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Yeah, the villagers are a cannibal cult that worships the Beast. I'd rename the village if I ran that adventure, because it gives the game away way too early. Although it does highlight the challenge of running mystery/investigation scenarios in a war zone setting. With most groups in my experience, all the GM has to do is say, "You notice that the villagers seem surprisingly well-fed and healthy," and the players will be demanding to know if they can call in an airstrike.
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May 5, 2020 15:20
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 Aftermath, the third book in the YKRPG set, is heavily based on Robert W. Chambers's story “The Repairer of Reputations,” which you should read. In “Repairer,” Hildred Castaigne firmly believes he is destined to become emperor of the United States with the support of the enigmatic Mr. Wilde and the Cult of the Yellow Sign. But at the end of the story, it is revealed that Castaigne is delusional and that the Cult doesn't exist, and his fantasies of imperial heritage are as unreal as the cheap brass crown he believes is solid gold. But what if he was right? What if Castaigne successfully took over America in 1920, with help from Carcosa and the Yellow King, and the country was ruled by his descendants for decades? In Aftermath, the PCs are former freedom fighters who took part in the battle to overthrow the Castaigne dynasty – and now have to confront the question of how to rebuild the country. Aftermath is set in the same time line as Paris and The Wars, and in the present day. Besides the usual choice as to whether to play at Occult Adventures or Horror level, Aftermath can be played at one of three Weirdness Levels: - In an Overt game, everyone knows about the Yellow King and Carcosa, and how they backed Castaigne's coup, as well as the monsters still left roaming the country after the Castaignes were deposed. - In a Fading game, people used to know about Carcosa, but most people (except the PCs, and other exceptional types) are forgetting that there was anything supernatural about the Castaigne era. Even photographs and paper records are changing to eliminate evidence of the supernatural, perhaps due to the King's influence. - In a Covert game, the Castaignes kept the existence of Carcosa secret from the general public. The PCs learned about the supernatural during the fight to free America, but they and the current provisional government keep the knowledge hidden as well because it would only terrify the public. Once again, PCs are created by choosing an Investigative Kit and assigning general abilities. One player gets the Government Lethal Chamber Technician kit. The Government Lethal Chambers, mentioned at the start of “The Repairer of Reputations,” are suicide booths freely open to anyone, and will probably provoke a lot of Futurama references. The other Investigative Kits include: Journalist Marketing Coordinator Waiter Doctor Photographer Security Guard These Kits represent what you were doing before the revolution broke out; you may have returned to your old job since, or you may be doing something new. If you've played The Wars, Laws suggests assigning the Lethal Chamber Technician kit to whoever had the highest Mechanics ability. The Writer becomes the Journalist, the Merchant becomes the Marketing Coordinator, the Peasant becomes the Waiter, the Medical Student becomes the Doctor, the Photographer stays the Photographer, and the Sergeant becomes the Security Guard. Extra kits can be given to the person who played the Lieutenant. Again, however, there's no requirement to do it this way, and you can let the PCs choose whatever Investigative Kits appeal to them. Investigative abilities in Aftermath include: Accounting Architecture Art History Bullshit Detector (“Assess Honesty, renamed for a less genteel era”) Bureaucracy Cop Talk Counterinsurgency (using your old insurgency skills to investigate terrorism) Flattery Forensic Anthropology History Inspiration Interrogation Intimidation Intuition Law Leadership Medicine Negotiation Occultism People Person (making buddies everywhere you go) Photography Psychology Reassurance Research Science Streetwise Technology Trivia There are no General Kits for this campaign. Instead, players get 46 (Horror) or 52 (Occult Adventures) points to assign to the following General Abilities: Athletics, Composure, Driving, Fighting, First Aid, Health, Insurgency, Mechanics, Morale, Network, Politics, Preparedness, Sense Trouble, and Sneaking. Of those, the only new ones are Insurgency, which is Traps and Bombs from The Wars plus the ability to plan guerrilla warfare and sneak attacks; Network, which enables you to find people to do small tasks for you; and Politics, which is used to pursue your group's Goal, about which more later.
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May 5, 2020 23:57
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 As in other YKRPG games, Aftermath players also choose a Drive to represent why your character gets involved in this weirdness. The Damned Peculiar Thing is replaced by Worst Memory, where you describe your worst memory of the insurgency against the Castaignes. If you've played The Wars, you also have a Parallel. At some point you found a book about the Continental War and the battle against Carcosa written by the Writer PC from The Wars, and you noticed a weird parallel between the book's events and what you were doing in the fight against the Castaignes – describe what it was. The group as a whole also chooses a Goal. All sorts of power groups are working to reshape the country the way they want it, and the PC group is part of that. Your Goal reflects how your group wants the new country to look. The provided Goals include: - Shut down the Government Lethal Chambers (people shouldn't be encouraged to commit suicide!) - Preserve the Government Lethal Chambers (people have the right to decide when to die!) - Truth and Reconciliation (we need to focus on investigating the Castaignes' crimes to heal our wounds) - War Crimes Trials (hang the bastards) - Preserve Order (we need to reestablish a system of laws and authority to ensure everyone is secure) - Reinstate Freedom (it's most important to protect the rights of individuals) - Banish the Supernatural (cleanse out every bit of Carcosan influence) - Harness the Supernatural (hey, just because the Castaignes misused it doesn't mean it's not useful...) - Get Elected (we need the right people running things, and we are the right people) - Start a Business (the economy is in ruins, and people need work and money) Players can create their own Goals in addition to those listed here, but they should be similar in scope. Aftermath also comes with a new Challenge Table. Your former insurgents aren't as tough fighters as the soldiers of The Wars, but they're still better at it than Paris's art students, and also better at escaping from conflicts. There is also a new set of Hazards and shock and injury cards to go with them. Next comes a history of the United States since 1912, based on the first couple paragraphs of “The Repairer of Reputations.” Even before the Castaignes took over, things were moving in a more authoritarian direction under President Winthrop. After a failed German invasion of New Jersey, the country became more isolationistic and anti-immigrant. The government took a tighter control of arts and culture, promoting approved styles, as well as more strictly regulating business and religion. Under the Castaignes, order was kept by secret police. The House of Representatives was abolished and the Senate was filled with the emperor's cronies, and state governors were also appointed by the emperor. The White House was destroyed and replaced by an Imperial Palace. Economic opportunities were doled out to those families who were friendly to the emperor, stifling innovation; even though Aftermath is set in the present day, technology has not progressed past the late 1970s-early 1980s, and favored fashion and architecture are more like the 1950s – the Castaignes went in for Brutalism. In particular, there is no home video or Internet, 8-track tapes are the pinnacle of sound recording technology, computers are still big mainframes that use punch cards, and while cell phones do exist they're the mid-80s brick kind. Starting ten years ago, unrest and demonstrations against the government began growing stronger, and five years ago, Emperor Hannibal Castaigne died and was replaced by his son Hadrian. Hadrian's incompetence led to open revolution and battles against the Castaignes and their Carcosan backers, and eventually the emperor being overthrown. What happened to the Castaigne family afterward is up to the GM – they could all be dead, hiding (possibly with Carcosan aid), or in prison and awaiting trial and/or execution.
