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Flared Basic Bitch posted:Morgan’s one of the guys that I was shocked about for a second, then thought, “oh wait of course he is.” Ugh. Well, I hoped for better. I mean poo poo the dude wrote about a world where body swapping is as easy as changing shoes...oh well. Never research your idols I guess
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Nov 3, 2020 03:08
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ExecuDork posted:I remember reading a story like this. I had thought it was Yahtzee Crowshaw's Mogworld but I'm not sure. Anyway, the main protagonist is a zombie (or possibly a skeleton) raised by a necromancer to be mindless labour building his castle and dungeon. But he turns out to have sentience and after a little while he ends up negotiating working conditions for the entire undead workforce, using basic arguments like "we should be paid for our labour" to convince the quite-reasonable necromancer. There were some funny scenes with the necromancer coming to the realisation that even though an animated skeleton doesn't eat, doesn't sleep, and can't stray beyond sight of the cursed castle, the skeleton still deserves a day off now and then. I really want to know what this is now.
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Nov 3, 2020 03:18
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I've never read a Spider Robinson book but after seeing his picture he's definitely the most punchable sci-fi author.
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Nov 3, 2020 03:34
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ExecuDork posted:I remember reading a story like this. I had thought it was Yahtzee Crowshaw's Mogworld but I'm not sure. Anyway, the main protagonist is a zombie (or possibly a skeleton) raised by a necromancer to be mindless labour building his castle and dungeon. But he turns out to have sentience and after a little while he ends up negotiating working conditions for the entire undead workforce, using basic arguments like "we should be paid for our labour" to convince the quite-reasonable necromancer. There were some funny scenes with the necromancer coming to the realisation that even though an animated skeleton doesn't eat, doesn't sleep, and can't stray beyond sight of the cursed castle, the skeleton still deserves a day off now and then. Mogworld definitely had a similar premise, but I don't think it was that either. I think the skeleton in that book just keep killing himself over and over again until the necromancer gave in? Mogworld wasn't a great book but it had an interesting premise- the NPCs in what is essentially Dwarf Fortress gain sentience. I can't remember how early in the book they reveal that.
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Nov 3, 2020 03:45
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I remember Mogworld being a fun enough read.
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Nov 3, 2020 07:45
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in re vocabulary: I'm a philologue, but Jack Vance use exactly one word per chapter that I'd have to go look up. I think trying to emulate him is part of what makes Gygax such a piss-poor writer (though I do like how he uses really obscure words for magic poo poo: dweomer, geas, etc)
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Nov 3, 2020 14:35
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I also got lucky in that, thanks to my adjacency to fantasy books, I managed to get dragged into roleplaying in 5th grade. Specifically it was not Dungeons & Dragons, but a less-known system called GURPS. GURPS was written and designed as a system of simulations for maximum customization of a game, and more importantly, it was written by a bunch of goddamn ultradorks. PhDs, rocket science, quantum physicists, you name it. Smarty fucks. So the writing in the book had a very technical quality to it, and managed to fling me way ahead as I gobbled up splat after splat of all this dense informative writing and wasted days figuring out what stuff like 'Unfazeable' meant.
