|
Everyone posted:Except that for D&D original Birthright was pretty cool. Along with actively running your own kingdom at any level, I recall that Birthright had some weird mechanic where if you killed another ruler you got some of their strength/power. Like in Highlander. Yeah, rulers had special bloodline powers, and defeating other rulers in combat or convincing them to surrender their powers(mind control, diplomacy, threats, blackmail, etc.) would allow you to absorb them. It wasn't extremely impressive, it was usually a bigger deal for a non-blooded ruler to steal their way into a bloodline, but it still mattered, especially if you were near a power breakpoint. Everyone posted:I think I'd rather play Out of the PurpleXVI Ashes AKA the version of this where you've spent a few weeks tweaking the rules and setting to do the stuff you mentioned in the review. I'm not sure entirely how fixable Out of the Ashes is without a lot of work. Some of it is obviously down to writing and theming, but for instance reworking the Spirit/Despair mechanics to be more about carrot than stick would be a big piece of work, I think. I think you'd largely be better off just making a new game.
|
#
?
Jun 17, 2023 22:31
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 7, 2024 12:16 |
|
|
Everyone posted:I think I'd rather play Out of the PurpleXVI Ashes AKA the version of this where you've spent a few weeks tweaking the rules and setting to do the stuff you mentioned in the review. Yeah, Birthright was cool, and this feels like kind of a... I don't want to say "knockoff," but definitely treading the same ground less deftly
|
|
#
?
Jun 17, 2023 22:32
|
|
|
Dawgstar posted:Oh my God, she's speaking in Describe Your Character. Also just oh... my God. Well if it's any consolation (barely) the sisters would have been 22 when they were embraced, since she mentions being taken to Alamut and Assasamites go through 7 years of training before being embraced (according to the players guide I reviewed a bit ago).
|
|
#
?
Jun 17, 2023 22:33
|
|
|
PurpleXVI posted:Secondly, the .PDF mentions the X-Card. Now... I am a bit of an X-Card skeptic, but I think that's also because I generally play with people I already and in that regard it's easier to just talk to people, I can see the use of it if you play with complete strangers especially. The developer of Ashes, on the other hand, holds the opinion that the X-Card can actually make things worse, arguing that when people know someone else has an option to speak up if bounds are overstepped, they have a tendency not to brake themselves and just thunder onwards with stuff that might upset others until an X-Card is deployed. Personally, I like the X-Card existing as an option even if I'm playing with a group of friends I'm familiar with. It means that if something comes up in game that hits someone in a way they didn't expect, there's a codified way to go "uh, no, not okay with this actually" rather than having to find the words on the spot or just grit through a scene or session that's distressing to them. But I tend to run with groups where we're friendly but not besties since kindergarten, and the assumption is that you might not realize something is going to be X-Card levels of distressing until it's being described. The developer's view is...odd, though, and makes it sound like they've run into a lot of "can't you take a joke" type of assholes.
|
|
#
?
Jun 18, 2023 00:54
|
|
|
The X-card also isn't supposed to be a tool used on its own. It's supposed to be something optionally included as part of your negotiated boundaries as a group, as a thing you slap in the moment when something catches you, and not the sole tool on its own. You're still supposed to talk to people about things anyway, and if this writer is just assuming that the X-card replaces that need entirely... well, they've obviously missed the point.
|
|
#
?
Jun 18, 2023 01:06
|
|
|
joylessdivision posted:Well if it's any consolation (barely) the sisters would have been 22 when they were embraced, since she mentions being taken to Alamut and Assasamites go through 7 years of training before being embraced (according to the players guide I reviewed a bit ago). That's true, I'd forgotten about the training montage phase of being an Assamite.
|
|
#
?
Jun 18, 2023 01:23
|
|
|
In the twins case, it took ten years, so on that level at least we're dealing with adult women during Weinberg's attempts to be racy.
|
|
#
?
Jun 18, 2023 03:19
|
|
|
The Masquerade of the Red Death - Book 1: Blood War - Part 3, Chapters 6-13 Chapter Six We’re back – and this time, we’re in Paris. Still March 12, 1994, though. Get used to jumping all over the place – both Weinberg trilogies are full of it. What does ol’ Bob think of the French? Well:  Fair cop, I suppose, and nothing unique to Weinberg – but that last line is important. The French, you see, enjoy loving with tourists by telling tales of how the Phantom of the Opera eats unwary tourists who stray away from the guide at the Opera House. As an Australian, I salute the noble cause of loving with tourists, but I also can’t help but think of this clip: https://youtu.be/v3W-fRxxBq0?t=20 Then we move in to the real stories of the Phantom, not the bullshit leg-pullers. Unexplained disappearances, stretching back in a long line to time immemorial, with a single unifying name: Phantomas, who haunts Notre Dame and is implicated in hundreds of disappearances. The Surete have a special case file on him, including:  Phantomas, naturally, is real, and cool, and my friend. He’s even a weird lil guy in his own right and a frustrated author who, when a series of pulps about him came out, wrote to the authors with plot ideas that were rejected! I love everything about this. He’s a Nosferatu in the classic style:  Unlike most of the characters, we actually have art for Phantomas, from the cover for book 2:  It’s a fairly standard piece but I like it. The more I paint myself, the more I appreciate good light work and composition, and while this one technically breaks some rules by going straight midline in the frame, the lighting and shadow draw the eye away neatly and pay some serious homage to both classic pulp covers and to Murnau’s lighting work. Of the three covers, it’s the best. Back to the story. Phantomas is ‘a quiet, gentle soul’ who mostly only kills people who try to blame him for their murders, which – fair enough, really. Tonight, he’s going to a soiree held by Villon. He’s never invited but he loves going to the Prince’s parties in disguise. And at this point we again get Weinberg being Weinberg, because Phantomas is in fact secretly the oldest vampire in Paris. He’s been there since 53BC, when he arrived as a Roman legionary and close friend of Caesar named Varro Dominus (not a name!) and was embraced by a local 5th-generation Nosferatu, who wanted to use him as a pawn. How did that go? Well:  Before we move on, about the name. ‘Dominus’ is not a name, and Varro is a cognomen, though by 53BC its probably there as a hereditary one, and we could stretch out to say maybe the dude is part of the Terentii Varrones, but we don’t actually have a first or even proper last name here. In short – this is like calling the first Earl of Shaftesbury ‘Ashley Sir’. Moving on, we get a brief description of Paris’s kindred dynamics, which is basically ripped from A World of Darkness, and learn that Phantomas has gone undetected by virtually everyone, including other Kindred, for two thousand years. He does so by staying in his tunnels and wearing the Mask of a Thousand Faces, like… [/i]every other Nosferatu.[/i] This is actually part of the strategy. Vampires who encounter him tend to assume he’s just one of the usual Nosferatu, not a secret ancient Elder. Now, what does this ancient Elder want in unlife? To rule from the shadows and control Villon in secret? To take revenge against ancient foes? We’ll jump ahead to Chapter 13 for a second here:   He’s not even writing it for power’s sake. He’s just a weird lil guy hiding out under Notre Dame drawing genealogical charts because he’s a colossal nerd who likes to compile facts and figures. As the meme goes: he just like me, he just like me fr. This is the best thing Weinberg has ever done, for my money: an ancient elder who isn’t a total badass, who isn’t part of some terrible sinister power play with totally unlimited resources, but who’s just been happily doing his own thing for literally millennia and has more or less accidentally stumbled into a peaceful and contented existence in doing so. Returning to Chapter Six, he’s off to the party at the Louvre and easily tricks the two Assamite guards (Weinberg read that bit about Assamites hiring out and took it as a basic fact that anyone worth their salt gets an Assamite) at the door, and roams the gallery for a while because he likes art and statuary. He thinks Villon is a tasteless fuckwit who wouldn’t know true art if it hit him and needs to grow the gently caress up and accept that he’s dead, rather than trying to be the hot young thing for eternity – and while this characterization of Villon is far from unique, it’s a nice touch. But something, naturally, is wrong. There’s no music, and there’s always music (specifically: ‘a loud rock band playing the latest hits’ because Bob is hip with the kids). You can probably guess where this is going, but to spell it out, a handsome young blonde man with blue eyes is just hanging out outside the actual court and warns him to ‘Beware the Red Death, Phantomas’ before vanishing into thin air. If you guessed its Ruben, correct: He roams around warning people and doing gently caress all. Here, he’s at least more direct and says that anyone who goes in there is gonna die. Phantomas, naturally, goes inside, and…  The Red Death appears and does his creepy act. He knows about the record project and disapproves, so Phantomas reveals his survival strategy of choice: run the gently caress away.  