FATAL & Friends 2020: 61 billion casualties

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > FATAL & Friends 2020: 61 billion casualties

«‹›19 »

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

By popular demand posted:

So what you are saying is the house and then Bluebeard. I can work with that.

This place sucks, send in the Straw Hats to put this pirate in the ground

# ¿ Jul 23, 2022 21:02

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 05:02

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

The idea of using a similar concept for something like the Disco Elysium experience is interesting...

# ¿ Jul 23, 2022 23:25

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

PurpleXVI posted:

"A bookshelf full of skulls? I don't get it."

"It's a spookshelf."

"Go gently caress yourself, Bluebeard."

"Yarr -- if only I could."

# ¿ Jul 24, 2022 08:21

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Dawgstar posted:

Aw, it sounds like they don't think Buddhism is a supernatural religion which is also common among white tech nerds.

That said, yes, non-self would probably make it a lot easier to handle a lot of the stuff in Eclipse Phase, conceptually.

# ¿ Aug 4, 2022 18:55

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

OtspIII posted:

I think this gets at another of the reasons that Rooms is just a fundamentally kind of set up to fail--one of the really cool things about RPGs is that they're just toolkits a group uses to play out a story; ultimately it's the group that's coming up with the content of the game, and in a game with a lot of themes that different players will have different comfort levels with, the GM can to a large extent adjust things to taste. Some groups might want things more veiled and implied, others might distract from the real-world parallels of the abuse with over the top grindhouse imagery, and others might just be comfortable with taking it all head on. Also, importantly, the group can build a history of trust with the GM that they aren't just Piss Wizarding them.

A book full of boxtexty descriptions of rooms can't really do any of that. It just seems like a recipe for making the game veer off into unwanted places unexpectedly.

Were there a couple of examples in the original book? That does seem potentially valuable, but uh, "a couple of samples" is not the same as a full monster's manual.

# ¿ Aug 7, 2022 08:29

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Blackbeard's Bride licensed edition: As normal, but Blackbeard is the ever-lovin' blue-eyed THING.

# ¿ Aug 8, 2022 21:21

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

I have a copy of Aztecs and you seem to be on the ball here, looking forward to the deeper dive. And yeah I felt like the author was pretty focused on the idea of specifically playing in the environment of contact with the Spanish as opposed to just, like, there; which stood out in comparison to the Greece, Egypt and Rome books. (Of course, we also have a lot less information about Aztec culture and society, and even less so when GURPS Aztecs was written.)

# ¿ Aug 9, 2022 18:14

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Epicurius posted:

So silly question about Lupus werewolves. So most wolf stuff is instinctual. Wolves have to be taught how to hunt and things, but most of wolf behavior, if you're a wolf you just know. Most human behavior is not instinctual. Some of it is, but people need to learn how to talk and social customs and all that fun stuff, and some things like language, we need to learn within the firat few years of life to really master.

So how do Lupus werewolves...work, for lack of a better word. You're born in a wolf den, and maybe if your'e lucky, your werewolf parent is there, but maybe they're not....you have a werewolf dad and he leaves or is dead, and you're raised a wolf pup. When you eventually change into a person, are you inevitably a "wild boy", like all those legends? Ypu don't know a human language, you don't know what clothes are, you don't know the culture of the humans around you. Aren't you just want to stay with your birthpack and become known as the weird wolf who every once in a while turns into a person by them?

In principle you should have a little spirit attached to you that goes and alerts the local sept if you wolf out (ape out?). I also believe even a lupus werewolf that rarely ever leaves wolf form becomes a supergenius Tony Tony Chopper of a wolf, which tends to cause social problems.

Even the Red Talons have the basic garou language and pictographs.

In theory you absolutely could just stay a wolf 90% of the time and live at a caern except for going on wolfass missions, and indeed I think this is encouraged. It may not, however, be practical in the modern day.

# ¿ Aug 9, 2022 21:32

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

What's very funny to me is that they call out Cleopatra's Needle, but don't mention the actual, literal Egyptian temple that was transported to and reassembled in the Met, which overlooks Central Park and, I believe, has an exit out to the nearby cross street.

# ¿ Aug 11, 2022 02:11

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Xiahou Dun posted:

Sort of. It�s not literally outside because it�s housed but it�s designed to give that appearance with the addition of local stone providing some cover.

It�s a good way into and out of the museum and was my go-to in my old apartment cause of how the geography works out.

