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Since Baba Yaga can't hurt a metal box, would it be possible to take on the Walker with a walker, like a melee-oriented Dreadnaught? What about a flame tank?
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Jan 8, 2018 14:59
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Obligatum VII posted:Does a recording of the whistle work just as well? Have something playing on loop and leave in there. Enjoy, rear end in a top hat evil house. Listen if you wanna gently caress around with all that clunky 1920s recording equipment, just full on dragging loving wax discs and poo poo out to the middle of nowhere, more power to you. JcDent posted:Since Baba Yaga can't hurt a metal box, would it be possible to take on the Walker with a walker, like a melee-oriented Dreadnaught? What about a flame tank? The magic of the Baba Yaga is thwarted by modernity. The Walker on the other hand is a big hunkering demigod that looks like a tree but is a non-terrene thing. Regular bullets barely do any damage, shotguns do slightly more, actually chopping at the thing with such as axes does a normal amount of damage. It's actually immune to fire and most everything else. So depending on what you fit your mech with, probably an even match! 
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Jan 8, 2018 15:11
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When a ranger reaches 9th level, they gain a random companion from The Deck of Encounters Set One Part 72:The Deck of Water, Weapons, and Wheel of Fortune 399: Fallout The PCs enter a town or part of a city where everyone is super colorful. Not just anime hair, but wild skin tones, and in some cases visible auras of color. Why? Because “their water has been contaminated by runoff from a wizard’s laboratory.”  It’s not just color changes, though. Drinking the water produces random effects, 1d4 hours after it’s consumed. Apparently, this happens every time you drink it. “Effects range from gaining actual magical abilities for 1d20 turns to simply changing colors for 1d6 hours. The DM is encouraged to be inventive” as long as it’s not too powerful or anything. Sometimes people change shape, but everyone knows it’ll wear off. I’m charmed by the idea of the town embracing this magical runoff. I imagine they try to bring in tourism, bottle the water and export it, and so on. Their whole economy could hinge on the stuff. If the players come back through, the town could be very upset because the magical runoff has stopped, and want someone to go investigate the wizard’s lab and try to get the wizard to continue whatever he was doing, ideally without letting on that they’re profiting heavily off his work. Keep. 400: The Waters of Immortality The PCs hear burbling water from behind a dungeon wall, and if they break through find a large natural cavern with a spring streaming off into another crack in the floor. There’s a little wooden sign dangling by a chain that says “Immortality.” The water radiates strong alteration magic. If you drink it, you do become immortal - you can’t die from anything “though pain still remains real.” However, the exit appears to close up and become impenetrable to you. You can’t leave. “There is no way out of the room for the PCs short of a wish,” and if you do leave like that you become mortal again. “The water has no effect if taken from the area.” Half cool, but I think there’s one more layer of complexity/punishment here than there needs to be. Requiring a wish too get out is harsh. Maybe make it so if you drink the water, you’re immortal as long as you stay right next to the spring? Or you fall into a deep, year-long sleep each time you drink it, during which time you’re immortal? I feel like it would be an amazing plot resource to have somewhere to take PCs or NPCs who you want to stay alive far into the future. I always did like the Lapseless Room in Zyuranger. Keep. It needs some work, but I do find it inspiring. 401: Stubborn Weapon When the PCs are about to enter a fight against “a creature that is far inferior to them” (like orcs, hi fantasy racism), one of their weapons turns out to be intelligent and speaks to them telepathically, saying it refuses to be used to “battle vermin.” It’s plusses will become negative until calmed, appeased, or dominated in that weird intelligent weapon personality conflict (which can’t be done during a fight). Hmm. Not a big fan of intelligent weapons - like familiars, you can maybe have one around before the group forgets about them, and I’d prefer to save that mindspace for something with a better hook or more interesting personality. Maybe if the sword’s vitriol is directed against something more unusual, rather than punching down at kobolds or orcs? (“Halflings!? Cretinous little mockeries of men! I refuse to have their blood stain my blade!”) Even then, I probably wouldn’t use this as a random encounter. Pass. 402: The Sacrificial Test The PCs are passing through a small town, where everyone is gathered in the town square, apparently frozen in fear. But they don’t try to wave the PCs away, either. When the PCs enter the village, a swarm of strange fiends will descend upon the town. “There are obviously too many of them for the PCs to completely