|
At the end of the Avatars trilogy and related stuff, when the Tablets of Fate were returned, AO looked around and basically said: "What. I sent you down here to learn humility, but all of you continue to play petty asshat, some of you kill one another, and one of you even murders his followers en-masse. gently caress it. From here on out, your power is directly related to the number of worshipers you've got. That's right: You have to make it worth their while. Now go home-- and on your way, pick up the hundreds of thousands of devoted souls you've left uncollected in the grey waste. Ungrateful shits." And Christ, Hera. RPGs often haven't been great with female characters in general, and female monsters in specific, but there's something about the tone of Palladium's writing when it comes to evil women that makes me particularly uncomfortable. In this case, it doesn't help that we'll be seeing her again...
|
#
¿
Apr 12, 2014 01:13
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 19, 2024 20:32 |
|
|
Mythologically speaking, there are multiple stories of attempted rapes of Artemis or her followers, including by Orion, but that kind of thing doesn't need to be mentioned in something like a RIFTS sourcebook any more than Hercules accidentally killing his family needs to be recounted in the Disney retelling.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 15, 2014 03:57
|
|
|
Wapole Languray posted:Turns out the Victorians were loving crazy about fairies. Totally bugfuck, yeah.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 17, 2014 04:39
|
|
|
Alien Rope Burn posted:* Whether or not Long was quit or fired is unclear, since folks at Palladium can never make up their mind on what happened. They probably roll on one of Kevin's omnipresent d% tables.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 28, 2014 16:36
|
|
|
When I was younger, I felt CWC (in addition to being ridiculous, terrible, etc) was Siembieda trying to out-CJ CJ Carella, whose statblocks were cartoonishly powerful and user-friendly-- none of this Xd6 MD garbage, or arguing over whether MD weapons use the Modern Weapon Rules, everything deals damage in clean XdYx10 bursts. 'Course, Siembieda took multiple ranks in Skill Fucus: loving the Dog for that one. CWC was the last book in the line that I bought. In retrospect, yeah-- even from the front matter, it's obvious that CWC and the horrible metaplot that followed was Siembieda trying to retcon or reboot the entire line, putting the Coalition back on top with his trademarked lovely mechanics and the revelation of a war machine that had been running for decades without anyone, anywhere catching the faintest whiff of it.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 28, 2014 17:47
|
|
|
Weird dwarf feet is apparently a Norse thing, working with a theme of disfigurement, greed and general unpleasantness. Come to think of it, the lack of dwarf ladies probably reflects an unwholesome fixation on Rhine maidens and the like, too. Bieeanshee fucked around with this message at 17:50 on May 1, 2014 |
|
#
¿
May 1, 2014 17:44
|
|
|
I've always got a giggle out of the idea of NGR troopers going AWOL and signing up with evil Norse pretender-gods.
|
|
#
¿
May 1, 2014 19:34
|
|
|
Ettin posted:First: I'm gonna try and do more of this poo poo, but I don't know what. There are two books left, take your votes: Mmmf. Go with Ancient Enemies. That way we know the light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming metaplot train. And maybe see if you can get permission to put the whole thing up on the wiki, or maybe just a Google document somewhere?
|
|
#
¿
May 7, 2014 14:49
|
|
|
PleasingFungus posted:What was the actual conflict resolution mechanic, then? I just looked it up. Lower the roll, the better, because after you roll under (skill, etc), you subtract the result from your skill and reference the result on a table to determine the magnitude of its Effect. Conflict resolution turns into dueling Effects, subtracting aggressor from defender and referencing the result. Or not, because it's apparently optional, and has riders, and combat is called out as using something different. Basically, it's roll-under meets marginal success systems. Or not, because those subsystems are optional.
|
|
#
¿
May 8, 2014 00:52
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:Ah, the 90s. It's really cute, in retrospect-- they're just so earnest. "How do I narrate? I don't know how to create drama!" "Here, use this table. You can always trust tables." As guidelines, they wouldn't be too bad: here's what you can generally accomplish on a success, here's what generally happens on a crit; in order to crit, knock the last digit off your skill and roll at or under the remaining one. Instead there's three different tables and two pages of poorly written examples and rules for calculating modifiers. It's like peering at a living transitional fossil.
