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There was a nation that entered WWII with semi-automatic rifles issued to every soldier in the army, and it wasn't Germany. There was also a nation that entered WWII with self-loading rifles for every third combat soldier, and that wasn't Germany either. There were some things the Wehrmacht had that were good (petrol cans, MG34) but the claim that a horse-drawn army with bolt-action rifles was the most well-equipped army of WWII is stretching it a lot.
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Jun 6, 2018 16:33
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Lightning Lord posted:I don't understand this because he made people mad last year by claiming D&D is a Fake RPG because of the likes of Tomb of Horrors I think, in short, people make a lot of presumptions about Wick's tastes that aren't quite accurate. He really, really doesn't like the notion of dungeons in general, and for the perfectly acceptable reasons that poorly implemented, they can be nonsensical, illogical, genocidal home invasions with little or no actual story. Of course, he seems to conveniently ignore there are ways to implement dungeons that avoid those sorts of pitfalls, but so it goes. Covok posted:It's an important lesson to remember. Evil doesn't need to be smart or cunning or clever. Evil just needs good people to do nothing and then they can do ungodly amounts of damage to the world. Yeah, a long time ago I burnt out hard on what I called "super Nazis", referring to fiction where Nazis either develop or nearly develop some amazing technology or ritual or whatever, based on the notion that the Nazis were so close to a technological breakthrough and if just one tipping point were changed then they would have developed warp space engines or what the gently caress ever. And while the Nazis inherited a very interesting time for science in Germany, they were fundamentally anti-science not just in their garbage ideology, but in their tendency to drive off, imprison, or murder brilliant scientists based on their supposed genetic makeup. While they did have the possibility of discovering the atomic sciences late in the war, the possibility is a far jump from the actual likelihood, which was pretty drat minuscule given the priorities and insight of the leadership. A lot of "wunderwaffen" was just poo poo throwing ideas at the wall out of desperation. Not to say you can't ever have that kind of thing in fiction, but unless you hedge it somewhere, it's easy to play into this fantasy version of the Nazis as some uniquely gifted world conquerors that would have conquered everything if it only weren't for their idiot leadership because everybody under them were masterful professionals and singular geniuses hobbled by madmen, an idea that falls down pretty hard on basic examination. Or, to oversimplify a good deal: "If you're so smart, why are you working for Hitler?
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Jun 6, 2018 16:45
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IMO the most interesting and least considered aspect of Nazi "science" was their obsession with agronomy and its connection to the blut und boden ideology.
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Jun 6, 2018 17:04
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Hitler was literally a Soyboy who wanted to turn Germany into a soy planting powerhouse
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Jun 6, 2018 17:07
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My favorite 'Nazi Superscience' story is the Hellboy history where the Nazis got desperate and stupid enough to fund 'literally the undying Rasputin' and a wide variety of bizarre pulp sorcerers and mad scientists. None of this was ever even close to being usefully deployed as anything but bizarre terror weapons (most of which fail on the launchpad, and the one that didn't was a giant rocket full of vampires and cyborg apes, and got blown up five minutes after launch in full view of the sun). In short, the reason there's a bunch of Nazi tech and sorcery is precisely the desperation behind historical wunderwaffen and it makes approximately as much difference in the war. On the other hand, if it weren't for Hellboy and the BPRD the results of Project Vampir Sturm and similar might well have killed all life on earth, so, there's definitely some real stakes to it.
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Jun 6, 2018 17:43
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Speculative wunderwaffen is way more interesting when a) it's acknowledged that it was desperate and stupid and b) the outcome blows up in the Reich's face, like Day after Ragnarok and Cold City/Hot War
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Jun 6, 2018 17:53
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I'll always love the story about how all those sleek uniforms were actually useless at pretty much everything you expect a uniform to be capable of doing. Troops dying of frostbite or being strangled by their own suspenders in the name of fashion.