We end the chapter with Phantomas resting in his haven and worrying about the bit where the Red Death knows he exists, which should be impossible. So, here we have it: the Phantom of the Opera is real, but also there’s another Phantom who’s much older and tougher, but who stays the hell out of it and just wants to look at art, read bad novels, and draw family trees. He’s dumb, but since I do the same thing, I can’t help but love him. But this is also where I think we could’ve substituted Reuben and Father Naples for someone else – Phantomas. Move the action to Paris and have him be making sure the Inquisition aren’t too close, and maybe to get access to their files. There’s very little Reuben does in this novel that can’t be replaced easily with other characters. Chapter Seven Back to McCann in St. Louis again. We get another touch of Weinberg’s approach to the World of Darkness:   World is a gently caress, basically. If there’s an overhyped crime scare in our world, in Weinberg’s take on the World of Darkness its true, but double it. Its an unsubtle way to play it but it does build the grime factor up quickly. This whole chapter is a recap of what’s happened so far for McCann as he tries to process it. McCann goes home. He lives in ‘a small brick home in a new development’, bought for cash in 1993 when he first arrived in St. Louis. This means that in the space of less than a year, half of which he’s spent travelling, he’s become the Prince’s closest advisor. Now, in fairness, he’s basically a mage whether in his own right or by borrowed power, but still: six months or so is an awfully short time for a human who shouldn’t even know much about vampires. No wonder Flavia is suspicious! We also bump into the slightly difficult question of how much of McCann is McCann and how much is Lameth. While he drinks scotch and listens to Billie Holiday, he considers the Red Death and Gehenna – which he doesn’t believe in, despite being possessed by a Methuselah who’s seen, first hand, that the Antediluvians are real and who collects signs of the coming apocalypse. Also:  The Dark Messiah! Praise! More importantly, this is where Weinberg first introduces Dark Anis, a contemporary of Lameth, who becomes important later in the book. It’s a brief mention – is she behind it all? – and for once Weinberg doesn’t stop and spell it out in big letters. Through his psychic powers, McCann tracks the wallet he took from one of the assassins sent after him back to DC, and makes plans to visit. He checks out an ancient Egyptian statue of his own face, and then its sleep time, and that’s Chapter Seven. As might be apparent, we’re in slightly ambiguous territory here about McCann, and I don’t think its entirely deliberate. The text is pulling in two different directions – one, that he’s a mortal (mage or otherwise) who timeshares with Lameth; two, that he is Lameth capable of acting as a mortal. I’m inclined towards the first, and the idea that through Lameth’s patronage McCann is simply millennia old in his own right, but the text could support the latter reading. Chapter Eight We hop over to Venice now, 12 March 1994. We get a long description of ‘a black shape… vaguely human in shape…’ sneaking across the city’s rooftops at lightning speed. Its destination: the Mausoleum, the stronghold of the Giovanni. We get a few snippets of the history, including that the Mausoleum stands on the former site of the old prisons, which is a nice touch – and that the plan to tear them down and build a giant skyscraper was met with protests. The Giovanni bribed the commissioners to get it through, then disappeared the most vocal critics. This does, of course, mean that the Mausoleum is smack-dab next to the Doge’s Palace, so I suspect Bob thought the Bridge of Sighs was rather longer than it actually is. Remember that the gap between the Palace and the New Prison is maybe 40 feet when you read the description of the Mausoleum:  We get a bunch of detail on the shape infiltrating the complex. It has all the vaguely nonsensical security measures you’d expect, ghouls (armed, for some reason, with AK-47s), hellhounds, thermal sensors, etc, etc. They prove utterly useless against The Shape, which is so fast and so perceptive it can wait for the four ghouls at the gate to blink simultaneously and flash past them and under the vault door. Inside, the place is bustling with activity, but no one dares to speak or play music. We get some more of the standard infiltration business as the shape transforms into a moving shadow here, a cloud of fog there, disables the building’s electronics and power via magic, and then slips along up the elevator shaft to reach the penthouse on the 40th Floor, where it takes on its true form:  This is the newest of our PoV characters, Madeleine Giovanni – who reappears in a comic, the Horizon War trilogy, and even the Clan Novels in reference. Her sire also appears in other White Wolf material despite originating in this trilogy, so these two are a big part of the ambiguity around the trilogy’s canonicity. Its also nice that we don’t get too much of a focus on her body, but rest assured: Weinberg will resume being a horny lil guy sooner rather than later. First, though, we get to meet her sire, Don Pietro, and find out why she was sneaking in – she’s pentesting their security. Don Pietro is your stereotypical avuncular father figure in an evil organization. He loves his granddaughter and childe, but reacts to the prospect of killing the sloppiest of the ghoul guards by turning it into a public demonstration with an hour of psychological torture slapped on for good measure. And now we get to the heart of the Madeleine plotline: revenge.  Unlike the other revenge hooks, this one is actually followed up on as a significant plot thread through the trilogy. We get some details on the extent of the Giovanni’s power, but also the rather odd idea that:  Bob reverts to type. No one is middling – everyone is the best at what they do. Despite this, she’s tried to kill Caravelli three times and failed three times. To keep away from her, he stays in Sicily, surrounded by Mafia goons. Now, this is… It bothers me. Its lazy. Now in fairness, it was the 90s and excellent histories of the Sicilian Mafia weren’t that accessible in English yet. But the first point, naturally, is that there is no one singular Mafia – even within the overarching Cosa Nostra, its divided into factions, families, districts, and so on. A much more interesting tack, with the caveat of the hazardous involvement of recent real-world violence into a fictional narrative, would’ve been to merge the Second Mafia War or the Second ‘Ndrangheta War with the Giovanni-Caravelli struggle. But, The Don of Dons of Dons is Caravelli, and that’s all there is to that, I guess. For now, he can wait – Don Pietro is sending Madeleine to America. Why?  Gee, I wonder what those two words could be. That’s the end of Chapter 8. Chapter Nine Now we hop to Sicily, because we need a chapter for Caravelli for… some reason? He’s the Capo de Capo of the Mafia, and he’s called a meeting with four major Mafia bosses, who’ve come to negotiate with him on business. Again, I find this supremely irritating but it is, in part, a symptom of the times – and in part, I imagine, Weinberg following the canon available to him. He also rules quite openly as a vampire:  The bosses are… Here we go. Tony ‘The Tuna’ Blanchard, the head of the ‘east coast branch’. Christ. George Kross, representative of the ‘midwest branch’. Harvey Taylor, ‘west coast Syndicate chief’, and Sol Cohen, ‘boss of the South’. You may be noticing these are all Americans. One of the few things Weinberg got right about the Mafia was recognizing that the Sicilians don’t directly run the Americans. The meeting’s discussion is mostly about the threat posed by Madeleine Giovanni, who’s harder to kill than the POTUS, and a loredump. The dialogue is about what you’d expect, and also includes explanations of clans, generation, and diablerie to… a bunch of mafiosi. Caravelli outright states his and Madeleine’s generations because he’s afraid she’ll diablerize him. He even talks about the diablerie of [Brujah] and the origins of the Giovanni and Tremere. Again – to a bunch of mafiosi. During the chat, George Kross walks off to hit the head. What happens next? Well, it’s a special meal, so you’ve probably already guessed:  Kross wanted to sell the secrets of Caravelli, so Kross’s man Dominated him to leave the room and had him killed. I suppose it’s a classy move of Caravelli not to serve them him as dinner, though it kinda reads like Caravelli didn't know one of them was going to betray him when he invited them in for dinner, just when he started speaking to them - so is there a frustrated chef whose actual nice meal has been upstaged for a display of brutal violence? Either way, he has his second in command ghoul them. Their actual proposal is never discussed or indicated in any detail in this chapter – and then the chapter’s over. Chapter Ten We’re back to McCann, only it’s a dream sequence flashback to when Lameth made his Golconda potion. He and Anis are the only Kindred to have imbibed it, and here they are:  Another buxom blonde bombshell, because Bob’s horny. The two were lovers and over the two centuries it took Lameth to make the potion, it was Anis who kept him moving. It all takes place before the diablerie of [Brujah], Anis’s sire. In fact, Anis’s entire plot is to use the liberation from the blood bond that Golconda provides to precipitate the Diablerie by seducing Troile – and tells Lameth to do the same with Asshur, his sire. We skip forward in the dream. McCann/Lameth is discussing the new Treaty between the Camarilla and Giovanni, and we have it explicitly confirmed Asshur is Cappadocius. He discusses the matter with an Assamite of uncertain identity, and hints that Lameth orchestrated the embrace of Augustus Giovanni. McCann wakes as dusk sets (he may or may not be a vampire), and thinks someone made him dream these specific dreams. No poo poo, McCann. Worse still, there’s a mysterious box that wasn’t by his bed when he went to sleep. It has his stolen papers and the photos of Baba