|
Night10194 posted:Well, it's a fun thing to do. And a perfectly legal thrill, getting mad at RPGs. Or getting excited about them. Both work! You can often do both at the same system!
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2022 03:07
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 3, 2024 11:29 |
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:
The Goons on the SA TG discord expained the dickshoes joke to me. I won't get upset about criticism. I try to take these things in stride and try to learn what I can from critique. The trad games forum actually helped playtest and make Friendship Effort Victory and I actually put a special thanks to the SA trad games forum and the SA trad game discord in the book.
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2022 04:51
|
|
|
Covok posted:The Goons on the SA TG discord expained the dickshoes joke to me. Ooh, where can I join the Discord?
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2022 05:26
|
|
|
By popular demand posted:You can often do both at the same system! Based on this thread many people do.
|
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2022 13:31
|
|
|
  KinRise, Part 3: Radical Faeries As you know, the Kin are fond of rumours. It’s not like they had their own talk shows on CableNet, after all. They also have their own myths and legends, and the biggest one is the KinRise. The KinRise is a prophecy of destruction and renewal, Nostradamus-like in its tantalizing nonsense. It says that someday, a great empire will cover the entire world, with so many people that the Kin can blend into the masses. That empire will be destroyed by a cataclysm that scorches the world with incredible heat. But after this destruction, the world will heal itself while the sun hides its face, allowing the Kin to go forth and conquer the Earth. But why would you believe any of that stupid poo poo? This isn’t the World of Darkness. The oldest most powerfulest vampire you’ve ever heard of owns a bar in Tribeca, and he’ll even book your lovely band. Well, when Mother Earth showed up spreading her pop-ecofascist gospel, those corny old legends didn’t seem so corny. The legends mentioned a lost race of Kin, aptly called The Forgotten, and several Elders agreed that Mother Earth must be one of them. While her cult was accruing big money and influence, the Kin were divided on how to deal with it. The Commune were the first to recognize Mother Earth as an existential threat, but her Brotherhood was too large and powerful to combat. When she began preaching that the Kin are abominations who must be destroyed, the other factions finally woke up. The Morningstar Corporation and the Failsafe Coalition threw their lot in with the Commune…but it was too late. The Complex responded by retreating into the doomsday bunkers that they’d duped Failsafe into building for them. When the Spasm War was over, the Kin assumed that Mother Earth was dusted and they had bigger problems to deal with. Then they saw the black concrete Bastions and the teenagers with black flames tattooed on their foreheads. So what are all these fuckups doing now?  The Commune has survived…in rags and tatters, anyway. Commune Kin want to help people, and most of them assimilate into a human community as best they can. Most people still don’t really understand the Kin, even if they’re aware that there are mutants and other weird things going bump in the night out there. A lot of Commune Kin have an unspoken understanding with the humans around them. Those weird guys just disappear into radiation zones, sometimes for days, and come back with guns or generators or maybe even the supplies to build a food tank. Some communities even have an open arrangement with the Kin, where Kin can Drain in exchange for finding goods and protecting the people from monsters. But these relationships are always tense, and most Commune Kin err on the side of keeping the Herd ignorant. The Commune lost a lot of people in the war and has only just reassembled, but the new Commune is leaner and meaner and better organized. Some of their Elders survived, and each one is now responsible for many cells across America. But the Commune doesn’t seem any more hierarchical than it ever was. The Elders act as hubs to communicate between cells and organize large-scale actions. The surviving Commune leaders include Golgotha, Parliament, and Captain Entropy. I’d roll my eyes at this, but Nightlife has always been good about keeping the NPCs out of the PCs way, instead of the other way around. The Commune wants to rebuild society, but that’s not their only goal. Destroying Mother Earth by any means necessary is still at the top of the list. They’re also opposed to the Complex’s plan to openly rule humanity. As Golgotha put it, humans can’t be made into docile livestock, and trying to tame them is playing with fire. To this end, the Commune is actually gaining a sort of human auxiliary among the communities that they’ve helped. People are starting to seek them out based on what they’ve heard from others. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the Commune.  