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Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:
Well since I'm being nice and waiting on Beast, I might as well do something else.

Wait, what's this



I don't remember ordering this.

I̢̲͎̳̪s҉͈̗̘ ̝̹my͓̭͈̠ ̠̰͟ṋ͈̤̖͜o̻̳̤̜͙͚s̛̬̭̤͈̟̮e͚̪̞̜̦ ̡͍̜̝b̻l̺e͔̼͍ȩd̖̫̺̹̖̣͙i̛̲̠̻͚̜n͏̗̲̰̺̜̫̯g̟͍̬͕?͕͈

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Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:
And I think in this case it's "Push yourself as close to self-destroying-paradox-backlash as you can before pulling away"

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:
So the book juxtaposes "Paradigm is important that's why you can't turn Werewolves into Silver Lawnchairs" with "Paradigm is a lie", fantastic.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

I feel you're somewhat biased in this regard.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

LatwPIAT posted:

What a... sensitive treatment of religion. "Insane zeal"? The religions themselves being hell-bent on bringing about Apocalypse? "Demented scripture"? Wow. There'll be more of this later, too.

Yeah, that's Brucato. He's the guy who wrote that the Abrahamic religions were actually a male cult founded by a Wyrm Spirit named "Patriarchy" that wanted to steal divine power from women by forcing them to wear clothes

Back in '93.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

oriongates posted:

71-90% While the first two channels sit pretty firmly in "should I be offended by this?" territory, the third channel takes a turn to goofball island and the Outsider becomes downright comedic. With this Channel (and a successful Avatar roll) your Outsider status becomes infectious. Your bodily fluids can infect a target, transforming them into an example of your "outsider"-ness. Meaning that you can have sex with someone and turn them black or gay....you can spit in someone's coffee and they'll turn into a woman. Since saliva is a vector for the transformation you can even infect people zombie-style: bite someone and their foreskin will disappear (yes, transmitting circumcision is given as an example). The effect lasts for 24 hours.

"Worlds Easiest Bris, Painless, no muss, no fuss."

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

Traveller posted:

M20 sounds like an even drier read than the Mage: The Awakening corebook, which is no mean feat.

This was a problem with W20 as well. But moreso because W20 couldn't devote time to exploring the world and instead towards "Hey here's every gift ever printed oh god please make it stop". The Rage Across the World and subequent W20 books a a lot better.


Also I'm glad that Paths of the Wyck don't involve you getting stabbed in the back by a immensely beautiful ninja, followed by you being forced to thank said ninja for the experience.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

Alien Rope Burn posted:

What bugs me just as much is just the outright rejection of modernism and the sense that technology or urban life or that darn bittiby-bop music has somehow poisoned our minds or souls, that there's no magic in them, metaphorical or otherwise. That a movie or a video game is somehow not art, that enjoying a quiet day indoors is sick, and that a faraway friend is somehow a false relationship. Because I'm sure the authors of Mage don't live in a loving cottage writing on a Smith-Corona before going out and living off the land with bow, arrow, pot, and fire. When people write that they seemingly don't realize "oh, this is exactly how I live my own life", but are perfectly content to dismiss everybody else as vidiots or dittoheads or whatever. It's tiresome and insulting and they should know better.

Some of this comes from Bridges too, the mindset started in 1st Ed Werewolf and followed him to Mage when he took over.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

PurpleXVI posted:

It honestly feels like the whole thing would've worked better if there was no word-of-god on who was the good guys and the whole thing was just filled full of unreliable narrators like the oVamp clanbooks were, so people could make up their own minds and grab the plot hooks they liked the most. :v:

They couldn't do that because enough of the Mage Writers were fully onboard the "Technology has gone too far" Train. That said I love that one of the progenitor archetypes is a guy who desparately wants to 'discover' new creatures because his master's thesis was making an honest to god gryphon and no one will ever know about it.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

Asimo posted:

Honestly, no matter how hard the writers tried push the traditions in oMage it's really really hard to cheer for the regressive luddite protagonist faction when you're literally only alive due to the continued intervention of modern medical science. :v: To the point where that anti-science stance in both oMage and oWerewolf almost feels hateful, if in an unintentional way. I have no idea how much similar experiences colored the Mage fandom, but I imagine at least some small but significant fraction felt similarly.

