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Night10194 posted:Also, one other thing I'd like to see in a Myriad Song 2e if one gets made: I would legit like a 'suggested media' section, particularly for music. The music theme is really cool in theory but there isn't a lot done with it and I'd love a little instruction/inspiration for that kind of thing. It might not be a direct reference, but Ar tonelico is a series about magic science music and a lot of the longer invocations (i.e. the plot ones instead of the battle ones) are actually sung as background music and it's *definitely* what I thought of when I heard about magic science music.
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Jan 19, 2019 01:59
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Leraika posted:It might not be a direct reference, but Ar tonelico is a series about magic science music and a lot of the longer invocations (i.e. the plot ones instead of the battle ones) are actually sung as background music and it's *definitely* what I thought of when I heard about magic science music. They are also really anime, especially the later ones. This guy has a bunch of the song magic songs. Be careful of related videos.
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Jan 19, 2019 02:22
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Probably stick to the first one if you have any susceptibility to anime poisoning.
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Jan 19, 2019 02:43
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honestly with Ar Tonelico, grab the music and ignore everything else. Even the bits of world building that's cool ends up getting serviced to otaku pandering.
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Jan 19, 2019 02:55
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 Rifts World Book 20: Canada, Part 4 - "Moreover, he does not ask questions when somebody walks in off the street with a bionic limb or organ still moist with blood or attached to a dead body or body part." Eastern Canada Quebec, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island & Newfoundland Free Quebec This isn't an actual writeup; we just get a long teaser that Free Quebec is gearing up for war with Chi-Town, largely as a power struggle within the Coalition itself (as originally revealed in Rifts World Book 11: Coalition War Machine). However, that won't be detailed here, and we're referred to "the Rifts® Free Quebec™ World Book", like you do. We're also reassured that the Xiticix, Calgary Rift, Lazlo, Iron Heart, and "other places" will get books. Of those, only the Xiticix will in World Book 23.  Definitely a guy fixing a thingy. Mechanicsville Quebec Province, near the ruins of Old Drummondville & Montreal Popular as a stop for those travelling through the area, Mechanicsville is a small boom town of around 2,000 people and about an equal number of visitors. Though they don't like magic much, they'll tolerate wizardly visitors enough to take their money. The only real nod to local politics is that there's a rivalry between the mayor / casino owner (Malcolm McKinley) and the owner of the largest repair shop in town (Wayne Sterling); the former is presented as a jealous bully while the latter is a nice guy who everybody loves. Sure, okay. Like earlier books such as Rifts World Book 1: Vampire Kingdoms, we get a itemized list of businesses and locations. Covering all 30 of them is a tall order, and honestly most of them aren't too interesting. So I'll try and zoom in on the more interesting few:
 It's important that armor have a mohawk port. The Island Kingdom of Montreal Quebec: Includes Montreal, Laval & the entirety of both islands. This is mainly a set of ruins mostly inhabited by ruins and the river pirates who use this as a port of call. It'll get a callback in Free Quebec, so remember it for the test. We get details on a few zones claimed by particular pirate crews, while the rest is run by gangs or "'god fearing folk' who call themselves 'Citizen Groups'" that try and carve out spaces for honest-ish people. Most are D-Bees. It's a popular place just because many of the ruins are Mega-Damage and thus, relatively defensible from outside attacks. The wealthiest locals have developed a militia and have probably the only peaceable spot in the city. It's only really attractive to scum and villains, however. Newfoundland Only sparsely populated by small homesteads, D-Bees, and indigenous groups. The Southern portion mainly has small groups of faeries and the North is mainly home to the Inuit and monsters. Apparently Splugorth minions are trying to develop the Southern area into an island colony from which to conduct slave raids and capture faeries. (As noted in Rifts World Book 21: Splynn Dimensional Market.) New Brunswick The main site of note is The Great Debris Wall. This is where debris from various now-submerged coastal cities washed up under the force of tidal waves during the cataclysm, forming a giant wall of rubble across the coastline. While there are D-Bees and settlers, this is mainly home to Psi-Stalker tribes. But what do they feed on...? We just don't know. Nova Scotia Cape Brenton Island is home to ghosts and abusive, evil faeries. The general presence of phantom ships and faerie-infested islands have kept humans away, allowing the Splugorth Slavers to march in and start capturing faeries as Bio-Wizard components (see above). Many faeries are trying to flee as a result, but don't have an easy destination. Prince Edward Island Largely deserted, and nobody's had much interest in changing that. Next: Lazlo! Ha ha, just kidding. ;D Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 12:06 on Jan 19, 2019 |
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Jan 19, 2019 04:43
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Alien Rope Burn posted:
I mean, have you seen post-apocalyptic fiction? This is unironically true. E: Whoever did this av, thank you. It's wonderful. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 04:59 on Jan 19, 2019 |
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Jan 19, 2019 04:55
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Dawgstar posted:Yeah, good catch. If anything proves that its saying "Iuchiban whose history is unknown." Wink, wink. Tbh I think everyone lives their best life by not caring about Iuchiban’s original backstory, tho
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Jan 19, 2019 05:42
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Night10194 posted:I mean, have you seen post-apocalyptic fiction? This is unironically true. This maybe spoilers for when Alien Rope Burn ends up reviewing Free Quebec, but, in true Siembedia "pull some interesting art and give it stats" fashion, that guy's armor has a whole write-up as Juicer environmental body armor, with add-on mohawk attachment.
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Jan 19, 2019 06:39
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Young Freud posted:This maybe spoilers for when Alien Rope Burn ends up reviewing Free Quebec, but, in true Siembedia "pull some interesting art and give it stats" fashion, that guy's armor has a whole write-up as Juicer environmental body armor, with add-on mohawk attachment. God bless this dumb as gently caress game.
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Jan 19, 2019 06:47
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Night10194 posted:I mean, have you seen post-apocalyptic fiction? This is unironically true. Not every comment is a value judgement. As for post-apocalyptic fiction, I'd rather not have future American history spoiled given the current curve of political events. Young Freud posted:This maybe spoilers for when Alien Rope Burn ends up reviewing Free Quebec, but, in true Siembedia "pull some interesting art and give it stats" fashion, that guy's armor has a whole write-up as Juicer environmental body armor, with add-on mohawk attachment. Yep. I almost made that part of the comment but I figured the mohawk port was actually a little more notable. Often art is reused in the same book and I don't even bother to point it out at this point; you can take it as given that an art piece will be reused in the same book it appears in, and that an art piece from another book will be reused. Often it's just "whew, a piece of art I can skip" when pulling art from a book. I tend to only mention it when it's especially egregious (like with the piece of art used twice on one page in Splynn Dimensional Market). Actually, one of my favorite examples of this is in Mutant Underground (a supplement for Heroes Unlimited), and since I'll probably never review it*, here's three pages from it presented in uninterrupted order. Bear in mind the first two pages are part of the same double-page spread if you're opening up a physical copy of the book.    It's the kind of layout that saves you the laborious time of moving the focus of your eyeballs like, five inches tops, or the utter exhaustion we all know of turning a single page. Siembieda's always thinking of the reader. * (I said blithely, not knowing my own dark future.)
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Jan 19, 2019 12:30
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I'll admit I sometimes have pangs of like... envious fury at Palladium. I work my rear end off making sure my layouts are clear, drawing or photomanipulating unique art thematic for each page, editing my manuscripts so that no paragraph ever breaks across pages for maximum readability, manually adjusting justification to avoid rivers and clumps in my text... ... and dude just keeps trucking by throwing all the poo poo directly onto the page and reusing decade-old art. Shine on you crazy diamond etc. But also where can I get some of that crazy.
