|
Zoeb posted:ah yes! what does all this have to do with being a teenage mutant ninja turtle
|
#
?
Dec 22, 2023 17:07
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 26, 2024 12:09 |
|
|
In my opinion, risk level/'position' is both one of the most essential rules in BitD and also the obvious go to rule to scrap to simplify the game.
|
|
#
?
Dec 22, 2023 17:10
|
|
|
Nothing like allowing a d100 to decide that your RPG character is now a pedophile. Comfort zones and player-GM agreement about boundaries in-game? Never heard of those. Think of it as a great way to find out somebody at the table was abused as a child! It’s easy to forget how bad game systems have been at acknowledging obvious and basic social dynamics that matter at every game table. If players and GM agree to explore or work through specific ideas or issues in a setting or campaign, that can be empowering and healing; having the system insist on it is intrusive at best. I’m not 100% sure a system that wants to do the reverse is equally out of line, especially as you can write “there’s no racism in this setting” but can’t police the stories people tell. I have to wonder why “in this fantasy world there’s no prejudice based on race, gender, or sexual preference” is worse than “spiritual corruption tangibly exists and is ick from another dimension”? Aren’t there multiple sci-fi RPGs that assert human racial prejudices have been “solved” or don’t even bring them up? (TOS Star Trek, Star Wars) In a subgenre that owes a lot to massive racist HP Lovecraft, I can see reasons for that kind of boundary-making even if it’s a strange set of guardrails to put on a setting that GMs and players can change or replace if they like. I presume that’s a selling point for the setting? “Earnest but crude” is hardly uncommon in RPG design, and there feels like an undercurrent of contempt for RPGers who entered the hobby through watching Critical Role that’s lurking underneath some of the criticisms. I’m not sure a single setting or campaign I’ve run could hold up to ths level of scrutiny, and “oops, our good intentions didn’t get expressed very well” is a long way from “oops, we guess the sensitivity advisor we’ve contracted should have been asked to look at the art and read through the species descriptions along with everything else,” or more precisely, “you mean the sensitivity advisor needs to look at all our material and not just some of it?!” That doesn’t mean nobody is allowed to criticize, but the conversation sounds a bit disproportionate and settings like Call of Cthulhu and WoD shouldn’t be grandfathered in. My sense is that Chaosium has been wobbly about rethinking the CoC insanity mechanics. Is that correct?
|
|
#
?
Dec 22, 2023 17:13
|
|
|
Ghost Leviathan posted:lol, if you roll that and your character is already gay you become straight it almost says that homosexuality is normal, since turning heterosexual is a lateral move on the Sexual Deviation chart. But not quite, because it's on a Sexual Deviation chart, on a page of illnesses, consequences of trauma, and a 15% chance of becoming a psychiatrist after a psychotic episode.
|
|
#
?
Dec 22, 2023 18:35
|
|
|
There are certain FATAL and Friends entries that should be required reading to remind people how bad a lot RPGs can be.
|
|
#
?
Dec 22, 2023 18:39
|
|
|
DalaranJ posted:In my opinion, risk level/'position' is both one of the most essential rules in BitD and also the obvious go to rule to scrap to simplify the game. I always explain it as risk vs reward and it's already baked into a single axis in effect. The non-binary dice outcomes already represent the effect level, so you just apply the position before the dice roll and slide up or down that outcome scale accordingly.
|
|
#
?
Dec 22, 2023 19:42
|
|
|
Zoeb posted:ah yes! "The monster scared me gay?" Just lol, that's so bad.
|
|
#
?
Dec 22, 2023 21:27
|
|
|
Cessna posted:"The monster scared me gay?" Big Rimworld energy. “I went on a pyromaniac rampage, and the colony fighters beat me so hard it turned me gay.”
|
|
#
?
Dec 22, 2023 21:54
|
|
|
Ominous Jazz posted:what does all this have to do with being a teenage mutant ninja turtle *to the tune of TMNT cartoon theme* Teenage Mutant Teenage Angst! Angst power!
|
|
#
?
Dec 22, 2023 22:47
|
|
|
Ominous Jazz posted:what does all this have to do with being a teenage mutant ninja turtle Nothing really; I'm pretty sure it was just copy and pasted from the original Heroes Unlimited like 84% of the rest of the TMNT book.
|
|
#
?
