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Robindaybird posted:Actually that's one of the reasons why the army really didn't like Custer much before he died - he was not that good a tactician. The other was that he was fame hound - constantly bringing journalists along with him, and more positively - he had during the civil war wrote a whole slew of articles about corruption and kickbacks going on in the Union army, and wasn't afraid of having relatives of powerful men like Grant arrested. i'd say Custer could not have tried to lose any harder, but it seems he did try awfully hard.
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Feb 1, 2019 16:19
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I figure it might be one of those cases when your entire philosophy is built around your innate superiority and hatred of the other you become utterly incapable of actually judging the strength of your opponent.
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Feb 1, 2019 18:45
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Emerald Empire: Shriners Hyozensho, the Outpost of Ice, is buried in the heart of the Unicorn-controlled Kobaku Province, a hard and desolate land even in summer's height. In winter, the ground freezes solid and the snows are pushed by howling wind. Other way stations overlook roads or trade routes. Hyozensho does not. It is rarely host to Imperial agents, either. It sits atop a tiny hill on the wide plain, and in summer it sees little use at all. The freezing and thawing of the land makes it treacherous, with soft patches to break horse ankles or collapse and swallow a man whole. Most of the native plants are tough grasses, barely suitable for grazing, and the land is not fertile. The occasional messenger passes through, seeking a fresh horse and warm food from the outpost warden, Utaku Sabuteki, who serves out his meager rations of rice and hunted bird meat. While the scent of burning peat is constant, it does little to fight the chill. In winter, however, the Battle Maidens arrive with thundering hooves. They bring with them coal and enough food to last out the year's end, plus wood for arrows and iron for horse shoes. The frozen wastes, you see, are a perfect training ground for the elite Utaku cavalry. Utaku Kamoko leads her maidens in formation drills, beautiful and deadly. Hyozensho is far larger than might be expected, because it exists to service the Battle Maidens every winter. It has a smithy and extensive stables now, not just the simple watchtower it was originally built around. While it is empty most of the year, it could easily serve as a staging ground for a major military operation, like an attack on the Lion in the south. While most clans would prefer to avoid the wide stretches of wilderness between Dark Edge Village and the Drowned Merchant River, the Unicorn see them as shortcuts, thanks to their horses. The Battle Maidens, if supplied with enough horses, could easily cross the distance in a day and a night of hard riding and still have fresh mounts for the attack. Utaku Sabuteki, Outpost Commander, is a distant cousin of Utaku Kamoko. He maintains the Outpost of Ice in constant readiness for war, which has made his cousin fond of him. While she is a gallant leader of battle, he is a master of logistics that understands the importance of food and fresh mounts to any cavalry force. He is a stablemaster of great experience, and while any Utaku man would consider that an honorable job, it was his intellect and reliable nature that led Kamoko to assign him to head Hyozensho. Unlike most of the Utaku, who tend to be known for speed and intensity, Sabuteki is a measured, methodical, even stoic man. Some of his family find him frustrating as a result, but Kamoko thinks he's the best for the job. While others might see the work as without glory, Sabuteki understands that by remaining in the isolated way station all year and ensuring its readiness, he is vital to any future war effort. Adventure seed: The PCs are traveling when they find a group of bandits, possibly ronin, picking through some corpses of travelers, which includes at least one samurai. The PCs will presumably drive off the corpse-picking bandits. When they do, all they find of any note are some dead horses, which indicate the samurai to have been at least Unicorn (and, based on its quality, possibly even a Battle Maiden), and a strangely warm egg. The nearest Unicorn outpost is Hyozensho. The inhabitants are grateful to have the chance to reclaim their fallen comrade, but in the night, the outpost is attacked by the returning bandits, now in greater numbers and some armed with maho magic. They seek the egg. In the height of the battle, the egg will begin to hatch. What emerges is a creature with the tail of a snake but the face of a human. The samurai might treat it respectfully, returning it to the forest they found it in, in hopes of earning the goodwill of its strange race, or they might treat it as a monster or demon, risking making enemies of the strange creatures. With this, we enter Chapter 4 - the sacred shrines and holy places of the Empire. Shrines predate the Kami's fall by quite some time. All Rokugani understand the idea of sacred and foul, and that the sacred shrines are a place for important life events, such as birth, marriage or death. They connect the living and dead. They tie Rokugan to the greater universe of spirits. To understand all that, however, we're going to have to understand that greater universe and cosmography. The physical part of Rokugan is also called Ningen-do, serving as a crossroads for various spiritual realms. Except for Yume-do, which follows dream logic and exists inside human thought, these realms are not alternate universes or planes. They occupy the same world as Ningen-do, above, below or beside it, as if the world were a sheet of paper folded over itself, fraying and crumpled and torn and repaired. The transition between spiritual realms might be gradual in some cases, as one perspective shifts to another, or you might be just grabbed and hurled into another part of reality. The passage of time has confused some things. Ancient tales speak of the underworld being a gateway realm, called Meido, and the final resting place of the ancestor spirits, the sorei, was called Yomi, and a forgotten part of the world where oni lived, called Jigoku. Yomi was seen as the whole of the underworld by humans of the past, and its borders kept Jigoku in check. However, Fu Leng's fall into the underworld ruptured Yomi's borders, allowing evil to taint Yomi. Fu Leng festered as he lay in Jigoku, absorbing its foul nature and growing in power, and because of this, Jigoku encroached further on Yomi, even capturing several sorei, who suffer there even now. Then came the Day of Thunder, and because they so loved the Thunders that they wished them free of the risk of Jigoku's taint, the Kami petitioned the Heavens to allow the souls of the Thunders to reside in Heaven with them. The lords of the Heavens did even more - they took the whole of Yomi and all of its sorei into the sky, where Jigoku could not reach. Yomi was safe, but all the underworld was lost to Jigoku entirely, save for Meido. Emma-O and his Kings of Hell, aided by their loyal mazoku, descended into the underworld to reconquer it. They seized the levels now known as Meido, Gaki-do and Toshigoku from Jigoku's forces, but controlling all but Meido has proven vexing even for a god as great as Emma-O. (A sidebar notes that while Rokugan has verified this set of cosmological theories as best they can, other cultures have their own beliefs on reality which they also have verified as best they can, and which one is objectively right is up to the GM...if it's just one. They suggest that the answer may be multiple choice depending on what part of the world you happen to be in.) To understand the relationship between the spiritual realms, you need to understand the nature of karma and the soul. Every human, demon, animal, ancestral spirit and god has a soul that is eternal, which has always existed, reincarnating whenever it dies. On reincarnation, the karma of the soul, the spiritual weight of its most recent life's deeds, determines its next form and destination. The worst lives are reborn as demons or hungry ghosts in the underworld, those of middling virtue become animals or humans, and the greatest and most virtuous become sohei. While Fortunist and Shinseist faiths are formally united and reconciled by Imperial edict, they view karma differently. Fortunist belief holds that karma can be good and bad. Positive actions produce good karma proportional to their effect and the effort they required, while bad karma is the same for negative actions. Shinsei, however, taught that all karma is 'bad,' in a sense. Every action, he said, generates karma, which binds you into the cycle of reincarnation. Actions motivated by fear, regret or desire generate more karma. So far, no one has ever proved one of the two theories right, and it is likely that doing so is impossible. Next time: Heavens To Betsy
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Feb 1, 2019 20:41
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Mors Rattus posted:I enjoy it the same way I enjoy games focused on medieval Europe - that is to say, it's far enough away from us historically and distinct enough from our modern context that I'm interested in exploring Feudal Japan But Fantasy (And Parts Of China) as a thing, even though it is a monstrously unjust and unfair society. L5R motivates me to do one of the most tiresome of nerd tropes: Wanting to use guns in a setting where its verboten. Mantis gaijen pepper pistoleer when?
