I found a great blog about retro GW miniatures circa Warhammer Fantasy Battle Third Edition. While completely eclipsed rules-wise by subsequent editions (especially 8th) for playability, 3rd edition was my gateway into Warhammer and the amazing Realm of Chaos books. I’m just going to post some pics and let the nostalgia flow.
Having fun with the “Weird” character builder. Like Kerberos Club, Atomic Robo allows custom skills and modes, so you can conceivably build just about any type of character, and so here we go with one of the greatest anime villains there is: Tessai from Ninja Scroll. This is not even in the wheelhouse of what Atomic robo is about, but here we go.
Tessai
Organization: 8 Devils of Kimon!
Modes and Skills
Good (+3)
Ninja (9 points for mode) (3 Skill point upgrades)
Athletics (+4)^
Combat (+4)^
Intimidation (+4)^
Physique (+5)^*
Stealth (+4)^
Will (+4)^
Fair (+2) (9 Points)
ACTION
Average (+1) (9 Points)
INTRIGUE
^ upgraded by cross skills
* upgraded with points
Aspects
Contept: Stone bodied Ninja
NINJA: Trained by Gemma
ACTION: All strategy is deception
INTRIGUE: A dead girl might be an interesting lay
Open: I am the strongest of the Devils of Kimon
Stunts:
Signature aspect: Stone Bodied Ninja
Weapon return: Always have thrown weapons made of metal return by next action.
Extras:
Immune to normal weapons (Armor 4, At a Cost)
Stronger than Normal humans (At a cost)
Equipment Extra:
Double Edge sword
Function: Slice!
Flaw: Huge
Weapon Stunts:
Spinning Death: Attack Effects everyone in a zone either current or one zone away (at a cost)
Massive Weapon: Weapon 4
Stress Boxes
Physical: XXXX
Mental: XX
So Tessai is a typical Brick with invulnerability to normal weapons and some armor against abnormal attacks. Both are “At a Cost” which creates a narrative difficulty or aspect when it’s used. I built a custom mode (NINJA) for him but no custom skills (didn’t seem necessary to get him to where he should be). As one of his extras, he has his double sided sword that he can throw to hit everyone within his zone or one away and does a lot of damage. One way to do the Brick style is to create a stunt where he can defend with his physique. Since it’s only +5 (nothing super human there) I wanted to go with the invulnerability extra instead.
Next up, I’m going to try something really odd, like Arakune from Blazblue and the like
I put myself on two weeks away from video games (not non video games, that would be preposterous) and the personal ban ends tonight at midnight. I usually get to play stuff a few hours at night at the most and a bit on the weekends here and there. So what did I accomplish instead? Seems like there would be a huge list right? uhhhh….not really.
1) Reading the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd edition rules and first campaign
2) Reading and prepping for a session with the Atomic Robo RPG beta
3) A game of 40K 2nd edition (!?)
4) Painting 3 bestigor and getting a long way on three more. 20 more after that is still pretty daunting..
5) Finishing Undaunted Courage (biography of Louis of Louis and Clark). It’s great but the end is very sad indeed.
So during the two weeks, what game was I joneseing for the most? the new Xcom was up there– I really wanted to play that more after losing my first campaign game embarassingly. Torchlight 2 of course, but the one I really really wanted to play was Dark Souls…I’m stuck at the Capra Demon– I know HOW to beat him but I just haven’t executed properly to do it yet and this is gnawing at me something fierce!
Now however, look what’s out? Hotline Miami, Blood Bowl Chaos Edition and a Steam version of Conquest of Elysium 3 from Illwinter– all ripe and ready for the nerdery action but Dark Souls is going to be the first taste…
While a huge proponent of Warhammer Fantasy Battle 8th edition, I am not and have not been a fan of the rules for 40K for a long time– since 1996 or so actually. The last edition I played was 4th–just a one off, but the last edition I played a LOT was 2nd edition from back in 1993. This is the edition that spawned GW’s new style of boxed games rather than just the big hardback books and miniatures. The plastics were crap, but the rules are IMO the best and were used in both 40K, Necromunda and Gorkamorka: at testament to the strength of the platform. Subsequent versions of 40K, while solving the “herohammer” problem 2nd edition definitely has, added in the less desirable ” every game is just a mob of infantry in close combat in the middle” and “my entire army was destroyed by ordinance because I didn’t roll well for the first turn” issues that I just couldn’t abide.
