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Giant robot games seem like they have a tendency to fall victim to either the massive overcomplication and technology porn that the giant robot aspect invites, all the ridiculous creepy sex stuff that the anime aspect invites, or more often than not both at once. It's not even like actual anime, it's like anime fanfiction, like I said, where everyone is seen through the eyes of horny shut-in teenagers (or teenagers at heart) who have forgotten the difference between storytelling and pornography. It's not even that bad with furries, who at least if they want to roleplay weird and horrible sex they can just go do that elsewhere and generally come to RPGs specifically for the structure and opportunity to do something else with meaningful imaginary stakes. It's not like some dramatics wouldn't be out of place in the genre, mecha pilots can easily be huge drama queens and could do something like Pendragon or Five Rings where mental stress and/or strong emotions influence gameplay. But very few systems do that well, even in the few cases they have a good reason to do it in the first place.
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Mar 5, 2019 14:54
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Leraika posted:There's Battle Century G, and I've been in games of LANCER that went the Super Robot Wars route. LANCER needs a writeup, but releases come out so fast that 1.9.0 would be out before 1.8.5 is finished.
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Mar 5, 2019 15:02
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Giant robot RPG's seem to fall afoul of three things in my experience. Firstly, if they're based off a specific franchise, especially in case of videogames, they tend to obsessively try to copy the mechanics and specifics rather than the feel, which leads us to the hilarity that is Final Fantasy pen and paper homebrews. Haaaaaaaaaah. Secondly, they fall afoul of RPG Vehicle Mechanics where they have separate mechanics for being on-foot and in-robot and that never works out well. If your vehicle rules are a minigame, you may as well pack it up and go home. Thirdly, a lot of them are homebrews/hacks based off of systems that are not for giant robots and thus fundamentally support them very poorly, rather than being original systems in their own right.
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Mar 5, 2019 15:25
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Adapting Neon Genesis Evangelion to a crunchy system just isn't going to give you a game that feels like playing out episodes of the show, for all the same reasons that crunchy universal systems don't replicate superhero comics. A NGE game would have to be a narrative one built around relationships and internal struggles (psychologically and politically), or at least have a large narrative element built into a lower-crunch tactical game like LANCER. And it goes without saying that pedophilia has no place in a roleplaying game and would have to be stripped out in favour of handling relationships among the PCs more in line with how Monsterhearts does it. Mechnoir is possibly a good choice. The thing is, there was already a game inspired mainly by NGE, which isn't intended to be pornographic but where it's assumed the kids are loving each other and one person is playing the Gendo Ikari role and probably loving one of the kids. PurpleXVI reviewed Bliss Stage for us.
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Mar 5, 2019 15:32
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Adeptus Evangelion Here we loving go Adeptus Evangelion is a bizarre game. It's an attempt to use 1st edition Dark Heresy, of all things, to write a giant robot game about tormented teenagers forced into the cockpit of weird biomechanical robots to fight angels while a ridiculous conspiracy goes on in the background. It's based on Evangelion, but really, it's based on what a lot of fans wanted from Evangelion rather than what was really there. This is the kind of game where, when writing about a series that was about a depressed kid in a lovely situation working through his depression, the authors decided what really mattered was writing pages and pages of gun and weapon rules so they could simulate every weapon anyone ever sold with an EVA action figure. This is a book where the author based it on Dark Heresy because there's a lovely fanfiction where loving Warhammer 40k 'makes Shinji man up!!!!' because God forbid there be a protagonist who isn't excited about all the crazy violence and madness around them. That's the reason they welded this to this system. A little history about me and this game: I've run two campaigns I still look back on fondly, but I also know the actual rules system presented here had almost nothing to do with why those campaigns were good. Any game can be fun; the measure of a game's actual quality as a rules system and set of fluff is how much the material within the game's books actually contributed, and with AdEva, I can comfortably say only a single rule really contributed anything to those campaigns. And they removed that rule. We'll get to that when we get to Ego Barrier, this game's replacement for WH40KRP Corruption. See, what I'm reviewing here is the edition that's publicly available, AdEva 2.5. I ran AdEva original. The systems are close enough, and both based on a base system I know very well, and so I still feel this meets my requirements for review. I picked this game up because I was really into Dark Heresy back in college and the premise of a Dark Heresy giant robot game sounded so goddamn weird that you know, why not? Free fan game anyway. Ad Eva is a bad game. A very bad game. We're going to go into why it's bad together, but it's amazing because it's terrible on pretty much every level. And that's the thing: This isn't some minor thrown together hack, this is the 3rd iteration of a system that a bunch of people have been working on and playing with for years. The book also really shows that it's an amateur offering, because it's both terribly organized and very, very over-long, and requires an additional GM's guide to actually run the game. They don't reprint any of the rules from DH, so you'll need the DH1e core book at your table, plus the player's guide, plus the GM's guide, and somehow without even retelling any of the DH rules they've got well over three hundred pages of material that really needed an editor with a weed whacker. All the new Talents have their actual game effect mixed in with their fluff, and man had I forgotten how much harder that makes them to read. The game tries to have a goddamn X-COM tech/gear porn metagame, with research rules, gun development, a council of funding nations, etc, in goddamn Eva. The show where the technical specs of the robots do not loving matter. Lots of concepts are introduced over a hundred pages before they're explained. You know how it gets when the same group of playtesters/designers work on something for a long time and forget that a new reader doesn't know what the hell a Spread Pattern or the Breach stat is? And that maybe you should put some of this stuff before the players are making decisions about their characters' abilities with it? What does my Eva's SOUL PATTERN mean? What is a Feedback Threshold? What is Synchronization Disruption? It's going to be a really long time before you find out, but they're going to come up early! In the interest of preserving the terrible structuring and amateur layout of the book, I'll be mostly reporting this stuff in order, with maybe a few reminders and refreshers as I go. Also, as you might expect from a game about tormented teenagers piloting giant robots written by anime fans, there's a persistent layer of slime on a lot of the advice/implications of how the book wants you to handle interpersonal relationships. We'll be loving getting to that. But you know, let's start at the beginning. Instead of a Homeworld, you pick a background for your pilot or Ops Director. We'll get to the goddamn Ops Director. For some reason the Ops Director isn't actually described until near the back of the book, despite being a Career and PC option. You can be a Neospartan (Asuka), someone trained from a very young age towards the goal of being an Eva pilot when they're needed. You can be a Prodigy (Shinji) who was grabbed off the streets and thrown in the cockpit as soon as they realized you could make an Eva move. You can be a Manufactured (Rei) who was cultivated and grown towards driving an Eva. You can also be an Impact Survivor (Misato), who hopefully isn't driving an Eva because in my experience groups with an Adult Pilot tend to go weird loving places but who makes a good Ops Director. See, awhile ago, Antarctica loving exploded and