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PurpleXVI posted:Myriad Song has a strangely Warframe feel to it, except over a larger space than a single solar system. Sounds like it could easily fit a bunch of Solar Creed/Metanoic Corps space ninjas fighting evil space clone armies, space capitalists and space robots. Yeah, I've been thinking the same thing now that I'm re-reading the book for this. Though it's much more...not everything is violent? Like I love Warframe, don't get me wrong, but it is a game about space ninjas who know only murder and looting. There are lots of nice places implied to be out there in Myriad Song where things are pretty normal. In general, it supports a lot of different tones and concepts for games, while staying fairly focused on 'weird sci-fi space opera'. It is perhaps a little too crunchy as they start to get really, really into conditionals and tags in the gear sections, but in many ways it's a natural evolution of the Cardinal system from Ironclaw. One particularly interesting bit about it: It's way, way harder to inflict damage that kills someone outright in practice, especially to PCs, than it was in Ironclaw. When I ran Ironclaw you had stuff like giant Italian fox Guts cutting people in half on the regular with a huge greatsword. When I ran Myriad Song, there'd be whole gunfights where not a single mook actually 'died', they just got dropped to Unconcious or panicked and ran off/surrendered after getting winged. Sanguine in general seems to have an interest in providing lots of ways to lose a fight (or win one) without having the default be 'everyone on the other side is dead'. E: I should also mention this is a game with a specific Suplex entry in the weapon table. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 21:50 on Jan 9, 2019 |
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Jan 9, 2019 21:33
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Meyers-Briggs Testicle posted:Does this thread have a greatest hits? I'm looking for good writeups of games that had good to great premises or settings but the gameplay itself was just awfully designed. So nothing like FATAL where its bad all around, but games that had potential but were hamstrung by weird decisions Man, I feel like this is half the thread. Like, if you read half the reviews, probably more, you'll find that 90% of the replies are: "Oh man, if only they'd just..." etc. etc. etc. wistfully dreaming about a world where the devs weren't huge chodes or actually had a basic understanding of statistics and alien concepts like Fun.
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Jan 9, 2019 21:53
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I guess Im more surprised there isnt a yearly worst or most baffling game ranked list every january. People love lists.
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Jan 9, 2019 22:18
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Meyers-Briggs Testicle posted:I guess Im more surprised there isnt a yearly worst or most baffling game ranked list every january. People love lists. Organizing that poo poo is way more work than anyone wants to do for a payoff that can be described as 'wow, buzzfeed sucks'
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Jan 9, 2019 22:19
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The Rhagia sound... neat? Having half the (spider) race be non-sentient is certainly novel.
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Jan 9, 2019 22:46
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Dawgstar posted:The Rhagia sound... neat? Having half the (spider) race be non-sentient is certainly novel. The only race in this game that could be played by a human with a rubber forehead on is humans. When we get to races, you can be a robot, a spider lady, a glowing bug, a bush that eats brains and shapeshifts, a symbiotic colony between a fungus and a giant bat wolf, a pastel colored silicon based dogman with poison bites, a space octopus, a weird bird, a gentle gender-shifting electric eel person, or a raptor but with hands and an assault rifle who knows how to hate.
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Jan 9, 2019 23:10
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Night10194 posted:The only race in this game that could be played by a human with a rubber forehead on is humans. I think my main problem with this race selection is that I want to play FUCKIGN ALL OF THEM except maybe the dogman.
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Jan 9, 2019 23:18
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Night10194 posted:or a raptor but with hands and an assault rifle who knows how to hate. Turians, how'd you end up in this game?
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Jan 9, 2019 23:44
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Nessus posted:See in general, I agree, but Double Cross seems so well thought out that it seems like it would be genre appropriate and perhaps hilarious if the GM had to do like, three funny voices in conversation. When I ran Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, I wrote out script pages for all 22 of the cold opens for the series episodes and handed them out to the players (they didn't know what each other's lines were). People really got into it and it added to the feel that this was the season of a Buffy spin-off that had never been made (After the cold open I would always play the opening title sequence/credits I had cobbled together in Flash with the theme music of Big in Japan's 'Dig That Stupid Sound')
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Jan 10, 2019 04:35
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I had this vague ill feeling against Myriad Song I could quite place, and then I realized I'm confusing it with that Hc Svnt Dracones game.
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Jan 10, 2019 05:00
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Halloween Jack posted:I had this vague ill feeling against Myriad Song I could quite place, and then I realized I'm confusing it with that Hc Svnt Dracones game. The single most unambiguously awful faction in Myriad Song is the megacorp that would be a main character in HSD, too. Like everyone else, you can kinda see why they do what they do, even the Remanence (the Syndics were actually unstoppable and they really might come back and want things how they left them, though usually you'll fight the Remanence), but AMG are portrayed as just absolute shitlords who should be dunked on at every opportunity.
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Jan 10, 2019 05:04
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Cythereal posted:Turians, how'd you end up in this game?
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Jan 10, 2019 05:07
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One of the things that makes Myriad Song so interesting to me is that every one of the really big players is a reasonable enough reaction to their Gods simply up and wandering off one day. Either 'keep things how they want in case they come back, which coincidentally also gets me way more money and property', 'I want to be a Space God to equal them!', 'We have to be ready to fight them this time! We won't be conquered so easily again!' and 'Let's see what they were afraid of us learning!' are all reasonable responses to a huge event.
