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Nessus posted:You could probably do some cross-line round-ups of Confederate apologia and see if you can trace particular ideas back to particular authors. I don't think I've seen any Confederate nostalgia worse than Dinosaur Planet: Broncosaurus Rex. ...Yeah, it's a game about riding dinosaurs on Martian colonies, and the victorious Confederacy is super-duper cool while the Union is an Orwellian beehive state.
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Jan 29, 2019 23:07
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There's a long history of deliberately leaving simple words untranslated in order to make them sound more exotic and mysterious to your audience than they actually are. For example, Juche Thought.
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Feb 3, 2019 06:16
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 Vampire: The Masquerade (2nd Edition) Preface Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: Setting Interlude: A History of Face Grabbing Chapter 3: Storytelling quote:Rule, after you have first learned to submit to rule. Chapter Four: Rules I have terrible, horrible, no good very bad news: it’s time to talk about rules. Vampire give the impression that its authors would rather talk about anything else but rules. Because that’s what they do. Before the chapter even begins, there’s an excerpt from the Book of Nod, telling the story of Caine in pseudo-biblical language. Since I haven’t spelled out the mythic prehistory of the setting yet, I suppose I must. As you know, God cursed Caine with vampirism with killing Abel. He founded Enoch, the First City, where he was worshiped as a god. Out of loneliness he created more vampires, but regretted it and forbade the practice. A great Deluge destroyed the City, and Caine took it for divine punishment, leaving forever. His grandchilder rebuilt the City and founded Clans, but vampire overpopulation ignited a war...the first Jyhad. The survivors built what is only known as the Second City. Fearing another war, they forbade the 4th Generation to sire more vampires. But the Second City eventually collapsed after a long and unexplained decline, and the Kindred were forced to flee. Since then, a cycle has repeated itself: as more vampires are created, they inevitably come into conflict, while the elders remain in hiding and consolidate power. Now vampires hide from mortals and each other, and Jyhad is an eternal cycle. But This is the Rules Chapter, Right? Sure. Right after a page of fiction about a vampire about to attack a woman, but chickening out. And a cool picture of Count Orlok. And an overview of the rules that begins with quotes like “You need only learn basic rules, but their permutations evoke the flavor of the game to reflect the true complexity of real life.” And “Rules are like the myths which shape and describe a culture. They define what is important and delineate the possibilities of existence.” And a quote from Plato.  No! No more quotes! I...oh, hi Mom. Hi Dad. Bleeding Jesus Just Tell Me How to Roll Dice Okay, okay! First, Vampire explains how it measures time. A turn is enough time to complete one action--a few seconds in a fight scene, a few minutes in a social scene. Speaking of which, a period of action or roleplaying in a single location makes up a scene. A chapter is several scenes of action and downtime, comprising the typical game session. A story is a story arc within a campaign. Vampire calls a campaign a chronicle, and defines it as a series of connected stories, perhaps with an overarching theme or plot. As for the dice, it’s pretty simple. It’s a d10 dice pool system. Characters have various Traits, rated 1-5. Roll your Trait in dice, and count any dice that meet or exceed the Difficulty as successes. The Difficulty can range from 2-10, with 6 as the standard. One success means you barely made it, three is a complete success, and five is exceptional and impressive. Most rolls are Attribute+Ability (e.g.Dexterity+Firearms, Charisma+Etiquette), so barring superhuman powers, you’re rolling 1-10 dice. An interesting innovation for the time is that different Attribute+Ability pairings are possible, even ones that don’t seem like common sense. Given examples include Stamina+Acting to hold up under prolonged interrogation, Dexterity+Streetwise to slip out of handcuffs, or Manipulation+Brawl to square up and show some mean drunk that you mean business and he should gently caress off. An important rule to single out is the Rule of One. Any 1s you roll count as anti-successes. If you roll more 1s than successes, you botch, a critical failure with nasty consequences. The Storyteller system has often been criticized for this: without going into detail, it produces wonky dice math as your pool increases. It also means that on a Difficulty 10 roll, you’re as likely to botch as to succeed no matter how many dice you’re rolling! The text explicitly calls this out and says you should rarely if ever call for a Difficulty 10 roll.  