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Mr.Misfit
Jan 10, 2013

The time for
SkellyBones
has come!
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*.

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Mr.Misfit
Jan 10, 2013

The time for
SkellyBones
has come!
Go with Option C. Weīll have to see how deep this rabbit hole goes!

Mr.Misfit
Jan 10, 2013

The time for
SkellyBones
has come!
Well. Thatīs it. Iīm buying Nightīs Black Agents. drat you DRACULA!

PS: Very nice work, ProfessorProf!

Mr.Misfit
Jan 10, 2013

The time for
SkellyBones
has come!
Not, if Monte Cook has a say about it.

Mr.Misfit
Jan 10, 2013

The time for
SkellyBones
has come!
I think it was because DitV was one of the early Forge-theory produced games. Though RPGnet hasnīt really changed since then. They still whine about things incessantly and for the most part still seem to adore CthulhuTech.

Mr.Misfit
Jan 10, 2013

The time for
SkellyBones
has come!

Halloween Jack posted:

And if you want to play fascism porno, just take my advice and use Marvel Heroic Roleplaying to play out more Marvel movies.

Thereīs a joke in there, but I just donīt see it. Care to elaborate for the uninitiated?

Mr.Misfit
Jan 10, 2013

The time for
SkellyBones
has come!

Tendales posted:

The math for exploding dice isn't even hard to calculate, so there's no excuse for designers not doing their homework and basing their game around the actual expected values.

Considering that even designers for the biggest games in tabletop rpgs donīt know or care about the odds should tell you how that is working out. And those people are still getting work in this field...

Mr.Misfit
Jan 10, 2013

The time for
SkellyBones
has come!

Eopia posted:

So what happens if the PCs decide to just kill Ninube while Ujina is still unconcious?

John Wick would know.

Somewhere, deep within the bowels of his Fortress of WICK, John looked up.
Something had nudged him to do so, at the edge of his mind.
He knew the feeling all too well.
"They killed Ninube!"

Mr.Misfit
Jan 10, 2013

The time for
SkellyBones
has come!
GoogleFu to the rescue!

quote:

Castlemourn is a campaign setting for the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game by Ed Greenwood, published by Margaret Weis Productions, Ltd. The world of Castlemourn lost its past during a cataclysm, and now various races (including old, such as elves and dwarves, and new ones) try to find their history.

Setting
Castlemourn is a land searching for its past. Its people are unaware of their origins, the greatness of their history, or what disaster brought about the dark age that has engulfed the land. Some three hundred years before the setting’s current era, there existed a magical place of shining towers and marvelous wonders called the Realm of Castles. Legends tell of a great war against fell creatures that destroyed the realm, leaving scorched ruins and crumbling citadels. Whatever befell this realm was so terrible that the gods have "cordoned" it off. No one is permitted to leave Castlemourn and those who find their way there, do so at their own peril, as adventurers, treasure hunters, and questors scour the land searching for relics, artifacts, and clues to their past. Castlemourn is a post-apocalyptic fantasy setting where kingdoms fight for power through political intrigue and outright warfare; where the brave seek their fortunes in dangerous ruins, and where everyone fears the unspeakable evil that shadows their land.

Races
In Castlemourn, one can find almost all of the core races, except half-orc. However, their base abilities all changed in some ways.

Dwarves: Dwarves are a stout miner race, just like in the core settings. However, they perceive the world as an illusion, so they are more prone to be affected by illusions, but can ignore real dangers, as if they were only illusions.
Elves: Elves are lithe creatures of the woods, who glow with light, and therefore hardly can hide from others.
Half-Elves: Just like their elven ancestors, they glow, but with a dimmer light.
Halflings: Small people, who are the masters of forging magical items.
Gnomes: Gnomes are little humanoids, who swore to commit a great task in their lives.
Godaunts: Fell beasts, who are looked down by other races. They are the equivalent of the half-orc.
Thaele: Vampire-like mysterious race.

Classes
There is only one extra class beside the core classes of D&D: the buccaneer. The buccaneers are pirates, seafaring swashbucklers. There are six prestige classes as well: dusked, faihless one, rhymesword, servant of the Seven, truesword knight and waymaster.

