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Man, first thing I see is a RIFTs post. It's like I never left... Anyways, some of you may remember I was writing up Alternity, and mysteriously vanished. That writeup will continue, and we shall finally see the ending of the saga of PlaidXII and TheDextrousWaffle... May God have mercy on their fictional souls... (For the previous chargen bits, go here and here) Alternity: Finishing Up (Chargen Part 3)  TheDextrousWaffle is displeased at how chargen's been going... IMPORTANT NOTE: The links are Orokos dice-rolls. So now you know what some of the pretty numbers are. So, last we left off, TheDextrousWaffle was weeping into his coffee, while PlaidXII was already poring through the perks and flaws chapter. Unsurprisingly, Fred The Gecko decides to take Filthy Rich as his sole perk, getting a Filthy Rich score of 12+/11/5/2. To balance this out, he decides to spice the challenge up with Bad Luck. Remember doubling the crit range in D20? This doubles the crit fail range, so if PlaidXII rolls a 19 or 20 on the control die, his character's going to gently caress up spectacularly. This applies to the Filthy Rich as well. TheDextrousWaffle, meanwhile, still has his mind on one thing (Making someone really killy), and buys Reflexes and Tough As Nails as perks (adds +1 step resistance to DEX and STR respectively), balancing it out with... an Alien Artefact and an Ordinary Enemy, leaving him a spare skill point, and the GM rubbing his hands with glee. Alien Artefacts as flaws, naturally, have more bad than good. First up, it's a carried object (EDIT: As an aside, it's perfectly possible to roll a building as your artefact), in the form of a small tool. Wow, really helpful (We'll assume it's a sonic screwdriver of some kind). Its primary purpose is... Transmutation. Oh dear. Secondary purpose? Thankfully nothing. But that still leaves a transmutation power, and, of course, the drawbacks to the tool. A single d8 roll reveals 2 ordinary powers, 2 M drawbacks, 1 S drawback. Looking ahead reveals that S is for a Slight drawback, while M, obviously, is for Moderate. The GM rolls the powers: a 3 and a 1... The artefact can convert 10kg of one element into another (or 1000 cubic meters of gas), and, with use of the Pistol skill, can damage inanimate objects by oxidising/reducing them (IE – burnination) to the tune of d4w/2d4w/3d4w, of Good firepower. PlaidXII grits his teeth, and so does the GM. Unless the drawbacks are really nasty, this isn't really going to be a flaw... Good Firepower will get through a lot of things. Rolling for all three at once, the GM gets 3, 1, and 8. That's Blackouts, Damping Field, and Infamous Device. The GM thinks for a minute, and then makes the Infamous Device the slight drawback... after all, burnination isn't exactly worth infamy now, is it? As such, the GM rules the Blackouts are caused by either getting a crit fail on the burnination roll, or using the element conversion power on gas (that just about adds up to the “once per session” a Moderate flaw has...). The damping field is cut and dry, and rather nastier: Thise's a 75% chance, every time it's used, that it will shut all powered devices within 20 meters off for an hour. The GM secretly resolves to only rarely let this happen when TheDextrousWaffle actively plans to use a power for the purpose of triggering that flaw. Of course, lots of things can be within 20m, especially on a small ship (Life Support, Gunnery, and Shields, for example), so this is definitely the flawed artefact it's meant to be. And, while it's not RAW, it's generally accepted that Flaw Artefacts somehow stick to you like the stink on a monkey's finger. The GM then lets the players pick their motivations, morals, and two character traits, if only to see what their concept is adding up to. Fred The Gecko is apparently all for Helping Others (motivation), is Honourable (moral), and is Flippant, yet Compassionate. Somewhere, a hollywood writer gets a feeling like somebody walked on his script. Grr'Arg, meanwhile, is unsurprisingly, is all about being the best ever at making things very, very dead (Winning is Everything), is Anti-Authority (Alternity's equivalent of Chaotic Stupid), and is Aggressive and Ominous. The hollywood writer suddenly feels like he needs a session with his shrink, because he feels like the buddy movie he's planning has been copied, and he knows that shouldn't matter! Finally, we come to kit. In TheDextrousWaffle's case, the GM takes pity, says that the starting money is “walking around money”, and gives him the starting equipment for a soldier: Assault rifle, pack of rations, battle jacket, and survival gear. He gets a whopping 15 dollars. Good thing the GM was nice, eh? PlaidXII eagerly awaits, knowing that he's going to get a spaceship and a cool pistol and...  The all-important "Rich/Poor" table. ...the GM tells him to make his filthy rich roll, and buy kit from that. The spaceship is a given (complete with high interest loans to pay off), but everything else has to be sorted by Filthy Rich. PlaidXII blanches. He rolls 1d20 + 1d4, and... blanches again. He's going to have to cope with only 10x starting funds. Luckily, diplomats have 5d12 for starting wealth, so maybe... but no, he gets quite a few lowballs, and ends up with 230 dollars. To compare this with what he would have got, that's 170 less than for half the remaining signature kit (a 9mm charge pistol, costing $400), and seven hundred and seventy dollars short of the natty armoured trenchcoat he could have got. TheDextrousWaffle sniggers, and PlaidXII mutters that he didn't want the god-drat charge pistol anyway. He buys a .38 police special ($100), 2 “clips” worth of bullets ($30), and a toolkit ($100). We may end up seeing Fred The Gecko and Grr'Arg again, but next time, we'll be dealing with computers... And the economics thereof. BIG OLD EDIT Ahahahaaa... Alternity's layout has actually tampered with this F&F entry. See those pretty numbers for money? Multiply all of them by 10. This isn't noted in the big black text box with "$$$" as a header (and the dice rolls you see above). Nor is it mentioned in the big greenish-grey textbox about "not going hog-wild". It's mentioned in one line under the header in the normal text of... "Spending Money". Therefore, PlaidXII actually comes out smelling like a rose with 2300 dollars, and TheDextrousWaffle ends up having kit and money totalling 3245 SpaceDollars. Not counting the ship, it was still a better deal to have starting money + starting kit, but kit costs are less of an issue than I've been making out. Although not, as we'll see for the Computer post, a non-issue. JamieTheD fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Jul 22, 2014 |
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Jul 21, 2014 14:48
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Next: Campaign guidelines... I... wait, is Rifts actually going to discuss how to run a game?! Nope, don't believe that for a second! That would imply hope, or good design, or... something!