So we got a game in of 2nd edition last night and it was good fun, while I prefer EPIC from this era, 40k is much faster to set up and play than the 6mm behemoth. Thousand points of Marines vs Eldar (and there weren’t many marines for that point value for sure). The game played fast and the rules, dusty as they were, played SOLID. It mattered where the individual models were on the table and what weapons they had and what sort of cover they had– and while there was some close combat, it was not the defining factor of the game. Here’s a shot of the predator vs Avatar with Blind grenade spots roaming around. Needless to say, with tons of chances to hurt the Avatar with shooting, the Predator did not hold up once the king of the Eldar got into close combat with it.
I (which means in some cases WE) got into the third round of beta testing for Atomic Robo RPG/FATE core 3.0 (Huzzah!), and the first thing I did was spew out a character using the no math version of character creation. FATE usually takes a bit of time to make characters, and Atomic solves this pretty well with a fast method and less aspects (Dresden and Spirit of the Century require TEN for each character). There are two types of characters– simple and complex (or weird). The simple method is pretty streamlined and gets you into the action fast, but it’s not possible to make a human blob or batwinged prehistoric monstrosity that way. For starters I chose and icon from the mid 70’s: BIG JIM. His aspects are ripped from Wikipedia and various commercials from the early 70’s where he had a backpack that talked. I think with a GM at your side, one could probably make a character like this in less than 15 minutes, even if you didn’t know FATE well. The only tough part are the Stunts, which can be filled in during play. The complex character generation will take a bit more doing, as it allows similar skill creation as Strange Fate/Kerberos Club.I’ll post something created via that method next.
Big Jim
Organization: Big Jim’s P.A.C.K.
Modes and Skills
Good (+3)
BANTER
Fair (+2)
ACTION
Average (+1)
INTRIGUE
Aspects
CONCEPT: Basic good guy leader of the P.A.C.K.
INTRIGUE: Average Caucasian Male with no other distinguishable characteristic
ACTION: I’m going in for a look!
BANTER: Permanent good attitude
Open Aspect: a Joy for Life
Stunts
Look out sir! : When hit, put a minor consequence on any of your teammates or friendly NPC’s rather than yourself
Give me the keys: +2 to drive any vehicle type never driven before
I’ve got the tools: +2 to Declarations regarding having the right tool for the job
Signature Aspect: Permanent good attitude
Call the P.A.C.K.: Spend a fate point to steal the iniative and choose who it goes to.
So he’s a natural leader and has some skills there but the meat of this guy are his stunts. He can have his teammates take consequences for him and control the pace of a fight with his Call the PACK stunt. While not a heavyweight fighting, he can hold his own against normal foes. His science is REAL weak so that’s a gaping hole that will need to be filled by team mates. I started it as a joke/test, but this is a character I’d actually dig playing.
How I missed this announcement during the summer I’ll never know, but it’s actually official. Exalted 3rd edition is in development (and has been for quite awhile now) and will be out next year some time. This is great but stunning news. Stunning because both 1st and 2nd edition have TONS of books (most of which I purchased) and will have to again with 3rd edition. It’s great because as awesome as the backstory of Exalted is, as cool as the 2nd edition combat system seemed to be at the beginnings of play (with basic, unoptimized Solars vs Dragon Blooded or Mortals) it seriously needs a rework to the combat system all the way through. First, because it’s a very difficult game for a GM to plan and run without a lot of handwaving to speed up play that does not do justice to the system and second because the combat is both narratively and systematically broken. There are a lot of people that did not (and do not) want this to be true. For years Exalted discussion has dominated the RPG forums, and for good reason, there is a massive amount to discuss and argue over– the main thing here is as many issues as the system has people really care about it a lot.