If anybody won the Spasm War, it was the Complex. They’re the most powerful force in America and they know it. There are strong suspicions that they even engineered the war–which is possible, since their long-term plans to gain wealth and political influence had paid off by that time. We don’t know, but they were the ones who stood to gain. The Complex predicted the war well ahead of time, and manipulated the Failsafe Coalition into building the first massive shelters that would come to be known as Keeps. The Keeps were stocked with food, fuel, medicine, weapons, and everything they’d need to live in style after the end of the world. They kidnapped people off the street to keep as livestock, and kidnapped doctors and engineers and technicians to keep the whole thing running. When nuclear war broke out, the Complex evacuated the cities in an orderly fashion and went to their assigned Keep. The Complex finally has the world they always wanted, where Kin rule openly and humans are slaves and food. But there’s trouble in paradise. The Brotherhood of Mother Earth, of course. Some of the scavvy gangs are strong enough to interfere with Complex patrols and even take them out. But the single biggest threat to the Complex is entropy. Machines break down and parts wear out. “Fix this or I’ll eat you” doesn’t motivate skilled professionals to do their best work. The Complex has food, water, power, and sewer, but it’s a constant struggle to keep everything up and running. Nonetheless, the Keeps are prosperous enough that some Herd are willing to give up their freedom and the blood in their veins. It’s no use to you if you die of starvation or radiation, after all. Every day the Complex takes in more sick and hungry stragglers, and they’re poised to become the strongest force in the world. Their policy toward nearby human communities is to leave them alone–they’ll come around when the time is right. The Complex ventures forth from their Keeps in two kinds of patrol teams: Seekers and Stalkers. Especially since the KinRise, the patrols have a higher proportion of powerful anti-human Kin like Hafgryr and Magadons. Seekers are tasked with scavenging usable equipment from the cities. Ghosts are common in these teams, since they can easily navigate debris. They also scout communities for valuable personnel to abduct. Seeker patrols can be a few Kin or a few dozen, depending on the scale of the mission. They’re always heavily armed, with plenty of spare ammo. Stalker patrols come out when the Complex wants to raid a community or comb the countryside to capture slaves. These patrols can include as many as a hundred Kin. They’re lightly armed and use nets and other methods of capturing people alive. The Keeps have hydroponic farms but the Herd wear out like everything else.  Red Moonrise was always kind of a stupid faction whose motivations don’t make a lot of sense. That hasn’t changed. I didn’t mention this before, but the first nuke that hit the United States went off over St. Louis, MO. Why, I have no idea. But just two weeks after the Spasm War, Red Moonrise pulled off a stunt that let everybody know they’re still around. Members of the Rotting Stumps gang traveled with the human survivors fleeing St. Louis, blending in and gaining their trust. Then they struck, and staged the world’s second-biggest human barbecue. The heaps of burning corpses could be seen and smelled for miles, in what came to be known as the Burning of St. Louis. Red Moonrise is at the top of everyone’s shitlist: Mother Earth, the Commune, Target Alpha. They always existed to do crazy evil poo poo for no real reason, and it’s likely that they won’t be around much longer. This is the only part of the chapter that gives information on specific NPCs. That’s probably because the remains of Red Moonrise are best used as a speed bump for your PCs on the way to bigger things.  Gang Green is the leader of the Rotting Stumps, and by extension, Red Moonrise itself. An Ekimmu, he’s rotten in every sense of the world, and decorates his clothing with the knucklebones of his victims. GG Allout over here isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed; like most Moonrise gang leaders, he rules through strength and cunning. He’s very proud of the fact that he’s never been defeated in single combat, but it’ll catch up to him eventually. If you want to challenge him for leadership of the smelliest gang in the Badlands, he’ll gladly take you on.  Pus Boy is a Ghoul and Gang Green’s number one toady. He’s a good scout, and he’s saved GG’s carcass on several occasions, but he’s more valuable as a fawning yes-man.  Slick is a Magadon who’s smarter than either of these assholes. He’s effectively running the Rotting Stumps by passing his ideas through Pus Boy, which is part of why Pus Boy is so overrated. When the two of them eventually falter, he’s ready to take over. In the meantime, his specialty is infiltrating enemy camps and assassinating the gang’s rivals. As for the other factions? The Failsafe Coalition was absorbed into the Reconstructionists. The Morningstar Coalition just ceased to exist along with all their stocks and bonds and hedge funds. It’s ironic, since their ultimate goal was to destabilize human society and put the Kin in charge. I got the impression they wanted that to happen on their terms, and their terms included yachts and bottle service and other yuppie bullshit. Finally, The Laughter Factory doesn’t even get a mention. They were always a silly faction with no real reason to exist.  