I agree that D&D generally does a super shitty job on developing races as anything more than a statblock with a handful of stereotypes attached. But I'm also not really sure it should go further than that? It's kind of a toolbox RPG, isn't it?
How much material like the "Complete Book to <Insert Race>" was there for later versions of D&D? Those books had the problem of generally not being very usable but I still liked them a lot.
A friend sent me a poem last night and now I really, really want to play The Veil as The Attached as a Mechagirl
The Melancholy of Mechagirl
Catherynne M. Valente
X Prefecture drive time radio
trills and pops
its pink rhinestone bubble tunes—
pipe that sound into my copper-riveted heart,
that softgirl/brightgirl/candygirl electrocheer gigglenoise
right down through the steelfrown tunnels of my
all-hearing head.
Best stay
out of my way
when I’ve got my groovewalk going. It’s a rhythm
you learn:
move those ironzilla legs
to the cherry-berry vanillacream sparklepop
and your pneumafuel efficiency will increase
according to the Yakihatsu formula (sigma3, 9 to the power of four)
Robots are like Mars: they need
girls.
Boys won’t do;
the memesoup is all wrong. They stomp
when they should kiss
and they’re none too keen
on having things shoved inside them.
You can’t convince them
there’s nothing kinky going on:
you can’t move the machine without IV interface
fourteen intra-optical displays
a codedump wafer like a rose petal
under the tongue,
silver tubes
wrapped around your bones.
It’s just a job.
Why do boys have to make everything
sound weird? It’s not a robot
until you put a girl inside. Sometimes
I feel like that.
A junkyard
the Company forgot to put a girl in.
I mean yeah.
My crystal fingers are laser-enabled
light comes out of me
like dawn. Bright orangecream
killpink
sizzling tangerine deathglitter. But what
does it mean? Is this really
a retirement plan?
All of us Company Girls
sitting in the Company Home
in our giant angular titanium suits
knitting tiny versions of our robot selves
playing poker with xray eyes
crushing the tea kettle with hotlilac chromium fists
every day at 3?
I get a break
every spring.
Big me
powers down
transparent highly conductive golden eyeball
by transparent highly-conductive golden eyeball.
Little me steps out
and the plum blossoms quiver
like a frothy fuchsia baseline.
My body is
full of holes
where the junkbody metalgirl tinkid used to be
inside me inside it
and I try to go out for tea and noodles
but they only taste like crystallized cobalt-4
and faithlessness.
I feel my suit
all around me. It wants. I want. Cold scrapcode
drifts like snow behind my eyes.
I can’t understand
why no one sees the dinosaur bones
of my exo-self
dwarfing the ramen-slingers
and their steamscalded cheeks.
Maybe I go dancing
Maybe I light incense.
Maybe I fuck, maybe I get fucked.
Nothing is as big inside me
as I am
when I am inside me.
When I am big
I can run so fast
out of my skin
my feet are mighty,
flamecushioned and undeniable.
I salute with my sadgirl/hardgirl/crunchgirl
purplebolt tungsten hands
the size of cars
and Saturn tips a ring.
It hurts to be big
but everyone sees me.
When I am little
when I am just a pretty thing
and they think I am bandaged
to fit the damagedgirl fashionpop manifesto
instead of to hide my nickelplate entrance nodes
well
I can’t get out of that suit either
but it doesn’t know how to vibrate
a building under her audioglass palm
until it shatters.
I guess what I mean to say is
I’ll never have kids. Chances for promotion
are minimal and my pension
sucks. That’s ok.
After all, there is so much work
to do. Enough for forever.
And I’m so good at it.
All my sitreps shine
like so many platinum dolls.
I’m due for a morphomod soon—
I’ll be able to double over at the waist
like I’ve had something cut out of me
and fold up into a magentanosed Centauri-capable spaceship.
So I’ve got that going for me.
At least fatigue isn’t a factor. I have a steady
decalescent greengolden stream
of sourshimmer stimulants
available at the balling of my toes.
