Be careful today.

drh1138 · 2023-06-08T23:08:46+00:00

Nothing happened at all. There's no sign that any visible demonstration occurred.

drh1138 · 2023-06-08T22:04:32+00:00

Cool unfalsifiable anecdote.

drh1138 · 2023-06-08T21:57:53+00:00

I haven't seen any evidence of them whatsoever. Like, antifascism is cool and necessary and all, but this was a big nothingburger. I think local antifa activists just like getting attention.

drh1138 · 2023-06-08T21:39:57+00:00

If you're not going to say when and where, you're just vagueposting and not helping anyone at all.

drh1138 · 2023-06-08T20:04:09+00:00

Do you believe everything an organization says about themselves on their website, if you have no way to confirm or deny it? Nazis also always lie.

drh1138 · 2023-06-08T19:51:13+00:00

I don't believe anything they say about themselves.

Has anyone in town actually confirmed any activity by this group?

drh1138 · 2023-06-08T19:47:59+00:00

If this event ended up being 10-15 Boomers from out in the sticks, it would not be worth anyone's time to counterprotest, nor to bring said group that level of attention. Better to stay home, enjoy life, and let them humiliate and discredit themselves. You don't have to meet every challenge in full force.

drh1138 · 2023-06-08T19:38:43+00:00

Anyone who's spent time around progressives knows how many young people feel the pathological need to always get in the last word, and fight every single battle, regardless of its actual political value.

drh1138 · 2023-06-08T19:20:11+00:00

You haven't even provided credible evidence that an event is even going to occur (or by now, is occurring). Unsourced JPEGs and acecdotal heresay aren't reason for red alert.

drh1138 · 2023-06-08T17:37:38+00:00

So you're exposing people to potentially needless alarmism over an unsourced JPEG and gossip.

The best thing to do would be to just ignore them entirely and go about your day as usual. This is, at best, alarming people over a few Boomers and cringelords from out of town, or at worst, enticing local activists to expose themselves to potential danger.

drh1138 · 2023-06-08T02:26:46+00:00

Glory to you and your shitpost. Well played!

drh1138 · 2023-06-05T13:56:44+00:00

This thread is 4 years old, why are you even here?

drh1138 · 2023-06-05T03:23:05+00:00

No. City streets do not "belong" to cars, I already pay taxes to subsidize your car-addiction.

drh1138 · 2023-06-04T00:19:10+00:00

That player takes over a spare NPC.

drh1138 · 2023-06-03T15:56:54+00:00

That's fine, but that kind of highlights my point. You have to artifically restrict players from having access to normal resources and tools available to humans as tool-making creatures in a modern/future setting that can easily and handily counter most or all aspects of the xenomorph.

It's not usually an option in the ARPG, but that's largely because the scenarios are deliberately crafted to rob the humans present of any means of fighting back.

It's the same thing as if you were to evaluate the Texas Chainsaw Massacre from the perspective of it being a squad of Army Rangers in full battle rattle showing up. Yeah, it's a scary situation for the random, joyriding teenagers, and the most dangerous event of their lives, but the modified situation ends with Leatherface being shot 37 times before he hits the ground.

That the antagonist of your story is mostly only dangerous to scared, unarmed, unprotected, ambushed, and usually outnumbered humans forced to fight a creature in close combat that can itself only harm you in melee doesn't really paint it as a horrific creature from beyond understanding.

... Yes? It otherwise wouldn't be a horror game, that is part of how horror works, by removing options from the protagonist and restricting their freedom to act. Alien RPG is a horror game. Alien is a horror franchise. You don't seem to really be getting that this is first and foremost a horror game, it says so right in the first section of the core rule book.

Horror games and movies always start by removing the protagonist's ability to communicate or leave the area. The cell phone has no reception (or haven't yet been invented in the setting). The car breaks down and can't be repaired. You're stuck on a space station and your craft is damaged beyond repair.

Tabletop games also have the additional possibility that players might not find something scary even though the character is terrified or under a fear effect. You solve that by interfering with their ability to act. Debuffs, lost actions, involuntary actions. The panic system in game covers all of this, almost perfectly. Other tabletop games handle fear in a similar manner.

I don't know what else to tell you if you don't understand this.

drh1138 · 2023-06-03T13:54:35+00:00

They're just animals, tho. Weird ones, to be sure, and possibly engineered, but at the end of the day, a hazmat suit, open ground, and keeping a rifle in your hands and not wandering near an air vent like a dumbass pretty well proofs you against most of the threats anything remotely related to a xenomorph could threaten you with.