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Nov 3, 2020 14:50
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I own about 35 GURPS books, but I've never played the game. I just like the sourcebooks, Russia is a particular favourite. They're usually about evenly split between stuff you could throw into any RPG (or, for that matter, fiction you were writing, copyright concerns about particular fantasy/sci-fi worlds notwithstanding) and stuff that's specifically written for the GURPS rules but is flexible and generalised enough that you could pretty easily adapt it to your RPG of choice. The examples and other oddball bits they put in the margins are good fun, too. I can particularly recommend the play-by-play in GURPS Hi-Tech (gunpowder to approx the year 2000) for using crew-served weapons in two situations: French gunners with a 10-lb cannon vs. a Dutch secret weapon in the hundred years war the secret weapon is a Tyrannosaurus rex. It gets shredded by grapeshot "unless it makes its dodge roll" and Kansas National Guard long-range artillery circa 1925 vs. "A Thing Man Was Not Meant To Know" The artillery spotter gets too close and has his mind invaded by the psychic powers of the space squid, shortly before the battery scores a direct hit and banishes the beast back to the void. Each book has a different author (or occassionally team of authors) but there are line editors and other full-time employees of Steve Jackson Games that keep some consistency. They wouldn't put up with any of the stupid, ugly, bullshit sex stuff that so many fantasy and sci-fi authors seem unable to resist writing about (one-handed). \/\/\/ Absolutely. From memory (don't have the books with me) the author of GURPS Cops was a Boston PD detective for like a decade before becoming a lawyer (and becoming either a prosecutor or a defense lawyer, can't remember) so she had buckets of direct experience with almost everything in the book. ExecuDork fucked around with this message at 06:12 on Nov 4, 2020 |
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Nov 4, 2020 06:04
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They've been amazingly clean and professional with only one or two notable weird exceptions (like Bio-Tech or some of the older 3rd Edition adventure module splats) but otherwise present an absurdly organized and to-specification series of books across decades with sincerely well-researched work
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Nov 4, 2020 06:09
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My dad got married my sophomore year (1995) of high school and as an avid reader, I decided to try to connect with my new step brother by reading some of his books. The first ones he gave me were the Dragonlance and Dragonlance Chronicles books. I used to read between/before classes and by the end of the first day I took the book home and never brought it with me again. Every nerd in school lost their poo poo when they saw a girl reading their nerd series. I don’t mind talking about books with people but gently caress they were exactly the unwashed creeps girls want to stay far far away from. I finished the books but from the safety of my own bedroom. He also had me read the Deathgate Cycle by the same authors and all I can remember is some brooding hipster with too many tattoos and a dude who did magic by essentially rave dancing. That being said, I don’t recall hating the books. Although after he got me into the Wheel of Time poo poo I was not sad when his mom and my dad divorced and I no longer got suggestions from him.
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Nov 4, 2020 07:37
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sweet geek swag posted:The main villain in Mossflower, the second book, was a huge wildcat, who was supposedly much larger than any of the other creatures. Later books retconned the Wildcats to just be Badger Sized (in-universe badger not real badger). The first book was written as a story about what the animals in real life are doing when we're not looking, which is apparently living quaint lives in the english countryside punctuated by ultraviolence. Jaques waffles a bit in the next two books before the 4th onward he just decides that it's just a fantasy world where everyone is a human sized animal person, except for Birds, who range from "Human Sized Animal Person" to "Giant Monster" depending on species.
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Dec 30, 2020 22:28
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I'm really glad this thread is still going and I just wanted to reiterate that Dragonlance sucks
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Dec 31, 2020 01:32
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I just found out my dm and his fiance meet in a dragonlance game. Most of the people in the canon characters even ended up marrying. I'm going to tease him mercilessly.
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Jan 8, 2021 07:23
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Tasslehoff Burrfoot is burning in Krynn Hell where he has no feet and everything he steals does something horrific to him
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Jan 8, 2021 07:30
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Did Dragonlance have a very unfortunate Gandalf standin named Fizzbang or something? I would look this up but I already have too many half-remembered things in my brain like Stromboli Lightbringer, Knight of the Rose - which was one of the three knightly orders, the others being of the Sword and something else. Dragonlance - like all art - must be viewed in the context of its time and as such must clearly be seen as the masterwork it is.
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Jan 8, 2021 07:51
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Fizban the idiot elder mage who was a literal DMPC and the puke twee-wacky persona of the ‘good’ god
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Jan 8, 2021 07:55
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.random posted:Did Dragonlance have a very unfortunate Gandalf standin named Fizzbang or something? I would look this up but I already have too many half-remembered things in my brain like Stromboli Lightbringer, Knight of the Rose - which was one of the three knightly orders, the others being of the Sword and something else. Crown. -> Sword -> Rose
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Jan 8, 2021 16:52
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Black August posted:Fizban the idiot elder mage who was a literal DMPC and the puke twee-wacky persona of the ‘good’ god LingcodKilla posted:Crown. -> Sword -> Rose This is the kind of art I’m talking about. True capital A Art indelibly changes you. Thank you.
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Jan 8, 2021 17:08
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Speaking of the word 'ambit' did anybody ever get into Diane Duane as a kid? Picture a 14 year old girl, yelling with her parents and fighting for her independence. Only when she sneaks out of her room, it's to the bottom of the pacific ocean, where she's to act as sacrifice in an ancient ritual where she feeds herself to the first shark. Inverted Icon fucked around with this message at 17:44 on Jan 8, 2021 |
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Jan 8, 2021 17:41
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Inverted Icon posted:Speaking of the word 'ambit' did anybody ever get into Diane Duane as a kid?
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Jan 8, 2021 18:20
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And not to forget, her The Book of Night With Moon, starring cat wizards managing New York City's complicated magical transportation infrastructure and battling personified entropy and dinosaurs.
