|
Count Chocula posted:and whoever Changeling was for Okay, that's unnecessarily harsh and caustic. But I've done chat RP online on and off since the 90s, and the explicit option to chargen childling satyr (and pooka, and just childlings in general...) was a magnet for a certain sort of horrible, horrible people. 
|
#
¿
Jan 6, 2016 12:35
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 24, 2024 04:21 |
|
|
It was also the oWoD game hat benefited the least from actually being in the World of Darkness and its related themes, too.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 6, 2016 23:56
|
|
|
Honestly, no matter how hard the writers tried push the traditions in oMage it's really really hard to cheer for the regressive luddite protagonist faction when you're literally only alive due to the continued intervention of modern medical science.  To the point where that anti-science stance in both oMage and oWerewolf almost feels hateful, if in an unintentional way. I have no idea how much similar experiences colored the Mage fandom, but I imagine at least some small but significant fraction felt similarly.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 8, 2016 22:54
|
|
|
Thesaurasaurus posted:I think the idea was that the Technocracy is why you need medicine to recover from illness or injury, instead of moxibustion or leeching or just plain prayer, but if that's the case then wow, did they ever do a bad job of communicating it. Unless the writers actually thought this was plainly and self-evidently true and bought into the 90s alt-medicine craze themselves, which, Brucato, so v It's a long running pet peeve with that sort of New Age thing, and it really screams of only looking at society from the perspective of a healthy person. I admit I missed a fair portion of the line so there's probably some bits somewhere about how you could use magic crystals or purely natural herbs or whatever the gently caress to do the same thing in the assorted tradition paradigms, but that's really the sort of thing you'd want to make clear from the outset.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 8, 2016 23:56
|
|
|
There was exactly one side in WW2 who discovered a terrifying weapon which changed the world forever, and it sure as hell wasn't the nazis. 
|
|
#
¿
Jan 9, 2016 13:28
|
|
|
Night10194 posted:I don't know if you've noticed, but Torg has a real issue with PCs doing stuff like 'being important' or 'accomplishing things'. I mean it's pretty telling that RIFTS of all things is probably more fun to play and less annoying to run than TORG. The whole thing about the PCs being worthless compared to the feature characters was just something WEG did in general in all their loving games too, even Star Wars and such. The company was horrible at game design and I am glad it's dead. 
|
|
#
¿
Jan 14, 2016 00:21
|
|
|
Alien Rope Burn posted:Why would you revive Secondary Abilities, even in a oWoD revival? And even if you thought it was a good idea, why would you put in the core, a book that obviously has more important things to cover? 
|
|
#
¿
Jan 14, 2016 22:40
|
|
|
TORG would be a great game if it were a completely different game.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 15, 2016 02:03
|
|
|
The In Nomine writeup reminds me that while I never minded Dan Smith's B&W art in like the thousand different GURPS books he did, his color art was really bad. Or at least whoever colored over his silhouette work did a lovely job of it.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 15, 2016 05:29
|
|
|
I still say Mike Pondsmith was one of the best and most unsung writers in the hobby. ... The DBZ RPG is very much not the example I would choose to show this.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 1, 2016 08:31
|
|
|
Alien Rope Burn posted:I think Pondsmith has excellent design ideas but often fell down at figuring numbers, which is why games like Castle Falkenstein or Teenagers From Outer Space hold up much better these days as math-lite games. TFOS is still great too, since it looks and plays like most modern rules-lite stuff with most of the rules focused around keeping to genre... except it came out thirty years ago. OvermanXAN posted:One thing I've gotten from reading these threads is that a lot of RPGs seem to have this problem. I mean, on the one hand with Rifts, White Wolf, or [Insert Heartbreaker Here] you can credit it to lack of (good) editing, amateurishness, or what have you, but it seems to just be common in general that people don't consider probabilities, how numbers are going to scale, or how things are going to balance in general. It seems like a systemic thing in the industry. Evil Mastermind posted:I think it's a case of the author knowing how they want the system to work, but not being able to put that into a book other people can use to learn it on their own because a) the original author isn't good at writing, and b) they've internalized so much of the system they probably don't think about it anymore, or will auto-house-rule anything that doesn't work.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 2, 2016 01:04
|
|
|
|
|
#
¿
Mar 2, 2016 22:27
|
|
|
It's probably partly how horrible and blatant the fetishes are, the complete inability to any sort of thematic or moral consistency, and the utter inability for the authors to realize either of these problems. It's the sort of insanity combo you usually only find on creepy deviantart galleries or the like.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 3, 2016 00:28
|
|
|
Alien Rope Burn posted:Yeah, I remember a certain webcomic from the old bad webcomic thread that was rather singularly focused on witches and transformation. And in their FAQ there was a outright question of whether or not it was a sex thing, and they're like "Nope! We just think it's fun." And it's actually a depressingly common thing with a lot of the more niche fetishes it seems like, since a lot of people seem wired to think that if you don't have nudity or PIV intercourse then obviously it isn't sexual right? It really is just "Deviantart: the Witchening."
