Farcast "review"
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Ancient History
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Ancient History
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Ancient History
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No, no, I didn't even finish reviewing the Doctor Who game (granted, for different reasons); it's more that my time that's useful for reviews is sharply limited.
Vebyast wrote:Here's a fun target for Major Creation: hydrazine. One casting every six seconds at CL9 gives you a bit more than 40 liters per second, which is comparable to the flow rates of some small, but serious, rocket engines. Six items running at full blast through a well-engineered engine will put you, and something like 50 tons of cargo, into space. Alternatively, if you thrust sideways, you will briefly be a fireball screaming across the sky at mach 14 before you melt from atmospheric friction.
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Ancient History
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Fair enow. I've just got the 2015 thing on my brain. I kinda want to do it, I'm on my third revision of an outline for the thing - it would be Call of Cthulhu based - but I don't know if I'm going to do it. Because I want to do it better than Farcast, y'know? And I don't know if I could pull it off, or if it'll be worth it even to try.
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Ancient History
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Ancient History
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Hokay.
The lawn is mown, the latest batch of wood is stained, and I have a BLTini. it's time for 085: The Pearlworks
I'm a little torn on this one. It's good; it's evocative; there's absolutely no reason for a group to care about it.
Roughly, there are these organisms living in an undersea river that slowly build a mineral sphere and live around the surface. The organisms are beautiful and pearlescent, and live only in one river. That's all really cool, but so what? Worse, the first seed just uses them as an especially uninteresting Chrono-Crossed Macguffin.
However, the second seed goes pretty far towards redeeming it: $MEGACORP has found that the pearls have started building spheres with platinum, and (obviously) started bulk harvesting them. $SOMEGUY would really like the megacorp to not kill off this species, and proposes using them to trace back to the actual platinum lode. "Blow it out your ass," suggests the megacorp. So now, Some Guy wants to raise capital, trace the lode, and mine it out, thereby earning $TEXAS, saving the pearls, and sticking it to the man right in the back of a volkswagen. That's fantastic. It's expansive, easy to hook into, easy to feel good about, and provides ongoing motivation for escapades.
Without that hook, B; with it, A-.
The lawn is mown, the latest batch of wood is stained, and I have a BLTini. it's time for 085: The Pearlworks
I'm a little torn on this one. It's good; it's evocative; there's absolutely no reason for a group to care about it.
Roughly, there are these organisms living in an undersea river that slowly build a mineral sphere and live around the surface. The organisms are beautiful and pearlescent, and live only in one river. That's all really cool, but so what? Worse, the first seed just uses them as an especially uninteresting Chrono-Crossed Macguffin.
However, the second seed goes pretty far towards redeeming it: $MEGACORP has found that the pearls have started building spheres with platinum, and (obviously) started bulk harvesting them. $SOMEGUY would really like the megacorp to not kill off this species, and proposes using them to trace back to the actual platinum lode. "Blow it out your ass," suggests the megacorp. So now, Some Guy wants to raise capital, trace the lode, and mine it out, thereby earning $TEXAS, saving the pearls, and sticking it to the man right in the back of a volkswagen. That's fantastic. It's expansive, easy to hook into, easy to feel good about, and provides ongoing motivation for escapades.
Without that hook, B; with it, A-.
Vebyast wrote:Here's a fun target for Major Creation: hydrazine. One casting every six seconds at CL9 gives you a bit more than 40 liters per second, which is comparable to the flow rates of some small, but serious, rocket engines. Six items running at full blast through a well-engineered engine will put you, and something like 50 tons of cargo, into space. Alternatively, if you thrust sideways, you will briefly be a fireball screaming across the sky at mach 14 before you melt from atmospheric friction.
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Ancient History
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Oh, neat. That wasn't obvious to me, but in a Europa-specific campaign I'd value Pearlworks more highly.
086 First Spawning
Europan festival based around a carefully coordinated mass birth of biomorphs tailored to the Europan environment. Neat backdrop, but not independently compelling. I think this could have been a fantastic adventure backdrop, and could easily be expanded to a very compelling campaign sourcebook, but in isolation I am seized by a profound apathy. A+ potential, C+ for this specific realization (consistent with awesome, but doesn't deliver).
086 First Spawning
Europan festival based around a carefully coordinated mass birth of biomorphs tailored to the Europan environment. Neat backdrop, but not independently compelling. I think this could have been a fantastic adventure backdrop, and could easily be expanded to a very compelling campaign sourcebook, but in isolation I am seized by a profound apathy. A+ potential, C+ for this specific realization (consistent with awesome, but doesn't deliver).
