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

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Strange Matter: Oct 5, 2009; Ask me about Genocide

Evil Mastermind posted:

This is why Reign's random character creation option is so good. It works because a) you're starting with a baseline human and building up instead of having the D&D swingyness, and b) you're not just generating your abilities, you're also generating why you have those abilities. Hell, you can even mix the random chargen with pointbuy if you want.

Thank god the Reign character generator is saved on Wayback.

God I love REIGN's character generator. It's the only system I've seen where you can create a character with a fully fleshed out backstory that's probably more interesting and original than 99% of what Joe Roleplayer could ever come up with.

# ¿ Jan 13, 2016 01:30

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# ¿ Jan 25, 2025 16:58

Strange Matter: Oct 5, 2009; Ask me about Genocide

theironjef posted:

Our review wasn't really ask that much about Wick the guy anyway, just a few asides.

So one of our listeners(and a lurker here), just sent us a microwave sized box containing the following:

GURPS Discworld
GURPS Hellboy
Blue Planet (with Moderators Guide and Fluid Mechanics)
Feng Shui
Godlike (with Will To Power and some adventures)
Ray Wininnger's Underground
The Whispering Vault
Underworld
Kobolds Ate My Baby
Nexus: The Whispering City
Kult
Witch Hunter: the Invisible World
King Arthur Pendragon

And what I consider to be the Arkenstone of this hoard, Everway.

Amazingly we didn't have a single one of these yet. So good.

Woah, Godlike? I play Wild Talents regularly but I've never actually looked at its predecessor.

# ¿ Apr 14, 2016 12:49

Strange Matter: Oct 5, 2009; Ask me about Genocide

quote:

Nowhere in this game are there rules for becoming a god, the greatest of spells can be foiled by a bowman with good aim, and the greatest weapon in the world is a competent officer corps.

This right here is my favorite thing about REIGN, the way that magic is actually balanced against martial abilities. The worst nightmare for a mage isn't an equally powerful sorcerer who will duel them in a battle of world-shaking power, it's a single guy in good armor with a tower shield and a bunch of dice in Counterspell. For everything you can exploit to become individually powerful, there's something in the game that will bring you back down to earth.

# ¿ Apr 20, 2016 19:03

Strange Matter: Oct 5, 2009; Ask me about Genocide

Mors Rattus posted:

Rolls is where my problems with ORE lie. Well, rolls and dicepool sizes. Due to the way rolls work, large pools are important - dicepools below 5 are unlikely to have any matches at all, while those above 7 almost never fail. There is a very, very small sweet spot of competence.

EDIT: Beaten, in part, but the point below stands:

It's true that having greater than 7d pretty much guarantees success, but that's not really the point; having 7-10d in a pool isn't so much about getting a success as it is being able to absorb penalties from special moves and still get a success. If you have 10d, you can drop up to 3d from your pool to go for things like multiple actions or inclement conditions and still have a 93% chance of at least getting something done.

Conversely, you only need 4d to have even odds of getting a success, which is extremely easy to get. All characters have at least 1d in all their stats, so you only need to add 3d (and in ORE, having 2d in a Stat or Skill is considered baseline competence).

# ¿ Apr 20, 2016 20:12

Strange Matter: Oct 5, 2009; Ask me about Genocide

PurpleXVI posted:

Also having literally only one roll with two variables(length and width) sometimes means that some things clash in combat where, if I remember right, there are some odd interactions between the initiative and dodging/blocking rules.

This is actually kind of by design though. Combat in ORE is supposed to be brutal, with the attacker typically having an advantage over the defender. To block an attack, you first must choose to perform a blocking action, which unless you're using multiple actions locks you out of your own attack, and your defense set needs to beat both parts of the attacker's set.

REIGN mitigates this by introducing Martial Paths (particularly the School of the Insouciant Monkey and Iron Tortoise Techniques) which vastly improve the defender's ability to protect himself, but since Martial Paths are optional it's not something you'll come across all the time.

What this translates to is making ORE a system where the best defense is a good offense, because hitting your opponent first will knock a die off his highest set, so if you hit someone with a 3x5 before they can hit you, their attack falls to a 2x5, and a 2x attack would be broken entirely. This turns some people off I'm sure, but the trade-off is that combat with ORE is super fast and fun because once all the dice are rolled, just about anything can happen.

