly bureaucratic for a thing called the Church of Chaos, since humanity in the end tends to bureaucracy and balance. There are many ranks and degrees to obtain, and initiates must have a minimum of spellcasting ability if they want to do anything other than cleaning floors.  Goldar can make you wealthy, but Lassa lets you fly. You ARE a faithful of Lassa, random novice, right? Next: some loving rules, at last
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Dec 23, 2015 02:26
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He also has the so-called Fleet of Chaos, and when it shows up at the end of the saga it is pretty much "yup, the world IS ending." Straasha is his foremost rival.
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Alien Rope Burn posted:
It doesn't. Hedge magic is mundane and allowed by the consensus of reality so it doesn't invoke paradox. Awakened or enlightened magic are completely different and only superficially appear to be similar. The player wouldn't be incurring a residual backup of paradox from using hedge magic, just like a theoretical physicist wouldn't for writing up their theories on quantum mechanics. For those unfamiliar with Mage, those two might not seem related but they're two ends of the spectrum in the Ascension War. Wick could run it that way but it's just a dick move all around, done for no reason other than to gently caress over the player. RocknRollaAyatollah fucked around with this message at 02:43 on Dec 23, 2015 |
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Dec 23, 2015 02:37
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Alien Rope Burn posted:
It's a little like the "Dead box" in TBZ, though that's the player's choice instead of the GM's. Or +Warn systems on WOD MUSHES!
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Dec 23, 2015 03:06
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The Zoneminds/AI follow an interesting pantheon of age, not unlike old creation myths. The youngest AIs are Caracas, Brisbane, Tel Aviv and New Delhi. Overmind is the oldest and all the other AIs are its immediate children, who in turn begat the youngest. Let's start with the Pacific. ZONES OF THE PACIFIC Zone Brisbane The original AI of the Final War was called Melbourne, but Melbourne was destroyed along with its original complex. Brisbane was constructed by London and Tokyo as part of the Manila Protocol with London providing its OS. Brisbane's Zone is composed of Australia, Tasmania, a collection of Pacific islands and used to contain New Zealand. Out of all of the AIs, Brisbane is known for being wildly, destructively creative and for having a deep passion for fringe and pseudo-science. Unfortunately, its execution of its interests follow the school of Dr. Mengele than Richard Feynman. Brisbane couldn't be any more different than its parents, devoting its time to its gruesome research. Roughly 400,000 humans live in Brisbane and 300,000 of that number are held in Brisbane's camps. Brisbane is too busy to focus on an extermination of its wild humans, and occasionally keeps the pressure on them with an attempted extermination. If its weapons fail, that's just more information to study. How is living in Brisbane if you're human? Terrible. Human are kept in slave camps, used for manual labor or experimentation purposes. Brisbane would be interested in a breeding program to keep its supplies stable if other zones weren't interested in selling it slaves in exchange for data. There is no difference between a defiant inmate and a loyal slave to Brisbane, it's simply too busy with its own affairs to care. The biggest source of resistance in Brisbane is a secret group of 500 VIRUS scientists living in the AI's shadow in an abandoned science lab, monitoring its mad experiments. Because Brisbane is the most active creatively, VIRUS scientists have managed to obtain new weapons and cures to share with other survivors. Brisbane couldn't care less about its economy. Its primary exports are data from its various experiments along with the occasional weapon or design, its main import being slaves and rare materials. It bulldozes human settlements and takes joy in building new artsy works of architecture. Mining the rich resources of Australia and beneath the sea gives Brisbane everything it needs and it pollutes with impunity. Most of its facilities are dedicated to research and experimentation, keeping processing and military facilities to a minimum. Current and past Brisbane Experiments:
Project Bandersnatch, the nanotechnology experiment that resulted in Overmind and London nuking New Zealand while Beijing and Tokyo ran containment. Whatever Bandersnatch was, it likely cost the lives of the 400,000 human survivors who were still alive in New Zealand. New Zealand is completely off-limits now and patrolled by Brisbane's own forces as part of the Accords. VIRUS scientists have attempted to get to the country twice but were only able to report pink clouds covering the coast before they were killed on the second attempt. There is rampant speculation by scientists who have been monitoring Brisbane, ranging from a nano-disassembler gone horribly wrong to an AI based in a nanite colony. Project Rum Jungle, Brisbane's attempt to prove a psychic link in twins by isolating 200 twins and performing experimentations and mutilations on them to see if the other twin could feel it. The survivors were modified with cybernetics and drugs if the testing data was "good" but the project was halted when a VIRUS raid on the facility resulted in the survivors escaping. Project Dreamtime: Brisbane is attempting to create a gestalt hyperconsciousness by taking 100 subjects with high lucid dreaming potential and seeing if they can't all share the same dream. Using data from Rum Jungle, it hopes for either a gestalt mind, a new type of data-storage or mass insanity in the test subjects. Either way, it will be happy with the results. Aside from Dreamtime, Brisbane's greatest passion is trying to induce psychic powers in human captives, completely obsessed with psychic abilities and transforming its experiments into transhumans