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Feb 1, 2019 20:48
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Rokugan makes me want to drop, like, a group of Orlanthi in it. What does a samurai do when the barbarian starts Heroforming?
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Feb 1, 2019 21:37
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Mors Rattus posted:I am now imagining the Xiticix as being intensely Midwestern stereotypes, just, bee people. It’s much better than the actual Xiticix. Yeah, the attempt to sell them as a mystery falls flat because it turns out there really is no major secret behind the mystery. The only major "secrets" just have to do with how they feed and their life cycle - mainly stuff you might use to fight them, not anything that would change how one interacts with them. The way they're written makes them feel like some kind of biological weapon or terraforming agent to me, which I think is probably the most interesting thing you could do without actually changing them. Everything about their life cycle seems so artificial and self-contained that they feel constructed rather than evolved.
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Feb 1, 2019 22:15
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I'm vaguely pleased Kamoko is still around. While she never got a lot of story time (she did stuff, but seldom had a story about her unlike Kachiko or Tadaka or whomever), she was a very key part of my first Unicorn deck.
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Feb 1, 2019 22:26
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Yeah, the attempt to sell them as a mystery falls flat because it turns out there really is no major secret behind the mystery. The only major "secrets" just have to do with how they feed and their life cycle - mainly stuff you might use to fight them, not anything that would change how one interacts with them. Which then lets you actually write something about 'how did they get out of hand' and 'maybe we can find the original plans and turn them off' or 'find the original designers and ask them to/make them call off their bugs'. It's a good angle to take because it gives you something to actually interact with besides 'fight 800 identical hive warriors'.
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Feb 1, 2019 22:34
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Sorry for the silence on the Wilderlands updates, I had some Life Stuff(tm) that came up and sucked away most of my attention. I'll hopefully be able to get back to posting soon!
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Feb 2, 2019 00:20
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Ronwayne posted:L5R motivates me to do one of the most tiresome of nerd tropes: Wanting to use guns in a setting where its verboten. Mantis gaijen pepper pistoleer when?
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Feb 2, 2019 00:59
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Emerald Empire: Heaven Is A Place The Heavens float over the earth, above the clouds. Some mystical beings such as dragons and ki-rin can fly to the Heavens and, should they choose to, could presumably carry a rider, but few mortals could ever even dream of being judged worthy of such a gift. The most direct route doesn't involve convincing a magical being to carry you, though - it's a sky ladder. A sky ladder is any feature, natural or artificial, that would allow a person to climb to or come down from the Heavens without flying. The best known sky ladders, of course, are divine gates guarded by the servants of Tengoku. Others include magical artifacts, typically in the form of folding ladders, chains, grapples or sacred feathers, but even some tall trees will work. Many seem to exist only when the Heavens are properly aligned, however, as revealed by the light of the stars or moon. Tengoku is the realm in which Lady Sun, Lord Moon, the greatest of the Fortunes, the Elemental Dragons, certain famed and accomplished past Emperors and their staffs of shinzoku servitors live. Tengoku is full of towering pagodas and constellation bridges, rising from dark clouds that also serve as rice paddies for the inhabitants of those that live above. Shrines of gold, jade and stone receive the offerings sent on from the earth below. The Imperial bureaucracy follows the form of Tengoku's, in which Lady Sun and Lord Moon rule over a pyramid of courtiers and administrators. Obviously, the petty quarrels, inefficiency, poor assignments and other imperfections of bureaucracy ar reflected above as well, but by and large Tengoku is committed to the orderly working of the universe and the progress of all life towards wisdom and high virtue. The current debates of the celestial courts typically concern the question of what to do about Jigoku. Long before the fall of the Kami, Jigoku was a place of just reward and rehabilitation, but it devolved into an evil place, where corrupt demons use the nature of the realm for selfish and destructive ends rather than obeying Emma-O. Telling which mazoku are just and loyal and which are villains is challenging even for the Fortune of Death, however, and his constantly growing workload means he visits Tengoku less and less every year. Also, because Tengoku is the literal top of the sky, one of its biggest functions is to oversee weather. The Elemental Dragons manage immense divine machines that order the seasons, adjust heat and cold, bring rain and snow, clear the clouds away and cause natural disasters as needed. Yomi, ever since the Day of Thunder, has been a precinct of the Heavens, a province of Tengoku. The sorei walk its halls and manors, serving as tutelary caretakers. Typically, this means they watch over the families of their more recent lives, but occasionally a sorei might oversee a region or organization. For example, there is a woman called Chifune who was a merchant with no living blood relatives, who devoted her entire life to a large ship construction business, treating her employees and clients with perfect fairness and paying her staff generously. After death, she became a sorei, watching over her business and taking on the role of protector of similar shipyards, enjoying their veneration and sacrifices in return