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Jan 10, 2019 05:15
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 Rifts World Book 21: Splynn Dimension Market, Part 17: "Very confident, very charming, and very masculine."  "Look, everybody knows the Splugorth couldn't have built advanced pyramids. It was humans." Skyborne Excursions By Mark Sumimoto & Kevin Siembieda The main source of transportation and tours, Skybourne Excursions also sells aircraft as part of a "multi-trillion" business due to... that's... really? They haven't expanded beyond Atlantis and a single outlet on Phase World, yet they're around ten times more profitable than American Airlines, Lockheed-Martin, and Uber mashed together? Palladium numbers! They have a deal with the Kittani to get exclusive rights to sell Kittani aircraft, which... why? I'm not sure what the Kittani get out of it, though maybe they're just like "Well, we'd rather just conquer anyway than worry about dumb business!... wait, we're not getting to do that either? Splynncryth, when are we gonna conquer stuff again? We're bored." We get a long list of Skybourne's prices, from a 40 credit two hour tour to a 40,000 credit daily air yacht rental (with a 250,000 credit deposit). In addition to flying machines they also have trained flying animals, slave flying sentients, and paid flying sentients that are used as mounts. So, in case you were worried they might not be dickbags, don't worry. They're slave-owning dickbags. But we can move on to the dickbag owners. Miles Sky is a hatchling Kukulcan dragon - the Quetzalcoatl-inspired serpents from Rifts Conversion Book - who has learned techno-magic in defiance of, well, dragon hatchling rules. Unlike his goody-goody rainbow serpent kin, he's greedy and selfish because that's what it says on his sheet. There's a note that he's considering secretly dealing with Tolkeen to sell them flight systems. However, they don't have enough money, he won't take credit, and they aren't willing to deal with the Splugorth anyway. Wait, what the hell was this note for, then? I get the impression there's some authorial conflict going on! If the fact he's a dragon hatchling with an O.C.C. wasn't odd enough, it's an O.C.C. from The Rifter #2 (the "Techno-Wizard Aviator")... wait, I thought that was "unofficial"? Well, I guess not anymore. Sumimoto got to write an official book, so now he can retcon his old articles into the setting... granted, that isn't the only example of that, with him referencing the Murder-Mage O.C.C. from another unofficial article he wrote earlier in the book. Whups. Of course, the class isn't reprinted here or in any other Rifts book, so good luck knowing what Miles can do without it! Andruu Realm is a demigod "reputed to be the offspring of some alien, Air Elemental god". Not alien enough if they're commingling their nethers with a mortal, I think. He used to have a cult, but got into business because it's more Rifts World Book 21: Splynn Dimensional Market posted:Except for the circle of clouds that follow him and the electric energy that illuminate his eyes, he would look like a normal eight foot (2.4 m) tall human with rippling muscles and light blonde hair. A perfectly normal eight foot tall human. Ah, yes, that is perfectly ordinary for a human ... okay, okay, it's probably just meant to be "normal but eight feet" but still. Sky is pondering betraying Realm, and Realm is afraid Sky is going to betray him... oh, and you may have noticed. Sky and Realm.  Rifts World Book 21: Splynn Dimensional Market posted:Note: The owners changed the name of their business from "Skyrealm" to "Skyborne" because they thought is sounded better, loftier and less like one specific place (after all, they do want to expand to other worlds). I get the impression - just the impression - that Sumimoto named it "Skyrealm", and Siembieda scrambled to rename it, lest the notoriously ligitious Skyrealms Publishing, publishers of Skyrealms of Jorune, come knocking at his door. You know, those guys who sue people all the time, and oh- sorry. You can't hear my sarcastic tone through the written word. But it's there all the same!  "I love flying whatzits!" Skyborne, Kittani, & Other Vehicles of Note No, not more equipment, I beg of you, no, please, please-  So we get a variety of Techno-Wizard magic geegaws to put on your magic plane, like a Fireball Blaster, Lightning Blaster, or... P-Beam cannon? Particle Beams? That can't be right... oh, it fires "magically created particle beams". I see. We have a "Gatling-style" machinegun that fires telekinetic bolts, but why does... I mean.. why would it be a gatling if it doesn't generate heat... well, I guess it looks cool? We also have a magic laser, oh, come on, you guys aren't even trying to stay on-theme! Also there's ectoplasm tentacles, even though ectoplasm is psionic, not magic, and whups, I just imploded into black hole of picked nits! Time for a section on Tech-Flying Platform, standing-room only, sitting down is for "luxury models", so you can feel free to catch bugs in your teeth at 60 MPH. They use the carpet of adhesion spell to keep pilots and passengers from flying off. We get stats for an Average Flying Platform "Taxi" (120 M.D.C.) and the Seaside Hover Platform "Boat" (100-200 M.D.C.). The latter can float on water, the former does not. We also have the the Splugorth Hover Platform, which is the thing that comes swooping down on you when you're on the run. It has an Eye of Eylor for the usual Palladium laundry list of sensor types, as well as a number of debuff spells.  "Look, we'll go outside and I can show you this is a jet pack!" Then, we get the Splugorth Eylor Jet Pack, which flies through the power of an Eye of Eylor - they do all sorts of unthematic nonsense, I guess! It also has a Haardeon attached, which is not a Splugorth-issue strap-on, but a creature tied to it that can leap out and claw people or eyebeam them. (Okay, I presume it's only there because it's in the art.) Also the Haardeon has a variety of psionic sensitive powers including sense time, in case you need a slave that doubles as a pocket watch. Haardeon.... haardeon... there's a joke there, it's like it's on the tip of my... hm.  How to just fill space, Palladium-style Let's see, how do you fill out the rest of a book like this? Well, you take a miscellaneous illustration, take the star-shape vehicle somebody's riding, and call it the Splugorth Eylor Hovercycle (200 M.D.C.). Then you cut out the vehicle out of the illustration, then blow it up on the same page, so you're using the same illustration twice on the same page. Bam, pro layout skills! Oh, I'm sure somebody's worried about what it does, right? I assure you nobody is. It flies and has magic powers drawn off a dartboard. Why the gently caress does a flying vehicle need mystic portal? Moving on.  Please do not ram. Kittani Hover Pods By Wayne Breaux Jr. Since flying platforms and flying barges and flying foxes wasn't enough, we get some hover pods from the writer that gave us such Palladium classics as Rifts World Book 15: Spirit West and Aliens Unlimited. Oh, have I not reviewed Alien Unlimited? Do you need seven different alien species that can all be summed up as "fish guy"? Seven different types of bird guy (including two parrotmens)? Seven different types of cat alien (including such creative names as "Pume", "Panteran", and "Lynx")? And on and on for ape aliens, plant aliens, etc. It's like looking into the event horizon of creativity. Dog aliens called the "wulf"? I don't want to review it and you don't want to read a review of it. I'm just establishing that. Speaking of which, we have these pods. But, I know, you're wondering, what is a pod? The mystery will be uncovered by Wayne Breaux, professional game writer: Rifts World Book 21: Splynn Dimensional Market posted:The term "pod" comes from the fact that these vehicles are pod shaped, rounded and bulb-like with very few or very slim protrusions. Wait, they're not named that because all Kittani are fans of Payable On Death, the classic '90s Christian nu-metal band? Racing pods, though... where have I heard of... it's just on the tip of my... hm.  "The best thing about this is just flying as much as you like, because it can't actually land." There's a One-Man Speed Pod (95 M.D.C., a Two-Man War Pod 100 M.D.C., and the Kittani Patrol Flyer (220 M.D.C.). Their ability to break the speed of sound will come in handy when you crash thanks to their low M.D.C. and take double damage since you're right in front. Gives a new meaning to the term "suicide door". Also, they get a bonus to automatic dodges at cruising speed or slower, but need to go above cruising speed to perform an automatic dodge... but are denied any bonuses when using it. No, seriously, I can't make a lack of editing like this up. Thanks, Breaux. It's always a treat. The rest of the book is filled up with extremely wishy-washy numbers for TW Sky-Flyer Compact (Two-Man) (100 M.D.C.), TW Sky-Flyer Sedan/Taxi/Bus (120 / 130 / 200 M.D.C.), (TW?) Airships (150-1,000 M.D.C.), we get Splugorth Flying Ships & Barges (250-4,000 M.D.C.) despite them being prominent in other books. The filler is so blatant that they may as well have lorem ipsumed the rest of the book. But I've got a few more things left to say. Next: Welcome to Palladium! Here's your introductory pink slip.
