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Ultiville posted:I’ve long since discarded my books for it so I can’t check, but my strong recollection is that 3/3.5 did this too. At least in part because spells weren’t consistently the same level for different types of casters (like a spell might be level 3 for a wizard and 4 for a bard or whatever). I’ve never played or read the 5e books so I dunno if they kept that part but it seems pretty likely to me that they kept that order because 3/3.5 did it. Yup, and also 2e had definitely done it the other way - sort the spell section by caster type and level, instead of alphabetically. I'm going to say that, having dealt with both, alphabetical order is vastly superior for me. It's way easier to look up a spell just by name instead of having to find what level it is before searching for it if you don't happen to know that out of hand. There's a lot of needing to do that outside character creation or leveling-up, such as for magic items or monster abilities that don't necessarily get sorted by level.
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Oct 21, 2021 16:13
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Daemons are pretty much extensions of the gods, aren't they? So Khorne's legions fighting constantly technically are Khorne himself, fighting constantly. Just that there's also Khorne, the general and king presiding over it all from his throne.
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Nov 11, 2021 23:40
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PurpleXVI posted:I'm starting a new review tomorrow, concurrently with starting my Betrayal In Antara LP, and I just had to tell you guys about it because it's a game loving named Spellpunk Cyberfight: Dark Time of Galaxy: Centermost Loredex. Holy poo poo that name. Inject this game straight into my brain, gonna get good and hosed up on that whether it's great or terrible.
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Dec 17, 2021 00:52
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I think I've got a contact high from that.
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Dec 17, 2021 05:58
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There is a ridiculously huge "preview" on the game's DriveThru page (like 300-some pages of a 460 page PDF, though with SAMPLE FILE stamped across every page), but I would actually advise against checking it out yet lest it ruin the journey of discovery we're on here. Still, I mostly bring this up because I think Purple shouldn't feel too bad about the powerful urge to quote since so much of it is just right there in the ginormous preview.
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Dec 17, 2021 17:52
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CitizenKeen posted:I hope the author is made aware there's a demand for a PoD option. I am one of the some people who want that, not the not some. It's been requested a couple times in the DriveThru comments at least, and the author has responded to at least some other comments in those so he's probably aware.
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Dec 20, 2021 22:48
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Hipster Occultist posted:One of my favorite little details is that Ariadna (the faction I play in the miniature game) has the universe's last Coca Cola bottling plant. Look, they saw the opportunity for a new, "I'd like to buy the worlds a Coke," ad campaign and took it.
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Dec 27, 2021 16:20
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Tsilkani posted:This sounds like thinking machine talk. No, no, I swear, I'm just an rear end in a top hat Mentat!
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Mar 24, 2022 22:36
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FMguru posted:LOL at Jamis being rated lower in combat than the gnarled old houseservant Shadout Mapes. It turns out in Dune, love is the most powerful force in the universe, and this is frequently a problem. It's kind of not well-written on that particular point though, yeah.
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Mar 28, 2022 18:54
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Went back over the relevant sections of the book and its glossary (text search, the great convenience of an ebook edition), and there's... an interpretation I can see made, as it's mentioned that Yueh was made to actually witness his wife's torture, and that his conditioning was not broken but "bent." As well, the mechanism of the Suk conditioning as mentioned in the glossary involves some kind of association of the act of taking a life with the "pyretic conscience," which is implied to be a level of personal inhibition so solid that to try to push a person past theirs causes them pain. (Think of the means by which a ghola's memories might be restored, later in the series.) Yueh also evaluates himself as weak in the narration, though admittedly at his lowest moment... So anyway. The interpretation I can see is that Yueh was put in that intellectually bullshit but empathetically terrifying moral quandary of a monstrous person torturing your friend or loved one to make you talk, and in an undeniably personal manner since he was there to witness it. "It'll stop if you just give me what I want," kind of thing. If Yueh could be convinced to believe that his resistance to helping the Baron was causing harm to his wife Wanna, then he would be ramming himself face-first into his conditioning. Create a mental loophole that allowed him to engage in his betrayal to square that quandary with the Suk conditioning. The biggest actual break with his conditioning, in what he does, is when Yueh stabs Mapes - otherwise he does very little personal violence that he can't rationalize away. It's probably not an opportunity that would actually come up too often because of how jealously a royal house like the Atreides should be guarding even their personal staff and where that staff comes from. But most of Duke Leto's personal staff had been liberated from the Harkonnens one way or another - Gurney came from the Harkonnen slave pits, Duncan escaped Giedi Prime, and it was known Yueh and his wife were their victims too. Part of the point being that Leto was a good man who could also capitalize on opportunities, taking in skilled people who have personal hatred for his main rival. But in an empire with all kinds of deep, extreme conditioning programs, that was a terrible risk as well that came back to bite him along with his other mistakes.
