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Mors Rattus posted:Age of Sigmar Lore Chat: Legions of Nagash You know in a weird way these three are kind of gently caress, Marry, Kill. You might be able to deal carefully with Neferata if you make sure she sees a way to advance/promote herself by keeping to the agreement of whatever deal you make with her. As awful as he is (and he is awful) it might be possible to recruit Manfred if you can find some way to break him loose from Nagash's control. If nothing else, most of Chaos is composes for living beings, so they'd be great targets for somebody who "terrorizes the living." Arkhan you probably just have to kill if you can (and you probably can't) in the hopes that Nagash will be somebody/something a little more subvertable in his place. If you coudl somehow capture the guy and learn all of his secrets about Nagash, that would be better be far less likely than even killing him, I think. Everyone fucked around with this message at 18:16 on Aug 20, 2020 |
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Aug 20, 2020 18:09
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I do enjoy that Manny's consistent shiteness gets carried through to AoS. Suck it you stupid bastard.
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Aug 20, 2020 18:12
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Josef bugman posted:I do enjoy that Manny's consistent shiteness gets carried through to AoS. Suck it you stupid bastard. von Carstein gonna von Carstein. Meanwhile, on a completely different subject, I'm loving the poo poo out of those Illithid modules - especially that second one. How useful is it to have your own Psionic talented folks in the party? Does it just open extra vulnerability or does it give you more of a chance to defend against the various Mind Blasts. I seem to recall something called Tower of Iron Will which allowed psionic folks to project an area shield around themselves to help protect other folks in the party. I wonder how hard it would be to translate that module (including psionics) into Warhammer 2nd/4th Ed. rules. Brain-sucking squid-beasties from space would make for an interesting change from the usual Chaos/greenskins/skaven/undead threats.
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Aug 20, 2020 18:18
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Everyone posted:von Carstein gonna von Carstein. Well! The wide-angle classic Mind Blast only works against non-psionicists, so actually having a couple along could help guarantee the party doesn't get completely locked down. Secondly, generic brainfuckery would require three stages of Contact on a psionicist while it only requires one stage of Contact on a non-psionicist, so they'd also be more resilient in that sense. Sadly, though, the wide-angle blast doesn't roll with "normal" psionic rules and so just goes straight for a save rather than psionic combat rules. Secondly, they'd be able to use some of the Illithid psi-gear like the exoskeleton to become pretty scary. Especially if they had high Int since there are some Illithid weapons that scale with Int. Like, by the end of Masters of Eternal Night, if the party has a psionic, he's likely wearing power armor and using the Illithid equivalent of a Force Weapon, so he's a Space Marine Librarian wielding something that counts as a vorpal weapon against all "humans and humanoids," which I would definitely include Illithids under. He'd also have the advantage that Illithid Magic Resistance, obviously, does not count against Psionics, so he'd have a chance to break into their brains and charm them, dominate them or erase the party from their senses. Difficult, considering that the Illithids are psionic powerhouses, but not impossible.
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Aug 20, 2020 18:29
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I mean, I feel for Manfred, because I miss Warhammer Fantasy too.
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Aug 20, 2020 21:46
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Nagash only selected Mannfred because Vlad would've kicked his rear end. 
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Aug 20, 2020 21:51
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Cooked Auto posted:Nagash only selected Mannfred because Vlad would've kicked his rear end. Vlad, Isa, Settra and Khalida on a road trip to kick Nagash' rear end would be a truly beautiful thing. Even though Khalida would be constantly trying to murder the vamps on the team.
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Aug 20, 2020 22:01
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The Illithiad Dawn of the Overmind  So the party's now saved the city of Stormport, rescued their friend, made contact with the mysterious "Strom" via their friend's psi-tattoo, recovered an ancient spelljammer, saved at least one village and numerous ancient anti-Illithid rebels, and they've got a vampiric Illithid stuffed in a box in the hold, ready to be unleashed on their unsuspecting enemies. Oh and the party's psionic has started talking exclusively in Warhammer 40,000 memes after realizing he's currently wearing literal psionic power armor and wielding a pseudo-vorpal Force Weapon. The rest of the party resolve to drown him once the adventure is over and they no longer need him to help in fights. Now they need to hunt down the powerful item that'll help them shut down the Illithid universe domination project once and for all: The Annulus. In any case, they've scoured the crater, loaded up their ship and they're ready to rock and roll. They plug in the navigational data, awakening the ship's simple AI which immediately pilots them up and into Wildspace, setting a direct course for the edge of their crystal sphere. It's surprisingly uneventful, which is frankly a bit of a shame, since it would be livened up by raiding some nautiloid jammers or something on the way, maybe disrupting an Illithid program to darken the sun to buy their homeworld a bit more time while they complete Strom's quest. Still, it would be easy enough for the GM to insert it. It's in fact encouraged by the book, where it's suggested that there are old star charts aboard the party's Nautiloid which have alternate locations they could visit along the way.  In general, the trip, unless the GM inserts some encounters, is mostly just mood-setting. There's a brief fight with some literal space ghosts that attempt to possess the party while in Phlogiston, but then they arrive in the Penumbra Sphere, which has unique conditions. It isn't full of Wildspace, but rather Truespace, which behaves entirely like real-world space, i.e. it's a near-vacuum that will gently caress you up. The 'jammer can't even maintain its usual air envelope in those conditions. Here there's also a slightly more nasty encounter, as they pass through a cloud of Voor spores. Voor are apparently an ancient race destroyed by the Illithid, just as nasty as the Illithid themselves. But a few of their spores have survived in deep Wildspace and Truespace, and here a bunch of them latch on to the hull of the ship and convert part of it to new bodies, developing into hunter-killer larvae literally built from the ship's hull. They have insanely good AC and are psi-immune, while also being able to hand out one hell of a melee asskicking. Unlike Illithids, however, they aren't magic immune and a clever mage could do a lot to gently caress them up. The party is also given a chance to hunt down and destroy most of the spores before they mature, as the ship's AI detects the infestation and warns the crew to go hunting for larvae before they grow up and kill someone. In fact, the party is given a decent chance of destroying most or all of them as long as they take the warning seriously and do an organized deck-by-deck search.  And with that done, they arrive in view of Penumbra...  Penumbra is a goddamn artificial discworld. Built so as to be in constant twilight from its captive star. Penumbra The party's Nautiloid touches down in the Capital Terrene region. Their goal is to get into the Capital Subterrene which lies, obviously, below it. Unfortunately, they're foreigners and don't know the area. Their main goal here is to get the trust of the locals so they'll serve as guides. The locals are descendants of rebel slaves, and, once the language barrier is overcome, are quite willing to work with the players. They've got their own set of issues that need dealing with, and the help of a bunch of magically and physically powerful offworlders is quite welcome. The locals aren't super-advanced technologically, but every bit as intelligent and capable as the players, though they have little to no outright magic. Just about any location the players head to on the map will in some way guide them to the others, so the players aren't railroaded into starting out in one particular place. For instance, if they go to the Lair of the Hungry One first, one of the corpses there has a map to Gwalior. If they go to Gwalior first, they can rescue a prisoner who can tell them about the other areas. And so on. (the module permits the GM to set some other pre-progammed landing areas if he wants to do some more Penumbran adventures) Their two main quests are to best The Hungry One and The Unliving King. The Hungry One is basically just a big hive of giant spiders that's been preying on the locals, and they'd greatly appreciate having them dead. Solving this gets the party a guide to the Capital Subterrene entrance. If the players aren't fools, dealing with The Hungry One is easy enough, it's huge and real dangerous if they get into a fight with it or let it ambush them, but it's also just a huge animal so they can blow it up with magic or teleport it into space and generally bust out all their tricks against it because it has no real tricks or bullshit defenses of its own besides backup spiders and save-or-die poison in its bite.  The Unliving King is... nastier. Mostly what they get out of dealing with it, besides doing an outright good deed, is that he's captured the most knowledgeable of the locals, who can actually tell them about the Annulus. The Unliving King is an Alhoon, or Illithilich, i.e. an Illithid Lich, who's set himself up in Gwalior, the former capital of the region which used to be a much nicer place than the villages the locals are now reduced to dwelling in. The Unliving King was accidentally unearthed by tomb raiders, and laid waste to Gwalior. Now it hunts for more slaves to set up a broader dominion over the region. Like most Illithids and liches, it is extremely arrogant and not as smart as it thinks it is. In a cool detail, the Unliving King usually spends his time meditating in a room filled with mummified Illithids, and since he can cast most of his spells and use all his psionics without actually moving, they effectively serve as camouflage. It provides a creepy mental image, if nothing else. Even so, though, he's a single Illithid without a Mind Blast to his name. If the players figure out which one he is and gang up on him, he's a goner. His staff is also rad, it's a sentient Illithid battle staff that can set enemies on fire, explode them at a touch(not literally, but it does so much damage it may as well gib them) and heal the wielder's wounds. Important it also allows expending (slowly regenerating) charges to reroll saving throws, which means it may not be a bad idea for a fighter or cleric to put down their main weapon to wield this staff to have an extra save against mind blasts. With the Hungry One and the Unliving King dead, and the shaman Hollerith freed, the party is given a guide to the Capital Subterrene as well as the legend of the hero Arrack, who first ventured there to do battle with the Unredeemed Beast, but was lost in the underground depths. Hollerith also suspects that the Annulus rests in the Capital Subterrene. The Capital Subterrene Into the depths they go! From slowest to fastest way into the capital Subterrene is the map from the Hungry One's lair, a guide from the locals or the rescued Hollerith. They're not really under a time pressure as such, but if the GM is rolling for random encounters it could cause them some danger. In any case, the Capital Subterrene is a combination of natural tunnels and intentionally dug Illithid chambers and passages. These days, they're mostly the home of a number of horrible flesh-eating animals(primarily a species of 9-foot humanoid cockroaches), and two competing Grimlock packs, the Hiao and the Gyor. Sadly there's no canon way to resolve their conflict(though I feel most parties, upon realizing it's not over any sort of unresolvable issue, but instead about who gets access to a religiously important part of the tunnels, would attempt to resolve it and sould be allowed to do so), but the party can easily make friends with one of the two sides to gain access to guides and an understanding of what's going on down there. Apparently, long ago, when Arrack was questing to slay the Unredeemed Beast, he came upon the ancestors of the two tribes and they guided him down to the impenetrable substrate of Penumbra, where he used a mighty artifact to blast a hole into the inner tunnels for himself and his companions. The two tribes sealed the hole behind him and left two of their own, one from each tribe, on the other side of the seal, as eternal guardians, left both to honour Arrack and guard against anything that might crawl up from the depths. The writing makes it easier to team up with the Gyor tribe(if the party does battle with the giant cockroaches, they'll rescue a trapped Gyor tribesman who'll give them a way to identify themselves to the tribe as a friend) and gives them more detail since the fighting seems to be mostly happening on their home turf, but either is an option. Either way, once they open the way to Arrack's descent they get attacked by one of the two ancient Grimlock guardians who is, somehow, still alive. Also he's like 15 feet tall, about as wide, glowing and has a