So what happened in the end?, CGL, state of Dumpshock, etc. Options

[sk8bcn]

A lot was described about the rules. But does it matter the most?

What I like the most are the plots and the background. But no comments about that with a review of history. Does someone mind to share his thoughts?

[apple]

Ares made a new assault rifle.
The assault rifle was not that good.
Interessting plot.

SYL

[Stahlseele]

Alamais and several DOZEND other Dragons took over a Metroplex in Italy and ate more than . . what was it . . 70.000 People?
And started a Dragon Civil War.

[Sendaz]

Ares made a new assault rifle.
The assault rifle was not that good.
Interessting plot.

SYL

Unless it turns out the Excalibur was designed and built by Insect Flesh Forms who wanted to try their hand at human tech design.

Could explain why it was so buggy. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[Fatum]

Ares made a new assault rifle.
The assault rifle was not that good.
Interessting plot.

And that threw Ares into a downward spiral, yeah.

Also, Amazonia and Atzlan had a war. They fought for a while, and Atzlan won, grabbing the entirety of 20 km of ground.
Oh, they also almost killed Sirrurg. Just not quite.

[Sengir]

Unless it turns out the Excalibur was designed and built by Insect Flesh Forms who wanted to try their hand at human tech design.

Could explain why it was so buggy. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRmkF3VgYVU

[Brazilian_Shinob...]

Also, Amazonia and Atzlan had a war. They fought for a while, and Atzlan won, grabbing the entirety of 20 km of ground.
Oh, they also almost killed Sirrurg. Just not quite.

Where can I find this gem? (trying it as much as possible to say it with a straight face)

[apple]

Shitfront.

I mean Stormfuck.

Edit: Sorry for the words. I mean of course Shitfuck.

Edit2: SORRY - its so hard to come up with the right words. It is of course the wonderful Stormfront.

At least they don´t advise players to hunt down jewish zombies for the necromantic scalpel of Dr Mengele in Auschwitz as in BOGOTA!

SYL

[Stahlseele]

No, they just expect people to kinda ignore the number of, i think, over 70.000 people having been eaten in the span of . . a month? in central europe, just next door to france, switzerland and germany . .

Oh, and it wasn't mengeles scalpell(*cough*bullshit, it totally was supposed to be but they were too chicken to actually use his name*cough*) but some clerks scalpell . . . who should never have had a scalpell . . which is why somebody here on dumpshock, might even have been me, no idea, really, came up with the idea to replace the scalpell with a ballpoint pen that requires the blood of his descendants to write and so shadowrunners get hired to, one by one, find them and bring them to auschwitz so they can be forced to write with the pen the names of all that have been killed there so their spirits can rest in peace . . with their own blood, untill they die from bloodloss. Then they need to get the next guy.

which is a 100 times better idea for this stupid shit they pulled than the stupid shit they pulled when they pulled this stupid shit!
there is simply no reason given at all why anybody should go there and actually get the scalpell . .

[Shinobi Killfist]

Where can I find this gem? (trying it as much as possible to say it with a straight face)

Which part is so bad in that short description? While I think storm front is epic lame in some areas the idea that a large powerful country/megacorp could threaten a great dragon doesn't seem that off to me. Its not like the tossed a few guys at him, they spent years researching weapons just to kill dragons and launched a gagillilon nuyen, 10's of thousands of men assault on him. If great dragons were so powerful they could shrug that off the game would be about Dragons ruling the world and the humans trying to find a way to survive and over throw the oppressors.

Its not as bad as adventures where they have Ares setting up a bug/human hybrid research facility where surprise surprise the lead researcher becomes the queen and no one discovers it.(the queen didn't even have masking IIRC) I mean yeah I'd never have teams of astral experts sweep a bug research facility because like nothing could go wrong. By never I mean like daily, and the teams sweeping it would be checked as soon as they leave. And sure in my most secret facility evar the people I'd send to it would be raw recruits from knight errant because they'd be the most loyal and hardest to infiltrate I'm sure.

[Brazilian_Shinob...]

Trying to kill Sirrurg? Nah, that's business as usual for Aztlan. I meant the fact that the two major countries in latin america finally fight just to push the border 20km? I mean, how long this war lasted and how many hundreds of thousands of lives were lost so they could make a new North Korea-South Korea armistice and largest mine field in the world? Assuming of course that's how it happened.

[Nath]

No, they just expect people to kinda ignore the number of, i think, over 70.000 people having been eaten in the span of . . a month?

Six months.

Oh, and it wasn't mengeles scalpell(*cough*bullshit, it totally was supposed to be but they were too chicken to actually use his name*cough*) but some clerks scalpell . . . who should never have had a scalpell . .

Dr Eduard Wirths. He studied medicine at university, so chances are he owned a scalpel at some point for the "cadaver class" if anything (and after that, he also served in the Waffen SS in Norway and Russia between 1939 and 1942). Bu as far as history goes, he never or very rarely used a scalpel in Auchwitz.

[Stahlseele]

ah, thanks.
but that's still twelfty thousand people per month eaten . .

[Fatum]

Which part is so bad in that short description? While I think storm front is epic lame in some areas the idea that a large powerful country/megacorp could threaten a great dragon doesn't seem that off to me. Its not like the tossed a few guys at him, they spent years researching weapons just to kill dragons and launched a gagillilon nuyen, 10's of thousands of men assault on him. If great dragons were so powerful they could shrug that off the game would be about Dragons ruling the world and the humans trying to find a way to survive and over throw the oppressors.

