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I'm sorry for the "you know what rustles my jimmies" posting, but I only just made this connection and I have to write it down and it's making me mad. You know in your d20 supplement or derivative of choice, there's always a set of feats that have some kind of special distinction? Like, in Arcana Evolved, there's something called "Name Feats" or "Ritual Feats" or something that you can only take in the first level because it's your heritage on some poo poo. Despite the fact that these feats are special enough to be separated into their own list, because you only ever interact with them that one time, feats are always, always listed alphabetically. quote:Talents and then when you down the feat list: quote:Aid Spellcasting [General] It's so stupid. You have a feat that you can only take at first level sandwiched between everything else that can be taken at any other time you can earn a feat. Again, I'm sorry for getting so worked up about this, but I had to let it out.
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Oct 16, 2017 14:53
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That's not a mistake, it's just a reference vs. learning problem. Personally I'd come down on the side of reference every day so I'm glad they did it like that. Even better would be to have it one way in a table with feat names + short descriptions and the other way in the full rules text with page numbers for cross-referencing but in the long run it's probably all going into a wiki or an character builder app anyways.
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Oct 16, 2017 14:59
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They could have easily broken out talents in alphabetical order.
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Oct 16, 2017 15:02
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The only person you have to blame is yourself, for reading a Monte Cook Arcana book
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Oct 16, 2017 15:06
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Also the idea that you can't train ambidexterity is wrong anyway, AFAIK. And even if it is wrong, there's not much reason to enforce that in a fantasy setting where people shoot fire because of book-lurnin'. I don't know why they mess around with having "innate" abilities in settings where people can get turned into frogs or reincarnated as gnomes on the regular.
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Oct 16, 2017 15:12
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Oh, man, I would love to run games in the Arcana Evolved setting again. Only with rules made by, you know, someone competent. The rules are so amazingly busted, particularly around spellcasting. And the class balance is just wretched.
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Oct 16, 2017 15:18
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This talk of premade MtG decks makes me sad the PC releases have been sucking so hard/ceased existing.
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Oct 16, 2017 16:02
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occamsnailfile posted:This talk of premade MtG decks makes me sad the PC releases have been sucking so hard/ceased existing. One of them, 2014 maybe? was pretty cool because it didn’t let you free build; it was all gimmick decks that you just unlocked more advanced strategies for as you ‘leveled’ then
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Oct 16, 2017 16:18
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fool_of_sound posted:One of them, 2014 maybe? was pretty cool because it didn’t let you free build; it was all gimmick decks that you just unlocked more advanced strategies for as you ‘leveled’ then Yeah, there were a couple like that (I would buy them on sale, play through the 'campaign' content and call it done) which were alright. I don't have the will and time to freebuild, which involves getting to know a shitload of cards and probably reading online guides and so on. The limited game version was okay for me as the most casual of casuals--I suppose I could do that with the premade card decks but then I'd need to find another seriously marginal magic player and then we'd have to buy several decks to keep up variety and so on. Though I would love an updated remake of the 1995 one that was like a little wandering RPG. That did require freebuilding but it was actually a fun mode, plus it had all that banned broken moxy stuff in it.
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Oct 16, 2017 22:01
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occamsnailfile posted:Though I would love an updated remake of the 1995 one that was like a little wandering RPG. That did require freebuilding but it was actually a fun mode, plus it had all that banned broken moxy stuff in it. That one was amazing. You'd be wandering around this world knocking over mermen and swamp thingies to get their cards, then go up against one of the bosses and discover they had some sort of horrifically broken 1e deck which ate you for lunch. I was big into Magic at the time and the pool of cards was smaller so I actually enjoyed deckbuilding, but these days the idea makes my eyes glaze over.
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Oct 16, 2017 22:42
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Yeah the Shandalar game was great, even if rules like “only 4 of a card in your deck” and “no power 9” didnt exist so a fairly basic way to win the game was running nothing but artifact mana generation and lightning bolts, nevermind the other truly gnarly combos available to you.
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Oct 16, 2017 22:58
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Barudak posted:Yeah the Shandalar game was great, even if rules like “only 4 of a card in your deck” and “no power 9” didnt exist so a fairly basic way to win the game was running nothing but artifact mana generation and lightning bolts, nevermind the other truly gnarly combos available to you. 4 card limit absolutely did exist in 1997. The inclusion of the power 9 was also an intentional design choice.
