Nessus posted:

It doesn't seem like you would need to change the Promethean rules themselves to set things in the classic World of Darkness, you would just flavor the relevant entities appropriately.

JcDent posted:

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.

Mors Rattus posted:

Generally, when Promethean starts to talk about buildings getting mad at you it means the building is on fire, and fire is possibly raining from the sky.

e: also come on how y'all not loving THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE, he's the goofiest motherfucker

Night10194 posted:

I'm gonna need more detail on this.

Night10194 posted:

The books genuinely do a good job of showing you a whole bunch of places where the aelfir can actually get kicked in the dick and you can make real progress, both because of their own craziness and because they're sort of complacent from ruling the Spire completely for so long. The bit with how the Paladins hate the big life extending liche thing is one of many.

And the cyber-tech-ish section is in Strata; drow biotech is one of the new avenues for getting crazy powers. I also agree that I'd like more on the gnolls; you get enough on humans to work with them, but not really enough on the gnolls.

Ronwayne posted:

Moonwolf posted:

The loyalty spell is for Magisters, not Ministers, which makes it somewhat less bonkers, since they're the cell handlers rather than cell members, and much more of a turning hazard.

JcDent posted:

The only downside to Severe Mind Fallout killing your char is that the GM has to choose it, making it possible for a grudge to arise, as player can feel hosed by the DM.

I'm generally not opposed to corruption mechanics or w/e to be a way for a char to buy it outside of combat, they only have to be done right.

Also, hype for comrades.

Night10194 posted:

Yeah, for me, it's specifically that the Mind version of becoming a traitor is 'you become a traitor who hates everyone you used to work with' rather than the Silver/Shadow ones where someone gets you over a barrel and turns you, and now you have the choice of coming clean to protect your allies (and get shot in the head) or desperately trying to play double agent or thread the needle as everything goes to poo poo around you. It's more that the wording dictates your reaction/what happens, while the others are more 'some really bad poo poo has gone down, you're over a barrel, what do you do now?' But I think that's more just word choice than the actual nature of it.

In general, Severe Fallout is 'this is either going to be a major climax, or a point where if you decide to keep playing as who you are things are going to go badly while if you give up your PC, you probably get one last cool scene before you're on to your next PC'. You might get through a Severe Fallout. It's possible. It's not going to be nice.

JcDent posted:

If I ever make a game *cue 5 minutes of laughter that turns both wheezing and desperate*, I'm stealing the tracks.

Also, I think I understand why Mind traitor doesn't give you a choice: nobody has you over the barrel but you, as you have finally reached the point where your doubts over what you're doing have gone and turned into utter disgust for the rebellion. So it's only you doing it to yourself. In which case, you can shoot yourself or turn traitor (or run away, which is boring and not that suspenseful).

PurpleXVI posted:

Also in part incredibly stupid because Evil Wizard Inc. has big ol' super-visible clubhouses and no one's cottoned on to the idea of burning them down. Like, you'd think that part of being a Good Wizard(tm) would be not tolerating the guy one lab over turning peasants into clams or whatever.

Night10194 posted:

Spire and Black Magic and Strata

Post 11: Spark Your Own Revolution

So part of the reason I feel comfortable writing up the entire base resolution mechanic of Spire (aside from being able to do it in like one paragraph) is that the authors have done the same. https://rowanrookanddecard.com/product/the-resistance-toolbox/ is where you can pick up the Resistance SRD and hacking guide (It's pay as you wish). You have no idea how helpful it is to just have a concise, clearly written document where the writers of a game lay out 'Hey, here's why we did the things we did mechanically, and here are some guidelines if you want to make your own stuff'. Now I like trying to figure out the logic behind RPG design (or if there is any) but let me tell you, it's a lot easier to do when the writers just tell you.

PurpleXVI posted:

I gotta be honest, while I don't enjoy using level-draining undead, especially with no access to Restoration or similar spells, I actually think there's probably a good reason there beyond "lol Gygax was a prick," or at least a better one than that.

