|
PurpleXVI posted:The reason I tend to end up with D&D is that it feels like most other fantasy games are a reaction to D&D in some sense. Either going "gently caress YOU DAD" and trying to be as different as possible whether it means making something good or bad, or going "this is what D&D was really about" and getting tunnel vision obsessiveness with one interpretation of D&D(like that it's supposed to be a hardcore mudfarmer murder simulator where you're not allowed to have fun and if you don't like that then you're playing games wrong). So as broken as D&D is in any edition, at least with my favoured edition I usually have more fun than these. Reign, Ryuutama, Burning Wheel?
|
#
¿
Apr 17, 2018 19:10
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 11:54 |
|
|
Lunar Ladies and any translation sperging you wanna do is very appreciated. (I’m assuming you speak Hebrew.)
|
|
#
¿
Jun 1, 2018 00:52
|
|
|
What the hell is this Middenarde drama?
|
|
#
¿
Jun 4, 2018 15:51
|
|
|
O wow. Thanks for the context ; definitely going to read the whole thing from the beginning.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 4, 2018 16:46
|
|
|
Kaza42 posted:I want a lizardman skink stranded in the Empire to join a party and then midway through the game hear about the pit in Bretonnia that keeps spewing weird frog things and just go "No... no way. OH MY GOD IT IS! WEHAVETOGOTOBRETONNIANOW!" Can you explain? I must be missing something. I played Lizardmen for years but know nothing about the Bretonnian fluff. Did they have some kind of slann spawning thing or something?
|
|
#
¿
Jun 8, 2018 03:58
|
|
|
Loving the new 7th Sea write up! Makes me feel old that I fondly remember reading the first one an uncomfortably long time ago. And I see the habit of abusing other languages has remained a constant. The German in that Eisen bit sure is a thing. And “gesa” (or well “geasa”) is the plural. The singular is “geas”. For a fun game, guess how it’s pronounced without googling. It’s basically “gesh” Also I double checked with my Spanish speaking friend and apparently El Vago and El Vagabundo are both perfectly good, it’s just that they mean lazy/hobo and vagabond respectively.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 20, 2018 03:59
|
|
|
So... The numbers for the Vatacine church seem kind of weird to me. Because every level of administration adds a 0. There's 1 Hierophant. Who is elected by 10 cardinals. Who are elected by 100 archbishops. Who are elected by 1,000 bishops. Who are elected by 10,000 monsignors. Who are elected by 100,000 priests. Add on to all of those, I guess, a little note saying "at least" depending on how you interpret things. (e.g. do you lose your prior status when you're elected higher? The fact that if you retire, you return to your original church would make that sound not true, but that has weird implications that some random village in Castille doesn't have a priest for 40 years because their priest is off being Not Pope. ) So that means there are, bare minimum to function, 100,000 Vatacine churches. (I'm assuming there can be more because otherwise you'd have to like get rid of old churches when you built new ones and that's very silly.) For reference, according to this totally reliable random source I googled, there 223,128 parishes in the modern Catholic Church (keeping in mind that the number for churches in a parish is more like 3, unlike the game, but also consider the number of continents Catholicism is on is slightly higher than the Vatacine's one). That number seems a bit weird but I can't put my finger on why I feel that way. This also means that there are (at least) 111,111 total priests which is just a fun number to know. Anyway, this has been me just having some fun with the implied math of a silly fantasy setting for funsies. Thanks again, Mors! Loving the write up!
|
|
#
¿
Jun 21, 2018 23:26
|
|
|
That seems... surprisingly functional? Like I’m not awed by it but seems fine. Kind of like a really light vaguely FATE thing. Huh. Or is the math borked and I’m missing something?
