Basements & Beards- Analogue Gaming Thread

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

Everyone wants to be Guardians of the Galaxy.
Or Suicide Squad, which also wants to be Guardians of the Galaxy.

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

Gen Con BIPOC Lounge
Gen Con 2024 continues its stunning and brave new tradition from last time: A segregated area for colored people
Though it's technically for BIPOCs, so they might let you in if you claim to be 1/64 Haudenosaunee (don't say Iroquois). I mean the fucker that wrote Coyote & Crow looks whiter than some actual Krauts I've come across.

in partnership with Rose Gauntlet Entertainment

Extensive investigation let me to conclude that company primarily does board games, usually with some kind of nature-theme. A bit weird but okay.

The lounge was designed to build, assist and provide resources for the growth of the BIPOC community

By keeping them separate (but equal) from all those white nerds that spend way too much of their income on RPG shit. Makes sense.

In the lounge, attendees found games and artwork created by BIPOC designers, a games library, scheduled events, refreshments and a space to connect with fellow members of the BIPOC community.

Can't wait for the "Orcs: Blacks or Mongols?" and "Dungeons & Decolonization" lectures.
Oh wait, I'm too white to attend.

Professionals could also utilize the room to meet with other industry professionals, obtain resources from companies seeking to work with and mentor BIPOC creators, sign-up for one-on-one meetings, and recharge.

"Resources" probably being some marketing help for the next Kickstarter for Afrofuturist RPG #69.

“Oftentimes people of color walk into rooms and feel like they are the only person of their race or gender in a specific room. It can feel alienating when you’re trying to enjoy a hobby and play games. We wanted to give them the feeling of them not being alone,” said Vega.

Would you support a *white* person that has the same feelings?

EDIT: Speaking of Afrofuturist RPGs: Whatever happened to Into the Mother Lands?
>Kickstarter updates apparently slowed down to once every 2 months
>cut ties with one writer/contributor
>according to latest update the PDFs should've gone to the backers last month, with physical books coming this month. This hasn't happened yet, of course
>apparently backers still don't know what rules system this book actually uses (betting on PbtA, though, or some Blades in the Dark thing that doesn't directly state it's Blades in the Dark)
>comment section being awfully quiet

Lookin' good.

[Kugelfisch]

>minority safe spaces
We already have those. They are called "Marvel vs. Capcom 3 tournaments".

[wulfenlord]

Segregation 2: niggardly Bix Nood

Did somebody try to tell them that they are worse racists than crossburning klansmen?

[Complicity]

They haven't produced and/or sold a single miniature yet, and they already locked their Discord after mass banning "tradcath chuds" for theorycrafting the politically wrong way.
If this was a vidya probably it wouldn't have mattered - after all that fat woke cunt of the Helldivers 2 Discord still has her job, and bans people over disliking furry drawings - but a niche Warhammer clone?
That shit is as dead as Biden voters.

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

>Kickstarter involving physical miniatures
Yeah, those tend to be a bit infamous. Even larger companies have managed to fuck this up, because I guess the miniatures production industry isn't quite flexible enough to allow for the spontaneous creation of an entirely new miniatures line.
There's certainly a reason why the most successful miniatures Kickstarters tend to only give you the STL files and leave the actual miniature production to either you or some third-party provider that specializes in this shit.

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

One piece of news and sperging about a certain d20 offshoot.

Pendragon 6e is upon us
In case you don't know, Pendragon is a RuneQuest derivative (though using d20s instead of percentile rolls) that is all about having autistically thematic adventures set in Arthurian England is a fucking knight.
The newly-released has been immediately met with confusion, because the "Core Rulebook" is actually the "Player's Handbook".
Basically until the Gamemaster's Handbook is out (probably in a year or so), you still need the previous edition for multiple knigthly activities like hunting, feasting, and slaughtering Saxons on the battlefield. Sad.

Essence20

A lightweight d20 fork which is already weird because it is used as the core "engine" to run various licensed Hasbro RPGs (Transformers, GI Joe, Power Rangers and most recently My Little Pony of course), but it is not done by Wizards of the Coast, but by a different publisher called Renegade Game Studios.

Now of course a single system having to cover such vastly different franchises is bound to be wonky, right?

It's still D&D
Though not directly compatible with mainline d20, it has d20 written all over it, and I don't think any of these franchises really work through a d20 lens. Especially not the one with the ponies.