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Jan 19, 2019 14:04
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Alien Rope Burn posted:[*]12. Mom's Boardinghouse: "Mom" is a beautiful young woman who's the wife of the owner, the 91 year old Rene Longueil, and they run a hotel that looks more like a mansion. It's first implied she's a gold digger, and then details her as an unrepentant career criminal in case there was any doubt. Pretty AND evil? Oh, Kevin, you master of subversion!  quote:[*]15. The Movie Theatre: "The proprietor of the theatre personally owns ten pre-Rifts crowd pleasing movies that he shows over and over again, which is fine for newcomers but boring for residents. They include, Terminator I, II & III, Lethal Weapon One, The Magnificent Seven, Six String Samurai, Yojimbo, Lassie Come Home and a pair of screwball comedies, Waterboy and Arsenic & Old Lace. He also rents 1-4 Perez Productions movies once a month. He tried a Fowler Film once, but the audience practically rioted." What's a Perez Production or a Fowler Film? That's later. I recall in the Create-A-Carnival rules all the way back in Vampire Kingdoms, one of the features was you could buy was a traveling theater and that helped bring in the rubes so they could gawk at The Godfather and not think about getting eaten by a Fury Beetle for a couple hours. The thought of people lining up multiple times to see Waterboy makes me laugh, though. I guess no prints of any of the Ernest films survived the Coming of the Rifts. open_sketchbook posted:Shine on you crazy diamond etc. But also where can I get some of that crazy. Honestly? I think you have to be grandfathered in. Kevin built up a lot of inertia when we didn't really know better and has been coasting off that ever since. And Rifts seems to have a pretty high fan retention rate if not a high (or much of any) new incoming fan rate. Working at the game store we would sell out of the six books we ordered of each new release but always to the same six guys and they never played nor do I think they knew about each other.
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Jan 19, 2019 14:18
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Back in the day, I'd mention to a friend that there was a new RIFTS book out (this was before CWC), and he would wait about a month before dropping by the local used bookstore. Every time, he'd end up with a brand new, discounted copy of RIFTS Poughkeepsie. I'm still not sure if someone was shoplifting from the hobby store a few doors down (probably), buying the new releases to make lovely scans with, or simply suffering buyer's remorse.
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Jan 19, 2019 15:56
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open_sketchbook posted:Shine on you crazy diamond etc. But also where can I get some of that crazy. The first folks to get in on a given hobby or genre get unfair advantages - i.e. why Gygax's writing is held up as holy writ when, even by the standards of the time, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons is barely decipherable. Of course, a lot has to do with Kevin's relentless determination to keep his toehold in the industry no matter what, though that somehow never seems to involve improving what he does very much. Also bear in mind that newer Rifts books tend to have (slightly) better layout and production values than these ones. Granted, they're still the same two-column format with no chapter format and completely arbitrary organization, but they at least have (old) layout software, so things can be arbitrarily organized slightly better, and where art is reused it's usually... reasonable? Like, sure, that's the art for the Gladiator armor from the original corebook in Rifts World Book 34: Northern Gun 2, but at least it's there to illustrate the Gladiator armor? It's still not great as far as modern layout goes, but it's only been 20 years or so. You can't expect more than baby steps.
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Jan 19, 2019 16:12
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Emerald Empire: Accidental Drug War One of the herbs that the Unicorn brought back with them to Rokugan was the opium poppy, used to produce the opium drug. The Unicorn used it as a painkiller, and it quickly spread across the Empire - including as a recreational drug, one which reduced devotion and loyalty. This led to public outcry even as the Yogo family discovered that it grew excellently around the lands of Ryoko Oawari Toshi, and so the Scorpion Champion convinced the Emperor to make the growth and use of opium poppies regulated, and to give the Scorpion sole right over growing and making opium. Over ten years, the City of Lies grew massively with the opium trade, and while the Scorpion control of medical opium made them rich, it didn't stop much misuse of opium, especially as the Kitsuki discovered that the land used for opium poppies far exceeded the amount needed to supply legitimate opium. However, the local governor assured the Empire that it was simply to ensure a high quality supply, and that all low quality opium was destroyed. This is certainly and surely true, not to be questioned. In the 900s and 1000s, urban areas expanded massively, in large part due to the innovations brought by the Unicorn, as well as improved agricultural techniques and greater crop yields which allowed taxes to be paid without need for so many workers, sending many youths to the cities. For some traditionalists, the rising mobility of peasant merchants is an offense against the Celestial Order, of course, but it is improper to speak of such things. The Lion, especially, were not happy with the changes, punishing peasants harshly if they tried to abandon their villages or sell their produce rather than giving it unto the lord as tradition mandates. Even now, the Unicorn city of Khanbulak represents a symbol of outsider influence in Rokugan, and has encouraged the Mantis to trade in gaijin goods. The official acceptance of the Unicorn has been taken as a tacit approval of the practices they brought, and so gaijin goods and even travelers have been slowly met with more acceptance - slowly being the operative word. Several ports grew massively in this period. In the late 1000s, a monk from the Shrine of the Seven Thunders described a new and controversial doctrine that has formed the Perfect Land Sect. This monk was Yuzue, who believed that the conversation between Shinsei and Hantei had started an Age of Celestial Virtue that lasted eight centuries - one for each Kami that heard Shinsei's teachings - and that the ninth began an Age of Declining Virtue, full of corruption and problems following the Tao. To get Shinsei to return, Yuzue would endlessly chant a special mantra proclaiming total trust in the Little Teacher, and believed that if enough people chanted it sincerely, Shinsei would return. Yuzue's student, Gatai, founded the Perfect Land Sect shortly after her death. Gatai's work claimed that Shinsei did not return to the Void when he left Ningen-do, but instead lived in a Perfect Land in the Celestial Heavens of Tengoku. The sect now believes that those who chant the kie, Yuzue's mantra, can join Shinsei in the Perfect Land after death rather than facing the wheel of karmic rebirth. In the Perfect Land, they may study under Shinsei himself, achieving enlightenment without need for suffering. For many Shinseists, the Perfect Land is heresy, a defiance of the Tao and the Celestial Order. However, they are very popular with peasants, as they offer the chance at freedom from mortal trials and the suffering of rebirth. Many heimin believe the Age of Declining Virtue refers to corruption among hte samurai class, which has further led samurai to denounce the Pure Land Sect. By the mid 900s, the sect was illegal in Phoenix Lands, forced to seek refuge among the mountains of the Dragon. The Unicorn innovaitons also sparked new progress in the fields of the arts, which had fallen to stagnancy in the late 700s, during which only one work, the journal of the duelist Ikoma Hanzo, titled The Days of Salt and Sun, had any literary value. We get a brief aside about why this book owns and you should read it from Miya Chinatsu. However, in the 800s, artists were forced to confront the Unicorn ideas and either accept or reject them, looking upon the world as new once more. Painting and novels thrived, as did poetic competition. For one thousand years, the Empire has been at peace, with no wars - only peasant grumbling, Shadowlands infestations and purges of gaijin. No war, do you hear me? This brings us out of the timeline and into chapter one with a discussion of feudal governance. The feudal lords, down to the lowest regional daimyo, are based out of castles, both for reasons of symbolic power and because they serve as administrative centers. All taxes are brought to the local castle, and soldiers and magistrates operate out of them. Commoners that require a lord's aid must petition them at the local castle. Each Great Clan divides their territory into several provinces, each with a daimyo based in, generally, the strongest of the provincial castles. The Clan's champion and family heads may also use the best of these, or may maintain their own seperate castles. Each of these ranking lords officially rules a province, but generally delegate the job to a seneschal or hatamoto. Major cities also have governors, who usually live in a nearby castle, though not always - some prefer unfortified homes within the city itself. Still, a city or provincial governor has ruling authority over their lands, including the maintenance of law and order and the collection of tax. Below the governors are the lesser lords, or shugo, who rule over chunks of the territory in the name of their governor. These are the lowest ranking daimyo, often ambitious and prone to fighting with neighbors over territory. Each of them, of course, has their own castle - without one, they would lose much face. As a result, there are hundreds of castles across the Empire. While a lesser lord may only role over a very small region, maybe even just one village, they are landed gentry with the right to collect tax, and stand higher in the social order than a border-guard samurai or member of the armies. However, such small lords are not daimyo and are far too weak to have castles, instead living in less fortified manors. Rokugani castles date back to the earliest days of the Empire - indeed, the Isawa histories claim that the Isawa tribe built them before even the Kami fell from the Heavens. As a result, the traditions of design and construction are ancient, using styles based on those developed when Hantei founded Otosan Uchi and set forth the "correct" methods of building, expounding on the ideas of architecture and engineering. Typically, these design elements are considered to comprise of a sloped tile roof and wall-top, a vertical and pagoda-like structure for towers and keeps, and plastered, smooth and lightly sloped outer walls. Because Hantei's palace keep was ten stories high, no keep in the Empire is more than nine stories, lest its master be accused of placing themselves on a level with the Emperor. Castles serve as a center of power, to be sure, but they are also a symbol of needs, values and power for the clan. While all share the same basic design principles, they are each modified to reflect a clan's needs and aesthetics. Crab castles are practical, Lion castles austere and hightly traditional, Crane castles beautiful, and Scorpion castles full of hidden passages. Specific families and even individual lords also alter the designs based on their duties and beliefs, which may well diverge from the general tenor of the clan. For example, the Daidoju and Kakita family castles are extremely different, despite both being Crane designs. The Unicorn castles, as you might expect, are significantly less conventional than those of other clans. Because the Unicorn were gone for eight centuries, they found many foreign influences in their travels. Their architecture merges these ideas with the classical designs of the early Empire, and only have gradually begun to adopt more modern standards. Far Traveler Castle, for example, is a huge three-sided keep, while Battle Maiden Castle has bell-shaped tower domes, and the Moto palace at Khanbulak isn't even a single solid structure, just a series of immense and beautiful tapestries hung between massive columns. Only one major Unicorn castle conforms to Imperial expectations - Great Day Castle, built for the specific purpose of good diplomacy with the other Clans. Next time: What a lord is actually expected to do.