Had they killed him, it'd be less idiotic. Well, idiotic still because Atzlan spends the entirety of its military ...what, three?.. times over the course of Stormfront, but less idiotic than the whole Atz-Amazonian war ending in nothing.

[Brazilian_Shinob...]

I've read some of the reviews on drivethru. A friend of mine got the book, I think I'll borrow from him and take a look. But yeah, I can't see how such ideological opposing countries would declare war and accept anything less than the total surrender of the other. Unless, UNLESS the war cost enough money and lives that both sides decided it was best to declare a draw and lick their wounds for a round 2 later.

[Shinobi Killfist]

Trying to kill Sirrurg? Nah, that's business as usual for Aztlan. I meant the fact that the two major countries in latin america finally fight just to push the border 20km? I mean, how long this war lasted and how many hundreds of thousands of lives were lost so they could make a new North Korea-South Korea armistice and largest mine field in the world? Assuming of course that's how it happened.

A lot of wars have ended with very little gained and massive amounts lost. I found that part very fitting for the setting.

[RHat]

Had they killed him, it'd be less idiotic. Well, idiotic still because Atzlan spends the entirety of its military ...what, three?.. times over the course of Stormfront, but less idiotic than the whole Atz-Amazonian war ending in nothing.

That's the nature of war. Let's not pretend that all - or even most - wars actually achieve anything worth talking about.

ah, thanks.
but that's still twelfty thousand people per month eaten . .

That sounds about right for what I got the impression it was supposed to be like in there. Though I do find it strange that, say, none of the IE's decided to do anything about it.

Also, I'd like to point out that present day terrain descriptions might not be all that accurate. A river popping up would be a strange thing, sure, but as I understand it the Awakening caused a lot of stuff to change - suddenly kinda curious as to whether or not the Atacama desert is still a desert on that note.

[sk8bcn]

War and Stormfront are among the most hated books in there. And I've read a lot about it here. But what about Ghost Cartels, Emergence, Dawn of the Artifacts...

Are they that lower than 3rd edition era?

When you read today lot of 2nd ed. books, they not that great to be honest.


When I read your reviews, I wonder in which plots characters could be involved. I don't see myself running a game where Lofwyr hires an army of shadowrunners to set an attack at a great dragon. It sounds like a stupid scenario to me.

Is that stuff at least playable? Did they find some room for gaming, or does it just suck?

[RHat]

When I read your reviews, I wonder in which plots characters could be involved. I don't see myself running a game where Lofwyr hires an army of shadowrunners to set an attack at a great dragon. It sounds like a stupid scenario to me.

That's not actually the scenario. The scenario is that Lofwyr gets a bunch of dragons together to attack Alamais and company, and both sides brought on runners as footsoldiers (freelancers of that sort being optimal for this sort of thing for various reasons). Then Lofwyr let the metahumans get the last shot in on Alamais as a purely political move.

The idea of modernized dragon warfare was interesting in and of itself, really. Still, Storm Front is more plot book than scenario book.

[Brazilian_Shinob...]

A lot of wars have ended with very little gained and massive amounts lost. I found that part very fitting for the setting.

The only recent one I can recall is the Korean War, which, techinically ain't even over yet, they just signed an armistice. If that's what happened between Aztlan and Amazonia, then ok, I can cope with that. But what you are saying is like 1940 Russia and Germany went to war and Russia capitulated after losing Moscow. There's war and there's total war and I don't see two ideological polars like Aztlan and Amazonia pulling the guns that easily. Sorry, I just can't accept that. And I believe this is the part where we agree to disagree...

[Sengir]

And sure in my most secret facility evar the people I'd send to it would be raw recruits from knight errant because they'd be the most loyal and hardest to infiltrate I'm sure.

IIRC the implied reasoning was that the queen actively fudges with personnel transfers to get plenty of new recruits (and place the "converts" all around). What's really bad about that adventure is not so much the setting as the adventure itself, which basically describes a few settings but nothing the players might actually do there. The best way to solve the adventure is to screw up and get captured, at least then you know what do do -- get out and blow up stuff.


Speaking of doing nothing, I considered "well, nothing happened" a fitting end to the war were nothing happened and life went on as normal even in a city sitting right on the front line (aka the Nixkrieg).

[kzt]

ah, thanks.
but that's still twelfty thousand people per month eaten . .

Just one every 4 minutes. Who would notice?

[Shinobi Killfist]

IIRC the implied reasoning was that the queen actively fudges with personnel transfers to get plenty of new recruits (and place the "converts" all around). What's really bad about that adventure is not so much the setting as the adventure itself, which basically describes a few settings but nothing the players might actually do there. The best way to solve the adventure is to screw up and get captured, at least then you know what do do -- get out and blow up stuff.


Speaking of doing nothing, I considered "well, nothing happened" a fitting end to the war were nothing happened and life went on as normal even in a city sitting right on the front line (aka the Nixkrieg).

I know but if Ares was run by someone who wasn't a total idiot things like that would not be under the control of people who worked at a facility who were potentially in the line of fire to become bug spirits. Its like if you have professor X locked up and you are researching telepathy, how many security/personnel decisions are you going to leave up to the people in the facility. The security and yes the adventure were so horrifically bad it broke my suspension of disbelief. I could of accepted bug spirits taking over Ares, but the way the adventure played out was just bad.

[RHat]

Just one every 4 minutes. Who would notice?

I could be mistaken, but I don't think the idea was that people didn't notice.

[apple]

Well, it doesn´t seem to have any effects.

SYL