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I greatly prefer the Cat Thread
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Aug 1, 2015 13:06
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The sad thing is that if I could have a dog, I would get a pug. Those little fuckers are so cute and I'd be drat happy to have one.
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Aug 4, 2015 02:51
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Ewen Cluney posted:Pugs are adorable, but I can never see one without hearing Maria Bamford talking about the Little Angels Pug Rescue in the Glendale Petco, with the trainer lady saying "These are Not! Smart! Animals!" This video is hilarious and Bamford is a genius, but the pug/corgi combo is a double whammy of doggie cuteness and I can't handle it.
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Aug 4, 2015 04:04
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gradenko_2000 posted:I know I came across a document before of trying to match the various 13th Age icons to Eberron organizations, such as the Lord of Blades instead of the Crusader and the Church of the Silver Flame instead of the Priestess. I dunno why they would try and do a 1:1 match for each Icon to an Eberron organization/figure, but the idea itself is sound. It so happens that there are exactly 13 dragonmarked houses, so if you wanted to do fantasy corporate espionage you could give that a go. More generally though I think turning the Lord of Blades etc. into Icons is the way to go. That's a pretty good way to adapt the system to the setting I think. It was already D&D to start with so it shouldn't be too much work, and the tone is generally the same.
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Aug 4, 2015 18:43
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The mystery and ambiguity surrounding the Lord of Blades and its possible origins is very 13th Age, though. Having no set truth about it is rather nice and lets the GM present it however they like.
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Aug 4, 2015 19:15
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I always point to the first half of Aberrant as being the game that hooked me with its setting based on sheer presentation. It is all told from an in-universe perspective. News stories, interviews, blog posts, forum posts, all of it is used to show the world and how it changes as the result of superhumans suddenly showing up. There are a few great comics that are representations of TV shows and are just fantastic. You get everything from internal memos of secret organizations with ominous codenames to an ersatz Hunter S. Thompson that apes his gonzo journalism while giving you a rundown of the world. There isn't a whole lot of out-of-character exposition and the majority of the setting is presented from the perspective of the people who live in it. And strangely for a White Wolf book, there is no real into fiction, instead we get straight into the action with the inciting moment - a transcription of a radio transmission with a doomed space station. Even the other two games in the line, Trinity and Adventure! have opening fiction, and I haven't seen another WW book that does this. Sometimes I'll just open up Aberrant and read the front half because of the conspiracy plot that is threaded right there through it, which is pretty engaging all by itself. Completely opposite that, I love the world guides to the Forgotten Realms, Eberron and Golarion. Maybe I'm just a huge nerd but those CIA World Factbook headers with population numbers and demographic breakdowns are something I love to see. I realize that it is pointless, but those kind of breakdowns do help me get into the idea of the world. A more modern and streamlined take on this is in 13th Age, where you get a basic overview of the world, some things that may or may not be true, and it leaves a lot of it in the GM/players' hands to fill in the blanks. Something I've always wanted to try is sorta a blend of the two. A world guide written by a character or institution within the world. A CIA World Factbook that is written by a sort of unreliable narrator. You could go full Marco Polo with it and have it be written by a traveler who exaggerates and makes up larger than life tales and doesn't always get things right. Or you could have a scholarly writer who is piecing all this together from stories and field reports and often gets things wrong, preserving the mystery of the world.
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Aug 4, 2015 20:02
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inklesspen posted:Just don't go all Erin Tarn with it. Don't you put that evil on me Ricky Bobby
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Aug 4, 2015 20:31
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Covok posted:As for Eberron in the 13th Age, this is what the creator had to say on it. It's not super useful. Okay, the Lords of Sharn idea is cool as hell. I would totally play that. I mean it's not a bad guide overall. I think the core idea of finding what you want to focus on and figuring out who your Icons are from there is a decent way of adapting the mechanic to settings not designed around it. In this case, rename them Factions and you're golden. Also I like the idea of a secretive or mysterious Icon. I've used one in my game and it did pretty well.
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Aug 4, 2015 21:09
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The Confederacy is a fine badguy group imo. They are the perfect group of completely-evil bastards for your players to kill without remorse. They're the old west equivalent of Nazis or zombies. But in terms of the world, I'm tired of this "what if the South had won/stalled out the war" bullshit which is too often Lost Cause historical revisionism dressed up like alt-history.
