(Part 2) Best rpg books according to redditors

Stross’s treatment of the Mythos in The Laundry series is much more cohesive as far as science fiction than the average horror writer’s. As far as fiction goes, though, its arch, ironic tone isn’t a good fit for Delta Green. That said, the now out of print Laundry RPG sourcebooks are excellent, particularly God Game Black for DG (you can still pick up a copy on Amazon).

A 2E (Edit: 1E ) Official Supplement, Bastions of the North, in which a young Solar who had not yet succumbed to madness and her loving Lunar consort are nonetheless murdered, as having a well-loved solar and lunar ruler does not fit with the Sidereals' prophecy.

There were doubtlessly a few other unique situations; we are talking about hundreds of wildly different near-gods. How many is up to the storyteller.

You can find a detailed history of Whitewall on some old wiki's with a little googling.

Personally, I think you're confusing your metaphors here, in the sense that you're trying to play the trope of "housed AI", i.e. a Data-like or Terminator-like entity as opposed to, say, an infomorph (an entity existing in a fully digital or virtual world).

Addressing your questions:

1: False - All robots are not essentially computers. They're essentially computers with peripherals. Important distinction. Let's look at various problems that would arise if and when you did something like what's you're outlining in the really real world of now.

A macintosh computer runs the same basic hardware as most Windows-based computers - it's an Intel x64 implementation of the IA-64 instruction set. Their operating systems are fundamentally different, however (Windows is quite different from OS X, while OS X shares some lineage with nix, and can be argued to be a form of nix, while the old PowerPC and OS 9 and earlier is yet another beast).

In this example, the other robot is running on the same hardware as you are, but they're not running on the same software as you are.

You cannot just blindly copy ("image") the entire drive of a mac to a Windows computer, and think you can do something with it right off the bat. You'd need to run it inside a virtual host, such as something like VMWare, in order to let it run on its own - and even then you wouldn't necessarily have access to the same information as the other entity, due to all sorts of data protection shenanigans.

2: Note that d20 Modern states brain. It'll be a factor for what I'll discuss at the end. Yes, you can do that - it would be fairly easy to have you as the broadcasting node in a network, and remotely control other armatures - other 'bodies', for all intents and purposes. It would be similar to guiding a drone through telepresence - or playing a game of CoD as compared to actually have feet on the ground in a conflict zone.

So, you're essentially fine with someone disabling you by putting you into a bag with an aluminium foil lining? RF signals can't penetrate through a Faraday cage. Electrical discharges in the atmosphere (lightning, basically) can change any and all broadcast conditions. A nuclear explosion can knock out RF broadcasts for days. And any time you're beyond LOS (line of sight), your signal is guaranteed to degrade. Your mates trundle down into a mine or something - but you can't follow, because LOS.

Basically, think of your 'brain' node as a cellphone tower - and your 'body' or armature as a cellphone. You're not guaranteed reception even in a house or basement, let alone throughout an entire city.

Also, modern warfare is already on the problem of RF signals, targeting, and whatever. AMRAAM missiles already home in on sources rich in the RF spectrum. With the need and a little bit of development time, you can have autonomous kill bots suspended from balloons, just waiting for you to start controlling your 'bodies' through RF signals, and then taking out the central processing node. I.e., you. Which is the reason why tightbeams and fiberoptics are often used in near future and future settings - you don't want to make too much noise in the RF spectrum, because it is easy to triangulate... and make go boom.

3: A swarm bot (which is already statted in d20 Modern, I believe) is a hive mind of sorts. And if you have enough cognitive capacity, you should be able to do this. Shadowrun has the drone controller role, where you can stay in an 'overwatch' of sorts, basically just keeping an eye on your semi-autonomous drones that crawl around doing stuff. However look to the answer of 2 for problems with relying on 'wifi'.

4: Of course. However, you're not a 'human' cognitive intelligence at this point. You're arguably even far beyond GladOS, and perhaps SHODAN. You'd be more akin to a vampire fleet in Traveller. Or perhaps the Computer from Paranoia, if played for giggles.