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Oct 17, 2017 00:53
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Barudak posted:Yeah the Shandalar game was great, even if rules like “only 4 of a card in your deck” and “no power 9” didnt exist so a fairly basic way to win the game was running nothing but artifact mana generation and lightning bolts, nevermind the other truly gnarly combos available to you. The per deck limit was in the game, it was three max for a forty card deck, four for sixty, and there was an artifact that increased it by one, lifting it entirely if your deck was big enough.
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Oct 17, 2017 01:49
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Lightning Lord posted:4 card limit absolutely did exist in 1997. The inclusion of the power 9 was also an intentional design choice. The game lets you build decks which ignore it, rules of magic be damned.
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Oct 17, 2017 01:49
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Barudak posted:The game lets you build decks which ignore it, rules of magic be damned. The misty haze of time must be distorting thine memory, because as you can see from NinjaDebugger's post, this is a falsehood.
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Oct 17, 2017 02:11
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Why are the Orcs on Shadow of War full on Warhammer Orks now. Is this some reverse cultural source thing.
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Oct 17, 2017 03:54
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Plutonis posted:Why are the Orcs on Shadow of War full on Warhammer Orks now. Is this some reverse cultural source thing. Becuz Green is Best
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Oct 17, 2017 04:14
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Plutonis posted:Why are the Orcs on Shadow of War full on Warhammer Orks now. Is this some reverse cultural source thing. What do you want, the Orcs to be made for fightin' and not winnin'?
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Oct 17, 2017 04:33
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Plutonis posted:Why are the Orcs on Shadow of War full on Warhammer Orks now. Is this some reverse cultural source thing. You doubtin' da power ov Gork an Mork? Dat's a stompin'. 
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Oct 17, 2017 04:37
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Warhammer fans are the worst
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Oct 17, 2017 04:55
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dEQQOuEc5g
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Oct 17, 2017 05:02
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Plutonis posted:Why are the Orcs on Shadow of War full on Warhammer Orks now. Is this some reverse cultural source thing. It's easier to ignore how hosed up it is you're mind controlling them to do your bidding if they're all ridiculous cartoon caricatures Also it's more entertaining
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Oct 17, 2017 05:31
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Plutonis posted:Why are the Orcs on Shadow of War full on Warhammer Orks now. Is this some reverse cultural source thing. I'm not really seeing it
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Oct 17, 2017 05:41
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gradenko_2000 posted:I'm sorry for the "you know what rustles my jimmies" posting, but I only just made this connection and I have to write it down and it's making me mad. Like Tuxedo Catfish said, it's a reference vs learning thing. And some people come down super strongly on the side of reference, to the point where they believe that teaching-focused organization must be a mistake. I've had a couple of reviews of Strike! where the reviewer was upset that I didn't organize the classes alphabetically. Well I didn't want to because I wanted them in an order that would help players reading straight through understand the mechanics better! It wasn't an accident! And it's not like it's hard to reference a class - they are all in the table of contents and they each have a large distinctive image to catch your eye when flipping through the pages. But one review made it out as though they had just been dumped there carelessly because they weren't in alphabetical order. On the other hand, that same reviewer was 100% right when they said I should have alphabetized the list of backgrounds. By not doing so, I made it hard to find any particular one. If I do a second edition, I'll alphabetize that list for sure! But the classes? No, I'll keep the classes in their simpler->more difficult order. I personally favor the teaching-focused method because I want people to be able to learn my game from the books instead of relying on being taught by a more experienced player. I have a good memory for mechanics, so when I read through a book, if it teaches me well, I won't need to reference it much. So, for example, when I read Burning Wheel, I got everything all sorted out in my head and didn't need to reference too much. I could teach other players right away without needing to play the game myself first. For contrast, when I read Fragged Empires, I didn't understand it. I kind of knew a pile of mechanics, but there was no big picture without play. I could not teach it to another player if I wanted to. We'd have to muddle through a session of looking poo poo up together before it would click into place. But the book does make it easy to find things when you need to reference them.
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Oct 17, 2017 06:51
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Obviously, class names should be such that they line up both alphabetically AND in order of difficulty/mechanical ease. Fighters should be named Aggressors, Wizards should be named Zappers, and everything else should fall in between
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Oct 17, 2017 06:57
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Whoa, turns out there's a Vurt RPG out right now!  quote:Vurt the RPG is a Cypher System game ...oh. 
