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LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

gradenko_2000 posted:

"Unions are Chaotic Evil" - Scott Walker, probably

Actually basing unions on alignments makes for an interesting idea. If there are the usual detection spells they would have mandatory membership to swell their ranks, but also then a built in plot where somebody gets the bright idea of fudging the spell to swell their numbers.

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LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

LatwPIAT posted:

I'm rather the opposite; I like simulation in my games (the caveat to which is that I generally like the kind of simulation where the referee says "but since you have basically all the time in the world, there's no way you won't be able to open this door without consequences, so we don't need to roll"), and this is so incredibly obnoxious because... all games do this. Well, maybe not all of them, but truly, what game these days doesn't make it easier to cross the same bridge after you've levelled up your Cross Bride skill? In early editions of D&D, each class would have Cross Bridge percentage that increased with level. In 3rd edition D&D and onwards each bridge would have a static Bridge-Crossing DC, and putting ranks into Cross Bridge would increase your chance of beating it. In every edition of GURPS a bridge would be represented by a set penalty to your Cross Bridge skill; put more points into it, and the probability of successfully crossing becomes higher. Call of Cthulhu? The higher your Use Bridge skill, the more likely you are to succeed. FATE? The Bridge has a rating on the Success Ladder you need to beat; the more Attributes/Skills/Aspects/Stunts/whatever you have in bridge-crossing, the easier that gets. Either World of Darkness? Bridges have a static Difficulty rating, and the more points you have in Pretentious Bridge Crossing, the greater your chance of success is.

The most rules-light non-simulationist games there are? The Referee says "well, last time you were dirt-farmers trying to cross a difficulty bridge, but now you're legendary heroes, so there's no point in rolling."

Seriously, what horrible abomination of a game has Cook played, where putting points into your Cross Bridge skill makes all the bridges in the world proportionally more difficult to cross?

Literally the only instance I can think of where Adjustment was technically to the detriment of the player was the level adjusting in Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, where every fight was a giant pain in the rear end the whole game through because of it, and you had the added bizarreness of the King's elite guard dropping garbage when they died, but ten levels fighting a random beggar with a silver sword.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Another thing is that sometimes a degree of crunch is necessary to satisfyingly model a specific game concept. In a lot of its rules Legend of the Wulin is exceptionally FATE-like, but in Combat in particular it is way more complex and swingy with very permissive injury rules. That's because all those things together create something that inherently acts much more like a martial arts movie, with characters trading attacks back and forth until someone does something crazy out of nowhere only for the now injured guy to get back up and keep fighting with only a little awkwardness (or surrender/turn tail and run, which the system incentivizes over just fighting everything to death). You can work to have the same feel in FATE, but it doesn't happen as naturally or as satisfyingly without that extra crunch.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

LatwPIAT posted:

Honestly, the adverse reaction people sometimes have to any implication of rape in CthulhuTech feels a bit like an over-reaction. The issue shouldn't be that it's mentioned, but rather that it's treated so lightly and used almost exclusively for edgy shock value. Acknowledging that, sometimes, people do horrible things in times of war - especially wars of genocide - should not really be a mark against CthulhuTech.

Instead, we can hold against it that it describes all amlati children of war rape as "damaged goods".

I mostly agree with you but there's another issue that comes up for me. It's actually the same issue I had back when the generally progressive setting of Blue Rose came into question, in fact: rape, along with those kinds of bigotry, is the sort of thing where I do feel it's kind of lazy and to a degree wrong to make a background radiation of your setting. Not because that isn't a real issue, not because those things shouldn't be talked about, but because I really feel they shouldn't be there unless your group of players specifically wants to engage with that kind of material. If somebody comes in and says they want to do a gay character who was specifically motivated to start adventuring because they wanted to find their own way in life and be themselves, or that they want to do a child of rape who's hunting down their offending parent and struggling with deciding whether they themselves deserve to live, then they can be there. But those things really shouldn't just be a footnote in the setting, or a value on your character sheet somewhere that only matters because it gives you +x to some skill and a starting trauma disadvantage or some poo poo.

