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Ladies and gentlemen, I regret to inform you that the Euros are at it again: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dracostudios/eldritchcenturycorebook/description    It's like they took a look at the more... colorful choices in world-building in Infinity and Degenesis, and said "hold my cerveza"
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Sep 10, 2019 15:09
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All this talk of orbs as money and child slavery that made them makes presidential candidate Marriane Williamson very angry.Razakai posted:SPHERES OF MIGHT: Part 3 That's it, I want to play Pathfinder now. Meow to power! quote:Shrapnel instead lets you target an unattended object to create a cone of damaging shrapnel that inflicts battered. The damage scaling isn't bad, making this a decent AoE option, and scales based on the hardness of the material - so if you have a handy steel door around you can rack up some damage. This suffers the Barroom problem of actually needing a supply of items to do so though. Breach&clear with one action! That room full of orcs won't know what hit them. JcDent fucked around with this message at 05:24 on Sep 11, 2019 |
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Sep 11, 2019 05:05
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Would it be OK to ask for a brief overview of Important Promethean Terms And Enemy Types/Groups or should I just gently caress off and wiki it?Deptfordx posted:RPG Fantasy guns always seem ridiculously over-costed. Early arquebuses were quite cheap, and the more complicated wheelocks and flintlocks still weren't that pricey. That's probably because most people don't understand guns. Arquebus is the same as a modern pistol: you shoot a person, he dies, no armor can save him. Meanwhile, a bow can get stuck in a dude or be stuck in armor. It's not how it was historically (iirc, the real heavy plate was there so you could no sell arquebus shots) or realistically, and it also ignored stuff like reload rates, accuracy (or lack thereof) or the fun of keeping a match lit, or the need to have it braced or
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Sep 12, 2019 20:26
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Why nuke Giza? What reason did the book give? It seems like good fun. Lassiter, eh? And not of the Killmatic kind? I don't like it. StratGoatCom posted:Man, I bet SA was great on Pre-Fall Earth - I can imagine the biohacking disaster mock thread where folks went to laugh at proto-Exhumans (before they became genuinely dangerous) - I bet some Exhuman-hunter crows still cite the posts on Abandoned Weakness or others as useful data on their early projects - or the Photo Chop Shop thread in The Skin Bin, or whatever. Or at least, it would have been funny until some idiot Basilisk hacked GBS or YOSPOS. The Real Pod People probably had some rave sleeve reviews
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Sep 14, 2019 20:05
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Jerik posted:Well, I guess it's possible they knew what mycelium was and intentionally wrote about making weapons and airships out of threads of fungal tissue, but considering how little sense that makes yes, I really think it's more likely that they didn't realize it was already a word. Maybe you're right and they used the word with full knowledge of its meaning, but that might actually be worse. There was probably very little thought put into writing it, besides making every faction use explicitly different tech and magic, as if you were making RTS factions.
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Sep 15, 2019 08:55
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At what level do I get Swim Through Gold feat to McDuck my way through my riches?
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Sep 15, 2019 18:46
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Mors Rattus posted:They were created first by a man named Ismael Hawker and originated solely from America and Canada in the '30s, made by dehydrating a corpse and anointing it with dust, then putting a drop of water on the lips. This raised them as a Promethean of endless hunger and thurst, both spiritual and physical. Wizards: no sense of right or wrong
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Sep 16, 2019 08:57
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How do you get non Promethean petris?
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Sep 16, 2019 15:27
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Oooh, right. The grey (flesh) goo.
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Sep 16, 2019 15:32
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Mors Rattus posted:More an extremely unaggressive zombie apocalypse, but yes. By the way, how do you safely extract Vitriol from these Promethean Ford Pintos?
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Sep 16, 2019 17:44
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Mors Rattus posted:One century from your creation. A Promethean doesn't age, but has one hundred years to complete the Pilgrimage or they just die. The century timer gets reset if they die and return to life. And how hard is that? So far we have what, one or two who Petrified themselves and the rest are just corpses animated by Petris? So as far as a Promethean is concerned, those are just temporarily ambulatory Vitriol pinyadas?
