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

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

golden bubble: Jun 3, 2011; yospos

In theory, Play Dirty says to be fan of the players, but an enemy of their PCs. That way their triumphs will be that much sweeter for the struggle. In practice, I'm not sure Wick has the skill to practice what he preaches.

# ¿ Apr 12, 2016 22:47

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# ¿ Apr 18, 2024 14:15

golden bubble: Jun 3, 2011; yospos

potatocubed posted:

At this point Sylvester's all out of fancy tricks, so he's probably going to get ro-sham-bo'd into oblivion.

So by the numbers, I'd back the bird.

Nice to see that some people still haven't learned from D&D's housecat problem.

# ¿ Jun 11, 2016 04:58

golden bubble: Jun 3, 2011; yospos

Comrade Gorbash posted:

Not really. Heavy armor never really became realistic for the average soldier, and the shield was still common right up to (and in some cases beyond) the invention of firearms.

It was the firearm, and particularly the musket, that put paid to swords as a primary arm. There were infantry who relied on the sword all the way up to the point that firearms drove all purely hand-to-hand weapons into secondary roles. But they tended to be specialists - either a counter to a specific opponent, or part of a warrior class (knights and samurai and so forth). The spear dominated the battlefield in the sense that far more combatants used them than they did swords.

The one major exception was the Roman system of the Republic and the principate. Roman armies relied on the sword as the killing weapon in a way pretty much no other military force did before or since.

While full body armor never became common, munition armour is a thing in early modern Europe. During the age of pike and shot, people put in orders for tens of thousands of one-size-"fits"-all steel breastplates. While while-spread armor didn't completely drive out the shield, there is a movement from huge kite shields to smaller stuff like bucklers.

# ¿ Aug 23, 2016 23:05

golden bubble: Jun 3, 2011; yospos

Tatum Girlparts posted:

that loving sleeve bugs me so much. At first I thought it was part of the chest, like an underhsirt thing that was meant to recreate the whole 'one arm free so you can get your sword easy' style and was like 'that's dumb but ok' but only now, looking at it fully, I see it's just a rando sleeve.

Why would one of the empire's best warriors want this, Wick, why would she tell her smith 'yea I need armor...no no, for my upper body I just want to protect my tits and ONE arm. No trust me on this I got it'.

To be fair, there are a lot of stories where an author commissions art of an armored amazon, only to discover just what the artist considers to be armor.

# ¿ Aug 26, 2016 04:08

golden bubble: Jun 3, 2011; yospos

RocknRollaAyatollah posted:

tl;dr The author has a false premise due to using English sources and is mostly incorrect. Bushido existed for centuries but is very complex, varies between authors, and is more of a guide of what a samurai should be, not what they are or were. It's mostly finding a high place in Confucianism for a group that Confucius viewed as being detrimental to society.

So basically the difference between what chivalry is for late Medieval writers, and what chivalry is for late Medieval knights and men-at-arms.

# ¿ Aug 30, 2016 06:42

golden bubble: Jun 3, 2011; yospos

Rand Brittain posted:

Would anybody be interested in doing an F&F of Fortitude: By the Docks of Big Lake? I feel like it's exactly the kind of thing that would improve my mood right now, but they weren't hugely popular when I did Chuubo reviews myself. Maybe some other Jenna fan would be into it?

That sounds great. I heard it was like middle-school aged kids reenacting creation myths, and that just makes me curious how such a bizarre concept would be implemented.

# ¿ Nov 14, 2016 06:34

golden bubble: Jun 3, 2011; yospos

Rand Brittain posted:

Maybe? I'm honestly not familiar with his movies, although maybe I should be.

It's a slice-of-life fantasy adventure, so the book mostly reflects what it's actually like to live in Fortitude, and the places and things you might be doing when it comes time to have a Shared Reactions or Adversity scene.

I'll give you a sample!

I'm down for Wes Anderson: the RPG: the Setting book. At least it will distract from how the CoD seems to have failed to learn from the problems of the oWoD, somehow.

# ¿ Nov 15, 2016 19:47

golden bubble: Jun 3, 2011; yospos

Josef bugman posted:

Was jack Vance good and Gygax bad?

That Old Tree posted:

Well, Vance wasn't writing a game rulebook.