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Mar 28, 2022 20:41
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Admiralty Flag posted:I hope I'm not backseat modding by saying this, but I'd love for this conversation to continue, and we have a Dune thread, which is officially a no failson zone -- only the six original books (and encyclopedia references, and movies/Syfy series) are blessed content: Fair enough. I was wondering if I was pushing it too far off-topic, honestly. Also, quote:I thought Wanna being BG was explicit in the book. It's canon in the game -- she's one of the BG leaders. It is text in the book that she was. Yueh uses some knowledge of BG capabilities, learned from her, to better deceive Jessica.
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Mar 28, 2022 21:13
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The blaspheming Ixians
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Mar 29, 2022 17:25
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Pvt.Scott posted:Tell me of your homebrew, Usul. "Well I took this from Chapterhouse: Dune, and..." "No, no... this is... this is too much." EDIT: Alternatively, "Dare you walk my Golden Path?"
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Apr 22, 2022 21:51
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"Superman but completely emotionally detached and going through the motions" can be and has been fertile ground for some interesting stuff, especially in the ways such a person becomes increasingly callous about the collateral damage. Going at things like a blunt instrument until something finally literally blows up in their (and everyone else's) face because he couldn't be bothered to stop and think about the situation for even a moment. But that book already exists, and this ain't it.
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Apr 26, 2022 05:03
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PurpleXVI posted:But are there mechanics for being returned as a Ghola for the 200th time? "I know, I'll just change the U to a Y by adding a little tail and... there, my new character Dyncan Idaho."
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Jun 7, 2022 15:17
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Eventually one just has to accept that some things are going to be "translated" for the reader because otherwise we end up with even more of a horrifying bolus of specialized setting jargon keeping us away from ready understanding.
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Jun 14, 2022 21:04
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FMguru posted:There is some evidence that the ownership of WEG had set it up to be an intentionally money-losing endeavor as part of a plan to balance out tax liabilities in other parts of the owner's business portfolio. That... that sounds like a wild, weird story in full detail. Please, do you have an article or something to hand, going into it further?
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Jun 15, 2022 20:29
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Loxbourne posted:....why does the kit include a live chicken? Egg shells have purportedly been used as casings for improvised grenades, so the chicken replenishes your supply while out adventuring. (Poke something sharp through both ends, stir up the insides a bit, then blow it out before packing something in.) It's also possible that you could make some fantasy alchemy excuse to extract useful materials from their poop or the eggs. Not that I would want to carry around a chicken in a case like that, or expect one to stay there if not forced. But it's an amusing image.
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Jun 17, 2022 23:00
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mellonbread posted:Actually, what happens if you use your shield on Arrakis and a berserk worm eats you? Do you die of overheating? Suffocation? Do the auger bits slowly grind you to pieces, moving below the speed at which the shield could deflect? If you wriggle fast enough do you jam the worm's internal ring segments, like the shark in James and the Giant Peach? As I recall, a worm is described as having incredibly hot internal processes compared to blast furnaces, so probably overheating and suffocation both even if the shield manages to guard you against the physical forces.
