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That is a sadness I know all too well, my friend. I miss working in Shanghai and just drowning in xiaolongbao.
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Aug 31, 2020 06:49
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Chicago has a joint, Imperial La Mian, which has pretty good Xialongbao for dates as they're all colored and filled with wacky different things so you and the other person can have a laugh trying em all and in basically true chicago fashion I've never seen anyone go there for the first time and not order the Gruyere one because gently caress me up on cheese, I guess.
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Aug 31, 2020 06:53
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Xiahou Dun posted:If you're not tripping over Sichuan food, you don't have good Chinese. I’m within walking distance of a Szechuan restaurant right now 
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Aug 31, 2020 13:32
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Barudak posted:If you want to talk chicago parks the key thing is several neighborhoods, including very nice ones like Lincoln Park, are built on reclaimed grave sites. Hell they're doing it right now with Dunning where they're building a new school on part of a gravesite containing 38,000 or so unmarked dead That just kind of begs for some kind of horror scenario, doesn't it?
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Aug 31, 2020 14:02
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1) okay good job that owns I’m jealous 2). You take that spelling and huck it into the garbage. We use pinyin in this house. Sichuan. 四川. Four rivers.
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Aug 31, 2020 14:04
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Falconier111 posted:This book strikes a balance: Chicago’s vampires were behind most of the city’s political developments, but cultural developments or unexpected events completely blindsided them. They still get achievements they could not possibly have pulled off attributed to them, but they also make really stupid mistakes; I left out a couple times Lopin, de facto ruler of one of the world’s most powerful cities for over a century, underestimated mortals in ways that derailed his plans. Ultimately they read like a collection of immortal, murderous, and extremely petty politicians, which they are. Lodin was interesting as a character, given his method of operation was essentially "find somebody who knows about what I want done and Embrace them" which ranged from things like banks and organized crime all the way down to computer science. Did this work for him? Sort of, at least for a while, since he was stronger than they are Discipline wise and they couldn't make an open move without the rest of their blood-siblings pulling them down. Lodin really wasn't the master-manipulator, old as dirt Prince (I think he was turned early 19th century) you'd see almost cut and pasted elsewhere, he just gave off that impression which is, again, more interesting than somebody with 5s in every skill and a paragraph of Disciplines.
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Aug 31, 2020 14:53
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Everyone posted:That just kind of begs for some kind of horror scenario, doesn't it? Thats what I'd be mining if I were a horror author. That and the insidious secret behind Malort Xiahou Dun posted:1) okay good job that owns I’m jealous Sorry, the extremely dodgy syndicate and Chinese importer group in Chicago that owns these restaurants uses the old way of romanizing, which is good because I have family only dimly aware it is not still the same year communism won its eternal victory and that Mao Zedong does not rule immortal over the land thanks to everyones collective sacrifice.
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Aug 31, 2020 15:11
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Xiahou Dun posted:1) okay good job that owns I’m jealous Yeah, if you want to support the PRC  e: The insidious secret behind Malort is that it grows on you after three shots. Like black mold. Falconier111 fucked around with this message at 15:26 on Aug 31, 2020 |
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Aug 31, 2020 15:12
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Falconier111 posted:Yeah, if you want to support the PRC I hate the PRC for just about every reason except the nominal Communism but pinyin is so much better than Wade-Giles or Yale. Zhuyinfuhao is okay but it's even harder to type than just normal Chinese. Like getting it on a keyboard outside of Taiwan is some serious work for the pay off of being able to write to Taiwanese children. (Also pinyin was started by the ROC and the PRC kind of hates it. It's complicated.)
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Aug 31, 2020 15:34
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Barudak posted:Thats what I'd be mining if I were a horror author. That and the insidious secret behind Malort You better not be talking poo poo about Malort. I unironically love that dumb poo poo, and I even have a buddy who distills his own.
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Aug 31, 2020 15:35
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I've a friend in Wisconsin who... I don't know if the word is 'loves', but she freely admits to drinking the stuff.
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Aug 31, 2020 15:43
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CroatianAlzheimers posted:You better not be talking poo poo about Malort. I unironically love that dumb poo poo, and I even have a buddy who distills his own. I love Malort, which is why I know its insidious.
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Aug 31, 2020 15:58
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That's the drink that could still be sold during Prohibition because no one believed you'd drink that as anything besides medicine, right?