Theoretically there's some value in having characters who are, for example, survivors of rape who have successfully moved on and are basically unaffected by it now but the problem is in a roleplaying context those only really have value if they're played by an actual person who experienced the same thing. You've got to go to other media in order to get general societal benefit out of such a portrayal, like a tv show that has such a character.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Lurks With Wolves posted:

Not that I disagree with your point, but your examples kind of make it sound like you're putting LGBT representation and casual hints at rape in the same category and they just... aren't.

Anyway, I agree that the biggest problem here is that this raises the amount of "acceptable" rape references in the game, both because that makes the game feel generally rape-y and because it makes it seem that much more acceptable for people to include more rape in their games. It all comes together to make Cthulutech feel like a really uncomfortable game to sit down and play, even if a good group could and probably will spend the time and effort to avoid all the weird casual rape references.

Not presentation, I was referring to settings that have baked in bigotry toward LGBT folk. Obviously you should be allowed to play a gay or trans character if you want, my reference there was more "the player should only have to face bigotry for their character being LGBT if that's what they want to roleplay."

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Kai Tave posted:

Well the default assumption in Blue Rose isn't really that LGBT characters face baked-in bigotry, that's sort of Aldis' thing is not being bigoted. "LGBT characters face prejudice elsewhere" is a setting detail but as a detail it's not really what I would consider a major one that's employed time and again as a bludgeon despite what people elsewhere trying to mischaracterize the game as SJW feminazi homofascist propaganda would have folks believe. You can play LGBT characters and never once have to deal with that sort of thing if you don't want to and still go adventuring, solve mysteries, defend the kingdom from the Lich King's plots, and do all that fantasy roleplaying stuff you want.

Cthulhutech, meanwhile, has a published adventure where the player-characters are inevitably chemically seduced by furries and raped. So, y'know.

(Speaking of which, I haven't given up on my joint review of Blue Rose, I'm currently waiting for gradenko_2000 to get back to me with the rest of the feats chapter.)

Yup, in the original post I was referring to the discussion that sprang up around the poster who expressed annoyance that Aldis was super-progressive and so forth, which then lead to people discussing whether settings should have written in prejudice and such. Sorry if that confused the issue any.

Night10194 posted:

I still hold up how they did sexism in Bretonnia in WHFRP2e as how to do in-setting discrimination. The entire book makes clear that it's bullshit (women have absolutely the same stats, can do every profession as well as men), there's an explicit disclaimer saying it's not the important part of the setting and thus if it makes your table uncomfortable drop it entirely, it doesn't limit a player's options, and exists to provide a plot hook IF your players want to deal with the cross-dressing and hiding identities, etc. I know I've brought it up in multiple threads, but making it clear it's optional, making it clear the discrimination is wrong in-setting and mechanically if you do use it, and making sure players can still play whatever they want and have it as a plot hook rather than a limitation (the example knight character is even a woman in disguise and the book makes it pretty clear that that's quite common) is how you do in-setting inequality. It should always be absolutely clear that in-setting inequality isn't designed to limit players and has no mechanical or factual basis.

Yeah, I would agree that's probably the best way to do it. Takes out the possibilities of unfortunate interactions, like super-groggy DMs who do legitimately not have any bad intentions but because it's in the settings and the rules harshly enforce that poo poo and make people uncomfortable.

LornMarkus fucked around with this message at 18:26 on Sep 15, 2015

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Lurks With Wolves posted:

I can see what you meant, in that case. Wasn't as clear as it probably should have been, but I see what you meant.

