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UH is one of those settings that seems like it wants to be taken seriously but it's just begging to be played fast and loose. The ideal party would be a badass Undertaker, a Mourner, a Dhampir vampire hunter, the aristocrat bankrolling it all, and everyone is secretly loving. Okay, maybe I play too much Apocalypse World.
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Jan 29, 2014 17:18
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Benagain posted:Viktor Frankenstein should win prizes for being the Dumbest Protagonist Ever.
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Jan 29, 2014 19:39
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Lynx Winters posted:Chargen starts with a very important question that every player is going to ask: can I be a Saiyan?!? The answer is probably not! In order to make a Saiyan character, you must roll a 2 on 2d6. Rolling a 2 or 3 on 2d6 lets you make a Namekkian, since weird slug dudes are the next best thing to fearsome monkey warriors. Otherwise, you're a standard human. Like I mentioned way back in the setting portion of this post, "human" also includes all the animal people so you can be a wolf-headed guy or whatever. Mechanically, though, you still don't get any special treatment if you didn't Roll To Be Better. After that is a bunch of stuff about having a basic personality and background. It's DBZ, you really don't need a detailed background. Ratoslov posted:Generally, American history education doesn't cover anything in South American history aside from Hernan Cortez and maybe the construction of the Panama Canal. We're completely ignorant of the era. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 14:37 on Feb 5, 2014 |
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Feb 5, 2014 14:35
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I wish someone would take another crack at Buck Rogers XXVc. I know nothing about Buck Rogers, but if I'm not mistaken, didn't they take a pretty light series and turn it kinda dark and grim and serious? And speaking of baroque sci-fi, I can't wait to get done with Everlasting so's I can bloviate about Dune forever and ever and ever.
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Feb 5, 2014 21:27
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 Chapter 12: Storytelling: Rediscovering the Magick of Life.  Rediscover the magick of fireflies building a church on your sweet zombie hat. This is the chapter where Everlasting lays out all its roleplaying and gamemastering advice, and it starts out...pretty drat good. Everyone at the table is a storyteller. Nobody’s fun/character is more important than anyone else’s. Keep everyone involved. Stress teamwork, but give everyone a chance to shine. “Winning” and accumulating power isn’t the most important thing. Everyone should try to embody their character and stay in character, but honest effort is what deserves the most reward. Accept criticism, and be prepared to improvise. So far, so good. Then it jumps off the deep end. There is a page on different “approaches to the mythic system,” a fancy way of discussing what the game will actually be about. It’s obvious that despite the author’s protestations, Everlasting is meant to be a setting in which you can hopefully tell many different types of stories, rather than a setting built around a theme. (And that’s okay. Not every game needs to be a tightly-focused narrative indie game.) The advice here, though, is several different ways of saying. “This is a thing you can do, just don’t do it too much.” Action is fun, but too much combat is a lot of meaningless die-rolling. In-depth roleplaying is fun, but too much and nothing actually happens. Intrigue is good, but too much becomes ridiculous and the Guide won’t be able to keep it all straight, and so on.  Do you believe this sweet swordcane was only $19.99 on BUDK.com? The advice on hosting a game session is mostly common-sense stuff, but assumes that you’re going to play for hours and hours, “often into the wee hours of the night (and sometimes on into the next day).” Granted, in the 90s I also believed that this was a necessary part of roleplaying, but I was in high school, and since then I haven’t had enough free time for that kind of gaming. I would rather they give useful advice on how to cram a satisfying legendmaking experience into 2-3 hours. Instead there is ho-hum stuff like “CDs of sound effects are good” and “pizza is tasty.” It’s suggested that the Guide receive rewards along with the players. This can take the form of XP for a character in someone else’s game, or even cash and gifts, under the rationale that we tip waiters for good service. Then it suggests putting time limits on scenes and sessions to prevent boredom and playing into the aforementioned wee hours of the morning, but like everything related to the Persona traits, it does so in the most fussy and mathematical way it can. It’s recommended for the Guide to estimate how long they think a scene will take, allot 2/3rds for the main plot and 1/3rd for the secondary plot, and allot 25% of overall time for scenes that overrun the time limit. What follows is an example of play--sorry, example of legendmaking. How do I keep forgetting that? quote:Four people have gathered in a basement for a night of legendmaking. They have exchanged the light bulbs for red lights and have placed some lit candles on the large table they are seated around. Also on the table are two fake skulls, hand-scrawled directions to a haunted house on what looks to be the brown paper of a grocery sack, and everyone’s cards, dice, and protagonist profiles. Okay, it’s nice to see that Everlasting hasn’t just unceremoniously dispensed with all those half-baked GMing experiments it rambled about in the introduction. Assuming this game actually happened, and the participants actually divided up the GM’s duties this way, actually getting legendmaking done must have been a lurching, crippled miracle, like three handicapped kids in a trenchcoat sneaking in to see Underworld. Because SteveNate is Guiding and playing at the same time, he describes everything with what sounds like the royal “we” of a king’s footman or a frustrated dental hygienist. “As the scene opens we find ourselves walking stealthily through a dark wood, led by Avery the ghost.” Avery the ghost was murdered by Efram the necromancer, and now he’s leading the party to the necromancer’s dilapidated mansion. They beat up some zombie minions, and while breaking into the house, SteveNate rolls a Disaster, and thus has to decide what kind of bad thing happens to his own character. He steps through a rotten board, spoiling the element of surprise and attracting a mob of ghosts and zombies. The example of legendmaking ends on a cliffhanger as someone pulls out a submachine gun. Some choice quotes: quote:I’ll bet you those dead souls are supposed to get put into the corpses over there in those graves. quote:You don’t mess me up, genitor. Stay clear so I can do some killin’. quote:(Directing Alexandra’s anger at Grauss) You bastard. I’m gonna rip you limb from limb, and your soul too if I can catch it. (Marie and Alexandra’s relationship and the strength of their friendship were modeled on Owen’s friendship with one of his own friends, so Owen knows that Alexandra is really mad.)  And this one was $15 at the flea market! Adventure Creation There is a large section on crafting campaigns. At this point, reviewing the chapter becomes difficult. This section is divided into Conflict, Plot, Theme, Construction, Character, Special Elements, Storytelling Tools, and Special Storytelling Techniques. Does that start to sound redundant? It is, and it scatters topics around while wandering aimlessly among them. Advice on details, like cue cards and props, are stuck in between treatments of more holistic issues like plot and theme. It’s possible that I’m being too harsh on Everlasting compared to other games published in the same era. (If I had any of my 1st and 2nd edition World of Darkness books at hand, I’d skim them for comparison.) That said, a big problem with most of the discussion of storytelling in this chapter is that it often consists merely of lists of things, along with frequent reminders to make this important or that important, without really telling you how or even defining terms, and the facile advice that you could do this or you could also do this other thing. Plots and motivations are especially prone to being conveyed through lists of possibilities, whereas stuff like “mood” and atmosphere” are often subject to nagging reminders. “Don’t leave the house without remembering that it’s every player’s responsibility to maintain the atmosphere! Your campaign will catch its death of bathos!” Yes, Grandma. It begins with the suggestion that you define the central conflict of the campaign. Most of these boil down to one faction of monsters opposing another in a gang war, in fine White Wolf tradition. Dominion vs. Dominion, Dominion vs. Intruders, Faction vs. Faction, Genos vs. Genos, etc. Then there are very vague ones, like “Immortal vs. Self” for a game focusing on Torment, “Immortal vs. Mortals,” which is very broad, and even more vague stuff like “Law vs. Chaos.” “Ancients vs. Ancients” would presumably work like Vampire’s Jyhad, of course, but we have little sense of the ancient eldritch in the setting and what they want. “Daevan Household vs. Kingdom of Night:” is kind of interesting because the daevas are at the center of the metaplot, and the daeva families are getting weaker while the Kingdoms of Night are getting stronger. Too bad we don’t have stats for daevas, or any reason to care about them. (And hey, looks like the author decided whether they’re “courts” or “kingdoms.”) Next we are advised to come up with a high-concept central plot in the form of a one-sentence description of what the game will be about. The given examples are “the party exorcises the many spirits in a haunted house” and “the party busts a human trafficking ring making people into eldritch food.” Everlasting is also kind of hung up on subplots, which it seems to define as an episodic adventure that’s somewhat tangential to the plot. As you’ve already read, it suggests weird things like specifically allotting time to subplots and having a different person GM when a subplot comes up. It recommends subplots either centered on a single protagonist and their motivations, “historical subplots” which take the form of continuity-establishing flashbacks (because this game needs more excuses to imitate “Highlander: the Series”), or Very Special Episodes wherein, for example, the players play NPC ghosts who visit their regular PCs to warn them about evil necromancers (or perhaps the consequences of losing their Christmas spirit). Next comes a section on creating NPCs, but it’s mostly concerned with antagonists. The advice here is listy but pretty solid; a good antagonist usually believes they’re in the right, you should consider the villain’s perspective and what they’re doing when they’re doing when they’re not menacing the PCs, and their villainy should be conveyed to the PCs in a show-don’t-tell fashion. There’s also a list of types of villains, encompassing the villain’s nature and/or how they go about menacing the party, from misunderstood creatures to simple maniacs to mysterious schemers or corruptors. Following this is a single paragraph on, well, all the other PCs, dividing them into helpful, neutral, and opposing. After this we get a very long list of examples of action and suspense without combat, including things like car chases, being detained by police, and some questionable ones like “showing off to impress others.” I wish more games did something similar, but not in the form of a 1½ page list.  