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I ran a short lived game of ConX2.0 once, and the review hasn't hit the part that took the most time. The biggest problem we had with it was that it took a full session to get the cell and everyone's characters made. That said, seeing a group of people who've played D&D almost exclusively up to that point work out the math on a Unisystem head shot and realize "Oh poo poo he killed this Black Book agent in one hit we need to be careful around guns" was pretty neat. It's still my favorite modern conspiracy setting. I won't go into any detail since the review isn't there yet, but I love the way the occult is described and how it meshes with the aliens' various shticks.
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Mar 3, 2017 16:15
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Seepage, despite the awful name, is still my favorite explanation for the supernatural in a tabletop game. It's thematically perfect for a paranormal conspiracy game, so self-contained so that any non-alien paranormal event can be explained by it, but so high-level that it doesn't really matter that seepage is causing a particular event because who gives a poo poo if he's turning into a manifestation of the Jungian collective unconscious because of some psychic bullshit, that crazy fucker who thinks he's a werewolf so hard that he grew claws is barreling down on you right now and you're out of silver bullets, it's time to go.
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Mar 23, 2017 15:15
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Hostile V posted:
Body Thieves sounds really close to Dog-Faced Joe in The Anubis Gates. Any chance of a flaw that makes their bodies somehow degenerate the longer they spend in them?
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Mar 31, 2017 20:52
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Even something as simple as changing it from "stress summons demons" to "stress risks putting prisoners into a fell mood in which they try to summon demons" would work. That alone would ratchet up the tension by introducing an element of paranoia: you never know who is about to, or has already, snapped, and needs your skull to summon a demon. AAH is rapidly becoming the thread's new Beast. Everyone has an idea that would make the premise better an more fun, but in the end, we're left with the author's original, half-baked intention.
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Jul 18, 2017 20:15
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Evil Mastermind posted:
I know it's just a typo, but the idea of a gang getting really pissed off that some schmuck was going to be in their turds is pretty funny.
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Jul 20, 2017 17:55
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AAH is, what, 3 for 4 about basing the core and source books off of movies? I can't wait for the next adventure, about a mysterious pre-Perdition artifact from Malta said to contain thousands of cigarettes only to be opened and have nothing inside. Seriously, though, the AAH reviews are great and I genuinely enjoy them.
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Aug 4, 2017 17:53
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Night10194 posted:Getting hunted by a serial killer in a place where neither of you can see very well while trying to move carefully to rescue victims by sound cues is, at least, a strong if hard to pull off concept for a horror scenario. Eh, I dunno. Could use more poo poo eating.
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Aug 10, 2017 17:42
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If I ever played in a game and the GM brought out a torture chart like that, I'd walk. I mean, I would've walked after the first TPK from an AAH adventure, because gently caress that, but...drat. The horrible sex crimes in the last one were awful and clearly based on the authors' fetishes, but at least it didn't force the player characters to perform them. The picture of Shel used with the torture chart makes it even worse, because that's clearly wank bait. "Look at this bad, bad girl. You get to break her. You're justified in breaking her." That's really, really hosed up.
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Aug 11, 2017 21:40
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Angrymog posted:Could we have an indication of how the fights vs. demons would actually go if the stat blocks weren't broken? Looking at the stats and powers, kind of like the old joke of Cthulhu eating 1D6 investigators around.
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Aug 11, 2017 22:59
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Zomborgon posted:Why the hell would one even bother to print this quote:I was wondering why we needed to know that the clones are Made Men within the Psychos. It's completely irrelevant! quote:But this is G-Unit. And there are now five Pincushions. Lucretia is psychic’d to death with extreme prejudice, repeatedly exposed to Random Psychic Powers until one of them immolates her with psychic power and another one grabs her and throws her up into the air so she dies on impact like a shooting star. Everyone hustles over to Ilona, has a moment of concern over the swastika on her forehead and then Doc reluctantly heals her and stuffs her into the party conga line. This is some straight up Caves of Qud poo poo, though.
