FATAL & Friends 2016-19: Bad Rules and Hidden Jewels

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Dallbun: Apr 21, 2010

Kurieg posted:

Jesus poo poo it was a geocities page.
my eyes

That site just screams professionalism. Oh no, wait, that's me. It's me screaming.

# ? Dec 5, 2017 20:45

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# ? Sep 30, 2023 08:29

JcDent: May 13, 2013; Give me a rifle, one round, and point me at Berlin!

To be fair, the only people who care about demographics are other, bigger nerds who know something about populations... and me.

I don't know anything, but I hate being happy and I worry that if I ever make a fantasy setting, it will have to have realistic maps, with enough villages to feed the cities, even if that isn't really important in an engaging setting.

gently caress Age of Sigmar's maps et al.

# ? Dec 5, 2017 20:53

JcDent: May 13, 2013; Give me a rifle, one round, and point me at Berlin!

Kurieg posted:

Jesus poo poo it was a geocities page.
my eyes

"What are you looking at? It looks like a virus" - my girlfriend

# ? Dec 5, 2017 20:55

Kurieg: Jul 19, 2012; RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20

Dallbun posted:

That site just screams professionalism. Oh no, wait, that's me. It's me screaming.

1) That wasn't an official site, it was the line dev's personal page that he just dumped stuff on.
2) it was 2006.

# ? Dec 5, 2017 21:07

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; To witness titanic events is always dangerous, usually painful, and often fatal.

JcDent posted:

To be fair, the only people who care about demographics are other, bigger nerds who know something about populations... and me.

I don't know anything, but I hate being happy and I worry that if I ever make a fantasy setting, it will have to have realistic maps, with enough villages to feed the cities, even if that isn't really important in an engaging setting.

gently caress Age of Sigmar's maps et al.

I figure in video game maps and so on, it's kind of a summary and representation which leaves off all the boring poo poo, like low-key farming villages that are six other farming villages' away from the Monster Zone.

# ? Dec 5, 2017 21:08

Freaking Crumbum: Apr 17, 2003; Too fuck to drunk

MonsieurChoc posted:

I can bring up Ravenloft again, where the entire setting has less people than Montreal.

in RL's defense, an overwhelming sense of loneliness and isolation would be thematic and reinforce the core setting conceits. to me, the weirder angle is that you've got some domains that have zero population, and the domains with next to no occupants skew the average way towards the bottom end of the scale.

you also kind of have to decide whether or not you're going to count all demihumans (like goblins or faerie or whatever) in the number, and whether or not intelligent undead or entirely alien entities (that are also self-willed) should count. because there's a fair few zones that don't have a human population, but they're full of trolls, or they include an entire city of intelligent undead.

personally I'd just rule that as long as the population figures for Barovia are within the realm of possibility, then none of the other realms matter because if you're in Ravenloft and you're not actively adventuring in Strahd's realm, why the gently caress are you even using that setting.

# ? Dec 5, 2017 21:09

Kaza42: Oct 3, 2013; Blood and Souls and all that

FMguru posted:

Nerd settings always, always, always screw up the demographics. Always.

I remember that Ars Magica gave population numbers for each of the Tribunals, but don't remember if they were reasonable or not. Anybody (mors) know if they check out or not?

# ? Dec 5, 2017 21:36

megane: Jun 20, 2008

Kurieg posted:

Jesus poo poo it was a geocities page.
my eyes

This site is the visual equivalent of a 13-year-old screaming Linkin Park lyrics in your ear.

# ? Dec 5, 2017 22:00

Mors Rattus: Oct 25, 2007; FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

Kaza42 posted:

I remember that Ars Magica gave population numbers for each of the Tribunals, but don't remember if they were reasonable or not. Anybody (mors) know if they check out or not?

They give numbers for the Houses. Each House contains between like 12 (Mercere) and 80-120 (everyone else) wizards, plus...I think 150-200 Ex Misc. The Order is not actually very large, which is why basically the entire thing can gather at the Grand Tribunal.

# ? Dec 5, 2017 22:18

MJ12: Apr 8, 2009

FMguru posted:

Another thing about faction-based games is that you have to build the setting so every faction have a reason to fight with every other faction (so that any pair of armies or decks that show up at a table have an in-game reason for being there), and also a reason for each faction to fight among itself (in case two space marine players meet each other or two ork players or whatever). Some settings go the extra distance and set it so every faction has a reason to ally with every other faction.

There are reasons why faction-based games setting all seem weirdly unreal and very similar to each other, and this is a major one of them.

I really liked Infinity's explanation of "all of these are basically deniable deep black ops operations," which is why you can have like, even nominally allied forces killing each other in the middle of nowhere. More games should recognize that just because the scope is small, the stakes don't have to be.

# ? Dec 5, 2017 23:10

Dallbun: Apr 21, 2010

Kurieg posted:

1) That wasn't an official site, it was the line dev's personal page that he just dumped stuff on.
2) it was 2006.