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May 6, 2020 17:41
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 The government of the Aftermath version of America is currently run by the provisional People's Congress in New York City, along with a motley bunch of holdover bureaucrats and newly installed officers. Law enforcement, especially at the state and local levels, is spotty and chaotic, and frequently corrupt if not openly sympathetic to the old regime, although the Congress is working to purge the worst offenders from government. This, of course, opens lots of opportunities for freelancers like the PCs to step in. The People's Congress is dominated by several informal factions: - All-for-Ones are Marxists, in favor of decentralization and redistribution. (Laws says that no country in this timeline adopted communism, so no one calls them “commies” or “reds.”) - Commercials are interested in reestablishing free business activity that has been held back under the Castaignes. - Guardians are in favor of strong law-and-order policies to hunt down former Castaigne criminals and prevent counterrevolutionary uprisings. - Homelords are libertarians, out to restrict governmental power. - Initiators believe that the old systems have failed, and that it's time to create a completely new form of government. - Mercantilists want to keep the economy stable by maintaining the crony-capitalist system that worked under the Castaignes. - Originalists want to return to the former Constitution to form a new government. - Renouncers seek forgiveness and reconciliation between the revolution and the old guard. Depending on the group's Goal, some factions will be natural allies for the PCs and others will be opponents – e.g., if you're trying to Start a Business, you'll find friends among the Commercials and the Homelords, who support individual economic initiative. But you'll be opposed by the Mercantilists, who don't want any upstarts competing with them. Besides the newly liberated Empire, there are two other countries sharing the space occupied by the former United States. The Castaignes never tried to conquer California for obscure reasons, so it became a semi-independent state dominated by the pro-Castaigne Richardson family for a long time. The Richardsons were overthrown as well, and California is now trying to get readmitted to the United States. Meanwhile, down south is the nation of Suanee. In 1918, under the influence of Carcosa, all white people left the Deep South and migrated to the north. Soon after, the remaining non-white inhabitants dealt with President Winthrop to establish the free nation of Suanee, stretching from South Carolina to Florida and out to Arkansas and Louisiana in the west. Since then, Suanee has become a model enlightened democracy, welcoming immigrants from all over the world as Castaigne-ruled America became more paranoid and isolated. While Suanee is pleased by the overthrow of the Castaignes, they're still not quite ready to trust the new government of the United States until things stabilize further. Suanee is mentioned briefly at the start of “The Repairer of Reputations” (“...the settlement of the new independent negro state of Suanee...”) Laws briefly mentions that Canada is still ruled by a Castaigne-installed dictatorship, but doesn't say anything about Mexico. As for the rest of the world, that will probably depend on how your The Wars game turned out. As you might guess from this discussion of factions, Aftermath wants to be as much about politics as it is about mystery and horror. The game abstracts the process of building a political coalition into the acquisition of Chit and Hit cards. As the PCs pursue their investigations and their Goal, the GM should give them the opportunity to earn Chits, representing political favors and alliances. Chits are worth a certain number of Goal Points (usually 1); for an average-length campaign (7-9 scenarios), 7 Goal Points should be enough to reach the players' Goal, but the GM can require more or less depending on how long you want to spend in Aftermath. Chits can also have various in-game benefits, such as immunity to criminal charges, extra Pushes, or bonuses when dealing with a particular faction. However, PCs can also acquire Hit cards, representing unfavorable shifts in the political landscape, loss of support, or enemy action. Hits subtract Goal Points from the party's total until they're cleared. Here's a sample of a Chit and a Hit:   Both Hits and Chits can be reskinned and tailored as necessary to match the PCs' actions and the NPCs they interact with. Next comes a brief discussion of technology in the Aftermath world -- as noted in the last post, tech is still mostly stuck in the 1980s, but the Castaignes did come up with some nasty advanced devices to enforce loyalty and empower their operatives and shock troops, such as readballs, which allow their user to track a target and read their recent memories, or tuners, knuckledusters that can turn anyone into an expert fighter. As you might guess, using these devices has potential shock costs. Following this is a chapter of People, one-paragraph sketches of various folks the PCs may meet, including leaders of the Congressional factions, other politicians and ex-insurgents, criminals, police, businesspeople, and more. The list of Foes is heavy on Carcosan monsters used by the Castaignes as enforcers, or weirder critters developed in the old regime's laboratory (including the lawn folk, a race of evil garden gnomes), as well as more mundane counterrevolutionaries and sleeper cells. The sample adventure, "Sleeping Dogs," has the PCs investigating the murder of a member of Congress, in a case that leads them to investigate his old war buddies.