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Jan 19, 2019 17:17
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Ironclaw 1e Bears With Dice Alright, so, last time we created a minmaxed murderbear, known only as The Bear, because if the signature Rhino merc can get by with just 'The Horn' through the whole book the Bear can do the same. The reason I created such a character is both to show off that it was significantly more of an issue in 1e, but also because he's going to help us show off why the dice system changed between games. I should also take a moment to note, IC1e's layout is generally pretty good for a game of its time. It tries to explain concepts in order, it tries to get the basics across before going into the weeds on character creation, and it's generally pretty well organized. It does mix its fluff and crunch significantly more than later books, which are clearer for separating the two more fully. It also does a good job of placing direct in-play examples after key concepts to demonstrate them in motion, which is pretty critical because this party is going to get crazy in short order. In Ironclaw 1e, there was no 'Roll dice vs. fixed TN and count successes'. In fact, the only time you count successes at all is during a damage roll. Instead, in the original Ironclaw, there is what's called an Overwhelm. You see, every single check in the game is rolled against a variable TN, as a contest of dice pools. This includes when you aren't actually in contest with another character; one of the example difficulties is 'The most complex lock in the world' at 4d12 difficulty. You Overwhelm your opponent if your highest showing die is 5 higher than their highest showing die. This causes special moves to trigger in combat, it causes damage dice to do more damage, it causes successes where you do something really impressive, etc. This means that your critical chance drops enormously if you and your opponent are both throwing around piles of d12s, which is not that uncommon. Similarly, as you go up in d12s on d12s, your chances of a tie increase an awful lot. There's a reason it's much harder to get piles of max dice in the later games! Overwhelms don't work as well as multi-successes. They work; the mechanic still came into play regularly when I was running the game years ago. But they don't come up as often and they lack for granularity. It's a binary 'did you crit, yes-no'. This is definitely a place where the new mechanic was better. What was fun about Overwhelms is that the Defender can Overwhelm in combat, too, sending the attacker Reeling. Hey, it's our old friend Reeling. There were also a ton of weapon-based special hits that you got if you Overwhelmed on an attack; most weapon special mechanics were based on Overwhelms. I'll get to that in a bit. Because first I have to talk about Bonuses and Penalties and God help me but these were a nightmare to calculate. See, back in IC1e, you got +1, or +2, or +3, or -1 or whatever to actions, instead of just getting extra dice assigned to one contestant's pool. What this would do is grow the die size of every die in your pool if you had an overall positive modifier to a check. If you had an overall negative modifier, you would roll the test twice (or more, if you had a -2 or something) and take the worst result. If a die was already a d12, bonuses would 'spawn' and pass over to stack onto lower dice, or spawn new dice if all your dice were d12s and you still had 'size ups' left. This sounds confusing, right? It sounds confusing because it is. Let's get Bear to help us out on this. Bear is trying to kill a man, something that happens to him regularly in his everyday job. He's hit the fellow, and he was using an attack that gave him +1 to damage. His normal damage pool is 2d12 from his weapon, d12+d10 from his hugeness. This becomes 4d12 from the +1 making the d10 into a d12, and then the 3 d12s that existed before pass their +1 on to a new die, making his total pool 4d12+d8. Let's say he was somehow in a situation where he could get +2 to damage from circumstantial modifiers. He would take his normal roll of 3d12+d10, then apply +1 as before, reaching 4d12+d8. He would then do this again, going up to 5d12+d8. Both of these damage rolls, by the way, are the kind that can potentially kill someone in one blow. So you can see why having to do this regularly was a pain. More importantly, once again, this is the kind of rule that aids and encourages the Bear; the higher your pool was, the more benefit you get from a +1 modifier. Similar, there were many skills and situations that didn't necessarily use one of your 4 basic Traits, with the rule that if you had to default to a Trait you did so at a -1 penalty. Meaning you rolled your Trait die twice and took the worse result. All 1s showing still botches in 1e. This was not a good combo, especially not with the highly restrictive skill list. This also caused Mind and Will to get somewhat undervalued; if Haggling just uses the Haggle skill and nothing else, it doesn't matter how smart your character is. They can have a d4 and be the cleverest merchant alive by pumping points into just the skill. This also made Botches much more common. Similarly, some test types needed specific Extra Traits; lockpicking required Dexterity, an extra Trait, or you'd just use your Skill. Your Speed, while extremely useful in combat, wasn't used for fine crafting or lockpicking or whatever. This hurt the general competence of characters and along with the bonus system, encouraged specialization and then staying in your lane, so to speak. I cannot say enough that I am really glad they shifted the Trait system to what it became in 2e, and later Myriad Song. The issue with the Bear, and why I made him for this, is that I wanted to show off how the bonus system specifically advantages that build, to the extent that he can mechanically overcome almost any foe in combat (he might need more to-hit in time, but he's still pretty good). He has a few things he can try to do outside of combat, but not much. More importantly, a non-specialized character has much less chance of contributing against him in combat. And with how non-combat tests often didn't even include your base Traits in 1e, if you wanted to be good at non-combat skills you needed to invest a lot of points and EXP into them, leaving you insufficient space to pose any kind of challenge to the Bear. The mechanics of the system encouraged specialists, even as they were much more open and less structured due to the focus on point-buy. Meanwhile, over in Myriad Song (and Ironclaw 2e), 'I have 3d8 combat dice from my traits and skill, and I can Aim for a single d12 from Veteran' is often enough to be a serious soldier, while giving you enough space to be good at other things. The much more generous interpretation of skills and the removal of penalties for 'only' having a Trait or two also opens up a lot of room to have a character branch out and establish broad competence. You can see the contours of that already in ideas like the Career die and Species die. Species dice were much muddier in IC1e, and let's be honest, IC2e, since they also cover checks in favored senses and habitats in both games as well as natural weapons and listed skills. Moreover, in IC1e, some species had more species skills than others. For instance, Horses only included Horse with Hiking and Tactics (Tactics was also much less powerful) while Foxes included Fox with Stealth, Sixth Sense (Foxes are very mystical and attuned to danger I guess), Tracking, and Climbing. So a Fox benefited more from being better at being a Fox than a Horse would benefit from being in a state of supreme Horsemind. I much prefer the Myriad Song version, where they're used with some specific natural weapons and a set array of 3 skills. They were, at least, standardized in how many abilities they covered by IC2e but IC2e also had some races give much more 'powerful' Gifts like Increased Trait. Myriad Song specifically keeps Legacy Gifts to minor/species specific things instead of trying to say that one species is outright better on various Traits than others. Still, Career started out as a way to say you'd be at least baseline competent in your job no matter how out of whack the rest of your rules were, and it's stayed that way. I appreciate it both as a mechanical and a flavor concept; it's neat that you can play the hardbitten professional who gets by on training and experience from a fluff point of view, and it's nice that even back in the day, the Bear could still properly read the bible and handle basic theological questions despite his specialization. Career is less important with the skill lists no longer being as crazy specialized as they used to be, but it's a nice legacy mechanic that remains a fun part of the Cardinal system. Next Time: The Bear Kills People