Yaga, and a single green sequin, and we end on that concerning note. Weinberg’s really hammering those sequins home, huh? Rachel is about as subtle as a car crash, though at least he isn’t trying to pretend it isn’t blatant. Chapter Eleven Back to Makish in DC. Its now the night of the 12th, and his orders are to kill more vampires to stoke up the conflict. More kills = more pay, and he’s eager to earn his money and exercise his art in the doing. The target is a gentleman’s club called the Deadlands in Anacostia – ‘one of the worst neighbourhoods in Washington’ – run by a Toreador (8th Generation. Weinberg thinks we should know this.) named John Thompson. We get another of those Weinberg moments of grime, because the Deadlands is no ordinary bordello:  Makish is in two minds on this. He considers it a necessary evil to control the government, but also finds the means – specifically ‘pandering to the basest instincts’ – distasteful, because he’s a morally upright gentleman in his own eyes. He likes killing scumbags and racists more than random people, so – good on him, I suppose. Most of the chapter is a fairly rote action sequence. He ignores the guard ghouls – six of them out front with AK-47s (everyone gets an AK this post, I guess) – and just sweeps in from above with celerity, uses his powers over machinery (Weinberg seems to think obfuscate and quietus covers pressure plates and alarm systems but not cameras) to bypass the alarms, and rips open the roof to get in. We also lose the possibility Makish isn’t an awful entity when he murders one of the prostitutes and drapes her dead body over her dead john’s corpse, though at least Weinberg doesn’t wallow in it. He kills some more people, including some congressmen, on the way to Thompson, and talks up some ‘stilted dialogue’ that blames the attack on the Sabbat at the Red Death’s instruction. Thompson records everything, and this way the word will reach Vitel of Sabbat retaliation. We finally get to see how he uses thermite after he stakes Thompson:  I won’t lie – turning Thompson into an incendiary boobytrap is a nice touch. The prose lets it all down, and the idea that he’s both well known for his explosive antics but doesn’t let anyone see the evidence is, uh – not impossible, but a bit weird. We end the chapter with him leaving to go after his next target of the night and, off-screen, a ghoul pulling the pin on the Thompson grenade, and it immediately becomes obvious Bob doesn’t really understand thermite as he says ‘the explosion was so loud that Makish heard it two blocks from the Deadlands’. Not a great chapter, but a lot better than Chapter Ten. This is one of the times Weinberg is actually clicking with the material. Makish’s attack plan is neat, he does a lot of misdirects inside the building, and he lays a trap any Hitman player would be proud of. The concept is fine, the execution isn’t great, but surprisingly Weinberg doesn’t wallow in a lot of violence towards sex workers or labour over long with horny detail on their descriptions, which is a relief after how he writes about Flavia. Chapter Twelve We’re back in St. Louis – now past midnight and into the 13th - where Vargoss is holding Court with McCann and Flavia. We get to meet two more local vampires, both advisors of Vargoss and both with stated generations: Darrow (Brujah 9) and Uglyface (Nosferatu 8). Darrow’s an old British army vet from the 1800s and the voice of reason, which is a nice subversion of the usual Brujah hothead, particularly since he dresses as a biker. Flavia’s swatched her white leather bodysuit for black in mourning, which is really funny to me because I can just imagine some poor ghoul frantically racing from fetish shop to fetish shop to try and find the right sizes for the sudden change. The topic is, naturally, the Red Death, who seems to be able to be in multiple places at once and struck simultaneously in Paris, Marseilles, and three more appearances in the US including the attack in DC. He killed some 35 kindred in a single night, which I suppose is easy if you’re literally immune to all forms of attack and covered in fire. Darrow’s smart enough to wonder if its more than one attacker using the very distinctive visage as a shared mask. We go back and forth for a while on whether or not the Red Death is actually Sabbat aligned. McCann doubts it, Vargoss is convinced of it, and there’s a lot of not terribly good but not terribly bad (for Bob) dialogue, including some chunks of exposition. Earlier, I mentioned that the timing of the Red Death’s appearance in DC was important – and here’s why: The evidence is that the first appearance of the Red Death was in St. Louis, at local midnight. No one can explain why St. Louis, a no-big-deal city, is the first target. The answer, of course, is McCann, but he steers attention to the murdered Tremere. That, in turn, prompts a loredump about Etrius, the Pyramid, and the condition of Tremere’s body. That becomes important later in the trilogy. Again, this is that breathless quality – and some fairly deep cuts. Bob either read a ton of the material or spent a lot of time talking to, and actually listening to, the experts. Things that most other VtM novels never even touch on, even ones where it might be relevant, are thrown in as casually as Makish’s thermite bombs or a green sequin. Things take a turn when it turns out Benedict Tyrus, the murdered Tremere, was:  This prompts discussion of Baba Yaga, who Uglyface claims to be the greatest sorceress in the world and a Nictuku – and the equal of Lameth, The Dark Messiah (praise!) When Lameth isn’t on screen, everyone should be asking ‘where’s Lameth?’. Benedict spent time in DC before he arrived in St. Louis, which prompts more exposition and loredumps – the politics of DC by Night, etc – before its decided that McCann will go to investigate, with perhaps the least Mage line of all time:  Flavia’s going along with him for his protection – and we get another sensuous lick of the upper lip from her. That’s three times now, I believe, but mercifully, end of chapter. It’s a lot of exposition and stilted dialogue without much that stands out except for ‘I have my mage powers to protect me’. Chapter Thirteen We’re back to Paris, where Phantomas is hiding out in the Catacombs – which, naturally, he built. He also likes his creature comforts: https://i.imgur.com/ubksmfL.png He has electricity down there, and collects art. Yet again, Weinberg needs to make his characters The Best and hypercompetent, so Phantomas has an extensive blackmail operation that he uses solely to fund his hobbies and buy artworks, not try and be a power player. Drawing on every major intelligence agency and wiretaps on major telecoms, he can monitor things as well as the NSA – and he uses this, again, to draw bloodline charts. Bob’s made another apex character, immensely powerful, but all he does with it is nerd poo poo, and its weirdly charming. This chapter, he’s freaking the hell out about the Red Death and scouring his database for any trace he can find of the Red Death or vampires old and potent enough to have the kind of power he saw displayed – and this is actually where we get the Project introduced properly for the first time, but I already shared that. His search turns up 27 possible vampires, of which only two remain on a second pass: Lameth, the Dark Messiah (praise!) and Anis, Queen of the Night. We get a little recap of who they are – most powerful sorcerer who invented a Golconda potion and the cause of the revolt of the Second City respectively – in case we forgot in the last fifteen minutes. Both disappeared 5000 years ago and their sires are Unknown to Phantomas’s record, though there's no mystery here for us because, again, fifteen minutes ago Weinberg literally loving told us who their sires were and made it clear they tried to have them killed. Its so sloppy - a touch of mystery here would not have gone astray! Then we get his highly relatable response to the discovery, via his wire taps intercepting Camarilla reports, that there may be more than one Red Death:  Sure, they’re wiping out swathes of Kindred and may come for him personally, but dear god, the charts are incomplete.  Then some cryptic poo poo happens again, because stuff just happens in a Weinberg plot and you just gotta roll with it. He thinks about the blonde fella at the Louvre and his keyboard starts typing by itself and spells out two words: ‘The Sheddim’. End of chapter – and part 1 of the book. So, it really doesn’t get better than here. Some of the characters improve slightly with a tiny bit of depth, and we get a fair bit more of the ‘throw the cool poo poo in the blender’ hype, but we also get a lot of the same grossness, the same bad prose, and the same stilted dialogue. Part of what frustrates me about Weinberg’s trilogies is that the underlying ideas are not necessarily bad – pulpy and dumb is not bad – but the execution ruins any chance they have of actually working well. The Father Naples example is perfectly illustrative: it and the Makish element seem like a plotline in waiting, but it goes nowhere. It isn’t even a misdirect. It is literally pointless, and there are other characters who could’ve achieved the Father Naples exposition much better without the need to fluff up an essentially unnecessary bit character. But, that’s Weinberg for you. His other non-WoD works aren’t really any better, so everyone involved got what they expected, I suppose. Next time: Part 2, and four new major POV characters.
|
|
#
?
Jun 18, 2023 14:52
|
|
|
Erik has a friend in the catacombs  this book kinda rules lol
|
|
#
?
Jun 18, 2023 15:11
|
|
|
Loomer posted:Chapter Ten "Blonde hair the color of the new moon." He literally picked the only phase of the moon that is entirely black, that has nothing that could even approach blonde.
|
|
#
?
Jun 18, 2023 15:35
|
|
|
The novel review does make me glad V5 has mostly gotten away from people speaking in game terms, albeit the first time I saw them go heavy on not doing that was Greg Stolze's Requiem novels.
|
|
#
?
