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[Roleplaying Games] Thank God I Finally Have A Table For Cannabis Potency.

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Posts

  • ArthilArthil Registered User regular
    While the version of it I'm going to run is 5th Edition, I figured I'd ask here:

    Is anyone familiar with the Rappan Athuk book? I've been prepping to start running it at my local events at a couple of shops, somewhat of an open but not Adventure League thing. Just any advice, or things you might have given a try etc would be extremely helpful.

    I suppose any advice for a megadungeon in general would also be handy. It's a very well laid out book, though there's plenty of room to make it my own.

    PSN: Honishimo Steam UPlay: Arthil
  • webguy20webguy20 I spend too much time on the Internet Registered User regular
    My player loved the tablet PC. Everyone thought it was very iconic for the setting.

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  • Albino BunnyAlbino Bunny Jackie Registered User regular
    Which is kinda funny because Android isn't super physical, well, Anarch's have an old school bent but you see a lot of smaller terminals, AR interfaces and stuff. The tablet PC would probably be some hipster's PAD or something.

  • webguy20webguy20 I spend too much time on the Internet Registered User regular
    edited March 2019
    Which is kinda funny because Android isn't super physical, well, Anarch's have an old school bent but you see a lot of smaller terminals, AR interfaces and stuff. The tablet PC would probably be some hipster's PAD or something.

    At least in the supplement this sits somewhere between a pad and a portable rig. We’re calling it a portable rig.

    Believe me if I could have had this thing project holograms from the screen i would have.

    webguy20 on
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  • KadokenKadoken Giving Ends to my Friends and it Feels Stupendous Registered User regular
    It would be rad if one day we had a VR Roll20/RPG program that basically allows you to do the same things as now but in a 3d space even if the space would be simple or if the avis were kept as 2D standing models. The dream would be the GM being able to switch between folks and be able to update stuff in real time.

  • SleepSleep Registered User regular
    Kadoken wrote: »
    It would be rad if one day we had a VR Roll20/RPG program that basically allows you to do the same things as now but in a 3d space even if the space would be simple or if the avis were kept as 2D standing models. The dream would be the GM being able to switch between folks and be able to update stuff in real time.

    AR instead of VR requires a TV and cameras for video conferencing purposes or to present materials, and a coffe table to place the ar goggle insignia on to popup a 3D game board for miniatures based combat.

  • KadokenKadoken Giving Ends to my Friends and it Feels Stupendous Registered User regular
    edited March 2019
    I was thinking of more of a first person experience where you play the characters in the play space.

    Kadoken on
  • italianranmaitalianranma Registered User regular
    Sign me up for the VR/AR game where we all sit around a table with our identities obscured SEELE style.

    飛べねぇ豚はただの豚だ。
  • admanbadmanb unionize your workplace Seattle, WARegistered User regular
    So I've got a... couple games right now.

    My Blades in the Dark game outlined here has continued, and escalated. The union revolt (i.e. a general strike) happened and the crew decided to play both sides. They beheaded the union leadership by bombing a bridge, blamed the Blueboats, and triggered a violent riot. Lucella agreed to all this so they now have a tenuous relationship with the commander of the Bluecoats in the district, while being actively at war with the Bluecoat faction.

    After some lower intensity stuff and side jobs they decided that the best way to get out of the war was to incorporate the Bluecoats into the unions and basically turn all of Coalridge into a giant worker co-op. The obvious problem being the highly-moneyed powers in Coalridge are entirely opposed to the idea. So I gave them two targets: a noble family, the Vales, representing old money, and a Dagger Isles orphan-turned-entrepenuer, Cross Keel, representing new money. Cross Keel may also be a front for their sort-of-ally Djera Maha, but I haven't decided.

    They're opening that action by calling open hunting season on all Vale representatives in Coalridge, so that's going to escalate quickly. After this arc we're gonna wrap and take a break for a while, so it should make a good finale.

    This game is pretty challenging to run. Two of the four players are pretty passive/reactive which isn't ideal for Blades and I still find the balance of believable challenge vs PCs feeling badass to be difficult. I think it's really easy to run a fun game of Blades, but I think it's a lot harder to run an awesome game of Blades.

    My other big game is Stars Without Number outlined here. We've gotten through two missions and some side activities and are working on... well, a side activity turned mission. They brought a refugee/hostage family to drop off at Atlas' -- the mercenary warrior woman -- medieval planet, and while I was assuming that would be a quick meet-some-NPCs and leave on the way there they told me they were excited to explore Leus so... I quickly threw together a major political dilemma with members of Atlas' family on each side, a rival family, some off-planet interference, and themes of growing old and cycles of violence. So they're gonna be doing that for a while.

    The main challenge with this group is that there are five players, but I want to have time to focus on the personal stories of each one as well as the larger missions. Managing that spotlight has been difficult and there are definitely two players that have fallen behind, but everyone seems to be enjoying the game overall so I'm not worried -- yet. I've scheduled a feedback/Roses & Thorns session in two weeks that will hopefully reveal any simmering issues and give me a chance to lay out my "vision."

