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theironjef posted:Actually we're suffering through another one of those right now. Recording tonight. Goddamn 90s and their games that are 100 times more realistic that D&D which is for noobs and babies.
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Apr 20, 2014 19:40
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This ad was in all my Silver Surfers.
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Apr 21, 2014 00:39
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 Chapter 2: Great Houses This chapter gives an overview of the Landsraad and the most powerful Great Houses. It also contains the rules for creating Houses Minor for the player characters, even before we get rules for creating the PCs themselves! This is intentional. The Dune series is very much about interorganizational rivalry, how people are shaped by the backgrounds, and the historical consequences of individual actions, and so Dune is way serious about playing people with meaningful connections instead of a gang of murderous hobos. Collectively, the Great Houses are the oldest institution in the Imperium, older than the empery, the Guild, and the Bene Gesserit. Each of the Great Houses holds a siridar-fief over a planet they claim as their homeworld, at least one seat in the Landsraad council, and shares in CHOAM, the corporation which controls the Imperial economy. In return, they’re responsible for paying tithes and conscripts, upholding the Great Convention, and good stewardship of any privileges they’ve received from the emperor or CHOAM--additional fiefs, exclusive contracts, board memberships, etc. These interests are often much more important to a House’s power than the resources on their home planet. Arrakis is, of course, the most valuable fiefdom in the known universe. (You know how on C-SPAN, Congress spends days arguing about what company in what state will get a contract to build $400 million worth of tanks the Army doesn’t need? Multiply that by 100, and you get the Landsraad and CHOAM. But you don’t have to think about all those excruciating details, because this is a story about psychic kung fu masters having knife-fights in the space desert.)  It’s chilly on Caladan. A Great House has to uphold the Great Convention on its planetary fiefs, but that’s basic stuff like the caste system, general law and order, and the ban on nuclear weapons. While there’s a courtly, cosmopolitan high society that brings the nobles together, that leaves room for vast differences in their philosophies, which are reflected by even vaster differences in the kind of civilization one encounters from planet to planet. A Great House has free rein to make their homeworld a shining meritocracy, a worldwide slave plantation, or a wretched hive of scum and villainy. Oh, and about that caste system, it’s called the faufreluches* and it governs Imperial society. At the top are the regis-familia, comprised of the Emperor, his court, and all the nobility of the Great and Minor Houses. Below them are na-familia, “named family,” which mostly includes the vassals and personal entourage of the Houses. Hey, wake up! These are your player characters: the swordmasters, mentats, assassins, and other experts who help a House succeed or fail. Characters from the books like Duncan Idaho and Piter de Vries are na-familia. Below them are merchants, artisans, peasants, slaves, and other people who probably won’t be important characters in a Dune game. Exactly what rights are assigned and denied to each caste is detailed in a later chapter.  *The etymology is beyond me; my best guess is a link to “mamluk.” There are thousands of Great Houses in the Landsraad to represent the thousands of inhabited planets in the Imperium, but most of them are “backbenchers” who have few representatives and meager CHOAM holdings, and throw their vote behind one of the handful of Houses that are the real heavyweights. (This is not an interpretation I like, but I’ll whine more about that later.) The Emperor isn’t bound by Landsraad decisions, but it’s unwise for him to veto all their decisions with complete abandon. The power players of the Landsraad are listed here along with some of their Houses Minor, their ethos, notable members of their entourage, and their views on the other Houses. A couple of notes: first, the art representing each house is notably bad. It’s well-executed, but it doesn’t illustrate its subjects with any meaning. Second, I thought I was a feminist, but after going through the House descriptions I realized I hadn’t said anything about sex and gender in Dune. The feudal system, even tens of thousands of years in the future, is patriarchal: only men can officially rule a House. However, the Bene Gesserit is an all-female order that literally controls the breeding of royal bloodlines, and more than one siridar-baron has had his own name fade from history because the BG decided he should only sire daughters to be absorbed by another bloodline with compatible genes.  Did you notice my just and honorable stubble? The Atreides are the siridar-dukes of planet Caladan, an agricultural world known for really good wine. They’re supposedly descended from the mythical Atreus, but their reputation for leadership, courage, and morality is not in dispute. These guys are, like, the Gryffindor of Dune. They’re not a very rich House, but their insistence on just government gets a lot of other Houses to rally behind their political stance. The Atreides are currently led by Duke Leto Atreides, and his entourage is an all-star team: Thufir Hawat (spymaster and mentat), Warmaster Gurney Halleck (best swordsman ever), swordsmaster Duncan Idaho (second-best swordsman ever), Dr. Yueh (Suk doctor), his concubine Lady Jessica (BG agent), and his son Paul, who was educated by all of these frighteningly competent people. The Atreides respect the Corrinos while calling for reform, believe the Moritani are corrupt pawns, admire the Tseida and the Wallach, and would like to see all the Harkonnens put down like the venal beasts they are. Atreides Houses Minor include the Demios, Parthenope, and Spiridon.  You bought the Golden Lion Throne from Halloween Express? The Padishah Emperors of House Corrino still rule the new Imperium they founded about 10,000 years ago. They rule by the maxim that “law is the ultimate science” meaning they’re the most Machiavellian motherfuckers around. You could also say they live by the policy “speak softly and carry a big stick,” because while they prefer to quell discontent with patient diplomacy, their benevolence always carries the implied threat of their unbeatable Sardakuar troops, which they employ only as a last resort. The responsibility of the Golden Lion Throne means that the emperor often has to put the interests of the Landsraad above taking as much as he can for himself, so the Corrinos have to deal with more grumbling from their Houses Minor than any other Great House. There’s a reason why House Corrino endures while its emperors aren’t particularly long-lived. The current Padishah Emperor is Shaddam IV, whose father, by the way, died from poisoning. His closest advisors include Count Hasimir Fenring, a swordmaster and prodigy of the BG breeding program; Lady Margot, Fenring’s wife and a Bene Gesserit; Gaius Helen Mohiam, his Truthsayer and a Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother, and his five daughters. The Corrinos admire the Atreides, but consider them enemies. They consider the Harkonnen useful if unreliable pawns, and the Moritani as more reliable pawns. They see the Wallachs as a House they can manipulate. Despite the Tseidas’ reputation for fairness, the Corrinos think of them...well, the way most people think of an organization of lawyers. Corrino Houses Minor include the Aingeru, Evangelos, and Schiavonna.  