billions of people died. The world is under UN control. Your PCs grew up in this post-Impact world and don't necessarily know how awful the direct experience of Second Impact was. Unless you're an Impact Survivor and lived through it. These background pick a bunch of abilities, 2 positive and 2 negative, from lists permitted to them. For instance, Neo Spartans are often better prepared for what's coming and can take some bonuses to physical combat, but in return, they're emotionally fragile or have stunted initiative or whatever. Prodigies can be luckier, better rounded, or more emotionally stable at the cost of being untrained combatants or flipping the gently caress out when they realize a missed shot hit a residential district (understandable). Manufactured can be tough or genetically augmented or have a pile of backup clones that make burning Fate easier, but they're weird and inhuman. Impact Survivors are capable and experienced, and often resilient against further trauma. However, they've usually seen some serious poo poo and have some nasty scars from living through the apocalypse. That kind of thing. Also want to note one of the potential Manufactured traits is 'anyone using social skills against you gets +20 because you're actually 3'. In context with some other poo poo, that's going to be really creepy! AdEva also introduces two other things to normal DH character creation: One, you don't roll down the line, you roll your stat rolls and then pick which stat each roll goes to. Two, you have a new stat: Synch Ratio. This is how well you naturally synch up with your Eva, and is one of your most important stats. In the original version I played, Impact Survivors got an absolutely dogshit SR value to discourage you playing an adult pilot. That's been changed to the point that they're viable pilots (they get a -5 instead of the original -20) probably because there's always been a subset of the game's community that loving loves adult pilots despite it being a bad idea for a lot of reasons. The original idea with the Impact Survivor was 'this character has high stats in general but can't be a pilot'. That's changed. In general, Background barely affects stats: You either get two +3s, a +5, and a -5 or in the case of the Prodigy, +5 to Synch Ratio with no drawbacks. Neospartans get +5 Tough, +3 WS and BS, -5 Fel. Manufactured get +5 Int, +3 Synch and WP, -5 Per. Impact Survivors get +5 Fel, +3 Tough and Int, -5 Synch. People all have at least 2 Fate Points, with usually a 20-30% chance to have 3. But you know, now let's get to the gem of a concept that told me I needed to write this poo poo up. There's always been a merits and flaws system bolted onto AdEva, right? In the original edition, you used starting EXP to buy assets and got extra starting EXP for taking personality/physical flaws. It was about as bad as any other Merits and Flaws system. But there's a specific change to how they contextualize it here in this 2.5 release that is just loving precious. They separated it out from the EXP system, right? Instead, you buy a special currency for your Advantages by taking negative traits about your character. I want you to guess what they called this currency. That's right, it's DEPTH. Think about what that means about storytelling and writing in this context. The implication being that a character acquired their depth as a character solely through their negative character traits. You have to acquire DEPTH through being unhealthy or insane or whatever so that you can be good at things, because character traits always exist in balance in a compelling character, too. That's just writing. That's how you write. I don't make these rules, they're just universal to good storytelling and character writing. Like, the contextualization as DEPTH tells you so much about the writing instincts of the authors. The system itself is the most Merits and Flaws rear end system that ever Merited or Flawed, down to the bog standard 'Hey GMs, punish your players if they don't play these up all the time, because many of them are purely roleplaying Drawbacks' and 'Hey if you want to be deep and cool and monopolize game time take even more Drawbacks than you get benefits for, it will make you a super good character!' implication. It's the exact same lovely Merits and Flaws stuff we've seen a thousand times, and a nice reminder of why these kinds of subsystems generally aren't considered good game design. And of course, our intro to the section is some lovely in-character fiction about how everyone in NERV (the weird giant robot agency) is so sociopathic and violent and crazy and all the pilots have grim PTSD and blah blah. It's a common refrain in nerd games that want desperately to be taken seriously as deep writing that everyone is miserable, everything is awful, and look at how grim and mature and dark we are. This game is just wall to goddamn wall of that stuff. The original Eva was a show partly about depression and isolation, so flawed people working through their issues and bouncing off one another in personal conflict is fine for a game based on Evangelion. The problem is it's just the most juvenile grimdark poo poo. It mistakes volume for, well, depth. Next Time: They loving called one of them 'Unshippable'.
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Mar 5, 2019 15:54
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The thing about different rules or at least character sheets for being in a giant robot vs on-foot could work without too much fuss and even be setting-appropriate, just to actually keep in mind they need to both be hard of a cohesive game, and the on-foot sections should be a lot simpler and probably 'get to the cockpit before you get blown to pieces/suffocate/shot' challenges. Not that being in the robot couldn't bear to be simpler most of the time either.
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Mar 5, 2019 15:58
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quote:Depth It really is fanfic: the game.
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Mar 5, 2019 16:15
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Man, don't use Depth as a game anything. It makes me think of Shadowrun AI rules.
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Mar 5, 2019 16:27
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Halloween Jack posted:Bliss Stage e u r g h wiegieman posted:LANCER needs a writeup, but releases come out so fast that 1.9.0 would be out before 1.8.5 is finished. I might give it a shot when the system stabilizes a bit more, but I'm not super great at evaluating balance beyond the *obvious* things that are broken (RIP the glory days of guncube) and LANCER has a lot of moving parts that can be configured pretty freely.
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Mar 5, 2019 16:34
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Halloween Jack posted:The thing is, there was already a game inspired mainly by NGE, which isn't intended to be pornographic but where it's assumed the kids are loving each other and one person is playing the Gendo Ikari role and probably loving one of the kids. PurpleXVI reviewed Bliss Stage for us. That's the game my memory was trying desperately to repress! Thanks! I... think.
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Mar 5, 2019 16:36
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The ironic thing in that in most actual anime of this genre nobody's actually loving, because everyone has the emotional maturity of a six year old.
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Mar 5, 2019 16:38
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I remember running across a homebrew(?) version of Adeptus Evangelion. The Evangelion side of things was over complicated because they were made with BESM rules, but the character side of things was handled with the monsterheart rule set with all of the skins modified so that they would fit more naturally with the setting.
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Mar 5, 2019 16:46
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Ghost Leviathan posted:The ironic thing in that in most actual anime of this genre nobody's actually loving, because everyone has the emotional maturity of a six year old.
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Mar 5, 2019 16:58
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wiegieman posted:Man, don't use Depth as a game anything. It makes me think of Shadowrun AI rules. So much DEPTH.
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Mar 5, 2019 16:58
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PurpleXVI posted:Giant robot RPG's seem to fall afoul of three things in my experience. Remnants doesn't really do any of these, though it may be a bit rules-light for some.
