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Tasoth posted:So how much of the Not much, as far as I can tell. There's a ghost world, unearthly invaders to the ghost world, and a big jerk faction that bosses other ghosts around... It would have made the ghosts here dramatically better if they'd ripped off more of Wraith, because they're pretty boring by comparison.
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Jan 10, 2014 23:40
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stuff is ripped off of Wraith?
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Pththya-lyi posted:Speaking of Howard-inspired media, I started and abandoned a write-up of the Savage Worlds version Day After Ragnarok in the previous thread, and I'm wondering if I should start it up again. Goons, would you still be interested? Should I c/p my old posts into this thread, or is it enough to pick up where I left off? Thank you in advance. Maybe just post a link to the old posts? I'd really be down for more Day After Ragnarok though, poo poo was 
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Jan 11, 2014 13:04
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Hey I can't seem to find an Empire of Satanis write-up in the wiki. Like, is this really a thing? Am I the only one who remembers this? quote:The thundering crash of dueling void sabers erupts over the ominous chanting of a grotto’s dark sabbath. Two bestial lords, inhuman, grotesque, and satanic slash at each other with blades of chartreuse magical energy from the void itself. A masked onlooker in yellow robes casts a spell as the ululation of strange tribal demons produces yet more sorcery! Emphasis not mine, by the way.
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Jan 18, 2014 04:17
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pkfan2004 posted:Eight adjectives in one sentence used to describe one thing? I am immediately sold on the prospect that this sounds enjoyably horrible. I've thought about doing a write-up before, but to do that I would have to get a copy, and I was afraid I'd have to give Darrick Dishaw actual money. I don't want to give Darrick Dishaw money. But it turns out it's free on Lulu so if people wanna see more, I'm down with it.
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Jan 18, 2014 05:21
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Empire Of Satanis: Kicked Out Of The Church Of Satan For Being Too Satanic I think this is meant to be the cover art, but it's not on the book. It's just kind of there on the Lulu page. About The Author To really get Empire Of Satanis, you need to be brought up to speed on its history and the background of its creator, one Darrick Dishaw.  Look at this fuckin guy Darrick Dishaw is a loving loon. He's been haunting the occult world for years as Venger Satanis, the founder and Head Culty of the Cult Of Cthulhu. The main beliefs of the cult – as far as I can tell from the awful website – are a blend of satanism, chaos magic and H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos. With this unusual melange of esoteric philosophies, he has been laughed out of every gathering of magic weirdos that he's tried to contact. He published a book on his beliefs, which according to one Amazon review liberally steals from other books on satanism. He tried to apply for a leadership role in the Church of Satan, which decided he was too much of a wanker to be part of their organisation. He is also a big RPG guy, and that's why we have Empire Of Satanis. Dishaw went to a stack of RPG forums to aggressively push his game on people while refusing to listen to any advice. Most notably, he gave review copies to peeps on RPG.net, which (naturally) led to them publishing negative reviews, which led to him starting a series of huge pissing matches where he made every possible mistake you could make in response to honest criticism. The highlight of this was Dishaw casting a loving curse on everyone who disliked his game: darrick3909, RPG.net forums posted:Hail Satan! Lord of the Pit! King of Hell! Ruler of the Earth! Master of the Abyss! I open the unknowable doorways and touch the violet flame, drink the revitalizing blood and break the skulls of those who cross Him or His brothers. I call upon the most vicious demons of Hell to intervene. From this night forth, you will be plagued by self-doubt, weakness, failure, hopelessness, hunger, pain, loss, insecurity, and envy. Nothing can save you and no one will come to your aid. All who have befriended you will now desert you in your hour of need. Which eventually led to his ban. Despite this, Dishaw went on to release a sourcebook for the game (Satanis Unbound) before going quiet. I guess he spent the next five years or so working on his cult and personal life before releasing some non-RPG books, all of which you can get off of Lulu for free if you're really curious. He's got a wife and a kid now? Good for them, they all look healthy. Last year, he made his triumphant return to the RPG industry. He slunk back into RPG.net, started a groggy OSR blog and released a couple of D&D sourcebooks which  look pretty bad. He also ran a successful Kickstarter project called The Islands Of Purple-Haunted Putrescence, which you should definitely take a look at if you want a taste of what you're in for.What you should take away from all this is that Darrick Dishaw is a man who takes himself very seriously. He takes his writing very seriously. He takes the Cult Of Cthulhu very seriously. This is why is RPG product is so unbelievably poo poo. Next: The true Satanis starts here.
