MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
I looked real quick
And at that angle, that yellow cape looks like bananas
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StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
edited February 2020
After consulting with the GM, I've finally decided on my character for my upcoming Dungeon World game
Sir Claremont of Iorwerth
As the name might suggest, Claremont is a knight. A loyal knight, close to his king, who is widely considered to be the greatest king in the history of the nation. He and his fellow knights are chivalrous men, and serve their king in bringing peace to the land through noble deeds and heroic quests. Recently, one of Claremont's quests, a search for a mythical beast in the darkest recesses of the forest, brought him into contact with a noble lady of the fae. In exchange for her assistance, he pledged his own service, serving for a year and a day in her court.
A year and maybe a couple of days later, the Lady of the Wood gave him his final task, which would send him back to the mortal plane. A message to deliver and a fellow mortal man to protect - all in a day's work for a heroic knight. However, when Claremont traveled back through the fairy circle that he had come through that year ago, he discovered that more than a year had passed in the mortal realm. Time passes strange within the kingdom of the fae, and straying those extra couple of days there had meant a century and a half for him. The king he had loyally served was dead, as were all of his fellow knights. The kingdom had not had a king for one hundred and twenty years. His lands had been lost, slowly annexed by the sons and daughters of his neighbors.
The only thing he had left to his name was the quest given to him by the Lady of the Wood.
In appearance he is a human in his mid to late thirties, well groomed and wearing antique (but pristine) armor and clothing. He's of a stockier build and strong as an ox, which brought no end of delight to the faerie courts, accustomed as they were to lithe and elfin warriors. He is possessed of a boisterous, sanguine manner, overcome only occasionally by the sadness of his loss and the strange formal feelings of his speech and mannerisms. His only weapon is an ancient spear, seemingly unremarkable but impossibly sharp, with a wooden shaft that has grown some life of its own after too long in the fae realms.
Stats wise he is a fighter (maybe he would have been a paladin once, but that time is long since gone), and I've given his spear the ability to glow in the presence of the fae and communicate with him when he asks it questions. He's fairly blatantly based on Arthurian mythology, along with the Child Ballad Thomas Rhymer and some classic King Asleep in the Mountain style folklore. Also a bit of Falstaff and Steve Rogers thrown in for good measure.
Edit: a basic "sketch" of the character
Heroforge isn't perfect, of course, and (understandably) tends towards a lot more exaggerated details than I'd like - I see the cape, gloves, and spear all being a fair bit slimmer and simpler in design, but the only way to do that was a sort of stylized rustic which also isn't quite right. Also there was no good option for tabard over chain, which is absolutely the direction I see his armor going.
Straightzi on
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StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
I uhh, I also did something really dumb
I was thinking about tabards and then I was thinking about heraldry (which is a bit later than the historical period that I'm basing this character on but is a lot of fun and this is a fantasy game)
And then I thought about fantasy heraldry and then
argent, quarterly vert two owlbears rampant argent
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gavindelThe reason all your softwareis brokenRegistered Userregular
The end of my campaign today.
Last time, the party had the big boss fight: airship, storm cyclone, storm giant, the works. With that all behind us, the party stopped for some short airship repairs (and a total rip off of Liore from Full Metal Alchemist west of the Rockies, false prophet included). Once done, they could finally make the approach into the city of angels and deliver the last key to finish rebuilding the Weavestone, stabilize reality, and banish the demonic incursion.
So, naturally, I sprung a fully formed JRPG boss fight on them.
The TRUE BOSS was VOID NECRON all along, and they would now fight this ultimate baddie in a swirling field of ochre color! Every villainous attack would destroy the universe!
I handed them class-appropriate JRPG command sheets:
Paladin - Smite, White Mage, Snark, Shield
Druid - Tiger, Druid, and Kitty Cat forms, each with abilities
Rogue - Dodge, Kidney Shank, Complain about Dead Parents, and Items: <Stabbing sauce, essential oils, and that one useless trinket carried since the beginning of the campaign with no apparent use>
Fighter - Hit, Hit, Hit, Hit, Hit
Obviously the whole thing was full of campaign callbacks, but I'll include one that I know you all will enjoy:
VOID NECRON blasts the rogue for 18 million damage. Rogue goes down. Paladin uses a White Mage charge to resurrect him.
Three angels descend from the heavens, stop above the rogue's body, and look between each other, shrugging...Then a little girl with ivy hair races out of nowhere and open-palm smacks him right back to life. Titania jabs a finger in his face, snaps "You owe me!", and races off. The rogue's player does a very nice mock recoil, shakes his head, and protests, "Not yet I don't!"
Finally, after half an hour of JRPG silliness, the party uses the meaningless trinket to break VOID NECRON's shields, and I toss a new card to the fighter that only says: LIMIT BREAK.
One explosive finale involving the airship, flown by the fighter's fairy cats, divebombing from outer space later...VOID NECRON is defeated, and the Weavestone magic sweeps the world to banish the demons. (Side effect: Gallia's perfectly harmless Argent Energy immediately shuts off. Bye bye, demon iPods.)
Now the party asks the Weavestone Oracle about payment.
She turns to them and asks, "Oh? And how much do you think saving the world is worth?"
Rogue: "I dunno, fifty thousand is a start."
===
40 sessions ago
Cassandra the aasimar lets the players all read from a holy book that increases their stats permanently. When asked how much it costs, she shrugs and says, "I don't pay for it." One of the players peeks. Cost? 50,000 gold a use.
===
The Oracle produces a ledger. "Oh, very good."
I show the players each one's entry for the holy book.
"I believe that brings your account balance to zero. Thank you for your help."
