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Kai Tave posted:So if two PCs want to physically fight each other for whatever the reasons people get up to PvP in their RPGs, is the idea then that they should just negotiate out how much damage each of them takes without any rolling? "Well Bob, I'd really like it if I could just chop your head off." "Eh Steve, I dunno, I was thinking more of a lingering mortal wound sorta deal..." Ideally there shouldn't be any PvP in most RPG's, and if there is, then yes, it's probably a good idea if the players talk out what they want out of it first. If it's really a grudge match where they both want to murder the other, wow, yeah, your group is probably hosed, so most likely if it's a fight that won't totally poo poo up your game with hard feelings, yes, they can probably agree on what should happen. Or at least agree OOC whether it's to the death, to surrender, etc. to make sure that no one's suddenly out of the game just because Dave rolled a natural 20 and lopped off their head. Most games aren't balanced around PC vs PC fights in the first place, because it tends to be assumed that the players will specialize in different ways, so it's almost guaranteed that one of them will be better at combat than the other(or perhaps specifically better at fighting a single powerful opponent, like another PC), to the point where it's just a hilariously unbalanced beatdown, so, unless your players designed their characters around PvP from the word go... probably it isn't really going to be much fun for anyone anyway to just run it by the books. Senrath posted:It also works for when a PC tries to use social combat on an NPC, and there's more to social combat than mind control. However, if your GM's response to every attempt at social combat is "the NPC reaches over and lightly slaps you, disrupting what you were doing utterly." then your GM is probably a cock who just wants to ruin the game for you. I mean, that seems less of a failing of the system, more of a failing of the GM if he abuses that "out" for NPC's(unless of course you do/say something that would reasonably make them blow their top and take a swing at you, in which case, again, it seems to me to be pretty good that there's a mechanical "out" in the rules that lets them actually react violently.).
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Oct 6, 2015 21:02
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Kai Tave posted:Part of the issue too though, in my opinion, is how weird it is that players get really knee-jerk over anything that might influence their character in any way aside from physical violence. Murder, torture, infestation by body-horror parasites, disfigurement, all this stuff is accepted as fair game without a second thought, but the moment the possibility exists that an NPC might persuade a PC of something then all at once it's like what no gently caress YOU, you can't tell me what to do, I punch the ambassador in the face. I know the usual argument has to do with preserving player agency, but "your character dies" is pretty much the ultimate loss of agency and that's considered such a default component of the typical RPG experience that most people don't even question it. Well, the instant that the GM, or by extention the GM's NPCs, are telling the PC's what to think, say or do, it's basically just the GM sitting around jerking himself off while the players occasionally pretend to be involved. The issue is that a character being physically threatened or injured doesn't rob the player of agency(though it may limit their options), while "diplomancy" most certainly does. I could make a character where I'd not be annoyed by social mechanics basically playing him for me, but then you'd find that I'd made a character who was, to me, just a bunch of mechanics, not someone I was actually invested in to any extent.
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Oct 8, 2015 14:02
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Well, I find that it's definitely less bad to have the option, but to have it have consequences(those guards will pound you into dust) than to have the option magically taken away from you at all. In the former case, you at least get to roleplay your character grudgingly accepting that he can't steal the Jewel of Infinite Awesomeness right away. On the other hand, if the GM's NPC walks up to you and, with a few dice rolls, either Diplomances you into being a different alignment or just removes your desire to have the Jewel at all, that just feels like bullshit, because it takes away my getting to roleplay my character. I legitimately can't think of any sort of "social combat" that wouldn't result in someone else deciding what my character does, rather than my doing so. Like, however limited the local version of diplomancy is, that's still the end result: Someone else decides what my character does or thinks.
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Oct 8, 2015 19:36
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When you say you can't play as BADASS LOBSTERMEN in TDE, does that mean that they're just not allowed during chargen? Or do monsters, even sentient ones, not have "classes" like PC's do, and turning them into PC races would take a lot of work?
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Oct 9, 2015 03:29
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Night10194 posted:The basic resolution system is fine, at least. TN Roll Under with a basic degrees of success system is, at least, simple and easy to resolve. It's conceptually decent, yes, but for some reason I've never seen a D100 roll-under system that handles the actual numbers in a non-poo poo way. It always either comes up as everyone being an absolute incompetent if the GM rolls by RAW(Rogue Trader, WFRP 2e) or with everyone having to intentionally cripple themselves to not start out with 80's and 90's in their core skills(Eclipse Phase) and then being kind of at a loss for what to do when their character gets more XP, because no one ever thought to add in some rules for being really, really good at stuff, having "won't gently caress up 90% of the time under normal circumstances" as the apex of the scale, and meaning that if the GM adds any modifiers for a challenging situation, they'll still be back to a 50% chance of blowing it. Besides, bell curves are your friend, get off that horrible single die and roll 3d6 or something sane.
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Oct 9, 2015 18:36
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I'd say that mathematics, as a skill, would probably involve a lot of being able to do the local equivalent of "taking 20," if you know the requisite mechanics for what you're doing(algebra or whatever), usually the main question is how fast you can complete it, not whether you can complete it at all, especially if you've got something to reference formulas in.
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Oct 9, 2015 22:58
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I like the vampire varieties, that's actually pretty cool, and also encourages the players doing some research. Though, is there any reasonable way that the PC's could identify which deity a given vampire is cursed by? Do they look notably different or anything? Are they rare enough that any given vampire is probably a local legend whose background they could investigate? Or is it just a matter of hauling along all the various anti-vampire remedies and giving them a try?
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Oct 11, 2015 22:51
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Mors Rattus posted:I imagine the easiest way is to start researching that vampire's history in life. Dig up old records, check church rolls... Yeah, but that'd require the vampires to be relatively rare. If there's, like, fifty vampires inside every old crypt, being able to do actual research goes out the window and it turns into more of a "lol the anti-vampire weapon you thought was the right one doesn't work! try again!" If they're legitimately pretty rare, though, any given vampire will probably be a local legend that can be researched if the players give a gently caress. Though that can also lead to an entertaining situation where the vampire, not being loving dense, realizes that information about it is a weakness, and it's gone to great pains to destroy any mentions of its life, kill people it used to know, etc. and the players have to do their research from incomplete and intentionally damaged sources.
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Oct 12, 2015 00:14
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I honestly don't think there was ever really a "decade" for adversarial GM'ing. I think it's more that games started out a bit more like GAMES, i.e., the players were supposed to be able to lose and have to start over, and hence the GM was meant to challenge them more aggressively and more mercilessly. But I don't think the ratio of "jackass GM who will TPK you with surprise medusas/cockatrices/rockfalls" to "normal, sane GM" has really shifted all that much. Except that the methods have changed from "TPK everyone" to "railroad everyone with my Mary Sue GMPC elf vampire wizard."
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Oct 12, 2015 20:55
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Well, I'd love some Trinity/Aberrant/Aeon reviews, or whatever the hell they're all called. I've heard stories here and there, but never read any of the books myself, and it sounds like there's a decent bit of stuff to rip on, and also some good ideas to learn from.
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Oct 16, 2015 07:30
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Young Freud posted:If you read my abandoned review on the game, those Watchmen books led to Ray Winninger's Underground because Winninger wrote two of those books with Moore's input and used it as a springboard at Mayfair to more mature material in Underground as well as made him kind of a name to non-RPG people because of the Watchmen-Moore connection. Any chance it'll ever get picked up and finished again? I really liked that review and wanted more.
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Oct 18, 2015 08:25
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The whole idea of "freeing a secret" so it can leak back into the world is kind of interesting, but outside of that this still feels pretty badly written.