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Aug 31, 2020 16:01
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Xiahou Dun posted:That's the drink that could still be sold during Prohibition because no one believed you'd drink that as anything besides medicine, right? Yes indeed. It's awful and I love surprising people with shots - tell them they need to send it all down the hatch at once or they won't get the full experience. It used this label up until a few years ago: Malort Screed posted:Most first-time drinkers of Jeppson Malört reject our liquor. Its strong, sharp taste is not for everyone. Our liquor is rugged and unrelenting (even brutal) to the palate. During almost 60 years of American distribution, we found only 1 out of 49 men will drink Jeppson Malört. During the lifetime of our founder, Carl Jeppson was apt to say, 'My Malört is produced for that unique group of drinkers who disdain light flavor or neutral spirits.' It is not possible to forget our two-fisted liquor. The taste just lingers and lasts – seemingly forever. The first shot is hard to swallow! Perservere [sic]. Make it past two 'shock-glasses' and with the third you could be ours... forever. It's right. And no, it's not because you're too drunk to care. Falconier111 fucked around with this message at 16:16 on Aug 31, 2020 |
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Aug 31, 2020 16:14
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'Shock-glasses'. I like that.
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Aug 31, 2020 16:24
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Barudak posted:I love Malort, which is why I know its insidious. Fair. I mean, I drink a lot of slivovicia and use that as a "shock glass" when people visit my home for the first time, so I'm pretty used to aggressive folk liquors.
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Aug 31, 2020 16:49
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hey guys, did you know cabrini green is so dangerous even vampires avoid it 
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Aug 31, 2020 17:33
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Falconier111 posted:hey guys, did you know cabrini green is so dangerous even vampires avoid it Vampires apparently aren't willing to wait the decade to get Cabrini Green redeveloped and get insanely rich.
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Aug 31, 2020 17:42
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A brief google makes me think that's Chicagoan for Williamsburg, which if that's correct just lol to the lol.
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Aug 31, 2020 17:44
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MOTHERSHIP PLAYER’S SURVIVAL GUIDE - Part 7: Stress, Panic and Resolve Today in the Mothership Player’s Survival Guide, we’re checking out the Stress system. We’ve seen lots of rules elsewhere in the book reference this section, let’s see how it stacks up.  GAINING STRESS The main way characters gain Stress is by failing saving throws. The book offers several other ways to gain stress. Going without food, water or sleep, falling to 0 HP, or being around a Scientist who fails a Sanity save can also do it. The book also offers this as a catch all: Mothership, Page 25 posted:Certain creatures, haunts, and locations can give you Stress just by interacting with them, or seeing them RELIEVING STRESS Every six hours of rest you get in a safe place, you can make a Fear save to reduce your Stress. If the save succeeds, you reduce Stress equal to the tens place of the successful D100 roll. The book gives an example of a character using their Psychology skill to give another character advantage on a Fear save to remove Stress. It also says that anyone who uses Psychology or Theology to help reduce Stress in such a fashion can only do so once a day, and cannot recover any Stress of their own during that day. Mathematically, this is a poor choice. The character doing the assisting gives up four of their own stress reduction rolls in order to potentially give another character assistance on one roll. If they pass a skill check. Which they are not likely to do. The book offers other possibilities for relieving Stress, such as defeating scary monsters, returning to safe and familiar places, and carousing. PANIC CHECKS When you take a critical hit, critically fail a save, see a player character die, or otherwise get in a scary situation as determined by the Warden, you have to make a Panic Check. To do that, roll 2D10 and compare it to your current Stress. If the result on the dice is greater, nothing bad happens, and your Stress is reduced by 1. If the result is equal or less, you Panic, and must roll another 2D10. This time, you add your Stress to the roll, then compare the total to a table of results, which determine what gameplay effect occurs. There are several low tier Panic results that actually help you, giving you focus and adrenaline that adds advantage to all your rolls. The next tier up gives you penalties, like gaining more Stress, being unable to engage in combat without a Fear save for D10 hours, or taking disadvantage on rolls. You can get permanent “phobias” from this table, which are never given mechanics in the rules text. The highest result on the table (30, meaning you can’t get it without at least 10 Stress) is a heart attack, instantly killing your character. Remember when I said this game felt a lot like Darkest Dungeon, and not necessarily in a good way? RESOLVE Speaking of things taken straight from Darkest Dungeon, Resolve is something you can buy when you level your character in Mothership. For each point of Resolve you buy, all rolls on the Panic Effect Table (the second 2D10 roll) are reduced by one, up to a maximum of five points of Resolve. STRESSING OUT ABOUT STRESS At first glance, this whole section seems obtuse, with different rules for Stress, Fear, Sanity and Panic rolls. The good news is, it’s simpler than the book makes it seem. Failed Saves build up your Stress, then horrible poo poo happens and you cash that Stress in with a Panic check. The bad news is, it’s still very clunky to use in-play. Stress primarily builds up on failed saves, which means the Warden has to be aggressive about calling for saving throws if the Stress mechanic is going to come into play at