but, realistically, it's kind of silly to force modern biology into fantasy settings because then technically dragons are the same species as damn near everything, so what the fuck
Magic.
0
Shortytouching the meatIntergalactic Cool CourtRegistered Userregular
but, realistically, it's kind of silly to force modern biology into fantasy settings because then technically dragons are the same species as damn near everything, so what the fuck
Magic.
exactly
which makes any discussion of race in a fantasy setting difficult from the start because it's not like genetics make any goddamn sense most of the time
but, realistically, it's kind of silly to force modern biology into fantasy settings because then technically dragons are the same species as damn near everything, so what the fuck
Magic.
exactly
which makes any discussion of race in a fantasy setting difficult from the start because it's not like genetics make any goddamn sense most of the time
yeah, i've seen it happen a bunch in critical failures.
Garret Dorigan"Why can't I be DLC for UMvC3?"Registered Userregular
Well, from what I remember from most of the different D&D multiverse, magic is the canon reason for why any racial shit works. Such as, you had the god dragons, and they begat dragons, who have a direct link to the god's magic. You have the god elves, and one of them is touched by darkness and turns brutish/evil/hairy, and one who becomes vain and starts identifying with spiders cause black widows lol. Same with dwarves and all the other intelligent species.
The only thing that is a constant is humans without a real direct blood connection to the gods. There isn't an explanation as to where humans come from in any of the settings that I can recall.
Humans in D&D might as well be aliens... which might be another explanation for why everything can mate with humans, alien magic.
These conversations always end up with someone saying
"So if a druid wild shapes into a wolf and has sex with a real wolf, can they have puppies? Will the puppies be human, or wolves? What happens if the druid then casts Awaken Animal on the wolf, can the wolf accuse them of rape?"
These conversations always end up with someone saying
"So if a druid wild shapes into a wolf and has sex with a real wolf, can they have puppies? Will the puppies be human, or wolves? What happens if the druid then casts Awaken Animal on the wolf, can the wolf accuse them of rape?"
At least, it does in my gaming group.
"Dude, first, suspension of disbelief. Second, this is not something that I want to talk about while playing a game that implicitly strives towards dungeons and/or dragons. Ask me again later."
4 hours later.
"Here's the Monster Manual. Look up 'Wolf'. It says it's an animal. Look up 'Elf'. It says elves are humanoids. In taxonomic terms that's basically their Genus, or Species, or whatever the fuck will make you understand this so it is never spoken of again. So, no, they wouldn't have puppies because the Druid is still a humanoid, they just look like a wolf through hippy prayer. There, there's your fucking science lesson in a game where an ordinary outcome is for some dude to waggle his fingers and turn your innards to ice cream."
Hey I'm actually getting ready to build my own gaming table as well. The big thing is its going to have a 26" or 32" LCD TV imbedded in the middle. Going to use it for all my map purposes for D&D and Pathfinder and what not. Going to have a 1/4" plexi surface laid in over it, with a 1" grid laid out. Going to run everything with a netbook.
That's my next design - to allow an LCD screen embedded. Right now I have a white-board in the middle that will serve as a projector surface. I also have a 27" x 36" plexi sheet that has a 1" grid overlaid.
Here are pictures as I am constructing it
This is the first cut; the central spine of the table.
These are the end and middle legs. I had flirted with the idea of making the middle leg shorter, but I think it provides a better surface with it extending all the way out. It also makes installing the sliding drawers a much more friendly process.
And the aforementioned short middle support;
I installed supports along the length of the table to help against bowing and make it more weight bearing.
Here it is with the top on but w/o drawers. I just wanted to see how it looked. You can also see the piece of 25" x 37" white board material that will be installed on the top. I will route out a 3/16" depression in the middle.
Installing the pull-out drawers.
The DM's side drawer is now installed along with the end supports.
The trim will be installed tomorrow and the top done, too.
I am installing a lighting kit under each station as well. The DM station needs to be bigger, I think.. but he will have the table top in front of him - much more than the other players.
Also; I am going to take Stale's advise and the next one is going to be more traditional in terms of legs. 4x4's and a more compact table size. I will also likely try and create hidden slide outs that look more like drawers instead of keyboard trays.
