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The weird grammar does sell a sense of surreality to the whole thing, like it's been translated through multiple languages into something still coherent but unplacably foreign. Or, alternately, like it's being written by an insane person in moments of relative lucidity. It suits the Synnibar-esque vibe while still being largely readable.
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Dec 21, 2021 16:24
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potatocubed posted:And yeah, Middenarde in its original form was accidentally amazing in a very similar way to Spellpunk Cyberfight here -- but apparently the author of Middenarde didn't like what they had created and stripped all the fun out of their game. Yeah, apparently the Exalted-esque shenanigans were not intentional, and when I informed them that they could either double down on dirtfarming or, my favourite, embrace the goof, they chose to double down on the dirtfarming... and then expand the game with Fantasy Wargaming-esque methods of handling deities and the worship thereof. Sadly it didn't recapture the goofiness of the first version, it was just really lame.
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Dec 21, 2021 17:24
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I can't believe they killed the Birdlord.
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Dec 21, 2021 17:32
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Drakyn posted:I can't believe they killed the Birdlord. I also notice that Middenarde is now out of testing and on Drivethru... perhaps time for a final definitive review?
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Dec 21, 2021 17:51
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Age of Sigmar: Maggotkin of Nurgle (3rd Edition Update) Gross Growths The info on the Garden of Nurgle is essentially unchanged. Our big shifts, in fact, are that we now have actual subfaction writeups!  The Munificent Wanderers are even more obsessed with spreading disease than most of Nurgle's daemons. They believe that any time not spent spreading plague is a wasted moment, and that any soul that never feels the touch of disease is a tragic loss. They believe it is their duty to spread and expand forever. The Plague Legion rarely remains in one place long, as they feel the need to constantly travel to spread Nurgle's blessings. A lot of their attitude is drawn from the lessons of threir commander, a Great Unclean One named Thrombolhox the Giving. He was a student of Ku'gath, one of Nurgle's original servants and most accomplished ones. Thrombolhox is said to have once destroyed the entire city of Thimara in a week purely with sickness after he was summoned by a small cult. In battle, Thrombolhox is unfailingly polite and cheery with his foes even as he has them killed. While some of this is probably just that daemons are broken, unhinged beings, but some scholars believe that the daemon represents the portion of Nurgle's mind that truly believes he is benevolent and generous or which does not understand the terrible harm he does. This might explain the singleminded devotion of the Wanderers and the fact that even their normally grumpy Plaguebearers are renowned for their constant stupid grins. Because the Wanderers are so favored by Nurgle, they possess many rare and potent diseases, which they infect themselves with before heading into battle, often diving into the slimy rivers of the Garden to collect more or forming massive lines at the cauldrons of disease brewing. The infections are carried out under the gaze of their exacting Spoilpox Scriveners, who calculate the ideal ratios of various infection vectors. The legendary tallyman Epidemius particularly likes the Wanderers, and he often aids them in their work. Even by daemonic standards, they are relentless in their quest to invade reality, making heavy use not only of corrupted realmgates but even hijacked Clan Pestilens gnawholes or use of cursed artefacts. Many of these artefacts have been recovered by the forces of Order or the Soulblight and shoved into vaults, but it wouldn't take much for most of these artefacts to be turned back into summoning nexuses for daemons. In battle, the Munificent Wanderers are no more subtle. They focus on massed swarms of Plaguebearers who make every effort to infect everyone near them with their own secretions and their Plagueswords. They rarely make any effort to hold territory, though - they quickly move on, looking for new populations to terrorize. Their obsessive need to infect others often makes them hard to stop by more traditional commanders, who find they can't really trick or mislead the daemons because they just ignore traps and strategies in favor of throwing more bodies at problems. They don't even seem to have much self-preservation insintct, willingly dying if it will spread their plagues.  The Befouling Host are also called the Garden's Garrison, and they are one of the most defensive and unbreakable of the Plague Legions. They are stoic and willing to take any punishment, withstanding more than even most other daemons can imagine. Their ability to eundure anything means they are given the job of protecting the Garden and other key sites of Nurgle's power. When they aren't out fighting mortals, they s pend much of their time engaged in constant battles against the armies of the other Chaos Gods who seek to raid Nurg;e's territory. While they are theoretically led by the Great Unclean One Bul'gla'throx, in practice most accept that the Befouling Host are servants of Horticulous Slimux personally. He is the Grand Cultivator of the Garden, after all, and many of the Befouling Host join him on his campaigns of spreading the Garden's power. Despite this, they have never actually earned his approval in any fashion. Despite this, they believe his glory reflects on them, and they maintain and care for many of Slimux's pet Beasts of Nurgle. The Legion prefers to bog