Anatomy of Failed Design: Vampire

General questions, debates, and rants about RPGs

Moderator: Moderators

User avatar
Prak
Serious Badass
Posts: 17340
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Prak »

Ok, I guess I was thinking of the overall "trying to escape from the town" with maybe a bit of The Room.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
User avatar
Longes
Prince
Posts: 2867
Joined: Mon Nov 04, 2013 4:02 pm

Post by Longes »

Prak wrote:Ok, I guess I was thinking of the overall "trying to escape from the town" with maybe a bit of The Room.
Yeah, but that's a plothook. It's not a game event - it's the premise. Protagonists of Saw aren't in the room because they fought Saw and decided to surrender. They are in the room because that's the premise of the movie.
Username17
Serious Badass
Posts: 29894
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Username17 »

Prak wrote:But my real point is that it's just weird people will buy into "welp, time for us to be captured!" in Champions, because comics, but don't see the genre convention in AS as something to buy into.
People will accept their characters acting out tropes instead of engaging in basic self preservation in a game that is fundamentally not serious. In a 4 color comic book game or Looney Tunes cartoon game, players will do wacky and self destructive things because it's in genre. In a serious game, by which I mean one which is serious in tone like Vampire or D&D, people who act out tropes instead of engaging in self preservation are rare and also regarded as disruptive assholes.

Seriously, if you do something because it's a trope of narrative fiction in Vampire people will call you a fishmalking asshole.

-Username17
User avatar
Prak
Serious Badass
Posts: 17340
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Prak »

I'm not disputing that at all. I just find it weird that they do it when the trope in question is a trope in the genre the serious game is emulating.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
User avatar
Longes
Prince
Posts: 2867
Joined: Mon Nov 04, 2013 4:02 pm

Post by Longes »

Prak wrote:I'm not disputing that at all. I just find it weird that they do it when the trope in question is a trope in the genre the serious game is emulating.
Books and movies and games are single author fiction. The character's road is predetermined, and there's never a chance for him to die in act 2 without ever reaching and defeating the villain. If the character is captured - he'll survive, escape, and bring down the villain. If the character in a RPG is captured - there's a non-zero chance for you to die and screw up the whole heroic story. Never surrendering is a result of OOC risk-management - your chance of surviving when you have all your tools with you is greater then when you are captured, stripped of your magic weapons and drained of blood. Never running away is a result of player-character dissociation. PCs are naturally fearless and lacking in common sense and self-preservation instinct.
Omegonthesane
Prince
Posts: 3680
Joined: Sat Sep 26, 2009 3:55 pm

Post by Omegonthesane »

I recall Unknown Armies had somewhere in there a rant about how actually killing your enemies was not necessarily the greatest of ideas because something something escalation plus something something most of your human opponents not actually being sociopaths and thus potentially returning the favour at a later date if you allow them to live. Similarly, the canon setting of In Nomine assumes that even Malakite PCs won't go out of their way to force demons into celestial combat to permanently destroy them (although it is set up so that you can corporeally murder them for all the visceral glee and have them show up in a new body next campaign arc).

None of that makes sense unless you have a boat that you do not want to rock however.
Longes wrote:Never running away is a result of player-character dissociation. PCs are naturally fearless and lacking in common sense and self-preservation instinct.
I did find myself acting downright cowardly in LARP even when playing characters with a good reason to show more spine, compared to my more berserk fearless tactics in TTRPGs.
(Past tense because I haven't had the convenient opportunity to take part in that shit for literal years now.)

I recall being more cautious than that in XCOM, which with the 2-action system about approximated the de facto action economy of most TTRPG sessions I've ever been in. Wonder if there are factors which caused that which can be ported into an RPG format other than "the 'GM' is not pulling a single punch, if you fuck up you are sending someone home in a coffin". It's also hardly relevant to captures or surrenders.
Last edited by Omegonthesane on Wed Feb 10, 2016 10:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Kaelik wrote:Because powerful men get away with terrible shit, and even the public domain ones get ignored, and then, when the floodgates open, it turns out there was a goddam flood behind it.

Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath, Justin Bieber, shitmuffin
User avatar
Longes
Prince
Posts: 2867
Joined: Mon Nov 04, 2013 4:02 pm

Post by Longes »

I recall Unknown Armies had somewhere in there a rant about how actually killing your enemies was not necessarily the greatest of ideas because something something escalation plus something something most of your human opponents not actually being sociopaths and thus potentially returning the favour at a later date if you allow them to live. Similarly, the canon setting of In Nomine assumes that even Malakite PCs won't go out of their way to force demons into celestial combat to permanently destroy them (although it is set up so that you can corporeally murder them for all the visceral glee and have them show up in a new body next campaign arc).
Not escalating things is perfectly reasonable. Talking your way out of the situation is usually better than slaughtering people. But once things got down to combat I honestly see little reason in leaving alive your enemies who attacked you with the intent to kill you.
Omegonthesane
Prince
Posts: 3680
Joined: Sat Sep 26, 2009 3:55 pm

Post by Omegonthesane »

Longes wrote:
I recall Unknown Armies had somewhere in there a rant about how actually killing your enemies was not necessarily the greatest of ideas because something something escalation plus something something most of your human opponents not actually being sociopaths and thus potentially returning the favour at a later date if you allow them to live. Similarly, the canon setting of In Nomine assumes that even Malakite PCs won't go out of their way to force demons into celestial combat to permanently destroy them (although it is set up so that you can corporeally murder them for all the visceral glee and have them show up in a new body next campaign arc).
Not escalating things is perfectly reasonable. Talking your way out of the situation is usually better than slaughtering people. But once things got down to combat I honestly see little reason in leaving alive your enemies who attacked you with the intent to kill you.
That's an assumption about intent that doesn't necessarily follow. If they're e.g. trying to get your MacGuffin, they could win by stunning the whole party for 2 rounds, grabbing the MacGuffin, and running so far away that a Chase scene must ensue - not necessarily leaving any permanent damage to anyone in your squad while unquestionably constituting combat.

And... I say offhand but I've spent like 10 minutes writing this thing even if not all of it was consciously thinking of answers. But there's two obvious and reasonably broadly applicable reasons you might spare your enemies - to interrogate them, or because murdering them leaves a body or at worst a missing person who will be missed and neither of those things is good for your paper trail. Alternately because you're a Stellar Oracle or something and as a consequence take issue with casual murder.

Also, how are we defining "letting them live"? ...I'm not quite sure what this scale is measuring, but "failing to execute my helpless defeated enemies" < "not using the most immediately lethal weapon you have available" < "sticking to shit like Dominate which doesn't cause actual damage". That second one is why I never liked greatswords in SIFRP, their drawbacks included "anything that you incapacitate with this will die, period, and I mean instantly upon falling to 0 HP instead of as a consequence of making their first healing roll with 3 Wounds and no medical attention".
Kaelik wrote:Because powerful men get away with terrible shit, and even the public domain ones get ignored, and then, when the floodgates open, it turns out there was a goddam flood behind it.

Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath, Justin Bieber, shitmuffin
hyzmarca
Prince
Posts: 3909
Joined: Mon Mar 14, 2011 10:07 pm

Post by hyzmarca »

FrankTrollman wrote: Seriously, if you do something because it's a trope of narrative fiction in Vampire people will call you a fishmalking asshole.

-Username17
Well, in Vampire you'd do it because the Prince does actually take the murder of vampires in his domain seriously and its a good way to get a blood hunt called on your ass.

More to the point, you surrender when the fight is already lost, so there is no point in continuing, so you're trading away certain death to turn the certainly lethal combat encounter into a potentially lethal social encounter.
Last edited by hyzmarca on Wed Feb 10, 2016 11:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
Whipstitch
Prince
Posts: 3660
Joined: Fri Apr 29, 2011 10:23 pm

Post by Whipstitch »

Prak wrote:I'm not disputing that at all. I just find it weird that they do it when the trope in question is a trope in the genre the serious game is emulating.
I don't think it's odd given the sheer prevalence of self-parody and deconstruction in the horror and super hero genres. The general public is actually pretty genre savvy and ultimately I've found that even the super hero games often feature atypical behavior unless the group is explicitly trying to play classic "Big 2" comic book characters in rough accordance with their official portrayals. All bets are off the moment people are playing their own original creations.
Last edited by Whipstitch on Thu Feb 11, 2016 1:17 am, edited 1 time in total.
bears fall, everyone dies
User avatar
Prak
Serious Badass
Posts: 17340
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Prak »

