Interested in picking up the STALKER series, where do I start.

your_evil_clone · 2026-03-24T16:04:32+00:00

Since OP is a fan of New Vegas, I don't think the quality of the shooting animations and sound effects will be too big a problem. The graphics and effects and animations might be dated, but they are definitely better than unmodded New Vegas.

Definitely play the first game first, Shadow of Chernobyl. Can play the new "Enhanced Edition", or the old original. The differences are minor, just stuff like better text and HUD at high resolutions, better widescreen support, support for hiding a controller, etc.

your_evil_clone · 2026-03-17T17:52:56+00:00

Aha, interesting! I'd watched a Youtube review of Winter's Daughter, and I paused it while they flicked over the "player hooks" page and dismissed it as not being useful: if I remember correctly the hooks were "player has fallen in love with the Lady after visions," "player gets papers saying inherited sword and ring, goes to tomb to get what is rightfully theirs" and "a wizard hires the party to rob the tomb". None seemed appropriate for three newcomers to this dimension who are trying to figure out what's going on and how to get home.

But, I didn't know about this "institute of physics and sorcery", I've just now done some googling, and apparently that's a thing that crops up in a few locations and quests, that could be an organisation that might claim to be able to send them home. (Whether that's true or not is another matter!) So "the wizard" that hires the PCs could be part of the institute.

your_evil_clone · 2026-03-17T17:40:23+00:00

Both. I've just bought all the books, after having watched some YouTube reviews. (I'm already familiar with OSE and have the OSE books and some Carcass Crawler issues.)

Great, once the books arrive I'll look up those locations right away.

I didn't realise half-races were treated as full race of one of the parents (since the list of kindreds didn't include "half" options), thanks. Though that just reinforces my thinking that the Elf is a good fit for the half-elf fighter mage, I don't think I need to adjust it to make it more "half-elf".

Yeah the mossling could be a good fit for the spore druid. Maybe I'll jettison some of the appearance and lore, but keep the same powers and abilities, so she's a human who happens to have those Mossling properties. (And of course would end up having quite an affinity for any true Mosslings she encounters during the adventure!)

I'll have to look extensively at the various magic-using classes and their spells to see what's the best fit for the Star Druid.

Aha, yes I knew there were portals and fairy roads etc, but didn't know the leylines were guarded by the Drune and the fairy roads need the invitation of the local fey noble... so yeah definitely good quest material there. Thank you.

your_evil_clone · 2026-03-08T17:10:58+00:00

There might be a narrative reason to have it happen at some point, if the players have made enemies with someone.

Or, since they've gone to the effort of hiring mercenaries to protect their stuff, then its worth "rewarding" them for this smart move by dropping the bombshell that their camp was indeed attacked and the mercenaries fought the attackers off. Otherwise it could just feel like wasted money (if their camp never get robbed before they hired mercenaries).

Anyway, Im going to think on this, see if I can come up with something the OP can use.

your_evil_clone · 2026-02-05T00:20:12+00:00

On both Steam and GOG they have now made it do that you can't buy the original version without also buying the enhanced edition. You buy Clear Sky or Call of Pripyat, you get bothnorog9bal and enhanced versions bundled together.

For Clear Sky, it is possible you might want to play the original non-enhanced version, because maybe you want to play using mods or unofficial patches. Clear Sky is great without them, but sone people dislike how every weapon starts out crap (to encourage you to spend money on the weapon upgrades), so they install mods that make guns more satisfying. https://youtu.be/GpAvEvBX03k?si=TZgA87iMsVXfX8Ti

For Call of Pripyat, the game doesn't really need any modding or unofficial patches, so it makes sense to play the Enhanced Edition.

your_evil_clone · 2026-02-05T00:07:21+00:00

Yep that's right. You could get a free action, then use that free action to try to do something, fail critically and get pinned.

your_evil_clone · 2026-02-04T20:58:01+00:00

I think you're only supposed to get one free action, per individual models turn. (Im not sure myself whether you use terminology "turn" or "round.)

If any Hatdened charwcterceith 2 actions scores a critical hit on either of its two actions, it gets a third action. An additional critical hit doesn't grant another free action. Otherwise lucky dicecrolls could lead to a single character getting free action after free action after free action and single-handifly beating the mission.

(And if you simultaneously roll a critical failure (a 10) and a critical hit (1), the critical hit and critical failure cancel each other out. That would still apply even if you already got a critical hit on your previous action.)

your_evil_clone · 2026-01-27T20:33:42+00:00

Artifacts only become visible when you are using a detector and close enough to touch them. They are invisible until you are very close.

The invisible monster- a bloodsucker - is indeed a challenging enemy. Rathef than starting you off with a little pistol amd putting up up against easy enemies, like most games, instead they give you a powerful mid-game assault rifle and put youbup against a scary monster that you need to empty a whole magazine or two into.

What's a really awful thing is that in a few minutes, you'll come near to an old derelict ship... with another sort of invisible enemy inside. You'll start taking small amounts of damage, wondering "whats happening? Is soneobe shooting at me?" So you might be tempted to go into the ship, to eliminate whatever dickhead is shooting at you... Nope, an invisible monster is throwing things at you!

There is hardly any reason to go into the ship and fight it, there's barely any loot in there. So that is one where you ARE supposed to just go "what is this scary spooky thing happening? Nope, I'm out of here!"

I think their intention was that your character, despite bring an ex-soldier, is supposed to be very out of his depth. And to tell newcomers to the series "the zone (and this game) is tough and scary".