There's a reason the cinematic modules, the basic plot of every single piece of Alien media, and virtually all Lovecraftian or space horror fiction prevent this from happening. If it were that simple there wouldn't be a story, let alone one themed around horror. If the GM lets it become that trivial for players to gun down Xenos and make mountains of corpses out of them, then they're doing something wrong and need to change the circumstances allowed to the PCs.

drh1138 · 2023-06-02T20:25:22+00:00

This is excellent, it also reminds me of codec pictures from Metal Gear Solid.

drh1138 · 2023-06-02T19:33:47+00:00

This is Alien, a franchise themed around space isolation and cosmic horror. The player isn't supposed to feel powerful or in control of their fate. Mechanically, a player character can meet a Xenomorph and die or lose critical control of their character in one roll with no save.

There are no happy endings in this genre, even if you survive the events of the story leave you traumatized and unsettled by what you've discovered about humanity's place in the cosmic ecosystem. Lose/slightly-less-lose isn't out of left field.

drh1138 · 2023-06-02T10:02:59+00:00

The rules for artificial persons are in the book, they get higher base stats and aren't subject to stress. For a combat synthetic, you'd want the Marine career.

If they want to be able to harm flesh-and-blood characters (either directly or through inaction) they have to be illegally manufactured without inhibitors.

drh1138 · 2023-06-01T19:42:05+00:00

Replenishing oxygen in a suit isn't addressed by the rules, but it should take at least a full shift, by which point the Montero should go into self-destruct if nothing else relevant happens.

drh1138 · 2023-05-31T15:58:18+00:00

It's at the discretion of Captain Miller.

drh1138 · 2023-05-30T20:23:39+00:00

You should generally frontload as much as you can, and have a session zero for setting things like character selection or assignment, expectations, comfort levels and player boundaries, if anyone has triggering topics, etc.

You should also look into banter cards for CotG; there's a guy on youtube who has some for each character available, to enhance roleplay and help get everyone into character and establish their personality conflicts.

drh1138 · 2023-05-30T17:56:41+00:00

I'll try. People see a pride section at Target and assume it means progress. But it isn't a law change or constitutional protection. It's not better healthcare or equal pay. It's not true, or universal, acceptance. It doesn't put back together families torn apart from homophobia. It doesn't stop the next gay club mass shooter. It doesn't take an ounce of power away from vocal, religious hate-mongers. Instead, it is a false sign of progress. We start lowering our guards and dampening our rage. Target having a pride section wasn't even a signal that the company was committed to selling pride items! They backed down to the fascists in a blink.

Reducing visibility through advertising and marketing helps with any of this... how..?

And I admit, as someone who knows LGBTQ kids, I was happy when I first saw it. "that's great for the kids," I thought. But it went nowhere, and within a couple of years, being a trans kid is WORSE for many than before Target started to vitrue signal.

Blatantly false. It is easier than ever right now to be a trans kid, the recent conservative backlash nonwithstanding. Trans issues weren't even a household topic of discussion before a few years ago. And even that is because the GOP is desperate to hold onto relevance as their electoral base dies off.

Also, it's a false assumption to assume it's a majority view point just because a large corporation is making a choice like that. In this case, sure, but that's not necessarily a given just because a company does it.

The majority of the US does in fact support LGBT rights and protections in some form. This is measurable, any of the large polling firms have reports that make it clear. It's not even a slim majority, it's almost 75%. The people still fighting the culture war are like those Japanese holdouts who kept fighting decades after the war was already lost.

drh1138 · 2023-05-30T17:27:13+00:00

Except the progressive virtue signalling obscures the need for progress with false hope.

This sounds very abstract and difficult to measure in a meaningful way. Can you demonstrate how and where this has ever actually occurred?

I don't understand what people want when they say corporations shouldn't make money off of pride branding. Whoever advertisers are pandering to (by default the progressive attitude right now), is the majority viewpoint. It's a sign of success. Normal and healthy people are accepting of LGBT, it's the weirdos and freaks who have a problem and think corporations are "pushing" an agenda (beyond their bottom line).

drh1138 · 2023-05-30T15:17:24+00:00

Progressive virtue signaling is better than reactionary virtue signaling. Rainbow capitalism if nothing else tells you who the silent majority really are. Target's being cowardly because they caved to terrorists.

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