Don't look, dadragon! I'm legendmaking, okay? Can't a guy let a little privacy in this house? The page on adventure construction recommends dividing your story into an introduction, body, transitional scenes, climax, and a denouement, as if it’s advising you on crafting a short story or screenplay. It suggests dividing the story into “chapters” if it’s going to take more than one session, and I think you’ll agree there’s a structural mishmash here that doesn’t quite work. By the way, it even suggests training montages as one example of a transitional scene. Cause you’re the best! Around! Nothing’s ever gonna keep you down! Unless they chop off your head or put a stake in your heart and leave you out in the sun. Afterward there are a few paragraphs suggesting you keep cue cards with notes on everything from the plot outline and planned scenes to locations, supporting characters, and even important magick items. The pages on Special Story Elements, Storytelling Tools, and Special Storytelling Techniques are collectively a big grab-bag of 1-3 paragraph long sections providing tips on storytelling details, some useful, some less so. The division between sections doesn’t make sense; any topic from one section could go in one of the others. I’m at a loss to summarize the whole thing, but going through it page-by-page would be redundant and plodding. Here’s the Cliff’s notes: Dream sequences: Wankity wank. Flashback sequences: Wanky wankity Highlander wankity wank. Epilogues, Prologues: Have scenes that don’t actually include the PCs, but show the players what happened before or after the adventure, like maybe a villain escaped on a boat. More evidence that this game is based on too much late-night television. Foreshadowing: It’s good. You should foreshadow things. Story Handouts: Have you ever used these? In a game that wasn’t Call of Cthulhu? Me neither. Humor: Humor is good! Be funny. Plot devices: Your plots should have devices. Surrealism: Have you ever considered making your games like "Twin Peaks?" No? Symbolism: It’s good. Your game should have symbols. Appearance: There is the understandable suggestion that you not wear a Hawaiian shirt while trying to scare the poo poo out of your players, and the less-understandable suggestion that you reward players for wearing period costume, and even that the entire group wear costumes and makeup, up to and including liquid latex zombie and ghul makeup. Conversations prior to Sessions: To set the mood, you could talk about Stephen King or “The X-Files” before you play. Okay. Lighting: Candles. Coloured lights. Remember to keep a flashlight so you can find the bathroom. Music and Sound Effects: Music. Sound Effects. Locations: If you’re going to LARP, you should LARP in...a location of some kind. Props and decorations: “Most participants are happy just to experience legendmaking without going to any trouble to decorate or bring out props.” But why not decorate your gaming table with skulls and swords and a bunch of other geeky poo poo you bought online? Seasons and Weather: A treatise on different seasons and how different adventures could be set in different seasons. I don’t know why (for example) demons are associated with autumn, but then again, the cast of “Supernatural” is always dressed like they’re hiking the Appalachian trail in October. Smells: Have you ever considered evoking a forested setting by covering the table in pine straw, or burning incense whenever a recurring villain appears? No, you haven’t, because you’re not a goddamned lunatic. Endangerment of Protagonists or Things They Value: Do this. Handling Boring Scenes: Wrap it up, eldritchailures. Imagery: Remember to describe things. Motivation: Give the PCs this. Mystery: Not bloody likely when you’re GMing and playing at the same time.  Oh look, exactly what this chapter needs! Here’s an aside that probably won’t make sense to anyone, but gently caress you, it’s my show. I started the season’s rugby practice last night, and I was really lost. I knew that my skills would be rusty, since I’m a novice and I missed the whole last season to injury. But it’s striking when you realize how difficult it is to not only perform basic skills like keeping pace with your teammates, maintaining a defensive line, catching, passing, tackling, and so on...but to do all of these things simultaneously, or in sequence, when someone else is trying to stop you. If our coach just blathered “Run good. Stay in your zone. Keep pace. Stay on the point man. Keep the line. Tackle. Tackle like this. Put your hands out to catch. Remember what I said about zoning. Pass good, don’t pass bad,” he’d be as bad at coaching as The Everlasting is at teaching us how to run...whatever kind of game it thinks it’s trying to be. And if he suggested that the whole team do a haka before every drill or dress up in Jonah Lomu costumes, he’d be just as crazy, too. Next time, on The Everlasting:   Xv*~LEGENDMAKING~*vX 
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Feb 7, 2014 21:18
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If you have any insight into the red lightbulbs I'd love to hear it
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Feb 7, 2014 21:39
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Regular white lightbumbs have a detrimental effect on legends, not as much as sunlight, but still, it's hard to make legends properly. Ideally, you should use a red or black lightbulb. At the very least you can get a dimmer for any white lights so they do minimal damage to your newly created legends. Stephen C. Brown posted:Darkness itself is a fun roleplaying tool, especially in freeform legendmaking. It is always a good idea to have a flashlight handy so everyone can navigate to the bathroom and kitchen safely.
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Feb 7, 2014 22:29
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oriongates posted:Propping up an uneven coffee table with the necronomicon?
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Feb 9, 2014 17:38
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pkfan2004 posted:The chapter proper pretty much starts off with this.
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Feb 11, 2014 04:37
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Seconded.
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Feb 20, 2014 22:12
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Chapter 13, Legendmaking Part 1: [REDACTED] the [REDACTED] of [REDACTED] If I think of a better metaphor for this chapter than a guy running with scissors until he gives himself a lobotomy, I’ll tell you. The “Legendmaking” chapter is unique insofar as there are two versions of it: one from the original print edition, and a very different version in the PDF release. It’s no coincidence that the “Legendmaking” chapter corresponds to the mystical thirteen, and the original version does indeed contain all the New Agey bullshit you might have heard rumours about : ceremonies, guided meditation, and more candles than your girlfriend’s bathroom closet. It seems that when the creators released the PDF version, they were a little more collected and at little embarrassed, and cut out most of the hocus-pocus. I will argue that they weren’t nearly embarrassed enough, because what we get instead is a preachy 7-page essay on “living mythically,” and it is incredibly tiresome. Slogging through all the homily and hokum was like shoveling unicorn poo poo; it may be unique and magical, but it’s still horseshit, and it stinks. Regardless of which version of the chapter you’re reading, it begins with a sermon on Personal Mythology. Most of us, we are told, are so wrapped up in worrying about our jobs and families to truly experience magic and myth, but it's not too late! The Everlasting is here to help you "explore your personal mythology" by using your player character as a repository of your greatest hopes and fears. That certainly sounds healthy! By the way, while the ideas in this chapter are crazy and stupid, the tone is more like that of a kindergarten teacher who doesn’t know how to stop being patronizing when not speaking to little children. Behold: quote:We have given up all our dreams, imagination, and aspirations in life in exchange for security and stability.We are happy to just sit back and let other people entertain us with their stories, without any effort on our part. But it is never, ever too late to rediscover the wonders of life… all we have to do is try. Storytelling, we are told, is a ritual as old as the oldest humans, and from the stories that "had the greatest value and meaning" to the cultures that created them, we get the first myths. Myths are the stories that give meaning to our lives and give us a sense of our place in the universe. The author believes that the "main problem" of the modern age is that we haven't found our new mythology. This is why "The Everlasting is more than a roleplaying game; it is a tool for mythic experiences." It's designed to help you create stories which have deep personal meaning which you share with your fellow participants, and which you can use to examine your life, question and reevaluate your beliefs, and achieve greater enlightenment and spirituality. Isn't that exciting? So what is "legendmaking" and how is it different from roleplaying? Simply put, legendmaking combines roleplaying with mystical rituals and meditation exercises, with the end goal of self-improvement.  Be a dear and zip me up. The key to understanding what Stephen Brown is trying to communicate is understanding that his entire theory of mind revolves around the idea of "personal mythology." Everyone, he believes, has a personal mythology that is a highly individualized version of the mythology of their culture. Most people in the modern age really understand mythology because we're so inundated by cultural memes that we can't see the big picture. As a result, "long-enduring myths are not holding up." This is good and bad, because it allows for greater individuality, but leaves many people lost and with no understanding of why they do what they do. Popular songs, television shows, books, films, art, advertising, and news all contain "mythic images" that impact our culture, and we look for guidance from athletes, musicians, politicians, and other celebrities. In short, Brown conflates absolutely any kind of media with mythology, and any kind of public figure with mythic heroes--given examples of "heroes" include Michael Jordan, Mahatma Gandhi, Bill Gates, Batman, the President, and the Terminator. As a general rule, I'm sympathetic to the idea that fleeting cultural memes and influences may influence our thinking much more than we realize, and are worthy of study. (That is, until my Facebook feed is flooded with clickbait articles purporting to discuss the implicit bigotry in something on television, coming to the facile conclusion that it's "problematic." I digress.) That said, Brown takes every aspect of the human experience, which could be approached differently through anthropology, sociology, psychology, or media criticism, and chucks it all into a big sack marked "personal mythology." It's ironic that in the process, he utterly trivializes the word "myth” to the point of losing all meaning. He even goes so far as to say that “"Every thought and deed you have performed or witnessed has been a stroke upon the tapestry of your personal mythology." Every experience you have supposedly contributes to your personal mythology, and Lady Gaga and Gilgamesh are grouped together as "mythic images." We're dealing with an intellect that can't draw a categorical distinction between Barack Obama and Bruce Wayne. The whole endeavour comes across as incredibly sophomoric, with Brown taking the role of That Guy in your introductory philosophy class who just read a book that changed his life because it explains everything, and surely it will change you too, if you let him drone on and on long enough. The book in question is Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces, which is quoted several times along with such great thinkers as Sophocles, Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, and someone named Lord Pumpkin. It's lazy and facile in its attempt to be a comprehensive Theory of Everything, and verges on being offensive in its treatment of psychological problems. It is true that you could take some concepts from humanistic psychology and rephrase them as "myths" and "living mythically" rather than "values" and "mindfulness," but this becomes downright insane when it leads to suggesting that you resolve your deep-seated personal issues by practicing meditation exercises to get in touch with an imaginary character. Critiquing Campbell, Goldenberg, or psychoanalysis at large is beyond the scope of this review. For that matter, so is critiquing Stephen Brown's syncretic New Age mysticism per se. As for "legendmaking" and the bizarre practices he suggests you use to transform roleplaying into therapy...I have some things to say about that.  