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Cooked Auto posted:The Ratte thankfully never got any further than conceptualising before they realized how stupid the ideas was and dropped it. I'm not sure "thankfully" is the right word. If they had built the dumb thing, it might have shortened the war a few days by diverting so many resources, saving thousands of lives.
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Feb 12, 2021 21:59
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TaurusTorus posted:I want the Ratte to be a boss fight in a WW2 Metal Gear Solid type game. Also supersoldiers dosed up to the gills on D-IX Project Wingman has a level where you fight two Land Battleships that are obviously inspired by them. If that's anything. wdarkk posted:I'm not sure "thankfully" is the right word. If they had built the dumb thing, it might have shortened the war a few days by diverting so many resources, saving thousands of lives. Yeah, not wrong there. I'll give you that.
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Feb 12, 2021 22:05
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i do appreciate, at least, the joke behind having all your tanks named after big cats and then deciding to name your obscenely huge tank "mouse" i also appreciate that their tanks were poo poo because they were too
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Feb 13, 2021 06:41
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Tiler Kiwi posted:i do appreciate, at least, the joke behind having all your tanks named after big cats and then deciding to name your obscenely huge tank "mouse" Tiler Kiwi posted:i also appreciate that their tanks were poo poo because they were too 
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Feb 13, 2021 06:51
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TaurusTorus posted:I want the Ratte to be a boss fight in a WW2 Metal Gear Solid type game. Also supersoldiers dosed up to the gills on D-IX Man, should have added "go for weird drug nonsense" for my "make Weird War 2 actually interesting" post. Like three paragraphs of backstory about how the occult Nazi organizations are trying to contact demons, and then the actual contact is made by some entirely unrelated program after a dude takes enough Pervitin to vibrate though the veil between the world.
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Feb 13, 2021 09:20
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that reminds me of my favorite story i tell to people to get them to understand just how stupid the nazis actually were instead of being "cruel but efficient", which involves telling them how the postal service has their own nuclear program. oh yeah and the non-ss intel service being headed by a nazi disliker for most of the war.
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Feb 13, 2021 09:32
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Tiler Kiwi posted:that reminds me of my favorite story i tell to people to get them to understand just how stupid the nazis actually were instead of being "cruel but efficient", which involves telling them how the postal service has their own nuclear program. 
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Feb 13, 2021 09:50
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Oh, it's basically as simple as it sounds. The wartime German bureaucracy was an insane and stupid mess and the german postal service had been taken over by the nazis, with the head being Wilhelm Ohnesorge who is so unimportant he dropped off the face of the planet after the war and nobody bothered to keep track of him until he died at 89. But he also had studied physics and was friendly enough with Hitler that he could get away with chasing after whatever caught his attention. He at least had the knack for going after things that were conceivably possible, like using the radio for "party propagation", but being the postmaster general he didn't exactly have access to the resources to do anything with it. He knew enough about physics to know that fission was a Big Deal, and knew enough about Nazi Germany to know that their inability to do basic coordination of their research programs and scientists (like the Americans were doing) was getting in the way of things. So he figured, hell, I'm the postmaster general, lets see if I can get things going despite it being absolutely not in the domain of the post office. He did not get things going. Nor manage to persuade anyone else to get things moving along despite maybe trying the hardest out of anyone; the physicists that remained in Germany didn't work together much and were more interested in chasing after cool sounding ideas than creating militarily useful technologies, and the german high command were distrustful of the "jewish science" of physics and adverse to the intra-branch efforts that would have been required to do something with fission since Hitler deliberately set them up with competing agendas for various reasons but mostly because he was a dorkwad idiot (and the known quality of Hitler being a dorkwad idiot ironically lead quite a few of his officials that understood the practical importance of fission to try to keep him away from nuclear fission projects since they knew he didn't really understand any of it and if got interested in it at all would insist on micromanaging it). Although Wilhem did manage to throw a lot of funding at whoever was doing things, like Manfred von Ardenne, a private researcher who was doing research on isotope separation and high-frequency technologies. That fellow got scooped up by the Soviets and (sort of) helped them get an actual nuclear bomb in the postwar, even. So basically the Nazis were so incompetent and mismanaged that the guy who showed the most enthusiasm about nuclear fission's practical applications was the postmaster, to the point where somehow funds meant for "getting letters from here to there" were being funneled into private research on how to make big explosions. And it was probably one of the more sane efforts of the war. Nazi efficiency, folks. Tiler Kiwi fucked around with this message at 11:23 on Feb 13, 2021 |
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Feb 13, 2021 10:20
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TaurusTorus posted:I want the Ratte to be a boss fight in a WW2 Metal Gear Solid type game. Also supersoldiers dosed up to the gills on D-IX Closest thing that comes to mind is the Cocoon in Peace Walker, which is like a 3D Metal Slug boss. Some goon in the Lets Play thread estimated it would have an operational range of about five miles from the factory where it was built. (which actually is in line with its depiction ingame, mind)
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Feb 13, 2021 10:22
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Heeey, Starkweather actually added differentiation for units for his cold war game: Anyway, next entry in the review comes today.
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Feb 13, 2021 12:33
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Closest thing that comes to mind is the Cocoon in Peace Walker, which is like a 3D Metal Slug boss. Some goon in the Lets Play thread estimated it would have an operational range of about five miles from the factory where it was built. (which actually is in line with its depiction ingame, mind) The Boss canonically landed in Normandy on D-Day to destroy V2 missile platforms, so it seems fitting that a WWII Metal Gear game would involve trying to destroy a mobile V2 launch platform that can strike anywhere in Europe without having to be staged at a vulnerable base!