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May 8, 2020 02:51
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 This Is Normal Now is the fourth book in the YKRPG set. It is different from the other books in that it's set in the perfectly ordinary modern world, and the PCs are average people. There was no Continental War, and the United States was never ruled by a Castaigne emperor. But the Yellow King's influence is still present in subtler ways. If you played Paris, the events of your campaign there also happened in This Is Normal Now, even though The Wars and Aftermath didn't (or did they?). Essentially, it's an alternate time line. Some of the Paris PCs may still be remembered as famous artists. As with the other YKRPG books, characters are created by choosing investigative kits. If you played Aftermath, then the PCs are alternate-universe versions of the Aftermath PCs – same names and appearances, but different jobs/kits. The player who took the Government Lethal Technician kit is now a small-time Hipster Drug Dealer (or Weed Dispensary Owner, if it's legal where you live). The Journalist has become a Technical Writer, the Waiter is a Barista, the Doctor is now a CPR Instructor, and the Photographer is a Graphic Designer. The Security Guard and the Marketing Coordinator keep the same jobs, though. As you might guess from these job options, the PCs in This Is Normal Now are intended to be random, average people – not soldiers, not freedom fighters, not even artists. General abilities are chosen by assigning 36 (Horror) or 40 (Occult Adventures) points to the following abilities: Athletics, Composure, Driving, Fighting, First Aid, Health, Mechanics, Preparedness, Sense Trouble, and Sneaking. As with the other YKRPG books, players choose a Drive and a Freaking Weird Moment to explain their character's interest in the supernatural. If you played Aftermath, players should also choose a Familiar Face – a NPC from Aftermath who is also present in this timeline, and what they do here. The group's patron in the People's Congress might now be head of the local HOA, for example. This Is Normal Now adds only two new investigative abilities to reflect how modern technology has advanced beyond Aftermath – Computers and Electronic Surveillance. As usual, there is also a new Challenge Table, reflecting the fact that most average people in the modern world are unsuited to combat – tolls are higher, and the difficulty to kill opponents is much stiffer. And again, there is a new table of Hazards, including While In Danger, You Discover You Have No Data or WiFi; You Get Swatted; and You Hear a Pop Tune As Something Terrible Happens. But this isn't quite the normal, modern world. At some point between Paris and This Is Normal Now, there was an “inbreak” between this world and Carcosa. Possibly it could be caused by the actions of the Paris PCs, or it could be the result of an alternate-universe version of events from The Wars or Aftermath. A This Is Normal Now campaign is usually about discovering what caused the inbreak, and how it can be stopped. The most visible effect of the inbreak is the fact that Carcosan monsters, known as rampagers, kill approximately 15 people per 100,000 every year, or about 50,000 people in the US alone. Except it's not all that visible, because almost nobody is paying attention. Most people are vaguely aware of rampager deaths, but it doesn't really mean anything to them – it's just a statistic. To help keep things fuzzy, rampager attacks are referred to as “safety-related incidents” (SRIs) in news broadcasts and government reports. Like so: “Two people were killed in a safety-related incident near the Wheaton Mall today. Police responded quickly to prevent further loss of life, and police sources say this was an isolated occurrence. Now here's Bob with the weather...” As Laws notes, this is totally not an analogy for anything. (And just a reminder, this was written two years ago.) So why don't people notice? An entire industry has sprung up around “reintegration” – helping people disturbed by encounters with rampagers and other Carcosan influences to recover and return to their normal lives. People can learn to repress horrifying memories through reintegration techniques, sometimes self-guided and sometimes with the assistance of doctors, psychologists, and/or drugs (legal and otherwise). Forcing someone to discuss things they've erased through reintegration causes them extreme discomfort and is considered rude – the phrase “respect my reintegration” is a warning to back off. Actually breaking reintegration to the point where someone re-accesses their repressed memories can cause them major psychological trauma, possibly even seizures or strokes. When the rampagers first arrived, the government tried to exterminate them – but this only caused an increase in rampager attacks, aimed at police, military, and other first responders. Rampagers are not particularly intelligent, but they instinctively retaliate against humans who harm their kind. Authorities quickly learned that the harder they fought against the rampagers, the more people the rampagers killed, and when they pulled back, the number of deaths decreased. At some point, it just became easier to accept a baseline number of deaths. Because of the psychological stresses of cleaning up after, and hiding the evidence of, SRIs, most cops, medical examiners, EMTs, and similar functionaries have become passively indifferent. (This is a solution to the frequent horror-game question of “Why don't the PCs just get the police?” Here, the police will shrug, give you a form to fill out, and do nothing.) SRIs usually happen only during night or overcast days, since rampagers won't go out in bright sunlight. Like wild animals, rampagers generally won't attack humans unless provoked – but you never know what might provoke them, and sometimes people are just stupid. The government attempts to manage rampager killings by establishing “feeding stations” in out-of-the-way places where animal carcasses are piled up, in hopes that rampagers will be drawn to easy food rather than hunting people.
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May 8, 2020 22:18
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That Old Tree posted:Anyone say "Sigmarks" yet? Sigmoleons.  After this campaign premise, This Is Normal Now describes of various interesting groups in the setting. Among them: - Abzynth is the biggest name in the reintegration industry, publishing books and videos, giving seminars and training courses, and manufacturing “pharmasocial” drugs that help maintain reintegration. - Blackstar is a paramilitary corporation that gets called in when rampagers threaten national security, which they usually handle by wiping out the rampagers and then leaving the local citizens to deal with the inevitable retaliation. - The Center for Incident Control is the government agency that monitors rampagers and other Carcosan influences, and does nothing to actually control them. - The Strategic Allocation Association is a federal lobby that opposes any attempt to spend more on investigating SRI or Carcosa. - The Temple of Hali is a New Age-slash-Scientology cult (based in California, natch) that originated with the founder allegedly meeting The King in Yellow, and promises inner peace and prosperity to anyone willing to follow its teachings. - /yel/ is the sub-you-know-what of a certain popular message board, dedicated to discussing Carcosa-related content, and/or trolling and harassing people who actually believe in Carcosa. The “Foes” section includes various types of rampager, as well as other Carcosan entities that have traveled to this world as part of the inbreak and humans who have been affected by Carcosan emanations. I particularly like the stan, shown here:   Also included is a “People” section with one-paragraph thumbnail sketches of various people who may be useful in your game, as victims, witnesses, patrons, or opponents. The book finishes off with some general guidelines on running the YKRPG games, including: - possible aspects of the Yellow King, his daughters, and Carcosa that might affect your games - further tips on running investigations and narrating fights - guidelines for creating your own shock and injury cards - how to tie the four campaigns together with recurring elements, plot lines, and references And finally, there's one more sample adventure, “Entanglement,” where the PCs attend a strange lecture and then discover they've all been invited to an even stranger Facebook group that they can't seem to leave. And that's The Yellow King Role-Playing Game. It's worth a look if you want the challenge of running games in four very different but interlocking campaigns, or you can just take one of the books and use it to run a short horror game. And if you want to play a Cthulhu-style game but you're bored with the usual squamous and rugose beasties, this game can provide a much different experience. There are currently a few supplements for YKRPG that I can't review because I haven't read them yet: - Absinthe in Carcosa is an artsy city guidebook for Paris. - Black Star Magic adds PC-facing spellcasting rules for any of the campaigns, because what Cthulhu-esque game is complete without melting your brain trying to cast spells? - The Missing and the Lost is a novel by Laws set in the Aftermath era. - You can also buy basic shock and injury card decks if you really want physical cards but can't be bothered to print your own. 
