FATAL & Friends 2014-15: The Neverending Storygame

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Selachian: Oct 9, 2012

Mr. Maltose posted:

Castle Falkenstein, buddy.

Buck Rogers XXVc is fairly well balanced too (despite some issues with distribution of skills). But then it's just 2nd Edition AD&D with a skill system bolted on, so Pondsmith doesn't really deserve much credit for balancing it.

And I'm someone who bought the DBZ game without really knowing much about the show. I was younger, I had disposable income to waste on stuff like that.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2014 16:19

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# ¿ Sep 18, 2024 18:21

Selachian: Oct 9, 2012

Halloween Jack posted:

I wish someone would take another crack at Buck Rogers XXVc. I know nothing about Buck Rogers, but if I'm not mistaken, didn't they take a pretty light series and turn it kinda dark and grim and serious?

People keep promising to and never following up. Maybe I should. (promptly disappears for six months)

I'm not really sure your characterization is accurate, though. Pulp adventure back in the day wasn't necessarily "light." XXVc was, however, a weird melding of '30s pulp sci-fi tropes (rocket ships! jetpacks! jungles on Venus!) with '90s cyberpunky tropes (AIs! sinister megacorporations! environmental devastation!), resulting in something that was neither fish nor fowl.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2014 22:11

Selachian: Oct 9, 2012

Barudak posted:

Nah, they just left construction up to the ghosts of the guys who built Sochi.

Using plans drawn up by Bloody Stupid Johnson.

# ¿ Feb 13, 2014 00:53

Selachian: Oct 9, 2012

Hulk Smash! posted:

1. The Star

1d6. 1-3 = there�s a Sun, 4-6 it�s a starless system.

2. Planets

1d6. 1-3 there are planets (3d6 worth) 4-6 no planets.

... so, like a quarter of the time, you get a "system" where there are no stars and no planet? Would that just be a bunch of asteroids/iceballs floating around or what?

# ¿ Apr 28, 2014 20:00

Selachian: Oct 9, 2012

Kurieg posted:

There was a 3.5 book that included rules for playing Anthropomorphic whatevers, from mice all the way up to beluga whales. They even had various bonuses for the different races, if you were a wolf person you still had scent and trip. If you were a bear person you had improved grab. If you were a whale person you had an absolutely ludicrous strength score.

And there were a couple of races in the various dragon magazines including a race of Wolf people that ride Wolves that hunt Werewolves for being too Wolfy. They were called the Lupin.

The lupin were one of several anthro races introduced into D&D's "Known World," along with the rakasta (catpeople) and tortles (guess).

# ¿ May 22, 2014 21:06

Selachian: Oct 9, 2012

A super-spy and master of disguise who doesn't actually accompany the players but is always hiding somewhere nearby when they need help.

# ¿ Jun 29, 2014 04:59

Selachian: Oct 9, 2012

Halloween Jack posted:

Espionage (Intellect): This is old-fashioned, Norman Smiley style spycraft.

Like how to evade a tail by doing the Big Wiggle?

# ¿ Aug 6, 2014 23:09

Selachian: Oct 9, 2012

Alien Rope Burn posted:

Later supplements upped the weird occasionally but it remained usually with the realm of modern technology, with the stranger things being things like icedroppers, gauss guns, x-ray lasers, paint rockets, limpet beacons, flame cloud ejectors, gyrosluggers, sonic cannons, etc. Oh, and nuclear weapons, which have stats for... some reason. There was always a fan contingent that argued for realism (x-ray lasers were quite controversial) and would get up in arms about any gadget or weapon that toed the line. We did get rocket boosters and jump jets, but they were one-shot sorts of deals. There were bladed wheels, but they were only really good for chopping up pedestrians. There was eventually overdrive (for all engines) and turbochargers & nitrous (gas engines only).

If I remember right, there was also a "Chassis and Crossbow" supplement in Autoduel Quarterly that had stats for low-tech weapons, for those who wanted their Car Wars games to be more Mad Max-esque.