Jun 18, 2023 16:03
|
|
|
Infinity RPG: TAGs Mid-Season Upgrade Upgrading TAGs and remotes is a major job of techs in an active military, but a lot of the really interesting upgrades aren't based on government work but rather come from the innovations of poor mercenaries or civilians who want to push boundaries as best they can. Modding subculture is definitely alive. TAG upgrades are usually focused on making the machines better at fighting, especially fighting other TAGs. When the firepower is roughly equal, any edge can be the reason you win a battle. (This doesn't include cosmetic mods - pilots are generally allowed to apply whatever personal mods they like, though sometimes within bounds of a uniform paintjob, for reasons of morale.) A pilot typically has to earn the right to get functional mods on their machine, because few army techs have any particular desire to do extra work for a pilot that is seen as unskilled or bad at their job. After all, that's a way to get a ton of money lost and a machine wrecked. Remotes also see combat mods a lot, to be sure, especially in the hands of military, corporate or mercenary outfits, the work done on remotes by criminals or civilians often shifts them away from a purely combatant role. Often, they are modded to make them better for smuggling, logistics, surveillance or similar...or they're just made to look really cool. Even combat mods can come into vogue in remote circles and be done purely for looks and clout, after all. Modding communities often have military ties that let them get access to stuff they probably shouldn't have, largely because a lot of the military techs that work on remotes and TAGs are super into modding. Of course, getting access to materials needed to mod a machine are only the first step. Even the upgrades that are largely legal to get hold of are often rare in practice because of the skill required to install them without damaging the remote or TAG, especially if the machine is already altered or modded. Finding the right mechanic can often be just as much work, if you're not able to handle it yourself. TAG and remote upgrades require hardpoints on which they can be installed, and not all machines have the right hardpoints. There are six kinds - Chassis, Comms, External, Internal, Motive and Weapons. Each can only accept the correct type of modification, and each mod takes up a certain number of hardpoints. A mod must have enough space to be installed - if it requires one Chassis and one Weapons hardpoint, and you only have the Chassis, you're out of luck. It is often possible to make space by removing built-in packaged systems or weapons, of course, and the various remotes and TAGs will list how many open hardpoints they have and any hardpoints that come stock with something in them. There is also a note: Remote TAGs cannot receive any Internal mods, nor any mods that would reduce their passenger capacity, as they don't have the internal space to spare for such mods. They already ditched life support and passenger space in their base design. Installing a mod or removing one from a TAG is a complex Tech roll, with Difficulty based on how many hardpoints are involved and Momentum cost equal to a TAG's Scale+1, with the number of failures allowed being based on the mechanic's Tech Expertise. If multiple complications happen, the installation fails, costs the mechanic Parts based on the TAG's Scale, and the TAG loses a single hardpoint, chosen by the mechanic if they got at least one success and chosen by the GM otherwise. Upgrades removed from a machine can easily be installed on others and aren't destroyed, at least. Changing out the weapons wielded by a TAG that has hands requires no rolls - you just have the machine let go of them and replace them. The bigger a TAG is, the longer upgrades take, modified by the hardpoints involved - Comms and Internal mods are fastest, followed by External and Weapons, followed by Chassis or Motive. Rugged machines are faster and easier to mod, incidentally. Remotes are modded under the same system, but with a few differences. Because remotes are produced on a much larger scale than TAGs, all remotes are considered Scale 1 for purposes of upgrades and long-distance shipping times, and they take half the time to upgrade that a TAG or vehicle would, with the exception of specifically more time-consuming upgrades such as full drone overhauls. Remotes are not able to receive Internal upgrades except for a few specific exceptions, and cannot (usually) carry passengers or receive any mod that would alter their number of passengers. However, remotes can receive specific and unique limb replacement upgrades to their appendages or weapon mounts. That said, you want them in matched pairs to avoid getting increased Agility roll difficulty due to poor balance. If a remote has an integrated 2-Handed, Unbalanced or Unwieldy gun, removing it opens up the mechanic's choice of a limb hardpoint or Weapons hardpoint regardless of any other hardpoints listed for the thing, too. Drone overhauls are the other mod unique to remotes. A remote can only have one overhaul at a time and it takes four hours or more per roll to install, but you can just install a new one on top of the old one rather than removing it beforehand - it overwrites the old one. As for what you can get... 2DA Magazine (Internal or Overhaul): These magazines are designed by ALEPH, containing a self-maintaining nanobot hive that will run as long as the thing has a power supply active from whatever it's installed in. It is designed to augment Double Action ("DA") Reloads, and the nanobots inside the magazine replace part of the microexplosives in DA rounds with themselves, ejecting from the munitions just prior to impact to tear into the target's surface. This adds the Anti-Materiel 2 and Frangible qualities to the ammo. A 2DA Magazine can hold up to 6 Reloads, and it takes one minute to convert a DA Reload into a 2DA Reload. The magazine will also repair minor damage to the weapon it is attached to. However, to prevent the nanobots from catstrophic failure to damage, they self-destruct if the magazine ever suffers a physical loss of integrity from a Fault Effect, and the nanobots in a 2DA Reload self-dstruct one minute after being removed from the magazine, rendering them inert. Akimbo Turret X (External or Limb): This converts the external or limb hardpoint it is installed on into a weapons hardpoint operated quantronically by the gunner. It is able to be disabled via Breach of the firewall of the machine it is mounted on. What makes an Akimbo Turret special from normal weapon mounts is that it mounts two small-scale weapons rather than one larger one, with weapon size limited by the size of what it's installed on. Most remotes can only take Scale 1 weapons, TAGs can take Scale 2. The rating of the turret determines how complex the weapons can be, from only one-handed weapons at rating 1 to two-handed at 2 to Unwieldy or Mounted weapons at 3. The gunner may use a Swift Action Momentum spend more cheaply, similar to a character dual wielding, as long as both actions are attacks using weapons mounted in the Akimbo Turret on the same target (or target zone, for Indiscriminate, Area or Torrent weapons). Collapsibility (Overhaul): This is a full redesign of the remote, replacing its rigid structures with smart material that can fold into empty spaces within the drone chassis or with modular parts that can be partially deconstructed. Either way, the result is a remote that can be collapsed down to smaller size for space. Collapsing a remote takes half an hour and a basic Tech roll, and un-collapsing it takes an hour. While collapsed, the remote can be moved and stored as if it was Scale 0. Compartment X (Chassis or Overhaul): These are made with smart-material casings that are used to make a cavity inside the structure of the machine, which is then sealed and disguised, giving anything placed within it Concealed X. The casing can be reshaped with a quantronic command to alter its dimensions, but its total capacity is dependent on the Scale of the machine you install it in - there's just more space in a bigger TAG. Remotes and Scale 1 TAGs can hold an oblong object up to Two-Handed in size or approximately 0.25 cubic meters. Scale 2 TAGs can store up to one Unwieldy object or about 0.5 cubic meters. Removing or putting an object in the compartment takes a standard action and at least one free hand, and stuff in a compartment is not usable. Cosmetic Mod X (Overhaul): Whatever you dream of, you can do, just like with your body! Purely cosmetic mods target a specific subculture, and reduce the machine's Structure by X, max 3. They grant +X bonus Momentum to rolls involving social interaction with the specified subculture or anyone into remote modding. Social interactions with other people can suffer up to +X complication range if interacting with the machine or the mod is visible while the machine is important to a scene, however, should the GM feel like it. Custom Loadout X: The rating is either 1, 2 or 3, and what it represents is getting a weapon modified to fit your TAG instead of its normal weapon loadout. Rating 1 can be Two-Handed or smaller, rating 2 is a larger weapon, and rating 3 is anything the GM rules is extremely specialist poo poo, like a hyper-magnetic rail cannon. Dedlink (Comms AND Internal): This is only useful to a TAG with an integrated hacking device, because what it lets the pilot do is hack without penalty, using their own Firewall and Security Soak in place of the TAG's if better and letting them make Infowar attacks with the TAG's integrated devices and defend against Infowar attacks personally. Normally you get a hacker buddy to handle that stuff, and the Dedlink is rare due to the dangers involved in its use. See, it works by linking with a neurally implanted comlog or other neural device the pilot has, and it cannot be used with that neural link. Thus, feedback causes the pilot 1dN mental damage whenever the TAG takes a Fault or Breach, 1dN physical damage whenever the mental damage roll gets an Effect, and 1dN firewall damage whenever the physical damage roll gets an Effect. However, it grants the pilot 1 free Momentum on all Pilot and Hacking rolls. Enhanced Life Support (Internal AND External): While most modern TAGs can be remote piloted, this isn't always possible or desirable. Enhanced life support causes the TAG to be Adapted to all environments. It also typically gets paired with a specialised frame that can be loaded with dedicated maneuvering thrusters, which only operate in a single chosen environment, such as vacuum or underwater. However, the thrusters must be purchased separately, though they don't take an extra hardpoint. Evac System (Internal): Officially known as a Zero-Zero Evacuation Device, this mod is based on the ejector seats used in airplanes. It places an explosive charge in the cockpit to tear open a section, rockets under the seat to send it flying, and an anti-shock gel bubble that functions as a crashsuit for the pilot. When activated, the pilot will land safely 3dN+1 zones away from the TAG. The system also integrates two smoke grenades that go off at the start and landing of the seat's flight, but the grenades are infamously unreliable and will only trigger if the distance roll gets an Effect. A Pilot roll allows you to steer the evac chair, landing 1+(Momentum spent) Zones closer or further than they normally would, and a Ballistics roll can be made to manually fire the smoke grenades at the start and end zones of the flight, or a harder roll to fire them anywhere else. The Evac System triggers automatically when a TAG takes its final fault, and can be manually triggered by the pilot making a Pilot roll as a Minor action or Reaction, or by an ally who is connected to the TAG's systems making a Hacking roll as a Reaction, or by a hostile hacker using a CLAW-2 Expel program who spends 2 Momentum after a successful attack. Eyepaint (Comms AND External or Overhaul): Eyepaint was most famously produced by the paint company Mokumokuren in Kuraimori, before the Uprising, but can be found elsewhere. It is paint embedded with microscopic recorder beads and light-sensitive filaments. Individually, each bead is very low-resolution, but as a collective in a paint job, they produce full 360-degree imagery of the area around the machine you paint, tapping into the machine's visual feeds to highlight various details. This gives a bonus die and +1 Complication range to all Observation rolls the pilot makes. However, any time the machine takes at least 1 damage from