down the enemy with their bodies, allowing the Great Unclean Ones that lead them to unleash sorcery on foes without worry. The favored disease of the Befouling Host is Lumberlord's Woe, a horrific and transmutive plague that turns the organs of the sick into wood, which then dissolves into rotting pulp. It is deadly, to be sure, but the worst aspect is actually spiritual: anyone infected by Lumberlord's Woe is a beacon for the plague-plants known as Feculent Gnarlmaws, which spread the essence of the Garden. By infecting large groups of mortals with the Woe, the Host can summon entire groves of Gnarlmaws into the world, which then absorb the mortals as food. The Host are constantly looking for new soil in which to plant their abominable crops, and they've been expanding recently, following the Cursed Skies of Be'lakor. They seek to seize large pltos of land, which they will then relentlessly defend and grow horrible new strains of plague on, along with tainted plants of all kinds.  The Droning Guard are deeply feared by mortals, for they appear without warning. All that presages their coming is the humming of insect wings and the darkening of the sky as they descend. They hide among the clouds in massed swarms of Plague Drones, and while they can be smelled at some distance, they are very hard to prepare for. Their fully aerial style of assault lets them bypass many defenses, and they deeply enjoy going after soft targets and civilians to begin with. The Plaguebearer riders really like seeing their Rot Fly mounts eat people, you see. They bear the symbol of the sacred plague fly as a badge granted to them by Nurgle himself, as something about their huge swarms makes the Dark God happy. Nurgle maintains a close watch on the attacks performed by the Droning Guard, and when they succeed, his mood improves quickly. This favor has made the daemons of the Guard particularly arrogant, and many of their fellows really dislike them. They demand to be respected as the vanguard of Nurgle's armies, and the other daemons think them obsequious yes men who do nothing but suck up to their shared boss. The Guard ignore these rumors, claiming that such rampant jealousy is just proof that they, like a plague, have infected even the hearts of their rivals. The Droning Guard favored disease is the Soul-lock Shivers, a plage which causes cartilige to painfully shift and grow around the victim's bones, then harden into place. Those who suffer it become completely unable to move but remain alive, feeling pain throughout it all. The daemons too are infected, but rely on their more amorphous nature to handle it. Their leader, Septuklus, actually constantly shifts between a giant mass of slime and a horrible entity of living, solidified bone, making him look much weirder than most Great Unclean Ones. The disease also afflicts the Rot Flies, hardening their carapaces into armor stronger than steel. Next time: The Blessed Sons, the Drowned Men and the Filthbringers
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Dec 21, 2021 18:54
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Awaiting the moment when the person who wrote Spellpunk Cyberfight either a) turns out to be a goon b) turns out to be PurpleXVI or c) turns up to say “ha ha, see, indie players will cheer the 5e mechanics if they’re expressed oddly enough!”
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Dec 21, 2021 20:15
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Just got recommender Dark Soul in Satanic Space Scifi After the End of the Universe, and just going by class descriptions, there is no way this thing will ever to out to not be a mess: https://www.backerkit.com/call_to_action/3cae9ca2-713b-4101-967f-281551ff6e2d/landing
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Dec 21, 2021 20:18
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hyphz posted:Awaiting the moment when the person who wrote Spellpunk Cyberfight either
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Dec 21, 2021 20:25
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hyphz posted:Awaiting the moment when the person who wrote Spellpunk Cyberfight either I like the 5e mechanics  Not as much as 4e's, of course, but they're fine.
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Dec 21, 2021 20:34
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hyphz posted:Awaiting the moment when the person who wrote Spellpunk Cyberfight either The last one would be like Santa materializing just to tell you he's not real 
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Dec 21, 2021 20:38
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hyphz posted:b) turns out to be PurpleXVI God I wish I was this brilliant. Like... almost everything in this game is stuff I've occasionally mused about like "ha ha imagine if the PC was a livestreamer" or "imagine showing up shirtless in a sci-fi setting and catching particle beams with your teeth before throwing them back" or "imagine if space fairies built the internet out of a dead god." But I don't think I ever even considered jamming them all together in the same game or making it this... delightful. JcDent posted:Just got recommender Dark Soul in Satanic Space Scifi After the End of the Universe, and just going by class descriptions, there is no way this thing will ever to out to not be a mess: This is like Spellpunk Cyberfight's evil twin. Twenty tomes worth of lore and grimdark edginess and probably there's a Lovecraftian deity that circumcizes you with an unresistable gaze attack or something, and instead of using a relatively generic system that everyone at least has a chance of grokking, I bet you that this poo poo is going to be pointlessly complex and idiotic. Also between the Lilith and the Satanic Entity who's ravaged by "rage and lust," I bet you it's going to have so much gross and unpleasant sex weird in it. So what I guess I mean is: let me know when I can buy it as a cheap .PDF on drivethru and post about it while weeping.