|
|
#
¿
Mar 3, 2016 17:42
|
|
|
Covok posted:This just perplexes me. Like, why would you expend effort doing that? The complete lack of self-awareness remains a running theme there, yes.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 4, 2016 08:36
|
|
|
I don't see a problem. It just goes from 19 to 20, perfectly logical! 
|
|
#
¿
Mar 5, 2016 05:51
|
|
|
oriongates posted:Like any sane person I love the Dark Sun setting, it's awesome, creative and weird. Past Fatal and Friends have largely covered the really cool parts of the setting, so I figured I'd shoulder the burden of point out some of the wackier and weirder bits of the setting. Starting with... Pretty much all the "revised dark sun" supplements were horrible. I'm not sure if it was due to editorial direction, change in writing staff, or both, but it was probably the most visible sign of late-era TSR's decline. I mean it was obvious from just looking at the books themselves! Most people call out the horrible art instead of the original Dark Sun's Brom and Baxa stuff, but the bigger thing was the enormous goddamn margins in the books, at least like an inch and a half of empty space, clearly put there to make them look bigger than they were. You literally got like two thirds the text of an equivalent early Dark Sun book in the same page count.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 12, 2016 21:37
|
|
|
gradenko_2000 posted:Papyrus, on the cover, as the title is a huge red flag.  Someone take a screenshot from a PDF to show off the horrible margins and typesetting though, I don't have any myself. quote:And as a follow-up, did 3rd Edition ever have a "low-magic" setting?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 13, 2016 03:42
|
|
|
Nah, the transparency's off, there's supposed to be that border-like design all down the left side. They're still atrociously laid out though, and no there isn't any art in the top right corner.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 13, 2016 04:27
|
|
|
I dug the core revised box set out of the box I shoved it in to forget about it and took a lovely phone photo of a random page. Quality isn't intended to be good, but it'll give you the idea of the layout... You should be able to instantly notice two things. The first, two inch margins with nothing in them. The second, the paper quality's so bad that you can see the other page through it. It's barely a step above newsprint. And yes, more papyrus.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 13, 2016 04:45
|
|
|
Sorry for harping on it but it was really bad, and held up even worse compared to the original Dark Sun stuff. I'm still pissed about being ripped off by TSR despite it being over twenty years ago.  I recall a lot of the revised supplements missing the core themes by a mile and being badly written in general, but it's been so long that I can't give good examples.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 13, 2016 05:05
|
|
|
Kai Tave posted:I'm pretty sure it was the same reason high school student essays have as much white space as they can get away with. Mind you, margins in general are sometimes useful. It helps with the layout, gives you some space so text isn't too close to the binding, and stuff like that, and decent RPGs and textbooks use them for sidebars and annotations and such. That... isn't really the case with revised dark sun here.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 13, 2016 06:50
|
|
|
Rolemaster then?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 13, 2016 10:26
|
|
|
Brom only did the old Dark Sun covers! ... Which are still infinitely superior to the revised ones, so the point still stands. Baxa's interior art was still way better too though.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 18, 2016 12:52
|
|
|
Spiderfist Island posted:The fact that life-shaped creatures in the 3.5 book aren't technically, you know, alive but instead are golems with a subtype similar to the Living Construct tag kind of further negates the initial premise of the whole magic art. As someone who got interested in Dark Sun during the 3.X era, I'm ultimately really glad that they reset the entire setting to just after Kalak's death in the 4th Edition books. It's kind of a shame too. The Revised edition Dark Sun map had a lot of cool-sounding locations and interesting ideas, but it withered on the vine before ever really exploring much of it. Then again, considering the rest of the revised supplements that might be for the best...