1st edition Glasswalkers were basically the italian mafia because technology was bad and they still hadn't figured out that giving the Vampire Factions fur coats wasn't the way to differentiate themselves. It wasn't until 2nd ed and the GW Tribebook where they actually started to put some credence to the whole "Use the weavers tools against her" thing and technofetishes showed up.

Remember Rage Across Australia has that bit where the White Man is being divinely punished for planting Cereal Grains rather than subsisting at a hunter/gatherer level.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

Robindaybird posted:

Must've overlooked it for that guy who had a footstool/drum made with aboriginal skin.

No that was there too.

But

quote:

Australia's native vegetation has suffered greatly from European settlement. Even prior to the invasion, the Aboriginals had done much to reshape the face of the continent through their use of fire. Guided by the Bunyip, Aboriginals ensured that grain-bearing grasses never flourished in Australia. This was achieved by way of large-scale grass fires, inhibiting agriculture and instead encouraging the spread of plants requiring periodic fire to trigger seeds into growth, such as eucalyptuses and acacias.

quote:

On the surface, the Squattocracy wanted wealth, property, and prestige. Of course they were manipulated by the servants of the Wyrm "including at least one Leech and several formori" who sat on the Squattor's Council. THE DESTRUCTION OF THE AUSTRALIAN ENVIRONMENT! Their logic was that if they made the land of Australia suffer, the spirit world would suffer, and since the Bunyip live in the spirit world, they might just up and die. The most effective method (the book says) was the introduction of European agriculture. The clearing away of the brushland and the planting of cereal grains to destroy the native vegetation(?). The servants of the Wyrm also introduced Rabbits, horses, sheep, cattle, foxes, pigs, cats, and dogs to further harm the Australian spirit world. At this point I'm getting the feeling that the author is just going down the list of things that could be even remotely construed as "harmful" to Australia and attributing them all to the Wyrm.

It was terrible.

Cythereal posted:

Yet the fact that not everyone's a mage suggests to me that not everyone can use a paradigm, making them dependent on someone else's. I don't know much about Mage, though, so they probably did address this at some point.

Yeah, the end-goal of "Awakening everyone" would probably get rid of consensus, but it would also be roughly equivalent of giving everyone rocket launchers and flamethrowers with hair triggers and no instruction manuals.

Kurieg fucked around with this message at 23:26 on Jan 8, 2016

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:
I'm getting the first bit of the Book of the Wyrm write-up ready, and it has a fantastic sidebar about making sure everyone's okay with the issues and themes that a game is touching on, and more importantly not brow-beating people into going along with your plot.

I'm imagining Wick recoiling in horror from it like a vampire looking at a cross made of holy-water grown garlic that is also on fire.


LatwPIAT posted:

The Wu-Keng are society of evil manipulative Nephandic child-snatching footbinding Chinese transwomen who wield great power through men they've seduced by acting demure. The book constantly refers to them as men or "women" :airquote:. As a transwoman, it did not make me particularly happy... (The book also suggests to the ST that they should put on a Chinese accent when roleplaying one.)

Holy poo poo. I wonder who was responsible for that

quote:

Authors: Aaron Anderson, Phil Brucato, Looking Eagle, James Estes, Deena McKinney, Derek Pearcy, Wade Racine, Andrew Ragland, Kathleen Ryan, Lucien Soulban

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:
So last time I reviewed a terrible book. Now it's time to review a book with a terrible subject matter.