    *deep breath* okay, two games down. We're uh... one-third of the way there. Yuh-oh.

    So I managed managed to get invited as a player(!!!) to a game. It's D&D5E and all the players are busy adults so we only meet once every couple months for a full-day session. My character in that is Zi, a rogue with significant trauma in her background, a fondness for stupor, and a knack for charm. We're a treasure hunting guild in a city full of guilds so half the game is politics/city intrigue and the other half is adventuring. Zi is chaotic neutral, but is bound to the guild as it's the only safe and stable existence she's ever had.

    Highlight of that game was a session where we had to steal something from a rich elf, so we got an invite to his solstice party and Zi got to dress up, then make a scene to distract the guards from my sneaking allies by spilling a drink onto a minotaur and then slapping the fuckboi she came with for chatting up a couple. She got sleep darted by a faerie, woke up in jail, bailed herself out, and walked across half the city. Best walk of shame ever.

    Next, I managed to sneak my way into a game my partner is a player in. (Okay, I started hanging out while they were playing because I was invited and after doing that semi-regularly the GM asked if I wanted to create a character. The GM is a player in my Stars game so now we're in each other's games -- eternal GMs gotta stick together!)

    This game is ostensibly Call of Cthulhu but isn't really in either setting or system. Setting-wise it's a lot closer to a Warehouse 13, with multiple supernatural organizations competing to collect artifacts and solve supernatural problems. There might be some Lovecraftian stuff out there, but most of what we deal with is more "mundane" supernatural like Vampires, Goblins, Rat-kings, and Fae.

    System-wise it's... well, we have characters built off CoC 6E, but the game is run how you might expect from a GM who's been traumatized by D&D 3E/Pathfinder and now just wants to play rules-light storytelling games, but doesn't know what's out there. So we basically just do stat or skill rolls using initially D20 but then after playing a bunch of Stars she switched to 2D6+stat bonus. Combat is heavily improvisational D20/hit point system. I kind of want to hack together a system that better supports what she's doing, but that would be overstepping my bounds.

    The game is very fun. The GM loves our characters and her NPCs but isn't precious about any of them. We work for the sort-of-good organization, but my character is an agent of the sort-of-evil organization. Except obviously they both suck, and my character is actually an ex-punk semi-anarchist that wants both orgs out of the picture and is just looking for someone who's both going to (a) contribute something to the world and (b) not immediately sell their souls to the worst thing they can find, and thinks he's found that in the group. That does mean I get to have fun private conversations with other PCs where we talk about how shitty our org is and I try to turn them against it... and avoid scenes with agents from the other org.

    *second deep breath* two-thirds done. The last two games are brand-new and we've only had one session of each.

    First up is Monsterhearts. This was the result of me convincing my partner that she should try GMing (surprisingly easy) and then pushing her to actually get the group together and organize it (much harder). It's just three players: me, the Cthulhu GM, and another player from my Stars game, and so far it is great. Monsterhearts is a tricky game, but we picked three players that love making disaster PCs and throwing them into trouble, and we already have a good rapport from our other games. I also think that if you have the right players it's a really good game for a new GM, because way more of the game is gonna take place between the PCs than most.

    We have a hot, manipulative Witch and his coven of admirers, a violent but highly protective Werewolf, and my heart-on-my-sleeve Fae. All of us have -1 in Cold so it's gonna be a hell of a game.

    Finally, finally. The last game. When we were originally working to schedule Monsterhearts we agreed that Wednesday nights would work, but our third player wanted to do every-other week alternating with Stars. I already had another game in mind I wanted to play and immediately pitched it: a 2-player+ me as GM Apocalypse World game with my partner and the CoC GM.

    God I love Apocalypse World. Our world is one where the poles slowly creeped north and south until the whole world is some degree of frozen except for a narrow band of green at the equator. Naturally that narrow band is dominated by the most violent and terrifying species that survived, while everyone else tries to eke out a living in the cold. The PCs are a traveling violinist Skinner and a Driver with an all-terrain Jeep, a dog named Mutt, and the mummified corpse of a former travelling companion that she uses to Gaze into the Psychic Maelstrom in her trunk. I forgot the last piece of post-apocalyptic fiction I absorbed was The Road until after the first people they met were keeping human beings in the basement underneath a strange Victorian house and selling them to nearby towns for food.

    Of course the basement is also a vortex for bad maelstrom shit so the newly-freed victims are gonna get up to some weird shit themselves. Not cannibalism, but I did write down the Threat type: "Pain Addicts: cause pain to themselves or others" so it's gonna be weird! Plus, the nearby hardholds just lost their main source of protein...

    Okay those are all my games right now. I've uh... kind of gone hard, and I've been lucky enough to find two people (partner + CoC GM) that are (almost?) as interested in RPGs as I am. If anyone has any questions or comments on this wall of text I'm happy to talk about them, as you can probably tell from this wall of text.

  • KadokenKadoken Giving Ends to my Friends and it Feels Stupendous Registered User regular
    Folks I named a Punisher-influenced NPC the Rook because I believe I was told by this thread it was another name for a crow and thus had the same symbology of a carrion bird. Also the plague doctor bird mask and crow’s foot symbol he paints on his armour and places he’s been.

