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 Money and Goods Do you wanna hurt? Do you enjoy screaming violently into the sky because goddamnit how stupid can you get? Do you enjoy your faciful magical world’s entire economy being based on industrialized child-labor? Currencies Invisible Sun has stupid loving money. The dumbest money possible. You will wish for copper/platinum/gold in reasonable base 10 increments of value. The first currency is Orbs. Yes Orbs. What are they? Little marble looking things that are full of thoughts and ideas. Let’s just ignore the stupidity of orb-shaped money and how impractical and stupid it is and get into the more esoterically stpuid details. Orbs come in four kinds: Glass, Crystal, Gem, and Trueorbs. Trueorbs is spelled like that in-book. Glass orbs are the most common, and each is worth approximately 10 American Cents. All units of currency are given equivalent value in USD, even though they are magical money from a higher dimension. Glass orbs are made of glass and full of common ideas and thoughts of minimal value. Examples given are a taste or the thought to wear a jacket when it’s cold. They are so low value in fact you can’t make money making them. The only way they are explicitly produced are by mass child-labor: Literally kids just daydreaming and thinking in explicitly stated long days to make them. Your base economy is founded on child labor. What the gently caress. They disincorporate after 50 years. Crystal Orbs are worth 100 Glass Orbs or 10 dollars. They’re fairly common ideas but rarer and more complex than glass orbs. Examples are a recipe or directions to a place. No mention is made of whether these are made by sweatshops full of children or not. They don’t discorporate, but they are fragile. Glass orbs are apparently NOT fragile, but crystal ones are. Why am I imagining GM’s telling you how much money you lost every time you get tripped or knocked over? Gem orbs are 100 crystal orbs or 1000 dollars, and are rarely used. They are nigh-indestructible, permanent, and who knows what sort of ideas they have inside them because the game doesn’t say, or how they’re made. Trueorbs are the last kind and are not loving money. They have the same value monetarily as gem orbs, but they’re made out of solid ideas made… somehow. “The essence of the original concept of orbs from days of old” as the book says. What this means is they aren’t useful as cash because what you actually do is eat them because they’re wizard drugs. Consuming a trueorb adds 1 to your Hidden Knowledge, representing you learning whatever the idea inside was. Orbs are a cool concept,.Wizards trading ideas and thoughts as currency, done as boring as possible. Also loving hell why did you base your monetary standard on child-labor??? Next up we have Magecoins which are even dumber than orbs. They’re large fancy golden coins that come in two denominations: Vim and Lumins. Also they may be called mana coins because we needed two names? Anyway, magecoins can’t be traded for orbs, except they can at a rate of 1 to 1 with gem orbs because loving hell Monte can’t you at least be firm on how your fake currency works? Orbs are used to pay for normal poo poo like real money, but magecoins are only traded to vislae because they’re magical money. As in they’re the money you use to buy magical items, potions, and services. It’s wizard money, separate from normal money. Also they’re wizard batteries because you and destroy one to refill one of your pools: Vims restore Certes and Lumins restore Qualia. There is no mention of how you make magecoins. Bloodsilver is the stupidest loving thing. It’s money that is literally cursed. The more you have the harder it is to resist the curse, which is basically random magical effects going off at you as you do stuff. Literally if you have more than 1 of them, the GM is supposed to randomly make you roll to not get hosed by some random magical thing happening to you. What do you use them for? Assassins. Literally just assassins. They have no other use and most people won’t interchange them for any other currency (worth 1 crystal orb because Commitment To A Gimmick Is Hard). In other words… I have no idea why any PC would ever touch these loving things. Demontears are not demon tears, but may be demonic excretions of some kind, maybe? Maybe they aren’t. It’s mysterious. They look like little red pearls, and work just like magecoins. Demons use them as money. There is no other information on them. Bits and Bobs are random currencies from other places in the multiverse besides Indigo aka Wizard City. They’re worth 5 to an orb. Cheques are just fuckin cheques. Issued by a bank, for orbs. It’s… it’s just cheques. Why did you have to point out that chequing is a thing? Noosphere Exchanges just means psychics can… buy and sell things through the noosphere? Which makes no sense because orbs have value because they’re physical items. Just an idea isn’t worth money unless it’s in the physical form, so what would trading ideas in mind-space be worth? Buying… imaginary furniture? Goods These are items. There’s annoying dogshit tied into these, as you’d expect. First up Kindled Items are your… not proper magical items but the boring kind that just give stat bonuses instead of doing cool poo poo. They are things that are “more like itself than itself” which is a stupid way of saying, they give stat bonuses. You can buy them with orbs, they’re small and minor and don’t do specific magical tricks. Just give bene or vex or armor. They don’t count as emphemera or objects of power. Kindled items are also full of stupid wacky lore that is so quirky you guys. They’re made by awakening the spirit of the object, which gives it a form of life. This mainly manifests by… hating and wanting to devour similar objects. Kindled items will “eat” non-kindled equivalents, and if two similar kindled things are put together they literally fight to the death. Aethyric Devices are just electronic/electrical stuff that runs on magic. Anything that would be electric runs on aethyr instead, which just means they don’t need power. They don’t need batteries, or plugs, they just have infinite power and just work. This also means they can be controlled by spirits and basically ghost-hack your magic-phone.  Shopping Tables The rest of this chapter is 8 pages of shopping tables. Just tables of stuff and their costs. These tables are things like “Home Furnishings”, “Supplies and Tools”, “Clothing”, etc.  An example. Special mention to the crafting materials, which are so uselsessly stupid it’s impressive. They essentially break down crafting by level of the material, and each level has a cost. Level 1 Material is 10 Crystal Orbs, Level 7 is 200, etc. But, they can’t just… have level and cost. No no, they have multiple entries at each level, with the same costs, for… some reason?  Next Time: The First Session
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Sep 10, 2019 02:47
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Night10194 posted:Ah hell yeah, the Cube is back. Send me that dumb, dumb assassin money. Bloodsilver is wanted by assassins literally because carrying proves you got BIG DICK ENERGY and don't FEAR NO CURSE. That's the literal reason, it makes them look cool and badass because machismo. Also, I probably understated how bad Bloodsilver is: the game explicitly says to treat it like magical flux, which are basically miscast effects. Depending on how assholish the GM is feeling, that can have such wonderful effects as:
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Sep 10, 2019 02:55
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Xiahou Dun posted:How do the assassins then pay for their own stuff though? Is it like those coins in John Wick or something? What does the assassin do with the cursed lovely money that only other assassins want? How does an assassin like buy a sandwich or whatever? No explanation in the currency description. Note that the concept of assassins is stupid too, because death... isn't a state of being. It's a place. Like, one of the Suns, the whole multiverse thing that the game hasn't really addressed but is 90% of the setting? It's literally just the afterlife. When you die you just go to Death Town. You become a ghost, yes, but... you are still, like. Able to exist and interact with people. Your friends can pack up and go to Death Town and meet up with you. This game seems to assume death is like in D&D, but you play super wizards and you can have holidays in the Underworld.
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Sep 10, 2019 04:16
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sexpig by night posted:I'm sorry, I have a sickness that makes me do this. quote:The most widely accepted currency is made in Satyrine. These tiny orbs each represent a thought, a secret, or an idea. Most people just call them by their material, so 3 glass orbs are “3 glass,” 6 crystal orbs are “6 crystal,” and 2 gem orbs are “2 gems.” The exception is that sometimes people just say “orbs,” in which case they mean glass orbs. That's the exact description of orbs.
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Sep 10, 2019 04:38
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Just so everyone arguing about orbs knows: That stuff I posted was the entire text about orbs. That's it. Only Trueorbs can be eaten or whatever to get you memories. The other orbs are just money. Also it's not wizard money: Wizard Money are the golden magic coin ones. Orbs are normal money. Vislae are a subclass of people in Satyrine which has a large population of weird magical people who are not Vislae.
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Sep 11, 2019 06:44
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Sep 11, 2019 23:41
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The First Session, Advancing Characters, and The End of The Key It’s time to wrap up this first book of Invisible Sun. So, the First Session is, still part of character creation. Yeah, it’s not finished yet. See, first session is you all get together and collaboratively… finishes the characters. Now, I am a fan of concepts like this: I think Unknown Armies 3e’s First Session campaign/character creation system is brilliant. This is probably not going to be brilliant. So after everyone introduces their characters BUT NOT THE SECRET SOUL. You move to step one of first session… Neighborhood Yep. The group collaboratively comes up with at least one neighbor for each PC, which the GM rates as Positive, Negative, or Neutral in respect to that PC. This repeats until every PC gets at least one neighbor. Then you do it again and come up with one to three nearby points of interest in the neighborhood, then one or two local problems or issues. All of those are again, rated as Positive, Negative, or Neutral. GM then tallies up the positive and negative, ignoring the neutral things. If more positive than negative things, PC gets 1 Joy, if opposite, 1 Despair, if neutral, they get nothing. Each PC gets a Wicked Key which… one sec. I have to literally flip to the last page of the book for an explanation of what a Wicked Key is.  Ok while a cool concept I actually dig, why is this the last page of the book? Anyway, everyone gets a Wicked Key… That they immediately give to another player as an award “for a suggestion that they liked or thought was particularly fun or imaginative”. Why? I can’t imagine any situation that wouldn’t result in keys just getting swapped around between people. If someone gets multiples, that means someone else gets none and that feels like a fast way to breed resentment in the group. Most of this section is taken up with suggestions, which I will transcribe a few of because they’re either hilariously bad or hilariously useless.
Bonds Then the PC’s figure out any bonds between them, ideally everyone has a bond with at least one other person. If you are familiar with various Powered by the Apocalypse games like Dungeon World, you may assume that this works the same, you’re wrong. This is Invisible Sun, these are hard mechanical definitions of human relationships. You can have one PC Bond at creation, any more you have to do the Develop a Bond character arc to get, and if you have a bond with someone, you can share character arcs. I’m not going to go over all the bonds, but they’re as awkward as you’d expect. Fellow Students bond lets both PC’s learn a single spell up to level 3, but they can only cast that spell when they’re physically close to each other. Housemates means you both share a better house mechanically, but… one character just doesn’t get a house. Lovers is hilarious because it’s a blanket +1 to every action as long as they’re physically close together. The drawback? They start getting stat penalties for every day they’re apart. Being in love is quantified through stat buffs and penalties. That’s the most 3rd Edition loving thing. Ephemera Each character starts with your maximum number of Ephemera. These are your minor magic items, cantrips, etc. GM gets final say, and it’s probably easiest just to draw random ephemera from the Ephemera Cards because remember, this game was a giant box-o-feelies. The Desideratum Good god Monte, is there any term you didn’t make obtuse and confusing? Desideratum, my god. This just means pick one of these six things that you want the game to be about : Money, Power, Information, Allies, Travel, Altruism, to give a guide for the GM in making the second session which is where you actually start playing.That’s it.  Advancing Characters This’ll be quick because I had to explain the advancement systems beforehand anyway. So quick recap: XP in confusing. Acumen is spent on skills, spells, secrets, etc. Joy and Despair are also XP but you need one of each to make Crux, because gently caress you, which is spent to advance Forte’s and Order. It’s also apparently spent to make magic items and activate certain abilities, so that’s… that’s a good idea I bet. Also… ok wait. Joy and Despair need to be tracked even after spending… because they increase the power of your Magic Hand or Buttplug??? That’s… the first I’m hearing of this. Wait, what is this???  Wha… why would you mix the systems like that? Like I get the idea: Bad stuff is more valuable mechanically than Good Stuff, but this just means it’s more confusing in a game with an already overcomplicated and confusing XP system. Whatever. I’m skipping costs to advance stuff, because who cares? It’s not insane, just like “oh 1 for level 1-4, 2 for 5-6”, etc. that sorta stuff. Instead let’s go to something… loving stupid.  This is a good way to end it I think. Your magical whatstit of choice is an ever-increasing in power magical item. This is a cool concept. This sounds neat. Or would except… you don’t get to pick. It’s the GM. This is a permanent defining magical item that you get, and you can’t choose what it does. The GM decides. The GM Always decides.  Always. Well, this wraps up The Key. Next time: The Gate: The Actual Rules of The Game, Gamemaster Advice, and… THE SOOTH DECK!
