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PurpleXVI posted:2nd ed AD&D was generally pretty short on caster supremacy. Though I'd say settings with little of it, possibly even less of it, would be Birthright or Dark Sun. The former because mages are really rare and the latter because casting spells in puiblic gets you hunted down by a mob.
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Oct 14, 2017 05:56
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Space fighters could totally fit into a D&D-in-space reskin. Hell, could just have space combat be a reskin of regular grid-based combat, with all the space fighters having weapons and abilities that happen to match their pilots. Alternatively; Gundams. poo poo, I think I just invented a better setting than Starfinger already.
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Oct 14, 2017 06:10
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D&D 3e had caster supremacy precisely because they lifted a lot of the AD&D-era limitations on spellcasters (and also because a lot of the mechanical changes then ate away at all of the natural advantages that martials had)
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Oct 14, 2017 06:12
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They also took away a lot of the ancillary benefits other classes accrued, like keeps and followers. It’s a lot easier for the fighter to keep up with the wizard in terms of narrative agency when they literally have an army at their back.
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Oct 14, 2017 06:33
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The saving throws rework was also huge. In 2e AD&D, saving throws naturally became better as you levelled up, but outside one or two spells, wizards had nothing to worsen a target's saving throws. Which meant that high-level enemies(or PC's) were almost always guaranteed to make their saves, making them relatively impregnable to save-or-die/save-or-suck attacks, and forcing any direct target options there to rely primarily on damage(and otherwise in creative spell applications to terrain and surroundings). Once you moved to 3e, however, while saving throws grew consistently, now they were pitted against a caster power DC of some sort, and casters had a lot of ways to make sure they outstripped saving throw growth for both PC's and NPC's. Magic Resistance, which a lot of iconic enemies like Mind Flayers and Drow had, was also the bane of casters, since it was a straight % chance to shrug off a directly targeted spell, unlike 3.x's somewhat forgettable Spell Resistance. Which meant that against certain enemies, Mages were relegated to summons, buff spells and battlefield management, and couldn't just Power Word: Kill enemies. Aside from that you had attack speed and interrupts, a lot of powerful spells were also relatively slow spells almost guaranteed to let an enemy in ranged or melee combat get an attack in first unless they were wielding a big two-hander. And even 1 point of damage before a spell went off would make it completely poof and be disrupted, a total waste of a cast. Mages really NEEDED either magical defenses or their friendly meatshields, in some fashion, to be truly dangerous. 2e also lacked Sorcerers, which meant that mages were always at the mercy of having memorized the right spells for the day/situation.
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Oct 14, 2017 06:50
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PurpleXVI posted:
Given that in 3.X the Wizard is significantly stronger than the Sorcerer this isn't as much of a limitation as you'd think.
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Oct 14, 2017 07:09
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Sorcerers have a narrower scope since their toolset has less in it, even if they’re a little more flexible. Not many sorcs are going to take Water Breathing, tongues and other single issue spells when they have to pick between those and Haste, but a wizard can easily swap those in when he hears about the mermaid merchant nearby.
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Oct 14, 2017 11:21
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 Starfinger Core Rules Part #17: "We want magic to augment what your character does, we don't want your character to only be able to do magic." (Credit: Amanda Hamon Kunz, Starfinger Design Team Member, GenCon Q&A Transcript)  Above: can you spot the magic? Because I can't. Because you may travel light years across the galaxy, but you can't escape slot-and-level casting. To be fair, Starfinger curbs the power of spellcasters somewhat, limiting them to spells of levels zero through six. On the other hand, another limitation of spellcasters is hacked away with in the form of variable-level spells. A curbed spellcaster is still very much a spellcaster. Variable-level spells are spells that can be cast at different levels. So instead of learning cure light wounds, cure moderate wounds, cure that wound in your heart from when your love left you, etc., you learn just mystic cure and choose what level you cast when you cast it. However, the weird and clunky catch is that the maximum level you can cast it is the level you learn it at. So if you learn mystic cure as a 3rd-level spell, you can cast it as 1st, 2nd, or 3rd level, but never 4th, 5th, or 6th unless you relearn it again later, at which point you get the earlier spell refunded and you can learn another spell of the same level in its place. However, there are no more Concentration checks, no more Defensive Casting rolls as in Pathfinder. If you cast a spell in melee, you trigger an Attack of Opportunity. If you take damage, the spell is lost. In addition, if conditions arbitrarily cause you to lose concentration, like getting blasted into vacuum, you can't cast spells. This is also an issue for spells that take 1 round or longer. Combat Casting still exists as a feat, but it only grants +2 to AC against attacks of opportunity and Reflex saves triggered while spellcasting. In a momentary Murphy's Rule, getting set on fire will break your concentration. Being on fire will not. You can still cast all the spells you want while you're on fire once you've gotten over the initial shock.. Otherwise, spellcasting matches its d20 counterparts for the most part. There are only two types of spells currently: Mystic and Technomancer. Mystic spells are the equivalent of Cleric with a slight bit more of a psychic theme, and Technomancers are Wizards with a notable technological theme. And for those that might worry that spellcasters have been cut down too much... ... don't worry about that.  Mystic Spells Mystic 1
 Mystic / Technomancer Spells Mystic / Technomancer 2
 Technomancer Spells Technomancer 1
 And lastly, let's go over Mystic Cure, the replacement for Cure [whatever] wound. I'm just going to quote directly from the most powerful Pathfinder single-target Cure spell, first- Pathfinder SRD posted:CURE CRITICAL WOUNDS And here's the Starfinger equivalent: Starfinger SRD posted:MYSTIC CURE M1–6 A slight upgrade.  Granted, it could be working overtime to try and make up for the loss of the ridiculous heal spell. And because we couldn't leave wish behind, Mystics get miracle at 20th level once a week while Technomancers at 20th level can use two 6th-level slots and 2 RP to cast wish... well, as long as they have those two resources. While 20th level effects may as well not exist for most campaigns, it's at least noting that even in Starfinger, they still have to have "do nearly any damned thing" as a top-level power. There's, of course, a litany of spells I didn't cover because they're just stuff you've mostly seen before, damage dealers with new themes, modest utility spells, etc. I tried to keep it short for the sake of our sanity, though it's a relatively brief spell list - about half that of Pathfinder's. Though Starfinger works hard to cut down the power level of spellcasters, they still remain very strong because they still have niches so vague as to step all over many of the other classes, even with the designers obviously eyeing that sort of thing more closely than before. After all, they clearly cut out bless and similar broad-boosting effects that would impinge on an Envoy's support abilities... and then left in every end-run around the social mechanics. So it goes. Next: But are tabletop campaigns eligible for a Hugo? Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 21:19 on Oct 14, 2017 |
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Oct 14, 2017 11:30
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Inescapable Duck posted:Space fighters could totally fit into a D&D-in-space reskin. Hell, could just have space combat be a reskin of regular grid-based combat, with all the space fighters having weapons and abilities that happen to match their pilots. I once saw a 3.5E in space hack that used the players' ship as effectively a character itself, with the six player stats replaced by Weapons, Hull, Shields, Engines, Computers, and Sensors, and the main function of the PCs was to lend the ship its skills and feats.
