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Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that

Doresh posted:

The only SAN to be lost is on the side of the Eldritch abominations, because their advanced minds have problems with the concept of moe.

This is without a doubt the best idea any SAN system has ever had, and I wish to know more.

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Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that

theironjef posted:

I want to know who's onboard with my vision of a CCG that competes with magic by including five extra cards per pack that can be used for short duration bonuses by being torn up, having stickers on them, or having scratch off sections.

I just want a CCG that can be destroyed to win.

Way back, I think it was early 2001, maybe 2000 or so, I stumbled across a bunch of old cards from a game I don't even know the name of. By the time I found it, it was already out of print and forgotten, so I have no idea when it actually came out. From what I remember, you had various heroes and monster cards, and you would play through adventures solo or pit your fighters against each other. Every card had a bunch of scratch-off sections representing randomized damage or loot etc. Once you completed an adventure, you would mail in the scratched off cards and, provided you didn't scratch off more than you were allowed to by the rules, they would send you your rewards. This would range from rare cards to treasure to actual real world prizes. It was just the coolest thing to tiny me, and I went through the huge stash I found in like a week. Sadly, there were no more cards after that because it was old and all the prizes had long since dried up.

It might have been BattleCards? That came out in 1993, and they look very familiar. Could have been a third party ripoff or some similar game.

Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that

theironjef posted:

I'm only in the shallow end of the Final Fantasy pool and even I know that VII had both a wolf-cat and a robot moogle with a cat riding on it in the party.

The cat was ALSO a robot though, being controlled by a human, so it doesn't count :goonsay:

Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that

I love this game so very much. Most of the art is great (there's one picture with the Dog Henge that is... not), the concept and execution is cute and pleasant, and the rules work pretty well for the stories they're telling. Definitely looking forward to reading this.

There's actually a fan song about this game, too: https://tomsmith.bandcamp.com/track/new-golden-sky-stories

Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that
That character is 12 years old in human form, 5 as a dog. The game goes out of its way to avoid being in any way sexual, including a part where they acknowledge that some myths are about spirits seducing mortals, but this really isn't that sort of game, so you shouldn't do that. All the rest of the art is cute and appropriate to the theme, and then they stick a sexy 12 year old showing off her cleavage collar. Talking about the collar as a treasure isn't that bad, given the way they've framed human/dog relations in the book, but that picture makes it... really uncomfortable.

But still, the entire rest of the book is fantastic, and one image on half a page should not turn anyone away from reading it

Kaza42 fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Mar 31, 2016

Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that
Or you could not introduce giant magic genitals in a game aimed at children about whimsical adventures in the countryside

Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that

Doresh posted:

Helping oppressed Japanese school girls fight the servants of Orochi - aka bullies.

In Golden Sky Stories, you'd probably help the school girl build confidence in herself that lets her stand up to the bully, but instead of fighting they start talking and become best friends because friendship is stronger than hate

Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that

Davin Valkri posted:

How many of those coins are actually leaves and nuts?

One five yen piece the Tanuki left at the shrine to be nice

Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that

Evil Mastermind posted:

You know, as reprehensible Bellum Maga is on pretty much every level, it seems even worse now in the light of the recent "Tabletop has a White Male Terrorism Problem" post and related fallout. Like, this is completely the type of :airquote:feminism:airquote: that gets held up every time someone brings up the idea that maybe gamers could be a little less terrible once in a while.

I am having a bit of fun imagining Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg popping into this setting and not havin' with any of this, though.

In all fairness, ANY setting could be improved by Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg popping in and disapproving. Except Golden Sky Stories, they'd just have tea and call Henge "Wossnames"

Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that

Josef bugman posted:

This sounds like it could get real catpiss real fast. It's like Narrative Causality, but much much worse.

I don't really see the potential for catpiss here, at least no more than any other tabletop game. Could you explain what you're thinking of?

Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that

FMguru posted:

Redhurst Academy of Magic - the Matt Forbeck-written D20 setting that is Harry-Potter-With-The-Serial-Numbers-FIled-Off (Plus Some Redwall) - is now available for free download at Forbeck's website.

Does it just use regular d20 classes, or does it have its own rules and mechanics? Because vancian magic is terrible for a Harry Potter style school

Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that

Doresh posted:

So in other words, they should've shuffled some time from their Dissidia sessions to play Double Cross instead.


Double Cross - the clearer Exalted.

