Quote from: Corolinth on May 06, 2024, 06:13:00 PMMeanwhile, the dwarf's bonuses when fighting giants and their keen sense of natural and worked stone are due to their cultural upbringing and not dwarven biology. I don't have the time or the inclination to do a complete audit of various editions of D&D, let alone other fantasy RPGs. The point is, not all of those racial traits are genetic, some of them are cultural. We are not very good at drawing that distinction, either, because for the entire history of humans and our hominid ancestors, the majority of us have lived in racial monocultures.

Yeah I didn't realize people didn't "get this" about Savage Worlds. Ancestry is representative of whatever tropes define your race and culture.

This is precisely why I've been saying for years that D&D is its own brand of fantasy. There is no specific thing about any of the traditional race of D&D that is 100% uniform across its settings. Which is why I perfectly understand your point about having to audit your races based on D&D's various takes on them.

Hence... Savage Worlds let's you quickly and consistently define the tropes you require for *your* setting.

Case in point. In my Savage Worlds Forgotten Realms all my races are +4 points and I define Lightfoot Halflings as:

Lightfoot Halflings
Dextrous:  Halflings are quick on their feet and spry even when they don't appear to be. They begin with d6 Agility.

Fun-Loving: Halflings are renowned for their ability to put people at ease and disarm them with their almost childish charm. Halflings begin with Persuasion at d6.

Light-Step: Halflings are naturally quiet when they move. Halflings begin with d6 Stealth and the skill cap is raised to d12+1.

Lucky Bastards: Halflings draw one additional Benny per game session. This may be combined with the Luck and Great Luck Edges.

Half-Pint:  Halflings average only about 3'- 3'4" 'tall. This gives them a Size of –1 and subtracts 1 from their Toughness.

Laaaaiiid Back: Halflings are renowned for their easy-going nature. They know their place in the big picture and make no bones about it. Halflings have the Mild-Mannered Hindrance due to cultural mores and the pursuit of pleasure and pleasantry above all else (this may be bought off with an Advance).

Whereas my Strongheart Halflings have different traits -

Strongheart Halflings
Dextrous:  Strongheart Halflings are quick on their feet and spry even when they don't appear to be. They begin with d6 Agility.

Challenge Accepted: Strongheart Halflings enjoy physical challenges which are part of their everyday culture.. They start with a d6 Athletics skill.

Observant: Keen senses allow Strongheart halflings to catch details others might miss. They start with a d6 in Notice instead of a d4. This increases maximum Notice to d12+1.

Tall-Pint:  Though Strongheart Halflings average only about 3'6"-4'tall. Like their cousins this gives them a Size of –1 and subtracts 1 from their Toughness.

True Allies: Strongheart Halflings are culturally driven to protect the Hin and those loyal to them. As such they rarely falter in their support of one another or those allies. Strongheart Halflings have a powerful sense of esprit de corps, and have the Loyal Hindrance.

Can Do Spirit!: Strongheart Halflings never give up when set to task. Whether the goal is a footrace against a horse, a drinking contest against a dwarf. Stronghearts are up to the task and will give it their all. This is not to be confused with being arrogant, it is in the nature of the Strongheart Halfling culture that anything worth doing is worth attaining for its own sake. They have the Elan Edge.

This might not be what some GM's want to do, but if you like doing hands on stuff, SW is wonderful at it. It excels at homebrewing or converting other material over very easily.

Quote from: Crazy_Blue_Haired_Chick on May 06, 2024, 12:31:02 PMGender: The Final Frontier!

To boldly go where no neopronouns have gone before!

Named after the crappiest Trek film ever (and I'm including the TNG and nuTrek ones in the list)...  Coincidence?  I think not!

New Release: The Alliance Conspiracy: Blending elements of RPGPundit's The Invisible College with Wretched Époque this book includes a scenario and campaign setting for the Belle Époque era.

https://moordereht.com/product/the-alliance-conspiracy/

Amid the turmoil of the late Dreyfus Affair and the insidious rise of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," Paris finds itself ensnared in another grim conspiracy. A respected French politician is brutally murdered, and his assistant—a young Jewish man—is accused and framed for the crime. Though he pleads his innocence, the seemingly airtight evidence paints him as guilty. His alleged ties to Zionist groups are publicized, igniting antisemitic fervor across the city. As public sentiment seethes, a pamphlet titled "The Alliance Conspiracy" surfaces, purporting to reveal a fabricated Zionist plot to control France and the world.

The Invisible College, a secret organization dedicated to fostering human enlightenment, grows suspicious. They believe a powerful anti-Illuminati group is manipulating events to provoke hatred and division. To uncover the truth behind the politician's death and disprove the pamphlet's dangerous conspiracy theory, they dispatch their Sojourners, a team of field agents, to investigate (122 pages).

Quote from: Zalman on Today at 10:10:46 AM

Quote from: D3magogu3 on Today at 08:54:00 AMHi, I am new around these parts. I hope entering here and posting sth  w/o a big introduction is okay. Rowan Rook and Decard entered a new low and call to violence in their newest "output". Violence against "Nazis" w/o defining what and who that is - openly advising people to do violence against former friends or even next of kin. The game is called "Eat the Reich" and is supposed to be a fun romp about hunting Wehrmacht bigwigs in Paris in the 40ies, but alas, after a few pages, this disclaimer comes:

Welcome! No need for a grand entrance, we'll get to know you if you stick around.

