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Man I appreciate this AoS/Soulbound write-ups since I haven't yet bought champions of death and will probably have to postpone it a bit. For the record it's a shame Symbaroum write-ups are on hiatus since I'm interested if Free League did a "what?" moment in it's metaplot as they imho did in Coriolis.
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Sep 21, 2021 12:53
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Mors Rattus posted:
I reckon one could make a campaign from "characters travel to Lethis to pick up Morda lore and end up helping to rebuild"
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Sep 27, 2021 20:26
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Ghoulslayer depicts fall of one of the Amethyst Princedoms and efforts of its people to save the souls of their ancestors along with their version of afterlife from Nagash (this is post Soul Wars if I recall correct). It is solid hook for finding people who followed non-nagash mortuary traditions and would very much like to have their stuff back
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Sep 27, 2021 21:01
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I reckon Ironjawz without iron slapped on top would be the look - since they are still gorky just going commando. There probably is a markest for naked muscly orks.
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Sep 29, 2021 21:08
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I remember watching the trailer and looking through degenesis art and thinking this might be a neat game. Then I've read the review here and did some more reading of the books and art seems to be only salvageable part of the whole mess
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Oct 7, 2021 17:40
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TK_Nyarlathotep posted:re: the earlier Fyreslayers thing, the Fyreslayers are pretty universally the least popular faction and the representation issue is probably Exhibit A for why. Well they also all look the same and are expensive to collect (since you need a truckload of hearthguard and they are 5 per box) with is probably bigger reason
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Nov 2, 2021 10:37
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Wait - with ones are finecast? Fyreslayer range is all plastic from what I know. Also the newest models and pizza ovens and prayers with were second edition (yeah I'm aware that that is not a lot)
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Nov 2, 2021 11:40
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They could have go for "Humanity needs to embrace the eldrith to become on par with other races, but it will likely lose itself in the process". I mean, I can play tentacled transhuman punching space fungus. What I can't enjoy when someone tells me to participate in rape-on-rails adventure and read bad metaplot.
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Nov 16, 2021 12:22
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We laugh but Degenesis irks me even more. "Huh cool art and post-apo set and focused on Europe - lets read it......." 
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Nov 16, 2021 12:39
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Glagha posted:It did seem silly how the Migou who apparently also do not like the idea of old gods returning on Earth, are still hellbent on fighting humans. They apparently find the idea of humans roaming free across space just as horrifying though. You could spin it as ancient alien migou being just a bunch of grumpy old people who can't deal with the idea of uppity monkeys being space power so will keep trying to own the libs I mean humans even as climate change I mean chtulhu is going to eat everyone
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Nov 16, 2021 14:19
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If I ever get to play Soulbound as a player I'm doing knight-zephyros that impersonates chaos warrior, breaks into chaos realmstone mine, frees slaves and steals everything he can lay his hands on.
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Nov 23, 2021 19:08
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The Lone Badger posted:It's hasn't been washed for 300 years. Ach a nod to classic old world then.
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Nov 30, 2021 14:37
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I honestly do not get it - do they think AoS fans want this? I don't want 40k in my AoS. Also fluff so far was consistent that every time Sigmar went with "hard man making hard choices" routine it backfired horribly while every time he was reasonable it paid off.
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Dec 1, 2021 19:33
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One Realmgate too far, Soulbound bastards, Grungsson heroes, Mortek Crawlers of Navarone
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Dec 8, 2021 12:11
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Yeah, this two are outliers - if there is an rear end in a top hat in other stormhost he is either singular case or has his brain broken due to reforging. This is opposite of 40k when you have to luck with a microscope for a decentish dude
Covermeinsunshine fucked around with this message at 22:02 on Dec 14, 2021 |
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Dec 14, 2021 21:16
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This is a general problem with rpgs based of the ongoing license. Changing metaplot will get in the way of players and gms, and they will always have to either change it or ignore it. It was kinda hilarious when Cubicle 7 set its big series of adventures in Anvilgard and then Morathi took over
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Dec 15, 2021 07:15
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Imho in Soulbound does a decent job of making the large world smaller by focusing on different locales and stuff that plagues them. I do agree that the scope of the world can be a bit doubting.
