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Whats the ETA on release?
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# ? Feb 16, 2025 14:50 |
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The Lone Badger posted:Why the gently caress do people live in the Madlands again? Because they're born there. And their family and friends are there. And they think anyone from anywhere else is crazy (they aren't).
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Josef bugman posted:Speaking of things set in Glorantha that are coming out soon(ish) check out the art work on Six Ages: http://sixages.com/blog/ ![]()
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Covok posted:Whats the ETA on release? Late this year/early next. The artwork is done, mostly, and the writing, but they are still ironing out the bugs.
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The Lone Badger posted:Why the gently caress do people live in the Madlands again? Presumably because other, much luckier people have all the other land.
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Oh man, I just finished reading through the Savage RIFTS and I'm super-impressed. From a cursory reading...
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Young Freud posted:Oh man, I just finished reading through the Savage RIFTS and I'm super-impressed. From a cursory reading...
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wiegieman posted:Why do these "everything is hosed time to die slowly" games always take place in London? Can we do it in Chicago? The UK is similar enough to the US that you don't have to explain everything, but different enough to be a little exotic. Plus like someone mentioned, they got banged up by Germany in a way the US never will.
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Young Freud posted:Oh man, I just finished reading through the Savage RIFTS and I'm super-impressed. From a cursory reading... Pinnacle's also been responsive to feedback about some issues people have found, and they've already released the second round of .pdfs, which is great. I backed it mostly for nostalgia reasons, but now I'm actually excited to run Rifts again.
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LeSquide posted:Pinnacle's also been responsive to feedback about some issues people have found, and they've already released the second round of .pdfs, which is great. I backed it mostly for nostalgia reasons, but now I'm actually excited to run Rifts again. Looking forward to Kevin making GBS threads on it in the foreword of the next Palladium book.
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Mmf. This crow's a bit gritty, but I'm eating it for sending up the Palladium veteran alarm when the Savage RIFTS kickstarter went up. I'm honestly impressed now.
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Midjack posted:Looking forward to Kevin making GBS threads on it in the foreword of the next Palladium book. Or he'll alternatively take credit for the whole conversion.
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LatwPIAT, I had some more Phoenix Command questions, as I'm trying to learn the more advanced rules: 1. In the roleplaying rules, there's a rudimentary skill and experience system. Is there an official list of skills, or is that something that the players are expected to make up themselves? 2. Can you dumb down how to read / compute the Penetration Summary Table 3B a little more? I can't quite follow how the Armor Protection Factor and the PEN rating of a gun will line up to output a Weapon Penetration line. For that matter, where does Weapon Summary Table 3C come into play? Is that supposed to be a simplified version of using the specific PEN values per gun+round?
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BattleTech - A Time of War![]() Critters & Guns Man, I need to get my act together with this one... Planetary Conditions A boring but necessary list of how terrain, weather and other planetary conditions affect the player characters. They again work just like in the BattleTech wargame (with some adjustments made to accomodate the smaller scale of the combat participants), so know that fighting on magma crust is bad while getting as many trees between you and the guy firing at you is good. Creatures ![]() Sir not appearing in this little bestiary. Normal rhinos do though, so I guess you can just beef up that. As mentioned way earlier, actual intelligent aliens aren't really a thing in BattleTech (aside form some tool-using primates and primitive bird people from that one novel everyone has erased out of their head canon). As such, alien life primarily takes form as more or less exotic animals and plants. Creatures are build roughly like normal characters, except they don't have a Charisma score and only three Skills to pick from: Perception, Tracking, and the awesomely-named AniMelee. The latter is used for all natural attacks (including a special charge attack known as a Ram Attack that adds lots of extra damage depending on the distance covered) and kinda cheesy, with its base Target Number of 5 (in a 2d6 + modifiers game). Seeing how the TN for human combat skills is a 8, this not only gives them a juicy advantage right out of the gate, but seeing how hitting your TN gives you a bonus (most importantly a counter-attack) even if your opponent has the better margin. All in all, it is very difficult to engage with an animal in melee combat without getting hit. If that wasn't bad enough, the example combat gives creatures a point-blank bonus, which isn't actually a thing for melee attacks. Thankfully, all example creatures presented in the book have terrible natural armor against ranged attacks, and they are easier to knock out. The list of example creatures includes a lot of mundane critters (also rats and orcas, in case you want to shoot those). Much more interesting is the list of alien critters (most of which sadly don't come with a picture):