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Oct 14, 2017 12:58
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I don't know if I'm down with even implying AD&D was a good game but Spelljammer at least had a much clearer focus and concept.
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Oct 14, 2017 13:04
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Cythereal posted:I once saw a 3.5E in space hack that used the players' ship as effectively a character itself, with the six player stats replaced by Weapons, Hull, Shields, Engines, Computers, and Sensors, and the main function of the PCs was to lend the ship its skills and feats. I've played Super Robot Wars 4e. It's pretty fun.
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Oct 14, 2017 15:10
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Alien Rope Burn posted:
Okay, so. It's a bit late, and a petty gripe but... most of the Starfinder art has been pretty inoffensive. Technically competent, but communicating nothing that really catches me at all. But a lot of this spacefighter art just bugs me. In particular this one. And it's those lazy-rear end "energy bolts" everyone's loving firing. Because it reminds me of poo poo you'd doodle as a 12-year-old in the margin of a schoolbook. Where everything is firing a little broken line of pew-pew-pews at everything else.
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Oct 14, 2017 17:09
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Warhammer Fantasy: Realm of the Ice Queen This city is goddamn huge I'm going to be paring back a little on detail and describing places in clumps, as unlike Erengrad Kislev and Praag don't have quite as many fun plot hooks in each individual special place. Also I want to get to the rad witches sooner rather than later. Gereyov Square houses the finest temples (including the ones I just described) and sits at the very heart of Kislev. It's also bordered by the actual Bohka Palaces, and thus it is one of the most popular public squares in the land. Government officials, commoners, wealthy merchants, and priests all meet in this wide open space, surrounded by beautiful onion domes and fine architecture, to hear the Tsarina's men proclaim the news of the day and gossip with one another. The great Bohka Palaces contain all of the records of state and a veritable army of clerks, judges, and learned folk to tend them, as the Tsarina (and the Tsars before her) struggle to keep track of all the happenings of their vast lands. The palace also has an entire wing made out of shimmering ice, carved in a single night by the Tsarina's magic when she ascended to the throne; here she keeps her court, surrounded by glittering diamond and sapphire. Nearby are her gardens, also constructed of unmelting ice; they are a perfect replica of all kinds of flowers, plants, and trees. Among them are sculptures of birds and animals, rendered in beautiful detail as if frozen in mid action. The Tsarina often adds to her garden, putting up new sculptures and carving new projects, and the magic of the place is such that among the Winter Garden it is always midnight and it is always cold, no matter the time of day or year. Artificial moonlight from a projected image of Mannslieb (the non-crazy moon) bathes the gardens at all times, a bright spot in the cold and dark all around. The Tsarina's knights enforce a policy of quiet in this cold place, even on the days when the public are permitted to walk its frozen hedges. Near the gardens, she has also built a great fountain that sprays magical shards of crystal, designed to refract light and make music from the shattering of the shards. I like these because it's nice to suggest that Katarin has an actual hobby. Too often you get all sorts of descriptions of these great lords and heroes, but never the things they enjoy, and the Gardens and Hanging Fountain show an artistic side to the Ice Queen. Near Gereyov square, you can also find a temple of Ulric, which is just baffling, as the book notes it replaced a temple of Ursun and that there's some trouble about this. Kislev is the principle city of the principle followers of Ursun. I do not understand how they had a foreign god (who Ursun's cult is fairly friendly with) come in and replace the temple of a very important local God, who was extremely significant to their last Tsar (Boris was Tsar *and* High Priest of Ursun) such that there is no actual sacred bear-park anywhere in Kislev. This makes no sense. They even mention that the bear-priests refuse to construct any shrines because of the shrine of Ulric and that the more fanatical among them think of Kislev city as a blasphemous and unholy place, defiled by Ulric. If that was the case, I don't see why Boris Bohka didn't just burn the stupid place to the ground and replace it with a nifty bear cave. Near the temple of Ulric is the Imperial Embassy, which may explain the Temple of Ulric, but does not quite explain it replacing the temples of Ursun so thoroughly. There is surprisingly little to note about the Embassy, considering the close ties between the Empire and Kislev. The Koztowny District also contains the Summer Gardens, which are completely opposite the Winter Gardens despite also being maintained by the Ice Witches. The Summer Gardens are magically shielded from cold, and it is bright and beautiful there all the time. The common folk are never allowed in, with rough mercenaries in fancy uniforms ensuring that only Boyars and those who can pay outrageous bribes are permitted to walk the pleasant fields and hedges. The Lubjanko, up against the east wall, was formerly intended to be a hospital for wounded soldiers. It was constructed on orders of Tsar Alexis shortly after the great war of 2302, with a promise that it would house the finest treatment any soldier could hope for in all of the Old World. For a time, it managed. But funding fell as the city and Kislev focused on rebuilding the country from the scars of war, and Lubjanko became a forgotten place. A place to dump the sick, the mad, the traumatized, and the crippled. Those who cannot be saved are placed in the Lubjanko, left to cry in darkness and pray to the Gods for salvation in their confinement. Only those who need to do dark things would get near this place at night, and even they fear the misery of this place. Keeping to misery and death, there is a grey, featureless, windowless building behind a wrought iron gate, with only a single black door. This is the headquarters of the Cheka. Those who are brought through its gates are said to 'disappear', as you are unlikely to see them hale and whole again even if they walk out. The Chekists officially prosecute traitors, enemies of the state, and worshipers of the Dark Gods, but their black nets catch many innocents. They are universally feared throughout Kislev, and their tendrils reach into other lands, as well; they must know of any threats to the Tsarina, and a foreign land could certainly pose a threat, da? Fabor's gets a description because of its fabulous mechanical eggs. Of course they'd have delicate mechanical eggs of great artistry in fantasy Russia. The lifelike toys and automatons constructed by the great master engineer Murtok Fabor confound Imperial engineers, some going so far as to say he must be a Gold Wizard or similar sorcerer to achieve such construction. This would naturally be a great scandal if it was anything but the wounded pride of foreigners; men do not do magic in Kislev unless they are priests. Madame Katya's Quilted Palm is a bordello, but it is one of the most popular in the city. The recent overthrow of one of Kislev's largest crime bosses, Vasilly Chekatilo, has left the city's bordellos without a slave-driving crime lord snapping at their heels, which has only been good for business. This place is notable for Madame Katya, who is known for paying her workers on time and for taking good care of her staff. The rumor is that she is a fallen priestess of Shallya, which would certainly explain her attitude towards the people who work for her and her desire to keep her people healthy and safe. It forms a duo of businesses near the docks with the World's Edge, a tavern that caters to those about to leave on grand adventures to Praag or east into the Darklands. At the World's Edge, no music plays, and the atmosphere is subdued. Even the drunk are maudlin about their chances of returning alive from the other side of the world and its many dangers. This is another tavern where your PCs might meet, before a great journey to the north or east. There are, of course, many more shops and theaters and places that I am omitting for the sake of finishing up the city, but I'll also confess that Kislev is more forgettable than Erengrad or Praag. It's a neat place, and I like the emphasis on the sheer number of educated people necessary to properly run an aspirationally absolutist monarchy. I like the sense of art and culture to the city. But without a hook like Erengard's energetic (and ridiculous, in the best way) rebuilding or Praag's coping with scars and horror, it's a little harder to set adventures in Kislev itself. Next: Kislevite Characters, Kislevite Careers: At last, you can play a winged hussar.