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Sep 15, 2019 23:40
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Okay, I'm here to infodump about Alexis, because his entire blog is F&F content. So let me teach you about this weird rear end in a top hat's Deal. First let's make something clear: He has never played anything besides Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 1e. He started playing it at 15, and has never changed games. His home campaigns are built on an insanely complex houseruled frankengame made... entirely of AD&D and his own ideas. He basically has no idea that other RPGs exist, and doesn't care to learn. He has campaigns, several ones. They are ran, not even joking, via blogspot. http://juvenis-campaign.blogspot.com/ Browse and see exactly what sort of game he runs. He takes literally months to run a single combat in this format, so who knows why he does this. His homebrew nightmare is present on a ""wiki"" (Blogspot blog). https://tao-dndwiki.blogspot.com/2018/02/general-index.html Some fun rules he thinks are Good Ideas: -Action Points ala XCOM in D&D.  -Chance for weapons to break when used.  -Tracking moon-phase to determine stealth-effectiveness.  Oh, note those modifiers aren't to the roll, that's how many hexes away you can be before getting seen. Everything is tracked via hexes universally at all times. He also has a secret Patreon Locked Super Blog of Higher Learning on D&D that I can't be bothered to look at. It's honestly hard to talk about this guy because his blog is this insane infinite hole of terrible opinions. I mean for gods sake he made nutrition rules, with spreadsheet matrices for determining taste and quality of cooking you roll on to determine how well fed/sick/disgusted you get by the food. http://tao-dnd.blogspot.com/2019/05/at-last-nutrition-rules.html
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Sep 23, 2019 19:07
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Ladies and Gentlemen. It’s time.  We have finished The Key. Character Creation is behind us. So now, we move on to The Gate. Which is Rules, GM Advice… and The Sooth Deck. God help us all. I’m going to be blitzing through this because as you well know, if there’s one thing more boring than watching oatmeal dry on an institutional white wall, it’s Monte Cook’s mechanics. Gameplay This is in fact where we start, after a short paragraph on what Narrative is that is totally unobjectionable. The game as a whole is perfectly fine on the writing end, and has a good grasp of WHAT it’s doing. The issue is just what it’s doing has no reason to be as well executed as it is. Most of this chapter is pretty standard and not very interesting GMing and play advice. How to know when to switch between Narrative and Action Modes in scenes, how to award XP at the end of a session, how to set up and prep for a session, how to handle missing players, etc. Some quick terminology is the Modes. You got Action Mode which is your basic initiative turn based stuff. Narrative Mode is what they call the non turn-tracked stuff, etc. Basic restatements of standard RPG mechanics. The weird part comes in Development Mode. Which… I’d almost say is a good idea, in fact it’s a really cool idea! It’s just ruined by clunky execution and a baffling decision to tie it into both The App (Yes, Invisible Sun has an app. It is literally just a chat program and cannot be used for any purposes DURING a session) and the loving Sooth Deck. The App is dumb, but also totally extraneous EXCEPT it isn’t because of the Sooth Deck. We’ll get the THAT but resolution of anything in Development Mode is supposed to be done by drawing a Sooth Card which is awful and we’ll see why much later when I cover that entire nightmare mechanic in its entirety. Development Mode is basically play between sessions. It’s supposed to let players have solo scenes, do character development, and take care of actions that are not necessarily interesting or important enough to do during live-session-play. It’s a Play-By-Post thing integrated into the rules. This chapter is mostly advice about how to handle it, and it’s actually good! Monte Cook is garbage at game design and setting but he legit does have good GM advice and isn’t a terrible grognard. It’s pretty consistently a thing he’s gotten very good at, just giving practical useful GM and Player advice. Good Job Monte, it’s nothing revolutionary but Competent and Inoffensive is a hell of a high bar to pass in this hobby.  Actions And here we go. This is the meat of actually rolling. I won't cover everything as I explained a lot back in the last book but some observations:
OK dumping the random thoughts to dig into something meatier: Using Bene For Effect Ok so, in addition to spending Bene to bump up your Venture (Your positive modifier to your die roll) you can also spend it instead to modify the results of a successful action. Amazingly, this invokes one of our favorite things! Mandatory “Optional” Abilities! See, there are 4 levels of Effect you can get by spending Bene, but by default you only get level 1 access. Want to be able to spend more to get higher effects? Gotta have the Expansive Endeavor secret (Feat). What are these effects? Nothing interesting at all, but stupidly designed because certain effects are locked into higher levels for no logical reason. Level 1: Do +2 Damage, get +1 Venture to social interactions with a character of your choice who knows about your action, +2 to… the same action in the next round, and… nothing. Literally: ‘’Just simply excel: Although there’s no mechanical effect, you succeed at the action with flourish, speed, grace, and aplomb.’’ So we got two semi useful universal things, one that is… just weird, and one that is literally Spend this mechanical resource for no benefit at all. You may say “but narrative advantages are valid rewards for…” no they aren’t EVERYTHING in this game has hard math behind it, it’s literally useless. Level 2: Another character nearby gets a +1 to their next action, you narratively change the environment in some way, you move farther when doing an action that moves you, you can do a precision called strike to an enemies specific bodypart, you do +4 damage, you knock a character to the ground. So, this tier requires a secret (feat) to access and… only 2 things have mechanical effects. The inspire one character to give them a +1 and the inflict more damage ones are it. None of the others have any actual mechanical effect, it’s all narrative. How far do you move more? Up to the GM to make up, no guidelines or rules. What does a precision strike do? Who knows, ask the GM they have to make it up. Change the environment? Depends. No mechanics. Level 3: Move AND act. That’s literally a thing you have to spend 3 bene and get a secret (feat) to do, is MOVE and ALSO DO ANOTHER THING. The typical Move and Standard actions require you to spend 3 bene. AS WRITTEN YOU CANNOT BOTH MOVE AND DO ANYTHING ELSE. That’s amazing. The actual action rules just say “anything you can justify as a “single action” or doing one specific thing” but that means that Monte Cook never assumed your magical dimension hopping wizards could both walk AND do magic at the same time. Oh the other stuff is a group version of the Inspire one, give enemies a -1, do +6 damage, group impress, and make a single character lose their next action. EDIT: I have reread and realized I was incorrect: you can move and perform an action, or move AS an action to move longer distances. The Move and Act is poorly named and merely lets you make ANOTHER move after your action. Also the layout of this book is hot garbage and I literally missed the rules for movement with my eyes. Level 4: Gain information, either a weakness of an enemy or a secret of another person you’re talking to, something like that. Vague and not a mechanic. -2 ongoing penalty to an enemy via an attack, scare one character into… doing something the GM decides but it’s should be run away or surrender or something but no hard rules sorry! Or +8 damage. OK the rest of the chapter is pretty much nothing interesting. NPC’s don’t roll, just provide difficulty for PCs, Damage is fixed based on weapon/spell, defenses are rolled by PCs, etc. A mostly dry and not that interesting chapter with a few MAJOR DOOZIES of stupid design. Next Time: Advanced Rules Modules, Oh God More poo poo to Buy With XP Not In The Character Book Why Wapole Languray fucked around with this message at 04:51 on Oct 11, 2019 |
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Oct 11, 2019 04:01
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I’m back baby! Again! This time lean, mean and cutting out garbage nobody cares about like “resolution” and sticking to the good poo poo like insane subsystems and stupid setting lore! Speaking of stupid setting lore:  You jaadi? Appurtenances Appurtenance is a smug dickheads way of saying “Accessories”. Not in universe, like Appurtenance just means Accessory. There is no reason to use it. So anyway these are character things that aren’t in the character book that you can unlock by spending Crux, which remember, is one of the XP types. You can only have one. These are essentially incredibly dull prestige classes. The benefits aren’t bad, but they are boring as hell. I’m not going over all of them, just the interesting or spectacularly offensive ones. Allied with Angels You’ve got a guardian angel. Angel not actually included. It gives you two powers, Foresight and Protection. Protection is just a Get Out Of Death Free Card that you get once in the game. Foresight is supposed to be precognition but it’s the most boring form where you don’t get any actual foresight but just get bonus Bene in your non Sorcery pools. It’s just a buff fluffed as foresight but not actually providing any foresight at all. This one gets a gold star for being typical: It’s as disappointing as you can imagine and nowhere near as cool as being buddies with the Heavenly Host should be. In League With Demons Oh god. OK so this is explicitly worse than the Angels one in every way. In fact it’s hilariously terrible. So you made a pact with Satan. This gives you one benefit: when you get down to 1 Wound from death, two level 7 demon warriors appear to protect your life. This also causes 2 Anguish (Mental Wounds), and gives you 1 scourge (negative modifier) to all your pools (stats). That Scourge lasts until you sacrifice another living thing to send their soul to Hell to pay your debt. The debt stacks up to 3 times: get the benefit stacked 3 times and Satan eats your soul on the next sunrise. Now, I will give it credit. It’s interesting and flavorful! Like, this is a cool concept for a power that causes adventures! It’s also horribly designed. First obvious issue: You can get Wounds from things that demon bodyguards can’t help with. Combat or enemy attack? Sure. Poison? Disease? Wasting curses? Completely useless, but it still triggers and gives you the stat penalties even if it literally does nothing helpful. You get a soul debt because you got real bad Wizard Pneumonia? Too bad gently caress you. The getting Anguish can kill you. You can get saved by demonic bodyguards, but kick the bucket the same instant through a heart attack, or just getting too sad to keep living, or something. Once again: It can literally kill you while trying to save your life which it might not do anyway Also it just… happens whenever you hit 1 Wound from death. Fights over? Too bad, it triggers, gently caress you. While flavorful for a demonic pact… it’s not fun as a thing you have to spend XP to get and locks you out of every other Appurtenance  Not hating on this one: I legit think it’s cool and good. Like, this is a good thing. It's flavorful, useful, and a cool unique gimmick to be the Gun Wizard in the party. I Like This. Good on you Monte. There are 12 of these. Of the ones that are interesting or at least like… fun? 3. With a Gun is one, the others are With a Beast which gives you a Familiar/Animal companion, and With Blood, which just lets you convert lost HP 1 to 1 to Sorcery points you can spend on your next action. 3 of 12 aren’t terrible or dull. Misc. Other Stuff There’s lots of terrible rule things that are boring and not worth going in depth on but I’ll highlight them in case people wanna know more. You can change your order or Forte! Changing Forte is really good. You get to keep all the stuff you’ve already gotten and get to start a new one, so there’s no penalty to min-maxing by skipping through Forte’s only getting the abilities you care about. Unless the GM stops you of course, but as written this is fine. Changing Orders will make your GM want to kill you. You keep your old stuff, but your new things are always at -1 until you progress in your new order up to where they were in the old. I can’t even begin to contemplate how horrifically complicated and insane it would be to have access to multiple orders worth of powers. I cannot see any GM who realizes how terrible this is allowing it to ever happen. Patrons are a thing: Pact with magical being of higher order, you do a thing for them and get benefits. It’s lovely because they only detail a handful of sample patrons and have no guidelines for making them up. Modalities are NPC copies of your PC that live entirely separate lives and you don’t know about each other. It’s a natural consequence of doing Magic poo poo. Most games would just make this a concept that would be fodder for adventures, meeting your NPC clone while adventuring and such, but Invisible Sun has entire detailed advice about how to make and stat and level them up because they’re clones of a PC, they have a full PC character sheet. Shadow Characters suck and only idiots play them. They have no magic at all. They only have skills. Static bonuses. There is literally no reason to play them and I don’t know why they had to include rules for it. Next Time: Gamemastering Wapole Languray fucked around with this message at 21:17 on Dec 1, 2019 |
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Dec 1, 2019 21:14
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Hey, I'm feelin kinda bad about abandoning Invisible Sun. I do wanna finish it, but it's also as of now over 2000 pages of text with the supplements they keep cranking out, and honestly it's kind of boring textwise as the entire thing is basically wastedpotential.pdf But y'know what we haven't had recently? A good horrorshow F&F. A real honest to god gently caress you terrible nightmare product. Something that physically hurts to look at. So prepare yourselves because motherfucker unlimited is coming down the tracks. 
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Apr 22, 2020 02:14
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 WHAT THE gently caress IS THIS This is a motherfucking brony-made My Little Pony but in Alt History Urban Fantasy 1950's. Do you want disturbing art of cartoon horses? Do you enjoy Libertarianism? Do you wanna know about all the gun-companies that make pony-compatible firearms and what innovations they brought to the pony arms industry? Do you wanna see 21 motherfucking fan submitted My Little McCarthyist Pony OC's? Welcome to loving Roan. Strap in, our intro is an in-universe newspaper that prints alternately in color and black and white.  A Species Divided; A Nation United posted:A Species Divided; A Nation United This newspaper just says a bunch of poo poo we learn elsewhere, but I'll cover the content for your edification: We learn that Roan, which is Pony America, is 100 Years Old. There was something called the Aether War (AKA Not-WWII) and everything is a horse pun.  President Pony Other nations include Canida (Dog Canada/Britain its sorta both), Falconigrad (Gryphon USSR), and some country of Dragons that goes unnamed. The various kinds of magical pony variants we will learn of later were made by Magical Nukes and therefore are literal mutants. Pony George Washington was named, not fooling, "Gauge Jet Chase".  Pony Heroin is literally called SALTZ and is in the form of sugar cubes. It is illegally snuck into your food and drinks by dastardly communist infiltrators to addict the population of Ponymerica. Thankfully the feds will protect us!  Have a page of animal puns and disturbing world building:  There is going to be so much art, because this book for some reason has like 20 artists credited. I hope you enjoy disturbing pony art, because we got a lot coming!
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Apr 22, 2020 02:34
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ROAN posted:Sometimes it is the world of adventure, driven by our imagination and built by our strangest circumstances that bring us to a What the hell made you want to combine a cartoon about cartoon ponies learning lessons about friendship in a pastel fantasy world, with media about real rear end humans shooting Nazi's??? Also this is a lie, as I previously stated, the world is more 1950's than 40's, and the bad guys are the Not-USSR, so gently caress if I know where this "inspiration" disappeared to. Anyway, you want to see a sexy flapper horse?  The Ponies of Roan ROAN posted:The streets are thick with many colorful species, celebrating Roan’s 100th Independence Day, the mass majority of which are ponies. Various species and flavors of speech all brought together for this momentous occasion. This is the character creation chapter, and therefore is mostly boring as hell to go over but we get to learn exactly how many types of stupid mutant horse we can be, and there's a ton more weird pony art. Race Yes, it is uncomfortable that Type Of Pony is called Race. Also uncomfortable is that this is also literally a racist system where these different pony types are divided into weird caste-systems and personality is genetic. Roadies These are what we'd call "Normal". They're just standard My Little Ponies with no magically induced mutations. Their things are they're good at physical stuff, and take less damage than other types of cartoon horse. Roadies are really generic. They're tough and no-nonsense but warm and friendly. They come in earth-tones and red coloration. They're farmers and hicks. Roadies sounds like an ethnic slur when paired with the concept of "race". Pegasi They got bird wings, can fly, are dexterous, but are fragile. They're lazy, aloof, carefree and skittish. They're adrenaline junkies too. They have pastel and "sky" colored pelts. They literally live in magical cloud cities they make with magical cloud manipulation. Unicorns Wizard horses. They're good at magic, can telekinetically lift things, and are bougie assholes. They're smart and absent minded and curious. Their description has the phrase "the geek is strong with them" in it. They come in "sky colors" like blue and purple and white and black. Nocturnes Goth Vampire Ponies. Not joking: They have bat wings, fangs, and are nocturnal. They have good senses and can see in the dark, and also fly. And are super strong. They're vampire ponies. They come in cool colors like black and purple and white. They are fructivores because Bats. Zebras They're fuckin' Zebras. They're good at Social Stuff. They're businessmen and public speakers and storytellers and such. Their homeland is called the Zebrican Dominion, and I don't know what real world nation they're an expy of because I'd assume something in Africa but their descriptions aren't very racist as they're mostly Good Capitalist Traders who are Very Hard Working and Charismatic. Kelpies Fish Horses. They're smart and can swim in the water real good. They're emotionally unstable and are inventors and scholars and look they're like all mad scientists and poo poo. They've got wild and unsettling mood swings but that's just how they are and they're so smart and inventive and build cool poo poo like GUNS.  So I'm not going over the system at all. Why? Because who cares. It uses Ubiquity, a generic RPG system found in a few other games, most famously Hollow Earth Adventures. Ubiquity is fine, it's kind of boring but it works ok. Standard Stat+Skill dice pool system, success counting resolution, you can look it up in a better game if you care. I don't. I'm here for the setting not the dull generic RPG system they stapled it to.   God seeing cartoon horses hold guns will never not be hilarious. Now, I should note I am skipping all of the combat and mechanics and magic chapters. That's because they're boring, and also have the best art in the game! Yes, really. The artists who did most of the work in these chapters were competent if dull and drew ponies doing various activities in a fine style that is not at all worth mocking. I'm not here to make fun of people who drew normal commissioned pony art for this game. I'm here to mock people who drew hilarious or awful pony art for this game. Anyway next time we cover Equipment so we can learn how a horse shoot a gun.
