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

[Marissa Moira]

>get starter set for Dungeons And Dragons 5th edition
>write up says contains everything in the box to start the game and learn how to play
>Open it and first line after intro says you need 4-5 other friends to play Lost Mine of Phandelver
>box contains no friends

 

[Anonymus Fluhre]

I'm shocked that Meatpunk was made by a tranny shocked I say! And trans lesbian no less

 

[Judge Dredd]

I'm shocked that Meatpunk was made by a tranny shocked I say! And trans lesbian no less
View attachment 2224100

"Nazis watch out!"

 

[Fictional Character]

lol, if I'm not confusing sword thirsty lesbians with this, meatpunks's adventure listed is just "you're at a bar and some fascists are there and make a comment so you better go over there and fuck them up because that's the worst crime in meatpunk town... also this fighting spills outside and robots are involved somehow"

And the game stresses in the adventure that you're not supposed to give the fascists names or characterization. In case you missed it in the general GM advice section.

Plus you never get to find out what the fascists actually say that makes killing them 100% justified:

Say some horrible fascist bullshit
These are just the worst little shits imaginable. They love to get under peoples’
skin. You do not need to specifically dictate this action, since “say some fascist
bullshit to a person you know in real life” is an awful decision that proves the
Magic Circle to be bullshit, but you may imply it with whatever vagueness your
group is most comfortable with. Saying“He says some bullshit that really gets to
you” is totally acceptable.

 

[Sobble]

Alright, I want to review this, and I’m going to stick to something that others haven’t covered, the pre-published adventure.

To power level a little:

The adventure, Ghost Town, begins with our four pre-gen characters with full character creation rules promised in the kickstarter.

From left to right, this is Amber, Bartlett, Crowe, and Dandylion.

Now, EXTREME MEATPUNKS FOREVER has a few themes that we need to discuss:

• You’re a queer antifacist living in the Fouth Reich. Nazis are everywhere, they rule the world.
• You and your friends/found family are traveling, and you are all on the run from the Nazi Regime.
• The people of this world live on the corpse of a Dead God.
• The sun is missing (you might think this matters, but it literally does not).
• Metal exists, but is incredibly rare. If you dig down into the ground, you find meat and sinew, instead of stone and ore. Because of this, people use the Dead God’s flesh as a crafting material.

So, let’s look at these characters, Amber and Bartlett in particular.

Amber has visible, neatly healed, professionally done in a hospital top-surgery scars. That’s not a hackjob she had done by a sketchy dude in a garage somewhere because risking death was better than dealing with her dysphoria, those were done by a cosmetic surgeon. So at the bare minimum, the Nazis either funded, performed, or funded and performed her gender-affirming care. The Nazi Regime supports transition and gender-affirming surgeries, what machine are these idiots raging against?

Our pal Bartlett has a wheelchair, and the art here is kinda dumb. It looks their intention was that he made it himself out of bone and sinew he scavenged, but they gave up trying to design it halfway through and drew a metal wheelchair that was obviously mass produced. So is metal rare or isn’t it? Why would the Nazis mass-produce wheelchairs in their factories? Why are the Nazi’s giving up rare metals to help the disabled? They could have made his wheelchair look old and janky, because after the Nazis came to power, they pretty much stopped making them, or made them incredibly hard to get, so Bartlett and/or his family had to snag one out of a trash pile destined for an incinerator. Alternatively, they could have drawn a bone and meat one he built himself, something he had to do (or teach himself to do), because no one wants the Gestapo to catch them sheltering/helping the disabled, but they didn't do that either. He just has a shiny, off-the-rack new metal wheelchair.

You may be wondering if Bartlett will suffer literally any setback for being in a wheelchair? I’ll spoil it for you, he doesn’t. Every single location in Meatworld is handicap accessible, these installations presumably funded by the Fourth Reich’s generous social programs. Even the secret Nazi labs are wheelchair accessible. There’s a point where a secret room is accessible only via a hidden ladder, or the massive wheelchair ramp that's apparently right next to it.

‘But Sobble’, you say, ‘surely the adventure doesn’t specify that the Nazi Regime built all these handicapable buildings?’

Don’t worry, it does. More and more, the Nazis are looking like the good guys here. Moving on.

Full confession, I honestly think Crowe looks fucking rad. She’s a spooky Magical Negro, which is a poor choice if you don’t want to piss of the SJWs, but I doubt KF cares about that particular aspect. Also, the game is SJW bait, so they’ll never be called on it. There’s nothing unique about Crowe and Dandylion that speaks to the setting, but at this point, I’ll address all the characters together.

These characters are supposed to be desperate members of a violently persecuted minority, on the run from an enemy with limitless power, endless reach, and infinite cruelty. Even the world itself is hostile and uncaring to the life on its surface, full of hidden dangers and brooding monsters who will slay you in an instant. There’s almost no metal, and what does exist is guarded jealously by the Fourth Reich, so you can’t even forge proper tools to defend yourself. You can submit, and live as a slave in their cities, or you can flee, but the wilds are overrun with terrors, so you might not live at all. Mad Max, or perhaps Dark Sun, but with mecha.

That could have been a great pitch.