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Mar 5, 2019 17:01
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Adeptus Evangelion Earn thy DEPTH So I'm going to be going into a lot of detail on these because the Assets and Drawbacks are one of the big parts of the game. The game practically fetishizes your character having tons of issues. Again, the characters having issues is not a problem; its the presentation and mechanism of it all, with the idea that the issues themselves are what give the characters DEPTH (Seriously, not gonna stop harping on that because it says so much) rather than the way those issues shape a coherent and interesting character. So, you can take up to 25 points of Drawbacks to get up to 25 points of Assets. I'm not normally going to go into this much detail in this book for obvious reasons (It's boring to read huge lists of abilities for a game that, let's be real, almost none of you are going to play and that's free on the internet) but I feel like this aspect of the game merits it since it's so central to the writers' vision of Tormented Anime Pilot times. Also, despite all the stuff on enforcing Drawbacks as roleplaying earlier, every Drawback has mechanical disadvantages attached so, uh, I guess that already enforces it. Also note, most of these descriptions are loving long in the book. They give a lot of fluff mixed in with the crunch and really needed an editor. Big Ego is worth 10 Depth. You think you're the best. If someone else seems to be hot poo poo, roll WP at +10. If you fail, you have to take a -20 on some action soon as you try to add extra flair and show off better than that dumb Ikari kid. If you succeed, you can choose not to do something stupid at the cost of -10 to Fel, WP, and Int for an hour because you're so mad. Chronic Pain is worth 10 Depth. Whenever you'd take Fatigue for the first time, you take 2. Given you can take up to TB+1 Fatigue before a PC passes out, this can be bad. Given passing out in the cockpit is a way to make your Eva go berserk (we'll get to that), a Berserker PC might actually benefit from this drawback. Can't take this with 'High Endurance'. Clumsy is worth 5 Depth and gives -10 to all Agi tests except Dodge, the one that matters most. Compulsive Behavior is worth 5 Depth and gives you a weird quirk you have to do. You take -10 to all actions until you do your OCD quirk once a session. How destructive this is is entirely a case of GM May I. Coward is worth 10 Depth. You take a -20 to Fear tests. If you remember the DH Fear system, this is loving crippling if you ever run into anything that causes Fear, like maybe those eldritch abominations you fight with a giant robot made of meat as one of the central gameplay conceits. Obligatory you mustn't run away. Can't take this with 'Fearless'. Damaged Goods is worth 5 Depth and just gives you 10 Insanity Points. The game loving loves the Insanity system from DH despite it being a pile. Dark Secret is worth 10 Depth and is awful. Just awful. There's something terrible about you, or something awful you did, and if anyone finds out there's a big 'ole chart of negative effects as they realize you're an edgelord OC. These are: Anger: Don't talk to me or my pilot son ever again. The character who found out won't speak to you for d5 Sessions. Denial: They get a Delusion from the Insanity rules that you're totally normal and not secretly a serial killer or whatever edgelord poo poo you came up with. Evasion: They won't get near you for d10+2 Sessions. You know, this weird random 'two characters won't interact for X sessions' thing is really awkward if the other person is a PC. Fear: They treat you as having Fear (1) for d5 Weeks, too in awe of your originalness to ever steal from you. Jaded: They gain 15 Insanity points for 'picking the boring option', according to the book. That's a fuckton of insanity to gain not to have to deal with 'I can't talk to or interact with one of the other central characters at the table', authors. Maybe if your consequences were at all interesting you wouldn't have to worry about people skipping out on them. Acceptance: If the GM permits, nothing actually happens and they're okay with how you like to torture squirrels or you're secretly a super alien from another dimension or whatever. Like, this is absolutely terrible. This trait is just asking to derail a game. Dependent is worth 5 Depth. You latch on to people and if they ever tell you off, you take -10 to all rolls for d5 Hours and pick someone else to latch on to. Again, notice how many of these sound really loving annoying to play with. Depressive is worth 10 Depth. You roll WP at the start of each session. If you fail, you gain 1 Fatigue from being sad and it won't go away for d5+DoF hours of game time. Depending on the session, this is either going to gently caress you (having any Fatigue in DH is -10 to everything) or be totally meaningless. Also given Shinji's struggle with his depression is one of the theme of Eva, I'd expect this to be more central. Dim is worth 5 Depth. You're a deeper character because you're dumb. -10 to Int skills. Diverse Troubles is worth 5 Depth. You take an extra Negative Trait from a different Background. So a Neo Spartan who is an idealistic sort could take the 'flip the gently caress out when I blow up a building' trait from Prodigy. This isn't that bad; you could construct an actual twist on a background with this, even if it's very mechanically punishing. Duty of Care is worth 15 Depth. You have a dependent NPC like an anime little sister or something who you need to take care of. You suffer penalties if anything happens to them. You gain a huge chunk of insanity when the GM inevitably kills them for cheap drama. You lose a lot of your spare time taking care of them and halve the benefits of the much later explained Time Management system. You need GM permission for this, but should also get lots of extra time to interact with your special relationship and it's strongly recommended it not be another PC. Fanatical is worth 10 Depth. You're totally devoted to a cause, person, or ideal. You permanently lose a Fate point, which is mechanically equivalent to surviving death or turning into Tang, if your GM ever rules you refused their orders or went against them. This is loving nuts! Foe is worth 5 Depth. It's the generic 'somebody hates you and will nebulously try to mess with you' and can represent everything from assassins to a janitor who is pissed off you put a penny in the door (the janitor from Scrubs is basically one of their examples). Hoarder is worth 5 Depth. You don't give stuff up. You store and hoard. If you need to give something to someone, roll WP to make yourself do it, or have someone use Command or Charm on you. Ergh. Again, this is just annoying. Most of these traits just make a PC annoying to play/play with. Impetuous is worth 10 Depth because being MANLY and HOT BLOODED is COOL. You can't stop to do anything important in combat until you've fired a full auto burst, charged someone, or shot someone at close range. Inattentive is worth 5 Depth and gives you a -10 to Perception tests even if they don't use the Perception stat. Ineptitude is worth 5 Depth. Pick one Basic Skill. You can never succeed. You will never overcome your crippling inability to dance. Lonely is worth 5 Depth. You get -10 to everything if you're alone because you hate being alone. This doesn't apply in your robit since the support staff is yelling at you. Low Pain Threshold is worth 5 Depth. You halve your TB, rounded down, for purposes of personal scale damage reduction or Feedback Threshold. We still don't know what Feedback Threshold is, but effectively crushing your TB probably isn't a good idea. Medicated is worth 5 Depth and is the most GM May I poo poo. You pick a stat besides WS, BS, or Synch. Every week you don't get your meds you suffer -1d10 to that stat. For every week you're unmedicated, not only do you suffer that temporary penalty, you lose 1 point permanently in that stat. Permanent stat loss is