All that nonsense just to tell me it’s Shadowrun with ten-siders? Special Actions A resisted action is when two people are competing or one is resisting the other--like trying to sneak up on someone, or an exchange of wits. You both roll and the higher number of successes wins. An extended action happens over a period of time. It could be a very long time with each roll representing days of work, like creating a work of art or conducting research. It could also be a race-against-the-clock scenario in one scene, like escaping a burning building. Whatever the case, you keep rolling, and try to accumulate a given number of successes. Failing might mean you have to start over; botching almost certainly does. An action can also be both extended and resisted--a car chase is a good example. Both opponents are in a race to accumulate a given number of successes first. There are also rules for teamwork, where both characters roll and add their successes together, usually on an extended action like collecting information or creating something. Last is the Gooolden Ruuule. Which is: every rule besides the basic die mechanic is just a suggestion. Do what you want. Thanks, Vampire!  Do it! Say “Chubby Bunny!” Next time on Kindred the Embraced: Character creation.
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Feb 3, 2019 20:21
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They also added this to Vampire 2nd Edition Revised. (Which was a 3rd Edition. I don't know why White Wolf was allergic to admitting that they did third editions of some of their most popular games.) In my opinion it was a mistake. It's been a long time since I played around with WoD probability, but this seems to reduce the chance of botches to the point that they're no longer a dramatic mechanic worth having, while not actually fixing the wonky dice math created by having ones count as anti-successes.
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Feb 4, 2019 02:20
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The cosmology would be more interesting if it were a blend of Mormonism and dispensationalism and various odd developments of American Protestantism in the 19th century, instead of just whatever goth and spooky bits the authors remembered from the Bible and Dante and suchlike.
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Feb 6, 2019 02:05
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"The South was going to free the slaves anyway, because it was the right thing to do and also, slavery was no longer economically beneficial" is the #1 talking point in Lost Cause Confederate apologism. (Well, it is now. It used to be "slavery was benign and good for the slaves," but that doesn't fly with anyone anymore.) It also appears in Broncosaurus Rex.
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Feb 6, 2019 15:32
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Robindaybird posted:Weird West/Horror West is such a fun potential for a setting and can be done right if it's not written by a bunch of CSA apologists and people masturbating over their own metaplot and pet NPCs The ideas are cool, but it's so flawed that I'd have to significantly rewrite it to make it playable. If I'm going to do that, I may as well write my own game...but said game would be too derivative to be worth writing.
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Feb 7, 2019 02:24
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The whole point of Deadlands is that it's Weird West. I will never understand why they thought turning it into steampunk Mad Max and then going to space was a good or necessary idea. Brand expansion? Just got bored?
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Feb 7, 2019 15:09
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I didn't pay close attention to those review chapters, but I can see how people would enjoy just having more gonzo options, more monsters, and maybe no political conflicts to worry about, if you don't care about that stuff. As for the space stuff, doing Weird West on a Burroughs-esque Mars actually does make sense. But it was bad. Rocket Age and the new Space 1889 are far better.
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Feb 7, 2019 15:26
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I've also heard good things about Giant Guardian Generation, which has a "this is not an engineering simulator" sidebar in the introduction.
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Feb 7, 2019 16:05
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OvermanXAN posted:It's wonderful if you like nothing but dodge-tanks. One of the biggest problems with mech games I've encountered is that most of them are nigh impossible to make a big tanky Super Robot and not eat poo poo. SirPhoebos posted:I've always wondered how much of L5R's emphasis on cleanliness is based on real religions and how much was the writers asking "What if Howard Hughes founded a religion? I have also heard that it's easy to pick up good used items in Japan, even things like televisions and appliances, because a certain "dirtiness" clings to used goods. These are both decades-old anecdotes, of course, but we're talking about a fantasy medieval Japan. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 20:17 on Feb 7, 2019 |
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Feb 7, 2019 20:08
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I feel very strongly that a game operating on the scale of the 40k games should not have a system that fine-grained and detailed. Warhammer Fantasy's system works pretty well for Warhammer Fantasy.
