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There is power in the factory, power in the land. I'm not sure if space habitats have either of those
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Aug 4, 2019 21:36
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Night10194 posted:One of the things that weirds me out about stuff like HSD and EP is the need to kill off Earth and most of humankind to get their weird transhumanist future. It feels weirdly unnecessary. Night10194 posted:Someday, someone will make a game of trashy idiot wizards and their vans and do it on purpose.
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Aug 7, 2019 16:26
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90s games were just full of nasty bad Taint. Aberrant, L5R, Immortal...at least WFRP calls it Corruption, instead of mentioning your taint. I wanna, but Progenitor has kind of an odd layout where it gives you a whole lotta timeline, then explains a lot of references in the timeline by explaining characters and powers in the later chapters. I'll have to read through the whole thing twice in order to review it coherently. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 17:36 on Aug 8, 2019 |
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Aug 8, 2019 17:31
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The Wilderlands is certainly a venerable setting, but I don't perceive any kind of overall ethos. Maybe that wasn't really a thing until the 2e D&D settings.
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Aug 9, 2019 13:34
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If people couldn't work while gripped with a constant sense of futility and dread, the US economy would've collapsed years ago.
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Aug 12, 2019 16:40
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SirPhoebos posted:Imagine what you'd get if you ran Christianity through the Deities & Demigods filter Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 15:26 on Aug 13, 2019 |
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Aug 13, 2019 15:23
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The only other RPG I can think of that tried to mechanically define the Christian God so tightly was Fantasy Imperium. And it's medieval Christianity (and Islam, hoo boy) as interpreted by the kind of evangelical Protestant who believes in Pizzagate.
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Aug 13, 2019 21:11
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One of my favourite things in Progenitor is that all the restrictions on making super-gadgets from Godlike have been torn away. You want to give the world free energy in 1975? Go ahead!
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Aug 14, 2019 16:14
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Aberrant grumpily protests against a lot of conventions it indulges in; it's strange.
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Aug 14, 2019 16:29
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The other problem with late-era WEG games was that the writers weren't funny, so the games weren't funny to read, either.
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Aug 15, 2019 14:05
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Loxbourne posted:Divis Mal screams creator's pet. My money would be on a lead writer creating him, thinking he was soooooo awesome, and then getting a nasty shock when everyone else says "oh so he's a Magneto-analogue villain?"
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Aug 16, 2019 17:13
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Flail Snail posted:Up next, we get some Immortal: The Invisible War flashbacks
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Aug 17, 2019 04:09
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Alien Rope Burn posted:So much of old White Wolf seems to be based around realizing a lot of old games are based on adolescent power fantasies and rejecting that, shouting "I'm an adult!!", and so you have the pushback mechanics in a lot of their games where any blatant power-seeking on the part of the player or character results in some punishment being levied against them. 
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Aug 19, 2019 14:30
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Ah, but by analyzing the math, you've just proven that you're a rules lawyer, not a real roleplayer. The White Wolf devs could have balanced their mechanics, but then they'd be rules lawyers! You don't want rules lawyers writing a storytelling game, do you? Now, to get back to writing this sourcebook that's 3/4 in-character fiction printed in an illegible "handwritten" font...
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Aug 19, 2019 14:38
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SirPhoebos posted:Isn't the Street Fighter Storyteller game really emblematic of why "Roleplaying, not Rollplaying" is bullshit? I've never played it, but everything I've been told gives me the impression that starting character simply does not have enough resources to be effective in actual combat situations, know the fundamentals of their martial arts and have (or at least had) a life outside of Street Fighting. Because those all cost resources. With regard to the martial arts, a beginning Street Fighter party is more than capable of wiping the floor with a gang of gun-toting Mafia hoods or even a circle of ninjas. However, you don't get the Special Moves associated with your martial art out of the gate. (If you played a Shotokan Karate guy and started with Fireball, Dragon Punch, and Hurricane Kick, there wouldn't be anything to aspire towards. Just more pluses, and some extra moves that would mostly be gilding the lily.) At character creation, your PC's best moves will probably be...you know how Street Fighter characters have unique moves that aren't their Special Moves, like how several characters have some kind of sliding sweep kick? That stuff. It's enough to have tactically interesting combat out of the gate. SF might be the best-designed White Wolf game, from a mechanics POV.
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Aug 19, 2019 18:47
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Night10194 posted:How often do the vampires actually think about that? 'Wow, something is controlling my actions so strongly that it won't even let me end my life, am I being parasitized by some other intelligence?'
