Adeptus Evangelion: Draft 05 Release, and Looking Forward

PANIC

In the meantime, there are a number of things we can do to keep the thread bumped.

The first is talking about the OD book to come, which I know at least some of you have an interest in.

The other is non-mechanical improvements to the Player and GM books which, while a long ways down the line, do still need to happen. Examples of this would be art or fluff sections, or just rewriting the whole Second Impact World chapter to something that isn't a total embarrassment.

General AdEva discussion is also fine.

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>>44719802
>I will be devoting my time and energy to getting the OD book off of the ground. Only when the OD book is ready for playtesting will I release a new draft of the Player GM books alongside it.

>>44720456

Never has that image been more appropriate.

>>44720583
I don't think you understand how long I've waited for this thread. I had the perfect image picked out MONTHS AGO. I fucking loved playing an OD back in older editions. And now that v3 will have them in the next update? Super fucking pumped.

One of the best games I've ever run was an AdEva game, so I'm excited to see it progressing. I like the look of the new edition a lot, and I'm super fucking impressed with the work you guys have put into it and continue to put into it. Sadly, as a GM I think I only have the one good AdEva game in me, so my group would really only use it if we were continuing the story we started using the previous edition, and that means we're waiting until the OD is playable. I'm super happy that you're working on it though, that means we might actually be able to get back to fucking up saving the world some day!

Is AdEva still garbage?

>>44720851
Well, it's not running on the dark heresy system any more, if that's what you mean.

>>44720657

I am so sorry for the wait. Is there anything you especially want to see when OD comes around?

Other than, you know, OD playing a miniatures wargame while everyone else plays an RPG. Thats a level of granularity for them I dont think we will go back to.

>>44720661
>Sadly, as a GM I think I only have the one good AdEva game in me

I can certainly understand that. A good game of AdEva requires a lot of yourself put into it, and unless you are already a writer or something its going to hard to do that a second time.

>>44720657

Aye. I don't know why, but I loved playing the OD.

>>44720851

I'm not sure how to answer that.

On the one hand, I think we have come a long way from past editions. Not only are we no longer based on the Dark Heresy system, which while fine for its own game was predicated on a number of assumptions that did not hold true for an Evangelion game and which caused Adeva to suffer accordingly, but we have managed to purge a lot of the restrictive and poorly thought out character archetypes that previous systems encouraged or even enforced and instead have a much more flexible character building system. Flexibility being a recurring part of the system, as it was intentionally designed to be modular this time around. Not only could I release a splat book in the future and have it easily swap parts in and out of core, but GMs who want to personalize their own games should find it very easy to do so now. On top of that there are direction choices like Insanity actually being a good thing for the player, and other parts of the system designed to encourage and reward roleplay.

On the other hand, AdEva still carries the burden of a bunch of conceptual flaws that are deeply embedded in its DNA. It is still a narrative focused game, in that the trials and the tribulations of the pilots personal lives are the meat of the game, and yet every couple of sessions you drop everything to dig out the 75% of the game book that focuses on combat, an obvious unbalance between the two. On top of that the game is especially difficult to run, requiring a massive investment of energy and creativity from the GM, and personal effort to lovingly handcraft every enemy they fight in addition to the typical concerns of plot and progression. This becomes especially difficult due to a combination of real and perceived blocks to the Agency of the characters that exist as part of the child pilot scenario, as a GM can easily (even accidentally) place such a firm grip on the PCs that they are basically on rails until the last session or two.

>>44721173

The agency issue and a bunch of other assumptions about the setup of the game are things that can be handled by a good GM, and the book even offers some alternatives to, but the fact remains that the initial premise has some serious flaws despite efforts to mitigate them. On top of that, the layout still kinda sucks and I haven't made a promised deadline since the Open Beta started.

Hypothetical third hand, AdEva is still worth zero moneydollars, so it has no financial value of any kind. Under that criteria, it is effectively garbage yes.

Does that answer your question?

>>44720898
>OD playing a miniatures wargame while everyone else plays an RPG
Yeah, I didn't really care for that part. My favorite parts of playing an OD all involved trying to keep these kids mission capable, helping them deal with the shit they have to do/experience, and coming up with crazy shit to use when suddenly for. Like the time the prodigy's overly pushy date suddenly had a gun being held to the back of his head (I'd stowed away in the bed of his "look how smally my dick is" pickup truck, and yes, it was pretty small). I think it might be thanks to the combination of the GM we had and the other players, but it was great.

Does anybody have an stories of games they've been in/ran?

>>44721314
I once played a character who bludgeoned a classmate to death with a piece of cinder block.

>>44721375
What happen?

>>44721375

Any particular reason?

My Neospartan once threw a classmate to his death down a flight of stairs. But that's because it wasn't the fall that killed him, it was the Angelspawn chasing us. Geoffry was a close personal friend, but his life wasn't worth that of one of the Eva pilots. Spending his life to buy 10 to 15 seconds of running away to safety was the single greatest contribution to the good of the human race that Geoffry could have aspired to. God is in his heaven, all is right with the world.
I wanted to attend his funeral, but the other pilots told me it would be in poor taste.

