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MollyMetroid posted:Hommlet is a surprising module in its way too, for being just, hey here's a fully fleshed out village you can use as a base. If I recall correctly. My favorite bit of Village of Hommlet is that the included the cash and treasure of every two-bit farmer, shopkeeper and widow in the village, down to the last copper piece. Including exactly where in which store and home the treasure was hidden. Because you just know during an early run-through or playtest someone went through people's homes and tried to murder/steal from everyone.
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Mar 9, 2018 19:43
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Evil Mastermind posted:Hey, just wanted to say that for those who were interested, Torg Eternity is finally out for non-backers. Unfortunately, the decks aren't yet. I just threw my credit card at the screen. God bless.
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Mar 9, 2018 20:01
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Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Dark Heresy, Part 7 Exploding the party does not balance magic The psyker chapter starts with the usual blurb about how psykers are very powerful but all extremely doomed and tormented, and how they've all been through ten thousand years torture or whatever to purify their souls but everyone still hates them. I hate the psyker fluff in 40k; back with our Fantasy wizards you stood out and might be a little weird, but you didn't have a couple pages devoted to 'Many people would kill you on sight, your life is awful, and endless torture has been visited upon you at all time'. As a Psyker you actually roll to see what kind of insane torture you've already endured, with results from 'gelded' to 'think part of your mind was cut out, has manifested in the world, and is trying to hunt you down and kill you', some of which have game effects and can even give you a bonus to Toughness or Willpower (you want Willpower. Badly.) Psykers also interact an awful lot with the Insanity and Corruption systems, which we won't get to for another half the book. As I mentioned when going over the class, psykers use spells (I'm sorry, PSYCHIC POWERS, it's totally different and more sci-fi) by rolling dice up to their Psy Rating and then adding their WP bonus, so the tens digit of their Willpower. They can also spend a full round and make an Invocation (WP) skill test to add their WP bonus again, for double WP bonus, if so inclined. If you beat the power's casting number, you cast the power. If you roll any 9s, you roll on the get hosed table for each 9 you rolled. Some powers will mention that if you beat their CN by a lot, you will invoke increasing levels of power and the power will be more impressive. If you're sustaining a power that lasts a long time, you take -4 to Power checks made while sustaining it and have to roll again to keep it up every 10 rounds. If you sustain two, -8. Three, -16. It is impossible to sustain more than 3 powers at once. Note that the Get hosed Table will not stop you from casting a spell successfully, unless the result you roll on it says it will. Also, if you know 10 or more powers from one discipline (Fire, Telekinesis, Telepathy, Life, Divination) you effectively get a +5 to all checks to invoke powers from that discipline, which is a good reason to specialize a little. Now, I am not going to go over every single entry on the Get hosed Table, and every single power. Most of the base 'I just rolled a 9' Get hosed Table isn't going to hurt you. It's mostly spooky stuff like ethereal winds, statues crying blood, etc. A few could ruin your day, like the one that jams everyone's guns and fritzes out all tech devices within 5d10 meters, or the one that gives everyone a tiny amount of Corruption and drives them all to attack randomly for 1 round, but it's only when you roll a 75+ on the d100 that things get bad. That causes actual Perils of the Warp rather than 'Phenomena'. Perils automatically give you 1 Corruption every time you roll on the table, most of it stuns you, does damage to you, inflicts Corruption and Insanity, body-swaps you with a nearby ally, causes blood to rain from the sky that also makes all psy invoked cause more Perils automatically, causes mass minor possession that forces a WP save or be stunned for everyone nearby for 2d10 rounds, explodes every item you have on your person (and also you) and leaves you naked and smoking in a crater, flings you like you were shot out of a catapult, or, you know, Unbound Daemonhost. Unbound Daemonhosts are one of the 'final boss' style monsters that players aren't really expected to fight directly until a long way into their careers. At any point, again, a Psyker has a .26% (forgot it was 75+, not 76+) per power die they roll to trigger this result. They get a WP-30 save to resist the possession, and after that if the daemonhost is defeated the Psyker takes 5d10 Corruption (that will hurt, trust me. We'll get into detail on corruption later) and 'may be dead if the body had to be destroyed'. If this happens early on it will kill your party, almost certainly. The even 'worse' 00 result just kills the Psyker, but many of the Perils effects can gently caress the whole team. We had a psyker just try to see if there were living beings on the other side of a door, with 1 die, during a commando raid, and he almost turned into a daemonhost right there (I houseruled he could Burn a fate point to ignore the result, since it was going to kill him and the team). It absolutely sucks to have a class that has a statistically not-insignificant chance to kill everyone any time they try to use their abilities. WHFRP's 'magic is balanced by miscasts' at least focused the miscast problems on the caster. Also, magic is straight crazy powerful in Hams. Let's take a look at a Minor Power that you can have from day 1: Chameleon. +30 to Concealment, -20 to enemy BS to hit you, for only CN 7 (which is trivially easy for a young psyker), sustainable as long as you want. Or Flashbang, an AoE stun with a 20m Aoe (Enemies do get a WP+20, but hey look at that poor Guardsman with his 30 WP who is now 50-50 stunned). You can give yourself Fear ratings, at a -10 to peoples' fear saves against you, further letting you gently caress the poor low WP Guardsman. Low level psyker magic can heal people, cure them of fatigue (non-lethal damage), make people forget you, give you combat bonuses, let you inspire allies against fear and pinning, let you cheat at cards, and make you Shotgun Wizard. That last one requires a little explanation. Scatter weapons like shotguns get the bonus from Semiauto fire no matter how many shots they fired, if you fire them at Point Blank (3m or less). One of the Minor Powers (Unnatural Aim) makes a shot at any target count as Point Blank. Technically, this allows your wizard with a semiautomatic shotgun to blow someone the gently caress away as long as they can see them and focus the shotgun pellets into a single point of murder. Hardly the most powerful thing a psyker can do, but pretty hilarious. And these are the low level spells that aren't supposed to be all that great! Compare this stuff to a Fantasy apprentice, who can shoot a little magic missile, make people drop stuff, put a sheep to sleep, or make minor illusions. And then you get to the actual Disciplines. A Biomancer can heal people from near-dead to full in a single easy spell every turn. Their actual buffing and crazy bio-lightning kind of suck (Though the Lightning spell does d10+WPB and always hits enemies in the head, bypassing cover, and can fire multiple bolts if you put a lot of juice into it, so you can Palpatine someone), but the heal is straight broken crazy as long as the person you're healing didn't get incinerated by good old Lascannon. They can regenerate destroyed limbs, undo critical hits, oh, and turn into a barehanded god of pure destruction. That's something they do. Hammerhands makes the psyker's damage go up to d10+SB with their bare hands. Then multiplies their SB by 4. Use with the 'buff a stat by 10' spell before hand and get Regeneration on and you can just run around punching people in half (or could if Psykers weren't dogshit at melee) which is not exactly broken, but rather just incredibly metal. Pyromancy mostly suffers from the fact that a gun would do the job better and you're running around a setting full of lunatics with flamethrowers already. Most of it does damage on par with someone with an assault rifle, which is hardly worth risking exploding your party for. Then you get the Holocaust. Holocaust is a CN 23 spell that can be Sustained as long as the Psyker wants, but does d10+1 damage that cannot be reduced every turn to the psyker. Then d10 damage *per point of Willpower Bonus* that cannot be reduced by anything to everything else within 6m. It also has the extra bit of fluff that anything killed by it is eradicated. Including demons. It is explicitly the only way to kill, rather than banish, a warhams demon in the book. The other big Fire AoE is Fire Storm, which starts out doing d10+5 at CN 16 in a 6m radius, but does an extra d10 damage per 5 you beat the casting number by. A really powerful psyker can turn that into a hell of an explosion. And this is just the basic direct damage stuff. Telekinetics get shielding spells, movement spells, and ridiculous storms of fully automatic force missiles that do d10+WPB and fire WPB shots, +1 per 5 you beat the 21 CN by. Or the ability to invoke a CN16 spell as a reaction to being shot to instantly catch WPB in projectiles and then let them hit the ground harmlessly on their turn (Note this will not stop lasers). Precision telekinesis lets them pull all the pins on someone's grenades by remote (this is the example the power uses!). They can summon a magic force sword that uses Willpower instead of WS to hit and does d10+2xWPB with Pen 2xWPB. Telekinetics are amazing at killing people. Telepaths are as you'd expect. They can cause and defend against fear, they can read minds, and they can take over people and make them do stuff, with the usual 'slightly harder to tell someone to shoot themselves in the head (but doable)' caveat. Going into someone's mind can hurt you real bad, though, as if they have more Corruption or Insanity their Corruption or Insanity can bleed over and make you gain Corruption or Insanity. There's a lot of somewhat uncomfortable stuff saying telepathic contact like that is also roughly akin to rape, so have fun with that (DH1e generally has the edgiest fluff. More than even Black Crusade, which managed an entire Slaanesh book without being especially creepy). Divination is basically 'Do you want to ruin this being a mystery game and/or be useless: The power set'. Good enough successes with its powers say that they will pretty much solve mysteries for you. It can also do some silly stuff like let the psyker make a gunshot that will automatically hit, with no need to roll, no matter the penalties. It does have a cool 'everyone gets -30 to hit you because you're playing bullet time' power, I suppose. We mostly never had diviners because prophets are kind of annoying to GM for. So yeah. Wizards (Er, Psykers) are bullshit powerful, with the caveat that they have not-insignificant odds of making the game worse for everyone else if they use their powers a lot. Much greater odds than they had back in WHFRP, and much more impact and power compared to characters who can't use Psyker powers. They'll also later on get magic jedi classes that make them extremely good at fighting, etc. This book is actually one of the *low points* for Psyker power in the system; for the most part, they only get crazier from here as the casting system gets much less harsh on them and enables much greater power. Next Time: Shooting people.