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Apr 23, 2020 04:12
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Who wants to learn about Horse Guns??? Equipment So melee weapons are uninteresting: it's just stolen from every fantasy RPG you've ever seen. Firearms are hilarious though because, as you'd imagine for a libertarian brony, they really like guns. Firstly, Guns come in two models: Canidian and Roan built. Canidian guns use gunpowder as you'd expect, but Roan built guns use *magical force crystals*. Deckers Guns that attach to a pony's hooves and are paired. They are literally Punch Guns that shoot when you punch people with them. So cartoon horses strap pistols to their hooves and then gun-punch you to death. Other weapons are your typical Pistols, Revolvers, SMG's, Rifles, and Shotguns. It's just notable that there are also weird melee punchguns built for horses to combat-box you to death. Now while he rules are very minimalistic and generic Gun Rules they add tons of description of how these guns work and who makes them. Literally multiple arms-manufacturers are highlighted with their contributions to Pony Gun Technology. Let's go over it! Pony Designed Firearms As you'd imagine, it makes no sense for horses to use guns, because they don't got any fingers. Unicorns I guess can use them, as they have telekinesis but no one else can. That is if you assume coherent gun design that isn't loving Stupid! So types of Pony Guns: Pistols, as shown here: Are strapped to one hoof. The other hoof pulls the trigger. The art doesn't show the Pony's standing on two legs with one hoof on their gun, but that's how it be.   This art shows how pony guns actually work: Goofy gently caress off huge triggers sized for goddamn horse hooves. Like that's literally it: they have really big triggers for pulling with hooves. Now, you may be wondering, how do you do anything else with a gun like reload, switch the safety, clean it, etc. with horse hooves? So, who wants to learn about Cartoon Animal World's military industrial complex!?  Canidian Firearms While Pony's have horse hooves, Dogs have actual hands with fingers, and therefore make Normal Human Guns. Pony's can still use them though! How?  ROBOT HANDS!!!!  ROBOT HANDS FOR STRANGLING NAKED DOGS!!!!  HANDS LIKE PEOPLE HAVE! BUT FOR HOOOOORSES!!!!
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Apr 25, 2020 19:58
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Night10194 posted:If you want horses with guns just play Ironclaw goddamnit. Since the rest of equipment is just copy-paste stuff from every other WWII Pulp style game you can imagine, the next update will be 21 sample characters/NPCs/My Little McCarthyist Pony OC's that each have full page art and stats and fan-written bios that are completely unedited in any way. So... you'll see what sorta characters the game assumes you're making.
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Apr 25, 2020 23:59
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 Part 1: Mirrors, Exposition, The Porn Gang Beneath is an OSR dungeon module/setting by Justin Sirois. It is one of the worst most offensive and disgusting modules I've ever read and I've seen a lot of garbage. It is crude, tedious, offensive, feels like a failed cryptofash manifesto, and seems to be made by people who don't realize how badly they've hosed up everything in this book.  This is all bullshit. This module is full of stuff that James loving Raggi hasn't even touched on for edgy grossness. I am going to violently poo poo on this whole thing. I'm going to reveal information as the Players would encounter it, simulating playing through this with a GM who wants to "Surprise" you with the "twists".   Here have some maps. They don't actually matter, but it could be handy to check back if you care at all about geography. This game is "systemless", but still OSR which means it's basically tuned to B/X D&D but with enough cut out or made vague that you can sorta run it in whatever variant of that chassis you want.  Please don't do this by the way, this campaign book is 600 loving pages long do not make these dungeons (yes plural) even longer.  This is the first part of the actual adventure that isn't GM Only Secret Text That Spoils poo poo. What... what are you supposed to do with this? I guess just tell the players that they apparently ignored a lynch mob and didn't think to ask about the missing mirrors that probably shouldn't even exist in dark-ages Europe but whatever! Seriously how do you start the campaign slash adventure like this? Anyway, the adventure doesn't work unless you "go to the bonfire", which the players apparently heard of somehow via gm into description? IDK why you wouldn't START with this bit, as your typical "You are traveling when you notice X in the distance" thing. Anyway, there's a big rear end bonfire in the woods surrounded by a crowd. Two guys are throwing mirrors into the fire, because somehow people forgot that... you can just break mirrors. They don't... really burn? Do you have to burn a mirror? What kind of mirrors are these anyway, glass? Wouldn't you just smash it? Anyway people are smashing mirrors and burning them in the bonfire. If you talk to two burly dudes smashing them they'll tell you:  That's right baby, this is a sexy fuckventure! There'll be a lot of NSFW naughty bits ahead, hope you don't mind! I'll try and spoiler any... like descriptive stuff (there's several literal sex scenes) but it's unavoidable really. Anyway, Gale the Blacksmith is getting drunk nearby. Talk to him and he'll tell you his GF Laura has gone missing, tells you the local Fighter Hannah is planning a raid into a dungeon to get her missing brother back (This is an aside that seems pointless at this point) and he directs you to the Baron who also is at the Bonfire. Also there's a d6 table of random poo poo the Blacksmith will give you, which is two useless things (a drink of whiskey or a missing poster), two that give you Stained Salt Crystals which are Macguffins for this adventure, and two that give you onyx-alloy weapons which are... also Macguffins for this adventure and have a weird feature: when you kill someone with it the weapon "records" a short 15 second "video" of their death from their POV into the metal. You can then watch the "video" in the blade's reflection. This ties into a stupid secret plot mystery bullshit arc thing. Anyway, you go over to the Baron. The first thing he asks you is if you're going to fight in the battle for Seven Walls. I don't know what that is because the book hasn't said yet. If you say yes, he mocks you for being unequipped idiots, if you say no he mentions that Seven Walls and Leaf hate each other. The Baron reveals that over two dozen people have gone missing in the last month, and that Hannah the local Fighter is going to go into the "UnDungeon (Don't Ask Why It's Called That)" to try and retrieve them. The adventure just assumes you'll... go with her? There's no like "Baron asks for help" dialog it's just...  This book puts a LOT of weight on the GM to actually piece together these encounters and plot dumps into a coherent narrative.  So I guess that's the first plot hook: Find this lady, get a tavern. He also gives you some randomized amount of gold as a down payment and directs you to Hannah's location. Also, note the tasteful disgust towards magically induced... inter-village fraternization. Anyway, you meet Hannah a lady-fighter who lost her brother. She's explored a room or two of the UnDungeon, but needs backup to go deeper. She's also looking for Stained Salt equipment, which is magical and can pass into the Invert. (We'll get to it. It's stupid.)  Why are the players asking this lady about her liquor preferences? Anyway, after talking to her at some point the GM will have you attacked by the Creeper Bandits. Now when I say Creeper Bandits, I mean that in the colloquial sense because they're a gang of perverts led by a snuff pornographer.  Yes, he rape-murders people while his gang quick-sketches snuff porn drawings for him. You fight the bandits, and the adventure assumes you kill them all? On Kilroy's body you find his human-skin bound sketchbook, complete with a table:   Also you can get some HiccupGlass, which is a drug? It looks like red shards of glass, and if you cut yourself with it "scratching glass", it gives you 2 attack points for 3 turns but you recover -5HP next rest. What the gently caress an attack point is I don't know, do they mean damage? +2 to hit? Attack Points aren't a thing in any OSR game system I know so gently caress if I know what that means. Anyway, after the bandit fight you camp out with Hannah for the night before going to the UnDungeon.  She will give you no useful new information, hooray! The next morning she will take you to the UnDungeon's entrance, a small stone mound with a descending staircase underground. Well that's it for the first update! Next time: The UnDungeon itself! poo poo gets worse baby!
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Oct 10, 2020 03:39
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400 ish of adventure and 200 of a monster manual because every entry has a full page illustration.
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Oct 10, 2020 15:46
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Part 2: Thing Happen for Reasons Time to go into the first dungeon of the module. Hooray. First we get a Fun New Mechanic: Stress. Stress triggers whenever The Church Bell is Heard (It sounds when you kill an "inverted townsperson"), or whenever any PC reveals they are disturbed. This means that the GM has module defined punishment for players who get freaked out by what they see. Players are punished for negative reactions to the content of the dungeon and should "restrain themselves". Stress is poo poo by the way:  Why does it penalize blunt weapons specifically? Who knows. Stress goes down when you heal, when you get rest, when you get a crit in an attack (note, crits are not a thing in a lot of OSR systems so... whoops.) or... oh gently caress you.  Anyway, we now get to the UnDungeon proper. Here's the overall map:  Rooms are keyed, so we'll be going through in rough order. Each one has a zoomed in more detailed map I probably won't bother with posting. Room 1 So the entrance is down a staircase, and you reach a hallway T junction where both directions are closed by mirrorDoors (sic). We learn how mirrorDoors work here, they're loving awful. So, they are completely indestructable. No smashing them. If you stand between two mirrorDoors facing each other (like in this hallway) for more than 5 minutes shadow demons fly out and drag you into the mirrorDoor. If you get dragged in you loving die. See your BODY can go through the mirrorDoor glass, but nothing else you're wearing will. These items will get torn through your flesh cutting you to pieces as your clothes rip through your torso. You can enter the mirrors buck naked, but this is a death sentence. When you go in you enter the Invert, which is a series of randomized dungeon rooms that are basically all instakill encounters if you aren't loaded for bear. Hannah does show you how to open them like regular doors instead of twisted murder porn mirror portals! She tells the PC's to close their eyes and goes to the western mirrorDoor. If you peek (you sick pervert) you see Hannah taking her top off and performing a strip tease for the mirrorDoor, after she fondles her tits for it for a few seconds the mirrorDoor vanishes leaving the western passage open. Hannah won't mention how she opened the door if you don't look, just telling you it was something " indecent" she learned from her brother. Through the door is the Reception Room, and Inverted Micheal who's a Bookseller who went missing. He's "inverted" which means Something. He's lounging on a chair with his foot partway in a mirror leaned against the wall. You can try to sneak up to hear him muttering "Yes, it's hidden. I hid it. In the confession booth and in the cup. Salty salty salty." Eventually he detects then and invites them into the reception room. He'll ask to see any books the PC's brought, but is disgusted by the bandit's sketchbooks. Once he notices you, the mirrorDoor comes back, locking you inside. Then... Well ok so after he talks to you he doesn't do anything but the mirror he's got his foot in starts vomiting infinite diseased frogs. Like it just starts shooting 1d4 per PC frog monsters out that *drain 50 XP per turn* if they bite you. Until you destroy the mirror or cover it in some way 1d6 frogs come out every 5 minutes. Once you disable the mirror Inverted Michael goes nuts and starts yelling about the Invert, which, if there are any remaining frogs, makes them attack him. The frogs jump on him and start trying to crawl down his throat to choke him. If you save him he just starts repeating "You Must Confess. Go West" infinitely and trying to attack you. Now, he's a missing person so your PC's presumably must wanna save him right? Too bad it's impossible. He cannot be subdued and will attack without ceasing until he is killed. When you kill him, which remember you cannot avoid, bell rings and you roll to see if you gain Stress. There's basically nothing inside here except some weak healing potions and a bottle of scotch. That's it. Anyway, you can now go back through the mirrorDoor, because Hannah now explains it (why was she coy before?) where you have to seduce the people inside the glass by doing something sexy . It has to be a new thing each door though, so Hannah can't do it again because they're bored by her.  Yeah. Anyway, going through the hallway you reach the Dressing Room. When you enter you see a young couple on a seat, where... yeah the guy is eating the girl out. When you enter they gasp and run out of the room, and the furniture magically moves to barricade the door and seal everyone inside the Dressing Room. A mirror on the wall then starts talking, a "voice" talking to Hannah. Hannah asks what happened to her brother, and the Mirror Voice says that "He entered on his own cognition. He will enter whenever he desires", whatever that means. Then:  Yeah. Anyway now you fight an incense golem which is a monster way too cool to be in this dungeon???  I mean it's a giant plate armor dude animated by magical incense smoke that's pouring from its helmet which is a giant censer. That's a loving cool monster for an evil church themed dungeon! So you fight it and get no loot but n ow you can y'know... move the pews blocking the door forward. So you go through and find the couple that ran away: They tried to get through a mirrorDoor but forgot to get naked so you just find their dismembered corpses. Just loving severed feet in shoes and bloody bracelets and shredding clothing and pools of blood. Hannah asks to go West, but you could go East, splitting to room 2 or 3. Next Time: Room 2
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Oct 10, 2020 21:03
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Part 3: The Inverted Church of Sex Mirrors Will Continue Until Morale Improves Today we're going into Map 2! I'll try and speed things up now that we're going to start getting Boring Dungeon poo poo. The next room you come to is a Banquet Hall. There's a big Mirror dining table, and food which is diseased and if you eat it you violently vomit and lose 1hp per 10 minutes until cured from poison. In the Banquet Hall is Inverted Diana and a Copper Chalice. The Chalice is just a key for a puzzle later in the dungeon so whatever.  Next is Map 3. Down a hallway you find a Confession Room, there's some desecrated statues of "saints" and several confession booths. Each booth has a table. Booth 1 has, I'm not kidding, a table of traps that lead to romantic tension.  Booth 2 has Regular Traps that don't trigger the GMPC Hot Girl to dote on you. Booth 3 has a stupid loving puzzle. You gotta go in, because the floor is a pressure plate. While the plate is depressed a secret combination lock slides out of the wall. If nobody is in the booth it's hidden. If your PC's just open the door but don't go inside you as written cannot find this puzzle. At the lock you have to...  Yeah. And yes, Altered Boys are Demonic Altar Boys. Thankfully they are not sexualized and just have black robes and shards of stained glass in their empty eye sockets. Solve the lock, open a hidden door. Through the door is Map 4, with more confession booths and some killer frogs. Booth 1 is a mirror that triggers stress because it shows you porn, booth 2 requires the Copper Chalice from earlier to go in a slot like a Resident Evil puzzle to open a secret door that leads to a Stained Salt Sword, and booth 3 is an arrow trap. So, why do we need the Chalice? It doesn't lead to anything, it just gives you a Stained Salt Sword, which while a nice magical weapon (2d6, +1d4 per 3 rolled, plus if you stab it through a mirror it can come out any other mirror you see to stab someone long distance) but it isn't... essential. You'll get more Stained Salt gear. Hannah will not carry the Stained Salt Sword if you get it. OK next is Map 5! This is the last one for this update because it will cause a lot of debate. So inside Map 5 you see Inverted Master Seaford, who is a man crying in front of a mirror. Hannah says "We need to save him" and says she'll grab him as soon as a PC smashes the mirror. If you do this, which is easy, he reverts to his old self and leaves the dungeon automatically on the path the PC's have cleared, they do not need to escort him. He gives the PC's a Stained Salt Knife, Hannah will not take it. Going forward you enter a room with a mirrorDoor, the ground is covered in broken glass, and there's sconces made of human hands with black candles in their palms. Hannah will walk ahead automatically triggering a trap: A box falls on her, with mirrors on all four sides. You cannot lift, break, tip over, disable, or in any way mess with the trap. This is a cutscene. Hannah will panic, but realize the only thing she can do: Strip naked before she's taken into the Invert. You can hear her crying while she strips naked, but you can't listen for too long because out of the hole the box trap fell from GIANT LEECHES ATTACK!!! For some reason the number is keyed to the highest INT among the PC's? I don't know why, they don't do anything special they just... are big leeches. Oh they can succ you tho and if you can't cut them off before your next turn your limb falls the gently caress off. As written, if you go after a leech, it can bite you, you take 1d4 damage, your turn comes, and you automatically lose a random limb to blood-loss. Anyway, Hannah screams as she's pulled into the Invert. The trap raises and you see all her gear and a severed finger wearing a ring: She forgot to take it off so it chopped her finger off when she went through the mirrors. In the loot is nothing notable except for her ring (it's sentimental) the key to Hannah's house, and some cure poison potions. Deeper in this room you meet Meredith the UnNephilim.   That's right it's an unavoidable boss fight where one PC will be forced to at least one turn be mind controlled! Anyway, she's half human half demon and likes looking at "sexual atrocities". She can kiss you to randomly paralyze a body part and make you move toward her, draining HP for each increment you move.  If you notice this "adventure" has a lot of cut scenes and "But Thou Must" moments, that's not changing any time soon. So once you get Cara back you also get a Stained Salt Robe, which works like Mithril Chain (whatever that is, not a standard OSR armor type.) but the book flat out says "PC's should give this to Hannah". So yeah anyway in the boss room is a big rear end full-wall mirror where Hannah is on the other side naked. You can't talk to her, but you can give her Stained Salt stuff through the mirror. You can find a Stained Salt Buckler too behind a mirrorDoor that leads to a treasure chest. That's it. For those people who thought that "Oh Hannah is the Real PC" sorry she's literally gone until the Epilogue. No I'm not kidding, oh she'll make an "appearance" here and there but she's literally trapped in the Invert unrescueable until the end of the entire module. Hope you liked her! Next Time: I'll actually show you the tables that tell you what you see in the mirrors when you look at them! Oh and also Map 6 and on.