![]() Hipposaur will end you. Diseases This section is thankfully pretty short, and gives you random disease tables instead of listing off some made-up stuff. The book is also helpful to inform us that you should only ever have a PC catch a disease if it's part of the adventure. Equipment Everyone's favorite section: lists and lists of all kinds of shiny toys for PCs to get their hands on. BattleTech is a big fan of letter codes when it comes to equipment, mostly using the letters A through F. Each item has a Tech Level (A for primitive stuff, F for super advanced stuff only the Clans were able to produce initially), a Legality rating (from unrestricted to top secret) and Availability (very common to unique). The latter rating comes as a trio of letters for the general eras of BattleTech (Star League, Succession Wars, Clan Invasion), with equipment that didn't exist during an era getting a X. Some pieces of equipment are closely tied to a specific faction, and they feature a lower Availability everywhere else as a result. The currency of choice in the BattleTech universe is the C-bill, but there's a table with exchange rates for 14 different other currencies if you're into that kind of stuff. Weapons Melee and Archaic Weapons I've mentioned earlier how BattleTech lets you equip your infantry squads with all kinds of archaic weapons. Naturally, the selection for PCs is a bit big for a futuristic setting. Unfortunately for all D&D grogs, BattleTech doesn't care much about individual types of polearms. What it does care about is Japanese weapons (except the naginata because that's a polearm). Not only do you get all your favorite types of Japanese swords (even a friggin' Bokken aka a sword-shaped stick), but you get two different Japanese bows, which are essentially just a short- and a longbow who sacrifice some range for more damage. And in case you're curious: yes, the Japanese swords are better than Western swords because everyone but the clumsy No-Dachi get an Attack Roll bonus. They are a lot more expensive as a result, though. The book also really, really hates axes, which is why get an Attack Roll penalty. They don't even deal extra damage compared to swords. Modern melee weapons include various kinds of stun weapons, monowire and your daily dose of vibro-weapons. The Vibrokatana rules supreme of course. They all require energy to work at full capacity, though. An interesting little weapon is the Medusa Neural Whip. Doesn't have much in the way of armor penetration, but you can add extra power for improved damage. Small Arms The big divide here is between ballistic and energy weapons. Ballistic weapons are a lot cheaper, tend to have more burst-fire weapons, and offer a nice selection of alternative ammo types. Energy weapons on the other hand have a much larger range, better armor penetration (not to mention that more primitive types of armor are essentially useless against energy attacks), and they draw their energy from the universal Power Packs. They're very nice for extended field trips since you can just keep shooting as long as you can find some way to recharge those packs, be it some small solar module or the fusion reactor of your 'Mech. The list of guns is a bit odd in that it features both generic weapons as well as specific models, with the latter often being faction-exclusive. Having such a wide variety of different variations of the same type of gun (the generic Auto-Pistol alone has 6 different named variants) of course means the weapon list as a slight case of "the best gun", with say the Lyrans and the Free Worlds League having their own kind of Auto-Pistol that is just straight up better than the generic one, and not even all that much more expensive. There's nothing much too say about ballistic weapons, as they just feature different models of pistols and rifles. Laser are similar aside from the pulse lasers (the only ones with burst-fire) and blazers (binary lasers, aka double-barrelled lasers). Personal-scale Gauss weapons hurt a lot, even come in burst-fire versions and can have a pretty high range. Aside from their high price, they also combine the worst of both ballistic and energy weapons in that they need both ammo and energy to function. Flechette weapons get their own list, featuring needler guns and shotguns. For Zero-G operations, you can get yourself some gyrojet weapons. Other assorted weapons include a dart gun, a 40k-like flamer pistol, and the nasty Radium Sniper rifle which lets you poison people from over 1 kilometer away o_O A lot less lethal is the Buccaneer Gel Gun, which shoots gel rounds to knock down opponents during boarding actions, and the Ceres Arms Crowdbuster aka the Sonic Boom Gun. Support Weapons The ballistic ones come in their usual variety of machine guns and launchers for various kinds of exploding goodness. The energ ones of course feature various oversized lasers and pulse lasers. They also offer flamers and the first man-portable particle cannons and plasma rifles, which can easily intagig you. Heavy gauss weapons are also a thing. Explosives Your various assortments of grenades, mines and demolition charges. Of particular interest are the Vibrabomb mines straight from the wargame, which can be set to respond to a certain tonnage range. Perfect for using your Light 'Mechs to lure in some heavier enemies. Ordnance For your launcher weapon. The list itself is a bit boring to read as each type of ordnance is just named "Class [A to E]". They come in quite a fun variety, allowing you to flashbang opponents, set them on fire, or just spread mines all over the place. Specialty Ammuniton Some nice goodies for ballistic weapons. Change your damage type with explosive rounds, change your effectiveness against armored or soft targets, set opponents on fire, get some subsonic rounds for sniper duty, or tinker with your weapon's ability to shoot through walls and such depending on whether or not that would be a good thing for you or not. Gyrojet weapons can also get guided ammo, which offers a nifty attack bonus. If you want to make sure that a fleeing enemy won't escape you, you can get some radioactive rounds. They're not radioactive enough to harm someone (beyond