Your setting will never be as interesting and diverse as the real world

Jokes on you, I just copied the real world and changed up the names and parts of the map.

>Europe

You mean the European Sub-Continent?

How come none of the stories ever take place in Canada?

Shit's got some of the best art in the setting, and there's all that unused space.

Nothing in that post implied that Europe wasn't a Sub-Continent. Insisting on writing "the European Sub-continent" every time instead of just "Europe" would be like writing out "www.Veeky Forums.org" instead of writing "Veeky Forums".

West Africa had a couple of good supplements, and they did throw Ethiopia a bone once.

>Europe is a sub-continent gradually getting penetrated by the African tectonic plate

How can white boi even compete?

I can try anyway goddammit

Australia got better supplements.
Fucking.
Australia.

You mean the European sub-continent?

That was to make up for them fucking up and not giving it any founder crops way back in base.

You think that's bad? Have you seen the Britain Saga, every damn century some random chucklefuck decides to invade the place. The Boudicca arc was just awful Romanfag pandering.

The Napoleon arc is still just a copy of the Alexander arc, and the Caesar arc. Honestly, the writers just love thier badass conquerors. Though I will say that the Hunnic Invasion was fucking awesome, the Romefags were finally put in their place, the Anglo-Saxon conquest of England was fucking mental. Though, all the Romefags seemed to turn into Byzantine fanbois and those fuckers are the worst. But still, that was the best part of the whole thing until the Crusades began.

Just because everyone ignored GhaMaSong doesn't mean it didn't exist.

Ethiopia's had stuff pretty consistently, it just gets overshadowed by Europe, Asia, and the Americas. People have seen their role in the Italian Colonialism supplement, which was great, but everyone's too busy fawning over The Fall of the Abbasids, and The Crusades to bother with Abyssinian Ambitions.

They also have a major role in the ongoing African Union plotline, and it looks like they're gearing up for a big comeback.

>Great depression
>Econ classnerfed enough to cause mass suicide
> nerfs are relative irl.

I like you.

How far back did you go?

>mfw I try to run a campaign that is not about conquerors and mass combat, but instead about European traders
>mfw my players just conquer the south east rather than trying to play the market

That is literally how the dutch east india, and British EIC company operated

>Literally the earth itself is a massive cuckold fantasy

What does it mean?

>until the Crusades began.
That was literally the only saving grace. At least the Holy Order supplement came with some neat designs.

When are they gonna build on the spacefaring mechanic more?

It's the survival checks, man.

Well, it has its own Monster Manual, so...

Yeah, but for the past few decades the European and North American quest lines are mostly just about xp grinding by professions and crafting. I swear it's the most boring part of the game.

>What next, another totally-not-Napoleon arc with that Trump guy?

Trump is the final proof that the "Great Leader" supplements have degenerated into a running gag. Of course the punch line will probably be that he's the most effective since the line debuted with Alexander.

>and zero ability to roll up a new character on death
what rpg allow this? On most rpgs you play a new thing unrelated to the old char

>implying trade can be conducted reliably with the archaic and disunified native kingdoms and their corrupt or nonexistent economic systems
Assuming control of these lands is best for all concerned

To tack on to this, it seems like the authors kinda-sorta wanted to make ANOTHER Napoleon-style arc in early 1800's Mexico, but they hyped the guy up to be this badass generalissimo whom even the poster-boy Americans were concerned about, but then, in typical fashion, turned around and had him get stomped out of nowhere by a bunch of Anglos in Texas, when if we go by the fluff and crunch just statistically should not have happened.

It's a completely ham-fisted attempt to wank American superiority while also attempting to make Mexico "good" by modeling them after Europe. The LEAST they could have done was at least given them a chance to regroup and consolidate (as they logically should have done) but nope, America just HAD to stomp out their only possible rival in the Western Hemisphere.

I just feel like they cheated the Western Hemisphere out of a really interesting power dynamic and cultural development, which would have given a lot more to the setting besides "Americans are the best, and Canada is pretty decent too, but everybody else is shit-tier."

It's just shitty writing.

>Literally "Napoleon of the West"
>Does nothing fucking interesting
>Loses when the odds are in his favor instead of winning when the odds are against him
Most disappointing BBEG ever.