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Jan 10, 2019 07:37
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Myriad Song Vexed By Space Birbs So, Myriad Song is about as complicated as Double Cross, except it's generally well organized and well explained. I'll be going over how Sanguine organizes things as we get to each section, but I also appreciate them putting the 'how the basic system works' section before character creation. You might be familiar with their Cardinal system from Ironclaw; Myriad Song is a refinement on Ironclaw running on the same system, rather than its own new system. There have been some significant changes in balancing and some other alterations designed to make PCs better and to make doing things easier, because it's in-genre for your colorful space hero adventurers to be a little better off than your highly able low fantasy movers and shakers, but not by a lot. In addition to clearly headered sections about each game concept, we also get a simple, organized glossary of short descriptions of game terms right at the beginning, which is nice to have. Everything has a header, important game terms are italicized and bolded, and the section is written without the assumption you are familiar with Cardinal or with RPGs in general; it starts from the basics. First, it begins with a brief explanation of the narrative role of the rules and dice. They're there to make things more exciting and to give extra decisions for players to make. You roll the dice to work out how the story moves forward; does the hero win this dramatic fight with their rival, or are you going to be sent into defeat, or captured, or worse? That kind of thing. We've all seen it a thousand times, but it's nice to write this section with the assumption that a player needs the explanation. I also like their term for the GM: Sanguine uses the term Host, to emphasize that the GM's job is making sure everyone (GM included) has a good time. PCs are Major Characters, who are expected to have fantastic skills and talents and to be important people who make the story happen. Most NPC mooks are Minor Characters, who don't have nearly the same narrative weight; in game Minor Characters can't take things like 'get out of dying free' powers. The general rules system works on the principle of Declaring your action ('I'm going to shoot the guy!') then Claiming any bonuses and circumstances that help you out ('I Aimed so I claim a bonus on shooting the guy!'). On the same note, you can Claim something in reaction ('He's shooting at me! Am I near cover? I dive behind it and claim a Cover bonus!') so that you don't have to keep telling your GM you're sticking to cover at all times during a gunfight. The game uses d4, d6, d8, d10, and d12 dice. You put your Skill (base ability with an action), Bonuses (situational), and Traits (stats) together, all of them described as dice pools or dice sizes. You roll them all, then take the highest number from the pile as your check result. If you're rolling for something fairly normal, you need to beat a 3. If you're working against someone, or something more difficult comes up, you roll against an enemy dice pool and compare your results to their results in the same way. If your highest showing die beat their highest showing die (or the flat 3 in an easier test) you succeed. You then check your second highest die. If it also won, you score two successes. Then your next, etc. In general, a 1 success success is good enough. A 2 success success is something an expert could do. And a 3 success success is a massive success that demonstrates total mastery of what you were doing. If absolutely all of your dice come up a 1, you Botch and something terrible happens. If your best die and theirs are tied, something dramatic happens around the stalemate. Ties are moments where you either fail, but introduce a significant complication for your enemy, or you succeed, but something comes up that might lead to further plot for you. Now, you can try to do anything where you can claim at least 1 die. But as the astute among you might notice, even if a character has a d12, if they have only 1 die the chances of botching are significant. If they get at least 1 more die (a d12 d4 dice pool, like someone with 1 point in a skill but the highest possible trait) suddenly they have a 1-48 chance of botching instead of 1-12. Even a little training will give a natural talent a lot more breathing room! The reasoning behind the success levels is similar; someone with a d12 Trait but no other dice could still get a 'good enough' success on anything in the game, since a d12 is the highest possible die and they could technically beat anyone if they're lucky. But that's as well as they can do. Someone with 2 dice, from a Skill and Trait both, has both training and talent and can succeed on a more professional or complete level as well as having better odds of not loving up completely. Someone with both those things AND some other bonus, like from a Gift (we'll get to these) or a situational modifier? That person has the potential to look like a master. You can also have a Challenge, where you and an opponent both roll against 3 and count who has more successes to see who beats who. This is often used for dramatic situations where you want to compare skill rather than have a single, sudden contest that can be decided by a single lucky die. The example given is trying to sneak into a compound. The PC rolls against 3 with their stealth skill and applicable traits and modifiers, while the compound guards roll vs. 3 with their awareness. This means that if the PC is a professional with a bunch of d8s from circumstance, gifts, gear, etc, they have a good chance of winning this contest even if the Guards have, say, a d12 and d4 and roll a 12 on that d12, since it's comparing numbers of successes. They're also good for when one player is contesting 5 guards; instead of rolling a separate one v. one stealth test for each, everyone applicable just rolls against 3 once and compares the successes. There's also Rote, where you don't bother rolling the dice and just do something. Rote is often used without rules; a ship's engineer knows what they're doing and doesn't need to roll for routine maintenance, for instance. But if it's important to see how well a character can do when they're just breezing through a task, assume they rolled maximum on all their dice but halve the number of successes they score, rounded down. So you'd need 4 dice (Let's say our engineer has Skill, Trait, a bonus from tools, and a Gift that helps them engineer) to get 2 successes, and 6 to get 3. Only the best people in the galaxy can make things look so easy that they don't need to roll at all to look like a master. You can only Rote against difficulty 3 (or other fixed number) tasks, never in a direct contest with another character. Rote is often used to save time for large numbers of NPCs, too. 'The guards Rote on Mind+Observation, they have 2 dice, so 1 success, you need 2 successes vs. TN 3 to sneak into the compound' instead of rolling for the 20 compound soldiers, for instance, in the above stealth check example. Direct contests vs. an enemy dicepool come up often in combat and negotiation. As already said, you roll your pool vs. theirs, compare your highest die to theirs, and whoever has the higher wins. Then compare second highest and if it's higher, 2 successes, etc. A tie on an actual contest means both characters win. In combat, this often means you exchange hits at exactly the same time. In a negotiation, you find a compromise you can both accept. In stealth, they can't quite find you but they find evidence someone was there. Etc etc. If you need to count successes during a tie (successes determine damage modifiers in combat, for instance) you get 1 success for each of your dice that tied their highest die. So if I roll 5, 5, and 4, and my opponent rolls 5, 3, and 1, we Tied but I got 2 Successes. If your opponent Botches during a contest, instead of some dramatic narrative consequence, you just get +1 Successes. If you and your opponent somehow both Botch a test, the result should be a massive comedy of errors that should become a memorable event, because holy poo poo that isn't going to happen often. You can sometimes have a rule called Favor with a check; if you have Favor, you may reroll one die that comes up 1 per test. Characters doing something they Favor rarely Botch. The common source of Favor comes from having at least 1 point in a skill, or having it be a skill granted by your Legacy (species) or Career (job). At that point, you get to declare a Favored Use, where you always get Favor. So say I have d4 in Shooting. I can, at any time, declare a Favored Use with Shooting, but that Favored Use will stay forever. So say I have a magnum pistol I've decided I like, and I'm in the middle of a gunfight and Botch on my d8 d4 shooting check. I can suddenly say 'Actually, my Favored Use is Shooting with this magnum' and reroll one of the ones. But then I'm stuck with that Favored Use for good unless I later spend some EXP to change it. The Host has final say on what's an acceptable Favored Use, but they're usually 'with my trusty X' or 'in this general situation' style things. Sometimes you'll do something over a