At that point, my rogue rolled his eyes so hard I thought he would break his neck.
I done fucked up, I told the guy that DMs one of my games (and DMs all of our one-shots) that I'd volunteer to DM the next one-shot we do so that he could get a chance to play. Now I'm scribbling maps in a graph paper notebook for a dungeon crawl and hoping it never happens :rotate:
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WearingglassesOf the friendly neighborhood varietyRegistered Userregular
I done fucked up, I told the guy that DMs one of my games (and DMs all of our one-shots) that I'd volunteer to DM the next one-shot we do so that he could get a chance to play. Now I'm scribbling maps in a graph paper notebook for a dungeon crawl and hoping it never happens :rotate:
There's a free one-shot dungeon named Tomb of the Iron General floating around the internet, it looks nice, maybe you can make use of it with some tweaking?
I done fucked up, I told the guy that DMs one of my games (and DMs all of our one-shots) that I'd volunteer to DM the next one-shot we do so that he could get a chance to play. Now I'm scribbling maps in a graph paper notebook for a dungeon crawl and hoping it never happens :rotate:
There's a free one-shot dungeon named Tomb of the Iron General floating around the internet, it looks nice, maybe you can make use of it with some tweaking?
I'll look into it, thanks! There isn't a one-shot game coming up that I know of though so I should have plenty of time to prepare before I have to keep my word and actually run one. But I'm glad for resources just in case it happens sooner than I think!
Sort of like how I discovered today while talking to people on Facebook that my halfling wizard learned necromancy to learn how to manipulate the powers of life and death, and also dabbled in transmutation to learn how to manipulate energy and matter into other forms so that he'll eventually become a lich (transferring his soul/life force into a phylactery and also reforming his body if it's destroyed). Not that any of that was my intention when I created him, but I came up with up today while chatting with randos on the internet and it sounded cool so I'ma run with it.
I also talked to a guy whose character was sort of becoming a lich, but instead of going the necromancy route he was imbibing potitions and such that slowly replaced the organic parts of his body with inorganic parts, and also enchantments to tie his soul to his new body, and eventually he'd become a sort of lich/elemental of the prime material plane. I'ma steal that idea if becoming a regular lich isn't in my character's future.
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RingoHe/Hima distinct lack of substanceRegistered Userregular
I'm actually now picturing a large white owl soaring overhead, dropping a book on your face. You're stunned a moment, a party member asks, "Are you alright?" And with a gleam in your eye you respond, "I know Kung Fu Burning Hands"
Which of course leads to the running gag of not learning any new spells until you're smacked in the face by a book
A campaign where all the major NPCs the party interacts with turn out to just be astral projections or manifestations of some evil force that is trying to get them killed until they finally realize it and take down the evil force.
The real BBEG was the friends we made along the way
Our session tonight ended in a cliffhanger right before fighting some cultists of Tiamat, but the DM told us to go ahead and level up before next week
So I guess I'm just going to suddenly discover new powers under fire and also where did this sinister book in my inventory come from?
My GM did this for our Rogue Trader campaign
I described my TechPriest's new weapon mechadendrite as an arm bursting out of my back and snatching another character's sidearm out of its holster
[Muffled sounds of gorilla violence]
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
So my campaign was in need of a soft-restart because it had been around 4 months since we played for various real life reasons, so I figured as a fun diversion I would drop the party onto Athas from Toril (it's possible in the context my game shut up), which would a) be fun because Athas is a great setting to explore with folks who are unfamiliar with it and b) be a convenient way to add a new player who's replacing someone who unfortunately can't play because his work schedule is now inimical to normal human life.
I was thinking that this would create a fun few sessions as they tried to figure out how to get back and the resume the fairly important work they were doing in Faerun, but instead they...mostly don't seem that bothered about it? So I guess maybe I just run a Dark Sun campaign now.
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GrogMy sword is only steelin a useful shape.Registered Userregular
So my campaign was in need of a soft-restart because it had been around 4 months since we played for various real life reasons, so I figured as a fun diversion I would drop the party onto Athas from Toril (it's possible in the context my game shut up), which would a) be fun because Athas is a great setting to explore with folks who are unfamiliar with it and b) be a convenient way to add a new player who's replacing someone who unfortunately can't play because his work schedule is now inimical to normal human life.
I was thinking that this would create a fun few sessions as they tried to figure out how to get back and the resume the fairly important work they were doing in Faerun, but instead they...mostly don't seem that bothered about it? So I guess maybe I just run a Dark Sun campaign now.
get a load of these badasses, not bothered by the athasian desert
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
edited February 2020
For this particular crew of characters it's really more like "too stupid and/or arrogant to be appropriately afraid." It's a fun game
3cl1ps3 on
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MsAnthropyThe Lady of Pain Breaks the Rhythm, Breaks the Rhythm, Breaks the RhythmThe City of FlowersRegistered Userregular
So tonight we began the...fourth?...story of my Star Trek campaign. (There was one prologue story set in the TOS era with pre-gen characters, and now we're on the third mission of the the main campaign, which is set between Nemesis and Star Trek 2009.)
The prologue session was kind of a playtest, to get everyone used to the system and me to get used to running it again (I'd done some briefly in 2017 but not enough for it all to stick.) I deliberately made the first couple "real" stories kind of action-y and maybe a bit hand-holdy specifically to help our group, which is big, acclimate to their characters and kind of get a sense of what they wanna do.