1) Yeah, it was his personal site, but he was presenting it as the copywritten work of a professional game designer, complete with threat of persecution [sic].

2) It's true. And I have seen worse. There's nary an animated gif in sight.

# ? Dec 5, 2017 23:32

Thesaurasaurus: Feb 15, 2010; "Send in Boxbot!"

JcDent posted:

Yeah, it would be hard to make a grimdark setting with IoM that's competent (not perfect), in, like, just using the massive hive world populations to keep factories running in 8 hour shifts without interruptions, having an imperial faith that not only does good but fights the more regular kind of corruption within it, and flak armor being 5+/4+ against explosions, but that would be super hard and would require a new setting... and you can't have orks in an original setting :/

I'm also angry for 40K writers for doing the Star Wars EU writer thing of "bigger = better": if this conflict kills a bajillion guardsmen, it means it's important! Hives have a billion people in the upper spire alone! Twenty Space Marine chapters were deployed to fight this! I just see those numbers and I don't care. What's so charming about Middenheim and stuff is that I can read and get how people live or understand the lay of the land. In 40K, not so much.

I dunno, I think the lore chapters in Dark Heresy etc did a good job with it. Like they kept the population numbers, but used them well, to create a sense of overwhelming, impossible enormity to the Imperium. Yeah, the upper spire for a primary hive can hold a billion people, but that spire is unbelievably huge, to the point that its top is usually above a planet's atmosphere. The hive itself can span an entire continent because the forerunners of the Imperium had the tech to hollow out tectonic plates without collapsing them. The amount of infrastructure required to sustain these populations boggles the mind, to the point that one such city has another city beneath it that exists entirely as a kludge for a biomass depletion problem where the terraforming engineers couldn't figure out a more elegant solution. A billion guardsmen dying is 5-10% of the population of a typical hive world, and while the Imperium definitely has a labor surplus, a single planet will certainly feel that kind of loss...but the Imperium has a lot of planets, too.

None of which is to apologize for the 40K writers doing the Star Wars EU thing, but that kind of astronomic scale can work if you're doing bleak, existential horror, and I think FFG were wise to recognize that when they wrote the RPGs.

# ? Dec 5, 2017 23:37

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Thesaurasaurus posted:

None of which is to apologize for the 40K writers doing the Star Wars EU thing, but that kind of astronomic scale can work if you're doing bleak, existential horror, and I think FFG were wise to recognize that when they wrote the RPGs.

It did make it a lot harder to write a story about 3-6 weirdos meeting up to do work together, though.

# ? Dec 5, 2017 23:38

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003; peed on;
sexually

MJ12 posted:

I really liked Infinity's explanation of "all of these are basically deniable deep black ops operations," which is why you can have like, even nominally allied forces killing each other in the middle of nowhere. More games should recognize that just because the scope is small, the stakes don't have to be.

My favorite example is from Warmachine. All four main factions have reasons to fight among themselves, and every faction has a reason to fight the other three factions - including the not-Russians of the frozen far north mixing it up with the desert full of religious fanatics in the far south (despite being a thousand miles from each other and natural allies against the other factions) for the most contrived nonsensical reason. I remember being utterly baffled by the metaplot twist that set that up until I realized "oh, right, they needed an in-game reason for these two armies to fight".

# ? Dec 5, 2017 23:51

unseenlibrarian: Jun 4, 2012; There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

I dunno, I don't think "Part of the resistance movement of a country occupied by the not-Russians invited the eager-for-converts fanatics in if they'd just kick the not-Russians out" is all -that- contrived.

# ? Dec 6, 2017 01:09

Alien Rope Burn: Dec 5, 2004; _{I wanna be a saikyo HERO!}

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness Revised Edition, Part Five: "Real mutation almost always results in death or disfigurement."

BIO-E Points

Time to find out how to mutate your animal! After working out your animal type, you cross-reference it with the list of animals to find out several things:

The BIO-E points you get to spend, if any. This can be 0.
The size level of your base animal, rated from 1 to 20.
The attribute bonuses for your animal type. These are added directly to your attributes, as determined earlier.
The cost it takes to purchase human features, and grow closer resembling a hairless ape.
What natural weapons or animal powers you can purchase, if any.

When spending your BIO-E, the first thing you're likely to look at is size level from around 10 ounces at size 1 and 1,500 pounds at size 20. Of course, there are terrestrial animals bigger than this, but if you're an elephant, you'll get bounced down to 1,500 pounds. Sorry, Jumbo. At size level 5 and lower, you start to get penalties to IQ, PS, and/or PE, as well as a bonus to Speed. At size levels 7 or higher, you get bonuses to PS and/or PE, but at 11 or higher, you get a penalty to Speed. Size level 6, or about 90 pounds, is the sweet spot where you have no ability modifiers at all. However, size level 10 is considered to be the default human, and gives you +4 to PS and +2 to PE. (Bear in mind this game has no guidelines for statting humans, so it's not clear if they get their own size level bonus.) Raising your size level costs 5 BIO-E per level, and lowering your size level gives you 5 BIO-E per level.