Then, for characters, we’re given a bunch of people wearing clothes they bought at Target. They’ve got a bunch of metal on them that they haven’t had to barter or trade away, and they’re clean, not starving (Amber is well-off enough to be fat) or disheveled, and they have makeup and clothes they bought at a shopping mall (more on this later). Amber has prescription glasses with gay pride frames and what I assume are supposed to be shiny new Doc Martens. Crowe is covered in metal jewelry. None of their shit is stolen or obviously handmade. Every one of them oozes suburban, middle-class affluence, like they’re the annoying hippie cousin who’s trying to sell you essential oils at Thanksgiving.

Or like someone read about punk and wanted to write about it.

 

[Hummingbird]

Alright, I want to review this, and I’m going to stick to something that others haven’t covered, the pre-published adventure.

To power level a little:

The adventure, Ghost Town, begins with our four pre-gen characters with full character creation rules promised in the kickstarter.

From left to right, this is Amber, Bartlett, Crowe, and Dandylion.

Now, EXTREME MEATPUNKS FOREVER has a few themes that we need to discuss:

• You’re a queer antifacist living in the Fouth Reich. Nazis are everywhere, they rule the world.
• You and your friends/found family are traveling, and you are all on the run from the Nazi Regime.
• The people of this world live on the corpse of a Dead God.
• The sun is missing (you might think this matters, but it literally does not).
• Metal exists, but is incredibly rare. If you dig down into the ground, you find meat and sinew, instead of stone and ore. Because of this, people use the Dead God’s flesh as a crafting material.

So, let’s look at these characters, Amber and Bartlett in particular.

Amber has visible, neatly healed, professionally done in a hospital top-surgery scars. That’s not a hackjob she had done by a sketchy dude in a garage somewhere because risking death was better than dealing with her dysphoria, those were done by a cosmetic surgeon. So at the bare minimum, the Nazis either funded, performed, or funded and performed her gender-affirming care. The Nazi Regime supports transition and gender-affirming surgeries, what machine are these idiots raging against?

Our pal Bartlett has a wheelchair, and the art here is kinda dumb. It looks their intention was that he made it himself out of bone and sinew he scavenged, but they gave up trying to design it halfway through and drew a metal wheelchair that was obviously mass produced. So is metal rare or isn’t it? Why would the Nazis mass-produce wheelchairs in their factories? Why are the Nazi’s giving up rare metals to help the disabled? They could have made his wheelchair look old and janky, because after the Nazis came to power, they pretty much stopped making them, or made them incredibly hard to get, so Bartlett and/or his family had to snag one out of a trash pile destined for an incinerator. Alternatively, they could have drawn a bone and meat one he built himself, something he had to do (or teach himself to do), because no one wants the Gestapo to catch them sheltering/helping the disabled, but they didn't do that either. He just has a shiny, off-the-rack new metal wheelchair.

You may be wondering if Bartlett will suffer literally any setback for being in a wheelchair? I’ll spoil it for you, he doesn’t. Every single location in Meatworld is handicap accessible, these installations presumably funded by the Fourth Reich’s generous social programs. Even the secret Nazi labs are wheelchair accessible. There’s a point where a secret room is accessible only via a hidden ladder, or the massive wheelchair ramp that's apparently right next to it.

‘But Sobble’, you say, ‘surely the adventure doesn’t specify that the Nazi Regime built all these handicapable buildings?’

Don’t worry, it does. More and more, the Nazis are looking like the good guys here. Moving on.

Full confession, I honestly think Crowe looks fucking rad. She’s a spooky Magical Negro, which is a poor choice if you don’t want to piss of the SJWs, but I doubt KF cares about that particular aspect. Also, the game is SJW bait, so they’ll never be called on it. There’s nothing unique about Crowe and Dandylion that speaks to the setting, but at this point, I’ll address all the characters together.

These characters are supposed to be desperate members of a violently persecuted minority, on the run from an enemy with limitless power, endless reach, and infinite cruelty. Even the world itself is hostile and uncaring to the life on its surface, full of hidden dangers and brooding monsters who will slay you in an instant. There’s almost no metal, and what does exist is guarded jealously by the Fourth Reich, so you can’t even forge proper tools to defend yourself. You can submit, and live as a slave in their cities, or you can flee, but the wilds are overrun with terrors, so you might not live at all. Mad Max, or perhaps Dark Sun, but with mecha.

That could have been a great pitch.

Then, for characters, we’re given a bunch of people wearing clothes they bought at Target. They’ve got a bunch of metal on them that they haven’t had to barter or trade away, and they’re clean, not starving (Amber is well-off enough to be fat) or disheveled, and they have makeup and clothes they bought at a shopping mall (more on this later). Amber has prescription glasses with gay pride frames and what I assume are supposed to be shiny new Doc Martens. Crowe is covered in metal jewelry. None of their shit is stolen or obviously handmade. Every one of them oozes suburban, middle-class affluence, like they’re the annoying hippie cousin who’s trying to sell you essential oils at Thanksgiving.

Or like someone read about punk and wanted to write about it.

I doubt that Nazis would be all that supportive towards transfolks to the point of helping them physically transition. And they didn't really like the disabled, either.

 

[FreedomMussel]

Is anybody interested in discussing urban fantasy that isn't Shadowrun or World of Darkness? I made a dedicated thread but it doesn't get any traction.

