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Xiahou Dun
Jul 16, 2009

We shall dive down through black abysses... and in that lair of the Deep Ones we shall dwell amidst wonder and glory forever.



Yeah this isn't fun anymore and just makes me worried about the author's mental state. Not gonna armchair psychologist or whatever, but that reads a lot like what my friend with sever bi-polar disorder writes sometimes.

Also tracking number of stomachs????????????????????????????????

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Xiahou Dun
Jul 16, 2009

We shall dive down through black abysses... and in that lair of the Deep Ones we shall dwell amidst wonder and glory forever.



1) I didn't expect Hams to make a reference to actual real historical fencing from Spain. That's a pretty deep pull. Good for them.

2) Purple : as someone who runs a lot of horror games, I really love and appreciate the X-Card as a mechanic. Horror games are inherently about riding a line between fun and disgust and it's really handy to have constant player feedback. Obviously I talk to my players about broad themes and stuff before the game but even then you can over-step a boundary that someone didn't know they had, and I don't want to make anyone uncomfortable because horror is kind of all about doing scary things but in a safe environment.

Like to give a random movie example, as someone who has watched horror movies all their life I'm pretty immune to violence in movies. But when I got to That Scene in Bone Tomahawk I still was pretty freaked out. Now that was still fine for me, if getting towards the edge of my tolerance, but I can totally see someone who wasn't as inured to horror poo poo getting freaked out and if I was GMing something like that I'd want the feedback that I'd over-stepped. (Not that I would. I think describing gore in RPG's is pretty facile and juvenile and I prefer creeping dread, but the same would apply.)

3) If you put a person through a meat grinder, you wouldn't get noodles. This was clearly written by a person who doesn't know how noodles or meat grinders work. Making meat noodles would be a loving nightmare and you'd need to add a bonding agent waaaaay stronger than making say meatballs and then you'd have to flour the poo poo out of them and then I don't know how you'd actually cook them that wouldn't just turn it back into a hamburger. The person who wrote this clearly doesn't know anything about cooking and I'm deeply offended by their lack of taste. I'm so angry I don't care about the pun.

Xiahou Dun
Jul 16, 2009

We shall dive down through black abysses... and in that lair of the Deep Ones we shall dwell amidst wonder and glory forever.



PurpleXVI posted:

See, I'm totally on board with telling people that: "If poo poo crosses your red lines, you can say no and things stop/you can leave the table with no judgments." But something about calling it THE X-CARD rather than just "say no if it weirds you out/terrifies you in an unfun way" just grates on me.

It's probably entirely on me that it pisses me off, but it just feels like an immature way of handling it.

For whatever reasons, making it an explicit mechanic makes people waaaaaaaay more likely to invoke it. Probably something about psychology and socialization. Lots of people find it much easier to hold up a card than say, "Hey guys, this is a bit much, could we not?" I can agree that if the latter were natural it might lead to a better civilization, possibly, but that's not the reality we live in so just use the X-Card mechanic and make everyone happier.

Now I'll entirely agree that if a game is trying to solve actual problems in their writing with the X-Card mechanic that's hosed up and dumb. It's fundamentally about honing in on the tone everyone wants out of a game, but everyone still needs to be vaguely aiming in the same ballpark ; it works fine for making sure that everyone has a comfortable amount of body-horror in a game about doing Cronenberg poo poo, but if someone tries to do a rape scene in Golden Sky Stories we've obviously gone beyond that point.

Basically it's a very good mechanic that I think should be in all horror RPG's and also many others, but has been sometimes misused and misapplied.


Night10194 posted:

They add more silliness with the focus on reciting exactly what you're doing while you're fighting, but yes, the Diestros are basically using Destreza style fencing.

Also given the obvious Princess Bride influence, it's fitting they'd still use a real fencing style; the styles Inigo references as he and Wesley fight and talk about their tactics are all real fencing masters and fight-books, after all.

E: I like the Diestros so much because I really enjoy stories about martial arts styles and schools and things, since I used to both fence and practice martial arts before my arthritis stopped me. So I enjoy reliving that stuff through PCs and I'm glad they're in the game.