Baron Harkonnen: Fat. House Harkonnen was exiled from the Landsraad at its inception, but earned its way back in through a series of business deals so shrewd, and so lucrative, that they eventually not only regained their siridar-barony but forced the other Great Houses to grudgingly award them the fiefdom of Arrakis. So this makes them the scrappy underdog who overcame the odds, right? No. Think more like if Joffrey Baratheon had Draco Malfoy’s baby. From their polluted homeworld of Giedi Prime, the Harkonnens rule a commercial empire based on ruthless exploitation, dehumanizing slavery, and sickening decadence. They’re feared and loathed for their hideous riches and hideous practices, and the Harkonnens, in turn, seem to enjoy being hated by those they consider their natural prey. The Harkonnen are currently led by Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, a brilliant and megalomaniacal tyrant. He has no heir, probably owing to the fact that he’s a morbidly obese pedophile. His closest advisor is a psychopathic mentat-assassin named Piter de Vries. He’s also supported by his possible heirs, Glossu Rabban, best known for murdering his own father with his bare hands, and Feyd-Rautha, best known for being portrayed by Sting in tiny shiny panties. The Harkonnens want to kill all the Atreides. Painfully. They conspire with the Corrinos to remove the Atreides, but of course they plan to betray him. They consider the Moritani allies, believing that their vision is limited. They’re suspicious of the Tseida, and hate the Wallachs for supporting the Atreides. Harkonnen Houses Minor include the Ivilonette, Ruymandiaz, and Truscantos.  The Moritani got their fief by guarding Buckingham Palace, I suppose. Now we get to the Houses that were created for this game! First on deck, the Moritani are descended from an ancient order of assassins. They reached a crisis point when House Ginaz unsuccessfully tried to indict their House for using a fake Suk doctor to assassinate the members of House D’artanna. The Emperor sanctioned a War of Assassins, and the Moritani soon elicited a response along the lines of “Holy loving poo poo” for wiping out House Ginaz, known for producing the best swordmasters in the universe, in record time. That said, the Moritani don’t seem so bad. Now that they have undisputed control over their home planet of Grumman, they’re mainly focused on putting their house in order, no pun intended. They’re trying to shake their reputation as an assassin cult, but their decision to withdraw from the public eye while they focus on internal development has worked against that effort. Their economic development is accompanied by military buildup, but it seems to be focused on internal security. The leader of the Moritani is technically Count Ferdinand, but he’s succumbed to dementia and is essentially locked away while his son, na-Count Tycho di Moritani, rules as regent. He’s advised by Delbreth Umbrico, a Swordmaster-Mentat, and his mother Lady Redolyn, a Bene Gesserit trainee. Tycho has his own appointed advisor, a “tall, swarthy monolith” named Pradisek, who probably wears a turban and calls himself a vizier. Tycho also has two sisters who are all too aware that if anything happens to Tycho, one of them could birth the Moritani heir. The Moritani regard the Atreides as “friends of our enemies.” They’re grateful to the Emperor for allowing their revenge, but that doesn’t mean they’re dumb enough to trust him. They look for ways to manipulate the Harkonnens and the Wallach, and they’re on friendly terms with the Tseida, whom they trust to represent them. Moritani Houses Minor include the Laurentii, Kazimierz, and Prinzporio, all of which are renowned for being difficult to type.  I’m Leonard J. Crabs, and I approve this box of flashing shapes and colors. House Tseida is also called the House of the Phoenix, and they’re a weird bird. The House actually evolved out of a highly bureaucratic theocracy which enforced the Butlerian prohibitions with extreme prejudice, and emerged as a Great House with the help of the then-Emperor and the Spacing Guild. They are, to put it bluntly, a House comprised of lawyers, who transformed their ancient bureaucracy into a service-based economy centered on legal services. If you’re a badass Swordmaster Assassin but today you have to attend a CHOAM board meeting to argue over all that boring C-SPAN bullshit I warned you about, you want to hire a Tseida diplomat. Otherwise the Harkonnens will sue the space-pants off of you and you’ll have no place to hide your space-daggers. The Tseida have strong ties with the Spacing Guild, from whom they learned to develop a facade of political neutrality. Well, in fact they do seem to be politically neutral on issues besides “We should make poo poo-tons of spice-dollars.” The Tseida are currently ruled by the Marquise Catriona Tseida, who acts as regent until her nephew Iorgu is of legal age. She is advised by her mother Ilema (who is a Bene Gesserit like all the other politically powerful moms), a Mentat-Suk named Dorian Mu, and Hiro Okusa, a crotchety Swordmaster who carries around a blunt kendo stick to beat people with. Iorgu is being trained by all these people as well as his aunt Catriona, who helps him spy on court affairs. The Tseida are on friendly terms with the Atreides and Wallach. All their interactions with the Moritani come with a “don’t blame us, we’re just their lawyers” disclaimer. They’re on good terms with the Emperor but don’t like him meddling in their affairs, and dislike the Harkonnen propensity for slippery legal schemes. Tseida Houses Minor include the Ikeni, Sunnivas, and Wyrkiru.  The Moritani assassins are no match for our SCUBA LASERS! House Wallach is relatively young at only 5,000 years old, but they were founded by an extraordinarily loyal and successful Imperial general. Their founder, Maximillian Banarc, was so grateful to receive the fiefdom of Wallach VII that he named his newfound House after it. The Wallachs have mellowed to become a House of even-tempered scholar-soldiers, but their military tradition (and their ties to the Emperor) remain strong enough that they send their scions to be trained on Salusa Secundus. They also benefit from a close, mysterious relationship with the Bene Gesserit, who accepted the offer to headquarter their order on Wallach IX. The leader of the Wallachs is Baron Wolfram von Wallach, a contemplative old soldier who, when not practicing statecraft, spends his time writing his memoirs and beating up his soldiers three at a time. Gotta keep fit, you know. The old general has sired many children, but currently claims Christhaad von Silgaimar as his only heir. His entourage includes his concubine, Lady Gersha, who is the mother of his son and a very gifted architect. Ha ha, just kidding, she’s a Bene Gesserit. He also has Olifer Mangrove, a Mentat with a silly name. The Wallachs are decent guys, all told. They’re friendly to the Atreides and the Corrino, cordial with the Tseida, and they despise the Harkonnen and the Moritani. Wallach Houses Minor include the Brugge, Ottovaar, and Roinesprit. House Minor Creation Houses Minor are lesser branches of a Great House who manage regions of the parent House’s homeworld and/or subsidiaries of their CHOAM interests. They answer to the planetary law of their homeworld, and form a planetary “Sysselraad” that answers to their parent House. And, of course, they squabble among themselves for a greater share of the power, wealth, and influence controlled by the Great House that spawned them. The rules for House Minor creation are pretty simple, and really aren’t hampered by not having created characters or seen the rules for using the House traits yet. They are hampered by being haphazardly explained. A House Minor has 8 traits. First is Holdings, consisting of Fiefdom and Title, both rated 1-5. Then comes Renown and Assets, which are rated differently. Last are the four House Attributes, also rated 1-5, and each of which includes two sub-attributes, or edges.   