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Jun 28, 2022 00:25
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Artillery was almost certainly obsoleted by vehicle and building-scale shields more than personal shields for individual soldiers anyway, as well as by kanly becoming conventional practice. Dropping a shell on a formation would probably gently caress with them even if it didn't hurt them through their shields, but war in the Imperium seems to involve more in the way of sudden brutal strikes with relatively small units instead of stand-up fights between formal armies. That perception's certainly colored by how war is presented specifically in the books and not necessarily reflective of more "orderly" places outside Arrakis, but the emphasis on wars of assassins and reducing collateral damage still points that way for me.
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Jun 28, 2022 17:50
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Otherkinsey Scale posted:I really do want to hear the logic behind "civil libertarians" being on this list. Probably because pot. The description makes me think of the Robert Anton Wilson types.
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Jul 11, 2022 04:15
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Otherkinsey Scale posted:"Because pot" is what I thought, but that'd really make them more Cultist of Ecstasy types. From what I hear how they get better developed later in the line, RA Wilson probably would fit more readily in CoE, but apparently how they're presented here as basically being just the hedonism stereotype, it doesn't really match. My recollection of RA Wilson's stuff is a bit spotty now, but he was emblematic of a certain crossover in left-libertarian and more... mystical, New Agey thought, for lack of a better term. I recall in one book (I think Cosmic Trigger I) he talks about a drug experience that included a vision of a Green Man figure, among other things that jibe pretty comfortably with eclectic Wiccan thought as much as anything else. (RAW proclaimed himself to be an "agnostic mystic" and that he tried to be what he called a "model skeptic," taking little at face value but also not immediately dismissing the strange out of hand just because it didn't have a ready explanation.) He's very much in the countercultural vein that oMage was obviously trying to tap and if they had to shuffle him along somewhere, seems like he'd fit 1e Verbena better than 1e CoE.
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Jul 11, 2022 05:08
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Also timing. Transhumanism itself was cresting a nerd peak around the time it came out, in the wake of stuff like Altered Carbon and Accelerando, futurists like Kurzweil and Yudkowsky were going strong. Transhumanism was really hot and sexy among nerds at the time, not that it's really subsided that much in the past decade. I also had a bunch of transgender acquaintances and some friends at the time who were into it for reasons I absolutely cannot disagree with. Plus I recall a lot of people really into it - and honestly what I read of the text itself - pretty happily elided the "horror" part of "transhuman horror" that the game claimed to be about, and solely engaged with being a robo-crab in a hollowed-out spinning rock. Pretending the "rep economy" wasn't itself a terrifying idea and instead would naturally reward people who did the boring necessary stuff because of course you'd talk up the person who's making sure the sewer lines aren't flooding the habitable areas of your rock.
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Aug 3, 2022 19:43
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joylessdivision posted:The Garou are absolutely the biggest, angriest morons to ever grace the face of Gaia and by god I love the big dumb fuckers It's a beautiful formula. Every step is, "We hosed this up, but what if the solution was to gently caress up even harder?" Eventually they'll have to gently caress up the right thing, yeah? Yeah?
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Aug 11, 2022 18:09
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and I don't really know why other than it's incredibly funny that they are basically the Planeteers with excessive anger issues and 99.9% of their problems can be traced back to "Some dumb poo poo we, the Garou did".
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Yusin posted:Spelljammer Adventures in Space Iiiinteresting. My GM has worked some of the new Spelljammer stuff into our ongoing campaign (we're having a diversion into the Astral and are currently caught up in a fight between an illithid ship and a pair of githyanki ships), so this is already making some of the disconnects between that stuff and what I know of old Spelljammer make more sense. It's probably for the best that they ditched the phlogiston currents for delving into the Astral, and has a stronger internal consistency.
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Aug 16, 2022 15:17
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PurpleXVI posted:I'm not sure how I feel about 5e Wildspace being set in the astral plane instead. On the one hand I realize that it unkrangles 2e's wacky-rear end cosmology some, but on the other hand it also feels janky and opposed to some of the original wildspace ideas that I liked. It sounds like it's more replacing the phlogiston, as there are still "solar systems" of Wildspace around Material worlds and then you transition into the Astral Sea when you get far enough away. It jibes pretty well with other random stuff through the history of D&D that associates the Astral with more-than-mere-planetary travel (like the Greyhawk god Celestian, whose whole deal is being the space and stars god but also likes to dwell in the Astral), plus the Astral is periodically associated with magic in general. The phlogiston was neat but just subbing in the Astral makes it more noticeably just shoved in to have something there when, yeah, the Astral (or Ethereal, as it was written in 2e) could also do the job ably.