One of the best examples is in the Heroes of New Arcadia campaign on RPPR, in the pilot episode. One of the heroes was throwing up a forcefield around a group of villains, and another hero was trying to use his super speed to zoom in and beat them up, but when the dice were rolled, the forcefield had greater width, so it went up first and the speedster ended up careening off it.

# ¿ Apr 21, 2016 12:40

Strange Matter: Oct 5, 2009; Ask me about Genocide

Halloween Jack posted:

One of the things I like best about ORE is that in Wild Talents, particularly, it's very easy to oppose a power with a power. If Grodd throws a pile of bricks at a crowd, he rolls that as an attack, and Flash rolls his Speed power as a defensive pool to create Gobble Dice to stop it, trying to catch all the bricks. Plenty of games let you oppose a roll with a roll in a fairly freeform way, but ORE does it in such a way that you have clear guidelines for measuring the results either way.

That's a very unique strength of Wild Talents, in that they define a power as one of three Qualities: Attacks, Defends and Useful. And for Attacks and Defense, all powers are fundamentally equal unless a power has a specific flaw that would render it ineffective against another kind of Power. If you have "Pyromancy" as a Power and give it the Attacks and Defends Qualities, then you can use you fire to block a punch. How does that work? Well that's up to you to figure out! It's a an awesome balance of mechanics and freeform narration that I love.

I'd do a write-up on Wild Talents for F&F, since I've been playing it for like two years with my wife, but I doubt I'd have the time or talent to do it justice.

# ¿ Apr 21, 2016 13:20

Strange Matter: Oct 5, 2009; Ask me about Genocide

Wapole Languray posted:

Character Creation

Couple notes in this section that I really like:

quote:

One Roll is more unique, but it�s boring to explain: Roll 11d10, check all the set results and waste die on a series of charts that tells you what sorta stuff you get.

A little bit more detail on this which makes it, I think, the best conceived random character generator I've ever seen.

First off, it's completely balanced. Every outcome in the roll generator is worth 5 character points, with matched sets basically being with Widthx5 points, since each level of Width incorporates the stats granted to it by the lower levels. It also starts every character out with 2d in every Stat, which is the baseline for competency in ORE. The result is that the random char-gen system always pumps out 85 point characters of (mathematically at least) equal power to each other.

Within the system itself, Matched Sets basically give you Careers (assuming that "Beggar" and "Royal Blood" can be considered careers), while your Waste Dice are unusual events that have occurred in your life, such as being Exiled, working as a Gladiator, Kidnapped by Barbarians or Surviving a Hideous Occult Ritual. A couple of my favorites:

Served the Decadent Rich: Maybe you played the nose-fl ute behind a screen in a brothel, or were the towel steward at the Empress� private bathworks, or were the door guard at the royal seraglio. Whatever, you got to see society�s best at their worst.
+1 Fascinate, +2 Graces, +1 Plead, +1 Lie

Love Triangle: At some point, you were in love with her and she was in love with him. Or maybe she was in love with him and he was in love with you. Or maybe they were both in love with you and you didn�t want either. Whatever happened, there were lots of hurt feelings and regrets and probably at least one really embarrassing public scene.
Beauty (3), +1 Lie, +1 Plead, Mission: Find True Love

Vengeance Quest: They murdered your father! (Or maybe it was your husband, or sister, or child.) You�ve spent years honing yourself into an engine of vengeance. Now they must pay!
+2 Sword, the first two techniques of a Martial Path. The Path is up to you, but it must relate to Sword, Dodge or Parry.

(Stolze kind of dropped the ball a little bit here, since there's only actually one Martial Path in the REIGN core book pertaining to Sword, which is REIGN's iaido-inspired Path of the Razor Heart. It's not as a bad as the aforementioned Gladiator event, which grants you Martial Techniques in Spear, Dodge or Parry when there's never been ANY Spear paths in any official REIGN product)

And of course everyones favorite:

His Majesty�s Personal Cobbler: You made the most beautiful, most comfortable, most durable shoes in the entire kingdom, and as a result you are one of the relatively few people to have seen the monarch barefoot. Do you still have this exalted position? If not, what happened? If so, where�d all your money get to? (This result gives you a Skill in Student: Cobbler that costs more than you should really get from a single die, but� come on, it�s cobbling. You can make and fix shoes and other leather goods and that�s it. It�s not quite the lifesaver that a 4+MD Dodge Skill can be.)
+4+MD Student: Cobbler.

