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Evil Mastermind posted:
I kind of assume he was this guy
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Jan 12, 2016 07:43
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Evil Mastermind posted:By the way, I haven't really touched on the "fiction" part of Torg, mainly because it's terrible. Here's the "intro story" for the Nile Empire sourcebook: I can believe it. I mean, don't get me wrong. The narration is dire, and the dialog is nowhere near good. But some of Mobius's dialog works, in a mad science pulp villain way, and the bit about how he can afford to miss watching the hero die... since he'll be dying for all eternity! is prime evil megalomaniac. It's bad writing in a subgenre where a little bad writing can actually help the atmosphere. Actually, given some of what you've said about Torg, I wouldn't be surprised if that was on the better end of the spectrum. If that's the case, I'm very grateful you haven't been touching on the fiction, and would prefer it if you continued to do so.
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Jan 15, 2016 04:37
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JesterOfAmerica posted:Truly Bugs Bunny is the greatest power in the world But he always loses to the turtle.
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Jan 31, 2016 08:00
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Nessus posted:I want to see one of these settings that has the cojones to make the Commies the good guys. With heavy veiling if necessary, of course. Yeah, you could play as the heroic Stasi, hunting down the fiendish spies pretending to be ordinary citizen, but you ended surveillance in 1991, because it was The Right Thing To Do. Also everyone's related to Stalin so they can inherit his heirloom weapons. Maybe they can ride dinosaurs! chiasaur11 fucked around with this message at 06:50 on Feb 3, 2016 |
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Feb 3, 2016 06:40
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Night10194 posted:Beast is also the kind of game that drives me to want to play Hunter so I can play as someone whose job it is to deal with creatures like that. One of the most laughable bits in Beast is where they go 'When confronted with a Hunter, the Beast will ask them WHAT GIVES YOU THE RIGHT TO HUNT and mind will be blown!' as if that isn't the main driving point behind every single Hunter ideology and something every Hunter works out over their vigil. I kinda want someone to try that poo poo on a VASCU agent, only to get the US legal code cited back at them, chapter and verse.
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Apr 10, 2016 02:36
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Cythereal posted:Or for a great many hunters, "My gun gives me the right. Now are you going to die like a man, or do you want to close your eyes?" And of course, there's the Long Night and the Malleus Maleficarum. "We're on a mission from God" isn't just for Jake and Elwood.
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Apr 10, 2016 20:32
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FMguru posted:A game about early modern European history (with folklore and magic and national cultures) is a great idea. Zorro and the Ancien Regime and King Arthur and Merlin and the Unseelie Court and Baba Yaga and Saracens and Musketeers and Galileo and Newton all crammed into it sounds like a hell of a good time. Except it was sold as "7th Sea" and the promotional art was full of pirates and ships and the CCG it was a spinoff was literally had players controlling fleets of ships sailing from place to place. And the setting literally had NO PLACE for those age of sail pirates and ships in it. Let's not forget Ogami Ittō. Sword for hire. Son for hire. Seriously, at least a quarter of Lone Wolf and Cub is "Honor lets Ogami Ittō loving kill the hell out of you." without having it be entirely a mug's game. (He'd probably kill all the Scorpions with a minigun in his son's baby carriage. )
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Apr 12, 2016 09:02
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is just the cherry on the poo poo sundae.
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Doodmons posted:Yep. Love is the most powerful of Inspirations - hence it bestowing immortality at 3 instead of 4 like all other Inspirations - but any inspiration at 4 saveguards the character. My character in the campaign I played in was kept alive by his Hatred of the King, for example, and PCs in the game I'm currently GMing are kept alive by things like Bettering The World Through Technology (wait until Nifara gets to the Engineering rules - holy crap) and Loyalty To The Pack. Second only to a nice mutton, lettuce, and tomato sandwich.
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Apr 17, 2016 23:25
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Halloween Jack posted:Whoops! He switched places with a double. Where does he keep finding them! And now I'm thinking of Baccano! The immortals in that could be reduced to a bloodstain on the floor, and in a few hours, that bloodstain would be a gangster in a snazzy suit again, and he'd probably stab you to death. ...Now I kinda want to to see what Vino's sheet would look like in Spellbound Kingdoms. Or maybe Isaac and Miria.
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Apr 22, 2016 07:35
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Cythereal posted:The promethean one-liners strike me as particularly tone deaf to that game line. Not surprising, I suppose, given that Beasts feel like they're ideal antagonists for Prometheans to come into conflict with. Or possibly "Aagh, aagh, why am I on fire?"