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Jun 6, 2018 17:54
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Jun 6, 2018 18:02
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Fuego Fish posted:I'll always love the story about how all those sleek uniforms were actually useless at pretty much everything you expect a uniform to be capable of doing. Troops dying of frostbite or being strangled by their own suspenders in the name of fashion. Yeah. I hear that the grenadier's uniforms had a complex system of hidden suspenders sewn into it in order to avoid ruining the look of the uniform. These built-in suspenders were a bit expensive and also never worked, so they eventually issued them normal suspenders as well.
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Jun 6, 2018 18:05
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Ratoslov posted:Yeah. I hear that the grenadier's uniforms had a complex system of hidden suspenders sewn into it in order to avoid ruining the look of the uniform. These built-in suspenders were a bit expensive and also never worked, so they eventually issued them normal suspenders as well. They never worked because they basically fell apart if the wearer moved faster than walking pace, if I remember correctly. All the fancy internal belts wound up coming loose and getting tangled together.
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Jun 6, 2018 18:24
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It would be more interesting to see wargames that played up the massive military egos and petty bureaucratic fiefdom fights that took place in war. It's not like the allies were free from that stuff, just look at the planning for Market Garden, though it was a lot better than the crazy Nazi fiefdoms and Imperial Japanese assassination politics. There aren't many good semi-cooperative board games, but what about semi-cooperative role-playing games? What are the best systems for experiencing the frustration of being on the same side and still failing to work together.
golden bubble fucked around with this message at 20:19 on Jun 6, 2018 |
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Jun 6, 2018 20:14
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That's a core setting conceit of Eberron. Though I don't think there's anything mechanically to enforce it.
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Jun 6, 2018 20:18
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Kai Tave posted:Is this part even true though? Aside from the V-series rockets, pretty much every example of Nazi wunderwaffe was either a prototype that had virtually no impact on anything or never even made it that far before getting scrapped. I think people generally consider stuff like the Schwalbe and the King Tiger/Maus to be secret nazi superweapons too. And to be clearer, I mean in the sense that it was a problem for the one battle it appeared in. Like, a Schwalbe terrifies the pilots it meets, even if very few pilots ever saw a jet speaking relatively. Halloween Jack posted:I mean there was an entire class of fighting vehicle designed to ambush or flank tanks and destroy them, I can't remember what they were called... Oh no, someone wants to revive the tank destroyer doctrine chat 
spectralent fucked around with this message at 20:22 on Jun 6, 2018 |
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Jun 6, 2018 20:20
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Just have the GM deal more loot and experience to the person who deals more damage or roleplays the best
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Jun 6, 2018 20:26
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Moriatti posted:That's a core setting conceit of Eberron. Though I don't think there's anything mechanically to enforce it.
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Jun 6, 2018 20:32
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I think it says a lot that of all the D&D settings to me, Eberron is the one you could move to nearly any other suitable fantasy system and lose nothing. Dark Sun is a close runner-up but it requires a bit more hacking.
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Jun 6, 2018 20:41
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golden bubble posted:What are the best systems for experiencing the frustration of being on the same side and still failing to work together. More generally, any game that has hidden agendas for the PCs. Dark Heresy maybe, or perhaps Vampire or any of its other scheming modern supernatural RPG offspring.
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Jun 6, 2018 21:00
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golden bubble posted:It would be more interesting to see wargames that played up the massive military egos and petty bureaucratic fiefdom fights that took place in war. It's not like the allies were free from that stuff, just look at the planning for Market Garden, though it was a lot better than the crazy Nazi fiefdoms and Imperial Japanese assassination politics. There aren't many good semi-cooperative board games, but what about semi-cooperative role-playing games? What are the best systems for experiencing the frustration of being on the same side and still failing to work together. I think one of the Battlestar Galactica board game expansions gave all the human players a hidden agenda, to make it harder to detect who the actual cylon is.