There's a big difference between technical writing and creative writing. It's perfectly acceptable to have multiple interpretations and long winded metaphorical flourishes in fiction or fluff. But when it is time to write the rules, clarity trumps all. Humans aren't perfect, so Errata and FAQs are necessary. But requiring lengthy errata and FAQs is not desirable.

# ¿ Feb 21, 2017 19:48

golden bubble: Jun 3, 2011; yospos

LuiCypher posted:

So did this one, and America fielded it.

To be fair, that occurred because the Brits weren't willing to wait two years for Sherman production to begin. So they rushed out a thing with a 75mm cannon from zero to mass production in 9 months without using any of the serious facilities earmarked for Sherman manufacturing.

Also, what the hell are "spells: special for beautiful women"?

# ¿ Apr 7, 2017 23:07

golden bubble: Jun 3, 2011; yospos

thatbastardken posted:

when all you have as a surgical tool is amputations, you look for faster ways to cut.

this dude would have loved a chainsaw

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Liston

To be fair, speed was life in surgery back then. Dr. Robert Liston only lost about 10% of his patients, compared to the average of 25% mortality from surgery. We're just lucky enough to live when surgeons don't have to be speedrunners who carry a third bloody scalpel in their mouth. But the man could amputate a limb in under 30 seconds sometimes.

# ¿ Jun 17, 2017 19:37

golden bubble: Jun 3, 2011; yospos

open_sketchbook posted:

Though the 60s are hardly the most terrifying time in regards to treatment of atomic weaponry. I mean, we actually transported and stored atomic weapons in South Vietnam, to be cracked out if Red China decided to go for round two with the US army, but... before the invention of the thermonuclear device and the subsequent reorganization of the US nuclear arsenal, the US Army just wanted to treat atomic weapons as bigger conventional explosives. We all laugh at the Davy Crockett now, but it was produced in the same era that the B-36 was being prepared as a nuclear carpet bomber, and it was seriously expected that the future of warfare lay in a primarily-atomic arsenal and armies racing to capture territory before they started pissing blood and their bone marrow died. A serious emotional examination of the human costs associated with strategies which categorized soldiers as time units by exposure could be really powerful.

The pentomic division concept was absolute madness. Nuclear-tipped 40kTon artillery shells and "Honest John" rocket artillery with your choice of 30kTon nuclear warheads or sarin gas warheads in every single division. In fact, the whole reason the Soviets developed the BMP-1, thus driving the development of the M2 Bradley, was the belief that the battlefield would have too much radiation/biological weapons/poison gas for foot soldiers to function at all. So they need an environmentally sealed vehicle to allow any of their infantry to function.

# ¿ Oct 3, 2017 21:00

golden bubble: Jun 3, 2011; yospos

MonsieurChoc posted:

The Ken Burns documentary series is really good. I haven't finished it yet, because goddamn is the Vietnam War depressing.

I think the worst part of Vietnam War apologia/revisionism is forgetting the Vietnamese. In fact, their viewpoint is almost never talked about in Vietnam, as well as the incredibly stupid reason for the war.

There's some decent articles up about the Vietnamese experience. Of course, they're personal accounts decades after the fact, and they aren't as rigorous as proper academic studies. But I think it gives a good idea of what S.Vietnamese veterans and N. Vietnamese remember of the war. Yes, even the Cracked interview is interesting.

The new L5R game does look interesting, but it still looks fiddly. Of course, I don't think it would be L5R if it wasn't fiddly.

# ¿ Oct 9, 2017 18:22

golden bubble: Jun 3, 2011; yospos

PurpleXVI posted:

Reminds me of that one story, "the path less taken," or something similar, where humans were the only ones without easy and simple, antigravity and hyperdrives, and as a result we were also the only ones with stuff like combustion engines, jet fighters and machineguns. At which point a group of ALIEN IMPERIALISTS show up... in their spaceships that are basically the equivalent of colonial-era sailships and with blackpowder guns, and we kill most of them, take their hyperdrives, and the aliens are like. "oh wait gently caress now THESE guys have hyperdrives" and that's where the short story ends.

I believe that story had a follow-up where human imperialists are just chatting about a new planet they found, until they realize this alien civilization managed to get even further without discovering that one easy trick to hyperdrives, and poo poo themselves.