A Flamen bite he own dick, a shameful Flamen The Kin aren’t the only weirdos out there. Witches have emerged as a small but potent force after the war. Witchcraft gives humans the ability to work magic, protect themselves from Kin, and heal themselves and the land. What’s not to like? They have a unique relationship with some other factions, but we’ll get into that later. This section is mostly revised rules for Covens. In Magic, Witches are humans who can perform Ritual Magic. They’re not Kin, so being in a Coven allows them to spread the SP cost around. But they still have to heal naturally, so not every Witch in a Coven can walk around with an arsenal of potent spells. With these revised rules, they can. Let’s get this out of the way first: all that stuff about how a Clade is made up of 13 Covens, each of which is made up of 26 people who comprise 13 heterosexual couples…it’s a tradition, but not an absolute requirement. There was an all-male Coven in Greenwich Village, for example. Any Coven usually has a few people in training, too. Covens have a masculine Flamen and a feminine Flamenca, and the Flamenca usually dominates. The biggest change to how Witchcraft works is the Power Flow. Just by existing, a Coven draws on a natural river of magic. This is a pool of SP that can be used to prepare and store spells, or to heal damage to any member of the Coven. Covens can also gather to prepare spells in Ceremonies, rather than the solitary rituals described in Magic. The Power Flow goes through the Flamen but is controlled by the Flamenca. A coven can tap up to its Flamen’s FIT in SP per hour, so Covens that attend to their rituals can easily arm all of their members with some potent magical poo poo. Ceremonies can also increase the Power Flow fivefold, or tenfold on a solstice or equinox. Multiple Covens can even combine their efforts in ceremonies! An entire Clade performing rituals together on a solstice could accomplish who-even-knows-what. (This isn’t a diegetic change caused by the KinRise, by the way. They just wanted to revise the rules.) Witches still have a monopoly on Root Magic and creating Talismans, and they charge dearly for the service. They still can’t use Street Magic, but they have some special White and Black spells that they keep to themselves, as well as Ceremonial spells that only a Coven can perform. As for the new spells, many of them are designed for the KinRise. So let’s get into the White Magic spells. Absence causes a single item to go unnoticed. It’s not invisible, but anyone but the caster will act like it’s not there. Very useful for sneaking contraband through a checkpoint. Aim gives you a scaling bonus to a single attack based on SP spent, up to +50 for 5 SP. Box creates a glowing cube of force around the target, which can be moved around but only opened by the caster. It’s airtight, so don’t hide someone in it. Catch summons nearby small animals, who will come to the caster’s feet and pass out. This is usually a precursor to the Messenger spell, which allows you to use a little bird or mouse or whatever to carry a magic voicemail to someone like you’re Gandalf. Detoxify removes toxins from the body. This is a big bargaining chip with anyone suffering from radiation poisoning. It can also be used to attack Toxxixx. Spring summons a fountain of pure water from bare rock or earth. It sticks around until you’ve filled 10 gallons of containers. Trackless Walk lets you travel for an hour without making a sound or leaving any trace. You can only be tracked by magic. Now for the Black Magic spells, starting with Asphands. It turns your hands into snakes, and if you try to harm the caster, your hands will bite you. Weirdly, the snakes aren’t venomous. Convince persuades a person or group to believe one “fact” you tell them for several hours. The lie can be totally ridiculous or delusional, like telling someone their path is blocked by a river of lava. Only absolute proof will break the spell (like kicking them into imaginary lava so they realize they’re not on fire). Disassemble causes any tool or machine to just collapse into its component parts. It can be put back together, but we’re talking every nut and bolt and wire and microchip. Witches often use this to disable guns. Flash creates an incredibly bright flash of light that stuns everyone around the caster for 1 BT. It’s usually used to escape or act as a signal flare. Flicker makes the caster flicker in and out of sight, making them harder to hit in combat. Giggle makes its target break down into a fit of helpless, hysterical laughter. The spell is broken if they take damage. Stumblefield causes a small area to become a “stumblefield” where any non-Witches will have to make a roll not to trip and fall to the ground, which will keep happening if they do anything besides trying to leave the stumblefield. Trickery makes the target believe anything you say for a matter of hours. Unlike Convince, you can’t make people see things that aren’t there or persuade them of things that are obviously absurd. But it’s very useful in any kind of negotiation. Ceremonial spells are a big deal, and some can only be perform around an equinox or solstice. Cleanse transforms toxic and radioactive material into harmless dust. It also heals the Coven of any rads they picked up by being in the area. The affected area is about 10 acres. It requires at least 16 Witches performing a 12-hour ceremony. Enhance lets Witches permanently increase their Basic Abilities in a mass ceremony at the Spring Equinox. Every member of the Coven can increase one Ability by 1 or 2 points, depending on the length of the ritual. Hex is used to punish enemies of the Coven. Chronic pain, impotence, and premature aging are just some of the possible effects, but it translates to a steep penalty to all actions. This effect has to be maintained, so the Coven usually lets up after a few months. (If they hate you enough to cramp their own powers for longer than that, they’ll probably just try to kill you.) Quicken allows Witches to grow crops in impossible conditions, like nuclear winter. The ceremony has to be repeated weekly, but if a whole coven participates, they can grow a whole crop and harvest it in a single week. This provides the Coven with food and trade goods. Talisman allows the Coven to create Root Magic and Talismanic Magic items as a group, instead of relying on a single artisan. Youth reverses the effects of aging. Some Covens won’t use it, believing it to be unnatural. It requires a whole Coven to perform a long ceremony at the Spring Equinox. Individual members can choose exactly how much to deage themselves.  