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Jan 18, 2014 07:38
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Empire Of Satanis: Chartreuse is the most evil colour. why does this picture suck so much Introduction EoS opens up with a brief introduction to the game and some gentle stroking of Dishaw's ego. quote:The thundering crash of dueling void sabers erupts over the ominous chanting of a grotto’s dark sabbath. Two bestial lords, inhuman, grotesque, and satanic slash at each other with blades of chartreuse magical energy from the void itself. A masked onlooker in yellow robes casts a spell as the ululation of strange tribal demons produces yet more sorcery! This is the thing with Dishaw's writing style; whenever he wants to try and describe something, he'll just start free-associating 'eldritch' words to try and get you as psyched up about his setting as he is. The problem is that it's just so over-the-top that it reads like a parody of the work Dishaw is trying to emulate. This becomes a big problem later on in the book when he tries to describe his setting and it becomes ugly walls of interchangeable adjectives. quote:Empire of Satanis, EoS, strives for innovation. I tried to go outside the role-playing box with this virgin effort. The layout is minimalist and garage band; it’s all about the words on the page. It’s akin to Lovecraft on an acid trip hurriedly transcribing the insanity of Hell as he falls deeper into the Pit. The book is Times New Roman on white for all of its 63 pages. The layout is dogshit. EoS is truly the most satanic of games, for it has committed the greatest sin: citing game mechanics before it tells us what the mechanics are. You get the impression that Dishaw wrote all of this, tried to edit it over a weekend then decided it was good enough for print. You'll see for yourself six updates from now, when we finally get to character creation. This intro is also where we get the game's first mention of its one kinda okay mechanic, Story Alteration. Once per scene, any player can try to make a big change to the story by rolling a d6. If it comes up six, the change happens and the story continues down the new route. The game even advises a sort-of troupe play structure where the player who initiated the change becomes the GM for the next scene or until someone else alters the story. This is actually pretty cute, and it's nice to see Dishaw doesn't take the GM AS GOD position that a lot of OSR types do. The book also tells us players can reduce the target number for Story Alteration by spending points of Social Standing and Hideous Paradise, which will be fun to think about several updates from now! quote:Slowly the gelatinous, chattering, translucent, viscous, slime drenched, unholy, bilious green monstrosity withdraws from the cyclopean, nightmare city of Frier. It peers into the decayed walls of "reality", fatigued by its vile sorcery. Alone and unobserved, except for his sword wielding companions, the demonic entity effects an unnamable change upon the universe beyond the Empire of Satanis the Black God! Now imagine the creature described above is You... In EoS, you play Fiends, monsters that are 'part alien, demon and human'. They live in the hell dimension of K'Thana under the Crimson God Satanis, which borders the human universe Sha-la and their home universe Yidhathroth. It's explained the Fiends have no slave-morality and are 100% master-morality, which has turned their society into a hot lolbertarian paradise. They are also very, very evil. quote:Characters in this game are generally encouraged to have traits such as: oppression, cruelty, domination, blasphemy, ambition, lust for knowledge and expansion, aggression, courage, a passion for degradation, and aesthetics. However, Fiends will also help each other out in order to receive something in return. Except for a few strict order-keeping laws (loyalty to Satanis), there is a liberal and laissez faire (hands off) attitude in K’thana and most places that Fiends have contact with. So if you've been looking for a game about objectivist demon monsters, look no further! EoS has got you covered. Next: More setting, plus Fiend races. poo poo's gonna get squamous. Down With People fucked around with this message at 02:05 on Jan 19, 2014 |
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Jan 19, 2014 01:21
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Derrick Dishaw's not the worst game designer in the industry, not by a longshot. However, he thinks of himself as a powerful sorcerer and a master of cosmic horror, and that's why he deserves a swirlie. pkfan2004 posted:Please tell me this game has Knowledge: Thesaurus that you can take that allows you dice bonuses depending on your skill level and amount of adjectives you can cram in a sentence. There's not, but believe me when I tell you the last thing this game needs is more loving skills.
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Jan 19, 2014 02:08
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Ehdrighor looks loving amazing, do that one.