_{Man, Wuj, nobody wants to play a mutant animal that just looks like some guy!}

The second thing to look at is human features. These come in four categories of three steps each. "None" means the feature is just like that of your natural animal type. "Partial" means you're halfway between animal and human in that category. And "full" means you're functionally human in that category. The four categories are:

Hands: At partial, you have fingers and a non-opposable thumb, and can wield weapons and use appropriate skills at severe penalties. At full, you have a fully working set of hands.
Speech: At partial, you have a rough, bestial voice that people can become accustomed to understanding, but strangers will have a harder time. You know, like Scooby-Doo. Full means you have a fully intelligible voice.
Biped: At partial, you can start like a bear does, but move at greatly reduced speed and can't run, jump, or kick while standing. Full means you stand up just like a human does.
Looks: At partial, you look human-ish, and can pass for a human in bad light or with a mask on. At full, you look kind of weird, but close enough to pass for human.

Increasing a feature to partial usually costs 5 BIO-E, and 10 BIO-E for full. Most stereotypical PC mutant animals will just buy hands, speed, and biped to full, and leave looks untouched, for 30 BIO-E total. Some animals get categories already filled out - for example, parrots get partial speech and are fully bipedal, and apes get partial hands and are partially bipedal. Of course, you can do the really weird thing, which is to buy up an animal to full human looks and no other human features. And so, you end up with a freakish, quadrupedal, thumbless human with no ability to speak intelligibly... but you're convincingly human?

Another thing you can spend BIO-E on is animal powers, though only those appropriate for your animal type. These come in several general categories:

Natural weapons like claws, teeth, tusks, horns, or antlers, doing between 1d4 and 2d12 damage. Since any animal can pick up a weapon that does equal or more damage (presuming you picked up hands), these tend to be a waste. The only advantage to a 1d4 or 1d6 claw over a 1d4 punch or 1d6 kick is the fact that they can't "roll" with your hits to reduce the damage.
Natural body armor that acts just like regular armor, only you can't take it off. Often comes in different grades
Movement powers like digging, tunneling, excavating, swimming, floating, flight, and gliding. The latter two give bonuses to dodge and damage while in midair.
Heightened senses like advanced vision, hearing, smell, or touch, as well as nightvision or ultraviolet vision. Smell lets you track, hearing gives an initiative bonus, and touch gives a small bonus on certain kills, but other senses are just descriptive.
Oddities like extra limbs for bird mutants to have both arms and wings, or the ability to hold breath longer than normal. (It specifically notes just because you can hold your breath doesn't mean you can swim; the skill must be purchased separately.) There are also unique powers for various animals like an alligator's quick run, a duck's water repellent feathers, a camel's spit attack, a cheetah's heightened speed, an opossum's play dead, a porcupine's quill defense, a weasel's increased metabolic rate, and many others.

The cost ranges between 5 and 60 BIO-E, but usually not more than 20. There are a lot of trap traits, though - by no means are prehensile feet worth 10 BIO-E. On the other hand, a bat's sonar for 5 BIO-E is a steal. Also, if you want to just break combat, play a skunk, your 15 BIO-E spray will kayo opponents for 7 full minutes on a failed save. Forget ninjas, forget guns, just squirt your juices all over foes for a big gross victory.

_{Sonic looked way cooler when he was still a porcupine.}

The last and weirdest thing you can spend your BIO-E on is psionics. Why this game includes psionics is a mystery to me - the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle comics have very little that can be described as such. Indeed, magic and super-science are a lot more common. While there will be a one or two obscure psychic characters later on, none have shown up at this point in the comics. It seems largely here to give some animal rapport powers and to enable some psychic mind control NPCs later. For those familiar with other Palladium games, note that the powers here don't have any limits on usage like "Inner Strength Points" - you can use them as often as you like. The powers available are:

Animal Control: You can psychically control animals of your type - and specifically only your specific type. So if you're a mutant tiger, you can control tigers, but not lions, leopards, or tabbies.
Animal Speech: This lets you communicate with animals... specifically, once again, only of your specific type. A mutant dog can't psychically connect with a wolf.
Bio-Manipulation: This is a psychic attack that lets you inflict various status effects: blind, deafness, mute, pain, paralysis, stun, or tissue manipulation. Each is bought separately and have the same costs, and as you may guess, paralysis is ridiculously better than most of the others. Tissue manipulation, on the other hand... you just spent 20 BIO-E on the ability to make somebody become itchy... some of the time. Congrats.
Detect Psionics: This gives a 75% chance to detect another psionic, unless they're mind blocked.
Hypnotic Suggestion: This lets you give commands unless they're "completely out of character". Specifically, no suicide commands unless the person that wants to die.
Mind Trap: Lets you trap somebody in an elaborate psychic illusion and renders them effectively helpless, but requires the user to keep some level of vague concentration. It presumes this is used for abuse or torture (and not, say, therapy), and gives optional rules to inflict permanent insanities if you have a copy of Heroes Unlimited.
Mind Block: An absolute defense against psychic attacks while in use, and just psychic communication in general.
See Aura: Shows you the alignment, species, and "estimated level of power" of a target.
Sixth Sense: This gives you a spidey-sense - a sense of danger but not what is occurring. Provides no actual mechanical bonus against being surprised.
Telepathic Transmission: Lets you psychically communicate. Cheaper than talking, at 5 BIO-E, but I guess it limits your ability to use phones. It notes "You can't use this to READ anything.", which... okay?