    I just looked it up today. I have been writing a lie for months.

  • admanbadmanb unionize your workplace Seattle, WARegistered User regular
    Kadoken wrote: »
    Folks I named a Punisher-influenced NPC the Rook because I believe I was told by this thread it was another name for a crow and thus had the same symbology of a carrion bird. Also the plague doctor bird mask and crow’s foot symbol he paints on his armour and places he’s been.

    I just looked it up today. I have been writing a lie for months.

    That means it was on purpose and there's actually a second, even more clever reason why they're named Rook.

  • DelduwathDelduwath Registered User regular
    edited March 2019
    I mean, a rook is a corvid that's closely related to crows - the Wikipedia page even compares it to the carrion crow all the time. Also, here's what it says about their diet:
    It also eats cultivated cereal grain, smaller amounts of fruit, small mammals, acorns, small birds, their eggs and young, and carrion.
    I think you're in the clear.

    Delduwath on
  • DelduwathDelduwath Registered User regular
    Also, just make sure that your character only ever walks in straight, orthogonal lines, and you can justify the name that way as well.

  • KadokenKadoken Giving Ends to my Friends and it Feels Stupendous Registered User regular
    edited March 2019
    ...that brighter almost silver-looking beak does fit his plague doctor-looking helmet more.

    This is the weirdest extrapolation but I want to take the idea of the "straight, orthogonal lines" and apply it to a Rorschach-like character that has no moral compromise. The Rook is a little more complicated.

    Kadoken on
  • KadokenKadoken Giving Ends to my Friends and it Feels Stupendous Registered User regular
    edited March 2019
    Delduwath wrote: »
    I mean, a rook is a corvid that's closely related to crows - the Wikipedia page even compares it to the carrion crow all the time. Also, here's what it says about their diet:
    It also eats cultivated cereal grain, smaller amounts of fruit, small mammals, acorns, small birds, their eggs and young, and carrion.
    I think you're in the clear.

    Oh. oh. ohhhhhh.
    Yeah, that fits him.
    If you are curious why
    Content warning: Attempted suicide, familicide
    http://darkheresychainsofmalice.blogspot.com/2018/12/players-dont-read-cilleathe-headless.html

    I'd also like to preface that I do not find characters like the Punisher, his biggest influence along with Max Payne, heroic in any sense. More like monsters that happen to fight other monsters. Hence how I built the Rook.

    Kadoken on
  • GlaziusGlazius Registered User regular
    edited March 2019
    Delduwath wrote: »
    Also, just make sure that your character only ever walks in straight, orthogonal lines, and you can justify the name that way as well.

    But I thought that piece was a castle. Isn't that why it's called castling?

    EDIT: ah, no, it was named after its origins in Indian protochess, where it was named for the rukh, or roc, the legendary giant raptor. "Castle" is frankly just some silly old shorthand and I'm ashamed.

    Glazius on
  • KadokenKadoken Giving Ends to my Friends and it Feels Stupendous Registered User regular
    edited March 2019
    Another reference with the name. Rook=(Frank) Castle. I didn’t plan that.

    Oh goddammit I thought you meant the bird walked in straight lines why do I not pick up on these things.

    This is really an awful the Monarch situation.
    “You know, Monarch doesn’t have to be a butterfly. You could be like a king”
    “YES, KING OF THE BUTTERFLIES!”

    Kadoken on
  • DelduwathDelduwath Registered User regular
    Glazius wrote: »
    Delduwath wrote: »
    Also, just make sure that your character only ever walks in straight, orthogonal lines, and you can justify the name that way as well.

    But I thought that piece was a castle. Isn't that why it's called castling?

    EDIT: ah, no, it was named after its origins in Indian protochess, where it was named for the rukh, or roc, the legendary giant raptor. "Castle" is frankly just some silly old shorthand and I'm ashamed.
    Wiki says it comes from the Persian "rukh" meaning "chariot". Apparently Persian chariots were decorated to look like mini-siege towers? The history of literally every chess piece is buck-wild.

    What's especially weird for me is that I originally learned the names of chess pieces in Russian (my native language), and in Russian the rook is named after a type of boat - but still uses the shape of a little tower.

  • GlaziusGlazius Registered User regular
    Delduwath wrote: »
    Glazius wrote: »
    Delduwath wrote: »
    Also, just make sure that your character only ever walks in straight, orthogonal lines, and you can justify the name that way as well.

    But I thought that piece was a castle. Isn't that why it's called castling?

    EDIT: ah, no, it was named after its origins in Indian protochess, where it was named for the rukh, or roc, the legendary giant raptor. "Castle" is frankly just some silly old shorthand and I'm ashamed.
    Wiki says it comes from the Persian "rukh" meaning "chariot". Apparently Persian chariots were decorated to look like mini-siege towers? The history of literally every chess piece is buck-wild.

    I know, right? When they put the queen in everybody started complaining about these SJWs ruining chess.