Remember these guys? In the corebook they were just one more refugee from Dungeons & Dragons, alongside Goblynnes and Trolles. After the KinRise, the Sidhe have reemerged as another powerful faction. I should warn you that the Sidhe conform to some odd, scattered ethnic stereotypes, though not as blatantly as the Gypsies. According to Sidhe mythology, the Kin are part of the natural order and humans are not. They were created from a Sidhe experiment in immortality, probably by some big-headed dweeb named Yakub. The Herd tricked the Sidhe into a bargain wherein humans would rule the earth by day and the Kin would have the night. For the Sidhe, this explains the Kin’s unique traits. They can’t walk in the sun, they prey on people instead of eating the produce of the earth, and they’re vulnerable to wood, silver, etc. because they’re products of the earth. Then the legends say that the Sidhe cursed humankind so that they could be turned into Kin by infection or by dying in extraordinary circumstances, so that they’d know the pain they caused. Sidhe always end this tale with a smile, so that the listener doesn’t know if they really believe it or not. After the KinRise, more Kin find these stories credible. (Kind of ironic, though. Sidhe don’t have to Drain and are only vulnerable to fire and “cold iron.”) Sidhe are nomadic, and they’ve been that way for thousands of years as they tried to stay ahead of human development. For millennia they lived mostly in the rainforests of Africa and South America, happy to ignore and be ignored by the world of the big folk. Forest clearing forced them out of these regions, as well as from the forests of Europe, and into the cities of North America. Now that human civilization has collapsed, the Sidhe have returned to purify the land. If this means humankind has to live in caves, or not at all, the Sidhe are fine with that. Sidhe are short, rarely over 3 feet tall, with proportionally long limbs and short torsos. Most, but not all, have dark skin, hair, and eyes. They look frail, belying the fact that they’re stronger than humans. For superstitious reasons, they rarely make eye contact in conversation. The text often compares them to pygmy tribes, and notes that their language includes “whistles and clicks.” They’re also known to use blowguns. Hm, okay. Sidhe live in small clans of 20-30 people. Their given names are long and sibilant, like “Sulisasina,” with clan names like “Light Bringers” and “Storm Children.” They wander in no apparent pattern, using their magic to purify one small patch of land at a time.  Glow little glow worm glitter glitter Oh yeah, about that! The Sidhe create magical Seeds of Purification that can cleanse the soil of radiation and other toxins. They can only cleanse one small patch of land at a time, so it’s very slow going. Sidhe clans are led by Seers, and they send out Seeding Parties to sow the ground with magical grass seed. Seeding Parties are notorious for asking random people to help out with trivial tasks. Helpers get magical rewards, while those who spurn them often get Hexed. They don’t much care that most people are tired, hungry, and sick. A Seeding Party is a tough fight, by the way. Three to five of them, armed with magical bows or blowguns. One’s an expert swordsman, another will be a Seed Bearer armed with a magic spear and plenty of Root Magic charms. Their mission puts them on good terms with the Gypsies, who consider them good luck. They also have a history of cooperation with Witches, but it’s an uneasy relationship. The Sidhe claim that they taught Root Magic to Witches in ye days of yore. Witches certainly want to learn more secrets of natural magic from the Sidhe, but the Sidhe usually swindle them out of whatever they can get and give them nothing.  Wait, please, wait a minute. Have you any idea what it will cost to dress up the band as animals? Sidhe can’t cast Ritual or Street magic, but they do practice Ceremonial Magic. They have some ceremonies of their own which they haven’t shared with any Covens. Sidhe ceremonies always take the form of elaborate dances with vivid costumes. Hide protects a Sidhe dwelling from being found by anyone. Anyone trying to navigate the area will have to make multiple Tests not to fall asleep or become hopelessly lost, leaving them dazed and confused some distance from the Sidhe camp. The rite has to be performed every full moon. Creating Seeds of Purification enchants a hundred pounds of grass seed. The grass grows in the dark and cold, and the seeds leech toxins and radiation out of the earth while producing a great deal of oxygen. The ceremony takes 12 hours, and produces enough seed to cover 100 acres. A square mile is 640 acres. There are only a few thousand Sidhe in North America. Creating seeds is easy; spreading them is the hard part. If Sidhe, Witches, and ordinary humans could work together, they could begin to make the world livable again. They have the same goal, but the Sidhe just don’t care if humankind survives or not. Next update: The Brotherhood of Mother Earth. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 15:11 on Apr 19, 2022 |
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2022 15:08
|
|
|
I need the guidance of the thread. Kult: Divinity Lost was a miserable shitshow of a game but they've now released a raft of expansions. Garbage, edgy-sounding adventures, a gamemaster's guide that might have yet more advice on how to terrify your players with sexual abuse, supplements full of DEEP LORE. Should I? Should I get these and review them? Should I hurt myself again?
