Ooh... now there's an idea. The part of my Underworld that's designated "Hell" is a bottomless pit, honeycombed with dwellings and cells as far down as anyone knows. The most dangerous known devils are imprisoned close to the top, so the can be checked in on regularly. But this means that the lowest reaches have been free to grow weird without regular supervision. If the Goblin Wardens deemed the reachable portion of the Pit too full, I wonder what kind of crazy stuff they would have invented to be a "New" Hell for future inmates.
Desert Leviathan on
Realizing lately that I don't really trust or respect basically any of the moderators here. So, good luck with life, friends! Hit me up on Twitter @DesertLeviathan
Also, if you want to entertain yourself at Riot games website melting down as people try to order Mechs vs Minions, check out the last page or so of that thread.
Ugggghhhh my GURPS Fantasy group is planning a totally sweet heist where they break into THE UNDERWORLD to steal the soul of a legendary warrior out of the PITS OF HELL, and I've worked out a bunch of really cool ideas for landmarks and set pieces, but they all have junky placeholder names in my notes like the RIVER OF SHITTY MEMORIES and the CAVERN WHERE FUCKIN ASSHOLES TRY TO STEAL YOUR BONES.
I mean, the River of Shitty Memories doesn't sound too bad but I really don't want to hang out in that Cavern.
It's a pretty rough place. My map actually lists it as "<Indecipherable Goblin Rune>, Whose Banks are Swelled With Tears", and if you try to swim across it it bums you out so badly that you sink to the bottom and drown. One of many security measures designed to make sure that anyone who enters the Underworld while still in possession of their mortality doesn't keep it for long.
The Cavern Where Assholes Steal Your Bones is home to a group of Ghosts who have perfected a means of stealing a person's mystical link to their own corpse, which is one of the few vectors the dead have for influencing the world of the living. It's probably OK if it winds up with the sort of name that was scrawled in haste on a map by someone who barely escaped from them. Especially if it's a name that misleads people who aren't as familiar with the concerns of the dead into making other assumptions about the cave.
You see, the Goblin races use organic materials, sometimes including bones, to make their sacred masks. But it's considered unthinkable for them to use the remains of a sentient being, with the exception of their own honored ancestors, or very rarely with permission gained in advance from someone they revered enough to consider a sort of living saint. Goblins are native to the Ethereal Plane (with the exception of the Gremlin sub-race), having been created by the Gods to be stewards of that realm, in the same manner that the Dwarves are caretakers of the Material Realm, the Giants of the world of Dreams, and the Elves of the Astral Plane. So because of their already-sinister reputation as the Underworld's Prison Wardens, it's pretty much inevitable that someone will mistake stories of Vicious Skeleton Thieves to refer to them.
While your party goes about their adventures in Hades, have some NPC quip "This place was pretty nice till you got here".
New Hell is less about burning lakes of fire and ironic punishments and more about the ten Yama scolding sinners until it's their time for reincarnation. Old Hell just wasn't sustainable. Granted both went to shit when some young women barged in and shot energy blasts absolutely fucking everywhere
who even DOES that
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Mx. QuillI now prefer "Myr. Quill", actually...{They/Them}Registered Userregular
edited October 2016
The RWBY HERO 6th Edition party consists of:
Sable Starburn, conspiracy theorist who wants to restore the defunct Kingdom of Mantle and carries a massive shield/emplacement gun and a Mental Entanglement semblance.
Amber Charles, gullible loser with a "bestie" snobby rich girl Rival, a variety of grenades, and the ability to teleport them and others' weapons around.
Hunter Peridot, "Anime Ghost Rider" with a telescoping lance and redirects all damage in a 64 meter radius to himself to power up an Illusion ability that can only be blocked by being a Pacifist. Who also never has to eat nor sleep for reasons.
I was expecting weird, and my friends did not disappoint. I found a way to make the team only be three members (and it's set 59 years prior to the show, so I get to do whatever the fuck I want); they settled on Team SAP.
Mx. Quill on
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KwoaruConfident SmirkFlawless Golden PecsRegistered Userregular
edited October 2016
Won't get to try the betrayal expansion until sunday, but I punched out the pieces and looked over new mechanics and they seem pretty interesting, the house will get much bigger much quicker I think
edit I mean except for when somebody fails a two omen haunt roll but whatever
Kwoaru on
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Der Waffle MousBlame this on the misfortune of your birth.New Yark, New Yark.Registered Userregular
So in the Mage game we're basically trying to take down a bunch of sin-inspired spirits that some jerk mage accidentally unleashed.
Sloth was easy because, well, its sloth. We defeated it in the weakest possible terms but it'll probably never come back anyway because its too much effort.
