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Runa posted:The end result would lead to the creation of the Elemental Plane of Cops but only the payday gang can open that portal lightrook posted:Well, now I know what I'm doing the next time I run a game. Its genuinely a great conceit for an RPG.
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Feb 20, 2023 02:45
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Runa posted:The end result would lead to the creation of the Elemental Plane of Cops but only the payday gang can open that portal I mean, that's just Mechanus.
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Feb 20, 2023 04:18
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Is there official stats for Inevitables and/or Modrons for 4e? I felt like that part of the cosmology is pretty underused. I mean, ideas of Law manifesting as magical Terminators is pretty cool, and makes for great plot devices.S.J. posted:I vastly preferred 4e's more mythological take on the cosmology rather than the, quite frankly, extremely boring previous versions which felt like it was just making planes of existence by going along the periodic table no matter how ridiculous it seemed. That CAN work if you go all gonzo with it, but the implementation did manage to be the most tedious possible way of doing things. Inevitables and some other Law-aligned outsiders arguably knock it out of the park conceptually, but they're more exceptions than the rule.
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Feb 20, 2023 05:10
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Seeds of WarsKestral posted:Very interested in your review of Seeds of War. I've read probably half a dozen independently-published "war systems," with or without realm management, and they've all been janky piles of garbage, so I'd dearly love to see one that works, for those times when I can't just run it in Reign/Burning Wheel/Exalted. A full review of Seeds of Wars is going to take me a while, but I did manage to spend a couple hours sitting down with the pdf, reading the intro and skimming the warfare section. Here is what I've gleaned so far. The introduction has a forward by both Richard Baker and Colin McComb the creators of the Birthright Campaign Setting. While I haven't done a direct comparison between the Birthright realm management system and Seeds of Wars'; this suggests to me that Seeds of Wars is a spiritual successor to Birthright that has built on Birthright's systems. Different from Birthright however is Seeds of Wars' take on race and the origin of civilization on their canon planet Ceres. Basically a fragment of a interstellar civilization landed on Ceres way in the past and their technology became magic as lots of time passed and the interstellar survivors integrated with the native populations. Pretty standard "scifi civilization gives rise to magic" plot. As for races I'll let the book speak for itself. Seeds of Wars, page 11 posted:The peoples of Ceres do not use the term “race” to describe themselves and are apt to become rather confused at its utterance. There is also little concept of racism or prejudice against species—even elves, dwarves, and orcs don’t typically mind one another just on the basis of what they are—with the notable exception of the Shadowed, who are generally viewed with suspicion. The Shadowed are the "if you want tieflings or aasimar, this is the place you find them" category. quote:Humans are descendants of all of the above [ie dwarves, elves, orcs]. Particularly, they perfectly balance all the strengths and weaknesses of orcs, dwarves, and elves. They live anywhere and everywhere. My point is Seeds of Wars doesn't have Birthright's divine bloodline system and Regency mechanic to explain how rulers are linked to the land. All that stuff has been left behind. However, in the warfare chapter there are specific statistics for different beings' warfare specific units. For example Elven Swanship gets it's own entry, as does Dwarven Battlebarge, Orcish Raider, and Halfling Armored Bumboat. So anyway, more skimming the warfare chapter. The mechanics, unit lists and warfare example come to a total of 22 pages. Units have basic characteristics like: Melee, Ranged, Defense, Morale, Hits, Move, Sail, Cost, Cargo, Berth and Seafaring. For normal troops you will find that +2 Melee and Ranged are average, +4 is left to veterans and +6 to +8 is for elite troops. Then there are unit lists for things like Artillery, Ranged, Mounted, etc.. There are rules for Unique units, Mercenary units, Mustering and Maintenance. Tactical combat occurs on a grid and there are optional modifiers for terrain and weather. There are also rules for sieging and naval combat. Importantly there are rules for bonuses to units in warfare if a character accompanies them. And there are quick battle resolution rules. With this summary I still haven't determined if the warfare system is "janky garbage" or not. I'll take a look at that next time.