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Feb 13, 2021 13:53
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LatwPIAT posted:The Boss canonically landed in Normandy on D-Day to destroy V2 missile platforms, so it seems fitting that a WWII Metal Gear game would involve trying to destroy a mobile V2 launch platform that can strike anywhere in Europe without having to be staged at a vulnerable base!
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Feb 13, 2021 14:19
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JcDent posted:Man, should have added "go for weird drug nonsense" for my "make Weird War 2 actually interesting" post. Like three paragraphs of backstory about how the occult Nazi organizations are trying to contact demons, and then the actual contact is made by some entirely unrelated program after a dude takes enough Pervitin to vibrate though the veil between the world. This guy?
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Feb 13, 2021 15:42
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Vietnam: A Rumor of War part 4 - Airplanes go zoom zoom Tired of generic ground units? Step right up, to the system where Starkweather probably did read a book or two. Part of this certainly is carryover from the Korea game but it's definitely more interesting for him than the other aspects of the war by far. Each aircraft type has a rating for each kind of mission. No, it's not on the counter, you have to look at this not-particularly-readable table. Some of them are bizarre, for example, the B-52 being an incredible CAS aircraft in the Vietnam era. The Communist player also has a much smaller table, as they only launch Downtown missions(the one place for fighter combat) with their aircraft. Downtown is the big fighter combat over North Vietnam, the one that's had books written on it because it's technical and interesting. There have, in fact, been games made about the air war over North Vietnam. If the Communists are the only ones to commit fighters here, they get to take a crack at anyone on a strategic mission, otherwise, they have to fight whatever US fighters show up there. If they do send all the US fighters back, they reduce the US military victory value by 1. The mechanics of air combat(and all air missions) are simple. Roll a d10 and try to get under the aircraft's value on that mission to get success. For fighter combat, that means you pick an opponent and roll to try to reduce and send them back to available. Reduced aircraft have a rating one lower, and are eliminated if they're hit again. After resolving all air combat in the downtown missions, the communists can try to fire SAMs to get at any aircraft doing any of the strategic missions, with an ARM modifier based on what turn it is. The missions themselves are pretty self-explanatory, targeting airbases(this reduces the amount of planes on offer), infrastructure(reduces next turn's supply), SAMs(reducing SAMs), etc. Tactical missions, likewise, allow the planes to contribute air support points, do the funky special forces missions, interdict(a weird interruption system on activations), or trying to bomb the Ho Chi Minh trail to reduce its length. Air missions are very, very chromey in this game. The location of the 7th fleet determines where the carrier planes' tactical missions can go and whether they can partake in strategic missions. US losses in strategic missions contribute to the Hanoi Hilton track, while special forces wings can try to conduct raids to rescue them. It's all very pop media-centric(the other very notable pop media-centricity of this and many vietnam games is an emphasis on tunnels, as though the VC were xenomorphs that moved around primarily underground, but i'll get to that later) It's really not that interesting- the Communist player seems to have planes mostly to provide props for the US fighters. If you were trying to model this conflict and wanted to abstract parts of it, the air war would definitely be one of the first choices, but Starkweather, driven by OSS's air system just soldiers on through. A lot of it is just a solitaire game for the US player, really one of the few things they get to do that isn't heavily scripted. At least they're not stuck with ARVN corps boundaries for air wings. The looking up for airplane ratings is really awkward and symptomatic of Starkweather's refusal to put stuff on the counters. Next up - Politics: Cambodia, Laos, PRC intervention
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Feb 13, 2021 16:01
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I learned about him from a spurdo  DD webm, which made his story only slightly crazier than it was.
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Feb 13, 2021 20:57
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An inspiration for tweakers everywhere. 
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Feb 13, 2021 21:49
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 Buck Rogers XXVc: The 25th Century No Humans Allowed Great Minds of the Times: Tonight, on Biography The next chapter is devoted to biographies of great geneticists. This is a very odd decision, as a great number of figures listed here are dead and cannot have any impact on the campaign going forward, nor do they really provide plot hooks. I feel this reflects the time this was written, a lot of RPG books of this era didn’t feel a need for their background info to be immediately useful, just so long as it fleshed out the setting. (I mean this still happens now, but back then it was endemic.) There are fifteen great scientists detailed here, and the ones that are still alive at campaign start do get full statblocks, so there’s some utility. We go in alphabetical order. Born on Mars, Mikeil Andropov (2266-2339) was a prodigy, starting young and hyped up by the text as some kind of super-genius. Before he was 20 he created the Saturnian Ringers (cyborg clones we’ll meet later), and was the first to synthesize DNA from silicates instead of carbon. Near the end of his life he began work that would eventually create the first humans ever to live in space without needing suits. He died before the first Spacers were born, but the genotype wouldn’t have happened without him, and he posthumously received the Tyrell Memorial Prize for it. Leonard Bronsk (2195-2238?), born in Moscorg on Earth, has a more interesting story. His major creation was the Woolsheep, a sheep which ate less food and produced more meat and wool; this meant a lot, as Earth was suffering major food shortages at the time. Shortly after receiving the Tyrell prize for his work, Bronsk disappeared. His wife was charged with arranging his abduction and murder on behalf of RAM, but authorities couldn’t produce any evidence. She did, however, become substantially richer after he vanished. Samuel Denning is the first NPC you might actually run into. He’s a 111-year-old Venusian man, walking with a cane and possessed of a biomechanical arm that can still pack a mean wallop. He prefers not to fight, though he is fond of smacking people’s butts with his cane if they piss him off. (This does no damage but is funny.) He worked on the Venusian Manta, a silicon-based life form used to help terraform the Venusian atmosphere, but it’s not clear what really motivates or drives him now, and there’s no indication of what side he might take, if any, in the major conflicts of the Solar System. Mechanically Denning is a 23rd-level scientist with most of his career skills at or over 100, though his HP are capped at a reasonable 31. His THAC0 is an 8, though, so watch out.  