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It all sounds very CHIM, which I wouldn't really consider a draw... What book(s) would be best for getting into the setting if I don't care about the attached rules systems? The Guide currently under review?
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# ¿ Sep 4, 2017 16:10 |
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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 14:14 |
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Alien Rope Burn posted:The very notion of a "war for souls" as posited by some Medieval Catholics (and part of the mindset that would lead to the early Inquisition) already led to horrific results in the real world; the notio of performing battlefield conversions on enemy soldiers and then killing them before they could recant was seen as a very practical matter. That's part why you wanted confessions from heretics, so you could then go and execute people after they admit their wrongdoing and hope that their souls entered God's ledger instead of Satan's. Of course, that's also why heresy had to be stamped out before it could spread, because souls going to the other side was untenable. The notion that one is tallying a score for Heaven that'll get counted in the Apocalypse - and one we better win if we're going to come out of that proper - I think is more horrifying for what it leads people to in life than the notion of what might happen after it, which is pretty abstract. Hello! I was reading through my backlog on this thread, and this very much caught my eye, so I cautiously wanted to ask if you had more to share about it?
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# ¿ Nov 28, 2017 21:09 |
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Selachian posted:Isn't that "basically everything West End did"? Like, for example, in their DC Universe game, if you were playing at the Batman power level, you couldn't even create a character who was anywhere near as competent as Robin. Well, it gives to remember the only reason Robin exists is because out-of-touch comic editors couldn't ever imagine kids identifying with Batman directly. A self-identification character whose purpose is to stand next to the real hero going gee willikers... is there a term for an anti-Mary Sue? That's what the comic makers figured the kids wanted, anyway.
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# ¿ Dec 10, 2017 22:23 |
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Terrible Opinions posted:I know it may be hard to imagine but kid sidekicks actually did massively increase sales, and at the time the highest selling super hero comic was Captain Marvel precisely because he was a little kid in his civilian identity. I know about Captain Marvel, but that's very different. He's the main character of his comic, and successfully amalgamates wish-fulfilment scenarios with an audacity rarely seen before the invention of animes. My idea was that the RPG writers might have had a similar idea of players wanting to play "themselves" inserted into the universe (I think one of the earliest superhero RPGs made this an explicit requirement in character creation). Or, it was the eighties, and the idea of giving the players undue narrative agency was anathema.
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# ¿ Dec 11, 2017 02:04 |
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PurpleXVI posted:Far as I know there's no rule that stuff has to wait a certain period before being reviewed. I mean, obviously if you're pasting every page in the book into your review, yeah, it's a bit close to piracy, but if you're just snagging choice paragraphs or sentences that are interesting/broken/hilarious/important, it's no different from any other sort of Day 1 review, which I've yet to hear people try to claim is piracy. Say, speaking of, would it be appropriate for the thread to show which Osprey paintings the art for that totes real olde English RPG you reviewed was copied from/based on?
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# ¿ Dec 13, 2017 20:45 |
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Josef bugman posted:Also a quick thing but has anyone ever done, not here but in general, an indepth look into the ideology of Glorantha or about any setting in D&D? Do you mean the in-game ideologies, or what real-life stuff influence them? In the case of Glorantha, the idea of Godtime and Heroquesting is largely taken from the idea of eternal return of the Romanian anthropologist Mircea Eliade: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_return_(Eliade) Sacred and profane posted:Where the Sacred intersects our world, it appears in the form of ideal models (e.g., the actions and commandments of gods or mythical heroes). All things become truly "real" by imitating these models. Eliade claims: "For archaic man, reality is a function of the imitation of a celestial archetype."[8] As evidence for this view, in The Myth of the Eternal Return, he cites a belief of the Iranian Zurvanites. The Zurvanites believed that each thing on Earth corresponds to a sacred, celestial counterpart: for the physical sky, there is a sacred sky; for the physical Earth, there is a sacred Earth; actions are virtuous by conforming to a sacred pattern.[9] Origin as power posted:According to Eliade, in the archaic worldview, the power of a thing resides in its origin, so that "knowing the origin of an object, an animal, a plant, and so on is equivalent to acquiring a magical power over them".[11] The way a thing was created establishes that thing's nature, the pattern to which it should conform. By gaining control over the origin of a thing, one also gains control over the thing itself. Myths, rituals, and their purpose posted:Eliade also explained how traditional man could find value for his own life (in a vision of where all events occurring after the mythical age cannot have value or reality); he indicated that, if the Sacred's essence lies only in its first appearance, then any later appearance must actually be the first appearance. Thus, an imitation of a mythical event is actually the mythical event itself, happening again—myths and rituals carry one back to the mythical age: These books would be pretty hot poo poo on campuses in the 60s/70s and known to any student of anthropology, so I'd guess the influence from the above to Glorantha is pretty much direct.
