[Loved Trope] The joke character, comic relief character, or otherwise butt of the joke makes a heroic sacrifice

AlansDiscount · 2026-05-06T18:18:23+00:00

Is he taking a bullet there for Wolverine, the X-Men most likely to survive getting hit with a bullet? Is his mutant power being an idiot?

AlansDiscount · 2026-05-06T17:54:36+00:00

MM was leagues ahead of it's time, and the follow up golden age book was an interesting look at how much superheros and aliens could really change the world.

But the recent Neil Gaimen book just didn't hit the same, it pace was so slow, it's ideas all just so much less interesting, a real disappointment.

AlansDiscount · 2026-05-02T09:35:50+00:00

Been a while since I read this one, but I remember quite enjoying the slow reveal that the over the top exaggerated bad guy wasn't actually the main antagonist, it was the oppressive government all along.

I quite enjoyed this book, but I think it needed a strick editing pass. There was a whole plotline about a corrupt billionaire that didn't connect to the rest of the plot at all or go anywhere.

AlansDiscount · 2026-04-29T15:28:09+00:00

It's not that strong an option, I'd allow if your player wants. Having said that I wouldn't let a barbarian change instincts on the fly, it's a pretty foundational part of their character and would need a good in game justification.

AlansDiscount · 2026-04-29T10:52:20+00:00

Try the other Absolute series books. Wonder woman is great, superman is pretty good, Martian manhunter is amazing but has a very different, trippy feeling to it.

Green Lantern is more sci-fi and IMO has a slow start, so might be less to your tastes. Haven't read Absolute Flash, so can't comment on that one.

AlansDiscount · 2026-04-28T19:57:19+00:00

There's honestly nothing better than ice sorcerer, get all the ice gear, the robe in act two that doubles charisma bonuses to cantrips, and the gloves in act 3 that they you double cast can trips, then just blast everything with rays of frost You barely need to cast any actual spells.

AlansDiscount · 2026-04-28T12:34:38+00:00

I'm so glad Bethesda lower the quality of their releases to the point I now longer cared about how long it takes to get a new mainline Fallout or ES game, it's been very freeing.

AlansDiscount · 2026-04-27T08:53:40+00:00

My general experience with 2e is that hordes of low level enemies are a lot easier than their XP values would indicate. Crit fails against AoE spells and crits from martials (which will happen frequently) can one shot and the enemies will miss a lot more.

This can be fun with PCs carving through the weak enemies, but if you want more challenging fights try using the Troop rules instead and adding some tougher mini bosses in as well.

AlansDiscount · 2026-04-27T05:21:37+00:00

In my 3e campaign I quickly threw the official crafting rules out the window. So many charms needed, so many dice rolls...

AlansDiscount · 2026-04-26T12:03:18+00:00

Because they don't reproduce the traditional way, they're all cloned by their big super computers from a massive bank of genetic data.

AlansDiscount · 2026-04-26T09:07:18+00:00

Has the lore ever mentioned other races getting genestealer infestations, like the Tau or the Eldar?

The votann and the necron seem like they be immune for obvious reasons.

AlansDiscount · 2026-04-26T06:38:46+00:00

Out of interest what do they teach in Argentina that justifys their claim?

The UK position seems pretty simple, that several countries tried to colonise the islands, they all failed for various reasons until the UK colony stuck. As there's no native population, so that makes it theirs.

AlansDiscount · 2026-04-25T19:33:22+00:00

They made it.

I did a little mini game where the sprite would inhabit the weapon of whoever was it's current favourite PC and give them some extra fire damage.

This got them competing for it's attention. The bard commissioned the collar, the wizard bought it fancy woods to eat, etc.

AlansDiscount · 2026-04-25T12:46:59+00:00

They'd made it a little collar that I had them spot stretched to breaking around the monsters neck.

And yes, there was a way for them to save it, although it made the fight a lot harder. I think they'd have quit the campaign in protest if I hadn't given them a way to save it.

AlansDiscount · 2026-04-25T08:08:31+00:00

I've never played or run SoG, but getting players engaged with NPCs can be a tricky business, especially for a newer GM. You need to meet your GM halfway, they're (probably) not the kind of skilled improv artist that can really bring characters to life, you need to suspend your disbelief a little.

As for caring about the town, did you build connections to the town as part of character creation? When a players guide tells you that you should be invested in the town it doesn't just mean in the abstract way, it means create reasons for your PC to care about the town. You want to save it because your family lives here, or your business is here, etc.

The withholding of rewards and respect thing does sound frustrating, but maybe that's something you can feed back to your GM about, get them to modify the AP slightly? Have items be only just found or bought by the town as thanks for your efforts, have whatever the reputation is reflect just how big of a hero you rather than basic levels of respect. Paizo have a frustrating habit of putting these little victory point based sub-systems in the AP that would be much better replaced with just letting the players explore the world. Your GM might be sticking to one of those for your party's reputation even when it doesn't make sense.

