$30 gets you the base game corebook, the Klingon corebook, the three division books (Command/Science/Ops), the Alpha and Beta Quadrant books, the Shackleton Expanse setting/mini-campaign, GM's Guide, Player's Guide, two books of adventures, lots of short standalone adventures, official character sheets for the casts of most of the shows, and assorted whatsits like the GM screen and deck tiles.
So I'm at work, fucking off as usual. Was thinking about the different types of currencies I'd mentioned previously for my setting. Had an idea that since the crab people are all about biotechnomancy, they might genetically modify some kind of sand dollar so their skeletons wouldn't be so brittle and use them as literal dollars. They'd also give them different colors to signify different denominations. Green and blue are apparently the wavelengths of light that travel farthest underwater so I went with those, and I thought maybe the coins could have a very slight bioluminescence when underwater to make em easier to see in the darkness of the deep.
Then my ADHD and I did a dive into Google with normal questions like, "can crabs sing," "can crabs hear," "can crabs even see color," and, "what kind of music could be played underwater."
Apparently crabs can make various noises! Some by grinding their insides together, others by rubbing their claws, others make sounds by banging on shit.
Also found this group of nerds talking about music and sound and how being underwater would affect it and all sorts of shit I don't understand (it's how I found the band up above).
It's nice that I'm being paid to do whatever the fuck this is called.
$30 gets you the base game corebook, the Klingon corebook, the three division books (Command/Science/Ops), the Alpha and Beta Quadrant books, the Shackleton Expanse setting/mini-campaign, GM's Guide, Player's Guide, two books of adventures, lots of short standalone adventures, official character sheets for the casts of most of the shows, and assorted whatsits like the GM screen and deck tiles.
Instant buy, because my partner is currently absorbing all things Star Trek and keeps making OC designs and discussing how a MMO in the Holodeck could work. Also how the Vulcan treated humans, the set up of Voyager, ship designs for non-combat purposes etc etc. She just doesn't want to watch any actual episodes because it would stress het out.
OK Jesus those books are succulent. Well worth the purchase, even though I've only skimmed through the PHB and the Beta Quadrant Sourcebook.
Especially loving the cooperation they have with the Star Trek Online team. I couldn't stand playing that game, but I certainly love that I can just browse through all that sweet sweet lore and stat blocks for whatever weird shit one can think of in Star Trek.
The books all do a good job at mixing game content and lore.
About the only thing I find annoying in the line is how the filler ‘here’s the stats for X shows crew!’ Packets push themselves by using a unique species as a draw.
I don’t need to know the Disco crew’s stats but I would like to know Kelpian’s unique talents or the stats on the ship frame.
Man, my game isn’t perfect, might not even be good, but I’m loving how things play out.
Ran Wreckage again today, and the squad have started making the tough choices. A consequence of poor dice is regularly ‘make a sacrifice’ and during a retreat they gave up the lives of several followers to make it out alive. Naturally they’ve vowed revenge against the icy Lipless Men, and to do that they intend to awaken the Arbiter, an ancient machine of fire that took an army to subdue and bury beneath a slab of blood red rock centuries ago. But first, they’ve got to convince King-Queen Bitch-Lord to give up the location of a certain key…
—
It’s always been hard to keep track of money, healing potions and other resources in dungeon crawl games, so in Wreckage all that is goo. It’s got multiple origins, but it might be nanomachines gone wild.
Creates a unique atmosphere where you ask, “Do I recover health right now, or press on so I can buy something? Do I expend a bunch to upgrade my gun or keep saving it up, just in case?”
There’s also a lot of straightforward trade going on, my gun for your gun, which saves on having too much stuff.
—
Writing up the rule book for it has been surprisingly easy, but I’m not done yet. I feel like I should take a full week off work for it some time.
Also in never to be finished news:
I blew through 50% of a roleplaying party game I’m calling Ancient Misery in 20 minutes. The premise is 3-5 players are old fashioned fighting mans, thieves and magic users half way through a delve.
However, you hate each other. Everything you do is designed to subtly push consequences onto someone else, take the most loot at their expense, yet keep them alive along enough to push them into the monsters as you escape at the end.
That back half of game design is where I lose steam every time. Hey, if anyone wants it you can have it!
Ooooooh, my Nightfell books that I backed on Kickstarter ages ago finally arrived! Got some other goodies too, like d8's with moon phases on each side, pre-made character sheets, lil cardboard minis for each premade character, DM screen, and a printed map!
Darmak on
+9
gavindelThe reason all your softwareis brokenRegistered Userregular
Session 5 of my alpha playtest went off pretty well. We did several stealth scenarios as they had to escape a centauri scout band and later do a bit of light Breaking-and-Entering in the blacksmith's shop.
The players really liked my Alertness timer for stealth. This mechanic won't shock you guys, who are up to date on RPG mechanics and meta-tension mechanics, of course, but the primary value is removing the binary pass/fail nature of stealth checks as seen in D&D. I modeled alertness as 0% to 100%, in increments of 10% based on their activity. Basically, any Challenge is 10% by default - there's your "ten round timer". Failures increase further.