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Aug 9, 2015 22:21
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Trust me, the south is about as close to Mordor as you can get in real life already. Turn back the clock a hundred and fifty years and it's a perfect fit.
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Aug 10, 2015 03:25
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gradenko_2000 posted:On a slight tangent, I don't know who the hell made the Swords and Scrolls reskin for Lasers and Feelings, but they have my eternal ire for not using the incredibly more obvious alliteration of Might and Magic. loving scrolls? Seriously? That ain't evocative. If I had to guess it's because of the video game series with a pretty similar name.
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Aug 10, 2015 15:02
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Yeah, I did a Color Out of Space adventure once for my players when they reached Paragon in 4E. A migration of the monsters were feeding off a neighborhood of nobles in a large city, who hired the players to figure out what was going on. It ended with their whole neighborhood in flames while the players dashed around beating up the manifesting creatures before facing down the main one as it rose out of the sewers. They really only managed to save themselves, stole their pay (and more) from the smoking ruins of the dead nobles' homes and rode off into the sunset. Good times.
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Aug 13, 2015 14:16
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I am never going to sleep again
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Aug 19, 2015 18:37
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The greatest crime is that we never got the 4E turn-based tactical dungeon crawler that we should have. If there ever was a game primed for being turned into a CRPG it was 4E.
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Aug 21, 2015 14:00
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Mass Effect 2 was such a huge improvement over the first one in gameplay terms that it was almost unbelievable. It went from a wonky mess that you had to slog through to a smooth cover-shooter with a slick control scheme and smart, less intensive inventory management. Easily one of my favorite games ever. 3 improved on that in smaller ways, but the multiplayer (something I hadn't cared about) eventually sucked me in for over a hundred hours. You start out pinballing from enemy to enemy as a vanguard, then figure out how biotic/tech combos work and its off to the races. Next thing you know you're an invisible salarian with the biggest shotgun in the universe one-shotting bosses at point blank range. Mass Effect was such a fun series, drat.
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Aug 22, 2015 04:54
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Potsticker posted:Mass Effect 2's story and plot progression was so bad that I never played 3.  Dunno what to tell you. I liked all the Mass Effect games pretty well, never had any problems with the story or anything. I remember I walked a couple miles to get that game in college and we all pretty much loved it. Good memories.RE space racism in Mass Effect: yeah, totally. I mean the game does a good job of showing you that the Illusive Man and Cerberus are bad news, and Shepard works with them to fight the Collectors because what else is he gonna do? They're basically a myth, no one else wants to deal with them. I was uncomfortable with how in 2 the Renegade options make you a space racist, so I went Paragon for that game. Ideally both options would have you giving the Illusive Man a big ol' gently caress you. Finally getting to kick Cerberus' rear end in ME3 was awesome.
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Aug 22, 2015 16:19
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ProfessorCirno posted:People who hate on Mass Effect 2's storylines are dumb and deserve the idiocy that is every other Bioware storyline, because ME2's plotlines were just uniformly cheesy 80's action movies. Mass Effect 1 was just a recycle of every other Bioware game and Mass Effect 3 wouldn't shut the gently caress up about how my badass protagonist apparently can't stop weeping over one dumb kid who got himself killed, whereas Mass Effect 2 gave me a goddamn Contra boss at the end and was 100% better for it. It's maybe the only Bioware game that isn't entirely shoved up it's own rear end. It's a dumb fun cheesy action game in space. I agree with this for the most part, except that I think I must've blocked out the weepy Shepard part of ME3. Also Bioware games generally have enjoyable stories to go with the gameplay. One day we'll get Jade Empire 2. One day...
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Aug 23, 2015 00:00
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dwarf74 posted:I am also cool because I hate things other people like. Accurate.
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Aug 23, 2015 04:34
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Covok posted:Random thought, but I'm surprised that the Elder Scrolls never made a cheap, cash-in TRPG. Seems right up their alley. Before Skyrim came out some of my friends wanted me to run Elder Scrolls for them in 4E, which we almost did, but then Skyrim actually came out and we all disappeared for a few months. There's so much cool lore and stuff to do in the Elder Scrolls universe I'd be down for at least a setting book to more easily run games there.