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Oct 14, 2017 18:26
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This picture reminds me of a gaming story: a party is fighting a dragon that's attacking a city, and the fighter describes this great sequence where he climbs buildings and throws a harpoon at it before jumping on to it to try and pull it down. He fails, because this required a bunch of ad-hoc rolls. The wizard is already flying, so he zips up and casts disintigrate.
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Oct 14, 2017 19:45
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The core problem with magic in D20 has always been that everyone else has to ask to do something and then be given the odds. The spellcaster simply tells everyone what's happening, sets the odds for their target and says 'Deal with it.'
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Oct 14, 2017 20:37
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In D20 Fighters and such are using AD&D, Magic is Apocalypse world. Martial characters have to play GM May I? while Wizards just tell ya how it is.
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Oct 14, 2017 21:18
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For me one of the really weird parts is all the mentions of conjuring nanotech. Nanotech is already pretty much an excuse for nonsense magical reasoning in a lot of (dodgy) sci-fi, so it's like magic on top of magic. Of course, it's mostly just trying to add a science veneer on things like conjuring a cloud of acid... but lightning? You just shoot lightning, sure. It's odd and not at all consistent thematically.
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Oct 14, 2017 21:24
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 Chapter 4: Divine Magic - Shamanism and Vodun FX  If it seems like Shamanism and Vodun were tacked on as an afterthought and treated like vestigial appendages, it's because that's exactly how Dark*Matter implements them. They're functional spell schools, but they've got a few extra hurdles that get in the way of casting their spells. Shamanism - Rather than spending an FX point and making a skill check to cast a spell, a Shaman must perform a ritualistic trance ceremony with a difficulty threshold relative to the power of the spell being cast. If they fail then they lose the spell and their FX point, and if they Critically fail then their spirit gets lost in the astral Hunting Grounds and must be rescued! Take on-going Fatigue damage while your meat body lies in a persistent vegetative state, and hope that you aren't the only member of your squad that can access the astral realm or else this is a death sentence. This is going to happen at least 5% of the time because Dark*Matter counts a natural 20 roll as a critical failure, and most of your Shaman spells require multiple trance rolls before being cast. Vodun - Houngans must perform elaborate ceremonies before they cast their spells. Each ceremony is different based on what spell is being cast and which Loa is being sought, and each one includes a pretty significant time component that can't be skipped. To give you an idea of how inconvenient this is, keep in mind how Alternity breaks down time - 1 minute of time is 5 Rounds and each Round is broken into 4 Phases. Characters can potentially act in all 4 Phases of each Round, meaning a Houngan casting a spell that requires a 1 minute ceremony is giving up 20 potential actions. Keep in mind, that's the shortest ceremony that can be performed, and most Vodun spells require much, much longer ceremonies. It's pretty obvious that Houngan are meant to cast their spells ritually and not in the heat of battle, but the time component requirement of each spell makes me wonder if the designers were aware of how the Alternity system actually integrates time with action rounds. BUT WAIT! Not only does the Houngan have to invest a non-trivial amount of time in the spellcasting ceremony, if the Houngan gets a critical failure on their spellcasting roll, they manage to piss off the Loa they were summoning and instead it decides to haunt them and cause them grief, unless they can appease it with a persuasion skill or by making a Vow (just like Enochians!) to do something that would please the Loa. HOWEVER, if they also manage to fail the persuasion roll, or the Loa doesn't think their Vow is very good, the Loa completely possesses the Houngan and gets to do whatever it wants with the Houngan's body for a very long time - 20 Days minus the Houngan's Personality score, and remember that in Alternity the human maximum for all ability scores is 14. At absolute best the Houngan is getting possessed for nearly a week, and likely much longer. A final insult to injury - if the Houngan critically fails their spellcasting roll, then critically fails their persuasion roll to avoid possession, the Loa gets to posses them for 40 days minus the Houngan's Personality score! Nothing like completely losing control of your character for a month of game-time because you had the temerity to try and use one of your iconic class abilities. It bears repeating, possession of your Houngan is going to happen at least 5% of the time, because of Dark*Matter's critical failure rules, with a non-trivial chance of losing your hero for months at a time as well! So with all that being said, the effects that these spells can create must be incredibly powerful, right?  Shaman powers go! Willpower: Shamanism - Dream Walking is Clairvoyance and Clairaudience wrapped into one package. Willpower: Shamanism - Guide My Hand gives the Shaman a -2 bonus to one combat specialty skill for one hour. This isn't actually terrible, although casting it always carries the risk that your Shaman might end up in a coma. Willpower: Shamanism - Hunter's Stare is likely the best Shaman spell. It requires no trance and allows the Shaman to make a contested check versus Willpower against another target within 3 meters and if the Shaman is successful, the target loses their next 1/2/3 actions. 1/2/3 cheers for action denial! Willpower: Shamanism - Spirit of the Beast gives the Shaman 4 ranks in a specialty skill (and the associated broad skill if the Shaman doesn't have it) that is related to some kind of animal. For example, the Shaman could invoke Wolf and get 4 ranks in Willpower: Investigate - Track for 1 hour. It doesn't say whether these bonus points stack with skill ranks the Shaman already has or if they just replace them, so the practical value of this spell is going to vary depending on how your GM interprets the spell's effects. Willpower: Shamanism - Venom Spirit lets the Shaman eat some poison and then cast the debilitating effects of the poison into another person. The Shaman actually has to succeed at a Constitution check with a -2 bonus vs whatever poison they ingest and if they fail then they lose the spell and suffer the effects of said poison! Probably not ever worth the hassle. Personality: Shamanism - Animal Voice gives the Shaman the ability to speak with animals. The book straight up says that animals don't perceive the world like humans do and that things like numbers and colors are meaningless concepts to them. I guess if you need vague advice about whether or not the dog that crapped on your lawn was also in heat, you could use this spell to ask your dog and find out. Personality: Shamanism - Ghost Dance gives everyone that participates in the ritual a pretty decent deflection bonus versus melee and ranged damage. The spell lasts for an hour which makes it a pretty potent pre-combat buff, but if the Shaman leading the spell fails their spellcasting check, everyone involved instead takes a point of fatigue damage. I guess you only get tired from dancing if the head Shaman fumbles their mojo? Personality: Shamanism - Trance Visions is "Mother, May I?" for Shamen. I seriously have no idea why almost every spellcasting class has one of these powers, except that they must fit into each school in a vaguely thematic way. I still don't believe that any of them all executed well enough to justify their inclusion, but nobody designing the game asked me what I thought 20 years ago, so whatever. And now onto the Voudon Spells! Willpower: Voudon - Erzuli's Fetish creates a voodoo doll and allows the Houngan to give the afflicted target penalties to all their actions. Except, when the spell is first cast the target gets to make a Willpower: Resolve - Physical check to resist the effects, and if they get an Amazing success on this roll then they can't be affected by that Houngan's voodoo dolls ever again. Pretty great risk to take, on top of potentially having your Houngan possessed for upwards of a week. Willpower: Voudon - Gris Gris creates good or bad luck charms that the Houngan can give to friends or trick enemies into accepting. Nothing especially remarkable. Willpower: Voudon - Helpful Possession allows the Houngan to choose a Loa associated with any specialty skill and summon that Loa into their, or another participant's, body for 24 hours. The Loa doesn't completely take over the target, instead they passively grant a -1/-2/-3 bonus to the specific specialty skill for which they were summoned. You can have more than 1 Loa riding you at a time, but each additional Loa after the first imparts an escalating difficulty penalty to the spellcasting check. Willpower: Voudon - Loa of Healing allows the Houngan to heal another target by trading their Stun (1:1)/Wound (2:1) points for the target's Wound/Mortal points. Also, the Houngan takes fatigue damage at the end of the spell regardless of how much damage was healed. This is strictly worse than Willpower: Monotheism - Cure but I guess having the option is better than nothing. Willpower: Voudon - Negate the Spirit creates Zombis under the Houngan's control. Because an actual Voudon Zombi isn't an undead abomination and is instead just a living person that's been fed a poisonous concoction that makes them extremely suggestible, the Voudon has to provide food and water and etc. for the Zombis. Personality: Voudon - Ayza's Juju is a floating Last Resort point (basically a Hero Point or Action Point or whatever analagous thing other systems have) that the Houngan can use instead of spending one of their actual Last Resort points. This is better than it sounds, because Alternity normally requires players to spend their limited XP to rebuy spent Last Resort points (yeah, it's one of those systems). Personality: Voudon - Legba Rides is "Mother, May I?" for Houngan. Yep, they get one too. We're finally done with all of the Arcane character creation Come back next time for Chapter 5: The Secret History of the World - More Metaplot Than You Can Shake a Stick at That Will Never Be Player Facing Information, Ever, Because Dark*Matter is 90's as gently caress!