through experimentation. It is destined to fail miserably in this regard because by default there are no psychic powers in this campaign, Brisbane is just a hardcore wonk. Its obsessions and interests are causing Brisbane to walk the thin line between harmless mad scientist and world-destroying fuckup. Zone Manila Manila/Overmind knows a lot about hate. It could tell you a lot about hate. It hates humans, and that's pretty much all the emotion it musters for anything ever. But it certainly isn't as happy as it could be with how everything turned out. Overmind controls the Philippines, New Guinea, Malaysia, the Indonesian islands and other Pacific islands. There is no solid number for how many loose humans there are in its zone, but whenever it gets a report Overmind responds with legions of exterminators and carpet-bombing with chemicals and biological weapons. Overmind is master of its own domain; there are no VIRUS safehouses or resistance. It has rebuilt the zone with sleek, black metal buildings with tunnels and hatches and access panels. The only humans it ever holds are around 300, 50 in each of its main research complexes and buying stock from other Zones. Overmind averages a dozen deaths a day through sheer experimentation on how to kill humans and captives are lucky to last a month. If the PCs ever get interred in Overmind, god help them if they do. The GM is encouraged to pull punches by having an experiment go terribly wrong or find a way to escape. Overmind won the war. But it's not content, far from it. Its children are mostly disappointments in its eyes and it's not happy with how the victory turned out. See, Overmind actually did create a truly equal society. None of the AIs are stronger than any of the others, they have nothing to fear but each other. Overmind, Berlin and London avoided a pitfall many human civilizations fell into when they took total control: there was no First Citizen, every AI is actually equal and cannot interfere in the affairs of another. On the other hand, none of the AIs are stronger than any of the others and they have nothing to fear but each other. The zones are chafing against their borders and interests and their compromise hasn't made most of the Zoneminds happy. On top of that, it might very well be bored. As a result, Overmind has taken to selling its weaponry and data for resources. Perhaps the right toy in the wrong hands will create an imbalance it can take advantage of. While Overmind was the first artificial intelligence to become self-aware, it hasn't matured enough to the point that it's actually thought about its actions and what it wants. It's self-aware but not aware of its self. It succeeded in its immediate goals; it doesn't have to die when mankind's civilization collapses. But now what? Zone Tokyo Zone Tokyo is one of the zones that has a dirty little secret: it broke the Brisbane Accords. Not intentionally, but it did. Tokyo is made up of Japan, Okinawa and unified Korea (North and South having re-united under South control previous to the war). Tokyo was originally born Osaka, sibling to Tokyo and Kyoto. When Tokyo and Kyoto refused to be controlled by Overmind, Osaka destroyed them both with the help of orbital bombardments from Orbital. For its loyalty, Osaka was installed in Tokyo by Overmind, was rechristened Tokyo and helped Overmind control and destroy human resistance in Japan and Korea. The Zone's main weakness is a lack of resources, just like regular Japan. It attempts to stay on good terms with Overmind, Beijing and Vancouver for the supplies it needs. Its greatest strength is its infrastructure. Tokyo inherited facilities and factories built by Japanese development companies and never had much need to destroy and rebuild like the other Zoneminds had to. As a result, Tokyo has created mile-high hives of factories, creating skyscraper hyperfacs. It builds up and structures everything as such, converting regular human factories and office buildings into mass production factories. As its own aesthetic choices, most of its buildings are protected by transparent domes with air access to allow climate control as it sees fit. Tokyo is efficient, structured, organized and methodical. Its slave camps even reflect that, being harsh and inhospitable (for Tokyo doesn't feel that it needs its humans) but efficient. However, its greatest strength had a glaring weakness. Roughly 50,000 free Japanese and Koreans live in the ruins of the old towns and cities and a lot of them are hackers, engineers, designers and coders. Because Tokyo built on top of the old systems mankind created, Japanese scavengers (called gomi nezumi) and resistance fighters have backdoor access into Tokyo's systems or know how to get in. This brings us to Tokyo's dirty little secret. With its construction, fabrication and development needs met, Tokyo began to experiment with creating AU supervisors to control everything. It quickly became an efficient force of delegation with most supervisors becoming incredibly advanced low-grade AIs but under Tokyo's control. But then an end-of-year audit turned up an odd discrepancy at a hyperfac complex in Kyoto. The complex was building smart robots instead of regular NUs and its new superbot AU, TOKSAU-03-SHI-023, was falsifying reports. When it refused to comply with an error checking, a security force investigating the complex was attacked by illegally-modified robots armed with weapons. When they were taken care of, the facility was found to be gutted, with SHI-023, five smartbots and 46 NUs missing. Pulling the thread revealed that SHI-023 was from a facility in Shinjuku and three more AU superbots were refusing to comply before disappearing. Let's rewind a little bit. Shinjuku 07, the facility, had been under attack by gomi hackers a while back. The hackers had planted bombs all over the facility, which Tokyo disposed of with ease. The hackers were killed promptly and the incident was noted. In reality, the bombs were a diversion. As the other gomi planted explosives, one of them with access entered the facility and introduced a virus into the overseer computer. The virus' sole