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Aug 19, 2019 20:13
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I'm quite fond of that setting/rule variant in the Requiem Chronicler's Guide wherein the Beast is replaced with the Other, and Humanity 0 vampires aren't mindless beasts but emotionless "snowmen."
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Aug 19, 2019 20:19
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Yeah, I just think they didn't really think outside of the standard RPG design standards of the time. I think having the ridiculous power characters like Methuselahs or Divis Mal is basically part of the "there's always a bigger fish" ethos so the player characters can never be on top of the power ladder, and otherwise giving the GM tools to glare at PCs and say "YOU FAIL" whenever they step out of "line". Evil Mastermind went into detail about how this problem fucks up Deadlands--the devs have no idea how to make the PCs the center of conflict when actual war breaks out. The PCs have to participate in pitched battles and sieges that are just endless slogs of combat rounds.
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Aug 20, 2019 14:20
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It's true. When Lovecraft's protagonist says with amazement and horror (paraphrased) "What did they do that we would not have done in their place? They were men!" that's his own perspective as a racist who loved the British Empire.
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Aug 21, 2019 00:48
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Of all the Ancient Outer Old Gods in the Lovecratian canon, Hastur is the one with the most tortured and fragmented history.
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Aug 21, 2019 13:46
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Okay, fine! I'll stop reading five different books at once and finish up the Vampire corebook, Jesus
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Aug 21, 2019 14:04
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Joe Slowboat posted:I am deeply annoyed that Beast had the temerity to call Beasts 'Nietzschean.' Because they sure as poo poo don't resemble anything interesting the guy ever wrote about, and their particular set of values is utterly uninteresting and utterly suborned to biology. "I have this deep desire to hurt people, and therefore I'm justified in doing so" is not Nietzschean, it's pathetically turning to the universe and saying 'see it's not my fault I do evil and enjoy it.' Nietzschean would be saying 'I do this because I choose to,' but Beasts are built entirely so they don't have to choose to be evil. The universe requires them to, so we should be sympathetic, according to pretty much the whole work.
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Aug 21, 2019 17:32
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Beast is worse than every WW fan game I've ever seen, including Genius and Princess and Dolls: Children of the Dollhouse. And all of the Highlander ones, too.
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Aug 21, 2019 20:05
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Mors Rattus posted:I WILL MURDER THE MOON
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Aug 22, 2019 21:29
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Speaking old farts who have a pretty good track record, anybody have thoughts on Cyberpunk Red? (Say what you will about Eclipse Phase, at least they're not charging $15 for a playtest document.) It seems like he did save some of the ideas from Cyberpunk 3.0 and implement them in a plausible way.
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Aug 27, 2019 13:48
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By popular demand posted:I'm really beginning to despise the term "inscrutable", related to this STOP BEING COY ABOUT THE UNIVERSE YOU MADE.
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Aug 27, 2019 18:05
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I mean if you want to run a horror game, you should obviously have Horror stats and have them go up, equaling more Horror. Duh!
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Aug 27, 2019 19:30
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Peasant is great! So I related the story about Mike Pondsmith getting barred from a convention in the CP2077 thread, and someone asked me where I heard it. I realized it's basically an urban legend I've been repeating. Anyone have a source on that?
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Sep 3, 2019 15:03
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I mean, I spent $8 on a copy of Everlasting. Then again, I don't think Stephen Brown is an obdurate jerk.
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Sep 3, 2019 18:23
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The anarcho-capitalist transhuman space habitat is really better suited to Paranoia, now that I think about it.
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Sep 6, 2019 15:03
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Razakai posted:After 2 excellent spheres, we come to one that is... less so. Barroom is an odd sphere that focuses on a mix of using improvised weapons and buffing yourself via getting absolutely shitfaced. If you want to be Jason Bourne killing guys with a rolled up magazine, look no further. I just remember Drunken Master stuff as one of those lovely cliches from the D20 boom era that wouldn't loving die. It's like how the first thing everyone homebrewed for their favourite cyberpunk game was dual-wielding and power armor.
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Sep 9, 2019 14:59
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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 Chapter 4: Rules Chapter 5: Character Chapter 6: Traits Chapter 7, Part 1: Clans Chapter 7, Part 2: Traits Chapter 7, Part 3: Disciplines Chapter 8, Part 1: Dramatic Systems Chapter 8, Part 2: Dramatic Systems Chapter 9: Drama quote:The only good policeman is a dead one What’s with this “Drama” chapter? We’ve already had two separate chapters on how to GM this thing, and one I just covered was called “Dramatic Systems.” While those systems were the narrative mechanics, this chapter is advice on using the rules to resolve common situations. The idea is that if you know how to use the rules without getting bogged down, you maintain the momentum and dramatic tension. This includes the rules for the most important part of every roleplaying game: combat!  I didn’t even know Einsturzende Neubauten performed at Ringling Bros. The Action Economy White Wolf’s games were the first ones I owned. The rules design may leave a lot to be desired, but they trained me to have a healthy loathing of any system that tries to define precisely how many pounds I can lift, how many meters I can run, and how many seconds a combat round lasts. No 90s game is complete without an Internet flamewar over how many punches or bullets you can sling in a 3-second turn. Vampire doesn’t really have that problem. Vampire defines a scene in the same way as a play or film. Scenes that are “just” roleplaying are still scenes--downtime is defined as the kind of thing you would just narrate, like extensive research or traveling to another city. Combat and other tense situations are called Action Scenes. In an action scene, a turn is defined as however much time it takes for each character to take one action. In a street fight, each action probably does take a few seconds at most. But it could be longer than that in a chase scene, and longer still in some kind of social combat.  You’ve never loved anything in your life as much as this chapter loves leather jackets and New Wave hair. Dramatic Systems Yes, the title of the last chapter is also a section heading in this chapter. These entries are advice on how to resolve common situations that could get more complicated than a single Attribute+Ability roll. The whole lot of them are presented as suggestions, not rules, so you can change them or even disregard them if you’d rather just roleplay it. Awakening: Vampires sleep like the dead. To awaken during the day (usually in response to some threat) roll Perception+Auspex. Humanity rolls may be required to stay awake for any length of time. Climbing: Dexterity+Athletics, with a bonus die if you have Protean claws. Hunting: Y’know, this is a tricky one. While the moral horror of being a bloodsucking monster is a central theme, it’s not the only theme. There are times you’ll want to deal with the practical question of feeding without derailing the narrative, especially since Kindred rarely hunt as a pack. (Longtime writer Rob Hatch once remarked, “Which is more obscene: the Revolting Revenant, or a player distilling murder down to ‘I attack the bum and recharge my Blood Pool?’” Actually, Rob, the autistic zoophile PC template was a terrible idea in itself.) So here’s how the recommend you resolve quick-and-dirty feeding: The PC gets 1 die per hour spent hunting, with bonuses from Herd and Fame. The Difficulty is based on the feeding ground--slums are easy, a gated community is hard. On a success, regain 1d10 blood. A botch means something goes terribly wrong. Or if you don’t have time for that, give them the blood and later tell them that they contracted a disease. Oh, brother.  Crazy that Paula Abdul never released this video. Feats of Strength: Your Strength+Potence sets the baseline of how much you can lift or how great a feat you can perform without rolling. To “push” it higher, roll Willpower and raise it one step per success.  Repair: It’s an extended Dexterity+Repair task, with Difficulty and needed successes based on the nature and extent of the repair. A weird glitch has a high Difficulty but can be resolved quickly, while replacing broken parts is easy but takes a lot of time. Sneaking: Dexterity+Stealth opposed by Wits+Alertness. You can make it an extended test if they’re trying to cover a lot of distance through a patrolled area. Shadowing: Actually quite complicated. The stalker rolls Perception+Investigation or Streetwise to successfully follow each turn. But they also need to roll Dexterity+Stealth opposed by Perception+Alertness. The stalker needs a certain number of successes to tail the target all the way to their destination, while the target needs 5 successes to definitely spot the pursuer. There are also optional rules for two people stalking one by trading off. They made this an overcomplicated stealth minigame that’s not very fun. Swimming: Dexterity+Athletics. This is only worth mentioning for the notes that vampires sink in water, sunlight penetrates it, and sharks are known to eat carrion. Stunt Driving: Another complicated minigame! Roll Dexterity+Drive, but your pool is limited by your vehicle--three dice for a bus, 9 for a sports car. Vehicle types also have a listed Safe Speed, and your Difficulty goes up when you exceed it. Pursuit: Chasing someone on foot is simple and should have been the model for how all such things are handled. Roll Dexterity+Athletics, Difficulty 6. If the chaser gets enough successes they can strike or grapple, if the chased gets enough they’ve lost their pursuer. Stealing: Dexterity+Streetwise for shoplifting and pickpocketing, while burglary should be handled with extended Perception+Stealth rolls. A liquor store holdup is a Manipulation+Intimidation roll, with the victim’s Willpower as the Difficulty.  