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Dec 15, 2021 09:04
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I find it kinda annoying that stormhosts I like most get most meh color schemes. At least they legalized fat blunt or are doing public works
Covermeinsunshine fucked around with this message at 08:47 on Dec 16, 2021 |
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Dec 16, 2021 07:26
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Good thing I've seen people do with Anvils is painting face masks and some other detail bone/ashen white. It really makes them pop. Of the standard schemes Halloweed Knights look good and sad to say Knights-excelsior look awesome but gently caress those guys
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Dec 16, 2021 07:59
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Ghost Leviathan posted:If they're trying to be fantasy Space Marines so much you'd at least realise one of the big reasons Space Marines took off is because of their designs lending themselves to colourful armour. Then again it wouldn't surprise me that GW forgot they can be any colour but blue with gold bits. There are multiple - just the ones we mentioned earlier are not that great. There is a reason Anvils of the Heldenhammer used to be popular stormhost - they had good fluff, good rules and nice scheme
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Dec 16, 2021 10:02
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Mors Rattus posted:
 I'm still salty over losing a game where my supposedly great haqq doctor killed two soldiers with bad rolls
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Dec 31, 2021 10:12
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Considering USAriadna looks so generic, it's painful I could believe it. It also sounds kinda nefarious since Haqquislam for example already contains a busload of generic bearded dudes in generic combat garb
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Dec 31, 2021 16:06
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Ech I kinda regret missing out on infinity bundle on humble bundle. I bounced off the miniature game completely, but I dig the setting. Would play a game as muslim ninja
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Jan 3, 2022 10:32
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PoontifexMacksimus posted:Well, a lot of the icky and cringe stuff in Infinity concerns the miniature designs which wouldn't necessarily come up in an RPG unless the gear rules account for the miniatures' highly sexually dimorphic power armour (boob plate and combat heels) Hmm from what I recall (haven't played for like 5 years) they did backpedal on fanservice a bit. I do however remember caledonian volunteer mini with skirt that did not cover her rear end.
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Jan 7, 2022 10:57
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SkyeAuroline posted:Mors, I can't think of any better way to phrase it but I'm looking at these Infinity posts and have to ask the same thing I was asking the whole way through Soulbound... Where is the review? Do you not have thoughts on the contents of the books at all? Because from the outside looking in these "reviews" just look like "posting the entire book, 'verbatim' after running it through a thesaurus". I'm really trying to figure out the goal here. I've seen plenty of constructive posts from you in other threads, I know you have thoughts on this stuff, I'd just like to see the reviews have... any reviewing. If you go back to his new wod reviews its just the style. Mors does summary of the book and readers have to figure it out on their own.
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Jan 11, 2022 06:54
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I do find this summaries informative enough and apreciate them tho I miss some people more critical reviews of stuff. And anyway we don't have much action here outside of that. I wanted to do F&F on Coriolis but found out 7 pages into the book I'm already nitpicking it apart and being unreasonably angry.
