Quote from: Darrin Kelley on December 26, 2023, 08:12:58 PM

Quote from: Grognard GM on December 26, 2023, 08:04:55 PM
I can confirm.

They're following the trend of Image Comics' Transformers lines for the past 8+ years. That is to say lots of Girlboss robots, and a Trans-Transformer (you read that right.)

IDW, not Image. Image only relatively recently got the license.

IDW really let some idiot writers into their company over the last decade,

Also, for the Transformers RPG. I found that the fact that they made all the Roles lack diversity or really represent the actual conditions Cybertronians faced to be a huge disappointment. It was only in the IDW books where Autobots all seemed to come from a privileged class. Which was definitely not how things started in the Generation One source material.

The Decepticon Directive is even worse. All of the various roles are some kind of criminal origin. It lacks even the thin diversity of the Cobra Codex. Making creating interesting diverse characters to be an almost futile exercise.

Thanks, corrected.


We live in the age of deconstruction. All of the heroes are actually the bad, and the bad guys all have backgrounds excusing their behavior. It's all part of tearing everything down, so that Utopia can magically spring from the ruins (totes, honestly guys! Forget all of the past famines and horrors, this time it'll work!")

Regarding the Roles, they're so restrictive! It's like being in a straight-jacket, constantly having to drop ideas because there's no flexibility AT ALL.

Quote from: Grognard GM on December 26, 2023, 09:33:07 PM
Thanks, corrected.


We live in the age of deconstruction. All of the heroes are actually the bad, and the bad guys all have backgrounds excusing their behavior. It's all part of tearing everything down, so that Utopia can magically spring from the ruins (totes, honestly guys! Forget all of the past famines and horrors, this time it'll work!")

Regarding the Roles, they're so restrictive! It's like being in a straight-jacket, constantly having to drop ideas because there's no flexibility AT ALL.

They are worse than the D&D character classes in that regard. And that's a true achievement.

Quote from: Darrin Kelley on December 26, 2023, 09:44:13 PM

Quote from: Grognard GM on December 26, 2023, 09:33:07 PM
Thanks, corrected.


We live in the age of deconstruction. All of the heroes are actually the bad, and the bad guys all have backgrounds excusing their behavior. It's all part of tearing everything down, so that Utopia can magically spring from the ruins (totes, honestly guys! Forget all of the past famines and horrors, this time it'll work!")

Regarding the Roles, they're so restrictive! It's like being in a straight-jacket, constantly having to drop ideas because there's no flexibility AT ALL.

They are worse than the D&D character classes in that regard. And that's a true achievement.

D&D at least is DESIGNED around character classes, from the ground up. The Essence20 shit is a 'one clunk to rule them all' system.

Quote from: Grognard GM on December 26, 2023, 09:50:16 PM
D&D at least is DESIGNED around character classes, from the ground up. The Essence20 shit is a 'one clunk to rule them all' system.

The best Essence20 game is G.I. Joe. Power Rangers comes up second. And I haven't touched the My Little Pony abomination. So I don't know where that stands..

I'm not as specialist, but AFAICR the OGL and CC are useful because they allow you to copy-paste, which is plagiarism otherwise.

But copy-paste means copy-paste, not rewirting the smae thing in your own words.

RPG mechanics cannot be protected this way, and AFAICT nor does terms such as Str, Int, Dex, or their specific combination (six scores, 3-18 each, rage x times a day, etc.).

I just remembered a part of the Transformers book that is such a failure, I am ashamed FOR them.

The game has an incredibly low top speed, because their system simply wasn't designed to handle anything beyond humans or land vehicles, and they're too...stupid/lazy for a work around. So here is there official response, in the game book, to people wondering thy their jet-mode is as slow as a car:

"You may wonder why you can't reach the speeds of a fighter jet, even though your Alt Mode resembles one. The fighter jet that Starscream, the most famous Seeker, is modeled after is capable of speeds upward of Mach 2. If your character traveled Mach 2, you could travel more than 2000 5ft squares on a battlefield every turn! Going Mach 2 is impractical in terms of the Transformers Roleplaying Game, but if you want to build one of the fastest possible characters in the game, the Seeker Origin starts you on the right path."


In other words, "we know, but tough shit."