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Feb 20, 2023 05:30
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Is there official stats for Inevitables and/or Modrons for 4e? I felt like that part of the cosmology is pretty underused. I mean, ideas of Law manifesting as magical Terminators is pretty cool, and makes for great plot devices. 4e made inevitables into just generic extraplanar mercenaries. See the Marut in the MM1.
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Feb 20, 2023 05:52
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Is there official stats for Inevitables and/or Modrons for 4e? I felt like that part of the cosmology is pretty underused. I mean, ideas of Law manifesting as magical Terminators is pretty cool, and makes for great plot devices. Yeah, you're not wrong, but I think you've also basically referenced the absolute peak of the whole thing there. There's a couple other decent examples and then the rest just shoots downhill with loving alacrity.
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Feb 20, 2023 05:56
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S.J. posted:Yeah, you're not wrong, but I think you've also basically referenced the absolute peak of the whole thing there. There's a couple other decent examples and then the rest just shoots downhill with loving alacrity. Indeed. The nostalgia for the Great Wheel is a bit laughable considering how obvious it is that they ran out of ideas pretty much immediately.
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Feb 20, 2023 07:36
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I once did a gimmicky modron fight where each type of modron represented a die and, except for the d20 for obvious reasons, they had the ability to lock any roll of that die to a particular value. It didn't work to a remarkable degree but I do feel like some type of dice gimmick and replacing random chance with predictability would be appropriate for a modron encounter.
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Feb 20, 2023 08:46
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Indeed. The nostalgia for the Great Wheel is a bit laughable considering how obvious it is that they ran out of ideas pretty much immediately. The Great Wheel is a lot more interesting than the elemental planes.
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Feb 20, 2023 12:18
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aww, i like the Quasi-Elemental Plane of Vacuum populated by enormous whales made out of nothing, swimming in a slightly different kind of nothing
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Feb 20, 2023 14:16
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The Great Wheel and the Elemental Planes in older editions of D&D are definitely just charts they felt obligated to fill out, but there's still a lot of weird bits I really enjoy because of those charts. (Admittedly the Elemental Planes are a lot more... light on reasons to actually go there, so it's a lot of words for things that are ultimately just distant set dressing.) And on a side note, this discussion is why I'm excited for the next big Pathfinder 2e book. Because it's essentially just a book devoted to actually doing interesting things with the Elemental Planes for once.
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Feb 20, 2023 16:30
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The elemental chaos is both cool and good.
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Feb 20, 2023 16:47
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Lurks With Wolves posted:And on a side note, this discussion is why I'm excited for the next big Pathfinder 2e book. Because it's essentially just a book devoted to actually doing interesting things with the Elemental Planes for once. Which book is this?
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Feb 20, 2023 16:50
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CitizenKeen posted:Which book is this? Rage of Elements. On the player side it adds the new version of the Kineticist and some element-themed player options. On the GM side, basically #natureishealing because the Pathfinder Society freed all the elemental lords. And part of nature healing is that the elemental planes of Wood and Metal are regrowing and there's a bunch of new elemental creatures running around, so hopefully there's room to have plot beats beyond "this is the Elemental Plane of Fire, it is full of fire". EDIT: Also the expected release date is some time in July-August, so don't get too excited. Lurks With Wolves fucked around with this message at 17:07 on Feb 20, 2023 |
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Feb 20, 2023 17:05
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:aww, i like the Quasi-Elemental Plane of Vacuum I understand the difficulties inherent in the Elemental, Quasi-Elemental and Para-Elemental planes and actually using them for anything, but I also like them because they're completely weird and inimical environments where different rules apply and the old solutions to problems might not function for whatever reason, or rarely-used tools might suddenly be relevant.
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Feb 21, 2023 03:31
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PurpleXVI posted:I understand the difficulties inherent in the Elemental, Quasi-Elemental and Para-Elemental planes and actually using them for anything, but I also like them because they're completely weird and inimical environments where different rules apply and the old solutions to problems might not function for whatever reason, or rarely-used tools might suddenly be relevant. There's not much mileage you can get out of a dozen different infinitely monotonous expanses of energy that instantly annihilate you if you ever go there.