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Jan 19, 2014 04:18
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Empire Of Satanis: 666 Pits of Hellfire and the 999 Layers of the Crimson Gate Introduction 2: Intro Harder The first chapter is called 'A Little Background' and is meant to be a basic guide to the setting I guess. Both it and the Races chapter are written in first-person from what I assume is a Fiend's POV. We find out a little more on the boring, stupid history of the Fiends. Dishaw's written this with the same corgi-esque, frothing-at-the-mouth excitement that he does for all his fluff. quote:This is a game of demonic alien fiends, black robes and dark cloaks, serpentine daggers, vile sorcery, crackling scarlet energy void sabers, servants of thinking black ooze, action, investigation, and exploration. Empire of Satanis is the story about creatures from a dark plane that have risen to power using cunning, will, fortitude, intelligence, and the Black Arts! Understanding forbidden, eldritch lore and satanic wizardry allows one to reshape “reality”. To forever alter the physics, laws, and truth of the world. That is greatness! Fiends were once human sorcerers who were banished from Sha-la. They broke through the dimensional barriers into Yidhathroth and met the Crimson God Satanis, who rewarded them by turning them into Fiends. Under the guidance of their new god, the Fiends journeyed to K'Thana, where they created a bunch of city-states and got heavily into back-stabbing each other and murder/raping/enslaving any humans they could find. Their magic is weaker in Sha-la, but they keenly await the day they can invade en masse and gently caress its poo poo up. There's only one real law in K'Thana: 'Thou shalt not kill evil without good reason, sufficient provocation, or for sport.' Despite the poor wording and immense vagaries of this one law, we're assured that it is brutally enforced by the Insidious Order of the Ninth Angle, the ruling body empowered by Satanis. This seems like it would contradict the Fiends' previously stated laissez-faire philosophy, but that's okay. Y'see, it's all part of the Dark Way, the path to evil enlightenment available to all Fiends, and by following it you too can become a god and start your own evil empire. It's all about freedom and liberation! I mean, you will always have to obey the Crimson God Satanis, and your empire will still be a part of his empire, but that's just how the Dark Way do. quote:Evil has two sides, the matter-of-fact death and destruction is but one. The other is a more intangible, spiritual evil that raises us the masters of creation. This is post-modernism and post-apocalypse mixed with chaos magic and the viscous, unameable, infinite, terrors that have only now come into the light. The political state is one of totalitarianism, religious zealotry, rule by black magic, total anarchy, and survival of the fittest. In this chapter, several organisations are mentioned, including the Imperial Murderers, the Sect Of The Stifling Air and the Bureau of Disinformation. We later learn that the Imperial Murderers are Satanis' military force, but the latter two are never expanded on in any way. Hail Satanis!  There are a bunch of races in this game, since Fiends come in all shapes and sizes. There are other gods besides Satanis, and they got in on the Fiend game too. Each Fiendish race gets a brief write-up explaining its background, culture and physical appearance. Mechanically, your choice of race gives you a bonus to two skills, normally one of the many types of magic. Aside from “The Smile”, all of them have names which look like giant fuckfests of random letters, with no attempt at resembling an actual language. First up, the Fiends of Satanis. Kurur-esh: quote:Kurur-esh are almost always uncivilized. City dwellers see them as barbarians. Their skin is a dark red, brown, and their thick tangled dark brown hair are physical trademarks...Their wild, untamed expressions also include jumping up and down, guttural chants, head butting passersby with their thick skulls. Dark-skinned tribal barbarians from the shadow jungles of Tharr. They eat human brains and smother themselves in cranial fluid. I think it's meant to make them smarter, but the wording implies that they only think it does. +1 Flesh Magic, two free skill levels from Music, Meditate or Rune-Casting. Zeph n' Glarl: quote:Their skin is a putrescent greenish black hue. Upon maturity, it is their custom to shave the head of hair by the light of the green flame in a ritual that further separates them from mortal creatures of “normal matter”. Not related to the bump n' grind. Scholarly types on the hunt for ancient black magic. They are also decadent socialites and killer mad scientists who hang out in alleys looking for victims, 'like an unspeakable monstrous Jack the Ripper'. +1 Word Magic, +1 to one other magic of your choice. Zirakeans: quote:Zirakean flesh is a pale green complemented by a wormy texture. Their 6 inch horns grow out of their forehead, sometimes effective for head-butting opponents in the stomach. Another common physical aspect of Zirakeans are the elongated ears, Cro-Magnon brow, semi-bipedal stance and loping gate. The elongated fingers ending in serrated claws are particularly noteworthy. Zirakean hands sometimes extend as long as their 2 feet. Psycho warrior race. They were interbred with hatred chimps to make them even stronger and killy-er. They don't much natural skill with magic, but the book says that member of other races will often teach them, even though its obviously not in their interests to do so. +1 to any two combat skills, though I think you can just go with +2 to one combat skill. Vihm: quote:The most noticeable characteristic of the Vihm race are the masks that always obscure their face...Their skin is an ivory white that is strange to behold, and vehemently clashes with the fuscia (sic) furr (sic) covering their calves on down and ending in cloven hooves. Creepy mute mask dudes who are prone to introspection. They prowl around and act all sneaky-like. This is the race for Lone Wolf players, and the book offers no advice for how to incorporate a completely silent loner into the party. +1 Mask Magic, +1 Shadow Magic Blazht:
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Jan 19, 2014 12:01
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Draculas. They drink blood, but also end up consuming part of their victims' personality, which eventually drives them insane. Most of them join the Temple of Blind Knowledge to learn ancient black magic, particularly rituals to calm their inner turmoil. They are also decadent hedonists who like sex ('Consent is inconsequential'). +1 Blood Magic, two free skill levels from Meditation, Sensitivity or Disinformation.