Also; I haven't even cut or placed the cup holder/dice tray slideouts. I was going to wait on those to see how it works. The table top for this thing is 4'x8' and if I wanted to make one for a larger group, it would be easy to put three place settings on each side to seat a total of 7 + DM.
Well, from what I remember from most of the different D&D multiverse, magic is the canon reason for why any racial shit works. Such as, you had the god dragons, and they begat dragons, who have a direct link to the god's magic. You have the god elves, and one of them is touched by darkness and turns brutish/evil/hairy, and one who becomes vain and starts identifying with spiders cause black widows lol. Same with dwarves and all the other intelligent species.
The only thing that is a constant is humans without a real direct blood connection to the gods. There isn't an explanation as to where humans come from in any of the settings that I can recall.
Humans in D&D might as well be aliens... which might be another explanation for why everything can mate with humans, alien magic.
Yeah, exactly
I fuckin' hate humans
They're an entire mary sue species, at this point
Seriously, prior to 4E, they were the only race without anything "wrong" with them; they had no stat penalties or anything else similar
And then, of course, the fucking problem, because humans are the best and even though elves are probably prettier than us it's okay, we're totally allowed to get our bone on with elves, it even produces viable offspring which somehow makes it more okay?
These conversations always end up with someone saying
"So if a druid wild shapes into a wolf and has sex with a real wolf, can they have puppies? Will the puppies be human, or wolves? What happens if the druid then casts Awaken Animal on the wolf, can the wolf accuse them of rape?"
One thing I want to do with my table is have the end where the DM sits to be sunk down about 4" or so, to help accomodate the DM screens to make it easier to see over the top and see what is going on with my players. I find the 4th ed screen to be not too bad but pathfinder is just too fucking tall.
One way to alleviate having to have a sunken part of th table that would be to have a 6"/8" removable wooden screen for the DM, and have a plexi surface in the table top and a space where the DM screen could slide, so you would be looking down on it. So you would pretty much just play on top of the DM screen, and have to move your dice to see some specific rule.
One thing I want to do with my table is have the end where the DM sits to be sunk down about 4" or so, to help accomodate the DM screens to make it easier to see over the top and see what is going on with my players. I find the 4th ed screen to be not too bad but pathfinder is just too fucking tall.
One way to alleviate having to have a sunken part of th table that would be to have a 6"/8" removable wooden screen for the DM, and have a plexi surface in the table top and a space where the DM screen could slide, so you would be looking down on it. So you would pretty much just play on top of the DM screen, and have to move your dice to see some specific rule.
What are your thoughts on that kind of set up?
Whelp... when I'm DM'ing I tend to go for a laptop computer instead of an actual DM Screen. I write modules that I leave in Word format or convert them to a clickable PDF document and just refer to them that way. Either way, most of the time I don't have a use for the DM screen. They are nice to have for beginning DM's who need some quick reference, though. The drop down platform idea is pretty awesome. If nothing else, you can use it to hide your dice rolls, hold books, etc. The key is to keep the tabletop as clutter free as possible.
Keeping one under the plexiglass section is a good idea, but make sure whatever section it is under doesn't have the grid on it (to make it easier to read). Our piece of lexan/plexi with the grid was given to us by a friend who works at a place that does signage. We wanted it that size because my fiance has a large format printer and we can basically create whatever plain jane background image we want and just use the grid overlay for battle purposes. I love your idea of having the entire surface covered, though. That would make large battles like Red Hand of Doom pretty freakin cool.
webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
edited January 2013
Totally Dubh. I remember playing table top games back in highschool, and they were just terrible. I think it was a White Wolf system, but the players were just so bad. I played a few times and the wish fulfillment BS was just rampant. Everybody was totally awesome Gary Stu's who had no weaknesses and were gods gift to women, even when transformed into horrible monsters. I won't lie, I was pretty bad about that shit too, but even I only stuck around a few sessions. I look back and realize it was just the stereotypical wish fulfillment kind of shit, and we just didn't know better.
