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The Lone Badger posted:Why does Satan want to keep the innocent in hell? Won't that just bring ruin down on his head when the Almighty realizes the Pikadon failed and sends a squad of bigger, nastier angels (or Michael himself) to Sort poo poo Out? Having them show up as The Feds as a possible ending option would be wonderfully thematic, especially if they'd been hinted at from early on.
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Jul 17, 2019 14:02
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Now I REALLY want a Twin Peaks style show in 1960's Vegas which takes inspiration from Paradise Lost, Dante's Inferno and alla that good poo poo.
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Jul 17, 2019 14:44
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Sig: Manual of the Primes Water Is Life  Whispering Sands by Hannah Shaffer Beliefs The Oasis hides from prying eyes. Desire brings absence. Water is a precious illusion. Many seek the Oasis of the Whispering Sands to gain power…but that’s easier said than done. The Oasis cannot be found easily, and seekers will be torn apart by the heat and the wind. Physical distance means nothing to the Oasis – it is not able to found by physical searching. Rather, it must be sought in the mind. Only upon giving up all hope of finding it will the chance of discovery begin – and the more you want to seek the riches and the glory of the Oasis, the further away it gets. The bones of lost seekers litter the desert. Those who truly seek the Oasis are best served by picking a direction at random, clearing their minds and just walking. Don’t look back, don’t care what you find. When all hope is finally lost, that is when you have reached the place. The world of the Whispering Sands are kept together by mass hallucination. Focusing too hard on any given thing tends to make it disappear. Where you go to sleep and where you wake up have no real relation to each other. Much of what you will see in the sands is nothing but illusion and mirage. There are settlements, markets and villages – but they are rare, far between and have very little worthwhile. The Oasis, despite being so hard to find, however, is neither fake nor valueless. It is not particularly large, though – you could walk around it in maybe ten minutes or so. The locals call it Movoda, and it is full of small, silver-scaled fish, strange silver-feathered birds and dense seaweed that forms a staple of the local diet. Unlike the sands beyond, the shores of Movoda are cool and pleasant, smelling faintly of peppermint oil. Silver-leafed palm trees encircle the Oasis. In the life of each tree, it produces a single ubami fruit, perfectly spherical. These pink fruits are protected by a waxy, transparent shell. While fibrous and very astringent, the ubami is quite edible. Not necessarily good, but edible. The moon-shaped seed at the center is the real prize, however. The seed has some relation to the continued existence of the Oasis and the Whispering Sands as a whole, though scholars don’t agree how. Legend has it that the seeds turn trouble into mere illusion. The locals speak in roundabout and indirect ways, so no outsider is entirely sure if this is metaphorical. The seeds might calm the mind, or might actually grant the power of reality-bending. Some say the seeds create the illusion of the desert around the Oasis – or the Oasis in the desert. The truth is closely guarded, but the seeds are not. The locals do not protect them. Only the nature of the Oasis does. Anyone that feels strong desire for wealth or water is cast out of Movoda, unable to find their way back from the sands. It is unclear how many people actually live in the Whispering Sands. Many nomadic tents and dwellings can be found around the Oasis and through the Sands. Over time, they often vanish and reappear elsewhere, in entirely new locations. Pretty much all dwellings in the prime are built with this impermanence in mind. They are typically woven linen, sand or glue made from the skin and bones of the fish of Movoda. Ownership of land or dwellings are largely not concepts the locals understand. Because of how often they disappear into the sands, the locals just use whatever building is closest. It is not particularly rare for vanishing structures to reappear in strange, unstable places – on top of trees or houses, or even partially in the lake. When this happens, they are quickly dismantled and rebuilt more safely. The locals don’t even need to talk about it anymore – they just work together to take apart and rebuild the dwelling. Communication with the locals isn’t easy. They don’t respond well to direct questions and sometimes just vanish. They dislike discussion with people who hold strong desires, and it often takes meditation and great patience before they will respond. While they do have a spoken language, they use it only rarely. Most of their communication with each other is via subtle body language, primarily eye contact. They possess some strange power to disorient with their stares, which they generally employ when outsiders begin to pry into their private lives. They have no words for desires, wants or hopes. They understand the concept of passing time, but have a strange relation with time and the constancy of existence. Rather, they seem to measure time based on strength of emotional experiences and their fading memory. The only times they speak at length are when telling stories. Their tales are strange, fantastic and often impossible, and after storytelling sessions they