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Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!

Kavak posted:

Dare I ask what TinySex is?

Sex on online RP sites based off of the TinyMUSH / TinyMUCK / TinyMUX server chat systems (based off of TinyMUD) for telnet. Hence, having virtual sex on them was called TinySex, or more often just "TS".

Nothing wrong with it in and of itself, but anything involving loving inevitably involves loving up.

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ADBOT LOVES YOU

Midjack
Dec 24, 2007



Alien Rope Burn posted:

anything involving loving inevitably involves loving up.

A statement with applicability far beyond gaming.

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!

Rifts Sourcebook 4: Coalition Navy posted:

Warning!

Patricia Pulling probably didn't even know who you are, Mr. Siembieda.

Rifts Sourcebook 4: Coalition Navy posted:

Violence and the Supernatural

After all, she founded Bothered By Dungeons and Dragons, aka BADD. Yes, that was a real organization. It was never BAPB, which would have been really hard to pronounce.

Rifts Sourcebook 4: Coalition Navy posted:

The fictional World of Rifts® is violent, deadly and filled with supernatural monsters. Other dimensional beings, often referred to as "demons," torment, stalk and prey on humans. Other alien life forms, monsters, gods and demigods, as well as magic, insanity, and war are all elements in this book.

Also, Pulling would pass away a month after this book was printed, in September of 1997.

Rifts Sourcebook 4: Coalition Navy posted:

Some parents may find the violence and supernatural elements of the game inappropriate for young readers/players. We suggest parental discretion.

What she did in life as far as demonizing young D&D players pales in comparison to the tragedy of her son's suicide and her own death by lung cancer. So I'm not making light of that, save to point out the curse of nicotine turned out to be far more tragic than any curse dreamt up by Gygax & co.

Rifts Sourcebook 4: Coalition Navy posted:

Please note that none of us at Palladium Books® condone or encourage the occult, the practice of magic, the use of drugs, or violence.

But she didn't know about Palladium, as far as I'm aware. And to this day, twenty years later, Palladium is still publishing these warnings, just in case Pulling's ghost should haunt the hobby again.




Rifts Sourcebook 4: Coalition Navy, Part 1: "The Coalition Navy is the largest Naval Force in the Americas, one of the great powers in the world - only Atlantis, NGR and the mysterious New Navy (described in Rifts® Underseas) are currently superior to the CS, and within the next five years, the CS Navy should surpass all but Atlantis."


Surpass the New Navy? But that's all the New Navy is! It's in their name! Well, I guess they've gotta keep taking an axe to whatever Carella wrote.



skulls now surprisingly optional


Well, time for the review nobody demanded and nobody wanted! Appropriately, however, I've decided to make these reviews shorter. Even if I hadn't already decided to do it, this is the book that might prompt it. It's Coalition War Machine, only about boats. It's not the most inspiring book. But I came to a point where it took so much effort I had to quit or find a way to slim things down. The audio format was a test to see if that was a faster, and it sure as hell wasn't. So I'm trying at just take a heavy trim to my usual format and seeing how that works out.

And it's tough saying that, because Patrick Nowak, the primary author, is better at writing military material than Siembieda is. Bluntly, he obviously knows the material better. However, he's painfully dry. Mind, what do you say about the topic other than defining rank, file, and boats? That being said, Siembieda will pop in and give his two cents, mainly to the tune of a few extra vehicles and monsters. He notes that apparently he had to cut about a third of the manuscript - mainly that pertaining to places and equipment around Ishpeming, the Mantisque Imperium, or Iron Heart, and focused the book mostly around skullomania. Well, not the cool Skullomania, the one with a capital "S". The less cool one, with a lower-case "s".

But there are some saving graces. Ramon Perez does some cool art! Lots of it! So you can look forward to that.



gently caress yeah, Perez.


Let's ship out. :sureboat:

Next: Swimtime for Hitler.

Young Freud
Nov 26, 2006


I see what you did there.

I can't wait until we get to the discussion of the improbability of the F-14 resurrection.

Midjack
Dec 24, 2007



Young Freud posted:

I see what you did there.

