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5m/action is basically a big step in the direction of the kind of resource economy I'm talking about. Dice ratios are manageable in either system because they all live on a relatively low level. So the big, frequently empty integers model is really there so you can have the granularity that says it costs 12m and not 13m to enchant your horse to fly or whatever. Many effects, maybe most of them, live in relatively broad ranges of 5m increments where a 1-2m difference means jack. You can seriously just divide all these bullshit numbers by 5 and the really interesting widgets in the game remain largely the same. That's loving crazy. Resolving dice ratios, the basic problem of such a conversion, is as easy as not giving a poo poo. It's a different system, don't do direct conversion, just decide on a different expected formula and stick to it. Which will be easier to do in a simplified resource economy. You can have a lot of the same gearheadedness going into the system. I'm very serious when I say that these bignumbers and the additional math to manage them is pretty unnecessary. Unless those specific things are what you're after, I guess.
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# ? Dec 6, 2013 19:41 |
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# ? May 30, 2024 13:07 |
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Excellencies that were just "Spend 1m to add 5 dice or 2m to add 10" might be preferable even if the basic attributes/abilities math never changed, yeah. There's still something to be said for exhaustible mana pools, though, and the nice thing about regaining 5/50 motes per turn instead of 1/10 motes per turn is that you can have a gradation between "using no magic whatsoever", "using just a little magic, but not enough that you aren't regaining your breath", "straining yourself such that you aren't actually regaining energy", and "running yourself dry". I have this theory that most White Wolf 1-5 scales would be more manageable and intuitive if they were White Wolf 1-3 scales instead, and you could actually get that spectrum in a game in which you respirated 3m/combat turn or something. It's not as useful to collapse 5mp into 3mp as it is to collapse five ability dots into three ability dots, though.
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# ? Dec 6, 2013 19:49 |
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Ferrinus posted:That said, if it were up to me I would give every being an essence pool and make every Ability go 1. an Excellency, 2. some Ability-specific trick, etc. Of course, while Exalts regenerate 5m/turn mortals would regenerate 1m/turn or 1/m minute or something. When I was working on my ultra-slim version of Exalted that never really got anywhere, basically you got your Essence in motes each turn to spend, and to unlock your super-duper moves, you used "sparks", and spending those temporarily reducing your Essence. So high-power moves would be a gamble, where you still risked exhausting yourself but you didn't have to worry about losing the fight just because you used your cool powers, only when you start spamming super moves, presumably out of desperation. Exalts also just got a bonus to their dice pools instead of a having excellencies, because having to figure the power cost of a dice booster you're going to be maxing out nearly every turn of a fight (unless you're dropping perfects) always struck me as less than ideal. Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 20:12 on Dec 6, 2013 |
# ? Dec 6, 2013 20:08 |
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Heart Attacks posted:I dunno, depends on whether it's martial arts, martial arts, or martial arts where all the fun stuff for mortals hides. The sad thing is that this is actually a legitimate question that you're asking.
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# ? Dec 7, 2013 02:47 |
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Ithle01 posted:The sad thing is that this is actually a legitimate question that you're asking. Martial arts charms are for exalts only; mortals really only have an option of martial arts and/or dots of martial arts. It's pretty simple, and it helps communicate to new players what the game is about when you can point at anything on the character sheet and it's probably martial arts.
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# ? Dec 7, 2013 04:48 |
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That's actually horribly misleading, though, because in Exalted martial arts are an esoteric, mystical discipline practiced by an enlightened few rather than an instinctive proficiency available to all characters. Exalted is actually a lot closer to D&D than to the various wuxia emulation systems in this respect, because it's actually the case that most people are regular old fighters rather than weird monks with quasi-supernatural powers derived from long study.
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# ? Dec 7, 2013 05:32 |
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Ferrinus posted:Wouldn't it be just like a tabletop RPG for animals to get special moves but not humans, though. Don't animals have special moves so that you can learn Mantis Style from first principles?
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# ? Dec 7, 2013 23:28 |
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Plague of Hats posted:5m/action is basically a big step in the direction of the kind of resource economy I'm talking about. Dice ratios are manageable in either system because they all live on a relatively low level. So the big, frequently empty integers model is really there so you can have the granularity that says it costs 12m and not 13m to enchant your horse to fly or whatever. Many effects, maybe most of them, live in relatively broad ranges of 5m increments where a 1-2m difference means jack. You can seriously just divide all these bullshit numbers by 5 and the really interesting widgets in the game remain largely the same. That's loving crazy. The more I read your posts on what you'd do with the system, the worse I feel about you not being part of the team. This is the kind of change I wanted for 3E.