Fiefdom determines the size of your fief, from a city district to a continental “subfief.” Title is the rank of the head of your House, ranging from magistrate to Baron. What’s the value of being a Baron rather than a Magistrate? Unexplained! Renown is your House’s fame and prestige. It affects your interactions with other Houses, including a roll just to see if anyone’s even heard of you. Renown starts at 1, and can’t be increased at creation. Assets covers anything you can leverage to succeed in a venture, including not only cash, but things like favours from Guild bureaucrats and expendable sleeper agents. We’ll use these to initiate “House Ventures” during downtime between sessions. Assets starts at 10, and will fluctuate up and down depending on our success. Status is your “privilege and favour” with your governing Great House, and determines your ability to undermine rival Houses Minor or get support for your ventures from your Great House. Status is divided between Aegis and Favour, which are not explained. Wealth measures your overall financial resources, including cash, revenues, investments, infrastructure, contracts, everything. It’s divided between Holdings and Stockpiles, again unexplained. Influence is your political sway among both fellow nobles and your subjects. It’s divided between Authority and Popularity which are unexplained but at least fairly self-explanatory. Security is the power of your army and your intelligence network. It’s divided between Military and Intelligence, also unexplained, but also self-explanatory. Creating a House is actually pretty easy. After choosing a Great House, a name, and a rough idea of your background, you pick from one of several archetypes, which gives you a package of Attributes. Then you get 15 development points to spend. Fief and Title are purchased up from 0 on a one-for-one basis. Increasing an Attribute costs five points, while increasing an Edge costs 3 points. (It appears your Edges can be +/-1 of the base Attribute.) Any leftovers go into your Assets. House Defender: Champions the Great House philosophy and defends them at personal cost. Status 3, Wealth 2, Influence 2, Security 3 (Military +1) House Favourite: Implements Great House policy with great enthusiasm, supporting the status quo and earning political favor. Status 3 (Favor +1), Wealth 2, Influence 3 (Popularity -1), Security 2. House Pretender: Goes along with the current political trends, hoping to replace the ruling House if the line should fail. Status 2 (Favor -1), Wealth 3 (Holdings +1), Influence 3 (Popularity +1, Authority -1), Security 2. House Pawn: Slavishly supports the Great House, hoping to earn favour through unwavering support. Status 4 (Aegis +1), Wealth 2, Influence 2 (Popularity -1), Security 1. House Reformer: Supports reform out of a genuine belief in changing things for the better. Status 2 (Favor -1), Wealth 2 (Stockpiles -1), Influence 3 (Popularity +1, Authority +1), Security 3. House Sleeper: Secretly supports another Great House, undermining its parent House from within. Status 2, Wealth 3 (Stockpiles +1), Influence 2 (Authority -1, Popularity -1), Security 3 (Intelligence +1).  So, uh, how is it possible to have both edges at +1 or -1? Can you take a -1 to get points to spend elsewhere? What’s the difference between Status 2 (Favor -1) and Status 1 (Aegis +1)? I have no loving idea. Setting the mechanics aside, I really don't like this interpretation of how Houses Minor work. It's canon that there are many inhabited worlds in the Imperium and each Great House has a homeworld, but not, if I recall, that almost every inhabitable planet has a Great House or that Houses Minor are bound to their patron's homeworld, especially when the degree of their nobility ranges down to being magistrates of city districts. So there are thousands of Great Houses, only a handful of whom really matter, but all of them and their extended families are part of the highest caste? If I can be a distant relative of the Emperor and just be a civil servant in Space Pittsburgh? What does that mean for the Houses Minor of one of a thousand insignificant Great Houses? The ostensible purpose of these assumptions is to allow the PCs leeway to adventure all over the Imperium--even in the book, Duke Leto spends a lot of time in meetings--but I think the purpose would have been served just as well by saying that the Houses Minor govern planets or companies of their own.  Houses Minor are the nadir of Imperial nobility, but they're still wealthy beyond the dreams of the common people, and they more-or-less conduct themselves like miniature versions of the Great Houses. They have to steward their resources shrewdly or come to ruin, and a lot of that responsibility falls upon the House Vassals, the royal entourage of experts who are situated below the regis-familia and above whole agencies of professionals, soldiers, and laborers. The nobles and the House Vassals are the PCs. There are three basic divisions of a House’s administration. Honestly, they give you more detail than necessary, but it’s useful for players who want to know where they fit into the House and ignorable for those who don’t. First is House Affairs, which covers fief government, representation in the Sysselraad, and managing the royal household and their retainers. The first two are boring C-SPAN crap, but the last is about making sure your kitchen staff don’t poison your Caladanian wine and your valet doesn’t plant a killer drone in the nursery. (I really, really wish they’d just state this bluntly, but that’s why Houses are riddled with Bene Gesserit although it’s an open secret they have agendas of their own. The BG is a clan of lady space ninjas. You’re a noble in a Byzantine space empire where cold-blooded murder is legal and your enemies want to knife your heirs in their cribs. Solution? Marry a lady space ninja.) Mercantile Enterprises is straightforward. Managing agriculture, mining, manufacturing, service-based industries, managing CHOAM holdings, paying tithes to your Great House, meeting production quotas, more C-SPAN crap. Household Security, ooh, that’s the good stuff. This overlaps with House Affairs, since it covers both military and intelligence operations ranging from your Warmaster conducting full-scale land war all the way down to your Swordmaster training your personal bodyguard. Houses Minor only rarely declare war on each other, but they do sometimes have to quell rebellion. Intelligence networks, on the other hand, are needed by every House, managed by Spymasters and Masters of Assassins. Next time, on Dune: Swordmaster 4/Mentat 3/Assassin 3/Arcane Archer 5
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Apr 22, 2014 14:47
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So what's the significance of that part of the myth where the handle's too short?
