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I'll go ahead and say that, for me, Degenesis is the exception to the usual rule, in that I haven't seen one single "good idea I wish were in a better game" in it, at all. Every single thing about it is either actively awful or done better by a hundred other works. It's the same bland mush of manchild fatalism and railroading* that WoD put out in the early 90s, except they replaced the emo vampires and vague sexual menace with evil Africans and overt sexual menace. * I don't even think railroading is the right term, here. Railroading implies the players are at least on the train and going somewhere. It's trainspotting. The players stand there in the rain while the train rolls past without stopping, then trudge onwards to the next station to do it again.
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Aug 28, 2021 00:41
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I'd like to see a nice breakdown of all the crap we know is wrong with Degenesis, honestly. I think it'd be a nice capper to just be able to point to that and say "yeah, that's pretty much it." You might be able to salvage some art or some concepts from the setting but honestly nothing really stands out but that.
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Aug 28, 2021 01:00
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Hypnobeard posted:I'd like to see a nice breakdown of all the crap we know is wrong with Degenesis, honestly. I think it'd be a nice capper to just be able to point to that and say "yeah, that's pretty much it." You might be able to salvage some art or some concepts from the setting but honestly nothing really stands out but that. I first started playing AD&D in high school in the 80s. It was the usual dungeon robbery-homicide game. But another new guy joined this group at the same time I did. I played a cleric because the party needed a cleric and the new guy played an elven Fighter/Magic-user-Thief. The group was at 5-6th level so we came at that general level. At one point we actually killed a dragon. A small, young, blue dragon, but still. I even got a Mace+1 out of the treasure. So the party leader, a Paladin if I recall, asks the GM if there was anything else in the room. The GM, at least half-joking, said there were a few piles of dragon crap. Immediately most of the rest of the party dove for the crap piles, tearing into them looking for more treasure. I was about to follow when the other new player had his character stand straight and declare in a haughty tone "There is no treasure on Oerth valuable enough for me to soil either my dignity or my silks by pawing through dragon feces." That was really the first time I grokked the idea of "role-playing." Of playing a role within a setting. Bringing this to here. There is nothing in Degenesis worth digging through the pile of pedophile poo poo that is Degenesis. But okay, if you want to dig into it, start with the adventure we just went through. And remember that this adventure is how you're supposed to run Degenesis. So, starting up the GM tells the players why their characters have chosen (lol) to come to Pedo Gulch. No "the GM should talk to the players and get them to come up with reason to be here." No, "your various superiors bosses want you here because [reasons]." Nope. Regardless of the party's actual membership. Even if they're a pack of teetotalling moralists, they're come to get their drink on. Because the GM/module says so. And then the pedo judge with no consideration in the module that the party might just blow the child-fucker out if his dirty socks. And then the two torture-idiots who can reasonably intimidate a party of hardened murder-hoboes with "gently caress off!" That leaves aside the Blacksmith and his Home Alone junk dungeon. And he's somehow the good guy that the party is supposed to save.
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Aug 28, 2021 02:17
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Oh yeah, I get it. The whole game is, for the most part, something you point at and say "don't do that." I'm mostly interested in the misery highlights.
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Aug 28, 2021 02:44
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Personally Voting for Soublight Gravelords that tome won't get an update anytime soon.
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Aug 28, 2021 08:56
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Mors Rattus posted:Options: Voting for naked angry dwarfs!
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Aug 28, 2021 17:50
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 This is what my randomizer picked from the three-way tie. The Soulblight Gravelords are the rulers of the dead, and their forces are terrifying in their inevitability. After all, corpses are their main logistical need, and what is more plentiful after any battle? They do not get sick, they do not grow tired, they do not become cold, the do not know fear. The dead that serve as the main forces of the Gravelords are immune to practically everything but pure destruction, and they will throw themselves en masse against the enemy without fear of that, either. Of course, their masters are not so lucky, and many think the key is thus to focus on the power that controls the undead - the Soulblight themselves, vampiric warlords and nobles. And it would work, but it's far easier to come up with than to put in practice. The curse of vampirism, after all, grants unnatural speed, strength and resilience. A vampire is far more powerful than a mere mortal, able to defeat entire warbands in personal combat. Even beyond mere physical power, they are able to call on an unholy charisma, charming those that they meet with their beauty and wit while hiding the monster beneath. Worse, a vampire is essentially immortal. Sure, it's doable, with a lot of effort, to kill their body - but all too often they will return, regaining their physical form with the aid of blood and necromancy. They command the beasts of night and can spread their curse to others, bringing them into the ranks of the blood-drinkers. And worst of all, they are magically potent beings, each one an unliving wellspring of necromantic magic. It is the nature of the vampire to do necromancy, with little need for teachers or study. They must merely call out to the dead to make them rise, and with a bit of help from a proper wizard they can do so on a massive scale, regardless of the age of the corpses they command. This makes them even more dangerous in battle, as they raise the corpses of their enemies to bolster their ranks. It's a favorite trick, as many vampires find it very funny when their enemies become horrified and need to strike down their former comrades. While they tend to view their undead servants as largely expendable tools, most vampires take great pride in making