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Just a heads-up: everything at ArcDream's store is 25% off until the 30th.
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Nov 27, 2011 05:59
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I finished reading Dinosaurs... IN SPAAAACE! last week and I enjoyed it. I wish there was a little more information about when the main setting is supposed to me. I take it that it's supposed to be early 50's and that it doesn't really matter but it would be nice to have a little more of an insight into what Stolze had in mind. I also wish he would do more examples of the system, but that's a pretty common wish I have. All that said, I can't wait to get a bunch of friends together with some beer and get silly with this. Good to know about the Arc Dream sale too.
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Nov 27, 2011 06:07
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Lemony posted:So, I just started flipping through my copy of Dinosaurs in Space today. It is everything I could have hoped for. Which is to say that it's basically X-Com the RPG, only turned up to 11. The only thing that seems to stop it from replicating the X-Com experience is the apparent lack of frequent horrible death. Still, totally worth the money. drat, yet another RPG I gotta buy.
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Nov 30, 2011 18:42
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Lemony posted:The only thing that seems to stop it from replicating the X-Com experience is the apparent lack of frequent horrible death. Still, totally worth the money. Frequent Horrible Death is well-supported in DiS! You're expected to essentially suicide/abandon your character whenever they're not fun anymore at absolutely no mechanical penalty (you keep all your tokens and build someone new with an equal total). Also, anyone not totally on board with the GREYS WIN future should kill themselves immediately so the archon controlling them can get someone more interesting with equal tokens and points. edit: italic is not spoiler...
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Nov 30, 2011 20:41
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I finally got my copy of Dinosaurs In Spaaaaace! the other day. Hopefully I'll have time to sit down and read it soon.
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Nov 30, 2011 20:43
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Just a heads up: IPR just got in Third Year of our Reign, which collects the remaining supplements in book format. Basically it' all the material for Nain, Ardwin, and Out of the Violent Planet.
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Dec 5, 2011 19:26
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I'd never heard of IPR before, that's cool. Their search is… interesting; searching 'Greg Stolze' doesn't bring up all his stuff and searching 'Reign' brought up a ton of unrelated poo poo including that masterpiece of Japanese ghost stories Kaiden: A Japanese Ghost Story 
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Dec 5, 2011 19:43
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For anyone interested in how combat in Reign plays out, we've just had our first two scuffles over in the Frontier Town thread. Check pages 3 and 4. In summary: looks pretty dangerous! One combat ended in the party calling for a truce, the second ended with the baddies fleeing. The first combat was the 6 PCs plus their 8 threat 1 followers vs 6 bad guys (two ranged, four melee, with 5 dice in their attack pools). First round went well for the Party, getting off a surprise bowshot and some sneaking into melee range. Second round saw two PCs get hit in the head with 3K damage each (you die at 4K to the head). Then they called truce and the baddies agreed, because two of them were badly wounded as well. Second combat was the 6 PCs (no followers this time) versus two stronger warriors (both with 7 in their attack pools and one with an ED. EDs are awesome) and their 8 threat 3 minions. One of the main enemies was taken out in the first round. Then by the second round half of the minions were dead so the rest fled. The other baddie leader tried to run but had his head cut in half with a lucky 2x10 (thanks again to an ED. EDs are awesome, remember). Conclusion??? Early days, but it looks like getting hit in the head can really turn the fight around quickly. Expert Dice are really powerful: if you have a dice pool of 5+an ED, then you set your ED to 10 and you really only need one other dice to roll a 10 and the other guy's dead if you're using a big two-handed weapon. Conversely, getting hit in the chest, head, arm or leg? Ehhh, unless the limb is disabled, it kinda feels like these areas are big damage soaks. In the first fight one of the baddy archers had: 3K to head, 5K to chest, 1S to arms, legs and chest, and he was fully operational. But we'll see. We also haven't seen armour play a huge role yet, but it seems super fantastically good (the killingest bow in the game got reduced to 1K when it hit the Axeman in chainmail. Would take a loooong time to kill someone completely armoured). Also, wide hits are really, really good. Even if you just poke the other guy in the foot with a 4x1, that's awesome because it ruins one of his sets. Other thing I noticed is that multi-actions (getting more than two sets) seem pretty hard to pull off. Anyway, for the kind of game I'm going for I'm really satisfied with how the combat works. There are definite consequences for drawing swords (even though they won, the PCs will be wounded for the next few days at least), and you've always got a chance of death hovering over you rather than being able to quantify HP ticking down and knowing you're safe for another few rounds. Which is what I wanted out of it. Wouldn't work for a dungeon crawl, and probably too deadly for high fantasy, but it works great when you want your game to be a bunch of planning/manipulation/manoeuvring/fight-if-we-have-to kind of thing. I think the party will probably try to massively load the odds in their favour if they have to fight again, and that's cool, that'll be fun. I want it to be the kind of game where combat happens because players decide they're going to risk it, whether that means actively seeking out a fight, as they did in this case to get their stolen property back, or because they push deeper into the dark forest trying to expand their territory and run across monsters, or because they make some decision that puts them in danger down the road (like consorting with the Tribals, which just may get them lynched if they don't come up with a good explanation right quick!) Anyway, we're about to get into the Company side of things, so I'll report back when we have some experience of that.