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Oct 19, 2015 04:02
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I dug 2E Clerics as long as you used the SPECIFIC Cleric rules rather than the UNIVERSAL Cleric rules. Universal Clerics were incredibly goofy. Making Clerics of specific faiths also helped give them a bit more of a role than "the guy who heals and then tries to fight but is actually worse at it than the fighter." It gave them some flavour.
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Oct 21, 2015 05:46
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Mr.Misfit posted:This last part got so bad that there is a running joke in the german TDE community about giving artifacts to NPCs only to advance the plot because you can be assured that they will somehow lose it, either by being stupid or making some really idiotic choice. I guess at least TDE's railroad-to-victory is marginally less awful than CTech's railroad-to-failure?
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Oct 25, 2015 08:07
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For some reason some of the stuff I love the most from the F&F thread is when someone completely breaks a game in half with some unintended results of RAW.
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Nov 7, 2015 14:39
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Covok posted:I hope this isn't a derail, but I'm curious if anyone reads roleplaying books like this normally? Like, from cover to cover? I tend to read every last page, myself. Not so much because I intend to memorize the rules, usually I run an abridged version in any case, because most systems, even good ones, are improved by only using the rules when it's fun or interesting, but because I intend to harvest them for inspiration and ideas. You never know what goofy magic item or sidebar tucked away in an appendix will give you a brilliant idea, or the template to realize something you want to do, even if you're not going to use it exactly as-written. Plus, not all books are just dry rules-tomes, Paranoia XP, for instance, had rules that you could use all the way through, but also came absolutely bloated with fluff spilling out of every crack, it was just plain a good read. EDIT to answer the follow-up question: Basically always a GM and usually only running one game at once.
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Nov 19, 2015 20:23
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I actually took a poke at making a Loom RPG once, but real life and the fact that no one had any real interest in the thing to help me with playtesting or critique kind of prevented me from ever doing much with it.
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Nov 22, 2015 04:04
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So, Hc Svnt Dracones had its first expansion officially launched today. Is everyone tired of it or does anyone want to hear what 200 pages and 14 dollars gets you? It's got more options! More lore! Apparently also robot dogs and squidcats! 
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Dec 31, 2015 19:51
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MadScientistWorking posted:Like the only other character in all of D&D that I know of which can travel to earth is Elminster. Specifically to hang out with Ed Greenwood and tell Ed what a great guy he is.
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Jan 1, 2016 11:32
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Hc Svnt Dracones: Extended Core Hc Svnt Dracones! The capitalist furry knockoff of Eclipse Phase, the one with blood ghosts and furry slendermans. It got an expansion(the first, unless you count a couple of pre-written adventures. Please don't make me do those, too. Please.) known as the "extended core," promising 200 pages(more like 184) of expanded fluff and rules! 32~ pages of fluff, and the remainder mostly dedicated to the chance to play as fish, bears, horses and mongeese(or mongooses, I have no idea what the proper plural is). It also has Blips, Cogs, Cogsunes and "Exonymphs." I have no idea what any of those are, but doesn't it just sound exciting? We also get a few chapter-start fluff pieces this time around. I'm pretty sure I'm going to be cringing my spine into permanent deformation when I read these.  Why is her nametag just "Elisa" mirrored? That's the laziest way to do "alien" script ever. Either that or she put her clothes on back to front. Victory Victory is the name of the first chunk of fluff we get in the Extended Core. It's a short and extremely pointless piece about an employee on a Jovian-orbit freeport space station doing some people-watching. Mostly it's an extremely long-winded way of going "gee, people are still social in space!" Victory posted:Spacecraft were some of the only truly independent environments in the Sol system, as their ability to move people great distances unseen while transporting all manner of hazardous material made them too large a liability for corps to want to maintain control over. It also keeps up the HSD "tradition" of completely failing to understand everything. In a society with no formal governments, only corporations, why would those corporations NOT want to control small, swift transporters of hazardous and illegal goods? In fact, isn't that likely one of the things they'd most want to control, so no one's sneaking around expensive, potentially stolen, potentially dangerous as gently caress things? I mean, they might not be able to, but not want to? Families Here are all the animals they left out of the core. In total, they seem to be: Bears, Sharks, Dolphins, Rats, Mice, Squirrels, Rabbits, Bats, Horses, Cows, Deer, Goats, Gazelles, Seals, Raccoons, Mongeese and Hyenas. And probably a few variants of those here and there. As usual, we get some weird drat design decisions all over the place, usually tied in no apparent way to what the actual animals are like or what human stereotypes of them are. Bears, for instance, get a bonus to being pretty(Body: Presence) and the sense of smell. Why physical beauty? Bears are mostly known for being tough and strong, not for being particularly gorgeous. Rodents inexplicably have advantages when attacking others in combat(you'd think they'd be small and have an advantage on the defense instead.). It also remains weird that there's only one guy named as the "Creator" of both books, because sometimes it really feels like there's two authors on everything. For instance, the first book really went on about how good the furries were at having a better society than humanity, but even in that book the actual writing hardly supported that idea at any point, and in the write-up for the bears, the entire write-up is actually about how they're discriminated against and considered less prestigious and second-class just because the circumstances of their creation are less clear, literally a sort of caste-based-on-birth sort of thing. Maybe the author just thought it was a cute quirk and not a sign of being a backwards-as-gently caress society. Hc Svnt Dracones posted:All aquatic Vectors share a deviation from the traditional outlooks on certain morphisms, as they work pretty differently when “legs” aren’t part of your natural animal anatomy. Not to mention, do they even remember the loving fluff they wrote just a book back? I'm quite certain that the description of the whole Vector project was that it was basically human fetuses with animal parts grafted on, that the only ones that were outright based on animals were the half-retarded, servant predecessors of the true Vectors. Let me just dig up the drat quote... Hc Svnt Dracones posted:MarsCo chose to approach the problem of intelligence from a different direction: they would turn the human into the animal, instead of the animal into the human. By manipulating cloned human “blanks,” or genetic fetuses built from scratch, and endowing them with the same appearance and features of the previously abolished species of bipedal pets, MarsCo reset the evolutionary clock and emerged with something new. See? If anything the challenge should've been to remove legs, not keep them there. Hc Svnt Dracones posted:Tauric Delphinidae and Selachii members transition to their lateral lower bodies just below the thighs, leaving a gap between the crotch and the lower body that’s absent on tauric snakes. Do I even need to make the joke about it being a poorly-disguised fetish game when the author is giving you pointless detail about their crotches? I also can't get over how stupid the whole "taur" thing is. I mean, this game pretends that there's some vague scientific justification for most of its bullshit, but what the gently caress would the inside of a "taur" even look like? I mean, even a classic mythological creature like a "centaur" only really functions because you don't think about it too hard. If you've got two torsos, do you also double up on all of the torso's contents, like the organs? Or do you just double the size of everything and shunt things "downwards" to make room, so the lower half is basically just one long intestine and maybe the kidneys? I could forgive a lot more of this trash if the game just said: "This is a furry RPG for furries, with some fetish elements in, which is why we're including everyone's favourite fetish: taurs." But, my ranting aside, mostly the stuff about the "aquatics" is pointing out how their "laterals"(in case you don't remember, those poor sods stuck with a human brain and an entirely animal body) are even more hosed and useless than the land animal "laterals" because fins are even less suited for doing stuff meant for hands than paws are. They also sadly nix the option of playing a lateral shark in a suit of powered armor(a "bodyframe"). Hc Svnt Dracones posted:By the time the family Delphinidae left the tanks, millions of humans had died back home, and their new caretakers were forced to look in the eyes of a template they knew to be from a creature of near-human intelligence, and explain what was happening. Somewhere in that conversation so many centuries ago had to have been the revelation that it was unlikely Earth’s dolphin population was going to have much say in whether or not they survived the war. I hate to repeat myself, but goddamn this is stupid. They're NOT HUMANOID DOLPHINS, EVEN BY THE GAME'S OWN FLUFF. THEY'RE CLOSER TO HUMANS IN REALLY ADVANCED FURSUITS. Also for some reason making dolphin vectors made the scientists feel icky because they were messing with the combined genetics of two sapient creatures, rather than one sapient and one not, while they didn't even feel slightly weird about anything else they did. Hc Svnt Dracones posted:Lateral dolphins have luxurious lives compared to most of the landlocked Vector species. They’re among a very small population that can do the jobs given to them, which puts them in high demand. These jobs never appear to be specified, so I have to wonder: What jobs can a dolphin do that a humanoid in a suit or a mini-submarine couldn't? Or even a remote-operated drone? I mean, they're LATERAL dolphins, so at best they can boop stuff with their nose or grab it in their teeth, barring specialized tools, and those specialized tools, if made, would really only let them replicate what you could otherwise do with a hand, claw or tentacle.  