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# ¿ May 7, 2018 22:16 |
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FMguru posted:Also: Glorantha's Sacred Time comes straight from Eliade's work. Has Stafford said as much? Joe Slowboat posted:What's interesting about that is that it's specifically supposed to be a universal concept of ritual based on Zurvanism, which itself is a pretty weird historical entity, and developed significantly after a lot of religious concepts in other traditional societies that fed into it. Which makes sense for a popular-in-the-60s theory of the psychology of religion for all 'archaic' peoples. Yeah, an anthropologist student turned shaman turned RPG author today would build their world in a very different way (obviously, but it's worth keeping in mind that while Glorantha incorporates real-world anthropology, it's not necessarily up-to-date anthropology. At least it's not as troublesome as with hard scifi.). Mircea Eliade himself was a pretty weird and hosed-up person, and his time with the Romanian Iron Guard fascists probably left some unhappy deep current traces in how he approached mythology, authenticity etc. Edit: So Glorantha is obviously a fascist parable about the necessity of the submission of the violent, young forces of the community [Orlanth] to the solar Führerprinzip [Yelm], as only by such submission can the extra-communal forces of chaos [Chaos] be defeated. PoontifexMacksimus fucked around with this message at 01:04 on May 8, 2018 |
# ¿ May 8, 2018 00:44 |
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PurpleXVI posted:Why would he ruin the book with this poo poo when there's all the great watercolour art already? Fear of drawing the ire of Osprey Publishing? A long time ago I put these together, but forgot to post them, so might as well now before this game fades forever into deserved obscurity: (Osprey Men-at-Arms 317 - Henry V and the Conquest of France and Osprey Warrior 68 - English Medieval Knight 1400-1500 are both illustrated by Graham Turner, one of the best-ever Osprey artists, so they have good taste at least.) That's just what I could spot, of course, who knows what else lurks in there. In the last picture the pants on the brown-hatted guy looks like a photograph of slacks, and I'm pretty sure the crowd in the middle behind the flames are from a reenactment group. I do find it weird that so many obvious lifts are primarily just from one book, but then I noted that the cover featured, not a trace, but an obvious reference (MaA 317, plate E): And he even shows up like three times in that crowd! So I don't know, maybe the author just insisted all art look just like his one favourite Osprey pamphlet. PoontifexMacksimus fucked around with this message at 01:26 on Jun 12, 2018 |
# ¿ Jun 12, 2018 00:28 |
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JcDent posted:Did you do the same uncovering for the Scythe dude that was making rounds on imgur recently? Jakub Rozalski; this thing? https://imgur.com/gallery/rmVIk Nope, hadn't even seen it until you made me search for it. Ah, well.
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# ¿ Jun 12, 2018 21:35 |
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inklesspen posted:I feel like he has a point on the very nice art that PurpleXVI embedded in the posts. Were it not for that I'd be happy to put it back in. PurpleXVI posted:My bad, he threatened to sue me for a while, and I conflated it with him asking for the review to be taken down. inklesspen posted:That's kinda-sorta but if you wanna make a properly snarky placeholder I guess I'm down. Uh, not to toot my own horn, but... NoWayToTheOldWay posted:Fear of drawing the ire of Osprey Publishing?
