A "Tomb Raider" #ttrpg has been announced, and it is going to be total garbage.
#dnd #OSR

What garbage. I have run some "reversed" versions of popular games. I ran a GURPS game where the players played agents of Cardinal Richelieu trying to save France from the idiot King and his musketeers. It was a fun campaign. This game doesn't look fun at all. The whole premise of the game makes no sense to anyone but useful idiot marxist tools. Can't wait to see the sales numbers on this turkey.

At some point, the progressive types decided that Tomb Raider was racist and problematic.  Evil Hat has adopted the standard issue progressive view on the matter like they do on everything.  So it's a Tomb Raider rpg for people who do not like Tomb Raider and think it's bad.  It won't be a Tomb Raider rpg.  It will be a virtue signal just like everything else that Evil Hat makes.

I'm not buying it. Regardless of being a Tomb Raider fan. This just sounds like it is way not for me.

To be fair, Lara was often pitted against evil groups who were also running around grabbing artifacts, they just didn't put a stupid 'muh colonizers' spin on it.  Lara was not doing her Indiana Jones thing on behalf of persecuted indigenous peoples, she was doing it because she was bored and rich and because the antagonists were trying to Lost Ark take over the world or whatever with the mcguffin.

The acknowledgement that Indy was just grave robbing and not doing real archaeology is not remotely new; my friend was majoring in archaeology in the 90s and said that the first thing on day one of classes was the professor telling the class to never do what Indiana Jones did, because running in and grabbing whatever loot is lying around just ruins the site for actual study.  But Tomb Raider never billed Lara as a real archaeologist, it was supposed to be a game.  For having fun.  Something Evil Hat is perpetually unable to understand.

Yeah, Tomb Raider has always been "good grave-robber races the bad grave-robbers to the magical mcguffin, finds it, learns it's too dangerous for the outside world, and destroys and/or buries it forever", just like Uncharted, the Mummy, and everything else in the genre going all the way back to Indiana Jones. The only reason they even make a pretense of Lara Croft being an archaeologist is to explain how she knows about all these ancient civilizations (unlike Uncharted, which to its credit, admits its protagonist is just a well-educated thief). That didn't change when Crystal Dynamics took over. If anything, they got even more devoted to the formula.

The controversy around the Crystal Dynamics reboot was mostly that they shrunk Lara's cup size by about 70%, while making an arguably more exploitative game. The first reboot game had a bizarre obsession with inflicting graphic violence on it's protagonist, and more than a few people thought it had the subtext of a rape-revenge film. The subsequent two games backed off of the weird obsession with vividly impaling the protagonist on various rigid objects, but her face got more homely and her clothes less flattering in each successive outing. The first two reboot games are actually pretty fun, if you like that whole third-person action/puzzle/platformer thing. The wokeness only gets overbearing in the third one, which is generally pretty crap.

Honestly, I regard all this woke posturing around the RPG as not worth much attention. It's mostly marketing hype for a game they know is not likely to sell. Evil Hat's probably trying to recreate the free press and culture war cache they got for Thirsty Sword Lesbians, which made that game way more successful than it ever should have been. Outrage only plays into their hands. The appropriate response should probably be: "Evil Hat makes cringe game. In other news, water is wet."

EDIT: I forgot that the current Tomb Raider timeline is actually the second time Crystal Dynamics has rebooted the franchise. The first set of reboots was a bit more serious than the originals, but still basically on brand.  That series included Tomb Raider Underworld, in which Lara looked like this:


So, people in glass houses...

#1. Is anyone else having issues with the quote feature not actualy quoting?

In the defense of Indiana Jones, he's usually looking for artifacts with crazy supernatural powers and racing to find them against Nazis. I imagine it's like the Star Trek effect, where we see all the unusual moments of adventure, and skip all the boring "normal" stuff. (Tho both Trek and Indiana Jones give us glimpses of those mundane moments.)

But yeah, this is missing the point of Tomb Raider being a fun video game.

Quote#1. Is anyone else having issues with the quote feature not actually quoting?

It does not work. I started a thread in the help forum - please pile on in the thread...

  That is dangerously close to having an RPG where your goal is to stop the adventurers from entering and plundering the dungeon isnt it?  Some people lack the capacity to have fun I think.

(Quote from Ratman TF)

Quote#1. Is anyone else having issues with the quote feature not actualy quoting?

In the defense of Indiana Jones, he's usually looking for artifacts with crazy supernatural powers and racing to find them against Nazis. I imagine it's like the Star Trek effect, where we see all the unusual moments of adventure, and skip all the boring "normal" stuff. (Tho both Trek and Indiana Jones give us glimpses of those mundane moments.)

Yeah it seems to be busted for everyone.

You're right. Indiana Jones is supposed to be a legitimate archaeologist as a day job, though the movies do make it pretty clear that his adventures are on the shady side of the law. Belloc in Raiders calls him out about it. If memory serves, original Lara Croft was basically just a rich adventurer. In fairness to her, that might be an intentional nod to the fact that most early archaeologists were exactly that.

For those interested, there was a free Tomb Raider TTRPG released last year by one of the guys at Crystal Dynamics. I have no clue if it's any good or not, but it's an option for anyone looking for something official.

https://raidingtheglobe.com/news/lara-croft-s-tomb-raiders-tabletop-rpg

(Quote from Brand55)

QuoteFor those interested, there was a free Tomb Raider TTRPG released last year by one of the guys at Crystal Dynamics. I have no clue if it's any good or not, but it's an option for anyone looking for something official.

https://raidingtheglobe.com/news/lara-croft-s-tomb-raiders-tabletop-rpg

The "Download Now" button goes to a dead link. I wonder if Crystal Dynamics ordered their own designer to pull down his free "passion project" so that it wouldn't compete with their cynical cash grab. It'd be shitty, but it wouldn't surprise me.

Yeah, I could definitely see that happening. I expect the free game can still be found out there in the wilds of the Internet if someone is determined enough, but if it were me I'd probably just run a TR game using a familiar system like Ubiquity or Unisystem.

Ha, ha ha! So you play a goalie, to prevent other Tomb Raiders from scoring? Can we say you play a "gatekeeper"?

Can we have social combat rules that continue this, too? Then one can play as the cockblocker! Puritans can't even allow the imagination to sin and shame, for the collective sees all, knows all.

Ha ha ha! Oh, the past was a better place, polygonal tetas with bounce physics and all. Oh weep for the sexually frustrated young adults, this brave new world they pined for.

Quote from: Exploderwizard on April 14, 2024, 09:17:34 PMWhat garbage. I have run some "reversed" versions of popular games. I ran a GURPS game where the players played agents of Cardinal Richelieu trying to save France from the idiot King and his musketeers.

That sounds fantastic. Details, man, details!