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Kai Tave posted:There's an STD joke in there somewhere but it seems a little too tasteless. I was thinking "this better not be a kid with HIV" because that sounds both on-theme and really loving horrible in a lot of uncomfortable ways.
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Dec 13, 2014 01:23
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It should be that if you can travel from 2000 to 2125, say, because the twists align so that a full turn around a twist is 125 years into the future/past, then you should just as easily be able to travel from 2010 to 2135, because those two points in time should also be as close to each other as 2000 and 2125 are. Instead, it seems that easily-traveled-between years don't merely have to be in phase with each other, they have to be in phase with a specific "root" year, which conveniently seems to be whatever year you are playing the game in. Still, even so, this isn't the worst take on time travel I've seen or heard of.
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Dec 14, 2014 19:15
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Unlike that other game that System Mastery did... I don't remember the game now, but because both the protagonists and all the relevant antagonists are time travelers, the combat system seemed to be essentially built on repeated time-travel one-upmanship until one of the two parties just spontaneously unravels due to accruing too much time paradox. But yeah, the twist and coil system seems designed to explicitly allow San Dimas Time to be a real thing and potential source of tension. Time travel is one of those conceits that can get really confusing and messed up real fast if you don't put some pretty serious restrictions on it.
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Dec 16, 2014 16:52
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Tatum Girlparts posted:the whole 'horrible fungal infection' is a D&D trope taken from the urban legend that the original mummy tomb explorers all got like, anthrax or some other poisoning from the tomb or something? It all goes back to Howard Carter and his team who opened the tomb of Tutankhamun back in 1922. There was the silly thing about a curse laid on them after one of the explorers died in 1923 from an infected mosquito bite, with a few subsequent deaths of other members of the expedition or visitors to the tomb. It was ridiculous even then though, as Carter and others of course understood, given that most of the crew lived for several decades following the opening of the tomb. "Mold infection" was a somewhat more naturalist explanation for the deaths touted at the time (e.g. by Arthur Conan Doyle) and at least had the benefit of being slightly more plausible than "ancient mummy curse". But really, even that was kind of a pointless rationalization since, yeah, most of the explorers didn't suffer any particular effects at all.
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Dec 16, 2014 18:18
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The Deleter posted:There's plenty of ways to curb the Juggernaut's effectiveness. A good MC will play off weaknesses - "Hey, those plutonium rods your suit needs are out, who's got some more and why do they hate you?" "The rat men swarm all over your and your suit's too loving cumbersome to shake them off, what do you do?" You can seperate the Juggernaut from his suit, or cause it to malfunction, or make him have to act under fire for some things because he can't roll Sharp for that. Other players can coax him out of the suit with seduction or bargaining. Maybe an area just can't fit the suit in. Sleeping in the suit can't be comfortable. Yeah, but then you're doing that thing where the DM goes "You know that gimmick you think is really cool and your entire character is focused on? I'm going to do everything in my power to deny you use of that gimmick." which does not make a game more fun.
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Dec 16, 2014 22:49
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theironjef posted:We read Maid. We're joined by a guest podcaster who helps us process exactly how horrible this all really is. The muscle brothers are Chou Aniki. I want to say the World-Changing Song is a reference to Macross? The Crocodile is almost certainly a reference to Pochi from He Is My Master, a gag/fanservice comic/cartoon about maids. In fact, that comic is probably one of the big inspirations for this thing.
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Dec 19, 2014 15:44
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I just really want to know who came up with the name "Eric The Red So Fine".
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Dec 19, 2014 18:51
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AmiYumi posted:Don't forget the last time someone did a "Fatal & Friends" of MAID, where the random character creation came up "Niko Bellic" and "Sebastian from Black Butler". quote:Our Stress Explosion, what we do when we crack under pressure, comes up 24, for Street Racing. I got to say that's the most hilarious thing imaginable. Master spurned your advances one time too many? Time to flip out and go Initial D for a few, uh, episodes I guess. Now, don't get me wrong, it sounds like this thing has the potential to be skeevy as poo poo, but I really have to admire how nuts the characters can get by the sound of it.
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Dec 19, 2014 22:42
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theironjef posted:The Greenmerang, as it's called in the book. I'll be damned if I can figure out which Sentai character had that first, but I'm sure one of them inspired Viewtiful Joe. The "V-shaped thing on your head" is possibly Kamen Rider like you said, but the name itself sound to me like it refers to Himitsu Sentai Goranger (the first super sentai show), where one of the characters (the green ranger, duh) literally has a weapon called exactly that, except in Japanese.