I wonder if they've got blowholes on top of their heads, now THAT would require some interesting biological rejiggery. I also thought I'd have to rant at the book for being scientifically inaccurate for lumping orcas in the "Delphinidae" group, but it turns out they actually are. So there's your educational fact for the day. Hc Svnt Dracones posted:The famous blowhole of this family serves little purpose on a biped and was removed in the original Vector design, but some Vectors have had them surgically added above their dorsal fin between their shoulders as a sort of physical statement of dedication to living below the waves. That's right, extreme body modding in this case consists of plugging a hole in yourself, through your spine, leading to your lungs. It might be off-centered, but even then it sounds like a really terrible location for an extra orifice, not that there are any particularly good locations.  Sharks inexplicably get cat/reptile eyes, not sure why, since their eyes are supposedly pretty human-like and have round pupils in every case I've seen. Hc Svnt Dracones posted:so much of Vector genealogy is built from scratch that it’s difficult to point to any one person walking around and say “you, you have a proud heritage of millions of years of evolution” because, by all rights, they don’t. If nature had at any point given the whole “two legged dog” thing a genuine go, it died out long before humans came along. The Vectors themselves aren’t even that; they’re clean designs that incorporate familiar traits and appearances from established genomes, but are at their core a fully artificial creature that began its evolutionary process from ground zero, 700 years ago. But... but... just a loving PAGE ago you made a point of someone doing EXACTLY THIS to a loving dolphin Vector! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa... Hc Svnt Dracones posted:Sharks eat to feed and more or less leave things alone otherwise. But if, for instance, a group of them was possessed of human intelligence, they would not be subject to those limitations. Include a little good old fashioned technology, and they would be faster, stronger, larger and better equipped for control of more than 70% of any given terraformed planet than any other family That seems to bizarrely assume that "more than 70%" of any given planet terraformed would be oceanic. I mean, yes, I know that Earth is wet, but there's no saying that every other planet has to be just as soggy.  Inexplicable pokeballs in ears. So there's a bit on rats and mice. The rats are dull, the mice were created by the rats for the purpose of slave labour, and the remainder of Vector society didn't do anything because if they liberated them, suddenly they'd have to take care of them for a while. Where's all the profit-motivated corporate charity and benevolence? All of the "logical" behavior that somehow ties profit to doing good and noble things for everyone? Hc Svnt Dracones posted:There is a long standing jab toward family Felidae about having started three separate race wars in their history Man, that's a lot of genocide. I love how the books can't decide if society is centered around species or corporate loyalty, because it feels like it changes from page to page sometimes. Anyway the cats inexplicably tried to kill/subjugate all the rabbits, and lost. Also despite it earlier(literally a page ago) saying that no one tried to save the mice from slavery until the mice rose up and saved themselves, now it's saying that the cats tried to, but failed.    Suddenly this anime atrocity with eyes so big I thought they were loving glasses at first glance. That thing is supposed to be a seal, by the way The write-up on raccoons also has a part where the surviving human scientists, before perishing as total idiots near the end of the fluff in the first book, create raccoons with some genes that they can spread to the other Vectors to eventually "cure" them of Lateralism. Keep in mind, it's basically constantly pointed out how Lateralism is debilitating and kind of miserable for most Vectors. They've got a human brain, but no real ability to interact with the world as a human, they usually can't even wear pants. Also keep in mind that the Vectors have Eclipse Phase levels of genetic modification and re-engineering they engage in pretty much at random, including resleeving. And yet they're outraged and basically burning effigies in the streets just because someone invented a cure for probably their worst genetic issue. Why are the creatures created by genetic engineering, who engage in it on a regular basis, suddenly absolute conservatives about a bit of biology?  What the hell is this monstrosity? Some sort of deer-cat-anime hybrid? There's also a whole bunch of new mutations/morphisms in case you want to look more like your fursona. Want to be a bat with tusks? A shark with horns? A glowing raver raccoon? Go right ahead. You can do that now. I also didn't quote a single thing related to horses and their ilk, but that's because there was literally nothing interesting there. Just more dully bad writing. Next up, though, are Blips, Cogs, Cogsunes and Exo-Nymphs. I'm willing to put money on at least one of those being retarded, and without having read ahead, I suspect that Exo-Nymphs will be the dumbest. Maybe Cogsunes, because that sounds suspiciously like a portmanteau of cog and kitsune.
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Jan 1, 2016 22:08
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Nuns with Guns posted:Looks like the entire image was flipped for some reason because the number 5 on the table is backwards too Ha ha, wow, I didn't even loving notice that. Good eye.
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Jan 1, 2016 22:39
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Doresh posted:One might also wonder why dolphin lady has no ears, but this shark dude has long, pointy ones. It' almost like this drawing originally started out as a different species. Oh no! They actually "explain" that in the fluff. Apparently it was an experiment to see whether ears helped sharks hear better... but it didn't, so they didn't bother giving them to any of the other fish. (the real explanation is probably that it looks cooler to the artists) Doresh posted:And man, now it's all coming back to me about the fluff not being consistent at all. They really can't decide between "Capitalistic furries too enlightened to repeat man's mistakes" and "WoD splats, but with furries", can they? The thing is, at least in all of the oWoD games I remember reading, there were usually really distinct mechanical differences from splat to splat, usually noteworthy drawbacks and advantages, unique abilities, etc. Here, despite the comparatively large write-up each "family" of furry gets, the mechanical consequences are pretty minor. +1 sounds like a lot when you're on a 1 to 5 scale, but you're still capped at a max of 3 at chargen, despite it, so the "wrong" +1 won't really keep you from being really good at something, and the "right" +1 won't let you be any better at something than if you didn't have it. The closest you get to unique abilities is that each order of animal has a choice between two equally irrelevant advantages, usually something on the line of being able to get a meaningless reroll in one extremely specific sort of situation, and that each order has a different set of "reclaiming" surgeries it can get(basically, gaining some abilities that its feral source had, like how lizards can gain better regeneration, etc.) but that's also largely pretty minor. If it was actually WoD with furries, it'd probably be more interesting. Hell, even loving Cthulhutech with furries would probably be a step up.
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Jan 1, 2016 23:31
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Bieeardo posted:Wait. Vaguely guessing from the angle of the eyes on those two characters, they're both looking at a third... which we only see as half of a hand coming in from off-page. I actually think they might have, because on the next page is the "Victory" fluff, which appears to cover the second half of the image...  It's hard to tell whether there's a full image hidden behind there, but there's definitely something covered up by the text. Communist Zombie posted:Looking at the menu it seems some of the items are 5 and 6 dimensional quarter pounders, for something around 15.XX credits. Which might be a steal? Assuming theyre not some lovely 'novelty' burger to scam tourists with. Hey, there's a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster there, too, if I'm reading the tiny, blurry text, right. Clearly this is a reputable establishment.
