Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)

For all the talk about 'we want more diversity', they're absolutely shit at making, y'know, diverse cultures.
They can't even make complete cultures.

For every civilization operating above "Grug, Ms. Grug and their kids", there's going to be a multigenerational hierarchy. Even if it's just "obey the chieftain/shaman/matriarch". Since there's a hierarchy, there are going to be people who are going to go against it, either because they want to be at the head of the hierarchy, or because they just don't fit in it. These people are going to at best cause internal conflict, and at worst become the criminal underclass. And as the group becomes larger and more stratified, the leaders and their favored people are naturally going to start believing they're superior to the people that take orders from them. As people's efforts become decoupled from their society's immediate survival, crime becomes more common. Every ancient legal or moral code we have unearthed has recommendations or edicts on how to deal with people doing criminal shit, so we know it was a problem for them. And very tellingly, very few of these codes advocate for exile of common thieves. They were either punished on the spot (often brutally) or killed outright, because if you send your criminals out into the wilds all that's going to happen is they'll be banding together and attacking your farmers or merchants.

And that's saying nothing about conflicts with other groups or cultures. Two native tribes from the same cultural stock might be bitter enemies because a hundred years ago Grug from the Rock Tribe accidentally killed Grug from the Stone Stribe's brother (coincidentally also named Grug) during a game of rock-throwing and it just spiraled on from there.

Now, compare it to the average Current Year interpretation of a civilization. If they're doing anything that's not just "white people with funny accents", there's rarely if ever any kind of divide in their society beyond a poorly-written analogue to some real-life religious/societal split. There's never crime unless it's to lash back at an "oppressive" system, there's never anyone doing shit because they're greedy, there are never societal roles that are being challenged by the underclass, and everybody behaves like an atheist even though their civilization is said to worship living gods that affect the world around them. And because of that... there's nothing to do. They build cultures and civilizations without ever answering the most important questions about them: what is their purpose? What are people gathered together for? What are their leaders pushing for?!

Those cultures are just empty shells. They're parodies of what a real-life society would be.

Say what you will about Saturday morning cartoon villains and their kingdoms: at least they have a motivation for doing shit.
 
Last edited:
So, I'll give you the archive instead (go all the way down to the part that says "Forgotten Realms and sex" near the bottom). In fact, I'll just copy that here verbatim for posterity's sake:
At least he doesn't have a Whizzard.
"Influencers" sounds to me like a synonym for "people who need to be against a wall."
You can't even take the good parts. If you do, you're culturally appropriating.
Cancer doesn't have good parts.
 
That's beyond retarded. Noteworthy gaming stuff in the form of not-shitty new products being released happens a handful of times in a year, at best. The rest of the flood of lukewarm shit seeping out of Kickstarter and Gofundme is unplayable garbage. Having a weekly or even a monthly show about tabletop products will be 99% these grinning bobbleheads lapping up retarded non-games like Thirsty Sword Lesbians and only very rarely mentioning an actual good Gloomhaven-level product.
The only good sporadic news based podcast thats any good is this week in gun news that only comes out whenever there's news enough to fill an hour and it's mainly court stuff and retarded atf rulings with very occasionally stuff about new guns being released, it's pretty kino.
 
Consider it done, @Corn Flakes! Just... give me a few days to type everything...

For those of you that don't know, HSD, or Hc Svnt Dracones as it's officially called, is a furfag tabletop game that... well, isn't exactly very good for the most part. The basic gist is: you play as a "Vector", a furfag that was created by a collection of Mega Corps after a massive war 700 years ago ended up spelling extinction for mankind. The war ended up completely destroying Earth; now, the furries are spread out across three separate galaxies, all living under the eyes of the corporations, basically just... doing shit, I guess. Doesn't sound too bad so far, right?

To give you an idea of what kind of game that this is, let's take a look at the cover:

1678928949068.png


Yep, as you can see, that is in fact a god-forsaken Chakat on the cover, in all it's Mary Sue glory. Anyone who knows the horrors of Chakats should get a pretty good idea of what the hell we're going to be getting into; if you don't... well, you'll soon see. Gonna go over the lore mainly; gonna give a write-up of both the original book and S&S - in case anyone wants/needs to get caught up - and then post what the new version, "Mastered", brings to the table. Grab a drink or three, cause you're gonna need it; this'll be a looooong post...

Nothing like getting nearly the entire damn report made, and then your computer decides to delete literally almost everything for some reason, forcing you to write everything from scratch. I know, fuck me, am I right? *sigh*



So, for those that are curious, here's a write-up of some of the shit from the first book:

To start things off in the book itself, the first thing we see is a word from the author, describing the setting; as stated above, the game takes place 700 years in the future, in space, after a nuclear war ended up destroying both Earth and mankind, leaving the furries to take control of the universe under the guise of their corporate overlords. The books goes on to talk about how humanity's history of "slavery, racism, classism, and sexism" was almost completely wiped out; the book does try to state that the setting is about "getting in touch with your human side", but given both the preceding passage and how the rest of the book handles itself... yeah, the whole thing just ends up being a self-contradictory clusterfuck.

Anyway, let's just jump directly into the lore of book 1:

The lore backstory starts during what is supposed to be the modern day, according to the author. At this point, the book talks about how most, if not all human conflict was caused by either geopolitical differences or manipulation from various governments; however, with the creation of the internet, people all around the world began to talk with each other and start "breaking free of their government-mandated brainwashing". Naturally, the governments and their "conservative drones" weren't happy about this, and began trying to control everything, declaring that any kind of online communication was "treason". This restrictive politic environment ended up fostering the rise of the corporations.

According to the book, since the mega-corporations were - I shit you not - completely open and honest about fucking people over, while governments were unanimously more secretive, this meant that the corps were always more benevolent and morally correct. Needless to say, tension began to build between the corps and governments; somehow during all of this, the corps created the Geo-Mat.

