|
I was more implying that the universal reaction to a Beast is 'kill it'. The better reaction is 'This isn't actually a thing in this setting, because Beast never should have seen the light of day as a product, so we'll just move on and not use it in anything', but if they show up they are absolutely the complete opposite of everything the Prometheans are supposed to be about.
|
#
¿
Sep 18, 2019 05:47
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 01:31 |
|
|
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 1st Edition Post 7: The Old Old World Gods The Gods are as the Gods are. Much of what makes Warhams religion fun to play with was already there from 1st edition; it's interesting to see how stable the cast of Gods and Goddesses is in both concept and flavor outside of Sigmar suddenly becoming increasingly important. Rhya is also less important in 1e, more important in 2e, and then made a fully separate cult with her own specific stuff in 4e, so she's one of the ones that changes the most; the original Rhya was explicitly the Goddess of the Old Faith. The original idea was to have Old Faith animistic druids running about as a PC type, who still worshiped the original form of Rhya, the spirits, and sacred places, while Clerics represented the more modernized pantheon of divinities. Which also makes for the amusing conclusion that Taal is kind of a sellout in 1e, since he's become a normal structured deity (albeit the deity of things beyond human structure) while she's mostly still followed as an abstract manifestation of the earth. What's surprising is how much the Gods are similar to how they are in later editions. Since I went through the trouble of covering the entire Tome of Salvation, I don't think it's really necessary to go back and repeat everything about the Gods. It's a good cast of Gods! There's a reason they've stuck around. The other important thing to note is that the 'actually polytheistic' element was around from the beginning, too; the people of the Old World believe that denying the divinity of a God is one of the dumbest things you could do. The Gods are certainly real, and just because you follow one doesn't mean you spit on or deny the others; priests are still specialists who know the important rites and rituals necessary to bring about divine favor and keep the forces of the world working properly. Interestingly, this extends to 'evil' Gods; you certainly don't worship Chaos Gods or Khaine or whatever, but you do not deny their divinity or disrespect them openly. A God might be outlawed, but they're still a God and still due some level of respect for their power, even if that respect takes the form of urgency in trying to stop their designs. In general, a God gets outlawed if their worship absolutely requires 'heavy anti-social elements', to quote the book. Things like regular human sacrifice. So Khaine is right out, but he's not as bad as Khorne. While Khaine is the God of Murder and wants his followers to commit murders, this is a little different than 'I want my followers to destroy the world and all life and beauty that exists within it', so Khaine doesn't get persecuted nearly as heavily as followers of the Chaos Gods. Once again: Chaos is not necessarily bad in 1st edition, but the Chaos Gods definitely are and represent the most destructive and evil aspects of Chaos. Similarly, 1st edition had Law Gods, though they don't get much play besides Solkan. Solkan is the God of Vengeance, and the God of bigotry and intolerance by extension. He's the guy who gets really excited when he talks about how you need capital punishment so people will 'know their place'. He's also the original patron of the Witch Hunters; they were kind of intended to be crazy Law cultists to serve as villains and hindrances to PCs in counterpart to the Chaos cults they fight, given their class entry talks about how if they aren't given official power to kill and terrorize as they wish they form secret cabals and cults to Law to try to take over the government and grant themselves secret police status. An awful lot of Solkan's deal seems to have gotten rolled into Sigmar in later works, after the Law Gods were dropped from the setting. The negative or troubling aspects of Sigmarism seem to have their origins with the God of Bigotry and Vengeance. Which also makes it weird that the later fluff for Fantasy in the wargames and stuff tended to go hard into 'Actually Sigmar is the only important God' stuff, considering. As for Siggy himself, the Heldenhammer is a minor regional God who is more important as the patron of the Imperial family and government. More like an Imperial Cult than one of the larger major religions, with its power placed more in the fact that his priests are highly placed in the Imperial government rather than on divine miracles or acts of magic. He doesn't get a spell list and is thus not especially playable in the core book. Lots of the bones of the later mechanics of religion exist here, too. You get extra skill access based on your cult, you have to follow Strictures or you'll gain divine disfavor, etc. There's a complex and mostly meaningless set of rules for praying for outright miraculous interventions that boil down to '1-5% chance if your GM feels like it' so eh. Cults define which of the generic spell lists you can use; for instance, Myrmidians can use all of the basic Battle Magic spells just like a non-specialized Wizard, while