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ZeroCount
Aug 12, 2013


Why can't they just use 'they' as a singular gender-neutral pronoun?

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ZeroCount
Aug 12, 2013


Premises are ultimately pretty easy. It's why 'ideas man' is such a derided term, ideas aren't hard, literally everyone has them. Getting mechanics right on the other hand is loving complicated and needs repeated playtesting and long grinding hours of unfun effort people typically don't want to put into their passion project.

ZeroCount
Aug 12, 2013


Horrible Lurkbeast posted:

So a demon might bust into a room and be confronted by a pervert who pulls a makeshift flamethrower from his rear end? I'd just go work for ID software instead.

demons didn't know what true hell was before they visited the Gehenna

ZeroCount
Aug 12, 2013


At this point hunting ninjas down seems like a pretty good idea.

ZeroCount
Aug 12, 2013


That's surprisingly good GMing advice, considering what I was expecting.

ZeroCount
Aug 12, 2013


Mors Rattus posted:

Ninja Crusade 2e - The Firebrands: CAT

The Way of 18 Strokes

:ninja: :fap:

ZeroCount
Aug 12, 2013


The problem with joining a megacorp or whatever to change it from within is that by the point you've reached any sort of authority to make decisions, you're already directly complicit in an awful lot of human suffering.

ZeroCount
Aug 12, 2013


Nessus posted:

Isn't the Imperium's navy this massive thing where the ships are practically Zeonic colonies unto themselves with entire generations of void-born spawning and mutating and poo poo beyond the hallowed surface of a planet?

except for the women apparently

ZeroCount
Aug 12, 2013


the real takeaway here is that Tzeentch worshippers are by far the stupidest of all Chaos followers

ZeroCount
Aug 12, 2013


Mors Rattus posted:

who is 'they' in this case, because it sure as hell ain't Nasu, who gets off on five paragraph diatribes about magic circuits and the world of heroes and other insane bullshit

and it sure isn't the hardcore nasuverse fans, who get off on talking to you about all that poo poo for three hours straight

i was friends with a nasuverse fan for several years and now i know far more about the nasuverse than anyone ever wanted to

if you see a nasuverse fan, cross over to the other side of the street before it's too late. Nothing good ever comes of doing anything else.

ZeroCount
Aug 12, 2013


The big problem is that judging other cultures by the values of your own culture is how people in history often arrive at scintillating insights like 'conquering these natives and forcing them to conform to our culture is actually us helping them because they're clearly doing it wrong right now'. It's a pretty huge cause of human suffering throughout history and probably shouldn't have a place in academic study of other cultures.

EDIT: Obviously there are limits to this. For example, I wouldn't hesitate to call Saudi Arabia, a place where executions for sorcery are still carried out fairly frequently, a pretty lovely place. Saudi Arabia sucks rear end. But I'm also not doing an academic study on Saudi culture. If I was, it would be ridiculous to make blatant value judgements like that within the text itself.

ZeroCount fucked around with this message at 01:14 on Sep 4, 2017

ZeroCount
Aug 12, 2013


Imagine if someone writing a lab report went on a lengthy digression on why they think erlenmeyer flasks are lovely and a pain to work with.

ZeroCount
Aug 12, 2013


PurpleXVI posted:

As mentioned I had a guy seek me out specifically to do a review. :v:

(and then threaten me for LIBELING HIS TRADEMARK when my review wasn't abjectly worshipful enough for his tastes.)

that dude should just embrace the whole birdlord thing and make his game about it imo

ZeroCount
Aug 12, 2013


holy poo poo that sounds rad

ZeroCount
Aug 12, 2013


What do you mean by 'infinite city'?

ZeroCount
Aug 12, 2013


rumble in the bunghole posted:

Why imagine it when you can read the dark tower.

Pretty sure telling people to read the Dark Tower is classed as assault in some countries.

ZeroCount
Aug 12, 2013


'Magical realm' is more explicitly about a GM forcing their fetishes into a communal game though. It's often a pretty loving stupid way to judge a book or a show unless you're an absolute puritan.

ZeroCount
Aug 12, 2013


wiegieman posted:

So I'm hearing a "yes but that's sort of the point", which I guess I should accept, but I suppose that's always been what pushed me away from both versions of Vampire in the first place. I just feel like you can do complex stories without stuff that brings the accompanying odor of cat piss.