the normal harm a bullet does, of course), but they do allow you to track them. Weapon Accessories Customizing your guns is always fun in these modern or futuristic games, and AToW has a nice selection. Various sights and scopes, stabiliziers, silencers... heck, you can even modify your gun to shoot around corners. Holsters are also featured here (a bit overkill to have to track those), and if you are for some reason really into bows, you can dek them out with scopes, too. More specialized accessories include Guided Rifle Modules (necessary for air-burst and those rad guided gyrojet ammo), a Cloaking Device (which is actually a stealth suit you wear that shields your weapons from sensors), and the Radioactive Tracker Scanner to keep track of people you tagged with your radioactive ammo. Personal Protective Equipment The different armor types here come in different variations depending on what hit location you want to have covered. Jackets, suits and vests cover at least the torso and maybe also the arms and legs depending on the exact type. If you're legs aren't covered, you can opt for pants or "Shorts/Skirts/Kilt", which sounds pretty amusing. The latter option is only good if you want to safe on mass though, as your flak kilts and ablative skirts are both more expensive than pants, and they offer slightly reduced protection. The armor types include Flak (good for ballistic, okay against explosives, crap at everything else), Ablativ€ (the same for energy and melee), and the Ablative/Flak combination which takes the best protection of either of its specialized versions and reduces it by one. Flak or Ablative can beat it in their respective fields, but it's probably better to stick with Ablative/Flak just so you are not totally screwed if say the enemy turns out to be carrying lasers instead of assault rifles. More than twice as expensive and heavy is the Ballistic Plate Armor, using modern polymers. It doesn't make you immune against pistols, but it will noticably reduce incoming damage. Neo-Chain Armor is just weird. Oldschool chainmail made out of modern ceramic-metal composites. It's pretty much a worse Ablative/Armor, and probably only exists because of the Draconis Combine's samurai honor guard (because yes, that's literally what they're wearing to go along with their vibrokatanas). Myomers are similar to the Ballistic Plate, with a heavier focus on ballistic and explosive damage. They do require energy to function at full capacity, though. Concealed Armor is a modifier for all armor types up to Ballistic Flak. More expensive and with less protection, but they are naturally harder to spot and lighter. Combat Armor Accessories This is oddly where you find helmets, offering (of course) protection against head shots and also against flashbangs. They come in Flak, Ablative and Ablative/Flak. The Standard Combat Helmet offers more protection, but is bulky enough to penalize your Perception. The Advanced Combat Helmet offers more protection, isn't nearly as bulky, and it makes you almost immune against flashbangs. Also includes comm equipment. Also listed here are combat gloves to protect your hands, boots to protect your feet, and shields that essentially act as portable cover. If you're the heavy weapon guy of the team (or are just too wimpy to carry enough guns), you might want to check out the Load-Bearing Equipment, which boosts your effective carrying capacity with the help of pouches and holsters. Gripper Gear grants bonuses to climb rolls. They include modified boots and gloves that offer a better grip, and a Grapple Rod if you want to play Batman. Standard Armor Kits And it's armor time again. The previously mentioned armor types are just your generic types of armor for your average Inner Sphere citizen. Armor Kits are specific sets of armor used by the various militaries of the Clans and Houses. Each piece generally combines various types of generic armor, and all helmets offer at least comm gear. There are sadly no pictures or descriptions on how these kits actually look like (which just makes me nostalgic for Heavy Gear), but they all seem to be making use of Ablative/Flak and Ballistic Plate, seeing how their protection is generally between those two types. Clan armor is of course the best there is (beating Ballistic Plate anywhere but explosive damage), followed closely by the Magistracy of Canopus and the Marian Hegemony. Also among these armor kits is your standard set for MechWarriors (with regular Inner Sphere armor sporting this fun vest + shorts combo, while elite and Clan MechWarrior get a more animeish suit). AeroSpace pilots always come with an animeish suit to improve their survival chances should they find themselves getting blown out of their cockpit. For Zero-G combat, you can either get yourself a combat space suit or a heavier marine combat suit. There is also the Tanker's Smock for vehicle pilots, which replaces the soldier's normal torso armor for incorporated cooling systems. Exotic Armor Why not. If you watn to run around like a samurai or knight, go for it. You can even fight the Word of Blake in Kendo practice armor. Hostile Environment Gear Your various masks and suits to survive in all kinds of situations. The funniest thing is probably that the list includes sunglasses. You're not only wearing them to look cool, but also to give you a slight bonus against flashbangs. Stealth Gear Sneaky suits in various kinds of sophistication, from a simple camo gear to an energy-powered Sneak Suit. Each of them offers different protection against ECM, Infrared and visual sensors. Non-Combat Attire Your typical clothes. Goes a little bit overkill in that it includes swimear, underwear, socks and hats. Electronics Man, there's a crapton of stuff here. If you want to find a specific way to sense, record, surveil or talk to someone, this section has got you covered. The various Power Packs also come in a staggering variatey with different weights and capacities, and there are also different kinds of rechargers. The weakest, but probably funniest, is the Kinetic Recharger, aka a hand crank. If