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LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

ProfessorProf posted:

Contained in this game, among other things:
  • Central game mechanics revolving around trying not to lose your mind and become a rampaging hate monster!
  • Giant mecha powered by demon hearts being cut in half by swords powered by fossilized souls!
  • The ability to play as a transforming robot dog that is also a ninja!
  • Android bodies being possessed by amnesiac demons!
  • Centipedes as a fully-developed branch of magic!

You forgot about the mages using abacus-computers to spontaneously create spirits to do their bidding. Or the "Samurai" who are basically surgically created half-demons with transformations and poo poo. Or, my personal favorite, the class of people who hate the giant mecha so much they train to use a mecha's shortsword in their bare, unaugmented hands to kill the mecha while on foot.

Sadly I have never gotten to actually play the game because my group of friends is tragically lacking in people willing to GM, but the themes and world poo poo of this game just delight me to no end.

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LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Gerund posted:

I'll still never forget reading KJA's deep, loving appreciation of the training of storm troopers. The dipshit mooks of the sci fi canon being given the same hallowed tones reserved for the least self-aware WH40k Space Marine fan-fiction.

Actually, one of the better practical jokes in Star Wars happened because Galaxies took that sort of stuff completely seriously. Storm Troopers in that game were pretty monstrous, especially at low levels, so you had all these new players who would bumrush the first one they saw and just get stomped.

Also it amuses me that I distinctly recall reading KJA's work and Darksaber too, but could not tell you a thing about them that I wasn't reminded of by the thread so far. On the other hand, I could probably quote chapter and verse from Timothy Zahn's.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

grassy gnoll posted:

You may be thinking about Diaper Girl*, the unfortunately-dressed ninjette under the dust cover. I'm not going to tread on Prof's writeup, but the director's commentary about that part may be what you're thinking of. It's also pretty much gold, and something I wish more RPGs would come with, translations or not.

*

Let me stop you right there. It's not actually a diaper. But it is dumb as hell.

If I recall correctly, that right there is actually the cover of the book as published in Japan. Andy, rightly leery of trying to put that in front of a foreign audience, negotiated for an option to deal with it. The publisher (possibly with the backing of the creator, though I don't recall if that was made clear where I saw the story) wouldn't allow any art to be removed or significantly shifted in the layout. So he made the compromise that she would remain on the cover but the book would come with a dust jacket with an entirely different and less questionable illustration. I believe it came up in a Q&A he did and sent out through the backer notifications.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Yeah, I think what makes TBZ so appealing to me is that all the setting details and flavor mean I'm totally willing to play anything, whereas usually I'm pretty picky about classes (3 and 3.5 instilled a reflexive dislike of casters in me). That and the actual advancement rules make the system surprisingly appropriate for Persona roleplay. In fact, I believe somebody is working on a hack to better accommodate that thanks to a stretch goal from the Kickstarter. Haven't heard anything about it in awhile though.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

theironjef posted:

We touch on that in the podcast a bit, but basically yeah. If you look at the skills it gives a strong impression that this is supposed to be a long-form game of space truckers punctuated with occasional combat, since the book goes on and on about how easy it is to damage ships and ship repair times are ludicrous. I guess maybe the GM is supposed to say things like "well your hyperdrive is busted so you're stuck on Nar Shaddaa until you do this adventure I wrote" but that'd be just a narrative trick baked into the skill system. Which means your character that wants to fix hyperdrives like in the movie (by pleading with them and hitting the ship) is accidentally buying a level in "DM fish hook."

Of course I also hate games where you take months to heal injuries. I like abstracted simple quick healing because I like the whole party being present during adventures and I am fully aware that puts me on one side of some sort of ideological RPG train tracks.

Mostly it's the question of consequences or not, really. Some people feel it's no fun if there are never any consequences for their actions and/or failures. The problem, as I see it, comes when the system itself tries to enforce that with static rules like that especially in regards to actions that are not choice based. It's one thing for the GM to assign me a penalty of being captured and roughed up a bit by a gang of thugs when I decide to be crazy and try some one-man-army stuff on them but don't quite succeed. I chose to do that dangerous and silly thing, and as long as the result of my capture isn't something horrific (they amputate your character's legs and/or you now have these permanent stat penalties from trauma) I'm totally cool with it. But if you're talking about mandatory healing times from all damage, your avoidance of which is down to luck during the fight or trying to just avoid a fight completely which you can't always do. That's not a choice and its not even really interesting as a consequence.