Didn't get back into gaming until almost 12 years later when 4th ed came out and I heard about it in Critical failures. Jokingly asked some co-worker friends if they wanted to play D&D and actually got the affirmative. We all picked up 4th ed and my god, the difference from playing with closeted highschoolers to mature adults was night and day. At that point I finally got hooked on TTRPGS. Also being able to drink while playing helps a bunch too.
Been playing with the same group for almost 3 years now. Its pretty awesome. The only bad thing is that I'm the flaky one in my group, through no desire of my own. I hate being the one to cancel the game for the week. Sucks so hard.
I can't imagine a world where sex in role playing game wouldn't make the whole experience terribly awkward.
It takes a lot of fade-to-black and a general consensus of it being okay between the players. I've tossed in a few sexual situations into my games(generally not making anyone uncomfortable, and never EVER putting the players in a position where they didn't have a choice to get involved or not,) but it's a subject that needs to be handled with a certain amount of delicacy and caution.
Roleplaying out anything explicit just seems weird, though. Typically nobody at the table shows up for erotic discussion, we're there to roll dice, crack some jokes, and make some good stories for later. Doubly so since my sister is at the game most nights, and that would just get weird.
Still, it's sometimes really enjoyable to have a character seduce a farmhand so that they don't need to sleep in the barn, and then when the party is attacked they stumble out wearing nothing but a greatcoat and firing one-handed at the incoming foes while holding the coat shut with the other hand.
Or, you know, half the party(male and female players, with male and female characters) rolling seduction to try and be the one to get into the landlord's daughter's pants while the haughty elf just shakes her head at the entire party of filthy humans and their filthy breeding, eventually resulting in the entire farm being burnt to the ground because escalation.
It's fun, and I feel like with my group it would be pointless to say 'alright guys let's not talk about sex here' because everyone is comfortable with it and treats it with a certain sense of humor, we don't get creepy chat about it, and if it DOES look like it's taking a turn to the wrong, it's either a quick fade to black or someone pulls a sword and starts fighting back because we can do that and it's cool to be able to make that choice.
Still not for everyone and I don't think I'd ever want to run an erotically charged sexventure.
NOW moving on from that let me talk about my awesome Iron Kingdoms RPG campaign that's happening right now.
So after we ran a short intro campaign to get the hang of the system, the players voted for me to run the game and told me that they all wanted to be pirates. I consented, somewhat begrudgingly, because I've never done naval combat before and the system only has the loosest of sailing rules(which is annoying since there's support for pirate groups RIGHT in the goddamn corebook.)
So we settle down, have some chat about what we're looking for, what the characters are, and how rad it's going to be for everyone to be pirates. I do some work extrapolating cannon stats and prices and figuring out the sort of maintenance costs they're going to need if their ship gets damaged, how crew shares will be handled, etc etc.
It's been going really well so far! The campaign kicked off with a raid on a merchant vessel, which got the party LOADED with gold and loot since they handled things extremely well, and then they got raided by undead pirates, did some quick mucking about in port(established a few NPCs, dropped a few plot threads, and let them make a few enemies because they're all assholes,) and then they decided to go raid an old abandoned fort that had some spooooky activity happening lately at nights!
Spoiled for CAMPAIGN STORIES
So they anchor by the shore of this island(mostly impregnable, aside from the harbor entrance, a hard climb up a cliff, and a narrow gully leading into the depths of the island that they absolutely did not want to enter,) and wait for dawn to come so they can start their infiltration when they can actually see how to climb up a cliff.
Unfortunately for them, there's a pirate hunter in the area(The Cygnaran royal pirate hunter Captain Deckard of the Royal Salute) so I ask them a few questions about who's on watch(Dab Hands Mcgee, the Night Officer NPC, as well as Thale, the elven Boatswain/mechanic) and if they're running with no lights, how they're situated against the island, and toss some quick perception rolls to see if they spot the oncoming Royal Salute. They manage to see it incoming, a ship similar to theirs, but better, with heavier cannons, turrets on deck, and what looks like a well-armed crew. The party might be able to take it, but it would be a hard fight and probably leave their ship crippled.
So there's some hushed decisions, the crew is roused, everyone is manning guns and straining their eyes into the dark as the anchor is raised and the Disgrace of the East begins to pull away from the island and hopefully slip away into the dark. A couple of light sails are raised to make some more speed, but if they start the steam engines, there's no way they'll be able to hide from the Royal Salute.
