In Soviet Czechia: Game Reviews You

General questions, debates, and rants about RPGs

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Lago PARANOIA
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Post by Lago PARANOIA »

You know, it seems like things would be so much better if they just changed the basic RNG to 3d6 or a 1d20.

That example difficulty you gave for the rappelling actually seems pretty reasonable if you do that. But 2d6? Give me a break.
Frank wrote: On the plus side: the riding beasts table has an entry for Llamas and Yaks.
All is forgiven, Drači Doupě Plus.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
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Post by Koumei »

FrankTrollman wrote: On the plus side: the riding beasts table has an entry for Llamas and Yaks.
Llamas? This game really has everything a person could want.
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Post by CatharzGodfoot »

Heh, they'd actually be decent mounts for hobbits. I could totally see a team of badass armored llama-mounted hobbit outriders.
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RobbyPants
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Post by RobbyPants »

FrankTrollman wrote:There is seriously an off-the-cuff statement in the appearance section where it talks about a ranger coming in from the forest and cleaning up and shifting her beauty modifier by ten. You know, on 2d6.
Magic Soap +10?

FrankTrollman wrote:The minimum strength on those things is +10, even with the bonus for using them two handed, you ain't pulling that off at chargen.
You can't use a greatsword at 1st level? Is it some uber weapon or something? Is it just overpowered compared to one-handed options?
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Post by Xur »

Being a long-time lurker, I just registered to say thank you for these insights. They are interesting, funny and slightly frightening the same time. Hope you can get hands on the missing handbooks :)
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Post by Draco_Argentum »

FrankTrollman wrote:OK, that's just illustrating the numbers. Each of those bars contains the name of a stat you are supposed to write down and the place for writing it down, and the line between the two is curved.
Thats much more boring than I expected.

Classes with this much variance in an MMO would be a good thing, you really need it for replayability. In a PnP game its the road to confusion town.
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Post by JigokuBosatsu »

This is fascinating. Now I wish I hadn't decided my DJ name should be "DJ Falsifier", so it could be "Mister Cavern". Maybe I'll have to name an album that.

All this is well and good, but here's a really important question: What does the Czech Gaming Den look like?

:shocked:
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Maxus
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Post by Maxus »

We chase each other around with a switch with some ribbons tied onto it, aiming to give each other a pop on the ass. If the person being ass-switched accepts, they give the Ax of Happiness. If not, they give the Words of Rejection.

If rejected, we go drink the Beer of Consolation (Czech beer is REALLY GOOD at consoling). This -may- be followed by the Disco Dance of Drunk. This is a scary dance.

Then we all go beat ourselves with the Moron Bat.
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

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Post by Datawolf »

FrankTrollman wrote:On the plus side: the riding beasts table has an entry for Llamas and Yaks.

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Post by Xur »

Frank, any chance to get more insight on this hillarious game? And I agree that Mister Cavern is the new DM title :)
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Post by Kaelik »

Yeah I already adopted it.
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Post by Username17 »

Xur wrote:Frank, any chance to get more insight on this hillarious game? And I agree that Mister Cavern is the new DM title :)
Actually yes. You see, I am in Czech Republic. Which means that I can go get another book and try to puzzle out more parts of the game. Would people rather see the wisdom of...
  • Bestiař (Monster Manual)
  • Příručka pro Pán Jeskyně (DMG)
  • Povolání Bojovník (Complete Fighter)
  • Povolání Knez (Complete Cleric)
  • Povolání Zloděj (Complete Thief)
  • Povolání Čaroděj (Complete Wizard)
To give you an idea of what you (and I) are missing, This is a section from the Complete Ranger. Most of it is taken up with "life as a Ranger" but it just starts in on discussing their deal where they wander around the wilderness and get access to "medicine" (in the Witch Doctor sense of the term) that Mr. Cavern feels like having them find.

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Post by Judging__Eagle »

Hmm.....

Monsters. Definitely Monsters. I want to see if there's anything new; or anything that you feel is a Czech folklore/mythology sort of creature that isn't well known by the D&D playing crowd.
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Post by Archmage »

I vote for the DMG. I really want to see the kind of advice Czech game designers ripping off Dungeons and Dragons give aspiring Mister Caverns.
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Post by CatharzGodfoot »

FrankTrollman wrote:
Xur wrote:Frank, any chance to get more insight on this hillarious game? And I agree that Mister Cavern is the new DM title :)
Actually yes. You see, I am in Czech Republic. Which means that I can go get another book and try to puzzle out more parts of the game. Would people rather see the wisdom of...
  • Bestiař (Monster Manual)
  • Příručka pro Pán Jeskyně (DMG)
  • Povolání Bojovník (Complete Fighter)
  • Povolání Knez (Complete Cleric)
  • Povolání Zloděj (Complete Thief)
  • Povolání Čaroděj (Complete Wizard)
How good of a translation are you going to get? If it's going to be good enough, the DMG would be awesome. Otherwise the MM for sure.

