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It's probably accidental but still hilarious that you could probably recreate most of the countless TMNT knockoffs with this system. Hell, the core assumption is basically that you're playing one.
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Dec 4, 2017 16:55
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Not the Mighty Ducks, tho. Hockey team isn't an available organization.
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Dec 4, 2017 17:06
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Also, weren't they aliens?
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Dec 4, 2017 17:20
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Space ducks from the planet Puckworld in an alternate dimension.
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Dec 4, 2017 17:23
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Inescapable Duck posted:It's probably accidental but still hilarious that you could probably recreate most of the countless TMNT knockoffs with this system. Hell, the core assumption is basically that you're playing one. Yeah, this was written well before the turtles were on the public's radar. Siembieda was likely more aware of the black-and-white comic scene than most (he self-published a independent comic series before founding Palladium) and the fact that they were probably the first licensed Turtles product is an amazing stroke of luck. It's too bad they weren't better at exploiting that fact as time went on... but it was still awfully good for them for about a decade or so. In theory you could do Street Sharks, Extreme Dinosaurs, or Pre-Teen Dirty-Gene Kung-Fu Kangaroos... once the rules for sharks, kangaroos, and dinosaurs came out, anyway. (I'm not 100% on the presence of shark rules, I know there are octopi and dolphins later on...) The main issue with doing some of them is that the game presumes a contemporary setting and an experimental or accidental background, but it wouldn't be too hard to just throw a different skill package at players and say "but you're aliens"... not that the game supports it, but it wouldn't be hard, particularly once there's a lot more origins in the game. Of course, the funny thing about all the copycats is that they're rip-offs and parodies of something that was originally both a rip-off and a parody itself. While I think it's pretty clear Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles overcame its parody roots in pretty short order, there's still a certain irony to whole phenomenon.
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Dec 4, 2017 19:09
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I'm curious, how many games have tried to be the kitchen sink for sci-fi that D&D is for high fantasy? I'm thinking games where you can basically play Star Wars, Guardians of the Galaxy, Buck Rogers, etc., travel to dozens of different planets with dozens of alien races and so on. I suppose Traveller counts, and definitely Star Frontiers, Encounter Critical, Humanspace Empires, and that French game that was covered here. (One thing I keep noticing in such games is that no one can resist the urge to put mechs and power armor in them. I'm kinda tired of that as a concept. No one thinks Han Solo would be cooler if he ascended to epic level and got his own Darth Vader armor.)
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Dec 4, 2017 19:54
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Halloween Jack posted:I'm curious, how many games have tried to be the kitchen sink for sci-fi that D&D is for high fantasy? I'm thinking games where you can basically play Star Wars, Guardians of the Galaxy, Buck Rogers, etc., travel to dozens of different planets with dozens of alien races and so on. I suppose Traveller counts, and definitely Star Frontiers, Encounter Critical, Humanspace Empires, and that French game that was covered here. GURPS and Hero had full sub-lines of support for space settings. Space Master was RoleMaster in space, and it had a default setting that got detailed through a bunch of supplements. Space Opera (early FGU game) had about 15 supplement books published (adventures, star atlases, equipment catalogs)
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Dec 4, 2017 20:07
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Deffo Alternity, I don't care about it precisely because it doesn't have its own setting. Traveller does, however, so I don't think that counts.
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Dec 4, 2017 20:17
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Halloween Jack posted:I'm curious, how many games have tried to be the kitchen sink for sci-fi that D&D is for high fantasy? I'm thinking games where you can basically play Star Wars, Guardians of the Galaxy, Buck Rogers, etc., travel to dozens of different planets with dozens of alien races and so on. I suppose Traveller counts, and definitely Star Frontiers, Encounter Critical, Humanspace Empires, and that French game that was covered here. I think they're rarer because "Generic Sci-Fi" is basically just "Star Wars/Trek with the serial numbers filed off" and thus it looks kind of indistinguishable from a generic Star Wars without the license game. Furthermore I think that the 'sci-fi' label implies a much greater deal of rigor than fantasy does, so people are more likely to ask themselves if having starfaring nomadic super cyborgs and superhuman AIs is going to 'realistically' change the politics of the region. Which means that you don't get kitchen sink sci-fi which supports, e.g., Peter F. Hamilton & Neal Asher games in the same space as Star Trek/Star Wars games.
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Dec 4, 2017 20:21
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JcDent posted:Deffo Alternity, I don't care about it precisely because it doesn't have its own setting.