For further information, Iīd lure you to either
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?243154-Castlemourn-Campaign-Setting
or
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?110696-Castlemourn

Edit:
On further note, it seems the setting died a quick and quiet death in abou 2008/09 as it never took flight as other settings did.

Mr.Misfit fucked around with this message at 17:59 on Sep 13, 2016

Mr.Misfit
Jan 10, 2013

The time for
SkellyBones
has come!
Itīs sad that the game is shiite (Middenarde), because that art is great.
Did the artist work on anything else?

Mr.Misfit
Jan 10, 2013

The time for
SkellyBones
has come!

PurpleXVI posted:

[...]Did you start out at 500 men and just watch the remaining 491 get demolished by a horde of dogs and birds, lead by a madman on the back of a bear huddling beneath two shields? Doesn't matter! There are still nine of you left, you're invincible!

I just had a laughing fit so hard that my coworkers looked at me funny. Made my day.
I mean, who wouldnīt feel invincible with 9 buds at his back? And who knows, maybe those 491 guys were really really frenchy?

Mr.Misfit
Jan 10, 2013

The time for
SkellyBones
has come!
This reminds me of a fun story from The Dark Eye I once heard.

See, in The Dark Eye 4.1, you usually roll either with a single d20 for the attribute, or 3d20 if its something that would fall under "skill".
However, despite an extensive skill list, this still left some things without a skill, and therefore forced to be rolled on the attribute RAW.

So that means, that many of the things are rolled with a single d20, and in TDE you roll equal to or below the attribute for a success.
If its a 1, critical success, otherwise below or equal your target number, a success, and above failure. And then thereīs the dastardly 20-result.

Rolling a 20 is a critical failure. In combat, this usually leads to someone ramming their sword into their own belly, but thatīs just for amusement.

Now, one of the things not listed as a talent, is hairdressing, or coiffeur...-ing...?
Anyway. A 20 is always a critical failure.

So have fun with a 1-in-20-chance of getting head accidentally lopped of due to a hairdressing accident,
or the hairdresser accidentally stabbing himself with his own pair of scissors...

Man, mortality in fantasy worlds is off the charts...:D

Mr.Misfit
Jan 10, 2013

The time for
SkellyBones
has come!

Asehujiko posted:

Are people reading but not commenting on Polaris because there's so little to say about the game's bone dry subject matter or is a game that starts off with 90 page fake geography textbook just too much? I've still got another 30 pages of contradictory history sections and those settlement writeups alone to go.

I suppose its just the dryness of the text overwhelms any attempt at commenting. Though I really like how you count the number of Dead End Metaplot references or contradictions that may occur, sometimes within the span of a few single pages (mind boggling, really).

Mr.Misfit
Jan 10, 2013

The time for
SkellyBones
has come!

Kurieg posted:

Enchantment!

Hey...yeah, so....2009 called, it wants its joke back.

Mr.Misfit
Jan 10, 2013

The time for
SkellyBones
has come!

Doresh posted:

So the mad scientist installed some gizmo into the ship so that nobody notices the ship travels through The Warp Hell. Did that also work for the AI? Was the crew aware of this, or did they just wonder why one of them just disappeared before each jump? When did any of this sound like a good idea?

And boy, that sacrifice stuff is some load of bullshit. They might as well just have a meatgrinder pop out with a sign reading "Insert puppies here".

Congratulations, you now used up more brain power thinking about that question than the people writing it ever did.
Btw., what this specifically written as a campaign module or was this the actual in-house campaign serialized as a module?
The latter would explain alot, because it would mean their in-house GM actually "asspulled" this and also why so little of this makes ANY sense.

Mr.Misfit
Jan 10, 2013

The time for
SkellyBones
has come!
Hang on, Lamentations of the Flame Princess is set in the 17th century, according to weapon technology and look and feel somewhere during or shortly after the thirty years war (Better than Any Man is specifically set during the Swedish invasion of northern Germany even!) but Marriage of Figaro wasnīt written until 1786! Also...why? The entire module seems based on shock value and absurdity alone, as an adventure to experience its pointless, doesnīt offer anything new or interesting and seems to serve purely to gently caress with people, especially in light of the fact that you get punished for mentioning the one movie the entire dungeon is based off of. Stupidly based of, I might say. I suppose thats LotFP in a nut shell, eh? *sigh*

Mr.Misfit
Jan 10, 2013

The time for
SkellyBones
has come!