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May 12, 2020 02:15
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By popular demand posted:Mortals are so OP, they can practice in daylight. Hey, there's nothing in the rules that says a dog can't play basketball.
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May 15, 2020 16:58
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 Sentinels of the Multiverse debuted in 2011 and was successful enough to spawn multiple supplements, a wargame, and two computer games. A RPG was a natural outgrowth, and the Kickstarter that Greater Than Games ran in January 2019 funded in under an hour – possibly fueled by the involvement of Cam Banks, whose popular Cortex-based Marvel Heroic Roleplaying had been ignominously killed by Marvel several years previously. And then they blew the August 2019 deadline for PDF delivery, and the December 2019 deadline for finished books, and it started looking kinda like the last Sentinels card game supplement, OblivAeon, which was also wildly oversubscribed, repeatedly delayed, and, when it came out, an overdesigned, unplayable mess. Well, GTG has finally gotten their poo poo together enough to produce a Sentinels Comics RPG book. This review is based on the (547-MB, un-bookmarked) Early Access PDF sent out to KS backers. The book is bright and colorful, with lots of art from Sentinels art maven Adam Rebottaro and comic-strip style rules explanations showing a GM and players interacting. Maybe I'm just old, but I find it overly busy to read, and I think it could have done with a tad fewer fonts and colors. SCRPG starts out with a discussion of how to play action scenes, and it should be clear right away that this game has a lot of MHR and Fate in its DNA, with a dash of Apocalypse. Here's a look at the character sheet for Legacy, the Supergirl/Captain America stand-in from the Sentinels universe:  Heroes are defined by Powers, Qualities (skills and talents), and Status (a measure of your health and the tension of the situation), plus Abilities, which allow the hero to vary the effects of their die rolls. Like MHR, SCRPG uses popcorn initiative – once you finish your turn, you pick who goes next from among those who haven't gone yet this round – and dice pools to resolve actions. But unlike MHR, where a dice pool could grow to quite a handful, SCRPG only uses a pool of three dice – one from your Powers, one from your Qualities, and one from your Status. Let's say we're at the start of a fight, and Legacy wants to punch out a bad guy – nothing fancy, just a quick right cross. She'd pick up a d8 for Strength, a d10 for Close Combat, and a d10 because she's still in Green status. (If you don't have an applicable Power or Quality for your action, you roll a d4 in their place instead.) Once you roll the dice, you arrange them according to the result. The lowest die is called your Min die, the highest is the Max die, and the middle die is, unsurprisingly, the Mid die. For most basic actions, it's the Mid die that's the effect die, determining the result of the action. So, going back to Legacy rolling 2d10+d8 for her punch, if she gets results of 2, 4, and 7, the Mid die is 4 and she does 4 damage. This is an Attack, which is one of the basic actions available to SCRPG characters. Note that there are no “to hit” rolls in this game – you just roll your Attack and do your damage. The other actions are: * Overcome, which allows you to solve a problem that can't be solved by punching/energy-blasting it. Roll and compare your effect die to this table:  (This is where the Apocalypse comparison comes in -- "success, but at a cost" is the most likely result unless you have really good dice or a bunch of Boost mods.) * Boost and Hinder, which allow you to create a mod (a bonus or penalty) that's applied to someone's effect die. Boosts can be something like “Found a weak point” or “All fired up,” while Hinders might be “Off balance,” “Psychically dazed,” or “Tangled in webbing.” If you're familiar with MHR, these are basically Assets and Complications, except number bonuses instead of extra dice. Mods can be removed with a successful Overcome, or by creating an opposing mod to cancel them out. Depending on your effect die, a mod can be rated from 1 to 4. Most mods are only good for a single roll, but some abilities can create persistent mods that last till the end of the scene. Mods can also be exclusive; only one exclusive mod can be used on a roll at a time. * Defend allows you to reduce the damage of the next Attack against you by your effect die. *.Recover allows you to regain Health, or restore an ally's Health. This is only available if you have an ability that explicitly lets you do a Recover action. The basic actions can be modified by each hero's abilities. For example, Hinder usually affects only one target, but Legacy's Sideswipe ability allows her to do a Hinder against multiple targets, although she only gets her Min die as the effect die instead of Mid. The other way to modify a basic action is by making it a risky action. This can include hitting an extra target, using your Max die instead of Mid as the effect on an Attack, using the Min die to create a Hinder mod as well as doing Mid damage on an Attack, having an in-gameworld effect like knocking your target away, or similar effects. Doing a risky action means having to take a minor twist. That leads us to twists; you may have noticed the Overcome table mentions minor and major twists as well. These represent success at a cost. Minor twists are small setbacks that usually don't last beyond the end of the scene: for example, reducing a power or quality by one die size, losing (Mid die) worth of Health, acquiring a (Max die)-size Hinder, having to make a difficult choice, having to reveal a secret, or simply not succeeding completely. Major twists include persistent Hinders, heavy damage, losing access to a power or quality entirely, drawing a new squad of minions to the fight, or having to make a major sacrifice, and so on, and last for an entire issue (adventure) or possibly even longer, if appropriate to the story. Besides the list of potential twists, each hero has two Principles that can be used to suggest minor and major twists. For example, Legacy has the Principle of the Hero, which is about being called to heroism at the possible expense of having a normal life. So a minor twist for her might have to be dealing with a phone call from a friend in the middle of a fight, and a major twist might be having to choose between going to an important interview or stopping a villain.