What's so cool about the system is that it doesn't just generate stats, it generates a character's entire history in a single dice roll, but since there's nothing telling you which event has to follow another, two characters with the exact same rolls, as unlikely as that is, can still have completely different backgrounds.

quote:

Advantages

[*]Beauty: You�re gorgeous! There�s three levels of this advantage, each giving a bigger bonus. With Beauty, whenever you roll the Fascinate (General charm and socialization) or Graces ( Etiquette and Protocol) skills, you can raise any set to a minimum. The one point beauty is a minimum height of 3, meanwhile the 5 point version bumps that up to a minimum of 10. Yeah, if you get 5 point Beauty, as long as you roll a set you can�t fail Fascinate or Graces rolls, and by definition at minimum tie any contests or opposed rolls.

Yeah I found it kind of odd that Beauty straight-up auto increases the Height of those skills, full stop. It apparently doesn't matter how actually charming or courtly you are-- you can be a total social failure and still get auto 10s whenever your roll Graces if you have Beauty (5). Any game that uses this Advantage really should have caveats attached to it that it should only work when it appearances really count.

quote:

[*]Cannibal Smile: You have abnormally strong jaws and sharpened teeth. You can perform a nasty bite attack in combat, and get a bonus to Intimidate rolls thanks to your scary smile.

I always found this Advantage weird, but it actually says a lot about the setting that it's the kind of place where someone might have their teeth sharpened to be more vicious in battle. It especially makes sense when you read about one of the Nations, the Truil Tribes.

quote:

[*]Knack for Learning: You pick a skill, and improving that skill now costs 1 XP less. This is a bad advantage, because there�s no reason to NOT pick it on your most-used skill. Every character would want this, no exceptions, as it would save you XP in the long run guaranteed. Though it�s only worth it if you know you�ll be maxing that skill out, so it�s not too broken. But, if you wanna specialize in a particular thing? This is a no-brainer.

Let's do the math here:

This comes up later, but to improve a skill after character creation, you spend XP equal to the next rank in the Skill that you're going for. So to level a skill from 2d to 3d, you spend 3 XP. as a result, it costs 15XP to bring a Skill from 0d to 5d, or indeed 14XP to go from 1d to 5d.

Now if you take this advantage, you're sacrificing another 1d in a Stat, a Master Die or straight-up buying 5d in a Skill. In return, you're reducing the cost of maxing out a 1d skill from 14 to 10 XP (1+2+3+4=10 instead of 2+3+4+5=14). Then again, you can promote a Skill die to ED for free (a 1 point saving) and an ED to MD for 4 XP instead of 5, so that does offset it, but really the math is pretty close to breaking even. I suppose the real draw here is how fast do you think you'll be accruing XP? If you're hitting your Problems regularly and completing missions, it might not take that long. On the whole, yes you might as well take it on your most-used skill, but I'm not sure it's as completely unbalanced as you say. It's really just a deferred cost.

quote:

Secret of the Dinda (4 Pts.): The swords that gave a nation its name are the finest known to mankind. They undoubtedly give an advantage to the nation that developed them, but more, there�s a point of pride in keeping outsiders from making swords of equal quality. A character must have at least an ED or five points in the Expert: Blacksmith Skill to learn the Secret of the Dinda. (Dinda are Not-Valyrian Steel, essentially. Swords made out of special metal.)

Dindas are also pretty explicitly Katanas, although I think the official art I've seen on the REIGN-wiki makes them look like a cross between hanzo steel and a Shamshir.

quote:

Problems
Problems are your general disadvantages, get them to get bonus XPs fi they cause problems. Except they don�t give you the XP at character creation. You get them for free, up to 3, but they only give you XP when they actually come up in the game to cause issues. If they never come up, you get no XP. Also, the Problems are all amazing.

