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I'm not all that familiar with SR4 and on, but 2 and 3 had a lot of good art, and they used it to great effect in the poo poo-rear end SR card game. Also I still distinctly remember the like 8" action figure Heroclix knockoff for Shadowrun from the early 2000's, because my friend who owned a game store got a couple of them and they never moved off the shelf for two years. We eventually opened them up when the store folded, and I think I still have the lovely tiny dice the troll street samurai came with. The figure was kind of cool. That Old Tree fucked around with this message at 22:19 on Oct 9, 2019 |
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Oct 9, 2019 22:16
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JcDent posted:Please, we don't need more proper nouns Please, no more sand on this beach.
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Oct 11, 2019 03:02
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 07 — Geist: the Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition — Character Creation, Part 3: Burdens & Krewe Archetypes   Splat. ”The world is my epitaph.” —Geist: the Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition BURDENS As discussed in post five, a Sin-Eater’s Burden is a principal theme or resonance to how they died and what attracted a geist to offer them the Bargain. It informs how they will approach the remains of their life and the hellish afterlife they’ve discovered. System-wise, it defines three Haunts for which they have an Affinity, granting a discount on Experience costs to learn them. Remember also that during character creation a Sin-Eater has an Innate Key that resonates with how they died, which they can exploit to gain power, power-up their Haunts and use as a literal key to open Avernian gates. The Abiding  Geist: the Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition posted:Those who died with no legacy left behind. Abiding Sin-Eaters hold oblivion at bay until they can forge something that will last beyond them. The Abiding are perhaps the most stereotypical ghostly loiterers, sticking around because something was left undone. They are concerned with leaving a legacy behind, whether building one up or repairing one that has been damaged. They’re afraid of being forgotten  , because that’s almost like never having lived in the first place. The legacies they concern themselves with can be grand, like finishing and submitting an architectural proposal for a literal monument, or more domestic, like bringing together an estranged family.Abiding often attract geists that have their own unfinished business, seeking to work through the Bound to accomplish the half-remembered adventures cut short by their own death. Other geists attracted to the Abiding are more like cheerleaders or mentors, happy to prop up their Bound, lending them advice and power solely directed towards their goals. In either case they tend to egg on their Bound, whether to get what the geist wants personally out of the relationship or simply to encourage the Bound to keep chasing their own dreams. Abiding that join Necropolitan krewes want to leave a legacy in both the living and the dead worlds. Being remembered by the living is intensely important to the dead, but being remembered fondly by your fellow dead doesn’t hurt. Abiding in Furies krewes go beyond protecting or rebuilding their legacy and seek vengeance on those who would damage it. Abiding Mourners concern themselves with maintaining and repairing the legacies of other dead. Abiding Pilgrims know that a legacy can be built by helping others, especially the downtrodden of the Underworld. Abiding Undertakers, like Mourners, help build and maintain others’ legacies, by teaching ghosts how best to do so themselves. Example Bound: a dude who choked training for a hotdog-eating contest, a renowned chef that neglected her family who choked on a sausage, a spotlight-chasing lawyer looking to start a class action lawsuit against gangs (?!?) who was exsanguinated by a gang, an Olympic medalist who was slut-shamed to suicide over a sex scandal. Example Geists: Le Magistrat who was an imposing judge in life and acts as legal counsel in death, the World Adventurer who speaks in different languages all at the same time but never got to travel the globe like they wanted, the Voice of Reason who offers film-making advice based on their life as a film critic. Other geist titles mentioned are the Watchdog, the Epicurean and the Gold. The Bereaved  Geist: the Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition posted:Those who lost someone dear to them — perhaps in the same incident that killed them, perhaps years before. The Bereaved scour the realms of the dead, seeking the fate of their lost loved ones. The Bereaved are defined by their love for someone or something that they have lost, and a longing to find them or it again. Often this is a loved one—romantic, platonic, familial, it doesn’t matter. Bereaved can also pine for things like how their home town used to be growing up, or the circle of friends they had in college. They also didn’t necessarily die alongside whatever they lost. Some Bereaved linger decades before their own death takes them, and the pang of their defining loss is still so keen, so driving a force, it attracts a geist that offers them the chance to search the Underworld to reconnect. Geists attracted to the Bereaved are rarely in the same depressive state as their Bound. Some are motivators of hope and cheer, knowing that somewhere out in the wide Underworld, the Bereaved can see their loved ones again. Other geists are simply emotional manipulators, exploiting the Bereaved’s overwhelming sadness and quest for lost love. Necropolitan Bereaved tend toward small gatherings of the dead and rumination, but might instead organize the largest gathering possible in hope of stumbling into their lost loved one. Bereaved Furies temper a krewe’s outrage with how keenly they understand loss. Bereaved Mourners help others hold onto their own memories of lost love. Bereaved Pilgrims search for their lost love while they help ghosts move on, which is also an opportunity to sift through the teeming dead masses. Bereaved Undertakers are…sufficiently obsessed with their own bullshit that they can be “objective” about assisting other peoples’ journeys to and through death. I gotta admit I’m not crazy about this last one.  