On balance, to pay for the rest
well
you’ve never felt anything
like a pearlypink ball of plasmid clingflame
releasing from your mouth
like a burst of song.
And Y Prefecture
is just so close by.
The girls and I talk.
We say:
start a dream journal.
take up ikebana.
make your own jam.
We say:
Next spring
let’s go to Australia together
look at the kangaroos.
We say:
turn up that sweet vibevox happygirl music
tap the communal PA
we’ve got a long walk ahead of us today
and at the end of it
a fire like six perfect flowers
arranged in an iron vase.
Inquisitor on
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Zonugal(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered Userregular
I agree that D&D generally does a super shitty job on developing races as anything more than a statblock with a handful of stereotypes attached. But I'm also not really sure it should go further than that? It's kind of a toolbox RPG, isn't it?
How much material like the "Complete Book to <Insert Race>" was there for later versions of D&D? Those books had the problem of generally not being very usable but I still liked them a lot.
In 3.0 & 3.5 we had:
Races of Faerûn: This book is a sourcebook set in the Forgotten Realms for the 3rd-edition Dungeons & Dragons rule-set, detailing various races and ethnicities in the Realms. Races of Destiny: This book deals with races that live primarily in urban settings, specifically humans, half-orcs, and a new race called the Illumian, whose most notable features are the sigils that constantly orbit their heads. This book is centered on races, their human blood and the effects of this. Races of Stone: This book focuses on gnomes, dwarves, and a new race, called goliaths, providing cultural information for these races as well as subraces. Races of the Dragon: This book contains info on two new races. This book offers a new race that works well with the Dungeons & Dragons sorcerers, a class that uses magical power derived from having dragon blood. Races of the Wild: This book contains background information on the elves and halflings, introduces a race of winged humanoids called "raptorans," as well as giving rules for playing wilderness based creatures such as fey and centaurs as player characters. Races of Eberron: This book is an accessory for the Eberron setting that provides information on the races originally presented in the Eberron Campaign Setting: the warforged, shifters, changelings, and kalashtar. The includes the psychology, society, culture, behavior, religion, folklore, and other aspects of the races.
Zonugal on
+2
Options
DepressperadoI just wanted to see you laughingin the pizza rainRegistered Userregular
edited March 2018
I'm cool with D&D keeping its Races relatively vague.
Like, a Wood Elf, they're into trees and nature, but that doesn't always mean they're Mirkwood Elves
Maybe they're more like hunters and trappers that respect the Game
weird semi-fae that live in tree trunks
or cannibals that lurk in the boughs of the deepwood
heck, maybe they're just Lothlórien Elves
you can just make up what you want
though, that being the case, I would appreciate more uh, granularity, I think is the word?
Like, when you pick a Race, you pick from a selection of attributes that Race has, as opposed to Every Elf Gets This
edit: Damn, I could really get down with 5e Eberron
Depressperado on
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
I just wrote all my class features and stuff out on index cards for fast reference and marked the important pages of the phb with more cards.
I'm ready for more d&d today.
Most of the folks I game with could use a lesson in organization from you.
One of our guys only writes down the name of his spells and then uses his phone to look them up on the SRD, and it takes forever each time, and then he has to see if the spell does what he thinks it does.
I just wrote all my class features and stuff out on index cards for fast reference and marked the important pages of the phb with more cards.
I'm ready for more d&d today.
Most of the folks I game with could use a lesson in organization from you.
One of our guys only writes down the name of his spells and then uses his phone to look them up on the SRD, and it takes forever each time, and then he has to see if the spell does what he thinks it does.
I grabbed the spellbook app on my android phone too.
I just wrote all my class features and stuff out on index cards for fast reference and marked the important pages of the phb with more cards.
I'm ready for more d&d today.
Most of the folks I game with could use a lesson in organization from you.
One of our guys only writes down the name of his spells and then uses his phone to look them up on the SRD, and it takes forever each time, and then he has to see if the spell does what he thinks it does.
I grabbed the spellbook app on my android phone too.
I ended up buying our group the arcane spell cards pack. Now both arcane casters in the group have their spells on cards in front of them. Even after one session it was worth it.