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Dec 21, 2021 20:43
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JcDent posted:Just got recommender Dark Soul in Satanic Space Scifi After the End of the Universe, and just going by class descriptions, there is no way this thing will ever to out to not be a mess: Except I can read Games Workshop's fonts. The game is called Astro Interns, right?
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Dec 21, 2021 22:05
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Nthing on SPCF. This is a beautiful piece of highly stylized weirdness, and probably the best thing I've seen done with 5e's ruleset.
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Dec 21, 2021 22:17
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 Icon part 4: Jobs: The Stalwart I thought for a long time about how to do this (hence my prolonged absence) and I decided that any summary I tried to do of these classes would be idiosyncratic to the point of meaninglessness, and the game is free, so I'm just going to give it to you straight so you can experience the crunch firsthand. Unfortunately that means this is a motherfucker of a post. Apologies/you're welcome/thank you. Next! This is the Combat Glossary for Icon. The most relevant to each Class are summarized again as part of the class chassis (god, exactly what I mean right there). This is not a bad layout, because the Classes tend to have distinct design spaces. But there’s also a multiclass system (Of course there is!) so eventually most players are going to want to know all of these, and as a DM you have to at least know what’s feasible. Monsters use similar rules but do not build like characters - like Lancer, Icon has pretty robust community support, and there are excellent character sheets and a web app for monster construction, a rough parallel to the very sophisticated Comp/Con, which is bordering on essential for Lancer characters and NPCs. All of which goes to say no, it doesn’t have a roll20 sheet yet, but Massif has a pretty good record on support. If you want to build a character or just get a feel for the bones, this is the one my group uses. Now, without further ado, a huge list of RPG words. quote:Combat Concepts I’ll include a quick reference to this for future posts, as well, because this is absolutely mandatory for understanding the Classes. Keep an eye on the Combo rules in particular, they get complicated. So, that’s the core of the tactical combat game. To see how it works, we can begin with Jobs. To clear things up a little, Classes are a group of 3 (eventually 4) Jobs that generally do the same thing. The Class chassis dictates your stats and a basic set of traits, which then get added onto by your Job. You then customize your Job by selecting Abilities (2 at first level), each of which has two Talents you can take in any order (even though it -really- looks like you’re supposed to take one and then other) and then a Master Talent, which upgrades it in a major way. You only get 5 Masteries maximum if you play through to 12 so it’s a big deal. I am also compelled to point out that the advancement table currently asks you to pick either two talents or a Bond power, which is one of very few places where the narrative/tactical blood/brain barrier is pierced. I don't like this much at all There’s two terms in these class writeups we haven’t seen before. The first is Meter - this is basically your Class-specific Shenanigan, and your Abilities interact with it. The second is Gambits, and Gambits are the multiclass system, we’ll get into it when we do advancement. The other is Meter - these are Class-specific mechanics that you build around using, generating, and setting up. For Stalwarts it’s Heroics, basically a “supercharge this ability” token you can spend and that incentivizes you to play to your class’s archetype - we’ll get to see them in practice in the Jobs. The Stalwart Weapon master and unparalleled soldier Stalwarts are your fighters/tanks. They block enemy movement, control battlefield space, have more HP (I think this might have been why Health is a listed attribute when it never changes, but they went with using Vigor for this kind of thing instead). The class chassis gets: quote:Class Traits: And the first of our Stalwarts is the shield-bashin arrow-catchin horned uh elf thing maybe? known as a quote:Bastion These guys are big on positioning. They’re sticky on the field, have lots of repositions including no-save ones. They have standard damage dice progression but their armor is significant and considerable (they can no-sell some categories of abilities entirely, for example, Fray Damage just bounces off them.). Regeneration is giant in this game - it’s a free Vigor every round, which is 6 hit points, in a game where most attacks do 1d6+chapter damage. Only three Jobs get it as an option and usually it’s something you have to give someone else, not yourself. Not being able to Attack is an important distinction, as it generally means (thanks to the game’s precision of language) only Attacks, you can do other stuff - moves, shoves, etc - and not break things. Specific beats general. The other thing that occurs to me about this class is that it shows a good deal of DnD4e lineage. The moves and position control is good. Granting Cover means that allies take half damage from ranged attacks if the enemy has to shoot through you, so you can reposition friends and enemies alike to serve as a, well, bastion. The problem, of course, is that tanking and maneuvering isn’t damage, and this character will really struggle to shine in combat against some that is immune to shoves. You can bounce weaker enemies off walls and each other in order to do Fray damage, but that’s just not a lot of damage. It is enough to wipe out Chaff, the game’s standard 1 hp swarm enemy, but other