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Joe Slowboat posted:Is Dawkins the same as 'The Gentleman Gamer' ? He's had that nickname/online persona far longer than recent lovely events that have maligned either of those G-words. His thing is/was making youtube videos where he put on the persona of an old-school British gentleman (in the Victorian sense, without full Victorian cosplay) talking 'bout WoD (and other RPG) stuff. Much of which was actually pretty good, as youtube content talking 'bout RPGs goes, it's worth checking out his stuff if you care about that sort of thing (which most wouldn't be here in this thread if they didn't to some degree). Basically, just trying to say he isn't a bad'un, and I feel bad that he got screwed over with his Beckett's Guide when nuwolf forced edits on it to make it more v5 compatible.
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Mar 26, 2019 19:46
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Oh, did he do Beckett's Guide? I'm not an OWoD fan but I've heard good things about that book, so... that's nice I guess?
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Mar 26, 2019 19:56
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Anyone else on here back the Contagion Chronicle kickstarter? I can't really say the new splats are grabbing me yet, but I'm curious what y'all think.
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Mar 26, 2019 20:14
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Does anyone know how Changeling Clarity interacts with Demon cover? I seem to remember it giving them some ability to see through illusions. Am I just misunderstanding what it's supposed to represent? Arashiofordo3 fucked around with this message at 20:37 on Mar 26, 2019 |
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Mar 26, 2019 20:32
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Demonic Cover isn't really an illusion, so I'm going to say that kenning does nothing.
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Mar 26, 2019 20:38
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Arashiofordo3 posted:Does anyone know how Changeling Clarity interacts with Demon cover? Changelings can see through each others' Masks. Cover is not an illusion or mask, and is explicitly able to beat even dedicated supernatural-sensing powers a lot of the time via the spoofing rules. Whenever a Demon's cover gets scanned by anything that detects supernatural beings, they can roll their Cover rating to make themselves read as a normal human.
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Mar 26, 2019 20:39
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Yeah, unless a demon's cover is paper-thin they're going to read as human.
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Mar 26, 2019 20:41
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Great, thanks for the clarification
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Mar 26, 2019 20:43
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e: Beaten, but yeah, there are explicit, mechanical rules for what happens when a supernatural ability "scans" a Demon to see whether they're a supernatural being or not; it's not 100% foolproof, but it also takes priority over things that would normally just work. See page 112 for the rules on spoofing.
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Mar 26, 2019 20:47
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FrostyPox posted:My bare-bones idea was to gently caress with the Mage setting a little bit and have each "watchtower" be the cornerstone of a different realm, all connect to the Dark Tower which is the metaphysical structural support of all realities. The Crimson King would've been some Lovecraftian deity imprisoned in the basement of the Dark Tower, which is connected to the Abyss, but he escaped and is climbing the Tower, corrupting realities as he climbs, with his ultimate goal of reaching the top and destroying the tower, thus allowing the Abyss to rise and consume everything. I might steal some of that if I end up running my own take on it.
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Mar 26, 2019 20:49
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Octavo posted:Anyone else on here back the Contagion Chronicle kickstarter? I can't really say the new splats are grabbing me yet, but I'm curious what y'all think. Threw five bucks in for the manuscript previews, expect to withdraw them before the campaign concludes unless the material surprises me. So far, with the first manuscript preview, completely unsurprised. I left the end of the first manuscript preview for the Contagion Chronicle, which explores the ten central factions defined by their response to the Contagion, not knowing what the Contagion is or what it does, and that's the same feeling all the other preview material I've seen has left me with. The faction stuff is flat and doesn't interest me in the least, and I certainly don't really want to read any more CofD material about an organization of vampires, mages, and beasts with a global surveillance network called Caliber. The faction names are cutesy and forced (the Zero Hour? the Crucible Initiative? the Machiavelli Gambit?). The references to the God-Machine are stilted and insubstantial, lacking that ground's-eye view that focused on what it does rather than what it is. There's a high proportion of first-person expositional narration, WoD-style. It's all kind of comic-booky so far. Arashiofordo3 posted:Does anyone know how Changeling Clarity interacts with Demon cover? You're probably thinking of kenning, the ability of changelings with healthy Clarity to detect supernatural beings and effects. A successful kenning roll would probably be able to identify that a demon is in some way supernatural, if the demon fails her natural spoofing roll, which demons use to fool senses that identify them as supernatural. Judging by dice pools and Willpower cost (kenning has one, spoofing doesn't), a demon with a stable Cover has the advantage in the exchange. Rand Brittain posted:Demonic Cover isn't really an illusion, so I'm going to say that kenning does nothing. Kenning has nothing to do with illusions. It just senses supernatural phenomena. A demon who's not using Going Native is a supernatural being, just one that's really good at hiding it and blocking detection. I Am Just a Box fucked around with this message at 20:58 on Mar 26, 2019 |
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Mar 26, 2019 20:52
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Do CofD writers get royalties for the sale of books they wrote, or other revenue based on ongoing sales?
