Messages

16

RPGs / Re: Game Fodder / Story Fodder

« on: November 20, 2015, 01:36:33 AM »

That's some high octane crazy right there. Reminds me of the 'Black Metallic Liquid' from The Book of Unremitting Horror, a substance like a dark mercury, which is peddled as a drug and always turns up in glass ampoules with shredded wiring and metallic pieces on one end, like it was torn off of some machine. In small doses, it's a psychoactive, in a full dose, it sends the user's mind to the Outer Dark, another realm where biomechanical monstrosities wage eternal war beneath unspeakable titans locked in eternal combat. On top of being sanity blasting, it also allows things from there to notice the user and follow him home.

Maybe when it's used as a weapon, it doesn't cause a nuclear explosion, but spreads and the people in the affected radius unconsciously summon something short lived and unstable. Would be one hell of a dirty bomb.

17

General Chaos / Re: HAY GUYS HAVE YOU SEEN THIS THING (Forum Shout Out Thread Thing)

« on: November 16, 2015, 05:09:05 PM »

That description reminds me of Hero (2002, starring Jet Li). Would you say there are some similarities, CAD?

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General Chaos / Re: Posthuman and Transhumanist Vidya Games?

« on: November 14, 2015, 10:28:49 AM »

Somewhat worthless addition incoming, since if you don't already know you probably won't care.

Black Ops 3 kind of has an early Eclipse Phase vibe in that it has what are basically mesh implants, cortical stacks (but without infomorphs and sleeving) and tacnet. Sadly, the game's campaign seems pretty fumbly and doesn't do much interesting with it so far.

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General Chaos / Re: Posthuman and Transhumanist Vidya Games?

« on: November 06, 2015, 09:16:37 AM »

A lot went down that bugged me, from plot points that never went anywhere and the antagonists becoming cartoon villains with improbable setups (an elaborate room whose only function seems to be to be a big fuck you to the PC) to asinine, dumb gameplay design (only way to progress is to trigger a flag by inspecting a specific fluff/background element in a room full of them). Also the monsters you see were pathetic and not at all threatening, despite them apparently being able to rip armed people to shreds.

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General Chaos / Re: Posthuman and Transhumanist Vidya Games?

« on: November 05, 2015, 03:22:17 AM »

I'd give caution as far as Stasis goes. I enjoyed my time with it because of the atmosphere and the puzzles being logical for the most part, but the last act goes bonkers in my opinion and lost much of my good faith. Plus, that stasis medicine puzzle was kind of infuriating.

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General Chaos / Re: Posthuman and Transhumanist Vidya Games?

« on: November 04, 2015, 08:38:02 PM »

http://www.overthemoongames.com/

Scroll down a bit and there's icons for GOG, Steam and Humble. Currently 75% off on GOG, oddly enough, sooo if you don't mind throwing out three bucks for a game, this is a decent time.

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General Chaos / Re: Posthuman and Transhumanist Vidya Games?

« on: November 04, 2015, 06:09:46 PM »

Another game that occurred to me that might be close enough: The Fall, Episode One (Ep. Two coming sometime next year, probably first half). Kind of an odd point & click adventure game, with some simple Flashback style shooting segments.

The basic setup is, you are the on-board AI of a combat suit cum exoskeleton, and have crashed under unclear circumstances in a dark, dilapidated area. Your user is unresponsive and thus you've been booted up to get him medical attention ASAP. You need to find a way to do that and getting through various obstacles, the problem being, most of your advanced systems are locked away, requiring human authorization, and you need to figure out how to comply to the restrictions and your own core directives while making headway in saving him. Short game, only about 2-3 hours (4 if you suck at adventure games like I do) but quite fun and interesting. Good writing and voice acting as well.

23

General Chaos / Re: Posthuman and Transhumanist Vidya Games?

« on: November 04, 2015, 02:49:52 AM »

Definitely recommend getting SOMA on sale if you're worried about replayability. Very much enjoyed my time with it, but I won't be revisiting anytime soon.

For Crysis, I'd recommend the second one. To me, it has the perfect marriage of mechanics, and managed the rare feat of actually feeling like I'm playing an action movie instead of it just feeling like they want me to think that (like post-MW CoDs).

I suppose Remember Me might skirt close enough to count. Definitely more cyberpunk, but it's focus on memory and everpresent AR instead of implants makes it a better fit, I'd say.

It's generally not an abundant field for video games though, since it's so much easier and more recognizable to make something cyberpunk.

24

General Chaos / Re: HAY GUYS HAVE YOU SEEN THIS THING (Forum Shout Out Thread Thing)

« on: November 03, 2015, 10:22:11 PM »

I'm sorry to be that asshole, but this immediately grabbed my brain and refused to let go. "No Statistics, Only Math." This is that whole stupid meme of GURPS requiring calculus and differential equations. Unless you're playing Phoenix Command you're not doing anything other than basic algebra. If you can't do division or multiplication during character generation, get a calculator like I do. It's not hard, it's literally in your phone and computer already.