Ugh. I see myself getting really into the new Star Wars Legion game.
My main complaint about it is the same for Battlefront, Xwing
Why would Vader/Luke or whatever showrunner be here?
Because between the beginning of ANH and the end of ROTJ there's like five years and in a society with FTL travel that's in a civil war that means you can be at a lot of battles.
So I'm wanting to do something a bit more Space Opera-y, inspirations from the Culture series, Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, that sort of thing
Currently I am working with a degree of a Star Trek pastiche, where the PCs are from a political alliance called the Polity. The Polity is made up of five species across six major habitable star systems (with each species originating from one of the systems, and the final system being a multi-species colony) and a few dozen small colonies, science stations, relays and so on. The Polity is sufficiently advanced that it has managed to almost entirely get rid of poverty and has advanced medical technology, meaning that diseases and such are easily cured in the majority of cases. It is automated luxury gay space communism that we have created, comrades.
Three of the species are humanoid, and all three developed from native primates that appear to have emerged as a result of genetic manipulation by an unknown alien entity (this is the divergence from our world, and gives and excuse to have humans-but-with-a-weird-forehead like Star Trek does). Two of the species are non-humanoid, one of them being four-legged Spider/Crab type things who live on a radiation saturated world, have no real concept of conflict or violence (no predators), live for ages, are a few feet tall, are highly intelligent and are generally considered to be the originators of the Polity due to developing interstellar travel and encountering humanity. They are very clever and artistic, but have a slow reproductive process and therefore are not too numerous, around a billion or so in total.
The other humanoid species include a slightly dolphin like aquatic mammal species from an ocean world, who believe in group ownership but also don't really organise on levels larger than the extended family/friends unit, and have never had big nations and such, and have a massively varied set of languages, cultural norms etc. They were pretty technologically undeveloped when they were discovered, but have been brought up to speed and are now an energetic and potent part of the Polity, making up a large number of their explorers and with an exploding artistic and scientific culture. There is also a four-limbed, four eyed humanoid species that humans tend to find rather attractive if odd. They have highly developed senses and analytical minds, and can instantly perform complex calculations in their head, living on a very volcanically active world this was necessary to detect dangers in their surroundings and move quickly to a new place (with four arms being useful, as two can hold a child, the other two can be used to climb). They are naturally very logical due to their mathematical minds, but are quite individualistic outside of their family units. So they have governments and social groups because they can see the logical worth of them, but tend to be caught up in cultural movements. Very idealistic though. They were quite advanced, spaceflight level, when discovered.
Humans are the social predators, active and good at organising, with competitive minds tempered by a lack of scarcity for basic resources (no replicators or anything like that, just a mostly automated society with a UBI that means people can live comfortably their entire lives without worrying about working at anything other than their personal interests), and they live in orbitals around Sol planets and Moons, which they are terraforming into garden worlds (and in the case of Earth, basically preserving it's natural beauty so that other intelligent life can grow there without being destroyed by humans first).
So really I need a final non-humanoid species to make things up, so to speak. Any ideas? There is a rival political entity of anarcho-capitalists/libertarians who are dealing with their own version of post-scarcity for basic resources and thus look quite unusual and interesting (art and culture is scarce by nature, and therefore it has been made a commodity), a fleet of sentient spaceships who seem to be on a massive migration path through the polity towards a big Nebula, and the Imperials, who are a humanoid species that live in the Nebula and are horrible fascist ethno-supremacists, and the reason why the Polity still has guns on spaceships.
To be clear, I lifted that right out of my current own project, but I love the idea of space bees so I just throw it at people at this point
(the bees are only telepathic to each other, come in bonded pairs that bond for life, manipulate stuff that isn't designed for them with limited telekinesis, have weird pheromones/pollen that have a calming effect on most sentient lifeforms and cure hayfever after being around them long enough, and lay eggs in small hex-shaped organic spaceborn clusters that they send into random wormholes to start a new hive on another world)
A species of superficially insect-like creatures that developed in the upper atmosphere of a gas giant, their bodies buoyed by lighter-than-their-air gases inside, like all the lifeforms that developed in their exotic ecosystem. Due to developing in the upper atmosphere all solid matter they encountered pre-space travel was either living or the remains of something living, and they built their culture on the husks of gargantuan gas giant whales.