Example Bound: a cancer patient preceded in death by someone she met in her support group, a Chinese woman who killed herself and her unborn baby girl for lack of a son and the One-child Policy, a private eye whose mother disappeared when he was a kid. Example Geists: Goyet Man who may in fact be the ghost of a pre-human hominid, the Caregiver who is addled and believes every child ghost is her lost child, the Bookie that always wheedles something in return for its services. The Hungry  Geist: the Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition posted:Those who left something behind they couldn’t bear to let go. They haunt the remnants of their lives and accomplishments, protecting what remains and hunting down that which was stolen. The Hungry refuse to give up their “stuff and things.” This is almost entirely a temporal concern but not strictly material. They want to continue to be a wealthy jet-setter, keep on painting their Warhammer minis, keep stamping their passport until they’ve visited every country on Earth, keep watching a TV show they love. There’s obviously some overlap with the Abiding, here, but for the Hungry it’s more about personal possession and experience than leaving something worthwhile behind. Whatever it is, it’s theirs and they want to keep it. The Hungry attract geists of similarly materialist nature. While the Bound gets to keep doing what made them happy in life, they have to make some time to do the same for their geist. As long as their interests align, Hungry Sin-Eaters and their geists become close allies, partners in crime. The Hungry don’t tend to have a natural end-point like other Sin-Eaters. Many of their obsessions are practically bottomless regardless of un-death, and even if all you wanted to do was finish your favorite show, there’s always a next favorite show after Big Bang Theory mercifully ends. This makes both Bound and geist particularly susceptible to bribery and manipulation, but they are nevertheless uniquely driven. It’s natural for the Hungry to join Necropolitan krewes, since they best suit the celebratory nature of their Burden. They share their triumphs and bask in adulation. Hungry Furies make a habit of exploiting those they target—they “come off as corrupt cops.” Hungry Mourners are good at commiseration with and drawing upon the knowledge of the dead. Hungry Pilgrims are hypocrites, helping ghosts move on, for a price, while the Bound refuses to do so. Hungry Undertakers are keenly aware of how close they came to losing whatever keeps them going, and impress onto others how precarious their grasp is on what they love. Example Bound: a guy who keeps building his dream-cabin getaway, a wizened octogenarian HIV/AIDS researcher this close to a vaccine, a Hollywood starlet who keeps chasing the next big role. Example Geists: the Robber Baron, the Lumberjack, the Tattered Surgeon, the Tastemaker. As the Burdens go on the specific examples, even just one-off names, become lighter and sparser.  The Kindly  Geist: the Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition posted:Those who, in death, recognize a great wrong they did in life and return to make amends. The Kindly redress personal wrongs and work to dismantle systems of exploitation they once benefitted from. “Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets” is one of the better quotes sprinkled in the Burdens. This defines the Kindly, Sin-Eaters that did something really bad and, probably, died as a result or from simple accident shortly after. They cheated on their spouse, abused their children, betrayed their best friend, embezzled from their business, etc. They want to mend the world, much like any other Sin-Eater, but the specific harm that they prioritize is the one they did. This can take the form of paying back loans—or “””loans”””—which is possibly a little easier if you didn’t die publicly, or being a weird creepy stalker who tries to help out your estranged family from the shadows. Kindly geists likewise want to make amends, which often puts a lot on the Sin-Eater’s plate. Like any other geist, the “Kindly” ones are not necessarily good or altruistic outside of their own personal interests. They could be the ghost of an alcoholic who wants to save others from their fate. They could also just as easily see their Bound as a tool to fix their own regrets, using the Sin-Eater’s own mission to manipulate them. An odd thing suggested in the Kindly is the possibility your geist is someone you died with. It doesn’t really align with everything else in the whole book about how ghosts and geists in particular work, and while it could be an interesting twist there’s no narrative or mechanical support for making it happen. Necropolitan Kindly are doing their good works through the krewe, but can also use the group to lose themselves in celebration, burying their regrets. Kindly Furies feel like they know what wrongdoing is and so can dish out good justice. Kindly Mourners use their own crime to teach others what not to do. Pilgrim Kindly help put to rest the regrets of others, which should be a little cathartic considering their own motivation. Kindly Undertakers likewise help ghosts move on, though more by being enablers than doing all the work themselves. Example Bound: a doctor who couldn’t find a suitable organ replacement for his wife, a teacher who acquiesced to ISIL-KP in front of her students and then was shot anyway, a documentarian that chose not to publish damning material for fear of government reprisal, a husband who cheated on his wife, a kid that shared tainted drugs with his date. Example Geists: the Solemn Girl who cyber-bullied someone to suicide, the Blank Badge who was a cop that shot an unarmed man, the Empty Woman, the Blessed Mind, the Eyeless Watcher. The Vengeful  Geist: the Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition posted:Those who blame another — rightly or wrongly — for their deaths and seek redress for the wrongs done to them. The unfinished business of the Vengeful is hurting people. It might be vengeance against whoever is responsible for their death, or just whoever ruined their life but didn’t actually kill them. As with any vengeance, it