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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. Wild! Was Splinter eating rats, people, or both? (In the cartoons, Splinter was a human who gained rat features, but in the comics it was the reverse.) Gatto Grigio fucked around with this message at 20:31 on Dec 24, 2023 |
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Dec 24, 2023 20:28
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Terrible Opinions posted:It's extremely funny they have a setting based on Victorian London but that is also the victim of an unjustified invasion. Zoeb posted:I see a lot of negative reviews of it on YouTube by people who are mad that there aren't PVP mechanics and that the mechanics aren't heavier and more neutral. One guy was saying that it wasn't a real game because the antagonists don't get it turn they only respond to the PC turns Lumbermouth posted:The most reasonable topic I read on it likened it to the stuff about half-races in new D&D: tone deaf handling of a thorny problem where there aren't really a lot of great solutions from a public relations perspective. Pulled a couple of quotes from the post's author. I'm not really interested in digging into Candela Obscura. I heard it's very Blades in the Dark-y, and that's it. So seeing that there's apparently strong reactions to exactly how Blades-y it is is very funny. Narsham posted:“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? Someone more familiar with CoC can probably talk about what Chaosium's current approach to madness and sanity effects is like. Chaosium's been fairly flexible about moving with the times, but there's probably some justification that doesn't involve them ripping the sanity system out of CoC wholecloth because it's so embedded in the conceit. Probably something about the unique nature of supernatural horror that is not strictly the same as a person struggling with "mundane" mental health issues? There's definitely been broader discourse on how to use sanity effects and mental maladies in games that has shifted over time. Cyberpunk's changes to cyberpsychosis are a clear indicator of how things have adapted. It is interesting seeing people analyze mental scars in the Candela Obscura game. I assume it's pretty close to the vanilla Blades Traumas? I can't recall much discussion about concerns there. Blades being a game about people with toxic coping strategies gradually breaking down from the stress of their dangerous lifestyle is the basic game loop. I suppose there is something innately problematic in making a game of someone's descent into "too unstable to function in society." There are splinter discussion points there about how player characters in most TTRPGs are not great models for normal human behavior anyway, and how RPing doesn't have to involve playing good or pleasant stories. As far as Blades' execution, I'd certainly put it on the "less intrusive/open to offensive behavior" side. The Trauma conditions are a set list: Cold, Haunted, Obsessed, Paranoid, Reckless, Soft, Unstable, and Vicious. There's some parallels to psychological conditions but it's not 1:1 or implying you're actually becoming schizophrenic. They're just impulses you start slipping into occasionally that might cause you problems. Someone's trying to help you, but you're struggling to trust them, or you could rescue this guard that fell over the side of the boat but you frankly don't give a drat if he lives or dies. It's not on the level of say, Vampire: the Masquerade, where one of the iconic clans is "the crazy clan" where you have to detail out exactly what kind of strange madness your player character is afflicted with and RP regularly. I'm open to the possibility that people can be tactful with that, but there's a reason "fishmalk" is a stereotype in VtM discussions.
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Dec 24, 2023 21:16
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Gatto Grigio posted:Wild! Was Splinter eating rats, people, or both? I haven't read it in a long time and the issues in question are in storage, so I might be getting the details wrong, but Splinter was the Rat King's prisoner, who kept him trapped in a pit full of ordinary rats. The Rat King refused to feed him, but suggested that Splinter eat the rats (since if he didn't they'd eventually get hungry too and eat him), but Splinter refused claiming that would be cannibalism. After a while he started losing his grip, and eventually gave in and gobbled up some of his cousins. It was all framed as a philosophical struggle between the two characters. quote:(In the cartoons, Splinter was a human who gained rat features, but in the comics it was the reverse.) He was also originally a rat in the 1990 movie.
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Dec 24, 2023 23:27
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And in the new comics he was a ninja lord who was reincarnated as a rat and then got exposed to mutagen and the turtles were literally his sons. The new comics are kind of wild.