But now that we've had that, I felt comfortable easing off the throttle a bit and giving the players a story much more in the classic TNG vein, where the threat element is very nominal and the actual point of the episode is just to have a bunch of character moments and a moral dilemma before a bit of action at the end. In this case, the story is that they've rescued an amnesiac alien that was being pursued in a shuttle by a swarm of killer robotic drones. The alien's nature, and why they're being hunted, is the mystery, along with the strange powers it seems to possess, but the actual point of the story is to have some fun with one of the PCs chaperoning the alien around to different situations to teach them about humanity (a la Data and Q) while the mystery ticks away in the background.
So what I did, after the initial setup, was to poll my players for ideas for different scenes they'd want to have in this context, and so far (we're halfway in) it's gone WONDERFULLY. In five minutes they generated more good ideas than I could use in the next few weeks, from the comedic to the cool and serious and interesting, and a lot of which aren't necessarily tied to the current episode but are just going to be things to explore in the future in general.
One pair of players are excitedly discussing how their characters, who have simmering racial tension (one is a Betazoid who led a guerilla unit against the Dominion forces occupying her world and really doesn't trust Cardassians as a result, the other is a Cardassian and former member of the Obsidian Order who kind of smirkingly trolls her) will move past that. Meanwhile, another player, the dude playing the captain, had to bow out at the last minute tonight because he had a health crisis (thankfully it seems to be ok), so we decided he'd caught alien flu, and when the player returned at the end of the night, he was like "next week we'll have my guy recovering from his man-cold and being a giant baby about it."
I love my group, I love that I'm getting to run games for people who give a shit
So I spent the weekend stressing hard about today's game because I've been out of town for a week and was supposed to return Friday night but was delayed. I thought I'd have all Saturday to work on the game and get prepared but it ended up that I walked in the door literally five minutes before the start of session (and I had to spend that five minutes cleaning up a mess the dumb cat had made ).
It turns out I needn't have worried. This was a fucking terrific session and I'm on cloud nine.
I selected a few scenes from the ones my players and I had pitched to each other and just ran through them, going "okay, now it's character A and character B in B's office, playing a game of Go" or whatever, and every so often switching to the bridge to interject a new scene that advanced the main plot.
It worked great. The PCs have developed real chemistry and real-feeling affections and antagonisms, and those got to play out and develop this episode. The addition of the guest NPC, the mysterious alien, gave a venue for the Chief Engineer character, an ex-Borg, to express himself more and reveal more of his feelings and backstory.
And the best part is that a lot of these scenes were just two-handers between a player and another player, doing great work while I just sat back and steepled my fingers and felt completely undeservedly like some kind of space genius.
Oh, that's one best part. The other best part is that our players who are new to Star Trek are completely picking up on the vibe and are fucking killing it.
I have a ton of things to say about the game and PCs, but will refrain until the inevitable AP thread eventually sees the light of day. I am fully expecting my character to not go over well with everyone, but I absolutely love her to death. It was a ton of fun to start dropping hints of everyone’s backstory and organically learn about the crew dynamics that would not be obvious if there were only high action episodes.
So tonight we began the...fourth?...story of my Star Trek campaign. (There was one prologue story set in the TOS era with pre-gen characters, and now we're on the third mission of the the main campaign, which is set between Nemesis and Star Trek 2009.)
The prologue session was kind of a playtest, to get everyone used to the system and me to get used to running it again (I'd done some briefly in 2017 but not enough for it all to stick.) I deliberately made the first couple "real" stories kind of action-y and maybe a bit hand-holdy specifically to help our group, which is big, acclimate to their characters and kind of get a sense of what they wanna do.
But now that we've had that, I felt comfortable easing off the throttle a bit and giving the players a story much more in the classic TNG vein, where the threat element is very nominal and the actual point of the episode is just to have a bunch of character moments and a moral dilemma before a bit of action at the end. In this case, the story is that they've rescued an amnesiac alien that was being pursued in a shuttle by a swarm of killer robotic drones. The alien's nature, and why they're being hunted, is the mystery, along with the strange powers it seems to possess, but the actual point of the story is to have some fun with one of the PCs chaperoning the alien around to different situations to teach them about humanity (a la Data and Q) while the mystery ticks away in the background.
So what I did, after the initial setup, was to poll my players for ideas for different scenes they'd want to have in this context, and so far (we're halfway in) it's gone WONDERFULLY. In five minutes they generated more good ideas than I could use in the next few weeks, from the comedic to the cool and serious and interesting, and a lot of which aren't necessarily tied to the current episode but are just going to be things to explore in the future in general.
One pair of players are excitedly discussing how their characters, who have simmering racial tension (one is a Betazoid who led a guerilla unit against the Dominion forces occupying her world and really doesn't trust Cardassians as a result, the other is a Cardassian and former member of the Obsidian Order who kind of smirkingly trolls her) will move past that. Meanwhile, another player, the dude playing the captain, had to bow out at the last minute tonight because he had a health crisis (thankfully it seems to be ok), so we decided he'd caught alien flu, and when the player returned at the end of the night, he was like "next week we'll have my guy recovering from his man-cold and being a giant baby about it."
I love my group, I love that I'm getting to run games for people who give a shit
So I spent the weekend stressing hard about today's game because I've been out of town for a week and was supposed to return Friday night but was delayed. I thought I'd have all Saturday to work on the game and get prepared but it ended up that I walked in the door literally five minutes before the start of session (and I had to spend that five minutes cleaning up a mess the dumb cat had made ).
It turns out I needn't have worried. This was a fucking terrific session and I'm on cloud nine.
I selected a few scenes from the ones my players and I had pitched to each other and just ran through them, going "okay, now it's character A and character B in B's office, playing a game of Go" or whatever, and every so often switching to the bridge to interject a new scene that advanced the main plot.