Mandatory consequences are a lot better when they're worked into the system more fluidly, like your Encroachment in Double Cross: it raises just from being present in scenes, and incrementally through your actions in combat with the consequence being that if it's too high your character goes crazy and becomes an NPC enemy. It works, though, because that determination comes at the end of story no matter how high you drive your Encroachment so you're never actually denied from playing your character. Even better, you've got the release mechanic coupled with experience bonuses for managing to cut it closer to the character loss limit without going over. Hell, the rules even have a safety valve if you really like your character and don't want to lose them by allowing you to give up all the XP in order to reset your Encroachment to base. It's complex, interesting and also has some really cool interplays with the actual role-playing of your character.

LornMarkus fucked around with this message at 18:27 on Jul 17, 2014

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Ratpick posted:

Monsterhearts isn't exactly a horror game though. It's horror in the same vein as Buffy and Twilight, i.e. it's not really about the horror but the drama between the characters, with the horror elements being there mainly as spice. Okay, I know that's arguable in the case of Buffy, but it at least applies to Twilight, which is the clearest inspiration for Monsterhearts (the game first formed as a simple Apocalypse World hack themed on Twilight).

The game does have some elements of the horror genre though: I already mentioned Menaces, which are basically the game's version of Apocalypse World's fronts. They're basically big bads working behind the scenes making the characters' lives more difficult and horrific. However, the Menaces aren't the center of attention: they're mainly there to give a context to the drama between the characters. Like in Apocalypse World, the MC is encouraged to frame the situation not just as the PCs versus the Menace, but have the Menace act as an independent agent that might try to work the PCs against each other. A great example of a good Menace would be the Infernal's (which I'll write up soon) Dark Power, which definitely exerts a degree of control on the Infernal and can basically play the Infernal against the other characters.

Furthermore, while in traditional horror RPGs PCs are often helpless and powerless, in Monsterhearts that isn't necessarily the case: should a character take four harm it's not an instant game over, as players can still save their characters by either triggering their Darkest Self or coming back having lost all their held Strings.

And finally, Monsterhearts is very explicitly a story game: the game doesn't reward you for success, but for doing things that fit into your character's theme, as determined by their Skin. You mainly get experience for two things: highlighted stats, one of which is chosen by the player whose character holds the most Strings on yours and one by the MC, and for Moves picked from your Skin that give you experience for doing certain things. The former acts as a reward mechanic for putting your character in situations that other players want to see them in (i.e. if someone highlights your Mortal's Hot stat, that means they want to see them trying to seduce and manipulate people), while the latter acts as a mechanic for acting according to type.

For an example, with the right Moves a Mortal will be rewarded for getting in way over their heads in supernatural stuff, a Ghoul will be rewarded for sating their Hunger, and a Werewolf will be rewarded for turning into a rampaging wolfbeast, because those are dramatically the most interesting situations those characters can get into. In many ways, the system often rewards you for putting your character into bad situations, simply because it makes for the best dramatic outcome.

That's an important part of playing Monsterhearts: not playing your character as a rational agent, but using them as a vehicle for getting some juicy drama out of the situation at hand.

That last bit is where you're losing people, I'm pretty sure. Mostly people play their characters straight and even many actor-types will still only allow their characters to dive into inevitable badness based on clearly defined and obvious potential rewards from a character perspective. The thief runs off to rob a crime boss even though the player and everybody else knows it's a bad idea because that loving score! The problem they're having here is that they're systematically encouraged to do those things but often those incentives don't translate in character: the Fae does those things and causes drama because that's just what they do and not for any particular goal, as it's been described up to this point.