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# ¿ Jun 18, 2018 21:48 |
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Mors Rattus posted:In the late 1990s and early 2000s, a game called 7th Sea was produced. I wrote it up for the first iteration of this thread, in 2011. Ahh, been looking forward to this!
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# ¿ Jun 19, 2018 17:17 |
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JcDent posted:Fun fact: Sarmatians are people of some questionably historical reality from.. central near Asia that Polish nobility of the Poland-Lithuania era claimed to be descended from. Well, the existence of the Sarmatians is about as well proven as the existence of any non-literate people can be, it's just the connections to Poland that were imagined by romantic Polish aristocrats. But it's that's exactly what makes it a good name for fantasy Europe! Edit: the Sarmatians are even politically relevant today - the reason Russia invaded Georgia a bit ago (besides Abkhazia) was to "reunite" North and South Ossetia, the Ossetians being descendants of the Alans, who were the last surviving subgroup of the Sarmatians. Vestermennervannereherererjar though, ugh. Hopefully the insipid viking influences have been excised, they were always the most out-of-place part of the setting (yes, even more than the space aliens). You can do enough with the Dutch Golden Age without tying it to the bad idea of foisting vikings on your pirate game. PoontifexMacksimus fucked around with this message at 22:20 on Jun 19, 2018 |
# ¿ Jun 19, 2018 21:59 |
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Mors Rattus posted:The name used to be Vestenmannavnjar, so we're actually improved on the spelling. They still double up as Scandinavia and the Dutch, though. Kind of odd, when you can find the space for separate nations for England, Ireland and Scotland, who actually had some measure of history, geography and politics in common. I had some ideas years back about how to split it, and what kind of stereotypes to play to to represent the Netherlands and Scandinavia of the time as broad but distinct fantasy countries, but I could never get any one to actually play the game so I dropped it. If the new edition works well enough I should have a look at it again. PoontifexMacksimus fucked around with this message at 22:31 on Jun 19, 2018 |
# ¿ Jun 19, 2018 22:27 |
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Thinking about it, both Scotland and Ireland being largely "eh, 's fine" with English over
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# ¿ Jun 22, 2018 15:55 |
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Mors Rattus posted:7th Sea 2: Ex-Vikings wiegieman posted:The Vesten/Vendel conflict between tradition, progress, respect, and freedom was one of the more engaging parts of 7s1e. Right, so, this kind of struggle between reformers and traditionalists makes for a great dramatic hook: it's just an extremely bad fit for early-modern Scandinavia, where no-one gave a poo poo about Vikings (if they even knew they had ever existed); runes had been quickly and completely forgotten about (apart from some extremely local peasant magic traditions); and all traces of old clan structures were completely replaced with modern bureaucracy, by and large the most centralised and efficient in Europe (at least at organising for war). If the hook of that conflict is to be retained it would be a far better fit for Scotland, which actually had a Viking-adjacent clan society survive into the time period, while also being one of the centres for the early Enlightenment and the discovery of scientific method. For Scotland you could also play up the sheer depth of internecine conflict such a clan-based society actually produced, with many clans perfectly happy to cooperate with outside conquerors if it means they get to beat up the assholes from the next firth over. The bit from the Monastyr RPG about the country in perpetual civil war felt like a good fit (also with Scotland being one of Europe's prime source of mercenaries - imagine targe-and-sword wielding kiltmen fighting tercio pikemen in central Germany): " For this version of Scotland I wouldn't go so far as to make it a "hellhole", but I would imagine two axis of conflict: the first (ideological) between traditionalists and modernists, and the second (political) between those who support the union with Avalon and those who oppose it. You would have traditionalists and modernists on both sides of the issue of union, and your social life would be defined along these axis, the only real way to escape the constant social tension and conflict being to go abroad, usually as a mercenary. Cythereal posted:Just call it Thule, imo. So the key thing about Sweden in this time is that it is basically Prussia: a strong and centralised monarchy and a thoroughly militarised society; a country far too small and poor to make their mark on the world in any way other than constant warfare, which so far they have been successful at. Tastes may differ, but I would not include anything about old norse paganism. Half of the countries are already crypto-pagan, so it's not an interesting differentiator, and you know, ugh, Thor, Odin, again...? Another thing to keep in mind is the importance of religion in support Swedish expansionism: one of the reasons Gustav II Adolf has such a sainted reputation is that he had an extremely successful propaganda machine positioning