It worked great. The PCs have developed real chemistry and real-feeling affections and antagonisms, and those got to play out and develop this episode. The addition of the guest NPC, the mysterious alien, gave a venue for the Chief Engineer character, an ex-Borg, to express himself more and reveal more of his feelings and backstory.
And the best part is that a lot of these scenes were just two-handers between a player and another player, doing great work while I just sat back and steepled my fingers and felt completely undeservedly like some kind of space genius.
Oh, that's one best part. The other best part is that our players who are new to Star Trek are completely picking up on the vibe and are fucking killing it.
I have a ton of things to say about the game and PCs, but will refrain until the inevitable AP thread eventually sees the light of day. I am fully expecting my character to not go over well with everyone, but I absolutely love her to death. It was a ton of fun to start dropping hints of everyone’s backstory and organically learn about the crew dynamics that would not be obvious if there were only high action episodes.
It's been a balancing act; I wanted to start off with some high-octane, big stakes stories both to get the overall plot rolling and also for the benefit of people who maybe didn't have a solid conception of their characters yet (this is often me in the first few sessions of a game). I was kind of shooting in the dark with the decision to tap the brakes with this story and give you guys something slower-paced with more room for PC-to-PC interaction; I wasn't sure if this was the right time for it.
But it totally was!
At this point I feel confident doing the full range of Star Trek stories, with action material, politics, intrigue, and quieter stuff about people meeting their exes or going on space vacation or whatever. And that's really exciting for me. There are so many possibilities.
The next thing I want to tackle is getting a few of the other players more comfortable with experimenting with Supporting Characters.
+4
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RingoHe/Hima distinct lack of substanceRegistered Userregular
Incredibly, extremely, absolutely jealous of your game Jacob
So when my life stops being a roaring stress-fire I swear I'll finish the write up for an AP for my Mage campaign, but we've had some more sessions and they managed the age old PC skill: figure out the one obvious loophole I (the GM) missed to completely circumvent my dungeon planning. It involved the spell Lucky Number, which allows the player to "guess" random numbers/entries to enter the correct combination and the like. It's normally used to guess passwords, entry codes, the phone number to call someone on, etc. Well Page, the Acanthus PC, used it on the elevator for the Atlantean ruins they were in. It was essentially a wonkavator, as the elevator could go in any cardinal directions through a different sequence of inputs onto buttons on the floor. So Page looks at this, casts the spell, and precedes to enter the correct sequence of moves to dodge the rest of the rooms/floors of the ruins to arrive to the exact room they need to go.
Cue laughter from the players as I calmly tell him to roll, and then rip the pages out of my notebook for comedic effect and throw them in the trash.
never die on
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
Incredibly, extremely, absolutely jealous of your game Jacob
:blushu:
But seriously, just bonk a few of the people here over the head when they're distracted talking about Feytouched Roguelocks or whatever and abduct them to a Discord you've set up. It's e-z!
The next thing I want to tackle is getting a few of the other players more comfortable with experimenting with Supporting Characters.
Not knowing Star Trek RPG, I'm choosing to assume "Supporting Characters" is a euphemism for "Expendable Redshirts".
Basically!
Since Star Trek stories tend to involve a lot of splitting up the main characters (some on the planet, some on the ship etc), the game has a system where, at the start of any new scene, players can opt to play their main PC or create a Supporting Character to use for the scene instead. You can create supporting cast on the fly, by just quickly assigning a few numbers from an array; they're less detailed and less powerful than full PCs, but that way if there's no reason for like, the ship's doctor to be on the planet, or the captain, you can roll up a security guard, or a biologist with the appropriate skills for the mission, or whatever.
The best part is that every time you bring back a Supporting Character from a previous game session, they get another skill point, gradually growing into full PCs, like how O'Brien goes from random redshirt in the background of the first TNG episode to main cast.
+4
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
So when my life stops being a roaring stress-fire I swear I'll finish the write up for an AP for my Mage campaign, but we've had some more sessions and they managed the age old PC skill: figure out the one obvious loophole me (the GM) missed to completely circumvent my dungeon planning. It involved the spell Lucky Number, which allows the player to "guess" random numbers/entries to enter the correct combination and the like. It's normally used to guess passwords, entry codes, the phone number to call someone on, etc. Well Page, the Acanthus PC, used it on the elevator for the Atlantean ruins they were in. It was essentially a wonkavator, as the elevator could go in any cardinal directions through a different sequence of inputs onto buttons on the floor. So Page looks at this, casts the spell, and precedes to enter the correct sequence of moves to dodge the rest of the rooms/floors of the ruins to arrive to the exact room they need to go.
Cue laughter from the players as I calmly tell him to roll, and then rip the pages out of my notebook for comedic effect and throw them in the trash.
So tonight we began the...fourth?...story of my Star Trek campaign. (There was one prologue story set in the TOS era with pre-gen characters, and now we're on the third mission of the the main campaign, which is set between Nemesis and Star Trek 2009.)
The prologue session was kind of a playtest, to get everyone used to the system and me to get used to running it again (I'd done some briefly in 2017 but not enough for it all to stick.) I deliberately made the first couple "real" stories kind of action-y and maybe a bit hand-holdy specifically to help our group, which is big, acclimate to their characters and kind of get a sense of what they wanna do.
But now that we've had that, I felt comfortable easing off the throttle a bit and giving the players a story much more in the classic TNG vein, where the threat element is very nominal and the actual point of the episode is just to have a bunch of character moments and a moral dilemma before a bit of action at the end. In this case, the story is that they've rescued an amnesiac alien that was being pursued in a shuttle by a swarm of killer robotic drones. The alien's nature, and why they're being hunted, is the mystery, along with the strange powers it seems to possess, but the actual point of the story is to have some fun with one of the PCs chaperoning the alien around to different situations to teach them about humanity (a la Data and Q) while the mystery ticks away in the background.