"I want to use my fairy to generate a distraction" => Okay, you get a bonus die, but Alertness goes up 20% this round.
"We failed to pick the lock." => Okay, you can always break a window, but that's 30%.
They finished the blacksmith job at 50% after evading an apprentice at 30%. At 50% the blacksmith knows somebody was rustling about, but can't finger the party as the problem.
I plan to add a few techniques to further embellish the system. A technique to let you know what the Alertness thresholds are ("At 40% a new threat arrives"); a technique to pay Ki to reduce a party member's disastrous failure during a stealth check into a regular failure; maybe some ways to reduce Alertness by playing specific ways.
Still, always good to get feedback when a system is working.
The PCs are a crew of reality TV stars who realized that their show was being used to release subliminal messages for an eldritch abomination named Succ'Naath, at the same time as they realized that their camera operator/editor friend had her brain replaced and was a soulless automaton. They then attacked their own AHAB (Advanced Habitation and Biosystems) corporate tower on the planet Sheol to prevent the episode from releasing. They forced a mad scientist to put their friend's real brain (found in a jar at an enemy base) into the body of a Thresher Lord (basically a blade-armed walking death machine from the setting's Tyranid analogue faction).
The PCs flew their ship to the top of the tower (they had been bugging me to show them what ship combat is like, so I gave them a ship combat here and they agreed that it was enough ship combat for the campaign), and took down the antennae to give time for a second team of mercs (mostly drow mafia) to sabotage the mainframe in the basement. I treated the whole thing like the Suicide Mission from Mass Effect, with all of their contacts and actions from the previous 9 levels of adventuring coming into play.
They tangled with the undead corporate security, who I play as workaday corporate stiffs who really have no time for adventurers and would rather be pacifying Accounts Receivable since they seem to be going mad and stabbing each other in the eyes.
Last session they took down Vanquish Yubari, the undead Director of Sheol Affairs on Floor 70, recovering her head from a safe, which appeared to be a sort of soul jar. This session they raided the director's office, and the Virtual Assistant for the ex-director came up and said, "Hey there, it seems as though the Director is dead, would you like to engage Succession Protocol? Y/N?" They talked about it and decided to do it, and they were pleased but disconcerted when their Solarian was named Acting Director (she's partly undead and the now-dead Director had forced her to sign a new contract with undead-control necromancy; the succession stuff was baked into the fine print). The Director had been herself co-opted by the Succ'Naath cult's necromancy and had been working around the control to put the PCs into a position where they could fight the cult.
They heard from Security that Information Technology on Floor 63 had sealed itself with a force field, so they went down there and fought a room full of IT Specialists that had gone full Pandorum, and were being possessed by Blin the Tech Gnome, who had become Blin the Tech Demon, digitally inhabiting IT's cybernetics. They had yet another plot to spread chaos and death; one of the PCs is the head of IT and essentially went around implanting ICE into the fanatics' hardware to prevent Blin from moving around. During the fight, the operative pulled out a dagger called the Touch of Ai'in which they had found with a starmetal comet. The fanatical IT employees also literally threw themselves onto the dagger attacking him; at least one died hailing the great Succ'Naath.
The player running the head of IT wanted me to assume that she said something to the order of "You're fired" when they banished Blin the Tech Demon after his last-ditch effort to possess her cyberware.
Also in IT they found the body of their friend whose brain was in the Thresher Lord. While the Lord is incredibly powerful, she was easily confused if she took damage, and would have to make a Will save or roll on the Confusion table the next turn. There was an uncomfortable moment when their friend, in the Lord's body, provoked an attack of opportunity from her regular humanoid body, and might have caused her to attack the nearest creature... basically chopping up her own body. Luckily she saved, barely.
Having secured their friend's body, they brought in the mad scientist, who was a cult believer but was mostly in it for the mad science. He had removed the brain in the first place and it appealed to him to put it back. They all went to Medical on Floor 60 and watched him carefully... they did notice that he was carefully keeping the Thresher Lord body alive, but they didn't notice that he had implanted the evil robot brain from the friend into it. The Acting Director of Sheol Operations twigged to it anyway, "We're going to have to fight a Thresher Lord, guys," she said, and called in security.
It would have been a very tough fight, but the gigantic undead vesk security sergeant and his two undead technomancer goons put a serious hurt on the creature while the new Acting Director took out her revenge on the mad scientist. Before he died, the scientist broke a magical veil on the Touch of Ai'in, revealing it to be The Devistation of Succ'Naath, a very powerful weapon sought by the cult (and is the Shape of Things to Come).
We're not even done with AHAB Tower... they haven't even gone into the Mirror Room where Vanquish Yubari communicated with the cult yet... but now the PCs are basically in charge of their planetary branch of the company, and they can tell me how they want to proceed. My guess is that they'll want to keep going after the cult (and filming their adventures, even though their show almost caused a galactic calamity). But we'll see.