Consider the following:

It seems that there's a good possibility for digital uploading of personalities is never going to work - it seems that we may be unable to differentiate the substrate a human's personality is running on (that'd be our meat bodies) from the personality itself. Or, to use a different metaphor - it's not necessarily possible to separate the human hardware from the human software at all, we might be running on human firmware.

Much the same may be true for a true AI. In the same way that any given person is shaped by their potential, their experiences, and random occurrences, a true AI may be as incomprehensible to another AI as two humans are to each other. Yes, we may have technological telepathy, and we may have fMRI capable of resolving (to a certain resolution) the images in our mind. Yet, it seems that we may not be able to duplicate ourselves without also duplicating our substrate.

Which means that our minds and our brains are unseparable - and by extension, an AI's brain and its mind is unseparable.

Ok, but what does it mean for your game? Well, basically, your AI may be able to invade and dominate a new body. This is a more active version of the 'move the brain over to a new robot body'. And, your AI may be able to start driving that body with some modicum of proficiency (that being your skills, levels, and so on). But you may not be able to aggressively copy skills and so on, because the format of those data is incomprehensible for you. Basically, each AI runs its own OS shaped by whatever made it an AI. It'd be like copying an application from Windows to a mac - it just won't run.

Sure, you may have common formats and exchange some data - for instance, you can copy pictures from one drive to another and make sense of it - but you cannot look into the mind of the other AI without some special powers to allow you to do so. That would be the equivalent of copying the installation directory of some application from a mac to a Windows-based computer and assume that it'll work. (Top tip: It won't.)

If your AI is built for it - i.e., with the right feats and attributes - you might pull off what is essentially a 'hive mind'. You'll likely exponentially increase your vulnerability as well - and limit your usefulness to the range of your wifi signal. Do you get cellphone reception everywhere? No? Well, then your AI's 'body' can't be able to go there and do anything useful either, unless your AI is physically present to drive the body properly.

What Skynet did / does / have done / will do in the Terminator franchise, is that Skynet makes a 'personality' of sorts - a limited construct, if you will - and installs that software into otherwise identical bodies. Essentially, barring manufacture defects, one Ah-nold T-800 is indistinguishable from another as they're manufactured, and are functionally clones.

Over time, if their read-only switch is toggled, their individual experiences will change their decision algorithms - they will 'learn' and may formulate different plans. Barring a quantum-level discussion, a 'default' setting Terminator will always do the same thing in the same situation - one T-800 will do the same as the next.

And that's you. You're functionally much the same as a T-800 with its read-only switch toggled. Though you may have started out identical to an infinity of other AIs, you're no longer the same because of different experiences. You're running a custom software on a jailbroken iPhone, your AI siblings may be running iOS 7 on the same model iPhone - but with vastly different capabilities.

And that has its advantages - you can level up, you can learn, you can formulate novel strategies - but it has its disadvantages as well - you can't go Agent Smith on the world and start 'eating' the personalities of other AI. Unless you're specifically built with that capability.

TL;DR - You're a Terminator with its read-only switch toggled, not Agent Smith.

http://www.amazon.com/Exalted-Art-Book-White-Wolf/dp/1588463591

The Art Book might be a good idea if he doesn't have it.

Big Damn Heroes seems to be an expansion to the older Serenity Role Playing Game. While the core book for that game is still reasonably priced, the expansion is a good chuck of cash.

The one linked above is the Firefly RPG which uses Cortex Plus instead of the Cortex system. Apparently they are significantly different systems, but I'm not familiar with either.

Here's the amazon link for the d20 Lone Wolf. It's out of print, so it's kind of expensive. If you search around, you might be able to find it for a better price. The also did a Darklords book and a magic book, but I think those might be even trickier to find and much more pricy. The books are fun for background information, but given the prices that are being charged, you might just want to read up on Magnamund on Project Aon and use the system of your choice to replicate the Lone Wolf experience. Any system that can do high fantasy would do the trick.