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Apr 28, 2014 15:42
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occamsnailfile posted:This is a rough summary in which I can't even be bothered to look up the Wikipedia version, but basically there was a gnome/dwarf pair (depends on the translation) who were really awesome craftsman, and he got into a dare with Loki, always a bad plan. The dwarves set to work and Loki came disguised as a fly and messed with the bellow-pumping dwarf, biting him. The dwarf didn't stop working, and they made (alright I lied, I looked this up) a shining golden-bristled boar. They took a break, had a snack, then started working again to make Odin's ring, mentioned above. Loki showed up as a fly and bit the bellow-dwarf on the forehead. He didn't stop working. Again, break and a snack, and then they started on the third phase of the bet--and Loki showed up as a fly and bit the bellow dwarf on the eyelid so hard that blood ran into his face. I know all of this, but explain to me what it means if it's a penis. Thor's penis is short but mighty?
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Apr 28, 2014 16:58
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Tagers are the only thing I unreservedly like about Cthulhutech (even if they're a ripoff) so yeah, Ancient Enemies. By the way, when did the database go down? I was reading PurpleXVI's Kult review not that long ago and suddenly I couldn't access it anymore.
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May 7, 2014 14:55
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By the way, while I was trying to find a cached copy of Purple XVI's review of Kult, I found a review of Purple XVI's review of Kult. Truly, it is us, we are the friends of FATAL.
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May 7, 2014 15:38
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PresidentBeard posted:Also speaking of lost posts, what caused one of the Carcossa posts to get eaten? I was going to redo it, but it was too laborious to type up. (It was probably much longer than it needed to be in the first place.) that was the chapter that covered the descriptions of each hex. That's a huge chunk of the book, but what was worth pointing out was that many of the hex descriptions just reuse the same few ideas over and over. For example...oh gently caress it, my boss is out of town...   Oh, of course there's just brainwashed naked titties all over the...wait. Octopotamus?  Still a better bet than going to law school.     Yeah, we're going to go on a mission to save a world covered in slime gods, to save all the people who want to rape us and sacrifice us to slime gods.  Wasn't this a scene in the Holy Mountain?  This too.  Haven't you ever wanted to roleplay rimming a hobo for drugs?    Is Roberta Williams responsible for this?   There's some great scenery here, and even some good encounters. But the scenery will become monotonous if the PCs can't interact with it, and the encounters are so marred by save-or-die bullshit that eventually, it will all become monotonous scenery as the players learn not to touch anything. Raggi has openly stated that LotFP supplements don't provide their own context; it's up to the DM to find a place for the dungeon in their campaign, or to provide a way for the PCs to discover how to interact with something like "a pit full of bugs that will give you a free spell if you jump in and let spiders rock out in your butthole while ants throw a tea party in your urethra." But how will the PCs trust you when even the good stuff is often booby-trapped with awful side effects, just because? Not to mention that linked points of interest (which will probably just kill you) are often separated by many ten-mile hexes (full of stuff which will probably just kill you). The main thing Carcosa has going for it is a lot of macabre, Clark Ashton Smith weirdness. I think that an extended Smith story is how McKinney sees a Carcosa campaign working out. But the stuff in a Smith story is not random, even when it appears to be, and the PCs are not going to think it's sardonic or ironic or funny at all when poo poo randomly kills them in the middle of an adventure. Except the Octopotamus. That poo poo is choice.
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May 7, 2014 19:35
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If you have Vornheim, you can mail me your copy instead of burning it.
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May 7, 2014 20:21
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GimpInBlack posted:Aside from Norse mythology, the Icelandic Sagas, and related fantasy literature, Trollbabe is heavily indebted to the underground comix scene of the 1970s. In particular, the aesthetic of Vaughn Bode seems to have had a big impact. Link NSFW for lots of cartoon nudity, but unlike a lot of fantasy art from the same period, there's a sort of... I dunno, innocence to a lot of it? The art in Trollbabe definitely reflects this, being all black-and-white line art. Forums Barber posted:I know some people freak out about Trollbabe but it's about as offensive as Heavy Metal and very much in the same theme. And yeah, the system is pretty slick. Bieeardo posted:Basically, it's roll-under meets marginal success systems. Or not, because those subsystems are optional.
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May 8, 2014 02:50
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Bieeardo posted:It's really cute, in retrospect-- they're just so earnest. "How do I narrate? I don't know how to create drama!" "Here, use this table. You can always trust tables." I think all the "incoherence" Ron Edwards condemned was people reacting to different aspects of D&D in different ways, and since AD&D contradicts itself, so did the games that reacted to it. They were releasing versions of AD&D all the way up through 1995. Must have been maddening.
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May 8, 2014 13:53
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I'm still waiting for my tongue piercing to give me all sorts of evil wizard powers.