>>44721475
Okay, so briefing on that.
Our GM and I jointly came up with a variation on the conventional NeoSpartan for the setting. Essentially, the program was wildly successful and produced a couple dozen potential Pilots. But NERV was only willing to give the NeoSpartan program one slot, due to them having to appease a couple of different programs.
So he was taught that his purpose above all else was to protect the less expendable/more valuable Pilots (the Manufactured being Replaceable was some insanely secretive shit) both in and out of the cockpit. The perfect Pointman.
Anyway, he starts to develop a crush on the Prodigy ATT.
However, due to being raised for as long as he can remember in a regimented environment, he has basically no social skills.
So he just kinda quietly and awkwardly starts trying to do nice stuff for her, and he also gets overly protective of her.
So one day, he notices another classmate lurking along her route to school, and looking quite suspicious.
So he panics, jumps the kid, and bludgeons him to death with a broken bit of cinderblock, debris from the last Angel battle.
Turns out the kid was just going to ask her on a date.
So Section 2 locks him up for a while, they cover up the circumstances of the kid's death (blame it on an Angel-worshipping cult that had been making trouble for the OD and her minions), whole nine yards.
She never found out what he'd done, but he never told her how he felt either, until he was dying during 3I. Managed not to drop dead until the battle was won and he got his first (and only) kiss.

>>44721759

Neospartan Pointmen always fall for the cute AT Tactician girl. Its a rule, dating back to the first edition of the game.

>>44721998
I think it's the "opposites attract" thing.

BMJ. This is important.

Will When Suddenly or a mechanically similar talent be making a return? One of my favorite things was combining Delegate and When Suddenly to jump myself (or NPC I delegated to GM ruled) into any session for reasons ranging to comedic or serious. Good times.

>>44721759
Man this sounds so incredibly cliche up until SUDDENLY MURDER.

>>44723025
The Program fucked that boy up. All I See is Weapons played for drama, literally everything he holds he's subconsciously calculating how to use it to kill an assailant. And he thought the kid was a would-be assassin, and his judgement was clouded by his overprotective crush on the girl, so he acted on bad intel without confirming it.

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Bumping because I'm downloading.

>Devoting everything to OD development.

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>>44719802
>>44720428
Can we get a quick-and-dirty changelog? Even if it's just off the top of your head?
Reading isn't hard, but remembering everything and distinguishing it from something new but similar is.
Love the Demolitionist, though. That's new and neat.

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>OD branches can drive the scenery and tone of the home city.
>OD has a Bomb Shelters And Shit branch.
>OD has an Urban Development branch.
>OD has a Declare Martial Law branch.
>OD has a Panopticon branch.

>OD has completely different roots.
>OD has Army Brat root.
>OD has Seen Some Shit squalor-scrabbler root.
>OD has Senator's Son root.
>OD has Marduk Reject holy shit it's a kid root.

>OD combat branches are weird.
>OD has Game of Drones branch to hit anywhere.
>OD has Barnstormer branch to modify Eva deployment and hand out round-one bonuses.
>OD has Viet Kong branch to make near-base zones hazardous and slow-going.
>OD has Godzilla Option branch to have some contingencies in place and so have some say in what happens during a Berserk.

Those are my ideas.

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I cannot wait to play a manipulative political wreckingball OD.

Pic related better be possible, even if only once a campaign. Make it happen, BMJ.

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>hell of a lot better
>due to your feedback

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>Putting the whole system on hold for a character who can (and should) just be left as a fluff NPC
Well, at least there won't be any new "great additions" "due to our feedback" for the time being.

>>44728260
More people ask about it than for any other thing, for some reason.

It's kind of amazing.

Also shows that the adeva community has no idea what actually works for a game and just want to emulate the show.

>>44722383

> Will When Suddenly or a mechanically similar talent be making a return?

Without question. I hope that I can come up with similar talents that are just as much fun to use.

>>44724342

Okay, lets see. Off the top of my head...

Numerous typo fixes, the Herald branch has been rewritten to not be a complete clusterfuck of rules, Wolf and Spotter both got a new talent, and we got a couple new branches (Demolitionist for specializing in area weapons, Frontliner for giving ranged players a reason not to stick at the furthest distance possible).

The old initiative system is gone entirely. Instead, the players decide what order they go in every round, no rolls required unless two players are dead set on going next and cannot compromise. Angels still get an interval after every player turn, though. So it makes teamwork and group coordination easier, like recognizing that a pilot needs to get out of melee right the hell now, or getting the guy with Spotter into position BEFORE the sniper fires as opposed to after because of an arbitrary turn order.
As a part of this, Stamina and ATP increment for all players at the start of the round, instead of the start of the turn, meaning that you can spend your stamina on Guard before your turn even happens, though obviously doing so means you have less of a turn to take.

Obviously, the lack of an initiative order means that we had to change up Nerv resources as well. Instead of being purchased up front, you spend Nerv Resources over the course of the fight until it runs out. Some options for it, however, can only be purchased within the first round of combat because they represent significant setup time by Nerv.

I'm probably missing something, but that sounds like about it.

>>44725201

Lots of those ideas are good, and on track for stuff I already have planned.

However, I feel obligated to note that the CURRENT plan for OD is that they will have a Lifepath system (being older and more experienced than the pilots) in place of the Roots that Pilot characters have.

This Lifepath is divided into 3 sections: Pre Impact (who did you used to be, back before the world ended?), Second Impact (when everything went to hell, what happened to you/what did you do to survive?), and Post Impact (How did you come to work for Nerv?).

Operations Directors also get a series of branches that let them improve and round out their bridge staff, with different kinds of officers providing different bonuses and unlocking different talents as you delegate tasks to them or their presence lets you pull off a greater degree of complexity in their field of expertise. For example, the Military Liaison will not just make your use of requisitioned military forces cheaper/more effective, but allows you to coordinate much larger scale operations on part with what would have been a Military IOU in previous systems.

Anyway, I told you that so that I could tell you this: ODs begin the game with a single Staff member of one of those branches, known as their Confidant. The Confidant acts basically as a staff member with especially high morale, but with the addendum that they are the one person you are 100% sure will never, ever betray you. It is actually against the game rules for them to do so.

>>44728194

I'm not sure I understand this post.

