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Didn't early D&D have healing/resurrection fall under Necromancy?
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May 22, 2018 22:53
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Antilles posted:Didn't early D&D have healing/resurrection fall under Necromancy? Yes, which is where it should have stayed. 
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May 22, 2018 23:09
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Antilles posted:Didn't early D&D have healing/resurrection fall under Necromancy? Technically, yeah. Priests in AD&D didn't interact with the spell school system, but all their spells still had a school listed in case you wanted to rework them as mage spells.
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May 23, 2018 00:02
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Lemon-Lime posted:In SotDL, yes. That's the lazy cop-out it's not a cop-out, it's the setting, and it's the absolute opposite of lazy. necromancy exists in SotDL as a way to cheat death, originated by some of the worst occultists in its history. its position as a forbidden and corrupting magical tradition ties into both the history and cosmology of the world presented in these books. in SotDL necromancy is essentially selfish, stealing other souls from reincarnation and using them to create slaves or extend the necromancer's own existence unnaturally, preventing their own soul from reincarnating and giving rise to new life. it gives you corruption for the same reason other things give you corruption: you're doing bad poo poo if you want necromancy to have different themes and spiritual ramifications, play a different setting, problem solved. in this one there's ramifications to loving around with other people's afterlives
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May 23, 2018 00:06
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zeal posted:if you want necromancy to have different themes and spiritual ramifications, play a different setting, problem solved. This is in fact what I'm doing, I'm just messing with you because a) I think cheating death is an extremely noble pursuit in general and always roll my eyes at the idea that upsetting the natural order is bad, b) I didn't want to bore people by rambling about my homebrew out of context, and c) skeletons!
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May 23, 2018 00:10
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zeal posted:it's not a cop-out, it's the setting I am criticising the setting. I'm not sure how to make this clear to you. What else do you think I'm doing when I say SotDL necromancy being evil is lazy? Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 00:46 on May 23, 2018 |
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May 23, 2018 00:43
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Healing and resurrection should definitely be necromancy, but I'm totally cool with necromancy being evil.
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May 23, 2018 00:48
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Healing almost always being good is way more boring than necromancy almost always being evil.
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May 23, 2018 00:53
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:This is in fact what I'm doing, I'm just messing with you because a) I think cheating death is an extremely noble pursuit in general and always roll my eyes at the idea that upsetting the natural order is bad, b) I didn't want to bore people by rambling about my homebrew out of context, and c) skeletons! SotDL's actually provides you with a reason to care about upsetting the "natural order" though, because while you can disagree with the way the Genies went about setting the world up, things following the "natural order" is what keeps the void from intruding, while doing things that go against it (as indicated by Corruption) weakens reality and ultimately endangers everyone - this is generally an abstract danger, but if you're a bad enough dude (or irresponsible enough with magic) you can inadvertently let the demons in in a literal sense using necromancy to violate the natural order and cheat death also isn't as noble as it might appear because there's actually very little reason for humans to worry about dying in a properly functioning Urth, as they would serially reincarnate in short order with complete recollection of all of their past-lives if left to their own devices- they're actually significantly more immortal than the fae the whole "death causes you to lose your memories/identity through the ennui of the underworld or the torments of hell" thing is explicitly due to the intervention of the great fae who bolted that system onto reality as a means of suppressing humanity and stopping them from totally overtaking the fae (who constantly need to work to maintain that system- by default hell is more-or-less succeeding while the underworld is falling apart) there's nothing metaphysically wrong (and quite a bit morally right) about circumventing the oppressive memory-scrubbing system the fae set up, but necromancy is a bad way to go about things because it tries to accomplish that through a series of sketchy reality-weakening hacks and actions, and it's end products aren't good- shoddy and incomplete facsimiles of life, the ability to harm or enslave the souls of others, and disrupting the natural cycles of souls by artificially tethering them to unnatural vessels like even if it was exclusively being used to good ends, I don't think the game or setting is weakened by staking out a position that Necromancy is a risky and novel magical tradition with potentially hosed up consequences LGD fucked around with this message at 01:41 on May 23, 2018 |
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May 23, 2018 01:18
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Similar to what Lemon-Lime's saying, the point isn't "what's canonically true in the SotDL setting" because obviously if they say that necromancy is corrosive and awful and contrive reasons for this to be so, then that's how it is. The question is what those narrative choices communicate to us as readers / players.