1678929077772.png


These gigantic factories (supposedly battleship-sized, but they look just a bit larger; that's supposed to be a river and trees, btw) were created to mass-strip-mine the entire planet; above ground or below water, these entirely autonomous, self-sufficient, completely green wonder machines were able to effortlessly provide a source of resources and funding for the corps, which enamored tons of people into blindly swearing loyalty to them, trading government propaganda and indoctrination for corporation swill. These corporate drones found themselves often buried in debt, being so far propagandized that they honestly believed themselves to be intellectually superior to the people surrounding them.

Bear in mind, we're supposed to be rooting for these guys.

Anyway, growing political pressure from the governments led the corps to start expanding into space, casually developing advanced methods of space travel and even making their Geo-Mats able to travel into space on a whim. The corporations decided to settle on Mars, creating colonies and transferring equipment and supplies to the planet for... reasons that we will soon see. Naturally, the various world governments were completely unable to stop this, due to them being "unable to adapt" or some shit.

Of course, shit doesn't stop there. The corps also manage to discover the secret to genetic modification, allowing them to create the first version of the Vectors; genetically-tampering with fetuses, the corps could design these abominations to have human-level intelligence and animalistic designs, while also being both completely subservient and, apparently, the perfect sex partners - a full-blown slave race, in other words.

1678929123137.png


^The first Vector, ladies and gentlemen. This is what the furries regard as "peak sexy".

The various governments got understandably pissed off at this, and banned the fucking things outright; however, they just so happened to not be fast enough, with plans for a superior version of the Vectors being sent to the colony on Mars... which was apparently in the process of being terraformed this entire time, reaching its final stages of transformation, despite the entire set of preceding events taking place in a fairly short time frame. Seriously, the book outright confirms that the entirety of Mars was colonized within several decades at the most, several years at the minimum. I swear, I'm going to drink myself into an early grave at this point...

At this point, the entire world ends up descending into full-blown war, with the book trying very, very hard to show the governments as simultaneously cartoonishly evil and hopeless incompetent; portraying humans and braindead savages too "afraid" of progress and the corporations and their servants as completely superior in every way. Anyway, the corps are somehow able to completely prevent the governments from being able to produce any food or resources for their people over the course of about two years, which leads to the governments trying to nuke them in retaliation. Naturally, the colony on Mars produces a brand-new superweapon called HYDRA, which hijacks Earth's entire nuke stockpile and makes them glass the entire planet over the course of several more months, killing literally all life on the planet and leaving the colony on Mars as the sole occupant.

There was a note that the Mars colony did manage to evac some of its personnel and several thousand corp-indoctrinated civilians during the nuclear holocaust; they would have gotten more, but the "evil conservatives" blew up their space port before they could. How the hell they were able to evac anyone while a nuclear war was going on is beyond me.

From there, the story kinda jumps ahead 150 years; at this point, Earth is recovering somehow, and all remaining 300 baseline humans (yes, there's only 300 normal humans alive at this point) decide to unanimously live on a separate colony on the Moon - which was never mentioned previously. Anyway, they all decide to take a trip down to Earth, where they're all killed by creatures that the corporation dubs the "Palemen".

From there, the story jumps ahead 200 more years, in which a bunch of furries all decide to travel to Earth, and are subsequently all eliminated by the Palemen. After that, we get a short blurb about how the furries and their corporate overlords were now facing an economic depression... which was somehow solved by a group of college students, thus allowing the corps to continue reigning over everything unopposed. We also find out that the furries were able to have one hell of a population boom, with a population of around 3 billion after only 400 years of colonization. Oh, and they colonized Venus, as a footnote.

From there, the lore cuts to the corps making attempt at colonizing Europa, Jupiter's moon. The first scouting attempt doesn't go well, with everyone going missing - their last transmission revealing that they found "alien scripture" or some shit and references to HYDRA, revealing/retconning that it wasn't Mars's weapon, but some kind of weird eldritch... thing. Anyway, the corps decide to send in "bio-probes" (read: sapient Vectors that look like orcas) to investigate the second time; something in the depths starts controlling the orcas, and manages to convince the Vectors that it just wants to communicate with them. Despite this, the Vectors decide to create a colony on Europa anyway... which subsequently disappears.

The Vectors also decide to try and re-colonize the Earth, only for their scouts to almost entirely end up getting slaughtered... again. The remaining Vectors all head back to the colony on the Moon - which was apparently rebuilt following the massacre of the remaining humans - and rejoin their brethren; however, it turns out that they all got infected by some alien disease, and since the furries don't have any concept of safety or quarantine measures, it naturally results in the entire colony getting infected. The disease basically makes the furries randomly explode, with their blood crystalizing and creating a bunch of monsters referred to as the "Whispers"; the Whispers then proceed to do... something, which somehow results in a giant pillar of crystalized blood surging out from the Earth and connecting to the moon. This all just happens, and... no one really acknowledges it.

1678929174926.png


^Completely fine, nothing's wrong here

Anyway, that's where the lore more-or-less ends for book 1; the game jumps ahead another 300 years, to where the main setting takes place. Technically, I'm missing a bunch of other stuff, but... honestly, I think you guys get the idea. There's some more shit about how the corporations are always benevolent and reasonable, and some stuff about how the furries were somehow able to casually create sapient robotic life that's just glossed over; believe me, the game really doesn't ask itself a lot of questions.



Coming up next is Sound & Silence, which was supposed to be the "deep hidden lore" of HSD; all's it did was make the entire game look even more bug-fuck retarded.

So, the lore section for this starts off with a recap of the previous book's shit; however, it then states that there's the possibility that not everything said in the previous book "might not be entirely accurate" to what actually happened, basically the devs' trying to cover their own asses after the massive shit pile that was the previous game. Anyway, the book does go on to state that the corps are, indeed, not perfect and did in fat end up crossing a number of lines... before turning right the fuck around and going right back to propagandizing how great they are.