defeat.” (Don’t underestimate how optimistic players will be about their chances.) The muscular demon leader will offer them a chance to sacrifice one of their number in exchange for the lives of the villagers. It’s a test for the PCs (“or anyone else who may pass through this region,” because in theory, the whole world doesn’t revolve around them). It’s sponsored by Upper Planar creatures to test mortals’ morality. “The PCs have three options: fight, flee, or surrender one of their number. If they fight or sacrifice, the beings reveal their true shapes and reward the PCs with a single wish.” So they only lose if they just up and run away? I’d like to imagine that this is part of some Upper Planar reality-TV gameshow, and that when the ruse is dropped a pair of well-dressed eladrin hosts will appear to congratulate the characters (one in a suit, one in a Vanna White dress, both androgynous), ask them a few questions about how they were feeling during the test and what their plans are for the wish, etc. I’m entertained. Keep. 403: Sports Fans There’s a stadium... maybe sports, maybe gladiatorial... in a city. “The stadium can easily hold 60,000 people, and the building is packed to capacity.” Woah! That’s almost half the population of Waterdeep (~130,000), to use the first famously urban fantasy RPG city that springs to mind. (How many people live in the City State of the Invincible Overlord?) Anyway, there’s a riot. A horde of fans stampedes out of the coliseum, either out of anger or celebration. “Unfortunately for the PCs, they stand directly in the path of the oncoming horde. The crowd does 1d10 points of damage to the PCs every round for 2d20 rounds (Dex-6 check for half damage), until the mob passes.” Assuming they don’t come up with some strategy for protection, of course. I don’t like it much as written. Not enough colorful detail, sort of contrived, too mechanics-focused. But I could spin it a different way, and emphasize that this is an opportunity for any kind of heists that the PCs had been contemplating, while the city is in chaos. I guess I’ll keep it.
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Jan 8, 2018 15:27
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Obviously they wish for many beautiful companions, and being from Arborea the Eladrin interpret that as 'cute baby monsters', cuing the huge number of 'kidnap an adorable catbird chick' encounters.
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Jan 8, 2018 15:41
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This is speaking from the dust of years, but I vaguely remember the original Horror scenario hewing closer to the Baba Yaga myth (Granny dive-bombing fleeing investigators in her flying mortar and pestle) and really problematically, strong indications that the three women were an actual triune Goddess figure (kill Granny, and the pastor's wife strokes out). I thought that interpretation was wicked cool back then, but now it seems a little too Dreamlandsy. Bieeanshee fucked around with this message at 16:00 on Jan 8, 2018 |
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Jan 8, 2018 15:56
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quote:I sincerely hope someone remembered to grab the Right Arm in all of that. One wonders what happens if they forget to do that in all of the hubbub. It's not like they can go back for it...
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Jan 8, 2018 16:00
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The Walker shakes a familiar-looking fist. Then hurls it at the train.
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Jan 8, 2018 16:01
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Down With People posted:Listen if you wanna gently caress around with all that clunky 1920s recording equipment, just full on dragging loving wax discs and poo poo out to the middle of nowhere, more power to you. So you're saying go for a Killa Kan?
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Jan 8, 2018 16:10
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Dallbun posted:403: Sports Fans If Faerûn was as much a peripheral region with the same limiting factors as medieval Europe, which it is not, Waterdeep should still be about twice as big as it's usually listed. That would put it in line with the largest cities of Europe of the middle ages. Given that Faerûn shouldn't have those limiting factors, Waterdeep should be at least 3 to 3.5 times as big as listed, on the order of medieval Constantinople or large Chinese cities of the era at minimum, and could easily be 7 or 8 times its listed value to get in line with the larger post-medieval urban centers. Waterdeep isn't the worst of this in D&D settings though - Sharn is something like 212,000 in a setting that's at least early industrial age equivalent, if not late-19th early-20th century. That makes it an order of magnitude too small. If we're talking early industrial, at least 10 times and probably 20 times bigger would be on target, while for turn of the century it would need to be 30 times as large. The upper bound on stadium size for a major city is also pretty high. About 1/4th of the urban population is the high water mark and also not too uncommon a proportion in Antiquity and the Middle Ages.
