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JcDent posted:Yeah, but how many campaigns reach that tier? I legit don't know, so maybe you don't even need to play that long to become Best At Everything. The majority of campaigns I've run and played in have reached late 2nd or 3rd tier. What I'm saying I'd have liked to see is, say, Chaos having weaknesses similar to vampires that you can find if you risk corruption by studying them. Or have Dark magic be especially helpful against Chaos, but still keep all the horrible poo poo it does to you (The Side Effects system from the Core Book and ToC is way nastier than Marks of Magic in every way, and should be, because dark magic is bullshit powerful). Have there be actual mechanical reasons they save some of the demon books and seal them in a vault beneath Altdorf in case of really important trouble. As it is, any Chaos item, book, etc just causes you insanity and mutation for generally no real benefit. Tome of Corruption had more Save or Die mechanics than any other book in the line. Players loving love Save or Dies with a 40-50% chance of succeeding, you know. Basically, the problem is it's too far in the other direction, where smart players are never even tempted to try to pick up and use anything Chaosy because it's just a booby trap and they know it. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 14:08 on Sep 10, 2018 |
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Sep 10, 2018 14:03
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You'd think that Necromancy and other Dhar stuff would actually be real good at against Chaos. Necromancy specifically is, after all, all about stasis and unchanging nature, and is fundamentally opposed to Chaos in the most basic way.
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Sep 10, 2018 14:07
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Night10194 posted:The majority of campaigns I've run and played in have reached late 2nd or 3rd tier. Ah, I haven't read the ToC review yet, but I will. Also, lol at that one Rifts doofus going "lol, glad civilization is dead." Motherfucker, you weren't alive back then, you have no idea what you're missing.
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Sep 10, 2018 14:08
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Man, WFRP 1st ed was my first and only RPG for the first few years of gaming. I still hold that, for all its faults, the 1st ed. is the best gamebook ever published, a benchmark by which I judge all other books, and yes, I am fully willing to die on that hill  I GMd The Enemy Within all the way to The Power Behind the Throne (or Grey Eminence, as the superior Polish title was) at which point the holidays ended all our group members left for college in different cities. We'd actually finish the campaign but at one point the PCs found an old, rickety boat and we spent about a month building up their river trading enterprise (which actually segued nicely into The Death on Reik).
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Sep 10, 2018 14:22
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Mors Rattus posted:You'd think that Necromancy and other Dhar stuff would actually be real good at against Chaos. Necromancy specifically is, after all, all about stasis and unchanging nature, and is fundamentally opposed to Chaos in the most basic way. Well, undead are really hard to make tentacle-y, that's the main strength Chaos has against normal people. The zombies and wights don't care what you have to say and the vampires are too arrogant to listen.
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Sep 10, 2018 14:27
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It feels like part of the problem with Chaos badstuff is that they got it backwards. You touch it and then you're instantly, randomly hosed. Feels more like it should be tempting to engage with. Like anyone can invoke Chaos for a boost or benefit to something they're doing. Tzeentch for wizarding, Khorne for chopping, Nurgle for surviving, Slaanesh for socializing(just to chop it up into rough terms). If you're out of Fate points, they should be able to replicate the same effects, or better, and the first time's free. But every time after that, Chaos wants something in return. It starts out with minor sacrifices and favours, accelerating as you ask more or simply get more indebted, and entirely bad mutations should be the result of failing to pay off your debt to Chaos, while beneficial mutations are what you get as rewards, whether you asked for them or not. Asked Khorne to help you beat this dude in a fight? Maybe you get huge swole demon arms so you can take him down, but now you've got a visible sign of Chaos forever, so you're gonna get into more trouble, which will require you to ask Chaos for more help, which will get you more marked. Rather than a save-or-die, make it a conscious choice to start the downward slide(though Chaos would not be above engineering situations where you'd want to ask them for help to stay alive or succeed) which may or may not have had the best of intentions, and which involves as little random chance as possible. Plus that way it may even result in an interesting story! I mean, there's nothing interesting in the story of "here's the guy who looked at the wrong page in a book and now he's a mewling blob of tentacles," but maybe there's something interesting in the story of the noble knight who wanted to save