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Sep 16, 2019 19:27
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I HAVE STUDIED ALL THE LORE OF DIVINE FIRE I HAVE HARNESSED THE MEMORIES IN AZOTH BEHOLD, MY ULTIMATE CREATION ZAP A pile of books start chasing the creator around Methinks he must have cooked his credentials somewhat, because that is some hilariously catastrophic failure.
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Sep 17, 2019 16:31
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Mors Rattus posted:Hm. Tossup between Skybreaker, a high-power ochemata from Mage and a high-power Pangaean. Why not go with "too powerful for intended purpose?" That's kinda the description of broken. quote:So it's kind of unfortunate that all the endings in Gehenna had Caine mythos and literally every weird myth vampires told about the early generations be completely accurate!
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Sep 18, 2019 13:18
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I like ZrkZrk's portrait in the WW Wikia, but it's not that sfw to put here.
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Sep 20, 2019 13:41
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I may get to get down to writing up Degenesis char creation tomorrow. It's a long loving section.
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Sep 20, 2019 19:46
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You know, you learn of VtM from Bloodlines, and it feels tidy! 8-ish clans of variable weirdness and the Tzimitche as weirdo outcasts, ghouls and thinbloods, and oh, what this, a Chinese vampire? Then you read about the RPG and suddenly, there's clans upon clans... By the way, is nuVamp so dead and boring that nobody ever talks about them?
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Sep 20, 2019 21:01
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I thought they did away with Clans in nWoD, and you're like, a Christian fundie vampire, a "we want to be Dracula" vampire... TBH, I know very little about nVamp.
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Sep 21, 2019 06:55
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Chapter 6: Character Creation Degenesis Rebirth Katharsys Chapter 6: Character Creation  Protagonists Before you dive into generating your character, you should sit down with your GM to answer a few questions about the campaign. So I'm guessing we're getting the exact opposite of WFRP 4e's “420-roll-it” approach. What will be the game's topic? I guess this answers the “what are the players supposed to do in this setting” question. This step is probably discussed will all of the players. That way, you narrow the campaign’s focus the gently caress down: where the game will take place (Europe, Africa, both?), will the characters do much traveling, how much fighting is to be expected, etc.. You know, just because you have a giant sprawling setting doesn't mean you can't run your campaign in a single city. I wish more people got that.  You'd think they'd have more dignified surroundings for this. There's also the question of genre: quote:Psychonauts embody horror. Crime stories develop in places where the human condition holds sway. When Cults collide and the power structure threatens to give under the pressure, we have a thriller. When the Sleepers or Pollen’s weird Fractal Forests come into play, we have arrived at mystery. Do the players want to portray normal people in the harsh daily routine of Degenesis? Or do they want to become heroes—or criminals? While you can argue how much horror is there in fighting Psychonauts, it's the part I bolded that's weird for me: if you're a member of a Cult, you're already something other than the “normal people” of the setting (except for maybe Clanners). There's really no common-commoner class. Anyway, this is also the step where the GM writes down the player's wishes and makes a schedule, which is a list of character goals, I guess? It says that the schedule will change with the game and it doesn't have to be more than a sketch at this point. Why this group? A Spitalian, an Apocalyptic, a Jehammedan and an Anabaptist walk in the bar. Why aren't they killing each other? That's where you determine why the group is together. The four suggestions here is being related, being friends, being in the same trouble together, or just being mercs. Who plays whom? This bit is about avoiding crippling yourself by making a party of four engineers with no social or combat skills. Most Cults can cover several roles. Here's the checklist for a good party: Two Damage Dealers They punch poo poo: Hellvetics, Judges, Scourges, Anabaptists, Jehammedans and Clanners. It notes that Spitalian