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May 23, 2018 01:42
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Similar to what Lemon-Lime's saying, the point isn't "what's canonically true in the SotDL setting" because obviously if they say that necromancy is corrosive and awful and contrive reasons for this to be so, then that's how it is. The question is what those narrative choices communicate to us as readers / players. sure, but what it communicates is very in keeping with the rest of the game- keeping reality safe from the demons hungering in the void is a fragile collective effort, and harming other sentient creatures brings the world closer to doom (especially if it's magic that fundamentally exists to hurt others by warping the bodies, minds, or souls or fucks with the basic functionality of the universe) positioning Necromancy this way isn't some sort of pro-death statement, and doesn't make it boring- all the (non-elemental) sentient creatures were already immortal to begin with, but the world has fallen and it has been taken away from many of them (either literally or functionally) through the machinations of others, and Necromancy represents a false and dangerous path to regaining what was lost (or power though abusing the spirits of others)
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May 23, 2018 02:19
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zeal posted:it gives you corruption for the same reason other things give you corruption: you're doing bad poo poo Counterpoint: Outside of the specific context of the setting, which is tied to but not irrevocably married to the rules, necromancy is eminently reskinnable (heh) and reflavorable. Is it necromancy to summon the glorified dead from Valhalla to do righteous battle against giants? Would that be bad poo poo? The more I learn about this system, the more I want to give it a try, but the more I learn about the base setting, the more I want to tweak things. Hell, aren't you given a whole bunch of different flavors and possible interpretations of what the titular demon lord is? Also: Skeleton parties are kickin' rad. 
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May 23, 2018 11:12
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SageNytell posted:Hell, aren't you given a whole bunch of different flavors and possible interpretations of what the titular demon lord is? Close. The Demon Lord itself is the same, but the Shadow it casts over Urth can differ. There's twenty different varieties IIRC, from killer vegetation, global warming, elder dragon, corrupt organization etc etc.
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May 23, 2018 12:06
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Antilles posted:Close. The Demon Lord itself is the same, but the Shadow it casts over Urth can differ. There's twenty different varieties IIRC, from killer vegetation, global warming, elder dragon, corrupt organization etc etc. I forgot about those, and now I want to run a game set in the default setting only instead of "general corruption occurs, and civilisation slowly falls apart," the effect of the Shadow is purely ecological, and the various factions at play are mostly just trying to do their best to keep things together.
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May 23, 2018 13:00
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Lemon-Lime posted:I forgot about those, and now I want to run a game set in the default setting only instead of "general corruption occurs, and civilisation slowly falls apart," the effect of the Shadow is purely ecological, and the various factions at play are mostly just trying to do their best to keep things together.
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May 23, 2018 16:34
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Lemon-Lime posted:I forgot about those, and now I want to run a game set in the default setting only instead of "general corruption occurs, and civilisation slowly falls apart," the effect of the Shadow is purely ecological, and the various factions at play are mostly just trying to do their best to keep things together. I'm a huge fan of the "nature reclaims the world" one and it's what I would use in a campaign. The Empire still stands the civilization is lovely and stable but the plants are thirsty for blood.
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May 23, 2018 20:52
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While I love the neutral, practical necromancer subversion, I wouldn't say SotDL's depiction of necromancy is any lazier than DnD's Tolkien-ish elves, or any other number of story tropes they lift from myth, literature, movies, etc. If anything, it's tonal consistency likely required far more thought and effort than DnD's kitchen sink approach. Point being, neither is really bad from a qualitative perspective, but tastes are unsurprisingly relative.
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May 23, 2018 21:00
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the guy who was calling it lazy had no idea what he was talking about because he didn't know how necromancy worked in the setting, he was just calling it lazy because it gives you corruption/is evil. in my game I have a paladin who was resurrected by a cultist of a nasty group of people and he's having dreams about the underworld. I think I'm gonna end up sending the party down to help fix Thanatos
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May 23, 2018 23:38
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glitchwraith posted:While I love the neutral, practical necromancer subversion, I wouldn't say SotDL's depiction of necromancy is any lazier than DnD's Tolkien-ish elves so you're saying it's like really lazy?
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May 24, 2018 02:26
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Does anyone have a link to that website that had the character creator?
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May 24, 2018 03:01
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Gay Horney posted:the guy who was calling it lazy had no idea what he was talking about because he didn't know how necromancy worked in the setting, he was just calling it lazy because it gives you corruption/is evil.  I know how necromancy works in the setting, dipshit, and that doesn't prevent it from being lazy. Serf posted:I'm a huge fan of the "nature reclaims the world" one and it's what I would use in a campaign. The Empire still stands the civilization is lovely and stable but the plants are thirsty for blood. I'm not a big fan of this personally, since it unwittingly frames civilisation as being inherently good. On the other hand, Shadow of Nausicaa would own. 
Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 13:43 on May 24, 2018 |
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May 24, 2018 08:46
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Lemon-Lime posted:
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May 24, 2018 09:55
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Foglet posted:Are swords lazy Yes. Capfalcon fucked around with this message at 12:31 on May 24, 2018 |
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May 24, 2018 12:24
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FYI the proper word to use for something that you personally don't like that does have some effort put into it is not "lazy." it's very well defined and rather unique.
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May 24, 2018 21:25
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Serf posted:Having the players control 2 characters who are level 0 is a good idea. That adventure can be brutal in terms of combat stuff, but it depends on how lucky they get with rolls. Another compromise to consider is letting their main characters be level 1 and their support characters be level 0. I ended up going with the recommendation of a level 1 and a level 0 character. We went from Core only for the moment, to make it easy and reduce the work we have to do ahead of time. Everything including race was randomized. Now I have a Level 1 Clockwork Priest of the New God, a dwarf (I think?) priest of the Old Faith, and a goblin rogue as the main cast. The supporting characters are a goblin ferryman, a very generic dwarf hunter/gatherer, and ... I actually forget what the third player's secondary character was. The priest of the New God rolled that he still remembers his old life, and his profession ended up being religious: temple ward, so we're going with that being his previous life and he has the opportunity to continue to serve his god in this new life. The goblin rogue is an artist/merchant who only eats candy, so we decided his art form is decorating pastries, which he then sells. Incidentally, he also has the tooth coming out of his forehead. I hope my player names him Sweet Tooth. I'm very excited and now I'm doing research on the inevitable follow-up campaign (when we wrap up our Malifaux campaign, I hope).
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May 24, 2018 22:46
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Lemon-Lime posted:I'm not a big fan of this personally, since it unwittingly frames civilisation as being inherently good. On the other hand, Shadow of Nausicaa would own. I suppose that's one way to look at it. But I don't see Drudge and the orc uprising as evil, when you consider that they were a slave race who were being secretly killed past a certain age and ground up into food for other orcs. The Empire was obviously lovely, and its fall was not undeserved. The Changeling posted:I ended up going with the recommendation of a level 1 and a level 0 character. We went from Core only for the moment, to make it easy and reduce the work we have to do ahead of time. Everything including race was randomized. This sounds awesome. Let us know how the session goes!
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May 25, 2018 00:58
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My group loved the system but preferred the Iron Kingdoms as a setting, so here I am thinking about an IK hack. This game is so good.
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May 25, 2018 18:39
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Doing my first game of Demon Lord tomorrow with a batch of players that've never played an RPG before. We're running Dead by Dawn, I think it'll be a blast. My only hang up is can someone explain Triggered Actions? I may be over thinking it but are these sometimes automatic responses to things that happen as it seems like the Path talents make it look, or are they explicitly the PC says "when X happens I do Y" or are they interchangeable terms for the same thing? If it the first option, does the auto-action count as the PC action this round or is it a "free" response to something?
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May 26, 2018 11:04
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Springfield Fatts posted:Doing my first game of Demon Lord tomorrow with a batch of players that've never played an RPG before. We're running Dead by Dawn, I think it'll be a blast. triggered actions are reactions and minor actions baked together for action economy reasons, iirc.
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May 26, 2018 11:43
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Correct. Triggered Actions pull double duty as conditional interrupts (ie attack opportunity if an enemy pulls away from melee), and actions that you can arbitrarily choose to take on your Turn if you have the appropriate talents (Assassin lets you use your Triggered Action to Hide or Retreat during your turn).
