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Soulbound: Steam and Steel Grenade Blunderbuss? Grenade Blunderbuss. So, gear! Deepmire Cloaks aren't something you can buy. They are made and worn entirely by the Wanderer aelves, created as symbols of their lost homes in Ghyran. These cloaks go beyond the normal ghillie suits the Wanderers sell - they actually flicker and change, moving like the shadows of the forest. Wanderers give them out only as acts of deep intimacy and trust. If you're wearing one in a woodland or grassy plain, you get a bonus to Defence and Stealth rolls, which increases further in dense foliage and forests. Devilthorn Packs are a now cheap and plentiful piece of survival gear developed in Chamon based on the dew-catching horns of the Devilthorn, AKA the thorned molodroth plant. He was trying to address two main problems - first, people out in the wild often need to drink water, but rarely have a free hand to do so with for whatever reason. Second, in places like the deserts of Aqshy or the wastes of Shyish, minimizing extraneous weight is a major need, but so is maximizing the amount of water you have. To handle both these issues, he made a waterskin you could wear. These are typically made from lizardskin leather or Ulguan slipcloth, with a valved hose of metal coming out and around to the face. Bite down on that and you can drink! You can fill this with any liquid you want - booze, water, up to 500D of Aqua Ghyranis, or up to 50 doses of any single type of potion, at max capacity. Once per turn as a free action you can drink any amount from the pack you want, even if you are Restrained. Freeguild Trumpets are a cheap and easy to get, common sound in the Free Cities. They are used to order the Freeguild regiments and direct their parades and patrols. The sound of the trumpets is a common one to wake up to in the cities, and some folks even grow to like the noise. You can play one as an action with an Entertain roll, and if you succeed, allies who can hear you are immune to Frightened for a few minutes. Also, all Unconscious creatures in your Zone are awakened. Grenade-Launching Blunderbusses are expensive, but you can find them in any Free City, because they're common enough gear among the Freeguild cavalry veterans. They resemble the shot-firing blunderbusses of the other cavalrymen, but instead they fire large explosive shells, making them nasty blast-fire weapons. Lesser Twinstones are only found in the area around the Stormrift Realmgate of Hammerhal, where the energies of Aqshy and Ghyran slam into each other. Basically, you hire a lapidarist to cut a twinstone gem and leave it near the Realmgate, hoping to capture the twinned energies of the gate before they mutually annihilate. Fully stable twinstones are exceptionally expensive and kept closely guarded by the Hammerhal armies, but semi-successful twinstones can be found on the open market - albeit not often and at high prices. As an action, you can crush the Lesser Twinstone and choose either fire or life. If you picked fire, everyone in your Zone takes moderate and unavoidable fire damage - including you. If you picked life, everyone in the Zone heals moderate damage. At the start of your next turn, whichever one you didn't pick takes effect in the Zone the Twinstone is in. You can carry it with you or drop it and leave the Zone, up to you. One use renders the thing inert, though. Mastro Vivetti's Magnificent Macroscope was developed by a student of the famous architect Valius Maliti, and it's a specialized telescope. You can't find it easily and it's hella expensive, but that's because each one is a custom piece using Hyshian glass. It operates on the principle of the microscope but in reverse, allowing the eye to see that which is too large to hold in your view. Greywater Fastness has a small collection they use for tracking troop movements and artillery rangefinding, because the way they work is they give you a bird's eye view of the area you're standing in. They can't focus on any area smaller than a square mile, but can zoom out indefinitely...though most people are physically unable to handle a view wider than a few hundred miles and will collapse into a twitching pile if they try. Mechanically, you can spend an action using a macroscope to track a target, getting a bonus to Accuracy for your next ranged attack and removing all penalties for attacking beyond your normal range. Misthavn Trick Knives are fairly rare but not very expensive. They appear to be completely normal daggers, though occasionally decorated to appear to be sacrificial knives. When you stab with them, they create dramatic blood spurts (the origin of which no one will say, possibly because no one knows). However, just before they impact someone, the blade cuts a tiny hole in reality, reappearing instead wherever the bearer wills - generally, that's inside someone's back. Users who don't know the knife's trick will just use it normally, stabbing their apparent victim through a tiny hole in reality without realizing they've done so because the hole comes out exactly where the blade looked like it was going. Mechanically, these are wholly normal daggers, but when you attack with them, you may choose to appear to target someone in Close range but actually target anyone within Long range, or no one. The true target will remain unaware of you unless they've already witnessed you using the Trick Knife. Pauldrons of Living Flame are built using a strange veing of primordial emberstone discovered deep in the Shimmering Abyss under Hallowheart. They're not metal - they're just shaped stone, very rare and quite expensive. Orangish light flickers through the cracks in the stone, and wearers often swear there's voices speaking to them, trying to provoke strong emotion. You can attach the Pauldrons to any Medium or heavier armor, as long as you've got a decently high Body score. Whenever you take a Wound, the pauldrons spew fire all around you, doing unavoidable damage to all creatures in Close range and setting stuff on fire. Prosthetic Limbs are common and not especially expensive. You can get them anywhere, in all sorts of designs. Most Freeguild regiments keep a Cogsmith on hand who specializes in prostheses, and while they're technically meant to make them for soldiers, everyone looks the other way if they freelance and make them for civilians in need. Other artisans make amazing artisanal limbs, as well. Depending on what you want out of them, your budget, and where you are, they can look wildly different, but each one is custom fit. Some mimic biological limbs, while others are obviously mechanical or carved from wood. Warriors and soldiers often have their prostheses modified to incorporate weaponry, hidden compartments, telescoping sections or similar tricks. Other limbs are made using magical means, such as those made of floating Hyshian crystal linked by arcane energies, those of living wood, or necromantically animated bone limbs. At base, a prosthesis has no special benefits - it just lets you use the limb as if it were a normal limb. You can pay extra to get an integrated weapon, an integrated arcane focus to reduce miscasts, or hardened defensive materials to increase your Defence when dodging. Other upgrades can be worked in, too, using the upcoming custom gear rules.  I love this sidebar. Realmshredder Dynamite is...high explosives. They're restricted and expensive, but the Ironweld swear by them. They can solve so many problems - undead hordes, daemons, hostile terrain! Realmshredders are specifically designed for tactical reshaping of the battlefield. You make an explosive and inscribe it with earth-moving runes that turn anything they touch into smoking rubble when activated. These things can be used by throwing them, and they set off giant blasts - so powerful that they remove any environmental traits of the target Zone and replace them with Difficult Terrain. Resonant Suncrystals are rare, expensive tools developed by the Lumineth in Settler's Gain for speechmaking, ensuring everyone could hear their lectures. They are glowing translucent crystals which vibrate if you talk into them. This causes them to telepathically project your words into the minds of anyone who can see the light of the crystal, even in reflection. Popular rumor in Settler's Gain suggests that they're also used in the Enlightenment Prisms to reeducate criminals, who are said to be forced to stare at them for hours while the Hysha-Mhensa philosophy is recited into them. The Lumineth consider this rumor laughable, as they don't believe their governing bodies would engage in torture...or that if they did, they'd do so more elegantly. Either way, a suncrystal gives a bonus on rolls to rally, address and calm down large groups, and their telepathic function works out to Long range.  