>is best for all concerned

It wasn't good for you if you were the enemy of the minority ethnic group the British put into power, that's for damn sure.

Just look at the Rwanda mini-splat. It is a textbook case of why European "indirect rule" systems just don't work long term. Sure, they're great for the short-run, but over time it's just going to collapse like the Communist government-system (unless you run that weird, bullshit "China" path, which only works if you're constantly fudging the numbers and can constantly keep your Dissidence levels below a certain threshold).

The Scramble for Africa was yet another case of writing to bolster the already-wealthy European nations (with America tacked onto it for some reason, if only to tell the Europeans to stay out of their special-snowflake Liberia) in some stupid attempt at "regulating" the different types of cultures and societies within the system itself. They absolutely could have chosen to develop the African cultures into new and unique culture, economic, and political systems, but they had to just cop out and make it all European-style just to make everything fit into nice, neat little boxes.

I swear, this trend of "streamlining" the game for the sake of simplicity completely defeats the purpose of why people play it in the first place.

>Most disappointing BBEG ever.

Yeah, you can definitely tell the authors were either completely unsure of what direction to take with the character, or were just completely phoning it in.

To be fair, he did kinda make a comeback as a """hero""" when the Mexicans fought the French, but even that feels tacked-on and uncharacteristic of the character as he was previously presented.

Rather than attempt to salvage a character who most of the player-base didn't like (except Mexifags who wank him off despite no evidence of him actually doing anything), they should have created an entirely new character to act as the Hero of Mexico. They could have definitely added on unique Mexican backstories, such as being Nahuatl-descendant, a poor corn farmer, and/or the extreme piety and Machismo. It would have been far better for both the Mexican faction and really the Western Hemisphere region.

>PCs
>Not from First World

Other parts of the world are more or less cannon fodder. That's like complaining that a kobold straight out of the MM (with his 1d10 copper and defective spear) is weaker than a starting human fighter with plate and real weapons.

Unless you're running a Guerrillas campaign, I guess. I still maintain that if a GM played the West to its lore and stats, by all rights they should be flattening any Guerrilla PCs with airstrikes the moment they poke their heads out of cover.

>To be fair, he did kinda make a comeback as a """hero""" when the Mexicans fought the French
You mean in that war over CAKE? That the French won?

That might've been the most retarded module yet though.
>Hurr durr the French are good at war
>Hurr durr the French are good at food
>Herp derp why not have them go to war over food?
>I'm a fucking genius

The authors tripped over their own crunch on that one. They'd already established that the "American" (alternate class of the Anglo) had a "militia" special rule. It's what made the Revolution arc feasible. Once the fighting started with Mexico there was suddenly 59,000 extra troops in play which even the GM hadn't anticipated.

I think low/secret magic mostly historical settings may be my favorite, as people can just google setting information most of the time and misinformation or conflicting information is totally ok.

if there's a castle on that mountain, and I have 1000 swordsmen, 500 pikemen, 200 cavalry and 5 engineers, how the FUCK do I take that castle?

>even the actual fucking continent of Africa would rather be in Europe

Fuck man

>(alternate class of the Anglo)

You know, I'm really glad that the "Roaring '20's" module really moved the American away from Anglo. Now it's actually its own, distinct class of its own, when before it was just British Anglo with a different coat of paint on it. I like how they also adapted some traits and abilities of other cultures while still managing to keep it "American."

Probably one of the only good things the authors did in Western Hemisphere region before the 1940's.

>Once the fighting started with Mexico there was suddenly 59,000 extra troops in play which even the GM hadn't anticipated.

Yeah, but those random militia troops stayed on the other side of the Sabine, so they weren't even active in the fighting itself. The actual fighting was done by less than a few thousand Anglos and Mexican defectors, against a professional army that was, according to the fluff, hot-shit lancers and grenadiers, with conscript auxiliaries. Santa Anna was reasonable at the Alamo (sending in waves of conscripts before his grenadiers fucked up the survivors after they'd depleted their ammo), but he hadn't been counting on the Texan defenders (which doesn't even make since to begin with, as the Texans were canonically stated to be guerrilla troops who were terrible at attrition warfare) but then he suddenly starts randomly executing people (I guess to reinforce that he's a bad guy?" and then gets his ass handed to him in a conventional battle against a foe who was, again, canonically stated to be terrible at conventional warfare. The only way they were even able to "rationalize" this defeat was that Santa Anna was supposedly too busy fucking a slave girl to direct the battle himself. That's GM fiat at the very least, and total Texas-wank at the worst.