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Feb 7, 2019 20:33
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Night10194 posted:Meanwhile over in 40k they're like 'lol here's a 2d10+10 gun also we're never going to increase your effective HP past 25 and also it hits you 6 times in one attack'. To say nothing of armor pen, Unnaturals, and all kinds of other fiddly bullshit that screwed the math. It let them print dozens of sourcebooks full of slightly more broken equipment one after another, but like I said in the Black Crusade review, at a certain point all these extra +2s to damage and poo poo don't matter because the base math was so hosed to begin with. Even in the World of Darkness, you run into rocket tag combat pretty quickly. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 20:59 on Feb 7, 2019 |
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Feb 7, 2019 20:52
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4e has a lot of problems, but one very good thing is that even if you use inherent bonuses* different items can give you a different encounter or daily power, thus creating a lot of design space. *always do this
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Feb 7, 2019 21:03
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A rite of passage into adulthood and a certain social class was a big motivator for young men to join imperial armies. British India and the Congo, for example.
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Feb 8, 2019 20:05
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NutritiousSnack posted:I'm not going to do the 'you gotta hand it the Nazis' Candace Owens thing, but I'm going to say this is why you don't listen to Youtubers: what loving ideology? Hitler had to kill or imprison various rivals under the Nazi banner to gain and maintain control of the Nazi party but also to mold his own constantly changing belief system. Under the Nazi banner there were hyper capitalists, genuine socialists who really hated Jews, christian fundamentalists, and dozens of others sub factions of fascism. No one agreed with anyone, outside of insanely weird outliers like Goebbels and his early on Hitler worship, in a coherent fashion in any other manner then 'I'm going to form a political alliance with this guy because a lot of the low ranking members generally like him and the just of what he says, and I can gain power this way.' Fascism is nebulous in its propaganda, not so much in its actual structure. Because fascism arises in a capitalist society that's butting up against problems the system can't resolve, and the fascist answer is to...not resolve them. Smooth everything over with nationalism and violent suppression, and make up the shortfall in the economy through conquest. It's easy to say that fascism is sui generis and doesn't fit into any point on a conventional political map, because it offends no one and Hitler and Goebbels spouted a lot of contradictory bullshit. But the actual structure of fascism is making imperialism your entire politics, at home and abroad. Midjack posted:It would be cool and good if we can avoid moving this thread into C-SPAM.
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Feb 11, 2019 17:16
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After I finish Vampire, I'm going to need to take a breather and review something hilariously lovely.
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Feb 12, 2019 14:30
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I find that with stuff like that, the shock and mocking laughter quickly gives way to depression at the suffocating banality of someone quantifying rape into game mechanics, over and over and over.
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Feb 12, 2019 15:45
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Without doing any research, I'm going to posit that Poul Anderson's elves were probably a big inspiration.
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Feb 12, 2019 20:36
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Apropos of nothing: It's been awhile since I saw a skill system as badly balanced as Cyberpunk's. And they kept it up for 3 editions, too!
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Feb 12, 2019 21:36
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Night10194 posted:How's it work? In 3.0: Reflexes has been split into Reflexes and Dexterity (good), but the latter just gets Dodge and the melee skills (dumb). The social stats have been pared down to Cool and Will (good), but Cool gets almost everything (dumb). One faction uses Will instead of Reflexes to control their drones, which is a disadvantage! Intelligence and Tech are pretty much the same. Body has been split up into Strength and Constitution (dumb) which each only get one skill (dumber). megane posted:Building planned obsolescence into your horrible giant monster is pretty funny anyway. "Sorry, bud, the elbow tendons on this model only really last a few months before you've gotta put in a new set. Now, the boys and I can do elbows here in the shop, but I'm gonna have to get them replacement tendons ordered in from the manufacturer and, hoo boy, hope yer ready to spend some warpstone!"