Right, I mean more like you could just have a Kinfolk leave the door unlocked or something. It's literally an Egyptian temple with Roman graffiti and poo poo. If that place doesn't have Mummies visiting it for some religious events I'd be shocked

e: Ah good, good. Hopefully the team has a Glass Walker to walk through that glass

# ¿ Aug 11, 2022 02:30

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

"If you want to prevent the Apocalypse, you must first gather seven Garou, one of each Auspice; New Moon, Crescent, Half-Moon, Swelling, Full Moon and Muad'" and then it cuts out.

# ¿ Aug 11, 2022 16:11

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Mr. Prokosch posted:

One thing I really like about Forsaken is that Father Wolf was 100% a spirit cop and you can be one too if you want, your power set even encourages it mechanically, but the best way to actually help is to stop being such a loving cop about poo poo.

lovely places attract lovely spirits that make it more lovely. If you roll in and murder all the spirits, new ones move in. You didn't do anything structural to fix it, just made a power vacuum. If you can get the spirits to self police a bit by empowering one that's alright, or if you go on the mortal side and deal with the underlying issue at the same time as you evict the spirits, then you can make lasting change.

Bad werewolves patrol around town and get in a fight every day with 4 headed snakes or whatever.

Good werewolves turn That One Building into a food bank and then volunteer there every once in a while to make sure there's no abuse and the bad vibes are really going down.

One of the things that has stood out to me about Forsaken is that the spirit world just sounds like a miserable source of trouble and problems and poo poo you have to fight, and every spirit seems to be some kind of horrible manifestation of negative human emotions, while Apocalypse at least refers to like tree spirits, frog spirits, and other things which are probably at least not lending themselves to a Kreia-like situation. Is this just because of online discourse? I have had genuine trouble reading the Forsaken books.

# ¿ Aug 12, 2022 03:32

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Epicurius posted:

Doesn't it come down to cultural dissonance? If you're playing a game as characters in a society with values different than your own (in this case, that human sacrifice is nifty), then you're likely going to have to have your characters do stuff that you as a player wouldn't. There are alternatives to that, of course. You and the other players could be the rare Aztecs opposed to human sacrifice, or the GM could downplay its role or even have some fantasy version if the Aztecs that didn't do it, but there's no question that it was vitally important to the actual Aztecs.

Being opposed to the sacrifice of living humans doesn't seem like it would be that hard and is I believe a position supported by figures such as legendary kings (Ce Acatl) so it wouldn't be an enormous cognitive leap. The other sacrifices, while not nice, don't present major ethical problems - animals, flowers, fruits, and potentially spilling some of your own blood are all things that don't kill other intelligent beings (unless you gently caress up the last one)

# ¿ Aug 16, 2022 18:41

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

MadDogMike posted:

Not as new as you'd think; they are pretty obviously lifted from the Star Frontiers Yazirians (note the homeworld name) and Dralasites respectively. Hell, the Thri-Kreen actually sub kind of well for the other major non-human race in Star Frontiers, the Vrusk. Mind you I don't dislike that they're using them; indeed I hope they stole some of the more interesting cultural traits, like the Yazirian "life enemy" idea (which isn't always a person or race; a Yazirian doctor could declare a particular disease his enemy for example). I suppose the Plasmoids would be pretty funny if they maintained the Dralasite terrible sense of humor too (a whole race of dad humor blobs!).

# ¿ Aug 17, 2022 04:38

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

disposablewords posted:

Seriously. The animal-head bit makes them sound specifically themed off of guardinals, the specifically-NG celestials, but it's not new ground.

It immediately made me think of the guy from the Conex Connections front page stories.

# ¿ Aug 19, 2022 03:17

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

joylessdivision posted:

Don't take this the wrong way, but gently caress you for making me see that. I am unsettled.

That's our Zack Parsons for ya!

# ¿ Aug 19, 2022 04:58

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Yes, if you limited yourself to muscle cuts as part of a ritual observance every once in a while, I imagine the risk is non-zero but would not be a source of culture-wide systemic disruption. I did remember hearing some brain geniuses theorize that the Aztecs must have had regular amounts of human meat in their diet because there's simply no way humans could survive or thrive without regular intake of generous amounts meat or, as a barely acceptable substitute, fish or dairy.

My understanding, of course, is that nixtamalized corn + beans = party all night in terms of protein intake.

# ¿ Aug 19, 2022 18:19

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

mellonbread posted:

There's a similar debate in paleontology regarding cannibalism among early humans, and how much of it was driven by caloric necessity.