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Jan 19, 2019 19:04
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Rifts World Book 20: Canada, Part 5 - "Fowlerville is the epitome of the two-robot town."  Note the stomachface, it's easy to miss. Central Canada Ontario & Manitoba The Hounds of War ... and Vultures too So, once again we get a long reminder on what a disaster that the war between Chi-Town and Free Quebec it's going to be, but here there the emphasis is on the fact that the conflict is likely to draw opportunists and bandits looking to rob the dead or the weak. As such, many communities are starting to see increased violence as brigands start to migrate in, seeking to get rich quick. In addition, the brewing conflict in Tolkeen is attracting heroes and mercenaries, meaning many communities are left more vulnerable. But is this book actually about the fight? No, it's not. This is just more metaplot droppings. Onward! Ontario The Windsor Ruins Overrun by ley lines and monsters, Windsor is generally avoided. Sometimes travelers try and use an underwater tunnel to Windsor to speed travel, but it's apparently haunted by Shadow Beasts (as per the summoning spell from the corebook). The Coalition has tried to cleanse this area, but rifts or greater demons often just summon forth more monsters.  Roger. (Randi not pictured.) Cartier-Fury Ranch Located near the old city of Chatham Starring Randi and Roger Cartier, both former Palladium contributors from a long time ago, this is a town that specializes in raising Fury Beetles (from the corebook) as livestock. Though marketing the meat was difficult, they first sold it cheaply as "a special meat blend", and now just openly sell it. They also sell trained Beetles, and the grand majority of people in the town work for the ranch. Randi is a Psi-Druid and Roger is a Psi-Tech (both classes from Rifts World Book 12: Psyscape). I don't know exactly how many of the NPCs detailed here are thinly-veiled associates of Palladium - we have Steve "Conan" Trustrum, who contributed to The Rifter, portrayed as a Psi-Stalker. Later, Trustrum would accuse Palladium of reprinting some of his Rifter work in official sourcebooks without paying him, but for now he's immortalized in World Book 20. Like Mechanicsville, this gets a point by point listing of locations, but a lot of them are even thinner or are undetailed entirely, like "13. Incinerator." Patrick Nowak, a former writer for Palladium, shows up as a deputy for the Constable Joshua Nowak. Larry MacDougall, a former artist for Palladium, runs an arts & crafts store. Randy MaCall, a previous writer at Palladium, runs a small magic school- You get the picture. A Fury Beetle ranch is a pretty cool place and a story hook to have, but the cool notion kind of ends there and just gets into a self-indulgent friend-insert fiction rather that exploring that too much. The Lazlo Region Rifts World Book 20: Canada posted:Since Lazlo will eventually get its own book, I've decided to take a look at some of the notable communities around it. Lazlo has never gotten its own book at the time of this writing. The information in Erin Tarn's intro? That's the most we ever really get on it. I think there was at least one later article in The Rifter on it, but a purely "unofficial" one.  The shirt refers to "Drunken Style Studios", an artist group working for Palladium at the time. The Relic Hamilton, Ontario Hamilton was apparently rebuilt entirely (how? dunno!), to the point here it's indistinguishable from a pre-rifts city from a distance. But up close, oddities like hover vehicles or roided-up juicers become a lot more obvious. It's essentially a recreation of a pre-rifts city where everybody seems to play around and dress period-appropriate (why? dunno!). It's got a heavy D-Bee population at 48%, and is supposedly "one of the true juggernauts of North America" with a huge population even though it's not been mentioned before or since. Apparently their old-timey charm actually keeps the Coalition from considering them a real threat. Wait, if it's peaceful, populous, tolerant, and prosperous, why doesn't everybody move here instead of say, Chi-Town? Well, I guess it's supposed to be "obscure", though I don't know why. Seems like word could get around. Trapper's Cove Located near the ruins of Guelph This is a tiny wilderness outpost with only a few dozen people. Not sure why it gets detailed, because there's nothing exceptional about it - no characters are named, no sights to see, no unusual resources or attractions, etc. I guess it's just here as an example, but there's not much to talk about. Oh, wait. It has- Rifts World Book 20: Canada posted:4. Outhouse Holy crap! That's not all! Rifts World Book 20: Canada posted:11. Outhouses Given that outhouses haven't been previously mentioned in earlier books, I have to presume in a pedantic fashion that this is one of the few places you can comfortably poo poo in North America. Perez Located where the old city of Brampton once stood, most recently known as Towerville Mainly known for "The Tower", a 30-story skyscraper that survived the cataclysm by "pure coincidence", this area has seen the rise and fall of many communities, but the current town surrounding it is the city of Perez, run by the Perez family. Mainly consisting out of mercenaries, psychics, and mechanics, they kicked out the previous group of thugs and set up a small outpost for travelers. When the Black Market (the shadowy group of criminals detailed in... nowhere, actually, it'll get a book in a decade or so) offered to set up a marketplace there, "Lord Perez" accepted, and then they proceeded to more-or-less take over the town. However, Quentin R. Perez, Lord Perez's son, has built upon a dream of turning the town into an entertainment spot. Bankrolling nightclubs and dance halls, he's also built a low-budget movie studio that makes actual films. Though nowhere near the budget and professionalism of pre-rifts movies, they are consistently at least watchable and sometimes even good. He's a big showman-type character that is relatively ambivalent towards the notion of taking over the town - it may end up going to one of his (unnamed) sisters. The main local issue is "Rogues' Alley", the portion of the town dominated by the Black Market. The Perez family realizes openly trying to kick them out will probably get them killed, but Quentin is looking to set up some (undetailed) years-long scheme to undermine them and give them the boot. Then, we get the numerically-listed Notable Places at Perez. The Perez family is set up out of the tower, of course. There's a grand movie theatre for new and old films, of course. And there's a line of walls and ruins that cuts off the main town from Rogue's Alley. Rogue's Alley is the dime-a-dozen den of inquity we've seen so often in Rifts, with no particular characters of note, despite them being politically important in theory. You've got places where you can become a crazy or a juicer in exchange for indentured servitude to bad dudes, buy all sorts of illicit stuff, or go the the Black Heart's Club, a club run by a Shifter and demonic goons, or- Rifts World Book 20: Canada posted:20. The High-Roller Casino: Your typical casino with slot machines, cards, dice, booze and women. The booze is cheap and so are the women. Oh, and this town is probably named for the artist Ramon Perez, of course. Moving on. Fowlerville Located near where Bronte once stood A painter and adventurer of a grandiose ego, James T. Fowler decided to retire and "build an empire". To get started, he bumbled his way through overthrowing a slaver camp, accidentally managing to kill their leader. He never got his empire, but he does run a tiny town that looks up to him. Seeing the fame and fortune achieved by Perez, he founded a movie studio of his own. Though he thinks he's a great moviemaker, his movies are horrendous - he's the Ed Wood of the post-post-apocalypse, essentially. The actual community is otherwise just a modest one of several hundred people. Fowler thinks the next boom for the town is just around the corner, but it hasn't happened yet. Burleston Located near the old city of Milton A small town named after Kent Burles (artist on this Rifts book and others). It's mostly just a tight-knit farm town - there's not much else to say. No outhouses are mentioned.  I have to wonder if this was posed using an action figure. Other Places of Note Time to compress this a bit.
