FATAL & Friends 2016-19: Bad Rules and Hidden Jewels

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Asimo: Sep 23, 2007

The One True Way to play D&D is the Rules Cyclopedia. I mean I'm not even sure why this is being argued, this is pretty much objective truth. :shrug:

And I recall some people complaining about 3e requiring miniatures, though it wasn't nearly as vocal as people whining about it with 4e. It's doubly funny since a lot of infamous rules like attacks of opportunity are trivial to use on a grid map, but require obnoxious fiating at best in a more freeform style. And it's not like by-the-book D&D rules haven't held close to its wargaming roots forever, to the point that it started out having distances for spells and ranged attacks or whatever listed in inches. You know, as in on your tabletop. Freeform mapless play has always been poorly supported by the rules, which is doubly weird considering it seems to be the way the majority of people play D&D.

# ¿ Apr 5, 2017 07:43

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# ¿ Apr 20, 2024 01:09

Asimo: Sep 23, 2007

wiegieman posted:

All random rolling in character creation is disgusting and archaic and should be replaced by point buy.

e:I will die on this hill

Gamma World 7e begs to differ. :colbert:

# ¿ May 9, 2017 09:37

Asimo: Sep 23, 2007

Alien Rope Burn posted:

The line is in a sharp nose-dive (...)

This is really an understatement, I think. I lasted another two or three books I think before unceremoniously dropping the line, and while I think some of that was growing out of my teens and realizing how crappy RIFTS actually was, I was still picking up other RPGs at the time and the drop in book tone and quality is really noticeable in retrospect, especially when laid out like this.

ZeroCount posted:

Honestly I don't see the racism angle with the devolutionist at all?

I... envy your naivete here. Go check some of the right wing media threads in D&D and come to a quick understanding about how easily stuff like this can be read in horrible ways. :smithicide:

# ¿ May 21, 2017 07:03

Asimo: Sep 23, 2007

Alien Rope Burn posted:

Hey, I called it a "disaster", and a "tire fire", I don't know what else you want me to say! Mind, "least favorite" was too kind a weasel phrase and I fixed it. Coalition War Campaign is one of the worst. Not as bad as Africa, but possibly even worse than Spirit West in my estimation. Breaux's new robot and vehicle designs are the only real highlight I'd see as worth salvaging from its pages. I guess Nowak's rank references are at least a useful reference. But the adventure seed at the end where it talks about "mercifully" executing D-Bees clinches it for me. It really is that bad.

Honestly, horrible as Africa was, what stood out to me at the time was Triax & the NGR. Which was... what, ten pages of vague and completely useless setting information followed by pointlessly redundant statblocks of guns, robots, and reprinted monsters? Even to my stat-addled teenage brain I remember being unable to help but think how pointless the whole drat book was, but Carella's stuff started shortly after that so I guess it delayed my dropping of the line a few years. But Coalition War Campaign was basically that but worse, since even if it had more setting information it was both almost as useless and way, way creepier.

I can't wait to see the horrors of the actual coalition "story arc" though since I've never read a Rifts book released since, I think, New West? :allears:

# ¿ May 21, 2017 10:46

Asimo: Sep 23, 2007

Huh, I'm realizing I guess I stopped grabbing RIFTS books around the time New West came out since I remember literally nothing about it. I mean I know I have some that came out later like Psyscape, but I guess I stopped caring and grabbed a few random ones or something.

On the topic of BESM, yeah most of the RPGs they did were either "things that was kind of big in mid-90s anime fandom" or "stuff that aired in syndication/on cartoon network or SciFi at the time". Which means there's some random forgettable crap, since that's just what licensed anime ~~was~~ is like. Although it does make me wonder a bit about a few things... I have a friend who worked in the anime industry back in the day who had some interesting stories about how insane a lot of the demands were. Like companies couldn't just license some big-name title, they often had to wind up getting a bundle of less popular (ie unwatchable poo poo) along with it to drive the overall price up, with the hope that they could make the money back on the high-profile title. I can't help but wonder if GOO wound up having to deal with a few licenses like this; it would at least explain why stuff like "Demon City Shinjuku" or "half of Tank Police" somehow got books, above and beyond GOO's other spendthrift issues.

# ¿ Jul 21, 2017 10:41

Asimo: Sep 23, 2007

Spark That Bled posted:

I think that may explain how Machine Robo: Revenge of Chronos got licensed and put out on DVD. I do remember Neil Nadelman on Anime World Order saying that show was "licensed by accident", so...