Where the art budget ends, legendmaking begins. How does Brown recommend we reconnect with mythology and find meaning in our lives? The answer is “living mythically.” Living mythically means “understanding that there are underlying forces at work in your unconscious mind that play themselves out in your life,” developing “the power to choose who you are,” and learning to make “better, more creative, and self-empowering choices within your life.” Brown asserts that when your values conflict and your actions don’t align with your beliefs, these are “warning signs from your unconscious mind that you need to renew your mythology.” In fact, “People who suffer stress and nameless anxiety may be following myths that are not attuned to their needs.” In other words, any healthy, well-adjusted, self-aware person is “living mythically.” As someone who’s completed a course of therapy, I can tell you that psychologists--the kind who actually help people instead of musing about the Goddess--refer to this active and empowering self-awareness as mindfulness, and there are many therapeutic techniques designed to develop it. None of them involve pretending to be a zombie with a machine gun. To be fair, the “personal mythology” and “living mythically” approaches to psychology aren’t Brown’s own invention; Brown quotes the terms as used by feminist theologian Naomi Goldenberg, and the concept traces its lineage to Jung. But when Brown implies that the difference between Nicki Minaj and the Nowell Codex is one of degree, that’s his own problem. Creating Personal Mythology Now The Everlasting is ready to actually tell us how to legendmake ourselves some seriously personal myths, beginning with direct quotes from Joseph Campbell. Unfortunately, the advice here follows the familiar “Don’t forget to do…” style from the last chapter, without actually giving examples or concrete advice on how to implement these principles using the characters and setting the game presents. The first is “The mythology should reveal the wonder and mystery of the universe and one’s self.” That means you should evoke mystery and wonder. Who knew? Second is that “The mythology should provide form to the cosmos while retaining its mystical qualities.” This means your game should have structure, like a sonnet. Uh, more specifically it should have a basis in realism, then embellish it with mystical stuff. I can’t think of a better setting for that than 90s gothic action horror where the world is like the real world but the skyscrapers have gargoyles and also the milkman is a vampire. Third, “The mythology should provide validation and support to a certain social order.” That means your game should take a moral stance on what’s right and just, and even if the characters deviate it, the story shows the consequences of their actions. This is the point where I must ask, if this game wants you to get really invested in your characters and use them as tools for self-reflection and personal growth, was it a good idea to write most of the character types in this game as self-centered undead serial killers? Finally, “The mythology should teach people about living.” This means your game should teach the players things, but you should be subtle about it. Another really important topic (you should make this important in your game) is Symbolism. The game should have symbols, totally. In fact, the players should all make a list of symbols that mean things to them so that the Guide can include them in the game. Oh, but be careful with symbols because they don’t always mean the same thing to everyone! If there’s someone new in the game, or you’re afraid a player has forgotten the symbolism, you can use subtle clues to bring them up to speed. For example, if the players agreed that a wise old woman represents Mother Earth, you could say “You meet a very old wise woman living at the edge of the forest. Her eyes are bright green and there is a lot of life in the woman. Her hands are soiled because she has been tending her small garden. She tells you the history of the land and how the humans have destroyed it.” Oh no, not the land! Those drat dirty humans! Remember: subtlety. So. Symbols. Important. There is a section on Exploring Yourself, and it’s...well, it’s not literally a guide to masturbation. The Everlasting recommends that you make your game experience mythic by weaving symbolism from your own life into characters and events in the story. You’re encouraged to project “deep-rooted personal beliefs, emotions, and experiences” onto characters, your own and otherwise.Thus you can vicariously achieve your goals, relive past experiences, and thus examine your own life. We’re warned not to emotionally invest ourselves in our campaigns too much, because that might actually lead to a negative emotional experience! For example, if you have a romantic crush and you project that onto how your character feels about an NPC, imagine how you’d feel if that NPC was killed! (Nevermind that it would be pathetic and creepy.) Or, you know, your family could have you committed because you decided you were too bound by “mundane concerns” and decided to seek personal growth by pretending to be a psychopathic vampire while practicing witchcraft in a basement with red light bulbs.  Where we’re going, we won’t need an art budget. Spell, Book, and Candle People use rituals to acknowledge important life events, like births, deaths, marriages, graduations, and so on. Since pretending to be a ghost is at least as important as any of these, The Everlasting recommends a special opening ceremony to get everyone in the proper mood and remind them that this is no mere roleplaying, but legendmaking. The ceremony starts with everyone “agreeing to start since the ceremony requires everyone to be quiet, serious, and attentive. If participants are not going to take the ceremony serious then it will hold no value in setting apart the legendmaking.” I mean it, Todd! I don’t care if you can burp the alphabet backwards, tonight’s the night that Konstantinos Ravynchylde becomes a lord of the underworld and I don’t want you screwing up my mythology! After agreeing to take all this very seriously so that our legendmaking will have a “mythic quality,” it’s recommended that we have low lighting, soft music playing the background, and a candle for every participant. (At this point, you could just ask the players out on a date to see an Air Supply concert.) Okay, now I’ll stop cracking wise and just quote the ceremony in its entirety: The Guide posted:Here we gather, we who seek admittance into the Secret World of magic and wonder, we who seek entry into the worlds of legend, we who shall be eldritch for our allotted time. The Players posted:Before us lie the mysteries of the universe. We shall seek the light and cast off the darkness. We shall seek adventure and heroic deeds. The book’s example posted:I am Sheila Krusoe, Osirian, Magician, everdying immortal. I am of the Bennu, an enforcer of Osirian law, arbiter of justice, agent of the Ennead. I have come here to join in this legendmaking. Louis posted:I'm flesh and blood, but not human. I haven't been human for 200 years. Please, how shall I put you at ease? Shall we begin like David Copperfield? 'I am born...I grew up.' Or shall we begin when I was born to darkness, as I call it? That's really where we should start, don't you think?...1791 was the year it happened. I was 24. Younger than you are now. But times were different then. I was a man at that age. The master of a large plantation, just south of New Orleans. I had lost my wife in childbirth. She and the infant had been buried less than half a year. I would've been happy to join them. I couldn't bear the pain of their loss. I longed to be released from it. I wanted to lose it all: my wealth, my estate, my sanity....Most of all, I longed for death. I know that now. I invited it. A release from the pain of living. My invitation was open to anyone. To the whore at my side. To the pimp that followed. But it was a vampire that accepted. Galstaff posted:I am Galstaff, sorcerer of light! Jack posted:Bob. Bob had bitch tits. When all the players have sufficiently introduced themselves, the Guide continues. The Guide posted:Let us walk now, past the shadows of the flame that cast upon the cave’s wall, beyond our mundane world. Our protagonists shall be our representatives. They shall symbolize a deeper truth than our everyday activities. Let us close our eyes. The Players posted:And so, it begins. The Guide posted:For now we are in the Secret World. The Guide posted:And so this mythic journey comes to an end...for now. Sheila posted:I, Sheila Krusoe, have journeyed far into this adventure and I have discovered that my enemies know many of my secrets. I am not yet ready for this life to end. When next we meet I must find the courage I have lost through fear. The Guide posted:We cast off our masks revealing our true selves. We release our protagonists back into the mists of legendry. But they will always be there, and though they may wear different names and faces, they will return to us again in the neverending cycle of myth. Butchers, Bakers, Candlestick Stakers Did you know that candles can be used to “express particular themes, character types, and settings?” The Everlasting has a handy chart telling you what different colours of candle can represent. There are no tips on how to coordinate your coloured candles with your coloured lightbulbs. They’re listed here as in the book; I have no clue why they’re ordered as such. Red: Demons Grey: Ghosts and revenants White: Astral Brown: Nature, Manitou Dark Red: Yetis (just kidding, of course it’s vampires) Dark Blue: Magick Dark Green: Nature Yellow: Questers Light Blue: Fantasy Gold: Osirians Black: Horror Pink: Romance Purple: Dream Orange: Dragons Off-White: Ghuls (not kidding, this is in the book)  I need to pad the picture count for this chapter, so here’s a kid evoking some seriously magickal poo poo with his leftover Chanukah candles. Solitary Legendmaking If you can’t find anyone who wants to make legends with you, The Everlasting has more “guidelines” for solitary legendmaking. Don’t worry, you won’t go blind! That’s just the red lightbulbs. Well, it sort of has guidelines. You remember when I explained that this book can be aggravatingly vague and noncommital, saying that you can do this or that but only if you want to, and not too much? This section is an entire page of the author not telling you to do anything in particular, which he calls the Free-form Creative method of solitary legendmaking. Obviously, The Everlasting isn’t the same kind of game as the original brown-box edition of Dungeons & Dragons, which you really can play by yourself using the encounter tables. In order to Free-form creatively legendmake by yourself, you don’t need rules, or cards, or a character sheet...unless you want to, since it can inform what your character can and can’t do. So what is free-form creative solitary legendmaking? Basically, you sit down and write fanfiction about your character, stream-of-consciousness style, without any outlines, editing, or any other constraints associated with good writing. Remember, you’re not writing for an audience, you’re writing to develop your personal mythology. Just writing out the characters’ actions as they come to you is upheld as an amazing and revelatory experience, and it’s suggested outright that you examine relationships with people in your own life and project them onto the protagonist’s relationship with other characters in the story. There is the admonition that your protagonist shouldn’t succeed at everything lest the story get boring, but otherwise, “solitary legendmaking” consists of writing the most self-indulgent and masturbatory sort of fanfiction. Alright, I can’t take any more of this poo poo for the time being. Next time, on The Everlasting: http://vimeo.com/9880377
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Feb 25, 2014 09:56
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There are three more corebooks and two sourcebooks I could do, but it will probably cost me my sanity. Maybe even yours! But I'm also seriously planning to do the new edition of Immortal at some point, so maybe I've already lost it?
