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SkyeAuroline posted:constructive criticism If all someone/a group is doing is repeating the same point, which the author clearly rejected multiple times, it might be criticism but it certainly isn't constructive.
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Jun 29, 2023 20:35
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Planescape: Dead Gods Chapter 7: The Ruins of Pelion  So, Chapter 7 can happen in a number of different places. It can happen before Chapter 6, for instance, if the player decides that "Orcus learned the last word on the third layer of Arborea, we should investigate that" is more important than immediately getting ahead of him in the chase for the wand. And it's not bad reasoning on the players' part. They expect that a confrontation with Orcus/Tenebrous will cap off the module and that they should be ready with some sort of counter to the Last Word, or that perhaps they can learn it(or some other Word of Power) themselves to give themselves an advantage. But, you know what? I'm going to spoil you: the players never have to deal with the Last Word, or fight Orcus, at all, nor can they learn any of the Words of Power from Pelion themselves. Instead what happens is that they travel to the third layer of Pelion and find an orb, which lets them see back in time to before Orcus visited the area and destroyed all traces of the Word. At this point they play not as themselves, but as eighth-level characters they will have rolled up exclusively for this little side-jaunt consisting of four rooms and two potential combat encounters(no there are no pregens for this). They enter a crypt under The Last Spire, where they find the Last Word guarded by a pool of toxic waste, a big slime and a big snake. Then two immortals sit around in front of the words telling the players how dangerous they are, and if the players try to read and learn any of the Words themselves, they explode. Returned to their own bodies, they might try to find the Last Spire, and they now can, but all the Words were destroyed by Orcus anyway. Chapter 7 can gently caress right off. Chapter 8: Deepest Pandemonium  So with that out of my system, lets proceed to a part of Dead Gods that doesn't suck rancid rear end. For the uninitiated, Pandemonium is a plane of caves, nothing but caves, filled with howling wind that eventually drives everyone insane. The exception is Agathion, where the tunnels are replaced by small, separate cave systems carved out of the solid rock often miles or hundreds of miles apart, generally used as prisons and disposals by powerful gods and mages. It also has no natural light whatsoever. The players can easily get to Pandemonium, the Bleakers maintain a permanent portal from the Gatehouse in Sigil to one of their fortresses on Pandemonium and they know the plane pretty well and, being Bleakers, aren't huge assholes about letting others use it. Unfortunately, no one the party bumps into can tell them how to get to Agathion, the fourth layer. The only lead they can pick up anywhere is that they need to find a travelling circus for clues. The travelling circus is pretty cool. It consists of a fleet of carts and other vehicles, all escorting, following or tethered to, a literal floating castle that they inherited from a wizard that felt Pandemonium needed to become more cheerful. Per the art, the gravity in Pandemonium is also towards the nearest wall, rather than a universal "down," so it looks pretty spectacular and is probably one of my favourite art pieces from the module. Asking around a bit, the party can find two crusaders who're hiding out in the circus because a Marilith is after them after they tried to liberate a Deva imprisoned in Agathion. One of them has gone insane and the other will tell the party where they can find an entrance to Agathion in exchange for a way off of Pandemonium(spell, magic item, enough money to buy it, etc.) after which the other will spontaneously try to attack the PC's because one mid-level Fighter against an entire party of adventurers is going to do something other than let the players pick over his body for magic items and other loot. The non-insane crusader points the party towards the ruined fortress of Caderis, near which is located the "Ingress" that will allow them to reach Agathion. The players can get a guide to that place from the Bleakers' hideout, but the only available guide will, inexplicably, refuse to accompany the party if they don't have at least one female party member because he "hates men" for no clearly defined reason beyond "he's mad, lmao." We're told to toss pretty much anything nasty that can survive in the dark at the PC's to entertain them during the week-long journey down through the layers of Pandemonium to Caderis, but once again aren't given any sort of random encounter table or any detailed-and-scaled appropriate encounters to challenge the PC's, once again putting a whole bunch of work into the GM's court.  When they reach Caderis, the party bumps into this cool group that will attack the party if they say they're going to see the Ingress. If the players talk to the innkeeper in Caderis to get directions to the Ingress, the group will also attack the PC's for unclear reasons. The players can skip this entirely and just use the directions from the crusader at the circus, something that takes longer, but since there's no actual time pressure, it lets them avoid having to butcher a bunch of random people. So what is the Ingress?  The Ingress is a giant meat served by littler meats that will demand all the party's food. At this point the party can then say where they want to go(the module says that "Agathion" is too vague, so presumably "Agathion, right next to the Wand of Orcus" will do), at which point the little meats pick up the party and shove them inside the Ingress' fat folds and they get teleported through the Meat Dimension ala Doom 3 until they get pooped out in a featureless, exit-less cave network on Agathion. Somewhat ominously, the floor is covered in bones. The party arrives about 200 yards from the Wand of Orcus, though they don't quite know where it is in the winding tunnels. There are really only four dangers in here: Two Visages arrive shortly after the PC's do and will require stabbing. An astrally-projecting half-ogre Cleric of Orcus will try to fight the players when he meets them. That the players did not bring the Gold Circlet That the players did not bring an escape route Ha ha, yeah, because the Ingress is loving one-way only. If the players did not psychically anticipate that and bring a magical way back up to one of the other layers or off Pandemonium entirely, they may end Orcus' threat and then get stuck living in a literal hole in the rock until they die of old age or their supplies run out. In any case, after stumbling around in the darkness for