a big deal! And you know you're going to have to go unmedicated, because otherwise what does this Drawback actually do? It's all a matter of how much and when you're going to get hosed mechanically. Meek is worth 5 Depth and is -10 to Fel skills. Overweight is worth 5 Depth and makes your Agi bonus 1 point lower when you have to run outside your Eva. No effect in the Eva, where the vast majority of combat is going to take place. Hey look, gimme points. Phobia is worth 5 Depth and makes you test Willpower when you run into your Phobia. You do NOT get any bonuses to Fear tests on this check. If you fail, you immediately suffer a Trauma roll (not a Fear roll) as per DH. Ech. Again, GM May I. Who knows how often this will gently caress you? Physically Challenged is worth 15 Depth and sees the PC crippled. They can only crawl outside their Eva, unless they have their wheelchair or braces, in which case they move at half speed. No effect in your Eva. Also, -10 to all Tough tests. How much this is even going to matter comes down to whether or not anyone ever takes a shot at you in pilot form. Poor Vision is worth 5 Depth and halves the range of any ranged weapon you use, which is loving awful. Or would be if any ranged weapons were worth a drat outside of the huge cannons with unlimited range. We'll get to that. Prejudice is worth 5 Depth and hooooo boy. I'm just going to quote here. "The character considers one demographic to be subhuman, and will not tolerate their presence. Should they be forced to, they suffer -20 to all rolls during the interaction as they can't contain their disgust." Yeah, that's a fun thing to bring to the table. One of the consistent themes here is these don't make your character interesting, they just make them a prick or a problem at the table. Or they're down to 'how much is the GM going to decide to gently caress me'. Repellent is worth 5 Depth and halves your Fellowship with 'a gender of your choice' because you 'come off as a sleeze, or you're awkward, or-' generally if someone take this it's a warning sign. Sadistic is worth 10 Depth and is also a warning sign about a player. If you have a chance to hurt someone and think you can get away with it, you must. If you don't, you test WP. If you fail, you lose a Fate Point for the session. If you really want to hurt that person, the test is at -30. Note your PC does this to everyone and it should be both 'physical and emotional'. If someone takes this, kick them out of your group. The general encouragement to be uncomfortable at the table is one of the worst parts of this piece of poo poo game. Second Fiddle is worth 15 Depth and has you be totally dependent on an NPC or other PC. You get -30 to resist their social skills, you'll never cross them or show them up, and you do everything you can to please them. Also suffer huge Insanity if they're hurt or they die. They can also choose to make you suffer -10 to everything for an hour by saying something mean to you, at will. Like, I get it. Unhealthy power dynamics and poo poo like Gendo being a piece of poo poo are a part of Eva, but put in this context this is just begging for abuse and bad feelings at a gaming table. Short Fuse is worth 5 Depth and just means you respond to 'stress' with a WP test or you'll punch something. Shy is worth 5 Depth and gives you -20 Fellowship when dealing with crowds or strangers. Once you know someone the penalty goes away. Suicidal is worth 5 Depth and means you have to make WP tests to actually back off from danger. Unlucky is worth 10 Depth and gives you a 10% chance of not actually getting the benefits of a Fate point (even though it's still lost) whenever you spend one. This is terrible. Unstable is worth 10 Depth and permanently reduces your Synch Ratio stat, one of your most important stats, by 1 for every 3 Insanity you take. Trap option. Wimp is worth 5 Depth and halves your SB. Normally, I don't go into this kind of detail. Normally I wouldn't list all this poo poo out. No-one is here to read a wall of text about how to actually play the game and I swear I'll spare you the dozens of pages of gun porn that are coming up later when they come up. But first, I want you to see just how much of this material there is. Second, it's absolutely critical to the message and story this game's authors are trying to tell, so I feel it deserves the same emphasis they gave it. And it deserves pointing out how little of this poo poo actually makes for a compelling character or a fun gaming experience. Remember, everyone is encouraged to take 25 points, and required to take at least 10, with some encouragement to maybe take more if you want to be a 'deeper' character. This is one of the critical components of how the authors see roleplaying and the themes of Evangelion. Yes, Eva is about a bunch of deeply flawed people. But this manifestation of it is designed to cause discomfort. Can you ever see yourself *not* booting someone who takes Sadistic out of your group the second they write it on their sheet? Can you see that leading to a fun gaming experience? The stuff like Second Fiddle is practically designed to cause creepy poo poo. This aspect of the game is part of its core, and it's absolutely rotted. This is not how you portray flawed and deep characters, this is how you write about a bunch of stupid assholes who make for lovely gaming. I also want to emphasize: I cut a lot of words out in summarizing this. This section is 8 pages, on its own, in the core book. Next Time: Seriously. Unshippable.
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Mar 5, 2019 17:10
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Wow, Maya Ibuki: The Disadvantage! It's kind of telling that, as someone familiar with the show, I can spot out the ones that exactly mirror a character's poo poo, and these are usually both the more 'valuable' ones and the crushingly disadvantageous ones. Nessus fucked around with this message at 17:22 on Mar 5, 2019 |
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Mar 5, 2019 17:19
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Kinda down with Clumsy not counting for Dodge, because presumably it keeps working in your favour as the enemy can't hit you because you keep accidentally falling out of the way.
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Mar 5, 2019 17:40
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Kinda down with Clumsy not counting for Dodge, because presumably it keeps working in your favour as the enemy can't hit you because you keep accidentally falling out of the way. Also, this is still Dark Heresy. You better believe we're going full Rocket Tag in actual combat, so having a penalty to Dodge would ensure no-one ever takes that (or else they die).
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Mar 5, 2019 17:47
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quote:It's based on Evangelion, but really, it's based on what a lot of fans wanted from Evangelion rather than what was really there. I stopped following anime more than a decade ago, but I remember NGE being an incredibly big deal. I'm old enough to remember how some anime got an outsize amount of attention just because they were released in the US, but NGE was big enough that you had other series that were in large part a response to it. There was Dual! which was a semi-parody of NGE twisted into a cheerful harem anime, and RahXephon, which is similarly complex but doesn't seem to delight in punching its audience in the stomach.
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Mar 5, 2019 17:59
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What was the name of the Japanese RPG about GGundam/Clan lawyers* in post-apocalyptic Australia? *All legal cases are decided through trial by giant robot combat.
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Mar 5, 2019 18:00
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golden bubble posted:What was the name of the Japanese RPG about GGundam/Clan lawyers* in post-apocalyptic Australia? Giant Allege.