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Aug 25, 2015 17:00
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Andrast posted:Too bad none of the games after Morrowind actually show any of that cool lore. In a way I have to agree because Morrowind was the coolest world I've ever seen in a videogame and Oblivion (post-retconning) and Skyrim are closer to the generic fantasy we see all over the place. I remember reading the books in Morrowind and just being so intrigued by their mythology and history etc. and they didn't even bring those books forward into later games. So disappointing. But Skyrim did have things like Blackreach and pretty cool lore concerning the dwemer and dragons, so it gets a pass. No excuse for Oblivion though.
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Aug 25, 2015 17:13
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Yeah, the mechanics of Elder Scrolls are less important than getting down the setting and tone. It's such a weird, dense world with lots of interesting stuff to explore, you don't really need to worry too much about which game you'd run it in.
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Aug 25, 2015 19:14
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Evil Mastermind posted:Basically, yeah. If you're making an RPG based on a video game where people can fling spells all day and all night, don't use the system that has people run out of spells. I mean you can run out of magicka. Either way, that's one of the reasons why I wanted to use 4E. Now that I think about it, I wish more games had an MP model where you spent points from a pool to cast your spells. I've always liked that more than Vancian casting.
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Aug 25, 2015 20:59
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Ratpick posted:I once toyed around with the idea for an RPG where you'd start each encounter at 0 and by using your basic attacks you'd also gain MP or Refresh or whatever it's called, so that you'd only be able to unlock your biggest and baddest attacks after a couple of rounds of combat. Flavor it however you like, maybe in order to perform greater magics you first need to open yourself up as a conduit between the magical realm and this one by using basic spells or something, I don't know. I love this idea. You could do something similar for non-magical folks as well, building adrenaline or focus or something like that. Or just separate the fluff from the mechanics and let the player flavor things however they like. Overall I like the 4E way of doing things as well. AEDU is pretty awesome, and the simplification of resource management was a good thing for my group. After looking over the Strike! rules I'm thinking of showing it to them and see if they would like to give it a shot. Still holding out for a good MP model, though. Really anything but Vancian casting.
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Aug 26, 2015 19:59
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Andrast posted:What's your opinion on the 3.5/Pathfinder Psionic system? I never played with it, but I did own the D&D Psionics book. The system seemed way more interesting than vanilla D&D magic. I remember there being a lot of different disciplines that were as arbitrary as the magic schools, so that was a bit lame. I'll have to glance over the book again sometime, but if I had ever run 3.x I would've used psionics instead of the normal magic classes just because they seemed much more fun. I also happened across a spell points variant rule in one of those old D&D books (Unearthed Arcana?) that looked like a good compromise between Vancian casting and an MP pool.
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Aug 26, 2015 20:30
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Proud to live in the Expanding Tiger Empire, but my heart belongs to the Kangarat Murder Society.
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Aug 28, 2015 15:21
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The Strange Fire Area is also pretty mundane by comparison.
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Aug 28, 2015 15:34
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Error 404 posted:United States of Lions checking in. After we're done with the Gorilla Communes, the tigers are coming for you.
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Aug 28, 2015 16:04
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Check out this awesome stuff that I pulled out of a local junk store: I've never even heard of Quest of the Ancients, but hoo boy does this look like a hell of an AD&D clone. It uses a d30!  Aww yeah, that's the good stuff.
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Aug 30, 2015 20:19
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Bedlamdan posted:It looks like it's just meant to symbolize two different genres, with the sword clearly being the divider between the two. Sorry to be a downer. Well it's GURPS, so I guess it's to do with the universal system thing? I'll read through it and see if the cover actually has anything to do with the contents.
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Aug 30, 2015 20:33
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gradenko_2000 posted:I'm imagining a scenario where an Ahnenerbe Obersturmbannführer, an NKVD Commissar, a Unit 731 doctor, and a Francoist worshipper of Chagnar Faugn all find themselves in the rear end-end of Greenland, forced to work together to find the Cthuloid McGuffin while knowing they need to stab everyone else in the back eventually to bring the relic back to their own respective countries. And run it in Fiasco.
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Sep 1, 2015 17:05
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