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Empire Of Satanis: There is of course more, but I will spare you. Fiend Race Mega-Update Did you know there are gods other than Satanis? It's true! Leedra-rive, Odhra-guoa, Drekth-crom and Toola-vra all have a stake in K'Thana, and have their own Fiends to enact their will. Leedra-rive is 'a struggling, elder, insectoid God bathed in leprous and discordant amber hued liquid fire.' Drekth-crom is 'the God of all thing that lurk in the gloom of hideous twilight.' Toola-vra is 'the God of Nonsense and Childish Amusement'. Does any of this matter? Nope. None of these gods get their own write-ups. All of the descriptions I'm quoting come from the race descriptions. Speaking of which, let's have more of those! Leedra-rive has two races: The Kanaima: This poo poo is bananas. I'm just going to quote the whole thing.
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Jan 20, 2014 02:27
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Empire Of Satanis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightsaber The Actual System Bits We don't get to learn the basic mechanics until we are almost a third of the way into the book.  Basic mechanics! EoS runs on a dicepool system. You take the appropriate attribute and skill for what you're trying to do, add them up and roll that number of d6. The highest number you roll is your result. If you roll a 6, then you keep the 6 and roll another die, adding its result to your total. You repeat this until you stop rolling 6s. You'll be trying to reach a target number decided by the GM: quote:easy is a 4, doing something average is 7, something complex is 10, challenging is 13, and unimaginable is 16 In addition, the GM can give you a +2 to bonus for actions in accordance with your Colour Sphere, or for giving your actions elaborate descriptions that are in accordance with your Colour Sphere. That'll be fun to think about, when we get to the Colour Sphere chapter several updates from now. Combat! Combat works completely different. Step by step: 1. Character with the highest Agility goes first. 2. Determine Attack Numbers and Defence Numbers. This is done the same way as any other dice pool, except you then roll a d6 for each one and add the result. 3. If your Attack Number is higher than their Defence Number, they take damage. This is soaked by their Endurance and inflicted on their Vitality. 4. Process repeats until the deadness takes hold. This is really awkward and it works this way because Dishaw is a grognard. Magic gets yet another system, which will be covered later. Attributes! The character attributes are: Will: Confidence, control, leadership and the attribute for resisting magical effects. Magical Aptitude: What you use to magic people. Theoretical Knowledge: Abstract thinking and book smarts. Also important for Nightmare Technology and Candy Land Magic. Practical Knowledge: Anything that requires hands-on experience. Cunning: Being a tricky bastard. Attraction: Charisma, and also the luck attribute for some loving reason. Brute Force: Physical strength. Agility: Dexterity, and also the attribute to max out if you want to fight people. Endurance: Stamina and constitution. The 'armour' attribute that you use to soak damage. Vitality: A derived attribute, determined by adding 6 to your Endurance. It's your health and functions that way. Skills! Then there's the skills list. It's an enormous monster of a thing, coming out as 65 skills all up. Most of them are your standard poo poo like Climb and Melee Weapons, so instead of listing them all, I'll just mention the interesting/stupid ones. Aberration Empathy: Like animal empathy, for demon monsters. Assassin's Art: Lets you study an opponent for five rounds to do double-damage. This is a trap option, because your opponent will be attacking you for those five rounds. Increasing it isn't worth it, because it only decreases the time by one round per point and there's a much better skill you should be saving for. Disguise: How the gently caress is this meant to work when one of the races is a toad-infested tree? Dreadful Exaltation: One of a handful of oddball magicky skills, this one lets you bring an object of worship to life. Whatever it is will do its best to fulfil your commands. Higher results make it better at follow your commands (not explained) and determines how long before it goes back to sleep (not explained). Lightning Attack: Get an extra attack per day for each skill level. This is really good, but it's not The One True Combat Skill. Nyctalops: Lets you see in complete darkness. More importantly, lets you see 'the secret darkness that resides in all things'. Once you see something's inner darkness, you can transform it into something else. This doesn't work on Fiends and transforming objects in Sha-la requires a Complex success. If you fail, you can't try to transform that thing again for 24 hours. Omnipresence: Depending on how good your roll is, this might let you project your sense a distance or let you literally be omnipresent. I can see this being a pain in the rear end to adjudicate, and the book offers no advice. Priest Of Satanis: Lets you heal 1d6+1 Vitality as many times per day as your skill level. Priest of the Dark Current: Lets you double a Fiend's attribute for 1d6+1 rounds blah blah blah skill level. What's the Dark Current? Never explained. Quivering Palm: Getting a complex success lets you knock out someone for 1d6+1 minutes. Also a trap option, because that's all it can do and it's not the One True Combat Skill. Ritual Dance: Do a ritual dance for the Old Ones. Dancing for an hour and getting a Complex success will give you a dice re-roll. 'An unimaginable result might attract kindness from a stranger who give you shelter, food, and a night with his daughter.' Rune Casting: Get vague prophecies about the future. Dumb, trap option, no advice given on how to run this. Seduction: I'm singling this one out because its entire description is: quote:Wooing the opposite sex. loving amazing. Darrick Dishaw, Venger Satanis, transcendent intellectual and High Priest of the Cult of Cthulhu, in his game about playing alien monster demons, can't think of a form of sexual interaction other than penis + vagoo.  