So after everyone creeps into position, the captain makes his sailing check to pull away from the island and botches it pretty badly, even with a reroll. The ship scrapes against the sheer cliff face of the island, the sound echoing out through the night and everyone just FREAKS OUT and it was awesome, the crew of the Royal Salute went on full alert, but the Disgrace of the East managed to pull away and take cover behind some nearby islets without being caught.
It was just incredible how tense everyone was the whole time, and I'm really excited to see how the campaign plays out in the long run. My players seem really invested in their ship, and making it clear that while they might survive, their ship might end up totalled or they might have to limp back home with a skeleton crew really makes them weigh all their options for engaging, and it's absolutely the perfect feel for a nautical campaign of a piratical flavor. The next couple of sessions will be a pretty straightforward dungeon crawl, but there were some players who stayed behind on the ship so I'll have to work up some cool pirate action for them to tackle.
I've got a really cool group, but if fantasy steampunk is at all interesting, the IKRPG is a really good damn book. The only thing it needs are some actual ship/cannon stats(oh god that would help so much) and a way bigger block of monsters/enemies for players to fight since they have a very very sparse selection right now, which means more prep for GMs.
Hopefully they'll come out with some more stuff in the Human Kingdoms book next spring. Do you have the expanded bestiary from the website?
I'm digging my monthly IKRPG game, I just wish people were inclined to meet up more often for it. Since most of the people in the group are new to the setting or getting back into it after a few years, I updated the Witchfire trilogy for them. It's been going excellently I must say.
(SPOILERS IF YOU CARE ABOUT A MODULE THAT'S ALMOST 10 YEARS OLD I GUESS)
I threw in a few red herrings of other magically-powered teenage girls to throw them off the scent of the body thief at first, and kept the main antagonist Alexia hidden until this last session [Rather than just hanging her out there at the start as written] The party is reasonably split between sympathy for her issue and 'Girl you crazy'. They're also convinced she's had outside help. I'm thinking I might modify that part a touch as well, at the very least to get her some good work books.
It's also amusing juxtaposing her with the Party's own 16 year old waif sorceress, definitely makes the older party members scratch their heads at why their street rat isn't more screwed up than she is.
Matev on
"Go down, kick ass, and set yourselves up as gods, that's our Prime Directive!"
Hail Hydra
0
JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
That is a fantastic story, Rainfall.
+1
Zonugal(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered Userregular
i find it amusing that when written drow was supposed to sound like crow, but everyone read it proper and when someone attempted to correct it, they were told to shut up.
Sometimes, nerds aren't the fucking worst.
+2
Zonugal(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered Userregular
Arguing about the linguistics of a fictional race's name might be one the things I hate most in this world.
It's shaping up to be a pretty fun campaign so far! I'm having a ton of fun creating cool pirate rivals and antagonists and coming up with ship names and such.
Hopefully they'll come out with some more stuff in the Human Kingdoms book next spring. Do you have the expanded bestiary from the website?
I'm digging my monthly IKRPG game, I just wish people were inclined to meet up more often for it. Since most of the people in the group are new to the setting or getting back into it after a few years, I updated the Witchfire trilogy for them. It's been going excellently I must say.
(SPOILERS IF YOU CARE ABOUT A MODULE THAT'S ALMOST 10 YEARS OLD I GUESS)
I threw in a few red herrings of other magically-powered teenage girls to throw them off the scent of the body thief at first, and kept the main antagonist Alexia hidden until this last session [Rather than just hanging her out there at the start as written] The party is reasonably split between sympathy for her issue and 'Girl you crazy'. They're also convinced she's had outside help. I'm thinking I might modify that part a touch as well, at the very least to get her some good work books.
It's also amusing juxtaposing her with the Party's own 16 year old waif sorceress, definitely makes the older party members scratch their heads at why their street rat isn't more screwed up than she is.
I do have the expanded bestiary and it is very useful, but I've mostly been either building NPCs out of the book(The pirate class is absurdly good, FYI,) or mashing stuff together using stats and abilities from Warmahordes.