Rahji Duhein(above), also still with us, received most of the credit for the Venusian Manta. He’s 100 years old but looks much younger due to liberal doses of Lifextend. He hasn’t produced anything big since the Manta, so he’s a bit forgotten. He’s also extremely paranoid; whenever he meets someone new, he makes a Wisdom check- on a failure he’s convinced they’re an enemy or corporate spy (it’s not clear what the result is if the character actually IS a spy). His computer doesn’t even connect to the Internet. Oh yeah he also carries weapons and is not afraid to use ‘em. Duhein is a 21st-level Scientist. Barbara Hall(1996-2032) was a weird, sad story. She grew up poor and hated it, and specifically hated her parents for being poor. She basically ignored them after she left home, and didn’t go to their funerals. She had a husband but he was an unemployed dick who just made fun of her (for some reason) and they divorced and somehow he got the children and alimony. She specialized in using micro-robotics in genetic work, developing the Microbyte as her Master’s Thesis. Her professor tried to steal the invention but she sued him and won. In 2020 she had a nervous breakdown, which, given last year, is totally understandable. She spent five years in a mental institution, went back to work afterwards, but died (for causes not listed) before her big experiment was completed. Alex Jalsey (2200-2239) was involved with Leonard Bronsk when he was developing the Woolsheep, and was responsible for whatever magic caused the sheep’s increased wool production. Bronsk’s wife Anne made a fuss at the awards reception, accusing the two of having an affair, and shortly after that Leonard disappeared. Soon after Anne was acquitted of his kidnapping/murder, Alex was found dead, apparently of natural causes.  Back to the living! Theo Jameson is a young hotshot Terran working for Kiyev Research. His big accomplishment is creating killer viruses. He’s got his own personal rocket, and after a kidnapping attempt he’s started carrying weapons. His THAC0 is 10, and yeah, so far all the statted Scientists have good attack ratings, which is just one of those things with a system based on AD&D. Theo is 18th level. Albert Madison (2185-2270) was born quadriplegic, and had to learn to type and work with his mouth. At 15 he’d already started research into total interactive prosthetics, work which would later influence the Ringer cyborg genotype and even the concept of the uploaded Digital Personality. He published his findings at 16 and won the Tyrell Prize at 21. After this he pivoted to teaching the ethics of genetic research, and his anti-gene-tampering views forced him to flee from his birth planet of Mars to Earth, where his work was influential on the first SSA rulings against genetic manipulation. He died before the war started. Bjorn Moseng (1972-2062) was born in Sweden but his family moved to the US “to live the good life” when he was 10. Specifically they moved to the Bronx. However, when Moseng graduated MIT Magna Cum Laude, the University of Stockholm offered him a six digit salary to come work for them, so back he went. He and his students began work on cloning organs in 2009, and in 2012 they succeeded in cloning the brain of student Inga Atkisson. They received no awards recognition, though, since someone discovered a new stable element that year and really, what’s one more brain?  (just as a side note this one picture looks really weird if you mirror it.) Michael Shae is another live one, a 28-year-old prodigy from Pavonis responsible for the Terrine Mark II. The Mark IIs, which can easily pass for human, were designed to hunt down and exterminate the Barney genotype, so he’s basically a war criminal. However he calls himself “a lover, not a fighter” and prefers to call his private security team (2d6 Terrine Guards) to deal with threats while he deals with his work and his three girlfriends. “Some think him a peerless womanizer, others a cad.” It is not clear what the distinction is. He’s an 18th level scientist, and a pretty good villain for the players to deal with. Sort of a Carter Burke type. Wayne Stratton (2003-2066) was born in Unalaska, Alaska (which does exist, I checked) and went to college at a university in Anchorage. He drifted from engineering to computer science. His big contribution to genetics, however, is the invention of the Risson Microscope, more powerful than any then-available electron microscopes and capable of viewing the atom itself. The original prototype was way too bulky and expensive to catch on, and he died two years after completing it, but his contribution is still duly noted. Frank Vale (1992-2020) led a short but interesting life. He led the team that mapped DNA in 2018, overriding the 1995 map- but of course their map was itself inaccurate and would later be overruled. However, he never lived to see his work become outdated. Vale was an insanely proud man, prone to avenge any insult to his honor, and carried around his grandfather’s pistols, challenging offenders to duels. In 2020 he finally challenged someone who outshot him.  Carlatta de Vries.dop is one of two digital Docs statted up here. The original Carlatta was born around 2228, and was digitized at 48. No word on when her original body gave out, but her digital personality used electronic subterfuge to seize control of the Aphrodite Genetic Engineering Group on Venus (natch). She puts on a very innocent, dowdy appearance, but is prone to blackballing employees and putting non-employees who stand in her way in the path of RAM’s Terrine squads. She’s a level 33 Scientist and has a ton of stats that will only be relevant in Digital Combat, which you may recall the PCs can’t do.  Remus Wydlin is a 71-year-old Belter living on the run ever since RAM seized his lab in the Jovian laGrange points. He was the creator of the Barney Class Terrines, and on learning RAM was going to seize his work, programmed a hatred of RAM into the last 40 he made. He’s actually a good guy, probably the only definitive good egg on this list. He doesn’t fight much himself but likes rigging up his lab with booby traps. He’s 20th level with very good stats overall.  Finally, there is David Zimmermann.dop, another DP. He’s the head of the Gennietek Corporation on Mars and hoo boy he’s a sick bastard, having caused over a hundred “accidental” deaths due to tampering with electronic systems. He likes entering the computers of a rocketship, causing havoc, and escaping before they self destruct or fly into the sun. It’s not entirely clear what his motives are, he may just be bored by this point. Again it’s tricky for the PCs to actually confront him but as an unseen menace he’s got potential. There we go! There are quite a few entries here that, while they make nice little character sketches, have little use in a game. I won’t begrudge a supplement a bit of short fiction, but I do wonder if Henson had a certain amount of space to fill and needed to pad things out. But then, that’s the thing, when you’re making a game setting it’s easy to come up with background material like this. Supplements at the time, especially, tended to put in a lot of stuff you’d never really come across in play. But we’re done with that. Next time, we’ll look at a bunch of genetic engineering firms. Be there! Or be somewhere else!