Speak Language: Each level lets you speak another language. There are many languages in K'Thana, such as Sphere of Colour-Borrowing: This confusingly-named skill lets you temporarily borrow someone else's Colour Sphere. Each skill level lets you hold onto another Colour Sphere. The game doesn't tell you how long you can do this and more importantly doesn't make you roll to use it, this skill is good to divert points into after maxing out the One True Combat Skill. Terrible Insight: You can see into the near future! Each skill level gives you an opportunity to alter the immediate future. Difficult to adjudicate, and it makes Rune Casting look even dumber. Two Weapon Fighting: Does what it says. Taking this skill at level 1 gives you a whopping -3 Attack Number for each weapon. You have to get it up to 4 before you can make those sweet, unhindered double attacks. Might be good to invest in after the One True Combat Skill. Unmentionable Stare: Roll Attraction + this skill to make someone run away screaming. The Tshahg's Umentionable Shriek works the same as this. Void Saber Combat:  THE ONE TRUE COMBAT SKILL. A void saber is a lightsaber – not kind of like a lightsaber, it's exactly a lightsaber. You invest in this skill, because unlike other weapons which add nothing, a void saber gives you +2 to both your Attack Number and Defence Number. And since it keys off Agility instead of Brute Force like most weapons, it's more cost-efficient too!Water Breathing: This skill doesn't let you breathe underwater, it just lets you hold your breath for a really long time, gently caress this game is stupid. Whispers in the night: This is a streetwise criminal contacts skill hampered by an awkward name. Next: Social Standing! Hideous Paradise! Dishaw goes full retard!
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Jan 22, 2014 14:34
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Halloween Jack posted:Aren't void sabers like, anti-lightsabers that work the same way by sucking anything they touch into a void? A chartreuse void? Yeah there's some poo poo mentioned about how they're made of pure void, but gently caress it they're lightsabers. They're a little handle with a button you push and then it's a chartreuse sword that can cut through anything.
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Jan 23, 2014 02:44
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Empire Of Satanis: making a scarf out of an intestine Social Standing and Hideous Paradise Social Standing represents how high up your character is in Fiend society. It runs from 1 to 10, ranging from the lowliest slave to the Overfiend. Increments in SS are gifted to you directly by the Dark Gods as a reward for doing evil things. The more dickish and evil your behaviour, the more SS you get. You can also lose SS by failing or being humiliated in front of your peers. Your SS determines how many spells you can cast per hour. You can also spend SS to temporarily raise your attributes or the result of non-combat rolls. The biggest benefit to high SS is that you can boss around other members of your race with lower SS. Even better, if the Fiend isn't the same race as you, you can steal their magic skills and use them at their level, or even use up their spells-per-hour instead of yours. The big problem is that SS seems to be an easy-come-easy-go thing. If you use it, it's gone, and by the RAW that includes the huge drop in your reputation and status. In fact, having high SS is so good, you will likely never spend it if you can avoid it. Another problem with SS is Deformities. When you hit SS 6, you roll 1d6 and gain a Deformity from the following list: quote:1. Head grows larger, disproportional to the rest of the body. Curvature of the skull becomes more pronounced, revealing grotesque angles, ridges, and shapes. One eye swells up, the other shrivels down to pea. Great bat-like wings sprout, Fiend can fly in the air and through space. So let's say you roll a 3. You get a fuckload of ears, worms for legs and insect wings. What if you're playing a Rive-zella, and already have insect wings? Do you get a second set? Or how about a Vahs-vra? Do you think having worm legs instead of snake legs is going to be a huge difference in your life? Is this something Fiends are going to notice, that you're walking on worms instead of snakes? It feels like another mechanic that's poorly thought-out, but lets Dishaw come up with more scary monster descriptions, so it went into the book. Speaking of Dishaw trying to be scary, Hideous Paradise is really dumb. It represents how well your character has been following the Dark Way. It's tracked similar to SS, and you gain points when you do things that fit the Dark Way. What does that involve? quote:It can be had by writing a death poem to your best friend just before you entomb his sister alive; abandoning common speech for zombie-like groans whilst stalking a victim; dancing the goat’s dance by the lonely roadside until the carnival arrives; putting on an impromptu puppet show where the puppets rip the flesh with their little wooden teeth; summoning a spectral light to reveal the insides of those who approach without giving the Sign of Veech; making a scarf out of an intestine, decorating it with feathers and albino ears, and then naming it Nicodemus; building a video screen into your own stomach that replays the most awful moments from other people’s lives as it jabs steel wires into your flesh for your masochistic pleasure you sick, sick bastard!  So you do something evil, and you get a point of HP. You can then spend your points to create permanent changes in the world around you, such as: quote:Make towering basalt temples in their honor appear; turn all the metal within a mile of himself into large flesh eating maggots with writhing tongues erupting from their eyes (this would garner another HP point); change a lake of water into acid; turn all the humans in a town into big breasted, green tentacled Fiend women; or any combinations of reality warping. The bigger the change, the more points it costs. It can't affect Fiends, but Fiends can spend Hideous Paradise to reverse your effects. So there you go. Not one, but two powers where you're expected to act like a dick so you can act like a dick. Next: Magic! The secrets of Candy Land revealed!