than that, you’re looking at most enemies have 24 hp. My players found this guy kind of underwhelming in concept, although I understand it has fans. Another thing I like is that Icon is mostly equipment agnostic. “Throwing your shield” is pure flavor text. This, alone, I think solves a lot of problems games have with martial classes that use throwing weapons: they don’t have to choose which half of their job they want to be good at. That’s just better unless you’re really into the crunch of a simulationist combat engine, which, well, I at least think (as a recovering pathfinder player) is Purely Better as an idea. quote:Demon Slayer I just said the system is equipment agnostic and it pulls out this “you throw your weapon” poo poo. drat. At least its purpose is to have you teleport to it and draw it all cool from the ground. I love a lot of these abilities but in play it sounds like this settles into a rhythm fast. A lot of Demon Slayer’s powers revolve around not attacking to charge Wind Up, Demon Strength and Hissatsu, which are all powerful, and you’re just drowning in Heroics. In practice the class ends up alternating on-turns and an off-turns and while Icon fights do tend to last longer than the usual 2-3 rounds that dnd-alikes do, it still is asking a lot of a player to do a setup turn and just hope they’re in position to use their cool ability later. You can mitigate this with popcorn initiative - Demon Slayer goes last one round, first the second, so you have minimal time for enemies to enact shenanigans, but that gambit is useful to a lot of classes. I imagine the intended gameplay is “Bastion sets up, Demon Slayers puts down.” This is only going to be exaggerated in the next edition where Hissatsu is going to be allowed to charge for two turns for an even bigger attack and AoE, which feels faintly ridiculous to me - asking a fighter player not to do damage for two rounds in order to put down a huge blow is entirely fitting with the anime rear end bullshit this game promises, but it feels really hard on the player who has to hope there’s room for his big drop the hammer moment in the fight’s architecture. This class is a darling of the optimizer types for white room combat scenarios and people who have played them seem to like it, tho. Maybe I am just brain-poisoned by too much hackety slash. Oh, and as a reminder from the interminable effects chart at top of page: Sturdy grants you immunity to most all forced movement and most of the status effects, Unstoppable makes you immune to -all- status effects, and Godly damage ignores armor and vigor to go straight to For Real hitpoints. If you’re into the power fantasy of a master warrior who bides his time and facetanks his way through his enemies before unleashing a slow series of terrifying one hit kills, this is about the best expression of that idea I’ve seen in an RPG. Anime as gently caress. quote:Head Lopper This character features a number of design elements we're going to see again. First is wounds-for-power and auto-recovery of those wounds (see Burning Blood and Heart of Arenheir). Second is Bloodied as a status, which is below 50% hitpoints. It does feel kind of weak to me because by default unless you’re getting badly bagged on you probably won’t hit Bloodied until round 2 or 3 of a combat. However, it is better than most systems with a Bloodied mechanic, because you have 4 healthbars in Icon. Odds are good you can get there and stay there, and Burning Blood means you can force yourself down into a lower health tier and get there faster by taking a wound in exchange for playing with fire. That’s mechanically interesting and I have no idea how optimal it is because my player has been doing it every fight without exception. Suplex, Blood Rage and Gigantas Crusher are all awesome abilities. Making damage godly and doing a set percentage of an enemy’s health, especially a monstrosity, is extremely valuable. (This statblock also references Physical saves. That’s not in the game anymore, it’s just “players save on 10+, monsters save on 12+.”) The ability to create terrain like Colossus seems kind of fiddly at first, but being at height 1 over the battlefield gives you a boon on attacks and a curse on being attacked, and you have Flight and Great Leap to maneuver more easily. I get the impression the intended play is creating a pillar you fling yourself off to clown on people. You are going to attract a ton of aggro, and you’re going to be moving a lot, but no one is going to be moving through you. Not having attacks of opportunity really opens up space for mobile martials. Again, though, this is a dynamic, interesting melee Job. So that is our first Class of Jobs. Next week we will move on to Vagabonds, the strikers, stabbers, and mobility class, who have learned the secret art of moving diagonally. Also, if people want to suggest character concepts, I’m happy to try to make a character that fits the bill. Til next time! spider bethlehem fucked around with this message at 23:36 on Dec 21, 2021 |
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Dec 21, 2021 22:50
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I hope I don't come across as an rear end in a top hat, but maybe instead of just copy-pasting, you could get rid of the superfluous carriage returns? ICON loving rules.
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Dec 21, 2021 23:03
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Or, you know, just not do transcription from the book. It gets real tiresome real fast.
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Dec 21, 2021 23:34
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CitizenKeen posted:I hope I don't come across as an rear end in a top hat, but maybe instead of just copy-pasting, you could get rid of the superfluous carriage returns? yeah, you're probably right. fixed.