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Feb 14, 2021 00:48
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Tiler Kiwi posted:Oh, it's basically as simple as it sounds. The wartime German bureaucracy was an insane and stupid mess and the german postal service had been taken over by the nazis, with the head being Wilhelm Ohnesorge who is so unimportant he dropped off the face of the planet after the war and nobody bothered to keep track of him until he died at 89. But he also had studied physics and was friendly enough with Hitler that he could get away with chasing after whatever caught his attention. He at least had the knack for going after things that were conceivably possible, like using the radio for "party propagation", but being the postmaster general he didn't exactly have access to the resources to do anything with it. He knew enough about physics to know that fission was a Big Deal, and knew enough about Nazi Germany to know that their inability to do basic coordination of their research programs and scientists (like the Americans were doing) was getting in the way of things. So he figured, hell, I'm the postmaster general, lets see if I can get things going despite it being absolutely not in the domain of the post office. As a German citizen this is loving melting my brain. How did I not know this. Thank you. LatwPIAT posted:The Boss canonically landed in Normandy on D-Day to destroy V2 missile platforms, so it seems fitting that a WWII Metal Gear game would involve trying to destroy a mobile V2 launch platform that can strike anywhere in Europe without having to be staged at a vulnerable base! Bruce Springsteen got up to some stuff when I wasn't looking, I guess.
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Feb 14, 2021 06:40
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Xiahou Dun posted:As a German citizen this is loving melting my brain. How did I not know this. Thank you. The Allies, who decided what history (at least, in English) got written after the war, had a vested interest in making victory against the Germans in the western theater look like a superhuman accomplishment, as well as a desire to get Germany turned around and pointed in the right direction for the upcoming Cold War. A lot of poo poo got glossed over.
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Feb 14, 2021 07:58
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That and there was a general sympathy for the germans postwar, compared to the Brutish Slavic Hordes; racism and fear of communism played a part there, but there was also a sort of hopeful denial of reality at play too, since NATO really wanted to believe that it stood a chance against a soviet offensive and the myth of german "quality" nearly defeating the soviet "quantity", save for that oh so incompetent Hitler getting in the way of his generals, fed into the belief that they could make up for a lack of manpower and a questionable position with expensive technology and decisive tactical action to avoid an attritional war. And of course, they wanted to "rehabilitate" the germans as rapidly as possible so they could rearm them and employ them against the communist horde (including trying to start fascist resurgent movements in soviet territory). another, more straightforward problem, was that they often took the German officer's memoirs at face value instead of correctly realizing that the lot of them were just making up myths to excuse themselves from getting into an unwinnable war and getting their asses kicked all the way back to Germany. Like the notion that it was all Hitler's fault that they opened a second front in the first place; the German military was all in on Barbarossa, to the point that when the actual logistics crew came to them and said "we'll run out of supplies by six months", they flipped it around and proclaimed they'd win by six months. But if you read their memoirs, oh, they were all really against it! And the whole business with the jews, well, they hadn't even really paid any attention to it... scouts honor! likewise, postwar analysis on the german's nuclear program concluded that basically the germans were never, ever getting the bomb. Labeling entire fields of science as "degenerate" is not a helpful attitude to make actually useful wonder weapons, turns out. the nazi post office's program wasnt even the most incompetent attempt at it; the SS tried to get into the effort too, because of course the SS needed to have their own separate version of whatever someone else was doing. e: the US's obsession with wonder weapons and having their own """elite""" branches of the militaries that want to have a bunch of expensive dogshit toys is one legacy of all this, imo. The notion of a small crew of elite combatants armed with powerful rare weapons facing off against hordes of aggressive, collectivist orientalist villains is thankfully not at all impactful on the history of fantasy and sci fi fiction. Tiler Kiwi fucked around with this message at 08:24 on Feb 14, 2021 |
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Feb 14, 2021 08:14
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Absolutely no one wrote a book that all officers are required to read about hyper-equipped fascist space soldiers killing communist insects by the trillions. That would be crazy.
