Did anyone check out the new Terminator game yet?

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Rob Necronomicon

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Hello!

As per title! :smile: I was about to buy the .pdf bundle but I read a review or two that said the system was a little odd in places.

I'm still thinking about buying it just for the lore if the system turns out to be a little wonky.

The art is class (as a side note).

Any thoughts are welcome!

Cheers, R.
 
It has a needlessly overcomplicated core dice mechanic which I am worried will be a real pain in the backside to actually use. (I fear my casual gamer friends will hate it. Tbh there’s a good chance I will lose patience with it!)

Aside from that, I enjoyed reading all the background stuff. They have put a lot of effort into it.
 
It has a needlessly overcomplicated core dice mechanic which I am worried will be a real pain in the backside to actually use. (I fear my casual gamer friends will hate it. Tbh there’s a good chance I will lose patience with it!)

Somehow "needlessly complicated" never seems to go out of fashion in roleplaying game desgin.
 
It has a needlessly overcomplicated core dice mechanic which I am worried will be a real pain in the backside to actually use. (I fear my casual gamer friends will hate it. Tbh there’s a good chance I will lose patience with it!)

Aside from that, I enjoyed reading all the background stuff. They have put a lot of effort into it.

Damn... That's a real shame. I don't have the patience for fiddly mechanics in my old age. I think Nightfall's new system might be a bit too linked to their 'skirmish' stuff which might be adding unnecessary steps.

But I might take the plunge just for the lore (as you say it's a good read).

Ta'.
 
Damn... That's a real shame. I don't have the patience for fiddly mechanics in my old age. I think Nightfall's new system might be a bit too linked to their 'skirmish' stuff which might be adding unnecessary steps.

But I might take the plunge just for the lore (as you say it's a good read).

Ta'.
I suspect you have the right of it in regards to their system. I preferred the old system, to be honest. It's not terrible, it's just not a good fit IMO. But I have the PDF from the Kickstarter for background stuff mostly (though just like usual, I haven't looked at it yet)
 
Always some interesting things to mine from the later movies (and the series), even if individually some of the movies were not the best. I did like the Firefly girl who played the good Terminator in the series - she was cool. Cromarty was a good villain too. :smile:
 
I think they try to do way too much with these movie universes and series. It’s ok not to explain everything, I don’t need to know how Snake Plisskin lost his eye. Call me crazy.

I didn’t like the Bale movie either but at least it tried to keep the previous three movies in continuity, I did appreciate that. I would have been happy with the series ending with the first movie to be honest…
 
I'm pretty confused with all the Terminator continuity these days.
I tend to feel that Terminator and Terminator 2 are the most connected; with possibly Terminator 4 Salvation feeling potentially connected.
Not so sure what has gone on with all the other ones, they seem all over the place.
Time for me to watch them all I guess, just to work out what fits where, if it fits at all.
 
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Controversial take: I liked it more than all the soppy nonsense in T2.
:angel:

I rewatched Dark Fate fairly recently and I quite enjoyed it. It does tread old ground but it does so with interesting set of characters and events, and LInda Hamilton take on old Sarah Conner was a joy to watch. I was less impressed with the awkward way they tried to shoehorn Arnie into the story. Nothing against Arnie and I understand how he is central to the franchise but I this particular movie would have been stronger without him (or just as a cameo in the flashback scene at the start).

And I agree, T2 is definitely way too sentimental for its own good. But it is also so slick and so much fun.
 
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I'm pretty confused with all the Terminator continuity these days.
I tend to feel that Terminator andTerminator 2 are the most connected; with possibly Terminator 4: Salvation feeling potentially connected.
Not so sure what has gone on with all the other ones, they seem all over the place.
Time for me to watch them all I guess, just to work out what fits where, if it fits at all.

Honestly, I would not worry about continuity, just enjoy (or not) each movie on its own terms.
 
I rewatched Dark Fate fairly recently and I quite enjoyed it. It does tread old ground but it does so with interesting set of characters and events, and LInda Hamilton take on old Sarah Conner was a joy to watch. I was less impressed with the awkward way they tried to shoehorn Arnie into the story. Nothing against Arnie and I understand how he is central to the franchise but I this particular movie would have been stronger without him (or just as a cameo in the flashback scene at the start).

And I agree, T2 is definitely way too sentimental for its own good. But it is also so slick and so much fun.

Same here! I disliked Dark Fate on my first watch, but enjoyed it a lot more on the 2nd. It does suffer from "too many main characters" syndrome which meant it didn't have the emotional punch of the 1st film. While I liked the older Sarah, I can't but help feel the story would have been better off without her and Arnie's terminator.