a few hours, the players will bumble into an invisible wall which blocks them from reaching the Wand of Orcus, which is just on the other side. There are three ways to break these walls: Get a devotee of Kiaransalee to tell the barrier to gently caress off(if the players restored Erehe's memory, unlikely as that is, he might have chosen to come along and do it) Cast a Disintegrate spell on the barrier(who would expect Disintegrate, a spell for destroying physical objects, to function on what is apparently an immaterial barrier?) Pick up bones from the floor and smash them against the barrier until you've done 50 points of damage(why would anyone ever think to try this????) At this point, the Circlet from Orcus' secret lair becomes relevant. If someone puts it on and thinks real hard about a solution to the barrier, then pass a wisdom check, they instantly learn the three methods for breaking the barrier. And I would like to point out, once again, how insane and convoluted this is. If I was a PC I would expect that a magic barrier would need to be Dispelled, not Disintegrated, for instance. Plus it's a problem with no "backup" solution, no way to brute force it in exchange for HP or resources. I would love to hear what PC's reached this stage of the module and then just got stuck here until the GM gave up and told them the solution. But, let's say that the players destroy the barrier. Now they stand before the WAND OF ORCUS, a big rod of metal with a human skull at the end. The solution to destroying it is to touch it with the gold circlet. But whoever's holding the circlet also gets destroyed, so to avoid permanently losing a character the PC's will have to think to toss the circlet on the ground and hit it with the wand. There are no hints, anywhere, that just pushing them together will hurt whoever does it OR that it will destroy the wand(whoever's holding the circlet just gets "vibes" that they should push the two together, which I think would generally make most PC's want to not do it since most magical impulses pushed on players in modules are ways for them to die horribly). The alternative is for someone to pick up the wand and offer their own soul to it as fuel to teleport it away to some distant corner of the multiverse. Because, see, Orcus is on a timer. Without the wand, he's not completely divine, and knowing the Last Word is slowly killing him. He will arrive moments after the players either destroy or banish the wand and go "gurgle, blargh, can't believe you did this to me, you suuuuuck" and die. Again. And turns to stone. And then fades away to nothing. If our PC's also prepared a way out, they can now go celebrate and... yeah, no one's going to loving pay them because this quest was entirely of their own curiosity, pretty much.. If the players, however, get stuck trying to figure out a way through the barrier or a way to destroy/banish the wand, Orcus shows up, Last Words the PC's and proceeds to reign over the multiverse with the ability to melt opposing gods with a harsh remark. Chapter 9: Graveyard of the Gods  But wait? What's this? Another chapter? Didn't the party already watch Orcus melt? Ah, yes, they did, but the astrally projecting half-ogre priest steals the remains of the Wand of Orcus, or finds where the players banished it to, and then also finds the corpse of Orcus floating in the Astral Plane, and jury-rigs a ritual he's convinced will resurrect Orcus. Again. The party is supposed to "find out about this" and also care about it, somehow, then travel to the Astral Plane where Anubis and his oddly detailed feet show up to yell: "BEHOLD, BRIEF MORTALS, I CAN'T DO MY OWN WORK, SO I NEED YOU TO GO KICK THAT PRIEST GUY'S rear end. PLEASE AND THANK YOU."  The final final dungeon is literally clambering over Orcus' petrified corpse floating in the Astral Plane to reach the head where the priest is doing his evil resurrection ritual. This involves dealing with: some skeletons, some bats and after a while standing on Orcus' corpse starts doing damage, so the players should, I guess, either move quickly or just fly or something. They're decently levelled PC's at this point(there are no listed XP gains for solving any of the previous things, but I can't imagine the GM that doesn't hand out at least a level-up or two and is still alive after running this module), so none of this should challenge them. But the final encounter might just be the most dangerous one conceived of in any D&D module.  So the players reach Orcus' head just as the ritual finishes and reality stutters, flickers and everyone is now in Sigil, except its a Sigil where Orcus is doing a jig on top of his defeated enemies, including the Lady of Pain and half of the city's populace. This is all an illusion, but one that does real damage, and every round Orcus does 4d10 unresistable, unavoidable damage. What's keeping the illusion running is the half-ogre priest, who's hiding in a house in Illusion Sigil somewhere, and until he's beat, the damage will continue. Let's assume the players are all Fighters, they're all 9th level as per the max provided for the adventure, and there are 6 of them. Assuming max HP(not rolled or very luckily rolled) and no constitution bonuses , this would be 540 HP tops. More realistically, if rolled, probably about half that, 270. Orcus does on average 22 damage per turn, which means that in about 14 turns, he'll have wiped the party out. Locating the priest requires Intelligence checks, where the time required to locate him is 10-(Intelligence-Roll), so if you have 18 Int and roll 16, you get 10-(18-16) = 8 minutes, i.e. 8 rounds. Of course, anyone with a high Int is likely to be a mage, which means in a party that probably won't flub these checks, they have even less HP, and thus less time, to find and kill the priest. Also, the players need to see through the illusion to start doing this at all, and Orcus won't attack until the PC's see through the illusion and start looking for the priest... which is actually the best possible result, because hold on to your assholes for this part. It takes ten rounds to finish the spell... at which point Orcus and his priest vanishes and nothing happens. It was all a failure, and the players take no damage. On the other hand, if the players DO interfere, they can also cause nothing to happen by finding the priest and killing him quickly... but at the risk of some of them getting killed. Once again, let me repeat this: if the players fail nothing happens. So the players should just stay home and play cards. NO ONE REWARDS THEM, NOT EVEN loving ANUBIS WHO ASKED THEM TO HELP. gently caress this module. gently caress Monte Cook. PurpleXVI fucked around with this message at 22:52 on Jun 29, 2023 |
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Jun 29, 2023 20:44
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This is why the Athars are right. AGAB.
