Mage: Vaccines are Oppressive
RIFTS: Huge Robots and Occasional Boobies
WH40K: Making Up For Your Fears of Masculine Inadequacy, the RPG
Torg: You Don't HAVE To Be On Drugs To Play This Game, But It Helps
OSR: Because ALL Us Real Gamers Drink Metamucil
Vampire LARP: Your Only Hope Of Scoring With Hot Goth Chicks
KULT: For People Who Think "The Human Centipede" Just Isn't Disturbing Enough
Champions: Because Accountants Like RPG's, Too
Chill: LEGIBLE TEXT IS FOR THE WEAK!
Shadowrun: Too Many Dice Is Never Enough
Dungeon Crawl Classics: "Because AD&D didn't have enough tables and funky dice"
Werewolf: the Captain Planeting
A game of savage horror and Freudian compensation.
Original D&D: "We made up some shit we thought would be fun."
Arrows of Indra: for those times when NyQuil just isn't enough to put you down fast.
Rolemaster: Because MMOs weren't invented yet.
Pathfinder: For Those Who Thought 3rd Edition Didn't Have Enough Crunch
Traveller: 39 years of the same old $!ht
Dark Albion: Fear the rain
OSR: Old Farts the Get off My Lawning
Amber: that game you'd play if it had dice
Exalted: Progressive if you ignore the bestiality rape camps
D&D 5th: Almost old school enough
D&D 4th: Yo dawg, heard you like vidya games...
GURPS: The game so detail-oriented that fat people get a swim bonus
Bonus round...
(http://i.imgur.com/PXLSBxj.jpg)
Legend of the Five Rings: The game of gotcha and suicide in glorious Chinapan!
7th Sea: Because history is hard
Cthulhutech: Proof that a good idea is meaningless without talent to back it up.
Ravenloft: Soft White Wolf center wrapped in crunchy D&D. New improved horror flavor with none of the calories!
Castle Greyhawk: An Inconvenient Spoof
Paranoia: You're screwed and you love it.
Forgotten Realms: Yeah, sure, whatever, I can probably make it every two weeks if the wife's ok with it and after the kids go to bed on Friday, just as long as I don't have to read anything or learn new rules or stuff
Quote from: Shipyard Locked;884736Forgotten Realms: Yeah, sure, whatever, I can probably make it every two weeks if the wife's ok with it and after the kids go to bed on Friday, just as long as I don't have to read anything or learn new rules or stuff
Forgotten Realms: Pretending you matter till a canon GMPC has to step in and save the day
ACKS: Satraps & Spreadsheets
Call of Cthulhu: Die and Go Insane to Not Save the Earth
Glorantha: The Land of Myth (As Imagined by 70s Berkeley Undergrads High on Cannabis, Campbell and Castañeda)
Rifts: EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME The RPG
Savage Worlds: The Rules-Light RPG with Just Enough Crunch To Entertain The Min-Maxer In Your Group
Traveller: The Things You'll Do to Pay Your Mortgage... IN SPAAACE
Quote from: The Butcher;884739Traveller: The Things You'll Do to Pay Your Mortgage... IN SPAAACE
That one made me chuckle.
Marvel Heroic Roleplaying: Punched in the Mary-Jane.
latest WoD Vampire: we did it for you, .tumblr
FATE Core: just make sure you all are on the same page, just make sure you all are on the same page, just make sure you all are on the same page, just make sure you all are on the same page, just...
Dungeon World: I don't know, I'm just a janitor here - you tell me.
Apocalypse World: EXTREEEEEMEEEEE!
Apocalypse World: Fuck for magic petrol!
any *.World: critical error, move not found
Maztica: Ew, human sacrifice is, like, so yucky and unheard of anywhere else... magical holocaust and brutal colonization for all y'all, kthxbai!
Forgotten Realms: Fantasy Fucking Canada
Godbound: The OSR's Retort To WW's Answer To D&D
Quote from: Shipyard Locked;884733Ravenloft: Soft White Wolf center wrapped in crunchy D&D. New improved horror flavor with none of the calories!
Quite the achievement, given that the setting launched in 1990, a year
before White Wolf premiered
Vampire: The Masquerade. :)
In Nomine Steve Jackson Games:
SJ — "Shit! How the hell do I finish this freaky French licensing contract without inducing a second Satanic Panic in the Newt Gingrich's Contract with America years?"
??? — "You could always stand the product next to someone more out there, sorta blend in and look harmless?"
SJ — "Great! Splat out the critters like *that other company's* competing boy band monsters, select artwork with a mature-yet-cartoony finish, have the setting theology read like nearby places of worship on offer from a non-commital conceirge at a 3-star Mobil hotel, and go on a highball bender last week of editing!"
??? — "You do almost as good a job as me... Might I suggest a card game? I think you'll find it keeps you busy in profits." ;)
In Nomine Satanis/ Magna Veritas:
"Spumoni ice cream and capers non-pareil on mom's apple pie?" :eek:
"Well this grenadine and chocolate syrup ganache I just made had to go on something!" :rolleyes: "I love the many colors..." :cool:
Golarion: All your favorite foods, ever! — all on one plate! (oversalted, drowned in ketchup, and topped with a frosted cinnamon roll)
Shall I top off your sweet tea subscription as I'm passin' through, dear?
Rolemaster - Drop book of charts on foot driving splinters of bone into arteries, bloody swelling rises up leg until fragment finds heart. Six rounds stunned, die in six rounds.
GURPS - A turnip, a loaf of bread, a toaster, and the former king of Spain dig ditches in an alien theme park.
Little Fears: chibi Call of Cthulhu.
Fiasco: Why the fuck do we need to collect these colored dice?
Pathfinder: Day 3.75. Still same tired leftovers -- with scrambled eggs.
Pathfinder Society: Stale leftovers, no substitutions! (just drown it in ketchup already.)
Opa, you should really start a separate "if RPGs were food" thread.
D&D 3.0/3.5/Tome: When you just want to read rules and never play.
I've been sick with fever recently. I must be regaining my appetite and it is spilling subconsciously into my comments. :p
Changeling the Dreaming 1e:
Game mechanics? Let's use random shit from the junk drawer! Yay!
Quote from: Armchair Gamer;884753Quite the achievement, given that the setting launched in 1990, a year before White Wolf premiered Vampire: The Masquerade. :)
Bah, still accurate.
Goth Punk setting: What your New Wave 13 year old self thought how badass clubbing was like.
(edit...)
NWoD Goth Punk setting: When your mid-20s self got tired from the stale and aimless local club circuit.
Maid: A "Most Regrettable" Harem Anime Random Generator... gomen nasai!
Superhero 44: "Where the fuck is the GAME?"
Quote from: Opaopajr;884758Golarion: All your favorite foods, ever! — all on one plate! (oversalted, drowned in ketchup, and topped with a frosted cinnamon roll)
Golarion: World design by Mall Food Court Inc.
Wraith: The Unplayable
The Tools of Ignorance: Because... For all the... When you need... I got nothin'!
Dungeon World - Radical innovation of doing the same old shit you ever did, but using 2D6 and looking smug.
FATE - Where aggressive marketing and faux enthusiasm are regarded as natural substitutes for genuine originality and wit.
The Burning Wheel - No, we didn't get it either!
Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition - Yo! Roleplaying SUXX!
Star Wars - Edge of Empire - Where the biggest profit margin is in the dice!
FATE - Where aggressive marketing and faux enthusiasm are regarded as natural substitutes for genuine originality and wit.
Burning Wheel: Don't mess with the rules as written or the author will call you retarded (which actually happened here BTW - Settembrini was the victim i believe.)
Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition - Hey! Bored of roleplaying?! Try this!
Kult - Look it up on the internet and they'll put you on the Register!
The Forge - Join the Rock Against Roleplaying movement! Viva la Revolution!
Arrows of Indra: Because Tekumel Needed A Clone, Too
Call of Cthulhu 7e: Because all the previous editions were obviously broken and sorely needed more narrative mechanics. Seriously, how did anyone manage to play such a broken game before we came along and fixed it?
Old School Renaissance: We want our youth back, and what's up with kids these days?!?!
Quote from: Shipyard Locked;884770Bah, still accurate.
Yeah, It's not like this thread is about even handed and reasonable critiques. Its about snark and nerd rage. :D
Quote from: Nexus;884839Yeah, It's not like this thread is about even handed and reasonable critiques. Its about snark and nerd rage. :D
Of course YOU are above that sort of nonsense.
Quote from: Simlasa;884841Of course YOU are above that sort of nonsense.
Well, no I'm not and I didn't claim to be. :)
That said...
The Strange: Because Torg 2nd Edition was taken.
(I Keed, I keed 'cause I love!)
MERP: the game where your grandmother knows all spell lists to level 40.
FATE: trade a bauble for +2
FATE: where everyone's so special that they can get +2 (and not even the GM can stop you)
FATE: it's an RPG, really, it's got dice, sort of, and look - you can get +2
FATE: it's all about +2
Quote from: flyingmice;884809The Tools of Ignorance: Because... For all the... When you need... I got nothin'!
You know? I still suggest it to people every chance I get.
The Tools of Ignorance: Because slayin' a dragon ain't half so grand as winnin' the pennant.
Well, I've learned something practical from this thread. I'm much further along the narrative side of things compared to the standards on this board.
Quote from: TrippyHippy;884826Star Wars - Edge of Empire - Where the biggest profit margin is in the dice!
Dig it. :)
FFG Star Wars:
"Well?"
"Well, yes..."
"Yes?... but what?"
/ominous light dimming
"I like big butts and I can not lie..."
/Sir Mix a Lot "Baby's Got Back" plays, mayhem ensues, again.
Quote from: Nexus;884846That said...
The Strange: Because Torg 2nd Edition was taken.
(I Keed, I keed 'cause I love!)
The Strange: Torg For People Who Don't Like Rules
Vampire Mind's Eye Theatre: played with rock, paper and scissors.
Prince Valiant: played with coins.
Dread: played with Jenga.
Dark Heresy: played with sociopathic assholes.
(Seriously, 40K RPGs brought out theocratic, fascist sadism in all of my players, WTF...)
The One Ring: Nice legs, shame about the face.
WFRP 3rd: Go play Descent.
FFG 40k: Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader, Deathwatch, Black Crusade, Only War, Dark Heresy2...hurry up and make more RPGs outta this license before GW destroys this IP too.
Dread: the only RPG where the story, characters, role-playing and any choices don't matter.
Dread: the only RPG where the story, characters, role-playing and any choices don't matter.
Quote from: Warboss Squee;884934WFRP 3rd
For a moment I thought somebody suggested that there are more than 2 official editions of WFRPG. It was a very sad moment in my life and I'm very happy that it's already gone.
Thank you for listening to this, where's the alcohol?
Quote from: Necrozius;884928Dark Heresy: played with sociopathic assholes.
(Seriously, 40K RPGs brought out theocratic, fascist sadism in all of my players, WTF...)
Ok, joking aside, what did you expect?
40k is either an exercise in futile counter-escapist nihilism if you play it straight or a hilarious
Blackadder Goes Forth style comedy if you play it as the original setting designers intended. One way or another, random cruelty, fascism, guilt by association and the law of unintended consequences are so utterly built into every facet of its universe that your players have no choice but to engage with it. That or die/get executed and go play another game.
Quote from: Shipyard Locked;884957hilarious Blackadder Goes Forth style comedy if you play it as the original setting designers intended.
Coincidence?
Spoiler
(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-lgdGg8iR4xs/UNC3PLebBMI/AAAAAAAAFwE/YizplsvJBw8/s1600/Blackadder+Christmas3.jpg)
:D
Phoenix Command: When you really need rules for exactly how many fractional seconds it takes your character to cut through someone's arm with a chainsaw.
Rifts: sometimes more is less.
Nephilim: Design your character. Design your character's spirit rider. Design your spirit rider's 5 past lives. Combine into one character. Go!
Quote from: Shipyard Locked;884957Ok, joking aside, what did you expect?
40k is either an exercise in futile counter-escapist nihilism if you play it straight or a hilarious Blackadder Goes Forth style comedy if you play it as the original setting designers intended. One way or another, random cruelty, fascism, guilt by association and the law of unintended consequences are so utterly built into every facet of its universe that your players have no choice but to engage with it. That or die/get executed and go play another game.
I freely admit to having only played Rogue Trader, and only a few sessions, but the enthusiasm that some fans show online for the totalitarian theocracy running the human race kind of rubs me the wrong way.
Quote from: Sergeant Brother;884980Rifts: sometimes more is less.
*boo, hiss*
Dungeon World - Old School for Dummies... with Indie Cred
Das Schwarze Auge/The Dark Eye - railroading the shit out of the metaplot while you sit back and enjoy the view
Quote from: RPGPundit;884642RIFTS: Huge Robots and Occasional Boobies
Wait, I thought we were supposed to poke fun at stuff that wasn't awesome about games?
Quote from: The Butcher;884988the enthusiasm that some fans show online for the totalitarian theocracy running the human race kind of rubs me the wrong way.
(http://i.imgur.com/A4JYvhL.jpg)
(https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/9e/41/36/9e4136c06f181ba6e528cde7777b0d19.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/OwFg8IG.jpg)
Morrow Project: Military Fantasy ala Stargate, before the Stargate was discovered. ...also, see bowling ball head in Damnation Alley.
Traveller: Thousands of new ways to die horribly in the cold hard vacuum of space, on strange new planets, as well as on exotic planets.
Twilight 2000: Nato gone rogue!
Gamma World: Cemetary World, redone. ...see also Ogre, and Clifford D. Simak.
Chivalry & Sorcery: Arthurian legends and Medeival Times meets RPGs.
Rolemaster: Charts, Tables, Math, and even more math, oh, and a bit of roleplaying!
Castles & Crusades: Legend reborn, without Tom Cruise, with with even more ugly mean-spirited goblins and demons, wizards, priests, thieves, and a bunch of Germanic Knights thrown in for fun.
Lejendary Adventures: AD&D reincarnated.
Traveller: The best characters don't survive generation.
OD&D: Watch Gary Gygax pass off Dave Arneson's Braunstein GM notes as a game
AD&D: Watch Gygax masterbate to ch-ch-ch-charts, with illustrations by that weird kid at the back of the class who spends way too much time staring at woodcuts of mermaids
AD&D 2nd edition: Watch Buck Roger's grand-daughter try to turn D&D into King's Quest.
D&D 3rd edition: Belt porn
D&D 4th edition: Math porn
D&D: Any OSR game Gygax porn
D&D 5th edition: "Please,please like us. Please. We're just like [insert edition]."
Quote from: Daddy Warpig;885003jpg
(http://s17.postimg.org/renizrv4v/1447165864230.jpg)
Mage, Any version or Edition: The Overpowering and Post-Modernism
Fate Core: For a "Rules-Light System", you have to read a lot of bullshit
Aegis Project: Go Back Killing People, John Wick
Werewolf, The Apocalypse: Totally Green Peace MO, Really
Houses of the Blooded: Everything is so Tragic! OMG!
Elric! (And Stormbringer): detailed combat if you fight, and insane power levels if you can summon demons. Oh, also, you suck unless you're part of the superior Melnibonean race.
The Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine RPG: This is your brain [strike]on drugs[/strike], I mean, when you're trying to understand what this shit is about. Questions? :hand:
Vampire: The Masquerade "High school angst:the rpg"
Werewolf: the Apocalypse "Captain Planet meets Furries"
Mage: The Ascension "If the high school angst of Vampire wasn't pretentious enough for you"
Wraith: The Oblivion "Because we already did all the good monsters"
Changeling: The Dreaming "What happens when you write an rpg after smoking pot and listening to too much Enya"
Shadow of the Demon Lord : because D&D is for pussies
Dark Heresy : because democracy is boring
Aw man, I wanna tackle some of those.
OD&D: The Make Some Shit Up Game
AD&D 1e: The Official Advanced Tournament Big Boy Pants Real D&D Ruleset
AD&D 2e: Friendship Is Magic
D&D 3e: One Game To Rule Them All
D&D 4e: lol pwnd
D&D 5e: I'm Sorry, Please Come Back
Of course, White Wolf's "A Storytelling Game of..." seems made-to-order for this joke.
Vampire: The Masquerade: A Storytelling Game of Being a Stone-Cold Mofo and Pretending You Feel Bad About It
Werewolf: The Apocalypse: A Storytelling Game of Ecoterrorism and Heavy-Handed Puberty Metaphors
Mage: The Ascension: A Storytelling Game of Cultural Marxism
Wraith: The Oblivion: A Storytelling Game of Daring Your Fellow Player To Do Evil Shit
Changeling: The Dreaming: A Storytelling Game of Super Iffy 'Childhood Is Magic' Borderline Pedo Shit
Vampire: The Requiem: A Storytelling Game of Masquerade All Over Again
Werewolf: The Forsaken: A Storytelling Game of Thinly Veiled Vigilantism
Promethean: The Created: A Storytelling Game of Coming Out of Your Room
Mage: The Awakening: A Storytelling Game That's Actually About Magic, Imagine That
Changeling: The Lost: A Storytelling Game of Abuse Revenge Porn
Quote from: The Butcher;885109D&D 4e: lol pwnd
D&D 5e: I'm Sorry, Please Come Back
that made me laugh.
QuoteChangeling: The Dreaming: A Storytelling Game of Super Iffy 'Childhood Is Magic' Borderline Pedo Shit
Where's the "borderline pedo" stuff come from?
Quote from: TristramEvans;885111that made me laugh.
:hatsoff:
Quote from: TristramEvans;885111Where's the "borderline pedo" stuff come from?
I'm being very, very mean, but the whole idea that childhood is Glamour, luminous and magical, and adulthood is Banality and killing the Universe gives off the weirdest Michael Jackson vibe. IMHO, YMMV etc.
Quote from: TristramEvans;885046
AD&D 2nd edition: Watch Buck Roger's grand-daughter try to turn D&D into King's Quest.
Quote from: The Butcher;885109AD&D 2e: Friendship Is Magic
Things like this remind me why AD&D 2nd Edition has a special place in my heart. :)
Quote from: The Butcher;885112I'm being very, very mean, but the whole idea that childhood is Glamour, luminous and magical, and adulthood is Banality and killing the Universe gives off the weirdest Michael Jackson vibe. IMHO, YMMV etc.
Ah, OK I can see that now.
Quote from: Armchair Gamer;885116Things like this remind me why AD&D 2nd Edition has a special place in my heart. :)
Its my favourite edition. And I happen to love a lot of the oWoD games, especially Changeling. But I don't mind taking the piss out of things I love. Just ask my GF.
Quote from: Armchair Gamer;885116Things like this remind me why AD&D 2nd Edition has a special place in my heart. :)
I started gaming in 1992. I only kid because I love. :o
Beast The Primordial: Gamergate the straw manning.
Dark Ages 20th Anniversary: Tumbler Approved Edition.
Mutants and Masterminds Freedom City Setting: IF I WROTE FOR COMICS THIS IS HOW IT WOULD BE!!!111!!
Deadlands Reloaded: Still not giving a shit about your outrage over the South.
Shadowrun 4th edition: CYBERPUNK IS SUPER SERIOUS YOU GUYISE! Swear words are cooler than made up slang! edition.
Shadowrun 5th edition: Okay, okay, we realized we fucked up and removed every single fun setting concept in 4th edition. Deckers are back and we say Frag and drek again, we're real sorry! Edition.
Shadowrun any edition: What, it's not fun when the GM has to memorize 4 different rule sets just to run a game?
Legend of the Five Rings 1st edition: Because I would pay money to let John Wick Urinate in my mouth.
Deadlands Hell on Earth any version: Okay look guys, we understand this is for people who want to play Rifts with a more cohesive ruleset AAANND masturbate furiously over anything Deadlands related.
As an aside, I do love most of the games I listed.
RIFTS "The game you would have made when you were 12"
GURPS "The rpg equivalent of a soybean"
ICONS "If you want to play FASERIP, but wish the art sucked and there were less options"
AMBER "Fellatio for your GM"
NOBILIS "The official game of people who never play RPGs"
Dread - jenga... with Indie Cred
Greyhawk "It was cool in the 70s, apparently"
Forgotten Realms "D&D minus imagination"
Ravenloft "For those who like their horror about as scary as Sesame Street"
Dragonlance "A railraod tour through a schlock book series by mormons"
The Hollow World "Obscure enough to successfully stroke your geek ego by name dropping it and pretending you actually played it"
Mystara "Because Greyhawk isnt bland enough"
Spelljammer "Because Traveller isnt gay enough"
Planescape "White Wolf wrote a D&D setting"
Dark Sun "Exactly the same as an 80s fantasy movie on VHS: awesome box art obscuring a crappy low-budget barbarian flick"
sword world the game that got made cuz tsr was scared to take any thing that wasnt made in house as an official setting
Quote from: TristramEvans;885138Mystara "Because Greyhawk isnt bland enough"
Mystara is many negative things, but on closer examination 'bland' isn't one of them.
Quote from: Shipyard Locked;885152Mystara is many negative things, but on closer examination 'bland' isn't one of them.
I found it to be so in description, prose, and art. While it may be engaging to game in, aesthetically it was a limp duck.
Old Delta Green: Cthulhu drives you insane.
New Delta Green: Cthulhu ruins your marriage.
Dungeons & Dragons: because it's the only game everybody in your group knows how to play.
Quote from: The Butcher;884752Forgotten Realms: Fantasy Fucking Canada
Holy crap, all it needs is maple syrup.
Shadowrun: Because I'm Stuck In A High Fantasy Rut
Quote from: CRKrueger;885183New Delta Green: Cthulhu ruins your marriage.
I trusted Cthulhu to keep it secret, assumed he would understand it was just a one-time thing, but before you know it he's boiling our pet rabbit and I'm looking for a lawyer.
Quote from: JesterRaiin;885086The Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine RPG: This is your brain [strike]on drugs[/strike], I mean, when you're trying to understand what this shit is about. Questions? :hand:
Fucking spot on unfortunately :P
"Chuubo's" became hugely popular over at RPG.net. I think I read two threads on it. Then I read the Kickstarter page. Then I googled it and read a few reviews. I still have no fucking clue what it even is. Could be a toaster for all I know :confused:
Quote from: Battle Mad Ronin;885302Fucking spot on unfortunately :P
"Chuubo's" became hugely popular over at RPG.net. I think I read two threads on it. Then I read the Kickstarter page. Then I googled it and read a few reviews. I still have no fucking clue what it even is. Could be a toaster for all I know :confused:
To be honest, those two threads are like an astro turf operation. I don't think most people give a shit about that game.
Quote from: Battle Mad Ronin;885302I still have no fucking clue what it even is. Could be a toaster for all I know :confused:
I read it. I admit that both my English and the following people's thoughts in general leave much to be desired, but in case of
Chuubo I'm totally lost.
Quote from: ArrozConLeche;885307To be honest, those two threads are like an astro turf operation. I don't think most people give a shit about that game.
Why do you?
Quote from: CRKrueger;885183New Delta Green: Cthulhu ruins your marriage.
Admittedly, that's a step up from strippers, cheap gin and ill-advised racetrack bets.
Quote from: JesterRaiin;885320Why do you?