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Mar 9, 2018 20:14
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 Part 4  OK, how does this game actually work? First we get the usual explanation of the difference between PCs and NPCs, but with a twist: here is the first hint about the difference between Main and Supporting player characters. Having more than one PC available to a player is not an original idea, but it is uniquely useful in addressing one of the problems of running a Trek game that resembles the on-screen action. We'll get into it in detail in the next chapter, but you can probably already see the fundamental advantage. There's no more twiddling your thumbs while your character is back on the ship studying Rigelian herpes while the other players are having all the fun on an away team; you can join in the action with a lower rank crewmember. You can split the party up and still have all the players playing. Love it (assuming they keep the bookkeeping to a minimum). A rumination on the relationship between players and GM gives off a kind of Apocalypse World vibe: quote:Above all else, the Gamemaster is not an adversary to the Players — the game works all the better if the Gamemaster is a fan of the Player Characters and their exploits, albeit one who seeks to make those characters’ lives as dramatic, exciting, and challenging as possible. Another similarity is the use of Traits, which are described in similar terms to Apocalypse tags, in that they are descriptors that can be attached the people, places and things that follow a certain narrative logic. At a systems level, they tend to either negate certain actions or adjust a task’s difficulty either positively (Advantage) or negatively (Complication). Let’s not get too excited about the narrative-style elements; at this point my broad impression is still that we’re dealing with kind of a medium-crunch simulationist game straight out of the 90s. It seems like they’ve at least read other kinds of stuff, though I don’t know how much of this was already a part of the Mutant Chronicles dealie. I’m starting to think I have some research to do. Dice and Task Resolution Alright, buckaroos, it’s time to talk turkey. I'm struggling a bit to find an order in which to introduce the gameplay systems, just as I think the book struggles as well. There's an awful lot of "we'll explain this in more detail later." Let's talk about some fuckin' dice. We got your d20s for doin' stuff, and your d6s for rolling on tables, and "challenge dice" for damage. Basic task difficulty is a weird hybrid system, where a character's proficiency and the circumstances they're up against are measured on two different axes: -An Attribute (like Reason) and Discipline (say, Medicine) most relevant to the task are added together to get a Target Number (TN). The player rolls 2d20 (more with expenditure of Momentum, which we'll get to later), and each die that shows a value less than or equal to the TN counts as a success. You get an extra success if you also roll under the Discipline rating and have a relevant Focus (Nausicaan Proctology?) within that Discipline. -The GM decides on a difficulty, which is the number of successes needed to complete the task. (Overachieving on this is one way to get Momentum for later rolls.) So the number of dice rolled, the number you're trying to hit and the number of hits you need are all three in flux. My initial kneejerk reaction is that I hate this. We'll see how we feel as we get into more detail later. But wait, there's more! Challenge Dice! (I had to jump to about half way through the book to see what these do.) These also have six sides, but instead of numbers from 1 to 6, they have maybe a 1 or a 2 or a Starfleet logo or nothing on a given side. These are generally used for damage rolls, and you roll a bunch based on the weapon or whatever, then you add the numbers together to determine damage. The logo side also adds one to the total, and triggers any special effects that your attack is capable of, like, say, a knockdown.  let's just add a ton of visual noise by putting a starfield on each side, that'll improve readability I'm not loving this, either. First of all, the name Challenge Dice doesn't mean anything. Secondly, it's a goofy-rear end die. It was a bit weird when we first encountered dice like this; for me it was in WFRP 3rd edition, and then later in the FFG Star Wars stuff. But that weirdness turned out to be in service of a pretty elegant solution that consolidates attack, defense, damage and special crit-style effects into a single roll. Here, we get the wackadoodle dice (that they want you to buy), but it doesn't really seem to reduce overhead. For a system that wants to be pretty cinematic, it sure comes off as a fiddly mess. We're jumping ahead, though. Let's back it up and talk more about Momentum and Threat and oh god there's another pool called Determination. Momentum: You collect it from rollin' good and other stuff like Talents. You spend it for more dice, or to upgrade a success to confer an Advantage, or to bump up an opponent's difficulty, or to get info about something. Threat: It's the same poo poo, but for the GM to use against the players. Determination: It's another thing you can spend to make good things happen, and it's related to your Values, which will be described later. It's like what you're about, and you're rewarded when it plays into the action, and there's stuff revolving around your values hindering you or you challenging them. Finally for this chapter, there's a section on things like extended tasks, and Challenges that are composed of a series of tasks, with a few wrinkles, like working against the clock. It feels pretty Star Trek. Like there's a plan, and you'll have to tech the tech first, while someone else creates a diversion. If you tech the tech especially well, you'll get an Advantage in some opposed check to trick the enemy sensors, while a good diversion will buy more time. Like a lot of stuff in this game, it's coming up with a lot of terminology for something that you'd just do naturally in the course of roleplaying, anyway. Next time: character creation.
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Mar 9, 2018 21:16
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There are plenty of options for reducing the risk of psychic powers, remember, even in DH1. Warp Lock is practically mandatory when you can get it, and Ascension introduces fettering.