Your campaign sounds great! Witchfire is annoyingly railroady, but it's not too hard to handle and you seem to be doing cool shit!
0
Zonugal(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered Userregular
I remember my first PAX that I met people from the forums and they started pronouncing my name a different way than I had been saying it. I told them how I had been saying it and they told me that way was wrong.
Oh also @Matev what sort of archetypes are you seeing? I've got a pretty even split with mine, but the more I look at it, the archetype bonuses seem really stacked for Mighty with stuff like Backswing, Shiels Breaker, Tough, Revitalize, and Invulnerable making them really flexible and either incredibly hard hitting or incredibly tough in combat. The only downside seems to be a lack of out of combat stuff, but damn Mighty is full of good choices.
Posts
But then blow it apart with magic
Twitch (I stream most days of the week)
Twitter (mean leftist discourse)
Magic.
exactly
which makes any discussion of race in a fantasy setting difficult from the start because it's not like genetics make any goddamn sense most of the time
yeah, i've seen it happen a bunch in critical failures.
So, Magic.
And also the gods.
The only thing that is a constant is humans without a real direct blood connection to the gods. There isn't an explanation as to where humans come from in any of the settings that I can recall.
Humans in D&D might as well be aliens... which might be another explanation for why everything can mate with humans, alien magic.
I believe it's indirectly addressed in the general 4e cosmology
"So if a druid wild shapes into a wolf and has sex with a real wolf, can they have puppies? Will the puppies be human, or wolves? What happens if the druid then casts Awaken Animal on the wolf, can the wolf accuse them of rape?"
At least, it does in my gaming group.
Everyone reproduces via spores.
(also it is always a good time to introduce people to the Green Brothers and their youtubes)
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"Dude, first, suspension of disbelief. Second, this is not something that I want to talk about while playing a game that implicitly strives towards dungeons and/or dragons. Ask me again later."
4 hours later.
"Here's the Monster Manual. Look up 'Wolf'. It says it's an animal. Look up 'Elf'. It says elves are humanoids. In taxonomic terms that's basically their Genus, or Species, or whatever the fuck will make you understand this so it is never spoken of again. So, no, they wouldn't have puppies because the Druid is still a humanoid, they just look like a wolf through hippy prayer. There, there's your fucking science lesson in a game where an ordinary outcome is for some dude to waggle his fingers and turn your innards to ice cream."
That's my next design - to allow an LCD screen embedded. Right now I have a white-board in the middle that will serve as a projector surface. I also have a 27" x 36" plexi sheet that has a 1" grid overlaid.
Here are pictures as I am constructing it
This is the first cut; the central spine of the table.
These are the end and middle legs. I had flirted with the idea of making the middle leg shorter, but I think it provides a better surface with it extending all the way out. It also makes installing the sliding drawers a much more friendly process.
And the aforementioned short middle support;
I installed supports along the length of the table to help against bowing and make it more weight bearing.
Here it is with the top on but w/o drawers. I just wanted to see how it looked. You can also see the piece of 25" x 37" white board material that will be installed on the top. I will route out a 3/16" depression in the middle.
Installing the pull-out drawers.
The DM's side drawer is now installed along with the end supports.
The trim will be installed tomorrow and the top done, too.
I am installing a lighting kit under each station as well. The DM station needs to be bigger, I think.. but he will have the table top in front of him - much more than the other players.
The Apocalypse Has Never Been More Fun
Secret Satan Wishlist!! Thinkgeek Wish List
Also; I haven't even cut or placed the cup holder/dice tray slideouts. I was going to wait on those to see how it works. The table top for this thing is 4'x8' and if I wanted to make one for a larger group, it would be easy to put three place settings on each side to seat a total of 7 + DM.
The Apocalypse Has Never Been More Fun
Secret Satan Wishlist!! Thinkgeek Wish List
Yeah, exactly
I fuckin' hate humans
They're an entire mary sue species, at this point
Seriously, prior to 4E, they were the only race without anything "wrong" with them; they had no stat penalties or anything else similar
And then, of course, the fucking problem, because humans are the best and even though elves are probably prettier than us it's okay, we're totally allowed to get our bone on with elves, it even produces viable offspring which somehow makes it more okay?