I can't wait until we get to the discussion of the improbability of the F-14 resurrection.

If Battlefield: Earth could have Harriers, Rifts can have Tomcats.

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!

Young Freud posted:

I see what you did there.

I can't wait until we get to the discussion of the improbability of the F-14 resurrection.

I feel like the Tomcats are so small compared to what else they unearth. Literally speaking.

JackMann
Aug 11, 2010

Secure. Contain. Protect.
Fallen Rib

NGDBSS posted:

My pithy way of putting this is that "it should not be easier to permakill a character than it is to make a new one". But yes, I love that blog and by all means keep putting out columns. (If only so I have some backing material to work with whenever a gaming buddy decides to play Amateur Game Designer.)

Just for you.

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!


Rifts Sourcebook 4: Coalition Navy, Part 2: "Saunders never took part in a single campaign or battle, but did fight countless skirmishes against river pirates and monsters — once he even battled a sea serpent with a robot cargo loader and crushed the beast."

Some Background

Seriously, that's the chapter title. "Some Background". Sure. So, it talks about how important water routes are for trade and travel - they're not safe, but safer than overland travel. Pirates and monsters are still a concern, but that's why the Coalition is building a navy - to take advantage of that.

We get a lot of :words: about the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River, but wikipedia has largely invalidated in the years since other than to say "they're bigger and deeper ". And, of course, there's the fact that there are ley lines and ley line nexuses over the water which can cause issues for travelers, as well as your usual bestiary of monsters that oft-prefer human meat for some inexplicable reason. So there are several main points of trade in the Great Lakes region aside from the Coalition: Lazlo, Ishpeming (aka Northern Gun), Manistique Imperium, Tolkeen, and New Lazlo. We get some details on what each of them produce, which is useful but not interesting. The Coalition itself only trades with a few trusted partners. Also, there be pirates here, and we'll have more on scurvy dogs later. Because of the Coalition's aggression, most large communities are militarizing their navies.

Did I mention that this book is dry? Well, at least we've got some fascists that might catch your interest. Watch them do the goose-step stroke!


Just hatch every inch of the drawing. Hatchhatchhatch.

The Navy of the Coalition

So, the Coalition recently conquered the small community of Port Horus on the coast of Texas (hinted at but not actually named in Lone Star) and renamed it Fort Pinnacle. We get a page-long speech from Emperor Karl Prosek of how they're going to use this to drive back the forces of Atlantis and eventually make war against the alien-dominated continent. This is a bit of a shift metaplot-wise in that it indicates that the Coalition is even fully aware of the threat Atlantis represents, but we'll actually get an explanation for that shortly.

See, the Coalition didn't initially focus on having a navy. They were focused on protecting their land borders, but some leaders pushed for an aquatic arm, like Colonel Marven Halliday. Halliday's military studies on naval warfare formed the basis for New Quebec's navy, which was established to attempt to claim and hold the St. Lawrence Seaway. However, he died before ever getting to see Quebec's navy emerge (most of their craft would be built by Iron Heart Armaments, who you may remember from Rifts Mercenaries).

What really changed things a decade ago was the "Anticosti Island Incident". The fledgling Quebecois navy encountered and engaged an Atlantean "Shark" submarine, which they crippled, capturing the crew. They tortured the Kittani (Atlantean apefolk) crew they were able to take alive, and learned of the growing strength of the Atlantean navy. In addition, it turned out the Atlantean sub was on a mission to provide arms to an anti-Coalition group. As a result, the Coalition military was alarmed enough that they formed the Naval Advistory Commission (NAC) and started building coastal bases and arming boats to counter this aquatic threat trying to undermine them.

We get a long list of priorities for the Coalition in building the navy, but the foremost ones are countering Atlantis and gaining dominance over the Great Lakes. Working mostly off their historical knowledge of the American navy, they initially procured a small number of ships from Iron Heart Armaments - this is about a decade before they'd destroy it in Coalition War Campaign - but gained most of them through a deal with Golden Age Weaponsmiths (detailed in Mercenaries). They'd found out GAW had discovered a great deal of surviving ships at a naval base in Norfolk, and brokered a trade. The Coalition would get the ships, while GAW got a number of exclusive military deals and guaranteed autonomy.