Count Chocula posted:

[snip]
Shadowrun should capitalize on how the Kids Today like synthwave. Make it a total retro product, lots of neon and bulky cybernetics. Shadowrun: Blood Dragon. Comes with a soundtrack cassette by Kavinsky.

That would require a self-awareness of both their roots and a connection to popular culture, which BTW is also slowly fading already, as the 80s Retro Hype "was so 2016".
Itīs just baffling in many ways how the history of Shadowrun goes, but then again, take one look at Anarchy, go shake your head and continue on your way. Because if anything, the people writing for Catalyst havenīt learned a thing.

Mr.Misfit
Jan 10, 2013

The time for
SkellyBones
has come!

Halloween Jack posted:

There's a bit in Transmetropolitan where Spider's dreams get infected with advertising. This is presented as a totally normal thing in the setting and why most people (who aren't poor) go around wearing "mood filters" in public.
[...]

Isnīt Transmetropolitan a vision of a dystopia as Shadowrun imagined at the end of the 90s would be instead of the 80s? Also by a better writer, clearly.

Mr.Misfit
Jan 10, 2013

The time for
SkellyBones
has come!

Night10194 posted:

It feels like rather than balancing out the fact that cybernetics give meaningful gameplay advantages a game would be better off assuming the protagonists have a baseline of powerful cybernetics or fully prosthetic bodies, balancing the various specialties they could have with their hardware against one another, and then leaving the explorations of the deep disconnect between sense of self and artificial body, the commodification of an agent's actual physical form, and other cyberpunk themes to the plot rather than directly enforcing them with soul-loss.

Honest-to-god, I would play the heck out of a game where physical and energy limitations would require one to work with tech like GitSSAC did. Heck, make it something FATE-y and youīve gone most of the way you need. Throw in a little bit of PDQ or something equally screwed and call it...I donīt now Shadowrun CHAOS Edition. Would buy that in a heartbeat.....ohhhhhhh

Mr.Misfit
Jan 10, 2013

The time for
SkellyBones
has come!
Can anyone re-translate that from BS to rulespeak? Iīve read more complex games that were written more clear and able to understand, but something breaks anytime I go over these rules. How exactly is that supposed to work now?

Mr.Misfit
Jan 10, 2013

The time for
SkellyBones
has come!
FATAL & Friends 2016-17: Go Back to Reading FATAL!

Mr.Misfit
Jan 10, 2013

The time for
SkellyBones
has come!

Lightning Lord posted:

Yet more proof that I never actually read any of the Rifts books I had, just looked the Ramon Perez art.

Quality-wise, you might have won out in that case.

Mr.Misfit
Jan 10, 2013

The time for
SkellyBones
has come!

RocknRollaAyatollah posted:

[snip]
Mechanics

This is a standard White Wolf/Onyx Path joint so all your rolling for actions are disciplines is going to be Attribute + Ability + Bonus. You’ll have a target difficulty based on the specific action but it’s generally around a 6 or 7. It can be higher or lower, it’s all based on what the book says or how the storyteller feels. A 3 is trivial and a 9 is extremely difficult. There are no 10 rated difficulties. There are degrees of success and how many successes you roll impacts the action you’re taking. If you have a specialty, four or more dots in an attribute or ability you get an area of specialization, 10’s rolled count as two successes. I’ll address other mechanics when disciplines mess with them but I think that's it for now.
[...]

Whenever I read this, I have to think of Greg Stolze and REIGN and that little story about him asking on "how do you set difficulties in this" and the WoD-people were like "Eh....wing it.". Which is hilarious when you think about how most of the mechanics for these games must have come together. Just think of the pitch meeting with writers thinking up ways on how to upstage others by writing more powerful things without regards for mechanics because no one know how or cares whether the mechanics even work as as intended...

Mr.Misfit
Jan 10, 2013

The time for
SkellyBones
has come!