begin strange meditation while linking hands and staring into each other’s’ eyes, often while holding ubami seeds. When this happens, the world around them becomes more vivid and colorful, suggesting they wield some deep power over the reality of the Sands. Travel in the Sands brings strange visions, drawn out of your past and dreams. Nothing you see there is very permanent, and anything left unwatched and uncared for is likely to vanish. Items of significance are important to keep with you, allowing you to return to reality from your visions without getting lost in the desert. Focusing on things you value anchors you – but you have to be careful. After all, desire and hope are what drive you away from the Oasis and into the killing desert. Despite this, many seek out the ubami seeds for their potential power over the nature of reality itself. That said, fetching one is much harder than they realize. It would be very difficult to gain access to the seeds if you know their real worth – and so, those seeking their power must make use of the naïve or unaware, who do not realize what they do. The Planes of Shadow and Freedom are strong in the Whispering Sands. The swirling, hallucinatory nature of the terrain indicates their closeness. The Plane of Dreams is also strong, and it is often hard to tell dreams from reality while in the Sands. The Plane of Waves has a surprising amount of influence, however, given how rare water is in much of the prime. Rather, the waves ensure that things of value become buried in the sands, that evidence becomes lost, that nothing can be settled. The riches are hidden in an ocean of sand, and water is precious and important. Next time: The Night Markets and the Shard of Empire
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Jul 17, 2019 17:55
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Robindaybird posted:Holy poo poo This is loving awful even from excerpts, you can tell everyone who wrote it is white because how else did all that poo poo pass by? Oh, it actually gets worse. I'm now 60% of the way through, and found even more hot takes. The lord of the third country, the Kingdom of Ozhvinmish, is racist against elves and is passing all sorts of laws to make them as miserable as possible, up and even including hoping they flee the country or get killed off and has even stated as such publicly in order to help deal with an unrelated refugee crisis ("they can fill in the labor void of the elves"). And the reason for his bigotry? quote:Shahn’s hatred for elves stems from his adolescence, when he became obsessed with an elf maiden from the Svomawhom Forest. He pined for her, and when she and her family came to the capital to trade, he watched her from afar. Finally, when she reached age 13, he approached the girl, professed his love and demanded she consent to wed him. She rebuffed him publicly, unaware or uncaring of his station, to the derision of the onlookers. Shahn was mortified and fled to his home. Although a teenager wanting to date a pre-teen is still creepy (inferred by her "finally" reaching age 13), I did a quick looksee in the Kingdoms of Kalamar Player's Guide to the Sovereign Lands (their main setting sourcebook for 3.5) to find out how different elves were in the setting. Looking at the age entry, they aged the same as in the 3.5 Player's Handbook. Meaning that 110 in elf years is 15 in human years. The racist king wanted to gently caress a toddler. And get this: his listed alignment is Neutral Good. I also saw one of their Prestige Classes, which is so lacking in self-awareness and respectability that it makes even WotC's Tomb of Annihilation look tasteful in comparison.  It's the Primal Warrior, where you have a special relationship with spirits to the point that your primary feature is to polymorph into various kinds of simians as you level up, from lemurs to Dire Apes. In a Fantasy Africa campaign setting.  I makes me feel weird; I fear that only touring the worst will get accusations of a lop-sided view as opposed to a full F&F treatment. Not to mention the fact that it's about as long as Nyambe is, and reviewing that product was a labor of love for me. But the thing is that most of the book is rather bland descriptions of settlements, history, local customs, sports, etc of the respective lands but few in the way of cool adventure material or fantastical events associated with D&D. This is a larger problem with KoK, where the authors clearly wanted a low-fantasy medieval setting with extra detail on the mundanities of life. One of their books even had a sidebar acknowledging that multi-page descriptions of city bureaucrats may seem boring, "but you can totally use them to give the PCs adventure hooks!" ...when you could have spent that word count writing up adventure hooks instead. This doesn't really leave much room for what D&D is best known for, unless you relish the idea of a Game of Thrones style world of noblemen and warlords finding ways to screw each other over in tense political situations. But the 3.5 engine is not geared to this; Kingdoms of Kalamar is now using Kenzerco's own Hackmaster system, but I cannot attest to how suitable that one is for that kind of genre. Libertad! fucked around with this message at 18:23 on Jul 17, 2019 |
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Jul 17, 2019 18:18
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juggalo baby coffin posted:could they just leave out all the rape though? Ithle01 posted:My way of looking at it is that Abyssals had a redemption mechanic. Infernals didn't have or need one.