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Dec 24, 2023 23:34
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Nuns with Guns posted:Someone more familiar with CoC can probably talk about what Chaosium's current approach to madness and sanity effects is like. Chaosium's been fairly flexible about moving with the times, but there's probably some justification that doesn't involve them ripping the sanity system out of CoC wholecloth because it's so embedded in the conceit. Probably something about the unique nature of supernatural horror that is not strictly the same as a person struggling with "mundane" mental health issues? This is incompletely and semi-broadly how the most recent version of Delta Green approaches sanity loss. Delta Green states directly that SAN represents your character's confidence in their understanding of their place in the world. SAN loss isn't directly gaining a real world mental illness from seeing a spooky thing, if that happens it's from the trauma caused by the erosion of someone's basic, fundamental assumptions about the world. Low SAN means that the normal human understanding of existence has been seriously damaged and as a result you are losing the capacity to trust yourself, your senses, and your baseline assumptions of a rational reality. Moreover DG also delineates a bit regarding the sources of SAN loss, making a footnote beside whether you're taking the hit from Unnatural gribblies as compared to being affected by Violence (received or inflicted) or Helplessness. You can eventually learn to cope with those latter two things, you'll end up with problems that come from deadening and becoming numb to those impulses, but you can never learn to "cope" with the Unnatural. It's a little Unknown Armies in that regard, except in UA you could eventually become jaded even to high magical weirdness. Delta Green also lets you channel SAN loss into your bonds, letting the work and the horror take its toll on your social interactions and functionally ruin your character's life as opposed to directly killing your character. And you could work on rebuilding those relationships, but it would come at the cost of doing job-related extra things or possibly helping yourself or possibly improving yourself. A pick your poison scenario, if you will. In the end the job was going to mess you up, very much by design of the rules. Does it all work? Good question. It's still fundamentally a system from the 80s after all, even if they shuffle around what all the words mean, but it does give you more ways to engage with it IMO.
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Dec 24, 2023 23:38
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I thought he was a rat blasted by goo who learned how to read and raise four rowdy boys
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Dec 24, 2023 23:47
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Ominous Jazz posted:I thought he was a rat blasted by goo who learned how to read and raise four rowdy boys Original comics shredder was. The modern ones are a good bit weirder.
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Dec 25, 2023 00:31
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Nuns with Guns posted:Someone more familiar with CoC can probably talk about what Chaosium's current approach to madness and sanity effects is like. Chaosium's been fairly flexible about moving with the times, but there's probably some justification that doesn't involve them ripping the sanity system out of CoC wholecloth because it's so embedded in the conceit. Probably something about the unique nature of supernatural horror that is not strictly the same as a person struggling with "mundane" mental health issues? It's not great! The more recent editions, particularly 7th edition, does the whole song-and-dance about "a lot of this stuff comes from a really gross place in a gross little man, so try to tone that down why don't you." But it's still largely the same as it's always been? Which is wild coming from the game line that had a miniature fandom explosion when they modestly introduced a new player meta-currency and some other quality-of-life sprucing up after six editions of almost slavishly reproducing the same game for 40 years. There was an amazing RPGnet thread of this guy being mad about Luck points or whatever and also that drowning/suffocation damage had changed throughout the editions from, like, 1d6+4 to 2d6+2 or something like that, and how along with changes to First Aid this meant that the First Aid Skill could keep someone alive indefinitely while they suffocated (as long as you ignore how and when you're allowed to use the First Aid skill). I think he got banned for keeping the thread going through like six repetitions of him being shown how he was unequivocally wrong and then just restating his wrong-rear end complaints. In 7th edition, your player character has a base of 99 Sanity points. When you're exposed to Mythos things (not just, like, an evil sorcerer, but seeing an actual shoggoth or witnessing a sorcerer open a rip in space-time to the starry prison of their god, or reading a cosmically naughty book) you simultaneously gain Cthulhu Mythos skill points and your maximum Sanity is reduced by the same amount. Your current Sanity will fluctuate. When you lose 5+ Sanity from one Sanity roll, you roll INT and if you succeed you can't suppress the memory of whatever made you lose SAN and enter Temporary Insanity. If in 24(ish) hours you lose 20% or more of the Sanity points you had at the start of the day, you suffer Indefinite Insanity. If you hit 0 Sanity, you are Permanently Insane and become an NPC. When you face something that can cause you to lose SAN, you make a Sanity roll which is d100 roll under against your current Sanity points. If you succeed you typically lose 0 or a small fixed amount of Sanity points. If you fail, you typically lose a random amount based on a dice roll. Below is the example table for SAN loss, with the "SAN loss if successful" before the slash, and "SAN loss if failed" after the slash. A fumble (critical failure, 100 if you're rolling against current SAN 50+, or 96-100 if rolling against SAN less than 50) causes you to lose the maximum possible amount. Regardless of success or failure you always have some kind of outward reaction for just a moment, like screaming, jerking back, or an "involuntary combat action."  