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Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003

La morte non ha sesso

SirPhoebos posted:

:popeye: when did DiTerlizzi work on Star Wars? Do you have a link to a gallery?
AFAIK it's a picture book where he's the author, and a concept artist did all the illustrations.

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Dawgstar
Jul 15, 2017

Out of curiosity, and I looked up the Kisent aliens in said Aliens Unlimited. They are, you're sitting down? Good. They're a plant-based race whose mining and forging of weapons is a big deal in the AU-verse. They have a SUPER DUPER SECRET technique for forging called 'laser forging' which is obviously special as it uses lasers. People are so in love with their forging and Kisentite weaponry they've developed a tourist trade off it.

(One reminds the court that Aliens Unlimited was written by Wayne Breaux. Not even an assist credits by Kevin. So every word in this book is clearly gold from the author's pen.)

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

Hello. You may not remember me, but I'm Evil Mastermind, a.k.a. The Idiot Who Decided To Review All Of Torg But Hasn't Posted In This Thread For Months.

I know I'm stupidly behind on it, but I kinda have reasons. (they involve losing my job a while back, as well as losing my notes on upcoming books)

But I just wanted to pop in to show something off.



Yeah, that happened.

And there's going to be a review incoming next week.

OvermanXAN
Nov 14, 2014

Evil Mastermind posted:



Yeah, that happened.

I really want to know it it's any good. Looking forward to your reviews, whether it's of the terrible old stuff or of this.

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

OvermanXAN posted:

I really want to know it it's any good. Looking forward to your reviews, whether it's of the terrible old stuff or of this.
I don't want to give the answer away just yet, but here's a little sneak peek to whet your appetite.

This is Baruk Kaah, High Lord of the Living Land, as he appeared in original Torg.


This is what he looks like in Torg Eternity.

Rigged Death Trap
Feb 13, 2012

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

I like his shorts

I know its a loincloth
but it look like hes going for a little tour de torg

hectorgrey
Oct 14, 2011

Evil Mastermind posted:

I don't want to give the answer away just yet, but here's a little sneak peek to whet your appetite.

This is Baruk Kaah, High Lord of the Living Land, as he appeared in original Torg.


This is what he looks like in Torg Eternity.


You know, I kinda prefer the first one...

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003

La morte non ha sesso
I mean I like it, but that's because I have four pet parrots

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!

Zereth posted:

Under 100% what? :confused:

Ooops. That should have been 100' (100 feet) instead. Thanks for pointing it out.

potatocubed posted:

Exactly so. I loved Crooks.

Yeah, I think META-4 is in the original core, Crooks, and the first Annual, and then just vanishes after that, never to be seen again.

Dawgstar posted:

Out of curiosity, and I looked up the Kisent aliens in said Aliens Unlimited.

Aliens Unlimited makes Coalition Navy look like a thrill ride. Though it does have some interesting ideas just because of the sheer number of races they wrote up, the majority of the content is only remarkable for its monotony. Here's seven races with cat heads, here's seven races with dog heads, here's seven races with bird heads...

Dawgstar
Jul 15, 2017

Alien Rope Burn posted:

Yeah, I think META-4 is in the original core, Crooks, and the first Annual, and then just vanishes after that, never to be seen again.

I was always curious as to why the only thing M&M seemed to keep from it was the 1E iconic techno-hero Gimmick, and even she wasn't really an NPC or anything. (Although one book is named after her.)

Midjack
Dec 24, 2007



Carados posted:

New format is good, especially for boring books like this.

Seconded.

JackMann
Aug 11, 2010

Secure. Contain. Protect.
Fallen Rib
I dig the format too.

And I'm a big fan of the percentages for the OCCs. It helps highlight how ridiculous the whole thing is.

unseenlibrarian
Jun 4, 2012

There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

Dawgstar posted:

I was always curious as to why the only thing M&M seemed to keep from it was the 1E iconic techno-hero Gimmick, and even she wasn't really an NPC or anything. (Although one book is named after her.)

Because the folks who were doing the Meta-4 universe development got the license to print Dungeon and Dragon from Wizards and then when that fell through, went on to produce Pathfinder, mostly.

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!

Dawgstar posted:

I was always curious as to why the only thing M&M seemed to keep from it was the 1E iconic techno-hero Gimmick, and even she wasn't really an NPC or anything. (Although one book is named after her.)