them look good before battle, showing off their macabre majesty. Skeletal warriors will have artfully rusted spears and be trained to stand at attention, ethereal winds will make their banners flutter dramatically. Vampires love drama. Wights will often join the vampires in battle, wearing ancient armor and riding undead horses alongside their less skeletal lords, while rotting undead wolves may prowl the flanks, waiting for the sound of a hunting horn. Swarms of bats large enough to darken the sky are not uncommon. The vampires are by far the most potent of the lot, though. On foot or mounted atop undead monsters, they are easily able to cut through any mortal warrior with ease, and doing so while still commanding and controlling their entire undead army is no challenge. They are casual in battle, taking the time to feed on their enemies in grand, bloody performances that leave them covered in gore. These acts reveal them for the true monsters they are, and reveal the cursed nature of the Soulblight. No matter their pretensions or how much they play at nobility, vampires cannot escape their curse. Theirs is an unnatural existence, one which was forced upon the Mortal Realms by the God of Necromancers, Nagash. Long, long ago, before the Mortal Realms wer eeven formed, the knowledge of Nagash was harnessed by the ancient queen Neferata to become the first vampire. What she did not realize was that there would be such a terrible price. Those fools who plundered the Nine Books of Nagash for immortality found it, but at the cost of a constant blood hunger. To fail to feed the bloodthirst would lead to a vampire descending into starved madness and oblivion. All vampires, even the most noble and honorable, must acknowledge their constant desire to drink the blood of mortals, most strongly those whom they once counted as kin. In almost all cases, this hunger becomes the vampire's defining trait, and they become unable to resist its urges. Often they become unwilling to even try. This is not to say that the Soulblight vampires are inherently evil. The curse doesn't do that. There's a good number of vampires hidden through mortal societies who make a great effort to control their bloodlust and maintain some semblance of humanity or normalcy. Even in places like Shyish, where many vampires rule openly, some are truly compassionate beings capable of deep honor and true love. It's just not the common vampire experience. Most vampires, especially those that style themselves Gravelords, see living mortals merely as cattle or at best as delightful delicacies to be sampled at leisure. They often see themselves as wolves among sheep, feasting as is their inborn right. It is believed by some scholars, particularly the more thoughtful vampiric ones, that this tendency may derive from the monstrous hunger itself, a predatory nature emerging from the Soulblight curse that will eventually claim the vampires and turn them into soulless, mindless beasts ruled only by their thirst. Others say this is nonsense, and it is merely the fact that vampires select their own "progeny" and most are far more likely to grant the blood kiss ritual to those who already share their wicked nature. Thus, they argue, the tendency of the Soulblight to callousness is not inborn, but rather self-selected. Certainly, it would fit with the fact that many of these Soulblight nobles prefer to rule by conquest and expand their grave empires by the sword, feasting on their mortal populations with little care for the damage they deal, even when they are not in want of blood. Their lust for control and domination seems almost equal to their lust for blood, the scholars say, and is therefore based largely in the mortals selected to become vampires - probably all the way back to Neferata herself and possibly even Nagash's will in writing the Nine Books. Nagash officially rules over all of the vampiric nobles of the Realms, but as long as they ultimately offer him fealty and obey if he ever truly demands it, he doesn't really seem to care what they do. They are allowed as much independent thought as they want, which can occasionally make them disloyal and hard to control, but also has produced some of the most cunning and creative generals he's had. Thus, he puts up with the Soulblight dynasties vying with each other and even occasionally ignoring him. Mostly, anyway - he does like to make an example of rebels, and in his presence it is nearly impossible for any undead, even his vampiric Mortarchs, to disobey him. That said, there's plenty of vampires that hate Nagash and his rule. They just tend to acknowledge him and the relative freedom they are allowed - it's safer for them to do so than to openly rebel. We can skip over Nagash's backstory and history with Sigmar - we've seen all that before. We do, however get a new view on the parts of Shyish ruled over by the Gravelords. Typically, the vampires have less interest in the place's mnay underworlds as they do in ruling over those mortals who still live within the Realm of Death. Many of these peoples made their homes in the Shyish Innerlands, near to its heart and far from the Perimeter Inimical. Since the Nadir Inversion, though, that has put them in a horribly dangerous position, along with their underworld neigbors. More and more cities and nations find themselves drawn near to the edge of oblivion, ready to be devoured by the Nadir. Most famous of these is the cursed city Ulfenkarn, the center of the Vyrkos Dynasty, which has barely escaped certain destruction and still fears the Nadir. Vampiric and skeletal nations tend to fight a lot. The forces of the Gravelords are always watching for trespassers, especially living ones, who might threaten their rule. Even in places where the mortal population has not been utterly devastated, battles and atrocities are not especially rare. It's not all vampire rulers, either - the city of Gharnost is ruled over by Deathrattle skeletons, a group known as the Blind Pentad. They pay a tithe to Mannfred von Carstein in corpses in return for safety, and when they can't take that tithe in the form of outside invaders, their Corpse Carts are not above harvesting their own population. Most of the Shyishian vampire and skeleton nobles know better than to try and rebel against Nagash. They remember the example set by the Katophranes of Shadespire, who sought to use shadeglass to preserve their souls in death and so stole from the Necromancer Lord. They remember that he broke Shadespire free from the world and cast it into the Uhl-Gysh, trapping it in its own shadows and reflections as the Mirrored City. The empires of the Mortarchs are probably the greatest of these nations. Mannfred von Carstein has long ruled over the underworld of Carstinia, a place of forests and bogs and constant mist. Of course, he's also long grown tired of trying to replicate his homeland from the World-That-Was, and the roads