Now we got into a highway chase with what turned out to be a spirit of conflict possessing a mage.
We got along side of it, and after learning that it will not stand down from a challenge, my character leans out the side of the RV with an electric guitar, locks eyes, and starts shredding.
I roll 5 dice, I somehow get 8 successes for my one-sided highway guitar duel.
Won't get to try the betrayal expansion until sunday, but I punched out the pieces and looked over new mechanics and they seem pretty interesting, the house will get much bigger much quicker I think
edit I mean except for when somebody fails a two omen haunt roll but whatever
Played the expansion on Thursday.
One friend got a box, in which he put the Puzzle Box. He also got the chainsaw, the candle, and the effigy, soooo...well, that haunt never stood a chance.
New Hell is less about burning lakes of fire and ironic punishments and more about the ten Yama scolding sinners until it's their time for reincarnation. Old Hell just wasn't sustainable. Granted both went to shit when some young women barged in and shot energy blasts absolutely fucking everywhere
who even DOES that
I hear they're working on refitting old hell into an eco-friendly fusion reactor
but I hear the plant manager is kind of a birdbrain
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KwoaruConfident SmirkFlawless Golden PecsRegistered Userregular
Won't get to try the betrayal expansion until sunday, but I punched out the pieces and looked over new mechanics and they seem pretty interesting, the house will get much bigger much quicker I think
edit I mean except for when somebody fails a two omen haunt roll but whatever
Played the expansion on Thursday.
One friend got a box, in which he put the Puzzle Box. He also got the chainsaw, the candle, and the effigy, soooo...well, that haunt never stood a chance.
Just looking at the tiles I really like the new mobility options that dumbwaiters give you and I like how some of them also give you a bit more control over your destiny so to speak
I am super excited to try the new haunts despite having only seen like a dozen of the old ones
I should go through and just mark off the ones my group has played before so we can include the old haunts but just ones we haven't done
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StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
Won't get to try the betrayal expansion until sunday, but I punched out the pieces and looked over new mechanics and they seem pretty interesting, the house will get much bigger much quicker I think
edit I mean except for when somebody fails a two omen haunt roll but whatever
What exactly are the new mechanics?
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KwoaruConfident SmirkFlawless Golden PecsRegistered Userregular
Won't get to try the betrayal expansion until sunday, but I punched out the pieces and looked over new mechanics and they seem pretty interesting, the house will get much bigger much quicker I think
edit I mean except for when somebody fails a two omen haunt roll but whatever
What exactly are the new mechanics?
A big one is that some of the new tiles have dumbwaiters on them, for an extra movement cost (so 2 instead of 1) you can use a dumbwaiter to travel up or down to the landing of the floor above or below the level your dumbwaiter is on
So a basement dumbwaiter can take you to the ground floor landing only, but a ground floor dumbwaiter can take you to the upper landing or the basement landing
Some of the new rooms do weird things like the tree house room makes you put a plant token on another non adjacent room (I forget with what restrictions) but then the treehouse is considered adjacent to that other room as well
Most or maybe all of the new rooms have either a unique effect or a dumbwaiter, and lots of them are item rooms it seemed like (i didn't count though)
Oh the other big thing is that the roof landing starts in play like the upper landing does, you get there by walking from the upper landing, and any rooms that can be played on the upper floor can also be built on the roof but the roof doesn't count as a second upper floor so for example the mystic elevator can be discovered on the roof but it cant travel to the roof unless you roll a 4 (or are the traitor I guess)
I didn't go through the omens items or events in detail (I did see a cat omen though) and first time I play I'll probably fix it so the tops of each deck have a higher concentration of new cards
Edit and some little things like tokens with character heads that you put in each stat buff room (gym etc) after using it so you can tell you've been there, i bet they come into play for haunt
Like 30 obstacle tokens that I'm excited find out what the heck they're for
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Blake TDo you have enemies then?Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.Registered Userregular
We played secret Hitler.
It is basically the resistance with powers. But the powers are a strong balancing tool as the more times fascist policies are enacted, the more powers the president gets. It didn't happen in the game, but I can see a liberal president passing fascist policies just to get those powers at all.
If you have any interest in secret role games you should buy it, and if you have interest in the genre but don't have the resistance you must buy it.
It is basically the resistance with powers. But the powers are a strong balancing tool as the more times fascist policies are enacted, the more powers the president gets. It didn't happen in the game, but I can see a liberal president passing fascist policies just to get those powers at all.
If you have any interest in secret role games you should buy it, and if you have interest in the genre but don't have the resistance you must buy it.
I've never played one.
I really kinda want to give one a shot.