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Jan 23, 2014 04:17
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Forums Terrorist posted:It's kill puppies for satan but completely unironically. Empire Of Satanis is about playing Satan, the great penis extension that Darrick Dishaw idolises. kill puppies for satan is about playing Darrick Dishaw. EDIT: Which makes me wonder if he's even read kill puppies for satan, and if he had enough self-awareness to see the abyss waving back.
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Jan 23, 2014 04:33
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Oh, I forgot to quote the thing that prefaces the Social Standing text.quote:“In the name of Satanis!?! Who was that thing covered in the blood of human children and beating the Drum of Secrets with the femur of his former master?” The Drum of Secrets! Ooooh scary.
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Jan 23, 2014 05:12
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EDIT: fuckin beaten on the sex kitten thingBieeardo posted:Here's a question: What happens when your SS rating starts bouncing up and down like an excited kid? Do you lose the mutations when you go below 6, do you just become more and more of a clusterfuck of oog, or is the first hit the one that sticks? This poo poo is ~never explained~ Down With People fucked around with this message at 12:08 on Jan 23, 2014 |
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Jan 23, 2014 10:47
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Empire Of Satanis: sad marshmallow clouds of gore and entrails Magic Skills Magic skills work roughly the same as normal skills, with a few new bits and bobs. Your level of success determines how long a spell lasts and how much it can affect. Magic used in Sha-la is twice as powerful and lasts twice as long, because take that, humanity! You can also use magic to damage peeps directly, which has the benefit of being unsoakable by Endurance. Instead, anyone who gets magic cast on them rolls Willl + Magic Resistance (a skill I didn't cover because it's self-explanatory); if they get a better success, they ignore the spell. All types of magic use the Magical Aptitude attribute except for Nightmare Technology and Candy Land Magic, which both use Theoretical Knowledge instead. Both of those can't be countered with Magic Resistance either, nor can they be used to damage someone directly. You can also combine two or more types of magic to get a specific effect, a la mages in World Of Darkness. Combined spells get a big boost in effectiveness, since you use the skill level of each type of magic together in the dicepool. For example, if you wanted to fill your opponent's blood with hallucinogenic mushrooms, you would roll Magical Aptitude + Blood Magic + Fungus Magic. However, combined spells also cost more spells-per-hour. Of course, you're not a dumb, so you have hella Social Standing and are surrounded by tonnes of minions. This gives you infinity kazillion spells-per-hour and means you may as well keep casting combined spells to get the maximum possible effect. The magic skills are as follows: Black Arts: Can do pretty much any effect, but takes a lot of faffing about with black robes, candles, live sacrifice, etc. Its effects are weaker than the other types of magic, and the book stresses that it may work in unusual ways if it works at all. You will never want to do this type of magic, unless trying to get an unimaginable success just to kill someone sounds like a good deal to you. Blood Magic: Magic blood powers! Get your target's blood to find out intimate details about them! Magically imbue a sample of your blood and give it to someone to make them think differently of you! This magic is cool because it works in real life: give someone a little zip-lock bag of your blood and see how their opinion of you changes! Candy Land Magic: The long-awaited Candy Land Magic lets you summon cutesy poo poo like puppies, chocolate and starshine. But watch out! All of these things have a sinister edge to them. Those puppies will distract your opponent. They'll eat too much of the chocolate and get a tummy-ache. quote:Candy Land Magic comes from a different plane just like Nightmare Technology. It is a realm of hideous silliness and frivolity, a dimension ruled by a slavering, unholy childlike deity! “...what dreams of chronic and sustained cruelty.” Dimension Magic: gently caress around with other dimensions! Hide in a pocket dimension, or take things out of another dimension! What dimensions? What things? Never explained. Dream Magic: Manipulate dreams, yours and others! Conjure up a dream self and astrally project to travel great distances! Flesh Magic: Manipulate flesh and bone! Tear big chunks off of people and watch 'em scream! Of course, any injuries will eventually reverse themselves when the spell duration is over, but you could rip off someone's arm, wow! Fungus Magic:  Seriously, it just lets you make magic mushrooms.Hideous Twilight Magic: The really loving dumb name for illusion magic. It lets you do illusions! Hyperspace Sorcery: Fly through hyperspace unaided! Travel to new worlds and dimensions! Mask Magic: Wear magic masks that change who you are, or even let you become someone else entirely! Nightmare Technology: Create mad science poo poo! The book offers some tips for ways you can combine it with other magic skills: quote:Nightmare technology might enhance another form of magic to give it a dark awareness... qualities of a black living ooze with amorphous ink-colored tentacles and slime. It can make a magical puppet into a puppet of flowing, thinking darkness so that it can fly or grapple someone with its new ichorous tendrils. The magician with this skill could make a magical plant live and breath with sentient oozing blackness making it grow shadowy heads that will converse with you in the night… The book also describes one Nightmare Technology invention, 'Soggothian servitors', which are shoggoths except called Soggothian servitors for some reason. Plant Magic: Be Poison Ivy! Grow magic plants for fun and profit! Puppet Magic: Create magic puppets! They'll follow your commands while you see through their eyes! Shadow Magic: Control light and darkness! Become a shadow yourself! Word Magic: Control words and their meanings! gently caress up what someone's trying to say, or make yourself sound less goony than you are! The big thing letting down all of these powers, all of these powers, is that their effects probably won't last longer than an hour, maybe a day in Sha-la. Your Soggothian servitor will very explicitly dissipate after its time is up. Next: A little over halfway into the book, we are taught how to make characters.