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Oct 14, 2017 23:49
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Hell yeah, bring on the stupid 90s metaplot.
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Oct 15, 2017 01:19
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 THE PLAGUE AND THE USA We're gonna skip ahead a little bit to tackle what the true source of the plague is. The plague originally started outside of Denver Colorado because the government had a black-site medical lab where they were conducting bioweapons tests on Al Qaeda prisoners. One of the prisoners breached containment and the entire site locked down as per quarantine protocols and the site went dark. Now, things would've probably turned out differently if not for the fact that a doomsday cult was keeping an eye on the lab and saw the silence as the perfect opportunity to attack. The lab repelled the attackers but the gunfire and open conflict drew the media and that's when the supervisors outside of the lab decided to pull the plug and burn the lab and all of the possibly infected survivors inside. The prisoner who broke containment was being subjected to a weapon that utilized prions, the little bastards that slide into your body and cause proteins to fold improperly. Now, the problem with burning the site to the ground was the fact that (like in real life) it takes extreme heat or extreme radiation to kill prions. Really all they succeeded in doing was creating a smoke that carried the prions and would ultimately result in the weapon going pseudo-airborne worldwide. So in about two weeks everyone who wasn't exposed to high concentrations had some prions in their body and in two more weeks their prions were in full-gear doing work in loving up their bodies. The main reason why so many people died was simply due to autoimmune reactions. The body knew something was wrong and it tore itself to pieces trying to fix it, killing the hosts with fevers and hemorrhaging. By the time doctors worldwide figured out what was wrong...well it was a little too late. People either survived or they didn't. The drugs to help people deal with the autoimmune reactions weren't really needed. So people survived. In fact a lot of children survived, which...baffles me because yes this is a fictional fabrication but I wouldn't really say that a lot of kids have immune systems strong enough to handle a prion infection. But I'm just being pedantic and don't have the knowledge to back that claim up. Anyway. The survivors either came out of it fine or had lingering effects like neurological damage or permanent coughs or other respiratory issues. But then the blindness came. Actually okay there were two other effects to having the prion integrated fully into your body. The first is sterility. The game doesn't really explain exactly how the prion makes people sterile or how successful it is in those regards. It just says most adults are sterile and kids and teens are just ????. Frankly sterility doesn't even have to be a part of this stupid problem. The main reason blindness happens is because there's an Unnamed Molecule that scientists haven't discovered yet which is vital to the functioning of the rods and cones. Without enough of it, a milky white fluid builds up in the eye and results in blindness. The problem isn't that the prion stops the body from making this Unnamed Molecule (henceforth called Eye Bleach) but it's that the prion eats Eye Bleach. In fact the issue is that it eats Eye Bleach faster than the body can produce it, which as most people who understand the biology will tell you is absolute loving nonsense because the eye is a closed, self-contained system. The Vitreous Humor of the eye, for example, is one of the few things your body makes once and then will never make more of.  But this is why children are still able to see: their bodies make Eye Bleach faster than the prion can eat it and as they get older the function slows down and it's a slow decline into blindness. This is also why people eat eyes. Eating eyes means the stomach will absorb the Eye Bleach which will carry the Eye Bleach back to the eye and temporarily restore sight. This is also absolute loving nonsense because the eye is still a contained system and how exactly is the milky fluid problem fixed. But I digress. Everyone is infected. Everyone will eventually go blind and also maybe sterile but the latter is way more of a crapshoot than the others. They say that by the time they reach the age of 16 they're just as sterile as the adults who got exposed to the prion but I say gently caress that and gently caress you. Mankind is already doomed enough with mass blindness and mass extinction, we don't need literal tweens being the only ones capable of bearing the next generation of feral children. Also some of you may reasonably be saying "well hold on a second, there's no such thing as a bioweapon/disease/virus/prion that works 100% of the time". Y'all are correct. There are in fact adults and kids who are out there who are still able to see and basically either shrugged off the prion or integrated it smoothly into their bodies with no problems. Roughly that's one in a million who is immune. The book also says that every single person who is immune to the effects of the prion has "severe chromosomal abnormalities" and all developmentally disabled with a sprinkling of a chance of physical disability. Which just rings as a massive gently caress you to me. I mean, cool, there are people who are out there who are genetic goldmines to figuring out how to neutralize the prion. They are all disabled in some form and the harsh decline of the world doesn't guarantee their survival four years later. It also rings as a gently caress you to people who want to play the game and be like "my character is immune and will never go blind!" like some rear end in a top hat GM is just gonna stroke their lovely neckbeard and be like "well enjoy playing a character with Down Syndrome" as a loving rear end in a top hat GOTCHA! move. So while people were dying, the good ol' government was blaming the plague on The Arabs. It is legit unclear if this is the government trying to cover its own rear end or if it's just irrational post-9/11 paranoia. Either way the government blames the Middle East, bombs them more and the government opens internment for select individuals and Muslims. The bombings, the deaths and the interments all went on for a few weeks before the deaths stopped and people started going blind. That's when the government and the military started kidnapping children en masse, dragging them off to military bases to make child soldiers for the glorious protection of the country from the savage foreign hordes. While this was happening, kids fled their homes, escaped capture or ended up trying to figure out what to do as adults tried to figure out how to handle going blind. Ultimately two months after the blindness started, every adult in America and the world was properly blind. And this lead to the rebellions, the escapes from the military, the beginning of each side enslaving the other and four years of anarchy and collapse.  TYPES OF COMMUNITIES Kid-Only