Taalites have Elementalism. Shallya gets a specific spell for curing anything short of outright losing a limb or getting murdered; the Shallyan schtick of 'heals status effects, especially insanely annoying and long-term ones' in 4e is a throwback to 1e as well. Though the 1e Shallyans could still heal base HP quite well, if not quite as well as 2e ones. She's a bit unique in getting her own unique spells, but they're there to make up for the fact that a Shallyan is disallowed from wearing armor, can only use a staff, and has no offensive magic unlike all the other Clerics. Also the only good way to cure Insanity; 1e had similar terrible Insanity rules to 2e. Druidic religion also gets detailed, as opposed to the nebulous references to an 'Old Faith' that is no longer practiced in 2e. They don't worship specific deities; The Mother is as close as they come, and even that is a representation of fertility and life rather than an incarnate goddess. They follow the sacred and magical places of the world, tend to them, and generally try to keep the universe from ending. They're buddies with elves (sometimes they are elves) and elves and Rangers can do the same stuff Druids can in finding sacred sites and magic wells of power. There isn't a lot of detail on their thing, but there's more than there is in later editions, since this is the only one that treats them as an existing faith rather than something that existed in prehistory. Much like all Hams RP, there isn't nearly as much on non-human Gods. I'm not entirely certain why Hams RP in general is so thoroughly focused on the humans; I really would have liked more material on Dwarfs, Elfs, and even Halflings (and Ogres.) You only get a small smattering of non-human Gods: Esmerelda the Halfling Goddess, Liadriel the Elf God of Song and Wine (who is explicitly genderfluid, as well), and Grungi, chief God of dorfs. The whole thing about other species seeing their gods very differently doesn't really come up in the 1e core, and I'd imagine it's a later addition to the line. Other species use divine magic the same way as humans do (though like all magic, Dwarfs and Halflings are half as good at it; by the way, Dwarrfs and Halflings could use magic but were lovely at it), because there's no real differentiation between Divine and Arcane magic in 1e. Grungi is as he always was, Liadriel is a fairly generic happy forest deity, but Esmerelda used to be a bigger deal in 1e. Also her sacred rites are basically cooking competitions and one of her strictures is to feed the hungry wherever you can, because the thought of letting people starve to death is anathema. Halfling priests considering it their sacred duty to feed the poor adds a nice extra touch to their characteristic gluttony by making it something they wish everyone could share in, I think. We also get a little on the Chaos Gods: Khorne and Nurgle are as they always are, but Malal is new. He is the Lord of And that's mostly it for religion. A lot of the stuff that makes Hams religion fun was already there from the beginning, which is a nice surprise. I'd be really curious to know what, exactly, sparked them to get rid of the Law Gods (though I think it was a good idea, because it reframes the conflict with Chaos as something the world itself does rather than making it a fight between two cosmic evils) and what caused the creation and addition of Slaanesh and Tzeentch later on. Given how important cult-hunting and mystery became to WHFRP, Slaanesh and Tzeentch being the two 'really good at making hidden cults' Gods and them being absent in the original version of the game is interesting to me. Next Time: GMing
|
|
#
¿
Sep 18, 2019 17:41
|
|
|
Wait, in Wormwood, does everyone on earth die, or just the vampires? Because if it's the latter that probably works out as a net positive for everybody else.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 19, 2019 17:42
|
|
|
megane posted:"The fate of the entire world (and the climax of a multi-year campaign) rests on the GM rolling for two super-powerful NPCs to beat other up in an alley while the PCs watch" might be the most perfect crystallization of Nineties RPGs I've ever heard of. Even Torg at least let you roll to see if you make the Per test necessary to find the artifact of the Good NPC to beat the Bad NPC yourself. Though 'Per test to continue adventure, even unto the end of days and the final conflict' is also an extreme level of 90s. Or rather bad adventure writing in general; Per Test To Continue Adventure is timeless, as WHFRP's published adventures from the 2000s can tell you.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 19, 2019 18:42
|
|
|
Ah, yes, the deep horror mechanic of '20% chance not to die', my old foe.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 19, 2019 19:02
|
|
|
You know, if you did a game where the various plans to stop the Antediluvians and stuff accidentally destroyed the Masquerade, but they weren't actually still alive/real/a threat and now you just have to deal with the 'apocalypse' of the setting's status quo, that might be pretty fun. "We accidentally made our dumb slapfights over an apocalypse we made up turn into a real apocalypse for how we used to do things." seems like something oWoD vamps would cause. E: Added bonus of keeping things on the level the system can actually handle! Night10194 fucked around with this message at 19:29 on Sep 19, 2019 |
|
#
¿
Sep 19, 2019 19:21
|