I swear the person who wrote these modules just hate the Mexican faction for some reason, or at the very least know nothing about them.

Normally I would just say starve them out. However anyone who was able to handle the logistics of building and maintaining a castle on that mountain they're probably out of most people leagues.

How about History: Modern? Some of the splatbooks coming out look kinda weird, I'm not sure if I want to keep playing if it's indicating the direction they're taking.

Seriously. Years and years of convincing us the paranormal and the magical don't exist ingame as anything but easter eggs, and yet they decide to all of a sudden introduce oompa-loompas and then throw one in as a DMPC trying to run the biggest faction. Makes no damned sense.

>Now it's actually its own, distinct class

Yeah, the "Real" American is now a hybrid class consolidating elements from the old WASP, Scots-Irish, and Pennsylvania Dutch classes. Of course the devs had to make a mess of it again by introducing all those hybrid classes in the 60s.

>The stats of an Emu
Literially the most unbalanced monster to fight, I'd rather fight polar bear

What splat book are you reading? The African-American additions eventually got integrated into the main American archetype. The R20's introduced the whole "jazz" cultural export, which took most of the other factions by storm in some form or another, and laid the groundwork for the later British Rock & Roll export. They also did a lot in creating new religious sub-classes and added new backstories for players.

It's pretty different now from the old Anglo path, to the point where it's entirely possible to play the class without hitting any of the Anglo characteristics at all save Literacy (English).

>the Texans were canonically stated to be guerrilla troops who were terrible at attrition warfare ... a foe who was, again, canonically stated to be terrible at conventional warfare.

Yeah, that was a side effect of the militia special rules. Specifically the "minute man" class swap which allows Americans to convert their profession to soldier easily, and the "for God and Country" moral boost rule. The bonus stacks from the "super patriot", and "frontiersman" feats most American players took just made it worse.

Fluff didn't match the crunch and it screwed the whole plot line.

>Fluff didn't match the crunch and it screwed the whole plot line.

They also added all those Tennessee characters into the plot, forgetting that pretty much every Tennessee character at that time took the Survival, Marksmanship (Rifled Musket) and Knife-Fighting perks. That just made them even more broken.

>your setting will never be as interesting and diverse as the real world
>as diverse
Thank god for that. Why would I want to create a whole fantasy world just for it to have black people in it?

>The African-American additions eventually got integrated into the main American archetype. ... It's pretty different now from the old Anglo path, to the point where it's entirely possible to play the class without hitting any of the Anglo characteristics at all save Literacy (English).

Cognitive dissonance much. Except for Literacy (English) the African-American class is an entirely different class; and half the players don't bother to put skill points into that feature as they level up. The main American class is still played by about half the American players, and it basically has nothing in common with the variants which became popular in the "Age of Aquarius" supplement. Which isn't surprising since most of those Variants" were introduced as outright contradictions of core elements of the main class.

>distinguishing between conquest and market economics
The East India Company called, they say you're a penniless faggot with no sense of adventure.

Trading their way up was literally what got the Britbongs their foothold in India.
After that they turned the rulers that were loyal to them against the others.
Trade was done all the time, and when something was incapable of being taken through war (like a suprisingly large amount of places) it was done through trade.
And to simply dismiss the native populations of Asia at least is quite unwise, you must remember that they were not all too far behind, perhaps a century or so, which is really not that long of a time. Many even argue they were somewhat superior until the 16th or 17th century, by which point, in-fighting by the Europeans had caused amazing development as war always does, giving them the edge for the first or second time.

My GM is a crazy person and recently gave me a level in Freemason while I'm playing a Jew, which I thought were unable to take that class.

Is there anything a Jew can do to make use of the sudden sword proficiency? I'm already pretty far into Scholar, so I haven't exactly been putting points there.

>Is there anything a Jew can do to make use of the sudden sword proficiency?

Have you tried also taking Trade (Circumcision)?

>gave me a level in Freemason while I'm playing a Jew
That's a pretty strong build. It opens up the "Global Financial Elite" or "Federal Judge" prestige classes pretty early in the game.