Know Your Limits posted:

This book includes a lot of disturbing subjects, from body-horror to necrophilia, from child abuse to sexual violence. Bringing these topics up in the context of a game can cause real problems for the people involved. Whether you’re a player or a Storyteller, talk to everyone you’re playing with and ask them one simple question:
Is there any subject you’re not comfortable with the game touching on?
If anyone says yes, listen to them. Don’t ask for an explanation — some people will back down if you insist they justify their discomfort, playing along while the story you’re telling makes them feel like poo poo. Just skip right past that element.
Don’t put it in the game.
Likewise, everyone should know that they can say when something that comes up in the game makes them uncomfortable, and you’ll cut that element out. Again, don’t ask questions. Whatever it is, it’s not worth including.
If that seems a little dire, it is. Does the game deserve such a warning?


In a word, Yes.

Book of the Wyrm 20th Anniversary is not a pleasant book. It is an unblinking gaze into the steaming heart of a corruption that wishes nothing less but the destruction of all that exists. That said it is still a good book, it is well written and tries to treat the material with a respect that the pre-revised Book of the Wyrm didn't really bother with.

Introduction: The Wyrm's Call
As much as the Garou rail against the Wyrm and his Corruption, they aren't really solving much of anything. Killing ten thousand Formori won't clean the air above China, and the blood of a Black Spiral will not make the oceans run clean. But that's what their rage drives them to do, and the Rage in a Garou's heart is a splinter of the Wyrm itself. That violence, that hatred, that drive to the easy solution to difficult problems just so they feel like they're accomplishing something. Each time they indulge that lust for violence. And in the deepest depths of that rage they fall into the Thrall of the Wyrm, a literal connection to the great Corruptor of all.

That's not to say that the Wyrm can't be subtle. Endron is one of the largest subsidiaries of Pentex, and it floods the seas with toxic waste on a daily basis. They also produce the most environmentally friendly electric cars in the world, and each one is just a little bit Wyrm Tainted, not through any travesties in it's process, but just to gently caress with the Garou and distract them from the more important targets. Formori can look monsterous or as human as you or me until it's too late. O'Tolleys does not need to put wyrm poison in it's food, empty calories and horrible business practices do the Wyrm's job better than it could if it actively tried. For every head of the Hydra that vomits balefire, two more destroy the world through mundane means.

Featuring the Wyrm
The Wyrm is the primary driving force in any Apocalypse game, but it isn't really the antagonist. Garou can see what the minions of the Wyrm do, but each of those minions is a being with it's own motivations and prejudices, perhaps working at cross purposes with each other. At the same time the Wyrm is literally a spiritual force of entropy and decay, so any plans it could have would warp within the infinite labyrinth of it's own mind. The Wyrm exists on a cosmic scale, kin only to the Weaver and the Wyld. Not even Gaia is it's equal, being either mother of them all or their greatest creation. Regardless it doesn't really matter. The Wyrm is unknowable, it isn't intelligent on a scale that we can comprehend, so don't try to define it's motivations beyond one thing. "Corrupt Everything". Asking why is meaningless because that implies you could comprehend the answer.

Theme: A Symbiotic Relationship

quote:

The Wyrm is the spiritual force of corruption in the World of Darkness. It is manifest in every act of petty evil. It is in the company that docks wages because the employees would starve if they quit, and the man who goes out drinking then takes his lovely day out on his wife and kids. It is disgust and self-loathing made manifest. For all that, it doesn’t cause domestic abuse and inhuman business practices. Those are the fault of humanity — “The Devil made me do it” is just as much bullshit now as ever.
The Wyrm feeds on these acts of evil, sometimes it uses Banes or formori to give just a little push, but the actual deed must be done through an act of free will. For all it's power the Wyrm is still a force of entropy, if it were to exert the force directly, the reward it reaps would be smaller than what it spends. So it needs those people who make the world a worse place on its behalf. And fighting them does weaken the Wyrm. But to destroy the Wyrm you would need to destroy the very concept of Corruption from the world; and that's a fight on a scale most people can't comprehend, not to mention most werewolves. Instead the Garou see the Wyrm as a being that causes corruption, because it's easier to sleep at night without accepting the truth that at some point every living thing feeds the Wyrm.