Grey Star was an AWESOME four book series published as World of Lone Wolf. In it you play Grey Star (or Greystar), a human raised by the Shianti. You're a wizard on a quest to recover the Moonstone and stop Agarash the Damned before he can use it to bring Naar into the world. It takes place in Magnamund in areas not typically covered in the main Lone Wolf books. The magic powers you get are awesome, and the books are really fun. The battle of wills with the Shadow Demon is something I remember to this day. Here's more info on the series.

The World of Lone Wolf series is also available here, on Project Aon.. That list also includes the post Magnakai gamebooks, the Grand Master Series, the New Order series and some really awesome, handy tools. It doesn't contain the prose books or the new multi-player gamebooks from Mongoose. You can find the first three prose novels in a single omnibus here and the first of the new multi-player game books here.

I'm sure there's more info on Mongoose's site and Project Aon. Happy hunting.

GM guide - $23

Players Guide - $40

Thats relatively cheap if you ask me. Yes. Perfect copies go for $100+...but most people want to USE the books...not look at them.

Got an eReader? Its even cheaper in digital format.

This book uses this style of having two "books" in a single binding, and you typically only see one of the covers of that as well. I assume it has something to do with the industry demanding that one of the covers be the official front cover. Though this retailer seems to have mocked up a split cover sort of thing (I think it ends up being more confusing though). Edit -- Ha! I just noticed that they also call this a "Flip Book" so that's probably what it is.

This might interest you if it's not what you were using already. It's a White Wolf game about exactly all of that stuff you just said. It uses the nWoD rules, but the world doesn't overlap with the other games at all.

> I am currently playing a custom adventure under the 4th edition D&D ruleset.

The Star Wars Saga edition is pretty much 4.0 beta, but because it is out of print it can be a bit expensive. I am running it now, and enjoy it. There is also a campaign setting book for that era.

http://www.amazon.com/Star-Wars-Roleplaying-Rulebook-Edition/dp/0786943564/ref=cm_lmf_tit_1

http://www.amazon.com/Rebellion-Campaign-Guide-Star-Roleplaying/dp/078694983X/ref=cm_lmf_tit_9

As for inspiration, I personally draw them right from the EU books. I am doing Legacy setting now, and took the campaign right out of issues 57+

But, if you still want to stick with Champions this is all that you need to start off with. http://www.amazon.com/Champions-Universe-6th-Steven-Long/dp/1583661271/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1310845713&sr=8-2

Or this book if you do not want to use all of the Champions licensed material.

The author of this article is obviously not familiar with a broader range of games. It is easy to find counter-examples if this.

For example, browse the Heroes & Rogues supplement for Rolemaster 2nd edition and you will quickly find that levels 1-4 aren't adventuring years but those uncovered years where D&D characters are level 0, and at level 5 they are more like level 1 D&D characters. In Rolemaster* there are no "commoners" - they all can be as complex as any heroic character.

What is described in the article isn't a flaw in the game design or a weakness in the DM/GM's skill in running a game - it is an intentional design difference in the style of the game being run. It is a question of what the relationship is between the players and the rest of the world - are they legends who use unheard of magics and take on monsters that few have seen, or are they just lowly commoners in a world where magic and Dragons are normal sights? For D&D, it started as the former and is now closer to the latter.

From a more realistic campaign design decision, magic and monsters would most likely mean the medieval styled world of castles and feudalism wouldn't emerge. What good is a castle in a world of flying beasts and wizards who can teleport and disintegrate?

Realism, high fantasy, worlds that make no sense - these are all style choices and there is no "right" answer.

Add to the argument of the article itself, it feels like one that comes from the logic of the rule system and not the logic of the campaign universe.

Are you specifically talking about video games, or board games and TTRPGs as well?