all. Then Panic Checks are just kind of… random. They happen on critical failures, critical hits, and a generic “when something is really scary” condition. And the mechanics for Panic Checks are just bad. 2D10 roll-under Stress, followed immediately by 2D10 add Stress. People complain a lot about Sanity tests slowing horror games down by requiring too much rolling and negotiating rules and point costs, right as things are supposed to be at their most tense. Mothership is especially bad in this regard. I see what the devs were going for here. Rather than a system of constant decline like a “conventional” Sanity system, they wanted something that modeled a gradual buildup and then release of tension. Instead, they built a kludge of a system that requires constant attention from the Warden, yet still feels random. And not in a “simulated universe that doesn’t give a poo poo about your plans” way, but more like a “the dice say this point of arbitrary chip damage is the one that matters!” way. If these Stress mechanics sound familiar, it’s because the Free League Alien RPG uses something very similar. Released a year or two after Mothership, the latest licensed Alien game has a conceptually identical build-up-then-release Stress system. Difference is, the Alien system is much slicker. Players can increase their odds of success on tasks by taking on more Stress, meaning the onus isn’t entirely on the GM to constantly be calling for saves and dealing Stress chip damage. Stress boiling over and becoming a problem is integrated into the dice mechanics themselves, rather than something that has to be adjudicated separately through a series of additional checks. I have no idea if there’s a direct line of inspiration from the Stress system in Mothership to the one in the Alien game. I think the gap between the release dates is just long enough for it to be possible. If there is, that’s a good thing. Games borrowing and stealing rules from each other is how good mechanics get better and bad mechanics die. Mothership already benefits substantially from RPG tech developed by other games, like D100 with black-jack opposed tests and doubles as criticals. I hope the developers close the loop and draw in some inspiration from the Alien game when they update the Mothership rules. Tune in next time for Space Travel and Space Travel Accessories.
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Aug 31, 2020 17:56
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Spelljammer helms can be powered by spell-casters, beholder-kin, dwarven craftsmanship, or The Deck of Encounters Set Two Part 54: The Deck of Nagas and Neogi 271: Snake Underfoot The PCs are in an underground tunnel where a spirit naga lives. The spirit naga has charmed slaves and made them dig out pit traps (then ate them). There are four pit traps - first, an open pit, then one covered by a conspicuous rug, then one covered by balsa wood lightly sprinkled with stones, and then one of those fancy ones with a pivoting stone lid. That final trap drops creatures right into the naga’s lair, and the naga will try to charm them during the turn they’re stunned by the 6d6 damage fall. What is the point here? Why not just lead with the best trap, instead of having some kind of scaffolded educational pit trap curriculum? I guess this particular spirit naga is just loving obsessed with pit traps. And that’s random enough for me to find it charming. Keep. 272: Drow Messenger “This occurs in any area known to have drow activity. It is most likely a forested area.” Because when I think “drow activity,” I think… overworld forests? Anyway, a spirit naga shows up at the PCs camp at night, politely asking for entry because it bears a message. Said message is basically a demand for a toll, though… “you are in the territory claimed by the drow,” yada yada. If the PCs don’t pay up, the naga is all like “on your heads be it,” portends dire consequences, and departs. The twist is that there are no drow and the spirit naga is trying to bluff the PCs out of some treasure. Pleasingly entrepreneurial. Similar to that “kobolds pretending to be an army” encounter, except I don’t have to worry about forcing it into some ill-defined borderlands political situation. Keep. 273: Spider Sandwich This occurs on the Rock of Bral, from the Spelljammer setting. Wonderful. I’ll just add it my customized “Rock of Bral” encounter deck, right next to my “forest,” “mountains,” and “city” decks. When I need a random encounter on the Rock of Bral, I’ll know just where to turn. Anyway a neogi approaches the PCs and offers to hire them to rob an illithid. “It expects the party to be honored to help it,” which I guess is nicely alien in perspective. It comes out in conversation that the illithid has kidnapped a young woman (who the neogi refers to as “meat”), and the PCs can take both the damsel in distress and any treasure. The neogi only wants its two umber hulks, which the illithid apparently has stolen/mentally enslaved. If they go confront the illithid in its dwelling, the neogi confidently promises to handle the umber hulks, but instead “is torn to shreds in one round.” Nice twist, I suppose. I notice the young woman is so peripheral that she has no name, description, or confirmation that she actually exists. But whatever. Maybe we just drop that angle, and the PCs are into the idea of a neogi owing them a favor. Both neogi and illithids are monstrously evil slaving cultures, so I guess there’s not much of a moral dilemma in helping one over the other. Though the pro move is clearly to free the umber hulks. Keep for a theoretical “Spelljammer melting pot city” random encounter deck that will never actually exist. 274: Black Bart A Spelljammer encounter. Slak Sart (“Black Bart” to humans) is a renegade neogi pirate who hates his own kind. Sart attacked a neogi mindspider (that’s a type of ship, folks) and damaged it, but their own helm was ruined in the fight. The PCs run into their stranded ship, waved down by Bart’s human shipmate Glasia (F5), who is rethinking her allegiance to Bart since the money has not been rolling in. There are also a couple umber hulk slaves. They negotiate passage to a nearby port where he’s hoping to raise a new crew, though Glasia might attempt to join the PCs instead. Most notably, they’ve got some coinage and a ballista to barter. Cool. Keep.