Vebyast wrote:Here's a fun target for Major Creation: hydrazine. One casting every six seconds at CL9 gives you a bit more than 40 liters per second, which is comparable to the flow rates of some small, but serious, rocket engines. Six items running at full blast through a well-engineered engine will put you, and something like 50 tons of cargo, into space. Alternatively, if you thrust sideways, you will briefly be a fireball screaming across the sky at mach 14 before you melt from atmospheric friction.
087: Tam Uisge
Neat, but bland. It's a guy adapted for ocean living. He might be a guide for the PCs. It's possible that "futura morph" conveys info I am not privy to and makes this neater. Otherwise, it's most interesting for being evocative of a short story I read once that made me care about cat people.
Overall: B. Bumped up for having a clever hook where instead of finding Tam when he disappears, you need to find the crazy stalker who went looking for him first.
Edit: from the comments, the name is a clever Irish pun. "Uisge" sounds like whiskey, and Tam is a common name, so I'm guessing 'man of the water'? Either way, brownie points for that.
Neat, but bland. It's a guy adapted for ocean living. He might be a guide for the PCs. It's possible that "futura morph" conveys info I am not privy to and makes this neater. Otherwise, it's most interesting for being evocative of a short story I read once that made me care about cat people.
Overall: B. Bumped up for having a clever hook where instead of finding Tam when he disappears, you need to find the crazy stalker who went looking for him first.
Edit: from the comments, the name is a clever Irish pun. "Uisge" sounds like whiskey, and Tam is a common name, so I'm guessing 'man of the water'? Either way, brownie points for that.
Last edited by fectin on Sun Jul 20, 2014 11:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Vebyast wrote:Here's a fun target for Major Creation: hydrazine. One casting every six seconds at CL9 gives you a bit more than 40 liters per second, which is comparable to the flow rates of some small, but serious, rocket engines. Six items running at full blast through a well-engineered engine will put you, and something like 50 tons of cargo, into space. Alternatively, if you thrust sideways, you will briefly be a fireball screaming across the sky at mach 14 before you melt from atmospheric friction.
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Nebuchadnezzar
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088: Sharktooth
It's a clever and evocative shiv. Easy to conceal.
Solid B.
It's a clever and evocative shiv. Easy to conceal.
Solid B.
Vebyast wrote:Here's a fun target for Major Creation: hydrazine. One casting every six seconds at CL9 gives you a bit more than 40 liters per second, which is comparable to the flow rates of some small, but serious, rocket engines. Six items running at full blast through a well-engineered engine will put you, and something like 50 tons of cargo, into space. Alternatively, if you thrust sideways, you will briefly be a fireball screaming across the sky at mach 14 before you melt from atmospheric friction.
089: The High Pools
It's a sauna-as-Randian-public-work. Could definitely use an actual layout to make this an easier drop-in. This would be good as part of a setting book.
I like that it calls out the operators, and mentions their priorities.
Overall, B
It's a sauna-as-Randian-public-work. Could definitely use an actual layout to make this an easier drop-in. This would be good as part of a setting book.
I like that it calls out the operators, and mentions their priorities.
Overall, B
Vebyast wrote:Here's a fun target for Major Creation: hydrazine. One casting every six seconds at CL9 gives you a bit more than 40 liters per second, which is comparable to the flow rates of some small, but serious, rocket engines. Six items running at full blast through a well-engineered engine will put you, and something like 50 tons of cargo, into space. Alternatively, if you thrust sideways, you will briefly be a fireball screaming across the sky at mach 14 before you melt from atmospheric friction.
090: Otta Tvash
Blind dino-penguin as flying explorer. She certainly has a lot going on, but most of it seems more suited to 'rich inner life' than 'interesting NPC.'
Notes suggest using her to get players thinking about their extra sense, but I'm not sure how that would work.
I assume she's well built and easy to drop in though, so B-.
Blind dino-penguin as flying explorer. She certainly has a lot going on, but most of it seems more suited to 'rich inner life' than 'interesting NPC.'
Notes suggest using her to get players thinking about their extra sense, but I'm not sure how that would work.
I assume she's well built and easy to drop in though, so B-.
Vebyast wrote:Here's a fun target for Major Creation: hydrazine. One casting every six seconds at CL9 gives you a bit more than 40 liters per second, which is comparable to the flow rates of some small, but serious, rocket engines. Six items running at full blast through a well-engineered engine will put you, and something like 50 tons of cargo, into space. Alternatively, if you thrust sideways, you will briefly be a fireball screaming across the sky at mach 14 before you melt from atmospheric friction.
091: Seanav
It's a bio- inertial nav sensor. Justified as an excuse to keep play going.
That requires a certain amount of foresight though, so I'm not 100% confident.
Mostly mechanical, so hard for me to evaluate, but looks like a B+.