Huh? WHy do I what?
after the bomb lets do some thing actually interesting with this tmnt license
fasa era battletech lets loose are asses because the legal department cant get sober for 5 or 10 minuets and do its job
modern battletech proving that old games do rise again
robotech rpg how not to make a macross rpg
Quote from: ArrozConLeche;885334Huh? WHy do I what?
Why do you care about that specific game? There are 11 pages of examples, and although the majority describe popular, well known stuff like D&D/WoD but there are also less known games like S44, Maid, the Tools of Ignorance and such.
Yet, you focus your attention on this piece of crap and assume some conspiracy behind it.
That's why I'm asking why do you care?
Quote from: JesterRaiin;885380Why do you care about that specific game? There are 11 pages of examples, and although the majority describe popular, well known stuff like D&D/WoD but there are also less known games like S44, Maid, the Tools of Ignorance and such.
Yet, you focus your attention on this piece of crap and assume some conspiracy behind it.
That's why I'm asking why do you care?
Why does anyone care about any of this?
Quote from: Nexus;885382Why does anyone care about any of this?
Because we're nerds?
Quote from: Nexus;885382Why does anyone care about any of this?
Lt. Columbo said once something along the lines "
when people begin to behave strangely, I'm beginning to wonder" and I agree with his attitude. I'm simply curious why my interlocutor decided to pick exactly this comment and make an example of astroturfing of it. :)
Quote from: Warboss Squee;885384Because we're nerds?
Got it in one! :D
Quote from: JesterRaiin;885380Why do you care about that specific game? There are 11 pages of examples, and although the majority describe popular, well known stuff like D&D/WoD but there are also less known games like S44, Maid, the Tools of Ignorance and such.
Yet, you focus your attention on this piece of crap and assume some conspiracy behind it.
That's why I'm asking why do you care?
i chose it because i felt like choosing it. you've got some sort of problem with it that you're starting yet another pedantic argument?
Quote from: Nexus;885386Got it in one! :D
(http://cdn.meme.am/instances/250x250/67235167.jpg)
Quote from: ArrozConLeche;885388i chose it because i felt like choosing it.
Ah, so merely a personal bias. Thanks for the explanation. :)
Quote from: ArrozConLeche;885388you've got some sort of problem with it that you're starting yet another pedantic argument?
No, but I can be persuaded to do so. Tread lightly. ;)
Quote from: Spinachcat;884713Amber: that game you'd play if it had dice
I laughed out loud. :)
Quote from: JesterRaiin;885407Ah, so merely a personal bias. Thanks for the explanation. :)
Pretty much every response here is based on personal bias, but somehow you've got such a hard on for me that you're nitpicking my posts here too.
QuoteNo, but I can be persuaded to do so. Tread lightly. ;)
Too late, you already started one. Now, can you let this thread get back to the topic it was created for, or are you going to keep acting the fool?
Your Favourite RPG : "What you were doing instead of having sex in high school"
Quote from: ArrozConLeche;885411Pretty much every response here is based on personal bias, but somehow you've got such a hard on for me that you're nitpicking my posts here too.
You were the one that addressed my comment, not the other way around.
Just FYI: I'm not into that submission stuff where two males embrace their strong, steroid-enhanced bodies, sweat a lot and call it "MMA". Just sayin. :D
Quote from: ArrozConLeche;885411Too late, you already started one. Now, can you let this thread get back to the topic it was created for, or are you going to keep acting the fool?
I'm sorry, I have trouble understanding that weird "time" feature. Should I let things go as intended
prior to or
after you decided to address me? ;)
Your Least Favourite RPG: "What you were arguing about online this week instead of having sex"
Quote from: JesterRaiin;885416You were the one that addressed my comment, not the other way around.
Lying again? I replied to someone else's comment, not yours.
QuoteJust FYI: I'm not into that submission stuff where two males embrace their strong, steroid-enhanced bodies, sweat a lot and call it "MMA". Just sayin. :D
Har har, you implied I'm gay. No one cares.
QuoteI'm sorry, I have trouble understanding that weird "time" feature. Should I let things go as intended prior to or after you decided to address me? ;)
no, prior to when you addressed me without being addressed. Ready to stop being asinine now?
Stay on target, you two!
Apocalypse World & * World hacks : Let's play stereotypes!!!
Quote from: TristramEvans;885136AMBER "Fellatio for your GM"
Depends on the group way too much:).
Quote from: TristramEvans;885136NOBILIS "The official game of people who never play RPGs"
I've played Nobilis3e, it plays just fine:D!
It was one of the most entertaining sessions ever, because we played the Power of Student Love (me), the Power of Administrative Obstruction and the Power of Things That Go Wrong, in a custom university-based setting (I think the GM has constructed the setting by the rules for "special domains where the Powers spend their leisure time", or something). Given the setting, it was just bound to be good with a group consisting of an university student, someone who had recently acquired a second university diplomas, and two university teachers (one of them GMing)! If you wonder: installing a machine for selling condoms on a campus takes a Magnitude 9 Wonder:D.
Why didn't we play it again? Because of the book's organisation, or lack thereof. The statement that explains it was quote, "the morons couldn't just put the rules in like 10 pages, but had to make me chase them across a 900-page book, didn't they", unquote. And though it was the GM that objected most strongly, for obvious reasons, we all shared similar feelings;).
Then again, we did prove you can play Nobilis. So that was something.
And now on topic.
DCC: Mutations, Psychic Overlords And Warriors Doing Their Actual Job.
GURPS: Don't Forget Your Metric Converters.
T&T: When You Don't Want To Take Anything At Serious.
Polaris: Drama Is Guaranteed.
Wushu: The Unofficial Chuck Norris Game.
Quote from: TristramEvans;885412Your Favourite RPG : "What you were doing instead of having sex in high school"
Daaaaaaahumm...
That is one sick burn. :D
Quote from: TristramEvans;885412Your Favourite RPG : "What you were doing instead of having sex in high school"
True, but while all those other people were busy having sex, I once managed to read Dune and two Van Richten books in four days (and still prep for a weekly game). Whose the loser now?
Quote from: TristramEvans;885412Your Favourite RPG : "What you were doing instead of having sex in high school"
I didn't get into RPGs until after* high school. This probably explains why I don't have more stories of GMs and players behaving like high-school kids with attitude problems. And it means this one simply doesn't apply;).
*That might be a late bloomer in your neck of the woods, but is pretty much the norm around here:p.
Quote from: TristramEvans;885418Your Least Favourite RPG: "What you were arguing about online this week instead of having sex"
Nope, I haven't even mentioned any of my least favourite RPGs this week:D!
Guess that makes me somehow unusual.
Quote from: AsenRG;885457Guess that makes me somehow unusual.
Well... there must be some OTHER reason you haven't had sex all these years... what gives?
Quote from: Simlasa;885459Well... there must be some OTHER reason you haven't had sex all these years... what gives?
Who says I haven't:)?
Vampire the Requiem: "Welcome back to high school."
Werewolf the Forsaken: "Bad spirit. Bad spirit. What cha gonna do? What cha gonna do when they come for you?"
Mage the Awakening: "Think vampire, but even more worthless."
Promethean the Created: "WE SUFFER FOR WE ARE ART!!! Please play us."
Changling the Lost: "Think vampire, but with a actual reason to be angst. Though the amount of sex we get would make Caligula jealous."
Hunter the Vigil: "Hey you can tell I was made to be played."
Geist the Sin Eater: "Hey I am playable too."
Hunter the Vigil: "Yeah your like a forth tier hunter."
Changling the Lost: "Your never gonna be popular as me."
Geist the Sin Eater: "Fuck you!"
Changling the Lost: "In what position you want?"
Vampire (or any WW game): virtue-signaling with nonstandard pronouns since 1991
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;885452True, but while all those other people were busy having sex, I once managed to read Dune and two Van Richten books in four days (and still prep for a weekly game). Whose the loser now?
or like how i read Beowulf in the old English in a week and a 1/2 and still got ready
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;885452True, but while all those other people were busy having sex, I once managed to read Dune and two Van Richten books in four days (and still prep for a weekly game). Whose the loser now?
That would undoubtedly make the worst "Reading is Fundamental" poster ever.
Quote from: JesterRaiin;885416You were the one that addressed my comment, not the other way around.
Just FYI: I'm not into that submission stuff where two males embrace their strong, steroid-enhanced bodies, sweat a lot and call it "MMA". Just sayin. :D
I'm sorry, I have trouble understanding that weird "time" feature. Should I let things go as intended prior to or after you decided to address me? ;)
"Argument? No, I'm sorry, this is Abuse."
KULT RPG: The game so vile, dark and cruel and what not... And then you
actually play it.
Quote from: James Gillen;885676"Argument? No, I'm sorry, this is Abuse."
If you want me to go on arguing, you'll have to pay for another five minutes. ;)
Interesting, 15 pages and not a bad word about FASERIP. It must have done something right!
Beast: the Primordal sorry, this is as close as we are going to get to Creature from the Black Lagoon.
Marvel Super Heroes no you can't ALL be Wolverine
Well played, well played...
Quote from: Teazia;885687Interesting, 15 pages and not a bad word about FASERIP. It must have done something right!
If you insist...;)
Faserip: No, it's not "Facerip", you morons!
:D
Also, allow me to congratulate you on FASERIP, whatever your role in its creation was!
Quote from: Teazia;885687Interesting, 15 pages and not a bad word about FASERIP. It must have done something right!
FASERIP: That thing you've only heard about.
FASERIP: That thing you probably never even heard about.
Marvel Superheroes aka "FASERIP": "Use the Ultimate Powers book for character generation; play a robot-plant hybrid with telekinetic control over wombats"
Marvel Universe: "The one no one played"
Marvel Heroic:"For when you want to roleplay a comicbook writer instead of a character in a comicbook"
This seems oddly relevant...
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Quote from: Opaopajr;884763Little Fears: chibi Call of Cthulhu.
Little Fears "implied child abuse the RPG."
Ghosts of Albion, its not Victorian its very late regency dammit.
Witchcraft -- Its Wicca with Cthulhu the RPG
D&D 4e Its not your daddies D&D heck its not anyone's D&D.
SenZar -- Not quite as insane as timecube
Rifts - Its like being 14 forever
Wraeththu -- Not even gamers are this perverse
Marvel Super Heroes:
Genre Simulation: Amazing
Complexity: Typical
Improv Potential: Feeble
Pathfinder: Kid tested, Poochie approved.
FATAL: Feeding RPG.net reviewer's bloated sense of self-righteousness since 2002.
Call of Cthulhu: When Mistress is busy with another client that night and you've been a naughty boy.
4th Edition: What else are we going to do while Tichondrius is down?
Dark Sun: I hear the Humongous runs a pretty tight table.
Far West: And I beheld when He opened the sixth seal, and, lo here was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as a sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood, and the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, and Far West was completed.
Exalted 3rd edition: We could make the pages out of gold, and give everyone a free puppy, and you bastards would still bitch about it.
Quote from: SneakyPete;885962Pathfinder: Kid tested, Poochie approved.
Poochie? the plush dog that was white and had pink ears, and was for girls?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtMkti7hSUA
Pathfinder: "no we won't do a 2nd edition incorporating all our required supplemental core books, because we care about backwards comparability." There I said it without laughing, can we turn the recorder off now?
Quote from: remial;886125Exalted 3rd edition: We could make the pages out of gold, and give everyone a free puppy, and you bastards would still bitch about it.
Ahem.
How about "
Exalted 3rd edition: 684K US$ raised and three years late, but still using poser art" ?
Quote from: remial;886125Exalted 3rd edition: We could make the pages out of gold, and give everyone a free puppy, and you bastards would still bitch about it.
Exalted 3rd edition: We could make it out of crusty hobo skin and smear it with dog shit and fanbois would still buy it.
Quote from: remial;886126Poochie? the plush dog that was white and had pink ears, and was for girls?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtMkti7hSUA
Pathfinder: "no we won't do a 2nd edition incorporating all our required supplemental core books, because we care about backwards comparability." There I said it without laughing, can we turn the recorder off now?
http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/Poochie
Pathfinder: How about a new sourcebook? Only 15$! How about a new sourcebook? Only 15$! How about a new sourcebook? Only 15$! How about a new sourcebook? Only 15$! How about... Quote from: TristramEvans;885860This seems oddly relevant...
Brilliant! :D
WFRP 1e: When you wanted to run Cthulhu but players wanted HARNMASTER
WFRP 2e: Now with EXTRA SPIKY BITZ
WFRP 3e: Let's get some D&D 4e attitude up in dis bitch!
Shadowrun: When you don't read enough documentation at work.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;885452True, but while all those other people were busy having sex, I once managed to read Dune and two Van Richten books in four days (and still prep for a weekly game). Whose the loser now?
I think you have answered yourself.
Quote from: remial;886125Exalted 3rd edition: Soon to be replace by Godbound.
I fix your typos.
GURPS: It can do ANYTHING... but can really only do low-powered low-magic stuff without sucking
My personal preferences:
Living Steel: 01110111 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01100100 01101111 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01101101 01100101 01100001 01101110 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01100011 01100001 01101110 00100111 01110100 00100000 01110010 01100101 01100001 01100100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00111111 (go here) (http://binarytranslator.com/)
CP2020: Look at my cool, edgy future! With GUNS and BIG HAIR.
Cybergeneration: You should teach your kids to play.
Cyberpunk 3.0: G.I. JOE!
Cyberpunk 2077: Hard copy will be so last millennium by the time this game comes out.
Quote from: RPGPundit;887358GURPS: It can do ANYTHING... but can really only do low-powered low-magic stuff without sucking
True enough. Though I would say that it leans towards very common magic that isn't earthshaking on its own but gets scary when you start to build institutions for the purpose of collaborative projects. The main problem with GURPS is that new stuff accrued through four editions and the balance between skills, advantages, and disadvantages began to skew more and more. If you cap attributes at 100 points you can spend hundreds of points on skills without ever really getting much better at things.
I think the patch list is really not that bad. Skills default to 1/2 skill, this largely removes the issue with high defaults due to high stats. The easy, average, hard spectrum needs to become the -1, -2, -3 spectrum and a two column chart needs to replace the current one, for whatever reason, that chart even messes the smart people up. Magic needs to be gone over and the known issues like unlimited creation of gold need to be patched up. The powers need to be separated out from the mundane advantages in their own section as do the supernatural disadvantages. All abilities need to scale up at the same rate, you can't have movement doubling at 20 points and then put strength on a much more expensive scale. Really GURPS has never handled super strength well. Strength needs to be fixed. I personally think a steeper lifting curve linked to a linear damage relationship and a massive cost increase on innate attack powers in excess of tech level would mostly solve things, though I'd probably put 2d damage at 10 strength and hit points equal to strength plus health, to make lower strength ratings more viable.
Supers break every system not designed 100% for them. That's not a GURPS issue per se.
Quote from: CRKrueger;887755Supers break every system not designed 100% for them. That's not a GURPS issue per se.
On the one hand I agree with you. On the other, one could say GURPS made it their issue by claiming to be a "universal RPGs system". I think there was even a picture of a superhero on the first edition cover.
Quote from: Panzerkraken;887657Cyberpunk 2077: Hard copy will be so last millennium by the time this game comes out.
Cyberpunk 2077: Chinese Democracy : The RPG. Guest collaborator : Axl Rose
Empire of the Petal Thrones: so it's just od&d with every in-universe word changed out for an Meso-American influenced invented language? Okay, I guess I'll play a session.
Tekumel: I got your Glorantha right here.
Mongoose Traveller 2: We hired some trolls and threw in 5e mechanics to make it suck.
one I liked was for first edition Blue Planet. "Read this if you want to get laid by oceanography students."
FATAL: Almost distinguishable from a surprising number of online D and D games.
Quote from: RPGPundit;887358GURPS: It can do ANYTHING... but can really only do low-powered low-magic stuff without sucking
Except, of course, it can do pretty well almost anything below godlike power, provided the GM is good. And even most systems that claim to do godlike powerlevels actually suck at the task;).
Quote from: Nexus;888023FATAL: Almost distinguishable from a surprising number of online D and D games.
:D
So true, alas!
Quote from: Nexus;888023FATAL: Almost distinguishable from a surprising number of online D and D games.
D&D: You do not want to play the same online games Nexus has been. :D
MgT2: Now made by trolls ripping off 5e.
Call of Cthulhu: Way easy to make a really good combat character from the very start, but a gang of pretentious pricks will get mad at you if you do
I used to be in a group with a member of the Swine (before Pundit taught me that particular pronoun for them I just refereed to him as a pretentious fuckhead) who insisted the only way to play Call of Cthulhu correctly was to have a group who knew the stories inside and out and were willing to ignore any possibility of the supernatural no matter how obvious that what they were dealing with was supernatural.
He was very upset when I ran a short, successful game that Started out as a Stargate SG1 game but was really Call of Cthulhu. (it was short because as soon as he realize it WAS CoC he and a couple others quit)
Quote from: RPGPundit;888975Call of Cthulhu: Way easy to make a really good combat character from the very start, but a gang of pretentious pricks will get mad at you if you do
Well, part of that is that being combat-effective is almost missing the point.
jg
Quote from: James Gillen;889129Well, part of that is that being combat-effective is almost missing the point.
Well, I've been in my share of firefights with cultists and I can vouch for the efficacy of dynamite, tommy guns and baseball bats. Yeah, you still have to track down the musty old tome and fry a few points of SAN banishing the Eldricht Horror of the Week, but the cultists are soft, squishy humans.
Quote from: The Butcher;889131Well, I've been in my share of firefights with cultists and I can vouch for the efficacy of dynamite, tommy guns and baseball bats. Yeah, you still have to track down the musty old tome and fry a few points of SAN banishing the Eldricht Horror of the Week, but the cultists are soft, squishy humans.
Same here, though I admit that I've never had anyone look at me askance when my military guys in CoC actually know how to shoot and brawl;).
Quote from: The Butcher;889131Well, I've been in my share of firefights with cultists and I can vouch for the efficacy of dynamite, tommy guns and baseball bats. Yeah, you still have to track down the musty old tome and fry a few points of SAN banishing the Eldricht Horror of the Week, but the cultists are soft, squishy humans.
Ahhh, baseball bats. I took a Call of C'Thulhu BYOC to Gen Con who was an ex-baseball player. He had 100 batting skill and 100 throwing skill. He was tossing grenades and dynamite and busting heads everywhere he went. My group won a scenario which the GM said no one had ever beat before, with no losses. Fun times.
Quote from: RPGPundit;888975Call of Cthulhu: Way easy to make a really good combat character from the very start, but a gang of pretentious pricks will get mad at you if you do
I actually remember something like this as a hilarious moment in a CoC game I was running. One of my players put points in martial arts and striking. It was part of his concept so I didn't fault him, the gumshoe had points in firearms for his revolver after all.
Anyway, the party gets to the end of the adventure and is facing down an evil liche responsible for all the bad stuff happening. Most of the party makes their sanity checks, the martial artist doesn't but he only goes temporarily crazy and still can fight. He charges the liche and proceeds to fight.
This was 5th edition I believe.. Suffice to say, he utterly destroys the liche in hand to hand combat, doing more damage than the party members with guns thanks to the double damage from martial arts.
It was hilarious, but it kinda did ruin the horror mood to have the martial arts college professor go Neo on an undead sorcerer's ass.
Quote from: Orphan81;889236I actually remember something like this as a hilarious moment in a CoC game I was running. One of my players put points in martial arts and striking. It was part of his concept so I didn't fault him, the gumshoe had points in firearms for his revolver after all.
Anyway, the party gets to the end of the adventure and is facing down an evil liche responsible for all the bad stuff happening. Most of the party makes their sanity checks, the martial artist doesn't but he only goes temporarily crazy and still can fight. He charges the liche and proceeds to fight.
This was 5th edition I believe.. Suffice to say, he utterly destroys the liche in hand to hand combat, doing more damage than the party members with guns thanks to the double damage from martial arts.
It was hilarious, but it kinda did ruin the horror mood to have the martial arts college professor go Neo on an undead sorcerer's ass.
I imagine this scene playing out to either "You're the best around" or "You are the Last Dragon."
Amber: When you want to play indie but want to keep your Old School cred.
Far West: It's fans have moved through the Five Stages of Grief, and now embrace the Zen of Caustic Humor at Another's Expense.
Unknown Armies: Severely fucked up people get magical power by doing severely fucked up things -- how do you think it's going to end?
Far West: People who expect what they paid for is just another example of the kind of shit GMS has to put up with.
Traveller: A hex crawl, where each hex is a solar system wide.
Nobilis: The game of flowers and vocabulary tests.
Quote from: Orphan81;889236I actually remember something like this as a hilarious moment in a CoC game I was running. One of my players put points in martial arts and striking. It was part of his concept so I didn't fault him, the gumshoe had points in firearms for his revolver after all.
Anyway, the party gets to the end of the adventure and is facing down an evil liche responsible for all the bad stuff happening. Most of the party makes their sanity checks, the martial artist doesn't but he only goes temporarily crazy and still can fight. He charges the liche and proceeds to fight.
This was 5th edition I believe.. Suffice to say, he utterly destroys the liche in hand to hand combat, doing more damage than the party members with guns thanks to the double damage from martial arts.
It was hilarious, but it kinda did ruin the horror mood to have the martial arts college professor go Neo on an undead sorcerer's ass.
That's just fucking brilliant. This player is a hero.
Quote from: dragoner;888719MgT2: Now made by trolls ripping off 5e.
I don't understand this. Really.
Care to explain?
Quote from: Orphan81;889236I actually remember something like this as a hilarious moment in a CoC game I was running. One of my players put points in martial arts and striking. It was part of his concept so I didn't fault him, the gumshoe had points in firearms for his revolver after all.
Anyway, the party gets to the end of the adventure and is facing down an evil liche responsible for all the bad stuff happening. Most of the party makes their sanity checks, the martial artist doesn't but he only goes temporarily crazy and still can fight. He charges the liche and proceeds to fight.
This was 5th edition I believe.. Suffice to say, he utterly destroys the liche in hand to hand combat, doing more damage than the party members with guns thanks to the double damage from martial arts.
It was hilarious, but it kinda did ruin the horror mood to have the martial arts college professor go Neo on an undead sorcerer's ass.
I did pretty much the same in a CoC DA/RQ2.5 PbP game (the GM has his own mix of d100 rules, I suspect - he's the one that got me into d100, and that might have been my first longer game, so I didn't even know the difference at the time).
I had established that I'm playing a mercenary. Cool. I make him the son of a man-at-arms (who is in reality the bastard of his own uncle, a monk). That means he can read.
My one unusual item? I have a book. The Book, to be exact, and you can guess which one that is. He can actually read his Bible...on the rare cases he's alone. It's too expensive to be shown to anyone, he plundered it by saving it from a burning church library (which probably had something like half a dozen books in all, so I've obviously saved a decent share of them).
Anyway, first time I get to meet a Mythos monster, I freak out, like most of the group, and run.
Next time I meet a Mythos monster, I start quoting the Bible from memory. This was a memorable moment, since I could actually quote the verses and integrate them in the combat description. Turning back? There's no turning back for the righteous! Cleanse the unholy things from the face of God's Creation! What does it matter my character is in a nightgown and not in armour?