|
|
#
¿
Mar 27, 2016 09:07
|
|
|
Whatever the presentation of the Technocracy, a lot of the fandom hatred of the traditions comes down to the massive and blatantly unsubtle detest of both modern society and modern technology. I admit I have a particularly person bias here due to the experience of literally only living due to modern medical technology, hearing that all this stuff is evil and horrible and I should go back to herbs and crystals or whatever is absolutely laughable. There were some vague attempts to imply that a Tradition-focused consensus would be better, but it never really says how and the in-setting examples of both history and the modern day shows that this is never even really given much in the way of thought by the authors. It was ableist as gently caress to assume that players could set concerns like that aside, and that's not really a term I use often. Also it's fun to shoot vampires with laser guns, even if you're playing the nominal bad guys. 
|
|
#
¿
Mar 31, 2016 03:49
|
|
|
I'm idly reminded that a part of the problem was that at least some of the old White Wolf staff just not getting what science is, specifically that it's a methodology separate from technology. I remember getting into a nerd battle with... I forget who, but one of the writers for oMage on RPGnet like thirteen years ago when I was still dumb enough to do that sort of stuff. I forget the exact context for the thread, but someone made the point that the most "scientific" tradition was probably the Order of Hermes due to their heavy documentation, experimentation, and all that sort of stuff. The writer was dubious about this so I brought up a theoretical silly example of a Hermetic perfecting the ritual of binding fire elementals to toasters to toast bread, finding all the scenarios and conditions where it would and wouldn't work, and using that to refine the ritual so anyone could make their own elemental toast if they followed the directions. Surely that's pretty scientific despite all the ritual trappings, right? Only to get back, paraphrasing, "Of course not. Magic can't be science!" There's a lot of good themes and ideas in the oWoD - there's a reason the line was so popular - but wow the biases and culture of the time are impossible to ignore now.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 31, 2016 10:29
|
|
|
Sometime, somewhere, I will play this alien in a game.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 8, 2016 11:53
|
|
|
Doresh posted:Now I'm imagining an Eldritch abomination sucking feeble mortals into its belly. Kurieg posted:You've just described at least 3 WoW Boss fights. 
|
|
#
¿
Apr 9, 2016 04:23
|
|
|
Doresh posted:And how is "You're a monster that is somehow good despite only really causing suffering, but nobody can see your monster self because reasons and you have to watch out for these Heroes who aren't actually heroes but rather evil bullies and...[more nonsense]" an easier introduction for a new player than "You're a vampire"?
|
|
#
¿
Apr 9, 2016 20:39
|
|
|
The depressing thing is, yeah, like mentioned there's totally a lot of ways to spin old monster myths. The blatant example is looking over the assorted female monsters in Greek myths and how it's trivially easy to give them feminist readings because they were often transformed and murdered for such horrible reasons like "dared to speak back to a I haven't given Beast a proper reading so I don't want to over criticize it, but the bits I have seen and reviews from people I trust definitely makes it sound like the author never even considered methods like this to make the protagonists even vaguely sympathetic, and that's a drat shame.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 9, 2016 23:32
|
|
|
I can understand the impulse at least, since there's usually some kernel of a good idea in a game that could be salvaged with better rules or writing. Thing is, I'm still not sure what Beast really adds to the WoD that the other lines don't already do, and better. Spending effort fixing it seems like it would be time better spent working on a Vampire or Changeling game or whatever. 