someone, but ended up in a situation where he had to ask Chaos for help to pull it off, and now he's trying to pay off his debt to Chaos without digging himself a deeper hole or ending up with a squid for a head. But enough about Chaos, it's time for... SenZar  It's back When we last left off, we'd just finished with the core mechanical parts of SenZar and I'd been pleasantly surprised by the fact that, for all its insane presentation and goofy writing, there was a reasonably competent game at the heart of it, with mechanics that I wouldn't be afraid to run a game with one day. What's next is the equipment chapter which starts off with generic gear(I mean, you can't go adventuring without rope, ten-foot poles and lockpicks), currencies(each made from their own valuable metal) and exotic materials(ranging from black moonlight to V-Steel and Vibrazyne, there are a total of 28 rare materials for things to be crafted from). You can also make armor and weapons from what is more or less fantasy uranium-anthrax, totally a great idea to wear a helmet of it, I'm sure, or wearing an armor made from literal magic light. It's over the top, as would probably be expected. It's also completely mangled, organization-wise. It starts off with prices for the basic stuff, cost modifiers for "exotic" materials, then launches into descriptions of how we can artifice super-cool bows as well as the list of Cool Weapons(tm) including stuff like the DEMONIAN HATE FANG and the DEMONIAN DEATH SPIKER(Demonian weapons are literally described as "the pointiest") before we're even told how much damage a normal sword, dagger or axe do. But really, would you want an axe when you could have a SUN BOW or a STAR JAVELIN instead? I think not. Though once we get over to the normal weapons, there are 17 kinds of different swords before we even get to the rest of the armory. They haven't skimped on variety, for sure. Next to the catapults, there's what's described as "a very wicked M1-A 1 Main Battle Tank" powered by a nuclear reactor. Its weapons are still inexplicably "compact ballistae" instead of cannons, for some reason. Most of the weapons aren't mechanically differentiated, they mostly just do more damage than the preceding type, have a cooler name and sometimes require two hands to hold. Oh and of course after the tanks, flying battleships, catapults, swords, spiky murderswords and such, there are also assault rifles, gauss rifles, laser pistols and rolling pins. Also the paragraph on shields is hilarious for a couple of reasons, none of which probably the intended one. SenZar posted:Fair Warning: In The Sen2'.ar System, where combat kicks your teeth in and bleeds you to the bone hard and fast, there is little room for lumbering about and cowering behind a garbage can lid. So while armor makes you take less damage, a shield just makes you harder to hit. There isn't a whole lot to talk about in this chapter besides having a laugh at some of the over the top poo poo they put on the gear tables, but the next chapter(which I'll tackle next post) promises to be more entertaining. It's the Magic chapter. And it starts off by making GBS threads on Vancian casting. Good show, SenZar guys, good show.
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Sep 10, 2018 14:34
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Ya, PurpleXVI has some good ideas about Chaos. Lol at the shield bit. Isn't that how they work in DnD, though, what with adding to AC?
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Sep 10, 2018 14:44
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megane posted:I feel like you put more research and thought into the headers of your review updates than Palladium does the entire books. I think part of what I can do now, to be fair, is a testament to being able to look up information online instead of just opening up Time/Life books and hoping they got it right. I have no doubt they often read books, given they cite them, but multiculturalism was only really starting to become more of a public (instead of just academic) movement around this time (like, Clinton's One America Initiative was 1997), and Palladium was never great at keeping up with the times as it is. It's not just a matter of doing research, but knowing what research to do, what's reliable, what's significant, etc. That and Siembieda sometimes seems to go into books with a fixed notion of what they should be, and I'm not sure any amount of research changes that. In this case, the original draft was done by Lucas, and edited / altered by Siembieda. The exact alterations aren't clear, but there are some rumors I'll cover later on. JcDent posted:Also, lol at that one Rifts doofus going "lol, glad civilization is dead." I'm sure they're all glad dysentery and diarrhoeal disease are likely back again. Those city folk just don't know what they were missing!
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Sep 10, 2018 14:46
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PurpleXVI posted:Chaos badstuff I dunno, I actually like the fact that ANYONE can fall prey to Chaos. No matter how pure, brave or pious you are, you will still pray to Shallya and Rhea that your child isn't born with tentacles, and you can still wake up one day and discover an extra set of eyes on your arms.. It works with showing Chaos as this prevalent force of not-nature and makes it a more menacing force than any roided up maniac going "KHORNESKULLSWARRRGLEBARF!"