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Jul 17, 2019 18:30
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The Lone Badger posted:Best move would seem to be to shoot Satan, load the Eye, then point the gun at Hades and tell him that we're all leaving and no we're not playing cards. it's weird too because ostensibly the game's using a christian-centric version of hell, but it claims there's practitioners of every religion there, plus hades is a shot caller for some reason, and there's an angel that arrives in a nuclear explosion but is also somehow defeated by satan, despite the fact that earlier it's able to wade into a demon gangland turf war and waste every other combatant. it's like they wanted some of the thematic elements of "hell" without having to completely flesh out the cosmology or explain all of the mechanics behind how this poo poo was working (or maybe the book does and hyphz didn't want to transcribe everything). which means, if we're supposed to be operating on the christian-lite version of hell, you could have PCs that have the damning flashback of "being an atheist" since in-context that's enough to qualify you for the lake of fire. like i get the sense they wanted the PCs to all end up with these gruesome murder crime flashbacks, but based on the cosmology they're aping you could just as easily wind up in hell for never being baptised, even if you were otherwise an objectively "good" person.
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Jul 17, 2019 18:44
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juggalo baby coffin posted:idk i think thats just cause the abyssals have more restrictions on being good than the infernals do, the yozis are morons who didn't properly think about getting their goals done so there are all sorts of loopholes like people have been talking about. the yozis are definitely more sadistic than the neverborn. There's really no way to settle whether yozis or neverborn are worse because that's fan territory but I'd say that in terms of the PCs, Abyssals and Infernals, that the Abyssals were more conceived to be the 'evil' splat.
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Jul 17, 2019 19:13
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Freaking Crumbum posted:it's weird too because ostensibly the game's using a christian-centric version of hell, but it claims there's practitioners of every religion there, plus hades is a shot caller for some reason, and there's an angel that arrives in a nuclear explosion but is also somehow defeated by satan, despite the fact that earlier it's able to wade into a demon gangland turf war and waste every other combatant. it's like they wanted some of the thematic elements of "hell" without having to completely flesh out the cosmology or explain all of the mechanics behind how this poo poo was working (or maybe the book does and hyphz didn't want to transcribe everything). No, there's deliberately very little of that to avoid stepping on any real religious toes, and to avoid the underlying elephant in the room of "if you're evil you get sent to hell to be punished, but once you get there if you're really evil you get to be a cool demon and commit all those sins for fun any time you like" Everyone in hell drops at least one chip when they die, so presumably murder or ruining a life is the critical condition? You're right though that it is absolutely depending on the PCs to make their flashbacks create the situation where they're redeemable bad people. As for the Pikadon though, Hades and the Demon Lords are on a totally different power scale to the regular demons (they're at least small scale reality warpers in Hell) and we never see what Satan is capable of except for the Pikadon fight, which involves him "beating it to death with a hotel".
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Jul 17, 2019 19:44
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juggalo baby coffin posted:could they just leave out all the rape though? This would require Alan Alexander to not be Alan Alexander, so it's pretty difficult. We're talking about a man who wrote not one but two books with obscenely graphic and tasteless depictions of rape, and was on a personal quest to make sure that every NPC he got to write about was established as canonically straight. He has the dubious honours of being one of the few freelancers While Wolf got around to blacklisting, after they realized exactly what they had let him put into their books. Naturally, OPP hired him to write V20 books.
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Jul 17, 2019 19:49
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hyphz posted:No, there's deliberately very little of that to avoid stepping on any real religious toes, and to avoid the underlying elephant in the room of "if you're evil you get sent to hell to be punished, but once you get there if you're really evil you get to be a cool demon and commit all those sins for fun any time you like" it runs afoul of too many of the bug-a-boos inherent to contemporary protestant christianity for me to buy into the setting. so the existence of this hell and satan specifically seems to imply we're working with a christian cosmology, which itself necessitates that there's an omnipotent omniscient creator that likewise runs heaven, in which case it makes no sense at all for some random angel to just kapoof into hell to rescue an "innocent soul" because said creator should just be able to immediately correct that particular mistake solely by divine fiat. i'm not even clear on what real purpose the angel is supposed to serve, since the story (as presented) doesn't ever have it interact with the players in any meaningful way, and its entire purpose seems to be existing long enough for satan to kill it. so we can see how powerful he is? we're already in hell, why do we need an overt display of how powerful satan is? it seems like the story overall would have worked better if there was no real indication that the players were in metaphysical hell before the final act, and even then have it be subtle stuff that never straight out confirms what's going on. i guess you lose the mechanic of having dead bodies turn into special casino chips? but i feel like everything in the story could still have been refluffed to omit the obvious supernatural things and been no worse off for it.