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May 19, 2014 20:31
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Thank you for doing Exile. I remember the announcement in InQuest magazine, which gave it a short blurb declaring that the creator of Vampire was making a game where you travel through space in a gimp suit. I remember seeing some HTML and PDF documents floating around the web and skimmed them, but I could never tell if these were official, seriously-for-real designer notes, or some fan collaboration to make a playable game with only a basic concept to go on. I suppose both are true!Asimo posted:... or to put it simpler, something akin to Transhuman Space crossed with Vampire: The Masquerade's politics and aesthetics. Asimo posted:Even some introductory fiction, as pretty typical for White Wolf books... despite the claims in the prospectus that Null-F was trying to avoid doing Another Vampire, there's still some similarities here.  Take my blood, take my clan, take me where I cannot stand...
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May 21, 2014 22:13
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Speaking of System Mastery, could you break down the resolution mechanic in Don't Look Back: Terror is Never Far BehindTM in writing? I still cannot figure that out.Asimo posted:It's not a unique idea in sci-fi, even if I can appreciate the idea of transhumanism not being all wine and godhead. I'm mocking bits of Exile here and there, but to be honest the premise to the game was fairly clever and there was definitely room for a storygame-style sci-fi outing in the late 90's. I only skimmed the alpha document of Exile, but I got the impression that the PCs were booted out of a godlike science fantasy paradise, but that unlike the protagonists of an Eclipse Phase game, they're very much free to explore the vast reaches of space relying on their Artifex to automagically nanofabricate what they need. I like JG Timbrook a lot, by the way. The official clan illustrations that replaced his in the V20 book are awful.
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May 22, 2014 18:10
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theironjef posted:Sure. Your stats range from 6 to -6, with lower numbers being better. So (this is all of the top of my head, so forgive the loose examples), you take your Strength or Fitness or whatever. Maybe you are a jock, you might have a strength of -3. Skills work by listing a stat they work with, and a set normal difficulty. So for example, Drive has a normal difficulty of 4, and a stat of Dexterity. So if you don't have any points invested, you just assume 4 for your number (number will come up later). If you have points invested in drive, you can get a bonus applied to that skill, like a -1 or -2 to Drive. To do a thing, add the value of your stat and the value of your skill, so like say you're very fit and a good driver. You add your -3 Dex and your Drive of 4, your skill adjustment giving you another -2 to Drive for a total of -1. Take the absolute value of this number, so 1. Add 3 to that, so 4. Roll that many dice, so roll four dice. Now check what the value of your roll was before you took the absolute value. In this case it was negative. If you had a positive value, you take the highest three dice out of however many dice you roll. If you had a negative value, you take the lowest three. So in this case we take the lowest three, so let's say a 1, 3, and 3. That's a total of seven. This is also the only system besides Masterbook I've seen where the attribute range is 13 points (-6 to +6). Why do you have to bodyshame the knife clowns? #notyourgoodfatknifeclown
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May 22, 2014 18:41
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Both games are by the same authors, or at least have credits all over the web for being the authors of both books. FMguru posted:I got the sense that they wanted to make a pirate game, saw how straight-historical RPGs traditionally did in the marketplace, cast around for a gamer-friendly "hook", and settled on applying a thin patina of furry to their game. In my limited experience (I played Jadeclaw a few times) most furry gamers just want to play spacemans, but furries, or dungeonmans, but furries, etc. They aren't interested in the literary science fictional route of asking what happens in a society that has a multitude of sentient species, but some are technically predators and only the lions can be king of Furtopia. My friend bought and ran Jadeclaw just because the idea of "What if your wuxia mans was a wuxia tiger mans?" was appealing and the system seemed novel. He was actually kind of mortified when he realized that the book used "furry" as an all-encompassing pronoun.
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May 22, 2014 19:21
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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. Selachian posted:The lupin were one of several anthro races introduced into D&D's "Known World," along with the rakasta (catpeople) and tortles (guess).
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May 22, 2014 21:20
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What I mainly remember from Binders is that the basic premise is pretty cool. It seemed kinda clunky in play (while the wizard is memorizing and the cleric is praying, the binder is doing a bunch of little rituals that he hopefully has the components for and making a bunch of checks). But the best thing is that a lot of vestiges were entities from D&D lore who weren't quite gods but were more than just NPCs or monsters.
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May 24, 2014 16:17
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Ooh, Viragos! That was in the InQuest blurb! Maybe I need to read over the Exile updates more closely, but it seems to me like it's starting with a great premise but then nullifying it step-by-step. If the theme of the game is "You're exiled from a not-so-paradisal space empire, go explore this vast space frontier," why all the emphasis on Hegemony politics and factions? The in-character bits I remember reading from some old doc floating around implied that exiles kind of support new exiles like they're newbies on an Internet forum, but you're mostly on your own. Perhaps I'm getting it wrong and I'm criticizing Exiles for barking because I thought it was a cat.
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May 24, 2014 20:47
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Cthulhutech probably has the highest "So stoked for the initial concept" vs. "disappointed with how the game line turned out" that I've ever experienced with an RPG.
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Jun 6, 2014 01:29
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The funny thing about Cthulhutech is that it got me thinking, "Y'know, RIFTS has some crazy fun gonzo ideas in it, so I could use Cthulhutech to play a fast-and-loose version of that kind of thing." Now I want to take some of the basic ideas from Cthulhutech and play them in a totally different system. I also have to give Cthulhutech credit for influencing me with its art alone. I used to say that art wasn't a big deal to me, but the Tager art really made me want to loving play Tagers. I barely know anything about Guyver and had no idea it was such a blatant lift, but "Lovecraftian werewolf ninjas fighting an evil corporation" is a game I want to loving play.
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Jun 6, 2014 02:07
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I actually lost one of the chapters (the hex descriptions) due to some copy/paste/edit stupidity on my part. If you like, I made a later post in the thread which serves as a replacement; you can link to that.
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Jul 8, 2014 05:23
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Y'ha'nthlei is a very expensive city.