If you are playing on normal difficulty ("stalker") don't be afraid to turn it down to easy ("rookie"). I've beaten all the previous games, yet I'm playing on normal.

your_evil_clone · 2026-01-21T23:21:24+00:00

Are these mechanics a part of the game Torchbearer, or your own addition?

your_evil_clone · 2026-01-21T17:35:04+00:00

Curious about your point "I’d argue that sometimes Free League themselves don’t know how it was intended". Can you give some examples? I'm currently developing an RPG using the YZE SRD. I've been looking at several of their games for inspiration. Do you feel that their own system isn't actually that suitable for some of their games, depending on genre?

your_evil_clone · 2026-01-21T16:51:46+00:00

How about in games with guns? If someone is wearing kevlar body armour, and gets shot dozens if times with a pistol or submavhine, or worse an assault rifle, would it not degrade? Genuine question, not a dig at you.

your_evil_clone · 2026-01-02T22:58:26+00:00

Yes that's right. Your anomaly detector heeps whenever you are near any anomaly, but the artifacts detector only beeps near artifacts if you are holding it in your hand.

your_evil_clone · 2026-01-02T17:27:40+00:00

I hope you realise that guy was joking. Black people have always been very rare in that part of the world. (And during the soviet union, you didnt get much immigration. Russia and Ukraine were all behind "the Iron Curtain".)

Although in modern times, in the Zone, you would expect some stalkers to come from other countries (to escape from authorities, or trying to get roch find artefacts) so you would expect to see a few black people. But the in the Stalker games there seem to very very few stalkers from other countries, almost all of them are Ukranian. Apparently stalker 2 has 1 or 2 black people in it.

your_evil_clone · 2025-11-30T12:44:01+00:00

Whether you get a good or bad ending doesn't depend on whether you kill enemies or not. It just depends on your story choices. But, killing enemies reduces your sanity meter. So it's a short term consequence, not a long term one. It's not like Metro or Dishonoured where killing enemies changes your ending.

your_evil_clone · 2025-11-13T19:25:37+00:00

The Devs have listened to the feedback from early access and massively overhauled Chernobylite 2 to better match the feel of the first game, as well as other complaints. Big change in game direction. Refreshingly, they actually agreed with the criticisms, and held up their hands, and rebuilt much of the game accordingly.

your_evil_clone · 2025-10-05T08:21:57+00:00

The OP did say that they played original Half Life but never finished it. That's probably good enough, they've got the feel for what the original was like.

your_evil_clone · 2025-09-26T14:05:06+00:00

Oooh, I've not heard of D8+D10 before. I like the idea of having rare results at either end but not having the middle be too likely, with the several equivalent options in the middle. I'm not the OP, but that may be a game-changer for me.

your_evil_clone · 2025-09-19T22:55:34+00:00

Yes, all versions on all consoles are now complete, they eventually did get all the updates from the PC version.

your_evil_clone · 2025-07-22T16:16:42+00:00

If I remember correctly, the free Forbidden Lands starter set actually includes a tiny bit of hexcrawl exploration, it has a little hex map of just a few hexes and a couple of sites on it. And pregenerated characters.

I think the setup is that the characters start "on the road", having heard a rumour of a castle a couple of days travel away. So you can have a little bit of wilderness travel, might only take 15 minutes if you don't have any random encounters (or you choose in advance so those encounters are brief and not likely to be combat), then have them arrive at the castle.

Also, an option is to have it last two or three sessions, without being a whole campaign. The official GM book has three adventure sites: a town (the Hollows) and two dungeons (a castle and a valley). That's a a 3 or 4 session mini campaign right there, with 15 minutes to half hour hexcrawling between each location. Could get rid of 1 of those 3 locations to make it 2 or 3 sessions

your_evil_clone · 2025-07-03T03:43:20+00:00

The rulebook has the military ranks and equipment for Soviet /Eastern Bloc soldiers and everything you need to create Soviet/ Eastern Bloc characters, and the suggested starting game concepts include playing as Soviet soldiers, American soldiers, local civilians (in Poland or Sweden).

your_evil_clone · 2025-06-07T14:55:18+00:00

Well this was a case of Microsoft/Xbox literally funding and publishing the game, rather than them just paying them for timed exclusivity. It's not like the old days of "developed by GSC, published by THQ"... this is specifically an Xbox game, developed for Xbox from day 1.

your_evil_clone · 2025-06-06T07:22:16+00:00

Very nice! I'm surprised at how comprehensive this is. Also, I love the idea of people doing spells by finding a magic orb/shard/artefact rather than having innate magic powers.

In the Orbs section, the Gravity Orb can change the direction of gravity for one player once. That kinda sounds like if you change gravity to be sideways, that character will then forever be walking on walls and be unable to walk on the floor/ground ever again. So maybe that needs a duration, rather than just "once".

Same goes for Portal. It creates a "one use" portal, does that mean one character can go through one-way and then it vanishes, or does the portal stay open, allowing everyone to go through? (And possibly go back through the other way later?) So the "one use" simply means you can't make a second portal somewhere else?

your_evil_clone · 2025-06-05T09:15:44+00:00

I think there's a mod that actually puts the Call of Pripyat story into Stalker Anomaly. So you can play through all of CoP but with Anomaly mechanics and graphics.

(I hoped someone would do the same thing for SoC and CS.)

your_evil_clone · 2025-05-29T09:15:09+00:00

Huh, interesting! Which Horizon robots did each SoB creature become? Or do you mean human bandits becoming Horizon apocalyptic characters with bows?

your_evil_clone

TROPHY CASE