FATAL & Friends 2014-15: The Neverending Storygame

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > Comedy Goldmine > The Goodmine > FATAL & Friends 2014-15: The Neverending Storygame

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MadScientistWorking: Jun 23, 2010; "I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

Night10194 posted:

I mean the game gets some slack for being, I think, the first RPG that FFG ever tried to make.

Its not their first and having played their first game it seems like its a step backwards. Admittedly, Blue Planet 2nd edition was pretty threadbare mechanically at least the system doesn't get in the way

# ¿ Sep 29, 2015 16:03

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 04:16

MadScientistWorking: Jun 23, 2010; "I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

quote:

Also of note is that any kind of thick clothing (like really anything mean for travelling around) counts as armor (with Armor Protection and Encumbrance of 1), which never ceases to annoy me..

That actually makes sense in a general abstraction so Im kind of wondering what the annoying part is.

# ¿ Oct 3, 2015 15:54

MadScientistWorking: Jun 23, 2010; "I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

Hostile V posted:

It's nice to know that one of the most dangerous classes is a big buff person with a machine gun wearing swim trunks, floaties, a snorkle and an aluminum foil hat yelling "SUFFER NOT A FISH TO LIVE" whenever they open fire or feel like it.

Its not necessarily the most dangerous thing in the game given that at-will no save blindness is a thing is this game.

# ¿ Nov 12, 2015 01:51

MadScientistWorking: Jun 23, 2010; "I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

Rangpur posted:

Yes. At this point, it's basically Exalted, in that whoever runs out of exceedingly long descriptions of their special move first dies instantly. The curse of all shonen manga is to descend into self-parody if they run long enough. ...Huh. And I think I just realized why TBZ is built for one-shots/short campaigns.

There is only one shonen manga that has actually avoided power creep and its because the writer knew off the top how absurd it is from a narrative standpoint most shonen mangas are. Hence the reason why JoJo's caught me off guard because it looks so stereotypical of a shonen manga but most of the time it most battles are won/lost from how quick thinking the characters are. That and the most intense battles in the entire show are ones that ironically don't involve punching.

# ¿ Dec 15, 2015 20:37

MadScientistWorking: Jun 23, 2010; "I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

Mors Rattus posted:

I wouldn't say avoided entirely. It just happened largely between Part 2 and Part 3, when Jotaro, the most boring and powerful Jojo, happened.

The problem with that argument is that its not exactly consistent as to whether or not Jotaro's powers actually are relevant in any given battle. There is at least one I can think of where he's absolutely useless at the encounter and my most favorite one where Star Platinum doesn't play into the battle at all.
EDIT:
Not sure about parts 4,5, or 6 but I know in 7 he flat out states that he isn't really all that powerful anymore.

# ¿ Dec 15, 2015 22:29

MadScientistWorking: Jun 23, 2010; "I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

Nessus posted:

This must be the work of an enemy etc.

I think the real difference is that Jotaro's power set does not change - if anything it backslides somewhat - during his later appearances. So yeah, he probably got one of the best "toolkits," but it's how you "use it" that counts.

Ehhhh..... JoJo's is the type of manga where its been established that your ability to use parlor magic and keeping track of time is arguably just as important in defeating someone with Jotaro's toolkit. Its kind of why JoJo's is different is because its not out of character or even absurd storywise for that sort of thing to happen.

# ¿ Dec 15, 2015 23:02

MadScientistWorking: Jun 23, 2010; "I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

Halloween Jack posted:

I'm always fascinated with European games, especially when they aren't accessible to Americans. I'd love to see someone do Neuroshima. The Stalker RPG is translated now and it's on my (very very long) list.

The Stalker RPG does something weird in that I want to say either in the original form or during the translation they introduced rape into the setting when it wasn't even needed and actually doesn't make much sense.

# ¿ Dec 19, 2015 16:15

MadScientistWorking: Jun 23, 2010; "I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

Simian_Prime posted:

Ugh. The basic concept seems good, but then it falls into the Pathfinder trap of throwing a crazy grab-bag of crap at you with no coherence.