Ugh
Fantasy humans are the worst
Holy crap that's rad
Sounds like a job for my lawomancer
My mistake
Also they can turn invisible
One thing I want to do with my table is have the end where the DM sits to be sunk down about 4" or so, to help accomodate the DM screens to make it easier to see over the top and see what is going on with my players. I find the 4th ed screen to be not too bad but pathfinder is just too fucking tall.
One way to alleviate having to have a sunken part of th table that would be to have a 6"/8" removable wooden screen for the DM, and have a plexi surface in the table top and a space where the DM screen could slide, so you would be looking down on it. So you would pretty much just play on top of the DM screen, and have to move your dice to see some specific rule.
What are your thoughts on that kind of set up?
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
don't always have that choice, though
Twitch (I stream most days of the week)
Twitter (mean leftist discourse)
Whelp... when I'm DM'ing I tend to go for a laptop computer instead of an actual DM Screen. I write modules that I leave in Word format or convert them to a clickable PDF document and just refer to them that way. Either way, most of the time I don't have a use for the DM screen. They are nice to have for beginning DM's who need some quick reference, though. The drop down platform idea is pretty awesome. If nothing else, you can use it to hide your dice rolls, hold books, etc. The key is to keep the tabletop as clutter free as possible.
Keeping one under the plexiglass section is a good idea, but make sure whatever section it is under doesn't have the grid on it (to make it easier to read). Our piece of lexan/plexi with the grid was given to us by a friend who works at a place that does signage. We wanted it that size because my fiance has a large format printer and we can basically create whatever plain jane background image we want and just use the grid overlay for battle purposes. I love your idea of having the entire surface covered, though. That would make large battles like Red Hand of Doom pretty freakin cool.
The Apocalypse Has Never Been More Fun
Secret Satan Wishlist!! Thinkgeek Wish List
Didn't get back into gaming until almost 12 years later when 4th ed came out and I heard about it in Critical failures. Jokingly asked some co-worker friends if they wanted to play D&D and actually got the affirmative. We all picked up 4th ed and my god, the difference from playing with closeted highschoolers to mature adults was night and day. At that point I finally got hooked on TTRPGS. Also being able to drink while playing helps a bunch too.
Been playing with the same group for almost 3 years now. Its pretty awesome. The only bad thing is that I'm the flaky one in my group, through no desire of my own. I hate being the one to cancel the game for the week. Sucks so hard.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
It takes a lot of fade-to-black and a general consensus of it being okay between the players. I've tossed in a few sexual situations into my games(generally not making anyone uncomfortable, and never EVER putting the players in a position where they didn't have a choice to get involved or not,) but it's a subject that needs to be handled with a certain amount of delicacy and caution.
Roleplaying out anything explicit just seems weird, though. Typically nobody at the table shows up for erotic discussion, we're there to roll dice, crack some jokes, and make some good stories for later. Doubly so since my sister is at the game most nights, and that would just get weird.
Still, it's sometimes really enjoyable to have a character seduce a farmhand so that they don't need to sleep in the barn, and then when the party is attacked they stumble out wearing nothing but a greatcoat and firing one-handed at the incoming foes while holding the coat shut with the other hand.
Or, you know, half the party(male and female players, with male and female characters) rolling seduction to try and be the one to get into the landlord's daughter's pants while the haughty elf just shakes her head at the entire party of filthy humans and their filthy breeding, eventually resulting in the entire farm being burnt to the ground because escalation.
It's fun, and I feel like with my group it would be pointless to say 'alright guys let's not talk about sex here' because everyone is comfortable with it and treats it with a certain sense of humor, we don't get creepy chat about it, and if it DOES look like it's taking a turn to the wrong, it's either a quick fade to black or someone pulls a sword and starts fighting back because we can do that and it's cool to be able to make that choice.
Still not for everyone and I don't think I'd ever want to run an erotically charged sexventure.
NOW moving on from that let me talk about my awesome Iron Kingdoms RPG campaign that's happening right now.
