Yeah, this one didn't really land for me. There wasn't enough to show that they were childhood friends or that they were reconnecting after years of separation; you could substitute any number of different backgrounds and have them fit with little issue. Unfortunately, without that extra depth or emotional component, it's just the same two panels repeating, over and over again, in service of a joke that can't land without a twist that they don't have.

Wasn't a big part of the end of Spikes ark him explicitly not getting back together with her? Like she was his lost love, but she was also very not good for him.

It seems the reception on exalted has been less than luke warm, so I'm not sure if it's worth trying. Campaigns tend to work better when everyone's at least partially invested in the idea anyways.

Out of curiosity, is there any particular part of VtM that you guys like or is it specifically the entire vampire package?

RandomGuy posted:

Also, as someone who isn’t terribly familiar with White Wolf’s products? What exactly are Geniuses? And what is Exalted?

White wolf has 2-ish settings (that I am aware of): World of Darkness and Exalted. They're each set in their own world and tend to focus on different types of stories, but they also support multiple types of characters that get described in standalone (or mostly stand alone) books.

World of Darkness is their urban fantasy setting, which takes place in a version of the real world that also has a supernatural element that is hidden from most mortals. The main books in this series are Vampire: The Requiem (focusing on vampires), Werewolf: The Forsaken (focusing on wearewolves), and Mage: The Awakening (focusing on Mages). Genius: The Transgression is a fan made book, in the same vein as the above three, but focused on mad-scientist characters who work by creating strange technologies that don't necessarily follow the normal laws of physics. If you want to read it, you can find it here.

In case you're wondering, Vampire: The Masquerade fills the same role as Requiem, but in the Old World of Darkness, which is basically just the version that came before the current one.

Exalted, unlike WoD, takes place on a fantasy world with a geography that's completely unlike Earth's — for one thing, it's flat — with more high power, action-adventure focused, characters. The theme is also inspired more by martial arts stories and heroic epics, rather than the more psychological monster and urban fantasy fare that goes into WoD, though it certainly has its elements of morality and psychology as it's still a White Wolf game.

In Exalted, the original creators of the world created the gods to serve them. Those gods decided to rebel and imbued select mortals with a spark of their divine might, called an Exaltation. Their rebellion succeeded and they ruled the world alongside the exalts for a time. Shockingly this actually worked quite well, up until a curse from the original creators caught up with the Exalts and drove the strongest of them mad. They were overthrown and a few apocalypses ensued.

Eventually, a Dragon blooded exalt was able to bring some order to the world and declared herself Empress. People got to rebuilding and things went ... fine ... for centuries. Right up until recently, when she vanished without trace or explanation.

The current edition of Exalted has rules for two types of Exalts: Solar Exalted and Dragon-Blooded Exalted. The Solars are defined as the strongest type of exalt, they are the ones who were originally in charge before they went mad, but no one has seen them in a very long time. While you would be playing as a new Solar Exalt, the power level is still higher than I'm really comfortable dealing with.

That leaves us with the Dragon-Blooded Exalts. While most exalts are specifically chosen by deities and only exist in very small numbers (between a few dozen and a few hundred, depending on the type), Dragon-Blooded gain their powers as descendants of the Great Elemental Dragons and, as such, there are a lot of them. In fact, the ruling class of the current empire is composed entirely of Dragon-Blooded dynasties, though not all Dragon-Blooded are part of the ruling class or even part of the empire.

If I were to run an Exalted campaign, it would be Dragon-Blooded, though the specifics of that campaign would depend on the players and what they're interested in. That said, while I'm willing to run an Exalted campaign, it would be the first time I've run anything in this system.

HB4L posted:

So I'm assuming you wouldn't be up for it?

I'm not up for running a VtM game, but I'd be willing to consider playing as a Genius character in one under two conditions: The GM is at least decently familiar with running the system and I can talk to them beforehand to make sure my character will actually fit the story they want to run.

Both of those are purely practical considerations. Running a mixed game is more complicated than a normal one, and using a fan book adds an extra layer of complication on top of that, so it's best to have a GM who's familiar enough with the system anticipate some problems in advance and figure out how to deal with any they don't anticipate.

Similarly, as with any campaign that mixes in a drastically different type of character, it's possible for the odd one out to warp the story in undesired ways, either because their abilities easily solve a wide range of problems the other characters would normally face or because they require things that necessitate dragging the party in a different direction. Conversely, it's also possible for them to be relegated to an unimportant cameo status, where they're there, but can't really interact with the main plot or accomplish anything without pretending they're one of the normal characters. Neither of those outcomes are particularly fun, so I'd like to make sure my character would be able to fit within the campaign.

Does that make sense?

Well seems like the 2 systems most people here are interested in are VtM and Exalted, so considering you're still against VtM, I guess Exalted would be the best bet? We can always run a trial session to get better hang of it/each other and once we do consider changing it again.