I'm not sure whether the phrase "religion-fuelled adrenaline storm" was used at this point, or whether I used it in a similar scene later. I'm reasonably sure I devised it in reference to this character, though:D!
So, we charged through the things, reached the priest, slew him, then charged the Mythos monster. The dice helped the holy (or at least, the holier) side, and the first swing criticalled it in the head.
With a halberd, as I remember;).
We actually got away, complained to the bishop, and came back with an army to cleanse the heretics...exactly as had happened in the history of said castle:)!
Did I mention that the GM is also a historian specializing in 15th century:p? I learned a lot about playing a period character from said game.
Overall, such moments often lead to great gaming material. And I'm one of those guys that likes that better than the horror.
And of course, then I go and play Unknown Armies, where all the people that would stand up against an Horror from Outer Space are standing up against each other. There's plenty of horror behind that sentence;).
Quote from: AsenRG;889357I don't understand this. Really.
Care to explain?
Ok, maybe just one troll, but he's a big enough to keep me from buying it; and he has been active here in this forum.
In the playtest forums, they were talking about how much easier it would be to take D&D 5e's advantage/disadvantage mechanic, it isn't, however. It just stacks another layer on the same 2d6 + skill roll that is the standard from classic onwards.
Unknown Armies: where being sane enough to be able to call the police and not get a psych hold on yourself is a game breaking super power.
Quote from: remial;889400Unknown Armies: where being sane enough to be able to call the police and not get a psych hold on yourself is a game breaking super power.
That might be the most awesome selling point for UA I've ever read :D
Quote from: dragoner;889363Ok, maybe just one troll, but he's a big enough to keep me from buying it; and he has been active here in this forum.
In the playtest forums, they were talking about how much easier it would be to take D&D 5e's advantage/disadvantage mechanic, it isn't, however. It just stacks another layer on the same 2d6 + skill roll that is the standard from classic onwards.
I suspect I can guess which poster you have in mind, but I wouldn't let that stop me:).
But the part I don't understand is the claim it's ripping off 5e. The exact same mechanic has been present in other games before 5e for decades, including stuff as popular as Barbarians of Lemuria! In fact, it allows you degrees of advantage and disadvantage.
I'm not even going to bother to check just how far back the idea goes, a decade is plenty in my book;).
Quote from: remial;889400Unknown Armies: where being sane enough to be able to call the police and not get a psych hold on yourself is a game breaking super power.
Quote from: Battle Mad Ronin;889408That might be the most awesome selling point for UA I've ever read :D
I agree with BMR:D!
Quote from: AsenRG;889650I suspect I can guess which poster you have in mind, but I wouldn't let that stop me:).
Because you haven't had to deal with him all over the internet.
QuoteBut the part I don't understand is the claim it's ripping off 5e. The exact same mechanic has been present in other games before 5e for decades, including stuff as popular as Barbarians of Lemuria! In fact, it allows you degrees of advantage and disadvantage.
I'm not even going to bother to check just how far back the idea goes, a decade is plenty in my book;).
They are getting it from 5e though. While you are correct it predates 5e, it also doesn't change the fact that it has increased the mechanics of the roll by 50%, while saying "It simplifies things !!1!" I'm not even going to talk about gun rules from people who hate guns, or that now to jump you have to stop because inertial momentum isn't a thing. It's a left turn into lala land.
Quote from: AsenRG;889650But the part I don't understand is the claim it's ripping off 5e. The exact same mechanic has been present in other games before 5e for decades, including stuff as popular as Barbarians of Lemuria!
And yet it MgT 2e decides to adopt it, only after D&D 5e came out. Coincidence?
It's a clunky and ham-handed piece of design, because they mostly keep the old circumstantial bonuses and penalties while adding the "boon/bane" mechanic. As opposed to D&D 5e which mostly substitutes them for advantage/disadvantage.
Oh, and dragoner? Do as I did and get this clown on your ignore list.
Quote from: The Butcher;889769Oh, and dragoner? Do as I did and get this clown on your ignore list.
He has been blocked for years on Mongoose forums, G+, etc; I'm not alone on the 'wtf?' when Matt said he was part of the team, it definitely made reading the playtest farcical.
Quote from: The Butcher;889769And yet it MgT 2e decides to adopt it, only after D&D 5e came out. Coincidence?
Maybe, maybe not, I'm not the one that can tell:). Basically only the people that decided it, could tell, but then we'd have to find a way to make sure they're telling the truth.
QuoteIt's a clunky and ham-handed piece of design, because they mostly keep the old circumstantial bonuses and penalties while adding the "boon/bane" mechanic.
According to my reading, they keep them only in specific places.
Besides, what I like about the boon/bane mechanic is that it keeps the possible range of results the same while changing the likelihood for either. This is strictly better for those cases where you don't want an outcome to become impossible, IME;).
QuoteAs opposed to D&D 5e which mostly substitutes them for advantage/disadvantage.
Which is not a bad thing, but it's kinda limiting in the amount of bonuses you can stack.
Quote from: AsenRG;890448Which is not a bad thing, but it's kinda limiting in the amount of bonuses you can stack.
I dunno, man, I think the whole point of the mechanic in 5e us to cut down the use of circumstantial modifiers. So unless MgT 2e has scaled back the use of modifiers from 1e, in a degree similar to D&D 5e to 4e and 3.5e, I'm not sure the mechanic is a good fit.
In any case it does definitely imply in a loss of granularity, which again I'm not sure is the best fit for the grit and fiddliness I've come to expect from the Traveller brand.
But I may yet be persuaded by a gaming session. Savage Worlds looked awful on paper and now is one of my fall-back games.
Quote from: The Butcher;889769(...) Oh, and dragoner? Do as I did and get this clown on your ignore list.
Quote from: dragoner;889829He has been blocked for years on Mongoose forums, G+, etc; I'm not alone on the 'wtf?' when Matt said he was part of the team, it definitely made reading the playtest farcical.
I believe I'm missing something...
Quote from: The Butcher;890449(...) But I may yet be persuaded by a gaming session. Savage Worlds looked awful on paper and now is one of my fall-back games.
For me it was the other way around. SW read like it was going to be fun. But then I actually got to play it. Sort of serviceable but that's about it, IME.
Quote from: 3rik;890468I believe I'm missing something...
That's good, you want to miss him.
miss who?
Quote from: The Butcher;890449I dunno, man, I think the whole point of the mechanic in 5e us to cut down the use of circumstantial modifiers.
In 5e, maybe, but I'm not sure that this is the point in MgT2e. Nor that it would be desirable.
Similar mechanics can and do have different effects in different systems, after all. And given the probabilities and range of results of d20 and 2d6, not to mention the grittiness levels, do we need to prove that these are different systems:)?
QuoteSo unless MgT 2e has scaled back the use of modifiers from 1e, in a degree similar to D&D 5e to 4e and 3.5e, I'm not sure the mechanic is a good fit.
But combining them still works.
QuoteIn any case it does definitely imply in a loss of granularity, which again I'm not sure is the best fit for the grit and fiddliness I've come to expect from the Traveller brand.
That's what I mean by the "not desirable" comment, too. However, we can actually remove the cap of one boon/bane die and we can assign DMs, too.
QuoteBut I may yet be persuaded by a gaming session. Savage Worlds looked awful on paper and now is one of my fall-back games.
Totally true for Savage Worlds:D!
Actually, I'm starting to suspect that this is also how T5 will be remembered as well:p.
Quote from: remial;890496miss who?
You sure you want to know;)?
Quote from: AsenRG;890519But combining them still works.
By replacing one roll of the dice with three? By that definition, anything works. I'm not going for it though, it is just extra work for me as GM.
Quote from: dragoner;890530By replacing one roll of the dice with three?
Where do you get the two extra rolls from?
Quote from: AsenRG;890532Where do you get the two extra rolls from?
That's your bonus or negative modifier for effect, the booba.
Quote from: remial;890496miss who?
If you say his name three times, he comes and trolls your thread.
Quote from: dragoner;890535If you say his name three times, he comes and trolls your thread.
jeff
jeff
jeff
Quote from: kosmos1214;890537jeff
Except he understands rpg's.
Quote from: dragoner;890538Except he understands rpg's.
then i have no idea if its not jeff
Quote from: kosmos1214;890539then i have no idea if its not jeff
Jeff is someone who should be rewarded in the Trav community, but probably never will. He sent me some David R Dietrick posters that I gave to some local game stores to put up, signed by Marc Miller.
Quote from: dragoner;890540Jeff is someone who should be rewarded in the Trav community, but probably never will. He sent me some David R Dietrick posters that I gave to some local game stores to put up, signed by Marc Miller.
huh cool i never would have guessed
Quote from: dragoner;890534That's your bonus or negative modifier for effect, the booba.
You mean the boon die? You roll that one together with the rest of them, IIRC. That's not even one extra roll.
Quote from: kosmos1214;890539then i have no idea if its not jeff
I suspect they mean someone who plays solo and has an youtube channel, they've had heated argumentslately.
Quote from: AsenRG;890559You mean the boon die? You roll that one together with the rest of them, IIRC. That's not even one extra roll.
Try it on a dice roller, complex enough to where it just makes more work for me, I don't want to have to roll all the dice as GM (I played with it enough to see that). However, all I ever saw was the first playtest document. Still not needed to replace a situational mod. Sort of moot now ...
There are other things in the works.
Quote from: dragoner;890570Try it on a dice roller,
Tried it on Myth Weaver's dice roller and on my smartphone's dieroller. Works as expected, which is fast.
Quotecomplex enough to where it just makes more work for me,
Picking the two highest dice is complex?
QuoteI don't want to have to roll all the dice as GM (I played with it enough to see that).
And I simply don't understand that.
QuoteHowever, all I ever saw was the first playtest document. Still not needed to replace a situational mod.
Huh? I pointed out what the benefit is - you're still able to roll 12, so all the numbers within your skill+attribute+2-12 range are still within the range. Some of them are just more likely than before.
Coupled with changing TNs, that's a good decision, or some tasks would be outside the ability of anyone.
Still easier to run 2d6+2 or whatever, than to run three iterations, sort numbers, then total your mods and apply them. Add complexity, then the players balk and then you have to roll them. Too much work for an extra +/- 1 or 2; just the fact it has to be discussed is proof enough of that.
Quote from: dragoner;890664Still easier to run 2d6+2 or whatever, than to run three iterations, sort numbers, then total your mods and apply them. Add complexity, then the players balk and then you have to roll them. Too much work for an extra +/- 1 or 2; just the fact it has to be discussed is proof enough of that.
Actually, the fact that it has to be discussed was simply surprising for me, then I remembered that it used to take me longer before I GMed Barbarians of Lemuria and played Honor+Intrigue:).
All that "work"? It would now take me longer to write "3,3,5+2" than to say "10", which is the result in drop lowest. Seriously, I can't hit the keys that fast, and my job involves typing:D!
Don't worry, it's going to get faster with practice for you, too, I can attest to that.
About one third of my test rolls amounted to +3 to +5, but as I explained above, the point is not in the modifier, but in
the modifier not changing the minimum and maximum roll;).
Quote from: AsenRG;890676It would now take me longer to write "3,3,5+2" than to say "10"...
Ah, there we see the three rolls.
My job is generally crunching numbers.
Quote from: AsenRG;890519And given the probabilities and range of results of d20 and 2d6, not to mention the grittiness levels, do we need to prove that these are different systems:)?
Never claimed they were the same system. Just that MgT 2e very likely aped the mechanic from D&D 5e.
Quote from: AsenRG;890519But combining them still works.
Again, never claimed that it doesn't. Just that it adds a little complexity and does nothing in return.
Quote from: AsenRG;890519Actually, I'm starting to suspect that this is also how T5 will be remembered as well:p.
Man, can't wait for an affordable version of T5.
Quote from: The Butcher;890701Man, can't wait for an affordable version of T5.
and one that's written in something other than the RPG version of Machine Code. :D
T5 is the perfect argument against complexity, and dice rolls.
Quote from: dragoner;890708T5 is the perfect argument against complexity, and dice rolls.
How so? (haven't read it yet. Just had my curiosity piqued by the reported abundance of creative tools)
Quote from: The Butcher;890714How so? (haven't read it yet. Just had my curiosity piqued by the reported abundance of creative tools)
Its mechanic is (or was) nD6+x; from which Marc said "who doesn't love rolling a hand full of dice?" Not many I found, during the playtest adventure I ran in the forum there at his site. Once you have figured the amount of dice to roll, and gone through the task/combat/whatever; it broke the flow to be constantly explaining what was happening, esp when it came to starship combat. While I could understand the want for greater granularity in numbers, the process became too complex in figuring out what was needed, and that ultimately the results were still binary pass/fail.
My feelings after 30+ years of rpg playing is that if 2d6+x does what you want, use it (like Classic Traveller), if you want greater granularity, go with a percentile like BRP.
Marc Miller's writing has always been dry and terse. One of the saving graces of Classic Traveller is that the limited page count favoured his style. The game was, of a necessity quite simple.
T5 is a sprawling mess because the format allows it.
The problem is that it's an massive interlocking system which is not always well explained and that one crucial sentence on one page is often hard to find. There's also an issue of the numbers produced by the makers being a bit troublesome. Try to build a tank that can damage another tank and you'll see what I mean.
It's getting the massive crosschecking and testing it needs but as everything goes through Marc in the end and he's just one person, the progress is slow. There will also be a player's book eventually though what will be in it and what form it will take remains undecided.
Quote from: AsenRG;890561I suspect they mean someone who plays solo and has an youtube channel, they've had heated argumentslately.
oh tetsubo
Quote from: dragoner;890726Its mechanic is (or was) nD6+x; from which Marc said "who doesn't love rolling a hand full of dice?"
:rolleyes: Yeah, that's bad.
How hard would it be to use the Makers with ye olde 2d6 roll-high?
Quote from: kosmos1214;890774oh tetsubo
Nope.
then whos left?????????????????????????????????????????
Quote from: dragoner;890679Ah, there we see the three rolls.
My job is generally crunching numbers.
That's one roll with three dice. Or do you call Classic/Mongoose Traveller 2d6 rolls "two rolls"?
If you're using a diceroller - what kind of diceroller doesn't allow you to roll three dice at once? And why do you keep using it instead of getting a better one;)?
Glad to hear that about your job. It means you're probably going to have an even easier time adapting to doing it on the fly.
Quote from: The Butcher;890701Never claimed they were the same system. Just that MgT 2e very likely aped the mechanic from D&D 5e.
Right, and I said they achieve different things in the different systems.
QuoteAgain, never claimed that it doesn't. Just that it adds a little complexity and does nothing in return.
Again, I know what you claimed. My point is that it adds negligible complexity, and achieves something in return, be keeping the range of results the same.
QuoteMan, can't wait for an affordable version of T5.
You mean hardback? I prefer PDFs, so this is a non-issue to me, but I guess several hundred pages would be expensive to print.
Quote from: dragoner;890726Its mechanic is (or was) nD6+x; from which Marc said "who doesn't love rolling a hand full of dice?" Not many I found, during the playtest adventure I ran in the forum there at his site. Once you have figured the amount of dice to roll, and gone through the task/combat/whatever; it broke the flow to be constantly explaining what was happening, esp when it came to starship combat. While I could understand the want for greater granularity in numbers, the process became too complex in figuring out what was needed, and that ultimately the results were still binary pass/fail.
My feelings after 30+ years of rpg playing is that if 2d6+x does what you want, use it (like Classic Traveller), if you want greater granularity, go with a percentile like BRP.
Rolling Nd6+X and comparing to TN is too complex? Seriously?
I'm seriously not understanding how you can say that with a straight face.
Quote from: The Butcher;890779:rolleyes: Yeah, that's bad.
How hard would it be to use the Makers with ye olde 2d6 roll-high?
Probably wouldn't be very hard, IMO. But I like Nd6+X mechanic, so I'm unlikely to ever try:D!
Quote from: The Butcher;890779:rolleyes: Yeah, that's bad.
How hard would it be to use the Makers with ye olde 2d6 roll-high?
There is a dice conversion section, and iirc, the makers are mostly still 2d6. The book has value, a lot more than just the nD6 mechanic. One of Traveller's problems has been people trying to gun-porn it up, but at 2d6, there isn't that much room.
About MgT, I have bought ~$300 of their books over the years, so it isn't like I hate them.
Quote from: AsenRG;890806That's one roll with three dice. Or do you call Classic/Mongoose Traveller 2d6 rolls "two rolls"?
If you're using a diceroller - what kind of diceroller doesn't allow you to roll three dice at once? And why do you keep using it instead of getting a better one;)?
Glad to hear that about your job. It means you're probably going to have an even easier time adapting to doing it on the fly.
Right, and I said they achieve different things in the different systems.
Again, I know what you claimed. My point is that it adds negligible complexity, and achieves something in return, be keeping the range of results the same.
You mean hardback? I prefer PDFs, so this is a non-issue to me, but I guess several hundred pages would be expensive to print.
Rolling Nd6+X and comparing to TN is too complex? Seriously?
I'm seriously not understanding how you can say that with a straight face.
Probably wouldn't be very hard, IMO. But I like Nd6+X mechanic, so I'm unlikely to ever try:D!
Do you actually even play with these mechanics?
Quote from: AsenRG;890806Again, I know what you claimed. My point is that it adds negligible complexity, and achieves something in return, be keeping the range of results the same.
That's the crux of our disagreement: I ain't seeing it. What would you say the boon/bane mechanic brings to the table?
Quote from: AsenRG;890806You mean hardback? I prefer PDFs, so this is a non-issue to me, but I guess several hundred pages would be expensive to print.
No, I mean a PDF that'll set me back less than $35. Though I'll probably cave in, eventually. I've gotten good at reading PDFs on a tablet.
Quote from: dragoner;890810Do you actually even play with these mechanics?
Yes, I've actually adapted them for my current campaign, which recently reached Barsoom:).
Quote from: The Butcher;890811That's the crux of our disagreement: I ain't seeing it. What would you say the boon/bane mechanic brings to the table?
Quote from: AsenRG...keeping the range of results the same.
Quote from: AsenRG...but as I explained above, the point is not in the modifier, but in the modifier not changing the minimum and maximum roll.
Seriously, this.
If you have a +1 Attribute and +2 Skill, decent for a pro, you can potentially hit a TN 14. Or you can, much more reliably, hit a TN of 10 with 5 points of Effect.
But, if there's any complicating factor, and said factor is expressed as a -2 penalty, you suddenly can't reach the TN, or can't reach an effect of 5 on the TN 10 die. That makes no sense, IMO. Sure it's harder to pull a headshot in a sandstorm*, even if you've got sensors that allow you to locate the target...but no, it's not impossible. Just much less likely to succeed.
OTOH, adding a Bane die in this case means that you still can succeed. It's just less likely, as it should be.
*Example is totally made up and beyond the point. Substitute for whatever other condition you think would be worth -2 if you don't like the sandstorm.
QuoteNo, I mean a PDF that'll set me back less than $35. Though I'll probably cave in, eventually. I've gotten good at reading PDFs on a tablet.
I totally understand you on this. But I think they're treating it as a full edition of Traveller, and that's the price of the rulebooks for a single edition on Far Future's website.
Given the pagecount, and how the Makers sub-systems would be spread in different books in MgT1e, it might even be a reasonable approximation:D!
Quote from: AsenRG;890817Seriously, this.
If you have a +1 Attribute and +2 Skill, decent for a pro, you can potentially hit a TN 14. Or you can, much more reliably, hit a TN of 10 with 5 points of Effect.
But, if there's any complicating factor, and said factor is expressed as a -2 penalty, you suddenly can't reach the TN, or can't reach an effect of 5 on the TN 10 die. That makes no sense, IMO. Sure it's harder to pull a headshot in a sandstorm*, even if you've got sensors that allow you to locate the target...but no, it's not impossible. Just much less likely to succeed.
OTOH, adding a Bane die in this case means that you still can succeed. It's just less likely, as it should be.
*Example is totally made up and beyond the point. Substitute for whatever other condition you think would be worth -2 if you don't like the sandstorm.
Or just use the old way of roll 2d6+x, 8+ for success. :rolleyes:
Quote from: dragoner;890833Or just use the old way of roll 2d6+x, 8+ for success. :rolleyes:
You missed the part about the maximum Effect.
Quote from: AsenRG;890854You missed the part about the maximum Effect.
...or did I? But hey, there's nothing like doing a Reimann equation for complex differentiability on a simple task roll. I don't see the players balking at that at all.
Quote from: dragoner;890858...or did I? But hey, there's nothing like doing a Reimann equation for complex differentiability on a simple task roll. I don't see the players balking at that at all.
Well, the post I qoted didn't address it.
Also, the solution to avoiding that is to not play games that rely on you
having to calculate Reiman equations. Luckily, no version of Traveller requires it.
Quote from: kosmos1214;890804then whos left?????????????????????????????????????????
He's talking about Shawn Driscoll. They are adversaries on just about every Traveler forum on the planet.
Quote from: CRKrueger;890903He's talking about Shawn Driscoll. They are adversaries on just about every Traveler forum on the planet.
Huh. Thought he was a poster over at the other site, guess I never noticed him here.
I think this thread has strayed from its titular purpose!
Quote from: RPGPundit;891868I think this thread has strayed from its titular purpose!
Set us an example, oh Great One.
Let's just bring the topic back on, shall we?:
MUTANT GRAVEYARD (Instead of MUTANT CHRONICLES)
As it back in the days were the final nail in the coffin for the Mutants in the original setting of MUTANT, and the only things that were called "mutants" in 'chronicles, were undead/zombies.
Shadowgrind. More of a statement on the wash-rinse-repeat way I saw people running Shadowrun than any fault of the game itself.
Witchcraft: A Game Of Neo-Paganism.
Lamentations of the Flame Princess: Because roleplaying a Cannibal Corpse album cover just isn't weird enough in itself.
Hero System Sixth Edition: To Fit In More Rules, We Had To Drop Some That Actually Worked
Quote from: Battle Mad Ronin;892030Lamentations of the Flame Princess: Because roleplaying a Cannibal Corpse album cover just isn't weird enough in itself.
:D
M&M: When You Want To Play Superheroes, But Your Players Refuse To Step Outside The Bounds Of D20;)!
Traveller: In space everyone can hear you pump the 12-Gauge!
(As said by one of my friends about the Classic Traveller Books 0-8 Reprint book - Traveller: VCR User's Manual in Spaaaaaaace).
D&D 3E and D20/SRD/OGL: Look, we aren't TSR. We're nice people! Honest!
D&D 4E: Look how GW makes a sh!tload of money from miniature wargaming! Let's get into this business, too!
D&D 5E: Well, let's pretend 4E didn't happen...
ACKS: Medieval Economics: the RPG.
Star Wars: Edge of the Empire: In a galaxy far, far away no one uses regular dice.
Star Wars: Force and Destiny Let's e honest you only bought the first two so we would be sure to publish this one, because playing a Jedi is what 90% of you really want.
(this was inspired in part because of the whining from one of the people I used to play with after he was told he couldn't be a Jedi because there were already 4 in the party, and he whined that he didn't get to have a character who could do anything cool)
That's disheartening. I remember playing WEG Star Wars, and people wanted to play droids and wookies and pilots too.