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Apr 24, 2016 09:01
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Kurieg posted:As I was writing all of them up I realized that the lessons are basically "Humanity is utter scum. Beasts are somehow worse." Beasts exist so that Dennis Reynolds has someone to feel morally superior to. Thinking about it, if I had to play Beast, it might be fun to run with the It's Always Sunny gang. But what lessons do they teach?
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Apr 26, 2016 04:34
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unzealous posted:So what kind of character concept do you want to see built? A brilliant medical examiner who lost his career as a doctor for his radical theories that the dead may walk among us. A successful high school athlete turned social worker who's the only one who cares when the kids he's trying to mentor start going missing. A low rent criminal from a wealthy family who just pissed off the Boss by trying to start his own operation.
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May 1, 2016 00:35
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Or Lottie Grote from Bad Machinery. Lottie would be good too.
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May 1, 2016 00:51
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unzealous posted:You also gain situational modifiers for breaking points. It’s much easier to justify defending yourself against a mugger than it is committing premeditated murder. Great. Now I'm wishing we were rolling up Rick and Morty.
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May 4, 2016 02:40
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Selachian posted:Nah, Booster Gold was doing the "celebrity superhero with endorsements and movie deals" thing a few years before Youngblood came along. So that's one thing Liefeld isn't responsible for. Heck, Spider-Man did it in a "What If" all the way back in 1980. I mean, he tried to do it back in the 60s, but it kept blowing up in his face. Oh, and the Fantastic Four! Issue 9 had them making a movie to make up for Reed losing all their money on the stock market. Admittedly, it was all a plot by Namor to murder them, but the movie still came out. The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.
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May 6, 2016 05:55
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You know what was an actually good, recentish, "grim and real" take on superheroes? The Winter Men. Basically, the USSR made superheroes in the cold war, but like so many other things rendered them ineffective thanks to bureaucratic infighting. Cut to the early 2000s, and they pretty much hid the whole set of projects away and tried to pretend they never existed. The hero's a cop who used to pilot power armor as a theoretical defense against rogue superheroes. Now, there's rumors in the air one's back, and making a power play. So he has to get the band back together to get to the bottom of things. Mostly, though, it's kind of just this dude's life, in a world that had something amazing once, but now it's pretty much gone.
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May 7, 2016 04:34
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LatwPIAT posted:Amazing: adjective 1. causing great surprise or sudden wonder. You can tell something's amazing if wealth and fame are ignored. Action is the reward.
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May 11, 2016 02:53
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Lurks With Wolves posted:To be fair 4e's premades were garbage too, what with all the cyberwareless combat characters and detectives that own lockpicks that don't know how to pick locks in the slightest. Well, he can't yet, but they have a course down at the Y, and he's always been meaning to learn, and you know the picks were on sale, so, you know...
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May 13, 2016 04:49
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Covok posted:Snakes are often associated with the devil and controlling them could be an allusion to sorcerey. I think the man is being intimidated or attacked by another through sorcerous control of the snake. Least that's my take on the picture. Snake handling is a popular test of faith in a lot of fictional depictions of Pentecostal churches, looking at things from the opposite angle. Basically, the idea is that if you have enough faith, you can get bit by vipers and shrug it off. Comes up as a plot point in Justified season 4. So, uh... that just makes things more confusing, I suppose.
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May 14, 2016 03:39
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Kavak posted:No, it worked just fine there. There were also plenty of examples of what happened when it was totally ignored to back it up. Some of those examples were a little silly, but the idea was sound in TOS. There were no examples as to why the "Let them all die" interpretation of TNG and later was a good idea, probably because it's basically indefensible. Yeah. The TOS Prime Directive mostly existed to prevent proxy wars and cultural assimilation "for their own good". Saving people from exploding planets was fine, but you don't gently caress with a culture because you're Mr. Genius Futureman and you know best without a pretty drat good excuse. Kirk violated it every couple weeks, including starting Space Vietnam once, but there were plenty of episodes (including the Space Vietnam one) where it showed Why We Have A loving Prime Directive. Essentially, it was more a guideline and a reminder that sometimes it's best to not get involved. In TNG it was loving insane.
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May 17, 2016 03:06
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Nessus posted:Maybe the gun'sbrasting thing in Dystopia America there is because the superheroes realize that they have nothing to fear from the petty iron of the plebians and as a result let them have whatever shooting tools they want. All they're going to do is murder one another, after all. Of course, I gather this Facade dude is not a Superman-type, so who knows. The whole point of the Delta/Alpha divide is that Deltas are the superheroes who still have to worry about your puny bullets, so, no. Doesn't really fly, especially since one of the classes is "I can shoot people. With guns!" (It always strikes me as missing the point when games like this make "Gun-man!" a viable archtype, and then put it as having to use super-powers to be Good At Guns. A big part of the appeal to playing as Hawkeye or Batman or The Punisher is that you're in a world of GODLIKE SUPERHUMANS, but you're the baseline who somehow keeps up by being Just That Good. If you need to have superpowers to be a superhero, you'd be much better off getting, you know, actual superpowers.)
