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[Jet Fuel Johnny]

It's also present in other things too. I actually backed the 7th Sea Kickstarter and do not regret it but Crescent Empire remains one of the most laughable books when the undeniable Sue of an Empress issues an edict eliminating the caste system and giving a decade to comply and it works.

I would have been more comfortable with divine messengers descending and enforcing that shit.

I could probably tear that entire book a new one but really it's hard to justify the effort when things are that egregious from the get go and as you say it's utterly empty. Progressive Empress enacts progressive degree and everything works without issue. Older RPGs would have provided sinister elements behind it with there being factions acting with/without the Empress' blessing to make this work because they recognised that things are not that simple.

Shit, I'm going to steal that idea for next D&D game.

A divine Empress has ascended the throne after her brother suddenly died under mysterious circumstances that the priests all claim was the will of the Gods. She declares that the caste system and the nobility system (with the exception of her, of course) is now dissolved and within a decade they will transfer to a Representative Monarchy as new nobility and political appointees are made.

My God, the plots, the intrigue, the murder...

Whole cities could burn.

Don't let it turn to civil war unless the PC's push it that way, but really play it all up.

 

[Morethanabitfoolish]

Shit, I'm going to steal that idea for next D&D game.

A divine Empress has ascended the throne after her brother suddenly died under mysterious circumstances that the priests all claim was the will of the Gods. She declares that the caste system and the nobility system (with the exception of her, of course) is now dissolved and within a decade they will transfer to a Representative Monarchy as new nobility and political appointees are made.

My God, the plots, the intrigue, the murder...

Whole cities could burn.

Don't let it turn to civil war unless the PC's push it that way, but really play it all up.

Yup. It's perfect for so many plots. Much like most of the posts that get people banned from RPG.net the actual engagement with the concept of plotlines, interactions, PC opportunities there is no desire to actually follow through.
I may still be bitter about what they did to Eisen in the new 7th Sea though

 

[Zonga]

Or start a Trouble Ticket thread. But same thing, really.

They already have a stock answer for this: "we don't rule on hypotheticals".

 

[Whoever]

I was randomly thinking about my time lurking on rpg.net where creepy dudes talking about watching torture porn was apparently A-OK but everyone would call you a misogynist if you talked about how men are generally stronger than women or any worldbuilding that reflects that. Decided to see if it had a thread on here and now feel like I'm losing my mind. At least the porn talk would probably get banned these days, I guess.

 

[Emperor Julian]

It's also present in other things too. I actually backed the 7th Sea Kickstarter and do not regret it but Crescent Empire remains one of the most laughable books when the undeniable Sue of an Empress issues an edict eliminating the caste system and giving a decade to comply and it works.

I would have been more comfortable with divine messengers descending and enforcing that shit.

I could probably tear that entire book a new one but really it's hard to justify the effort when things are that egregious from the get go and as you say it's utterly empty. Progressive Empress enacts progressive degree and everything works without issue. Older RPGs would have provided sinister elements behind it with there being factions acting with/without the Empress' blessing to make this work because they recognised that things are not that simple.

From what I understand about revised 7th sea, its wants its cake and to eat it. Because it effectively wants to maintain the psuado 17th century setting but it wants hyper idealized 21st century lgbt/gender/minority attitudes, which gets patently absurd when you have kings, theocracies and feudal holdovers endemic to the period.

 

[Morethanabitfoolish]

From what I understand about revised 7th sea, its wants its cake and to eat it. Because it effectively wants to maintain the psuado 17th century setting but it wants hyper idealized 21st century lgbt/gender/minority attitudes, which gets patently absurd when you have kings, theocracies and feudal holdovers endemic to the period.

Pretty much. It's not so bad with the more established parts of the world and there's some good new additions. But there's also points where there's a sudden this mass societal change occurred in a ludicrously short amount of time with little to no pushback. There's loads of ways to make that an interesting part of the setting with how these changes get pushed through but for some of them it 's just utterly handwaved.

See the above Rpg.net stuff. Potential for intriguing mysteries, political intrigue or sinister conspiracies is all just tossed aside in favour of demanding the setting bend to the point where it allows people to do whatever they want.

 

[UnsufficentBoobage]

but Crescent Empire remains one of the most laughable books when the undeniable Sue of an Empress issues an edict eliminating the caste system and giving a decade to comply and it works.

I just finished reading a 60-odd page article on an irrelevant real-life thing, but wtf are those people thinking, when and entire-ass emperor of China could not stop his nobility messing around with cloth patches denoting rank.
Cloth. Fucking. Patches.
And here you have an entire caste system, that probably existed for centuries (as whatever I am referring to only existed for a relatively small time), just poof? Lol.