We get a long list of bases where the Coalition are set up, with some of them seemingly pretty distant from Coalition control (particularly on the East Coast). Though the Coalition usually gets their military strength handwaved, we at least get a fair number of details on the twenty-year buildup of the navy. In case you're wondering, Atlantis doesn't actually have any plans to invade and Splynncryth (their psuedo-Lovecraftian leader) finds the Coalition naval buildup to be a joke - they still outnumber Coalition forces literally 50 to 1.


"Rocket engines work fine underwater, don't worry about it!"

The Three Fleets

The Coalition has three main fleets, comprised of:
  • The CSN 1st Fleet: The secession of Free Quebec cut this fleet by more than half, and it's mainly based out of Lake Ontario and oversees the Great Lakes. They have a island base named Fort Defiance near Lazlo. Though its proximity makes Lazlo nervous, the main focus of the 1st Fleet is preparing to fight Free Quebec (after the metaplot bit where they seceded from the Coalition in Coalition War Campaign) and to try and seize the Isle of Orleans and the St Lawrence Seaway.
  • The CSN 2nd Fleet: This is based out of Fort Pinnacle near Lone Star, and focused on testing deep sea operations. Their main role is to counter Altantean aggression and secure the the Mississippi delta, as well as oversee convoys and travel to South America (Columbia and Cordoba, specifically). At least this explains how they might actually be getting so far South, which was a bit puzzling when it was mentioned offhandedly in the South America books.
  • Brown Water-Mississippi Command: ... is not an official fleet designation, but refers to the smaller fleet dedicated to securing Coalition interests on the Mississippi. Generally their focus is fighting monsters and pirates, as well as maintaining the Mississippi as a trade route.
Notable CSN Installations, Bases, and Ports

Next, we get a long list of CSN facilities:
  • Chi-Town, CSN Headquarters: This is mainly just a support base, but most of the actual CSN command, training, and "nerve center" is here, located close to the main Coalition States leadership.
  • Fort Pinnacle: Perhaps their largest base near Lone Star, this has their largest number of capital ships and a laundry list of support armor and aircraft. It's also a growing city founded largely to support the base. They also have an atomic-powered train to Lone Star, and they regularly patrol it for bandits or monsters, as well as checking for breaks in the rails that need to be repaired (apparently a common issue). It's kind of a weird thing where I was going to pick on the feasibility of having a rail line but Nowak isn't Siembieda, and has thought about the issues with that. Curse you for writing thoughtfully, Nowak!
  • The Simmons Line, Posts Joaquin and Newgulf: These are posts built along the Sabine River in Texas to a literal protective wall against bandit and monster aggression that might threaten Pinnacle.
  • Isle of Orleans: 1st Fleet of Quebec Headquarters: The original HQ of the Coalition Navy, this is now run by the Navy of Quebec and is well fortified by some of most experienced sailors who (used to) work for the Coalition navy.
  • Halifax: Originally meant to occupy the Saint Lawrence Seaway, supply and support base was cut short because it's seen as too vulnerable to Quebecois or Atlantean aggression with the current state of affairs. As such, it only has a skeleton crew to oversee the single aircraft carrier still stationed here.
  • Baton Rouge: This oversees the Mississippi and the Mississippi Delta, and is the HQ of the "Brown Water" fleet.
  • Old Chicago: Well, this is north of Chicago, as it turns out, and mainly sees to protecting trade and provides docks for goods being shipped into Chi-Town. It's heavily fortified to hold off monster attacks from Chicago itself.
  • Sault St. Marie: Iron Heart's only Naval facility is more a commercial port than a military one, and only has a relatively small Coast Guard-type force for defense.
  • Greenville: This is located near Fort El Dorado and mainly exists to support that new Coalition holding, as well as ship the oil produced there - the actual Naval force is relatively token.
  • Fort Girardeau and Hannibal: These bases on the Mississippi is mainly to counter demon and monster aggression arriving from the Devil's Gate in St. Louis. Wait, didn't they have that rift now contained in a facility? I guess Nowak missed that note in Coalition War Campaign... which I guess is natural, since it completely contradicted the corebook...
Key Coalition Navy NPCs


Leblanc, the Cousteau of Canadian fascism.

