FrankTrollman wrote:
Technically the Treaty of Denver put a stop to the threat of the various North American powers nuking each other - both with the real thing and with various magical knockoffs. It being unconditionally abrogated by a big penis NPC who doesn't follow the rules is very stupid, and puts incredible strain on the believability of the entire setting. You know Aztlan is contractually obligated to nuke Atlanta, right? And has been ever since that nonsense went down.
I don't remember ever seeing specific provisions of the Treaty of Denver. Do you have a reference handy?
I took GW out in my game but I hadn't really done anything with Aztlan's reaction to that event. It's been a couple months, in game, since it happened so I should probably formulate a response for the characters to hear about on the news.
There's a lot that's weird and retarded with Denver. Really, Denver should have gotten it's own book (Denver 2073, in the same vein as Seattle 2072, was something I argued long and hard for) if they were going to address it rather than throw it into Spy Games. My general argument is that if something is weird and wrong but already in print, you try to roll with it - not roll it back. Recasting stupid ideas and decisions is a time-honored practice which makes something technically retarded into something at least barely plausible.
That was one of my major problems with Denver: at the end of Year of the Comet, Ghostwalker was in nominal control, and Aztlan was out. This didn't make any fucking sense except for the fact that everyone hates Aztlan. The Great Dragon only rolled over the Azzies because he'd already cut deals behind the scenes with everyone else, and no one gave a damn that the Azzies got screwed over. Ghostwalker becomes the Judas goat that the remaining treaty nations can pin any blame for anything that happens in the Front Range Free Zone on. Yes, it looks like he's the all-powerful wyrm, but only because the other Treaty nations are backing his every fucking play. He puts a claw wrong and they're going to come down on him hard.
I thought a Treaty renegotiation was fairly mandatory. Ghostwalker-as-puppet-state was something I thought was fair to continue - I mean, it's worked for 10+ years so far. Getting rid of GW doesn't help anything. Getting the Azzies back in Denver makes no fucking sense at all. Their asses were kicked out, and all the other countries either helped, hindered, or did nothing. My suggestion was the the Azzies negotiate for something they do want - a piece of L.A. and the Hopi emergence tunnels. Which is totally doable. If CalFree can continue to get use of the Nicaragua Canal in exchange for a bunch of real estate that's magically underwater despite being in the mountains, why the fuck not?
Of course, it also ties into the war plot, because Aztlan should not be having things go all its own way in a fight with Amazonia. I actually wanted Amazonia to stage a naval invasion of the Yucatan. So part of Aztlan's big desire at the treaty re-negotiations should be to secure it's (peaceful) northern borders with the PCC and CAS - because the Azzies don't want to open another front on the war when they're facing the Amazonians. The entire concept that Amazonia is losing the war is bizarre, because while they are a bunch of magical guerrilla forces, they also have hundreds of thousands of unemployed gangsters in their massive coastal cities. Amazonia could literally draft a half-million metahuman army armed with ancient AK-47s and throw them at the Azzies. That is totally something they could do.
I'm just looking at the kind of things Amazonia should have access to.
Free Spirits
Wyverns
Drakes
Sapient Birds
Harpy
Naga
Centaur
Pixies
para anacondas
Sapient Cats
Adepts
Mages
Supposedly Aztlan is winning by using tanks? /tanks/? In the mountains of Columbia and the Amazon Basin? This should be a really bloody ugly mess where noone is getting their way. Amazonia is not some backwater with no resources. They have a giant sprawl filled with more gangers than they know what to do with. 3 Great Dragons with all their resources. EcoTerrorist training camps. Entire tribes of Amazon Basin Paracritters who owe their continued existance to Amazonia. It's an ugly ugly mess.
We're coming up with reasons why Aztlan would attack Amazonia as hard core as they did. But it's a stretch, and the given information we've been given by Catalyst, it does not make sense. Other than.. Aztlan evil.. heheheheh..
