A "you're all in prison for a while" is the sort of thing better suited to WoD style games that have very large chunks devoted to social rules and political structures.
Like...could you imagine that value of things like contacts, allies, and retainers in a prison? You really need a strong background/indirect ability/skill system, and D&D has never emphasised that.
In both the 3rd edition and 5th edition rulebooks own, I hit the Matrix chapter and my eyes glaze over and I enter a coma. Every time.
There may be a slight exaggeration there
I love all that fun Matix stuff in theory, but it's impractical. It forced all the rest of the table to sit there while one is the star of the show for an hour. We tended to treat Decking more like being a Rogue in D&D.
I played the prison thing once with a GM..it was a mess, and it fell apart when he revealed that the whole game would be set there with no intention of ever leaving. Months on end with no scenery change, little chance to gain xp, no access to any sort of discernible loot or weapons. It really was a prison.....for his players.
What an asshole
He thought it was really clever and would be fun. I didn't take it personally... I think he envisioned OZ set in D&D and I get that but the execution was such that it was just a constant depressing beat down with no discernible way to improve your situation and he wasn't the sort of DM that was up to the sort of character interactions that could salvage something so maudlin.
I made this mistake. Ish.
I tried to do Lawrence of Arabia. Looooong, drawn out adventure in the desert. It did not go great, although I did manage to have some good fights, it was ultimately a little boring and contrived.
since I didn't want them to use their daily powers and be at full hp every fight, I just sort of said "magic cursed desert. Diabolical wizards did it."
The characters in the campaign I'm running atm have just been imprisoned, it's not an impossible situation for them but I constructed it so that I could foster better roleplay solutions, they're fairly new to the game (5e, Forgotten Realms setting because they started before I joined them and then handed over DMing to me once they knew I'd been playing for a while, whoops) and had kinda gotten into the 'swords solve problems' mindset that is very easy for new players to get into.
So far it's working out well, looks like they'll be crafting a makeshift explosive to get out of their cell which wasn't a planned thing but works out well enough for me to go with it.
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VivixenneRemember your training, and we'll get through this just fine.Registered Userregular
edited March 2016
My new games arrived on Friday last week! We still haven't played Mafia de Cuba yet as we haven't had enough people in a group to play, but we did give Coup: Rebellion G54 a go with three of us over the weekend.
We only played with the recommended starter roles (Peacekeeper, Politician, Banker, Guerilla, and Director) and it feels like a streamlined version of Coup, but with about the same basic mechanics. I really want to give it a go playing with the max of 6 players because I feel like that's when things get interesting. Playing with 3 players was fun enough the games went very quickly and the Peacekeeper seemed way OP at the start (if you claim it straight away you're unlikely to be challenged and then you can't be targeted by ANYTHING but a coup or other challenges, which forces the other two to either hope they draw a Peacekeeper to get the token away from you, bluff Peacekeeper successfully, or mess with each other).
I love the concept of this game, though, because you only ever play with 5 out of 25 possible roles. You have to have 1 role from each of 3 categories and then 2 roles from a fourth one. You can draw randomly or actually customise the game to suit the players - i.e., by increasing the luck factor or increasing the skill level needed to do well.
It seems to address some of the difficulties around getting new players into games like this, because you can build it in a way that you know they might find more fun or engaging. I like it WAY more than the Resistance, but that's also because the Resistance is where friendships go to die.
since I didn't want them to use their daily powers and be at full hp every fight, I just sort of said "magic cursed desert. Diabolical wizards did it."
I am increasingly becoming a fan of how 13th Age handles this sort of thing. Meaningful rests happen after significant achievements in the campaign (that will oddly happen every 3-4 fights or so...) with the option to take a "campaign loss" otherwise to get one whenever the PCs want. "Campaign Loss" basically amounts to the game giving permission for the DM to have something bad happen in the narrative and if it feels a bit "fairer" because the PCs chose to have it happen.
At the very least it removes the need to constantly arrange time pressure for the PCs which always annoys me about D&D.
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
Hey guys, what's a good name for a ghost?