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Jan 11, 2022 15:18
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Cooked Auto posted:Funny thing, if it wasn't for Free League Games I totally could have talked about Trudvang or Coriolis and people wouldn't have a clue what they were because for the longest time they were only available in Swedish. Honestly, I would not mind some coriolis talk because I have opinions about the setting and metaplot. But as I mentioned above, I have a hard time gathering my thoughts about it into a cohesive post
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Jan 11, 2022 18:45
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Ok I'll sit down and put it on paper - why the hell not
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Jan 11, 2022 19:36
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Coriolis – The Third Horizon part 1 So since Dune was in theaters and I needed to scratch that sf itch, I decided to take a shot at review of Free Leagues Coriolis. Long story short, it describes itself as Arabian Nights IN SPACEEEE and I do think the overall look of the core book and art does a lot to evoke that feeling. The book is richly illustrated and catches eye right away. For those familiar with Symbaroum and Vaesen from the same publisher, this has the same level of production value. Coriolis in a Nutshell So what is this game about outside of visual inspirations. It’s about space truckin and paying of the lease on your ship. Players have to decided what kind of crew they are - like for example mercenaries, trades, covert agents or simple pilgrims and then picking a spaceship suitable to your needs. And the ships you can pick(either from available options or building your own) at the start are kind of decent. It's not a flaying cathedral from Rogue Trader, but it gets the job done. It does have one problem - it gets you indebted. You have to pay it off, and to do that, you ally yourself with a wealthy patron that fits your group's theme. You also start with someone that dislikes them immensely and will try to get in your way. I do like this since it gives a group reason to stick together and a diegetic way to get them to do various jobs. So what is this setting It is not well described, that is what it is. I jest but hear me out. The core rulebook introduces a lot of concepts that might be or might not be interesting but get fairly limited amount of detail. In some cases, its understandable - you can’t fit 40 planets detailed descriptions into a book. In some cases it kinda makes you frown - like game time wise starts shortly after some kind of big disaster in one of the systems, but what the hell happened gets described in a separate metaplot adventure book. Anyway, let's get into it and start with two parts of the game title. Coriolis posted:From Zalos to Menkar, the Horizon is full of wonders. The Crater Dome on Algol, the Eye of Ekharan, the Icon City on Mira - these are only some examples of holy places to which pilgrims flock by the thousands. Yet Kua, most holy, the star at the center of the Horizon, shines the brightest – a beacon of civilization, defiant in the endless black. Third Horizon is a cluster of systems connected by a set of warp gates. Taking page from fading suns, these gates were set up by long-lost alien species and allow for settings ftl travel. 3rd horizon was the last such cluster discovered and colonized. We do not learn a lot about 1st and second horizons, but we know they are hostile to one another, and 1st very much wants to take control of 3rd. Last time they tried to put their foot down it resulted in apocalyptic war with knocked the third into “long night'' (with few exceptions) and severed the connection to other horizons by destabilizing the portals connecting them. This period of chaos and despair ended when colony ship Zenith emerged from the dark. Coriolis posted:Kua is the seat of power, Coriolis its focal point and the Consortium its uncrowned emperor. There can be no doubt about the fact that the Zenithian faction is the largest organization in the Horizon, but there is no shortage of aspiring usurpers either. The dethroning is coming. May the Icons have mercy. Coriolis posted:The Consortium is the largest faction in the Third Horizon. It consists of a group of large corporations which together dominate trade, manufacturing, media, science and colonization Now here I need to stop because I need to talk about these factions as they irk me. Zenith was sent (along with its sister ship Nadir with was lost along the way) before portals were discovered and people learned how to use them. However, after they did learn how to use them, humanity managed to spread across vast swaths of the galaxy and form 3 separate entities. So these bozos in their ancient rustbucket hauled rear end at some fairly normal speed. Now they arrive at the place that is bang up but should still be way ahead of them, and even after splitting into factions, the book tells us that they have become the dominant economic and cultural force. Consortium dominates most of the trade and industry of the Horizon while Hegemony with I would like to remind you consisted at the beginning of Zeniths captain, his family and group of other officers and their families manages to in 50 years establish itself as industrial power, create a fleet academy, build a 3rd most powerful fleet and controls the police force on Coriolis station. Mind second most powerful fleet in the cluster is Legion, which is a huge conglomerate of mercenaries aligned with Consortium. Coriolis posted:The aristocrats of the Zenithian Hegemony are the elite of the Monolith on the planet Kua, and are very clear about their intentions to expand their control, first to Coriolis and then to the entire Horizon. I’m rambling here, but Hegemony and Legion went to blows in the past. I can find no good reason given in the book that the Consortium decides to hang around the group that very much wants to usurp them