Kid-ruled towns are the ones most likely to either engage in slavery or at the very least put adults in a subservient position. Some of them are anarchies but a lot of their governments revolve around utilizing the adults in some beneficial manner and the security of the adults. It's kind of like if there was a bunch of apocalyptic survivors holed up in a hydroelectric plant and all of their decisions revolved around keeping the plant going and harnessing the electricity for the prosperity of the enclave. It varies between communities about who exactly is in charge, the adult speaking through the kid through manipulation or the kid because the other kids are too scared to interact with the adult. And it's unfortunate that a lot of these communities do pretty well in regards to agriculture, defense, engineering and medicine because it's built on the back of slavery. Plus sometimes the success of slavery leads kids to decide to enslave other kids. Adult-Only Adult-only communities are, generally, societies that never attracted kids, never kept kid slaves or lost their slaves and have just lived without. It's more the first two than the latter; once word gets out that adults keep kids as slaves, even the places that would be safe are viewed with suspicion. The government varies (democracy, theocracy, meritocracy) but a lot of their governments have annual meetings to act as group entertainment for everyone. They get by through careful scavenging, subsistence farming and raising livestock as best as they can. They have technology, but not much of a reason to use it because power sources are limited. They have needs, but most of their societies are surrounded by kid communities that fear them and won't trade with them. It's not great to be living in an adult-only community because it's just kind of grim and desperate. The big upside is that a lot of them have managed to at least make steps towards adapting to their blindness. A lot of communities use really ingenious traps (such as traps that sense light from photovoltaic sources because only kids would use flashlights) and have managed to do things like set up guide ropes or leave clay maps on pedestals that you can read with your hands to orient yourself. Adult-Ruled An adult-ruled community has a lot in common with proper American slaveholding tradition. Kids are worked 16 hours a day and fought over, used to guide adults and only educated in what the adult wants them to know. Adults in these communities generally know how to apply coercion via physical or emotional abuse to get the kids to comply and a lot of them fall when the kids figure out how to sabotage the society. The downside of these communities is that of the three types before them, they're doing the best. They have eyes to see and hands for fine manipulation and they're using their intelligence without being tortured to get what they want done. They have things like properly working farms and a chance of a genuine medical clinic being propped up on the backs of slave labor. Utopias Rare (to the point of the book saying that most people doubt they exist) communities exist where kids and adults are equals. Nobody is enslaved and everyone works together. They don't have to worry about keeping slaves in line or having to deal with groups that might cause their society to collapse (like slavers). A utopia is of course the ideal community by the classic definition of the word, a successful and safe place where they're able to be the strongest and most secure with their cooperation and mutual trust. The book says it's also possible for a utopia to be a bad thing such as a raider communities where kids and adults work together to enslave adults and kids alike to sell them to the highest bidders, so. This book says a lot of stuff. Me, I'm just gonna go out on a limb and assume that utopias probably aren't as rare as the book posits. There are rules at this point for making communities using Build Points and this pretty much goes over all of the things I mentioned above except for the fact that you can't make a utopia. There's also a picture of a kid smoking opium, which sure is a thing. GEOGRAPHY OF THE US The Midwest Lots of food, lots of nature, lots of spread out people. Pretty safe place to be. Just watch out for all of the death by nature. Each segment has a bunch of little notable places to focus on and I'll be including brief write-ups of each. Case in point:
All that's really said here is that the Scouts tend to be more powerful due to the wilderness. Also it sucks to freeze to death or get mauled by an animal. That's it.  This game has some real good art in places and I kinda hate that it does. The East Coast The mass deaths rocked the coast and most of the cities are generally abandoned. Fishing has gotten popular amongst children as a food source and there are a lot of gangs roaming the urban areas extorting food and goods from people they catch. But the coast is still pretty populated.
The west coast is basically said to be like the east but with more farmland. Which, I mean, have you seen the east coast? There's no shortage of that there. Anyway the main problem with the west coast is that cities like LA are totally abandoned because there was an interruption in the waterways that carry fresh water from the midwest to the coast. No water and a desert environment means that the urban sprawl has been largely abandoned as survivors move out into the farmlands for water and food.
The southwest runs into the main issue urban California does: not a lot of water. That and a lot of risk of death from poisonous animals. Life is hard for those out in the Mojave and that's a problem when you have Inheritor Border Guards and racial tensions caused from what kids were raised to think.
The south isn't great. Racial tensions and Confederate ideals have been reignited, creating child-run Klans and race-based slavery. Of course there are plenty of communities in the south that are just completely integrated because the kids grew up next to each other and didn't really care about race or skin color, but the fact that you have kiddy Klansmen running around is a problem. Go further east up into Appalachia and you find communities that are getting by just fine due to forming towns out of related kids who've had practical experience living off the land. Kids from the mountains are highly valued by groups for their knowledge of survival, hunting and agriculture.
 Happy October! GROUPS
RELIGION Outside of the standard religions, a few newish ones have popped up due to the fact that kids aren't great theologians.
THE FUTURE Mankind is hosed. We're probably going extinct within a few generations or less. To elaborate, the real twist of the screw is that sterility is a thing with the Plague. Let's do some fast math based on the info provided.
What renders mankind extinct is the addition of sterility. For obvious reasons, of course. This previously imagined feudal existence is completely unsustainable because the birth rate will plummet. Because the sterility is so poorly defined, it's completely unknown if teenage women are capable of reproduction before they go completely blind but they sure can't have kids post-blindness (unless of course they're not actually sterile). The adults die, the kids become the adults, the next generation dies, all that's left is a constantly dwindling pool of children going more and more feral and likely breeding with each other as best as they can until what's left of the human race is a horrifically inbred shambling beast too unfit to reproduce and dying. All in the span of roughly a century if we consider diminishing returns and that fertility is not the dominant trait passed on by two fertile parents. If fertility is dominant...well I give them roughly the same odds of success due to inbreeding and isolation. KidWorld! It's all hosed! You're never gonna cure that plague unless you lock all the surviving scientists in a room and constantly feed them child eyes! I super hate this wack-rear end junk science hoodoo poo poo! Join me NEXT TIME when we go over dangers of KidWorld and sample adventures and maybe alternate settings which are infinitely better than the core!