single cyclopean eye that can shoot energy beams. What the hell? The answer is that the area they sealed him and the other grimlock in was home to the POOLS OF VIGOR, i.e. Illithid mad science vats that they kicked thralls into to give them superpowers to better prepare them for fighting the Voor in ages past. It's implied that this may in part be responsible for the proto-Gith gaining the mental powers and resistances to rebel, which would be moderately funny, the Illithid sowing the seeds of their own destruction that way. If the party has any grimlock guides, they assume that this mega grimlock is an avatar of their gods and joins him, except for one tribe leader, named Inonu, that the PC's are clearly expected to have befriended. Inonu is a bit testy, but intelligent and also crazy strong, seeing as how he's a 10th-level Fighter that can backstab like a high-level thief and wields an ancient Illithid gauntlet that can rip out people's brains. Badass. Once they've defeated the Megagrimlock, the party might be tempted to gently caress around with the POOLS OF VIGOR themselves. This is a bad idea, as there's an 80% chance of side effects like limbs dropping off, eyeballs literally exploding(possibly taking most of the owner's head with them, 4d8 goddamn damage!), big head mode or becoming a vampire(not in the cool way, you just need to drink blood to live now). The last 20%, on the other hand, is stuff like inherent magic resistance, being immune to normal weapons, blowing people up by pointing a finger at them(3d10 damage at will, 1/day) or being able to Mind Blast like an Illithid. If the odds were slightly less fucky, it would be extremely tempting. Of course, it's implied that a powerful priest can cure this stuff... if you have access to a cleric with Heal, it may be worth just rolling the dice over and over again until everyone in the party is a superman. Past the pools of vigor, the party descends into the Nethermost, where Arrack lost his life. The Nethermost is mostly a pitch-black intelligence test for the party, to see whether they can resist getting into a fight with a dragon-sized Neothelid on the way to the resting place of the Annulus. Fighting the Neothelid is... not recommended. It has a 12d12-damage breath weapon and can erase pretty much anyone even a high-level party in a round of combat with a bit of luck. It's also quite durable and has access to the standard illithid mind blast. Destroying the neothelid is probably the toughest, nastiest fight in the entire series of modules, and does have some decent gear rewards, but it's much better for the party to just try and sneak past the snoozing beast. However, once they recover the Annulus not far from it, the Neothelid wakes up. The smartest thing to do here, is probably just to run for the hills.  Let's just talk about the Annulus for a moment, it has four things it does: 1) When wielded, all psionics in the area cost three times as many PSP's to use. 2) It can be used to burn out the psychic ability of all nearby creatures(there's a save, of course) 3) It can be used to lock down space-time in the area to prevent all teleporting. 4) It can be used to completely blast one or more psionic creatures in a large area(or one extremely powerful object) to dust. Non-psionic creatures and objects are untouched. Apparently the ancient illithids used it to annihilate those illithids that started having sympathies for the thrall races. It can only do this once per year, though. Anyway, once the party either manages to defeat the neothelid(its main weakness is "only" having a 45% magic resistance which means that if the mages can stay alive and pelt it with save-or-suck/die spells they might manage to stick some) or to run away(it can be distracted with/by some of the local wildlife in the caves, though this is not immediately obvious), Strom contacts them through their psionic tattoo again. It's time, he says, time to face... THE OVERMIND. Thus he unlocks the tattoo's ability to generate a portal to his current location, for the party to make use of as soon as they're ready. Presumably they'll make sure any local allies are safely off to their homes, gather up their most important gear from their Nautiloid jammer and set off. The Overmind They arrive in an observation dome set on the exterior of the Overmind, an Illithid  In short, he sets out the plot for the PC's. It turns out that Ethereal Rifts, long considered to basically just be black holes in the Ethereal Plane, actually contain stillborn potential universes. The Illithids found one that contains a universe where they never lost and still rule everything. They're currently using the power of thousands of suns in an attempt to turn it inside out and replace the current universe with this one, and only those on the station will remember that there ever was a universe where the Illithids didn't rule everything. He tipped off the Githyanki to get station security and the researchers outside, so that his special aces, the PC's, could sneak and fight their way to the power core and annihilate it with the Annulus, permanently canceling the project. As a bonus, the illithids on board the station are so incredibly arrogant that they'll assume the heavily armed adventurers strolling through the rec room are just thralls at first glance, giving the PC's a chance to just whistle and say they're out picking up some brains for their boss or to gib a bunch of squid morons and laugh. So you've got a mapped-out space station(a 1.5mile diameter torus, for scale) for the party to infiltrate, accounting for all sorts of stuff, like what if the players blew the Annulus' big cancelling power on the Neothelid? Then they can still disable the project, they just need to find the 2022-digit long master password. What if they need more punching power? Well if they can sneak outside and contact the Githyanki, they'll dispatch a strike team of badass paladins with silver swords to back them up. In general there's a lot of accounting for what the PC's might get up to(for instance, the high power levels of the project disrupt psionic communications, so the party can take hostages and even use them as squidly shields against their coworkers without them being able to telepathically alert the entire station). But their main goals are two-fold. If they still have an active Annulus, they want to get to the Engine Consummate which powers the entire station. If they lack it, or just want a backup, they want to hit up the head researcher Raelus who's currently sulking in his lab. He invented and bult the Engine Consummate, the power source for the entire station, but intended it for something much more insane and gonzo than this milquetoast "turn the universe inside-out"-plot. Literally they can talk Raebul into giving them the master password for the Engine Consummate if they humour his ramblings for a while, just because he's salty that the project is being used for something other than his bespoke solution to illithid universal dominance. What he really wants to work on is, in fact, making artificial universes, demiplanes, in the deep Ethereal to provide cozy homes for illithids without needing to go through any of the tedious "turning off whole suns"-business that the rest of his species seems so obsessed with. Unfortunately his bespoke demiplanes built so far have all had some sort of snag or issue, like the local wildlife feeding on illithids rather than illithids being able to feed on it. The Overmind also has other supervillainy things on board, like a big observatory of all the stars that the Engine Consummate is currently feeding on, so the party can grab a telescope and see how their homeworld is suffering and get motivated to gut some more mind flayers. Once they arrive at the Engine Consummate, which is honestly somewhat simple, they're confronted with only a single non-hostile Ulitharid, "Kusk," who simply tells them to gently caress off, referring to them as "mortals" and other such things that in no way hint that he is, in fact, Lugribossk, one of Ilsensine's proxies. If they attack him, which they'll almost certainly have to do, he goes down in a single blow, totally non-suspicious for an Ulitharid and lies on the floor groaning and whimpering. This is a prime time for the party to bring out the Annulus and nuke the Engine Consummate. Because if, say, they can't, like say they need to spend ten loving rounds entering Raebul's master password because they blew the warranty on the Annulus on destroying the Neothelid, they've got problems. See, Lugribossk isn't dying, he's transforming.  In his battle form, the description of his tentacles is "acid-soaked battering rams" and he is insanely dangerous. The Neothelid is probably still more dangerous in physical stats, but Lugribossk is back up to being magic-immune. It takes Lugribossk ten rounds to transform. The same amount of time as it takes to enter the code if the players have to do that. The damage done to the Overmind depends on what the players do: If they use the Annulus... the Overmind starts overcharging. Soon it'll explode, annihilating everything in a five-mile radius. The Githyanki will be warned by Strom to evacuate, and some of the squid may psychoport out, but most will be dust on the wind. It's such a massive blast that even the ether rift itself is destroyed, forever destroying that potential universe If they use the deactivation code... the Engine Consummate disengages from the Overmind and drops into the rift. It'll take the Illithids literally hundreds of years to make a new one and resume the project, assuming the Overmind and/or the rift aren't destroyed in the meantime by the Githyanki or other anti-squid crusaders. If they just use raw physical damage... they only temporarily disable the Engine Consummate and the illithids will be able to resume again in a few years, of course, by then the Annulus will be charged once more and some heroes can take another shot at it. Let's assume they use the Annulus, though. Lugribossk shapeshifts just as they finish blasting the Engine Consummate with their artifact and starts chasing them while the station is coming apart around them. They return to Strom's quarters, where he's prepared a portal to take them back to their homeworld, with only scant few rounds before the station explodes. Unless they've distracted or defeated Lugribossk somehow on the way, someone will have to sacrifice their life to slow him down and give Strom and the party a chance to make it through. They return home, suddenly the sun flares back to life, banishing the seemingly-endless winter. Illithids trapped on the surface are dazed and confused by the sudden sunlight and heat, and the surfacers manage to hound them back to the local equivalent of the Underdark. Sempiternal turns over and naps away another few millennia. Steve the pillarthid learns to play the Bonethriven. The party beats the psionic's player until he becomes less of a memelord. The player characters become famous friends of the Githyanki oh and the Illithids will send assassins after them every few years just because they're still salty. What if... they don't succeed, though? Maybe the dice just hate them. Maybe they're incredible fuckups. Maybe something unexpected happens. The book accounts for this, as well. There are ways for the GM to still give the party a win, firstly. Perhaps they make it all the way to the EC and Lugribossk mires them down in a fight, illithid security comes rushing to the site, doom seems certain... but they've distracted the illithids enough, the Githyanki manage to win through. In a blaze of claws and dragonfire, they smash a hole in the side of the Overmind for the party to escape through while raking Lugribossk with spells and breath weapons, driving him back and destroying the Engine Consummate. Or perhaps the illithids' scheme was just wrong and "throw more suns at it" was never going to work. They've been wasting the last five hundred years or so concocting this scheme and it'll never succeed. Or maybe the scheme works. Reality is inverted, and only those in the immediate vicinity of the Overmind, the Githyanki knights, Strom and the PC's, as well as the surviving members of the Overmind's crew, are aware that this isn't how the universe always was. The game is now a dark and sinister game of rebellion against the Illithids in a universe they dominate, where the heavens and hells themselves are under siege by the tentacled menace. They can can try to free the new universe, or to return to the Overmind and re-invert reality. Conclusion Despite having the fundamental flaw of most of the encounters involving some sort of save-or-die garbage, I love these modules. They're well-described, there's a lot of account for the players approaching things from different angles or in a different order. The author leaves space for the GM to add in his own touches and specific encounters. It's very hard for the players to paint themselves into a corner and softlock the adventure. It's set in a dark universe but there are still plenty of options to do things that bring light to people, and the players are usually rewarded for not being assholes pointlessly. And it also lets the players do some really badass things. Like, they save a city. Then they get an ANCIENT ALIENS spaceship. Then they save the universe by blowing up an evil mad science villain space station. They fight dragon-sized enemies(and maybe even win). And the modules aren't afraid of giving them cool toys to play with like psionic power armor and weapons, either. Like, the only thing I could really complain about is the part in A Darkness Gathering where it goes out of its say to say that the players can't do much for Johana's poor, brain-damaged brother. But that's such a small thing in such a relatively good series of modules. Outside of that, the players are never too late to make a difference. And the difference they make always matters. I think that's probably some of the strongest takeaway I've got to differentiate these modules from so many others.