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Jun 6, 2018 21:04
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spectralent posted:I think people generally consider stuff like the Schwalbe and the King Tiger/Maus to be secret nazi superweapons too. Sure but the Maus, for example, is the quintessential worthless Nazi wonder-weapon. Only two were half-built, both accomplished fuckall, and even if it had somehow miraculously made it into mass production it was so heavy and unwieldy that it would likely have been completely useless at accomplishing anything of value. ARB and Plutonis are right in that the fantasy surrounding the wunderwaffe far outstrips the actual usefulness of anything the Germans managed to roll off the assembly line. Even the Tiger tanks weren't all they were cracked up to be even though a lot of tabletop games treat them like super-units in an RTS.
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Jun 6, 2018 21:04
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spectralent posted:Oh no, someone wants to revive the tank destroyer doctrine chat Kai Tave posted:Sure but the Maus, for example, is the quintessential worthless Nazi wonder-weapon. Only two were half-built, both accomplished fuckall, and even if it had somehow miraculously made it into mass production it was so heavy and unwieldy that it would likely have been completely useless at accomplishing anything of value. No wonder there's all this conspiracy-mongering about Hitler's tiny crooked dick
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Jun 6, 2018 21:06
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Eh, the Tiger and Panthers were probably the first tanks to outmatch T-34s and other Soviet tanks in armor and weaponry but the 34s were more mobile and the Soviet production outmatched German so much that they could easily encircle the Tigers. E: ^^^ The Ferdinands giant loving gun could easily gently caress up soviet heavy tanks from a distance but once they got close it was pretty much useless against their mobile medium tanks. And even a single red army soldier man with a bunch of grenades could take on it since it had no machine guns or other anti infantry weapons lol Plutonis fucked around with this message at 21:13 on Jun 6, 2018 |
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Jun 6, 2018 21:10
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I think it says a lot that of all the D&D settings to me, Eberron is the one you could move to nearly any other suitable fantasy system and lose nothing. Those were my two very first Savage Worlds conversions.
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Jun 6, 2018 21:15
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I think it says a lot that of all the D&D settings to me, Eberron is the one you could move to nearly any other suitable fantasy system and lose nothing. I was thinking about Spelljammer in this regard if one is willing to make up one's own spheres rather than going on a grand tour of the Official Settings without using planar travel, but then I remembered that those stupid helmets require Vancian spellcasting levels or something to operate successfully. Our group managed a pseudo-spelljammer campaign a lot like this anyway, using GURPS 4th and a few modifications of the out-sphere physics by a GM who loved designing those kinds of systems. Eberron really doesn't lose much by changing systems though, and it might be a chance to ditch some of the monster manual entries that had to be included or else.
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Jun 6, 2018 21:19
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Kai Tave posted:Sure but the Maus, for example, is the quintessential worthless Nazi wonder-weapon. Only two were half-built, both accomplished fuckall, and even if it had somehow miraculously made it into mass production it was so heavy and unwieldy that it would likely have been completely useless at accomplishing anything of value. ARB and Plutonis are right in that the fantasy surrounding the wunderwaffe far outstrips the actual usefulness of anything the Germans managed to roll off the assembly line. Even the Tiger tanks weren't all they were cracked up to be even though a lot of tabletop games treat them like super-units in an RTS. Yeah, but you're not thinking about their strategic effect, here. You're thinking of a breathless memoir talking about how they threw everything they had at it* and it just KEPT COMING, and, woah!! If they had a few thousand of those** then they'd have WON THE WAR! *ignore that this is two Stuarts and a bazooka on a jeep. **ignore also that this would require the design to be far simpler/less labour intensive/less material-hungry/whatever. Like, part of the fact that everything the allies had that worked really well just became standard issue is the fact most of the top-secret nazi superweapons didn't work that great in practise, so weren't standard issue. The only real exception is the Me262, and even that was hamstrung by Germany's fuel situation (though it's fair to say the only real superweapon there was "admitting they'd lost"). spectralent fucked around with this message at 22:45 on Jun 6, 2018 |
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Jun 6, 2018 22:40
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occamsnailfile posted:I was thinking about Spelljammer in this regard if one is willing to make up one's own spheres rather than going on a grand tour of the Official Settings without using planar travel, but then I remembered that those stupid helmets require Vancian spellcasting levels or something to operate successfully. Ditch the vancian helmet thing, and instead use Spelljammer to go on a tour of the Totally Not Copyrighted versions of all the popular settings. The low quality midi Forgotten Realms.