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Jul 17, 2019 20:07
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Freaking Crumbum posted:it runs afoul of too many of the bug-a-boos inherent to contemporary protestant christianity for me to buy into the setting. so the existence of this hell and satan specifically seems to imply we're working with a christian cosmology, which itself necessitates that there's an omnipotent omniscient creator that likewise runs heaven, in which case it makes no sense at all for some random angel to just kapoof into hell to rescue an "innocent soul" because said creator should just be able to immediately correct that particular mistake solely by divine fiat. i'm not even clear on what real purpose the angel is supposed to serve, since the story (as presented) doesn't ever have it interact with the players in any meaningful way, and its entire purpose seems to be existing long enough for satan to kill it. so we can see how powerful he is? we're already in hell, why do we need an overt display of how powerful satan is? The innocent isn't there by mistake, he's there because one of the PCs sold the innocent's soul to Satan in life (well, hopefully they have that flashback). But narratively the Pikadon's there to make the PCs special by showing up at the same time as them. Otherwise you'd be in the "these are just random guys" situation.
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Jul 17, 2019 20:10
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Have we mentioned how utterly ridiculous 'Pikadon' is as a name, and how nonsensical it is even if you buy into the idea that this is somehow appropriate Japanese onomatopoeia - which it isn't, if you used this word in Japan you'd get people wondering what the hell you were going on about.
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Jul 17, 2019 20:13
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Mors Rattus posted:Have we mentioned how utterly ridiculous 'Pikadon' is as a name, and how nonsensical it is even if you buy into the idea that this is somehow appropriate Japanese onomatopoeia - which it isn't, if you used this word in Japan you'd get people wondering what the hell you were going on about. I don't know. The book only says that "at least one player will probably make a Pokemon joke and then one of them will Google it", and the Japanese psychopoeia is what I found when I googled it. I didn't know about the Hebrew word, but I'm not sure that's appropriate either.
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Jul 17, 2019 20:18
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hyphz posted:"at least one player will probably make a Pokemon joke and then one of them will Google it" Feeling like you should put this disclaimer in your book is a sure sign you've made an excellent choice of name.
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Jul 17, 2019 20:25
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There's a strain of thought in some forms of Christianity that either places Satan as a sort of Ahrimanic figure who is the evil counterpart to the benevolent God, or that allows that the Devil/Satan can win some battles and force some metaphysical events. This usually exists in a theological context where, basically, God is extremely legalistic and morality is all about correctly appreciating God and his laws, so if the rules say 'God sends his angels, who can lose to Satan, who managed to purchase an innocent soul' then that's how the world works until the apocalypse, where Satan will be defeated. Or whatever. I mean, this is on the same basic theological wavelength as 'you can sell your soul to Satan and not know it by saying the wrong magical words' and similar ideas, where whether you go to hell is not really determined by your qualities as a person but by something more like ritual purity. If Satan is an independently-willed, powerful metaphysical actor in the cosmology a lot of stuff can get very weird. Not necessarily weirder than any cosmology, but, weird. There's also a lot of Renaissance and earlier theology that sort of allowed a (potential) place for beings like the Greco-Roman gods as neither demons nor angels, just powerful entities, basically because they were romantic figures with a long cultural tradition. So you have anthropomorphic deities like 'Nature' showing up in various stories, which are very Christian stories. In that context, Hades being the pre-Satan ruler of the Underworld seems less out of place. Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 20:48 on Jul 17, 2019 |
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Jul 17, 2019 20:44
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That particular "strain of thought" is considered an outright heresy by Catholic, Orthodox and most Protestant sects because it inherently limits the power of God. It's freaking Dualism and it both makes a lot of sense for folks and is a great way to define and in group and out group so large swathes of American Evangelism and Churches in general have fully accepted that Satan is not only real, out to get you and malevolent but he's also about equal to God. It's really interesting to watch.