Don't know, but I pulled the book from my shelf to have a glance and it looks like she was still copyrighted by Super Unicorn and not Green Ronin, even though it was published well after META-4 material stopped appearing in M&M. Presumably they worked out the rights to use her in that book, at least.

Dawgstar
Jul 15, 2017

unseenlibrarian posted:

Because the folks who were doing the Meta-4 universe development got the license to print Dungeon and Dragon from Wizards and then when that fell through, went on to produce Pathfinder, mostly.

Never heard of it.

Although on a serious note, while Crooks! itself is fun, I found I wound up preferring the DC analogues of Freedom City when it came to my hero NPCs anyhow.

The Clique remains one of my favorite things to torment teen heroes with ever, so SU obviously did good and lasting work.

By popular demand
Jul 17, 2007
Probation
Can't post for 12 hours!
:pcgaming:New Torg.:pcgaming:

Autocorrect keeps changing that into "Jew Tory"

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

Horrible Lurkbeast posted:

:pcgaming:New Torg.:pcgaming:

Autocorrect keeps changing that into "Jew Tory"

Autocorrect learns from phrases you use a lot.

Which is to say: the gently caress are you typing that so much for?

By popular demand
Jul 17, 2007
Probation
Can't post for 12 hours!
I don't, that's why it's so funny to me.
E:I'm using some 3rd party Android keyboard app.

marshmallow creep
Dec 10, 2008

I've been sitting here for 5 mins trying to think of a joke to make but I just realised the animators of Mass Effect already did it for me

My autocorrect insists on turning words like "at" into random numbers like 81st even after five years of use so I don't think every autocorrect is actually learning anything.

Bieeanshee
Aug 21, 2000

Not keen on keening.


Grimey Drawer
Mine finally learned 'chrissakes'. Felt like a proud mama.

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

the Dangan Ronpa 2 LP got derailed when a character's name got autocorrected to Blackula

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!

Rifts World Book 16: Federation of Magic posted:

Warning!

:v:

Rifts World Book 16: Federation of Magic posted:

Violence and the Supernatural

:eng101:

Rifts World Book 16: Federation of Magic posted:

The fictional World of Rifts@ is violent, deadly and filled with supernatural monsters. Other dimensional beings, often referred to as “demons,” torment, stalk and prey on humans. Other alien life forms, monsters, gods and demigod, as well as magic, insanity, and war are all elements in this book.

:drac:

Rifts World Book 16: Federation of Magic posted:

Some parents may find the violence, magic and supernatural elements of the game inappropriate for young readers/players. We suggest parental discretion.

:pedo:

Rifts World Book 16: Federation of Magic posted:

Please note that none of us at Palladium Books@ condone or encourage the occult, the practice of magic, the use of drugs, or violence.

:350:



Rifts World Book 16: Federation of Magic, Part One: "Poor Peter."

So, you know the story. Peter Murphy submits a manuscript. Kevin reads it and likes it, but then forgets to get back to him, decides to rewrite much of it, and apologizes in the introduction. Nonetheless, he does compliment him on it, as well as the vague contributions of Doug Coughler and Chris Kornmann. There's also an second apology as he had previously said that Federation of Magic would have been an index for all the myriad forms of magic up until this point except shaman magic (elemental magic, herb magic, temporal magic, tribal magic, and necromancy) but that there wasn't enough time. However, he promises more books on the Magic Zone and Federation of Magic that have never arrived, though Rifts World Book 12: Psyscape will expand the region a bit. The more things change...


"Rise, tiny people!"

Rifts World Book 16: Federation of Magic posted:

Please Note

The magic spells, powers, people and monsters described in this (or any Palladium RPG) hooks are works of fiction. They are not real. Although some elements may have been inspired by myths and legend, as well as fairy tales, books, movies, and the authors’ own fertile imaginations, the magic and monsters are not “real.” You cannot take anything from this role-playing game book to summon forth demons, travel through a dimensional portal, turn invisible, weave a curse, or anything else magical (other than the magic of friendship and using one’s imagination to have fun).

These are games. Entertainment. Fictional works made to excite and stimulate the reader’s/player’s imagination and to help build fun, new RPG adventures. Please don’t lose sight of that. If you start to think any aspect of these games are “real” and they start to affect your life, you should stop and talk to a parent, uncle, priest, psychologist, or somebody who can help you see reality and work through your fears and problems.