a Blinding attack, the eyepaint gets scrambled, giving +2 complication range to any roll it would normally boost and giving no bonus until it gets repaired. Flarechaff Pod (External): This only works for TAGs with ECM systems. It is a single-use array that fires a cloud of smart-magnesium chaff and micro-munitions to interfere with projectile guidance. It takes a Tech roll to turn on as a Minor action or Reaction by the pilot, and once active, it lasts until the pilot's next turn, plus one turn per Momentum spent. For the duration, the TAG gets +1 to its ECM rating and any Cover Soak against Guided ranged attacks is doubled, and it gets +2dN Cover Soak against all non-Guided ranged attacks. Observation rolls to detect the TAG get -3 Difficulty, though, because it is surrounded by exploding chaff. Gunclaw [Ammo Type] (Limb): Gunclaws are also referred to as Alphies, short for Alpheidae, a claw shrimp variant. This is because the mod was designed as a replacement limb for the Crabbot to make it more of a combatant. It replaces the flash pulser or other gun with a specialized heavy pistol and integrated ammo feed system. The bulk of the arm imbalances whatever it's installed on, however, increasing Complication range of Agility and Brawn rolls and melee attacks. While the Gunclaw was meant for the Crabbot, it can be installed on any remote, and the penalties are negated if the remote has Brawn 10+ or if it's replacing an Unwieldy or larger weapon. If the remote cannot negate the penalties, installing a second Gunclaw doubles them. A Gunclaw fires a single specific kind of special ammo, designated at installation, and has capacity for up to five Reloads of that ammo type. Gunslinger Mount X (Limb): A Gunslinger Mount is a ranged weapon mount with gyroscopic stabilizers, recoil compensators, heat sinks and specialized joints, all of which combine to maximize potential angles of fire and minimize inaccuracies. A Gunslinger Mount applies Expert 2 to the weapon mounted on it and allows it to use the Swap Ammo action as a Free Action once per turn if the user has Ballistics Focus 2+. Further, the Swift Action Momentum spend is cheaper to use to fire the weapon a second tme if the target is the same as the last attack and is in the ideal range of the weapon. However, because of the structural requirements of the Gunslinger Mount, each one installed halves the remote's Structure, rounding up, and reduces Armor Soak on the replaced limb and the remote's torso by 1. Swapping the weapon in the mount requires half an hour of work and a Tech roll, but you can also just add or remove the entire mounting as a single unit if you want. The higher the rating of the mount, the bigger a weapon can be loaded in - One-Handed or Two-Handed at rating 1, Two-Handed or Unbalanced at rating 2, and Two-Handed, Unbalanced or Unwieldy at rating 3. Pillion Grabhandles (External): This mod, uniquely, can be installed on any remote, even if it has no external hardpoints available. You're putting on enough hand and footholds to allow a single person to ride it as a passenger by clinging on. However, if you install it on a remote without a hardpoint for it, it drops the remote's Armor by 1, minimum 0. The passenger has no control over the remote unless they're already authorized to access it, is considered to be on an Exposed vehicle, and can grab on or drop off as a Free Action. The Difficulty of any Acrobatics roll to jump on or off the remote is reduced, and anyone clinging to it ignores the usual penalties for actions while on the outside of a moving vehicle as long as they can hold on with at least one hand and foot. The GM may rule some remotes are too small for Pillion Grabhandles. Porcuspines (Chassis AND External or Overhaul): This a set of mechanically retractable metal spines to shred anyone trying to attack the machine. The machine may use its porcuspines for any Close Combat Defence Reactions against melee attacks at reduced cost, and if the machine's pilot wins the roll, the porcuspines deal damage to the attacker on top of blocking the attack. With Close Combat Focus 4+, they gain Piercing 2 and Vicious 2 instead of the normal Piercing 1 and Vicious 1. Remagtrax (Overhaul): This overhaul incorporated thousands of segments of magnetic materials, smart-material hubs and a vectored thruster system, allowing it to dynamically reconfigure itself to suit whatever conditions the remote it's on happens to be in. This is a massive power hog, which is why it requires a full reworking of the remote, which reduces its Structure by 1/4 (rounding up). The constant vibration gives the remote -2 Coordination, but it gains 1 rank of Superhuman Agility. It may move to any zone within Long range as a Minor action so long as it only has to cross level terrain or calm water, and it gets reduced Difficulty to all rolls to move into, through or within difficult or hazardous terrain. Remote Presence Upgrade (Comms AND Internal): This is an after-market conversion to allow a TAG that normally requires a pilot inside it to be operated by remote presence instead. This increases the number of Internal hardpoints on the TAG by 1 as well, thanks to removing the life support systems. One must be careful where one gets the mod, though - it is not unknown for technicians to note down the TAG's access codes and steal it remotely using this. Rhino Reinforcement (Chassis AND External AND Internal): This mod is intended to protect passengers inside a TAG, adding layered neomaterial crumple zones which can be repaired and recharged after impact, plus internal shock absorbers in the armor and seating areas. Whenever a passenger would take damage due to the TAG suffering a Fault due to collision, loss of control or melee/ranged weapon attack, they get +4dN Armor Soak. This also gives -1 Backlash when ramming, to a minimum of 1. However, the added protection for the passenger comes at a cost - the TAG itself has its Structure reduced by 1/4 (rounding up), and of course it is an extensive modification requiring three different hardpoints. Screambox Array (External AND Weapon): A Screambox Array is legally considered an active denial system, and it is meant as a non-lethal crowd dispersal agent. It fires a blast of high-energy beams that excite water and fat molecules in the top 4mm of skin, which causes intense pain until the targets flee its area of effect. Its creators claim it causes no lasting harm besides minor blisters, as the beam wavelength is too short to penetrate skin, but the psychological damage can be long-lasting or even permanent. The system has the Terrifying quality, but on top of that, all physical damage is also dealt as mental damage. Any kind of modern armor, including armored clothing, prevents all effects, as does full cover. However, that armor must be full from head to toe, and anyone who has any exposed skin must make a very difficult Brawn+Discipline roll not to flee the targeted area. Shredclaws X (Overhaul or Chassis AND External): A Yu Jingese mod also called the Oroku, these are paired limbs originally made for Crabbots but now available at TAG scale as well. They replace the machine's arms and hands or manipulators with serrated blades that operate on a chainsaw-like rotary rasp with powerful hydraulics, allowing them to tear through walls, chassis or military-grade armor easily. Shredclaws cannot hold weapons or be used to manipulate objects except for crudely shoving them, and they get increased Difficulty to attack non-stationary targets. The rending claws also degrade quickly, requiring frequent and costly replacement. The higher the rating, however, the higher their Anti-Materiel quality and damage. When rolling damage, each Effect rolled reduces the damage rating by 2, and if it hits 0dN damage, the claws cannot be used again until the renders are replaced for the claws' Maintenance cost, which does not otherwise need to be paid. If installed on a TAG that does not normally have hands or on a remote other than a Crabbot, melee attacks with the claws have +2 Complication range due to the structural differences. Sleeper Housing X (Chassis): Sleeper housings are also known as rat panels, and they use smart materials and bodywork to disguise other mods, giving +X Difficulty to Observation rolls to notice them or figure out what they do. The GM decides whether or not this applies while the disguised mod is in active use, but by default the Difficulty increase drops to +1 regardless of rating when the disguised mod is being used. Usually you buy and install this alongside the mod it disguises; installing it by itself doubles installation time due to the custom refitting required. Swapsocket (Limb): This replaces a remote's normal limb mounting, allowing modular limbs to be replaced in the socket much faster - only 15 minutes of work and a Tech roll. If the technician installing the Swapsocket has Tech Focus 4+, all of the remote's limbs can be replaced with swapsockets at once. While this makes changing limbs much easier, each swapsocket reduces the remote's Structure by 1. Waldo (Limb): This is an articulated mechanical arm with functioning hand. This lets the remote do anything a hand and arm could do - open doors, throw stuff, wield small weapons and so on. If used in pairs, they can do anything two hands could do! Handy. Specialised Waldo X (Limb): These come in Surgical, Engineering or other variants, counting as a kit for a specific skill and allowing the remote pilot to make rolls with that skill without being physically present but without the normal Complication range increase or Reaction cost. The waldo also allows the remote to serve as an assistant for appropriate skill rolls, with a TN of 10+X. Each additional specialised waldo halves the amount of time needed to do a relevant job, but adds +1 Complication range. Some skills are rarer and more expensive - good luck finding a specialized thieving army cheaply, for example. They exist, but they cost more than surgical ones and are generally less legal. Next time: Playing a TAG Pilot
|
|
#
?
Jun 18, 2023 17:06
|
|
|
joylessdivision posted:Erik has a friend in the catacombs Phantomas is my emblem for how the trilogy is both awful and kind of awesome, even setting aside my own project of recording every Vampire lineage. I think of Weinberg's two trilogies almost like the Jose Chung X-files episodes of the World of Darkness, just without the self-awareness or writing quality those had - a parody whether intentional or otherwise of the dumbest bits of the setting and the pulp genre that's done with such obvious enthusiasm and affection for both that you can't mistake it for being earnestly mean spirited, however poorly executed it is. I think thats a big part of why people gave it the big side-eye and tried to memoryhole it as both non-canon and not worth reading: it's bad in this specific way where (a lot like Tower of Babel, actually) you can't really ignore its approach, and it just shreds a lot of the pretentiousness to focus on 'wouldn't it be cool if...?' That part isn't fully evident yet but trust me, as we go it will be, particularly by the second trilogy. Rambam! The Nictuku! Kabbalistic Demons! Tortured Romance! The Three Musketeer-Stooges! A giant ghoul panther presented without a trace of irony! Stay tuned because they're all in here. Napoleon Nelson posted:"Blonde hair the color of the new moon." He literally picked the only phase of the moon that is entirely black, that has nothing that could even approach blonde. lmao I didn't even notice that because my eyes glaze over whenever Bob starts describing another hot blonde. Incredible.
|
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2023 03:21
|
|
|
wait wait why is the Rambam showing up in vampire oh dear lord this is going to make me sad isn't it e: oh god kabbalistic demons this is definitely going to make me angry
|
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2023 03:30
|
|
|
Rambam turns up and generally owns bones, as memory serves. As for the Kabbalah element, it was a big point of reference for Weinberg in his other works. Not a terribly well executed one though, and I don't know that he ever actually went and studied Kabbalah properly either in its appropriated forms or in the traditional form (for instance, the following line: 'we must delve into the darkest secrets of the mystical tome known as The Kabbalah'? It doesn't suggest a particular personal familiarity!) In this context, the Sheddim are the remnants left over when God created the earlier worlds, spiteful and hostile to their successors. Its giving Cosmic Horror Qliphothic vibes.