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Jan 8, 2021 19:28
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Lord Awkward posted:And not to forget, her The Book of Night With Moon, starring cat wizards managing New York City's complicated magical transportation infrastructure and battling personified entropy and dinosaurs.
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Jan 8, 2021 19:36
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Yeah definitely, and I think that topic comes up in the book more than once between the cats. If I remember right, the book is set in between some of the young wizards ones, but I think was meant for adult readers. I should reread all of those.
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Jan 8, 2021 19:48
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Lord Awkward posted:Yeah definitely, and I think that topic comes up in the book more than once between the cats. If I remember right, the book is set in between some of the young wizards ones, but I think was meant for adult readers.
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Jan 8, 2021 19:51
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.random posted:Did Dragonlance have a very unfortunate Gandalf standin named Fizzbang or something? W&H use that one as a recurring character, he’s in the Death Gate books as well. Fizban/Zifnab and his dragon babysitter. Also, don’t forget that the Darksword books ended up with wizards vs laser tanks. 
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Jul 11, 2021 08:43
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hey, good news, more loving DragonlanceShitshow posted:https://twitter.com/Wizards_DnD/status/1501245115498643465
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Mar 8, 2022 23:26
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.random posted:Did Dragonlance have a very unfortunate Gandalf standin named Fizzbang or something? If I recall, he also turned out to be the big good guy god Paladine. But there are no paladins in the setting. Go figure.
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Mar 8, 2022 23:33
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Can I play as a Gully Dwarf now? (seriously Kender get a lot of poo poo but I feel people gloss over Gully Dwarves being a thing, jesus loving christ  )
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Mar 8, 2022 23:33
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quote:Gully dwarves, also known as Aghar, are stupid, filthy, and obnoxious.
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Mar 9, 2022 00:02
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Assuming that their source material was real-world race science literature from Victorian times.
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Mar 9, 2022 00:34
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Atopian posted:Assuming that their source material was real-world race science literature from Victorian times. dragonlance-branded phrenology kits were a surprisingly large portion of TSR's bottom line in the mid/late 80s
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Mar 9, 2022 00:41
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Goons, also known as Aghar, are stupid, filthy, and obnoxious. Goons are short and squat, averaging four feet in height and weighing about 100 pounds. Their skin tones range from olive brown to a light parchment color Males wear long, scruffy beards; females have cheek hair but no beards. Hair color ranges from dirty blond to duil black. Eyes can be watery blue, dull green, or hazel. Goons have narrower fingers and limbs than other dwarves, and their skin is often covered with scars, boils, sores, and filth. Pot bellies are common among both sexes. The stupidity of goons is legendary. To a goon, any number greater than one is “two”, which simply means “more than one”. In spite of their dull minds, goons take themselves quite seriously. They tend to have inflated ideas of their own importance, and puncturing their egos is almost impossible. Combat: Since they regard cowardice as a virtue, goons have raised groveling to an art form. If confronted by a dangerous opponent but not immediately attacked, goons either faint, cry, beg for mercy, divulge rivers of information, run away, or stand and hake. If attacked, goons defend themselves, but they sometimes fight with their eyes closed. goons are not above stealing, lying, or bullying, and dirty tricks are among their favorite tactics. Master scavengers, goons use any armor and weapons they happen to recover from garbage dumps or scrap heaps. Padded and studded leather are commonly worn. goons rarely use weapons other than clubs, daggers, knifes, and hand axes. A few have learned to use slings. Habitat/Society: Goon communities are quite small, seldom exceeding more than 2d10 members. A typical clan of 11 members includes a chieftain (a fighter of level 2-6), about four 1st-level fighters (one of whom serves as the clans shaman, although he has no magical abilities), one fighter of level 2-4 (or a thief of the same level range); the rest are females and children. Most clans live in abandoned villages or in the wilderness in old mines and caves. Others live in slums, refuse dumps, or the sewer systems of large cities. When several clans live together, the strongest and cleverest chieftain becomes the local king, whose title is produced by adding the prefix “High” to his clan name. Each successive king often calls himself “the First”, owing to the goons’ inability to count. Goons believe magical items are useless because their magic was put into them by other races. To goons, the most powerful items are those that seem to do nothing at all. Objects such as old bones, rotten fruit, fur balls, and bent sticks are treasured and venerated. The clan’s shaman keeps these “holy relics” and administers their use. Ecology: Other races avoid goons, but they are occasionally hired to perform menial tasks. Gnomes occasionally hire them as assassins and spies, even though goons aren’t particular adept at these jobs. goons eat anything. Many goons keep a pot of stew boiling constantly, throwing anything dead or nearly dead into the pot.