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Oct 17, 2017 07:19
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drrockso20 posted:I'm not really seeing it They have british cockney accents and have warhammer-ish war machines and are often comical dipshits instead of menacing evil dudes.
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Oct 17, 2017 15:15
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Foglet posted:Whoa, turns out there's a Vurt RPG out right now! What's Vurt?
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Oct 17, 2017 17:08
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Zoro posted:What's Vurt? A '93 literary acid trip.
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Oct 17, 2017 18:11
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Blockhouse posted:It's easier to ignore how hosed up it is you're mind controlling them to do your bidding if they're all ridiculous cartoon caricatures The game will actually start calling you out for it, though. I did something in-game and unscripted that had a one of the Orcs, whose name was like Bracka the Torturer, tell my character that he was really hosed up. A friend of mine also had something similar; the game only lampshades it for so long.
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Oct 17, 2017 19:23
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Even the first game, which had orcs that were much more openly despicable, had several of them call you an out and out monster. Of course the fact that an orc's default state is being at least partly mind-controlled by Sauron made that statement fairly ironic.
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Oct 17, 2017 20:17
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I was pretty confused at the thematic gap between the end of the first game and the beginning of the second, since you basically end the first game as a cartoon villian. Then in the second game Tallion suddenly cares about people again. It must be because he spent the interim forging a ring intended to dominate people’s minds aka one of the most evil actions that occurred in the canon.
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Oct 17, 2017 20:38
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The answer is "the writer from the first game probably didn't work on this one".
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Oct 17, 2017 20:40
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:The game will actually start calling you out for it, though. I did something in-game and unscripted that had a one of the Orcs, whose name was like Bracka the Torturer, tell my character that he was really hosed up. A friend of mine also had something similar; the game only lampshades it for so long. Like I give a poo poo about Orcs think of me
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Oct 17, 2017 21:05
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The game looks interesting, but it is odd that you play as a guy who runs around stealing slaves and then enslaving them for your own purposes.
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Oct 17, 2017 21:20
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I imagine they stopped trying to pay lip service to Tolkien in the second one because the first one barely tries to and kind of fails at it. It's just a fun game where you're Batman, but with a sword, and mentally dominate commanders who have often comical names. They do make it kind of apparent in the first one that you're becoming Sauron-lite in order to defeat Sauron. EDIT: I wouldn't exactly call what you do in the first one "enslavement" but that's more to do with the limitations of the game engine. You pretty much just make mobs hostile to you ignore you and occasionally attack other orcs, which I think is already happening according to the story. The commanders come back at the end but they're far from your personal army. That seems to be changed in the second one, although I haven't played it yet. RocknRollaAyatollah fucked around with this message at 22:57 on Oct 17, 2017 |
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Oct 17, 2017 22:52
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Plutonis posted:Like I give a poo poo about Orcs think of me That's the mindset of the protagonist, yes. If you stop, the game ends.
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Oct 17, 2017 23:56
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Serf posted:The game looks interesting, but it is odd that you play as a guy who runs around stealing slaves and then enslaving them for your own purposes. I mean the game straight up tells you its bad and you're the villain so idk. Seems like a solid what if game set in Middle Earth. RocknRollaAyatollah posted:I imagine they stopped trying to pay lip service to Tolkien in the second one because the first one barely tries to and kind of fails at it. It's just a fun game where you're Batman, but with a sword, and mentally dominate commanders who have often comical names. They do make it kind of apparent in the first one that you're becoming Sauron-lite in order to defeat Sauron. Yeah the game's premise is pretty much 'What if Celebrimbor somehow survived Sauron's betrayal and could go on to forge a ring Sauron had no influence over?' Like for anyone whose into Tolkien stuff they know that Celebrimbor is a huuuuge piece of poo poo and the giant repeating message is that making an item that makes you better that everyone else is a real bad thing that leads to dark lords. At no point does the game treat it like your mind control over orcs is a good thing or anything. kingcom fucked around with this message at 00:44 on Oct 18, 2017 |
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Oct 18, 2017 00:40
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While we're talking video games. I hear tons of praise for Witcher 3. Will I enjoy this game not having played the previous games?
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Oct 18, 2017 01:15
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Witcher 1 and 2 had horrible loving gameplay so if anything you are better off watching a LP of them or something
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Oct 18, 2017 01:19
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