How alien do you want these non-human aliens? Like, several-meter tall squid beasts that experience time in a non-linear fashion, or is something like tiger people more what you're looking for?
Something that could join with the other four species as described above and create a utopian political entity, and something playable as a PC
But also something non-humanoid
Gas Giant dwellers is quite cool, mind. I am not sure how you'd get life in the upper atmosphere of a Gas Giant developing in of itself, but then, I am not a xenobiologist so I am sure you could handwave it
Lighter than atmosphere beings though... hmmm... even if I didn't use them for this, I'd have to use them for something else really
I mean, Iain M. Banks has written a non-Culture SF book about gas giant-dwelling aliens that are intelligent but have very different ideas about society and what-not. It's called The Algebraist and was pretty good IIRC.
Everyone loves dinosaurs, so i consider dinosaur people always an option. No need to make them anthropomorphic, just give some troodons or raptors arms with dextrous hands and a bigger brain.
Squid people are also a classic, although prepare for hentai jokes
A species that developed in a radically different environment, such as Venus, that requires a env. suit on at all times to survive on other species' ships
A parasitic/symbiotic intelligence that attaches to a species with manual dexterity on their own planet (probably something more unique than apes), and maybe there is a split in their society between 'original platform' symbiotes and 'artificial platform' ones
Goo or amoeba-like species that developed sort of like hermit crabs, using pseudopods to gather an exoskeleton and tools and now they have much more advanced suits to move around and communicate in - also more hentai jokes here, probably
An Alien race that I always thought was neat and could be worth stealing is the Ijad from Mobile Frame Zero.
They have boneless, 10 cm long bodies. They have long antennae which contain organs for peripheral sensing, eating, and communicating. They are genderless but reproduce sexually, with one or both individuals carrying the eggs for the next generation.
They were originally a parasitical life form that hormonally controlled the other complex species of their planets for their own benefit. During fat times they'd use and discard the other species for work, during lean times they'd stay attached to the same host for months or years, carefully maintaining the host. Physically weak, but very smart, they ended up creating a more symbiotic relationship with the more robust animals of their planet. Their brawn combined with the Ijad brain lead to city farms, and then engineering. They could ride flying animals to spread their civilization. As they spread out they fell into the normal pattern of splitting into factions and warfare amongst one another, attaching themselves to creatures suited for combat. After a large war, they basically decided that they big cities were a mistake, and went back to small, communal living.
Eventually, space sparing races showed up on their planets, and then their were other sentient races to attach to. When they fuse with a human it's like two sentient creatures in one body.
In the game, whatever the animal they are bonded with is what their mech or spaceship or whatever looks like. So bind with a quadruped? Get a quadruped mech. Want to make a fighter jet? Bond with some kind of sleek avian creature and build a chassis that resembles that, etc.
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tzeentchlingDoctor of RocksOaklandRegistered Userregular
Some sort of insectoid race? Thi-keen style, maybe preying mantis style? Highly organized, possibly militaristic but possibly just different castes that are good at certain things - engineering/science, building, warfare, trading, piloting.
Space humanoid mammals that are your Star Trek humans with forehead ridges. Like humans they developed tribes early on for communal survival, but their empathy for group survival went extreme and changed their concept of self. When you ask a human where they are they will indicate their own body, either chest or head or something. When you ask that of this alien they make a broad sweep towards all of their kind nearby. Their minds are not connected, there's no hive mind, they just perceive themself as the collective. Relatively young species advancing their civilization quickly to spaceflight due to the cooperative nature of the way their brains work. Still some social divides on members of the species that consider every member of their species part of the collective, or every member of the Polity is part of the collective. Within the Polity they can create very efficient teams that may as well have a hive mind with how well they work together, but their population is relatively small and you need like a hundred of them to match the best of other species.