The Saint's Blade can't be purchased, but is intended as a template for any kind of divine relic weapon you might want. This one specifically was wielded by an ancient hero whose name has been long lost. Whatever the case, their zeal and honor were imbued into the blade, empowering it against the forces of Chaos. It's a normal sword, but it does extra damage to Daemons and those corrupted by Chaos, and you can wield it with Devotion instead of Weapon Skill. Seerstone Amulets are rare, expensive devices made using special scrying gems cut in the city of Tempest's Eye. Each amulet has a paired mate, and legitimately acquired ones always have the mate held by a Tempest's Eye seer, while the other half is sold, given to diplomats or assigned to military officers. When activated by incantation, the amulet allows the bearer to see and hear from the perspective of the person with the other half while retaining full control of their own body. This allows for instant communication over massive distances, because while you can't see and hear what's going on around you, you can hear the response of the other bearer. Some folks even get a ton of amulets and use the seers of Tempest's Eye as intermediaries for communication. The seers claim that the amulets must both be activated at once to work; they're lying. In truth, the amulet kept in Tempest's Eye is always on and receiving, allowing the city to spy on their clients. Amulets are designed to be light and forgettable, to make it less likely they'll be taken off, even. However, it's still possible to get paired amulets outside of Tempest's Eye - several have been stolen and made their way to the various black markets of the Free Cities. The fact that each amulet is specially made for a specific person means that these did have original owners, though, and it's often better not to think too hard about what happened to those people...or the spy-seers that were wearing the other half. Spears of the Hunt are rare, expensive weapons modeled on the legendary Spear of Kurnoth. Typically, they will have a large crossguard under the blade to keep them from breaking inside the target or allowing the target to climb up the spear shaft. The Wanderers make most of them, and they tend to be light and swift. Mechanically, they're spears that do extra damage to Beasts and, when they do damage, let you Seize The Initiative as a free action, essentially giving you a chance to jump up the initiative list for next round. Steam-Piston Plate Mail is a rare, highly expensive brainchild of Greywater Fastness - a suit of steam-powered power armor. It's exceptionally loud, made from gromril, and hisses and clanks even when at rest. It's far too heavy for most mounts to carry, but fortunately the pistons in the underharness let the wearer actually walk despite the massive weight. Usually. Mechanically, it is Heavy armor, but it drops you to Slow speed and replaces your normal unarmed attacks with a profile on par with a two-handed weapon. The problem besides the low speed is that if the armor's rating is lowered by Rend or other means, the thing shuts down, rendering the wearer Restrained until either it gets fixed or they get out of the armor. Venomfang Blades are rare weapons developed by the Blackscale Coil of old Anvilgard. They glisten with poison, which weeps out of the steel from an internal reservoir that remains magically full. They've only become more popular since the city became Har Kuron. They function as relatively normal swords, except anyone you damage has to make a tough Fortitude roll or be Poisoned. You can replace the poison that's inside the blade with a Crafting roll during a Rest or as an Endeavor, as long as you have a more specialized poison to replace it with. Once you do, they permanently use that type of poison until you replace it again...but if you fail the roll, you not only use up your dose, but the blade loses all poison until you try again. Wardroth Horns are rare and quite expensive, taken from the bodies of the massive Wardroth spite-beetles when they die. The Sylvaneth harvest their soulseeds for reincarnation, but have no particular use for the rest of the corpse. The Living City has, with their permission, taken to gathering the bodies and carving off their big ol' beetle horns. These are hollowed out and turned into musical instruments which are able to speak into the Spirit-Song. As an action, you can make an Entertain roll, which is easier if you're Sylvaneth. This alerts all Sylvaneth within several miles to your call. They decide how to answer, but by default most Sylvaneth will assume anyone blowing a Wardroth Horn is a friend of their people who is in great need. They tend to get quite upset if either of those things is not true. Wheelchairs and Mobility Aids are pretty common and not all that expensive. Hyshian designs often are made from hovering stone blessed by elemental spirits, while in Ghyran they are made from living vines, and the Ironweld develop elaborate cog-driven machines powered by emberstone. Each chair will have a number of possible configurations, and you can further upgrade them with additional abilities. By default, they just let a person move at Normal speed, but you can pay extra to get special climbing legs that let the chair scale vertical surfaces as easily as flat ground, special rams or blades to let you ram people in battle, realmdrifter propellors or hover magic that lets your chair ignore difficult terrain or even overcharge the propulsion to temporarily fly, special armor to protect you, weapons you can attach to the thing, hidden compartments to conceal goods...all kinds of upgrades are possible. Next time: Making Custom Gear
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Jul 16, 2021 17:41
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Attributing Tarot cards to your not-Roma is also an oh-no point, because...it's literally what the French dudes who created tarot as a divinatory device did. Basically they wanted a mystical origin to sell the bit, and Egypt was regarded as mystical as gently caress, and everyone thought the Roma were Egyptian descended so they were like "Ah yes, this is ancient egyptian poo poo, brought to us by the <racial slurs> who are definitely from Egypt." It's basically the prototype for attributing mystical knowledge to the Mysterious East, except people probably got killed for not understanding what was being asked for when they were handed a deck of cards and told to read the future with them. Nowadays of course there's an entire tradition of Roma and Romanichal cartomancy, but it's a weird case where it was something shoved on them from outside and they adapted.
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Jul 16, 2021 17:43
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Jesus christ can we shut up about NHPs? You people are as bad as people arguing on if Worm is good or not.
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Jul 16, 2021 18:31
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unseenlibrarian posted:Attributing Tarot cards to your not-Roma is also an oh-no point, because...it's literally what the French dudes who created tarot as a divinatory device did. Basically they wanted a mystical origin to sell the bit, and Egypt was regarded as mystical as gently caress, and everyone thought the Roma were Egyptian descended so they were like "Ah yes, this is ancient egyptian poo poo, brought to us by the <racial slurs> who are definitely from Egypt." I had suspected as much, but my knowledge of the origins of Tarot are kinda limited to wikipedia so I wasn't confident in making a statement on this. I did know they were mostly a French thing originally, using them for divination rather than playing cards, but not the rest. Thank you for this! It's just such a wasted opportunity. Deep Lore does not always help your thing, and in fact, can do serious harm to your writing project sometimes! Particularly for setting writing. Like someone pointed out about Lar'Tya; the Deep Lore isn't something you, the players, interact with so it doesn't even have much reason to be there and could be safely flung out a window. And it mostly just ends up yikes in both cases! Replace it with material people can use to make stories, because the purpose of a sourcebook is to aid others in their writing!
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Jul 16, 2021 18:59
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My friends and I like to play tarocchi card games so I know a bit about it, but yeah it was originally playing cards - possibly originating in China and based on the paper currency the various states were using on and off. The European versions were adapted from .. I want to say Arabic sources? from probably like the 15th century. But it's been a while since I've looked it up. Anyway, long story short there's a poo poo load of different tarocchi games that all have regional variations. It didn't start being used for divination stuff until like the 19th century by the English and the French who were way into that stuff at the time.
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Jul 16, 2021 19:15
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Another big irony is that in a bunch of places, the Roma weren't really wanderers. In medieval Romania,they were enslaved and used as agricultural workers til rhe 1860s, when they finally were emancipated. In Hungary, they were semi-nomadic, mostly because they were hired by the Hungarian government and Hungarian nobles to build fortifications and serve as blacksmiths, and when they wewnt doing that. They hd a reputation as horse breeders and horse traders. Ultimately, what singled them out in European countries was that they were a distinct culture. They had their own language, and they had their own ritual purity laws that didn't let them marry non Roma, eat with non Roma, and in some of the strictest interpretations, touch non Roma, this led to them being distrusted and persecuted, which,in turn, led to Roma being less trusting of non Roma, and itbled to a cycle of mistrust and hatred.