 

[Fictional Character]

I doubt that Nazis would be all that supportive towards transfolks to the point of helping them physically transition. And they didn't really like the disabled, either.

They're neo-nazis, so they updated their ideology for the modern times.

A more compassionate nazism is needed if National Socialism is to remain relevant in the 21st century.

 

[Morethanabitfoolish]

This looks as stupid as fuck and I don't know who else will mock it with me:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sinisterbeard/extreme-meatpunks-forever-the-roleplaying-game

That's pretty damn awful. Shame, there's some good ideas in there but they're lost in the mountains of crap.

 

[Adamska]

Alright, I want to review this, and I’m going to stick to something that others haven’t covered, the pre-published adventure.

To power level a little:

The adventure, Ghost Town, begins with our four pre-gen characters with full character creation rules promised in the kickstarter.

From left to right, this is Amber, Bartlett, Crowe, and Dandylion.

Now, EXTREME MEATPUNKS FOREVER has a few themes that we need to discuss:

• You’re a queer antifacist living in the Fouth Reich. Nazis are everywhere, they rule the world.
• You and your friends/found family are traveling, and you are all on the run from the Nazi Regime.
• The people of this world live on the corpse of a Dead God.
• The sun is missing (you might think this matters, but it literally does not).
• Metal exists, but is incredibly rare. If you dig down into the ground, you find meat and sinew, instead of stone and ore. Because of this, people use the Dead God’s flesh as a crafting material.

So, let’s look at these characters, Amber and Bartlett in particular.

Amber has visible, neatly healed, professionally done in a hospital top-surgery scars. That’s not a hackjob she had done by a sketchy dude in a garage somewhere because risking death was better than dealing with her dysphoria, those were done by a cosmetic surgeon. So at the bare minimum, the Nazis either funded, performed, or funded and performed her gender-affirming care. The Nazi Regime supports transition and gender-affirming surgeries, what machine are these idiots raging against?

Our pal Bartlett has a wheelchair, and the art here is kinda dumb. It looks their intention was that he made it himself out of bone and sinew he scavenged, but they gave up trying to design it halfway through and drew a metal wheelchair that was obviously mass produced. So is metal rare or isn’t it? Why would the Nazis mass-produce wheelchairs in their factories? Why are the Nazi’s giving up rare metals to help the disabled? They could have made his wheelchair look old and janky, because after the Nazis came to power, they pretty much stopped making them, or made them incredibly hard to get, so Bartlett and/or his family had to snag one out of a trash pile destined for an incinerator. Alternatively, they could have drawn a bone and meat one he built himself, something he had to do (or teach himself to do), because no one wants the Gestapo to catch them sheltering/helping the disabled, but they didn't do that either. He just has a shiny, off-the-rack new metal wheelchair.

You may be wondering if Bartlett will suffer literally any setback for being in a wheelchair? I’ll spoil it for you, he doesn’t. Every single location in Meatworld is handicap accessible, these installations presumably funded by the Fourth Reich’s generous social programs. Even the secret Nazi labs are wheelchair accessible. There’s a point where a secret room is accessible only via a hidden ladder, or the massive wheelchair ramp that's apparently right next to it.

‘But Sobble’, you say, ‘surely the adventure doesn’t specify that the Nazi Regime built all these handicapable buildings?’

Don’t worry, it does. More and more, the Nazis are looking like the good guys here. Moving on.

Full confession, I honestly think Crowe looks fucking rad. She’s a spooky Magical Negro, which is a poor choice if you don’t want to piss of the SJWs, but I doubt KF cares about that particular aspect. Also, the game is SJW bait, so they’ll never be called on it. There’s nothing unique about Crowe and Dandylion that speaks to the setting, but at this point, I’ll address all the characters together.

These characters are supposed to be desperate members of a violently persecuted minority, on the run from an enemy with limitless power, endless reach, and infinite cruelty. Even the world itself is hostile and uncaring to the life on its surface, full of hidden dangers and brooding monsters who will slay you in an instant. There’s almost no metal, and what does exist is guarded jealously by the Fourth Reich, so you can’t even forge proper tools to defend yourself. You can submit, and live as a slave in their cities, or you can flee, but the wilds are overrun with terrors, so you might not live at all. Mad Max, or perhaps Dark Sun, but with mecha.

That could have been a great pitch.

Then, for characters, we’re given a bunch of people wearing clothes they bought at Target. They’ve got a bunch of metal on them that they haven’t had to barter or trade away, and they’re clean, not starving (Amber is well-off enough to be fat) or disheveled, and they have makeup and clothes they bought at a shopping mall (more on this later). Amber has prescription glasses with gay pride frames and what I assume are supposed to be shiny new Doc Martens. Crowe is covered in metal jewelry. None of their shit is stolen or obviously handmade. Every one of them oozes suburban, middle-class affluence, like they’re the annoying hippie cousin who’s trying to sell you essential oils at Thanksgiving.

Or like someone read about punk and wanted to write about it.

Now remind me: didn't this book already get funded? Because I could've swore it did given this was a good while ago. If so, then they're committing fraud on Kickstarter by doing more panhandling.

Quality grifting, especially since it's literally just porting what little story they made for that shitty video game that Jaimas played a while back and the quickstart edition already exists.

 

[Sobble]

They're neo-nazis, so they updated their ideology for the modern times.