HSD, everybody. At the very least, the game does seem to be trying to edge away from the idiotic "corps always good, governments always bad" crap that the original book had in favor of a more classical "cyberpunk anarchist" plotline. Not very well, mind you, but it's still more effort than I see out of most furries... and that's pretty sad.

From here on, the entire story becomes a confusing circlejerk of self-wanking shit that even I can't keep track of; I'm just gonna leave a brief cliff notes version until we get back to the good stuff:

- In HSD, once you get rich enough, the corporations somehow cease to have any control over you.

- In HSD, everything is equally cheap and easy to magically 3D-print, whether it's something as small as a pencil or as big as a damn house.

- In HSD, the various corporations often have galaxy-wide wars covering multiple planets, that the populace is somehow completely unaware of for the most part, and are supposedly somehow good for the economy and stuff.

- In HSD, the furries somehow have a better grasp of mental illness then mankind ever did; apparently, they try to treat people for it, whereas the human race often shunned and abused the mentally ill. Because the book seems to have forgotten the original message of "getting in touch with your human side".

So, with that shit out of the way, now for the section on the various Mega-Corporations; there's eight (technically seven) major power-players in the setting:

- MarsCo.: The original corp that was the only survivor of the fall of mankind; somehow over the course of 700 years, the company ended up branching off into 6/7 other mega corps in addition to the original, with those companies splitting off into smaller companies. In general, MarsCo. has... very little in the way of uniqueness, being basically "a big corps that makes money". That's seriously it.

- Applied Science and Robotics/ASR: A corps that focuses on advanced technology; cyborgs, artifical robot limbs, AIs, you know the drill. They're the ones that originally came up with the sapient robots - called "Cogs" btw - mentioned in the previous book. Also, they have access to long-range teleportation, matter/energy conversion, energy shielding, and have the ability to casually read the minds of everyone that they encounter. Somehow, we're supposed to think that's a good thing and that they won't try to abuse it.

- Inner Ring Police Force/IRPF: Space police, essentially. Gigantic police state. Often collaborates with criminals to bring down other criminals and tends to ignore smaller crimes in favor of catching more "notorious" thugs. Not much to say.

- Progenitus: Space doctors. Basically, the furries' idea of a welfare state; every citizen living under Progenitus's "care" will be constantly followed and made sure that they are healthy. If they aren't healthy enough, then the citizen in question will have their citizenship revoked. Also has facilities where they keep sapient clones of people that they regularly torture and execute to find more medical knowledge.

- Pulse: A corps focused on entertainment and sports, with the apparent goal of mass self-improvement. In this case, it means that they both regulalry release dangerous monsters into civilian locations, then give a few civilians weapons to see how they react. They also regularly transform and mutate people on the street into new forms, apparently for shits-n-giggles.

- Spyglass: Communist CIA. Corp that focuses on stealing and selling the secrets of other corps; this somehow hasn't resulted in them getting annihilated by every other corp in the setting. Also regularly engages in assassinations and wet-work, because that's totally morally acceptable and benevolent behavior in a government entity.

- Lumen: A corp entirely ran and staffed by a race called the "Cogsue", which are basically cyberpunk kitusne, and are both the setting's "kender" equivalent and the author's personal fursona race. Hilariously overpowered in terms of stats, have no real weaknesses in anything, and has access to tech even more advanced than the rest of the setting, such as portable FTL travel, which "runs the risk of destabilizing the corporate balance of power", somehow. Revealed to be a branch of ASR.

- Transcendent Technologies Incorporated/TTI: The big asshole corp of the setting; specializes in organic technology and screwing around with the eldritch. Focuses heavily on occult and creating supernatural implants that are far more likely to kill you than do anything of worth. Revealed to have quite literally destroyed the universe 15 time previously, only getting away with it because of their ability to casually manipulate time and space. Also has created a serum that allows the user complete immortality, able to withstand the vacuum of space; the drawback is that it makes the user go completely bug-fuck insane. Oh, and they casually resurrected an alien species that now wants to kill them all. Why? Who knows.

Anyway, the reason why I mentioned the corps here, instead of the first book's section, is that A: S&S has a better write-up than the first book ever did, and B: S&S strongly hints that all of the various corps are, in fact, still under the control of MarsCo., which is in turn under the control of either an AI, or possibly some of the last surviving humans. How? No one knows; like I said earlier, the book doesn't ask itself a lot of questions.

Moving on...

Anyway, we finally get some info on the antagonists! First, the Palemen; as mentioned previously, they're the race that destroyed the moon colony. As it turns out, they're basically mankind's attempts at beating the furfag corps at their own game, being a race of artificially created eldritch monsters designed to kill the furfags.

1678929281318.png
1678929371771.png


And, honestly... they're pretty dope, being basically what the chakats and furfags claim to be; an actual race of badasses. They're immune to extreme temperatures, capable of invisibility, near-impossible to capture or kill - in text at least, gameplay is a different story - and generally capable of making the corps' conquest a hell of a lot more difficult.

Story-wise, it's a bit...odd. It gets "revealed" that the second-generation of the Palemen suddenly betrayed humanity - turns out, a bunch of surviving humans had managed to secure themselves in bunkers below ground and the ocean - and apparently assisted the corps in destroying humanity, though the book strongly indicates that they were basically manipulated/controlled into doing so. The Palemen were left on the dead Earth while the corps got to fuck off into space and create their little utopia; nonetheless, the Palemen managed to survive, and even managed to make their own societies of sorts on the planet.

Then, of course, the corps showed back up, sending their little moon colony down to Earth. The Palemen hijacked it, intending to try and get the corps to back off - turns out, the Palemen legitimately didn't even want to fight anymore and just wanted to live in peace. Naturally, the corps kept covertly sending soldiers down there to kill them all off, since the Palemen weren't under the control of the corps and are therefore "evil", and the eventual issue of the Whispers creating a tower of blood to reach the moon ended up forcing the Palemen to start evacuating the Earth.