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May 26, 2018 16:50
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Dead by Dawn went pretty well last night! I flubbed some rules for sure, but that will happen. We also had a substitution in which a giant murderous orc warrior took over for the excessively generic dwarf. We started a little later than I wanted, and my group is more into crunch than narrative, so we didn't spend much time in the pre-siege phase. The first round passed pretty uneventfully - the New Faith priest (of revel, though he didn't take the Revel-specific path) succeeded in removing the bulk of the second rounds encounter phase and the two other PCs had an easy time in bolstering the defenses. I rolled a 1 on the unexpected event phase and got the option that removed a threat level, and they lost the Recovery option because there was no alcohol. The second round found the New God cultist trying to do the ritual, which he failed at. The Old Faith priest tried to fortify the defenses by putting one of the goblin secondary characters at the top of the stairs with an ale keg, but failed the challenge. I ended up ruling that the goblin was frightened by the encroaching undead and didn't shove the keg hard enough for it to go all the way down the stairs, then wound up retreating to the nobile suites. The orc, with help from the other goblin, snuck to the woodshed and retrieved more booze. They quickly dispatched the two corpses who made it through their defenses. The third round also went quickly - the orc bolstered defenses while the other two recovered. Thunder shook the inn and caused a wreckage, preventing recovery in the 4th round and taking away the ability for secondary characters to help in the siege activities. The orc fought and quickly wrecked a single animated corpse. We had to stop after the 4th round, where they all tried to bolster defenses. Two succeeded and one failed, and I wound up rolling "I thought that was secure", which raised the threat back up. They ended up battling 3 animated corpses and 3 zombies, one of which managed to take out the clockwork, who was immune to the zombie plague anyway. The orc took damage from the zombie bites as well but didn't succumb to disease. I accidentally made things tougher by giving the zombies a bite attack when they successfully grabbed PCs. Things certainly got much more dangerous that round. By that time it just got too late, but I felt like that had given them a good sense of the basics. I think they enjoyed it and I will definitely be pushing for a campaign in the future. One of the immediate pieces of feedback I got, though, was that it just felt like another d20 game, and the player wasn't sure why I was so excited about it. As a group that until recently played Pathfinder predominantly, I found that comment really funny - I'm excited because it's a familiar framework for a group that bounced very hard off of BitD. On the other hand, we've been playing the Malifaux rpg as of late, where you gain substantial power quickly, and uses cards to resolve challenges (with the ability to cheat cards from your hand), so I can understand the shock of going back to dice.
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May 26, 2018 20:02
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Rolling on the appearance/personality tables is optional, right? The blurb before them says that you decide your appearance/personality, so I assume the tables are there for if someone wants to streamline character creation or take on the RP challenge of playing a character they didn't have absolute control over. What about the clockwork purpose/form tables, which directly affect stats, or the various background tables, which can provide benefits (someone important and powerful owes you a favor) or drawbacks (you murdered someone in cold blood; you start the game with 1 corruption)?
Elysiume fucked around with this message at 18:14 on May 30, 2018 |
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May 30, 2018 18:10
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It seems more important to answer that for clockworks than anyone - being size 2 and bipedal with a sword arm is a pretty different character than a little flying drone. I've always rolled on them while retaining veto power.
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May 30, 2018 18:17
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They are specifically optionalquote:Your ancestry presents several tables you can use to determine your character’s background, appearance, personality, and other story elements. You can roll dice to randomly determine these elements, choose them, or come up with something else instead. When looking at each entry on the tables, bear in mind that the descriptions are relative to your ancestry, so your character could be short for a goblin or might be an orc who repels other orcs in terms of appearance.
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May 30, 2018 18:47
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Serf posted:They are specifically optional
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May 30, 2018 19:04
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Elysiume posted:I looked for a blurb like that but must've overlooked it. Would you still allow people to take the plainly superior options with no drawbacks? I wouldn't prevent someone from rolling an attractive character in the prime of their life, but also grabbing an owed favor from a strong ally or literacy is kind of a weird boon to be able to take at will. Maybe just letting people take a benefit only if they also take a drawback, or only allowing benefits if they actually roll for it. I have actually never had someone not elect to randomly roll. I thought that the tables were dumb at first because who would use them? But thus far I've run like a dozen one-shots, and never had anyone pick their stuff from the table aside from one or two single choices that were made for logical reasons. If people do want to pick things, I say let them. If they want a superior choice, that's not really an issue, especially since they're gonna need all they can get at level 0.
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May 30, 2018 19:08
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I honestly don't think letting them choose a background element with a built in advantage is that much of a boon. Like, clockworks probably have one of the biggest possible advantages by choosing size 2, but given their terrible stats and weird key trait, I'd strongly suggest they take that option anyway. Though, funnily enough, my players chose to mostly roll on the tables, even though I allowed them to pick, choose, or create as they saw fit. Granted, they did start fudging things a bit when it came to gross outcomes and professions, which I was fine with.
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May 30, 2018 19:16
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I had someone react super negatively to the idea of rolling for anything character related when I pitched SotDL to my PF group; most of them seemed fine with the idea of rolling for a character. That's a fair point about needing whatever help they can get at level 0, sounds reasonable to just let them do whatever.
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May 30, 2018 19:20
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One of the best PCs I ever saw was a randomly rolled clockwork who was Size 2... but only had 9 Strength and therefore sucked at using their built-in sword arm. It was a funny combination of big and intimidating and completely inept in action.
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May 30, 2018 19:21
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| # ? Jun 1, 2024 08:47 |
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Rolling characters is good when the group has all bought into the idea of being shithead nobodies who will probably die, like in warhammer fantasy roleplay. If you're going for a more heroic or at least less doomed feeling, choosing is fine. SotDL can go either way.
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May 30, 2018 19:24
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