I wonder if D&D's CR and lack of workable chase/escape systems contributes to this. In D&D, it's assumed that whatever you're facing is at worst a hard victory, something that you can beat, but at a cost, and you can't really run away from most things, since they're usually at least as fast as you. And I wonder if people carry this over to other games, regardless of whether those games have any kind of CR system, or allow for chase/escape.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
User avatar
Ancient History
Serious Badass
Posts: 12708
Joined: Wed Aug 18, 2010 12:57 pm

Post by Ancient History »

Well, D&D used to have a Morale system where you killed the lead orc and the others rolled and fled - Shadowrun had something relatively similar, also based around when NPCs would stick around for a fight vs. running away - but it's a hard metric to reliably capture.
Mechalich
Knight-Baron
Posts: 696
Joined: Wed Nov 04, 2015 3:16 am

Post by Mechalich »

Prak wrote:I wonder if D&D's CR and lack of workable chase/escape systems contributes to this. In D&D, it's assumed that whatever you're facing is at worst a hard victory, something that you can beat, but at a cost, and you can't really run away from most things, since they're usually at least as fast as you. And I wonder if people carry this over to other games, regardless of whether those games have any kind of CR system, or allow for chase/escape.
I suspect the chase/escape systems matter less than the simple fact that D&D's treasure metric encourages you to hunt down and murder the defeated so you can strip their bodies. A fleeing enemy in D&D is a bag of gold with legs and that's a problem.

It also probably doesn't help that a huge proportion of D&D monsters either aren't smart enough to retreat (like skeletons), or have absolutely no incentive to do so (like many outsiders).

Also, fleeing in the face of the enemy is generally an implicit sacrifice against group cohesion. The assumption is that some proportion of those running away will be pursued and will be captured/killed, you're just hoping that it isn't you. However, the average D&D party of four really can't sustain the permanent or even semi-permanent loss of a single member. If your character survives but can't continue playing the game, that's hardly a victory and it induces you to stay and keep fighting.
User avatar
Chamomile
Prince
Posts: 4632
Joined: Tue May 03, 2011 10:45 am

Post by Chamomile »

The issue isn't really enemies running away from the party, although it would be nice to solve that, the issue is that players can only lose combats by dying. They can, but won't, run.
hyzmarca
Prince
Posts: 3909
Joined: Mon Mar 14, 2011 10:07 pm

Post by hyzmarca »

D&D also had random wilderness encounter tables by terrain type rather than by level. So it was entirely possible for a first level party to get a bad random encounter roll and get attacked by a purple worm, or whatever. Running was specifically the best choice in most encounters.
User avatar
OgreBattle
King
Posts: 6820
Joined: Sat Sep 03, 2011 9:33 am

Post by OgreBattle »

How do protagonists and badguys run away/get captured and escape in the fiction After Sundown seeks to emulate?
hyzmarca
Prince
Posts: 3909
Joined: Mon Mar 14, 2011 10:07 pm

Post by hyzmarca »

OgreBattle wrote:How do protagonists and badguys run away/get captured and escape in the fiction After Sundown seeks to emulate?
IF you use Dracula, his go-to was shapeshifting. Batform, rat swarm form, and mist form.

In Supernatural, it's a combination of their own hunter skills, monster carelessness, and rescue by the other brother.

Generally, the captured protagonist or bad guy will have some special skill or power that lets them escape. This could just be tenacity, cunning, and the ability to exploit an opening. Or it could be magical powers that make holding them extremely difficult.
Last edited by hyzmarca on Thu Feb 11, 2016 4:14 am, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
Prak
Serious Badass
Posts: 17340
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Prak »

Ok, I'd like to talk about the various material rules in AS, but not because animates being taken out like Power Girl in the bad old days is weird.

Am I the only one who thinks that the conceptual-space-induced reductionism renders things a bit too convoluted?

There are specifically four categories for hunters to care about in AS- Bane materials, Suppression materials, Detection materials, and Countering materials- each a set of three which gives you 11 things to care about (because water suppresses and detects).