Last edited by sabs on Wed Dec 29, 2010 8:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
FrankTrollman wrote: Dragons are a tactical asset, but if they want to be a major international player they have to use their wanted intellect and magical power to become rich and powerful, and then influence proceedings in the normal way.
You mean like how everyone refers to Lofwyr as the boogeyman not because he's a dragon and can personally belly flop onto you, but because he's got the smarts and is the private owner of Saeder-Krupp, which means it's entirely possible to piss off an entire AAA megacorp?
FrankTrollman wrote: Dragons are a tactical asset, but if they want to be a major international player they have to use their wanted intellect and magical power to become rich and powerful, and then influence proceedings in the normal way.
You mean like how everyone refers to Lofwyr as the boogeyman not because he's a dragon and can personally belly flop onto you, but because he's got the smarts and is the private owner of Saeder-Krupp, which means it's entirely possible to piss off an entire AAA megacorp?
Ghostwalker pisses people off because he's been a very obvious loose plot end for a very long time. It's like shooting the villain and having him dramatically stumble around for 10 years, still conducting day to day business and seeming to retain his menace and influence.
Ghostwalker needs to be resolved, not resolutioned.
TheFlatline wrote:You've got it completely backwards. You're not going and blowing away Nazi ghosts in the book, you're going an destroying the anguished, restless spirits of the Jews who were massacred in a concentration camp.
Paraphrasing Kevin Murphy: To glibly summon the darkest shadows of our century because one has run out of adventure ideas is to stoop to Schumacherian levels of banality. Disgusting.
For a minute, I used to be "a guy" in the TTRPG "industry". Now I'm just a nobody. For the most part, it's a relief.
Trank Frollman wrote:One of the reasons we can say insightful things about stuff is that we don't have to pretend to be nice to people. By embracing active aggression, we eliminate much of the passive aggression that so paralyzes things on other gaming forums.
hogarth wrote:As the good book saith, let he who is without boners cast the first stone.
TiaC wrote:I'm not quite sure why this is an argument. (Except that Kaelik is in it, that's a good reason.)
So?
If this were rpg.net, they'd close it up and we'd need to make a new one now.
Welcome, to IronHell.
Shrapnel wrote:
TFwiki wrote:Soon is the name of the region in the time-domain (familiar to all marketing departments, and to the moderators and staff of Fun Publications) which sees release of all BotCon news, club exclusives, and other fan desirables. Soon is when then will become now.
Peculiar properties of spacetime ensure that the perception of the magnitude of Soon is fluid and dependent, not on an individual's time-reference, but on spatial and cultural location. A marketer generally perceives Soon as a finite, known, yet unspeakable time-interval; to a fan, the interval appears greater, and may in fact approach the infinite, becoming Never. Once the interval has passed, however, a certain time-lensing effect seems to occur, and the time-interval becomes vanishingly small. We therefore see the strange result that the same fragment of spacetime may be observed, in quick succession, as Soon, Never, and All Too Quickly.
TheFlatline wrote:Yes, an entire spell that simply creates a laser that pulses is limp. I imagine the cost of creating a laser designator vs teaching the spell is going to be a no-brainer.
It sounds like even the author of the spell has no fucking clue what it can do.
This is correct.
Or, rather, he believes that encryption is built-in for the spell but also receptor-dependent, meaning that, well... who the fuck knows. Assuming the author's intent:
1. you paint a target with this and every single munition with a laser guide on it targets the one point: paveways, hellfires, copperheads... everything. It's a stupid waste, especially since after the first impact that laser designation is going to be scattered throughout a cloud of debris.
2. a physical laser designator with its multiple codes calling for various munitions and what-not are still useful, since they actually work.
3. any operation using more than one designator, so long as it has a Designator spell active, is useless, since as soon as you mark two targets and one of those is a Designator target, a munition in the area gets really fucking confused and has a real hard time deciding which target it ought to be hitting. So fuck anything other than hitting one target at a time.
Of course, the author's intent is stupid; if true, the spell is clearly exhibiting "intelligent" behavior of the sort expressly limited by SR's extremely open spell-creation system.