A more compassionate nazism is needed if National Socialism is to remain relevant in the 21st century.

In the game, the author's self-insert is a disabled transgender Jew, and the Nazis only actual problem with her is that she won't stop murdering people, they're cool with the other Jews.

Now remind me: didn't this book already get funded? Because I could've swore it did given this was a good while ago. If so, then they're committing fraud on Kickstarter by doing more panhandling.

Quality grifting, especially since it's literally just porting what little story they made for that shitty video game that Jaimas played a while back and the quickstart edition already exists.

This I can't speak to. I don't know if they had previous funding to make the game. It would not shock me if they were grifting, but I can't say for sure if they are or not.

Now, let’s get into the meat (haha) of Ghost Town. I’ll summarize here, because the adventure does a piss poor job of it.

The Supervisor of a farming town called Bunkerville has acquired a spirit called a Ghost. This spirit feeds on specificity, so if it attacks you, it’ll steal your identity and turn you into a faceless drone.

In a better game, this might have been an interesting plot point. Remember, in EXTREME MEATPUNKS FOREVER, the Nazis are not allowed to have names, identities, motivations, or backstories. They can’t care about things, have personal lives, or work towards any specific goals. Are these specificity-eating ghosts how they recruit? Are they themselves victims of Meatworld’s hostile native organisms? Is this some Old God shit? Can the faceless drones ever be cured?

Don’t worry, the adventure won’t address any of this.

Having acquired this ‘Ghost’, the Supervisor intends to lure the town’s residents into Bunkerville’s strongest tornado shelter, and once they’re inside, the Ghost will tunnel into the building and convert them all into faceless people.

The reason the Supervisor wants to do this is…

Well, there’s no reason. As noted, enemies in Meatworld don’t have names, personalities, or motivations, so the Supervisor wants to enact this plan because otherwise there would be no published adventure. He gains nothing from it, and arguably loses out in the end, because the Faceless are more fragile than people and aren’t particularly good farmers.

Ghost Town isn’t really a ghost story, nor is it a murder mystery, because you can win the scenario in the first scene by just walking into town and attacking the only dude in town who has no identity because he’s Fash. That’s literally all the depth this story has. The adventure seems to assume you’re going to do some kind of in-depth investigation, but in EXTREME MEATPUNKS FOREVER all of the bad guys are literally paper cut-outs of Nazis with targets painted on them, and the characters are actually stupider for not taking advantage of this fact.

So let’s go through this meandering piece-of-shit piece by piece.

The adventure starts off with our four meatpunks on the road. Seeing a storm brewing, the characters decide to stop at a bar made from a converted mech. Yes, it’s quite literally, ‘you all meet in a tavern’, but I won’t begrudge them this.

We're given some examples of how these authors think human interactions and dialogue work:

The bar is packed, because it’s opening night and all drinks are free. Three Nazis are also at the bar, and they talk some non-specific shit to the player characters, who murder them on the spot.

Now, something tells me that if a black guy talked shit to a cop and got shot in the face, the authors wouldn’t like that, but here, murder is a totally appropriate response to a drunk guy saying something like, ‘nice outfit, fag’, to you in a bar.

Another thing I want to point out here is that literally everyone has mechs. I don’t know if that was the author’s intention, but as presented, they’re as ubiquitous as cars. They really don’t seem to require any special resources, storage, or upkeep, and every named character (and unnamed fash) has one. Even people that are supposedly poor sharecroppers and unpaid cooks own personal battle mechs, so they’re not particularly special or even that big a deal. They’re pretty much the setting’s cars, which really cheapens the feeling of uniqueness I think they’re supposed to have.

No one in the bar cares that the meatpunks have murdered three people, and there are absolutely no consequences to doing so. I thought it was supposed to be about queer antifacists in a desperate fight for survival, but there’s literally no blowback for anything you do, including murdering whoever you want.

Anyways, while the characters are in the process of committing triple homicide, a tornado swoops down and picks up the bar. Everyone evacuates, but in their brave fight against the Nazis the characters have come to the attention of Alexander, who is described as a gay bear, and the community leader of Bunkerville. Having seen them murder three human beings because someone said a bad word, he concludes that they’re completely trustworthy, and asks them to help him investigate some disappearances in his town.

Let’s talk about Alexander a bit.

We’re told he’s married to another man and they have a child. So, the Nazi Regime allows gay men to marry and adopt children. He also owns a four-story wheelchair-accessible home, built for him by the Nazis when they set up the farming town of Bunkerville. Okay, in the Fourth Reich, gay men can marry, adopt children, and jointly own property. Alexander works, but his husband, Miguel, is a stay-at-home dad who runs a day-care center out of their home. Alright, so in this Nazi dystopia, gay men can marry, adopt children, jointly own property, be teachers, and it’s possible to support a family on a single income.

Again, what fucking machine are these people raging against? What additional societal change could the Fourth Reich adopt that would make them happy?

More and more, it looks like this is just a game about playing the ugliest murderers possible.

 

[Hummingbird]

In the game, the author's self-insert is a disabled transgender Jew, and the Nazis only actual problem with her is that she won't stop murdering people, they're cool with the other Jews.


This I can't speak to. I don't know if they had previous funding to make the game. It would not shock me if they were grifting, but I can't say for sure if they are or not.