So what I did, after the initial setup, was to poll my players for ideas for different scenes they'd want to have in this context, and so far (we're halfway in) it's gone WONDERFULLY. In five minutes they generated more good ideas than I could use in the next few weeks, from the comedic to the cool and serious and interesting, and a lot of which aren't necessarily tied to the current episode but are just going to be things to explore in the future in general.
One pair of players are excitedly discussing how their characters, who have simmering racial tension (one is a Betazoid who led a guerilla unit against the Dominion forces occupying her world and really doesn't trust Cardassians as a result, the other is a Cardassian and former member of the Obsidian Order who kind of smirkingly trolls her) will move past that. Meanwhile, another player, the dude playing the captain, had to bow out at the last minute tonight because he had a health crisis (thankfully it seems to be ok), so we decided he'd caught alien flu, and when the player returned at the end of the night, he was like "next week we'll have my guy recovering from his man-cold and being a giant baby about it."
I love my group, I love that I'm getting to run games for people who give a shit
So I spent the weekend stressing hard about today's game because I've been out of town for a week and was supposed to return Friday night but was delayed. I thought I'd have all Saturday to work on the game and get prepared but it ended up that I walked in the door literally five minutes before the start of session (and I had to spend that five minutes cleaning up a mess the dumb cat had made ).
It turns out I needn't have worried. This was a fucking terrific session and I'm on cloud nine.
I selected a few scenes from the ones my players and I had pitched to each other and just ran through them, going "okay, now it's character A and character B in B's office, playing a game of Go" or whatever, and every so often switching to the bridge to interject a new scene that advanced the main plot.
It worked great. The PCs have developed real chemistry and real-feeling affections and antagonisms, and those got to play out and develop this episode. The addition of the guest NPC, the mysterious alien, gave a venue for the Chief Engineer character, an ex-Borg, to express himself more and reveal more of his feelings and backstory.
And the best part is that a lot of these scenes were just two-handers between a player and another player, doing great work while I just sat back and steepled my fingers and felt completely undeservedly like some kind of space genius.
Oh, that's one best part. The other best part is that our players who are new to Star Trek are completely picking up on the vibe and are fucking killing it.
I have a ton of things to say about the game and PCs, but will refrain until the inevitable AP thread eventually sees the light of day. I am fully expecting my character to not go over well with everyone, but I absolutely love her to death. It was a ton of fun to start dropping hints of everyone’s backstory and organically learn about the crew dynamics that would not be obvious if there were only high action episodes.
It's been a balancing act; I wanted to start off with some high-octane, big stakes stories both to get the overall plot rolling and also for the benefit of people who maybe didn't have a solid conception of their characters yet (this is often me in the first few sessions of a game). I was kind of shooting in the dark with the decision to tap the brakes with this story and give you guys something slower-paced with more room for PC-to-PC interaction; I wasn't sure if this was the right time for it.
But it totally was!
At this point I feel confident doing the full range of Star Trek stories, with action material, politics, intrigue, and quieter stuff about people meeting their exes or going on space vacation or whatever. And that's really exciting for me. There are so many possibilities.
The next thing I want to tackle is getting a few of the other players more comfortable with experimenting with Supporting Characters.
I will say that I am generally reluctant to play supporting characters if I didn’t actually create them, as I just feel like I end up not playing them as intended.
So tonight we began the...fourth?...story of my Star Trek campaign. (There was one prologue story set in the TOS era with pre-gen characters, and now we're on the third mission of the the main campaign, which is set between Nemesis and Star Trek 2009.)
The prologue session was kind of a playtest, to get everyone used to the system and me to get used to running it again (I'd done some briefly in 2017 but not enough for it all to stick.) I deliberately made the first couple "real" stories kind of action-y and maybe a bit hand-holdy specifically to help our group, which is big, acclimate to their characters and kind of get a sense of what they wanna do.
But now that we've had that, I felt comfortable easing off the throttle a bit and giving the players a story much more in the classic TNG vein, where the threat element is very nominal and the actual point of the episode is just to have a bunch of character moments and a moral dilemma before a bit of action at the end. In this case, the story is that they've rescued an amnesiac alien that was being pursued in a shuttle by a swarm of killer robotic drones. The alien's nature, and why they're being hunted, is the mystery, along with the strange powers it seems to possess, but the actual point of the story is to have some fun with one of the PCs chaperoning the alien around to different situations to teach them about humanity (a la Data and Q) while the mystery ticks away in the background.
So what I did, after the initial setup, was to poll my players for ideas for different scenes they'd want to have in this context, and so far (we're halfway in) it's gone WONDERFULLY. In five minutes they generated more good ideas than I could use in the next few weeks, from the comedic to the cool and serious and interesting, and a lot of which aren't necessarily tied to the current episode but are just going to be things to explore in the future in general.
One pair of players are excitedly discussing how their characters, who have simmering racial tension (one is a Betazoid who led a guerilla unit against the Dominion forces occupying her world and really doesn't trust Cardassians as a result, the other is a Cardassian and former member of the Obsidian Order who kind of smirkingly trolls her) will move past that. Meanwhile, another player, the dude playing the captain, had to bow out at the last minute tonight because he had a health crisis (thankfully it seems to be ok), so we decided he'd caught alien flu, and when the player returned at the end of the night, he was like "next week we'll have my guy recovering from his man-cold and being a giant baby about it."