I suspect part of it was providing direct, tangible benefits to the citizenry of the Triple Alliance, similar to Roman Emperors handing out slaves and treasure after a victory. The Revered Speaker crushed some fuckup city state at the edge of the One World, and the man on the street got a delicious bowl of pozole out of the deal.

I mean I'm not sure what the debate would be. You might as well eat other humans you kill but you'd probably rather be eating antelope. Presumably one of the big reasons why you'd be killing the other human is that he's taking your antelope!

# ¿ Aug 19, 2022 19:18

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Did the lifejammer helms do anything worse than HP damage, because I'm absolutely imagining people busting out their math to figure out the economics given a full heal on a long rest and so on. I think if it was permanent HP or constitution damage that'd make people think twice, but also doesn't seem to be how 5E usually does things.

# ¿ Aug 21, 2022 07:43

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Snorb posted:

Seems simple enough. "Every day of operation, the creature's current and maximum hit points are reduced by 1d8, and the creature must make a Constitution saving throw. The creature is killed if their maximum hit points are reduced to 0 or if they fail the saving throw. This maximum hit point reduction lasts until the creature completes a long rest outside of the lifejammer helm."

They'd probably make it a sort of pseudo-death save mechanic if PCs were involved, though putting the edge of possible for-real death in one shot seems correct while still making it a grim theoretical "Well, you probably can use the Neogi ship to make it back to safety, but" situation.

# ¿ Aug 21, 2022 19:30

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

PurpleXVI posted:

If they eat people's nightmares, shouldn't that give the "victim" a calm and relaxing sleep? Keep a pet Feyr and feed it all your night-time worries and anxieties.

If it works like the Baku, it's great to have once in a while, but if you let 'em eat too much you lose your dreams in the general sense.

# ¿ Aug 23, 2022 23:38

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Xiahou Dun posted:

Wait hold up there solar dragon entry :

10 miles from a star is when you're gonna be blinded.

You're absolutely positive that that's the appropriate number and unit you want to be measuring anything about stars in.

I assume it's a fantasy realm so poo poo works differently.

# ¿ Aug 28, 2022 07:08

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

By popular demand posted:

It's not like apocryphal books are like an exclusive club or anything, just get a mentally unbalanced guy to fill a book with NO BUT I KNOW WHAT REALLY HAPPENED.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2022 09:37

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

By popular demand posted:

I think I speak for all of us when I demand to hear about the phallus, in art, religion and jokes.

Also since the history of ancient independent Roma is close to a millennia the authors really painted themselves into a corner by deciding to go with a single book.
Things were very different in the late empire from the early republic, is what I'm saying.

I imagine you could fairly enough focus on the high water mark of Rome and/or around Bible times, since that's presumably going to be most attuned to what people imagine with 'Ancient Rome.'

# ¿ Sep 18, 2022 20:46

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Yeah, this is a shockingly good D&D adventure module through Bible times. How much is this tagged as being explicitly for a religious audience? Maybe... maybe we've found a product that's NOT intended for noisy fundamentalists. :lsd:

# ¿ Sep 20, 2022 16:30

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

You can also skim and gloss if you want, you don't need to get exhaustive. Or skip chapters with a couple of paragraphs. The world is your frumentum or something

# ¿ Sep 24, 2022 21:53

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

What if I throw beggars... into a room full of cuddly puppies and a reasonable amount of silver and copper coinage?

# ¿ Sep 25, 2022 09:42

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

My take on the death realms spiritual geography was:

You have the Shadowlands which are pretty easy to get your head around.

Any significant distance under the Shadowlands and/or with magic is the Tempest, which is a giant storming death hyperspace.

There are stable locations in the Tempest which are broadly comparable to the Shadowlands. Stygia is the biggest and most famous but the other "Dark Kingdoms" are here, plus the "Far Shores," that weird shipwreck lagoon where the Ferrymen hang out, and so on. (If you wanted to have real fun, strongly suggest that some of these places are actually nearer to worlds your PCs can't reach - because they have no way whatever to have Fetters in these alternate Shadowlands.)

In some metaphysical down/outside there is the Labyrinth which leads down to Oblivion.

e: As for Africa and Asia and so on, while that model Has Some Problems, there are small but meaningful metaphysical differences in how wraiths work there. I figure it works like Stygia broadly construed, if perhaps in a smaller scale in some areas: there's a realm in the Tempest where old-rear end gaunts sit and practice Ghost Politics, and there's a relevant Shadowlands realm. Since space is sort of a suggestion here, and a lot of wraiths have access to Argos, you probably don't need to worry much about Tempest "geography" - you can just make it up if you need to.