Now, let’s get into the meat (haha) of Ghost Town. I’ll summarize here, because the adventure does a piss poor job of it.

The Supervisor of a farming town called Bunkerville has acquired a spirit called a Ghost. This spirit feeds on specificity, so if it attacks you, it’ll steal your identity and turn you into a faceless drone.

In a better game, this might have been an interesting plot point. Remember, in EXTREME MEATPUNKS FOREVER, the Nazis are not allowed to have names, identities, motivations, or backstories. They can’t care about things, have personal lives, or work towards any specific goals. Are these specificity-eating ghosts how they recruit? Are they themselves victims of Meatworld’s hostile native organisms? Is this some Old God shit? Can the faceless drones ever be cured?

Don’t worry, the adventure won’t address any of this.

Having acquired this ‘Ghost’, the Supervisor intends to lure the town’s residents into Bunkerville’s strongest tornado shelter, and once they’re inside, the Ghost will tunnel into the building and convert them all into faceless people.

The reason the Supervisor wants to do this is…

Well, there’s no reason. As noted, enemies in Meatworld don’t have names, personalities, or motivations, so the Supervisor wants to enact this plan because otherwise there would be no published adventure. He gains nothing from it, and arguably loses out in the end, because the Faceless are more fragile than people and aren’t particularly good farmers.

Ghost Town isn’t really a ghost story, nor is it a murder mystery, because you can win the scenario in the first scene by just walking into town and attacking the only dude in town who has no identity because he’s Fash. That’s literally all the depth this story has. The adventure seems to assume you’re going to do some kind of in-depth investigation, but in EXTREME MEATPUNKS FOREVER all of the bad guys are literally paper cut-outs of Nazis with targets painted on them, and the characters are actually stupider for not taking advantage of this fact.

So let’s go through this meandering piece-of-shit piece by piece.

The adventure starts off with our four meatpunks on the road. Seeing a storm brewing, the characters decide to stop at a bar made from a converted mech. Yes, it’s quite literally, ‘you all meet in a tavern’, but I won’t begrudge them this.

We're given some examples of how these authors think human interactions and dialogue work:

View attachment 2225363

The bar is packed, because it’s opening night and all drinks are free. Three Nazis are also at the bar, and they talk some non-specific shit to the player characters, who murder them on the spot.

Now, something tells me that if a black guy talked shit to a cop and got shot in the face, the authors wouldn’t like that, but here, murder is a totally appropriate response to a drunk guy saying something like, ‘nice outfit, fag’, to you in a bar.

Another thing I want to point out here is that literally everyone has mechs. I don’t know if that was the author’s intention, but as presented, they’re as ubiquitous as cars. They really don’t seem to require any special resources, storage, or upkeep, and every named character (and unnamed fash) has one. Even people that are supposedly poor sharecroppers and unpaid cooks own personal battle mechs, so they’re not particularly special or even that big a deal. They’re pretty much the setting’s cars, which really cheapens the feeling of uniqueness I think they’re supposed to have.

No one in the bar cares that the meatpunks have murdered three people, and there are absolutely no consequences to doing so. I thought it was supposed to be about queer antifacists in a desperate fight for survival, but there’s literally no blowback for anything you do, including murdering whoever you want.

Anyways, while the characters are in the process of committing triple homicide, a tornado swoops down and picks up the bar. Everyone evacuates, but in their brave fight against the Nazis the characters have come to the attention of Alexander, who is described as a gay bear, and the community leader of Bunkerville. Having seen them murder three human beings because someone said a bad word, he concludes that they’re completely trustworthy, and asks them to help him investigate some disappearances in his town.

Let’s talk about Alexander a bit.

We’re told he’s married to another man and they have a child. So, the Nazi Regime allows gay men to marry and adopt children. He also owns a four-story wheelchair-accessible home, built for him by the Nazis when they set up the farming town of Bunkerville. Okay, in the Fourth Reich, gay men can marry, adopt children, and jointly own property. Alexander works, but his husband, Miguel, is a stay-at-home dad who runs a day-care center out of their home. Alright, so in this Nazi dystopia, gay men can marry, adopt children, jointly own property, be teachers, and it’s possible to support a family on a single income.

Again, what fucking machine are these people raging against? What additional societal change could the Fourth Reich adopt that would make them happy?

More and more, it looks like this is just a game about playing the ugliest murderers possible.

It's like they didn't even pay attention in history class when it came to WW2 and the Nazis. Homosexuals were throw into the camps with the Jews. Not to mention why aren't there any death camps in this world? It's the same problem 5th ed. Ravenloft has, that everything has to be happy for the marginalized even if it goes outside the established lore and setting.

 

[Adamska]

In the game, the author's self-insert is a disabled transgender Jew, and the Nazis only actual problem with her is that she won't stop murdering people, they're cool with the other Jews.


This I can't speak to. I don't know if they had previous funding to make the game. It would not shock me if they were grifting, but I can't say for sure if they are or not.

Now, let’s get into the meat (haha) of Ghost Town. I’ll summarize here, because the adventure does a piss poor job of it.

The Supervisor of a farming town called Bunkerville has acquired a spirit called a Ghost. This spirit feeds on specificity, so if it attacks you, it’ll steal your identity and turn you into a faceless drone.