MYFORAG: Look at the designer, and that's all you need to know about the game.
Within the Ring of Fire: The same goes for its designer, too.
BESM: It's like GURPS Lite for weebs!
Black Tokyo: It's like FATAL for weebs!
Wraith: Just when you thought White Wolf couldn't get any more grimdark and pretentious, they top themselves!
Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;892690MYFORAG: Look at the designer, and that's all you need to know about the game.
Within the Ring of Fire: The same goes for its designer, too.
Varg Vikernes was easy, but what's the deal with that Wood guy who designed WtRF?
Mutants & Masterminds: Plagiarizing Better Designers Since 2002
Call of Cthulhu: Blow up tentacle monsters with dynamite.
Empire of the Petal Throne: Weird insect people worship Indian and Aztec gods in an astonishingly original world that you'll enjoy reading about but never find any players for.
Ars Magica: Play a cabal of medieval mages by exploiting the power of mathematical formulas. Lots and lots of mathematical formulas.
Gamma World: Create totally broken mutant characters, then loot rifles and motorcycle helmets from ruined military bases.
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: Nasty scoundrels uncover even nastier cultists in a world where survival hinges on remembering dozens of German names.
Earthdawn: An evocative and inspiring setting brought to life by a system so involved that it's guaranteed to wrench you out of any immersion in the setting.
Greyhawk: Gary Gygax's wargame setting hastily re-purposed into an RPG world that hung on the walls of thousands of rec rooms in 1983.
Golarian: A world as inclusive, clichéd, and commercially accessible as its publishers dreamed it could be.
Quote from: Doc Sammy;892720BESM: It's like GURPS Lite for weebs!
Black Tokyo: It's like FATAL for weebs!
Weebs?
Quote from: Nexus;892835Weebs?
Short for Weeaboo (http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/weeaboo).
Keep in mind that I am a huge fan of anime and games like BESM but I believe if you can't laugh at yourself, why laugh at all?
Quote from: Doc Sammy;892840Keep in mind that I am a huge fan of anime and games like BESM but I believe if you can't laugh at yourself, why laugh at all?
Anime fandom deserves 80% of the mockery it gets, and I say that as someone who watches plenty of anime. Few fandoms have, over time, so appallingly warped the very production of their object of adoration.
Quote from: Doc Sammy;892840Keep in mind that I am a huge fan of anime and games like BESM but I believe if you can't laugh at yourself, why laugh at all?
Why do I imagine the Joker saying that? :D
Quote from: CRKrueger;892838Short for Weeaboo (http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/weeaboo).
Ah, thanks.
Quote from: Shipyard Locked;892847Few fandoms have, over time, so appallingly warped the very production of their object of adoration.
Is it just me, or has anime gotten
less creative over the last decade or so? I remember a lot of really outre but well-done premises from Back In The Day, but the stuff I see readily available now all seems derivative.
Quote from: Doc Sammy;892720Wraith: Just when you thought White Wolf couldn't get any more grimdark and pretentious, they top themselves!
I always referred to oWoD Mage as
Vague: The Pretension.jg
Quote from: daniel_ream;892895Is it just me, or has anime gotten less creative over the last decade or so? I remember a lot of really outre but well-done premises from Back In The Day, but the stuff I see readily available now all seems derivative.
Nah, no more so than most media in my opinion (Sturgeon's Law is consistent). There are still good ideas that turn into mostly good shows, the problem is they are increasingly getting filtered through the distorting lens of what will appeal to a, frankly, decadent and perverse core audience. I hate how Bible-thumping that makes me sound, but it actually fits here.
I know I'll get mocked, but it really is annoying trying to watch a show for its good elements while putting up with the intrusions of puerile erotic pandering and jokes that would make the writers of South Park nervous.
Quote from: Doc Sammy;892840Keep in mind that I am a huge fan of anime and games like BESM but I believe if you can't laugh at yourself, why laugh at all?
Quote from: Nexus;892848Why do I imagine the Joker saying that? :D
Well, the Joker can say "good morning" and shake your hand, but most people that say and do the same mean vastly different things;).
MYFAROG: For when Black Tokyo isn't offensive enough for you
Werewolf The Apocalypse: Eco-Terrorism 101-The RPG
GURPS: Lots of character options and lots of math
D&D 5e: It's Dungeons & Dragons Greatest Hits album
Quote from: Doc Sammy;893022D&D 5e: It's Dungeons & Dragons Greatest Hits album
Our Pathfinder GM has been reading 5e and his comment was: 'This reads a lot like 4e'
Quote from: Simlasa;893033Our Pathfinder GM has been reading 5e and his comment was: 'This reads a lot like 4e'
That's why I hate reading even the free basic set, though I admit there's lot of polish applied over the engine.
Maid: The Game You Should Really Try To Test Your Ability To Have Fun At Your Own Expense And Rile Up Everyone On Internet That Lacks Said Ability.
Godbound: For Those Times When Exalted Is Just Too Low-Powered.
Quote from: AsenRG;893039Maid: The Game You Should Really Try To Test Your Ability To Have Fun At Your Own Expense And Rile Up Everyone On Internet That Lacks Said Ability.
Maid: Where Having Fun at Your Own Expense includes Pedophilia.
Vampire: the Masquerade, black eyeliner pencil not included.
1st ed AD&D:
Advanced Dungeons & See the Other Book For the Rest of the Title
AD&D 1e: Our Bards Are Copyrighted.
Quote from: Shipyard Locked;892847Anime fandom deserves 80% of the mockery it gets, and I say that as someone who watches plenty of anime. Few fandoms have, over time, so appallingly warped the very production of their object of adoration.
no they dont and the assholes who pick on people who watch it need to have there porn collections mailed to all there friends and family and a boot stuck up there asses for good measure
Quote from: daniel_ream;892895Is it just me, or has anime gotten less creative over the last decade or so? I remember a lot of really outre but well-done premises from Back In The Day, but the stuff I see readily available now all seems derivative.
no as a guy who watches it theres still plenty of fresh ideas coming out actually some of the best ideas iv seen lately are out of budget titles
sound of the sky and living for the day after tomorrow are 2 that come to mind
Quote from: Rincewind1;893287AD&D 1e: Our Bards Are Copyrighted.
like for real??????
Quote from: Shipyard Locked;892847Anime fandom deserves 80% of the mockery it gets, and I say that as someone who watches plenty of anime. Few fandoms have, over time, so appallingly warped the very production of their object of adoration.
Can you expand on this (maybe on its own thread if it's worth it)? I've been out of the anime loop for years. Last anime I tried to watch was the reboot of Bubblegum Crisis, but I couldn't get into it.
Quote from: ArrozConLeche;893369Can you expand on this (maybe on its own thread if it's worth it)? I've been out of the anime loop for years. Last anime I tried to watch was the reboot of Bubblegum Crisis, but I couldn't get into it.
the reboot was so so from what i heard compared to 2032
Quote from: kosmos1214;893371the reboot was so so from what i heard compared to 2032
I sort of liked some of the changes in the origins...somewhat, but the character designs were so so for me (the boomers sort of sucked, but I didn't see that much, tbh). The city also looked less 'cyberpunkish'-- like too squeaky clean, but again, I didn't get too far into the series.
I also miss the rocking tracks, but I chalk that up to a generational thing.
Quote from: kosmos1214;893368no they dont and the assholes who pick on people who watch it need to have there porn collections mailed to all there friends and family and a boot stuck up there asses for good measure
Its so weird and kind of fucked up. Geeks/nerds are our own worst enemies. There's nothing most of us like more than crapping on another group of nerds for what they like... even if essentially the same thing to feel superior to them. We insult each other, come up with inventive slang, labels and jargon to deride each other far more than people outside the so called "community" who, by and large, except for some slow news day snickering at cosplayers or geek obsession displays and puzzled looks when a nerd thing goes public don't give much of a fuck after high school, IME.
Edit: And I do it too. I don't intend to be Holier than Thou. Much more than I want to but its an odd compulsion. Even if hours or even days later I realize it was a pretty silly argument to have often with a near stranger that was just doing there own thing.
Quote from: Nexus;893383Its so weird and kind of fucked up. Geeks/nerds are our own worst enemies. There's nothing most of us like more than crapping on another group of nerds for what they like... even if essentially the same thing to feel superior to them. We insult each other, come up with inventive slang, labels and jargon to deride each other far more than people outside the so called "community" who, by and large, except for some slow news day snickering at cosplayers or geek obsession displays and puzzled looks when a nerd thing goes public don't give much of a fuck after high school, IME.
yah very true and iv been craped on for hmm pretty much all of it at one time or another and never by a nerd.
so i tend to react more heated then most over it might also explain why ill play devils advocate for some thing im not even in too.
at least if im under standing you correctly.
Quote from: Rincewind1;893287AD&D 1e: Our Bards Are Copyrighted.
And don't forget "®RIFTS©TM All Rights Reserved"
Oi, fuckers, can we have one humorous thread here without people hijacking it?
RuneQuest: When you want to feel better than a D&D player.
Quote from: Nexus;893383Its so weird and kind of fucked up. Geeks/nerds are our own worst enemies. There's nothing most of us like more than crapping on another group of nerds for what they like... even if essentially the same thing to feel superior to them. We insult each other, come up with inventive slang, labels and jargon to deride each other far more than people outside the so called "community" who, by and large, except for some slow news day snickering at cosplayers or geek obsession displays and puzzled looks when a nerd thing goes public don't give much of a fuck after high school, IME.
Edit: And I do it too. I don't intend to be Holier than Thou. Much more than I want to but its an odd compulsion. Even if hours or even days later I realize it was a pretty silly argument to have often with a near stranger that was just doing there own thing.
(https://pp.vk.me/c627621/v627621756/14b2/JtsOAAeS_ws.jpg)
Quote from: ArrozConLeche;893398(https://pp.vk.me/c627621/v627621756/14b2/JtsOAAeS_ws.jpg)
Mmm ... bugs.
Quote from: Rincewind1;893397Oi, fuckers, can we have one humorous thread here without people hijacking it?
Also 'no'.
Quote from: Doc Sammy;893022MYFAROG: For when Black Tokyo isn't offensive enough for you
Whats offensive in MYFAROG?
Quote from: TristramEvans;893453Whats offensive in MYFAROG?
It's by Varg "That's How You Stop An Aggressive Buyout" Vikerness, supposedly chokeful of actual references to aryan/white power ideologies.
Quote from: Rincewind1;893457It's by Varg "That's How You Stop An Aggressive Buyout" Vikerness, supposedly chokeful of actual references to aryan/white power ideologies.
It lives!
(http://images5.fanpop.com/image/photos/28500000/Pennywise-stephen-kings-it-28546033-520-333.jpg)
:p
Quote from: kosmos1214;893368no they dont and the assholes who pick on people who watch it need to have there porn collections mailed to all there friends and family and a boot stuck up there asses for good measure
At least in our porn collections, the women are over 18.
There's a very real problem when adult men
otaku[1] over media aimed at and about prepubescent girls. For every fan of Black Lagoon or Planetes, there's a hundred who have body pillows of Azumanga Dai-oh! characters.
[1] Yes, I'm making that a verb
Quote from: CRKrueger;893080Maid: Where Having Fun at Your Own Expense includes Pedophilia.
Good try, but no, it doesn't by default, much as one of the Outrage Brigades tried to persuade people otherwise:).
Quote from: Rincewind1;893457It's by Varg "That's How You Stop An Aggressive Buyout" Vikerness, supposedly chokeful of actual references to aryan/white power ideologies.
Well, yes, and the setting seems almost like it's written by some white supremacist.
Which, of course, is exactly the case;).
Quote from: daniel_ream;893509At least in our porn collections, the women are over 18.
There's a very real problem when adult men otaku[1] over media aimed at and about prepubescent girls. For every fan of Black Lagoon or Planetes, there's a hundred who have body pillows of Azumanga Dai-oh! characters.
[1] Yes, I'm making that a verb
is that an euphemism for choking the monkey?
Quote from: AsenRG;893580Well, yes, and the setting seems almost like it's written by some white supremacist.
Have you read it? Can you give an example of how his views manifest in the setting/rules?
None of the reviews I've read mention such stuff.
Quote from: daniel_ream;893509At least in our porn collections, the women are over 18.
There's a very real problem when adult men otaku[1] over media aimed at and about prepubescent girls. For every fan of Black Lagoon or Planetes, there's a hundred who have body pillows of Azumanga Dai-oh! characters.
[1] Yes, I'm making that a verb
I'm a
Maison Ikkoku fan myself - is a Kyoko or Kozue body pillow a thing?
:D
Quote from: AsenRG;893580Good try, but no, it doesn't by default, much as one of the Outrage Brigades tried to persuade people otherwise:).
Nah, the Outrage Brigade left this one alone, because raping kids is totally cool if you can tie it to another culture's mores doncha know. ;) If the Pundit had put out Maid as an OSR game, Purple would have went to war with Uruguay. :D
Seriously though, it's obviously a parody game, but when you got stuff like this...
(http://i.somethingawful.com/u/elpintogrande/maid_rpg/character.gif)
...and this...
Quote from: Maid"Likes them young" : You're only interested in.....younger partners. You can decide what age range this entails.
...then you can't say with a straight face that the pedo charge just
fell randomly out of the sky without merit. Especially when a 9 year old PC like Mao could come with sexual perversion traits and murder condoms.
As a Japanese satire of Anime Maid Fetish culture, it's pretty biting, and I hope it's seen that way in Bulgaria, but in the US, the guys I've seen talking about Maid at cons and FLGS pretty much look like they keep their copy under their Azumanga Dai-oh! body pillow. Thank god it's only been a handful over the years.
Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with adults using RPGs designed to be Fetish Fuel, whether satire or not. But, be honest and accept that in Maid, there's a whole lot of *wink wink nudge nudge* to the underage sex that might give you plausible deniability...but it's there.
It pushes buttons, which is part of the intent.
Oh, and grats for being the first poster to defend Maid before it was attacked. ;)
Quote from: CRKrueger;893600Seriously though, it's obviously a parody game, but when you got stuff like this...
That's about 3 notches above "skeevy", well into "WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?!" territory.
Quote from: ArrozConLeche;893369Can you expand on this (maybe on its own thread if it's worth it)? I've been out of the anime loop for years. Last anime I tried to watch was the reboot of Bubblegum Crisis, but I couldn't get into it.
Sure:
Quote from: CRKruegerAs a Japanese satire of Anime Maid Fetish culture, it's pretty biting, and I hope it's seen that way in Bulgaria, but in the US, the guys I've seen talking about Maid at cons and FLGS pretty much look like they keep their copy under their Azumanga Dai-oh! body pillow. Thank god it's only been a handful over the years.
This entire conversation is a taste of what the Japanese fandom has allowed itself to become and (bafflingly) what the industry has submitted to catering to.
Quote from: Daddy Warpig;893603That's about 3 notches above "skeevy", well into "WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?!" territory.
Maid is wrong. From what I've heard, it has been there all along in manga/anime.
The last anime I watched was Cowboy Bepop on Adult Swim, first was SDF Marcross and Akira, back in the old days when you had to order it on VHS cassette. I know from talking with people that the whole manga/anime in Japan has a darker underbelly.
Quote from: Shipyard Locked;893634Sure:
This entire conversation is a taste of what the Japanese fandom has allowed itself to become and (bafflingly) what the industry has submitted to catering to.
Wrote my reply here: http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?p=893672#post893672, so as not to derail this here thread.
Mutant Chronicles: Big guns, shoulder pads, and nationalistic stereotypes do battle with the mind destroying horror of the rules.
Dark Albion: It's Warhammer in BEST MECHANIC EVER WRITTEN (Millions of People Can't Be Wrong) (Hey Did You Know I Created 5e?)
Quote from: remial;892540Star Wars: Force and Destiny Let's e honest you only bought the first two so we would be sure to publish this one, because playing a Jedi is what 90% of you really want.
(this was inspired in part because of the whining from one of the people I used to play with after he was told he couldn't be a Jedi because there were already 4 in the party, and he whined that he didn't get to have a character who could do anything cool)
Star Wars: Age of Rebellion, the game you bought to fight against the Empire, until you realized no one really cared, including the developers (seriously, the last couple of splat books have been utter ass).
Quote from: Simlasa;893591Have you read it? Can you give an example of how his views manifest in the setting/rules?
None of the reviews I've read mention such stuff.
No, I just found the reviews. Some of them included pictures of the relevant pages of the book:).
Quote from: CRKrueger;893600Nah, the Outrage Brigade left this one alone, because raping kids is totally cool if you can tie it to another culture's mores doncha know. ;) If the Pundit had put out Maid as an OSR game, Purple would have went to war with Uruguay. :D
Totally true, but I'd bet on Ururguay.
QuoteSeriously though, it's obviously a parody game, but when you got stuff like this...
(http://i.somethingawful.com/u/elpintogrande/maid_rpg/character.gif)
OK, yes, this is weird. But It's totally news to me that there is such an NPC in the book (I even had to check.
...yes, this might come as a surprise. This blog post might help you.
http://storiescharactersandsystemsinrpgs.blogspot.bg/2013/05/why-i-dont-use-adventures-as-general.html
Guess whether I've read the material tucked in the "extra scenarios";).
Then again, the part about seducing her? That's about "Seducing and comforting". Here's the first sentence describing that optional rule.
QuoteThis is an optional rule set. It's up to the GM whether or not to use it during a game session.
If the GM doesn't allow it, and I've never played or run a game where this mechanic was allowed, there's no benefit to anyone trying to "seduce the 9-years old spirit". And if anyone tries to do that regardless, well. I don't have to react, either, but I'm probably going to:p.
Also, I want to point out that my UA3 players yesterday were totally willing to kill innocent people. I don't blame the combat system of UA for that, though.
In the same vein, I can't blame the game for someone deciding to seduce a 9-years old NPC ghost.
Quote...and this...
Well, the worst I've seen is someone who had an older character deciding he likes (it was a 30-something butler, IIRC) characters 18-20 years old. Definitely nothing illegal.
Quote...then you can't say with a straight face that the pedo charge just fell randomly out of the sky without merit. Especially when a 9 year old PC like Mao could come with sexual perversion traits and murder condoms.
Nope, I can't say it. But similarly, I've never seen the game used that way.
QuoteAs a Japanese satire of Anime Maid Fetish culture, it's pretty biting, and I hope it's seen that way in Bulgaria,
It was more of a mockery Anime Maid Genre. The players behaved as normal girls who suddenly had to work as maids for an Anime Maid Master. It lead to hijinks, but not, I suspect, to the kind of hijinks commonly seen in the Maid Harem genre.
Quotebut in the US, the guys I've seen talking about Maid at cons and FLGS pretty much look like they keep their copy under their Azumanga Dai-oh! body pillow. Thank god it's only been a handful over the years.
No idea what Azumanga Dai-Oh is and don't want to google it. I'll agree that meeting those guys could well colour your perception of the game.
QuoteDon't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with adults using RPGs designed to be Fetish Fuel, whether satire or not. But, be honest and accept that in Maid, there's a whole lot of *wink wink nudge nudge* to the underage sex that might give you plausible deniability...but it's there.
Maybe I'm just that insensitive, but that's not the vibe I'm getting. I'm getting the vibe of a game where you can play normal characters...or you can go into creepy stuff. But It Still Was You, not the game's fault.
Seriously, the opposite would be like people on TBP who claimed that a mechanic for seduction would be used to "seduce" underage characters. First, the verb for that is called "abuse", not "seduce".
Second, a combat system can be used to kill kids, too...but nobody claims that combat systems are meant to do that. Let's be consistent, here!
QuoteIt pushes buttons, which is part of the intent.
Yup, definitely. And finding ways to not go into perverse stuff is part of the assumed playstyle, I suspect (or I hope:D).
QuoteOh, and grats for being the first poster to defend Maid before it was attacked. ;)
I wasn't defending Maid. I was attacking the SJW reviewers, because there was a SJW review with unsubstantiated claims. I remember debunking them on TBP, but I think they haven't got to the page you pointed out.
Jesus, this place has changed beyond recognition.
Quote from: One Horse Town;893995Jesus, this place has changed beyond recognition.
No shit.
Quote from: One Horse Town;893995Jesus, this place has changed beyond recognition.
Can you unpack that for those of us who are relatively new here?
I just saw things that cannot be unseen !!!
Quote from: One Horse Town;893995Jesus, this place has changed beyond recognition.
In some ways...
Then again, I notice there is still a discussion about Conflict versus Task resolution and I thought I'd taken care of that
years ago...
:D
Having read the Maid RPG, I feel the need to point out a couple of things. (I'm not making excuses for the game or defending it)
1) it is a translation and compilation of the line of the Japanese RPG line.
2) it is written to be faithful to the Maid sub-genre of the harem sub-genre, in which there is almost ALWAYS a little sister type character.
3) the "9 year old" in question is a house spirit, and such beings are usually centuries old, and take on the forms of small children as a means to disguise their true form and power.
4) all Ewen did was translate the books, he didn't write them. if you want to accuse someone of being a perv, look to japan.
so really the comment that the whole game is about pedophelia is as inaccurate as saying the game is all about women raping men, because one of the sample characters has a difficult time taking "no" as an answer when she tries to seduce the Master.
[rant mode ON]Whether Maid is "technically pedo" or not is moot. It's a shit game. And it's a shit game because fuck it,
harem anime is a shit form of entertainment. It may be funny, but so is watching chimps flinging feces at each other. It may have its poignant moments, but even reality TV gets to pull this off. I'm sorry but I cannot think of it as anything other than shitty otaku wish fulfillment fantasy. I'm sure someone will be along shortly to educate me on the genre and pull back the curtains of ignorance to reveal a far-reaching horizon bathed in the light of artistic brilliancy and unsuspected depth and sophistication... actually, no, I'm sure no one will. Because harem anime is a shitty genre, and only a shitty game can follow from any attempt to emulate it. The fact that there's a NPC that looks like a 9yo that may hit on your grown man PC is but a thin layer of shit icing on the shit cake.[rant mode OFF]
Whew. Sorry, had to get that out.
Thread topic tax: Warhammer 40,000 RPGs.
- Dark Heresy: Play Enforcer To A Totalitarian Empire In This Not At All Uncomfortable RPG
- Rogue Trader: GW Presents Munchkin Traveller
- Deathwatch: Paul Verhoeven's Space Marines RPG
- Black Crusade: What The Fuck Are We Doing We Can't Even
Quote from: The Butcher;894127[rant mode ON]Whether Maid is "technically pedo" or not is moot. It's a shit game. And it's a shit game because fuck it, harem anime is a shit form of entertainment. It may be funny, but so is watching chimps flinging feces at each other. It may have its poignant moments, but even reality TV gets to pull this off. I'm sorry but I cannot think of it as anything other than shitty otaku wish fulfillment fantasy. I'm sure someone will be along shortly to educate me on the genre and pull back the curtains of ignorance to reveal a far-reaching horizon bathed in the light of artistic brilliancy and unsuspected depth and sophistication... actually, no, I'm sure no one will. Because harem anime is a shitty genre, and only a shitty game can follow from any attempt to emulate it. The fact that there's a NPC that looks like a 9yo that may hit on your grown man PC is but a thin layer of shit icing on the shit cake.[rant mode OFF]
Spot on.