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Feb 12, 2019 22:14
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Young Freud posted:Why is splitting Strength and Constitution considered bad? In early D&D, Strength and Constitution as separate abilities makes sense. Strength is important for melee combat and breaking down doors, which are key components of a game set entirely in a dungeon. Constitution helps you be not dead. In most other games, most characters don't need to give a poo poo about Strength. In real life, functional strength is important to many tasks, but in most games, the Strength attribute gives you nothing but a passive bonus to melee damage and the ability to lift heavy weights. How often does that come up? Constitution likewise just gives you resistance to damage and is rarely rolled to actively accomplish anything. This is how you get dozens and dozens of games where being a strong tough dude just doesn't work and combat is always dodge-monkeys playing rocket tag. Young Freud posted:True, but you also have real life examples of bodybuilders unable to run marathons or Foreman vs. Ali. Strength doesn't always equal endurance. Rolling all this poo poo into Dexterity is also an artifact of early D&D, where being dextrous just nets you like a +1 to attack with missile weapons. In most other games it's the attribute used to attack, dodge, be stealthy, pick locks, or do anything physical that matters. And a low Strength, high Dexterity character never has problems doing backflips while firing a Desert Eagles in each hand. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 05:54 on Feb 13, 2019 |
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Feb 13, 2019 05:51
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LatwPIAT posted:I think it's worth emphasizing here that it's really difficult to do these kind of "moving fast" actions without also being decently strong. The decision to strip perhaps the most fundamental part of being strong out of Strength in a lot of games makes for a very anemic "Strength" attribute.
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Feb 13, 2019 15:54
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The main problem in D&D as of 4th edition is that STR is completely and totally dump-worthy for the vast majority of classes, even a whole slew of classes devoted to melee combat. It only has one skill tied to it, and if you were just looking to boost your Fortitude defense, CON gives you HP. CON also has only one skill tied to it, though.
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Feb 13, 2019 18:00
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SirPhoebos posted:I would really love for someone to review Cyberpunk 2020. Someone review Cyberpunk 2020  So I can review Cyberpunk 3.0 
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Feb 13, 2019 18:52
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Well, it gave us the Cybersnake.
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Feb 13, 2019 21:55
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SirPhoebos posted:Went ahead and bought the Cyberpunk 2020 pdf off of drivthru. There's quite a bit to talk about, some stuff I fondly remember, some stuff that I didn't notice when I was 15 (as I'm sure is the case with a lot of 30 year old RPGs).
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Feb 14, 2019 14:31
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Oh, I read my books throughly, but I jumped all over the place in reading them.
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Feb 14, 2019 16:33
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CP2013 and CP2020 had character classes, one of which was the Media. The Media is an investigative journalist, though; not really a Thompson type. 3.0 dispensed with character classes. Desnai was one of the AltCults in that game. Cyberpunk 3.0 is also non-canon now, at least as far as the video game is concerned.
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Feb 14, 2019 19:25
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The DataKrash is a really clumsily executed idea, but I was talking to my wife about it the other day and she found the premise remarkably prescient.Alien Rope Burn posted:Yeah, they were called "roles", and determined which skills you favored, more or less, and provided a unique skill only your role got. These varied from complete loosely-goosey what the GM says you get (the Nomad's "Family" skill) to utterly breaking combat in your favor (the Solo's "Combat Reflexes"). But it wasn't really a class game per se in that they didn't dictate leveling or anything, just the special ability you had.
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Feb 14, 2019 20:44
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That was CyberGeneration, which does have a F&F writeup!Wrestlepig posted:There’s something extremely stupid about designing an archetype in an rpg called a Solo. How could you think that would work?