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Oct 12, 2020 01:51
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Addendum: I will not be showing the Mirror Tables because they aren't in the loving book. See the book repeatedly tells you to check the Mirror Table to see what players see... in the mirrors. But... they also say it's on Page 70-71. That's the middle of the dungeon we're IN, and just is more room descriptions. Searching for the text "mirror table" doesn't work because it gives me just references to the tables. They loving forgot the mirror tables in the goddamn book. They don't exist in the text. They Forgot Them.
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Oct 12, 2020 01:59
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Part 4: More Bad Dungeon We enter map 6 and find a giant cloud of living human eyelashes. They're harmless but flammable. Apparently your GM can now throw these at you randomly whenever? Anyway...  In the room is Inverted Dane, a dude armed to the teeth with Stained Salt gear. He's also batshit insane and brain damaged and all hosed up because of weird mirror porn magic poo poo. He's looking for his wife who's gone missing. He won't talk to you if you say you're from anywhere but Leaf, and he won't talk to non-humans at all. You can ask some stuff about the dungeon but all he'll say is poo poo you already know mostly. He'll mention that there's someone who can make Stained Salt stuff deeper in the dungeon. (This is technically incorrect because of how this stupid module splits the three dungeons it contains.) You can try to fight him if you don't he'll leave. The next room has more eyelashes, if you use any fire in this room everyone takes 7 damage as they all combust. Also there's a pile of piss-soaked severed hands. You have to "roll to see if PCs vomit" what ever that means. If nobody vomits nothing happens, if anybody Vomits you gotta fight a one-armed giant made of severed hands wielding a giant axe. It's just a big monster with an axe. If you lead it to the room with the severed feet, they will animate and trip it repeatedly. You have to kill it. Anyway, the next room is...  https://imgur.com/sYHAEZv Linked for actual description of sex acts. Once again: There is no mirror table on page 70. Good Job. Once you enter this room a countdown starts where the mirror starts cracking. In 1d100 Seconds the ceiling shatters in a flood of blood and glass which does damage and stress to everyone in the room and shoves you out of it through the nearest exit. Nothing else is in here. Next room! Whole place is made of Mirrors, if you got shoved here from the LAST room, you keep tripping and falling down in the blood while in the room. If you're inside fro more than 5 minutes you get pulled into the Invert. Here we learn something insanely stupid to bury in a room description this deep: Mirrors don't work if you close your eyes. You can just... close your eyes and you won't get transported to the Invert and can be inside the room however long you want. Oh also it constantly spawns giant leeches every 2 minutes that you're inside. In the middle of the mirror & leech room is a chest that you can see even with eyes closed, it has a Combination Lock just like the "puzzle" last time in the confession booth. You have 5 minutes to solve it though because while you're looking at the lock the timer counts down and if you take more than 5 minutes the chest is pulled into the invert. You can reset the timer by waiting outside the room for an hour. What's in this chest? A poo poo load of loot. An Onyx-alloy Battle Axe that ignores light armor, a Holy Reverter which is a magical bracelet that cures the wearer of The Invert, a Holy Vexer which is a ring that gives a one-time recharge of any level 1-3 spell, a Stained Salt Hood and Knife. This is a lot of very useful and good gear locked in the most bullshit puzzle imaginable. Remember, you have to: Within 5 minutes, while fighting infinite leeches, randomly roll d6's until they luck into rolling the 9 digits of the combination lock, and if you go over time everyone in the room dies and the chest is gone forever. Next is a Bathhouse! It's full of Inverted people jerking off in the bath. This room also kills you in 5 minutes because it has a mirror ceiling and water in the big bath counts as a mirror. You have to drain the bath to avoid this. Oh also every stall has a trap that goes off if you enter it, and the Inverted people will attack you onsight if you enter the stalls or open a shortcut mirrorDoor. There's 5 inverted villagers inside who will attack you. The only way to go through without a fight is to sneak on a winding path past every Inverted Villager rolling each time you go past them to sneak by. If you make it through the Shower Fight Room you hear singing...  There's one last thing he'll tell you, stuck on the next page because the fucker who wrote this didn't know how to not break paragraphs across pages.  Next time: Map 9 and on! Things don't get Better!
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Oct 12, 2020 21:55
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Beneath Addendum! I found the Mirror Tables! ON PAGE 596!  
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Oct 13, 2020 02:32
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Part 5: The End Of the Inverted Church We're finishing this poo poo in one big chunk, get ready! Map 9 Big room, pews, woodworking tools for some reason. Inverted Tom, a dwarf, is sleeping under a pew. Apparently his job is to... steal pews from other churches and bring them here. Weird. Also he sucks on a rosary all the time, it's gross. Anyway, when you meet him you have to fight him. If you haven't killed Meredith the UnNephilim he summons her and you have to fight them here. Map 10 It's a Congregation Chamber, ie the big room in a church where you go to have a sermon. It's gross as gently caress. The ceiling is held up by columns of fingernails glued together by a "dense white fluid" which is obviously jizz. There's black windows that let no light through, green torches, etc. Lots of people in black robes in the pews chanting ominously while "The Barren Priest" presides. He's basically just a typical Evil Priest type and literally isn't physically described he's so generic.  You can try to sneak by but if you're seen he attacks. One he reaches 1/2 HP then 2d6 of the congregation mutate into Frog Abominations:  No I don't get the frog and leech thing. Everything else is like... twisted church or Satan-y, but the frogs and leeches I don't get besides generic "evil creature" stuff. Anyway, if you fight and kill them you get some minor loot including a Spell Book. The module explicitly states this room is safe to sleep in, which is a good time to bring up another awful mechanic! Whenever you sleep in the UnDungeon you are supposed to check for Parasites of Sleep.  Yes, every time you sleep. This has come up several times, but this is the last "safe" room to rest in, so I figured I'd put it here. These all are awful and stupid and I don't know if the PC's are supposed to just know how to cure these things or even if they ARE infected. Is this supposed to be a GM SECRET to gently caress with the PCs? Map 11 The Lounge, nothing important really. When you go in you see Hannah in a mirror on the wall, you can give her stuff, and she'll give you some exposition. Mainly that something called the Inverted Cupid controls the UnDungeon and if you kill it she'll get free. Once you finish talking to her a dumb trap triggers via the floor and ceiling tiles flipping over to reveal mirrors and the door backwards locking closed to force you to rush forward. Map 12 Chamber of the Inverted Cupid. This room is detailed and stupid. You're trapped inside here when you enter. It's a huge black room, the walls are covered in statues of people of all races and classes, the floor has a big chalk pentacle with black candles around it, and the ceiling is covered in Stained Salt stalactites. Inside is an Incense Knight, the Inverted Cupid, and a bunch of Mirror Traps equal to the cupid's HP in number.   I'm posting multiple images so you too can know how annoying text broken over pages is. Anyway, after you talk to him the Incense Knight attacks.  He's just a big dude with a sword, and also secretly Hannah's Brother! When you get him to 10 HP he takes off his helmet to reveal it I guess except the PC's shouldn't know what Cameron looks like I think, so whatever. You have to kill him by the way, he fights to the death. Also if you stand near the mirror traps you'll get stabbed for 1d4 damage by someone in the Invert.  Anyway then you fight the Cupid.  He doesn't actually fight you because "pacifist". What he does do is move around the mirrorTraps to get you attacked, force moves PC's, and drains your XP. Note: The XP drain lasts until the Cupid is killed. You cannot kill him in this fight.   Map 13 It's just a dirt tunnel. There's a giant spider in here. You can fight it if you want. There's a door that opens up back to Map 3 and the beginning of the dungeon, because it's all a big loop. Anyway, when you leave you find a bunch of people in the Dressing Room, three villagers that Hannah saved from the Invert. Note, the PC's have not been able to save anybody from the Invert, because every villager they meet fought to the death upon encountering them. The only survivors are saved off screen. Anyway, all the mirrors and mirrorDoors in the UnDungeon are broken now and PC's can go back and loot whatever they missed if you want.  Anyway, you can loot Hannah's camp now. You get some random common items and also can adopt a stray collie that wandered into camp. You see a man with a mirror running towards the UnDungeon, you can stop him and save him or let him go and he vanishes forever, there is no immediate reason to do either but if you don't stop him you secretly get hosed later. You can visit Cara who runs the mine with only nonhuman labor and she's a slave driving piece of poo poo who will give you gold and offers to buy stained salt from them.  Next Time: Book 2, the Spire and the Sound, also we're on page 119 god help us all
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Oct 14, 2020 22:20
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Do people want me to continue this? Stop here? Or just give a super annotated cliff's note version of the rest?
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Oct 14, 2020 22:20
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  Imagine: four adventurers sitting around a fire under a night sky filled with rolling clouds and billions of stars. They feel the warmth of the campfire on their skin as they rest, sharpen their weapons, play songs, and pet their cat. Fireflies dance along the grasstop around them. But trouble brews in the distance. A pair of glowing eyes watches them from the grass on a nearby hill. A lightning storm pricks a distant mountop. A storm is coming for the adventurers.  Imagine: A wanderer in a soft coat with a generously furry lapel sits on a fallen tree stump in the forest. The ghostly image of a deer emerges from a skull on the forest floor. The wanderer and the deer spirit share a joke and laugh together. Quest is a fantasy RPG created by TC Sottek with the goal of being the most open accessible and easy to play RPG he could. Quest was inspired by super popular Actual Play podcasts like The Adventure Zone, in particular how Sottek noticed that the GMs often struggled with, ignored, rewrote, or misapplied the rules to keep play moving or to facilitate interesting stories which means that while they were all ostensibly playing D&D, they obviously weren't *playing D&D*. D&D, especially 5th Edition, is quite frankly not a game designed to facilitate the sort of fast improvisational drama and comedy that people expect from those crazy popular AP's, and often acts to foil or prevent it. So the design goals for Quest were pretty obvious: Easy to read, friendly to experience, and meant to provide the experiences people wanted that D&D or other heavy traditional fantasy games did not provide. I think it does a pretty good job of it! It's a beautifully made book with clear writing and a system that's just there enough to be interesting while not being complicated. I haven't seen much conversation about it around here, so I figured in preparation to running it I'll do a quick F&F of the game to learn it and get people interested! Next: First, we'll teach you how to play the game.