The only time I can think of psychic powers popping up in an early Turtles comic isn't an actual comic, but in Fugitoid #1, a comic that would swiftly cross over into the main Turtles. Of course, there, it's not mutant animals, but telepathic crab-aliens instead. So it's hard to say why it's included in the game, other than a vague pop culture connection between mutation and mind bullets. And for the Terror Bears. We'll have more to say about the Terror Bears later.

_{And for some reason, dogs as the heralds of Galactus.}

Lastly, there is an actual formula that generally determines the BIO-E available to a given animal type! I know! It's shocking! The formula we're given by Wujcik is:

pre:

50 - (Size Level x 5) + (Cost for full human features) - ([# of attribute bonus categories] x 5) = Total BIO-E

Where "Total BIO-E" cannot be less than 0.

Wait... that's... not right let's check the math. So, a gorilla (size level 11, partial hands, partial biped, partial looks, IQ +6, ME +2, MA +2, PS +4, PE +2) works out like this:

pre:

50 - (11 x 5) + (5 + 5 + 10 + 5) - (6 x 5) = -10 BIO-E

Yes, the formula given in the book is wrong, which really threw me off for a bit there. It should actually be:

pre:

50 - (Size Level x 5) + (Cost for full human features) - (total attribute bonuses, rounded to the nearest increment of 5) = Total BIO-E

Where "Total BIO-E" cannot be less than 0.

Now let's take another look:

pre:

50 - (11 x 5) - (10) - (15) = 0 BIO-E

Yep, now that matches what we see in the book. Now, there are some issues with the formula, though:

Because this is a Palladium book, some are just wrongly counted, like cows and bulls. (Also, bulls are just better than cows, getting attribute bonuses where cows get none. Sorry, cows.)
Dogs are particularly badly done, where they have a variable size level, but that size level is wrongly accounted for, meaning dogs above size level 5 are penalized by around 5 BIO-E per size level.
Since there's no "negative BIO-E" values for animals, large animals like elephants basically get free size levels, which ultimately results in them getting more BIO-E than other animals.

Finally, let's detail what animals are available in this book. It has: aardvarks, alligators, baboons, badgers, bats, bears, beavers, boars, bobcats, camels, cats, chickens, cheetahs, chimpanzees, cougars, crocodiles, cows, coyotes, crows, deer, dogs, ducks, eagles, elephants, elk, falcons, foxes, frogs, goats, gorillas, guinea pigs, hawks, hippopotami, hamsters, horses, jaguars, lions, lynxes, martens, mice, minks, monkeys, moose, muskrats, opossums, orangutans, otters, owls, parrots, pet birds (tropical songbirds), pigeons, pigs, porcupines, rabbits, raccoons, rats, rhinos, sheep, skunks, sparrows, squirrels, tigers, turkeys, turtles, weasels, wild birds (robins, bluejays, etc.), wild fowl (pheasant, quail, etc.), wolverines, and wolves.

What's missing are nearly any marsupials (opossums only), reptiles (alligators / crocodiles / turtles only), amphibians (frogs only). In addition, fish are missing entirely, as are any invertebrates. More animals will be added in supplements, mainly through the After the Bomb setting. So if you were interested in seeing more animals, you unfortunately had to invest in that setting, as they drip-fed them largely in those supplements rather than the main Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which... I don't know if it was an intentional way to push that secondary setting, but it was an effective one. I mean, maybe you're not interested in animal Camelot (aka Animalot) or post-apoc Yucatanimals settings? Well, we've got some new animals for you in those books anyway...

Next: Hey, kids! Biff! Pow! Comics!

Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 22:18 on Dec 6, 2017

# ? Dec 6, 2017 01:10

Mors Rattus: Oct 25, 2007; FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

unseenlibrarian posted:

I dunno, I don't think "Part of the resistance movement of a country occupied by the not-Russians invited the eager-for-converts fanatics in if they'd just kick the not-Russians out" is all -that- contrived.

I think it was more that the ability of the crazy fanatics to actually get there involves some Menoth space warping, IIRC.

# ? Dec 6, 2017 01:22

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; To witness titanic events is always dangerous, usually painful, and often fatal.

Mors Rattus posted:

I think it was more that the ability of the crazy fanatics to actually get there involves some Menoth space warping, IIRC.