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May 16, 2020 15:40
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 Looking back at Legacy's character sheet, you may notice that abilities are arranged by color, the weaker ones at top in green and the more powerful ones at the bottom in red. Normally, when a fight starts, a hero can only use the green abilities on their sheet. So how do you unlock higher status abilities? Two ways. One, losing Health. Look at Legacy's sheet and you'll see that her Health is divided into three bands. When she falls to 24 Health, she's in Yellow status – her status die drops to a d8, but she can use her Yellow abilities. When she gets to 11 Health, she's in the Red and can unleash her Red abilities. At 0 Health, she's Out, and can only use the Out ability at the bottom of her sheet. SCRPG calls this the GYRO system (green/yellow/red/out). Not every hero gets smaller status dice as they lose Health, by the way – some heroes, like Time-Slinger, are steady and use the same status die no matter what color they're at, and others, like Tachyon, actually get bigger status dice as they drop in Health to reflect that they get better when their backs are to the wall. (Tachyon gets only a d6 status die when she's in the Green, and d12 when she's in the Red!) The other way is the Scene Tracker. Every action scene has a Scene Tracker like this:  Once everyone has taken a turn, the GM marks off a space on the Scene Tracker, from left to right. Villains can also make an Overcome action to advance the Tracker, but only once per scene, and the Tracker can also be advanced as the result of a twist. When the Scene Tracker gets to the yellow portion, everyone is considered to be in Yellow status even if their Health is still Green; likewise for Red. If the GM marks off every space in the Scene Tracker, the scene ends with failure for the heroes: the bomb goes off, the villains escape with the loot, the volcano erupts. The Scene Tracker is a useful tool for GM pacing, since you can make things tenser by speeding up how fast the status reaches Yellow/Red, or shortening the Tracker to put a tighter time limit on the players. As for opposition, baddies come in three flavors. Minions are represented by a single die, which they roll for everything – the die result is their effect, without using the Min/Mid/Max system. If a hero hits a minion, the minion rolls a damage save, rolling its die against the amount of damage done. If it doesn't match or beat the damage, it's taken out of the fight; otherwise, its die size drops by one, until it's at a d4, where it remains until it fails a damage save. Lieutenants get only one die as well, which they use for everything. They also roll damage saves when they get hit; on a success, nothing happens, and on a failure, they drop one die size. Lieutenants are also immediately taken out if they get hit with double or more their die's maximum result – e.g, 12 damage to a d6 lieutenant. Villains, on the other hand, have a full sheet with Health, powers and qualities, and abilities, as well as status dice. Villain status dice aren't necessarily based on the GYRO system; they can also be based on specific criteria. Baron Blade, for instance, gets bigger status dice as he activates his gadgets (by creating Boost/Hinder mods); Proletariat gets weaker, with lower status dice, the more clones of himself he creates; Dragonclaw gets more dangerous when she's engaged with multiple opponents at once. While having only one die for minions and lieutenants keeps things simple, it also -- at least in my experience -- can make them a bit more dangerous than minions in most other games, especially since attacks never miss. Remember, Legacy has 32 Health, which is on the high side (Health ranges from 17 to 40 for heroes), but if she runs into a group of four of Baron Blade's bionic troopers (d10 minions) and they focus fire on her, they can potentially knock her out in a single round. It's generally better not to have the minions just attack one target; spread their fire out or have some of them work on creating mods instead. Character advancement is handled in two ways. Characters can earn up to five Hero Points per issue (adventure) – one point for everyone in the team if a character uses one of their Principles to make an Overcome action, and one point for characters who take part in a social scene. Between issues, these points can be traded for one-time bonuses that can be applied to any roll going forward, so if you had five points, you could trade them for five +1 bonuses, a +3 and a +2, etc. Characters also earn a Collection for every six issues they play through. A Collection can be invoked once per session to alter die results, establish a fact in the gameworld, or avoid having to take a minor twist. Outside of action scenes, SCRPG follows MHR's lead in being mostly freeform role-playing. During a montage scene, you can heal up to the next highest health zone from what you're currently at (e.g, if you were beaten down to Red, you can heal up to Yellow), help another PC heal another zone of Health, or make a Boost roll to gain a mod for the next action scene by doing detective work, developing a gadget to use against the opposition, etc. Players can also choose to engage in social scenes, where they just talk and interact. Doing a social scene earns the participants a Hero Point each, although it has to be a scene that's genuinely meaningful and reflects the characters' relationship, as opposed to “Hey, nice weather we're having.” It's up to the GM to ensure that everyone gets a chance to do social scenes, rather than letting the amateur dramatics types hog the spotlight. Selachian fucked around with this message at 03:56 on May 17, 2020 |
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May 17, 2020 03:51
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mellonbread posted:I don’t want to do this anymore. I'm done with this area. I’ve got thirty pools here and most of them just kill you. Some of them give you a permanent disfiguring injury, and a few give you money or a special power. But overall they just suck. They would be cool if they were distributed across a more interesting dungeon area, with tricks and traps and creatures and so on, that used the pools’ contents in interesting ways. Instead they’re just all together in a room with all these mushrooms that cast fear on you whenever you go close, until you burn them all. A bit late, but I'd like to note that the "room full of pools that do weird stuff" is swiped straight from the original module B1, In Search of the Unknown. But that module's implementation is much less gently caress-you: there are only two pools that could kill you and/or maim you permanently, and it's blatantly obvious that they're dangerous.
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Jul 28, 2020 01:40
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kommy5 posted:While on this digression, I don't suppose anyone might recommend military sci-fi that is not... fascist adjacent? I absolutely adore the Lost Fleet series by Jack Campbell. I don't suppose you know anything like that? Military sci-fi that actually likes liberalism, democracy, and/or humanism? You might want to look through the "MilSF That Doesn't Suck" tab of James Davis Nicoll's review site -- there are some quite good books there.
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Apr 21, 2021 15:27
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Mors Rattus posted:Wait, hold up, why is there an npc named for Gore Vidal? Maybe he's named for Count Gore de Vol.