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Dec 17, 2011 10:03
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Between this and my short run in the Tunnels of Moscow game, there's not a lot of reason to ever set the ED lower than 10 for attacks. Which is a bit disappointing to me, since the text makes Expert Dice feel like it would be great way to put more tactical control in combat, when in fact there's little reason not to shoot for a 2x10 that's both deadly and very unlikely to gobble. I'm glad to be shown wrong, though. ORE is a lot of fun.
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Dec 17, 2011 10:47
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I have yet to actually play any ORE games unfortunately, but it seems to me from reading Reign and Wild Talents that Wiggle Dice are a better system than Expert Dice. It seems more elegant, simpler and more useful for players. I think they're in the Reign book as an optional rule, though I can't remember what they're called, but maybe use that instead? Or try it for a fight and see?
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Dec 17, 2011 18:46
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rantmo posted:I have yet to actually play any ORE games unfortunately, but it seems to me from reading Reign and Wild Talents that Wiggle Dice are a better system than Expert Dice. It seems more elegant, simpler and more useful for players. I think they're in the Reign book as an optional rule, though I can't remember what they're called, but maybe use that instead? Or try it for a fight and see? In Reign they're called Master Dice, but you can only have one special die per skill.
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Dec 17, 2011 18:50
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TurninTrix posted:Between this and my short run in the Tunnels of Moscow game, there's not a lot of reason to ever set the ED lower than 10 for attacks. Which is a bit disappointing to me, since the text makes Expert Dice feel like it would be great way to put more tactical control in combat, when in fact there's little reason not to shoot for a 2x10 that's both deadly and very unlikely to gobble. That was just the combats we got into. In ORE Striking at the legs and arms is useful for the reasons you'd think: They've got partial cover, a shield, you want to disarm or hobble them, already injured there, etc. Against  mutants there's no reason not to take the kill shot.
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Dec 17, 2011 19:31
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A brief reminder that the Tunnels of Moscow game has a slot open right now, if anyone would like more Reign combat. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3425981
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Dec 17, 2011 19:37
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Xand_Man posted:That was just the combats we got into. In ORE Striking at the legs and arms is useful for the reasons you'd think: They've got partial cover, a shield, you want to disarm or hobble them, already injured there, etc. Oh yeah, cover and armor did slip from my mind. Maybe some of us should actually get armor in this game. Or at least a shield. Still, aiming for the legs sounds like it would be easy to Parry otherwise, even in cover. But that's assuming that the opponent's gonna be setting up the parry instead of actually counterattacking.
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Dec 18, 2011 02:07
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TurninTrix posted:Still, aiming for the legs sounds like it would be easy to Parry otherwise There's alternate combat rules on Nemesis.
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Dec 19, 2011 01:19
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I'm in Children's game, posted above. My character is an (annoyingly) pacifist sort of guy, and even then he can do many things in combat. Since this is a very Stolzy system, he can enact quite a few of the "Six Ways to Stop a Fight". I gave him a bunch of spear skill specifically so it can be used as a tool for disarms and chokeholds and all of that rather than a straight up weapon. The fact that REIGN comes pre-loaded with rules for all of that sort of stuff makes combat a lot more fun than just doing a basic "uh i attack the guy" every round. Hopefully my character doesn't get their throat cut in their sleep from the party getting sick of them.
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Dec 20, 2011 12:46
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That's a great list (although there's no law in Camp Sijpoda!). And your peacable ways -have- earned the party five new diggers, so unless you manage to cost them more than that maybe you won't get sleep-knifed yet. Maybe? Now, anyone have any advice for running Company stuff? Especially with tiny companies? With 1 Treasure and 1 Territory? How's it been working in the Tunnels game, Cantor?
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Dec 20, 2011 14:29
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If we'd kill them we'd be a two and a half treasure party 
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Dec 20, 2011 14:36
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The Nain magic system is really interesting. I'd love to give it a try. How 'bout someone run a short Nain game so we can test it out? Or someone just run any Reign game!!!!