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Jul 22, 2014 19:43
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Poison Mushroom posted:Every time I see a RIFTS book in this thread, I get tempted to run a game of it in a completely different system. Something like FATE or OctaNe. Yeah, for all that it's a "Rule of cool" system and setting, there's still interesting things. Also, OctaNe would be the best system for the insanity that is RIFTs. I remember playtesting that game, with 12 pissed people at a roleplaying convention. Nearly everyone multiclassed, and there were no less than 4 Elvis Impersonators. It was glorious. Speaking of which, nobody's written about OctaNe, which is kind of a shame. EDIT: Hah, just realised it was actually the Roleplaying Nationals, a thing I'm not even sure exists anymore. JamieTheD fucked around with this message at 20:56 on Jul 22, 2014 |
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Jul 22, 2014 20:46
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Mr. Maltose posted:How do you multiclass in OctaNe? In early drafts of the rules, you just said "I am this, this, and this class", and you had the features of all three. It was a glorious fustercluck and got taken out, as far as I recall (It's been a long while). But the feel of OctaNe, and the relative speed of its rules, works well with the madness of RIFTs. EDIT: A good example would have been the Elvis Impersonators. We had: Elvis Impersonator/Alien Tourist Elvis Impersonator/[Death Metal Magician] Elvis Impersonator/Road Warrior and vanilla Elvis Impersonator EDIT 2: I've got the rules somewhere, lemme hunt it down and double check what they do now. JamieTheD fucked around with this message at 21:08 on Jul 22, 2014 |
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Jul 22, 2014 20:57
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ARG! Don't get me wrong, I love Alternity... But that final chargen section? hosed by the fact that the starting money is... multiplied by 10. This is not mentioned in the big old text box (which draws the eye) or the equally big other text box (similarly eye catching)... It's mentioned under a heading titled Spending Money (which is slightly ambiguous, even though it's now clear the intention was "This is how much they can have to spend." [edit edit edit gently caress gently caress gently caress]
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Jul 22, 2014 21:52
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In answer to the OctaNe question, multi-Role characters were indeed removed. But now... a re-write. Alternity - Beep Boop! (PHB Part 9)  "Wait... How many children did I have to sell into slavery to get this again?" Now we come to Computers, which shows the balancing factor behind Tech Ops. Yes, Tech Ops by their very nature have a lot more freedom of skill choice (and skills) than a Combat Spec, but they pay for it with specialised equipment. Never is this more apparent than the section to do with Computers. For Progress Level 5 (Modern day, and, obviously, when computers are first canonically used), using a computer is relatively simple. None of the bullshit we're about to see, just Hacking rolls for hacking, Software rolls for programming (which, in PL 5, has limited applications, rules wise), Computer Operation for using the Internet to research, and Hardware to fix the drat thing when it inevitably breaks. Once we hit Progress Level 6, however, we have... The Grid. The Grid is a middle ground between Shadowrun or CP2020's "Hacker's Separate Adventure", and nearly every other system's abstractions, and it feels kludgy. I think one of the reasons I like Alternity so much is that, since I either ran Star*Drive without all this Grid bullshit, and Dark*Matter (which uses PL 5 rules), I never actually had to deal with it. But it's a mess, and there's lots of reasons why. The first is that, RAW, it's going to need Cybernetics (we'll get into Cybernetics next time). The game gives you the option of using "A light version of the Cybernetics rules" if you don't want to cope with Cykosis (the game's nickname for the good old "Six Million Dollar Crazies" we've known since the days of CP2020, possibly before) and Cybernetics in general, but the computer stuff alone is expensive, and, as mentioned, kludgy. First off, you have to get a computer. Even a lovely Marginal PL6 Dataslate (Basically, a tablet computer) costs $300. This has space for 1, count that, one Program. Let's take a look at the basics for Grid Combat and Hacking, shall we? Oh wait, no, you see, most computers, while existing on the Grid, don't have the capability to access the Grid, especially not the humble DataSlate, which is so unbelievably poo poo that it requires you to buy 3Ds (basically, holochips) which you then put programs on (2 Program Slots a 3D, 5 for an X-3D, which are $10 and $25 at Marginal... There is no reason I can find to buy above marginal, because it's the Computer's rating that matters for processor speed, not the storage media's. Also, there is no written benefit to buying Ordinary or above. Whoops.) No, what we'll need, at minimum, hardware wise, a GridCaster ($2000 minimum for a Marginal, 3 Program Slots), and an NIJack ($500, only comes in Ordinary flavour, although PL7 has Subdermal and Wireless at Good quality for $700 and $1000 respectively). Wire comes with it, obviously. So that's between $2500 and $7500 (Marginal to Amazing) for the absolute minimum you need to go play with the big boys on the Grid. Hardware wise. It also doesn't specify if we can use a Mainframe (most powerful), Microcomputer (okay, and less expensive), or Nanocomputer (technically Cyberware, and only allowed with GM permission from PL 7 onwards) to hack the Grid. Great.  A 3D. You will be sick of these quite quickly. But your life will depend on them. Yes, I stressed Hardware-wise, because we still have our Programs to buy. Only between 3 and 10 (if we're using the Gridcaster as our prime example) Programs can be installed at any one time, depending on quality, and you definitely don't want a Marginal one, because we need more than 3 Programs. Just to start with, we need a ShadowForm. Well, we don't need one, but it's a drat good idea (For reasons that are never adequately explained). Even a basic ShadowForm program takes... 2 slots of the three to run. And pretty much everything is done by Computer-Science - Hacking rolls. If you're good at Hacking, you can improve one of the three stats your ShadowForm has (STR, DEX, CON) by half the skill rating. By the way, those stats are mostly for HP type things and Resistance Modifiers to being attacked. Everything is Hacking. Everything is Hacking. I cannot stress this enough. So, you've got a Marginal Gridcaster, and have just used 2 of your 3 slots to... Start doing anything. But guess what, to even scan data in the Grid, you need a Program! That takes up your other slot! And most of the programs you can't use, ever, with a Marginal Gridcaster, because you can't run ShadowForm and the other Program at the same time! Also, you've spent... Between $600 and $2400 for... The ability to go on the Grid, and what is basically Foxit Reader. Congratulations, you've hacked the Gibson! So let us just leave this little segment behind with the note that nobody I've ever met who ran Alternity used the Grid. Ever.  Nope, this isn't a GridCaster. Nor is it an AI. Neither are ever pictured in this book. Let's talk about AIs, instead! AIs turn up around PL 6, and from there, generally only inhabit Mainframes until around PL 9, where they might inhabit smaller stuff (but the most powerful AIs still need the big guns.) They're rated on the same Marginal to Amazing scale everything else is, and, assuming the same kind of system and AI level, will have exactly the same basic stats. No, you don't have one AI slightly smarter or less perceptive than another, and, for obvious reasons, don't have physical stats (they can control robot bodies, but afaik, this doesn't turn up till the sourcebook DataWare... Which we will eventually deal with.) Again, nearly everyone I've met houserules the poo poo out of this when it applies to their campaigns. Spaceship computers come in three flavours, all of them barely mentioned: A stock mainframe with a Marginal processor that runs the systems in general, dedicated computers for various Systems that are generally only Ordinary in PL 6 (Good and Amazing are PL 7), and, at PL 7, a dedicated AI Supercomputer that is neither denoted by quality, or price in this section. This is, funnily enough, my favourite part of the entire Computer chapter, because it has little to no faff. Little to no rules, either... But you've already seen what specific rules have gotten us. Finally, we have Robots. Don't bother with the Robot section in the PHB, it is crap. Robots are the purview of the GMG and DataWare, Citizen, and anyone who says different is obviously not working out that creating stuff is the purview of the GM, and the GM alone! Next time, we deal with Cybernetics, and why that, too, is often houseruled and optional. FATAL & Friends: Reminding you that systems you love are because you didn't stick to RAW.