you want to be a spy, hacker or thief, there's also various espionage gear, be it a simple lock pick set or forgery kits. Miscellaneous Gear Since this is one of those games where armor can get damaged over time, you probably also have to get some repair kits sooner or later. Characters can also be patched up, and there is of course your usual assortment of wilderness adventure gear. Prosthetics Prosthetics in thse kinds of games usually come as simple replacements for lost limbs that are at least as good as the old thing. AToW covers the lower end of the spectrum. Your peg legs, glass eyes or primitive hand replacements that are either purely cosmetic or merely reduce the penalty for missing a limb. Prosthetics come in several ranked Types that counteract the respective Lost Limb Trait. Type 4 and 5 Prosthetics are generally enough to completely negate any penalty from a missing hand/foot and arm/leg, respectively. These even come with a little bonus (namely increased strength and armor penetration to unarmed attacks). Type 6 prosthetics are Clan-exclusive cloned replacement parts, which completely remove the Lost Limb Trait. Though even Clan MechWarriors don't make use of them all that often as the whole procedure takes longer than a simpler proshetic. If you just want to look pretty, you can also get yourself some cosmetic modifications. A bit more far out there and expensive (up to 1.5 million c-bills) are Elective Myomer Implants that slightly boost your physical abilities. More Strength? Check. Better punches? Check. Better reflexes? Also check. The most expensive of the all is the Enhanced Imaging Neural Implant. Required for ProtoMech pilots, and usable by just about anyone else with the right cockpit modification, this implant offers a deeper integration with your vehicle of choice, granting you bonuses to piloting, shooting and sensors at the cost of a higher possibility for feedback damage whenever your ride's internal structure takes damage. Fore really crazy stuff like additional limbs or subdermal armor, you sadly have to go to the supplement. Drugs and Poisons A lot of these don't deal damage per se (some even offer a slight bonus), but can result in nasty addictions. You gotta lova any system that not only differentiates between different intensities of alcohol (Clanners apparently have the hardest booze), but also makes caffeine addiction a possibility. Also here are rules to make up your own drugs on the fly. Personal Vehicles Various kinds of vehicles (in both the wheel and hover variety), planes and boats. Most of this is civilian-only stuff, or jeeps and other vehicles that could be used by mechanized infantry. None of these vehicles make use of an expensive fusion reactor and make use of anything from alcohol over hydrogen to batteries. Also included is coal. There's not a single vehicle on the list that actually uses a friggin' steam engine, but BattleTech's vehicle creation rules insist on being able to make steam-powered vehicles for some reason. The Fires of Hell Oh boy. After almost getting TPK'd and only surviving thanks to the team's 'Mech otaku and his massive luck, the group spends what must be weeks in the wilderness, avoiding Word of lake patrols and almost getting eaten by space panthers. They finally come across civilization again in a suspicious looking outpost. Storming the place was almost a bit too easy, but then they ran into what must be the entrance of a top secret WoB complex. which in turn resulst in another almost-TPK when a couple rad killer cyborgs show up. They even result in a few casulties, including the team's brick shithouse getting his arms ripped off. Ouch. Barely surviving the encounter, the rest of the team finds out the complex is for the planetary defense system, which has just started to track the Lyran invasion force headed towards them. A bit random tension, but at least they manage to more or less save the day. ![]() Looks like someone's having a blast. Your BattleTech infodump of the Day: Combat Vehicles Combat Vehicles include all your tanks, helicopters, hovercraft and other assorted rides to go along with your 'Mechs and infantry. Combat Vehicles are handled in a more ismplified manner compared to 'Mechs and AeroSpace Fighters. They don't track heat (just slap on enough Heat Sinks during construction and you never have to worry about heat), and the exact location of your weapons and ammo is not all that important aside from turret weapons. Combat Vehicles have the advantage of being not as tall as 'Mechs, and they have fewer hit locations, meaning each location is better armored. Their big disadvantage is their high chance of suffering motive system damage, rendering them immobile at best and pretty much destroyed at worst. A helicopter is pretty much toast if you hit its rotors, and BattleTech has strangely detailed rules to determine just how much damage you take from crashing (which is usually enough to destroy the vehicle anyways). They are essentially nerfed on purpose, what with this being a 'Mech game and all. Still, if you run into some 100-ton tank bristling with Gauss Rifles or AC/20's, you better watch out anyways. Thankfully, there are optional rules in place to dial down the motive system hits, and you can even drift like a pro. Also those turrest with their 360° firing arc is nice, though they have a tendency to get damaged, fixing them in place. Combat Vehicles are separated into various motive types, which sets their maximum tonnage and restricted terrain:
Now if you're wondering "300 tons sounds a bit light for a battleship", that's because naval Combat Vehicles are essentially patrol boats. Big dreadnoughts, aircraft carriers or submarines with ICBMs are too restrictive in the futuristic warfare of BattleTech, where invasion forces hop from planet to planet to duke it out with fighters and 'Mechs. They are only really seen on planets with lots of ocean, and even then they play more of a defensive role. But that's a topic for next time... Next Time: Character Advancement. It's slow. Very, very slow. Like my release schedule.