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Jul 17, 2019 20:55
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Joe Slowboat posted:There's a strain of thought in some forms of Christianity that either places Satan as a sort of Ahrimanic figure who is the evil counterpart to the benevolent God, or that allows that the Devil/Satan can win some battles and force some metaphysical events. This usually exists in a theological context where, basically, God is extremely legalistic and morality is all about correctly appreciating God and his laws, so if the rules say 'God sends his angels, who can lose to Satan, who managed to purchase an innocent soul' then that's how the world works until the apocalypse, where Satan will be defeated. Or whatever. can't wait until we get to the point where hercules, batman and luke skywalker can team up to take down satan, voldemort and zeus in a contemporary, mass media format and nobody even cares because they're all romantic figures with long cultural traditions. i'm riffing dangerously close to the premise of American Gods but gently caress it, that book was good, let's allow Disney to just go whole hog with this poo poo already
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Jul 17, 2019 20:56
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Freaking Crumbum posted:can't wait until we get to the point where hercules, batman and luke skywalker can team up to take down satan, voldemort and zeus in a contemporary, mass media format and nobody even cares because they're all romantic figures with long cultural traditions. Man, I wish we could get that. But copyright law is a bastard
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Jul 17, 2019 20:57
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Urban Fantasy games that try to acknowledge the existence of Christian Cosmology as it's considered now with pagan deities end up in a very awkward place as they're trying shove in the post-renaissance concept of 'There is literally only one god' Deity into a pantheistic trappings.
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Jul 17, 2019 20:57
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Josef bugman posted:That particular "strain of thought" is considered an outright heresy by Catholic, Orthodox and most Protestant sects because it inherently limits the power of God. My impression is that it's often couched in language that implies 'oh well Satan is running around doing his thing NOW but come the end times he'll get his because God is stronger' - which is presumably meant to be less dualistic, but also, is literally the apocalypse in Zoroastrianism, a famously dualist religion in that respect. e: Yeah, I mean, people are going to create mashups that don't really make sense in the original context because they find the characters compelling, and that extends to religious art too. A lot of religious development in various times and places has involved 'we find this figure compelling and believable, let's introduce them into our theology too.' Or more elaborate variations on the same. Herakles got effectively turned into Buddha's bodyguard in Indian statuary due to Grecian plastic arts being influential in the right time and place, and eventually ended up a guardian deity, Vajrapani. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Buddhism#Hellenized_Buddhist_pantheon Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 21:07 on Jul 17, 2019 |
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Jul 17, 2019 21:00
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Robindaybird posted:Urban Fantasy games that try to acknowledge the existence of Christian Cosmology as it's considered now with pagan deities end up in a very awkward place as they're trying shove in the post-renaissance concept of 'There is literally only one god' Deity into a pantheistic trappings. jRPGs have solved this problem pretty elegantly for years - the christian God is always the actual most evil entity in the universe and either destroying God or usurping God's powers is your primary motivation
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Jul 17, 2019 21:18
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Freaking Crumbum posted:jRPGs have solved this problem pretty elegantly for years - the christian God is always the actual most evil entity in the universe and either destroying God or usurping God's powers is your primary motivation Rand Brittain posted:We also know that the primary inspirations are We Know the Devil and Count of Monte Cristo.
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Jul 17, 2019 21:25
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Freaking Crumbum posted:
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Jul 17, 2019 21:27
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Freaking Crumbum posted:Go Nagi solved this problem pretty elegantly for years - the christian God is always the actual most evil entity in the universe and either destroying God or usurping God's powers is your primary motivation
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Jul 17, 2019 21:38
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Mors Rattus posted:Have we mentioned how utterly ridiculous 'Pikadon' is as a name, and how nonsensical it is even if you buy into the idea that this is somehow appropriate Japanese onomatopoeia - which it isn't, if you used this word in Japan you'd get people wondering what the hell you were going on about.
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Jul 17, 2019 21:42
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Zereth posted:They really should have had the angel as not "weird force floating around in the background", but "Shadowy Federal agent here to try and make a bust poo poo and hoping the PCs will help" This sounds way cooler, and a Hell-Vegas with angels as Feds and demon mafia run by Satan seems like it could be a much more robust setting and story.
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Jul 17, 2019 21:52
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hyphz posted:I don't know. The book only says that "at least one player will probably make a Pokemon joke and then one of them will Google it", and the Japanese psychopoeia is what I found when I googled it. I didn't know about the Hebrew word, but I'm not sure that's appropriate either. The Japanese thing is a reference to a single animated short from the 70s. It's like expecting Americans to not look at you funny for slipping a reference to Ralph Bakshi's Coonskin and expecting everyone to get it.
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Jul 17, 2019 21:54
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Joe Slowboat posted:This sounds way cooler, and a Hell-Vegas with angels as Feds and demon mafia run by Satan seems like it could be a much more robust setting and story. Yea, but I guess they had to hide the daftness of the Pikadon getting help from the people responsible for the damnation of the innocent..
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Jul 17, 2019 21:59
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Zereth posted:They really should have had the angel as not "weird force floating around in the background", but "Shadowy Federal agent here to try and make a bust poo poo and hoping the PCs will help" Actual Literal Elliot Ness.