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Sep 10, 2018 14:48
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Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: Tome of Salvation The lands of small gods Alright, enough random discussion posting, time for more actual reviewing. The Empire loves tradition and generally doesn't like to change if things are working out for them. From this, while scholars may debate the nature of the Gods and the meanings of their creeds, you get the actual lived experience of divine worship among the people of the Empire. The Gods (except maybe Morr) aren't very communicative in everyday life, and even when they send signs and portents it tends to be vague and open to interpretation. Thus, people have come up with all sorts of rituals and local rites that they think placate the divine and enable them to get through their lives without famine, beastman attack, or a plague of mutant catbirds descending on the fields. Similarly, Imperials love excuses for parties and spectacles, because who the hell doesn't, and so the people have invented as many festivals, holidays, and other reasons to get together with your mates, have a beer and some sausage, and do something silly as they can get away with. This is incidentally why humans don't mind absorbing the halfling ritual of Pie Week; it's a week where you eat pies! And it even favors a God and brings her favor so it's proper and pious to be eating pies. Who doesn't want some of that? The Empire is a big place, with many people and many Gods. Many places worship smaller Gods, held by the cults to be minor aspects of the main Gods. Many places worship in ways that would be considered very odd, and the Witch Hunters are charged with investigating rumors of truly strange practices and making sure it doesn't turn into Chaos worship. For the most part, though, without modern communication there's no way to even communicate total orthodoxy. Most cults are happy to accept minor divergent practices; a local village might celebrate Rhya with a mushroom festival where the person who picks the biggest mushroom on the first mushrooming day of the year gets to represent the Goddess or her husband Taal in a celebration that night, and that would be fine. If that same festival started to include hallucinogenic mushrooms and the representative of the God or Goddess being sacrificed by being put in a box full of bees, the Hunters would start to get suspicious. Generally human sacrifice is the biggest red line. Worship differs between Nobles and Commoners. Commoners tend to pray for more immediate needs, for one. They want good crops, they want the weather to stay nice, they want taxes not to go up, they want their families to be safe, and they want to keep the Beastmen away. Nobles tend to ask the Gods for help in affairs of state, or for victory in war, or for help getting promoted to a higher title. As the Nobles look down their noses at the 'vulgar and ribald' worship of Commoners (who also tend to prefer myths with lots of exciting sex and violence and adventure) the Commoners wonder why the Nobles are bothering to ask for help getting even richer when there's crops that need tending. Can't eat without crops, you know. Nobles love the temples as a way to increase their prestige and demonstrate their piety. Donate a statue of gold to a temple of Sigmar and you get a plaque saying your family was rich and powerful enough to do so, while honoring the God of Government and improving your prospects by being publicly pious. The cults like receiving massive donations and so they tend to encourage the Nobles to do this, often by speaking in favor of families that do so. Similarly, funding big religious festivals and parties makes you beloved of the common people, who love any excuse to get a big dinner and a day off that they didn't have to pay for. There are dozens and dozens of minor deities in the Empire. Too many to list them all, even among the ones actually described in the book. Minor deities tend to be regarded as aspects of a major deity, or else they're regional Gods or mostly forgotten Gods whose worship has only survived in a few places. Most Imperials are respectful of local customs about these Gods, though Hunters might ask a few pointed questions to be certain that Katya the Lady of Disarming Beauty (a minor goddess of love worshiped in Reikland) isn't Slaanesh. Minor Gods are still Gods, and as long as they aren't a matter of Chaos it's still a smart thing to respect local Gods. The classification of Minor Gods as aspects of the nine main Gods is actually part of a common missionary tradition (and one with plenty of real-world precedent), whereby priests encountering a backwater that worships a new God will attempt to relate that worship to their worship and thus convert the followers while still overall respecting their tradition. Other Minor Gods are foreign Gods worshiped primarily by expats, who haven't caught on in the Empire yet. A shrine of Dazh the Sun God built by a Kislevite merchant living in Marienburg and trading with Erengard would be considered a Minor God, but still shown respect. Meanwhile, Myrmidia used to be like this, but her explosion in popularity has seen her acknowledged as a main God and her Knights' contribution to the crusade of Magnus the Pious have made her an accepted part of the Grand Conclave. It is heretical to note openly that whether a God is major or minor relies almost entirely on how much popularity and political influence their cult has. The most common sort of Minor Gods are nature deities, as they are the usual fare of isolated rural communities, and place Gods like Bylorak, the God of Bylerhof Marsh, whose priests managed to overthrow their Von Carstein master and make their home safe against the vampires. From the example of Bylorak, you can see that even these small Gods can have real power among their people. We get some sample Gods, like Artho, the