Mood: Heroism and Futility

quote:

Unlike a Lovecraftian god, the Wyrm cares about humanity, the Garou, and everything else. It hates everything. Fully one third of reality will not stop until it has cursed and corrupted the world, dragging every last living thing down to share its Hell. Against such a foe, the Garou hope to win, but it’s a shallow hope. All they’re good at is killing things. Sometimes that’s useful, like excising a tumor before it metastasizes; but usually it does more harm than good. Killing someone’s abusive spouse doesn’t make his life better. Often it makes things worse, as he propagates a cycle of abuse that spreads like a disease. Fear and terror and pain, all these things feed the Wyrm. Faced with this horrible cosmic truth, what’s the point in fighting?

It sure as hell beats the alternative.
The Garou are probably doomed. The Apocalypse is going to happen it's just a matter of when, and it's probably not a battle that they're going to win. But in the meantime they can win the smaller battles. Light candles in the darkness, but all that does is illuminate a part of the true monster they have to face.

So it's a task for the Storyteller to take a step back every now and again. Even if every victory turns out to be Phyrric, if they don't have a solid win or a light hearted adventure every once in a while the players will get ground into the dirt and no one really wants that.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

LornMarkus posted:

Plus, when the horror's specifically gunning for the human race it gets really easy to slip into granting importance through that very focus. Probably the best presentation of it I've personally seen was actually a fanfic that included a portion where the earth was glassed and the population enslaved by an alien race because their leader had been personally slighted by earthlings in the past. Didn't hurt that it was witness from the perspective of an earthling ex-pat who watched mostly dispassionately as the galactic machine churned the whole of human civilization up and spit it back out as a cog in a greater machine.

It's not specifically that humanity is important. It's that humanity is a part of existence, and it's a part of existence that the wyrm can use. Our depravity feeds it, and he can feed our depravity in turn.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:
Changing Breeds probably merits the first one. And I haven't read BOTW20 all the way through yet but It's been fairly good in it's handling of the material so Give it the second one.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

Mors Rattus posted:

Did you get to the part where it has weaponized genitalia yet?

That's the other Book of the Wyrm/Freak Legion. This is the 20th anniversary edition, and neither it OR the W20 core have Savage Genetalia OR Living Volcano.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

That Old Tree posted:

If I recall correctly, cWoD was adamantly "Hitler was just human omg man's inhumanity to man!" Nephandi and Wyrm werewolves and racist regular werewolves and ultimate mind control Technocrats and whatever were just hangers on all the way to the end…somehow. Which might sound reasonable in light of recent tangents, but considering he's basically the only one who gets that sort of treatment it comes off as cheap edgelord posturing. Like many of oWoD's problems, it could've been solved by just having some goddamn restraint.

If they had kept his entire inner circle human it probably would have been fine, but half of the vampire tribes claim Himler and Mengele amongst their numbers. According to the 1st ed Get tribebook, a lot of German Get worked with the nazis without up and going "hey we're werewolves how can we help" and most of them stopped once they found out about the Concentration Camps and that some Nazi Scientists were experimenting on Garou. (I'm not sure how? but they were apparently)

Also this exists.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

Night10194 posted:

Operation Darkness: The RPG is and always should be an option.

I just googled this and how have I never heard of that game before?

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

Mors Rattus posted:

Because, sadly, it was a terrible game.

Do you have a link to your LP of it handy? It's not on the archive.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:
I do have archives so that's not a concern, I'm just a sucker for dumb alt-history particularly if it involves Werewolves.


Kavak posted:

I still don't get that chart :saddowns:

Neither do I, so don't worry.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

Thank you. So far the most ludicrous thing I've stumbled upon in this game with werewolf soldiers is that a machine gunner in the british army would be able to perfectly describe nuclear fission without prompting.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

Cythereal posted:

You could probably play Botlickers as a lighter shade of grey if you're willing to play the Zoneminds as such, too. The Zoneminds are portrayed as straightforward villains for the most part, but Reign of Steel keeps making me think you could have a good campaign about playing at least one Zonemind as more ambiguous or, well, human-like. There's a lot of story potential for a story about a Zonemind and a crew of favored mooks on what turns into an odd sort of redemption quest, I think.