# ¿ Sep 5, 2014 15:05

Selachian: Oct 9, 2012

Spycraft is right up there with Continuum for games that look really cool but are too terrifying to consider actually running. 1.0 wasn't quite as spergy as 2.0, though.

# ¿ Sep 10, 2014 16:24

Selachian: Oct 9, 2012

ThisIsNoZaku posted:

While 3.5 divided stealth into "be unseen" and "be quiet", Spycraft has "passive" Blend and "active" Sneak. I don't know why they're different.

I was under the impression that Blend was the skill that let you melt into a crowd and/or not look out of place -- the skill that you'd use if you wanted to walk through Dr. Badguy's poison gas factory with a clipboard and lab coat, acting like you were late for a meeting. Sneak was the traditional move silently and/or hide in shadows stuff. I haven't looked at my Spycraft book for a while, so I could be wrong.

# ¿ Sep 17, 2014 15:59

Selachian: Oct 9, 2012

Libertad! posted:

All this Spycraft and espionage talk has awakened my interest in checking out Spycraft.

Aside from the main book, does anybody know if the supplements are any good?

I'm only familiar with the 1.0 supplements. I recall the various class guides as being variable quality but generally OK. The Shadowforce Archer stuff was pretty meh; it felt to me like an attempt to graft a White Wolf-style "clans" structure into a spy game in order to sell more splatbooks. It might be good if you like that type of gonzo superspy action, though.

# ¿ Sep 29, 2014 23:09

Selachian: Oct 9, 2012

Tatum Girlparts posted:

I legitimately will never understand why GMs like Wick think they 'win' in these stories. Like, you control the world, that's the entire point of your role in the story, no poo poo you can declare a woman...sorry...girl who plays in your game A Villain and taunt her about it because she failed a dice roll...you did that thing. Like, you're not watching a program play out, you did a thing in a situation where you had ultimate power and you made someone go 'ugh poo poo'.

If one day I hide my dog's treats and then laugh while he's sniffing around trying to find them again I didn't 'beat' my dog at anything, I just hosed with something that has no power to stop me beyond going 'gently caress this I quit' and walking away.

I had the same thought when I was reading this bit:

Alien Rope Burn, quoting Wick posted:

So, your next combat should sound like this:

Player: I roll to hit. Succeed. Roll to damage. Ten hit points.

Game Master: The villain grabs your sword arm (dice roll). He succeeds. You can�t use your sword next round because your sword arm is tangled up.

Player: Uh. Okay. Roll for initiative?

Game Master: Sure. But you subtract two from your roll because you�re surprised.

(Dice roll.)

You lose?

Player: Uh, yeah.

Game Master: All right. He twists your arm. He rolls Strength. You roll Stamina. He gets a +5 because he�s got an arm bar on you.

Player: Uh, okay.

(Dice roll.)

Game Master: All right. The villain won. He takes you down to the ground. Now, he�s on top of you. You�re face down on the ground. He�s got your arm behind you, and your shoulder�s making strange sounds. He grabs hold of your hair and pulls your head up just before it comes slamming down into the castle�s stone floor.

To me, this sounds like he's encouraging his reader to abuse the fact that, as DM, you have complete narrative control, while in most traditional games the PCs have limited or no ability to affect the narrative.

I get trying to make combat more colorful than "I roll to hit, I roll damage," but there are ways to do that other than constantly making new rules so your NPCs can go all MMA on the players. I'm sure a Wick-style GM would be much less generous if I, as a player, tried to do the same thing to his NPCs.

As a DM myself, I can't imagine trying this sort of poo poo without having a lot of empty seats at the table next session.

# ¿ Dec 4, 2014 07:22

Selachian: Oct 9, 2012

Gazetteer posted:

O.G.
I really hope I�m not missing a Phantom of the Opera reference here and this is literally just a move called �Original Gangster."