can be petty as hell. Killing the target of one’s vengeance might be a satisfying conclusion to tracking down and confronting a powerful enemy, while ruining someone’s life is better suited to foes you have more control over, but nothing stops the Vengeful from being ridiculously, self-destructively petty toward dangerous antagonists. In fact, their geists might just encourage this bad habit. The Vengeful often attract geists just as driven to destruction as their Bound, egging on the Sin-Eater’s rage and “justice.” Some are even drawn to Bound that will take their anger out on the geist, bizarre co-dependent relationships with an ultimately bloody purpose. Other geists may not be so angry or violent, but their sympathy and encouragement nonetheless enable the Sin-Eater’s outbursts. Vengeful Necropolitans use the celebration of dead society to blow off steam and, of course, to direct them to new targets for their wrath. Fury krewes are a natural fit for the Vengeful, even in some sense reining them in by focusing their violence. Vengeful Mourners act as proxies for the vengeance of other dead. Vengeful Pilgrims tend to release their worldly attachments by destroying them, likewise helping ghosts the same way. Undertaker Vengeful still tend to resolve their obstacles through violence, but they at least put some thought into what is or is not an obstacle worth destroying. Example Bound: someone killed by burglars, someone “driven to a sex worker” by their inattentive wife, someone who was already on a quest for vengeance when they died. Example Geists: the Speed Demon, the Strangler, the Starvling Child. KREWE ARCHETYPES Similar to Burdens for individual Sin-Eater characters, krewe archetypes are broad categories that outline the nature of a krewe and its approach to the living and the dead. On top of the Bestow Regalia Ceremony that all krewes start with, each archetype determines three other Ceremonies that krewemembers can use if they have enough Mystery Cult Initiation. Furies  Geist: the Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition posted:Krewes that focus on balancing the scales of justice. They put right that which is wrong. Despite their name, Furious krewes are ideally concerned with justice, not simply punishment or vengeance. They seek not just to redress grievances but to mend the the rifts and systems that led to those grievances in the first place. This can take the form of tracking down someone to moralize at them, or just ruining their predatory business, or if all else fails putting the unrepentant down like animals. Furies are here to reform, and in the end they want to build a world that doesn’t need them. Until then it’s not enough just to fix the results of trespass, but to establish the rules that define what a trespass even is, and try to demonstrate these rules as guidance for others to make the world a better place. Low-key Fury ceremonies often take the form of casual conversation or philosophical debates, arguments over challenging moral knots. Celebrants may act as audience to lectures, taking notes, or everyone might be a participant in interminable, raucous discourse. They are also partial to martial ceremonies, whether ritualized combat or simple pageantry. Furious krewes have to watch out for overreach. Harshness and violence are tempting “cures” to immediate problems, and sometimes the consequences can seem not so bad. Furies that rein in their brutish impulses can still go too far. Good justice relies on evidence, and ghosts and ghostly super-powers make it easy to build a surveillance state. Even barring all that, Furies can overstep by appointing themselves arbiters of what other krewes should be doing to fix the Underworld. Example Fury Krewes: Bizango may or may not be the secret ghost police arm of the real Haitian vodou organization. In any case, they try to keep a low profile, rooting out those who trespass against dead society and poisoning them (not usually fatally). Le Quatrième Etat is an underground journalistic outlet that exposes wrongdoing against the dead. They've recently taken down one of their own old, Bound allies who was into human trafficking, which got them a lot of praise but also side-eye from other, nervous allies. The Sodality of the Door concerns itself with protecting other krewes, particularly from the other supernatural denizens of the world. They prefer mediation but nonetheless know how to fall back on "ghost powers and baseball bats." Mourners  Geist: the Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition posted:These Sin-Eaters remember the dead, especially those the living have forgotten. They bring light into the darkness of the Underworld and return with wisdom to share. Mourners believe that nothing should be truly lost to death, from the meanest legacies of everyday nobodies to a late author’s unfinished masterpiece. What they uncover may not be suited for public consumption, but the krewe itself will know, and what matters is that someone remembers. Naturally, they act as repositories for knowledge and centers of research into the dead. Krewes that maintain regular contact with other Mourners can engage in spirited, friendly or not-so-friendly academic rivalry. As ghost-powered game protagonists, this preoccupation also tends to make Mourners into the Lara Crofts of the Underworld. Their ceremonies help preserve and pass on knowledge, and while these krewes often have strong traditionalist streaks they also incorporate plenty of modern trappings like server farms and Underworld-accessible wifi. It’s easy for Mourner’s academic rivalry to turn sour, leading to spying and sabotage. Their facility for information-gathering can also tempt them to solve their problems with blackmail. Perhaps worst of all, the most depraved Mourners might be willing to destroy information in return for what they want. Example Mourner Krewes: Supposedly a direct continuation of the ancient library, the Musæum of Alexandria makes its mission to catalog literally all information, in the living and dead worlds, for knowing's sake and to preserve it against the death of humanity. The Society for the Preservation of Endangered Martial Arts wants to catalog all the ways humans fight each other. This is not just a pugilist’s academic interest, as tons of cultural information is