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unseenlibrarian posted:Mike claims Tom's not a self-insert, but is based on a real person (Who wasn't always pleased with the depiction.) I am inclined to believe him, mostly because I am pretty sure that if it -were- a Mike Pondsmith self-insert, he wouldn't be a blond white dude, given that Mike Pondsmith looks like this: Pondsmith has had actual inserts or references. "Listen Up, You Primitive Screwheads!" has an entire back-section where Mad Mike in his cyberpunk trenchcoat is setting up landmines and acid traps. There's also the Paranoia supplement "Alice Through The Mirrorshades" where a game designer, Mike Puddleforge, who is described as having cracked black skin like the covers of his cyberpunk game he's burning for warmth, attacks the time-travelling troubleshooters because they're ruining his vision of the future. He's an interesting dude. I remember when me and a friend where playtesting CPv3.0 and we went out to the now-defunct Sal's Taco Lounge for dinner and watched Ice Pirates on the TV screens. Supposedly, he grew up in Oakland and told us about him carrying a knife for defense back then.
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Apr 17, 2014 00:04
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Majuju posted:Erin Tarn is a pretty bad historian, so it's not your fault. RIFTS: Chaos Earth brings it down to a minor nuclear war between a thinly-veiled Colombia and Venezuela. The countries are unnamed, but they're South American countries with a history of antagonism with each other, one being ingenuously nuclear-armed (which Venezuela is pursuing) and the other American-backed (which Colombia has been since the '50s). Colombia stomps the gently caress out of Venezuela in a border skirmish turned major invasion when their newly-gifted Glitter Boys work better than hoped. Venezuela launches a nuclear attack on Colombia to stop the invasion. This causes the large number of souls being released that opens up the rifts.
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Apr 21, 2014 01:08
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Well, there's an upcoming Rifts review I have waiting that has... an art style very reminiscent of Liefeld's "style". It's possibly some of the ugliest art to make it into a Rifts book. You will know it by the gritting of teeth. Let me guess, Rifts Mercenaries? I remember it having some egregious Liefeld/Image Comics ripoff art.
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Apr 22, 2014 04:03
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occamsnailfile posted:Ewell definitely has some Kirby in his inspirations though he also has a lot of manga in there. Mostly he often just gets really overcomplicated but always has that sort of 'techno-organic' style. I know Ewell as he was or still is a guest to anime conventions but I've taken from him that a lot of his inspirations comes from the Metal Hurlant stuff more than manga. I know he's specifically called out the whole giant cone hats as some from Moebius.
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Apr 22, 2014 04:53
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Bieeardo posted:Oh, awesome. I'll let Iron Maiden know we found their mascot. I'm pretty sure there's a whole race of Eddie the Head in RIFTS. Or, I should say, at least one whole race, because there's a lot of similar D-Bees.
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May 18, 2014 00:15
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Bieeardo posted:I never understood how anyone thought that was a good idea. Had the same feeling about this, with a dash of Bionicle for the style. The rumor I heard about Shadowrun Duels was that it had to deal with continuing rights holding from the FASA era, where Ral Partha supposedly still had exclusive contracts to any Shadowrun miniatures, so WizKids tried to make Duels be off that 25mm scale they where shut out by.
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May 21, 2014 07:15
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Asimo posted:
I'm starting to notice a lot of similarities to Greg Saunders' In Flames, particularly the "kicked-out-of-a-posthuman-paradise" premise.
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May 22, 2014 05:50
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Mark Rein·Hagen's Exile
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theironjef posted:We're both Exalted players so the fish rape seemed pretty lightweight by comparison to the beginning of Infernals/roughly as easy to houserule out of existence. Is the Islamophobia stuff in the core book? I must have skipped right over it. It becomes a lot more evident past that first book, from what I recall of Ettin's posts. I know the cult splatbook has a cult pretty much rich folks going rape-rape-rape with sex slaves and in one of the later books one of the Hastur's influences has likely caused idol singer to sing a top hit song about wanting to get raped. Also, the sexy, sexy furries mentioned Mors are supposed to be Shub-Niggurath's spawn, which have a save vs. loving and an instant pregnancy result if female PCs fall to their charms (and they will). However, listening to your podcast, I gotta admit I like that I like Tagers the most and a "not-Rifts" game I'm thinking off making will probably include Guyver-ripoffs in addition to Juicers with the serial numbers filed off.