Preservists get good at ranged in the late game, but I doubt that's something a starting party has to take into account. At Least One Support Buff your dudes or weaken enemies from range: Spitalians and Chroniclers. Spy or Assassin Rogue: Palers, Scrappers and Apocalyptics. Considering what jerks two of those Cults are... Healer Healer: Spitalian, but an Anabaptist Elysian or Anubian can do. Seeing how only Spitalians are strongly recommended, this almost feels like niche/waifu protection. Silvertongue Face: Neilibyans, Judges and Apocalyptics. So Judges. Spark of Life A very strange side-section which says that the players should now know how their team is supposed to work... but that they should also read the rules before continuing with the char creation. Special Skills Remember when the Skill section first mentioned that Primal and Focus as well as Faith and Willpower are mutually exclusive? Primal and Focus Primal means you're driven by feelings, Focus – that you like to tell people how rational you are. (INS+Primal or INS+ Focus)*2 determines your ego points, which are like fate points? I guess? Your pool can lowered by social and mental attacks, and you get demoralized if it reaches 0 (we'll find out what that means in the Combat section). The influence is mostly roleplaying, says the book, but it also impacts access to Attributes and Skills. We're advised to flip 71 pages ahead to find out what that actually means. Faith and Willpower INS+Faith or INS+Willpower is your mental defense. That's it, lol.  The virgin Spitalian vs. the chad Anabaptist Character Generation Overview This is a side section! 1. CHOOSE CULTURE, CONCEPT AND CULT This is when you note down skill and attributes 2. SPEND POINTS You can spend 10 points on Attributes and 28 on skills. The “max” is 2, but your Culture, Concept and Cult can raise those by +1 each (so I guess you can walk out with max 5 in an Attribute or Skill) 3. SPEND POINTS ON BACKGROUNDS You have 4 points and 6 backgrounds to choose from; no going over 3 in a trait. 4. DETERMINE RANK Remember when I was confused as to what a char is supposed to do as a 16yo newbie Chronicler? This bit solves that. You climb ranks in a Cult until your stats are not enough to qualify for the next. This awards you gear and stuff. I'm sure this won't lead to terrible balance issues down the line. 5. CHOOSE POTENTIAL You get a level in a Culture/Clan Potential. No idea what that is. 6. FINISHING TOUCHES Pasting Mr. Proper as the character portrait for you Spitalian. Anyways, back to the main-section land, where the above details are expanded upon. The Character Sheet It's explained that every player needs a character sheet and that's where you write down your character's stats. It's highly unlikely that Degenesis is your first RPG, so I doubt the utility of this bit. The Human Note down name, age, sex, height, weight; none of it matters mechanically (we'll see if that holds true when we get to the more... interesting Jehammedan ranks). Attributes and Skills Same as mentioned in the side section. Attributes all start at 1 already, so you spend those 10 points however you want; however, the max is still set at 2, so you best hope your Cult, Culture and Concept will give you enough of a ceiling to allow you to spend all the points. But yes, when any of the CCCs give you an Attribute or Skill bonus, that's just a bonus of how high you can raise them. So essentially, you spend your points after you choose Culture and such. Could have worded that better, book. Culture Here's where you choose your culture (region) and get your bonuses. quote:Some combos of Culture and Cult are uncommon, but not impossible; not all Cults are present in every Culture. In the list, you will find the Cults commonly encountered in the respective Cultures. A Character does not have to adhere to this, but an African Jehammedan needs a drat good explanation. I'd say a Pollner Scourger would be a harder concept to pull off, but that's just me. What follows is a table of Cultures and their associated Common Cults, Attribute Bonus and Skill Bonus. Here's Africa (an obscure micronation):  Interesting bits: Apocalyptics, Scrappers and Clanners can be found everywhere. The African Cults are also present in Hybrispania. Palers are limited to Balkans and Hybrispania. Concepts The part about Concepts is a bit insane, since we have paragraph or more on each of the 22 Concepts (based on Apocalyptic tarot). Mechanically, you get the Skill/Attribute bonuses that Concept gives as well as +2D to an Action once per day when acting according to your concept. This seems too small a thing to waste that much space on. Personality Patterns This side-section explains that Concepts basically exist