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Mar 26, 2019 20:56
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Octavo posted:Anyone else on here back the Contagion Chronicle kickstarter? I can't really say the new splats are grabbing me yet, but I'm curious what y'all think. Yeah. I wasn't expecting much from the first chapter but was pleasantly surprised. We'd seen three groups spoiled on the blog, the Cryptocracy, the Jeremiad, and the Crucible Initiative. None of them really grabbed me. I think it was the Gentleman Gamer who name dropped the others. I really like Zero Hour, the Rosetta Society from the Sworn, and Naglfar's Army and the Machiavelli Gambit from the False. Nice goals, easy to play or put in, can see myself playing or running members from them. That's a relief.
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Mar 26, 2019 20:57
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Demon and Changeling cooperation is always fascinating to me because both splats are engaging with paranoia on some level: Dealing with the ever-present fear that a nigh-omnipotent enemy that you were once a servitor of will find and recapture you. A Winter Court Changeling is, theoretically, a Demon's best friend; They can provide access to the Hedge, where the God Machine has no power, and can magically enforce bonds of allegiance, mitigating the risk of betrayal, while a Demon is an enormously potent asset as backup. The issue is, of course, getting two fidgety, paranoid covert operatives to trust each other. EDIT: Geists/Ghosts, also. The fact that the Hedge doesn't have a twilight, so all ghosts just instantly manifest whether they have that ability or not (And Geist makes it clear that the number of ghosts who can do that is pretty low). Getting able to become visible/tangible is a big deal for spookies and their continued existence. Crasical fucked around with this message at 21:12 on Mar 26, 2019 |
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Mar 26, 2019 20:58
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Do CofD writers get royalties for the sale of books they wrote, or other revenue based on ongoing sales? No.
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Mar 26, 2019 21:01
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Any chance I could get a list of all ten Contagion Chronicle factions? I'm morbidly curious whether they do in fact all sound like relatively low-effort MMO factions.
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Mar 26, 2019 21:05
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Thanks. Digging up rules references and so on reminded me that I still need to think about whether I'll ever run Demon again, but at least that takes "material support to awful people" off the table.
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Mar 26, 2019 21:05
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Joe Slowboat posted:Any chance I could get a list of all ten Contagion Chronicle factions? I'm morbidly curious whether they do in fact all sound like relatively low-effort MMO factions. There's only eight. Five Sworn, the Cryptocracy, the Jeremiad, the Rosetta Society, Ship of Theseus, and the Zero Hour. And three False, the Crucible Initiative, the Machiavelli Gambit, and Naglfar's Army. They've been name-dropped on the forum before.
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Mar 26, 2019 21:19
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The heck does the Ship of Theseus problem have to do with extrauniversal plagues?
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Mar 26, 2019 21:20
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Okay, from reading into the Introduction after pledging for $5, the factions don't explain what the Contagion is because it's a "no canon answer" kind of thing.
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Mar 26, 2019 21:25
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quote:The Ship of Theseus is a philosophical problem we took as our guiding principle. It poses the question: how many parts of a thing can you change or replace before it is no longer the same thing? In our case, how much could a monster change before she is no longer a monster? In the end, we embraced the uncertainty of having no firm solution as a sign of our work having meaning. Definitive answers breed complacency. They think the Contagion is emblematic of situational factors changing, or maybe the symptoms of the cosmos itself evolving, and view it as a pressure to evolve themselves. They're the Crossover Ordo. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I'm not really even sure what the distinction is between the Sworn and the False. I mean, I know what it says: Sworn fight Contagion, False embrace it on some level. But the Crucible Initiative of the False seems like it's all about fighting the Contagion, whereas the Ship of Theseus don't really seem like they care much.