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gradenko_2000 posted:1. In the roleplaying rules, there's a rudimentary skill and experience system. Is there an official list of skills, or is that something that the players are expected to make up themselves? Living Steel and the other RPG setting supplements (like the Aliens Adventure Game) have skill list and even tasks with difficulties and stuff, though they're not nearly as detailed as gun/melee combat. gradenko_2000 posted:2. Can you dumb down how to read / compute the Penetration Summary Table 3B a little more? I can't quite follow how the Armor Protection Factor and the PEN rating of a gun will line up to output a Weapon Penetration line. For that matter, where does Weapon Summary Table 3C come into play? Is that supposed to be a simplified version of using the specific PEN values per gun+round? I'm not sure I can dumb it down more than "Enter the left column with the target's Armor PF, go right and find the biggest number smaller than or equal to your weapon's PEN; it's column header is the Penetration Line you use." The Weapon Summary Table is just a quick reference for stats of the most common guns, so you can run simple games without referencing the weapon data sheets in the back of the book. Personally I feel that the Advanced rules are actually more intuitive; refer to table 6D and you'll get a table where you cross-reference the Armor PF with a 1d10 roll, giving the effective PF (EPF) caused by things like glancing angles. Then calculate EPEN = PEN-EPF. If EPEN is a positive number, the bullet can cause damage. If EPEN > EPF, the bullet has more than twice the energy needed to penetrate the armour and is not significantly slowed. If EPEN =< EPF, the bullet is slowed and DC is reduced to 1. Then enter table 6A with the DC, EPEN, and the hit location to find the damage dealt. In the Basic rules, Low Velocity Damage is equivalent to when EPEN =< EPF, while Over Penetrating Damage is what happens when EPEN > EPF.
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Midjack posted:Looking forward to Kevin making GBS threads on it in the foreword of the next Palladium book.
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Glorantha![]() In the beginning was nothing. The world was not, and all around was one. The one was both nothing and everything, all at once. However eventually a thing defined itself as seperate to everything. This something was called "Darkness". From Darkness came water. From water, earth. From Earth, Sky. Later there came the middle air, but we'll come to that. Then came the eight great runes. Harmony, disorder, conflict, life, stasis, movement, illusion and truth. These things ruled in the endless "just formed" world. They were the building blocks, and they were in partnership and opposition. They (or specifically Truth and Stasis) built a mountain, the biggest mountain that would ever exist. They chose to live their and began to try and understand more of the world that they saw and was building around them. (Much of this is conjecture, no-one not even Arkat himself managed to breech the Gods War back to the very beginning.) It was decided that more division was needed, as the concepts were too large to do certain things. Hence the "new" runes were created, and applied to all manner of things. The dragonnewts became the first sentient beings, Earth and Skys Plant children set themselves up on the foot of the mountain. The Darkness folk lived under the world, the human peoples lived in happiness, the stranger creatures began to proliferate. This is a time of building and proliferation in peace and (relative) harmony. As this happened though the old Gods became concerned. They were happy to be used by all who took joy in it, but were worried that they would not be the Gods that were needed for the people. So they decided to stand aside, and to let another rule. That Other was Yelm. Yelm was a son of the the heavens. He was the perfect ruler, but he did not wish to see the world change at all from it's current state of perfection, and so he demanded that all things in the universe were catalogued. It worked, and all things in the Universe were brought to do obedience and to be "recognised" by Yelm. ![]() This is the world at the beginning/middle portion of the Golden age. However then Sky lay with Earth and bore a second son. His name was Umath. The middle air. His first act was to tear apart his mother and father and create the middle air between them. He moved throughout the world, changing and refusing to accept the emperors authority. Yelm thought that Umath was hurt, and so sent a healer to him. Umath said he was fine and continued to dance and fornicate across the heavens. Yelm thought he was ignorant and sent a messenger to tell him to come to the centre and be acknowledged by him. The messenger was told that he wasn't going to. Yelm sent a third messenger who demanded that Umath listen to him. Umath said something very simple "Make me". And so Yelm made him, by hitting him in the face with a planet. Specifically the War God planet, Shargash. Umath died, but as he exploded he had already made change a part of the Universe again, more was coming undone in the court of Yelm. His Perfect Justice was Unjust, his endless powers were no longer as good as they should have been. The doom of the Gods was already being written. Or at least that is what the priests tell you. Shaman would tell you that the powerful spirits that made the world fell to arguing over differences, some of them became greater spirits and demanded worship, when they should have been content with understanding. Wizards would tell you that all of this was caused by the splintering of the Prime mover, who created the universe, and that the divisions were caused by simple inventions of that mover (water, fire, magic etc) becoming increasingly unable to listen to their instructions. The mystic would tell you to focus on what these stories would tell you about how the world appears, and to meditate on the runes themselves. For instance, why do all of the runes in the council of pairs look like they could fit inside each other? ![]() And now you are enlightened! The World The world of Glorantha is one of Bronze and bravery. It is inspired by any number of ancient societies and cultures, but is built for gaming in. This is just the first part of what is hopefully going to be one of the largest scale tellings of what Glorantha Is in the hope that people can become more interested in this fascinating world. Josef bugman fucked around with this message at 23:24 on Aug 6, 2016 |
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Oh man, buckle the gently caress up it's Glorantha. (Praise Hrestol)
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Doresh posted:I've mentioned earlier how BattleTech lets you equip your infantry squads with all kinds of archaic weapons. Naturally, the selection for PCs is a bit big for a futuristic setting. Can I get a vibro-bow? Can my mech get a vibro-bow?
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loving Yelm...
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Midjack posted:The UK is similar enough to the US that you don't have to explain everything, but different enough to be a little exotic. Plus like someone mentioned, they got banged up by Germany in a way the US never will. The company that made Cold City and Hot War is British, so not very exotic for them.
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It's probably the post-Blitz psyche.