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Jun 29, 2023 21:49
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It always seemed self-evidently true that the gods are just extremely powerful assholes.
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Jun 29, 2023 22:20
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PurpleXVI posted:Cast a Disintegrate spell on the barrier(who would expect Disintegrate, a spell for destroying physical objects, to function on what is apparently an immaterial barrier?) It's not COMPLETELY insane, as Disintegrate is one of the few ways to destroy a Wall of Force.
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Jun 29, 2023 22:32
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Arborea only has three layers.
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Jun 29, 2023 22:51
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SirPhoebos posted:Arborea only has three layers. Oh, right, my bad. Third layer not fourth.
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Jun 29, 2023 22:52
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I don't think that I ever seen a module so dedicated to pissing every single player off at each and every stage of progression. I'm definitely lifting the "fight on the body of a dead god" concept though.
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Jun 29, 2023 23:14
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nothing to see here. The art in Dead Gods is really nice even if the module sucks. Angrymog fucked around with this message at 23:37 on Jun 29, 2023 |
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Jun 29, 2023 23:26
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PurpleXVI posted:Once again, let me repeat this: if the players fail nothing happens. So the players should just stay home and play cards. NO ONE REWARDS THEM, NOT EVEN loving ANUBIS WHO ASKED THEM TO HELP. "We wanted to put this in as a setpiece, but couldn't figure out where in the adventure it should go, so ENJOY YOUR lovely TWIST EPILOGUE" Has anyone paid the PCs anything for any part of this adventure, outside of whatever they looted from Orcus's sock drawer?
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Jun 30, 2023 01:23
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Glazius posted:"We wanted to put this in as a setpiece, but couldn't figure out where in the adventure it should go, so ENJOY YOUR lovely TWIST EPILOGUE" That one guy who asks them to return to Crux at the start of Chapter 4 pays them about 3000 gold or so.
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Jun 30, 2023 01:25
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Apparently Planescape PCs are getting paid with the satisfaction of a job well-done in these adventures.
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Jun 30, 2023 01:53
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PC's really would've been better off helping that one modron go home instead of this orcus business, huh
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Jun 30, 2023 02:09
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Arcanuse posted:PC's really would've been better off helping that one modron go home instead of this orcus business, huh Pentadrones are actually pretty chonky and nothing ever suggests its going to leave the party unless they get near a portal to Mechanus that it recognizes. It fights like a mid-level fighter with 18/00 Strength and has a paralyzing gas attack, so throw it a spare weapon or two and let it go to town, since if the players say they intend to help, it'll attack threats to them and aid them in combat. You could argue it'll almost certainly find a portal to Mechanus in the break between chapters 3 and 4 when its in Sigil, but nothing ever explicitly says so... So bringing it along as muscle for the rest of the adventure is actually a great idea. Especially since its also immune to illusions and can thus no-sell a lot of Visage bullshit.
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Jun 30, 2023 02:25
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The canon outcome is that Orcus gets his Wand back and is revived, but the Last Word is incompatible with his now flesh and blood body, if he utters it, there is a decent chance it forever kills him instead of his target. So he’s still very dangerous just not as much as he thought he would be.
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Jun 30, 2023 02:56
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If memory serves the point is that yes, Orcus comes back, but Orcus comes back, not Tenebrous, so he's 'just' a demon lord, and not a god anymore. Which is not the ideal outcome but far from the worst.
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Jun 30, 2023 03:47
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MonsterEnvy posted:The canon outcome is that Orcus gets his Wand back and is revived, but the Last Word is incompatible with his now flesh and blood body, if he utters it, there is a decent chance it forever kills him instead of his target.
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Jun 30, 2023 04:35
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PurpleXVI posted:One thing I personally really liked, and which I recall the Sabbat stuff being heavy on(though I think in V20 this just got rolled into the corebook), were the alternate morality paths. I liked that it was less "be a good Judeo-Christian" and more "have some sort of moral system to anchor your mind, even if that moral system is alien or evil," that it was about declaring that you weren't just going to be run by your base desires and urges(except, lmao, I think for like one or two paths that were LITERALLY embracing that), that there was a thinking, reasoning being inside of you, which grounded you away from the Beast. Yeah, Paths were a cool idea, even if the execution didn't always work properly. And I think it added a bit of extra horror to the setting - the realization that clinging to your humanity wasn't keeping the Beast at bay because you were being moral, but just because it was giving you an identity separate from the hunt, and any identity could do the same thing, even if it seemed monstrous or insane to a normal person - and that once you survived your first few centuries, you'd probably end up going down one of those roads too.