I know there are those of our readers who dislike these disclaimers and statements of what may seem obvious fact, but we, at Palladium, feel they are important. That having been said, read on and enjoy the ideas, wild tales and game to its fullest. We hope you have even more fun playing this stuff than we had writing it.

- Kevin Siembieda, Author & Publisher


"Hugs!"

In 2003, there will be a revised version of Federation of Magic, one of the few times Palladium actually updates a Rifts book. This is seemingly because most of the magic information in this book gets reprinted in the later Rifts Book of Magic, though Rifts World Book 16: Federation of Magic never explains the revision itself within its pages. Mind, no other book that gets heavily reprinted in Book of Magic gets a revision, so it's rather unclear. In any case, I'll be skipping it for now, as part of it deals with metaplot details that won't be relevant until the conclusion of the Coalition Wars series, and I just need to keep moving on to the next book.

Lastly, we get some Ramon Perez art that goes some way to show "Dungeonpunk" predating d20 with some interesting, odd designs for mages in this. Practical? Probably not, but given we haven't really seen some distinctive spellcaster designs since the corebook, it's a welcome addition.

Next: The Gathering.

Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 19:22 on Feb 24, 2018

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

It feels like whoever designed the cover really loved The Night on Bald Mountain segment in Fantasia

DalaranJ
Apr 15, 2008

Yosuke will now die for you.

Mors Rattus posted:

Autocorrect learns from phrases you use a lot.

The only thing my autocorrect has ever successfully learned is that when I type "Kill 6 " it gives me "billion demons".

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!



I think autocorrect goes by regions and has a sort of general database which can be overridden eventually by your own preferred use.

Bieeanshee
Aug 21, 2000

Not keen on keening.


Grimey Drawer
This is the book with my favourite player-facing rant.

Dawgstar
Jul 15, 2017

How many potentially world-ending/world-conquering threats lurk in the Federation of Magic!? I cannot wait to find out! ::allears::

(There's a big one in Psycape, but since CJ wrote it I don't think it comes up again. Much the same as the big evil squid god in Underseas.)

Also Kevin forgot about an entire manuscript that somebody wrote for him. A whole manuscript. Wow.

EverettLO
Jul 2, 2007
I'm a lurker no more


Legend of the Five Rings 1e: Night of a Thousand Screams Part 5



Where we just left them, the PCs bumbled through another fight that was deadlier than the authors intended. Assuming they won and didn’t kill everyone, the PCs capture the lead apprentice who quickly cracks and tells them they work for Kuni Ryo and that he had the masks, but that he doesn’t have them any longer. The adventure calls for the PCs to take the apprentice to the local prison for processing before execution. Again it assumes that the PCs didn’t act like PCs do and let a hugely dangerous enemy live. Luckily it’s fairly easy to adjust what happens next to fit the scenario either way.

3:00AM

The PCs are stopped by Shinjo Dokiu who they met earlier in the night. He tells the players that he has arrested some ronin for talking about stolen masks. Rokugani justice prevails! When the PCs go to interrogate the ronin it should be immediately obvious that something is wrong. The first man questioned screams at the magistrates to gently caress off and begins a litany of insults against them, their family, and their clan. It’s the kind of thing that will almost certainly get someone killed, and absolutely should spell the death of a ronin. If the PCs are clever, though, they’ll figure out that the ronin is looking for suicide by cop rather than be questioned. If they pass a TN 20 awareness roll they’ll notice a small brand on his arm that looks suspiciously like the brand mentioned two updates ago as those worn by Moon Cultists. It’s not an impossible roll but a mid-level player group still has a solid chance to miss it.

Here’s where things go off the rails in my estimation. The standard method of interrogation both among Rokugani magistrates and among angry players is torture. If they decide to go this route, the ronin feigns putting up a good fight but eventually tells the players about their hideout at an abandoned manor outside of the city. Careless PCs will go charging off, spend hours traveling to the house, probably fighting a handful of random, non-Moon Cult ronin and end up learning nothing. It was a false lead planted by the tortured ronin to distract the PCs and waste enough time to let his cult’s plans come to fruition.

In order to get any useful information on the Moon Cult, they players need to pass an awareness TN 20 roll to notice that the Jade Sun figurine they were given earlier has begun lightly glowing. Once again, it’s not an impossible roll to make but failure basically means the adventure is over. The PCs will only be able to react to the carnage of what’s coming and will fail to stop the Moon Cultist plot. It’s a very old-school adventure design thing, putting absolutely necessary things behind stat or skill rolls that might stop the adventure dead. The easy fix is to just let the players notice it’s glowing without a roll.