|
|
The solution is to just sit down and decide 'Old Testament and Book of the Watchers: True. Mostly.' and then go from there. I wonder why that never happens, by the way. They always bring in the Christian stuff, never stop with the Old Testament, despite that stuff being considerably more easily put into a game. I suppose "The other sects of Judaism were correct and the Jesus Movement was effectively a heresy" would piss off a lot of potential customers.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 19, 2019 19:50
|
|
|
Ithle01 posted:Mage, on the other hand, had no idea what it was doing and has without a doubt the dumbest loving ending you can possibly imagine. It's literally 'Aliens steal magic. The end.'. I'm gonna need more detail on this.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 19, 2019 21:17
|
|
|
That Old Tree posted:Skimming the book to refresh my memory, so some of this may be a little off: The Zigg are from an alternate universe and are stealing all the Avatars. The Grays (yes, those Grays) show up to find out why all their alien "science" (a la Technocratic magic) is starting to fail. Everyone's looking for Zoraster, the extradimensional city that is the last true source of magic, and even in the "good" ending it gets booted out of our universe into a new one where it becomes the legendary source of all magic in that universe. As much as Ascension is already an incoherent mess, you'd think it wouldn't be very hard line to come up with ending scenarios for. "Reality consensus shifts, new Paradigms A-F depending on what the PCs want and how they do." seems like it would be natural. Instead of aliens stealing all magic to Zeta Reticuli and accidentally creating some other setting's realm of magic.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 19, 2019 21:42
|
|
|
Well, it's ever been an issue in a lot of RPG writing that it isn't always aware it's trying to be a prompt for a story rather than a story on its own. That is again one of the reasons Spire's book is really well done; the authors really have a good grasp of how much detail to give to give a hook a little more of a hook, while keeping it a hook. Knowing how much to say and what to say is almost certainly the hardest part of writing the fluff/fiction side of an RPG. E: There's also always the issue that the amount of detail you need changes a lot depending on what kind of game and setting you're writing, too. Something like Call of Cthulhu, hell yeah I care about the ins and outs of local custom in the adventure location in 1925 because that's probably going to be important. Elsewhere, not so much. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 21:52 on Sep 19, 2019 |
|
#
¿
Sep 19, 2019 21:50
|
|
|
Ah, yes. The classical attraction of the 'Aryan' physique. Christ, WW.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 19, 2019 22:58
|
|
|
I admit I've always been baffled by the sheer amount of mythmaking WW/OPP thinks the concept of 'being a nine foot killing machine in an urban fantasy world where turning into a nine foot killing machine is awkward, now manage your nature and the world you live in' needs in both versions of Woof. Also Hunter (oWoD) just had monsters have simplified stat sets and a single unified source of magic mojo that they all just fed differently. Which makes sense, since they're meant to be your monster manual. It naturally encourages the ST not to keep to this, but to instead buy the other books and stat everything up fully instead.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 20, 2019 16:17
|
|
|
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 1st Edition Post 8: Gamemastering The GM section contains most of the nuts and bolts of the game system, including the very detailed rules for traps, line of sight, fire, etc. I should also note 'setting stuff on fire' has a full half page of rules devoted to how to set things on fire, what can be set on fire, how players might improvise incendiaries, and how to put yourself out. The people writing this understand this aspect of player characters, at least; they're always trying to set things on fire. Coincidentally, setting your enemies on fire is quite effective since only AV, not TB, applies to flames. And you take 2d4 damage a round while on fire and need to reduce it to 0 to actually go out, with allies helping you try to beat out the flames giving an extra 1 DR each (+1 for you spending your turn trying to do so). Do not be on fire. It is very distracting. Curiously this is true in 2e, as well, where you took d10 wounds with no AV OR TB while on fire. 4e's fire is even more dangerous, since Being On Fire can stack and the more stacks of On Fire you're suffering the worse everything gets. At no point in Fantasy was being on fire ever something to take lightly. Compare to WH40KRP, where it was quite possible to become immune to being on fire, since you reduced fire damage by TB. Self-immolating Space Marine/Techpriest/Ork was a common joke special effect. Anyway, I digress: What's important isn't the specific rules for setting stuff on fire, but rather that they're a good indicator of what a lot of the mechanical meat of the GMing chapter is like. It's tons and tons of subsystems. You remember Rik'tikk's stuff about exactly which substances are most lethal to each species during the Old World Bestiary? Yeah, that's almost certainly a reference to the Poison subsystem, which includes specific toxins that are specifically lethal to specific species. Interestingly, poison is actually less lethal because of the level of detail at play here; it takes multiple 'doses' to kill you, usually. And you save against each dose, suffering effects based on how much you saved by. You also get a specific roll based on the average of your Intelligence and a chance to notice poison to realize your meal is poisoned. This is interesting because it makes it much more likely you'll suffer some sort of effect compared to 2e's simpler 'one save' poisoning, but also much less likely to actually die outright. And even in 2e, you saved against poison, then suffered the effects, which usually had enough of a lead time where you realized you were poisoned for someone to use Heal or (if you had our heroic friend the 3rd Tier Shallyan, hardest working lady in Warhams) cast a spell or use an Antitoxin kit to let you reroll your save (which you also probably used Fortune on in the first place), so it still sort of worked out to a similar number of chances to not die. What I'm getting at here is all of these detailed subsystems at least relate to things that are likely to come up in play, even if they're overly complicated compared to later editions. This is the general mechanical theme of 1e: It's very concerned with playing out and having subsystems for almost every dramatic occurrence. Which makes the game complicated, but at the same time, multiple chances for a player to survive an event like 'assassins slip poison into your wine' does add something to the game and is definitely going to come up in a game featuring murder and intrigue. The large number of subsystems also gives them space to make the huge range of Skills matter to adventuring; knowing how to cook is more useful when it also comes with knowledge of how to detect and cover up the taste of poison! While I prefer the simpler system in 2e, at least 1e usually does something with its complexity. Insanity is exactly as terrible as it is in 2e, and for the same reasons. Insanity systems are usually pretty offensive treatments of mental health issues, but on top of that, it's also basically 'retire your PC, unless you know our hardworking friend the Shallyan' since most of the effects are very crippling. Some are actually beneficial, though; you can end up Fearless from going crazy. This is actually the only way to get Fearless in 1e! It isn't a Talent/Skill yet. Similarly, Fear and Terror work exactly like in 2e. Fear in 1e and 2e is notably less dangerous to you than in 4e, since it just slows you down or takes up turns until you overcome it. GMing also includes lots on random encounters, dungeon crawling, and how to construct scenarios. It also advises the GM to be stingy with Fate Points, but to remember a Fate Point is a guarantee of survival. When a PC spends one, they get out of whatever happened to them, and they get out of it alive. Plenty of stories have twists where the hero tumbles over a ledge after losing a battle with their rival only to wash up at a friendly village, barely alive, after all. Your PCs should get the same benefits, until they run out of 'cheat death' points. Interestingly, this is all Fate does in 1e. Fortune Points for rerolls, extra actions, etc don't come about until 2e, and I think they were one of its big improvements to the game because it gives you a nice extra set of decisions to make and resources to manage. Even as simple death-protection, though, Fate Points are a simple and easy way to let players lose without ending the game and I appreciate them for that. Similarly, GMing has a ton on character advancement, because with Fate, you're kind of intended to have a decent chance to survive and move up. You might die quickly, like our buddy the T2 unarmored elf with very few Fate, but you also had pretty good odds of making it. What really stands out to me is that RAW, you are expected to shoot up like a rocket in power compared to 2e or 4e. First, every Advance is +10 in a stat (or +1 Wounds, Attacks, Str, Tough, or Movement) or a Skill. All Advances are still 100 EXP. You are, however, expected to earn about 100-300 EXP a session, depending on how much you accomplish. Maybe more if it's especially long or important. Compare that to the general 100 per session in 2e, and then note that 2e awards half as many stat points per advance bought. You also had more options for jumping your Career track; namely, any Basic Career that you could have started on in your general 'class' of Careers is available to you as an exit. Also, you didn't actually have to finish your current Career unless you were a spellcaster or the GM said you did. So it was entirely possible to roll something lovely like Servant, but then because you were a Warrior, spend your first 100 earned EXP to exit right into Squire or something to reflect how you'd moved on in your life. Heck, the example character is a Prospector who uses her first 100 EXP to buy straight into Scout instead of staying in Prospector. The idea is that she was a miner and prospector, yeah, but now she's an Adventurer and buys into an adventuring career that's on her exits. 