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Aug 20, 2020 22:11
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Looks like my "red dragons strafing an ilithid space station" spitballing wasn't as original as I thought. Absolutely kickass module. Thanks for posting it.
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Aug 20, 2020 22:29
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Joe Slowboat posted:Vlad, Isa, Settra and Khalida on a road trip to kick Nagash' rear end would be a truly beautiful thing. Even though Khalida would be constantly trying to murder the vamps on the team. I mean considering Settra is implied to have been turned into a Stormcast there is a possibility that Vlad and Isabella might have been grabbed by him too. As they got redeemed somewhat during End Times as I remember it. No idea about Khalida though. Although she could make for a Bonereapers character.
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Aug 20, 2020 22:44
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Everything about this module rules. Thanks for posting, I really enjoyed the review!
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Aug 20, 2020 23:06
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Call of Cthulhu 7E stats have changed in one significant way: You now record them after multiplying by 5, which makes them percentages like everything else. The character sheet also lets you record the half and 20% value, which are important as quick difficulty checks or various forms of gradients in other parts of the system. This also dispenses with some other derived stats - Luck roll is POW, know roll is EDU. Call of Cthulhu 7E skills work basically the same way. 7E provides a (unfortunately optional) rule for specialty skills like Science: When you have a Science skill break 50%, all other Science skills gain 10% to their default. Similarly, when a science skill breaks 90%, you get another 10%. Each investigator only gets this benefit once but you can apply that benefit in chargen. So Dr. Geology gets Geology to 90%, and now all his other science skills are at a base of 21%. Dr. Geology can buy up these skills from that floor, so getting Physics to 40% would be 19 points, not 39. BIG SAVINGS FOR THE NERD! You also now can "push" the roll, which is basically that if you lose you can push yourself at some sort of stakes and try again. If you succeed, you do not lose out; if you fail, you take the consequence (though you may still succeed). All of the skills contain a number of examples of both "how you would push a roll," and "consequences for failing a pushed roll." Also, Hide, Sneak and Climb are now Stealth and Climb. So there was a little consolidation. e: Also, the language fluency chart as of 7E; 5%: You can clearly recognize it in a vacuum without a check on anything 10%: Simple communication 30%: Can express transactional requests (presumably things like 'you give me the idol i'll give you the whip' not 'Ikura des ka?') 50%: Fluency 75%: Can pass for native speaker To identify a living language you don't know, make a Know roll. To identify an extinct one, Archeology or HIstory. To identify a non-human language, Cthulhu Mythos or in some cases occult. Nessus fucked around with this message at 23:35 on Aug 20, 2020 |
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Aug 20, 2020 23:27
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Yeah I liked that module too. If illithids weren't such bullshit monsters and psionics weren't so poorly implemented in d&d this would be a lot better, but it's still good as is.
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Aug 20, 2020 23:33
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Ithle01 posted:Yeah I liked that module too. If illithids weren't such bullshit monsters and psionics weren't so poorly implemented in d&d this would be a lot better, but it's still good as is. Yeah they are great modules that I'd love to run in a reasonable system.
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Aug 21, 2020 00:22
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Ultiville posted:Yeah they are great modules that I'd love to run in a reasonable system. I will have you know that 2e AD&D is a perfectly reasonable system. 
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Aug 21, 2020 00:25
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PurpleXVI posted:I will have you know that 2e AD&D is a perfectly reasonable system. Yes, but sometimes the reason is  ,  , or 
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Aug 21, 2020 00:55
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Ultiville posted:Yeah they are great modules that I'd love to run in a reasonable system. Actually, if PurpleXVI is done I'll do a dive in on Thoughts of Darkness which is that lovely Ravenloft adventure I mentioned. It's... pretty bad.
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Aug 21, 2020 01:15
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PurpleXVI posted:I will have you know that 2e AD&D is a perfectly reasonable system. I would rather run/play AD&D 2e than D&D 3.x. What this says about the merits of AD&D2 is left as an exercise to the reader.
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Aug 21, 2020 01:45
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 Chapter 2: Character Creation (Attributes, Skills, Hindrances, Edges) Nitemat was born centuries ago, coming of age just before Memmon destroyed his empire. In life, Nitemat was a member of the Pharaoh’s court, a member of first Memmon’s father’s, then his honor guard due to both her high birth and her talent for detecting and countering poisons. She lived a respectable and unremarkable life before failing to protect the heir to the throne from a group of assassins in the final round of rebellions. After dying of the wounds she sustained, only the influence of her family kept Memmon from destroying her sarcophagus. When the Djinn woke them up old Hyphrates, Nitemat’s family joined Memmon’s army and she walked with them. She remembers little of this time; she was too deep in despair and mind control for consciousness. But at the moment of the Great Betrayal the Djinn’s power lifted, freeing all Mummies; in a blind panic, Nitemat escaped Memmon’s army and fled into the desert. After years of aimless wandering, Nitemat joined the Order of the Penitent after its agents approached her and explained their purpose; she stopped listening at “we seek to redeem ourselves” and joined up. Nitemat’s life changed course when she saw one of her new companions drink down a glowing potion. When asked about it, he described the basic concepts of alchemy – and the long-dead part of her personality devoted to analyzing chemicals reemerged. By the time they reached the chapter house in Ur-Xandria, Nitemat had mastered the basics of alchemical theory; by the time she arrived in Valkenholm for training, she had already memorized her first formula and gained a basic understanding of the other sciences as well. In the next two years Nitemat established herself as an alchemist in her own right, even inventing a glue-bomb formula other Order alchemists now use in the field. Then her life shifted again. One day, scouts brought a newly-rescued Mongrel to headquarters, a little boy who, remarkably, sthe arm of one of the ill-preserved mummies who didn’t gain Witchmarks, burial markings still intact. She passed by him and stopped in her tracks, thunderstruck: she knew that arm. Somehow, in a bizarre, almost contrived coincidence, the body of the heir she had failed to protect – his sarcophagus having been marred by grave robbers – had been dispatched to the Chimera for experimentation. Nitemat already had a reason to live; she wanted to continue her discoveries. However, in protecting this Mongrel she saw a way to finally wipe away her still-haunting shame. So to this day she escorts her charge into the field (over his objections), spending her free time exploring the world of science. Wait, gently caress, I said the fluff was over. Okay, so, character creation. I’ll be proceeding as if you either read the second post of this review or just know the system.  A blank Accursed character sheet. Let’s start out by applying the various parts of the Mummy template. Each part of every template is presented with a name:
Once we start picking out our numbers, the first setting rules come into play. There’s a bunch of ‘em, some borrowed from the Savage Worlds Horror Companion (which you’re supposed to use with this book), some borrowed from the core, and some unique to this book. Some of them are interesting (all creations of a certain Witch (including PCs) gain power at specific thematically-relevant times, once per session the GM can give an NPC Wildcard a Benny representing a Witch taking personal interest in the situation), some aren’t (you can move faster by taking penalties to your defenses). As a rule, though, they make PCs tougher and reward them for planning ahead. I’ll only cover individual ones if they come up. The book also specifically notes you should pick and choose which rules you want to apply to your game and ignore the others, which is always nice to see; less limiting that way.  Nitemat starts out with Agility d6, Smarts d8, Spirit d4, Strength d6, and Vigor d6: a pretty standard spread, given both the template and character concept. When we hit skill distribution, though, we hit the first relevant setting rule; we have to use Guts skill rolls to stave off fear instead of just Spirit and a Wild Die. Funnily enough, this means Mummies are in fact easier to scare than many ordinary humans in this setting. We get a budget of 15 points to blow on skills, and since I know what I’m gonna be doing with the bonus points I get from Hindrances, I give myself two extra. End result is Alchemy (a special skill I’ll get to later) d8, Athletics d4, Fighting d6, Guts d6 (took two points to raise it past its relevant Attribute), Knowledge (Science) d4, Notice d6, Repair d8, and Throwing d6. Should add up to 17. Next up comes Hindrances, the obligatory flaws you get alongside Edges’ merits. Most Savage Worlds characters get one major and two minors, but another setting rule here lets you take an additional Endurance; Morden’s seen decades of war and oppression and basically everyone’s traumatized. No word on what kind of Hindrance, so I’ll just take an extra Major. Two of my Hindrances, Curious (Major) and Vow (Minor), come out of the corebook, both amounting to “get points for the opportunity to earn the occasional Benny”. Standard flimsy merit/flaw design, echoed by Hindrance choices in Accursed; some of its Hindrances have clear and measurable mechanical effects, some are the standard steal-the-spotlight-for-a-Benny opportunities. For Nitemat, I picked two of the most egregious Hindrances to fill out the rest of her allowance. The first, Unwitting Tool (Major), allows your Witch (or a more powerful creature among those created by your Witch) to look through your senses at any time. No one except the GM has to know who, they can’t be always watching, and they can’t control you or anything, but you don’t have to know when they’re looking or what they’ve done with the information they got. Flavorful, certainly, and it doesn’t offer the kind of Benny-farming opportunities you get from other Hindrances, but it sure does incentivize other players to keep your PC out of the loop and away from decision-making. That’s not a recipe for party conflict. But the other Hindrance, Obligation (Minor). By taking Obligation, you swear allegiance to an organization of your choice and have to act with their interests in mind (and come when they call). The Major form makes you an active member constantly compelled to work with them, to the point that the book advises GMs restrict access to it unless they want to make that obligation a major feature of the campaign. All well and good. But! Once you’ve taken this, any attempts to persuade that organization to give you support of any kind get a +2 bonus for Minor and a +4 for Major. If you take this, you get the opportunity to earn Bennies AND gain a situational bonus to rolls. That is not a Hindrance. That is an Edge pretending to be a Hindrance.  As for Edges, the new ones are almost entirely either setting-specific backgrounds or special Edges limited to specific Witchbreeds. After picking her Hindrances, Nitemat has six points to spread everywhere; I put two into Skills (as I described) and another two into a Mummy-specific Edge: Multipurpose Sarcophagus. With a successful Repair roll, the Mummy can remove their sarcophagus (losing the armor and weapon temporarily) and reconfigure it into any tool the same size or smaller than they are; the GM is encouraged to give them a lot of leeway in what they can build, whether it’s lock picks or a single-person part. Depending on the game you run, this can turn the party Mummy into a technical specialist and make them absolutely essential or never come up and be a waste of points. Many other Witchbreed-specific Edges grant the same kind of situational bonuses, but others directly Hindrance combat ability or enhance the native benefits of that template. I picked this Edge mostly because it’s cool but also because it dovetails nicely with the other Edge I chose: Arcane Background (Alchemy), which grants Nitemat access to one of the two magic systems that make up the next chapter.