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Jul 22, 2014 22:58
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Gerund posted:God bless you for your Alternity F&F review. My teenaged group didn't run with any of the Grid rules either. Or computer hardware statting even, it was always supplied/stolen as-is and then never mentioned again. I'm actually quite irritable about that now, because, through this writeup, I have come to realise something. Something pretty bad. Alternity is a great generic system (the skill system is quick, and so is the combat, although combat is a little deadly), but, the moment it comes to anything science fiction, like it was built for... It falls down, goes boom. The Computer and Grid rules are kludgy as gently caress. Cybernetics, as we'll see tomorrow, isn't much better. Both are hideously expensive. Starship creation rules were so bad, they released an entire supplement to fix them, and people still houserule it. But despite this, I still like the god-drat system, because these things can be ignored (yes, even Starships can be fudged), and the basic system is mostly fine. It's just that it doesn't do the job it was designed for, and it could have been fixed with proper playtesting.
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Jul 22, 2014 23:20
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Kill it with fire? It's almost like you read this section of Alternity, mate! Oh, wait, you're talking about RIFTs. Whups. Alternity: The Most Expensive Part of the Book (PHB Part 10)  All the toys you can't actually afford. gently caress you too. NOTE: This is technically hugely out of order, as Cybernetics is Chapter 14 (the final chapter) of the PHB, while Computers are Chapter 10 (Inbetween are Weapons and Armour, Mutations, Psionics, and Starships). You'll understand quite quickly, though. Cybernetics... in many other systems, they break the game over its knee. In Alternity, they're points and money better spent elsewhere. The cybernetics system is a definite flaw in this game, and I'm fairly certain many people house-rule it. So, you want to be a cybernetic superman, huh? Well, first, you need a nanocomputer installed in your body, before anything else (except cosmetic poo poo). That'll be 10 skill points and between $2000 and $4000, please! Oh, you don't want to spend what is, on average, a third of your skillpoints and more money than a starting character sees in a quarter for the basic cybernetic requirement? And you definitely don't want to spend $3000 for a +3 to your strength? Thank you, come again, and don't come back, you min-maxing poo poo, we're dead serious about cybernetics, we are!!! Oh, and let's not forget that, after chargen, there's at least two chances for you to not actually get what you paid for. There's a check (varying between a single roll for between adventures or chargen, to an extended check in-adventure) against the Surgery skill... Which can not only fail, but cause Mortal Damage if it crit fails... And, in some cases, there's a CON check to see if the body accepts or rejects the implant. You've lost the money regardless. This, specifically, is when you've installed enough implants (based on their Size) to push you over half your CON score (or CON + 4 with Mechalus, because they love that poo poo). If that second check fails, as noted, you still lose your money, and you take a Mortal point in damage too. Keep in mind, that's anything up to 5 Mortal Damage in total, and 5 is, coincidentally enough, exactly the amount needed to kill someone with an average (10) CON. If you're genuinely enforcing that cyber-surgery check in chargen, this is the only way I know of to kill characters as they're being generated. And that's one “only” too many. I freely admit, the Cybernetics section is definitely not great, and I really wouldn't mind if somebody dragged Bill Slaviscek or Richard Baker here to explain exactly why Cybertech is so god-drat expensive. Although, to be fair, for the +3 strength, it's actually a great deal, because that can take you over the stat maximum, and costs less than it would to actually buy improved stats, then improve the stat over play (more to the point, it's not actually possible to raise a stat 3 above the max). But RAW... It's really not worth the hassle. What I'm basically saying is, cybernetics is mostly terrible unless you spend big, and cyber-hackers have to spend silly points (10 SP!!! A minimum of $2500!!!) just to be able to use their special GridCasters to their full potential (yes, in addition to the other $4000 or so they already spent.) As we'll also see, Telepaths with Datalink blow cyber-hackers at first level out of the water. But that's for later. Next time, we'll be looking at combat in a little more detail, just to demonstrate how potentially deadly it is... Oh, and looking at (mentioning) some of the fun guns and stuff the game comes with while we're at it. JamieTheD fucked around with this message at 06:17 on Jul 23, 2014 |
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Jul 23, 2014 06:01
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Night10194 posted:Has anyone ever actually played a game of RIFTs as written? I've never heard of such a thing happening. I just hear people say 'Oh, RIFTS!' and then sad laughter. I did. Once. They all died, and that is all that needs to be said.