And we get some high muckity-mucks. Fleet Admiral Travis Fisher (9th Level Military Specialist) gets a tough luck story about a juvenile deliquent who turned his life around and distinquished himself fighting monsters from Devil's Gate. After that, he caught the eye of Karl Prosek, who eventually bumped him up until he was in charge of the Navy. Admiral Rene LeBlanc (10th Level Navy Officer) is formerly of Free Quebec and was pivotal the the Anticosti Island Incident, and now oversees the 1st Fleet. Supposedly the finest seaman in the CSN. Vice Admiral Nathan R. Copeland is a former tank officer that distinguished himself fighting Pecos Raiders, but was able to earn a transfer to work in the fleet early on. He's the head of the 2nd Fleet and is apparently an easy-going fascist but you better not cross him or he turns into a real tuff dude. Captain Fletcher Saunders is the head of the Brown Water Command and started out as a merchant marine who "battled a sea serpent in a robot cargo loader". He basically joined the military to try and protect sailors after seeing the carelessness of some Coalition officers assigned to the Mississippi. Lastly, we have Major General Jean-Pierre Moreau who is your usual tough and crude military leader with a heart of fascist gold. He oversees the CSN Infantry.


Copeland, with his carefully affected three-day unshave. (I mean he's a vice admiral, you can't tell me that's unintentional to run around looking like a solo scruffy scoundrel.)

It's odd that we actually get a better overview of the leadership of the Coalition Navy than we've ever gotten regarding the leadership of the Coalition Army! Well, that's what Nowak do that Siembiedon't.

Next: Player-facing material for floating fascists.

Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 14:21 on Feb 18, 2018

Cassa
Jan 29, 2009
Sooooo I'm always slightly at a loss as to just whom these sourcebooks are for, so what's this latest coalition war books purpose?

Shart Carbuncle
Aug 4, 2004

Star Trek:
The Motion Picture
Yeah, the PCs as a squad of Imperial Coalition defectors premise only goes so far in justifying the wealth of information on this stuff.

megane
Jun 20, 2008



Cassa posted:

Sooooo I'm always slightly at a loss as to just whom these sourcebooks are for, so what's this latest coalition war books purpose?

"We really felt like the 90,000,000 pages of stupid details we've printed about the Coalition and their endless nigh-identical skull-covered vehicles and the eyerollingly over-the-top scifi fascist poo poo they do and how its actually totally justified and they're just antiheroes you guys just weren't enough yet.

...game? What game?"

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!
One of the things about most Rifts books is that they most often don't have a clear delineation between player and GM content, outside of explicit adventures. Books are just generally grab bags of content, and this time it's mainly on the Coalition Navy, and it doesn't really care whether or not you're using them as protagonists or antagonists. After all, in theory the GM is supposed to use the same material as players for making (non-monster) NPCs, as excruciating as that is to do in actual practice. So there's rarely "this book has antagonists" or "this book is equipment for players" or any purpose-driven focus.

TL;DR: A Rifts book is whatever they could put together under a particular theme to fill 128-160 pages and put on a shelf.

Vox Valentine
May 31, 2013

Solving all of life's problems through enhanced casting of Occam's Razor. Reward yourself with an imaginary chalice.

Rifts: Thanksgiving
Rifts: Panda-Fighter
Rifts: Je Ne Sais Quoi
Rifts: Dirtfarmer
Rifts: Asparagus

JcDent
May 13, 2013

Give me a rifle, one round, and point me at Berlin!
I used to be intrigued by Rifts

Then I listened to the System Mastery episode about it and the mega-damage scalpel.

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!