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Mar 5, 2019 18:12
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Adeptus Evangelion UN-loving-SHIPPABLE Assets give you significant mechanical bonuses where Drawbacks caused you to be deep. Some of the advantages and how they work tell you some unpleasant things about how the game tends to go in the hands of some players, I think. Again, because this is one of the core aspects of the system and how the designers think you build cool and unique characters, I will be going into way more detail than I usually do; I don't blame anyone who skips these sections. Just read the bit at the bottom, it's kind of important. Academic costs 10 Depth, and for some reason, requires you start the game with 40+ Int. You know 2 Common Lores and a Scholastic Lore of your choice, and get Talented (+10) in one of them. This represents being a child genius who has a college degree, an important anime archetype, apparently. It's also not very useful, as Lore skills are extremely GM May I. Athlete costs 10 Depth and is extremely good. You get the ability to spend a single Fate point to wipe all Fatigue, you get the ability to test a physical stat to see if you can raise them faster while working out between missions, and you get the ability to use your fists as d5+SB weapons instead of d5-3+SB while carrying more weight. The last isn't likely to come up, the second is situational, but that first ability is gold because Fatigue can be really dangerous. Catlike costs you 5 Depth and gives you Move Silent and Shadowing as skills. Given the game is going to insist over and over again pilots have no choice but to run and hide if there's a confrontation on the ground, knowing how to be stealthy might not hurt. Alternately, good for sneaking in your 40m tall ridiculous meat-mech. Celebrity costs you 15 Depth and makes you a pop idol, boy band member, or whatever. You get Peer (Fans), Peer (Media), and Talented+Trained in a Performer skill of your choice. Requires GM permission 'because it will affect the tone of your game'. Not really worth the points mechanically. Charming costs 5 Depth and gives '+10 to Fel with the gender of your choice'. The 'gender of your choice' part tells you what the devs anticipate this being used for, and it sets my teeth on edge. Especially as they're going to make it clear they like the idea of social skills being used on PCs the way they're used on NPCs later. Which is a huge no no. Common Sense costs 5 Depth and lets you ask the GM once a session if what you're about to do is a bad idea. As the GM is only supposed to answer 'based on what you reasonably know', this gets the double whammy of being a GM May I ability AND one where the GM can lie to you if they feel like playing power games, and in this system and context that bears thinking about. Cynic costs 10 Depth and means you're a cool kid who questions EVERYTHING, man. You aren't one of those sheeple, you know how the world REALLY works and ergh. You get the Scrutiny skill and +20 to resist Charm and Deceive. Again, you're a PC. Resisting Social Skills should not be a part of things. Especially not with what they've already signaled about the context of people using Charm on PCs. Driven costs 10 Depth and gives you a Fate Point atop your normal pool. Your GM tells you if you're defying the odds enough to actually use it. It can't be burnt to avoid death. Again, GM May I is always a bad sign. Eidetic Memory costs 5 Depth and is, as usual, something thrown in when one of these Merits and Flaws systems is running out of Merit ideas and the deadline is coming up. You get Total Recall from Dark Heresy. Yawn. Egghead costs 5 Depth, and gives you both Training in and Talented in any individual Int based skill of your choice (like Tech Use. Take Tech Use). You can take it multiple times, unlike most, up to your Int Bonus. Fast costs 5 Depth and lets you run away, even though you mustn't. You can spend Fate and your Reaction for the turn to full move in any direction, at any time. You also get +1 Agi Bonus for movement outside your Eva. Eh. Giving up your Reaction can often be a death sentence depending on the fight, but melee is the strongest general tactic in the game and closing into melee might be worth it sometimes? Maybe. Fearless costs 15 Depth and gives a simple +10 to Fear, but also counts your Insanity as 20 higher for purposes of Fear Immunity. Remember, in DH, you're immune to Fear Ratings of IP/20 and Fear only goes up to 4. So this makes you immune to Fear at 60 Insanity instead of 80. It's useful; Fear can be crippling for a lot of reasons. Just is it 15 points useful? Healer costs 5 Depth and gives you Medicae (God, I hate that name for it) and Master Chirurgeon (Heal people better) from Dark Heresy. Note how many of these just give you a random starting skill, versus how many of the other ones cripple a part of your PC. It's telling, no? You also get a first aid kit. 5 points for being able to be a medic in an emergency is one of the better deals for these 'just get a skill' ones, though; Medicae/Heal in DH/WHFRP are really useful skills. High Endurance costs 10 Depth and lets you test Toughness any time you gain Fatigue to gain 1 less, min 0. It also makes your Feedback Threshold (whatever that is, we won't know for 100 pages) 1 point higher. Can't take it with Low Pain Threshold. Definitely useful, as it has tangible benefits. Incredible Sense costs 5 Depth and gives you +20 to tests with one sense. Smart people take Sight or Hearing, because the likelihood that taste/smell/touch comes up is far lower. Potentially worthwhile; 20% is a huge bonus and perception tests can be life or death. Innovative costs 10 Depth and gives you an extra Fate point like Driven, but you spend this one while trying to undertake clever plans. GM decides if it's acceptable. GM May I is still poison. International costs 5 Depth and lets you start knowing an additional language and makes it cheaper to learn more. For when your GM insists on playing language barriers. Eh. Mad Skill costs 5 Depth and lets you be crazy to be good. Any time you gain Insanity, you can spend a Fate point. If you do, you get +1/2 your IP to all tests for 5 rounds, then roll on the Trauma table as you break down. Given how much this game loving loves the Insanity system this could actually be insanely (heh) good. Made for Each Other costs 5 Depth and lets you pick one of your Eva's traits instead of rolling randomly. You can take it up to 4 times, if you want to actually pick your robit's quirks. Given some of the quirks, this can be really worth it. Military Nut costs 5 Depth and sigh, means you're such an avid wargamer or whatever that you're actually a strategic genius, getting Common Lore (War), Scholastic War (Tactics), and Talented in both. Note this is better than Academic for this specific function, at less cost, and without the dumb 'have to have a 40+ Int base'. Lores are still a crapshoot of whether or not they'll actually get rolled. Mimic costs 5 Depth and just gives you Mimic from DH. You're good at voices. Paranoia costs 5 Depth and gives you DH Paranoia. Given DH Paranoia is +2 Initiative and a chance of warnings before ambushes and poo poo, this is ridiculously worth it. Prepared costs 10 Depth and gives you a measly 100 Bonus EXP. You start with 400. The GM's guide suggests an average of 500 a combat session (300 for sessions with no combat). This is insignificant and you're spending one-time special Depth on it. Trap option. Privileged Family Name costs 10 Depth and means you're on of the Illustrious Ashford Family Name or whatever other ridiculous pseudo-nobility you want to play at for your anime bullshit. Authorities won't bother you because they know your family. You also get the ability to call in a political marker once during the campaign. Eh. Resilient Metabolism costs 5 Points and gives you +20 to tests to resist illness, Resistance (Poison), and the ability to ignore the Toxic weapon trait entirely. Depending on if this extends to your Eva (It does say it works at E scale) this is actually potentially really good, because Toxic can gently caress you up. Taking d10 unreducable damage if you fail a Toughness-Whatever test is bad news and being able to no-sell it might be worth the points. Shrewd costs 10 Depth and gives you an extra Fate to be spent on negotiations. You are Business Kid, doing Business! Probably the most well defined of the Conditional Fate Assets, and the least useful unless you're the Ops Director. Soldier costs 15 Depth, because being a grim, cool soldier who has fought in child soldier wars (or an old Impact Survivor) requires IMMENSE depth to pull off, right? You get +20 to WP tests to snap out of (but not initially resist) Fear. You get Jaded from DH (Never take IP from non-magical fear or blood again). You unjam weapons as a half action. You do d5+SB with fists. You're a badass. A badass original character. No-one will steal you. Joking aside, the grab bag of advantages for this one is actually pretty good. Thrill Seeker costs 5 Depth and gives you a 10% chance to get your Fate Point back if you spend it while doing something crazy. Eh. GM May I and a small chance of triggering? How can I say no? Troublemaker costs 10 Depth and makes you too cool for school. You get 2 skills of your choice from Concealment, Silent Move, Sleight of Hand, Gamble, and Deceive (these are, at least, useful skills) and get a -20 to resist Charm attempts from characters in positions of