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Feb 21, 2023 06:00
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gtrmp posted:There's not much mileage you can get out of a dozen different infinitely monotonous expanses of energy that instantly annihilate you if you ever go there. To be fair some of them take a little longer to die in
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Feb 21, 2023 06:06
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We can set all kinds of games in the hard vacuum of space, surely we can figure out how to set those same games underwater or on fire.
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Feb 21, 2023 06:10
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Siivola posted:We can set all kinds of games in the hard vacuum of space, surely we can figure out how to set those same games underwater or on fire. See now, if that were the actual core idea behind the game, that you were explorers taking a submersible style vehicle into various elemental planes to explore stuff, that would be sick. But instead it's D&D. gently caress that's actually a sick as hell idea I'm writing that down
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Feb 21, 2023 06:13
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oh my god The Core as an adventuring party  🥰
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Feb 21, 2023 06:17
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gradenko_2000 posted:oh my god The Core as an adventuring party The Hunt for Red October except the elemental plane of water sounds awesome
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Feb 21, 2023 07:00
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Iron Lung is a fun game that functionally takes place in an Elemental Plane of Blood. Just because everything is fire/water/whatever doesn't mean there can't be interesting kinds of fire/water/whatever in there
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Feb 21, 2023 07:21
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S.J. posted:The Hunt for Red October except the elemental plane of water sounds awesome Make it the Elemental plane of Earth and give the submarines all giant drills at the front and have them move like earthworms.  Who is the Cold War between in this scenario?
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Feb 21, 2023 08:04
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Or you could just be like "the elemental plane of fire isn't uniformly made out of fire everywhere, the closer you get to a gate to the Material Realm the more like the Material Realm it gets" and explore the kind of societies that spring up when a half a mile down the road there's a permanent firestorm. That sounds like it'd be a rad as hell place to visit.
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Feb 21, 2023 08:14
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Siivola posted:We can set all kinds of games in the hard vacuum of space, surely we can figure out how to set those same games underwater or on fire. The blue-collar sci-fi RPG Mothership has had a huge upswelling of third-part zine level support, a lot of them are underwater adventures. So people are solving that problem! e. Helical Nightmares posted:Make it the Elemental plane of Earth and give the submarines all giant drills at the front and have them move like earthworms. <rolls dice> The githyanki and <rolls dice> the beholders. mllaneza fucked around with this message at 08:21 on Feb 21, 2023 |
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Feb 21, 2023 08:18
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githyankee
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Feb 21, 2023 08:35
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Helical Nightmares posted:Make it the Elemental plane of Earth and give the submarines all giant drills at the front and have them move like earthworms. Rival exploration guilds trying to claim rare materials on various planes? Whole lotta options there Could be backed by creatures who have emigrated from the various planes
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Feb 21, 2023 08:44
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Is there a dedicated thread for Cyberpunk2020/Red?
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Feb 21, 2023 08:45
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MrMojok posted:Is there a dedicated thread for Cyberpunk2020/Red? Yeah it's on the third page because it's not very active. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3954467
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Feb 21, 2023 08:59
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Kwyndig posted:Yeah it's on the third page because it's not very active. Thanks very much!
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Feb 21, 2023 09:04
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Whybird posted:Or you could just be like "the elemental plane of fire isn't uniformly made out of fire everywhere, the closer you get to a gate to the Material Realm the more like the Material Realm it gets" and explore the kind of societies that spring up when a half a mile down the road there's a permanent firestorm. That sounds like it'd be a rad as hell place to visit. This is what 4e did to reinvent the Inner Planes as the Elemental Chaos, because the Inner Planes as actually written are so totally monolithic and hostile that they either aren't usable in-game unless you have the action take place in a little bastion where the plane itself gets essentially neutralized, or are more or less indistinguishable from an adventure set in an especially extreme environment in the normal world.
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Feb 21, 2023 09:34
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The Plane of Earth is also about the most usable one considering it's basically just one big dungeon.S.J. posted:Rival exploration guilds trying to claim rare materials on various planes? Whole lotta options there Rock and stone.