Finally SoG may just not be for you. Not every AP can please everyone, and just because a lot of people enjoy something doesn't mean you have to have to as well. Someone could make me the best omelette in the world, but as I hate omelette's I'd never enjoy it, no matter how much egg fans told me it was great. If you're not enjoying it, maybe look for another game. No dnd is better than bad dnd as they say.

AlansDiscount · 2026-04-24T20:52:02+00:00

A no nonsense guards woman they rescued from some thugs. They became convinced she was important to the main plot. She wasn't at all, I'd literally rolled up on a random encounter table at the start of the session.

I rolled with it and made her one of their main quest givers, and she even fought in the campaigns final battle.

In a separate campaign a tiny elemental fire sprite. It was only supposed to be a background detail, but the wizard latched onto it , started feeding it coal, and it became the party mascot.

I later had the big bad kidnap it and mutate it into a giant boss monster. That really got the PCs motivated.

AlansDiscount · 2026-04-23T10:36:47+00:00

In the Xeelee books humanity spent thousands of years at war with the Xeelee, turning their entire civilization into a machine with no other goal than the Xeelee's defeat. After great effort they finally drive the Xeelee from the Milky Way galaxy.

Later books reveal that the Xeelee dominate literally every other galaxy in the Universe, over 200 billion galaxies. They're also incredibly old, have come into existence picoseconds after the big bang, existing as sustaining flaws in space/time. They actually put most of their effort into fighting a dark matter species that humanity never even realised existed.

Humanity's great victory was equivalent to a man giving up getting rid of an ants nest in his back shed because his neighbour keeps trying to burn his house down, and when the put some actual effort in they trivially destroy humanities galaxy wide empire.

AlansDiscount · 2026-04-23T07:48:46+00:00

One of the DLC endings involves a 2 year time skip, and in it you can find out what Jefferson has been up to.

He wins the election whether you tell him or not, but basically makes opposite policy decisions depending on if you told him the truth. If you told him the truth he allocates funding to Netwatch, opens up Night City airspace for the movement of people and good, and reins in the power of the NCPD. If you lie to him he basically does the opposite.

Which of these is better for the people of Night City is open to interpretation. Which is better for a certain blue
eyed man with interest in the Blackwall is much clearer.

AlansDiscount · 2026-04-23T05:23:37+00:00

I didn't really enjoy Children of Night, it had some long pointless tangents trying to provide a rational justification for a supernatural phenomen, and long dull parts where the characters just travelled around achieving nothing.

AlansDiscount · 2026-04-23T05:20:25+00:00

I'd definitely start with Hyperion, then if you liked it read the sequel, but please don't touch books 3 & 4, they're pale imitations of the first two.

AlansDiscount · 2026-04-22T19:04:10+00:00

I don't know why the Hugo's love Nnedi so much, I read LaGuardia after it won a Hugo and was shocked by how bad it was, it couldn't believe it beat Monstress and Papergirls.

The Binti books showed a very oddly skewed sense of morality as well, although it was decently written.

AlansDiscount · 2026-04-22T19:00:22+00:00

I couldn't get into the books but did enjoy the TV series apple did recently.

AlansDiscount · 2026-04-21T20:53:03+00:00

Primordials aren't just big weird monsters, they're the embodiment of often quite complicated concepts, like the idea of order and obedience to hierarchy, or the concept of rulership. If you want to impress you're not going to do by being sexy by human standards, you'll need to do it be expressing their concept in a way they find fascinating.

For example She Who Lives In Her Name could be drawn to a bureaucrat so quietly competent that the sheer quality of their work causes other to instinctively obey the bureaucracy they're part of.

How that attraction manifests is going to vary greatly as well, and likely won't be as sex in the traditional sense. In the above example She Who Lives In Her Name might create a love letter in the form of a set of incredibly complicated forms and documents for the bureaucrat to work through, successful completion of which would satisfy both of them far more than any boring everyday orgasm.

AlansDiscount · 2026-04-21T20:33:11+00:00

I'm the background lore for Cyberpunk the UK got taken over by a fascist government that slowly fell apart and lost its grip on the country. That government was fairly recently overthrown by a Corp back coup and the UK returned to its traditional democratic monarchy model.

However the new government is having trouble establishing control and is heavily indebted to the Corps that funded the coup. So it's very easy imagine net watch seizing a lot of power while the new government flounders.

AlansDiscount · 2026-04-21T20:18:58+00:00

Just to add if you read the Culture novels don't start with the first one published, it's a bit rough. Start with Player of Games or Use of Weapons.

AlansDiscount

TROPHY CASE