This is not going to be easy to do. Exalted combat, as it stands, takes a long time, is intensely engaging for the players that get to act often (sorry archers) and involves tons of dice rolls. Your characters are rarely dealing with mooks or even mortals most of the time so the antagonists are as detailed and complicated as the player characters. In terms of bosses, much more so. This is rough on the GM who has to remember all the stunts for his antagonists AND the stunts the players have in their arsenal. It’s quite daunting to try to run a Dragon Blooded Solar hunt team and they are the weakest of the Exalts! The part that broke it for me personally is the stunt to mote engine. In order to keep going in a fight, Exalts (all of them) have to use a narrative stunt every single action they take, whether offensively or defensively. Every time they succeed, they get motes back. This makes combat drag terribly, even though the idea of narrative during fights is key and throwing out stunts is a huge no no going forward. However when you have players that are hoping that they get attacked by the mooks (who can’t hurt them anyway) so they can stunt to get their two motes back in order to fuel their perfect defenses when getting attacked by the big bad is just not a fun situation to be in as the GM. The initiative system, Perfect Attacks, Perfect defenses, Soak, Armor, Ping damage, and the total invincibility of the (updated!) version of Mask of Winters– the list of issues is long and tangled for 3rd edition to work out.
This is stuff I’d like to see (and Matt too):
No movement measure in yards – FATE uses ZONES rather than yards, etc. and it works awesome. This should be stolen. I hate Exalted chase scenes and combats where people are trying to stay just out of reach by a ‘square’ and such.
Not too many charms! – Kerberos Club allows characters to create Skills with trappings that allowed lots of stuff to be done with a single ‘power.’ even for magic users, the ability to create trappings (a trapping would be like “Strike” or “Climb”) during a session. This is cooking good if your players can grok it.
Charm cards – let’s have some official ones that players can use.
Let my character get hit! – Perfect defenses are OK in theory, but when you MUST use one to not die, it’s a problem.
Limit stunting to once per turn – either offensive stunt or defensive stunt.
That said, there has been enormous amounts of discussion around the Exalted combat system since 2nd edition came out and tons of ideas on how to fix it from some really brilliant minds (who started with the errata bringing it to 2.5). Many of these brains are working on third edition and know exactly what the system needs so I have great hope that the game will be essentially playable while holding on to that special magic that Exalted certainly has. Beyond the metaplot, which is incredible, to me it represents, along with FATE (Kerberos Club especially), the evolution of truly narrative focus for everything in an RPG (including and especially combat) that started (for me at least) with Robin Law’s FENG SHUI, so that we are not simply clearing out a room of 66 Gnolls after clearing out two rooms of 25 Gnolls, our characters are fighting for reasons and take consequences for STAKES. It’s possible in both Exalted and FATE for your character to be fundamentally changed by the outcome (other than, you know, croaking) of a single combat. As we push forward in RPG design, there are three systems that I am really looking at that I feel are carrying the torch of Feng Shui. Obviously FATE Core 3 that will come out with Atomic Robo RPG, Legends of the Wulin (which I know I will never likely PLAY outside of a con setting, but I want to absorb the system) and now, of course, Exalted 3.
And of course, I wonder what the Exalted world will look like after the events of The Return of the Scarlet Empress…
In explanation of the previous post: a few days ago, our brave hardcore, elite, blind heroes had still not made it to Act 2 of Torchlight. The first 20 levels or so were manageable but after that, they found constant permadeath in the dungeons and regions of the second half of act 1 (the ice region!). One fateful night, three of us decided to make a run on the final Act 1 dungeon, but had to level up one of our fellows in the process so running around the ice region was in order. Much to our surprise, a random boss not even in a dungeon fired off an attack that killed both the level 25 Engineer (with a LOT of hit points) and the level 17 Berserker. My character, Blactaculus 2, was hit about as hard as possible, but managed to survive. After all the deaths, this was the final straw for Elite hardcore blind.
What caused both characters to die in one attack we cannot determine. The attack itself was an ice shot that hit multiple times along a straight line. Chillhoof has this same attack and I have lost at least one character to it– but he’s a major boss. This ice guy was just a dude running around. Were there criticals rolled at this time? Multiple criticals? We can’t be sure.
That said, we’re putting away the hardcore mode for awhile to see the rest of the game together. We will be back to Hardcore Elite, but as of now, the blind run is over and we— we failed! This is a testament to the difficulty of Torchlight 2 on the higher levels for anyone stating that the game is too easy: be more ELITE.