That's a nasty "disclaimer" all right; I don't know if this game is popular enough to warrant inclusion in the list (others might). I've noticed the list's maintainer tries to avoid bringing attention to games that no one would otherwise notice, which seems good practice to me.

The company made a fantastic game called "Heart" and "Spire" fantastic settings and games that put a very different spin on the Reverse Dungeon mindset.   

Sadly RRD have gone down the proverbial Social Justic Shithole and are flinging their proverbial poo paradigms to produly project their Purity.

Quote from: jhkim on May 06, 2024, 06:05:47 PMI feel like it's less generic to have separate and redundant mechanics for "racial abilities" and "character abilities". For example, SWADE has "Size -1" as a racial trait and then has a separate listing for "Small" as a character trait. Worse, "Big" is a negative racial trait (Size +1) that works differently than the "Brawny" character Edge (Size +1).

To me, it makes more sense to have traits, then one can apply those traits equally whether they are because of race, cyberware, magic, superscience, etc.

Packages of traits could represent a species, a race, a cultural background, a membership (i.e. Order of Hermes or space marine), a profession/class, etc.

But that *is* how it works.

Sometimes those descriptors are merely just that - a verbal description, but it uses an established mechanic to signify that. And remember, these only exist as distinctions that *matter* i.e. there is a mechanical benefit/drawback for this race or character ability.

For example - having "Big" is merely a description of size. Having the Brawny Edge means you're strong and jacked. Not everyone that's big is strong and large, that's cooked into what being Brawny means. Likewise Brawny doesn't overtly say you're BIG, its says you're "very large OR very fit" which is simulated by increasing your Size, Strength and Toughness by 1. It's not supposed to be "realistic", it's simply supposed to represent something about a character that makes them tough and strong above/beyond a normal representative of their race.

There is *nothing* preventing a Halfling from taking Brawny. It means that particular halfling is a tough son-of-bitch compared to whatever the baseline halfling is. Exceptions to this rule are things like certain Hindrances which 1) you get bonus starting points for and are voluntary 2) requires you pay them off if you wish to remove them, which might require an in-game narrative reason. Certain Hindrances might preclude you from purchasing certain Edges. For example you can't be Obese (Hindrance) and purchase the Brawny Edge.

If you want to create a race that is so ingrained with say... cyberware - nothing prevents you from saying a racial trait comes from inherent "cyberware", or "magical rituals" or even just societal conditioning to represent <X> which is ubiquitous to the entire race.

Example - you might rewrite in the JHKIM-world your halflings, to be rebalanced pointwise, they don't have the Luck trait, instead they culturally replace their teeth with steel-teeth which gives them the Bite trait, and institute a program of Spartan-like Agogi which gives them Toughness. This is the trade off from having that good-ol'fashioned happy-go-lucky Halflings, into being steel-mawed biting tough little bastards.

Packages of traits *do* represent these things you want. It just matters where you place them and how you define them.

What am I missing?

Quote from: D3magogu3 on Today at 08:54:00 AMHi, I am new around these parts. I hope entering here and posting sth  w/o a big introduction is okay. Rowan Rook and Decard entered a new low and call to violence in their newest "output". Violence against "Nazis" w/o defining what and who that is - openly advising people to do violence against former friends or even next of kin. The game is called "Eat the Reich" and is supposed to be a fun romp about hunting Wehrmacht bigwigs in Paris in the 40ies, but alas, after a few pages, this disclaimer comes:

Welcome! No need for a grand entrance, we'll get to know you if you stick around.

That's a nasty "disclaimer" all right; I don't know if this game is popular enough to warrant inclusion in the list (others might). I've noticed the list's maintainer tries to avoid bringing attention to games that no one would otherwise notice, which seems good practice to me.

Quote from: RPGPundit on Today at 06:44:21 AMBecause you demanded it! You can now get a form-fillable character sheet for Baptism of Fire, on DTRPG!
#osr #dnd #ttrpg

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/479603/baptism-of-fire-character-sheet

I will not admit that part of the decision to get an Adobe products subscription was the ability to make our own form-fillable PDFs. (Yes, there are other tools. No, we didn't like them. LOL)

I have always been partial to Etherscope.

Quote from: jhkim on May 06, 2024, 09:38:44 PMThe current spate of superhero movies since 2008 is annoying, but it's quite parallel to the dominance of westerns for many decades.

One very notable difference is that the vast majority of current Superhero movies come from one studio and one IP. Marvel/Disney. With DC/Warner Bros being a very distant second.

There was at least a little more breadth in the genere of westerns made in the 50's.

Hi, I am new around these parts. I hope entering here and posting sth  w/o a big introduction is okay. Rowan Rook and Decard entered a new low and call to violence in their newest "output". Violence against "Nazis" w/o defining what and who that is - openly advising people to do violence against former friends or even next of kin. The game is called "Eat the Reich" and is supposed to be a fun romp about hunting Wehrmacht bigwigs in Paris in the 40ies, but alas, after a few pages, this disclaimer comes: