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Okay, I am confused. I would like to play along with this LP. I understand DMS used an early version of the game engine and is hella clunky. There is apparently a better version which is a...mod? Official mod? What?...for Dragonfall. At the same time there is apparently a better version of Dragonfall, a Director's Cut. I want to play the best, fixed versions of all three games. What do I buy?
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Mar 31, 2018 19:16
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Ze Pollack posted:attentive readers may wonder: what's the deal with Absinthe? is there some deeper lore explanation for what the hell she is? If she's not part of the plot, my fallback assumption would be that she is a nod to some piece of obscure metaplot from the original PNP game. The kind of thing that makes fanboys squeal with recognition (and to be fair, I've done my share of squealing myself at such moment). Given the green glow to her portrait and the "green fairy"/Absinthe name, she might just be a nod to European drinking culture.
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Apr 3, 2018 18:43
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If you are very smart, and a very quick thinker, you can try and persuade him that the real money is in the maintenance agreement. Although now if I ever GM Shadowrun and the players meet a dragon, their mission will be to obtain (a) that pesky decker who did something very annoying last week, (b) this list of condiments, and (c) "drop by my personal bakers and pick me up one of the special super-size hot dog buns".
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Apr 6, 2018 21:26
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CannonFodder posted:Then the dragon eats everyone but the tuna. Then pays the PCs in tuna. Which the PCs now have to fence.
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Apr 6, 2018 22:10
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Given standard CRPG plot twists, I'm wondering which cast member is Firewing. I wonder if WE might secretly be Firewing given some of the dialogue in the opening run and the personnel files.
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Apr 11, 2018 12:28
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Xander77 posted:What happens if you get him killed in a clash with security on floor one? Presumably the mission fails as you cannot cloak the cameras without him.
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May 11, 2018 18:30
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Tehan posted:In this way, the runner-Johnson relationship evolved. Betrayal was no longer a given, but complications still need to be thrown in, so Johnsons developed quirks. Perhaps they have a preference for a certain approach to runs, offering extra pay if you colour within their lines. Perhaps they keep secrets from the runners. Perhaps their goals are terrible. The clearcut inevitable betrayal of the previous generation of Johnsons gave way to the shades of grey of having to decide whether you wanted this person to be a major part of your life and career. The Johnson concept has inspired some genuinely interesting study, because the concept is a core part of the cyberpunk mythos and yet the figure is inherently untrustworthy. I particularly liked one sourcebook (precisely which one, I've sadly forgotten) noting the quirks of different nationalities and corporations. Not every part of the globe has the suave dark-glasses hacker figure or the dark-suited man with a bulging briefcase and shoulder holster. It gave a wonderful rundown of what a sinister fixer is expected to look like to different cultures and regions. I remember German ones gave the name "Herr Schmidt" or "Herr Meier", and I do hope we run into one.
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May 11, 2018 21:06
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"Mr Johnson screws over the team" is the Shadowrun equivalent of a crappy GM trying to force the party paladin to fall with bullshit "moral dilemmas", i.e. it's one of the game's biggest and most obvious points for abusive GMing but isn't part of the setting per se. It just became so infamously associated with Shadowrun that the game started introducing loyalty mechanics and canon writeups to give the players some reassurance and counter the perception that "the best solution to every published adventure is to shoot the Johnson right at the start". This particular game has given us a lovely Johnson, and a believably in-character one. It is now down to the game's writers to recognise that, compensate the player, and provide a suitable route for us to insert his own sunglasses three feet up his smug overclenched rectum. I will be disappointed if the next mission is not written to account for this; the game so far has given the player a pleasing aura of professionalism and respect, and I do hope the game continues in this vein.
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May 12, 2018 15:53
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Deep Dish Fuckfest posted:What's the wireless do? Updates the leaderboards.
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May 21, 2018 23:22
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Something's not right here. You'd expect even a token sniper or lookout even if they were expecting you to get toasted by the ambush. I have a feeling we're about to walk into a building full of corpses and voicelogs.
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Jun 13, 2018 16:41
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This sounds like something interesting. I'll be honest, the big loreposts in this thread make my eyes glaze over but the dialogue in the game itself is written with care and a good eye for character. I'm looking forward to investigating this mystery,
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Nov 10, 2018 15:38
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This is pretty clearly a setting point dictated by real-world concerns (the aforementioned fear of another Satanic Panic). So trying to rationalise it in-setting will always run into a block. That's not to say a Catholic uprising in Central America wouldn't be a pretty magnificent campaign seed though!
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Nov 20, 2018 23:48
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Night10194 posted:Blitz absolutely has all 7 episodes and a collector's edition. His 'oh yeah I just happened to watch it while high' excuse doesn't hold up. So what's the crappy big-ticket item in the Collectors' Edition box to justify the 200-nuyen price hike? Styrofoam helmet of the Knight-King? Banners of the Great Houses of Lightninghold?