Overall, though, I do actually understand it. The point is what actual goal they're pursuing is vague so you can determine it from a character basis, because the goals of a Monsterhearts setting are intrinsically personal and character-driven.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Alien Rope Burn posted:

It's true the power level of spells is relatively reduced, but you still have the Magister who can change out his spells every day in the classic fashion, and choose which of those he's going to use, and he can throw in higher-level slots to approximate. With his access to the entire spell list, he's more flexible than a 3.5 Wizard, and that takes some doing. There are certainly some nice touches (like Magister that gets their staff knocked away loses some of their power), but they're the archetype of the "Batman Wizard" dilemma, able to get the tools for any situation they need as long as they had foresight or the time to prep. Hell, they aren't even limited to switching their spell list once a day (just their spells per day), they just need an hour to do it, and they can combine low-level slots to get even more high-level slots.

And you still have quadratic Magisters whose spells bump up every level, as opposed to linear Ritual Warriors, whose combat rites only provide small bonuses and never improve. Granted, the Ritual Warrior does get access to stronger rites as they level up, but they're getting stuff like +30 movement or DR/5 for three rounds at the top end, while at the same level the Magister is controlling the weather or summoning 16 HD elementals. As with Pathfinder, the fact that they're weakened doesn't do much to change the essential issue, unfortunately, because the two classes are still working on entirely different conceptual levels.

And that is, in a nutshell, why the market dominance of 3 and 3.5 when I was growing up shaped my outlook of reflexively hating casters and magic in role-playing. Even recognizing that these days I still look first to completely non-magical fighter and rogue types and get very annoyed if such isn't available or is obviously underpowered.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Humbug Scoolbus posted:

The Sea Witch also gets to spray acid too for that same cost of a pick. Yes I know the sword is an at will but it also only does non-lethal.

Is there anything in the game that is explicitly immune to non-lethal damage? It's been awhile since I dug into the D&D crunch but I don't actually recall there being any such thing on even undead, at which point the only "downside" to that is you have to chop off whatever it is you knocked out's head afterwards. Which isn't hard, given it's helpless and coup de grace rules apply.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Luminous Obscurity posted:

Fun fact, Humans have monstrously high endurance compared to pretty much anything else on Earth. So not only are we Space Orcs, we're Space Orcs that will walk you to death.

Yeah, not sure where I remember hearing it from exactly, but I'm pretty sure more than a few/most animals would die outright from shock at the total loss of a limb whereas a hopped up enough human can just keep on trucking and potentially survive even without advanced medicine.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Saguaro PI posted:

See, I think this is why the Slenderman angle of the Proxy would still work. "It" then becomes a metaphor for the horrifying, complicated bundle of things that turns someone into this hosed up person, hard to understand and something most people don't want to understand anyway. Something that acts in such an incomprehensible fashion that we can't really be sure how many of the hosed up things the Proxy is doing are being driven by this outside force and how much are simply the proxy being caught up in the cycle that it's all they know.

Also, "I like this monster, let's make a playbook" is totally an acceptable starting point for making a Monsterhearts playbook, sorry guys. I understand you've got to really think about what teenage experience analogues you're using the monster to represent if you want it to really shine. But I'm not going to blame someone for using "what monster do I think is cool" as a starting point and I think "why not just play a ghost or werewolf" kind of misses what's trying to be achieved.

I'll disagree with your disagreement for a simple reason: considering the teenage drama aspect directly alongside the monster is important because it makes the social aspect central to the design. Most of the skins that are broken are terrible are specifically bad because they and/or the other players have no incentive to interact with them. That comes primarily from that lack of focus, looking instead only to make stuff that fits with the monster theme.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Gazetteer posted:

Rose Whip
The name of this move is, for the record, a Yu-Gi-Oh! reference. So, you can decide how you feel about that on your own, I guess.


Actually, so is Elegant Egotist. If I recall the original show correctly, it was the card that cloned the single Harpy into three of them.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

NachtSieger posted:

:colbert: Marche did nothing wrong.

Luso was the better protagonist and had the better game. :smugbert:

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

fool_of_sound posted:

That game was weird in that the plotline that felt like the central story and had the most plot-relevant missions (the foreign syndicate, I don't recall the name) wasn't the main plotline, which just sort of meandered around for most of the game.