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Aug 21, 2020 01:54
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Nessus posted:7th Ed Stuff! That Push mechanic seems like something this game really needed and like it would make it much more fun to play! I'm actually glad to see some of my complaints being addressed in later editions, even if CoC is a very iterative game.
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Aug 21, 2020 03:07
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Night10194 posted:That Push mechanic seems like something this game really needed and like it would make it much more fun to play! I'm actually glad to see some of my complaints being addressed in later editions, even if CoC is a very iterative game. And in a more normal/organic game it's a bit of a fail forward mechanic without changing the, so to speak, core chassis of the system.
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Aug 21, 2020 03:19
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 Hello everyone and welcome to my next F&F! I realize it’s been a long time coming, but a lot of stuff’s been going on in life that disrupted my regular schedule. However, now that I have more time to devote to writing, I’m fulfilling my promise to those who voted for this book way back in May! The Nightmares Underneath is an OSR game with some modern innovations. It is set in a realm called the Kingdom of Dreams, a pseudo-Middle Eastern region drawing influence from Persian culture with some Turkic Ottoman touches. Its leaders and intelligentsia speak of a golden age of science and reason, having progressed far from their pagan past. But within the shadowy corners a new threat arises: incursions from a world of nightmares find root in places of fear and sin, growing like an extradimensional cancer in the form of dungeons. The PCs and a rare few others are better able to resist the Nightmare Realms’ taint, and in order to excise these tumors they must brave the incursions’ depths, destroy its Crown monsters, and/or unfasten the Anchors (a valuable treasure or relic) holding these dungeons to the material world. As of December 2019 the Nightmares Underneath got a new 2nd Edition. This passed by some people as it was released as an update for those who already bought the original PDF. Which is nice as people don’t have to pay double, but not having much fanfare means that there’s not a lot of discussion about it. I will note the differences where I can via Edition Changes.  Chapter 1: Alabaster and Frankincense Our first chapter briefly details major aspects of the Kingdoms of Dreams. They’re a decentralized assortment of governments with a diversity of terrain and people, but are unified in being followers of the Law. The Law is a series of texts penned by five prophets and serve as the binding element of society. The Law’s derived from a higher realm, extolling the virtues of reason and condemning idolatry of false gods. The preceding Age of Chaos was a time when said gods demanded utter servitude and worship instead of the Divine who sent the word out via angelic messengers. It is unclear if the Divine is regarded as a deity proper or is meant to be a philosophical ideal. There are no churches or mosques in the Kingdoms: instead the Law is “worshiped” in courthouses, and its “priests” are required to be well-read in administrations of science and the state. Conversely, the “modern age” is referred to as the Age of Law. The Kingdoms are technologically advanced by fantasy RPG standards. Gunpowder and Renaissance-era firearms have been invented, along with a high proportion of scholars, alchemists, and mathematicians being common among the upper class. Factories churn out metal goods and smog in the largest cities, and the printing press makes books of all stripes and literacy something within reach of the common folk. Technological and magical innovations mean that many people of means have access to promising new devices, although most people still live agrarian lifestyles. The Highland Coast is a sample region of the Kingdoms of Dreams, a pre-made place for GMs to set their game and also a template showcasing the common cultural influences. The Coast is home to the land of Geth, which shares a mighty port metropolis of the same name. Hadrazzaar and Shahrazar are adjacent provinces, the former home to the rival city of Neth-Hadrazzar, and the latter a haunted wasteland populated with ruined cities and monsters. Immigration and trade with various cultures from land and sea make the area a diverse place, particularly in the cities. Common naming conventions often have two to three names per person: at the very least one has a gendered name and a gender-neutral name to be used as the person prefers. A few people have surnames: these can reflect a person’s family profession, homeland, or their noble house. Speaking of which, the “common tongue” of the Kingdoms of Dreams follows Persian and Turkish conventions: grammatical genders do not exist, and “u” or “o”* is used instead of he/she, while reference to objects is “an” or “anha” for plural. However, gendered names often have -a as a suffix, while masculine names can be done by removing vowels from the end of a non-masculine name. For English speakers unused to casual use of foreign grammar, the book suggests using the singular “they” when referring to people. It’s not often known what gender a person is unless they’re told explicitly or you get to know that person well. We also get a table of sample names with gendered and gender-neutral equivalents across the chart. *Persian/Turkish respectively. In regards to race and ethnicity...for fantasy races, dwarves, elves, gnomes, and the like are never really called out, and Nightmares’ setting has a ‘human default’ in the discussion of characters and cultures. There’s nothing explicitly stating the races of the world, and the GM and players can incorporate whatever species they desire; it just won’t have a mechanical impact for the game. When it comes to various cultures, the Highland Coast typically groups foreigners in via geographical ancestry and regard their own kind as a melting pot of these different societies. Northerners are implied Mongolians that come from cold steppes; Southerners are implied Africans who hail from the rainforests and savannahs of Voss; Westerners are implied Europeans from across the Sea; and Easterners don’t have much detail besides the fact that they’re rare in these parts and have darker skin than indigenous Highlanders. Regions of the Highland Coast are split up into three major sections. Geth by the Salt Sea is the Waterdeep/Sharn of The Nightmares Underneath. It’s the crossroads of a multinational mercantile hub situated by a river running out to the sea. Its trading vessels prioritize economics, and justify outposts in kingdoms ignorant of the Law as an opportunity to proselytize...which they don’t push too hard on the natives. Geth is also a center for the arts, and is home to many theaters, schools, houses of music, and cafes and tea houses frequented by cosmopolitan people. Light skin tones are often associated with the nobility due to said aristocracy’s penchant for blonde slaves from foreign lands, and the city’s full of such heirs bitterly fighting for their claim to minor thrones. Furthermore, we get a brief overview of Geth’s major districts, which include a Necropolis overseen by lightning-shooting towers to keep the undead at bay, a series of artificial islands owned by various nobles lining the Harbour, a Temple to Justice home to an underground complex of entire libraries and schools, and a Grand Bazaar selling just about everyone if one knows where to look. Neth-Hadrazzar (or Neth for short) was formed by exiled nobility from Geth on the losing side of a civil war, and the populace has carried down this grudge for generations. Neth’s nobility fostered economic and marital alliances with many kingdoms, and new villages outside the city proper continued to pop up to support waves of new immigrants (both free and unfree) to support the upper class’ coffers. Corruption is rampant, and nobles often challenge each other to duels and other games in a public Dome of the Muses which also serves as a bread and circus byproduct to entertain the masses. Nethian culture does the opposite of whatever is popular in Geth at the time: shepherding is exalted over horsemanship, people paint their faces instead of wearing masks, and dark-skinned slaves from the south are preferred as concubines and have similar social perceptions of economic status and feuding heirs. We don’t have a list of Neth’s districts, but six smaller villages outside Neth are summed up with 4-point bulletin lists: for example, Siyaghul has Mountainside, Secret Cult, Well-Defended, and Xenophobic descriptors. And for a great built-in campaign hook, the Sultan of Neth set up a government department specializing in fighting nightmare incursions. Foreign adventurers and death row inmates seeking to commute their sentences are tasked with destroying said dungeons and killing any monsters that escape from them into the wider world. Shahrazar is our final section, and it is not a city. It once had a golden age, but now it is a metaphorical graveyard. The only real centers of civilization are isolated monasteries who may be pious folk or secret devotees of evil ways, none can truly say. Shahrazar’s wilds and ruined cities team with monsters, much of whom are still unknown to human eyes. The legendary lost city is a rumor, alternatively condemned as a trap to lure adventurers or hidden refuges of potential allies fighting against the nightmare realm. To the north is the Vale of Serpents, a barren desert home to the ruined temples of the most wicked rulers during the Age of Chaos. Finally, the land of Voss lies to the south of Shahrazar proper: the area of Voss bordering the Highland Coast is home to nomadic tribes that wander the savannahs and mountain passes. Edition Changes: Our chapter ends with tools for randomly generating towns and countries, from climate and cultural aspects to major industries and problems for adventurers to solve.  Chapter 2: Beneath the Sunlit Lands The Threat of Chaos details the nature of the nightmare incursions, as well as the cosmological makeup of the setting. The planes of existence can be summed up as follows: the Pillars of Heaven are home to angels who serve the Divine and delivered the Law to humanity on Earth, which is not real-world Earth but the Material Plane world for this setting. Faerie is a plane adjacent to Earth, populated by creatures whose physical forms are manifested by their personalities, emotions, and ideologies, known as fey in some cultures and genies in others. The fey also suffer the depredations of nightmares, but are more resistant to it and have no desire of allying with humanity as a whole due to viewing them as weak. Beyond such worlds, details become more sparse. There are known to be demons and devils who empower false prophets to work evil in the world. Such entities have been known in recorded history since time immemorial, but the nightmare incursions are more recent. It is unknown if such beings are but one manifestation of nightmares or separate, given that they’re both attracted to and feed off of mortal misery. The Realm of Nightmares is a shadowy, Silent Hill-esque world. In the slums of great cities, in households touched by tragedy, in villages whose inhabitants were slaughtered, entryways to other realms spawn. Nightmare incursions take many forms, shaping around or extending dimensionally beyond these tainted places. One thing that almost all have in common is that they’re dark, located underground, and inhabited by inhuman monsters that are formed fully from its cosmic taint. And if their Crowns and Anchors are not severed, they’ll grow in size and power, infecting more people and places and spawning entryways in once-untainted lands. And yes, there are game rules for ignoring and/or being unable to “beat” a dungeon over a period of time, but detailed in Chapter 7. And beyond even the Nightmares are Dwellers in the Deep, a catch-all term for creatures taken from utterly unknown realms, either as planar stowaways hanging onto nightmare incursions or by the folly (intentional or otherwise) of summoners. Incursions have the side effect of weakening planar boundaries in general, meaning that all sorts of portals and creatures can manifest as befits the whims of the story the GM has in mind. The nightmare realms also taint humans and other creatures who lair near them or end up trapped inside, tempted, cajolled, and threatened by dreams, illusions, and whispers promising a devil’s bargain. Such is the source of all manner of wicked mages and warped beasts. Most people who enter a nightmare realm end up insane from the corruption, the effects growing worse the more exposure. But a rare few people, including the Player Characters, are capable of repeatedly entering the incursions without any ill effects in and of themselves. They can still suffer from magic, poison, and other threats therein, but the planar transition alone has no noticeable effect upon their psyche. And yes, there are game rules for this, too, in Chapter 6! One thing that should be noted is that contrary to popular belief, the pagan faiths of the Age of Chaos are not responsible for the Realm of Nightmare. Their gods’ worshipers are menaced by the incursions all the same, and have no special proficiency over its beasts and sorcery than the followers of the Law. Edition Changes: We get an entry on the Vale of Serpents. 2nd Edition wanted to provide more material for adventures taking place outside of dungeons, and the Vale of Serpents serves as a great excuse for ruin-delving. Sorcerer-kings ruled over this place during the Age of Chaos, their bodies interred in massive tombs warded with demonic guardians and traps. Tomb robbers are known to brave this place, home to wealth and forgotten spells of a prior era. Although there is a market for such goods, prevailing legal and cultural standards look askance at “Chaos-tainted” artifacts even should they be non-magical in origin. Texts penned are regarded as blasphemous, their lying words a risk to undoing the rule of Law. However, there are cases where adventurers can prove the safe use of such things, even more so if they can be wielded against the nightmares. 2nd Edition’s Chapter 2 also details Crew Types for PC parties, which sums up why the characters are all banded together along with specific advantages. Beyond the typical adventuring party, we have a criminal gang (no taboos regarding Chaos magic and artifacts, count as their own communities for purposes of Resentment scores), Official Investigators (advantage on checks when dealing with courts in ‘legit use’ of forbidden artifacts), and Political Party (ideological advocates count as their own community for Resentment, advantage on convincing said people the worth in using forbidden artifacts). The standard Adventuring Party is not left out, for they have advantage on rolls when looking for retainers and performing research, provided they spend their dungeon-gotten gains in the community and have an exciting tale to tell about it. Thoughts So Far: The Nightmares Underneath has a notably unique setting. There aren’t many Middle Eastern-flavored sourcebooks out there that take a non-Arabic influence to them. Even so, I can see some influences from other media such as Darkest Dungeon in the portrayal of dungeons as maddening, unnatural places. Or in al-Qadim in having a similarly-named Law and an underlying Red Scare of pagan influences. One potentially problematic source for gaming groups is the socially acceptable practice of slavery; while it’s just a brief mention, the use of sex slaves in the creation of royal heirs can be particularly uncomfortable on top of that. The sample Highland Coast is brief, but we get a lot of material to work with in what it gives us. And while it doesn’t explicitly say it out and out, the discussion of pronouns and gender-neutral is a good way of acknowledging non-binary characters in the world. Join us next time as we cover Basic Resolution Rules!