Even then, the Palemen still try to play nice; they very strictly avoid attacking civilians and children, try to covertly negotiate and manipulate people into backing off without violence, and generally just try and stick to the shadows and live peacefully. The corps see this as an act of terror against them; after all, if you're not willing to put children in gas chambers for the sake of progress and profit, then are you really the hero?

Anyway, moving on again...

From here, it starts talking about the Whispers, the blood monsters. It's revealed that they're agents of HYDRA, which is revealed to be an eldritch horror from beyond the stars. HYDRA, or Apophis as it's also known, is made out to be this "true neutral" monstrosity, merely looking to destroy everything so it can learn more about them - that's why it helped the furries destroy the Earth, because it wanted to see what would happen, basically. It's revealed that TTI is basically looking to try and control the damn thing, to use it as a weapon; why? So nothing can ever stand against the furries, of course!

Meanwhile, there's also revealed to be another horror, known as Ra, that both the furries and HYDRA/Apophis are completely terrified of; whereas HYDRA kills everything out of curiosity, Ra kills everything because it's, as one person summed it up, "a greedy piggy that wants to devour everything". Whereas HYDRA/Apophis uses blood and has darkness motifs, Ra uses sound and has light motifs. Whereas HYDRA seemingly just showed up somewhere and the corps have no idea where it's from, Ra as it turns out was chilling in the depths of Europa and only really started becoming active after TTI started to start messing with time-space shit, which apparently managed to piss it off.

Oh, and if you haven't figured it out yet; HYDRA/Apophis and Ra are supposed to be the setting's equivalents of the Christian Satan and God, respectively. Apparently, all miracles and supernatural happenings that have ever happened on Earth were caused by humans accidently invoking one of the two, somehow, and since the corps state that Ra is this evil monstrosity that wants to destroy everything, then it's evil, no questions asked. Weirdly, HYDRA/Apophis does the exact same things, but... it's regarded as neutral at worst.

Anyway... there's a bunch more shit about various other dimensions and such - including one that looks like fucking Yharnam, of all places - but... there's not actually much substance after the shit about Apophis and Ra. The aforementioned different dimensions aren't really fleshed out properly, so you can't really use them in gameplay, and there's another bit about TTI making various god-like creatures through genetic manipulation, but again, they aren't really fleshed out properly. The setting and lore details pretty much end after the shit about Ra.



So, we're finally here, at HSD 2.0. Or, "Mastered" as the game likes to call itself. Couple of caveats here:

Firstly, a pretty good chunk of the "Mastered" version's shit was already covered in the previous books; there's some new stuff, but it's mostly the same old shit. So, I'll keep the recap stuff brief while getting to the new shit.

Secondly, Mastered handles it's lore a bit differently than the previous two books; instead of just one big shitpost, the lore is instead scattered through the book as part of various game bits. Basically, it means that I'm going to have to go through the entire damn book to find everything. So, that's what I'll do.

Fuck it, let's do this...

So, first off, the game talks about the various technologies that each corporation has developed over the years, and how they can affected development in the world. They're basically some examples of game hooks; technology that can be created while a game is in progress, and how it can affect said game.

- MarsCo. creates Jump Gates, basically fast-travel stations that allow a ship to safely travel between two pre-designated points; it's considered to be a safer alternative than Luman FTL. This means that Lumen ends up becoming less popular; they don't see a problem with this, however, as it allows them to be able to operate more openly now, and start openly mass-producing their FTL stuff for the populace. TTI on the other hand ends up panicking, as the Jump Gates apparently created an alternate pocket dimension that allows some of Ra's agents an opportunity to invade easier. Somehow.

- The Cogsune create a method of reliable energy plating for ships; this finally allows ships to have a reliable means of defense in space. Unfortunately, things quickly start going pear-shaped; this shielding allows smaller ships a better opportunity to go after larger ships - the extra shielding allowing for more defense - and raids from bandits end up skyrocketing. Additionally, the IRPF tries to re-purpose the shielding to keep civilians safe during the "shadow wars" that the corps regularly engage in; all this does is trap said civilians in a location, with the combatants manipulating events to ensnare as many people as possible to have maximum casualties.

- Pulse invents teleportation, allowing people to easily travel from one location to the other. Unfortunately, accidents start to occur, with damaged or destroyed machines resulting in people being lost to the void when they fail to materialize. Additionally, the teleportation machines are implied to cause brain damage; naturally, Pulse doesn't care, as death makes things more exciting.

- ASR develops energy weapons. They prove themselves to be cheaper and more powerful than ballistic weapons, so bullets get replaced with lasers over time. That's it.

- Spyglass develops complete invisibility, which means that no one can track them... or, rather, it's revealed that they have had complete invisibily for a while. This makes their reputation completely tank - as if all of the assassination shit and other stuff wasn't horrible - and yet no one does anything against them, since Spyglass will just release all of their secrets if they do.

Anyway, those are the technology advancements that are being potentially made in the HSD setting; apparently, the furries quite literally haven't made a single form of technological advancement in 700 years; any advances made were being kept under extreme lock-and-key by the corps, in order to keep the populace under control. The fact that the furries still see all this as good is just...

In any case, let's move on; Mastered introduces a new little activity involving TTI implants, called "Transcendence"; this allows the user to basically be in two different dimensions at once, and explore them both simultaneously to conduct investigations. There's a few little mini-plots available for this:

- Hauntings: Places that are haunted by "ghosts", the residual residue of previous people that have died due to using TTI's shit. Basically, you're a Phasmophobia investigator, trying to figure out what kind of ghost you're dealing with and how to exorcise it.

- Blightspots: Locations that have become trapped between multiple dimensions, basically turning into The Zone from S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Basically, you investigate the area, and figure out how to reverse the dimensional collapse.

- Investigations: Playing CSI and gathering evidence in other dimensions, to track down missing people or criminals.

Additionally, there's a brief section on combat, which basically means that combat can basically happen between two or more dimensions; it becomes a guessing game of sorts, hopping between different realities to gain an edge. Some other stuff is in this section as well; fairly basic, really, what kinds of stuff to track on investigations, manipulating reality to gain an edge, that sort of thing.