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Dec 29, 2011 11:42
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Impermanent posted:After you read Unknown Armies, everything you see becomes Unknown Armies. The Colbert Report ripping on O'Reily becomes a an upstart challenging the old Godwalker of the Demagogue. Wikileaks becomes a platform for the attempted ascension of the Anonymous Whistleblower. The old guy who comes into your local diner every day, pays in lint, mutters about the dogs he's seen, and gets coffee and a bagel becomes a burnt out Urbanomancer. This. I haven't played RPGs or Unknown Armies in 5 years but I still make those connections. I keep trying to stat up songs and albums by The Hold Steady in UA. Holly is an avatar of The Naked Goddess who Ascended but came back and Sapphire uses the awesome clairvoyance rules.
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Jan 2, 2012 12:21
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Test Pattern posted:It's worth noting that the published scenarios for UA run the gamut from highly experimental game to nothing-supernatural-here fakeout and include, notably, an adventure that no one is going to run anywhere for at least the next five years (mentioned above, "Fly to Heaven" is, no poo poo, 9/11 the RPG, published in '99).. My GM ran us through that a few years ago as a playable flashback involving The New Inquisition. I'm an American expat in Australia, and the other players were all Australians. I was pretty uncomfortable, but it fit the tone of the game. In another game under another GM my character was taken over by an Epideromancer demon. Our group had just came out of an adversarial PC vs PC Mage game, so I had control over my possessed character. I ripped out 'my' eyeball and melted another PC. No saving throw. I felt bad, but it was okay. He rolled up a Diplomancer and in the last session brought in expensive booze (the player, I mean) and used it to help me convince the party to assassinate an Aussie pop star I hated. My urbanomancer got the venue he was killed at to change it's name, gaining a Sig charge (I think) and stealing the pop star's soul. The game ended then. A few weeks later the venue changed its name in real life.
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Jan 2, 2012 14:50
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http://www.ebay.com/itm/Unknown-Armies-RPG-Lot-8-books-/300642929317?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item45ffb70aa5 Just noticed an ebay auction for 8 of the 9 Unknown Armies books - anyone looking to complete their collection might want to take a look sometime in the next seven hours. If they had "To Go" in there, I'd be buying it myself.
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Jan 2, 2012 21:39
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Count Chocula posted:I felt bad, but it was okay. He rolled up a Diplomancer and in the last session brought in expensive booze (the player, I mean) and used it to help me convince the party to assassinate an Aussie pop star I hated. Was it Shannon Noll? Because if so, no court in the world would convict you.
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Jan 3, 2012 03:45
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Thuryl posted:Was it Shannon Noll? Because if so, no court in the world would convict you. My secret fear is that Shannon Noll is related to me by blood (a shared, uncommon surname on his mother's side).
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Jan 3, 2012 06:15
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Ben Lee. I have my reasons. Speaking of Auatralian occult weirdness, I saw the 'Eternity' plaque in Town Hall and wondered if it was possible to somehow get a posthumous Major charge. Arthur Stace was obviously an Urbanomancer (and maybe an Avatar of The Messenger?), and having 'Eternity' written on the Harbour Bridge in 2000 would have given him some serious mojo. His chalk is probably pretty powerful too. For the uninitiated, The Eternity Man is basically a real life UA character: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Stace quote:
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Jan 3, 2012 10:58
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UrbanLabyrinth posted:My secret fear is that Shannon Noll is related to me by blood (a shared, uncommon surname on his mother's side).
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Jan 3, 2012 12:11
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Splicer posted:But... Shannon is a girl's name. In upside-down land, Shannon is a boy's name, and Shazza is a girl's name. 
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Jan 3, 2012 12:26
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Reigns company rules, are they robust enough to stat Alexander the great's empire from start to finish? My idea was to really just split things into like "Macedonian troops in persia," "unified Greece under Antipater," "random persian city that we're besieging", "All the lands under control of Darius 3" Since his empire was pretty much the entire known world, or it would be for pcs, it seems odd to put into one company. Then again if they're on the outside looking at his forces it might make sense to slap Troops 5 territory 6 on it or something, i don't know i'll have to read more reign.
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Jan 3, 2012 14:13
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I totally want to gift myself Unknown Armies for Latetmas. There's absolutely no chance of a series revival and a new edition coming anywhere in the near future, right?
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Jan 3, 2012 14:33
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Cyphoderus posted:I totally want to gift myself Unknown Armies for Latetmas. There's absolutely no chance of a series revival and a new edition coming anywhere in the near future, right? Atlas Games is probably considering it, considering that they were supposed to release three new books for UA this year, but it got cancelled. John Tynes is out of the RPG biz nowadays, though.