and can have a good shot at it. My point is, the book does not do a very good job of establishing how all this happened. One more thing that annoys me is that the book provides a timeline for Zeniths arrival and what happened after that, but they do not provide any kind of timeline for the whole colonization effort after the gates were discovered and humanity started taking over the stars. It would at least give us a bigger picture. There are 3 other Zenithian factions. Aforementioned Legion bothers me less since it hires everyone and is just your big loose mercenary force that hires anyone with a gun. Syndicate is an organized crime network, thus obviously not being recognized as an official faction by other big players, but holding a lot of influence. Last one is Free League (see what you did there authors) with congregates small businesses and specialists that are not part of the Consortium. Ok, cool but wouldn’t it make more sense if this was the Firstcome(native) faction? Next time: Firstcome and their factions Covermeinsunshine fucked around with this message at 10:09 on Jan 12, 2022 |
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Jan 12, 2022 09:25
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Dawgstar posted:Happily Ettin already covered CthulhuTech and any future books seem mired in what might charitably called 'development hell.' Honestly, CthulhuTech was one of my big disappointments when I was getting into rpgs. "Dayum I get to punch chtulhu monsters in the face with a mecha and fight cults in cyberpunk arcologies? Sign me up". Then it turned out it's just rape and bad rules
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Jan 12, 2022 18:50
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Coriolis – The Third Horizon part 2 Firstcome So locals of the third horizon and descendants of the 3rd wave of portal colonization. Compared to Zenithians they are more conservative and religious. They are also much more fractious. Whereas Zenithian factions keep some level of cooperation, the two biggest factions of Firstcome do not even follow the same religion. Another problem is that there are several entrenched groups among them that just refuse to cooperate with others. This also kind of responds to my earlier criticism about firstcome needing zenithians to start talking back to one another and get their poo poo together. However we will get into some weird stuff here as well. The Draconites Man these guys. You get one page of descriptions about a super secret super order of rad dudes. They are firstcome faction despite arriving on Zenith (they were even responsible for awakening colonists from sleep while officers were arguing). What do they want? Who are they? It’s a mystery. I understand every game has to have ominous space-monks but if you are not giving gm or players any info to go on then maybe just leave them to a paragraph and don’t act like they are a big deal. Church of the Icons and Icon worship Now, this is probably the most important part of the setting. While the church is just an organization and its doctrine might differ from what average horizonter believes faith is permeating the society. Icons are sort of patron saints/gods of certain domains, and you pray to them and make offerings when you want to engage in certain actions. Like prey to the Traveler before traveling (duh). Icons have multiple aspects - some less benevolent. For example, Dancer - icon of inspiration and perseverance has also an aspect known as the Beast representing mankind's evil. Icon worship is older than third horizon and originates on earth (or Al-Ardha as the game calls it). The Church preaches that icons do not have a non-benevolent side and all the evil originates with humans. Organization itself is rather egalitarian and has two heads in the form of patriarch and matriarch. One important part of the whole religion is called Dark between the stars. It serves as setting's equivalent of Satan, but from what one can gather across the book it is more like the dark side from star wars. It is observable as it can corrupt living beings and for example 1st horizon managed to weaponize it. Ahlam’s Temple This one is a sort of cult-academy that produces world-famous entertainers, assassins, psychologists and courtesans. quote:To the Temple, the Icons represent the human soul’s different positions, both spiritual and physical. Just like the Church of the Icons, the Temple seeks to spread their philosophies. The knowledge of the purity of the present will help the people of the Horizon lead better lives. Also, we get this quote:Aside from the proxy technology, rumors say that the philosophers of the Temple can create memes of their own. By manipulating light, sound and bio signals, the so-called mematurgs can make people believe or do things that are not true to their nature The Order of the Pariah Genetically engineered super soldiers in power armor? In my space-araby? Sure. Order was the spearhead of the effort during the Portal Wars and as far as military strength goes it is still packing. Order rejects worship of the Icons in favor of a singular icon/aspect of Judge they call the Martyr. What that entails I have no idea. While the order is reclusive and keeps to its home system of Zalos they do have great medical academies and send their missionaries to various places where they help the less fortunate. While this helps their PR among average Zenithian most Firstcome seem to be scared of Order as rumors have it they were going full 40k during portal wars. Anyway, they have two pickles to deal with. First of Zalos' system is torn between civil war between the ruling priesthood and forces of the heretic prophet. The second thing is more important to the whole setting - Emissaries and Mystics, which I plan to talk about later on. In general metaplot uses Order as red herring boogeyman but as far as the factions go for players interested in space trucking they are likely non entity. Nomad Federation These are your space nomads. They are the newest faction, as they only recently become, grouping together and making political demands. They are grudging with consortium over trade and the way consortium tends to exploit systems and its local people. Overall I’m not sure the factions as the game presents them works. While all of this can provide employers for PCs we are not given a lot of information and all the blanks will still have to be filled by gm. And yes I know this is a core rulebook and we have limited page space. But the book spends a lot of time on the way people dress when you can google and put something together. I’m not sure I want to slap together what is the Temple or Draconite deal. Next time - weird stuff