Hostile V posted:

Rifts: Thanksgiving
Rifts: Panda-Fighter
Rifts: Je Ne Sais Quoi
Rifts: Dirtfarmer
Rifts: Asparagus

Well, it still has to be something a child of the 1970s and 1980s thinks is real cool. A lot of the game material makes more sense when you think of it as a toy line; I feel like one of the best descriptors for Rifts is "toyetic".

Young Freud
Nov 26, 2006

JcDent posted:

I used to be intrigued by Rifts

Then I listened to the System Mastery episode about it and the mega-damage scalpel.

I was doing a rewatch of Robotech recently and I did some rumination on the origins of Mega-Damage: Mega-Damage's origins made some sense in Macross, where the Zentradi's size difference meant that they could only be hurt with heavy weapons and mecha, but when you got to Southern Cross, where the ATAC arming doublet personal armor could prevent instantaneous death and their infantry laser rifles could destroy Bioroids, and especially Mospeda, where the titular powered suits along with the Galland laser carbine and even small arms could wreck the poo poo out of Invid with well-placed hits, Mega Damage falls apart quickly. What was interesting was watching those instances, Dana Sterling, Scott Bernard and their comrades are clearly protected by Plot Armor and shooting it's offensive counterpart, the Golden BB. But Siembedia was so in love with Mega-Damage that he had to explain their survival and combat efficiency by making their personal protection and sidearms superpowered, since they can clearly damage mechs, because he couldn't rationalize anything else outside of the AD&D paradigm like them rolling super-criticals or spending points to influence narrative results. It's clearly something the Savage Rifts design team thought about and rectified, by just renaming Heavy Armor to Mega Damage and removing MD from personal armor and weapons.

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!
Robotech as part of the Palladium system has probably aged the worst of any Palladium game. With all apologies to the goon that worked on the new edition (since IIRC he didn't use the Palladium system for his own games anyway), it's an absolutely infuriating adaptation rules-wise.

Mr.Misfit
Jan 10, 2013

The time for
SkellyBones
has come!


Antarctica. The last place on earth, humanity has not truly conquered. (If we discount the nazis who fled to the moon from here, and the entrance to the subterranean inner world of course, but I digress...) A place where the cold is willing to bite of your nose, spitting it back into your face and laughing while doing so. Antarctica. It is a magical place.

But before we get into that, we'll have to go back. A long...long looooong while back. You see, Beyond the Mountains of Madness (BtMoM in short) is a roleplaying campaign written by Charles and Janyce Engan for Call of Cthulhu 5th edition, released by Chaosium Press in August 1999.



It details the events of the Starkweather-Moore expedition to Antarctica of 1933-34, which follows the Lovecraft story “At the Mountains of Madness” from 1930. Wait, I hear you say. What story? Right, I think most people interested in the campaign itself will know that story, but we´ll have to talk about the novella as well.



You see, in the late 1920s Antarctica truly was mostly unexplored and alien. A hostile environment, where hardy men tried to succeed, some died and some went on to become “heroes of science and western exploration”. In those days, especially in 1928-30 the public interest was placed on the Robert E. Byrd expedition to Antarctica.



Lovecraft especially, was fascinated by it and connected it and several other elements to write this story, which contains and connects many of his other, more disjointed works together to form a more coherent idea of horror and cosmos behind it. But what is it actually about?


[Warning - Image may not accurately depict game as played by real people; Picture from gameoverride.com]

As you might have guessed, it´s about slimy things in the dark, ancient cities from before the time of humanity, things-man-wasn´t-meant-to-know and much gory, gory death. A full plot summary is available on wikipedia, I´ll just recap quickly:

At the Mountains of Madness Summarized posted:

In 1930 there was an antarctic expedition to what was termed the Miskatonic mountain range led by Professor Lake, who, together with many others, died at the hands of re-awakened Elder things, while William Dyer and Paul Danforth actually crossed into the highest mountains to reach the lost city of Elder Things where they decided that “nope, we're outta here” after walking for five meters and Danforth goes nutso after watching something terrible rise out of the mists as they escape via plane.