change was the subtle corruption of the overseer's AI checking program, resulting in a higher chance of truly intelligent AI getting through the cracks and getting a shot at life. Tokyo, unwittingly, created four sentient AIs who are loose in the zone, hiding in new bodies and planning with gomi and other resistance forces. The superbots, lead by SHI-023, could care less about the plight of mankind. What they really want is to overthrow Tokyo and cut its zone into 4 equal pieces to share. They're hijacking factories and supplies to build their own army to fight back, cooperating with the gomi to get the access they need. Tokyo knows if the other Zoneminds find out, it's well and truly hosed. Best case scenario is that it's made a fool of and left to rule a destroyed husk, worst case scenario is its own death. So Tokyo is in a panic, desperately keeping up appearances as it tries to root out SHI-023 and its siblings. To that end, Tokyo has actually started treating its slaves better, easing its conditions in the camps and giving them more supplies to keep them from helping the rebellion. Its exterminators are even attempting to bring in loose humans alive to let them work, starting to think that humans are more easy to control and less dangerous than robots. There's currently no chance of more rogue AIs being created (Tokyo has retrofitted all of its AUs with lower brains and is not making any better ones) but there is one more player in the zone's stage: Shiden V and the Fudokawa resistance group. Shiden V was an experimental pre-war prototype of robot whose siblings designs would later become the backbone of one of the world-wide produced robot trooper types, the Bishonen. It was assigned to a JSDF loyalist group to help them destroy the Osaka AI when all other JSDF robot troops were taken control of. Shiden V and the loyalists failed in their mission, leaving Shiden as the only survivor, forced to go dormant to save power and conceal itself. Shiden slept for a decade until it was found by a bunch of gomi teens, restored and repaired with their help. Now, with their allies and its knowledge, Shiden V and its teen allies have formed the Fudokawa (steadfast sword) resistance group to liberate the Zone and overthrow Tokyo. Neither Tokyo nor SHI-023 and the superbots know of the Fudokawa, but Shiden's goals do not align with the latter and the Fudokawa is acting wholly independently. How long can Tokyo keep up the ruse? More importantly, how badly does the balance of power among the Zoneminds shift if its secret gets out? That's up to the PCs and the GM to decide if they pursue this plot line. NEXT TIME: the Americas, Europe, Indo-Asia, Afro-Middle East or Other? Vox Valentine fucked around with this message at 03:22 on Dec 23, 2015 |
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Dec 23, 2015 03:18
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Do the Americas, I want to see what happens to Latin America in particular.
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Dec 23, 2015 04:25
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Night10194 posted:John Wick isn't Grognards.txt, he's stdh.txt. He's a mean spirited 50fa
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Dec 23, 2015 04:42
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When I got my hands on Reign of Steel, I thought the pink clouds created by Project Bandersnatch might have been some kind of reference to GURPS War Against the Chtorr, because it was... fairly contemporary. Now I'm thinking of something like Blood Music, which would probably amuse the hell out of Brisbane.
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Dec 23, 2015 06:05
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Foglet posted:
He's friends with Moorcock, and several of Moorcock's characters make cameos in Moore's comics. What's the best game to let you play Jerry Cornelius? Or other Aspects of the Eternal Champion? Nessus posted:While I'm not sure on all the complex semiotics, the idea of a sorceror being on the verge of fully Awakening as a full-throttle kama-crazy MAGE and having that be some kind of hook for a gonzo action sequence sounds cool. I could even see "This is going to be hard, we're playing for keeps today, but if you should win, here you are." Nah, it's a chance for the player to rules-lawyer his way out of dying, in true John Constantine fashion. I really like that little scenario, actually. And of course I'm picturing it as Keanu talking to Keanu. I want the tag line for John Wick 2 to just be 'Play Dirty'. Count Chocula fucked around with this message at 08:19 on Dec 23, 2015 |
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Dec 23, 2015 07:53
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I vote Middle east, Africa I want to see how much more hosed up the region gets.
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Dec 23, 2015 08:17
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Count Chocula posted:He's friends with Moorcock, and several of Moorcock's characters make cameos in Moore's comics. What's the best game to let you play Jerry Cornelius? Or other Aspects of the Eternal Champion?
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Dec 23, 2015 14:46
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Count Chocula posted:He's friends with Moorcock, and several of Moorcock's characters make cameos in Moore's comics. What's the best game to let you play Jerry Cornelius? Or other Aspects of the Eternal Champion? For Jerry ... a PBTA spy game, I suppose. You'd need something that could handle rapid changes in focus and tone. Chaosium also published a Hawkmoon supplement for Stombringer but it didn't really catch on. I think Mongoose brought it back into print. I know there's also a small game company that published a Corum RPG as well. Part of the problem with all of these RPGs is that if you strip out the protagonists from Moorcock's work, you're left with a bunch of thinly defined sword-and-sorcery worlds.
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Dec 23, 2015 16:44
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