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Jan 8, 2018 16:26
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Any fantasy advances in agriculture are probably nullified by fantasy plagues, orcs, goblins, angry druids and magical runoff from wizard towers.
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Jan 8, 2018 16:45
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At the same time the average D&D city is going to be swarming with literal 'I can just tap you to cure plague' clerics.
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Jan 8, 2018 16:47
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Night10194 posted:At the same time the average D&D city is going to be swarming with literal 'I can just tap you to cure plague' clerics. But somehow they only tap rich people.
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Jan 8, 2018 16:50
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JcDent posted:Any fantasy advances in agriculture are probably nullified by fantasy plagues, orcs, goblins, angry druids and magical runoff from wizard towers. Hey. Hey. Magical runoff from wizard labs never killed anybody. At worst, it maybe makes you grow big or small and forget that you were ever any other size. Any implication to the contrary is a malicious attack on the reputation of RunoffTowne, and we will see you in fantasy court.
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Jan 8, 2018 16:54
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Incidentally, Runofftowne imports all of its food because the Fireball County Fair from the next town over has burned all the farmland and the forests and boiled the fishes in the lakes
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Jan 8, 2018 17:05
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Lichtenstein posted:But somehow they only tap rich people. components do cost
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Jan 8, 2018 17:06
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Tevery Best posted:components do cost ...when specifically given a GP cost, otherwise they are assumed to be in all spell component pouches in arbitrary quantity.
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Jan 8, 2018 17:34
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Ignoring the fact that nobody who ever made an RPG knows how a big a city should really be, except maybe Greg Stafford, Sharn and Waterdeep are both The Big City. They have Enough people living in them, which is definitely A Whole Bunch.
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Jan 8, 2018 17:42
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wiegieman posted:Ignoring the fact that nobody who ever made an RPG knows how a big a city should really be, except maybe Greg Stafford, Sharn and Waterdeep are both The Big City. They have Enough people living in them, which is definitely A Whole Bunch. Does Ptolus count?
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Jan 8, 2018 17:52
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JcDent posted:Any fantasy advances in agriculture are probably nullified by fantasy plagues, orcs, goblins, angry druids and magical runoff from wizard towers. Hell I ignored magic all together, and even if we assume (contrary to what the fiction is telling us) that Faerûn and Khorvaire are stuck with High Medieval European agricultural techniques, the Big City in each setting is still much too small.
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Jan 8, 2018 17:56
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Yeah, if you don't know about the sizes of medieval populations or what amount of arable land you need to feed Waterdeep, you'll be fine with Skyrim looking like it is.
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Jan 8, 2018 17:56
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JcDent posted:Yeah, if you don't know about the sizes of medieval populations or what amount of arable land you need to feed Waterdeep, you'll be fine with Skyrim looking like it is.
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Jan 8, 2018 17:59
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Kurieg posted:Does Ptolus count? City-State of the Invincible Overlord
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Jan 8, 2018 18:01
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Comrade Gorbash posted:I'll admit I give video games more lee-way in this regard due to technological and quality-of-gameplay limitations, but yeah, Skyrim wins a prize for being both hilariously tiny and still clearly incapable of feeding itself. Everyone just glitches in infinite food, it's cool.
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Jan 8, 2018 18:02
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wiegieman posted:Ignoring the fact that nobody who ever made an RPG knows how a big a city should really be, except maybe Greg Stafford, Sharn and Waterdeep are both The Big City. They have Enough people living in them, which is definitely A Whole Bunch.
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Jan 8, 2018 18:48
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Cernel joeson: "You don't understand, we had to reverse engineer the elderich furry virus! It was the only way to save mankind. " Doomguy pulls the radio off the wall and proceeds to stuff it down the gullet of the nearest abomination, choking it.
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Jan 8, 2018 18:51
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[HORRIENT LOADING SCREEN ADVICE] In the belly of the beast, your only salvation might be Hot Cross Buns.
