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Any D&D/D20

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World of Darkness

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[scriver]

Why would she? Mirrors isn't the only way to beat Medusa. Sticking a fork in her heart works just as well, and now she's also vulnerable to sunlight, so now you can also defeat her by using your mirror to shower her with sunlight.

[Trekkin]

Technically mirrors aren't even a way to defeat Medusa. Perseus just used his shield as a mirror to see where to swing his sword without getting turned to stone. Then, too, vampires' reflections are only supposed to not show in silver, so a polished shield would still work.

[SOLDIER First]

Or a non-silvered mirror (which is, IIRC, what most mirrors are nowadays). :p

[Kagus]

Why would she? Mirrors isn't the only way to beat Medusa. Sticking a fork in her heart works just as well, and now she's also vulnerable to sunlight, so now you can also defeat her by using your mirror to shower her with sunlight.

Yeh, but just try and stick a fork in someone's heart without looking at them. It's "Pin the Tail On the Donkey: Ironman Mode".

Technically mirrors aren't even a way to defeat Medusa. Perseus just used his shield as a mirror to see where to swing his sword without getting turned to stone. Then, too, vampires' reflections are only supposed to not show in silver, so a polished shield would still work.

S'pose that's true, unless the shield was silvered for some reason... Was gonna make a comment about trying to see usable reflections in something like bronze, but then we've got Bob Munden over here shooting targets via the reflection in an engagement ring... So eh.

Or a non-silvered mirror (which is, IIRC, what most mirrors are nowadays). :p

Nowadays, yes, but that kind of technology wasn't really big in her days.


I'm surprised no one mentioned the slight difficulty of trying to feed on victims without them seeing her and turning to stone.

Yeah, I personally don't see the appeal of playing an objectively terrible game. I'd much rather play a game like deadEarth or World of Synnibarr, where, sure, the rules are terrible, but the core idea sounds fun.

Just started reading about Synnibar, I've only just gotten past the class review of the Alchemist and how 80% of its abilities don't work. I'm digging the fact that a half-decent roll can apparently put you into a strength class that lets you "throw a 370 pound object at 243 miles per hour a distance of 6,660 feet, and the object will take its weight in pounds in damage". But I dunno, it doesn't seem quite as inherently bogged down as FATAL with unnecessary skills and checks, at least not yet...

deadEarth is always good fun though. "Will we survive character creation? Who knows!"


Also finished off what little there was of the Monte Cook's World of Darkness blurb, so although the concept of "vampires do it better, mages do it best" was introduced, we never got to see just how fucky mages actually got in MCWoD.

[MrRoboto75]

I'm digging the fact that a half-decent roll can apparently put you into a strength class that lets you "throw a 370 pound object at 243 miles per hour a distance of 6,660 feet, and the object will take its weight in pounds in damage".

Imagine being so swole you are your own trebuchet.

[scriver]

I don't believe the whole "only silver mirrors" thing anyway. Sounds 110% like a factoid that gets spread around because everybody loves to be a betterknower.

[birdy51]

Oh hey, on the subject of obscure RPGs, I would recommend looking up Sailor Moon's take. It's surprisingly robust.

[Telgin]

The Big Eyes Small Mouth version?  My cousin had a copy of it and I remember trying it some, but don't remember all that much about it.

The main thing I took away from it, which was surprisingly good and necessary advice for me over the years, is that you can't run a game for both good guys and bad guys at the same time.  Honestly, I'm surprised the game even floated the idea of running games for characters from the Negaverse (or whatever it was called) at all.

How does a DBZ RPG even work

In seriousness, not well.  I actually can't imagine how you'd make a fulfilling DBZ RPG, since it's nothing but fighting and having bigger numbers than your opponent means you win.  Dragon Ball might be doable, but Dragon Ball Z is probably always going to break down mechanically.

The Fuzion based version was a train wreck on top of that, of course.

[MrRoboto75]

Oh hey, on the subject of obscure RPGs, I would recommend looking up Sailor Moon's take. It's surprisingly robust.

Can I declare my job is done and just run off, in spite of not doing anything

[Cruxador]

I don't believe the whole "only silver mirrors" thing anyway. Sounds 110% like a factoid that gets spread around because everybody loves to be a betterknower.