as a scientific thing in the world of Degenesis. They emerged from a Chronicler big data surveillance project that compared their sensor data to whatever leftovers of Stream they had at hand. quote:Over 100 years ago, data sets of alleged personality patterns activated a cascade of 22 symbols. Every pattern related to exactly one symbol. A Chronicler’s dream became reality. The Stream had revealed to them that humans were classifiable into 22 groups! How much easier could it get? The Stream reactions died down after minutes, but from this point on, the symbols were rooted in the Chroniclers’ minds. Years later, Chroniclers saw the same symbols on the cards of the Apocalyptic tarot. They were identical, and they were 22 again. They were definitely onto something very big here. Chroniclers are really too excited about rediscovering Meyers-Briggs (all of them are INTJ, btw). Back to the main sections, the 22 Concepts and descriptions follow. How do y'all want me to do it? I don't want to c/p the entire thing! Next time: So, my character concept is “a good Apocalyptic” and
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Sep 23, 2019 08:40
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Nessus posted:Are the 22 personality types the major arcana of the tarot? Haha, no. It's Shitbird tarot, remember? We do have a Hermit, though! E: For funsies, here's how tarot and Apocalyptic tarot/Character Concepts look like (going by the numbered list on Wikipedia). 1. The Magician - The Creator 5. The Hierophant - The Seeker 7. The Chariot - The Traditionalist 9. The Hermit - The Hermit 17. The Star - The Visionary 21. The World - The Traveller JcDent fucked around with this message at 11:37 on Sep 23, 2019 |
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Sep 23, 2019 11:33
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Wapole Languray posted:-Action Points ala XCOM in D&D. BRB, rolling Sense Intent to find out whether this cat is friendly or not with regards to how many AP I have to spend to pet it. Why am I petting a cat mid-combat? Why wouldn't I be? Wapole Languray posted:-Chance for weapons to break when used. Jesus Christ, I didn't think that weapon durability could get more dogshit than papier-mâché swords in Oblivion, YET HERE WE ARE
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Sep 24, 2019 12:14
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KirbyKhan posted:Been reading these Diongenesis write-ups for a litteral year and we've gotten to character creation and mechanics. On one hand, I could have covered the rules before the setting. On the other hand, I was more interested in the setting and the book and chapter layout strongly incentivizes getting through all the setting BS first. Mors Rattus posted:Night Horrors: The Tormented Refinement of Metal Gear Solid: Soldier Genes and Warrior Azoth. Paging doctor LatwPIAT, doctor LatwPIAT to the thread. You may need to fire up another PbP RPG.
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Sep 24, 2019 13:50
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Mors Rattus posted:To be fair, you can get multiple dots of Azoth per Promethean if you try. Ye, a single Promethian is a person with great powers that may not want to cooperate and follow your orders to the letter. Instead, you can carve him up to make 5-6 (how do Promethians deal with loss of limbs/Azoth? Can you have a freaky farm for harvesting Azoth from Promethians) utterly loyal subjects who are five hours in Pavlov VR away from being your perfect strike team. Also, unlike Promethians, they don't generate Disquiet and cause Wastelands. You probably don't know about those, and you're probably an rear end in a top hat in the first place. I mean, if you knew about Centimani and Petrificati enough to carve them up for parts, you could already be an Alchemist. And sure, Alchemists can create Promethians, but it's hard, requires specialized knowledge and materials (instead of a Promethian foot, a tub of Draino and the toalnail clippings of your cute neighbor), and those fuckers have free will. JcDent fucked around with this message at 14:28 on Sep 24, 2019 |
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Sep 24, 2019 14:25
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Dawgstar posted:At the time, Forsaken certainly felt like a downgrade. From 'the Earth is dying and you must rage to save it' to 'you're the neighborhood watch but for spirits.' I'm one of those "read the 1e and never looked again" people. Specifically, it was about having just read a bunch of oMage fluff (including Technocracy poo poo, which seemed way cool) and going to read nMage's hippy bullshit (caves? Ladders? Atlantis?) turned me the gently caress off.