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Dec 21, 2021 23:45
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PurpleXVI posted:God I wish I was this brilliant. Like... almost everything in this game is stuff I've occasionally mused about like "ha ha imagine if the PC was a livestreamer" or "imagine showing up shirtless in a sci-fi setting and catching particle beams with your teeth before throwing them back" or "imagine if space fairies built the internet out of a dead god." But I don't think I ever even considered jamming them all together in the same game or making it this... delightful. Do you have an evil/good poster twin named MaroonXVII who might have written the game? JcDent posted:Just got recommender Dark Soul in Satanic Space Scifi After the End of the Universe, and just going by class descriptions, there is no way this thing will ever to out to not be a mess: Just from title I thought it was going to be an RPG parody of grimdark bullshit like Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood was to modern blackspoitation movie, but no. They're serious. Soooooper serious. So yeah, this will suck like a Black Hole of Gravitational Pulling Hardness.
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Dec 22, 2021 01:37
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JcDent posted:Just got recommender Dark Soul in Satanic Space Scifi After the End of the Universe, and just going by class descriptions, there is no way this thing will ever to out to not be a mess: "ambient heavy dark world" sure okay hail satan i guess.
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Dec 22, 2021 02:18
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Spellpunk Cyberfight: Dark Time of Galaxy: Centermost Loredex Heartbreak Have you ever had one of those whirlwind romances? Where you fall head over heels for someone and for like, a week, maybe two, the universe is just completely different. They can do nothing wrong. Nothing can get you down and then it just... seeps away. You realize you didn't have as much in common as you thought, you realize that something about them just bugs you in ways you can't get over, that everything else about them doesn't make up for... and that's how Spellpunk gets me right now. There's still like, a chapter of decent stuff left, funny little bits of lore writing about the cosmology like... Spellfight posted:More accurately described as Mildly Psychic Mechanica Realm, intermesh is reflection of all machines and also data stored within mildly psychic crystals. Created aeons ago, Metaphysicists have long debated exact nature of intermesh. And this is all great. It's insanely awesome and I'm here for this beautiful writing, but the more I think about it, the more I realize how just not here I am for the loving system. Like... everything about the writing tells us about a wild, awesome universe where narrative power is more vital than specific +X ratings in your Adequacy Spheroid or whatever, where abilities have creative uses and you can challenge someone to a Ryoshimon battle at the drop of a hat rather than after rolling fifty dice. But the system just doesn't back it up. The system is loving 5E D&D despite everything that's attempted to defuse it, with simplifying some of the numbers and easing the XP curve and adding Environment Seasoning and the Location Wizard and all that good poo poo. Where it shows most, I think, is in the spells. Because you've got stuff like Basic Shot, Chilly Triangle, Morti's Ego Shield and Spheroid of Crushing Banality, but... if you actually read what any of them do, they are all. And I repeat every last loving one of them, renamed 5E D&D spells. This game deserves a better loving system, and I'm wracking my brain trying to think of which one I can slot it into with a minimum of adjustments. Earnestly I feel like maybe 3rd ed BESM with the narrative bits attached would probably be the easiest way to replicate most of the classes and their feel. I mean, this stuff is basically anime already, which I'm fine with, it rules. Feel free to recommend your favourite choice of system for me to drown my sorrows in. But man it kinda loving sucks, you know? Why would someone who can write something this funny, creative, uplifting and inclusive choose loving 5E D&D? Was it a bet? Were they drunk? Contractual obligations? Did no one tell them other systems exist? There's a contact email address inside the book and I am strongly tempted to email it and just ask why... why did you break my heart like this? Like I guess if you held a gun to my head and forced me to play a 5E game, I'd pick this, hands down. Beats doing more ethnic cleansing in the Forgotten Realms or whatever the hell. But having touched that system once I feel no motivation to go back to it. Even more than earlier editions of D&D it just feels soulless. I wish I could tell you all that the last 150 pages of the game contain something more interesting than copypasted D&D spells with funny names and copypasted D&D equipment with funny names but... sadly they do not. So I guess that unless we get a big ol' "PSYCH!!!! PRANKED U! HERE'S THE REAL SYSTEM WHICH OWNS!" from the developers, this is the end of the review for now.
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Dec 22, 2021 03:01
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Every some months I'll check up on F&F to see if there's anything bonkers being showcased and I am drat pleased to be here for Spellpunk Cyberfight. It's a minor thing compared to everything else in SpCf, but I love that this dude's familiar (?) is a worm-on-a-string.
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Dec 22, 2021 03:04
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The heartbreaker tag has hit.
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Dec 22, 2021 03:06
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Well, yeah, none of us were here for the mechanics. It's been obvious from the character creation they were a mess/nothing really, it's just the crazy writing that's the draw. You'd just run it with something else, which is sad. It'd be nice for one of these things to have a system that works to go along with the rest of it some day.