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Jul 16, 2021 19:37
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What's interesting about the whole thing is that Blue Rose does well when it's talking strictly fantasy, then lets fantasy get in the way (along with some degree of laziness or inability) when it tries to deal with things that are more directly related to something real. They can deal with the purely metaphorical, and do it in a genuinely clear-headed (Seriously, the Night People are some of my favorite orcs ever for not having any of this bullshit about struggling against their nature or whatever, while the Vata'Sha were a failed experiment that literally are barely different from Vata'An because what the Sorcerer Kings wanted in both them and the Night People was impossible because stripping a sentient people of moral agency is just straight not doable in this setting, that's the good stuff) manner dealing with that fantasy metaphor. Then they struggle when dealing with someone who is more directly a cipher for something in the real world. It's an odd point of failure, but to me it suggests much more experience with fantasy fiction than history in the writers.
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Jul 16, 2021 20:42
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Mors Rattus posted:Misthavn Trick Knives are fairly rare but not very expensive. They appear to be completely normal daggers, though occasionally decorated to appear to be sacrificial knives. When you stab with them, they create dramatic blood spurts (the origin of which no one will say, possibly because no one knows). However, just before they impact someone, the blade cuts a tiny hole in reality, reappearing instead wherever the bearer wills - generally, that's inside someone's back. Users who don't know the knife's trick will just use it normally, stabbing their apparent victim through a tiny hole in reality without realizing they've done so because the hole comes out exactly where the blade looked like it was going. Mechanically, these are wholly normal daggers, but when you attack with them, you may choose to appear to target someone in Close range but actually target anyone within Long range, or no one. The true target will remain unaware of you unless they've already witnessed you using the Trick Knife. Actually it works a bit different then this. If you don't know how it works, and try and stab someone, the blade just goes into the void. But when withdrawn looks blood slicked, so the stabber thinks they have stabbed the target, but actually did not. If you do know how it works, you can pick targets, or send into the void to do pretend stabs.
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Jul 16, 2021 22:42
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Night10194 posted:To be blunt, this is what I mean by 'I wish they were actual AIs and not spirits', because the questions raised by actual AIs are much more interesting than the 'they're cosmic weirdness with their guts in magic space' ones. I think dealing with the integration of manufactured persons would play much better with the sorts of questions Lancer is trying to get at politically than the AIs being magic spirits. Mind you, the space magic entities could still exist (personally, I would call it "creating terminals" or something as opposed to shackling. The construction of a translator intermediary basically), but I agree they should not be inherently tied to AIs conceptually. I think it would be better if the weird extra dimensional space magic entities were actually decidedly more mysterious. I would also accept if they were like if you took the Gardener and the Winnower from Destiny but there's like dozens of them and they're having some sort of esoteric gigantic debate behind the scenes while occasionally interacting with the universe as we know it to try and Prove a Point. Edit: Destiny actually has a fantastic example of absurdly advanced "AI" (sort of, it's complicated) in the form of the Vex existing in the same setting as paracausal space magic entities. The Vex are absurdly dangerous and powerful, but still actually restrained by physics and as such, have been getting absolutely clowned on by the paracausal entities (this is very upsetting to them, insofar as they even have a state that could be conceived of as "upset"). Obligatum VII fucked around with this message at 23:34 on Jul 16, 2021 |
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Jul 16, 2021 23:29
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Night10194 posted:Blue Rose 2e I will need to disagree on this being a 'positive' stereotype. The whole "sleep around under false pretenses and causing exes to become depressed and hate your guts" isn't as a very endearing character trait in modern times. It comes off as a lot more predatory, and in association with a minority group it comes off as worse. Also I mentioned it on the Discord and on RPGnet, but Green Ronin subscribes to a kind of lazy progressivism where they hit the right notes in supporting certain causes but do the bare minimum beyond that. When it comes to things in their products which are outdated in more modern times, it makes them come off as rather unprogressive when they leave them entirely unchanged, whatever their actual politics are. A good example of this is in one of their Mutants & Masterminds books. The below paragraphs were originally written in 2007, but remain in the newer version of the sourcebook 10 years later in 2017:  And that's not to mention the whole CA Suleiman fiasco. Libertad! fucked around with this message at 05:47 on Jul 17, 2021 |
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Jul 17, 2021 05:39
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Libertad! posted:I will need to disagree on this being a 'positive' stereotype. The whole "sleep around under false pretenses and causing exes to become depressed and hate your guts" isn't as a very endearing character trait in modern times. It comes off as a lot more predatory, and in association with a minority group it comes off as worse. I'm not saying it's a positive stereotype, what I mean is 'We portrayed the characters as seeing it as a good thing' does not make it such.
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Jul 17, 2021 05:46
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Night10194 posted:I'm not saying it's a positive stereotype, what I mean is 'We portrayed the characters as seeing it as a good thing' does not make it such. That's fair; I can see that, but that's just how it read to me at the time.
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Jul 17, 2021 05:48
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Night10194 posted:I gotta say, I think I'd find actual AIs more interesting than spirits with a computer science aesthetic. That you kill every 5-10 years so it doesn't escape its bindings. It's also kind of frustrating to me, as a writer, how much time tends to be devoted to binding AIs whenever they show up in fiction, with the assumption that this is just a necessary part of any story about AIs. Eh, I find Ian M. Banks-ian* "AIs can do no wrong, only wrong Catholic dumbasses can be against them!!!" to be more obnoxious. *Motherfucker wrote Algebraist to break away from Culture novels, and still wrote a book with wrongly-prosecuted AIs that are wrong and cult led by a bastard who isn't in any way a believer.
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Jul 17, 2021 09:04
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It seems common for people to assign virtue based solely on intelligence. Intelligence is not inherently virtuous though it can lead to virtuousness. It gets worse when that person is a writer but write what they think great intelligence looks like, but can't actually describe it or make a character that actually acts intelligently. So they assign trappings of intelligence and just say they are virtuous, but create a character that is neither intelligent nor virtuous. This is most easily observed when a mediocre writer is writing about alien intelligences with "incomprehensible" mindsets and AIs.
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Jul 17, 2021 11:33
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JcDent posted:Eh, I find Ian M. Banks-ian* "AIs can do no wrong, only wrong Catholic dumbasses can be against them!!!" to be more obnoxious. I just want to talk about personhood and the ethics of constructed people, dangit. To be honest I get tired of God AIs as well, simply because that and hyper-intelligence is where many writers seem to go with AI by default, with the odd assumption that intelligence is something that's simple to scale up and scales infinitely. Mind, we don't know what a true AI would look like in part because we have difficulty defining sapience as it is. Also don't know if true AI is possible. So that means there's a lot of room to use them to talk about all kinds of things, and examining the rights of created persons and how Union treats them seems like it would be a useful thing to have for talking about the political themes that Lancer wants to have compared to space gods and space gods wearing 'talk to a person suit'. Also, if you want space gods, why not model it on something like Roadside Picnic? Have them be a thing whose presence is seen in passing, in their artifacts and refuse, the things themselves forever beyond comprehension or interaction, but what's left behind being absolutely essential to the construction of the setting's FTL or something. Would have the side effect of producing a very critical, precious resource that you can then have exciting small-team robot battles to secure before other polities in order to help bring Union's ability to bring its post-scarcity model to more regions. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 14:34 on Jul 17, 2021 |
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Jul 17, 2021 14:14
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dragonraid's back, baby https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lightraiders/first-watch
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Jul 17, 2021 14:50
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90s Cringe Rock posted:dragonraid's back, baby You know, the worst part of this is they're actually onto something. RPGs are a tremendous teaching tool and there's a lot of good room in the world for instructional/educational RPGs; getting into character, having the information come up directly in a story you're all telling, these things are fantastic for retention and exploration of concepts. The interactive nature of an RPG makes it great for that kind of thing. Just not like this. NOT LIKE THIS.