That's just vampires in general isn't it? At least half of their whole deal feels like metaphors for sexual assault dressed up in a fancy waistcoat.

ZeroCount
Aug 12, 2013


Demon_Corsair posted:

Thinking about orcs as Roman legions, has any game really thought about what large scale military tactics would look like when mages can drop meteors, poison clouds, or mind control generals?

I guess you would see small scale unit tactics similar to the modern day.

Now I'm imagining a charge by a group of knights or cataphracts being stopped dead by a well placed stone to mud spell.

D&D wizards pretty much invalidate armies.

ZeroCount
Aug 12, 2013


Chaotic Neutral means 'I don't want to actually engage with this lovely alignment system anymore than I have to' and thus it is the best alignment. It's so vague beyond the fact that you like doing whatever you want to do and you don't like people stopping you from doing that. You can fit most character concepts there really.

ZeroCount
Aug 12, 2013


I guess Kult wants to be more about the PC's gaining personal liberation from the world? Setting everyone free sounds like an awful idea.

ZeroCount
Aug 12, 2013


Weird to act like the Soviet Union was good.

ZeroCount
Aug 12, 2013


Avatars in UA are basically cribbed wholesale from Last Call by Tim Powers. It's a great read for getting into the mindset.

ZeroCount
Aug 12, 2013


Yeah, an avatar of the Fool is pretty much personally invulnerable but also very very dumb. They're really easy for enemies to manipulate unless you have another PC right there on hand to babysit the Fool. And babysitting the Fool has its own problems 'cause they're just as much of a walking disaster area for their friends as they are for their enemies.

ZeroCount
Aug 12, 2013


The Skeep posted:

Isn't being a homeless guide contradictory? unlike the other examples it's physically impossible to not practice what you preach, because what you're advising is how not to literally die on the streets.

Yeah by that logic that example should be a guy who works at a homeless shelter or something. Someone who does have a home but knows from past experience how to help those who don't.

ZeroCount
Aug 12, 2013


Ghost Leviathan posted:

This game seems to be based around in the inner narratives of people getting into fights in the parking lot of a 7/11.

Just wait until we reach the Adepts, the Avatars have their heads screwed on tight in comparison.

EDIT: UA is of the opinion that seeking and gaining occult power not only doesn't necessarily make you more successful in 'real' life but that the pursuit can be actually an active detriment to it. It actually reminds me a little of the vibe from Cultist Simulator, where you play a seeker of enlightenment and immortality and the truth behind the world etc etc...who most likely has a really lovely job and no non-occult friends. If you already had material power, why would you be so desperate to seek the immaterial?

ZeroCount fucked around with this message at 12:55 on Aug 15, 2018

ZeroCount
Aug 12, 2013


Night10194 posted:

I'm curious. Has anyone here actually played UA3e? It feels like another major theme is that all these people don't actually change anything because by the time you're powerful enough to try you're just a whigged out avatar of another lovely cultural phenomena and dragged along by your taboos to the point that you no longer possess independent individual agency.

How do you deal with an actual group of people who do this, potentially, in play?

You can be other things besides Avatars. In addition to the Adepts, some of the most powerful and influential people in the occult underground are completely 'normal' humans because their lack of direct occultism has left them with the capacity to competently function in the modern world without having to consult the Parliament of Banana Peels or whatever.

ZeroCount fucked around with this message at 14:47 on Aug 15, 2018

ZeroCount
Aug 12, 2013


Freaking Crumbum posted:

i assume the answer is NO, but do the rules account for things like time dilation and relativistic speeds and etc? or do you just move the "regular" distance you would be expected to move and going from one setting to another would take decades of travel time? or do the spelljammers do something special for long distance travel so that an adventuring party doesn't age 80 years between moving from Krynn to Aber-Toril?

edit: and because D&D fuckin' loves wacky and unnecessarily complex cosmologies for each setting, does SpellJammer address how the elemental planes from each setting interact with crystal spheres and philogiston? because it seems like the elemental planes already served as a conduit between certain settings, so I'm wondering if SpellJammer is just an alternative method of travel or whether it even cares about the elemental or alignment planes at all.

bold of you to assume that the speed of light exists

ZeroCount
Aug 12, 2013


MonsterEnvy posted:

Yeah the Sigmarite entry really reminded me of this side section in the AoS Core book.

this is some 40k poo poo

ZeroCount
Aug 12, 2013


Rifts Australia seems surprisingly nonawful, especially compared to White Wolf's australia books.