|
|
#
¿
Jun 23, 2018 03:10
|
|
|
I vote any of the nation/geography books. The setting is the most interesting part for me and I love reading your summaries. Also, fun game I do in my head : John Wick the game designer and John Wick the movie assassin are definitely one distinct entity and the same person. It just makes me chuckle constantly.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 26, 2018 22:26
|
|
|
I can literally not process my feelings about the inclusion of Not Haitian Creole in 7th Sea. Like, I’m a linguist. With the Not German and Not French and stuff I just laughed and thought it was dumb but fun and silly. For some reason the fake Creole gets to me. I appreciate that it was included but something about making a constructed language to ape a thing that was made by really inhumane circumstances sticks in my craw but also they’re trying to represent that also and I’m so confused by my own opinions. My brain just broke because of the politics of the fluff of an RPG. Good job, John Wick.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 3, 2018 20:05
|
|
|
And your ignorance and not shutting the gently caress up never made you think about a possible solution? (It’s shutting the gently caress up, because you’re saying dumb things. Do that. )
|
|
#
¿
Jul 8, 2018 06:31
|
|
|
Double post : I googled how much a human heart weighs (pretty sure I’m on a government list now) and it’s just a bit less than a can of soup. 5 hearts? On his neck at all times? Ignoring everything else that dude must have a monstrous crick in his neck. I hope that poo poo is padded.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 8, 2018 06:55
|
|
|
The two former lover lawyer rivals, who are also the only two lawyers and who are both working to help witches make better pacts with demons is extremely my poo poo. Hot drat that's good. I don't even want to play with that content, I want a 4 season long television show off it so I can buy the box set.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 26, 2018 22:33
|
|
|
I have to nerdily throw in a mention for Embassytown, in which the aliens (just called "Hosts") are unable to really understand the disconnect between the sign, the signified and the signifier. Not like in a hur hur Drax from Guardians of the Galaxy way, but in a straight up can not ever lie even conceptually. They can't even really do analogies, so they pay people to act out something kind of like a metaphor. The whole book is just a big ol' deep dive into their society as it goes through some serious changes. It's a really good book, especially if you're a big language nerd like me.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 10, 2019 21:11
|
|
|
Give me a game where I can play as a Pierson’s Puppeteer. But maybe not anything to do with the Ringworld. Cause uh. You know.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 10, 2019 22:08
|
|
|
So despite living through the 90's RPG scene my only knowledge of L5R is flipping through a d20 version when I was 14. Is there not a not-China? Or is Rokugan supposed to also be a not-China? Why did they change the name of the clan from Ki-rin (hahaha) to "Unicorn"? Like you knew the more accurate term and just left it in as a weird in joke? Are they represented by a kirin or a like Western unicorn in fiction? Did really no one speak even any Japanese? My Japanese is some hot garbage and I'm still basically playing a drinking game counting the syllables that can't happen. (Looking at you all the "tu"s in the middle of names!) I'm guessing I'm correct in my assumption of "This was made by some weebs in the 90's before looking poo poo up was trivial but now we're stuck with it so we're just gonna keep rolling with it"? So many weird decisions.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 31, 2019 03:36
|
|
|
Huh. Okay. So it's like 7th Sea but no one knew anything about the countries involved besides samurai movies, and now FFG is furiously spackling over that as best as they can? I'm also guessing Korea is sadly forgotten? Also I thought the Unicorn were supposed to be not-Mongols? Was I wrong? (Not that any of this is wrong. I've created dumber settings. I just think it's hilarious and amazing and might run it for my colleagues who do Asian history just to see their faces.) Is the attached system any good? But Fu Leng as the only Chinese name in a game where Japan is all of China is...uh... Highly problematic. And he represents the dark evil things from the South, you know, like Nanjing. Uh.  That might have needed an edit. Just saying.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 31, 2019 03:58
|
|
|
Robindaybird posted:King had that pretty nasty car crash after the first book, iirc - it definitely had a major effect on his writing. And suddenly all his books changed from being about an author with substance abuse problems, to stories about an author with substance abuse problems who got hit by a van. I secretly like him, and have met him*, but he is 100% hilarious garbage. *HIs daughter is my girlfriend's minister.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 8, 2019 06:04
|
|
|
Libertad! posted:Hello everyone. Way back in late 2013 I wrote up a Fatal and Friends on Zak S' Vornheim product. I am no longer able to edit the original posts, but as the review is archived on the Inkless Pen site, I'm making a formal request for it to be taken down. Some major CW in the following links for many triggers: Just as a rando, I don't think deleting it is the best move? Like I hate Zak S as much if not more than the next person, but honest criticism (I'm pretty sure it's crappy ; haven't read your review) seems like a good thing. We've all known for like 6 years he's a super abusive creep, but I don't see how denying someone in the future your flaying (again, I'm assuming) of his thing is good. If anything you should edit in an update (if you're willing, obviously).
|
|
#
¿
Feb 12, 2019 05:48
|
|
|
Thuryl posted:It's a positive review. O okay. Never mind. Throw that in a in a burning porto-potty.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 12, 2019 06:09
|
|
|
In terms of making good content, Coffin Rock would probably be best since you can give various trip reports and helpful tips... But I gotta vote for Back East : The South. You know it's going to be maximally cringe-inducing and terrible.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 16, 2019 07:57
|
|
|
Okay, but what happened to India and the Middle East?