  • PolaritiePolaritie Sleepy Registered User regular
    Glazius wrote: »
    Delduwath wrote: »
    Glazius wrote: »
    Delduwath wrote: »
    Also, just make sure that your character only ever walks in straight, orthogonal lines, and you can justify the name that way as well.

    But I thought that piece was a castle. Isn't that why it's called castling?

    EDIT: ah, no, it was named after its origins in Indian protochess, where it was named for the rukh, or roc, the legendary giant raptor. "Castle" is frankly just some silly old shorthand and I'm ashamed.
    Wiki says it comes from the Persian "rukh" meaning "chariot". Apparently Persian chariots were decorated to look like mini-siege towers? The history of literally every chess piece is buck-wild.

    I know, right? When they put the queen in everybody started complaining about these SJWs ruining chess.

    Please tell me this is actually a thing.

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  • GlaziusGlazius Registered User regular
    edited March 2019
    Polaritie wrote: »
    Glazius wrote: »
    Delduwath wrote: »
    Glazius wrote: »
    Delduwath wrote: »
    Also, just make sure that your character only ever walks in straight, orthogonal lines, and you can justify the name that way as well.

    But I thought that piece was a castle. Isn't that why it's called castling?

    EDIT: ah, no, it was named after its origins in Indian protochess, where it was named for the rukh, or roc, the legendary giant raptor. "Castle" is frankly just some silly old shorthand and I'm ashamed.
    Wiki says it comes from the Persian "rukh" meaning "chariot". Apparently Persian chariots were decorated to look like mini-siege towers? The history of literally every chess piece is buck-wild.

    I know, right? When they put the queen in everybody started complaining about these SJWs ruining chess.

    Please tell me this is actually a thing.

    IDK man, you tell me.
    Starting from Spain, this new version – called "queen's chess" (scacchi de la donna), or pejoratively "madwoman's chess" (scacchi alla rabiosa) – spread throughout Europe rapidly, partly due to the advent of the printing press and the popularity of new books on chess. The new rules faced a backlash in some quarters, ranging from anxiety over a powerful female warrior figure to frank abuse against women in general.

    Glazius on
  • KadokenKadoken Giving Ends to my Friends and it Feels Stupendous Registered User regular
    I got tree days of DH and DnD comin' up after a stressful two weeks.
    At the end of the DH adventure, I'm going to spend a fortune to send a letter back to my wife.
    Assuming I don't get stabbed in the back for being a (relative) goody-two-shoes.
    Or get executed or thrown in a dungeon for smashing a prominent religious figure's resurrected corpse with a hammer.

  • Trajan45Trajan45 Registered User regular
    edited April 2019
    EDIT: nm, saw a D&D 5e thread. Seems more appropriate.

    Trajan45 on
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  • KadokenKadoken Giving Ends to my Friends and it Feels Stupendous Registered User regular
    edited April 2019
    I had no arms out but needed a guy with a really strong gun to stop shooting so I didst a knightly dropkick. I missed.
    Also, I bought a bike and the GM let me get a sidecar so we look ridiculous.
    The techpriest holds on to me from the back with his wriggly mechadendrites when we ride. Eugh.
    I was going to tease them if they were uncomfortable with wrapping their arms around me as we ride (Chaucer is not) but he turned it around on me.

    I traded a poor quality power sword for a better grip on my warhammer. I don’t have an deeply set fear of them like chain weapons (they sound like an angry dog barking on a chain trapping young Chaucer in a corner) but I need to be able to hit.

    Kadoken on
  • KadokenKadoken Giving Ends to my Friends and it Feels Stupendous Registered User regular
    edited April 2019
    I said it before, but 5E DnD's crits are so disappointing after playing any FFG game. Like wow. Another die. I feel so powerful.
    Meanwhile over in FFG land crits, even weakened crits from DH1E to DH2E, can change the course of fights. They got 160 of the things written out based on body location and damage type and all the crits specialize in something so weapon choice matters. EOE is similar although its critical system is a little odd to me.

    Also, I got this enemy type that is somewhere between the Thing from Outer Space and a necromorph from Dead Space I would like some advice on. On top of being well armoured and tough with flexible Akira-like biological weapons from their body and spray corrosive vomit, they don't die and stay down unless all the sections of the body including legs, arms, chest, and head are destroyed making them get back up from death after a round. They are also can't be stunned, fatigued, or bled. They regenerate and can mould themselves to fit in tight spaces. One can just keep shooting at the bits after they're downed to make sure or use a flamethrower on them to get them down once and then burn them while they're down one more time. The creatures' health go back to 0 and they're back on the bottom of critical damage (0) when they "die".

    Am I being too easy with them by automatically counting a random body part being destroyed when the players damage them enough that it would cause death in other creatures when the hit(s) had damaged an already destroyed body part? Should I have to make them hope they get lucky on rolls to hit all the body sections (there are six) or get them to make called shots (specifying a body part at a penalty) to damage different specific parts instead of making it automatic?

    Edit: My players decided that because one of their characters could not keep down a sip of coffee they instead injected it right into another character's veins.