1e is much heavier on the idea that you're exactly and professionally doing what your Career says on the tin than 2e, which still contains a fair bit of that. 4e is even heavier on it, since it ties directly to its income and status rules, and I'd say it's another example of 4e looking back to 1e. One of the reasons this is all interesting is the designers of 2e specifically talk about why they slowed advancement and made you need to finish careers to promote. The issue was that (especially combined with a paucity of long-term career tracks outside of these two) almost all PCs who survived would become Warriors or Wizards. Or both, if they made it that far. And when you're potentially advancing this quickly...well. Also notable: Neither 1e nor 4e actually require you to have all your trappings to promote; they just suggest you find the new trappings for your new career ASAP. This seems to have been another attempt to slow down promotions, or potentially to guide adventures towards making sure players get the stuff they need (2e does tell you to structure adventures and quests to help people get the gear their intended new careers will require) but given the 'players never get paid' brain spiders that afflict 2e adventure design, I much prefer the 'trappings for promoted careers are guidelines of what kind of gear you want' design over 'you must have them to promote'. Similarly, I actually like the 'career class' idea in 1e, specifically the way you can do an equivalent of the '200 out into another Basic' but for any Basic of your general type. I also think the 4 classes being directly related to adventuring works better than 4e introducing extra 'career classes'. Adding in Peasant, Burgher, Courtier, and Riverfolk as specific Classes with a bunch of Careers under them really just dilutes this concept. So yes, this is a place where I actually like what 1e's doing better than either of the future versions. The other interesting bit about GMing is that the GMing advice is mostly quite good, and especially good for being written 33 years ago. The GMing advice tells you to keep in mind that for all the mud and weirdness, this is still a heroic fantasy story and the players are still the main characters. Your job as the GM isn't to 'win' by killing them, it's to create interesting situations and challenges that make them make plans and use resources. Killing players too often will, as they say, lose you your gaming group. Especially if it's seen to be arbitrary. There's a lot of focus on the goal of the game being gaining power and money, but that's fairly normal for the time. And really, most WHFRP PCs do want to go up in stats and advance in their Careers, and almost all of them care about money, so it's hardly out of line with the stories you'll generally be doing with this game anyway. In general, it actually advises cheating your rolls a little to save the players. Especially if they actually did come up with a cool plan that would make for a good story and then beefed the roll at the exact wrong moment. Now I'm of two minds about this sort of thing; on one hand, yes, it's fine, on the other, it may be a sign the lethality of your game is a bit overtuned if you expect to need to save players from the dice often. I admit, I'm not a particularly harsh GM and I generally prefer stable casts; I've not had many player deaths in my campaigns, though I do see Fate burning from time to time. But that comes from balancing scenarios that way and doing things like interpreting the wording of Fury in 2e to be player-facing. If you're regularly having to toss dice rolls to save players, your dice might be too swingy on the bits aimed at the players. 2e is generally better about material not being able to one-shot you, outside of anything by Robert Schwalb, who seems to find save or dies some kind of tremendous thrill, which makes avoiding these sorts of situations easier. Seriously, Tome of Corruption is a huge outlier on that. Still, WHFRP 1e is not a book I expected to include 'Look, your players really want to be heroes, not just lowlives. Cut them a break sometimes, because you'll also discourage them taking risks and moving the plot along if they're pessimistic and feeling down.' That's not only good advice, it's a good explanation for why it's good advice; players who think they have a fair chance are players who come up with risky but interesting plans and adventures. Balance makes people take risks and drive stories in this kind of game, and that's a good reason to care about it! It also emphasizes over and over that the GM 'wins' when everyone has a good time playing. Good play is consistently equated to play that makes the table enjoy the game. Actual honest to god 'adversarial GMing is pointless, you need to be seen as fair and working with your players' is fantastic to see in a 33 year old game. I should also note that players mutating doesn't come up much in the core book and the only corruption system I can find applies to evil wizards and demonologists. At least in the core book, this doesn't seem to have been a major concern yet. I'm certain it got added in supplements, but it wasn't here day 1. Which is notable because of how much mutation and corruption ends up doing in later games in the line. The closest to it is that Demonologists lose Toughness when summoning demons, which they offset with drugs, but when they hit 0 Toughness they can no longer survive without the intervention of dark powers and thus become an NPC in thrall to the evil bargains they made. Given you have to choose to be that kind of wizard, this is not something that's going to happen to you at random. So yeah, there's the GM's side of the game's mechanical meat: A bunch of subsystems for lots of things that will happen to adventurers, that at least have some mechanical room for interesting things to occur, coupled with surprisingly fast advancement rules and surprisingly good GMing advice. Really, on the whole it's a decent GM's section, especially for its age. Next Time: The Old Old World