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Jul 11, 2014 18:28
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Chapter 3: Character Creation This has been too long in coming, so here's a link to the last chapter. Dune’s character creation sets out with advice on fleshing out a character concept and seeing PCs as more than the sum of their stats. It also devotes a lot of space to telling the GM and the players to be cool with each other, and to buy in to the basic premise of the game and its setting. That is, the PCs are going to play a House entourage, so they have to be able to get along. For example, Suk doctors are conditioned to be nonviolent, but a Suk PC who constantly rails against his House’s military endeavours is inappropriate. That is a misinterpretation of the setting, but the real reason it’s a bad idea is that it will lead to the players getting on each other’s nerves. What? Gaming advice from adults, for adults? In the 90s, no less? Players are encouraged to pursue unconventional character concepts; for example, there’s no reason you can’t play a Mentat who is also a passionate duelist, since the source novels are full of that kind of thing. However, there are also some firm limits. First, the Imperium is deeply patriarchal, so men can’t be Bene Gesserit agents, and women can’t inherit leadership of a House. The fact that you’re assumed to be playing a House entourage also discourages you from playing characters who are part of the setting but who aren’t tied to the feudal system, such as a Guild navigator or a spice smuggler. However, there are suggestions on how to include such characters as a “special guest appearance,” somebody’s secondary PC, or as a character on a long-term mission with a good reason to be palling around with a House entourage. There’s no advice on how the players reach a consensus on what Great House lineage to play, which is a glaring omission. The House you play will not only have a great influence on the tone of the game, it determines your base stats! Granted, the differences are mostly minor: a +1 to an Attribute edge here, a skill there. But if you’re playing a Mentat, you probably wanted the Tseida’s +1 to Intellect (Logic) instead of the Harkonnen bonus to Physique (Strength). I’m guessing the Baron makes all his young relatives pump iron while he watches.  The default character creation method boils down to choosing a series of “packages,” starting with your House Allegiance, with a few free Development Points at the end for additional customization. At each stage of creation, all the packages are worth the same amount of points, so if none of them appeal to you, you can just take some free points. You can also do full point-buy with 130 Development Points. I can’t explain the character creation process in full without going into some detail about the traits themselves. A Dune character sheet will be familiar to anyone who’s ever played a Storyteller, Unisystem, or D6 game, not to mention many others. Player characters have Attributes, Skills, and Traits. Attributes are rated 1-6, with 6 representing the absolute peak of human potential. Each Attribute is also split into two Edges, just like the House Attributes from the previous chapter.  So it’s possible to have Physique 2 (Strength +1). I really don’t like this, because it seems to defeat the point of the laudable design decision to combine Strength and Constitution in the first place. Too many other games have a Strength attribute that falls by the wayside and is almost useless both in and out of combat. (I’m looking at you, White Wolf.) Second, you need to keep track of the Edge bonuses you get during character creation. If a bonus would give you +3 in an Edge, instead you “reset” and increase the base Attribute by 1. Oh, and what’s the difference between having Physique 2 (Strength +1, Constitution +1) and having Physique 3? I have no idea; I hope they’ll explain later.    Oh! How very simple! Skills, on the other hand...I like what they did here. First, there’s a bounded number of skills, and they’re appropriately broad. “Armed Combat,” for example, covers all melee weapons. Many skills do require a specialization, but there’s a limited number of those, too, and your base rating still reflects general knowledge. A character with Science 2 (Biology 1) specializes in biology, but has an education in all the physical and life sciences, while a character with Transport 1 can operate everything from a car to a space shuttle. So Dune avoids the pitfalls of a game with extremely specific skills and a potentially infinite number of skills for things like academic disciplines, and prevents PCs from being so specialized that their skills are often irrelevant. Traits are miscellaneous advantages and disadvantages that include mundane resources, social statuses, strengths and weaknesses of character, and “conditioning” that isn’t covered by skills, such as that of Bene Gesserit agents and Suk doctors. Having dispensed with those details, these are the stages of character creation: Stage 1, House Allegiance, is the Great House to which your character’s House Minor belongs. It determines your base attributes, plus some skills and low-level Traits. All the Houses get base Attributes of 2 with a bonus here and there, plus a point of Culture, History, and World Knowledge with a free specialization in your native House and homeworld.  Stage 2, Vocational Conditioning, basically means character class, like Bene Gesserit Adept, Strategist, Assassin, et cetera. These packages grant attribute bonuses, more skills, and Traits related to your character’s profession and conditioning. While Dune isn’t a class/level game, some of the “vocational” Traits are exclusive and integral from a setting point of view. Mentats, for instance, must be trained from early childhood. Vocation is also important because it determines your caste.  Stage 3, Background History, encompasses three background packages that represent your character’s upbringing, career, and goals. Early Life is a good opportunity for a character to either become more specialized or get some “multiclass” training with backgrounds like Mentat Priming, Bene Gesserit Teaching, or Dueling Instruction. (Paul Atreides got all three.)  House Service goes beyond your profession to your actual job--what do you do for your House? Suk characters are likely to take House Physician, but a Swordmaster could potentially be a Security Commander, Weapons Master, or the Personal Confidante to the royal heir.  Personal Calling is essentially what marks you out as unique. The term is imprecise, because the packages encompass a mixture of career paths and unusual backgrounds. For example, you could be a Sleeper Agent or an Arena Fighter, by choice or otherwise, or maybe you received an Off-World Education, which is a circumstance of your upbringing. Or you might be a Breeder, which is exactly as creepy as it sounds--it means that because of some genetic quirk, the Bene Gesserit take a special interest in you as part of their grand scheme to control the bloodlines of the Houses.  Stage 4, Finishing Touches, gives you five “freebie” points to spend.  Development Points At this point, your Vocational Conditioning will determine your social Caste and starting equipment. Each character also gets 3 Karama (“karma points” to spend on automatic successes), and Renown. Renown has 4 aspects: Valor, Learning, Justice, and Prayer, representing a character’s reputation for heroism, knowledge, diplomacy, and wisdom, respectively. You get 1 point to put in 1 aspect, plus any granted by the packages you chose.  That's it! The GM has veto on character concepts that make no sense, like a dueling Suk doctor. There is some more advice here that strikes me as too heavy-handed: case in point, the assertion that a Noble would never have the Assassination skill, despite the fact that the Emperor's best buddy is duelist, an assassin, and an all-around treacherous bastard.  ”I can’t eat fifteen gallons of spice!” “Oh, it’s not going in that end, Mr. Atreides.” Next time, on Dune: I'll go over the sample characters, and create a couple myself.