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Mar 9, 2018 21:18
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It took me forever to get through this part. It was partly because of other stuff going on in my life, partly because it's just denser material now that we're getting into game mechanics, but mostly because I think it kinda sucks. I'm sure I would have taken it all in stride if it was, like, 1994, but I've been spoiled by more modern, cleaner game design, I guess. Especially for a licensed property, why would you base it on something so fiddly? It's very likely to be someone's first RPG experience.
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Mar 9, 2018 21:21
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Warp Lock isn't in DH1e's core book. You're going to want Favored by the Warp (Reroll Phenomena and take your choice, including avoiding Perils) ASAP, though. Can't get it until like Rank 6, though. The problem is, when you start making it much less risky to use psy, uh, the other part (where Psy is insanely powerful) stays around without any balancing factor. The balancing factor was bad, yes, but 'you can eventually ignore it' is not any better. E: The development of Psy along the lines in WH40kRP is basically a progression of removing most of its downsides or adding ways to mitigate them (Because, fairly, they gently caress with the entire party and suck to be on the wrong end of). Night10194 fucked around with this message at 21:27 on Mar 9, 2018 |
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Mar 9, 2018 21:23
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I'd go for Hommlet, because it's more unsung, AFAIK, and was a lot of people's first D&D adventure early on.
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Mar 9, 2018 21:46
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Oh man, guess who just got the only copy of SenZar he could possibly find, from loving Italy of all places, and only shipped to Italy. Thankfully I just happen to have an Italian friend who didn't mind receiving it and then sending it on to me. I'm also really going to need to get my scanner up and running for this, because there's ART and also the goddamn cover.
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Mar 9, 2018 22:02
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PurpleXVI posted:Oh man, guess who just got the only copy of SenZar he could possibly find, from loving Italy of all places, and only shipped to Italy. Thankfully I just happen to have an Italian friend who didn't mind receiving it and then sending it on to me. Congrats! I didn't realize it was so hard to find in print until just now. But apparently you can get a tee shirt reading "If You Dont Like SenZar Then You Probably Won't Like Me ...And I'm Okay With That" Which... says things. Looking forward to that trip.
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Mar 9, 2018 22:20
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Night10194 posted:WHFRP's 'magic is balanced by miscasts' at least focused the miscast problems on the caster. One of the results of the WHFRP Perils of the Warp table is roll again but the effect targets your nearest living relative. During the course of a campaign my Wizard kept rolling that and then an increasingly severe result. I started making up brief 'Cousin Siegfried has (x) happen to him and the disastrous social consequence that ensues' stories every time I did it, to the point the rest of the group started to cheer every time it happened. Culminating in poor Siegfried, his would be bride and most of my Wizard's relatives being, several hundred miles away and completely unknown to him, being devoured by a massive demonic incursion during the wedding ceremony.
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Mar 9, 2018 22:40
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Frobozz posted:My favorite bit of Village of Hommlet is that the included the cash and treasure of every two-bit farmer, shopkeeper and widow in the village, down to the last copper piece. Including exactly where in which store and home the treasure was hidden. My favourite bit of Village of Hommlet ('favourite') is that it mentions exactly three named female characters -- a cleric, a demon lord, and a goddess -- and not one of them is actually in the module. (I say this as someone who greatly enjoys ToEE, but it's most definitely a product of its time.)
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Mar 9, 2018 23:37
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Hommlet is fine for doing first, but I'd REALLY love a blind reading of Barrier Peaks because it really feels like out of nowhere.
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Mar 10, 2018 02:22
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I remember being baffled at flipping through Barrier Peaks at a church bazaar when I was tiny.
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Mar 10, 2018 03:50
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Barrier Peaks is something that should be experienced at least once. Not *played* per say, this is a tournament scenario after all, but experienced. I say go for it.
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Mar 10, 2018 04:25
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Lucas Archer posted:Dungeon Module S3 - Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. I know nothing about this one. According to the blurb on the front, it was the tournament scenario at Origins II. Hey can you make a reaction video when you read this module? 
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Mar 10, 2018 05:31
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I want to clarify, so that you don't get suspicious and google it - Barrier Peaks isn't a BAD surprise. It's not the author ambushing you with their fetish or radical ideological beliefs, like Wizard's First Rule. It's just an honest to God left field zinger.
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Mar 10, 2018 05:34
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I know the Terrible Secret of Barrier Peaks, but I haven't read it, so I'm super interested in hearing your writeup on it.
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Mar 10, 2018 05:35
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Tibalt posted:I want to clarify, so that you don't get suspicious and google it - Barrier Peaks isn't a BAD surprise. It's not the author ambushing you with their fetish or radical ideological beliefs, like Wizard's First Rule. It's just an honest to God left field zinger. yea it has genuinely one of the best completely bonkers twists in RPG pregen adventures. No lovely "GM smugly says they won because you didn't take the gold egg from the museum at exactly midnight even though there was no hint you had to even go there at all" kinda 'twist', no weird piss troll sudden fetish/insane belief injection, just a genuinely good 'yea gently caress it what if we got weird'.