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Jul 17, 2021 14:57
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kommy5 posted:It seems common for people to assign virtue based solely on intelligence. Intelligence is not inherently virtuous though it can lead to virtuousness. It gets worse when that person is a writer but write what they think great intelligence looks like, but can't actually describe it or make a character that actually acts intelligently. So they assign trappings of intelligence and just say they are virtuous, but create a character that is neither intelligent nor virtuous. Its like that one Jimmy Neutron Copypasa about the salt.
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Jul 17, 2021 17:22
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I gotta be honest, some of this feels like ordering a hamburger and then complaining that it's not a hot dog. Like, the statement of 'I can't explore all the AI themes I want with NHPs' isn't necessarily wrong, but also a single setting just can't be all things to all people. e: like you wanna talk about the ethics of constructed people and whatnot, that's *cool*, but lancer not being about that isn't necessarily an inherent flaw of its writing, y'know? Doctor Zaius fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Jul 17, 2021 |
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Jul 17, 2021 18:48
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Doctor Zaius posted:I gotta be honest, some of this feels like ordering a hamburger and then complaining that it's not a hot dog. Like, the statement of 'I can't explore all the AI themes I want with NHPs' isn't necessarily wrong, but also a single setting just can't be all things to all people. Some people like thinking about the Lore and if you are coming to this from the Corebook, the authors could have done a better job of telegraphing just they didn't want people engaging with the setting. For example, if you want NHPs to be a background detail, don't create at least two factions devoted to engaging with humanity's relationship, and the nature of that relationship, with NHP and NHP-like entities.
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Jul 17, 2021 19:18
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Doctor Zaius posted:I gotta be honest, some of this feels like ordering a hamburger and then complaining that it's not a hot dog. Like, the statement of 'I can't explore all the AI themes I want with NHPs' isn't necessarily wrong, but also a single setting just can't be all things to all people. Oh, no, I'm not expressing my disappointment with their concept as a flaw, merely saying I wish that they were otherwise as I think it would contribute better to the overall theming of the setting. More 'I think this is a missed opportunity and I don't think much is being done with what they did instead' because as you say, these are not questions they're especially interested in.
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Jul 17, 2021 19:19
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Pakxos posted:Some people like thinking about the Lore and if you are coming to this from the Corebook, the authors could have done a better job of telegraphing just they didn't want people engaging with the setting. For example, if you want NHPs to be a background detail, don't create at least two factions devoted to engaging with humanity's relationship, and the nature of that relationship, with NHP and NHP-like entities. I feel like you're coming at this from a pretty antagonistic place, so I don't know how much good this'll do, but without getting too deep into spoilers for the first big campaign for the setting, No Room for a Wallflower, the authors deffo don't want people to not think about this stuff, it's just that NHPs tend to serve different roles than AIs usuall do in fiction. e: like, the writers are absolutely interested in exploring 'what is the psychology of NHPs, and what role do they play in society and culture' it's just not necessarily the same role that say, Data plays in Star Trek or what have you. e2: Ok, like, fairly heavy spoilers for Wallflower: Overland/Kingwatcher, the antagonist of wallflower, is a cascading NHP traumatized by the genocide of the egregorians. Due to cascade bringing them closer to that fully unshackled state, part of that trauma manifests in them being literally stuck in the time of the Crisis - Unshackled NHPs being atemporal beings clashing with the 'humanity' brought on by the shackles means that O/K is literally stuck re-living the past until they can find a way to break out of it. This is what I mean by 'oh they're weird math demons' isn't just meant to be an 'oh don't think about it too hard' cop out - it's something that advances the themes of the story and can be used to explore the characters. Doctor Zaius fucked around with this message at 19:59 on Jul 17, 2021 |
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Jul 17, 2021 19:46
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Doctor Zaius posted:I feel like you're coming at this from a pretty antagonistic place, so I don't know how much good this'll do, but without getting too deep into spoilers for the first big campaign for the setting, No Room for a Wallflower, the authors deffo don't want people to not think about this stuff, it's just that NHPs tend to serve different roles than AIs usuall do in fiction. 100 percent agree that was the author's intent. And that I am clearly out of step with everyone who is enjoying Lancer. That is how it is sometimes.
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Jul 17, 2021 20:44
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Soulbound: Steam and Steel My New Sword The first gear creation bit is largely focused on weapons and armor rather than anything else, as those have the msot hard and fast rules to apply. Weapons get handled first, in a five-step process. Step one is simple: What type of weapon is it? What are you making - a ranged weapon or a melee weapon? What is it designed to do - are you making a sniper rifle, a shotgun, a dueling weapon? (If you want grenades or other explosives, you're out of luck. That's an alchemy trick, go learn alchemy.) Having come up with the basic concept of your weapon, we hit step 2: Define the core trait. All weapons are one of Crushing, Piercing or Slashing. These have no direct benefits normally, but key into various Talents. Alternatively, a weapon may have the Undamaging trait as its core trait, to represent weapons not intended to cause direct harm. These are things like thrown nets - they don't do damage, but have some other useful trick when they hit. Shields are notable here as essentially being an Undamaging weapon with the Defensive trait, too. If you're making an Undamaging weapon, you get to skip the next step. That's because step 3 is defining how much damage the weapon does. Weapons that do any damage at all can deal damage of 0, 1 or 2, which then gets added to an attack's successes to determine total damage of the attack. 0- or 1-damage weapons can be one-handed, but to get 2 damage, often you will need two hands, either to reflect body weight being hurled into the blow with melee weapons or to brace and handle recoil or stabilize for ranged weapons. (Technically, you could get up to 3 damage by making a base 2-damage weapon that has the Two-Handed trait to get +1 damage, but this would add a large amount to the rolls needed. I'm not sure if this is actually intended, or if two-handers are meant to be required to hit 2 damage.) The more damage a weapon does, the more difficult and expensive it will be to make. Step 4: What, if any, other traits does your weapon have? Most traits are positive, like Rend, but some are negative. Positive traits increase complexity and cost, while negative traits reduce complexity and sometimes cost. The traits you pick, positive or negative, are going to play into your description of the weapon and why it has to be made that way, such as requiring specialized and slow-loading ammo or because you do not currently have the materials or skill to produce a perfectly weighted version. This helps develop the story of the weapon's creation. It shouldn't be too hard based on this to add new Traits to reflect special tricks the weapon does, like the Venomfang blade's poison. +2 for most Traits, +1 for niche ones and +3 for really good ones. Step 5: We determine the crafting check needed to make the thing. Base difficulty is 4, and Complexity is based on the total cost of the traits you picked, with a floor of 3 after all modifiers and no ceiling. Melee weapons and short range ranged ones are easiest, and the longer range you want, the harder it gets. Undamaging weapons are easier than any of the other core three types, and the more damage the weapon deals, the harder it is. Most traits have the same number - +2 Complexity - but some are lower, like Thrown (Short) is only 1, as is Two-Handed, and some are more, like Blast, which is variable depending on how much the blast damage is, but is always at least +4 Complexity. The negative traits are Reload (ranged only, -2 Complexity) and Loud (-1 Complexity). Armor is a similar process, but slightly shorter. Step 1: How good is the armor's protection? Each point of Armor adds 5 to