him as a near-Biblical figure single-handedly saving the Reformation from its enemies. Swedish society in general was nearly theocratic in its adherence to Lutheran doctrine: each and every peasant was expected to memorise religious text and doctrine, and would be inspected on a yearly basis by the parish priest and ambulating inspectors to ensure they knew the proper tenets and could recite the required scriptures. One interesting result of this was that Swedish peasants were perhaps the most literate in Europe (though of course hardly the most open-minded). Religion was of central importance to the war effort, both for internal cohesion and external propaganda and casus belli. Actually, there's actually no 100 % Objectionist country, right? Avalon are largely doing their own thing, and Eisen is split? To reiterate the point above, making Scandinavia the only country to wholly and successfully convert to Objectionism and define themselves by this relatively new faith and the international struggle it faces would do far more to set them apart them than making them yet another country ~were the Old Ways are still strong~. PoontifexMacksimus fucked around with this message at 00:42 on Jun 23, 2018 |
# ¿ Jun 23, 2018 00:29 |
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If you absolutely have to have Vikings in your pirate game, now that we actually have other continents, just make them a lost colony somewhere between not-Greenland and not-Canada. Say they successfully managed to peacefully intermarry with locals and you get some cool opportunities for a joint Native American/Viking hybrid culture and culture clashes when modern Théans come roaming about.
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# ¿ Jun 23, 2018 01:05 |
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Cythereal posted:Fair enough, you clearly know much more about Swedish history and culture than I do, and I bow to your greater knowledge. I hope I didn't come off as dismissive! I had to slap my head that I hadn't thought of your lesbian warrior queen I would be happy to crib the idea if I ever write something more substantive, with your permission.
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# ¿ Jun 23, 2018 01:14 |
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Comrade Gorbash posted:Really it's the introduction of the socket bayonet that truly drives the wholesale rethink of warfare. Siivola posted:The socket bayonet was the last nail in the pikeman's coffin, but I think convenient field artillery and just the sheer size of armies are what made body armour eventually take a break for a couple of centuries. Cythereal posted:Eh, the steel helmet never went out of style. It just took a long time for armor to catch back up to having a reasonable chance of stopping certain intentional attacks rather than shrapnel and glancing hits. The gunpowder revolution is often overstated, or at least misconstrued. Full plate armour postdates gunpowder weapons, and was developed as much in response to them as anything. Certainly China and the Muslim world never used the heavy plate armour guns would supposedly be made to penetrate. In the great gunpowder empires of the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal dynasties bows, armoured cavalry, swordsmen etc. never went out of style, coexisting with technologically advanced cannon and muskets for centuries without being supplanted. I would say the rise of the homogeneous musket armies of early modern Europe is entirely the result of the rise of capitalism: first in terms of the new Foucaultian discipline complexes allowing for easier enforcement of dehumanizing military drill; the destruction of communities and their traditions of war as cultural expression, making it instead an object of scientific management and time-motion studies. Secondly, in the rise of fiscal debt financing and an international military-industrial complex, further decoupling local communities from the conduct of war to the point were they would be incapable of sustained armed resistance. Saltpeter is far more rare and difficult to process than iron, requiring tapping into advanced international trade networks. Without those social transformations you're looking at a Shogun: Total War situation, handgunners just one unit type among many. PoontifexMacksimus fucked around with this message at 14:09 on Aug 9, 2018 |
# ¿ Aug 9, 2018 14:07 |
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Anyway! I remain impressed with the amount of world building in 7thS, but I did have two minor quibbles: 1. There seems to be an inordinate focus on local folklore and forest goblins, because I am not sure how they are supposed to fit in campaigns of high intrigue, international piracy and gallant swashbuckling. Are your big-hatted heroes supposed to spend much time hexcrawling the wilderness? 2. People on average seem too nice! Most monarchs, apart from designated villain nations like Mbey or the French, seem like genuinely good people, idealistic pacifists or outright democrats. It’s fine and fun to have a country like the Commonwealth that’s explicitly a chaotic experiment, but looking at the leaders on the world stage it’s hard to imagine the world couldn’t end up happy and peaceful even without player intervention. A few too many heroes and a few too few villains, perhaps. (And the occasional character too much like the perfect GMPC players are supposed to be super excited to be best buds with...)
