LatwPIAT posted:

Challenging people to make a difference in their world? What, as opposed to, I don't know, any game ever? Going out to kill the tyrant king is making a difference in the world - so is stopping Cthulhu from waking.

LatwPIAT posted:

Well that's even more pretentious.

Domus posted:

I never had a DM who thought Correspondence was about teleporting and such. In our circles, and I believe in RaW, you can't effect anything outside yourself without at least two spheres in Correspondence. And then it's only things you can touch. So Correspondence is pretty much required for most characters.

Evil Mastermind posted:

_{EVE Online: the RPG}

Evil Mastermind posted:

Oh man, amazing catch. I had to look at that like five times before I saw what you meant.

Rand Brittain posted:

I would also like to point out that the Sons of Ether are totally proper scientists and they do do peer review and repeatability. (Sons of Ether Revised is a really good book and an example of why leaving out paradigm and philosophy or boiling them down to sound bites like "everything is data" turns intellectually respectable philosophies into cardboard cutouts.)

Doresh posted:

It's amazing how Campbell can give a pretty a complete and to the point look of the Technocracy, while Brucato meanders all over the place and yet can't bring himself to give the guys players are actually supposed to play as more detail than "They're goths. Also something something art is magick."

Evil Mastermind posted:

Right. Just like pretty much everyone else because at some point you're going to go somewhere your gimmicks don't work.

Evil Mastermind posted:

Well, let's look at the numbers.

The battlesuit is Tech 25. Nippon Tech is Tech 24, and since the character is from the Nippon Tech realm his personal Tech axiom is also 24.

Using the suit in Nippon Tech will have a decent chance of disconnection. He's using a device that has a higher axiom than both himself and the reality he's in. That's a four-case contradiction, which means that he disconnects on a roll of 1 to 4 when using the suit.

If he does disconnect, he'll have to try to reconnect. If he's in a fight that has to be his next action. It's a reality skill roll, but at least reconnecting to your home realm while in that realm is difficulty 0.

The thing is, though, there's only three realities he can use the suit without heavily risking disconnection: the Cyberpapacy (Tech 26), Tharkold (also Tech 26, but doesn't show up until later), and one of the SPOILER realms. Everywhere else it's going to be a four-case contradiction, and in those three it's still a one-case since the armor's more advanced than the character.

LatwPIAT posted:

Jinx has the concept Wiseass Street Kid, and she's "restless risk-taker often taken to excess", so she has a Dynamic essence, Rebel Demeanor, and Seeker Nature. Now let's take a look at what Jinx' character ends up as based on her concept. The huge range of the dot-ratings can make for some very interesting results.

LatwPIAT posted:

Chapter 7: Telling the Story

The snippet of intro fiction here is a piece about an Etherite cultist who's sitting in a cloaked car that's slaloming between cars on the motorway at full throttle, while the Etherite is up to his eyeballs on not-LSD. The moral of the story is "go do fun things", like test experimental technologies in the middle of traffic while high as a kite.

Cthulhu Dreams posted:

Why do people have these pointlessly complex dice pool mechanics when most people (including myself) cannot accurately tell you how much harder it is to get two successes with 7 dice against TN 6 vs TN 7. If the GM can't work that out then he doesn't know what he is doing when he sets the difficulty.

MonsieurChoc posted:

It's funny, I thought I remembered Nuclear Liches being playable, if extremely high-point.

Mors Rattus posted:

Superiors 2: Glutton is Hard to Pun

Mors Rattus posted:

Probably eventually.

Midjack posted:

Oh, I own it and the entire rest of the In Nomine line though it's been quite some time since I've looked through them.

Alien Rope Burn posted:

The thing about the gizmos system is it would be an interesting idea if that was like the core of the game, like if you were all playing robots where you had to work out your whole sheet as a diagram, but as a mechanic just to figure out if you can make a lightning gun it's tedious busywork.

Ratoslov posted:

Yeah, I think the most important thing I learned from all this is that Lilith and the Lilim are all insufferable, and Jordi isn't all bad because he hates Lilith.

Black August posted:

Yikes, haven't walked down these roads in a long while. I got PMd about my old stuff, I was the one who ran an In Nomine campaign using Furfur a while ago. One of the few successful full IN games I ever even heard of, which doesn't surprise me. I was steeped nose-deep in In Nomine with its creators and writers for a long long time. Nice to see it still getting some tiny bit of attention.

I guess if you wanted to know In Nomine anything, ever, in excruciating detail, about any aspect, feel free to ask because I devoted more time to writing for that game than I did loving up GURPS to run to my Frakensteinian standards. But if you want to know the answer to your first question, yeah, In Nomine is a weird weird WEIRD product, and a terrible game, mechanically speaking.

I love it.

Black August posted:

Ok. I need to frame this, all of this, for every conversation here on out before I answer your question.

The framing is this: The writing, setting, and especially the mechanics of In Nomine are a CLUSTERFUCK

Detail: In Nomine is a product of many, many people, all of who have had very strong ideas of what angels and demons are, and very strong ideas for the tone of their settings, and tremendously powerful ideas of what their take on a Superior is, which frequently clashes and rollercoasters around the place like a hundred giant snakes tied to a renegade jet turbine and aimed at the local preschool. Especially the first guy who was writing for it, Derek Pearcy. That guy was a goddamn hand to the forehead.

quote:

Hey before I talk more there, here's another qualifier to back up why that happened;

BEFORE BETH MCCOY, IN NOMINE DID NOT HAVE A LINE EDITOR.