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Aug 21, 2020 03:32
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Test post, did my F&F review show up? Edit: Oh hey, it did!
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Aug 21, 2020 03:33
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Each PC in Call of Cthulhu (going back to the very first version from 1981) has three metagame skills (Know, Idea, and Luck) that are meant to goose a party along when it hits a dead end. Everyone has them, and they're usually at or above 50%, so when the adventure seizes to a halt, the players or even the Keeper can call for Luck and Idea checks until someone succeeds and they get a clue they need to bump them along in the scenario. Really, it's a formal mechanic that allows the Keeper to fudge outcomes in order to keep a session on track. One of the reasons I was kind of disappointed in Gumshoe/Trail of Cthulhu was that the big innovation in the system (you always get the appropriate clue you need to progress in the scenario! No more dead ends because nobody made their Library Use skill!) was solving a problem that CoC had mostly solved in its first iteration.
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Aug 21, 2020 03:35
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If you're fudging outcomes to ensure the players get the most critical clue to progress and using multiple layers of check for that, isn't that functionally fairly similar to just giving that as the bare minimum?
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Aug 21, 2020 03:38
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Night10194 posted:If you're fudging outcomes to ensure the players get the most critical clue to progress and using multiple layers of check for that, isn't that functionally fairly similar to just giving that as the bare minimum? I think for a horror mood it would be the factor of tension. If you're down to the point where everyone is circling around making Idea rolls you are probably losing time and the scenario is degenerating (as in, the Deep Ones are eating more of the stolen infants, Cthulhu is considering not pushing Snooze again, etc.) -- but if you have a hot streak you will feel like you're getting ahead.
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Aug 21, 2020 03:45
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FMguru posted:Each PC in Call of Cthulhu (going back to the very first version from 1981) has three metagame skills (Know, Idea, and Luck) that are meant to goose a party along when it hits a dead end. Everyone has them, and they're usually at or above 50%, so when the adventure seizes to a halt, the players or even the Keeper can call for Luck and Idea checks until someone succeeds and they get a clue they need to bump them along in the scenario. Really, it's a formal mechanic that allows the Keeper to fudge outcomes in order to keep a session on track. I'm of the opinion that if you need a mechanic like that then your design has failed and you should redo things. In my experience such a thing just frustrates people and wastes time.
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Aug 21, 2020 03:51
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FMguru posted:One of the reasons I was kind of disappointed in Gumshoe/Trail of Cthulhu was that the big innovation in the system (you always get the appropriate clue you need to progress in the scenario! No more dead ends because nobody made their Library Use skill!) was solving a problem that CoC had mostly solved in its first iteration. A lot of people heap praise upon Gumshoe foe finally "solving" investigation, but it's really only put front and centre that, hey, important clues shouldn't be locked behind rolls you can fail. It's a more elegant solution than 22 rolls of Idea/Luck/Know, but it's nothing more than GM advice turned into a formal rule. ...somewhat awkwardly too, since the heavy mechanical emphasis on this being part of what you do with the Investigative Skills means that you can still accidentally lock clues behind things like a room full of enemies, a dangerous jump, or similar barriers.
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Aug 21, 2020 03:56
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All honorable warriors in Kara-Tur are expected to have at least some knowledge of The Deck of Encounters Set Two Part 44: The Deck of Further Fighter Kits (Composing new cards on the fly is a very popular activity among the nobility.) Cards 217 through 324 are by Thomas (Tom) Prusa, who worked on some various setting-based adventures for TSR. Black Spine, City of Delights, the Shining South, MC12. I kinda liked Black Spine, and never read the others. 217: Barnabas the Bold The PCs encounter a crying halfling warrior at the side of the road - the titular fighter, hero of his halfling village. He feels like he’s failed his people because his plan to kill a marauding wyvern by attaching sacks of poison to a sheep didn’t work - the wyvern attacked again last night. He’s rightly terrified to go fight the thing alone. It feels slightly patronizing towards halfling fighters, honestly - a bit of a “aww, look at the little guy!” vibe. In reality, the problem isn’t that he’s a halfling, the problem is that he’s only level 4 and has no magic equipment or friends with class levels. A level 4 human fighter would be just as much of a goner. Anyway, the PCs will probably join him to go wyvern-hunting. He offers them half the treasure in its lair. When they get there, though, the wyvern is already dead, killed by the poison. (I guess it was just slow-acting?) The treasure is about 144 silver worth of coinage on a dead traveller’s corpse, so hopefully the PCs don’t raise much of a fuss about Barnabas bringing back half to share with the needy in his village. Anticlimactic. Weirdly cloying. But it also has some good detail, hangs together logically, and is pretty “runnable,” for lack of a better term. Keep. 218: Ship Ahoy! The PCs are crossing the sea on the caravel Swimming Manticore, and are attacked by pirates. To the card’s credit, it spends a few words on critically important information such as what weapons the ship has - namely, two ballista and three medium catapults (!). That seems like… a lot? So, fight those pirates, who are raking the ship with arrows and catapulted stones! Mages, fireball! Fighters and thieves, uh… get ready for ship boarding! Except that there will be no ship boarding! “As the pirate ship is driven off, a catapult shot hits directly amidship.” (Hits the PCs’ ship, that is.) They need to help put out the fire. “Creative use of spells such as create water can help save the day.” Fighters and thieves, uh… come up with some other clever ideas! If the ship sinks, they get a lifeboat but need to abandon their heavy armor and stuff. By the way, if the pirate (one Trumaine Shipkiller) survives, “he blames the PCs for the loss of his ship.” Did he even get close enough to have any idea who the PCs are? Seemed like the whole engagement took place at a great range. There’s a certain attitude in the card I don’t like. The pirate ship will be driven off. It will hit the PCs’ ship with a catapult on the way out. The only thing the card leaves up in the air is whether the ship sinks. And when you get past all that, it’s really just a “pirates attack your ship!” encounter with no real twists. Not into it. Pass. KIT CORNER: Pirate/Outlaw (PHBR 1: The Complete Fighter’s Handbook) Thieves get the "Buccaneer" kit, but this is a fightin' pirate. Pirates must take the weapon proficiencies of Cutlass, and either Belaying Pin or Gaff/Hook. FYI, a cutlass is basically a slower short sword with a bonus to Parrying (a fiddly and suboptimal technique from the PHBR1), and the ability to punch with the guard like you had an iron gauntlet on. A belaying pin is a crappy improvised club that you can grab easily in a deckboard melee, but it’s not quite a club so club proficiency doesn’t quite cover it and will still give you a -1 to hit with it. A gaff has almost the same stats and purpose, but it’s the proficiency you need if you ever want to replace your hand with a hook, so it’s clearly a superior choice. Also, if you’re a halfling, you can call yourself the Gaffer. They get Rope Use and Seamanship as bonus NWPs. Their bonuses and penalties are completely social and contextual - you are a pirate, which is good in an outlaw pirate city and probably not good most other places. 219: Twan San Po at the Bridge The PCs come across a bridge being guarded by a dude in sweet armor decorated with fish and dragons. It’s a samurai (a non-Japanese samurai apparently, so that’s cool I guess) who declares that they must fight him, for nobody may pass without his permission. If you just ask for his permission to cross, he looks puzzled, tentatively grants it, and then stands aside, “looking proud for having again upheld his vow.” Otherwise you’ve gotta fight him or whatever. (9th-level fighter; the statblock summarizes his “ki shout” ability from the kit below, so that’s nice) I don’t mind having a feudal warrior guarding a bridge Athurian-style, but I need a sentence about who he serves and why they told him to stand guard here - those are things that are likely to come up! After all, PCs love befriending strong, friendly, KIT CORNER: Samurai (PHBR 1: The Complete Fighter’s Handbook) Stereotypes ahoy, but that’s nothing new. You need 13 Strength, Constitution, and Wisdom, and a 14 (!) Intelligence, and you must be Lawful. You start with two extra Weapon Proficiencies, but must use 5 out of your total six to specialize in the katana and daikyu (greatbow), and your last one needs to be picked from a list of “samurai weapons” in the back of the book. (“My noble samurai uses the nunchaku!”) You get a free katana, but can only start with “oriental” weapons and armor, and can’t have more than 10 gp left over after character creation. You also need to buy Reading/Writing, which takes two slots since it’s not a Fighter NWP, but you get Riding and Etiquette for free. Your main mechanical deal is that you can kiai once per day per experience level, which boosts your Strength to 18/00 for a single round. Not bad if you’re rolling stats, since legit 18/00s are hard to come by. Obviously you’ve got a lord bossing you around and stuff, and you have to do everything they say or kill yourself (or become a ronin). The DM is supposed to give you orders sometimes that you don’t like, just to make your life difficult. As for 220: Dirty Darrin On the way to the inn, the party encounters a “savage from the northlands” - big sword, furs, terrible smell. 8th-level fighter, by the way. He’s looking for a wife “who isn’t afraid to skin a bear or burn reindeer chips to cook the walrus meat for supper.” Apparently such spouses are in short supply in the savage northlands, because instead of looking there, he hones in on one of the PCs who is a female human, elf, or half-elf and starts to follow them like a creepo. He hasn’t even seen them skin a bear yet, so I don’t know what’s supposed to attract him specifically. “If approached” (but not before, I guess), he’ll be forthright about his matrimonial intentions, and will apparently back down if rejected. Then he’ll come the next morning, drop a net on them, and try to abduct them. “The other members of the party may try to stop him.” (You think?) “As far as diplomatic means are concerned, the only reason Darrin will accept is that the chosen PC is engaged to one of the males in the party. He doesn’t believe that a female does not find him attractive.” Well, that got unpleasant fast. I’m jettisoning everything that actually happens in this card, but I’ll keep the idea that a rugged frontiersman (he must not live in a community because otherwise this wife-seeking doesn’t make sense) is struck with earnest admiration for a female warrior-type’s obvious badassery and decides to court her. Could be a fun roleplaying beat. KIT CORNER: Savage (PHBR 1: The Complete Fighter’s Handbook) Savages are They can only take appropriate weapons (the kit suggests blowgun, long bow, short bow, club, dagger, javelin, knife, sling, or spear). Likewise, they start with no actual money, but can choose four weapons and 10 other items that the DM is willing to sign off on, potentially including a riding horse or a small canoe. They get Direction Sense, Weather Sense, Endurance, and Survival for free, and having so many bonus NWP is pointed out as a distinct benefit from the kit. They also get a special ability that acts like a spell but isn’t magic, usable once per day per experience level. They can pick from alarm, detect magic, animal friendship, or detect evil. They lay on a few extra restrictions to make sure your Fighter doesn’t get the full benefits of a 1st-level spell - heaven forbid! For instance, the alarm is only centered on the Savage and only works while they’re awake, and detect magic can only detect the spell school if the Savage is also a Ranger. Okay then. Then they have drawbacks, all clothing-related. They get a -3 to attack, damage, and NWP rolls when wearing “any sort of armor at all,” and if the player decides to suck up that penalty, the DM is told to be an rear end in a top hat and start gradually increasing that penalty to -4, -5 and so on from session to session. “If the player asks why this is happening, the DM need merely reply that the character is growing more and more uncomfortable in his unnatural trappings and finding it harder and harder to concentrate on the job at hand.” Good job fitting player/DM antagonism into somewhere it didn’t need to be, book. Just say you can start wearing armor, but you need to drop the kit if you do. Oh, and even beyond actual armor, the Savage takes a -1 if they wear “any sort of clothing more cumbersome and concealing than his normal tribal dress” (emphasis mine). I assume this is especially important if you go with one of the suggested character concepts, “a breathtakingly beautiful native princess from a culture which the characters consider impossibly primitive and yet uncorrupted and very noble.” For some reason the book chooses this kit to put in a footnote: If your character’s background is complicated and more than one kit could apply, then just pick when kit best identifies them and go with that. Good advice, wrong place for it. 221: Horation Swordsinger The front of the card says “Horation,” but the card checklist and the entire back of the card say “Horatio.” Could this be… inspired by something? So Horatio is a swashbuckler who has bad luck, and is trying to impress his current crush, a shopkeeper’s daughter. So he wants to hire a PC to go to the shop and make insulting comments about whatever, and then he’ll challenge them to a duel which the PC will throw. Presumably that plan can be executed just fine. “Horatio is very convincing and a nice guy as well. If the PCs help him out here they have made a friend for life.” Okay roleplaying beat. Keep.