On the other hand, I was still rather amused they acknowledged the point of the first game right at the beginning by having Luso's initial goal focused on getting back home only for him to be told that having an adventure that satisfied the magic book was how he would get home.

Also excellent moments like with the Moogle Power Rangers showed up, did their schtick, and his first reaction was to turn to his guildmates and say, "so, shall we kill them?" Oh, and that loving Blue Mage in the tournament. Dammit, now I have to find my copy so I can play it again.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Cyberpapacy here.

Edit: You know what, it was several pages ago but HSD really does just have me annoyed enough that I have to throw in my own point. Just like everything else Libertarian related they labor under a very simple delusion: they believe that the greatest economic good is also the greatest societal good. Not only is that not true in the macro (corporations will always make better and more reliable money off a populace teetering on the edge of poverty than one that is well-paid), but it fails spectacularly on an individual basis. Stable, long-term gains will always lose out to the quick buck that can be made by burning everything to the ground and running away with everything you can carry because as long as every other person doesn't die in the process someone will rebuild it again. It carries down through to even the oldest levels: the individual or small gang who murder the hunter for his stores of winter forage rather than bothering to do it themselves. There'll always be someone else to murder and pillage and even if there ultimately isn't . . . the phrase, "gently caress it, got mine now," comes to mind.

LornMarkus fucked around with this message at 02:19 on Jan 14, 2015

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Bieeardo posted:

You're also more kink-bait, thanks to the... noticeable micro/macro subset of the furry community.

Please don't make us talk about that. Just ugh. :gonk:

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Count Chocula posted:

This is how I remember playing Fallout. Maxing out SPEECH meant I could talk most villians into anything.

But where's the perk for making the villain stand passively by while I fill him so full of Super-Stims that the backlash when they all wear off kills him?

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Hey, theironjef, love the podcast and earlier today I had the crazy thought of sending you guys the completed rules for a fan-made Final Fantasy pen and paper that I used to play back in high school. Any chance you guys would be interested in seeing that at all? It's hilariously broken in quite a few ways but could probably provide some entertaining reading if only for seeing its attempts to reconcile ancient design philosophy with emulating Final Fantasy.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

bathroomrage posted:

Oh man, now that just reminds me that I have a full copy of the Returners RPG flying around my hard drive, is that the one you're talking about, or is it -another- crazy Final Fantasy pen and paper?

Nope, that's the one. I'd be thinking 3rd edition as that was a little cleaner and less broken than 2nd, which is what I think most goons are familiar with.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

theironjef posted:

Isn't the Returners like 1400 pages long or some insane thing? (send it though for sure, systemmastery at gmail)

Hell yeah, I'll dig it up as soon as I get home then.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

bathroomrage posted:

I found it, I'll send it right over now.

Oh man, this book is a treat, how did I manage to play this when I first found it? :allears:

I'll go ahead and send mine too just in case we do have different versions.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

bathroomrage posted:

Wait until you see how they try to rectify not being able to use your in-combat spells like Fire and Thunder out of combat. They try so hard to make it work. :allears:

drat, looks like I lost my PDF at some point. Oh well, if you're bringing up Intuitive Magic then you sent them the final release of 3rd edition and that's all I wanted.


Doresh posted:

I'm actually more familiar with 3rd edition. It might be cleaner, but there's still a lot of problematic stuff. Like how a good chunk of the monk's and ninja's abilities are like spells (aka they don't scale with your level all that much) and would require MAD to be useful. Not that you'd want to be MAD with those two as they can dual wield, with especially the ninja racking up lots of damage thanks to having access to katana blades.
There's also the inherent flaw of having a strict class system (without class change or anything) that makes it impossible to adapt a lot of characters from the games. Maybe except for Cyan, who basically is the Swordmaster class.

Oh, and there's that silly bit of making wolfmen a core player race because FF5 and 6 had that one wolf dude you saw in like one scene.