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Jan 24, 2014 06:29
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pkfan2004 posted:Do you mean to tell me that your squamous unknowable deathbeast can defeat enemies by combining them both and summoning mushroom cookies to make your enemies trip out? Absolutely! Of course, there won't be anything about the cookies that will make them inherently more alluring than normal cookies. They might just sit there, uneaten. 
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Jan 25, 2014 03:11
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Empire Of Satanis: Orange Flame Of Emerald Lavender Character Creation The section on character creation opens with Dishaw answering an important question: what the hell was he thinking? quote:Let me talk a little about what I’m trying to achieve in Empire of Satanis. Basically, what is game play supposed to be like? While combat is nice, very nice sometimes, this game is more about creating an interesting story revolving around the Fiendish player characters. Even more that that, it’s about achieving power, blasphemy, and revenge over all those normal people and civilizations out there. The characters don’t have a chance of overthrowing Satanis and the other evil Gods of Yidathroth. However, there is a chance of improving their station in life by Machiavellian scheming and ritual assassination. However, there are many other Gods, races, ideals, and world-views that need to be smashed, ridiculed, mocked, pissed on, poisoned, choked, blasphemed, and annihilated. A million worlds filled with a billion of Fiend-hating scum exist in Sha-la. Time to do a little inter-universal house cleaning! That means that K’thana might be a temporary haven for the characters between invasions into the human realms of Sha-la. You're supposed to get into Fiend politics, but the game fails to introduce any distinct factions in Fiend society. You're supposed to get all hyped up on invading Sha-la, but humans are so outclassed by Fiends in every way that it's a wonder the mass invasion of Sha-la hasn't happened yet. You're meant to be a free libertarian Ubermensch, but you can never rise against Satanis or the other gods.  To build a character, you start off with 36 Character Building Points to buy all your attributes and skills. Attributes, magic skills and certain mundane skills cost 2 CBPs to increase, other skills cost 1 CBP. Starting characters can have a maximum of 3 in any attribute or skill, with a final maximum of 5 after the game starts. Any CBPs you have left over can be spent on zirkas, 50 apiece. You earn experience points during the game which you can use to advance your character. Because this is a poo poo game, they don't work the same as CBPs and require you to spend (x*current rating) experience points to advance something, in which 'x' varies depending on what it is. Any player who wants to help out in any way (contributing to the setting, helping with notes and maps, or even just buying snacks) is invited to, and the book advises the GM to give extra CBPs and experience in return. Giving players incentives to get involved in the game is actually a good idea; even if the game is still poo poo, I can't fault his general attitude here. Colour of the Magical Sphere of Influence At character creation, you pick a colour sphere that matches your character's approach to the Dark Way. Colour spheres are important, since actions that match your colour sphere get a bonus. Each colour sphere has certain attitudes and philosophies associated with it. The colour sphere list is loving hilarious, I'm gonna copy-paste the whole thing. quote:Black: Death, Tyranny, Dishonor. I'd like to thank Dishaw for not bringing chartreuse back for another round. In a book full of dumb ideas, colour spheres stand out. 'Metallic' isn't a colour. 'Opalescent' isn't a colour. 'Blackish Green' is how your vomit looks after a night of licorice and absinthe. Half of the attitudes described for each colour sphere are just random words; if you're Midnight Blue, how are you supposed to be indignant? Are you supposed to just get really huffy and pompous like Fiend!Frasier Crane? What the gently caress is Orange Flame of Emerald Lavender supposed to look like? It's never properly explained how colour spheres work in Fiend society. It says that your colour sphere determines your place in Fiend society, but why? Why are these broad behavioural categories organised by colour? Why are they such a big deal? Why are they so magical? It says some colour spheres are ostracised in some parts of the city. Which colour spheres? Which parts of the city? Which loving city? Is it Frier? It must be, because in spite of the multiple universes that Fiends inhabit, there's only one city worth mentioning! All of this poo poo – never explained. Equipment The equipment list is pretty small. Rather than obsessively writing the costs for everything the PCs might buy, Dishaw just tosses out a few examples to give you a rough idea. quote:A