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Halloween Jack posted:There's been such a deluge of Lovecraft stuff in the past 15 years ranging from masterpieces to forgettable shovelware, that it could be a lot of things. It feels like there were three dozen people waiting for the precise moment Lovecraft's stories became public domain to hit that button and launch that Kickstarter.
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Jan 27, 2023 01:00
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Rappaport posted:You might like A Colder War, though it still features humans. But it all goes horrible for everyone involved! Oh I've recommended that to many people and is why I was asking the question. I think it was eldritch skies but I gotta ctrl f the first dozen or so pages to double check e: It was the cruel empire of tsan chan Milo and POTUS fucked around with this message at 13:09 on Jan 27, 2023 |
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Jan 27, 2023 11:54
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Harold Fjord posted:Is it Root? This is a poster that knows his audience Speaking of, I grabbed the Steam version on the winter sale and haven't played it yet (there or otherwise), any tips for a neophyte or suggestions for how/who to play so I can get my dealers? Edit: lol that was supposed to say sea legs instead of dealers and I only noticed like 12 hours later that it autocorrected BougieBitch fucked around with this message at 04:20 on Jan 28, 2023 |
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Jan 27, 2023 14:39
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Birds and woodland alliance are so, so strong. Birds in particular might be the most overall balanced. Cats are kinda fun though I wish they could attack twice if they chose that as one of their 3 actions, similar to move. They're just a little too action starved it feels but I am bad at the game. Vagabond is for assholes and if the other players aren't making his life miserable at every opportunity, he'll likely win with the right cards. Play the tutorial. I had about 8 hours at least into it before I felt comfy playing the real game but it's still fun enough that it didn't feel wasted
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Jan 28, 2023 02:50
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With Cats it can sometimes feel like the objective is to lose slowly enough to win. It's strange.
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Jan 28, 2023 03:57
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pick the crows and play turn based bomberman
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Jan 28, 2023 10:48
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i have yet to actually win as cats vs other players. on top of being kind of weak and hard to play, they end up often in an early lead but their scoring slows down in midgame. and they are _really_ rewarding to beat up since they make a lot of buildings and end up often with a hoard of cardboard they cant defend or get rid of so even if youre eating poo poo people will still find their best path to victory is destroying you. and your early game position and need to police everyone else means that if there's a particularly vengeful player on the board they will very likely blitz you to burn down your keep as petty revenge for the sin of your existence. to top it all off, the otters could probably be one of your best friends since they'll give you a source of good cards, but a very "meta" strategy is for the otter to just repeatedly squat on your wood piles so you have to pay them for the privilege of playing a normal game, which despite being an obviously losing strategy will still often result in extremely pissed off otter players who will demand death or reparations for your violation of the NAP if you like, respond with "aggression" with actual aggression. they're the only faction that can actually be totally tabled but thats just salt in the wound, it rarely actually comes up. Tiler Kiwi fucked around with this message at 11:05 on Jan 28, 2023 |
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Jan 28, 2023 11:02
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What's tabled mean? I also adore how the keep is totally defenseless. Root is a good game but man is it frustrating sometimes.
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Jan 28, 2023 11:35
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Tabled as in, you can be wiped out and cannot put anything else back on the board; all your stuff has been removed from the table and put back in the box. (I think its a warhammer slang that I picked up from the total war multiplayer scene.) All other factions either don't need to have things already on the board to put down new things, or have some explicit mechanic that lets them put down new things if otherwise they'd be screwed, but a cat without capital is no cat at all. There's a few other factions that can maybe wrestle themselves intentionally to a point where they're basically incapable of doing anything on the board, but the cats are the only one where it might actually come up without it entirely being your own fault, and even then it has some requirements like there not being any otters to hire or hirelings to, uh, hire (not that it'd matter either way since you're in all likelihood not winning the game at this point no matter what). You still take turns so you might have a card you crafted that you could maybe use to save yourself, but the best case if you cant get back on the board is that there are lizards and you can vaguely shift the outcast suit to maybe annoy them, letting you roleplay as something like a forlorn haunt trying to communicate your distress onto a furry themed Ouija board. Or a failed business owner turned politician banished to writing opinion pieces in the back half of the Economist. Tiler Kiwi fucked around with this message at 12:11 on Jan 28, 2023 |
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Jan 28, 2023 12:07
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Tiler Kiwi posted:i have yet to actually win as cats vs other players. on top of being kind of weak and hard to play, they end up often in an early lead but their scoring slows down in midgame. and they are _really_ rewarding to beat up since they make a lot of buildings and end up often with a hoard of cardboard they cant defend or get rid of so even if youre eating poo poo people will still find their best path to victory is destroying you. and your early game position and need to police everyone else means that if there's a particularly vengeful player on the board they will very likely blitz you to burn down your keep as petty revenge for the sin of your existence. to top it all off, the otters could probably be one of your best friends since they'll give you a source of good cards, but a very "meta" strategy is for the otter to just repeatedly squat on your wood piles so you have to pay them for the privilege of playing a normal game, which despite being an obviously losing strategy will still often result in extremely pissed off otter players who will demand death or reparations for your violation of the NAP if you like, respond with "aggression" with actual aggression. Cat has to sacrifice territory to save their pieces and build up enough power to fight
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Jan 28, 2023 21:59
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the "pro" meta seems to be just getting your second forge burned down repeatedly because it's the most cost effective building to throw down for points
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Jan 29, 2023 01:20
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Forge burn was an inside job, The Marquise did it.