Some of my confusion is learning curve and skimming. I've played WoD where silver deals aggravated, no you can't soak it, damage to werewolves, but I haven't played AS. But then when I go check AS to read how bane materials work specifically, it just ignores magical defenses. But then I find out, rereading the expansion thread which prompts me to go read again, that bane materials literally only ignore bonuses to the soak roll from magic. So a werewolf in Giant Size loses only 1 soak die when attacked with silver, while a werewolf who doesn't know any powers that give armor or bonus soak dice gives no fucks about silver.

But then, if in the "flow chart requiring confusion" that is AS combat, you forget that bonus strength is not negated by bane materials, monsters turn into wet paper.

I mean, combat is its own discussion for AS, but bane materials are mostly meaningless, unless you know one of, like, two powers, Giant Size or Flesh of Marble that actually give armor or bonus soak dice, or one of a few powers that make you insubstantial but make your bane a barrier.

Also, the power specifically called out as being negated, Force Field, makes no reference to being a soak bonus, and so a natural reading says that it is not negated by bane materials, because it just says that you get to apply your strength at a distance. Ditto the passive bonus of Fortitude. It's specifically called out in Slaying Monsters, but then the description calls it a bonus to Physical Resistance tests, not a soak bonus.

Given that bane materials literally only matter if you know two, maybe three powers, or at least one power from one set, depending on whether things get cleaned up or not... monster hunters probably don't even bother with silver/iron/wood weapons. They probably bring bags of salt, sand and seeds, and use whatever weapon they like best, since relatively few monsters are supernaturally resilient in a way that having a silver knife changes, and when they are, it's to a fairly low degree. If a werewolf knows giant size, a silver knife or bullet is the difference between 13 and 14 points of Soak, on top of their basic strength, before Vigor. Or the difference between 11 and 14 if the cases called out in Slaying Monsters are fixed (either being specified as bonuses to Soak/armor, or SM saying "as though they were armor" or whatever).

So I no longer care about "Iron Man is brought down with iron blades/a sharp stick" because Iron Man loses, like, 1 point of soak to this shit. Well, 4, if he uses Flesh of Marble to represent the power suit, but Giant Size or War Form is just better. But tangentially, that means that there is no reason for the vast majority of supernaturals to give a shit if you are bristling with spikes made of whatever "hurts" them, because the vast majority of supernaturals don't have powers negated by their banes.

Then there are suppression materials, already called out as being unbalanced. Everyone can carry around half-a-liter of water, especially if they live in LA or New York where the young and pretty buy into that whole "YOU MUST DRINK 64 OUNCES OF WATER A DAY OR YOU'LL DIEGET OLD AND WRINKLY. But unless you are a fictional british alt-rock singer from the late 90s, no one's carrying around fucking sunlight with them, and if you're hunting werewolves in Salt Lake City, good luck suppressing their powers (though turning the old "beer run out of a dry county" thing into a pre-werewolf battle mission is kind of hilarious). Also already called out is the fact that this means Dryads are suppressed during their power ritual and hunting transhumans becomes an attempt to ambush them in their shower.

Moreover, Transhumans and Witches are automatically fucked by anyone who knows Tumultuous Rain. Or, for that matter, Water Prison. Whether or not they're screwed over by Prison of Ice is an exercise in rules lawyering. Beyond just having Tumutuous Rain being an auto-lose power for transhumans and witches to go up against unless they have celerity and always carry an umbrella, it also means that transhumans and witches can't use Tumultuous Rain without carrying an umbrella. I know that AS is about horror, not playing comic book characters, but the lack of weather witches, at least by the original book rules, is weird.


So. Water probably needs to not be a suppression material. Whether Sunlight and Alcohol are balanced with each other I don't know, except that one can be carried around in a squirt gun (and I suddenly want to play a hunter who disguises themselves as a party clown) and the other you have to stall for. Bane materials probably should just have an inherent effect other than negating soak bonuses. Whether they do agg, or extra damage, or whatever, just ignoring the effects of a couple powers (or four if Force Field and Fortitude get a bit of editing) is not enough to care about. "The vampire was kind of a bit less difficult to damage when I had a wooden knife" is not something that is going to be canonized in monster hunter lore. Especially when it's true for one vampire, but not most others.