And nobody has even gone into the example of play in which one underage maid gets sexually satisfied by being bullied into screwing a broom.
Maid is a shit game and is even considered a shit game by other Japanese TTRPG fans.
Quote from: The Butcher;894127- Rogue Trader: GW Presents Munchkin Traveller
I am totally convinced that GW got their idea for the entire WH40K line from the writing of the Classic Traveller adventure Leviathan.
Neuroshima: Fallout & Mad Max evolved, featuring one big pile of post-apocalyptic themes you love and enjoy; actually cool, original and quite playable game, BUT! we refuse to translate it to commonspeak until it becomes not so original and cool anymore, merely another post-apo game really, because fuck you, allowing our product to wither and die is what passes for marketing-wise reason in Eastern Yurop and that's precisely how we roll, ahahaahahaha, ahahaahaha, hahaahaaa, jokes on you, world, you lose, ahahahahaaa (maniacal, hysterical laughter).
Risus: Baron Münchhausen: the game, aka Bullshit your way to the victory.
Ryutama : the Japanese RPG you play with the friends to prove them that all things Japanese are not creepy pedobearish !
Ryuutama: We replaced "I hit it with my axe" with "I hike to the next town"
Lords of Olympus: My Big Fat Greek Inbred House of Freaks: the Soap Opera RPG.
Quote from: RPGPundit;894730Lords of Olympus: My Big Fat Greek Inbred House of Freaks: the Soap Opera RPG.
SOLD!
RIFTS: Everything you thought was cool at age 12, just dumber!
Dungeon World: Our mugs say "OSR fans' tears"
Quote from: Rincewind1;893814Dark Albion: It's Warhammer in BEST MECHANIC EVER WRITTEN (Millions of People Can't Be Wrong) (Hey Did You Know I Created 5e?)
There's nothing in this description that's actually wrong as such.
Quote from: The Butcher;884752Forgotten Realms: Fantasy Fucking Canada
HA! Very good.
Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;884700Rolemaster: Because MMOs weren't invented yet.
whoosh. I don't get it.
Fading Suns : Warhammer 40k for adults.
Quote from: David Johansen;884761Rolemaster - Drop book of charts on foot driving splinters of bone into arteries, bloody swelling rises up leg until fragment finds heart. Six rounds stunned, die in six rounds.
.
It's a feature. not a bug.... anyhow, you nailed it! +15% on next swing.
Quote from: saskganesh;896040whoosh. I don't get it.
MMOs resolve their mechanics with RNGs vs. Charts, just as Rolemaster does, and then pretty it up with effects and animations.
Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;896532MMOs resolve their mechanics with RNGs vs. Charts, just as Rolemaster does, and then pretty it up with effects and animations.
Which is what the critical hits charts are: special effects and "animations" (aka "descriptions").
: )
RIFTS: A Great Big Pot of Shit.
Savage Worlds: The greatest universal roleplaying system for the first three sessions of any campaign!
Burning Wheel: 500+ pages of rules-lite roleplaying!
Basic Roleplaying: We were innovative in the 80s
Quote from: Battle Mad Ronin;897044Burning Wheel: 500+ pages of rules-lite
Burning Wheel is marketed as rules-lite? I had to turn away from BW as being far too rules-intensive, and I say that as a GURPS aficionado.
Quote from: Antiquation!;897218Burning Wheel is marketed as rules-lite? I had to turn away from BW as being far too rules-intensive, and I say that as a GURPS aficionado.
of course it is rules lite. the book is by Luke Crane and he wouldn't make a rules heavy game!
Everything Is Dolphins: A dolphin game, drawn by monkeys...
Feed: It's got more sand than box.
Rifts Ultimate Edition: "Oh-look! A Squirrel!"
Luchador Way of the Mask: Because what's a niche game, unless your allowed to show your "special moves" to a vampire chick, while wearing a speedo?
HOL: Because Toon is to carebear.
HoL: my OCR program just set itself on fire, and is using the soundcard to swear at me...
Quote from: Shipyard Locked;884726GURPS: The game so detail-oriented that fat people get a swim bonus
Bonus round...
(http://i.imgur.com/PXLSBxj.jpg)
I accidentally gave this a thugs down, I think. I actually cracked up!
World of Darkness: "Here's some really cool shit. Now enjoy a setting where you can't do any of it."
Exalted 2e: "Perfect attack, perfect defense- a battle of attrition!"
Dark Heresy/Only War: "Nice character, would be a shame if you lost it."
Pathfinder: "Do you think you're too good for D&D and really need to prove it?"
D&D 4e: "World of Warcraft for people who are too poor to buy a computer."
Quote from: Crüesader;900473World of Darkness: "Here's some really cool shit. Now enjoy a setting where you can't do any of it."
So true!
Quote from: The Butcher;894127[rant mode ON]Maid is ...a shit game ... harem anime is a shit form of entertainment.[rant mode OFF]
Harem is a hard genre to get right. The Ur example is Love Hina, which is one of my favorites though I definitely prefer the manga over the anime. Nisekoi might be the only other harem title I like. I own MAID. I like some of the content, but I don't play it. Closest I came was my game Maidenloft (which I originally ran using Mutants and Masterminds 3e). As you can imagine, the game took place in Castle Ravenloft with Strahd as the Master. Instead of using the Dread Domains, I imported a few of them in to Gothic Earth from the Raveloft setting Masque of the Red Death, putting Barovia in Eastern Europe. I even maid a map (http://i415.photobucket.com/albums/pp233/KrimsonGray/Maidenloft/GothicEasternEurope2a.jpg) :D There was some romance, but mostly the game was Maids fighting invaders like filthy clerics and paladins. I am so tempted to revise it for 5e and put it on DMs Guild. :D
Cortex Plus version
Smallville: You can defeat an opponent by arguing with them. Really.
Leverage: If you need something and don't have it, you can have a flashback to somehow remember that you do have it.
Marvel Heroic: I may be a story game in disguise but I'm the only OTHER Marvel game where Aunt May has a chance to hit Galactus, unless we're using Social Stress in which case see the Smallville entry.
its cool and its different nice go
Quote from: Krimson;900983The Ur example is Love Hina
Pretty sure Ranman 1/2 and Tenchi Muyo predate Love Hina.
Quote from: Krimson;900983Harem is a hard genre to get right. The Ur example is Love Hina, which is one of my favorites though I definitely prefer the manga over the anime. Nisekoi might be the only other harem title I like. I own MAID. I like some of the content, but I don't play it. Closest I came was my game Maidenloft (which I originally ran using Mutants and Masterminds 3e). As you can imagine, the game took place in Castle Ravenloft with Strahd as the Master. Instead of using the Dread Domains, I imported a few of them in to Gothic Earth from the Raveloft setting Masque of the Red Death, putting Barovia in Eastern Europe. I even maid a map (http://i415.photobucket.com/albums/pp233/KrimsonGray/Maidenloft/GothicEasternEurope2a.jpg) :D There was some romance, but mostly the game was Maids fighting invaders like filthy clerics and paladins. I am so tempted to revise it for 5e and put it on DMs Guild. :D
You're some kind of mad genius. I can easily imagine this premise as the basis for an actual anime or manga.
Quote from: TristramEvans;900988Pretty sure Ranman 1/2 and Tenchi Muyo predate Love Hina.
Yes, you're right. I don't know about the latter, the former is the first manga I read in it's entirety. I didn't even think of Ranma because the story mostly focuses on Ranma and Akane and the other characters seem to be more sporadic. Love Hina at least set the tone for harem shows that came after it.
Quote from: Nexus;900990You're some kind of mad genius. I can easily imagine this premise as the basis for an actual anime or manga.
Honestly the idea came from thinking of the word Maidenloft one day and just filling in the details from there. :D
Quote from: TristramEvans;900988Pretty sure Ranman 1/2 and Tenchi Muyo predate Love Hina.
well yes and no ranma is a love comedy that is sort of the grandfather of harem/maid anime but it didnt quite make that step
Tenchi muyo is generally considerd the 1st harem anime but not necessarily a maid anime
Quote from: kosmos1214;900994well yes and no ranma is a love comedy that is sort of the grandfather of harem/maid anime but it didnt quite make that step
Tenchi muyo is generally considerd the 1st harem anime but not necessarily a maid anime
I haven't really seen much in the way of Maid anime aside from Kaichou wa Maid Sama, which was more maids in a maid cafe. I enjoyed the first season of the anime, but the manga (which finished last year) was a horrible slog to read through. I think I finished it out of principle.
----------
Munchkin d20: What I would pull out when my 3.5e players started talking about their builds.
Quote from: Crüesader;900473World of Darkness: "Here's some really cool shit. Now enjoy a setting where you can't do any of it."
Quote from: RPGPundit;900768So true!
SO true.
Quote from: Crüesader;900473D&D 4e: "World of Warcraft for people who are too poor to buy a computer."
So fucking true.
jg
Quote from: Krimson;900993Honestly the idea came from thinking of the word Maidenloft one day and just filling in the details from there. :D
I could see this as a new product from Cheapass Games.
JG
Quote from: Krimson;900991Yes, you're right. I don't know about the latter, the former is the first manga I read in it's entirety. I didn't even think of Ranma because the story mostly focuses on Ranma and Akane and the other characters seem to be more sporadic. Love Hina at least set the tone for harem shows that came after it.
Yeah, I guess Ranma added a lot of kooky characters but it wasnt so much HArem, in that the only one who competed for Ranma's affections was Shampoo, and that was never returned.
Tenchi Muyo I highly recommend. The reason I love it despite not being a fan of the genre overall is that even though it has the basic premise of one guy and an expanding stable of girl characters who are into him in one way or another is that Tenchi himself is just this regular, nice guy. He's young, a bit naive, and tends to either misunderstand their advances or reject it on the basis that he's just too young and ultimately the show is more about all the characters becoming a sort of weird but functional family. Every other harem anime I've seen the protagonist is a letch of some sort. I remember someone recommending Ah My Goddess to me because I liked Tenchi, but I watched like 2 episodes and was like "this guy's a slimeball". Can't get behind a main character like that.
Unless its Golden Boy.
[video=youtube;QickU67A8j4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QickU67A8j4[/youtube]
0D&D: Some Words
1eD&D: Some More Words
2eD&D: The Wordening
Mythus Dangerous Journeys: All the Words!
Lejendary Adventures: Sorry About All Those Words.
Quote from: Krimson;900984Cortex Plus version
Smallville: You can defeat an opponent by arguing with them. Really.
I prefer "Level up by picking fights and losing them"
Quote from: James Gillen;901034I could see this as a new product from Cheapass Games.
JG
Afraid I am unfamiliar with them. Though I have to admit I have quite a bit of material written for it, and even started 5eifying it.
Quote from: TristramEvans;901042Yeah, I guess Ranma added a lot of kooky characters but it wasnt so much HArem, in that the only one who competed for Ranma's affections was Shampoo, and that was never returned.
Tenchi Muyo I highly recommend. The reason I love it despite not being a fan of the genre overall is that even though it has the basic premise of one guy and an expanding stable of girl characters who are into him in one way or another is that Tenchi himself is just this regular, nice guy. He's young, a bit naive, and tends to either misunderstand their advances or reject it on the basis that he's just too young and ultimately the show is more about all the characters becoming a sort of weird but functional family. Every other harem anime I've seen the protagonist is a letch of some sort. I remember someone recommending Ah My Goddess to me because I liked Tenchi, but I watched like 2 episodes and was like "this guy's a slimeball". Can't get behind a main character like that.
Unless its Golden Boy.
I don't watch a lot of anime lately. I'll probably be slowly slogging through FMA Brotherhood and the rest of the Monogatari's. If I got into those titles it would probably be via manga since I read more manga than anything these days.
Quote from: trechriron;9010940D&D: Some Words
1eD&D: Some More Words
2eD&D: The Wordening
Mythus Dangerous Journeys: All the Words!
Lejendary Adventures: Sorry About All Those Words.
2e Revised: What are these words? What did they do to the monk?
Quote from: Warboss Squee;897769HOL: Because Toon is to carebear.
Quote from: remial;900463HoL: my OCR program just set itself on fire, and is using the soundcard to swear at me...
HoL: A Bitingly Honest look at RPG Gamers.
Quote from: Krimson;900995I haven't really seen much in the way of Maid anime aside from Kaichou wa Maid Sama, which was more maids in a maid cafe. I enjoyed the first season of the anime, but the manga (which finished last year) was a horrible slog to read through. I think I finished it out of principle.
----------
Munchkin d20: What I would pull out when my 3.5e players started talking about their builds.
i think in all the anime iv watched / heard of iv only seen 4 or 5 total though its not really my thing so iv never searched it out
Quote from: TristramEvans;901042Yeah, I guess Ranma added a lot of kooky characters but it wasnt so much HArem, in that the only one who competed for Ranma's affections was Shampoo, and that was never returned.
Tenchi Muyo I highly recommend. The reason I love it despite not being a fan of the genre overall is that even though it has the basic premise of one guy and an expanding stable of girl characters who are into him in one way or another is that Tenchi himself is just this regular, nice guy. He's young, a bit naive, and tends to either misunderstand their advances or reject it on the basis that he's just too young and ultimately the show is more about all the characters becoming a sort of weird but functional family. Every other harem anime I've seen the protagonist is a letch of some sort. I remember someone recommending Ah My Goddess to me because I liked Tenchi, but I watched like 2 episodes and was like "this guy's a slimeball". Can't get behind a main character like that.
Unless its Golden Boy.
[video=youtube;QickU67A8j4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QickU67A8j4[/youtube]
well iv never watched the ah my goddess anime (any of what the what 3 or 5 of them) iv read some of the manga and in the manga its actually kind of a slow sweet romance with 3 sisters that dont really want to see them get together
Bit of thread necromancy here, but I wanted to give it a shot...
Dungeons & Dragons LBB: An expansion pack for your Chainmail wargame!
Rolemaster: House rules for AD&D that forgot they were house rules for AD&D
Fate Core: Works 100% of the time if everyone can agree on something as nebulous as Genre Rules and Expectations... psychically...
Fate Core: Ask honest questions to our designers and get free pedantic abuse!
Fate Core: Solve every rules question by saying "Fate Fractal"
LotFP: Constantly killing your players for wanting to have fun in the game is edgy... honest.
Mongoose RQ: RQ is back at last!
MRQII: Now with errata...
Legend: Now with more errata and less ducks...
RQ6: Now lets bloat the system...
Mythras: Man, how many times can we make you buy the same rules set...
Burning Wheel: The best character creation minigame out there (Caution: Not intended for actual gaming)
DC Heroes RPG (Mayfair): Use our system to allow Batman to throw hamburgers and toddlers into orbit! Wheee!
Nobilis: Enjoy reading a game no one else will ever play with you
Vampire: The Masquerade: A 100% original Anne Rice vampire emulator
Vampire: The Masquerade Revised: Bend over and prepare for overplot insertion!
Mage: The Ascension Revised: Do you enjoy it when villains get to declare they were right all along and none of your choices mattered? If so, oh boy, open the cover and get your lube and kleenex ready, gentle reader!
Marvel Heroic Role-Playing: Guaranteed to be supported for at least over 1 year! Honest! WARNING: Does not include stats for 50% of the iconic heroes from this Brand.
And, just because I feel the need to pick on my favourite games from my teen gaming years...
Robotech™®©: You want to play a game like the TV series? Too bad... here's Battlepods you can't kill in one shot. Enjoy!
RIFTS™®©: Defining Power-Creep for anyone seeking a definition. Also featuring a new story about an aging scholar and metaplot no one uses!
Btw, tangential here, but it just got me thinking that the two most solid games in the Palladium library were both written by Eric W... did that guy ever write a bad game? TMNT, Ninjas & Superspies, Amber...
Pretty much all of those made me LOL. Good job.
As much as I love MHR, it's best use these days is to serve as a warning to anyone thinking about doing a popular license. Man, did they get screwed over by MarDisVelNey.
Quote from: daniel_ream;908507Pretty much all of those made me LOL. Good job.
As much as I love MHR, it's best use these days is to serve as a warning to anyone thinking about doing a popular license. Man, did they get screwed over by MarDisVelNey.
That doesn't exactly explain the snail's pace of the generic Heroic and Action Kickstarter which was slated for "Spring", though I did point out elsewhere that they didn't specify 2016. I think MWPs habit of going silent for long periods of time is more than a little part of the problem here.
I know some of the people who used to work there. MWP is very, very tiny. They laid off most of their creatives after Firefly. Either they just don't have the staff to manage more than one product at a time (Firefly) or, more likely, the staff they do have don't have the PM expertise to handle the work they're doing. They're certainly not very good at community management.
I think Cam Banks is working on his own variant of Heroic. Besides that, the audience for MHR wasn't big to begin with, and I doubt they could recoup their costs on a generic superhero RPG. I count myself fortunate that I scored hardbacks of all their core Cortex+ books when I did.
Quote from: Coffee Zombie;908501Mythras: Man, how many times can we make you buy the same rules set...
To be fair, you should hang that slogan on the new version Runequest that Chaosium is working on, not on Mythras. Mythras is still the same system as RQ6, so you don't need to buy it to keep up with future supplements in the line. It's just a way to keep the game in print.
Chaosium is the one cooking up an entirely new edition of Runequest to try and dig out from the disaster of the Call of Cthulhu 7 Kickstarter (speaking of new editions that nobody asked for).
QuoteRobotech™®©: You want to play a game like the TV series? Too bad... here's Battlepods you can't kill in one shot. Enjoy!
Yes. They went perfectly with the stormtroopers in WEG Star Wars that couldn't be killing with one shot with a laser. How many times do you need to watch the movies to know that stormtrooper armor provides no actual protection?
Quote from: Baulderstone;908575Mythras is still the same system as RQ6, so you don't need to buy it to keep up with future supplements in the line. It's just a way to keep the game in print.
No, they've added
just enough new material to make that not quite true. It's not really a new edition, but it's a 6.5.
Quote from: daniel_ream;908578No, they've added just enough new material to make that not quite true. It's not really a new edition, but it's a 6.5.
No it's the same system with certain bits better explained, a few bits of free supplemental information included and other references to RuneQuest removed. The layout and title are different. The system is the same.
Quote from: TrippyHippy;908594No it's the same system with certain bits better explained, a few bits of free supplemental information included and other references to RuneQuest removed. The layout and title are different. The system is the same.
Yes. A few optional crunchy bits have added. Nothing that will prevent the old core book from being used with new material. All the current supplements are still being left in print and simply getting a logo change on the cover, as there is no need to revise them at all.
In any case, my main point is that The Design Mechanism didn't make the decision that required this new book anyway, so it seemed weird to point the finger at them. Even when they released RQ6, they still left it almost entirely compatible with MRQII, the previous edition.
AD&D Oriental Adventures: By Oriental we mean Japan not Syria, anyways, we never went to either one of those places.
Mystara: Like a whitewashed video tour of Bangkok you would show your family in Michigan so they wouldn't worry.
Recon: All the fun of jungle warfare without the skin cancer or the half-Asian kid showing up to demand back child support.
C&C: Asses, Elbows and some very questionable grammar
Talislanta: I haven't actually left Southern California yet, but my mind, man, has been everywhere, you dig?
Powers & Perils: 1d10+SB+WSB+(EL/2 round UP!). Simple, see?
Tunnels & Trolls: Comedy for people who think Garfield is some hilarious shit.
Metamorphosis Alpha. The secret will last just as long as you keep that Everclear flowing.
Dungeon Crawl Classics: A head shop designed for hippies who are starting to miss the old days before medical marijuana.
LotFP: Because fuck you IS a design choice.
Tekumel: Tonguing Chirine's Wrinkled Peehole - the RPG.
Quote from: Kellri;908851AD&D Oriental Adventures: By Oriental we mean Japan not Syria, anyways, we never went to either one of those places.
Oriental Adventures: We have two Japans. TWO.
Quote from: Kellri;908851LotFP: Because fuck you IS a design choice.
Sorry to break away from the humor for a sec, but could you elaborate on this? Just curious, I have no personal investment in LotFP.
Well, I haven't really followed how that game has progressed since Raggi first wrote it, but when he first released it he seemed to think adding insult to injury was what made it so special - the combat mechanics themselves made sure nobody but the fighter would ever get any better at fighting, and in any case - if most or all of the PCs weren't dying you're just not hardcore enough. So...there's that.
I also made the suggestion to Raggi himself (and this was years and years ago now) that maybe calling his, at the time, newest module, 'Fantasy Fucking Vietnam' wasn't the best choice, for the same reason one wouldn't want to call it 'Fantasy Fucking Gaza Strip' or 'Fantasy Fucking Auschwitz'. He responded by claiming I was being small-minded and had no respect for his intellectual design choices and I should just go fuck myself. I dropped it, largely because - what can you really say to a man who named his self-published role-playing game after a certain red-haired Scandinavian woman he unsuccessfully stalked all the way from the US to Finland? Certainly nothing every other person he knows probably hasn't already said many, many times to no avail.
Quote from: Kellri;908926I dropped it, largely because - what can you really say to a man who named his self-published role-playing game after a certain red-haired Scandinavian woman he unsuccessfully stalked all the way from the US to Finland?
Wait, what!?
What, you're telling me you've never been driven by an unrequited, yet oddly HEROIC, love for a foreign woman to do something she would just like to forget?
Yeah, me neither.
That's probably why I'm not calling my next OSR booklet 'Sad Dungeon-crawls With a Dark-Haired Asian Goddess'.
Quote from: Kellri;908969What, you're telling me you've never been driven by an unrequited, yet oddly HEROIC, love for a foreign woman to do something she would just like to forget?
This reminds me about my trip to Thailand. Only sans that HEROIC part. And perhaps involving a bit niche definition of "love".
Quote from: JesterRaiin;908970This reminds me about my trip to Thailand. Only sans that HEROIC part. And perhaps involving a bit niche definition of "love".
:eek:
Supporting single moms in Thailand seems pretty HEROIC to me!
Quote from: AaronBrown99;908975:eek:
Supporting single moms in Thailand seems pretty HEROIC to me!
Thank you. I feel more HEROIC already! :cool:
Quote from: Kellri;908969That's probably why I'm not calling my next OSR booklet 'Sad Dungeon-crawls With a Dark-Haired Asian Goddess'.
Sad how? as in depressing?
"OK, you have entered the dungeon of 'your father never really loved you' and you encounter the existential dread of 'you wouldn't be here if your grandfather hadn't nailed your grandmother'."
or pathetic?
"the goblin raiding party consists of 1 goblin on a one legged dog. the dog drags itself across the ground, doing its best to move, while carrying the weight of a creature that weighs twice as much as it does. Both appear to be extremely malnourished. The goblin is carrying a sword that is black with rust. what do you do?"
either way I'm on board so long as the Asian goddess is represented in the game's art
Quote from: Kellri;908969What, you're telling me you've never been driven by an unrequited, yet oddly HEROIC, love for a foreign woman to do something she would just like to forget?
Yeah, me neither.