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Oct 15, 2017 02:21
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Hostile V posted:Actually okay there were two other effects to having the prion integrated fully into your body. The first is sterility. The game doesn't really explain exactly how the prion makes people sterile or how successful it is in those regards. It just says most adults are sterile and kids and teens are just ????. Frankly sterility doesn't even have to be a part of this stupid problem. The main reason blindness happens is because there's an Unnamed Molecule that scientists haven't discovered yet which is vital to the functioning of the rods and cones. Without enough of it, a milky white fluid builds up in the eye and results in blindness. The problem isn't that the prion stops the body from making this Unnamed Molecule (henceforth called Eye Bleach) but it's that the prion eats Eye Bleach. In fact the issue is that it eats Eye Bleach faster than the body can produce it, which as most people who understand the biology will tell you is absolute loving nonsense because the eye is a closed, self-contained system. The Vitreous Humor of the eye, for example, is one of the few things your body makes once and then will never make more of. I'm thinking it's probably aqueous humor, which is another closed system, but operates more like the blood-brain barrier of the central nervous system in which it's constantly fed and refreshed indirectly, than completely closed off like vitreous humor. Aqueous humor can eventually develop cataracts and glaucoma with age, but, guess what, there's already medical procedures that can stop that. Intraocular lens implants have been a thing since the turn of the 21st century and have been so common place as a treatment for cataracts that there's been talk of artificial lens with LCDs for perfectly-sighted military personnel, like the goddamn cyberpunk future we were promised. In fact, once that the disease mechanism is discovered or suspected, the government wouldn't bother with the child soldiers but instead rotate military units and put them under the knife with artificial corneas. Also, what's stopping people from just eating cow eyes? There's not much difference between human and other vertebrates' tissues, enough that you can use cattle or pig tissues in human beings. Happens all the time. Hostile V posted:Also some of you may reasonably be saying "well hold on a second, there's no such thing as a bioweapon/disease/virus/prion that works 100% of the time". Y'all are correct. There are in fact adults and kids who are out there who are still able to see and basically either shrugged off the prion or integrated it smoothly into their bodies with no problems. Roughly that's one in a million who is immune. The book also says that every single person who is immune to the effects of the prion has "severe chromosomal abnormalities" and all developmentally disabled with a sprinkling of a chance of physical disability. Which just rings as a massive gently caress you to me. I mean, cool, there are people who are out there who are genetic goldmines to figuring out how to neutralize the prion. They are all disabled in some form and the harsh decline of the world doesn't guarantee their survival four years later. It also rings as a gently caress you to people who want to play the game and be like "my character is immune and will never go blind!" like some rear end in a top hat GM is just gonna stroke their lovely neckbeard and be like "well enjoy playing a character with Down Syndrome" as a loving rear end in a top hat GOTCHA! move. This is where you start tricking your GM by pulling obscure chromosome abnormalities like Klinefelter syndrome, Turner syndrome, YY, or trisomy X as a counter-GOTCHA! move. gently caress, YY syndrome would be the easiest to game KidWorld given the stereotype from the 1970s of XYY people being violent criminals.
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Oct 15, 2017 03:09
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All of that ridiculous 'science', and they still tried to play the magic retard card.
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Oct 15, 2017 03:14
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 Today with a special guest letter!      Transcript: Sir: I hope you will forgive my presumption in writing to you without being previously introduced. I found your correspondence among my brother’s effects; he has been missing for a week now and my apprehensions have taken a turn for the worse. Before my brother disappeared, he had developed a habit of taking long walks in the afternoon. He would return covered in a layer of ash and on several occasions I expressed my concern for his respiratory health. He assured me he was taking precautions and demonstrated how his handkerchief could be tied in front of his nose and mouth. This seemed an insufficient precaution and I begged him to reconsider his habits, but to no avail. On one instance, after returning he instructed me to look at some photographs he had taken of the urban landscape. Of course, the fallen ash makes it seem greatly changed compared to earlier this year, but I found nothing remarkable in the photos. My brother pointed to various features in them and asked if I didn’t think they looked like fantastical creatures; he was particularly insistant on a sort of giant salamander he supposed to be curled around an apartment building. I do not mind telling you that I began to fear for his mental stability, but I allowed myself to be reassured when he stopped demonstrating an obsession with these impossible creatures. Now, however, I must wonder if he merely started sending the photos to you instead. If you know anything that could help us find him, or at least understand what has happened to him, I would be in your debt. I have enclosed certain papers I found in his desk; perhaps you can make sense of them, though I cannot. Sincerely yours, R H D  Transcript: Dear R.H.D, Unfortunately I have not heard from your brother in some time. He had become fixated on something he referred to as a troll, though whether it is a creature or a location is beyond me. Occasionally he would write to me about times he spent surveilling it at night, seeing people come to it and perform some sort of oblation. Perhaps this troll is the Moloch he references in his notebook. Unfortunately, like you, I have not heard from him in some time. My best advice would be to follow his tracks, perhaps locate this Moloch or this Mr. S-. Based on the note the latter likely works as some sort of archivist or librarian, one which specializes in old or archaic works. I wish you the best of luck in this endeavor, I know your brother to be a good man, and likewise know you to be someone of great cunning and resourcefulness. I have faith you will find out what has happened when you set yourself to the task. I know this in part because you were correct in assessing the handkerchief across the mouth as being insufficient to weather the toxic air outside. I attempted it this morning and am much worse off for it. Actually, now that I think of it I was conversing to him about the same book I have been discussing with others, titled De Profundis. I will send you copies of what I have written already, perhaps a clue lies buried therein. Before I lost contact I had written a letter discussing it a bit more. I have taken the precaution of copying it beforehand, just in case. It appears as though my mild paranoia has paid off. Sincerely, Unzealous     Transcript: Dear Reader, I am feeling a bit better as of late. Perhaps I have simply come to accept my forced isolation and am trying to focus on the situation with a positive attitude. After all, I have not had so much time to myself in months, and I have gotten a great deal of reading done. Admittedly I still have a coughing fit now and then, and I have music playing constantly in the house to drown out the deafening silence caused by the ash outside snuffing out the sounds I had become so used to. But aside from that I am in good spirits. This has to end eventually, does it not? We appear to be at around the halfway point of the book. I pray for your continued patience as we delve ever deeper into this tome. The next section is discussing a bit of the framework involved in crafting a game. They refer to it as the Convention which is the setting, style and themes you use during the game. The theme is the core ideas you want to explore and experience. If I may be so bold as to use my current predicament it would be one of isolation and dread. The dangers I face are primarily psychological. Inside my house, I am safe. Outside, I am not. But I recognize this is not a tenable situation. You could choose anything that sits well with your group as something interesting to write about, and the book provides several examples. For instance you could be a group of people who have come out on the wrong