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Jan 8, 2018 19:02
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Horrible Lurkbeast posted:Cernel joeson: "You don't understand, we had to reverse engineer the elderich furry virus! It was the only way to save mankind. " Would the abomination in question be a space demon or some kind of libertarian sparkledog?
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Jan 8, 2018 19:47
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kommy5 posted:Would the abomination in question be a space demon or some kind of libertarian sparkledog? is there really a difference?
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Jan 8, 2018 20:14
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"We coded the entirety of John Galt's speech into the DNA of this sparkledog." "After the fiasco with the Owls? What if they turn evil?" "Well they're not evil they just have really interesting opinions on currency and enterprise."
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Jan 8, 2018 20:23
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gradenko_2000 posted:City-State of the Invincible Overlord City State of the World Emperor. Also for a comedy option, Verbosh.
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Jan 8, 2018 20:37
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Kurieg posted:"We coded the entirety of John Galt's speech into the DNA of this sparkledog." No worries here, by the time Doomguy gets there the sparkledog will have dissolved into a puddle of inconsistent goo.
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Jan 8, 2018 21:15
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So is it actually plausible for the PC's to destroy the Walker in their one round of free attacks assuming they've brought some dynamite or something similar? Or is the best they're going to be able to hope for giving it some scars and then legging it? Also some horrible people I know have been egging me on to run HSD. I've been wondering whether, if I accept their terrible challenge, to just run it entirely straight and let it collapse into an incoherent mess two sessions in, or whether to try and clean it up a bit(i.e. rewrite 90% of the fluff) so it could actually work?
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Jan 8, 2018 22:29
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PurpleXVI posted:So is it actually plausible for the PC's to destroy the Walker in their one round of free attacks assuming they've brought some dynamite or something similar? Or is the best they're going to be able to hope for giving it some scars and then legging it? I don't really recall the system being anything worth using from the original review, which makes it feel like doing a ton of work to tinker with and fix the setting isn't really worth it.
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Jan 8, 2018 22:35
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Night10194 posted:I don't really recall the system being anything worth using from the original review, which makes it feel like doing a ton of work to tinker with and fix the setting isn't really worth it. The system is largely workable and inoffensive, the combat actually has a few neat ideas from how I recall it, the only parts that are actively broken are all the space magic parts and the whole Ledger section. The worst that the rest of it suffers from is having a few stats that overlap in vague ways, which is hardly unique. Mind you, fixing the setting wouldn't be that much work... I could probably do it in a few paragraphs: So, Vectors aren't altered humans grown in vats, they're uplifted animals originally designed for slave/unethical/unpaid labour, which sparked an original moral/ethical conflict on Earth between supporting and opposing factions, with corporations and nations on both sides of the divide. Eventually, somehow, the war goes nuclear without involving any stupid alien memes, everything is hosed... except for the largely-corporate-owned colonies, which is why the conflict is eventually spun in an entirely different way in the history books. They produce large amounts of Vectors to replace human labour because they're incredibly short on actual humans to do work, and they have ethical hang-ups about producing actual humans for labour, since they consider the Vectors to be less-than-human, they're an ideal compromise. The Vectors turn out to be just as smart as them, and eventually take control, leaving the remaining humans to die of in uprisings or of old age in prisons. Vectors don't have any stupid post-scarcity tech or insane FTL travel, and the corporations can be relatively easily rewritten to not be self-contradictory moron machines. They're just corporations, as evil or good as any that Earth ever had, but with way more power, corporate territories, scrip, etc. and basically they work kind of like the Planetary Consortium from Eclipse Phase. Keep in the weird supernatural poo poo, because I love the idea of crazy alien junk on Europa, it's a good place for it, since it's a scary and alien location. Just excise any references to human theology and state that the invading realities don't have any sort of sinister personalities, they're just slowly and grindingly converting our reality into theirs by mere contact, in a process that can be retarded or halted by destroying its agents, but no one's yet found out if there's a deeper purpose to it or whether there's any way to actually roll it back. Or whether Sol should just be blocked off and everyone should migrate to a nice, safe alternate dimension or galaxy that can support them. Add in the complicating factor that TTI is actually using technology derived from the alternate-dimension research and the alien invasions/plagues, and