The reason I ask is some friends of mine are having a get together tonight, and they've requested I bring my copy of Betrayal
Which is all well and good, except I know there will be seven people there, one more than the game allows
So my plan is to bow out of that game, and, when the Haunt is revealed, choose a side to ally myself with (most likely the traitor, particularly if they're less experienced with the game, which seems to happen a lot)
So I need a character name, essentially
I'm thinking Todd
Ghost-Todd has a nice ring to it, and there's that delightful multilingual pun
And now I'm thinking I'd like to run a Yugioh campaign, or something along those lines.
Basic needs: Players collecting powers that aren't intrinsic to their character, signature moves, and 1v1 duels that are fun and don't take a huge amount of time to resolve.
I have no idea what system I'd use to run this, but an elite team of teens playing a card game to save the world has a lot of appeal. Any thoughts?
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StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
Obviously the system to use is Yu-Gi-Oh (the card game)
I should clarify, said magic cursed desert was the lands that had formerly been the human empire that had become the tieflings. The event that caused it started a cataclysm that wiped out a large portion of civilized life. Basically blasted life back to the stone age.
Of course magic, and such, so it only took 2-3 millennia to get back to small formalized kingdoms and nation states.
Is it better for a party of characters in d&d to know each other before a campaign or try to get them together as the first adventure opens?
Right now I'm leaning towards the second option but have problems coming up with interesting story hooks that could lead a party together without seeming too cliche? I've never been a fan of "you are all in the same Tavern when suddenly!"
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Zonugal(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered Userregular
Is it better for a party of characters in d&d to know each other before a campaign or try to get them together as the first adventure opens?
Right now I'm leaning towards the second option but have problems coming up with interesting story hooks that could lead a party together without seeming too cliche? I've never been a fan of "you are all in the same Tavern when suddenly!"
In my experience, I think the 2nd is better.
If you go with the 1st option they're still going to act like they're meeting for the first time, it's going to happen...
As to remedy how to put them together that isn't a cliche? Maybe they:
* Are attending the same social event/festival when something happens.
* They have all been asked to the same place by an NPC they all know for different reasons.
* They're all in the same prison and have to work together to get out.
Having the characters already have some sort of existing relationship when the game starts makes for more interesting party dynamics, in my opinion, but if the players aren't interested in getting too deep into role playing, that can easily be glossed over
Some openings I've used in the past: the characters are part of a caravan (they could be guards, merchants, travelers, etc), orcs/goblins/kobolds attack the village the characters are staying in or traveling through, the characters are part of a mercenary company and they've been tasked with doing whatever it is you want their first quest to be.
It's cool to try and get characters to have enmeshed backstories but they don't all have to be interconnected.
If you can get like, two or three groups of players with connected backstories, then you can figure out a way for at least one of each of those connections to be brought together, and the rest join because hey, their friend needs help!
Is it better for a party of characters in d&d to know each other before a campaign or try to get them together as the first adventure opens?
Right now I'm leaning towards the second option but have problems coming up with interesting story hooks that could lead a party together without seeming too cliche? I've never been a fan of "you are all in the same Tavern when suddenly!"
It depends entirely on the tone of your campaign, I think.
I've mentioned my two favorite campaign openings here before, but here they are:
- Every player character was blackmailed by the same party, in the style of Clue. We were all given the task of coming up with a secret (some element of backstory) that we were being blackmailed for. This led to an incredibly divisive party, obviously, as we all tried to ferret out one another's secrets. The campaign stakes, however, prevented us from going our own ways as we were immediately framed for murder, so we had to stay together as a party to clear all of our names. There was also a fair amount of social/political activity in that campaign, so we had a number of instances in which our secretive ways could be to our advantage - or be exposed.
- Every player character grew up in the same town and were well established friends/relatives of one another. For this campaign we actually did several adventures prior to our characters gaining their first class level (if you want to get into the details of how we did that, I'd be happy to explain), with our characters as teen adventurers around town. This campaign was a bit more of a "traditional" campaign - the gods had been cast out of the heavens, and were now inhabiting mortal forms, complete with someone hunting them down and killing them to steal their power.
So yeah, what are you looking to do? I think, regardless, the best story hook requires your players to write themselves a decent backstory to explain how they got there (or of course, RP it out in a prequel campaign). Players should be just as responsible for providing story hooks as the DM, as they're an important part of the game as well.