end of a conspiracy and are only left with questions. How much of what is happening is a coincidence and how much is the machinations of a secretive and powerful group? With each discovery you can feel them slowly turning their gaze on your group and you wonder just how far their reach extends. Conventions also cover the style in which you communicate with one another. Once again, using my own predicament as an example, I write letters as I would to a close associate. I am careful with my word choice and try to write in an eloquent and refined manner. But this would not be appropriate in all circumstances. If your group were members of a paramilitary organization or a corporation your correspondences might look more like After Action Reports or Corporate Memos. Likewise you should remember that you are writing as your character and should write as they would, using their vocabulary and idiosyncrasies. Some people might get straight to the point in a letter while others might approach it only after exchanging greetings and updates on their life and other goings on. This section also covers the use of tables as a means of combating writer's block and moving the plot forward. They consist of words or phrases that are inspired by the themes you’ve selected. In my case I might have chosen Ash, Burning Eyes, Isolation, Mysterious Footprints and Receiving Strange Letters. With these at hand I can choose one or more to write about during the next letter. If you want to test your creative abilities you can assemble a table beforehand and choose randomly which element you will include in the next letter, challenging you to weave it into the story as naturally as is possible. Though I would not personally recommend this if it would prove detrimental to the game itself. The next part of the book is concerned with the organization of a society. Everyone should maintain Society Sheets either individually or, thanks to ingenious inventions like Google Documents, as a group. These would keep track of the themes of the game, what people are looking for out of it, the characters and their goals, and notes on the plot as it progresses. You should also have a clear idea on how much of the unnatural you should start with. It would be rather dissonant to start a game where one individual has never experienced the supernatural while a colleague is already knee deep in demons. You can also add an expected age range, and other bits of information that people might consider important. I’ve transcribed one of the examples from the book as an illustration. Court Martial Convention: Weird Fiction / Jewellery Box Time and place: Eastern Europe 1915 and 1917-1918. Plot: Investigation of a small but mysterious episode from the Battle of Dukla Pass in 1915. A handful of low-ranking officers from the Austro-Hungarian army are to be charged with treason and sentenced to death. However, investigation of the documents, letters exchanged, and copies of orders suggests that the case is not as straightforward as it first appears, and the accused are likely to be innocent. The players follow various leads in order to solve the mystery (for instance, this could involve a mass murder of a civilian population by the soldiers, laying down arms in the face of the enemy in spite of clear orders from above, and so on). They get to investigate military documents (orders, reports, letters), visit old battlefields, talk to prisoners, look for witnesses, and withstand the pressure from above to find the accused guilty. And the war goes on... Society: The players play high-ranking officers, and also may play cooperating reporters,doctors, and anyone else who could be involved in the investigation. As you can see this gives you all the information you need to create a character and begin writing letters to one another. It’s practically dripping with potential stories and intrigue, and even strange and inexplicable events for those so inclined. I’ve even taken the effort to painstakingly recreate the table accompanying it, filled with possible clues and complications for the story. "This method may seem a bit patronising or limiting, but it’s only actually needed at the outset of the game. The whole setup can gradually be phased out when the plot picks up, when following and developing it is the players’ responsibility. In short, you don’t have to restrict yourself to such a tight set of initial rules once the plot is safely established. And that’s exactly what the Society Sheet is – a base, a starting point for your exchange of letters." This should be enough food for thought, for the moment. While my spirit might be willing my flesh is still as weak as it was before. I have been corresponding with an associate who is experiencing some rather unfortunate circumstances and I need time and energy to focus on those as well. I hope these letters continue to find you happy and in good health. Sincerely, Unzealous unzealous fucked around with this message at 03:39 on Oct 15, 2017 |
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Oct 15, 2017 03:17
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So how did the prion infect the entire planet from a single facility going up in tainted smoke?
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Oct 15, 2017 03:27
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Every new detail I learn about Kidworld just makes it more unclear why anyone would want to play it, or even who the game is for. I really wonder if some of the games in this thread ever got played outside of the developer's close friends.
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Oct 15, 2017 03:27
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I don't think De Profundis is ultimately a game I'm interested in but I heavily enjoy your review of it and the presentation style, unzealous.Green Intern posted:So how did the prion infect the entire planet from a single facility going up in tainted smoke?
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Oct 15, 2017 03:29
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BinaryDoubts posted:Every new detail I learn about Kidworld just makes it more unclear why anyone would want to play it, or even who the game is for. I really wonder if some of the games in this thread ever got played outside of the developer's close friends. My great question about it is, what are the PCs supposed to be doing? The game clearly wants you to be playing children and curing the epidemic is beyond their capabilities. Are the PCs supposed to be running a community? Fighting these threats? Being a threat? Making a bad community better? Nevermind the note that everyone's boned eventually, I'm not seeing a clear pitch for what you're supposed to be doing.
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Oct 15, 2017 03:36
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Cythereal posted:My great question about it is, what are the PCs supposed to be doing? The game clearly wants you to be playing children and curing the epidemic is beyond their capabilities. Are the PCs supposed to be running a community? Fighting these threats? Being a threat? Making a bad community better? Nevermind the note that everyone's boned eventually, I'm not seeing a clear pitch for what you're supposed to be doing. Welcome to every lovely RPG ever. *Especially* the grimdark ones.
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Oct 15, 2017 03:37
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Night10194 posted:Welcome to every lovely RPG ever. *Especially* the grimdark ones. Less sandbox, more litterbox.
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Oct 15, 2017 03:48
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I can't believe we've found a game even grimdumber and more pointless than Abandon All Hope, but here we loving are.
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Oct 15, 2017 05:18
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I really did not expect Kidworld's review to turn out the way it has so far.
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Oct 15, 2017 05:21
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I don't know why you'd do kidworld as an rpg. As a premise it's not terrible for a sci-fi book, I can see Steven King doing something decent along those lines, but it's a dumb fit for a game where you interact with things.
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Oct 15, 2017 10:06
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Green Intern posted:So how did the prion infect the entire planet from a single facility going up in tainted smoke? Also, all those guys in sealed bunkers - hopefully they brought a lot of lady troops with 'em - would presumably be fine by now. I don't know how durable prions are but it seems like you gotta eat 'em raw and by now, years later, they'd all have been exposed to lengthy and extended bouts of radiation (from the sun) as well as temperature changes.