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Sep 24, 2019 16:27
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DAD LOST MY IPOD posted:one thing that’s always been a bit off putting to me about oWoD AND nWoD is the incredible amount of proper nouns. I know you can’t run a game without naming some basic concepts, but Promethean really struck me as the apotheosis (perhaps Apotheosis?) of this runaway idea: you have a Lineage which has a dominant Humour and Element and grants you Bestowments, and a Refinement which grants you Transmutations according to Role and Alembic, all of which are fueled by Azoth, which can also cause Wastelands, Disquiet, Torment and even Firestorms. In addition to accumulating Azoth to live you try to generate Vitriol to make an Athanor. You must beware of Flux, which leads to Pandorans, separated into different Mockeries and sometimes becoming Sublimati or Praecipati... Thanks, I feel the same way. But I also want to run/be a part of a game where you're Promethean mercs fighting clooones and other mercs. You change refinements to try new roles in your unit.
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Sep 24, 2019 16:43
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Having read the WW wiki, I must say that yeah , having oVamp clan names (but only some) in nVamp doesn't help. Other than that, heck yeah, I'd be a Catholic vampire.
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Sep 24, 2019 16:59
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So, ugh, what happens when you ensure "they don't leave a ghost behind?" Also, how do Sin-Eaters know that the Underworld is bad and not just functioning-as-intended? How much can they do to change what are probably it's physics? Btw, what kind of stuff benefits are Prometheans left with after they New Dawn? Can they then become a Hunter? How powerful would they be when compared to lvl 1 Hunter? Kind of a bum deal than making clones into Prometheans or New Dawning deletes your memory.
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Sep 24, 2019 20:12
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Night10194 posted:It's a good ending for the PC. It's fine for a character's story to end with 'and they got what they most dearly desired and then lived a decent life where being near them no longer pissed people off.' What if they New Dawn into a Chud or a liberatarian?
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Sep 25, 2019 11:06
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PoontifexMacksimus posted:Unfortunately they would probably assume you were looking for a brothel... Suuure, "unfortunately"...
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Sep 25, 2019 12:58
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8e Kill Team is an obviously better effort than 7e KT was (since it was basically a no effort release), but I still don't like it - and I pre-ordered the book. The charge mechanic was borked, the campaign resources don't matter (aside from "are you still in it to win, or have you been demoted to griefing"), only a few dudes can level up, there's really no gear upgrade mechanic and the team composition on launch was... questionable (hello, Imperial Guard). But it has received a billion of expansions at this point, so maybe it's a better game at this point. Shadow War: Armageddon had a terrible name and only barely more effort than 7e KT put into it (you buy a Necron team. They have no gear upgrades. Have fun), but I enjoyed my time with it a lot more. All in all, I think Battle Companies for LotR is the best of these skirmish rulesets that GW has put out for the better games. Well, that's my bitching done, let's how the FnF goes.
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Sep 25, 2019 14:44
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Cheeki breeki intensifies.
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Sep 25, 2019 16:09
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Mors Rattus posted:Clara has spent years crafting her Cover to be exactly what it appears. Those that knew the real Clara back in high school, though, are confused about how she could have changed so much. She has stolen bits and pieces of other lives to add on to her original soul pact, and if examined too closely, the entire thing could fall apart. It'd take something like, oh, intense and widespread scrutiny of her life... Wait, wot's a soul pact? How do fallen demons construct their cover anyways?
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Sep 26, 2019 19:46
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The Lone Badger posted:And excellent for the person they're buying from too. That murder you've been trying to cover up for the last 30 years? Never happened. I wondet how convincing a demon must be to be able to buy abstract concepts like that. Or are people just humoring a weirdo and then suddenly finding out that its all true?