|
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2023 04:01
|
|
|
Mors Rattus posted:wait RAMBAM is literally introduced in a Vampire supplement "A World of Darkness: The Promised Lands". I was extremely excited about him because he's named loving RAMBAM. Again, this sounds exactly like the kind of extremely dumb nonsense I enjoy. I may have to double check my digital library to see if I have these books. I have a handful of WoD novels in paperback but I'm sure I don't have these
|
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2023 05:17
|
|
|
Loomer posted:I think thats a big part of why people gave it the big side-eye and tried to memoryhole it as both non-canon and not worth reading: it's bad in this specific way where (a lot like Tower of Babel, actually) you can't really ignore its approach, and it just shreds a lot of the pretentiousness to focus on 'wouldn't it be cool if...?' That part isn't fully evident yet but trust me, as we go it will be, particularly by the second trilogy. Rambam! The Nictuku! Kabbalistic Demons! Tortured Romance! The Three Musketeer-Stooges! A giant ghoul panther presented without a trace of irony! Stay tuned because they're all in here. I do like how the Nicktuku are just presented as way more commonly known than they ever are in the game. Y'know, the super secretive ancient Nosferatu whose life goal is eating other Nosferatu.
|
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2023 13:34
|
|
|
Loomer posted:lmao I didn't even notice that because my eyes glaze over whenever Bob starts describing another hot blonde. Incredible. No you see he means brand new, the color of the molten mantle that was ripped from the surface of the earth by the asteroid impact that formed it.
|
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2023 13:43
|
|
|
"Her hair was the color of a TV station tuned to a dead channel." 
|
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2023 15:00
|
|
|
PurpleXVI posted:I would kill for an updated Birthright divorced from D&D. You could play the old computer game without ever bothering with the janky first person dungeon adventuring though strategy part certainly had its own share of bugs... Would be very cool to see it redone Nd expanded so you could play the whole continent.
|
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2023 16:06
|
|
|
Birthright fascinates me. I've tried doing a retroclone-thing with rules rewritten to be clearer and more procedural and straightforward (at least as I find rules clear) but there's just so much.  It's probably one of the more interesting AD&D 2e products simply because it includes an entire, separate, workable, high-crunch strategy game as a setting conceit.
|
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2023 17:07
|
|
|
Leave it aside until the moment they invent an actual good AI GM to reduce the amount of detail you need to know.
|
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2023 17:44
|
|
|
LatwPIAT posted:Birthright fascinates me. I've tried doing a retroclone-thing with rules rewritten to be clearer and more procedural and straightforward (at least as I find rules clear) but there's just so much. I think I would just go out on a limb and call them the best domain management rules officially published for D&D. They never made good rules light alternatives that I recall, so not a lot of competition. I guess your retroclone cut ties with D&D? PoontifexMacksimus fucked around with this message at 18:36 on Jun 19, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2023 18:32
|
|
|
PoontifexMacksimus posted:You could play the old computer game without ever bothering with the janky first person dungeon adventuring I already did that LP, thank you, never again. LatwPIAT posted:Birthright fascinates me. I've tried doing a retroclone-thing with rules rewritten to be clearer and more procedural and straightforward (at least as I find rules clear) but there's just so much. The strategy layer mostly suffers from being a bit fiddly and not really taking character stats into account much, or various modifiers, and having a few very clear "best choices" among which the main one is "SKELETONS." Also some parts could absolutely do with being presented in a clearer way. But it has the best army-level mass combat system I've yet seen in any RPG.
|
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2023 18:35
|
|
|
PurpleXVI posted:I already did that LP, thank you, never again. I must've missed that, and not finding it on the LP Archive site, do you have a link?
|
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2023 18:38
|
|
|
PoontifexMacksimus posted:I must've missed that, and not finding it on the LP Archive site, do you have a link? https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4001761 It isn't archived yet, but it's on the https://lparchive.org/lpmaster/ master database among with several other ill-advised projects of mine.
|
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2023 18:49
|
|
|
The Masquerade of the Red Death - Book 1: Blood War - Part 4, Chapter 14 Part One Part Two Part Three A little bit of a shorter post this time, as I spent yesterday running Mage and have stuff to do today. We’re now into Part 2 of the Book, which brings us another Poe quotation:  Strictly speaking all the chapters reset per part but I’m keeping consecutive numbering for my own convenience. We’re now moving to New York City on March 14. Our new POV character? Why: the most dangerous woman in the world. She owns one of the largest skyscrapers in the city and lives in the penthouse. It is, as you might expect, fancy – though the description is rather lacking and a little plain. We are not spared this with her description, and she naturally sleeps naked:  Tapered legs and not straight-up-and-down cylinders? Wowee! I suppose we should just be thankful she’s not yet another blonde, but it’s ‘interesting’ that we get an immediate and relatively detailed description of her while McCann is still basically just ‘big guy, dark eyes’. And interesting, I mean ‘textbook men writing women’ behaviour. Her name is Alicia Varney, and we mostly get a lot of indulgent nonsense that tries to sell power and prestige but mostly comes across as pretentious. She has voracious appetites for food and sex and rarely goes to bed alone, there’s a brief masturbation sequence with the shower head but by god its no match for a man, and then an incredibly ‘mid-level faux-luxury hotel’ breakfast of three slices of French toast, a selection of ‘imported fruit jellies’, coffee, and the WSJ. Its all very try-hard and stereotyped hedonist, without the necessary appreciation of actual luxury and the pleasures of privilege to sell it. The prose is particularly poor here too, and one aspect that really irritates me is that when you're doing luxury, its incredibly easy to slip a couple of specific products or brands in to indicate someone's taste, social status, and outlook on the world, so the textureless 'its fancy, y'all' descriptions are just utterly toothless and give nothing except the most shallow idea of privilege. We also meet her manservant:  Jackson is a real badass throughout the rest of the trilogy, as you’d expect, and yet again a case of Weinberg being unable to resist making everyone the best at what they do. He and Flavia will bond later but not over their shared experience of being objectified and treated as trophies by their vastly-more-powerful owners. Similarly, Varney’s company – Varney Enterprises – is a big deal:  And America, as usual, remains a gently caress:  Varney, who’s lived as a peasant and now as a veritable queen, is considering whether or not to be made into a vampire, and if it just clicked, yes, her name is a reference to Varney the Vampire. She deals with them regularly but likes life too much to sacrifice it. Jackson is more pragmatic because it’d suck, but in his words, ‘Survival ain’t pretty… death is awfully final.’ Also, he might be a war criminal since it’s implied he may have already committed predatory cannibalism in Vietnam, but that’s neither here nor there. Is this dialogue about whether they could bear to live without the sun foreshadowing? no. There’s more flirtation and power dynamic (read: Varney belittles Jackson and asserts herself in the most shallow way possible), and then we meet Sumohn, Varney’s beloved black panther, which Jackson is pretty convinced is a goddamn ridiculously dangerous pet to own. Point to him: it is not an appropriate pet to keep in a basement kennel in an apartment building. With breakfast done, they’re off to work for the day. Now, just quickly: What in the gently caress is this outfit?  Bullfighting jackets with velvet skirts? They clash, Alicia! They clash, drat it! Moving on, we find out that Varney’s people can’t get into Russia even though Varney’s company has been doing business with the Commies since 1919, and then… Well, for some reason Varney thinks that Andropov is still running Russia?   There’s been a sudden coup eliminating the old guard, including Varney’s contacts at the Kremlin and the ministries, which is to say: Baba Yaga done ate ‘em. No foreigners allowed. This is one of the big divergences, really, because we all know how Russia’s post-1991 economics panned out – but here, Bob’s following the canon, so it’s not really his fault. Jackson’s sources are good enough that he knows about Baba Yaga meeting with ‘the Premier’, and Varney, of course, recognizes the description of the Iron Hag because good golly who could this mysterious sexy lady in her tower be? Sumohn arrives, and she’s just a giant goddamn black panther which Varney, naturally, can communicate with telepathically. If you haven’t already guessed, Varney is Anis’s puppet like McCann is for Lameth. So at this point, Varney goes for a walk to clear her head, taking her cat with her. She’s going to the park in Prospect Heights, which from googling is a very nice place. But in the World of Darkness (part of this is from the next chapter):   This is just how New York is, I guess. Again, Weinberg’s method here is to basically take any crime scare hype campaign (like the real one around Prospect Park and NYC's crime problems generally back in the 80s), accept it as factual, and then dial it up to 11, and it works as what it is, even as over the top as the results get. Terrorists setting up training camps in Brooklyn’s park is just ‘part of the New York scene’, and heads on pikes are just, like, the local culture, bro, you wouldn’t get it if you’re from further north than 51st street. But Varney tells Jackson not to worry despite this whole bit where the park is a real version of a right-winger’s fever dream of a majority Black neighbourhood. She has a giant panther to protect her, which – you know what? Yeah, gently caress it. If I have a giant, probably supernatural panther, I’m not going to be that worried about muggers and crackheads either. She leaves Jackson to get cracking on the Russia situation and make plans for the night’s visit to a vampire bar, The Devil’s Playground, and we leave the chapter there. Next time: Probably the grossest poo poo in the entire trilogy, and also, Reuben ex machina!
|
|
#
?
Jun 20, 2023 07:41
|
|
|
This is indeed gonzo AF, I can't even imagine how the murder gangs get to the top of that ~4.5 meter fence to impale heads on. I wish WoD took this approach and ran with it instead of trying to convince us that the game world is realistic in any way.
|
|
#
?
Jun 20, 2023 08:18
|
|
|
By popular demand posted:This is indeed gonzo AF, I can't even imagine how the murder gangs get to the top of that ~4.5 meter fence to impale heads on. This is all extremely 1st edition. 1e Masquerade especially was all about the leaning into the absolute worst aspects of the world and cranking them up to Gonzo. It's absurd sure, but the influence of the Splatterpunk writers of the 80s is definitely rippling throughout the setting and it seems this author "Got it", mostly. At least he got the "Everything is worse" part down. And remember that NYC was held by the Sabbat in 1e until.....uhhhh whenever it was that they lost it to the Cam so yeah, this poo poo is bananas but it weirdly makes sense. It's still dumb as hell, but it makes sense.
|
|
#
?