Would it be good for a beginner and about how many folks would you need?
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Blake TDo you have enemies then?Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.Registered Userregular
Secret Hitler is minimum five (so it's resistance maybe if not it is six)
We have taught people with no experience how to play the resistance and if you are firm on the rules SH then it won't be a problem.
So, I'm trying to build a fantasy setting, in part because for the group of dudes I play with I ain't run a fantasy game in a dog's age, and partly because it will serve as a good "core" setting for a scratch-built RPG system I've devised. The system isn't really the subject of this post and I'm not going to get into it a lot.
The setting design poses some challenges for me, because while there's a massive amount of resources out there for advice and guides for creating fantasy settings, what they really are is advice on creating Dungeons & Dragons settings.
And quite frankly after 20+ years of playing RPGs I am sick to death of D&D and it's tropes and I actually have a lot of problems with conventional "high fantasy" and many of the bog-standard things for fantasy settings and RPGs.
So I'm trying to find a balancing point between making a setting that doesn't include all the various pet peeves about fantasy I have, and something that's accessible and engaging for other people who might not necessarily share my views and hang-ups.
For example: I hate "fantasy races". Hate em. Not just because "here's how our elves are different, here's how our dwarves are diffrent" is fucking garbage for a fantasy setting that isn't explicitly designed to accommodate D&D, but in general I find the way the majority of fantasy handles race to range from overly simplistic and boring to ignorant and offensive.
To give an example of what I'm talking about, the most common mistake fantasy settings make is assigning human cultures to non-human "Other" races. Like "Oh, the Dwarves are basically Norse", or "These Cat people are basically Arabs". It's fucking offensive! It's basically saying that whatever culture humans are in the setting (almost universally white European, quasi-English) is the default, and other cultures are so Other that they can be freely assigned to creatures that are literally not human.
Like ten years ago a buddy of mine was homebrewing his own D&D campaign setting. Now, this was explicitly a D&D setting, so I won't fault him for opting to include elves and dwarves and orcs and shit. But like, he decided that (of course) the culture of humans in the setting was medieval Europe (specifically England), but that other cultures existed. Many of them, however, especially the more remote and "foreign" they were, were occupied by non-humans. Like, there was a "Forbidding East" in his setting that was basically a classical (and racist) portrayal of The Orient. The major empire that defined the culture of that region? Ruled by the Yuan-Ti.
I was like dude are you saying that in your setting, the Asians are literally slit-eyed snake people? Is that not fucked up to you?
He like backpedaled and tried to present examples from professionally produced fantasy settings that do this shit as if that made it okay and I was having none of it.
But the thing with all of that is... there's an extent to which that's just me being a Social Justice Paladin? Like while I absolutely believe in what I'm saying, I also acknowledge that a solid majority of gamers do not care about these things or will shuffle their feet and say "Well, actually..." and basically go #NotAllDwarves at me.
RPGs, and Fantasy RPGs in particular, have trained players to expect there to be a race selection chapter and for there to be a myriad of available player races. At least 3. There are settings that get away with just having humans, and usually these are based on novels or other media where the writer doesn't pull that kind of shit (such as tabletop games based on Game of Thrones).
It's just a bunch of stuff like that. A bunch of stuff where I want to make Not-D&D Fantasy that takes a more thoughtful and less racist/ignorant/blithe view at things like race, nationality, religion, magic, and technology. Fantasy can be amazing, and I feel like so many RPGs squander it. Video games do an alright job, there's quite a bit of variety there. You get industralized fantasy like Dishonored or dark, horror-influenced fantasy like Dark Souls.
There are smaller indie fantasy tabletops that do a better job of this shit, but I feel like that in some ways can be the trap; the more you deviate from the mainstream, the less accessible your setting is, and the more it turns off RPG players.
I have written and deleted like three responses to that because on a lot of points i really agree with you. But I am also one of the people who really likes elves and junk.
Assigning human civilization to fantasy races is very boring, often racist, and very often annoying.
I am very done with the scottish viking dwarves we keep getting. Or the Posh english elves. throw it in the trash. I still really like elves and dwarves, but these ideas are as done as zombies.
I have written and deleted like three responses to that because on a lot of points i really agree with you. But I am also one of the people who really likes elves and junk.
Assigning human civilization to fantasy races is very boring, often racist, and very often annoying.
I am very done with the scottish viking dwarves we keep getting. Or the Posh english elves. throw it in the trash. I still really like elves and dwarves, but these ideas are as done as zombies.
What's even more frustrating is when you want to explore something different and try not to stick to the tropes, but your most likely players are like "If the dwarves aren't scot-viking artificers I want no part in it!" Makes it super hard to stretch out the creative muscles.