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Jun 30, 2023 05:53
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Thinking about doing a LANCER write-up, although I should probably reread the book/look around on the internet to see what other people have said in reviews of it first. Its a fun game from my personal experience, although my group never got very far into the higher levels and generally I feel like d20 games always poo poo the bed when they get high enough on the XP track.
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Jun 30, 2023 05:58
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The Masquerade of the Red Death - Book 1: Blood War - Part Seven, Chapters 23 to 26 Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four Part Five Part Six We’re back with the most notorious trilogy of oWoD novels ever printed. A bit of a shorter one today since I’ve been busy running Mage and trying to find work as a proofer to fill some gaps. Chapter 23 We pick up an hour later in St. Louis as Madeleine departs. But we have a new POV – Darrow, the Brujah advisor to Vargoss. One of the irritating bits about Weinberg’s work is he has a fairly rigid third person limited approach even where it doesn’t really serve the flow of the narrative best, but that’s neither here nor there. Back to the story. Darrow finds Madeleine captivating because she’s clearly as deadly as the stories say – and looking forward to the challenge of killing her. Wait, why does he want to kill her? Well, because Darrow serves two masters. This is our first chapter with his PoV, the third he’s appeared in in any significance, and we’re immediately told he has divided loyalties. Weinberg doesn’t really do subtle reveals even where he tries (which he isn’t here.) We get some fluff for Madeleine as they all sit around talking about what a powerfully commanding personality she has and try to work out her real intentions. It takes all of a page for them to work out she’s after the Red Death, because she did outright ask them about it, but this is naturally just evidence of the Cunning and Scheming nature of the Giovanni clan as a whole. There’s nothing subtler than just literally walking up, loudly announcing who you are, and demanding to be told precisely what you want to know, I guess? Either way, we close out quick. Darrow and Uglyface are tasked with working out where she’s going next and warning Flavia if its DC, which naturally, it is. Did this need to be a chapter? I’d hazard ‘no’ – but because Weinberg sticks to a very firm third person limited perspective where he directly tells us in clear and simple terms what’s going on (mostly, anyway), he doesn’t try and get away with sneaking hints in the other chapters. That produces part of the breathless 12-year old vibe of the two trilogies, but not the good part of it. Chapter 24 We’re back off to NYC and Varney now. It’s the night of the 16th and she’s at Perdition, the Anarch club, which depresses her because these drat new vampire kids are all idiots. And, you know, fair enough. Weinberg also gives us this gem:  I could quibble for days on the degree to which this is accurate, but for early period VtM its not too far off the mark. This is the high point in understanding the Sabbat-Anarch dynamic for Weinberg, unfortunately, as we’ll see next Part. What do anarchs listen to? Punk rock, obviously. There are a lot of vampire musicians in Weinberg’s work, and the Perdition is a five-man overloud bunch called The Fingers of Death, punch not included. This isn’t important, but again – I really love the idea that for Weinberg its just utterly normal that there are musician-coteries everywhere. Its dumb, but so much of the rest of the oWoD tries to play the numbers a little straighter and not spend ~10% of the allowable tally of vampires in St. Louis on a trio of jazz legends. There’s a little discussion of how powerful Varney is – naturally, she can wrap high-generation Kindred around her little finger without real effort because they all have feeble minds. Naturally, she’s the one using Bern to gain total control over the Sabbat, because that’s something you can just ‘do’. Oh Bob – though at least he acknowledges it probably won’t work and implies rather strongly that Varney (or more likely, Anis) has been trying this for a long time without much luck. But, why’s she at Perdition slumming it with anarchs if she’s a power player at the highest levels? She’s there, though she doesn’t actually know it, for a mysterious meeting. Who could it be? Reuben? Rachel? Close – its Walter Holmes. Bob being Bob, Walter is the world’s greatest card player with unparalleled dexterity. There’s a rather wanky dialogue between them about how evil Bern is, and so on, and then Varney reads his thoughts. He’s just a late-generation vampire of no note, but naturally, she can tell he’s more than that. We’ll get it later but he’s strongly implied to be no other than the Longinus as well as the 2000-year-old Inconnu Monitor of New York. Then there’s some maddeningly dumb poo poo. Walter offers to read Varney’s fortune using a standard deck of cards. The reaction…  Varney is older than the modern use of tarot cards for divination. Setting aside the theories of Peter Mark Adams (a fine copy of which I once possessed but have since sadly lost), tarot has no particular mystical links of great antiquity. They’re literally just playing cards, and the older fortune reading traditions with cards have no special association with them, which both Varney and Anis should know. Now, I’m cross, but…  Just when I thought I was out, Bob reels me back in. This is the dumbest poo poo and I am here for it. Why are Tarot Cards such a big thing that slack-jawed new agers assume have always been first and only tools of mystic power? Because the loving Gangrel made everyone think they are! This bit is also a little unfortunate because I’m pretty sure where Bob uses the clans, he means ‘Roma people’ given the Gangrel fortune-teller we had a few chapters ago, but at least its not a direct claim of some awful fraud and just presented as a savvy piece of marketing. The reading is fine. Not exceptionally well or poorly considered, and very short. The bit takeaway is that both the Red Death and Anis are using pawns in their game and are going to come into conflict, which I’m pretty sure you don’t need to be able to read the future to predict. Then the reading is interrupted because Bern and her advisors arrive. This is the ‘real’ meeting Varney’s here for, but it’s a bit of a nice touch that it plays second fiddle to the Holmes meeting. Not terribly subtle or well-executed, mind, but nice. The chapter ends with a pissed off Bern – and before we get the actual meeting underway. Chapter Twenty-Five We cross back to Europe and the Three Stooges, still in Bulgaria. What are our three diablerist PCs