I love my group, I love that I'm getting to run games for people who give a shit
So I spent the weekend stressing hard about today's game because I've been out of town for a week and was supposed to return Friday night but was delayed. I thought I'd have all Saturday to work on the game and get prepared but it ended up that I walked in the door literally five minutes before the start of session (and I had to spend that five minutes cleaning up a mess the dumb cat had made ).
It turns out I needn't have worried. This was a fucking terrific session and I'm on cloud nine.
I selected a few scenes from the ones my players and I had pitched to each other and just ran through them, going "okay, now it's character A and character B in B's office, playing a game of Go" or whatever, and every so often switching to the bridge to interject a new scene that advanced the main plot.
It worked great. The PCs have developed real chemistry and real-feeling affections and antagonisms, and those got to play out and develop this episode. The addition of the guest NPC, the mysterious alien, gave a venue for the Chief Engineer character, an ex-Borg, to express himself more and reveal more of his feelings and backstory.
And the best part is that a lot of these scenes were just two-handers between a player and another player, doing great work while I just sat back and steepled my fingers and felt completely undeservedly like some kind of space genius.
Oh, that's one best part. The other best part is that our players who are new to Star Trek are completely picking up on the vibe and are fucking killing it.
I have a ton of things to say about the game and PCs, but will refrain until the inevitable AP thread eventually sees the light of day. I am fully expecting my character to not go over well with everyone, but I absolutely love her to death. It was a ton of fun to start dropping hints of everyone’s backstory and organically learn about the crew dynamics that would not be obvious if there were only high action episodes.
It's been a balancing act; I wanted to start off with some high-octane, big stakes stories both to get the overall plot rolling and also for the benefit of people who maybe didn't have a solid conception of their characters yet (this is often me in the first few sessions of a game). I was kind of shooting in the dark with the decision to tap the brakes with this story and give you guys something slower-paced with more room for PC-to-PC interaction; I wasn't sure if this was the right time for it.
But it totally was!
At this point I feel confident doing the full range of Star Trek stories, with action material, politics, intrigue, and quieter stuff about people meeting their exes or going on space vacation or whatever. And that's really exciting for me. There are so many possibilities.
The next thing I want to tackle is getting a few of the other players more comfortable with experimenting with Supporting Characters.
I will say that I am generally reluctant to play supporting characters if I didn’t actually create them, as I just feel like I end up not playing them as intended.
That's true, yeah. I have some ideas about how to help with that.
I let a friend borrow my D&D figures. Which includes my reaper bones 4 set.
He comes down today and tells me that he was bringing them back this morning. Got distracted having a conversation on the bus. And left the box with the figures on the bus this morning...
He's communicating with CTA dispatch and they'll call him if they find it. If they don't he says he'll repay me for everything.
I did a quick eBay search and that set is running close to $300 right now. Hope the bus driver calls soon...
Just had another session for our Storm King's Thunder campaign and it was a long one! Plus with all we did and fought, our DM gave us enough XP to reach level 5, and that means my ranger gets multi-attack! Plus I'ma swap out one of her spells for zephyr strike, because holy shit it looks amazing and I must have missed it previously. Going to zoom all over the battlefield and chop fools up. 2 attacks main hand, one attack offhand, and if there's another enemy standing next to my target within my reach I can attack them too. Fuck yeah, I'm excited!
Unless I roll like I did today, that was dogshit lol
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
I let a friend borrow my D&D figures. Which includes my reaper bones 4 set.
He comes down today and tells me that he was bringing them back this morning. Got distracted having a conversation on the bus. And left the box with the figures on the bus this morning...
He's communicating with CTA dispatch and they'll call him if they find it. If they don't he says he'll repay me for everything.
I did a quick eBay search and that set is running close to $300 right now. Hope the bus driver calls soon...
:bigfrown: That's awful. I'm sure your friend feels terrible, assuming they're not a total sociopath, but them feeling awful is pretty cold comfort.
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BaidolI will hold him offEscape while you canRegistered Userregular
edited February 2020
Won a 4-player game of T'zolkin today by 1/4 of a point. It was a nice combination of very good plays and unfortunate mistakes between me and second place.
I've had Overlight sitting on my shelf for almost 2 years now waiting to be played (it's really neat!), and I've had Tenra since it came out (it's so cool looking!) and haven't played it, Pathfinder 2 is over here lookin kinda interesting. Aaand instead of playing either of those I'm running a BeastWing one-shot this weekend because why use the things I've paid for when I can run a game about space animals.
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astrobstrdSo full of mercy...Registered Userregular
Games on my shelf I haven’t played:
Night’s Black Agents
Tales From the Loop
Dungeon World
Masks
Over the Wall
Pathfinder 2E
City of Mist
Stars Without Number
Fiasco
Shadowrun 6E
Not as bad as I thought...now I just need to not open or think about the external hard drive I store PDFs on.
Do libraries carry RPG books? I've never thought to check. Then again only having a Player's Guide or what-have-you for a couple weeks would be kind of tough. A boardgame / tabletop room in a library seems like a slam dunk though if they had the space for it. I wish I was wealthier, there are so many little projects like that that I would want to fund.
Do libraries carry RPG books? I've never thought to check. Then again only having a Player's Guide or what-have-you for a couple weeks would be kind of tough. A boardgame / tabletop room in a library seems like a slam dunk though if they had the space for it. I wish I was wealthier, there are so many little projects like that that I would want to fund.
My local one has a giant manga and comic book section, so I wouldn't be surprised. But I've never thought to check.
Posts
And at that angle, that yellow cape looks like bananas
Sir Claremont of Iorwerth
As the name might suggest, Claremont is a knight. A loyal knight, close to his king, who is widely considered to be the greatest king in the history of the nation. He and his fellow knights are chivalrous men, and serve their king in bringing peace to the land through noble deeds and heroic quests. Recently, one of Claremont's quests, a search for a mythical beast in the darkest recesses of the forest, brought him into contact with a noble lady of the fae. In exchange for her assistance, he pledged his own service, serving for a year and a day in her court.