That's probably why I'm not calling my next OSR booklet 'Sad Dungeon-crawls With a Dark-Haired Asian Goddess'.
You make me feel blessed. My adventure would be 'The Empire of the Gorgeous Slovakian Princess and Your Good Sense for Marrying Someone Else Who Isn't a Hot Mess.'
Depressing AND Pathetic.
True story....the first time I accompanied my old boss on one of those terrible 'let's entertain the customers with a trip to a hostess karaoke bar' outings I got seated next to this really stunning beauty wearing a sheer black cocktail dress. I was pouring through the Great Tome of Songs trying to decide if I wanted to do a boozy 'Achy Breaky Heart' or go full on Glee with 'Don't Stop Believing'. I glanced over at my hostess. Her left arm was covered in a series of both fresh and old and scabby razor slits. Fresh: like she'd just finished up a blindingly depressing fit of self-mutilation mere seconds before sitting down with me. I signaled to the manager and demanded he take the girl out and get her some first aid. Coming back in, I just couldn't do either Billy Ray Cyrus or Journey much justice after a scene like that. I decided it was best to quickly down several pints of beer before making a selection. I ended up choosing Neil Young's Heart of Gold. I sang that song....morosely. Neil Young's original sounded like David Lee Roth next to my rendition.
Quote from: Baulderstone;908596Yes. A few optional crunchy bits have added. Nothing that will prevent the old core book from being used with new material. All the current supplements are still being left in print and simply getting a logo change on the cover, as there is no need to revise them at all.
In any case, my main point is that The Design Mechanism didn't make the decision that required this new book anyway, so it seemed weird to point the finger at them. Even when they released RQ6, they still left it almost entirely compatible with MRQII, the previous edition.
It was a
joke, son...
Quote from: Baulderstone;908596Yes. A few optional crunchy bits have added. Nothing that will prevent the old core book from being used with new material. All the current supplements are still being left in print and simply getting a logo change on the cover, as there is no need to revise them at all.
In any case, my main point is that The Design Mechanism didn't make the decision that required this new book anyway, so it seemed weird to point the finger at them. Even when they released RQ6, they still left it almost entirely compatible with MRQII, the previous edition.
It was a joke. I actually love what DM did with RQ6, but the progression is there, and it's damned funny.
Quote from: Shipyard Locked;908909Sorry to break away from the humor for a sec, but could you elaborate on this? Just curious, I have no personal investment in LotFP.
As well, and I believe this was the Pundit's own criticism here I'm recounting, LotFP adventures have you make a bunch of adventurers, then punish you for behaving like adventurers. "Go into this dungeon... wait, you did that, what kind of crazy person would do that. Guess you all get tentacle raped and end the world. Jokes on you!"
Quote from: Coffee Zombie;908501LotFP: Constantly killing your players for wanting to have fun in the game is edgy... honest.
Truly excellent description, though more about the style the author tries to push in the adventures than anything to do with the system.
Quote from: Coffee Zombie;909308As well, and I believe this was the Pundit's own criticism here I'm recounting, LotFP adventures have you make a bunch of adventurers, then punish you for behaving like adventurers. "Go into this dungeon... wait, you did that, what kind of crazy person would do that. Guess you all get tentacle raped and end the world. Jokes on you!"
I've never thought that was a fair description of the LotFP adventures and I've read most of them and played through several... including one with Raggi himself as the GM. Most of the time the punishment is only for PCs that don't think and just charge in based on bad assumptions. I've been through Death Frost Doom a few different times and only once did anyone get killed and only once did the 'bad thing' happen (not on the same trip either)... but we ALWAYS had fun.
Quote from: Shipyard Locked;908958Wait, what!?
Its something for 4 years I've seen Kellri reference, but never actually explain in any detail, or how he would know. My guess is that the author just badtouched him online in some way.
You understand what reading is, right? If it's been stuck in your craw for 4 years, then by all means scroll up and read. I think I gave more than enough explanation just in this thread. ;)
Quote from: Kellri;909741You understand what reading is, right? If it's been stuck in your craw for 4 years, then by all means scroll up and read. I think I gave more than enough explanation just in this thread. ;)
You understand what skepticism and burden of proof is, right? The details/proof that are nonexistent in your assertion makes my Bullshit sense tingle and you sound like a man with a grudge. But no, your grudge is not stuck in my craw, I could care less, just in general I would not take anything you said seriously and offer the same advice to anyone else.
I've been working on an oral history of the Vietnamese-Cambodian war for 3 years - delving into the salacious and often extremely politically sensitive details of cannibalism, rape, murder and other war crimes while sitting a few feet away from the people who perpetrated them has given me a pretty unique outlook when it comes to burden of proof. Further, rpgs are my hobby. I'm not going to sift through a mountain of 10-year old forum posts from the guy in question just to satisfy your skeptical bullshit sense. If you want to, fine. If you want to shoot off an email and ask him yourself, be my guest. Otherwise, go fuck yourself.
Quote from: Simlasa;909728I've never thought that was a fair description of the LotFP adventures and I've read most of them and played through several... including one with Raggi himself as the GM. Most of the time the punishment is only for PCs that don't think and just charge in based on bad assumptions. I've been through Death Frost Doom a few different times and only once did anyone get killed and only once did the 'bad thing' happen (not on the same trip either)... but we ALWAYS had fun.
There's even a term for it: the Negadungeon.
Not ALL LotFP adventures are like this. But there are quite a few (as well as quite a few non-LOTFP OSR adventures) that do not just punish 'stupid' stuff, they punish players for doing the typical things that D&D adventurers have always done.
Quote from: Kellri;909818I've been working on an oral history of the Vietnamese-Cambodian war for 3 years
Holy fuck, how depressing.
Quote from: RPGPundit;910542Not ALL LotFP adventures are like this. But there are quite a few (as well as quite a few non-LOTFP OSR adventures) that do not just punish 'stupid' stuff, they punish players for doing the typical things that D&D adventurers have always done.
Typically stupid things that D&D adventurers have always done maybe?
The one that pops to mind that probably fits what you're thinking is 'The Tower'. Adventurers are told a tale of a tower with a princess locked up in it who will marry the one who rescues her and give him her kingdom and treasure and whatnot... and there is a tower... but otherwise the whole thing is one big trap.
But it's kind of an obvious trap if given a bit of thought and is beaten by not engaging with it. But all it takes is one guy who insists he must rescue the princess...
I thought it was all pretty hilarious when I read it.
None of the others are anything close to the same level of 'fuck you, dumb adventurer!'
Whatever, I find Raggi's modules entertaining.
Quote from: Simlasa;910597Whatever, I find Raggi's modules entertaining.
To read, to run, or to play in?
Quote from: Simlasa;910597But it's kind of an obvious trap if given a bit of thought and is beaten by not engaging with it.
So, are you saying that Raggi wrote an entire adventure in which the most intelligent course of action is just to not go on the adventure at all? What exactly are the players supposed to do after deciding to not play the game? Sit back and reflect on the definition of wasted time? I suppose it might make for entertaining reading while sitting on the john, but it certainly isn't going to be very entertaining for people showing up expecting to actually play a role-playing game.
Quote from: Shipyard Locked;910642To read, to run, or to play in?
All three.
Quote from: Kellri;910643So, are you saying that Raggi wrote an entire adventure in which the most intelligent course of action is just to not go on the adventure at all?
I'm saying he wrote ONE scenario that I'd agree definitely qualifies as a 'negadungeon'. I haven't played or ran it but as a Player I'd still find a it hilarious comment on our expectations... "Sure, there's a King who will marry his daughter off, and give a chunk of his kingdom and treasure, to any common slob who happens to find her in that tower."
Reminds me of all the dreaming princes caught up in the briars (and slowly dying) in Robert Coover's version of Briar Rose... each one still astonished at the idea he might not be the hero of the story.
LotFP adventures have a lot of horror elements... which I like... so I really don't want them to push the 'heroic fantasy' ideals any more than I want a Call of Cthulhu adventure to. If you don't enjoy horror, play something else.
Ooh, ooh! I want to play.
Amber Diceless Roleplaying: Destroying friendships since 1991!
Amber Diceless Roleplaying: Forcing thousands of gamers to willfully ignore the fact that diceless systems actually work!
Amber Diceless Roleplaying: Nobilis with chest hair!
Amber Diceless Roleplaying: Juuuuust ignore the incest, and move on.
Amber Diceless Roleplaying: Because Machiavelli was a noob.
Amber Diceless Roleplaying: What? Brand returned from the Abyss, all of reality is in danger, and we're the only ones who can stop him? Fuck you, Benedict!
Lords of Gossamer and Shadow: Amber Diceless Roleplaying, now with better art!
Lords of Gossamer and Shadow: Because taking the stairs to get everywhere is good for your cardio.
Lords of Gossamer and Shadow: What? The Dimmerlaik have returned from Shadow, all of reality is in danger, and we're the only ones who can stop them? Fuck you, Vala!
Lords of Olympus: Amber Diceless Roleplaying, now with better rules!
Lords of Olympus: For players who think Amber's Elder Amberites were just too nice.
Lords of Olympus: With just as much creepy incest as Amber, but Greek flavored!
Lords of Olympus: What? Eris has escaped from Tartarus, all of reality is in danger, and we're the only ones who can stop her? Fuck you, Zeus!
Vampire the Masquerade: Goth Chick: The Ignoring.
Werewolf the Apocalypse: It's all fun and games until you realize your friends are some sick fucks who want to play a hard-core Black Spiral Dancer campaign.
Rifts: It's all fun and games until you realize your friends are some sick fucks who want to play a hard-core all Coalition, anti-nonhuman campaign.
Hero System 6E: Wait! Why are you leaving? I thought nerds liked math!
GURPS 4E: That girl you dated in college who could do anything, but was otherwise boring as all hell.
EABA: That girl you ignored in college, but really should have given a try.
GenreDiversion: I need more supplements, Bret!
Active Exploits: The best diceless system I've ever found, no joke. Also, more supplements, Bret!
Masterbook: Hey, bro. I heard you liked some Torg.
You could have just said 'I really like diceless roleplaying games'.
Quote from: Kellri;910988You could have just said 'I really like diceless roleplaying games'.
Where would be the fun in that? :D
Quote from: noman;910968Active Exploits: The best diceless system I've ever found, no joke. Also, more supplements, Bret!
QFT, that is a very decent diceless RPG - worth a look for anyone who likes reading (or even, gasp, playing) diceless rpgs.
BASH! - FASERIP for people who found BESM too intelligent.
Star Without Numbers - if Traveller wasn't pretentious enough for you
Boot Hill - if you love cowboys but hate roleplaying
Gamma World - the only game improved by D&D 4th edition
OSRIC - for people who don't know what a used book store is
How is Stars Without Numbers pretentious?
It isn't. That's just Tristram's shitty little way of saying he's visited my blog in the last few hours.
Quote from: Snowman0147;911021How is Stars Without Numbers pretentious?
For that matter, how is Traveller pretentious? The whole comment is baffling to me.
Quote from: Kellri;911025It isn't. That's just Tristram's shitty little way of saying he's visited my blog in the last few hours.
I'm putting together a SWN campaign at the moment. Let me just take this off-topic opportunity to say that your spreadsheets are fantastic. Thanks for sharing those.
Okay. I also added your blog to my reading list.
What's with the comparisons of Forgotten Realms to Canada, - Canadian here - and *woosh*.... Maybe it's because I'm not from Ontario...?
Ars Magica 5E: Logistics & Dragons
M&M 3E: We wanted to go beyond d20, but couldn't quite do it.
Quote from: Iron_Rain;911115What's with the comparisons of Forgotten Realms to Canada, - Canadian here - and *woosh*.... Maybe it's because I'm not from Ontario...?
It's big, it's mostly empty, and everyone is nonjudgmental and polite.
Quote from: Iron_Rain;911115What's with the comparisons of Forgotten Realms to Canada, - Canadian here - and *woosh*.... Maybe it's because I'm not from Ontario...?
Maybe it's because Toronto is a heavily multicultural city, and Forgotten Realms is a bunch of cultures randomly placed on a map masquerading as a coherent setting,
That's Mystara in spades. Neither the cultural melting pot, history or even the climate makes any kind of sense whatsoever. One might argue that it allows players to explore an Egyptian pyramid and then a Scandinavian fjord without traveling thousands upon thousands of miles to a new continent, but that's about it. Any moment now I expect some die-hard Mystara fan to show up and explain it all, but they would still be wrong.
Quote from: Snowman0147;911021How is Stars Without Numbers pretentious?
Maybe its just the people who talk about it online :P
Quote from: ThatChrisGuy;911147everyone is nonjudgmental and polite.
Someone's never been to Vancouver
Quote from: Kellri;911025It isn't. That's just Tristram's shitty little way of saying he's visited my blog in the last few hours.
Careful, you'll make Pundit's Ego jealous
Tristram the RPG: just as tedious
Quote from: Kellri;911155That's Mystara in spades. Neither the cultural melting pot, history or even the climate makes any kind of sense whatsoever. One might argue that it allows players to explore an Egyptian pyramid and then a Scandinavian fjord without traveling thousands upon thousands of miles to a new continent, but that's about it. Any moment now I expect some die-hard Mystara fan to show up and explain it all, but they would still be wrong.
I'm a fan of Mystara (not sure if "diehard") but I think this is spot-on. Mystara was never about making a lot of sense. But then my experience suggests that patchwork pastiches of Earth cultures and periods, starting with Howard's Hyborian Age, have always been the exoediency of adventuring in Third Dynasty Egypt this week and Danelaw England the next, rather than exercises in worldbuilding for its own sake.
Quote from: The Butcher;911184I'm a fan of Mystara (not sure if "diehard") but I think this is spot-on. Mystara was never about making a lot of sense. But then my experience suggests that patchwork pastiches of Earth cultures and periods, starting with Howard's Hyborian Age, have always been the exoediency of adventuring in Third Dynasty Egypt this week and Danelaw England the next, rather than exercises in worldbuilding for its own sake.
It's true. There is definitely a place in the world for gaming settings that are nothing but all the cool shit you can think of crammed together. I am running a B/X game wheneve my nephews come to visit, and I'm growing the setting one step ahead of them, based simply on putting things on the map that they will want to explore.
Quote from: Snowman0147;911021How is Stars Without Numbers pretentious?
There really doesn't have to be a reason. This is the "Fling shit at games you don't like but make it funny and maybe little backhanded or passive aggressive" thread.
And I say that a willing participant. ;) :D
Quote from: TristramEvans;911160Someone's never been to [strike]Vancouver[/strike] Canada
FIFY
M&M 3E: We're running out of better superhero RPGs to rip off
Zweihander - The Marketing: Still pretending it's got something, anything, to do with WFRP.
Forward to Adventure! - the game I wrote before I realized I was the single biggest intellect in the OSR. Then I wrote a supplement.
Gnomemurdered. Let's just not talk about that. It wasn't funny, although several people did laugh.
Arrows of Indra - Didn't actually go to India but I read about it and smoked a chillum once. That's a tranny on the cover. Please quit calling me a homophobe.
5th Edition D&D - you should really congratulate me for this. Think about it. Has any other edition of D&D inspired so many to do so little? I think not. On your knees, bitches.
Some diceless shit - because really, I just like like diceless roleplaying games.
The War of the Roses - as written by a guy who really loved Blue Rose but hated all the furfaggotry.
Yeah. That was probably problematic.
(http://i.imgur.com/pSZn0tY.jpg?1)
Tekumel - a 4000 page thread about two guys who prefer toy trains and who aren't afraid to ask strangers to give them oral sex.
Quote from: Kellri;911572Tekumel - a 4000 page thread about two guys who prefer toy trains and who aren't afraid to ask strangers to give them oral sex.
ummm.. what?
What did you think Mornard's 'tongue my peehole' catchphrase meant?
I figured it was a reaction to TBP.
Quote from: remial;911672I figured it was a reaction to TBP.
I don't think Gronan lives his whole life as a reaction to rpg.net. You might be getting him confused with Pundit.
Quote from: Iron_Rain;911115What's with the comparisons of Forgotten Realms to Canada, - Canadian here - and *woosh*.... Maybe it's because I'm not from Ontario...?
Ed Greenwood is Canadian and said he was inspired by Canada for a lot of the realms. Waterdeep is fantasy Toronto.
Quote from: RPGPundit;912584Waterdeep is fantasy Toronto.
Toronto was also the original basis for Superman's Metropolis.
Quote from: RPGPundit;912584Ed Greenwood is Canadian and said he was inspired by Canada for a lot of the realms. Waterdeep is fantasy Toronto.
I've thought about importing the Sword Coast to Gothic Earth from Masque of the Red Death, though I was going to put it along where California/Washington/British Columbia should be, before upgrading the towns and cities to the mid 19th century.
Quote from: TristramEvans;918110Toronto was also the original basis for Superman's Metropolis.
Not really.
The "Canadian-ness" of Superman is extremely overblown. The Daily Star (later the Daily Planet) is called that because Joe Shuster was a paperboy for the Toronto Star when he was
eight. That and the skyline of Metropolis is about the extent of it.
Quote from: Kellri;911155That's Mystara in spades. Neither the cultural melting pot, history or even the climate makes any kind of sense whatsoever. One might argue that it allows players to explore an Egyptian pyramid and then a Scandinavian fjord without traveling thousands upon thousands of miles to a new continent, but that's about it.
Which is exactly why it was good. I don't play elf-games to do advanced climate modeling studies. I will bust out Traveller when I want to start that.
Quote from: daniel_ream;918172Not really.
The "Canadian-ness" of Superman is extremely overblown. The Daily Star (later the Daily Planet) is called that because Joe Shuster was a paperboy for the Toronto Star when he was eight. That and the skyline of Metropolis is about the extent of it.
I'm not sure anything else is being made of it. Merely that Toronto was indeed based on Shuster's hometown of Toronto, as he explicitly stated in numerous interviews, just as Lois Lane was based on the woman he eventually married, and Superman himself was based on Douglas Fairbanks. These are interesting anecdotal facts, but I've never really seen anything mae of them. Then again, I'm no longer in the comic book business.
Quote from: Kellri;911155That's Mystara in spades. Neither the cultural melting pot, history or even the climate makes any kind of sense whatsoever. One might argue that it allows players to explore an Egyptian pyramid and then a Scandinavian fjord without traveling thousands upon thousands of miles to a new continent, but that's about it. Any moment now I expect some die-hard Mystara fan to show up and explain it all, but they would still be wrong.
Perfectly valid worldbuilding in my book. There's time for True Scientific Realism and there's time for a party of Viking warrior, Knight Templar, 1001 Nights Arabian thief and generic fairy-tale pointy-hat wizard raiding an Aztec pyramid inhabited by lizard men.
Quote from: The Butcher;918321There's time for True Scientific Realism and there's time for [...]
I will confess that I really, really don't understand the fetish in the FRPG niche of this hobby for rigorous planetology in
fantasy worlds. Like, gonzo LotFP/DCC stuff all over the place is perfectly fine, but if that rain shadow's on the wrong side of that mountain, the suspension of disbelief is
totes ruined, man. :-/
Quote from: daniel_ream;918481I will confess that I really, really don't understand the fetish in the FRPG niche of this hobby for rigorous planetology in fantasy worlds. Like, gonzo LotFP/DCC stuff all over the place is perfectly fine, but if that rain shadow's on the wrong side of that mountain, the suspension of disbelief is totes ruined, man. :-/
Realism for fantasy games,
for me, is less about rain shadows and ocean currents and shit (estar, I love you man, but I am never ever using the no doubt painstakingly researched and lovingly written physical geography chapters of How To Create A Fantasy Sandbox) and more about how unorthodox cultures sharing borders would interact; in no small part because I enjoy the domain management endgame.
See, if you are the lord of a mead-hall in Vikingheim overlooking the border with Persiranistan and your drakkars can reach Seven Dragon Rising Sun Middle Empire Island in less than a week's sailing, and this has been the state of things for the last, I dunno, 1000 years (which is the minimum time unit for fantasy setting backstories because most worldbuilders lack any sense of scale, spatial or temporal) there better be a good reason why your Viking lord is a tall, blonde axeman and not a swarthy, slant-eyed scimitar-swinging kung fu pirate. Maybe the world was put together in the last 100 years by godlike aliens kidnapping humans from across alternate Earths, or the seas and mountain ranges were shrouded in impenetrable magic mists by evil sorcerer-kings until a generation ago.
I'm mostly good with wacky physical geography, though. As long as it's not blatantly, egregiously illogical, you'll get away with it, at least in my group. And if it is, well, "a wizard did it" is lazy storytelling but can be good GMing -- what sort of insane magic keeping the jungle warm in these insane latitudes, or an iceberg smack-dab in the middle of the tropics? And why? And how can we enterprising gentlemen and ladies of fortune get a piece of this sweet magic that can potentially, theoretically make deserts into farmlands and turn us into lords of this benighted world?
Eh, I still subscribe to the theory that geography shapes environmental pressures shapes ecology shapes human adaptation shapes culture.
And I also subscribe to the theory of cultural exchange where there should be a blending along the cultural edges of peoples, barring catastrophic exchanges.
So wacky, anachronistic, hodge podge mix of culture & tech neighbors is a no-go in my book. And even worse is zany geology bearing little to no impact on the nearby peoples.
So, no. Completely 100% disagree on zany world preferences (though we're sympatico on cultural exchange Butcher). If it's wildly creative geology, explain to me the whys, and similarly the cultural forms & boundaries. Zany for zany's sake I can achieve with Mad Libs; don't waste my time. I buy product to save me time in cohesion and coherence.
Zweihander: "Guys, it's totally not Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying. But since we're talking about it, click the link."
Quote from: Opaopajr;918511Eh, I still subscribe to the theory that geography shapes environmental pressures shapes ecology shapes human adaptation shapes culture.
You had me up until the last link in the chain there. What piece of geography is responsible for Morris Dancing?
Quote from: TristramEvans;918535You had me up until the last link in the chain there. What piece of geography is responsible for Morris Dancing?
That looks like a mélànge of the Kicking Sparrow Feet Dance popularized in China during the late Tang, traveled along the Silk Road through the Islamic lands, and ended up used as a masque for European pagan dances.
The kerchief waving and little kicking, ankle flicking dance popularity was well documented (and oddly ended up in my Dynastic Chinese History class). The extra bells on the feet and colorful ankle and elbow ties was also mentioned but apparently was more of a nomadic people's addition along Western China, Dzungaria, into Transoxania, etc. (obviously related to animal husbandry, to find one's wealth in the vast spaces). Islamic Caliphates prized musicians and dancers immensely, and it was not uncommon to trade such artisans extremely far distances to new locales, affecting trends anew. They also likely added to the extensive white shirts & some poofy pants (surprisingly good fashion sense to survive the deserts), along with extra colorful sashes & scarves.