"hey man, sorry for trans-spectral hyper-ebola... can we be friends again?"

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:
I thought you could spend a possibility to make a bubble of your reality and not risk disconnection for a while, but since possibilities are rare that's not something you'd want to do 100% of the time.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

AmiYumi posted:

How do you gently caress things up this badly? I want more behind-the-scenes tell-alls, anything that would explain and excuse...this. Lie to me, if you have to.


Because Vampire and Werewolf were written by the Devs who had already spent most of Revised cleaning them up and trying to make them presentable, whereas Mage was written by the guy they drummed out of White Wolf for being insufferable about Magykk.

I think the point is that Achilli and Skemp both did very good things, and Brucato did precisely what was expected of him.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:
"This reminds me of a puzzle."
"The qlipplothic beast vomiting it's own flaming organs out of it's ears reminds you of a puzzle?"
"I know what I'm about, boy."

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

Kavak posted:

"Editor", is that some type of minor character template from a supplement they forgot to include? :confused:

Reading this, I'm starting to think that Beast was not some huge misstep and that Onyx Path is slipping back into White Wolf's lovely old ways.

Honestly Beast was really out of left field for everyone. BHM's previous book was Demon, which is god-machine damned amazing. But he also had someone else writing with him on that one. I know Rose and Rich raised their concerns after the Beast Kickstarter feedback was the equivalent of "Oh hell no!" but Matt really stuck to his guns with how he wanted Beast to go.

Demon recently had a new release with it's Storytellers Guide and it's apparently a return to form.

Kurieg fucked around with this message at 07:03 on Jan 15, 2016

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

LatwPIAT posted:

I was somewhat horrified to read the writer's guide for nChangeling 2E and discover that it included things like "don't care too much about edge cases, we expect the STs to handle that" (paraphrased) and "I don't want more than 300 words on specific Tilts - instead there'll be a system for making Tilts" (paraphrased, but with less uncharitable interpretation this time). They seem to offload a lot of the development and even quality control on the STs, rather than providing rigorous and elegant mechanics - and I know they can do better; the WoD games have often been full of interesting emergent mechanics that help to create stories from simple interactions. One of my favourite examples is how Willpower and Vice interact in World of Darkness, where you need to spend Willpower to do difficult ~stuff~ and the best way to regain Willpower is to invoke your Vice. The result is that characters who face adversity get stressed and are tempted to succumb to their vices a lot, because investigating the supernatural is stressful and going out and getting drunk, starting a fight, or having a one-night stand is tempting.

In Beast the mechanical bits, such as they are, are somewhat well put together. The Atavisms and Nightmares are really good and evocative. But the fluff put together around those mechanics is what kills it. It's one of those things where you think a competent writer could probably come in and salvage it given the opportunity, except a competent writer was given that opportunity, and he was forced to take it by the Kickstarter Backers. He just didn't change anything that mattered, it still has vile enemies such as "Pick Up Artist" and "Conservative Mother" and goes on at length about how everybody loves you because you're so perfect and special and anyone who says otherwise deserves to die.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

LatwPIAT posted:

I don't, by itself, mind that the book references things I don't know. I just find the examples used to be particularly striking in their obscurity; a "significant pop-culture figure" is someone who until reading M20 I had never heard of. Geronimo is rated above Elvis and Batman. These examples are supposed to provide context and guidelines, but to me they fail to do so. I know who Grumpy Cat is, I don't know who Janis Joplin is. I know more about Elvis than Geronimo. This makes it very hard for me - and I reckon I'm not alone in this - to determine where on this scale something falls. Is Fritiof Nansen an obscure 1-dot legend, or a major 4-dot legend?

I think the issue is that Brucato is letting his prejudices show again. Geronimo is an Apache folk hero who resisted both the Mexicans and the Americans, of course he's more important than Elvis and Batman. But putting him on the same level as Red Riding Hood just seems... wrong somehow. Why are fictional characters even *on* that list?

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

Alien Rope Burn posted:

The idea that you would still use floating TNs and splitting dice pools... it's amazing to see folks who ignore 20+ years of refinement on a game system, but I guess that's not as important as feels.