Yeah, to get into a little map chat:

The fanatics are the white strip south of the blue blob. Assuming their goal is Llael, their most feasible route is through a howling wasteland (which is probably pretty feasible, comparatively), or some kind of smuggling through Khador. (Khador is in theory the same religion as the Protectorate, albeit in a much milder, less fanatical way.)

# ? Dec 6, 2017 01:35

Tasoth: Dec 13, 2011

JcDent posted:

Anyways, are there any other grimdark space settings that are good/fun?

I'm going to nominate Mutant Chronicles. It's pretty much WW1 in SPAAAACE!!! (actually limited to the our star system). The big, bad extradimensional horrors are literally the personification of mindless industrialization and the social environment during WW1, and the Megacorps (did I mention it has a lot of cyberpunk elements?) actually have a shot at winning because, while they're all flawed, they also really don't want to see the species end. And the zealous religious type organization fights the extradimensional horrors with both a fighting arm and also lobbying for humane treatment of people, charity and healthcare. And magic. Space magic. With large pauldrons.

Plus the latest edition added Czarist Russia as seen through Metro/STALKER.

# ? Dec 6, 2017 01:44

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003; peed on;
sexually

Mors Rattus posted:

I think it was more that the ability of the crazy fanatics to actually get there involves some Menoth space warping, IIRC.

Yeah, it was the distance that made me tilt my head like a confused dog, especially since the game otherwise takes its geography so very seriously (lots of maps with arrows showing armies moving around on campaigns and such

e: I always regarded Mutant Chronicles as WH40K but on a saner scale (nearer future, all in our solar system, smaller armies, better rules). Megacorps and governments fighting a forever war across Mercury and Mars, and also some idiot opened a helldoor so there's demons and magic and cultists to fight, too. It was a minis game and an RPG (also a CCG and a even a terrible direct-to-video movie), and the setting was 90s faction/clique as gently caress, complete with space-Nippon (Mishima), space-Germany (Bauhaus), space-Britain (Imperial), space-America (Capitol), and space-Cyberpunks-Fightin'-The-System (Cybertronic).

FMguru fucked around with this message at 02:13 on Dec 6, 2017

# ? Dec 6, 2017 02:05

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Tasoth posted:

I'm going to nominate Mutant Chronicles. It's pretty much WW1 in SPAAAACE!!! (actually limited to the our star system). The big, bad extradimensional horrors are literally the personification of mindless industrialization and the social environment during WW1, and the Megacorps (did I mention it has a lot of cyberpunk elements?) actually have a shot at winning because, while they're all flawed, they also really don't want to see the species end. And the zealous religious type organization fights the extradimensional horrors with both a fighting arm and also lobbying for humane treatment of people, charity and healthcare. And magic. Space magic. With large pauldrons.

Plus the latest edition added Czarist Russia as seen through Metro/STALKER.

What system does this use, because this sounds relevant for me.

# ? Dec 6, 2017 02:05

Tasoth: Dec 13, 2011

Night10194 posted:

What system does this use, because this sounds relevant for me.

Modiphus' own. 2d20, roll under your stat/stat+skill with criticals based on a range you can purchase. Difficulty is based on number of successes needed total. You can buy upto 3 more d20s by giving the GM Dark Symmetry points, which they can use to complicate your life later. Tactical combat movement is abstracted, reloads are there to let you take extra shots in a round/use special ammo and enemies can be terrifying if they form a squad. The only gripe I have is that the GM has the option to corrupt a players equipment through DS points, and the book just says 'Don't abuse it', which feels really bad for me.

# ? Dec 6, 2017 02:33

Nuns with Guns: Jul 23, 2010; ....?

Robindaybird posted:

yep, with Ravenloft, the rule of thumb is to times the population number by ten to get a more reasonable number.

Even Eberron messed it up. It's supposed to be some kind of pseudo early-modern magepunk world and the largest city is Sharn, the New York/London analog, with bustling population of 200,000.

# ? Dec 6, 2017 03:28

Mors Rattus: Oct 25, 2007; FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

Nuns with Guns posted:

Even Eberron messed it up. It's supposed to be some kind of pseudo early-modern magepunk world and the largest city is Sharn, the New York/London analog, with bustling population of 200,000.

So, y'know...that was the population of New York, broadly, in 1900. (Mind, it doubled within a decade, and London was already at a million before that, and was nearer to 10 million by 1900, so.)

# ? Dec 6, 2017 03:34

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Mors Rattus posted:

So, y'know...that was the population of New York, broadly, in 1900. (Mind, it doubled within a decade, and London was already at a million before that, and was nearer to 10 million by 1900, so.)

Eberron is the Wizard 20s, though.

I want someplace to be Fantasy 1920s Detroit.