authority. They can still Intimidate you at 0 penalty. Again, with context? Thanks for that thought, AdEva. Uncanny Luck costs 5 Depth and gives you Gamble, because you're lucky. It also lets you subtract 2d10 from a roll result once per session. Definitely worth 5 points. Unremarkable costs 5 Depth and gives you, uh, Unremarkable from DH. Lame. Unshippable costs 5 Depth and a universe of terrible implication. You gain Chem Geld (Immune to seduction) from DH and the Charming Asset doesn't work on you. You're 'naive' OR perhaps 'strong willed'. A special note says you may still willingly enter romantic relationships; this Asset just prevents people using Social Skills on you to make you enter them. Hoooo loving boy! Let's let those Implications sink in! You probably thought I was just being paranoid when I was pointing out how creepy a lot of the 'Use Charm on a PC' implications felt before! Well, I wasn't, because I knew loving Unshippable was coming up. What this says about the mode of play that the designers assume for their game is really, really loving bad. Not to mention how many horror stories I've heard from people who've made the mistake of playing AdEva with people they didn't know and trust not to go to the places that kind of Asset implies the designers assume the game can and will. I told you all these loving Assets just to get to that last one. It looms over the entire list. I'm not being hyperbolic; once you see that one, go back and read some of the other Assets and Drawbacks and bask in the horrible and cosmic Implication. That aside, on a general design note, Assets are incredibly dull. Remember how the Drawbacks often crippled your PC or made you a huge rear end in a top hat? These are all like 'Oh I guess you get an extra starting skill'. Nothing here really feels worth a powerful metacurrency like DEPTH that you can only get in one place at once time. My recommendation is to just take 10 minor Drawback points then grab, I dunno, Athlete or Luck+Metabolism or something. Nothing here is actually worth what you pay for it when you consider how lovely Drawbacks are. Normally I'd recommend Unshippable, but let's be real: If you needed Unshippable, you needed to get out of that group yesterday and to never play with those people again. Unshippable is the kind of Asset that shouldn't loving need to be a character resource in a game. Seriously: Do not game with people who would make 'Take this to not be forced into relationships by dice roll' necessary. Next Time: PC Classes. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 19:03 on Mar 5, 2019 |
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Mar 5, 2019 18:46
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I'm deeply amused by the decision to have "overweight" be more-or-less free points in the Eva, and equally as disgusted by the thick layer of slime over everything. Edit: It speaks to AdEva's total lack of self-awareness that "stereotypical repellent basement-dwelling neckbeard" is a possible min-max strategy to optimize yourself for violent combat robot action. Wales Grey fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Mar 5, 2019 |
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Mar 5, 2019 19:07
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Leraika posted:There's Battle Century G, and I've been in games of LANCER that went the Super Robot Wars route. Having played around with Battle Century G back when it was called Giant Guardian Generation, it had some significant issues, and a lot of them actually got worse as it got tweaked. It's actually surprisingly hard to stat a lot of stuff from actual mecha anime in it.
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Mar 5, 2019 19:14
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I think a big part of why this is all so slimey compared to something like, say, Monsterhearts is that there's no 'rails', so to speak. Most games would have material saying 'Hey if someone's uncomfortable they can say so and things will stop' or the X-Card or other mechanics like that. Plus, you all sit down for Monsterhearts, everyone's here to play Love Disaster: The Interpersonal. You're on the same page and the game is still concerned with consent and player comfort even with that. Here, the Implication is that discomfort and misery are where you get Depth, and why can't you handle being DEEP? The GMing advice has no stuff like 'hey, so, if one of your players is using the game's rules as a coercive to creep on someone, you need to shut that poo poo down' and is instead full of 'you need to keep giving them IP so you can come up with FUN new disorders and hurt the PCs more!' bullshit. The Implication ends up being that this is approved play because it's what the idiots writing this think of as deep and mature roleplaying. When they mention that players will come to you with concerns about the direction of the game due to things like sexual imagery, the advice is 'listen, but don't let the players BULLY you into changing the direction of your plans' and 'only listen insofar as you need to to maintain Player Interest'. That's loving horrible. There's this implication at all stages in the GMing advice that The Story!!! is so important and the GM should have deep secrets and keep them from those wily players and make them see their vision and deal with their deep, mature writing about giant meat robots and maid outfits or whatever other loving anime bullshit they've decided to bring in. It's real bad. A GM's giant robot fanfiction is never going to be 'important' enough to be worth hurting someone over. gently caress that poo poo.
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Mar 5, 2019 19:38
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Ghost Leviathan posted:The ironic thing in that in most actual anime of this genre nobody's actually loving, because everyone has the emotional maturity of a six year old. In any other genre, sure, but in mecha they usually are. I can think of at least four couples loving in Gundam, even more in Zeta (including the protagonist), and as Go Nagi went on with Magziner series people having actual romantic relationships were the norm even if was ANIME as hell. Heck, even in Gundam SEED, the most ANIME of the series, sex happens and is very important to how the MC operates from that point. It's a big plot point that not only are Misato and Kaji knocking boots, but Gendo is sleeping with Ritsuko because the former wants to keep her loyal and the later has mommy issues. The thing with a Neon Genesis Evangelion game though, is that it should be a game partly why people avoid romantic relationships despite desperately wanting them or even needing them (The Shinji-Asuka-Rei thing) or their want or even psychological unwell need of them when they're unhealthy (Misato and her whole Shinji deal, but also Rei depending on the version). Maybe whoever the bridge bunny is, is getting laid but that should be a bad relationship they find the wherewithall at the end or middle of a campagin to finally end. Two PCs Pilots asking out each other or a NPC should be the end goal of a campaign, forget about sex.
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Mar 5, 2019 19:54
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As someone's whose only experience with NGE is "I read some of the manga while at Borders for some reason" and internet osmosis, I'll probably be asking a few questions through this review. Even so, seeing Depth told me that this was probably written while the second monitor was opened to tvtropes.
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Mar 5, 2019 20:01
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This entire conversation is a yawning portal into a world of 'entertainment' I do not understand and ideas about relationships probably best quarantined from normal human beings.
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Mar 5, 2019 20:05
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Cythereal posted:This entire conversation is a yawning portal into a world of 'entertainment' I do not understand and ideas about relationships probably best quarantined from normal human beings. It just has to be done well. Guess what AdEva isn't.
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Mar 5, 2019 20:21
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yeah, trying to make NGE shippable... misses the fact almost every single romantic relationship in the series is incredibly toxic or otherwise damaging.
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Mar 5, 2019 20:21
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Night10194 posted:I think a big part of why this is all so slimey compared to something like, say, Monsterhearts is that there's no 'rails', so to speak. Most games would have material saying 'Hey if someone's uncomfortable they can say so and things will stop' or the X-Card or other mechanics like that. Plus, you all sit down for Monsterhearts, everyone's here to play Love Disaster: The Interpersonal. You're on the same page and the game is still concerned with consent and player comfort even with that. The thing is, even though MH is specifically about horrible destructive relationships, it still refuses to cross the line of letting PCs be coerced without their player's consent. If another PC rolls to turn yours on, you get a choice of whether to go along with it (or give them a string). Really it's like the gold standard for how to handle this poo poo.