>>44728297

Some people enjoy playing an Operations Director. Some games don't have any need or room for one. That's why it is optional instead of baked in like previous editions.

Personally I just think it is a really interesting role to play as, because I don't know of any other RPG that has that same kind of split in terms of the characters. Its one of the things that makes AdEva, for better or for worse, unique.

>>44728583
>Personally I just think it is a really interesting role to play as, because I don't know of any other RPG that has that same kind of split in terms of the characters. Its one of the things that makes AdEva, for better or for worse, unique.

Bliss Stage
Eclipse Phase

>>44728583
Will it be possible to play a (physically) pilot-aged manufactured OD still?

>>44729604

Thats a pretty specific edge case. I can keep it in mind, but by its nature that sort of goes against all of the assumptions that go into both ODs and Manufactureds in general. It might not end up being workable by default, but the stats for Manufactureds in the players book are not going anywhere so worst case scenario you get GM permission and homebrew it.

>>44728583
>I'm not sure I understand this post.
The system hasn't improved, nor were the changes made due to /tg/'s feedback. I've rarely seen you reply to actual suggestions or critique beyond what was already said a million times in previous threads.

Your development operates on a one step forward, two steps back basis. You make a bunch of minor positive changes, then do something pants on head retarded, like removing Coordination, or initiative as in this draft.

>>44730062
>removed initiative

I for one welcome the change and wait to see how it goes. Maybe it will be fine, maybe it won't be. But as someone who plays a lot of support rolls being able to set up to help others before they go is a nice change from them having to hold actions waiting for me lower on the init count. Or the flip side, go too early and don't know what you are going to need to do and end up wasting a turn as opposed to waiting until everyone else goes to see where you are needed.

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>>44730062
>removed initiative

I continue to have no grasp of the moon logic that governs the development of this game.

>>44730062

While whether or not things have improved may be up for debate, that it was done using /tg/s feedback is not. I realize you are not privy to all of the inner working of the development cycle, but lots of changes, from typos to major mechanical shifts, have come from these threads. It only seems like I am doing it all on my own because the majority of the work gets done in between threads as opposed to in front of a live studio audience.

Also, I receive some of my feedback from players that are almost certainly from /tg/ (I'm not sure how else they would have gotten ahold of the relevant documents) in the form of emails and them dropping by the IRC. Or does that not count?

>>44730401
> I continue to have no grasp of the moon logic that governs the development of this game.

This guy >>44730299 pretty much nailed it.

AdEva is blatantly a teamwork focused game, where it is entirely possible to build a character whose whole job is to never fire a shot but make sure everyone else is running at 110%. But lots of these support powers require proper setup, some semblance of a plan, or just being in the right place at the right time.

Initiative got in the way of this as often as not. There was no reason to keep Initiative around other than that it was traditionally how these things were done. You don't even need to do it in order to break up when players can act from when enemies act, like Force and Destiny/Edge of the Empire, because the enemy automatically gets an Interval after each player turn anyway regards of who goes.

So we gave the players more flexibility and reliability in their battlefield tactics and lost nothing in the process. So whats the problem?

>>44731017
Didn't you previously say Angels moving after every player was carried over from the time they were considerably weaker, and this was a balancing tactic? Wasn't this supposed to be amended?

>>44730062
People who go on the IRC or otherwise contact BMJ directly with concise proposals or an interconnected range of system changes that can be analyzed have more impact than the /tg/ threads.

I agree on the steps forward and steps back but removing initiative is good.

>>44731076
I, too, wish it was Players Turns > Angel > Players Turns, and that the angel relied on its reactions/AoOs for defense and offense more and as a way of keeping the game dynamic instead of the players just wailing on it with impunity until it was the Angel's turn again.

Like Kingdom Death: Monster.

But BMJ is really intransigent on this matter. It took a while to convince him to implement no initiative. IIRC he won't touch intervals because that means a lot of changes here and there and he doesn't want to bother.

>>44731076

You have the polarity on that reversed. A couple drafts ago I had to go and change the damage of the attack profiles in Angelgen because the higher tiers of firepower they could achieve were a balancing tactic from when they could only act once a round.

> Angels only can attack once a round, better make it count!
> Hmmm, that's still not enough. Action economy advantage of players is way too strong. Time for intervals!
> [time passes]
> Oh fuck, I forgot to dial damage down to account for the fact that they don't need to squeeze a whole rounds worth of damage into one attack. Late game Angels are absolutely bonkers, capable of doing 5d10 beams multiple times a round!

Moving over to Intervals, so that Angels move after every player, was an intentional choice that only happened about halfway through the beta. Some of the side effects of that needed to be fixed after, but that's not the same thing as going back on that change.

Wouldn't it be a lot more sensible to just have players and the Angel roll intiative as normal, and let players trade their results as they like? With no initiative, we're bound to have a "so who goes next?" situation every single turn, which will drag out the already lengthy fights.

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>start up an adeva game
>learn the rules
>make a bunch of tables, spreadsheets, etc etc
>first combat is today
>NEW VERSION LOL

JUST

Any significant changes that I should be aware of? If this is going to be the latest version for a while, I'll migrate to 05 for the coming year.

>>44731252
Nothing is keeping you from just rolling a dice and just always going in that order. Then if something happens where you need player X to do thing Y, they can just go as opposed to sitting on their hands while everyone else thinks of something to do before Y thing gets done.

>>44731255
Oh, I see most changes were done to Initiative. Sounds pretty good, actually.

>>44731255

Just the changes to how turn order is handled (no more initiative) and Nerv resources.

You can run today under the 04 rules and then switch over to 05 after that. Everything they learned how to do the first fight still applies, they will just have a greater degree of flexibility in when to do it going forward.

