Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)

[Wormy]

but did you know that the Marvel release a RPG system based around well Marvel. What is everyone's experience with the Marvel RPG system?

This one?

Had a pretty good time with it, though in hindsight the DM was anything but intricate or clever.

 

[Pendulous Dong]

@Wallace don't know why I can't reply to your post directly but whatever.

Hard Wired Island has always been funny to me because you can flip to almost any page and find something stupid.



Obviously in any cyberpunk game I immediately flip to the section about augments, and they're just underwhelming on a mechanical and flavor perspective. If the most your cybernetics can do is "gives a +1 to a skill you already have" then your cyberpunk game has failed. There's no flavor to your cybernetics by default, it's all on you to make it interesting,



And I know you mentioned it in your post, but I genuinely hate that in a game about the privatization and capitalist corruption of every facet of your life that you can't get deep into medical debt.
Wouldn't it better reinforce capitalism's encroaching, all-encompassing nature if your character got into their life of hacking and terrorism to help pay for treatment for a medical condition that they have no control over?
Or if you're playing a troon, wouldn't having to pay exorbitant monthly fees for an HRT regulator better represent capitalism's predatory nature of supporting your gender identity for only so long as you're willing to pay the subscription fee?

In Shadowrun I started my character $75,000 in debt so they could get adjustable tits, facial feminization and gender reassignment surgeries, and a treatment to make their entire body smooth and hairless except for the hair on their head. They even had a bioengineered tapeworm that meant they could do Nikocado-tier mukbangs every day and never weigh more than 110lbs. None of these things ever had a significant impact on gameplay, nor did I want them to. Meanwhile in Hard Wired Island, I can just get that shit for freeI don't have to grift and commit crimes to pay for the only shit my character cares about. Make me pay for my AutoDilator!

 

[Brain Problems]

In 5e I suppose you could flavor a high level Reborn Wizard/Sorceror as a sort of alignment-friendly Lich. They have all the traits other than a phylactery, and can always just slap on a few spell-like abilities. They didn't choose to come back, sometimes you just come back.

Maybe someone might sperg out and shoot blood from their eyes that you gave a reborn a phylactery but as long as it fits the story and if it's for a PC, doesn't make them OP or too powerful in a way that pisses off the rest of the party. Or fuck it, make a not-evil Lich and blow your party's minds when it turns out they're not dealing with a cackling, maniacal, skeletal mustache-twirling undead bad guy this time. What a tweest.

This gets back to what I was saying though about grey sludge because this is really only interesting though because the standard for them is that they're evil motherfuckers thus that it's interesting to see one that has pulled a switcheroo. And if I was a PC being giving the option or having a DM roll (heh) with my hare-brained ideas in a way that's conducive to a fun campaign is awesome and what makes me love this game.

 

[Corn Flakes]

This gets back to what I was saying though about grey sludge because this is really only interesting though because the standard for them is that they're evil motherfuckers thus that it's interesting to see one that has pulled a switcheroo.

You can only "subvert expectations" when the expectations are there to begin with.

If all orcs are Proud and Noble, and if Liches aren't necessarily evil, finding an Orc Paladin or a Lawful Good Lich will just not be interesting. If the entire world is quirky and zany and queer, a part of quirky, zany and queer adventurers is just a bunch of normal people wandering around with stabbing implements.

It's like those shitty PBtA "games" @Adamska keeps reviewing: when everybody is a lesbian or an anarchist or a lesbian anarchist, everything renders down to just a gray homogeneous paste at the end of the day.

 

[Randall Fragg]

Didn't non-evil Liches use a different ritual so they wouldn't become inherently evil?

I mean, my spin on it has been “there are non-evil paths to becoming a lich, but they’re hard, complex, and painful. It’s easier to follow the evil path and murder a bunch of people. Most liches are evil because they wanted a quick route to power and didn’t want to undertake the effort that non-evil lichdom requires”.

 

[Wallace]

Obviously in any cyberpunk game I immediately flip to the section about augments, and they're just underwhelming on a mechanical and flavor perspective. If the most your cybernetics can do is "gives a +1 to a skill you already have" then your cyberpunk game has failed. There's no flavor to your cybernetics by default, it's all on you to make it interesting,

And I know you mentioned it in your post, but I genuinely hate that in a game about the privatization and capitalist corruption of every facet of your life that you can't get deep into medical debt.
Wouldn't it better reinforce capitalism's encroaching, all-encompassing nature if your character got into their life of hacking and terrorism to help pay for treatment for a medical condition that they have no control over?