I collapsed for an hour after sending my gamers home. As an introvert, I burn a ton of energy when running a game, and even more when we're down players and I have to add friendly NPCs to give them a fighting chance, so there are sections where I'm fighting myself (the players love it when NPCs take the crits, heh).
I'm gonna be doing a streamed D&D game in the next few weeks that I'm pretty excited about. Homebrew world within 5e, so lots of opportunity for me to customize things to my liking. My players are excited about the prospect of owning a boat and doing sailing stuff though. Anyone have good resources for doing boat combat stuff?
Session 5 of my alpha playtest went off pretty well. We did several stealth scenarios as they had to escape a centauri scout band and later do a bit of light Breaking-and-Entering in the blacksmith's shop.
The players really liked my Alertness timer for stealth. This mechanic won't shock you guys, who are up to date on RPG mechanics and meta-tension mechanics, of course, but the primary value is removing the binary pass/fail nature of stealth checks as seen in D&D. I modeled alertness as 0% to 100%, in increments of 10% based on their activity. Basically, any Challenge is 10% by default - there's your "ten round timer". Failures increase further.
"I want to use my fairy to generate a distraction" => Okay, you get a bonus die, but Alertness goes up 20% this round.
"We failed to pick the lock." => Okay, you can always break a window, but that's 30%.
They finished the blacksmith job at 50% after evading an apprentice at 30%. At 50% the blacksmith knows somebody was rustling about, but can't finger the party as the problem.
I plan to add a few techniques to further embellish the system. A technique to let you know what the Alertness thresholds are ("At 40% a new threat arrives"); a technique to pay Ki to reduce a party member's disastrous failure during a stealth check into a regular failure; maybe some ways to reduce Alertness by playing specific ways.
Still, always good to get feedback when a system is working.
This is really cool and I'm gonna save it for later.
A game design thought I have a lot is that DnD really drops the ball by trying to make every concievable noncombat encounter the same. These are the kind of rules the game needs.
+2
WearingglassesOf the friendly neighborhood varietyRegistered Userregular
Got a question for folks in the US who might know:
Why is DMs Guild's delivery prices expensive at the moment? I was planning to have the Minsc book printed on demand, but the delivery options for < 2 weeks are like, $TEXAS$. Does anybody have any not-money-related tips if this can be sped up?
Or is it just due to the fact that you're getting prioritized to get printed faster?
Got a question for folks in the US who might know:
Why is DMs Guild's delivery prices expensive at the moment? I was planning to have the Minsc book printed on demand, but the delivery options for < 2 weeks are like, $TEXAS$. Does anybody have any not-money-related tips if this can be sped up?
Or is it just due to the fact that you're getting prioritized to get printed faster?
It's air freight, and 2nd day air, and air is super expensive, especially right now.
UPS is just expensive, those air prices do seem bonkers though. The time involved is largely the time the printer wants to get to your order rather than actual shipping time, since 2 day and next day air obviously ship in 2 or 1 day.
+1
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
Unfortunately it's just the way of it I think. Media mail heavily subsidizes costs for shipping things like books, which is good, but it does make the UPS prices, which already would exceed comparable USPS rates, look especially bad.
+1
WearingglassesOf the friendly neighborhood varietyRegistered Userregular
Thanks all! Looks like I just need to be patient and go with the UPS option.
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
Yeah I also do not fully trust that estimate, because I've always had great luck with media mail, but I'll accept it if that's what they're saying it is.
I'm gonna be doing a streamed D&D game in the next few weeks that I'm pretty excited about. Homebrew world within 5e, so lots of opportunity for me to customize things to my liking. My players are excited about the prospect of owning a boat and doing sailing stuff though. Anyone have good resources for doing boat combat stuff?
I'm sorry I don't know. I'd just Google for any old Reddit posts or whatever and assume they were smarter than whatever I'd cook up. This guy Limithon seems to know what's up https://www.patreon.com/posts/49197752
Alternatively, I'd take inspiration from the Acquisitions Incorporated book for pimping a ship and look at a board game for rules and game pieces. It's not even about playing the full game, but just to lift some basic structure and useful tools from. If you can find a copy of https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2516/man-o-war that'd probably be a blast.
I'm gonna be doing a streamed D&D game in the next few weeks that I'm pretty excited about. Homebrew world within 5e, so lots of opportunity for me to customize things to my liking. My players are excited about the prospect of owning a boat and doing sailing stuff though. Anyone have good resources for doing boat combat stuff?
I did a pretty extensive search for similar content a while back and they're really just isn't anything. The Ghostmarsh book has rules for that sort of thing but they sent very good.
I was going to eventually have a look at the Star wars 5th edition game. It has rules for ship combat and such that I've heard pretty good things about but of course if you go that route your planning on doing a lot of home brewing anyway.
Treantmonk just did a video about Ships and Naval combat a couple weeks ago, I think it was more or less going over everything covered in Ghosts of Saltmarsh though. Might be additional suggestions in it somewhere.
I'm gonna be doing a streamed D&D game in the next few weeks that I'm pretty excited about. Homebrew world within 5e, so lots of opportunity for me to customize things to my liking. My players are excited about the prospect of owning a boat and doing sailing stuff though. Anyone have good resources for doing boat combat stuff?