the Complexity of the eventual roll. That's pretty simple and direct. Step 2: How hard is it to wear? The higher the Body requirement is to wear the armor, the more Complexity reduction you get. You can pick minimum Body of 2, 4 or 6, each of which reduces the Complexity further than the last. Step 3: Any additional traits? Loud, Magical and Subtle are your only possibilities here by default, with the latter 2 upping Complexity and Loud reducing it. There's plenty of room to freeform new Traits, though, in the same vein as with weapons. Step 4: Determine the check. Again, the base Difficulty is 4, and the minimum Complexity is 3, but with Armor, you're likely to get higher numbers, especially if you're making really good armor. After figuring out how hard the thing is to make, it's time to consider materials cost. We get a table of example difficulties to make all the core book weapons and materials costs for them, plus another table to break down costing new ones. Basically, weapons cost more the harder they hit, and two-handers cost more than one-handers. Armor costs more the better it is. Extra positive traits increase cost, while negative ones reduce materials cost. Generally speaking, it costs half a weapon or armor's cost on the open market to get the materials to make one, so it's cheaper if you can do it. A sidebar notes that where you are may also alter the cost - if you're in Chamon, metals will be much cheaper to get, so the GM may give you a discount, while in Ghur, you're going to have a hard time finding those same metals without a markup but might be able to get free materials if you go out and hunt them yourself. Next time: Alchemy
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Jul 18, 2021 00:09
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Soulbound: Steam and Steel The Sweet Science Alchemy, as defined by Soulbound, is the science of analysing and using natural resources for mortal gain. So technically speaking, mining is alchemy. In practice, though, we limit it to magical chemistry. Practically every culture has developed some form of alchemy, but formal training in it is rare and hard to come by, as are proven recipes. In the Age of Myth, things were better for alchemists. They developed formulations that could alter lives or transmute the strangest things. The scale on which they operated is practically impossible for modern alchemists to comprehend, but most of their knowledge was lost or destroyed during the Age of Chaos. Their labs were burned and broken, their libraries ransacked and destroyed. Many alchemists died in battle, were sieged and starved, or joined the forces of Chaos and turned against the world. Most of the alchemical knowledge that survived the Age of Chaos did so in the hands of those who fled to safety in Azyrheim, and what they were able to retain is but a tiny fraction of the alchemical lore that once existed. Sadly, even if one were to recreate many of the theorems and recipes of the Age of Myth, they w ould be impossible to create in the modern day - most of the exotic plants and materials that were called on for the greatest works simply do not exist any more or have been corrupted by Chaos. The good news is that in the modern Age of Sigmar, alchemy is finally making forward movement again. As Order expands its reach and reestablishes itself throughout the Realms, more and more materials come into grasp for those who would practice the great science of transmutation and concoction. Ancient labs are being rediscovered in old ruins...and, unfortunately, so are those few alchemists who survived the Age of Chaos by turning to the Dark Gods. Their genius remains, but now twisted and corrupted, and they're more than ready to use it for evil. Alchemy has all kinds of different variations and methods that can be used to approach it, and it shouldn't be surprising that different factions handle alchemy in different ways. The Free Peoples largely leave the practice of alchemy to the Ironweld Arsenal and the Collegiate Arcane, who pursue very different goals and methods. The Ironweld are deeply interested in chemical engineering as a means of protecting, building and improving the Free Cities. They are endlessly seeking out new fuelds that will burn hotter or longer, new accelerants to fire explosive rockets, and new alloys to create better weapons and armor. Materials science and chemical engineering may not seem glamorous, but the Ironweld understand deeply how important they are. They've had to solve a number of unique environmental problems through applied alchemy, such as Anvilgard's use of chemical defoliants to fight back rampant jungle growth. The Collegiate, on the other hand, is a scholarly body, as much a school for magical study as an organization to keep the wizards on task in battle. The many colleges that are incorporated into it frequently maintain departments of alchemy, and some claim scholarly lineage from the Age of Myth, tracing master to apprentice all the way back to the original scholars. Collegiate alchemists often spend much of their time in heavily warded labs, experimenting on local plants, animals or minerals out of sheer curiosity rather than practicality. Their lectures to their peers are often exciting, full of shouted praise and criticism. The Collegiate's focus on battle magic does mean their leaders often try to subtly guide them towards work that will enhance magical abilities or the development of new arcane foci, though. The Gold Order are the leaders within the Collegiate when it comes to alchemical study. They are masters of metal transmutation and chemicals, and many Gold wizards are unusually wealthy as a result of selling their alchemical knowledge to civilians or military groups. The Kharadron Overlords have made alchemy the cornerstone of much of their society, in the form of the Aether-Khemists Guild. After all, their transition into flight in the Age of Chaos was only possible through extremely rapid alchemical research to learn how to manipulate aether-gold and use it to fuel their massive endrins. Ever since, the Aether-Khemists have dedicated their lives to mastery over this miraculous gas. Getting into the Guild isn't easy, requiring great study to pass immense written and practical exams, which can be quite dangerous in their own right. Some take decades to be able to pass the exams, and even those who get in quickly had better hope they have sensitive noses. The Aether-Khemists insist on this, as while they have the best detection equipment in existence, they know malfunction is always possible, so the nose is the most trusted instrument for finding aether-gold. While their alchemy is often highly specialized around this singular substance, there is no one in the world who knows more about it. The Daughters of Khaine are on the cutting edge of alchemical mysticism, having both a deep understanding of the science involved and a firm religious reverance towards it. They are mistresses of both potions to improve physical ability and deadly poison, excelling in these fields beyond any other. Their understanding of alchemical medicine is peerless, both to kill and cure, and even their mystic rituals to extend life and youth are fundamentally based in alchemical science. Their rituals are grueling and hard to master, with the greatest secrets taught only to the top of the hierarchy. Hag Queens use their knowledge to be functionally immortal, restoring themselves to youth and vigor as long as they haven't been murdered, and the competition to earn rank when one of them does die is fierce. This tends to mean those who do pick up alchemical skill among the Khainites are absurdly patient and good at taking the long view. They also tend to be extremely vicious towards any alchemist who didn't put in the work to earn their knowledge and training, and also ferociously territorial about their lore. Attempting to replicate Khainite alchemy is a good way to be marked for murder by the blood cult. Of course, even outside these luminaries, there's all kind of people out there performing alchemy that no one else understands. Every day, new plants, materials and beasts are discovered or created. Those who learn to harness them first can discover all kinds of new secrets, and many alchemists get their start based on personal experimentation with no formal training. Herbalism and homebrewing are pretty common, and while they may lack the institutional support and libraries of the greater guilds and cults, they also often have unique tricks that they've developed by trial, error and reverse engineering. Some set out on adventures to gain new resources, while others hole up in cities to stay safe and pay people to get things for them. Some even exist outside the bounds of the Free Peoples. Few can equal the Gloomspite when it comes to growing and brewing fungal potions, and the Seraphon are masters of natural poisons. The Skaven of the Great Clans Moulder and Skryre have developed warpstone-based alchemy to power and boost their horrific creations. The Kruleboyz are notable for their Swampcallas, who brew healing potions and deadly poison with equal ease, and the Ogor Butchers are masters of culinary alchemy. You could learn alchemy from so many loving places. We get a brief recap of realmstone and the alchemical uses that it can