What if bane materials negated half the monster's soak roll, including soak from just having a high strength? I mean, then we get into "Power Girl is taken out with a fucking branch" and "Iron Man goes down to really old knives" but at least werewolves care that your knife is extra shiny now.

Edit: Looking at the materials, I was struck by the fact that, to some extent, the Bane Materials seemed to tie into the themes of the power sources more than the themes of the splats. Wood is strong against vampires and animates because they're not alive. But then there are weakness materials that get things mixed up. In Victorian lore, iron is strong against fae and demons because those things are primal and chaotic and iron is emblematic of civilization. But in AS, only fae are weak to it. Demons are weak to silver, which makes a certain amount of sense, given silver's associations with purity. However, what's particularly impure about giant animals? At the very least, Evil Plants and Giant Animals should probably be swapped, then, as far as antagonists go, Life-ium (wood) is strong against Death Monsters (ghosts and zombies), Civilization-ium (iron) is strong against Primal Monsters (fae and giant animals), and Puritium (silver) is strong against Corrupt Monsters (evil plants and demons).

However, at that point, why not tie all the materials to the kind of magic you use? The suppression materials can be based on magic theme too. So you get something like this-
AstralInfernalOrphic
Countered BySaltSandSeeds
Detected ByMagnetsWaterPlants
Suppressed ByAlcohol*Water**Sunlight***
Wounded ByIronSilverWood

*because it dries it out
**because it puts it out
***because the dead come out at night

Yes, this means that 2/3 of vampires can go out at day and shapeshift and shit with no problem, but I don't really have a problem with that, since only 1/3 of them are explicitly powered by death.

Along with this, I think there needs to be a couple of minor changes with the splats. Well, a biggish change and a minor change. First, the biggish change. There is virtually no practical difference between Witches and Transhumans.

Witches are people who used evil magic to remove their hearts or souls to better channel more evil magic. Transhumans are people who have had their souls changed or removed by evil magic.
Baali are people who burn out their souls with Infernal magic. Fallen are people who had their souls burnt out by exposure to Infernal magic. Dryads are people who used evil Astral seeds to replace their hearts. Icarids are people who used evil Astral procedures or drugs to alter their bodies. Khaibit are people people who use Orphic magic to kill themselves and return to life. Reborn are people who died and returned to life because wibbly wobbly orphicy morphicy.

Now, the power overlap between witches and transhumans of the same power source ranges from "almost none" (Infernal) to "almost entirely" to (Astral). There are only two Fallen powers that Infernal witches could select in Frank's proposed "Choose Your Own AdventureWitch" model by virtue of them being Infernal sorcery powers, but there are only two Icarid powers that Dryads couldn't select under that model, being powers from Clout and Fortitude. Reborn are in between, with four Universal powers that come from Celerity and Magnetism instead of Fortitude, which Orphic witches can choose from in addition to Discernment.

So, honestly, I think Transhumans and Witches can just be combined into Witches, and if you're an Orphic witch who cut their heart out and put it into a canopic jar, then you call yourself a khaibit, and if you're an Orphic witch who just treats Mictlan like a revolving door, you call yourself a Reborn.

The other issue is one of renaming. Androids and Icarids imply too much technological basis, and skew peoples' expectations. If the "built to love" Animates were called Galateans, and the astral transhumans (if transhumans aren't collapsed into witches) were called Hydes or Cuchalains or whatever then people aren't taken out of immersion when a sharp stick breaks their metal skin, because they don't have "android" written on their sheet telling their brain that they have wires and circuits under that skin, or when an old knife cuts off their evil water cannon arm because they don't have the pseudo-mad science connotations of Icarid looking up at them from their sheet telling them that evil water cannon is a cybernetic enhancement.

Now, tech monsters are totally a thing that should exist in AS. However, calling splats things with tech or artifice connotations just leads to frustration and defied expectations. Even people here constantly forget that Androids are vaguely tech flavored, not actually technological.
Last edited by Prak on Thu Feb 11, 2016 8:49 am, edited 1 time in total.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
User avatar
Ancient History
Serious Badass
Posts: 12708
Joined: Wed Aug 18, 2010 12:57 pm

Post by Ancient History »

hyzmarca wrote:D&D also had random wilderness encounter tables by terrain type rather than by level. So it was entirely possible for a first level party to get a bad random encounter roll and get attacked by a purple worm, or whatever. Running was specifically the best choice in most encounters.
And yet sometimes they insist on fighting the owlbear.
User avatar
erik
King
Posts: 5861
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by erik »

I'm in favor of keeping witches and transhumans. They're plenty different.