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It honestly fits for me. The BERB is established as loving with Twisted Technology in Cold City and they come back again in Hot War. Plus enough of the populace would remember the Blitz and living and surviving during it (of course, this isn't the Blitz, it's nothing they've ever seen).
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Hostile V posted:It honestly fits for me. The BERB is established as loving with Twisted Technology in Cold City and they come back again in Hot War. Plus enough of the populace would remember the Blitz and living and surviving during it (of course, this isn't the Blitz, it's nothing they've ever seen). Speaking of the games you were waaaay nicer to aspects of Cold City than I would've been. I mean, I love the way the game incentivizes building dice pools by playing to your hidden agendas and how trust can be super useful in a roll but even more useful if you betray it. It all feeds into a really nice cycle of escalating and conflicting interests that reinforces the whole Cold War espionage angle very well. But the writing in the book does it no favors. The book is riddled with typos (yes I have version 1.1, there's a bunch that they still didn't catch.) They're never as bad as, say, AMP: Year One or anything by the WGA people, but it's stuff like failing to capitalize a word, missing a letter, etc. all over the book. Basically, the book needed one more pass under a fresh editor (or one pass at all). The editor could've cleaned up some spots where the important rules info is vaguely-worded or just awkwardly-written enough to make comprehension hard, too. This is probably a pet peeve, but I also didn't like how often the writers use "obviously". Like, if it was so obvious, why did you feel the need to say "obviously"? There's a few real-world references I could've done without in the game, too, mostly involving which alphabet soup agency is torturing what people at that very moment, plus the completely unnecessary mention of Unit 731. Something about how they address contentious issues bothers me too. I mean, I do appreciate that they bothered to cover how to deal with Nazism and Stalinism in the game. And it's nice that they emphasize that if anyone is uncomfortable with those subjects on any level, those feelings should be respected and the topics should be not brought up in the game. At the same time though, it felt like the writers were giving too much ground to the ~story potential~ of playing a guard of a concentration camp. Meaning giving them any ground. The section on that being here: Traditional Games: I would discourage players from creating character histories that include war crimes, atrocities, genocide, and other crimes against humanity It's still a good game that I enjoy a lot and would run/play in, but it needs one good, final cleanup to be excellent.
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Yeah probably my biggest problem with Cold City is the typeface and the need for one last go-through of editing and revising the sentences and words. The big issue with the typeface is that it inadvertently creates weird fragments because commas are indistinguishable from periods (abundantly clear if you look at the snippets above). You do make some fair points though; they do kind of cloak the "hey don't play Nazis" as "personally the creator of the game, you shouldn't play Nazis, but you bought this game and I can't tell you what to do, hopefully you're mature enough". Personally I just...gloss over stuff like that unless I feel it's egregious or just plain awful if I'm enjoying what I'm reading enough. I like to confer the spirit and fun stuff of a game that's won me over more than the faults because sometimes it's kinda hard to review a fun/good/notable game! But yeah. It could use one last pass and a little altering to really shine.
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Josef bugman posted:For instance, why do all of the runes in the council of pairs look like they could fit inside each other? ![]()
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Nuns with Guns posted:At the same time though, it felt like the writers were giving too much ground to the ~story potential~ of playing a guard of a concentration camp. Meaning giving them any ground.
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Hostile V posted:Yeah probably my biggest problem with Cold City is the typeface and the need for one last go-through of editing and revising the sentences and words. The big issue with the typeface is that it inadvertently creates weird fragments because commas are indistinguishable from periods (abundantly clear if you look at the snippets above). Yeah, I can get why you wouldn't want to get hung up on it. Speaking of, are you going to do coverage for A|State after Hot War? It was published before the other two books but a lot of people speculate that it might be a sister game/what-if of Hot War. Nessus posted:I think this was unusually prolix, but given the time and specific locale of the setting they would have to address it somehow, and it is not as if "was involved in/a witness of atrocities during the war" is a rare trope in characters in similar settings. If anything it seems to be taking pains to also discourage Russian characters, which is understandable if also kind of dismissive. It still feels mealy-mouthed to waffle like that to me. Especially since one of the covert agencies players can be part of in Cold City is explicitly stated to be composed largely of ex-SS and Gestapo members. Nuns with Guns fucked around with this message at 15:00 on Aug 7, 2016 |
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Doesn't really help that Gehlen Org was a real thing and it was in fact notorious for the fact that a lot of ex-SS and Nazis joined the group to escape the public eye. Also to answer your question, no, I didn't really have anything planned for a/state. I thought someone tried to cover it in the past but I may just be getting old memories mixed up, there's some inkling in my head about a semi-dystopian city where the PCs are enlightened and trying to make their way but for the life of me I can't recall. I don't have much planned beyond finishing BNW and Hot War and maybe starting Corporation but I'll consider it, thanks for bringing it to my attention. Funny story: I found out about Hot War because of Unhallowed Metropolis, Tasoth mentioned it and I actually have owned both that and Cold City for years and didn't really look into it until recently. So thanks, Tasoth. Hot War was way better than Unhallowed Metropolis ever could be.