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Aug 31, 2020 19:32
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Arkham Horror: the Living Card Game 6 - Scenario Set up So, I've talked about the basics of the game, I've talked about tests and resolutions in the game, I've talked about the various kinds of Player Cards, the various kinds of Encounter Cards, and the many rules for building a deck. Now we start talking about actually playing the game. Arkham Horror's rulebook lays out the 13 steps needed to set up a game, so let's go down them shall we? Step 0: Choose what you are going to play. This isn't technically in the rulebook, but it is technically something you do so let's shove it in here. Arkham Horror at time of writing has a total of 6.5 complete campaigns to choose from and play through. Most of these are 8-part campaigns. These are The Dunwich Legacy, The Path to Carcosa, The Forgotten Age, and the Circle Undone. Along with those campaigns is The Night of the Zealot, a 3-part campaign in the core box, and The Dream Eaters which is composed of two 4-part campaigns, The Dream Quest and Waking Nightmare, which can be played either individually or as an interconnected campaign (hence the .5) The seventh campaign, The Innsmouth Conspiracy is slated to begin in October. For sake of clarity and simplicity we will be setting up The Night of the Zealot. Step 1: Select Your Investigators Once again for sake of simplicity I'm going to wheel out the starter decks for Nathaniel Cho and Harvey Walters, who I will be playing two-handed. Step 2: Take Trauma Damage Thankfully, as we are starting fresh there isn't any. Glad to see that Harvey isn't any worse for wear despite being used as a punching bag for years in Call of Cthulhu. Step 3: Choose an Investigator to Be the Lead Investigator The Lead Investigator is the person chosen to lead the table. In practical gameplay terms, whenever thing must be done in player order (i.e. drawing encounter cards) you start with the lead investigator and go around the table. Additionally, there are some cases where something will happen to the lead investigator or must be chosen by the lead investigator. These are not always good things. Lastly, should the players be at an impasse over something (which choice to make during the story, where a hunter enemy moves) the lead investigator has to be the one to break ties and decide where things happen. For this scenario I am choosing Harvey Walters to be Lead Investigator. Step 4: Assemble and Shuffle the Investigator Decks Fairly self-explanatory I think. Step 5: Assemble the Token Pool Again, fairly self-explanatory, though it does say a little bit about Fantasy Flight Games that this was deemed an important enough step for gameplay preparation that it had to be explicitly called out in the official, printed rulebook. Step 6: Assemble the Chaos Bag If you are continuing from a previous scenario in a campaign than the chaos bag is more or less already assembled and you just grab it for this step. Since we are functionally starting a new campaign we have to get it together. Each campaign has its own campaign log, and on the very first page of said campaign log you'll find the specific Chaos Bag for each different difficulty of the campaign. I will be playing Night of the Zealot on standard difficulty so flipping open the booklet/PDF freely available from FFG's website under the support header in amongst the other rulebook PDFs, we find the four possible difficulties each with their own listing of Chaos Tokens. So, I will be grabbing the following tokens: +1, 0, 0, -1, -1, -1, -2, -2, -3, -4, Skull, Skull, Cultist, Tablet, Tentacle, Elder Sign Step 7: Collect Starting Resources By default, each player starts with five resources. Cards may adjust that up or down. Step 8: Draw Opening Hand Your starting hand size in Arkham Horror is 5 cards. However, players are allowed to take a Mulligan. To Mulligan in Arkham Horror you select any number of cards in your opening hand, set them to the side, and draw cards to replace them. Once you have your post-Mulligan opening hand you take all of your set aside cards and shuffle them back into the deck. An important note about the opening hand is that it's not possible to have a weakness in your opening hand. If you draw a weakness you immediately said at the side and draw another card. This happens both before and after you Mulligan, so if you Mulligan into a weakness you put it aside and draw another card. Only after you're done mulliganing do you shuffle your weaknesses back into your deck along with your other mulliganed cards. Step 9: Read the Scenario Introduction in the Campaign Guide This is where you learn the story! Let's do that: Night of the Zealot posted:The Ghouls Hunger… Nice and ominous. Also, since that is the campaign introduction we still have the scenario introduction to read, so let's do that. The Gathering posted:You and your partners have been investigating strange events taking Step 10: Perform the Scenario Set up Instructions Indicated by the Campaign Guide Here's the big one. The set up for The Gathering specifically has four steps. First and arguably most important is gathering the appropriate encounter sets. The encounter sets we need are The Gathering, Rats, Ghouls, Striking Fear, Ancient Evils, and Chilling Cold. Encounter sets are modular groups of encounter cards that are used to form a scenario's encounter deck. The choice of encounter sets means that scenarios can vary widely from one another. The fact that encounter sets can pop in and out as necessary for each scenario means that each scenario has its own field and its own challenges. This has afforded FFG a lot of leeway in designing individual scenarios, a scenario taking place in Arkham or Dunwich will have a very different encounter deck from a scenario taking place in the Mexican rain forest. You may also notice that one of the encounter sets for The Gathering is literally called "The Gathering". Each scenario has its own self-titled encounter set which includes not only unique challenges and scenario specific enemies but also all the locations needed to actually build the field. And a helpful little thing is that each encounter set has its own special icon so you can recognize it at a glance. Here they all are for The Gathering, in the same order as I listed above:  I'll take what's behind Doom number one! As this is the tutorial/dry run scenario most of these encounters sets are pretty easy. Rats contains the weakest enemy in the game, half of the Ghouls set is comprised of Ghoul Minions who aren't much tougher, and The Gathering itself has no particularly nasty cards. Chilling Cold is a fairly mild encounter set that can make investigation a little harder or more dangerously possibly lose you an asset but otherwise isn't that bad. Striking Fear is probably the meanest encounter set, it consists of previously mentioned cards Rotting Remains, Frozen in Fear, and Dissonant Voices. None of these cards are completely harmless depending on who draws them and when. Finally Ancient Evils is possibly the most hated encounter set in the game. It consists of only three copies of the same card, and frankly that one card is enough to ruin your day.  