A refresher on basic combat follows, and that is followed up by settings. Most of them were previously covered in previous books - I didn't cover them because they were either fairly dull, or weren't stated properly - but there are some new ones.

Earth and the moon, or Luna as they like to call it, are fleshed out for gameplay now. Naturally, both locations are hellish places, as both are absolutely infested with Whispers and new kinds of supernatural phenomena. Getting there is something of a challenge in and of itself, as the locations are heavily restricted by the corps, and there's a variety of both weather phenomena and the local monster populace that are also an issue. On top of this, Ra's agents have begun popping up, bit by bit, on Earth as well; they've been getting into conflict with HYDRA's shit for a while, turning the entire planet into a potential battleground. Furthermore, there... isn't actually much there, in terms of loot; the book does note that there were somehow a few old structures still standing after humanity got nuked into oblivion, but... it doesn't really give a reason why anyone would want to actually go down to Earth, as there doesn't seem to be anything worth the while. But it's an option, I guess?

After that, there's a primer on historical play, if you wanted to play in any of the historical periods before the current game time; you can choose to play during the end of days on Earth, either before or during the creation of the Vectors... though it doesn't really give many options other than "humans are dumber and weaker than Vectors, corps good, governments bad". There's a period for "after-the-war" kind of play, where MarsCo. was still colonizing the galaxy; again, fairly dull, though it does give an opportunity to play through just how things got so utterly fucked. Some other periods, mostly boiling down to times when MarCo. was making progress in expansion and such, learning to colonize the universe. Again, fairly dull, just take the modern game and move/remove a few details around, and you pretty much got it.

From there, we hit the endgame; yes, it took the release of Mastered to finally add in some fucking endgame scenarios for HSD. There's four of them; weirdly enough, three of them tend to focus on ASR, of all corps. Also, these endgame scenarios... aren't exactly very well thought-out; compared to the WoD endgame stuff, these are honestly fairly short, with three of the endgame scenarios only being a few paragraphs long and all of them nearly fitting on the same page. There's really not much to work with, here.

Slaying the Illusion: ASR's president is revealed to be an extremely old and powerful AI that's been guiding and manipulating the entire situation ever since the fall of humanity; however, a number of recent events to the galaxy - the Palemen, HYDRA and Ra, new technologies being developed, etc. - have thrown it's plans into disarray, meaning that it can't properly fix everything. Naturally, the PCs are supposed to manipulate events to help it... somehow. Because the AI is completely benevolent and certainly won't screw them over in the future.

Project Ascension: The rest of the galaxy dislikes TTI, so TTI decides that the best way to get everyone to trust them is to elevate every single furry into godhood; to do that, they need to design a way to drag HYDRA into their reality, capture it, and turn it into what is basically a power source. To get its attention, they're going to blow up the giant crystal blood pillar - called the "Ruby Pillar" btw - that's connection Earth to the Moon. Given that HYDRA is able to make people telekinetically explode into giblets and create new monsters from the remains while in a separate dimension, this can clearly only go well.

Energy Construction: The Vectors want to develop the ability to make free energy; the Cogsune's already have it, but they aren't sharing it. So, the best way to do this is to completely change the entire political landscape of the Vectors, going from a corporate-led universe into what is apparently a democracy, and that will somehow convince the Cogsune to share their tech. I... don't even know at this point.

Cogsune 3.0: ASR want's to create a new, even more advanced version of their little Mary Sue race to act as ambassadors to any potential alien races that might exist, by combining the data and technology of every other and company in the galaxy to create an even more hideously-broken monstrosity. Because having what is basically a somehow-even-worse, fox-based chakat is clearly the type of ambassador that the universe would want to see.

From what I can tell, it seems that the devs basically just gave some vague ideas of how an endgame scenario could end in HSD, and basically went "figure it out yourselves" in regards to how in the royal hell the players could even make it happen. It's kinda shit.

Anyways... from there, it's mostly just another recap of stuff from previous books; weapons, equipment, playable races and all that shit. I'm not going to go over most of it - FATAL and Friends has a review of the original book and S&S that goes into more detail, and most of the stuff that they mentioned there is repeated here - but the devs did add in one new race option, shockingly enough.

They made the Palemen officially playable, hilariously strong base stats and villain status and all, apparently for the sake of a villain campaign. The racial weakness for the Palemen? Since they can't go out in public, that means that they must scavenge and actually work to gain access to new equipment and supplies, forcing them to adapt to situations and circumstances instead of being able to just go out and buy the best gear available. Proving that, once and for all, the devs have no fucking clue how to write an interesting setting.

Also, I think that they're basically locked out of the endgame scenarios - more specifically, since the endgame stuff is supposed to benefit the Vectors and only the Vectors, that means that the Palemen naturally wouldn't try to pursue those avenues.

The Palemen are basically just there to hide and survive, really; they're not really all that fleshed out, but... they're an official option, technically.

From there, there's a section on ships and vehicles and the weapon options available to those; again, it's already been covered in previous books, so I'm not even gonna waste my time with that. Then, there's the Antagonists section, which is, again, mostly just rehashed shit from previous books; however, there is one new enemy section; Ra and it's agents, which... are not nearly as threatening as the lore tries to make them out to be. Also, they don't have stats... which begs the question of "how in the hell are you supposed to use the damn things for gameplay", but... well, given that they're A: already kinda shit, and B: mostly there to serve as a hypothetical lore bogeyman to point fingers at, it's likely that they won't get any stats until another new edition of the game comes out.

Gonna break this down a bit; since Ra and its agents are one of two things that the Vectors truly hate and fear, I think it deserves it.