# ¿ Nov 13, 2017 21:03

golden bubble: Jun 3, 2011; yospos

Hunt11 posted:

As in?

Most Gundam protagonists are good at war with giant robots. But their true calling is usually to improve the world using their physic communications powers or idealism. Typically, the final battle involves overcoming the antagonist's ideals in a giant robot debate-fight. In Iron Blood Orphans, the protagonist does not have physic powers or exceptional idealism, Mikazuki Augus is just really, really, really good at killing dudes in a giant robot. Also the second season of Iron Blood Orphans is all about how you can't just kill your way to a better world, with a very unorthodox final battle at the end.

# ¿ Dec 4, 2017 23:29

golden bubble: Jun 3, 2011; yospos

Alternatively, it might be related to Thomas Laqueur's theories on gender. He believes that some ancient people believed in there was only one sex, male. This belief, which can be traced to Aristotle and Galen, says that females are not a separate sex, but merely imperfect males that lacked "vital heat". It also says that wombs and vaginas are inverted penises, and female fluids were undeveloped forms of semen. This idea is extremely sexist, but strangely trans-friendly. The misogynistic believers thought that females could become males by absorbing "vital heat", causing their "imperfect" wombs to transform into a "perfect" penis.

# ¿ Nov 30, 2018 23:10

golden bubble: Jun 3, 2011; yospos

With black powder rifles, the residue from the gunpowder would completely clog up the rifle grooves in two to three shots, and a clogged rifle is nearly impossible to load with a traditionally lead ball. That's why the major armies never used rifles in large numbers until the development of the Mini� ball, which reduced the amount of residue and made it possible to load a partially clogged rifle. I assume warpstone bullets have a similar effect on the rifling.

# ¿ Dec 10, 2018 07:05

golden bubble: Jun 3, 2011; yospos

Robindaybird posted:

Jackson gets well-deserved backlash in modern day for being a horrific person, but Johnson tends to go under the radar but he is no less heinous.

Johnson only goes under the radar, because pop history tends to forget he exists, along with every other president between Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt. But a quick Wikipedia search reveals that academics have considered Johnson as a bottom-tier president since the civil rights movement.

# ¿ Jan 22, 2019 19:31

golden bubble: Jun 3, 2011; yospos

Mors Rattus posted:

Emerald Empire: Rice Balls

Samurai in the cities eat well - vegetables, meat, fish and lots of rice. White rice is everywhere. Served in a bowl, used for sushi and rice balls, brewed into sake, and made into the rice vinegar used with nearly every meal. Brown rice is sometimes eaten or used for mochi, rice cakes or aromatic rice (a food brought in by the Unicorn) regionally, white is by far more common in nearly any samurai meal. Peasants get less variation, mostly eating barley, or millet for the poor ones. Merchants and other wealthy peasants of the city might eat rice often, however, and even get meat or fish sometimes. After rice, but not far after, are noodles of buckwheat or wheat flour, or sometimes yams. Seafood and especially fish is also common anywhere near the coast, as well as anywhere inland that can get ahold of river and lake fish. Poultry - mainly chicken, pheasant and more rarely turkey - is widely used for meat and eggs. Soybeans make up the rest of the proteins most Rokugani eat, as they can grow nearly anywhere. Most soybeans are turned into tofu, but it's also used for soy sauce and miso paste. Besides fish, seafood includes fresh and dried seaweed, and the common vegetables of the Empire are cabbage, kale, yams, burdock, carrots, radishes and onions. Plums, apricots, pears, cherries and apples are common fruits.

Beriberi (Vitamin B12 deficiency) was a major issue in countries that love white rice. In the historical Edo period, beriberi was called the city disease. The second to last Shogun, Tokugawa Iemochi, died of beriberi. Several decades later, his wife, the aunt of Emperor Meiji, also died of beriberi. Beriberi was the scourge of the Imperial Japanese Navy during the late 19th century. Until they added a bunch of barley to the naval rations, every long distance voyage with the Imperial Japanese Navy had well over a dozen dead sailors from beriberi. During the Russo-Japanese war, beriberi killed almost half as many Japanese soldiers as the entire Russian army.