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2022 16:08
|
|
|
Look at you, still attempting to cleanse your soul by an ordeal of suffering. But I was there, I saw what you did and I know that there's no removing this stain! The devil will have his due! Srsly though it's cool if you can't
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2022 16:19
|
|
|
I keep wanting Kult to be more than the sum of its greasy, bloody parts, and I'm continually disappointed. So I will suffer with you in solidarity
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2022 16:28
|
|
|
The old Kult actually had some stuff worth cribbing, the new edition is ALL EDGY ALL THE TIM
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2022 16:34
|
|
|
I admit I give the side-eye to any game with the flaw Sexual Neurosis.
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2022 16:46
|
|
|
By popular demand posted:The old Kult actually had some stuff worth cribbing, the new edition is ALL EDGY ALL THE TIM
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2022 16:54
|
|
|
Kult Expansions posted:Screams and Whispers is a 224-page hardcover scenario collection with six newly written scenarios. They follow a variation of themes and touch upon different genres of horror, all firmly rooted within the KULT mythos and setting. The first scenario is: lol this is going to be so loving dire. I feel like I will have to whip up some content warning stickers for these.
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2022 16:55
|
|
|
FMguru posted:Edgier than old Kult? Wow. I don't know how to quantify edginess but it definitely has way more sexualized violence, like the writer is pissed that the early 90's are never coming back.
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2022 16:57
|
|
|
PurpleXVI posted:Should I? Should I get these and review them? Should I hurt myself again?
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2022 17:06
|
|
|
FMguru posted:Edgier than old Kult? Wow. I think the easiest way to characterize the difference would be the following. Old Kult: Sex happens, sometimes people do sexy sex magic that involves loving a toaster. You might be able to find a boob in the art. NuKult: YEAH WE'VE GOT TITS IN ALL THE ART, THERE'S SO MUCH loving, THERE'S A POOP-loving DEMON, YOU REALLY WANNA gently caress WITH THE SQUARES AT THE GAMING TABLE? HAVE THEIR CHARACTER RAPED. HERE ARE FIVE RAPE SCENARIOS YOU CAN SPRING ON THEM. YEAAAAAH. The elements were there in old Kult, yeah, they felt presented in a comparatively dispassionate way. It was just an element of this particular hosed up world the game was set in, nothing the authors were furiously beating off to. Siivola posted:Sure you wouldn't rather review something you like instead? Sadly there are more things I dislike than enjoy in the world of RPG's. I think I've already reviewed every single system or module I have fond feelings for.
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2022 17:09
|
|
|
By popular demand posted:I don't know how to quantify edginess but it definitely has way more sexualized violence, like the writer is pissed that the early 90's are never coming back. And Kult v1 had things like a hospital where all the doctors are actually serial killers and there's a giant temple to Kali in the basement and it's part of a global network of serial killer hospitals. Which is the sort of the thing you'd expect the main character in a Clive Barker short story to stumble into, but very 1990s splatterpunk so-edgy-it-will-cut-you. And the current reboot is even worse? PurpleXVI posted:I think the easiest way to characterize the difference would be the following.
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2022 17:14
|
|
|
FMguru posted:Shades of Swedracula's Vampire V5 reboot vision. I mean the example you give is the kind of sill edge that you can laugh at - like read it aloud "network of hospitals stuffed with serial killers". In new kult you have hospice stuff rapeing elderly
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2022 17:25
|
|
|
PurpleXVI posted:I think the easiest way to characterize the difference would be the following.
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2022 17:26
|
|
|
I would not recommend reviewing books that you think are unsalvageably bad. I've only ever seen those reviews make the person posting them miserable, along with the rest of the thread by proxy.
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2022 17:49
|
|
|
Kult 1e was a bad game with some very good ideas. Kult 2e/3e/Fart-e went crazed edgelord and is a rotting carcass not worth salvaging
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2022 19:16
|
|
|
Carcosa hosed with my head a little bit, to be honest.
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2022 19:23
|
|
|
Pray for me Goons, I've decided to read/review Mage the Ascension 1e instead of Masquerade 1e next. I anticipate regretting this choice by about 30 pages in.
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2022 22:18
|
|
|
joylessdivision posted:Pray for me Goons, I've decided to read/review Mage the Ascension 1e instead of Masquerade 1e next. I actually brought that book back to the game store and swapped it out for something else, so displeased was I.