lie unmaintained, scattered with looted artifacts and trophies from his legion's many wars. The few peasants that make their homes in Carstinia are horribly oppressed and rarely stray far from their homes, which are always marked with as many wards as they can manage. Dire wolves, Deadwalkers and other monsters are found all too easily past the light of a village lantern, after all. Mannfred refuses to stay there for any real length of time, for he finds Carstinia to be a mockery of the glories he never truly had, and he now sees it as a cruel prank by Nagash on him. What time his there he spends in Castle Sternieste, but for the most part he leaves the place to his vampiric progeny and merely shows up to collect new adjutants and lieutenants from among them. Neferata spends far, far more time on her own empire, centered on the f ortress Nulahmia. It is one of the most thriving city-states in Nagash's domain, and while it has been attacked by foes many times, it has never fallen. It is a beautiful if terrifyting place, assuming you can put up with tourist attractions like the Pathway of Punishment - a large road around the Throne-Mount where Neferata has the latest and greatest torture devices on display, usually while in use. Atop the Throne-Mount are the Grand Chapel of Night's Hunger and the Palace of Blood, the home of Neferata. The palace is coated in art, including a number of gilded statues of animal-headed gods from the ancient homeland of Neferata - no one else has any idea what they are. Each night, bloodletting rituals are performed in the temple-cloisters of the Grand Chapel for the courtiers of Neferata, all of them vampires. They spend most of their time engaged in petty intrigues against each other, hoping to earn their queen's favor however briefly. Next time: The Soulblight Lineages
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Aug 28, 2021 22:07
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[The Maze of the Blue Medusa - A Retrospective, part 14 Torgos Zooth, the Medusa's majordomo The Almery, Part 2  Let's see if we can get one step closer to escaping from the Maze, shall we? Room 234: Untalented A room full of junk, including a box of artists' suicide notes. There's a cracked glass tank that has a coil of rope in it that will animate and try to "kill talent by strangulation." Every time it hits a character, it moves their Charisma, Wisdom, and Intelligence a point closer to 10. "Destroys all artistic or creative ability once all three stats are at 10." Seems like a weird thing for an art-lover like the Medusa to keep around. Room 235: Damaged Stone Steps They're stairs. Room 236: Sooty Puffing A rocking-pig made to keep kids "away from the wrong sort." It rocks back and forth on its own, and only talks to ask the youngest character present whether the other characters are their friends. It'll check the alignment and level of the characters and if they aren't close enough together it'll start rocking back and forth violently. This will cause a random encounter, but it should also just bring Torgos Zooth since the area description said he'd investigate any loud noises. That was 36 rooms ago though so I guess the authors forgot. I give the name "Sooty Puffing" a six out of ten as far as names for a rocking pig go. Room 237: Thanotic Flock Seven cages of silver, gold, and jade. Six of them hold "timeless birds" that can't be seen or touched. If you can hear their song then saving throws are rolled with disadvantage and all damage dice explode. The seventh cage is empty and open, and no bird that's placed in it can sing. The cages are worth some money, but if you release the birds then they might show up in future encounters. For whatever reason a cleric can turn them, though they aren't described as undead or demonic. More random junk! Room 238: Keycock Another name that gives me some concern, but in this case it's literal. It's a clockwork bird that has a tail made of keys. The keys will fit any lock, but may break off inside, and if the keycock is killed then the feathers still in its tail will become useless. In combat its touch can "open" armor, the mechanical effect of which I hope you're ready to improvise (it's not a huge lift, but would it have been so hard to say "the armor cannot be used until the character has a chance to put it back on?"). There's a note that Zacchaeus, the mechanical peacock from the Dead Wedding, is in love with this bird, but how would he have ever come in contact with it? Room 239: Balcony Another empty room. Thank goodness. Room 240: Terminus Lux A lamp over an executioner's block. When lit, it has a bunch of effects that would make it pretty easy to execute someone. Nothing about what it'd be worth, although this seems like it'd be pretty valuable. There's a random number of uses left so maybe it runs on magical oil that's almost run out?  Room 241: Bird of Paradise A beautiful glowing bird kept on a leash in a cage. It lets only very gentle creatures approach. The shadows cast by its light are hard to see through, and are occupied by a bunch of skeletons that crawl endlessly around the cage, slowly chasing the bird. Room 242: The Heavy Storm A bas relief in obsidian of a tempest with a perfectly rendered ship just about to fall into the sea. Room 243: The Levalliant Glass A stained glass window at the center of a corridor- chunks of the masonry from the wall it was originally in are still present. The window's image is a desert of dark sand with weird objects looming in the background. If you touch it, you get transported to the desert. Depending on how well you do at a Constitution test, you might survive easily and come right back out, or be trapped there for what feels like weeks but is only a few minutes in the Maze. There's a quick note that you could also use this as another exit from the Maze- that'd be two exits in 243 rooms. Room 244: Column of Flesh A column made of the broken-off body parts of people turned to stone. If the Medusa dies then it'll collapse and seal the room off completely. That would make it pretty hard to get into or out of rooms 245 through 253, but would that matter? Let's see. Room 245: Vortex A huge gash in the floor that sucks in light and light sources, dumping the light into the weird lamp in Archive 133. Anything else that gets sucked in winds up under the floor in Halls 3 (the room where shadows create pits into the floor below). There are links to those rooms, proving once again that they can cross-reference when they feel like it, although neither room 3 nor 133 reference room 245 in their own text. 0 for 1 on whether losing access to a room if room 244 collapses would be important. Room 246: Six Seconds Free A heap of sand. If put in the hourglass in room 216, it stops time for one round for everyone but the person who holds the hourglass. Might be interesting, but doesn't seem to be for anything. Still, being able to stop time while escaping the Maze after the Medusa dies would be useful, so I'll begrudingly say we're 1 for 2 on whether the column collapsing would matter at all.  