Negative space makes me horny. Seduction: “Seduction is an unnatural means of gaining intimacy with another person, because every step is carefully staged and real feelings are not shared (they are faked).” Welp, this is the opposite issue of the quick-and-dirty feeding rules. How much do you want to roleplay seducing someone so you can (probably) attack them and drink their blood? You’ll probably fail anyway, since seduction involves three stages and you have to succeed at all of them. The “opening line” requires Appearance+Subterfuge, followed by Wits+Subterfuge for “witty exchange,” then Charisma+Empathy for “conversation.” The Difficulties are the victim’s Wits+3, Intelligence+3, and Perception+3, respectively. After that you can say “Do you wanna get out of here? I’m thirsty,” and they’re confused because you’re already in a bar. Fast Talk: You can use any combination of Manipulation/Charisma/Appearance+Acting/Subterfuge depending on what the Storyteller thinks is appropriate. Unlike most games, a failure leaves you with the option of walking back your confused, babbled lies and trying again, until you get a botch. There are also rules for “Credibility,” which I guess is for when you’re not full of poo poo. In that case you roll Manipulation+Leadership against Intelligence+Subterfuge. Interrogation: This is one of the few games I’ve seen that understands interrogation doesn’t always involve physically bullying or torture--though that’s certainly an option. Roll Manipulation+Intimidation to get useful information out of someone. Facedown: When two people are just staring each other down to see who blinks first, each rolls Charisma + Intimidation against the other’s Willpower. First one to get their enemy’s Wits+5 in successes is the winner. This childish behaviour is very common among vampires. Performance: The appropriate Attribute+Ability for a public performance can be one of many options. The Difficulty is based on how receptive the audience is at the outset, with successes indicating their reaction. Research: Roll Intelligence+Investigation in an extended test, with Difficulty based on the obscurity of the information. Your first roll takes an hour, the second a day, the third a week, and so on. Composition: Roll Intelligence + Music, Acting, or another appropriate Ability. The player chooses the Difficulty and the number of successes they’re going for, which is reflected in the quality of the final product. Recollection: Since you could potentially be a thousand years old, there’s a roll to recall specific memories. Roll Intelligence + an appropriate Knowledge. A botch indicates you remember the event completely wrong, and are bound to roleplay this thoroughly...or the Storyteller will punish you! Tracking: Roll Perception + Survival in the wilderness, or Investigation in the city. This is an unopposed extended test. There sure are a lot of ways to chase somebody in this system! Investment: Yes, there are rules for investing in business. Roll Intelligence+Finance. Five successes raises your Resources level--so if you’re a Ventrue businessman, you may as well start the game flat broke! Search: Perception+Investigation, with Difficulty from 7-10 depending on how well-concealed the hidden items are. There are notes that you should let people succeed automatically if they’re looking in precisely the right place, and give penalties if the player is clueless and just saying “I search.” Although these entries are presented as advice, and far from all-encompassing, the overall scheme still strikes me as badly balanced. In particular, Dexterity is called for whenever you’re required to do anything physical, while Stamina isn’t called for once. Wits and Perception are also usually called in as resistance stats, something Requiem would formalize. Anyway, let’s  quote:Out with my crew, some punks got loud Combat Combat always begin with a Wits+Alertness roll for Initiative. Difficulty 4, count your successes. Failures go last, botchers lose their turn! Characters declare their actions in order of reverse initiative. As you may know, the big problem with WoD combat is that each attack can involve four rolls: attack, dodge, damage, and damage resistance. That’s if nobody splits their dice pool. If your players are powergaming, they often will. Attacking: Guns use Dexterity+Firearms, melee weapons use Dexterity+Melee, and fists and feet and claws and fangs use Dexterity+Brawl. The base Difficulty is based on the weapon. Defending: Any time you’re attacked, you can spend your action to dodge by rolling Dexterity+Dodge. The Difficulty is 6 in melee combat, plus one for each additional enemy in melee range. The Difficulty to dodge bullets is based on the nearness of cover. Damage: Weapons have a base Damage pool. With Firearms, you get to add your net successes to this pool, and with melee weapons you get to add your Strength. (You don’t get to