|
|
#
¿
Sep 20, 2019 18:24
|
|
|
ChaseSP posted:More rules based tabletop games need robust fire rules because you'll be drat sure your players will likely try fire as a solution to a or multiple problems. It's why I use it as the example of 'yeah they made a subsystem for everything, but this is a subsystem that's gonna get used, at least'. They even cover how players can make molotov cocktails because someone in the party is going to think of some kind of equivalent of petrol bombs, it's an inevitability.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 20, 2019 18:34
|
|
|
The specific way they work in Hams has always been 'fear is bad, terror is worse'. In the RPGs, fear makes you freeze up, terror actually makes you run away and inflicts Insanity points if you fail the save. 4e made Fear a psychological trait rather than a basic part of the system, and tied it partly to size; if someone larger than you comes at you with hostile intent, you suffer fear and can break if you're still afraid when it comes closer to you. Specifically, if it advances on you. Not if it gets into melee, if it advances on you with hostile intent. This means horse-mounted foes cause fear. It also has some very unhappy implications for anyone playing a Halfling.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 20, 2019 19:29
|
|
|
Kurieg posted:Also Saulot was a special snowflake holy vampire who could do no wrong and was sacred and pure and his bloodline is also sacred and pure and has magic holy powers so he's always going to show up in something plot significant. This seems very unusual for a vampire. I thought all the ancient ones were supposed to be bugfuck crazy abominations from beyond on some level.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 20, 2019 19:44
|
|
|
PurpleXVI posted:About the only thing I remember about the Baali is that their apex ability is essentially "you end the world by summoning a demonic kaiju that no one's gonna have much luck stopping." That seems like a very counterproductive thing for Vampire Jesus to give people the ability to do.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 20, 2019 20:13
|
|
|
The designated hero of the story being a fuckup who does extremely stupid and destructive things all the time is also very 90s metaplot anyway. Especially if they do it for 'balance' between good and evil or some other silliness.
Night10194 fucked around with this message at 20:23 on Sep 20, 2019 |
|
#
¿
Sep 20, 2019 20:20
|
|
|
At the risk of being the pigeonholed guy in general, too...if you're playing D&D But Early Modern and with more of a focus on mundane life, why the hell are you using D&D for it instead of WHFRP? The sad thing about mustard smuggling campaign is 'our campaign starts with mustard smuggling as we try to get around tax laws' would be a fine starting point for a lot of games, if the players were on board with it. How many players and player groups and games start around 'we're a bunch of minor but good hearted crooks committing a cool crime or just trying to make it day by day AND THEN!'? It's this insane idea that A: The players have to actively seek it because it's hidden in rumors within the gameworld, rather than people saying 'we want to start out as smugglers and see what kind of crime drama/adventures/escapades happen from there' and B: That he thinks that's just how all games should be. There's nothing wrong with starting out rag-tag mustard smugglers, or having a detailed locale you adventure in. Just there's a lot wrong with the way he wants to do it.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 23, 2019 17:57
|
|
|
Are you trying to tell me most of history doesn't ride on 3-5 weirdos trying to get beer money?
|
|
#
¿
Sep 23, 2019 18:09
|
|
|
Everything that says 'realism' usually means 'fucks someone over'. Usually the guy without magic.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 23, 2019 18:58
|
|
|
Mystara had a rad arcade game series, that's all I know about it.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 24, 2019 21:41
|
|
|
It's a good ending for the PC. It's fine for a character's story to end with 'and they got what they most dearly desired and then lived a decent life where being near them no longer pissed people off.' God willing, they'll never have to deal with a messy soup of eighty proper nouns again, too. Definitely a step up.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 25, 2019 03:11
|
|
|
Stuff like Kill Team, Inquisitor, and Necromunda has always been interesting. Heck, the one time I got to play the huge scale Epic version of 40k it seemed surprisingly well made, too. I always heard good things about Warmaster and Mordheim over in Fantasy and BFG is the only Games Workshop game I've ever owned and painted my own fleet for. The Specialist Games stuff is legitimately some pretty cool stuff.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 26, 2019 13:54
|
|
|
I want to know more about totally sweet rocket pistols. How directly are they just Gyrojets? Or are they actual rocket launcher pistols, like WH40K's bolters never dared to be?