In a better game, this might have been an interesting plot point. Remember, in EXTREME MEATPUNKS FOREVER, the Nazis are not allowed to have names, identities, motivations, or backstories. They can’t care about things, have personal lives, or work towards any specific goals. Are these specificity-eating ghosts how they recruit? Are they themselves victims of Meatworld’s hostile native organisms? Is this some Old God shit? Can the faceless drones ever be cured?

Don’t worry, the adventure won’t address any of this.

Having acquired this ‘Ghost’, the Supervisor intends to lure the town’s residents into Bunkerville’s strongest tornado shelter, and once they’re inside, the Ghost will tunnel into the building and convert them all into faceless people.

The reason the Supervisor wants to do this is…

Well, there’s no reason. As noted, enemies in Meatworld don’t have names, personalities, or motivations, so the Supervisor wants to enact this plan because otherwise there would be no published adventure. He gains nothing from it, and arguably loses out in the end, because the Faceless are more fragile than people and aren’t particularly good farmers.

Ghost Town isn’t really a ghost story, nor is it a murder mystery, because you can win the scenario in the first scene by just walking into town and attacking the only dude in town who has no identity because he’s Fash. That’s literally all the depth this story has. The adventure seems to assume you’re going to do some kind of in-depth investigation, but in EXTREME MEATPUNKS FOREVER all of the bad guys are literally paper cut-outs of Nazis with targets painted on them, and the characters are actually stupider for not taking advantage of this fact.

So let’s go through this meandering piece-of-shit piece by piece.

The adventure starts off with our four meatpunks on the road. Seeing a storm brewing, the characters decide to stop at a bar made from a converted mech. Yes, it’s quite literally, ‘you all meet in a tavern’, but I won’t begrudge them this.

We're given some examples of how these authors think human interactions and dialogue work:

View attachment 2225363

The bar is packed, because it’s opening night and all drinks are free. Three Nazis are also at the bar, and they talk some non-specific shit to the player characters, who murder them on the spot.

Now, something tells me that if a black guy talked shit to a cop and got shot in the face, the authors wouldn’t like that, but here, murder is a totally appropriate response to a drunk guy saying something like, ‘nice outfit, fag’, to you in a bar.

Another thing I want to point out here is that literally everyone has mechs. I don’t know if that was the author’s intention, but as presented, they’re as ubiquitous as cars. They really don’t seem to require any special resources, storage, or upkeep, and every named character (and unnamed fash) has one. Even people that are supposedly poor sharecroppers and unpaid cooks own personal battle mechs, so they’re not particularly special or even that big a deal. They’re pretty much the setting’s cars, which really cheapens the feeling of uniqueness I think they’re supposed to have.

No one in the bar cares that the meatpunks have murdered three people, and there are absolutely no consequences to doing so. I thought it was supposed to be about queer antifacists in a desperate fight for survival, but there’s literally no blowback for anything you do, including murdering whoever you want.

Anyways, while the characters are in the process of committing triple homicide, a tornado swoops down and picks up the bar. Everyone evacuates, but in their brave fight against the Nazis the characters have come to the attention of Alexander, who is described as a gay bear, and the community leader of Bunkerville. Having seen them murder three human beings because someone said a bad word, he concludes that they’re completely trustworthy, and asks them to help him investigate some disappearances in his town.

Let’s talk about Alexander a bit.

We’re told he’s married to another man and they have a child. So, the Nazi Regime allows gay men to marry and adopt children. He also owns a four-story wheelchair-accessible home, built for him by the Nazis when they set up the farming town of Bunkerville. Okay, in the Fourth Reich, gay men can marry, adopt children, and jointly own property. Alexander works, but his husband, Miguel, is a stay-at-home dad who runs a day-care center out of their home. Alright, so in this Nazi dystopia, gay men can marry, adopt children, jointly own property, be teachers, and it’s possible to support a family on a single income.

Again, what fucking machine are these people raging against? What additional societal change could the Fourth Reich adopt that would make them happy?

More and more, it looks like this is just a game about playing the ugliest murderers possible.

FuCk ArOuNd AnD fInD oUuUtTtT~

But in all seriousness, I wouldn't be shocked if this adventure was cut content from their horrible game or actually the plot itself.

Again, it's impressive to see incompetence this grand, and I'm glad the group and I didn't read this far in because fuck this.

 

[BScCollateral]

Every single location in Meatworld is handicap accessible, these installations presumably funded by the Fourth Reich’s generous social programs.

Nazi Germany had one of the first if not the first public-funded health care systems. Otherwise, carry on.

 

[Corn Flakes]

FuCk ArOuNd AnD fInD oUuUtTtT~

But in all seriousness, I wouldn't be shocked if this adventure was cut content from their horrible game or actually the plot itself.

Again, it's impressive to see incompetence this grand, and I'm glad the group and I didn't read this far in because fuck this.

I'm glad, too. I only made it halfway through the stream recording before closing the tab out of sheer cringe. Getting to that adventure would have given you guys a fucking collective aneurysm.

Nazi Germany had one of the first if not the first public-funded health care systems. Otherwise, carry on.

They were, however, rather particular about who got to use it.

 

[Juke and Jam]

It's like they didn't even pay attention in history class when it came to WW2 and the Nazis. Homosexuals were throw into the camps with the Jews. Not to mention why aren't there any death camps in this world? It's the same problem 5th ed. Ravenloft has, that everything has to be happy for the marginalized even if it goes outside the established lore and setting.

