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JcDent posted:If only the unicorn had been some sort of Forest&Fire themed Solarian who understands that forests growing and burning down are the two sides of the same cosmical cycle.  ?
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Nov 1, 2017 16:19
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 05:35 |
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I'd wonder what Orc cats are like, but we have Caragors now. Wargs domesticated goblins.
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Nov 3, 2017 14:32
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I always feel a worldbuilding measure of a civilisation is being able to describe the daily life of an average commoner in it. Incidentally, one of my players insisted on building an elf commoner. (to start with) I had to veto the name Ron Mapleflower, if only because I don't want to run out of embarrassing names for the pixies.
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Nov 4, 2017 08:56
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Super Mario Galaxy worlds are valid settings for Spelljammer, I imagine. Hell, that's how I picture the 4e Elemental Chaos.
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Nov 4, 2017 09:34
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Random dumbasses who struggle at basic tasks sounds like an accidentally awesome concept for a sitcom RPG. The average party is more Always Sunny than A-Team anyway.
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Nov 4, 2017 15:26
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theironjef posted:Been a while since I hauled out The Duckman RPG. Yet another wonderful game that I'll never play. I'd probably use it for Sam and Max.
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Nov 5, 2017 04:59
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Actually, the Jock class can basically be Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
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Nov 5, 2017 05:58
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Sounds like a lot of Spelljammer fluff is based on debunked and obsolete scientific theories. Which is always pretty cool. You could possibly make a more reliable phlogiston time bomb with clockwork.
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Nov 6, 2017 11:54
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Dallbun posted:Oh wait let’s just say they’re all gnomes. Boom! Better. Keep. You are clearly not keeping in mind how easily this could turn into Gnomeo and Juliet.
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Nov 8, 2017 13:19
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The description of Winged Lancer (a take on Winged Hussar?) keeps making me ponder what happens when one gets their hands on a Pegasus. Also I kind of want to play a Russian cowboy. That accent would be absurd. Oooh, ooh, new idea; dodgy pegasus salesman.
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Nov 9, 2017 08:49
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I can totally start with a pegasus, if it can't actually fly, due to frailty, stupidity or obesity. (I'm picturing a cross between horses and pigeons, attitude wise)
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Nov 9, 2017 10:27
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That sounds like a different story where the Justice League gets kidnapped by aliens who have a device that suppresses all their superpowers. The rub is, Superman figures out that doesn't make any sense because their powers all come from different sources- his are natural, Wonder Woman is magical, Green Lantern has alien supertechnology, etc- and figures the only explanation is that they're being mentally blocked to be unable to use their powers. So he puts himself in harm's way and his invulnerability protects him, since that can't just be turned off (red sunlight notwithstanding), and the spell is broken.
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Nov 9, 2017 16:42
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Freaking Crumbum posted:I was definitely referencing the story Dallbun mentioned but it's clearly a premise that gets reused multiple times. It makes sense in that case in particular simply because Batman doesn't have powers, and while he does make an effort to understand superpowers of his allies and enemies and how to counter them, he doesn't really think of them as an aspect of someone's being. And it depends; BTAS had an episode where Batman was trapped in a mental world where his parents had never been murdered, he's happily married to Selina Kyle, and there's even a Batman out there protecting Gotham of his own accord. It started breaking down pretty quick because he couldn't accept it. (also because anything he tried to read was weird and illegible, hinting that it was a dream) On that note, does give me some interesting ideas for using mind control and such things on PCs both as a puzzle and exploration of their personality. (the key thing about making 'it was all a dream' plots not infuriating is to have the dream be interesting in as of itself and provide its own story and resolution advancing the character development. Also, you still get experience from it.)
