Mr. Maltose posted:

Lets be honest, we barely learn poo poo about our own country except the highlight reels of all the wars we won/lost until undergraduate classes.

This certainly isn't a US problem alone, either.

LornMarkus posted:

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.

InfiniteJesters posted:

Totally interested in this just to see you dissect the Aliens RPG.

Mr. Maltose posted:

The last thread was goldmined, so any review on the wiki can be read at your leisure!

GimpInBlack posted:

Next Time: We'll learn how a single number is all we need to make a trollbabe and talk about the (minimal) adventure prep a game of Trollbabe needs.

theironjef posted:

Right? We were so excited to crack this thing open and start making fun of furries like the major leagues. Then we get in there and it's just dry pirate information and terrible rules, except they did a Find & Replace to change all instances of "man" with "furry" and added species to most of the famous historical figures of the time. Like there is nothing to make fun of outside of sperginess and a lack of drat furries. There's so little dedication to the genre conceit that the word furry is the word they use for the whole group of species. Not anthro, not just "man" like you see sometimes, but furry. "10 furries are needed to operate this cannon" etc.

There's also like zero puns or jokes or plays on words and species. Nothing whatsoever about animal nature. The kings are all lions, but never once does he describe one as predatory, or mention that they are lions because lions are naturally kingly, or anything. They're all lions because there's no interracial breeding, so if one of the royals is a lion they have to all be, the end.

*Note that neither of us at System Mastery is down with the fur-l. We were just really hoping for something weirder to make fun of than what we got. Like I would personally hope for a better game for furries than this. Those goofballs in their big suits need good gaming books too.

Flavivirus posted:

Thinking about it though it might also be interesting to take the angle of the person who's been traumatised by the entity/infidelity/abuse/whatever and now sees it everywhere, and tries to protect others from suffering the same without realizing that they're using the same methods they fear. It makes the playbook a bit more sympathetic, I think.

Xelkelvos posted:

I'd love to see this done for Dungeon World content too eventually

Robindaybird posted:

I liked Tennant's Doctor, but his season is when the flaws in Russell T Davies' "vision" and direction really started to rear it's ugly head.

But it's amazing how many people tried to wedge square pegs into round holes, wouldn't be surprised there's a Brony Playbook.

Tulul posted:

Tasoth posted:

Problem is, if you're going to make tank decanted soldiers, why would you give them a cartoony, anthropomorphic animal appearance instead of something vaguely human and designed to inspire fear? Taking on Tompkins 'Ruff' Sechs the dog soldier is going to be less frightening then something in ballistic armor that looks human, just shorter, faster, stronger and is still bearing down on you with multiple gunshot wounds while it picks off your teammates in rapid succession.

Evil Mastermind posted:

Of course a 17-year-old came up with the ultimate solution to the world's economic problems. I'm honestly amazed they didn't start using bitcoins.

fool_of_sound posted:

Eh, it seems to have a lot of really interesting ideas, but completely botched mechanics and subpar writing.

Davin Valkri posted:

It might be funny if White Wolf started with a historical event that was entirely 100% human caused and motivated, then had every supernatural faction on the block lining up to claim, oh, yes, that was absolutely totally 100% our idea, uh-huh, yep!, in such a way as to make it clear that they're all just trying to cover for something that blindsided them. Like, the jokey incompetence version of the stuff I'm reading about here.

Evil Mastermind posted:

Pretty much. Of course, it could be argued that the world would be better off without vampires feeding off everyone and mages poking holes in reality.

Simian_Prime posted:

Man, there's loving the smell of your own poo poo, and then there's loving the smell of your own poo poo so much that you bottle it in jars and make your own public poo poo Museum.

Zereth posted:

There's a decent chance he's just lying.

EDIT: I mean, he's openly admitted at least once to putting a thing in a machine that had no purpose other than to make it look cooler.

EDIT: In fact, here it is:

Zereth posted:

Hm. I think I'm behind, actually. I don't remember reading that one!

theironjef posted:

In a thousand years the philosophers will answer this statement by just saying "The Parable of Fallout: Equestria" which will have become shorthand for "Obsessive fans will naturally attempt to convert everything they sort of like into the mold of everything they really like."

Cythereal posted:

Then... why not play Hunter with a DM willing to spin it idealistically? That's how my gaming group does it, triumphing over evil through teamwork, firepower, most people being basically good when not under the supernatural's sway, and an R&D budget of "yes."

Cythereal posted:

I suspect Princess will also suffer heavily from being written by and for teenage-to-20s guys when most magical girl shows are aimed at girls and young women.


Fair point. I suspect some of my group's antics, like luring a werewolf into getting hit by a freight train and sucking a vampire into one of Air Force One's jet engines would distract some people heavily from the themes and subtext.

LornMarkus posted:

He's dropped that and also Magical Fury which was a more rules-light affair, as I understand it, and might also have been designed to be lighter in tone. Haven't gotten around to reading it yet though so I can't say for certain.

theironjef posted:

Aw come on, I was planning to cover the Clerks: Animated Series RPG next April.

Night10194 posted:

Aborted primarily because, I imagine, god help someone trying to wade through that thing. It was made up as a joke about what kind of RPG would exist in someone's AdEva campaign and then the guys running that game tried to actually write something that blended 7th Sea, WoD, Exalted, 40k, and Warhammer Fantasy.

I tried playing a time-displaced Winged Hussar with a magical star horse and a good-natured heroic personality. We got two sessions in before saying 'Goddamn everything about this system is awful.'

Doresh posted:

Monsters grow into bigger monsters.

theironjef posted:

This isn't in the game but just so you know, there's no crude oil on this world because there were no dinosaurs. 65 million years ago there were just elves and dwarves all over the place, and naturally when they die they aren't converted to crude oil over time, but natural gas, leading to a rise in helium availability and pressurized gas as a fuel source. There are many elfropologists who believe that the races of the world were all descended from a common elf ancestor, as the ancient elves were known to easily split into a variety of subraces, but this is highly disputed by religious factions the world over.

Some scientists to this day are searching for the link between humans and elfropithecus dwarfarensis.

LazyAngel posted:

It's also the case that she doesn't "believe" in the god, but drat well knows it exists anyway.

Communist Zombie posted:

You can probably also craft the IWW's wheel of industry into a literal magic circle. I mean look at it.

Alien Rope Burn posted:

If I'm running a game, definitely. It's possible I'll skip parts like back-of-the-book locales or adventures that are generally less relevant to me, but I think it's definitely essential to RPGs with detailed settings. As a player, I'm less likely to; if I'm playing in a PbP, I generally won't have the time. I find it interesting that you bring up Torchbearer and Chuubo's, because I feel both Crane and Moran write presuming their books are going to be read cover-to-cover, and I find their games very hard to interpret "piecemeal", with their rules spread into odd sections in the book and often not written like technical manuals (which I think is a bit of an issue, because that's partly what an RPG book is).

Edit: Writing as I do for FATAL & Friends is a bit of an oddity because I think vanishingly few people read Palladium books cover-to-cover, even amongst the fandom. They're not well-organized, but the slapdash layout lends itself very well to being read piecemeal, because it rarely presumes you've read the rest of the book's text.

Mors Rattus posted:

So, is there any problem on Tenra that is not ultimately the fault of the Priesthood?