Worst. Skill. Ever

So the game has 4 stats with 5 skills each. Since the system has to support anything from Derpy Hooves to Grimlock you'd better make sure that those few skills are as widely applicable as possible.
One of the skills is Animal Handling.
Animal Handling. Fucking Animal Handling. Who among all of these franchises uses Animal Handling? I could maybe think of some loser in GI Joe who has a pet dog or falcon, but that's about it.

Vehicles are fucked

Being shackled to d20 rules (and having to factor in that not everyone will be in a vehicle in the same combat), vehicles are kinda fucked. Especially anything airborne. I think 80 ft. per turn is the fastest jet. If you think you can have cool dogfights with Starscream you're screwed.

Also instead of having a dedicated MegaZord every Zord can just kinda combine with any combination of random Zords. Fucking shamefur.
It's kinda cute that Zords have to wait a number of turns in battle before being allowed to combine, but how often does this actually happen in the source material? Usually after the first 1-2 episodes they combine straight away, with rare exceptions like when one of them has a humanoid form (because then you can make it a suit and have an actually interesting fight against the monster).

Fucking weapon lists

All the books (except the pony one) have weapon lists. This might be fun for GI Joe, but the fun in Power Rangers or Transformers would be in cobbling together your own weapons, right?
Wrong, mate. You either pick some generic option from the core book, or buy the sourcebook that includes the Ranger Team / Transformer whose gear you'd like to have.

(Because of course there are additional books that cover difference facets of the franchise. Also there's a stupid crossover book that is bound to include shit you don't need.)

The Woke

Of course it's there. The artwork for the Transformers book might remind you of G1, but it's closer to the IDW comic run.
Like for some reason the backgrounds you can pick for your Transformer tend to push the conflict between Autobots and Decepticons as being about literal class warfare (with the Decepticons of course being the marginalized lower-class peasants).
Also who the fuck thinks "Former Senator" or "Refinery Laborer" when thinking about transforming robots?

The Power Rangers books have some nice art of the official teams, but things get cringy very quick when it's about OC teams. They always include the "classic" that is a Female Red and a Male Pink, and sometimes they even sneak in a Hijab Ranger.

Find new rules for mortal threats, from the landlord who doesn’t accept “saving the day” for rent to the politician who sees Power Rangers as a menace!

It's like my favorite Power Rangers episode uwu.
And how dare the government have something against teenagers who can summon a giant robot god.

Bottom Line

Just use Savage Worlds. Less retarded than d20 from the outset, and there's tons of dials and switches to customize everything to your specifications. For Power Rangers and Transformers you might also like Battle Century G.
FATAL is of course the system of choice for MLP.

[Kugelfisch]

I don't get why anyone would ever want to play a RPG of any of those franchises in the first place.

[ebin namefag]

I don't get why anyone would ever want to play a RPG of any of those franchises in the first place.

Licensed shovelware as a book.

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

Licensed shovelware as a book.

Though at least the art appears mostly original, which is more than I could say for the Avatar The Last Airbender RPG. It's the most profitable RPG Kickstarter of all time, and yet a ton of the art is just stills from the show.
Also half of the art for the playbooks (because of course this is Powered by the Apocalypse; probably took them a weekend to cobble everything together) is basically Aang with a different outfit.

I don't get why anyone would ever want to play a RPG of any of those franchises in the first place.

Super Sentai is not a bad start if you want to run a tokushit campaign because of the team focus, but there's really no reason to not pick a more generalistic sentai/supers RPG unless you're like Linky and hate the Japanese originals out of spite.

Transformers or GI Joe I could see for a beer-and-pretzels evening where you and your buddies are essentially poking fun at the nonsense going on in the original cartoons, but there's already a system for that that doesn't require you to have to deal with retarded IDW lore.
(You could probably play CAH seriously, but all their supplements for their fake OC cartoons go into detail about their production history and behind-the-scenes drama, so they probably except you to play your Not-He-Man campaign with the (gay) memes at full display.)

I have absolutely no fucking idea why you'd want to play as a pony, but apparently the overlap between D&D/Pathfinder fans and Bronies is big enough to support MLP with the numbers filed off, and it terrifies me.
(How do you even play a d20 game where no character has hands? That's like playing a game of FATAL where nobody has an anus.)