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Jan 2, 2016 08:48
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Hc Svnt Dracones: Extended Core I keep wanting it to be Extended Core, because Core: Extended just sounds stupid to me Blips  Considering the formatting, it was easier to just paste the entire bit of "fiction" along with the picture So what the gently caress is a "Blip"? This is a Blip.  Basically one-off prototypes grown in vats, entirely sapient, raised from children to adults, but because the Vectors are only opposed to genetic engineering when humans do it, made intentionally sterile so that they'll forever be lone abominations, never able to raise families. Unless they make their own Blips or something. Also there are weird rules against making too good Blips, apparently it's illegal to make a Blip that can do anything better than another Vector, so essentially all the law permits them to do is to be glittery sparkledogs. Hc Svnt Dracones posted:They’re also a risky venture socially; Blips bring out one of the few cases of outright racism present in Vector society. Many Vectors have various views on various other species, but it’s mitigated by a feeling of connection due to their common origins. Blips don’t share that common origin. They’re the efforts of one (probably very well-to-do) individual who decided standard reproduction wasn’t good enough for their vision of the future and created a unique piece of work instead. So superior to humanity, no racism, no discrimination... except for the huge examples boldly trumpeted all over the loving fluff. Also bizarre judgments on the hobbies of the rich in a corporate-ruled state, when, since the corporations and advancement in them seem to be the core of society, you'd figure that everyone would look up to the hyper-rich and their hobbies and dream of being like them. Mechanically, there's no goddamn reason why Blips shouldn't simply be the way all characters are made, since they, by fictional law, have no advantages over the rest. They get to look how they want, and in the one thing that actually set some types of Vectors apart from others mechnically, reclaiming surgeries, they get to pick-and-mix what they want. The section ends on a note of the author begging people not to make Blips, to please try to fit their unique concept in under the existing "families," because if everyone's a Blip, Blips don't get to be unique and special any more! Cogs  That's Blips sorted, so how about Cogs? Hc Svnt Dracones posted:when the Core Consciousness, the critical component of Cog sapience, was demonstrated and explained, they didn’t look at it with a thousand years of human contempt for machines, or with the self-assured security of mastery over their land and pride in their cities which they had built on ancient tradition and principle. Sapient robots, basically. Honestly it sometimes feels like the author of this book isn't human themselves, because they don't seem to actually know how real humans think or act. How does humanity have "a thousand years of contempt" for machines? I mean, I can't even write anything that conveys how ridiculous this statement is better than the statement itself already does. Also wondering what "ancient traditions and principles" humans have for building their cities, urban planning is a relatively new discipline, it's not like we're using ancient Greek or Roman secrets to lay out our roads and avenues, because our requirements these days are vastly different from what theirs were. At worst we occasionally gank some "ancient" aesthetics. Hc Svnt Dracones posted:At the center of every Cog is a single, constantly powered unit which serves as a continual input recording and analysis device. A brain, essentially, but one that behaves as an electronic analog to the biological construct. It experiences the world through the Cog’s senses, builds bridges between experiences as a normal brain does, and is only “programmed” in the same way any brain is; by reaction to stimulus. It possesses no operating system, no built-in abilities or applications, and no backup feature. It’s simply an information sponge. It even looks vaguely brain-like, and is the inspiration behind the ASR logo. Cogs have to live, in order to be living. They attend schools, learn about their environment, trade stories and gain skills through all the traditional means, and as such they build the same sorts of social and emotional bridges Vectors do. None of it is “simulated” any more than a normal person’s laughter or sorrow might be. It’s simply a result of stimulus, compared to a lifetime of experience. The system has functioned so well, that (beyond a few tweaks to make sure things don’t decay prematurely) it has remained unchanged for nearly a thousand years. Its similarity to organic construction has also led to one of the most universal social rules of being a Cog: the idea that being a machine does not make you a tool. So the robots have brains that are EXACTLY like human brains, except made of metal. If the explanation is that vague, and the differences non-existent, why even bother to loving explain it? Also they DO think and act different from organic creatures, because they universally have a retarded aversion to any sort of alterations to their body. I'm pretty sure it's easier to swap out parts on a machine than it is to engineer and swap out parts on a biological creature, so why they'd be averse to something that's easier and simpler for them, is baffling, except that they don't wanna be made into tooooools maaaaaaan. Hc Svnt Dracones posted:Cogs have hobbies and physical aspirations like anyone does, and likewise want to train their bodies to be good at what they do. When your body is mechanical, it doesn’t “train” particularly well, and when your race disdains physical modification, it’s difficult to get “in shape” as it were. At some point they could've just written "we didn't want to make any special rules for the Cogs. Think up your own reasons why they work like everyone else." and it would've saved everyone a whole lot of wasted words and embarrassment. I mean, they even have genders. Hc Svnt Dracones posted:Every Cog, regardless of registered gender, is entitled to the integration of reproductive anatomy. It isn’t gender specific, or even limited to a single binary (though you do have to pay if you want more than what your hereditary code entitles you to). Typically this anatomy is established by the birth gender and present in every chassis, but not attached to any functional reproductive system. How does a robot even have a birth gender? Or, for that matter, functioning reproductive anatomy? Hc Svnt Dracones posted:Visions of a hard dividing social line forced by sheer mechanical incompatibility demanded a solution. It was remarkably easy to fix, even if it did make for a disturbing reminder of just how “artificial” Vectors were to begin with. From the human standpoint anyway. The Vectors themselves thought the whole situation was pretty clever. "If they're too weird and we can't gently caress 'em, they'll never fit in!" Exclaimed the furries, "We have to give 'em robot titties or there will be war!" Hc Svnt Dracones posted:Mother Cogs cannot produce organic offspring with this unit (that was attempted with the first few mechanical wombs, and the results were considered publicly unacceptable. And a little nightmarish.) Father Cogs can, however, produce organic offspring if the mother is a Vector. How the gently caress do you translate a "personality" into genetic code? WHY do you write this loving trash as part of your stupid RPG? Also the robots are built to intentionally not be immortal, for no good reason except that, apparently, when you get old enough, you "live just to live" and stop being a consumer and corporations don't like that. In general they seem to have that attitude towards all their "employees," which is why they don't really offer anti-aging stuff for the biological Vectors either, which is retarded. People don't stop needing to eat, or stop enjoying entertainment, just because they get older. I mean, you could argue that very old creatures have enough accumulated experience, and enough jadedness, that they become dangerous manipulators and start needing to dig into Most Dangerous Game poo poo to get their kicks, that'd be an argument, but people don't stop consuming just because they get old. I mean, they may consume less if their biological and mental health are on the decline, but if they're just as spry as when they were 20, I doubt they'd want any less burgers, movies or drugs. Hell, their need for weird poo poo to still feel novel to them, could inspire crazy new markets and corps. Vectors must also be dense as poo poo, because the tech for eternal life is there, the fluff states so, but some of them still sign up for contracts that include literal termination points shortly after 100 years of age, for no good loving reason. At least the robots get it a bit better, their