Also, on a similar note to Night's comments about Bretonnia, I really like how Legends of the Wulin handles women. You see, wuxia traditionally doesn't exactly have the best gender dynamics and it would have been really easy for them to go "this is a quasi-historical setting, things suck for women, deal with it". Instead, they had a whole section of the book talk about women in China in the time periods wuxia cribs off of and they give you a few disadvantages like "everyone thinks of me as a woman and not as a warrior" and "everyone thinks of me as a warrior and not as a woman". And if you don't take those disadvantages, congratulations, you don't have to deal with that kind of sexism because you didn't put "I want to deal with that kind of sexism" on your sheet, the same way your GM would be an rear end in a top hat if they had your character be constantly hunted by the army if you didn't write "Disadvantage: I am wanted by the army" on your sheet. It's just something that more RPGs should do.

Yup, apologies for that.

And yeah, along with having an explicit section elsewhere that says, that the Wulin community literally is a world apart from the non-martial community and has different rules. Sexism is the exception, not the rule.

Edit: To add to that, I still also really like the inclusion of the Virtues (Chivalrous and Selfish). Just a really cool way to quantify out what you're interested in doing for the DM, and even includes a sidenote that having a low Virtue doesn't have to mean that you're an awful person in that regard.

LornMarkus fucked around with this message at 18:55 on Sep 15, 2015

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Xelkelvos posted:

If only there weren't so many bits and pieces to it, I'd probably understand the game enough to run it rather than depend on a GM that'll never materialize for the game to teach it.

Yeah, I mostly managed to work it out but Chi accumulation is still a little fiddly. Oh, and Secret Arts: I basically understand nothing about all that aside from how the Warrior stuff works. Unlike Exalted, though, I really do feel like I could figure the rest of it out if I could play the game some more. Unfortunately I too lack any sort of GM and also aren't really the type for it myself. :(

Night10194 posted:

A lot of this stuff sounds like I'd enjoy this Wulin game.

It's an amazing game and it's actually very similar to FATE in a lot of ways, just with a fair bit more crunch and interplay to the combat. Literally the only thing keeping me from playing it often is that lack of a DM thing and not having had much luck with online games.

LornMarkus fucked around with this message at 21:03 on Sep 15, 2015

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

ZorajitZorajit posted:

Who... Which side was which in the edition wars analogy? Also, I sent you an email about writing for Blimpleggers. Because every RPG needs endless tracts of prose only tangentially related to the rules.

I'd guess it's supposed to be, given they said "the third edition rebels" which would make them the South but then the letter was read with a southern affect despite being named as a person with a Dragonborn who mentions encounter powers.

Still hilarious either way.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Alien Rope Burn posted:

Diaz has gotten much better than where he was, but the Patreon also makes it shady when you have a stated agreement regarding deadlines you can't follow. Of course, his kvetching comes off as downright offensive when I get to see a lot of talented artists on Patreon struggle balancing a day job and regular comic updates and earning a fraction of what he gets from the Patreon alone, working through illness and exhaustion and feelings of inadequacy... and still putting out full pages two or three times a week.


Well, being a writer is a different matter. But a lot of widely-criticized creators get work because they can keep to a monthly schedule. See also: Greg Land. Honestly, I think the monthly grind of comic books is something only a minority of artists can really manage, but it's become a false expectation for comic artists to be able to crank out a full page every day and a half. The amount artist earn from the work they put in is frankly, tragic, and the whole mainstream comics industry is pretty hosed up.

Well, to be fair, the more you look anywhere related to mass-anything the more you have to acknowledge that the systems are designed to wring as much out of the workers for as little return to them as possible. Capitalism is violence in the aggregate.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Terrible Opinions posted:

I cannot think of any economic model, no matter how permissive, in which Diaz's productivity would be acceptable.

Was more referring to the latter bit about the state of the comic industry. All of that definitely sounds pretty awful.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Alien Rope Burn posted:

If it fits on a bumper sticker it's probably wrong.

I would argue more for fitting on a bumper sticker means it lacks nuance. Capitalism can do good and has lots of upsides, but by itself it's predatory by nature and does a lot of awfulness. Ideally it needs to be married to a robust system dedicated to the common good that will manage it, but America at the very least is in a rather awkward place as far as that's concerned.