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Apr 29, 2021 15:18
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GimpInBlack posted:Seriously, there is so much poo poo in early aviation that makes you simultaneously say "okay, yeah, that is an honestly ingenious solution to this problem given the technological limitations you were working under" and also "oh god what what the gently caress" Heh. I was wondering if the game included any planes featuring the Gallaudet Drive, where the propeller was put in the middle of the fuselage instead of the front: 
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May 14, 2021 19:37
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I just realized that this is a reuse of the art from the legendary wizard-killing housecats in 1E's Monster Manual II.
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Jul 28, 2021 05:29
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Wapole Languray posted:
Maybe because Through the Looking Glass is set on a chessboard, with the terrain Alice moves through divided into squares?
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Sep 27, 2021 19:15
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 The Dueling Fops of Vindamere is a short (44-page), GM-less, player-versus-player RPG by Greg Stolze, in which players take the roles of sleazy, dissipated, conniving aristocrats in a fantasy city. Each player's main character is the head of a fencing school and strives to outdo the others socially, romantically, and on the dueling fields, producing a game that’s very much like Bridgerton, Dangerous Liaisons, and Cobra Kai run through a blender, with a little Fritz Leiber on top. Characters have four statistics: Foppish, Duelist, Serious, and Aristocrat. The attributes are divided into two pairs -- Foppish and Serious and Duelist and Aristocrat -- each of which must always total 10. If your Foppish is 4, your Serious is 6, and if an event makes you lose a point of Foppish, then your Serious also goes up to 7. You determine your character's Foppish and Duelist ratings at the start of the game by rolling a d6+2 for each one. Besides being used to do things, the ratings also double as hit points; if you go to 10/0 in either pair, your fop is eliminated from the game. For instance, if you’re pushed to Foppish 10/Serious 0, you drink yourself to death; if you go to Aristocrat 10/Duelist 0, you give up all this dueling nonsense to focus on your duties to your family. The fop with the highest starting Duelist rating runs the most famous school and owns Ye Baron’s Clayemorre, the trophy for winning the annual Ye Alle-Valley Fencinge Championeshippe. The rest of you get to grumble about how they bribed the judges and won with a clearly illegal maneuver. Your fop also starts with two Beloveds, minor characters who are important to them. Your Beloveds are determined by a chart roll, and can range from Scorned Lover to Badass Granny to Hot-Headed Student to Goofy-Faced Failson. You play the part of your Beloveds in scenes they’re involved in, and a big part of the game is trying to steal other players’ Beloveds. Your Beloveds start out neutral to everyone but you, but can become Infatuated with other characters. An Infatuated Beloved who gets Infatuated again becomes Devoted. The original player loses control of them and they are transferred to the player they’re Devoted to ... where they can once again become Infatuated/Devoted and swiped by someone else. A fop who has no Beloveds left is out of the game, because what’s the point of carrying on if you have no one left to love you? (Infatuation and Devotion don’t necessarily have to mean romantic passion, I should note. A Beloved who’s Infatuated with you might believe you’re a superior fencing teacher, or see you as a parental figure and want to impress you, or just like you as a good buddy and drinking companion.) Task resolution is done by a d10 roll, to which you add two of your attributes, depending on what you’re trying to do (seduction or spreading scurrilous rumors about a rival: Foppish+Aristocrat; showing off your amazing sword skillz: Duelist+Foppish; trying to injure someone for real: Serious+Duelist; asserting your superiority over the lower orders: Serious+Aristocrat, and so on). A total of 15 or more is a success, and competitions are settled by opposed rolls. A game of Fops of Vindamere covers seven scenes and is intended to be playable in a single session. It is possible to end before the seventh scene if two players are eliminated before then, or if the players all agree the game has reached a satisfying conclusion. Three scenes are mandatory: the game begins at Ye Midwinter Balle, followed by two randomly determined scenes, then Ye Springe Cotillionne, two more randomly determined scenes, and finally Ye Alle-Valley Fencinge Championeshippe, which determines once and for all who's the greatest duelist in Vindamere ... for the next year at least. Each scene specifies who’s present -- at least one fop or Beloved per player, sometimes more -- and what occurs to start the scene. This is followed by a list of possible actions in response to the scene, with required rolls and consequences for success and failure. The players, going clockwise (in odd-numbered scenes) or counterclockwise (even-numbered), describe their responses and make the appropriate checks. Some scenes can be resolved with a single action from everyone, but others have multiple stages to be resolved in turn. Results can include gain or loss of stat points, changes in the affection status of Beloveds, or more serious consequences like the death of a Beloved. Once everyone has played the scene through to the end, the group moves on to the next one. Besides the three mandatory scenes, the game includes twelve random scenes to fill out the session, including the inevitable tavern brawl, a romantic triangle, a locked-room murder mystery, a peasant revolt, an ugly breakup, and more. Since you only use four per game, there’s decent replay value there. The game finishes up with a five-page appendix on important locations in Vindamere, in particular spots frequently used for dueling. Selachian fucked around with this message at 01:23 on Oct 7, 2021 |
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Oct 7, 2021 01:16
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Tibalt posted:I'm a little confused. So your Beloveds are randomly generated, and the Scenes are randomly ordered and set up. Each scene specifies how many characters (instructors or Beloveds) are involved and sometimes gives guidelines on picking a character, but the selection is usually up to the player. Even if you have multiple characters in a scene, they won't be in the same action at the same time, so you just play the part of whoever's currently involved in what's going on.
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Oct 9, 2021 02:13
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FMguru posted:Don't forget Chivalry & Sorcery (SCA nerds rewrite D&D) and Bunnies & Burroughs (Watership Down with the serial numbers filed off), both of which are important early RPGs. Plus my favorite FGU product, Starships and Spacemen -- a thinly disguised Star Trek four years before the officially licensed Trek RPG.