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# ? Dec 9, 2013 07:16 |
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Yeah seriously. I'm not sure what the inflated mote pools ever did for us. Did anyone sit down and think, "under these specific conditions it should take 90 minutes to recover from X Charm use vs Y Charm"? They seem totally arbitrary. Turn by turn mote limit is exactly what I wanted. Essence-as-MP is sorta dull and plagued with fiddly problems.
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# ? Dec 9, 2013 10:44 |
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Don't worry all! We still get a great big Christmas present worth of new and exciting systems! No one had ever had a disappointing Christmas present right?
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# ? Dec 12, 2013 09:44 |
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I asked in the White Wolf thread not realizing there was an Exalted thread. They pointed me here for more opinions. Can someone give me a break down of the good, bad, and the Ugly, of 2e, and maybe contrast it against 1e. Also there was a mention of THAT Infernals Comic I don't know what was being referenced but figured someone here would probably know immediately and be able to provide me with a link.
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# ? Dec 14, 2013 02:27 |
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Mendrian posted:Yeah seriously. I'm not sure what the inflated mote pools ever did for us. Did anyone sit down and think, "under these specific conditions it should take 90 minutes to recover from X Charm use vs Y Charm"? They seem totally arbitrary. I maintain that essence as in-combat MP is fine, but essence as out-of-combat MP is redundant with willpower points/health levels/committed essence. You should be able to run dry in the middle of a fight and get really nervous about it.
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# ? Dec 14, 2013 02:29 |
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Here is Stovetop posted:I asked in the White Wolf thread not realizing there was an Exalted thread. They pointed me here for more opinions. Can someone give me a break down of the good, bad, and the Ugly, of 2e, and maybe contrast it against 1e. Also there was a mention of THAT Infernals Comic I don't know what was being referenced but figured someone here would probably know immediately and be able to provide me with a link. The Good: The setting! It's quite fascinating and it blends a bunch of stuff together in a really interesting way. The general consensus is that Games of Divinity from 1E is the best fluff book in the line, particularly the Malfeas chapter, so if you're looking to see what makes Exalted cool, that would be a good start. The Bad: The system. I mean, I'm sure if I dredged my mind, I could find something nice to say about the system, but it honestly just sucks. It's gotten better, sort of, but you're probably better off just using a Fate hack or something rather than dealing with the morass of mechanics. The Ugly: Hoooo boy. Exalted has some real, real serious problems with "mature" (anything but) content, which mostly means a whole lot of rape and unimaginably juvenile approaches to sex. This pretty much culminated in Infernals chapter 1 and 2, which are loving atrocious. There's a write-up in F&F if you really want to take a look (and at the infamous comic), but I would honestly just not bother. There's nothing redeeming there. In general, 1E and 2E don't differ a whole lot. The setting is cool in either one and the mechanics suck in both. In general, there was a slump quality-wise throughout a good chunk of the 2E line, but 1E had it's stinkers too. Pick and choose among the best books and use a different ruleset.
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# ? Dec 14, 2013 04:26 |
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Thanks!
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# ? Dec 14, 2013 04:39 |
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Here is Stovetop posted:I asked in the White Wolf thread not realizing there was an Exalted thread. They pointed me here for more opinions. Can someone give me a break down of the good, bad, and the Ugly, of 2e, and maybe contrast it against 1e. Also there was a mention of THAT Infernals Comic I don't know what was being referenced but figured someone here would probably know immediately and be able to provide me with a link. 2e was still Exalted, but it ditched "Conan multiplied by anime." for TTGL finale style ridonkulous. The rules were "improved" from 1e to 2e, but ticks are objectively worse than turns. The corebook actually said "avenging your dead family isn't epic enough!" and power creep made the entire setting vanish into an anime teamup montage. Then we got really juvenile stuff like abortion artillery and Infernals Chapter 1-2, which didn't match up with the rest of the book, let alone the setting as a whole. And then we finally figured out what happened to Lilun, the Scarlet Empress' youngest daughter! And the artists were so kind as to illustrate the things described.
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# ? Dec 14, 2013 05:21 |
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Tulul posted:The Ugly: Hoooo boy. Exalted has some real, real serious problems with "mature" (anything but) content, which mostly means a whole lot of rape and unimaginably juvenile approaches to sex. This pretty much culminated in Infernals chapter 1 and 2, which are loving atrocious. There's a write-up in F&F if you really want to take a look (and at the infamous comic), but I would honestly just not bother. There's nothing redeeming there. Are you sure your not just talking about Infernals chapter 1 there? Infernals chapter two was also pretty crappy, but for primarily mechanical reasons. (The mechanics for Akuma really, REALLY didn't mesh well with what was printed in the charms chapter, and as-written there was no reason they shouldn't have long ago dominated the setting with superior force and numbers.) Nitpicky maybe, but I kind of have a bee in my bonnet about these sorts of criticisms turning into a bandwagon where the most vocal posters don't actually remember the breakdown of why particular works were bad or what is actually being complained about.