Room 247: Canus Grey A pair of bronze suns are in the room and reflect any light that hits them back as pure sunlight. There's a vampire knight chained to the floor between them with a dried up bowl of blood just out of his reach. Like the time elemental, he'll make big promises to those who'll free him but will betray them the instant he has a chance. He killed an old lover of the Medusa's which explains why he's kept tortured here instead of being turned to stone. This guy is just a trap and would not be missed, so that's 1 for 3. Room 248: Rude Mechanicals A little theater where ancient animatronics will act out a simple story. Each act will include a weak spell that gets thrown at the players, which they can save against with Advantage. In broad strokes, the story is one where a Leviathan rules over "an inhuman race," the race begs for help, the Medusa hears their pleas, she fights the Leviathan and its Serpant Man slaves, petrifies the Leviathan, and it sinks beneath the sea to form the ocean floor. Sounds like the Medusa is a good guy who rescues oppressed people from giant whales? Still not sure why the book seems so sure you'll kill her. Anyway, the reward for surviving all of those spells is +1 to saving throws for a day, which isn't even slightly worth it and the story doesn't really help the players figure out other parts of the dungeon's plot, so that's 1 for 4. Room 249: Knot in Space Floor tiles all warped and knotted in on each other. The Medusa used this disorder power against automatons in service to Order, but it's leaked out into the rest of the Maze. PCs can't use the power for anything, though, so 1 for 5. Room 250: Homo-Scalprus A bunch of knives on the floor in the shape of a man, surrounded by velvet ropes. If you cross or cut the rope, they'll animate. Hitting it with a blade will add the blade into the creature's body, and every time it hits it leaves a blade in its target's body, reducing the monster's HD. It can only be disabled by sticking every blade into something, and if you pull out a knife from your own flesh after defeating it then it will automatically hit a work of art or someone performing art, once. Might be vaguely useful but not worth fighting something with 24 hit dice. That puts us at 1 for 6. Room 251: The Call A lump of flesh on gold wires that lets someone's parents communicate with them while the parents are dreaming. The parents will ask PCs basic questions, and for every answer the PC gives they'll get a pool of +1 bonuses they can use against magic in the Maze that would change their personality. Kind of a neat idea, but not worth the time and trouble for a relatively dubious benefit, so 1 for 7. Room 252: Death Did Not Part A table covered in 50 pairs of severed finger bones wearing golden rings. Each ring and finger has a soul inside, and each pair is a married couple's pair of souls. Taking the rings off will free the souls, but a few of the couples don't think they'll go to the same afterlife as each other and will yell for Torgos Zooth. The souls are the remains of a city that the Medusa sacked, and she kept their souls here as punishment. The souls won't say why the Medusa wanted to get revenge against them. The book won't say what 100 gold rings are worth, but my gut tells me that'd be worth a good chunk of change so I'll very generously call this 2 for 8. Room 253: Mappa Mundi The last room that would become less accessible if the flesh column collapsed, although I think there's a door from 254 that could get you into here so it only kind of counts. Also one of the cooler concepts I've seen in this slog of a dungeon, and something that really should just be its own dungeon and campaign arc. Basically, the floor of the room is a huge mosaic map. It shows a pathway for a journey all across the world. If you walk the route in the room, it'll slowly unveil destinations along the way, and if you later leave the Maze and follow the same route in the real world within one year then you'll be able to reach anywhere in any reality to either retrieve or deposit one soul. You could use this to set up a big rescue mission, or as a way to imprison some kind of unstoppable evil. At three points as you traverse the room you'll run into a guardian- defeating the guardian will reveal the next stage of the journey, and some of them reveal clues about the nature of the quest. There's an Ice-Mantis, a Serpent of Mist, and a Turtle carrying the Nightmare Isle on its back. The guardians are man-sized and made of mosaic blocks, but they represent real creatures that you would meet on the journey. This sounds like a really cool adventure prompt, but it's just thrown into this corner of an enormous dungeon whose only exits are an island that you can't leave and a huge desert in another dimension. It also wouldn't be the least bit helpful if the Maze was collapsing anyway so that brings our total to 2 of 9. That's two out of the nine rooms that would be cut off by Room 244 collapsing that you might actually miss. Not great math there. Room 254: Overdose We finally get an actual description of what this "chem-stoat" is. It's a dire stoat pumped full of steroids and outfitted with articulated steel plate. It guards Torgos Zooth's office. Room 255: Mister Grasp Still just a weird snake-hand-eye monster with annoying powers that guards Zooth. Room 256: Torgos Zooth Another description of Zooth, with a note that you should know the phase of the moon because it had to be full when the PCs entered the dungeon 255 rooms ago. It's like they heard me complaining about that last time! He won't betray the Medusa, he wants his sons back, he may hire the PCs to get the sons back, etc. He can let players get into room 277 if he feels like it, or if he's dead. Also he's wearing the IagoScope, which is why he looks so weird in the title image. If you wear it and look at a construct, you learn the most important thing about it that someone else doesn't want you to know. Not sure why he has this or what use he'd put it to, but maybe it got put into the drawing first and then the authors decided to explain it in this room description. Room 257: Aglinak Aglinak is a water elemental in a water clock. Depending on what part of the clock he's in, he'll be forced into a different form which will unlock either the North, West or South door (though the South door is broken). He can only hold a form for one round before being forced into another. Apparently he committed "psychotic acts of desertification on a massive scale." Unlike most of the other prisoners in this section, the text doesn't say he'll immediately murder the players if he's freed. Then again, it doesn't say that he'll do anything helpful either. Room 258: Calder Force An onyx fountain that looks kind of like the one Aglinak is trapped in. There's a secret compartment left by Levalliant Green that includes a little orb that will release a destructive water elemental if dropped into several gallons of water. There's a note from Green that says it's to cause a distraction. Levalliant Green would by much more effective as a character if these secret panels were in the dungeon more often than once every fifty rooms. As-is, they're just more noise.  