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Dec 20, 2014 01:15
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Alien Rope Burn posted:It's that weird anime thing where the sexuality is generally played for laughs, in theory... Just to briefly mention it, it's not like the sexual farce isn't a cultural mainstay in the west too. It's been around since the ancient Greeks in the form of satyr plays as well as general comedies about sex. There are many farces where the primary source of entertainment is the raunchy situations the characters constantly get into. So to say that sexuality being played for laughs is a "weird anime thing" is kind of strange to me since it's been such a big part of western culture as well for centuries... just not generally in the form of cartoons, and perhaps not with quite as many 11-year old boys (well, I don't know about the ancient Greeks...). Naturally, the Japanese approach to the sex farce is going to be different in the details from what we're used to here, but the basic premise is pretty close to humanly universal. Nevertheless the big question remains of why you would want to sit down at a table with a bunch of people who you're also going to be playing Magic: the Gathering with next week and roleplay out a sex comedy involving housekeeping staff. I just can't see any way that this wouldn't be tremendously awkward, even sans rampant concealed boners, unless you go to some length and excise all the naughty bits and just do straight up PG-13 "bake Master the best cake for his birthday" type play.
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Dec 22, 2014 11:26
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I didn't mean to say it's unique to Japan, but some of the detailsintent Mainly, the division between ecchi and hentai (or more properly, oiroke and seijin manga) is key. Maid leans more towards ecchi than outright hentai, so I think labeling it a vehicle for actual sex RP isn't actually correct . Sex is undoubtedly an element but it doesn't dwell on actual sexual acts. It may seem like I'm splitting hairs, but I think it's a big part of how those ideas can seem acceptable for Maid at Japanese gaming tables, where the titillation has a weird modesty and often paired with humor. Lumping it in with La Blue Girl or Urotsukidoji strikes me as inaccurate, and I don't say that as a defense of the regressive elements in Maid, but that a description of it being a vehicle for blue balls is likely an exaggeration mainly because of how those elements are treated. I don't intend that as a defense of those regressive and creepy elements, but just as an explanation of them. Oh, just to be clear, I totally agree with you on this point. In fact, the translator says outright that the intent behind the game is risqué humor and not porn, but they had real trouble getting this across and actually cut some stuff. I am down with the idea that a Japanese audience would see that more readily. However, my point is I can't actually see that working out without getting awkward either. Neither the porn RPG nor the sex comedy RPG sound like things I'd like to do, and I kinda can't see how you'd make it work either I guess?
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Dec 22, 2014 21:15
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theironjef posted:whatever the heck robots and spiders are supposed to represent. Robots are supposed to be sociopaths, aren't they? They're basically lacking in empathy and emotion, being cold and calculating and, well, robotic. The spiders are, I don't know. The only thing I can think of is some disorder that involves poor impulse control, as if someone else were controlling you against your will. But that would mean your character is the meatpuppet and not the spider family. E: I'm missing an NPD race, me. Would make a decent villain, if only because NPD sufferers are almost by definition egocentric and megalomaniacal. E2: Wait, is that what the Victorians are? Hyper Crab Tank fucked around with this message at 19:07 on Jan 23, 2015 |
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Jan 23, 2015 19:02
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Bonuses that get worse as you level up (because you obviously pick the best ones from the list first) are such a blatantly poor idea that it's kind of surprising no one noticed before adding them to everything. If you're going to do that, you should like... offer three meaningfully different ones and let you pick one, once. You want something that actually makes you feel different so you're actually customizing your dude. I haven't gotten my hands on D&D Next, but I heard feats are a bit more impactful in that one? Edit: ^^^^^ Why is that cover art just basically furry Slayers? Hyper Crab Tank fucked around with this message at 17:50 on Jan 26, 2015 |
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Jan 26, 2015 17:47
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gradenko_2000 posted:1. They turned goddamn CHARGE into a Feat. That sounds... weird, and disappointing. I'd heard that feats now were basically more like feat packages? Like, one feat might give you the equivalent of cleave and power attack and stuff so that you can take that and become a bigass motherfucker who warhammers people he doesn't like, which to me sounds more interesting than just picking up mandatory features or minor stat adjustments.