Besides, that's making statistics seem bad somehow. I do statistics on dice rolls for fun and it helps me grok the system better.

This also feels like an odd comment because the game's die system seems decidedly weird, and a touch difficult to crunch the math for.

Also, it's your book. If you feel like you want to swear, you can swear, and don't need to censor yourself. If you want to swear but also want to censor yourself, you may want to reconsider doing so, unless your target demo is young teens.

Otherwise, it seems alright. Vaguely reminds me of a less silly and/or Fallout-y Gamma World.

No-fun curmudgeon away!

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General Chaos / Re: Posthuman and Transhumanist Vidya Games?

« on: November 03, 2015, 10:05:14 PM »

I'd argue SOMA is more of a transhuman/posthuman story with survival horror elements, just based on how much of the game it takes up. Personally, I enjoyed SOMA, but if you're mostly into the gameplay elements of Frictional's games, you'll be disappointed. I'd also call the story Transhumanist 101 - not going to hear anything new or thought provoking if you play/read Eclipse Phase or enjoy fiction dealing with this stuff.

Apparently, EVE Online can be considered to be relevant, with the capsuleers (player characters) essentially doing backups and farcasting.

Crysis' later games have elements, oddly enough. The second game's hardest difficulty is even called Posthuman Warrior. The nanosuits aren't just exosuits that boost the wearer's physical abilities and grant cloaking etc., they have more...complex and interesting features. Don't know if there's a spoiler function active in this forum build, so, don't want to say more cause it's kind of an important part of the games' plot.

26

RPGs / Re: Game Fodder / Story Fodder

« on: October 31, 2015, 07:26:48 PM »

A site to which I completely forgot to include the link.

http://www.x-rayaudio.squarespace.com/

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RPGs / Re: Game Fodder / Story Fodder

« on: October 31, 2015, 07:25:14 PM »

So, unsure how well known or not this might be, but I just found this and it's kind of amazing. They're called a number of names according to wikipedia, including 'ribs' or 'roentgenizdats'. During the Soviet times, it was difficult to get banned music distributed. So someone figured out that by cutting grooves into x-ray shots they snipped into record shapes, they could produce (low quality) phonograph records.

There's a site that deals with them that has a few you can listen to.

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General Chaos / Re: What are you reading?

« on: October 24, 2015, 09:48:08 AM »

Read two interesting books lately.

Skullcrack City from Jeremy Robert Johnson is a bizarro fiction novel, relatively short which made itself felt by the end. Still, it's a pretty interesting book that I enjoyed, and despite being bizarro, it's actually completely palatable. It's about a banker who lives alone with his turtle Deckard, and falls back into addiction to a strange drug called Hex as he tried to sink his own bank by uncovering it's dirty dealings. Was an odd experience jumping in without knowing the author, because my assumption was the setting was IRL as is, but it all got peeled back bit by bit to reveal a more surreal, dark world inspired by paranoid delusions, it feels like. I'd recommend it.

Second one was Pretty Little Dead Things by Gary McMahon, similarly subversive of my expectations. It's the first novel in the Thomas Usher series, the titular character being a widower who lost his wife and child in a car accident and gained the ability to see and attract the restless dead. Assumed it'd be closer to urban fantasy than horror, and was very much wrong, as the main antagonists of the novel have some serious repulsive decadence and self-destructive corruption going on, not to mention the nightmarish thing that seems to be pulling the strings. Got a bit of a Laird Barron vibe. Dark, gloomy and somewhat fatalistic, not a whole lot of good happens to anyone by the end of it all. Have to say, though, wasn't a huge fan of the prose at times, felt a bit too forced and purple here and there. Recommendation pending, gotta read the other books first.

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General Chaos / Re: Introduction

« on: October 23, 2015, 06:43:36 PM »

Hello all, I'm TRNSHMN (read that as you will, interpretations vary), 25, from Hungary and thus I'll leave my name redacted since chances are no one'll be able to pronounce it. Been listening since April or so and have pretty much devoured about 60-70% of APs from RRPR since. It's been a fantastic ride and helped get my enthusiasm for RPGs back after a few years of pretty mixed-to-unfortunate online RP history. Been occasionally commenting on APs and podcasts for a while and pontificating at the drop of a hat about shit nobody cares about so I figured why not come over here as well.

Currently in my final year of a Psych BA after a too-late-aborted attempt at an MBA. Also no cats, like 'em but always been in a one dog family, fine with beer but not a habitual consumer so somewhat deviating from the platonic ideal of the RPPR listener. Big on horror and sci-fi, currently big on rules light systems after a few years of being a crunch fanatic, occasionally GM for a small group of weird and clever friends on IRC who are better roleplayers than I'll probably be in ten years.

Might try and see if I can't bounce some things off of people around here for an overly ambitious game I'm planning, since ya'all seem pretty cool.

Do have to mention though, have not seen a forum post requiring three layers of verification, especially math-related ones.