I'm on the fence for whether power source or monster family should determine weaknesses. Meh. I've always wanted Reborn to suppress their powers by getting drunk and neither model helps me there.

If people are making a character based on a superhero then they just have to be aware that it isn't the same. Iron Man in this game may be a golem that came to life and replaced the waning body it was helping stay alive. It is very much different from comics. Making examples of arguments based upon supers not being thematically weak against X or Y totally misses the point and I tend to categorically ignore such arguments.
User avatar
Whipstitch
Prince
Posts: 3660
Joined: Fri Apr 29, 2011 10:23 pm

Post by Whipstitch »

@Frank
One thing that's become crystal clear to me over the course of these threads is that Shamshir-e Zomorrodnegar and other "bane weapons" need to be rechristened "fated weapons" so that players and other supernaturals can use the term "banes" freely to describe mundane anti-monster materials in-world without confusion.
Prak wrote: Some of my confusion is learning curve and skimming.

Clearly. Iron/silver/wood weaponry is actually in a really good place right now. That's because you actually get 2 extra soak per level of Fortitude, not 1, and of the 18 playable splats only 4 are completely lacking in Fortitude disciplines. More importantly, aggravated damage is aggravated. In After Sundown you can heal normal and lethal damage via Revive the Flesh at combat relevant speeds, whereas healing aggravated damage via the same power requires 2 power points and an hour of time per box healed. Without powers, you're stuck healing normally with a healing check interval of 3 days compared to 20 minutes for normal wounds and a single day for lethal wounds. Aggravated damage can thus be bad enough that characters have to temporarily sit out further shenanigans unless they have a healing factor or a benefactor with Gift of Health or Cleanse the Body. That's about as nasty as you want things to be given that conflict between supernaturals is fairly common in After Sundown--you want people to care about these things, but you also don't want people to just keel over and die the moment they're brought onto the scene, either.
bears fall, everyone dies
Username17
Serious Badass
Posts: 29894
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Username17 »

Whipstitch wrote:One thing that's become crystal clear to me over the course of these threads is that Shamshir-e Zomorrodnegar and other "bane weapons" need to be rechristened "fated weapons" so that players and other supernaturals can use the term "banes" freely to describe mundane anti-monster materials in-world without confusion.
You are completely right.

-Username17
User avatar
Prak
Serious Badass
Posts: 17340
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Prak »

Whipstitch wrote:@Frank
One thing that's become crystal clear to me over the course of these threads is that Shamshir-e Zomorrodnegar and other "bane weapons" need to be rechristened "fated weapons" so that players and other supernaturals can use the term "banes" freely to describe mundane anti-monster materials in-world without confusion.
Prak wrote: Some of my confusion is learning curve and skimming.

Clearly. Iron/silver/wood weaponry is actually in a really good place right now. That's because you actually get 2 extra soak per level of Fortitude, not 1, and of the 18 playable splats only 4 are completely lacking in Fortitude disciplines. More importantly, aggravated damage is aggravated. In After Sundown you can heal normal and lethal damage via Revive the Flesh at combat relevant speeds, whereas healing aggravated damage via the same power requires 2 power points and an hour of time per box healed. Without powers, you're stuck healing normally with a healing check interval of 3 days compared to 20 minutes for normal wounds and a single day for lethal wounds. Aggravated damage can thus be bad enough that characters have to temporarily sit out further shenanigans unless they have a healing factor or a benefactor with Gift of Health or Cleanse the Body. That's about as nasty as you want things to be given that conflict between supernaturals is fairly common in After Sundown--you want people to care about these things, but you also don't want people to just keel over and die the moment they're brought onto the scene, either.
Then there at least needs to be some copy editing in the Slaying Monsters and/or Fortitude section, because those bonuses to soak are bonuses to physical resistance rolls, not specifically soak, and so, other than being called out in Slaying Monsters, there's no reason to assume they're treated as that, rather than like bonuses to Strength. Ditto Force Field.