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Dec 22, 2021 03:13
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Why... why on earth did you think it'd be anything else? People that go all in on crazy writing never do mechanics. They either copy something extremely conventional or make up stuff that fails to work instantly upon use. That's how this business works. To be fair, there's only so many ways to do "roll a die to see what happens". At least it isn't yet another PBTA clone. A DnD clone is honestly kind of refreshing at this point.
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Dec 22, 2021 03:50
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I can think of an exception to that in Spire (which both has crazy writing and its own attempt at a narrative system that works pretty well) but yes, that is often the case. Glaring meaningfully at Troika.
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Dec 22, 2021 03:52
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Night10194 posted:I can think of an exception to that in Spire (which both has crazy writing and its own attempt at a narrative system that works pretty well) but yes, that is often the case. God, yeah, Troika. There's a heartbreaker and a half, at least SPCF is bolting its cool writing onto a system that is, while not exactly good, is at least functional and ubiquitous enough that you're likely to have at least someone in your group who intuitively grasps it. It isn't good writing attached to unusable nonsense you have to scrap entirely. Still mad about that initiative system, what the gently caress...
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Dec 22, 2021 03:57
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I'm keepin' feral tower wizards, though. And probably wizard biscuits. Troika's poo poo rules can't take those from me.
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Dec 22, 2021 04:02
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kommy5 posted:Why... why on earth did you think it'd be anything else? People that go all in on crazy writing never do mechanics. They either copy something extremely conventional or make up stuff that fails to work instantly upon use. That's how this business works. Love blinds you, man, love blinds you... looks into the distance longingly
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Dec 22, 2021 04:04
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It was already clear enough to me that it was a D&D5 hack that I knew I wasn’t going to run it, but I’m also a bit surprised to find the spells are just reskins. Like, sure the classes map to D&D ones but it felt like there was some cool mechanical variation in them, so it’s a bummer if the spells are even lower effort. Maybe it’s supposed to highlight how limited IP protections are by not covering game mechanics at all? Or maybe it’s just way too much effort to write or modify the huge number of spells a D&Dlike has.
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Dec 22, 2021 04:50
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I think that leaving the D&D spells the same is kind of the only functional way to deal with the incredible number and pointlessness of D&D spells, and since CPSF is a D&D hack that doesn't care much about mechanics, it was always going to just reproduce them. Personally I feel like 'replace D&D spells with a small number of generic effects or options you can rename however you want, and that's what Wizards etc have' seems like a perfectly solid hack, but also, some people do enjoy D&D spell lists and you can just let them inflict themselves on the book and vice versa. This book is what it always was, it's just that not even this book can make D&D spell lists fun to us anymore, for good reason.
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Dec 22, 2021 05:25
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PurpleXVI posted:Spellpunk Cyberfight: Dark Time of Galaxy: Centermost Loredex I live in a small-to-mid-sized city in the Southern United States. We have a Books-A-Million as our only non-religious/non-used bookstore. I haven't been in there for a few weeks but the last time I was there the RPG section had a copy of The Expanse RPG and I think an Aliens RPG. Everything else was either Pathfinder or 5E AD&D. I'm willing to bet you real fake money that if I go in there tomorrow the same thing will be true. They're writing the game with the 5E system because they want to people to buy it, play it and run it. So they're using the best-known, most available system to do that. Not the best actual system, just the one people know.
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Dec 22, 2021 05:47
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I don't mind 5e. I look forward to running this game that uses 5e for people that like 5e. Why do they like 5e? I don't know, I've tried to get them to play things like Blades or any FATE based system but they don't seem to want to engage and contribute to the narrative and prefer having a dedicated GM and clearly delineated rules. I've been gaming with some of these people for over forty years.
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Dec 22, 2021 07:19
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:I don't mind 5e. I look forward to running this game that uses 5e for people that like 5e. Why do they like 5e? I don't know, I've tried to get them to play things like Blades or any FATE based system but they don't seem to want to engage and contribute to the narrative and prefer having a dedicated GM and clearly delineated rules. I've been gaming with some of these people for over forty years. Yeah some people are just like that and have their preferences for how games are run even though I'm not necessarily into it. And Lord knows I am sick of D&D so I'll probably snag this thing and might use it to run 5th as I would prefer. Purple, thanks for the review and I'm sorry you're to heartbroken to continue, but I don't blame you because the last loving thing we need is the D&D spell list in this game.
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Dec 22, 2021 08:02
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I mean the thing is, if you just keep the 5E "skeleton," i.e. the resolution mechanic and the six stats, then no harm done. But when half the game's classes are defined by their spell lists more than their abilities, and those spell lists lack all the nice pseudo-narrative options handed out literally everywhere else because it's easier to just call Magic Missile a funny name, then it feels like it sinks a bit.