brains are programmed to upload them to Robot Heaven(tm)* once they get old enough. *Actual heavenliness of Robot Heaven not guaranteed, as no one's ever actually checked up on the system except for two guys who don't talk about what they see, so the entire place could just have crashed or it could be loving Purgatory or some such poo poo. Whatever, you're a sucker, and this system is retarded. Cogs apparently also eat, and while the text declares that many of them have "neutral" chasses that don't clearly resemble any gender, all the ones shown so far are clearly either masculine or have robot titties. Hc Svnt Dracones posted:Cogs are capable of eating food if they possess a mouth, but it’s purely for show. Chemically metabolizing the meal takes more energy than it’s worth when the rest of the body isn’t tuned to make use of it. Instead, Cogs are powered by an internal reaction system fueled by common elements in the air. I'll just leave everyone to boggle over how retarded this quote is. Hc Svnt Dracones posted:Cogs don’t “breathe,” but they do make use of air for a variety of other critical systems. It assists with cooling and circulation as well as element harvesting for their power source. Cogs can do without air for about 10 minutes before experiencing power loss and systems failures. These are the shittiest robots ever, they can't even survive in loving vacuum or underwater. Hc Svnt Dracones posted:Debt is common enough in the Sol system, but centuries of social practice and careful social rules have put the burden of responsibility onto corptowns to ensure that prices of day to day life items are not so high as to forever drown their populace. There are, essentially, enough other options available that anyone who began the old human company practice of digging a debt trench at the company store would soon be without customers. Not to say it hasn’t happened, but on a surprising number of occasions, other corps have swooped in to dig people back out again, occasionally possessing the company in the process. Which, conveniently, gave them a population of new, thankful customers. Megacorps arrange these “benevolent takeovers” on a regular basis, sometimes against their own subsidiaries. It’s led to the volatile, occasionally violent hotzones Vectors are familiar with, but also kept many crippling business practices at bay. Because gee, corporations would never think to make a cartel! Instead they engage in completely above-board competition with each other at all times, preventing harmful monopolies and hurfle durfle gurfle burf. Man, I'd sure love to trade the hellish horrors of government regulation for something as minor as "occasionally violent hotzones" as corporations have shootouts! Jesus Christ. At least the frame creation rules give you a few new options. They don't just let you make metal versions of normal Vectors, but actually let you make stuff like that Squidcat from a page or two back, having six legs, levitating instead of having legs at all, etc. Sadly, for no clear reasons, all Cogs are limited to human torsos, symmetrical constructions, a single head, etc. Basically any weirdness you have will mostly just be from the legs down(the tentacle forms are an exception, since they also replace your arms with tentacles).  Sadly being a Cog won't protect you from the worst of Vector blights: Looking loving retarded  I figure these guys are being levitated against their will, but the guy in the back just seems to be chilling out more than panicking or flailing. Next time, Cogsunes! Exo-Nymphs! Whatever other stupid poo poo I find along the way!
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Jan 2, 2016 12:56
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Doresh posted:So what I take from this (unless my brain turned off halfway through to preserve SAN points) is that rainbow-colored dogdudes with four dicks are a discrimminated crime against nature and have to be born sterile, but rainbow-colored dogbots with a metal brain and four tentacle dicks that can actually make you pregnant are ok o_O ? This is precisely what the Space Furry Libertarian Singularity is about, yes. These are also presented as totally reasonable opinions.
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Jan 2, 2016 15:17
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Kurieg posted:If a bio-dad knocks up a toastercat does anything happen? Or can robowifes only make robabies with a dadbot? Cause if so this entire segment is bizarrely discriminatory against women, both flesh and steel ones. Robabies only with a dadbot, for some bizarre reason. Yeah, I have a hard time putting my finger on exactly WHY, but it did strike me as weirdly misogynistic. Kurieg posted:I'm pretty sure you can't even get that, since odds are some other robot character already had those life affirming arguments with someone else. It also means you can't get the genuinely hilarious parts of EDI's character growth because Cogs aren't also a spaceship. Interestingly enough, they DO make semi-intelligent designer organisms, "Bio Probes," and they do acknowledge that the difference between a Blip, who's ostensibly free, and a Bio Probe, which is a piece of owned equipment, is extremely vague, but then they just drop it there. No Bio Probe freedom activists or anything. Also yes, all of this could be sort of interesting if we had an unreliable narrator, especially considering the fact from the original HSD book that human voices supposedly hypnotize Vectors, and you could have a weird Vector facade society run by behind-the-scenes humans and crazy stuff like that. But nothing in the writing ever indicates that it's anything but Word of God.
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Jan 2, 2016 17:43
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Hostile V posted:Honestly bioroids are a thing that interests me a great deal because it blurs the line between nature and machine like never before but I'm having a real hard time wrapping my head around Cog biology. Chalk it up to sleep issues. Okay, to summarize. They don't need to eat, because they extract power from air. Literally, from breathable air. They need to drink, because they need water for coolant. They need air to breathe, because apparently they have nothing resembling batteries and when deprived of their power source(air) for more than eight or ten minutes, they power down and "die." They're in constant wireless connection to Robot Heaven(tm) and slowly become part of it as they become older, or just when they die. They gain no advantages from this. Robot Dads can visit the Robot Creators and get his personality translated into Robot Semen that they can use to impregnate biological women. Or they can just give the Robot Dick to Robot Moms. In the former case the kid is biological, in the latter, a robot. Edit: I don't know who/what Ghus is, but he looks tiny and armed. In my review of the core book I both made a tiny character and also proved that thanks to the rules being poo poo, it could still effectively chokeslam most of the setting's big bads if it won initiative.
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Jan 2, 2016 18:22
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Just so you know I'm not making this poo poo up:Hc Svnt Dracones posted:Cogs are powered by an internal reaction system fueled by common elements in the air. They do, however, need to drink water regularly to facilitate the process, assist with cooling, and provide additional lubrication and cleansing to internal systems. Cogs drink nearly as much water weight as a Vector of equivalent size would consume in food and water combined. Hc Svnt Dracones posted:Cogs don’t “breathe,” but they do make use of air for a variety of other critical systems. It assists with cooling and circulation as well as element harvesting for their power source. Cogs can do without air for about 10 minutes before experiencing power loss and systems failures. Hc Svnt Dracones posted:Crush depth for a Cog is only 96 feet, at which point the external pressure on their systems will render them unconscious unless they’re wearing something protective. Someone who knows more about diving and submarining than me can probably answer this better, but... isn't 96 feet a relatively shallow depth to be inconvenienced by pressure? PurpleXVI fucked around with this message at 18:57 on Jan 2, 2016 |
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Jan 2, 2016 18:53
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Covok posted:Are you sure? I heard it was janitor who walked in on a chalkboard full of equations trying to solve the energy problem. He decided to erase one line and fixed the entire equation. The scientists involved, of course, had him killed and buried without rites then used his work to revolutionize the world. The funny thing is that in the corporate dystopia that HSD should be, despite the author's protestations to the opposite, this is really what they'd do. 
