The Gubat Banwa guy is making a new "fourthlike" (actual term used, presumably meaning D&D 4e), Swords Against Heaven. It is grimdark, mudcore fantasy with a vaguely East Asian and Southeast Asian theme. It is a super-fallen, super-ruined, everything-is-awful hellscape of a world, with vague intimations of esoteric lore. Not my thing, to say the least.I dislike dark fantasy of the "you are no hero" (direct quote from the game) variety.The game does not capitalize letters at the start of sentences. I find it hard to read.This game is also hard to read due to its high-concept artsiness. I have a more concrete mindset, so I have a hard time appreciating this. I prefer more straight-to-the-point exposition. For instance, I find it cumbersome to keep on reading about "the World's demand" (translation: roll difficulty), and I still have no idea what "the battlefield reincarnates. this is why it’s known as revolution" actually means as a core combat rule.I am not a fan of randomized statistics at character creation (or character death and the subsequent creation of a new character). This game has you roll initiative at character creation, which is bizarre to me: you are either blessed to go first or cursed to go last. When your character dies, your amount of "points" to spend on core statistics is also randomized, so you might have a super-weak character or a super-strong character.There are no classes or roles in this game. It is purely build-a-bear for your tricks in combat, for good or for ill. There are only twelve bestiary entries, and they are built like PCs in the sense that they simply pull from the same pool of build-a-bear combat abilities.I find build-a-bear characters and enemies bland, as they do not present any ready-to-go packages for combat roles and specialties, and they leave little room for unique enemy designs.There is a premade dungeon written in mudcore OSR style. It has encounters like simply "d6 goblins." Not very "fourthlike" to me.
To give an idea of what kind of "fourthlike" game this is, in the first three rooms of the premade dungeon, the PCs start off in "the abyss" and fight 3 zombies, progress onwards to "the rescension [sic] of the wheel-turner," and then make it to "the sanctuary of faded bones," where they battle d6 goblins and nothing else. The goblins have purely basic statistics with no special abilities whatsoever.At least in Draw Steel's own starter adventure, the first encounter has three varieties of goblins, each with their own unique abilities.What do you think of the idea of the game?
I think you should kill yourself Edna
Post rules or piss off
>>96621712How the fuck do you find pre-packaged statblocks more interesting than something unique?Is it because you have a shit imagination, or what
>>96622021It's because touhoufag doesn't play games as you or me understand them. He does absolutely bizarre white room solo experiments with games to satisfy some deep seated autistic need. He needs everything to be by the book, nothing external can ever his pocket dimension.
>>96622021I find prepackaged statistics blocks unique in their own way.One thing I really like about 4e is the ability to challenge tactically savvy players with enemy group synergies.For example, let us consider an encounter against a group of xivort darters (level 1 artilleries) who have tamed a bunch of thornskin frogs (level 1 brutes) and wolf packmates (level 1 minion skirmishers).http://iws.mx/dnd/?view=monster5029http://iws.mx/dnd/?view=monster4879http://iws.mx/dnd/?view=monster4614The xivort darters can daze PCs, which is annoying enough. However, the thornskin frogs can move in to deal heavy damage and knock PCs prone. Standing from prone takes a move action, and a dazed creature can take only one action on their turn, so a dazed PC who wants to use a standard action will have to settle for staying prone. Unfortunately, the wolf packmates can then move in to deal extra damage to the prone PCs. Simple but nasty enemy synergy.How about a positioning challenge for PCs of a slightly higher level? Let us say a couple of centurions of the Iron Circle (level 6 soldiers) have rounded up several dwarf warriors (level 1 minion artilleries) and a couple of extremist wilden ancients (level 4 artilleries [leader]) to stir up trouble.http://iws.mx/dnd/?view=monster6025http://iws.mx/dnd/?view=monster115713http://iws.mx/dnd/?view=monster5027The Iron Circle centurions are highly accurate against PCs with no other adjacent PCs... but if the PCs cluster up, then they might just be smacked by nasty area attacks from the wilden ancients, who can also buff the centurions. Worse, the dwarf warriors are many in number, and any PC not in cover is liable to be pincushioned by the extra damage from the crossbow attacks.I like how 4e is a 30-level game, yet even lower-level encounters can have a surprising amount of tactical depth just with some good enemy selection, to say nothing of terrain.>>96622056I have been playing with and GMing for groups of players.