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Feb 25, 2014 16:39
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Robindaybird posted:The big thing I get from Everlasting is the writers are very, painfully unaware. No one on the team steps back and goes "You know what? This is actually kind of silly," from candle rituals to their opening fiction, it drips with the pretension of someone that thinks they got the deepest, best thing ever. I think this is symptomatic of an inability to maintain a coherent vision. Even within a single chapter, the vampire clans are presented as amoral psycho cultists, then as beautiful and damned, then you're told to play them as heroes. I think that an intelligent, original, and well-written game can include some genre indulgences without suffering for it. But it seems like half the time the authors were trying to create an original setting, and the other half of the time, they were sort of daydreaming about stuff from their favourite movies and books that they wanted to imitate, and those two tones didn't blend into each other when they were put onto the pages. The vampire thing brings me around to a recurring point: it often seems like the authors aren't that interested in their own own material. There are so many overshadowing references to Osirians, Daevas, and Questers that it seems like they'd rather be writing about them instead, and that starting the line with a book about undead was obligatory. Even within this book, vampires obviously get a lot more attention than the other character types. For a game that is so high on its own gratuitous cheese, the book itself seems like a cynical marketing-based choice for a flagship title. I knew before I started that Everlasting was a WoD ripoff with some pretentious New Age stuff tacked on, but I never anticipated just how uniquely bad and weird it is.
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Feb 26, 2014 20:02
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Mors Rattus posted:Personally: it reeks to me of unexamined personal beliefs.
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Feb 26, 2014 22:18
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I'll still defend it as the best-executed attempt at the White Wolf approach to special powers and moves.
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Mar 5, 2014 18:10
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theironjef posted:We fully agree. It's probably a little heavy on gating mechanics (Want hadouken? Put points in Focus, Chi, Shotokan, and Fireball), but beyond that the whole hex-grid, move when you attack, no rolling to hit thing is excellent overall. We'd play this one.
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Mar 5, 2014 20:44
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Contenders makes me mad. A book of NPCs should be the easiest thing in the world to make for Street Fighter. They could have gotten away with lots of silly characters, sure, but instead they were just stupid characters and injokes nobody outside the White Wolf office was supposed to get.
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Mar 5, 2014 20:54
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Since they published those godawfully broken rules for cyborgs, animal hybrids, and elementals in the Player's Guide, they might as well have given us Sumo Cyborg, Karate Dinosaur, and Fire Pro Wrestler.
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Mar 5, 2014 21:02
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theironjef posted:Shoot yeah, you're right. Also Geki was in the first game, so I guess he is an additional honorless dog. Honestly for a game called Street Fighter: The Storytelling RPG, they don't mention a single character from Street Fighter besides the three that made it into SF2. Oh well. More likely the White Wolf people did research exclusively by getting drunk and playing SSF2 a bunch. They mention offhandedly at one point that Ken shouts "Ayu-Ken!" when he does his dragon punch, for example. I think the full extent of available research materials (or available license) was SSF2, and the issue of EGM where they mention Gouken.
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Mar 6, 2014 19:27
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Grnegsnspm posted:I can believe that. I'm sure they were more concerned with marketing to people familiar with their current product rather than establishing some kind of persistent world narrative that tied in Street Fighter. Also, you would want the RPG to focus on whatever the current game was in an effort to boost sales. theironjef posted:It would also explain why the splatbooks get crazier instead of introducing more Street Fighter elements. If the choice is spending a bunch of time and effort on wheedling Capcom to give you access to Akuma or ... I guess Adon and Lee, or just add the basic elements of fighting game power in (elementals! cyborgs! half-animals!) and churn out a bunch of EZ-Bake NPCs, it's an easy choice to make. As for the art itself, I touched on that in my F&F...it was the early 90s and comic book art was trending toward just that sort of ridiculousness.
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Mar 7, 2014 18:21
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But but but Haggar!
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Mar 7, 2014 19:56
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I'm glad you guys zeroed in on it because it was one of the things that really drove me crazy as a teenage martial arts nerd. Zangief is obviously a pro wrestler, but they can't put that as his fighting style, so...he's Russian, sambo is a Russian grappling style, so whatever Zangief does, that's sambo. Capoeira, Lerdrit, Kabaddi, Shotokan, and Sumo all got appropriated the same way because they didn't feel they could list a guy's fighting style as "yoga master" or "mutant Tarzan" and imply martial arts schools full of mutants and yogis. It's also kind of weird that Boxing is separated out and Muay Thai isn't in the book because the World Warriors associated with those arts are bad guys, and that you have rules for Yoga Fu and Magical Indian Wrestling but not, say, taekwondo. I guess it's pretty easy to play most common martial arts styles with either Kung Fu or Western Kickboxing, though. The especially funny thing is that when they published a bunch more martial arts styles in the Player's Guide, they veered toward realism in ways that make no sense. There are rules for groundfighting and "Pankration" as a style, but when you look at the rules for real-world martial arts like Savate, they don't get much embellishment...if kung fu guys in the Street Fighter world get flaming kicks and death touches, shouldn't a savateur get Dragon Punch and Hurricane Kick?
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Mar 7, 2014 23:25
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Chapter 13, Legendmaking Part 2: Feel the Limpness Move Through You (long pause) After teaching us how to write fanfiction, The Everlasting’s chapter on Legendmaking delves into Achieving Altered States of Consciousness. quote:Legendmaking is more than creating personal mythology; it is also about transcending your own conscious state to reach some magical level of heightened awareness. You mean you’re going to teach me how to have the real power? The first magickal altered consciousness legendmaking technique we’re supposed to learn is visualization, which simply means vividly imagining all the sights, sounds, smells, and feels so that the interactive legendmaking session is more real to you. We are told that some people are “high-imagers” and others are “low-imagers” but that everyone can learn to be a better “imager” by practicing meditation exercises--for example, focusing on objects and then closing your eyes and trying to visualize them in detail. We are specifically cautioned to avoid visualizing things contrary to how the Guide describes them, so you shouldn’t imagine a dark hallway as well-lit. Meditation The Everlasting is really high on using meditation exercises to enhance your legendmaking skills. First, it recommends spending 10 or 15 minutes in “character meditation” before sessions, closing your eyes and thinking deeply about your character’s personality and motivations so that you can roleplay them better. The second method it recommends is a more universal, less geeky practice in which you sit quietly, close your eyes, breathe deeply, ignore distractions, and relax fully so that you emerge from meditation feeling refreshed. (This is how a lot of normal people meditate; you don’t have to have a boner for a gun-toting mummy wizard.) Finally, The Everlasting recommends that players go through a process of “guided imagery similar to light hypnosis.” You can do this exercise with a partner, or by making a recording of your own voice reading the prompts below. The goal of this exercise is to delve deep into your own unconscious mind and develop a character concept for a protagonist that will reflect your innermost desires and fears and whatnot. Once again, I’ll let the book speak for itself. At length. The Everlasting posted:Okay then, let’s start now. None of this made it into the PDF edition of the game, probably in the interests of making it more pure, odorless, and safe. I don’t know about you, but imagining myself being anesthetized, forced to write the alphabet, and buried alive in sand doesn’t make me feel relaxed and peaceful. Now for the next part! A game designer who would make a pretty good Dexter villain posted:In a few minutes I want you to create a character for a roleplaying game, a hero. Someone who is good, someone you can look up to. I want you to bring to mind all the people, real and imaginary, you admire or want to be more like. I want you to consider the qualities you most admire about them, the reasons you wish you could be more like them. Next time, on The Everlasting: (long pause)
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Mar 18, 2014 20:30
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I went back to check if that was a typo on my part. It's not. The letter Y might be lacking in mythic representation, I don't know. Forums Terrorist posted:That's a pretty standard hypnosis script.