be put to. It's some of the most potent material in the Realms, but because of its raw power, it is exceptionally dangerous as well. It must be carefully refined and diluted to be put to safe use, but once it is, it can produce miraculous effects. Aetherquartz, the solid light of Hysh, can be used to improve intellectual efficiency and physical grace or can be harnessed to control magical energy, but overuse of it can cause obsession, egomania and inability to lie. The Amber Bones of Ghur are potent materials for transformation of flesh, but if not handled with sufficient care, they will leave body and mind twisted into permanent bestial states. Celestium, the stardust of Azyr, can grant visions and prophecy, but overuse can trap the mind in infinite possibility, living you unable to interact with the present. Chamonite, the liquid metal, is exceptionally valuable in transmuting one material to another, altering or breaking the laws of gravity and magnetism, or in creating otherwise impossible alloys. However, prolonged exposure will convert flesh into metal or cause horrific organ damage. Cyclestone, the shifting realmstone of Ghyran, is very useful for healing, and trace amounts of it are a key component of Aqua Ghyranis. However, raw cyclestone, improperly imbibed, can accelerate or reverse aging to impossible degrees, killing by old age or reverting someone to infancy. Aqshy's Emberstone is a powerful fuel source due to its intense heat and can also be harnessed to encourage passion oir anger, but it's easy to lose control of it and allow it to burn up either mind or body. Ulgu's Falsestone is deceptive and illusory, making it useful in disguise tools or potions to assist in lying, but if overused it causes massive paranoia and memory loss at best. The crystalline Grave-sand of Shyish commands death and rot, useful in many poisons and control over souls. However, even "correct" usage of it tends to be quite dangerous, and it attracts death to it if used improperly, making violent accidents a major problem. Warpstone, of course, is solidified Chaos magic, consuming nearby light. Only fools and madmen would dare to use it - which is why the Skaven are so fond of it. It can be harnessed for mutation and it produces vast amounts of energy when used as fuel, but even small amounts are heavily corruptive. Varanite, meanwhile, is the magma flowing in the Eightpoints, even more potently Chaotic than Warpstone. It is extremely rare, and its ability to mutate and corrupt the soul itself means even the Skaven have little safe way to use it alchemically...though few materials are as good at manipulating souls. Perhaps the rarest form of realmstone, however, is Nullstone, the soldified void between worlds. Nullstone is extremely powerfully anti-magical, making it priceless if you want to weaken or destroy magic and knowledge of magic. It's very good for defenses against magic. The problem, of course, is that like the Void, it is all-hungering, and improperly applied, it can strip someone of all capacity for magic and thought, leaving only a broken shell behind. Next time: New alchemical gear.
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Jul 18, 2021 14:07
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a computing pun posted:I feel like some of people are kind of saying "Hey, it's kind of lame that Lancer has X, which, if interpreted as Y, an interesting science-fiction concept, should have a bunch of moral / social / political implications that aren't present in the setting, making the setting feel incoherent and full of holes." and then, upon learning that X is not intended to be interpreted as Y, are saying "Hey, it's kind of lame that Lancer doesn't really explore science-fiction Y in a particularly significant way, it only has X, a much simpler form that doesn't have deep setting implications or the potential for moral / social / political stories to be told about it!" This. My take on both 'Kill Six Billion Demons' and 'Lancer' is that both use a lot of lingo to set a mood underpinning an aesthetic, with the main point of both being not to prove a particular point or explore a concept but to create an interesting story. Trying to hold it responsible for any coherent philosophy misses the point.
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Jul 18, 2021 15:44
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I mean this as a sincere question since we have one of the co-authors here: What is Lancer about? To you? I know Death of the Author and all so it can be a lot of reads to a lot of people, but I'm curious what its creators see it as, primarily. What are some of the central ideas at play here? What do they hope to explore with it?
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Jul 18, 2021 15:58
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Night10194 posted:I mean this as a sincere question since we have one of the co-authors here: What is Lancer about? To you? I know Death of the Author and all so it can be a lot of reads to a lot of people, but I'm curious what its creators see it as, primarily. What are some of the central ideas at play here? What do they hope to explore with it? Giant Robot Fights. Worrying about the fluff is irrelevant, to me, because what the focus is on is on the combat, and a Lancer game without combat is already a failure and a disaster. Combat is what Lancer does well, does best, and comparing it to Mekton or Silcore or, shudder, Adeptus Evangelion, Lancer is the best mecha RPG of all time.
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Jul 18, 2021 18:04
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PurpleXVI posted:Cough TITANS cough. Trying to make up something alien that a human mind cannot map to is probably a futile effort for a human, and then if you do set it down on paper, it could fall to bunch of other tropes people find boring, and so on, and ad infinitum, and wait, wasn't this game about robots punching robots? Me, I'm fine with magical spacetime Cortana and I'm sad if the reset deletes them, in the same way I'm sad about Cortana thinking herself to death/going rampant.
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Jul 18, 2021 18:36
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Blue Rose 2e Told You That One To Tell You This One Blue Rose comes with a lot of campaign suggestions and possible frameworks. It has fairly standard but decent GMing advice (don't plan the series on your own, involve the players in all of it, etc) though it does talk about limiting combat far more than its rules suggest. AGE works fine out of combat; your character will be competent at a wide range of things, and sure, it's conventional but the math works, Stunts just needed another pass for non-combat use. But much of the definition of a character is what they do in an action scene, so I'd have expected more on limiting the lethality of exciting swordfights and adventures rather than a suggestion to often avoid them all together. It's what I've done instead in running (making 'we are willing to strike to kill here' a significant choice, because by mechanics you can always choose to drop rather than kill a foe) and I think the game pushes against it a bit less if you go that route. Lots of limited violence lighter hearted action does the system well. It has some odd suggestions for running Blue Rose as darker fantasy if you want (which I suppose you certainly could with the Darkfiends and the authoritarian enemies and all, but it feels like a bit of a waste compared to just using one of the many, many settings pre tuned for that) or even more lighthearted fantasy, and it emphasizes that the Romance in Romantic Fantasy isn't necessarily about love interests, it's about centering the story on how people feel. Emotion, idealism, a desire for belonging and adventure. There's some basic stuff about not dragging a series on forever (try to have an ending eventually) and basic story structure, but c'mon, we're mostly familiar with that kinda thing. No, the fun part is when they get to campaign frameworks and concepts that they suggest. You can do the completely standard story suggested by much of the fluff, where PCs are the Sovereign's Finest, Nobles, Aldin Guard, Knights of the Blue Rose, etc working for the Aldin state and going around fixing problems and having adventures. You can do a simpler road trip story about traveling the world mostly to see the world and running into adventures along the way; it's a bright and colorful planet, you can always find something exciting going down somewhere. You've also got the obvious coming of age story about finding your places in the world, and, of course, Deer Based Isekai Framework. Because of course you could play people who got narniaed into Aldis from Earth and now have to find their place in this wonderous fantasy world, why wouldn't that be a suggestion? Much nicer to go through a closet than get hit by a truck, too. Way less final. Well, until we get to Book 7 and Lewis decides it's time to inform us Susan went to Hell for being a Modern Woman and oh dear, friends don't let friends read The Final Battle in Chronicles of Narnia. There's the intrigue based Game of Thorns campaign idea (oi, I hate that title, book), focusing on the stuff set up about the Queen's uneasy helleporter assassination