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Jan 3, 2012 17:03
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canada jezus posted:Reigns company rules, are they robust enough to stat Alexander the great's empire from start to finish? You could stat it under Reign's company rules since there's a bit of leeway in the individual numbers: 6 Territory is "The Biggest", whatever "The Biggest" might mean in your world. But out of interest what do you plan to do in the game? To me, the Company rules work best in the background. It's not the best system for working out what happens when two countries go to war. But it's a really fantastically fun system for working out what the PCs are up to during that war and how their actions influence it. For that, it can be useful to have the Company stats in mind. I don't know what you're planning, but lets say your PCs were an upstart conspiracy working against his empire, which is almost certainly 6 in Might and Territory and Treasure, but has low Sovereignty (I don't actually know historically: a bunch of people forced into an empire by war, and didn't it fall apart pretty quickly after he died? Sounds like low Sovereignty). It also probably has a few Assets, such Epic History and Keen (your military forces love killing and are +2 in Might against weaker nations). Reign would work super well for tracking how the PCs chipped away at his empire: took a bit of territory here, stole from the treasure there, etc. You have a real measure for how well you're doing. Progress Quest! I mean, the actual Company system isn't fun as a game on its own, it's just a tool for all these fun things to happen. If they were actually part of the Empire and conquering other nations, I think it could still work too, but since Macedon would probably already has 6 in Might and Territory and Treasure, maybe there'd be less of a sense of progress (though that would be historically fitting: "When Alexander saw the breadth of his domain he wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer.")
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Jan 5, 2012 13:07
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Well he died in 323bc, in 321 40 years of war erupted and by 319 (i think) they were handing out governor positions for quashing rebellions, so yeah low Sovereignty. Especially since alexander alienated a good part of his core troops before all the conquering was done et all. Game plan wise, its preliminary but at this point i was thinking the pcs are officers or otherwise important people in his army, work their way up into his inner circle, see that he is completely insane/a nice guy but misguided/Working on an occult ritual that will ascend him to divinity. Haven't quite decided yet. Probably work in the pcs background, say you have an egyptian (or if i go pseudo alexander setting the analogue country) in there, maybe he slaughters the poo poo out of the pcs hometown but hey, you get to be governor buddy  I figured reign was 1 messy enough combat wise, can support like mythological creatures if i need them. The company rules seem great to keep track of all the factions floating around. edit: Are any of the other Ore games compatible with reign btw? Like could you use wild talents for hella superpowers? canada jezus fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Jan 6, 2012 |
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Jan 5, 2012 13:37
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The Company rules work best as representing the PC's networks and organizations they're part of. When your cyberpunk clan goes to war against a megacorp, and your party goes in to sear their mainframe or whatever, your Company can represent how much of a distraction they can make, or how well they can secure the city block you need to raid with firebombs while your party's doing the cool stuff inside. Companies are a communal resource to be used, more than an extra party member everyone gets to order around, I feel.
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Jan 5, 2012 14:15
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Thought you guys might want to see this.
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Jan 9, 2012 05:32
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I read it through and the system seems pretty neat. I'm not totally sure what sort of game you'd use it for, though. It looks like something more modern.
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Jan 11, 2012 00:26
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Okay, now I'm interested.G posted:In short, what is HORIZON about?
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Jan 12, 2012 00:05
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He had me at "fantasy science." Then I read the last sentence.  Shoot, now I'm going to end up buying Reign and UA and everything else.
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Jan 12, 2012 02:13
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After getting my group pumped for an Unknown Armies game, I started paging through the conspiracy theories/ideas section. I had a laugh remarking to my players that the section on Elvis simply reads "He's dead." One of the players then piped up with the following suggestion. "Maybe the reason Elvis is 'just dead' while all this other stuff is flying around is because the universe needs someone to be 'just dead' while people wish it were otherwise. Perhaps there's a secret cabal that assassinates people trying to resurrect The King, because if they didn't, the universe would split apart." God drat. Unknown Armies owns. My players own. Anticheese fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Jan 12, 2012 |
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Jan 12, 2012 07:51
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While Unknown Armies does own, I think its safe to put this one on your player owning.
Splicer fucked around with this message at 11:54 on Jan 12, 2012 |
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Jan 12, 2012 11:47
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I forgot what thread this was and read that description. "drat," I thought, "That is a very ambitious idea that could go to poo poo if not properly handled." Then I saw that it was by Greg Stolze.
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Jan 12, 2012 16:31
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