carried in the texts and traditions that pass on fighting styles. It can also have practical applications against ancient ghostly enemies. The Uknown Soldier Cult gathers artwork and stories from battlefields, even in places of ongoing conflict. They usually work in pairs with one Cultist serving on each side of the conflict, committing treason as they pass information back and forth. Necropolitans  Geist: the Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition posted:These krewes care for the dead, protect them from the depredations of the Underworld, and reunite them with loved ones across the veil. “Celebrants” is never more apt a name than for members of a Necropolitan krewe. Their goal is to build a society for positive outlooks on life and death, obviously with a preoccupation for the latter considering the nature of Sin-Eaters. They are all about networking, whether through swanky parties, clubbing meetups, or even staying in touch with your friends online. The key to building a better life and afterlife is other people, to make those personal connections that can help focus your motivation or pull you back from the brink of despair. Ultimately, they don’t want to just make the Underworld better, they want the lands of the living and the dead to become friendly neighbors. This very public-facing goal can make more secretive krewes nervous. Necropolitan rites tend towards displays of togetherness and communication, and are often concatenations of all sorts of religious and folklore practices that emphasize community. Like any hierarchy, Necropolis can become entrenched, adopting a self-importance and entangling itself with other power structures that exist for their own sake. Necropolitan krewes naturally trade in favors and status, a field of work ripe for individual and systemic abuse. They can also simply descend into debauchery, excusing their hedonism as religious ecstasy as they become pushers and dealers getting high on their supply. Example Necropolitan Krewes: Taking the credit or blame for Sin-Eaters generally using the term “krewe”, le Krewe LaBas was formed after a fight between Mardi Gras Indian tribes in 1920 ended when dead from each side returned as Bound and embraced. These days they have a lot of business in the Underworld, and tend to act as a mentor organization for younger krewes. X-Treme Unction was founded in the 1990s and “is generally accepted to have the worst name of any krewe in history, but its members are really enthusiastic about it.” They’re an extreme sports club that treks to dangerous environments for rescue missions in the living and dead worlds. Not credited as a krewe by many, alt.gothic.ghost started out on Usenet but nowadays has a dedicated mobile app. Its members, themselves too old, too cloistered or otherwise impaired for traditional adventures, specialize in contacting ghosts that channel their powers through electronic devices. Pilgrims  Geist: the Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition posted:To Pilgrims, death is a step along a journey to something greater. They help the dead release their Anchors and come to terms with their demise. “The Underworld isn’t a threat, it’s a challenge…” Pilgrim krewes see that death is a step after life, that there is another step after death. They want to gentle this journey and usher the dead along to transcend to whatever lies beyond. This philosophy combined with the nature of ghosts to move on by releasing their Anchors leads Pilgrims to view life and death as an exercise in controlling or shedding one’s attachments. While many Pilgrim krewes gather up their beliefs from ascetic Christian mystic traditions or psychoanalytic theory, a significant proportion of them are outright Buddhist sangha (monastic communities). Pilgrim rituals typically involve exploration of the Underworld and celebration of what good can be found there. A preoccupation with understanding can also be a temptation to forge new attachments, and to grasp and overpower. Pilgrims studying the monstrous denizens and geography of the Underworld may stray into sympathy and emulation. Even Pilgrims who cleave to their mission of helping ghosts move on can lose their way, becoming too focused on the end and not the journey, inflicting what they think is best on their charges rather than teaching them how to truly let go. Example Pilgrim Krewes: The First Church of Persephone, Architect studies and maps the structures of the Underworld, particularly those built outside of densely populated areas. Seeking to understand and master the waters of the Underworld, the Convivial Society of St. Christopher Souterrain often acts as Ferrymen, but also dive to shipwrecks in the living world to contact ghosts there. The Temple of Dogcatchers study and fight the worst monsters of the Underworld. Undertakers  Geist: the Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition posted:Undertakers help the living get their affairs in order before they become a ghost’s unfinished business. By changing how people perceive death and by understanding its metaphysics, they can change the game altogether. Undertaker krewes seek to shape the Underworld and ghostly existence by changing the way the living view death. Death is at once totally expected and a surprise, and the Undertakers aim to change that. There is no ghostly torment if death is a soothe that leaves no ghosts behind, and for those that nevertheless become ghosts, the Underworld could be a paradise. They study the Dead Dominions to find the best of them, to figure out what seems to have worked and build on that. Their rituals tend to be traditional, as they believe those rites to lay the dead to peaceful rest are signposts laid by their philosophical forebears. As a philosophy fundamentally about transforming other peoples’ practices and beliefs, it’s temptingly easy for Undertakers to fall back on just trying to control them through intimidation or subtler manipulations. Undertaker krewes also maintain close contact with the Underworld and gather its deep lore, which can become something of a commodity and turn them into power brokers. Arguably worst of all, their constant plumbing of the failures of the past can be disillusioning or even corrupting. Example Undertaker Krewes: Schultheiss and Company is a PR firm that also