>>44719802
Shit like this is why I'm writing my own Eva system.

>>44731425

Best of luck! And please, LEARN FROM MY MISTAKES.

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>>44731422
I'm kind of expecting at least some of the players to not have read the rules too deeply despite me giving them fifty billion reminders, and if all it is is just initiative and NERV Resources, we'll just use the new system from this fight.

>>44731252
Nah. Most people will just sort of volunteer to go next, unless its a situation where turn order matters. And then you have battle plans.

Any major changes to Angel stats?

>Typo on Painful fixed
Nice

>>44731625

Neat! Looks like you have a good grasp on things.

I hope it goes well.

>>44731748

Nothing significant recently. Most of the feedback I get is from the players book, only occasionally the GMs book.

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>>44731764
I'd upload the Excel sheet since it does a lot of the derived value calculations and SR Effect lookups (we always forgot these in V2.5), but my players are on /tg/ and I'd have to redact it heavily.

Here's some feedback:
-Make a Low/Med/High icon that replaces | || and |||. They look misaligned and like a typo unless you've read the GM book. Suggestion is the MAGI three-boxes logo that's green, yellow, and red.
-Add something like pic related. Going through each branch to find out what you want is such a huge pain in the ass.

>>44731940

Those are both good ideas. I will add them to the suggestions doc, and make sure they get included down the line when I come back to these books.

>>44731940
-Type in Ambush Prerequisite is still there. Hide? Everyone can Hide, it's a Basic Skill.
-Are the super-low Martial/Firearms prerequisites intentional? No Eva unit starts with less than 50 in either stat, so why 35 Martial still a prerequisite for Duelist? (45 for Overwatch, 35 for Pit Fighter, 50 for Phalanx, 45 for Sniper, 50 for Wolf...). They don't restrict anything, there literally is no way to get lower than 50 for either stat.

>>44732114

Huh. I thought I had fixed those low prereqs. I hope I didn't accidentally some fixes again. Thankfully, that's not a gamebreaker.

The Ambush one is not a typo, actually. The Skill you are thinking of is actually called Sneak. Hide is the name of a Talent in the Cover branch, so you have to take Cover before you can take Ambush.

>>44732222
Gotcha. Now it's a typo on my end!
Also seems most of the Prerequisite changes were made except Duelist

>>44732114
-Ironhand is kind of shit for Assault Types. Natural Weapon and Fists of Steel are incompatible, and the selection literally wastes one of the two. Sure, Natural Weapon is midgame and Fists of Steel is early game, but Natural Weapons fall behind in terms of damage compared to the mid-to-high tier weapons. It's not really possible to have an unarmed-focused rip-and-tear kind of Eva. Unless this is intentional, Fists of Steel should probably read "Any Natural or Unarmed attacks deal Kinetic damage and an additional S damage."
-Sprint Proficiency in Scout Prerequisite should read Skill Proficiency (Sprint) to be consistent with other formatting.
-Is it correct that a weapon stored in a Storage Wing is free (no Req)?
-Wing Loadout (Markerlight) P133 has "page ref" instead of an actual reference.
-The NERV Resources section on p180 should make reference to NERV Resources being modified by battlefield. It's a little bit misleading to say it's always 2+(3 per player).

>>44732512

Noted

>>44733431
So is storage wing equipment free?

>>44732512
>>44733431

Derp, sorry. The rest of that is written down for later, but as for

> -Is it correct that a weapon stored in a Storage Wing is free (no Req)?

That is accurate, yes. People keep assuming that is false because it clashes with their expectations, but that is the intent.

As long as knives and pistols cost Req like other weapons, they needed to compete with 'primary' weapons in terms of stats, which was sort of counter to the whole idea of backup weapons or even just small weapons in general. Now, Knives and pistols pack less punch than full sized weapons (as is to be expected) but they do not compete with those weapons directly, as they cost no Req and are free to deploy with.

>>44733523
And a blessing for Mismanaged evas

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>>44733523
Good times. Although the very basic idea of a pistol chambered in 306mm custom battleship rounds is fun.

I have to commend the new angel building system. I hate stating things out and this made it fun.

>>44734833

The whole design fluff for Eva weapons is crazy.

"...so we decided to use battleship rounds in the pistol instead. What about you guys?"
"Not so good. You know Rajesh?"
"Yeah?"
"He did an activation test for the new Polythermic sword the other day. Just turning it on, you know? Set the whole room on fire and burnt a hole in the floor into the next sublevel, killing six people in the room below. They never had a chance."
"Jesus, that's horrible. Did he get canned?"
"No, he got promoted! And they doubled his grant money!"

>>44735094
So I was up last night because my neighbors were having this super loud party and I had this epiphany.
I have created the MASER Anihilator in an attempt to evenly heat this microwave burrito.

I see the One Handed Rules were errata'd and nerfed a lot. Was it just too broken?

>>44735459

Are you building microwave weapons in your kitchen, anon?

>>44735586

No, just made easier to get to without making it automatic. Check the Titan's Grip talent in the Trunk.

>>44735679
Oh, nice. So now you can dual-wield Prog Swords and buy into Dual Wielder to just ruin some angel's day.

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>>44735094
Yeah, it's silly as all hell, but I love it.

I'm a total weapons autist, so reading about stats and numbers is a joy for me. Like the rifles being in 209mm.

>>44735954

My favorite bit is the Penning Rifle gag, under N2 Shell tech, which is a weapon that doesn't exist. One of the guns ends with talk about how their next project was something called the Penning Rifle, and the very next weapons entry starts with "After the Penning Rifle fucking exploded and everyone who survived went back to the drawing board..."