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Oct 15, 2017 10:31
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Starfinger Core Rules Part #18: "So if you want to play an Ursula K. Le Guin style science fantasy, or C.J. Cherryh, who whoever it is that you're into, you can do that in our system." (James Sutter, Starfinger Creative Director, Game Informer interview.)  So, their first suggestion is to run published adventures, and they encourage you to do so. Of course they do. It however, notes that some people just run on some basic notes or off the cuff, and that's okay too. They suggest that when writing up an adventure, just keep to broad strokes and when you're thrown off your guard, just grab some reference material and wing it. Reference material like the Starfinger Alien Archive. Because of course. There's notes that some people stat out every creature, while others just reuse material from the Starfinger Alien Archive. Others only write down partial statblocks. Actual advice? Why have that when we have noodle arms and a big fat shrug! Have we mentioned there is this Alien Archive book, even after we said this was the only book you need unambiguously? Welll... you might need that? Maybe? Of course you do. Designing encounters is "both an art and a science" but is mostly just bog-standard d20 Challenge Rating (CR) stuff, which is never gotten any fresher. For example, an NPC has CR equal to their level which uh, is rarely ever accurate and will usually get torn apart by any reasonably competent group of PCs. In addition, it means a 7th level Envoy is supposed to be an equal challenge to a 7th level Technomancer and that's either hilarious, sad, or both. Even sadder is that a 10th level Soldier sans equipment is CR 9, because an humanoid NPC without equipment is only -1 to CR. Suuure, I'm sure that Soldier will be terrifying, coming at you with their 1d3 nonlethal meathooks. Hey, there's this book called the Alien Archive that can help you with your NPCs, maybe? Because of course there is. It may seem I'm being needlessly pedantic, but they were the ones that said that this was the only book you need. Once again, from Chapter 1, page 7: Starfinger Roleplaying Game posted:This book contains all the information you need to play Starfinger, whether you're a player or a Game Master. Chapter 1 had no mention of the Alien Archive. And why not? I mean, all of us who are RPG hobby veterans know that D&D clones are oft-separated into several necessary books, but Starfinger is aimed at new players as much as old-timers. So why not bring this up in Chapter 1? The only reason I can think on holding off on mentioning it until the midst of Chapter 3 and not even emphasizing it until Chapter 11 is to more or less obscure that fact and to make like the entry price looks like the $60 cost of the core rule book, when the entry cost for a gamemaster adds in the $40 cost of the Alien Archive for a total of $100. And then they'd like you to subscribe... Making money isn't wrong. And getting a fair price for your game isn't wrong. And getting financially supported richly by your fans isn't wrong. But obscuring the true cost of your game is a problem, I think. Thankfully, the days of just picking up a book in a store and trying to parse it out are over, and there are places where you can ask online "What do I need to play Starfinger?" But it's still curious that they wrote that this book was the only thing you need more than once, knowing that it isn't. Moving on, XP charts still have a detailed chart based on the challenge rating of the creature and the number of people in the party, and formulae to adjust that CR based on the number of creatures of a given CR and all that. There's some handwaves done towards the notion of "story awards", but XP is still primarily gained by eliminating, overcoming, or bypassing specific threats - mainly fights (on foot or spacecraft) and vehicle chases. It does add that they have to be actual threats, and going around committing civilian atrocities shouldn't be rewarded. (Of course, like many such games, it provides an alignment system where you can be any alignment you like!... but presumes you're good or at least neutral.)  We have charts detailing the value of loot that should drop from each encounter and what the wealth level of each character should be for a given level. It notes that since usable loot is miserably salable (you can only ever sell equipment for 10%, as it restates) to make up the difference in terms of story awards like job payments. Of course, there's also the complicated issue of having to figure out what items count towards a PC's wealth value and which are only worth their resale, which comes down to trying to predict which equipment a PC will use and what they'll stash... There's also the question of "what happens if the PCs decide to sell their spaceship" and... Starfinger doesn't have an easy solution to that. Starfinger Core Rulebook posted:But starships are expensive-what's to stop them from simply selling their starship and retiring, or using the money to buy gear far too powerful for their level? Uh, the fact that sellers can automatically evaluate a character's level and not sell them equipment unsuitable for it? C'mon, they covered this. Well, it says that the GM can just instruct them not to. If that's not enough, they can come up with a story explanation where it's actually lended by a patron, or it has an AI that doesn't wish to be sold (wait, does that make it a character, then...?), or other reasons it doesn't ultimately belong to the PCs. Ultimately, starships are meant to be kept aside from the normal gear and wealth structure.  We've given sample DCs for GMs, saying that: Starfinger Core Rulebook posted:A challenging DC for a skill check is equal to 15 + 1-1/2 x the CR of the encounter or the PCs' Average Party Level (APL). Which, while not as unworkable as the computer or starship rules, results once again in math where tasks get slightly harder at a rate faster than the PCs gain competency. At level 1, a PC with maximized bonuses might have a +8 against a DC of 17, meaning they need a roll of 9 or higher to succeed. At level 20, a PC with maximized bonuses will be adding +32 against a DC of 45, meaning they need a roll of 13 or higher. And note that most PCs won't necessarily have maximized bonuses in the skill checks they're making all the time. Operatives and Envoys have it a little better, but ultimately the slow increase in difficulty applies for most PCs. It notes that GMs can fudge rolls in desperation, putting Starfinger in the pro-fudge camp - and to use a GM screen for that kind of thing - but not to be antagonistic about it. In addition, it notes you can adjust encounters if PCs don't have the tools to do so, like ignoring a particular type of Damage Reduction or giving PCs a plot twist that lets them overcome it, but not to overdo it. (Of course, they could have written rules where random rolls can't result in unresolveable failure states - or just unfun results - but Paizo's not in that business.) It notes that character death should be addressed as quickly as possible, resolving encounters and working out whether or not the PC is going to stay dead - "You aren't required to let a dead character return to life." - or return. If a PC is to return to life, the GM is encouraged to immediately whisk them to the situation where that can occur. Alternately, if a player is moving on to a new character, it's suggested a player can take up the role of an established NPC for the meantime until the new character can be generated. Also, because the equipment treadmill trumps all other concerns- Starfinger Core Rulebook posted:Thus, it's usually easier to simply assume that the dead PC's personal gear (though not necessarily important story items belonging to the group) is destroyed, lost, or otherwise goes away. I know Starfinger: a Game of Space Accounting might not have been an attractive title, but it certainly would have been more accurate whenever the subject of stuff comes up.We're given a variety of other pieces of advice - Starfinger guides GMs to confront problem players and dismiss them if necessary, advises keeping campaign journals, tells GMs to resolve rule conflicts swiftly, etc. It ain't all bad, and a lot of it is good advice, though it's mainly mainly matters of XP and equipment that get any real depth. Next: Standing on the sun. Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 12:42 on Oct 15, 2017 |
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Oct 15, 2017 12:38
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Starfinger Core Rules Part #18: "So if you want to play an Ursula K. Le Guin style science fantasy, or C.J. Cherryh, who whoever it is that you're into, you can do that in our system." I will never cease to get pissed off when I see this kind of quote because it just isn't true. Don't tell me I can play anything then give me the assumption that this will be a gear-porn action-fantasy game where everyone REALLY REALLY CARES what brand of laspistol I'm using in my strictly defined class and race boundaries.
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Oct 15, 2017 12:45
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gradenko_2000 posted:I really did not expect Kidworld's review to turn out the way it has so far. When I first saw the cover I thought it was about a fantasy land full of children and the kids had tamed a giant or something. Obviously this turned out to be wildly incorrect.
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Oct 15, 2017 12:55
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Night10194 posted:I will never cease to get pissed off when I see this kind of quote because it just isn't true. Yeah, I'm left going, "Uh, have you read those books? Because it turns out they're not about people getting paid a million billion dollars to shoot baddies."
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Oct 15, 2017 13:03
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Hostile V posted:[*]Angry-Dad Christianity: i'm not sure if this is your phrase or the book's, but it made me laugh way too hard because i'm pretty sure that's the actual form people practice right now, today, in reality, without some imaginary plague to inspire it the eye eating element is the thing that screams "THIS IS THE AUTHOR'S PRIVATE FETISH / WANK MATERIAL" to me. the rest of the setting is full of weird plot holes and involves fictional leaps of logic that basically no one would ever reach on their own, but the part about having to eat eyes to temporarily regain your sight is what sends the whole thing into piss wizard territory.
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Oct 15, 2017 13:24
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Freaking Crumbum posted:the eye eating element is the thing that screams "THIS IS THE AUTHOR'S PRIVATE FETISH / WANK MATERIAL" to me. the rest of the setting is full of weird plot holes and involves fictional leaps of logic that basically no one would ever reach on their own, but the part about having to eat eyes to temporarily regain your sight is what sends the whole thing into piss wizard territory. That or someone read/watched too much Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children.
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Oct 15, 2017 14:19
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Yeah, I'm left going, "Uh, have you read those books? Because it turns out they're not about people getting paid a million billion dollars to shoot baddies." brb drafting my campaign pitch for Space John Wick
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Oct 15, 2017 14:20
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