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Jul 23, 2014 09:42
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Rushing a bit, but that's because I want to get to GMG hilarity at some point this month.  Alternity: Wait, That Does WHAT? (PHB Part 11) So, before we go into kit, and an example of combat using our old friends and some creeps from elsewhere, let's recap on the basics of combat, armour, and wounds. - Everything is skills, except initiative, which is action checks, and damage, which is based on how well you did (on the usual OGA scale). - Weapons and Armour both come in two sets of flavours: Type, and Quality. Type is Low Impact (Melee), High Impact (Bangtubes), or Energy (Lazors), while Quality follows the OGA scale. Armour blocks some damage, only downgrades damage type if it's better than the weapon's Firepower Quality, and Amazing armour is reserved for Vehicles. - There are essentially four types of damage, but only three are common: Stun, Wound, and Mortal. Stun and Wound are based on CON, Mortal (and the rarely used Fatigue) based on CON/2. Run out of Stun, you're KO'd. Run out of Wounds, you're down. Run out of Mortal, you're dead. Run out of Fatigue, and... Eh. No, really, I so rarely see Fatigue damage overflow that it's not worth mentioning. - Healing is pretty slow, so please try not to get shot up real bad, mmm'kay?  A brief selection of the higher level melee weapons So far, so simple. So let's take a brief look at guns and ammo. Everything is sorted, as is usual, by Progress Level. Unlike Computers, the Surgery skill, or technical skills, you don't have to worry about Progress Level compatibility, because weapons aren't generally based on PL unless you're running some very interesting settings. No, weapons in Alternity remain as simple as the basic system. Melee wise, we start off pretty simple. Not as simple as a rock, but close enough, the humble club. Like all but a few of its Melee brethren, it does Low Impact damage, and is Ordinary (so Good armour will downgrade the damage, and Ordinary armour will only block its LI rating). Looking at the pretty numbers, we see that it's bog standard in accuracy (Less than a third of the melee weapons have any sort of accuracy modifier, and it's never more than -1 step (good) or +1 step (bad). They're also where you'd roughly expect them to be.), has a range of Personal (means its a Melee weapon, doofus. What, did you think you'd have reach?), uses the Bludgeon skill, and does d4+1s/d4w/d4+1w. What this means is, on an Ordinary, it does piddling Stun damage, on a Good, it does piddling Wound damage, and on an Amazing roll, it does still piddling Wound damage. Well, piddling in terms of this game (you'll rarely see anything do less than 1d4-2 (minimum 1) damage.) As we move up the table, we see other fun stuff, but PL 6-8 is the stuff that makes me grin. Chainsword? Yup, got one of those at PL 6! Light Sword That Isn't Called A Lightsaber? Yup, PL 8, obviously, it does the best damage of the melee weapons. Powerglove (It's so baaaad)? Yup. But two weapons in particular (PL 6 and 7 respectively) give the game its own flavour: The GravMace and the TriStaff. The latter doesn't have a second set of stats about cost, mass, or hiding accuracy, and this is a misprint... But a hilarious one, considering it's meant to specifically be the weapon of a specific group in Star*Drive (the space opera official Alternity setting.) So what do they do? Well, the tri-staff is also sort of a ranged weapon, and is basically a polearm with energy abilities, but the GravMace has a small gravity generator inside it that... Briefly and suddenly makes the tip of the mace much, much heavier as it hits. Doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but, as you might imagine, it hurts. And, like much of the higher PL stuff, requires Powered Weapon skill to use. Yes, they thought of that. Guns, honestly, don't have a whole lot of major interest, being... Well, guns and lasers and plasma, big fricking woot.  ...And this... ...Okay, okay, the heavier weapons are fun, because they include things like everyone's fave, the Railgun, plasma, a lightning gun (PL 7), Quantum Minigun (don't ask) and portable Black-Hole guns (they're called Mass guns, and fire gravity distortions, but basically, they fire mini Black Holes.) Armour, however, has not only the usual assortment of crap (Hide, Plate, Armoured Trenchcoat, blah blah blah), but has a very interesting method of handling shields (they add +1 to certain categories, ending with the Riot Shield at +1 to all), but Powered Armour (in both “slightly exo” and “This is basically a human-sized tank” flavours), ablative and deflection “harnesses” (Shield-Belts, ala Dune), and our old friend, the StealthSuit all exist, and add some flavour. Of course, there is a tiny worm in the Garden of Eden here, as weapons by PL8 have almost all become at least Good (and, in a couple of cases, Amazing), while Armour remains, by and large, Ordinary, with a few Goods here and there. Remember, this is a system where damage is very bad , and guns that have better Firepower than the armour has Quality just go straight through. Even the best armour items only decrease the chance to get hit, as opposed to block damage. Don't get shot at high PL's, folks... Speaking of which, let's return to TheDextrousWaffle shall we? In this brief example, we shan't worry overmuch about Action Check (the game's initiative), and simply have Grr'Arg try to attack his very own Klick (a bug alien that we'll be dealing with in more detail when we get to Star*Drive, but, for now, just think of them as “Intelligent, malicious Ticks with special lasers”), and the Klick, in return, will try to shoot them in the face.  A Klick. Looks like a dumb bug. Isn't. TheDextrousWaffle is going to use his action to melee a dude with his awesome claws, because... Awesome claws! Let's just remind ourselves of those, shall we? pre:Clawing Faces Off d4w/d4+2w/d4m LI/O Personal The first is that Klicks have d6+1 Low Impact armour (assumed Ordinary, because most natural armours are), and that's between 2 and 7 damage it could block. It would still take between 1 and 3 Stun (Because secondary damage isn't blocked... That poo poo hurt, yo!)... But it wouldn't be very wounded at all. Also, there's the other ability Klicks have... A bio-weakness field that needs a Stamina-Endurance check. Failure means d4-1 Stun damage (minimum 0). That's every round. He fails, and it stings. Now it's the Klick's turn. The Klick has a Blacklaser Pistol (En/O, d4+2w/d6+2w/d4m, -1 Step Accuracy Bonus), and is shooting in melee (+1 Penalty). Waffle's okay DEX means the Klick also gets another +1 Penalty (Reaction Modifier... Not to be confused with the Social Reaction Modifier), but still manages an Ordinary result. The Battle Jacket Grr'Arg wears is also Ordinary, but only blocks... d4-1 points when it comes to Energy. So that's 0-3 versus 3 to 8. It's not looking good for our Weren buddy, who's now lost anything up to 2/3rds of his Wounds, and maybe a quarter of his Stun (more with the bio-weakness field). Maybe he should have tried the assault rifle? There are really two takeaways from this: The first is that Unarmed Attacks without Martial Arts to buff it is a bad idea against anyone even vaguely armoured (and the Klick is fairly well armoured). The second is that fights are generally over very quickly, and they end, straight shooutout wise, with the winners being the ones who picked the right armour for the job. And yes, there is armour that is better against one type over another, so that's always a consideration. I can't say this enough: Alternity is a deadly little game at times. Next time, we're going to talk about Mutants and Psionics. JamieTheD fucked around with this message at 20:28 on Jul 23, 2014 |