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# ? Dec 15, 2013 20:16 |
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Hidingo Kojimba posted:Are you sure your not just talking about Infernals chapter 1 there? Infernals chapter two was also pretty crappy, but for primarily mechanical reasons. (The mechanics for Akuma really, REALLY didn't mesh well with what was printed in the charms chapter, and as-written there was no reason they shouldn't have long ago dominated the setting with superior force and numbers.) Infernals Chapter 2 posted:While the physical and mental changes are achieved in just a few hours, the akuma must now spend days suffering the rape of his soul, as his personal Essence is extracted, alloyed with vitriol and then restored to his body. Yeah, there's plenty more that's hosed up in Infernals Chapter 2 beyond lovely Akuma rules.
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# ? Dec 15, 2013 20:25 |
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I propose Search and Replacing "Rape" for "rap" in 3ed's books. Suddenly the whole game is about rapping demigods. Keepin' it real in creation.
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# ? Dec 18, 2013 09:46 |
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Hugoon Chavez posted:I propose Search and Replacing "Rape" for "rap" in 3ed's books. Infernals posted:While the physical and mental changes are achieved in just a few hours, the akuma must now spend days suffering the rap of his soul, as his personal Essence is extracted, alloyed with vitriol and then restored to his body. 10/10 would roleplay whole thing.
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# ? Dec 18, 2013 13:21 |
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Hugoon Chavez posted:I propose Search and Replacing "Rape" for "rap" in 3ed's books. Night Caste Assassin dropping dark soulful beats: Glorious Wyld-Reflecting Lunar Freestyle: A Chosen of Serenity in her Resplendent Destiny:
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# ? Dec 18, 2013 13:52 |
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Here is Stovetop posted:I asked in the White Wolf thread not realizing there was an Exalted thread. They pointed me here for more opinions. Can someone give me a break down of the good, bad, and the Ugly, of 2e, and maybe contrast it against 1e. Also there was a mention of THAT Infernals Comic I don't know what was being referenced but figured someone here would probably know immediately and be able to provide me with a link. Okay, well my perspective is different than the one you got, so let's talk about the good, bad, and ugly of 2E. The Good: 2E basically decided to finally start ditching fantasy tropes fully. What I liked about Exalted, and I understand I'm a minority, is that it was actually written from a fairly modern perspective, rather than exulting in the romanticized past. Kings and heroes were gigantic assholes who killed people for no reason, giving people divine right made them generally terrible unaccountable assholes, evil was not something everyone knows but is in fact subjectively created by a (well-meaning but still flawed) person with a ton of power. 1E had all these elements but it was often slightly reticent about expanding about them. I may be a rare Exalted fan, but I preferred the idea of "Solars are ridiculous deity-killing superweapons which have been let off their leash and are probably going to gently caress up because they were designed for a rebellion, not as leaders." to "Solars are awesome heroes who happened to initially have fought and killed the gods". The latter is very much generic fantasy. The former takes a normal fantasy trope (hero empowered by god to do something awesome) and shits all over it, which honestly is most of where my love for Exalted comes from. The fact that Exalted was willing and capable of saying "hey guys look. The past was a pretty lovely place with pretty lovely people." instead of the regressive tendencies fantasy often has. Mechanically, 2E did have some interesting ideas in how cheap perfects worked to allow anyone to survive in combat for an extended period for minimal XP cost. The Bad: 2E's mechanics were fundamentally broken. Ticks were awful. Ticks combined with flurries were mega-awful. Multiple action charms were king, the way perfect defenses had fixed costs meant the combat paradigm fundamentally broke completely and turned into something unbelievably different from what anyone was expecting. Even given that there was probably only limited playtest that didn't catch all the kinks, the fail state of 2E combat was fairly critical. My thoughts are that it was basically the GEV Problem-everyone knew that relying on perfect defenses instead of heavy passive defenses was stupid, and relying on purely mundane offense backed by infinite masteries was stupid, so the playtesters didn't purposely make builds dedicated to exploiting that. Ironically, for people familiar with modern combat, this is exactly what happened to warships, fighter aircraft, and a whole bunch more things, so they really should have tested it. Passive defenses such as armor becoming supplanted by active defenses like ECM, missile defense, and maneuverability, that is (or in Exalted's case, perfect defenses) since that is a paradigm that does start showing up. Social combat was broken too. A lot of the things in Wonders of the Lost Age and Dreams of the First Age were "wooooo look at modern conveniences with essence" instead of the completely weird stuff that people wanted and probably should have gotten. On the flipside the team, especially the late 2E team (and this is what one of my biggest reservations with the 3E project is) was incredibly unwilling to get away from the fantasy aesthetics even when they had a good reason to do so. Autocthonia fights wars with militia using crossbows and swords instead of weird industrial magitech special forces cyberpunk raids, for example. The Ugly All the rape. MJ12 fucked around with this message at 13:55 on Dec 18, 2013 |
# ? Dec 18, 2013 13:53 |
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Hugoon Chavez posted:I propose Search and Replacing "Rape" for "rap" in 3ed's books. I approve of this idea. People getting SERVED left and right. Clearly the usurpation was the greatest rap battle in history. Immersed in their hubris, the Solars, skilled as they were, could not keep up with the team dance choreography of the Dragon Blooded. Humiliated, they disappeared, never to show their faces in millennia. But now, the Dragon Blooded team is falling apart, too busy bickering with each other to work together. Will the Solars, humbled by their experience, be able to rise again?