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>>44736140
Hah! That's a good one.

The one thing I still use vBorderline for is the weapon fluff, until this project gets its own written.

>>44736381

But it did? I mean, all of the weapons have fluff now. Have had it for a while.

>>44736463
Well, shit, I'm out of date.

>>44735954
>not making them 22.3 inches in diameter

>>44721314
Yeah, I have a few, but the one that comes to mind requires a bit of set-up. So, in the setting I was running there was some time-travel strangeness. Basically, in response to the equivalent of second impact, the equivalent of NERV had been set up, scrambled to get the basics of EVA tech down, won about 7 or so fights at ever increasing cost, and then lost horrifically. In that final fight, a pilot was authorize to us what amounted to the spear of longinus against the angel. This caused a massive shockwave that killed the angel, destroyed the city, cut the eva and pilot in half, and fired their corpses back in time, landing a dead eva in a crater where the fortress city was just beginning construction. Obviously they put it on ice and studied the fuck out of it. Information on what remained of the computer gave them angel names if not much else, and the corpse alone gave them a jump-start on making better evas. Anyway, the dead pilot inside was an older (though not MUCH older) version of one of the players, of course. Three or four sessions after the ops director had done a tour of the fridge/crypt they were keeping the bodies of both eva and pilot, said player tanged in a fight. Having never seen this before, the tech team was at a loss. Then my OD says "hey, we have a dead version of her down stairs, right? Why don't we take some of that DNA and put in this orange broth, maybe...help her remember how she's supposed to be?" After shrugs all around, they decide to try it, and it works (and the rolls work out). It should be noted that none of the pilots know anything about any kind of time travel or dead future selves or whatever. So she reforms, but now is starting to get these weird nightmares/memory flashes about a life she never lived, friends she never had, and a positive relationship with another players character who hates her guts...Fucking ops directors, man.

>>44735656
Don't judge me until you try to make a burrito from Trader Joes in a microwave.

>Initiative is gone
>Players choose turn order
>This is the only significant change to combat rules
Finally, a reason to use a 3 Arrows scenario.

>>44737921

I don't get the reference.

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>>44739246
In the GM Book, an outside consultant with unorthodox training techniques teaches the kids teamwork. Like the DDR Bach vs. Iruel episode. The party gets an advantage in the next fight, for this it will be permanent.
I'm gonna do a softspoken veteran who paints. The words of the Gunny in the voice of Bob Ross.

Does this game naturally attract pedos?

>>44739806

You are the first person to bring up anything even remotely related to that topic, so its probably just you.

>>44737194
That sounds pretty fucking cool, can you tell us more?

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>>44739806
Not as bad as Bliss Stage, in this one the pedo is That Guy and you can find him quick.

>>44739921
On that particular topic? Not really, unfortunately. It was one of the last things that happened in the game (the actual last being the pointman and his entire eva getting amber alerted into a pocket dimension by a kraken themed angel) before we went on "extended hiatus". It's a game I desperately want to get back too, but i'm waiting on new rules and ops director.

>>44740089
What were the pilots like?

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>>44740248

>>44740248
Just two pilots and an ops director. Pointman and...shit, it's been a while, I think AT tactician though. Anyway, lets see. The pointman was a paraplegic neospartan, part of the original batch of potential pilots. Lost the use of his legs when the test eva being driven by his best friend freaked out in the test chamber and the escape pod smashed though the observation booth, killing the rest of the class/team as well. (There's a whole thing where the best friend is alive, just in a coma in the depths of the base in a eva subconsciously projecting an AT field around the spear equivalent. It's a whole thing.) Anyway, he's pissed, hostile, never going to smile again, the whole nine yards. Lives in a big empty barracks alone, that sort of thing. Kind of settled into assuming he was the last best hope for humanity.

The AT tactician is a bit weirder. Manufactured, technically, but not by ODIN. Her grandfather was a crazy nazi scientist who found evidence of angelic activity on earth and managed to actually call a small scout life form which tore up hell before he took it down with an incredibly crude, immobile AT protector harness thing. He then dedicated the rest of his life to integrating it's crystalline DNA into his own, and largely succeeded, becoming a freaky immortal inhuman thing in the process. Then he had kids, then they had kids, and one of those kids is our AT tactician. She's the one who's body came back from the future, and despite knowing from that that she could pilot ODIN deliberately avoided getting her in the first round of recruits because her cells were clearly weird and alien. But after the accident, they had no choice, so she showed up late to the party. The character doesn't know she is part angel, so the fact that, for example, she has an armed bodyguard at all times doesn't make a lot of sense to her (but the OD had a whole setup of blackops teams ready to kill her at a moments notice if she showed signs of being an alien monster).

>>44740646
Awesome!

Sorry for being a weirdo, I've just never gotten to be in one of these games and I desperately want to believe people are actually running them.

>>44740920
They run them, just on irc.

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>>44740920
No worries, it's fun to talk about. I put a LOT of hours into backstory and world building and fight planning and stuff, and my players put a ton of time into characters. And then, on top of all that, it was fun! Plus, now and forever, when someone asks what the weirdest shit I've run is, i can say "A fan hack of a pretty bad rpg based on a miniatures game converted into a game based on an anime about giant robots and depression" so there's that.

So what exactly is the point of the OD as a player character as opposed to an NPC? It seems like there isn't much impact they could have on the game other than being in control of player agency.

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>>44741514
People who usually DM are used to being cat-herders. It's a way for two GMs to rub elbows and tag-team you Ritalin-deficient rascals, while one DM gets to be a player.
Also being mortar for a pile of bricks is a valid role when you make a wall.

>>44741514
Some mechanical diversity, first. Another perspective for players, second. It's a shitload of fun, third.