Oh yeah, not trying to claim it's not a broken as hell and in several ways just bad system. Just that it's a little better than 2e and it's Weapon Masteries, among other things. Also 3rd is the one I actually played a bit, so hearing them take it to the woodshed would be way more interesting to me than the edition I never even fully read.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Prison Warden posted:

I've always thought that in dealing with Final Fantasy you'd have to kind of approach the mechanics at a 90 degree angle, if you want them to emulate the mechanics of the game. Like, accuracy in Final Fantasy games only really matters against certain enemies and for some status effects like blink and such, so the default assumption should be that attacks auto-hit. I've always been tempted to give it a go myself because I love Ivalice as a setting, but it's a lot of work and it was hard enough to get my friends to try playing anything that isn't called DnD. Maybe I could whip something up and call it Dark Clouds and Dissidia.

Dissidia has always been really interesting for me just because of that crazy nonsense they did with Bravery and HP attacks, because it is so beautiful and so insane at the exact same time.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

PurpleXVI posted:

One of the problems with an FF RPG is that the settings are kind of like Dragonlance, each setting, and its components(possibly excepting the FF:Tactics setting), are pretty much made for one story and rarely have the content needed to weave another story out of. The mechanics are, mathematically, a pain in the rear end to replicate with dice and paper, and when they're not a pain in the rear end(and sometimes when they are), they require huge suspensions of disbelief and really treating the thing like a game(see: phoenix down mechanics, abilities that only work in combat, etc.).

Frankly I always found it kind of a weird thing for anyone to make an RPG based on, most FF stuff isn't a deep vault of inspiration that begs for more stories to be told with it.

A huge part was frankly the classes from the various games with class changing, and you can tell that from the presence of twenty or thirty some in the finished edition and ORD rules for a bunch others.

Edit: Let's see if I can remember them all for effect.

Warriors
Fighter
Swordmaster
Fencer
Samurai
Archer
Knight
Monk
Dragoon

Mages
Black Mage
White Mage
Red Mage
Time Mage
Summoner
Black Caller
White Caller
Sage

Adepts
Paladin
Dark Knight
Ninja
Blue Mage
Geomancer
Magic Knight
Rune Knight

Experts
Thief
Chemist
Bard
Dancer
Engineer
Gambler
Mediator
Mime

There you have it, all the classes in the base game, each with eight or so combat abilities spaced over 64 levels, some having huge tables to cover what an ability does. Engineer gets an entire appendix all to itself and the rules for things they craft. :eng101:

LornMarkus fucked around with this message at 01:54 on Feb 7, 2015

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Hyper Crab Tank posted:

The only Final Fantasy class I can recall missing from that list would be Viking (a.k.a. Pirate). Given that they dug deep enough to have Black/White Callers (which are from FF3, the Japanese one - well, actually, in that game there's one class that has both black and white versions of summons, but whatever - and if this came out before FF7, then there was no translation of that game into English yet), you'd think that would be in there.

Actually the names are drawn from there but the big deal is the difference in use: Callers are old style summoners while the Summoner class works like Yuna from FFX, where they're completely replaced on combat by their summon rather than just it being a much more grand spell.

Summoners also made an excellent stand in for Dante from DMC.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Hyper Crab Tank posted:

Interesting. They must have taken some of these from FF5 at least though (which didn't have Viking/Pirate, but did have Berserker), and that one didn't have an English translation either. To wit, the Geomancer, Magic Knight, Chemist and Mediator don't appear in FF4 or FF6 if I recall correctly. Several of the others (e.g. Paladin, Engineer and Gambler) are of course directly from characters from one of those two.

Some of them are actually also mergers of things, like the Knight which has a combination of skills from the Tactics Knight and the moves General Leo had for that short bit you got to use him in VI.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

SisterAcacia posted:

The only FF tabletop game I really remember was one where your weapon type (Sword, Book, Gun, whatever) determined the die type, and the quality of the weapon (Iron Sword, Platinum Sword, Demon Edge, Ultima Weapon) determined how many damage dice you roll. The main thing I remember about it was that the race/class options allow for a Moogle Dark Knight. That's pretty awesome, even if the FF games typically take themselves too seriously for a cutesy character that tries to be emo and gloomy and evil but fails at it. (Obviously it'd work as a side-character in FFX-2.)