"Go down, kick ass, and set yourselves up as gods, that's our Prime Directive!"
I have written and deleted like three responses to that because on a lot of points i really agree with you. But I am also one of the people who really likes elves and junk.
Assigning human civilization to fantasy races is very boring, often racist, and very often annoying.
I am very done with the scottish viking dwarves we keep getting. Or the Posh english elves. throw it in the trash. I still really like elves and dwarves, but these ideas are as done as zombies.
What's even more frustrating is when you want to explore something different and try not to stick to the tropes, but your most likely players are like "If the dwarves aren't scot-viking artificers I want no part in it!" Makes it super hard to stretch out the creative muscles.
It's why I feel it's for the best to just throw them out entirely when opting to create a non-D&D fantasy setting. That way, you're not fighting with what the players want elves or dwarves to be.
If a player sees there's dwarves in a setting and wants to play a gruff, burly Scottish-accented blacksmith warrior and you tell him that actually, in this setting Dwarves are a humble and intellectual culture who concern themselves with science and academia, you may as well not have bothered having dwarves at all.
Like elves and dwarves and orcs and other D&D shit (I'm gonna call them D&D shit even if they have far older roots than that, because let's be real D&D has defined them for a generation of RPG players even if they have never played D&D directly) are short-hand for certain archetypes and tropes. If you're going to go out of your way to turn those races into completely different archetypes and tropes you might as well not bother having them.
I have written and deleted like three responses to that because on a lot of points i really agree with you. But I am also one of the people who really likes elves and junk.
Assigning human civilization to fantasy races is very boring, often racist, and very often annoying.
I am very done with the scottish viking dwarves we keep getting. Or the Posh english elves. throw it in the trash. I still really like elves and dwarves, but these ideas are as done as zombies.
What's even more frustrating is when you want to explore something different and try not to stick to the tropes, but your most likely players are like "If the dwarves aren't scot-viking artificers I want no part in it!" Makes it super hard to stretch out the creative muscles.
Easiest fix i have to this is not having the fantasy races be a monolithic entity. in my Largely Made By Polls fantasy thing i posted here, i had like 7 different elves. So, maybe in one of the nations of dwarves they're You Favourite Annoying Stereo Type Derick, fuck i hate you, but the ones we will be dealing with in this aren't that. they're these generally different thing.
Have you considered something like Microscope to generate a setting together as a group Pony?
Because that works really well for mechanical systems like d&d where the mechanics aren't that integrated with the setting.
One of the first rules our group made wheb using microscope to create our fantasy world is that "generic personalities are defined by community, not racial contexts" so there can be scottish grumpy dwarves, if they are from a grumpy, scottish community, but if they are from somewhere else they will be differentz
I got some things to say about fantasy and racism, sexism, and other kinds of bigotry and general shittiness. Most fantasy RPG settings include racism, but only fantastic racism against actual non-humans. To use Dragon Age as an example, there's institutional racism against Elves... but not black humans. Fereldan is basically Anglo-Saxon England and Orlais is basically France, but characters who are from or live in those places who are of color are not noted or remarked upon or treated differently. Eberron likewise includes racism against elves (and especially half-elves), but nationalistic prejudice is the closest you get to human-on-human racism.
This sorta lets fantasy settings have their cake and eat it too. They can include racism, and racist characters, and add some "grit" to their setting and make commentary on racism... but without actually invoking real-world racism directly or trying to address it or talk about it in any meaningful way. I think it's part of why I abhor non-human races in fantasy so much. They get used as a way to do a bunch of stories and ideas that if inflicted upon simply another human ethnicity or nationality in that setting, would be prrrrrrrrroblematic.
The opposite extreme is when settings try to be "gritty" and "realistic" by deliberately picking a specific group and as a default, making their lives shit in the setting. Good examples of this include how women are treated in Game of Thrones or the Witcher. Generally speaking, the more "historical" a setting tends to be, the worse it will be for women. Part of this is a misguided and poor understanding of history and how women have been viewed and treated historically, and general hackery when it comes to trying to portray a complex issue like institutionalized sexism.
But y'know what? Ultimately it fucking sucks and I hate it. Players who are either women themselves or decide to play female characters should not have the constant presence of sexism, rape, and general shittiness towards women floating around in a tabletop fantasy setting. It isn't fun. I don't care if you're trying to argue it's "gritty" or "realistic". That's the sort of argument straight white cis men put forward towards institutional violence and awfulness that doesn't actually affect them.