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Nov 9, 2017 17:35
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Cythereal posted:Cat-people showed up as part of Starfleet in the movies, too, though they never got any elaboration - not clear if they were meant to be Kzinti who had joined the Federation or the Caitians from TAS (Star Trek had a catgirl in a miniskirt in the 60s folks) or some other race. Makes me think 'space hot rod' for some reason. Star Trek Online somewhat infamously has playable Caitans, and Ferasans as an offshoot race of them that are basically a replacement for the Kzinti that are aligned with the Klingon Empire. It is pretty easy to see where Star Control shamelessly nicked ideas from Known Space. I think that would make the Shofixti the Kzinti counterparts?
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Nov 13, 2017 05:17
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I wouldn't say that all sci-fi settings have to have humans be Special in some way or another. Oddly enough Transformers comes to mind as a setting where humanity are massively, hopelessly outmatched by nearly everything else in the universe, especially the giant shapeshifting living robots, who only have anything to do with humans because of their own devastating million-year war and because some of them are very nice people. And Hitchhiker's Guide gets a lot of humour out of how insignificant Earth is, while Lovecraft plays it for horror. And that tends to kinda illustrate why humanity has some special gimmick in sci-fi; because unless you're playing it for humour or horror, people start wondering why the story even bothers focusing on the insignificant, whiny, boring, usually underage humans and not the aliens who are actually doing interesting things.
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Nov 14, 2017 05:49
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Nessus posted:Isn't this why Transformers comics, at least, tend to have only token human characters, whereas the cartoons tend to have a more focused appeal to the audience stand-in character? Mostly because the comics are generally written by fans of the shows who grew up getting bored and annoyed by the cartoon audience stand-ins. And a well-recieved few incarnations of the franchise (namely Beast Wars and the War For Cybertron and Fall Of Cybertron games) don't feature them at all. Transformers Animated is a bit funny given it has some human characters the audience actually likes (though the human supervillains are maybe a little too goofy), though one turns out to be not so human after all. Wapole Languray posted:Both are probably inspired by Animorphs, which also paints humans in some pretty interesting light, by making them TOTALLY unique among all species. The rub there is that it takes a lot of creativity to make a number of believable alien aliens. It does come up that humans are the perfect host species for Yeerks, with their versatility and fast reproduction. And to be vaguely on topic; it makes RPG balance nearly impossible. While I'm at it, I vaguely recall about the Kzinti having had access to genetic engineering technology in their equivalent of a Bronze Age culture, which resulted in them altering their women into non-sentient domestic slaves and men into 'heroes' mostly good at leaping and yelling, which seemed to be the start of a cultural bottleneck that came back to bite them a long time later when intelligence is the most important trait a species can have. Incidentally, the Human-Kzin Wars make me think a bit of basically Pearl Harbour, or WW2 in general; when it comes to total war, the side that has the biggest manufacturing base is generally the one that's going to win. Ghost Leviathan fucked around with this message at 09:27 on Nov 14, 2017 |
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Nov 14, 2017 09:25
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Kurieg posted:Now I'm envisioning a Dragon taking over a country and working his hardest to instill a sense of national pride and sense of self worth because his citizenry is his hoard. This sounds right out of the playbook of a Steel Dragon. They tend to spend more time in human form than dragon form.
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Nov 15, 2017 04:29
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The gargoyle plot seems like it might be interesting with some tweaking. Mainly making the gargoyle into Batman. Or Gargoyles. Have the pegasus be the mount of a wicked criminal terrorising the city.
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Nov 15, 2017 15:52
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The gargoyle's origin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZqeR8EVFKY
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Nov 15, 2017 16:02
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Yeah, it's a nice design. I mean, it's not a goldfish bowl atop power armor, but nothing's perfect. Hello extremely! We hope you like to *play*!
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Nov 19, 2017 11:40
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Ancient aliens stuff has gotten a bit old, but it's still fun when done interestingly. The closest thing to Pak Protector society is Protectors from the same family, I'm guessing?
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Nov 19, 2017 12:32
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I was guessing that, given female Kzin are non-sentient and only a few Kzinti ever get to even meet them, the majority of romantic relationships between Kzinti are probably homosexual. Hey, space cats need love too. Bandersnatchi must have an entertaining story behind their name. I'm guessing the human kids love them.