Deviating from general thread here just to note that I unironically adore that movie/musical. Except for maybe one song, just about everything about that works and Tradition is a great song to get a first glimpse into the mindset of a russian jew at the Fin-De-Siecle.

Mr.Misfit fucked around with this message at 23:37 on Mar 18, 2017

Mr.Misfit
Jan 10, 2013

The time for
SkellyBones
has come!

Halloween Jack posted:

Seepage is my cousin. Doesn't she look just like Laura Palmer?

Are....are you secretly David Lynch?

Mr.Misfit
Jan 10, 2013

The time for
SkellyBones
has come!

gradenko_2000 posted:

[...]
And that's if you survive the attack damage at all, since Crab Spiders can appear as early as level 1 and deal 1d8 damage on a hit.

Playing this by-the-book, the players could enter a room, the DM rolls a d6 and gets a 1, then rolls to attack, and then hits, and then either the player dies right then and there or they survive the hit but fail the saving throw and it doesn't really matter whether it's a 1 or a 4 on the 1d4. There's no reaction allowed, nothing to inform you that something's coming, you're just dead.

[...]


Stuff like this makes me wonder how people expect newcomers to get into this hobby for fun. Imagine, you are..what, ten, twelve years old, and your friend invites you to this strange, arcane game with dice and imagination. Okay, sounds rad. But you read into this really bizarre ruleset where nothing makes sense and everything is sacrificed on the altar of yesteryear and tradition, jump though hoops to create a character that might suck (because roll for attributes, hey) and then finally, sit down with the group, and die to the first thing your character sees after entering the dungeon. A poisonous crab spider. You donīt get a say. The gm just says "Youīre dead. Sucks to be you. Donīt be weaksauce or go cry."

HOW is this supposed to encourage people to WANT to play this? This is absurd in its way to appear as asinine as possible! I...I canīt get my head around this.

Edit: Are we absolutely certain Gygax didnīt mean DnD to be a DaDaist experiment? Because then it would all make sense, in a miserable, roundabout way...:/

Mr.Misfit
Jan 10, 2013

The time for
SkellyBones
has come!
I like especially how they actually seemed to believe that being hit frontal by a mounted lance while wearing platemail wouldnīt be easier. Those fuckers are ramming with 60 miles an hour and sure as hell no amount of platemail will help you against that. +0 ....pfff

Mr.Misfit
Jan 10, 2013

The time for
SkellyBones
has come!

SirPhoebos posted:

I don't normally do this, but I have to side with the anonymous grog. Tomb of Horrors is an important enough part of the game's history that it's worth preserving its reputation as a PC meatgrinder.

That said, when I was doing the conversion of the dungeon I condensed down mechanics in several places to move things along. The best example is the Stone Juggernaut. There's at least 3 die rolls, probably more, when all that really needs to be determined is "how many PCs get crushed before they wake up".

Well...contrarian for oppositions sake. Here I go...

I donīt think so. In fact, I think hat Tomb of Horror has an entirely undeserving and overblown position in DnD history. It was a tourney module based on and built for Gygaxīs personal group and frankly, itīs rather uninspiring to waltz through with a normal group who hasnīt caught on that itīs a middle finger to players. Toning it down to humane levels makes it at least mediocre, but canīt save it from the fact that its whole existence is based on something of a very personal arms race that simply cannot be replicated. But because Grogs continue to hold up all by old Gary himself as the divine Moccha of Pleasure itself, it obviously must be a good, great or perfect thing that shall never be touched.

I mean, even the bible was revised, so Tomb of Horrors definitely should be.

PS.: ;)

Mr.Misfit
Jan 10, 2013

The time for
SkellyBones
has come!

quote:

.......

What the? When did they start copying images from Bellum Maga?

Mr.Misfit
Jan 10, 2013

The time for
SkellyBones
has come!
I also remember Council of Wyrms as being somewhat weird and awful. Please rip into that one. Afterwards, we can be rebuilt from the awfulness into something good with more Dragonmechs.

Mr.Misfit
Jan 10, 2013

The time for
SkellyBones
has come!

Doresh posted:

Just relax about Maid. After all, there's at least one actual hentai RPG out there. Untranslated, but still.

What? Chris Fields body of work is available in english, you know...