So I picked up Dead of Winter last week, and I've played it three times, now. And I like it a bunch! I don't think it's perfect, but I like that it can force you into tough choices, and I really like that it can play fairly differently each time you go. Like, the first time we attempted one of the scenarios, we lost like, four people to zombie bites turn one, which put us in a hole we nearly scraped our way out of, until the various choices we were forced into kind of...ultimately ruined us by forcing us to take more and more desperate chances until it was finally just too much. Like, we, at one point, straight up burned down a school. In another game, we came upon a horse...and slaughtered it for food. The only reason we rescued a baby was because we knew we could get a morale boost, like...there's a decent amount of chance in the game, and it strikes a nice balance between figuring out what you can do to mitigate that kind of thing, and putting you in awful positions and letting you try to figure out a way out of it.
In short, it's pretty fun! And it's pretty easy to teach, too, which is a huge help.
Speaking of Prison openings, I've just joined a crew that's undergoing a variant of that - the Underworld opening. Everyone is already dead, and in Hell. Or one of the Hells. Or whatever. It's a homebrew setting, and I'm not 100% sure of the cosmology. Whatever it is, it's definitely not one of the friendly parts of the afterlife. The DM is a friend of my stepbrother who ran a very similar game back in the day, and it's very likely the idea was cribbed in part from that campaign, but I'm trying my best to ignore similarities and not metagame.
It's also very likely that I and one other player who also joined this week aren't actually dead, but are in fact undergoing a guided Vision Quest under the watch of the Head Shaman from my Half-Orc's tribe. If true, it means that our characters imbibed enough mind-altering compounds that our spirits became untethered to freely roam the Ethereal Plane though... so the distinction between that and regular death is maybe not worth arguing. The Head Shaman had received a vision that indicated that the other four actually-dead PCs were destined to get involved in some high-tier shit, so he sent me and the other new PC (a Human Bard from the city allied to the Orc Tribe) down to assist them with their jailbreak, in the hopes that this would help the tribe curry favor with various Cosmic VIPs.
So far our major accomplishments as a team are getting chased by spooky ghost horses, getting lost in the spooky ghost woods, and getting trapped in the basement of the spooky ghost mansion.
My Barbarian Half-Orc's backstory is that he was the son of a political marriage between an Orc Warchief and a Human Noble, to unite their people against a mutual threat. He was kind of spoiled by both sides of the family while growing up, but now that he was an adult he was being pressured by his parents to get a real job. So he signed up as an apprentice to his uncle the Orc Shaman, because he understood the job description to mostly involve hanging around in caves, playing the drums, and eating psychedelic mushrooms. But then on his very first vision quest, he accidentally became the Mortal Avatar of the Great Mad Boar Spirit, who had been the totem of his tribe. I RP the Boar Spirit as taking direct control when he enters his Rage, and portray their internal relationship as something like mismatched police partners who will eventually learn to respect each other despite their differences. Basically imagine if Jeffrey "The Dude" Lebowski and Randy "Macho Man" Savage shared a body. I'm having a pretty good time with it so far.
Realizing lately that I don't really trust or respect basically any of the moderators here. So, good luck with life, friends! Hit me up on Twitter @DesertLeviathan
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StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
Oh, honorable mention for the third campaign that DM tried to run, that never quite got off the ground
We were all war veterans, served in the same squadron, a year or two after the war
It provides a good mix of knowing one another and having a shared history without being too intertwined
+1
VivixenneRemember your training, and we'll get through this just fine.Registered Userregular
We are playing with the idea of implementing a house rule where anytime there's a secret individual objective (like in Lords of Waterdeep, Dead of Winter, Archipelago, etc), rather than getting dealt only one option, if possible everyone gets dealt 2-3 options and chooses 1. It seems to increase the fun factor a bit, particularly for newer players, because then they can play the way they want to.
Like I'd straight up HATE being the traitor in Dead of Winter, for example. I get that some people would love it, but I'd personally hate it and would probably give myself away pretty early on.
Dead of Winter, so far, seems like a game where finding the traitor seems like it could be really easy? But we haven't had a traitor pop up yet, so
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VivixenneRemember your training, and we'll get through this just fine.Registered Userregular
Yeah the thing is tho, if you're found out to be the traitor and it's a co-op game, it changes your experience with the game entirely. People may not work as well with you or just exclude/de-prioritise you, for instance, which I would hate. I wouldn't blame the other players for doing that if they're sure I'm the traitor, but for me as the traitor that wouldn't be super fun. Certainly not for a game that lasts longer than an hour.