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Hostile V posted:It honestly fits for me. The BERB is established as loving with Twisted Technology in Cold City and they come back again in Hot War. Plus enough of the populace would remember the Blitz and living and surviving during it (of course, this isn't the Blitz, it's nothing they've ever seen). Yeah, some of this is reminding me of Quartermass And The Pit, namely the burned out house next door to the subway (or above the Martian rocket), except all of the world is probably in that last ten minutes of the movie. Also, "Soviet Mobile Biological Weapons" has got to be the most British term I've read for a game. No slang, no mythical allusions, just straight and to the point.
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They're probably not actually soviet, though I bet they're mobile.
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LatwPIAT posted:Living Steel and the other RPG setting supplements (like the Aliens Adventure Game) have skill list and even tasks with difficulties and stuff, though they're not nearly as detailed as gun/melee combat. Thank you! That actually makes a lot of sense and I got that immediately the way you said it.
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The Lone Badger posted:Can I get a vibro-bow? Sadly not. There is no "modern" bow, only explosive and incendiary arrows. There's also no 'Mech-sized bow of any kind (not sure of a 'Mech even has enough dexterity to pull a bow string), but you can always get a gun or misisle launcher that looks like a bow.
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![]() Part Four: Equipment Let's be honest here; regardless of what it's about, a sci-fi game can live or die on its gear. And the problem with that is that it's very easy to wind up with the classic list of hundreds of weapons and armor and such, each of which only differs from the others by a point or two. It can also lead to the "best gun" problem that was discussed upthread, where there's always one or two guns that are objectively better than all the others, so everyone uses them, leaving most of the equipment list untouched. So how does Fragged Empire deal with these potential problems? Equipment falls into three categories: weapons, outfits (armor), and miscellaneous items. Miscellaneous items are just that; the stuff you buy via Resources or Spare Time rolls and you're set. There's a page-long list of stuff to buy, like communication headsets or tablet computers or backpacks and whatnot. Weapons and outfits, however, are handled in a more general fashion. Instead of providing a long list of twenty slightly different pistols, then a list of two dozen slightly different rifles, and so on, FE provides generic weapon and outfit types, then allows the player to customize them in a few different ways. Weapons fall into four broad categories that line up with the weapon skills: Small Arms, Heavy Arms, Tactical, and Exotic. Each weapon has a short list of generic weapon types; for instance there are only five types of small arms: pistols, SMGs, rifles, assault rifles, and shotguns. Here's the stat line for a base rifle: ![]() And here's the stats for a chemical thrower: ![]() We've talked about a few of these numbers already, but to summarize:
The chemical thrower is Slow (does nothing on its own, but is a keyword that can trigger other stuff), Jam 1-5 (the weapon will jam on rolled triple values of 1-5), targets get -1 Cover step against attacks with this weapon, and if you make a Spread Fire attack then you get +1d6 to each attack roll. Once you have your base weapon, you can adjust its numbers and/or add on new capabilities through the use of Variations and Modifications. Variations are changes that affect the fundamental style of the weapon, such as turning a normal pistol into a gauss pistol or installing a chem injector into a sword. Variations also come in different categories ("gun variations", "chemical variations", "melee shape variations", etc.) that determine what variations can be put on which weapons, but a weapon can only have one variation per category. So you can turn a generic pistol into a gauss pistol (+1 RoF, but can jam) or a bio-tech spine launcher (lower ammo and Crit, but higher End Dmg and RoF), but you can't have both traits on the weapon. Modifications, on the other hand, are only limited by your ability to pay for them. These are things like targeting scopes, tripods, extra clips, and so on. By way of example, let's trick out a rifle. I start with the standard rifle above, and I have the option of adding one Gun Variation and one Gun Size Variation. For the Gun Variation, I'll take "Self-Propelled"; this increases the Range stat by 1, and adds the "Low Tech" and "Works in Liquid" traits. There's only three Gun Size Variations (Body Mounted, Mounted Weapon, and Tiny) so I won't take any of those. For mods, I'm going to add a Laser Sight (+1 hit), a Targeting Matrix (adds +2 to hit if the target is Locked On, loses Low Tech), a Tripod (+1 Weight, halves range penalties while deployed and shooter is prone), and a spare clip (obvious). Now I look at the costs of all this. The Gun Variation has a cost of +0, so that doesn't affect the cost of the rifle. The modifications all have separate Spare Time costs, generally 12t or 14t. And just for fun, let's add a grenade launcher onto the rifle. Grenades are "Shell, Thrown", which means it can be either fired from a launcher or thrown by hand. Grenades have the following stat line: ![]() Again, I can add one Shell Variation and one Gun Size Variation. For the Shell Variation, I'll make them shrapnel grenades; +2 End Dmg, -1 Crit Dmg, +1 Splash radius, and Low-Tech. For the Gun Size, I'll take "Mounted Weapon". That gives -1 to End Dmg, Crit, Rng, and Clips, but turns the grenade into an item that's attached to another weapon, granting me the Strong Hit option Combo Strike: if my rifle attack hits, I can make a free attack with the grenade launcher at the same target with -2 to hit. The final stats of my custom rifle are: quote:Rifle With Underslung Grenade Launcher (It's interesting to point out that one of the listed melee weapons is a metal chair, which means it can be modified as per normal rules. So your character could have a pair of retractable, biotech, fightin' chairs balanced for dual wielding