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Mors Rattus posted:The seed is that Khalid has no loving clue how to handle a Holiest Man In The World who is a secular humanist and an atheist. At first this is really compelling, but it made me wonder -- exactly how many people would react beneficially to finding out that angels genuinely existed?
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Jan 31, 2016 22:25
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Grnegsnspm posted:Time for a brand new episode! We are finally reviewing GURPS! Kind of. Tangentially. And it's the Lite Rules. Still, though. GURPS! And much more importantly than any of that, Discworld! Yeah, the million-to-one chance thing is called out when Nobby and crew are trying to game it, as something on the order of "Destiny favors million-to-one chances, but Fate has 999,999 deciding votes".
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May 10, 2016 16:56
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ProfessorProf posted:A town might have multiple situations, related or I dunno, I mean, I get that it's based on frontier Mormonism and 19th-century lifestyles. The part that really bugs me is how it takes those ultra-conservative values and makes them explicitly, magically correct, with all violations punishable by demons eating the community. All this fascinating moral dilemma is poured into "How will the Dogs address this growing problem in the community while wrestling with the secular authorities, people's morals, and their own consciences" and meanwhile over here we have a huge pile of poo poo that's actually, legitimately evil behavior, according to the undeniable will of God himself. And it's not even poo poo like "Decapitating your brother and burning his house down", it's poo poo like "A woman maybe wants her life to not be terrible a little". It seems like a weird setting choice for a game with a heavy moral choice theme, to have certain moral choices automatically lead to demon possession and sandstorms. Well, do note -- I'm not sure if it's here or later but it's definitely applicable to here -- the person doing the injustice is not necessarily the person who starts the demon cult and sharpens the long knives. Some girl doesn't get scared of bugs? Some boy's father isn't satisfied with his boy's bravery and sends him to KillYouDead Gorge on a test of courage, then when the inevitable happens makes bargains for the boy's life. At this point the Dogs are probably not going to remedy the situation by finding a big, scary bug. It is not that the tenets are right, it's that they are accepted as right and people are either aware of their transgressive behavior or will otherwise use their own flawed judgment in steering a course.
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May 16, 2016 20:35
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Robindaybird posted:Basically it was negate the "Dark skin = evil" implication, and the "Wimmenz, they go cray with power" that tends to pop up, though to D&D's defense they've been downplaying both aspects, it's still enough there that someone can run with it. So, uh, GAZ13: The Shadow Elves? No Lloth, even, given it's Mystara.
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Jun 27, 2016 20:26
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theironjef posted:So I'm pretty sure that this has also been covered in here, so it's a good thing I don't care about that(Especially since our last care package from listeners had Talislanta 4e, Brave New World, and Godlike in it)! Anyway, here's Testament D20: Roleplaying in the Biblical Era, which is right off the bad a bad sale, since it terminates pre-Jesus! I wanted to play as a singing dancing Judas, dammit! The bumper song is obviously appropriate, but I was wondering if you knew that there actually was a Mesopotamians RPG. A two-pager, part of the Indie Mixtape series. But it's not just a Mesopotamians RPG. TMBG did some promotional stuff where they dubbed the old Monkees cartoon over some of their music video-style animation. It's an RPG of the theoretical low-budget 70s era Mesopotamians cartoon.
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Aug 4, 2016 14:17
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Halloween Jack posted:Do the Mesopotamians have a talking lion that helps them solve mysteries? They have a goat that helps them solve mysteries. The goat may or may not talk, the rules aren't sufficiently granular to care.
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Aug 5, 2016 21:18
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Josef bugman posted:I always just think "Has there ever been a water level in a game that I have enjoyed the most" and the answer is usually "no". Being in water is good fun, but it's also a real arse and a half if you want to actually do anything. Ristar is a notable exception here, but that's mostly because going in water gave you total freedom of movement and let you just jet in arbitrary directions.