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Mar 5, 2019 20:29
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Adeptus Evangelion Shootman, punchman, get punched man, Wizard So, our character classes reveal another problem with the organization of this book, but to be fair it's kind of one every single Hams game has had and one that's a bit hard to avoid. There's going to be a shitload of Talents and abilities and the Careers are DH1e style 'you unlock this Advance table once you've spent X EXP' careers, rather than WHFRP2e full advance tables or Black Crusade/Only War 'here's your list of EXP costs' tables. Thankfully, the career concepts are extremely simple and easy to describe, so even without being able to tell what all of them do yet I can tell you what they're for. Stat scales are also very different from DH; you generally use less EXP to advance in your stats. A 'good' Advance is 100-250-500-750 like in DH, a 'medium' advance is 200-350-500-750, a 'bad' advance is 250-500-750-1500, and an 'excellent' advance is 100-200-300-400. Also, every single pilot starts with Speak (English) (Should probably be 'home language'; what if you're playing in Japan, or Russia, or China?), Literacy, and then either another language or a Common Lore. They also all start with AT Field (Deflect) (We'll get into this later), AT Power (Neutralize) (Completely necessary for angelic combat, we'll get into it later), 2 skills of their choice that are NOT Dodge or Awareness (Those two are important and advance separately), and a couple upgrade points for their Eva based on their type. Also get 400 EXP to spend. Ranks go 0-1000, 1000-2000, 2000-4000, 4000-7000, 7000-9999, and then top at Rank 6 at 10,000+. Skill Proficiency is one of the other few good ideas they had. The bulk of the game's mechanics are focused almost entirely on giant robot combat, and that goes for character resources. If you want extra skills, they're cheap and you get X number of picks each rank. You also get a few slots for upgrading those skills to +10 or +20. This helps make the careers much easier to make, since the designers don't need to be worrying about important questions that vexed DH1e's designers, like when it's permissible to give the party's Scum actual stealth skills or the weird insistence that 'ride horse' is a high level ability reserved for the mightiest. The Skirmisher is our first career, and it's Asuka, ostensibly. You don't bother with AT Field magic or the biological nature of your robot. You're all about your robot as a giant weapons platform. You fight with the two most effective physical combat styles: Melee and Heavy Weapons. The Skirmisher tries to be so good with basic combat that they can get around an Angel's bullshit, and they're often good enough to do this. With some newly introduced mechanics compared to when I actually ran the game, ranged combat is more viable, but rifle/pistol scale weapons still kind of suck. Heavy weapons are where it's at, just like in DH. Interestingly, there's no longer any need for weapon proficiency. If the weapon is mounted on your Eva, you know how to use it. This was done because in the earlier editions, players learned proficiency for weapons, which also carried over to when they were on the ground if they ever found themselves under attack. Some of the designers hated the fact that pilots, being trained combatants with a bunch of EXP in fighting skills, kind of tended to rock the average soldier despite being 15 years old (Evas are piloted almost exactly like infantry combat, just scaled up, which is one of the few good decisions). So, now you don't have to spend EXP on learning to use new weapons, but you're also non-proficient with pretty much anything when you're out of the cockpit. Skirmishers are fast as hell, have good WS and BS, have amazing Perception for some reason, suck at WP and Synch, and are generally a boring but very effective class. You want to be an unimaginative but useful basic fighter, this is the class for you. They're the most equipment focused class, and get lots of Structural and Weapon upgrades (Armor, gadgets, and guns) but pay more for the base biology of their Eva. They tend to approach the Eva like it was a huge cyborg and treat it more like a vehicle. They play an awful lot like a Dark Heresy Assassin, and given how effective Dodge Tanking is and how useful high skill can be, they'll do their job just fine. The Pointman is supposed to be Rei and was, when I played, the most redundant and useless class in the game. That may have changed; I'll have to go over their talents and things more to check. This is the tank/support class, and if you know 40kRP you know 'tank' doesn't really do much. They're great at Toughness to an absurd degree, which is potentially useful since it helps you resist passing out in the cockpit. They're also good at WS and BS, good at Agility, and have excellent Fellowship. Also bad at WP and Synch. The Pointman focuses on stuff like taking hits on their arms (which they can survive losing) or slowing down enemies, and ostensibly sets up the Skirmisher and other characters to win battles more easily. In practice, when I was playing in the older editions, there was nothing a Pointman did that wouldn't have been done better by having another Skirmisher who killed enemies faster. They'll spend a lot of a fight acting as a budget Skirmisher while trying to get the enemy to target them so they can throw their Toughness abilities in its way, and to do that they basically have to be right next to an ally. In my experience, in a system like DH, the best status effect is dead. You're better off just trying to put the enemy down faster, and taking hits is never as safe as avoiding them. But you know, the tough self-sacrificing type who loves their friends and loves getting their arm torn off dramatically is a staple of anime, so here they are. They're good at Biology and Structure but have poor Weapon upgrades, because they need armor and they need meat. The Berserker is Shinji, ostensibly. They're a pilot focused on their bond with their Eva, and on making the Eva go crazy. Hilariously for the class intended to be Shinji (sort of), the Berserker is buff and huge, getting Excellent Strength and Toughness and good Weapon Skill and Synch Ratio. They're bad at Agility and Willpower. Wow, sure seems this game hates Willpower. Almost like it's excited for your characters failing Fear tests or being easy to manipulate. They get all kinds of wild stuff like 'add some of your own Strength Bonus when fighting in the Eva' or abilities that make it much easier to drive the Eva into its crazy Berserk mode. They also have Frenzy! Well, Bloodlust. Frenzy didn't sound cool enough, I guess. At least it gives a WS bonus instead of penalty, now? Still stops you parrying, though, so you're going to die. They also kind of suck at dodging, which is a bad thing for a melee specialist. They are all melee specialists. This is fine, because melee is one of the most powerful combat options. As time goes, the Berserker learns to eat angels, regenerate, and do all kinds of crazy biological soul tricks. They're good at Biological and Weapon upgrades, because they want a chainsaw and they want it now, and they want a huge beefy right arm behind it. They suck at Structure because you cannot possibly contain The Beast and all its meats. On one hand, they're powerful. On the other hand, a lot of what they do takes away your ability to make decisions for your character because now the Eva is in charge. That kind of sucks. They're also the second best AT Power user because of their high Synch. The AT Tactician has no parallel in the show and is a wizard. The 1st edition AT Tact was terrible. They focus on manipulating their Absolute Territory or Absolute Terror or whatever field, the exact name doesn't matter. This is a weird sort of sacred boundary within which the Eva or angel or whatever can exist, and it's the huge shield that provides angels with near immunity to conventional weapons. You can do all kinds of Laws of Physics warping poo poo with it, according to the AT Tact and their space wizardry. How good the AT Tactician is will depend entirely on the AT Powers list and chapter 100 pages from now. They're decent shots but terrible in melee (bad at both WS and Agi), they have excellent Int and Per, they have good WP, and they have good Synch. They get almost no physical combat talents, but in return they get huge piles of Space Magic. Just piles and piles of the stuff. Their advance lists are absolutely full of high level Space Magic, picked up well before any other class can learn it. Where others use the AT Field for a few tricks, the AT Tact relies on it completely. They also get good advances in all 3 Eva upgrade points, for some reason. I'd have expected them to have bad Weapon Upgrades, seeing as I don't think most of them really use weapons very often. AT abilities can theoretically do all kinds of things, relying on your Synch Ratio to generate a pool of points you use for deflecting attacks (Your AT field is never going to stop an angel, so it's rarely worth using it for this), turning down the enemy's AT field (so your mates can shoot them), or casting spells. If you play any other class, your AT Field is going to be a minor afterthought. If you play one of these guys, everything else will be a minor afterthought as you focus everything on being a Space Wizard. We do not, in fact, have everything needed to make a character yet. We only have what's needed to make a pilot. The sample character will be holding off until we get to the Eva, and that's waiting for us right through the massive pile of Talents that's coming up. Next Time: Goddamn, they made up a lot of random Talents.
