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[Interest Check] piL is thinking about running a game! (Iron Kingdoms, or Post-Apoc SR4)
piL
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Hello my lovely Critical Failures audience. It's been a while. A friend of mine recently picked up some DnD stuff, which got me excited about RPGs again. I was thinking I'd translate the Witchfire Trilogy into 4th edition and run that, but the Rifts thread and my recent purchase of Fallout New Vegas reminded me of my Post Apocalyptic Shadowrun 4th idea.
I thought I'd throw up a brief description of each, and see what people thought, which they thought would be better to run/play.
The Witchfire Trilogy is my favorite series of modules that I've ever read. Gabe ran them for a bit, but I think he abandoned them in Feburary. The Witchfire Trilogy takes place in the Iron Kingdoms, which many of you might know as the setting for Warmachine. It's a three book-long exploration and introduction to the setting, with city work, investigation, dungeon delving, etc. The Iron Kingdoms is a land where technology and sorcery have met and combined--it's a beautifully flavored steampunk setting.
I have some friends who just got into DnD, and I'm thinking I might run this for them, which means I'd be converting this anyway.
Introduction
Some artwork: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Miniatures from Warmachine/IK: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Idea two involves progressing Shadowrun 4e forward in time into and past an apocalyptic event. The idea emerged in me thinking about how much I liked some of the core ideas of Rifts, but the game kind of sucked and there was a lack of unity/fairness/anything. Shadowrun, however, would contain an awesome backstory, an interesting system of magic, and all the other intersting trappings needed for post-apocalyptic survival. Play would probably center about a group of wasteland wanderers as they explore post-apocalypic United States, try to defeat or evade magical threats, and discover more about the events that tore the sixth world asunder.
Goalwise, I think I'm looking at Shadowrun meets Fallout.
Each would require a few tweaks. I don't know if 4e has firearms yet in its bajillion books, but if not, I would probably include two varieties, one as an encounter power, and then some for use. I would probably want to write a paragon paths for warcasters, gun mages, and artificers, as well as race specific. Races I'm fine with as long as they're tweaked to be IKable--I might need to make a few racial changes to make goblins smarter and to include something trollkin-like. I think I could be loose with most things, except religion.
Shadowrun's contact system would need revamping to stay relevent, and I'm not sure on how useful hackers would be, and I'm not too familiar with SR4 (although with Hacking and Rigging melding together a bit more, it might be a bit easier to keep hackers relevent).
Bonus Third Option: This one would require more work, but could be cool. I've been working on a system focusing on playing cards with a conflict system similar to Mouse Guard. It's a little under construction at this point, but I could potentially put it together to make a system to run for people. Ideas for games there are more broad, but include: A magic-focused game where everybody plays a wizard, and work to survive in the world (similar to mage I guess?), a futuristic space-opera esque group of mercenaries/bountyhunters/pirates/whatever, or some other stuff I'm not thinking about right now.
So just curious on what people would like to play, which might be a better decision, etc.
I thought I'd throw up a brief description of each, and see what people thought, which they thought would be better to run/play.
The Witchfire Trilogy is my favorite series of modules that I've ever read. Gabe ran them for a bit, but I think he abandoned them in Feburary. The Witchfire Trilogy takes place in the Iron Kingdoms, which many of you might know as the setting for Warmachine. It's a three book-long exploration and introduction to the setting, with city work, investigation, dungeon delving, etc. The Iron Kingdoms is a land where technology and sorcery have met and combined--it's a beautifully flavored steampunk setting.
I have some friends who just got into DnD, and I'm thinking I might run this for them, which means I'd be converting this anyway.
Introduction
Some artwork: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Miniatures from Warmachine/IK: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Idea two involves progressing Shadowrun 4e forward in time into and past an apocalyptic event. The idea emerged in me thinking about how much I liked some of the core ideas of Rifts, but the game kind of sucked and there was a lack of unity/fairness/anything. Shadowrun, however, would contain an awesome backstory, an interesting system of magic, and all the other intersting trappings needed for post-apocalyptic survival. Play would probably center about a group of wasteland wanderers as they explore post-apocalypic United States, try to defeat or evade magical threats, and discover more about the events that tore the sixth world asunder.
Goalwise, I think I'm looking at Shadowrun meets Fallout.