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Jan 3, 2016 01:56
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Hc Svnt Dracones: Extended Core Cogsunes Surprisingly enough, Cogsunes are not robot kitsunes(or kitsune? Not sure on the plural there again.).  Instead they're these little fuckers. Remember the Pod morphs from Eclipse Phase that no one ever used because they were mechanically vastly inferior to everyone else, and essentially only good for novelty NPC's or if some PC really wanted to tank his numbers just so he could be a giant plant? Cogsune are kind of like pod morphs in that they're part organic, part robotic. Again, it's amusing that the Vectors apparently have a taboo against creating new outright organic species, but are cranking out these weird fully or partially robotic races every few hundred years just for corporate profits. Unlike Cogs, however, Cogsune aren't full citizens. They're made by one corporation, and all work for that one corporation, usually secreted away in their own little insular outposts where they do superscience research into forbidden topics(or using forbidden methods), in order to give said corporation some deniability on it. It's never really defined what's "forbidden research" considering that creating new lifeforms(Blips and Bio-Probes), creating en entire slave species(the Cogsune themselves, the Mice) aren't really something that greater Vector society reacts to, and there's an entire major corporation dedicated to prodding at the soft, vulnerable underbelly of time and space(TTI, the guys doing the whole "Transcendent Implants" poo poo, you know, space wizards that blow themselves up most of the time) and just about everyone can buy huge railguns if they've got the money. So what's left as being socially unacceptable? Obscene art? Recreating humans? Besides being modular(their big custom rule thing is that they can swap out limbs for specialized tools. Of course, pretty much all of the tool options for arms also preclude having enough manual dexterity to wield weapons or operate devices, so that renders the majority of them effectively pointless. Also their existence and operations are supposed to be semi-secret, but all of their robot replacement limbs are super-blatant) pseudo-robots, their main thing is that they're small(two feet tall) without having any of the limitations that "Micro" characters have, and also their chargen is radically different since they have no Ledger stats(they get funded by the other Cogsune or their parent corporation) and they have only one stat spread. Said starting stat spread makes them a complete social sperg and physically utterly brittle, but break the starting limit of 3 on three out of their five mental stats(and remember that the "Mind" stats are also the ones used for firearms, so this makes them combat monsters as well.)  Hc Svnt Dracones posted:Vectors represent excess and opulence that is, quite literally, larger than life, and Vector pop culture holds a certain fascination to some while simultaneously revolting others. Singing is a noteworthy example. Cogsunes like music as much as the next person, but singing uses an enormous amount of oxygen, something they themselves consume very little of. The fact that oxygen isn’t a finite resource for them is a non-issue; it’s the overuse of it that matters. You should play a Cogsune IF: You want to roll your eyes and complain about all the normies and the "illogical" or "wasteful" things that they like. Also all Cogsunes are functionally immortal since they've basically got the whole brain backup thing from Eclipse Phase going for them, complete with instantaneous, constant backups(no losing a month of memories and experience because your Stack fell into a star) and instant deployment of a new body for them(though it may take a few days for them to actually get back to where they were). Also they just get their replacement limbs by instantly transforming one of their existing limbs(after calling back home and asking for it to be done), then when they're tired of their new specialist limb, they can just plug it out and spend a couple of hours growing themselves a fresh normal one to plug back into the socket, keeping the specialist limb in their backpack in case they need it again. These things really feel like the author had a pre-made "Cogsune" OC that he wanted to jam in with its own super-special rules that no one else got to play with. Exo-Nymphs  I'll be honest, when I saw the name "Exo Nymph" my first thought was "oh boy, is this going to be some creepy alien fetish chapter?" Instead we get giant bugs. I like giant bugs, they're cool. I've always been a fan of the Thri-Kreen from Dark Sun, for instance, the Aranea from Red Steel, etc. Aren't you all excited to see how badly HSD will gently caress up the first thing in it that might've been slightly cool? They're essentially a species of gardener bugs, created by the original human scientists when they started the terraforming of Mars. Rather than trying to just create a stable ecosystem from scratch, with all of the pollinators and other little niches that'd need filling, all the delicate equilibriums that'd need balancing... they just created one species of relatively intelligent bug with a desire to maintain the system, who'd prune or sustain other species as needed, keep things pollinated, etc.(the game even addresses that this does make for a somewhat-fragile system since there's only one species that'd need to be hit by a poison or a plague to tank the whole mess) They're capable of having a lot of forms, modified by hive chemistry, so they can turn serpentine, grow wings, extra limbs, etc. oh and they can eat brains to consume knowledge and skills. Usually each others', as it's the fastest way for two colonies to communicate a lot of info, just send one guy who knows it all then let the other colony eat his brain. Of course, that sounds more like what tiny little bug-sized creatures would do, when the art we've just seen is of a human-sized creature with a gun. The answer is mad science. Some idiot Vector decided to make a human-sized, human-intelligence, human-sapience Nymph so he could talk to it for undefined reasons. He was successful, the nymph then decided that it needed to know more about its environments and did what it always did: It ate his goddamn brain. Which taught it to make more of its own kind, which it promptly did with the idiot scientist's lab equipment. I'll be honest, it's kind of cool that one of the PC options is basically as a creepy, buggy xenomorph that eats brains. Most Vectors don't know that they exist(they know about the bug-sized ones, but not about the human-sized, brain-eating ones), so they lurk around the shadows and, if discovered, just pretend to be novelty Blips. They're also not sapient until after the first time they eat someone's brain, which is another fun thing. Their starting memories and skills are literally from their first kill. Unlike Vectors they're also not just humans in funny suits, which is refreshing, alien forms and actual alien behavior... though some of the potential for this is somewhat lost due to not really having their own culture, and really only Vector culture and Vector knowledge to start off of, which means they'll basically always end up kind of Vector-ish, but never quite(for instance, murdering other sapient beings is part of their basic biological functions, so they're unlikely to ever really feel super bad about that.). To further the Xenomorph comparison, they also steal the form of the creature they eat, to some extent. If it's got wings, they can sprout a pair, if it's aquatic, they develop more hydrodynamic surfaces, etc.  Mechanically they're somewhat less well-thought-out, basically whenever you eat a brain, you randomly reroll all your stats, despite the fluff stating that you retain all your older memories(though they're somewhat overshadowed by the latest kill), meaning that a poor roll can mean that after eating a brain, you're suddenly less competent than you were before. Set number arrays to distribute would've worked much better, as a single reroll session can make an exonymph either absurdly powerful compared to other characters, or completely useless. Each brain eating also has a 12.5%(one in 8) chance of making part of your last brain-eating a permanent boost, the same thing happens, via GM fiat, if you eat an "important character," i.e. an NPC who's supposed to be exceptionally good at something. Then you get a permanent +1 in their unique stat. It's a cool idea, but again, mechanically troublesome because the book encourages Exonymphs to function in full-Exonymph parties(so they have nothing to hide), in that case, who eats Elminster's brain when you finally capture him for those sweet +1's? You can't share a brain, and there are only so many important NPC's around. You could easily have one or two PC's hogging all the actual bonuses. Also keep in mind that as far as I can tell, they don't get to "normally" advance in stats like other PC's do, their only way to gain stat boosts is literally by randomly rerolling all their stats through brain-eating, or eating important NPC's brains. Also that's how you generate your stats at the start of the game, just one big fat random roll. Overall, I think this is one of the less offensive parts of HSD. Cool creature concept, less hung up on pretending to be scientifically accurate, novel mechanics for a PC, but sadly kinda pooches it on actually implementing those mechanics, as well as missing out on some important fluff. For instance, your body changes to mimic your last kill, but it never says if that happens instantly, or after cocooning like a bug, or what. There are also no vivid descriptions of bug sex or mechanics for what happens if a Vector tries to slip the dick to an Exo-Nymph, the lack of anything even vaguely fetishy is a refreshing change. Unless having your brain torn out by a four-foot tongue is your fetish. After this, we're hitting a patch of mostly rules with less fluff, so there'll probably be less to comment on but... the art doesn't let up. Let me give you a sample so you won't be bored until next time.  I think this is legitimately the dumbest piece of art in the Extended Core so far. See, way back in the "new animals to play as"-chapter, we had a bit that read: Hc Svnt Dracones posted:Tauric Delphinidae and Selachii members transition to their lateral lower bodies just below the thighs, leaving a gap between the crotch and the lower body that’s absent on tauric snakes. I thought they just meant some little indent for the genitals to be in so the porn artists wouldn't be confused about where to put them, but THIS is apparently what they meant. Wow, that looks retarded and more than a little horrifying. Makes the poor thing look like something that should be put out of its misery, like some hosed up Cronenberg mutant. The, uh, "I'm missing some chromosomes, can you help me find them?"-face doesn't make matters any better.