Double Cross has quite a few problems of its own, but one thing it absolutely gets right is the power writeups. It is always totally clear both A)What the power does and B)How to use it. They even have simple, effective rules for combining powers into unique superattacks or whatnot, and it all slots together in a straightforward, rigorous manner. That statblock style lets them made dozens of powers for each of their power sets, and have them all be immediately understood. I have only played a few sessions of it, but we didn't have any Exalted-style "What does this actually do" questions. My only real gripe is that sometimes the fluff and effect doesn't quite match up, but in that case you can just ignore the fluff because the crunch is so clear.

Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that

Doresh posted:

Wait. There's no Hunter-related secret government agency build around elite teams made up of different patriotic monster splats?

"The God-Machine interferes in our lives. It is unnknowable, untouchable, and unkillable. Or so we thought, for so long. I believe otherwise. I have studied these monsters that infest our society, the vampires, werewolves, witches, and other stranger creatures. I am assembling a task force, comprised of the worst, most powerful monsters we have ever captured. They will be set to the task of dismantling this God-Machine piece by piece, using every twisted method they can think of. They will have to operate separate from us, so that the God-Machine agents within our organization cannot stop them. They will cause untold damage, murder and mayhem but - and I truly believe this - it will be worth it. We will be free, ladies and gentlemen, free from the yoke of this God even if we must make a deal with the Devil. We will form the Deicide Squad"

Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that

quote:

But she’s got a superlative method of negotiation, and it involves putting the fear of God (or at least a billion little spiders) into opposing counsel.

Wait, she scares the OPPOSING LAWYER? This is supposed to be about people who break the rules or transgress in some way, how is provided someone with legal defense at all a transgression? I mean, if she scared the DEFENDANT that would at least make sense, in twisted Beast logic at least. But this is punishing someone for following the exact rules that they should, even when it's unpleasant.

Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that
So, after reading the review here, I decided to pick up Spellbound Kingdoms, and I'm loving it so far. Quick question for Nifara or anyone who might know, how are you supposed to use the Spin maneuver in Court Sword? The only path that accesses it is through Lunge, which has an (r) tag, which means you have to use one of the balancing moves next turn. Or the Intensify maneuver from Elemental Maelstrom, which is only accessible past the Fireball (r) move. I feel like I'm missing something here, but can't figure out what.

Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that
Huh, not sure how I missed that. Thanks for clearing that up!

Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that

Adnachiel posted:



Bad copy-paste or a wig? You decide.

Quite possibly both, a bad copy-paste of a wig. That looks like that girl from lazytown's hair to me.

Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that

Asimo posted:

I hate this more than everything else shown about this loving game so far. Well, almost everything, but "literally stealing other people's work" is a pretty succinct summary of shittyness.

These are WG fans, though. It's entirely possible they volunteered it, or gave permission for free. Which you shouldn't do, as it devalues everyone else's art, but I can see it happening.

Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that
One of my favorite characters was a Blank Badge in 1e. We were playing a game about meddling in mortal politics, and my character was the PR guy who never quite appeared on camera or left any lasting traces. A faceless source of soundbites, quotes and platitudes that kept our opponents busy and our public placated. Although to be honest I mostly picked the Legacy so that I could have Psychic Paper.

Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that

Mors Rattus posted:

they're still human, and most have no desire to outlive their children...or their grandchildren.

You know, this is always a pet peeve of mine. Not because it's an unreasonable desire, but because so very few things that use this argument see the obvious solution: make your children and grandchildren immortal too. I know that paradox and such make that hard to do for non-Mages, but that just means the Silver Ladder has to get creative :science:

Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that

Bieeardo posted:

Wow, I thought that was a compilation of the old Ecology of... articles from Dragon. Glad I was too poor to buy it when it was in print!

So did I. I used to really enjoy those articles, they spoke to my inner :goonsay: I'm not sure if I want to look up what this is actually about, or if I should just sit tight and enjoy the show.

Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that

Halloween Jack posted:

On the other hand, it's a big red flag when one of these Dark Modern Urban Fantasy expects me to believe that vampire gangbangers talk at each other in pseudo-Latin or words like, Idunno, "Empyrean" or "Reverie."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXpxnxAL62A&t=7s

Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that

MonsieurChoc posted:

As long as you don't go full Turin.

Never go full Turin.

Instead, just go full Huan and beat up Sauron and an army of werewolves while being a dog

Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that

Nessus posted:

Personally, I can only accept space wizardry when it's rooted in traditionally masculine emotions or really loud yelling. Anything else undermines my confidence in my own market demographic identity!

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann was an amazing show :colbert:

Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that

Cassa posted:

gently caress that cop up, Tobias!