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Jun 5, 2014 23:32
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Tough Love: Yeah, I listen at my work's Wi-Fi, so I have to stay at the front, but now I've done all the front jobs. DLing is currently not an option, since I have no internet currently at home and my tablet doesn't open zip files.
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Jun 17, 2014 23:33
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ZorajitZorajit posted:Did the artist ever do any of those "How to Draw..." books? His name and style look familiar (even if it's a deliberately simple style.) I'm not much of a Scooby Doo fan, but Meddling Kids looks like something that would be fun to run for kids. Then add in more Dark Heresy until the lines blur and Daphne becomes a psyker. Ahem, Daphne would be Sororitas, along with Techpriest Velma and Arbiter Fred. It would be Shaggy who would be the Psyker, just so we can say that Scooby is the Daemon that lives in his head.
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Jun 19, 2014 23:58
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It's funny but when you guys started talking about the Duke of Torture or whatever, I kept thinking that it's personification should be a TV set playing Jack Bauer on 24.
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Jun 26, 2014 23:42
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Rifts Mercenaries feels like peak nineties, somehow, except for maybe Juicer Uprising. It's not that unusual as far as Rifts books go, but just the terrible art and being focused on every... single... NPC... being... bad... rear end. Merc Ops has better cover art, just because it has a Juicer about to curbstomp a Crazy.
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Jul 18, 2014 22:19
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:I have all of those in hard copy. Same here. Maybe not all of them, but just the cosm books plus a few others.
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Jul 31, 2014 23:16
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Alien Rope Burn posted:So Golden Age Weaponsmiths raided National Guard depots and (numerous military bases mentioned by name), and built up in Alabama to give themselves a central location away from the Coalition oversight. They also have strong ties with the Black Market, which we'll get details on about 18 years after this book's release. We get mercenary stats for them, but it reminds us they aren't a real merc company. I'm not sure if it's intentional or not, but Alabama as their central base isn't without reason, since Alabama is home to the Anniston depot, where a majority of the Army's armored vehicles are overhauled and repaired. Also, Siembedia hadn't nailed down the date of the Rifts Cataclysm. Carella also has several hints that it's supposed to be within fifty years of recent history, such as the upmodded M16s turning up in Rifts Underseas.
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Aug 3, 2014 23:29
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I looked up that depot and saw that it was an accurate in that detail, at least, but didn't think to mention. Definitely seems intentional. It also makes a bit more sense that Anniston Army Depot would be refurbishing the M48s and M60s for distribution among National Guard units and overseas customers and demilitarized for collectors at the time of publication, so those would be largely in stock that someone could reverse engineer them from parts with Rifts-modern technology. I'd just put it up with something that Carella and maybe Siembedia was familiar with. In addition to all the cutting-edge 48Hz processors mention in Cyberpunk 2020, a lot of the armor, security uniforms, and weapon were derived from Vietnam era flak vests or failed prototypes like the Enfield EM2 and ARES AIWS, because that's what Scott Ruggles and Mike Pondsmith were familiar with.
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Aug 4, 2014 00:42
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MadScientistWorking posted:Every single story I've ever heard about Call of Cthulhu that makes it sound interesting involves murderhoboing. There's a certain appeal to playing CoC as if it was Vampire$ or the opening to Phantasm 2 with Reggie, Mike, and the Hemi-cuda on the prowl through ghost towns in search of the Tall Man.
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Aug 22, 2014 23:11
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theironjef posted:I don't think it ever should. I maintain that a redesign of Car Wars with the scale upped to the point that the cars are "coincidentally" Hot Wheels-sized and with a focus on arena combat would be an amazing game for players and modelers. I am already looking around my desk at work at things that would be the right size for aftermarket rocket launchers on a repainted Hot Wheel. I've seen some designs being passed around on Thingiverse of an open-source Car Wars-type game with the weapons on pegs that are placed into a car body. It's a real simple idea that could use some expansion, like having higher-damaging weapons taking more than one peg space; peg-on armor, wheel, and engine upgrades (like placing a little blower to indicate a better engine); a HeroClix style wheel under the car that acts as an ablative armor counter (per location or general body), etc. A single point could remove a weapon, damage armor or a component that players could relish in pulling off their opponent's cars. It's definitely something that could be made into a tabletop game.