Obviously the system to use is Yu-Gi-Oh (the card game)
For the duels, at least
But then I'd have to spend an absurd amount of time crafting decks and money on cards! Not really viable, sadly.
Run the real-world sections in whatever genre-independent system you prefer, then run the duels in Wushu.
Do not establish rules for the card game. Players can make up rules and cards on the fly, with the note that everyone has to role with it as if it wasn't total nonsense.
The "loot" would be new cards which benefit play styles represented by Wushu stats. Things like "Summoning," "Green Mana," "Ancients Path," "Reverse Discard," etc.
FishmanPut your goddamned hand in the goddamned Box of Pain.Registered Userregular
edited March 2016
My last three campaign openings:
1) All plucked from the ocean by the same vessel after many ships sank in a storm.
2) A plague has broken out; the cities and towns are closed, and the roads are crowded with the sick and dying. A cross-country route offers a chance to escape, but the way is long and hard. A small group offers the best opportunity for survival.
3) You all meet in the inn. A dragon has just set the inn on fire, and the town is filled with homicidal fanatic dragon worshipers.
EDIT: some other ones I enjoyed:
A) According to the news, you and 3 other runners you've never heard of are wanted for that downtown firefight that happened while you were out of town... not that you could prove that to the authorities without implicating yourself for something else. Someone just killed your God.
The only opening I've done that felt unique and dynamic was basically an in media res. The PCs, and some civilians, were all in the town square shopping when suddenly goblins. It was neat because they didn't strictly have to fight together, and got to see each other in action before joining together.
Then they were all arrested by the over zealous sheriff and presses into investigating the attack
I played the prison thing once with a GM..it was a mess, and it fell apart when he revealed that the whole game would be set there with no intention of ever leaving. Months on end with no scenery change, little chance to gain xp, no access to any sort of discernible loot or weapons. It really was a prison.....for his players.
Probably some food trays in the mess hall that you could use. I mean allegedly use.
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Erin The RedThe Name's Erin! Woman, Podcaster, Dungeon Master, IT nerd, Parent, Trans. AMABaton Rouge, LARegistered Userregular
I played the prison thing once with a GM..it was a mess, and it fell apart when he revealed that the whole game would be set there with no intention of ever leaving. Months on end with no scenery change, little chance to gain xp, no access to any sort of discernible loot or weapons. It really was a prison.....for his players.
Probably some food trays in the mess hall that you could use. I mean allegedly use.
Oh yeah, great advice from mr "I'm on trial now for two counts of murder".
Yup. Listen to this one! He should write some aid-thyself scrolls.
Speaking of PC's meeting in prison that is uh, exactly what I'm doing for a three part Dystopian Cyberpunk Future in the Year 20XX game I'm going to run.
The players all got to decide whether or not they were there for an actual crime or were imprisoned falsely but either way they are in a corporately owned prison and were contacted from the outside by a crime lord to break her son out of prison. A giant hurricane is coming to destroy the city they're in (Los Angeles) and getting out of the city is nearly impossible and the prison is running mostly on a couple of people left behind to run the security robots and ... a bunch of security robots. So if the group can get him out, they'll get a free ride out of the city on the crime families private jet when they get to LAX.
In my head I see the game taking three sessions with each day being a single session. Session 1 I imagine will be the prison escape. The party is an athletic ex drug runner with no combat abilities but a lot of social skills and acrobats, a dude who just put all his points into hacking and is rocking two cybernetic limbs, and a petty ex gun thug who is the only person in the party who even has combat skills. Fourth guy is making his dude tonight, no idea what it'll be.
I want to give them a lot of leeway to devise how they break out, but it's a party of 4 and 2 of them have never played a PnP RPG before. Thoughts? Suggestions?
And Siegfried the Northerner's first instinct was, of course, I want to have sex with her and beat him up
Which was hilarious as Witch of Sapphire Scale was once the Lunar mate of another Solar in the group (Watching Statue, a Tribal Chieftain and Sorcerer) and now he's unreasonably annoyed at Siegfried's cheerfully direct tactic ("I am going to give her a big wide smile and just sort of sit here, being huge and muscley and beautiful")
It may work! What may not work is picking a fight with Blood-Soaked-Mane, who is an Essence 4 Lunar Full Moon with a mostly complete Evocation Set for the eight foot long slab of Moonsilver he calls a Daiklave
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StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
Speaking of PC's meeting in prison that is uh, exactly what I'm doing for a three part Dystopian Cyberpunk Future in the Year 20XX game I'm going to run.