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Aug 21, 2017 17:44
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What a wet fart of a conclusion. Great work, Hostile V, for making it through that and making it more entertaining than it had any right to be!
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Aug 23, 2017 15:18
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It's been a while since the TORG review covered this, but don't non-Core Earthers need to pay points to exist in Core Earth without adopting the local cosm's rules? From the sound of it, that Orroshian vampyre on the train would be bleeding (HA!) points throughout the adventure.
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Aug 31, 2017 15:27
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drat, Monte, that really does look like it's not too difficult to learn. There are only, what, six separate decks of cards?
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Sep 19, 2017 17:59
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Starfinger is amazing. It gets more and more mathematically broken with each update. Working at Paizo must be boss as hell; all you have to do it get blitzed and fart out a first draft of rules and BAM! you're published.
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Oct 16, 2017 17:01
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Pictured above: a combat round consisting of 45-60 minutes of straight dice rolling.
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Oct 24, 2017 21:57
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Going back to the Elf of Blinding Speed for a second, according to another poster, he runs at about 240 ft. per second. That's equivalent to approximately 7.48 Gs of force. Here is a video of a human experiencing that level of force: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YT2WuKERUJY Now imagine that elf making that man's face the entire time he's running.
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Nov 7, 2017 15:36
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That Starfinger goblin's head is bigger than the neck hole of his bubble helmet.
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Nov 17, 2017 16:07
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Alien Rope Burn posted:
I love these pictures of the monstrous or animalistic low CR monsters and the higher social class and CR versions. Orocoran: SKREEEEE! Ichor Lord: SKREEEE there's a FLY in my wine!
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Nov 20, 2017 19:07
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Reign's magic premise was that anyone can learn a low level spell with enough time, and lots of people know a cantrip or two. If you wanted to get deep into magic, though, you had to either learn a spell to link you to a particular school's magical ability, or horribly mutate yourself in some way, like turning into a centaur or turning your bones into iron, which has the side effect of locking you out of any other school of magic. It makes the mages of the more overt schools very, very easy to point out and target in a fight compared to common foot soldiers, in addition to how such mutations would affect your day to day life. Hope your fire-bleeding flame dancer doesn't get a paper cut! I really appreciate how much Stolze thinks about the logical extensions of magic systems he builds. Too much fantasy ignores the effect its own magic would have on its setting. That said, I could see a PDQ or other light system game of wizards arguing codified physical laws like lawyers in battle. Counterspelling through citing case law would be fun at the table.
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Jan 3, 2018 18:05
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hectorgrey posted:D&D 3rd Edition - The Core Books Holy Hell I forgot how much of a clusterfuck this was. There are dozens of skills, all with their own rules, a lot of which are traps, four different types of skills (class, cross-class, untrained, and class dependent), none of which actually make the game more fun to play, and all of which being entirely dependent on one ability modifier no matter the context. My favorite 3.0 moment was my half-orc monk in a game that went comedic, fast, punching through a guard's face, snarling "Run away!" at the other guard with the first guard still attached to my monk's punching arm, then subsequently failing the Intimidate roll because he had a 6 in Charisma. The DM allowed me to retroactively switch to Strength for that roll, because the first guard's brain was at the second guard's feet, and the roll was successful.
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Mar 13, 2018 21:39
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So far, knowing nothing else about it besides its reputation, SenZar sounds pretty loving cool. I'd play a Spellsinger in a heartbeat, especially with a magic electric B.C. Rich wannabe like the guy in the picture's rocking.