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Feb 14, 2021 09:02
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TaurusTorus posted:I want the Ratte to be a boss fight in a WW2 Metal Gear Solid type game. Also supersoldiers dosed up to the gills on D-IX "hrmgrrrn, dicks?"
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Feb 14, 2021 11:11
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TK_Nyarlathotep posted:"hrmgrrrn, dicks?" No that's the delivery system.
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Feb 14, 2021 11:18
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wiegieman posted:Absolutely no one wrote a book that all officers are required to read about hyper-equipped fascist space soldiers killing communist insects by the trillions. I love the amazing timing of me having a certain iconic song from a certain, possibly very related movie playing the background while reading this. 
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Feb 14, 2021 11:41
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But i thought that Red Dawn was the gold standard in pro-fasc and bad army tactics.
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Feb 14, 2021 12:42
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By popular demand posted:But i thought that Red Dawn was the gold standard in pro-fasc and bad army tactics.
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Feb 14, 2021 13:09
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Nessus posted:It is interesting that Red Dawn comes up, because I think it presents something which would be interesting to see in an RPG context. You have this heroic losing side who are doing acts of bravery and derring-do even though they're doomed -- and it's taken as a model, kind of a moral center, for the guys who are winning, and are in charge. It's because when you win you have to justify why and how and look at yourself. If you are eternally threatened by something that isn't any actual threat you can continue to claim weakness and require people to commit themselves fully to you. It's the same problem that everyone in NATO faced after the end of the cold war "Well we've won!" and the follow up of "well how do you justify your victory, what comes next?" devolved swiftly into "more money for us, gently caress you".
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Feb 14, 2021 13:28
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Related, it’s funny how few WW2 war games have a meth rule for Nazi stuff.
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Feb 14, 2021 15:47
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wiegieman posted:The Allies, who decided what history (at least, in English) got written after the war, had a vested interest in making victory against the Germans in the western theater look like a superhuman accomplishment, as well as a desire to get Germany turned around and pointed in the right direction for the upcoming Cold War. A lot of poo poo got glossed over. The Nazis in particular liked to portray themselves as a cold, efficient war machine, but on the Eastern Front they literally gave conscripted murderers and rapists light munitions, flak jackets, trucks, and as much alcohol and amphetamines as they could carry and let them gallivant across Belarus and rural Poland. They weren't, like, good at any aspect of warfare things beyond bombing runs and machine gunning peasants.
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Feb 14, 2021 16:36
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I would rate the Wehrmacht as "pretty good" at 3 things in particular: they were good at coordinating the movement of forces (they had a lot of radios and a filled-out officer corps) and thereby maintaining their initiative, they had hit on a pretty effective light MG based infantry doctrine (German infantry squads were machine gun squads and were built around the gun), and they weren't bad at operational logistics for supporting an armored spearhead (most people were and still are garbage at operational logistics because it is incredibly difficult.) Barbarossa hit the Red Army at the most perfect time for the attacker - just after the purges, during a full force reorg, as production was switching over to entirely new equipment - and it performed very well. But no offensive, no matter how lucky or well timed or well supported, can go all the way to Moscow in 5 months when it has to build its own rail-line. In fact, the offensive stalled out pretty much where the German logisticians predicted it would.
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Feb 14, 2021 17:40
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Mors Rattus posted:Related, it’s funny how few WW2 war games have a meth rule for Nazi stuff. Meth use by the German armed forces seem to have fluctuated during the war, with the peak period being 1939-1940, after which the negative effects of addiction and disruption were discovered and use was restricted (for example, in 1941 Pervitin became a prescription drug, which meant it was far harder for soldiers' families to send them Pervitin). I've not yet seen a good figure for exactly how meth use in the German armed forces developed over the course of the war. Additionally, it wouldn't be uniquely a German thing. The biggest users of methamphetamine was Imperial Japan, where it was widely used not only by soldiers but in industry to boost production. Additionally, the western Allies distributed benzedrine to their soldiers, so it wouldn't be a uniquely Axis thing either. For example, soldiers the 24th Armored Tank Brigade was authorized 20 mg/day in 1942 in Egypt--twice the authorized dose for the Royal Air Force at the time. wiegieman posted:I would rate the Wehrmacht as "pretty good" at 3 things in particular: they were good at coordinating the movement of forces (they had a lot of radios and a filled-out officer corps) and thereby maintaining their initiative, they had hit on a pretty effective light MG based infantry doctrine (German infantry squads were machine gun squads and were built around the gun), and they weren't bad at operational logistics for supporting an armored spearhead (most people were and still are garbage at operational logistics because it is incredibly difficult.) While it's not quite the Nazi supersoldiers you so often hear about, they also prioritized infantry training a bit more than, e.g., the US, which drew the smartest recruits (to the degree something like that exists) to technical services rather than the rank and file infantry.