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Dec 4, 2017 20:24
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Mors Rattus posted:Space ducks from the planet Puckworld in an alternate dimension. I rewatched the pilot of the show with Mors for the first time in like 15 years a few days ago, and I sincerely urge all of you to give it a watch yourselves if you want to see the Platonic form of 90s Cartoon. It is not the best, nor is it the worst, but it is the absolute crystallized ur-form of 90s Cartoon. It has everything, it's completely aware of what it is, and its pace is so breakneck it's likely to give you whiplash. It's also crammed with a positively ridiculous amount of voice talent - the villain lineup is basically the Harlem Globetrotters of 90s cartoon villains, having Tony Jay, Frank Welker, Clancy Brown, and Tim Curry all competing to see who can chew the scenery the hardest.
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Dec 4, 2017 20:29
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I don't know how I missed Alternity, as it's one of my 4e DM's favourite systems.MJ12 posted:I think they're rarer because "Generic Sci-Fi" is basically just "Star Wars/Trek with the serial numbers filed off" and thus it looks kind of indistinguishable from a generic Star Wars without the license game.
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Dec 4, 2017 20:36
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The big trouble with trying to be a space opera toolkit in RPGdom is that, for most of the time that RPGs have been published, there's a been a Star Wars game. And Star Wars games have rarely been outright bad compared to their peers. That's a hell of an IP to go up against, and so it's hard for a space game in the same niche (Traveller leans towards harder and military sci-fi, very generally speaking) to survive.
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Dec 4, 2017 20:53
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The aforementioned FGU Space Opera game was very definitely trying to do Star Wars+Starship Troopers+ Star Wars kitchen sink, in that it straight up stole mobile infantry shoots, there was sci-fi and lightsabers and if you followed the rules and had the right rolls at startup Luke Skywalker would eventually somehow evolve into Spock with a lightsaber via levelups. Space Opera was kind of weird. As a side note a chunk of eighties space opera RPGs had this weird obsession with "What if we got Eugenics to work" where you had superhumans developing from careful controlled breeding programs that was super-gross even at the -time- and now isn't worth it. (The Rolemaster Space Opera game is the one I'm thinking of in particular but I know there's at least two-three more.)
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Dec 4, 2017 21:14
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Daeren posted:I rewatched the pilot of the show with Mors for the first time in like 15 years a few days ago, and I sincerely urge all of you to give it a watch yourselves if you want to see the Platonic form of 90s Cartoon. It is not the best, nor is it the worst, but it is the absolute crystallized ur-form of 90s Cartoon. It has everything, it's completely aware of what it is, and its pace is so breakneck it's likely to give you whiplash. It's also crammed with a positively ridiculous amount of voice talent - the villain lineup is basically the Harlem Globetrotters of 90s cartoon villains, having Tony Jay, Frank Welker, Clancy Brown, and Tim Curry all competing to see who can chew the scenery the hardest. It also straight up kills the team's mentor figure. Dude is loving dead. Super dead.
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Dec 4, 2017 21:17
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unseenlibrarian posted:The aforementioned FGU Space Opera game was very definitely trying to do Star Wars+Starship Troopers+ Star Wars kitchen sink, in that it straight up stole mobile infantry shoots, there was sci-fi and lightsabers and if you followed the rules and had the right rolls at startup Luke Skywalker would eventually somehow evolve into Spock with a lightsaber via levelups. I think Buck Rogers XXVc had eugenics-program races as well
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Dec 4, 2017 21:24
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I blame Herbert. Also a lot of other people, but Herbert was the one who put the most...intellectual gloss on it, let's say.
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Dec 4, 2017 21:27
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Fading Suns is another SF setting that's wide-open for gaming purposes, but is also very distinctive and non-generic.
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Dec 4, 2017 21:28
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Daeren posted:I rewatched the pilot of the show with Mors for the first time in like 15 years a few days ago, and I sincerely urge all of you to give it a watch yourselves if you want to see the Platonic form of 90s Cartoon. It is not the best, nor is it the worst, but it is the absolute crystallized ur-form of 90s Cartoon. It has everything, it's completely aware of what it is, and its pace is so breakneck it's likely to give you whiplash. It's also crammed with a positively ridiculous amount of voice talent - the villain lineup is basically the Harlem Globetrotters of 90s cartoon villains, having Tony Jay, Frank Welker, Clancy Brown, and Tim Curry all competing to see who can chew the scenery the hardest. Okay, but what show?
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Dec 4, 2017 21:28
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Halloween Jack posted:I blame Herbert. Also a lot of other people, but Herbert was the one who put the most...intellectual gloss on it, let's say. Very much so. Though, it's been ages since I read Dune, but I seem to recall the intended point being 'This is about how awful it would be if Great Man Theory was anywhere close to being true so stop wishing that were so'.