Quote from: Grognard GM on December 26, 2023, 10:04:31 PM
I just remembered a part of the Transformers book that is such a failure, I am ashamed FOR them.

The game has an incredibly low top speed, because their system simply wasn't designed to handle anything beyond humans or land vehicles, and they're too...stupid/lazy for a work around. So here is there official response, in the game book, to people wondering thy their jet-mode is as slow as a car:

"You may wonder why you can't reach the speeds of a fighter jet, even though your Alt Mode resembles one. The fighter jet that Starscream, the most famous Seeker, is modeled after is capable of speeds upward of Mach 2. If your character traveled Mach 2, you could travel more than 2000 5ft squares on a battlefield every turn! Going Mach 2 is impractical in terms of the Transformers Roleplaying Game, but if you want to build one of the fastest possible characters in the game, the Seeker Origin starts you on the right path."


In other words, "we know, but tough shit."

In their defense, that's the approach I take with my own homebrew. Fighter jets zipping around at mach speeds just aren't going to be interacting with a bunch of robots fighting in a city street. They can slow down to strafe or hover, but then they're not flying at mach speeds anymore.

What I found aggravating about the Transformers RPG is how vague they are with equipment. They handwave it away with a Requisition system that's supposed to be a part of the adventure, and then the sample adventure omits the part where characters requision equipment... this includes any extra weapons and armor systems, and that requisition is part of some of the classes. I was like, if they're not going to put in the effort, I'll just use my own system, thanksverymuch.

Quote from: Darrin Kelley on December 26, 2023, 09:55:05 PM

Quote from: Grognard GM on December 26, 2023, 09:50:16 PM
D&D at least is DESIGNED around character classes, from the ground up. The Essence20 shit is a 'one clunk to rule them all' system.

The best Essence20 game is G.I. Joe. Power Rangers comes up second. And I haven't touched the My Little Pony abomination. So I don't know where that stands..

The Power Rangers one is the same thing though.  I mean, it says Blue Ranger but, if you really look at it, what you are playing is Billy from the first series with a different name.  You're a Green Ranger but, really, you're Tommy by another name.  You have to fight the system to play anything but OC versions of the characters from the first show. 

Quote from: Venka on December 26, 2023, 06:43:30 PMHasbro owns all the rights to their books

Actually I doubt this is true in any sense other than the pragmatic.  If for no other reason than taxes I assume WotC and Hasbro are still legally separate entities.  Yes Hasbro has control over WotC and can tell them what to do, but they each own their own property, including IP.

Quote from: mcbobbo on December 27, 2023, 10:08:28 AM
If for no other reason than taxes I assume WotC and Hasbro are still legally separate entities.

Maybe, but it's not interesting for these purposes.  WotC is a wholly owned subsidiary; if for whatever reason that doesn't allow them to make an agreement with WotC copyright, they'll just add another signatory to the document that represents WotC, or whatever.  Hasbro completely owns and controls Wizards of the Coast, and any legal necessity about licensing is just dotting an i for whomever's job that is.  Whatever document lets them use GI Joe could either let them use anything that WotC might claim, or at least make them unable to be charged for such use in any additional fashion.

And of course, nothing about that needs be public. 

Quote from: Venka on December 27, 2023, 01:39:16 PM
And of course, nothing about that needs be public.

That's what makes the OT difficult. We don't know what agreements WOTC and Renegade studios may have regarding what they can and can't use.

Quote from: Grognard GM on December 26, 2023, 10:04:31 PM
The game has an incredibly low top speed, because their system simply wasn't designed to handle anything beyond humans or land vehicles, and they're too...stupid/lazy for a work around. So here is there official response, in the game book, to people wondering thy their jet-mode is as slow as a car

Forget a car, jet mode is slower than a thin man on a bike IRL.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on December 26, 2023, 10:10:18 PM
In their defense, that's the approach I take with my own homebrew. Fighter jets zipping around at mach speeds just aren't going to be interacting with a bunch of robots fighting in a city street. They can slow down to strafe or hover, but then they're not flying at mach speeds anymore.

The really fast vehicle modes are not used as part of a stand-and-fight scenario in the media that it's based on, but they really do move that fast.  It sounds to me like your homebrew instantiates that, but still has a realistic flight engine handwaved and accessible should it become important (if a high level seeker was 1v1ing starscream over a desert for some reason).  We're talking about a game that seems to have no actual rule for this case, and in fact, tells you That's A Good Thing (TM).