Mr.Misfit
Jan 10, 2013

The time for
SkellyBones
has come!
Somehow seeing that face reminds me of the Padishah Emperor Shaddaim IV. I mean, it would technically fit a backwards-minded traditionalist emperor dude, right?

Mr.Misfit
Jan 10, 2013

The time for
SkellyBones
has come!
That would require to actually think through some of those things, and from what can be gleamed about Kevin S. that is just highly unlikely. If anything, he has a very particular, if not downright specific view of how RIFTS and the Coalition should look like, and nothing should ever come between him and that, or thereīll be doom to be had for all around.

Kinda sad really. Even from a grown up perspective, a good way to bring all the elements we loved as children together sounds like a rad idea, but itīs so deeply marred by its execution by the hands of mediocrity. And no, Savage Rifts isnīt better, it still requires Savage Worlds, a system marred by itīs own problems. Sorry, just my 2c.

Mr.Misfit
Jan 10, 2013

The time for
SkellyBones
has come!
Funny that. If that was pre-release content, does that warrant another look? I remember PurpleXVIs review good enough to know that it mainly came down to "Game bad, Art good" and that the author was somewhat focused on his research on dick shoes instead of actual medieval England (like thinking London was landlocked etc..). Or is that more of a PR sentence thing?

Mr.Misfit
Jan 10, 2013

The time for
SkellyBones
has come!

Evil Mastermind posted:

[...]
I mean, I get that accepting criticism is hard, and the game you spent years working on is your baby, but if you don't want actual feedback then why'd you ask?

Because personal and public perception differ profoundly. Not quite unlike what Siembieda is doing actually, only with even less subtle awareness of how much of a doubleplusbad person he is for his business practices.

Mr.Misfit
Jan 10, 2013

The time for
SkellyBones
has come!

Simian_Prime posted:

:same:

Every time I hear about Kev Sim and all his bizarre business decisions, I can't help but feel that there's an interesting tragicomic movie in there somewhere. He's like the Michael Scott of the RPG industry.

Imagine if the RIFTS movie gets optioned, but turns it into a Wes Anderson film about an eccentric Midwestern game designer whose behavior causes rifts :wink: between him and his friends and business partners.

Doesnīt even have to be a movie, simply write a book about something that is clearly based on his life and decisions, but called "Breach" or any other RIFTS™ synonym and you got yourself a great and dramatic novel of the failure of the american dream on the cliffs of ego and the american man. Hell, make it all political and you get an Ayn Rand/t out of it ;)

Mr.Misfit
Jan 10, 2013

The time for
SkellyBones
has come!
The problem with multiple colours is that for many the brown and grey and dark brown is an aesthetic borne out of the grimy and human-defying oppressive mood of the era as recreated in the 1930s, where people needed something to look down upon and the past century was a great place to do that.

Itīs the same problem with ancient rome, or greece, where everything was coloured AF, but people only ever see the statues and models etc. after the colours washed off and believed the "noble white marble" to be the aesthetic of an entire era when in truth it was as rainbowy as possible because people like colours. But hey...

Mr.Misfit
Jan 10, 2013

The time for
SkellyBones
has come!

Young Freud posted:

You say this when there's a character in "Fiddler On The Roof" named Lazar Wolf. No, he isn't a lycanthrope that shoots lasers from his eyes.

Boy, would Tevye ever have married his oldest daughter to a jewish lycanthrope butcher shooting lasers from his eyes. Thatīs a glorious image alright!

Mr.Misfit
Jan 10, 2013

The time for
SkellyBones
has come!

theironjef posted:

Hah yeah. We're still working out the exact details of how it's going to help us. We're not connected to their Patreon in any way. Mostly we just get a few extra links and mentions. Eventually the goal is that we take advantage of James' industry contacts to publish one of our games. This upcoming episode is a favor for him since he's launching something soon and needs to be on shows, but we worked out a good way to bring him in.

Yessss....Duckman needs to become reality! Weird...crazy....maddening reality.

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Mr.Misfit
Jan 10, 2013

The time for
SkellyBones
has come!

Kurieg posted:

The Premise is willing but the Mechanics are weak.

.....wait, why are you guys talking of CthulhuTech?

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