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Aug 21, 2020 14:36
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Call of Cthulhu, 5th Editions Roll 1dDSMIV Alright, this is the big one. And probably the meanest I'm going to be to this game mechanically. I don't think CoC is actually a bad game, and I do see the purpose of Sanity as a mechanic. It's here to be a pressure/resource mechanic, something that gets the players hyped up and worried. It's also one of the most famous mechanics in Call of Cthulhu, and I'd argue CoC is probably one of the reasons 'Sanity Systems' have become such a genre signifier for horror games. I'd also argue that CoC's Sanity system is the origin of a thousand lovely Sanity systems; most bad Sanity systems are directly aping it, and I think it's part of why you get stuff like 'I know, I'll tell the players they gained an Insanity Point, that'll show this is a horror section' over in Warhammer Fantasy, because WHFRP came out after CoC and was obviously influenced by it to some degree. After all, one of the original ways people described WHFRP 1e was 'D&D through the lens of CoC'. I think that sort of stuff stems directly from CoC's advice about how to use Sanity, the popularity of the mechanic, the flaws of CoC's Sanity system, and a paucity of imagination. In Call of Cthulhu, one of the ways the game tries to convey the deep unpleasantness of what you're dealing with is making things cost Sanity points to see. When you encounter a spooky situation, a weird fish, or read a scary book, you lose Sanity. In the case of a Weird Fish/Spooky Situation, you make a check, rolling against current Sanity. If you succeed, you lose very few Sanity points (or none!). If you fail, you probably lose significantly more. Sanity losses are always rolled, and are intentionally swingy, because 'lose a ton of Sanity in one whack' is how you get PCs going temporarily crazy. Sanity is normally treated like mental HP; if you get to 0 Sanity your PC is retired, because you're too destroyed mentally to function. If you lose 5 or more Sanity to a single check, your PC goes temporarily insane. Your GM either decides what happens (though the book does ask them to let the player weigh in as well) or rolls randomly, but most of the time you have a panic attack, faint, etc. Though the random tables for temporary insanity do include some very questionable elements like a 4 on Longer Temporary Insanity inducing 'Strange Sexual Desires like Nymphomania, Exhibitionism, or Teratophilia (attraction to monsters? You decide the Weird Fish is hot, I guess?). For the most part, aside from the stuff like 'aberrant eating desires' and 'strange sexual desires' that should probably not be on this table, going temporarily Insane just means your PC panics to a degree that they're probably going to die unless their friends help them escape whatever drove them wild. This gets at the heart of what I don't like about Call of Cthulhu style Sanity right away from a mechanical standpoint. We're going to get into the ethical and fictional objections later. The basic idea of Sanity as a thing that slowly drips down to show the players' characters are stressed and uncomfortable, pressuring them and creating atmosphere? That I'm fine with. I've played with similar mechanics in other games, they do some good work for atmosphere and create memorable moments when players are starting to question if they can or should press on for now or back off to recover. The dread of some horrible thing around the corner that might push you harder, that works. The problem purely from a mechanical standpoint is that Sanity is all about taking away control of the players' characters. This is especially true with Indefinite Insanity, which happens if you lose 1/5th of the Current Sanity you came into the situation with in a single game-hour. Indefinite Insanity starts inflicting permanent mental disorders. See too many weird fish, now you're schizophrenic, or you have depression, etc. Or, if you go by their own example of play, you do something fishmalk like wearing two hats because 'you worry you might have to tip one to a lady but want to protect your head from the sky falling'. This is portrayed as a wonderful 'opportunity for roleplaying'. It's basically a moment where your character concept shifts significantly, and you're given a major mental disorder that also likely carries serious mechanical penalties. Sanity is highly random, and the most commonly inflicted level of Sanity damage on a failed save is d6. That means a 1-3 chance that you simply lose all control of your character for long enough for them to just die. The game constantly emphasizes that players' decisions and actions are important, but then simply snatches control of your characters and the decisions you make away reasonably often in any dangerous situation. It's aware this is a problem, even; the GMing advice will repeatedly tell you NOT to just murder the PCs when they have a panic attack in front of a weird fish. But if you keep having to tell the GM to soften what happens when a mechanic goes off in players' faces, it's a sign that the mechanic itself is not doing what you want it to do. If the logical consequence of your Sanity getting dinged by 5 in front of a monster is 'you'd probably die barring GM intervention' and the advice is 'GM, often you should intervene', something is off. Perhaps something like a 'fight or flight' mechanic, where the player chooses one when they get shocked so hard and then they're locked into that course of action, might do the job better? Also, from a mechanical standpoint, Indefinite Insanity lasts d6 Game Months before the PC comes back with a disorder. That almost certainly means you play a replacement PC in the meantime, and may effectively take the PC out anyway. You can regain Sanity in play; accomplishing adventures, managing to defeat monsters, getting better at skills, getting treatment, all of these will shore up and increase Sanity. It can even go above your starting level, though that's highly unlikely as you'll lose Sanity just for playing the game. Recovering Sanity is a good mechanic; having ways to get back what you're losing is important to the sense of pressure from a slow drip mechanic like this, especially if it's a struggle to keep your head above water but it's possible. The problem with Sanity ethically is that, well. Let's be a little personal here. I'm writing from the perspective of someone who suffers from a mental disorder, and for once I think it's relevant and important to this review to be open about that, rather than it being overly personal, since it directly impacts my view of this system and why I'm offended by it. One listed in this game, even! I have Generalized Anxiety Disorder. I've had a panic attack before. I've had a panic attack so bad that I lost consciousness, once, the way this game posits PCs will all the time. It loving sucks! It also doesn't work anything like this game suggests it does. According to this game, my GAD should be 'halving all physical skills and subtracting a quarter from all mental skills' from my shaky hands and constant hyper-vigilance. It should be leaving me a barely-functioning wreck, with quirky roleplaying possibilities. This is no good, for a lot of reasons. Number one being I'm not a barely-functioning wreck; I've lived with this disorder my entire life, and while it's still painful and definitely does cause me distress at times, people develop coping mechanisms, support systems, possibly get medication and care (both have helped me plenty) and go on. People with mental disorders are not zany roleplaying opportunities where you wear two hats, and we aren't utterly destroyed by the things we have to deal with, the same as other people with disabilities. Assigning crippling mechanical penalties to mental disorders and portraying them as wild and crazy wrecks to roleplay helps promote a stigmata against mental disorders. This is especially the cast when the game portrays itself as 'more realistic' on the subject of Insanity and includes a long list of mental disorders and what their game effects should be in another chapter. It also includes a lot of 'period' treatments for mental disorders, without really explaining that many of them might not do anything or might make things worse. One thing I will give CoC is that it at least portrays treatment as fairly effective. Therapy and medication can both help your character cope, though the portrayal of medication as 'suppressing symptoms' entirely on its own so long as you keep taking it is rather dubious. Still, getting help, or emotional support from friends, these things will help your investigator, and that much is at least accurate to my experience. From a fiction perspective, the issue with insanity in CoC is that it often dodges 'mental disorders don't work like that' with 'how do you know, we've never seen a weird fish'. Which is true! None of us have ever seen a sufficiently weird fish on the scale at which CoC posits weird fish. Which makes my point: Since none of us have ever experienced encountering a Deep One or a Mi-Go (since they are fiction), how it affects characters is also purely fictional, and thus purely something the authors control. This makes the decision to dive into 'roleplaying opportunities' with its depiction of mental illness something that was consciously chosen by the writers, and it's a very specific interpretation of the existential crisis/panic attack effect of terror in Lovecraft's work. Characters in Lovecraft's stories often have moments of terrible revelation or wish they didn't know something or hadn't seen something, but it's usually panic attacks, when you drill down to it. Or someone finding themselves committed, which is something Lovecraft was likely very frightened of considering his father was committed when he was a young man and it seems to have left an impression on him. The decision that you go trawl through the DSM in order to assign a madness to a player (and corresponding mechanical penalties) because they discovered the world doesn't work how they assumed it did is a conscious decision by the authors, and one I suspect has more to do with standard older RPG desires for 'realism' (that are anything but) than any other factor. More importantly, I think you could still serve the good element of Sanity (a pressure mechanic to track how frightened and stressed out PCs are, because a number ticking down slowly really does help drive that home mechanically) without needing the problematic elements or lack of control. Something like a system of break-points, where the GM asks the player 'what do you do, in this moment, to make yourself feel better, or lash out, or snap at something'. Or as I suggested above, a fight-or-flight response. Something to highlight the moments where scared, tired, upset people sometimes do unproductive or foolish things, without cloaking it all in the DSM and stigmata about mental issues. Call of Cthulhu's Sanity system is one of its single most influential mechanics, inspiring dozens of imitators and making mental health systems a major genre feature for horror gaming. It's a shame it did it in an offensive way that emphasizes taking control away from players and forcibly rewriting characters. Next Time: Weird Wizbiz
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Aug 21, 2020 15:40
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Dallbun posted:219: Twan San Po at the Bridge Is it intentionally a non-Japanese samurai, or did the writer just not know the difference between Chinese and Japanese? (Not that "Twan" sounds like a Chinese name either.) The character himself is pretty endearing though, all you have to do is ask. He just assumes that fighting the sentry is what you do.