I find the further you get into the 20th century the less interest I have. Big nose dive in the 1940's and gone somewhere in the 1980's.

I'm good for about any century before that though.

>gave me a level in Freemason while I'm playing a Jew, which I thought were unable to take that class.

Common misconception. The multi-classing rules around the Freemason prestige class are a mess, but they don't exclude classes except Atheist and Former Slave (which almost no one takes anymore). Weirdly the "Catholic" class specifically prohibits taking levels in Freemason, but GMs usually hand wave that rule.

>Is there anything a Jew can do to make use of the sudden sword proficiency?

That only applies for ritual use. You should put your points into "social networking" and "business contacts". I've got a feeling the "Scholar" class is going to get nerfed hard in the next update.

The setting's been pretty stagnant recently.

When are we finally going to get a faction that can compete with the Americans and all their fancy high-tech stuff that none of the other factions have yet?

>49248854
>I've got a feeling the "Scholar" class is going to get nerfed hard in the next update.
What why

New Student loan rules, your wealth by level will be way behind the rest of the party.

Did you miss the part where his race is jew?

Which faction has the best lore, Veeky Forums?

I like North Korea, even if the writers stretch believability a little bit.

He wasn't really paying attention to the meta during character creation and picked the "bagel & deli" Jewish subclass instead of the "happy merchant" subclass.

I assumed he was using background(jew) not Jew the class.
The whole race as class thing always confuses me.

oh well, at least I'll always have more sources of inspiration

Anyone else noticed how odd it is that the Mormons not only survive going into each supplement since their release, but you keep finding them popping up as minor but compelling side characters in each supplement, and have even started appearing in other nation's supplements?
Heck, I think I recall them getting passing mention in the latest India Supplement.

Also, anyone else notice they keep slowly getting more minor buffs? Sure, the RP requirements and restrictions still make them unplayable in a lot of games, but they keep getting stronger, and I think o e of the most important NPCs in the Mass Communication Tech supplement was one.

I even heard that they recently had their restriction against the Free Mason PiC removed in an errata.

Will Mormons be too OP, or are they already? Will we see more players playing as them and posting more "GM made me fall, wat do?" threads?

The best Mormon was added in the "Turn of the Century" expansion, though.

In which century?
It depends much in what type of games you wanna play, because of the variations in the themes and everything... But i think that Japan actually has the best lore because of all the Novels and Fluff additions that are coming in the last suppliments, even with the "Otaku Culture" plot that is going out of control now...
They gotta nerf that "Weaboo-Class, Weaboo-Perks,Weaboo-Skills,Weaboowhatever" though, its getting out of hand with the level of pure unbalance that thing has.

>pure unbalance
user, I'm sorry, but they're not gonna fix that
they said on the forum that this is not a bug, it's a feature

It sounded like they were miffed over the "Anime & Manga" supplement they were pressured to write

As a Brazilfag i got to ask, do anyone here have an opinion on the lats suppliments that Brazil got?
All of that political nonsense was crazy good, but someone really has to nerf the "BR HUE" bonus of the faction, or it will break the game eventually.

Not-Related to the First question:
Is the "Space-Plot" even going to continue? I feel like they just dropped it for a long time ago, and just continue to add Fluff about it to use it as Sell-Bait to "not-even-much-related-science-stuff", I wonder even anyone even cares at this point, it's like the dreaded "Clone-Erratas" again, they are going to super-hype us again and then just nerf it in the last minute when they noticed that they are going to break the ongoing plot even more if they really deliver something close to what they alluded to.

>>Meanwhile, canada continues to be unused space like already has been pointed a thousand times to developers,

Feature? It's an abomination made from a mix of the alternate rules to "Urban tribes" that exists in an eternal state of being simultaneosly an prestige-class and a colletions of Merits,skills,perks and everything from ALL the japanese supplements in nerfed versions that make it crazy unusable to anyone who isn't either a Munchkin or an "Malkfish".

No wonder its the ultimate "that guy" class...

Best laugh of my day. Thanks.

>Expert general and tactician
>Who is a lawful good mary sue and a Man of the People
>Gets offered a chunk of the continent to stop being so lawful good
>Says "lmao no" and gives up his titles to fuck with the corrupt senate
>Gets stabbed by his best friend in the capital building because fuck security right?