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Nov 21, 2017 05:07
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I don't know much about Ringworld, but it does sound like a pretty perfect setting both for stories and for a RPG perspective. A huge artificial inhabitable world where the surface of the Earth is a small measure of its size and life from all over the galaxy was left to run amok for untold aeons? You could do pretty much literally anything there. Also missed the Tunctipun if they were in the previous writeups, but sounds like their Star Control equivalents might be the Ur-Quan, who instead had the misfortune to survive the experience.
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Nov 21, 2017 17:35
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Mors Rattus posted:They're pretty much entirely a backstory thing. There is, at most, a single living tnuctip in the galaxy, and if said tnuctip exists it's trapped in a stasis box, in which time doesn't pass. Definitely seeing the inspiration for the Ur-Quan here (what with them being huge carnivorous centipedes), though clearly intended as more of a precursor race than an active one. Though Star Control goes for more identifiable alien races, with the Ur-Quan having a sympathetic backstory of having gone through massive species-wide trauma that's still with them on the genetic level, rather than Niven's rather alien aliens. And on slimes; some D&D editions have slimes be a result of spells gone wrong, if you're doing Space Not-D&D than rogue nanotech makes about as much sense.
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Nov 22, 2017 04:44
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Ferengi were a bit weird and confused given their society in some ways is more relatable and fleshed out than what Federation civilians actually do with their time, when they're meant to be the foil to the totally-not-communist Federation. Besides, the proper sci-fi metaphor for capitalism is probably grey goo. Generally I think a measure of a setting is whether you can imagine actually living an ordinary life there that doesn't involve being A Protagonist. Similar reason why things like Klingons become weird to examine, because a society needs tailors, farmers, janitors and band managers too. (see the band manager Kzinti character) I think Star Wars as a setting has stuck in people's heads so well because you see more of the mundanities of life; it starts out with an extended sequence of Luke the moisture farmer dealing with technical issues and buying second-hand hardware, one of the most iconic pieces of music is a band playing background music in a bar, and so on. It's a setting where things happen and life goes on when the protagonists and antagonists don't happen to be around.
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Nov 22, 2017 07:11
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I think the Ferengi as Jews thing came from a lot of them being played by Jewish actors and the humongous ears as a stand-in for noses. Chaos is absolutely the pyramid scheme from literal hell, though. Occasionally with literal pyramids.
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Nov 22, 2017 10:08
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Nessus posted:The Ilwrath were ahead of their time, because they're disgustingly brutal and grimdark and would totally be played seriously in some kind of modern FPS environment, but they are obviously chumps whose ships can be easily defeated once you learn the trick, and they are far from the actual primary antagonist. The fun part is that according to the Pkunk, they seem to have suffered the Civ 1 Ghandi bug on a cultural scale, where they were so peaceful and enlightened they had a stack overflow error into genocidal grimdark supervillains. Hence why the Pkunk have childish insults as a weapon, they want to avoid being TOO nice. Also, another thought on the Ferengi is that the show doesn't shy away from exploring the flaws of their society; even if they do cutthroat capitalism in a relatively fair way, for one, it's meant that the rest of the galaxy doesn't trust them in the slightest anymore and it turns out trust is important to run a successful business, and two, it means that Ferengi with skills outside of business sense often find their skills devalued by society, and end up with brain drain as they emigrate to a society that does, as demonstrated with Rom and Nog. Ghost Leviathan fucked around with this message at 09:07 on Nov 23, 2017 |
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Nov 23, 2017 07:19
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4e Medusas got kinda weirder, with male ones who are bald and have some kind of weird psychic powers instead of petrification. Probably one of those monster concepts where you're better off mixing and matching whatever traits suit the tone and use case you're going for and say anything else they've heard are inaccurate legends. Most classical monsters were originally one-offs usually created by the gods being dicks (and/or loving something weird) anyway. Or just Echidna and Typhon's offspring whose traits might as well have been determined via dice roll. Attempting to make everything into a subtype tends to result in dumb stuff and undermining what made a monster interesting in the first place.