>>96622208Oh, right well yeah if you're GMing in a kinda adversarial wargame-lite way then I guess having prepackaged units is going to be more interesting than coming up with cool flavor befitting a randomly generated statblock. I will add though that random ones can result in surprisingly effective combos, stuff that even you with your turbo autism might miss, assuming a large enough pool of abilities.
>>96623752No, enemies in Swords Against Heaven (or should I say, swords against heaven, since the game is on a crusade against capitalization) are not randomly generated.Their individual quantities sometimes are, such as the d6 goblins encounter in the starter dungeon.
Here is an example of what I mean when I say that the game has obtuse writing. Above and beyond the lack of capitalization, here is how the game tries to explain forced movement collision damage:>pushing, pulling. forced movement—>if forcibly moved into terrain. or someone else. or something else. >roll one die of colliding for every space left. every strike a hurt.One might think that a "strike" is some sort of success on a dice-pool-based roll. In actuality, this is not what "every strike a hurt" means at all. It simply means "the total is bludgeoning damage.">strike is hurt that bludgeons and smashes.Is this grammatically or linguistically sensible? I doubt it.
According to the adventure:>whatever you do, do not forget—>violence for violence’s sake is the law of god.Is this a blank check for the PCs to murderhobo, I wonder.
>>96621712I'll be honest, I just opened up this thread to save the Exalted-core pic of Ollie and haven't read a whit of your post. But since I truly appreciate that, I'll throw you a bump.
In this game, every character can simply choose their starting outfit or armor. Heavy plate is rather beefy:>heavy plate (-2 cut, -2 strike, -2 speed)"Speed" is the game's initiative statistic, so this is not a devastating penalty. Meanwhile, reducing all incoming cut damage and all incoming strike damage by 2 is rather good. A goblin, a militia, a soldier, a mercenary, and a knight all deal 3 damage, so reducing this to just 1 damage is very good.Why not have the whole party start off in heavy plate, then, really?
>>96621712Hadn't heard about this. Thanks for letting me know! Gunbat Banwa was interesting to steal some ideas from, this sounds like it might have something worth stealing too.
It'd probably help this discussion if we could see a place to read the rules so that we could more properly talk about them, Edna
Holy fuck just buy an ad already
>>96621712Yeah, I'm not seeing it anywhere. Did you make this up to be angry?
>>96624702Also, 1d6 damage per forced movement is a game-breaking amount under this system's math. 3 damage is what a knight NPC, built like a PC, deals with their cleaver.>>96626310https://tagamantra.tumblr.com/post/795402290716672000/introducing-swords-against-heaven
Major Update:>i'm working on capitalizing words properly for the doc now btw lmfaoo though the starting spiel keeps the poetry-esque artsy formattingI have suggested that the lack of capitalization be used for more flavor- or lore-focused passages, while mechanics-oriented sentences receive proper grammar.There is also a randomized character generator for the game: https://swords-against-heaven-dev.vercel.app/And yes, the name generator is actually 100% faithful to the tables in the document, resulting in names such as:>gan ha hom wi feng sat>tar kong ang feng ket>ling ha ling ju kong>tong ling hom ri mi>tong ka wi sa liFor all I know, these are genuinely faithful to the Chinese and Southeast Asian source material.This randomizer also highlights how, despite this nominally being a communist-themed game, randomly generating alignments leaves communist PCs (12 on 2d6) as rare as fascist PCs (2 on 2d6).
>>96624702I agree with Edna here, this trash is not a game, it's a masturbatory writing exercise.
>>96627560>This randomizer also highlights how, despite this nominally being a communist-themed game, randomly generating alignments leaves communist PCs (12 on 2d6) as rare as fascist PCs (2 on 2d6).Why are there fascist or communist pcs at all?
>>96624702you have a hard time parsing this? weebs really are fucking morons
>>96627560>being a communist-themed gamekill yourself ASAP
>>96626559broken link, retard. just buy an ad instead
>>96621712How many castings of Gentle Repose would I need to impregnate a zombie?
>>96627560Another update. It seems like the author has taken the feedback from me (as well as others) and will be releasing a new version of the game and the starter adventure soon. Supposedly, it will include more capitalization and more 4e-like design, and fix up several issues that have been pointed out.>>96628066I do not know.>>96629293The author took it down in preparation for releasing a new version.
>>96631183post pdf,or:buy an ad,faggot
>>96621712>4th like>Dark fantasy mudcoreThat sounds like a nightmare
>>96621712>>96624702>>96627560God I wish I could hug Ollie