    Kadoken on
  • SteelhawkSteelhawk Registered User regular
    edited April 2019
    I might not have quorum for my next D&D game (alas) but that might give me an opportunity to try and GM a Star Wars one-shot! I have loose ideas around a badass pair of Jedi running around and being awesome. But I'm not too familiar with the FFG system beyond character creation and "low level" play.

    Whats a good starting XP number for badass Jedi types? Not Masters, but solid Knight level heroics. (Edit: I see the "Knight level" +150XP here, but I don't quite think that's enough...)
    Can anyone point me to towards a suitable statted out Dark Jedi/Sith/Inquisitor BAMF to use as an BBEG somewhere on the internets?

    Steelhawk on
  • KadokenKadoken Giving Ends to my Friends and it Feels Stupendous Registered User regular
    I'm really liking a thing my friend is doing as a GM. He is doing the undercover black ops agent thing really well for us. He's really got us in this space of us figuring out how far we can go before we crash the mission and how do we get the most out of it before it crashes. Right now, I and my fellows Inquisitorial have gone in half-disguise to bust up a xenos artifact ring masquerading as a place people just happen to keep finding holy relics from. Half disguise because I still speak in my Chaucer/Shakespearean diction and call myself by my real name because no one knows what a Wyld is. What I am really enjoying are the ample opportunities to keep getting in deeper to scoop more heretics up at the risk of being caught and losing the chance. Do I stop at just the guy and his boss selling the stuff? Do we quit the charade at an upcoming auction where a lot of folks can be caught? Do we keep going in further and actually start working for a clearly Chaos-adjacent organization before setting a deeper trap? It's really awesome.

  • italianranmaitalianranma Registered User regular
    I've been asked to run some L5R at my FLGS: great! I'm also permanently leaving the area to go to work in Japan in about 2 months: also great, but a little unfortunate for the timing :(. My goal is going to be to start this group and then leave them with the tools to begin their own campaign. Now most of them are vaguely familiar with the property, or at least the general themes and tropes of Feudal Fantasy Japan, so what I'd like to do is to create a series of introductory games where each game explores one of the factions of Rokugan and emphasizes an aspect of the game. I actually have had this idea for a while and wrote the first part of eight which focuses on gameplay and narrative basics through the eyes of Ronin.

    Story 1 "Ronin" Synopsis:
    The PCs as part of a roving gang of Ronin attempt to find employment or cash prior to the onset of winter. Traveling with a sick father figure NPC (who serves as the GMs mouthpiece to organically provide information, and also as the emotional driving weight of this story) they come to a small farming village in Crane territory only to find it bustling with new prosperity. The village elder is eager to hire the Ronin as he fears bandits will attack once the fall harvest is complete. After driving off the bandits the PCs discover the village elder has an ulterior motive: he has illegally grown a large amount of poppies which he hopes to sell to the not-so-distant Scorpion clan. But the refinement of the drugs has taken much longer than anticipated and Crane Samurai will arrive any day to collect the rice harvest. Discovery of the drugs will lead to the execution of the village elder and worse: the PCs won't get paid. The PCs then must concoct a plan to delay or drive off the Crane samurai, or some other scheme that provides them with a basic amount of ryo for their and Hancho's needs.

    I already ran a version of this, and have been able to refine it a little. The goals for the game are to introduce the world from the perspective of the marginalized, to guide the PCs through the basic mechanics, and to establish the general themes of Samurai drama, namely the conflict between ethical behavior (honor) and personal desires (ninjyou).

    For the rest of the games I want to focus on a single clan at a time and their associated specialty within the game's mechanics, with each story building into the next. So naturally the next story focuses on the Crane clan, Rokugani aesthetics, and dueling in the physical and social arenas. That being said I don't have a strong hook for this story, other than I want there to be a thematic undercurrent of "which is mightier, the pen or the sword." or in other words I'd like the PCs who focus on dueling in the physical sense to be in conflict with the PCs who focus on the social aspects. Maybe with a meta-narrative on compromising or cooperating and why it might be necessary sometimes to ask for help, again reemphasizing that overarching theme of balancing honor and personal desires. I should mention that for each of these games I'm providing the players with premade characters and personal goals to accomplish which will be hidden from the other players. Also, I'm not sure where to guide the story to next: should it be the Lion to focus on warfare or the Unicorn to focus on... I'm not exactly sure? I think a good progression is Lion (warfare/glory) > Phoenix (magic/religion) > Crab (shadowlands/injury) > Scorpion (political intrigue/loyalty) > Imperial family (culmination of themes and set up/handoff for the campaign), but I don't know where to fit the Unicorn in or what topic they should introduce. I also don't know a good place to insert Dragon, though I know I want to focus on investigation and introduce meta plot of the Kolat.

    As always, suggestions and critiques are welcome.