The players all got to decide whether or not they were there for an actual crime or were imprisoned falsely but either way they are in a corporately owned prison and were contacted from the outside by a crime lord to break her son out of prison. A giant hurricane is coming to destroy the city they're in (Los Angeles) and getting out of the city is nearly impossible and the prison is running mostly on a couple of people left behind to run the security robots and ... a bunch of security robots. So if the group can get him out, they'll get a free ride out of the city on the crime families private jet when they get to LAX.
In my head I see the game taking three sessions with each day being a single session. Session 1 I imagine will be the prison escape. The party is an athletic ex drug runner with no combat abilities but a lot of social skills and acrobats, a dude who just put all his points into hacking and is rocking two cybernetic limbs, and a petty ex gun thug who is the only person in the party who even has combat skills. Fourth guy is making his dude tonight, no idea what it'll be.
I want to give them a lot of leeway to devise how they break out, but it's a party of 4 and 2 of them have never played a PnP RPG before. Thoughts? Suggestions?
What system are you working in? Some systems are way better for this sort of thing than others, as we've been discussing.
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And this is why I've only gotten to play as a Shadowrun player once.
Like...could you imagine that value of things like contacts, allies, and retainers in a prison? You really need a strong background/indirect ability/skill system, and D&D has never emphasised that.
I always massively streamlined the rules for shadowrun...it seemed like a game that demanded a fast pace combat.
I love all that fun Matix stuff in theory, but it's impractical. It forced all the rest of the table to sit there while one is the star of the show for an hour. We tended to treat Decking more like being a Rogue in D&D.
I made this mistake. Ish.
I tried to do Lawrence of Arabia. Looooong, drawn out adventure in the desert. It did not go great, although I did manage to have some good fights, it was ultimately a little boring and contrived.
since I didn't want them to use their daily powers and be at full hp every fight, I just sort of said "magic cursed desert. Diabolical wizards did it."
So far it's working out well, looks like they'll be crafting a makeshift explosive to get out of their cell which wasn't a planned thing but works out well enough for me to go with it.
We only played with the recommended starter roles (Peacekeeper, Politician, Banker, Guerilla, and Director) and it feels like a streamlined version of Coup, but with about the same basic mechanics. I really want to give it a go playing with the max of 6 players because I feel like that's when things get interesting. Playing with 3 players was fun enough the games went very quickly and the Peacekeeper seemed way OP at the start (if you claim it straight away you're unlikely to be challenged and then you can't be targeted by ANYTHING but a coup or other challenges, which forces the other two to either hope they draw a Peacekeeper to get the token away from you, bluff Peacekeeper successfully, or mess with each other).
I love the concept of this game, though, because you only ever play with 5 out of 25 possible roles. You have to have 1 role from each of 3 categories and then 2 roles from a fourth one. You can draw randomly or actually customise the game to suit the players - i.e., by increasing the luck factor or increasing the skill level needed to do well.
It seems to address some of the difficulties around getting new players into games like this, because you can build it in a way that you know they might find more fun or engaging. I like it WAY more than the Resistance, but that's also because the Resistance is where friendships go to die.
Beware my warbolds!
I am increasingly becoming a fan of how 13th Age handles this sort of thing. Meaningful rests happen after significant achievements in the campaign (that will oddly happen every 3-4 fights or so...) with the option to take a "campaign loss" otherwise to get one whenever the PCs want. "Campaign Loss" basically amounts to the game giving permission for the DM to have something bad happen in the narrative and if it feels a bit "fairer" because the PCs chose to have it happen.
At the very least it removes the need to constantly arrange time pressure for the PCs which always annoys me about D&D.