Middenlander God of Old People Disapproving Of Young People, or the Nordlander God of Dancing, Leork (whose name is awfully similar to the elf God of dancing and song and trickery, and Nordland borders on Laurelorn forest...) or Borchbad, the God of the Voice. He is the patron of agitators, and it's said if a powerful person keeps an amulet of him immersed in wine the local Agitators will be too drunk to ruin the plans of the mighty. The minor Gods tend to be weird, or Imperials worshiping an aspect of an imported God or non-human God. Imperials often worship their ancestors, too, especially if the ancestor did something important. This is partly an imported custom from the dwarfs, and is more common among Imperials than other humans because of their influence. The dwarfs approve of this practice, though they sympathize with the way short-lived humans have so many ancestors to placate and keep track of. Ancestor worship is the principle aspect of all dwarf religion, and you can often tell how much contact a human settlement has with dwarfs by how much attention the humans pay to worship of their ancestors. Halflings also worship their ancestors, but prefer to do it with ridiculous exaggerations and tall tales of their illustrious great aunt's life. Reciting genealogy is a common memorization lesson for halfling students, and halflings hold competitions about who can remember more of their ridiculously gnarled family tree than one another. Elves respect their ancestors, but tend to do it while they're still alive. A great-great-great-grandaughter has a good chance of personally speaking to and knowing her great great great grandmother, after all, since they live so damned long. Once someone actually dies of old age, the elves tend to consider it something of a victory, sing a few songs, and get on with it. This looks extremely disrespectful from a dwarf's perspective, and is one of the reasons they struggle to get along. If you wish, you can buy an extra Talent to have an Ancestor spirit following and annoying your PC. Every time you spend a Fortune point, you roll on a table full of results like YOU IDIOT! and YOU CANNOT BE RELATED TO ME! I REFUSE! to see what extra effect you get. These range from the very positive (a free +20% on your next test, an immediate extra half action, a floating +10% to whatever test you wish, d5 Wounds healed immediately, etc) to the very dangerous (The spirit getting mad and leaving until you coax it back with long recitations of their deeds, the spirit cursing you with minor penalties, the spirit trying to cause an IP). Overall kind of a wash mechanically but it might be fun to have from a roleplaying perspective. Next Time: It isn't superstition if you live in a setting with goddamn wizards
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Sep 10, 2018 14:51
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RedSnapper posted:I dunno, I actually like the fact that ANYONE can fall prey to Chaos. No matter how pure, brave or pious you are, you will still pray to Shallya and Rhea that your child isn't born with tentacles, and you can still wake up one day and discover an extra set of eyes on your arms.. The thing is that in like... a story, if we're just reading a story, it may be engaging or interesting reading about people trying to mitigate or avoid this random chance of bad hellstuff that screws them and their lives up. But in a game, that's less engaging, because it's a mechanic/world aspect that we can't use for anything except going in a huge wide circle around it. What makes for a good story to watch/read and what makes for a good story to play aren't always the same.
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Sep 10, 2018 14:53
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I am real glad Senzar is back.
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Sep 10, 2018 14:56
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Surprised there's no real mention of some of the river gods. I know the Reik has one that has a fair amount of shrines along the river and is pretty important to the boatmen of the river.
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Sep 10, 2018 15:08
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Mors Rattus posted:Surprised there's no real mention of some of the river gods. I know the Reik has one that has a fair amount of shrines along the river and is pretty important to the boatmen of the river. There is, but it's in the huge list of dozens of Gods that are just 'name, place, basic thing' in a big table. Grandfather Reik is one of the big minor gods of Reikland. E: Looking at it, every major river has a God who is important in the provinces they pass through. It cannot be overstated how important the rivers are to the people of the Empire as the main artery of transport and commerce in their country. Taal being considered the master of rivers and lakes is a big reason Taal will always remain so important to the Empire. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 15:12 on Sep 10, 2018 |
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Sep 10, 2018 15:09
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Ancestor worship seems kinda random for Empire as I know it. I wonder how a Morr priest would deal with having some dude who was a state trooper ghosting him around and imploring him to get drunk and laid in the service of Empire. E:  "A headsman is an honorable* profession. You could live in a town, see your mother more often. None of this wandering and wizardry nonsense..." "Shut up, grandpa" *I know it wasn't honorable in the early modern, shut up. JcDent fucked around with this message at 15:23 on Sep 10, 2018 |
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Sep 10, 2018 15:19
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JcDent posted:Ancestor worship seems kinda random for Empire as I know it. That's a great idea for a character, honestly.