Problems are pretty much the best application of Flaws to REIGN's Advantages/Merit system. Like in 7th Sea, it recognizes that things like having a Hated Enemy really are just ways for you to get more spotlight, so it doesn't award you with refunded character points. It's just a mechanized way to build those elements into your character's background, and I really like it.

# ¿ Apr 22, 2016 13:53

Strange Matter: Oct 5, 2009; Ask me about Genocide

Oh, one more REIGN Character Gen option that I missed, which is actually my favorite of the bunch:

quote:

Magnificent Garden: You had a really great garden, once. It was your pride and joy. It brought you happiness and tranquility. Now, it�s gone.
+5 Student: Plants and Herbs

It's so evocative. What happened to it? How do you feel about it? What are you going to do about it? Truly countless storytelling possibilities await.

# ¿ Apr 22, 2016 15:55

Strange Matter: Oct 5, 2009; Ask me about Genocide

Drat, I knew about the Black Thirst, but I forgot about the Spearman Squad.

That said, it's pretty easy to create your own Martial Paths, which I think is the implication here.

# ¿ Apr 22, 2016 17:33

Strange Matter: Oct 5, 2009; Ask me about Genocide

I dunno, I don't really like Uldholm as much as the other nations. They lack the craziness of the Truils, the weird social paradoxes of Dindavara and the desperate Machiavellian-ism of the Empire. They come across as being kind of banal, really. A nice place to live and visit but personally not one that inspires a lot of heroics.

# ¿ Apr 26, 2016 02:17

Strange Matter: Oct 5, 2009; Ask me about Genocide

Wapole Languray posted:

Uldholm fills an important place as the "normal" place in the setting, a safe fantasy kingdom that would be familiar to players without involving too much work. If you're introducing people to the game for the first time, Uldholm is where you would probably start. It's also the first area detailed to let you ease into the game a bit. There's plenty of fun adventure ideas: Dealing with Truil geurillas, military conspiracies from the Empire and Dindavara, Guild politicking, etc. just it doesn't go as out there as some later regions.

Fair enough. I suppose REIGN does need some middle ground of craziness to help ease the players into the world, given that you haven't even hinted at the really weird stuff going on with the setting.

# ¿ Apr 26, 2016 12:04

Strange Matter: Oct 5, 2009; Ask me about Genocide

unseenlibrarian posted:

Uld also make pretty good villains, since they're basically Prosperity Gospel assholes who sincerely believe the poor are poor because of moral failings and they have a right to drive the Truil out of their already crappy land because if the Truils were truly good people they wouldn't be scratching out a subsistence level existence in a sunless wasteland.

This works even better when you factor in their flamboyant fashion, which is soooo far beyond what the rest of the Nations dress like that it borders on alien. It's described as an "arms race of elaboration within the Weavers and Woodcarvers� Guild", which inevitably would lead to the 1600s nonsense of towering wigs and cravats. You could pretty easily turn them into something like the Capitol from Hunger Games.

# ¿ Apr 26, 2016 12:38

Strange Matter: Oct 5, 2009; Ask me about Genocide

Wapole Languray posted:

Oh, and a note about Uldholm: The Uld are explicitly black. Like, African-featured, very dark skinned, with tones describes as "earth colored". Just changing that, making the Uld black can suddenly change completely what images go through your head, yeah?

Pursuant to this, I'm not sure if you mentioned it previously but there are no non-human cultures in REIGN, and all but one are explicitly non-white. It's actually kind of refreshing and is one of the game's more unique aspects in the context of most other fantasy roleplaying games.

# ¿ Apr 27, 2016 12:09

Strange Matter: Oct 5, 2009; Ask me about Genocide

Holy smokes, Dog's conflict system is, like, nothing I've ever seen before. So basically the idea is that, against really thick-headed opponents you can escalate all the way up to lethal force if nobody is willing to give?

# ¿ May 13, 2016 14:51

Strange Matter: Oct 5, 2009; Ask me about Genocide

Doresh posted:

Oh crap. Now their elite pilots need actual talent again.

It's been years since I saw Victory but if I recall correctly its endgame revolves around the Monopoly Man trying to manipulate Lady Space Jesus into powering some kind of giant psychic space laser, so it's not entirely without its newtype nonsense, though none of the main characters are that.