The reason I ask is some friends of mine are having a get together tonight, and they've requested I bring my copy of Betrayal
Which is all well and good, except I know there will be seven people there, one more than the game allows
So my plan is to bow out of that game, and, when the Haunt is revealed, choose a side to ally myself with (most likely the traitor, particularly if they're less experienced with the game, which seems to happen a lot)
So I need a character name, essentially
I'm thinking Todd
Ghost-Todd has a nice ring to it, and there's that delightful multilingual pun
And now I'm thinking I'd like to run a Yugioh campaign, or something along those lines.
Basic needs: Players collecting powers that aren't intrinsic to their character, signature moves, and 1v1 duels that are fun and don't take a huge amount of time to resolve.
I have no idea what system I'd use to run this, but an elite team of teens playing a card game to save the world has a lot of appeal. Any thoughts?
For the duels, at least
Of course magic, and such, so it only took 2-3 millennia to get back to small formalized kingdoms and nation states.
Right now I'm leaning towards the second option but have problems coming up with interesting story hooks that could lead a party together without seeming too cliche? I've never been a fan of "you are all in the same Tavern when suddenly!"
In my experience, I think the 2nd is better.
If you go with the 1st option they're still going to act like they're meeting for the first time, it's going to happen...
As to remedy how to put them together that isn't a cliche? Maybe they:
* Are attending the same social event/festival when something happens.
* They have all been asked to the same place by an NPC they all know for different reasons.
* They're all in the same prison and have to work together to get out.
There are countless others...
Some openings I've used in the past: the characters are part of a caravan (they could be guards, merchants, travelers, etc), orcs/goblins/kobolds attack the village the characters are staying in or traveling through, the characters are part of a mercenary company and they've been tasked with doing whatever it is you want their first quest to be.
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But then I'd have to spend an absurd amount of time crafting decks and money on cards! Not really viable, sadly.
If you can get like, two or three groups of players with connected backstories, then you can figure out a way for at least one of each of those connections to be brought together, and the rest join because hey, their friend needs help!
Gamertag: PrimusD | Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
It depends entirely on the tone of your campaign, I think.
I've mentioned my two favorite campaign openings here before, but here they are:
- Every player character was blackmailed by the same party, in the style of Clue. We were all given the task of coming up with a secret (some element of backstory) that we were being blackmailed for. This led to an incredibly divisive party, obviously, as we all tried to ferret out one another's secrets. The campaign stakes, however, prevented us from going our own ways as we were immediately framed for murder, so we had to stay together as a party to clear all of our names. There was also a fair amount of social/political activity in that campaign, so we had a number of instances in which our secretive ways could be to our advantage - or be exposed.
- Every player character grew up in the same town and were well established friends/relatives of one another. For this campaign we actually did several adventures prior to our characters gaining their first class level (if you want to get into the details of how we did that, I'd be happy to explain), with our characters as teen adventurers around town. This campaign was a bit more of a "traditional" campaign - the gods had been cast out of the heavens, and were now inhabiting mortal forms, complete with someone hunting them down and killing them to steal their power.
So yeah, what are you looking to do? I think, regardless, the best story hook requires your players to write themselves a decent backstory to explain how they got there (or of course, RP it out in a prequel campaign). Players should be just as responsible for providing story hooks as the DM, as they're an important part of the game as well.
In short, it's pretty fun! And it's pretty easy to teach, too, which is a huge help.
It's also very likely that I and one other player who also joined this week aren't actually dead, but are in fact undergoing a guided Vision Quest under the watch of the Head Shaman from my Half-Orc's tribe. If true, it means that our characters imbibed enough mind-altering compounds that our spirits became untethered to freely roam the Ethereal Plane though... so the distinction between that and regular death is maybe not worth arguing. The Head Shaman had received a vision that indicated that the other four actually-dead PCs were destined to get involved in some high-tier shit, so he sent me and the other new PC (a Human Bard from the city allied to the Orc Tribe) down to assist them with their jailbreak, in the hopes that this would help the tribe curry favor with various Cosmic VIPs.
So far our major accomplishments as a team are getting chased by spooky ghost horses, getting lost in the spooky ghost woods, and getting trapped in the basement of the spooky ghost mansion.