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Jul 23, 2014 20:21
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It's funny you mention high damage numbers, because you don't need big guns to have high damage numbers in Shadowrun, which ends up making it more narrative than you'd think. Good example, in my game was a Physical Adept. I am slightly ashamed to say I deliberately killed that character off, but only slightly, because the guy could, with just normal Physical Adept stuffs, dodge quite a lot of attacks, and do approximately 10-15 die of damage just by kicking and punching (Imagine a small, unassuming guy who was able to punch peoples' hearts out through their backs). The troll in the group was a fair hacker, wasn't actually built for being a combat god, and... Took a LAW rocket to the face, only going into Moderately Wounded. My main problems with Shadowrun definitely aren't on the narrative end, or the combat end (the modifiers are mostly common sense stuff, like "Are you in cover?", "Are you running really fast?", or, on the opposite end, things like "Did you bother to aim?" and "How close is he?"), but with the magic system (which is focused, yes... But also bogs down combat far more than a Decker does) and the Decker (which is mainly a narrative problem, considering your average Decker does 3 rounds to everyone else's 1 in one arena, and is effectively a vegetable the other guys have to protect in the other... And only with good GMing shall the twain meet.) I still love the basic system, though, with the aforementioned exceptions. In the end, though, it's a matter of taste and what you want out of a system. If I have my own setting and want it to be really cinematic, I'll go FAE. If I want it to have some realism, or at least simulationism, I'll go for GURPS, Alternity, or Unisystem. And sometimes, the tie-ins to certain settings really fit the setting, so I'll run those (Amber Diceless is really, really dickish, and so it works for a game about a bunch of cosmic jerkoffs being jerky to each other while the universe, in turn, is a jerk to them.) On top of that, there's the rose tinted glasses factor. I've said it before, but I'll clarify this a fair bit: I've run Alternity, on and off, for ten years, about four or five mostly large campaigns (only one of which crashed and burned early), and I genuinely didn't notice these flaws I've seen.
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Jul 23, 2014 21:56
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Alternity: Brotherhood of Racist Assholes (PHB Part 12) ...Of Assholes. Ah, Mutations and Psionics. These two words have always struck fear and disgust into the minds of roleplayers, because we know all too well how easy it is to be poo poo about writing them. But fear not, mutations and psychic powers are actually passable in Alternity! I'm not going to say great, because that would be a blatant lie. But passable, verging on good. First off, let's get one rule I really don't like out of the way: Mutations are a Homo-Sapiens Only Club. Psychic powers are available to everyone, but mutations? Nope, humans only, gently caress you. In fact, mutants are basically Humans with a random table of powers and no extra skill points. One could easily argue that a whole extra Broad Skill and 4 Skill Points is not an expensive price for potentially game breaking power. Well... We'll see. First off, the player has to either roll on their Mutant Origin or (with the Gms permission) pick it. Regardless of the roll, there will be Mutation Points, and a slightly lesser (or equal) amount of Drawback Points. These go between 1 (absolute minimum) and 7 (absolute maximum, maximum drawback points is 6), depending on background, and with those points, you can, at most, afford 1 Amazing Mutation, 1 Good Mutation, and 1 Ordinary Mutation (4+2+1). As far as Drawbacks go, this can be, worst case scenario, 1 Extreme and 1 Moderate Drawback. No, you don't get to pick how many points in each you get, you roll them d4s, and if you end with more Drawback than Mutation points (even though you're designed, and thus low risk), well boo loving hoo. Nah, just kidding, it depends on your GM, and how lenient/houseruley they feel. From here on in, you pick or roll your mutations, and, while rolling is a d20 roll, it's literally pot luck whether you get the best of that category, or one of the (relative) stinkers. For example, Flight (a double edged sword of an Amazing Mutation) is right next to Hyper CON (Straight +3 to your CON score) in the table. This is because it's organised first by category, then alphabetically. The same with Drawbacks. As far as Mutations go, they're all largely beneficial (some, like Flight, have slight downsides such as lowered STR due to hollow bones and skill requirements to use), but none are truly game breaking. Some, however, are in the wrong drat category. Good example, Dermal Reinforcement (Ordinary, gives lowish armour that can be layered) is, by the very nature of the beast, actually a better move, ruleswise, than Improved Natural Weaponry (gives you claws that do Low Impact/Ordinary Wound damage). As an aside, you can't take more than one Mutation of the same “type” (so no Improved and Enhanced STR). In any case, the discussion of mutation placement is just quibbling on my part. Drawbacks, on the other hand... ...Drawbacks hurt. These are what makes you doubt whether being a Mutant is a good investment, and there are no “good” picks. There are, as usual, better picks in the same table (Slight Environmental Sensitivity, for example, is definitely a better idea than Reduced Ability Score (Slight) or, god help you, Weak Immunity... Which is actually Slightly Weak Immune System), but everything in there is a penalty that, sooner or later, will bite you in the rear end. And if you think that taking One Extreme Drawback is better than two Moderates, you'd be horribly, horribly wrong. Extreme Drawbacks go from things like Physical Change (you are quite obviously a mutant, and suffer a +4 penalty to social skills as a result) to Highly Susceptible To [Damage Type], which adds 3 damage to anything of a certain damage type. There is little room to game the system here.  