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Sep 15, 2016 18:48
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Grnegsnspm posted:Way back in the long, long ago; Jef and I (mostly Jef) kept saying that we would review this Batman RPG he had. We kept putting it off. The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. But now we make good on that promise. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: Batman Roleplaying Game So at what point do game designers start to understand how probability works? Because "supposedly representative sample has four doubles in a row" and "bell-curve chart with random Question villain at the center" suggest we're not there yet.
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Sep 29, 2016 14:27
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Halloween Jack posted:That Marvel Universe game that used token-spending, sort of? But it also had a Health track. Holy poo poo, we found an original bit of design by Monte Cook. Well, the Shin Megami Tensei/Persona series has been using HP to cast physical skills since at least SMT 3.
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Oct 18, 2016 21:24
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Nuns with Guns posted:Part 3: Character Types- the Vector Joins the Fray! I don't know if they've said it yet, but here's an important thing to keep in mind - you can spend 1 level of effort to do 3 extra damage on a single target attack.
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Oct 22, 2016 19:36
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I'm pretty sure a party made up of all comedy-relief characters is... true to the spirit of Slayers, at least?
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Nov 27, 2016 04:45
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theironjef posted:
You say the die system tends low, but it's actually no different from d6-d6 in terms of output spread. It just gets there in a weird way.
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Jan 5, 2017 18:48
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theironjef posted:My city is either dunked underwater and taken over by fish people or just nuked first in every fictional future story. Plus we just lost the Chargers. Ah hey, by the way, if you want a history of RPGs as a hobby you might want to look into picking up Shannon Appelcline's four-decade four-volume series Designers & Dragons. Despite the reference in the title it does make a go at covering the whole of the hobby.
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Jan 26, 2017 14:16
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The Darkness Devices have separate motivations from the High Lords? Are they all slaved to the Gaunt Man or something?
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Feb 7, 2017 18:40
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Cassa posted:This is basically how Greg Stolze's ORE came about, isn't it? Yes, anecdotally it developed as a result of him going around to various WoD writers, asking "what's the difference between raising the target number and penalizing the dice pool, and when should I do either?" and not really getting more than a "well just, like, use your discretion, man" as a response.
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Feb 12, 2017 03:03
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Alien Rope Burn posted:
Ooh! Let's try and think about this like a sensible person. The rocket weapon is the top one with the shoulder brace because rockets have recoil and lasers don't.
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Mar 1, 2017 05:22
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Bieeardo posted:Jesus. Is it ever revealed that the Pope is possessed or something, or is he just the second coming of Hitler? What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
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Mar 2, 2017 03:32
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megane posted:Numenera is yet another game that just staggers me with its lack of innovation. You're reality-hopping bearers of the secret power underlying all reality, who twist causality itself to your whim and change identities like coats... and just by pure coincidence the archetypes your mystical power can manifest in are exactly The Fighter, The Rogue, and The Wizard, and the primary thing you do in the multiverse is collect Magic Items that let you do things like see in the dark or shoot fireballs. That's actually a different game entirely, called The Strange. Well, different game, same engine, and really nothing you said changes at all. I'm actually kind of amazed they made it worse in v2. Wizard spells had fixed costs. Skill checks, which the not-wizards would be making, were made easier by spending Effort, and now dropping multiple levels of it is actually more expensive. Unless they've changed the level-up math? Or it wasn't mentioned in the quickstart, because you can only put out 1 level at level 1.
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Sep 18, 2017 17:41
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GimpInBlack posted:There's an apocryphal story from the Pentagon in the early days of the Nixon administration, that a computer was fed all the relevant data about the US and North Vietnam--population, industry, military strength, official casualties to date, etc.--and asked to predict, based on the attrition model, when the US would win. Well, allowing for some bullshit in the figures, peace talks were going pretty well in 1968 until Nixon deliberately sabotaged them to win the election.
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Oct 9, 2017 16:38
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So, a gun that's a furry, then.
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Oct 25, 2017 17:49
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Night10194 posted:One of the oddities of Way of the Wicked for me is that working for Evil in D&D Land seems like an even bigger bit of stupid than working for Evil in a lot of other fantasy settings. When you can get enormous financial rewards, renown, and supernatural power killing random stuff for Good without all the skullduggery, it just seems more difficult to structure a campaign around 'We do that, for pretty much the same pay, but, uh, to the shiney guys.' Well, in theory Evil offers more opportunity for rapid advancement via sudden but inevitable betrayal. There aren't really any good ways for PCs to get fast-tracked experience or wealth in that way.