"O.G." (for Opera Ghost) is how the Phantom signed his notes to the opera management. I guess it looked better than signing them T.P.o.t.O.

# ¿ Dec 23, 2014 03:33

Selachian: Oct 9, 2012

Night10194 posted:

How did anyone ever actually play Torg?

I GMed it a bit back in the day. It's a pretty fun multiverse to play in but the heavy crunch levels (and this was with a group that cut its teeth on AD&D 1E, mind) eventually pushed us away. The Drama Deck was an innovative mechanic for the time but it didn't quite work -- "dramatic" scenes could be pretty drat unforgiving if the PCs hadn't saved up enough Possibilities, and they never seemed to have enough, leading to a lot of frantic GM hand waving to avoid every climactic scene from ending in a TPK.

# ¿ Jan 4, 2015 21:56

Selachian: Oct 9, 2012

Night10194 posted:

I'd have more respect for that kind of thing if the authors just straight up said 'gently caress it, it works this way because I really want it to and I think it would make a cool story.'

Speaking of weird transhumanist furry stuff, I think it's finally time I begin my review of Albedo: Platinum Catalyst by Sanguine. Sanguine is an odd duck of a company. They make furry RPGs, but the furry RPGs they make are mechanically interesting (if complicated) and somehow less furry than something like HVD, if that makes sense, in that they don't really read like someone wrote them with one hand. The focus is much more on the classical sense of using anthropomorphic animals as shorthand for people groups than fetish work. Their debut game, Ironclaw, will always hold a place in my heart for being Redwall+Game of Thrones+The Renaissance with combat mechanics that were actually fun to play and a setting that got across the grit of a world changing over to a new era without being overly grimdark or making the PCs ineffectual shitfarmers, so when a friend said they'd made a sci-fi game as well, we picked up the rules for fun. I should also preface that I have never run a long campaign in this system, though I have played a few adventures and run a couple missions, myself.

I'll be interested in seeing this. I actually have the original '80s Albedo RPG, which was written by Paul Kidd.

# ¿ Jan 12, 2015 06:48

Selachian: Oct 9, 2012

Kai Tave posted:

On the other hand the WEG Star Wars d6 game was notorious for taking the stance of "you and your shitkicking PC pals are nowhere near as cool as the canon characters from the movies." It took a while for people writing RPGs based on licensed settings that hey, maybe the folks playing these want to be on par with the main characters instead of Third Background Extra From the Left.

I think the height of that was WEG's DC Universe game, where the character creation rules made it literally impossible to have a starting character who was as powerful as Robin, let alone Superman or Wonder Woman.

# ¿ Jan 16, 2015 17:30

Selachian: Oct 9, 2012

Payndz posted:

Or run them over with a Toyota Atoz?

Send them all to Alcatraz.

# ¿ Jan 16, 2015 21:16

Selachian: Oct 9, 2012

Libertad! posted:

Because the D20 System back in the early Aughties was hailed by Wizards as this universal, all-for-one game system. A year before D20 Modern they had Call of Cthulhu D20, also by Wizards of the Coast.

Naturally with the Open Gaming License, a lot of 3rd party publishers took to this and started making D20 games for all sorts of inappropriate stuff. Like a WWE RPG.

Hey, WWE Know Your Role was surprisingly not awful. I ran a campaign of it for a while. Tag matches did tend to drag and there was endless confusion over what constituted a Savvy move, but otherwise I'd take KYR over at least 75% of the d20 glut. It's probably one of the best wrestling games out there, not that there is a hell of a lot of competition.

After the license lapsed, an indy publisher picked up the rules and polished them into a new system, Wild World Wrestling. Haven't played that one yet though.

# ¿ Jan 30, 2015 03:44

Selachian: Oct 9, 2012

Count Chocula posted:

From my memory of Wonderland, i'd want to play supernatural psychiatrists who heal people by hunting down the Wonderland manifestations of their issues and defeating/making peace with them. Or somebody trying to spread weirdness to the 'real world'. But I'd honestly be happy just chilling out and seeing trippy poo poo.