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2022 23:51
|
|
|
Dawgstar posted:I actually brought that book back to the game store and swapped it out for something else, so displeased was I. I'm about 20 pages in so far and aside from the doofus in the opening fiction wearing a trenchcoat and carrying a katana (Also a literal dragon lady Holy poo poo that just hit me) and the use of the term"Magick" (it's a pet peeve), I don't hate it....... Yet. There's still 284 pages to go 
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2022 01:40
|
|
|
Let’s Read Brave New World: Revolution, Part One Chapter One: July 4th, 1976, Patriot John “Patriot” Cruise runs up the steps of the interior of the Statue of Liberty which, Jesus, if you’ve ever been there, drat dude. There’s a god drat terrorist in the head of the Statue of Liberty and it’s Patriot’s job to take him out. Alright pause one second: who the gently caress is Patriot? Let’s roll back the clock a bit. Who the gently caress Is Patriot John Cruise is an orphan who grows up in the 1940s and ends up idolizing the first wave of Deltas (especially for The Yankee), people with tremendous superpowers gained through surviving dangerous situations. His passion inspires him to do the very stupid thing of tackling a man whose power is “exploding and surviving the explosion” while said man is doing a Batman origin story to a rich kid. He survives, doesn’t question how he survived, and later finds out he has powers when he’s drafted for the Korean War and doctors can’t draw blood from him on account of his powers. Patriot is a Blaster which means he can channel energy through his hands with the force of an assault rifle, is naturally armored with an undetectable force-field of energy, and can punch people like Goku if he focuses on containing energy in his fists. This is great for his new mandatory job as a member of Delta Squadron, a branch of the US military that functions as a super-powered fighting force that later becomes Delta Prime, which is basically a paramilitary intelligence organization caused by giving the CIA superpowers. Patriot loves America, which is why he’s abundantly willing to do questionable things for Delta Prime, because in his mind he’s a patriot, not a nationalist. That’s pretty much the major character trait Patriot has, that and being as narratively well-rounded as a writer’s favorite character and having a personality made out of uncooked pressed tofu. But, good news: soon Patriot will gain a new character trait! Anyway, he’s got fists full of plasma energy and a mind like a steel vice. He’s also accompanied by two other Primers, Booster and Porter. Booster (AKA Billy) can enhance other Delta’s powers as a Booster and is described as having a shaggy brown mop of hair and being a little devil-may-care. Porter is a Teleporter and is described as being serious/focused and having she/her pronouns. They are deeply fleshed-out characters who are under Patriot’s command and assisting in this operation, the three of them against a madman holding hostages. Booster basically wants to slap Patriot’s rear end to make him pop his ult and explode the terrorist but Patriot really isn’t in the mood for collateral murder of civilians today and Porter is unable to see where she can teleport, so they’re all sorts of stumped. But who could this madman be, and is he well described? Well, he’s a Gasser who calls himself Renegade and he has the power of being a walking biological weapon. Gassers are constantly exhaling poison gas on par with mustard gas, it’s serious stuff, and they can’t turn it off under any circumstances short of running into a Snuffer (a type of Delta who, with focus, can turn off another Delta’s powers as long as they focus) or wearing a nullifier. Renegade is “Six foot tall, skinny, and a shock of dark red hair cropped close on the back and sides but left free up top, brushing over ice-blue irises. Desperation danced in those eyes, or maybe it was madness.” Renegade is using his powers to hold about a dozen people in the Crown of the Statue, and though he has a gun that Patriot can easily tank the shots of, the moment he gets worked up he can and will literally gas the hostages. Naturally being a coolguy super-operator, Patriot approaches him with his mask off and hands free to play good cop and ask for demands (a million dollars and a helicopter to a fueled plane in LaGuardia Airport, Right Now). Unfortunately for our would-be villain, Patriot has the greatest power of all: Copaganda Supreme posted:“You don’t need that gun,” I said. “You could just use your gas to kill me, right? To kill us all?” Powers are tied to the Delta gene, a weird quirk of genetics that will turn-on when the host of the gene is under extreme duress that will probably kill them. It will awaken a power set that will set them apart from humanity and make them strong…but most importantly are not like Aberrant rules. Powers do not correspond to the triggering incident. In one of the adventures the enemy was someone who got the ability to summon and bind demons after they drove a car into a river and nearly drowned. It’s a plot point that the reason places marked by radioactive fallout are full of vampire Deltas is because those are the only Deltas that can survive concentrated high-yield areas of radiation. Every other Delta formed by a nuclear blast loving dies. So yeah for Renegade it really loving sucks that whatever happened to him caused him to perpetually exhale mustard gas. Will we find out what happened? Maybe! What the gently caress Is The Delta Registration Act? So after JFK “survives his assassination” (put a pin in that, we'll return eventually), he puts a law on the books that demands all Deltas register themselves ASAP within a week of manifesting powers. If you do your movements are tracked and you’re officially in Delta Prime as a government asset that can be leveraged and redistributed at will but you’re playing ball and get some leeway. If you don’t, you are officially a federal criminal and go directly to jail if someone figures out you have powers and aren’t registered. It’s a lot like the draft except even more of a violation of the Bill of Rights. Delta Prime’s main job is to police Deltas and capture rogue citizens while also being a paramilitary organization. As a result of the act, the Defiance movement starts up in full-force, an