1678930336449.png


As I mentioned earlier, Ra is the enemy of HYDRA/Apophis, the blood demon that may or may not have been co-opted by the corps to destroy humanity for them. Befitting with the furfag tendency to make demons good/neutral at worst and angels always chaotic evil - it's been a motif since the damn 90s, if not earlier - Ra and its agents, collectively known as the "Choir", are made out to be a bunch of mindless kill-droids that do nothing but destroy everything for no apparent reason, with the text go out of its way to mock anyone that would follow it; i.e., Christians. As an example, the text and setting very specifically use a bunch of Biblical terminology and references to describe it and its agents, twisting it however possible to make the same damn point over and over about how Ra is pure evil and must be destroyed. Notably, it avoids using any iconography and text from Jewish or Muslim beliefs; Ra is 100% the same tired cliche of "evil Christian" in yet another damn setting.

Also... it doesn't really do that good of a job as portraying Ra as evil, actually. Yes, the book "says" that Ra apparently devours entire dimensions and seeks to destroy all life, but... it doesn't actually "show" it doing that. Any of the evidence that the books "says" that proves that Ra did something, it's also just as likely - if not more so - that HYDRA/Apophis did it instead. Granted, the game does all but admit that the corps are somehow controlling HYDRA - given how they're still standing after TTI destroyed the fucking universe 15 times, it's the only sane explanation as to how Ra hasn't killed them all yet - so them trying to pull a double-think and saying "okay, HYDRA might be bad, but Ra is so much worse!!!1! Trust the corps guyz!!!1!" is perfectly in-character.

Additionally, it never makes any appearance in the setting; despite the furries constantly whining how terrifying it is and how it would immediately be a massive threat if Ra ever appeared, there's no indication of what would actually happen if it actually did show up. Instead, the books talks about its agents, which the book tries to hype up as these super-dangerous abominations that are nearly impossible to kill... until you see that 1: there are no actual stats for the damn things - meaning that you can't actually field them in a game - and 2: the corps have already developed ways of reliably countering them completely, with any of Ra's victories being down more to luck and ambush tactics.

Anyway, there's three types of Ra agent:

Hosts: Vectors that have been brainwashed into following Ra... somehow, the book isn't clear how, actually. Aside from endlessly talking about Ra and having a complete loss of self-preservation and tactics, they look normal... up until the final stage of the infection, where Ra's "power" reaches a critical mass and start burning the victim from the inside-out, making the eyes and other orifices glow with fire.

1678929584880.png


^This, basically.

If they manage to survive long enough to reach the final stage - Hosts are no stronger than a regular furfag, and they have very little survival instinct in genral - then... they drop dead. That's it; no transformation, no powers, just dead. Seriously, why the fuck does Ra even make these things?

Thrones: Biblically-accurate angels. Can manipulate fire. Can be killed easily by gunfire. That's all she wrote.

Cherubim: The only one of Ra's agents to be a remote threat; they take the appearance of feral cats, deer, or foxes made entirely out of blue, white, and yellow stained glass-like crystal. Their method of attack is using sound; they can either destroy things outright with their "voice", or they can "infect" Vectors and turn them into more Cherubim.

1678929635141.png


^This, basically. Except replace babies with furries.

Anyway, they're vulnerable to gunfire as well, and their attacks can be negated with specialized equipment, or distance; if they can't be heard, then they're a complete non-threat, from what I've gathered.

And this, ladies and gents, is what brings me to my main bitching point; the complete and utter lack of stakes or threat in HSD.

Seriously, we're... how many books in, now? And the game doesn't have a single antagonist or plot hook of note; everything feels like a rip-off of other, better games and franchises, and the only two creatures in the damn setting that the furfags actually view as an issue - the Palemen and Ra - are either a non-threat, or can be killed by just pumping the characters up enough; it's entirely possible, and extremely easy, to make a character that is quite literally completely invincible to literally everything in the setting - gunfire, Ra's agents, the void of space, literally everything.

That's not getting into the extreme lack of self-awareness; the praising of corporations as benevolent masters and acting like the won't ever screw you over makes me think that the devs legitimately have never actually interacted with anyone outside of Twatter. I mean, that's actually pretty common for furries in general - and I do admit, HSD is quite a bit better-written than plenty of other furry settings - but it all feels so disjointed and disconnected from both reality and itself that it's difficult to take seriously.

Granted, there is fun to be had; my crew has made a few settings where the Palemen and/or Ra are both victorious and fleshed-out - hell, we actually have a session in progress taking place in Chicago, breaking down the story in its entirety and why it wouldn't work. It's been loads of fun; it's not perfect, but compared to the shit we have in-game, it's pretty entertaining.

Still... unless you either want to make parodies or what to run a campaign just for... whatever reason, I seriously can't say much positive about this game. The lack of self-awareness, the contradictory story, the designation of sympathetic or interesting characters as one-dimensional villains; this game really does give some of the other games I've seen a solid contender for "worst tabletop RPG of recent memory". Not as bad as C&C, but pretty close in some regards.

EDIT: I keep finding spelling mistakes; seriously, I need a better spell-check system...
 
Last edited:
So, whatever happened to OGL anyway?

Wizards has feinted appeasement. In response to public pressure they released the 5.1SRD under CC-BY as well as OGL and pledged they will not touch any existing OGL content (ie they have pledged not to fight a long court battle that would result in their loss, at least not until the people who created it are dead and can't be called as witnesses to confirm it was intended to be non-revokable).
Efforts by most OGL compliant "Also Rans" to excise SRD content are still running with a little less steam. Paizo is still working on their ORC license but no announcement yet.

WotC have left the door open for a new license for 6e (which is completely in their rights) and are "processing community feedback" and generally have not publicly shit themselves for a while.