 

[Morethanabitfoolish]

I just finished reading a 60-odd page article on an irrelevant real-life thing, but wtf are those people thinking, when and entire-ass emperor of China could not stop his nobility messing around with cloth patches denoting rank.
Cloth. Fucking. Patches.
And here you have an entire caste system, that probably existed for centuries (as whatever I am referring to only existed for a relatively small time), just poof? Lol.

It's plausible. There's long lists of ways it could be done with challenges and difficulties to face but these seem largely glossed over. And usually reform of that scale is carried out by extensive violence and oppressive rulership. But since this is the "good guy" I suspect they don't want to acknowledge that.

I half think they forgot about it.

 

[Hugbox Kommissar]

Dragon Age 1 actually did that with the dwarves and their caste system. They even had the "nice" claimant to the throne want to abolish the caste system while the asshole "conservative" claimant wants to keep the system and reclaim the dwarves ancient home. Except surprise, if the player supports the nice claimant then the other nobles get pissed and plunge the nation into civil war.

 

[kcbbq]

These same attitudes just gut game after game. I've done a little reading on the new Over the Edge, and it's been stripped of all personality. I stopped looking before I could be exposed to what they did to one of the signature NPCs, an homage to the Marquise de Sade patron to local Satanists who keeps a young girl with magical talents strapped to a table in the basement drugged into a coma. She wanders the astral plane as essentially a vicious guard fog in a mindless, feral state. I don't want to know how they neutered them.

It was ruined to placate RPG.net types, but luckily they can't take away the older editions. They can't even call the various neighborhoods barrios anymore, and moved the island out of the Mediterranean so the European influences are diminished because only Mexicans are allowed to use Spanish, not Spaniards or something.

 

[Screw Danlon]

It's not so bad with the more established parts of the world and there's some good new additions

Have they finally explained whether the catacombs are actually from space crickets?

That was the thing that always drove me nuts about that style of source book where they gave some info about the world but still kept some mysterious. Like, either give me everything as the GM so I can decide what I want to use in my stories, or give me nothing so I can make it up myself.

 

[Morethanabitfoolish]

Have they finally explained whether the catacombs are actually from space crickets?

That was the thing that always drove me nuts about that style of source book where they gave some info about the world but still kept some mysterious. Like, either give me everything as the GM so I can decide what I want to use in my stories, or give me nothing so I can make it up myself.

The Syrne are established fairly early on to be the ancient civilisation, whether or not they are space crickets any more is less clear. There's no hints of it though so it seems likely that metaplot is out.

I can sympathise with that, in the prior edition I felt like it was left open ended to allow the GM to make the final decision but with ongoing game lines you feel constrained by the possibility of doing plot that doesn't line up.

If you want a decent review of the 2nd Edition there's a Fatal and Friends write up that does so well. I'm less fond of it so disagree with some of their points but that's my personal bugbear.

 

[Agarathium1066]

Dragon Age 1 actually did that with the dwarves and their caste system. They even had the "nice" claimant to the throne want to abolish the caste system while the asshole "conservative" claimant wants to keep the system and reclaim the dwarves ancient home. Except surprise, if the player supports the nice claimant then the other nobles get pissed and plunge the nation into civil war.

I don't know if I'd call one 'Nice'. If memory serves the forward thinking candidate is the brother who backstabs the dwarven player character in their start, mercilessly blackmails or kills those that get in his way, and intends to force the entirety of the dwarves to have a major cultural change whether they want to or not. There's some positives to his aims including the plan to do away with the castes but.. he's also a huge power hungry asshole.

The conservative claimant is actually honorable, reasonable, and forthright at the cost of not wishing to make major changes to the culture. In this situation there's at least reasons for it, the caste system is shitty and the dwarven people as a whole are slowly withering away because their dogmatic refusal to take steps to improve things.

I don't actually remember there being a civil war that kicks off in the first for that but it's also been years and years since I've played it. If that's the case its funny that Bioware of all companies actually went that route.

 

[Emperor Julian]

I don't know if I'd call one 'Nice'. Ff memory serves the forward thinking candidate is the brother who backstabs the dwarven player character in their start, mercilessly blackmails or kills those that get in his way, and intends to force the entirety of the dwarves to have a major cultural change whether they want to or not. There's some positives to his aims including the plan to do away with the castes but.. he's also a huge power hungry asshole.

The conservative claimant is actually honorable, reasonable, and forthright at the cost of not wishing to make major changes to the culture. In this situation there's at least reasons for it, the caste system is shitty and the dwarven people as a whole are slowly withering away because their dogmatic refusal to take steps to improve things.

I don't actually remember there being a civil war that kicks off in the first for that but it's also been years and years since I've played it. If that's the case its funny that Bioware of all companies actually went that route.

The prologue makes it clear the nice dwark king is largely ineffective wereas asshole dwarf ensures a ressurgance in dwarven might and individual liberties for the plebs. It's bassically the ceasar dillema and problably the closest bioware has got to good writting in Dragon age.