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Nov 1, 2021 21:32
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Siivola posted:Huh, thanks, that certainly looks like a cool set. I did a review of Spectaculars starting back here. I'm not 100% sold on the system, but even if you don't use the game itself, it's a hell of a resource for superhero game ideas. The MHR team was working on an Annihilation book that would have included the Guardians among other space teams, but Marvel yanked the license and as far as I know it was never published. I remember the old DC Heroes RPG had some material based on the Legion, too. Halloween Jack posted:The only game I know of that specifically sets the PCs up to change the world beyond the historical status quo is Wild Talents: Progenitor. I still want to review it, but it's at the end of a long list. I recently picked up Galaxies in Peril, a supers game based on the Forged in the Dark system, and it does give the PCs the ability to change the world through "shake-up" missions. It's an interesting concept, although I'm not sure FitD and supers really go together. Selachian fucked around with this message at 20:25 on Jan 17, 2022 |
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Jan 17, 2022 20:20
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Wheeljack posted:Classic TORG had your Possibilities act as both a dramatic meta-currency and experience points for improving abilities (Which is never a good idea). Pulp powers had a cost of Possibilities per adventure to keep them around, don't pay it and they're lost forever. This naturally kept pulp heroes from advancing very much. How about the issue of disconnection? In old Torg, one bad disconnection roll could break your cool stuff, which was punitive for characters who depended on high-tech gear.
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Feb 13, 2022 07:41
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Sliding in to vote for Strike Force, if it's not too late.
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Feb 20, 2022 15:34
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I actually ran a short Indiana Jones campaign with the Masterbook rules, and it wasn't bad. Of course, it was the 90s and we didn't know any better back then. My group also tried Shatterzone for a little while. Unfortunately, the GM (not me) didn't give us enough guidance as to what he was planning in the campaign, and we ended up creating completely incompatible characters -- an alien lawyer, a spaceship engineer, and a cyberpunk goon. The game, unsurprisingly, fell apart after a few sessions.
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Jun 16, 2022 20:21
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Asterite34 posted:Indiana Jones! Speaking of that!  Broken Compass is a game by the Italian design studio Two Little Mice. It’s about taking the part of a treasure-seeking adventurer in the mold of Indiana Jones, Nathan Drake, Lara Croft, and their ilk. You’ll travel the globe seeking clues, getting into and out of trouble, and clashing with rivals who are after the same treasure. The basic rulebook for BC is the Adventurer’s Journal, available in PDF or as a snazzy pseudoleather-bound pocket notebook. A bit over half the book is rules; the remainder is advice to the GM (or, rather, Fortune Master) on adventure and campaign design, variant rules, an introductory adventure, and a guide to setting adventures in the nostalgic, far-off era of – hack, cough, cough – 1999. Supplements are available to cover other adventurous eras, including Golden Age (1930s pulp), Voyages Extraordinaires (Jules Verne-inspired Victoriana), Jolly Roger (arr matey), and What If, a collection of variant campaign ideas, including a cartoon animal hack for those of you who want to run TaleSpin. Character generation is fast and simple, with ease of pick-up-and-play a priority. After writing down your character’s name, home (including heritage, homeland, and workplace), and Words to Live By (a short quote that summarizes your character’s outlook), you choose two Tags from the following list: Action Hero, Cheater, Daredevil, Explorer, Gunslinger, Hunk, Hunter, Medic, Pilot, Playboy/Femme Fatale, Professor, Rebel, Reporter, Soldier, Spy, Techie, Thief, and Wingman/woman. Broken Compass eschews ability scores. Instead, characters are defined by ratings in six Fields – Action, Guts, Knowledge, Society, Wild, and Crime – each of which has three associated Skills. A starting character has two dice (of a possible three) in each Field and one die (again, of three) in each Skill, so characters are broadly competent even at the base level. Each Tag gives you one more die in a particular Field and one more die in each of eight Skills. A Tag also gives a single Expertise, which reflects a specific area where you’re particularly skilled. Examples of Expertise include Military, Heights, Strength, Espionage, and, of course, Archaeology. Once you’ve chosen your Tags, you can customize your character by adding a third Expertise of your choice, and add two more dice to any Skill(s) you want. You can also choose the same Tag twice, which makes you a True example of that tag; e.g., a True Gunslinger. Doing this means you get one fewer Expertise, but you start with an extra Luck Coin (about which more later) to make up for it. Finally, you can also choose to be Old or Young. A Young adventurer doesn’t get a third Expertise, but you get a permanent Good Feeling (also, about which more later). An Old adventurer gets an extra Expertise and one Experience or Scar, but also gets a permanent Bad Feeling. After these details, you can choose three pieces of Gear to have with you, like a rope, a pistol, or a camera. Inventory management is fairly simple; you can store things in your Pockets, Bag, or Backpack, depending on their size and how accessible/secure you want them to be. So, that's all there is to character generation: pick two Tags, assign a couple of dice and an Expertise, and you're ready to go. The character generation chapter also includes tables so you can roll a character at random if inspiration isn’t striking.
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Jun 25, 2022 23:25
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By popular demand posted:But that also depends on how much simulation you intend to offload on the players: Reminds me of that infamous bit from grogs.txt where the DM sneered at the idea of professional adventurers and adventure hooks -- he expected his players to figure out on their own that the best way to make money would be to price various goods and deduce that it would be most profitable to buy and sell mustard.
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Dec 15, 2022 17:09
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Asterite34 posted:If I remember right, Murlynd was, like a lot of the gods and important NPCs of Greyhawk, based on one of the regular players in Gygax's home campaign whose character was just a straight up gun toting cowboy. That was Don Kaye, who cofounded TSR with Gygax. Apparently he was a Western buff. disposablewords posted:]Also, artificers automatically having firearm proficiency is a 5e thing, and only if the firearms actually exist in your setting. (If it's a 4e thing as well, I'm not personally aware.) I don't believe 4E ever had official firearms rules, although ENWorld's Zeitgeist adventure path included some. 4E artificers just used regular weapons (crossbows were a popular choice IIRC).