long period of time. Generally, you roll vs. 3 for every time period you're working and get 5% done with the task per success. Hard tasks might subtract 1 success from each check (so you'd need 2 for +5%, 3 for +10%) etc. This is used for long term projects like building your own power armor between adventures, or checking if you can fix the engine and get off world before the ridiculous space bird mating season. You can also get bonuses and penalties. Bonuses add to your dice pool. So say I'm trying to fix the ship ahead of ridiculous space bird mating season, and I have the right tools and supplies for the job. I get a d8 gear bonus and thus add a d8 to my dice pool. If you get a penalty, you add it to the enemy dice pool, or use it to determine the overall difficulty of a task if you were rolling against a fixed number before. Say I'm still trying to escape the silly space birds, but one of them stole my only spanner to present to a potential mate while doing a silly bird dance. Now I'm at a d8 Penalty, so I roll a d8 and if it's higher than 3, that's my new difficulty number. Say I'm trying to chase the bird and get my spanner back, but there's a massive storm that's washing away its tracks, giving me a d8 penalty to track it. The wily birb gets an extra d8 added to its dice pool to vex me further. Allies can also help you out on a check, rolling vs. 3. If they get at least one success (and they may be allowed to Rote this) they give you +d8 to your dice pool. If they have a specific Gift (Team Player), they give +d12. So I'm still trying to escape the drat bird planet after getting my spanner back, and my crew finally finishes their musical number about being meant to be a space pirate because nothing rhymes with orange. They finally pitch in, and 2 of them are able to get successes on the assist check. One of them has Team Player. I now get +d8 and +d12 on my check to fix the engine, and we finally get off this ridiculous planet. They end the section with the most important rule: Have fun. You're here to tell a story, and it's important to be clear about the rules and explain what everything does so that people aren't disappointed when what they thought would be a cool special power or Gift doesn't do what they want. Be willing to offer to let people make changes to their characters if there were misunderstandings like that. The Host's goal is to challenge players, make them use resources and make decisions, but not to 'beat' them. In general, Myriad Song is the kind of story where after a bunch of dramatic happenings, the players will accomplish their goals; you want it to be a fight, but you often want to balance it towards the protagonists winning in the end. Overcoming things and growing is one of the fun parts of a roleplaying game, and one Sanguine likes to emphasize. Similarly, they remind a Host that the PCs are important people. You start the game a significant cut above average and have a lot of room to grow from there. PCs should be the kind of people who make big changes, or look into major setting mysteries, or become central to important conflicts. The scale can be whatever you want, as can the stakes, but the PCs should always have central stage in your story. Every PC starts with some measure of plot armor, after all. In general, the goal is a story where the heroes face setbacks and difficulties, and make choices and possibly sacrifices, but achieve something great in the end. It should all be worth it, and PCs should have narrative agency. I'm actually quite happy they include this kind of thing in every game, though I think it was more necessary in Ironclaw due to genre conventions; people need a little more reminding that it's okay to play an important character as your PC in a gritty low fantasy intrigue fest than a wild and colorful space hero setting. But if you want a game about resolving where the Syndics went, or guiding a major faction to victory, or the players eventually starting their own? You should feel free to do that. These things are well within the intended scope of the game. All those mysteries were left open for your group for a reason! Next Time: Making PCs
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Jan 10, 2019 16:07
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Myriad Song Myriad People First, lets talk about stats a bit, then I'm going to skip ahead slightly because goddamn I want to talk about the species you can play as, they're fun and cool. You get 6 stats: Body, for your physical strength and endurance. Mind, for your mental acuity and perception. Speed, for your coordination and grace. Will, for your resilience and self-control. Career, for your training (You include your Career trait with 3 skills, decided by your Career). Legacy, for the abilities you get from your species. You set two of these to d8, 3 to d6, and one to d4. You thus start with 2 strong points, 3 average ones, and 1 weakpoint. Note there are only 15 skills in game, and having a skill covered by your Career or Legacy counts as having skillpoints in it for purposes of claiming a Favored Use as discussed before. So every Legacy gets included with 1/5 of the game's entire skill list. The short skill list is an intentional paring-down and broadening of skills to make players widely competent; a space hero only needs to know Shooting and they'll be able to handle everything from bows to high tech railguns, etc. Each species will also give you 2 Gifts (special abilities that form the basis of much of character building) and access to a larger species tree of Gifts. Anyway, our species start with BIRBS. Adhallians are space bird people who have a very strange method of reproduction. The female lays a single egg with several fetuses, then one dominant fetus eats and absorbs the others within the egg, coming out with a mixture of genetic expressions and traits based on the siblings it absorbed. They vary widely in morphology, but none of them have 'hands' in the traditional human sense. Instead, they have 3 prehensile tails that serve as highly dexterous manipulators; for game purposes, an Adhallian character actually counts as having 3 hands and they're equally dexterous with all of them. This is, in fact, one of their automatic species Gifts; being able to triwield guns, or wield a rifle and a pistol, or use a rifle and a melee weapon or whatever is a pretty big advantage. All Adhallians can also fly with their powerful and well developed wings. Adhallian society is very territorial, and they have strict social roles based on morphology. Adhallians who come out of the egg with extra eyes are called Observers, and it's thought that they should all become academics and diplomats because of their superior eyesight. Adhallians who come out with buff tails or tails that contain weaponized blades are called Raptors, and are assumed to be warbirbs of unparalleled strength. The two general morphologies leave one another alone and don't like to interact. A new wave with Adhallian families is using newly discovered medical science to extract the fetuses from their eggs rather than letting them eat one another, producing a new wave of multiple births. Traditionalists think this is hideously unnatural and grumble about how chicks need to devour their siblings in the egg-womb for genetic power. This is weird, birds! You're weird! Adhallians are very expressive in body language, often clacking their beaks or nipping lightly and gently whapping people with their tails to make a point. In bird culture, this is normal. To others, it's like talking to someone who makes their points by poking you. An Adhallian PC gets Winged Flight, the 3 usable hand tails Gift, and gets to include their Legacy with Fighting (any kind of melee, birbs are mighty warriors), Observation (Keen-eyed birbs), and Transport (They can already fly, it's natural they be hotshot pilots). They can buy further Gifts later that either let them use Observe to Dodge (if multi-eyed), or give them a very solid tail-blade that works as a multi-target melee weapon, based on if you want to express that you are an Observer birb or a Warrior birb. Note you can eventually buy both, and be a Weird birb. Elvers are a complex and friendly race of adaptable eel-people. They don't have legs, but their arms are well developed and they can slither fast enough to keep up with any legged sapient. They're generally about 4 meters long, and will lift the upper 1-3 meters of their body up and off the floor to use their hands or look other sapients in the eyes. Elvers never actually stop growing, and there is no known limit to their natural lifespan, either. Elver who are over 100 years old can grow as long as 9 meters, and truly ancient Elver can get so big they can't support themselves outside water anymore. Elvers love ocean habitats and zero gravity both, especially the older ones. Elvers are often nearsighted or night-blind, but this doesn't matter much to them because they primarily perceive the world through electro-sensitive organs instead. Many Elvers wear glasses or goggles to be better able to see the world how other people of the Myriad do, in order to facilitate getting along. Elvers are very friendly and social creatures, prone to being academic and gregarious. They get along well with a variety of species