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Jun 6, 2018 22:47
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lawyers from the beachfront sorcerers alliance can be a recurring villain
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Jun 6, 2018 22:49
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ProfessorCirno posted:Ditch the vancian helmet thing, and instead use Spelljammer to go on a tour of the Totally Not Copyrighted versions of all the popular settings. The low quality midi Forgotten Realms. Yeah, the actual mechanics of a spelljamming helm are probably the least interesting parts of spelljammer (in fact, pretty much every alternative helm is much, much more interesting than the standard one).
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Jun 6, 2018 22:54
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I thought a Spelljaming Helm was the magic version of what the Juggernaut wore
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Jun 6, 2018 22:55
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spectralent posted:Like, part of the fact that everything the allies had that worked really well just became standard issue is the fact most of the top-secret nazi superweapons didn't work that great in practise, so weren't standard issue. The only real exception is the Me262, and even that was hamstrung by Germany's fuel situation (though it's fair to say the only real superweapon there was "admitting they'd lost").
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Jun 6, 2018 22:57
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Plutonis posted:I thought a Spelljaming Helm was the magic version of what the Juggernaut wore It does kind of demand one of those joke magic items, like the box of skeletons that do your laundry. An actual helmet (with a hefty strap) that can travel through space.
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Jun 6, 2018 23:45
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Tekopo posted:That's pretty much it. All the comparisons are being made where a tiger and a bunch of shermans magically appear on a battlefield, and most minis wargamers are largely unconcerned with how those forces are getting to the battlefield, or how they are getting supplied, or how often they are breaking down, or how easy it is to procure replacement parts when your penisreplacementkampfwagen's gearbox finally shits the bed (which it will). Things that usually are not possible to replicate in mini wargames because you aren't zooming out enough. Or worse yet it's Shermans going 1:1 with Panthers because they were both medium tanks, never mind that the Panther was as heavy as both Soviet and American heavy tanks (and 50% heavier than a Sherman), and the Panther started with an operational reliability of 35% and never got much more than twice that. And basically its only advantage over the Sherman was front armour. Alien Rope Burn posted:I think it says a lot that of all the D&D settings to me, Eberron is the one you could move to nearly any other suitable fantasy system and lose nothing. Dark Sun and Planescape are of course both settings which you could move to nearly any suitable fantasy system and have them done better than they were in 2e. And yet they are probably the two most fondly remembered of 2e's settings. neonchameleon fucked around with this message at 00:16 on Jun 7, 2018 |
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Jun 7, 2018 00:14
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alg posted:I don't think it does many things at all for you, which is why I like it, I think. We don't play D&D or Pathfinder so I would hate to pay for those features. All the stuff we use it for (and I pay for Pro) it does marvelously. Fog of War, tokens, initiative, character sheets and automation, music, handouts, all of that stuff works really well. It's worth it for me to pay monthly vs having to troubleshoot poo poo every session like maptool or fantasy grounds. Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:Yeah it's not great. I personally don't expect to be using the VTT much at all, especially for Dungeon World (outside of "draw maps!!!"), and the extra stuff like music, audio/video, chat, and tokens and stuff is out of scope or already solved by Discord. The tool I was hoping to get was something that would let me share and edit documents (e.g. character sheets), roll dice, and serve as a good resource or reference for the Dungeon World system. Unfortunately, the DW sheets are kinda bleh - I don't know if it's my lovely laptop, but it's badly proportioned (can't see poo poo), kind of buggy, and not a particularly good UI. I was hoping the character sheets would get automatically filled out with more information, like if you apply Fighter to a character it'd set your hit points, your armor, give you options for your race, etc. Maybe it'd even walk you through creating the character. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to do anything but populate your moves and set your hit die, and I can actually totally mess up a character by just dragging Fighter onto it over and over again. For Wizards, I can't even add a Spell to the Spellbook by dragging it, and I had to dig around to figure out where the Spells are so I could try and fill my Spellbook. I would have expected that to be a natural result of the Prepare Spells move. I was kinda hoping it could at least do some stuff for me I don't want to type everything into the boxes, that's a pain in the rear end.Lemon-Lime posted:It's a pain to deal with but the worst part of roll20 is how clunky the VTT is. Thankfully, you don't actually need to use that for Dungeon World. I'm going through the tutorial now, but the community post on the DW is kinda vague, and references the exact things I'm trying to do...I'll figure it out eventually. edit: oh good 
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Jun 7, 2018 00:46
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FMguru posted:I'd put the V-rockets as another exception. They worked, they were way ahead of anything the Allies had, they were built and deployed in large numbers, and they had some small effect on the course of the war. Still way, way short of saving Germany or changing the outcome of the war, of course.  Which had been thoroughly suborned by that time between the Double Cross system and breaking Enigma. The gunners had expected to walk their shots into London, but instead all their spies in Britain had been suborned (or were just fictitious ravings of a very clever Catalan farmer) and so those shots were walked away from the city.
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Jun 7, 2018 02:32
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 New blogpost is up, for The Next Project.Today, I talk a bit about the new playtest that is just getting rolling, on these very forums! Recruiting has been closed, due to the high number of apps right out of the gate, but make sure to keep an eye out for the game thread, once we start in earnest. Also discussed, are the some specifics on the plans for updating some more classes to the latest draft of the rules (2018 Edition.) If you're interested in discussing the rules, classes, or the playtest, feel free to jump into the TNP Discord.
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Jun 7, 2018 03:13
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I wish my The One Ring thread had not died.
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Jun 7, 2018 03:27
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Lurdiak posted:I wish my The One Ring thread had not died. You should resurrect it because TOR is one of the top three games ever made. Pollyanna posted:I was kinda hoping it could at least do some stuff for me You're supposed to get your players to copy the moves they've taken to their sheet, not manually input every playbook into roll20 yourself. Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 09:18 on Jun 7, 2018 |
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Jun 7, 2018 09:02
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Lemon-Lime posted:You're supposed to get your players to copy the moves they've taken to their sheet, not manually input every playbook into roll20 yourself. It saves the GM a lot of time. The downside is when you copy and paste the effects from your D&D 4e powers into your macros to be helpful but you feel like a scrub because your friends found some sweet macros with graphics and formatting on another website.
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Jun 7, 2018 13:30
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Yeah I don't know if the DW sheet is officially supported by Roll20 (probably not) but good sheets typically depend on an interested member of the community putting in the work. The StarWars and DCC sheets I use are excellent but they were made by devoted members of the Roll20 community.
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Jun 7, 2018 13:48
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Wait, you can import playbooks and macros n poo poo from elsewhere? 
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Jun 7, 2018 13:56
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alg posted:Yeah I don't know if the DW sheet is officially supported by Roll20 (probably not) There's an official DW sheet on roll20 and an unofficial one (plus a bunch of ones in other languages), but neither of them come pre-populated with moves like say, the Blades in the Dark sheets do. Either way, the GM really shouldn't be doing anything to the DW sheets other than creating the shared documents on roll20 and setting the ownership to the right player. Let the players copy in the moves they've taken (and not the ones they haven't) as they pick them.
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Jun 7, 2018 14:05
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