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Nov 24, 2017 07:21
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Making Medusoids their own seperate evil race seems to crowd things a bit given then they're competing for space with Yuan-Ti, who are already all over the place. Isn't it practically canon that Yuan-Ti are inbred genetic car crashes where the human hybrids are weaker but way more stable while the bigger ones roll the dice on what limbs are what and their ancient kings all went insane and turned into living piles of snakes?
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Nov 24, 2017 16:26
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You know, COBRA would absolutely make sense as a D&D organisation. Even keep the backstory where they're run by an exile from a crazy ancient biopunk empire waiting for the opportune time to strike.
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Nov 24, 2017 17:19
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Ironically I'm fairly sure real life rats are usually very social and attentive, caring parents.
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Nov 25, 2017 11:57
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Bad Horse, Bad Horse, the thoroughbred of sin.Mors Rattus posted:So you're saying that the evil wizard is dancing naked on a mailbox. Well if he isn't by the end of the night then the PCs aren't trying.
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Nov 27, 2017 09:13
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I recall the Targaryeans (or however the hell you spell it) have been compared to Egyptian royalty, who had a long history of sibling and even parental incest. I didn't realise the TMNT RPG came so early in the franchise's existence. Been kinda funny given how many recent incarnations have hewed a bit closer to the originals while combining various elements. (TCRI comes up in the recent series)
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Dec 2, 2017 15:32
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So it's possibly to roll up a team of mutant college students? Roll on the chart for Animal House jokes.
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Dec 4, 2017 13:15
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It's probably accidental but still hilarious that you could probably recreate most of the countless TMNT knockoffs with this system. Hell, the core assumption is basically that you're playing one.
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Dec 4, 2017 16:55
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As someone who was an unreasonably huge fan of the Mighty Ducks cartoon (it was a Disney show by the way) as a possibly insane kid, I'm glad it still comes up talking about ridiculous 90s TMNT knockoffs. And there's always the same problem that while war is horrible, it makes for really good TV. See the entertaining confusion of Metal Gear on the topic.
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Dec 5, 2017 03:49
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There's a big difference between liking something as a setting and liking it as a place. The Imperium of Man can work pretty well as a setting because it's so big and so screwed up you can do all kinds of things with it, and explore all of the worst aspects of human history, society and nature. There's usually a point in the fiction that the universe grinds down even the strongest of good people while the horrible often thrive when the system has decayed and ossified to the point where it's a struggle just to get things to work how they should be. But that presents a lot of its own issues, including difficulty in portraying people's actual everyday lives, and giving the players a reason to care about a place and setting when the details become so sketchy the further down you go. JcDent posted:Stop stealing words from Buddhism/whatever sounds exotic, Gundam. You do remember it's a Japanese show, right
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Dec 5, 2017 07:50
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Seems to be the reason why there's increasing emphasis on prequel 30k stuff, since at least that's presented as part of a setting and status quo that's actively changing (for the worse) and new things are actually happening, while they can't think of anything to do with 40k but slowly hint that the setting's heading for the apocalypse or something.
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Dec 5, 2017 08:04
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It's kind of a general issue when you focus on quantity over quality for your fiction. At least some advantages to the fluff being somewhat backgrounded is that it's not hard to basically pick and choose your personal canon, which may include glorified fanfiction and things GW hasn't acknowledged for decades.
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Dec 5, 2017 10:00
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 05:35 |
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Big fancy impractical wunderwaftens are always built to impress, often succeed in doing so and always underperform at best. Wars are nearly always won by whoever can muster the most bodies, guns and bombs to throw at the enemy before the enemy beats them, and so the great big superweapons are rarely on the winning side. (Nuclear weapons maybe being an exception) Getting wrecked before they even got to be used just makes people think 'what could have been'.
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Dec 5, 2017 11:51
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