and have a reputation as cosmopolitans, partly caused by their complex social and gender dynamics. Elver have 4 different genders, which shift throughout an Elver's life based on social dynamics. They are born neuter, and remain such for roughly 20 years, before they develop a current gender. They develop their gender based on the genders of the community around them; an Elver living in a female-tilted community is more likely to become male, and vice-versa. Elver who are kept alone their entire lives will remain neuter. There is also a fourth gender, a midwife, who carries and protects the eggs that a male and female fertilize inside of them. Elvers consider gender a wholly pragmatic thing; a community just needs a balance of males, females, and midwives. They don't assign any sort of other characteristics to the genders, because they have zero sexual dimorphism besides their reproductive equipment. There's no assignment of social traits to each gender, no idea that a male should be fierce or a female should be nurturing. As a result, when assimilating into sexually dimorphic cultures (such as living among humans), Elvers will generally tell their neighbors they are whatever gender they feel like they match best, on a purely social basis, based around what their neighbors think gender means. Elvers have very developed natural radio and electrical senses, but most learn to speak vocally to get along with their neighbors. Among their own kind, they prefer to communicate by electrical signaling. Their lack of actual lungs can mean they can't speak very quickly, unless they master the art of 'throat singing', in which case they can talk without ever seeming to need to take a breath. I imagine this is especially common among the most lecture prone of Elver professors, of which there are many. Elvers get their Legacy with Academics (They're curious and naturally prone to learning), Athletics (They're actually tremendously strong), and Observation (They like learning by watching as well as studying). They get a gift for their unique body structure: They can always stand up as a free action (since they don't have legs), they can't kick (if that matters), they're immune to Smothering weapons since they breathe differently, and they get an inherent d12 bonus to squeeze through small spaces or escape from grapples. The power of eeeeels! They're also amazing swimmers, getting the Swimming gift for +d12 to any tests involving swimming. They can later buy further gifts to let them constrict people, electrocute people, or hibernate so thoroughly they seem to be dead and can survive all sorts of adverse conditions. Humans have something I appreciate: They're described exactly the same way and in the same detail as the other species. In general, there's actually no 'main' species in Myriad Song. No one species is massively more prevalent than all the others. An average human is 1.5 to 2 meters tall and weighs 70 to 100 kilograms. They have an enormous number of pigments (the human art in book is very colorful and multi-ethnic) but tend to only have trace body hair and hair on their heads, which is often styled as a cultural display. They experience some sexual dimorphism, but it isn't especially extreme. Females are smaller than males on the whole. Humans have the best and most developed vision of any race in the Myriad, with the best ability to track visual details and the widest spectrum of color perception. Their hearing is about average and they lack any sort of electrical senses. They also have a strongly developed sense of taste and the most adaptable guts of any common Myriad species; humans have and accept the widest diets and are the truest of omnivores. This gives them a reputation as producing the best chefs and most exotic dishes in the setting. Human reproduction is relatively simple, with the female carrying one or more infants for nine months before giving birth. An average human reaches physical and emotional maturity around 18 years of age. Humans communicate primarily through vocalization, and are known to talk. A lot. Humans achieved spaceflight and joined the galaxy during the rule of the Syndicate, and for some unknown reason the Syndics had an especial liking for them. There are plenty of uplifted humans, and they rule the Remanence. All 4 major surviving Remanence dynasties are human. At the same time, humans are likely to vehemently rebel against the old ways of the Syndicate Empire; they seem to take both extremes rather than settling in a middle ground. Humans either wish for their Gods to return and follow the old ways, or eagerly seek out new paths for the galaxy. Because of the large number of Conductors and uplifted humans, the rest of the galaxy sees the human figure as one of the faces of the Syndic Empire, and associates them with oppression and totalitarianism. Humans don't get a racial gift tree, which I think was kind of a missed opportunity to really lean into 'humans are another kind of alien in this setting'. They do get Leadership, which gives every single human +d12 on Tactics checks to Rally allies (which is necessary to help them recover from getting hit and shaken; psychology is very important in Cardinal combat), and Low Profile, which gives +d12 to checks to stay hidden in crowds, blend in with a stolen uniform, or otherwise stay unnoticed. They include their Human dice with Negotiation (Humans are good diplomats), Questioning (And good detectives; they pick up on body language and unconscious expressions well), and Tactics (And good officers. They have a natural tendency to work together). Ishato are space octopi and masters of multitasking. The average Ishato is 2/3 tentacle, 1/3 head/beak, and not much else. Pre-sapient Ishato used to have neurotoxin glands, and modern Ishato can cultivate them with practice and meditation. They still have enormously strong tentacles and sharp beaks that can bite through armor and bone. They generally use 4 of their tentacles as hands while using the others to walk and climb (or swim). They have highly developed senses of touch that far surpass their mediocre vision and they prefer to see the world in 'feels', first. Ishato personal decoration thus takes the form of an elaborate form of braille markings, with Ishato running their tentacles along one another's elegant robes and personal marking tattoos to read each other's appearance. Males have slightly thicker tentacles while females have two bony fin protrusions that don't do anything. Ishato don't have the same concept of personal space as other species; it's normal and polite to get close to one another and touch in Ishato culture. This is how they talk with one another, after all. Among other races they're capable of talking vocally, but their voices rarely rise above a harsh whisper and they often have to add on sign and body language to ensure they're understood. Conservative Ishato preserve the complex braille shawls and robes that the Syndics introduced to their species, and often look down on youngsters who prefer to 'go naked' and actually touch one another's bodies to communicate. The Ishato were some of the most influenced by the Syndics, and are some of the most likely (and loyal) citizens of the Remanence. They were originally used as shock troops and assassins; they're naturally stealthy, they can use two rifles or shotguns at once, and they can strangle most sapients with their bare tentacles. The Syndics first started the trend of 'wrapping' when they noticed Ishato are also amazing multitaskers and thus made great bureaucrats and administrators, too. They wanted to differentiate the space octopus with a clipboard from the heavily armored shock troopers who made sure your world would be administered by clipboard guy. Conservative Ishato face a crisis of culture. Their culture was heavily shaped and influenced by the Syndics, and now their Gods are gone. The conservatives have tended to involve themselves in heavily authoritarian projects in the absence of their masters, both as agents of the Remanence, but also in the form of Ishato businesspeople forming the core of the Averlini Mercantile Group. Oh dear. Younger, more cosmopolitan Ishato are very drawn to the Concord, seeing it as a way to build a new culture that won't be so dependent on absent overlords. They are also often drawn to the Metanoic Corps, seeing it as a good and just way to preserve a few of the good things the old masters did without being a Remanence agent. Ishato include their Legacy dice with Fighting (Strangling), Evasion (Stealthy strangling, dodging), and Endurance (Hard to strangle). Ishato get an Extra Pair of Arms, giving them effectively 4 hands (though not all of them are equally dexterous), and they also get Stealth, giving them +d12 to Evasion tests made wholly to hide. They can buy Gifts that let them recharge 'spend an action to recharge' Gifts when they hide during combat and they can get a special long-range tentacle whip poison sting attack. An octopus assassin or commando can be lethal indeed. Next Time: Brain Eating Bush, Magic Spider
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Jan 10, 2019 19:29
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I always appreciate when media remembers that the human superpower is the ability to eat anything.