Exactly. Cyberware is just so boring. It doesn't tell us anything about what it means to be human.

And it also drives home the point that all of the debt you find yourself in is completely voluntary. So when you can't pay rent because of your student loans or because your cyberware costs too much to maintain, then that's on you. Capitalism didn't do that to you, you did that to you. You chose to go deep into the red and buy things that would incur a debt obligation that you couldn't pay back, and now that the debt comes due, you cry foul? Ettin's full of shit.

I mean... There's a point buried somewhere underneath the lazy game design, the many plot holes, and obsequious genuflections to genderwoo. Is capitalism unfair? In many cases, yes. There's plenty of people who are smart and talented and work hard every day and never make it, and there are plenty of people who are born rich and always seem to fail upwards. Ettin's answer to this unfairness is to evolve into bitterness and resentment and make impotent demands that capitalism submit to its own humiliating demise, followed by lashing out angrily when he doesn't get what he wants.

Ettin's answer is that the game is hopelessly rigged, there is no point in trying, and all of this is 100% the systems fault and 0% your fault, so be miserable all the time, take anything you can and give nothing back. Hard Wired Island is about waking up in your mid-30s realizing that you have pissed away your 20s trying to do what the cool people are all doing and realizing you have nothing to show for your life.

 

[Another Char Clone]

And it also drives home the point that all of the debt you find yourself in is completely voluntary. So when you can't pay rent because of your student loans or because your cyberware costs too much to maintain, then that's on you. Capitalism didn't do that to you, you did that to you. You chose to go deep into the red and buy things that would incur a debt obligation that you couldn't pay back, and now that the debt comes due, you cry foul? Ettin's full of shit.

If megacorps are so evil, why stop there? For some strange reason, the all powerful megacorp won't just make everyone born into debt by default, or take away the "free healthcare".

 

[Wallace]

If megacorps are so evil, why stop there? For some strange reason, the all powerful megacorp won't just make everyone born into debt by default, or take away the "free healthcare".

Or that the same all-powerful corp cartel that can ignore the rule of law when it suits them is also easily defeated by a bunch of dangerhaired genderspecials, and all they can do is shake their fists in impotent rage when they lose?

 

[Another Char Clone]

Or that the same all-powerful corp cartel that can ignore the rule of law when it suits them is also easily defeated by a bunch of dangerhaired genderspecials, and all they can do is shake their fists in impotent rage when they lose?

I'm rather disappointed at authors not thinking of secondary order effects of their setting. Cyberpunk 2077 for example had the same problem for me, yeah the game is cool and stuff, but why in God's name would they not put location tracking on your cybernetics and go BEEP BEEP BEEP disable themselves if they are used in an "unauthorized manner" or entering restricted area with the cops immediately swarming in.

Location and height limits already work on drones, or are all the cybernetic implants made by backstreet doctors in their underground labs? Are all the parts screened for tracking devices before going onto our intrepid dagerhairs? I don't know how much punk you'll be doing when the author just writes themselves into a corner by implication.

 

[Road Work Ahead]

View attachment 3622202

Dude sounds more like Torm than the Gruumsh we love to hate. And to misspell. I blame the tequila.

Here's the description from the 3.5 Monster Manual for comparison

 

[Ghostse]

I always portray orcs as the savage Other from beyond the veil of civilization; so in my fall of the relven empire setting orcs are the germano-hunnic hordes in my 19th century imperialism theyre mahdists and thugees in my new world campaign theyre the savage indian they arent anything but the savage Other

I usually do a savage other with the tinest bit of 40K tossed in, with a garnish of Not All Orcs. And sometimes a tiny bit of Oscar Fish aggression-levels-are-based-on-diet.

The average orc loves Gruumsh and behaves like a murder-fundie, they rove in warbands and kill or enslave everything that isn't an Orc. Mostly these orcs are little better than beasts, but you get the occasional Green Skin Chieftan who bullies the goblins, trolls, and ogres into cooperating.

There are some... well Orcish Mennonites. Orcs that realize that the squishier races will give you shinies if you are willing to kill the other squishy races, and those shinies can be traded for weapons made of less-shiny metal.

And then there is a very small minority who just don't cotton to Gruumsh & the forever war.

I mean, my spin on it has been “there are non-evil paths to becoming a lich, but they’re hard, complex, and painful. It’s easier to follow the evil path and murder a bunch of people. Most liches are evil because they wanted a quick route to power and didn’t want to undertake the effort that non-evil lichdom requires”.