they've got a vested interest in not completely keeping everyone away from it, and some people may suspect that their abilities are helping it grow, or that they might actively have some weird culty fervor for helping it grow. Possibly some parts of the corporation do, in fact, worship the red crystal and consider it their imperative to help it spread, while the greater majority is unaware of this. While Vectors are developing their own cultures, a lot of their culture at the moment is sort of made up of humanity's leftovers, complete with their stereotypes of animal behaviors(dogs, for instance, either cling to the idea that they're LOYAL COMPANIONS or tend to rebel against it and become, well, edgy loners), and once you're past the surface there's a general struggle for self-identity and "what the gently caress is our purpose here?" As well as various movements going: "Hm humans had this thing called Republics once, maybe we should try one of those." and basically being ideological rebels(sometimes with guns, sometimes without), against the supreme corporate state, which does its best to portray itself as a noble meritocracy that's extremely efficient compared to all these outdated ideas of "national governments," which, frankly, seem like very dangerous things based on illogical concepts like ideology and group identity, rather than sensible things like profit and pragmatism. That way you could have paid-up members of the system doing shadowruns against other corps(kept mostly secret because they have to pretend to be a great big monolith for the most part, all agreed on how to run things), you could have spooky supernatural agent poo poo, you could have your rebels against the system, etc. and mostly what it requires is rolling back the author's fetishism for being right and also basically ignoring that the Sound and Silence .PDF exists at all.
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Jan 8, 2018 22:50
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If the system is decent enough then redoing the setting quick is better, because the principle problem with the original setting isn't so much its politics (loving stupid/evil though they may be) or anything as the fact that there was jackshit to actually do in it.
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Jan 8, 2018 23:07
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On the other hand, I feel like if you actually made the setting not an insane clusterfuck, all you're left with is unexciting furry space stuff + kind of bland system. Not an attack on your writing or anything, Purps.
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Jan 8, 2018 23:11
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PurpleXVI posted:The system is largely workable and inoffensive, the combat actually has a few neat ideas from how I recall it, the only parts that are actively broken are all the space magic parts and the whole Ledger section. The worst that the rest of it suffers from is having a few stats that overlap in vague ways, which is hardly unique. I'd just go and say there's humans and trans/posthumans but they're rare and isolated in their own communities or colonies and thus unplayable. I'd bring something like the Bio-E creation in TMNT and After The Bomb, with human-looking features being key to the hierarchy of the corporations, since they've basically inherited them from their overlords (as well as persistent rumors/game hooks that the humans are still running the corporations, just in a diminished and remote capacity). I only want this because this game needs really creepy human-faced hybrids like sphynixes, biblical prophecy or that dog in Invasion Of The Body Snatchers.
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Jan 8, 2018 23:19
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Leraika posted:On the other hand, I feel like if you actually made the setting not an insane clusterfuck, all you're left with is unexciting furry space stuff + kind of bland system. Oh, no, I don't take it as an attack. The entertaining part of reviewing HSD was what a loving dumb mess it was. It's just hard not to go: "well it had one or two neat things, like the exo-nymphs and some of the alternate dimension art, so I wonder if I could fix it to salvage those few things?" EDIT: Ha ha, only just noticed my amazing new title. I guess someone took issue with my HSD review. I invite them to actually tell me what their issues are rather than making vague statements that I couldn't actually react to even if I wanted to. PurpleXVI fucked around with this message at 00:19 on Jan 9, 2018 |
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Jan 8, 2018 23:54
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PurpleXVI posted:So is it actually plausible for the PC's to destroy the Walker in their one round of free attacks assuming they've brought some dynamite or something similar? Or is the best they're going to be able to hope for giving it some scars and then legging it? You might as well just run Ironclaw re-fluffed for space instead.
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Jan 9, 2018 00:51
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PurpleXVI posted:Oh, no, I don't take it as an attack. The entertaining part of reviewing HSD was what a loving dumb mess it was. It's just hard not to go: "well it had one or two neat things, like the exo-nymphs and some of the alternate dimension art, so I wonder if I could fix it to salvage those few things?" I don’t even understand what they mean by “slurs”, is the word “furry” a slur now? What do you call them, “trans-specied”? Guess I’m just not woke enough.
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Jan 9, 2018 01:01
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