>>44741514
PCs can go off the rails.
The GM is controlling the conspiracy, and the rest of the NERV staff.
But a PC Ops Director can do things that genuinely catch the GM, and thus the rest of the universe, off guard, throwing spanners in the works of all kinds of shit, for good or ill.
Additionally, I've found that the PCs tend to be more trusting of a fellow PC. While they might not be willing to go to an NPC for assistance in something, a PC who has the sort of access they need? They're more willing to take that risk, due to other RPGs programming them with the idea that the PCs are all on the same side. This gives the GM a tool to get the players interested and invested in the goings on at NERV, and to start some investigations.
Overall, it just makes all the "adult side" stuff going on a lot less masturbatory than when you don't have an OD and you wind up watching the GM roleplay with himself for twenty minutes.

>>44741766
Of course I'm biased.
I was always more interested in the conspiracy parts of Eva than in the giant robot (well, cyborg) fights.

"... ... Katsuragi, it's me.
I'm sure you're listening to this message, after I caused you so much trouble.
Sorry.
Please tell Rit-chan "I'm sorry."
And there's one more thing to trouble you with.
I've been growing flowers.
I'd appreciate it if you could water the flowers for me.
Shinji-kun knows where they are.
Katsuragi, the truth is with you.
Don't hesitate. Move ahead!
If I can see you again, I will say the words that I could not say 8 years ago... Bye."

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>>44741514
Dad jokes. All the dad jokes.

So one of my players picked both Run Away and Survival Instinct as his assets and every time he fails a fear test he chooses Immobilized as his condition so he essentially got off scott free (minus the stress). Is this working as intended?

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>>44742050
It sounds familiar.

>>44741766
>Overall, it just makes all the "adult side" stuff going on a lot less masturbatory than when you don't have an OD and you wind up watching the GM roleplay with himself for twenty minutes.

Okay, of all the replies I got, this makes the most sense. The rest of it just seems to confirm my fears of it being a way for one player to effectively play co-GM and control the players.

Though my perception of the system is slightly warped from a bad experience where the GM ended up restricting our characters so heavily that we weren't allowed to leave base or interact with each other, and reached a point where my character was literally kept locked in her room most of the day by senior staff when she wasn't being let out to talk to the OD who physically abused her.

While said OD wasn't played by a player, we did have another character who was player controlled and not a pilot. A schoolteacher. It ended up being that player's way of forcing characterizations onto us and further limiting our agency as players.

So yeah I guess you could say I'm not fond of the idea of a player who's effectively a co-GM in a game like this.

>>44742452
It sounds like you just got stuck with a shitty group/DM. That kind of shit can happen no matter what the rules say.

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>>44742452
The command and control staff appreciates your concern for groups less shitty than yours.

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It is wrong to steal obscure kaiju to use as Angels for my game?

>>44741680
>that pic
>BY THE POWER OF THE MOON

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>>44742925
Power Rangers is very hit and miss, I've found.

>>44742452
That sounds like a terrible game if it wasn't the kind of environment the pcs wanted. And thats got nothing to do with OD-like roles.

>>44742050
Realistically some people do deal with panic and fear by shuttig down. Think of small animals that play dead. Seems alright to me.

>>44742452
Like some of the others have said, this seems more like a bad DM and bad players who made things miserable for you, rather than the OD role inherently being flawed.

Hell, I was in a game with a shitty OD once but because the DM was good, it wasn't actually a problem.

>>44742925

My first thought was 'Kaiju aren't alien enough to work as Angels.', but the more I think about it, the more I realize how absolutely *wrong* it would look if you were actually confronted with something that looked and moved like a guy in a rubber suit scaled up to Angel size.

>The Angel looks like it's trying to approximate some sort of dragon, but failing.
>Dead, rubbery flesh that moves *with* a roughly human-shaped skeleton, but does not itself appear alive.
>The eyes don't move, the mouth doesn't open or shut completely.
>The AT field refracts light around the Angel oddly, blurring out fine detail and distorting colors. The HUD tries to compensate, but your field of vision is still grainy and uncomfortably saturated.
>It advances with a rolling, lumbering gait that seems appropriate for its size, but your eyes keep catching things--its reaction time, little movements it makes to regain balance--that make it look like it doesn't HAVE to move that slow, that's just the way it walks.
>One of the pilots has a sudden flashback to their father chasing them around the living room when they were three, pretending to be a dinosaur.
>The Angel is fucking with you.
>Silence from the OD for several long seconds.
>"OH MY GAWD, IT'S GODZILLA!"

>>44742648
>>44742684
>>44743215
>>44743388
The GM was new to it and kind of realized what he'd done far too late to reverse it. He's done much better since then. And barring the guy who played the teachers, the other players were all cool guys.

I've played other AdEva games since then, and they've gone far better. But none of them have ever really set up a scenario where I'd feel like a player as OD would have any significant difference or benefit. Well, barring making senior staff discussions less like talking to a mirror, and that bit about the OD fucking with the GM's plans somehow.

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>>44731255

Should players be allowed to paint their Evas? One of mine wants to put a bunch of flowers and rainbow stickers on it, but that just doesn't seem like it should happen.

>>44735042

Glad you like it!

>>44742050

Seems legit. If someone is willing to spend all of their Assets on that, sure.
I suppose I could add in a rule that says they cannot be taken together in the future, but as of this draft its a legitimate combo.

>>44742452

The sounds pretty rough. What did you even do between battles, if you couldn't leave your room/walk around and interact?

>>44748014

Depends on the setting. They can probably do it, its just a question of whether or not the engineering team will be told to take them off/paint over it.