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Sep 6, 2014 00:23
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mllaneza posted:Endurance Predators >> Pack Predators And given our social abilities to allow for cooperation and planning, we're more like Endurance Pack Predators. I'm guessing to a gazelle or a cheetah, a group of human hunters would like Jason Voorhees popping up from behind a tree when they thought they were racing away from him.
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Sep 7, 2014 23:14
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Mr. Maltose posted:Yeah, Persistance Hunting is also reliant on pack tactics because it narrows the ability of faster animals to alter direction and burst away. We don't stop and we work in groups, and that can be absolutely terrifying if you're on the wrong end of it. Reminds me a bit of Swofford's comment to his fellow Marines in "Jarhead", where he pities the Iraqi Republican Guard, who, up until the Gulf War, had been pretty victorious in conflicts within the region, built up as an elite unit by Saddam, and armed with what they considered the best of equipment, and getting killed and routed by guys who are operating at night, in camouflage, fighting out of visual range or close to it, and have this reputation of being baby-eating monsters. He likens the experience to what it would be like if U.S. Marines would be fighting aliens. It would be as if they suddenly had to fight a bunch of Predators (the alien kind).
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Sep 8, 2014 00:11
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Davin Valkri posted:I think that's actually one of the stated influences on the Hollow, so yeah, you could definitely do Frankenstein's Monster. Reading through some of those moves, you could easily play teenage Roy Batty.
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Sep 20, 2014 21:04
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PurpleXVI posted:In short: because they deal with the EMOTIONAL and SOCIAL aspects of sex, while giving basically no screentime to the actual squishy organic parts which, frankly, are less interesting than the former when it come to a story. I always figured the whole "sex" thing in AW was more like "be intimate with another PC", like your Faceless and another PC's Gunlugger share war stories over the campfire or a Skinner is invited into a Hardholder's private quarters to share some rare liquor instead of actually knocking boots.
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Oct 11, 2014 22:58
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Alien Rope Burn posted:If these guys sound familiar - a pro-human, technologically advanced country led by a tinpot dictator with mutated dog flunkies - that's because they'd be given a skull-intensive makeover for a certain later Palladium game. I actually find Christian more interesting than his successor in Rifts, Prosek, because he has that edge of hypocrisy inventive PCs can use against him, being a mutant railing against other mutants. He has a grand total of two notes, as opposed to Prosek's one note. To be honest, it's a rather common trope, with the dictator really being part of the minority that'he's oppressing. I recall the computer game Bad Blood had a similar plotline, with it's human supremacist ruler having the mutant ability of regeneration, and there's the unsubstantiated rumors of Hitler being half-Jewish due to a grandmother. If this guy could turn his skin to stone at will, why did he become some sort of tinpot dictator instead of Kiba Daioh from Fist Of The North Star?
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Nov 17, 2014 21:55
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Pththya-lyi posted:"Mirror-Universe Star Trek Crew" is a good tone to set for Rogue Trader Also Saints' Row 40K: In the glittering darkness of the 40th millennium, there is only bling. Dark Heresy works similar well if you think of it more as Paranoia 40K. This was illustrated in a chatlog from Maptools that got screencapped and passed around... quote:Player 1: I psychically throw open the doors
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Nov 22, 2014 23:38
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Evil Mastermind posted:I remember this being an adventure in Shadis magazine way back in the day, so Wick may have actually published this (it even has the players waking up in Al Amarja), but I don't remember the "wake up" trigger being character suicide, instead it was the looping "simulation" glitching out. It's kinda the shittiest way to be introduced to Over The Edge and Al Amarja. Al Amarja really should be run like something like the town in Blue Velvet, where everything seems normal at first (at at least, normal for a Mediterranean third world country), but as you get deeper, things start getting stranger and more disturbed.