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Dec 4, 2017 21:29
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Prism posted:Okay, but what show? The Mighty Ducks. Which is actually a cartoon about duck-aliens from a culture based entirely around hockey, living on Earth undercover as an NHL team while they fight the evil dinosaur-aliens. Their leader draws his power from his magic hockey mask. It was not in any way related to the movie of the same name, even though they had the rights to adaptations of the movie and used the name for the title. It's literally peak 90s American cartoons.
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Dec 4, 2017 21:44
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One of the characters is a dashing be-eyepatched pirate theif named Duke L'Orange. It would probably be THE peak 90's animated tv show if Mummies ALIVE! didn't exist.
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Dec 4, 2017 21:51
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FMguru posted:I think Buck Rogers XXVc had eugenics-program races as well
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Dec 4, 2017 22:06
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Night10194 posted:Very much so. This thread has issues with "representation is not endorsement" in general.
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Dec 4, 2017 22:18
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:This thread has issues with "representation is not endorsement" in general. Well, the thing is, Dune's influence on the genre was for a ton of people who did not get that message to go 'Man you know what would be awesome, being genetically superpowered god king, that thing this book was about how bad it would be if that thing happened.' I'd say it's a suggestion maybe the point of the original work was not well made if not for the fact that fascism/eugenics/superhumans just seems to be catnip to certain segments of the nerd gaming/nerd story population and thus anything that looks vaguely like it can be surface-read to be 'Man this stuff is awesome' is going to be taken as 'man this stuff is awesome' by those chaps. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 22:24 on Dec 4, 2017 |
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Dec 4, 2017 22:20
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Night10194 posted:I'd say it's a suggestion maybe the point of the original work was not well made if not for the fact that fascism/eugenics/superhumans just seems to be catnip to certain segments of the nerd gaming/nerd story population and thus anything that looks vaguely like it can be surface-read to be 'Man this stuff is awesome' is going to be taken as 'man this stuff is awesome' by those chaps.  
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Dec 4, 2017 22:27
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Basically, yes. While Death of the Author is certainly a thing I do usually like having a sense of what the author was actually trying to convey even if it's not what people end up taking.
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Dec 4, 2017 22:33
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:This thread has issues with "representation is not endorsement" in general. Even when a game does a decent job of it, it's easy to fall back on the default reaction. EDIT: Speaking of a game line that often undercuts it's own message... Night10194 posted:While Death of the Author is certainly a thing I do usually like having a sense of what the author was actually trying to convey even if it's not what people end up taking. Death of the Author definitely sounds better in its original stupid French pun. (EDIT2: Removed a reference to someone cause I got names mixed up.) Comrade Gorbash fucked around with this message at 22:45 on Dec 4, 2017 |
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Dec 4, 2017 22:35
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Comrade Gorbash posted:It crops up, but a lot of games covered here do a bad job of portraying things without at least tacitly endorsing them, or sending badly mixed messages. I've well lost count of the cases where the book says "oh this is bad" and then dumps twenty pages of mechanics on this bad thing they don't want you to do. And that's before we get to the really clumsy/stereotypical portrayals that, even if their heart is in the right place, are ham-handed and gross. Oh God, yeah. 40k is a great example for both sides of the point because lord knows it doesn't know what it wants to say anymore about the topic, but the original stuff was the world's most obvious anti-Thatcherite black humor, and it keeps staggering in and out of that wheelhouse in between going "maybe some fascists are right, actually" with stuff like Guilliman coming back furious about the state of things for the right reasons, but still an absolute dictator of a different stripe.
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Dec 4, 2017 22:45
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wiegieman posted:The Mighty Ducks.
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Dec 4, 2017 22:47
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Daeren posted:Oh God, yeah. 40k is a great example for both sides of the point because lord knows it doesn't know what it wants to say anymore about the topic, but the original stuff was the world's most obvious anti-Thatcherite black humor, and it keeps staggering in and out of that wheelhouse in between going "maybe some fascists are right, actually" with stuff like Guilliman coming back furious about the state of things for the right reasons, but still an absolute dictator of a different stripe. Plus embracing the utterly un-ironic heavy metal album cover aesthetic of the universe is tempting even to those of us who do get the message. Then it ends up as an over-the-top gonzo grindhouse setting, a take which has it's own problems.
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Dec 4, 2017 22:49
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Zereth posted:Okay to be clear here: They lived undercover as an NHL team made out of alien ducks right? Yep. There's one of those newspaper-spinning-at-the-camera cuts and the headlines clearly acknowledge they are space aliens that are good as hell at hockey. The framing device of the pilot is their manager explaining their backstory to a guy who gets more and more resigned to how stupid it is.