I'm listening to the Dead Men Roll No Crits podcast, which is a PF2 hack of the PF1 adventure path Skull & Shackles, a pirate campaign. I don't know the specifics, but they do customize their boat and it has hit points and whatnot. Most naval combat ends up being boarding actions, but they do have ballistae and such.
So, re: Naval stuff, there's bound to be some ship-to-ship stuff coming out in Spelljammer, though whether you can wait that long for it is in question, as well as what it will eventually look like.
For prior editions, I've liked the rules found in ...
Skull and Bones, which includes various character options, as well, but likely not super useful in a non-3.X context.
I've also used, in a more stripped-down fashion, the rules from Hot Pursuit: The Definitive d20 Guide to Chases when running a smaller ship-involved adventure, but that would be more appropriate when ships aren't the centerpiece of what you'll be doing, I think.
GrobianWhat's on sale?Pliers!Registered Userregular
Someone once told me the only worthwhile vehicle combat in official 5e material was in descent into avernus. That's land vehicles, but maybe you can still use some of it
Oh! I should’ve mentioned, if you’d like some ship minis and don’t want to break the bank, look into Ebaying lots of the old Pirates of the Spanish Main constructible card game. It's been out of print for mumble years, but you can get a decent variety of pretty good-looking ships for ~$20.
Not sure if you'll need them if you're playing online, but if you're doing a "picture of the tabletop" version it might come in handy.
Oh! I should’ve mentioned, if you’d like some ship minis and don’t want to break the bank, look into Ebaying lots of the old Pirates of the Spanish Main constructible card game. It's been out of print for mumble years, but you can get a decent variety of pretty good-looking ships for ~$20.
Not sure if you'll need them if you're playing online, but if you're doing a "picture of the tabletop" version it might come in handy.
Someone once told me the only worthwhile vehicle combat in official 5e material was in descent into avernus. That's land vehicles, but maybe you can still use some of it
Descent into Avernus? Isn't that a Baldur's Gate thing? Does it go all Mad Max when they get to hell or something?
Yeah, I think it explicitly goes for a Mad Max vibe
+7
webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
I will say i don't think the avernus rules/mechanics for vehicles are good out of the box. Everything is far too fragile/hard to fix. At least thats how it felt when we played.
The Starfinder ship combat rules are, as mentioned, not great. The land vehicle chase rules are even worse; tedious and confusing at the same time.
Paizo learned their lesson when they made the mech rules: they are played on the regular map and can be easily run with both mech suits and un-armored combatants in the same fight; basically the party is considered to be +3 APL on what challenges they can take on.
0
Indie Winterdie KräheRudi Hurzlmeier (German, b. 1952)Registered Userregular
edited July 2022
Ultima Ratio Magi - Last Argument of Spellcasters ring, legendary, requires attunement
This ring is made of plain silver, but is engraved inside and out with magical sigils and glyphs. It holds a single charge that can be used as a free action to either grant advantage to a roll determining the success of a Counterspell (if such a roll is required) or instantly Counterspell a Counterspell of any level. Once used, it takes 1d6+1 days for the charge to return.
Everyone wants rules for ships, so you gotta have ‘em, but I wonder if for D&D it’d be more fun to say where the other ships will be next round and then just offer simple options.
At the start of the round, you say “The barque is going to ram you. The schooner is trying to flee.”
Do they stay the course, take the hit, but get a chance to run across and start fighting?
Do they rig more sails and steer away? A consequence of failure might be skimming the hull of that other ship.
Do they fall back by paying out the anchor? No skill check, but now they’ve got to heave it back in to move.
And naturally, while you can keep the ships within a small grid, remind everyone that ships are constantly under way, they don’t move it like a PC, they can only ever steer it.
I also think playing it straight as a combat encounter allows for any player to grab the wheel for a turn, rather than putting someone in the role as helmsman for the whole time they’re at sea. Throw in a few crewman to take the heat off actually working the ship too, so at times they’re the boarding party and don’t even have to worry about what the ship is doing.
I think you can make awesome ship rules, don’t get me wrong, but on average aren’t you playing the guy swinging from a rope, firing off a one-shot pistol, landing into a roll and saying a quip?
Working on a back up pc for 5e if my current weirdo dies in this arc of the empire invading us and us doing a Star Wars about that.
Main pitch is a Kobold who was the demolitions expert/alchemist on a crew that hit mines for the magic mega material the empire’s invading for.
Only for her to wind up just as much a refugee as anyone else when the crews latest ‘polite tax’ on a mine is interrupted by an Imperial take over.
So far I only really have ‘All feats, no ASI to represent a civilian over an adventurer, read up all the various rules on making explosives and alchemy stuff’ but avoiding magic spell lists and finding a class for her is trickier.
Working on a back up pc for 5e if my current weirdo dies in this arc of the empire invading us and us doing a Star Wars about that.
Main pitch is a Kobold who was the demolitions expert/alchemist on a crew that hit mines for the magic mega material the empire’s invading for.