|
|
#
¿
Feb 20, 2019 08:05
|
|
|
Wait they don't have the printing press? Real China/Japan had had it for like a thousand years.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 22, 2019 18:34
|
|
|
Yeah that makes sense.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 22, 2019 19:12
|
|
|
NGDBSS posted:They probably have woodblock printing in the setting but not movable type. So anything that wasn't an important document that needs ten thousand copies or whatever still has to be copied by hand. One of the alternate 4E settings, Iron Rokugan, featured movable type as an instance of modernity encroaching on a conservative society. China invented the printing press around 200 BCE and had it 100% down by the 8th century CE. They invented movable type and then discarded it cause yeah it's kind of a bitch with how characters work. They'd get a calligrapher to do each page and then turn that into something printable. Old Chinese people printed a LOT of stuff, not just big important government documents. Like, there's a poo poo ton of ancient written materials that are basically the equivalent of bodice-ripper novels. (I work with ancient Chinese texts for a living ; fuckers printed EVERYTHING.) Also learning the writing system is actually really easy, assuming you already know Chinese. It's just designed to write, you know, Chinese, so if you're learning it at the same time you're learning the spoken language it's hard. It's hard to get firm numbers, but China historically had a positively ridiculous literacy rate compared to, say, Europe for most of its existence.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 22, 2019 20:50
|
|
|
As someone who will never use this setting, I choose to imagine that they totally have 2,000+ airplane pilots but also no airplanes. They are all carefully trained to sit inside a cargo-cult cockpit made out of scavenged cardboard with painted on dials and make VRROOOOM noises with their mouths. All day. Every day.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 25, 2019 04:02
|
|
|
I really like your Warhammer stuff because I never really played the RPG and the (often) surprisingly good fluff they came up with fascinates me. Bonus points for anything with more info on either the Lizards are those hilariously dumb murderous Canadians*. *For the brief time I played the tabletop, I had a Dark Elf army and even at like 11 or whatever, I still adored how stupidly ridiculous they were.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 4, 2019 19:04
|
|
|
Not gonna quote the whole thing but : "Eva movement is measured in decimeters, because 'E Scale' is 'x10'." Someone here has made a mistake, either a typo or not knowing how the metric system works. What? Also, I know I've watched Evangelion, but I honestly couldn't remember any of it, and after reading your reviews and then skimming the wiki page, I'm really glad my memory decided to just wipe itself.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 6, 2019 19:49
|
|
|
O okay, sorry. Not trying to be lovely. (I actually assumed it was the authors' error, not yours.)
|
|
#
¿
Mar 6, 2019 19:54
|
|
|
I'm always a fan of the classic combo of "break the system over your knee" and "make something that should be thematic and cool but is mechanically garbage" as a way to show off the system's foibles.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 6, 2019 20:34
|
|
|
unseenlibrarian posted:It's probably because it's 4Chan and they're making a dumb reference to the equally dumb tvtrope thing about stockings. Stockings? Excuse me? Big Mad Drongo posted:They should compromise, have a guy name Whitby wander in and describe it as Absolute Terroir. That is an A+ reference to a book I thought only I read. Thank you.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 7, 2019 20:18
|
|
|
Parchment isn't made from trees.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 11, 2019 17:49
|
|
|
The part that I keep coming back to with robo-soccer is : aren't they still plugged in with giant extension cords? How does this not turn into everyone knotted together like a 75m tall rat king after just a few minutes? Have any of these dudes actually played soccer?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 13, 2019 03:53
|
|
|
I'm too lazy to post much in this thread (plus it's not like I have a super rarified RPG collection ; does someone really want my thoughts on Torchbearer or Blades in the Dark, games many of you have already played?), but I really wanna say how much I love the Hams fluff, Night. Like I actually kind of want to play WHFRP game for the first time in my life and am thinking through how to pitch it to my group. So thanks! PS tell us if they ever mention extravagant codpieces.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 19, 2019 04:45
|
|
|
Two feet long, bright yellow with a wolf's head statue on the end?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 19, 2019 04:59
|
|
|
Yesssssssssssss. That's the good stuff.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 19, 2019 05:05
|
|
|
Ugh fine then maybe I'll write a Torchbearer review soon. Short version : the author really hates elves for some reason.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 19, 2019 07:25
|
|
|
Sorry, what does “pose” mean in this context?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 25, 2019 00:33
|
|
|
Huh. Cool. Never seen that before. I’d just assumed it was a typo the first time I read it. Also unrelated but I am actually drafting up a Torchbearer review, I just want to write ahead a chunk so updates aren’t “in real time”, so to speak. People who are competent, how much do you recommend writing in advance before you post content?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 25, 2019 00:41
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 11:54 |
|
|
I tried reading those crafting rules like 3 times and my eyes just slid right off them. Jesus christ.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 27, 2019 17:58
|
|