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Dec 22, 2021 09:17
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To be fair, though, while the 5e undercarriage isn't great, I feel like "5e but with actually solid GM/playing advice" is already a pretty big thing in and of itself. To at least acknowledge things like "fail forward" and a whole lot of other advice as well as the shared nature of play (i.e. "tell me what the room looks like, Player X), are huge, and the fiction is funny. I agree though that it's a bit of a pity about the spells, because spells in 5e aren't a lot of fun (which is funny, considering characters without spells are even more boring to play -- hello there, Mr Barbarian!).
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Dec 22, 2021 11:10
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Age of Sigmar: Maggotkin of Nurgle (3rd Edition Update) Very Large Men  The Blessed Sons are the most infamous of Nurgle's forces, a massive collection of cultist-crusaders devoted to spreading worship of Nurgle by force. They are by far the largest and most skilled of the Rotbringer forces, and their legacy is ruin and atrocity. They claim to be descended from the original Rotbringers, but this isn't quite true. Rather, they are a collection of different Nurgle cults that ended up combining together as a result of alliance or conquest. In theory, at least one of the contagiums that made them up might originally descend from the first Rotbringers, but that's hard to trace. They make a point, after all, of defeating other Nurglites and adding them to their forces, giving them the choice of joining the endless crusade or dying. The Blessed Sons were definitely the first to combine forces with the Plague Legions in the War of Life, however. It likely was originally an alliance of convenience between early Nurglite warlords in Ghyran, but the Sons have taken on their own momentum and essence now. They style themselves after the sump-hydras of their swampy origins, and losing one head only makes the rest of the body turn its attention to you. While the Sons began in the Jade Kingdoms of Ghyran, they have since spread to Cotha in Aqshy, Athanasia in Shyish and many other strongholds. They rule over a broad empire in which the Blightkings that take the field are considered nobles, ruling over an oppressed mass of peasants who are forced to praise Nurgle, grow what food they can to feed the Sons and operate the various plague-engines that craft the diseased, pus-coated weapons that the warroprs wield in battle. The Blightkings also force their peasants to help them brew the various plagues they prefer, occasionally using their slaves' bodies as incubators. The Blessed Sons maintain diplomatic ties to various other groups, like the Doom Lords of Ahramentia, the various Clans Pestilens skaven, and even a number of ogor mawtribes who enjoy the taste of rotting food. They collect tribute and trade in exchange for access to custom-designed diseases or aid in battle from the Blightkings. While these rotting nobles tend to be quite diplomatic and outgoing, they are very bad at maintaining a distinct leadership figure. Indeed, many low-ranking Sons do not know the nature of their own rulers, though they believe that the heart of their empire lies in the depths of Ghyran, where a triad of unholy leaders meditate on Nurgle's glory. The authority of Blessed Son leadership waxes and wanes depending on how good their plagues are doing, and their symbol, the Chitinous Triptych, represents their belief in three key truths and three leaders...but in practice, the various cults within the Sons are allowed to do whatever they want as long as it spreads Nurgle's will. Their tactics in battle favor mass slaughter, and Blessed Sons warriors are known for their derisive jokes and world-weary humor in battle as they beat people to death. Their treatment of conquered peoples is deliberately bleak and cruel, to break their will and force them into the desperation that best serves Nurgle's worship. They have increasingly begun targeting civilian populations rather than the armies they once focused on. They enjoy using sieges as a psychological weapon, pushing foes into pressure situations in which they make mistakes, because they know that all people tire and entropy eventually wins - so if they can endure long enough, they will be the winners.  The Drowned Men are the rulers of the Slime Fleets of Nurgle, the main naval force of the Rotbringers. Their plagues are the bane of sailors, and their favorite is scurvy. (Yes, you and I know that's a vitamin deficiency. Just accept it.) The first Drowned Men were explorers and sailors who sought only to discover new things, no matter how hard it was to do. However, their ships were struck by epidemics of various sorts, stranding them on the sea. Most died in agony, becalmed and beset by infection. Those who survived, however, descended into dementia and prayers to Nurgle to spare their lives. He rewarded their tenacity with blessings and wind, and they became pirate raiders, attacking other ships and taking them captive. They would force-feed their captives dirty seawater until they either died or embraced Nurgle. The Drowned Men are shockingly fast despite their bloated, rotund forms. Their ships are rotting hulks of wood and flesh, often infested by Nurglings, but they can take far more damage than their appearance suggests. The fleet isn't all naval any more, either. They've expanded it to include stinking blimps that release unending smog and fetid gas and stolen Kharadron skyvessels that have been rusted and left to decay. Regardless of their vessels, their armies favor massive swarms of Pusgoyle Blightlords, who fly ahead of the ships and entrap their foes from above, offering the main crew a chance to board their targets and slaughter them en masse without worrying about prey escaping. The Drowned Men can show up in just about any area, though even with their air vessels, they prefer to stick to the oceans...or, at least, they did. Their most recent push has been to expand into the airways of Chamon, where they have begun using yellowed, sickly clouds to launch ambushes on Kharadron trade vessels. They do this for three reason, as three is a holy number to them. Firstly, they are plundering wealth from the rich duardin, and while they are Nurglites, they do appreciate gold and jewels. Second, they're humiliating the forces of hated Tzeentch by encroaching on their territory. And lastly, they're cutting supply lines for Sigmar's forces by taking out some of the most prolific merchants in the Realms.  