Oh also suicide bikini rocket launcher squads and battleships built as giant motorcycles.

# ¿ Jun 9, 2016 19:44

Strange Matter: Oct 5, 2009; Ask me about Genocide

I was interested in Better Angels but when I started reading over the Stats and conflict rules my eyes kind of glazed over, so I'm interested in seeing how someone who knows the system better explains it.

# ¿ Jun 14, 2016 12:30

Strange Matter: Oct 5, 2009; Ask me about Genocide

Nessus posted:

You gotta look in the recommended media section and see if Jojo's is in there, because this is getting comically eerie in its precision.

I've never played Godlike but I've been playing it's successor Wild Talents on a weekly basis for like two years now and I can say that it's completely coincidental how well Jojo fits into it; and if anything Wild Talents fits it even better because it has a more robust power creation system. I think I've been subconsciously moving the game I've been playing in that direction more and more, in fact.

# ¿ Aug 30, 2016 12:55

Strange Matter: Oct 5, 2009; Ask me about Genocide

Halloween Jack posted:

Another note on this: another houserule might be to let Hypercool 7+ grant +1 effective Width for initiative, but no more. Or, Hypercool could add to Sense for determining the order in which characters declare actions--so you're not moving with superhuman efficiency, but you're so self-possessed you always have the chance to choose the optimal course of action.

This makes more sense; Hypercool should be about being centered and unfazed by battle, so it makes sense that it gives you the advantage when it comes to planning your moves.

It's interesting that these complex Stat effects were basically entirely stripped out of Wild Talents, except for Body to a certain extent. Had I known this before I started playing WT I probably would have incorporated them back-in in some way.

# ¿ Aug 31, 2016 15:17

Strange Matter: Oct 5, 2009; Ask me about Genocide

No but the Zeta and Double Zeta basically consume stray newtype ghosts as fuel.

# ¿ Oct 15, 2016 17:34

Strange Matter: Oct 5, 2009; Ask me about Genocide

It's kind of nice how the whole time through Godlike the timeline is being fairly ginger with Talent influence over real events, mostly relegating them to side missions with minimal relevance to actual events, and then Omaha Beach happens and it's total craziness. Especially the image of whole chunks of the beach being teleported into the ocean.

# ¿ Jan 11, 2017 21:20

Strange Matter: Oct 5, 2009; Ask me about Genocide

Halloween Jack posted:

Godlike, Chapter V, Part VIII

So what I'm getting from that is that Das Tragheit is basically the result of a player super min-maxing his character to be able to do exactly one thing that can kill anybody without Zed resistance. What a jerk.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2017 21:31

Strange Matter: Oct 5, 2009; Ask me about Genocide

Wild Talents (and maybe Godlike too, not sure yet) contains a section about outlining your own superhuman alternate history, and one of the parameters is basically Historical Inertia, where you describe how much of an impact the existence of superhumans have on major historical events. By that metric, Godlike has very high interia-- Talents affect historical events, but don't actually alter them very far off from how they really occurred.

# ¿ Mar 21, 2017 19:16

Strange Matter: Oct 5, 2009; Ask me about Genocide

xanthan posted:

Something something dark is evil and a lack thinking the implications through. Also ignorance of how beings that love underground tend to actually look.

Yet more reasons why REIGN is the best fantasy setting, because its lily-white people are savages from the sunless armpit of the world.

# ¿ Apr 19, 2017 18:13

Strange Matter: Oct 5, 2009; Ask me about Genocide

bewilderment posted:

I read Stephenson books to have a fun story and also kind of learn interesting asides (that may or may not be true - good to look that sort of thing up later). He puts a lot of research into his work but isn't afraid to change things for the sake of a story.

But on a personal level he seems to lean a bit libertarian and while I don't think he's a neoreactionary, a lot of them use his terminology and language.

And REAMDE was awful.

REAMDE is a dumb book for three-quarters of its length but the final 1/4th is actually kind of awesome. Not really worth the slog to get through it though.

# ¿ Apr 27, 2017 00:44

Strange Matter: Oct 5, 2009; Ask me about Genocide

MonsieurChoc posted:

Neal Stephenson wrote the Baroque Cycle, which are both his best books and the most 7th Sea thing ever written.