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Aug 21, 2020 16:29
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I Am Just a Box posted:Is it intentionally a non-Japanese samurai, or did the writer just not know the difference between Chinese and Japanese? (Not that "Twan" sounds like a Chinese name either.) (Probably you're right and they didn't know the difference.)
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Aug 21, 2020 16:46
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Age of Sigmar Lore Chat: Legions of Nagash The Legion of Doom  Morghasts are not directly stated to be the prototype for the Ossiarch Bonereapers, but it's a pretty easy inference to make. They are handmade by Nagash, who weaves together souls and bone to create a form of undead that mortal necromancers cannot manage. They fly on tattered wings of soul, wear ancient armor and wield ghostly weapons that can cleave flesh and soul alike. They come in two types. Morghast Harbingers are designed to hunt those who have wronged Nagash, wielding either dual blades or a powerful halberd. They fly through the skies and swoop down on their targets mid-battle, going into a frenzy of attacks when they find them. The Morghast Archai serve instead as bodyguards and caretakers, protectors of Nagash's lieutenants. They are assigned a ward and can think of nothing but keeping that ward safe. They usually operate in groups, closing ranks around their ward and intercepting incoming attacks on their ebonwrought armor before counterattacking with spectral swords. They also come with a helpful buried command which allows Nagash to turn them on their assigned ward instantly. From here, it's time to talk about Soulblight vampires. The Soulblight Curse, as Nagash has designed it, turns its victims into perfect soldiers for his purpose. It grants eternal life, amazing physical strength and a terrifying resistance to damage. The cost is high, though. The Soulblight causes an endless hunger; no vampire ever feels satiated, and they must regularly consume fresh blood in large quantities to keep the hunger from overwhelming them and turning them into little more than a murderous beast. The curse does not, however, replicate many of the vampiric weaknesses of the World That Was, which have generally survived in folklore and old wives' tales, much to the chagrin of would-be vampire hunters. Vampires can cross rivers with ease, have no compulsion to count things, and merely find sunlight intensely irritating rather than lethal. They are often able to summon immense swarms of carrion bats to block its light, as well. The only true way to permanently kill one of the Soulblight vampires is to totally destroy its physical form. One of the most famous of their number is Prince Vhordrai, ruler of the Crimson Keep. The Crimson Keep may manifest itself in any place that is full of ruins or abandoned fortresses. When it does, the sky darkens with bats and the earth begins to crack and flake. The sky glows red, and the ruins will warp themselves and shift, transforming into a red-walled castle of great size with a black iron gatehouse. Within, Vhordrai plots his wars on the living, riding out atop his undead dragon, Shordemaire, to attack wherever he ends up. He was the first of the order of vampiric Blood Knights and is still renowned as one of the greatest warriors ever to walk the Realms, and many Blood Knights consider it a pilgrimage to find the Crimson Keep and feast with Vhordrai. Despite this, Vhordrai is as much a prisoner of the Keep as its master. In the Age of Chaos, when Nagash's body was broken by Archaon and Chaos overran Shyish, Vhordrai was one of the Mortarchs. He saw a chance to free the world of his dark master and escape his slavery. He tried to steal Nagash's corpse and through it through the corrupted realmgate at Yulghuan, hoping that in allowing the Dark Gods to devour Nagash's essence, true death would claim the necromantic god. It might have worked, but Arkhan the Black remained loyal and refused to allow it to happen. He fought Vhordrai's armies and defeated them, entombing the vampire in a coffin of realmstone. Vhordrai remained trapped within until the modern age, when Nagash saw fit to open the casket and release him, now half-maddened by his centuries of blood-starvation. It was not an act of mercy; Nagash has none. It was further punishment. Nagash cast a spell on Vhordrai that bound him forever to the Crimson Keep. While it can now appear anywhere Nagash desires (that meets the criteria for its formation, anyway) and while Vhordrai does not receive orders any more beyond guarding the castle and attacking the living, he knows the curse that has been laid on him. Should Vhordrai spend more than a day outside the walls of Crimson Keep, he will suffer a terrible and painful final death. He hates it and hates Nagash more than anything, though he does love killing mortals and feasting on them, for his blood-hunger has grown no weaker than it was on the day of his release. Bound as he is, he cannot help but function as Nagash's attack dog, terrorizing anyone that displeases his lord simply because he cannot resist the call of blood and cannot range far from his castle.  The average vampire, of course, never really aspires to betraying Nagash. They are immortal and as long as they can exist in a certain degree of luxury and are allowed to think themselves superior to mortals, they tend to be quite happy. These vampiric aristocrats rarely deign to walk on the battlefield, but equally tend not to be happy with simple bestial mounts. Thus, they ride into battle atop the Coven Thrones, huge and opulent carriages borne through the air by the tortured souls of their own victims. Each is commanded by a Vampire Queen (or King, but they're not as common, as Neferata prefers women). These royals are attended by their servants even in battle, and together they love to ensnare mortal soldiers with their magical gazes, then drag them aboard to be devoured. A rare few may even be given the blood kiss that transmits the Soulblight curse, kept as pet, paramour or champion for as long as the coven's ruler desires. The servants atop a Coven Throne are chosen for beauty and magical skill, and each is a potent diviner, able to glimpse the future by gazing into a basin on the throne which is filled with the blood of innocents. Sanguinarchs are those vampires who are dominated by their love for blood, though some also call them Bloodmothers or Red Widows. (As above, they tend to be female because Neferata is the one who tends to create and command these vampires; Mannfred's just not that interested in fathering lineages these days.) They often see themselves as artists, seeking the perfect taste, and unlike other vampires, they usually embed themselves in mortal society rather than going for the Dark Gothic Castle Aesthetic or the Terrifying Vampire Conqueror Aesthetic. They usually pose as wealthy eccentrics, and may spend centuries manipulating a lineage in hopes of breeding the perfect meal over generations of arranged marriages. Others, though, are less patient and take to the battlefield to try their luck on the taste of any particularly potent foes they can find. These vampires often ride Bloodseeker Palanquins, borne into battle on the shoulders of chained banshees. The banshees are drawn from the ranks of those slain by the vampire, chained into eternal slavery. The banshees hate the living nearly as much as they hate their commander, and they are bound not to harm the Sanguinarch...so their fury is generally taken out on anyone else nearby. They wield powerful spirit-blades designed to cause large arterial sprays, which the Sanguinarch will catch in a goblet and sample to decide if a victim is worthy of being eaten. The heady blood-brews of the Sanguinarchs are powerful indeed, and normal vampires find them utterly intoxicating. A sip will drive them to frenzies of bloodlust. Vampire Lords are those vampires that decide to play conqueror and rule over a section of the Mortal Realms as dark kings and queens rather than settle for the courts of Neferatia or Carstinia. They are often cruel masters that view their mortal subjects as little more than cattle to be farmed, and few are able to restrain their appetites for very long. This keeps their realms expanding, as they go to war in search of new victims to add to their herds. Their appearance often reflects the realm in which they live, though they often prefer the trappings of nobility and aristocracy, whatever those may be. Those of Ghur are often more bestial than other vampires, covered in hair and with massive fangs, and they cloak themselves in the furs of chieftains. The vampires of the Parching Wastes of Aqshy are pale and unnaturally thin, with fingers like knives and dark, ash-rimmed eyes. While no mortal army will willingly serve a Vampire Lord for long, they don't need to; the Soulblight curse often grants an instinctive control over necromantic magic, allowing the vampire to summon up undead armies to command. They may lack the wit and survival instinct of a mortal soldier, but they're disposable and few mortals can truly claim to have no fear of the dead. That fear tends to please vampires. Vampire Lords often march to battle at the fore of their armies; no few are swordmasters that love to take the fight to their victims, carving them open in the field. Their intense resilience to damage and ability to heal by consuming mortal blood add to this, as they rarely fear wounds, and may even carry magical chalices filled with blood from particularly powerful past victims. They often ride into battle atop undead Nightmares, accompanied by their vampiric knights. These are drawn from the order of Blood Knights, elite cavalry that bear the Soulblight. They wield beautiful swords and lances and are typically the most favored "children" of a Vampire Lord, the cream of those who have been gifted with the blood kiss. Their charges are nearly unstoppable, and each Blood Knight has typically had centuries to study the art of mounted combat, and their Nightmare mounts know none of the fears that plague living horses. Many Blood Knights serve as the elite guard to vampiric nobility, but not all. Many have formed questing bands to rove the land in search of glory. These wandering knights are perhaps the most honorable vampires, as they dedicate themselves to a strict warrior code, but honor is not the same as kindness, mercy or goodness. There are many stories of Blood Knights driving off monsters for communities...but always at a price, often a tithe of living people for them to eat. Vargheists are what happens when the hunger of a vampire goes denied too long. The darkness within consumes them, transforming them into massive, bat-like abominations of muscle and fang. Their claws can rip a man in half, and their mouth is full of vicious fangs. When they smell a mortal, their entire existence becomes the hunt, a single-minded pursuit of food. They can fly and will happily use this to ambush their victims, dragging into the air or tearing them apart in vicious dives. Once a vampire becomes a vargheist, they can never become an intelligent being again. The process is one way. Blood starvation is a common punishment in vampire courts, as it turns the victim from a problem into a weapon and also serves as a deterrent to misbehavior by others - most vampires find the thought of becoming a vargheist horrific. Not all, though; some see it as a sacred transformation, like the Avengorii dynasty of Ghur's Sascathran Dunes. Their champions undergo the mas'ranga ritual, willingly binding themselves with heavy chains and hanging face-down over a pool of boiling blood. This accelerates the transformation into a vargheist by driving their inner beast into a starved frenzy. Once the transformation is complete, they are strong enough to shatter the chains binding them, allowing them to devour the pool beneath. They lose their minds just as much as any vargheist, but the Avengorii see the maddened, bestial state of the Vargheist as a blessed one, reflecting the nature of the Realm of Beasts. Vampires are often able to command bats. The largest of these are the Fell Bats, carrion-eaters that grow to immense size by consuming corrupted corpses. This also massively increases their appetite, and these unnatural beasts live to devour flesh. Each bat is the size of a human being, and strong enough to drag one into the air if they can catch one. It is fortunate that they don't come into being naturally, but that's little solace to anyone that runs into a vampire's army. These armies also can contain swarms of lesser bats in numbers large enough to blot out the sun. These Bat Swarms are enslaved to the will of the vampiric general, and while any individual bat is a nuisance, a thousand attacking at once can actually kill people, sort of like flying piranhas. Next time: Ghosts and Skeletons
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Aug 21, 2020 19:01
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Night10194 posted:Call of Cthulhu, 5th Editions I actually don't mind CoC on a variety of levels (hell, I ran it years ago), but the Sanity System makes me so loving mad. I work in the world of neurodiversity (as in, being neurodiverse is part of my job description) and Sanity embodies the view of mental illness we have to struggle with all the time. I think its called the Tumor Model. Neurodiversity describes "mental illness" as a label attached to natural variations in the human mind that happen to have negative effects on a person's life, usually through societal judgment (the fact that being neurodiverse often causes stuff like sensory issues or other physical difficulties as well is a contentious topic that sees a lot of debate, but that's another issue). The Tumor Model, on the other hand, portrays mental illness as a sort of tumor on a person's personality, an inherently negative thing that both can only hurt someone who has it and exists separate from their personality. The Tumor Model fuels poo poo like anti-vaxx ("if I can cure the autism, my baby will suddenly become a normal, fully functional person!) and generally makes my life harder. CoC FEEDS that poo poo with its "mental illness comes from outside influences" thing and I hate it so much.