In any case, given how often damage is taken I wouldnt expect stickers and any specific coat of paint to last long. That armor plate is going to get replaced after any battle in which it takes a hit, taking the pretty flowers with it.

So they would have to redo it constantly, unless one of the people on maintenance does it for them.

>>44747045
illuminati confirmed

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>>44748014
The question is, can they successfully smooze the engineering team to paint it for them? Any color in a spray gun to prevent corrosion is one thing, redoing your vanity job with an airbrush every battle is another.
They'll probably make some panels glow in the dark for giggles, though.

>>44742452
Sounds like you got the shortest stick possible when it come to an AE game. Sorry about that, anon. It's not always that bad.

Is it possible to play a Manufactured who isn't an emotionless shell?

>>44749922
In one of my games, our Manufactured was essentially a CoD kiddie, because of the whole backup bodies thing. And the friendly fire.

So yes. Yes it is, you just need to be creative.

>>44749922

Of course it is. You just have to do literally anything else with the character.

Anyone who wants to just copy/paste Rei can use manufactured to do that, or you can do something new.

Your character can be a clone and never knows it until they find the relevant files, and artificial person but one who you would never guess to be. Just play them like a normal character.

Or a character who knows they have backup clones, and that they can die and be replaced, but is absolutely terrified that the backup clones are not really 'them' and fears death just like anyone else would.

I once played a manufactured that, as a result of accelerated aging and being raised in Nerv labs, was never properly socialized with humans during her early development and instead considered herself to have more in common with the Evangelions themselves than her fellow pilots, because both she and the Eva were life that Nerv had created to fight the Angels. She talked to her Eva and treated it like it was a person, despite it never once moving or acting on its own.
Despite having had a lot of skills and knowledge downloaded into her head, and being quick grown, she was only a few years old so she would wildly alternate between talking like an adult and acting with the immaturity or curiosity of a child. Also she couldn't sit still or stop fidgiting, because your perception of time is based on how long you have lived and hers was still equivalent to that of a toddlers, so everything seemed to take forever. She tended to repeat phrases she overheard verbatim in an attempt to fit in without grasping the context in which they were used, and I had a note sheet where I would write down new things for her to parrot in the future.

You can be passive without being emotionless, but the only one making you be passive is you. Hotblooded manufactured is just as viable, as is a sociopathic 'no sense of right and wrong' clone, or a Manu that changes their personality every time they die.

>>44749922
Yep.
Played a Manu Skirmisher back in 2.5 and did it.
He was fascinated by EVERYTHING, because it was all new to him. So every new experience was this huge exciting moment for him.
The NS chick, and she got him into vidya and "heroic bloodshed" movies.
Then he discovered music via the internet, and convinced the engineers to rig him up a sound system in the plug because LCL has crazy cool acoustic qualities. The official explanation was testing the effects of auditory stimulation on synch ratios. And (thanks to some lucky rolls) it worked.

>>44751042
He started hanging out with the NS chick, that is. Not sure how I dropped that part of the sentence.

>>44745696

I missed a memo. What does the JUST meme actually fucking mean?

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Jet Alones when?

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>>44753109
Aussies will get on it, and apply their shitposting skills to mecha design.

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>>44753184
>implying Jet Alone wasn't more like Cherno Alpha

>>44753109

The game already has Jet Alone. Or do you mean for pilots? Or perhaps for Operations Directors?

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>>44754966
I think he means Jet Jaguar

>>44743507
This couldn't work except in a less serious setting. Tongue in cheek campaign? Sure, but otherwise it would break immersion for me.

>>44755890
>muh immersion
take it easy anon

>>44755890
I mean, if you say your angels, being noneclidean create a form by stealing them from the memories and Dreams of man then godzilla could be in the game without braking your precious 'Immersion'

>>44755890
Yeah, probably.

Still, there is a certain kind of horror to realizing the Angel isn't taking you seriously. I could see it being pulled off with the right group.

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> Instead, I will be devoting my time and energy to getting the OD book off of the ground.

BMJ, does Faster eat an instance of Boost Reflexes, or is it an additional instance of Boost Reflexes?

That is to say, if you have available to you, from Trunk, Eva, and Branches two instances of Boost Reflexes and one instance of Faster, can you take all three, or just two?

>>44757845

It counts as if it were Boost Reflexes, and eats an appropriate portion of the maximum bonus that Boost reflexes can stack to.

In every way that matters, act as if you had paid that xp for Boost Reflexes itself. The only reason that it isn't called Boost Reflexes is because Boost Reflexes is a Talent, and Eva Type's can only offer Upgrades, which are not mechanically the same thing.

>>44758547
Ok, so if the following were available:
Boost Reflexes
Boost Reflexes
Faster

You could only take two of the three (until you got access to more Boost Reflexes, at which point you could either take the Boost Reflexes or Faster if you hadn't taken that yet).

>>44749922
Yes, why the fuck do people STILL believe, edition laters, that all prodigies are Shinji, all NS must be Asuka and all Manu can only be Rei? Granted there are new archetypes as of V3, but the fact remain that as early as V2 you had people asking that question and the answer was always "No, they are defined by assets/flaw/whatever/roleplay"

>>44758810
Lack of imagination, probably.

>>44758810
Because those ARE the characters they're based on. The issue is that people automatically assume that they HAVE to be those three.

>>44758862
I understand the reasoning of 'they are based on' but I fail to see how anyone can be dense to think there is a splat/character choice that requires them to be a raging asshole or an emotionless doormat.

>>44758810

Manufactured is the only one that is still hard locked to Rei. Most NS I see are less Asuka and more Sagara Souske or Heero Yui, and Prodigies were sort of a catchall for anyone who wasn't covered by something else, so you got more than just Shinjis.