When you enter a state of Insanity you have a Bout of Madness where you act out your insanity. You roll on a pretty limited table or the Keeper (GM) just chooses something appropriate. This can include amnesia concerning all events since they last felt safe, psychosomatic physical disability, a violent outburst, but also includes rolling on other tables to have a new permanent Phobia or Mania. The Keeper also gets to add to or modify your background story elements, corrupting your memories and social connections or adding strangers to your memories, which is kind of neat. The Bout lasts for 1d10 combat rounds, and you're encouraged to just narrate it away if the insane Investigator is the only one in the scene, or if all the Investigators are going insane at the same time. Once your Bout is over, you enter Underlying Insanity where you should roleplay the aftereffects, especially if you gained a Phobia, Mania, or the Keeper hosed around with your Backgrounds. If you're Temporarily Insane this state lasts for 1d10 hours. Whenever you lose even a single SAN point in Underlying Insanity, you suffer another Bout of Madness. The Keeper might bedevil you with Delusions, and you can make a Reality Check to see through them, with failure resulting in losing 1 SAN and immediately entering a Bout. Success makes you immune to further Delusions until you lose more SAN from something else. Temporary Insanity ends after a good night's rest in a safe place, or after the 1d10 hour timeframe of your Underlying Insanity has lapsed, whichever comes first. Indefinite Insanity requires extended care over months, with two options: in-home care, or institutionalization. In either case you just roll a d100 for every month of safe, comfortable care that involves little to no sorts of player character activities. If you've got private home care (including psychoanalysts and drugs), a 1-95 gives you back 1d3 SAN and you make a Sanity roll that if successful means you're cured. If you roll 96-100 you lose 1d6 SAN and in addition to this failed month, the next month is also an automatic failure. If you enter a sanitarium or the like, "on average" a roll of 1-50 restores 1d3 SAN and allows you a Sanity roll to be cured, but the Keeper is encouraged to increase the range for this result depending on the quality of the institution. A roll of 51-95 means no progress. A 96-100 is the same as home care, 1d6 SAN loss and next month is automatically a failure too. There is an off-hand mention that "in the real world all insanity is indefinite insanity, since there's no author or Keeper to tell you when it will end" because "Many disorders, especially congenital conditions, offer little hope of recovery." Which is real hosed up when you take into account the entire rest of the chapter defines insanity as you turning into a weirdo full to the brim with a wacky grab-bag of phobias and manias, delusions, and entering a violent fugue state whenever you're surprised by something gross, which you become more and more susceptible to the more it happens. If they had just left that "real world insanity is X game thing" out, the whole section would be a lot better as a "look, we're just playing at a specific kind of story full of magic and demons here and this does not represent any real mental illness." That Old Tree fucked around with this message at 01:15 on Dec 25, 2023 |
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Dec 25, 2023 01:11
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Oof, I remember CoC Insanity as a death spiral that hates you and it sounds like 7e didn't fundamentally change that?
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Dec 25, 2023 11:23
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NGDBSS posted:Oof, I remember CoC Insanity as a death spiral that hates you and it sounds like 7e didn't fundamentally change that? Because it's a feature, not a bug.
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Dec 25, 2023 11:36
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Kestral posted:Because it's a feature, not a bug. It mirrors the source material, no?
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Dec 25, 2023 15:12
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Eastmabl posted:It mirrors the source material, no? Not nearly as much as it thinks it does.
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Dec 25, 2023 15:14
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Not nearly as much as it thinks it does.
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Dec 25, 2023 15:25
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Not nearly as much as it thinks it does. Lovecraft Accurate Shock (d%): 1-88: fainting spell 89: cannibalism 90-00: cleansing bolt of story-ending lightning
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Dec 25, 2023 17:32
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Eastmabl posted:It mirrors the source material, no? Not as much as you think. People see poo poo and they don't take like, sanity damage or whatever, usually it's a revelation that we don't matter that much which is unsettling, but usually there's a further, scarier revelation that we need to stop loving around or we will find out. Like Mountains of Madness there's the whole "ancient aliens we basically dont matter" thing, but then he sees something at the end that is still alive and now MORE humans want to go check them out and oh gently caress ahhh AHHHHHHHH AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. Meanwhile, Shadow over Innsmouth is more the meme of "im FIVE...PERCENT....IRISH???? IM...IM GOING INSANE!!!" stuff where he researches his own geneaology and finds out...he's a fishman too (or something to that effect). Lots of other famous ones don't end with people going insane, Cool Air didn't iirc, and Color out of Space kind of did in that an alien thing like, drained their life force but overall, nah
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Dec 25, 2023 18:42
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Hell, sometimes in the source the response is, "Get my goddamn shotgun." What people labor under in his stories is less the immediate "AHH TENTACLES SO SCARY" and more the gnawing knowledge that comes afterward that we are motes and will inevitably be brushed aside, and even doing much of anything about the short-term threats will make everyone think you're a violent maniac. Because who's going to believe that you murdered your buddy because his evil father-in-law is a body-stealing sorcerer? Some do have a breakdown in the moment but it usually comes with other traumatic circumstances piling on as well.