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# ¿ Aug 9, 2018 15:52 |
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Tibalt posted:It's possible I might be remembering Haitian history wrong, but didn't a large number of Haitians earn their freedom fighting in various armies? That's more what I was imagining - that in-between time from 1790 to 1805, where the old order (Antebellum Slavery and Plantations) hasn't collapsed yet but it's obvious to everyone that the Confederacy isn't long for the world. The French indeed loved wasting the lives of their colonial troops protecting the Metropole, but not a single colony in history has ever won their freedom fighting for their masters.
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# ¿ Mar 9, 2019 23:40 |
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SirPhoebos posted:So this would be like setting a pulp RPG in an alt history where Nazi Germany survives WWII and can be protagonists, but it's okay because the Holocaust never happened in this alt history for Reasons (even though the change point was, say, 1943), and any reader who's upset by this authorial decision is actually the real racist. Libertad! posted:Marshal’s Territory: The real Jefferson Davis was killed in 1872 by a shapeshifting doppelganger, tasked by the Reckoners with making the war more desperate and bloody while also making the Confederacy a worse place to live. Members of his family, who long suspected the change in his disposition, were placed under house arrest in Mississippi, kept under close watch by Harrowed agents known as the Nightwatchers. Sturmbannführer's Brief: In 1935, on the eve of announcing his plan to peacefully extradite all Jews to Palestine, Adolf Hitler was killed and replaced by a supernatural doppelganger, who instead started ramping up racial confrontations. Eva Braun suspected something about the changes in her Addie's behaviour but was placed under solitary confinement in Dachau. Campaign seed: The players rescue Eva, who reveals the impostor and puts the Reich back on track!
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# ¿ Mar 9, 2019 23:46 |
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RahXephon ironically felt like a better fit for AdEva in that it had a lot of surface "themes" (in AdEva's terms) that never really seemed to cohere to any satisfactory whole. And in that it seemed inappropriately interested in finding opportunities to have female characters fawn over the male lead. Been years since I saw it though, so maybe all the show's signifiers for ART actually pointed to something in the end.
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# ¿ Mar 13, 2019 15:03 |
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Battle Mad Ronin posted:I don't understand this playing around with joke quotes and I would like an explanation. megane posted:White Wolf like to pretend their game about biting people while dressed like a 15 year old emo girl and crying raises deep philosophical questions about the nature of humanity. Nah, the question is why some quotes at least are misattributed (or maybe made up): quote:She's hungry as the hunter and she's shooting for the thrill Quick Google shows these lyrics were by the band The Mission from a song called Hungry as the Hunter PoontifexMacksimus fucked around with this message at 01:13 on Jul 25, 2019 |
# ¿ Jul 25, 2019 01:10 |
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By popular demand posted:I honestly saw some 40K art that seemed more nuanced and unique in that way of moving beyond the limits of humanity. Which is strange considering how chauvinistic the Empire is about the perfection of the human form. None of the day 40K games ever had any humanity loss or cyber-psychosis rules, right? Did any of the fluff ever talk about humans being uneasy with extensive cybernetics, or was it just Burn The Mutant 24/7? Were there rules about fixing your mutations with equally inhuman but apparently accepted cybernetic implants?