But Manufactured? Pretty much always Rei or ManRei.

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>Tasmanian
>Actually get to set a game where I live
>Rest of Australia is completely fucked allowing for more tense situations
>It's already presented as interesting and I have too many ideas

We're going to uncover mysteries and go to fucking Antartica we won't even be able to handle it.

>>44760103

Maybe because the others like Neospartans actually got an alternative interpretation pushed early on. All I See Is Weapons and its ilk sort of crafted the image of Neospartans as child soldiers more than anything else. Asuka acts more like what V3 would call a Poster Child than anything else, acting really superficial and insecure about her strengths as a pilot but having nothing else but the status.

What archetype could we push instead of Rei to be the new face of Manufactureds?

Have players play two characters. A teenage pilot AND an adult spy/soldier/commander etc etc to fix agency issue

>>44761068

Does anyone else feel like the whole agency thing gets overstated a lot? The only time I have actually seen it become an issue is when our groups resident That Guy tried to massively derail the campaign and realized that he literally couldn't ruin this for anyone but his own character.

The rest of us just had fun piecing together what was really going on based on clues and making insane theories both in and out of character, some of which I feel like the GM stole to make into actual subplots.

What do people actually want to be able to do that the game won't let them, that isn't just ending the game early by smashing Nerv or leaving the city to fuck off and do something else or declare independence from the rest of the world as a sovereign country or some such shit?

>>44761600
>declare independence from the rest of the world as a sovereign country
>implying that's not possible
You just need to use the Eva's to steal something valuable enough that you can use it to hold the rest of the world hostage in order to get your supplies.

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>>44761669
Good luck with that.

>>44760996
Visionary. They're pretty transparently an autism joke.

Since this is going to be the last draft in a while, I'm probably going to start my campaign soon-ish, but I first have to translate the essentials (my group can't speak or read english to save their lives so I'll have to translate the things they are going to work with, sheets, branches, talents, basically most of the crunch, into spanish), can anyone point me to the branches they are most likely to take on the early-game? The ones with the less prerequisites? Pretty please?

>>44731625
why did you blank out 'irmgard' on the left, but not on the right?

>>44761600

Hey man if you like a 60 session long railroad with one or two actual decision points in your campaigns, more power to you. But some of us actually like the interactive nature of P&P games, and enjoy actually being able to meaningfully change the gameworld our characters exist in.

>>44768064

You didn't actually answer the question.

>>44768235

It's not really necessary to answer a question framed as "Wow who needs [x], the only people I've seen who want [x] are dicks. Are you a dick?".

Even BMJ acknowledges the narrative limitations of the child pilot scenario. If you want to keep being delusional, that's your choice.

>>44721314
I've got one from forever ago, back when it ran on the DH system. It's short, but sweet.

Basically, the media figured out that Eva pilots were a thing due to the evil machinations of [REDACTED] and the pilots were surely in trouble, considering the protests and minor-but-escalating acts of terrorism and whatnot.
The O.D. was a crazy, crazy person who was having none of that.
So I made them into power rangers.
Well, I mean, not the pilots. Just a group of actors, in dummy cockpits. We started broadcasting all of our fights on a delay of ~5 minutes or so and having the actors dramatically live-dub fights, saying hot-blooded things while getting bounced around in their simulated fake cockpits.
We made the entire Eva project into such a beacon of Human idealism that when 3rd impact was happening and everything was going to shit, people threw everything behind the pilots.
They had the faith of the whole world behind them.
Sadly, it was not to be. The game fell apart before finishing.

I like to believe they succeeded, though, and created a better world.

>>44769519

That is sort of brilliant. Even without the fake battle footage thing, I could totally see Nerv creating a PR team of adult and confidence inspiring "pilots" who act as decoys for the teenagers. Not only does this mean that all but the most well informed of terrorists and assassins are only going after actors, but it sort of covers up the whole child soldiers bit.

Bonus points if the PCs and the actors have to spend a session together so that they can help the actors get into character and be more realistic.

"So, whats it like to pilot the Eva?"
"Its sort of like trying to play a video game while drowning, and any time you mess up someone tazes you or stabs you with a fork. But if you lose someone flips a coin and if it comes up heads you die for real."
"What about when you win? Would it be in character to sad a cool, post-kill one liner?"
"Mostly I just cry after every fight."

>>44769621
The other thing I did as O.D. was divert funding to permanently staff the best psychologists in the world, so the pilots were fairly sane for an AdEva game. It wasn't a solution, but it helped some.

The propaganda machine was the lynchpin of my whole O.D. strategy, and it worked very well. Later in the game, the fake pilots were killed in a terrorist bombing meant to reveal "THE TRUTH OF THIS!" and, by that point, the real pilots had suffered and given so much of themselves willingly that they were heroes.
There was actually very little need to manipulate perception at that point--the pilots knew they were screwed but they were all-in at that point, whatever the cost.

I really want to both play in, and GM, an AdEva game again...
Just like playing Shadowrun, though, for me it's been
>Good GM
>no That Guy players
>Lasts more than one or two sessions
Choose two.

>>44760103
Bitch, I played a manu with Big Ego in V2 who was basically much more Asuka than Rei.

>>44768925
Fix that filename immediately

>>44749922
>Not playing your manu as a superior transhuman compared to all the filthy flesh born other pilots

It's like you don't even appreciate your designer genes, backed up mind and spare bodies for when things get bad.

We Eclipse Phase now.

>>44770808

Man, with all of their soul technology, if humanity ever survives an AdEva campaign the future is going to be super weird for them.

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>>44772164
>you are now imagining NERV run by Kane

>>44770808
>implying that isn't NERV's endgame in my campaign