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Mar 5, 2019 20:43
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megane posted:The thing is, even though MH is specifically about horrible destructive relationships, it still refuses to cross the line of letting PCs be coerced without their player's consent. If another PC rolls to turn yours on, you get a choice of whether to go along with it (or give them a string). Really it's like the gold standard for how to handle this poo poo. Yeah, I was using them as an example because they're a game that is 100% about Love Disasters, knows it's about Love Disasters, knows there can be trouble when you're writing about Love Disasters, and is focused on trying to make sure it doesn't pop up and everyone can feel comfortable and safe. Contrast with this, which thinks making people comfortable and safe is the GM holding back too much.
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Mar 5, 2019 20:50
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Dan Olson has a solid two-part series discussing Evangelion and authorial intent that is good watching to get a handle on Eva if you never have. In short, people didn't get the message of "you should accept yourself and utilize introspection to understand you're worth it" due to a mixture of A: scheduling issues that resulted in budget cuts, B: the author being unable to tell the story true to their vision due to hella depression and budget cuts and C: fans being absolute dogshit at any form of critical analysis, relying on a surface level reading of the work and hitching their horses to the Christian symbolism because that's more acceptable and accessible than "it's okay to be depressed". Then put that in the hands of people who are worse at critical analysis and fetishize a game about bad satire and an entire medium because it is exotic entertainment from the land of the Orient and clearly superior because Different. People who, to be absolutely cruel and sweeping with my statements, are not emotionally equipped or emotionally mature to approach the topics of relationships from any direction. People who regularly engage in ritualistic dehumanization of others through ignorance or malice and of themselves through embracing anonymity of the chans. It was doomed from the start, children raising a child in a cargo cult environment to shamble out into the world on tremoring legs. It's no real surprise that it has a poisonous view of relationships and identity and writing. It's just interesting in how the symptoms manifest.
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Mar 5, 2019 20:53
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In Monsterhearts, everyone is a fool doing foolish things in foolish relationships because all the PCs are vulnerable adolescents in crisis, and that gives context to people treating each other badly. As opposed to, for example, Bliss Stage establishing "Pedophile Mastermind" as a GMPC role.
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Mar 5, 2019 20:54
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Hostile V posted:Dan Olson has a solid two-part series discussing Evangelion and authorial intent that is good watching to get a handle on Eva if you never have. In short, people didn't get the message of "you should accept yourself and utilize introspection to understand you're worth it" due to a mixture of A: scheduling issues that resulted in budget cuts, B: the author being unable to tell the story true to their vision due to hella depression and budget cuts and C: fans being absolute dogshit at any form of critical analysis, relying on a surface level reading of the work and hitching their horses to the Christian symbolism because that's more acceptable and accessible than "it's okay to be depressed". The thing is, I actually really enjoy Evangelion the show, or did when I watched it like 8-10 years ago (can't remember exactly) because of this. I thought the ending of Shinji saying 'I want to exist in this world and I want to learn to love myself and not assume everyone hates me' was a perfectly good climax to the story because that's what the loving story was actually about. Sure, the Congratulations ending is weird, but a story about a depressed person slowly working through it under pressure and reaching emotional catharsis is a-okay with me. Evangelion is a weird, weird show with a lot of really strange window-dressing and a fanbase that hates the fact that Shinji even exists as a character, hence the endless 'Shinji becomes a MAN!' stories and all. When we get to their dogshit treatment of theme (They think one of the themes of the show is evolution) I've got a bunch of stuff I want to say about the utility of weakness in writing and its under utilization in genre fiction. E: This is part of the reason for this review. AdEva is a really, really terrible treatment of a genuinely interesting work. More importantly, the spirit of that original work really did lead to some very good gaming when I ran the game for friends I knew and trusted, even if the actual AdEva game we were exploring it through did not, itself, add much to doing so. I have genuinely good memories of those two campaigns years ago. But a terrible treatment of an interesting work can, itself, be intriguing to examine because of why and how it's terrible. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Mar 5, 2019 |
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Mar 5, 2019 20:59
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Night10194 posted:The thing is, I actually really enjoy Evangelion the show, or did when I watched it like 8-10 years ago (can't remember exactly) because of this. I thought the ending of Shinji saying 'I want to exist in this world and I want to learn to love myself and not assume everyone hates me' was a perfectly good climax to the story because that's what the loving story was actually about. Sure, the Congratulations ending is weird, but a story about a depressed person slowly working through it under pressure and reaching emotional catharsis is a-okay with me.
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Mar 5, 2019 21:04
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Hostile V posted:Unironically congrats on getting it because when I saw it, it was a drip feed of four episodes a week once a week at anime club, talking to friends and being snarky. We thought the ending was boring and weird and that the show was overhyped. I really have to imagine most people saw it in that way as well and took the ending as an insult. I also had the advantage of watching the whole thing many years after it came out on DVD, knowing about Anno's serious depression going into it. It is a lot easier to engage with something when you see it all at once and have some background on what you're getting into. Amusingly, I was also primed for it because I was running my first AdEva game at the time; I was watching it because I was curious about the show the game was based on since I was enjoying running the game. Also, I'm talking about the end of the show, not End of Evangelion. I've actually never seen End of Evangelion, weirdly. I know what it is from osmosis, but I was content with how the normal series ended and didn't really see the need for a further conclusion. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 21:13 on Mar 5, 2019 |
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Mar 5, 2019 21:10
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| # ? May 15, 2024 00:24 |
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Part of what makes Evangelion so frustrating is that not only was Anno prevented from telling the story he wanted by budget cuts and depression, this is mirrored in the show. On the budget cut side, I can still recall bits where the show contrived reasons to have very long still shots. On the depression side, there are multiple instances where one of the main characters makes progress, then suffers a triggering event that leaves them a near-catatonic wreck all over again. So it's not just that Shinji's a wimp, but he'll start to grow a little before suddenly winding up back where he started. Rei and Asuka suffer analogous traumas at one or more points. Anyway. Speculative fiction has always been a double-edged sword in that you can realize your personal and political beliefs (including ones you don't hold consciously) in a fictional world, or project your beliefs onto the fictional world created by someone else. I'm not sure why the communities surrounding anime and young adult fiction are a hotbed of people projecting their maladaptive and antisocial sexual and political ideology.
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Mar 5, 2019 21:16
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