for her wise grace. Yomi's buildings all glow a sulfur yellow, as a reminder of the Yellow Springs beneath the ground from which they originally took their name. The realms that are closest to humanity are, oddly, the least understood. They are known as Senkyo, a word meaning either enchanted country or immortal country. These are the forests and highlands beyond the normal world, where strange and unpredictable beings wield mystic powers to unknown ends. Legends and folktales speak of humans that wander into the back country of Rokugan, where wild beings trick them or help them, depending on the story. These talking animals may take on the shape of a beast, a person with bestial features, or something in between, or may shapeshift. Souls whose karma places them above normal animals but below humans might be reborn as these creatures, whose nature tempts them to mischief and chaos, often preventing a higher rebirth. The territory of these beings is usually called either Chikusho-do, the Animals' Path, or Sakkaku, Illusion. In truth, these are not specific places, but political categories, though each tends to control certain territories. The animals of Chikusho-do are dedicated to living a virtuous life and helping others be virtuous. They know that this will help them be reborn in better lives. Many, especially their leaders, are lay followers of the Tao of Shinsei or even ordained Shinseist monks or priests. The followers of Sakkaku, on the other hand, believe their animal incarnations are perfect, ideal forms, and by embracin their animal nature and the chaos they cause, they may puruse immortality in their current life and be done with all this ridiculous reincarnation business entirely. The two groups treat each other as foreign courts, openly neutral and diplomatic, but undermining each other with trickery, social engineering and occasional violence. Each, while made of individual beings rather than land, dominates some of the Rokugani wilderness and avoids the strongholds of the other, struggling to claim the contested land. Some animal spirits swear to one or the other, while others try to walk between them or play them off each other for their own benefit. Historically, each court is ruled over by a Great Tengu, though sometimes the role is taken by another species of spirit. According to the oral traditions of Chikusho-do, one of these Great Tengu renounced his name, answering only as the High Shinseist Priest after learning the Tao of Shinsei directly from Shinsei and Shiba, that he might bring Enlightenment to the animals. Sakkaku, on the other hand, claims that the High Shinseist Priest did it all as an elaborate prank that Chikusho-do has yet to understand. Yume-do is the realm of dreams. It is popular now due to the fashionable and growing activity of yumeji, the pursuit of mystic wisdom through dreams. Spirits of all kinds, good or evil, great or small, have used dreams to speak to the Rokugani for millenia, though the time when a samurai might sleep and awaken to find a magical bow as a gift from a spirit is long since over. Dreams still provide an escape from the conventions of police society, however. In Yume-do, all are equal. A beggar may wander into the memories of an Emperor's palace, a general may speak as equal to a child. Even lucid dreamers with only a little pracitce can easily conceal their identities and appearances by will. Mazoku might dream themselves as humans, humans as animals. Rumors even exist of spies and saboteurs traveling into dreams to steal secrets. As to whether a dream is merely a figment or a legitimate communication is fascinating for the practitioners of yumeji, who study the techniques of lucid dreaming and divination to better explore Yume-do. The greatest of the practitioners are the Dreamweavers of the Kaikoga family of the Moth Clan, who have explored the dream realm for centuries, long before the practice become popular. However, as the hobby has grown, the veil seperating Yume-do and Ningen-do has begun fraying. Stories of yokai born of dreams, long thought to be fiction, such as the baku that either torment sleepers or fight off nightmares, have been growing - especially tales of evil baku escaping into the waking world to torment the innocent. The Kaikoga are greatly troubled by these stories, as they may ultimately be the only people who have the power to clean up the mess that careless dabbling in dreams can cause. Underneath the ground, deep below the surface, even further than the mines and the sea floor and the laval beneath, deeper than anything - that is where you will find the underworld. It is ancient, predating any human civlization, but none can say what happened there before its current state. It is layer upon layer of regions stacked on top of each other, like the crumbling floors of a ruined tower. A soul weighed down by evil karma at the end of a selfish life is reborn as a demon, banished to a realm of cruelty and pain. These demons must struggle to remain virtuous despite their tortured existence if they are to have any hope of a better rebirth. Many kinds of demons and many hells make up the layers of the underworld, most far too remote and unpleasant to be worthy of any consideration. The greatest demons, the best and most virtuous of these worst of beings, call themselves mazoku, demonds that serve Emma-O and the Kings of Hell in keeping the underworld working efficiently and with justice. They are typically depicted as humanoid, but with red or blue skin and sharp claws, teeth and horns. Mazoku are jailers, torturers, prison guards, judges, scribes and other such things in service to Emma-O, and if they serve well and honorably, rejecting the savagery of their vicious realm and occupations, they may hope for rebirth as an animal or even a human. Jigoku, according to ancient documents and apocrypha, was once more than the maze of torture it is now, a place of rehabilitation rather than damnation, which scoured the souls of the oni to rid them of villainy and prepare them to start over. However, Fu Leng and Jigoku brought out the worst in each other, and the oni have conquered their former prison. Now, it is not a prison - it is a fortress. Technically, all of the present underworld is Jigoku, but in practice the word refers not