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# ? Dec 19, 2013 16:17 |
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New map preview just went up. I am basically stoked about the map because I helped kick the design off, way back when. (You can't see it at this res, but it's an in-character map, with a credit to the Realm cartographer who made it, coincidentally named after the RL cartographer....)
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# ? Dec 30, 2013 00:18 |
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Couple questions on the new map: 1) Are the circles meant to denote 'sphere of influence' type stuff? 2) Is The Caul shown at proper size or is that magnified? (The way it's styled it's hard to tell.) (Sidenote: Fake crease lines look really cool on digital copies and really dumb on physical copies of maps.)
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# ? Dec 30, 2013 00:36 |
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I'm still annoyed by the big flat expanse of nothing between the West and everything else, but otherwise that looks great. I take it Ixcoatli means they're going for a more overtly Mesoamerican-influenced East?
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# ? Dec 30, 2013 00:58 |
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e: Nevermind, it's dumb
tatankatonk fucked around with this message at 01:35 on Dec 30, 2013 |
# ? Dec 30, 2013 01:30 |
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tatankatonk posted:Why do fantasy maps never resemble actual maps re: naming? Like, nobody is calling the Sahara 'THE HEATED WASTES' or the Persian Gulf 'STORMSCREAM BAY'. I've just proposed to Holden that we add a Stormscream Bay to the setting, but I think he's going to veto it.
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# ? Dec 30, 2013 01:35 |
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# ? Dec 30, 2013 01:36 |
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loving Russia.
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# ? Dec 30, 2013 01:37 |
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Saving its life.
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# ? Dec 30, 2013 01:38 |
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I like the concept that law, bravery and morality have been at war with each other for thousands of years
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# ? Dec 30, 2013 01:41 |
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Look, I'm just saying it'll be hard to see myself immersed in a world that doesn't have real-sounding names of places like Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu or Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch
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# ? Dec 30, 2013 01:51 |
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tatankatonk posted:Look, I'm just saying it'll be hard to see myself immersed in a world that doesn't have real-sounding names of places like Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu or Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch "Sahra al-Kubra," from which "Sahara" comes (according to Wikipedia anyway), means "the Great Desert." Red Sea. Black Sea. Death Valley. Empty Quarter. Isle of Dogs. The Thousand Islands. Stormscream Bay is a pretty badass name for a place, though.
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# ? Dec 30, 2013 02:05 |
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tatankatonk posted:Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch Or, in English, "St Mary's church in the hollow of the white hazel near to the fierce whirlpool and the church of St Tysilio of the red cave."
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# ? Dec 30, 2013 02:32 |
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I have to say, Stormscream Bay would be pretty drat badass. Just stick it somewhere and never give an in-universe explanation for the name.
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# ? Dec 30, 2013 02:35 |
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Most place names tend to be older than the modern languages spoken around them. They just don't change the way regular words do, survive invasions better than their languages/peoples, etc. But if you go back far enough, pretty much everything is Big loving Mountain, Nasty rear end Swamp, Land Of Good People, Land Of Those Shits We Hate, etc.
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# ? Dec 30, 2013 02:47 |
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Grand Tetons
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# ? Dec 30, 2013 07:14 |
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Is there a resolution that isn't made for ants? EDIT: Seriously though, I can't find a link to a larger resolution. I feel like they are just toying with us. I guess I could just take this through MSPaint and hope for the best. EDIT2: Hmmm, seems like working through the Kickstarter comments it looks like this is the only size they had that was given to show. I don't even.... Bardlebee fucked around with this message at 16:49 on Dec 30, 2013 |
# ? Dec 30, 2013 16:45 |
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Second Edition is free on drivethruRPG today, for anyone who doesn't own it (likely not anyone in this thread)
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# ? Dec 30, 2013 18:11 |
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# ? May 30, 2024 13:07 |
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Bardlebee posted:Is there a resolution that isn't made for ants? I think (and this is just my understanding; I could be wrong) we'll drop a higher resolution preview once we have the final. This is still missing a few elements.
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# ? Dec 30, 2013 21:14 |