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Mar 19, 2014 19:18
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Strangely enough, in the PDF edition, the editor is the only contributor who doesn't get a silly title. The original edition had no editor.
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Mar 19, 2014 19:26
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Look, it wouldn't be a LotFP release without something penetrating your body with its body against your will.
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Mar 20, 2014 19:12
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GimpInBlack posted:Next Time: My weird fixation with reviewing d6-based dice pool systems continues with a review that pretty much defines the "obscure" side of "obscure and mockable." We're talking about a game that's been described as one of the only real collector's items in the tabletop RPG hobby outside of the earliest printings of D&D. A game that was only sold for four days in the summer of 2000. That's right, folks, strap on your shield belts, brush up on the articles of kanly, and always remember that killing with the point lacks artistry, because we're going to be taking a look at Last Unicorn Games' Dune: Chronicles of the Imperium.  
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Mar 23, 2014 16:41
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Chapter 13, Legendmaking Part 3: Everybody dreams The final leg of our journey down the rabbit hole is an exegesis on lucid dreaming. Here’s a “visualization” exercise for you: Picture HP Lovecraft handout out crystal necklaces at a Vampire LARP. There, now you can skip this section. Dreams constitute “another reality as powerful as the one you are experiencing right now,” or so Everlasting tells us. It does discuss the phases of sleep on a more-or-less scientific fashion, but it also discusses dreaming states using language that sound more like the fictional realm of dreams in a game setting than what dreaming is actually like. For example, a whole section on “dream physics” belabors the point that in dreams, things can suddenly disappear or change completely, as if anyone needs to be told. You spend a quarter to a third of your life asleep, so it behooves you to understand the “wondrous, fantastical realm” of dreaming! The Everlasting purports to teach lucid dreaming. It plays up using lucid dreams as an opportunity to play out the fantasy of your choice--being a pirate, knight, monster, Joseph Campbell--in God Mode. Of course, lucid dreams are also a chance to delve into your personal mythology and work out your personal issues, blah blah blah. We also get a little “history” on dreaming. The ancient Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans all studied dreams and believed in their power. St. Augustine believed that dreams contained divine messages, but “later Church leaders stressed itself as the intermediary between Christians and God’s Will. The Church convinced people that dreams should be ignored.” If you thought you were going to squeak through a 90s Dark Modern Fantasy game without some needless potshots at Christianity for ruining somebody’s childhood, you were wrong. How does one become a lucid dreamer, or as the book calls it, Oneironaut? Sleep longer, record your dreams in as much detail as possible as soon as you wake up, and add anything you remember during the course of the day. (This is, as far as I know, a very effective means of remembering your dreams and increasing the likelihood of lucid dreaming.) We’re also instructed to look out for “Dreamsigns,” which are sights, sounds, settings, and even moods which are common in dreams even when haven’t experienced them in real life. Once you’ve done this, you’re reading to follow the procedure for lucid dreaming. Mostly, this boils down to relaxing as you wait to fall asleep, and focusing on what you would like to dream about and that you would like to be able to remember it. More alarmingly, we’re told to practice asking ourselves whether we’re awake or dreaming at least ten times a day. Once you are successfully lucid dreaming (uh, oneironauting?), Everlasting has some suggestions for what you can do with your newfound superpowers. Flying, for example, or altering the laws of physics. You can also alter your own body and create dream characters. If your first suspicion is that this sounds like a setup for zero-gravity furry sex, then you read this thread too often.   Lucid dreaming is also supposedly a great way to get ideas for a campaign--sorry, Odyssey. This is the same as “ordinary” lucid dreaming, except that you should jot down an outline for a legendmaking adventure during the day. Supposedly, the symbolism and all that other Campbell poo poo will just come to you while you’re dreaming. There is also a brief section on nightmares, which encourages you to confront the painful and scary experiences and images that show up in nightmares, rather than fleeing from them. We are also reassured that you will not really die in real life if you die in a dream. Seriously. And now, a final word from our author:  My only reaction to this is that I can’t believe this game was written by someone old enough to have played in the early 80s. I mean, most of what’s wrong with SLA Industries is attributable to the fact that the design team was only old enough to drink because they grew up in Scotland. Next time, on Everlasting: Oh, but there's more! A brief chapter giving you a starting Odyssey, "Time of the Dark Ones." The forecast calls for trenchcoats and katanas with a chance of submachineguns. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 21:11 on Mar 24, 2014 |
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Mar 24, 2014 20:41
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Chapter 14: The Long Dark Magical Tea Party of the Soul  This chapter is a sample Odyssey. It’s divided into chapters, and each chapter has an entry for each of the 6 or 7 plot threads running throughout the campaign. Those plot threads are: 1. A vampire army 2. A werwulf cult 3. A massive influx of dead souls 4. A conflict with daevas 5. A revenant conspiracy 6. An onslaught of demons 7. Other eldritch doing random things. I must be more naive than I thought, because Everlasting still manages to surprise me with its failure to...well, to be about what it claims to be about. There’s nothing at all in this guide about theme or mood, much less the bizarre New Age pop-psych exercises that have been preached to us for the last two chapters. Everything in this chapter is organized based on what kind of monsters the PCs are dealing with, and yes, there are way too many of them. “Time of the Dark Ones” reads like a parody of one of those World of Darkness sourcebooks that came out late in the game’s lifecycle, with little oversight, videogamey plots, and packs of monsters from the other game lines showing up just because. When the elves and orcs appeared, I thought they must be loving with me. Speaking of elves, you could use this as a guide for a D&D campaign with little or no tweaking. This campaign doesn’t display any of the modernity of the setting, which doesn’t surprise me--this game is clearly more interested in the eldritch and their shenanigans than in making any of it relevant.  The art budget’s finally run out! We takin’ over this bitch! Woodcut skeleton party 4 lyfe! Chapter 1: The PCs are invited to a gala event hosted by the Court of Night. They learn that vampires are amassing an army and werwulfs are killing people. One of the PCs has a dream about a half-demon torturing some vampires. The daevas issue a demand for the vampires to stop killing people indiscriminately, and the vampires kill the messenger and send him back in pieces. A dark elf requests a private audience with the Court, a revenant tries to feed on him, and he defeats his attacker with magick. Sounds like one hell of a party. Chapter 2: The Court of Night tries to recruit the PCs. Ghuls share gossip about the vampire army and a secret faction within the Court. An NPC takes a romantic interest in one of the PCs. The PCs learn that many dead souls are coming to the city through an unknown portal to the Underworld. They also encounter werwulfs killing mortals. A PC has a dream telling him that the demons control a company called Blackstone. Another PC sees orcs and dark elves skulking in the ghul catacombs. Chapter 3: The PCs and Court members are invited to a ghul meeting. The ghuls reveal that many bodies are being stolen, but the Court doesn’t care. The grim reapers show up hunting dead souls who are members of a cult called the Black Circle. Werwulfs spy on the PCs. The PCs can join a daeva attack on a Blackstone facility. The Dracul and the daevas declare war on each other, and an Osirian shows up to lead the PCs to an evil necromancer. He dies before revealing any information. Chapter 4: The PCs are framed for attacking Court members, but the Court learns they were set up by the Black Circle. The Dracul expect a favour for exonerating the PCs. A ghul wizard invites to PCs to exchange information about the dead souls, and evil ghosts attack. The werwulfs are killing more mortals and selling the bodies to revenants. The Black Circle spies on the PCs and tries to recruit them. The daevas start fighting the demons and werwulfs. Gargoyles appear and hunt down murderers in the city.  Eat, drink, and be merry, for yesterday I died. Tomorrow you die. Probably from eating and drinking. Chapter 5: The Court invites the PCs to a holiday party where three mortal vampire hunters are burned alive as a celebration. Then werwulfs attack. Some Court members call for the formation of a group to protect neutral eldritch from the warring factions, calling themselves the “Peace Faction.” They try to recruit the PCs with the promise of reward. Some dead souls approach the PCs asking for protection from Underworld monsters, the “Brood of Lilith,” coming through the underworld portals. Demons try to seduce the PCs. The daevas bring in angels, questers, and elves to help them fight the demons. The dark elves offer the PCs a magickal device, claiming that they don’t know what it is, but that it will be necessary in the future. (I guess one of them had a dream about it?) Chapter 6: The PCs “overhear” two vampires talk about burning down the Draculs’ castle. A ghul whose packmates were all killed by werwulfs, offers information in exchange for protection. The NPC who had showed romantic interest in one of the PCs asks them to help her kill her creator. The PCs also get a map to the underworld portals from the Osirians, and Lilim vampires and ghuls ask for help closing them. They have to travel into the underworld and close the gates one by one. Later, werwulfs attack. The PC who’s been having dreams about demons gets kidnapped and the other PCs must rescue them. Some daevas agree to stir up trouble among their own kind in exchange for favours from revenants. Chapter 7: The attempted arson sets off a Blood War between the Dracul and Tantalusi. The Brood of Lilith are killing eldritch. The werwulfs control a human cult. The dream-plagued PC dreams about Lilim suspended over a pit by demons, and the PCs have to rescue them in time. The daeva faction begins to collapse. Manitou show up to fight the Black Circle. Chapter 8: Other vampire consanguinities (ugh) take sides in the Blood War. A PC discovers that a Peace Faction leader is a Black Circle member. Grim reapers continue hunting dead souls. A PC is betrayed by a friend who is secretly a Black Circle member. The PCs track the werwulf cult to their headquarters where they learn the werwulfs sell humans (alive and dead, including some allies of the PCs) to a necromancer. Angels join the Lilim in fighting demons. The Black Circle tries to frame the PCs again, this time for attacking daevas. Again, it doesn’t work. The dark elves “grow in number, but remain in hiding.” Okay.  