I feel like the fluff just turns on its head to make it seem more grimdark than it really is, no idea what theyre doing with it anymore

Sometimes I get the feeling that they're building up the Americans as the next BBEG, just to pull off a nice cozy "we can do anything together" with the other factions.

And then they will be redeemed because it was their leader's fault.

And THEN, just when we thought they were finally going to pull off this "antichrist" the devs try to shoehorn for so long, the villain's just a puppet for the real BBEG.

Which leads to Alien Invasion plotlines.

>alien invasion plotlines

They introduced a few alternate scenarios by about that in the Video Games sourcebook.

>VIGILO CONFIDO

>VIGILO CONFIDO

>THE COMMANDER IS THE ONE TRUE GOD AND BRADFORD IS HIS PROPHET

>REMOVE AYYLMAO

>Sure, they're great for the short-run, but over time it's just going to collapse like the Communist government-system (unless you run that weird, bullshit "China" path, which only works if you're constantly fudging the numbers and can constantly keep your Dissidence levels below a certain threshold).

I really wish they hadn't rushed the Communism splat. It was fun to mess with when it was just the rules in the long-ass sidebar that introduced it, but then we got the CCCP faction, and the writers completely ignored the whole "government is treated as level 0" thing. The splat was pretty clearly intended to be released waaaay later in the metaplot, but this is what happens when the playerbase gets excited.

There's some pretty decent new commie fluff in History: Modern on page 443, though, when it talks about Kurdistan, but like all of the Middle East lore, it's complicated.

> Wanna make a setting with our earth but with weird plane shenanigans far in the past that caused magic and stuff
> History follows our vaguely, some stuff's similar, some different
> So wizard hitler and barbarian genghis khan and shit, basically an excuse to have magic in real-world stuff
> Change names around and see if players ever notice
Yay or nay?

I've been working on a setting like that which focuses on the big kickoff point for "Oh shit magic is concretely present in the world now", which is just before the first crusade.

They weren't ignoring the rule, the stuff as it was o originally written was broken as fuck once you really started using it, and they tried to salvabe it with constant erratas rather than scrapping the whole thing.

My setting is Earth, but with an extra island in the Pacific and a phenomenon where objects and living beings from other realities are randomly pulled through and appear all across the globe.

Too over-the-top for me. It's like the writers had to mimic 40k's level of absurd grimdarkness.

I was thinking more along the lines of some event millions of years ago (Before the dinosaurs) that caused either our reality or just our world to turn into a generic DnD setting, but with some differences attached for flavor. And shenanigans like wizard hitler and abraorc lincoln abolishing the enslavement of golems and shit.

No, the 10,000 BC Alien Gods splat is NOT canon!
They already said in the forums ten years ago that they are NEVER going to follow through with that plot.

The alien's implied in the setting are just fluff, they are never going to stat them.

Eh. I think the Pablo Escobar arc handled that same theme much better.

Meant for

What gets me is the amount of magical realm the dm forces in with all the small tribal groups in African or South American settings . We have tribal groups for polygamy, canibalism, polyandry, institutionalized homosexuality, a variety of body mutilations, and on and on. And don't even get me started on the shit from the latest add ons to North America and Europe.

>It also for no fucking reason allows in the people they conquered
What.

Empires do that all the time. It's called being an empire.

People get way to hung up on the restrictions. Honestly they aren't that hard to play, it's comparable to some of the prestige classes from the older middle age editions and everyone still loves the shit out of those. The only reason they don't see more play is because of the difficulty interacting with npcs, since in setting they're vilified for no apparent reason.

Nah, they've always done that. There's a reason no one talks about the Greek Starter Kit's little boy rape page. And let's not get in to the Egyptians or the Persians...

These people seriously need to tug their dicks a few times before sitting down to write the lore.

Wow. That building is really, really ugly. That's not official art, is it?

Don't forget Japan user, back when Samurai was still a playable class they shoehorned homosexuality in there too. Though arguably newer splats for Japan have just made the degeneracy worse overall, even if that particular facet of lore has been phased out.

Hey look it's the bandwagoning Mormon hater. Admit it user the building looks fine, you just wanna shit on them cause they're designated as antagonists in some of the urban splats and your tired of random encounters when you think your character is safe at their home base.