    飛べねぇ豚はただの豚だ。
  • KadokenKadoken Giving Ends to my Friends and it Feels Stupendous Registered User regular
    edited April 2019
    I have fallen out of love of playing the NPC I made influenced by the Punisher. I think I actually played him very well in the sense that to the party, he’s similar to how say Daredevil and more non-lethal vigilantes view Frank as a dangerous liability left on his own. I consider it a feat to make this a reality for a bunch of black ops agents with a lot less scruples. He’s very lethal but unhinged (yet not in a braying jackass way) and not very predictable to the point he almost derailed the adventure. Metawise, I actually had a backup which, thinking back, had I wanted to stretch this out for more sessions I would have set an alternative path to the end including the backup as an included main part. That would have explained a lot more of why the bad guys’ thing is a big deal and what they’re doing exactly. I have been building up stuff beforehand and they have faced these types of folks in gameplay before (with a nurgle marine and expertly talking to tricking a boss out of fighting them among other things) so it’s not all just telling them the stuff is bad. I kind of had to awkwardly bridge between the climax and the piece before because the way I made another NPC he wouldn’t have all the answers to solidify the threat to the party leading to some kind of finicky extrapolation by their boss getting them to the next part. I wouldn’t say I’m disappointed because they’re getting to where they need to go but it could have been done better.

    I did make this adventure on a forced time crunch in a way. I need to resolve this series of three campaigns with adventures inside them. I call it the Malice series. This is the second to last of the second campaign and before we all graduate or go our own separate ways I would like to definitively finish this thing we’ve been doing for a couple years. I really loathe having no closure.

    Back up to the opening sentence, I think this NPC would be more interesting to play as a PC. I feel like we have seen a lot of the brooding, remorseful, death-seeking, vigilante types in media that there’s not a lot to do with that as an NPC that does not change and expressly does not want to change (even if he could be forced to change with a little sedation and mindwiping and boom you got not-Frank Castle: Agent of Shield). On its face by itself is not quite engaging in this sense without tangible buildup via gameplay to players. Fun to read and watch, not working so much in the game as is. Someone who has more consequences in their actions over a long period of time as a PC that maybe could undergo change with an arc would be more interesting. Since, you know, they aren’t automatically designed as a liability. Although, a long term person like that who wasn’t abusive to the other players could be interesting if everyone agreed to have it. Of that type of character, there’s a lot more work needing to be done around them to make them interesting but before that point they’re shooty-angryman. They can be engaging, but it’s takes time and a lot more stuff then I had given.

    If this character had a more antagonistic relationship to the party like I originally planned with the idea and a lot more time and sessions to spend on that idea they could be a lot more interesting. Something remniscent of Rorschach with his self destructive nature that is less shorthand and more apparent to the players in gameplay built over time so the players have a tangible reason to be like, “okay, what the fuck is with this guy.” Lost leads because of him, dead ends because of him, actively chasing him because of his reputation as a clinic bombing terrorist possibly pointing him out to be a Chaos cultist, and possible chases or outright combat where he would at least try to stun them and run so they would be more curious. With time, there is a campaign where running parallel to the main plot a relationship could be built up with the players that builds up to the point of cooperation even if it would be strained cooperation. Right now he’s not much different from any other NPC that’s like, “I have a problem please help.” I originally planned for him to have half a chance to becoming outright hostile to the PCs since he wouldn’t want to work for the inquisition. He would find his personal mission working on the streets more important than the higher level dangers the players investigate. Right now it’s not like he came out of nowhere in asking them for help. They saved a bunch of people they didn’t need to and possibly wouldn’t have a want to in order to earn his trust. The whole thing including that and beyond that has not been an abject failure but it could be much more than it is right now.

    The guy and the stuff around him is maybe a concept to take another look at and change the guy’s character if need be for a new group of people. Right now at least it’s a sort of alpha test of what works and what doesn’t. Always learning.

    Again, self-hamstrung by my need to shorten the time taken up by the adventures and not having experience in this kind of thing before. He definitely would work way better as someone introduced in a newer campaign then where my guys are at right now.

    Edit 2: other than the hearsay stuff of a guy doing things on the street and on the radio and bringing him up to the point they did actually try to look him up on their own volition before the adventure which I am happy about, I did try to make give a tangible gameplay experience in two attempts. Both failed because it wasn’t their characters. One failed because they didn’t know how to play him and it all fell to shit and had to be ended early. It didn’t help that the shit-fall one would have only worked in a longer adventure or campaign where they were searching him out and it took more than one very good roll to find him. The idea being if they won with him, the building he assaulted would be destroyed but have different clues the if they lost with him and it was intact wih people to talk to. The other one felt kind of throw-away. Another related group they had met with met with him, beat him up, but then couldn’t get out-of-character knowledge because it wouldn’t had made sense for them to.

    Edit 2: although that third campaign, while lacking the background experience of going through the first two, would be completely doable with a fresh break of players and new folks and not diminish their experience if this group couldn’t finish it.

    Edit 3: One thing I could have done is made him much more unhinged and cause more collateral damage meaning the party has more reason to engage him. There’s a cult blossoming around him that they’re afraid of turning into a full blown death cult. I feel like GMs with more sense and that did not want to stick to a specific vision would take advantage of that and make him actually accept cultists and use them to further his goals. I also felt like that has been done before and not the type of thing I wanted to do. Having him follow his influence and stay strictly alone and attempting to dissuade cultists and not cause a bunch of collateral damage to me gave the players more conflict in what to do with him. He’s not not a swell guy who can be left alone with no worries but it’s also not as clear cut as using him then killing him or mind-wiping him at the end.