It's fantasy. I'm not saying everything should be like weirdly egalitarian in a way that rings false with human behavior. I'm not Gene Roddenberry, going "in the future, we'll have solved interpersonal conflict". No, I'm saying if you're going to have racism, sexism, homophobia, or other kind of bigotry in a setting at all (and it's super optional, imo), then it's the realm of villainous behavior. It's the thing that shitty people do to make them deplorable characters.
Gonna use Dragon Age as an example again here (this time on how to do it right). In Dragon Age, for the most part nobody cares who you fuck. Homophobia doesn't really exist. The closest you get is if you're like, nobility or something, there's a familial pressure on you to "marry straight" so you beget offspring and carry on the family line. This is especially pronounced in a place like Tevinter, where a noble house having a gay son who won't deign to carry on the lineage is scandalous and they can actually be really shitty about it. But A.) That's considered a peculiarity of nobility, B.) It's considered self-centered and shitty by parents who don't give a shit what they want, and C.) The worst of it is in Tevinter, a place infamous for blood magic and slavery, so y'know, it's sort of a bad place all around whose primary function is to produce villains for the setting.
This is a good way to handle this sort of thing. Austin Walker wrote a really good bit about how it makes him feel to hear n-bombs directed at him in video games. I feel like RPGs, especially fantasy RPGs, should be an escape for your players from at least some of the brutal horse shit of the real world. Let their demons be actual demons they can hit with a sword.
It kind of makes sense that if you have another whole race to shit on, then divisions between humans based on appearance would be lessened. Because there's a "better" Other to marginalize.
For my own part, I let players play their characters how they want regardless of race, with the thought that if the setting is big enough to contain a multitude of human societies with different norms and accents and whatever, then the same goes for dwarves, elves, and all the other races.
Of course I usually like to hash out with my players before the game gets going in earnest about what sort of setting they want to play in and if they have any particular ideas about how societies that should exist, etc.
Using non humans to explore human problems is also a very bog standard fiction thing to do. Science Fiction does it every day.
And Often just as poorly.
It's one thing when a video game does it. It's another thing when people want to "explore" real-world problems in a tabletop game with other people you may or may not know well, especially since there could very well be someone who thinks it'll be "fun" to play a character who is fantasy racist (but it's okay because it's just fantasy racism").
Using non humans to explore human problems is also a very bog standard fiction thing to do. Science Fiction does it every day.
And Often just as poorly.
It's one thing when a video game does it. It's another thing when people want to "explore" real-world problems in a tabletop game with other people you may or may not know well, especially since there could very well be someone who thinks it'll be "fun" to play a character who is fantasy racist (but it's okay because it's just fantasy racism").
As someone who hates Gnomes, playing a fantasy racist is often a waste of energy. And it bothers me when people do it. We get it, you're using this group as a analogy. Can we please just go kill the dragon? yeah, i'm an elf, yep, i fucked my brother. That doesn't have anything to do with my being an elf i just have a hot brother. Durxthra also had sex with him, Fucking hell Derick CAN WE JUST GO KILL THE DRAGON ALREADY?
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admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
Ultimately a lot of what you're saying is why many games recommend that you create your setting with the group of players you sit down with. RPGs can be a really good way to explore a lot of issues we deal with in the real world, but without triggering the issues that the players might be dealing with. Expressing racism through elf-on-dwarf violence may seem cheap, but it can still cover some very important issues without having to do anything horrifying like figure out what fake fantasy word for "black" is used as a slur.
Using non humans to explore human problems is also a very bog standard fiction thing to do. Science Fiction does it every day.
And Often just as poorly.
It's one thing when a video game does it. It's another thing when people want to "explore" real-world problems in a tabletop game with other people you may or may not know well, especially since there could very well be someone who thinks it'll be "fun" to play a character who is fantasy racist (but it's okay because it's just fantasy racism").
Yeah, I feel like tabletop RPGs have an extra burden on them that video games don't. You are going to be interacting, directly, with the people the story is going to impact. There's been video games that have portrayed scenes of rape, torture, and bigotry-motivated violence and while those might have been fascinating moments in a video game golly would they be inappropriate for a tabletop setting.
Like games like BioShock Infinite are already fuckin' hack-jobs with how they handle racism, can you imagine "The man hands you a baseball. Do you throw it at the interracial couple?" in a tabletop game?
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we don't go to Old Hell, but there's a really quite nice biryani place in New Hell we should definitely check out before fighting Satan
Oh shit.
Satans..... hints.....
While your party goes about their adventures in Hades, have some NPC quip "This place was pretty nice till you got here".
Has anyone here ever played a game called Darlin' Corey
the Betrayal expansion shipped last night and is on the way to my house right this very minute
I backed the Shogun Big Box kickstarter, finally got it a couple weeks ago after about eight months of delays
and I only just now noticed it's 3-5 fucking players
I have no idea how I missed that very important tidbit of information, but... Fuck.