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Dec 29, 2020 02:25
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mellonbread posted:I remember this one from the TG Industry thread, or maybe it was the TG chat thread. They had a post from the designer about how he hadn't read or played many RPGs, and based the game's mechanics entirely on listening to Actual Plays. Wish I'd saved the Twitter thread. That's a misunderstanding. He's not basing it off of just listening to AP's, it's that the motivation was that he wanted a system that would provide the experience you got from an AP, without having improv professionals working around D&D's.... D&Dness. He is new to RPGs, but that's more important as to him coming in, looking at the hobby, and seeing some Problems with it.
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Dec 29, 2020 03:08
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Yeah that... that reads like bullshit? No receipts just "I talked to the guy in private and he's a moron who knows nothing about our hobby trust me he definitely said this." And what bits are supposed to be credited to someone else? The core mechanic which is from *Talislanta*, a relatively obscure RPG from over a decade ago? The abilities are vaguely move-like? Abstract range bands?
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Dec 29, 2020 06:03
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Chapter 1: You are an adventurer in a world of magic and danger  Imagine: Four adventurers stand in the foreground atop a rocky ledge, ready to explore. The magician waves their hands, illuminating a map for their ally. The ranger and fighter stand ready, surveying the land for dangers. In the distance, a vast mountain range blanketed by forest and snow caps surrounds a valley with gushing waterfalls. A floating city with gleaming towers sits above the valley with ten thousand birds flying about its crown. This is the first chapter and introduces the basic concepts and rules of the game. For some terminology, the GM is called "The Guide" in Quest, and players are collectively called "The Party".  Say what you do, then find out what happens Quest makes sure to very clearly explain how play works primarily via conversation, with the actual resolution system not showing up until page 13. This is an organizational thing that very clearly establishes that dice rolling is not the primary mode of play, conversation is. The basic flow is: Guide describes the scene and world so players can imagine what's happening, then Players say what their characters do, then the guide imagines what happens next and describes the scene again. This sounds really basic, but that's the point. Quest is an RPG for people who have never touched an RPG before. That is an explicit design goal stated by the authors, they wanted to make the best gateway RPG they could and that requires explaining... how you play RPGs.  Explore each scene for clues Players also have a responsibility to explore and think about the scenes the GM describes. Quest wants players to ask questions about what the GM says, poke at details, query for more information, think about stuff. There are no assumptions here. This basic play advice covers three pages, one entirely of text clearly breaking down how the roleplay conversation works! This isn't something I've seen in any RPG that isn't a high concept storygame like Apocalypse World, which while a wonderful game I think everyone agrees is not exactly beginner friendly in a lot of ways.  Scenes Quest's general scene rules focuses on the difference between narrating your character and acting as your character, and why you'd do one over the other or both! Narrating is great for describing movement, expressions, reactions and emotions, while acting is best for dialogue and conversation. The best thing to do is mix both, narrating and acting at the same time, switching to the best form but importantly you don't have to, explicitly in the rules. If you're new to the game Quest wants you to do what's comfy for you, and if that means you don't want to act that's fine and good and the Rules support you. Quest even goes so far as to very clearly break down into a discrete list of essentially "player moves": Ask questions to the Guide about the scene, Describe how your character is feeling or what they're thinking, Talk to a party member or NPC, make an attack, use your special abilities. Simple, easy, and a bulleted list so if a player has brain freeze but wants to do something they have a list. The final bit of this section is just reinforcing advice to try and always play your character: Think of them as a real person, think about how they feel and react to things, take time to talk to other characters and think about them as real people too, socialization and roleplay not only is fun in itself but makes other moments in the game better because of the connection you have with your characters and the world, and sometimes it's more fun to do what your character would even if it'd result in a setback. Action Scenes Most of the game takes place in that freeform conversation style established over the last three pages, but when it's time for an action scene things do change, breaking down into turns. Each player gets a turn where they can move and do one thing, that one thing being any single "thing" there's no actions or rules for it. Just whatever everyone agrees is "one thing" is what you can do. There's no initiative in Quest, instead the Guide simply chooses people to act in the order they feel makes most sense, with players all going before NPCs.   I generally am trying to not just post pages, but this one is just a complete package and also shows you what the book looks like in general. It's a very pretty book. Rolling the Die Quest has no modifiers. There are no stats or Advantage or pools. If there's a die-roll needed you roll a single d20.  That's it. When do you roll? Well there's two situations where rolling is always mandatory: When making an attack, or when a Special Ability tells you to roll. Otherwise? It's up to the Guide, and so the advice for that is in the Guide section of the rules! Why? Because players don't need to worry about it at this point. I will say though: You don't roll the die in quest for most things, leaving it mostly for rare or especially risky moments where it represents more the vagaries of fate and luck than skill. Most play should be in conversation, with the die rarely making an appearance. Deadly Scenes: Don't run out of hit points Quest handles damage simply: You have Hit Points. You start with 10, and they never change. Bad things happen when you hit 0 HP, and if you get hit while at 0 HP you may die. Unarmed attacks do 1 damage, regular weapons do 2 damage. You can Regroup, a short rest in a safe place, to get up to half your HP back, resetting to 5. If you do a Rest, a full night in a safe place you heal all your HP. They're an abstraction, not meat points or physical measurement of harm. You aren't considered actually hurt unless you reach 0 HP, where you're in serious danger. Whenever you take damage while at 0HP roll the die. If you roll below the damage you took, you die. So most weapons only kill you 10% of the time (A roll of 1 or 2) even at 0 HP! But attacks at 0HP aren't without consequences: They may knock you out, or give you a permanent or long lasting injury! And of course death isn't the end: Die and it just means you make a new character who joins the Party at the next reasonable moment, if you want and if the story is continuing of course. Abilities: You begin with 6 special abilities Instead of Classes, Quest has Roles. These give you access to Abilities, which are powerful gameplay altering things your Role can do. Abilities are powered by Adventure Points, a limited pool that refills during play. You start with 10, and always get 5 at the end of each session. You also gain them, essentially, whenever you would gain XP in another RPG. So whenever you beat a foe, finish a quest, avoid a trap, explore a new place, etc. you gain AP. There's more advice later, but the idea is that they're limited enough that you can't just go ham on Abilities without worry, but you will get a constant enough stream of AP that you'll never want to hoard them. You gain new abilities essentially at milestones: By default you get one new ability at the end of every session of Quest, so every time you play you get something new to do. Buying Things: Receive what you need, trade for things you want I really like how Quest handles inventory and items, mainly because it's a nice blend of not having to worry about it while not making it irrelevant. For basic goods the game just assumes you can get whatever you want without worry. You can always get a room in an inn, buy food and drink, and get any common items you could want. If you can find it in a general store or as a regular service, you can just have it or get it without worry, no tracking gold or inventory space for candles and no worries about affording a warm bed. The Guide can of course limit and restrict this: Food may be scarce in the middle of the desert, or a hostile town may not let you sleep in their walls, but this is based on the story logic and not on complex simulated supply chains or random tables. When you can't just get a thing, you have to trade for it: There's no money tracking in Quest, it's all just barter. You can trade an item you own, or a treasure, or a promise or service. It's meant to be a negotiation, a back and forth of give and take. You are explicitly told to roll the dice only if at an impasse: Luck doesn't come into it unless you get stuck in the negotiation and the player asks the Guide to let them roll. Inventory: 12 items or fewer For stuff that isn't basic goods, you have 12 slots to track them. You can carry however much you want in storage, or on a horse, etc. but on your person you can carry 12 things. Things are "complete", a first aid kit is one thing not many, and things like clothes you're wearing, pens, a letter, etc. don't count. Generally things that should count are weapons, treasures (items of high value good for trading), and magical items. What exactly counts as something you have to track is up to the Guide though. I feel this is a good balance of "inventory matters" vs. "Encumbrance is awful". The freedom to tune what counts as tracked inventory is nice, as it lets you tune how important prep vs. freeform things are. A game where a rope or lantern takes up a slot vs. one where they do not is a minor difference but definitely says something about both the game and the world. General Rules: Be good to each other This is one of my favorite sections in the game, and one of the reasons I love Quest, because these "rules" are things 90% of RPGs wouldn't call rules. They'd be "Player Advice" or similar, but no in Quest these are hard and fast rules built into the game right along with rolling dice and inventory tracking. What are the "General Rules"? Be Respectful Yep, that's the first one. Basically: Be nice. Your character can be mean, but you the person shouldn't be. If you're angry or rude or uninterested then it just makes the game unfun and things stop working. So respect boundaries and don't make people uncomfortable, make sure everyone agrees before you introduce extreme concepts like torture or sex into a game beforehand, don't interrupt people who are talking but also give everyone a chance to talk, don't try to play characters that aren't yours, etc. Like I said, most games would call this stuff "Player Advice" and not "Rules", and I think the fact that this stuff is framed as Rules is important. They even explain why you should pay attention and silence your phone and such: Because it's hurtful towards the Guide and other players to not pay attention when they're working so hard to help you have fun. Ask for Consent Basically, a player cannot do anything to another player in game unless hat other player consents to it Out of Character. If you want to attack, steal from, tie up, convince them of something, etc. in Character, the player has to agree to it Out of Character first, otherwise it's just a hard no. Every player is the sole person in charge of their Character. Don't be Evil, Unless... An expansion of the consent rule to the entire Party. Basically, if you are going to do something that may effect the entire party in a negative way, everyone should agree to it first. If yo u really wanna stab the king with your poison dagger and get the entire party outlawed for regicide, you can! But only if everyone else agrees to it. Muderhoboing is a perfectly fine thing, but only if everyone agrees that they'd like to murderhobo! The story belongs to the whole group, not one player. Be Mindful of Secrets Everyone should know everything Out of Character, but should act in ignorance in character. If you, the player, knows something your character shouldn't that's fine, but don't let that information affect how you roleplay until your character learns it. I should note that the language is try not to use the information. You'll probably mess up, and that's ok! Speak Clearly When speaking Out of Character and In Character, make sure the difference is clear to everyone to prevent confusion at the table. Flip a Coin If the party can't agree on a course of action, flip a coin and respect the outcome. Be a Fair Guide The Guide is very important to the game, and so they have the responsiblity to use their great power properly! Don't punish players cruelly, don't play favorites, don't rule inconsistently, don't single out people, etc. Try to be consistent and fair in your decisions and rulings. Help Everyone Have Fun The point of Quest is to have fun with your friends. If someone isn't having fun, talk about it. If you're not in the mood or not having fun, tell your fellow players about it and why, and listen to others if they're upset. If things get too tense, take a break and come back later. Next Time: Second, you'll create a unique character with a backstory, a dream, and a role to play. Wapole Languray fucked around with this message at 18:41 on Dec 31, 2020 |
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Dec 30, 2020 23:07
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Battle Mad Ronin posted:Re: Quest I'm really enjoying your breakdown of the rules, Wapole. Going through the book from start to finish fits the format because the order in which things are presented feels like something the writers put considerable thought into. It's a great guide for both players and Guide to get into the intended thought proces behind play before the rules are even mentioned. What? The rules for range are in the rules section right after the rules for action scenes where they belong. We haven't gotten to character creation at all yet, but they explain the mechanical bits of it with the rest of the rules so you know them when you're picking your starting abilities and items and such.
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Dec 31, 2020 18:16
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Chapter 2: Say your name  Imagine: Four adventurers climb magical steps in an ancient hall of heroes in the sky. Their torches warm the chipped stone faces of legendary ancestors between columns that stretch into the clouds below. The ranger peers down at the sky as magic steps appear in front of her as she walks. The fighter closes their eyes nervously and tugs on the robe of the wizard for safety So this is character creation, which will be a short chapter not because it is lacking in content but because it's...basically just creative writing. There's very few "mechanical" choices, and most of the effort in character creation is pure creativity. To help understand the process, let's first look at the character sheet:  Each blank in the Character Worksheet has a number that corresponds to a step in character creation, so let's get started going through things! The first few sections are pretty self explanatory: Name, pronouns, age, and height are ones you can fill out ahead of time or after everything else, it won't matter too much, and are pretty self explanatory, hence why they don't get a "step" for those blanks. 1: Choose a role This is the first, and probably biggest, choice you'll make during character creation. There are eight roles in Quest, which are the games equivalent of classes or playbooks. Role determines what abilities you have access to as a character, so it's the thing that has the biggest impact on mechanical ability. I'll give a brief description of each Role here, but the next chapter of Abilities is where we'll actually learn what makes them cool. The eight roles are: Fighter A weapon master, martial artist, hero, and leader. While closely mapped to D&D's Fighter, it also has heavy inspiration from the much missed Warlord. Invoker A battle-mage who channels a higher power to aid allies and oppose their enemies. A combination of the Paladin and Cleric. Ranger An outlander, survivalist, and knower of the wilds. They have all the things you'd expect of a Ranger, with a dash of Bard. Naturalist A nature-mage, who commands plants, the elements, and can shapeshift. Your Druid, with everything you'd expect from that. Doctor A role I've not seen in any other game! Doctors are both healers and killers, magic scientists who can control life, the body, decay, and death. Necromancer Medics. Spy A crafty master of stealth, subterfuge, and social manipulation. While best equated to the Rogue, the Spy's unique thing is that they have a bit of James Bond: Spy's get access to a wide suite of inherent magical gadgets and special equipment. Magician Masturs of both mental manipulation and illusory magic, they forgo raw power for subtlety and spectacle. There really isn't an analogue in D&D. Wizard Your classic big explosions and magic lasers spellcasters, no big surprises but some novel abilities to make them more than generic. 2: Enter the scene This step is the basic description. There's space for three key details, which the game suggests you use to define your Body, Face, and Vibe. I like this because, let's be honest, nobody can remember lengthy hyper-specific character descriptions that go over a paragraph, and if you don't have some punchy way of describing someone you end up just imagining the most Generic Form of whatever they are. Three short descriptive phrases can give you a good picture without being easily forgotten or unwieldy to remember or say. Some Examples from the Book:
3: Show your style What you wear and how you move. Two signature pieces of clothing, and how you walk or move to further fix a mental image.