There, I just saved you 120 pages of reading. Now onto the campaign. Now, we´ll look at the v1 of BtMoM first, and afterwards will compare and contrast with the new v2, concluding with a final review of the campaign as a whole. Now, let's get to it.

The campaign comes at a whopping 439 pages, which isn't quite pathfinder-level but still enough to cause a serious concussion if used appropriately, which can be quite handy for it´s 2.7 pounds of weight. Of those 439 pages we use 15 for Foreword and personage, 268 for the campaign itself and the remaining 152 are for appendices, timelines, creature stats etc. Oh, and about 40 pages of handouts. Oh yes. This campaign kills trees. Well.



Because space is important, the entire campaign is written in a three-column layout with...well, I suppose font 10 text. It's tiny, is what I'm trying to say. Also, with about 310k words, it's really a mountain of text in the space you´d assume some sort of novel would fit. A big one. To compare, the entire Lord of the Rings comes up to 480k words. So BtMoM is basically Fellowship and Two Towers in one book. With very small print. Hope your keeper likes epic novel-length reading.

Now, before we start, the campaign gives us an overview of which NPCs can be replaced by the player characters, which is good, and some of the later important stuff, or what you might read in preparation. Because it's such a thin book to start with, you know, to pad out word count. Among those is, of course, the original Lovecraft novella, which I do agree, the keeper should know, as well as Edgar Allan Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym.

Now take it as truth, the latter can be skipped, it's mostly flavor for the campaign and the important part is something rage-inducing all on its own which we´ll come to later on. Read the novella, watch a few good movies about Antarctica, maybe a nature documentary. Got it. I myself really enjoyed The Thing (Not only for the scares), Shackleton's Antarctic Adventure (very informative) and Encounters at the End of the World (Werner Herzog, very artsy, but some great images).

With that, we jump, even before we come to the prologue, to the Dramatis Personae. 12 are presented, the leaders of all three expeditions, some characters from the previous lake expedition, among the Paul Danforth whom we´ll meet again in this campaign, as well as Arthur Pym (whom we won't meet) as well as “The Profiteers”, because unscrupulous german business men who play “Sir-Does-Not-Appear-In-This-Movie”. Neato. Kinda pointless, but it's a theme we´ll discover more often in the book itself.

This is followed up by what amounts to two pages of a newspaper article about the general knowledge the world has of the events of the Lake expedition. It's of interest to note, that it already talks about elder things, but mostly as “fossils” and claims that the expedition was destroyed by a cruel Antarctic storm.


Beyond the Mountains of Madness Prologue posted:

In September of 1930, researchers from Arkham's Miskatonic University set sail for the Antarctic continent on a bold venture of exploration and discovery. The Miskatonic University Antarctic Expedition, privately funded with I support from the Nathaniel Pickman Foundation, left Boston Harbor in two ships. Two months later they landed in Antarctica near Ross Island: twenty men, fifty-five dogs, and five large Dornier aeroplanes were set upon the ice. Their mission was to survey a geologic history of the Earth's last frontier; to chart from the air where no human foot had stepped, and to determine at last, once and for all, whether Antarctica was indeed one land mass or several...

Opening up with an atmospheric quote, the chapter begins by describing what amounts to job interviews. In May 1933 two men, the “world famous” British adventurer James Starkweather and us-American scientific trailblazer and geologist William Moore of Miskatonic University, Arkham, Massachusetts (because with Lovecraft, it is always Lovecraft County), are looking for people who wish to join their expedition to the last unexplored corner of the earth. Antarctica. Offering up two newspaper clippings with articles for the players, our intrepid investigators are invited to “seek employment” with the expedition.

Now, truth here, that is a neat idea. The player characters are invited to a job interview with Moore and Starkweather, where they are asking some questions about the background and assessing their capabilities, Moore from a technical-scientific, Starkweather for the more aggressive, survival and daredevil´ish qualities. Of course, a woman is right out. Starkweather is a noted woman hater. The interview, which can be well played like twenty questions, is basically a chance for the investigators to learn something about the adventure before them, and talk about their past at the table, offering up ample role-playing opportunities.