Sounds like that'd really jostle the board
who even DOES that
Sable Starburn, conspiracy theorist who wants to restore the defunct Kingdom of Mantle and carries a massive shield/emplacement gun and a Mental Entanglement semblance.
Amber Charles, gullible loser with a "bestie" snobby rich girl Rival, a variety of grenades, and the ability to teleport them and others' weapons around.
Hunter Peridot, "Anime Ghost Rider" with a telescoping lance and redirects all damage in a 64 meter radius to himself to power up an Illusion ability that can only be blocked by being a Pacifist. Who also never has to eat nor sleep for reasons.
I was expecting weird, and my friends did not disappoint. I found a way to make the team only be three members (and it's set 59 years prior to the show, so I get to do whatever the fuck I want); they settled on Team SAP.
edit I mean except for when somebody fails a two omen haunt roll but whatever
Sloth was easy because, well, its sloth. We defeated it in the weakest possible terms but it'll probably never come back anyway because its too much effort.
Now we got into a highway chase with what turned out to be a spirit of conflict possessing a mage.
We got along side of it, and after learning that it will not stand down from a challenge, my character leans out the side of the RV with an electric guitar, locks eyes, and starts shredding.
I roll 5 dice, I somehow get 8 successes for my one-sided highway guitar duel.
Played the expansion on Thursday.
One friend got a box, in which he put the Puzzle Box. He also got the chainsaw, the candle, and the effigy, soooo...well, that haunt never stood a chance.
I hear they're working on refitting old hell into an eco-friendly fusion reactor
but I hear the plant manager is kind of a birdbrain
Just looking at the tiles I really like the new mobility options that dumbwaiters give you and I like how some of them also give you a bit more control over your destiny so to speak
I am super excited to try the new haunts despite having only seen like a dozen of the old ones
I should go through and just mark off the ones my group has played before so we can include the old haunts but just ones we haven't done
What exactly are the new mechanics?
A big one is that some of the new tiles have dumbwaiters on them, for an extra movement cost (so 2 instead of 1) you can use a dumbwaiter to travel up or down to the landing of the floor above or below the level your dumbwaiter is on
So a basement dumbwaiter can take you to the ground floor landing only, but a ground floor dumbwaiter can take you to the upper landing or the basement landing
Some of the new rooms do weird things like the tree house room makes you put a plant token on another non adjacent room (I forget with what restrictions) but then the treehouse is considered adjacent to that other room as well
Most or maybe all of the new rooms have either a unique effect or a dumbwaiter, and lots of them are item rooms it seemed like (i didn't count though)
Oh the other big thing is that the roof landing starts in play like the upper landing does, you get there by walking from the upper landing, and any rooms that can be played on the upper floor can also be built on the roof but the roof doesn't count as a second upper floor so for example the mystic elevator can be discovered on the roof but it cant travel to the roof unless you roll a 4 (or are the traitor I guess)
I didn't go through the omens items or events in detail (I did see a cat omen though) and first time I play I'll probably fix it so the tops of each deck have a higher concentration of new cards
Edit and some little things like tokens with character heads that you put in each stat buff room (gym etc) after using it so you can tell you've been there, i bet they come into play for haunt
Like 30 obstacle tokens that I'm excited find out what the heck they're for
It is basically the resistance with powers. But the powers are a strong balancing tool as the more times fascist policies are enacted, the more powers the president gets. It didn't happen in the game, but I can see a liberal president passing fascist policies just to get those powers at all.
If you have any interest in secret role games you should buy it, and if you have interest in the genre but don't have the resistance you must buy it.
Satans..... hints.....
I've never played one.
I really kinda want to give one a shot.
Would it be good for a beginner and about how many folks would you need?
We have taught people with no experience how to play the resistance and if you are firm on the rules SH then it won't be a problem.
Satans..... hints.....
Here's video of people playing it, if you want to get a feel for it before buying
The setting design poses some challenges for me, because while there's a massive amount of resources out there for advice and guides for creating fantasy settings, what they really are is advice on creating Dungeons & Dragons settings.
And quite frankly after 20+ years of playing RPGs I am sick to death of D&D and it's tropes and I actually have a lot of problems with conventional "high fantasy" and many of the bog-standard things for fantasy settings and RPGs.
So I'm trying to find a balancing point between making a setting that doesn't include all the various pet peeves about fantasy I have, and something that's accessible and engaging for other people who might not necessarily share my views and hang-ups.