Tobias was a red tailed hawk. Jake was the Peregrine Falcon :goonsay:

Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that

kaynorr posted:

It's unclear the degree to which spirits are intended to function as familiars outside of Ephemeral Induction Technique - I've looked through the book and can't seem to find any firm text on the subject. They would be significantly more powerful than animal familiars, with the ability to Join Battle independently without a Charm, materialize as needed and call upon their inherent Charms. Were it my table, I'd say it was fair game if you could persuade a spirit to work with you, but that relationship will have a lot more give and take than just keeping your tyrant lizard fed and healthy.

Twilight Castes have the ability to bind spirits as familiars (with an insultingly easy roll by the way), which strongly implies they're the only ones who can do it

Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that

Count Chocula posted:

I've linked this too many times on this forum and elsewhere, but if you want to read an essay on racism in Tolkien and fantasy in general, here's one by a fantasy author who is much better than Tolkien, Michael Moorcock: http://www.revolutionsf.com/article.php?id=953

So, a lot of people accuse Tolkien of racism in his works, on account of all the good people being white skinned and fair haired and the bad guys being savage black people of varying degrees of "literally a monster", but it's actually not as bad as people keep saying. I'll link my source on this, http://www.mediafire.com/download/jviiivrdbfxerxk/Racism+and+Middle+Earth.pdf

A few points to be made:
1) Tolkien rarely actually describes the skin color of the characters (or literally anything about Legolas. Seriously, the guy is never described but that is unrelated)
2) Where he does, it's almost always "not white". For instance, the majority of hobbits are explicitly called out as having dark skin, and Sam is described as brown
3) Rohan are the only humans described as white, and the men of Gondor are frequently described as swarthy (not a good word to use today, but probably not contemptible given the times) and various other terms for dark skin
4) While the Easterlings and Southrons were often described in text as "Savages", their culture as presented were not, being centers of learning and deep religious traditions. It's unclear whether Tolkien thought of them as savages despite presenting them as civilized, or if he intended the "savage" label to be through the unreliable and imperfect view of the characters

His works still have a lot of uncomfortable or outright racist implications. Orcs all being horrible twisted monsters is a bad thing, which Tolkien admitted in his later works and was trying to fix when he died. The Woses, while not described as dark skinned, fit many of the negative stereotypes of African people. However, most of the racism in his stories is cultural rather than skin-related, such as the heroes culturally resembling England and the enemies resembling foreign (especially Middle Eastern) cultures. Not to mention how early stories depict the dwarves as Literally Jewish Stereotypes. But in his defense, he saw and acknowledged the racist implications in his works, and wrote extensively on where he went wrong and how he would fix it. Nobody is claiming that he or his stories are perfect, but he also doesn't deserve quite as much shame as is frequently heaped upon him.

Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that

MonsieurChoc posted:

At least I'll always have these abused copies of Continuum and Ghost Dog I got for less than five bucks each.

If you ever decide you want to sell some of this stuff let me know. I've got a bizare unplayable soft spot for Continuum

Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that

Simian_Prime posted:

I vote for a Requiem 2e review because it's a good game, but it has some of the most laughable art I've seen in a long time.

(The Lancea Et Sanctum group pic :lol:)

I vote for Requiem 2e as well, but mine is because of the text swinging between actually good and laughably terrible (Daeva Clan).

Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that

PantsOptional posted:

Despite having a gaming circle with heavy overlap between RPGs and 40K, I can't say as I've ever encountered the type of player who drags 40k stuff into other games, so that may be a very specific concern there.

I will say, however, that in the goddamn year 2016, people are still pulling that "magic (which is good) and technology (which is bad) are antithetical to each other" poo poo like it was 1997 and people were still huffing Ascension fumes.

For setting stuff, dragging 40k into basically anything is terrible. But every setting where it is remotely appropriate needs chainswords. They just appeal to my inner teenager as something that will always be cool

Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that
As someone who loves information theory, encryption, and specifically using magic FOR encryption, this game is My Jam.

What happens when you use Cryptomancy to encrypt a written message, hand it to someone who doesn't know the keyphrase, and have them transcribe it via their own encryption keyphrase that you don't know?

Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that

BinaryDoubts posted:

Cryptomancy only works one layer deep, which the writers point out is basically just a gameplay contrivance to allow players to crack enemy encryption relatively easily. I'd imagine the gibberish resists attempts to further encode or mess with it beyond simply copying it down. That said, there's nothing stopping the original message from being encoded within the clear-text.