4: Call Home Where you're from and what your people's deal is. This could be race, city, country, continent, village, ethnicity, etc. A short phrase to describe where you hail from, and why that place is notable or interesting!
5:Believe in something Your Belief is an ideal or philosophy that acts as a guiding light to help you know how your character should responds to situations. They're broad conceptual frameworks that define your general approach and values, not specific ideologies.
6: Be vulnerable Your flaw is something that gets in your way, complicates your life, or generally causes problems. Like your Belief, it's a broad personality trait applicable to many situations and stimuli and is meant to act as a guide to roleplay.
7: Dream big Your Dream is your goal and motivation as an adventurer. It can be a specific task you want to accomplish, or a broad motivation you work to fulfill, regardless it's why you're going out and doing heroic and dangerous things.
8: Gear up Your starting gear can be any 3 common weapons you like, with ammo for a ranged weapon taking up an item slot. You also can choose one of a selection of useful items to start with, these being handy or semi-magical devices useful for a beginning adventurer. The Useful Items are:
Next: Third, you'll prepare your character with special abilities and equipment (Part 1)
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Jan 2, 2021 23:40
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Third, you'll prepare your character with special abilities and equipment. This chapter is the Ability Catalog, where the Roles and Abilities are found. This chapter I'll break into 4 parts, covering 2 Roles each. How Abilities Work By default you choose six abilities from your role at creation. Abilities belong to a linear learning path, and have to be taken in order. Each role also has Legendary Abilities, which have to be learned in-game and not via advancement. Abilities all have a cost in Adventure Points marked out next to them, though some have a cost of 0. You only roll the die for an Ability if it has that as explicit instructions. Some abilities do have "at the table" in their directions, indicating something you should do in real life. These are always optional, and just exist to add some fun or flavor for the ability. I'll be explaining each path but won't cover every ability, only hitting one or two of the most interesting or novel in each. The Fighter  The Fighter represents martial experts of all kinds. They are by far the deadliest Role in straight up combat, but have many Abilities that keep them from being one-note or useless outside of a brawl. The first Fighter path is "Dueling", focused on one-on-one battle. Do more damage and take less, the final and most interesting ability in Dueling is... "Duel"! You compel a nearby creature to fight you in single combat. The physical details of this ability can be a bit tricky online, but are very fun: You write down four of your previous dueling abilities (Basic Attack, Wild Attack, Overpower, Disarm) on index cards, assign them to playing cards, use the purchasable Quest Ability Deck, etc. Choose three and place them face-down on the table. The Guide then has to guess the cards in order. If the Guide guesses correctly, nothing happens. If they guess wrong, you get to instantly use that ability at no AP cost and it auto-succeeds. If the Guide guesses all three correctly they get to attack you, but if they get all three wrong you get to repeat the move for free for three more guesses. If playing via text, you could easily write them down in spoiler text and just trust your Guide not to cheat. The second path is "Tactics", and is all about control and defense. The first ability is "Provoke", a 0 AP cost one that makes a target focus on you for the next minute or until they get hit by someone else. This path lets fighters control the flow of battle and protect other party members from danger, wit the capstone ability being "Whirlwind", a 2 AP ability where you roll to hit every enemy within reach, with failures disarming you as you accidentally spin so fast your weapon flies out of your hand. "Camaraderie" is incredibly cool and is the first that breaks out the Fighter as more than the D&D style melee beatstick. This is in short, the Warlord Path. You can get all sorts of powerful support abilities like "Summon the Blood" where you recite an inspiring poem (in real life if possible for extra fun) when you regroup to heal everyone for an extra 3HP. Make a heroic speech with "Valiant Soliloquy" in the middle of combat to give everyone the ability to redo their next roll, regain AP once per session by recounting a past battle with "War Story" and so on. The coolest ability is "Marshal" which lets you organize the entire party to work together on a test of strength: Everyone rolls and as long as the majority succeed you all succeed. This lets you perform feats of strength that a lone person could not, such as bashing down a reinforced door, lifting a wooden beam, or beating a Giant in tug-of-war. "Leadership" is another really useful support path, this time focusing on being a cunning tactician instead of inspirational leader. The first ability "Size Up" is 0 AP and when used lets you evaluate a nearby creature or group of creatures. The Guide will give you information about their abilities, strength, and any vulnerabilities or resistances they may have. This is delivered narratively, but should be accurate and effective if used. The capstone, "Attendent", costs a whopping 7AP but gives you an entire second Fighter to follow you around! They have 10HP and the Counter Attack, Wild Attack, and Provoke abilities, making them effective combatants! This Attendant is controlled by the Guide and will loyally perform any tasks you ask as long as they are not suicidal or morally repugnant. "Body" is a bit of a mixed bag, but mostly focuses on superhuman physique. The classic "Technique" lets your bare hands do damage like a weapon, but the most notably awesome is "Focus". This ability has a list of three options with varying AP costs: For 3 you can enter "Flow", allowing you to make a Basic Attack against every enemy within reach that is automatically successful. For 4 you become immune to basic attacks from Minions until you take damage or they roll a 20 to hit you. For 5 you instantly purge a poison or illness from your body. The Fighter "Legendary" abilities are all amazing. "Champion" has you be recognized as a famous hero who's reputation is greatly known especially among authoritarian minded people who look to strength for leadership, letting you gain both the Recruit and Attendant ability if not already had, with Recruit being free and Attendant costing only 4AP. "Steel Pact" forges a magical bond with a weapon of your choice. You always know where this weapon is, you can reroll any failure you make while using it, and a 20 will automatically kill a minion. "Limit Break" is another multiple choice ability, letting you perform truly superhuman feats. 7AP lets you just instantly rout all nearby minions, killing or frightening them away in a gratuitously awesome display of martial skill. 4AP marks a single enemy, you perform three automatically successful Basic Attacks on them, and you can then just keep rolling Basic Attacks until you roll less than a Success. 3AP let's you perform a single task with superhuman strength or physical ability, like lifting a boulder single-handedly or knocking a giant to the ground. The Invoker  Essentially combining the Paladin and Cleric, they are those who channel greater powers or wield their beliefs to protect their friends and harm their enemies. "Invocation" is all about speaking to a higher power. The most signature ability is "Invoke", where you ritually make contact with the avatar of a higher power you are aligned with and speak to them in a psychic dream-state. You can speak to them for 1 minute (in real life preferred of course) where you can ask them any of a set of five questions (generic but useful things like "Am I on the right path to ____?" and "How can I redeem myself?") that the Guide will answer truthfully as the Avatar. "Inquiries" is all about gathering information via supernatural means. The capstone "Shadowseek" is the most interesting here, where you roll to essentially Scry for a target creature or object. A critical shows you in real time where the target is, what it's doing, and if they're intelligent you can psychically talk to them for a minute. A success merely shows you the targets current location and action for a minute, a tough choice is a brief glimpse, a failure shows nothing but darkness, and a catastrophe reverses it and the target instead sees you. "Verdicts" is best described as mind control, though it's more about emotional control than direct manipulation. This is best typified by "Forgive". You lay your hand on a creature, and essentially grant them divine Forgiveness, instantly absolving them of any feelings of guilt on their conscience. You have to know something they feel guilty for, but otherwise it just works. Commoners and minions become essentially worshipful of you, they are awestruck and will refuse to cause you harm and may even follow you like a prophet. Even bosses will be endeared, acting peaceful until at least your next encounter. "Wrath" is all about messing people up, best represented by "Fiery Avenger" and "Smite". "Fiery Avenger" ignites your weapon in magical flame, allowing it to be bright as a torch and increasing the damage by 1 until you roll a failure or worse with the weapon. "Smite" is classic, choose a nearby creature and it's instantly hit for 10HP as it's engulfed in flame, collapsing into a pile of ash if it's killed. When you use it though, you have to roll: on a 1, the ghost of the creature you killed is now haunting you and can speak into your mind and observe your behavior. "Wards" is more about protection. Magic shields, turning, etc. fall in here, with the most detailed being "Sigil". Draw a magic sigil on an object, and something special happens depending on the sigil. You can only have one active at a time, and it has to have a target: a specific creature or type of creature. The Sigil can have one of four effects: Lure that creature to the sigil, repel creatures that come near, alert you psychically if any of the target creature comes near it, or psychically send a 10 word message to the target when they pass nearby. The Legendary abilities I'll cover in depth just like the Fighter, though these are less "Things to use" and more "Massive story altering events". "Wraith" turns you into something only partially material. Whenever you reach 0HP you can become ethereal, making you immune to all non-magical damage while doubling all magical damage done to you. You can revert at any time during your turn. "Sacrifice" allows you to resurrect a dead creature, even one that died of old age (they receive a new maximum lifespan), but each time you revive something you permanently lose 2 HP and gain a new Flaw. If you reach 0 maximum HP using this ability, you permanently become a Wraith, and another use will kill you. "Prophecy" can be used once a campaign, but is incredibly cool. You choose an NPC and use this to glimpse their fate. You choose one of five fates for that NPC, which the Guide must make come true now. The exact nature of the manifestation is up to the Guide, but it has to happen in line with the Fate. The Fates are, Savior (Die saving someone or something), Betrayer (Betray their allies at a pivotal point), Leader(Gain a meaningful amount of power and authority over a people or place), Disgraced (They will do something morally ruinous that makes them a pariah), and Paragon (Do something so morally good they become a paragon of righteousness). "Eternity Gate" is incredible. You astrally project up to meet God, outside of time and space and all known reality. You can ask a single question of Eternity Itself, which the Guide will answer in detail and in spirit: the Guide has to answer in the spirit of why you're asking not only what you're asking. No weasel words or vagueness allowed, as long as it's a single question you get every detail possible to answer it. The question does have to have a factual true answer though, philosophical questions aren't really valid. The exact outcome depends on a roll though: a 20 gets you a second follow-up question, 11-19 is standard as above, 6-10 gets you the information but you're trapped at the gate for a week which feels like a year to you, 2-5 gains you Flaw as your mind ages by 10 years in that week, and a 1 traps your bind for 10,000 years where you get a new Ideal, Flaw, and Dream because you've just spent an Eon outside of time and space vision questing through impossible dimensions. Next Time: The Ranger and the Naturalist Wapole Languray fucked around with this message at 00:40 on Jan 11, 2021 |
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Jan 10, 2021 08:55
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PoontifexMacksimus posted:Not sure I get this, are Recruit and Attendant different abilities on the same path? Yeah sorry I realised in hindsight I didn't explain what Recruit does and used the name instead of "Attendent", I've fixed that up. They are both abilities on the same path, yes. Attendent gives you an NPC Fighter companion that's as tough as a PC and has three Fighter abilities (Counter Attack lets them... counter attack enemies on a failed attack, Wild Attack does bonus damage for a bigger downside if you fail your roll, Provoke makes an enemy attack you) so they're super helpful. Attendents cost 7AP to get but stay with you until they die or you do something really lovely to betray them and make them leave. Attendents are your faithful squires, loyal retainers, student learners, etc. Recruit is an earlier ability in the Leadership path, where for 1 AP you can point to a Commoner or Minion (Extras or Minor NPCs) and as long as they're not hostile you can order them around for the next day or until they complete whatever task you gave them. They won't do anything suicidal or stupid but otherwise it's freeform. Making it 0AP for your fans/admirers means that a Champion can do that infinitely, commanding as many NPCs they want without question as long as they think you're cool. This is really awesome because it means if you are a famous figure (Which being a Champion you are) you can basically take command of any situation as long as people have heard of you and don't hate your guts. Fighters really combine "Deadly combatant" with "Leader of Men".