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Dec 23, 2022 06:21
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Animal instinct barbarians can still get magic item bonuses from Handwraps of Mighty Blows. And getting weapon traits while unarmed is pretty good for maneuver specialists -- if you want to be a wrestling barbarian, for instance, you want one of the animals that has a Grapple trait, like deer, snake, or ape. Yeah, they don't do as much damage right away as Giant or Fury barbarians, but they're not THAT far behind and they do catch up -- at level 7 a deer or frog barbarian will have a d12 attack with reach. Regarding Giant barbarians: PF2 does not keep the "bigger weapon = bigger damage die" rule from PF1. Giant barbarians do get more bonus damage than other barbs, but they pay for it with lower AC and less accuracy. Oh, and Quaking Stomp? You can do it every 10 minutes. A caster isn't going to be able to whip out an earthquake every single encounter unless the DM is really generous with rests. Selachian fucked around with this message at 15:59 on Feb 7, 2023 |
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Feb 7, 2023 15:55
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Yeah, the PF2 team could have used another pass on naming stuff. My favorite example is from weapon traits, which use both Fatal and Deadly -- Deadly weapons add extra dice when you crit, while Fatal weapons increase the damage die size when you crit. Try keeping that straight in your head. As a 4E veteran, I tend to think of focus spells as a way to sneak in encounter powers without setting off the anti-4E alarm. Except instead of having a bunch of different encounter powers that are usable only once per encounter, you have a pool of points you can spend reusing the same spell if you want.
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Feb 10, 2023 17:00
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There was also another variant 1E bard that appeared in Dragon #56, and was frankly much better than the 2E version. This is the one my group used back in the day.
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Feb 11, 2023 19:09
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srhall79 posted:I'd feel safe making a bet that the paladin became the Champion in PF2 because a vocal portion of the design staff wasn't having Non-LG paladins, no way no how. During the playtest, there was a certain very loud and active poster on the Paizo boards denouncing the idea of the name "paladin" being used for anything other than the traditional LG paladin.
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Feb 14, 2023 17:00
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Tsilkani posted:A god I can believe in. In PF1, there was a specific fighting style for followers of Cayden Cailean that involved a rapier in one hand and a tankard of beer in the other. I don't know if you can replicate that in 2E yet, but I'm sure it's coming eventually.
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Feb 20, 2023 16:17
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Siivola posted:The deal isn’t the point, developing a last-second scruple and refusing to kill the one named villain is. Avengers for example ends with Loki being imprisoned after all his space alien mooks get shot. Captain Marvel shoots a bunch of space fighters and then spares that one guy. Luke throws away his lightsaber. The Punisher season finales are probably the weirdest cases because they’re so thick with unpacked ideology. It's pretty common in pulp fiction. Doc Savage, for instance, has a code against killing, but almost all his main enemies end up dead anyway, either through hubris, accident, their own flunkies turning on them, or whatever.
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Mar 19, 2023 16:09
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It's a very 90s game design thing that you have to have a skill system that covers every possible field of human (or vampiric) endeavor, regardless of whether or not those skills will ever come up in the typical game. Which is why you end up with a vampire game that includes skills like Artillery, Mathematics, Orienteering, and Meteorology. Half those skills are just there to put on your sheet to say something about your character -- that they're a mathematical genius or a talented potter or whatever. You're not expected to USE them. For all the deserved poo poo 3E D&D gets, cutting down 2E's massive list of nonweapon proficiencies to a small set of skills that the typical D&D adventurer would regularly use was a revolutionary move in 2000. And even then, some cruft like Rope Use and Innuendo managed to sneak in.
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May 26, 2023 16:30
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Silver2195 posted:Didn't somebody write up a conversion of the Eberron setting to Pathfinder 2e? Yeah, you can find it here.
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Jul 25, 2023 21:51
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Libertad! posted:Based on my quick Googling, Resh can be used in a Hebrew phrase to mean "lie," which is rather on point for the Antichrist. I also noted that his "chief propagandist" is named Mendax, as in mendacious. A bit on the nose.
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Aug 3, 2023 01:41
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The Chantry building rules seem inspired by the similar rules in Ars Magica. The spring/summer/fall/winter classification is straight from Ars as well.
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Aug 14, 2023 16:22
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Yusin posted:Marvel Multiverse RPG This was something I didn't like from the playtest: if I'm playing Spidey, do I have to remember the differences between, and the rules for, Webcasting, Webtrapping, Webslinging, and Webgrabbing? And I'm still not sure what Rank adds to the game other than making it very difficult for Thor and Iron Man to team up with Black Widow. And the description of Rank as your character's area of influence doesn't hold up: Nick Fury is a Rank 2 character even though he has worldwide responsibilities, for instance.
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Sep 5, 2023 15:31
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Dawgstar posted:This was apparently a mandate from West End Games with regards to the movie characters. WEG would send stuff in for approval and get copious notes back on needing to increase skills, ones even the characters shouldn't have like Han being an expert droid mechanic despite not liking droids or having one on his ship. It's not just Star Wars. I have West End's DC Universe game (which used the same d6 system), and if you're playing at the Batman level, it's impossible to create a starting character who's even half as capable as Robin.
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Sep 9, 2023 19:18
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Yusin posted:Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse I don't have my books on hand right now, but I'm pretty sure that back in 2E, the Lady would kill you on the spot if you tried to start anything with her. I'm not sure what the point of changing it to "reduced to 1 HP" is. Yeah, unbeatable insta-kill NPCs kind of suck (hello Caine), but the Lady's different in that she's not a tool for the DM to bully PCs with; she's more of a background detail to explain why the gods stay out of Sigil and shouldn't be interacting with the PCs much, if at all.
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Oct 26, 2023 16:17
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Mirage posted:Yes, I'm from Bozom. Bozom in Hydrogenia? Sounds sort of ... inflated. srhall79 posted:That's not the cover of my book (which, like all my AD&D 1st edition books, was my dad's, handed down). Long, long ago, like probably before 2nd edition dropped, the pages of my Unearthed Arcanca decided to try living without the cover. Now, my Dungeon Master's Guide was lost (or stolen), but another I acquired is in fine shape with the original cover. The Player's Handbook is doing fine. The Monster Manual lost its spine, but the book stayed together. I've long suspected that the crisis of cashflow contributed to the Unearthed Arcana getting a substandard binding. You're probably right, Unearthed Arcana is infamous for binding that falls apart if you look at it funny. My copy lost its spine pretty quickly although the covers are still attached.
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Nov 15, 2023 03:50
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By popular demand posted:Didn't Gloriantha lean heavily into the elves as manifestations of nature? Glorantha elves (Aldryami) are plant people rather than pretty humans with pointy ears.
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Nov 19, 2023 15:42
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