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Dec 29, 2017 04:56
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Rigged Death Trap posted:Incredible valor against overwhelming odds is the usual good fast track. Little-g good, but yeah, that's kind of the points. Good gets its experience from inside a horde of devils. In theory, an evil functionary could be granted great powers in return for a few knives in the right backs, but in practice, PCs of any alignment tend not to get the giant whacks of plot XP that would imply, or infernal patrons investing their gear with a similar rush of power. So evil likewise has to go angel hunting to advance.
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Dec 29, 2017 22:46
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I mean, players often will really latch onto Boasty McBoastFace and try to make all his mad fantasies come true. Just, maybe not in Call of Cthulhu.
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Feb 20, 2018 03:49
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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?
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Feb 24, 2018 23:18
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Double Plus Undead posted:So, in summary, if you want to know the real take-away from Eldoru, read the first letter of each paragraph in this post. I never suspected a thing. Excellent leaning into Poe's Law to sell the lie.
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Apr 2, 2018 00:05
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EclecticTastes posted:I think you mean 4d8 or 3d6, chum. It's the 6-6 System, the hottest new game system since the Open Game License! Oh, hey Earthdawn! So this is what you're getting up to these days, huh? I remember the old times... 
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Oct 11, 2018 04:00
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OvermanXAN posted:Earthdawn's Step/Action Dice thing makes... kinda sense. Actually has anyone covered Earthdawn yet? It's one of those systems where I'd actually like to know more about it because it seems interesting Yes, that step chart is from its writeup on the archive.
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Oct 11, 2018 06:17
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Night10194 posted:Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Old World Armory Studded leather, for all that it isn't real, might still model leather brigandine, which substitutes hard leather plates for metal ones.
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Mar 18, 2019 23:10
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Night10194 posted:Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Lure of the Liche Lord "But I have to be a Rog3\Clr2, my backstory is that I grew up as part of a street gang and then found religion!" is one of them there false affordances of multi-classing, and I'm sad to see it make its way into careers too.
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Apr 2, 2019 14:59
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NutritiousSnack posted:HEY THE NEGATIVES OF SOCIETY ARE ACTUALLY BEING SHOWN AS ILLOGICAL AND BASED ON PERSONAL, UNFAIR BASIS! Just like all forms of discrimination in society, which inevitably trace back to a legitimate personal grievance with another human being wrongfully extrapolated outward! No one ever uncritically accepts that the powerful hold power because that's "just the way things are"!
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Apr 8, 2019 23:53
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Mors Rattus posted:The way Dragon-Blooded stuff works is, to prevent a thing that happened in past editions where people talked about the literal ideal DB practice was constant stud farming: Dragon-Blooded charge up their elemental chi within themselves and, when they have a kid, all that Essence goes into the kid. It then takes time to rebuild, and the more elemental chi goes into a kid, the better their chances of Exalting as a Dragon-Blood. As a result, the Realm has developed a culture of essentially aiming for one kid every twenty years or so, and there is a strong prejudice against having kids outside that cycle, and men are typically the ones blamed for loving it up, since...men don't get pregnant, so it is way easier for them to be "irresponsible" with their progenerative Essence. Ah, holding people personally responsible for bad luck. Now that's familiar societal territory.
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Apr 9, 2019 13:32
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Lambo Trillrissian posted:But I like to imagine that if you showed him something like Chuubo's Marvelous Wish Granting Engine he would have a heartbreaking moment of enlightenment just before his head exploded. See, that just makes me think of this one time Chuubo had been learning about the water cycle in school and fumbled a key into a storm drain, then wished that lost keys would come back out of the ocean into Fortitude. Like the rain. (It really wasn't going THAT badly until Leonardo de Montreal remembered exactly where he'd thrown the single key to the magnificent apparatus that sealed the gaping void where his heart used to be, about five seconds before it dropped inerrantly out of the clouds like a vengeful thunderbolt.)