Only for her to wind up just as much a refugee as anyone else when the crews latest ‘polite tax’ on a mine is interrupted by an Imperial take over.
So far I only really have ‘All feats, no ASI to represent a civilian over an adventurer, read up all the various rules on making explosives and alchemy stuff’ but avoiding magic spell lists and finding a class for her is trickier.
Play that dancer class you liked again and don’t explain it.
It's been a time of much change for me as a D&D player - my regular thursday game as a player and my occasional game where I DM 2 people have both fizzled out due to people getting busy, but I have managed to get together a full in-person party of 3 with the intention of DMing for them every week!
We had our session 0 on sunday and it was awesome, I talked to them about creating the setting alongside me and they were really excited for that and about their characters. I asked them about media they loved that they'd like to take inspiration from, and they came up with Avatar (both Cameron and Nickelodeon), Treasure Planet (Disney) and Atlantis (also Disney). I cooked up some ideas and this is the one we're going with:
We will be bringing our campaign spacewards, or rather waterwards, to the Galactic Ocean! As the name implies, this is a vast watery expanse populated by a huge array of planetoids - many of which are shielded from outer sea by bubble atmospheres. Societies of all kinds await across the Galactic Ocean, but dominant are the civilisations that have tapped into this infinite water power source to power their technology and enable interplanetary travel! There are yet many uncharted waters where no known beings have traveled - or at least, returned. Exploration and adventure, encountering wondrous and dangerous pockets of the galaxy - often at the same time - define this setting.
It's definitely the one that most inspired me when I thought of it! Deep space and the deep ocean both give me the chills to even think about, so why not make them one and the same thing?
The party will be:
A paladin warforged who was created from a dragon's horde, but lost their dragon creator/parent and their siblings. They ended up aimlessly roaming the galaxy on their steed, looking for people who need protection.
A psion (kibblestasty homebrew) air genasi, daughter to owners of an interplanetary travelling circus. She was born with inexplicable and potent elemental powers and wants to discover more about herself and the galaxy.
A druid axolotl (personal homebrew adapted from grung), a former spelljamming pirate captain who ended up marooned and alone, with only nature to commune with, longing to get closer to the stars once more.
One cool thing about this party - and part of the inspiration for the setting in the first place - is that all of them can survive indefinitely underwater. Warforged don't need to breathe, axolotls are amphibious, and air genasi can hold their breath indefinitely while they aren't incapacitated.
Now I'm on the hunt for more inspiration for things to fill my new setting with. Does anyone know any good material for fictional and real deep sea creatures and phenomena? Any and all suggestions are much appreciated!
Somestickguy on
+5
WearingglassesOf the friendly neighborhood varietyRegistered Userregular
As the DM of a group, I'm inclined to allow something, but I'd like to hear your thoughts on this:
- We have a rotating cast of 4-5 PCs per session among 8 people. It's a bit Westmarch-like, one player (sometimes two) gets the proverbial spotlight and the adventure furthers their story, and the other characters, being friends, or tangentially interested in the adventure (due to an NPC, or merely the rewards), will come along to help the Point Person with their problem.
- Sometimes an session ends mid-adventure, so we pick up where we left off on the next session. In such cases, the players do not wish to handwave when a character is unable to be present, and would rather postpone if one is unavailable.
- Predictably, we have been having trouble recently organizing for a game session. This time, the postponement has reached a month, and will continue further, as one of the players will be going away for two/three weeks.
- They would rather let one of the others "pilot" their character (to the best of their ability), because they're not the Point Person of the current adventure. The others are also willing to do so. The intent is to leave the big decisions/Story Beat Questions to the original Player, who should still be contactable through chat (they're assuming there aren't any such questions. Right now, they're correct: the character-pertinent stuff is the rewards at the end of the adventure, but I am willing to change that if it's better for everyone).
- I was thinking, 1) no one has any problem with this arrangement, 2) everyone's acting in good faith, and 3) the game will get to continue, so I'm inclined to let it happen. I'll just need to confirm that the Owning player is okay if their character bites it in the game (though they're at the level where this isn't a problem).
Posts
https://www.humblebundle.com/books/more-star-trek-adventures-rpg-modiphius-books
$30 gets you the base game corebook, the Klingon corebook, the three division books (Command/Science/Ops), the Alpha and Beta Quadrant books, the Shackleton Expanse setting/mini-campaign, GM's Guide, Player's Guide, two books of adventures, lots of short standalone adventures, official character sheets for the casts of most of the shows, and assorted whatsits like the GM screen and deck tiles.
Then my ADHD and I did a dive into Google with normal questions like, "can crabs sing," "can crabs hear," "can crabs even see color," and, "what kind of music could be played underwater."
Apparently crabs can make various noises! Some by grinding their insides together, others by rubbing their claws, others make sounds by banging on shit.
Found a neat group that's experimenting with making fuckin weird music underwater (I kinda like it though!)
Also found this group of nerds talking about music and sound and how being underwater would affect it and all sorts of shit I don't understand (it's how I found the band up above).