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Feb 14, 2021 18:03
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Age of Sigmar Lore Chat: Lumineth Realm-Lords Slightly More Ridiculous Hats  The Alarith are those Lumineth dedicated to the spirits of the Hyshian mountains. Many of those mountains suffered terribly in the Age of Chaos, splintering or crumbling under the weight of the great magic thrown around. Corrupted magma hollowed some out, while others became the homes of cursed and bitter spirits. Travel became very dangerous, between landslides, paths that became treacherous due to the anger of the stones, and freezing, killing cold. For centuries, they were feared and avoided by all sane aelves. The Lumineth returned to them only after the Reinvention. These devotees endured the worst of it, even when the mountains themselves cast stones down upon them in rage and anger. Many of the pioneers seeking the mountain spirits died, but some managed to reach the peaks, armed with nothing but their own determination. They sang to the mountains, lamentations and poems beggining forgiveness. They made works of art from the broken stones they found, decorating the peaks with a glory that they had not seen in centuries. They fasted to show their devotion, and many died of hunger. Eventually, the mountains gave in. They accepted the sincerity of the Alarith mages, many of whom had willingly given their lives just to apologize and praise the mountains. The spirits reached out, offering algae and moss up to them. These grew around the aelves where they sat, and animals emerged from the caves and offered their throats. The Alarith ate of these, though only sparingly. They knew that despite these gifts, their relationship with the mountain spirits was weak at best. Over time, their friendships grew deeper, allowing for a bond between aelf and mountain. By drawing on the mountains' blessings, the Alarith became more stoic and able to endure more than any other aelves that have ever existed. The Alarith Stonemages draw on their bond to the mountains, embodying the strength and endurance of stone. They are able to harden their bodies to indestructibility for a time, yet remain able to move and breathe. They can draw on that strength to entomb foes in stone, harden the skin of Alarith warriors, or even channel the power of Hysh to form massive stone bodies for the Spirits of the Mountain to embody and join them in battle. Stonemages keep their souls in perfect balance, remaining unmoving and powerful in the face of anything the enemy can throw at them. The Alarith Stoneguard are the warriors of the mountains, who guard the mountain temples that are the focus of Alarith worship and bonding with the spirits. It is said that a Stoneguard can root themselves in one spot, spending years or even decades without food or water by drawing nourishment from the mountain on which they stand. When anyone outside the Alarith approaches their temples, the once motionless aelves smoothly and quickly move to block their path and demand to be told their business. Those whose answers are not considered good enough will not be allowed further, and if they try anyway, the Stoneguard strike quickly with their large hammers to knock out the intruder and carry them from the mountain, leaving them unconscious in the lowlands. To join the Stoneguard ranks, an aelf must seek out the mountain's blessing with a fast during which they endure the elements on the most exposed peaks. They must handle everything the mountain decides to send them, from wind to wild beasts to avalanche. At the height of this trial, the initiate is literally buried alive by the other Alarith. If the mountain has decided it likes them, they find themselves able to breathe through tiny cracks in the rock. After a full week within the stone, they emerge once more as an Alarith. Those whom the mountain judges to be insincere never emerge. Their souls are absorbed by the mountain spirits, taken to repair the damage the Lumineth once dealt to the land. The true Stoneguard, however, receive from the spirits instead, gaining a portion of the mountain's strength. When the Stoneguard enter what they name the mountain stance, they become essentially impossible to move. Even a charging beast could not force a single step from the Stoneguard when they set themselves. When they switch to offense, they emulate the avalanche, using their massive, long-hafted hammers in arcing strikes that bring massive force down on their foes. Aimed properly, a single blow can crack every bone in a victim's body. The hammers are built with enchanted stone given to them by the mountain spirits, allowing each hammer to smash with enough force to send even the heaviest, most armored foes flying. Some Stoneguard instead seek to emulate the gems and mineral veins within the mountain rather than the hard, bulky shell. They forgo the longhammers of the first temples, instead wielding diamond-cored pick-hammers in pairs. The sunsteel heads of these hammers have vicious spikes of diamond emerging from them, able to punch through the armor of even a Daemon Prince. Once they strike, the sunsteel discharges a blaze of light that can banish daemons with a good hit. Both types of Stoneguard are led by the Truestone Seneschals, champions of the Alarith temples. Most Seneschals trade in their longhammer for a pair of sedimentary rock hammers. Some of the strata within these stone hammers is imbued with magic that was born from the formation of the realm, while others absorbed the magic of the Spirefall. These, in particular, are chosen because of the fury and wrath of the mountain spirit that is born from them. The rest of the hammer is a mix of granite and diamond, channeling the rage and magic into physical force.  The Avatars of the Mountain are animated by the mountain-souls, the spirits that serve as the focus of the Alarith. Only an aelementor that truly trusts and loves the Alarith will ever agree to leave its natural home and march to war. The natural state of a mountain spirit is one of peace and contemplation much of the time. Moving on the timescale of aelven action is hard for them. When they do it, it is only after much preparation. First, their host body must be made, a huge sculpture built from rock rich in realmstone veins, shaped by the magic of the Alarith rather than carved. Its shoulders are topped with a tiny replica of the mountain, an entire ecosystem built in miniature. Tiny Tohnasai trees sprout from the mountain-head, forming imitations of cloud around the slopes. Once the body is ready, a massive warhammer is built for it, designed with equal care and attention so as not to offend the spirit that will wield it. Then, the mask is prepared, shaped in the design of the Ymetrican longhorn, a rugged cow-like beast said to be immortal and thus embodying the eternal spirit of the mountains. Once all this is ready, the body is given magical armor of sunmetal quenched in the lakes and waterfalls of the mountain that will inhabit it. Even cannons can't break that armor. Finally, the spirit is called to the body. To do this, the mountain must be convinced that the enemy it will fight is going to threaten the land itself, either directly (such as Chaos) or unwittingly. Even the most persuasive Alarith typically spend weeks pleading their case before each sorty, as the mountains are slow deliberators and rarely make decisions quickly. Further, what they decide is important or not important is often hard to understand. Once a mountain agrees, however, then its Avatar is nearly unstoppable in battle. A single hammerblow can kill large monsters, and the spirit can also send forth blasts of elemental energy from a distance. Those who get close will be quickly flattened by the weight of the stone body and the hammer blows, and when needed, the Avatar can call on the nature of the longhorn whose face it wears. It will lower its horns and charge, smashing apart larger foes with avalanche force. The greatest of the mountain spirits is Avalenor, the Stoneheart King, the spirit of the highest of the Ymetrican Peaks. Unlike all other mountain spirits, he never needed anyone to make a body for him. He arrived at the Alarith temples fully formed, having been convinced to aid them by Celennar rather than the Alarith. It is theorized that Avalenor is composed entirely of naturally occurring aetherquartz, voluntarily given up by the mountains to help protect Hysh. Even if not, he's certainly absorbed the light of the realm for millenia before appearing, glowing with power even when he travels to Ulgu. He wields two hammers in battle, striking with impossible force despite their relatively light weight (by Avatar standards). These are the Firestealer Hammers, for they channel the killing cold of Avalenor's peak, and those slain by them leave corpses black with frostbite, their body heat absorbed into the weapons themselves. Avalenor's greatest strength is not his battle prowess, however, but his wisdom. He is one of the most ancient beings in existence, and he knows many secret truths of the Mortal Realms, which he shares with those whom he considers worthy. However, Avalenor is not a swift thinker nor a quick speaker, and he answers questions only slowly, after much deliberation. What answers he does give, though, are always deeply enlightening. The End! Next time: We'll get back to armybooks later, because Soulbound: Champions of Order just dropped and I'm going to do that next.