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Feb 21, 2023 09:49
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gtrmp posted:... the Inner Planes as actually written are so totally monolithic and hostile that they either aren't usable in-game unless you have the action take place in a little bastion where the plane itself gets essentially neutralized, or are more or less indistinguishable from an adventure set in an especially extreme environment in the normal world. No, see, adventuring on the inner planes takes preparation, so when your preparations get dispelled, that's when you panic, because you immediately bear the brunt of the plane's monolithic and hostile nature. (In 3.5, a magic item giving you environmental protection or movement capability turns off for 1-4 rounds when dispelled, just long enough to add tension without loving you over entirely.)
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Feb 21, 2023 10:04
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Helical Nightmares posted:Make it the Elemental plane of Earth and give the submarines all giant drills at the front and have them move like earthworms. Pretty much Deep Rock Galactic in this scenario, just with a more standard fantasy version of Dwarves(though probably more advanced than the norm for D&D settings in both tech and magic), the native horrifying death fauna, an invading enemy race of machines(probably Modrons), and most recently a mysterious other worldly infestation(probably something from the Far Realms)
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Feb 21, 2023 10:30
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https://twitter.com/ShawnTomkin/status/1627521851244306432
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Feb 21, 2023 11:08
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Whybird posted:Or you could just be like "the elemental plane of fire isn't uniformly made out of fire everywhere, the closer you get to a gate to the Material Realm the more like the Material Realm it gets" and explore the kind of societies that spring up when a half a mile down the road there's a permanent firestorm. That sounds like it'd be a rad as hell place to visit. This leads to fun stuff like chaos sorcerers being powerful psychics who cast elemental spells by dipping into the elemental chaos and pulling out ??? to throw at people, and one of the major cities being a bunch of colonialists trying to manifestation destiny the place through will and numbers. 5e got rid of all of that of course.
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Feb 21, 2023 11:32
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gtrmp posted:There's not much mileage you can get out of a dozen different infinitely monotonous expanses of energy that instantly annihilate you if you ever go there. The elemental planes aren't uniform, though, they have a primary element, but also pockets of others, and near the borders, it gets more muddled. The Elemental Vacuum would in fact be a lot like space, with rare pockets of solids(asteroids, comets, minor planets) and pure fire(stars). One of the most famous parts of the Elemental Fire is a city, the City of Brass, so if that's not some differentiation in what the plane is made out of, I don't know what is, in the 2e manuals, a large section for each plane is actually devoted to what sort of "foreign" intrusions you might find there in terms of other elemental materials, what shape they take and what dangers they pose. Plus it doesn't take a lot of creativity to figure out that if someone finds a way to survive in the Instant Annihilation Expanse, then it's a great place to hide their important research and magical mcguffins where people who don't know how to survive there can't get to them, so the harsher planes would absolutely be dotted with gruesome vaults and fortresses, magical labs where busted experiments can be deleted just by opening a hatch before they kill everyone inside, etc. probably dug into the safer intrusive elemental islands, etc. Splicer posted:That's the elemental chaos from 4e. It's a big churning mess of all the elements but if there's enough sapient beings in one place they can force it into a semi-permanent shape. Note "can" not "will", most inhabitants don't understand why you'd want something that's the same thing two days in a row. All the static portals are, obviously, in the places where the exceptions live. See, I find this sort of thing entirely tiresome. Unfixed locations that just respond to will and imagination don't really pose any sort of interesting challenges to overcome or limitations to play with, it's just Limbo, the worst Outer Plane, all over again.
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Feb 21, 2023 12:18
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The Elemental Chaos is basically Super Mario Galaxy and that's why it rules. Thing is that the lore and crunch rarely actually focuses on the liminal areas that are actually survivable let alone interesting, outside of 4e.
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Feb 21, 2023 12:30
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Age of Sigmar has a more interesting, functional take on "there's a fire world and an earth world and a water world and a death world and"
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Feb 21, 2023 13:19
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PurpleXVI posted:See, I find this sort of thing entirely tiresome. Unfixed locations that just respond to will and imagination don't really pose any sort of interesting challenges to overcome or limitations to play with, it's just Limbo, the worst Outer Plane, all over again. Splicer fucked around with this message at 13:25 on Feb 21, 2023 |
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Feb 21, 2023 13:22
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