Room 259: Addictive Elephants Little elephant constructs, very cute. A white one, the Upperderm, blows white powder. A black one, the Pachydowner, blows grey smoke. They try to drug PCs so they can rob them with their little trunks. If hit with the drugs you have to "save or enjoy it and protect the golemphants." You also take worse and worse effects from this silly table.  Room 260: Kawai (sic) Karnage Kawaii isn't that hard a word to spell, guys. A room full of little toys going to war with each other. Very gruesome, but toy-shaped. They'll adopt a PC as a god and try to sacrifice to them. The golemphants came from here, but escaped. Room 261: The Warhelms of Dendro Blackpoll Two helmets, one dour and one foolish, made of gold. If a PC picks either up then they'll have to immediately put it on, kneel before the character in the next room, and ask to be killed. No save! Very nice. If both helms are brought into Room 262 then the door into that room will disappear until Dendro Blackpoll is killed or he kills the thieves, so player characters could easily get trapped with a killer monster with no warning.  Room 262: Dendro Blackpoll A pair of demon hands joined at the wrists. They're the literal hands of Dendrosathol, Psytharella's father. Each hand has its own personality, but they're both jerks and they hate each other. They're the Medusa's familiar and protector but they don't seem particularly well positioned to do any protecting- she doesn't really like them either. They'll probably decide to kill the PCs and are extremely tough, since whenever you hit one side the other side will become immune to that effect. Room 263: Halo Nilotic Brother to a demon that the Medusa has petrified, she's given him a Twisted Blade and told him that she'll free them both if he kills Dendro Blackpoll. Halo is so indecisive that he can't bring himself to make the attempt- we won't even be able to decide to defend himself if the players attack him. The blade itself is pretty neat, made from a willingly given snake from the Medusa's scalp. If you want to use it in a fight, you roll attacks at the start of the first round until you get a hit. You aren't able to attack for the rounds that you missed, but when you would be able to make the successful attack you do so, hit automatically, and the target has to save or die. They still take a bunch of damage and get paralyzed even if they make the save. The knife disintegrates after it's used. Could be used in a dungeon that was actually intentionally designed as the solution to a problem, or the prompt for a difficult choice in who to use it on. Room 264: Montagu Nycticorax A corvid automaton in a soundproof room, the actual guardian of the Cells to the north. He'll tell PCs not to cross the room, and if they do he'll sing the Carrion Hymn. Killing him also releases the hymn. Hearing the hymn will make you mutilate a certain body part (your own or someone else's) or take a really nasty curse. Montagu remembers there's a cage that could be used to move him around safely, and we get a link to Almery 237 where the cage could be found! Almery 237 also links back here! Cross-referencing! It's a miracle! Anyway, the Almery serves absolutely no purpose but to aggravate PCs. There's some useful stuff in here but it's drowned out by nonsense. The only story to the section is that of Zooth's sons, who aren't even in here! They're in the Reptile Archive! You might be able to have Zooth provide useful directions to get around, but there's not actually a reward listed or even suggested for finishing the son quest. I'll re-purpose room 253 to some better use one of these days, but that highlight's the biggest weakness of the Almery as a portion of a mega-dungeon. Almost none of this stuff actually serves a purpose in the Maze. You could cut it out and publish it in a list of "d100 Weird Things to Find in Dungeons!" and the Maze would lose nothing. Just put Zooth in the Halls so the PCs will actually be able to return to him when they find his kids. That closes out the penultimate section of the Maze of the Blue Medusa. Next time I'm going to try to get all the way through the Cells, and will cap off that post with "On the Death of the Medusa." Maybe a reason for the PCs to kill the Medusa will be hidden somewhere in the Cells! I wouldn't get my hopes up if I were you.
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Aug 29, 2021 00:03
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I'm just going to say this feels less like a dungeon and more a like a wish list of abusive art installations. Of course, the specific focus on philistinist traps speaks to how the author sees the world; subtext is for cowards.
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Aug 29, 2021 05:23
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Of course, the specific focus on philistinist traps speaks to how the author sees the world; subtext is for cowards. Also the quantity of 'here is a person in need of help; if you help them they will backstab you immediately' traps.
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Aug 29, 2021 05:37
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Mors Rattus posted:This is not to say that the Soulblight vampires are inherently evil. The curse doesn't do that. There's a good number of vampires hidden through mortal societies who make a great effort to control their bloodlust and maintain some semblance of humanity or normalcy. Even in places like Shyish, where many vampires rule openly, some are truly compassionate beings capable of deep honor and true love. It's just not the common vampire experience. Most vampires, especially those that style themselves Gravelords, see living mortals merely as cattle or at best as delightful delicacies to be sampled at leisure. Sigh. I liked the old world lore where some living inhabitants liked their Vampire overlords, as they got taxed less than their neighbors. Can you tell us more of the ones are like that, or are all the examples over the top evil? Human skeletons are only a renewable resource if you have humans growing them.
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Aug 29, 2021 06:28
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Comstar posted:Sigh. I liked the old world lore where some living inhabitants liked their Vampire overlords, as they got taxed less than their neighbors. Can you tell us more of the ones are like that, or are all the examples over the top evil?