does ghost-troubleshooting for big companies, and also cultivates child star Bound in some way. It’s kind of really vague. The Romsa Ludographical Institute is a department in Norway’s University of Tromsø that wants to use Nordic LARP to control the cultural narrative around the dead and Bound. Started in the 80's, Dispatches from Beyond the Veil takes the opportunity to talk plainly to its audience about the Underworld because it’s a conspiracy ‘zine so no one serious suspects a thing. COMMENTARY Burdens superficially seem like they suffer from a lot of overlap, a complaint that I can sort of understand and have seen, however I see this as a feature. Reducing Sin-Eater motivations to A Big Regret isn’t quite wrong, but the specific narrative arcs suggested by each Burden are pretty distinct. The Abiding, the Bereaved and the Kindly can all easily start out in very similar places, but their focus handily distinguishes their journey. I like the krewe archetypes well enough, but I’m just a little unhappy that they’re the big, defining philosophy of your whole group, instead of each being one of the many philosophies it might contain. I’d prefer something a little less mechanically firm. Every remotely interesting krewe will include members with differing outlooks, or even ill-fitting celebrants who are better suited to other types of krewe. (That latter being a perfectly good source of drama!) Geist loosens up how a lot of the usual templates for these game lines work, and I guess I wish it had gone just a little bit farther dislodging the “philosophical Y-axis splat.” It would be relatively simple removing starting Ceremonies from the krewe archetypes—and, for sanity’s sake, renaming the krewe archetypes to something else. Finding a way to make these philosophies more interactive and relevant would call for a lot more work, possibly adding whole new krewe subsystems. Oh well! PS X-treme Unction is x-tremely good. Next Up: Ghost-wizard lists! (Ceremonies, Keys and Haunts.) That Old Tree fucked around with this message at 10:50 on Oct 12, 2019 |
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Oct 12, 2019 10:10
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OvermanXAN posted:So how do the Abyss and the Idigam from Werewolf connect, since those are also impossible entities that shouldn't and/or can't be? Apart from the usual pat answer of "while they don't completely ignore each other, the game lines don't bother much with crossover (to varying degrees)", they really don't. The Abyss is anti-reality that was created/summoned/tapped into/found, on purpose or by accident, by using the Lie to hide the Supernal from the Phenomenal World. Its intrusions seep into our reality and take forms we can sort of understand in order to explore, attack and eat reality, with the ultimate goal of destroying everything and replacing it with the nothingness-adjacent Abyss. Beings from the Abyss can be changeable, but most of them that intrude have a relatively set form and motivation. Idigam are powerful monsters from the Before Times that Father Wolf couldn't find a way to properly kill, so he locked them up on the Moon. They were or became (I can't remember) formless spirit goop with no set natural states apart from "powerful" and "goopy gribblies." The Moon landings accidentally set them free, though a few weren't captured in the first place and have been around causing trouble since prehistory. In any case, nowadays these chaos monsters tend to grab onto some conceptual obsession (like darkness and deception, or disease) and use that to find new ways to experience and hunt the modern world, and to wage war against the werewolves who are successors to the hunter-god that imprisoned them. They want to rule over the world, not destroy it, at least not as fully as the Abyss and its entities do. That Old Tree fucked around with this message at 19:24 on Oct 15, 2019 |
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Oct 15, 2019 19:22
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Omnicrom posted:I will accept gun customization only if you can go full Resonance of Fate. Jesus at first glance I thought this was a dungeon map.
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Oct 17, 2019 11:28
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My only meaningful contact with Dragonlance was a PUG in high school RPG club where the DM basically took a bunch of people who have no familiarity with the setting and led them around to watch war set pieces before Paladine showed up at some siege and solved everything. Even by my dumb teenager standards I thought it was terrible, and for years I was especially disgusted by (I thought) the DM being such a lazy piece of poo poo he named his god of goodness "Paladine."
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Nov 27, 2019 19:07
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PurpleXVI posted:It's mostly annoying because it doesn't loving add anything. I'm not a purist, I don't mind a few corners being cut to make it flow better as a movie, or minor rewrites. But this is just a stupid addition to get more elves on screen more of the time. Eh, I'm very much not a fan of the movies in the first place (they're…fine, just not for me; 100% flaming fucks to the Hobbit movies tho), but I thought it was a fairly okay nod to making the setting a little more palatable, instead of every single elf except Legolas shrugging and saying "Well, we're off to the West, gently caress all ya'll and your apocalypse."
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Nov 28, 2019 00:33
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Glagha posted:Okay I didn't read the Vampire thing through but... is there seriously VtM poo poo taking place in Gary? Like... that Gary? Gary, Indiana? The crew that came up with the game did so as they were driving to GenCon, part of which through the economically blighted Gary. It may have started there, in fact. I can't remember. MRH tells the story in the terminally mediocre WoD documentary.
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Dec 18, 2019 00:25
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FoldableHuman posted:To whet everyone's appetite even more, here's the cover of the one Dragonlance novel set in said location. I…her…her head. Is she owl-kin?