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Jan 10, 2019 19:46
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We're also pretty great at endurance running  Well not me specifically 
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Jan 10, 2019 19:49
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What would a human superpower be In a universe with sentient three appendaged birds and gregarious eels i cant help but feel humans got the short end of the stick. Maybe adaptability? To quote calvin, "No retractable claws, no opposable toes, no prehensile tail, no compound eyes, no fangs, no claws......."
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Jan 10, 2019 19:55
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Rifts World Book 21: Splynn Dimension Market, Part 18: "Special Thanks to Mark for expanding upon my original ideas and breathing life into the famed Splynn Dimensional Market." In Conclusion Hopefully Mark Sumimoto enjoyed his trip through the Palladium rotating door, much like Ben Lucas, Kevin Krueger, and Chris Kornmann did. Watch it spin! Apparently he's now an editorial manager for the Society of Nuclear Medicine, so it seems he came out the other end okay. Apparently he was originally going to also contribute to Powers Unlimited, but that never happened. Kevin Siembieda, The Rifter #8 posted:1999 has been especially good for Palladium. We have built a network of amazing artists, writers and creators — many of whom have become friends rather than just distant, machine-like freelancers. Some of these folks are only beginning to stretch their wings and be seen. New guys like Bill Coffin, Ben Lucas, Steve Edwards, Mark Sumimoto, Steve Trustrum, Mike Wilson, Apollo Okamura, Ryan Beres, and others. Together, we plan on making the next 20 years better than the first! There is an excitement and energy at Palladium Books that reverberates through the stalwart staff and freelancers alike. An energy that we hope will carry us to new heights. To boldly go where no man has ... um ... well you get the idea. Kevin Siembieda, The Rifter #8 posted:We had a lot of fun with this book, filled it with great artwork, and Mark Sumimoto did a fantastic job writing it (I only pitched in here and there)! Kevin Siembieda, The Rifter #9 posted:Mark Sumimoto leaves Palladium Mark Sumimoto, sumocat.blogspot.com posted:My first paid piece of writing appeared in The Rifter #2, a periodical published by pen and paper gaming company Palladium Books. This was followed by more minor pieces and a full-length supplement for the Rifts series, The Splynn Dimensional Market. Fortunately, our relationship soured before I became as emotionally involved as Bill Coffin, although I vouch for everything he has said about PB.  You know, I have a soft spot for the Atlantis books and their ability to throw seemingly random ideas in a blender, but they're just not terribly playable save for generating slavers for the PCs to lob missiles at. Sumimoto does his best to give us some hooks and a rebel group to give us reasons to actually go to monster island, but the cartoonish evil of the Splugorth at this point is so amplified that I'm starting to think it's less cunning or malevolent and more just dumb. I can only express this in narrative form. Not Rifts World Book 21: Splynn Dimensional Market posted:Splynncryth the Splugorth: Okay, I'm not high on megaopiates for about five minutes, it's a rare time, let's do some governing. Right, so, if you've got a problem, look, I'll solve it. Altantis is ultimately dumb and I feel dumber for having summarized two books about it. Rad bio-borgs and cool psychic conch art just can't get me past the pre-adolescent, dull, "do evil for evil's sake because you were born evil in an evil dimension" gibberish that infests this chunk of the setting from the core. Real evil is way more chilling and subtle, and might even involve motivations. What would this book be like if you didn't have one big circular Lovecraftian fart at the center? We just don't know. THE END: A FAREWELL TO TENTACLES.
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Jan 10, 2019 19:56
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Meyers-Briggs Testicle posted:What would a human superpower be
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Jan 10, 2019 20:10
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Don't forget godlike tolerance of caffeine and alcohol! E: vvvvv I'm gonna have to disagree with you on that goonsir. By popular demand fucked around with this message at 20:21 on Jan 10, 2019 |
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Jan 10, 2019 20:12
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By popular demand posted:Don't forget godlike tolerance of caffeine and alcohol!
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Jan 10, 2019 20:14
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Meyers-Briggs Testicle posted:Maybe adaptability? Adaptability is definitely the go-to excuse for the People of +1 Feat and +1 Skill Point. What a human "power" would be is something that'd largely be defined by what the limitations of other species are. Usually humans are just the baseline and other species add or subtract from that, but you could go the other way around if you're not working off a particular assumption. Granted, making humans the baseline is usually done with good reason (it turns out people are pretty familiar with humans), but if you're doing some more nuanced sci-fi or the like, it's worth considering.
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Jan 10, 2019 20:28
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Adaptability is definitely the go-to excuse for the People of +1 Feat and +1 Skill Point. This is true. I know of two separate sci-fi settings that do something like that, but both define humans as exceptional in some respect because of how the other aliens are set up. In one, humans are defined by our uniquely primate biology that lends us unparalleled agility and ability to get around. We're the only race in the galaxy that's invented the ladder, and it's such a pain for other races to get around human ships and cities that we're largely left alone militarily. In another, the fact that we don't have telepathy and are immune to other races' telepathy in turn makes us uniquely feared in the galaxy and our literature and television become the most popular in the galaxy because we don't automatically read each others' thoughts and communicate that way unlike every other race in the galaxy, so human literature and drama is a field of art widely beloved by the galactic community as something original and new, even as we're dreaded as master spies and scheming politicians.
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Jan 10, 2019 20:34
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Compared to other animals on Earth (ignoring the intelligence difference, as assumably other races would have that to), Humans would have: Greater resistance to injury and pain. Humans are capable of recovering from broken bones and similar injuries better than most other species Extreme endurance. Humans may not be fast, but we can keep going much longer than other animals, as highlighted by our ancestral role as pursuit predators Fantastic throwing ability. No other animal is remotely close to Humans when it comes to throwing things accurately and with force. Dietary variability. Both in terms of food and drugs, Humans can consume a much wider range of things than other animals. Pack bonding. Even compared to other social animals, Humans are ridiculously willing to pack bond with anything, including other species and even inanimate objects.
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Jan 10, 2019 20:37
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The one with the lack of telepathy also makes humans very in demand as mercenaries, because if there's a master telepath who's decided that your whole planet needs to fanatically worship him it's very convenient to have a bunch of humans show up with rifles and shoot him a lot.
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Jan 10, 2019 20:41
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Stolze's Out of the Violent Planet.
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Jan 10, 2019 20:46
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I love that the Ishato have no sense of personal space. It just seems to lend itself to countless comical encounters.
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Jan 10, 2019 20:50
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Kaza42 posted:Pack bonding. Even compared to other social animals, Humans are ridiculously willing to pack bond with anything, including other species and even inanimate objects. There's also that humans apparently have a special reward signal path in the brain that triggers when working together, which other social primates (chimpanzees) don't have. Maybe humans are the proud warrior race because they'll retain squad cohesion long after every other species would gtfo.