I think it was hosted on a Geocities or Angelfire site. Classy stuff, I know.

You're thinking of Returns, yup. Daggers are d6s up to Greatswords at d12. Interestingly, despite being one-handed (and thus dual-wieldable) standard Swords were a d10 and thus the destination for munchkins that wanted the insane starting punch of dual-wielding without losing in the long run on their ability damage.

Also, the mention of that Moogle Dark Knight does remind me of one of the most interesting discussions I saw go on in the games forums: a massive multi-page argument about a guy who wanted to make a Tonberry Paladin of Hatred. For reference, Tonberries are those little green lizard guys in the robes with the kitchen knives and the lanterns that murder the poo poo out of anything they hit. FFXI gave some context to a society for them and it was based around worshipping pain and all that evil sort of stuff. So guy wanted to make a Tonberry Paladin of Hatred, because culturally to the Tonberry devoting yourself to hatred and murder is the noblest of goals. And all kinds of people got insanely pissed off about it, ranting and raving about how he had to be a Dark Knight because good and evil aren't culturally relative, and the fact that Paladins deal a lot of holy damage means their powers can only come from good deities and so forth and so on.

Probably somewhat old hat for people who hung around DnD forums but it was interesting for me to see for the first time there and in that exact context.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Hyper Crab Tank posted:

Depending on the setting, they kinda have a point. A lot of RPG settings have this really kind of rigidly defined good/evil dichotomy where you really can be objectively good or evil, and the campaign book is very clear that this is case and which gods are objectively good and whcih are objectively evil. And when you have a class that's defined as (objectively) good in nature, then of course you can't also be evil and be that class. That being said, I much prefer paladins that are just defined as "champions dedicated to some deity" without specifying exactly what that deity is, what it cares about, and what powers it grants. I don't see any problem with a paladin of an evil god that ends up essentially fitting the "dark knight" archetype merely by virtue of those being the domains associated with that god, and thus also the domain of the paladin's powers, but that has to be in a setting that doesn't outright define paladins as a force of good, period.


Hey, at least it's true to the source material! :v:

Yeah, I don't disagree though I do generally feel it makes for a better experience when you play in something closer to real world morality. Mostly I characterized it like that because it was literally the one guy going, "I think it'd be fun to play this character," and everybody else flipping their poo poo at him.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Night10194 posted:

I didn't go into it a lot, but the basic Order of Battle stuff on squad compositions and things in Albedo goes directly into 'This is how an ILR squad in this kind of section is trained to fight and how it tends to act once in combat.' I think my favorite little detail was that the ILR takes advantage of the uniformly amazing acrobatic/athletic leaping and sprinting of rabbits to cross obstacles and flank enemy positions in coordinated leaping advances. The image of Helghast-looking rabbits (I know their actual uniform was more Soviet, but I couldn't stop imagining them in glowy-eyed overcoats and gas-masks) basically doing tactical ballet towards you with SMGs will never stop being funny to me, even if in setting it was a good idea.

And all of the grenades, as I recall.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

theironjef posted:

My gentle way of pointing out that this chat is clearly just about anime now.

Shh, don't ruin the magic. :allears:

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Night10194 posted:

Gundam Unicorn was enormously disappointing. So many actually interesting characters, and then...Banagher and Audrey and Space Wizardry Screaming To Make Everything Okay.

Here's the thing about that, though: what Laplace's Box contains is actually the greatest thing. Especially after how reverently, almost spiritually everyone talks about it.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Kavak posted:

They always pick lovely fantasy MMOs for these stories, too. Why can't people get stuck in Star Trek Online or pre-NGE Star Wars Galaxies instead of lovely Fantasy Grind Fest 42?

Not to get the anime fight started again, but I'm pretty sure they always get stuck in a Fantasy MMO because that's what .hack//SIGN did and it was the best and first of them (to my knowledge, at least).

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Kurieg posted:

It's also a game where one of the playable races are ideas. You can play as a chunk of virus that has embodied the physical form of a meme.