For example: I hate "fantasy races". Hate em. Not just because "here's how our elves are different, here's how our dwarves are diffrent" is fucking garbage for a fantasy setting that isn't explicitly designed to accommodate D&D, but in general I find the way the majority of fantasy handles race to range from overly simplistic and boring to ignorant and offensive.
To give an example of what I'm talking about, the most common mistake fantasy settings make is assigning human cultures to non-human "Other" races. Like "Oh, the Dwarves are basically Norse", or "These Cat people are basically Arabs". It's fucking offensive! It's basically saying that whatever culture humans are in the setting (almost universally white European, quasi-English) is the default, and other cultures are so Other that they can be freely assigned to creatures that are literally not human.
Like ten years ago a buddy of mine was homebrewing his own D&D campaign setting. Now, this was explicitly a D&D setting, so I won't fault him for opting to include elves and dwarves and orcs and shit. But like, he decided that (of course) the culture of humans in the setting was medieval Europe (specifically England), but that other cultures existed. Many of them, however, especially the more remote and "foreign" they were, were occupied by non-humans. Like, there was a "Forbidding East" in his setting that was basically a classical (and racist) portrayal of The Orient. The major empire that defined the culture of that region? Ruled by the Yuan-Ti.
I was like dude are you saying that in your setting, the Asians are literally slit-eyed snake people? Is that not fucked up to you?
He like backpedaled and tried to present examples from professionally produced fantasy settings that do this shit as if that made it okay and I was having none of it.
But the thing with all of that is... there's an extent to which that's just me being a Social Justice Paladin? Like while I absolutely believe in what I'm saying, I also acknowledge that a solid majority of gamers do not care about these things or will shuffle their feet and say "Well, actually..." and basically go #NotAllDwarves at me.
RPGs, and Fantasy RPGs in particular, have trained players to expect there to be a race selection chapter and for there to be a myriad of available player races. At least 3. There are settings that get away with just having humans, and usually these are based on novels or other media where the writer doesn't pull that kind of shit (such as tabletop games based on Game of Thrones).
It's just a bunch of stuff like that. A bunch of stuff where I want to make Not-D&D Fantasy that takes a more thoughtful and less racist/ignorant/blithe view at things like race, nationality, religion, magic, and technology. Fantasy can be amazing, and I feel like so many RPGs squander it. Video games do an alright job, there's quite a bit of variety there. You get industralized fantasy like Dishonored or dark, horror-influenced fantasy like Dark Souls.
There are smaller indie fantasy tabletops that do a better job of this shit, but I feel like that in some ways can be the trap; the more you deviate from the mainstream, the less accessible your setting is, and the more it turns off RPG players.
Assigning human civilization to fantasy races is very boring, often racist, and very often annoying.
I am very done with the scottish viking dwarves we keep getting. Or the Posh english elves. throw it in the trash. I still really like elves and dwarves, but these ideas are as done as zombies.
What's even more frustrating is when you want to explore something different and try not to stick to the tropes, but your most likely players are like "If the dwarves aren't scot-viking artificers I want no part in it!" Makes it super hard to stretch out the creative muscles.
It's why I feel it's for the best to just throw them out entirely when opting to create a non-D&D fantasy setting. That way, you're not fighting with what the players want elves or dwarves to be.
If a player sees there's dwarves in a setting and wants to play a gruff, burly Scottish-accented blacksmith warrior and you tell him that actually, in this setting Dwarves are a humble and intellectual culture who concern themselves with science and academia, you may as well not have bothered having dwarves at all.
Like elves and dwarves and orcs and other D&D shit (I'm gonna call them D&D shit even if they have far older roots than that, because let's be real D&D has defined them for a generation of RPG players even if they have never played D&D directly) are short-hand for certain archetypes and tropes. If you're going to go out of your way to turn those races into completely different archetypes and tropes you might as well not bother having them.
Easiest fix i have to this is not having the fantasy races be a monolithic entity. in my Largely Made By Polls fantasy thing i posted here, i had like 7 different elves. So, maybe in one of the nations of dwarves they're You Favourite Annoying Stereo Type Derick, fuck i hate you, but the ones we will be dealing with in this aren't that. they're these generally different thing.
Because that works really well for mechanical systems like d&d where the mechanics aren't that integrated with the setting.
One of the first rules our group made wheb using microscope to create our fantasy world is that "generic personalities are defined by community, not racial contexts" so there can be scottish grumpy dwarves, if they are from a grumpy, scottish community, but if they are from somewhere else they will be differentz
nah it predates WoW by at least a decade or more, it just helped entrench it more.