An Alien race that I always thought was neat and could be worth stealing is the Ijad from Mobile Frame Zero.
They have boneless, 10 cm long bodies. They have long antennae which contain organs for peripheral sensing, eating, and communicating. They are genderless but reproduce sexually, with one or both individuals carrying the eggs for the next generation.
They were originally a parasitical life form that hormonally controlled the other complex species of their planets for their own benefit. During fat times they'd use and discard the other species for work, during lean times they'd stay attached to the same host for months or years, carefully maintaining the host. Physically weak, but very smart, they ended up creating a more symbiotic relationship with the more robust animals of their planet. Their brawn combined with the Ijad brain lead to city farms, and then engineering. They could ride flying animals to spread their civilization. As they spread out they fell into the normal pattern of splitting into factions and warfare amongst one another, attaching themselves to creatures suited for combat. After a large war, they basically decided that they big cities were a mistake, and went back to small, communal living.
Eventually, space sparing races showed up on their planets, and then their were other sentient races to attach to. When they fuse with a human it's like two sentient creatures in one body.
In the game, whatever the animal they are bonded with is what their mech or spaceship or whatever looks like. So bind with a quadruped? Get a quadruped mech. Want to make a fighter jet? Bond with some kind of sleek avian creature and build a chassis that resembles that, etc.
You know, a parasite race that we’re previously unacceptable/antagonistic to the alliance but eventually developed artificial hosts to use and integrated could be a neat take on modular/robotic species.
could be some interesting social conflict in such a society between the liberals who believe that other lifeforms have a right to autonomy and respect, or at the very least that the best path to the continued survival of their species depends on coexistence with the other advanced interstellar species, vs. the old guard conservatives who think other sentient forms of life should be thought of merely as fodder for the parasites and subjugated.
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StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
Hopefully this isn't the case for you Moriveth but counterfeit boardgames on Amazon is a thing to be wary of.
Yeah, I was thinking about that myself. It does look like the seller is a third party seller using Amazon fulfillment, but they seem to be a more or less legit board game outlet, and they have no negative reviews. The other stuff they're selling is on a variety of price point/discount levels, so it's not like they've got everything they're doing marked down super low or something suspicious like that.
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Librarian's ghostLibrarian, Ghostbuster, and TimSporkRegistered Userregular
Ugh. I see myself getting really into the new Star Wars Legion game.
My main complaint about it is the same for Battlefront, Xwing
Why would Vader/Luke or whatever showrunner be here?
Because between the beginning of ANH and the end of ROTJ there's like five years and in a society with FTL travel that's in a civil war that means you can be at a lot of battles.
Also because it is cool and also I can ditch Luke and have Princess Leia leading my army and that is super rad!
Posts
I'm ready for more d&d today.
How much material like the "Complete Book to <Insert Race>" was there for later versions of D&D? Those books had the problem of generally not being very usable but I still liked them a lot.
Catherynne M. Valente
X Prefecture drive time radio
trills and pops
its pink rhinestone bubble tunes—
pipe that sound into my copper-riveted heart,
that softgirl/brightgirl/candygirl electrocheer gigglenoise
right down through the steelfrown tunnels of my
all-hearing head.
Best stay
out of my way
when I’ve got my groovewalk going. It’s a rhythm
you learn:
move those ironzilla legs
to the cherry-berry vanillacream sparklepop
and your pneumafuel efficiency will increase
according to the Yakihatsu formula (sigma3, 9 to the power of four)
Robots are like Mars: they need
girls.
Boys won’t do;
the memesoup is all wrong. They stomp
when they should kiss
and they’re none too keen
on having things shoved inside them.
You can’t convince them
there’s nothing kinky going on:
you can’t move the machine without IV interface
fourteen intra-optical displays
a codedump wafer like a rose petal
under the tongue,
silver tubes
wrapped around your bones.
It’s just a job.
Why do boys have to make everything
sound weird? It’s not a robot
until you put a girl inside. Sometimes
I feel like that.
A junkyard
the Company forgot to put a girl in.
I mean yeah.