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Mar 10, 2018 05:50
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You guys are really hyping this up, I am now anxious to learn the terrible secret
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Mar 10, 2018 12:49
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 Rifts World Book 12: Psyscape, Part 3: "The old Tibetan sages of Pre-Rifts India referred to something they called The Third Eye."  "Mouth-trees, this must be Ohio." The Secrets of Psyscape™ By Kevin Siembieda & Patrick Nowak Psynex So, before we even talk about Psyscape, we get into the Psynex Entity / Psychic Nexus / Psynex. It's a friendly, bodiless creature of pure psychic force that attached itself to a ley line nexus in the Ohio Valley, and it drew psychics to it in order to gain allies. It stabilizes the nexus and can prevent rifts and magic storms, which is handy. It also senses everything happening around its ley lines and can use its psychic powers there, but it remains a detached fence-sitter more often than not, and only occasionally decides to warn or defend those in trouble. Since it can create rifts, they used its cooperation to create a rift to the astral plane where Psyscape was built, and also as a means to return to Earth. Does it matter much beyond this? Not really! It's just a big ball of sentient plot justification. Psyscape™ The City of the Mind's Eye Yep, the ™ keeps coming up. Just in case you forgot it from the last page. So, Psyscape is presented as a psychic utopia where ESP has taught them enhanced empathy and appreciation of natural beauty. As such, they've become super good people that fight demons and evil at every opportunity except for their whole self-imposed exile which doesn't quite square with that, but whatever. In any case, the city supposedly straddles both the real world and the astral plane, and only psychics can see it - others only see mist and can only stumble into it by forcibly traveling int othe mist, though likely the local defenders will try to drive them away first. It's all misty and Greco-Roman and sparkly and generally  Psi-stalkers make up 2% of the population here. This is one of them. In any case, it's mostly poularly human and d-bee psychics, though the implications of being non-psychic in a society where psychic powers are so highly valued isn't really explored at all. We then get a listing of special powers only Psyscape-trained psychics get. And if you think, "Well, I can't wait for my old psychic character to go there and train with Psyscape's masters!", get ready to wait, because it'll take decades to open up one's "Third Eye" and get the extra Psyscape powers. And yes, Psyscape psychics are just plain better at psychicing than regular old psychics. Oh, my old friend power creep, sup? So, they get the ability to radiate their emotions, and I guess this is supposed to be an advantage in that it makes them painfully sincere, it also just allows anybody around them to know what they're feeling. (Also, for some reason this ability gets well over a half-page describing what various feelings are.) They also can appear in people's dreams, meld with a ley line in stasis as an energy being, sense the supernatural like dog boys can, get double effect with certain psychic powers of their choice, and increased psychic power overall, bonuses on saves, etc. Lastly, we get details on a variety of locations around Psyscape™. We get descriptions of government locales without any description of the government (it's implied to be democratic, but never clearly stated). There's a description of an embassy complex even though there are no apparent contact with other city-states that might have embassies. A psi-warrior complex trains psi-warriors in an "Oriental compound". There's a garden, zoo, bazaar, a cloud art, and a psychic academy. Somehow they build techno-wizardry items with psychic powers, even though there's no rules for such. In addition, there are credit costs for things, even though it seems exceedingly unlikely Psyscape could be hooked up to the whole Coalition-created credit system.  "I tried to wear this on the cover, but they said it looked way too comfortable." In any case it's all pretty idyllic and though in theory it's nice to have another unambiguous good faction, it's all as deep as a puddle and seems more like a painting than a place. There's no NPCs or names listed, no businesses listed, nothing that would add a real feeling that humans live here. Moreover, there's a lot you could do with the implications of a society where psychic powers are the norm, particularly in a setting where psychic powers are determined seemingly by birth, but the book doesn't have much time for Psyscape, despite it being the name on the cover. It gets a mere six pages of a one hundred and sixty page book. That's less than 4% of the book. And when they're eating up part of that space telling us what being "mean and or spiteful" is, as if we couldn't figure that out on our own- Rifts World Book 12: Psyscape posted:Mean and/or Spiteful: The psychic is feeling mean and spiteful. This usually means he's in a nasty mood and either short-tempered or looking for a fight; verbal or physical. Wants to lash out and hurt somebody, so it's best to leave him alone and let him get over it, or try to reason with him and get him to snap out of it. - well, it's kind of a disappointment, particularly when they've been teasing this location since the corebook.  Moreover, there are no surprises, no twists, no real detail, just about 90% of what you'd expect from the rumors.Next: Psychics Rethunk.
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Mar 10, 2018 13:41
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You know the first thing I would do if I were trying to salvage RIFTS™ (and I kinda want to run the Savage World version, so I guess I am) I'd make Psynex the anti-Nxla. It rooted itself to start Psyscape™ up. It disperses it power to make stronger psychics because they can best fight the Green Tentacle and its strength lies in community whereas Nxla's lies strictly in gathering all power to itself. Actually make this living ball of psychic energy, which is a very cool notion, matter to the goings-on. I might even say the city's mostly Good-aligned because the special training opens them up to make them super empathetic and doing nasty stuff to others hurts on the soul level which is the price you have to pay.