to the three realms over which Emma-O rules, but the uncountable strata of pain beneath them, lost forever to Fu Leng, his oni servants and the evil spirits that obey their will. This is the foulest of the many realms of the underworld, where the oni plot to ruin the world above, to undermine it both literally and metaphorically, and consume it with corruption. It is said that one day, heroes equal to Shinsei and the Seven Thunders might head into its depths, to seize the underworld from the grip of its demonic tyrants and reshape it into a place of proper order and justice...but as yet, no such heroes have arrived. Meido is the realm to which all Rokugani dead go before their eventual reincarnation. It is a gateway realm and the seat of power for Emma-O, Fortune of Death and Judge of the Dead. In MEido, the dead souls form up to be counted, recorded and judged. From there, they are sent to an appropriate reincarnation. Emma-O is aided in this by his nine Kings of Hell - Shinko, Soko, Sotai, Gokan, Benjo, Taisen, Toshi, Byodo and Tenrin. They or their subordinate judges read the karma of a soul and assign it to a reincarnation and realm that fits it. The mazoku serve as guards, scribes, judges, bailiffs and aides to this procees, hoping to earn a better rebirth by loyal service in a hellish job - literally. However, the mazoku can stray, just as humans do. Fu Leng has agents influencing even Meido, offering power to weak-willed mazoku, or trading favors to influence the processing of certain souls. In this way, a great hero could be sentenced to a life deep in Jigoku, or a paperwork mix-up could be arranged to cause an evil soul inclined to serve Fu Leng to be reborn as a samurai rather than a hungry ghost. Emma-O must find and purge this corruption, which only makes his job even more stressful. Gaki-do is the realm reserved for souls thoroughly corrupted by desire. These souls are known as gaki, 'hungry ghosts,' though a gaki is not, technically, a ghost or shade that has failed to pass on. They have been to Meido and found mediocre. Their misdeeds are not so violent as to be sent to Toshigoku, nor so evil as to be banished to Jigoku, but neither have they done so well as to warrant a new life as an animal. Instead, they enter a massive underground slum that surrounds Meido, which is austere and well-appointed. Gaki-do, on the other hand, is a realm of lovely weather and precincts the size of Rokugani provinces overseen by mazoku magistrates, full of stale air and poor living. The gaki live, work, eat and fight in this miserable, sprawling world of crap. Emma-O does not admit it easily, but Gaki-do actually is far too large for his mazoku to properly administrate. It is extremely easy to escape Gaki-do, and the edges of some of its precincts blur and merge with the worst portions of Ningen-do - mass graves, sites of battlefield massacres, defiled tmeples, the worst parts of the wilds and the roughest parts of the cities. There are many rumors that if a traveler gets lost enough in the most corrupt neighberhood of a big city that they might accidentally wander into Gaki-do, where only determination and luck will allow them to find a mazoku magistrate willing to even hear them out before the gaki kill and eat them. While some local gaki are shrewd and virtuous enough that they might show you the way out, probably as part of a bargain, most are afflicted with a terrible hunger, and the living smell very tasty indeed. Toshigoku, the Realm of Slaughter, was created by Emma-O as a special division intented to rehabilitate the far too many Rokugani dead who were slain in unjust and unproductive wars. He cleared out a particularly lovely part of Gaki-do, built a castle there, and appointed one of his most competnet mazoku, Mujoki, the Ghost of Impermanence, to be its warden. The legions of the castle have swelled with the ranks of those dead by pointless violence. However, unknown to Emma-O, Mujoki has fallen to treachery. Fu Leng sent clever oni to break into Gaki-do, infiltrate Toshigoku Castle and kidnap the true Mujoki. An imposter shapeshifter now rules in Mjoki's place, sending lies and falsehoods back to Emma-O, who is far too busy to check on what appears to be a loyal servant. The false Mujoki is a sadistic oni that enjoys violence for its own sake, and who know trains the legions of Toshigoku in brutal martial arts and vicious tactics. Fu Leng's servants seek out the most ruthless warriors of Ningen-do, trying to manipulate them to bloodthirst and carnage, that they may find themselves sentenced to Toshigoku in death. The souls there do not realize the truth - that they are being trained as the shock troops of Fu Leng, when he eventually makes his move to drive Emma-O out of the underworld entirely. e: I should note, all of this stuff is new for this edition. In past editions, the spiritual realms were literal other dimensions and were not really usable for adventuring unless the GM did a lot of work. Next time: Ancestor worship. Mors Rattus fucked around with this message at 01:32 on Feb 2, 2019 |
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Feb 2, 2019 01:28
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Mors Rattus posted:I am now imagining the Xiticix as being intensely Midwestern stereotypes, just, bee people. It’s much better than the actual Xiticix. If you play their buzzing sounds backwards you can make out a distinct "ope" pattern
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Feb 2, 2019 05:54
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wiegieman posted:Rokugan makes me want to drop, like, a group of Orlanthi in it. What does a samurai do when the barbarian starts Heroforming? This is my approach to most settings. "What do if Orlanth?"
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Feb 2, 2019 10:08
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Mors Rattus posted:Look, they live in Minnesota and can't recognize a dick shape. Xiticix Warrior One (Translated): "Oh, yah, we need to kill these adventurers right quick I've got a coopon for Sludge that's goin' off soon." Xiticix Warrior Two (Translated): "Well, it's so good you're bein' so thrifty! I guess it's how you were able to afford that new chitin armor, even if it's maybe a bit too young for you."