and covered in nano-bone spurs. Whether you think that's a bug or a feature is, of course, entirely up to you.) Two interesting weapons on the Exotic weapons list are actually pets: the Legion Hound and the Nephilim Beast. They're stand-alone NPCs, but it's worth noting that while the Hound can't be modded, the Nephilim Beast can, so you can give it all kinds of fun biocyber add-ons. Yikes. If you really want to go nuts with weapon modifications, you can make a Prototype Weapon. Prototype weapons require some sort of Secret Knowledge to aquire (so start researching), not to mention a good outlay of Resources. But the upside is that you can now pick options off special "Prototype weapon variation" lists. ![]() A few examples One tactical weapon I haven't really gotten into are drones. Drones are basically autonomous weapons you can control during a combat. I touched on these briefly in the Combat chapter, but the short version is that they're mini-NPCs that can follow basic instructions, but are generally used to provide fire support. They're considered Tactical weapons, and have their own stat blocks. They can also be tweaked out in various ways as per the normal weapon rules. The book also provides a bunch of pre-made "common" weapons, so you can get something effective without having to dig into the customization system. ![]() ![]() Outfits and their related modifications work like weapons; you pick a base piece, add one variation and as many modifications as you want. Outfits also have a few stats:
One of your base outfit options is "Clothing", which provides no armor but gives a +1 to Conservation rolls. However, you can take normal clothing and add things like Shield Nodes (provides an energy shield), an Auto-Med system (can use a stimpack as a free action), a Tactical System (built-in comms), and make it Personalized (takes up less inventory space just for me, takes up more and weighs more for anyone else). Now you've got a nice three-piece suit with some defensive capabilities. It's important to note that there's no real way to increase an Outfit's inherent armor bonus. If you want decent armor, you need to pick an outfit with decent armor out of the gate. Which makes sense; that way you don't have to worry about people taking a suit of clothing and slapping armor mods onto it until their coveralls are as good as a full suit of tactical armor. And once again, there's a bunch of sample outfits to work with. ![]() Next, there's Utility Items. Utility Items are your special pieces of gear that serve a specific purpose. You can only have one Utility Item equipped at a time, but that's because they're involved pieces of hardware. These are things like drone control modules, stealth nets, a high-end targeting system, and so on. These items are straightforward off-the-rack stuff that can't be modded. ![]() Last up are Miscellaneous Items. This is pretty much the "everything else" category; flashlights, headsets, medical supplies, etc. One important item to point out here is the alcoholic energy drink Draz. Draz is a Corp-made superdrink that costs 14t and removes your need to sleep for one night, granting you a Spare Time Point. It can also be cooked up into an addictive meth-like drug that will grant temporary Armor for a few rounds, after which it deals unavoidable damage to one of your physical attributes that can't be healed without substantial medical work. Oh, and it's addictive as hell, too. All this now begs the question "how much of this crap can I drag around?". The way inventory works in FE is that you have a number of Equipment slots based on your Outfit, Utility Items, and Traits. Each non-Outfit item takes up an number of slots equal to its Weight. Your Outfit (and possibly Utility Item) will determine how many slots you have. Weight 1 items can be used one-handed, Weight 2+ items require two hands to use. And that's really it. It's an interesting take on the whole "gear porn" concept because instead of giving you two dozen pages of items, of which only maybe ten items will see real use, players can tweak their gear to their personal needs. It's not complicated outside of there being a bunch of options to choose from, but at least it's a front-loaded difficulty. Once the item's built, you're set. The one thing I wish they had was a spreadsheet you could just pick options from to do the math for you, just for ease of use. I'm sure it'd be relatively easy to do for people who speak Excel. We're going to cover starships next, and unsurprisingly we're going to see some interesting similarities to the equipment section. NEXT TIME: To infinity and beyond.
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so who's gonna call dibs on this:quote:Announcing the Invisible Sun RPG
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Didn't SKR have another different RPG project where it soon became embarrassingly obvious that he was still very much in the 3.5e/PF mindset, replete with long long paragraphs of limitations on a Monk's unarmed strikes?
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Yeah, Five Moons, which is apparently still in playtesting. I remember it because he was so proud of stuff like getting rid of Vancian casting and giving fighters access to fun things to do.
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quote:Invisible Sun is deep. It’s smart. Just like you. That whole thing reads like a Shadowrun parody ad, but this is just beyond absurd.
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First of all, a The Police RPG? Neat! I was getting tired of playing the Genesis RPG (even if Land of Confusion was my favorite source book). Second I hate the name and I hate that the invisible sun is apparently a real thing. Third oh my god you are writing checks you can't hope to properly cash by claiming your game is to be so adaptive to exist in such a fluid way. It's just so impressively loaded with buzzwords it just immediately rings false the moment you look at it. Finally, surreal fantasy sure sounds like a spin on "it doesn't have to make sense, gently caress you" plus it's hard to do surreal anything well.
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# ? Feb 16, 2025 14:50 |
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Especially as no one can agree on what 'Surreal' means.
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