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Jul 17, 2019 22:17
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hyphz posted:Yea, but I guess they had to hide the daftness of the Pikadon getting help from the people responsible for the damnation of the innocent.. Ratoslov posted:Actual Literal Elliot Ness. 
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Jul 17, 2019 22:20
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Hello everyone. I just recently completed a Let's Read of Nyambe: African Adventures here in this very forum. But it was not the only product of its kind that I reviewed. Last year I reviewed Southlands, and I first reviewed Spears of the Dawn nearly half a decade before that. When rereading Nyambe I could see how this book's elements went on to influence the other two, in addition to the existing myth and folklore of the inspired continent. Review Link. General Pitch: A Dungeons & Dragons continent modeled off of medieval African kingdoms with a healthy dose of Yoruba and Vodoun theology. System: 3rd Edition D&D Strengths: Has a novel religion and blends it well with the setting and mechanics, a neat alternate feat-based Rogue class, lots of new player-facing material, showcases alternative equipment common to the region Weaknesses: Lacks an overarching foe of the other titles, has a "big-picture" focus on the setting which provides scant detail on the nitty-gritty, is relatively light on traditional "dungeons," 3.0 system has not aged well Closest Video Game Equivalent: That old-school RPG which was novel and set precedent for future games of its ilk, but is clearly dated in the game mechanics department.  Review Link. General Pitch: A high magic blend of Medieval Africa, Ancient Egypt, and Arabian Nights. System: Pathfinder 1e & 5th Edition D&D (supplementary conversions) Strengths: Uses the most popular tabletop systems on the market, has a great level of detail for countries and cities alike, a distinct high fantasy flair makes you feel like you're playing in a mythical setting Weaknesses: Some elements, such as the Mharoti Empire's invasion, require the main Midgard sourcebook to understand. Is Pathfinder by default, so will need to buy the 5e conversion supplements and bestiaries to convert the mechanics. Closest Video Game Equivalent: Early Final Fantasy or any JRPG with "collect the magic stone" MacGuffins  Review Link. General Pitch: Fantasy Africa Monster Hunters fighting remnants of an undead kingdom and other threats. System: Customized OSR/Stars Without Number hack Strengths: Mechanics and setting were built from the ground up in a complementary fashion rather than one being bolted onto the other. Fighters get unique moves and talents unlike other OSR martials, there's a lot of material to ease the burden of sandbox GMing. A lot of the rules are minimalist and easy to reference. Weaknesses: Although more intuitive than Thac0, the AC system is a bit novel for unfamiliar players. The Kingdom conflict mini-game is more complicated than it's worth and certain narrative options it creates don't make sense. Closest Video Game Equivalent: Dragon Age Origins & the Witcher (thematically), Elder Scrolls (open world emphasis) Each of these RPGs provide something different in both themes and mechanics. Spears' and Nyambe's Ancient Egyptian analogues are long-dead civilizations, but in Southlands they're thriving. Spears of the Dawn is perhaps the most down to Earth and 'gritty' given that the OSR system is bereft of the power-scaling of 3.X/Pathfinder and to a lesser extent 5th Edition. I've also noticed some similarities among the three. All of them have a powerful rainforest kingdom, all of them authoritarian. Nyambe's is not exactly run by evil people (barring one adventure hook), whereas Southlands and Spears put them in the role of tyrannical magocracy. The association of spiritual possession and masks shows up in Nyambe and Spears of the Dawn as their own classification of magic items. All three have plains-dwelling warrior societies, each based upon a different culture. Nyambe's Shombe derive inspiration from the Masaai, Southlands' Narumbeki the Zulu, and the Kirsi the Songhai Empire (famed for their cavalry). The three settings also have regions or areas with unequal gender rules, in some cases explicit and others implied, although adventurers have the good fortune to break free of their society's expectations. Finally, Southlands' and Nyambe's continents have regular contact and trade with the rest of the world, both mostly from Fantasy counterpart Middle Eastern and Chinese/Japanese cultures. Spears of the Dawn's setting is surrounded by mountains and an ocean to the west, effectively isolating it. Other D&D Africa Settings: Here are ones I found but have not reviewed. With the exception of Scarlet Brotherhood (which I have not read) I cannot recommend them as much on account that they do not match the breadth and respectfulness of the above three. Svimohzia breaks off from the "Darkest Africa" trope and details a setting not unlike the ones I reviewed, but it has so much problematic material that its bad points weigh down the rest of the setting. Paizo does have plans to rectify their past mistakes, according to a blog post. Svimohzia: the Ancient Isle: Kingdoms of Kalamar's regional sourcebook for their Counterpart Sub-Saharan African kingdoms Tomb of Annihilation: This 5th Edition megaventure details the environs of Chult, Faerun's "Darkest Africa" region. The Scarlet Brotherhood: A 2nd Edition sourcebook, one of this book's chapters goes into detail on Hepmonaland, a hybrid South America/Africa continent of the Greyhawk setting. Pathfinder: Heart of the Jungle: A Pathfinder RPG sourcebook detailing Golarion's "Darkest Africa" region. Libertad! fucked around with this message at 22:59 on Jul 17, 2019 |