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Jan 4, 2020 11:54
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PurpleXVI posted:...what exactly does Carousing govern, anyway? Being able to hold your drink? Being able to hold a tune while quaffing? In every RPG I've ever encountered that elaborates on it even a tiny bit, "Carousing" is used as a synonym for "partying."  EDIT: That'll be 23 experience to…be Aleister Crowley, I guess. I'm sure that slays at parties. That Old Tree fucked around with this message at 21:50 on Feb 9, 2020 |
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Feb 9, 2020 21:47
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The first edition of Star Wars d20 and D&D3 both came out in 2000. SWd20 honestly was a much more exciting and interesting platform for what they were doing with the basic system, what with the Force points and Vitality/Constitution (or whatever they called the "critical" hit points), and having social-focused class features with actual heft right in the core book. (I may be misremembering that last part since I'm much more familiar with the second edition or revised or whatever they called it from 2003. Maybe they didn't have diplomats and nobles in the first core.)
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Feb 27, 2020 19:55
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Yeah SAGA was artsy with matte minimalist covers on at least some of the books, in square format.
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Feb 27, 2020 20:08
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dwarf74 posted:Yes, that's a decent (flawed, but decent) rule for a grittier game but absolutely non-thematic for a cinematic game like Star Wars should be. It would've been perfect for Star Wars if it had been partially based on "tiers" instead of the usual "just randomly do better damage." Like if a crit against mooks was just a +5 margin* and their Life points were so low only a real plinker of a gun might not one-shot them. * Or even better, make the vs mooks crit just depend on a regular successful attack roll, and doing normal base damage on a "miss", and in this case "base damage" is one dead mook, and a crit is two or more depending on the weapon. But now we begin straying into "what if D&D was completely different and built to some singular purpose other than 'be D&D' whatever that means" territory where the barren ruins of 4e lay. Tibalt posted:I thought that was the point - HP represent plot armor, but an actual hit from a lucky stormtrooper still kills you until you've become a real badass. Sure but the odds are poo poo for the players, as is often the stumbling block for D&D. Any given player faces tons more attacks than any given NPC, and only Soldiers and maybe whatever the Jedi soldier was could survive more than a couple "lucky" one in every 10-20 attacks. If you were an adventuresome social scoundrel you could get got really quick. And upping your "take crits" points was much harder and less generous than just leveling up, so everyone but the soldier stays that way basically for the whole game, and the soldier doesn't pull all that far ahead of his own starting point. I think I recall managing a beefy powerhouse soldier who by level 14 or so who still only had like around 30 Life, which is not a lot of "lucky hits" to go before death sets in. That Old Tree fucked around with this message at 21:00 on Feb 27, 2020 |
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Feb 27, 2020 20:51
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Since I'm slowly making my way through Nameless and Accursed, I'm curious to see your opinions.
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Mar 12, 2020 16:57
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Considering what mages can get up to even when they're pretty firmly considered "the good guys", Gwydion is on the level of "kind of a troublesome rear end in a top hat."
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Mar 12, 2020 19:34
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Dave Brookshaw posted:As Rand says, they're name-changed Mad Ones, which were in the 1e corebook then ignored until Left Hand Path where they got proper rules. We changed their name because, well.. They were called Mad Ones. It also helps that it's a more accurate and more interesting descriptor.
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Mar 12, 2020 20:59
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Yeah, Professional Training gives you bonus dots of Contacts, Specialties and dice tricks like 9-again and rote. (The former of which I'm not a fan of, but I'm generally not a fan of circuitous, repetitive and cost-imbalanced things like "buy one dot of this thing to get two dots of this other thing" or the various Experience cost fuckery that happens in I think every White Wolf and White Wolf-derived property since time began.) EDIT: I will say—and I understand some of the factors that went into why this was—the way Nimbuses are described in this book is very helpful to getting a handle on just what the corebook meant for them to be, which is a little frustrating after ruminating on the game for the better part of a year and then finally getting to start a game a few weeks before this book came out. The new information on Legacies is also extremely useful in signposting just what they're supposed to look like, which I feel like the Eleventh Question didn't quite manage as well as I would like. That Old Tree fucked around with this message at 23:40 on Mar 12, 2020 |
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Mar 12, 2020 23:31
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I'm not, like, opposed to Pangloss' existence, but I'm personally pretty cool to a character that is in large part "this real life piece of poo poo *wink*." I appreciate the technical achievement of making him a pretty believable, hooked-in antagonist for the setting, but he's so on-the-nose I don't think I or most of the people I game with would be able to refrain from talking in a Kermit voice about lobsters and the terrors of cider-drink every few minutes when he's around.
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Mar 14, 2020 04:44
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Xiahou Dun posted:I fail to see how that is a problem and not a feature. Although I admit I don't get the cider-drink reference but I want to be nicer to my blood-pressure so I don't know if I'll look it up. It's actually an uplifting story about how Jorp is a loving weird self-destructive charlatan! Before his daughter "dietician" fixed him with her all-meat diet (or maybe it was a misstep after starting the diet, who cares?) he drank some cider and was plagued by night terrors and literally didn't sleep for a literally unbelievable three+ weeks. So, essentially, he made up some bizarre, impossible pseudo-science story where he was terrorized by some apple juice.