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Feb 2, 2019 11:28
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 Rifts World Book 23: Xiticix Invasion, Part 3: "Dat green sum-of-a-gun dropped in an' squirted ol' Rollie wit sumting." I do have mercy. I do. I'm not going over Wayne Breaux's attempts to do a rural Coalition informant's accent in full detail right now. Every Xiticix type is opened up with one of his blurbs about him and how scary they are. "From da ceiling, da floor, da walls .. . da place was crawlin' wit dem!" Y'don'say.   The rare Xiticix beach party. Xiticix By Wayne Breaux Jr. & Kevin Siembieda We get some details on the Xiticix's abilities, which I'm just going to break down briefly: Special Senses: 340 degree field of vision, polarized eyes, vision in the infrared and ultraviolet ranges, nightvision, super smelling / tasting / hearing antennae (rated at double dog), "track by sound", motion detection, hearing in the ultrasonic range (with accompanying ultrasonic language), identify objects with antennae, identify temperature, detect wind direction (is this out of hand already?), antennae danger sense, track by smell, recognize scents up to a mile away, remember scents, smell fires, detect incoming rain- At this point you may as well just write "Sense Adventurers 98%" instead! How does smearing yourself in their smell fool them at this point? "Boy, that Xiticix sure doesn't have the right number of eyes, arms, biology, has no wings, is wrapped in a strange mineral resin, and doesn't seem to notice anything I say. But he smells right, seems legit, move along." I mean, things like that in theory would work with creatures where their primary sense is smell and the others are weakened - most real-life insects have wide-angle but essentially garbage vision, and they rely on their antennae for a lot. The Xiticix have basically no weak senses - hell, some of them have psionic senses on top of this! Moreover, does it matter if they know rain is coming? Do they attack more in the rain? Do they hate the rain and avoid it? I'm just saying this could have been rained in a bit. Then, we get a variety of chemical abilities that Xiticix have. Dog Boys and other super-smeller characters can detect their pheromones, but they probably don't grok the meaning immediately. Oh, and there are different types of Xiticix; we'll discuss what these are shortly, but bear in mind the book references them before defining them. These include:
Rifts World Book 23: Xiticix Invasion posted:Lost hands, arms, feet and wings take longer to regrow but can also regenerate in 4D6+12 months. In all cases, the appendage can be used at half its normal capacity once it has regrown to roughly three quarters its normal, natural size. Rifts World Book 23: Xiticix Invasion posted:The eyes, mandibles, legs and other body parts do NOT regenerate, once lost they are gone forever.  Palladium editing: it's what's for failure. Those statements are in the same column on the same page, even. I guess they mean it can regenerate arms and feet but not legs? How can it regenerate a whole arm but not a mandible? and could I possibly care less  "Blowing off its arm is useless, bro! It'll regenerate it in two years!" Granted, I think the idea is that if you badly injure a Xiticix maybe it can come back and you can fight ol' one-eye? Still, I'm struggling to imagine a circumstance where you have to track how well one of them is regenerating a limb over the course of over two years. We get detailed rules on what penalities they have for subtracted limbs, presumably because it doesn't slow them down that much and so you can have that zombie moment where the bug with one arm and one leg and one wing is still comin' atcha, but at the same time I can't imagine worrying too much about doing anything other than firing at their center of mass (for some reason "head" is not a hit location for them even though their eyes are). They can also universally fly, climb, get a low-end Horror Factor. And, for the record, all Xiticix that aren't Queens or Nannies are male. Next: Zoobooks: Xiticix. Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 12:47 on Feb 2, 2019 |
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Feb 2, 2019 12:43
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I've been stuck here for about five minutes trying to find a response to that pun, ARB. It was well played.
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Feb 2, 2019 13:05
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I have to get this off my chest, that tea in Rokugan is called cha bugs the hell out of me.
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Feb 2, 2019 13:52
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According to wiktionary:quote:Etymology 1 It seems to be legit. what's your problem?
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Feb 2, 2019 14:49
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By popular demand posted:According to wiktionary: Because its just straight using the chinese word for a mundane thing which has an exisiting word in English for the mundane thing. Imagine if everytime they talked about the unicorn you had tor read how they ride ma into battle and love their ma and ma are intrinsic to the clan. Its just something I never like in translations because it creates pointless separation around the term and because I deal with japanese and chinese a lot in my daily life it sticks out to me as something that would 100% be translated to the English. Unless tea in rokugan is magical and has non earth tea function/cultivation/growth that I missed in which case Im an idiot
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Feb 2, 2019 15:09
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The word cha gets used exactly once, it gets dropped as ‘this is the word for tea’ like how they drop the word for a highway in the highway section.
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Feb 2, 2019 15:25
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It could have been interesting if they went back to the root word and referred to it as "bitter drink" but I see your point, this sort of thing is only fun the first time you read it. TBF I'm a tea sperg and would definitely use multiple words and describe myriad sorts of tea. By popular demand fucked around with this message at 15:30 on Feb 2, 2019 |
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Feb 2, 2019 15:28
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Hats off to ARB for this read-through. I gotta imagine it's pretty weak tea.
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Feb 2, 2019 16:03
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Barudak posted:Because its just straight using the chinese word for a mundane thing which has an exisiting word in English for the mundane thing. Imagine if everytime they talked about the unicorn you had tor read how they ride ma into battle and love their ma and ma are intrinsic to the clan. Its just something I never like in translations because it creates pointless separation around the term and because I deal with japanese and chinese a lot in my daily life it sticks out to me as something that would 100% be translated to the English. So what you're saying is that everything is going according to keikaku?
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Feb 2, 2019 18:45
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theironjef posted:So what you're saying is that everything is going according to keikaku? (Translator's Note: Keikaku means plan)
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Feb 2, 2019 18:54
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I love it when a plan comes together. seriously you should play a ronin A TEAM game, the empire is so full of bullshit politics that deniable troubleshooters are sorely needed.
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Feb 2, 2019 19:38
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So it came to my attention that an RPG was made set in the universe of Rune, the UT engine third person viking slasher. Has it ever been written up or are there any good reviews for it?
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Feb 2, 2019 22:24
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theironjef posted:So what you're saying is that everything is going according to keikaku? Nothing in English captures the majesty of the word 'nakama' so we leave it in.
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Feb 2, 2019 22:28
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Dawgstar posted:Hats off to ARB for this read-through. I gotta imagine it's pretty weak tea. Yeah, it's going to be a shorter review than usual, because there's a lot that can be cut with no appreciable loss. There's stuff like 11 maps detailing the locations and territories of the aforementioned major hives, it's baffling. If that sounds like it's redundant white noise when one map could communicate all information, it is! Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 00:07 on Feb 3, 2019 |
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Feb 2, 2019 23:12
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Also, just a quick update to the Urban Jungle review, I've now gotten a chance to use the new Soaks system in play (not exactly in what it was intended for, but I did still use it as written) and it does about what I hoped it does for combat in the Cardinal system. So I'm prepared to say that's one rules change that hit home how I hoped it would. It makes it so getting hit, period, is a bit less of a huge drawback for enemies and makes it easier to extend a fight a little, while still giving people something solid to manage that tells them when it's time to consider avoiding a fight or backing off for a moment. It takes some of the 'get taken out in one or two lucky hits' swingy-ness out of combat while still keeping damage very consequential. So that one bit of the system I can now saw I'm more confident in after using it in play.