underground anti-government organization dedicated to protecting themselves and their families at first before branching out into insurgency and anti-government action. The tensions of the DRA existing are one of the big American powder kegs before poo poo really hits the fan. Speaking of poo poo hitting the fan, Patriot almost gets through to Renegade’s better nature before Booster slaps his rear end and makes him pop his ult and very visibly start glowing all over as Renegade freaks the gently caress out, shoots to no effect and then takes a deep breath to gas everyone. Hooray for police competency! And then Superior tears the roof off the top of the Statue of Liberty and Renegade gets loving ganked. Who the gently caress Is Superior Chapter Two: Same Day, Same Patriot Way way back in World War II there was a man who went by The Yankee who was an honest all-American homegrown superhero who joined the fight to beat Hitler’s rear end as part of the nascent Delta Squadron. He led Delta Squadron with his boy sidekick Sparky at his side and the two of them were captured in 1943 by the head Nazi Delta, one Kapitan Krieg, and put in a concentration camp for Deltas. Yankee tried to lead a prison break/revolt, did not succeed, there was mass deaths (not Yankee or Sparky) but Krieg said “actually having a bunch of super-people in one place who won’t fight for the Nazis is a bad idea, let’s throw everyone in the ovens”. They did this with Sparky and Sparky…became an Alpha. An Alpha is an evolution past Delta where they gain multiple powersets on top of what they already had and the juice fueling Sparky was enough for him to explode out of the ovens, kill every single guard, dismember Krieg, impale his head on a spike, fly to Berlin, kill Hitler and force Hitler’s inner circle to surrender. In five minutes. This was the first act of Superior. That name totally isn’t gonna give him a complex or anything, no way. Superior becomes America’s nuke much in the same vein of Dr. Manhattan. Superior also becomes the power behind the throne in the JFK presidency due to other shenanigans. Other Alphas come into existence but none can really hold a candle to him. And personality-wise? He’s kind of...well you’ll see. For example: despite this being Patriot’s op, in the span of seconds Superior arrives on scene without Renegade noticing, jackknifes the skull off the Statue of Liberty into the air, fans the gas away and proceeds to just casually toss Renegade over his shoulder into the New York Harbor. He then basically says “hey Patriot, you good?”, waits for the confirmation, flies up, grabs the crown, laser-eye welds it back on, and then Renegade hits the water. Everyone’s reaction, understandably, is “HOLY gently caress”, except for the Primers who respond with “thanks dad” as the crowd cheers for Superior (who retrieves the still-living but knocked-the-gently caress-out Renegade and hands him over to Patriot). If you think I’m bring brusque and brisk you should really see how Patriot talks. This Ever-Loving Blue-Eyed Book posted:“Hovering a few feet in the air, Superior acknowledged the applause with a nod, then pitched Renegade over to land in a heap at my feet. “He’ll live,” he said. “You have it under control here.” Borat posted:I didn’t look back at him. “My wife.” The Primers clean up the scene, bag and tag Renegade, hit him with snuffing tech and the trio commiserate on the news. According to Patriot, Delaney was originally in NYC with him in the morning but she’s already in Chicago. And according to a Delta Prime technician, whatever Devastator is doing is big. The office in Delta Prime has put out a call to bring every single Alpha that the organization can muster to deal with the problem, and this has Patriot low-key worried. Who the gently caress is The Devastator? I can keep this one relatively short. Noted Bastard Kapitan Krieg had a son, a little Hitler Youth piece-of-work named Heinrich Brecht. Heinrich saw Superior dunk his father’s head on a spike and pretty much immediately vowed revenge, but the problem is Heinrich has no powers, so he manages to find the man responsible for giving his dad powers: noted Criminal Against Humanity Josef Mengele. Mengele’s complete and total lack of knowledge of science was applied as part of the Nazi’s Delta program where he was essentially allowed to just kill people and if they became Deltas before dying, well that’s another Nazi super soldier, maybe. Anyway, he flees to Brazil and nobody knows where he is but Heinrich finds him somehow and is like “please do to me what you did to my dad”. Mengele basically sees the guy as a loose end, and is ultimately successful in making him a Delta before shooting him in the heart and throwing him into a furnace to dispose of the corpse. And this immediately windmill-slams Heinrich from Delta to Alpha levels, who proceeds to burn the house down and immolate Mengele in the process, arising as The Devastator. The Devastator, for all of this convoluted and inane backstory, can basically be summed up in the following sentence: what if Doctor Doom was Superman’s nemesis and was also a demon-shaped man made out of fire? He’s a formidable terror in a scrap but he has Doom-level intellect and paranoia, throwing traps and self-designed sets of power-armored enemies loving everywhere to give him an edge in a brawl. And this is the man who is currently terrorizing Chicago. This took. A lot. Because I needed to contextualize a lot. The book does not do that, or at least hasn’t yet, and this has been a lot of words to sum up two chapters. Next time, though, we continue our march through “stuff that’s already happened in the backstory and metaplot of the game that one would know about if they read every single book like I did”. We are literally like a single toe in new territory and that’s basically because next chapter is from the POV of Superior who has such a rich interior life that is so lavish, textured and complex. It would be an insult to basically sum his personality up as “a man who is kind of just perpetually passively annoyed that he’s got a schedule and people want poo poo from him, and he could just let people take care of things but doesn’t because he just gets touchy about not seeing to things personally”. But alas it’s exactly that. “What if Superman was kind of bored” and other thrilling narrative conventions, NEXT TIME!