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# ¿ Jul 29, 2019 18:32 |
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wiegieman posted:Augmetics are considered part of the idealized human form as an aspect of the Emperor in his form of the Omnissiah, the Machine God. Mutants are considered unclean because they deviate from that assumed perfection in uncontrollable (and worse, inheritable) ways. They're not an exercise of humanity's power over their own flesh, they're a defeat by nature or the Warp. Have to say I find it hard to see the human aspect of an ambulant pile of cogs and cables. Sure, it's a setting element, obviously, but I always thought it was one of those internal contradictions in the setting which would be interesting to see more explored, and the RPGs would obviously be the place to do it. Edit: After all, there are still strong taboos about human technological hubris even without the warp re: AI PoontifexMacksimus fucked around with this message at 19:18 on Jul 29, 2019 |
# ¿ Jul 29, 2019 19:14 |
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KingKalamari posted:Brezal Island (City State) - “Just north of Croy is the Skandik island Brezal Isle and its capital city, Armagh.” Think you could stuff a few more ridiculous fantasy names in that sentence? Well, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brasil_(mythical_island) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armagh
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# ¿ Aug 1, 2019 02:00 |
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KingKalamari posted:Well would you look at that? you learn something new every day! I guess they ran out of creative juices after the sheer brilliance of calling their vikings ~skandiks~
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# ¿ Aug 1, 2019 02:44 |
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Leraika posted:I wonder if Ezora is anything like Eorzea. Eoris Essence?
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# ¿ Aug 2, 2019 03:46 |
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Flail Snail posted:Hey now. That one was spell-checked, professionally edited, and bound into an amazing quality book, even if the book's contents weren't really much to write home about. This is a 60 page PDF that chokes most PDF readers and is full of awkwardness that most people with a decent command of the English language could probably fix. Lest we forget, https://projects.inklesspen.com/fatal-and-friends/hyphz/eoris-essence/ Someone should really complete a review of it... PoontifexMacksimus fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Aug 2, 2019 |
# ¿ Aug 2, 2019 13:47 |
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Flavivirus posted:Jesus, I was a big fan of EP 1e but that section on trans issues is loving yikes. Even just the assertion that the non-trans population is totally a-ok with different gendered bodies is completely tone deaf. Not to mention the old faithful of immediately conflating trans issues and drag It reads so bad it could've been written by bad old White Wolf: the transhuman version of the Magical Hermaphrodite
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# ¿ Aug 2, 2019 21:55 |
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juggalo baby coffin posted:the hypercorps are just hypercorps, i could point to altered carbon again, because all the problems around a shortage of sleeves and the poor having restricted access to new bodies is lifted from there, but that setting (as far as I remember) wasn't post scarcity. it also makes no sense having hypercorps be a major factor in a world they do not have complete control over. what leverage do they have on people when effectively replicator tech is out there and other factions are giving away their poo poo for free? That's a question, is there any indication of trade between the political blocs, or do they all just exist in solipsistic bubbles of post-scarcity? If so, what exactly do the hypercorps... do? Just endlessly exploit infugee slave labour to extract wealth from... something, somehow? Manually calculating Bitcoin hashes? hyphz posted:Yea, sorry about that one. The main thing is that once you get past that sheet and the crazy term-spraying, what's left just.. isn't all that interesting or funny really, it's just a regular game with a ton of the annoying WoD tropes like bizarre ongoing storylines that have no relationship to anything the players can do. Honestly, I've had a few things I considered F&Fing that I ended up dropping because they were just bad but not interesting-bad. No problem if it's more trouble than it's worth, it's just interesting to see oddball heartbreakers gone over, in case they accidentally sneak in interesting and fresh mechanics in some random subsystem.
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# ¿ Aug 2, 2019 23:35 |
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LatwPIAT posted:In the various location sourcebooks, especially Sunward, there's occasionally mentions of large-scale interplanetary trade. Water to the Inner System is one thing that's mentioned, antimatter from wherever it's produced is another, and Mercury and Venus are metal producers so presumably someone buys it. It's not spelled out in full, but the Jovian Republic also controls an interplanetary shipping lane because they can toll everything that uses Jupiter for gravitational slingshotting. Thanks! But the logistics of that just made me realise the absurdity with the 10 year time span: if the setting lacks any magic space travel, there have literally only been like 3-4 round trips between the outer and inner system since The Fall, and a ship from say Mercury might still be en route! You can't really claim to be hard sci fi and have extensive space travel, even just within the solar system, on a sub-decade time scale.