# ? Dec 6, 2017 03:36

PurpleXVI: Oct 30, 2011; Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

Tasoth posted:

Modiphus' own. 2d20, roll under your stat/stat+skill with criticals based on a range you can purchase. Difficulty is based on number of successes needed total. You can buy upto 3 more d20s by giving the GM Dark Symmetry points, which they can use to complicate your life later. Tactical combat movement is abstracted, reloads are there to let you take extra shots in a round/use special ammo and enemies can be terrifying if they form a squad. The only gripe I have is that the GM has the option to corrupt a players equipment through DS points, and the book just says 'Don't abuse it', which feels really bad for me.

You know, I hate it when games have stuff like "gently caress with your players"-points or disadvantages like Unlucky that just read "bad poo poo might happen to you when your GM says it does."

Because as a GM, actually using those options just feels adversarial in an unfun way, while not using them is just giving players free poo poo.

# ? Dec 6, 2017 03:42

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

PurpleXVI posted:

You know, I hate it when games have stuff like "gently caress with your players"-points or disadvantages like Unlucky that just read "bad poo poo might happen to you when your GM says it does."

Because as a GM, actually using those options just feels adversarial in an unfun way, while not using them is just giving players free poo poo.

I agree, I prefer players just have bonus pools to spend.

# ? Dec 6, 2017 03:43

Halloween Jack: Sep 12, 2003; La morte non ha sesso

I'm intrigued by any tabletop franchise that gets a cult following, and Mutant Chronicles sounds neat...but I think it's never pulled me in because its aesthetic is too close to 40K.

# ? Dec 6, 2017 03:43

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003; peed on;
sexually

PurpleXVI posted:

You know, I hate it when games have stuff like "gently caress with your players"-points or disadvantages like Unlucky that just read "bad poo poo might happen to you when your GM says it does."

Because as a GM, actually using those options just feels adversarial in an unfun way, while not using them is just giving players free poo poo.

The FFG Star Wars games have them too, and I hate them. The GM has unlimited ability to arbitrarily make a situation more challenging or complicated because, well, that's part of the basic job of running a scenario as a GM. The GM doesn't need to play a black poker chip to make another squad of Stormtroopers show up, he just says "suddenly the side door whooshes open and four stormtrooper charge into the landing bay, spraying blaster bolts everywhere"

A metagame currency that lets the GM ratchet the difficulty level up is completely redundant, given the fact the GM built that lever and set it originally and has the built-in ability to turn it up or down at his discretion. The implication that the GM can't make a situation more complicated unless he chooses to play a special chip is just...I mean, I could see making it work in a PbTA game or some similar indie game that is designed from the get-go with specific constraints on what the GM can and can't do in play. But in a traditional GM-runs-the-show affair, it's just so meaningless.

# ? Dec 6, 2017 03:56

Desiden: Mar 13, 2016; Mindless self indulgence is SRS BIZNS

Thesaurasaurus posted:

I dunno, I think the lore chapters in Dark Heresy etc did a good job with it. Like they kept the population numbers, but used them well, to create a sense of overwhelming, impossible enormity to the Imperium. Yeah, the upper spire for a primary hive can hold a billion people, but that spire is unbelievably huge, to the point that its top is usually above a planet's atmosphere. The hive itself can span an entire continent because the forerunners of the Imperium had the tech to hollow out tectonic plates without collapsing them. The amount of infrastructure required to sustain these populations boggles the mind, to the point that one such city has another city beneath it that exists entirely as a kludge for a biomass depletion problem where the terraforming engineers couldn't figure out a more elegant solution. A billion guardsmen dying is 5-10% of the population of a typical hive world, and while the Imperium definitely has a labor surplus, a single planet will certainly feel that kind of loss...but the Imperium has a lot of planets, too.

None of which is to apologize for the 40K writers doing the Star Wars EU thing, but that kind of astronomic scale can work if you're doing bleak, existential horror, and I think FFG were wise to recognize that when they wrote the RPGs.

Part of what the RPGs recognize is what was sorta true back in the Rogue Trader days: that all that ginormous macro level trillions upon trillions was meant to be backdrop so that you *could* tell stories where there big things and people won or lost, but it wouldn't by default muck up the whole setting. You could have a whole sector or whatever get embroiled in an epic struggle for the fate of everything and even if chaos or the orks won it didn't mean the Imperium had to fall. Hell, Terra might not even learn that it had lost that sector for another thousand years. The Imperium could be eternally doomed on the macro level because its eventually collapse would be played out over hundreds of generations, during which you could tell all sorts of campaigns using the base setting and have them all be "canon", just spread out over vast distances.

The problem is that the writing kept focusing more and more on the macro-level stuff, with these key players who ruled whole factions and could be meaningfully represented personally on a territory map of the galaxy. The thousand man space marine chapters make....okay, they still don't make sense, even with a single world. But they make *some* more sense when they're meant to be a big player in one tiny fraction of the setting, rather than being a big portion of the galactic political sphere.