So after we ran a short intro campaign to get the hang of the system, the players voted for me to run the game and told me that they all wanted to be pirates. I consented, somewhat begrudgingly, because I've never done naval combat before and the system only has the loosest of sailing rules(which is annoying since there's support for pirate groups RIGHT in the goddamn corebook.)
So we settle down, have some chat about what we're looking for, what the characters are, and how rad it's going to be for everyone to be pirates. I do some work extrapolating cannon stats and prices and figuring out the sort of maintenance costs they're going to need if their ship gets damaged, how crew shares will be handled, etc etc.
It's been going really well so far! The campaign kicked off with a raid on a merchant vessel, which got the party LOADED with gold and loot since they handled things extremely well, and then they got raided by undead pirates, did some quick mucking about in port(established a few NPCs, dropped a few plot threads, and let them make a few enemies because they're all assholes,) and then they decided to go raid an old abandoned fort that had some spooooky activity happening lately at nights!
Spoiled for CAMPAIGN STORIES
Unfortunately for them, there's a pirate hunter in the area(The Cygnaran royal pirate hunter Captain Deckard of the Royal Salute) so I ask them a few questions about who's on watch(Dab Hands Mcgee, the Night Officer NPC, as well as Thale, the elven Boatswain/mechanic) and if they're running with no lights, how they're situated against the island, and toss some quick perception rolls to see if they spot the oncoming Royal Salute. They manage to see it incoming, a ship similar to theirs, but better, with heavier cannons, turrets on deck, and what looks like a well-armed crew. The party might be able to take it, but it would be a hard fight and probably leave their ship crippled.
So there's some hushed decisions, the crew is roused, everyone is manning guns and straining their eyes into the dark as the anchor is raised and the Disgrace of the East begins to pull away from the island and hopefully slip away into the dark. A couple of light sails are raised to make some more speed, but if they start the steam engines, there's no way they'll be able to hide from the Royal Salute.
So after everyone creeps into position, the captain makes his sailing check to pull away from the island and botches it pretty badly, even with a reroll. The ship scrapes against the sheer cliff face of the island, the sound echoing out through the night and everyone just FREAKS OUT and it was awesome, the crew of the Royal Salute went on full alert, but the Disgrace of the East managed to pull away and take cover behind some nearby islets without being caught.
It was just incredible how tense everyone was the whole time, and I'm really excited to see how the campaign plays out in the long run. My players seem really invested in their ship, and making it clear that while they might survive, their ship might end up totalled or they might have to limp back home with a skeleton crew really makes them weigh all their options for engaging, and it's absolutely the perfect feel for a nautical campaign of a piratical flavor. The next couple of sessions will be a pretty straightforward dungeon crawl, but there were some players who stayed behind on the ship so I'll have to work up some cool pirate action for them to tackle.
I've got a really cool group, but if fantasy steampunk is at all interesting, the IKRPG is a really good damn book. The only thing it needs are some actual ship/cannon stats(oh god that would help so much) and a way bigger block of monsters/enemies for players to fight since they have a very very sparse selection right now, which means more prep for GMs.
I'm digging my monthly IKRPG game, I just wish people were inclined to meet up more often for it. Since most of the people in the group are new to the setting or getting back into it after a few years, I updated the Witchfire trilogy for them. It's been going excellently I must say.
(SPOILERS IF YOU CARE ABOUT A MODULE THAT'S ALMOST 10 YEARS OLD I GUESS)
It's also amusing juxtaposing her with the Party's own 16 year old waif sorceress, definitely makes the older party members scratch their heads at why their street rat isn't more screwed up than she is.
The Apocalypse Has Never Been More Fun
Secret Satan Wishlist!! Thinkgeek Wish List
Sometimes, nerds aren't the fucking worst.
It's shaping up to be a pretty fun campaign so far! I'm having a ton of fun creating cool pirate rivals and antagonists and coming up with ship names and such.
I do have the expanded bestiary and it is very useful, but I've mostly been either building NPCs out of the book(The pirate class is absurdly good, FYI,) or mashing stuff together using stats and abilities from Warmahordes.
Your campaign sounds great! Witchfire is annoyingly railroady, but it's not too hard to handle and you seem to be doing cool shit!
And than I hated everything ever.