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I picked up 16 different books of the Doctor Who TTRPG published by Cubicle 7 on Humble Bundle a while back. While I haven't gotten a chance to play it with a group (yet) the ruleset looks pretty solid. And like with all TTRPGs, it's all about what you and your friends make it.

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Edit to add a link for those interested: https://www.amazon.com/Dr-Who-Roleplaying-Game-Cubicle/dp/0857442627

I've been gaming most weekends for 15 years now. If not dnd, then minis games or hero system

> Your personal opinion that you are Quasimodo Naked makes no sense because other people are not you.

I'm far from the only one. Just saying. And it's not like I want any of this.

> And are you under the impression that women can't be perverts? Because perversion is human.

Of course women are human and are just as "perverted" as men (although I prefer to call it "normal"). But men, by and large, don't seem to mind being perved on, at least compared to women. I know for sure that I don't. Am I right in guessing that you feel the reason for that is because of the unhealthy culture you describe? Or is there another reason? Or do you disagree with what I'm saying entirely? Are most men really not okay with this?

I mean, there are women out there that feel that men are basically slime because of our sexuality. Why do you suppose that is? For example, I once made the mistake of telling a female friend that I liked the cover of this book. This led to her telling me tnat it's a terrible cover and I'm a bad person for liking it. Why do you suppose that is?

> I am stating plainly and clearly that you have come to incorrect conclusions (how do you even think our species has managed to spread the way it has on our planet without active cooperation from the women?) and you are making a strong impression of being obtuse for no discernible reason at all.

I think you are (repeatedly) drawing the wrong conclusions about what my conclusions are. Sorry if you feel I'm being obtuse, it's absolutely not my intention at all. You do remember which subreddit we're on, right? Slowness to understand comes with the territory, I'm afraid.

Yes, I know that cishet women have a sexuality that is not qualitatively different from cishet men's sexuality. But the reality is that I would be over the moon if I got even a single "spam email" like the one you describe, and I doubt that's ever going to change. Even hearing it from a guy would be intensely flattering, and I'm not even attracted to guys. Just the thought that someone, anyone, viewed me as a sexual being would be fantastic. Where do you suppose that tendency comes from? Am I wrong for feeling this way?

Another thing to consider is Steve Jackson games puts out cardboard standees that work great as minis too. http://www.amazon.com/OP-Cardboard-Heroes-Denis-Loubet/dp/1556343701/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1343428637&sr=8-1&keywords=cardboard+heroes

You get over 400 cardboard minis for something like 30 or 40 bucks. And theres several lines, like fantasy, modern, etc. You can probably find it locally at your game store.

Ultimately, DH is less about big combat encounters and more about uncovering secret plots and solving mysteries. In my experience with the game, putting together all the pieces is just as fun (if not more so) than fighting a big, nasty baddy and coming out on top.

You might consider making the modules more challenging by tweaking the story, NPCs or puzzles that the Acolytes have to solve. In the RT book Into the Storm, for example, there are great rules for social interaction challenges where players will have to be observant and work on improving their relationship with NPCs in order to get info out of them.

If combat is where you want to add the challenge though, you can't go wrong with ShamelesslyPlugged's advice. Consider giving them small XP bumps in addition to limited use, yet powerful equipment.

"Faith Manages" is the core book.
https://www.amazon.com/Babylon-Faith-Manages-Roleplaying-Second/dp/1905471203

That said, I have a deep dislike of the d20 system. I got into the White Wolf d10 system back in the day and played everything with that. I would use whatever system you like.

I would recommend WotC Star Wars Saga Edition. I think the rules are more streamlined than the original d20 CRB or RCRB. I still own my copies (though EotE has COMPLETELY replaced Star Wars roleplaying for me!) and I think they're quality books. They're not too expensive yet...but they're running 20% above original retail at least.

Star Wars Saga Edition Core Rulebook

Knights of the Old Republic Campaign Guide

Jedi Academy Training Manual

I have these books and a couple more that I might consider selling. PM me if you're at all interested in talking. :D