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Feb 2, 2019 23:56
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Yeah, it's going to be a shorter review than usual, because there's a lot that can be cut with no appreciable loss. There's stuff like 11 maps detailing the locations and territories of the aforementioned major hives, it's baffling. If that sounds like it's redundant white noise when one map could communicate all information, it is! If I had to armchair developer, I'd at least throw in a bunch of places/people that were caught in the path of the hives. Throw in some NPCs, maybe make a fun merc company, that sort of thing.
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Feb 3, 2019 01:17
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Night10194 posted:Also, just a quick update to the Urban Jungle review, I've now gotten a chance to use the new Soaks system in play (not exactly in what it was intended for, but I did still use it as written) and it does about what I hoped it does for combat in the Cardinal system. just as planned
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Feb 3, 2019 01:44
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RiotGearEpsilon posted:just as planned I do have a significant question, though: The two descriptions of ammo dice seem to conflict. Do you include them with attack rolls, or just roll them separately like a Decay dice in MS?
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Feb 3, 2019 04:12
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There's a long history of deliberately leaving simple words untranslated in order to make them sound more exotic and mysterious to your audience than they actually are. For example, Juche Thought.
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Feb 3, 2019 06:16
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Rifts World Book 23: Xiticix Invasion, Part 4: "How deez drat bugs git such tings I don' know." Then we can get into the different types of Xiticix; M.D.C. given has been averaged. Yes, they for some reason have leveling, even though they come in thousands and have little to no discernible identities.   Dawwww- AAAAAAA-
  Meet the beetles.
 The right of the Xiticix to hunt humans is a valued part of the Hive's heritage and shall be forever preserved for the public good.
 And now for something slightly different.
quote:Trapper-Woodsman O.C.C.: What? I can extract me some poison?!  Nobody knows a future scourge upon the Earth like Mom does.
 Yes, that is a picture of somebody missing a target that size.
 "Wait, why don't we all get six arms?"
 Dai pinchi! The whole writeup is odd where they have all these level-based benefits to combat, but... like, are there really going to be detailed Xiticix NPCs? Is that going to be a thing for anybody ever? It's not like they have names unless humans give them one to identify a recurring threat.  Goo-d weapons. Xiticix Weapons So, we can skim over most of this because it's mainly a variety of resin melee weapons that are more-or-less interchangeable. They require Mega-Damage strength to use to their full Mega-Damage effect, though anybody can pick them up and use them. Though there's been an attempt to give them different bonuses to different combat rolls instead of just giving them varying damage values, some are just better. Granted, that's still just 1d6+4 (the Xiticix Spike Whip and the Xiticix Sickle Axe being the ones of choice). While the the two-handed Xiticix Beheading Axe (5d6+4 M.D. with their strength values counted in) sounds badass, it's actually a bad choice for most Xiticix Warriors compared to just two-handing Sickle Axes (8d6+8 M.D., ditto). The Xiticix Double-Dagger is designed to let Leapers inflict their poison with a blade, which is good for them and bad for everybody else.   Dare you enter their magical realm? They get the new Resin Spike Gun that fires spikes for perhaps some of the worst damage I've seen on a ranged weapon (1d6 M.D... on a burst), but gives a -6 penalty to dodge because it does. The TK-Rifle hasn't changed from the corebook, and is pretty middling- though now it inflicts the -6 penalty the Spike Gun does to dodge when firing spike bursts and- wait, it seems like they just copied the Spike Gun entry and forgot to change some of the traits! Maybe? Lastly, the Resin Spitter is probably the nastiest weapon in their arsenal, because it leaves you out for two rounds trying to clean resin off or trying to make your way around with concrete on your limb... if it doesn't hit you on the head. We get a reminder that only Queens can make the ranged weapons at all, not just the TK-Rifle as previously stated... not that it really matters, we it's not like we're tracking the Queen's schedule or know how quickly they can be crafted. "Oh, they can only field two dozen TK-Rifles because she's got a busy schedule farting eggs." is not something that's going to come up.  Buggy whip. Next: Would you like to know more?
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Feb 3, 2019 08:03
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Man, this is an incredibly dire RIFTS book. You can't even make fun of the bugs, they're that boring. It's like they came out of a can labeled ONE (1) WORLD-THREATENING HORDE OF BUGS, UNFLAVORED.
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Feb 3, 2019 08:26
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Even the Trapper-Woodsman is more interesting than the Xiticix. I mean, if they had any sort of interesting nuance, like, say, maybe if some of them broke away from the hives and, gasp, maybe you could play one of these liberated Xiticix, they'd have something interesting to them. Instead they're just bugs that like to go toss their kids into pools of melted people. They have no culture, no art, no personality, they just turn people into soup.
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Feb 3, 2019 10:54
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Ive always figured the people soup enemies should work on cooking rules. Do anything to change the environment and the whole thing is ruined but if you add certain new ingredients you can fracture their uniformity because bug people colony B is now EXTRA BOLD
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Feb 3, 2019 12:04
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Ratoslov posted:Man, this is an incredibly dire RIFTS book. You can't even make fun of the bugs, they're that boring. It's like they came out of a can labeled ONE (1) WORLD-THREATENING HORDE OF BUGS, UNFLAVORED. There's just... nothing to them. You could have tucked this away in one of the Canada books or, if pressed, maybe something the size of the Rifts Sourcebooks like Mechanoids. The Mechanoids actually deserve (in theory) a book this size, although that comes perilously close to the long-awaited Mechanoids 2E book.
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Feb 3, 2019 14:30
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The Chad Jihad posted:So it came to my attention that an RPG was made set in the universe of Rune, the UT engine third person viking slasher. Has it ever been written up or are there any good reviews for it? Doesn't look like anybody's done a write-up, though I've been tempted ever since picking up a used copy a couple years back. It was written by Robin D. Laws, who also wrote Feng Shui, and has some pretty interesting mechanics. I remember the basic shtick being that adventures are supposed to be mechanically balanced such that the GM is actively trying to challenge and injure the PCs in order to score points. The players in turn are trying to score by killing monsters and getting treasure with their PCs. Each player takes a turn at GMing to give them an opportunity to score their own GM points. The shared GMing responsibility and the board game-like open competitiveness between roles at the table seemed interesting, but I'd have to do a deeper dive to figure out whether it really worked in practice.