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May 26, 2016 03:13
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So, in this universe where superheroes first appeared in WWI... the Catholic church had a secret society of Dracula hunters dating back to Rome. Who they never told anyone about. For Reasons. I can't even begin to list my problems with this concept. Like, in a standard Cape setting, fine. There's a lot of crazy poo poo floating around, and it doesn't make that little sense to have church monster hunters. I mean, the Vatican officially sanctioned an exorcism group a couple years back. If there are Draculas, and they have the traditional weaknesses, there's going to be a response. And if this was a Dracula centric setting, then hell yes. Bring on the malleus maleficarum. Even if the setting goes past "Well, who knows?" to a hard "No." on the God issue, major religious groups have reason to object to supernatural monsters chewing their flocks, and enough influence through the ages to do something about it. (Admittedly, the something may be 'kill any witnesses that can prove we're full of poo poo', depending on the setting, but, you know, it's still an influence on history when you do that.) But previously in the setting, the Big Thing is superheroes. They arrived in WWI. They reshaped WWII. They're the big Thing in the world. There being Draculas since time immemorial just shits all over that idea. Also, the Pope is JFK's personal confessor? A schism based entirely on the church's lack of outright condemnation for one dictatorship? (And the schism is co-lead by a Baptist, because, you know. All actual theological debates are much less important for a religious organization than how you feel about superheros.) Cripes. Even by the lovely worldbuilding standards already on display this is dogshit.
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May 26, 2016 07:30
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Hostile V posted:HOLLYWOOD: Brian Selvin has low-level mind control powers and uses it to dupe studio executives that his Delta clients can actually act. However, when the movies reach the American public, their actors suck royally and he's starting to have trouble keeping clients and studio numbers. He had another agent take the fall for it and that agent is getting out of prison soon to confront him. I don't really care about Hollywood. You know, even aside from the whole "Why should I care?" thing, this is stupid. First, it said that he was getting Deltas for stunts, which, you know. Different skillset from standard acting. But second, he has low level mind control. Hollywood has (if half of what I've read is true) hundreds of perfectly competent hopefuls who just never get their big break. His problem is not getting good actors. So, he could just team with a decent talent scout, use his powers to encourage hiring his clients, and hey presto. Back in the game, people talk about his Hot Young Talent, audiences don't mind, and nobody makes trouble. But no. Like so many other things in Brave New World, it has to be extra dumb.
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May 27, 2016 04:28
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Young Freud posted:I just got to the point where you talked about the Storytelling chapter and Sounds like Vancouver needs a visit from Task Force Valkyrie. I mean, with the whole "They're probably working for Vampires!" thing, (much as I might dislike it normally) they got a drat good reason to show some interest. No supernatural powers work? Fine. Shotguns still do!
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May 30, 2016 05:14
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Night10194 posted:How will they write a plot that doesn't get resolved by soul lasers and screaming really loudly, though? (My opinion of Gundam is probably too harshly colored by Unicorn being the first full series I saw, as I'm given to believe it is not typical of the setting) Honestly, I'd say the current series is maybe the most grounded in a lot of ways. No energy weapons, PMC mercenaries instead of civilians for the core cast, and "psychic powers!" are replaced with "horrific cybernetic surgery" as the go-to for ace pilots. Kind of an interesting contrast with Unicorn getting a TV edit between the seasons.