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Jul 11, 2014 21:19
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I remember bumping up against that, too. "It's evil to choke a guy out with the Force? I just chopped that other guy in half."
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Jul 16, 2014 17:38
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The weird thing about powers in Star Wars games is that sometimes Force Lightning is a really big deal, and in other games the protagonist is Magneto with a lightsaber.
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Jul 16, 2014 19:25
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Kurieg posted:Force Unleashed was pretty good about the fact that at his best Starkiller was only gray on the good/evil scale. In the first half of the game you're basically a sith lord, and in the second half of the game you're a lone man up against an army with a big old bag of force powers culminating in you yanking a super star destroyer out of orbit to destroy a foundry.
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Jul 16, 2014 20:07
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Robindaybird posted:I think the huge problem is that the writers of these games decide because a Sith used those powers, it's automatically evil and never really thought about it any further. The only real logic I can see in it is that lightsabers and other Force powers can be used offensively or defensively or for other things, but Force Lightning is pretty much just an offensive weapon. But Force choke?
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Jul 16, 2014 21:11
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My understanding is that many of the WEG Star Wars sourcebooks were so lovingly detailed and so well-regarded that they, in turn, informed what the franchise novelists were writing. Ironically, I had a lot of stuff for Masterbook, but I only played WEG Star Wars two or three times.
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Jul 17, 2014 02:51
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Sometimes I think that it would be cool to run the RIFTS setting in a narrative game, but...no. I don't really want to run the RIFTS setting. More like, imagine that a RIFTS book actually had an index. Take all the cool-sounding words like Psi-Stalker and Cyber-Knight and run a gonzo mashup based on that.
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Jul 22, 2014 21:53
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theironjef posted:I've mentioned it before but a few insane friends of mine have a huge set of documents that represented a D10 Rifts universe, basically taking a lot of the rules for NWOD and Exalted, stripping out some of the cruft, and replacing it with brand news Rifts cruft. It works very well as a narrative game and is deeply playable, plus since it's just a bunch of .doc files we can keep around the Rifts books for inspiration. At the core that's what Palladium books are for a lot of us (at least everyone in that game group) a series of ridiculous art pieces that we all associate with being 14 and thinking that if playing as a Cyber-Knight is rad, playing as a TITAN Cyber-Knight is 15 times as rad!
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Jul 23, 2014 03:18
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A lot of the games I've read about in this thread seem like they're crying out to be redone in a more narrative system, or at least a more focused one. Playing D&D 4th edition was a real eye-opener for me, because I later realized that it was very different from other games I had played that were similarly focused on combat, weapons, and a mission-oriented structure. It was different in that it was actually tactical. A lot of games I played in high school and college had a whole lot of rules devoted to combat, but they didn't contribute anything to gameplay except busywork. Shadowrun is a good example. There are many pages of guns, armor, and cyberware, and the rules distinguish between minor variations in all of them, but all it boils down to is that you want all your numbers to be high. When combat starts, you want to roll high initiative, high attack, and high damage. (And more actions so you can roll again.) Sure, there are a lot of "situational modifiers" for aiming, positioning, et cetera, but in my experience there are two problems that render them virtually irrelevant. One, the action economy makes them worse than useless compared to unloading on the enemy until someone drops. Two, they're so heavily dependent on the GM or the players pointing them out that FATE's way of handling such things isn't radically different, just more honest. There are some fiddly details, like ammunition types, but the most interesting combat-related choice is not tactical, but logistical: do you carry a stealthy weapon or a powerful one? RIFTS seems much the same, carried to the point of absurdity. If you have a bunch of spells and guns that have +27 to hit and do 40d6 damage or whatever, why not collapse the whole system down to something more manageable and abstract? But the thing is, Rifts does have a hardcore fanbase and they emphatically do not want that; they want the game to precisely model a ton of weapons and powers in a blow-by-blow combat system.
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Jul 23, 2014 21:09
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Ultimately Siembieda is a true heir to Gygax in writing a system that's just a mishmash of rulings he laid over a framework of ten or so attributes, skill percentages, and a to-hit rule. Palladium's system makes a lot more sense when you look at games of its time that are almost more like collections of rulings rather than rule sets. The difference is, of course, that later designers worked their darndest to try and make the AD&D rules into something that makes sense (someday, they might even succeed), while Palladium just keeps layering on house rules for their newest campaign rather than thinking about rules as a coherent whole. Asimo posted:Well it's important to keep in mind that Rifts was something like the sixth or seventh iteration of the "palladium system". If you go back a ways, Palladium Fantasy Role-Playing Game was actually a relatively streamlined and passable-but-forgettable AD&D heartbreaker, especially compared to its contemporary competition. The problem was that it was written in 1983 and the system hasn't really been refined or changed since, just had more stuff cut off or bolted onto it like ARB mentioned. It's a thirty year old system and feels every creaking decade of it. It appears that that's okay with Siembedia, and that Palladium's first priority isn't to innovate, or to grow their brand, but to provide a living for the handful of full-time employees who have been there for 20+ years. He would certainly like for the movie and video game deals to take off, but he's not going to risk his more-or-less comfortable living to do that, much less to bring the game-as-written in line with the game as he supposedly plays it himself. (I believe Malcolm Sheppard approached them about doing a spin-off game that would use a much simpler version of the system that was still fully compatible, and they declined.) He has the company he wants, and his shriveling fanbase has the game they want. Siembieda doesn't care about Rifts looking good in a museum of game design; he's taking it with him in his sarcophagus. Evil Mastermind posted:Well, most of the games we talk about in this thread were written in the mid-to-late 90's or early 00's. The idea of a game supporting a theme with anything outside of MORE NUMBERS hadn't really come up yet. Hell, most games didn't even like the idea of handwaving things (c.f Torg's "you can calculate how much damage the Death Star can do!") because the whole point of the rules was to simulate the game world's physics. Apocalypse World is a great one for this; I get the feeling that people fall in love with its resolution and playbooks and skim over the deeper stuff before deciding to write up Nightbane World or whatever. But that first revelation--that you can crush a really crunchy game into a much simpler and more focused framework and get great outcomes--that's a big one.