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Aug 29, 2021 07:20
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MÖRK BORG: The Writing It is probably absolutely not a secret that I love me a good elaborate turn of phrase. So when your book’s lore section opens up with this:  The wind from the west. From the sundered land. Rot rides it, and the stench of blood. Cursed walker, will you travel there? To the Valley of the Unfortunate Undead? Our young ones are taken by the child-thief Tergol, known for his vile crimes and alchemies of the flesh. It feels like some poo poo a creepy old man would whisper at you in the first level of a Soulslike. It’s such a fantastic mood-setter and it sets up a fundamental approach to the worldbuilding of MÖRK BORG - a mystery that you, the players, can answer is better than a mountain of expository text. The text is very elliptical and mysterious, giving enough answers to form a concrete world but enough questions to keep you asking. It is strange, almost dizzying, and definitely paints a picture of a world too bleak to keep standing.  IV: THE WORLD DIES EVEN NOW. Reality decays, truth becomes dream and dream, truth. Cracks grow in the once-stable structures of the past, allowing things misshapen and vile to worm through, emerging into day’s wan light. The world closes in, bounded to the west by the massive Bergen Chrypt with its catacombs and ice-caked peaks east. Many have ploughed the wave’s furrow in search of and surrounded by the Endless Sea to the north, south and Known new lands. They all return, against their will. Alive or dead. Poetic imagery and strange sentences surround the setting, sometimes obfuscating details, but usually revealing more about the world than if it were merely listing factoids. Some passages are (admitted by the author) lifted wholesale from Revelations, such as several entries in the infamous Calendar of Nechrubel:  The Calendar of Nechrubel. Mörk Borg is © 2020 Ockult Örtmästare Games and Stockholm Kartell. Image used with permission. This lends the whole world a certain, very credible air that it’s going to end. Death is coming. This is truly the end of days. The setting has a bleak and hopeless, but still somewhat tongue-in-cheek feel, like the punk roots of old-school WFRP. This page, for example:  In this world there are those who seek riches or redemption. Some say the apocalypse is escapable, that it might even be stopped. And there you walk in discord and despair. One hand holds 2d6 × 10 silver (s), the other holds a waterskin and d4 days worth of food. Your soul and your silver are your own and equally easy to lose. To begin with, you are what you own: It uses several turns of phrase that feel very tongue-in-cheek regarding your wretched situation, like you aren’t meant to take it THAT seriously. Even the creators of the game admit their sessions trend very much towards Evil Dead 2-style gore slapstick. And mixed in (with mechanics highlighted, nice) are details of hope - offers of redemption, or that the apocalypse is escapable, preventable. Hopeless, but funny and maybe not totally devoid of hope after all.  The Abilities section, describing generally the core mechanics of the game. The mechanical writing itself is crisp and quick to the point, suggesting how quickly problems with the rules should be resolved. It really isn’t that complex, and it doesn’t try to sell itself that way.  The section of the game on Getting Better. Editorial note: The HP thing seems incredibly superfluous, I’d just have a PC roll the die closest to their current HP starting at D4 and it only doesn’t go up if they roll their current HP or some bullshit, I’unno, maybe just give ‘em the d6 HP sheesh ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I haven’t mentioned it yet, but a middle section of the book and the endpapers are just endless charts. Adventures, things you’d find on a corpse, arcane catastrophes, just mountains of flavorful and usable tables for your own grim ‘n’ gritty metal game. Even the dungeon descriptions are sparse but largely usable, apparently dedicated to keeping the dungeon itself on as few pieces of paper as possible. Lookin’ good. (I’ve already given my review of the dungeon, so I like my dungeon writing to be a /little/ more detailed than this, but it’s good for inspiration. We could all afford to write shorter RPGs.)  The description of The Dining Room in the adventure The Rotblack Sludge. An ominous berobed old man sits to the right of the description, clad in arcane scripture. Overall the writing in MÖRK BORG is brief, accessible, and a little scattershot on the layout but by and large easy to use. There’s even a very handy index at the end for anyone who might be struggling to use it as a reference book, and the PDF’s bookmarks are excellently done.  The Index. As you’ve probably guessed, I’m positively inclined towards MÖRK BORG, and the writing itself is a HUGE part of that. Next I’ll talk about the art and design, art I like, layout tricks I don’t like, and other stuff in-between. So join me next time when I talk about MÖRK BORG: The Art/Design
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Aug 29, 2021 07:55
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Comstar posted:Sigh. I liked the old world lore where some living inhabitants liked their Vampire overlords, as they got taxed less than their neighbors. Can you tell us more of the ones are like that, or are all the examples over the top evil? Two of the big name vampires we will be learning about are the nicer sorts, though one has few mortal subjects because he lives in a teleporting castle and the other has been cursed with an even more terrible thirst than usual and struggles real hard to keep it under control.
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Aug 29, 2021 12:25
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The big joke with vampires in Fantasy is that feudal lords are basically indistinguishable from vampires anyway. AoS doesn't have that satirical edge so that joke isn't there.
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Aug 29, 2021 12:40
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Even the nicest vampires in WHFB weren't nice, it's just that the stirlander lords were even worse.
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Aug 29, 2021 12:50
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MinistryofLard posted:The big joke with vampires in Fantasy is that feudal lords are basically indistinguishable from vampires anyway. This. I feel like the "You have a choice of two lords to rule over you. One is a soulless bloodsucking predator who sees you as nothing but fodder for his own desires and ambitions, and the other can't cross running water or see her own reflection in a mirror" joke is lost when your setting is such a bland fantasy world that's trying way too hard to be epic and heroic.
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Aug 29, 2021 13:06
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Excited to read more about the vampires. They seem a far more interesting undead faction than Bone Robots or Deluded Arthurian Ghouls.
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Aug 29, 2021 15:49
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Ratoslov posted:Also the quantity of 'here is a person in need of help; if you help them they will backstab you immediately' traps. Add in "women who manipulate you with beauty" and a particular viewpoint becomes clear.