My Barbarian Half-Orc's backstory is that he was the son of a political marriage between an Orc Warchief and a Human Noble, to unite their people against a mutual threat. He was kind of spoiled by both sides of the family while growing up, but now that he was an adult he was being pressured by his parents to get a real job. So he signed up as an apprentice to his uncle the Orc Shaman, because he understood the job description to mostly involve hanging around in caves, playing the drums, and eating psychedelic mushrooms. But then on his very first vision quest, he accidentally became the Mortal Avatar of the Great Mad Boar Spirit, who had been the totem of his tribe. I RP the Boar Spirit as taking direct control when he enters his Rage, and portray their internal relationship as something like mismatched police partners who will eventually learn to respect each other despite their differences. Basically imagine if Jeffrey "The Dude" Lebowski and Randy "Macho Man" Savage shared a body. I'm having a pretty good time with it so far.
We were all war veterans, served in the same squadron, a year or two after the war
It provides a good mix of knowing one another and having a shared history without being too intertwined
Like I'd straight up HATE being the traitor in Dead of Winter, for example. I get that some people would love it, but I'd personally hate it and would probably give myself away pretty early on.
Run the real-world sections in whatever genre-independent system you prefer, then run the duels in Wushu.
Do not establish rules for the card game. Players can make up rules and cards on the fly, with the note that everyone has to role with it as if it wasn't total nonsense.
The "loot" would be new cards which benefit play styles represented by Wushu stats. Things like "Summoning," "Green Mana," "Ancients Path," "Reverse Discard," etc.
1) All plucked from the ocean by the same vessel after many ships sank in a storm.
2) A plague has broken out; the cities and towns are closed, and the roads are crowded with the sick and dying. A cross-country route offers a chance to escape, but the way is long and hard. A small group offers the best opportunity for survival.
3) You all meet in the inn. A dragon has just set the inn on fire, and the town is filled with homicidal fanatic dragon worshipers.
EDIT: some other ones I enjoyed:
A) According to the news, you and 3 other runners you've never heard of are wanted for that downtown firefight that happened while you were out of town... not that you could prove that to the authorities without implicating yourself for something else.
It's nearly impossible of the traitor understands he just needs to tank one check rather than making them all slightly harder.
Nobody can ever comment on you holding back important resources because everybody is doing it for their own secret missions
That and the wild variation in difficulty of the personal objectives as a function of global objectives are the key issues
The Crossroads mechanic is a fun idea though
Then they were all arrested by the over zealous sheriff and presses into investigating the attack
I also want to devise a better/faster set up system because jesus that game has so many pieces parts
Probably some food trays in the mess hall that you could use. I mean allegedly use.
Oh yeah, great advice from mr "I'm on trial now for two counts of murder".
Yup. Listen to this one! He should write some aid-thyself scrolls.
Gamertag: PrimusD | Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
The players all got to decide whether or not they were there for an actual crime or were imprisoned falsely but either way they are in a corporately owned prison and were contacted from the outside by a crime lord to break her son out of prison. A giant hurricane is coming to destroy the city they're in (Los Angeles) and getting out of the city is nearly impossible and the prison is running mostly on a couple of people left behind to run the security robots and ... a bunch of security robots. So if the group can get him out, they'll get a free ride out of the city on the crime families private jet when they get to LAX.
In my head I see the game taking three sessions with each day being a single session. Session 1 I imagine will be the prison escape. The party is an athletic ex drug runner with no combat abilities but a lot of social skills and acrobats, a dude who just put all his points into hacking and is rocking two cybernetic limbs, and a petty ex gun thug who is the only person in the party who even has combat skills. Fourth guy is making his dude tonight, no idea what it'll be.
I want to give them a lot of leeway to devise how they break out, but it's a party of 4 and 2 of them have never played a PnP RPG before. Thoughts? Suggestions?
And Siegfried the Northerner's first instinct was, of course, I want to have sex with her and beat him up
Which was hilarious as Witch of Sapphire Scale was once the Lunar mate of another Solar in the group (Watching Statue, a Tribal Chieftain and Sorcerer) and now he's unreasonably annoyed at Siegfried's cheerfully direct tactic ("I am going to give her a big wide smile and just sort of sit here, being huge and muscley and beautiful")
It may work! What may not work is picking a fight with Blood-Soaked-Mane, who is an Essence 4 Lunar Full Moon with a mostly complete Evocation Set for the eight foot long slab of Moonsilver he calls a Daiklave
What system are you working in? Some systems are way better for this sort of thing than others, as we've been discussing.
Like the opening of that DarkSun game back in the DOS days. Shattered Lands I think?