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Jun 10, 2016 03:11
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You know, this is kind of small in comparison to the many, many other issues with Glory days, but it stands out to how loving boring they play Rommel. Like, this is an interesting historical figure, both for what he did himself, and how he was used for propaganda by both sides, both during and after the war. Brilliant tank commander, lead from the front, picked up a reputation for decency and chivalry while also being, oh yeah. One of loving ADOLF HITLER'S closest pals! You could do a lot with him. Guy lead from the front, and already was Germany's golden boy. So why not go for the obvious, give him a standard brick package? It means he's going to be able to better support his units in skirmishing, playing to his strengths, while also letting you highlight his weaker large scale planning. Powers work great with the guy's tendency to go off on his own and ignore the chain of command, and with his whole "I am just a regular Joe Nazi Germany, doing my part to help the working class with my natural abilities and charm." shtick. Hell, you can get a lot of good comedy out of him, if you're willing to go with bleak humor. This is the guy who sent a letter to Hitler suggesting how to best counteract the obviously spurious allied propaganda about the whole anti antisemitism thing. He thought they should find a capable Jewish fellow, and give him a high ranking political office. (Hitler did not think it was a good idea.) If it wasn't a remarkably elaborate bit of rear end covering on his part, there's a political naivete there that borders on the absurd. Works for comedy, works for tragedy as someone who wants to think of himself as a decent person keeps going deeper into self delusion and atrocity to convince himself that no, one of the most evil regimes in human history really just has a few bad eggs, and everything will be fine as soon as they win. The classic Super, only he doesn't seem to get he's working for the guys setting up death camps. But no. He's "Generic Nazi Commander who is Good At Tanks (Because Superpowers)". Way to be creative, Brave New World! Really playing with the vast canvas of history.
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Jul 1, 2016 10:30
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Hostile V posted:Yeah the sad thing is that he doesn't even get a good set of powers. I agree that he'd be better as a Tough or even as an Ace actually piloting a tank himself and doing crazy poo poo with it. Instead they make him a Genius, a power set with barely any real use against the players because how exactly is +5 to all Smarts rolls supposed to be executed when you're a Nazi commander and the PCs will never see your (nonexistent) sheet? It doesn't even give you something new to do on a narrative level! Without powers, he's a brilliant tank commander. With... he's a brilliant tank commander. Dude was treated like a superhuman genius in the press in real life. Actually making him superhuman there just takes away some of the fun failings and weaknesses. It does, however, allow the writers to keep to the theme of "Anyone important is a Delta." Because nothing makes a world feel real and lived in quite like every historical figure getting laser eyes.
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Jul 2, 2016 11:05
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Hostile V posted:I'm just gonna say that in general, sometimes you can make using Nazis work for the backstory of things. But if at any point you have Mengele's tortures be used for any sort of research and he actually gets results, you have gone too far in a tastelessly stupid direction and should reconsider this. Does it acknowledge that what he did was monstrous? Yeah. Did they still go along with him being responsible for the nation's force of offensive and defensive Deltas? Yes and that's where things start going south in the "hold the gently caress up" sense. The thing for me, for that, is that it's mentioned that Deltas get their powers from, basically, lovely things happening to them. So I can believe Mengele could create Deltas. I'd just also assume he'd create Deltas who would massacre the entire facility. Besides, the cynical part of me kind of assumes that, if he was any good at things, he'd just be Paperclipped rather than run off to South America.
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Jul 6, 2016 17:28
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I'm just impressed that the Duplicator is one of the best powers in the game, when it's basically Duo Damsel from Legion of Superheroes. I mean, she has one of the crappiest power sets in the group based around coming up with weird-rear end power sets, but worse because of getting killed by robots, and she's still riding high on the badass heap around these parts. I hesitate to imagine how dangerous Matter Eater Lad would be around here. (I mean, on top of everything else he's a lawyer, senator, and beloved TV personality. How's Kennedy going to stop that?)
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Jul 14, 2016 04:03
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Why does this setting need Evil Inc, again? It already has a massive evil organization which can put the screws on the PCs. It's called loving Delta Prime. It's not even like Evil Inc is a third party, guys Defiance doesn't like but they help with the whole evil government thing. They work for both sides, because when you're a totalitarian government, of course you want to keep a private army that can and does undermine your authority at every turn around. Cripes, this setting started in the sewers and just keeps digging.
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Jul 16, 2016 06:19
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Hostile V posted:Yeah it's actually kind of amazing how unnecessary Evil Unlimited and this entire book is, in the long run. It's also amazing how they suggest starting an Evil Inc campaign. First, assume the players will take loans without checking for strings, because of course they haven't learned insane levels of paranoia from years of the kind of gotcha DMing Brave New World encourages. Then assume that PCs, a group collectively known for showing less restraint than Detective Sledge Hammer, will just nod and go along with increasingly deep levels of blackmail which show no signs of being relieved, because they fear consequences. They're PCs. If they're good guys, they'll baulk at doing villain dirty work. If they're murderhobos, they want to get paid, and would probably recruit easier if you just went "Hey, we're a morally shady group of terrorists for hire. How many trucks worth of money you want?" over "Haha! We'll release these pictures to the police and... what are you doing with that steamroller?" Even aside from being bad etiquette, it seems remarkably unlikely to achieve its desired objectives.