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Jan 11, 2021 00:40
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Ability Catalogue Part 2: Ranger and Naturalist We're continuing this chapter, covering the two nature-themed Roles. The Ranger  Obviously best compared to the venerable D&D Ranger, Quest's Ranger I feel fixes the biggest issue that D&D's version has: that it's a vague mashup of ranged fighter, Aragorn, and the Beastmaster without any real coherency or theme. The very first ability path for Ranger is one of the coolest and one I've never seen associated with Rangers in any other game: "Story and Song". It only has three abilities, but all three are amazing. The first, "Commune" leverage the fact that as a ranger you wander around and so get familiar with various peoples. You spend 1AP, invent some local colorful local saying or expression to form a kinship with a Commoner NPC and you can then ask them three questions: Is anyone causing trouble? Where can I find the leader? and What are folks talking about lately? In short, this is the Ability to gossip with the locals. "Folk Song" has you sing a song to a crowd (you can make one up, use an existing song, or just describe your performance) and based on the "mood" of the song you can sway the emotions of the group to bright easy happiness, somber reflection and acknowledgement of suffering, or feelings of zealous pride and excitement. The last ability, "Speak Myth" lets you make a commoner do you a favor by reciting a folktale or myth to show why they should help you. There's a list of suggested favors (common things like "Offer you and your allies food and shelter", "deliver a message for you", or "offer the best price in a trade") but you really can ask for anything that isn't overly onerous or cause them harm. The player should actually create the myth right at the table: the obligation the target should fulfill, the moral lesson the myth invokes or teaches, the subject of the myth, and the actual story itself. You don't have to go into full detail, but it basically lets a Ranger player make up stories within the world itself. The next path, "Survivalist" is pretty self explanatory, and is all about wilderness survival. It's got four abilities, two of which are cool but not that deep: "Remedy" lets you make herbal cures for disease or poison, while "Shroud" lets you set up a concealed camp that provides extra healing when resting within it. The two real standouts are "Signal" and "Ritual". "Signal" lets you send out some distress signal, the nature of which is up to you to describe, and the next day you meet a friendly NPC Ranger who temporarily joins your party. "Ritual" lets you find a magical edible which when consumed lets you gain magical insight and gain certain knowledge (Safest or fastest way to get to a destination, where your Nemesis is, whether you're in a real or illusory place, whether an ally is deceiving you). "Pathfinder" is a path all about wilderness navigation, though because quest is cool this manifests in crazy cool nature magic. "Read the Winds" lets you predict the weather for the next few days for free, or dictate the weather for 2AP as long as it's not a natural disaster or impossible in local conditions (no blizzards in the jungle). "Navigate" makes you completely incapable of being lost in the wilderness for free, and lets you automatically navigate to a site of interest nearby for 1AP (An Oasis with nourishment, a Shelter from inclement weather, a minor Ruin, or an animal Nest or lair). "Delve" gives you automapping: you make a magical sound in an underground structure and read the echoes to make a rough map of the next three connected rooms or areas complete with major physical features like buildings or crevasses. "Speak with Trees" is the capstone and is also incredibly rad because you can just talk to trees now to either get them to tell you exactly how to get to any specific item, creature, or location in a forest, or to get the trees to warn you whenever you approach any danger within the woods. "Hunter" is your tracking and ranged weaponry path, as expected of a Ranger. This path is pretty long so I won't detail every ability, but by the end a Ranger can perfectly identify and locate any animal by its tracks, shoot ranged weapons far beyond default range and with devastating accuracy (they get an ability that just lets them auto-crit on ranged attacks), follow creatures without detection, spring ambushes (the enemy skips their first round of turns), and the capstone of "Nemesis". When you get "Nemesis" you choose a specific creature you've met or encountered before (you can change what your Nemesis is if you want). You get a ton of benefits for dealing with your chosen Nemesis: You can track them with "Ritual", you always know when they're nearby or in the scene, they can't ambush you, and invisibility or concealment doesn't work against your attacks. "Friend" is the last path and is your animal companion stuff! Speak with animals, get an animal partner, summon animals to your location, etc. Nothing really surprising, though it's all pretty cool. For animal companions themselves: They can be any animal that's between the size of a mouse and a horse, they have 6 HP and do 2 Damage. A basic companion is 4AP to recruit, but by spending 2AP you can "Pair Bond", allowing you to telepathically communicate with them, sense everything they sense, and even go into a trance to possess and directly control your companion. The Ranger has three Legendary abilities, and as before they're all really cool. "Wild Celebrity" makes you beloved by all wild creatures: Wild animal Commoners and Minions will no longer attack you unless attacked first, "Speak with Animals" and "Speak with Trees" cost no AP to use, and your Animal Companion now has 10HP and can attack twice a turn. That's passively. It also lets you spend 6AP to summon an army of animals. This army of local creatures acts like a single NPC with 20HP that can do 6 Damage split among up to 6 targets, which is terrifying. "Slayer" is a short but sweet one: Spend 4AP and you can, once per scene, just auto-kill half of all nearby minions in the scene. If you're surrounded by a squad of 10 goblins, you spend 4AP and now there's 5. "Friend of the Land" lets you choose a specific wilderness region where you become it's magical guardian and lord. You get a huge number of abilities usable with no AP cost in that land, the local animals build you a wilderness fort of appropriate theming (A giant anthill, a beaver-dam hall, etc.) which is a fully equipped fortress with all amenities and a full-time honor guard of animal sentries and a staff of animal volunteers that keep it stocked with fresh natural food from the area. Yes, this lets you create Beorn's Hall from The Hobbit. The Naturalist  Naturalists are obviously the Quest version of Druids, though without the ahistorical name. They get mostly what you'd imagine, with some fun twists. "Shapeshifter" is the path of... well shapeshifting. Animal Form lets you turn into any animal between a mouse and horse in size, with 6HP and 2 damage. You get to do everything the animal can do, but lose all other abilities, items, and the ability to speak while transformed. The capstone is "Shapeshift" which upgrades your ability to transform into an animal: You get 10 HP, can be anything from the size of a fly to an elephant, do 3 damage, and can speak telepathically to party members.The other abilities of shapeshifter are more... interesting. You can give other creatures gills, transform metal objects into living plants, petrify a target, and grow chitinous armor. "Summoner" is... hard to define, but it's general "nature magic". "Thorn" is a basic ranged magical attack that on a crit gives your target an allergy attack, swelling their skin so they cannot see or speak until the end of their next turn. "Wild Font" turns a container of food, water, or oil into a cornucopia that overspills its contents constantly for one minute. "Evening Star" creates a magical light that turns a huge area as bright as daylight around you for one hour. "Aurora" summons an aurora borealis into the sky which covers a kilometer and dazzles and stuns those who see it for 10 minutes. The final ability "Echoes of Creation" summons magical wisps that heal all creatures and revive all plants in the scene for the next minute, stunning every creature with awe until they vanish. "Elementalist" is general elemental abilities: Cold, heat, lightening blasts, and the classic "Fireball" which explodes a massive area for huge damage (but could blow up in your face). Not going into too much detail because it mostly works as you'd expect, though Shock's 8 damage+2 if they're wearing anything metal for 4AP is notable for being a terrifying damage spell. "Stormcaller" lets you manipulate the weather, creating fog, whirlpools, wind gales, floods, and at the capstone summoning thunderstorms. "Riverfury" is notable for just letting you recreate the river scene from Fellowship of the Ring. "Spiritcaller" is a mix of channeling animal powers and supernatural senses. "Wild Aspect" can give you the eyesight of an eagle, you and nearby creatures the nightvision of a cat, and the entire group the ability to outrun any other creatures on foot with the endurance of a wolf. "Prey Sense" gives you basically spidersense: you gain in instinctual signal when you're in danger, preventing ambush and sneak attacks. "Nature's Watch" let's you choose two vision effects to have for an hour: Aurasight (Detect magic), Infrasight (See heat, even through walls), Darksight, Mirrorsight (You can see around corners and bends), and Realsight (detect illusions). "Ecologist" is the final path, and a major highlight of cool abilities. "Command Nature" lets you magically cause plants to grow to your command. You can use it as an attack, make fruit grow and fall, vines expand, a tree grow in the shape you want, etc. "Memories of Stone" lets you touch a stone item or formation and access its ancient memories, learning the location of subterranean ruins and lost artifacts. "Shift Season" is the capstone, letting you change the season in your area and dictate the weather inside a zone of 1 kilometer, if you roll well. If you don't the season is random and you end up causing unnatural storms or natural disasters. The Naturalists Legendary abilities give us some new interesting abilities we haven't had equivalents of, including our first suicidal ability. "Natures Wrath" creates a storm, one so vicious you lose 1HP for every turn you keep it going, though you can generate a safe "eye" at a location you wish. When you cast the spell, you get to choose a natural disaster that happens within it: Lightening constantly striking every NPC for 2HP per turn, Blizzard blinding and freezing all NPCs for 1HP a turn, or a Hurricane tearing apart building and uprooting trees to smash NPCs for 4HP a turn. The indiscriminate nature of the ability is why you have a choice: Lightening does more damage, but Blizzard blinds as well, and while Hurricane immobilizes and damages more than either, it also basically levels the area of effect. "Wild Evolution" is an upgrade to your shapeshifting. You pick a single animal which is a permanent special form. You can turn into this animal for free, in that form you maintain your HP but do 3 Damage now, can cast spells and use abilities, and speak telepathically to your allies. Your "Shapeshift" and "Animal Form" abilities work as normal still. "To Dust" lets you touch any crafted object that can fit in a 10x10 meter cube, and turn it permanently into dust. It's just 3AP, no other requirements: if it's less than 10 x 10 meters and isn't naturally occuring, you can just permanently destroy it. "World Wish" is the first suicidal ability. Yes, this ability functionally removes you from play when you use it: Your life is permanently consumed in exchange for permanently and unstoppably rejuvenating the natural world in a wave of lifegiving magic. The entire planet you are on is affected: First a life-sustaining atmosphere is generated or created, then the entire surface is covered in flora. Then oceans and rivers are carved and filled, and if you chose all artifical structures are gently disintegrated. This is literally the Genesis Device, but it explicitly does not kill or harm any living thing, and cannot be stopped, reversed, or interrupted by any means. Next Time: The Doctor and The Spy
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Jan 13, 2021 00:51
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In reference to the Blue Medusa authorship debate, Zak himself contributed via an attempted harassment campaign against yours truly! In essence, I said that the Gardens were him being creepy about women, the Gallery is him being pissy about the art world, Patrick probably made the Wedding because it's the least bad part, and the rest is random traps and NPCs and rooms smashed together in vague ways. Zak responded by trying to get people to publicly correct me over Discord by making a giveaway of whatever his current lovely zine is for doing that. Nobody bothered, but he did passive aggressively defend himself in the dumbest way possible: He basically said Patrick Stuart did everything and he just did art and editing and some minor changes. By trying to prove me "wrong" he accidentally made Patrick the primary creative mind behind the whole thing. Mind I don't loving believe this one bit because Patrick Stuart has made several other dungeons and they are nothing like MotBM, and the worst stuff here is 100% Zak poo poo, and exists in his other awful adventures. So I'd say blame the Authors plural, as there's definitely two, I suppose. Loxbourne posted:I remember thinking the dungeon's core plot is very easy to solve if your party just talk to the NPCs. Point 1 is sadly impossible as written: The NPCs will either never actually tell you about their problems, will lie about them, or in the case of any of the core plot the solutions literally don't exist within the module. Point 2 I'd argue against because while some stuff can be evocative pretty much everything falls apart hard the second you try to think about it or use it in play without heavy GM editing. Wapole Languray fucked around with this message at 22:48 on Mar 28, 2021 |
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Mar 28, 2021 22:45
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 Zak S. is a piece of poo poo who’s entire reputation is built on three works that anybody cares about. The first is Vornheim, which says it’s a city kit but is instead like 5 pages of vague ideas and 4 terrible dungeons. It’s so thin that it’s hard to even talk about and incredibly boring cause he doesn’t have time to be offensive, just vague and weird. The second is Maze of the Blue Medusa which is a poorly made bloated rambling megadungeon of every idea Patrick Stuart and Zak Badhaircut had barely edited together. It is probably worth talking about, but it's so bloated and random that most of the discussion would be “Look at this poo poo, it sucks!” ad nauseum. The third is this. A Red and Pleasant Land is a setting and two big rear end dungeons for Legend of the Flame Princess, a game that can’t decide if it wants to be a D&D clone or an Early Modern Horror Game built on D&D’s rotting corpse. It’s made by a libertarian rear end in a top hat, 90% of the content for it is edgelordy gore porn and player slaughter dungeons, it has at least one other module that’s based around inflation porn and cannibalism, and only ever mattered cause it’s the first D&D retroclone to have layout not from the mid 80’s. A Red and Pleasant Land is awful, but awful in a new exciting way for Zak. It’s totally coherent, functional, and well put together. It’s a middle ground between Vornheim and Medusa and is three times as coherent. For this it sucks even worse because there’s hints of something good in there, buried in the trash. To make it good would require Zak to both not be in violint love with every stupid idea he has, and be willing to stop being innovative and shocking at every turn, so it will never be good. The basic concept of a Red and Pleasant Land is one cool idea married to a stupid aesthetic that he definitely feels is very clever but isn’t. At its core, A Red and Pleasant Land is about a stalemated war between Not Elizabeth Bathory and Not Vlad Dracula over a chunk of non-specific Eastern Europe. This would be a very good idea for a grim dark fantasy sort of campaign, playing mercenaries or spoilers in this Vampire war. This would mean Zak didn’t have the idea to then instead make the entire thing an Alice in Wonderland pastiche. Random bits of the Wonderland books are ripped out and stuck on that vampire war framework, along with a bunch of other random weird poo poo that doesn’t actually matter or fit the theme. What do Vampire civil wars and Alice and Wonderland have in common? Jack poo poo! You’re either dealing with Vampire Horror Tropes, Alice in Wonderland poo poo, or Random Dumb Zak Brainchilds and they basically don’t mesh at all.  This is the map of the setting. See the two castles labeled Castle Cachtice and Castle Poenari? Those are the only two bits of this map that in any way matter. Everything else is basically blank randomly generated content. There is EXPLICITLY no information about any other location on the map, they’re all just evocative names you have to use to do something with yourself. This is a nearly 200 page book, and he couldn’t bother to think up even a sentence about the half dozen named places on his map. Also everything on the map, and in the world of the setting, is made up of regular squares on a grid. Old school game navigation is pretty much universally done on a hexgrid. Nobody uses square grids. Does Zak just hate drawing curves?  This is the introductory text, it is intentionally vague. The Red King is Dracula, the Queen of Hearts is Bathory, the whole dream reality warping is basically ignored for the rest of the book, and also “Unreason” here means everyone’s an rear end in a top hat and he has some stupid physics fuckery mechanics in the dungeons to annoy everyone.  This is just here to give you the tone of this book since I won’t be directly quoting it much. Zak is an rear end in a top hat, and I’m going to enjoy tearing this poo poo apart.