I mean, even if you don't agree with the end result, most stuff in 1E and 2E D&D actually have a reason behind them that implies that a rational human being thought about them. Like, take racial level limits. Seem like a lovely idea, probably most people houseruled them out, but they're actually there as an answer to "lol why isn't the world just full of level 20 elves everywhere since they live forever?????" which is kind of a legit question if you have a species with a much-longer-than-human lifespan. Why aren't they dominating the world? They even address, at least in the 2E AD&D DMG, that you might want to remove it, they just suggest that you consider what kind of world it might result in, compared to the default one.

Snorb posted:

Wait a minute. Wait a drat minute.

Xak Tsaroth? The Disks of Miskahal? Was Dragons of Despair responsible for that lovely NES Dungeons & Dragons game?!

Seatox posted:

Wait, so Paladine is actively killing off his own worshipers through negligence and monkeycheese antics?

Robindaybird posted:

What is it about the tech industry that attracts this kind of ridiculous culty nonsense?

Tibalt posted:

Right down to the twist ending where he finds out that magic didn't make him special either.

I Am Just a Box posted:

I understand the idea, I just don't... agree? When viewed as a game element this makes a very poor and very uninteresting metaphor for addiction. The euphoric rush of crack that people destroy themselves for is here represented by a brief mention in the text that you feel real good and euphoric, and now you're addicted. It's very tell-don't-show. It doesn't engage with how we actually play the game, and it falls victim to the tendency of the reader to consider the emphasis to be on whatever receives the most word count, thus inadvertantly telling the reader that the antinomian rush is much less important than all of these ways antinomian sorcery can mess with Paradoxes and what Abyssal Mage Sight does and what forms the Elder Diadem can take.

It conveys very poorly to a reader used to reading game books that this is supposed to be something people do because it feels good even though it destroys them. The way it is written unintentionally suggests instead that it is supposed to be a tempting path to forbidden power, which of course it then fails at being.

Jerik posted:

Heck, at least two 2E Ravenloft adventures actually required all the PCs to die during the course of the adventure.

Obviously, they didn't stay dead... in one case, they were brought back as intelligent flesh golems, and in the other they became assorted varieties of undead. And in both cases they eventually had a chance to return to their former, living state. But still.

Overall I have a great deal of fondness for the Ravenloft setting, but it had its issues, and major railroading in many of its adventures was one of them. The PC deaths may have been particularly egregious examples, but they weren't necessarily all that far from par for the course.

Jerik posted:

The two adventures I was referring to were Adam's Wrath (flesh golems) and Requiem (undead). Both adventures explicitly mandate that there has to be a TPK; all of the PCs have to be killed for the adventure to progress. Hour of the Knife doesn't go quite that far... it does suggest that any PCs left alone with a doppelganger are automatically killed, and has a section for what happens if all the PCs are killed—but that doesn't have to happen, and in fact if the PCs stick together it's possible (if unlikely) to complete the adventure with no fatalities. Same for The Created (the one with the evil puppets)—while it does have an eventuality for what happens if all the PCs are defeated by the puppets, it also says that this doesn't have to happen and that the adventure still works if the PCs win the fight. But I'll give you Thoughts of Darkness. I admit I'd never read it all the way through, but glancing over it now... yep, you're right; it also has a mandatory TPK. So that's at least three.

Edit: Make that at least four! I forgot From the Shadows, where the PCs all get decapitated and then brought back by Azalin as disembodied heads. Yeah, Ravenloft was pretty bad about this...

CitizenKeen posted:

Was there an apiarist in Spire?

wiegieman posted:

Hams feels like it's very much a victim of a time when RPG writing was niche enough to have some real weirdos.

Ratoslov posted:

The funny thing is, their counter example of a round-heeled attourney is probably way more mechanically powerful than the Navy SEAL they're contrasting them with. Like, an attourney is absolutely gonna have a ton of useful contacts, resources, and skills for finding horrible poo poo, talking to people, getting information, and possibly even getting the cops to handle the situation instead of them. The ex-SEAL is liable to spend like 95% of every session in the party van sitting on his hands if he knows what's good for him.