Speaking of trippy poo poo, I'd love to hear more about the GURPS Prisoner book that FM Guru mentioned. I hope there's a different GM each game.

heh. I actually have that book, and there are suggestions on how to run it as a multi-GM campaign (complete with each GM having his/her own Number Two, if desired).

Even though GURPS isn't my favorite system by any stretch, it's an awesome sourcebook for Prisoner stuff and ideas on how to run a Prisoner-inspired game.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2015 03:16

Selachian: Oct 9, 2012

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.

Ooh, do they explain why you can't just save Aeris with a Phoenix Down?

# ¿ Feb 6, 2015 21:40

Selachian: Oct 9, 2012

BatteredFeltFedora posted:

Oh thank God, for a minute there I thought you were talking about Space Hercules from Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda.

My mind immediately went to Charlie-27 from the original Guardians of the Galaxy.

# ¿ Feb 10, 2015 15:10

Selachian: Oct 9, 2012

I yield to no one in Moorcock fannishness (ever read Neil Gaiman's "One Life, Furnished in Early Moorcock"? That's me right there) and even I don't understand why anyone would want to play in the Young Kingdoms without Elric. It's not really THAT amazing or original a fantasy world; if I was gonna adapt any of Moorcock's worlds for gaming, it'd be the future Europe from the Hawkmoon books.

# ¿ Mar 26, 2015 20:18

Selachian: Oct 9, 2012

gradenko_2000 posted:

Isn't it just that there are enough people on RPGnet that it doesn't have any one single consensus; that there are "vocal minorities" for multiple views? I see the same thing in reddit's /r/rpg or /r/dnd where you have Pathfinder partisans, 3.5 partisans, 4e partisans and of course 5e partisans.

I think I've pretty much sworn off the place though after I dipped my toe into a Zak S discussion.

It's kind of weird for me to see people saying RPG.net is the grumpy old man of gaming forums when ENWorld. the official WOTC boards, and Dragonsfoot exist.

Seriously, on the grumpy old man scale, compared to those forums RPG.net is a college freshman with green hair, tattoos, and a septum ring.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2015 01:44

Selachian: Oct 9, 2012

Asimo posted:

Ghostbusters (WEG, 1986) and Marvel Super Heroes (TSR, 1984) are other contenders for the earliest use of inspiration/luck point mechanics there depending on how you want to define them. Top Secret would probably predate both, but I haven't seen the original versions, just the Top Secret/S.I. one from '87, so I can't say personally.

I'm pretty sure James Bond 007 (1983) was the first game to include a luck/hero/fortune point system. I don't recall the original 1980 Top Secret having any system like that.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2015 02:49

Selachian: Oct 9, 2012

unseenlibrarian posted:

Wasn't the Dallas RPG just "How to Host a Murder" only the question always was "Who shot JR?"

I had a friend who had a copy of the game back in the day (and no, we never played it). It was expected that you'd play characters from the show, so there was no character generation. There were several scenarios included, none of which involved shooting J. R. However, it was a PVP game -- each scenario had win conditions for the characters involved. I guess it would be kind of like running Amber, only with less dimension hopping and more Southern accents.

I don't remember anything about the system itself, I'm afraid.

# ¿ Apr 1, 2015 16:10

Selachian: Oct 9, 2012

Cythereal posted:

Next up is the standard list of suggested inspiration (hur hur), which I will present without commentary.

Doc Savage but no Tom Swift? Of course, neither of those have anything to do with "bitter disappointment."

# ¿ Apr 7, 2015 01:34

Selachian: Oct 9, 2012

Kai Tave posted:

The problem with "use Nippon Tech as a place to get rad supplies," aside from it being kind of a one-note reason to keep a whole parasitic genre-cosm around, is that Torg goes out of its way to discourage taking poo poo from one cosm into another, so all your rad Nippon Tech computers and guns turn to dirt as soon as you go to the Living Land or whatever.