Quote from: Ratman_tf on December 27, 2023, 03:45:20 PM
We don't know what agreements WOTC and Renegade studios may have regarding what they can and can't use.

Ok lemme take a step back then, because I have no idea why that matters.  Because they don't need to make the agreement public, and because they either own or allegedly own ever single thing, I just don't see why Renegade would even briefly care at all.  I don't think I know why it matters- they definitely have an agreement with Hasbro, we definitely can't see it, so why would we assume that it doesn't include whatever licensing they would need to not fear Hasbro's fangs over 5e content?

Edit:  Unless the topic is "Renegade printed X, how can another company print X without fear of a baseless lawsuit from Hasbro?", in which case, well, I'd not use Renegade as template because they obviously have a license to use a bunch of other Hasbro things, and we can't see that license.

Quote from: Venka on December 27, 2023, 04:39:42 PM

Quote from: Grognard GM on December 26, 2023, 10:04:31 PM
The game has an incredibly low top speed, because their system simply wasn't designed to handle anything beyond humans or land vehicles, and they're too...stupid/lazy for a work around. So here is there official response, in the game book, to people wondering thy their jet-mode is as slow as a car

Forget a car, jet mode is slower than a thin man on a bike IRL.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on December 26, 2023, 10:10:18 PM
In their defense, that's the approach I take with my own homebrew. Fighter jets zipping around at mach speeds just aren't going to be interacting with a bunch of robots fighting in a city street. They can slow down to strafe or hover, but then they're not flying at mach speeds anymore.

The really fast vehicle modes are not used as part of a stand-and-fight scenario in the media that it's based on, but they really do move that fast.  It sounds to me like your homebrew instantiates that, but still has a realistic flight engine handwaved and accessible should it become important (if a high level seeker was 1v1ing starscream over a desert for some reason).  We're talking about a game that seems to have no actual rule for this case, and in fact, tells you That's A Good Thing (TM).

You give me too much credit. I just say that jets flying above X speed are in air combat mode, and don't interact with events on the ground. To bomb or strafe, they have to slow down to ground scale movement. Which is still pretty fast. Transformers as a setting has some really wonky interactions. In theory, a character could tranform from a tape cassette deck to an aircraft carrier and interact with things on a tiny scale and things on a huge scale all in one turn. It's a challenge if one wants to make a good system that's fun to play and also encompases all the crazy stuff Transformers characters can do.

To pull away from defending Renegage, jets do interact with ground targets in real life, and they have to have some kind of ruling to handle that, other than *Shrug*.

Renegade is full of lazy and sloppy game designers. The worst part is that the books themselves have passages that demonstrate that they know they didn't get it right.  Altered Carbon has a paragraph explaining that they know the odds of a critical failure increase as the PC skills increase but that's ok because nonsense shitty reasoning.

I bought the Altered Carbon RPG two years ago because I love the concepts and world building and I though a game built around them was a good idea.  I paid full price for the hard cover and the PDF.  I want my money back.  I should never have to fix the core mechanic with homebrew to make the game playable.

The fighter jet rules are just trash and immersion breaking.  Their justification for leaving it broken is the same bullshit type justification they've used in other books (including Altered Carbon) for why they left them shitty rather than making them work.  They didn't have to come up with good working rules from scratch either.  Battletech/Mechwarrior had strafing rules worked out in the 80s and I've seen at least one other RPG (Palladium Robotech I think) handle it well too.

If you get the sense that I'm angry about it, I am.  To me, this is a borderline scam.  That's why I'm writing reviews.  I'm hoping that going through the games I bought and doing my best to represent them honestly, no other fellow gamers have to go through the disappointment of  spending their limited disposable income on a game they can't play.

Quote from: BadApple on December 28, 2023, 01:45:56 AM
Renegade is full of lazy and sloppy game designers. The worst part is that the books themselves have passages that demonstrate that they know they didn't get it right.  Altered Carbon has a paragraph explaining that they know the odds of a critical failure increase as the PC skills increase but that's ok because nonsense shitty reasoning.

It's so dumb because the super simple house rule fix is to put crits on the d20 instead of the skill dice. (I'm assuming Altered Carbon is the same engine...)