When they pull the figurine out, the ronin react like he’s been set on fire and begins grasping protectively at his brand. If the PCs place the figurine against his brand, he screams and convulses. The figurine bursts into a blast of pure sunlight and the brand on the ronin’s arms disappears.

He awakes from a haze. The brand has been controlling his mind for years and forced him to do unspeakable things. He immediately asks for permission to commit seppuku to restore his honor and assuage his stained conscience, but presumably the PCs want to know what he knows. The ronin is more than willing to spill everything he knows about the Moon Cult’s plot. Thier plan is to ‘destroy the light’ by using the masks but the ronin isn’t sure what that means. He does know enough to point them to the Cult’s actual headquarters, though, which is down near the docks. The PCs go running off to the penultimate fight of the night.

3:30AM

It’s one more unmemorable encounter, this time against five Moon Cultists, one of whom is a powerful shugenja. She has at least two spells that could quickly end the encounter and four bushi bodyguards to ensure that she has time to get them off. It’s one more fight that could be a challenge for fresh PCs and is instead thrown against a collection of sentient wound penalties. I won’t go into detail since it’s old hat by now, so let’s assume that by some miracle the PCs get the job done.

If they let the shugenja live, which seems unlikely to me, she’ll pull some classic villain poo poo and gloat out the majority of their evil plan. The Moon Cult plans on causing a massacre and destroying the ceremonial sun at the end of the Bon Festival. The Bon Festival has been celebrated in the streets all night and can basically be compared to a Rokugani version of Halloween. People dress up as ghosts and the dead and march in a parade to the center square of the city where a ceremonial sun will be lit that will ‘banish’ all the costumed dead and grant blessings to the city all year long. People use it as an excuse to get out, get drunk and have a good time in costume. The Moon Cult plans on flooding the city with hundreds of actual zombies, who will go unnoticed during the masquerade, then have them begin a massacre on cue. With everyone distracted by a horror of unparalleled proportions, cultists will take the opportunity to get to the normally-well-guarded ceremonial sun and destroy it. It will be an important symbolic victory for Lord Moon and his cult.



The players rush off to the Temple of Amaterasu located in the center of the city to stop the Moon Cult. All hell is breaking loose in the streets. It seems the Moon Cult managed to gather most of the masks back and raised the majority of their planned army at the local burakunin graveyard. The zombies have marched into town unnoticed and are just now beginning to make their presence felt. Chaos ensues as some people panic and try to flee, others pull weapons and try to attack zombies only to hit costumed revelers, and some stand around trying to figure out what is going on. The GM may force the players into some fights with zombies but that feels needlessly cruel.

To cap off the chaos, when the players arrive at the town square in front of the temple, the leader of the moon cult is casting a devastating earthquake spell. The panic is only beginning to reach the square and hundreds of citizens mill about while cheers are slowly replaced with screams. The PCs likely run up to the temple to protect the Dragon Globe, which is the symbolic representation of the sun. Zombies begin to attack the priests of the temple in order to prevent them from lighting the globe. Meanwhile, the PCs have ten turns to stop the enemy leader from completing his spell. He has two competent bushi acting as bodyguards, but if the PCs have made it this far then they should be able to handle such a piddly fight. The leader, the same Phoenix bushi who was conducting midnight business with Yasuki Nobuko, probably won’t put up much of a fight since he is in the middle of trying to finish his earthquake spell. It’s a strangely anticlimactic fight considering what’s come before.

If the PCs should fail to stop the earthquake then the Dragon Globe comes crashing to the ground before it can be ceremonially lit. Spirits normally friendly to the city will see this as a bad omen and leave. For years to come it will be more difficult to cast normal magic in and around the city due to the dearth of spirits. Crops will fail and starvation will sweep the countryside. It will be a crippling blow to the most populous city in the empire. It’s not exactly an apocalypse scenario but try telling that to the tens of thousands of peasants who will suffer and die as a result.