|
|
#
¿
May 8, 2014 04:18
|
|
|
Zereth posted:Isn't that a more complicated method of getting the same results as "roll under skill, higher is better"? Instead of doing some math you could just take the raw die result and compare it to the table. Unless you failed in which whatever. Absolutely, though the balky 'roll under 10% of your skill rating for a bonus on the Effect table' is still going to want a little math. The rear end in a top hat critical failure rules could just as easily trigger on a natural 1 as a natural 20. Rolling as close to your skill rating without going over speaks more of drama and snatching victory from the jaws of defeat to me than consulting a table to see which degree of success you achieved. Nineties design.
|
|
#
¿
May 8, 2014 12:57
|
|
|
I remember looking forward to Mindwerks because there was a chance that Crazies would suck less. I know, who in their right mind would play one? But still... and... yeah.  And there's the cover. Which is perfectly nice, if you don't dwell on the borg boobs or the apparent gargoyles in the background, whose bio-regeneration would cause them to spit those metal brains out like watermelon seeds.
|
|
#
¿
May 16, 2014 20:13
|
|
|
Valatar posted:Alternity's luck analogue, last resort points, costs experience to refresh. This should always be filed under 'where X System stinks'. Alternity, Shadowrun, 7th Sea, Earthdawn, whatever: requiring a player to permanently burn XP to affect a roll, leaving their character that much worse off than the rest of the party, making them that much more likely to have to do it again in the future, is a bad rule. It's just as easy to give everyone a do-over that refreshes once a session or even once an adventure if you want them to have the opportunity to invoke adventurer's luck, but not doing it every time they go to the bathroom and want to make sure there's TP on the roll. Alien Rope Burn posted:
Oh, awesome. I'll let Iron Maiden know we found their mascot.
|
|
#
¿
May 17, 2014 21:22
|
|
|
Everything Counts posted:Oof. Reminds me of the short-lived "Shadowrun Duels" action figure game. That was a disappointment on a lot of levels. 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.
|
|
#
¿
May 21, 2014 06:42
|
|
|
Really risky fursex, considering the traditional penalty for violating that part of the Litany is being torn into chunks too small to regenerate. Mere ostracism is probably the least of their worries, given how little respect the Coggies get from the other tribes to begin with.
|
|
#
¿
May 21, 2014 17:03
|
|
|
I've got a copy of GURPS Bunnies and Burrows around here somewhere. Of all the licenses they've done, I think that one's one of the strangest.
|
|
#
¿
May 22, 2014 22:13
|
|
|
I've been thinking of doing the Crucibles for F&F, maybe starting sometime next month. Sea Giant PCs always struck me as particularly weird because, not only did they start off far below Normal Monster hit dice and potency, RAW they were children. 'Burst into tears the first time you get hit for damage' was a roleplay suggestion somewhere in the book, which didn't help. Nothing that rewriting them as callow adolescents about to hit a Hell of a growth spurt wouldn't fix. I think someone took the class/level titles a little too prescriptively. I've always wondered if that's why 1st level BECMI clerics didn't get spells.
|
|
#
¿
May 23, 2014 02:18
|
|
|
Sufficiently Advanced takes a tack like that, though I think most of the time you're traveling within one vastly advanced cultural sphere or another.
|
|
#
¿
May 23, 2014 03:44
|
|
|
Asimo posted:Virago - individuals who received extensive treatments to become effectively immortal. This one is up there with borrowing 'Brujah' for a clan of ultra-angry, gently caress-you-Dad vampires. Never change, not-White-Wolf.
|
|
#
¿
May 24, 2014 19:32
|
|
|
A wizard did it. With all kinds of things.
|
|
#
¿
May 28, 2014 01:16
|
|
|
With search down I can't find the post, but someone suggested that the Turn Someone On move didn't necessarily require a sexual context. I wish I could remember exactly what they said, but I think it was in one of the monthly chat threads from a couple of months back. While sudden realizations of queerness are almost a genre convention (thank you, slashfic), I don't think it's fair to handwave everyone as being that malleable. That said, just because a character is straight (or asexual, or what have you) doesn't mean they aren't going to be affected by a pass or a whispering campaign by someone they aren't interested in. Call it what it is: coercion. Maybe Johnny Straightarrow acts in Gary's favor as an expression of his internalized homophobia, in hopes of just getting out from under his influence before people start to notice; everyone knows how fast a destructive rumour can move, how persistent they can be. VVV That's a good point, too. Bieeanshee fucked around with this message at 20:09 on Jun 4, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Jun 4, 2014 19:58
|
|
|
That's roughly why I dropped out of the Chuubo KS early on. One of the early updates was couched in some impenetrable, long-winded metaphor about tomatoes and trellises, and the thought that might have been representative of the game's presentation made me reach for the eject button.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 18, 2014 06:05
|
|
|
I'll keep that in mind if I manage to find copies on the cheap, because whatever else I do think the concepts she's presenting are really nifty.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 18, 2014 12:37
|
|
|
Is that the one with 'ballistic spooge' as a power?