We could also do that. If we go exalted, would I be the one GMing, or does anyone else want to run a game?

From what I understand, running a WoD campaign that involves more than one "race" (vampire, werewolf, changeling, mage, slayer, etc) requires a lot of imagination, but it can be done.

Yeah, anything like that is going to be fairly reliant on an experienced GM and the right kind of campaign. I'm fairly confident that I could write a character that could fit, given those two conditions, but neither of them are reasonable constraints for this thread, which is why I only mentioned a mixed campaign in passing.

Unfortunately, I'm not a fan of the whole vampire esthetic. I don't have any problems with other players playing as vampires, but it's generally not something I want to deal with myself or something I'd want to center a campaign I'm running on.

In terms of White Wolf Published systems, Exalted and Dragon Blooded, in particular, seems interesting. For those who don't know, Exalted is set on a fantasy world with a largely Asian and Indian inspired aesthetic and players take the role of mortals who have been empowered by some form of divine gift. In the case of dragon-blooded exalts, this takes the form of ancestry that can be traced back to one of the elemental dragons.

While technically not published by White Wolf, there's a fan made book called Genius: the Transgression that uses their system and is set in the same world as Vampire, Mage, and a number of other books. In Genius you play as a mad scientist and, in addition to mad science gadgets, there are sort-of pocket dimensions based on what-if futures or speculative futures that failed to pass. I think you can technically run crossover campaigns, with mixed parties, using other books from the same setting, but that can get really tricky.

There are also three non-White Wolf systems I'd be interested in trying.

The Stuff of Legends is an Indie system that's still in development. It started as a spiritual successor to Legend, if you're familiar with that system, and it's d20 based, like D&D, but it is otherwise very different from either of those systems. Rather than choosing a single class, a character's combat abilities are primarily determined by three tracks, while their out of combat abilities are primarily defined by a point based perk system. The end result is a lot of flexibility when it comes to character build alongside more diverse and interesting abilities than you traditionally see in d20 systems.

There's also FATE of Cthulhu, which is a Lovecraft inspired variant of FATE. It's much less mechanically focused than White Wolf's stuff or SoL which can be good for some people. It also has some time travel/timeline aspects which seem really interesting.

Finally, I recently got a copy of Lancer, which is a mecha-themed system from the guy behind the Kill Six Billion Demons web comic. I haven't looked at it in too much detail yet, but it seems really cool and I'm pretty sure it comes with a digital character builder.

I'd be willing to play or GM any of those systems, except for Genius which I'd only be willing to play. (I'm less familiar with White Wolf's system and it's complicated enough that I wouldn't feel comfortable running a fan-made expansion for the first time.) I'm also willing to look at most other systems, except for D&D and Pathfinder, which I really can't stand.

@Nevri, making a thread for it might be a good idea. Personally, if it's going to be something White Wolf's published I'd rather go with Exalted or the Genius: The Transgression. There are also a few other systems I'd be fairly interested in, but D&D and Pathfinder are things I'd rather avoid.

Really? I was under the impression that Balderls Gate Planescape Torment were pretty similar to the official rules and they came out in '98 and '99 respectively.

Also, it's probably worth mentioning that Shadowrun is based of of, well, Shadowrun, not D&D. The two systems are fairly different.

Boss: "Work on your day off with no pay because I said so."

Me: "Fuck off."

Boss: "You're fired."

Me again: "I said fuck off. I already quit. Shove your unpaid overtime back up the orifice you excreted it out of."

Tip: You may want to skip the "You can't fire me, I quite" line. Forcing your old employer to pay unemployment insurance is a much better FU.

I haven't played any of the D&D arcade games, but I generally haven't been a fan of the pc games based on it, in part because of mechanical issues with 3.5 and how characters are built, in particular.

That said, if a bunch of people are really interested in playing non-D&D games, I might be up for playing or GMing, depending on what people want.

It's kind-of unfortunate that D&D is so dominant, because there are a lot of other interesting systems that are much harder to play, simply because everyone has heard of D&D.

I'm curious how often something like this ALL happens in Japan!!!!

How accurate are Mangas?

How accurate are sitcoms and soaps?

Also isn't Hamefura is Yuri Bait? Bakarina end up with Geordo* (the prince). Falling for him in vol.5? l

Wait, seriously? That's disapointing, given the entire tone of the first part of the anime and it's opening.

Unless Rei's fanfic is an AU fic, she probably doesn't die.

Not sure what you mean but Rei's fan fic that we never find anything about, has no bearing on the story. The world is following the story of the game Rei was a fan of- but with changes ofcourse since she now has knowlege she shouldnt.