doing? Crimes, duh. They’ve slaughtered an entire tavern because They’re Evil. So evil we get a weird platonic necrophilia dialogue where Jean Paul is playing with a dead girl’s hair! Because… I don’t know. Shock value? A sense of the grotesque? It neither adds nor detracts, honestly. Weinberg’s characters are too thin for it to have any weight. But it can always be worse than being a murderous necrophiliac:  The real purpose of this interlude is to discuss the Red Death. Do they serve willingly, or do they try and betray him and eat him when they get a chance? Points to Bob: that’s exactly what a diablerie-focused game is like. The decision: Eat Phantomas for him, and then using that strength, eat the Red Death. They are nothing if not ambitious. Finally, we close out with them torching the place and a brief introduction of the concept of the justicar, which becomes important later:  This is, bluntly, wrong. The Justicars are far from ‘independent of the hierarchy’. In a very real sense, they are the Camarilla hierarchy given physical form. Nor are they the kind of terminator-esque enforcer depicted here, even if hunting and killing is a good part of the job. Chapter Twenty-Six We’re back to New York early morning of the 18th, with Varney again. This, I think, is a typo: its meant to follow directly from Bern’s meeting, which is just after midnight on the 17th. This is also another largely unnecessary chapter that could’ve been handled later, but Bob really wants his ‘three parts of 13 each’ motif to mirror the clans which…  We’re skipping the meeting completely and are just told what it boils down to, which is also fine. Varney is, you guessed it, being sent to DC. This time, though, it’s not to investigate the Red Death. Its time for… BLOOD WAR. What this actually entails is that Varney and Jackson are being sent as an advance team to lay ground work, because there’s no one, I don’t know, less conspicuous and busy running one of the world’s largest companies to do that? They also have precisely one day to arrange it before Bern and her advisors themselves turn up directly in DC. I again emphasis that Bob doesn’t really do subtle or nuanced. We get our third reference to the Society of Leopold, too. Use them as a pawn in the blood war against D.C.? Nah – that’d be too interesting. Varney instead just has Jackson put in a tip with them to strike against Portiglio, and also tasks him with finding out about Walter Holmes. Jackson’s got eyes and ears everywhere, I guess. And now one of the greatest pieces of writing in any language:  What this actually entails is laughable. In the span of a single night, Bern has managed to send secret messages to every pack on the East Coast. Weinberg’s approach to the sects here involves giant phone trees – but he also really doesn’t grasp how the Sabbat and the Anarchs are structured. While, as we’ve seen in JD’s review, the Sabbat does have a fairly strong internal hierarchy and systems, at the ground level its still very much a fragmented matter where a pack might be nowhere near where it should be at a given time, chasing its own groupthink clusterfuck on behalf of a bishop from another city. To get every single one in a night is a major pull where you’re more-or-less definitely relying on the Tremere antitribu. The goal: seize DC and destroy the Camarilla there before they can use the Red Death to exterminate the Sabbat. Is it a flimsy pretext? Yes. Is it really loving funny given that this same month we’re given the truth about Marcus Vitel, Prince of DC? You better believe it. That said, this is where we begin the parallels with some of what comes later. To a certain extent, aspects of this trilogy feel like a dry run of parts of the Clan Novel Saga – ancient unknowable horrors returning and the Siege of DC, for instance – but I suppose that’s probably just because these are obvious and inevitable parts of the setting. But again, Weinberg’s sense of logistics crumples immediately.  Not only can they all be contacted within a night, but they can all drop what they’re doing and head straight to DC in a single day’s travel, presumably guarded by ghouls. I sure hope there’s no, say, ongoing state of hostilities in any of these territories. You know, like the constant skirmishes in New England, or the ongoing violence over Florida. Gosh, it’d be awkward to completely lose the Eastern Seaboard for a single attack on a single city – wait, I’m getting a memo about the Clan Novel Sagas again… Anyway. In fairness to Bob, he does give us a description of how the Sabbat usually handles this, which might as well be ripped right from the Sabbat guide JD just reviewed. Fifth columnists sneak in first, then turn on their new friends to pave the way for the brute force sledgehammer of hundreds of shovelheads. The only hope of success here, having forfeited the infiltration, is massive overwhelming surprise and force, taking advantage of the internal divisions in DC’s Camarilla. Its not a great part of the book but at least there’s some awareness it’s a terrible plan and, as we’ll see later, that’s actually the Red Death’s game anyway – so in that sense, well, it’s a great plan. How does Jackson react to the idea he’s about to be sent into the flashpoint of a full-scale sect war, possibly involving the full force of every government asset both sides have and thousands of vampires?  I really want to like this line but its so loving clunky! And then we’re immediately back into some gonzo poo poo:  Secret Service anti-vampire flamethrowers! Mysterious nasa technology! Did we suddenly slide into Mage? Either way, Jackson’s also smart enough to spot that the Red Death seems to be sparking these conflicts, which would be nice if it weren’t Bob repeating the same point over and over to make sure we, the readers, understand. We’re left with a single question: Why is the Red Death doing it. For power, clearly: But to do what with? That’s the end of Part 2 of Book 1. Weinberg’s tried for some ‘interesting’ techniques – the mirror image of Part 1’s structure so that we can sense that McCann and Varney are two sides of the same coin, for instance – but he doesn’t really pull it off. It feels too forced, and the part where he doesn’t trust us to make the connections and shouts them from the rooftop ruins any slow realization we could have. Likewise, the 1 Book with 3 Parts with 13 Chapters each is a nice mirror of the clans, but to get there we get break points we don’t need and missed opportunities for richer storytelling instead. Next time, the Blood War kicks off in full, McCann and Varney meet, and we discover just how subtle Madeleine Giovanni’s ride is. I’m sure that the Dagger of the Giovanni, a master of stealth and a feared assassin who strikes from the shadows, travels discreetly. Her ride is a loving big-rig truck with ‘MG’ in big letters on the side.