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Jan 26, 2015 18:04
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 That'll do it, yeah. Jesus.Xelkelvos posted:I think everyone would be more tolerant of furry RPGs if they had art like that See, that's the thing about that art. Furry art has become so entrenched as being, y'know, that worrying Disney-esque style that even "edgy" ones like Furry Martian Libertarians can't get away from. That art there, it's just animal dudes, and it's better for it. Hyper Crab Tank fucked around with this message at 18:54 on Jan 26, 2015 |
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Jan 26, 2015 18:51
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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.
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Feb 7, 2015 04:19
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LornMarkus posted: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. 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.
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Feb 7, 2015 04:38
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MartianAgitator posted:Do they actually have good and evil summons or are they like adult Rydia who can summon and also just cast black magic spells? In FF3, there are three summoner-type classes. The first you get is the Caller, and basically whenever they use a summon they randomly get either a black spell or a white spell associated with that summon. So Shiva, for instance, randomly either casts Sleep on the enemy party or does ice damage to one enemy. Odin can either cast Reflect on your party, or attack a single random enemy, etc. Later in the game you get the Summoner, which is basically the standard summoner class from the later games. They always get the same effect, and it's always a big, multi-target spell that does loads of damage. At the very end you also get the Sage, which is just dumb and powerful and gets every Black and White spell in the game, plus every Summoner summon. Hyper Crab Tank fucked around with this message at 13:00 on Feb 7, 2015 |
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Feb 7, 2015 12:46
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LornMarkus posted: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. 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. Doresh posted:Two-handed weapons really blow a bit in Returner. Their little extra damage is not worth the loss of a shield slot. Legendary-tier weapons can be a bit OP, but that's true for pretty much all weapon types. Hey, at least it's true to the source material! 
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Feb 7, 2015 23:08
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PurpleXVI posted:KROMORE Sounds like a heartbreaker that decided just fantasy wasn't interesting/ambitious/edgy enough. What could possibly go wrong?
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Feb 22, 2015 16:29
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Evil Mastermind posted:Am I the only one who finds these types of games depressing? Like, they're so excited about everything they think they're innovating, and you just want to put a sympathetic hand on their shoulder and say "I have some bad news..." That's why they're heartbreakers.
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Feb 22, 2015 17:19
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PurpleXVI posted:KROMOR€ The best thing about the DARK BLADE is that it looks like it's considered a civilian profession. As for settings, some setting that involves a lot of ship-to-ship combat, perhaps in space, and if possible in a situation where infantry can also be present. I want to see how it deals with statting up entire crews, dealing with large differences in scale (can a regular plasma rifle meaningfully damage a star destroyer?) and interstellar travel.
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Feb 27, 2015 13:46
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Doresh posted:So it's Strike Witches with swimsuits? Not exactly... it's more like they're anthropomorphized ships themselves. Strike Witches was more like girls wearing machine parts, this is more like the girls are the ships. Most of them don't actually wear swimsuits (the ones that do are pretty consistently submarines). It tends to be more like miko outfits or school uniforms with cannons attached to their backs. Carriers tend to be dressed like archers and fire airplanes like arrows. At least one of them has an onmyouji-like design, having shikigami airplanes and a big scroll representing the landing strip. That kind of thing. Anyway, they're all named directly after actual battleships from the Japanese navy (and recently other navies). Hyper Crab Tank fucked around with this message at 14:48 on Feb 28, 2015 |
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Feb 28, 2015 14:46
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Doresh posted:Does the Yamato already have a Wave Motion Gun, or does she/it only get that one after turning into a space batttleship in the far future? Far future, I'm afraid. She does have a crapload of heavy cannons though.
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Feb 28, 2015 15:47
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PurpleXVI posted:They are referred to as space monkeys by Kromorians, because they are no more apt at flying than a monkey is in space. What the hell? That is not how you do pejoratives. Why monkeys? Are monkeys particularly known for being bad with space flight? Why not call them "space salmon" or "space bears" or like literally any animal on earth because none of those would do particularly well in space, either. "Monkeys" is completely arbitrary here. Who came up with that?
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Feb 28, 2015 18:13
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Doresh posted:Also, I love that the orcs have the feline-ish name, not the actual felines. "Zatilok" could've worked a lot better for Proud Warrior Race. You know... between the orcs being described as having feline features which are clearly not there in the art and having the more feline name, and the actual cats being described as "monkeys" while having a name more fit for the orc race... that makes me wonder, were these switched at some point in development? Given how poorly edited this thing seems to be, there could be a treasure trove of material referring to the wrong race in this thing!