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Dec 25, 2023 19:32
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disposablewords posted:Hell, sometimes in the source the response is, "Get my goddamn shotgun." For my group.That's how we've always played CoC, and that's the way we like it.
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Dec 25, 2023 20:15
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Being haunted by terrible nightmares after reading the Necronomicon or learning about the Cult of Cthulhu and seeing a grotesque Cthulhu statue does happen, though. Sometimes Lovecraft seems to be writing a kind of period understanding of PTSD, or simply people getting extremely stressed and nervous in stressful situations. The archetypal going-insane-at-the-sight is Danforth at the end of At the Mountains of Madness, though, who, already pretty freaked out, sees something and ends up with spells of mad rambling.disposablewords posted:Because who's going to believe that you murdered your buddy because his evil father-in-law is a body-stealing sorcerer? Some do have a breakdown in the moment but it usually comes with other traumatic circumstances piling on as well. As an aside, one of my favourite adaptations of The Thing on the Doorstep is a Batman Beyond episode.
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Dec 25, 2023 21:02
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The one where the real-estate developer is being haunted and attacked by a sludge ghost?
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Dec 25, 2023 21:11
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Ominous Jazz posted:The one where the real-estate developer is being haunted and attacked by a sludge ghost? No, the one where Talia al Ghul makes Bruce Wayne young again only to reveal that actually, she’s Ras Al Ghul downloaded into Talia’s body, and he plans to swap into young Bruce.
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Dec 25, 2023 21:42
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No, I think it's the one where Talia al Ghul reconnects with Bruce and then it turns out her dad wants Bruce's body. Efb
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Dec 25, 2023 21:44
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That episode good as gently caress
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Dec 25, 2023 23:13
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Batman Beyond was a good show.
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Dec 25, 2023 23:30
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Omnicrom posted:Batman Beyond was a good show.  Also I know this isn't TG general chat, but the best and most nuanced sanity mechanic ever is still Unknown Armies
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Dec 26, 2023 00:09
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theironjef posted: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. It isn’t just the thoughtless laziness that bothers me, it’s that most systems of that era had a double-standard. Using the DSM II but then treating physical damage differently? Lovecraft has characters trapped in decaying bodies, or transforming into mythos creatures, or (arguably) suffering from aggressively accelerated effects of radiation. I recall more PCs with missing limbs than with conditions like cancer, or infections, or bad knees, or incontinence. And usually the results either barely came into play or were crippling (catatonia was always a “fun” result; I don’t recall many CoC characters in a coma, come to think of it, just “dead” or “hospitalized”). The horror games I’ve played that allow you to pick an effect with your GM have worked so much better, though even then, I’d say more than half the horror groups I’ve gamed with have been a pretty strong mix of horror and humor. My personal favorite “insanity” was my Mythos caster’s developed hatred of archeologists. In one miniadventure, an NPC introduced himself as “Doctor Matthews, I’m an archeologist working on the find at…” and my Mythos caster pulled a gun out and shot him before he could finish the sentence. (That NPC wasn’t a cultist, just an incautious fool, and it was too late.) Even after that character recovered, it wasn’t safe for someone to introduce themselves to him as an archeologist.
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Dec 26, 2023 01:40
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Pretty sure the part fish dude ended up basically going 'Welp, guess I'm part fish, let's see where this goes' compared to the part ape dude who literally set himself on fire. Though takes on a bit of a different dimension given Lovecraft very clearly had mental illness run in his family, what with both his parents being institutionalized and leaving him raised by his aunts. As a girl. But yeah, a good chunk of the stories have people freak out at first but gradually get used to the weird poo poo they've been plunged into, even getting curious about it. Pretty much the opposite of the literal dice roll to suddenly become unplayable.
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Dec 26, 2023 05:18
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Strangely enough, it seems as if you were trying to emulate the literary effect of Lovecraft's protagonists finding out various horrific events, something similar to the Cyberpunk RED humanity track would make more sense. Some people are broken by it, others simply bodied, and some rally up well -- perhaps due to having already worked with the material already. (Dr. Armitage in the one with Wilbur Whateley comes to mind.)