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Jul 17, 2016 04:18
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Cassa posted:What was the cause of the vampires before h-bombs and nuclear accidents? Ancient stone masks and Tom Petty, respectively.
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Jul 28, 2016 06:06
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Doresh posted:Sadly not. There is no "modern" bow, only explosive and incendiary arrows. There's also no 'Mech-sized bow of any kind (not sure of a 'Mech even has enough dexterity to pull a bow string), but you can always get a gun or misisle launcher that looks like a bow. I'm pretty sure that a mech can use a bow. Of course, you might need to be an expert doctor/engineer/martial artist to pull it off, but the point stands.
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Aug 7, 2016 23:36
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Doresh posted:BattleTech doesn't take kindly to your silly excuses for "Real" Robots. All a 'Mech can do with his hands is whack people with trees and make rude gestures I'm pretty sure science will show you that G Gundam has the realest robots. I'd like to see one of your fancy "'Mechs" ride a horse back to Earth from space after killing the devil with the power of love!
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Aug 9, 2016 09:39
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Nessus posted:Godlike concept: A former petty criminal Japanese-American whose life goal is to get rich even if he's not a hostile (or particularly bright) sort. Power is heavy on Disintegration. I was going to suggest a brash young English immigrant with a focus on improvised weapons and minor precog, but this is good too.
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Aug 16, 2016 03:16
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Count Chocula posted:That last update actually made Beast look fun. Just take out all premise of 'teaching a lesson', emotional abuse, and rape and run it as a game of over the top monsters. That cranky old Halloween lady getting more points the more her murder fit her theme was great - like a Batman villain or something. Plus the powers with over the top names were cool, and who hasn't been so irritated by a minor annoyance that you've wanted to punish them? You could have a Duel/War Boy type who runs down everybody who cut them off in traffic, for example. Just make it a bit more over the top, like Better Angels. Yes, because what's most fun in a game session is everyone sitting around the table talking about how they want to rapemurder everyone who ever looked at them funny, including the other players. Cor, what a ruse! Seriously, Beast just keeps getting worse, and it started awful. Fortunately, Hunters and Demons are immune to their stupid bullshit "You're my friend" rays, so we can imagine any beast that starts this crap gets a friendly bayonet to the back courtesy of the Malleus Maleficarum or something of that nature.
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Aug 17, 2016 03:28
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Davin Valkri posted:What's wrong with Mimikyu?! You got a problem?! It's just that the universe loves Mimikyu too much to reward people for hurting them.
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Aug 19, 2016 04:22
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:You meant Mantis right? Yes, Mantis is one of the clans that brings the largest temptation of straying from the Crab, the True Path. (Still. Second best clan. Their founding story being a Crab samurai going "Hey, look, you guys are cool and all, but I don't quite agree with everything, so... I'm ditching. We cool?" is pretty great, especially in the context of so many petty blood feuds.) The bits on Crab Honor remind me a tiny bit of Lone Wolf And Cub, which probably isn't a coincidence given the zeitgeist when L5R was being written. The commitment to this one big, suicidal matter of honor means they don't give a gently caress about the standard rules of what you do and what you don't. Of course, Itto was a Ronin with nothing but the cash in his pockets, the clothes on his back, the sword at his side, his son, and a baby carriage with more weapons than some third world countries, so there wasn't much people could do to screw him over beyond just trying to kill him, and that... didn't tend to work out. Meanwhile, the Crab have to maintain a position in society, and that is not made easier when your diplomats just drop their balls on the table, belch, and ask the Emperor if he has a problem.
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Aug 28, 2016 08:04
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Count Chocula posted:Toredor aren't snobs, since can't they be transfixed by the beauty in ANYTHING? Maybe in theory, but apparently (haven't read it) that clanbook does not play that idea up like they maybe should. As for the Lion, I think one of their problems is that the Crab's demon fighting thing is a unique niche. Sure, other people sometimes help, but if you need demons killed, you get a Crab. Meanwhile, the Lion fight other people, and one thing that keeps coming up with the clans is everybody goes in for human on human facestabs from time to time. The lion may be better at it, but they seem like someone else could sub in quick enough if they had an off day. As for their virtue, well, if your virtue makes you abuse children, drown yourself in pride, and send good soldiers to a pointless death, I'm not sure losing that virtue is that much of a cost to society. But, first ed. I'm sure they seem more interesting later.
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Sep 1, 2016 10:05
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Tasoth posted:Gym Class Hero: Whenever you take your full movement and no other action during a round, gain advantage/+2/automatically end any ongoing conditions (death included). And, once again, the Body Improvement Club is shown to be the heroes we need.
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Sep 19, 2016 00:15
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