Splitting Dice Pools is needlessly complex and usually a trap options that results in you succeeding in neither thing you were trying.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:

The most important thing to ever remember about oWoD's dice pool mechanics (splitting, changing TN, changing # of dice) is Greg Stolze's anecdote about working on some mechanics for a book and asking the line developer "what's better, +X dice or -Y difficulty?" and being told basically "do whatever feels right, man." It's not even lunatics running the asylum, it's lunatics squatting in an open field and insisting that theirs is a fine institution that serves the needs of the population.

There's a reason why Revised got rid of the reduced difficulty merits. Reducing the TN by 2 increased your chance of success by more than adding two dice.

ignoring 1s, since they muck up the math more than is strictly necessary(and, again, heavily favor decreasing TNs vs adding more dice, since more dice means more ones).

4 dice difficulty 8 has a 60% chance of success.
6 dice difficulty 8 has a 73% chance of success.
4 dice difficulty 6 has a 87% chance of success.
6 dice difficulty 6 has a 95% chance of success.

6 dice is about the bare minimum level of competency of "A thing I want my character to do often" so taking one of those merits would reduce your chance of failure to 1/20.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

Mr.Misfit posted:

Reading all this talk about dice probabilities made me think about all the different resolution systems floating around out there. Did anyone ever try an compile list of general dice resolution system?

Would be interesting to see, if one system prevails despite decades of baggage *cough DND cough*.

I don't have a list of all of them, but I do have all the various formats that Orokos supports on their help page.

quote:

Dice Roller
Format

XdY to roll X dice of Y sides. Prefix N# to roll the dice N separate times. Special dice for Fudge (Y is F) and Cthulhutech (Y is C).

Operators allowed are +, -, *, and / which follow order of operations. Division rounds down. Use parentheses if needed. Full format is any number of terms combined with the operators, where term is a literal number or a roll. N can be a term itself.

Combinatorics are possible as well. N-choose-K results can be of the form NcK, the value will be the number of combinations to choose K items from a set of N items, and return a random one of these sets in the details. (i.e. 4c2 might result in 6 [4c2=1,3]) Permutations are possible in the form NpK. These terms are useful for generating sequences.
Options

Append the following modifiers as desired, if using multiple then they must be added in the order below. Some combinations may be invalid.

rZ - reroll die if result is Z or lower (Brutal property in D&D, etc.)
roZ - reroll die only once if result is Z or lower
mZ - count result as Z if roll is lower than Z
eZ or oZ - extra / open roll when the die is Z or higher, extra grants one bonus roll only
kZ or lZ - keep the highest / lowest Z rolls, drop others
tZ - target number Z, count rolls that meet or exceed Z as successes (if Z > Y, implicit oY)
hZ - hits Z, count rolls that meet or exceed Z as successes, max roll grants bonus roll (implicit oY) (WoD)
xZ - hits Z, count rolls that meet or exceed Z as successes, max roll grants bonus success (Exalted)
uZ - under Z, count rolls that are equal to or under Z as successes
! - when at the end of any roll, turns on verbose mode (shows all dice rerolled and modified)
Other Dice

Edge of the Empire dice are available as XeY, where Y is the first letter of the die type: Ability, Boost, Challenge, Difficulty, Force, Proficiency, or Setback.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3e are available as XwY, where Y is the color of the die: Characteristic (Blue), Expertise (Yellow), Challenge (Purple), Reckless (Red), Conservative (Green), Fortune (White), or Misfortune (blacK).