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Jan 29, 2023 12:41
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Milo and POTUS posted:Forge burn was an inside job, The Marquise did it. 
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Jan 29, 2023 13:28
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Milo and POTUS posted:This is a big thread and the only one I've really read on tabletop games, was there some game or setting that took place in the cthulhu mythos after humans were extinct and the surviving factions were predictably horrible? I've tried ctrl+fing lovecraft but I haven't found it Chaosium did a range of short pdfs in their Monograph series. The two I can think of are set after it all goes down, one set on Earth a few thousand years after and there are a couple of places protected from most of the old ones due to worship of one particular old one and the human sacrifices that go with it. The other is set on a Human colony on Mars set a few hundred years after it all went down. Mars is somewhat, minimally terraformed, there are secrets to be found about ancient Martians, etc. I think the colony believes a nuclear war happened which is why communications stopped, and an attempt to go back to Earth to find out what really happened may threaten the colony. Perhaps the top tier of the colony is more aware of what is going on, but still doesn't know the whole truth which is why the 'nuclear war' explanation is told to the rest of the colony. None of these pdfs are labeled as 'monographs' anymore, so it's difficult to search them out. Edit: The Mars-based one is called End Time, still looking for the other one. Edit, again: The Cruel Empire of... *sigh* Tsan Chan is the other. They aren't connected, but I don't see how they couldn't be made to be so. LashLightning fucked around with this message at 20:41 on Jan 29, 2023 |
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Jan 29, 2023 20:28
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Milo and POTUS posted:This is a big thread and the only one I've really read on tabletop games, was there some game or setting that took place in the cthulhu mythos after humans were extinct and the surviving factions were predictably horrible? I've tried ctrl+fing lovecraft but I haven't found it Fate of Cthulhu goes halfway into this - in the future the stars are right and things have gone all gribbly, and so some of the human resistance have time-traveled back to the present day.
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Jan 30, 2023 00:35
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https://youtu.be/IEUqLL8J4gI I asked this question up-thread, and this is a well researched video essay about why you’re always killing god in jrpgs
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Aug 2, 2023 13:57
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Killing the god who represents the themes of your story is a nice way to tie everything together in a way that also uses the main element of your gameplay (the battle system). That said, the word "god" means practically nothing so this is a fairly meaningless observation.
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Aug 2, 2023 14:21
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Triskelli posted:https://youtu.be/IEUqLL8J4gI I can't watch the video yet because I'm at work, but how much of the reasons are "Because God is a dick and needs to be punched in the mouth"?
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Aug 2, 2023 14:26
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Randalor posted:I can't watch the video yet because I'm at work, but how much of the reasons are "Because God is a dick and needs to be punched in the mouth"? I’m still working my way through it, but it starts out describing eastern religious tropes, the cultivation of immortality by mortals, and how Japanese religious organizations accrued political and military power, which caused later military governments to suppress those religions and claiming a divine right to do so. Triskelli fucked around with this message at 15:39 on Aug 2, 2023 |
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Aug 2, 2023 15:32
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So basically all of them? Good to know. I'll try to watch it on my bus ride home after work.
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Aug 2, 2023 15:33
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Clarste posted:Killing the god who represents the themes of your story is a nice way to tie everything together in a way that also uses the main element of your gameplay (the battle system). As a lifelong JRPG player, I've never understood this supposed cliche in JRPGs. Final Fantasy is surely the premium name in JRPGs and while certain bosses end up with godlike power by the end, it's almost always just some dude or maybe a lady that one time. The only god/abstract entity final bosses I can think of are Cloud of Darkness, Necron, and Orphan. Oh and Bhunivelze if we count sequels/spinoffs.
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Aug 2, 2023 15:41
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In Final Fantasy Legend you can kill your Creator with a chainsaw and eat His flesh.
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Aug 2, 2023 15:44
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Halloween Jack posted:In Final Fantasy Legend you can kill your Creator with a chainsaw and eat His flesh.
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Aug 2, 2023 16:05
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Charlz Guybon posted:Didn't he release them into the public domain when he was alive? That's why there's always been a ton of lovecraft stuff published.
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Aug 2, 2023 16:29
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NikkolasKing posted:As a lifelong JRPG player, I've never understood this supposed cliche in JRPGs. Final Fantasy is surely the premium name in JRPGs and while certain bosses end up with godlike power by the end, it's almost always just some dude or maybe a lady that one time. The only god/abstract entity final bosses I can think of are Cloud of Darkness, Necron, and Orphan. Oh and Bhunivelze if we count sequels/spinoffs. FFT is kind of more god murder, iirc. or fake god, i don't really remember.