ZeroCount
Aug 12, 2013


Yeah sovcits get the nature of transactions and poo poo, especially since a lot of them are also ancap or ancap-adjacent. Put thing in = get thing out, even monkeys understand this. It's just in transactions where the thing you're putting or what you're getting out of it is abstract or not immediately obvious that confuses them.

EDIT: It's the legal equivalent of Flat Earthers honestly. Both groups are predicated on an assumption that only that which can be immediately seen and understood is true and anything that goes against your basic common sense (of course the earth is flat or things would fall off) is arcane, made-up and probably trying to trick you.

ZeroCount fucked around with this message at 15:44 on Sep 28, 2018

ZeroCount
Aug 12, 2013


Avatars feel very different from adepts because much of the whole basic process of what avatars are is taken whole cloth from Last Call. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it's a good book. Maybe some adept stuff was inspired by it too but avatars as they exist are an inspiration from this book in particular and have barely changed in translation. So if avatars sometimes feel like they're part of an entirely different genre than what adepts are doing, it's 'cause they are.

ZeroCount
Aug 12, 2013


JcDent posted:

That and Trump would be a major, idk, Demagogumancer. Lose charges if you ever admit that you're wrong, gain charges every time you ouright lie to a bunch of people and nothing bad happens to you.

There's an Avatar path called the Demagogue which is pretty much entirely this.

ZeroCount
Aug 12, 2013


why does 'ugly old witch' need to be a distinct creature type

ZeroCount
Aug 12, 2013


I fully understand the need for evil witches, I just don't know why you'd specifically make them weird nonhuman things rather than just stat up a human with class levels.

ZeroCount
Aug 12, 2013


Being a Loner lets you start with a third Trait which, as someone who has GM'd a fair bit of Torchbearer myself, is a drat good bonus.

ZeroCount
Aug 12, 2013



huh

ZeroCount
Aug 12, 2013


Part of what makes this so surreal for me is that for a long while Holden and Morke were the golden boys of the Exalted franchise. Back in the latter days of 2e when everyone assumed that the game was more or less dead, they kept it alive by producing a bunch of content for free and eventually putting entirely new books out. And since it was 2e, a raging garbage fire of bad mechanics and awful Charms, they came off in comparison as if not system geniuses but as people who knew what they were doing. Hell, they even re-did Graceful Wicked Masques of all things.

It was at this point that I drifted away from the game and stopped following it or hearing news about it so coming back from that era into today's time of 'Morke is a sex pest, the 3e corebook is 70% charms and Holden wants you to summon rapeghosts' has been jarring.


EDIT: I should note that this isn't in anyway intended as a defence or validation of them, just noting that they sure fell a long way.

ZeroCount fucked around with this message at 21:48 on Apr 6, 2019

ZeroCount
Aug 12, 2013


Yeah anything to avoid the old Chejop Kejak forum arguments honestly

e: for anyone who didn't have the 'privilege' of being involved in the old Exalted community, the previous editions had a major Elder Exalt problem (referring to ancient Exalts who as a result of their age could go into Essence 6-10 ranges). Your Solar PCs are supposed to be the brand new badasses here to shake up the world but in 2e there's a shitload of Elder Sidereals, Lunars, Deathlords, etc all variously hanging out that were all way higher Essence that your PC could ever be. Kind of a conflicting theme, you know? Exalted really wanted the players to be free to do all that stuff but the first editions of it still kept to that classic White Wolf habit of populating the setting with a lot of inordinately powerful NPCs that can smack your PCs into the mud. The only question being, would they and if they aren't, why not?

And this dissonance really solidified in people's minds with Chejop, the oldest and most powerful Sidereal alive, leader of the anti-Solar faction and the architect of the Usurpation. There were a ton of forum arguments about how this guy, the most powerful Exalt in all Creation who isn't a Deathlord, who personally hates your PCs, who has most of Creation on his side and who was never really described with anything but an extremely loose and open interpretation of his power and what his actual job was, should *logically* be devoting his time to hunting down and murdering Solar PCs constantly the moment they become visible to the Loom of Fate. The very moment you do anything fate-worthy, Elder Sidereal death squads are no doubt en-route to location to punch you into a duck.

ZeroCount fucked around with this message at 15:01 on May 2, 2019

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ZeroCount
Aug 12, 2013


Kevin really didn't think that some PCs might just want to kill Hitler, huh?

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