Rifts World Book 20: Canada posted:Beyond the Rockies is a land few modern Canadians have ever seen. A land of dense (cold weather) rainforests and bionic centaurs. I do like the two movie companies, and would be totally about the hard-bitten techno-mercs getting caught up the movie biz. Though there's no real encouragement to do so, the idea of PCs getting involved of some scheme of post-apocalypse Ed Wood I find much, much more exciting than the upcoming Chicago-Quebec war. Next: Buggery.
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Jan 20, 2019 06:37
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It's really amusing to see familiar placenames in a RIFTS book.
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Jan 20, 2019 07:30
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The pointed notes of Psi-Stalkers remind me of how little sense they make. I can't recall game where somebody played one their feeding rules weren't just handwaved. If I were to run it now (and it would be Savage Worlds, let's not get crazy) I'd still let them drain ISP/PPE and such like normal but they could eat whatever.
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Jan 20, 2019 12:06
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I picked up Urban Jungle on sale, so I have that to write up after IC1e, now. It's actually quite interesting. An attempt to drastically simplify the system after Myriad Song, and a complete rework of the damage system that might be really fun in play.
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Jan 20, 2019 15:41
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What no I didn't fall behind on the thread again just missing an entire discussion about this.OvermanXAN posted:I think Deadlands is possibly the most aggressively in-your-face metaplot I've seen. Maaaaybe TORG's is about equal, but even it doesn't go as far as "Yes just kill the PCs for having the temerity of existing adjacent to our story." More egregiously, while other settings are guilty of metaplot bullshit, Deadlands seems unwilling to back off from it even recently or even give a "Feel free to take things in your own direction" Shane Lacy Hensley, creator of Deadlands, got his start working oTorg. One thing I bring up here and there on the review of Torg is how linear the adventures were, coupled with no consideration for what happens if the PCs don't succeed at whatever is happening in the adventure itself. He also seems to be a fan of linear, railroaded adventures, which he took from Torg and brought to Deadlands (and, sadly, Torg Eternity). Case in point, of course, is Deadlands: Hell On Earth: The Unity, the end-of-game-line adventure that a) has a lot of points where the players can wind up in scenarios where they're unable to advance, and b) has exactly one point where the PCs get to make a decision that matters on anything. Yeah, the Reloaded plot point campaigns are a little better about things, but ultimately it's just Shane's writing style. Evil Mastermind fucked around with this message at 22:26 on Jan 20, 2019 |
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Jan 20, 2019 16:40
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I wonder if the call center is still there in Okeemo...
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Jan 20, 2019 17:24
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Alien Rope Burn posted:The Relic It's filled with LARPers and reenactors, that's why.
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Jan 20, 2019 18:31
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Dawgstar posted:The pointed notes of Psi-Stalkers remind me of how little sense they make. I can't recall game where somebody played one their feeding rules weren't just handwaved. If I were to run it now (and it would be Savage Worlds, let's not get crazy) I'd still let them drain ISP/PPE and such like normal but they could eat whatever. Yeah, they need 80-100 P.P.E. or I.S.P. a week, and only can get it from supernatural sources or psychics / wizards. Multiply that by a hundred or thousand and you need some kind of regular supernatural baddie population to attack. Or faeries, but that seems like a bad idea. This makes sense in the next book where they have a clear food source, but it's not clear here.
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Jan 20, 2019 19:09
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Evil Mastermind posted:What no I didn't fall behind on the thread again just missing an entire discussion about this. I wouldn't consider that a writing style so much as bad game design, at least in regards to Unity. If that book was a Dungeons & Dragons adventure it would be condemned by reviewers for what you just said. A railroad can be salvageable if the stops along the way make the PCs feel like they're doing something that well, matters. As for the Reloaded Plot Point Campaigns, Shane Lacy Hensley was one of the two main writers for the Flood. Matthew Cutter is credited as the other, and incidentally is the sole major writer for the other 3 Plot Point Campaigns. Shane is credited with "Additional Material" for the post-Flood PPCs, but his name is alongside several other Pinnacle Entertainment writers so his influence is not as great. I'd also like to note that my write-up of the Last Sons is currently in rough draft mode. It'll be a while before it's  ready, though, although for teasers there is one noticeable thing: it more or chucks Reloaded's "post-racial society" design decision, at least in relation to Native Americans and white settlers. Albeit this time it's intentional rather than the writers forgetting that American racism extends beyond black slavery and Jim Crow.Unlike the Flood it seems a much more conscious writing decision in that you can't really talk about the American Indian Wars without touching on systemic racism, and a Presidential candidate running on a "gently caress the Indians!" platform is skyrocketing in the polls.
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Jan 20, 2019 22:23
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Libertad! posted:I wouldn't consider that a writing style so much as bad game design, at least in regards to Unity. If that book was a Dungeons & Dragons adventure it would be condemned by reviewers for what you just said.
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Jan 20, 2019 22:42
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Which was the one where the PCs get locked in a room and are forced to kill a PC in order to proceed and the GM is specifically told to stare at them smugly and enjoy "real, hard role-playing" or something, was that Deadlands
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Jan 21, 2019 01:08
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megane posted:Which was the one where the PCs get locked in a room and are forced to kill a PC in order to proceed and the GM is specifically told to stare at them smugly and enjoy "real, hard role-playing" or something, was that Deadlands Yes.
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Jan 21, 2019 01:14
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megane posted:Which was the one where the PCs get locked in a room and are forced to kill a PC in order to proceed and the GM is specifically told to stare at them smugly and enjoy "real, hard role-playing" or something, was that Deadlands Yes, and it was Evil Mastermind's Unity adventure specifically. Evil Mastermind posted:Yeah, the Reloaded plot point campaigns are a little better about things, but ultimately it's just Shane's writing style. Unless you haven't read/still reading it, any further thoughts on the Flood? Libertad! fucked around with this message at 01:27 on Jan 21, 2019 |
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Jan 21, 2019 01:14
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Next time I'm Gming a western a man called Shane is gonna get tied to the rail tracks while the party is having a quiet drink in the shade.
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Jan 21, 2019 01:21
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And the worst part of Unity is, aside from Unity itself, Lost Colony (which it branches into, more or less) was just kind of a dinky sourcebook and not the full game we expected. Every time I think of Deadlands now I think of the obscure Werewolf: The Apocalypse book Pentex: Subsidiaries chapter on Black Dog Games where they talk about some of Black Dog's rivals. One was Apex Gaming, which rode to fame on the back of its game Undead Cowboy, followed by Radioactive Undead Cowboy with Undead Cowboy in Space coming soon. It still makes me chuckle.