Regardless, not looking to start an argument, just been reading a lot lately and had that on my mind.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Doresh posted:

Isn't this kinda sorta what FATE and Mutants & Mastermind are already doing?

No clue on M&M, but I think what you're thinking of in regards to FATE is the Ruined Empires campaign setting they drafted up during the Kickstarter, which was meant to be a world in the style of FFVII but included no actual specialty rules or different systems from FATE Core.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Doresh posted:

Well this makes sense considering that Dissidia and FF7 have nothing in common in the mechanics department aside from damage reducing HP.

Oh, wait, no Ruined Empires was for Tenra Bansho Zero. Hmm, have to check all those setting books I had from the FATE kickstarter then.

Edit: Huh, well I've got stuff like Camelot Trigger and Kriegszeppelin Valkyrie in there but nothing for FFVII. No clue where that's coming from then.

LornMarkus fucked around with this message at 19:03 on Oct 6, 2015

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Doresh posted:

Spikey hair? Big swords? Evil corporations? Some weird afterlife juice? Birds as mounts? Maybe it's just kinda sorta JRPG-ish and they decided to just use Final Fantasy for marketing reasons?

And what other setting could you possibly want if you already have Grimdark Feudal Japan with a bit of Devil May Cry and Fist of the North Star mixed into it?

For TBZ? Well the other two settings that are coming out of its Kickstarter are Mythos Hunters Zero (tweaked TBZ rules to do Cthulhu Mythos paranormal investigations) and a last I checked unnamed rules hack to let you play a Persona-styled game.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Doresh posted:

Now the latter one sounds intriguing, though TBZ already kinda sorta does Shin Megami Tensei with those computer wizard dudes.

Yup, I believe the biggest change is they were rejiggering the Emotion Matrix into something that could be more tightly integrated with the . . . I'm at work and drawing a blank on the name, but the system where you have the stuff your character cares about that you cultivate and then ultimately sublimate or discard to lower your Karma score. Either way, they're integrating an altered Emotion Matrix with that to make a Social Link system.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Oh yeah, speaking of that and having listened to the latest Movie Mastery, if you guys want Chronicle you should check out a Barnes and Noble in your area with a music and DVD section. They should have it for about ten bucks, I believe.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Hell yeah, I'd love to see someone hit up Tenra Bansho Zero. I kicked the drat thing and love just reading the book. If you do it, though, I definitely suggest just getting diaper girl out of the way first thing probably with the inclusion of the story about how the translators would have flat removed it from english release if they could.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

theironjef posted:



Got a hot, fresh Afterthought 18 - The One Shot Podcast episode here. We discuss the value of one shot games, plus a bunch of fan questions and digressions.

Oh yeah, not to the Afterthought but I figured I'd let you know you're not actually alone in being traumatized by Superman 3. poo poo was god drat horrifying at a young age.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Lovely as always, Doresh, the only thing I think needs to be added is a tidbit that I forget if the previous write-up covered: despite the descriptions of the duties for each of those ranks, you can still play a higher ranked Agent as a PC. The book even provides a simple explanation: the Priesthood, to one degree of frequency or another, has its high-ranked agents pose as lower ranks to gather information and experience they couldn't otherwise get while staying cloistered. Thanks to the masks gimmick, all they really have to do is don a Taira rank mask and nobody, even others in the Priesthood, will know the difference.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Rangpur posted:

Yes. At this point, it's basically Exalted, in that whoever runs out of exceedingly long descriptions of their special move first dies instantly. The curse of all shonen manga is to descend into self-parody if they run long enough. ...Huh. And I think I just realized why TBZ is built for one-shots/short campaigns.