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Dec 3, 2014 21:27
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theironjef posted:Well yeah, the big story about how he had a villain kill a character's grandmother, causing that character to retire in shame, is total STDH. We're supposed to believe a player was so beaten at a table that they quit, but literally quit from the story and not just because the DM was being an rear end in a top hat? I think you infected me with your attitude from System Mastery, because when I read that the villain killed that heroine's grandmother, I immediately brought up the mental image of her leaping into the air going "Yes, free points"! Also, who says you can't have dead family members and still be a superhero? I can think of at least two examples. Honestly, I'm really in favor now of Fate-like traits that reward points in game than during character creation. That way, taking care of Grammy-Num-Nums before going on patrol allows you to pull off a Kamehameha on Dr. Braino. Or, if Dr. Braino kills Grammy, you can "take care" of Grammy by doing things in her memory and gain points that way, like leave roses on her grave or beat Dr. Braino so hard his axons shits out inhibitory neurotransmitters.
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Dec 4, 2014 01:09
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theironjef posted:Oh, you mean my inordinate hatred for merit/flaw systems? Yeah, that's a real thing with me. All the way back to our like second episode with Buffy and flaws like "have to always be telling jokes". Nah, I was more specifically thinking that bit in the Cthuhlutech review where you talk about buying a Repulsive: Stinky then getting a roll on the "Warp Phenomenon" chart when spell casting and get the "permanent smell like vanilla" than your general hate for merit/flaw systems. I like merit/flaw systems, but I do think that flaws really need to have a statistical drawback to actually earn points for character generation. I've been working on a heartbreaker myself and I've been thinking about separating statistical flaws from storytelling/character flaws, which cost nothing during generation, but, borrowing a bit from Fate aspects, would allow the character to earn points when invoking those flaws, motivations or needs they can use to "power" other abilities, either gameplay or narrative-wise.
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Dec 4, 2014 01:59
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Halloween Jack posted:Considering that the Battlebabe is the cool sexy badass who seizes protagonism by their very nature, the idea of the No-Battlebabes-Allowed Post-Apoc Sex Club is kinda funny. The other thing is that the Battlebabe can be reskinned very easily into something like a Post-Apocalypse Connery-era James Bond, where you could be clad in nothing but a speedo and your obnoxious chest hair zapping bandits with your Magnums and your unbridled machismo. There's nothing in the playbook that states the 'babe has to be female.
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Dec 20, 2014 01:27
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Kavak posted:You design it, I'll find a 3D printer. I've got one and this sounds like the perfect dice bag substitute to make.
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Dec 20, 2014 02:08
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Doodmons posted:First time I played Apocalypse World, the Battlebabe was just a guy who'd seen tapes of old James Bond movies and based his life around that. He was on an eternal quest to find an Aston Martin and spent all of his barter having all the dirt and blood cleaned off his tuxedo every couple of days. I quite enjoyed that character. I totally forgot that "formal wear" was actually part of their kit until I reread the playbook yesterday.
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Dec 20, 2014 22:16
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Sadly, I rather have the playbook retooled into something more familiar with the genre, like "A Boy And His Dog" or at least like Stinger and her falcon in Wheels Of Fire. At least, there should have been different beasts that you start with as pets that have varying stats other than "2-harm gang with 0 armor". Seriously, a "gang" tag? I know that the Gunlugger can have that tag, but starting off, I'm seeing more like a gang of piranha chihuahuas than a single "beast".
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Dec 28, 2014 02:10
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Kavak posted:Interesting, and I'm starting to finally grasp the mindset that let people think metaplots were a good idea. It's also why we got the whole open source movement following 3.5D&D. Turns out you can't exactly copyright a game system, no matter how hard you try, but you can copyright all the graphics, fiction, and rest of the fluff that comes with it.
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Jan 2, 2015 23:34
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Evil Mastermind posted:There were actually multiple novels and a 6-issue comic. What I remember of the 6-issue comic is that it was based loosely off the Arthurian legend and super depressing compared to the content of the covers.
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Jan 3, 2015 06:27
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Evil Mastermind posted:It also ended with the destruction of Friend Computer because the main character's last clone (he lost a clone every issue) realized he had the genetic memory of one of the Computer's pre-MegaWhoops original programmers or some poo poo, and basically destroyed Alpha Complex. Yeah, I recall it had to do with the whole Computer crash, even though it did not feature the cryogenically-frozen programmer from "Alice Through The Mirrorshades" who ends up reviving and crashing the whole system.