It's nice that I'm being paid to do whatever the fuck this is called.
Instant buy, because my partner is currently absorbing all things Star Trek and keeps making OC designs and discussing how a MMO in the Holodeck could work. Also how the Vulcan treated humans, the set up of Voyager, ship designs for non-combat purposes etc etc. She just doesn't want to watch any actual episodes because it would stress het out.
Especially loving the cooperation they have with the Star Trek Online team. I couldn't stand playing that game, but I certainly love that I can just browse through all that sweet sweet lore and stat blocks for whatever weird shit one can think of in Star Trek.
About the only thing I find annoying in the line is how the filler ‘here’s the stats for X shows crew!’ Packets push themselves by using a unique species as a draw.
I don’t need to know the Disco crew’s stats but I would like to know Kelpian’s unique talents or the stats on the ship frame.
Ran Wreckage again today, and the squad have started making the tough choices. A consequence of poor dice is regularly ‘make a sacrifice’ and during a retreat they gave up the lives of several followers to make it out alive. Naturally they’ve vowed revenge against the icy Lipless Men, and to do that they intend to awaken the Arbiter, an ancient machine of fire that took an army to subdue and bury beneath a slab of blood red rock centuries ago. But first, they’ve got to convince King-Queen Bitch-Lord to give up the location of a certain key…
—
It’s always been hard to keep track of money, healing potions and other resources in dungeon crawl games, so in Wreckage all that is goo. It’s got multiple origins, but it might be nanomachines gone wild.
Creates a unique atmosphere where you ask, “Do I recover health right now, or press on so I can buy something? Do I expend a bunch to upgrade my gun or keep saving it up, just in case?”
There’s also a lot of straightforward trade going on, my gun for your gun, which saves on having too much stuff.
—
Writing up the rule book for it has been surprisingly easy, but I’m not done yet. I feel like I should take a full week off work for it some time.
I blew through 50% of a roleplaying party game I’m calling Ancient Misery in 20 minutes. The premise is 3-5 players are old fashioned fighting mans, thieves and magic users half way through a delve.
However, you hate each other. Everything you do is designed to subtly push consequences onto someone else, take the most loot at their expense, yet keep them alive along enough to push them into the monsters as you escape at the end.
That back half of game design is where I lose steam every time. Hey, if anyone wants it you can have it!
The players really liked my Alertness timer for stealth. This mechanic won't shock you guys, who are up to date on RPG mechanics and meta-tension mechanics, of course, but the primary value is removing the binary pass/fail nature of stealth checks as seen in D&D. I modeled alertness as 0% to 100%, in increments of 10% based on their activity. Basically, any Challenge is 10% by default - there's your "ten round timer". Failures increase further.
"I want to use my fairy to generate a distraction" => Okay, you get a bonus die, but Alertness goes up 20% this round.
"We failed to pick the lock." => Okay, you can always break a window, but that's 30%.
They finished the blacksmith job at 50% after evading an apprentice at 30%. At 50% the blacksmith knows somebody was rustling about, but can't finger the party as the problem.
I plan to add a few techniques to further embellish the system. A technique to let you know what the Alertness thresholds are ("At 40% a new threat arrives"); a technique to pay Ki to reduce a party member's disastrous failure during a stealth check into a regular failure; maybe some ways to reduce Alertness by playing specific ways.
Still, always good to get feedback when a system is working.
The PCs are a crew of reality TV stars who realized that their show was being used to release subliminal messages for an eldritch abomination named Succ'Naath, at the same time as they realized that their camera operator/editor friend had her brain replaced and was a soulless automaton. They then attacked their own AHAB (Advanced Habitation and Biosystems) corporate tower on the planet Sheol to prevent the episode from releasing. They forced a mad scientist to put their friend's real brain (found in a jar at an enemy base) into the body of a Thresher Lord (basically a blade-armed walking death machine from the setting's Tyranid analogue faction).
The PCs flew their ship to the top of the tower (they had been bugging me to show them what ship combat is like, so I gave them a ship combat here and they agreed that it was enough ship combat for the campaign), and took down the antennae to give time for a second team of mercs (mostly drow mafia) to sabotage the mainframe in the basement. I treated the whole thing like the Suicide Mission from Mass Effect, with all of their contacts and actions from the previous 9 levels of adventuring coming into play.
They tangled with the undead corporate security, who I play as workaday corporate stiffs who really have no time for adventurers and would rather be pacifying Accounts Receivable since they seem to be going mad and stabbing each other in the eyes.
Last session they took down Vanquish Yubari, the undead Director of Sheol Affairs on Floor 70, recovering her head from a safe, which appeared to be a sort of soul jar. This session they raided the director's office, and the Virtual Assistant for the ex-director came up and said, "Hey there, it seems as though the Director is dead, would you like to engage Succession Protocol? Y/N?" They talked about it and decided to do it, and they were pleased but disconcerted when their Solarian was named Acting Director (she's partly undead and the now-dead Director had forced her to sign a new contract with undead-control necromancy; the succession stuff was baked into the fine print). The Director had been herself co-opted by the Succ'Naath cult's necromancy and had been working around the control to put the PCs into a position where they could fight the cult.