|
|
#
¿
Jun 19, 2014 04:23
|
|
|
I'm liking Meddling Kids. Fairly simple, without being condescending, and that Rube Goldberg trap system is really clever.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 19, 2014 14:32
|
|
|
He's a chicken, I tell you! A giant chicken! (And Vincent Price was the best drat thing to happen to Scooby Doo. Other than maybe Don Knotts. Maybe.) Bieeanshee fucked around with this message at 17:44 on Jun 29, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Jun 29, 2014 17:32
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:I wasn't really speaking to the protagonist's morality and what that means for the setting, but rather the way Jedi power can ramp way, way up or down depending on the question "Do non-Jedi matter in this game?" I keep trying to mind-trick myself in the mirror after asking, 'How well would a Star Wars game with Ars Magica's troupe mechanics work?'
|
|
#
¿
Jul 16, 2014 20:17
|
|
|
I think it's akin to the 'problem' with D&D: determining exactly what kind of world the game is intended to evoke. Luke starts off farming water on a dustball, Han is a scummy bastard, and it isn't until Leia's message in a walking bottle arrives that they move beyond that. It isn't totally unreasonable to assume that without that boost into the frankly magical realms of the setting, they'd have stayed in that mundane frame. And that fits with older style, hardscrabble gaming. Personally, I think it's bullshit. As much as I'm not a fan of Campbell, Luke and the others follow a clear Hero's Journey arc, and for my money the focus is on the fantasy heroics. Sure, Mos Eisley is a shithole, but then you've got places like Cloud City... which, okay, wasn't a whole lot nicer when you got past the shiny surface. The focus was still on adventure, and sticking a thumb in the eye of evil, not praying that you don't flub your docking roll, and getting hassled by Hutt legbreakers while your hold's being loaded with tibanna. Not that there isn't room for that style of play, but it's pretty weird when the rules as written seem to sidestep the tone of the source material.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 17, 2014 18:11
|
|
|
theironjef posted:Wait, now that I think about it, that just sounds like Star Wars: The Easy Rider, and I'm on board. Greedo Chigurh is a captive bolter gun-wielding hit man, hired by Jabba the Hutt to recover money owed by Han Solo, in No Desert for Old Jedi. FMguru posted:That's a legitimate way to produce an RPG, but it really does create some mismatched assumptions if it's not communicated clearly by the game itself. Totally, and I'll admit that it isn't entirely fair to point and stare from thirty years on. It was the age where everyone started at first level, and if you wanted to be Conan, then you had to be fresh from the slave pits. Unless you were playing one of the rare games with a lifepath system, in which case you were probably an old Conan, full of canny wisdom but one bad roll from a heart attack.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 17, 2014 19:20
|
|
|
Giggle. Titter. Even funnier than that.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 18, 2014 19:10
|
|
|
RIFTS does have weird nods to 'realism' here and there, usually written in bold-face and block capitals. I swear, every time a drug more potent than Aspirin gets statted, it comes with a table of horrible addiction and withdrawal effects. Not to mention Kevin's seething hatred of lasers that make noise. Played RIFTS since it came out. Quit flat out six or seven years ago, then joined a friend's game because Friday nights were goddamn awful lonely. Managed to end it because the primary instigator (let's play rifts, it's simple!) left the city. I will spend a lifetime of Fridays crying into a frozen Lean Cuisine before playing that game again.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 23, 2014 19:54
|
|
|
I had similar problems getting through the first edition of Palladium Fantasy. A couple of the magic classes just... didn't seem to work. It felt like the terrible D&D '3e' a friend and I did one summer, a huge mass of rewrites mostly for their own sake, only our bugbears were hit points and proficiency slots, and not Kevin's hate-on for neutral alignments.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 24, 2014 06:50
|
|
|
Humbug Scoolbus posted:The weirdest part is that in the source literature humanity won a lot. CoC the game is far more dangerous in some ways. It also reinforced the GM vs. Players mentality. The broader mythos has seen a lot of authors with different attitudes toward the canon. CoC picks up a few bits from Lumley and others (Cthonians, for example), though his mythos stories end up involving the good twins of various Great Old Ones and going far more toward adventure pulp than weird tales of decay and despair, and while CoC definitely leans toward the sole, batshit survivor school of endings, it's capable of some thematic flexibility. Compare the Blood Brothers adventure books (with 3D action!) to Horror on the Orient Express, to the Dreamlands supplements. Night10194 posted:Hearing about Stone basically single-handedly kept me from playing Deadlands. That is the most ridiculous kind of bullshit in older RPGs, where the game felt it had to protect its own goddamn metaplot. From what? The DM can just write that stupid crap out, and what are the designers going to do, come yell at them? Nah, we're all nerds. They just take the passive aggressive route and assume that you're following along, predicating everything on metaplot progression. If they blow it up, or decide something is too good for players to have, they can just skip those parts going forth. Bieeanshee fucked around with this message at 02:51 on Jul 25, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Jul 25, 2014 02:48