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Jan 10, 2019 21:07
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Myriad Song Crime Bush Lampyr are bio luminescent bug people. Who can fly. These are the galactic newcomers, rather than humans. They were mostly unknown during the Syndicate period and have only since come onto the scene of the Myriad. They have two arms and two legs, plus their wings, and stand .8 to 1.2 meters in height. They perceive a very wide range of colors and are very sensitive to light, and communicate among themselves with a mixture of vocalization and bio luminescent flashes. Lampyr are defined by their mating rituals, which are so complicated and complex that most suspect they're making them up as they go along. This includes the Lampyr; they often can't explain what attracted them to one another, just that it had to be SOMETHING in all that dancing and flashing and chirping that worked out. Lampyr reproduce via the pregnant female retreating to a cave and eating a lot before laying roughly two dozen eggs. She and her close family then flash at and protect the eggs for several weeks, with a high mortality rate among eggs. Out of the clutch of 24, only 1-4 will usually develop and hatch into larvae. They are then raised in colonies, where the bugs perch in large numbers and synchronize their flashing and chirping, forming great choirs that they find highly soothing. They have a love of arcologies, spaceships, and other high places to perch and flash. This is, oddly, about all we get on the Lampyr. They feel like a bit of an afterthought, which is sad, because choral light display bugs seems like a good place to start. They get their Legacy dice with Observation (watch the flashes), Athletics (Fly and perch), and Tactics (COORDINATE FLASHING) They get Winged Flight like the birbs, and also start with Lampyr Sync. They can use their flashing to calm and soothe allies, granting buffs or removing mental and hit-stun penalties from allies. They also get a variety of gifts for blinding and disorienting enemies with their flashing bug butt. They can also get a Gift that grants them extra armor for their shell, helping them dodge. They are also our first appearance of Gifts where you can Exhaust (tap) the Gift, making it go inactive to a bit, to reduce incoming damage. Lots of Cybernetics and things let you do this to represent your extra organs or capabilities suffering damage but stopping a bullet from getting into your vitals and actually killing you. Ldum-Rabo aren't one species, they're two. A giant species of wolf-bats that prefers to walk on all fours, and the symbiotic slime molds that lives on them and helps them think. The Ldum is smart, and helps enhance the Rabo's mental capacity, while the Rabo is strong, and lends the Ldum their senses. Rabo only live for about 20 years on average, but the Ldum have been trying to help them to live longer, especially because a Ldum can outlive their host and it's quite difficult to transfer them to a new one (though it is doable). Like humans, Rabo can eat nearly anything, and the Ldum survive off of the shed skin and hair of their host. Rabo can vocalize well enough to talk, while Ldum can't vocalize at all. The Ldum will often talk through the Rabo, who may have no idea what they are actually saying but will pronounce it perfectly, and in a highly distinguished diction. Ldum and Rabo both direct their breeding and genetics towards making better Ldum and Rabo. Their libido is suppressed by their Ldum, and they make decisions about reproduction based entirely on what they think will lead to longer lived, smarter Rabo who have better hands. Because of their general symbiosis, Ldum-Rabo are very interested in medicine and xenobiology. They have spread across the stars, eager to take advantage of the absence of the Syndics to study all the things they were once forbidden, so it should be no surprise that they're a common sight among the Concord. They're also common with the Solar Creed; they like the idea of many organisms working together to make a better whole, after all. They're also common in the Metanoic Corps, if for no reason than to study the ecosystems they repair. Some even go and seek out primitive worlds, both to study them and to offer medical care to the natives. Ldum-Rabo are some of the best doctors in the galaxy. They get an extremely unique Gift: They get 2 Legacy traits. They effectively get 2d8, 3d6, and then 2d4, having a separate Legacy Dice for Ldum and for Rabo because you're playing as both. The Ldum dice is used for Academics (They are genius doctor slimes), Presence (Also highly urbane!), and Questioning (And fine detectives! I say!). The Rabo dice are used for Athletics (Buff), Endurance (Tough), and Observation (High perceptive). All Ldum-Rabo also start with Ldum Medicine, which lets them heal more conditions, more easily, once per rest period with a Mind+Academics+d12 for this Gift check vs. 3. For every success, they can remove one medical condition besides really serious injury, help someone along on healing serious long-term injury, OR they can recharge your plot armor (All PCs get a once-per session 'No, I did not just get knocked into Dying/Dead/Exploded' Save). This is hugely helpful! They don't get any other racial Gifts to buy, but amazing slime doctor and his hyper-bat-wolf assistant/ride is enough, damnit. Morphir are where we get really weird, and I say that knowing we just got past a symbiotic slime mould and their wolf-bat porter/companion. Morphir are plant people. Morphir are normally not people. They're normally just plants. Carnivorous plants. Their homeworld was originally kept secret and their species was originally quarantined by the Syndics. This is because while normally they're just a very aggressive kind of pitcher plant, they can digest just about any organic material in their pitchers. If a female Morphir plant is fed brain matter, it starts to produce buds that can be smoked for an incredible hallucinogenic high that includes some of the memories and experiences of the brain she had eaten, a substance called Chara. If a female Morphir is fed sapient brain matter, they produce even stronger Chara that sells for immense sums on the black market. However, if they're fed enough, they become sentient, take the shape of the brain they've been eating, and escape from the illegal drug farm as a sapient Morphir. So yeah. They're produced by evil drug smugglers and farmers feeding people to a pitcher plant to make hyper-drugs. Which then risks making the plant sentient. The sentient plant is not necessarily evil, but she is a shapeshifting creature that can still eat more brains if she wants to to get their thoughts and more easily mimic their form. Sapient Morphir are very capable of pretending to be human, without any sign that they aren't. They most often mimic the human form because they have similar senses, and find human voices easiest to mimic by vibrating their fronds. They can pretend to be other species and are generally masters of disguise. Given most are born of murderous drug smuggling, most don't have happy memories of their initial existence. Sapient Morphir aren't evil. It's important to remember that. They were born of evil, and people are goddamn terrified of them if they're unveiled as Morphir, but there's actually nothing even driving them to especially desire eating any more brains now that they're sapient. Only female Morphir can undergo this weird transformation. They have a variety of hidden thorns, spores, and weapons they can use to defend themselves, and a reputation as some of the galaxy's most terrifying assassins. The Remanence considers them a living biohazard and proscribes immediate burning for any that are unveiled. Criminals try to enslave them into gangs, using them as assassins, enforcers, and forcing them to produce additional Charas under threat of turning them in to the authorities if they don't comply. Morphir aren't any more violent than any other species, they just have 'uniquely terrible tools' for violence, as the book puts it, and are often in situations that force their thorns to the forefront. They get a bonus with Deceit (I am not a bush), Evasion (I am a bush), and Questioning (Do you suspect I am a bush?). They get a suite of abilities for being a plant person; they're immune to Poison weapons and Smothering weapons since they don't breathe like humans do. They can Exhaust their Morphir Body gift to break disguise in return for taking 1 less damage from a hit; someone notices you're bleeding sap as your disguise slips. They also get the Disguise Gift, giving +d12 to any check to pretend to be someone they're not. As you might imagine that's a bit easier when you can change shape. They can also buy a whole host of lethal natural weapons, from a fully automatic spine shooter to spore cloud grenades to confuse enemies to briar thorns that attack as they Dodge to yes, eating someone's brain. They can only eat the brains of living, carbon-based characters, but if the attack kills their target, they get a d8 bonus die to a bunch of things the target knew until they refresh