I mean that in the classical sense of the word meme, not an internet meme. Though I suppose you could do that too if you really want

Yes, because done right you would then be playing Freakazoid.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

PurpleXVI posted:

Oh man, this sounds like it could lead to something wonderfully lovely. How about just taking it in the order it appears in the book? Sometimes the bad planning and formatting is part of the ~experience~.

You won't have to work hard for it, as it's my understanding their most recent world book for it was "Native American Stereotype land," and people were not happy about this.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Midjack posted:

Same, I thought it was one person in a ghillie suit. And I'm still not entirely sure what's going on there.

Best I can determine one of them is frozen and/or Spawn and attacking the other one with murder-wire and chains.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Kurieg posted:

Yes. Really. It's super schlocky comic book SCIENCE! poo poo that you're supposed to think is super deep and meaningful because they say it is.

I knew one guy who swore that Genius: The Transgression was the best nWoD game ever. We cut ties with him after he sent White Wolf developers death threats for not including the Sons of Ether in nMage, or basically for making an nMage AT ALL because it wasn't oMage with rules updated to function with nVampire and nWerewolf.

Frankly you can pretty much just stop at "death threats" and call it a day for him as a human being. Even as a gesture with no intent to carry out behind them, sending death threats to another human being is ridiculously hosed up.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

wdarkk posted:

I'm not. I felt betrayed by how 4E was handled and this is sort of a "final straw" thing.

:hfive:

Seriously, though, the moment I got a look at what Essentials was and that it was supplanting any further standard 4th releases, I pretty much just gave up on D&D entirely.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Alien Rope Burn posted:

Honestly I think the framework of D&D doesn't necessarily "kill fantasy", though many of the settings certainly do. For example, Planescape is surreal and weird and fantastical - and that's a setting where you can visit the afterlife and meet a god - but the fact it takes the D&D setting so literally is what makes it fantastical. If you actually implement D&D rules ideas about religion into a setting, you can end up with some weird stuff. Imagine a culture that worships Life Domain God A, who keeps all their nobles alive with resurrection, runs into culture with Death Domain God B, who use a spell that murders anybody who falls below a certain Constitution threshold. Or if your Fire God's highest blessing is to summon 3d4 murderous fire elementals, what do you take that as a sign of? Even within D&D's dorky, antiquated ruleset, you could squeeze out some interesting ideas that just don't generally get taken into account.

Instead we get something like Forgotten Realms where there are so many gods that religion is barely meaningful save when the metaplot drags them kicking and screaming into relevance. What god will you worship? Well, how about the one that embodies whatever the gently caress you wanted to do anyway...

Plus there's the interesting tidbit about FR that not only are the gods real and have come down to visit/gently caress poo poo up many times, but not believing in any god is actually a form of damnation. If you die with no patron deity to collect your soul then it gets tossed into the Wailing Wall to suffer eternally. I believe the only respite at that point is one of the devils or demons might come by recruiting.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Night10194 posted:

This is why I called them a divine protection racket. Don't forget the only thing that tends to kill them is running out of prayer to feed on. You can get a good story out of FR by leading the revolution against the cosmic parasites that have set themselves up as false Gods.

Well that's the other funny thing: I don't remember which cosmic shake-up to in universe explain an edition shift it was, but one of them actually involved Ao the Overgod kicking all the other gods into the mortal realm because he was tired of them being lazy sacks. And part of the solution was that direct tie of their wellbeing to prayer and worship. Before that I believe it just felt good and maybe gave them a little power boost.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Plague of Hats posted:

Who the gently caress ever heard of acid-vial arrows or magic swords in a fantasy RPG?

More to the point, who the gently caress ever heard of someone reading an old book so hard that they learn to shoot bolts of pure energy from their fingertips? Demanding that "mundane" characters adhere to real world rules and limits in a fundamentally fantastical world is dumb.

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LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Thesaurasaurus posted:

Imagine a locker door slamming shut over a human face...forever.

That's pretty much my theory, an early association of non-magical classes who excel based on physicality with Jocks. Also a knee jerk "magic is better and cooler than anything that's real" escapist fantasy.

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