My crystal fingers are laser-enabled
light comes out of me
like dawn. Bright orangecream
killpink
sizzling tangerine deathglitter. But what
does it mean? Is this really
a retirement plan?
All of us Company Girls
sitting in the Company Home
in our giant angular titanium suits
knitting tiny versions of our robot selves
playing poker with xray eyes
crushing the tea kettle with hotlilac chromium fists
every day at 3?
I get a break
every spring.
Big me
powers down
transparent highly conductive golden eyeball
by transparent highly-conductive golden eyeball.
Little me steps out
and the plum blossoms quiver
like a frothy fuchsia baseline.
My body is
full of holes
where the junkbody metalgirl tinkid used to be
inside me inside it
and I try to go out for tea and noodles
but they only taste like crystallized cobalt-4
and faithlessness.
I feel my suit
all around me. It wants. I want. Cold scrapcode
drifts like snow behind my eyes.
I can’t understand
why no one sees the dinosaur bones
of my exo-self
dwarfing the ramen-slingers
and their steamscalded cheeks.
Maybe I go dancing
Maybe I light incense.
Maybe I fuck, maybe I get fucked.
Nothing is as big inside me
as I am
when I am inside me.
When I am big
I can run so fast
out of my skin
my feet are mighty,
flamecushioned and undeniable.
I salute with my sadgirl/hardgirl/crunchgirl
purplebolt tungsten hands
the size of cars
and Saturn tips a ring.
It hurts to be big
but everyone sees me.
When I am little
when I am just a pretty thing
and they think I am bandaged
to fit the damagedgirl fashionpop manifesto
instead of to hide my nickelplate entrance nodes
well
I can’t get out of that suit either
but it doesn’t know how to vibrate
a building under her audioglass palm
until it shatters.
I guess what I mean to say is
I’ll never have kids. Chances for promotion
are minimal and my pension
sucks. That’s ok.
After all, there is so much work
to do. Enough for forever.
And I’m so good at it.
All my sitreps shine
like so many platinum dolls.
I’m due for a morphomod soon—
I’ll be able to double over at the waist
like I’ve had something cut out of me
and fold up into a magentanosed Centauri-capable spaceship.
So I’ve got that going for me.
At least fatigue isn’t a factor. I have a steady
decalescent greengolden stream
of sourshimmer stimulants
available at the balling of my toes.
On balance, to pay for the rest
well
you’ve never felt anything
like a pearlypink ball of plasmid clingflame
releasing from your mouth
like a burst of song.
And Y Prefecture
is just so close by.
The girls and I talk.
We say:
start a dream journal.
take up ikebana.
make your own jam.
We say:
Next spring
let’s go to Australia together
look at the kangaroos.
We say:
turn up that sweet vibevox happygirl music
tap the communal PA
we’ve got a long walk ahead of us today
and at the end of it
a fire like six perfect flowers
arranged in an iron vase.
In 3.0 & 3.5 we had:
Races of Faerûn: This book is a sourcebook set in the Forgotten Realms for the 3rd-edition Dungeons & Dragons rule-set, detailing various races and ethnicities in the Realms.
Races of Destiny: This book deals with races that live primarily in urban settings, specifically humans, half-orcs, and a new race called the Illumian, whose most notable features are the sigils that constantly orbit their heads. This book is centered on races, their human blood and the effects of this.
Races of Stone: This book focuses on gnomes, dwarves, and a new race, called goliaths, providing cultural information for these races as well as subraces.
Races of the Dragon: This book contains info on two new races. This book offers a new race that works well with the Dungeons & Dragons sorcerers, a class that uses magical power derived from having dragon blood.
Races of the Wild: This book contains background information on the elves and halflings, introduces a race of winged humanoids called "raptorans," as well as giving rules for playing wilderness based creatures such as fey and centaurs as player characters.
Races of Eberron: This book is an accessory for the Eberron setting that provides information on the races originally presented in the Eberron Campaign Setting: the warforged, shifters, changelings, and kalashtar. The includes the psychology, society, culture, behavior, religion, folklore, and other aspects of the races.