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Sep 10, 2018 15:21
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PurpleXVI posted:The thing is that in like... a story, if we're just reading a story, it may be engaging or interesting reading about people trying to mitigate or avoid this random chance of bad hellstuff that screws them and their lives up. But in a game, that's less engaging, because it's a mechanic/world aspect that we can't use for anything except going in a huge wide circle around it. What makes for a good story to watch/read and what makes for a good story to play aren't always the same. Agreed. But my point is that those things do set a proper 'mood' for the setting and can be a source of interesting NPCs, story hooks and background details. And it's not like I'm planning to have my players randomly sprouting new body parts. Not unless they do something profoundly stupid like praying to daemons or rubbing thmselves with warpstone. Or if I can get a 'mutant outcasts' campaign idea past the player who is deathly allergic to Warhammer after playing with too many "Lol, you get raped by thirty goblins" GMs.
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Sep 10, 2018 15:26
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I'm just saying there's that town of sane mutants fighting the beastmen and rescuing travelers in the Arden forest in Bretonnia if you want a mutant outcast game. E: There's also the hidden valleys of mutant children raised by Ungol witches to be fanatical crusaders against Chaos up in Kislev. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 15:48 on Sep 10, 2018 |
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Sep 10, 2018 15:41
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Still mad 40K doesn't support hordes of mutants lead by a firebrand preacher out to gently caress up servants of Chaos for the troubles mutations caused in their life. Or imperial beastguardsmen.
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Sep 10, 2018 15:46
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JcDent posted:That's how it feels when people go "let's turn this medieval stasis into an industrial revolution, also communism". Now, if you were supporting Erdarbeiters in the Empire... TBF the two biggest most 'succesful' communist revolutions were in Russia, so unindustrialized that peasants-bound-to-the-land sefdom was abolished recently when the revolution hit, and China, which was actively trying to maintain medieval stasis until it all fell apart. Though the industrialization happened after the revolutions.
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Sep 10, 2018 15:48
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JcDent posted:Ancestor worship seems kinda random for Empire as I know it. They live right next to a major empire where ancestor worship is a very big deal and the two empires have been close allies for a very long time. Cultural diffusion is only to be expected.
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Sep 10, 2018 15:50
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Communist Zombie posted:TBF the two biggest most 'succesful' communist revolutions were in Russia, so unindustrialized that peasants-bound-to-the-land sefdom was abolished recently when the revolution hit, and China, which was actively trying to maintain medieval stasis until it all fell apart. Though the industrialization happened after the revolutions. But those ideas weren't homegrown and had at least half a decade of germination elsewhere. It's not like some peasant went "you know what? Communism" one day. Cases like that usually end up in Skopsy and Heavenly Kingdom stuff.
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Sep 10, 2018 16:01
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To be fair, communal support and total equality ARE ideas that exist in Warhammer. They are espoused by the churches of Ranald and Verena, among others.
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Sep 10, 2018 16:02
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*diggers intensify*
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Sep 10, 2018 16:06
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Mors Rattus posted:To be fair, communal support and total equality ARE ideas that exist in Warhammer. They are espoused by the churches of Ranald and Verena, among others. It's also a major theme in a lot of the various career writeups, plot hooks in the provinces, etc. It's an intentional part of the RPG that technology is developing and changing lives (guns being everywhere in the Great War changed the tone of the war a lot) and that classes like Agitator, Politician, Herrimualt, and Priest of Ranald are PCs. The slow change away from a normal feudal structure is also a part of the Empire, as is the struggle between 18th century absolutism and the old feudal order in Kislev, and like 1/4th of the Province storylines in Bretonnia include 'And then VIVA LE REVOLUCION'. To say these things are not present in the text is to ignore the text entirely. It's mostly a function of mistaking Fantasy for 40k, which is, in fact, generally stuck in relative stasis. It's not that there will necessarily be political developments on the same line as the real world, but political tension and the give and take between the haves and have nots and the rulers and the ruled is very much a part of the dynamic in Fantasy.
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Sep 10, 2018 16:12
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If playing proto revolutionaries in Britonnia isn't your jazz I don't know what to say to you. More games need to have tensions against millennia old institutions IMO and is why I'm a fan of Spellbound Kingdoms from the time played.