Now this is a part I´ll offer up to the public. I need four people, three men and one women, to send into the interview and expedition. I need a name, an occupation as well as their nationality.
Help me FATAL thread, you´re my only hope!

Kavak
Aug 23, 2009


James Fowler
Mountaineer (Familiar with dealing with cold, wind, navigation, etc.)
American

Ratoslov
Feb 15, 2012

Now prepare yourselves! You're the guests of honor at the Greatest Kung Fu Cannibal BBQ Ever!

John Joseph Babcock, Doctor and Nutritionist, hailing from Australia.

Edit: Because I know a little about Antarctic expeditions, that's why.

Midjack
Dec 24, 2007



Nadine Bergen, Prussian cartographer lady.

Spark That Bled
Jan 29, 2010

Hungry for responsibility. Horny for teamwork.

And ready to
BUST A NUT
up in this job!

Skills include:
EIGHT-FOOT VERTICAL LEAP
Andrew Graham, British hunter and marksman.

Vox Valentine
May 31, 2013

Solving all of life's problems through enhanced casting of Occam's Razor. Reward yourself with an imaginary chalice.

Alien Rope Burn posted:

Well, it still has to be something a child of the 1970s and 1980s thinks is real cool. A lot of the game material makes more sense when you think of it as a toy line; I feel like one of the best descriptors for Rifts is "toyetic".
I don't see you telling me that I'm wrong. :colbert:

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!
I could, if you really think that would help.

Bieeanshee
Aug 21, 2000

Not keen on keening.


Grimey Drawer

Young Freud posted:

I was doing a rewatch of Robotech recently and I did some rumination on the origins of Mega-Damage: Mega-Damage's origins made some sense in Macross, where the Zentradi's size difference meant that they could only be hurt with heavy weapons and mecha, but when you got to Southern Cross, where the ATAC arming doublet personal armor could prevent instantaneous death and their infantry laser rifles could destroy Bioroids, and especially Mospeda, where the titular powered suits along with the Galland laser carbine and even small arms could wreck the poo poo out of Invid with well-placed hits, Mega Damage falls apart quickly. What was interesting was watching those instances, Dana Sterling, Scott Bernard and their comrades are clearly protected by Plot Armor and shooting it's offensive counterpart, the Golden BB. But Siembedia was so in love with Mega-Damage that he had to explain their survival and combat efficiency by making their personal protection and sidearms superpowered, since they can clearly damage mechs, because he couldn't rationalize anything else outside of the AD&D paradigm like them rolling super-criticals or spending points to influence narrative results. It's clearly something the Savage Rifts design team thought about and rectified, by just renaming Heavy Armor to Mega Damage and removing MD from personal armor and weapons.

After watching veritechs and destroids both dissolving under a small hail of gunpod fire, only for identical vehicles to shrug off massive salvos while piloted by a heroic character, I realized that Megadamage(TM) was an adorkable misunderstanding of painfully obvious plot armour.

MightyMatilda
Sep 2, 2015
Ernst Carl Winkler, a linguist from Darmstadt, Germany.

You know, just in case you encounter weird languages in the Antarctic.

Malfeas
Dec 11, 2017
Yukon Cornelius, Canadian, Miner turned Survivalist

Young Freud
Nov 26, 2006

Bieeanshee posted:

After watching veritechs and destroids both dissolving under a small hail of gunpod fire, only for identical vehicles to shrug off massive salvos while piloted by a heroic character, I realized that Megadamage(TM) was an adorkable misunderstanding of painfully obvious plot armour.

The big moment for me was an episode of Southern Cross where Dana and Bowie are fleeing on hoverbikes from a Masters' dig site, taking potshots at some pursuing bioroids with some laser carbines and scoring a few killshots on them.

Mospeda is loaded with scenes where Rand or Annie or someone fires a lucky burst from a Wolverine (a .45 caliber submachinegun, essentially a future "Grease Gun") into an Invid Scout's eye, killing it, so Palladium wrote the Wolverine as having explosive MD bullets instead of the Invids having vulnerabilities to small arms fire.