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Jul 17, 2019 22:32
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Whoops... for the record, I haven't abandoned the Deities & Demigods review; I've just been very busy with work lately and I guess lost track of time and didn't realize how long it had been since my last post. Next Deities & Demigods post should be up later tonight; in the meantime there are just a few posts since my last visit here that I wanted to comment on: Is that an actual scan from the book? Does it really say "Equiment" in huge block letters? Because if so, that seems like kind of a major oversight by the copy editor. Libertad! posted:We get a comprehensive one-page spread of Nyamban poisons which sadly are mostly copy-pasted from the Dungeon Master’s Guide but include a few new ones: aboleth mucus grants you the ability to breath underwater at the expense of suffocating in air; carrion crawler brain juice can paralyze you for 2d6 minutes, while jellyfish sting extract dazes you for 1 round initially and can stun you for 2d6 rounds as a secondary effect; poison frog secretions deal 1d6 Constitution on initial and secondary damage and 1 to 2 points of said damage can be a permanent drain; raw sewage of all things is a new poison which can nauseate you for 24 hours, and spoiled food for 1d10 hours; spitting cobra venom and spotted toadstools have a chance of blinding or deafening the victim respectively, said affliction becoming permanent on a secondary failed save. For the record, carrion crawler brain juice isn't new; that's one of the standard poisons from the DMG. Mors Rattus posted:She is daughter of the Silent Regent, and that comes with baggage. She is bound to the city itself by ancient pact, and she alone can hear its words. She alone may access her mother’s mazes and command her cryptic servants. Wait... mazes? The Silent Regent had mazes? Is there any further description of these, and if so, just how close are they conceptually to the mazes of the Lady of Pain in Planescape? I mean, yes, of course it's been obvious all along that Sig was heavily Planescape-inspired, but this hews a little closer than I was expecting. (Though maybe I shouldn't be surprised.) Night10194 posted:Surprising players by just running roughshod and making all the decisions as the Auteur GM is just going to piss everyone off; you'll be upset if and when they start pushing against your Grand Deep Narrative and they'll be pissed off about being dragged through someone else's failed novel pitch. Oh heck yes. This describes a GM I used to play with to a T; he planned out in detail exactly what he intended to occur in his campaigns, and had no intention of letting the players deviate from his predetermined plots. To his credit, he did plan out the plots around the PCs, and at first it wasn't obvious what he was doing because they involved things the PCs would want to do anyway, but he got progressively less subtle about his railroading as time went on. (I recall in one Mutants & Masterminds game he asked me at one point whether I'd be interested in having my character pick up some magical spellcasting powers. I told him I wasn't; it really didn't fit my character concept, and I'd rather invest the power points into further developing my character's existing powers (which were centered around shapeshifting). But apparently his plot mandated that my character get spellcasting powers, because he soon after introduced into the campaign a spellbook that would grant powers to anyone who read it (at the cost of possible insanity), and proceeded to try to badger my character, and only my character, into reading the book. Why did he even bother to ask if I was interested in the first place, if he wasn't going to take no for an answer? Oh well.) But yes, I'm totally with you on this; not only as a player do I not like having my freedom of action arbitrarily limited just because the GM's already decided what's going to happen, but as a GM much of the fun for me is seeing what the players do, and how they shape the campaign. ETA: Mors Rattus posted:The Japanese thing is a reference to a single animated short from the 70s. I don't speak Japanese (it's one of several languages I'm learning with Duolingo, but I'm still very much at beginner level with it), but a Google search suggests that's not the case: I know Google searches are customized to individuals' search history, so this may not be true for everyone, but most of the links on the first page of the search for me reference it as a Japanese term related to the atomic bomb and make no mention of the animated short. (This, for example, is the first page my Google search shows; no mention of the short.) In fact, it seems the term goes at least as far back as 1945, when it was discussed in a book called Hiroshima Diary by Michihiko Hachiya, a doctor who survived the Hiroshima bombing. It was also used for the title of a photobook about the Hiroshima blast in 1961. So while you may be right that it's not a widespread term in Japan—I wouldn't know—it clearly didn't originate with the 1978 animated short. Jerik fucked around with this message at 22:53 on Jul 17, 2019 |
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Jul 17, 2019 22:33
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Jerik posted:Whoops... for the record, I haven't abandoned the Deities & Demigods review; I've just been very busy with work lately and I guess lost track of time and didn't realize how long it had been since my last post. Next Deities & Demigods post should be up later tonight; in the meantime there are just a few posts since my last visit here that I wanted to comment on: Yes, it's from the book. I clip the artwork using MSPaint and upload it to Imgur. Regarding Brain Juice, I haven't read the DMG in like forever, and its poison list is huge, so it likely escaped my notice.