Which brings us to Europe, where the Morris dance apparently has analogs all throughout the continent with similarly looking names often attributed as coming from the Moors (Morisk, Moreys, morrisse). But now it was an organized multi-performer dance, now sometimes with sticks (occultic wand, fertility, cycle of life?), or other props like hobby horse (Moors? Crusaders? who knows when added exactly,). That likely had to do with wands and coordinated dancers' facing representing compass directions and solar cycles tied to pagan rites for solar calendar, (it does start on Boxing Day, day after Christmas, thus it is tied to solar calculation rites) but attached to something "exotic yet respectably cultured" (Islamic society's big debut & upswing) so as to not to upset Christianizing too much. Given that Norman conquest went all the way down into Iberia and Sicily, and picked up heavy Moorish influence, there was likely a "religiously civilized" respectability that carried it peaceably to other Norman expansion lands (which seems to correspond to where the other variant "Morris Dances" are, and closely named).
Given that it really took the Crusades a few more centuries to really pick up swing, it makes sense how it had a chance to ingrain in culture and retain a name association to the Moors. It also made sense how it has pageantry, as Christianizing would like to subsume it into itself and sprinkle some moralizing (likely more visible in Spanish or Italian versions). Then, as the Crusades pick up, you have a popular dance which now ensconces into the non-nobility, an allowable entertainment exoticism for such classes. It's popular, no one seems to remember the pagan rite meanings behind the moves, no one remembers why the dancers favor certain ankle kicking moves or kerchiefs, nor why shin bells and colorful scarves & tassle decorations, and in England the name is bastardized into something safe and seemingly disconnected from "Mohammedeans," and some vague Christianity polishes the lot into passable — so let the peasants have their fun!
Thus how it likely turned from a courtesan dance in China, gained accoutrement and travel through Central & West Asia and North Africa, into Europe broadly, embraced regionally within past Norman presence, attributed, adapted, pageanted moral veneer, and renamed to a safe disconnection.
(Psst! It was kind of an unfair example, as I sorta specialize in this about humanities and interconnectivity. Even though there is not enough primary sources to definitely attribute this whole chain, I spent quite a bit of classes studying Asia and Africa, along with the required European studies of pre-college. Most of my collegic essays were attempts to study cultural things, and many ethnographic things, such as Painting, Dance, Fashion, Poetry/Lyrics, Music, Funerals, Esoterica, Occult, etc. I worked with librarians and professors on some seriously obscure things — had to abandon a few topics due to lack of primary texts, too — but I came across a lot of seemingly tenuous connections that raises more than a few eyebrows if you dig and broaden your scope.)
So in answer: Silk Road trade, flowering of Islam, Norman expansion, and lulling consolidation of pagan Christianizing before the worst of the Crusades. Geology affected ecology affected natural symbology (sparrow) as courtesan entertainment; transfered across by Animal Husbandry travel, embellished by Animal Husbandry practical adornment (steppes and deserts), etc. etc. etc.
Quote from: Opaopajr;918594So in answer: Silk Road trade, flowering of Islam, Norman expansion, and lulling consolidation of pagan Christianizing before the worst of the Crusades. Geology affected ecology affected natural symbology (sparrow) as courtesan entertainment; transfered across by Animal Husbandry travel, embellished by Animal Husbandry practical adornment (steppes and deserts), etc. etc. etc.
(https://cdn.meme.am/instances/500x/56053920.jpg)
Quote from: Opaopajr;918594That looks like a mélànge of the Kicking Sparrow Feet Dance popularized in China during the late Tang, traveled along the Silk Road through the Islamic lands, and ended up used as a masque for European pagan dances.
The kerchief waving and little kicking, ankle flicking dance popularity was well documented (and oddly ended up in my Dynastic Chinese History class). The extra bells on the feet and colorful ankle and elbow ties was also mentioned but apparently was more of a nomadic people's addition along Western China, Dzungaria, into Transoxania, etc. (obviously related to animal husbandry, to find one's wealth in the vast spaces). Islamic Caliphates prized musicians and dancers immensely, and it was not uncommon to trade such artisans extremely far distances to new locales, affecting trends anew. They also likely added to the extensive white shirts & some poofy pants (surprisingly good fashion sense to survive the deserts), along with extra colorful sashes & scarves.
Which brings us to Europe, where the Morris dance apparently has analogs all throughout the continent with similarly looking names often attributed as coming from the Moors (Morisk, Moreys, morrisse). But now it was an organized multi-performer dance, now sometimes with sticks (occultic wand, fertility, cycle of life?), or other props like hobby horse (Moors? Crusaders? who knows when added exactly,). That likely had to do with wands and coordinated dancers' facing representing compass directions and solar cycles tied to pagan rites for solar calendar, (it does start on Boxing Day, day after Christmas, thus it is tied to solar calculation rites) but attached to something "exotic yet respectably cultured" (Islamic society's big debut & upswing) so as to not to upset Christianizing too much. Given that Norman conquest went all the way down into Iberia and Sicily, and picked up heavy Moorish influence, there was likely a "religiously civilized" respectability that carried it peaceably to other Norman expansion lands (which seems to correspond to where the other variant "Morris Dances" are, and closely named).
Given that it really took the Crusades a few more centuries to really pick up swing, it makes sense how it had a chance to ingrain in culture and retain a name association to the Moors. It also made sense how it has pageantry, as Christianizing would like to subsume it into itself and sprinkle some moralizing (likely more visible in Spanish or Italian versions). Then, as the Crusades pick up, you have a popular dance which now ensconces into the non-nobility, an allowable entertainment exoticism for such classes. It's popular, no one seems to remember the pagan rite meanings behind the moves, no one remembers why the dancers favor certain ankle kicking moves or kerchiefs, nor why shin bells and colorful scarves & tassle decorations, and in England the name is bastardized into something safe and seemingly disconnected from "Mohammedeans," and some vague Christianity polishes the lot into passable — so let the peasants have their fun!
Thus how it likely turned from a courtesan dance in China, gained accoutrement and travel through Central & West Asia and North Africa, into Europe broadly, embraced regionally within past Norman presence, attributed, adapted, pageanted moral veneer, and renamed to a safe disconnection.
(Psst! It was kind of an unfair example, as I sorta specialize in this about humanities and interconnectivity. Even though there is not enough primary sources to definitely attribute this whole chain, I spent quite a bit of classes studying Asia and Africa, along with the required European studies of pre-college. Most of my collegic essays were attempts to study cultural things, and many ethnographic things, such as Painting, Dance, Fashion, Poetry/Lyrics, Music, Funerals, Esoterica, Occult, etc. I worked with librarians and professors on some seriously obscure things — had to abandon a few topics due to lack of primary texts, too — but I came across a lot of seemingly tenuous connections that raises more than a few eyebrows if you dig and broaden your scope.)
So in answer: Silk Road trade, flowering of Islam, Norman expansion, and lulling consolidation of pagan Christianizing before the worst of the Crusades. Geology affected ecology affected natural symbology (sparrow) as courtesan entertainment; transfered across by Animal Husbandry travel, embellished by Animal Husbandry practical adornment (steppes and deserts), etc. etc. etc.
(https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-170004e6d218aec092af1064685d891a-c?convert_to_webp=true)
Forty effeminate blacksmiths waving bits of cloth they've just wiped their noses on. How it's still going on in this day and age I'll never know.
Quote from: Opaopajr;918594...a whole bunch of stuff...
Dang. I'm impressed.
Quote from: Opaopajr;918594(Psst! It was kind of an unfair example, as I sorta specialize in this about humanities and interconnectivity. Even though there is not enough primary sources to definitely attribute this whole chain,
There are some pretty big gaps in there. There is no real evidence connecting the Moors to what was called Moorish dancing or Moorish dancing to Morris dancing for example. Almost nothing is known about what early Morris Dancing even looked like. There is speculation about things like some Morris Dancers blackening their faces showing a connection to Africa but real evidence supporting this is nonexistent.
Of course there are gaps, as the primary sources are extremely thin. That's when ethnography, tapping into cultural memory, and good essay argumentation comes in. There has been many attempts to capture the ephemeral creations of humanity, but often times they are just lost to time and war. Imagine if French music notation failed to take off like their development of dance notation? The amount of human wisdom and beauty lost is already incalculable. We in the West are only now giving serious academic credence to oral traditions, and think of how much was lost due to colonialism.
And I'll say this, too: my answer is speculative argument, not multiple primary sourced truth. (And "truth" is a very loaded term, especially over time and more info is discovered.) So the Morris dance is not "solved" in any way — but we can reasonably be sure it did not derive from watching Nile hippos fight crocodiles.
;)
Further, there is a whole lot of unexplained shit out there. So, even though I wholly lean on geography to help shape man's creativity, there's just some WTFBBQ stuff that leaves me speechless with my prevailing "geography shapes man" theory, Some of the most everyday, yet creepiest, are the one's we take for granted. Things like, axial ages (@-ish 500 BC with Socrates, Confucius, Siddhartha Gautama), civilization through 'revelation' (most Ur-civilizations, Islam), and "ideas whose time had come" (multiple synchronous inventors, e.g. photography, human flight - as we just saw in Rio Olympics).
Thus I am very OK with "so 'n so did it," even if it was "so 'n so came from the stars/cave/lake/flaming wings/portal in stone." But a little goes a long way. And even so, afterwards the environmental pressures will start to leave their marks.
(edit: It's also fun to see how East-West land trade routes do better than North-South land trade routes due to climatic bands. It's one of the few reasons I'm sorta OK with Al-Qadim being so south of FR Faerûn & Kara-Tur and being relative cut off.)
Quote from: The Butcher;918508Realism for fantasy games, for me, is less about rain shadows and ocean currents and shit (estar, I love you man, but I am never ever using the no doubt painstakingly researched and lovingly written physical geography chapters of How To Create A Fantasy Sandbox) and more about how unorthodox cultures sharing borders would interact; in no small part because I enjoy the domain management endgame.
Chacun a son gout, and I'm not arguing personal preferences here but even that would rankle me as too much unnecessary "realism". Or rather, it rankles me that this kind of Tolkien Subcreation has become the ubiquitous default and crowded out settings where, say, the world is a flat disc you can sail off of (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/192774/Thennla), the half-submerged bodies of two gods (http://gregstolze.com/about-reign/), floating islands in a luminiferous aether (http://www.tripleacegames.com/store/sundered-skies-products/sundered-skies-core-setting/), or my personal favourite, land, sea and firmament created out of the bloody chunks of the Mother of all Monsters (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/En%C3%BBma_Eli%C5%A1) when my city-state's patron god beat the living crap out of her in a epic battle for supremacy over all creation.
I'm not saying Tolkien Subcreation is bad, just that like zombies and Cthulhu, it's crowded other options out of the market to the detriment of diversity and originality.
Now that's an interesting argument about scope! What is useful at the table: material empiricism, or a priori cosmology?
Because humans like to push boundaries (like all life), wherever I see very fanciful ideas presented in Tolkien Subcreation format (modernish cartography) I immediately try to suss out what humans and life would do with those known consequences. BUT, if it was presented in a priori cosmological format (i.e. this IS the known world. over there, who the fuck knows, it's likely madness,) I could wholly accept without question a piecemeal map with huge gaps of terra incognita, or "logical" world building.
It might actually be a factor of map technical presentation, and map size (THE known world,) screwing things up.
Quote from: daniel_ream;918852it rankles me that this kind of Tolkien Subcreation has become the ubiquitous default
I suspect this has less to do with Tolkien and more to do with familiarity with ol' Earth. Tolkien toys with language and myth, but very little or not at all with geography, physics, culture or psychology. Most fantasy settings out there, not even that.
Quote from: daniel_ream;918852and crowded out settings where, say, the world is a flat disc you can sail off of (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/192774/Thennla),
A world that integrates a "flat Earth" cosmology as espoused by several pre-scientific cultures. But pretty much works like our own world in most respects. I dare say most players will not bother trying to sail off the world. See also Glorantha.
Quote from: daniel_ream;918852the half-submerged bodies of two gods (http://gregstolze.com/about-reign/),
This one actually plays fast and loose with physics, to its intellectual merit, but the whole weird gravity thing (gravity being always perpendicular to the ground meant some weird stuff like perpendicular harbors), among other things, turned me off. Hell, the author himself released a "non-wacky physics patch" for it.
Quote from: daniel_ream;918852floating islands in a luminiferous aether (http://www.tripleacegames.com/store/sundered-skies-products/sundered-skies-core-setting/),
Not exactly the most original idea either, now, is it? Also the whole "the sky glows and it'll drive you crazy" struck me as poorly explained.
Quote from: daniel_ream;918852or my personal favourite, land, sea and firmament created out of the bloody chunks of the Mother of all Monsters (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/En%C3%BBma_Eli%C5%A1) when my city-state's patron god beat the living crap out of her in a epic battle for supremacy over all creation.
Again, sweet creation myth, but this world will behave like our own for most practical purposes. See also Glorantha, which had the whole myth and God Plane and Heroquest things going on but only recently actually developed systems for your character to interact with this stuff as suggested by the fluff.
Quote from: daniel_ream;918852Earth Subcreation
FIFY ;)
Quote from: The Butcher;918943Again, sweet creation myth, but this world will behave like our own for most practical purposes.
Ah, but that's my point; it needn't and shouldn't. If the world is a flat disc with continents in a ring, the ocean waters come out of a huge geyser in the middle of the disc and the water falling off the edges creates some
interesting currents and navigational challenges. Sail too far from the outer coastlines and you'll be lost forever, as the increasing speed of the currents overtakes how fast you can tack against them.
White Wolf's
Scarred Lands setting had a similar
Titanomachia origin, and it definitely affected geography; the Sea of Blood was called that because the chopped up body of an immortal Titan was down there, bleeding into it for all eternity and turning it red.
...the more I think about it, the more I wonder if a lot of this isn't just that gamers and fantasy lit fans don't like gods that are Gods, with all the ability to Do Godly Shit that most myths and legends ascribe to them. That mountain range isn't there because two tectonic plates collided; it's
Tiamat's fucking spine, it's fifty miles high and you're not getting across it because fuck you, mortal, that's why. And deep in the dark places under the Earth, her dying body still spawns great and terrible abominations that have no ecology, culture or cute little babies because vomiting up hideous monsters that have no purpose but to annihilate the children of Marduk is just What Gods Do.
*sigh* I try to do similar for my star system celestial bodies. Since we have had a sample size of one up until pretty recently, and the new data threw out what we assumed about gas giants and their distance to their star, I freely play fast and loose with planet and satellite creation. I get it. Sometimes you wish people could be so bold...
:(
Quote from: daniel_ream;918956Ah, but that's my point; it needn't and shouldn't. If the world is a flat disc with continents in a ring, the ocean waters come out of a huge geyser in the middle of the disc and the water falling off the edges creates some interesting currents and navigational challenges. Sail too far from the outer coastlines and you'll be lost forever, as the increasing speed of the currents overtakes how fast you can tack against them.
White Wolf's Scarred Lands setting had a similar Titanomachia origin, and it definitely affected geography; the Sea of Blood was called that because the chopped up body of an immortal Titan was down there, bleeding into it for all eternity and turning it red.
...the more I think about it, the more I wonder if a lot of this isn't just that gamers and fantasy lit fans don't like gods that are Gods, with all the ability to Do Godly Shit that most myths and legends ascribe to them. That mountain range isn't there because two tectonic plates collided; it's Tiamat's fucking spine, it's fifty miles high and you're not getting across it because fuck you, mortal, that's why. And deep in the dark places under the Earth, her dying body still spawns great and terrible abominations that have no ecology, culture or cute little babies because vomiting up hideous monsters that have no purpose but to annihilate the children of Marduk is just What Gods Do.
I loved the Scarred Lands, it seemed a lot more like "what if were living in Myth" than some other games that try.
To take this thread back to purpose indirectly...
Warhammer Fantasy Battles 6th edition: "Check out this awesome game and all the cool stuff you can do with it!"
Warhammer Fantasy Battles 7th edition: "Like 6th edition but boring"
Warhammer Fantasy Battles 8th edition: "Fuck you, buy our shit"
The 9th Age: "Do you really love 8th edition but wish it was less creative and really pandered to ruleslawyer competitive gamer-douchebags?"
Warhammer 40K: "Like Warhammer Fantasy Battles, but for children"
Age of Sigmar:"Like Warhammer 40K, but for even younger children"
Quote from: daniel_ream;918956Ah, but that's my point; it needn't and shouldn't. If the world is a flat disc with continents in a ring, the ocean waters come out of a huge geyser in the middle of the disc and the water falling off the edges creates some interesting currents and navigational challenges. Sail too far from the outer coastlines and you'll be lost forever, as the increasing speed of the currents overtakes how fast you can tack against them.
If you're gonna go down that rabbit hole, you're going to have to invent entire new models for weather, because ocean currents and their temperature seem to be kind of a big deal there.
Which is why, again, I'm not crazy about toying around with geography too radically; too many downstream, cascading changes to both the physical world and sophont cultures with each variable. You end up threatening consistency.
Quote from: daniel_ream;918956White Wolf's Scarred Lands setting had a similar Titanomachia origin, and it definitely affected geography; the Sea of Blood was called that because the chopped up body of an immortal Titan was down there, bleeding into it for all eternity and turning it red.
Red blood is probably a lot like our own, i.e. uses hemoglobin. Can you imagine the sort of ecological catastrophe that would follow a huge lumbering giant thing bleeding thousands of gallons a day into the sea (which is probably a fraction of our own oceans)? The algae blooms triggered by this dumping of dead organic matter, the dead fish due to changing salinity and pH, the carrion birds at the beaches... Good luck fishing anything out of the putrid blood-tainted sea.
Quote from: daniel_ream;918956...the more I think about it, the more I wonder if a lot of this isn't just that gamers and fantasy lit fans don't like gods that are Gods, with all the ability to Do Godly Shit that most myths and legends ascribe to them. That mountain range isn't there because two tectonic plates collided; it's Tiamat's fucking spine, it's fifty miles high and you're not getting across it because fuck you, mortal, that's why.
That's one badass rain shadow. Not to mention, of course, an actual shadow.
Quote from: daniel_ream;918956And deep in the dark places under the Earth, her dying body still spawns great and terrible abominations that have no ecology, culture or cute little babies because vomiting up hideous monsters that have no purpose but to annihilate the children of Marduk is just What Gods Do.
Everything has an ecology! What's the birth rate of these horrors? Do they not eat? Eventually they'll spill into the countryside and take over if left unchecked, unless their birth rate (which would probably be constant, not depending on current population, food supply or similar mortal foibles) is kept very low.
I love it that we have been gifted with people like Tolkien, Barker, Stafford and some posters in this thread, for whom worldbuilding is an end in and of itself. But for me, fun as it may be, it's a means to an end: getting a game going. But by all means, keep bringing up the crazy stuff. I'll be reading with interest.
Quote from: CRKrueger;918961I loved the Scarred Lands, it seemed a lot more like "what if were living in Myth" than some other games that try.
Yes, it is. Another setting begging for a RQ6/Mythras conversion.
Quote from: The Butcher;919010If you're gonna go down that rabbit hole, you're going to have to invent entire new models for weather [...]
Red blood is probably a lot like our own, i.e. uses hemoglobin. Can you imagine the sort of ecological catastrophe that would follow [...]
Everything has an ecology! What's the birth rate of these horrors? Do they not eat? [...]
See, I can't tell if you're being facetious here, but on the off chance you're not, the answers are no, no and no. You're starting with the assumption that these worlds
must be based on realistic laws of physics, rather than being what the ancients thought they were: an inherently magical place where gods, monsters and other supernatural creatures existed and operated according to their own rules - rules which were consistent and logical, but not the same as our modern understanding of science.
What did Medusa and her sisters eat? The serpent that guarded the golden fleece? Scylla and Charybdis? Picking off a sailor or two is a fine snack, but it's not going to keep a monster that size in calories. When Zeus gets annoyed and chucks a few thunderbolts, does that screw up weather patterns all across the Aegean?
This is what I mean by Tolkien Subcreation, or "scientific realism", crowding out other worldbuilding concepts. Gamers seem to be almost incapable of comprehending a world that operates according to mythic rules rather than scientific laws.
Quote from: The Butcher;919012Yes, it is. Another setting begging for a RQ6/Mythras conversion.
I'm going to disagree, if only because I've tried it. RQ6/Mythras really doesn't handle mythic anything very well. You can hack it with the magic systems or by importing RQII's Legendary Abilities, but it's hard to get that Big Damn Greek Heroes feel out of Mythras.
Yeah... :(
In Stars Without Number I wanted to make a swiss cheese planet where xenon was the majority of the atmosphere. So a planetary atmosphere that is predominantly sub-surface and reaching the fondue-like mantle. Crashing meteors easily breach the lattice rock structure into the mantle and *glop* out huge geysers of molten material and rolling fogs of plasmic xenon that then cool and settle back into the swiss cheese crust system.
Somewhere a Traveler fan screams...
Quote from: daniel_ream;919031See, I can't tell if you're being facetious here,
No, I am not.
Quote from: daniel_ream;919031but on the off chance you're not, the answers are no, no and no. You're starting with the assumption that these worlds must be based on realistic laws of physics, rather than being what the ancients thought they were: an inherently magical place where gods, monsters and other supernatural creatures existed and operated according to their own rules - rules which were consistent and logical, but not the same as our modern understanding of science.
Yeah, those scenarios sound great, but when the rubber hits the road and players are deprived of doing something that seems logical because, ultimately, A Wizard Did It feelos weaksauce as fuck at my game table. I do not trust my mostly casual players to engage with the set of mythic rules I wrote super special just for them. YMMV of course.
Quote from: daniel_ream;919031What did Medusa and her sisters eat? The serpent that guarded the golden fleece? Scylla and Charybdis? Picking off a sailor or two is a fine snack, but it's not going to keep a monster that size in calories. When Zeus gets annoyed and chucks a few thunderbolts, does that screw up weather patterns all across the Aegean?
Not relevant to the myths that feature these beings, but roleplaying game are not stories. What if the PCs want to bait the serpent with carrion? Or trick Zeus into screwing up Aegean weather by banging his mistresses?
Quote from: daniel_ream;919031This is what I mean by Tolkien Subcreation, or "scientific realism", crowding out other worldbuilding concepts. Gamers seem to be almost incapable of comprehending a world that operates according to mythic rules rather than scientific laws.
Tolkien is possibly one of the worse examples of "scientific realism" as his creation is suffused with myth (cf. The Silmarillion). I identifiy this sort of "hard fantasy" as mostly a pulp fantasy/sword-and-sorcery thing.
Quote from: daniel_ream;919031I'm going to disagree, if only because I've tried it. RQ6/Mythras really doesn't handle mythic anything very well. You can hack it with the magic systems or by importing RQII's Legendary Abilities, but it's hard to get that Big Damn Greek Heroes feel out of Mythras.
Mythras might not do Herakles (at least not right out of the box), but it sure as hell can do Odysseus. ;)
Back on Track:
Paranoia: "I've always wanted to do this shit to you in other games."
Quote from: The Butcher;919191Or trick Zeus into screwing up Aegean weather by banging his mistresses?
Holy crap that's the worst idea ever. I need to run a Mythic Greece campaign to see if my players will try it.
Quote from: crüesader;919202back on track:
Paranoia: "i've always wanted to do this shit to you in other games."
winner
Black Tokyo: Is the idea of a good hentai RPG even possible? Probably not.
Zettai Reido: I don't even need an English translation to tell me "Nope, it's definitely not possible. Moving on."