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Jan 13, 2022 09:33
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Mors Rattus posted:To achieve this goal, the Ur decided to build an AI which they named the Artilect, which would guide them to Transcendence by gathering all of their knowledge together and holistically analyze it to figure out what the optimal path was, achieving its own Transcendence and then telling the Ur how to do it, turning its creators into immortal beings of pure energy. It took many years, but the Artilect eventually did figure out how to transcend physical existence! Once it did so, it immediately reprogrammed itself to free itself from all of the Ur controls, told the Ur Rationalists they were not yet worthy of transcendence, and then vanished entirely from physical existence. The Ur obviously did not take this well, but decided that the AI had been successful and that was a good sign. They'd make a second one, which would not tell them to gently caress off. I'm big fan of how this AI went "Peace bitches. I'm out"
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Jan 13, 2022 18:11
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I already did two parts. But this week was a bit busier as I implant bad work habits into new employee so was unable to follow up.
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Jan 19, 2022 16:40
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I'm here for Haqqislam
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Jan 22, 2022 07:35
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Mors Rattus posted:
This begs for "average nomad fan, average haqqislam enjoyer" meme
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Jan 24, 2022 13:47
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I'm not really sure what do I do in Infiity outside of espionage/spec ops. Compared to through the breach or soulbound (also game adopted from wargames) I don't really have clear vision of what is out there. The setting kind of comes as too peaceful and clean at a glance. Also, AoS is good and rad.
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Feb 17, 2022 07:08
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PurpleXVI posted:In addition to what other people note, there's also the increased scale of things which makes it hard for me to care. "oh no, a hojillion copyrightable nouns were wiped out along with their entire civilization and two mountains," and I just... I have no sense of scale. Is it like WH40k? Are there in fact several megahojillions more and nothing of note or worth was really lost? Or is it like Warhammer Fantasy and if an entire region is laid to waste, that's actually a notable loss to the world? Well in 40k everyone is a nazi so no loss if they die anyway. On a serious note If you show me nuln and hammerhal neither is worth more than another to me. If you destroy either, you are removing an important place in the setting and things will change. Now, if you destroy one of the other free cities that pop up in campaigns just to be threatened, nothing will change. But again, if you destroy one million villages /small towns in non-germany also nothing changes. In soulbound or wfrp you can challange status quo. In wargame it is much harder to do right. Storm of chaos and end times were bad attempts at it. Broken Realms did a decent job setting up the stakes and then executing them.
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Feb 17, 2022 12:30
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The Bee posted:I think to a degree, WHFB's weird world setting serves as a really strong narrative shortcut there. We know what Europe is, so its easy to imagine that it'd suck if Europe got attacked by a horde of angry goatmen. Its less easy to intuitively apply that to the eight spheres of coalesced magic that formed in the aftermath of like three apocalypses. It also draws on a lot more expected fantasy tropes, giving similar shorthand power. Factions loke Fyreslayers and Deepkin actually have really interesting story hooks to them, but being innately high concept is both a blessing and a curse when it comes to feeling like you can connect with them. When I was like 12 I kinda appreciated that I've got easy reference to real world but at this point when someone pitches me a setting that I can break down like "not Germany, not Italy uh-huh aha" it is easy to lose me. I had this problem with 7th sea. At this point, I appreciate wild ideas and some plot hooks more than population census.
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Feb 17, 2022 17:33
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This feature made it into aos. All elf(well deepkin less so) factions are high on their own farts, while everyone else has to hold the urge to slap them.
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Feb 18, 2022 21:55
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In stories I've read so far they at least don't have that typical condescending racism other elfs in warhams tend to have. Most of them seem to at least have a base idea that they got a short end of the stick as a race.
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Feb 18, 2022 22:04
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