Dec 22, 2023 22:56
|
|
|
It does seem odd to me that Candela Obscura chose to do nothing with those possibilites. It's not like 'Let's see how Victorian London feels when the shoes on the other foot' wouldn't have made for an interesting part of the game. I mean 'Holy poo poo, what if someone came here and acted like that to us!' is literally the thought that led Wells to write War of the Worlds.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2023 00:05
|
|
|
Looks like Casey Jones rolled 26-30 on the phobias table. E: The pedohphia bit is really bad, but also if you roll fetisism you can be sexually attracted to dogs, cats, boars or insects? Foolster41 fucked around with this message at 00:36 on Dec 23, 2023 |
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2023 00:34
|
|
|
Zoeb posted:I'm sorry to hear that so many people are saying Candela Obscura is bad but some of these complaints sound more like complaints at rules light RPGs in general or complaints about the style of rulings over rules. One negative reviewer said that RPGs are not story games and they should be games with more guidance from the rules, that candela obscura requires players to trust the GM too much, and I just don't agree with that. I mean it's true of D&D but it's not necessarily true of games that aren't D&D. E: I know jack all about the critical role system, I'm twitching at this post because I've only ever seen "rulings over rules" used to excuse lovely systems, never in reference to actual good make poo poo up on the fly systems. Splicer fucked around with this message at 00:58 on Dec 23, 2023 |
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2023 00:52
|
|
|
Foolster41 posted:E: The pedohphia bit is really bad, but also if you roll fetisism you can be sexually attracted to dogs, cats, boars or insects?
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2023 01:04
|
|
|
mellonbread posted:Is it bestiality if a turtle-man is attracted to a hog-man, or a rhinoceros-man? The Harkness test says probably not! 
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2023 01:28
|
|
|
Honestly, I think Pendragon is the only game with 'madness' rules I like. And that isn't trying to be some specific mental illness and more is 'Dramatic Arthurian tantrum for a year or so'.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2023 01:40
|
|
|
Yeah, Pendragon remains the king of tasteful genre emulation.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2023 02:00
|
|
|
Capfalcon posted:Yeah, Pendragon remains The Once and Future King of tasteful genre emulation.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2023 02:22
|
|
|
Gorelab posted:Honestly, I think Pendragon is the only game with 'madness' rules I like. And that isn't trying to be some specific mental illness and more is 'Dramatic Arthurian tantrum for a year or so'. And usually resolved by running naked into the woods and coming back a year later having been taken care of by a kind maiden, a mysterious holy hermit and/or the fairies, possibly having gone on some stranger than usual adventure. Oddly enough one of the better ways to handle sensitive topics in genre media is to go the opposite way from trying to apply modern frameworks to them, because the latter often ends up with the worst of both worlds.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2023 03:40
|
|
|
Ominous Jazz posted:what does all this have to do with being a teenage mutant ninja turtle Palladium is really bad at making games.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2023 06:14
|
|
|
Zoeb posted:Palladium is really bad at making games. Doesn't Siembieda still put books together by physically cutting out and pasting together draft sheets?
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2023 08:42
|
|
|
Roadie posted:Doesn't Siembieda still put books together by physically cutting out and pasting together draft sheets? He certainly is committed to the bit
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2023 08:52
|
|
|
Zoeb posted:Palladium is really bad at making games. I was hyped for the recent reprint of the TMNT RPG until someone pointed out it was still Palladium's ruleset. Noped right the gently caress out. Hell, it wasn't until Savage Worlds picked up the Rifts license that I finally enjoyed playing it.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2023 15:39
|
|
|
CobiWann posted:I was hyped for the recent reprint of the TMNT RPG until someone pointed out it was still Palladium's ruleset. Noped right the gently caress out. Have you seen Mutants in the Now?
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2023 16:03
|
|
|
CobiWann posted:I was hyped for the recent reprint of the TMNT RPG until someone pointed out it was still Palladium's ruleset. Noped right the gently caress out. I'm 99% certain that it's not only the system but also just a reprint of the original books but with uh...redone art which is just Peter Laird's original TNMT art run through some computer coloring.
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2023 00:06
|
|
|
"a historical-ish setting but you don't need to deal with racism or homophobia" isn't a mark against the game. thats like pretty stock standard in every table i've ever been at at anything that wasn't a modern setting, and even most of the modern settings
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2023 01:00
|
|
|
Narsham posted:Nothing like allowing a d100 to decide that your RPG character is now a pedophile. Comfort zones and player-GM agreement about boundaries in-game? Never heard of those. Think of it as a great way to find out somebody at the table was abused as a child! In a game adaptation of a property primarily aimed at 10 year olds no less! Jesus Kevin.
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2023 05:00
|
|
|
Farg posted:"a historical-ish setting but you don't need to deal with racism or homophobia" isn't a mark against the game. thats like pretty stock standard in every table i've ever been at at anything that wasn't a modern setting, and even most of the modern settings Makes me think of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puBrFifxSSM My position is that steampunk or whatever Candela Obscura is, is the world that the 19th century *could have been* rather than what it was.
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2023 05:02
|
|
|
Zoeb posted:In a game adaptation of a property primarily aimed at 10 year olds no less! Jesus Kevin. It's lovely enough without this (because it is plenty lovely), the RPG predates the cartoon by two years and the first movie by five. It's based on the old b&w TMNT comics, when the series was still theoretically aimed at adults.