Like, a Wood Elf, they're into trees and nature, but that doesn't always mean they're Mirkwood Elves
Maybe they're more like hunters and trappers that respect the Game
weird semi-fae that live in tree trunks
or cannibals that lurk in the boughs of the deepwood
heck, maybe they're just Lothlórien Elves
you can just make up what you want
though, that being the case, I would appreciate more uh, granularity, I think is the word?
Like, when you pick a Race, you pick from a selection of attributes that Race has, as opposed to Every Elf Gets This
edit: Damn, I could really get down with 5e Eberron
Most of the folks I game with could use a lesson in organization from you.
One of our guys only writes down the name of his spells and then uses his phone to look them up on the SRD, and it takes forever each time, and then he has to see if the spell does what he thinks it does.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
I grabbed the spellbook app on my android phone too.
It's kind of nice playing a rogue for a change in 5e.
It's almost braindead at times. Which is a nice change of pace, honestly. Just get to kick back and focus on narrative.
My main complaint about it is the same for Battlefront, Xwing
Why would Vader/Luke or whatever showrunner be here?
I ended up buying our group the arcane spell cards pack. Now both arcane casters in the group have their spells on cards in front of them. Even after one session it was worth it.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Because between the beginning of ANH and the end of ROTJ there's like five years and in a society with FTL travel that's in a civil war that means you can be at a lot of battles.
Currently I am working with a degree of a Star Trek pastiche, where the PCs are from a political alliance called the Polity. The Polity is made up of five species across six major habitable star systems (with each species originating from one of the systems, and the final system being a multi-species colony) and a few dozen small colonies, science stations, relays and so on. The Polity is sufficiently advanced that it has managed to almost entirely get rid of poverty and has advanced medical technology, meaning that diseases and such are easily cured in the majority of cases. It is automated luxury gay space communism that we have created, comrades.
Three of the species are humanoid, and all three developed from native primates that appear to have emerged as a result of genetic manipulation by an unknown alien entity (this is the divergence from our world, and gives and excuse to have humans-but-with-a-weird-forehead like Star Trek does). Two of the species are non-humanoid, one of them being four-legged Spider/Crab type things who live on a radiation saturated world, have no real concept of conflict or violence (no predators), live for ages, are a few feet tall, are highly intelligent and are generally considered to be the originators of the Polity due to developing interstellar travel and encountering humanity. They are very clever and artistic, but have a slow reproductive process and therefore are not too numerous, around a billion or so in total.
The other humanoid species include a slightly dolphin like aquatic mammal species from an ocean world, who believe in group ownership but also don't really organise on levels larger than the extended family/friends unit, and have never had big nations and such, and have a massively varied set of languages, cultural norms etc. They were pretty technologically undeveloped when they were discovered, but have been brought up to speed and are now an energetic and potent part of the Polity, making up a large number of their explorers and with an exploding artistic and scientific culture. There is also a four-limbed, four eyed humanoid species that humans tend to find rather attractive if odd. They have highly developed senses and analytical minds, and can instantly perform complex calculations in their head, living on a very volcanically active world this was necessary to detect dangers in their surroundings and move quickly to a new place (with four arms being useful, as two can hold a child, the other two can be used to climb). They are naturally very logical due to their mathematical minds, but are quite individualistic outside of their family units. So they have governments and social groups because they can see the logical worth of them, but tend to be caught up in cultural movements. Very idealistic though. They were quite advanced, spaceflight level, when discovered.
Humans are the social predators, active and good at organising, with competitive minds tempered by a lack of scarcity for basic resources (no replicators or anything like that, just a mostly automated society with a UBI that means people can live comfortably their entire lives without worrying about working at anything other than their personal interests), and they live in orbitals around Sol planets and Moons, which they are terraforming into garden worlds (and in the case of Earth, basically preserving it's natural beauty so that other intelligent life can grow there without being destroyed by humans first).