the gift, which they can do at their wish. Interestingly, most of their weapons have the cost of revealing them as a Morphir when used, and have to be 'reloaded' by Hiding and resuming your previous disguise. Rhax/Rhagia are an amazingly genetically diverse species, partly because of their own self-directed breeding experiments. These are the spider ladies, whose males are non-sapient spiders the size of large dogs, generally kept as favored pets and companions by their sisters and mothers. Rhagia is the plural, Rhax the singular. A Rhax can vary from 1m to 2.1m tall, and some of them are highly humanoid and human-like, while others are much more akin to very large spiders with 4 usable hands. They're very dexterous, and famed for their skill with their multiple arms. Also quite famed for being able to climb almost anything. Some of them will also have poison glands or spinnerets, and are capable of producing either sticky, entangling webbing or durable silk ropes. Males live in zoos, or are left to run wild in poorer areas. Females have a complex sapient society, as you'd expect from any sapient creature. They have no real idea of sexuality as anything but a means of reproduction or something of a chore; a Rhax will mate with a male of her choosing, usually for genetic reasons, once every three years or so and have several hundred eggs. Only a couple dozen will hatch. Very few will be female. Males are usually kept as pets until they're adults, while females are cherished and doted on and educated as best a mother can. Because their males are non-sapient and can't talk, Rhagia incorporate a lot of dancing and touching into their communication. Female Rhagia are perfectly capable of talking, but like many species in the Myriad they tend to get up close and touch the person they're conversing with while they do so, out of habit. They're also noted for their nice singing voices, which I think is a cute touch given the Malmignatti Cluster and their desire to grant all spiders incredible song magic. Really, their biggest role in the setting is their link to the Malmignatti Cluster and the Empress of All That Is. Not every Rhagia is a Malmignatti, though. Many are free to go their own way, or disagree with their hyper-spider queen, or just got sick of the breeding experiments. They are also obligate carnivores. Rhagia get to use their Legacy dice with Athletics (Climbing), Craft (Weaving), and Presence (Exceptional Spider Charisma). They automatically get the ability to walk on and cling to walls, and an extra pair of hands. They can buy effective paralytic poisons that are very useful for taking targets alive, and the ability to discharge webbing to use as either a rope or a means to wrap up and incapacitate opponents in combat. Next Time: Robit People, Magnodog, and The Raptor That Hates Night10194 fucked around with this message at 15:01 on Jan 19, 2019 |
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Jan 10, 2019 21:09
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I have to nerdily throw in a mention for Embassytown, in which the aliens (just called "Hosts") are unable to really understand the disconnect between the sign, the signified and the signifier. Not like in a hur hur Drax from Guardians of the Galaxy way, but in a straight up can not ever lie even conceptually. They can't even really do analogies, so they pay people to act out something kind of like a metaphor. The whole book is just a big ol' deep dive into their society as it goes through some serious changes. It's a really good book, especially if you're a big language nerd like me.
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Jan 10, 2019 21:11
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Whenever the topic of 'humans are the best at something' comes up, I always like the idea of humans being the pet species. Like, everyone else developed bioroid technology, but they did it after they got genetic nanoforges. Humans, on the other hand, took their natural predator and made them into bioroids with meat, fences, and fire-sharpened sticks. So nowadays, whenever there's some strange alien monster on a frontier planet, they call in some humans. Half the time, they'll walk out with the monster on a string calling it 'Muffins' or something.
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Jan 10, 2019 21:11
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PurpleXVI posted:I love that the Ishato have no sense of personal space. It just seems to lend itself to countless comical encounters. There is an entirely 'cowardly comic relief who causes mishaps' Gift line and the example Ishato character has some of it. Yes, you can play the character who flies into a scrambling panic during a gunfight, running around and tripping up enemies, accidentally rallying allies, and dodging bullets without meaning to.
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Jan 10, 2019 21:14
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Nessus posted:Enviro tolerance, dietary range, good eyes, endurance running... seems like a good grab bag if you aren’t doing some sob story on the Good/Evil Within Hunanity.
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Jan 10, 2019 21:16
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wdarkk posted:There's also that humans apparently have a special reward signal path in the brain that triggers when working together, which other social primates (chimpanzees) don't have. Maybe humans are the proud warrior race because they'll retain squad cohesion long after every other species would gtfo. This is basically what Myriad Song went with. Humans are really sociable but also very good at cooperating and inspiring people to cooperate. Also good at blending in and going with the flow when they want to. The Tactics skill is usually included as a bonus to combat skills when you gang up on enemies, in addition to being used to do, well, tactics and leadership. It is often the mark of a professional soldier.
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Jan 10, 2019 21:17
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The human ability to not die of shock from broken bones and poo poo is honestly a big deal.
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Jan 10, 2019 21:29
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Mors Rattus posted:The human ability to not die of shock from broken bones and poo poo is honestly a big deal.
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Jan 10, 2019 21:53
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Mors Rattus posted:The human ability to not die of shock from broken bones and poo poo is honestly a big deal. wdarkk posted:There's also that humans apparently have a special reward signal path in the brain that triggers when working together, which other social primates (chimpanzees) don't have. Maybe humans are the proud warrior race because they'll retain squad cohesion long after every other species would gtfo.
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Jan 10, 2019 21:55
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 01:17 |
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I think my favorite alien race that would conceptually be really neat to play in a setting like this is the Leviathans, from a book I read as a kid. The idea is, they're sea serpents. When born, they have powerful telepathic abilities but are non-sentient and parasitize and telepathically dominate their full grown (anywhere from ten to hundreds of feet long) parents. As they grow older, their intelligence improves to the point of sentience even as their telepathy diminishes and their barbed tentacles they use to clasp on to their parents and control them become prehensile and usable as hands. But the Leviathans don't stop growing, and each only has fifteen to twenty years of sentience before they reach sexual maturity and their intelligence begins to diminish until they're just giant, animal sea serpents ready to mate and breed more telepathic elvers. So during the brief adolescent phase where they're sentient, the Leviathans congregate in the shallows where the massive elders and telepathic youngers won't go, and have a civilization of sorts dominated by the inevitable knowledge that they will one day feel the calling to the deep. The book pointed out that the Leviathans are effectively a civilization of perpetual teenagers who live on a world dominated by kaiju, and that they probably would never have developed space flight on their own. Another civilization uplifted them as use for soldiers, as a Leviathan colony is hilariously destructive to any world's ecosystem as you'd expect from introducing a race of kaiju, and the adolescents just don't live long enough - and tend to oscillate between crippling depression and manic hyperactivity - to really make them a problem. I like the idea of a clearly sentient race that just wasn't meant to ever reach this level of technology, and they know that and are struggling to figure out what to do now.
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Jan 10, 2019 22:00
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