A year and maybe a couple of days later, the Lady of the Wood gave him his final task, which would send him back to the mortal plane. A message to deliver and a fellow mortal man to protect - all in a day's work for a heroic knight. However, when Claremont traveled back through the fairy circle that he had come through that year ago, he discovered that more than a year had passed in the mortal realm. Time passes strange within the kingdom of the fae, and straying those extra couple of days there had meant a century and a half for him. The king he had loyally served was dead, as were all of his fellow knights. The kingdom had not had a king for one hundred and twenty years. His lands had been lost, slowly annexed by the sons and daughters of his neighbors.
The only thing he had left to his name was the quest given to him by the Lady of the Wood.
In appearance he is a human in his mid to late thirties, well groomed and wearing antique (but pristine) armor and clothing. He's of a stockier build and strong as an ox, which brought no end of delight to the faerie courts, accustomed as they were to lithe and elfin warriors. He is possessed of a boisterous, sanguine manner, overcome only occasionally by the sadness of his loss and the strange formal feelings of his speech and mannerisms. His only weapon is an ancient spear, seemingly unremarkable but impossibly sharp, with a wooden shaft that has grown some life of its own after too long in the fae realms.
Stats wise he is a fighter (maybe he would have been a paladin once, but that time is long since gone), and I've given his spear the ability to glow in the presence of the fae and communicate with him when he asks it questions. He's fairly blatantly based on Arthurian mythology, along with the Child Ballad Thomas Rhymer and some classic King Asleep in the Mountain style folklore. Also a bit of Falstaff and Steve Rogers thrown in for good measure.
Edit: a basic "sketch" of the character
Heroforge isn't perfect, of course, and (understandably) tends towards a lot more exaggerated details than I'd like - I see the cape, gloves, and spear all being a fair bit slimmer and simpler in design, but the only way to do that was a sort of stylized rustic which also isn't quite right. Also there was no good option for tabard over chain, which is absolutely the direction I see his armor going.
I was thinking about tabards and then I was thinking about heraldry (which is a bit later than the historical period that I'm basing this character on but is a lot of fun and this is a fantasy game)
And then I thought about fantasy heraldry and then
argent, quarterly vert two owlbears rampant argent
Last time, the party had the big boss fight: airship, storm cyclone, storm giant, the works. With that all behind us, the party stopped for some short airship repairs (and a total rip off of Liore from Full Metal Alchemist west of the Rockies, false prophet included). Once done, they could finally make the approach into the city of angels and deliver the last key to finish rebuilding the Weavestone, stabilize reality, and banish the demonic incursion.
So, naturally, I sprung a fully formed JRPG boss fight on them.
The TRUE BOSS was VOID NECRON all along, and they would now fight this ultimate baddie in a swirling field of ochre color! Every villainous attack would destroy the universe!
I handed them class-appropriate JRPG command sheets:
Paladin - Smite, White Mage, Snark, Shield
Druid - Tiger, Druid, and Kitty Cat forms, each with abilities
Rogue - Dodge, Kidney Shank, Complain about Dead Parents, and Items: <Stabbing sauce, essential oils, and that one useless trinket carried since the beginning of the campaign with no apparent use>
Fighter - Hit, Hit, Hit, Hit, Hit
Obviously the whole thing was full of campaign callbacks, but I'll include one that I know you all will enjoy:
VOID NECRON blasts the rogue for 18 million damage. Rogue goes down. Paladin uses a White Mage charge to resurrect him.
Three angels descend from the heavens, stop above the rogue's body, and look between each other, shrugging...Then a little girl with ivy hair races out of nowhere and open-palm smacks him right back to life. Titania jabs a finger in his face, snaps "You owe me!", and races off. The rogue's player does a very nice mock recoil, shakes his head, and protests, "Not yet I don't!"
Finally, after half an hour of JRPG silliness, the party uses the meaningless trinket to break VOID NECRON's shields, and I toss a new card to the fighter that only says: LIMIT BREAK.
One explosive finale involving the airship, flown by the fighter's fairy cats, divebombing from outer space later...VOID NECRON is defeated, and the Weavestone magic sweeps the world to banish the demons. (Side effect: Gallia's perfectly harmless Argent Energy immediately shuts off. Bye bye, demon iPods.)
Now the party asks the Weavestone Oracle about payment.
She turns to them and asks, "Oh? And how much do you think saving the world is worth?"
Rogue: "I dunno, fifty thousand is a start."
===
40 sessions ago
Cassandra the aasimar lets the players all read from a holy book that increases their stats permanently. When asked how much it costs, she shrugs and says, "I don't pay for it." One of the players peeks. Cost? 50,000 gold a use.
===
The Oracle produces a ledger. "Oh, very good."
I show the players each one's entry for the holy book.
"I believe that brings your account balance to zero. Thank you for your help."
At that point, my rogue rolled his eyes so hard I thought he would break his neck.
The sweet, sweet taste of GM's victory.
There's a free one-shot dungeon named Tomb of the Iron General floating around the internet, it looks nice, maybe you can make use of it with some tweaking?
I'll look into it, thanks! There isn't a one-shot game coming up that I know of though so I should have plenty of time to prepare before I have to keep my word and actually run one. But I'm glad for resources just in case it happens sooner than I think!
So I guess I'm just going to suddenly discover new powers under fire and also where did this sinister book in my inventory come from?