Remember how I've repeatedly characterized Arkham Horror as a race against time? Yeah, this card is exactly as bad as it seems. Once you have all the encounter sets together there are still further instructions. First, we put the Study location into play and set aside all the other locations.The set up also tells us to set aside the Ghoul Priest and Lita Chandler cards. Setting them aside strongly hints that we will be bringing them into play somehow later on. The rules also states that all investigators begin in the study as the starting location.  Finally, we shuffle all the remaining encounter cards together to form The Encounter Deck. Step 11: Set the Agenda Deck As mentioned previously the Agenda Deck is the bad deck representing negative progress through the scenario and the forces of the mythos. To form the agenda deck we grab all of the agendas for this scenario and stack them up starting with agenda 1a on top. Note that you aren't supposed to actually look at what's on the back of the various agendas. You're allowed to know how many agendas there are and probably can't help but notice the doom thresholds on each, but if this is your first time doing the scenario the game would appreciate it if you didn't jump the gun on it. You might ruin the surprise.  Spooky! This particular agenda has no specific rules text. All it has is a Doom threshold of 3 to advance, though on the other hand an agenda is quite dangerous enough. Step 12: Set the Act Deck The Act Deck represents the counterpart to the agenda. Whereas the agenda is negative storyline progress towards a bad ending, the act deck is positive storyline progress towards a good ending. The Agenda is what happens to you, the Act is what you're doing to fight back. In a nutshell a game of Arkham Horror is a race to complete the act deck before the agenda runs out.  As with the agenda the game would appreciate it if you didn't look on the back of the acts and tried to avoid skipping ahead. It's reasonable to know that there are three acts in The Gathering, but don't spoil yourself as to what they are. Now as for how you interact with the act you'll notice the number in the green magnifying glass. That is how many clues you need in order to advance the act. In the case of this act you need 2 clues per player. Once your group has that many in total then as a free action you may spend those clues to flip the act over, read the other side, and advance to the next act. So now it's finally time to talk about clues! Clues are anything necessary to affect positive progress in the game. In the case of the very start of The Gathering you're stuck in your study, so clues are you looking around trying to figure out what happened and how to get out. Clues are held individually but spent jointly. If one person has 3 clues and another person has 1 clue then the investigators collectively have 4 clues and could advance the act. In general, unless the game explicitly says otherwise, advancing the act is optional and you can spend clues from anywhere to progress the act. Do note that the game will have cases where it will indeed explicitly say otherwise. So how do you get clues? Usually by investigating locations.  Above I showed the unrevealed side of the study. In general, locations in Arkham Horror begin unrevealed and are then revealed once an investigator moves into said location. Since the game is more or less ready to begin all the investigators are at the study so it is flipped to the revealed side seen above. In the middle of each location are two numbers. The number on the left in black is the Shroud Value. Shroud is the difficulty to investigate in this location. If you spend an action investigating in the study you make an Intellect check with a difficulty equal to the shroud, in this case 2. The number on the right in the magnifying glass appropriately is how many clues are on this location, in this case it is two per investigator. When a location is flipped up you put clues on it equal to the clue value. In an astonishing coincidence (not really) there are exactly enough clues on this location to advance the act. Two other important details on locations are the symbol in the upper left corner and the row of circles on the bottom. These are used to show how locations are connected. It's not apparent using only the study, because the study is not actually connected to any other locations (you're trapped inside it, remember?) but when locations are connected you link symbol on the bottom to symbol at the top. The study has a circle symbol in the top left, so in theory if you could enter the study from another location you would be able to tell because that same symbol would appear on the bottom of that connecting location. Once the scenario is actually in swing and there is more than one location to move between it should be easier to understand. Final note on movement, one action lets you move one location. Step 13: Place the Scenario Reference Card Next to the Agenda As mentioned a while back, the scenario reference card tells you what chaos tokens with special symbols actually do. And we're done! A good number of these set of instructions are quick and easy especially once you're in the swing of things and everyone has decks already. Next Time: Can Harvey Walters and Nathaniel Cho Escape from Harvey's Study and Figure out What the Heck Is Going On? Omnicrom fucked around with this message at 23:29 on Apr 12, 2021 |
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Sep 1, 2020 00:20
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Cabrini Green is where Candyman was set and filmed, so again if you can't do something suitably evocative horror you can just rip off something that is.