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Feb 28, 2015 20:06
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PurpleXVI posted:Nah, it specifically points out that the Zatilok are also feline, and that some people think the Zatilok and Ferrians are related, but they're not. New theory: The two races were a single Proud Warrior Race Guy race in early design, until someone pointed out they were missing a brutish orc race/weirdass blue cat race in their lineup, so they split them up into two and bullshitted out some new lore for one of them.
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Feb 28, 2015 21:13
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I can't even tell what race that's supposed to be. It's clearly not a human or a dwarf, too blue to be a ferrian or gyxan, and too lacking in cat ears to be a zatilok. Is it supposed to be a metal man? It doesn't look metal...
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Mar 2, 2015 21:59
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theironjef posted:
Well, that sounds like rear end. Wait a second. SIZ stat? Percentile dice? Roll-under skill checks? This is a BRP game, isn't it? That reminds me of the first RPG I ever played, which used a variant of that system (d20 instead of d100, experience points, a bunch of other stuff) and I think (thankfully) only ever came out in my native language. It had this as the illustration for the Player Characters section in the rulebook. 
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Mar 3, 2015 23:18
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Zereth posted:Ah, that must be in Glorantha. It actually isn't - but you're right that that's where the ducks are from. Yes, aside from the system, the one thing they decided was worth cribbing was the goddamn ducks. They are consistently drawn as Donald Duck, too.
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Mar 3, 2015 23:30
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unseenlibrarian posted:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drakar_och_Demoner, maybe? I know it started as a Runequest derivative and kept the ducks. It sure is. Note how the cover is the same goddamn picture of Elric of Melniboné as Stormbringer used. E: That's also probably the only good art in the book. Most of it looks like this. What is this guy even doing?  Hyper Crab Tank fucked around with this message at 00:06 on Mar 4, 2015 |
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Mar 3, 2015 23:52
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He's doing some weird squatting motion, I think? It doesn't explain what the hell is going on with his hand, though. Also there's this gryphon that convinces me the artist has never seen a lion or an eagle in his life. 
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Mar 4, 2015 02:19
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moebius2778 posted:This is from a bit back, but they probably mean salt depletion. Liquid petroleum. Make sure you're getting enough gasoline in your diet, kids! It's better to have too much than too little. Also, I don't know why I didn't react to it before, but why "Homeopathic Touch"? Homeopathy is a crack pseudoscience about how diluting poisons until there is no poison left in the water turns the water into a cure, has nothing to do with what's being described. I suspect the author may have extrapolated from the word "homeostasis", which is at least related.
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Mar 9, 2015 14:00
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I really enjoyed Afterthought too, and will expect a writeup on Tarp in the Woods (Dare You Enter?) at your earliest convenience. If you won't post them in the thread, well, I'll just have to figure out how to properly use RSS like some sort of animal.
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Mar 11, 2015 12:27
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theironjef posted:This is true in 40k. In the version of Dark Heresy we read, it was less than a 1% chance that anything like that would happen, and most of the old 1 in 6 perils fear was replaced by 1 in 100 chance of the room smelling like eggs or something. Really took the teeth out of it. I'm not sure I would prefer having a chance on any spellcast to instantly end the campaign.
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Mar 13, 2015 21:19
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On an unrelated note, I read some more of that DoD book and I remembered this book has misfire tables. The melee attack one has twenty possible effects ranging from "You swing your weapon so hard it snaps it half" to "You swallow your own tongue and fall prone, and will choke to death in a number of rounds if no one helps you".
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Mar 13, 2015 21:39
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Kurieg posted:It's supposed to be a representation of this I love how they just straight up look at the original item and translate it line-for-line into some rough d20 version of each little part with no concern for how wonky the result is.
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Mar 21, 2015 22:46
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So, uh. Are the intros to these podcasts literally just to troll people? Because I love it.
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Mar 25, 2015 01:08
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I remember reading like, one Elric short story some time in my teens. The rest has just sort of made itself my way by way of pop cultural osmosis, I guess. I feel like cursed artifacts have been a staple in fiction for a long time, but was the blood-crazed runesword entirely original to that or was it older? theironjef posted:Man we lucked into it, our Cheese Dude restaurants will be a huge success, serving up piping hot baskets of artisanal cheese dudes. Delicious.
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Mar 26, 2015 19:19
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It actually baffled me when you brought that up in one of them podcasts, that apparently some people don't understand why you're negative about the game? I mean, it's the format. It's obvious why from the title of the darn podcast, even.
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Mar 26, 2015 22:05
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