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Aug 29, 2021 16:04
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Add in "women who manipulate you with beauty" and a particular viewpoint becomes clear. I still love that for me one of the most memorable encounters from the Decks of was the naked were-tiger lady who would not attack you if you helped get her out of the zoo cage. But yeah, wayyyy too much of the fantasy stuff seemed likely to be: GM: You encounter a pretty lady who asks for your help wi- Players: Kill it! Kill it with Fireball!
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Aug 29, 2021 17:45
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I'm honestly surprised it never turned into a system in FATAL: All right, you enter the hall and find 2 ladies in the midst of an erotic massage. what's the ratings? Ratings? C'mon I filled that attraction hierarchy page, how would my character rate them? um one is about a 7 and the other is definitely over 9. I forgot what weapon I should ready. 9+ is like 99% a soul sucking daemon but get the net thrower just in case of a shapeshifting Vagina Dentata.
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Aug 29, 2021 17:58
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Mors Rattus posted:Two of the big name vampires we will be learning about are the nicer sorts, though one has few mortal subjects because he lives in a teleporting castle and the other has been cursed with an even more terrible thirst than usual and struggles real hard to keep it under control.
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Aug 29, 2021 18:09
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While no vegetarian Vampire exist in hams the insane cast of characters is right on. And the joke telling clock. Or gently caress it and just go for Glorintha, they got ducks!
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Aug 29, 2021 18:17
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Cythereal posted:This. I feel like the "You have a choice of two lords to rule over you. One is a soulless bloodsucking predator who sees you as nothing but fodder for his own desires and ambitions, and the other can't cross running water or see her own reflection in a mirror" joke is lost when your setting is such a bland fantasy world that's trying way too hard to be epic and heroic. Well they are not really trying to make that joke here.
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Aug 29, 2021 20:55
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Mors Rattus posted:Two of the big name vampires we will be learning about are the nicer sorts, though one has few mortal subjects because he lives in a teleporting castle and the other has been cursed with an even more terrible thirst than usual and struggles real hard to keep it under control. One thing that's a bit funny about Nagash being an rear end in a top hat by cursing the Vampires with "thirst for the blood of the living" is that he's effectively given vampires a vested interest in keeping some of the living around in case they get thirsty. He's also given them the secondary goal of knocking off other vampires to make sure that there's less competition for that living blood.
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Aug 29, 2021 21:27
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SCENIC DUNNSMOUTH PART 1: INTRODUCTION Hey FATAL and Friends, let’s read Scenic Dunnsmouth. This is the one Lamentations adventure I remember being pretty good, so let’s see if it still holds up. What’s it about? Inside Cover posted:Dunnsmouth is diseased and rotten to the core. This is a “dice on a page” map builder from 2014, which puts it prior to any of the procedural map builders I’ve reviewed previously. It’s written by Zzarchov Kowolski, edited by Matthew Pook, laid out and illustrated by Jez Gordon. WHY AM I REVIEWING THIS? In addition to all the other problems associated with Lamentations of the Flame Princess, most of the original run of modules really suffered from an inattention toward the actual gameplay experience. There was lots of evocative descriptive text, but it was all gated behind so many special conditions and thou-shalt-nots and bullshit instakills that there was no way the players would ever encounter it. You’d have a rich ecology of witches and witch hunters, a necromancer cave filled with gross taxidermy and crystal tigers, an infinite tower of horrors, a horrible insect cave filled with monsters, and the players would never find any of it because the first random encounter was 5D20 Swedish musketeers, who would immediately mistake them for Catholics and gun them down. Scenic Dunnsmouth solves this problem by just being a cool collection of points of interest and set pieces with no barrier to entry. That means there’s no real story or connective tissue for the content to nestle in, but it also means the players aren’t going to be hacked to pieces or wander around aimlessly for hours before finding something cool. If, at any point during the review, you think this sounds like a cool module and want to read it yourself, my recommendation is you find some way to acquire it without giving Lamentations your money. If you still want to support the author, you can always buy something else directly from him. I know nothing about him outside this module, but I hear Neoclassical Greek Revival is interesting. PRESENTATION I’m reviewing the 2014 PDF version of the book, so everything here is based on that. There was a print version, which I saw in stores but never picked up, and a new print only version in a Kickstarter I didn’t back. I think that version was published without the Lamentations imprint, but there was no digital version (probably due to rights issues), so we’ll have to fall back on the original PDF. The art and typography are, generally, good.  What’s going on in this picture? All will be revealed…  Example typography I don’t love this cover, too many gradients. Thankfully, the art inside the book is the opposite - lots of sharp edges and chiaroscuro shading, like something Mike Mignola or Duncan Fegredo would draw. I’ll include examples throughout the review. Thankfully it’s quite easy to strip out of the book as .pngs. Organization is good. A table of contents, map building rules and content sorted logically, then a set of quick reference tools and examples in the back to help with map building. If I run into any problems finding information in the course of this review, I’ll mention them as I go. Let’s go over some of the basics while we’re here. WHAT IS DUNNSMOUTH Dunnsmouth is an isolated swamp village, far away from any population centers that exist in your setting. It has some setting details that let it slot into the general Lamentations pike and shot era historical fantasy milieu, but all that is easy enough to overwrite to fit it into another setting.  In addition to all the other content you might roll, there are two (almost) guaranteed secrets in Dunnsmouth. THE SPIDER CULT There’s (probably) a giant spider somewhere in the village. If the spider bites you, it can mind control you into becoming part of its cult. Once you’re in the cult, you want to protect the spider, and bring other people to it so that it can bite them. If you have kids after being bitten, the kids also feel the urge to serve the spider, and have a high chance of having spider based mutations and special powers.  When we generate our village, we’ll get a set of mechanics that determine the spider’s power level, and which of the villagers (they’re all named NPCs) have been infected by its bite. THE TIME CUBE Somewhere in the swamp is a powerful magic artifact: the time cube. It’s a glowing box with writing on it, that has a variety of magical effects if tampered with by a player character. Right now, the one we care about is that it distorts the flow of time in Dunnsmouth, relative to the rest of the world. This is the reason why Dunnsmouth is a flooded swamp shrouded in fog instead of a normal river delta. It’s the reason why this place seems so socially and technologically backwards, even if the DM dropped it next to a major population center for reasons of plot convenience.  There’s a lot more to say about the time cube, but for now just know that it’s a powerful magic item that a wizard would love to possess - according to the text, anyway. GETTING THE PLAYERS INVOLVED Basically, you’ve got three options.