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003
I WILL CUT OFF BOTH OF MY ARMS BEFORE I VOTE FOR ANYONE THAT IS MORE POPULAR THAN BERNIE!!!!!
It always seemed to me that Mega-Damage was simply a means of measuring the difference in scale between personal weapons and armor and that of vehicles and giant monsters, which promptly ran out of control.

DalaranJ
Apr 15, 2008

Yosuke will now die for you.

Halloween Jack posted:

It always seemed to me that Mega-Damage was simply a means of measuring the difference in scale between personal weapons and armor and that of vehicles and giant monsters, which promptly ran out of control.

Yeah, it’s just a scaling mechanic except without any real thought put into it’s function.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Halloween Jack posted:

It always seemed to me that Mega-Damage was simply a means of measuring the difference in scale between personal weapons and armor and that of vehicles and giant monsters, which promptly ran out of control.

Basically the second you started having Mega-Damage personal weapons and armor, incidentally.

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003
I WILL CUT OFF BOTH OF MY ARMS BEFORE I VOTE FOR ANYONE THAT IS MORE POPULAR THAN BERNIE!!!!!
The big conceptual flaw in Mega-Damage, as far as I can tell, is that it's a hazy mixture of both size and power. It doesn't account for how, while a lightsaber can cut through the size of a battleship, the battleship doesn't instantly explode when the saber touches it, and it would take forever to carve up a building-sized thing with a sword.

So every mega-damage pistol is the ridiculous gun from Blame!

That Old Tree
Jun 24, 2012

nah


Halloween Jack posted:

The big conceptual flaw in Mega-Damage, as far as I can tell, is that it's a hazy mixture of both size and power. It doesn't account for how, while a lightsaber can cut through the size of a battleship, the battleship doesn't instantly explode when the saber touches it, and it would take forever to carve up a building-sized thing with a sword.

So every mega-damage pistol is the ridiculous gun from Blame!

This is sort of ameliorated by locational damage, though in practice it is pretty inconsistent and the numbers are loving all over the place. Who gives a poo poo about locational damage when you're shooting armor with a few dozen MD per location with a little pistol that does MD measured in multiples of ten?

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!



Yvonne Lefevre, socialite adventurer from Montreal.

Young Freud
Nov 26, 2006

Halloween Jack posted:

The big conceptual flaw in Mega-Damage, as far as I can tell, is that it's a hazy mixture of both size and power. It doesn't account for how, while a lightsaber can cut through the size of a battleship, the battleship doesn't instantly explode when the saber touches it, and it would take forever to carve up a building-sized thing with a sword.

So every mega-damage pistol is the ridiculous gun from Blame!

And every mega-damage armor is basically the Iron Man suit. Feel free to walk through rioters, zombies, non-explosive booby traps, and every other non-MDC obstacle virtually invulnerable. And since most armors also have environmental protection, don't be bothered by smoke, gas, or going underwater or into a vacuum, either.

echopapa
Jun 2, 2005

El Presidente smiles upon this thread.
Juan Peron, ski instructor in the Argentine army, prepared to assert his nation’s claims in the Antarctic.

Terratina
Jun 30, 2013
Madison Claremont, American Dillettante with a major in headbutting. because old f&f jokes are funny right

Simian_Prime
Nov 6, 2011

When they passed out body parts in the comics today, I got Cathy's nose and Dick Tracy's private parts.

Terratina posted:

because old f&f jokes are funny right

Robert Johnson, blues musician, ready to punch a Hard Ticket to Antarctica

Wrestlepig
Feb 25, 2011

my mum says im cool

Toilet Rascal

Terratina posted:

Madison Claremont, American Dillettante with a major in headbutting. because old f&f jokes are funny right

Dr mcheadbutt will always be funny. He was Cluwne Tier.

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Kavak
Aug 23, 2009


:eng101: Madison was actually an example character to show how loving broken the Basic RPG-d20 conversion method was. A starting investigator turned into a Level 17 monstrosity because of a high headbutt skill translating into a giant Base Attack Bonus.

EDIT: HONK HONK butt HONK butt HONK

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