In this chapter she says her fanfic was about Claire making a life for herself after the events of the game. While we don't know much more than that, it does imply that Clair survives the original game, in at least some of the routes.

She's being a cat. It's only natural.

Yandere vs. yandere?

People keep saying that, but neither of them seem to be yandere style stalkers. They're a bit messed up and rather violent, but it's a different sort of violence.

Maybe tsun(×50)dere? That said, I'm not sure there's really a dere part here, even if they ultimately fall for each other. They're more like characters out of Black Lagoon or maybe Mercialago: Violent and misanthropic as a default, with the ability to act civilized when necessary.

What's more interesting is that the inspiration for this manga appears to be American. Specifically this is a yurified version of Mad Magazine's "White Spy versus Black Spy."

What makes you say that? The only real connection I see is their names, which seems a bit tenuous.

last edited at Sep 4, 2020 5:23PM

I like to think that white is just very violent and black is just really in love with white and doesn't know how to express it except through violence as well

That or there is a very odd miscommunication going on where Black thinks white was following her around because she has a crush on her and White thinks Black is up to know good, so Black went into a fight thinking it was going to be sexy times and White is just very fond of hate sex.

Also, I love the facial expressions in this and the eyes in particular.

I get why manga like Akuyaku Reijou Tensei Oji-san lean so heavily into the genre-cliches but with these it just drives me into despair. Not a shred of originality. Not even a single moment in those first two chapters is anything you can't find elsewhere. Sure, it's puzzled together slightly different each time, but that's about the level of originality and creativity LN authors and mangaka bring these days?!

Bleh. Unworthy.

This one seems fairly different from the normal fair, with the reincarnated princess not being automatically good at everything and massively popular, rejecting her claim to the throne, and focusing on science and research rather than personal power or politics.

penultimate panel: the duke is saying he's take action about the successsion?

I think he's saying that he's willing to go against the princess's wishes to push her onto the throne, rather than leave it up to the king who's more willing to indulge his daughter. The King seems to agree that she'd be a better ruler, despite her quirks, so the duke isn't actually going against him.

On a completely stupid side note, Kisaki-san suffers from a "tree" disease. That got me to wondering if she has to deal with termites or pesky critters that mistake her for a tree. if so, what does she do to deal with it?

Applies garden-variety insecticide from the corner store probably. Or just squishes them, what with that fluid shape and generally many orders of magnitude greater ability to flexibly respond to nuisances than proper plants boast (those are mainly down to chemical countermeasures which as per the usual predator-prey arms race their major pests are varyingly resistant to).

I'd expect regular showering to be pretty effective too, since most insects aren't going to like the soap and the running water+scrubbing will probably dislodge most of them and their eggs.

The real question is whether or not she has to deal with bees, or other pollinators, and how she feels about it.

Funfact about UV - while mammals have categorically lost the ability to directly perceive it likely thanks to millions of years spent as small nocturnal critters (not much of the stuff available at night) dodging dinosaurs,

Actually, that's not entirely true. We still have some ability to see light at the edge of the UV spectrum, but you usually need something to help filter out the normal light to make it more visible.

Loco said Baiser only has 2 stars, but she very clearly has at least 6, so either her count is off or we're missing something.

https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/looking_up_to_magical_girls_ch13#11

Here it mentions that it is the stars on their skin that count, so yeah, Baiser only has 2 stars but they multiply when he gets horny/excited. She doesn't have horns outside of her costume as well, so how are they not accessories?

Unless I'm mistaken, while her horns only show up when she transforms, they don't break away like the rest of her costume. That is, she's actually transforming, rather than just getting a costume like everyone else, thus those horns are part of her body and equivalent to her skin. Similarly, Loco describes the relevant marks as "engraved on their skin" and it's hard to view marks "engraved" on her eyes as being less than ones engraved on her skin.

Now I'm even more confident that Loco's miscounting her marks, because they're so out of the ordinary that she doesn't realize what she's looking at.

Loco said Baiser only has 2 stars, but she very clearly has at least 6, so either her count is off or we're missing something. My guess is that Baiser's form differs enough from the normal dark magical girls that she's discounting stars she shouldn't be. (e.g. stars on clothing and accessories don't count, but Baiser's eyes and horns aren't accessories.)

Also, the mascot seems to be hinting that grenade girl can get stronger.

Oh, also, are we sure they're not older, because they [i]really[/i] don't look or act their supposed age.

last edited at Aug 29, 2020 3:46PM

I am disappointed in the little sister. I mean, how could she.

That camera doesn't even look like an slr! And where's her lens? Don't tell me she's relying on a digital zoom!

Isn't her epithet is literally "The Awesome Demon".

Do asians tattoo english lines the same way we tattoo chinese/japanes lines?

Judging by the prevalence of gratuitous English in anime, my guess would be yes and possibly at a higher rate.