When I learned about 7th Sea my first thought was "Cool, I can play the Baroque Cycle with this!"

# ¿ Apr 27, 2017 19:27

Strange Matter: Oct 5, 2009; Ask me about Genocide

Halloween Jack posted:

Pvt. Anthony �The Stripper� Colombadas is a good kid from Long Island. He spent his formative years as a thug and a petty criminal, but only to support his mother and siblings. He volunteered out of patriotism, and discovered his power during training while being bullied by visiting colonel. He�s proved himself an effective commando trainee with or without his power, and is well-liked by everyone for his sense of humour. He�d like to see his family�s ancestral home in Portaferrio, Italy before returning home.

Anthony�s nickname comes from his power to teleport clothes--and only clothes. His power can�t steal weapons or ammo, but it does steal lightweight effects like wallets and maps. (Rendering someone stark naked on a battlefield also tends to have a psychological effect.)

All of these guys are amazing, but this guy has my mind spinning. Does it work at range? Can he affect multiple people at once? How far away can he teleport the clothing?

So many questions.

# ¿ May 8, 2017 12:50

Strange Matter: Oct 5, 2009; Ask me about Genocide

Night10194 posted:

A commando who can teleport maps and documents to himself also sounds really goddamn useful.

I wonder if it's discerning enough for that. Like can you just teleport some guy's left boot, or is full frontal or nothing?

Then again if you know the guy has a map your CO probably won't care if you also snatched the pants he was keeping it in too (unless you don't want them knowing you took it).

# ¿ May 8, 2017 16:58

Strange Matter: Oct 5, 2009; Ask me about Genocide

Halloween Jack posted:

Godlike doesn't address using your power on someone you perceive via television, because it's not an issue. (Sure, someone could set up an experiment with an iconoscope, but who cares?) But Wild Talents has a universal range chart, based on your die pool, and range maxes out at about 5,000 yards. And by default, powers require actual line of sight.

Otherwise, the Godlike/WT universe ends the moment a crazed supervillain starts flipping through TV channels, using whatever power to assassinate Eisenhower, Krushchev, Mao, Attlee, Walter Cronkite, Jack Benny, and Captain Video.

Wild Talents does, however, have the "On Sight" Extra which allows powers to work through a transmitted image as long as it's live (presumably). As you mentioned, it's got some terrifying implications.

# ¿ May 8, 2017 19:01

Strange Matter: Oct 5, 2009; Ask me about Genocide

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

Random Rolling in Reign allows you to play as the King's Personal Cobbler who got kidnapped by barbarians, forced into participating in deadly chariot races before finally joining a mystic academy and training to become a mighty sorcerer.

# ¿ May 9, 2017 13:23

Strange Matter: Oct 5, 2009; Ask me about Genocide

Precambrian posted:

While I'm annoyed that someone's bruised ego is making you take down the review, I'm glad that I was reminded of Middenarde, a game supposedly of grim, brutal medieval life where this

*BIRDEMIC*

is a possible situation, entirely supported by the rules.

Is Middenarde the game where you can measure the energy of a serf rolling down a hill in Joules, powering your wizard's diabolical plans? Or am I confusing it with another GRITTY MEDIEVAL GAME?

# ¿ May 23, 2017 18:47

Strange Matter: Oct 5, 2009; Ask me about Genocide

Red Metal posted:

no, you roll them down the hill in order to bring them back from the dead

Okay that makes much more sense.

# ¿ May 23, 2017 20:03

Strange Matter: Oct 5, 2009; Ask me about Genocide

Halloween Jack posted:

Just wanted to say I've really enjoyed this review. I've been playing Wild Talents for years but never touched Godlike, and this hasn't given me a lot of insight as to where the system originated from.

# ¿ May 25, 2017 19:38

Strange Matter: Oct 5, 2009; Ask me about Genocide

theironjef posted:

Yeah, and our first huge 4+ hour recording session this Saturday, now that we have our absolutely ridiculous characters. I think we're basically going to be playing with a high risk of death to encourage more crazy characters.