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Jun 30, 2023 07:44
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 Joylessdivisions World of Dorkness Presents:  The Storytellers Handbook to the Sabbat ConclusionEach spirit has Willpower 7 and 6 dice for possession attacks, like the level 5 Dominate power of the same name. They have eyes of a sort, enough that they can be affected by Dominate or Presence, or whatever other Disciplines the ST wishes them to be susceptible to. If Ischin succeeds in escaping the gate, he is followed by numerous lesser spirits. These minions will possess the players. What exactly Ischin’s plans are is left to the ST, but it should be clear that whatever he has planned requires more than just the players to stop. If the players can shut off the gate in time, they see Ischin get sucked back to whence he came. Before the gate fully shuts off, another spirit flies through, taking the form of a man. The man grabs the necklace around his neck and disappears again. Possibility of Continuation If Harget succeeds in bringing Ischin through the gate, the poo poo is going to hit the fan across the city, not only for the players but every Sabbat in the city. This could lead to an interesting story as the cities Sabbat must unite to defeat the great spirit, with the Tzimisce potentially improving on the gate to suck Ischin back in, though this would obviously require a massive number of souls to be sacrificed. Hell, let’s throw some loving Garou into this madness. An uneasy alliance could be formed as even if Ischin is blasted back into his Umbral realm, there are still other lesser spirits that escaped. If the players succeed in stopping Ischin from escaping, they’ve not got an inoperable Spirit Gate to deal with, though no matter what they try, they are unable to get the machine working again. The spirit who escaped at the end is of course Samuel Haight who has regained his fetish, the source of the gate's power. Haight can reappear as often as the ST wishes, quote:“But the characters should not have the opportunity to kill him. He will be appearing in future White Wolf products”. Insert eye roll here. If Hargett somehow survives all this madness, he blames the spirit that possessed him for all of this mess, and at the ST’s discretion, the Inquisition appears to question the players. Opportunities for Roleplaying The scene where the possessed friend shows up can be played live action, to the point where the zombies appear, and whoever is portraying the friend should act unnaturally, making their physical movements express that something is off. When encountering Hargett, the player handling him should act as the possessed friend does, and the scene should be played in a large, poorly lit room with some distance between the players and Hargett. For extra fun, have someone in a Halloween mask show up behind the players as the Franken-Sabbat. No. Just…. Okay, the Halloween mask gimmick is pretty funny, but seriously, just no. If I’m running a tabletop game, I’m not going to put in all this added work to add LARP poo poo to my game. It’s silly as hell and absolutely going to rip the players out the story as we all stand around like assholes pretending to Vampires because it’s a lot easier to get into the zone at the table than it is to try and act this nonsense out physically. Possible Benefits to the Characters Nothing. The players gain nothing directly from the story. Unless you count the satisfaction of saving the world from Ischin. The Tzimisce clan might be willing to offer a minor boon for the gate. Well, this adventure certainly is the least active in trying to murder the players, until we get into the possession stuff and into Hargett’s lair. The Franken-Sabbat is a cool monster that I dig, and while I think the plot of this story is good, the execution feels like there’s entirely too much railroading the players through things. The weird ghost Stargate is a cool idea for sure, and stopping an evil spirit from coming through to conquer the world is a good idea. Well, maybe not for the loving Sabbat, what with the whole being the villains of the setting bit. Also, what the gently caress is the point of Sam Haight in this story? He literally doesn’t appear until the last moments, pops out of the gate, says “So long fuckboys” and then disappears into the umbra again. Oh, but as an ST I can bring him back as much as I like, so long as I don’t let the players kill him. Great. Cool. Why the gently caress would my Sabbat players know or care who Samuel Haight is? A Night on the Town makes way more sense as a story to fit Haight into, but even then, it doesn’t make any sense for him to appear in this book, beyond the fact that White Wolf wanted to do this stupid crossover event. Now, having said that, you could take this last story and rework it for a Werewolf game, because if you’re going to have Samuel Haight as a recurring character, it makes sense that you would have him appear in stories where the players are already encountered him, and while sure, it’s obvious that White Wolf had this idealized vision of their player base playing all of their games, reality tells me that’s not going to be the majority of players, and so it’s highly unlikely that the group that ran the Valkenburg adventure is going to be the same group that plays a Sabbat Masquerade game or the group that will eventually play in the Ascension game where Haight shows up next. To be clear, I like Samuel Haight as a character, and I’m more annoyed that he had such a strong introduction, only to be relegated to a footnote here. Hell, this entire story is essentially a footnote in his history, one that you could easily just throw out and have 0 effect on how his 6 book adventure concludes. I’m utterly baffled as to why he wasn’t slotted into Night on the Town, considering every one of these adventures has said “Hey if this character doesn’t die, have them show up again in another story”, you could have easily replaced McLaughlin with Haight and just added the “Don’t kill him because we’re using him in more books later” excuse. Just…. how do you botch something this simple when you’re dedicating space in 6 books to this loving character, and you make him a footnote in his second appearance? HOW!?  