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Aug 16, 2022 20:09
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Mors Rattus posted:…for the first time? Aasimars have been around. Seriously. The animal-head bit makes them sound specifically themed off of guardinals, the specifically-NG celestials, but it's not new ground.
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Aug 18, 2022 18:43
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I'm looking forward hopefully to the Reigar, who when the first version of Spelljammer was released, were basically a whole race of sparkly, willowy David Bowies. Something that'd get accused of pandering to the anime pretty-boy (and -girl) fans these days.
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Aug 24, 2022 01:01
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taichara posted:That's because the reigar are loosely based right off of Tenku Senki Shurato, or at least the appearance of the cast. In 2e they even each have a super special magic item that can be a vehicle or an armour or a statuette, called a shakti -- which is lifted clean out of Shurato altogether. Fair enough! I'm never going to stop thinking of them as aggressively David Bowie because that association is too entrenched in my brain now. But that's just going to turn him even more anime in my mind.
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Aug 24, 2022 17:06
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90s Cringe Rock posted:how do they get the trousers on, wizards Just like everyone else, one leg at a time.
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Aug 24, 2022 20:29
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I read the first Darksword book and got some way into the sequels, as I recall, but it seriously lost the plot for me when it went to tanks and heavily-armed soldiers from a sci-fi universe invading this fantasy world. Maybe I'd appreciate that more now, but it was enough to jar me out of the books at the time. My recollection at this point is pretty fuzzy, though. I also liked the priest character much more than the actual main character. The idea goes that everyone in this world has some kind of magical talent, but for some people their whole talent is channeling and replenishing power for others. They cannot use magical energy themselves. As a result, if you have the channeling talent you're basically forced into the priesthood and one of your main duties as a parish priest is to be a battery for your flock. Priests are the only ones who even bother wearing shoes, because everyone else just uses their power to hover instead of walk. So this priest, one of the major perspective characters, is someone who is caring and dutiful but also kind of resentful of the social order which forced him into this life. He shelters the magic-dead actual main character because even if this guy can't use magic, it's the priest's duty to care for his flock. He's a kind of character I love to play, really! A supporter, both mechanically and personally, but who's kind of cynical about the whole deal even as he's drawn to care for others. The main character, meanwhile, always felt much flatter in comparison. He's got his reasons, but he doesn't really feel like a whole person. I'm given to understand he actually develops over time, but too late for him to really hook me.
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Sep 5, 2022 18:20
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srhall79 posted:Yeah, there's a whole lot of versions, things changed, details added. As I said in the post, there are versions where the knights figure out what he's done, and try him for his crimes. Either he's banished, or maybe his loyal knights break him out, and he's basically stuck in his keep with the threat of death if found in Solamnia. I saw mention of one where his human wife does get pregnant through magic, then gives birth to a monster, maybe born dead but mutated by the magic. The elves maybe imply that his elf wife has been unfaithful. The elves might be servants of the Dark Queen. The elves might have been part of a group he rescued and he first met his elf bride among them. But here it's just that Soth is a bad dude, but he's willing, and the elves talk him down. So this is basically Sodom and Gomorrah, and Soth was just lovely Lot.
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Sep 9, 2022 05:48
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Cooked Auto posted:The moon phases reminds me of the section about planar influences in the Eberron Campaign book. A whole lotta text and bookkeeping for very negligible bonuses and advantages. Eberron, even back in 3.5, at least had the presence of mind to tell DMs to only keep to that if they actually cared, and otherwise you should just move the planes about as you feel like for the needs of your campaign. They're more important for the plot hooks than the rules changes. This sounds like unironic, "It is VERY IMPORTANT to track every day of your campaign!"