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Feb 16, 2021 19:09
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LatwPIAT posted:While it's not quite the Nazi supersoldiers you so often hear about, they also prioritized infantry training a bit more than, e.g., the US, which drew the smartest recruits (to the degree something like that exists) to technical services rather than the rank and file infantry. That's it. e: Also the infantry stuff was inherited from the past, not any kind of Hitlerite innovation
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Feb 16, 2021 21:27
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Mors Rattus posted:
It's pretty awesome.
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Feb 16, 2021 23:20
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Froghammer posted:That, plus the concept that fascism is in any way an efficient form of governance or structural organization is literally fascist propaganda. Plenty of organizations with nominally fascist power structures (governments, cults of personality, businesses) fold or collapse due to mismanagement of resources, poor organization or planning, genuine human error, intraparty politicking and bickering, or any combination thereof.  Mussolini didn't make the trains run on time, he just made people say he did.
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Feb 17, 2021 00:37
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Soulbound: Champions of Order Champions of Order is the first new supplement for Soulbound. It's pretty much entirely a player options book, and it gets down to business very quickly. It adds a new element for all characters in the form of Subfactions - different origins for your character within their primary faction of choice, which gives a bonus Talent much like your species does. It adds a new Archetype for each faction, plus a new faction with four Archetypes - the Lumineth Realm-Lords. Plus, tons of new Talents, Miracles and spells, and a whole bunch of new things you can do during downtime! Still no Seraphon rules, though, so I'm gonna have to make those myself. Before all that, though, there's a whole chapter on how Bindings are made and the Soulbound as an order. Short form, the Ritual of Binding was first invented in the Age of Myth, when Sigmar proposed to the Pantheon of Order that they should create an elite group of brave mortal souls whose diverse skills and origins would let them adapt to any problem and handle any kind of situation in ways that a more uniform group could not. Their job would be to work in small cells and root out corruption by the enemies of Order in ways armies would never be able to and to serve as living examples of heroism and skill. However, to make that work, Sigmar knew that these heroes would require divine gifts, for even the greatest heroes need help. Teclis the Illuminator was the first god to agree to the project and the main force behind the Binding Ritual that would become the core of the Soulbound. He saw the entire thing as largely an interesting problem to solve, proposing a framework that would bind mortals together by their souls. This formed the basic core of the Ritual. Grungni saw potential for power inside mortal souls and signed on to the project, offering to set the souls of those bound on fire, hotter than any other flame. This would grant them the power of Soulfire as a source of inner strength in dark times. Alarielle, however, felt that compassion was needed for the mortals that would become Soulbound, for she foresaw they would suffer and take on great pains in the place of the innocent and weak. Thus, she filled their bodies with life, to ensure that they would heal from any wound and would never suffer the ravages of age. However, life can only be paid with life, and she mourned the price of her gift: while the Soulbound would never age, they would never have children, either. Sigmar then sought out and convinced Malerion to help in the Soulbound project. It took time and effort, but Malerion agreed to help, creating wards of darkness and illusion around their mortal minds and souls, that the madness and corruption of Chaos could never turn them. Morathi didn't particularly want to help, seeing no need to give Sigmar such powerful tools, but she saw a chance to gain insight on the other gods through contributing some of her followers to the order. Plus, she could use it as a dumping ground for followers to difficult or annoying to just murder but still not good to have around. Thus, she welded the soul-links with blood magic, allowing the Soulbound to draw on each other's Soulfire. At this point, Gorkamorka demanded to be allowed to help because they didn't want to be left out of anything fun. They felt the Soulbound lacked true hunger for battle despite their burning souls, so he roared into the bindings, creating a force so terrifying that no other monster would ever be able to live up to it. This memory of perfect fear tempered the will of the Soulbound, protecting them from mind-searing terror. At last, Sigmar approached Nagash. Nagash was happy to see the order made, for he wanted their souls to eventually fall to him. However, Sigmar denied him, saying that he would not see such noble heroes enslaved in death. Nagash, enraged, demanded one condition for this: in death, a Soulbound's soul must shatter, so that if Nagash could not have them, no one would. Sigmar didn't like it, but agreed on the basis that this was better than an eternity as undead. Nagash then demanded to observe the ritual, nominally to ensure he got his demands met, but in reality studying the magic of Teclis in order to steal any new tricks for binding souls that he might use later. At last, the Ritual of Binding was completed. Teclis prepared the magic perfectly, and Sigmar laid out the ritaul with great car, personally overseeing the first Binding and linking these chosen mortals together until their eventual deaths. Because each member of the Pantheon of Order was involved in the ritual creation process, each one has the knowledge to create Bindings. Each one has, in the