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Dec 17, 2018 22:16
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CommissarMega posted:Man, I wish I had the Hell yes. With all these deathly serious Shadowrunners who think it's all secret code, and try to work out who the gently caress the "Ork-Gods of Kazlor" are this week. That ending was magical, yes. And even if King Philip does die, he dies with his honor intact.
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Dec 23, 2018 15:24
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to learn how to use the shadowrun editor- I want a campaign with Phillip as your
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I'm impressed by the way the game has managed to generate a loveable fuckup without making the player hate him or dipping into schmaltz. That's some genuinely good writing.
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Feb 12, 2019 20:46
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Slaan posted:Bedtime stories, a job well done, tossing your enemies screaming into a woodchipper. Ahhh, how delightful I like to imagine him adjusting his glasses and reading financial reports as he presses the start button.
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Mar 1, 2019 18:54
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We had a big discussion of this about four months back in the FATAL & Friends thread; Mr Johnson as an archetype is expected to betray the party because that's a stock twist in heist stories and cyberpunk literature. But at the same time, logically a shadowy fixer would want to cultivate long-term relationships with trustworthy and skilled operatives and betrayals would be rare or amateurish. So there's some in-genre tension over the expectations placed on that kind of character. Shadowrun as a game has come up with various ways to try and boost player/Johnson trust over the years (partly to restrain tiresome GMs from having the party get betrayed every other adventure). Sometimes it then turns around and shoots itself in the foot with published material. Certainly a standard criticism of many pre-published Shadowrun modules has been that the party would be better off just shooting Mr Johnson at the first meeting...but at least by now it's understood that this is a sign of bad writing.
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Mar 18, 2019 10:22
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Cataloging the low-hanging fruit.
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Jun 2, 2019 14:17
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By popular demand posted:I wonder how many Spiders start by trying to cut a deal with obviously prepared intruders: Diplomacy skill still overpowered I see.
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Jun 16, 2019 22:38
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"listen sonny, the north gate is basically protected by a blind Roomba so how about you save both of us the hassle?"
"why are you telling me this?"
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I'd like to note my admiration for whoever wrote Harrow's "scripture" for managing to carefully, without saying anything overt, start part of my brain screaming as it realised the implications of each line. I remember being deeply pissed off when Mass Effect pulled the "free the hostages OR kill the mastermind" ending choice in one of its DLCs, but I see it's going to be a much harder decision this time around.
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Feb 23, 2020 19:21
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The writing here is superb. By which I mean I want to incinerate the mansion from orbit.
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Mar 2, 2020 00:59
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Yeah that's one heck of an Act 3 escalation. Even better for making sense; it's not the standard video game "look how scary this boss is, roar roar grar". Sometimes you want to look an enemy in the eyes and tell him you look forward to looting his corpse.
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Jul 23, 2020 14:07
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paragon1 posted:That might make sense for your super secret operatives infiltrating black sites, but just like in real life security has to compete with the needs of accessibility and usability. And it's not like the hard lines were secure anyway. Yes but this should be a problem for the players and the sysadmins opposing them.
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Jul 28, 2020 16:15
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paragon1 posted:Not universally so, unless you're only going to have your players breaking into top secret bunkers and skull fortresses. Let me rephrase. I think you are quite right to point out that Wi-Fi will not always be secured, or not secured to any decent degree. I just think that issue should be something the GM should consider when designing targets for the players, to make it more fun and interesting. Not every company will be assed, not every security guard will bother to change the password (especially if they're recruited from a technically illiterate underclass from the slums), and so on. Monotonously telling the players all access points are secured is boring. Looking for an underpaid junior systems tech to bribe for details of Executive Sigma's wireless coffee maker which he insists have network access so he can order cocktails from his phone? That's fun. If wireless hacking of guards is too easy, it is equally easy to justify making the players work a bit harder with all kinds of real-world corporate security waffle.
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Jul 28, 2020 17:09
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By popular demand posted:If the word gets out that the head of the Incredibly Dangerous Autonomous Drones R&D just can't find a decent cup of maple charcoal filtered cold brewed kopi luwak.... Et voila, now the PCs are posing as coffee machine salesmen to try and get the head of R&D to buy one of these coffee machines and play around with it, without IT seeing the invoice.
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Jul 29, 2020 10:10
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I have to be honest, Shadowrun's metaplot has been far too complex for me to keep up with and doesn't seem terribly rewarding. I know metaplots exist to sell books by keeping people buying to see what happens next, but I'd rather just say "these are the current megacorps, their styles are X, Y, and Q, it's the cyberpunk future and here is the gear porn chapter". There are no entry points, is what I'm saying. And from what I'm hearing this has already passed the Grimdark Hilarity Line and entered into the realm of settings that are so Grim that you just burst out laughing and can't take them seriously anymore.