Burninating the towns... Burninating the Villagers... Psionics, meanwhile, is a fair bit more balanced, I feel. Mainly because, while Mindwalkers (the optional class for Psionics) are good at Psychic stuff, and psychic stuff can be drat useful, it's also going to be the majority of what they do. Psi uses, as 2nd Ed AD&D did, Psionic Power Points, or rather, in this case, Psionic Energy Points. In Alternity, these are based directly on WIL if you're a Mindwalker, half WIL if you're a Diplomat who happens to be a Mindwalker too, and the same if you're a Psionic Talent (IE, another class who also wants a psychic power). If you're a Mindwalker, you can buy any of the four Psionic skills, and that's fine, but if you're a Talent, you're restricted to one. These skills are not cheap, and even the specialities will cost you a fair amount of your SP allotment. Let's briefly sum them up, and why they're good, but not game breaking. Every time you roll one of these skills, you lose PEP (hehe, just noticed that) according to whether you used a Broad Skill, Speciality, or you Crit Failed (regardless of type). These points are taken off whether you succeeded or not, and going from speciality to crit fail, it's 1, 2 or 3 points. Recovering points is an hourly Resolve- Mental Resolve check at the end of any hour when the character wasn't using a psychic power, and sustainable powers cost more PEP to maintain. So even with a high WIL, you're not going to be able to keep that poo poo up all day every day. Now, the four Types, each using a different stat. Yeah, it pays to know what type of Psi you want before you start... Biokinesis [CON], or body control, is mostly extended powers like Control Metabolism or Heal, all fair. It does, however, have a little gem in Body Weaponry. In AD&D, Body Weapon was a bit poo. In Alternity, it has potential if you roll really well. While it's extended (and thus expensive in PEP), the damage type is based on the success quality, so if you somehow make an Amazing roll with it (With your average CON of 11, and 3 starting skill ranks in it, a roll of 3 or less on a d20), the club or staff you make out of your hand does between d4 and d6+2 Mortal Damage. Yes, even an Ordinary attack with your ClubHand would do d4 Mortal. gently caress. Yes. It also has shapeshifting of a sort, which, since it's also Extended, ain't broke. ESP [INT] not only covers the usual “I see different places and times” schticks, but, for some bizarre reason, has “Mind Reading” here. Guess it's due to passive v active, but whatever. Most of its powers aren't extended, with the exception of Battle Mind (which gives between a -1 to -3 Step Bonus to combat rolls while it's active... Not bad, but, like all extended powers, has to be maintained at a PEP a round, and whether that PEP is spent has to be declared right at the start of a round...), and all of them are plot useful, to one extent or another, but, with the exception of Battle Mind, not great in combat. Telekinesis [WIL] doesn't just cover kinetic energy, but also electricity, light, and FIRE. Of the skills, Electrokinesis is a bit wet (requiring two skill checks, and taking at least two phases to fully use), but the damage isn't bad for the low price and fizzle chance. Kinetic Shield adds up to +4 armour, but requires maintennance, doesn't block Energy damage, and gives a +1 Step penalty to everything else while it's maintained. Levitation's fine, Photokinetics is the Light spell, and thus nigh useless (1 PEP a combat round, remember?), PK definitely isn't bad (but definitely a utility thing), while Pyrokinesis does what it says on the tin, doesn't require a second skill check, and, while less damaging, is meaty for what it is. Finally, we have Telepathy [PER], and this is, for the most part, utility and mind tricks, as expected. However, there are two exceptions here, and both are interesting. The first is Mind Blast, which, on the one hand, only does Stun Damage, at a maximum range of 40 meters, but, on the other? Bypasses armour completely. The other is Datalink, and, while extended, it allows you to mentally enter and interface with computers. Yes, it means you can hack without all this Grid bollocks, and, providing you've focused on that as your main Telepathy skill, means that you can do what they can do, with your own drat stats instead of a Shadow, and Programs are just things you do. Telepathy rules. Wow, we're actually almost done with the PHB, but there's one last thing we have to deal with. Vehicles and Spaceships. After that, we're into the GMG, and the meat of the tools for creating ships, aliens, and other fun stuff!
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Jul 24, 2014 12:11
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Gerund posted:I remember Psionics and mutations being the only good Alternity subsystem because the only long-running game we had was essentially Gamma World crossed with Star Trek. Of the optional systems in the PHB, only Psionics/FX and Mutations really got a fair deal with their respective crunch-books (Beyond Science and Gamma World for Alternity), with the revised Starship system in Warships being... Kinda eh, and Dataware doing the usual thing of making an already complicated loving netrunning system more complicated fuckdammit... (Because what we all need in our Cyberpunk style games is fifty million ways of making things more rules heavy...  )Evil Mastermind posted:The best thing about Alternity is that the four presented "power" types (cybernetics, superhacking, psionics, and mutations) map directly to the Galaxy Rangers. Three of those I see, but Mutations? Wasn't the main dudebro's laser arm just... Well, a cybernetic arm? Ah, doesn't matter, all the mooks have 6/3/1 skills at shooting anyhoo. But y'know what? That's as good a segue as any to finish up the PHB with... The Vehicles and Starships chapter, yay! ...The PHB portion isn't actually so bad... But after this is the GMG, and that opens up a whole new bag of Fun. Alternity: Playing Chicken (PHB Part 13)  What your example spaceship looks like before you inevitably destroy it... Vehicles, statwise, are actually a nice little selection. Their armour goes the whole spread (Canoes have Ordinary, your average Speedboat has Good, Tanks and Shuttles have Amazing, to name a few examples), there's a good selection of basic categories throughout the ages, and, of course, it allows you to use some silly choices with the use of the Daredevil skill, such as Jetpacks, Ultralights, and... Bicycles? Okay, that one's a very odd choice for the Daredevil skill. Bicycles.   Seriously, I can't make this poo poo up...  No, the vehicles are fine, and are mostly statted quite sensibly. It's vehicle combat that gets interesting. Because it does require some thought. Y'see, everything is, unless combat is set in a Destruction Derby or something, already moving, and most of the vehicles themselves, for obvious reasons, don't have guns. It has four Phases, as usual, and the driver, regardless of his initiative, can undertake Routine Maneuvers every Phase. These are simple things like braking, accelerating, swerving, turning. poo poo to make sure they don't crash. Passengers act on their own phases, and do whatever drat fool things passengers do during a vehicle fight (generally, if I remember right, this involves leaning out of the windows with LAWs and SMGs, firing wildly.) But it's when the respective drivers get their own turns that poo poo gets real. See, then, they can attempt either a Moderate (tight turns, reversing direction, ramming, regaining control, and driving Routinely in rough conditions) or Extreme (zigzagging wildly, bootlegger turns, using a Moderate Maneuver while doing something else) Maneuvers, use car or ship systems (like, y'know, the guns they generally don't have, or the super cool oil-slick droppers, etc), or use the Tactics skill (which generally gives you a small edge). gently caress up a Moderate or Extreme Maneuver though, and you'll, at best, spin out. This is generally the end of a chase scene, because you done hosed up. Well, maybe. See, we also have the fact that combat is based on relative ranges and intentions.  