And even then, I'm not sold because it's still a very small difference in a werewolf's soak roll.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
User avatar
virgil
King
Posts: 6339
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by virgil »

Prak wrote: other than being called out in Slaying Monsters, there's no reason to assume they're treated as that, rather than like bonuses to Strength. Ditto Force Field.
But yeah, other than the rules as written, there's no reason to assume it would work. :roll: I feel the need to point out that it's called out in the rules that soak is a physical resistance test. Personally I think you're just being obtuse, but I can see the argument that you're continued confusion is a sign that clearer writing wouldn't hurt and should in fact be on the to-do list.
And even then, I'm not sold because it's still a very small difference in a werewolf's soak roll.
To this, I must say, so what? If the werewolf is only a couple points better than a human, then they're not all that tough, which should mean the effort to use kryptonite should be unnecessary. I would certainly question a player digging for the family cutlery to melt down into daggers to fight someone no tougher than Vin Diesel.
Image
I have a gun, in my room, you give me five seconds...

Bane materials get past force fields, tactical regeneration, intangibility, and toughness beyond just plain being bigger; what the fvck more do you want out of it?
Last edited by virgil on Thu Feb 11, 2016 6:39 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Come see Sprockets & Serials
How do you confuse a barbarian?
Put a greatsword a maul and a greataxe in a room and ask them to take their pick
EXPLOSIVE RUNES!
Eikre
Knight-Baron
Posts: 571
Joined: Mon Aug 03, 2009 5:41 am

Post by Eikre »

FrankTrollman wrote:Players in RPGs are very reticent to run away even when they should. Lacking the "net" of a tv show or novel that guarantees them an escape and a victorious rematch, players are extremely reluctant to "accept a loss" and will fight on long after an MC has dropped some serious hints that they are outgunned.
Thank you for articulating this. It's actually a problem I had in mind, but on which I failed to develop a thesis. Allow me the opportunity to do that now:

My supposition is that a player's reticence towards fleeing is a matter of convention. Players have a learned bias for fighting until absolute submission, I think, because they accept that it's the matter of course. This is particularly true now that we can expect pretty much everyone to learn their gaming folkways from a Nintendo long before they ever arrive at a table.

When you play a videogame, you build a certain vocabulary of recognition for game concepts, mostly to indicate when your efforts are effective. Let's say you're playing Zelda. When you strike an enemy with your sword, you knock him back and hear a sound effect. Then, you arrive at a room occupied with a hostile ghost, but swinging your sword at him doesn't do anything. You put in best efforts to experiment with him a little bit before accepting that you haven't found the dungeon item that is supposed to work on him yet. You can reasonably expect this (and the designers of the game can reasonably expect you to understand this) because it's a convention of the genre, and it has been appropriately signaled to you.

So, when I say, "mechanisms which offer reasons for characters to occasionally defer on a fight," I'm talking about a way for the game to have a way of escalating indeterminate GM hinting to a specific signal that everyone really does understand means "no, motherfuckers, stop trying and just turn around, you really actually are supposed to leave this guy and come back later," without incurring the intellectual insult of making the GM just state it outright.

Take, for example, the convention of the Gygaxian Dungeon, which is so laced with traps that adventurers end up combing every 5' square for them as a matter of course. Now, in the base case, there's just no good reason to expect a spiked pitfall to unilaterally murder you when you're walking down an unfamiliar hallway, and it's not really a very interactive game element, which is why it's fallen back out of style. Nonetheless, Gygax wanted that pulpy tomb-raiding aesthetic, so he jammed it right in there anyway. Players eventually built a culture of acceptance towards traps as an essential conceit of the game, and thereby, adjusted their behaviors accordingly.

I recognize that AS will likely never have the following for people to learn its folkways from cultural osmosis like they did with AD&D, but I think the tone of the manual is such that you can straight-up inform the reader, in big bold letters, that obscure weaknesses (or whatever) are how the story tells you to accept something less than total victory as a confrontation's default outcome. After you communicate this in explicit terms, I believe the players can sublimate the conceit, and when the GM pulls the lever at the end Act II, everyone can play their role in a much more naturalistic fashion.
Post Reply