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Aug 2, 2023 16:49
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Every single SMT game puts a pretty large weight on the scale. Also Sephiroth is in theory some dude, the imag everyone uses for killing gods in JRPGs is his final form which he got by eating a cthulhu monster and taking on its mission.
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Aug 2, 2023 17:05
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Sephiroth's final form and not Kefka's? Odd.
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Aug 2, 2023 17:07
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his name is a reference to the kabbalah, that has to count for something
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Aug 2, 2023 17:13
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Tiler Kiwi posted:his name is a reference to the kabbalah, that has to count for something My fellow poster in Cthulhu, have you heard of Wizardry 4?
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Aug 2, 2023 17:13
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Halloween Jack posted:Sephiroth's final form and not Kefka's? Odd. Spoiler for the video: its because the god is capitalism
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Aug 2, 2023 17:19
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Rappaport posted:My fellow poster in Cthulhu, have you heard of Wizardry 4? yes its a weird game but also cool
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Aug 2, 2023 18:08
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Apparently Wizardries are pretty popular in Japan, I wonder which way the Kabbalah influences went. Although by the LP, getting the Kabbalah references in Wizardry 4 is a humongous pain in the rear end.
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Aug 2, 2023 18:45
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It's fun to see all of the Western fantasy tropes in Japanese media and how they differ from what we usually see, and the answer as to why they're like that usually just boils down to "well that's how it worked in Wizardry"
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Aug 2, 2023 18:50
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We owe Wizardry a debt for giving us little doggie kobolds, if nothing else.
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Aug 2, 2023 18:54
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Halloween Jack posted:We owe Wizardry a debt for giving us little doggie kobolds, if nothing else. boo
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Aug 2, 2023 20:28
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NikkolasKing posted:As a lifelong JRPG player, I've never understood this supposed cliche in JRPGs. Final Fantasy is surely the premium name in JRPGs and while certain bosses end up with godlike power by the end, it's almost always just some dude or maybe a lady that one time. The only god/abstract entity final bosses I can think of are Cloud of Darkness, Necron, and Orphan. Oh and Bhunivelze if we count sequels/spinoffs. It's just I guess at this point millennial/partial gen-x confirmation bias about JRPGs? There were quite a few "what if some church people....bad?" and "psshh, I the edgy main character thinks the church is crap, huh the big bad is god weird" not just in JRPGs but in some cult action games/etc. too in the mid to late 90s. For many adults who still play games but probably the biggest single point of them sitting down and playing games at length was when they were in their teens/early adult hood around that time, I can see why it's a thing that sticks out. Speaking of old memory brain on my part.... Halloween Jack posted:We owe Wizardry a debt for giving us little doggie kobolds, if nothing else. He only did the art for like one Wizardry game but I always associate the series with Katsuya Terada now because of his stuff for Wizardry Tale of the Forsaken Land. He did the OG Legend of Zelda art too so his stuff is just forever burned into my brain as like "this is what old Japanese fantasy stuff with some western influences looks like"* even his style is not AS prolific in that place and time in reality as much as I think it is. *I know Wizardry series didn't originate in Japan but oh my word did Japan run with it in comparison to the US. Neo Rasa fucked around with this message at 20:37 on Aug 2, 2023 |
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Aug 2, 2023 20:33
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Terada is one of my favourite illustrators--above Amano for me. I must have first seen it in old issues of Nintendo Power. Now his style recalls my favourite D&D artists from that era, like Clyde Caldwell. Hell, I wish my tabletop books from the 90s had art as consistently good as the stuff he did for Nintendo Power. Oddly enough, when Pool of Radiance was ported to the NES, it had little doggie kobolds. At some point between late AD&D2e and 3e they were cemented as little reptile guys and that stuck.
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Aug 2, 2023 20:49
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Chu Chu died for your sins.
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Aug 2, 2023 20:50
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Halloween Jack posted:Terada is one of my favourite illustrators--above Amano for me. I must have first seen it in old issues of Nintendo Power. Now his style recalls my favourite D&D artists from that era, like Clyde Caldwell. Hell, I wish my tabletop books from the 90s had art as consistently good as the stuff he did for Nintendo Power. pool of radiance and other gold boxes were 1st ed ad&d kobolds became draconic in the 3rd ed, but they had never really been dogs in d&d, they just sounded like small dogs in the earlier editions
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Aug 2, 2023 21:09
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Kobolds are outright still little dog (or at least mammalian) people in AD&D 2e, it was a noteworthy change that Wizards made them lizardy and tied to dragons in 3rd Edition. Japanese nerd-media dog kobolds are most different in that they're often depicted as big dudes almost like dog gnolls instead of dog goblins.
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Aug 2, 2023 21:11
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