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Dec 26, 2023 05:33
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Narsham posted:It isn’t just the thoughtless laziness that bothers me, it’s that most systems of that era had a double-standard. Using the DSM II but then treating physical damage differently? Lovecraft has characters trapped in decaying bodies, or transforming into mythos creatures, or (arguably) suffering from aggressively accelerated effects of radiation. I recall more PCs with missing limbs than with conditions like cancer, or infections, or bad knees, or incontinence. I mostly agree regarding TMNT, honestly the game sucked. I was just in a mood and objecting to someone else "not liking it correctly" or whatever. Personally I have yet to like ANY insanity system in any game, finding they tend to be either "alternate death track" or "excuse to play a stereotype" like when your worst friend rolls an INT under 5. theironjef fucked around with this message at 05:58 on Dec 26, 2023 |
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Dec 26, 2023 05:45
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Pretty sure the part fish dude ended up basically going 'Welp, guess I'm part fish, let's see where this goes' compared to the part ape dude who literally set himself on fire. You have to fail pretty hard and be extremely unlucky for the character to be permanently unplayable. And in fact the more weird poo poo you see the less you have to roll those sanity checks, you do actually get used to things (of course everyone will think you're mad anyway, ranting about flying beings from another dimension). Also therapy exists in the game.
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Dec 26, 2023 12:45
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theironjef posted:I mostly agree regarding TMNT, honestly the game sucked. I was just in a mood and objecting to someone else "not liking it correctly" or whatever. Personally I have yet to like ANY insanity system in any game, finding they tend to be either "alternate death track" or "excuse to play a stereotype" like when your worst friend rolls an INT under 5. WFRP3's insanity rules had a bunch of neat stuff, like how most of them were symptoms rather than root causes, like "growing apathy" or "the shakes". They usually only lasted for the scene and had defined mechanical effects (usually a penalty die to certain stats). There was also a tag system where seeing an orc throw a goblin through your friend could force you to draw a card and you'd keep it if it was something like "dry heaves" but you'd probably just discard something like "nagging doubts". They were more a stress system than an insanity system. LatwPIAT posted:Being haunted by terrible nightmares after reading the Necronomicon or learning about the Cult of Cthulhu and seeing a grotesque Cthulhu statue does happen, though. Sometimes Lovecraft seems to be writing a kind of period understanding of PTSD, or simply people getting extremely stressed and nervous in stressful situations. The archetypal going-insane-at-the-sight is Danforth at the end of At the Mountains of Madness, though, who, already pretty freaked out, sees something and ends up with spells of mad rambling. of course, /what/ they found traumatic is sometimes just "my grandma was black" Splicer fucked around with this message at 13:50 on Dec 26, 2023 |
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Dec 26, 2023 13:39
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Penguins are loving scary.
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Dec 26, 2023 15:19
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I've actually been out in a big collection of them (used to work at Sea World) and they have the threat level of a sleepy toddler. Even the big ones can't do much more than gently prod you slightly. Most of them you can just pick up and move around like a lightly chirping football.
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Dec 26, 2023 19:01
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theironjef posted:I've actually been out in a big collection of them (used to work at Sea World) and they have the threat level of a sleepy toddler. Even the big ones can't do much more than gently prod you slightly. Most of them you can just pick up and move around like a lightly chirping football. 
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Dec 27, 2023 01:46
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That penguin is way better than indifferent imo 
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Dec 27, 2023 01:57
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theironjef posted:I've actually been out in a big collection of them (used to work at Sea World) and they have the threat level of a sleepy toddler. Even the big ones can't do much more than gently prod you slightly. Most of them you can just pick up and move around like a lightly chirping football. I get nervous if a bird chases me even if I know it can't really threaten me. An angry goose or grouse has generally scared me off by charging me, and a penguin would probably do that to me too.
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Dec 27, 2023 05:29
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The description of the albino penguins suggests they're pretty hosed up; they're huge, bigger than emperor penguins it seems, blind and pale, and the only living things found in an already unsettling place. That said, it's literally just their appearance, the characters realise pretty quickly they're harmless.
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Dec 27, 2023 05:36
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Penguins are a menace. Proof: 
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Dec 27, 2023 06:17
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FMguru posted:Penguins are a menace. That's a scalped chicken.
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Dec 27, 2023 18:24
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(right)
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Dec 27, 2023 18:38
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MonsterEnvy posted:I get nervous if a bird chases me even if I know it can't really threaten me. An angry goose or grouse has generally scared me off by charging me, and a penguin would probably do that to me too. gently caress Sandhill Cranes. One fucker chased me once down the street once to protect their young who were walking towards me 20 years ago and I still hate them! I know they’re protected and I don’t harass them but I give them a wide berth whenever I can.
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Dec 27, 2023 22:18
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