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Feb 14, 2019 21:56
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I forget, does Cyberpunk ever refer to Netrunners as cowboys?
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Feb 14, 2019 22:16
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I mean, psychopaths typically have unstable, abusive childhoods, and often exhibit antisocial behaviour in childhood, but you don't hear people saying that little John Gacy deserved to be molested. In addition to his terrible backstory, with the other Servitors all serving as leaders of organizations with big plans and armies of minions, Stone really sticks out as particularly useless.
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Feb 15, 2019 19:49
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SirPhoebos posted:One of CP2020’s selling points was the art and in setting quotes did a lot to convey the setting. The quotes were colorful, but they never went so overboard with in-setting slang that you couldn't follow what was happening. The art and quote on the cover let you know right away what this game is about. This was the RPG for playing William Gibson’s Neuromancer. But it was also the game to play Escape From New York. And Blade Runner, Robocop, The Warriors, The Running Man, etc. Or just anything from Canon Films. Also all their Italian knockoffs. Basically if you can name a 80’s movie set in the Dystopian Future, CP2020 tried to make room for it. My favourite Media is Moon Grey from Bronx Warriors 2: Escape from the Bronx. The Sprawl is not the best-designed PbtA game, but the PbtA framework gives you a much better framework to play these kinds of characters than a more traditional game where the party is presumed to usually be in the same room and gameplay is zoomed in to the level of a dungeoncrawl. It goes without saying that games in CP2020's era didn't really handle more narrative and situational bonuses like the Media's, Rockerboy's, and Nomad's as opposed to a straight bonus to Initiative. Young Freud posted:I think you're underestimating the influence of the Media and the Rocker in relation to cyberpunk as a whole. It's not a big thing in cyberpunk film, but there's a reason why "cyberpunk" has that "punk" suffix: a lot of cyberpunk authors were fascinated with mass media and music and wrote heavily about characters, such as K.W. Jeter's "Dr. Adder", Bruce Sterling's "Islands Of The Net", Gibson's "Idoru", Norman Spinrad's "Little Heroes", John Shirley's Eclipse series. These films were heavily inspired by Cronenberg and post-apoc films, so they're much more preoccupied with dystopia and body horror than with virtual reality and the nature of consciousness.
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Feb 18, 2019 02:06
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Young Freud posted:The best one, IMO, featuring all of those take-offs, being 2019: After The Fall Of New York. 
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Feb 18, 2019 02:44
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You're underestimating Left Twitter's appetite for shenanigans.
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Feb 18, 2019 06:16
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I have no idea how well Symbaroum did saleswise, but it seems like it was doomed to get lost in the flood of people publishing their Forgotten Realms heartbreaker during the D20 craze. It's much, much better than the baseline level of quality for that lot, though.Cooked Auto posted:Not to mention one of the later edition books where all the interior art photos of various dolls unless I'm misremembering. But really? It's better than the Poser art in the few sourcebooks that were released. Ghost Leviathan posted:Bad RPG book art is something else. There's a point where you're probably better off just not having any.
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Feb 19, 2019 16:13
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This isn't a fair fight, because the two traced Poser games you mentioned are both creepy as hell. Cyberpunk 3.0 isn't creepy, even if NuCybe sounds like a Bluetooth-enabled sex toy.
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Feb 19, 2019 18:03
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My understanding is that Poser is a legit professional tool, but when real professionals use it, the result isn't something that makes you go "Ugh, it's that thing people use to make Sonic the Hedgehog vore porn."
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Feb 19, 2019 18:27
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megane posted:e: Siembieda's games must be a barrel of laughs to play in. You stopped a squad of insane, jack-booted thugs who were trying to burn down an orphanage? Well, their comrades declare forever war and will hunt you forever and you can't escape them or reason with them because they are all highly-trained special operatives! Also the children in the orphanage are actually cultists and the fascists were right all along! Haha, what about that, PCs, huh??
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Feb 21, 2019 03:14
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