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Aug 21, 2020 19:29
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That's about where I am, with the added effect of being very annoyed that CoC also influenced the development of stress/mental health systems in RPGs very heavily, leading to many, many imitators. Which annoy me on both the ethical/problematic level, but also that it depicts mental struggle purely as 'now you have major penalties/extremely anti-social or troublesome behaviors'. I think I made an error calling it a loss of 'control' in the review, when what I'd be interested in is a model of stress and distress that centered around retaining player agency. My ideal system would have breakpoints where the players, themselves, come up with the things they do to cope, or the unproductive things the stress and terror of the moment make them do, rather than being focused on 'now the GM decides what dumb poo poo you get up to' on a gameplay level. Revealing what characters do in emotionally fraught moments is intriguing. Tracking how someone copes when they're exhausted or deeply afraid is also a way you can start talking about how people live with their issues and can come back around to more positive portrayals. While still possibly letting you track stress and have a pressure mechanic that provides tension and helps people put themselves in the characters' shoes about how unpleasant what they're dealing with is. E: Thinking on it a bit more, I think referring to it as the Tumor Model also gets at why I don't find CoC's portrayal of mental issues interesting from a fiction standpoint, too; in CoC mental conditions and loss of control are things that just get added on to your PC. They're impositions; like a tumor. They crowd out your original concept, instead of revealing more about your character through how they struggle with adversity and low points. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 19:47 on Aug 21, 2020 |
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Aug 21, 2020 19:37
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Chapter 3: Unholy Powers Accursed has two magic systems: Alchemy and White Witchcraft. Like all magic systems in Savage Worlds, you buy access to them with an Arcane Background Edge, use them with the appropriate Skill, have a discrete number of spells to use (plus applicable spells from other books), and control usage through a budget of Power Points. However, both of these systems use those mechanics entirely differently and both could not be more different fluff wise. Before the Grand Coven arrived in Morden its inhabitants saw witchcraft as both distant and inherently corrupting. Their only regular contact with magic was dealing with Fey bullshit and nobody wanted to get too deep into that. But then, of course, Witchcraft crossed the mountains and smashed through armies unprepared to deal with it, especially since many Banes (collectively called warlocks) could use a lesser form of it. So Mordenites stole spell books and scrolls, interrogated Banes, and even pumped a few friendly seelie for information to build a knowledge base for aspiring “white witches”. Even the greatest white witches can only access a fragment of the power that true Witches throw around casually, and Enochian priests regard witchcraft as inherently danger to the soul (though they rarely speak up about it; there’s too much at stake and it’s not held as anymore destructive than any other sinful activity). But the advantages of magic are too great to ignore.  The book offers little information on the nature of magic, only that in theory it can accomplish just about anything. Most white witches and warlocks use one or more of three techniques: invocation, the simplest form, which focuses power through chanting a formula and is used mostly in combat or for simpler spells; sympathy, which creates a supernatural connection between two similar objects and manipulates one to manipulate the other, usually used for things that directly affect a target like healing or causing allusions; and sigilism, in which the user creates a mark of some sort on an inanimate object and places a long-lasting and powerful enchantment on it. Or at least, the book says so. Mechanically, the spells described in the book use a variety of techniques for a variety of effects and don’t always line up with this description. Maybe it’s supposed to shape borrowed spells? Oh well. Witchcraft uses the same system that magic in Savage Worlds usually uses; you start with two spells, use a budget of Power Points to fuel them, and get a wide variety of powers to choose from (filtered by rank). You get a lot of options borrowed from other books and a wide variety of setting-specific spells, but I’ll cover a few more interesting ones here:
 Alchemy, on the other hand, is simply an outgrowth of the sciences; alchemists practice their art by combining materials in a prescribed manner to create a potion with a specific effect. First practiced in the Pharaonic court, early alchemy spread across Morden under the auspices of a particularly powerful and secretive Guild. Unfortunately, when Steppegrad invaded Remus, a land of philosophers and statesmen that lay between modern Steppegrad, Manreia, and Valkenholm, the Guild sided with the defenders. Steppegrad crushed Remus and its inhabitants scattered across Morden as the Romani (yes, the Romani, because you need the Romani in any Gothic game), and the Guild died with them. However, the surviving alchemists spread across the continent and established themselves as a part of Mordenite society; at this point most towns have at least one alchemist in residence. Alchemy is a very wide field, as wide as any other major branch of chemistry. Users can produce anything from panaceas to chemical weapons to building aids – and yes, they can transmute metals, though not cheaply enough to be economically viable. Most of the time, though, they make potions. The most important part of the process, no matter the product, is the formula, a long, difficult, and complex series of actions and measurements that only produce desired effects if followed exactly; since these techniques must be memorized and often involve knowledge in multiple fields and dealing with dangerous actions or chemicals, alchemy draws some of the most capable people in the land. Every nation has its own alchemical tradition, and in places like Cairn Kainen it’s usually treated as another form of supernatural power; but in scientifically advanced cultures alchemists are feted as the greatest thinkers of the age and the most likely people to lift Morden out of its postwar malaise. Mechanically, alchemy is a lot more complex than witchcraft. You start out with access to three formulae and 10 Power Points, but instead of casting spells, you can keep up to 10 Power Points worth of spell effects at any one time. While making a new potion requires at least one rare and/or expensive material, as far as I can tell you don’t need to roll to make new ones; memorizing new formulae, however, involves a very difficult roll and quite a bit of time. In exchange for all the complexity, alchemists have to advantages over white witches: first, while spells have a chance to backfire and take effort and special actions to maintain, using a potion is as simple as using any other object (or using a throwing weapon); and while it offers like a third as many magic powers, those powers are much more easily accessible and honestly more useful. Two of which we’ll give to Nitemat!  Last time, we gave our Mummy the Arcane Background (Alchemy) Edge, which gave her three already-memorized formulae and 10 PP to distribute between them. One formula gets allotted to Entangle, a power from the corebook that she can use as a ranged attack by throwing the potions. Her other two, however, are book-specific. Alchemical Fortitude Next time, we move into the “Tools and Gear” chapter, which is as much an essay on Mordenite technology as a gear list.
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Aug 21, 2020 19:47
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Night10194 posted:That's about where I am, with the added effect of being very annoyed that CoC also influenced the development of stress/mental health systems in RPGs very heavily, leading to many, many imitators. Which annoy me on both the ethical/problematic level, but also that it depicts mental struggle purely as 'now you have major penalties/extremely anti-social or troublesome behaviors'. I think I made an error calling it a loss of 'control' in the review, when what I'd be interested in is a model of stress and distress that centered around retaining player agency. Probably the best way to do it comes out of the FATE system which I know from the Dresden Files RPG. You have physical and mental stress tracks and when one fills completely, you're "taken out" in an appropriate way. Not necessarily dead, just you can't function/defend yourself until you rest up some and recover your stress. However, at times that's hard to do. So, instead of taking Stress in damage you can choose to take "Consequences" instead. Sprained knee. Irritable. Stuff that screws with your abilities but doesn't take your free will. Consequences tend to take longer to heal than Stress. Your Stress will clear with rest or the end of a Scenario. Depending on the severity, consequences could last through a few adventures or possibly even be permanent.
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Aug 21, 2020 20:26
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Night10194 posted:
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Aug 21, 2020 20:43
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PurpleXVI posted:The Illithiad Of course if the party psionic is also the party bard, you get this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkUAzcja74Y The best description of it came from the comments below with "If Warhammer 40K wasn't depressing as balls." Nessus posted:I agree with your general thoughts here. I think nothing would be lost and much gained, if Sanity was renamed "Psyche" or something and "temporary insanity" et cetera were called "psychic breaks" or similar. I will give the 7E chapter on the topic an examination and write some notes up later tonight. If you tell me that my character has to wear two hats to be polite to ladies and protect himself from the sky falling and by the way also wants to gently caress some fish people, you're still imposing things onto my character that I did not choose and that still sucks. It is what it is. This particular "rose by any other name" still stinks like infected diarrhea. Everyone fucked around with this message at 21:12 on Aug 21, 2020 |
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Aug 21, 2020 21:01
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Nagash sounds really boring and annoying, and reading about him reminds me of reading stories about Acheron or whatever the 40k Chaos champion who keeps being talked up in all 40k lore as the coolest dude to ever exist in Chaos. Does he have as much of a hatedom as Acheron does?
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Aug 21, 2020 21:04
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