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Mar 14, 2020 05:18
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Ah, we finally get to my least-favorite part of the book! Not because I don't want any kind of Nephandi-style shenans in my gamesbook, but because I think the mechanics are actually kind of lovely. Antinomian sorcery is such a hassle and so uncertain to provide you any actual benefit at all, and if it provides any benefit that benefit will be pretty small, and (as we'll see later) tends to gently caress you up for days, all the talk in the book about it being seductive and addictive falls pretty flat for me. Now, yeah, once you master this poo poo and go to Second Level Evil it becomes a bit more attractive, but boy the game mechanics don't make the process of getting there at all attractive. It also adds a bunch of extra dice rolls to resolving an action, which I am very rarely a fan of. That Old Tree fucked around with this message at 02:19 on Mar 27, 2020 |
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Mar 27, 2020 02:17
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:The seductive power of maybe applying a Condition, sometimes, possibly. Which could be really strong or entirely useless depending on your familiarity with Conditions, given that "apply a Condition" in CoD 2e games is broadly "do, idk, anything to someone" I mean, I don't want to get too ahead of the review, but one step above that is getting what amounts to +1 free Reach. Which is, like…nice, I guess? But, woof, all the poo poo you've gotta go through to maybe get that. It's like "I love the adrenaline rush of dangerous situations, so sometimes I crush my head with a cinderblock. On purpose. And sometimes I'm so taken off-guard or so used to it, I don't get the adrenaline rush. I am somehow addicted to this activity."
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Mar 27, 2020 02:33
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wiegieman posted:As someone who doesn't know much at all about mage, what's the deal with the abyss? The foundational myth (which may or may not be true, as usual) is that in the long-ago Time Before, mages were awesome. Then some of them were like "let's storm Scelesti look at that situation and think, "I'm going to get a straw and suck up some of that universe-smothering power for my own ends!" That Old Tree fucked around with this message at 03:02 on Mar 27, 2020 |
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Mar 27, 2020 02:47
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That's a problem that CoD and White Wolf needs to have solved years ago by not framing nearly everything as theoretically player-accessible.
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Mar 27, 2020 22:39
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The Lone Badger posted:To what extent are the Seers and the Abyss aligned with each other? The Exarchs originated the Abyss and the Seers work for them, do they try to keep it strong and present in order to help maintain the Lie? It's unclear precisely what the Exarchs want even when they give specific commands, because their commands are delivered as oracular dreams interpreted by Special Big Boys. "Maintain the Lie and regulate the Abyss" could mean a whole loving lot of things. That said, according to the Scelestus write-up, the Seers are a little bit tolerant of Rabashakim (people who dabble in Abyss magic) but anyone who has gone fully on-board and corrupted their Nimbus or worse is slated for immediate murdercution by all parties. Also, it's a roughly popularly accepted myth that the Exarchs originated the Abyss, because it's a Time Before fact and is therefore at best a "good guess." All the poo poo from the Time Before is intense levels of "entire sub-field of anthropology borne from half a finger-bone and a four millimeter square piece of broken pottery." That Old Tree fucked around with this message at 00:11 on Mar 28, 2020 |
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Mar 28, 2020 00:07
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DigitalRaven posted:That's one part, along with most writers and line developers not being technical writers. F&F bears many much less relevant tangents on the regular and it's mostly fine. But General Chat might be more appropriate if you still don't want to talk about it here.
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Mar 28, 2020 14:54
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Mors Rattus posted:Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed Lil' Nasnas X (Gonna take my horse to the Old Man's abode.)
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Mar 28, 2020 21:35
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LazyAngel posted:So... Heart's backet PDF dropped today, and I'm put in mind of doing a long-read review of it, similar to how I treated Spire, albeit hopefully with a bit more of an opinion as I've actually been running the latter for a while. But it's still in PDF for now (although a quickstart is available) - should I wait until it's on general release, or just try to go through slowly enough that it'll be available before I finish? Since they're already selling the PDF and are pushing a discount on print books if you buy the PDF, I'd suggest now's the perfect time to start. That Old Tree fucked around with this message at 12:08 on Apr 1, 2020 |
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Apr 1, 2020 12:06
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Are you going to do any commentary on RMSS/FRP? Or the crazy poo poo from the companions like the critical table for being really depressed? I also feel like it's worth bringing up, especially as a contrast to RMSS+, how earlier Spell Laws did "learning list portions classifications" as one of the most needlessly arcane character advancement subsystems I've ever seen in a game that was at one time pretty widely popular.
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May 7, 2020 12:49
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Anyone say "Sigmarks" yet?