of Jarek. Is the Queen slipping? She might be. Or is it just the work of jealous courtiers who aren't happy she keeps refusing to buy into the Falish family's dominance of Aldin politics for the last century? Either way, something is up in the Kingdom and you, as spies, couriers, investigators, and Nobles must look into the fallout of these events and see who stands to benefit from what and who risks undermining the Kingdom of the Blue Rose. This draws from stuff I already IDed as a major plot thread back when just reading through the fluff before reaching this section, so that was definitely all an intentional setup for a game about the internal stability of Aldis if you want a game about intrigue and politics. I like that it's left open in the campaign suggestion, too. The Queen could be slipping! You might have to save her from herself and her tendency to put everything on her own shoulders. Or maybe you stop a plot to take advantage of the Helleporter Incident to try to overthrow a legitimate government. Then it gets WILD. The next idea is portal fantasy, where a technological republic has accidentally found itself in contact with this magical world and both worlds collide around a plague of shapeshifters and Shadow agent bodysnatchers that might threaten both. Honestly, the details aren't that important next to the idea of 'why don't you ram a tech setting with no magic into Aldis and have the two explore one another'. This directly inspired my home game, about a troopship returning from a sci-fi war after it had ended, then suffering a warp accident thanks to the schemes of a war criminal CEO from a defeated corporate autocracy. Now he's wormed into the Kernish government while the survivors of the wreck explore Aldis, make contact, and plot to stop 'Jeremy Irons from Margin Call transitioning to Jeremy Irons from Dungeons and Dragons' as hardened star marines learn magic martial arts and loosen up from Space War Trauma and have tea parties with magic foxes in cute hats. It's pretty fun! And they basically tell you right here: Do something like that, it'd be fun! I appreciate this. It gave me the idea, it's been a fun idea, I'm glad this stuff was here. I think that kind of thing is why these Campaign Frameworks are a good idea. 'What do I do with this game?' is always an important question, and by not only having a few basic ideas about how to structure and process the fluff for different campaign concepts but also some out there and wilder stuff, they give you a hand in coming up with your own jumping off points. It's a good addition! The material isn't all winners; the magic shapeshifter plague of bodysnatchers is a bit of an odd move and I'm just going to assume it was the plot of a Romantic Fantasy/Portal Fantasy novel I haven't read. But 'Why not have a completely outside perspective of people exploring magic for the first time while the Aldins curiously explore their deal too' is a fun suggestion and I love that kind of story, so here we are. You also get suggestions for playing a specific knightly order of blind and/or deaf knights put together to deal with things with gaze attacks and magic songs, a suggestion for playing as itinerant wedding planners, and one really weird one about a colony through a portal on what's apparently mars that fled there to escape the Shadow Wars which is probably the most 'off' of the storylines. The place is just really weird and has all kinds of odd, evil eugenics/reproductive control stuff it does to survive their harsh colonial environment. The story's meant to be about recontacting these people and dealing with their weird isolation, but I'm not too into the Red Land, I gotta say. It feels wrong in tone compared to the rest of the campaign ideas. But hey, they can't all be winners. Oh, you could also run into exploring a weird gothic horror orchard that wanders the land trying to cause magical romantic tragedies, that's kinda neat, if weird. Still, I didn't expect the material I got when I first got to Chapter 9, and I'm glad that the material that was there was there. It really helped with putting the book to use and coming up with wild campaign ideas. Having Modern AGE on hand for the sci-fi elements helped a lot, too; just handing a character a Modern AGE Assault Rifle to represent their space pulse rifle (and its incredibly limited ammunition; the idea being that you had X number of encounters you could pull out a gun unless you found another power pack somehow) did a good job of making a limited, powerful resource the Alliance Marines could pull out occasionally that still fit within the basic system framework. While giving lots of reason for space people to transition into wearing cool jackets and capes and using rapiers and Spirit Dancing and stuff. So I'm glad Chapter 9 existed, because it gave us fun ideas to work with and helped refine down all the fluff into 'Here's some direct plot hooks'. I wish that was slightly better integrated into the fluff itself at points (I can certainly ID plot hooks while reading, but a little more signposting in the fluff chapters would've been nice) but at least they get to it eventually! And really, the deer's less likely to get weird on you than Aslan so go ahead, go through that portal in the wardrobe and have a wild adventure. Even the 'darker' campaign about intrigue and corruption doesn't go whole hog on trying to grim up the setting, it just puts a little more emphasis on a plot point they'd already brought up to make it the focus of the framework. I appreciate that, too; they're more willing to have industrial revolution portal fantasy or isekai than they are to go Actual Grimdark, and I'm glad they stick to their guns some where it counts. Next Time: Tanglewood, But In The System It Was Written For!
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Jul 18, 2021 19:03
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Fivemarks posted:Giant Robot Fights. I think that it is absolutely fair to care about the fluff. (I don't want to step on Tibalt's review but: All of this is commentary on the back quarter of the book; if you had been handed a copy of Lancer to play, you would have gone through like four pages of intro before hitting character generation.) However it does seem like all of this stuff is meant to build towards actual moods and tones and to encourage a particular form of storytelling, without specifically dictating, "If your characters do not take actions to be the same kind of Communist as the GM, do not check XP" or similar. This seems to be at the point where, if we were discussing the Universal Century Gundam setting, we would be just about to start talking about Zeon Zum Deikum after a bunch of talk about the handwaving of space colonization by a world government and probably an aside about the quirks of their fusion reactor technology.
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Jul 18, 2021 19:28
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Night10194 posted:Blue Rose 2e Every time I read Aldis I think about groceries. Like, quote:'why don't you ram a tech setting with no magic into Aldis and have the two explore one another'.
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Jul 18, 2021 20:51
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dwarf74 posted:Every time I read Aldis I think about groceries. 
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Jul 18, 2021 20:53
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dwarf74 posted:Every time I read Aldis I think about groceries. Like, My apartment is across the street from an Aldi. I can see it from my window. Think of how this review has been for me.
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Jul 18, 2021 20:57
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I was sure that I'd read a Weis/Hickman novel about modern tanks and infantry arriving in a fantasy world so I Googled it up and found the Darksword books. Turns out I've never read the books but a long time ago I did have a copy of the Darksword RPG. If only I could find it now.
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Jul 18, 2021 21:29
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I love those kinds of stories, but they're tricky, because generally the author has a very specific side to take in them, so to speak; at the worst end you get nonsense like that awful Gate series. I like them because I enjoy the thought of people from extremely different perspectives trying to understand the situation they've found themselves in, people from very different contexts encountering extremely new phenomena. Not so much for the idea of making a fantasy world bow down before King Slug or modern technology turning out to be worthless. I like them as a reason to explore, basically.
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Jul 18, 2021 22:05
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Night10194 posted:My apartment is across the street from an Aldi. I can see it from my window. Think of how this review has been for me. Hard for the review, sure, but it's like you can just wander over there whenever you need to.
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Jul 18, 2021 22:37
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dwarf74 posted:Oh man that would be awesome. It's very convenient!