    Kadoken on
  • tzeentchlingtzeentchling Doctor of Rocks OaklandRegistered User regular
    I've been asked to run some L5R at my FLGS: great! I'm also permanently leaving the area to go to work in Japan in about 2 months: also great, but a little unfortunate for the timing :(. My goal is going to be to start this group and then leave them with the tools to begin their own campaign. Now most of them are vaguely familiar with the property, or at least the general themes and tropes of Feudal Fantasy Japan, so what I'd like to do is to create a series of introductory games where each game explores one of the factions of Rokugan and emphasizes an aspect of the game. I actually have had this idea for a while and wrote the first part of eight which focuses on gameplay and narrative basics through the eyes of Ronin.

    Story 1 "Ronin" Synopsis:
    The PCs as part of a roving gang of Ronin attempt to find employment or cash prior to the onset of winter. Traveling with a sick father figure NPC (who serves as the GMs mouthpiece to organically provide information, and also as the emotional driving weight of this story) they come to a small farming village in Crane territory only to find it bustling with new prosperity. The village elder is eager to hire the Ronin as he fears bandits will attack once the fall harvest is complete. After driving off the bandits the PCs discover the village elder has an ulterior motive: he has illegally grown a large amount of poppies which he hopes to sell to the not-so-distant Scorpion clan. But the refinement of the drugs has taken much longer than anticipated and Crane Samurai will arrive any day to collect the rice harvest. Discovery of the drugs will lead to the execution of the village elder and worse: the PCs won't get paid. The PCs then must concoct a plan to delay or drive off the Crane samurai, or some other scheme that provides them with a basic amount of ryo for their and Hancho's needs.

    I already ran a version of this, and have been able to refine it a little. The goals for the game are to introduce the world from the perspective of the marginalized, to guide the PCs through the basic mechanics, and to establish the general themes of Samurai drama, namely the conflict between ethical behavior (honor) and personal desires (ninjyou).

    For the rest of the games I want to focus on a single clan at a time and their associated specialty within the game's mechanics, with each story building into the next. So naturally the next story focuses on the Crane clan, Rokugani aesthetics, and dueling in the physical and social arenas. That being said I don't have a strong hook for this story, other than I want there to be a thematic undercurrent of "which is mightier, the pen or the sword." or in other words I'd like the PCs who focus on dueling in the physical sense to be in conflict with the PCs who focus on the social aspects. Maybe with a meta-narrative on compromising or cooperating and why it might be necessary sometimes to ask for help, again reemphasizing that overarching theme of balancing honor and personal desires. I should mention that for each of these games I'm providing the players with premade characters and personal goals to accomplish which will be hidden from the other players. Also, I'm not sure where to guide the story to next: should it be the Lion to focus on warfare or the Unicorn to focus on... I'm not exactly sure? I think a good progression is Lion (warfare/glory) > Phoenix (magic/religion) > Crab (shadowlands/injury) > Scorpion (political intrigue/loyalty) > Imperial family (culmination of themes and set up/handoff for the campaign), but I don't know where to fit the Unicorn in or what topic they should introduce. I also don't know a good place to insert Dragon, though I know I want to focus on investigation and introduce meta plot of the Kolat.

    As always, suggestions and critiques are welcome.

    One thing that I've been workshopping in the back of my head for my eventual L5R campaign is a conflict between Phoenix and Unicorn shugenja. This allows you to highlight not just the magic/religion of the Phoenix, but how they tend to be know-it-alls with over-inflated egos when it comes to magic, as well as hammering home the point that while the Unicorn are trying to fit in to Rokugani society (still, after 200+ years), they really are different and for a good reason - and emphasize how Rokugan tends to treat things that don't "fit in" well enough. If you want to work in the current lore this works too, as the Phoenix are blaming the Unicorn meishodo magic for all the weird things happening with the kami lately and pushed for it to be outlawed in the first place.

  • Mostlyjoe13Mostlyjoe13 Evil, Evil, Jump for joy! Registered User regular
    Any good suggestions for a lower powered but NOT d20/level based fantasy game.

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  • KadokenKadoken Giving Ends to my Friends and it Feels Stupendous Registered User regular
    Any good suggestions for a lower powered but NOT d20/level based fantasy game.

    The new Warhammer Fantasy RPG I believe is point-buy leveling again and not a d20. You can be the man with the dogs and die to plague.
    Genesys I assume scales how you want it to and has a point-buy system as well
    Earthdawn I don't really know but since it's Fantasy Shadowrun probably d6s

  • ArdentArdent Down UpsideRegistered User regular
    Any good suggestions for a lower powered but NOT d20/level based fantasy game.
    Straight up high fantasy?

    There's D6 Fantasy, Savage Worlds' fantasy splats, Burning Wheel, Fate Accelerated (I don't recommend full-fledged Fate to anyone who isn't comfortable doing mechanical work), Genesys works fine (and Realms of Terrinoth is a pretty complete fantasy game built on Genesys if you don't want to do the design work)...