I also see that, but I'm annoyed by the Princess Bride (despite loving the movie as it's amazing) because they list that poo poo but don't do any of it. Like they did all this research to actually list historical fencing masters, and then just do Errol Flynn style stage fighting. Which is fine. I have no beef with that. It looks good on the screen. But I would have honestly preferred they did made up names.

It's like how I love hard sci-fi, or science fantasy technobabble, but the bits in between piss me off. I'm fine with fiction caring or not giving a poo poo, but I want it to decide on a level and stick with it.

Xiahou Dun
Jul 16, 2009

We shall dive down through black abysses... and in that lair of the Deep Ones we shall dwell amidst wonder and glory forever.



Zereth posted:

Not to mention that there's a good chance that other people might say "No" to the "could we not" request, while if they say no to the x-card they're breaking the rules.

Yes this is also an excellent point that I hadn’t considered. I basically only play with friends who are chill so I’ve only had the mechanic used like twice, but this is a very good thing to keep in mind.

Xiahou Dun
Jul 16, 2009

We shall dive down through black abysses... and in that lair of the Deep Ones we shall dwell amidst wonder and glory forever.



Wait how the sweet hell is an eyepatch a "prudent tool" for a blacksmith?

Cause when I think of careful and effective things for dealing with hot metal and swinging hammers, it's something that ruins my depth perception while only maybe protecting a very tiny portion of my face. It's like having a cup that only covers one ball and saying it makes you better at sex.

Yes, I'm going for complete pedantry because I'm trying to drink less and dealing with the substance of Beast is anathema to that.

Xiahou Dun
Jul 16, 2009

We shall dive down through black abysses... and in that lair of the Deep Ones we shall dwell amidst wonder and glory forever.



Double post but I don't want this to get lost in an edit : Kurieg do you have a bigger version of that cave misty image? I can almost read some of it and I bet you it's hilariously dumb. I definitely see some Chinese but the characters are kind of smudged and smushed, and then I can see some Russian but my Cyrillic's bad enough that I can't read some of the faded characters and I don't want to go to my Russian-speaking colleagues and hand them a nerd image and ask them what they say.

Xiahou Dun
Jul 16, 2009

We shall dive down through black abysses... and in that lair of the Deep Ones we shall dwell amidst wonder and glory forever.



I did my best guess on the Russian transcription and texted it to someone who's Russian is much better than mine, so we'll see.

And I zoomed in on the Chinese and what I can make of it is total gibberish even assuming they hosed up the characters and wrote them wrong. (Like having to pretend parts of the characters are different things to even make them characters.)

Plus there's like a swirly thing that is just straight up nothing. It's like "gauze/maybe a surname???? little [might as well be shrimp emoji for all it means] [thing that might be half of tiger if I was really drunk, I guess?]". Basically it's the written equivalent of racist ching-chong noises, is what I'm getting at.

Beast. Beast, you always just find new bedrock to dig through, don't you?

Xiahou Dun
Jul 16, 2009

We shall dive down through black abysses... and in that lair of the Deep Ones we shall dwell amidst wonder and glory forever.



megane posted:

It's obvious that the authors realize, on some level, that Beasts are just the crappy 4Kids version of werewolves. They can't even come up with one single shred of imagery that hasn't already been done much better by the woofs (or sometimes by vamps). And at the same time, the few things that make werewolves interesting had to be filed off lest they conflict with whatever pretty princess original character somebody wanted to play as a Beast.

Hey now hey now. Credit where credit is due :

I'm pretty sure Beast has stolen from ALL the other, much better game-lines at this point.

Xiahou Dun
Jul 16, 2009

We shall dive down through black abysses... and in that lair of the Deep Ones we shall dwell amidst wonder and glory forever.



Uh what?

Xiahou Dun
Jul 16, 2009

We shall dive down through black abysses... and in that lair of the Deep Ones we shall dwell amidst wonder and glory forever.



I'm really annoyed that Eclipse Phase color-coded their monster entries, but one of the colors is literally loving invisible.

Is this a game for loving mantis shrimp or something? Why the hell would you do that?

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Xiahou Dun
Jul 16, 2009

We shall dive down through black abysses... and in that lair of the Deep Ones we shall dwell amidst wonder and glory forever.



Except I thought that was a joke in Paranoia.

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