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Jan 3, 2016 12:42
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Thank you for suffering for our sins, Kurieg. You've done God's work.
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Jan 3, 2016 21:40
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Those loving special dice rules make my head spin, I can't imagine it's any easier for someone who's completely new to RPG's.
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Jan 4, 2016 07:21
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I think part of my failure of understanding is why you need, as far as I parse it, one set of symbols for normal successes and one for awesome successes(or failures). Why not just have an excess of normal successes/failures lead to that? The "but!"-dice, as in "but something neat/bad happened as well!" aren't a bad idea, but, eh. Maybe it betrays my OLD GROGNARD ROOTS, but that's something I'd usually just leave up to GM discretion, having the system demand that a good/bad thing suddenly be shoehorned in, just feels wonky to me. Personally I see more headaches than adventures from making it work, but it's probably a whole lot down to your player, your GM and the group's playing style. As far as I understand the system right now, I'm getting more Donjon flashbacks than anything.
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Jan 4, 2016 18:29
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Tatum Girlparts posted:The biggest thing is that a 'major' advantage/disadvantage dice can't be countered. They're basically a pass/fail plus, you can counter a threat/advantage but the 'big' ones exist for special storytelling moments, they basically exist to make the scene more epic. Threat/advantage are more mundane, they can be used a lot of fun ways (this is where GM discretion comes in obviously) but a triumph or despair is a big 'oh poo poo' moment. Advantages and threats are for more common troubles and wins, the cops already on high alert suddenly pick up your signal, a dude's blaster cell runs out just as he's about to shoot you, that stuff. LornMarkus posted:I think the best version of this idea I've seen was "Interesting Times" in Legends of the Wulin. When you roll dice in Wulin you pick out groupings of d10s that show the same number to complete your actions, and if you pick 0's then that brings up an opportunity for Interesting Times, where some complication occurs which varies from annoying to dangerous depending on whether or not you actually succeed on the action you put the 0's toward. You opt to do it yourself, but the Wulin Sage is also explicitly allowed by the rules to say, "okay, but there's not really anything all that weird that can be done to this scene/I can't think of anything right now" and the action resolves as usual. See, I'd rather have mechanics like that powered by some sort of point pool like "fate points" than by random rolls. So on a "special storytelling moment," you can bust out your fate points to make sure that your dramatic rescue is actually a dramatic rescue, and not just a wet fart of a failure. Similarly, being able to bust them out to rescue yourself from a failure, but with an Interesting Times caveat attached. That gives the player control over what's going on around them. Attaching it to any sort of randomness makes it seem more likely that they get busted out for completely inappropriate situations.
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Jan 4, 2016 19:44
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I guess I should put off the next HSD post until after the new thread starts, then.
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Jan 5, 2016 20:36
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Hc Svnt Dracones: Extended Core New Rules This section is mostly a section of various minor new rules adjustments, though for some reason it adds something you'd have figured would be vital to the actual core game, motivations and "compulsions." Motivations have no mechanical impact at all, while compulsions mean gaining a tiny advantage in exchange for a social flaw. This works about as well as it ever has in any RPG, i.e. not at all, since they mostly mean you're encouraged to do things adventurers already do. I.e. be aggressive, gather loot and stay with your friends. The only real thing of note is that there's a Motivation which basically means your character(somehow) has memories of the human era and longs dreamily for it, feeling more human than Vector. Basically you're a sort of reverse Otherkin. Aside from that, there's mostly new gear and body mods to implement. Prehensile Tail posted:Though not a trait associated with any of the major species in most Vector families, the genetic keys for tail control were carefully preserved and cataloged through those few members that possessed it as a potential advantage that could be used later. Pulse has wanted to make this particular trait universally available as a General Operation for ages, but it was, currently, classified as a heritage trait for specific lizards and rats, which protected it under ancient codes of conduct put in place to avoid potential unforeseen genetic complications from the mixing of incompatible genes that might someday result in the sterilization, and subsequent destruction, of a species. Only after years of testing, computer models and no shortage of payoffs has it finally been reclassified as a universal commodity. So, firstly, the genes for a prehensile tail can literally just be cut-and-pasted to make one happen. This is worse knowledge of biology than Wraeththu. Secondly, "protected under ancient codes of conduct"? What ancient codes? There's no global/interplanetary regulatory bodies, there are just corporations. Laws barely even exist. Thirdly, people are literally producing their own loving home-made mutant babies, corporations are literally making servitor species, why the gently caress does anyone care about careless implementation of tails for the general populace? There's also the "Hive Node" implant, which basically starts up a hive mind that others with Hive Nodes can join, giving everyone in the hive access to their memories, knowledge and perspective. It's described as making everyone superhumanly understanding and cooperative, with relatively little individuality... and seems to be described as more dangerous than drugs, Whispers(Space Blood Ghosts), the slenderman knockoffs from the first book or in fact most other things. I suppose there's an obvious joke present in a corporation-fellating RPG describing something involving sharing in the same terms as a dangerous drug. And a bit of body horror that's reasonably well-done, essentially there's Nublood(replaces all your blood with a superior synthetic substance, and rejiggers your body to produce it instead of Blood Classic(tm)), and "Inteliformic Flesh," essentially integrating a very powerful self-repair system in a body that's been filled with Nublood. The downside is that the more repair you undergo as a result of being injured, the more of your body is replaced with the new flesh. It causes no mental damage, even when it eventually subsumes your brain, but it does effectively make you shapeless, until you're basically just a plasmic blob that can manifest limbs and pseudopods as needed. It mostly replaces your vulnerability to being shot with bullets with a vulnerability to ultrasound and electromagnetic fields, as well as water, since you end up being too dense to swim from all the tissue replacement. Aside from that, 60 or so pages are wasted on dull, dull, dull stuff, mostly describing minor house rules you can choose to apply or not. Lore Honestly, the main draw for me in getting this to review was never whatever new abominations of the rules they were going to come up with, but the new fluff.  The ~Lore~ is given in a mix of IC and OOC stuff. IC is that kid explaining to the naked lizard-thing in the trenchcoat what her world is like, OOC is just, you know, narrators talking to us. For some reason this girl, supposedly ten years old, has an in-depth understanding of how mega-engineered arcology blocks work. Mind, how it works is retarded. Hc Svnt Dracones posted:The building pipes natural light in through solar tubes and each of the levels has its own sort of ‘sky’ I guess. Why would you pipe in natural light? I mean, even assuming that you could gather a bunch of it with reflectors and focus it down some mirror pipes or whatever... I'm pretty sure it would be 900 times more efficient, especially with Superior Furry Space Technology, to just make some lamps that emulate natural sunlight. Especially once you get much farther into the solar system than Mars, at which point there's a lot less natural light to work with in the first place. Hc Svnt Dracones posted:“We get weather and stuff like they do outside, but it’s all on a schedule to keep it consistent.” One of the points of living inside is that you don't get loving rained on. Why would you add rain to the inside of a goddamn building unless you were a loving idiot. There are even indoor storms. The writing also suffers terribly from sounding like something out of Moon People at times, where the author(even when its in a 10-year-old girl's voice) gives incredibly specific measurements of size on things that no one would ever need. Why would I need to know that exactly every 1000 square feet of the arcology is a modular section that can be removed and replaced? Why would I need to know that the bridge to the next arcology is