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Sep 26, 2021 22:01
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 I. A Guide to the Place of Unreason This is the general setting info and it’s all terrible. Let’s get into this nonsense. So the main conflict is between the Red King Vlad Vortigen and the Heart Queen Elizabeth Bathyscape. Yes these names are awful, moving on. They both dreamed somehow the setting into creation, turning an otherwise normal bit of Not Eastern Europe into what we’re about tolearn about. They hate each other for some reason that’s never really explained and are embroiled in the “Slow War”. “The land is still hidden from the West by the Terrible Goblin Wood, still hidden from the East by the Carpathian Mountains, and now from the gods by the gods’ own disgust. For not only has every kind of creation and creature been abused by the blasphemies and sorceries of the unfathomable war, but every force, law, lesson and explanation ever decreed by those above and those beneath. Meaning is meaningless and there are never any reasons. There are, however, monsters you can kill, some of whom have stuff. So your players may want to go there. Thus this book. “ Thanks Zak. If this sounds confusing and stupid, it is. Zak thinks things are way more clever than they are, which is mostly dumb and annoying. So one of the worst bits of this mess is what the setting looks like:  Zak uses a ridiculous amount of purple prose to try and explain “The entire land is stone skyscrapers with garden-parks for roofs.” That’s it. Every building is all interconnected and have balconies and doorways, and underground is a ton of subfloors and dungeons and corridors. The entire map is one big interconnected building that’s overgrown with greenery. It takes a page to communicate that information because the writing is being clever, and spends a long time trying to explain how directions work in this world with the conclusion they don’t, which doesn’t stop him writing sentences like: “For example, if someone said “Start in square 15 dash 87. Climb 16 feet down into the crocodile pit, find the rectangular window, climb through it. Walk an even number of steps or until you see something orange, drink the blood of a mother or small ape, walk in any direction at any speed for nine minutes, strike the gazebo, then sleep. When you awake you’ll be in the Virgin’s Pantry,” then they would be telling the truth, and describing the most reliable route.“ Besides the Red King and Heart Queen there’s also the Pale King and Colorless Queen. They’re also vampires. The Pale King is random monkeycheese humor bullshit, and the Colorless Queen are Fish-Vampires. Your characters should come from outside the land, called Voivodja, but every way to get in is stupid. One way he suggests is that you crawl through a mirror into this world portal-fantasy style. This is stupid cause it breaks the entire complicated system of the whole dualistic mirror universe I’ll explain in a bit further down this update. You have to rewrite a lot of established stuff to make that work, so it’s a stupid idea for Zak to suggest. You can also travel physically which is him going “IDK make up your own super brutal wilderness hexcrawl or something” ignoring that there’s 0 reason for any sane adventurer to ever come to this lovely hellhole place. You can wind up here via dungeon gateway getting you transported here, or through a magical gate in a city, or… etc. etc. Basically if your players don’t want to hexcrawl to this place, magically teleport them there. Also once they’re there you have to trap them so they can’t just leave, that’s super important cause they will 100% want to loving leave. So Voivodja is split into four types of location: the Interiors which is a “Make your own dungeon” insides, the Gardens which are battlefields and… gardens, the Forests where the only living humans in the land live in hidden villages, and The Castles. Everything but the Castles is given no detail at all, and the Castles are fully statted out dungeons. The Quiet Side of the Looking Glass This is an awful stupid thing that is important for one of the two big dungeons, but is never consistently portrayed or explained and exists to drive the GM insane. So, in this setting mirrors are portals between the “War Side” which is where all the crazy vampire wonderland poo poo is, and the “Quiet Side” which is… well it’s not really coherent. See by implication the Quiet Side should be like… a normal fantasy or historical realm. It’s even suggested that in the bit about how to get to Voivodja. But then the first fact about it established is “It is said The Quiet Side contains equivalents of almost everyone and everything on The War Side”. The exception is Vampires, as they don’t cast reflections. And later bits make it very clear, especially in one of the dungeons, that the Quiet Side is a reversed but otherwise exact replica physically of the world. Okay… so why is there a giant dream palace on the other side of the mirror when it was made by vampires that don’t exist over there? There are explicitly people living on the Quiet Side, but they're given no detail. In fact no detail is given about what the Quiet Side is like at all except that… there’s humans there. The rules for the Quiet Side are: Humans have a duplicate there, who live normal lives that seem incompatible with living in an overgrown fantasy megacity. They live even if the War Side equivalent is killed by vampires. If you go over to the Quiet Side you merge with your twin and so can never meet your double. Clerics have no magic on the Quiet Side. You can only exist in the Quiet Side for 10xWisdom in seconds before you go permanently insane, or you can make yourself pass out and only awaken when brought through a mirror. The Red King and his three Brides can freely enter the Quiet Side for 120 seconds, and the Heart Queen can if someone Bloody Mary’s her over. Vampires explicitly hunt people from the Quiet Side for food, but since only four Vampires can enter the mirrors, I have no idea how you get eaten by them. Are Quiet Side people just really gullible and climb through magic mirrors at the prompting of loving vampires on the regular? Orb Loc This is a stupid name for hidden human villages. They get two paragraphs, they’re scared, huddled villages in the forests. Generic gothic horror villages, that’s it. There may or may not be a secret order of militant faithful called the Sisters of Merciful Fate who want to wipe out the vampires but I don’t know I guess maybe they exist or not I won’t say. Children in Wells No I have NO idea why this is a thing. I should note that the editor of this book is James Raggi, the creator of LotFP and Zak’s Bestest Buddy so I assume he wouldn’t ever think to suggest cuts of any sort! Anyway this is a stupid concept. There’s wells all over the place, and in them are children. These wells have some edible foodstuff in them, for they are treacle wells or marshmallow wells or cheese wells or whatever the gently caress else not water wells silly. The Children will not leave the wells, but hate the food. If you give them new food, they’ll trade y ou… random junk that begins with a letter of the alphabet based on the substance they eat but not really. Treacle wells give stuff that begin with M and “malignized adrenocortical cells” wells provide things that start with G. Customs and Events More random things, but at least this is… vaguely useful and flavorful? It’s not random starving children giving you mallets from wells in exchange for a ham sandwich. There are Banquets and Feasts, because vampires everything is made of flesh and blood and live people are always eaten with marmalade this is an important fact and in fact in one of the dungeons is a pile of corpses smeared with marmalade. Battles are typical medieval stuff. It says a lot of things are and are not true about the battles, like they sometimes do and do not have a point, and may be planned or random depending on times maybe some of the time I guess. Players can have affects on battles by doing things. Croquet is the favorite sport of the Heart Queen. She does all diplomacy during games, cannot refuse requests from someone who beats her at croquet, she makes up rules randomly where breaking them means she kills you, play is not voluntary, games last days cause technically the entire land is the playing field and for some reason they can hide the wickets in dungeons and poo poo, and for some reason hedgehogs watch the games disdainfully. No, there is no more detail on the croquet hating hedgehogs. There’s a page of dueling rules, which is mostly pretty much an OK subsystem for doing formal duels using old D&D style rules. I honestly have nothing bad to say because it’s also kind of nothing burger. There’s some stupid flavor, like children duel from the tops of ponies (EVERYONE IS A VAMPIRE), if it’s for the honor of a lady both parties must fight with their left eye closed, etc. For some reason he says that these insane vampires in a pocket reality in the remotest regions of Not-Eastern Europe only accessible by magic portal or long dangerous trek… also have connections to foreign powers and engage in international intrigue and the vampires are minor world powers. This is a stupid justification to steal monsters from this book and put them in other adventures. Marriages are stupid cause Zak and Vampires. Marriages among vampires are not valid unless the partners kill an enemy vampire in fair combat during the wedding. This must be arranged ahead of time. Vampires are also polygamous and so can have many many bloodfights at once. Kidnapping brides or grooms to sabotage weddings or for ransom are common, and are said to be a thing adventurers are hired to do. Except of course everyone is a vampire so why would they talk to humans instead of eating them? Trials are bullshits and nonse. The Red King rules arbitrarily, and drops you into a pit of mome raths (pigs) or crocodiles depending on if you’re guilty or innocent. The Heart Queen … educates her lawyers in Vornheim so buy the Vornheim City Kit to learn about the laws they learn and know! BUY MY BOOK! THE OTHER ONE! The Pale King uses jousts and duels abut does complicated and in-depth interviews of all parties ahead of time, and the Colorless Queen just feeds you to eels if she thinks you did a thing. The last part of this section is a concept so offensively stupid I’m just reproducing it in whole.  I’m done, next time more about the setting, hooray! Wapole Languray fucked around with this message at 05:55 on Sep 27, 2021 |
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Sep 27, 2021 03:17
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That Old Tree posted:What possible use is this supposed to be for? How many words and pages are spent telling you that you basically can't go to a place you wouldn't want to go to anyway where there appears to be nothing of value? Is there any suggestion in the book what to do with this? As far as I can tell it's used as a puzzle and stealth element in one of the dungeons in this book. Also deleted that bit, just wrote that automatically wasn't thinkin.
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Sep 27, 2021 05:56
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JcDent posted:One thing that keeps tripping me up is exactly how it works with souls in AoS. Is Nagash breaking them down into components like you would like recycling a soul, or does it just take souls and merges the components he likes to make a sort of networked soul, with the unfused parts of originals just sticking out of it like some sci-fi blob monster? Ossiarchs can't be Soulbound, it's that simple. Their weird frankensouls prevent the ritual from working on them. They try and cut out all the bad bits from an Ossiarch's soul, but they can miss bits or have to leave certain stuff inside to keep the soul useful, and that's where you get the few renegades.
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Sep 27, 2021 07:42
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Selachian posted:Maybe because Through the Looking Glass is set on a chessboard, with the terrain Alice moves through divided into squares? Makes sense and it'd be cool if this was a chessboard instead of cityblocks of apartment buildings and only one of the warring sides has a chess theme. If you want the map to be a chessboard that's cool but you have to actually make it a chessboard not just use square graph paper and probably should actually make the war a chess game.
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Sep 27, 2021 19:25
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Things to Know So this section is basically… guidelines for how the GM should run the setting. They’re all awful in new and exciting ways. The very first section is Behavior of Creatures in Voivodja. It’s a page of some of the worst instructions to a GM ever put in an RPG book. Because the entire thing is basically “Be as annoying as humanly possible.” So there’s 7 rules for how things behave in Vovodja: Offense taken is inversely proportional to offense meant. What this means is that characters will get super pissy at minor things but ignore dire insults and offenses. This exists to piss your players off. Real violence, injustice, oppression, and general lovely behavior is ignored or misunderstoon intentionally while minor, accidental, and imagined breaches of etiquette are met with… violence, oppression and injustice. I think this translates to little poo poo gets disproportionate responses while seriously antisocial behavior is ignored. In all conversations random tangents are more important than the actual topic of discussion. Everyone is difficult. No further elaboration, so I guess just be SUPER obnoxious beyond what you’re already doing. No-one is unalterably hostile, but well judging by the others this would be a temporary state of affairs. No-one can be made to understand anything. This is really going to make your players want to interact with NPCs in any way shape or form right? Information is usually accurate. Well, that’s nice I guess? Though I’m betting you could drive a bus through the “usually” in this clause. Zak goes on to explain better how this translates to behovior: mainly that the GM should make any conversation as long an annoying as possible by making everyone you talk to go off on rambling tangents and asking inane questions. Explicitly unless the characters do something for force action, every NPC will just talk endlessly while reaching no point. This is meant to emulate the rambling conversations of the Alice books, which works fine when you’re reading a book but when you’re actually forced to participate in them I can’t imagine them lasting long. Any PC group is going to quickly learn that talking is useless and just start forcing their way through situations with action because socialization is not only of questionable value it’s actively unpleasant. Next is a section on buying stuff and getting items. Now in a stupid move that creates infinite logical holes Vovodja is basically depopulated of humans by the Vampires (Why would they ever listen to your mortal PCs instead of eating you if all the food’s gone?) and so it’s basically post apocalyptic. Merchants exist as dumb video game magic merchants, because he basically just takes the Merchant from Resident Evil 4 and sticks it in his game. They magically appear wherever, are never bothered by vampires, and their stores are magically bigger on the inside than outside. This is dumb but at least it’s a major improvement on Maze because he acknowledges that there’s gotta be a way to convert treasure to gold and then spend that gold on actual stuff you need to not die like food. Which, by the way, is a pain to get outside of shops. You either eat Vampire Food ie Cannibalism, or you go hunting in the woods for wild animals, or you barter it with the hidden villages. Currency rules suck and I never got why you’d care if the standard is silver, copper or gold for whatever you’re using. This runs on Gold even though LotFP is Silver based, whatever that matters. Firearms: pistols exist if you want but no long guns by the author's opinion even though that makes no sense. This section is literally useless because it’s just “IDK I guess you can have guns if you want, but I say only pistols, but it’s whatever.” Thanks for that bold authorial stance Zak. Growing and Shrinking Presumably there may be things later on that will invoke this, and also it seems that maybe LotFP also has shrinking and growing rules? Anyway sizes are Too Big, Normal, Too Small, and Mouse-Sized. You can talk to small animals while Mouse-Sized. That’s it. Kings, Queens, and Levels So this section is… lies? Stupidity? Zak seriously thinks that this module can be played as and I quote “intrigue heavy style of play this setting is meant to encourage” which is nonsense. Remember the thing I just wrote about how every NPC from here should be as intentionally obnoxious and crazy as possible? Also I will say it right now: Basically every major named NPC is either inaccessible or violently horrifically evilly insane, or both. There is no reason to work with the insane murderous randomly acting cruel monsters that fill this land. Everyone logically wants to eat you, and if they don’t they’re almost impossible to deal with in any way. Maps, Locations & Overland Travel The maps squares cause he thinks it’s easier, that’s explained. The map is blank and nothing but the two palaces is detailed because Zak wants y ou to customize your map and put stuff wherever you want! Use your imagination! I’m not lazy! Each square is approximately 10 miles across and you can travel 3 squares per day. Remember this entire setting is a network of stone skyscrapers that plunge deep into the earth as well. All the advice here assumes the world is a traditional 2Dish plane, not this decaying megacity. Zak seems to forget a thing he wrote previously quite often in this book, creating some weird inconsistencies if you try to actually run and portray this land as he describes. The Unreasonable Alice in Wonderland is kind of like a dungeon crawl if you think about it y’know? There’s mapping and scale problems, jokes, animated objects… Thats I guess why he decided vampire war needs wonderland too. “Most of the ideas in this book make no sense and some are deeply silly” is a direct quote and I’d agree, but not for the reasons Zak wants. I also think a lot of the ideas are stupid, like a bad idea. This section reveals that Zak can’t tell the difference between actual surrealism and silliness and complete randomness or nonsense. “...these people pay real money for adventures here you try to win a goblin beauty contest or marry a giant space bee” he says, because I guess he has to convince the grimdark black metal listening LotFP players he’s selling this too by thumbing his nose at the Bad Kind of Silly not HIS kind of silly which is the kind that can easily be made creepy! Basically he wants you to use his stuff, to be silly and whimsical, but then make it creepy and uncomfortable and weird in the bad way. Or you could leave in innocently whimsical, but that clashes with the fact the game’s major NPCs are GENOCIDE VAMPIRE WARLORDS. I end this section with his recommended media list for understanding A Red and Pleasant Land: 
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Sep 28, 2021 02:20
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