Okay, so I lied, there are better cases... But still... There's a whole slew of these cases, but basically, if you both wanna close, you both close (and god help you if you unintentionally ram each other!), if you both wanna back off, you do that, and so on, except for a Break (which is one or the other trying to end the combat by gettin' the hell out of Dodge). If that one succeeds without interruption, bam, fight's over, go home. All well and good, and yes, ramming's fine here. Starships, however, are a different story. We won't get to see Starship Creation rules here (that's for the GM, doofus!), but we do get the idea that running a spaceship (not just piloting it, but everything else) is hard. That's sort of given away by the table I'm going to give you below.  Soooo... Many... Skills... Notice the amount of skills you would need. Also remember that a single pilot can only do so much in a round... Some ships have many of these consoles either automated or shoved together, but you're still under the “multiple actions are harder” rule, so unless a Fighter pilot is good (As in “What a Guy” good), single pilot ships are automatically going to be at a disadvantage against larger ships. Also, I'm going to mention this now, but anything below a Corvette hull in the GMG's creation rules? Is gimped to hell and back. Don't say I didn't warn you when we get there. Otherwise, it's much the same stuff, relative distance, pilot can do Routine Maneuvers all the time, opening v. closing v. breaking v... Oh, wait, no Ramming. Yes, there is even a little sidebar saying “Yeahno, the possibility of you ramming a ship in space is so god-drat small we don't consider it a real rule... And if you somehow manage it, congrats, you're probably both dead!” Another change from normal vehicle combat is that ships... Are big. Therefore, you don't attack the whole ship, you attack the compartments of a ship (a core part of the creation rules, by the way). So picture it like a fight in FTL, because, essentially? That's exactly what it is. Even down to crewmembers running back and forth desperately trying to repair Life Support, you cruel, cruel bastards. It even has different rules for what Stun, Wound, and Mortal damage do to a compartment (Give it a penalty, give it some more penalties, and finally... Give it hefty penalties for use, force a check for “Does it break?” for every point of Mortal Damage, and finally, destroy the compartment, with all the fun effects that might have. The PHB, however, is oddly silent on what else happens when a Compartment is destroyed. I'm pretty sure that's left up to your (evil) imagination.  The last art example from the PHB... The very definition of  So that's pretty much the PHB! Next time, we'll be moving onto the GMG, where we'll have the insanity of the creation rules, which vary from handwavey to... Psysplode territory. You have been warned.
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Jul 24, 2014 17:53
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Davin Valkri posted:Did proper mechanically-backed genre emulation really only happen in the 2000s? It feels weird hearing about stuff like that Indiana Jones example in an age where Apocalypse World, Monsterhearts, Leverage, Atomic Robo, and Double Cross are all readily available. Weeeeelll... Call of Cthulhu mechanically emphasised how boned you were, does that count? But, as Mr. Maltose says, like computer games, designers have slowly been learning better ways of doing things.
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Jul 25, 2014 00:17
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Darth Various posted:Besides that by the rules as written, you can roundhouse kick Deep Ones. ENWorld told me so. Nice. I'd forgotten about that... But still... Read a book? Go insane. Cast magic? Go insane. Use a magic gubbins? Most likely go insane, possibly get injured/cursed/zambified as well. See a monster? Go insane, and die horribly to anything nastier than a Deep One, because even LAW Rockets bounce off, and the players refuse to believe this (Yes, okay, I stole that bit from Knights of the Dinner Table, but "Scream of Kachoolu" was pretty spot on.) Meet Great Cthulhu? 1d10 people every combat round instantly die, everyone goes insane, and his attacks do about five times more damage than you'll ever have hitpoints. Did I mention I love CoC? Because I love CoC.
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Jul 25, 2014 01:42
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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. Well, for a given value of "won", anyhow. But yeah, the game is decidedly adversarial, and this is unfortunately true of many early systems, because of the wargaming link... Not a lot of designers back then were good with the whole "co-operative storytelling" thing, even though they often paid at least lip service to the idea. Still, even today, horror games can be surprisingly adversarial. I have at least two (both, funnily enough, based on slasher films) where it outright states that every character is going to die. Deadlands was very similar in that respect, in that there were monsters and NPCs, in game, whose entire purpose was "Rocks Fall"... Stone being the prime example, his whole reason for existence being to make sure nobody stops the Reckoners by murdering anyone who could potentially do it, before they get anywhere close to that powerful. Actually, it's very rare to find a good horror RPG (or a good horror DM), to the point where most stories end up as silly as Tales From The Crypt (Total aside: The HBO retellings are pretty much required viewing for anyone doing "camp" horror, and are amusing viewing even without that.)
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Jul 25, 2014 02:27
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Asimo posted:Just as has been already mentioned, there was sort of a sea change in the late 90's/early aughts where people really started to look at the "metagame" of and started more actively making mechanics and designs that would naturally guide players towards RPing within the theme of the game. It's not surprising that this has a pretty heavy correlation with the downfall of "generic" systems like GURPS. Except that FATE is a generic system. PDQ is a generic system. Savage Worlds, while intended for a genre, is still a generic system. Unisystem, GURPS 4th... While designers have learned how to do thematic gaming better, it is nowhere near true that "generic" systems have undergone a downfall... If anything, they've had an upturn.