The Filthbringers are the Rotbringers most devoted to seeking the darkest and most hidden secrets of their god. They study the mysteries of disease in hopes of transforming themselves - quite a literal one, as they seek to ascend beyond their humanoid form and become living disease itself. They are perhaps the contagium most concerned with their own appearance, as they seek to turn everything into a tool for their ascension. Their armor is made from the chitin of wyrr-maggots, the beasts they use to excavate their sacrificial filth pits. They tend to pallid skin, not by any ethnic choice, but as a result of their heavy self-experimentation, which usually involves mass extraction of their own fluids. They are partially magical scientists, partially devoted fanatics, and their ambition is matchless - a rarity among Nurglites. So is their cruelty, which is less rare. Unlike most contagiums, the Filthbringers are led almost exclusively by sorcerous covens. None have yet achieved the ultimate goal of becoming a disease personally, but they have become the foremost masters of disease magic by a major factor. Their spells grow in strength in the same manner as a disease outbreak, exponentially increasing as more of their sorcerers gather in one place. This makes their magical attacks terrifically potent if given the time togather. While they consider all disease holy, they believe mundane, non-magically augmented plagues to be the tools of limited beings who cannot hope to ascend. They favor by far the stranger and more esoteric creations of their god, like gheist pox, aetherplague, elementally aligned phages or other rare, highly magical plagues. The Filthbringers are led by the Blighted Septagon, a group of (theoretically) seven mages who are extremely well-favored by Nurgle. Six of them are the very same wizards that founded the group centuries ago to achieve their ultimate transcendence. Some legends claim they are six siblings, lesser members of some minor kingdom's royalty who were unsatisfied with the tiny wealth they were given. The seventh seat is empty - it is held in absentia for Leechlord Festus, whom they have offered it to many times. He's fought alongside them many times, and the Filthbringers are so quick to obey him that they are often seen as his personal army, but he's never formally signed on. Still, the Filthbringers headquarter themselves in the Leech's Lair with Festus, operating primarily out of Ghur so that they can capture various megabeasts and experiment on them to produce yet greater and more terrible magical plagues. Next time: The Heroes of Nurgle
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Dec 22, 2021 18:48
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All the moves mentioned so far have just been 5e moves. The monk parrying and then reflecting ranged attacks is exactly the same except with "lasers count because our game has lasers" added. It was just 5e mechanically from the start. The punch a guy far away monk is just the chi blast and elemental monk moves. The GM advice was good, nothing I hadn't seen before, but its always good to see that a game has it. All in all though... hyphz posted:c) turns up to say “ha ha, see, indie players will cheer the 5e mechanics if they’re expressed oddly enough!” Its me, I'm the guy that's been waiting for people to realize they've been gushing over 5e mechanics. Don't get me wrong, I loved a lot of the presentation, some genuinely funny stuff in there and it did some neat twists on giant space civilization mash up!
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Dec 22, 2021 18:55
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I thought SPCF being mostly reskinned 5e was part of the parody, like how every super-original-do-not-steal fantasy heartbreaker still has you roll 3d6 down the line or whatever.
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Dec 22, 2021 20:13
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OutsideAngel posted:I thought SPCF being mostly reskinned 5e was part of the parody, like how every super-original-do-not-steal fantasy heartbreaker still has you roll 3d6 down the line or whatever. Yeah, it's very clear that this might have been a d12+d8 system at some point, in order to be a d20, and that was perhaps a bridge too far. The joy has always been for the setting and writing and the object, not because the bizarre reimagining of the classes was genuinely transformative into a fully new game.
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Dec 22, 2021 20:35
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| # ? Jun 7, 2024 19:39 |
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In all honesty, when the author puts their name in loving wingdings font on the cover that's probably a good sign you're about to get trolled and the 5th ed stuff was super apparent as far back as the character races and absurdly obvious once you got to classes. I think the classes are even listed in the exact same order as the 5th ed. PHB. edit: like I said earlier, I like this game because it lets me settle arguments about what is and what is not possible using D&D. The last time I ran D&D some of the players pitched a shitfit because one guy had a laser pistol. Ithle01 fucked around with this message at 23:02 on Dec 22, 2021 |
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Dec 22, 2021 22:59
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