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Mar 10, 2018 14:20
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OvermanXAN posted:Barrier Peaks is something that should be experienced at least once. Not *played* per say, this is a tournament scenario after all, but experienced. I say go for it. Actually, has anyone here ever played Barrier Peaks? I had a copy back in the day but never ran it, and I don't recall ever hearing of anyone doing so.
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Mar 10, 2018 14:41
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Deptfordx posted:Actually, has anyone here ever played Barrier Peaks? I had a copy back in the day but never ran it, and I don't recall ever hearing of anyone doing so. *raises hand* I did! Our GM had also run a similar scenario from Blackmoor adapted to AD&D and tied them together. unseenlibrarian fucked around with this message at 16:00 on Mar 10, 2018 |
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Mar 10, 2018 15:02
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unseenlibrarian posted:*raises hand* I did! OUR GM had also run a similar scenario from Blackmoor adapted to AD&D and tied them together. Oh, shiiiiit. The Blackmoor modules were a fuckin' trip.
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Mar 10, 2018 15:48
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Deptfordx posted:Actually, has anyone here ever played Barrier Peaks? I had a copy back in the day but never ran it, and I don't recall ever hearing of anyone doing so. I have indeed played Barrier Peaks. In fact, I did it at Origins, so I've had as close to the original experience as was possible to get in 2016. Nthing the suggestion to do Barrier Peaks.
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Mar 10, 2018 17:03
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Dawgstar posted:You know the first thing I would do if I were trying to salvage RIFTS™ (and I kinda want to run the Savage World version, so I guess I am) I'd make Psynex the anti-Nxla. Psyscape is such a blank slate that it doesn't feel like making them more interesting would be challenging. In theory they are good because of their whole ur-psychic sensitivity, but "good" factions in Rifts usually just dig a little safe haven and then never act outwardly, which feels more... neutral, dare I say. And I understand why they might not want a good guy faction all set to step on the PC's toes, it says a lot about Savage Rifts that one of the first things they did was create a proactive faction of good guys to back PCs going out and helping people. It might be surprising that nothing like that had really existed before, at least in the core setting of North America's midwest, outside of wandering do-gooders like the Cyber-Knights.
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Mar 10, 2018 18:12
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Dungeon Module S3 – Expedition to the Barrier Peaks – an adventure for characters levels 8-12 It followed us home, can we keep it? Gary Gygax posted:This module was the official ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS Tournament scenario at Origins II. The author wishes to express his thanks to Mr. Robert Kuntz who contributed substantial ideas for the various encounters herein. This version has been carefully revised and updated to conform to ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS game systems. Included herein are background information for players, statistics for a party substantially the same as that used for the tournament, DM notes, six level maps with encounter matrices, and numerous full color illustrations of scenes from the adventure in order to enhance the enjoyment of participants. There are also many new and special monsters designed for this scenario, and they appear nowhere else. This module is located upon the Map of the World of Greyhawk (WORLD OF GREYHAWK fantasy world setting from TSR). If you enjoy this module, be sure and try any of the many other unique offerings in this line from TSR! After reading this module, I really wish I had been around at Origins II to play this blind. The module, published in 1980 and written by Gary Gygax, contains a 32-page adventure guide, with the map keys, item and monster information. A second 35-page booklet includes 63 individual illustrations for the DM to show the players when they reach specific areas in the adventure. I really want to find a scanner to show you some of this art – it’s fantastic. Finally, the module has two slip covers that have six detailed maps for the adventure. I’m definitely going to try and scan these because otherwise the navigation may prove to be fairly difficult when we get into the guts of the Barrier Peaks. Gary writes a short preface about writing the module, and how it came about. It seems the Expedition was gestated back in 1976 with another designer, Jim Ward, as an attempt to inject some “science fantasy” into adventuring. He mentions a game called METAMORPHISIS ALPHA, as well as GAMMA WORLD, as inspirations. They did a drat good job as far as I can tell. However, before we send our adventurers off to die, we need to get some housekeeping done. What the hell are our players doing here? And where is here anyway? The adventure is located at the “mountains northwest of the city of Hornwood in the Grand Duchy of Geoff” in the world of Greyhawk. Now for some background. The way this was written makes me think it was either intended to be read aloud to the players before the session began or printed out and given to the players beforehand to read. I would recommend the second option – the players eyes will begin to glaze over long before you finish reading this mountain of text. Short version: A bunch of strange and weird monsters have been coming out of the mountains and harassing the civilized societies nearby. While the presence of monsters isn’t unusual in this area, the attacks have escalated over the past few months. Four fortresses and a walled town have been wiped off the map. Some of the creature’s corpses have been found and preserved (in brine) by local rulers but none of the wisest sages can determine anything about these decomposed