Its quiet which is what Wizards wanted. I suspect a good many D&D Beyond subs have reupped as things seem to be going back to normal.

edit: was just checking, OSE has abandoned their OGL excise, creator is instead focusing on his Fungal-fetish setting as stand-alone system/setting. https://necroticgnome.com/blogs/news/another-update-on-old-school-essentials-and-the-ogl

Kobold Press is going on with their Project Black Flag, seems like the system that emerges is going to be officially be using the name "Core Fantasy Roleplaying" https://koboldpress.com/project-black-flag-friday-from-the-crows-nest/

Basic Fantasy looks like they are chugging along on their excised 4th Edition and are expecting to have it replace the POD version in April
draft: https://basicfantasy.org/downloads.html#corerules4 discusion: https://www.basicfantasy.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4696&start=1090
 
Last edited:
Apropos of nothing, I decided to illustrate precisely why Powered by the Apocalypse is dogshit. Everything in the system is resolved with 2d6s, and on an unmodified roll 2-6 is a failure, 7-9 is a semi-failure where the GM picks some bad shit to do to you, and 10-12 is a success. With high stats/skills you can get bonuses to the roll. Simple enough, right? But as you can see here, regardless of bonuses you are always most likely to get 'sorta fucked up' as a result on a test.

pbta.png


The mechanics are rigged in such a way that even a highly-skilled person will likely run afoul of the game and have to submit themselves to the GM's whim for what bad thing happens when they try to act, because that's the entire gimmick of the system. No matter how much you progress a character, they will always most likely get that yellow result.
 
Say what you will about Saturday morning cartoon villains and their kingdoms: at least they have a motivation for doing shit.
Its impressive in a very awful sense that Skeletor and his weekly cursing of He-Man you could set your clock by is a better-written character than any of these. Of course, he's also far more entertaining, but that goes without saying.

You know, probably a terrible idea, but having Internet Skeletor as a villain popping up to spout random weird facts about the setting at the party before fleeing and telling them "Joke's on you. I'm into that shit." when they deploy anti-undead measures against him thinking he's a lich and not a guy who had his face eaten off by acid would be hilarious. Nothing motivates players like spite after all, and boy, would they hate his guts.
I do admit, HSD is quite a bit better-written than plenty of other furry settings
Out of everything you typed up, that scares me the most. Also, I'm just a bit disappointed the Palemen are eldritch-looking things interested in peaceing out and not you know...
 
  • Like
Reactions: Brain Problems
Apropos of nothing, I decided to illustrate precisely why Powered by the Apocalypse is dogshit. Everything in the system is resolved with 2d6s, and on an unmodified roll 2-6 is a failure, 7-9 is a semi-failure where the GM picks some bad shit to do to you, and 10-12 is a success. With high stats/skills you can get bonuses to the roll. Simple enough, right? But as you can see here, regardless of bonuses you are always most likely to get 'sorta fucked up' as a result on a test.

View attachment 4790386

The mechanics are rigged in such a way that even a highly-skilled person will likely run afoul of the game and have to submit themselves to the GM's whim for what bad thing happens when they try to act, because that's the entire gimmick of the system. No matter how much you progress a character, they will always most likely get that yellow result.

That's better graphics on a break down/write up of PbtA I did a while back.


As you point out, that yellow zone isn't a bug, its feature. PbtA is a narrative game for people who are uncomfortable just playing pretend and need dice to make it "not gay". So 'I succeed but something goes wrong' is how basic-bitch creative writing guides tell you to do. So its that, just for RP.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Brain Problems
The only thing I'll comment on the furry book is the weird tendril art and the thing about the monsters and crystal blood is just the Lunar Cry from Final Fantasy 8. I don't really have the braincells to really want to read it right now, but it was pretty obvious what they were ripping off from that bit of art and the fact that monsters come from that thing.
 
Out of everything you typed up, that scares me the most.

Yeah, HSD is fairly well-written compared to both a bunch of other furry games - Changed, Flexible Survival, FAPP, etc. - and other furry settings in general - Nexus Conglomerate, Vulcan Automata, etc. It's by no means the best; HSD is genuinely shit, and there's a number of other furry games that are better set-up - i.e., Albedo - but at the very least HSD has some actual antagonists that the furries can't just casually glass into oblivion. The fact that the book is the spiritual successor/possible actual successor to Chakona Space makes it all the more impressive!

Also, I'm just a bit disappointed the Palemen are eldritch-looking things interested in peaceing out and not you know...

To be completely fair, the book does point out that they're severely outnumbered; causing too much heat all at once would possibly make the furfag corps all track them down and kill them. They are, in fact, completely capable of going full MGR or Doom Slayer on the furfags; however, there's also the issue of the furfags all universally having access to shit that makes them basically invincible - looking at you, Cogsunes - as well as the fact that the corps have a fucking Elder God on their side, so they really do have to pick and choose their targets carefully. Think more Metal Gear, less CoD.

Additionally, the Palemen being created and programmed by mankind means that they're likely trying to follow the Laws and Custom of War... which includes, y'know, not blowing up civilians. Military and armed targets are still fair game, it's just... well, the Palemen are outnumbered and outgunned.

I'm going to assume that HSD takes place post-rapture and Ra is just here to fumigate the universe so it can usher in paradise.

I mean, my crew runs the idea that Ra is really just hell-bent at destroying HYDRA and its servants, and that most of the negative stuff is just propaganda made by the corps - the books themselves admitted that the corps try to rewrite history and control information, so it makes sense.

That being said, your idea does fit a bit better. Given how furries think Heaven is bad and Hell is good - look at Flexible Survival and Tokyo Afterschool Summoners, for fuck's sake - your theory makes a lot more sense.

Thanks for the fascinating read, my only question is if the game system itself is filled with furry fetish shit (like voring and inflation).

Believe it or not, no; there's a few sexual tidbits here and there, but the majority of the game is more or less "corps and furries good, governments and humans evil" shit as opposed to furfag fetishes. There really isn't much sex shit here; that's part of the reason why I said it was a better game than most furfag settings.

The only thing I'll comment on the furry book is the weird tendril art and the thing about the monsters and crystal blood is just the Lunar Cry from Final Fantasy 8. I don't really have the braincells to really want to read it right now, but it was pretty obvious what they were ripping off from that bit of art and the fact that monsters come from that thing.