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Sep 10, 2018 16:20
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I concede that I was wrong. Still, a post-revolution Brettonia game would demand a lot from the GM. Might as well PbtA it, since the players will be creating a new world order anyways. E: how long before Cult of Supreme being crops up and turns out to be an elf plot?
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Sep 10, 2018 16:25
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I mean, going up against the grail knights that's will be gunning for you and everything else near the end is great for a campaign end and a way to destabilize the world for future potential campaigns.
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Sep 10, 2018 16:26
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ChaseSP posted:I mean, going up against the grail knights that's will be gunning for you and everything else near the end is great for a campaign end and a way to destabilize the world for future potential campaigns. Or alternatively, convincing the grail knights to your side. Going Robin Hood is a valid exit career from Grail Knight...
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Sep 10, 2018 16:29
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I don't see why you'd have to use a different system when you have everything you need to run with in the original system. We still use the original system for the even-further-in-the-future 2700s game where Nagash has come back and the Empire has to pit the grinding tide of industrial warfare against the endless waves of the dead while adventurers run off on an insane pulp adventure to find a way to trick him and actually beat him. I mean, yes, we made up rules for bolt action rifles and revolvers and poo poo, but that's not hard.
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Sep 10, 2018 16:31
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Night10194 posted:I don't see why you'd have to use a different system when you have everything you need to run with in the original system. We still use the original system for the even-further-in-the-future 2700s game where Nagash has come back and the Empire has to pit the grinding tide of industrial warfare against the endless waves of the dead while adventurers run off on an insane pulp adventure to find a way to trick him and actually beat him. I mean, in 4e, pretty much it'd be faster reload times, maybe loss of Blackpowder now that the things no longer shoot out giant gouts of smoke and flame everywhere when fired. The damage isn't going to go up, and they already pierce armor. Maybe give 'em precise for rifling.
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Sep 10, 2018 16:44
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Basically, the game is already quite modular and has pretty solid design 'rules' in 2e that it's not that hard to add new elements without destroying the system. When I was working on our (very non-canon, due to some other changes to stuff like the Old Ones) Lustria and Amazons game last year, it was even easy to add 'fighting style' perks for the Amazon Warrior Lodges just by following the guidelines from Bret Virtues. On a mechanical level, the fact that the base in 2e is fairly solid and takes modification well is one of the fun parts for me as a GM.
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Sep 10, 2018 16:51
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Just as the von Bildhofens were the dynasty of the big landed property and the Unfähiger the dynasty of money, so the Holswig-Schliesteins are the dynasty of the peasants, that is, the Imperial masses. The chosen of the peasantry is not the Karl Franz who submitted to the Elector Counts but the Karl Franz who dismissed the Elector Counts. For three years the principalities had succeeded in falsifying the meaning of the 2502 election and in cheating the peasants out of the restoration of the Empire. The election of 2429 has been consummated only by the coup d’état of 2502. Historical tradition gave rise to the Imperial peasants’ belief in the miracle that a man named Holswig-Schliestein would bring all glory back to them. And there turned up an individual who claims to be that man because he bears the name Karl Franz, in consequence of the Lore of Sigmar, which decrees: “Inquiry into paternity is forbidden.” After a twenty-year Waaagh! and a series of grotesque adventures the legend is consummated, and the man becomes the Emperor of Man. The fixed idea of the grandson was realized because it coincided with the fixed idea of the most numerous class of the Imperial people. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 18:58 on Sep 10, 2018 |
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Sep 10, 2018 16:58
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JcDent posted:Still mad 40K doesn't support hordes of mutants lead by a firebrand preacher out to gently caress up servants of Chaos for the troubles mutations caused in their life. 40K tabletop used to allow Beastmen and Ogryns in IG armies but I think that stopped in 3E. As did I.
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Sep 10, 2018 17:08
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Midjack posted:40K tabletop used to allow Beastmen and Ogryns in IG armies but I think that stopped in 3E. As did I. You can still use Ogryns. They're one of the more impressive units in IG these days.