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Jan 21, 2019 03:11
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Rifts World Book 20: Canada, Part 6 - "They now speculate that the immediate danger of the Mechanoids had gotten mixed and confused with the Xiticix, and now that the Mechanoid threat seems to have gone, they recognize it is the bug men who threaten life in North America, if not the world."  A headshot of Plato, wise dragon and metaplot-dispensary. Manitoba, The Hivelands Xiticix Territory So, the Xiticix - the insect people from wayyy back in the corebook - have apparently taken over most of Manitoba. Though city-states in Michigan and the like halt their advance in places, they're spreading out across unprotected wilderness rapidly. It turns out there are also more variations amongst them than previously known... to be in a future book. Rifts World Book 23: Xiticix Invasion, in fact. In any case, it turns out they've nearly quadrupled their population in only five years, and some in Lazlo have come to believe their prophecy of a "Devouring Swarm" (as detailed in Rifts Sourcebook 2: Mechanoids) may not have referred to the Mechanoids, but instead to the Xiticix, in a convenient retcon that doesn't make precise sense given the details of that prophecy. But I'll get into that in more detail in the review of Rifts World Book 23. Whether or not they're one of the prophesied "Seven Great Dangers", Plato, the dragon at the head of Lazlo's Council of Learning, has come to the conclusion that Lazlo has to act to destroy the Xiticix immediately. They've tried to communicate with them in myriad ways, only to fail every time. And as the Xiticix spread over an area, they eliminate anybody they remotely see as a threat. Lazlo recognizes the irony of them turning to genocide, but he sees it as the only way to protect the innocent. He also bemoans that neither Tolkeen or the Coalition States will join their crusade, having approached both. Lord Coake, leader of the Cyber-Knights, has promised his aid. However, the Cyber-Knights are already split leading with vampires to the South, the vaguely-defined "dark forces at Calgary" (where one of the larger ongoing rifts is), as well as others joining Tolkeen against Coake's wishes. As such, there are that many left to assist Lazlo. However, they do have a larger ally in enlisting tribes of Psi-Stalkers, who already make a habit of hunting the Xiticix for their Potential Psychic Energy points. This is, of course, a metaplot twist that will be detailed later on, and is largely a tease for the (not yet revealed) World Book 23: Xiticix Invasion. Ironically, despite it being detailed here, don't expect it to have too much of an impact on the upcoming metaplot... but we'll get into that in- you guessed it. World Book 23. We get some notes that there are some scattered farms and tribes, but large communities are usually subject to Xiticix attacks; only small groups are discounted or ignored by the hives.  The boxes of tomorrow! Hudson Wheigh By Eric Thompson & Kevin Siembieda The only notable community nearby, located on the former site of Gitlam, Hudson Wheigh is largely isolated from the politics and conflicts of the Coalition States and Tolkeen / Lazlo by the Xiticix. A magically gifted community, they use elementals and techno-wizardry along with technology for construction, fortification, and utilities. In fact, most of their spellcasters are Techno-Wizards and the elemental Warlocks (from Rifts Conversion Book). Though they could easily become a boomtown, they've avoided contact and trade with other communities for fear of getting dragged into their conflicts. Though they don't have much in the way of technological weapons, they have more than their fair share of techno-magical weapons. They also - for whatever reason - have a special type of psychic known as a Psi-Mechanic or Psi-Fixer. Remarkably, this isn't a class, but just is a modification of the minor or major psionic powers one might roll randomly. They get some bonus psychic powers, including a free Telemechanics power (from Rifts World Book 12: Psyscape), with... no real tradeoffs or drawbacks. If you randomly roll yourself as a psychic, just say you're from Hudson Wheigh and get some free powers, folks! They also have D-Bees and an ice hockey league- Rifts World Book 20: Canada posted:They actually have a semi-professional hockey league with 10 teams (4 from outside the city proper) and a Stanley Cup Playoff (and you have not experienced rough hockey until you've seen Psi-Stalkers, Noli Bushmen and Greot Hunters play). Plus a mini-season with Warlocks and mages vs psychics and Juicers (these latter teams are not part of the official Hockey league and just play for fun). May I suggest ignoring the usual military or cosmic conflicts of Rifts and just having a campaign about mutant ice hockey in Canada? Try it; you might like it. Next: Mega-Mounties.
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Jan 21, 2019 03:35
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Alien Rope Burn posted:May I suggest ignoring the usual military or cosmic conflicts of Rifts and just having a campaign about mutant ice hockey in Canada? Try it; you might like it. I would unironically play the gently caress out of a RIFTS-version of Blood Bowl that replaced the football with ice hockey.
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Jan 21, 2019 11:04
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Dawgstar posted:And the worst part of Unity is, aside from Unity itself, Lost Colony (which it branches into, more or less) was just kind of a dinky sourcebook and not the full game we expected. I suspect by then the Deadlands playerbase had dwindled to the point where not enough people bought it to justify more stops on the plot railroad (although Unity shows they did a stirling job of packing stuff in, including last-minute revelations about some of the characters who had survived all this way). By that point someone would have been buying books non-stop for eight years straight (and since 1998 those books would have stopped being horror westerns, the thing that might have attracted them in the first place). 2003 saw the great last hurrah of 90s settings and metaplot concepts with Time of Judgement, and that was a response to declining sales and top-heavy continuity. Or in other words, it wasn't the 90s anymore. The world moved on. EDIT: ^^^^^^^ sign me up for fantasy blood-and-magic ice hockey too!
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Jan 21, 2019 11:42
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Loxbourne posted:EDIT: ^^^^^^^ sign me up for fantasy blood-and-magic ice hockey too! You're forgetting the giant robots that have micromissile launchers going off with every move they take, shooting randomly in every direction, elaborate skull decorations opening their jaws to launch a salvo of micro missiles into the audience just because the player took a step, etc.
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Jan 21, 2019 12:03
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Emerald Empire: How 2 Feudal Lord The main job any lord has in Rokugan is to maintain order. This means protecting their lands from threats - invasion, bandits, pirates, rebellions - and collecting taxes. To do so, they keep a force of jizamurai who serve as their garrison, patrollers and protectors. The more powerful and wealthy a lord, the more jizamurai they can maintain and the more secure their land, as they must keep the jizamurai properly armed and armored out of their own pockets. Lords will also appoint various lower-ranking officials, like tax assessors, magistrates and local landholders to maintain law in smaller portions of their land. In the case of war, a lord is also responsible for raising, training and arming the ashigaru peasant-soldiers used in battle. Any poorly defended or lawless land is the fault of its lord, who must fix the problem. Failure to do so is usually punished with public shaming or even demotion in rank - or, in the worst cases, seppuku. Lords must also maintain the welfare of their vassals, though the level of care varies by family and clan. Some will go out of their way to ensure all vassals live well even to the point of ensuring good marriages or giving gifts at any major event, while others only pay a monthly stipend and nothing more. Most are somewhere in betwene. Due to its defensibility and centrality, a lord's castle is usually where all governance happens. Taxes arrive there each fall and are held securely until the proper shares are sent on to the Emperor, bandits are brought there for execution or the display of their heads as a warning, wars are planned and diplomats are hosted there. The duty of hospitality is vital to being a lord, who must provide safe and good housing to any visiting samurai guest, no matter their rank. Of course, what passes for hospitality varies by clan - Crab or Lion lords are usually just going to give you a room and some food, while a Crane will more likely go out of their way to make you comfortable and entertained. Likewise, clans vary on how important it is for a castle to serve as a center of culture, with more martial clans tending to minimize this job at best. Lords must also coordinate and host religious festivals over the course of the year, working with local temples and shugenja to ensure observances are carried out properly and auspiciously. The Rokugani are a pious and extremely superstitious people, especially commoners, and lords that fail to venerate the kami and Fortunes or whose rule is plagued by evil omens will often face internal discontent. This is a problem because a lord's final duty is to keep order among the heimin and hinin, the peasantry. A lord that allows disrespect or lawlessness among the peasants or who fails to protect them from danger is failing in their duties, and may face a humiliating peasant revolt. In such a case, the castle is effectively a prison in which the lord and their vassals become trapped by the angry peasants. All castles share a single decoration - anything else is variable. That decoration is the banner in the court chamber, which displays the symbols of the