past, though not frequently. In the current age, almost all Bindings are made by the hand of Sigmar God-King. Despite this fact, the ritual is essentially a very powerful spell, and in theory a sufficiently skilled mortal could perform it, so long as they understood it well enough and had the raw power to ensure it worked without killing everyone. Gorkamorka and Nagash both retain the ability to create their own variants of the Binding, but these rituals have been reworked and reinterpreted by those gods, and likely will be covered in future books. Here, all we know is that outsiders to the current pantheon, including Nagash and Gorkamorka but also godbeasts or mages of extreme power, can create Bindings but almost always created flawed or twisted versions due to lack of expertise. These Bindings usually cause their members chronic pain, Soulfire outbursts, an entangling of emotions or so on. Teclis' Bindings are extremely well-made and strong, without any faults. However, he almost never makes them, as he sees the ritual as an old puzzle he enjoyed solving but which no longer holds his interest. He only creates Bindings when he feels he has no other tool to accomplish a goal, as he'd much rather be doing new work. Alarielle is more frequent, and she pretty much never performs a ritual that kills any of its potential members. Her Bindings actually tend to heal the Soulbound, purging them of old wounds and illnesses or even reversing the ravages of age. Despite this, she always performs the ritual with great melancholy, for she mourns anyone's loss of fertility, and especially that of the Sylvaneth. This tends to leave a profound sense of loss in the hearts of the Soulbound. Sigmar does most of the Binding Rituals, though he isn't the most skilled at doing so. He's had a lot of practice, at least, so he almost never fails. The problem is Sigmar doesn't really adjust his ritual to suit the participants, as he trusts in the power of the spell. This means he has a greater chance of fatalities than the other gods, as he rarely pauses to notice if a mortal is unable to endure the rigors of the soul-binding. Grungni's are rather safer, for he approaches the ritual in the same way of craft. He strikes with his mighty hammer, forging and tempering his creations as he would a sword. This usually results in Soulbound with strong wills and hot tempers, but can also cause stubbornness and a tendency to hold grudges. Morathi almost never performs the Binding Ritual, as she prefers to keep her most loyal pawns nearby, and Bindings don't do that. However, sometimes she needs a Binding for some complex and elaborate problem. She is perhaps the most dangerous to receive a Binding from, given the bloody magic she calls on and the fact that she often taps the magic of mortal Hag Priests to assist in it so she doesn't have to use much of her own power. While even she only has a few more fatalities than Sigmar does, the Soulbound that come out typically are marked by the experience, often with streaks of gray or ashy hair and an unnatural lust for blood. Malerion is equally sparing with his Bindings, though no one is quite sure why, or what he does to specialize the ritual. Whatever the case, the Soulbound that result can never remember the experience, as it is shrouded by darkness and shadow even in their minds. Often, they also love memories of their past lives or interactions with other members of the Binding, which can make them quite paranoid, as they know something is missing but not what. A chart is provided to roll on if you don't have an idea in mind already for who did the Binding or why, as well as charts to roll on to see why a specific member was chosen, what they gained from doing it, and what they lost as a result. Obviously, players can decide without rolling on these tables, but they can easily provide inspiration. For example, I rolled up: Who Forged Your Binding: 6, Sigmar. To What End: 6 - Destined, 1 - "Sail the screaming ocean to where whispers die." Why Were You Chosen: 5, 6 - My sibling was supposed to be Soulbound, but when they died I took their place. What Did You Gain: 3, 2: The time needed to create my greatest work. What Did You Lose: 2, 1: A vast family inheritance will pass me by, going to my least favorite sibling. We also get charts to decide on goals, short-term or longterm, for each faction. Again, players can come up with their own, but this can help them figure out what someone from their culture might want. Let's say this guy is a Lumineth, and we get: Short-Term Goal: 3 - You desire to gain further practical knowledge in the field relating to a personal philosophical treatise to which you subscribe. You need this to prove your innate superiority to a rival. Longterm Goal: 4 - Found a centre of learning in the light of Teclis and create the next generation of philosopher-mages. Next time: Archetypes and Subfactions and the Pointy Aelves
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Feb 17, 2021 01:28
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I can't help noticing that Nagash contributed absolutely nothing.
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Feb 17, 2021 01:47
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He's consistent that way.
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Feb 17, 2021 01:57
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So he was the rear end in a top hat team member who just needs to be placated before anything gets done on the project. I shouldn't be able to consider him any more evil than before I learned that but I do.
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Feb 17, 2021 02:12
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C7 announced that Seraphon is getting a supplement later this year in a recent production update by the way.quote:Stars and Scales: A PDF supplement exploring the mysterious Seraphon! Includes background information on the Seraphon, new creatures, and six one-page adventures featuring the Seraphon.
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Feb 17, 2021 02:17
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