# ¿ Sep 27, 2022 22:40

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

PurpleXVI posted:

But is there or is there not a catchy Graybusters theme song?

The official pilots' uniform better be a black business suit

# ¿ Sep 30, 2022 03:23

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Bro took 3 paragraphs of meandering to say what he could have said in one, but I guess it was pretty clear ("HP is like, 20% your actual meat body once you start stacking levels")

# ¿ Oct 3, 2022 00:50

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Xiahou Dun posted:

No because he's talking About Beyond the Walls of Sleep and I know the story, which has a dude from the Catskills where they talk about the Catskills being full of inbred half-human cannibals.

And it doesn't matter because neither one of these affects the location of a mountain range.

Monticello isn't THAT bad.

# ¿ Oct 5, 2022 03:06

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Yeah, in Franklin's day the perfidious Other who sought to destroy True, Real America with their dark menace of Immigration and Talking Foreign Jibber Jabber were... Germans.

# ¿ Oct 6, 2022 02:06

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

PurpleXVI posted:

The D&D Meteor Supplement feels like it's kind of missing some super obvious hooks. Like, the "good" engram ark isn't how I'd roll with that at all. A much more interesting hook would be if the engrams had their own, perhaps neutral, perhaps malicious, motivations, and were just hijacking everything living they could reach. Humans, animals, hives of insects, trying to somehow rebuild their old culture or possibly even bodies. Like, without something like that, the Engram Meteor feels kind of... dead-ended.

Some sort of powerful impact from space that produces a massive explosion, throwing superheated stone everywhere, and leaving some sort of free-floating engrams in the area?

:lron:

It's not clear to me what you could do with this, but it would truly make a battlefield of your fantasy Earth.

# ¿ Oct 15, 2022 05:09

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Night10194 posted:

It's even loaded with beams of pure education!

Warlock Patron: The Source

Paladin Oath: the Sea Org

# ¿ Oct 15, 2022 05:52

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

srhall79 posted:

That's certainly what they're trying to evoke. And yeah, if you're making a game, sure work in the poo poo you think is cool. But it's a little weird adding cryptids into a game that has real, legit monsters. Do you really care if Bigfoot might be hiding in the forest, when you know for sure there are owlbears in there?

I would want to know if Bigfoot is a playable race. I understand his powerful psychic abilities might interfere, but perhaps we can be a young bigfoot? A mediumfoot.

# ¿ Oct 15, 2022 22:59

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Did they have to call it an "incident", honestly. Will the Japanese forces have a light and effective but fragile fighter craft, or will they go straight for the Long Lance space torpedoes?

Libertad! posted:

Join us next time as we engage in some frightful fun and games for Mist Talismans at the Dark Carnival and the Mirrors of Madness!

The Dark Carnival is your invitation
To witness that without explanation
Take a look at this fine creation
And enjoy it better with appreciation

# ¿ Oct 17, 2022 17:49

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Can the Evil House teleport to any place in Ravenloft, doomed nonetheless to return to its origin at the rise of the sun?

# ¿ Oct 20, 2022 04:53

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Angrymog posted:

Cultures giving stuff like infravision seems a bit odd. Feels like it should be if you already have infravision it's extended, and non-infravision Havers get something else related to life in the dark

Dining on plump helmets makes certain changes in your eyes, lad/ss.

# ¿ Nov 20, 2022 20:36

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Halloween Jack posted:

We should have a big wheel that you can spin.

Bust a deal, face the wheel

# ¿ Nov 30, 2022 21:33

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 05:02

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

JcDent posted:

TURBODRACULA disagrees!

Q: Why can't the humanoid robot wear armor in a setting where humanoids of all shapes and sizes exist?
A: gently caress you

Armor in D&D has always been weird because "armor" suggests that it's actively getting in the way of blows, but from the very beginning it always functioned as more a warding-off-damage field, by making it hard to "actually" hurt you. Presumably some of the misses on a guy with a high/low AC (depending on era) were actually "hits" (probably glancing blows) that just didn't accomplish anything but making a loud bonking sound. However, if you did get hit clean, you just took the same damage as always. For a war game this is probably a really good general abstraction rather than having to take four points off THIS damage and two points off THAT damage but Anti-Knight Steel Piercing Elf Shot goes straight through iron and steel (but not leather or bronze)...

GURPS does this better by separating the two main aspects of armor, at least in the context of medieval brawls.

# ¿ Dec 14, 2022 15:29

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > FATAL & Friends 2020: 61 billion casualties

«‹›19 »