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Jul 17, 2019 22:54
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Nessus posted:This was actually way less widespread than often claimed, it's kind of funny. i will admit that Nocturne and DDS have been permanently burned into my brain from sheer awesomeness. i don't even know why they make other jRPG settings if they don't revolve around allowing you to punch God in the face
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Jul 17, 2019 23:03
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Freaking Crumbum posted:i will admit that Nocturne and DDS have been permanently burned into my brain from sheer awesomeness. i don't even know why they make other jRPG settings if they don't revolve around allowing you to punch God in the face  Nah I mean, it's there, but in the Playstation-era console RPGs I think it's present in like two? And in neither of them is it unambiguously "Yes, you are fighting the Literal Creator God, your daddy, who you will now righteously kill."
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Jul 17, 2019 23:07
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Libertad! posted:Yes, it's from the book. I clip the artwork using MSPaint and upload it to Imgur. I figured that was the case; it didn't seem likely you were making those images yourself. Just seems odd that the book's copy editor missed such a glaring typo in a chapter title. Huh. quote:Regarding Brain Juice, I haven't read the DMG in like forever, and its poison list is huge, so it likely escaped my notice. Yeah, that's completely understandable, of course; I only looked it up because for some reason it sounded familiar (I'm not sure why; I never made much use of poisons back when I played 3E, but I guess carrion crawler brain juice had stuck in my mind for some reason).
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Jul 17, 2019 23:09
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Jerik posted:Wait... mazes? The Silent Regent had mazes? Is there any further description of these, and if so, just how close are they conceptually to the mazes of the Lady of Pain in Planescape? I mean, yes, of course it's been obvious all along that Sig was heavily Planescape-inspired, but this hews a little closer than I was expecting. (Though maybe I shouldn't be surprised.) There is no further reference. The entire writeup of Ramella takes up literally a page.
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Jul 17, 2019 23:27
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Japan released what may be the most Japan TRPG ever. http://r-r.arclight.co.jp/rpg/skdc It's called Divine Charger, and it's the Gacha TRPG. You play as warriors chosen by the gods in a fantasy world, fighting against evil. Only these gods are stingy, so in order to get the holy weapons to fight the evil folks your character has to pay money to them to take a spin on the Holy Weapon Gacha. Your character has a cool skill with knives? Too bad, you rolled an axe. Better spin again. What's that? Out of money? Well you could go into debt to pull again, but if you don't manage to pay the debt back with dungeon treasure by the end of the session you start the next session with curses on your character. Yes, that's a real system from the game. I'm going to Japan soon and I'll be going to a monthly TRPG club while I'm over there. They seem to have at least one table running this each month so I'm definitely going to try it out. And buy it. It sounds fun as hell.
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Jul 18, 2019 00:17
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Mors Rattus posted:The Japanese thing is a reference to a single animated short from the 70s. Oh god, it's this, isn't it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEOZ1sBppWs That's like naming an RPG character after a reference to When The Wind Blows.
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Jul 18, 2019 00:37
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So I've been reading Kurieg's F&F of Beast: the Primordial. Yes I know that I'm late to the game but I'm 6 chapters in. And I have to ask, is this game meant to be played like a tabletop Postal 2? Or the World of Darkness' murderhobo equivalent? Because you're not really part of any higher supernatural order to give you protection and Masquerade social constraints, nor do you have to worry about a supernatural "morality score" equivalent of any sort as far as I can tell. The driving crux of the game seems to involve going around using your powers on innocent bystanders to see what happens, and you can sometimes summon cops-I mean Heroes who will try to kill you for that. As someone who played Postal 2, the novelty wears off rather quickly. Libertad! fucked around with this message at 02:39 on Jul 18, 2019 |
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Jul 18, 2019 02:33
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