And with that final bit of ranting and raving out of the way, that concludes the Storytellers Handbook to the Sabbat. Overall, I think this is a very mixed book, as I personally have no interest in either running or playing a game with the Sabbat as PC’s, and most of the information provided in this book about doing so just puts me off the idea even more. There is good stuff in here however, and despite my complaints I liked the idea behind Dark Thaumaturgy, and some of those powers are pretty cool, especially the Cenobite powers, that’s hysterical and awesome. I like most of the adventures in this book, more than I have some of the others I’ve covered previously, but there is still a lot of work that needs to be done from the frameworks provided to make something worth playing that isn’t just “Kill your players because gently caress you, Sabbat are expendable”. As the second chapter of the Samuel Haight adventure? Total garbage, and I am so confused how this book made it through pre-production and editing without a single person on the team saying “Hey, we should do something more with Sam Haight in this book”. I mean you went ahead and slapped his name on the back cover as a selling point and then just don’t do anything of value with him. loving lame my dudes. I do really dig the Ahrimanes and Kiasyd however, both are interesting new bloodlines that add unique flavor to the greater world of the Kindred, and I appreciate that. The art in this book I also really enjoy, the chapter opening images are all a lot of fun and every well done, although I’m slightly disappointed in the Larry McDougal stuff, simply because it’s such a drastic change from the work he was doing in the 1e Player’s Guide that I raved about previously. It’s not bad, it’s just different, though even in its considerably rougher style than the PG’s art, the characters have a certain vitality to them that hasn’t been lost from this work in the PG. As always, thank you all for reading and while our quest to follow Samuel Haight had a somewhat disappointing second act, hopefully act 3 (of 6) will be better as we dive into the Werewolf: the Apocalypse supplement Rage Across the Amazon for Haighters Gonna Hate # 3.
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Jun 30, 2023 14:22
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Flashback to 90's WW where Stephen Wieck is yelling at freelancers to make sure to put some g-d Haight in each supplement because he thinks it moves books, like DC comics putting gorillas on their covers.
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Jun 30, 2023 14:25
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A Doom house? -yeah, DOOM Or also "Maggots? Maggots. Maggots all over the apartment"
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Jun 30, 2023 14:28
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By popular demand posted:
I mean, why should it sound ominous to them? They're vampires, they're all about blood all the time. It's like declaring a Food War
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Jun 30, 2023 14:58
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Thanks to the folks reaching out that got me to come check this thread again. I appreciate all the support here, and will continue my work in that light. I will continue not to center myself in them because my purpose in doing these is to present a setting I think is cool. I am, in fact, deeply insulted by the idea that I copy paste text, tho, or that I just post entire books thoughtlessly. gently caress off with that poo poo. It is untrue, it isn’t constructive criticism, and it doesn’t at all reflect the actual time I take or work I put in. I am not going to turn to the camera each paragraph to tell you that I feel the thing I am writing about is neat.
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Jun 30, 2023 16:12
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Can we at least be privy to why you think something is cool?
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Jun 30, 2023 16:23
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Forgive me, for I cannot resist.Mors Rattus posted:Thanks to the folks reaching out that got me to come check this thread again. I appreciate all the support here, and will continue my work in that light. Then don't do the thread equivalent of a high school MLA paper where you copy and paste stuff, use thesaurus.com to change some words, and change the order of stuff. Mors Rattus posted:or that I just post entire books thoughtlessly. Then, if you don't want to be accused of that, don't do that. Mors Rattus posted:It is untrue, it isn’t constructive criticism, and it doesn’t at all reflect the actual time I take or work I put in. I am not going to turn to the camera each paragraph to tell you that I feel the thing I am writing about is neat. Then you're a bad reviewer, and doubling down on "Here's stuff you could do to be better, but I refuse to do it because how dare you tell me I'm wrong" doesn't make you look principled or make you right- it makes you look like Doug Walker defending his review of The Wall. Except at least Doug Walker had the ability to actually tell us what he was thinking and give us his own opinion, which is more than you've ever loving done. And I don't want to hear poo poo from people whining about "Oh no you drove Mors off" or "Oh no Mors doesn't need to improve." Mors is the master of his own actions, so shut the gently caress up about anyone "Making" him do anything. He's been told, for years, that people are tired of his style of just regurgitating books without putting in his own input or actually reviewing them, and rather than change or adapt, he chose to be a big loving baby, and some of you have chosen to coddle him and give him his bottle and go "Waah, why is the big mean dane being so mean to Mors!" Edit: We have a tool to do what Mors does. It's called reading a loving summary on the back of the book. Edit Edit: You know what Mors' style of review is? You know those youtube channels that are just people reacting to other youtube videos and just not emoting or adding any new content or context? That's Mors' style of "review". A lovely Youtube React channel. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) Fivemarks fucked around with this message at 17:08 on Jun 30, 2023 |
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Jun 30, 2023 17:03
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shut uuuuuuup
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Jun 30, 2023 17:14
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I said constructive criticism was OK but there's a limit and just heaping abuse crosses it. I have told Mors Rattus that they are welcome to accept and incorporate constructive criticism in the spirit in which it is offered, but they do not actually have to to change their style to be allowed to post here. They are not plagiarizing content. The rules in the OP represent something like a community request for good content and not things that will get you probated. A number of people have already spoken up to say that they like Mors reviews so this is a matter of taste. If you cannot stand Mors' reviews, put them on ignore and you'll never see them.