    There's also Harn, which I've never even seen played. RuneQuest Glorantha, which I've never played but I have played RuneQuest which is...serviceable.

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  • Pablo the PenguinPablo the Penguin Registered User regular
    So I'm playing D&D 4th Edition with my friends. In my experience with D&D, each session has a point where someone gets bad luck, or an encounter is unbalanced, and there are several turns of failed dice rolls in a row. It's frustrating when it happens, but my friends get over it. The problem is that these runs of bad luck occur with such regular consistency that it has affected how I feel about the game. I no longer feel like my character is competent at anything, since he needs the dice's permission to actually do anything. It's like I'm sitting at a slot machine hoping that I get to hit the enemy, or climb the wall, or whatever. Looking this problem up online hasn't helped, as I keep finding the same advice over and over again. Mostly it's about how the DM should describe failure in a narrative way (he already does, it doesn't help after the 3rd missed attack in a row) or how failure is fun (if that statement were always true, I wouldn't have this problem in the first place). Has anyone else experienced this, or have any advice on what I can do about it?

  • Endless_SerpentsEndless_Serpents Registered User regular
    edited April 2019
    I strongly maintain that while everyone can have tons of fun with D&D (any edition), D&D isn’t fun in combat or in using skills (which is everything save the general fantasy idea). Multiple counts of missing (which is just wasting your turn, nothing happens) in a row are pretty common from my own experience and from other’s recounts. It’s a glaring flaw in the system. Other games have concepts like “failing forward”, mixed results on a lower roll, or traditionally failed rolls supplying experience or unlocking a counter or power.

    I won’t point to other systems, because that’s the obvious option that is harder to implement with groups than it should be.

    Instead here’s some homebrew ideas I slowly, painfully managed to get going with the people I know.
    - If you’re proficient in a skill or tool, you reroll a roll of 1. You can’t critically fail at what you’re good at.
    - If you’ve got a proficiency it’s the DM’s job to outright tell you something useful you’d spot on sight, without having to make you roll. Sure, roll to gain more information, or more detailed insight, but a herbalist should be able to see deadly nightshade if it’s in front of them. Likewise an acrobat doesn’t have to make the roll at all to leap over the fence that his friend the dwarf sumo does.
    - As a bonus action, you can use a skill. So you can try talking to the enemy during your turn while still attacking, or parkour over a table during your movement. Sure, some rules lawyer will say turns are 6 seconds long in D&D, but playing by Spider-Man rules is always more fun.
    - But also just try to get everyone to play a looser system, or at least be looser with your D&D. Hard encounters can be made easier if the DM just says “yes, but” or “yes, and” to all your crazy ideas. Push the orc off the cliff as a sneak attack! No, you don’t need a special move that says “move target up to 12.5 feet”. DMs should allow it because it’s more fun!

    Endless_Serpents on
  • webguy20webguy20 I spend too much time on the Internet Registered User regular
    Yea if you're having trouble in 4th ed then thats rough, as it had the best "on a miss" rules out of all of them. A lot of abilities do half damage on a miss or other things. It might be worth building towards those kind of attacks. Also the DM could look into the escalation die from 13th age.

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  • DarkPrimusDarkPrimus Registered User regular
    d20 systems can feel really swingy and D&D, regardless of edition, don't have any "failing forward" mechanics natively in them.

    Are you playing with normal stat blocks/stat buy?

  • MsAnthropyMsAnthropy The Lady of Pain Breaks the Rhythm, Breaks the Rhythm, Breaks the Rhythm The City of FlowersRegistered User regular
    DarkPrimus wrote: »
    d20 systems can feel really swingy and D&D, regardless of edition, don't have any "failing forward" mechanics natively in them.

    Are you playing with normal stat blocks/stat buy?

    The math of 4e is very tight, too. If the DM does anything different with regard to magic item distribution (without using inherent bonuses), or pushing encounters past a level+2 difficulty on a regular basis, or if the players don’t start with at least a 16 in their primary stat, then things start to break down.

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  • DarkPrimusDarkPrimus Registered User regular
    Inherent Bonuses are the truth and the light for 4e. Besides the fact that it means that the GM doesn't have to constantly be trying to keep track of who has what for magical bonuses on all their shit, it means players can hold onto a particular item that they like the effects of without knowing that keeping it is screwing them over on the to-hit math.

  • DevoutlyApatheticDevoutlyApathetic Registered User regular
    The other thing in 4e is that positioning really matters. You can miss but if you put yourself in the right position you're still going to be hampering your enemies best way to hurt you and aiding your allies plans just by being there.

    Finally, if you have a player who really hates missing there are options to combat that. A dagger rogue can push their miss number down into the single digits. Avengers get permanent advantage. A starting 18 is probably not worth it for optimal play but if you like hitting? Bite the bullet and pay for it. Just by making the choices to prioritize the thing you really want you can make measurable strides towards getting it.

    What rulebooks are you using? The later "expertise" feats were a sort of stealth errata and are ridiculously good. Everybody should take one as they're all +1 to hit.

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