What I really want is for them to make the film T3 should have been: Sarah Connor's final battle against Skynet. (Stop the Future or Die Trying!) Instead they killed her off camera in that one. While it has its charms, Clare Danes' is a very wooden performer and just wasn't that good in it. And Nick Stahls' version of John Connor never feels like it comes together. Partly because he never gets to do anything proactive. He never takes charge and shows us the beginnings of the Great War Hero he was supposed to be. Instead they are either just running away or its Kate giving the orders. (Not the actors fault, but a bit of a shitty script.) Its only at the very end, when he has no choice, does he step up.
 
Early Terminator models could be sent back in time and blend in by pretending to be shop mannikins.

Riff off that old Kim Cattrall movie.

"Shes a deadly killer robot hiding out in Sarah Connor's favourite department store. He's a lovable, but hopeless designer hired for one last job to save his career: the Christmas Window Display. She was programmed to inflitrate, not to fall in love. This December on the Hallmark Channel watch a love story that is out of this time...The Christmas Terminator."
 
I backed it, but there's a list of specific things I want from a Terminator game, and it isn't it. I'm not interested in playing in 2029.
Yeah, I'd want to play a Terminator game set in the present; but the key issue for me is, The Terminator isn't a setting, it's a scenario. One thing I loved about the first two movies is that they can just be things that happen, and they're never explained outside of their own logic; you could pretty much drop it into any modern-day horror campaign as a one-off event and have a good time, but the more you connect things, the less interesting it becomes.

And anything post-Judgement Day... what, exactly, is the point? It's not an interesting place.
 
Where I think the Terminator franchise (including the roleplaying game) should have gone is the post-apolcalyptic fight against the machines, rather then endlessly revisiting the time-travel gimmmick. A bit like the TV series Falling Skies with robots rather than aliens. I always found the brief flashfoward sequences in the movies with the robots stepping on piles of skulls very exciting.

In that respect Terminator Salvation had the right idea. It just wasn't a very good film (and in the end, it did lop back to the time travel gimmick thing anyway).
 
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I dont know... I quite like the idea of starting the players off as survivors in the future war. And then they find themselves in 1980s small town America. Could be a cool fish-out-of-water campaign. It would suffer from a massive change in tone halfway through - starts off as a grimdark war movie and then turns into Twin Peaks. And I am not sure this is the right ruleset for that sort of game.

But I do see where you are coming from. I don't know if its something players would want to come back to again and again.
 
Campaign Idea - PC's start off as children in the future. They have been bred by skynet and altered as part of its cyborg weapons program. They have all sorts of funky cyborg abilities. Their father, a human scientist working for Skynet, has removed their programming allowing them to have "free will". He then smuggles them into a time machine and sends them back into the past. Where they meet his past self... who they now have to save from Terminators being sent back to kill him before their creation. Oh, and they also have to go to school. And do gym class and deal with mean cheerleaders. I envision the Dad as being like Walter Bishop from Fringe. Totally work obsessed and has no idea how to raise kids. Together they learn the meaning of family. I could call it, "Skynet ate my Homework."
 
I'm pretty confused with all the Terminator continuity these days.
I tend to feel that Terminator and Terminator 2 are the most connected; with possibly Terminator 4 Salvation feeling potentially connected.
Not so sure what has gone on with all the other ones, they seem all over the place.
Time for me to watch them all I guess, just to work out what fits where, if it fits at all.
money-machine.gif


No emojis were mis/used in the making of this post.
 
So, I got my Terminator books eventually. (On time, but I'd forgotten that I'd backed them.) And it turns out that 1) they really did have most of what I wanted, after all, and 2) I actually really love the system they're using.

I backed their new Kickstarter for the Terminator 2 material. I won't forget this time. And I will be running my Terminator game, Scoundrels in Paradise, as soon as my local gaming group will allow me. A couple of my kinswomen have purchased the Avatar RPG... and I lost that fight before I slapped leather.
 
Campaign Idea - PC's start off as children in the future. They have been bred by skynet and altered as part of its cyborg weapons program. They have all sorts of funky cyborg abilities. Their father, a human scientist working for Skynet, has removed their programming allowing them to have "free will". He then smuggles them into a time machine and sends them back into the past. Where they meet his past self... who they now have to save from Terminators being sent back to kill him before their creation. Oh, and they also have to go to school. And do gym class and deal with mean cheerleaders. I envision the Dad as being like Walter Bishop from Fringe. Totally work obsessed and has no idea how to raise kids. Together they learn the meaning of family. I could call it, "Skynet ate my Homework."

Reading this, I started thinking "oh, this is pretty good and dark." Then it got to the time travel and the idea of saving dad. OK, very Terminator. Then it hits the school part and it straight up turns into a high school anime. Bonus points if it's a harem show.

I immediately thought of the main pilot character guy from Full Metal Panic as one of the cyborgs.

Love it.
 
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