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Mar 26, 2019 21:27
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Joe Slowboat posted:The heck does the Ship of Theseus problem have to do with extrauniversal plagues? Basically that while sometimes change can be scary it's not necessarily something you have to freak out and fight against as much as something to adapt to. It's like what the covenants do in vampire, you can either fall into your worst impulses, try to deny anything's happened, but the best idea is to accept that This Is Happening and find a way to live with it. I Am Just a Box posted:I'm not really even sure what the distinction is between the Sworn and the False. I mean, I know what it says: Sworn fight Contagion, False embrace it on some level. But the Crucible Initiative of the False seems like it's all about fighting the Contagion, whereas the Ship of Theseus don't really seem like they care much. "The Initiative employs a scorched earth policy when it comes to the Contagion. Raze it all to the ground, burn the fields, salt the earth. We destroy all Contagious on sight, as well as anything or anyone that is infected, that could possibly be infected, or that could potentially be a vector." nofather fucked around with this message at 21:34 on Mar 26, 2019 |
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Mar 26, 2019 21:28
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Rand Brittain posted:Okay, from reading into the Introduction after pledging for $5, the factions don't explain what the Contagion is because it's a "no canon answer" kind of thing. Right, but the God-Machine Chronicle spent a very good introduction chapter explaining what form the God-Machine's machinations take and what effect they have on people without settling on a firm answer for what it Truly Is or Comes From. You still come away with an idea of what the God-Machine does (Fortean conspiratorial high strangeness) and a sense of the tone of its motives (control and mysterious arcane alignments). What does the Contagion do? What does it look like when the Contagion strikes? In what situations does it strike? How does that differ from any other miscellaneous antagonist, what gives it a little definition and flavor? The book gives us eight factions (my bad, not ten, fooled by expecting a pattern that was broken!) brought together and defined by their response to the wake of the Contagion without first characterizing the wake of the Contagion.
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Mar 26, 2019 21:36
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It seems like it would be really difficult to have an entire chronicle when the driving force behind the events is a giant Mario question block.
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Mar 26, 2019 21:37
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Mors Rattus posted:It seems like it would be really difficult to have an entire chronicle when the driving force behind the events is a giant Mario question block. Didn't they make a movie about that? 
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Mar 26, 2019 21:40
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I Am Just a Box posted:What does the Contagion do? What does it look like when the Contagion strikes? In what situations does it strike? How does that differ from any other miscellaneous antagonist, what gives it a little definition and flavor? The book gives us eight factions (my bad, not ten, fooled by expecting a pattern that was broken!) brought together and defined by their response to the wake of the Contagion without first characterizing the wake of the Contagion. The campaign description says that's explained in other chapters.
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Mar 26, 2019 21:42
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good to know that organizational layout remains a mystery beyond human ken, at least
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Mar 26, 2019 21:43
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Casual Encountess posted:so i’m running my first irl game of v5 vampire hopefully this summer and i just got the core rulebook since i haven’t touched this stuff in years. i’m playing with a bunch of people who have d&d experience but have only heard the ww horror stories.
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Mar 26, 2019 21:46
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nofather posted:The campaign description says that's explained in other chapters. Right, and I'm saying that's the wrong order to put the information in. Keep the full length explanation later, but at least move enough information up in front of the splat splashes that you get a handle on it before reading about the Sworn and the False. This is really a problem every 2e core has inherited from Vampire, because the splats-first layout Vampire set as the standard works well for Vampire, a game where general pop culture knowledge is close enough to what's going on that you can jump straight into what are the different kinds of vampire and what do they spend their nights doing, and basically none of the other gamelines. It just kind of hits especially hard here.
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Mar 26, 2019 21:49
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I Am Just a Box posted:Right, and I'm saying that's the wrong order to put the information in. Keep the full length explanation later, but at least move enough information up in front of the splat splashes that you get a handle on it before reading about the Sworn and the False. Even with Vampire, it would have been better IMO to have had some theme and setting building before immediately hitting the Clans and Covenants. It's a design choice that I frankly hate, but eh, maybe it works better for other folks. I feel it is more an artifact of that time it was going to be a chronicle book for Vampire: the Requiem rather than a whole new edition and they never bothered to backfill in the "basics." Many of the second editions feel like they presume you read the first edition.