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Feb 3, 2019 16:45
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Emerald Empire: Lucky While many ancestors do not in fact ascend to Yomi to become spirits after death, basic practice in Rokugani religion ensures that their descendants will honor all but the very worst of them as if they had. Every family, even peasants, maintains a small altar with memorial statues or plagues to their ancestral dead, and wealthy homes may have a niche or an even an entire room dedicated to an ancestral altar, while in less wealthy families it will still occupy a place of honor. Even those few Rokugani who have no interest in either Shinsei or the kami will maintain a family altar to the dead, appeasing their spirits via clapping, prayers and offerings. These are in addition to the cemetaries that Rokugan maintains. Of course, burial mounds are not often made in modern Rokugan, but ancient ones, often small but sometimes full of elaborate mausoleums and clay grave goods, can still be found across the land, diligently cared for by the locals. Ever since the Imperial mandate of cremation, burned remains are usually interred in graves under a stone block that bears the name of the deceased and sometimes a death poem. Families visit their ancestral graves to clean up and remmeber them every so often, especially during the yearly Bon festival. Graveyards also sometimes have statues, but these statues do not represent the dead. Rather, they are of Fortunes or major Shinseist figures, particularly the Fortune Jizo, who is said to roam the underworld doing his best to comfort the dead. Families may decorate Jizo statues with clothes, jewels or toys to honor children that died before their time. Jizo, as a wandering Fortune, also served as a patron of travelers and his statues ca be found in many small roadside shrines. Ancestors themselves, however, are extremely personal, and a Rokugani will rarely bring up another person's ancestors unless they are very close. Partly, this is practical - suddenly mentioning someone's dead family may make them depressed. And partly, it is philosophical, in that the living cannot match the wisdom of the elder dead. This courtesy is even extended to your enemies. Any remark along the lines of 'you shame your sohei' or similar would reflect poorly on the speaker, not the person being insulted, and would likely summon the wrath of the speaker's ancestors. We also get a sidebar on the Tenth Kami, of whom the people of Rokugan know nothing. He resides in Meido, and his name is Ryoshun, the first of the Kami to be devoured by Onnotangu, and the only one to die before Hantei could free him. When Emma-O descended into the underworld to reclaim Jigoku from Fu Leng and the oni, he discovered Ryoshun there, wiating. Now, Ryoshun manages the defense of the boundary between Jigoku and the rest of the underworld, but the oni believe he could be a vital and powerful ally, if they could find a way to turn him against the Heavens. Ryoshun, in original continuity, was kind of an asspull that didn't make a lot of sense, so it's interesting to see that they're trying to incorporate him from the start here. Fortunes are a form of powerful kami who rule over a concept rather than a specific place or natural feature. They might be the kami of strength, or of cats, or so on. Fortune is a contraction of their full title, which might be translated along the lines of 'God of Fortune' or 'Lucky God.' The Fortunes have been around, watching over Rokugan, since the beginning of time, alongside the other kami. Shinseism has changed how most people think of them, however. Per Imperial edict, the Tao of Shinsei and the seeking of Enlightenment are supreme law over kami and human alike. The Fortunes are important still, but as exemplars of Shinseist wisdom. Despite this, the festivals and traditions that honor them have not changed much over the millenia, and Fortunism, ancestor worship and other esoteric traditions remain powerful, even if Shinseism is dominant in many regions. The Fortunes divide their time between Tengoku and Ningen-do. From Tengoku, they oversee the land as a whole, descending to Ningen-do via their sacred places - shrines, mostly, but also regions that express their purview clearly. Their time in Ningen-do is used for when they must take a personal hand in earthly affairs. Like other kami, their earthly homes are typically within natural, geographical or human-made features called shintai, which are the focus of most shrines. Fold tradition holds that hte Fortunes may take on human form as one of their shintai, and the myths of the Fortunes often describe their lives as humans, either in Rokugan or in some mythical land to the west. In life, they performed some act of supreme excellence, which allowed them to ascend as Fortunes, blessed human souls among the kami. A modern human might still become a Fortune, by legendary effort or virtue, but few Rokugani tend to think often of these stories, and the odds of running into a Fortune disguised as a human are fairly low. The Seven Great Fortunes are the most widely worshipped in all of Rokugan. Benten is the Fortune of Arts and Romantic Love, appearing as an elegant woman with dark-brown skin and wet black hair. She rides on a five-headed dragon, her symbol is the biwa, and rivers are sacred to her. Benten is especially popular with young samurai before their gempuku, when they are in the midst of their education and often overwhelmed by poetry and calligraphy, and who also are teenagers and thus prone to romantic feelings for other teenagers. Playwrights, actors, puppeteers and other entertainers also worship Benten as their patron. Bishamon, the Fortune of Strength, appears as a male figure in ancient armor, carrying a giant halberd in one hand and a Shinseist temple full of sutras in the other. Cynics may debate over how much Shinsei actually means to the Fortunes and their servants, but Bishamon at least is known for his honest and devout study of Shinseist doctrine. When the common people meet him, he is frequently in the form of an armored warrior, but he has also been said to appear as a wandering Shinseist priest with a backpack of books and scrolls. He is always depicted smiling widely, to represent the joy and satisfaction that comes from balancing physical fitness and wisdom. Daikoku, the Fortune of Wealth, is a god of contradictions. He is cheerful, even jolly, with plump and lucky earlobes, yet his skin is smeared with grave ash. His massive wooden mallet showers golden coins when it strikes, but his associations with death and cemeteries serve to remind all that wealth cannot follow you into Meido. He sits on top of fat rice bales, representing wealth and plenty, but they are always gnawed at by ratys, to remind that wealth is nothing if not defended and invested. Merchants and farmers revere Daikoku the most, and Fortunist monks of Daikoku often remind wealthy samurai that their wealth must not be taken for granted, and that while money cannot buy happiness, poverty can certainly buy sorrow. Ebisu, the Fortune of Honest Work, is Daikoku's friend and ally, but far more mercurial than the cheerful lord of wealth and the grave. He teaches that