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Jan 4, 2015 02:14
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Evil Mastermind posted:I actually played it quite a bit as recently as last year. That's not to say we didn't have trouble with the rules, but it is playable. The last edition, the Revised edition, has rules for converting TORG into either Masterbook or Open D6. In fact, the Kanawa gun and vehicle books have stats in TORG, Cinematic D6 and Open D6. I actually got into Open D6 through that edition. I'm left wondering if that the Ulisses Spiele TORG might not be D6-based than D20 based. Also, I'll say this, Open D6 kinda fixes the Glass Ninja problem since you're rolling to find those values. The Skeep posted:What happens if you take a O hit before a K hit? You just ignore it and take whatever shock or wound damage it's paired with on the table? You mark it down until end of combat. Essentially, it only matters if you get a K result afterwards, at which point you get knocked out. Any combination of K or O will knock you out.
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Jan 4, 2015 22:48
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Payndz posted:The first time I read Torg's "guns don't work in some realities because reasons", that just made me think "Wait, so basic chemical reactions don't occur in that reality? Wouldn't that mean life evolved on a completely different path, if it even appeared at all?" Shouldn't the gun just cease to exist (since it hasn't been conceived in that reality) rather than not work? It does if you give it enough time or possibility energy. A gun might start rusting or become dulled (as if the machining used to make the gun was regressing, which, given the complexity of gun parts, might be enough to start causing feed or firing issues), convert itself into a similar ranged weapon of the era (like an assault rifle into a blunderbuss or crossbow) or just fall straight apart. Most of the time, it might be a user issue in which the user mentally can not conceive of how to use the weapon. Edit: Also, it depends on how far the axioms are from each other. Theoretically, it's possible for areas like research labs or temples to have a higher axioms than the cosm normally allows. As well, they could produce stuff that end up being used in the cosm, but is generally unreliable and prone to failure. Core Earth can produce cyborgs like the Cyberpapacy or Tharkold, but they would not be the same level of capability or reliability. That's why Nippon Tech stuff can work because it's relatively similar to Core Earth, except they might use different materials technology or manufacturing processes that dull or delaminate or transform in such a way they just fail more. The same could be said of Core Earth in the Nile Empire, where you can use AKs and early jet aircraft against the Mauser-wielding and Panzer-driving stormtroopers of Dr. Mobius, but the transformation problem becomes really noticeable in something like the Living Land, where you had tanks and ICBMs converting almost immediately into rocks made of their component materials. Young Freud fucked around with this message at 00:13 on Jan 5, 2015 |
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Jan 4, 2015 23:51
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Kavak posted:I think Rein-Hagen moved to Georgia (The one on the Black Sea, not the one where White Wolf is) and started a nightclub that was involved in a sex slave ring or something. I also thought the Russian invasion of Georgia spooked the poo poo out him.
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Jan 5, 2015 23:24
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:I want to imagine his life over there was far from that interesting but he would tell people that was the case in a hushed manner because it made him seem edgy or dangerous in his own mind. It kind of comes with the territory of being a privileged expat in a country like Georgia who likes to imagine they're on some grand adventure. From the stories I heard, he was more likely trying his hand at farming than holding kinky sexy parties.
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Jan 6, 2015 00:06
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theironjef posted:Arguably the classic vampire trope is straight up sex monsters. But why argue? A book of Succubi totally smacks of trying to keep the old White Wolf model chugging along as if they hadn't run out of good monsters, it's true. I wish they were secretly working on "Creatures: The Black Lagooning." I remembering coming up with a 15-second game idea off some fanbook based off the Prototype games that came up in one of the early FATAL and Friends threads which was essentially, "Thing: The Invasion".
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Jan 6, 2015 00:17
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It's sad that label something posthuman and all you can come up is furries? Not robots, not weird, twisted-looking humanoids, not biomechanicoids, but a lion-headed centaur.
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Jan 6, 2015 23:11
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theironjef posted:Let me tell you all about the Island of Terra Malatora... Oh, I know all about Malatora. I was one of the Dargon Slayers in that thread. And I'm not surprised that it got mentioned here, because it was what I was thinking as well. I pretty sure that they used "Here Are Dragons" and those centaur-tiger things. Edit: I would not be surprised if this game is somehow related to Malatora. What was Taygon's real name? Need to compare against the editorial staff of the game. Young Freud fucked around with this message at 23:27 on Jan 6, 2015 |
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Jan 6, 2015 23:17
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