I got some things to say about fantasy and racism, sexism, and other kinds of bigotry and general shittiness. Most fantasy RPG settings include racism, but only fantastic racism against actual non-humans. To use Dragon Age as an example, there's institutional racism against Elves... but not black humans. Fereldan is basically Anglo-Saxon England and Orlais is basically France, but characters who are from or live in those places who are of color are not noted or remarked upon or treated differently. Eberron likewise includes racism against elves (and especially half-elves), but nationalistic prejudice is the closest you get to human-on-human racism.
This sorta lets fantasy settings have their cake and eat it too. They can include racism, and racist characters, and add some "grit" to their setting and make commentary on racism... but without actually invoking real-world racism directly or trying to address it or talk about it in any meaningful way. I think it's part of why I abhor non-human races in fantasy so much. They get used as a way to do a bunch of stories and ideas that if inflicted upon simply another human ethnicity or nationality in that setting, would be prrrrrrrrroblematic.
The opposite extreme is when settings try to be "gritty" and "realistic" by deliberately picking a specific group and as a default, making their lives shit in the setting. Good examples of this include how women are treated in Game of Thrones or the Witcher. Generally speaking, the more "historical" a setting tends to be, the worse it will be for women. Part of this is a misguided and poor understanding of history and how women have been viewed and treated historically, and general hackery when it comes to trying to portray a complex issue like institutionalized sexism.
But y'know what? Ultimately it fucking sucks and I hate it. Players who are either women themselves or decide to play female characters should not have the constant presence of sexism, rape, and general shittiness towards women floating around in a tabletop fantasy setting. It isn't fun. I don't care if you're trying to argue it's "gritty" or "realistic". That's the sort of argument straight white cis men put forward towards institutional violence and awfulness that doesn't actually affect them.
It's fantasy. I'm not saying everything should be like weirdly egalitarian in a way that rings false with human behavior. I'm not Gene Roddenberry, going "in the future, we'll have solved interpersonal conflict". No, I'm saying if you're going to have racism, sexism, homophobia, or other kind of bigotry in a setting at all (and it's super optional, imo), then it's the realm of villainous behavior. It's the thing that shitty people do to make them deplorable characters.
Gonna use Dragon Age as an example again here (this time on how to do it right). In Dragon Age, for the most part nobody cares who you fuck. Homophobia doesn't really exist. The closest you get is if you're like, nobility or something, there's a familial pressure on you to "marry straight" so you beget offspring and carry on the family line. This is especially pronounced in a place like Tevinter, where a noble house having a gay son who won't deign to carry on the lineage is scandalous and they can actually be really shitty about it. But A.) That's considered a peculiarity of nobility, B.) It's considered self-centered and shitty by parents who don't give a shit what they want, and C.) The worst of it is in Tevinter, a place infamous for blood magic and slavery, so y'know, it's sort of a bad place all around whose primary function is to produce villains for the setting.
This is a good way to handle this sort of thing. Austin Walker wrote a really good bit about how it makes him feel to hear n-bombs directed at him in video games. I feel like RPGs, especially fantasy RPGs, should be an escape for your players from at least some of the brutal horse shit of the real world. Let their demons be actual demons they can hit with a sword.
For my own part, I let players play their characters how they want regardless of race, with the thought that if the setting is big enough to contain a multitude of human societies with different norms and accents and whatever, then the same goes for dwarves, elves, and all the other races.
Of course I usually like to hash out with my players before the game gets going in earnest about what sort of setting they want to play in and if they have any particular ideas about how societies that should exist, etc.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
And Often just as poorly.
(what if cyborgs were disliked by society?)
It's one thing when a video game does it. It's another thing when people want to "explore" real-world problems in a tabletop game with other people you may or may not know well, especially since there could very well be someone who thinks it'll be "fun" to play a character who is fantasy racist (but it's okay because it's just fantasy racism").
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
As someone who hates Gnomes, playing a fantasy racist is often a waste of energy. And it bothers me when people do it. We get it, you're using this group as a analogy. Can we please just go kill the dragon? yeah, i'm an elf, yep, i fucked my brother. That doesn't have anything to do with my being an elf i just have a hot brother. Durxthra also had sex with him, Fucking hell Derick CAN WE JUST GO KILL THE DRAGON ALREADY?
Yeah, I feel like tabletop RPGs have an extra burden on them that video games don't. You are going to be interacting, directly, with the people the story is going to impact. There's been video games that have portrayed scenes of rape, torture, and bigotry-motivated violence and while those might have been fascinating moments in a video game golly would they be inappropriate for a tabletop setting.
Like games like BioShock Infinite are already fuckin' hack-jobs with how they handle racism, can you imagine "The man hands you a baseball. Do you throw it at the interracial couple?" in a tabletop game?
No thank you.