I go off of a sort of Magical Determinism for lich-hood, which is there is no unnamed liches. You only become a lich by doing shit so heinously evil, death refuses to take your soul to the afterlife. To become a lich, and not merely have your body reanimated as some sort of undead approximation of yourself, Your name has to become a curse to the living.
You did so much evil you are never forgotten.

That said, its a game using potions-and-reagents magics instead of trying to cast a mystical air as you describe reality, so usually the if the ritual isn't interrupted until late in the game, all the hard work is done, so you could potentially finish the ritual with minimal cost to your allignment.

The Archliches in games I run are either
Someone (usually paladins) who stopped a Lich, and out of concern of someone coming back and trying again, complete the ritual.
A lich who had real, true regrets and did penance with the Raven Queen (or equivalent).
Or someone the gods bestowed a lich-like immortality on for someone reason.

(There is some fun to be had with sort of the "Reality as described by Magic" things. The idea is that being a Lich - as an unkillable evil - requires really no action on the Lich's part, just the hate adn fear of people. I mean, sure, if you wanted to become a lich going around being Genghis Khan or Tamur Lane to get your legend to grow would do the trick. But you could also have people being blamed for things they didn't do being turned into unwilling Liches. i.e. Thomas Cromwell. And in this environment, Archliches would be unascended saints, i.e. Mother Theresa)

 

[Wallace]

Let's take a look at the issues plaguing Space Portland.

Spoiler: Long

The first is housing, as privatization means that people have to actually pay rent as opposed to being given a free house by the government. Naturally, this is an injustice.



And of course, the young 20-somethings who grew up in Space Portland (i.e. Millenials) and now want to have their own places to live are being hit the hardest.

Meanwhile, another orbital habitat was being built by a private corporation. The company cut a whole bunch of corners on construction and the station got destroyed with a bunch of people already living in it. The solution was to send all these refugees to Space Portland where there was no room, instead of, y'know... back to Earth. This resulted in making huge refugee camps of people who couldn't find jobs and weren't willing/able to leave. Naturally, this is the corporation's fault.





You would think that the company responsible for this negligence would be sued into bankruptcy pretty quick, but in the Ettinverse, corporations are above the law.

Then there's the Dreamers, which came about when some rich CEO wanted an android that could perform basic manual labor without all of those pesky human rights problems. So yeah, a metaphor for illegal immigrants.




Real progressive there, Ettin.

Now we look at a day in the life of an average resident of Space Portland, which sounds a lot like some fanfiction written by r/antiwork. It's such horrific oppression that she has to work a full-time job for a boss who's a jerk and can't buy the toys she wants.






Why in the fuck do you need cybernetic hands to improve your work? What can a cyberhand do that a machine can't do just as well?

Meanwhile, the corporate executive is a white male who got his job by being the CEO's son, and said job consists of slacking off, preening, and generally being a Captain Planet villain.

 

[I'mma real anime gurl]

Jeverett is intresting because he can be a networker or a character that you can have that has to deal with living up to expectations.

Kero is your basic bitch portlander with a unfortunate nickname who probably fucked a dreamer.

 

[Wormy]

Obviously in any cyberpunk game I immediately flip to the section about augments, and they're just underwhelming on a mechanical and flavor perspective. If the most your cybernetics can do is "gives a +1 to a skill you already have" then your cyberpunk game has failed. There's no flavor to your cybernetics by default, it's all on you to make it interesting,

The Chromebooks for CP2020 still stand as the gold standard for how to handle it IMO.

Or that the same all-powerful corp cartel that can ignore the rule of law when it suits them is also easily defeated by a bunch of dangerhaired genderspecials, and all they can do is shake their fists in impotent rage when they lose?

What the....

Putting myself into the mind of a sci fi/cyberpunk Corporate; I'm not getting taken down by dangerhaired genderspecials. I'm co-opting their stupid asses to do advertising for it to make more money and paint the competitors as "Chuds" to get likeminded dolts to buy our crap and enable me to have something good to talk about at the next board meeting. But ya know, I'm just thinking like someone PROFIT MINDED, which is what I thought the point of a CORPORATION was.

Jeverrett Horne would have been a Corporate PC's prison bitch in a proper CP2020 game.

Fer fuck's sake, even the most idealistic Shadowrunners/Edgerunners knew that, in the end, they weren't doing anything other than helping one exec's bottom line while annoying another exec's PR.