Necromancer Lair: This Way Chapter 9: Ghuls warn of more disappearing corpses. Werwulfs try to destroy the PCs’ homes. Fifty demon worshippers sacrifice themselves to open a temporary gate and let more demons into the world. The daevas realize they’ve been manipulated, sort out their internal issues, and focus on fighting the Black Circle. Chapter 10: The Dracul defeat the Tantalusi, but are quickly defeated themselves by the Peace Faction. The leaders are entombed. The PCs discover another evil necromancer serving the Black Circle, and is helping evil revenants possess the bodies of mortals the PCs know. The werwulfs collect bodies, the war with the demons continues, while the Shiny Happy Eldritch (daevas, angels, questers, etc.) have a series of pitched battles against the Black Circle. Chapter 11: The PCs discover that the Blood War was orchestrated by the “Peace Faction” all along, and the Peaceniks are members of the Black Circle. The Black Circle has been collecting bodies so that they can summon a “dark god” to inhabit a gigantic monstrous human centipede. Dead souls warn of an “oncoming storm” before vanishing. Werwulfs stop doing stuff. Demons arm their human cultists. Dark elves and orcs move into the city. Chapter 12: The PCs rush to stop the summoning of the dark god. If they can’t stop the ritual, the God sucks the lifeforce from its summoners before going on a rampage. If they fail, it will inflict heavy casualties before the Shiny Happy Eldritch army stops it. The grim reapers show up to hold the revenants at bay. The werwulfs join the revenants. The demons fight the questers and angels. Chapter 13: Other eldritch fill the power vacuum left by the Peace Faction, the Blood War factions, and the casualties of the dark god. This means the PCs will receive great renown and dominions of their own. The ghuls lay claim to former vampire dominions. The Brood of Lilith are still out there. The remaining werwulfs and demons flee or go into hiding. The dark elves also emerge and lay claim to abandoned territories, but only fight in self-defense. I’ve got to admit, this campaign definitely has its merits. There is plenty of stuff for the PCs to do, an impressive absence of godlike NPCs controlling everything, and it even ends with sensible rewards for the PCs and setups for future conflicts. On the other hand, I was surprised by the straight-up dungeoncrawls to close magic portals, a videogamey boss battle to save someone from being dropped into a pit, and another videogamey boss fight against an Exalted rapemonster. That’s not to mention getting a magical doodad from an elf just because, and head-scratching incidents where orcs and gargoyles show up just for its own sake. On the other hand, all that stuff is either innocuous or forgivably indulgent. The real problem with this campaign is that there is a set series of major events that the PCs can’t really change, although they can engage with them and reap rewards. What happens if the PCs go whole-hog on joining one of the warring factions? What if they wanted to side with the Black Circle? There are no answers. The Everlasting: Book of the Unliving ends the way all its sessions should begin: without ceremony. 
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Mar 26, 2014 18:54
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 Dune: Chronicles of the Imperium or, A Brief Exegesis on Why I Am Sad Dune: Chronicles of the Imperium is a roleplaying game set in the universe of Frank Herbert’s groundbreaking science-fiction novel Dune. It was published by Last Unicorn Games, a small company with a short list of properties that included some very well-known licenses and some very unique original works. LUG produced the Dune CCG and a uniquely weird CCG titled Heresy: Kingdom Come. On the roleplaying front, they were the publishers of Aria: Canticle of the Monomyth and a series of licensed Star Trek games. Dune: Chronicles of the Imperium would ultimately be the last gasp of Last Unicorn. The game was designed primarily by Owen Seyler, with Christian Moore and Matthew Colville. (Seyler and Moore worked on Aria and Star Trek, and would later be involved in Decipher’s Lord of the Rings game.) They were still developing Dune when the company was bought out by Wizards of the Coast in 2000. Wizards allowed a “limited edition” of less than 2000 copies to be printed and sold at GenCon, and had big plans for a D20 version of the game. Matthew Colville discusses these plans in an amazing blog post which even has his outline for the game and the default campaign that would accompany it! Matthew Colville posted:WotC had this incredible mound of market data. They spent a lot of time and energy figuring out what people wanted to do in different universes. So they’d mention a property, like Dune and ask them to rate these statements: According to Colville, one of principal reasons for the demise of Dune was an executive order for Hasbro not to make any licensed games. As for those “contractual issues,” I can only speculate, and speculate I will. Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson are not only listed as “creative consultants” on Dune: Chronicles of the Imperium, an interior title credits them as editors. I’m sure they would have prevented anything that conflicted with their own plans for the Dune universe. Now, if you’re not a Dune fan, let me explain something quickly: Frank Herbert wrote six Dune novels (the last ending on a bit of a cliffhanger) and had plans for a seventh when he died. His son, Brian Herbert, supposedly discovered these notes on two floppy disks and some printed pages in a safe deposit box. Stories about the notes vary wildly, from “a 3-page outline” to “hundreds of pages of notes for future stories.” In any case, Brian partnered with noted space opera author Kevin J. Anderson to release “Dune 7” in two books, and have since gone on to release over a dozen prequels and sequels to the original series. They are, to say the least, not critically acclaimed. Here’s what I think of the “Dune 7” notes and all the sequels and prequels based on them: Kevin J. Anderson offloads all the ideas that the Bantam editors considered too dumb for Star Wars, Brian Herbert puts his name on them, and the floppy disks were copies of Dig Dug and Centipede all along. The failure to capitalize on the Dune franchise is almost a tragedy. Hell, Dune’s failures are more interesting than many other artists’ successes. You see...let me explain something else about Dune. There’s a whole lot in the history of the setting, or happening far away from the main characters, which is never exactly defined. It’s one of the things that kept fans coming back for more. For example, we know that a civilization-spanning jihad occurs between the first and second books, but because of the weird, baroque nature of technology in the Dune setting, we can only imagine how a full-scale war plays out. We also know that computers, robots, and AI are forbidden because of a long-ago “Butlerian Jihad” against “thinking machines,” but Herbert repeatedly declined to describe exactly what happened and how. When Anderson wrote Dune: The Butlerian Jihad, he made it about swashbucklers with “pulse-swords” fighting cyborgs called “cymeks.” This, I think, is why the Dune property is so underused, with the last attempt at a movie dying in development hell and no games of any kind since 2001. Nobody wants to publish a Dune title that is really just a Star Wars novel that is really just a rip-off of Battlestar Galactica. I can only berate Brian Herbert and KJH so much, because I’ve only read synopses of their books. Perhaps this is still hypocritical, but that is preferable to being the kind of nerd who reads an entire series of novels just to feel justified in hating them. As an aside, the only Kevin J. Anderson I’ve ever read was Jedi Search, a book I picked up in middle school. It features a barren planet where giant underground creatures create a substance which is mined for its ability to give people psychic powers. Dune: Chronicles of the Imperium is not legally available in digital form, and remains one of the rarest and most expensive roleplaying games. Used copies, when they become available, go for $200-300 depending on their condition. There are some fanmade Dune games out there, including Dune: A Dream of Rain, a d20 fan supplement, Houses of the Landsraad, which uses Greg Stolze’s One Roll Engine, and a French game called Imperium, which has several supplements. I don’t know anything about it except that the PDFs are a) quite professional looking and b) only available in French, a language in which I only know words for weapons and brands of liquor. Luke Crane wrote Burning Jihad, a supplement for his game Burning Wheel. In true Luke Crane fashion, Burning Jihad is set during Paul’s Great Jihad, and specifically set up as a war between a group of Fremen jihadi and a rebellious Noble House, with the PCs playing as one of the sides. The jihad wins.   Long story short, this is the only official Dune roleplaying game that ever was or will be. Is it any good? Let’s find out. Next time, on Chronicles of the Imperium: Introductions and a history of the Imperium. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 15:47 on Mar 27, 2014 |
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Mar 27, 2014 15:44
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I had no idea what a can of worms I was opening just by invoking Anderson's name.Rockopolis posted:Please tell me more about this. I will learn French and then review this game. theironjef posted:Kevin J. Anderson writes as if he is a seven-year old boy having an imaginary superhero fight with Star Wars. "I have a Death Star," he imagines Star Wars to boast, "and it can destroy a planet!" For example, there's a bit in Dune where we learn that Paul's grandfather died in an ill-advised bullfight. The idea that a member of an advanced spacefaring empire is a feudal lord who died fighting a bull tells you something about this society. So of course, Anderson not only depicts that event in a prequel novel, the "bull" isn't a bull--it's a Denebian Slime Bull with six eyes and ten horns or something like that. For another example, the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, chief villain of the first book, is monstrously obese. Someone comments offhandedly that this was at first because of indolence, and later because he took a perverse pleasure in disgusting others. Of course, when Anderson makes him the focus of a prequel novel, he's obese because a Bene Gesserit infected him with a rare virus. Anderson's writing appears to be the exact opposite of, say, A Song of Ice and Fire where there are fantastical elements but the plot ultimately turns on human motivations. Everything meaningful in Anderson's books has to be an alien or robot or superweapon or cosmic cataclysm or some other sci-fi cliche. Dune is filled with truly weird poo poo, but it all exists to set up a story about a Byzantine society and explore questions about ecology, imperialism, and ideology. Anderson doesn't get that.