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Jul 24, 2014 19:56
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I especially liked that Indiana Jones encourages you to gently caress over the player who spent his one skill slot on Portuguese by saying "No, this is different Portuguese."
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Jul 24, 2014 21:30
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Green Intern posted:Edit: Speaking of failed game products, I have a copy of The Noir RPG, by Archon Games. As far as I can tell, Archon never made any other products. Evil Mastermind posted:I think I talked about this a thread or two ago when we were discussing Paranoia 5th Edition, but when it got right down to it WEG's writers didn't see the difference between dark comedy, intelligent comedy, or slapstick. Everything got dumped into that category eventually. Davin Valkri posted:Did proper mechanically-backed genre emulation really only happen in the 2000s? It feels weird hearing about stuff like that Indiana Jones example in an age where Apocalypse World, Monsterhearts, Leverage, Atomic Robo, and Double Cross are all readily available. Pendragon is another 1985 game deserving mention. PresidentBeard posted:OD&D was pretty good at emulating playing in Dying Earth. I mean that's a really narrow genre, but it does emulate it well.
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Jul 25, 2014 01:43
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Green Intern posted:I would not be surprised. The book just has this feeling of "cut corners" all the way through. I recall a fair few really simple typos that would have been caught if anyone was being paid to give a drat. I quoted a bunch of stuff here, but it was too much. Long story short, developer Jack Norr just tears into the company in this RPGnet thread. Somebody loving explain to me why I remember RPG business gossip from years ago, but I can't find my football. Also: quote:Archon owner Lisa Mann e-mailed me one day after I wrote a Usenet post about Noir. She offered me a job writing fiction for one of their anthologies. Based on a Usenet post. They threw a party at the GAMA trade show, featuring ice sculptures and free cigars. You have to do this.
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Jul 25, 2014 05:11
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FMguru posted:1990s WEG which spiraled down until it was shipping junk like the $30 hardback RPG supplement for Star Wars "The Truce At Bakura", Paranoia 5E, and RPGs based on the Species and Tank Girl properties. Oh, and one of the strangest, least-loved RPGs ever - Shatterzone. 1. Finish Dune 2. Go back and finish Eldritch Skies 3. Immortal: Claudia Christian Edition 4. Masterbook: World of Tales from the Crypt Green Intern posted:Holy crap, that's impressive sleuthing. I'll start my reread this weekend. Might take a bit to actually get some content down for the thread. John Tynes posted:Archon was originally going to publish Unknown Armies. Greg Stolze, Thomas Manning, and I assembled the whole book, laid out, illustrated, edited, ready to go, without anything from Archon. The last couple weeks before the drop-dead press deadline for GenCon, I couldn't ever reach the head of Archon on the phone or email. The morning of the deadline I had the book files on CD, a printout made, and the whole thing ready to ship to the printer, but I needed to know how to get them paid. I made one last call to the head of Archon, left a message saying it was now or never, and that was that. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Jul 25, 2014 |
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Jul 25, 2014 19:20
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To be honest, I have periodically thought about just handling most of my games in a universal system like GURPS or BRP, but whenever I approach them, they just come across to me as serviceable, a little clunky, and largely insipid. PresidentBeard posted:Really? It seemed to have a similar murderhobo and random magic killing you for no reason. Unless I'm misremembering how the Dying Earth stories actually ran. It's been a long time since I read any of them. So if I'm completely misrepresenting them my bad. Second, mechanical support for characters like Cugel doesn't appear until Supplement I: Greyhawk. OD&D itself just has fighting-men, clerics, and magic-users, and magic-users don't really live up to Dying Earth wizards like Turjan, who is more than capable of wielding a sword and far from helpless without his spells. The most Dying Earth stuff in OD&D is not in the rules, or anywhere else in the text, but with the playstyle we associate with that era of D&D--bullshitting your way out of trouble, being unsure if creatures you encounter will attack on sight, and trying to avoid actually using the combat rules by hiding, sneaking, and coming up with baroque ways of bushwhacking your enemies. Ultimately, OD&D is a set-piece wargame as much as anything, and rules support for character power is either "magic" or "lots of weapons and armor." Cugel, in particular, falls entirely into the nebulous gap where D&D gives you the freedom to make poo poo up. If you read those books after having played D&D, there are times when Cugel almost seems to be playing on Vance's indulgence like an old-school D&D player wheedling the DM. All of the Dying Earth stories, from the eponymous short story collection to the Rhialto novellas, are picaresques about getting into and out of peril, and OD&D really doesn't model that. And I'm not saying that from an arrogant modern perspective of "Well, it doesn't have rules for drama and personality," I mean it really just doesn't model those adventures at all beyond letting you have wilderness encounters where you roll to see if you can talk to creatures instead of fighting them. Apropos of nothing, Vance wrote a sword-and-planet series called Planet of Adventure, and it's far more lively than John Carter. I'm believe Gygax read at least some of it, but its influence doesn't appear in D&D. I recommend it to anyone interested in running old-school D&D in a sword-and-planet style. (It's one of Vance's series that, altogether, are shorter than one Jordan or GRRM novel, so it's a very quick read.)
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Jul 27, 2014 18:07
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PresidentBeard posted:Thanks for that rather thorough explanation.
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Jul 28, 2014 16:22
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C°ntinuum always struck me as being kind of brilliant, and kind of like it was made for people think Mage just isn't wanky enough.
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Jul 29, 2014 19:55
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