 

[Agarathium1066]

The prologue makes it clear the nice dwark king is largely ineffective wereas asshole dwarf ensures a ressurgance in dwarven might and individual liberties for the plebs. It's bassically the ceasar dillema and problably the closest bioware has got to good writting in Dragon age.

Yeah I got curious enough to look it up and in Inquisition they full tilt into Bhelen (Forward thinker) being unequivocally the right choice. Both he and his conservative opponent have a complete change in attitude with Bhelen suddenly being hugely supportive of all endeavors from the inquisition and even being nice to his estranged sibling. The conservative claimant is totally ineffective and even puts up an intentionally smaller statue of the player character if they were a dwarf to spite them.

Bhelen apparently takes back lost land, totally demolishes the social order successfully, openly marries his casteless outcast wife, and saves the dwarves as a people all while being 'nice' later on.

Well, except for one actual sign that his magnanimous nature is a front. The entirety of his conservative opponent's noble house is murdered by assassins to the point that the now ex-noble flees to the surface (which is considered taboo as it comes). You have the option to either leave him to be slaughtered by the aforementioned assassins or try to protect him, either way it hardly matters.

I have to agree that the Dwarves are honestly the one thing that is consistently interesting, if only because they didn't use them as stand-ins for a minority group. So they're allowed to be shitty.

 

[Mola Ram]

Well, except for one actual sign that his magnanimous nature is a front. The entirety of his conservative opponent's noble house is murdered by assassins to the point that the now ex-noble flees to the surface (which is considered taboo as it comes). You have the option to either leave him to be slaughtered by the aforementioned assassins or try to protect him, either way it hardly matters.

The funny thing is the ending slide where Bhelen wins in the first game really, really reads like propaganda, and post hoc justification for his usurping the power of the Assembly and ruling unilaterally. Harrowmont's ending slide is definitively terrible, for different reasons. I strongly suspect Bhelen being the unquestionably correct choice is a bit of a retcon.

 

[AnOminous]

I can't even imagine how this community of pussies would have dealt with me as a GM. I was generally sadistic and evil and routinely inflicted cruelty upon all among my domain. But when I wasn't a GM, I would sometimes volunteer as a PC for other GMs, where I would act as a foil and do incredibly bad things that for whatever reason, the GM wanted done.

One of my favorites involved being a character (the sort that is often an NPC) who had some vital information the party (led by one of those paladin retards) needed to finish the mission. And I was such a complete dick, insulting everyone's race and ethnicity and gender, that every single person in the party wanted to kill me. Note: this was literally the point of my character.

And of course, the rest of the party wanted to torture me for the information. And the paladin leader had to refuse because of his goody two-shoes bullshit. And I constantly mocked him for that, too.

At some point, the information (about the location of the stash that was mission critical) leaked. And someone commented "we don't really need you around any more do we?"

And playing the role to the end, I taunted the paladin that it wouldn't be very lawful good to just kill me, would it?

And he said "I'll atone later" and took my head off with his vorpal.

And then we had a few beers. Shit, fun isn't allowed any more is it?

 

[Emperor Julian]

Yeah I got curious enough to look it up and in Inquisition they full tilt into Bhelen (Forward thinker) being unequivocally the right choice. Both he and his conservative opponent have a complete change in attitude with Bhelen suddenly being hugely supportive of all endeavors from the inquisition and even being nice to his estranged sibling. The conservative claimant is totally ineffective and even puts up an intentionally smaller statue of the player character if they were a dwarf to spite them.

Bhelen apparently takes back lost land, totally demolishes the social order successfully, openly marries his casteless outcast wife, and saves the dwarves as a people all while being 'nice' later on.

Well, except for one actual sign that his magnanimous nature is a front. The entirety of his conservative opponent's noble house is murdered by assassins to the point that the now ex-noble flees to the surface (which is considered taboo as it comes). You have the option to either leave him to be slaughtered by the aforementioned assassins or try to protect him, either way it hardly matters.

I have to agree that the Dwarves are honestly the one thing that is consistently interesting, if only because they didn't use them as stand-ins for a minority group. So they're allowed to be shitty.

I always intepreted Bhelen as the ceasar/ dillema. He is a good leader whose rule will benifit his people but he's ultimatly still a absolute monarch who grabbed power through treachery of the worst kind and the system he's built is reliant on the king being good at his job and the biggest bastard in the endless succesion struggles being a natural king, the king dies you've set up a stabocracy with no rules and Roman history shows how this pans out.

 

[Wallace]

Another poster banned for agreeing in an unapproved way.

 

[mr.moon1488]

Another poster banned for agreeing in an unapproved way.

View attachment 2012637

I think the mods there count as sex workers because it seems likely that a fair bit of their user base is into masochism.