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Jul 18, 2021 22:57
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Night10194 posted:I love those kinds of stories, but they're tricky, because generally the author has a very specific side to take in them, so to speak; at the worst end you get nonsense like that awful Gate series. I like them because I enjoy the thought of people from extremely different perspectives trying to understand the situation they've found themselves in, people from very different contexts encountering extremely new phenomena. Not so much for the idea of making a fantasy world bow down before King Slug or modern technology turning out to be worthless. I love tech uplift stories but only if the people involved are portrayed as intelligent and adaptive but not technologically advanced instead of primitive screwheads.  Like that. But you can't always count on that, sometimes you'll just end up reading somebody's imperialist wet dream. If you haven't seen Maoyuu or Ascendance of a Bookworm, I suggest them both for that reason. Oh, and speaking of people coming in from an outside context!  Ancalia – The Broken Towers, a Gazetteer for Godbound: Ancalia Before (Pt. 3) A brief reminder on fundamental theology in Godbound, even though I said I wouldn’t do this: just about everybody in the setting knows there was a God, mostly because they invaded biblical heaven, fought his Angels, and found his literal throne (he wasn’t there). The Angels turned on humanity as they scrapped heaven for spare parts and they turned Hell from a soul purification facility into a place of eternal punishment for every human. The Unified Church, the state religion of Ancalia (and a few other nations), worships the Creator and promises its adherents not only that one day he’ll come back to redeem the souls of all humanity, but they can put the souls of the dead to sleep until he does so. The rites they use to do that are the most important part of the faith, by far; every adherent gets their soul put the sleep, no matter how horrible they were, because nobody deserves hell. Of course, there’s more to the religion than just conducting funerals, and in fact the more a person’s life was in line with Church values, the easier it is to successfully conduct the ritual. The local Bible equivalent is called the Book of the Creator, and it dates back so far past even the invasion of heaven that nobody has any idea where it came from. Officially, it came straight from the divine horse’s mouth. While it lays out a roughly equivalent value system to our familiar Bible, it’s also even more obscure, being less a collection of commands, stories, and parables and more a mixed legal document and instruction manual in a language barely anybody speaks. It falls to the Church of every land to interpret it for their followers. In Ancalia, the Unified Church evolved into something vaguely Catholic (or more accurately Orthodox I guess): a structure of public-facing bishoprics and private-facing abbeys answering to a single Patriarch that offered the best education in the land and tried to provide moral guidance to its followers. The Church weathered the opening of the Night Roads a lot better than you might expect. Sort of. Not for long. Most ordinary priests, monks, and nuns died like everybody else, leaving the survivors without access to clergy to conduct rudimentary last rites everyone gets taught as a child just in case. Trouble is, those rites don’t really work unless the recipient was already practically a saint. So most people’s souls go straight to hell now, right? Wrong. The current Patriarch, Ezad, escaped the initial collapse and made his way up into a sacred fortress in the mountains with most of the country’s bishops. He put together a sort of ad hoc ultra-last rites for the entire country that he’s been running for more than four years: anyone who dies within Ancalia has their soul intercepted by the ritual and put to sleep, no matter who they were or how they died. Except that ritual eats holy artifacts, and holy people. So far, it’s killed off about half the bishops Ezad brought with him, and within another five years it’ll have polished off everyone else. Most people don’t know any of this, of course. Some enclaves have devolved into religious extremism; some others deliberately abandoned moral precepts. Others turned to the worst faith they could think of because gently caress the church, those assholes hosed us over and let the Uncreated in. While it used to at least acknowledge that worshipers of other gods had some moral standards, the church considered atheism (because of the Atheocracy to the west) and Angel worship (because Angels) inherently evil, so they deliberately subscribe to those. Or they join Uncreated cults, though those enclaves don’t tend to last long. Most people just follow a simpler, more desperate version of the same religion they grew up under, hoping that whatever they can scrape together is enough to protect their souls.  Hard pivot to family life! Life in Ancalia revolved around the family. Most people were raised by their parents in multi-generational homes and identified strongly with their extended families; even commoners called on their cousins whenever they needed help, influence, or manpower, and the nobility used family connections to get ahead. While there were strong cultural constraints on abusing the system, Ancalian society was strongly patriarchal. Marriage and children defined the life path of most Ancalians; men were expected to do just about everything outside of the house, while women were expected to stay at home and raise children. Marriages were usually arranged along social status or economic lines, age gaps of a decade or more were expected, and divorce was only allowed in cases of severe abuse or infertility; only clergy were exempt of that expectation. There were a few ways out, though. If you had money or influence, you could probably “donate” your way into being a nun; likewise, if you had a particularly strong concentration of transhuman blood, your abilities were too valuable to pass up on if you wanted to make your own way in the world. But, with extreme competence and dedication, women could succeed in just about any profession. Even ordinary blade lords usually had a female soldier or two kicking around their retinue, and the book suggests lots of women succeeded in economic and managerial roles (everything from sea captains to state managers). They’d face disproportionate barriers, but at least it was possible. Most women either never managed to pull it off or never bothered. Sexual mores were a lot less fluid than gender roles. By both law and religious commandment, people could only have any kind of sexual interaction with their spouses; the casual dating we’re familiar with would land an Ancalian on the business end of his girlfriend’s cousins’ fists, and while prostitution was very much a thing, men and women who engaged on either end with it could expect their social status to plummet if anyone found out. The book specifically mentions how gay and trans folks saw lots of discrimination, though if they lived with their partners quietly and never mentioned anything about their identity or sexuality they probably could have squeaked by. Naturally, sexual morality matters a lot less these days, now that competence takes precedence over the fine points of religious doctrine; if two of the men manning the barricades happen to make out in their free time, their neighbors usually just shrug and pay attention to more important things, like not dying. But unlike basically every other thing in this chapter, the Ancalian family not only survived, but has fully adapted itself to a new reality; lots of particularly close enclaves consider themselves parts of “found-famiies” and behave like traditional families as much as possible. A lot of people abandoned it entirely, though, for whatever reason. No social structure survived everywhere. And that’s chapter 1 finished. I know it’s important to build a backdrop for your setting, and some of the stuff Crawford lays out (those historical adventure hooks, how people could break gender roles) might have actual use in the game. But a lot of it just won’t. Like, I still can’t get over the extensive sidebar on terms of address. And most of it isn’t all that interesting on its own, it’s just “this is a standard medieval society except the apocalypse happened”. I guess it had to happen though  So, the book does a weird thing with the next couple chapters. Chapter 2 is an extensive gazetteer of Ancalia with all the weird poo poo each area is going through listed out, Chapter 3 briefly covers the major noble bloodlines, and Chapter 4 goes through the most important groups of Uncreated in the area. Thing is, Chapter 2 constantly references the Uncreated and their influence without saying anything about them, which leaves a lot of stuff awkwardly unexplained a couple dozen pages. So my question is: would you guys like me to skip to Chapter 4, cover that, and go back to Chapter 2, or just go through things in sequence?
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Jul 19, 2021 00:56
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Night10194 posted:I love those kinds of stories, but they're tricky, because generally the author has a very specific side to take in them, so to speak; at the worst end you get nonsense like that awful Gate series. I like them because I enjoy the thought of people from extremely different perspectives trying to understand the situation they've found themselves in, people from very different contexts encountering extremely new phenomena. Not so much for the idea of making a fantasy world bow down before King Slug or modern technology turning out to be worthless. One of the few good Recluce books was like this, the pre-history of the setting being the crew of a starship that got lost in a wormhole and crash-landed on a fantasy world, inadvertently inventing magic in the process.
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Jul 19, 2021 02:38
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