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Sep 1, 2020 00:52
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I picked up arkham horror like a week before your review started and its been a great help in understanding the rules. I'm looking forward to seeing how your example play of the gathering goes compared to mine. (poorly, ghouls ripped my flesh and freaked my bean until I swapped from Roland to Skids.)
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Sep 1, 2020 00:59
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The Skeep posted:I picked up arkham horror like a week before your review started and its been a great help in understanding the rules. I'm looking forward to seeing how your example play of the gathering goes compared to mine. (poorly, ghouls ripped my flesh and freaked my bean until I swapped from Roland to Skids.) I'm really glad I've been able to help. Just finished my first game with Harvey and Nathanial. Harvey was VERY close to being taken out. The game had it in for the old man. Meanwhile one of Nathaniel's what a combat God whose turn 1 play totally whiffed. Trip report should be up soonish.
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Sep 1, 2020 01:31
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Falconier111 posted:hey guys, did you know cabrini green is so dangerous even vampires avoid it It's kinda worse than that, but you'll see.
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Sep 1, 2020 01:45
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 Chapter 3: Geography This is gonna be a rough one.  The vast majority of this chapter is a point-by-point listing of the city’s various neighborhoods and their important sites and businesses, many of which are real. I’m not going to list them all out. Instead, I think I’ll go region by region, noting important elements as I go and ignoring everything that isn’t (this book sure has an extensive listing of all the bookstores, clubs, and shopping centers vampires visit occasionally, complete with practically a clientele list). If you’re familiar with oWoD, you’ve probably heard the term “Gothic-punk” used to describe its particular aesthetic; this book leans HEAVILY on the word to draw contrasts between locations here and their real equivalents. While the city looks pretty similar from the outside, the two versions of Chicago are quite different – and, interestingly, the book makes a point of drawing distinctions between the two cities as far as danger is concerned; it gives the impression that Chicago as a whole is, while definitely not sunshine and rainbows, a relatively functional city. Somewhat. Definitely not in the World of Darkness. Anyway, the book divides the city (and much of this chapter) into six sections: the East Side, South Side, West Side, Northside, Downtown, and the Outlands. After covering them one by one, it goes back and hits several places of note in depth.  First up, downtown, which is basically the area I covered in Chicago-in-a-box; the Loop, the Magnificent Mile, and the Gold Coast (which contains the city’s most expensive residential areas), all the way up to Cabrini Green. Not going to waste too much time going into details where I’ve covered them already, although then pointing out that it lists shops by name (often real ones) like this is some old city supplement for Forgotten Realms. Also the book specifies an East Side, but it really just means downtown east of the Loop. There is no reason to cover it separately. Come on.
 The South Side consists of mostly working- and middle-class neighborhoods, mostly populated by various ethnic minorities (and the University of Chicago). They don’t get too deep into local racial politics, for which I am grateful. With… one exception.
Atrociously short, but I spent the whole day working with tech support and I stone cold do not give a gently caress. I don’t know, we’ll hit up the rest of the city in a few days, who cares. E: Oh god, I should have googled that name. The name of the triad he controls? The Wing Kong 
Falconier111 fucked around with this message at 04:00 on Sep 1, 2020 |
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Sep 1, 2020 03:13
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It’s a part of the Barrens, a thing I’ll go into depth on later… unfortunately.
. Look, I’ve been to Chicago’s Chinatown. It’s nice. A little dirty in some parts, but perfectly safe and friendly. My first exposure to manga was a random volume of Dragon Ball some shop here sold to my parents. In this book, Chicago’s Chinatown is a poverty-riddled slum stalked by triads and “oriental warlocks”, where people live 10 to an apartment and filth coats the streets. It spends several paragraphs describing Lo Pan, the local mage/triad boss, who’s the single most intense incarnation of the “inscrutable oriental” stereotype I’ve ever encountered. God, I want to talk about the issues here but 
. gently caress this section.
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Literally David Lo Pan. 