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Jun 30, 2023 17:15
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Fivemarks posted:Forgive me, for I cannot resist. You totally could have resisted, though
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Jun 30, 2023 17:16
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Purple saying Mors just copies and pastes to make reviews is absolutely rich when Purple openly lies about the contents of books in order to make a sick slam dunk that'll make the whole thread cheer.
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Jun 30, 2023 17:18
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Fivemarks posted:Forgive me, for I cannot resist. I'm sorry you feel that you are too good to use a scroll-wheel. Now 
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Jun 30, 2023 17:23
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I actually agree that the first three editions of Kult are grosser than Purple was implying, but LOL at defending a game as stupid as Kult: We Skimmed Apocalypse World Before We Made This Edition
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Jun 30, 2023 17:39
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I hope that's the end of this completely legit and important internet slapfight. Come back Morse, I'm of the opinion that you are providing a valuable service to role players even if It's not my cup of tea.
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Jun 30, 2023 17:54
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Halloween Jack posted:I actually agree that the first three editions of Kult are grosser than Purple was implying, but LOL at defending a game as stupid as Kult: We Skimmed Apocalypse World Before We Made This Edition The first edition of Kult is the least gross, but that's like saying sticking your dick in a fire hurts less than hitting it with a sledgehammer.
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Jun 30, 2023 18:30
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sasha_d3ath posted:Purple saying Mors just copies and pastes to make reviews is absolutely rich when Purple openly lies about the contents of books in order to make a sick slam dunk that'll make the whole thread cheer. Well, if you could tell me what I lie about then I'd love to see it. I won't pretend I might not have missed a paragraph here and there, or perhaps have misunderstood a mechanic at times, but I've never intentionally told a lie about something I've reviewed. If this is about Kult: Divinity Lost(other people seem to think it is and I seem to remember you were upset that I was very mean to it in the past?), then you're free to point out what I lied about. Was it the heroin poop demon that fucks you in your sleep until you can't think of anything other than the heroin poop demon? Or, you know, if you feel like I preseented it unfairly, you could make your own review where you correct my many mistakes. Halloween Jack posted:I actually agree that the first three editions of Kult are grosser than Purple was implying, but LOL at defending a game as stupid as Kult: We Skimmed Apocalypse World Before We Made This Edition Honestly, they have their gross parts, but they just seem far less horny and at least do not have examples of how to describe sexually assaulting the player characters. Now, I haven't read any of the modules/adventures for Kult 1e, its entirely possible it gets a lot worse in those, but while it mentions gross things in the book, it seems to roll around in it excitedly a lot less. Like, yeah, there are bad people who do bad things, some of them involve violence, some of them involve sex, but you never get the feeling that the writer was furiously beating off to it.
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Jun 30, 2023 19:33
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Does the heroin poop demon wear a penis sheath?PurpleXVI posted:Pentadrones are actually pretty chonky and nothing ever suggests its going to leave the party unless they get near a portal to Mechanus that it recognizes. It fights like a mid-level fighter with 18/00 Strength and has a paralyzing gas attack, so throw it a spare weapon or two and let it go to town, since if the players say they intend to help, it'll attack threats to them and aid them in combat. You could argue it'll almost certainly find a portal to Mechanus in the break between chapters 3 and 4 when its in Sigil, but nothing ever explicitly says so... Or his evil ninja offspring, Pentadrone Jr. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 19:48 on Jun 30, 2023 |
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Jun 30, 2023 19:45
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Mors Rattus posted:Thanks to the folks reaching out that got me to come check this thread again. I appreciate all the support here, and will continue my work in that light. Welcome back.
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Jun 30, 2023 20:03
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Heroin Poop Demon is going to the name of my first grindcore album.
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Jun 30, 2023 20:05
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Halloween Jack posted:Does the heroin poop demon wear a penis sheath? quote:Anyway, then some Libiths are described. Anyone remember Dogma? And the Golgothan? The demon made of evil poop? That's the first Libith. It's a poop demon that comes out of your toilet at night and injects you with dream heroin. Then you get addicted to secretly loving the poop demon until you die.
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Jun 30, 2023 20:09
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