Other symbol dice are available as XxY, where Y is one of:

K - King of Tokyo die (d6: 1, 2, 3, Heart, Energy, Attack)
M - Mage Knight mana die (d6: Black, White, Red, Green, Blue, Gold)
R - Fate of the Norns runes (draw from 24 runes)

Double Cross dice are available as XxxY to roll X dice (d10s) with a crit threshold of Y. Takes the highest single result, unless one or more dice are Y or higher. The result is increased by 10 and the dice Y or higher are rerolled and the process repeated.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:
That's pretty much how the original books were arranged, actual dice resolution mechanics are buried in the storyteller section I believe.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

DAD LOST MY IPOD posted:

is brucato the guy who did that setting where America had a red state blue state civil war and the blue states use sex magick and furry gene splices and the red states use power armor and pro life super-soldier teenagers

because that was the worst

Unlikely, He maintains his bibliography on Wikipedia and unless that's "The best little hellhouse in texas" it has entirely too little to do with faeries and loving to be one of his works.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Brucato

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:
Not really, Fields is just obsessed with sex, particularly sex acts that might be normally seen as transgressional or taboo, combined with specifically Japanese exceptionalism. He's also ridiculously infantile and loves putting corprophilia and menses into his book for reasons.

Brucato sees sex as a gateway into the realm of "Magiiiiiccccccckkkkkkjjjssskksss" and a return to a time when love was free and we all danced with the earth mother and faeries existed etc etc etc.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

PurpleXVI posted:

That was Otherverse: America, by Chris Field. This was also part of the setting where the universe is ruled by a parsecs-long space penis, and that being able to understand cocks is a prerequisite for sentience. None of this is hyperbole or made up.

Chris Field was also the guy who wrote Black Tokyo. He's a bad person.

I'm re-reading Otherverse America. And honestly I don't know who's worse. Fields is more extreme than Brucato but Brucato is also being professionally published. The only things keeping Brucato's Id in check are his editors and his belief that magic is real.

Basically: Fields has been doing this poo poo for years on the periphery of the d20 shitware business and most people wouldn't even know he existed if he hadn't stumbled his way into the limelight last august, but he can usually be ignored. People who like White Wolf can't ignore Brucato because he keeps turning up in the worst places.

Kurieg fucked around with this message at 23:27 on Jan 19, 2016

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

Young Freud posted:

Which is hilarious because Field is like a militant pagan. Otherverse is like some weird wish-fulfillment for him.

no, the idea was "SJWs are trying to take down Fields free speech"

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

LatwPIAT posted:

As an example of Hollywood/Hollywood people loving to romanticize the Nobel Rebels: Joss Whedon's Firefly has some pretty heavy undertones of Confederate appologism. Like, it's a cool show, but Mal Reynolds spends the entire show with "The SouthBrowncoats Will Rise Again" metaphorically embroidered on his shirt.

Yes, though it's free of references to actual slavery, meaning the primary conflict is actually about states planets rights.

It helps that the core systems are actively villainous in other ways as well.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:
The way it works is basically AO is a true neutral rear end in a top hat who understands that Mortals need to exist, but can't fathom a reason to actually care about them. So he can't fathom why the lesser gods would care either, so he created a system where they have to care. The gods are powered by belief, and without belief they wither and die. And to ensure that the mortals would believe, he created the wall of he faithless. Where those who refused to believe would be punished for all eternity. The time of Troubles was AO enforcing the status quo.

Basically in any other setting AO would be Neutral Evil at best, and the entire checks and balances system of divinity that the Forgotten Realms has is one of the reasons I loathe the setting.

Their hidebound refusal to actually advance the setting in any meaningful way is the other. 4e tried with all it's heart but 5e bent over backwards to return to the status quo, even bringing Mystra back from the dead in the dumbest loving way possible after killing her off so hard that Magic broke.


Also I'm working on Book of the Wyrm still. should hopefully have an update in some form before I go to bed... just.. so much In Nomine to read..

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

Night10194 posted:

Why the hell would anyone bring back Mystara she is the worst.

Free Waukeen.

It's Mystra, Mystara is something completely different.

And because she's Ed Greenwood's personal wank fantasy, and that makes her important to all the nerds who demand that the Forgotten Realms stay eternal and pure.

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Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

Kavak posted:

They reversed the status quo so hard Bhaal came back to life. How the gently caress did that even work?

The last two Bhaalspawn finally killed eachother. What's dumb is that Myrkul came back with no explanation whatsoever.

At least Mystra was a Bear.


That loving Bear.

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