To be fair, this isn't a new problem. They started introducing those personalities pretty early on. But early on too many of those characters were still oriented towards a slightly smaller scale. The chaos primarchs were doing poo poo, but it was oriented on things like conquering a single world or sector; the setting made a point that the old legions had fractured into warbands and the old big leaders didn't normally command forces of a scale necessary for galactic level war. Over time though, the lines started to focus more and more on those supposedly rare events that did have a galactic impact, which is how we get into the mess of an eternally static setting now.

# ? Dec 6, 2017 03:57

Nuns with Guns: Jul 23, 2010; ....?

Mors Rattus posted:

So, y'know...that was the population of New York, broadly, in 1900. (Mind, it doubled within a decade, and London was already at a million before that, and was nearer to 10 million by 1900, so.)

This definitely doesn't look like a city of 200,000

Night10194 posted:

Eberron is the Wizard 20s, though.

I want someplace to be Fantasy 1920s Detroit.

Well the Cogs of Sharn are basically Detroit.

Nuns with Guns fucked around with this message at 04:02 on Dec 6, 2017

# ? Dec 6, 2017 03:59

Tasoth: Dec 13, 2011

PurpleXVI posted:

You know, I hate it when games have stuff like "gently caress with your players"-points or disadvantages like Unlucky that just read "bad poo poo might happen to you when your GM says it does."

Because as a GM, actually using those options just feels adversarial in an unfun way, while not using them is just giving players free poo poo.

So the thing about Dark Symmetry points is they're mainly used so enemy forces can replicate some of the effects of PC characters: Act before the all the PCs (PCs go first then the enemies then critically wounded PCs, order outside of that doesn't matter), call reinforcements, use monster powers, burn for extra attack, etc. Most of it just makes fights more than 'PCs take the best equipment, murder everything'. The technology corruption is also a roll, with the roll have to go reaaaally bad before the technology is permanently corrupted and not just on the fritz temporarily. It still seems lovely to me, even if it is thematically appropriate for the game.

# ? Dec 6, 2017 04:06

Halloween Jack: Sep 12, 2003; La morte non ha sesso

I think metagame currencies related to difficulty are great, when they're actually used within the context that exists to help the GM measure the difficulty (like any good encounter system), or where the resolution system is built around cues for the GM to act against the PCs (like PbtA). Otherwise, yeah, it's like printing fake money.

I haven't played FFG Star Wars a whole lot, but the main complaint I hear about Triumphs and Despairs is that there's too many of them to think of something interesting happening every round of every combat.

Godlike had an interesting optional rule for the FUBAR token. When something triggered a roll on the FUBAR table, the party got a FUBAR token they could spend for a bonus or a benefit. The one big problem with that is that FUBAR rolls included stuff like artillery fire and landmines--very, very lethal poo poo even in a game about superhumans.

# ? Dec 6, 2017 04:41

Loomer: Dec 19, 2007; A Very Special Hell

Trying to do proper fantasy demography is really hard. You need all kinds of information that just never comes up unless you're an obsessive homebrewer. Caloric and nutritional needs for each race, reproductive rates, soil yields, availability of wood vs peat vs coal for fuel sources.

# ? Dec 6, 2017 05:17

Terratina: Jun 30, 2013

Given the current discussion about meta currency, I'd like to hear the thread's opinion about Fate Points in FATE Core/Accelerated.

# ? Dec 6, 2017 07:49

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; Out here, everything hurts.

Freaking Crumbum posted:

personally I'd just rule that as long as the population figures for Barovia are within the realm of possibility, then none of the other realms matter because if you're in Ravenloft and you're not actively adventuring in Strahd's realm, why the gently caress are you even using that setting.

Because Sithicus is interesting too? That's about it.

# ? Dec 6, 2017 11:44

Dallbun: Apr 21, 2010

As one of the greatest weapons ever to appear in the world, the Mighty Servant of Leuk-o has 6 abilities from Table 28: Offensive Powers, 6 from Table 25: Major Spell-Like Powers, and 6 from

The Deck of Encounters Set One Part 49: The Deck of Trolls and Tainted Water

289: Youth Gang

In a swamp, the PCs run into a gang of 10 young trolls wearing blue bandanas on their arms. If they tie blue bandanas to their own arms, the trolls will let them pass, otherwise they�ll fight. That�s kind of cutely bizarre. I like it.

Then the card continues. �The trolls have been organized into a gang by a local hobgoblin shaman, who wants to control the influx of people and monsters into the area. The young trolls were impressed by the shaman�s magic, and agreed to participate in his scheme. The PCs may later see other monsters with similar rags, or rival gangs with different coIors, depending on how far the DM wants to take this idea.�

Wait, what? :confused:

This hobgoblin wanted to control traffic in this swamp (why?), so he told the trolls to� only let beings with blue bandanas pass? How is this even a �scheme?� And then why would there be rival gangs with different colors? Rival hobgoblin shamans trying to control... swamp traffic? The same hobgoblin shaman setting up different gangs under different aliases, and it�s all a metaphor for how the land-owning class has an interest in keeping the proletariat divided? There�s the germ of an entertaining faction setup here, but the concept just doesn�t quite click.