creatures. The Grand Duke has put the call out for adventurers to lead an expedition into the mountains. In addition, other powerful state actors have also sent minions to assist in the expedition: The Society of Magivestre, the Fellowship of the Blinding Light, the Magsmen’s Brotherhood, and the High Lord of Elvendom. “A total of 15 have assembled beneath the pennoned turrets at the Grand Duke’s mighty castle near Gorna”. I do like the roleplaying option of having adventurers from different political entities all working together. I can see the possibilities of giving each set of adventurers their own hidden goals that align with the power that sent them. Let me pause here a minute and skip ahead. When I began reading this adventure, I guess I assumed the expedition would be designed/balanced for a typical adventuring group. You know, 5-8 characters, a good mix of classes and races. On the second to last page of the module, there’s a section to give players pre-generated characters, along with suggested magical items and such. Here, I’ll let Gary take it: Gary Gygax posted:THE EXPEDITION TO BARRIER PEAKS was designed for a large party of characters of moderate to high level. Suggested party size is 10 to 15 characters with most having levels between 5th and 10th. Smaller parties may adventure in this scenario but party levels should be increased accordingly, though never exceeding an average level of 12th. Multi-class characters should be considered as one level higher than their highest class. All characters should have at least 2-3 useful magic items. We’ll come back to the pre-generated characters and their “useful magic items” much later on, but speaking as someone who’s DMed, at the most, 7 people in one session – I cannot imagine trying to wrangle 15 people for this insanity. Nothing but respect for the DM’s back at Origins II who guided players through this for the first time. Anyway, back to the background. After the expedition has assembled at the Grand Duke’s castle, it’s revealed there’s a strange metal gate in the mountains that is disgorging monsters at seemingly random intervals. Nobody still around has penetrated the gate, but several parties have entirely disappeared. The goal of the expedition: find out what the cave is, what’s causing the monsters to emerge, who is responsible, and to prevent any future incursion. Any other information about strange flora or fauna would be in high demand, as well as any magical devices or new weapons. To placate the freedom of information types in your group, “His High Radiance, Owen III” is promising everyone that any information gained will be shared with everyone. Any wealth or treasure that is found will be distributed based on contribution to the expedition. Not is all trinkets and rainbows however. The party has a time limit. The Grand Duke is planning on sending in his army to lay waste to the entire area and kill every living creature around if this expedition fails. We are reassured that the powers that be believe this won’t be necessary because the party is full of badass super adventurers, but nonetheless – from the moment the party enters the cave, they have 4 days to complete their expedition and leave before the Duke’s escort (which remains outside the cave, waiting) return to report the expeditions disappearance. What happens then is not outlined, but I can imagine a battalion of wizards just nuking the entire mountain range. So let’s not let that happen, hm? Finally, the party sets forth towards the mountain range. Take us there, Gary. Gary Gygax posted:It is now afternoon, and you have set up camp in a hidden dell but a few bowshots from the strange entrance. The men-at-arms have been detailed to guard the supplies and mounts at your camp while you go onward immediately. They will await your return for four full days before returning to the keep. Gathering your personal gear, you are now climbing the steep slope of the dell’s north side, passing the rim, and forcing your way through a dense growth of trees and undergrowth. There, across a field and beyond a rocky rise, awaits adventure… NEXT TIME: Colors! Lights! Strange combinations of letters that defy explanation at a glance! Mostly more DM stuff (there’s seriously a LOT for the DM to remember in this place), along with a tiny bit more background that I may or may not get into.
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Mar 10, 2018 18:12
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The good old Grand Duke of Jeff
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Mar 10, 2018 18:43
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unseenlibrarian posted:*raises hand* I did! Our GM had also run a similar scenario from Blackmoor adapted to AD&D and tied them together. I played it at Origins II, and then I ran Barrier Peaks (and the original Tomb of Horrors, and White Plume Mountain) when it came out. The one in Blackmoor was The Temple of the Frog (I ran that one too!) and it could easily be blended with Barrier Peaks. EDIT: also regarding the illustrations. The lettering is a simple substitution cipher and most of the stuff actually means something... Humbug Scoolbus fucked around with this message at 20:42 on Mar 10, 2018 |
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Mar 10, 2018 20:39
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Deptfordx posted:Actually, has anyone here ever played Barrier Peaks? I had a copy back in the day but never ran it, and I don't recall ever hearing of anyone doing so. I've played it, although only as a home game, not at a convention.
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Mar 10, 2018 21:25
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Lucas Archer posted:We’ll come back to the pre-generated characters and their “useful magic items” much later on, but speaking as someone who’s DMed, at the most, 7 people in one session – I cannot imagine trying to wrangle 15 people for this insanity. Nothing but respect for the DM’s back at Origins II who guided players through this for the first time. I think it's designed around having hirelings and multiple characters under your control, which was pretty common with high level D&D back in the day.