|
|
#
¿
Apr 11, 2016 02:25
|
|
|
oriongates posted:But really all of this could have been solved by simply saying "Dark Sun doesn't take place in the larger Great Wheel cosmology" (much like Eberron in 3rd edition) and bam...everything's fine. But nope, they had to come up with some way to tie in with the rest and therefore come up with a ridiculously elaborate mini-cosmology where in Athas technically exists alongside all other settings but its hard to leave but there's also the Black (so shadow illusions work) and the Grey (so ethereal spells work and there's a place for dead spirits to be).
|
|
#
¿
Apr 11, 2016 06:01
|
|
|
It's still such a hilarious gimmick, especially since it took surprisingly long for people to clue into it. 
|
|
#
¿
Apr 11, 2016 17:27
|
|
|
Bieeardo posted:Huh, really? I'll admit, I like Stolze's stuff, but I didn't toss in for the kickstarter because Shadowguiding made me break out in hives. Also I've seen people describe it as a superhero game and while it has a lot of the superficial trappings it really isn't. It's deconstructionist enough and has different enough themes that it's pretty much a different genre.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 12, 2016 03:02
|
|
|
drrockso20 posted:Man he sounds like a complete rear end in a top hat
|
|
#
¿
Apr 12, 2016 08:32
|
|
|
Yay, more fetish comics with smoking school children.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 14, 2016 09:16
|
|
|
The Lone Badger posted:Moran's charms are unusual in having no flavour/rules divide at all. At first it looks like it's all flavour text until you realise that the charm does exactly what it says it does. Spiderfist Island posted:I think one of the issues with Exalted goes more deeply than just its game design and is because of the content structure of the line as a whole. I tried to like it for years as both player and GM, I really did, but the issues with it are just way too deep and impossible to resolve. I hope Exalted 3 fixes some of it, but in the end I suspect it's just shuffling the deck chairs around on the titanic. 
|
|
#
¿
Apr 23, 2016 03:16
|
|
|
Aberrant's setting was deep into 90s supers deconstruction. The problem was it thought it was exciting and novel about this despite the same ideas being done in different ways for years beforehand in numerous different media. It was rife with obnoxious metaplot (both annoying contemporary stuff and the long term implications due to being a prequel to Trinity) and the rule balance was... well they tried I guess, but it's obvious Exalted took some lessons from the laughably skewed balance in the storyteller version. And the less said about the d20 edition, the better. And this is from someone who kinda liked it when it was new. Adventure! on the other hand was actually, genuinely good aside from a few foibles, and Trinity- well, I admire the attempt but after watching the aborted development of Exile at the time it kind of felt like a far more conservative and disappointing cousin.
|
|
#
¿
May 6, 2016 03:46
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 24, 2024 04:21 |
|
|
Even ignoring the setting of Aberrant (and there's a lot of little hilarious issues there that haven't been brought up) the rules were just... rough. Trinity and Adventure! were pretty balanced there due to their lower power levels, but Aberrant tried to pretend that "guy who can throw lightning bolts that evaporate tanks" and "gal who is really good at mundane skills" were somehow equivalent, and hell, the latter usually cost way more points to accomplish. I mean I guess if you're going pure chat RP it's not a big deal, but the very second combat hits the former character is just going to obliterate the latter character in the first round and that's the end of that. It's a bit easier to run than Exalted since you don't need to remember a billion charms, but it lacks all cheap effective defense stuff that keeps social/skill characters from getting slaughtered. And that's not even counting the usual balance issues between powers and such, like one rank Claws power being objectively superior to the lethal damage Mega-Strength enhancement despite the latter costing more. And then there's the insufferable authorial tone, but that's more in the supplements... Maybe I should grab it off the shelf and give it a proper review, if I can be assed to. I'm mostly just salty over it because I really liked Storyteller stuff around 2000ish when it was new and it overshadowed the far superior Adventure!.
|
|
#
¿
May 6, 2016 07:21
|
|