Yeah, HSD is a furry game, through and through; there's plenty of stuff that is just ripped off from other settings, and anything that may or may not be new, is fairly poorly designed. Still, if you decide to parody the game and ignore some of the massive leaps in logic that the furfags try to pass off as fact, then... the game can be quite fun. Still, I'd suggest Ironclaw or one of it's derivatives, or Albedo, or... hell, any other setting, really.
 
We've just started out on a brand new "arc" for our campaign. In our previous adventures we came across evidence that hinted that there was another continent across the ocean. First, when we were delving into the ruins of the old Imperial System (magocratic slave state) that the hobgoblins were using as strongholds, we found a "data center" (the Imperials weren't Magitek, but operated on a sort of inverse of Clarke's Third Law; this particular example was an large idol to a minor god of secrets that was used to store large quantities of information) that contained evidence of an Imperial outpost way out past the boundaries of the known world. Second, during the downtime year after the end of the previous arc, our old ship's quartermaster-turned-captain went off to do some privateering against the not!Southern slave-owning elves in not!Dixie, and while doing that encountered a "Pirate Queen" who claimed to have crossed the ocean and discovered a new land, and was trying to raise a fleet to go properly raid it. The king granted sanction to an expedition, roped our PCs into it, and sent us on our way in some airships to do some jolly old colonialism.

The DM has promised pulpy high adventure as a bit of a change from the previous "gritty existential war between civilizations" arc. There's gonna be exploration, there's gonna be ancient jungle temples full of accursed gold, there's gonna be blood-maddened death cults, there's gonna be exciting new venereal diseases. We're still crossing the ocean, but we've already fought a ghost ship and discovered a strange island culture, so things are looking pulpier than homemade orange juice. We picked up some new players, so our current party consists of a cleric (me), a bloodrager (Pathfinder sorc/barb hybrid class), a magus/Hellknight signifer (@2LtMashengo's character), a wizard (new guy 1), and a shaman/something else (new guy 2).
 
Going to run my first game in the coming weeks (a Cold War espionage setting in GURPS), for a group of people that have never played GURPS before, or even anything that isn't 5e. The first session is just going to be character finalisation and a brief training session to ease everyone (including myself) into the system. Should be fun...
 
  • Like
Reactions: Judge Dredd
There's gonna be exploration, there's gonna be ancient jungle temples full of accursed gold, there's gonna be blood-maddened death cults, there's gonna be exciting new venereal diseases. We're still crossing the ocean, but we've already fought a ghost ship and discovered a strange island culture, so things are looking pulpier than homemade orange juice.
Sounds awesome. Vaguely piratey themed adventures like that are right up my alley. I sort of wish Ghosts of Saltmarsh leaned more into that than the boring ass Sahuagin stuff but that's just me. Funny how it turns into Dunwhich Horror by the end.
 
To be completely fair, the book does point out that they're severely outnumbered; causing too much heat all at once would possibly make the furfag corps all track them down and kill them. They are, in fact, completely capable of going full MGR or Doom Slayer on the furfags; however, there's also the issue of the furfags all universally having access to shit that makes them basically invincible - looking at you, Cogsunes - as well as the fact that the corps have a fucking Elder God on their side, so they really do have to pick and choose their targets carefully. Think more Metal Gear, less CoD.

Additionally, the Palemen being created and programmed by mankind means that they're likely trying to follow the Laws and Custom of War... which includes, y'know, not blowing up civilians. Military and armed targets are still fair game, it's just... well, the Palemen are outnumbered and outgunned.
I hate to break it to you and your dead serious reviews, but I take just about everything on the Farms a bit tongue-in-cheek. Yes, I am well aware of all that because I actually did read your long-ass review. Doesn't mean I'm not mildly disappointed the reality isn't what I was hoping it might have been. ;)
 
I hate to break it to you and your dead serious reviews, but I take just about everything on the Farms a bit tongue-in-cheek. Yes, I am well aware of all that because I actually did read your long-ass review. Doesn't mean I'm not mildly disappointed the reality isn't what I was hoping it might have been. ;)

It's all good! And, yeah, I get taking everything as tongue-in-cheek; good to have a sense of humor these days.

Also, I appreciate you reading my long-ass review; I meant to cut it down a bit, but seeing as there wasn't a review for Mastered, I figured I might as well cover everything - it's mostly a re-hash of old content, with some new shit thrown in. Nice to have something to read, at least.

And, yeah, sucks the Palemen aren't an entire race of Doomslayers; that's furries for you, they can't write worth shit!
 
  • Feels
Reactions: Snekposter
More exciting pulpy adventures tonight. We encountered an island people. They mistrusted us at first because most of the outsiders they had contact with were pirates. We made friends with them, introduced them to beer, the usual stuff. The bloodrager fought a pretty good duel against some random schmuck who turned out to be the island's resident demigod (actually an astral deva who got stranded on the planet a million years ago after the Eldest turned our world into their personal VPN node to protect the First World from an interplanar conflict). A cleric of Kelizandri who was travelling with the expedition did some ecumenical work with the island's high priest and bonded with him over their mutual love of water.

About a week later, he sprints back to the ships screaming at the top of his lungs about how the islanders worship "the demons of the sea". Which, given that this is coming from a follower of Kelizandri, is a very bad sign. Sure enough, about a minute later a fucking kraken surfaces in the lagoon and attacks the ship which had been anchored there undergoing repairs. Luckily, the wizard got off a Summon Monster VI before Squidward showed up, so there were 6 celestial lions on deck to eat the grapple attacks. We didn't quite manage to kill it, since krakens have a special move ability that allows them to do the squid thing of jetting away at obscene speeds, but we did maim it. Then, we hear a horrendous noise, and an even bigger kraken breaks the surface just as the airship is taking off.

So, uh, yeah, the island people worship a giant calamari platter as their god. By general agreement we will not be returning until we are sufficiently equipped to commit deicide by means of major ecological disaster. After that we continued our voyage, and the session ended just as we caught sight of a big landmass, with a gilded city visible in the distance and a giant pyramid at its center.
 
Back