night with one of the illustrious tentacled whores that K’thana has to offer costs about 10 zirkas. A mug of wyrm cider costs about 2 zirkas. And a room for a night in the plethora of inns and rooming houses in K’thana costs about 5 zirkas. However, there is a big list of Infernal Equipment, magic poo poo your PCs might want. Dream Senders: They work as you'd imagine. Sending dreams is a big thing in K'Thana, because dreams are ~the magical connection to the energies that connect the universe~ or some poo poo like that. You could pay someone 10 zirkas to send a dream, or spend a thousand zirkas on your own Dream Sender, or spend 2 CBPs to get a point in Dream Magic and side-step all that poo poo. Aquatic Glyphs of the Blood-slicked Sea: Magical glyphs etched on stones, created by the Leviathans that live in the Blood-slicked Sea. Using the glyph summons the Leviathan to act as arbitrator in a dispute. It may decide to just drag you back to the Blood-slicked Sea to live as a slave, because when we look to giant sharkwhales with our problems we reap what we sow. Costs 100 zirkas. Void Sabers: They're rare and cost 400 zirkas. They're the only reason you opened up this part of the book in the first place. Unseen Spear: An invisible spear. It's supposed to be useful for assassins, but I don't see how; spears are really big, people will be able to tell you're using one. 300-500 zirkas. Scimitar of the Indigo Flame: When you kill someone with it, you turn into a copy of them for an hour. A neat idea, but there's no cost listed and it's not a void saber. Ring of Decrepitude: Lets you 'shrivel' a target once per day. Why you would pay 2000 zirkas for this I don't know, since the book doesn't explain what 'shrivelling' involves. Diabolic Armour: Comes in light (+1), medium (+2) and heavy (+3) varieties. This is the first time armour is mentioned in the book. Prior to this, no rules have been described for wearing armour. No rules are described here either; all it says is that you lose a point of Magical Aptitude equal to the rating. 200, 500 or 1000 zirkas. Coloured Weapons and Items: When an item is imbued with a colour, it gives a +2 like the usual colour sphere bullshit. This stacks if you'd already get a +2 colour sphere bonus. They're super-rare and expensive, so no price listed. Possible Scenarios After that, about fifteen adventure seeds, none of which help make the game sound interesting. A bunch of them involve killing humans or invading Sha-la. A bunch of them involve mystery locations which the PCs quest to. One of them involves a burgeoning romance with a flesh hook girl, and ya'll gonna poo poo when you find out what they are. Final Words Dishaw takes a moment to encourage you to have fun and do whatever you want with the game. He reminds GM that the PCs are supposed to be mighty, and to gently caress with the rules or setting if it lets a PC do something cool. Again, I can't fault the guy's attitude. There's a link to his cult website and invitation to send feedback. He thanks his playtesters and the good people of the Forge, who gave him way more advice than he deserved back in the halcyon days of 2005. There's still twenty-odd pages of book left to cover. Next: More GM tips! A deeper exploration of K'Thana!
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Jan 25, 2014 05:05
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pkfan2004 posted:NEXT TIME: EVERYONE'S FAVORITE, THE CHAPTER ABOUT SHOPPING AND 85% MINOR THINGS YOU WILL NEVER NEED I LOVE THAT CHAPTER I LOVED IT WHEN IT APPEARED IN ALMOST EVERY RPG Actually, it'll be good to know the deal with battle corsets.
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Jan 25, 2014 10:32
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When I was 16 and really into WoD, I thought Genius was the coolest poo poo ever. I'm gonna echo what other people have said and say that even though it's full of cool and interesting ideas, pretty much all of them conflict with each other. Especially the mechanics. I mean, we're going to see that pretty much as soon as we get into Axioms and the way building Wonders actually works, but just wait until we get to the really far-out pulp poo poo that comes up later in the book.
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Apr 8, 2015 01:15
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Halloween Jack posted:*Unless you're playing a Mystic Hermaphrodite, and even then, the Freak is capable of both whimsy and mercy toward other MHs that don't pose a direct threat. The Sleepers sourcebook Hush, Hush, mentions that one of the high-ranking Sleepers is a Mystic Hermaphrodite who is powerful enough that they could make a push for Godwalker. However, they've made a deal with the Freak: they won't try to become the Godwalker, and the Freak won't rip off their arms. They're not exactly happy about that, but there's not much they can do.
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Jul 31, 2015 11:28
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