Well, the other issue is just not recognizing when you've reached a good point to just stop. Bleach should have just ended with Aizen's defeat, because it had the perfect draw down ending with Ichigo no longer powered but still crazy knowledgeable and skilled taking on the task of training his sister do poo poo for the future. Throw in some element of him having found the intrinsic value of regular life and the good he can bring to the world and you had a perfect hero's journey end right there.

But no, instead he had to get repowered to eventually be revealed to be all the special things of the universe at once and fight Hyper-God for reasons.

Edit: In fact, that actually reminds me of one of my favorite stories the translating team shared that they had learned from the original writing team. It was about a player in a game that ended with an epic boss fight against a crazy powerful enemy and ultimately the way the team decided to deal with it was to pool all their Akai chits and other resources on one of their combat monkeys so he could blow of two crazy attacks, one to tick the guy's dead box and the other to kill him. Afterwards the character had an absurd amount of Karma but after spending a bit doing the numbers the player figured out that by dropping all of their destinies and such they could manage to get to exactly 108 Karma and thus not go Asura. And then they looked at the character, suddenly a blank slate as far as purpose and destiny went and just said, "yeah, I think that's good." They came up with a little story about how he'd lost all his memories of his previous life, including all the awful things that had made his life awful, and the rest of the team chipped in saying they bought him a nice farm in the country and let him live out the rest of his days in peace.

LornMarkus fucked around with this message at 07:07 on Dec 13, 2015

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

unseenlibrarian posted:

When Rumiko Takahashi does a series that's basically a straight up parody of yours that's more focused on a core cast of characters and less inclined to power upgrade bloat, you've probably hosed up somewhere.

For real, Bleach is still the mental example I go to when I'm thinking of "absurd tier of setting power." It exemplifies the pitfalls and issues even better than DBZ because at least there it's only the villains that use armies of guys who are literally incapable of hurting any significant threat.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Too much positivity and goodness makes my soul itch. Bring on the vile hatred so that we might bathe ourselves in it.

. . . drat, really need to get back to that Bloodbourne DLC.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Night10194 posted:

This is the real problem with Wick's style, yes. In every single case he'd be better off just asking the players 'Hey guys, this is something I want to try, and it's a bit of a take off of what you guys said you wanted, would you be down?' The whole point is to arrive at a game or concept that everyone at the table enjoys, and you get there much better by negotiation and especially communication than anything else.

Nah, if the players knowingly agree to it then their reactions and emotions won't be real and visceral. How can they possibly appreciate the ignominious death of their character in a dungeon if they know it's likely to happen? That would just be silly.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Doresh posted:

And aftera healthy sleep, you can summon a bunch of Red Servants for a little Thriller re-enactment.

Personally, I'm far more likely to ask the player why they became the Rose Bride, and perhaps whether or not they believe in miracles.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Nessus posted:

I agree, though of course he's definitely Wick That Didn't Happen, dot txt.

My favorite part is that, unless I grossly misunderstood that casino story, Wick's fake friend threatened him with bodily harm via "kung-fu" and Wick both took that threat seriously and yet still remains friends with him. Over him going, "hey, dude, you're gonna get us thrown out of here if you keep being cooler than everyone else here" no less.

There is literally not enough eye roll on this earth.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Alien Rope Burn posted:

The whole "Don't judge a book by its cover." adage has always been pretty silly. We have to have some sort of filters on the media we consume or go mad, really. Most of us aren't independently wealthy enough to read the contents of a library, not that we'd likely remember it all anyway. And so, yes, we need to be able to come up with some criteria of judging, and sometimes it's because something smells like poo poo. Or has a writer we don't like. Or a premise that's offensive. I don't need to read or watch Twilight to confirm I won't like it; I've been sufficiently informed of its premise and nothing is likely to change my opinion in the near future.

What's more, you don't need to read the whole of most games to get a good idea for them; they're not like novels where a shocking twist at the end brings the whole book together. You're not going to read through World > Rules > Chargen > Combat > GM Advice and suddenly once the Monster section comes around, the entire game changes. Or at least, it's so exceedingly unlikely as to not bother. You can read just about any chapter of Orkworld and have a pretty good idea whether or not the whole thing is really your bag.