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May 12, 2020 00:55
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Falconier111 posted:
As someone way too deep into Exalted at the time, Alchemical Charms were extremely good within the context of Exalted at the time. As the last in the line they benefited once again from lots of lessons learned, and also the happenstance of being written by competent writers. Ex2 was pretty terrible at a fundamental level, but I would still be willing to play a game of Alchemicals, with minimal house ruling needed. quote:Live Wire Style, a Terrestrial style that is almost certainly a reference to the metalbender cops from Legend of Korra. Alchemicals came out in 2010, and Korra came out in 2012. That Old Tree fucked around with this message at 01:10 on May 29, 2020 |
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May 29, 2020 01:08
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on a PDF I’ll never use again when I’m trying to save money, and I don’t have any experience seeing this stuff in action. I just wanted to show off this neat setting I liked and I didn’t realize I’d be wading through 102 pages of mechanics I don’t understand 
. And there are a lot of mechanics here: whoever it was (I think Night?) who complained about Charm descriptions mixing fluff and crunch in confusing ways, you’ll be happy to hear the two are clearly delineated in nearly every case, both for Charms and elsewhere. But since the entries are half flowery surface level descriptions and half in-depth mechanics terms and never the twain shall meet, trying to puzzle out how to present them is making my brain dribble out my ears. And that sucks! A lot of these are really cool! They are thematic, useful, and important to understand if you want to use the setting! They deserve to be gone through in depth. But I’m doing this review because I enjoy it and I am not enjoying sifting through these goddamn Charms and Spells and Artifacts. What I can do is sift through the information surrounding them: details on categories, related setting information, general mechanics, I’ll write that up. But for the sake of my sanity I will not touch individual Charms, Spells, or Artifacts. If anyone reading this wants to share their favorites, though, with their permission I’ll happily add them into the relevant post.
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Falconier111 posted:[I understand they released a Locust Crusade supplement of some kind, anyone familiar with it would be welcome to talk about it here. The book introducing the Locust Crusade and Alchemicals was one of the very first things released for Exalted. I can't remember if the gazetteer book for Creation came first. In any case, it was so early and being developed while the core was being rewritten, so the rules were kind of lovely. It was an adventure book, with the last chapter being the Locusts invading and a brief rundown of how Alchemicals worked. The various adventures weren't connected, it was just a "here's some crazy poo poo you can get up to with Exalted, including space madness robot Exalts." It was pretty cool for one of the first things after the core to show you this absolutely bizarre stuff with communist robot invaders stumbling into your anime fighting fantasy. The storytelling chapter of the first edition Alchemicals book proper went all in on the Crusade. It was the worst part of that book. Everything was lovely and was doomed to get shittier, including some bad math in the rules for a spreading oil slick thing that meant the entirety of Creation would be covered in like a month.
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May 30, 2020 04:43
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Dawgstar posted:So that would - by this logic - means that the Yozis are technically more morally valuable? There were a handful of regular posters on the old forum that would advance this idea, yes. The Yozis/Primordials in general were "right" and the aggrieved party in all things, because after all they created everything* and were so complex. Often simultaneously they were so complex they were more like "the weather" than a character or whatever, and so beyond moral judgement, but you still shouldn't try to control or defeat them outright because actually yes they are like characters since they have distinct personalities and desires of their own and it's bad to take away their agency. Moral arguments about Exalted were some of the worst things in the internet during 2e.
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Jun 1, 2020 00:41
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The Lone Badger posted:The Charms were supposedly very mechanically interesting and thematic. The fluff chapter... the less said the better. In a game as complex and rules-focused as Exalted, the fandom was relatively starved for good content between all the outright abysmal poo poo. Infernals were incredibly creative and mechanically robust, and there was enough implied or explicit non-poo poo setting information that you really could just ignore the first couple chapters and use the rest of the book as-is, a rare strength of letting a book get written by people who don't coordinate with each other.
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Jun 1, 2020 02:38
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Stephenls posted:It turned out later that at the point in time that MoEP Infernals was published, John Chambers was developing Exalted unpaid in what free time he could scavenge while doing full-time work on the WoD MMO. I honestly feel super bad in retrospect for all the poo poo I gave him at the time. Jesus, I had no idea.
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Jun 1, 2020 09:37
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Thanks for doing that Falconier111. It's nice to be reminded of the good things.
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Jun 13, 2020 02:24
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Fivemarks posted:What i'm learning from Fatal and Friends, as well as previous experience with Lamentations and anything touched by Zak S, is that OSR is bullshit and is bad. There are some bright spots here and there, most of it's mediocre, but the luminaries most prominent outside the scene are burning garbage dump people. Kind of like TTRPGs in general.
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Jul 4, 2020 16:45
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Had this gotten a physical release already? I mean, it is nice that they're going to stick lengths to fix it even if it shouldn't have been so sorry in the first place. But if I'd spent $60 on a book so crappy that within a year the publisher added whole pages and tore whole sections out, unless I got some coupon for a replacement I'd be more pissed than I already was about the state of the original book.
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Jul 7, 2020 15:40
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:Fingers crossed over here for The Collie Out of Space Just "The Cats of Ulthar" but at some point it's revealed the narrator is a dog. The Peanutbutter in My Mouth The Mailman on the Doorstep The Vacuum in the Dark
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Aug 29, 2020 01:44
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In These Troubled Times™, I'd suggest finding something you like that's not ubiquitous that you want to help other people discover and like.
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Oct 7, 2020 15:57
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Xiahou Dun posted:Well in that instance "Oriental" means like, Turkey. Not that it's any better but because it's old as balls. I think a magic soy sauce rug would mostly stain and make the floor sticky.
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Oct 9, 2020 01:03
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