|
|
|
kaynorr posted:They've tried to change that in the last few years with the Dungeon Fantasy and Monster Hunter lines, which are roughly analogous to buying a LEGO kit that you can make into an X-Wing or a Camaro or what-have-you. It's a valiant effort, but doesn't really play to GURPS' strengths which are largely in insanely flexible character creation. Infinite Worlds or Transhuman Space did far better jobs of that, but just didn't sell enough. I threw a classic groggy fit when 4E came out, but while I still think that swathes of the new core could be cut without tears, I eventually pried my head out of my rear end. That stuff though-- that just left me cold. Like, I understand and appreciate the utility of character templates and a Chinese menu where you choose 20 points from Column A and 10 from B, and get a roughly functional character of that archetype without slogging through Evil Stevie's Skills Dumpster. That's hugely helpful, especially for new players. Dungeon Fantasy just seemed to take it to an unfunny extreme for something the designer claimed was '...by turns cheesy, silly, and munchkin.'
|
|
#
¿
Jul 25, 2014 19:18
|
|
|
Lynx Winters posted:All that said, I've pretty much had enough of GURPS in general. Someone else said that it's pretty good about scalability in terms of how complex you want to get, and I sort of agree, but it really doesn't do a good job of explaining that. That was the biggest problem I had trying to convince people to play or run GURPS during the 3E years. People took one look at the Basic Set (and god help you if you had the Compendiums near to hand) and balked. Or worse, they insisted on using every part of the buffalo and things ground to a screeching halt.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 25, 2014 21:45
|
|
|
FMguru posted:Goblins and Discworld and Black Ops are also settings that are ill-served by the GURPS ruleset. One of the things I love about Goblins and Discworld is just how much they fly in the face of bog-standard GURPS. Goblins, you start off with a racial package that weighs in as a disadvantage. Someone shivs you and throws you in the river, you spend the rest of the night floating along, nursing a kidney wound that probably won't kill you, and planning your revenge. Discworld, someone shivs you and shoves you in the river, you'll probably just bounce. And the mechanical sidebars just kind of look directly at you and throw their hands up. And I love, love, love the fluff for Black Ops, but Jesus. 700-odd point characters, of which you've got like 20 points for personalization.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 25, 2014 22:49
|
|
|
Hey. Isn't that one of those 'Totally not a Jenner' Mechanoids in the foreground there?
|
|
#
¿
Aug 7, 2014 13:09
|
|
|
Kai Tave posted:You know what a great idea is when you're designing an armored vehicle? Strapping a bunch of exposed, lightly armored explosives to the side. Yep. Reminds me of one of the things we learned from playing Robotech: if you're not making called shots on the head, make called shots on the missile pods.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 11, 2014 02:06
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:Hypno-ligature (+1 to 2): Unbeknownst to you, the Bene Gesserit have identified you as a potential threat, and have secretly conditioned you to respond to a secret trigger word by freezing or falling unconscious. It’s up to the Narrator to decide which Sisters have access to the word, and it doesn’t explain the difference between the 1-point and 2-point versions of the disadvantage. The two point version has the Bene Gesserit writing 'for a good time, call trigger-word' on every dive bathroom in the known universe.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 12, 2014 03:37
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 19, 2024 20:32 |
|
|
Eh, it's clearly a storygame: you can't actually die unless you explicitly accept the risk, and you have the option of taking crit-fails in return for additional bennies, as well as extra bonuses for describing your (otherwise) death-defying stunts. Crimson Skies 2.0 is obviously not the intention. At the same time, it shouldn't be hard to decouple the setting and attach it to something that offers more in-depth tactics and mechanics.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 18, 2014 23:38
|
|