If the spell just fires a pre-determined coded laser light pulse at something, its redundant and pointless when compared to a physical multimodal designator, but its at least not a net minus to your operations.
That makes it an awsome spell, for different reasons. This isn't "blow up enemy shit," this is "immunity to designators." Just target some rock you don't care about, and suddenly They can't shoot off missiles at you (they're expensive enough when they hit, it's terrible if they miss).
A dollar says there will be an outcry of "It doesn't work like that!" should that idea be posted on the Shadowrun forums.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
It's hardly worth the effort to find out. It's one spell in a 100+ page book containing a mission seed where you kill dead concentration camp victims in order to steal and sell for marginal benefit an artifact that breaks the canon of Shadowrun.
Maxus wrote:A dollar says there will be an outcry of "It doesn't work like that!" should that idea be posted on the Shadowrun forums.
i'll try it. wanna see what happens ^^
Welcome, to IronHell.
Shrapnel wrote:
TFwiki wrote:Soon is the name of the region in the time-domain (familiar to all marketing departments, and to the moderators and staff of Fun Publications) which sees release of all BotCon news, club exclusives, and other fan desirables. Soon is when then will become now.
Peculiar properties of spacetime ensure that the perception of the magnitude of Soon is fluid and dependent, not on an individual's time-reference, but on spatial and cultural location. A marketer generally perceives Soon as a finite, known, yet unspeakable time-interval; to a fan, the interval appears greater, and may in fact approach the infinite, becoming Never. Once the interval has passed, however, a certain time-lensing effect seems to occur, and the time-interval becomes vanishingly small. We therefore see the strange result that the same fragment of spacetime may be observed, in quick succession, as Soon, Never, and All Too Quickly.
"It doesn't work like that because...because it just can't!"
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
Maxus wrote:"It doesn't work like that because...because it just can't!"
*snickers* ^^
Welcome, to IronHell.
Shrapnel wrote:
TFwiki wrote:Soon is the name of the region in the time-domain (familiar to all marketing departments, and to the moderators and staff of Fun Publications) which sees release of all BotCon news, club exclusives, and other fan desirables. Soon is when then will become now.
Peculiar properties of spacetime ensure that the perception of the magnitude of Soon is fluid and dependent, not on an individual's time-reference, but on spatial and cultural location. A marketer generally perceives Soon as a finite, known, yet unspeakable time-interval; to a fan, the interval appears greater, and may in fact approach the infinite, becoming Never. Once the interval has passed, however, a certain time-lensing effect seems to occur, and the time-interval becomes vanishingly small. We therefore see the strange result that the same fragment of spacetime may be observed, in quick succession, as Soon, Never, and All Too Quickly.
But that's my experience of what happens when you figure out a novel use for a spell/magic/tech.
I mentioned the Midas Meteor (a D&D trick: Use Major Creation and a single gp to make gold by the cubic foot and drop it from a great height to crack open a building of your choice or to hit sleeping people) to someone, who promptly went on a rant about how it couldn't work because such-and-such line in the DMG says spells can't be used for unintended purposes. When the purpose of Major Creation seems to be: Make a lot of a material which evaporates after a while and leaves what you use it for up to you.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
I can't really decide if the Mike Wich part on the official forum is hilarious or sad.
So he noticed that fans have been upset about grammar and spelling. Wow. And thus, his part in bettering CGL releases is to pay more attention to grammar. Yippie! And after Spy Games, he'll discover spelling! Woot! That will make the best writing he can do even better!
Seriously. If you cannot even use the language correctly, why become a writer? It's like an airplane ngineer saying "so I noticed that many users of my planes are unhappy about them exploding in midair, so int he future I'll design my planes so they don't regularily spontaneously explode, to make the best planes I can design even better".
My general argument is that if something is weird and wrong but already in print, you try to roll with it - not roll it back.