Plus also, Law of Betrayal. Using Nippon Tech as your supplier is a great way to guarantee you're gonna get backstabbed at some point.

# ¿ Apr 9, 2015 11:57

Selachian: Oct 9, 2012

"Boys, I think this chump has been stickin' his nose where it don't belong. Why doncha take him for a little ride? So let it be written, so let it be done."

# ¿ Apr 10, 2015 19:23

Selachian: Oct 9, 2012

Halloween Jack posted:

I think it was GURPS, actually.

Malazan started as an AD&D campaign back in 1982, switched to GURPS when the world became too idiosyncratic to fit in with AD&D rules, and ended up as freeform RP.

# ¿ Apr 28, 2015 02:28

Selachian: Oct 9, 2012

My experience back in the day was that we didn't like playing the high-level armies and castles game because the books barely gave any guidance on how to run that kind of campaign. Oh, the 1E DMG went into exhaustive detail about the costs of building a castle and recruiting and retaining an army ... but there was very little information about what you did with them when you had them.

# ¿ Apr 28, 2015 15:43

Selachian: Oct 9, 2012

gradenko_2000 posted:

Dreamscarred Press' Path to War made a base class that's literally named a Warlord (link to the PF SRD), although I'm not sure how close it hews to the 4e ideal.

The PoW Warlord does have some abilities geared toward buffing his team by being dashing and inspiring, but if you're looking for a 4E-style Warlord who can serve as a group's main healer, this isn't it.

# ¿ Apr 29, 2015 04:34

Selachian: Oct 9, 2012

Count Chocula posted:

I'm sorry, but I got into Moorcock in the late 90s and he's still amazing. His fantasy is actually FANTASTIC - weird and strange and surreal. Read Elric sure, but also read Blood or Mother London or especially the Jerry Cornelius books. His New Wave anthologies brought 'literate' sci-fi like Aldiss and JG Ballard into a market that needed it.
Seriously, you can pick up one of his paperbacks for next to nothing, and they're all good. If you need a guide, start here: http://ferretbrain.com/themes/59
Plus he wrote for Hawkwind and Blue Oyster Cult and designed the 'chaos' logo Warhammer still used.

Is there a good Jerry Cornelius RPG? I want to play a universe-hopping glam rock musical assassin who fights Margaret Thatcher with his friend Lemmy. Over The Edge, maybe?
Yes, Lemmy is a Moorcock character.
I haven't even got into the adaptation he wrote for the Sex Pistols movie.

Well, there's StarChildren, the glam rock RPG, which could be used to run those Hawkwind fantasy novels Moorcock did.

# ¿ May 3, 2015 13:44

Selachian: Oct 9, 2012

theironjef posted:

Bruce Campell, photo credit to someone with one of those cameras that you could attach to a gameboy.

I was thinking a slightly chunkier Mitt Romney.

# ¿ May 21, 2015 19:58

Selachian: Oct 9, 2012

Halloween Jack posted:

The two things I liked that came out of Essentials was the Controller Ranger and the Hexblade. But the Hexblade became a poster boy for how they didn't give two shits about supporting the online character builder anymore. (The Hexblade's key power, that let his implement manifest a magical sword, was something that the builder really couldn't handle.)