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May 29, 2019 04:26
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Joe Slowboat posted:Someone better with epubs than I am should copy a Chuubo's arc into this thread for comparison, because I'm just poleaxed by Monte Cooke's ability to miss the point. So the thing with a Chuubo's arc is that quests are better thought of as a way to spend XP than a way to get them. Because while you get bonus quest XP from taking actions in-flavor of the quest, they're not enough to finish it - you'll need to put in the XP you got from playing out scenes and hitting your character beats. You get 5 XP kickers once and another quest XP per appropriate scene you frame in a chapter (where you've got about two scenes to frame, total) That said, here is A Scientific Adventure. 1) What a troublesome situation. Let's do science at it! - 5 XP: you resolve to science the hell out of this problem, or someone else explicitly trusts in your science - 5 XP: you put up some kind of containment around it - 5 XP: you meet someone with Big Mojo pokin' around. This is serious! - 5 XP: three chapters have passed and you've ignored this on-screen, tell us what you've totally been doing off-screen - 1 XP: you sympathize with or assist the outcast or wrong - 1 XP: a dream calls you to a place of danger - 1 XP: portentous tales of the strange and wondrous - 1 XP: that thing where you flip over a blackboard and explain how these five equations mean don't walk into the pulsing black orb - 1 XP: rail about how awful everything's going - 1 XP: agonize over leaving this behind to do something else important - 1 XP: agonize over involving other people 2) Not the Mayor! He never asked for this! (insert sufficiently empathetic person if you don't give a care about the Mayor) - 5 XP: you resolve to science the hell out of the Mayor's dilemma in particular - 5 XP: the Mayor confides their worries to you in a quiet breakroom in City Hall - 5 XP: so the Mayor was worried about controlling people and now there's this solid black figure calling itself Royam running around and literally controlling people with chains made out of shadow? - 1 XP: you have a sudden foreboding about a threat to the Mayor - 1 XP: you spend a night guarding the Mayor, perhaps in dreams - 1 XP: you comfort the Mayor while they're having a breakdown - 1 XP: you learn a deep Mayoral secret, with or without the Mayor's knowledge - 1 XP: you hunt down some specific bit of trouble - 1 XP: you abscond with the Mayor for their own safety 3) Okay, you think you have a handle on this whole thing, now it's just a matter of time. - 5 XP: you put the finishing touches on an exhaustive survey of the situation - 5 XP: you accomplish an important reconciliation in pursuit of this, between opposing factions or between yourself and something else - 5 XP: you find something important that was hidden - 1 XP: do the prepwork that makes this whole thing tick over - 1 XP: eat with someone strange in a cave, or perhaps local hangout Plato's Cave II - 1 XP: do survey work - 1 XP: care for a dog or other creature that's related to this somehow - 1 XP: the weather keeps you from your work somehow - 1 XP: you witness strange visions 4, optionally) And then, you go beyond. - 5 XP: a storm rages around you as you stand at the edge of a drop. - 5 XP: you stand in the presence of something dead. Once it was stronger than you. (You don't have to have killed it, but...) - 5 XP: ultimately you come to some insight, and you forgive, or are forgiven. - 1 XP: your solution is taking you to a dangerous place - 1 XP: but even here, people live their lives day to day - 1 XP: but even here, there are children - 1 XP: but even here, there are moments of levity 5, optionally) You're going to need some time to reflect on this - 5 XP: you walk among the flowers in a place where someone died - 5 XP: you read or tell someone the stories of a place's history - 5 XP: you share a precious bit of food or drink with someone - 5 XP: you give an old friend a proper goodbye - 1 XP: you tend to a garden or wildland - 1 XP: you make repairs - 1 XP: you stare into a fire - 1 XP: you watch children or animals playing - 1 XP: you play ball or Frisbee, something physical but mostly unguided - 1 XP: you encounter something that seems terrifying but is friendly - 1 XP: you wake up because of something else - water, a plant, an animal - touching you
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Aug 7, 2019 13:54
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