luck comes to the diligent, appearing as a wandering fisherman, for fishermen are the oldest of workers in Rokugan, predating agriculture. He wears archaic clothing, carrying a great fishing rod and a big fish he as just caught. Fishers that find a stone among the fish in their nets will venerate it with offerings of food and drink, for legend has it that these stones are Ebisu in disguise. Ebisu is the only one of the major Fortunes whose shrines have no shintai. There are icons of him, but he does not live in them, preferring to take the form of a whale and live in the seas. While Ebisu has shugenja that serve him, he does not speak to them in his voice and he is hard of hearing, so he is not called on by prayers spoken aloud. Rather, they use clapping and the ringing of bells. Ebisu's monks, while in theory paying lip service to Shinsei, are the furthest from orthodox Shinseist practice. Fukorokujin, the Fortune of Wisdom, is held by popular legend (though not the teachings of the Phoenix Clan) to have once been a mortal who mastered the Way, learning to subsist on the breath of the universe instead of food or drink, anmd thus ascending to divinity. Martial artists often revere him as the incarnation of the wisdom they seek through combat skill. He appears as an old, bearded man, stout but small of stature, with a high and conical forehead. He leans on a long staff and carries a great book of lore. He is always seen with a turtle, crane, black deer or combination of these animals. His holy symbol is the needle, and tailors are his most devout followers. It is said that Fukurokujin knows how to revive the dead, but that he never uses or teaches this knowledge, for fear it would be misused. Hotei, the Fortune of Contentment, is like Daikoku in that he is a fat, jolly man with big earlobes, but he is not covered in grave ash. His symbol is the sack, also called a hotei, which is full of toys and gifts for deserving children. He is one of the most popular and beloved Fortunes, and the only one believed to have personally met Shinsei. Legend has it that before any knew who Shinsei was, an eccentric old monk appeared at the Imperial Palace, walked into the throne room, sat down in a corner and began to meditate. The Emepror stopped the guards who went to arrest him, and personally brought the monk food and tea each day, but otherwise ignored him. When Shinsei arrived, the monk stood and went to greet him, and they bowed to each other as old friends. They spoke briefly, and the monk listened quietly as Shinsei spoke of the Way, then left with Shinsei and Shiba. As the three parted in fron of the castle, the monk saw a small boy playing nearby, and he removed from his sack a kemari ball far too large to have fit inside it. He kicked ito the boy, who thanked him and ran off, and it was then that everyone realized he was Hotei in human disguise. When they asked Shinsei if he knew Hotei, Shinsei said he did not, but that he seemed familiar, and he was sure they'd meet again. Hotei's was the first monastic Fortunist order to be founded, well before the fusion of Fortunism and Shinseism by Imperial edict. Jurojin, the Fortune of Longevity, appears as an old, thin man who lives in a constellation that resembles him in the southern sky. He is always an old man leaning on a staff, accompanied by a deer, turtle or crane, but unlike Fukurokujin, he is thin, rather than fat. Jurojin is the patron of all visual arts, and the Fortunist monks sworn to his service are universally painters and sculptors whose works, great and small, are sold to wealthy patrons in order to fund their monasteries. Other Fortunes may not receive the same level of worship as the Seven Great Fortunes, but there are many of them. Emma-O is said to have been the first human ever to die. He journeyed alone from the land of the living to the underworld of Yomi, which had not at that point been taken over by Jigoku, and in doing so he became the Fortune of Death and Judge of the Dead. Some tales say he beuilt all of the underworld's facilities personally, others that he discovered them already built even though he was the first ever to enter it. After Yomi and the sorei were taken to Tengoku, Emma-O entrusted them to the gods of the sky and returned to conquer Meido and Gaki-do, on the logic that if someone didn't do so, Fu Leng would win. He seems to have been largely correct in this belief, but all who look on him know that he is a very, very tired Fortune indeed. His face is red and scowling, with sharp tusks and fangs. He wears a hat that has the character for 'king' written on the front, and he always carried an antique board to which he fastens the records of a soul before judgment. He has priests, but few prayer ot Emma-O, as prayers are said to annoy him, for he is so overworked that he'd never have time to get to them and so they will merely clutter up his office. 'Emma-O will get to your prayer eventually' is a saying that means 'your efforts are earnest but pointless.' Many bureaucrats and administrators adorn their offices with images of Emma-O, whose face is meant as a defense against corruption. Hachiman, the Fortune of Battle, is probably the most popular of the Fortunes among samurai. As a human, he was born wearing an archery glove, and he is honored as the inventor of mounted archery. Even today, many archers will mutter a prayer to him as they fire their first arrow each day. The monks of Hachiman maintain in his greatest shrine a library of texts, poems and letters said to have been written by the Fortune himself, and if read closely, many seem to predict the coming of Shinsei centuries later. It is said that if an invading fleet from beyond the Empire ever lands on its shores, Hachiman himself will descend from Tengoku in the form of a tornado to drive them back. We then get a sidebar on how, yeah, the Fortunes and kami are in fact often just direct lifts of real-world religious figures, and that discussing them as game figures could actually offend folks to whom they are not fictional beings but actual religious figures, or that it could be uncomfortable to treat nonfictional religion as entertainment, and that people may or may not feel safe voicing this discomfort. It's actually a very good sidebar on how good intentions aren't always wenough, and you have to make an effort to ensure that when characters in the game are critical or reverent about religion, you shoudld always make it clear that it's in character and not an out of character criticism or debate, and that it may be better to not go into specifics and shouted invective of IC religious debates to avoid hurting feelings or sounding like you're denouncing actual religious beliefs. Describe mantras, don't chant them, and while outside research on Asian culture will be popular, keep in mind that drawing on non-Japanese sources may be inappropriate for purely Japanese figures, even if they might fit those that have, say, Hindu origins such as Benten or Daikoku. In short: be respectful. Would it surprise you if I said that no edition before this one has had anything like this sidebar? Next time: Shrines.
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Feb 3, 2019 16:48
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