lord's clan and family on the wall above the dais, as well as any personal mon the lord may have. If guests of rank are visiting, their banners are hung across the chamber from this banner as a show of respect, though sometimes in ways that give subtle insult, such as ensuring they are slightly lower than the lord's or being put on a side wall instead of directly opposite. When hosting the Imperial Winter Court, the hanging of banners follows elaborate rules of etiquette. Tradition dictates that the Imperial banner with the chrysanthemum symbol of the Hantei is largest and hangs directly over the dais, flanked by the banners of the Seppun and Otomo, with the banners of the Great Clans hung on the side walls in an order based on the current placements in Imperial favor - traditionally, the Crane and Lion are closest to the Emperor, but if the Emperor is mad at them this may not be the case. Traditionally the Dragon are placed on the wall directly opposite the Emperor's banner, in honor of Togashi's refusal to participate in the Tournament of the Kami. The court chamber is included, of course, in any castle that's more than just an outpost, even if it's small. This is where court is held, and court is where a lord listens to their samurai for discussion and advice, as well as pleasant conversation and diplomacy. By tradition, a court chamber is a two-story room with a balcony around the second floor level. The main room is largely unfurnished, but for a dais on one end, where the lord or their deputy sits. The upper level usually has some tables. Courtiers and diplomats use both levels to form various conversational groups, and any artistic performances or formal presentations are done in front of the dais. Ideally, a court chamber has room for 200 samurai on the main floor, but only a handful of castles actually manage that. More commonly, even both floors together can't handle that many, and additional rooms are used for large events, or they are held outdoors in gardens or the parade ground. Court is open during the day to visitors, but the lord is usually only present for the morning. Guests may ask permission to address the entire court, especially to announce important events such as marriages, formal alliances or declarations of war. This will usually happen before the dais, with the speaker addressing the lord but heard by all. Artistic performances may happen at any time in the day or evening, but outside of formal court hours they are often held elsewhere in the castle. When court is not in session, shoji screens are often used to subdivide the hall for other uses, such as to provide extra space for barracks or an infirmary in time of war. The arts performed at court vary wildly by castle. Some lords like musicians on the balconies, while others display bonsai trees, shoji-screen paintings or ikebana flower arrangements. Jesters may be called in to reduce tension by humor or to goad visitors from rival courts. Wealthy or ambitious lords might even arrange for indoor koi ponds or plays, while poor or ascetic lords may minimize decoration, often with comments about Shinsei's teachings about worldly distractions. Jesters in Rokugan are unusual artisans, not like what we might think of from the word. They are masters of various artistic forms, including kabuki, dance, song and poetry, and they often are keen students of politics. Their job is simple: expose the hypocrisies and pretensions around them. They are a socially acceptable exception to the typical Rokugani rules of etiquette which dictate ignoring spectacles and being silent, being allowed to call out what others must endure. The idea apparently originates with the Crane, probably in the second or third century. Jesters are samurai, but need not be from any specific school or training - they just need to show skill with the job and be appointed to it. Acting as a jester without a lord's appointment and official protection is a good way to be disgraced or killed. A Rokugani jester is neither madcap nor cheerful, but typically sardonic, sour and biting. They often use double intendres, puns and riddles to make their points, drawing attention to dishonor and satirizing the careful and polite conversations around them. So long as they use this mockery, they may call out the behavior of others without much risk of a duel. Of course, they can only go so far - a Lion or Crab samurai is unlikely to put up with constant needling from a jester for too long, after all, and the wise jester learns when it's best to retarget. Every castle also maintains a sizable population that is effectively invisible to the entirety of the samurai within - the servants that keep it clean, orderly and working. Servants never use the main doors, relying on special ones that are typically ignored and unnoticed by the samurai. In some ways, this gives them quite a lot of freedom - a samurai is restricted in where they may go in a castle by rank, with most being barred from places like the lord's personal chambers. Servants can go everywhere and no one cares. They see and hear just about everything that goes on. Samurai may be good at keeping secrets from each other, but they barely notice the servants at the best of times. However, this sort of social blindness also means that samurai rarely actually exploit that fact, either. Talking to a servant for any reason but to give orders is highly demeaning. That small group of samurai that are willing to lower themselves to do so, however, gain a significant advantage politically. Simple bribery, threats or blackmail, or even just charisma, can gain much useful information from servants, and servants' entrances are extremely useful if you want to get in and out without notice, for who would dream of a samurai using them? The Scorpion tend to be the most common of samurai that actually are willing to do this, though even they are not universally so. Next time: Seven People You Meet At Court
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Jan 21, 2019 16:18
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Libertad! posted:Unless you haven't read/still reading it, any further thoughts on the Flood? Okay, look. I need to digress and start talking about cosmic horror in general here. Deadlands, when you get down to it, is a cosmic horror game (and at the risk of tangenting in my tangent, I feel it's more interesting cosmic horror). There are otherworldly entities trying to leak into our world, and they do so though monsters and the corruption of humans. In that way, it's like the Mythos. And like the Mythos and other cosmic horror settings, there's an explicit understand that humanity can't win. No matter how many cultists you beat up, no matter how many deep ones you shoot in the head, it doesn't matter. Eventually the stars will align, Cthuhlu will awaken, and humanity is doomed. That's how it works, and when you play CoC you accept that as part of the setting. In Deadlands, it's the same situation. We know that the Reckonners will win, that ghost rock nukes will be created, World War III will release the Four Horsemen and all that crap will happen due to the existence of the later games and the whole time-travel thing. No matter how many Harrowed you blow away, no matter how many demons you stop, it doesn't matter. Hell on Earth, and by extension Lost Colony, will happen. So why do we accept it in Mythos games but not in Deadlands? I think it's because Deadlands had the Reckoners cheat. The whole idea that the PCs did win a long time after the 1800's, but before their final defeat the Reckoners send Stone back in time to original Deadlands to run around and kill "heroes". That's why he's there as a PC-killing tool; he represents the Horsemen screwing up the timeline. It's not the idea that you can't win in Deadlands, it's the idea that you did win, but had that win negated. It's not that the deck was stacked against you from the beginning, it's that you still won against the stacked deck and then your opponent flipped the table. The Reloaded plot point campaigns are a step in the right direction in trying to fix the metaplot, but for them to actually work as intended, you have to ignore the metalplot completely. Maybe presenting HoE as a separate timeline or something might have helped, I don't know. Even taking into account my "Mythos Bad/Reckoners Better" stance, Deadland's metaplot is still a hard railroaded mess, but at least they're trying to fix things. Loxbourne posted:I suspect by then the Deadlands playerbase had dwindled to the point where not enough people bought it to justify more stops on the plot railroad (although Unity shows they did a stirling job of packing stuff in, including last-minute revelations about some of the characters who had survived all this way). By that point someone would have been buying books non-stop for eight years straight (and since 1998 those books would have stopped being horror westerns, the thing that might have attracted them in the first place). 2003 saw the great last hurrah of 90s settings and metaplot concepts with Time of Judgement, and that was a response to declining sales and top-heavy continuity.
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Jan 21, 2019 16:28
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Well, also Call of Cthulhu sees you maintain the status quo. All you're doing is defending the way things are. Moreover, PCs are generally doomed - they can advance, but they're always one bad roll away from going mad or dead. In Deadlands, the status quo is more or less that the bad guys are winning. By the time the PCs enter the picture, things already suck. However, the mechanics incentivize trying to make things better (via the Fear mechanics), and encourage long-term play (through advancement mechanics like Grit or Harrowed coup abilities). Moreover, unlike Call of Cthulhu, there are actual bad guys that can be defeated to improve the world in the form of the Four Horsemens' servants. I don't think it's just that they cheat, but that at heart Deadlands encourages players to struggle towards a better West, and having that pulled out arbitrarily out from players just to preserve the faux-sanctity of the developer's fiction was never a good idea.