Let’s continue with the players having instead won the day. With the leader of the Moon Cult dead the players can help mop up the remaining zombies. The real kicker is what they find on the body of the cult leader (the authors forget that your PCs probably shouldn’t be rooting through corpses if they want to fit into Rokugani society): some powerful scrolls and a large porcelain mask. The mask is far too large to fit a human being, is finely crafted, and is designed with a strange two-faced motif. The front facing side is a fairly standard Noh mask without significant expression. The inside of the mask, rather than being flat, is actually a different face – one contorted in a rictus of pure rage. It’s seems like a weird artistic piece that just so happens to radiate enough evil magic to make any shugenja notice immediately. Anyone who holds onto it for a few months will likely succumb to fatal shadowlands taint.



Meishozo Nisei is still hanging around like a bad penny and requests the mask so he can take it back to his homelands to be purified or quarantined. The PCs probably defer to the expertise of the experienced and friendly Witch Hunter and if so, he thanks them and assures them that he’ll sing their praises to his lord. Then he’s off.

Should the PCs fail to hand it over, he shadows them until he can steal it and is more than willing to kill the PCs if they prove intractable. Obviously this all seems like a strange coda to an otherwise self-contained adventure. It turns out that the mask is the most important part in this whole thing. Huge spoilers coming up for anyone who actually cares.

The mask is the last key to opening the Tomb of Iuchiban. For those who don’t know the backstory of L5R, Iuchiban is perhaps the second or third most powerful evil entity in the history of the world, and the only one of the top three to start as a human. He was a failson brother to an emperor and in his jealousy figured out new forms of blood magic. He managed to magically remove his own heart so that he cannot be killed and waged a war of raised undead against the Empire 500 years before. He was defeated and they tried to contain him but he escaped using the power of magical body switching and raised another army of undead to topple the empire. When defeated the second time the empire got serious. They created a tomb bristling with magical traps and wards to ensure that he could never escape and his followers could never get to him. Then the Scorpion clan murdered the engineers who designed the tomb to ensure that its secrets never get out. Also they created several other empty tombs also bristling with similarly deadly traps to further confuse and decimate Iuchiban’s followers.

Our good friend Meishozo Nisei is actually Iuchiban’s second in command and an incredibly powerful magical blacksmith named Asahina Yajinden. Yajinden has his own plot to get into the Tomb of Iuchiban and needs the final mask to complete it. Following his trail of destruction is actually what leads the players into the Tomb of Iuchiban in the adventure box set of that name.

Absolutely none of this is known to the players at this time and may never be known since the odds of the players even reaching, let alone surviving, the Tomb of Iuchiban adventure is slim. At this time Nisei and the mask don’t appear important even if it’s probably the most important thing happening in the empire at this time.


Thoughts on Night of the Thousand Screams

Night of a Thousand Screams has the bones of a good adventure but suffers from three problems. The first and most critical is combat. From the introduction, the purpose of this adventure is to “help answer the question “What can I do to add more combat to my game without killing off all the player characters?”” In that they’ve failed loving miserably. As noted again and again, the combat in this adventure ranges from dangerous to nearly impossible for a fresh party, and your players’ party will not be fresh for long. It feels like the designers forgot two things. One is that healing in L5R is slow and magical healing is rare. The second is that all of this adventure is compressed into a 12 hours timeframe and natural healing just isn’t going to happen. If they assumed you were at high insight rank and fresh in every fight then maybe some of the ‘impossible’ combats might become merely ‘very difficult’. I don’t know why they would’ve assumed it, though.

The second is that the designers frequently forget to provide reasonable difficulties for their target numbers. Luckily this adventure is not nearly as egregious as Code of Bushido was. There are still a number of times where rolls to notice important details are behind incredibly unlikely numbers. It’s frustrating but an easy fix and not a game killer.

The third is the pace of this thing. Large amounts of time are spent running back and forth with little payoff other than maybe getting in fights. The middle part of the adventure is a series of situations that could easily be compressed. The big notes of the adventure can be broken down into about five major events, but there are about twenty in total. The GM could certainly change things to make it work with fewer stops. Reviewing things based on what could be done rather than what was done is folly, though.

Up next, if I ever get to it, is the Tomb of Iuchiban.

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!
Yeah, I've seen NoaTS run, and there's just no way for low-to-mid-rank characters to complete it without shenanigans. In addition, you're likely to end up tainted as well, which makes you persona non grata if you're discovered. Almost every 1st edition adventure is a bit of a mess and this is just one of the more memorable messes. It's not the worst or even the most deadly (both honors go to, uh, Twilight Honor, IMO), but that's saying a lot.

Lovely Cris Dornaus art, though. Her art is a highlight of early L5R books.