 

[Martys_not_smarty]

Putting myself into the mind of a sci fi/cyberpunk Corporate; I'm not getting taken down by dangerhaired genderspecials. I'm co-opting their stupid asses to do advertising for it to make more money and paint the competitors as "Chuds" to get likeminded dolts to buy our crap and enable me to have something good to talk about at the next board meeting. But ya know, I'm just thinking like someone PROFIT MINDED, which is what I thought the point of a CORPORATION was.

How's the saying go? You can always pay off one half of the poor to deal with the other half.

 

[Wormy]

How's the saying go? You can always pay off one half of the poor to deal with the other half.

That's not a saying. That's fucking POLICY, cho.

GOD I want to play that character again now....

 

[Adamska]

l finally read about 5e (the crunch and controversies, late i know) and holy shit WOTC are retarded even more than I thought.
I just read somewhere that Kingdoms of Kalamar 3e books were/are seen as some of the worst stuff in 3.x even including oil, either i was lucky with what i read (campaing settings player version of the previous and the setting equivalent to africa?) or is it overblown?[/spoiler]

It had the least playtesting from what I remember. I know that there's a prestige class in it which was unfinished, but still thrown in despite that, likely supposed to either be removed from the book or revised. I've never done a full deep dive with it like I did Dark Sun or Birth Right.

Maybe someone might sperg out and shoot blood from their eyes that you gave a reborn a phylactery but as long as it fits the story and if it's for a PC, doesn't make them OP or too powerful in a way that pisses off the rest of the party. Or fuck it, make a not-evil Lich and blow your party's minds when it turns out they're not dealing with a cackling, maniacal, skeletal mustache-twirling undead bad guy this time. What a tweest.

I mean I did this once. He was mostly just too obsessed with researching and creating improved creatures to make the ultimate life form. So long as the party didn't interfere with his research, he didn't mind them traipsing around his ruined spire. Hell, he took on one as an apprentice since he was a master of biological agents and she was a poison specialist.

This gets back to what I was saying though about grey sludge because this is really only interesting though because the standard for them is that they're evil motherfuckers thus that it's interesting to see one that has pulled a switcheroo. And if I was a PC being giving the option or having a DM roll (heh) with my hare-brained ideas in a way that's conducive to a fun campaign is awesome and what makes me love this game.

Yep, if everything is bland, then it makes the exceptions not unique or interesting.

 

[Capsaicin Addict]

The Chromebooks for CP2020 still stand as the gold standard for how to handle it IMO.

Politely disagree. Shadowtech was better.

What the....

Putting myself into the mind of a sci fi/cyberpunk Corporate; I'm not getting taken down by dangerhaired genderspecials. I'm co-opting their stupid asses to do advertising for it to make more money and paint the competitors as "Chuds" to get likeminded dolts to buy our crap and enable me to have something good to talk about at the next board meeting. But ya know, I'm just thinking like someone PROFIT MINDED, which is what I thought the point of a CORPORATION was.

Jeverrett Horne would have been a Corporate PC's prison bitch in a proper CP2020 game.

Fer fuck's sake, even the most idealistic Shadowrunners/Edgerunners knew that, in the end, they weren't doing anything other than helping one exec's bottom line while annoying another exec's PR.

Is there anything in this textual pile of puke about weapons, per se? What stops Gerald from getting potted in an unfortunate accident, for example?

 

[Pendulous Dong]

this page presented without comment

 

[Snekposter]

Only a nuke can improve Portland at this point.

God I hope so. But my gut says radiation would just make things worse, Fallout-style.

Also this cafe communist can eat shit since they benefit solely from capitalism to shit out such a garbage sci fi setting.

Headpattr was one of the most cringe-inducing things I have ever, ever seen. I know my weebery is showing but god damn, it is one of the most out-of-touch things I have ever seen, from the name to how it operates. A name change and treating it as a serious maid service that uses cat ears as a marketing gimmick would massively improve things.

This has been a problem long in the making. Even 20 years ago Lawful Good charcters were frequently interpreted as "so good that they're evil".

They can be. You know the old moral question of "Can a good man serve bad rulers?" That paradox of a good, lawful man being forced to obey a cruel man due to being the lawful ruler, even as he tries to mitigate said ruler's worst excesses as much as he can could be a fun moral quandary to deal with... if properly written.

Fer fuck's sake, even the most idealistic Shadowrunners/Edgerunners knew that, in the end, they weren't doing anything other than helping one exec's bottom line while annoying another exec's PR.

Don't forget taking as much for yourself from both sides as you can. Don't need to be a megacorp to play by megacorp rules... but it does make things easier to be giving orders to the corporate hit teams instead of running from them.