OSSR Request Thread

[Occluded Sun]

I'd like to propose Continuum, and its never-fully-released companion game Narcissist, if you can locate either of them.

[Wiseman]

Is anyone willing to do a beatdown review of RaHoWa? I'll understand if nobody's willing to touch it.

[Ancient History]

I would, but I'm busy trying to make some progress with Space Madness!

That said, RaHoWa is more boring than anything else; Wraeththu is much more disturbing.

[OgreBattle]

An OSR of Rogue Trader (1st edition 40k from the 80's, not the 21st century RPG) would be fun, particularly the Ork books.

[zugschef]

Is anyone willing to do a beatdown review of RaHoWa? I'll understand if nobody's willing to touch it.

Honestly, I think that this kind of shit shouldn't get that kind of attention. That would be wrong. This piece of shit doesn't need a thorough examination to be labeled racist trash, just pointing out that it's about white pcs killing black monsters should suffice.

If you did write such a review it would've succeeded at one of its goals: getting attention. I'd probably put the member who did that on ignore.

[Prak]

1d4chan has some review-y sort of information about it if you want to know how much it fails.

[OgreBattle]

I found a thread on RaHoWa on the internet's premier white power forum, Stormfront:

An interesting idea, though I think that there needs to be a lot more work on the setting - describing the state of the world, factions and belief systems that exist both among whites and non-whites, character concepts and play style, etc. This is largely a system, one with many of the trappings of D&D such as classes and levels.

I think that the non-white races may be a bit stereotyped as well. While various races certainly tend to have certain characteristics, I think that as presented here they are a bit too exaggerated. I think that when you combine entertainment with political commentary you need to be careful not to present things in too black and white (no pun intended) in a setting that portrays real world issues that are often morally ambiguous in nature. I think that creates a presentation that not only has broader appeal but also is more immersive and thought provoking - the difference between light and deep entertainment.

[RobbyPants]

Anyhoo, now that I have a copy of the 5e PHB, would people want to see a review of it? And would it be worth doing a comparison to the 4e PHB?

Go for it!

That said, RaHoWa is more boring than anything else; Wraeththu is much more disturbing.

I've heard the name dropped here before, but I don't know anything about it. About all I'm getting from Wikipedia is that it's a race of post apocalyptic hermaphrodites from some series of novels.

[hyzmarca]

That said, RaHoWa is more boring than anything else; Wraeththu is much more disturbing.

I've heard the name dropped here before, but I don't know anything about it. About all I'm getting from Wikipedia is that it's a race of post apocalyptic hermaphrodites from some series of novels.

That's exactly it. You're a flower-penis virally-converting hermaphrodite out to exterminate the human race in a post-apocolyptic setting. Men you kill or converted. Women can't be converted, but are also mostly harmless, so can generally be left alone.

[CapnTthePirateG]

Gonna have to wait till Saturday when I get back home to my books.

Is that seriously a Nazi dude off Stormfront complaining that something is too stereotyped?

[Occluded Sun]

He's complaining that the stereotyping is too strong, blunting the message. There's no particular reason why a white supremacist would necessarily want to be maximally brazen. They can have skilled propagandists, too.

[RobbyPants]

I've heard the name dropped here before, but I don't know anything about it. About all I'm getting from Wikipedia is that it's a race of post apocalyptic hermaphrodites from some series of novels.

That's exactly it. You're a flower-penis virally-converting hermaphrodite out to exterminate the human race in a post-apocolyptic setting. Men you kill or converted. Women can't be converted, but are also mostly harmless, so can generally be left alone.

Thanks. I'd assumed by seeing it mentioned with RaHoWa that it was a racism thing. I guess it is, in a really weird way.

[Username17]

Wraeththu is yaoi porn written by a really creepy fangirl from the UK. I mean, she's nearly sixty now, but that has in no way stopped her from being a creepy yaoi fangirl.



-Username17

[Omegonthesane]

Wraeththu *the books* is her creepy fangirl stuff. Wraeththu *the RPG* is even worse IIRC.

[Prak]

I really should go find those books...