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Sep 15, 2022 22:11
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Yeah, alignment is firmly Okay as a roleplaying guideline to fall back on, a summary of the kind of direction one's inclinations will drive a character toward when in new territory. 5e did a good move by disentangling alignment pretty much wholly from mechanics. Even spells like protection from evil and good are more like "protection from supernatural forces" with the old name stapled on. It's even perfectly fine for people and gods to declare themselves on a particular "side," though you'd probably see a dearth of forces openly declaring themselves Evil. It's when it becomes concrete in-character knowledge as a thing that it tends to fall apart the hardest.
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Sep 21, 2022 20:06
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I know it's fairly obvious but I figure I'll say it plainly: kender are children. Literally children. Someone thought it was a good idea to have a race whose whole existence was being an impulsive and grabby 4-year-old with better diction. To gamify small children, I guess to get the authentic experience of having one at the table while you try to play. But the problem is that this kind of stuff is only tolerable in children because they generally can't know any better, and frequently also because we're dealing with related children which usually translates to a stronger impulse to protect and try to guide them. Even the stuff about the intensity of their emotional expression, the happiest happiness and the saddest misery to behold, is something you feel about children, especially those you already care for. And I love the little kids in my life but even that has limits, and an adult just pretending to be that way would run incredibly hard on those limits incredibly fast. Kender delenda est.
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Sep 22, 2022 17:07
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I promise you a giant rambling mess that will make your eyes glaze over for my first review.
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Sep 23, 2022 16:35
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sleepy.eyes posted:This Dragonlance stuff is interesting. I read the first book in college after an old friend recommended it as dumb fun and I remember being baffled by what an amazing rear end in a top hat the Paladin was, but from all this I guess he was a goddamn paragon. I just bounced off it so hard, and I'm a guy who likes the Wheel of Time. That and I hated the kender without being primed by tales of nightmare PCs. I tried the novels and got through... I think the first two? I know definitely the first one. Nobody had enough of a personality for me to really remember outside of the absolute broadest strokes. And at least one baffling time skip right in the middle of it all - if I remember, the novel just kind of skipped over what was obviously some major dungeon crawl adventure and this one-armed blacksmith very suddenly had a magic metal arm that let him make dragonlances. Just jarring pacing and meh storytelling otherwise. One of the later books, The Siege of Mount Nevermind, came out when I was still on my gnome kick in my teens, and it stood alone fairly decently from whatever sub-series it was part of. There were evil army guys who wanted to conquer the gnomes after one of them discovered something that actually made their technology work, except the gnomes were still such frustrating little twerps that it was a nightmare posting for the evil army. Funnier (or so I recall) and much better paced just for the fact it wasn't trying to replicate someone's adventure.
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Sep 27, 2022 04:39
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I will concur on pretty much everything Purple's said. The "lesbian space necromancers" thing is because the author herself is gay and so a lot of people are queer, including each perspective character so far and a lot of other major characters. (Mostly lesbians, it's a very woman-heavy cast, but also some bi representation.) And everyone is deeply hosed up - even when you hate a character, usually they're wonderful to hate. So there's a lot of drama among screwed up people with terrible powers, which to my understanding suits Monsterhearts quite well. EDIT: Also there's a SA thread on the series but a lot of current posting reads like a redacted CIA document because the most recent book came out just two weeks ago. disposablewords fucked around with this message at 16:24 on Sep 27, 2022 |
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Sep 27, 2022 16:18
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CitizenKeen posted:Easier or harder to figure out what's going than, say, The Quantum Thief? It can be a little hard in the moment-to-moment because the perspective characters don't always fully understand what's going on themselves, but the general thrust and structure of the plot is pretty straightforward. The benefits of a reread are more to catch (lots of) foreshadowing and to help better grasp something murky with later knowledge.
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Sep 27, 2022 17:27
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I'd be a bit more interested in hearing about Runelords than the other. Started in on it with some friends at the time but we didn't even finish the first adventure before the game fell apart, and always been kind of curious where it goes. I'm given to understand that it goes into splatter horror with a side of gross-out before too long, though. Not inappropriate for October, but probably something for people to be aware of.
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Oct 7, 2022 06:04
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