Also I'm taking Find Familiar and he'll look like a northern white-faced owl and his name will be Quip and I can't wait to have him
ILLUSIONS, MICHAEL
It brought you a book
Sort of like how I discovered today while talking to people on Facebook that my halfling wizard learned necromancy to learn how to manipulate the powers of life and death, and also dabbled in transmutation to learn how to manipulate energy and matter into other forms so that he'll eventually become a lich (transferring his soul/life force into a phylactery and also reforming his body if it's destroyed). Not that any of that was my intention when I created him, but I came up with up today while chatting with randos on the internet and it sounded cool so I'ma run with it.
I also talked to a guy whose character was sort of becoming a lich, but instead of going the necromancy route he was imbibing potitions and such that slowly replaced the organic parts of his body with inorganic parts, and also enchantments to tie his soul to his new body, and eventually he'd become a sort of lich/elemental of the prime material plane. I'ma steal that idea if becoming a regular lich isn't in my character's future.
I'm actually now picturing a large white owl soaring overhead, dropping a book on your face. You're stunned a moment, a party member asks, "Are you alright?" And with a gleam in your eye you respond, "I know Kung Fu Burning Hands"
Which of course leads to the running gag of not learning any new spells until you're smacked in the face by a book
The real BBEG was the friends we made along the way
My GM did this for our Rogue Trader campaign
I described my TechPriest's new weapon mechadendrite as an arm bursting out of my back and snatching another character's sidearm out of its holster
I was thinking that this would create a fun few sessions as they tried to figure out how to get back and the resume the fairly important work they were doing in Faerun, but instead they...mostly don't seem that bothered about it? So I guess maybe I just run a Dark Sun campaign now.
get a load of these badasses, not bothered by the athasian desert
I have a ton of things to say about the game and PCs, but will refrain until the inevitable AP thread eventually sees the light of day. I am fully expecting my character to not go over well with everyone, but I absolutely love her to death. It was a ton of fun to start dropping hints of everyone’s backstory and organically learn about the crew dynamics that would not be obvious if there were only high action episodes.
"The only real politics I knew was that if a guy liked Hitler, I’d beat the stuffing out of him and that would be it." -- Jack Kirby
It's been a balancing act; I wanted to start off with some high-octane, big stakes stories both to get the overall plot rolling and also for the benefit of people who maybe didn't have a solid conception of their characters yet (this is often me in the first few sessions of a game). I was kind of shooting in the dark with the decision to tap the brakes with this story and give you guys something slower-paced with more room for PC-to-PC interaction; I wasn't sure if this was the right time for it.
But it totally was!
At this point I feel confident doing the full range of Star Trek stories, with action material, politics, intrigue, and quieter stuff about people meeting their exes or going on space vacation or whatever. And that's really exciting for me. There are so many possibilities.
The next thing I want to tackle is getting a few of the other players more comfortable with experimenting with Supporting Characters.
Not knowing Star Trek RPG, I'm choosing to assume "Supporting Characters" is a euphemism for "Expendable Redshirts".
Cue laughter from the players as I calmly tell him to roll, and then rip the pages out of my notebook for comedic effect and throw them in the trash.
:blushu:
But seriously, just bonk a few of the people here over the head when they're distracted talking about Feytouched Roguelocks or whatever and abduct them to a Discord you've set up. It's e-z!
Basically!
Since Star Trek stories tend to involve a lot of splitting up the main characters (some on the planet, some on the ship etc), the game has a system where, at the start of any new scene, players can opt to play their main PC or create a Supporting Character to use for the scene instead. You can create supporting cast on the fly, by just quickly assigning a few numbers from an array; they're less detailed and less powerful than full PCs, but that way if there's no reason for like, the ship's doctor to be on the planet, or the captain, you can roll up a security guard, or a biologist with the appropriate skills for the mission, or whatever.
The best part is that every time you bring back a Supporting Character from a previous game session, they get another skill point, gradually growing into full PCs, like how O'Brien goes from random redshirt in the background of the first TNG episode to main cast.
I love Mage so goddamn much
I will say that I am generally reluctant to play supporting characters if I didn’t actually create them, as I just feel like I end up not playing them as intended.
"The only real politics I knew was that if a guy liked Hitler, I’d beat the stuffing out of him and that would be it." -- Jack Kirby
the curse is that it only turns things into fondant cakes
That's true, yeah. I have some ideas about how to help with that.
HomerSimpsonMonkeyPaw.gif
He comes down today and tells me that he was bringing them back this morning. Got distracted having a conversation on the bus. And left the box with the figures on the bus this morning...
He's communicating with CTA dispatch and they'll call him if they find it. If they don't he says he'll repay me for everything.
I did a quick eBay search and that set is running close to $300 right now. Hope the bus driver calls soon...
Unless I roll like I did today, that was dogshit lol
:bigfrown: That's awful. I'm sure your friend feels terrible, assuming they're not a total sociopath, but them feeling awful is pretty cold comfort.
this hurts me
I've had Overlight sitting on my shelf for almost 2 years now waiting to be played (it's really neat!), and I've had Tenra since it came out (it's so cool looking!) and haven't played it, Pathfinder 2 is over here lookin kinda interesting. Aaand instead of playing either of those I'm running a BeastWing one-shot this weekend because why use the things I've paid for when I can run a game about space animals.
Night’s Black Agents
Tales From the Loop
Dungeon World
Masks
Over the Wall
Pathfinder 2E
City of Mist
Stars Without Number
Fiasco
Shadowrun 6E
Not as bad as I thought...now I just need to not open or think about the external hard drive I store PDFs on.
My local one has a giant manga and comic book section, so I wouldn't be surprised. But I've never thought to check.