|
|
#
¿
Sep 27, 2019 05:12
|
|
|
It is a pretty bizarre series of adventures, and the main characters are JoJos, so it's pretty descriptive.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 28, 2019 15:02
|
|
|
There are a lot of people who never, ever internalized that no gaming is better than bad gaming. Or who are very lonely and want a social group of any kind. Plus, it's sort of a long, weird, and bad legacy in TT gaming that GMing is a position of power rather than the GM just being another participant in the group activity, so some people might not notice an abusive GM since that's 'tradition'.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 29, 2019 22:48
|
|
|
Why is WoD quite so rules heavy, anyway? Considering what it wants to focus on, I wouldn't really expect it to be as crunchy as it is. But they're as mechanically heavy as something like Double Cross. Heck, I think Cardinal's actually simpler.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 30, 2019 23:24
|
|
|
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, 1st Edition Post 9: The old World, but not yet the Old World So what was the original setting like back in the day? You're cautioned to make sure your players are only 'really' aware of the Empire and the Old World at the start of play, but there's a lot more focus on the idea that they might go to other places. Someday, someone may publish actual books about those places; you'd think in 33 years of this gameline existing there'd be a drat elf book or something, or an actual official book about going to Lustria or Khemri, but it seems we're doomed to always stick to the Empire and its neighbors for the most part so far. Anyway, originally the world beyond not-Europe was called the Known World. There never seems to have been an actual name for the world Warhams takes place on. They just call it the World. Hilariously, the 'World Guide' here is both more useful and more extensive than the lovely travel packet in the Warhammer Companion in 2e; you still don't get enough on places like Albion or Araby to do that much with them, but you likewise don't get a ton on the Empire since the entire setting was 3 years old when this book was written. Originally, the Old World was more medieval than early modern; the RPG seems to have been one of the forces pushing the Empire more into first the Renaissance, then the 30 years war HRE But With Wizards we all know and love. Hell, originally Bretonnia was the highly advanced but decadent elder state. That's right, they were originally just-pre-revolutionary France, with the Nobles happily backing an absolutist monarch and crushing their unfortunate peasants and signs of rebellion and revolution brewing. Yep, none of the knightly crossdressing and ridiculous hellforest fairy tales from later editions: They were 18th century France, not 14th Century But Also Arthurian France. I am biased by how much I adore Bretonnia, but I think the weird medieval stasis Bretonnia next to a more advanced Empire was a good change. Estalia and Tilea were much as they are: Mostly footnotes, with the book talking about how they're far from the North and thus far from Chaos, and free to focus on it much less. Interestingly, at this stage, Norsca wasn't depicted as a place partially in thrall to Chaos but rather as the front line in resisting it. The Norsemen and dwarfs were the people closest to the places where Chaos rules everything, and were portrayed as heroic and indomitable allies in the last big Chaos war. Old Worlders still looked down on the Norse, but they also needed them, same as the Kislevites. This is one of those places where I think both versions are good; the Norse being partially in thrall to Chaos but partly independent of it and a very complex and unpredictable people is good in the later works. But the idea of the Norse as the front line and Norsca as a place your Adventurers can go to actually see open military conflict against Chaos at any time is also an appealing bit of setting for an RPG. Kislev was exactly as it is in later works: Ethnic tensions and political maneuvering, with a lid on them because everyone knows they need to work together against the 8 foot murder-machines from the far north. Which is fine; it works great as it is. Araby was different in 1st edition; 2e and 4e will make note of Araby as being about as advanced as the Empire, just far to the south. 1e takes the time to point them out as inferiors dominated by religious fundamentalism. Yeah... Cathay gets mention in 1e, but it's mostly 'it's so drat big and there are so many places in the far east that it's impossible to generalize', which is fair enough. I'd be a lot happier if they didn't call it 'oriental'. Still, shrugging and going 'Man, Asia is super big and there are a ton of different peoples that live there, can't make one blanket statement about them' isn't the worst I've ever seen (especially if you're only doing one paragraph on the continent), and it's certainly better than the material on the Hung and other stuff about them in later editions. I'm always at once a little sad Warhams never did anything with its Asia, but also a little glad considering the general quality of what we did get about the place that they didn't try to focus on it more as I'm not sure I'd have trusted GW with it. Oh, yeah, and Lustria mentions the infamous pygmies. Yeah, just...no. The Warhammer Pygmies were literal little sambo stereotypes, as you might expect from British nerds in the 80s, and were absolutely awful and a shame to everyone involved in making them. It also mentions the Amazons, who used to have laser cannons. No, really, that was their thing: Mysterious sci-fi-primitive women who live in Lustria and have mohawks and the occasional royal rocket launcher. Lustria was also home to the Slaan, who were originally just the Old Ones themselves; it's a later addition that the Slaan were the surviving servant-race of a more mysterious and more powerful people. Originally, the Slaan were just the trapped descendants of the space-faring and extremely powerful Old Slaan. The whole 'world was engineered by powerful magitek