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# ¿ Aug 3, 2019 02:34 |
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juggalo baby coffin posted:depends on the scale of the country. england had big cities and still shipped food by horse and cart or canalboat for a long time, its just that a lot of the food was lovely, long life stuff, and the range of vegetables and fruits was very limited. a lot of the breeds of fruit we eat today are ones that were created so they could survive long periods of travel without spoiling. It's worth remembering that ancient Rome was fed by grain from all across the Mediterranean, and even without an imperial bureaucracy in the early modern period western Europe would regularly import food from Poland and eastern Europe, especially to make up for shortfalls and famine, so even before refrigeration and steam power food could be moved across the continent relatively quickly in emergencies.
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# ¿ Aug 4, 2019 21:47 |
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PurpleXVI posted:
What about delta/gamma forks? Thinking about it, the whole fear of indentured servitude seems pretty silly and bioconservative considering the commodification of skills and talents implied by forking technology. Why bother enslaving an actual sapient when you can just license/pirate an infinite number of copies of the Best Cold Call Seller in the System, guaranteed to be literally incapable of anything other than cold call selling 24/7. You would have an entire industry of people training themselves just to serve as feedstock for sufficiently competent forks, and recruitment agencies trawling the infugee databanks for unclaimed talents to copy-paste.
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# ¿ Aug 4, 2019 22:52 |
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It's a pretty interesting space to explore, actually. You could have fork rating agencies similar to our credit rating agencies (with all the shenanigans that implies); full people claiming to be forks to make themselves more employable; the release of a new sufficiently skilled fork could put entire industries and thousands of people out of work, making assassination a key form of industrial sabotage.
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# ¿ Aug 4, 2019 23:13 |
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Joe Slowboat posted:E: the point being that enslaving infugees is just cheaper on psychosurgery bills and produces a more flexible asset than going to the trouble of dividing out the part of them you want and copying it over and over. Well, the point of commodification is that it produces systems larger than the individual actor. A corp wouldn't have to manage forking itself, there would be an entire highly liquid market to supply them. You just hit up the fork emporium and find whatever solution fits your budget. One of the universal truths of capitalists is that they are highly risk adverse, and the risks and uncertainties involved in personnel recruitment and HR is one of the largest risk factors in business. If corporations could use lobotomised skill-bots with certified and measurable abilities they would happily trade away soft factors like "flexibility", I think.
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# ¿ Aug 5, 2019 01:08 |
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On some level, to use a phrase from the political forums, "the cruelty is the point"; when systems of hierarchy and exploitation become primarily about the pleasure of being a petty tyrant oppressing and exploiting social inferiors with any economic benefit as just a nice bonus on top. But I don't know if the authors have identified this sadistic-authoritarian aspect of laissez fair, or if they take the fig leaf of "blind greed causing harm without malice" too much at face value.
PoontifexMacksimus fucked around with this message at 12:06 on Aug 5, 2019 |
# ¿ Aug 5, 2019 12:02 |
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KirbyKhan posted:You hear about Wizard Rick? He had his 8th kid and leaned Disintegrating Beam. Gonna go to his next baby shower to ask which dope spell he's gonna name his 9th after. Actually raising the child is highly XP inefficient though, which, certainly brings some implications.
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# ¿ Aug 6, 2019 20:00 |
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PurpleXVI posted:I have at various points been extremely tempted to homebrew a Warframe PnP RPG just because it's got so much cool setting and background stuff that's kind of wasted/rarely engaged with because of the format. Or at least a passable knockoff of the Warframe setting. Getting off topic for the thread, but are there any good summaries of the Warframe setting? I haven't played in forever, and I mostly remember all fan sources just being numbers crunching and drop rates
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# ¿ Aug 13, 2019 15:34 |
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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 14:14 |
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megane posted:He still has to rest for eight hours a day so He can grant Himself all His spells, of course. Don't be ridiculous. Actually He can put off resting for up to 144 hours, but at that point has to rest for a full consecutive 24 hours.
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# ¿ Aug 14, 2019 02:45 |