They heard from Security that Information Technology on Floor 63 had sealed itself with a force field, so they went down there and fought a room full of IT Specialists that had gone full Pandorum, and were being possessed by Blin the Tech Gnome, who had become Blin the Tech Demon, digitally inhabiting IT's cybernetics. They had yet another plot to spread chaos and death; one of the PCs is the head of IT and essentially went around implanting ICE into the fanatics' hardware to prevent Blin from moving around. During the fight, the operative pulled out a dagger called the Touch of Ai'in which they had found with a starmetal comet. The fanatical IT employees also literally threw themselves onto the dagger attacking him; at least one died hailing the great Succ'Naath.
The player running the head of IT wanted me to assume that she said something to the order of "You're fired" when they banished Blin the Tech Demon after his last-ditch effort to possess her cyberware.
Also in IT they found the body of their friend whose brain was in the Thresher Lord. While the Lord is incredibly powerful, she was easily confused if she took damage, and would have to make a Will save or roll on the Confusion table the next turn. There was an uncomfortable moment when their friend, in the Lord's body, provoked an attack of opportunity from her regular humanoid body, and might have caused her to attack the nearest creature... basically chopping up her own body. Luckily she saved, barely.
Having secured their friend's body, they brought in the mad scientist, who was a cult believer but was mostly in it for the mad science. He had removed the brain in the first place and it appealed to him to put it back. They all went to Medical on Floor 60 and watched him carefully... they did notice that he was carefully keeping the Thresher Lord body alive, but they didn't notice that he had implanted the evil robot brain from the friend into it. The Acting Director of Sheol Operations twigged to it anyway, "We're going to have to fight a Thresher Lord, guys," she said, and called in security.
It would have been a very tough fight, but the gigantic undead vesk security sergeant and his two undead technomancer goons put a serious hurt on the creature while the new Acting Director took out her revenge on the mad scientist. Before he died, the scientist broke a magical veil on the Touch of Ai'in, revealing it to be The Devistation of Succ'Naath, a very powerful weapon sought by the cult (and is the Shape of Things to Come).
We're not even done with AHAB Tower... they haven't even gone into the Mirror Room where Vanquish Yubari communicated with the cult yet... but now the PCs are basically in charge of their planetary branch of the company, and they can tell me how they want to proceed. My guess is that they'll want to keep going after the cult (and filming their adventures, even though their show almost caused a galactic calamity). But we'll see.
I collapsed for an hour after sending my gamers home. As an introvert, I burn a ton of energy when running a game, and even more when we're down players and I have to add friendly NPCs to give them a fighting chance, so there are sections where I'm fighting myself (the players love it when NPCs take the crits, heh).
SniperGuyGaming on PSN / SniperGuy710 on Xbone Live
This is really cool and I'm gonna save it for later.
A game design thought I have a lot is that DnD really drops the ball by trying to make every concievable noncombat encounter the same. These are the kind of rules the game needs.
Why is DMs Guild's delivery prices expensive at the moment? I was planning to have the Minsc book printed on demand, but the delivery options for < 2 weeks are like, $TEXAS$. Does anybody have any not-money-related tips if this can be sped up?
Or is it just due to the fact that you're getting prioritized to get printed faster?
It's air freight, and 2nd day air, and air is super expensive, especially right now.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
I'm sorry I don't know. I'd just Google for any old Reddit posts or whatever and assume they were smarter than whatever I'd cook up. This guy Limithon seems to know what's up https://www.patreon.com/posts/49197752
Alternatively, I'd take inspiration from the Acquisitions Incorporated book for pimping a ship and look at a board game for rules and game pieces. It's not even about playing the full game, but just to lift some basic structure and useful tools from. If you can find a copy of https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2516/man-o-war that'd probably be a blast.
I did a pretty extensive search for similar content a while back and they're really just isn't anything. The Ghostmarsh book has rules for that sort of thing but they sent very good.
I was going to eventually have a look at the Star wars 5th edition game. It has rules for ship combat and such that I've heard pretty good things about but of course if you go that route your planning on doing a lot of home brewing anyway.
I'm listening to the Dead Men Roll No Crits podcast, which is a PF2 hack of the PF1 adventure path Skull & Shackles, a pirate campaign. I don't know the specifics, but they do customize their boat and it has hit points and whatnot. Most naval combat ends up being boarding actions, but they do have ballistae and such.
For prior editions, I've liked the rules found in ...
Corsair: The Definitive d20 Guide to Ships, which borrows heavily from Green Ronin's
Skull and Bones, which includes various character options, as well, but likely not super useful in a non-3.X context.
I've also used, in a more stripped-down fashion, the rules from Hot Pursuit: The Definitive d20 Guide to Chases when running a smaller ship-involved adventure, but that would be more appropriate when ships aren't the centerpiece of what you'll be doing, I think.
So, might be some stuff worth stealing in there?