"Your party arrives in 1920's Russia and RASPUTIN'S there and BABA YAGA is his mom and ANASTASIA is there and Prince Alexi's a THREE-HEADED DRAGON and you're just constantly FIGHTING AND BLOWING poo poo UP!!!"

It's like a game written by an over-caffeinated 12-year old, and with the PF rule set you know the whole thing is going to be a tedious exercise. Pathfinder is truly the new RIFTS.

Nope. Its an exact duplicate of D&D. Nothing more nothing less. Even 4th edition had a weird as all hell reference to what that Adventure Path references though I've never exactly been bothered to figure out who was the original person to equate Baba Yaga comes from our earth.

Kurieg posted:

One thing that's kind of bizarrely impressive about Pathfinder is that they crammed so much random poo poo into it. Robots? Sure. Aliens? From which planet, we have several. Sentient Plant People specifically designed to be ridiculously delicious by their creator? Wizards shouldn't be trusted with nice things.

That's not even getting into the officially published adventure where you take a portal to 1920's-ish Russia in search of Baba Yaga and end up killing Rasputin.

Ehhh... I don't think Pathfinder ever compares to D&D at its weirdest. What makes Pathfinder odd really is that there is only one setting whereas in base D&D its typically comparmentalized into many smaller thematic settings.

MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 01:06 on Jan 1, 2016

# ¿ Jan 1, 2016 00:55

MadScientistWorking: Jun 23, 2010; "I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

gradenko_2000 posted:

Just from a quick google, Baba Yaga is a figure from Slavic folklore as a witch/crone figure.

It got involved in D&D because early D&D was a pastiche of whatever random mythology Gygax wanted to pull out of his rear end and throw into the game, and specifically it seems like Gygax homed in on the fact that the hut she lives in is described as being raised on chicken-leg stilts, and that the dimensions of the inside of the hut seem to defy explanation.

He translated this into the hut's leg-stilts being literally large 12-foot long chicken legs that can run really fast over terrain and smack around adventurers with ease, while Baba Yaga herself is a powerful magic-user that's going to hurl all manner of destructive spells at adventurers as she uses the hut to travel across multiple dimensional planes. The insides of the hut are then some sort of labyrinthine construction that's many times larger than what it looks like from the outside.

I meant why is she does she also have a connection to earth. In 4th edition you actually come across a Soviet Tank while exploring her hut. Like the only other character in all of D&D that I know of which can travel to earth is Elminster.

# ¿ Jan 1, 2016 01:41

MadScientistWorking: Jun 23, 2010; "I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

Bieeardo posted:

They named the polar bear splat... polar bear. Bra-loving-vo.

From what I've heard of the Pathfinder Alien wank from a friend, it strikes me as a callback to things like Blackmoor, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks and even Metamorphosis: Alpha. Or, if you were around for the bleating about 3E being like Diablo, the Might and Magic games.

I thought it would be Spelljammer and Planescape more than anything.

# ¿ Jan 1, 2016 17:35

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 04:16

MadScientistWorking: Jun 23, 2010; "I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

WaywardWoodwose posted:

I think the names are what trip people up, in my group we just say success/ failure, critical success/ critical failure, and advantage/ disadvantage.
I think the dice are weighted so on an even check you are slightly more likely to get more failures, but also more advantages, so at least you can fail forward,.
Also since upgrade dice are the only ones with crits, so you can only crit if you have ranks in a skill.

That terminology doesn't work because by how the rules are written crits are entirely decoupled from success or failure. It happens because the critical effect of the negative/positive symbols do not cancel out. Only the success/failure part do.

quote:

I think part of my failure of understanding is why you need, as far as I parse it, one set of symbols for normal successes and one for awesome successes(or failures). Why not just have an excess of normal successes/failures lead to that?

Because it in theory leads to more chaotic events than rather what you suggest.

MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 19:01 on Jan 4, 2016

# ¿ Jan 4, 2016 18:55

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > Comedy Goldmine > The Goodmine > FATAL & Friends 2014-15: The Neverending Storygame

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