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Mar 10, 2018 21:31
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Psyscape is such a blank slate that it doesn't feel like making them more interesting would be challenging. In theory they are good because of their whole ur-psychic sensitivity, but "good" factions in Rifts usually just dig a little safe haven and then never act outwardly, which feels more... neutral, dare I say. And I understand why they might not want a good guy faction all set to step on the PC's toes, it says a lot about Savage Rifts that one of the first things they did was create a proactive faction of good guys to back PCs going out and helping people. It might be surprising that nothing like that had really existed before, at least in the core setting of North America's midwest, outside of wandering do-gooders like the Cyber-Knights. Yeah, now that you mention it it is pretty surprising. Or maybe not, knowing Kevin. Erin Tarn goes on about how awesome Lazlo is, but it never does anything. Ever. And Tolkeen was good originally, before they had to demonize it (literally) for the CS war but they were too busy hunkered down and glaring at the Coalition. The only groups I can think of close to that on Rifts Earth period are the New Knights of the Round Table (or whatever) in England, some of the warlords of Russia are Good aligned, and there's that group of adventurers fighting the Horsemen in Africa. That's about it. My group just used the Mercs book to set up their own do-gooding merc company. It is funny now that I think about it Psyscape has such a big warning about 'We talk about EVIL done to SOULS' when they've already had the aforementioned Horsemen who are literal apocalyptic evil.
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Mar 11, 2018 01:44
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Dawgstar posted:Yeah, now that you mention it it is pretty surprising. Or maybe not, knowing Kevin. Erin Tarn goes on about how awesome Lazlo is, but it never does anything. Ever. And Tolkeen was good originally, before they had to demonize it (literally) for the CS war but they were too busy hunkered down and glaring at the Coalition. The only groups I can think of close to that on Rifts Earth period are the New Knights of the Round Table (or whatever) in England, some of the warlords of Russia are Good aligned, and there's that group of adventurers fighting the Horsemen in Africa. That's about it. My group just used the Mercs book to set up their own do-gooding merc company. I mean, there are good groups that are active... mostly in books by Carella, like the New Navy or the Empire of the Sun. There are good folks out West but mostly only within their respective territories. Most are just kindly fence-sitters like Lazlo, Psyscape, or Tryth-Sal. Granted, Lazlo will take major action in a later book but it'll mostly just be in a subplot. The fact that Lazlo has never been detailed is another real oddity. I asked the Palladium table at GenCon if we'd ever see anything on Lazlo, and was told a book was in the works... but that was two years ago. No actual announcement has ever been made.
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Mar 11, 2018 02:23
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I'm trying to remember something I may have read about years ago, possibly in some incarnation of this very thread, about an independent RPG in the early 00s that was possibly the most pretentious thing I'd ever seen. It had some title along the lines of 'aetheria' of the high-concept fancy RPG type, an extremely complicated character sheet that had some kind of quadrant dot thing in the middle I presume was some horrifyingly complicated advancement and/or alignment system, and even the price was pretentious (high and kind of random). It had its own web site with pretty, incredibly generic looking fantasy art and very little if any indication as to what the game was actually about.
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Mar 11, 2018 07:34
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Inescapable Duck posted:I'm trying to remember something I may have read about years ago, possibly in some incarnation of this very thread, about an independent RPG in the early 00s that was possibly the most pretentious thing I'd ever seen. It had some title along the lines of 'aetheria' of the high-concept fancy RPG type, an extremely complicated character sheet that had some kind of quadrant dot thing in the middle I presume was some horrifyingly complicated advancement and/or alignment system, and even the price was pretentious (high and kind of random). It had its own web site with pretty, incredibly generic looking fantasy art and very little if any indication as to what the game was actually about. Prithee, dost thou mean Eoris Essence?
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Mar 11, 2018 07:39
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I just want to say I've read fifty pages of my copy and still don't know what the premise of the game is.
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Mar 11, 2018 07:40
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Rifts World Book 12: Psyscape, Part 4: "Although all such damage is only in the mind of the psychic (no physical damage occurs in the real world), if he dies in the virtual world, he can die in the real world as well!" 90s.txt  Sometimes your disguise slips a little when having fun. Psychics & Psionic Powers Terms & Notes By Kevin Siembieda We gets a lot of clarifications on psychic rules and terminology, much like Rifts World Book 16: Federation of Magic did for magic. And like that book, it does help... except where it hurts. Characters that make the 10% roll to become major psionics at start now lose out on a certain number of skills and get reduced skill percentages... but they now specify you don't have to roll for psionics if you don't want. Naturally, some of the rules are clunky; for example, trying to aim for a "particular target, person, or location" is a "called shot" and is done "as when using a modern weapon". Only there are no weapon proficiencies for psychic powers, so your attack bonus never improves. However, psionic powers at least have the advantage of using your normal number of attacks, and don't have any action economy issues like magic does.  "And now I call upon whatever the hell this is!" Psionic Abilities We get some new psionic powers for characters to select from, but not too many new ones. As usual, I'll be covering some but not all.
  New art for the Burster and Mind Melter. In addition, all the Mind Bleeder powers from Rifts World Book Four: Africa get reprinted, since that class will be as well. There's... a lot of reprinting up ahead. Next: P.C.C.s aka R.C.C.s aka O.C.C.s-
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Mar 11, 2018 08:11
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Lightning Lord posted:Prithee, dost thou mean Eoris Essence? 
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Mar 11, 2018 08:18
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Alien Rope Burn posted:
I know that SFX from the Super Friends! That there's FISH TELEPATHY.
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Mar 11, 2018 08:45
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