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Oh! I should’ve mentioned, if you’d like some ship minis and don’t want to break the bank, look into Ebaying lots of the old Pirates of the Spanish Main constructible card game. It's been out of print for mumble years, but you can get a decent variety of pretty good-looking ships for ~$20.
Not sure if you'll need them if you're playing online, but if you're doing a "picture of the tabletop" version it might come in handy.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
CZYY also makes some decently priced wooden things like ships, buildings, minis, etc. https://www.amazon.com/Miniatures-3-Level-Terrain-Pathfinderor-Tabletop/dp/B07V3HNQXF?ref_=ast_sto_dp
Descent into Avernus? Isn't that a Baldur's Gate thing? Does it go all Mad Max when they get to hell or something?
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Paizo learned their lesson when they made the mech rules: they are played on the regular map and can be easily run with both mech suits and un-armored combatants in the same fight; basically the party is considered to be +3 APL on what challenges they can take on.
ring, legendary, requires attunement
This ring is made of plain silver, but is engraved inside and out with magical sigils and glyphs. It holds a single charge that can be used as a free action to either grant advantage to a roll determining the success of a Counterspell (if such a roll is required) or instantly Counterspell a Counterspell of any level. Once used, it takes 1d6+1 days for the charge to return.
At the start of the round, you say “The barque is going to ram you. The schooner is trying to flee.”
Do they stay the course, take the hit, but get a chance to run across and start fighting?
Do they rig more sails and steer away? A consequence of failure might be skimming the hull of that other ship.
Do they fall back by paying out the anchor? No skill check, but now they’ve got to heave it back in to move.
And naturally, while you can keep the ships within a small grid, remind everyone that ships are constantly under way, they don’t move it like a PC, they can only ever steer it.
I think you can make awesome ship rules, don’t get me wrong, but on average aren’t you playing the guy swinging from a rope, firing off a one-shot pistol, landing into a roll and saying a quip?
Main pitch is a Kobold who was the demolitions expert/alchemist on a crew that hit mines for the magic mega material the empire’s invading for.
Only for her to wind up just as much a refugee as anyone else when the crews latest ‘polite tax’ on a mine is interrupted by an Imperial take over.
So far I only really have ‘All feats, no ASI to represent a civilian over an adventurer, read up all the various rules on making explosives and alchemy stuff’ but avoiding magic spell lists and finding a class for her is trickier.
Play that dancer class you liked again and don’t explain it.
Plus I’m more going for hands dirty crafts lady and crook than suave battle leader.
We had our session 0 on sunday and it was awesome, I talked to them about creating the setting alongside me and they were really excited for that and about their characters. I asked them about media they loved that they'd like to take inspiration from, and they came up with Avatar (both Cameron and Nickelodeon), Treasure Planet (Disney) and Atlantis (also Disney). I cooked up some ideas and this is the one we're going with:
It's definitely the one that most inspired me when I thought of it! Deep space and the deep ocean both give me the chills to even think about, so why not make them one and the same thing?
The party will be:
A psion (kibblestasty homebrew) air genasi, daughter to owners of an interplanetary travelling circus. She was born with inexplicable and potent elemental powers and wants to discover more about herself and the galaxy.
A druid axolotl (personal homebrew adapted from grung), a former spelljamming pirate captain who ended up marooned and alone, with only nature to commune with, longing to get closer to the stars once more.
One cool thing about this party - and part of the inspiration for the setting in the first place - is that all of them can survive indefinitely underwater. Warforged don't need to breathe, axolotls are amphibious, and air genasi can hold their breath indefinitely while they aren't incapacitated.
Now I'm on the hunt for more inspiration for things to fill my new setting with. Does anyone know any good material for fictional and real deep sea creatures and phenomena? Any and all suggestions are much appreciated!
- We have a rotating cast of 4-5 PCs per session among 8 people. It's a bit Westmarch-like, one player (sometimes two) gets the proverbial spotlight and the adventure furthers their story, and the other characters, being friends, or tangentially interested in the adventure (due to an NPC, or merely the rewards), will come along to help the Point Person with their problem.
- Sometimes an session ends mid-adventure, so we pick up where we left off on the next session. In such cases, the players do not wish to handwave when a character is unable to be present, and would rather postpone if one is unavailable.
- Predictably, we have been having trouble recently organizing for a game session. This time, the postponement has reached a month, and will continue further, as one of the players will be going away for two/three weeks.
- They would rather let one of the others "pilot" their character (to the best of their ability), because they're not the Point Person of the current adventure. The others are also willing to do so. The intent is to leave the big decisions/Story Beat Questions to the original Player, who should still be contactable through chat (they're assuming there aren't any such questions. Right now, they're correct: the character-pertinent stuff is the rewards at the end of the adventure, but I am willing to change that if it's better for everyone).
- I was thinking, 1) no one has any problem with this arrangement, 2) everyone's acting in good faith, and 3) the game will get to continue, so I'm inclined to let it happen. I'll just need to confirm that the Owning player is okay if their character bites it in the game (though they're at the level where this isn't a problem).