exactly a mile long and a thousand feet wide? This doesn't even add any drat sense of scale. Also, the author might've read my first review or just, somehow, come to the same conclusion I did. Because in the first review, I boggled over a device called a "Neuroplex," basically a learning-while-sleeping machine, which could give a PC proficiency in basically every skill. In fact, given the time scales presented, there was no reason why every single character in the setting should not have been proficient with every single skill. However! In this bit of lore, it's explained that the "Neuroplex" doesn't actually work, because it just gives you "knowledge" that you don't really understand. Which makes you wonder why it works for adults, then, since the kid explains that they can't use it to teach her and her peers. Hc Svnt Dracones posted:“Tellll meee about the schoool, Elsie,” Stranger interrupted, and the young lynx bit her tongue. “Whhhyy aren’t yooou taught...wiiith a Neuroplex?” This explanation is entirely retarded, and I'll note that I hate Stranger(the lizard guy)'s speech impediment so much after hearing his retarded alien drawl in paragraph after paragraph. Also, why not just teach the kids with neuroplexes, then let them run wild and socialize, if lack of socialization is really the only excuse for keeping them in traditional schools. The neuroplex doesn't put you in a LEARNING COMA for weeks on end, it's just something you plug into at night for a couple of weeks. But really, we already knew that this RPG was retarded. Hc Svnt Dracones posted:Beaming information into someone’s head might teach them facts, but it gives them no life experience to attach those facts to. Knowing how to draw, for instance, is more than knowing how to construct shapes on a page. It’s having the experience with a pencil, the training to control your hand and apply the correct amount of pressure, the understanding of what angle the page should be at to be most comfortable for you, or how the room lighting should be arranged so as to best facilitate your thought process. These are things that are learned through practice, experience, time, trial and error. They are not constants, and they change from person to person, or even from day to day. Again, what would the harm be in giving everyone encyclopedic knowledge before turning them loose to get "life experience" and, again, nothing in the neuroplex rules makes the proficiencies it provides any different from proficiencies that characters have gained from year-long learning. Also there's a weird sidestep into a paragraph about how kids in the HSD universe are more mature, earlier, because teaching methods are now better. I mean, in any other RPG it wouldn't seem suspect, but in an RPG where we've already had robot pregnancy, I really have to wonder if it's not an excuse for why statutory rape isn't a thing in HSD. We're also taught about how THE LAW works in HSD. Basically one company has a monopoly on THE LAW, gee, almost like a government, and every other company contracts them for law enforcement because they're the only brand of law that people trust. If corps didn't contract THE LAW corp, no one would want to live in their corptowns or whatever. It seems kind of dull and unimaginative(what a surprise), you'd figure that in a corporate dystopia(or utopia) there'd be multiple competing brands, like Mountain Law, Coca Law and Pepsi Law, and no single contractor would rent out THEIR law, they'd only contract to enforce the specific employer's law. Though, if we're going by law enforcement corporations enforcing their own specific law, you'd figure that there'd still be fascist law enforcement, libertarian law enforcement, something in between, etc. and depending on personal preferences, people would choose their living space or employer depending on who they contracted with to supply law. But no, you just get one corporation supplying one flavour of Law which is very similar to our own, Earth Law. Starvation and thirst are also apparently no longer things in the setting, which is, again, weird to me. It may be post-scarcity, but Eclipse Phase accurately predicted that corporations aren't limited by morals or ethics: If they control the means of post-scarcity, they can also enforce scarcities to make people consume their products and do their work. Also apparently, despite the GLORY OF CORPORATE FREEDOM, you're not allowed to have kids if you're poor. On the one hand I'm surprised, because that's a step beyond the sort of fascism that any Earth nation I know of has ever tried. On the other hand, I'm not surprised by the disdain for the poor or the disdain for CHILD HAVERS. Hc Svnt Dracones posted:Consider the setting: the solar system is run by corporate giants with nearly limitless wealth and power and control over just about every aspect of individual life. It’s a recipe for disaster, really. To their credit, the organizations in HSD all stemmed from a common mission statement laid down by the Mars corporation 700 years ago; a message of freedom, personal liberty and the right to not be contained and controlled by stagnant powers that could not keep up with their population. As publicly owned companies, they’re accountable to their stockholders, who expect them to respect that concept. Vectors have a long history of ending problems before they start, and more than a few tyranical organizations have been torn down from within when they became too obviously corrupt. The rest of the sidebar this is from basically consists of "AND THEN VECTORS WERE MORALLY SUPERIOR TO HUMANS IN EVERY WAY. AND MORE ENLIGHTENED, TOO. AND THEY'D NEVER HUNT AN ANIMAL TO EXTINCTION, EITHER." Afterwards the writing goes on a tangent about how cults are now called "universities" and how the kid stole her mom's pornos when the alien tries to ask her how babies are made. What the gently caress. Hc Svnt Dracones posted:Birth method is determined by the father; if he is a male of an egg-laying species, the child will be born in an egg, regardless of the species of the child or the mother. Likewise if the father is a live-birth species, the child will be born live regardless of its, or its mother’s, species. This can result in a number of occurrences we as humans see as unnatural (cats laying eggs, birds giving live birth, dogs hatching out of a shell, etc.) What in the gently caress again. Does this idiot have no understanding of the differences in biological plumbing required to lay an egg vs nurturing a living fetus? This isn't just some poo poo you handwave away, you gently caress. It's also explicitly described as something that the idiots who first made the Vectors implemented on purpose despite the extra difficulties. loving why. The whole thing just ends on a sort of wet fart rather than an actual conclusion. The kid's parents were assassinated, and the corp wants to pick her up as a test subject for extremely vague reasons, and the big monster wants to protect her, and suddenly she realizes she can escape in a spaceship. But then the monster's on his own for a bit and he's all: "WELL, CORPSE, WHO I AM TALKING TO NOW(WHO WASN'T ACTUALLY COMPLETELY DEAD). I WAS ACTUALLY THE ONE WHO KILLED HER PARENTS, BUT NOW I LOVE HUMANITY AFTER ALL, OR SOMETHING, SO I WILL ARBITRARILY DECIDE TO SAVE HER INSTEAD. GOODBYE, CORPSE." and then he kills the corpse(that wasn't actually dead) and the whole thing ends. It's 40 pages or so just to teach use the few tidbits I've noted here, that and some percentage chances for inheriting mutations like being a Lateral or a Taur or whatever. I mean, they even namedrop a couple of Vector religions and then completely fail to tell us anything about them except that one of them believes in an ouroboros or something. loving stupid, something that would actually have ADDED DEPTH(and probably been mockably retarded) to the setting, and instead text is wasted on a ten-year-old blushing as she tries fumblingly to explain to a giant monster what she saw in her mom's porn mags. God, I'm glad this is loving over. Well, until the next loving expansion, anyway. Jesus Christ, I'm almost starting to look forward to when Desborough finishes his stupid Gor RPG so I can review that.
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Jan 5, 2016 22:45
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Night10194 posted:So, what the hell are you supposed to be doing in HSD? I mean, the corporations are all moral agents who have everything on lockdown, they have world peace, they know where they come from, and somehow despite being a setup for a situation where almost everyone should be at everyone's throats, there's no goddamn conflict anywhere. Yeah, the book hints at there being corporate conflict to participate in, but at the same time also does its best to suggest that this conflict is REALLY VERY MINIMAL and handled in the MOST HUMANE WAYS POSSIBLE because if it was a Shadowrun-esque dystopia then there might be a point to having governments. Hence the somewhat ham-fisted inclusion of the various types of space ghosts, and also I suppose the exo-nymphs, to add in some threats from outside the system it praises. Even when the little kid's parents are murdered by ONE corporation, rather than it making her suspicious of the entire system, she runs off to get help from a different corporation, and the sidebar goes on about how sub-divisions of corporations might be bad without the entire corporation being bad and so on.
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Jan 5, 2016 23:27
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