Oh also here's our next episode of System Mastery. We reviewed a weird little game called Exquisite Replicas which is... basically They Live except with Anonymous instead of Rowdy Roddy Piper and Keith David. A significant downgrade.

When was this game published? The Insanity System is clearly borrowed from Unknown Armies, buts its implementation feels kind of like UA 3rd Edition which just came out.

# ¿ Jun 21, 2017 15:08

Strange Matter: Oct 5, 2009; Ask me about Genocide

oriongates posted:

Well, SOMA did a really good job with it, although reduced to its purest form in the sense that there is no teleporter and everyone is just an electronic copy of someone...but the main character just can't wrap his head around the fact that when he is "downloaded" it doesn't mean the original magically disappears.

GANTZ played with it in an interesting way since the characters are copied (they refer to it as being faxed, which is a good way to sum up the analogy) just before death with their original bodies being erased...except in one case where the original survived her death leading to a clone situation.

Hannu Rajaneimi's Quantum Thief novels also kind of tackle the problem head on, to the point where the two major transhuman organizations in the solar system went to war over the issue. The Sobornost, a civilization of endlessly copied uploaded human minds, believed that as long as the memories and thought patterns are the same then there's no issue. The Zoku, a culture of minds (descended from MMO-clans) distributed across quantum networks, were firmly in the camp of the "no-clone theorem" that you need continuity of substance to preserve a person's innate self-ness.

# ¿ Jun 22, 2017 14:21

Strange Matter: Oct 5, 2009; Ask me about Genocide

theironjef posted:

I really want to revisit that but I don't think FATE was going to be the right toolkit for us. Now I'm not sure what to do with it, I love the world for it so much.

Fung Shui?

# ¿ Jun 27, 2017 13:28

Strange Matter: Oct 5, 2009; Ask me about Genocide

Flavivirus posted:

I played in a long campaign of Tribe8 (which would be well worth an F&F if I had the books) and yeah, silhouette really doesn't work that well. For one thing, as your damage is a flat value multiplied by your roll's margin of success, it was far better to be an agility monkey hitting people with a huge MoS using your dagger than a big dude using a great sword to slightly graze your enemies on a hit.

That certainly backs up the meme I'm familiar with that Silhouette is the platonic ideal of "Dexterity is the God Stat".

# ¿ Sep 13, 2017 18:45

Strange Matter: Oct 5, 2009; Ask me about Genocide

Halloween Jack posted:

dexisthegodstat.txt

efb

Are there any mecha games where this isn't the case that aren't Fate-style make-em-ups? The whole "problem" with mecha is that because the players are pilots, the expectation is that they'll need good reflexes, so it makes sense for Dex to be important. The obvious way to go is to divide Dexinto a bunch of very specific skills or stats (Precision, Response, Anticipation or whatever) so that, while everyone obviously has excellent reflexes they're still specialized. Has any actual system done anything like that?

# ¿ Sep 13, 2017 18:51

Strange Matter: Oct 5, 2009; Ask me about Genocide

So Monte Cooke believes that players should be able to have a cool narrative influence over the game about 10% of time. Truly a ground-breaking system.

# ¿ Sep 19, 2017 12:11

Strange Matter: Oct 5, 2009; Ask me about Genocide

gradenko_2000 posted:

You joke, but there's no shortage of "and then ... he rolled a natural 20! oh man it was the best!" stories across this hobby.

I mean, that's no excuse for the design, but some people genuinely believe that.

So basically then the system is designed to codify those stories as core game mechanics, whereas every tabletop group in history has been doing that since the dawn of the medium.

It's such a shame too since the Numenera game world is so cool. I'd love to run it in, say, Reign or something similar (which actually HAS balanced Martial vs Magical mechanics!)

# ¿ Sep 19, 2017 13:43

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# ¿ Jan 25, 2025 16:58

Strange Matter: Oct 5, 2009; Ask me about Genocide

gradenko_2000 posted:

No. Monte Cook's Invisible Sun costs 300 bucks. That's the one that Cook was saying players should buy for their GM as a gift.

Has there been a Fatal and Friends on Invisible Sun? I feel like I've seen one and just laughed at how important and beloved Monte Cooke thinks he is. He's like the American McGee of tabletop games.

# ¿ Sep 19, 2017 14:11

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

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