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Dec 4, 2017 22:51
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As I see it, Death of the Author is a heuristic, a tool for analysis. It's especially appropriate and valuable today, when all the available information about the creative process obscures the work itself. (To put it in plain English, the big example I'm thinking of is blockbuster movies, where the swirl of rumours, carefully leaked content, and endless repackaging and analysis of that content by entertainment news outlets seems to replace just watching the goddamned movie.) As for Herbert in particular, he seems to have the same issues as a lot of military sci-fi, where the author isn't necessarily endorsing the things they write about--they may in fact be fervently opposed to them--but concludes that they're a tragic inevitability. We had this discussion back when I reviewed the Dune game, and several people found Dune reeking of just-so assumptions about  and the idea that society will inevitably be dominated by an elite, whether that's an aristocracy, a Soviet style nomenklatura, or the plutocracy masquerading as democracy that we live in now.
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Dec 4, 2017 22:52
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Halloween Jack posted:As I see it, Death of the Author is a heuristic, a tool for analysis. It's especially appropriate and valuable today, when all the available information about the creative process obscures the work itself. (To put it in plain English, the big example I'm thinking of is blockbuster movies, where the swirl of rumours, carefully leaked content, and endless repackaging and analysis of that content by entertainment news outlets seems to replace just watching the goddamned movie.) Halloween Jack posted:As for Herbert in particular, he seems to have the same issues as a lot of military sci-fi, where the author isn't necessarily endorsing the things they write about--they may in fact be fervently opposed to them--but concludes that they're a tragic inevitability. We had this discussion back when I reviewed the Dune game, and several people found Dune reeking of just-so assumptions about Comrade Gorbash fucked around with this message at 23:07 on Dec 4, 2017 |
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Dec 4, 2017 23:01
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Comrade Gorbash posted:It crops up, but a lot of games covered here do a bad job of portraying things without at least tacitly endorsing them, or sending badly mixed messages. I've well lost count of the cases where the book says "oh this is bad" and then dumps twenty pages of mechanics on this bad thing they don't want you to do. And that's before we get to the really clumsy/stereotypical portrayals that, even if their heart is in the right place, are ham-handed and gross. Also bear in mind when you put something questionable or problematic in your fiction, it's your fiction. When an RPG puts something in a book, they're most often suggesting it for use in other people's fiction, and the two things can be very different. And a lot of RPGs kind of miss that point. If I have a monster in a story that has to forcibly impregnate people to produce offspring, that's one thing to observe it as a reader or viewer. You might be horrified, but there's some emotional distance. When you have a monster in an RPG that has to forcibly impregnate people to produce offspring, you're dealing with players having to potentially face the implications or even become victims of consequence. And the two are very different things. Add in the fact that many RPGs think "This thing in fiction is cool, let's copy it and put in in our RPG." without considering the above, or even considering its implications in the original fiction... and then you also have years and years of supplements for the point to be lost if there was one to begin with... and you've got a brewin' stew of potential problems.
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Dec 4, 2017 23:04
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Also bear in mind when you put something questionable or problematic in your fiction, it's your fiction. When an RPG puts something in a book, they're most often suggesting it for use in other people's fiction, and the two things can be very different.
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Dec 4, 2017 23:08
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And then Iron Blooded Orphans kind of.. removed the subtlety.
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Dec 4, 2017 23:12
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Halloween Jack posted:Ech, yeah, the concept is "What if Tom Cruise failed at acting and got AIDS from performing in stag shows and then did a snuff film and became a vampire." It was too gross to make my Best Of list, and I didn't read the details when doing the Worst Of. Holy poo poo, ahaha. Are you just doing the 2E clanbooks? I remember the Revised ones being a lot better about this stuff, but I'm ready to be extremely wrong.
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Dec 4, 2017 23:14
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FMguru posted:Yeah, a lot of early SF games were sci-fi kitchen sink arrangements where you could easily see where they swiped everything from - which, to be fair, was how D&D was built. XXVc are straight-up genetically engineered, with the more human subsets of Homo Sapiens being more GEd for their specific home planet. The only race that you could even say are naturally selected or eugenic are the Terrans, who are just plan hardy compared to 20th/21st century humans due to centuries of interplanetary occupation and NBC warfare.
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Dec 4, 2017 23:15
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Kurieg posted:And then Iron Blooded Orphans kind of.. removed the subtlety. As in?
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Dec 4, 2017 23:18
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