JigokuBosatsu wrote:This is fascinating. Now I wish I hadn't decided my DJ name should be "DJ Falsifier", so it could be "Mister Cavern". Maybe I'll have to name an album that.
Lots of DJs have multiple DJ names. Consider Amon Tobin, who also released music as Cujo and Bonobo.

[Edit] Holy shit, those character sheets are intense. [/Edit]
Last edited by CatharzGodfoot on Fri Oct 08, 2010 1:09 am, edited 1 time in total.
The law in its majestic equality forbids the rich as well as the poor from stealing bread, begging and sleeping under bridges.
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Mount Flamethrower on rear
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Koumei
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Post by Koumei »

Yeah, it's a toss-up between Mister Cavern's Book and the Monster Manual. I'm kind of hoping it has weird Chechen folklore monsters that those of us on the other side of the Iron Curtain missed out on.

That said, the DMG must surely have the whole Kafkaesque Nightmare thing going on, which is a sure win.

"If your players want to multiclass, make sure they obtain the multiclassing from form for their current class and the multiclassing to form for their new class. Note that the multiclassing to form is in the book for their new class, which they are not allowed to open until they gain a level in it. They will also need the variant rule permission slip, located in the box marked 'Beware of Leopard'."
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Post by Orca »

I suspect Mister Cavern's Book is fail we've all seen before. I'd like to hear the weirdness of their Monster Manual.
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Post by Maxus »

Orca wrote:I suspect Mister Cavern's Book is fail we've all seen before. I'd like to hear the weirdness of their Monster Manual.
Agreed
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!
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Post by RobbyPants »

Either the DMG or MM sound good. The DMG because I expect to see some terrible advice, and the MM because I expect to see a lot of DNS effects.
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Post by Username17 »

So I got the Bestiař. It comes in a three ring binder kind of like the 2nd edition Monstrous Compendium. I was wrong about the Povolání Zloděj and Povolání Theurg, in that they are actually one book - you literally flip the Povolání Zloděj upside down and start reading from the other end to get the Povolání Theurg. So it would take half as many actual books to figure out how the classes "really" work as I thought.

Also, there are two, two short book sets of "Pokročili (Advanced)" and "Expert (Expert)" rules, but I am starting in on the Bestiař for now.

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Post by Dominicius »

FrankTrollman wrote:Povolání Zloděj (Complete Thief)
I find it hilarious that the Czech word for thief is literally evil doer.
Last edited by Dominicius on Fri Oct 08, 2010 5:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Username17 »

Oh, also there's a "modern" Czech game that came out last year called Střepy Snů, which seems to run on dice pools and because it's Czech, those dice are all d6s. I have not played it or even found out what he hell it's about, but flipping through a book in the gam store it looks exactly like a White Wolf game in terms of layout and presentation. You seem to have "Fear Points" (Body Strach) or something. I don't even.

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schpeelah
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Post by schpeelah »

That game sounds like a Czech Don't Rest Your Head. Any connection?
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Post by TheFlatline »

Koumei wrote:"If your players want to multiclass, make sure they obtain the multiclassing from form for their current class and the multiclassing to form for their new class. Note that the multiclassing to form is in the book for their new class, which they are not allowed to open until they gain a level in it. They will also need the variant rule permission slip, located in the box marked 'Beware of Leopard'."
I see you've played Paranoia.
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Post by Username17 »

schpeelah wrote:That game sounds like a Czech Don't Rest Your Head. Any connection?
Not seemingly. Here's how the designer describes it to the best of his ability in English:
Matouš Ježek wrote:In 2009, I have written and published an independent pen and paper RPG called “Strepy snu” (loosely translated as Dream Shards). Focusing on the storytelling aspect of gaming, it puts the players in roles of characters from a fictional film and tells the story of their lives.

The development of this game gave me a great insight into game design, especially concerning the application of film techniques to game mechanics. The 160 pages long book was self-published.
His other credits include no PnP stuff at all, but he apparently worked on Mafia 2 (the computer game reviewed Here), where he did storyboarding.

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