# ¿ Jan 25, 2019 15:05

golden bubble: Jun 3, 2011; yospos

When the US army released their report, they blamed the loss on bad ammo and designs causing the Springfield trapdoor to jam in combat. It caused the entire army to switch from copper cased ammo to brass-cased ammo. Modern battlefield archaeology suggests this was a lie, and the Springfield trapdoor was as reliable as the best lever-action rifles of the time.

golden bubble fucked around with this message at 06:48 on Feb 1, 2019

# ¿ Feb 1, 2019 06:45

golden bubble: Jun 3, 2011; yospos

What was the name of the Japanese RPG about GGundam/Clan lawyers* in post-apocalyptic Australia?

*All legal cases are decided through trial by giant robot combat.

# ¿ Mar 5, 2019 18:00

golden bubble: Jun 3, 2011; yospos

Night10194 posted:

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Old World Armory

A Best Codpiece isn't a waste, it's an investment

One of the things I appreciate about Fantasy, and this gets it across, is that it's much more colorful than most Dark Fantasy settings. People try to put in bright dyes and pretty colors. They wear nicely tailored clothes. They put a lot of their effort into making art and architecture and fantastic codpieces. It's just usually got mud on it, or your fancy new doublet already has a couple patches because you wore it to an adventure and got shot a couple times. The pretty, but worn and lived-in look that the setting usually has is a big step up from everything being drab shitfarming all the time.

...

The most important takeaway is that almost everyone wears colored clothing. Also, anything white doesn't stay white long.There's enough here to properly play dress up, and really, that's part of the appeal of playing an early modern Adventurer, isn't it? As silly as it can be, I like these bits and pieces on what the people of the Empire actually wear, eat, and do and I'm glad the book is more about this and less about giving direct stats to eighty varieties of polearm. I will be skipping the long section on carrying equipment, though, because that kind of stuff is pretty useless even within the game. No-one really cares that you need more than one pack to carry X amount of encumbrance. Especially with encumbrance being an optional rule, anyway. That kind of stuff doesn't tell you much about material culture and is really just filling out wordcount.

That reminds me of an interview with a historical consultant for Vikings. He mentioned that the wealthiest and most powerful Viking leaders would wear fine pants with white and other bright colors, to prove they were rich enough to maintain such easily stained clothes. But the show decided not to include this, because they didn't want scared badass Ragnar Lothbrok to walk around in "clown pants."

# ¿ Mar 19, 2019 18:22

golden bubble: Jun 3, 2011; yospos

To add onto HRE/Warhams love, here is an example of what the richest merchant in town could do.

https://twitter.com/EmpireRomanHoly/status/1105437448505606144

# ¿ Mar 20, 2019 16:31

golden bubble: Jun 3, 2011; yospos

By popular demand posted:

A spite house isn't enough, I want a motherfucking spite-town!

Ghost Leviathan posted:

I'm entirely sure there's historical precedent for this.

When Khosrow I, Shah of Shahs of Persia, conquered Antioch, he deported all the survivors of Antioch and forced them to build a new city along the Tigris river. The new city was named Wēh Antīōk Khosrow, or Better Than Antioch, Khosrow Built This.

# ¿ Apr 21, 2019 05:37

golden bubble: Jun 3, 2011; yospos

Hot Take: character creation should be based off of Galaxy Trucker

# ¿ Jun 3, 2019 04:28

golden bubble: Jun 3, 2011; yospos

For all the eastern trappings, the Realm feels more like an Roman empire than a Chinese or Japanese empire. The haphazard succession, the powerless but important senate, and the structure of the legions feels rather Roman. Plus, the relationship between the Immaculate and the empress seems more like Christian caesaropapism than the messy and mercurial relationships between emperors and monks in eastern empires.

# ¿ Jun 5, 2019 20:31

golden bubble: Jun 3, 2011; yospos

Also, the books explicitly support making an ancient Chinese transformed animal who is incredibly disappointed at their descendants as a character motivation.

# ¿ Jun 11, 2019 21:18

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# ¿ Apr 18, 2024 14:15

golden bubble: Jun 3, 2011; yospos

JcDent posted:

What about Hosts and idigham? Can you apply Gun to them?

I think you need bullets made from their ban. So every single Host and Idigham requires a Buffy episode where you figure out its weakness before killing it with this week's special bullet.

# ¿ Sep 5, 2019 14:16

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