I forget the exact title since it was something horrible and forgettable, but there was one of these bundle-licensed releases that sold double digit copies.

Alien Rope Burn posted:

It's only rather recently in the past few years they've been cracking down on it hard, but until recently piracy was endemic in the Japanese market. In Asian markets, it seems often the pricing has to do the most with "What's the absolute most we can charge that some people will buy it for?" instead of "What's the most we can charge that the most people will buy it for?" Part of it might just be the rapid product turnover even compared to the US amongst other factors, but it's kind of amazing. Things have changed over the years, but only somewhat.

Yeah, for a long time a lot of US anime releases were hard subtitled or not allowed to be dual-audio specifically because the Japanese companies were terrified of the comparatively cheaper US releases competing with their domestic releases. It's also the reason Japan went for a different DVD region code from the US, though that was more for hollywood movie releases.

# ¿ Jul 21, 2017 21:35

Asimo: Sep 23, 2007

FMguru posted:

TBF, it was 1984, and they were still working out the kinks in the system.

Yeah. At the time it was just a rough sort of attempt at genre enforcement, and the fact it had potential dramatic editing style mechanics along with it was fairly revolutionary. I'm pretty sure it was the first with it too; the Ghostbusters RPG usually gets credit (and it probably had a more modern style to it really) but it also came out a year or two afterwards.

# ¿ Mar 14, 2018 21:58

Asimo: Sep 23, 2007

Alien Rope Burn posted:

I always felt like Spelljammer had a sort of quadratic goofiness to it. Or: "Do you know how goofy D&D is? Imagine a product that's as goofy to D&D players as D&D is." It almost seemed to me to have an almost aggressive lack of style or coherency, and doesn't really work in an intuitive sense given that it's not space as we think of it, nor it is sky, it's... something else. Like, sometimes it's really self-aware and silly and other times dead-serious and it feels a lot like a kitchen sink of notions the authors had.

As you can probably tell, I never really hookd onto it. I think there's definitely the seed of a lot of fun games to be had in it, but it didn't seem quite sci-fi enough or quite fantasy enough for me to grasp what they were going for.

Yeah, kinda. If I'm going to be honest about my experiences with it back in the day, I think I love spelljammer dearly and there's a lot of stylish and creative stuff in it, but at the same time it's an absolute goddamn thematic mess with no consistency from book to book and most of the actual mechanics involved with the setting were absolute hot garbage. Having to render a player character literally useless in order to meaningfully interact with the setting is just the tip of the mechanics iceberg, and there's a lot of really inventive worlds and cosmology setups that basically get ignored by later supplement writers.

Planescape or Dark Sun were way better examples of the "total conversion" settings that 2e came up with.

# ¿ Aug 20, 2018 09:03

Asimo: Sep 23, 2007

By popular demand posted:

I like what I'm reading about Sig so far, surely I'm not the only one who felt that a setting as rich in possibilities as Planescape was hobbled by being tied to DnD.

It's really a weird thing since the insane cosmology of D&D was the only reason something like Planescape could come about at all, but the actual gameplay of D&D was about the worst possible fit for the sort of setting they were going for.

# ¿ Jun 21, 2019 00:16

Asimo: Sep 23, 2007

Grats on finishing the Rifts reviews! Even if it's a shame it was kind of a stark downward slide at the end there. I forget where I stopped bothering to follow the line, I think somewhere around Juicer Uprising, but the little bits I saw of later books - and then these reviews - proved I made a wise decision.

I remember seeing you and occamsnailfile stressing over the review writing, and it's still impressive it's gone this long. I still don't hate RIFTS or Siembieda himself, but it's still kind of a weird coelacanth-esque RPG relic in both game design and uh, social issues, so I'm glad it's got this much reviewing.

# ¿ Jun 24, 2019 07:29

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# ¿ Apr 20, 2024 01:09

Asimo: Sep 23, 2007

I have a soft spot for Aberrant itself even if it's kind of horrible, but Aberrant d20 is one of the worst games I've ever seen written. I mean I guess it "works" as a game but none of the mechanics or systems are successful at doing what they're supposed to and I can't imagine anyone actually running it and enjoying it or being successful at portraying its intended theme or genre. Can't wait to see more of it laid out. :psyduck:

# ¿ Aug 2, 2019 07:40

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > Comedy Goldmine > The Goodmine > FATAL & Friends 2016-19: Bad Rules and Hidden Jewels

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