Also, �[the trolls] fight to the death.� Ugh. THEY ARE REALLY HEAVILY INVESTED IN THIS �WEARING BLUE BANDANAS� SCHEME, OKAY, THEY VALUE IT MORE THAN LIFE ITSELF, ALSO I�M PRETTY SURE THIS IS HOW GANG VIOLENCE WORKS. That puts it under for me. Pass.

290: Two for the Road

In a tundra spotted with only a few bushes, two young trolls have set up a rockslide ambush. The rocks are small and don�t do damage, but the trolls roll down with them to help get the jump on their victims. They won�t pursue if they killed a horse or something to eat, and if they flee they�ll try to throw rocks at the pursuers horses to spook them. They have a typically annoying AD&D treasure horde hidden at the top of the ridge (400 sp, 250 gp, 10 pp, and three large gold bracelets set with rubies and worth 20 gp each. So that�s, uh� how much loot?)

Ehh, fine. I wouldn�t remember a couple trolls attacking normally, but I might remember a couple of trolls avalanche-surfing down a hill to attack. Keep.

291: No Rest for the Wicked

20 feet up on a cavern wall, there�s an entrance to a troll�s lair. It�s scraping a bear hide, so the PCs won�t be surprised, but it�s also pretty alert and is unlikely to be surprised as well. When it sees them, it�ll �shake its head, sigh, and leap down at the party with a slightly weary roar.� It�s super old, only regenerating 1 hp per round and can�t reattach severed limbs. In its lair is a bunch of coinage and a ring of free action.

...so I guess the PCs are just expected to murder this troll senior citizen, because the card lists no XP for diplomacy, and there�s treasure as a reward. Well, whatever. I�ll keep and see if anything interesting comes of it.

292: The Bigger They Are (Tainted Water)

The PCs wander into a village in the mountains where all the people are twice as tall as they are. It�s because of magical run-off from a reclusive wizard�s cave lab further up in the mountains - it goes down-stream and enlarges people who drink it for a couple days in a row.

The villagers think the PCs are halflings, and refuse to recognize the fact that they are the ones who are too tall, which is bizarre for multiple reasons. Just how long has this magical run-off thing been going on? All their houses and tools are explicitly built to their enlarged scale, so it must have been, like, generations. Do they never leave the village to trade, and do travelers never come and stay a few days? Do they never bring in spouses from outside? They must be some crazy isolated, inbred, bizarrely self-sufficient weirdos.

Also, the enlarge effect �can be easily dispelled on individuals, though it will return the whole village to normal height if cast on the water, for which the villagers would be very grateful.�

:downs:

: �Thank you, kind adventurers, for solving this problem that we didn�t know we had! Now all our houses and tools are too big for us to use, and the predators and enemies outside our village have doubled in size! We are very grateful!�

:black101:

: �All in a day�s work, good peasants! We�ll just enjoy our 3,000 exp and be on our way.�

Pass. This makes my head hurt.

293: Don't Tread on Me (Tainted Water)

Same mountain as the last village. The PCs run into a village about half the size of normal. The villagers flee when the PCs come, thinking that they�re� [sigh]... giants. Because they drink from a reducing stream. :sigh:

Like the last card, the stream itself can be dispelled, but this card maintains that �the effect will return in a day or so because of the constant run-off from the wizard�s experiments. The only way to stop it forever is to get the wizard to move or to cease his work here.�

Well, that must be one long-lived wizard. Is there a lich puttering around up in the mountains? Has he� just been repeating the same one �experiment� over and over for the past 100 years? That�s enough to make me almost like the concept of these cards, but I�d have to rewrite so, so much to make the gameplay interesting and not nonsensical. Pass.

Dallbun fucked around with this message at 06:15 on Dec 7, 2017

# ? Dec 6, 2017 15:14

Bieeanshee: Aug 21, 2000; Not keen on keening.; Grimey Drawer

"The wizard has been working on this one weird trick for years, and it's driven him crazy."

# ? Dec 6, 2017 15:41

Comrade Gorbash: Jul 12, 2011; My paper soldiers form a wall, five paces thick and twice as tall.

The two Tainted Water cards have the germ of a really neat little adventure in them, but doing them as random encounters reduces it to a bare bones state that makes no sense at all. It's a shame, really, because playing Captain Planet to deal with wizard toxic waste sounds like it could be awesome.

# ? Dec 6, 2017 15:46

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# ? Sep 30, 2023 08:29

Halloween Jack: Sep 12, 2003; La morte non ha sesso

Terratina posted:

Given the current discussion about meta currency, I'd like to hear the thread's opinion about Fate Points in FATE Core/Accelerated.

Aspects and Fate Points are The Correct Way to do character traits like "Unlucky" and "On the Run from _____"

# ? Dec 6, 2017 15:51

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > Comedy Goldmine > The Goodmine > FATAL & Friends 2016-19: Bad Rules and Hidden Jewels

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