I will actually argue that specific point: any single section is unlikely to really raise your opinion of a whole system, but a single section totally can torpedo an entire system if it's bad enough. Referring to that specific example, I know there are otherwise good systems that completely gently caress it up in the monsters/enemies section by having literal rape monsters in there.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Alien Rope Burn posted:

Fair enough. But it's usually easy to discard one bad element in a game you like as long as it isn't too central.

Yup, most of the time the issue there is weighing the good aspects of the system against the thought of having to preface and clarify every time you bring it up to someone else that, "no, I like it because of X and punch anyone that tries to bring up the tentacle dicks."

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

gradenko_2000 posted:

The background of the Magical Witch Girls completely slipping under your radar was also rather surprising, even to me too.

Well, it is worth remembering their generally followed "zero research," rule. That and they did comment on the aspect of the book that is obvious to people who don't know the buzzwords of that community: those comics where the character blatantly murders people using transformations.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

theironjef posted:

Here is an Afterthought for you guys, hopefully you want to discuss favorite campaign settings with us.

Sadly the campaign talk was kind of a wash for me because I never played/read about Planescape. On the other hand, thanks for that random clip in the Q&A because I'd completely forgotten I really liked that song and that movie.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

Evil Mastermind posted:

Also this. At the end of the day it's about profit. Not if he can use what he's earned, just that he's earned it.

That does go to a really odd semantic place though. Can you actually call earnings from your venture a "profit" if they are essentially valueless? Though, of course, that already resides on top of the whole concept of currency being a shared illusion that we just accept has value so I suppose there's little point in bringing up arguments about trading cave lizards for useless rocks at a high stated value to turn big "profits."

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

PurpleXVI posted:

The "but!"-dice, as in "but something neat/bad happened as well!" aren't a bad idea, but, eh. Maybe it betrays my OLD GROGNARD ROOTS, but that's something I'd usually just leave up to GM discretion, having the system demand that a good/bad thing suddenly be shoehorned in, just feels wonky to me. Personally I see more headaches than adventures from making it work, but it's probably a whole lot down to your player, your GM and the group's playing style. As far as I understand the system right now, I'm getting more Donjon flashbacks than anything.

I think the best version of this idea I've seen was "Interesting Times" in Legends of the Wulin. When you roll dice in Wulin you pick out groupings of d10s that show the same number to complete your actions, and if you pick 0's then that brings up an opportunity for Interesting Times, where some complication occurs which varies from annoying to dangerous depending on whether or not you actually succeed on the action you put the 0's toward. You opt to do it yourself, but the Wulin Sage is also explicitly allowed by the rules to say, "okay, but there's not really anything all that weird that can be done to this scene/I can't think of anything right now" and the action resolves as usual.

LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

PurpleXVI posted:

See, I'd rather have mechanics like that powered by some sort of point pool like "fate points" than by random rolls. So on a "special storytelling moment," you can bust out your fate points to make sure that your dramatic rescue is actually a dramatic rescue, and not just a wet fart of a failure. Similarly, being able to bust them out to rescue yourself from a failure, but with an Interesting Times caveat attached. That gives the player control over what's going on around them.

Attaching it to any sort of randomness makes it seem more likely that they get busted out for completely inappropriate situations.

Actually Interesting Times is just "weird and ancillary bullshit happens," and not crit success or failure. And it's worth a reminder that the River mechanic for Wulin is basically made to let you bust out a crazy success at will, much less Chivalrous of Malicious Joss or the other supporting systems.

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LornMarkus
Nov 8, 2011

FATAL and Friends 2016: A Lamentable Pile of System Mastery

Partially in honor of our favored sons, but also because our collective knowledge of these awful systems is slightly embarrassing.

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