Jun 20, 2023 14:08
|
|
|
joylessdivision posted:And remember that NYC was held by the Sabbat in 1e until.....uhhhh whenever it was that they lost it to the Cam so yeah, this poo poo is bananas but it weirdly makes sense. It's still dumb as hell, but it makes sense. Indeed! The Battle of New York wasn't until the late 90's, so yes, this is all the Sabbat making New York City* a cesspool via their influence/lack of caring what mortals do but kind of encouraging the cesspool part because it makes their style of the Masquerade easier. *Save for the isle of Manhattan itself which is ruthlessly held by the Ventrue, specifically the first one to twig how big a deal Wall Street would be and embraced a giant brood of 8th Generation Ventrue to back him/her/them up. The Sabbat could take it they want to but as a point of (foolish) pride don't, because that would make them seem to care about needing mortal things and totally ruin their rep. I believe people still nag Archbishop Polonia to do it anyway but he's already made a big show of Not Caring so he's stuck.
|
|
#
?
Jun 20, 2023 14:43
|
|
|
ActingPower posted:"Her hair was the color of a TV station tuned to a dead channel." Displaying a live ad feed?
|
|
#
?
Jun 20, 2023 21:14
|
|
|
That does sound incredibly cyberpunk. Completely unfitting for this though, but still.
|
|
#
?
Jun 20, 2023 21:38
|
|
|
Planescape: Doors to the Unknown Intro  Doors to the Unknown is kind of fascinating. In the absolutely worst of ways. It's... I'm sure everyone's by now twigged on to me complaining that few of the prior modules seem happy to operate inside Planescape as established, that they all feel some sort of driving desire to invent a new cosmological constant, or way to become a god, or something that's stronger than the gods, or something that can destroy the planes, without considering how it affects everything else. Doors to the Unknown steps that up a notch. See... from bottom to top, you have the Inner Planes, you have the Primes, you have the Outer Planes. What if, DttU ponders, you had something higher up than the Outer Planes? Quite clearly someone had an idea for a classic story where a demon and an angel got fighty, the angel got killed and the demon got locked away, and now later on the demon is about to bust out, forcing the players to pick up where the angel left off against an enemy that's quite out of their league, but perhaps they can rig together a victory with the angel's old gear and clues. But then they realized a demon and an angel weren't anything noteworthy on the planes, so instead of setting it on a nice Prime somewhere, they instead decided to make it a Super Angel and a Super Demon from a Super Reality where everyone's Super Strong and can't be hurt by Normal Reality. If this place exists why isn't everyone trying to solve their Super Conflicts with Super Mercenaries and Super Weapons? It just raises so many more questions than... ugh! UGH! Anyway this adventure makes me so angry that I'm really not going to give it the usual, more detailed lookthrough because it just makes me depressed. Where's my loving good Planescape module, assholes? I'm going to look real silly if I've been saying Planescape was a good setting for so long and it turns out even the developers didn't have a loving clue about what to do with it. It's also packed with several of Planescape's incredibly forgettable iconic characters. I know some folks get excited about Drizzt, that elf queen in the Forgotten Realms that fucks everything, even Elminster sometimes, and I used to know some fans of the canon Dragonlance PC's, even, but I have never. Ever. Heard of anyone giving a poo poo about Planescape's ostensible "iconics" except the Lady of Pain, who's a plot device and not a character. Structure  at least we have some good DiTerlizzi art So the way it's set up is that there are four "mysterious doors" that are each their own adventure, and each of them gets a Super Item that can be used to Super Solve the problem when the Super Devil wakes up and tries to Super Conquer everything again. In the first adventure the PC's are sent off to recover someone else's partial investigation of the Super Adventure. It's a pointlessly complicated situation where an ogre named Estavan hires a wizard named Thames to investigate it for him, then a second guy also hires Thames do to the investigating, and has someone steal Estavan's intelligence and deliver it to Thames. All this just to get the players to walk through a portal to stab some guys and steal the Super Item they're trying to loot before they do. In the second adventure, likewise, the players step through a door into a minidungeon, fight a bad demon, and meet the Super Angel who's still clinging on to life after having been locked away in a lightless cave for 500 years. See, the Super Devil did his evil Super Devil thing for five hundred loving years. And you want me to believe no one ever researched him or learned anything about Super Reality during all this time? That's loving stupid. In the third adventure, the players step through a door to yet another weird other reality, this one being one where no magic words, so lmao gently caress you if you chose to play a Wizard or a Cleric, I guess. Entering the door for this adventure also requires passing a heavily penalized Wisdom check. If no players pass it(they do get second tries), the adventure arbitrarily soft locks and cannot be completed. The locals are weird cyborg robots and the players can either become their new ruler or fight a frog so the current ruler can survive. In the fourth adventure the players have four Super Magical Super Items they can use to defeat the Super Devil. The sad part is that this part introduces a theoretically cool idea: The Super Devil has the ability to parasitize non-Super people, piloting their bodies around while eating their organs for sustenance. It could make for a great murder mystery or something, but instead he just hijacks a dude and then bails straight for Super Reality to power up so he can return and rule Normal Reality. The Super Angel will let the players through the magic door to Super Reality, which is... all the numbers are just loving bigger, for gently caress's sake. They had this big conceptual adventure and then their notes for Super Reality is "double damage, double XP, double speed for everything." It's very important whether the players beat the Super Devil to the source of his Super Powers first so they can destroy them, but as far as I can tell the module doesn't really present anything for adjudicating who gets there quickest. If the players stab the Super Devil... everything goes back to normal and nothing interesting happens. Everyone forgets about the existence of Super Reality or Robot Reality. If the Super Devil stabs the players... he fucks off and causes trouble somewhere else. So it won't bother anyone the players care about or anywhere they hang out for centuries. So anyway, gently caress this module. You know what happens next? Next Up: It's Faction War. Let's see if it's as bad as everyone says it is. Maybe it'll actually be good!
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2023 00:43
|
|
|
That is a really consequence free module. The first adventure reminds me of how in attack of the clones you have emperor palpatine make count dooku hire django fett who hires a lizard lady who uses a robot who drops centipedes top try and kill darth vader's princess girlfriend. What's the point of any of that. Are the fights cool? Are the sights cool? If the answer is no, don't publish the module. They could at least imply that the ultra devil and mega angel come from the same place as the knife wife of planescape but this seems real whack
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2023 00:56
|
|
|
Asterite34 posted:I just realized what Out of the Ashes reminds me of: LatwPIAT posted:Birthright fascinates me. I've tried doing a retroclone-thing with rules rewritten to be clearer and more procedural and straightforward (at least as I find rules clear) but there's just so much. PurpleXVI posted:I would kill for an updated Birthright divorced from D&D. Have you all heard of Seeds of Wars? It is suppose to be the spiritual successor to Birthright. It even has it's intro written by Richard Baker and Colin McComb. Richard Baker and Colin McComb were picked by TSR to design Birthright in 1993. I own it. I have not read the Domain system yet. I was reading the mass battle rules for a bit. If I have time this weekend I may be able to summarize what I've read and throw a few dice around to test out a couple of things. No promises. I do know Bards can have a Culture Faction (the rest are Order, Trade, Faith and Magic Factions that correspond to the classes you think they do). I think Seeds of Wars sits on top of the D&D rules but I'm not sure I would say it's ruleset is "divorced" from D&D. Book here: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/302174/Seeds-of-Wars-Strategy-Roleplay Expansion that has been discussed on Kickstarter here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/blaede/seeds-of-wars-a-new-horizon
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2023 03:12
|
|
|
Helical Nightmares posted:Have you all heard of Seeds of Wars? I haven't heard of it but I would be VERY interested if you'd consider doing an F&F review of it.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2023 03:23
|
|
|
Doors to the unknown really left something to be desired. Did spark some ideas for me though, so that's something?  more credit to wasted potential than the actual adventure in and of itself Arcanuse fucked around with this message at 06:53 on Jun 21, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2023 06:46
|
|
|
PurpleXVI posted:Anyway this adventure makes me so angry that I'm really not going to give it the usual, more detailed lookthrough because it just makes me depressed. Where's my loving good Planescape module, assholes? I'm going to look real silly if I've been saying Planescape was a good setting for so long and it turns out even the developers didn't have a loving clue about what to do with it. It's also packed with several of Planescape's incredibly forgettable iconic characters. I know some folks get excited about Drizzt, that elf queen in the Forgotten Realms that fucks everything, even Elminster sometimes, and I used to know some fans of the canon Dragonlance PC's, even, but I have never. Ever. Heard of anyone giving a poo poo about Planescape's ostensible "iconics" except the Lady of Pain, who's a plot device and not a character. Turns out there was a reason they never pushed too much for Planescape in 3.X and 4 editions.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2023 09:32
|
|
|