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Mar 26, 2019 21:53
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I Am Just a Box posted:Right, and I'm saying that's the wrong order to put the information in. Keep the full length explanation later, but at least move enough information up in front of the splat splashes that you get a handle on it before reading about the Sworn and the False. So you understand it, at least. I think it's in response to the ratio of players to storytellers. The players don't need to (and, as I've learned from hearing about other games) don't want to know everything about the setting. They want to know what they can play. There's more players than storytellers, so frontload their big options. D&D does the same thing, classes up front, feats and spells and magic items later. But there's certainly enough people apparently confused about it that I understand it's an issue. Saying it 'hits especially hard' here seems a bit of an exaggeration, too. You've said you are basically just throwing five dollars at it and expecting to take it back 'unless the material surprises me.' You don't seem interested in playing it, or running it, as much as you want answers regarding the setting. And that isn't really the audience for the book so much as someone who wants to play a crossover game is. Plus obviously if you had the book, if you wanted information on something, you could just check out the table of contents and flip to the relevant section. nofather fucked around with this message at 22:05 on Mar 26, 2019 |
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Mar 26, 2019 21:58
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nofather posted:So you understand it, at least. Why is the player getting the chronicle book with all the details in it at all, though? Like, a loving pamphlet ought to be enough, or a 30 pager; if you're selling a chronicle where every player needs their own copy of the entire book to be able to participate, on top of the existing books they need (at least one corebook) you're doing it wrong
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Mar 26, 2019 22:04
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speaking as a dude who knows and runs games for box: I would not say that box doesn't want crossover games
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Mar 26, 2019 22:05
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MollyMetroid posted:Why is the player getting the chronicle book with all the details in it at all, though? Like, a loving pamphlet ought to be enough, or a 30 pager; if you're selling a chronicle where every player needs their own copy of the entire book to be able to participate, on top of the existing books they need (at least one corebook) you're doing it wrong Boxed sets don't seem to be as popular now. But with a book you can just hand it over to a player and say the player options are in the first chapter. Mors Rattus posted:speaking as a dude who knows and runs games for box: I would not say that box doesn't want crossover games I'll take your word for it, but it doesn't seem like from any of their posts that they want 'this' crossover game. nofather fucked around with this message at 22:09 on Mar 26, 2019 |
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Mar 26, 2019 22:06
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Except that as a player, knowing what I can play is one thing; knowing what the gently caress is going on in vague terms at minimum is going to be required for me to be able to make any sort of informed decision about what I want to play.
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Mar 26, 2019 22:09
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The thing that weirds me out is that the contagion seems like it occupies the conceptual space of the Abyss - reality degrading or being degraded.
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Mar 26, 2019 22:12
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Also like, legit: They don't need a box set. They do loving jumpstart 30pagers all the goddamn time. You do a Player's Guide to the Contagion Chronicle with the player-facing information, make it a $5 pdf even, and say to your players hey folks you'll want this. That way you're not requiring every single player to look through one single copy of the book or buy a book that has 90% content they're not going to use. It's not rocket science; it's not even something that they don't know how to do--it's not even something the industry hasn't seen, as Paizo releases one of these for literally every adventure path, free, because this is a solved problem
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Mar 26, 2019 22:13
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nofather posted:I'll take your word for it, but it doesn't seem like from any of their posts that they want 'this' crossover game. This is pretty accurate. I'm open to being proven wrong! I don't want to dislike the book. I want there to be stuff I think is cool that I might use in a game, and I'm down to keep and up my pledge if future reveals of later parts of the book turn me around on it. Right now I mostly feel disappointed, because "a book about crossovers" was right up my alley, but so far, what the book turns out to be is much more specific than that in a way that doesn't do anything for me.
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Mar 26, 2019 22:15
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Octavo posted:The thing that weirds me out is that the contagion seems like it occupies the conceptual space of the Abyss - reality degrading or being degraded. 
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Mar 26, 2019 22:15
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MollyMetroid posted:It's not rocket science; it's not even something that they don't know how to do--it's not even something the industry hasn't seen, as Paizo releases one of these for literally every adventure path, free, because this is a solved problem But Paizo's rich. They can give out a cheap pdf for free because people are paying $15 a month for at least six months for an adventure path. I Am Just a Box posted:This is pretty accurate. I mean obviously it's your right to not like it, I just don't think the thing is going to be giving out solid answers about the metaplot to the point that it can be used as an almanac or something. Like the Rosetta Society think that the Contagion is a result of Something Else communicating with our present world. And they could be right, it looks like interstitial terrain is going to be expanded on in this, and there's probably going to be some more suggestions and theories, but in the end it would be more for you to say you want it to be Father Wolf attempting to claw his way back into the world, or the darkness of the Cheiron Corporation's homeworld coming after the last survivors. Just like if you're running D&D or Pathfinder you can choose your game to be about the manipulations of the Zhentarim or another rise of the Runemasters. quote:Right now I mostly feel disappointed, because "a book about crossovers" was right up my alley, but so far, what the book turns out to be is much more specific than that in a way that doesn't do anything for me. It does look like there's going to be a decent amount of possibilities. Things like the Geryo spreading like a plague, but also people wandering into interstitial terrain, and while it hasn't been mentioned I and others have been waiting for them to whip out a zombie apocalypse. For more generalized crossovers, this chapter 'Storytelling - Thorough, accessible advice on running your crossover chronicles' seems more up your alley. The Contagion looks like it's going to be a big part of the book but that's seems to be the framework, like the God-Machine Chronicle had a bunch of adventures to run, while offering advice on how to run it without them as well. nofather fucked around with this message at 22:25 on Mar 26, 2019 |
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Mar 26, 2019 22:16
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