Companies are scrambling to get money out of the social justice Twitter audience. That's why everything has to be simplified into a milquetoast theme park experience. No chills, or thrills allowed. First problem is, that they're trying to hop on board of a moving train that has been running out of track for over a year now. Second problem being, that the audience they're trying to pathetically cajole does not spend money on this hobby. In fact, they don't spend money on the vast majority of things that they pretend to get outraged about. Small indie creators, like this Meatpunker, can keep costs low and turn a minor profit, but for them it's more about self-expression. Which is often batshit crazy and god bless them for all the free entertainment.

 

[Sobble]

So, here’s where I can say without a doubt that this game was written by upper-middle class white transbians (i.e. straight dudes who have never suffered from real oppression in their lives).

The game tells us that Alexander and the people of Bunkerville tried to unionize two years ago, but the effort was halted early on, with Alexander selling his co-workers out to the Nazis. All of the people who have gone missing were part of the effort, and Alexander fears they are being targeted by the Nazi Regime. This is why he asked the meatpunks for help.

The only reason given for the effort is that, ‘they were trying to ‘make the town a better place to live’, and this right here is one of EXTREME MEATPUNKS FOREVER‘s big faults.

No one, the villains, the common people of the setting, or the heroes, actually have any goals. It’s just constant Us vs. Them with absolutely nothing to strive for. The authors read on twitter that unions are good, therefore Alexander is above reproach, and him being a Nazi collaborator who sold out his friends is forgivable (seriously, the adventure does not even address this). Likewise, union busters are bad, therefore the Supervisor is evil and needs to be murdered (even though he’s not said to have taken any direct action against the union, only that the effort fell apart).

...but, what, honestly, did Alexander and the others want? People put their bodies and their jobs where their politics are because they want change and they’re willing to take risks to get it. So what was their end goal? Did they want higher wages? Safer working conditions? Better equipment? New tornado shelters? For the Reich to build a better school in their town? A fire station? The authors have completely failed to put themselves in the shoes of the people they’re supposed to be writing about. They want a world where oppressed people fight the Nazis, but they don’t want any actual oppression in the world, and this actually weakens the presentation dramatically.

Here’s an example. The farmers of Bunkerville grow genetically modified crops, digwheat and burrowcorn, which have been engineered to bury themselves when they sense the change in pressure that indicates a tornado is coming. A sort of combination food source/early warning system. We’re told that the farmers are forbidden from stealing the crops, if they want to eat from the fields, they have to buy the flour and corn like everyone else.

So, right there, you could have had a great set-up for conflict, with farmers being paid in company scrip who are now desperately in debt to the company store, surrounded by food but always teetering on the brink of starvation. There could be punishing work quotas, or cruel overseers patrolling the fields with shock whips, making sure that no one walks off with seeds in their pocket.

Here’s the thing though - the people in Bunkerville actually have it pretty good. There’s only a single Nazi in town, the Supervisor. He has no guards, no staff, and no soldiers. There are also no police in Bunkerville, and the citizens run the town themselves. So the whole, ‘don’t steal from the fields’ laws operate entirely on the honor system - since literally no one from the Fourth Reich is watching the crops. Several married couples are mentioned, all of them single-income, so the company pays enough to support a family on an honest day's work. No one is said to be starving or in dire straits (everyone owns pretty sweet three or four floor homes and has a personal mech, hunting gear, and private underground gardens), though there is a brief one-liner about how the company store is prohibitively expensive, so people just… choose not to shop there.

All of the ways in which the working class are exploited by the wealthy sailed right over the author’s heads, and they have absolutely no desire to do any research on it or engage with it - hence the belief that, ‘just make things better’, is a goal that people can (or will) organize around. It’s definitely possible to write a good adventure where people rise up against the tyranny of corporate interests, but like I said, these authors want a world where you can fight back, but they keep shying away from writing about anything you might actually fight back against. They sure as fuck don’t want to examine their own comfortable lives, which I think is why we get writing like this. Alexander and his people don't come off as desperate people in a bad situation, they come off as entitled whiners.

EXTREME MEATPUNKS FOREVER is actually one of the least punk things I’ve ever read. The whole theme of this game appears to be, ‘The poltics we absorbed from twitter are right, and if you question us, you’re a Nazi’.

 

[Adamska]

So, here’s where I can say without a doubt that this game was written by upper-middle class white transbians (i.e. straight dudes who have never suffered from real oppression in their lives).

The game tells us that Alexander and the people of Bunkerville tried to unionize two years ago, but the effort was halted early on, with Alexander selling his co-workers out to the Nazis. All of the people who have gone missing were part of the effort, and Alexander fears they are being targeted by the Nazi Regime. This is why he asked the meatpunks for help.

The only reason given for the effort is that, ‘they were trying to ‘make the town a better place to live’, and this right here is one of EXTREME MEATPUNKS FOREVER‘s big faults.

No one, the villains, the common people of the setting, or the heroes, actually have any goals. It’s just constant Us vs. Them with absolutely nothing to strive for. The authors read on twitter that unions are good, therefore Alexander is above reproach, and him being a Nazi collaborator who sold out his friends is forgivable (seriously, the adventure does not even address this). Likewise, union busters are bad, therefore the Supervisor is evil and needs to be murdered (even though he’s not said to have taken any direct action against the union, only that the effort fell apart).