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Mar 27, 2014 20:21
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I presume you shot an alien, then you shot another alien, then an alien killed you? And there was a lot of looking up rules involved in this process?
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Mar 31, 2014 17:55
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From what I hear, Carella was also consistent and prolific enough to allow Palladium to put out product at a steady pace. It all fell apart without him.
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Apr 1, 2014 18:21
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Was Paranoia 5th Masterbook? MiB was D6; I own a copy. Masterbook has some peculiar merits, but I wouldn't use it for Paranoia.
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Apr 1, 2014 22:07
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 Introduction The book itself opens with a foreword from Brian Herbert, a few paragraphs of him fondly recalling his father’s voracious need to write, his vivid descriptions of his ideas for the books, and his mother’s suggestions. He also takes the opportunity to plug his upcoming Dune sequels. gently caress him. Moving on, the designer’s opening notes state outright that they expect you’re either a Dune fan looking forward to experiencing it as a roleplaying game, or a roleplaying fan looking forward to experiencing Dune. After the obligatory “what is a roleplaying game” section, it gets right to the business of telling you what kind of characters you’ll play, and what you will do. The PC party is called the “House Entourage,” and that’s not just pomposity a la Immortal or Everlasting. The expectation is that the PCs will be playing the members and advisors of a minor House, and grow in power and prestige. The book is also blunt about telling us that while playing Paul & the Gang and recreating scenes from the books is possible, we’ll have more fun telling our own stories. They must have finished this part before they did all that fancy market research! They even promise us that in addition to Bene Gesserit and other emblematic roles detailed in the corebook, future supplements will support playing characters like spice smugglers and water merchants. Hoo, boy.      Space hippies! Space pharaohs! Space cotton plantation owners! None of these books were ever published. Dune uses the Icon system, the same rules as LUG’s Star Trek roleplaying game. It’s a d6-based system designed to be “simple, elegant, and easy-to-use” but “open-ended and flexible.” Colville thought it was “not very gamist” and “awful.” We’ll see. The bit of advice for the Narrator is good--rules provide structure, but you’re going to have to use your own judgment, because no one is playing a Dune game so they can spend all night looking up rules. I guess it’s time to end this chapter but oh look, the Icon Link!  Innovative, and very late-90s. The chapter wraps up with a brief glossary of setting and game terms. Next time on Dune: A shorter history than the one in the back of the novel.
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Apr 2, 2014 17:55
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Chapter 1: History of the Imperium Dune is divided into three “books,” the first being “Imperium Familia,” which contains all the setting, character generation, and rules info that the players will need. The first chapter is a history of the setting, the Imperium.  The Imperium is many thousands of years old, and the primary basis for the setting is a historical event called the Butlerian Jihad. The old Imperium was a peaceful community of over ten-thousand far-flung, technologically advanced planets. Unfortunately, relying on technology rendered them complacent, decadent, and stagnant, until it went a little something like this:  Discontent eventually broke out, and the elite responded by using more technology to isolate themselves from their disgruntled subjects. Within a generation, the Imperium went from its technological peak to being rife with widespread insurrections as rebel groups used artificial intelligences and “sentient weapons” to seize entire planets, and untold billions died as human civilization fell into anarchy and carnage. What followed was the Butlerian Jihad. The Butlerian Jihad was a revolution that lasted a century and spanned the entire Imperium. It wasn’t just a rebellion against oppression by artificial intelligences and advanced weaponry, but an ideological crusade centered on the idea that men should not be controlled by machines, figuratively or literally. The Jihad purged human civilization of not only AI and robots, but automation and most computer technology. This laid the foundation for organizations like the Spacing Guild and the Bene Gesserit, who developed programs to breed, condition, and train humans to surpass the capabilities of machines. The aftermath of the Jihad plunged the Imperium into a technological and cultural dark age, because faster-than-light travel was largely abandoned. When isolated planets began communicating with each other again, they did so with the shared philosophy that “Man may not be replaced.” The Orange Catholic Bible, a syncretic scripture created for the new Imperium, declares “Thou shalt not disfigure the soul.” What does that mean? No artificial intelligence, no robotics, no cybernetics, no genetic engineering; in short, no transhumanism and no reliance on automation. The Imperium has faster-than-light travel and gravity manipulation, but not Microsoft Excel. (Although the Butlerian Jihad is a major part of the premise of the Dune universe, Herbert alludes to it many times without ever defining exactly what the conflict was or how it played out, not even in the appendix to Dune which lays out the background of the setting. We don’t even know who Butler was! Multiple allusions imply that it was both a literal war against Space Skynet and a neo-Luddite movement, but Herbert was a master of the “always leave them wanting more” principle. Dune: CotI takes a middle ground by saying that it was both. There’s some technology that seems like it couldn’t work without some computerization being involved, but as far as the Narrator and the players should be concerned, the Imperium is a sci-fi setting with no computers.)  We’re going to the bandolier store, and there better not be any smartphones in here when we get back! Most of human history was lost during the Jihad, but as civilization rebuilt itself, planets forged new feudal alliances under the leadership of Great Houses, which mostly claimed legitimacy based on their ancient bloodlines. The Great Houses agreed that humankind should form another Imperium uniting human civilization, but disagreed on who should rule. They formed the Landsraad League, a loose confederation for mutual support and arbitration, but it lacked any real enforcement power of its own. The fighting between the Great Houses came to a head at the Battle of Corrin, where House Sarda, its allied Houses, and its peerless Sardaukar troops defeated the remaining Landsraad supporters. The leader of House Sarda renamed his house Corrino, ascended the Golden Lion Throne, and declared himself the first Padishah Emperor of the Imperium. With the support of the Spacing Guild, who achieved a monopoly on interstellar travel, the new Imperium expanded throughout the Known Universe and reunited humanity under one government. Among the waves of refugees fleeing imperialism were the Zensunni Wanderers, who eventually settled on an obscure desert planet called Arrakis. The New Imperium On Arrakis the Fremen discovered a drug called melange, or simply the spice, and soon, so did the Spacing Guild. (How it happened is a mystery, and neither the Guild nor the Fremen are talking--but it’s thought that when the Zensunni refugees moved on, the Guild learned about melange from them, while the Zensunni who remained on Arrakis became the fearsome Fremen.) Melange improves human health and extends lifespan; the only problem is that it’s addictive, and regular consumers of spice will die if they stop taking it. Spice can also awaken prescient psychic powers. The Spacing Guild experimented with the spice until they discovered that it could replace the sophisticated sensors and computers that had previously been necessary for faster-than-light travel. With training and massive doses of spice, a Guild Navigator’s mind can transcend space-time and navigate a faster-than-light ship better than any AI. Not only did this pave the way for a new age of space exploration, it cemented the Guild’s monopoly on space travel. As the Imperium regrew, the “Great Schools” developed to answer the question of how to improve the human condition without relying on machines. All of them have means of conditioning humans to achieve “superhuman” abilities. They are the Bene Gesserit, the Spacing Guild, the Mentat order, the Suk School, and the Swordsmaster’s School of Ginaz.  Do you know of a place where Swordsmasters hang out? (Dune admits outright that of the four schools, only the Bene Gesserit and the Spacing Guild are major powers. But while Mentats are important to the plot of the Dune novels, the Ginaz swordsmen are only mentioned in a few passing references to give some background on why House Atreides has such great soldiers. But “swordsmaster” is going to be a character class in this game, so…) The Bene Gesserit is an order dedicated to preserving and evolving the human race. In practice, that means they manipulate politics from behind the scenes. They nominally support the status quo, because the feudal caste system makes it easier for them to accomplish their goals. They literally control the breeding and training of royal bloodlines for superior genes, support their scions as political leaders to maintain “continuity in human affairs,” and they “seed” worlds with myths and cultural memes that their agents can exploit in times of need. (Arrakis is one such planet that was “seeded” and then forgotten centuries ago.) The Bene Gesserit is an almost entirely female order which recruits the young women of noble Houses, a tradition that’s been going on for centuries. (They do share limited degrees of their training with men, and in fact, one of their major projects is trying to breed the Kwisatz Haderach, a hypothetical enlightened male ruler with prescient powers their best members don’t have, who can lead the Imperium into a new age.) Everyone knows that the BG has a hierarchy and plans of its own, but frankly, their training is incredibly useful and nobody wants to be on their bad side.  