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Jul 31, 2020 14:46
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Gotta laugh at that fake katana. MAI HANZO STEEL! Also, Dante, while we're down in the sewers eat Blitz and gain his power OK? Good boy.
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Aug 1, 2020 12:08
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BisbyWorl posted:If covered in spikes is considered discrete, I imagine the Conspicuous Full Suit would have a flashing neon sign pointing at your head and a Kick Me sign on the back. It's the Dark Cyberpunk 80s Future(TM), everyone wears spikes. Gotta love that elite trenchcoat option though. Know what you are and lean into it.
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Sep 15, 2020 10:49
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I assume this is a breather sequence, to give the player a break before the explosions start.
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Sep 27, 2020 20:11
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JustJeff88 posted:I wonder why so many dragons like Wales. Must be the flag. Local mythology, local tradition of Celtic magic and mysticism, mountains and volcanoes for lairs, mineshafts for dungeon crawls. Even a good supply of ominous rural locals who "keep themselves to themselves", and enough civilisation for infrastructure and stuff to explode. Wales is very good adventuring country that's not too far from the bright lights of an English-speaking country with lots of adventure hooks. Now I'm imagining a dragon who just wants to run his private steam train preservation line.
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Nov 9, 2020 18:27
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Comrade Koba posted:This is why games where the hopelessness is hard-coded into the setting (like CoC) feel much less interesting to me than those where there's heavy dystopian elements, but you still have the ability to make a small difference by fixing what's in front of you without it being immediately taken away by whatever mechanism the writers put in to force you to play according to the script they have in their heads. This is the key point. The idea that the setting must have a certain tone and any action taken by the PCs that violates that tone will be punished, and punished with glee. Served you right for trying to kill Hastur etc etc that's not how things work here. This gets downright ugly when you get into the territory of "the setting will crush you if you try to change it - and we, the game's core fanbase, will look forward to that crushing with relish". Tell the uglier 40K fans that you're playing a DH campaign around reforming the Imperium and they'll start detailing exactly how your characters should be burned at the stake and statting up the stake. The usual example I cite is Jasper Stone, the unstoppable super-undead gunfighter in Deadlands. His whole reason for existence was to kill PCs who tried to avert metaplot events, and GMs were instructed to use him if the players got "uppity". He was a time traveller in a Weird West game and if the PCs' actions contradicted the game's future apocalypse, they were reverted because he went back in time and killed the PCs in the past. This was presented as a good thing because it meant you could continue to experience the wonderful world of Deadlands as the writer intended. The reason I happen to prefer the Laundry Files take on CoC is that their suggested campaign guides allow for the possibility of averting the apocalypse. Obviously it shouldn't be easy, but the system will support you if you try. Just being able to try makes life a lot more interesting than Dark Heresy's endless parade of misery and suffering with added genocide to break up the monotony.
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Nov 12, 2020 14:32
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JustaDamnFool posted:Instead all you can find is an explanation of why there's a bunch of monsters down there and a contextless magic rock. Is the rock a reference to something further ahead in the timeline? It seems a bit NOTICE ME to have no further use in the plot.
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Nov 17, 2020 12:20
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Free her because being known for slaying a dragon in Lofwyr's back yard does not strike me as a good long-term position.
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Nov 21, 2020 22:47
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DeathChicken posted:If nothing else, this dragon seems far less inclined to playing games than most of them. Which could be a good or bad thing, depending on what the Vengeful Nature Guardian thinks of you The big question for our runners is whether Vengeful Nature Guardian is lucid enough not to venge at them or Berlin. The second big question is what the other dragons will do when they find out about this (assuming the game goes that far in scope; were this tabletop I'd be very worried about removal of witnesses).
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Nov 23, 2020 11:35
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Alacron posted:Okay real talk, who here would take up Herr Brackhaus on his offer? Whether from a role-playing standpoint or a player standpoint. I'd take him up to see what happens. I imagine it would be a wonderful idea and genuinely benefit the PC and their associates...at first. Magnificently done, Kanfy. I always loved Shadowrun's basic concept but found the metaplot painfully tedious to follow. This game did the smart thing; a self-contained story set at a specific point in time that provided a solid setting. The writing is consistently actinic, sinister, and dark. Precisely what cyberpunk should be.
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Nov 28, 2020 19:25
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Well, that was chilling. It's not often games put hidden content behind the worst ending. No unlocks, no special unique loot, just forcing you to see the consequences of your actions. That really rammed home that you done hosed up good. I'd be very curious to know how many players have seen this ending. The lesson of the Wing Commander series was always that players rarely go down losing plot branches, but that was in the days before internet walkthrough videos and achievements. (Also, where did the "grow fat on screams" line first come from? I scanned the last few updates briefly but I didn't pick up on it). EDIT: Found it. As I suspected, it was one of Absinthe's prophecies. Loxbourne fucked around with this message at 20:13 on Dec 6, 2020 |
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Dec 6, 2020 20:10
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