Each would require a few tweaks. I don't know if 4e has firearms yet in its bajillion books, but if not, I would probably include two varieties, one as an encounter power, and then some for use. I would probably want to write a paragon paths for warcasters, gun mages, and artificers, as well as race specific. Races I'm fine with as long as they're tweaked to be IKable--I might need to make a few racial changes to make goblins smarter and to include something trollkin-like. I think I could be loose with most things, except religion.
Shadowrun's contact system would need revamping to stay relevent, and I'm not sure on how useful hackers would be, and I'm not too familiar with SR4 (although with Hacking and Rigging melding together a bit more, it might be a bit easier to keep hackers relevent).
Bonus Third Option: This one would require more work, but could be cool. I've been working on a system focusing on playing cards with a conflict system similar to Mouse Guard. It's a little under construction at this point, but I could potentially put it together to make a system to run for people. Ideas for games there are more broad, but include: A magic-focused game where everybody plays a wizard, and work to survive in the world (similar to mage I guess?), a futuristic space-opera esque group of mercenaries/bountyhunters/pirates/whatever, or some other stuff I'm not thinking about right now.
So just curious on what people would like to play, which might be a better decision, etc.
piL on
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Cycles permeate the world. News events follow a similar pattern of lulls and highs, clearly visible in the events that brought about the surge of insect shamans and collapse of Fuchi in the 2050s, the events following the Year of the Comet and death and rebirth of the Matrix in the 2060s, and then the building wars and tensions throughout the mid 2070s. So when the cycle was briefly disrupted, and things had briefly calmed, it was those watchers of cycles and those with an eye on the shadows that first took notice. Many important nobles of the Tir began to fade away from society. Next, the great wyrms seemed even less interested in the affairs of mortals--Saeder Krupp's leadership, for the first time in decades, became the purview of metahumans and drakes, while Hastaby, Mujaji, and Lung had been reportedly consolidating their hoards. Shortly thereafter, most of the big ten's leadership had been transferred to higher-up executives while the elite's focuses had shifted elsewhere. Sure new and exciting events continued to emerge--new magical phenomena, natural disasters, but the shadows had gotten quiet.
On June 18, 2078, the Shadows echoed with noise. For the next three weeks, runs and nuyen become frequent and lavish, and anybody with even a modicum of Street Cred could find a job a plenty. Plenty of players backed out and took note, trying to figure out the show in this new shadow war--was this another Matrix Crash? A secret Otaku War? A contest of dragons? Another Triple-A going belly-up? Rumors of strange events and cults, reminiscent of Haley's Comet flooded the feeds, but it was exactly July 11, 12:00 GMT when the event took place. Recollection of the coming days is foggy, but it was within the coming hours that the arcologies shut their doors, those clients, customers, and employees within trapped from their loved ones outside while every connection to the outside reported widespread pandemomium and slaughter. Following the sun, terrible events opened up across the world. Metropolitan areas erupted in uncontrolled violence. Spirits and awakened critters grew mad, killing all in their path and forming a marching line of death that marched westward across the world. Militaries were stationed and warheads were launched on the UCAS's own soil that served only to slow the terrible flowing tide. Then outside contact ceased.
80 years later, in the year 2158, this is how it's told. Your ancestors were, for some reason or another, in SCIRE (Renraku Arcology) when the event occurred. Many had killed themselves immediately upon the second lockdown of the arcology, but your predecessors had worked to survive. Across the generations, many factions have emerged, and the Renraku Elite that had led your people for the last 80 years are seen as weakening and slow to meet the needs of its people. Although some have left the arcology, they had done so in banishment--many now push for the re-exploration of Seattle and the surrounding wilds. It is amongst this turmoil that your story begins.
Why not keep IK 3.5E (if you end up running that)?
Hackers/Technomancers can be very useful in a Post-Apoc campaign, as they can interface with any piece of technology that has power and a wireless transceiver (or datajack port). When resources are scarce, which is better: using 20kg of C-12 to blast open that survival bunker blast door, or having your hacker think it open?
And, yeah, I might be interested
"Go up, thou bald head." -2 Kings 2:23
And yeah, you're right about the usefulness of Hackers/Technomancers. I was thinking about how cool it would be to have one of them to redo old tech.