Glazius
Jul 22, 2007

Hail all those who are able,
any mouse can,
any mouse will,
but the Guard prevail.

Clapping Larry
Man, I just busted out laughing at the spoiler block. loving metaplot, man. When did that stop being a thing RPGs were trying to do, or does it endure to this day?

Kavak
Aug 23, 2009


What happens if the player's just break the mask? Does that spill Shadowlands taint everywhere?

MonsieurChoc
Oct 12, 2013

Every species can smell its own extinction.

Glazius posted:

Man, I just busted out laughing at the spoiler block. loving metaplot, man. When did that stop being a thing RPGs were trying to do, or does it endure to this day?

nuWhiteWolf wants to bring it back!

EverettLO
Jul 2, 2007
I'm a lurker no more


Alien Rope Burn posted:

Yeah, I've seen NoaTS run, and there's just no way for low-to-mid-rank characters to complete it without shenanigans. In addition, you're likely to end up tainted as well, which makes you persona non grata if you're discovered. Almost every 1st edition adventure is a bit of a mess and this is just one of the more memorable messes. It's not the worst or even the most deadly (both honors go to, uh, Twilight Honor, IMO), but that's saying a lot.

Lovely Cris Dornaus art, though. Her art is a highlight of early L5R books.

I would like to do Twilight Honor at some point. If you thought I spent too much time laying out how bullshit the fights here were, explaining the capstone battle of TH against the Shadowlands requiring twelve consecutive battle rolls and expecting your players to last through is proof that the writers have no idea how their systems work. I gawked at it the first time I read it.

EverettLO
Jul 2, 2007
I'm a lurker no more


Kavak posted:

What happens if the player's just break the mask? Does that spill Shadowlands taint everywhere?

The mask, conveniently, is described as totally indestructible.

Dawgstar
Jul 15, 2017

EverettLO posted:

I would like to do Twilight Honor at some point. If you thought I spent too much time laying out how bullshit the fights here were, explaining the capstone battle of TH against the Shadowlands requiring twelve consecutive battle rolls and expecting your players to last through is proof that the writers have no idea how their systems work. I gawked at it the first time I read it.

Which one randomly starts out having Yokuni show up and say 'hey go to the Carpenter Wall because reasons?' And then when you get there the Crab daimyo's kid holds a big wrestling tournament that everybody can participate in, unless you're a girl. Because Crab randomly hated the idea of female bushi for this specific adventure and never mentioned it again.

Hunt11
Jul 24, 2013

Grimey Drawer

Dawgstar posted:

Which one randomly starts out having Yokuni show up and say 'hey go to the Carpenter Wall because reasons?' And then when you get there the Crab daimyo's kid holds a big wrestling tournament that everybody can participate in, unless you're a girl. Because Crab randomly hated the idea of female bushi for this specific adventure and never mentioned it again.

Isn't one of the founding principle of the Crab is that it doesn't matter who you are as long as you kick rear end?

Ratoslov
Feb 15, 2012

Now prepare yourselves! You're the guests of honor at the Greatest Kung Fu Cannibal BBQ Ever!

Hunt11 posted:

Isn't one of the founding principle of the Crab is that it doesn't matter who you are as long as you kick rear end?

That's not incompatible with sexism, but I was pretty sure that the Crab specifically and Rokugan in general didn't give a crap about that.

EverettLO
Jul 2, 2007
I'm a lurker no more


There was plenty of pointless sexism in first edition L5R. The most notable one that comes to mind is a screed in the GM Survival Guide about the difficulties of playing a samurai-ko. You needed a retainer around to prove/protect your chastity and it was unlikely your lord was gonna let you go travel around with a group of male samurai. No one would take you seriously and your word was constantly suspect.

I didn't notice it as much in second edition and by third edition they were actively going against standard sexism by saying there's no difference in opportunities in Rokugan.

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

Adventures like that sure don't help with the reputation of L5R being hilariously lethal, I get there isn't always time to play test adventures and you don't always catch potential outliers but you'd think they have some rough idea of the deadliness of their critters.

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hectorgrey
Oct 14, 2011

MonsieurChoc posted:

nuWhiteWolf wants to bring it back!

Really? *facepalm* But then, this is the company that, if I'm to be generous, had a PC in their V5 playtest material that feeds from children and young teenagers without considering the context of vampirism as a metaphor for sexuality.

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