LazyAngel posted:

Zereth posted:

I think in the minds of the people doing these adventures, the somewhere that "you actually succeed/get paid" exists is "playing D&D instead".

Loxbourne posted:

I kicked around an idea for a Rogue Trader campaign where the players lost their ship to mutiny but stumbled across a wrecked grand cruiser (most powerful ship class in the game, but can have dodgy demon-attracting engines), with the idea being that now they have to get their prize out of the mud and home with a skeleton crew and whatever they can scavenge.

The problems I ran into were that RT considers crew population to basically be another hitpoint track, and the penalties in ship combat for having a skeleton crew either rendered the party totally useless or did nothing at all, meaning the party might as well just flip a coin each session to decide if they had a working superpowered spaceship or not.

What I am saying is that this is a good premise but one that FFG's game engine cannot handle very well.

Proud Rat Mom posted:

I don't think 40k is really gun porn heavy, I only ever here their names when someone is describing them during a battle report for profiles, or the bolter which is pretty iconic.

Cythereal posted:

Having an in-setting reason why the women-dominated army is psychotic and stupid doesn't help. Because oh isn't it a shame that we've established that it's fluffy and in-character for all those women to act dumb am i rite fellas.

Drakyn posted:

If nothing else, making the fascist space catholics more egalitarian and appealing seems to be solving one problem (the product is misogynistic, both obliviously and willfully) at the expense of making the fascist space catholics more relatable and empathetic protagonists, which is ALSO a problem (the product says 'the catholic space fascists are bad guys don't root for them' but virtually every story is about some group of them and their arch-enemies are all portrayed as worse).

Terrible Opinions posted:

I don't think that is fair to the audience. The source material had especially in the mid 2010s explicitly moved to siding with the imperium.

Cythereal posted:

That's the biggest reason why I've stopped spending money on 40k. I still follow it on the internet some, but I grew disillusioned hard with supporting fantasy and sci-fi fascism four or five years ago. The setting's treatment and portrayal is another reason why I dislike it now, but the fascism bit is the big thing.

Everyone posted:

From my perspective, reasoned, non-rear end in a top hat choices do exist in that situation. Support the Empire then overthrow it and replace it with something better. Support the Imperium to throw back the Orks, Dark Elder, Chaos, etc., and then work to overthrow it and replace it with something not run by psychotic, facist fanatics. Be loving proactive and agenda driven. If the game universe gives you three, awful choices, create choice number four.

Night10194 posted:

I saw some of the 'halflings are now Kender' type stuff in the extra article their team posted on halflings, and I can't say that's the direction I'd go with them.

Everyone posted:

I'm giving my take as though I were playing a character in 40K. If my GM said, "Okay, we're gonna do 40K," the characters I played would be revolutionaries-in-waiting. But I don't play it because what little I do know about it has left me utterly uninterested in it. Between 40K and that stupid Nazi Pony game up-thread, I'd rather play a Nazi Pony because at least then I wouldn't have to even pretend to take that bullshit seriously.

GimpInBlack posted:

...Oh poo poo that might not only solve the Stress system, it might solve a lot of the problems with Chaos. I like Slaanesh as "the God of violation of your sense of self" a lot better than "slut-shaming hedonism bot."

Selachian posted:

As mentioned in the last post, getting in a fight usually requires you to pay a Toll in general ability points if you win. If you lose, however, you'll be taking injury cards. Each enemy has a major and minor injury card listed in its description. There is also an extensive list of Hazards, which require the player to roll a test, usually Athletics or Health for physical Hazards, or Composure for mental hazards, to avoid having to take an Injury (physical) or shock (mental/emotional) card. Failing a Hazard test by 1 gives you a minor injury/shock card, and failing by 2 or more gives you a major card. Laws warns against setting up situations where the player gets a minor injury on success and a major injury on failure -- even having one card can be a big deal.

Selachian posted:

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.