The Essentials years also gave us the Monster Vaults and Reavers of Harkenwold, so it's not *all* bad. And I liked the Essentials Rules Compendium; it was nice to have a small, handy book that had all the important rules in it for DM reference.

hectorgrey posted:

This is where my biggest problem with 4e was - your class was pretty much entirely about your role in combat, rather than what you had learned to do. In 5e, being a fighter means that you're good with weapons - you might be a lightly armoured fighter who focuses on doing large amounts of damage with finesse weapons, or a heavily armoured fighter who focuses on hitting things in the face with two handed weapons, and making themselves enough of a threat to be worth focusing on, or even an archer who focuses on turning enemies into pincushions from distances outside of normal spellcasting range. Outside of combat, you could be good at many things - you could be from a Criminal background, making you the next best thing to a Rogue for dealing with locked doors and traps; your could be a Sage, and be really good at knowledge checks. With the right background, you could even be the face of the party. In 4e, being a fighter means that your job in combat is to stand there in heavy armour and be hit in the face, and your job outside of combat is to stand there and look mean or do the heavy lifting.

I don't think even the biggest 4E fanperson on these boards would disagree that 4E fell down when it came to giving fighters noncombat utility, thanks to getting fewer skills and a crappy skill selection. 4E's implementation of Backgrounds did help in that area though.

However, 4E did also provide options such as the tempest fighter for people who didn't want to just be Lunk McPlatemail, and I think 4E went farther than 5E does in making different combat styles and weapon types feel different. Yes, you still can't create a very good archer fighter in 4E unless you play a ranger and re-label it, but that's a well-worn argument.

Selachian fucked around with this message at 20:11 on Jun 10, 2015

# ¿ Jun 10, 2015 20:04

Selachian: Oct 9, 2012

Count Chocula posted:

It's 1989. You know TV gives you power, but you're not ready to commit just yet. You don't want to end up like one of those soap opera freaks. So you pick a show on the shittiest network you can find. It won't be around in 5 years, and there's no way your show is gonna cause you trouble. So you start watching the scratchy little cartoon about the yellow family, and your life ends.

Thirty years later you're on the AV Club, ranting about 'zombie Simpsons', but unable to miss a single cameo-filled episode.

I can't even imagine the hell of a Simpsons Videomancer. Again, all this poo poo is doable in Australia - even with digital we only have 13 channels, and even a Simpsons adept only gets hosed over like once a week.

Last year, the US cable channel FXX showed every single episode of the Simpsons, back to back around the clock. It took about two weeks. For Simpsons videomancers, that would have been like the Apocalypse.

# ¿ Jun 13, 2015 19:52

Selachian: Oct 9, 2012

inklesspen posted:

Aggressively Hegemonizing Porcine Swarm

Mason Verger approves.

# ¿ Jun 28, 2015 20:31

Selachian: Oct 9, 2012

Ratpick posted:

But besides that, there's never a not-Finland in any RPG setting, although given the treatment that Scandinavia gets in most fantasy settings ("They're just a bunch of vikings who live in a land filled with trolls and giants") I can't even imagine what a fantasy analogue Finland would look like.

# ¿ Jul 29, 2015 17:10

Selachian: Oct 9, 2012

Count Chocula posted:

Just read Moorcock. That's where the Law and Chaos thing came from and he shows how both extremes are hosed up, but in interesting ways. So follow Balance.

No, it came from Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions -- Moorcock has said he was influenced by Anderson when he was writing the early Eternal Champion stuff.

# ¿ Jul 30, 2015 15:15

Selachian: Oct 9, 2012

Bieeardo posted:

I'm still amused by the early cameo of Agatha Heterodyne there, years before her comic saw print.

Well, Foglio had already published the original Heterodyne Boys story before then, so I guess he was already noodling around with the characters.

I also note Steve Jackson is on the upper right, and that Foglio, unsurprisingly, also managed to work a bare rear end in.

# ¿ Aug 16, 2015 06:09

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# ¿ Sep 18, 2024 18:21

Selachian: Oct 9, 2012

Comrade Koba posted:

Speaking of Rolemaster, it has the best illustration of the Bard class ever created:

Huh. I know I've seen that artist's stuff before but I'm damned if I can remember the name.

# ¿ Aug 17, 2015 23:51

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > Comedy Goldmine > The Goodmine > FATAL & Friends 2014-15: The Neverending Storygame

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