You say “swordsmasters,” but you don’t just mean any swordsmaster, do you? The Spacing Guild is an omnipresent but mysterious organization with an absolute monopoly on space travel. Although FTL technology was never lost during the Jihad, the Spacing Guild has perfected the art of training Navigators to pilot them better than any AI. Their Guild Heighliner transports are so massive that a Great House can pack all its assets (including people and buildings) into a corner of one and move its seat of power to a different solar system. Not only that, but the Guild enforces absolute neutrality, so a rival House can be doing the same thing in the same Heighliner without any fear of treachery. The Guild also has a monopoly on banking through its Guild Bank, which serves the entire Imperium and uses spice as a unit of value. You can rely on the Guild to never stab you in the back, but any House that tries to screw over the Guild is going to be punished with a series of fees and penalties. Oh, and if you ever find yourself well and truly hosed, with the strength of your House broken and your rivals beating down your door, the Guild maintains the Tupile system as a place of safe exile. Paying the Guild your last bit of cash to live out your days on some faraway planet isn’t great, but it’s better than having your enemies hunt down each and every last one of your family. The Mentat School trains people to be human computers. Mentats aren’t just people walking around with spreadsheets in their heads; they can actually bring human judgment and intuition to bear on massive amounts of data and predict, for example, that there’s a 79.4% chance that your Bene Gesserit advisor plans to murder you, with an 85.6% chance that she’ll do it by poisoning that Caladanian wine you love so much. The Mentat school isn’t a major political faction, but no House would enter tense negotations without a mentat advisor. The Swordsmaster’s School of Ginaz was founded to train soldiers to heretofore unseen levels, and many other schools have tried to imitate their success. House Corrino founded the Imperial Suk School to train expert doctors whose “imperial conditioning” prevents them from ever harming their patients. These were just minor plot points in the books, and as such, don’t get a lot of detail here.  Swordsmasters? Well, I see them around in the evenings. What do you want with them? The Great Houses Dune: CotI lists over thirty Great Houses in the Landsraad council, but there are only a handful who are major players and get a lot of detail. Each of the Great Houses has a number of Houses Minor united under its banner, too. (Yep, just like Game of Thrones, but with lasers.) Power accrues to power, and House Corrino still sits on the Golden Lion Throne and remains the most powerful House in the Imperium. The Corrinos are notorious for internal power struggles, but the House as a whole rules with a steady hand, even if its Emperors are not particularly long-lived. They’ve moved their seat of power to the planet Kaidan, after an assassination attempt on the royal family turned their homeworld, Salusa Secundus, into a radioactive wasteland. It now serves as a prison planet, but is secretly the training ground for the Emperor’s matchless Sardaukar troops. The Sardaukar are like nuclear weapons themselves: rarely employed, but their mere existence is sufficient to deter any disobedience. While the Corrinos have spent thousands of years consolidating wealth and power, the Atreides have shored up their reputation for honor and justice. The Atreides first came to prominence at the Battle of Corrin, when a cowardly Harkonnen abandoned his post and an Atreides swept in to save the day. The Atreides aren’t particularly wealthy, but many of the lesser Houses count on them to take a principled stance in times of crisis, as they did in the Ginaz/Moritani war. Having the support of all these “backbenchers” makes them a threat to the Corrinos and a target for the more devious Houses, but their enemies are afraid to take action against them...openly. House Harkonnen is a bag of cunts. They were exiled from the Landsraad for their ancestor’s cowardice, but since that time they earned their way back in through a series of shrewd business decisions that cornered the market on several luxury goods, making them too wealthy and powerful to ignore. They’ve even been awarded control of Arrakis, the richest fiefdom in the galaxy, and they’ve ruled it the way they rule every other world under their control: repulsive decadence and brutal exploitation. Their homeworld is an industrialized shithole, and most of their subjects are degraded slaves. And now we get to the Houses that were just invented for this game! House Wallach was founded by a general loyal to the Corrinos, but while they’re still tight enough with the Emperor to train their heirs on Salusa Secundus, their primary focus is now diplomacy. They also have a strong alliance with the Bene Gesserit, who are headquartered on Wallach IX. House Moritani is a bunch of devious bastards who are still best known for quickly wiping out House Ginaz in a brief and bloody war of assassins. They’ve spent generations trying to shake their dubious reputation, but retreating into relative obscurity while rumors of a military buildup continue to circulate hasn’t helped them much. House Tseida developed on a planet which was ruled by a Butlerian Inquisition for thousands of years. Theocracy has waned, but they are, no kidding, a House of expert lawyers. They keep themselves strong (and indispensible) by representing other Houses in business ventures, and they’re strongly intertwined with the Spacing Guild.  Swordsmasters? I think they drink a lot of booze at the bars or someplace. The Imperium You’ve been told all sorts of things about all sorts of factions without understanding how they work, haven’t you? I’m sorry, I’m just trying to roughly follow the book here. The document that guides the way the Imperium works is the Great Convention. It’s essentially the extension of a general truce, and is designed to protect the powerful and prevent open warfare. Basically, it goes lie this: 1. It defines the rights and obligations of Houses, how the Landsraad council works, and other boring stuff that isn’t meant to be spelled out in a space opera novel or a roleplaying game. 2. It defines the faufreluches, the universal caste system. 3. Houses are allowed to wage war on each other through formal duels, assassination, and political hostage-taking and ransom. This is called kanly. As long as you formally declare your vendetta, almost anything is permissible. What, even knifing babies in the crib? Absolutely. Can I interest you in a long vacation in the scenic Tupile system? By “scenic” I mean only the Spacing Guild knows where it is and you can never return. 4. One thing that’s not allowed? Atomic weapons. Ever. The penalty for this is that the Emperor executes your entire House and your home planet is destroyed. The Landsraad is, uh, feudal space Congress. The Emperor is the leader of the council, and while he doesn’t have to do anything he doesn’t want to, he’ll usually follow their recommendations. The Landsraad passes laws, creates and funds Imperial projects, listens to its members whine about how they’re not getting enough stuff, and so on, just like Congress. The Landsraad forbids any action against the Guild, and authorizes the Guild to penalize misbehaving Houses with fines, punitive rates, embargoes, or outright confiscation. Basically, you can’t wage war unless the Landsraad sanctions it. The space knights of the Dune universe don’t fight each other with fleets of X-Wings and Birds of Prey and Flaz Gaz Heat Rays and such because the Guild is having none of that bullshit. The CHOAM corporation was founded in the Great Convention as a financial reserve for the Imperium, and it’s now the center of the imperial economy. (It stands for Combine Honette Ober Advancer Mercantiles.) It’s deeply intertwined with the Guild Bank and with every commercial enterprise on every planet in the Imperium. Through CHOAM, the Landsraad regulates trade and establishes currency. (The sol, plural solaris, is the imperial unit of currency, and pegged to the value of spice. Ron Paul Muad’Dib, eat your heart out.) Next time, on Dune: Everything about the Great Houses that you don’t know already.
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Apr 10, 2014 22:20
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unseenlibrarian posted:I always figured that the Butlerian Jihad referred to the robots themselves- it was a holy war to purge robotic servants- a Jihad against -Butlers-. The Ixians and the Tleilax are a thing, but they're not organized as Great Houses. They both skirt or outright violate the Butlerian proscriptions (the Ixians with machinery and the Tleilax with biotechnology) but anyone in a position to do anything about it is benefiting from their rare and precious inventions. Young Freud posted:You're a long way from Hoth. Barudak posted:Please tell me the Dune Book drops/handles deftly the imprinting idea. Eating worm juice to see beyond space and time was fine with young me, the weird imprinting poo poo lost me. As for the imprinting, I really have no idea yet, but I'm pretty sure that the game is going to focus on prana-bindu kung fu a lot more than stuff like imprinting. As you'll see, one of the problems in this game is that there are a lot of character "abilities" which don't actually do anything, both because they never got to publish the supplements and because of 90s design.
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Apr 11, 2014 19:07
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Bilal kaifa.
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Apr 11, 2014 20:04
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I would really like to do Wraeththu some time, but there's no PDF version available and I'm not about to spend $40 on a joke.quote:Legendmaking Part 1: This Joke Breaks Wikis Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 15:03 on Apr 20, 2014 |
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Apr 20, 2014 14:59
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Me too, apparently! I had no idea that had been covered. I was just listening to the Haven episode of System Mastery, and it actually reminded of what I'd heard about Wraeththu. I know that sounds weird, but hear me out: In both cases, the game wasn't just about a setting, it was the author's attempt to make the best, most "realistic" and comprehensive universal system at the same time.
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Apr 20, 2014 15:18
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