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Sep 27, 2019 07:05
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The Lone Badger posted:And once you've concluded one pact with them, preferably one that offered them a lot for very little, you're in an excellent position to start buying other things. How do you replenish your supply of "a lot"? Anyways, love the XXVc write-up, it feels inspiring and fun. Unlike Eclipse Phase. The stormriders is a great name and a great visual!
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Sep 27, 2019 08:36
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Night10194 posted:There are a lot of people who never, ever internalized that no gaming is better than bad gaming. Thank you, Warhammer 40K, for drilling that lesson into me.
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Oct 1, 2019 19:16
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What would a Sin-Eater think of what happens to a person that a Demon soul swaps? Yeah, yeah, I know, TOOLBOX APPROACH, but maybe WW has considered thay at some point. (And I don't know if any other splat would be that soul-concerned)
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Oct 1, 2019 19:53
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Thanks, I was wondering how everyone was talking about mechanics of soul pacts without mentioning that it's the most horrible thing. I guess it was made that way so that players would have some incentive to build Covers instead of soul-pacting everyone.
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Oct 1, 2019 20:10
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God-Machine keeps the Mercers going, Musk popular and Zucherberg rich (and plausibly humanesque). That's why you want to gently caress it up. Why do these writeups keep mentioning firearm ability or, like, Wednesday's spear skill? When is that ever going to come up? Like, I got that using human weaponry against Woofs is pointless, but it doesn't seem like demons are less robust or in need of a 9mm boost to their terrible warforms.
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Oct 2, 2019 19:51
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The GM doesn't have to be behind every human vice; it's just adaptable (for an overgrown Pentium I) and when it sees a good (read: bad) thing going, it latches onto it. Like how it created the assless wonder to influence TV, as TV is a great way to influence people/do infrastructure. On an unrelated matter, I find the bolded part hilarious: Ms. Morgue posted:In her true form, she is roughly humanoid and vaguely resembles whatever identity she's wearing. She glows, buzzing like a flourescent bulb, and floats just over the ground. She wears a white robe with circuit patterning, and her open chest cavity holds a moving gear assemblage. Her feet are copper and discharge electricty when she speaks. Her eyes are filled with static, and have neither iris nor pupil. Two fist-sized silver spheres float behind her, each with a pair of owl wings. You know why? Because Ms. Morgue, who looks hella human, is only "roughly humanoid" while some of the earlier fellows have been really stretching the definition: quote:In her demonic form, Ms. Thermal is about two stories tall, appearing as a dark, crystalline humanoid whose head and torso end in points. She has neither arms nor legs, and her shape is more bird than human. Arcs of electricity connect her body to at least three sets of wings, which merge and split with each other irregularly. One set, feathered, keeps her flying. Another, of bone, shields her core. A third, of brass, functions as manipulator appendages. A mass of clouded ephemera floats beneath her crystal body, like a semi-real shadow. No legs, no arms, pointy head and torso, six pairs of wings... humanoid!
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Oct 3, 2019 07:23
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Back to the gun question - since it's always a gun question with me - so how effective it is to blast an angel in a Cover with a facefull of buckshot? Wouldn't it just Soak/Willpower/Angel shenanigans it away? Do they become weaker when they are in Cover? Also, how much do angels care about maintaining it? Can't they just GO LOUD and have Ms. Morgue deal with what happened?
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Oct 3, 2019 11:48
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MJ12 posted:The balance factor to Demons is that they are ludicrously powerful just because of the massive grab-bag of things that make them terrorists from hell they get for free and the extreme power of Exploits, but they need to parcel out Exploits and Demonic Form use carefully to avoid being hunted, because the God Machine can build things that can take you down, and there's a lot of those and only one of you. Ergo, Demons gain a lot of benefits from being extremely good at using perfectly mundane means to solve violence problems. So, it's perfectly viable to a fallen angel that was created to operate 1000 avatarless MAGA twitter accounts who solves its problems via IEDs?
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Oct 3, 2019 14:55
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