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Mar 20, 2018 15:41
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Night10194 posted:I mean if magic is going to be the only way you get worthwhile abilities in a game, deciding the game is going to include only characters with magic would hardly be insane. Halloween Jack posted:It would be such an uncharacteristic admission that I think it would be greeted warmly. Luckily, Eldritch rear end Kicking already exists. I'd love to do a review of it, but I don't have time for it these days. The short version is that the kingdom was capital-G Good and the wizards were, too, until, one magical day, the wizards went bugfuck crazy and decided to build towers and kill each other without worrying about collateral damage. Now, wizards are starting to snap out of their murderous fugues and are trying to piece together what happened, all the while dueling wizards who are still bugfuck and settling old grudges with the ones who went sane. There are no traditional skills in the game, just loose schools of magic that get rolled when trying to do something with that school, like using Air to fly over a wall or Earth to make an iron lock soft enough to poke a finger through. Wizards don't jump, climb, or pick locks. Wizards use magic.
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Apr 17, 2018 16:56
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The explicit mind-control aspects are pretty lovely. Changing that to, "People instinctively know you are a god, with all of the issues that being a god among mortals may bring," would be a better idea. That gives normal people a choice in how they react to a god walking among them. Some might build temples, sure, but others may just want to mug you, because successfully mugging a god is a great way to get street cred. That said, I like the eXTREEEEEM, "This goes up to 11," style they're going for. If you're going to make a game about killing gods, you might as well go whole hog with the power fantasy. Otherwise, you're probably just better off playing Delta Green and throwing the olympians into it. A Delta Green game where the PCs dome Zues with a rocket launcher and another Athena pops out would be pretty badass, now that I think about it.
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May 18, 2018 16:42
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I like the current juxtaposition between Degenesis and The Spire. They're both heavily setting, culture, and weirdness focused games, but presented in entirely different ways: Degenesis is a massive and impenetrably dense setting scaling all over Europe with little input as to what PC's are meant to do, whereas The Spire is a contained, one city setting rife with with plot hooks and strong, archetypal character options. Which one is better presented is up to the reader and their gaming group (it's The Spire), but it's neat to see how these games, while playing with similar themes, are so dissimilar from each other.
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May 25, 2018 15:24
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Night10194 posted:Isn't that literally the HP system from Deus Ex 1? It's almost exactly the damage system from the roguelike IVAN, in which one of the most effective ways to power game is to walk over broken bottles until your legs fall off and then praying to the right gods to get fancy new legs made from exotic materials, but only after eating a large treasure chest in a cycle of binging and purging that has been transmuted into monster earwax. If you get lucky, you can end the first dungeon with two steel arms and two legs made of phoenix feathers. Or you could die from a hedgehog biting your hog off. What a great game!
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Jul 19, 2018 20:59
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unseenlibrarian posted:Honestly my favorite game in the vague Christapocapunk genre is Carella's Armageddon, which also feels like "Well I can't make Rifts anymore so I'm gonna make my own rifts with blackjack and talking cats that can turn into humans and have angels team up with devils and Thor to fight Cthulhu. In fact, forget the blackjack." Armageddon rules. It packs in everything but the kitchen sink, but does so in a way that comes off as fun instead of tiring. The main good guy group was formed by Odin, the archangel Michelle (because Michael wanted to be a woman), and the ghost of motherfucking Ben Franklin, Thor is explicitly running around northern Europe crushing tanks with Mjolnir, and the big bad Old One knock-off is presented as a corrupting force, facilitating espionage games, with its messiah leading a big gently caress-off army if your group just wants to smash things.
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Oct 11, 2018 17:13
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quote:Ironshrike by Ben Brock. How do you kill a place? The cell must find out: they are ordered to kill an underspire marketplace where a warped sect worships the god of predatory capitalism. Will burning it to the ground be enough, or must they destroy the spirit of the district too? Well, you can kill capitalism, guess I'm picking this one up, too.
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Oct 17, 2018 19:55
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Tibalt posted:I personally prefer the idea that the greatest Fire Wizards in the world exist in the frozen north, throwing fireballs at Ice Wurms. That makes sense. Fire magic would theoretically be a little harder to cast in the cold, so when a frozen fire wizard heads to warmer climes, it would get a little more heat and fire out of the same amount of magical effort.
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Nov 19, 2018 22:53
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