The Masquerade of the Red Death - Book 1: Blood War - Part 5, Chapters 15 to 17 Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four Chapter 15 We’re back! This time, we stay with Varney on her walk with her kitty to Prospect Heights and Prospect Park, which is, of course, A gently caress. As joylessdivision pointed out, this is when the Sabbat still controls NYC so its extreme level of over-the-top darkness could be put down to that, though I still wonder about the two terrorists group that’ve set up shop. We never find out who they are, which is… Probably for the best, given Weinberg’s general level of sensitivity to anything remotely touchy. To recap, though: Varney is the most dangerous woman in the world – according to the book, not me – and her cat is a giant, superintelligent black panther named Sumohn. Does Sumohn prowl along easily beside her? Yes, but she’s still on a leash, which is an amazing visual. You put a domestic cat on a leash and they look like they want to commit suicide and I can’t imagine a giant panther is any different. But, anyway – Sumohn and Varney sense hostility and danger in the park. Which, again, is now host to multiple terrorist organizations the headquarters of over half a dozen gangs in a postmark all of two square kilometers in area, so no poo poo. The place has to be tenser than Swedish Dracula being asked to explain the Chechnya incident to the Paradox board. Varney’s come here specifically to lure out assassins, who she can sense telepathically. We had the same thing in Chapter 1 with McCann. Is it deliberate narrative symmetry, or is Weinberg just bad at his job? My money’s on the latter. Sumohn gets taken off the leash and disappears into the trees to stalk, and Varney just goes on walking with genuine pleasure despite the bit where she’s there to lure out and kill assassins. Her usual exercise regime, we learn, is an hour in the gym three times a week, which I mention because we have the usual nonsense here of the lavish eater who only needs to exercise quite moderately but never gains a pound of weight. Then comes the action. Sumohn takes out an assassin off-screen but five more come at Varney, and things get gross. There’s no polite way to say it, so let’s just get it over with: They decide to rape her, and she weaponizes her sexuality against them in some detail to distract them until Sumohn arrives to carry the day. Then, and only then, does she use her tricks to ‘paralyze the part of the[ir] brains controlling motor skills’ and tear some throats out with her bare hands. Why, precisely, we needed the ‘come gently caress me’ act if she can switch off their brains at a distance with a glance is simple: Bob was, sometimes, a gross lil guy. Once again, the initial attackers turn out to be distractions and a new one is behind her with a Kobra submachine gun. As he opens up – deus ex machina again! A handsome blonde in a white suit appears from nowhere, stabbing our sixth assassin in the back with a bowie knife after ‘paralyzing his fingers’. It is, of course, loving Reuben. He vanishes into thin air but not before telling Varney the assassin’s name, Leo Taggert, and that he was a ghoul who could hide his thoughts from Varney’s telepathy. This upsets her considerably because who’d know she’s a telepath? Who’s been talking? Why did they spend such good money on her? We’ll find out later because that wraps Chapter 15. It was short, but not good. Chapter Sixteen We’re still with Varney in NYC. Now, night – just before 1AM on the 15th to be precise. Varney’s at the vampire club, The Devil’s Playground, wearing ‘an outfit made entirely of layers of white lace with nothing underneath’. These days that’s a little less shocking, I suppose, but naturally she’s still the most attractive woman in the building, because Bob does that, and naturally, she usually comes there to hunt for men, because of course she does. Tonight, mercifully, she’s going right to a meeting with Justine Bern instead – Archbishop of NYC, a 5th generational Lasombra and serial diablerist, and Varney’s domitor. For a relieving change, we meet a woman with a description who isn’t the hottest lady ever:  On the way in, she spots Reuben and a mysterious redhead in a green sequined dress, and in a charmingly dumb touch Reuben waves to her and she waves back awkwardly because she’s not sure how else to handle the situation. We’re given a little infodump on the Sabbat – mostly fine – including the disappearance of Melinda Galbraith, the Regent, several months earlier in Mexico. I believe that should be coming up soon in joylessdivision’s pursuit of Sam Haight, so I’ll leave that one for him to cover! Some other vampires in Bern’s court are there too. Hugh Portiglio, Tremere dickhead extraordinaire, snarls and hisses because all the Tremere in these books are dickheads with like, two exceptions, and Molly Wade, Malkavian lunatic who might be playing it up to gently caress with people. They’re Bern’s advisors, because this is a meeting of the rulers of NYC, which Varney is included in because she’s wealthy enough to bankroll the entire Sabbat. Then… Well, remember what I said about Weinberg’s understanding of anarchs and Sabbat?  There’s a bit of back and forth about the rivalry between Portiglio and Wade, how Bern killed and probably ate her predecessor, and so on. Its about what you’d expect. Then, finally, the Society of Leopold returns. Are they major players? Is it a dramatic raid? An agent in disguise working to build intelligence for a relief mission to the archdiocese? In a word: no.  This is one of very few times we get the Society invoked again, and it’s a brief reference as pawns, nothing more. Its weird how Weinberg’s usual approach is to throw everything cool at the page but he more-or-less ignores the Inquisition entirely. There’s a discussion of Russia – Molly knows Baba Yaga is back courtesy of the madness network – and then it moves to the more important issue: the Red Death’s attack in DC. Everyone involved is, in a nice surprise, too clever to accept the extremely blatant ‘I am the Red Death and I’m here from the Camarilla’ line. But then…  I like Molly. She may be a Sabbat Malkavian, which means she’s almost certainly done some horrific poo poo, but she’s also got some common sense. Portiglio is busy speaking Game Terms and she’s just going ‘nope, gently caress this noise, y’all can burn to death but I’m out’. The Red Death arrives and the battle starts between it and Bern:  Yes, another power name drop. Naturally, it doesn’t work – the shadows just fizzle and sublimate at a touch from the Red Death. Varney probes him (again, these chapters almost directly mirror in structure the ones in Part 1 – if I had more faith in Bob I’d call it clever). We get the same discovery – more than one of them, they’re called the Children of Dreadful Night, etc. Justine and co attempt to flee but the doors are locked thanks to the Red Death’s powers. Is this the end?! No, because unlike Vargoss, Bern understands that bit where she’s a very powerful vampire and just smashes the reinforced fire door into bits, aided by thaumaturgy to disintegrate it into rust. Everyone flees except the dazed Varney, which permits some pretty unnecessary exposition:  I’d like to remind you that Varney is ‘the most dangerous woman in the world’. So naturally, in this situation of great danger, she acts dynamically! Oh, no. She weeps helplessly and waits to die until Reuben turns up in the door to save her. He’s completely immune to the Red Death’s flames, simply walks on in, snatches her up, and takes her to safety using ‘a trick [his] father taught [him]’. The club’s on fire now and we get the standard chaotic club escape background while Reuben outright explains that the Red Death can only hold the Body of Fire for a while. I really loving hate Reuben and Rachel. Here, we learn that they’re brother and sister, and that Varney is Anis’s puppet. Is this reveal dramatic in the least?  No. No it is not. That’s the end of Chapter 16. Chapter Seventeen We jump to another viewpoint now. We’re in the Bulgarian mountains, March 16, 1994. Now we get to meet the Three Stooges in vampire form – Le Clair, Jean Paul, and Baptiste. They’re probably a reference to something but I’m too ill-cultured to spot it. They’re serial diablerists who go from place to place to kill and eat more powerful vampires, which is to say: they’re PCs. Their present target is Dziemianovitch, which seems to be a mangling of the actual name, Dziemianowicz. He’s an especially terrifying and cruel 6th Generation Tzimisce who’s dropped out of all awareness for the last six month, which they know because the local villagers clean his house and talk about it freely. Not much on the horrific flesh tortures, dominate, and blood bonds, our Mr. Dziemianowicz, I guess. Baptiste is especially keen because he’s stuck at 8th gen and the others are at 7th, so he expects to do the deed. Where did these three come from?  So, a bunch of sadistic pricks who had such a good time in the war they got the nickname ‘The Unholy Three’ (Trinity is right there, Bob!), torturing prisoners and doing war crimes. Their embrace came from ‘an officer in their regiment’ old enough to have supported the Student Uprisings of the ‘18th century’. There’s some logistical issues there. Their sire was a devout Marxist and 9th Generation Brujah, who thought he could use their violence for the revolution. Unfortunately for him, they promptly ate him, and launched their diablerie plan to become the rulers of Europe. In the intervening eight decades, they’ve eaten eight more vampires. Now its time for the ninth. There’s a long lot of them sneaking into the place – though sneaking may not be the right term, since Baptiste loses patience easily and smashes the windows to climb in. There are various boobytraps – a hall of arrows, a pit of acid, a pit of spikes, razor sharp hidden wires, etc. LeClair has the ability to control and disable mechanical devices at a distance because Weinberg gives that out like candy. Its not very compelling but does include the immortal line:  Its also nice to know that they’ve kept up with mortal comedy:  Is someone waiting? Yes – Le Clair can sense them, and there’s no hostility in them. They finally break into the crypt, and… Dziemianowicz is long dead! Gasp! Waiting for them is – shock! The Red Death! The Red Death ate him first (which, naturally, tells us something important: just months earlier it was worthwhile for them to diablerize at least one 6th Generation vampire). So what’s he waiting for?  Oh no! Not Phantomas!
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2023 14:52
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 7, 2024 12:16 |
|
|
This is all making me feel like Planescape is a setting that's sold on the notion of breadth that has zero or possibly negative depth. You're at the place where everything in reality converges and it's... a sort of magic london but not really, populated with a dozen or so guilds that all have about one point two opinions each. Also 'everything in reality' is homogenous lumps of 'this is the place that is the Most X.' So every time you run into anything it's either 'this is a normal example of a place/object/person from the Large Pretty Trees dimension;' 'this is a cunning SUBVERSION of a place/object/person from the Large Pretty Trees dimension;' or 'this is INCIDENTALLY a place/object/person from the Large Pretty Trees dimension but they live in magic london and talk in fake cockney now and don't miss home much.'
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2023 14:52
|
|