It's a bio- inertial nav sensor. Justified as an excuse to keep play going.
That requires a certain amount of foresight though, so I'm not 100% confident.
Mostly mechanical, so hard for me to evaluate, but looks like a B+.
Vebyast wrote:Here's a fun target for Major Creation: hydrazine. One casting every six seconds at CL9 gives you a bit more than 40 liters per second, which is comparable to the flow rates of some small, but serious, rocket engines. Six items running at full blast through a well-engineered engine will put you, and something like 50 tons of cargo, into space. Alternatively, if you thrust sideways, you will briefly be a fireball screaming across the sky at mach 14 before you melt from atmospheric friction.
092: Nagog Hill
"[A] bizarre pseudo-fractal recombinatorial extrapolation of Schloss Neuschwanstein..." Nice.
It's a writhing squid of a building on a hill, filling a crater. Inside, it's a comic-con of competing cosplay ideas, writ large.
Great and plausible excuse for genre bending, and could be dropped in fairly easily.
Overall, A-, because there were no specifics, just an overall concept. Would be interested to see this expanded to a mini-setting though.
"[A] bizarre pseudo-fractal recombinatorial extrapolation of Schloss Neuschwanstein..." Nice.
It's a writhing squid of a building on a hill, filling a crater. Inside, it's a comic-con of competing cosplay ideas, writ large.
Great and plausible excuse for genre bending, and could be dropped in fairly easily.
Overall, A-, because there were no specifics, just an overall concept. Would be interested to see this expanded to a mini-setting though.
Vebyast wrote:Here's a fun target for Major Creation: hydrazine. One casting every six seconds at CL9 gives you a bit more than 40 liters per second, which is comparable to the flow rates of some small, but serious, rocket engines. Six items running at full blast through a well-engineered engine will put you, and something like 50 tons of cargo, into space. Alternatively, if you thrust sideways, you will briefly be a fireball screaming across the sky at mach 14 before you melt from atmospheric friction.
093: Skeeters
Mosquitos as drones. Good, solidly written, and some implications explored. Easy to use, but no compelling reason to do so.
Overall, B.
Mosquitos as drones. Good, solidly written, and some implications explored. Easy to use, but no compelling reason to do so.
Overall, B.
Vebyast wrote:Here's a fun target for Major Creation: hydrazine. One casting every six seconds at CL9 gives you a bit more than 40 liters per second, which is comparable to the flow rates of some small, but serious, rocket engines. Six items running at full blast through a well-engineered engine will put you, and something like 50 tons of cargo, into space. Alternatively, if you thrust sideways, you will briefly be a fireball screaming across the sky at mach 14 before you melt from atmospheric friction.
094: Ulf Vargsnev
Garbageman with a good backstory. Useful as a contact, or as an excuse to smuggle in somewhere, and potentially has prices more interesting than just cash or Macguffins.
Somewhat heavy on the violins though. A-.
Garbageman with a good backstory. Useful as a contact, or as an excuse to smuggle in somewhere, and potentially has prices more interesting than just cash or Macguffins.
Somewhat heavy on the violins though. A-.
Last edited by fectin on Sun Jul 27, 2014 10:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Vebyast wrote:Here's a fun target for Major Creation: hydrazine. One casting every six seconds at CL9 gives you a bit more than 40 liters per second, which is comparable to the flow rates of some small, but serious, rocket engines. Six items running at full blast through a well-engineered engine will put you, and something like 50 tons of cargo, into space. Alternatively, if you thrust sideways, you will briefly be a fireball screaming across the sky at mach 14 before you melt from atmospheric friction.
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Ancient History
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095: Orcamorphs
I'm not sure what to think about these guys. They're large critters that are super-smart, and adapted to swim like whales. They're usually quadrupeds, and look funny. Apparently, a huge minority of them are autistic.
It's evocative, even if I can't picture it, but was this what people were clamoring for? (Again, no basis for judging balance)
Overall B
I'm not sure what to think about these guys. They're large critters that are super-smart, and adapted to swim like whales. They're usually quadrupeds, and look funny. Apparently, a huge minority of them are autistic.
It's evocative, even if I can't picture it, but was this what people were clamoring for? (Again, no basis for judging balance)
Overall B
Vebyast wrote:Here's a fun target for Major Creation: hydrazine. One casting every six seconds at CL9 gives you a bit more than 40 liters per second, which is comparable to the flow rates of some small, but serious, rocket engines. Six items running at full blast through a well-engineered engine will put you, and something like 50 tons of cargo, into space. Alternatively, if you thrust sideways, you will briefly be a fireball screaming across the sky at mach 14 before you melt from atmospheric friction.