...but, what, honestly, did Alexander and the others want? People put their bodies and their jobs where their politics are because they want change and they’re willing to take risks to get it. So what was their end goal? Did they want higher wages? Safer working conditions? Better equipment? New tornado shelters? For the Reich to build a better school in their town? A fire station? The authors have completely failed to put themselves in the shoes of the people they’re supposed to be writing about. They want a world where oppressed people fight the Nazis, but they don’t want any actual oppression in the world, and this actually weakens the presentation dramatically.

Here’s an example. The farmers of Bunkerville grow genetically modified crops, digwheat and burrowcorn, which have been engineered to bury themselves when they sense the change in pressure that indicates a tornado is coming. A sort of combination food source/early warning system. We’re told that the farmers are forbidden from stealing the crops, if they want to eat from the fields, they have to buy the flour and corn like everyone else.

So, right there, you could have had a great set-up for conflict, with farmers being paid in company scrip who are now desperately in debt to the company store, surrounded by food but always teetering on the brink of starvation. There could be punishing work quotas, or cruel overseers patrolling the fields with shock whips, making sure that no one walks off with seeds in their pocket.

Here’s the thing though - the people in Bunkerville actually have it pretty good. There’s only a single Nazi in town, the Supervisor. He has no guards, no staff, and no soldiers. There are also no police in Bunkerville, and the citizens run the town themselves. So the whole, ‘don’t steal from the fields’ laws operate entirely on the honor system - since literally no one from the Fourth Reich is watching the crops. Several married couples are mentioned, all of them single-income, so the company pays enough to support a family on an honest day's work. No one is said to be starving or in dire straits (everyone owns pretty sweet three or four floor homes and has a personal mech, hunting gear, and private underground gardens), though there is a brief one-liner about how the company store is prohibitively expensive, so people just… choose not to shop there.

All of the ways in which the working class are exploited by the wealthy sailed right over the author’s heads, and they have absolutely no desire to do any research on it or engage with it - hence the belief that, ‘just make things better’, is a goal that people can (or will) organize around. It’s definitely possible to write a good adventure where people rise up against the tyranny of corporate interests, but like I said, these authors want a world where you can fight back, but they keep shying away from writing about anything you might actually fight back against. They sure as fuck don’t want to examine their own comfortable lives, which I think is why we get writing like this. Alexander and his people don't come off as desperate people in a bad situation, they come off as entitled whiners.

EXTREME MEATPUNKS FOREVER is actually one of the least punk things I’ve ever read. The whole theme of this game appears to be, ‘The poltics we absorbed from twitter are right, and if you question us, you’re a Nazi’.

I suspect every single mental case that worked on it were trust fund kids who are just a bit smarter than ADF given that they seem to barely understand marxist thought, they don't know what work is like, and they had the time to absorb the most retarded takes on twitter.

Like shit, not hard to have your idea, especially if you make the nazis Gene Purists like what I came up with off the top of my head. Them making more perfect crops for services would fit.

It's actually amazing how incompetent this product is. I also am beginning to suspect this is the final end point of entertainment before the pendulum swings back.

 

[Capsaicin Addict]

This ties into a common problem with radleft themes: their enemies must be both terrible and irredeemable, and yet weak and easily defeated.

Which is a real problem: if your villain is a wuss, why are the heroes concerned? To draw an analogy: imagine if the Ringwraiths in Lord of the Rings could be fended off by waving a fistful of pipeweed at them. Suddenly they're not exactly intimidating, are they?

Plus, as noted: the bad guys never seem to get any characterization. This is a long-running symptom in radleft thought, and you can see its echoes in some of the bans handed out at RPGnet. No discussion of bad things allowed except to say 'they're bad'. This is another reflection of that; the enemies cannot be more than cardboard cutouts. Even animated, mindless skeletons have more depth than the enemies depicted here.

Why? My guess is that they're fearful that if they offer the bad guys any characterization, people might start to identify with or at least analyze them, and God knows we can't have that! There are already people who point out that the Coalition in Rifts has a small point, as does the Jovian Republic in Eclipse Phase. That's doubleplusungood badthink!

 

[Judge Dredd]

They sure as fuck don’t want to examine their own comfortable lives, which I think is why we get writing like this.

It makes me wonder, is their understanding of their own ideology this shallow, or is their understanding deep enough that they realise that they can't write about it without the hypocrisy being apparent?

Edit because ninja'd.

This ties into a common problem with radleft themes: their enemies must be both terrible and irredeemable, and yet weak and easily defeated.

It's not just that. They have be so powerful that even the most milquetoast threats are serious despite their supposed weakness and ineptness.

This causes a problem seen in the Law and Order GamerGate episode. Acid Rain and his crew are said to be losers. They live in their parents basement, they're threatened by women making games. But at every turn they run circles around the NYPD and are only caught when a friend rats them out, and even though they're caught they manage to win in the end.

Or there's the opposite problem seen here. We're told the nazis are evil and irredeemable, but we're never shown any evidence of that, and if anything are shown evidence of the opposite. This makes the so called "heroes" seem like psychos attacking people for no reason.