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2023 05:14
|
|
|
Oh so they totally just lucked into it
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2023 05:22
|
|
|
Ominous Jazz posted:Oh so they totally just lucked into it Yep. The timing was extremely fortunate for Palladium.
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2023 05:47
|
|
|
Even the original “gritty” TMNT comic that Palladium’s game is supposedly based on is still around the level of a PG-13 kung fu action movie, in terms of tone. A lot of it was a direct parody of Frank Miller’s work at the time, especially his run on Daredevil and the “Wolverine Goes to Japan” stuff (ex. The Foot Clan was a parody of a ninja clan in Marvel Comics called The Hand). The original TMNT had a more noir tone, but it was still very much tongue-in-cheek. Those ridiculous mental illness charts still shouldn’t be a factor at all. Gatto Grigio fucked around with this message at 07:05 on Dec 24, 2023 |
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2023 07:01
|
|
|
Palladium is very much the old school of RPG design that doesn't understand why you wouldn't include charts for literally everything.
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2023 07:09
|
|
|
Gatto Grigio posted:“gritty” TMNT comic that Palladium’s game is supposedly based on Supposedly? What else would it be based on? There wasn't really any other TMNT media at the time. Like I guess that it's sort of a lovely loose adaptation of the work and generally obsessed with creating your own world instead of recreating the TMNT one, but it's still a game about mutant animals with a ninja skill package and some color coordinated turts on the cover. It's for sure a lovely adaptation, but that was kind of the style at the time. No one has fond memories of 1982 FASA Star Trek or that insanely bad Indiana Jones game from '84. Gotta remember this wizened homophobic old fossil of a game is four years older than AD&D 2e. Honestly I think it might be the 2nd RPG ever based on a comic book, with MSHRPG coming out in 84 (I just don't remember if TMNT came out before or after Mayfair's DC Heroes in 85). Ghost Leviathan posted:Palladium is very much the old school of RPG design that doesn't understand why you wouldn't include charts for literally everything. My old rear end joke is that Palladium is the only RPG company where an hour is 58 + 1D4 minutes.
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2023 07:49
|
|
|
theironjef posted:Supposedly? What else would it be based on? There wasn't really any other TMNT media at the time. Like I guess that it's sort of a lovely loose adaptation of the work and generally obsessed with creating your own world instead of recreating the TMNT one, but it's still a game about mutant animals with a ninja skill package and some color coordinated turts on the cover. Splicer fucked around with this message at 11:34 on Dec 24, 2023 |
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2023 11:31
|
|
|
I dunno, that seems pretty accurate to recent fast movies
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2023 12:14
|
|
|
Until someone reveals a subplot I’ve not heard of from the TMNT comics where Donatello develops a sexual disorder due to a traumatic battle in the Technodrome, “supposedly” still stands.
Gatto Grigio fucked around with this message at 13:34 on Dec 24, 2023 |
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2023 13:30
|
|
|
Gatto Grigio posted:Until someone reveals a subplot I’ve not heard of from the TMNT comics where Donatello develops a sexual disorder due to a traumatic battle in the Technodrome, “supposedly” still stands. So that's why he "does machines"
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2023 14:36
|
|
|
Gatto Grigio posted:Until someone reveals a subplot I’ve not heard of from the TMNT comics where Donatello develops a sexual disorder due to a traumatic battle in the Technodrome, “supposedly” still stands. IIRC, I vaguely remember a storyline where Splinter goes kind of nuts and indulges in some mild cannibalism. There's also the Rat King, who initially was just some guy convinced he was a monster who could psychically control rats. None of which is to defend Palladium's take on the game, which is awful for more reasons than can be explained in a timely fashion. (Those storylines also took place years after the RPG was first published, anyway.) For whatever it's worth (not much), my copy of Ninjas & Superspies was published in 1988, and although it has the insanity tables, those sexuality sub-tables aren't there anymore. I remember it was explained to me once that they were initially included because these tables were inspired by the DSM, which until 1974 included homosexuality as a mental illness, but by the mid-80s Siembieda acquired an updated copy of the DSM and updated his system's insanity tables to reflect the changes. No idea if that's true, though, or simply RPG world rumours.
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2023 17:24
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 26, 2024 12:09 |
|
|
Falstaff posted:IIRC, I vaguely remember a storyline where Splinter goes kind of nuts and indulges in some mild cannibalism. There's also the Rat King, who initially was just some guy convinced he was a monster who could psychically control rats. Yeah, the table didn't even make it to the second printing of the game, Simbieda was basically just copying some lovely list out of the DSM II. I think it's only in the first editions of TMNT and Palladium Fantasy? I've got a copy of the TMNT one, I have never come across the Palladium Fantasy one but I've read that is also existed.
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2023 18:28
|
|