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Sep 1, 2020 03:23
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Ah, the Old World of Darkness, where you can squeeze some giggling about Doctor Who into the same chapter as "yes it's the antagonist from Big Trouble in Little China. Do not cross him!"
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Sep 1, 2020 03:24
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Wait, wait, wait. Lo Pan? 
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Sep 1, 2020 03:25
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Laffoooooooo on the Chinatown section. Chicago's chinatown is quite nice, especially in the mandarin section, although I don't think that development existed when this book was written.
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Sep 1, 2020 03:25
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:Ah, the Old World of Darkness, where you can squeeze some giggling about Doctor Who into the same chapter as "yes it's the antagonist from Big Trouble in Little China. Do not cross him!" Clearly, the writers of Chicago by Night were not put on this Earth to 'get it'.
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Sep 1, 2020 03:26
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Libertad! posted:Sun Court Fey are lawful seelie faeries. They are skilled artists and hunters, and carry bronze muskets which fire angry wasps. Their courtiers, paladins, and visionweavers (better attribute scores, and armour in the case of paladins) are their peoples’ front line of defense against the nightmares, but they have no patience for humans that do not respect their authority. While I'm here, these fuckers are straight up Ray Bradbury martians.
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Sep 1, 2020 03:28
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Bieeanshee posted:Wait, wait, wait. Oh god, I should have googled that name. The name of the triad he controls? The Wing Kong
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Sep 1, 2020 03:32
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If you drink the Black Blood of the Earth three times, do you become a Gaian fomor?
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Sep 1, 2020 03:37
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Falconier111 posted:Oh god, I should have googled that name. The name of the triad he controls? The Wing Kong no loving way
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Sep 1, 2020 03:49
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After reading Dalibun's post header I remembered there was something I meant to do this weekend. Oops, well, here's an introduction to Under the Dark Fist. I'll get the rest done as I can. Under the Dark Fist Not exactly a high-level Spelljammer adventure so much as it is the seeds of a high-level campaign. The adventure module is fairly bare bones as an adventure and moves from scene to scene very quickly with the implication that the DM will fill in whole adventures' worth of details between the few scripted encounters. The final battle has the most detail and occupies about half of the module, meaning that the module is mostly about getting the PCs to this point as fast as possible and hoping the DM can make the build-up to this part as interesting as they can with only a little bit of help. What's this adventure about? Under the Dark Fist asks the question - can the three spheres (i.e. the three solar systems) of the official Spelljammer canon survive the attention of Emperor Vulkaran the Dark, Master of the Twelve Spheres, and Ruler of the Known Universe? Vulkaran is your typical megalomaniac evil emperor who wants to add your home star systems to his tally of conquests and your job is to stop him. That's about it in terms of story. Pretty straight-forward space opera without much going on. Vulkaran himself isn't actually all that interesting, he's a guy who's not interested in politics or diplomacy and would rather just crush all who oppose him and hear the lamentations of their women. There are a few other villainous and helpful NPCs and we'll get to them in time, but first let's talk about Spelljammer a bit for those who weren't playing D&D in the 90's. Spelljammer is a D&D space fantasy setting that occurs around (above) the official D&D canon of Krynn, Greyhawk, and Forgotten Realms. In Spelljamer all of these settings have their own star system dedicated to them and these star systems are contained inside enormous bigger-than-dyson jet black crystal spheres. Each crystal sphere floats in the rainbow fluid of the phlogiston, a cosmic sea that spelljammer ships ply when they travel from sphere to sphere. Spelljammer ships are magical vessels that are like a combination of traditional aquatic ships and starships. Each is powered by a "helm" which is the magical device that enables ships to travel through space. There are numerous types of helms, but the most common ones are powered by spell-casters who lend some of their spell power to the ship to make it travel, draining off the caster's spells in exchange for propulsion (other types of helms work based on impossible gnomish technology, psionics, or just straight up vampiric life-drain of slaves). D&D is a fantasy setting and space isn't the vacuum that you might be familiar with; air is easier to find, but still a concern if you're adrift or fall overboard, gravity is far more subjective, and travel is more like long sea voyages than space travel. That being said, it's D&D in space. One thing that will matter later on, in order to resolve the issue of which set of gods are the 'real' ones Spelljammer assumes that each crystal sphere has its own set of gods Gods can't leave their home crystal sphere, but can still communicate with their followers outside of it. Now, you might wonder, how does this work with clerics or the different planes? Two answers, first, badly for clerics. Regaining spells while in the phlogiston outside of your deity's sphere is difficult and capped at (I want to say) level two barring some circumstances. While inside another sphere clerics can use the trans-dimensional Astral Plane to get their spells back. Which brings us to the second question's answer: Also badly. Spelljammer does not do a very good job of integrating the different planes into its cosmology and as a DM I would offer the suggestion 'Dont' think about it'. It's D&D .. in space! In general the Spelljammer setting is more high fantasy than most D&D settings. Wizards and magic items are fairly common as you might have guessed and Spelljammer blends setting details from Dragonlance, Greyhawk, and Forgotten Realms into its own melange that tends to favor the assumption of lots of magic items and magical creatures. Speaking of which, major factions and political entities in Spelljammer are broken down by race because of course that's the easiest way to explain factions to our stupid racist monkey brains. The factions tend to be similar between all three of the canon spheres despite any differences that arise from those game settings. *Elves: Typical fantasy elves. They're better than you, they're jerks, they're the good guys, they have amazing ships made of fine crystal and wood, they have lots of wizards, and they're probably in charge of 'civilized' areas. Elves in Spelljammer are probably the most divorced from the three settings, but still the same in that they're roughly identical in all three anyway. *Dwarves: Have trouble with space travel due to a lack of wizards so they use cleric-typed helms instead. Asteroid fortresses. Have the same issue as elves where dwarves tend to share characteristics between the settings so Spelljammer dwaves are broad stroke caricatures. But this is space opera so what do you expect? *Gnomes: Krynn-inspired gnomes. Mad scientists and inventors. Wacky hijinks. At least they're not kender. *Humans: The everyman faction. Can come from anywhere and have any background. Also includes non-humans who don't have a major or minor faction. So, like, gnolls are 'human'. *Mind flayers: A natural fit. They have caster- and psionic-based helms. They eat brains. Nautical themed squid ships. Surprisingly willing to try diplomacy when it suits them (i.e. they are cowards). Basically, space-Portuguese triangle-trade merchants. For the D&D savvy I would like to mention that Gith are also present in Spelljammer, but I think most of them hang out in the Astral plane so mind flayers sort of get a break from dealing with them if they stay in space. *Beholders: Space pirates. Fly around in giant asteroids carved into "boat" shapes by their laser eyes. Do not work well with others - including other beholders. Beholders would be far more dangerous to civilized space if they weren't in a state of perpetual war with each other. *Neogi: Spelljammer specific race. Spider-creatures. Decedent slavers. Have dedicated umber hulk bodyguards and sail either small raider vessels or giant slave-powered barges. Treacherous and debased monsters who feed on their slaves bodies and use their life force to power their helms. I think they have some kind of scent-based hypnotism. Basically, the bad guys of Spelljammer - that is until you meet Vulkaran's empire: *The Vodoni: basically humans. Basically. The Vodoni people were forced to flee their home sphere, Vodon, when the star went nova four hundred years ago. In the time leading up to the explosion the gods of the Vodoni were worried they would not survive because no magic or power could divine what would happen after the star went nova. Would the gods be destroyed by the massive output of cosmic energy? Could the gods survive the nova without leaving the sphere? They didn't know and worse, as gods, they couldn't leave their crystal sphere without giving up their divinity. So, they cooked up a scheme. The chief god, the Crystal King, forged an orb that the gods could seal themselves in and while contained in the orb they could travel outside of Vodoni space without yielding their godhood. The only catch was that while contained in their prison/ark they were at the mercy of whoever held their orb so the gods needed a champion. Someone who would not be tempted to misuse the power of the gods. Their search led them to a talented and rapidly rising star of the Vodoni armed forces, Vulkaran. Vulkaran was put to the test and it appeared that he passed all of the moral challenges presented to him. The gods were certain that Vulkaran could be trusted to not go mad with the power of the orb. Unfortunately for the pantheon of Vodon, this was because Vulkaran was, even then, a self-obsessed megalomaniac who was so convinced of his own inevitable rise to greatness that he didn't even think he needed the gods to become master of all-known space. Turns out, he was right. With their gods sealed away Vulkaran took charge and led his people in exodus onto a conquest of their nearest neighboring sphere where he had the entire sphere inhabitants expunged so he could reshape the sphere into Vodonikaspace - the new home of the Vodoni people.Vulkaran wasn't content with just one sphere though and he - through a pact with an equally ambitious, but inexplicably trustworthy transmuter, Mongrelle - created a race of werewolf super soldiers that were unleashed on the nearby spheres. After four centuries of bloody conquest Vulkaran is now the master of twelve spheres and is looking to add three more to his set in the near future.
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Sep 1, 2020 03:55
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I like the idea that Vulkaran just stuck the gods in his sock drawer and forgot about them.
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Sep 1, 2020 04:07
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PurpleXVI posted:I like the idea that Vulkaran just stuck the gods in his sock drawer and forgot about them. I wonder if the PCs can cut a deal with Vulkaran with the idea that he can have Krynn if he promises to put all their gods in a sock drawer jar too.
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Sep 1, 2020 04:41
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<completely monotone read off a notecard> Oh no, its terrible. Someone is putting all the gods of krynn in an orb where they can no longer influence others lives. Somebody stop them.
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Sep 1, 2020 05:55
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