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Sep 10, 2018 17:16
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Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: Tome of Salvation It's not superstition if it works The world is full of goddamn wizards and Gods and demons and mutants. People in the Old World know this. They know magic is real and they know there are powerful forces everywhere affecting their lives. What do people do when confronted with all manner of phenomena they're powerless to control? They invent means of making themselves feel in control, obviously. Almost everyone in the Old World has something they do to try to keep themselves lucky and healthy, even as the most educated try to point out that none of this works (before making sure they bring their lucky quill to the thesis defense on the subject so Verena will bless their words with persuasion, of course). Players are encouraged to come up with the ridiculous things their heroes do to try to make sure they'll be lucky, in the spirit of good fun. What curses and superstitions you believe in (and why) can add texture to your character. Similarly, con-men at all levels take advantage of these beliefs and sometimes amass huge piles of gold selling false cures or protections from non-existent curses. Many Imperial superstitions have a root in some ancient historical event or religious ritual, long since forgotten, but Imperials are generally nervous about actually discarding a tradition. In essence, superstition should be a fun way to add some quirks to your character, some comic relief, and plot hooks for swindlers or for loving with other characters. Say the Crime Lord Ernst von Waldendorf believes the first coin he ever stole is sacred to Ranald and the source of all his good luck; stealing it from him and watching him go to pieces would be a fun plot. Superstition interacts weirdly with magic. Magisters debate whether or not superstition exists because of magic, or whether perhaps magic exists because of superstition; Magisters know that magic is partly a function of human thought and aethyric resonance, though they debate how exactly that happens. But at the same time, people are superstitious partly because they know that an old woman in a pointy hat really can curse or bless your fields. That's something that happens! The Empire's agricultural system relies on it. So if she can do it, why wouldn't various other rituals and rites have a real effect on the world? People believed (and still believe) in all kinds of ridiculous stuff around their luck and health in our world, where no-one can actually shoot lasers out of their eyes after babbling some magical nonsense. Imagine how much more people will believe in when when sorcerers really are swaggering around dispensing curses. In general, superstitions have no game effects. Your GM can decide that your silly ritual or your lucky charm really do have an effect at a dramatic moment, though. This should be limited to something like a minor -5% or +5% to something or +1 damage on one attack or minorly reducing the effect of a crit; superstitions are not nearly as powerful as real magic, even if your GM decides they'll have actual power. We are referred to the adventure path Lure of the Liche Lord for rules on 'real' curses, which a friend informs me is intended as something of a Nehekara book and is an adventure path that actually concerns the Tomb Kings, complete with plenty of extra rules for tomb robbing and raiding. I'll have to add it to the docket to cover some day. An interesting note: Magisters cannot use superstitions at all. Something about being an actual mage makes the minor blessings people believe in totally useless to those who can genuinely shape the Winds of Magic. They can still be afflicted by minor curses, though. The most common curse Old Worlders fear is THE EVIL EYE. This is the general maleficium that you see in any account of evil magic and witchcraft. Finding weevils in your bread, the milk going sour, a run of bad dice rolls (for the player or the player character), these are all signs someone has put the EVIL EYE on you. Evil Eyes can come from the wronged, the spiteful, the hateful, or the malicious, and they can either involve eye contact or they can be inscribed on your doorstep or belongings. You get rid of the Evil Eye by various completely insane folk remedies, like eating pig eyes and then making yourself vomit them back up to 'purge' the eye spirit out of yourself, or more commonly by going to someone you know you wronged in the community and making restitution. The superstitious will often keep a chicken at hand, because a chicken can outstare anyone with those blank chicken eyes, and that deflects the Evil Eye nine times out of ten. "Paranoid men with a chicken under their arm are a common sight in backwaters of the Empire." Due to all these superstitions, there are too many variations in custom to police them all in the Empire. Even the most zealous Hunter will usually grudgingly admit most of this is harmless. Usually. Though now I'm imagining the badass Witch Hunter very seriously carrying his anti-curse chicken everywhere and yes, this is good. Next Time: Signs of Faith
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Sep 10, 2018 17:17
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Small but vicious chicken should be an equipment option.
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Sep 10, 2018 17:21
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This chicken talk is getting uncomfortably close to Sword of Truth and the chicken-that-was-not-a-chicken.
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Sep 10, 2018 17:28
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Anyone who's played Age of Wonders 3 can tell you that chickens are serious weapons of war and should not be underestimated.
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Sep 10, 2018 17:44
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| # ? May 30, 2024 13:43 |
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Also interesting is the Kislevites have the same superstitions but simply call the creatures 'spirits' and make a clear distinction between them and an actual God like Dazh, Tor, or Ursun.
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Sep 10, 2018 17:48
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