So really I need a final non-humanoid species to make things up, so to speak. Any ideas? There is a rival political entity of anarcho-capitalists/libertarians who are dealing with their own version of post-scarcity for basic resources and thus look quite unusual and interesting (art and culture is scarce by nature, and therefore it has been made a commodity), a fleet of sentient spaceships who seem to be on a massive migration path through the polity towards a big Nebula, and the Imperials, who are a humanoid species that live in the Nebula and are horrible fascist ethno-supremacists, and the reason why the Polity still has guns on spaceships.
They may be a plot... thing
Space Bees though...
(the bees are only telepathic to each other, come in bonded pairs that bond for life, manipulate stuff that isn't designed for them with limited telekinesis, have weird pheromones/pollen that have a calming effect on most sentient lifeforms and cure hayfever after being around them long enough, and lay eggs in small hex-shaped organic spaceborn clusters that they send into random wormholes to start a new hive on another world)
Something that could join with the other four species as described above and create a utopian political entity, and something playable as a PC
But also something non-humanoid
Gas Giant dwellers is quite cool, mind. I am not sure how you'd get life in the upper atmosphere of a Gas Giant developing in of itself, but then, I am not a xenobiologist so I am sure you could handwave it
Lighter than atmosphere beings though... hmmm... even if I didn't use them for this, I'd have to use them for something else really
not like, humanoid ones. just like mushrooms with snail eyes and weird tiny legs or slug-like tails they move around on
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Squid people are also a classic, although prepare for hentai jokes
A species that developed in a radically different environment, such as Venus, that requires a env. suit on at all times to survive on other species' ships
A parasitic/symbiotic intelligence that attaches to a species with manual dexterity on their own planet (probably something more unique than apes), and maybe there is a split in their society between 'original platform' symbiotes and 'artificial platform' ones
Goo or amoeba-like species that developed sort of like hermit crabs, using pseudopods to gather an exoskeleton and tools and now they have much more advanced suits to move around and communicate in - also more hentai jokes here, probably
Maybe something big and fluffy?
They have boneless, 10 cm long bodies. They have long antennae which contain organs for peripheral sensing, eating, and communicating. They are genderless but reproduce sexually, with one or both individuals carrying the eggs for the next generation.
They were originally a parasitical life form that hormonally controlled the other complex species of their planets for their own benefit. During fat times they'd use and discard the other species for work, during lean times they'd stay attached to the same host for months or years, carefully maintaining the host. Physically weak, but very smart, they ended up creating a more symbiotic relationship with the more robust animals of their planet. Their brawn combined with the Ijad brain lead to city farms, and then engineering. They could ride flying animals to spread their civilization. As they spread out they fell into the normal pattern of splitting into factions and warfare amongst one another, attaching themselves to creatures suited for combat. After a large war, they basically decided that they big cities were a mistake, and went back to small, communal living.
Eventually, space sparing races showed up on their planets, and then their were other sentient races to attach to. When they fuse with a human it's like two sentient creatures in one body.
In the game, whatever the animal they are bonded with is what their mech or spaceship or whatever looks like. So bind with a quadruped? Get a quadruped mech. Want to make a fighter jet? Bond with some kind of sleek avian creature and build a chassis that resembles that, etc.
You know, a parasite race that we’re previously unacceptable/antagonistic to the alliance but eventually developed artificial hosts to use and integrated could be a neat take on modular/robotic species.
Shit that's a good deal. I am... tempted.
Yeah, I have no idea why it’s so cheap. I’ll let you know if i just get a box full of rocks or something.
Yeah, I was thinking about that myself. It does look like the seller is a third party seller using Amazon fulfillment, but they seem to be a more or less legit board game outlet, and they have no negative reviews. The other stuff they're selling is on a variety of price point/discount levels, so it's not like they've got everything they're doing marked down super low or something suspicious like that.
Also because it is cool and also I can ditch Luke and have Princess Leia leading my army and that is super rad!
Yeah I’ve heard of that! Guess I’ll see!
you wouldn't call someone a general princess
If we go off of 40k, they have Lord Generals and Lord Commissars so I guess Princess General would be correct.
Or just General as in new Ep 7 and 8, though this is Rebellion period so probably just Princess.