aliens' thing was much more front and center at this point, rather than being relegated to ancient history and reading between the lines. There's a lot more mention of actual colonies in the New World. Also, the Dark Elves were originally straight up Chaos Elves (who were described as 'jealous of humanity', partly because Chaos paids humans more mind) who were mostly losing their civil war. The East Coast of the not-US was actually colonized by both humans and Sea Elves at this point. Oh, yeah, also used to be 4 kinds of elf: Dark, Sea, High, and Wood. Dark were dicks, Sea were elves from the actual elf kingdoms who had to work for a living and thus couldn't afford to be such insufferable dicks, High Elves were originally upper class twits who disdained all labor, and Wood Elves were originally much more like the Laurelorn Elves of later editions. They were the ones who actually had to live and work with humans, so they couldn't be as high and mighty and tended to be down to earth and friendly, comparatively. Other elves all looked down on them for not being dicks and for having hick accents. That's right there in the book. Still, there was a lot more material suggesting you'd actually go to the New World, or the Chaos Wastes, or other crazy places back in this 1st edition. The idea seems to have been you'd start play in the Old World, have adventures in familiar settings, then eventually set off to a city of gold in Warhams South America or something equally foolish and rewarding. Next Time: Ancient Aliens
|
|
#
¿
Oct 1, 2019 17:56
|
|
|
One of the reasons I tend to hate Perception stats is because of exactly what you're saying about Wisdom here. They tend to be critical, but they only do one thing and then the designers spend a long time grasping at 'well what the hell else do we do with Perception' like in the 40kRP games. So you can't tank them, since you want to notice things, but they also end up feeling extraneous.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 2, 2019 00:18
|
|
|
That doesn't sound like much of an improvement. E: Though that's one of the general issues that can come up when you don't really want to write about protagonists, and also put in 'also the insane status quo oppression machine does prevent disasters'. I think one of the refreshing bits in Geist is that it starts with 'actually, you are probably working for decent purposes, though you could choose not to, and what you're trying to change should be changed'.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 2, 2019 19:10
|
|
|
The lack of interest in that is the bigger problem, yes. It's something I notice in a lot of games, not just CoD: There's not much consideration of what victory would look like or what people could be working towards.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 2, 2019 19:21
|
|
|
The main thing is that I find a lot of game settings sort of calcify over time. What starts as an order from the top like 'don't majorly change the setting in an official published adventure' (WHFRP is my area of particular expertise, so naturally I come back to it) turns into an impression of 'You can't accomplish things'. Or you end up with stuff like Shadowrun where it becomes accepted wisdom and stuffed to the gills with 'Oh well if you try to do X, Aztechnology/Whatever Big Dragon/whatever kills you instantly and unstoppably' style thinking. Having some little hooks and stuff like 'hey, here's where some things can change' is really useful just in avoiding giving groups the impression of stasis. Which is the long way of agreeing that games need to consider more about minor and middle term victories, because those are the things groups build their own ideas of climax/ultimate victories out of, which is absolutely the sort of thing that should be left to individual groups (if they want to touch on them at all) and don't need as much support. I suppose what I'm trying to say is that the need to keep a setting consistent (or the desire to keep it open) can sometimes accidentally give people the impression there's nothing that can be achieved, even if that isn't the authors' intent.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 2, 2019 19:45
|
|
|
If you can do it with regular person bullets, it makes it a lot easier to keep the giant sign that says 'How do you do, fellow human beings with skin and organs, I too enjoy having biological processes and soft skin' from falling off.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 2, 2019 19:54
|
|
|
That Basilisk thing is a little too 'this is literally just that thing'. I mean I'm all for making people aware of the fundamental beliefs of tech cultists, but that's just 'this is what tech cults believe, using the exact same mechanism and terminology, with no real twist or addition'
|
|
#
¿
Oct 3, 2019 15:28
|
|
|
So you defeat the hobo god by hitting him in the face with a cup full of spare change and piss. This after Ophelia Adder, The Basilisk, Do You Get That She Is Snake Themed.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 3, 2019 19:09
|
|
|
megane posted:Dear White Wolf: please rename the God-Machine so its acronym is something other than loving "GM," thanks in advance I'm sure this was intentional.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 3, 2019 19:36
|
|
|
PantsOptional posted:So, this... exists: https://www.feastoflegends.com/ Alright this is actually weirder to me than anything I've seen in this thread.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 3, 2019 21:53
|
|
|
So you're saying you kill this one with a KGB poisoned umbrella tip.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 3, 2019 22:34
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 01:31 |
|
|
Look, you get an opportunity in a spy story about heaven and hell to pull honest to god weird KGB assassination tricks and actually have it work, you take it and consequences be damned. It's your chance to make the metaphor as unsubtle as naming the programmer angel Seele, and you can't let the writers have all that to themselves.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 3, 2019 23:10
|
|