Sounds to me like something somebody wrote into their setting because they thought it was super elegant, and in-setting said something to the tune of "nobody knows this but it's super true" and then readers thought that was a general statement outside of the game, or just spread it because they also think it's elegant. It's hard to imagine that myths from a time when everything was silvered would specify that. Especially since silver isn't a super common theme in vampire mythology to begin with.

[Mephisto]

I love obscure RPGs, for all definitions of obscure. Ancient shit like Adventures in Fantasy and MEGA, old shit like Strange Frontiers and Agone, new shit like all three lines from GenIsys Games (distinct from the good FFG system and the meh Terminator series) with their mind-bendingly massive character sheets, off-color shit like Asylum and its bag of marbles. I've tried to start up an "obscure game review" thing but, seeing as they're obscure and few people enjoy the things I do, it never really took off.

They're mostly mediocre-bad but some games (like Agone, though that's seemingly still popular-ish in its home country of France) are pretty good.

[Cthulhu]

Recently read the book for Violence, which is basically an RPG version of Hatred, written by Designer X who's apparently a well known designer who didnt want his name attached to it.

Thinking about changing my system from DCC to swords and wizardry, a popular OD&D revamp.  DCC is great but it has an almost memey approach to a lot of old school tropes which is clashing with the initial plot thread I want to weave into my hexcrawl, which is more magically oriented, whereas DCC magic is hypercompetitive and cannibalistic and doesnt like organized magic. Busting out the alexandrian's node-based storytelling, set up a villain and henchmen and a goal, gonna write up a general schedule of activities with no player interference, and then populate the hexes with clues and the aforementioned activities so when the players stumble on the conspiracy it feels organic, rather than something i laid out and railroaded them into

DCC also veers away from true OSR in a lot of ways that feel "load-bearing" to me, like the XP system which feels more like a storygame with semi fixed gains each adventure.  Gold as XP is love, gold as XP is life.

[Trekkin]

I don't believe the whole "only silver mirrors" thing anyway. Sounds 110% like a factoid that gets spread around because everybody loves to be a betterknower.

Sounds to me like something somebody wrote into their setting because they thought it was super elegant, and in-setting said something to the tune of "nobody knows this but it's super true" and then readers thought that was a general statement outside of the game, or just spread it because they also think it's elegant. It's hard to imagine that myths from a time when everything was silvered would specify that. Especially since silver isn't a super common theme in vampire mythology to begin with.

Well, in a way, vampires weren't super common in vampire mythology to begin with, at least not in the sense that we're familiar with them now; the common traits of vampires (undead, sucks blood, looks like an attractive human under certain circumstances) weren't all really found in the same mythological creature prior to Dracula. Probably the antecedent of the silver thing was the use of silver coins soaked in blood to repel the Albanian shtriga, although these were blood-sucking witches, and interestingly the dhampir, from the same region, lack a shadow.

[birdy51]

The main thing I took away from it, which was surprisingly good and necessary advice for me over the years, is that you can't run a game for both good guys and bad guys at the same time.  Honestly, I'm surprised the game even floated the idea of running games for characters from the Negaverse (or whatever it was called) at all.

That is good advice indeed. I am not sure if many other source books even get to do that kind of thing, since villain vs. hero powers seems to be well-defined in this instance.

Another fun note though is that apparently the book is packed with background information; so that someone who hasn't even seen the show can still get a gist of what the world is like without really having to hunt down background information.

[Kagus]

I don't believe the whole "only silver mirrors" thing anyway. Sounds 110% like a factoid that gets spread around because everybody loves to be a betterknower.

Sounds to me like something somebody wrote into their setting because they thought it was super elegant, and in-setting said something to the tune of "nobody knows this but it's super true" and then readers thought that was a general statement outside of the game, or just spread it because they also think it's elegant. It's hard to imagine that myths from a time when everything was silvered would specify that. Especially since silver isn't a super common theme in vampire mythology to begin with.

Well, in a way, vampires weren't super common in vampire mythology to begin with, at least not in the sense that we're familiar with them now; the common traits of vampires (undead, sucks blood, looks like an attractive human under certain circumstances) weren't all really found in the same mythological creature prior to Dracula. Probably the antecedent of the silver thing was the use of silver coins soaked in blood to repel the Albanian shtriga, although these were blood-sucking witches, and interestingly the dhampir, from the same region, lack a shadow.

"What are you doing with that wooden stake? You kill a vampire by cutting its head off and sewing it onto the neck backwards. Everyone knows that!"

Now you will know why you fear the night.