Quote from: The Butcher;919191I do not trust my mostly casual players to engage with the set of mythic rules I wrote super special just for them. YMMV of course.
And that's just fine. Your game has to work for your players. And that does explain part of what I'm kvetching about: gamers that can't unmoor themselves from the assumptions of atheistic scientific realism.
QuoteWhat if the PCs want to bait the serpent with carrion? Or trick Zeus into screwing up Aegean weather by banging his mistresses?
Yes to the first, no to the second. It's not really that hard; you just have to quit with the assumption that the weather is some physical phenomenon separate from the god who commands it.
Quote from: Doc Sammy;919506Black Tokyo: Is the idea of a good hentai RPG even possible? Probably not.
And this book is where we prove it. :D
Quote from: TristramEvans;918968To take this thread back to purpose indirectly...
Warhammer Fantasy Battles 6th edition: "Check out this awesome game and all the cool stuff you can do with it!"
Warhammer Fantasy Battles 7th edition: "Like 6th edition but boring"
Warhammer Fantasy Battles 8th edition: "Fuck you, buy our shit"
The 9th Age: "Do you really love 8th edition but wish it was less creative and really pandered to ruleslawyer competitive gamer-douchebags?"
Warhammer 40K: "Like Warhammer Fantasy Battles, but for children"
Age of Sigmar:"Like Warhammer 40K, but for even younger children"
I love it but I think we need to add:
Warhammer Mass Combat Roleplay (1st edition): "Buy some miniatures and fight battles but this is totally a roleplaying game not one of those nasty wargames." Seriously, I've always wanted a mass combat roleplaying game, even wrote a couple that never quite worked right. The third version of Dark Passages is optimized for it, seems natural for D&D really.
War Hammer The Game of Fantasy Battles (2nd edition): "Lets smash skulls again, and hey, look, we were joking about the roleplaying game thing, those are stupid."
Warhammer The Game of Fantasy Battles (3rd edition): "Look at the cool new plastic miniatures (all six of them!), we're re-making our lines in the new, bigger and chunkier style so they don't look out of place. Don't worry, this won't be the last time we invalidate your collection and make you buy it all over again."
Quote from: Doc Sammy;919506Zettai Reido: I don't even need an English translation to tell me "Nope, it's definitely not possible. Moving on."
what is wrong with a police procedural TV show about solving cold case files? CBS had one in the US.
Quote from: remial;919708what is wrong with a police procedural TV show about solving cold case files? CBS had one in the US.
He is talking about the Zettai Reido RPG which is about something entirely different. The game is about hentai demon sex and has a sourcebook titled Lewd Children. I can't even post the cover image here.
Scion 2nd Edition: We are totally not going to fuck our backers this time. We swear.
Beast: The Primordial- "We're desperately trying to pretend we can do what White Wolf did, so we made a game where you can be a random monster. Look at our Gamergate reference!"
Champions: A Game Designed By Accountants for Lawyers
Kult: Totally Not Clive Barker: The RPG
Conspiracy X: Totally Not The X-Files RPG
The Hercules & Xena RPG: Actually Not the Hercules & Xena RPG
Ghostbusters: Encumbrance Rules Are For Twats
Ghostbusters International: All Right, Fine, Here's Some Encumbrance Rules You Twats
N.E.W. The Science Fiction Roleplaying Game - Taking an old generic sci-fi idea and literally calling it N.E.W. as an acronym that doesn't actually stand for anything.
Quote from: daniel_ream;920166Champions: A Game Designed By Accountants for Lawyers
Better, the other way around...as Steve Long is actually a lawyer...
Quote from: The_Shadow;920192Better, the other way around...as Steve Long is actually a lawyer...
D'y'know....that explains quite a lot...
Quote from: The_Shadow;920192Better, the other way around...as Steve Long is actually a lawyer...
Kind of why I actually enjoyed some of the splat in Dark Champions. He made quite a few reference to how 'reality' works.
Marvel Heroic Roleplay: Less an rpg more a dice game but hey there's some pretty pictures!
Marvel Heroic Role playing: An rpg where you role play a comic book writer instead of comic book character... What a twist!
That was the final opinion of the groups I played it with so we ended up going to back to Champions. But, humorous snark aside, to each their own.
Quote from: Nexus;920264But, humorous snark aside, to each their own.
I'm a huge fan of MHR and I don't find either of those inaccurate.
I do find it odd that if you wanted something that felt like an RPG you went back to
Champions, though.
Quote from: daniel_ream;920328I'm a huge fan of MHR and I don't find either of those inaccurate.
If its a play experience you like then its what you like you. No harm in that.
QuoteI do find it odd that if you wanted something that felt like an RPG you went back to Champions, though.
Too keep from derailing things again, I'll just say that statement is baffling opinion so fair enough and again, to each their own
Demon: The Descent-The moment that the New World of Darkness jumped the shark.
Beast: The Primordial-The moment that the New World of Darkness jumped the shark and we realized it couldn't be saved.
Big Eyes Small Mouth-A blast from the past that should have stayed
Vampire: The Masquerade-A guide on how not to write a metaplot
Pathfinder: "Ever wanted to go buy a burrito, but the place that sells them is full of rabid monkeys throwing feces at each other?"
Quote from: Warboss Squee;920143Scion 2nd Edition: We are totally not going to fuck our backers this time. We swear.
There was a first time? Or were some of the developers involved in a bad kickstarter?
Quote from: Doc Sammy;920455Demon: The Descent-The moment that the New World of Darkness jumped the shark.
How so? I've never read the thing, but I'm curious what it changed.
Quote from: Crüesader;920486Pathfinder: "Ever wanted to go buy a burrito, but the place that sells them is full of rabid monkeys throwing feces at each other?"
It's sad, you know. Those are great burritos.
JG
Big Eyes, Small Mouth - for anime fans not pervy enough to play Maid, not sensible enough to play FASERIP, and/or not smart enough to play Anima.
Prince Valiant - World of Darkness rules, minus the pretension, angst, crunch and splats.
The Streetfighter RPG - for when the WoD tenchcoat-katana brigade give up on pretending to roleplay.
Thrash - The Streetfighter RPG Heartbreaker with 110% more fanboy, and 50% less playability.
Quote from: Iron_Rain;920496There was a first time? Or were some of the developers involved in a bad kickstarter?
many people believe that Onyx Path screwed their backers in the Kickstarter for Exalted, because the primary author for the system suffered a life threatening illness, and took time off from writing toe game to, you know, be all selfish and try not to die. During that time the PTB at Onyx Path kept people up to date on the author's health, but as he was the architect for the new system for charms, nothing could really move forward until he finished treatment. They also didn't just take the assignment away from him and give it to someone else. At least that is what I've managed to put together from big purple. so YMMV
Quote from: Simlasa;920499How so? I've never read the thing, but I'm curious what it changed.
AFAIK, many are upset that what started out as a random, throw away comment about a God Machine in the original edition of nWoD core rules, became canon with Demon where your character is a renegade servant of the God Machine who is hiding as a human.
You didn't cover some things. You did not cover the shitty poser art nor the stolen art. You did not cover the horrible treatment that the exalted devs gave to their fan base and the constant bannings at rpg.net. That was the source of all the hate. The devs treated the fans like shit and as moderators they ban people who were reasonable. In fact some people moved to this site because of it. This is not covering the fact that a streamlined system was promise, but instead we got a broken system with over hundreds of charms that is filler work.
The guy who was sick was the only one with an excuse. The others have nothing to protect them.
Quote from: Snowman0147;920616You didn't cover some things. You did not cover the shitty poser art nor the stolen art. You did not cover the horrible treatment that the exalted devs gave to their fan base and the constant bannings at rpg.net. That was the source of all the hate. The devs treated the fans like shit and as moderators they ban people who were reasonable. In fact some people moved to this site because of it. This is not covering the fact that a streamlined system was promise, but instead we got a broken system with over hundreds of charms that is filler work.
Hm,is there a more in-depth treatment of all of this online, particularly regarding the artwork? I only ever seem to catch glimpses of this from the outside, never being an Exalted player, mostly from a few vague comments on TBP before people are banned.
There is a old thread that is over a hundred pages. Plenty of links to help my case.
Here is a link. (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?29069-Exalted-3-What-the-hell&highlight=Exalted)
Quote from: Snowman0147;920621Here is a link. (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?29069-Exalted-3-What-the-hell&highlight=Exalted)
huh, yeah, guess I saw that thread a hundred times, but I see "Exalted" an just pass on by. Anyways, lots of reading to do I guess, thanks.
Quote from: Crüesader;920486Pathfinder: "Ever wanted to go buy a burrito, but the place that sells them is full of rabid monkeys throwing feces at each other?"
Wouldn't it be more ',but the place that sells them closed down and reopened as a flauta stand. We don't have the same name, but our burritos are basically the same.'
Quote from: Willie the Duck;920660Wouldn't it be more ',but the place that sells them closed down and reopened as a flauta stand. We don't have the same name, but our burritos are basically the same.'
The burritos are the same, maybe with a couple of extras on the side these days. But as soon as you walk into the door, a neon monkey screeches and throws the poop at you. Best to do a delivery.
Quote from: Crüesader;920661The burritos are the same, maybe with a couple of extras on the side these days. But as soon as you walk into the door, a neon monkey screeches and throws the poop at you. Best to do a delivery.
The burritos aren't even bad, you know. They're loaded, stuffed with cheese and meat and beans and they have this amazing spicy salsa. But as I got older I just couldn't eat then with the same impunity as my youthful self and now favor lighter (though still flavor-packed) fare. I still eat one every now and then, when someone else orders them.
Pretty sure I reprimanded Opaopajr for doing the exact same thing a few dozen pages back. :o
Quote from: The Butcher;920668The burritos aren't even bad, you know. They're loaded, stuffed with cheese and meat and beans and they have this amazing spicy salsa. But as I got older I just couldn't eat then with the same impunity as my youthful self and now favor lighter (though still flavor-packed) fare. I still eat one every now and then, when someone else orders them.
They're really not, and the extra sides are fun. But I can understand.
Quote from: The Butcher;920668The burritos aren't even bad, you know. They're loaded, stuffed with cheese and meat and beans and they have this amazing spicy salsa.
Given all the topping options and menu items, I just don't have three hours to order a burrito any more.
Quote from: The Butcher;920668Pretty sure I reprimanded Opaopajr for doing the exact same thing a few dozen pages back. :o
California burritos, thick as a... woman's calf (whew!), carb loaded with an additional scoop of rice to send the nearest diabetic into starch-induced coma by proxy. All while you are tripping on acid which steals away your appetite. And did you ever really pay attention to the manifold shapes of tortilla chips? I mean, dude, they're all just triangles from Geometry Class trying to escape two-dimentionality through the power of boiling oil! Holy shit, horchatas are like drinking a churro...
I am the Tapatío hot sauce man.
/glassy eyed stare
/unnerving silence
Quote from: Doc Sammy;920455Beast: The Primordial-The moment that the New World of Darkness jumped the shark and we realized it couldn't be saved.
World of Darkness had already jumped the shark when Changeling: the Dreaming came out. I might even argue that the Sabbat books were the shark jump. Attention getting, yet also showing that they were losing sight of what made the setting interesting.
You are deep, deep into the Ted McGinley seasons with Beast: the Primordial.
Quote from: TrippyHippy;920193D'y'know....that explains quite a lot...
Steve Long was freelancer for White Wolf for awhile. I think he did allot for Hero System initially but frankly, some of his actions may very well be the bullet that finally slays the beast (or puts it out of their misery for those who are less than fans :D)
Quote from: Crüesader;920669They're really not, and the extra sides are fun. But I can understand.
They are, and this what kills me. Though I sometimes get to recreate some of them at home, in a leaner, more manageable burrito.
Quote from: daniel_ream;920684Given all the topping options and menu items, I just don't have three hours to order a burrito any more.
I know, right??? Still, if someone else's going through the trouble of ordering it, I'll gladly take a bite.
Quote from: Opaopajr;920718California burritos, thick as a... woman's calf (whew!), carb loaded with an additional scoop of rice to send the nearest diabetic into starch-induced coma by proxy. All while you are tripping on acid which steals away your appetite. And did you ever really pay attention to the manifold shapes of tortilla chips? I mean, dude, they're all just triangles from Geometry Class trying to escape two-dimentionality through the power of boiling oil! Holy shit, horchatas are like drinking a churro...
I am the Tapatío hot sauce man.
/glassy eyed stare
/unnerving silence
You are so much better at this than I am. Why the acid, though?
Quote from: Baulderstone;920739World of Darkness had already jumped the shark when Changeling: the Dreaming came out. I might even argue that the Sabbat books were the shark jump. Attention getting, yet also showing that they were losing sight of what made the setting interesting.
You are deep, deep into the Ted McGinley seasons with Beast: the Primordial.
I always thought of
Demon: The Fallen as
Changeling: The Dreaming with a REALLY BAD hangover.
jg
Quote from: Baulderstone;920739World of Darkness had already jumped the shark when Changeling: the Dreaming came out. I might even argue that the Sabbat books were the shark jump. Attention getting, yet also showing that they were losing sight of what made the setting interesting.
You are deep, deep into the Ted McGinley seasons with Beast: the Primordial.
I think, in a commercial and popularity sense, White Wolf had really reached their crest when Mage: The Ascension came out. The first three games were really the World of Darkness proper. As as trend setting, zeitgeist type of thing it started to fall away with the release of Wraith: The Oblivion and by Changeling, the format was starting to get a get a little old and the critics more vocal. This isn't to say that these were good games of merit, with some good ideas though. They just weren't as popular.
In the case of the NWoD/CoD lines, it's more a matter of a marketing overhaul.
Quote from: The Butcher;920756You are so much better at this than I am. Why the acid, though?
I needed something to ground me. :o
If I let go, I'll fly away... :eek:
Quote from: TrippyHippy;920774As as trend setting, zeitgeist type of thing it started to fall away with the release of Wraith: The Oblivion and by Changeling, the format was starting to get a get a little old and the critics more vocal.
I know around my neck of the woods the problem was that nobody quite knew what to do with them. Everyone had seen vampire and werewolf movies, and Mage mashed a bunch of gonzo stuff together that gave people options, but Wraith and Changeling just left people going "huh?"
Wraith in particular would have been a lot better if it had stuck with people resolving the issues that they had in life. Everything else from the undead government to the tempest to the metaplot just distracted and detracted.
Quote from: Willie the Duck;920785... Everything else from the undead government to the tempest to the metaplot just distracted and detracted.
I remember reading about this, and all I could think about was 'Beetlejuice'. It just seemed like it far outshined what the game was supposed to be about, and made you more worried about Stygia or the Jade City or whatever it was called. It seemed far more suited to Exalted.
Quote from: daniel_ream;920782I know around my neck of the woods the problem was that nobody quite knew what to do with them. Everyone had seen vampire and werewolf movies, and Mage mashed a bunch of gonzo stuff together that gave people options, but Wraith and Changeling just left people going "huh?"
I think they were also the victim of a mandatory production schedule and the overall line stretching thin. Vampire, Werewolf and Mage all had solid ideas behind them. I can nitpick about specifics, but they were entirely playable games. By they time you get to Changeling, you have a company mandated release. it didn't mater that there was no coherent idea behind the game and that the system was a hideous CCG hybrid. The ultimate irony was that this soulless thing was a game about Imagination.
I think it actually could have been good with another year of work, but WW was married to a new RPG every year at any cost.
Quote from: Willie the Duck;920785Wraith in particular would have been a lot better if it had stuck with people resolving the issues that they had in life. Everything else from the undead government to the tempest to the metaplot just distracted and detracted.
Quote from: Crüesader;920786I remember reading about this, and all I could think about was 'Beetlejuice'. It just seemed like it far outshined what the game was supposed to be about, and made you more worried about Stygia or the Jade City or whatever it was called. It seemed far more suited to Exalted.
I actually really liked the afterworld setting. It clearly was a more high-fantasy Beetlejuice, which I actually thought was awesome.
The thing is, that setting was really incoherent and hard to grasp in the core book. As the line went on, it did become a really interesting setting, but it was too late. If they had spent more time on that Wraith core book, it could have been a success. I don't think it would ever have been a Vampire level success, but like Mage, it could had really appealed to a subset of gamers.
I agree with Willie that the underworld stuff never gelled with dealing with your past. I think they could have made that work though. They simple didn't put enough thought into it.
Both Wraith and Changeling felt like the developer threw up his hands and figured he could get it right in the next edition.
Quote from: Baulderstone;920796I actually really liked the afterworld setting. It clearly was a more high-fantasy Beetlejuice, which I actually thought was awesome.
The thing is, that setting was really incoherent and hard to grasp in the core book. As the line went on, it did become a really interesting setting, but it was too late. If they had spent more time on that Wraith core book, it could have been a success. I don't think it would ever have been a Vampire level success, but like Mage, it could had really appealed to a subset of gamers.
I agree with Willie that the underworld stuff never gelled with dealing with your past. I think they could have made that work though. They simple didn't put enough thought into it.
Both Wraith and Changeling felt like the developer threw up his hands and figured he could get it right in the next edition.
I really liked Wraith too, but I recall the Dragon review of the time which said it was the weakest of the WoD line (to date) which was the first unfavourable review I ever read for a WW game. It did, however, get a late following a few years later where some critics started to feel that the game had something quite unique and deep to offer, over and above the rest of the WoD games.
One other factor for Changeling and Wraith is they simply didn't quite fit the WoD. In the case of Wraith it was actually a seperate setting (the Underworld) while Changeling was such a tonal shift it may as well have been.
Still looking forward to getting both 20th Anniversary versions though.
Quote from: Baulderstone;920796I actually really liked the afterworld setting. It clearly was a more high-fantasy Beetlejuice, which I actually thought was awesome.
...
I agree with Willie that the underworld stuff never gelled with dealing with your past. I think they could have made that work though. They simple didn't put enough thought into it.
Oh, certainly. If it was the undead bureaucracy setting that you liked, then dealing with your mortal existence was the part that detracted. I don't think they gelled, thanks for that phrasing.
As to Stygia (or Jade Kingdom, they were both there Cruesader), the challenge for playing that was that the system and backstory they laid out was less high-minded Beetlejuice and more high-minded Terry Gilliam's Brazil (which sounds awesome, but is really hard to play in). An uncaring government where just by existing all of the citizens were technically criminals (pretty much everyone had illegal powers), and any run-in with the law ought reasonably end with the PCs turned into lampshades. I understand it was supposed to be just like vampires' "you start out at the bottom of the totem pole, and if you don't act carefully, you could be killed by your own kind," but it was set up more closely to "you wake up with no memory with a gun and a dead hooker. You don't remember much except that you live in a world where the police shoot on sight." For a story-driven game, I felt one actually had to break verisimilitude constantly to explain why the PCs survived at all.
To further this problem, just about everything from spectres to stygia's police forces weapons to the blades of jade razorgrass which apparently covered most of the Asian shadowlands did aggravated damage. The designers made this wonderful system where when you dropped to 0 health from regular damage, you had this existential crises where your own darkside would try to convince you to embrace your darkest nature and all that, but it never got used. So it had a character-driven game/roll up new characters every week discontinuity.
It was a wonderful concept to think about though. I actually have more fond impressions of the game than the ones that actually got played.
Quote from: Baulderstone;920793I think they were also the victim of a mandatory production schedule and the overall line stretching thin. Vampire, Werewolf and Mage all had solid ideas behind them. I can nitpick about specifics, but they were entirely playable games. By they time you get to Changeling, you have a company mandated release. it didn't mater that there was no coherent idea behind the game and that the system was a hideous CCG hybrid. The ultimate irony was that this soulless thing was a game about Imagination.
I think it actually could have been good with another year of work, but WW was married to a new RPG every year at any cost.
The University of Alabama Gamer's Guild was very involved in the original Changeling playtest back in the '90s. The universal reaction to it from those involved was that it sucked ass. The guys who were in on that playtest were real WW fanboys, too.
Changeling was just a bad game, and I don't think more time would have helped.
Quote from: ThatChrisGuy;920869The University of Alabama Gamer's Guild was very involved in the original Changeling playtest back in the '90s. The universal reaction to it from those involved was that it sucked ass. The guys who were in on that playtest were real WW fanboys, too.
Changeling was just a bad game, and I don't think more time would have helped.
I disagree. Had many a fine campaign with that game back in the day. Some people just don't have the right tastes or imagination to pull it off.
Quote from: TristramEvans;920885I disagree. Had many a fine campaign with that game back in the day. Some people just don't have the right tastes or imagination to pull it off.
I would have preferred a more classic take on faeries, myself. I wanted a more classic take of pretty much every White Wolf monster, though, so my tastes never did totally line up with anything White Wolf. I played in a few good games of Vampire the Masquerade in the early years but I was perfectly satisfied when I stopped.
Quote from: ThatChrisGuy;920869The University of Alabama Gamer's Guild was very involved in the original Changeling playtest back in the '90s. The universal reaction to it from those involved was that it sucked ass. The guys who were in on that playtest were real WW fanboys, too.
Changeling was just a bad game, and I don't think more time would have helped.
Knowing they playtested and simply ignored the feedback just makes it worse.
I think the game could have been better if they stuck conceptually closer to what was done in Ars Magica. It made faeries creatures essentially made from story archetypes. Left to their own devices in Faerie, they acted out the same cyclical stories over and over. In Ars Magica, character with True Poetry could alter Faerie and its inhabitants with new stories about them. This way why faeries like to lure such characters into their world.
You can see traced of that in Changeling, but it is done in a much more boring fashion. The best part is the way that the archetypes used to refresh Willpower are like types of characters in a story. However, I think this should have been the way to gain Glamour instead. If you had the Knight archetype, you got Glamour by running around the WoD trying to be a chivalrous hero. If you were the Jester, you could play elaborate pranks to get Glamour. By pursuing stories tied to your nature, you would gain magical power.
Instead, you got Glamour by hanging out at poetry slams and galleries, draining artists of their creativity. It's just a boring incentive that lead nowhere from a story perspective. Rather than Glamour being a cause to push you into stories, it pushes you to go hang out at the coffee shop. I also just makes Changelings feel too much like vampires as well.
Quote from: Baulderstone;921059I think the game could have been better [...]
Changeling: the Jack of Kinrowan RPG would have been fine and dandy, accessible, very White-Wolfy with its special snowflake PCs and kiths and secret worlds and all, and likely would have sold better.
Quote from: Baulderstone;921059You can see traced of that in Changeling, but it is done in a much more boring fashion. The best part is the way that the archetypes used to refresh Willpower are like types of characters in a story. However, I think this should have been the way to gain Glamour instead. If you had the Knight archetype, you got Glamour by running around the WoD trying to be a chivalrous hero. If you were the Jester, you could play elaborate pranks to get Glamour. By pursuing stories tied to your nature, you would gain magical power.
Instead, you got Glamour by hanging out at poetry slams and galleries, draining artists of their creativity. It's just a boring incentive that lead nowhere from a story perspective. Rather than Glamour being a cause to push you into stories, it pushes you to go hang out at the coffee shop. I also just makes Changelings feel too much like vampires as well.
Which probably says more about the designers than the source material.
jg