The adventure also gives us some groundrules at this stage. Page 9 posted:1. The locations are random. If a location or inhabitant is not rolled at generation it never existed. ROADMAP The way this review will work is, I'll cover the basic concepts and procedural rules that are constant across all possible iterations of the village of Dunnsmouth, along with a few more pieces of content that are guaranteed to appear (though they might differ significantly from iteration to iteration). Then, I'll do a run-through of the map generation rules, creating an example village. I’ll go point by point through it and show off the content that populates it. Depending on how long that takes and the thread’s level of interest, I might do a second village to see how different it really is. The module advertises a lot of replayability, with each variation playing differently enough that you could run the same group through two different iterations without anyone getting bored. See you in part two, where we go over the map generation rules.
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Aug 30, 2021 01:58
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Everyone posted:One thing that's a bit funny about Nagash being an rear end in a top hat by cursing the Vampires with "thirst for the blood of the living" is that he's effectively given vampires a vested interest in keeping some of the living around in case they get thirsty. The Bloodthrist was just a side effect, Nagash had no intention of making it that way.
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Aug 30, 2021 03:43
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mellonbread posted:SCENIC DUNNSMOUTH PART 1: INTRODUCTION ADVENTURE HAS 4 CORNER SIMULTANEOUS 4-DAY TIME CUBE WITHIN SINGLE ROTATION.
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Aug 30, 2021 04:25
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Midjack posted:ADVENTURE HAS 4 CORNER
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Aug 30, 2021 04:41
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I'll bet it's just as confusing but without insulting your education.
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Aug 30, 2021 05:29
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By popular demand posted:I'll bet it's just as confusing but without insulting your education. It IS LotFP, so it may insult your intelligence instead.
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Aug 30, 2021 06:04
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TK_Nyarlathotep posted:It IS LotFP, so it may insult your intelligence instead. I never really got into LotFP. It seemed like was trying to be "F.A.T.A.L. lite." All the weird sex/violence stuff of FATAL without the overt racism or charts letting you measure the size of a baby's anus for purposes of loving (modified by whether or not the baby in question was slutty).
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Aug 30, 2021 06:26
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JcDent posted:I do love how you can lose 5 EP if you act naturally and just kill the Blacksmith. Also, I guess “the good end” here is that you get more EP and background increases, woo. Funny story, this is pretty non-canon according to the later books. Blacksmith is the brother of fellow Cave Bears Eisenfaust and Steelbeam respectively, and his death is an explicit part of what motivates both of these guys to get involved with the adventures. If you do gain him as an ally, said books make no allowances or recommendations for how it might change the encounters with the other two Cave Bears.
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Aug 30, 2021 07:38
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So Dunnsmouth features a cube? Hm, already getting high marks. As for the spider cult, aside from forcefully indoctrinating people... does it do anything evil or does it just turn successive generations into quipping superheroes while making everyone talk about how great SPIDER is a lot? Plans for world conquest? Does the spider occasionally eat the cultists? Does the cult run a ponzi scheme at the local market or something?
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Aug 30, 2021 08:17
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PurpleXVI posted:So Dunnsmouth features a cube? Hm, already getting high marks. And that just makes me picture MC Pee Pants, who I'm pretty sure was a spider the first time around. Also put that way it sounds like the origin of a spider-themed supervillain group... oh hey, Arachnos!
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Aug 30, 2021 11:43
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I just remembered that Hostess fruit pie comic where the Cosmic Cube, an artefact that can do 'anything' is bribed with a loving sugary pastry thus spoiling the Red Skull's plans. The cube does not appear to consume the pie in any way at all but 'thinks' about how terrific the real fruit flavour is. All of which raises questions about the nature of the relationship between cube and Skull, it's clearly not a mere device to be utilised.
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Aug 30, 2021 11:56
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The Cosmic Cube turns out to be intelligent and becomes a character all it's own in the Earth-616 continuity (as opposed to Earth-51914, the alternate universe that Hostess ads take place in).
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Aug 30, 2021 16:09
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The Lone Badger posted:Even the nicest vampires in WHFB weren't nice, it's just that the stirlander lords were even worse. Stirlanders are the worst, and this is in an Empire with Middenland.
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Aug 30, 2021 16:20
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Timecube, spider cult, and random village generation sounds like a good start. Already gave me some ideas for time cube related nonsense.
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Aug 30, 2021 18:52
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PurpleXVI posted:So Dunnsmouth features a cube? Hm, already getting high marks. I kinda hope it's completely innocuous beyond the whole "LOVE SPIDER" thing. Like, the magic bite is just some self-defense mechanism on an off-brand Rom the Vacuous Spider and the cult is an unintended consequence seems way more interesting a problem than Evil Extradimensional Spider #3,963 seeks world domination. The whole mind-altering bite part makes the spider still not great to have around, but having it be an isolated bit of weirdness rather than a threat against the world seems more in line with a module that aims to be a semi-randomly generated pile of strangeness.
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Aug 30, 2021 19:23
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