And it works if done right. It works with the German Berlin book, which makes the single most retarded setting in SR history (this includes War! and post-GW Denver) into something playable with an absolute minmum of retcons, just with a firm idea, good editing and the right amount of research and thinking things through.
Last edited by hermit on Fri Dec 31, 2010 1:48 am, edited 3 times in total.
Creative Fanboy Rage: Channeling your anger by writing the book the author should have written.
No, really, it should be a pen because Wirtz never cut up a prisoner himself, he always delegated such stuff, hence the pen of doom. The guy Dave Hill meant was Mengele, but apparently he mixed him and Wirtz up.
But yes, it was fantastic. I might even run this someday.
Last edited by hermit on Fri Dec 31, 2010 2:08 am, edited 2 times in total.
Creative Fanboy Rage: Channeling your anger by writing the book the author should have written.
hermit wrote:The guy Dave Hill meant was Mengele, but apparently he mixed him and Wirtz up.
It's that whole "giving a shit" about your work bit again. Obviously he doesn't. Even the most trivial research, AKA Wikipedia, shows that he never did any cutting of prisoners and that the person most famous for cutting up prisoners was one Dr. Josef Mengele.
hermit wrote:The guy Dave Hill meant was Mengele, but apparently he mixed him and Wirtz up.
It's that whole "giving a shit" about your work bit again. Obviously he doesn't. Even the most trivial research, AKA Wikipedia, shows that he never did any cutting of prisoners and that the person most famous for cutting up prisoners was one Dr. Josef Mengele.
Also it mentions the twin studies, which wasn't even something Eduard Wirths was especially into. That was totally Mengele's thing.
Judging from the way people try to explain how Bogota surrounded by jungle makes sense, "It's Magic" will also explain this - the magic altered the timeline, of course!
It's that whole "giving a shit" about your work bit again. Obviously he doesn't. Even the most trivial research, AKA Wikipedia, shows that he never did any cutting of prisoners and that the person most famous for cutting up prisoners was one Dr. Josef Mengele.
Now, this may be different in America, but that is middle school knowledge here.
Also it mentions the twin studies, which wasn't even something Eduard Wirths was especially into. That was totally Mengele's thing.
I am actually amazed he even found Wirtz. Because Mengele is the well-known guy. Wirtz is a pencil pusher who was, at best, a second row villain, Mengele is the original mad evil nazi scientist, complete with black leather gloves and smug attitude. Mengele was a living, breathing TV trope until Israel found him. Witz? A smelly little footnote in history.
Last edited by hermit on Fri Dec 31, 2010 9:36 am, edited 1 time in total.
Creative Fanboy Rage: Channeling your anger by writing the book the author should have written.
I'm starting to see some interesting patterns emerging here.
The proofreading thread on the official boards caused me a little embarrassment as I was involved in the playtesting for Darkest Hour. A little research reveals that I have the playtest document but that we missed the deadline and I never sent any feedback to Jen. So I am off the hook to some extent there.
However a cursory examination of the original document and the final pdf gives me the impression that no changes were made to the playtest document other than layout and artwork.
Now there were blatant, obvious mistakes in that scenario that could be seen from the very outset, I spotted them within minutes. They were all the usual crap, Adepts with illegal levels of Improved Ability being one of the most common.
However, to introduce slight spoilerage, the final act takes place in a valley with a BC of 4. Opposition forces are significantly magical in nature. Several Mages, Adepts and high force spirits.
None of which have access to filtering or have any text describing the effects the Shallows has on their magical abilities. By RAW they should all be violently nerfed.
It was the first thing I saw and would have been high on the list of problems I submitted to Jen had we actually run the playtest. It's all still in there. Word for word.
As far as I can tell no proofreading has occurred since the start of the trouble at CGL.
6WA only has one credited proofreader that proofed anything else as far as I can tell, the rest are various freelancers and insiders. Lars is gone most tellingly.
And War! has no credited proofreaders.
Last edited by crizh on Fri Dec 31, 2010 11:01 am, edited 1 time in total.