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Jul 25, 2014 13:53
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Kavak posted:Aw man, this is giving me flashbacks to my days with Last Unicorn's Star Trek games. System issues or not, those loving owned, and it's a real shame this got cut short. It is a real shame the Dune RPG got cut short, it's definitely an interesting book, and while the artwork isn't always great, it's consistent. Also, goldurnit, you reminded me I've never really had the chance to run either the LUG or the Decipher version of the Star Trek RPG, and that I'm unlikely to as well (my group wouldn't touch it)
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Aug 3, 2014 03:43
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Alternity: The Other Problem With Alternity (GMG Part 1) Interesting cover. The contents? Bit Dry... There has, F&F Readers may have noticed, been a long delay in writing up the GMG for Alternity. This is because, honestly, it's hard to write about. Most of the time, it's dry as hell (they have a table for how rare a 14 in a stat is, and the median roll of the various difficulty dice, to give you some idea), and this, in and of itself, creates a problem, both as a F&F reviewer, and as a GM. It's mostly the same problem... I don't particularly want to slog through specifically for gems of good/bad design. The GMG, in short, is not a book you familiarise yourself with. It's a book where you flick to the relevant section, and, in a sense, this is bloody useful, because it takes pains to let you know how hard a roll is, how to use the three act structure and how to compartmentalise scenes into things like Interaction, Combat, and Puzzles. In a much more important sense, this is half the reason I don't spot too much rules crazy in the core books... Because the book, itself, makes this bloody hard.  Click to enlarge some obvious advice... Good example, Creating an Alien. At a first glance, this section seems like four and a half pages of time wasting handwavery. On a closer inspection, it's less handwavey than it first appears... Still lots of “It is encouraged not to do [X overpowered thing]” and “You need to balance out [no guidance on how...]”, but, between those two sentences is something like an hour of re-examining  .So I hope you'll forgive me if I sum up 90% of the book, and go into detail on only some parts. Most of the advice it gives is actually good. As with any system that's somewhat attached to its modifiers, it spends a lot of time establishing, with tables, how distance+fog+the other guy running really, really fast = Haha nope, get some better modifiers, scrub and the like. This is to be expected, as the core mechanic of combat is not, in fact, standing out in the open letting dudes shoot you with their incredibly lethal armoury, but making sure you aren't in a position to get shot in the first place. It gives advice on precisely how special your PC snowflakes really are (Did you know that even the SAS only has a special few Combat Specs?), which, admittedly, is kind of at odds with how hilariously easy it can be to die in full body armour.  Alternate Caption: Did Not Stack Modifiers, F- But a large portion of this, like any generic system, is poo poo you can, and will handwave. Visual range, for example... Yes, on the one hand, with Slight visibility, I should only be able to make a roll to spot Mount Plot Device at 2KM. On the other, no sane DM is going to check this with any regularity. No, the first chapter where we get any sort of interest or satisfaction is most of the way through Chapter 3... Let's talk GRAPHs The GRAPH system, in essence, is like that long string of Base-16 (not, as previously noted, Base-12) you wrote down every time you wanted to know what a planet was like in Traveller. On the other, it's simplified, because it only covers 5 things: Gravity, Radiation, Atmosphere, Pressure, and Heat, aka, the important stuff. So let's see how hilariously screwed your player could be by the universe... 2 is the normal. Gravity So, Gravity is fun, and there are two grades below normal (0-0.2G, 0.2-0.8G), which have their own funtimes. Zero gravity, obviously, has a movement modifier of Special. Why? Because movement in Zero-G is special, in that any sudden movement you make can leave you arse-over-tit, vomitting wildly and wondering why the hell you even chose to get up in the morning. Light gravity, on the other hand, is only bad for us talking-monkeys (the baseline, naturally) in big doses (it weakens our bones, muscles, and cardiovascular system. All of these things are important). It does, however, add a +1 penalty to doing things if you're not used to it. Heavy gravity, on the other hand, is where you will get poo poo on quite heavily. It goes from 1.2-2.0G (slows you down by 25%, make an exhaustion check every day... Exhaustion checks? Those are to do with Fatigue. Y'know, that thing you never use? ... Adds a +1 difficulty mod to doing things), to 2.0-4.0G (Add another difficulty step, make that -25% move a -75% move, exhaustion checks each hour just for doing things), and then, there's 4+ G... A total of +3 steps of difficulty, you cannot move without special suits, and you make an exhaustion check each minute. Life does not tend to evolve on such superheavy worlds. Radiation Most of this makes sense. 0 Radiation rarely exists, and is generally artificial. Radiation is generally bad. R2 and R3 are mostly sorted by soft suits, R4 by hard suits, and R5 is basically "You are on a Pulsar, at Ground Zero, or somewhere very hot. Even spaceships can't completely save you here."  Yup... That'll give me R4 protection, alright...  Atmosphere Atmosphere 0, or Vacuum, is a "look elsewhere" (Pressure, in fact). Atmosphere 1 is Inert (bring your own air), 2 is normal, 3 is Toxic (Bring filters), 4 is Corrosive (Wear a suit), and 5 is "Your spaceship will dissolve in six hours." The vast majority of alien worlds in sci-fi fit into the first three (plus Vacuum.) Pressure This one's definitely linked with Atmosphere, for obvious reasons, as it represents how much air there is, or rather, how dense it is. But it's nice to see, under Vacuum, they don't repeat the "Cold Depths of Space" bollocks. It is recommended to have something that covers your skin in P/A0, because while space isn't inherently cold, it does depend on your surroundings. PS - Your surroundings are often radioactive in space. It doesn't go into decompression, but if you won't tell, I won't either. Thin air (P1) means a risk of altitude sickness and easy exhaustion, 2's slightly better, 3's normal, but 4 and 5 are interesting. See, dense atmospheres apparently cause vascular and respiratory damage, who knew? Crushing (P5) is basically "You are in a gas-giant's lower atmosphere, you are hosed without a spaceship." I'm starting to see a theme here... Heat It goes from absolute zero all the way up to +1000 Centigrade. If I need to spell out for you what cold and heat does mechanically, you're probably in the wrong thread. 0 and 5 are, naturally, ultra-bad. But here's the fun part. It doesn't give guidance for aliens who, say, evolved on a G4 environment (who would consider G1 to be super, super light.) It just goes straight into skill mechanics. Which means another few chapters skipped ahead... JamieTheD fucked around with this message at 20:01 on Sep 4, 2014 |
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Sep 4, 2014 18:52
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