We're ignoring everything else related to that, but it helps frame the bizarre, inconsistent, and unsettling tone most of the game has in relation to itself. It was, as said, originally a product of the French parody RPG, a game where angels and demons may as well be wearing different hats, a lot of which carried over, didn't carry over, got splatted on the wall, scraped off, and thrown to burn in a pile. So yes, every time something seems weird or stupid, it's probably because some nutcase with no editor was slapping out whatever seemed good at the time.

To answer your question: In Nomine has tremendously poorly thought out and bad mechanics and you should burn 90% of them into a fine, silvery ash. In the parody original, Janus and Valefor were literally the same person. There were a lot of Princes and Archangels that got fused or remixed or repurposed for the SJG version. It was a plot that never really went anywhere, but it was intended as an adventure seed - what is the TRUTH behind Janus and Valefor?? Why are they so similar? What's the secret to their bright/dark reflection?

The truth is that it's up to you, the GM, and their dissonance mechanics suck red asswater because nobody was thinking half of this poo poo out as it hit paper. Sensible GMs of the system toss the Wind's condition or introduce caveats to make it sane. In Nomine walks a weird line where it's very fun to design attunements/dissonance for it, but they can unbalance the game or just have absolutely no use at all without you even realizing it.

Mors Rattus posted:

I am pretty sure that 'oh dear god I hate Lilim' is a common feeling among In Nomine fans.

Because seriously, guys, Lilim.

The game really, really wants you to buy into how special and amazing they are.

Cythereal posted:

I'd almost think this is on purpose: being warriors is not what God created the Malakim for, they were supposed to be judges and adjudicators among men and angels but lost their way with the Fall, similar to Dominic.

Robindaybird posted:

I get Ao is meant be representative of the GM, but given how many gently caress ups in FR is either because he's remote, or he chose to act in what seems to be the most dickish way possible, makes you wonder why the rest of the gods don't go "You gotta go."

Alien Rope Burn posted:

Nah, that's Sigil.

Black August posted:

oh god not the Zadkiel writeup

Count Chocula posted:

She actually seems human

NutritiousSnack posted:

Didn't the same thing happen in Witch Girls Adventure? Like Witches where such assholes that muggle men blowing them up was in fact 100 rationale and just a means of self defense

Mors Rattus posted:

Superiors shouldn't show up in person very often - they don't fight individual battles. They are potent, unfathomable, mysterious beings of immense age and strength. They should inspire awe, and so appear rarely.

Night10194 posted:

This is actually a good idea, because again, the PCs will usually be outnumbered and so rolling fewer dice. A player-favoring critical rule is usually a better idea than the other way around.

Kurieg posted:

Ettin posted:

Sounds like you need a palate cleanser.

Kurieg posted:

"Traditional combat"-focused is what I mean. Domina's about combat magic, Furie's about beating people to death with magic swords.

However both of them are nowhere near as effective as just turning someone into a frog due to the way the hit point system is designed. I'd say that's intentional but that would also mean that Soto's proficient enough at game design to include something subversive like that.

Black August posted:

I really, really don't care for that Soldiers section. I mean, I don't care for the game's narrative and attitude to humans in general, placing almost exclusive focus on celestials, and leaving humans as total trash, system-wise. 5 Forces is poo poo, and 6 Forces isn't good either.

Black August posted:

Yes. The humans in In Nomine are unbelievably weak. Like, by the system's numbers, they can barely accomplish simple rolls, will CRUMPLE before any celestial in a contest of any attribute or skill, and if they specialize in one realm of Forces, they drop into barely-able-to-function levels in their other attributes. GURPS In Nomine did jack poo poo to really manage this, on top of the hilariously library-length garbage templates and insanely complex power modifiers to bend the systems screaming together into a flesh pretzel of unplayable puke. It'd fare much much better in GURPS 4e, but SJG is allergic to doing anything useful. If you do know GURPS as a system, as an example, most humans in a straight 1:1 translation would end up with like, ST 6, DX 4, IQ 9 and HT 7. On average. Want to jump up to like, drat, ST 15? Your IQ is now 3. Whereas all the celestials start with a hot hard suite of 14/14/14/14 which they can rocket up to like the 30s with minimal effort.

Evil Mastermind posted:

Back on Gaea, steam power and gaslight are the norm, although electrical systems exist. They just don't see widespread use. Telephones are used for communication in the cities, and telegraphs are used for long-distance communication. There is a "Transdimensional Cable" running up the bridge from the Gaean city of New London to

gradenko_2000 posted:

To be fair, the author does say that "you put it on, and then you die"-type curses should be avoided, as the players cannot be taught a lesson if the item just straight up kills them. Rather, he suggests creating items are critically flawed in one way or another, such as:

* A Berserking Sword that looks perfectly normal until you enter combat, at which point the wielding starts randomly attacking any and every living being within 60 feet

* A Backbiter Spear that looks perfectly normal until it is either thrown or rolls a 1 during the melee attack. When either of those two happen, the wielder deals themselves twice the amount of damage that should have been dealt to the enemy.

Hypocrisy posted:

It was still the case in 1st or 2nd edition. Don't trust anyone who says otherwise. Sleep has been Sleep in every version of D&D.

Adnachiel posted:

Oh hey, this thing. A few years ago, I remember Soto posting that picture with the witch standing on the melty head (on Facebook, I think) and saying it was for a game that was basically WGA with adult witches in a post-apocalyptic setting.

Bieeardo posted:

I can't believe I'm actually typing this, but would smoking Circe actually kill her? I'm assuming that the mundanes are ash, but her reaction to returning to human form with her hips turned into one of RPGpundit's siglines seems more 'ugh! you little bitch!' than 'OH MY GOD WHERE'S THE REST OF ME?!'

Kavak posted:

I would totally play "Meduka Meguca: The Rol Plaeyng Gaem"