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Jan 21, 2019 17:13
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Emerald Empire: Court Tiers Courts are dominated by the minority of samurai known as courtiers, trained and specialized in politics. There are relatively few of them compared to the warrior samurai, and they overwhelmingly are part of the courts. There are many, many ranks within a court, but a few are more important or universal than others. Ambassadors are empowered to speak on behalf of a lord and make binding agreements. Not all diplomats are ambassadors, who have additional prestige, and the job is extremely demanding. If an ambassador fucks up or shows weakness, that reflects on their lord and clan. This is one reason why courtiers are so frequently found using veiled and indirect language. Speaking bluntly is rude or indelicate, sure, but for an ambassador it's outright dangerous - if they speak too clearly, they end up committing themselves unwisely, and because a samurai's word is their bond, that is as binding as a written treaty. Indirectness gives room to maneuver and withdraw as necessary without loss of face. Karo, or seneschals, are those samurai assigned as senior aides to their lord. They can be advisors, but their real job is to manage their lord's affairs and serve as the castle's chief administrator and recordkeeper. Further, they are the lord's stand-in when the lord is away. Being named a karo is a huge honor and a show of significant trust, and the office is often hereditary. When possible, a karo will be a hatamoto as well, to ensure total loyalty. A hatamoto is a lord's personal vassal, and only the most senior lords, typically family daimyos or clan champions, may name them. Their loyalty is not to the office of lord but to the actual person, with no intervening distractions, after all. Socially, a clan champion's hatamoto outranks a provincial lord, as well, so they are often used as troubleshooters to deal with disloyal or problematic provinces. Artisans are those samurai that focus on artistic pursuits by specific training rather than as a hobby to supplement more martial training. They typically operate within the court system because it's the best way for them to show off their work, as a form of entertainment for the court. Most lords that care about having a civilized court will attempt to attract at least one or two artisans to the castle and to get more prominent ones to visit and exhibit their works. Nakodo, or matchmakers, are used by samurai families to help arrange advantageous marriages. Nearly all samurai marriages are arranged, and a skilled nakodo is highly in demand. Any lord of real note will have a nakodo at court, and their services are a useful diplomatic bargaining chip. When not serving as matchmakers, nakodo are typically found doing the same work as any courtier. Sensei, instructors, are the last common position found in most courts. Every castle has at least one training dojo, after all, and a large castle may have several. The most prestigious schools with the best sensei are always in major castles of a clan, so they are centers of learning as well. Even a minor castle will maintain a small dojo and a sensei to train the bushi, and sensei often also serve as advisors to their lord, especially if the lord was one of their students. Their words are always given considerable influence, for as trainers they are responsible for ancient school secrets. We then get a description of what a routine day in the life of various castle inhabitants would be like. It is, as many things in Rokugan are, pretty formalized and standardized by tradition, but gives a surprising amount of free time, especially around the afternoon or evenings. We get another way a lord can insult their guests - if a lord is armed or armored when meeting them, it is a show of distrust, while a lack of even symbolic guards is a show of trust. Lords often offer 'sword polishing' services to guests, as being asked to leave your sword behind, while a legitimate request, is often seen as insulting, so leaving them with a sword polisher is a way to save face. Guests have very strong rights under the Rokugani rules of hospitality, and so even if you are in the midst of a blood feud, it is expected that a guest will be safe in your castle, to the extent that they can expect to leave their sword in their room unless they're a yojimbo. Further, it is forbidden to openly harass and mistreat guests, which is one more reason for the court's development of the art of the subtle insult - it can be done without violating a guest's rights. Crude insults or physical attacks are not only offensive but dishonorable and worthy of punishment. Guests, however, are also bound - they must not freely insult others nor disrupt the harmony of court, at risk of dishonor and possibly a duel or even expulsion from the castle. Castles are one of the few types of building in Rokugan to make heavy use of stone in their construction, especially in the outer walls and foundations. Wood is typically used for the upper levels and interior, but the amount of wood to stone varies by local tradition and resources. The Crab make heavy use of stone, both in their massive castles and the Kaiu Wall, and the Lion use stone whenever possible to increase defensibility, while the Dragon do so because stone is much more common than wood in the mountains. The Unicorn, despite their martial bent, make very little use of stone due to their nomadic traditions and the large number of forests in their territory. Other clans use relatively little stone as well, finding wood easier to work with, and the Crane and Phoenix in particular tend to view their castles more as art pieces than martial fortresses. Castles are usually placed along important routes of travel, like roads, mountain passes or rivers. Ideally they occupy an elevated position on a mountain or hilltop. If there is no available hill, they should at least be in an open area in which attackers cannot use the terrain for shelter. A castle built on a mountain is known as a yamajiro, a hilltop castle is a hirayamajiro, and the most common type, the castle on open ground, is a hirajiro. A castle will be designed by a single clan artisan with their own unique style, and often the artisan for a new castle is selected via competition. Each architect will be backed by a different patron, seeking power and rank in their clan by sponsoring the winner. Deciding on which architects to allow to compete may require weeks of secret negotiations and political maneuvering, and the sponsors and architects will also present gifts to the lords. In theory this is to demonstrate seriousness and dedication; in practice, it's bribery. This is not, however, a universal practice. The Crab and Lion rarely allow politics to play any part in a castle's construction - the new castle is simply too tactically important. The manner in which plans and designs are presented varies by clan, as well, and may be public or private. Crab architects are known for use of highly accurate scale models, while the Crane prefer artistic drawings, and the Scorpion discuss secret and delicate aspects of design with the lord in private. The actual work of construction is done by peasant labor conscripted from the locals. The architect and samurai artisans will oversee the work and select skilled tradespeople as assistants. The Crab are known to actually put heimin craftworkers in charge of some portions of the labor, which is viewed as highly pragmatic and distasteful. The Scorpion, on the other hand, often rely on the labor of condemned criminals, and many rumors claim that a large portion of such labor is buried in castle foundations. All castles are known either as a shiro, or castle, or a kyuden, or palace. The distinction is, in theory, that a kyuden is capable of hosting the Imperial Winter Court. By tradition dating back to the first century, the Emperor never remains in Otosan Uchi over the winter, but will instead stay with a Great Clan for the season. To host the Winter Court is a huge honor, but extremely costly in both money and effort, and it is impossible to refuse the honor without loss of face. More than one Emperor has used Winter Court hosting as a way to punish people. The traditional requirement, established by the Seppun, is that a kyuden must be able to handle 250 guests at least - 30 from each Great Clan, plus the Emperor's entourage. However, the distinction is more symbolic than practical at this point. The decision as to whether a castle is shiro or kyuden is a matter of face, honor, symbol and politics as much as anything else. Many castles which should be kyuden are designated shiro on maps, even if they've hosted Winter Court, while other castles that are wholly incapable are called kyuden. Shiro Mirumoto, for example, has hosted the Emperor at least twice, and Pale Oak Castle in the Phoenix lands is famously an Imperial winter destination, but is still a shiro. Then there's Shiro Ide in the Unicorn lands, built for the express purpose of Winter Court, which is still not yet called kyuden. On the other hand, you have Kyuden Togashi, which is physically incapable of hosting the court due to being essentially a massive shrine complex in a remote location rather than a castle. (Indeed, no one can ever recall an Emperor so much as seeing the place.) Kyuden Hida is probably theoretically capable of being host to the Emperor, but it would be bizarre in the extreme for the Emperor to inflict the bleak and dangerous lands of the Crab on his court. (A novel claims that Hantei XXXI once did, but it has never been historically confirmed.) Next time: The parts of a castle.
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Jan 21, 2019 17:15
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I wonder if Kyuden Togashi still basically teleports around the Dragon mountains.
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Jan 21, 2019 17:33
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