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Mar 9, 2022 00:43
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Embarrassingly, I actually teared up a bit reading Dragons of the Summer Flame  Years later, I realize that was the last dregs of good taste leaving my body, freeing me from the burden of discernment and critical thinking. Today, I proudly post on Something Awful Dot Com.
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Mar 9, 2022 02:25
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I would play a gully dwarf 
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Mar 9, 2022 04:31
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.random posted:Embarrassingly, I actually teared up a bit reading Dragons of the Summer Flame “My children…..”
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Mar 9, 2022 04:35
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I was introduced to RPGs via Rifts. Yeah, that's right. And worse, introduced by people who insisted on *winning* every time. How do you even win an RPG like that? So they vaguely show us how to play this horrible game. And neglect to mention so many rules so that they can go "well actually I can do this dumb this just trust me I know the rules". It was very Stockholmesque that I played RPGs at all after that. But they were fun, especially when myself and others dared to venture to other systems. Systems we had read the rules for. Suddenly it was an even playing field. But back to Rifts. Rifts is essentially 80s kid brained nerds who wanted everything cool in a game. Mechs, cyborgs, ninjas, magic, mutants, all of it. Sounds cool, but it was so poorly implemented and everything was at odds. The definition of if everything is special, nothing is. The setting had so much to tell you and nothing to say. Nothing was thought out. Nothing really mattered. It wasn't generic like GURPS, it was just bland. When you can somehow make interdimensional invaders with cyborg ninjas feel dull you're impressing and not in the way you want. Just the worst system that is possible to actually run. Absolutely trash.
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Mar 9, 2022 04:45
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syntaxfunction posted:I was introduced to RPGs via Rifts. Yeah, that's right. And worse, introduced by people who insisted on *winning* every time. How do you even win an RPG like that? So they vaguely show us how to play this horrible game. And neglect to mention so many rules so that they can go "well actually I can do this dumb this just trust me I know the rules". The system was loving garbage but the setting was literally anything goes and I still like it. The secret was just selecting a setting and go with that. Fan of the new/spirit/vampire west.
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Mar 9, 2022 04:49
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syntaxfunction posted:I was introduced to RPGs via Rifts. Yeah, that's right. And worse, introduced by people who insisted on *winning* every time. How do you even win an RPG like that? So they vaguely show us how to play this horrible game. And neglect to mention so many rules so that they can go "well actually I can do this dumb this just trust me I know the rules". People actually played Rifts? I read a bunch of sourcebooks for it, but the idea of actually playing it just seems crazy to me. Shadowrun and Champions gave you a pretty broad pallette to work with - Rifts was just buckets of paint.
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Mar 9, 2022 05:00
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Crab Dad posted:The system was loving garbage but the setting was literally anything goes and I still like it. The secret was just selecting a setting and go with that. Fan of the new/spirit/vampire west. Problem is you were better off playing GURPS or some other better system, and then just making the setting exactly that anyway. CaptainSarcastic posted:People actually played Rifts? I read a bunch of sourcebooks for it, but the idea of actually playing it just seems crazy to me. Shadowrun and Champions gave you a pretty broad pallette to work with - Rifts was just buckets of paint. Yeah, this guy and his entirely family were hardcore RIFTS players. They also played D&D a bunch but refused to play anything after 3.5 which was the pinnacle to them. Because they knew it and the rules. That was the reason. They insisted on referring to 4E and 5E as "Wyverns and Caverns" because it wasn't "real D&D". They were wild. But yeah, RIFTS is a thing where everything was smashed together in no coherent way. You could play a fun game and some settings were neat enough, but in a very generic way that you could houserule a setting in a better system in fifteen minutes. RIFTS was Star Citizen before SC existed.
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Mar 9, 2022 05:06
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syntaxfunction posted:Problem is you were better off playing GURPS or some other better system, and then just making the setting exactly that anyway.  I would argue that anyone who said they actually played RIFTS was lying. IIRC there was a LOT of funky crap in trying to cross books. Uh, something about SDC and MDC? All of the books for Rifts owned super hard, but it was just impossible to make a game with a tattooed Atlantean warrior, an Anti-Monster, and a Glitter BoyGURPS was the better system.
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Mar 9, 2022 05:13
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