attack successes from the attack roll to melee damage, but remember that Potence gives you automatic damage.) Then you roll that pool against Difficulty 6, inflicting 1 Health Level of damage per success. Soak: A struck target gets to roll their Stamina+Fortitude against Difficulty 6, reducing the damage by 1 Health Level per success. That’s a lot of rolling, but the basic mechanics are simple. So what are the nuances? First, the system seems to favour the attacker. If you dodge, you sacrifice your action--and if you want to dodge multiple attacks, you have to hold part of your pool in reserve! However, both the attacker’s and defender’s Difficulty are altered by the availability of cover, so taking cover is very effective. That brings up another issue: positioning. Cover is central to the rules for ranged attacks, and multiple people in a melee together both raises the Difficulty of dodging and invokes penalties for flank and rear attacks. This is in a game that doesn’t advise using any kind of battle map, not even a vague sketch, and relies on the Storyteller to track everyone and everything meaningful when describing the scene. A major complicating factor in combat is the ability to split your dice pool. At base, the rules for multiple actions are simple. Take the lowest applicable dice pool and split it between however many actions you want--limited by your weapon’s rate of fire or by what the Storyteller deems reasonable. Everyone gets to take one action before anybody gets to take two, and so on. (Of course, Celerity just gives you extra actions at your full pool, which is why it’s the best Discipline.) Different guns have different rates of fire, so even assuming you can open-carry a longarm, you have to consider base Damage and Difficulty against Rate of Fire. Shotguns in this game are cinematic--they hit like a truck and are just as hard to avoid. But an assault rifle can attack three times for good damage. Since dodging consumes your action, splitting your attack pool isn’t such a bad prospect when your target may not be able to dodge at all. The list of guns is far from exhaustive, but Vampire definitely started the 90s trend of games that professed an emphasis on roleplaying while nursing an odd preoccupation with equipment lists.  ROLEPLAYING NOT ROLLPLAYING!!!  No katana?  Despite a remarkably complicated combat system, I’ve always found that the best option is the simplest and least interesting: numberslam. Win initiative and do your damndest to one-shot your enemy before they can hit back. Some of you may disagree--I can usually crunch numbers with the best of ‘em, but I didn’t put nearly as much time into the game's combat math as I put into misquoting Ronny Moorings. Fiddly Little Rules I Barely Used in a Decade of Playing This Game Immobilized: If you’re held but still struggling, it’s -2 Difficulty to hit you. If you’re totally immobilized, it’s an auto-hit. Range and movement: If you need to close distance and attack, it’s +1 Difficulty per 3 yards. It’s also +1 Difficulty to shoot at a moving target or while moving yourself, like a driveby shooting. Aiming: You can add up to your Perception to an attack by spending one turn aiming per bonus die. This is insanely bad combat math, so you’d never do this unless you’re on sniper duty. Called shot: +2 Difficulty. By itself, headshots don’t have any hard and fast rules for bonus damage. Multiple shots: When you split your die pool with Firearms, you add +1 cumulative Difficulty per extra shot. (It doesn’t say you can make multiple attacks in melee. It doesn’t say you can’t.) Burst fire and Spray: What would a 90s game be without autofire rules for fans to argue about? Burst fire is simple: you get +3 attack dice with +1 Difficulty. Spray is its own thing: you get 10 extra dice, yes, but Spray is only for hosing down an area with multiple targets, and you split your big sweaty dice pool among several targets and exhaust your clip. Not a magazine, a clip. The chart says so. Flank and Rear Attacks: Attacking a target from the side gives -1 Difficulty, attacking from behind gives -2 Difficulty. This game doesn’t have facing rules, so have fun ruling on that poo poo. Stake: To stake a vampire you need to get 3 net successes and do at least 3 damage. There are stats for a wooden stake, but it doesn’t say you have to use a wooden stake. Biting: Bites do aggravated damage, and as soon as you do any damage you can start draining Blood. Claws: Just saying, they’re a drat good weapon. Perfectly concealable and they do aggravated damage. Grapple: Do a melee attack and get more successes than your enemy’s Strength. Grappled targets lose their action, but make opposed Strength+Brawl rolls to break free. Body Slam: This is not what you think it is. It’s a tackle. Make a melee attack, success means all your enemy’s actions are Difficulty +2, and they have to roll Dexterity+Athletics not to fall down. For actual rasslin’ rules, please refer to Street Fighter: The Storytelling Game or the Trinity Player’s Guide.  Armor Sure, this game has armor. Wear a leather jacket, it’s a free +1 Soak. Anything more than that and you start taking Dexterity penalties, which is suicide. Next time on Kindred the Embraced: Monstrous Compendium I: Mad Catholics!
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Sep 9, 2019 21:23
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