Clear-text must be made up of real words from an actual language. How this works with dead languages or dialects is unclear (can you mix Dwarven and Old Elvish in a single message? How does the magic define "a real word"?) The easiest way to encode something before the cryptomantic magic is the ol' word swap - changing "attack" to "puppies" and "enemies" to "butts", for example, so even if decrypted the message doesn't make any sense. The message doesn't have to be meaningful beyond the rule about actual, non-gibberish words, so I'd imagine any real enemy who uses cryptomancy would also have a scheme to scramble their sentence and word structure so that's its unreadable even when decrypted. This opens the door to all kinds of old-school spy poo poo. My first thought would be to create an alternate numbering system (1 = lemon, 2 = lime, for example) and then have the message be a string of numbers, referring to pages and words in a specific book that only the intended recipient of a message would possess. I'm sure there's a ton of similar concepts.

Now, whether or not I'd use them in the game... everything is built around the idea that once you crack the crypto, you're in. Unless you have some seriously hardcore players, I'd probably not gently caress around with the messages too much. Let the players understand what they've found, but leave the possibility of mindgames open (false-flag messages, for example) as I think that kind of analysis/counter-analysis is more interesting than ALSO having to crack an analog encryption scheme.

Yeah, I definitely see your point from a gameplay perspective. Although I think it would be neat to have an enemy midway through a campaign who relied solely on analogue encryption methods that aren't super hard to break, but everyone's trying to do Cryptomancy methods and coming up empty handed. Used once, it could be a neat switch up.

Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that

Count Chocula posted:

Wizards are not samurai.

Shugenja are samurai, which is a social caste. Shugenja are NOT Bushi, which are warrior samurai

Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that

FrostyPox posted:

So literally the only way I can see to use beasts as players is to, like, ignore or rewrite large swathes of the splat which is way more effort than its worth, or, more simply, to throw the "everyone loves me!" poo poo right out the window and use them as antagonists and not player characters.

Like a buncha mummies wake up because someone's stealing their relics, some Mysterious Benefactor helps them figure everything out, they go off to retrieve the relics, turns out they've been stolen by a Hero so he can use them to kill a Beast (who was SURPRISE the mysterious benefactor all along), the mummies punk the hero, punk the beast, get the relics back, go back to bed, the end.

You start a Beast game set in a small town, pitching it in such a way to play up the self-righteousness of it all, to encourage the players to really get into the horrible swing of things. Focus on the individual damage they're doing and the effect on the environment of the town. Then one session, they arrive and you hand them all Hunter character sheets and now they're playing the Union here to kick the crap out of the Beasts.

Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that

Tendales posted:

The real reason to use a sling Catapult is so that you can write crude insults on the bulletsStones.

Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that
Mantis and Monkey are the best clans, because they give 0 fucks. Mantis has my favorite origin story, where they basically keep out-ballsing everyone until they get official recognition (including holding the emperor at swordpoint and basically holding the fate of Rokugan ransom). Monkey are just shounen heroes, and it is never not fun to play Samurai Kamina

Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that
Power Attribute refers to Strength, Intelligence and Presence. Attributes are divided into three categories: Power, Finesse and Resilience in addition to Physical, Mental, Social.

Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that
That notation is used in a few places where the actual attribute varies. In their physical body, they still have 3 Power attributes, they just use whichever one is bet suited to the situation. Beast has a lot of problems, but I'm pretty sure this is just a generic confusing World Chronicles of Darkness term.

Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that

Serf posted:

Why are so many people allergic to using the word "women"?

I think it's because "female" sounds more scientific or official, and so they use it to make it sound like they're impartially discussing facts rather than possibly being sexist. Sometimes this works, but most of the time it just feels really awkward and strained.

I think that this sidebar is about as good as it could be, given the content of the rest of the book. It treats "GM forcing women into inferior positions" as more valid than it should, but at least the default assumption seems to be to let the PCs have fun, no matter their gender?

The Bretonnia book from WHFRP had the best explanation for women in roles that are - in theory - exclusively men. Namely that it happens all the time that women pretend to be men in order to be knights, but the penalty is severe if caught. Namely, they must go on an epic quest to restore their honor. Being Bretonnian Knights, they were either already doing this, or looking for the thinnest excuse to go do this.

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Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that

Evil Mastermind posted:

Oh, right, I forgot that you're paying with XP, not a separate pool. Fate and PbtA games don't tie their compel/failure mechanics to the advancement system.

How in the poo poo are we still doing "pay XP to do non-advancement things" in this day and age?

I think it's possible to have "Spend XP to do things other than make your character better" work, depending on how strictly you interpret it. Exalted 3e's Sorcerous Working system is quite good, and it lets you spend xp to effect a lasting change on the world. It also explicitly and repeatedly tells the ST to give you the XP back once your working either A)stops mattering B)gets destroyed or undone or C)isn't beneficial

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