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2022 04:16
|
|
|
This feels authentic to what I was expecting from BNW. We salute your sacrifice, Hostile V.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2022 04:33
|
|
|
Ascension 1e has always kind of interested me just to see things that changed. Like, just looking at the back cover, you can see that it's essentially saying "Man, we old folks hosed up. We hosed up because we were afraid to wiz, and now, for lack of having enough awesome wiz-biz, the world sucks and is full of Technocrats and Nephandi and poo poo. But perhaps you, who are young and cool and possess a trenchcoat, will have the courage to just totally wiz out and fix things." This is kind of fascinating because future editions tended to err on the side of "you should feel extremely bad about wizzing out, you hubriser."
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2022 05:58
|
|
|
WoD, Stop shaming me for being the best version of myself!
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2022 06:00
|
|
|
Rand Brittain posted:Ascension 1e has always kind of interested me just to see things that changed. At least the Technocracy had that as their job. They also had the advantage of Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones doing free advertising for them.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2022 07:13
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:Carcosa hosed with my head a little bit, to be honest. Carcosa marked me with the shame of paying money for it. I bought it thinking "Hey, maybe I can do some kind of Call of Cthulhu spin-off with this." And then, "Oh, goody, yet another way a player can rape and murder a 12 year old to summon/bind some weird monster-god."
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2022 07:14
|
|
|
 You did WHAT?! I have a cellphone these days man!
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2022 07:22
|
|
|
KDL is way less edgy than the previous editions, I have zero idea what Purple is talking about. Their review is entirely in bad faith anyway - claiming that being able to call in academic resources for your academic background means "lol free nukes at chargen? game is bwoken lol" ETA: Hell most of the content in K:DL (including some adventures) is literally just adapting stuff from 1e, which they were largely about throwing back to. sasha_d3ath fucked around with this message at 10:51 on Apr 20, 2022 |
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2022 10:22
|
|
|
 I didn't even plan on watching a review flamewar today.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2022 10:28
|
|
|
There's nothing like "Google Translate" for gaming systems is there? I've got a bunch of Dark Conspiracy stuff that I want to convert to Aeon Continuum (I want to use the Dark Lords/races stuff as a bit of a nasty surprise to players used to dealing with Aberrants).
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2022 13:13
|
|
|
sasha_d3ath posted:KDL is way less edgy than the previous editions, I have zero idea what Purple is talking about. Their review is entirely in bad faith anyway - claiming that being able to call in academic resources for your academic background means "lol free nukes at chargen? game is bwoken lol" While I don't exactly want to start a slapfight about this, OG Kult never had a "sexually assault your players to shock them, here are some graphic examples"-subsection, nor a poop demon that rapes you and then you become addicted to loving it. So I am going to err on the side of KDL being the edgier one.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2022 14:23
|
|
|
Everyone posted:Carcosa marked me with the shame of paying money for it. I bought it thinking "Hey, maybe I can do some kind of Call of Cthulhu spin-off with this." And then, "Oh, goody, yet another way a player can rape and murder a 12 year old to summon/bind some weird monster-god." Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 16:06 on May 19, 2022 |
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2022 14:23
|
|
|
Everyone posted:There's nothing like "Google Translate" for gaming systems is there? I've got a bunch of Dark Conspiracy stuff that I want to convert to Aeon Continuum (I want to use the Dark Lords/races stuff as a bit of a nasty surprise to players used to dealing with Aberrants). Sadly no, but that is a great idea for enemies. Dark Conspiracy is a sadly underrated game. Not for its rule system which was a tweaked Twilight 2000 2e, but for its setting, which was an economic apocalypse near-future with plutocratic overtones and being stealth invaded by extradimensional horrors.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2022 15:08
|
|
|
That weird demiplane that creates whatever you expect to find is a terrific idea for any rpg dealing in a multiverse.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2022 15:16
|
|
|
Dark Conspiracy gets points for having its backstory be full of UFO/grey alien conspiracy shenanigans in like 1991 - two years before the X-Files first aired. A rare example of RPGs leading, not following, pop culture.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2022 16:30
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 3, 2024 11:29 |
|
|
FATAL & Friends 2020: Their review is entirely in bad faith anyway
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2022 16:33
|
|