[Prak]

Apocalypse World isn't oldschool. More importantly, there's not actually much to talk about. There's no setting, little mechanics, and hardly any new ideas. Not that complete creative bankruptcy should bar something from the harsh glare of an OSSR, but the stuff that does make Apocalypse World stand out has already been discussed to death on various threads.

We've deconstructed the resolution mechanics, the ethos of the game, how imbalanced the basic maneuvers of the game are, the random stupid crap like the sex moves, and even some of the clingy bits of dogshit like the extremely immature names. What more is there left to talk about? All that's really left is making fun of Vince Baker, but if you want to do that I think that doing it in the context of Poison'd would be better. Not only is there more to demonize him about there but the premise of that Poison'd game (an unflinching grimdark deconstruction of historical piracy) is at least modestly more interesting and original than that of Apocalypse World (a Firefly-edgy softcore porn version of Mad Max).

So, yeah. Apocalypse World is 300 fucking pages. That's not happening unless I get really, really bored. However, I just found a pdf of Poison'd, and that's only 28 half-size legal pages. That should be entertaining, and won't take long, so I might do a review of Poison'd.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Has anyone requested or done "Maid" yet? I've heard people talking about it, but I barely know anything about it.

[Username17]

Has anyone requested or done "Maid" yet? I've heard people talking about it, but I barely know anything about it.

I've played Maid. The character generation is rather more fun than the game itself. It's like Mechwarrior in that respect - it's fun to roll up parties but I wouldn't want to play a campaign of it.

Maid is a very retro game with very retro-stupid sensibilities. Also it's based heavily on harem manga.

-Username17

[AcidBlades]

I've played a few Maid games. It pretty much always devolves into cyber-sex and bondage porn.

[name_here]

I've played a couple games of it and steered clear of the bondage porn segments of the rules (which it is nice enough to mark off). Basically, the game has two core resolution mechanics: roll 1d6 times your stat, higher is better, and roll on a d66 table full of gonzo. By d66 I mean you roll 2d6 and use one of them as a tens digit, because this is Japan in the eighties and you do not own percentile dice.

There's also Stress and Favor. Stress is basically your hitpoints and you take stress damage by failing at things, and when you run out your character has a freakout and proceeds to close herself in her room/hit the bar/begin praying for a short period of time. Favor represents how much your boss likes you and is raised by successfully taking credit for things that went well and lowered by being blamed for things going poorly. It is also where the cyber-sex and bondage porn come in if your table likes that sort of thing.

Basically, Maid lives on the fact that the random generation tends to throw out entertaining things and the resolution system is very simple so it is easy to play. Though there's a big variance in the tables; my second Maid character was a mutant with extensive piercings and divined the future with Tarot cards and also had a tan.

[Prak]

Apparently, the Serenity RPG was released in 2005, so it's officially old enough for an OSSR. Anyone want to do one? I know it was terrible, and in fact remember having to swap roles with a friend trying to run a published adventure because he barely had RPG experience, let alone experience with the game, and being repeatedly struck with how bad it was, but it'd still be an entertaining review.

[Longes]

because this is Japan in the eighties and you do not own percentile dice.

Maid RPG was released in 2004.

[JesterZero]

I know it's tried-and-true, rather than branching farther afield, but I for one love it every time Frank and AH do old Shadowrun material. Some of the more obvious candidates for review might be Arcology, Year of the Comet, and / or Cyberpirates. Honestly, while Year of the Comet is notably crazy, it's so notably crazy that it might not be that much fun to review.

[Ancient History]

There's a lot of Shadowrun products which probably wouldn't be much fun to review. Either because they're just a bizarre concept (Prime Runners) or there's just not much there there (Portfolio of a Dragon). Ironically, the old-school adventures and basic stuff like Grimoire would probably make for some interesting review material - the last not least because Frank and I both worked on Street Magic, so we know where the broken bits are.

[RelentlessImp]

Ironically, the old-school adventures and basic stuff like Grimoire would probably make for some interesting review material - the last not least because Frank and I both worked on Street Magic, so we know where the broken bits are.

That would be an interesting read.