So just fyi for folks, the BattleTech: Clan Invasion KickStarter has about 4 hours left and is on the verge of hitting $2.5 MILLION pledged.
That's huge! Like top 100 KS projects in the history of the site (top 50 games)
And there's tons and tons of swag in the pledge levels, and close to 100 new mechs to snatch up.
Also huge: The ten pages of errata for the physical copies of 6th edition Shadowrun.
Like wow, you could support the Big Swag or you could make do with infinite battletech that already exists and not support the company that continually short changes free lancers and puts out shabby products.
Can you elaborate on this?
CGL's reputation is in the toilet because of their own poor decisions. Including not paying freelancers in the wake of a significant loss of funds; ostensibly this was due to embezzlement but I wouldn't call their case conclusive. But they also continuously churn out sub-standard garbage that's clearly paid for on the cheap. SR6 is so bad that a significant portion of the Shadowrun fanbase has sworn to never buy any CGL products ever again.
SR6 is out?
What's so awful? Obviously I haven't heard anything about it.
Depends on where you sit, but nobody's happy with it. Whether it's the Edge rules (which either make Edge completely mandatory or worse than ever, depending on your view), the Matrix rules (replete with completely useless rolls because of course), the new race rules (where you now essentially only pick human if you're a dumbass rather than saving your priorities for other expenditures), or the fact that there still doesn't appear to be any reason not to be a Mystic Adept...
Honestly it's just another edition of Shadowrun. But it's another edition of Shadowrun in an era where "just another edition" isn't going to be treated very well.
Today in Symbaroum the group got themselves hired by the Ordo Magicka to conduct the initial investigation of a sink hole that opened in the city and spewed out corrupted barbarians.
The Ordo Magicka sent with them Kullinan, a centuries old master of the order. Whose a a pensive man who loves researching and seeing how stuff works.
After some exploring they came across the Black Crystal Isle: A corrupted, enchanted font of mystical power. Currently surrounded by 30 wraiths of the barbarian clan that attacked the city and occupied by the barbarian witch Bayela.
Bayela explained that her clan had attacked because they presumed the sink hole opening was the Ambrian's finally coming for the corrupted clan in exile. They then used the time brought by those warriors to retreat into the forest through a tunnel network. Bayela had stayed behind because she was old and just wished to die where she'd lived.
Kullinan wanted to test the strength of the island and the witch and so attacked. The wraith's started to swirl in and a big fight was about to happen... until our large warrior lady bashed Kullinan over the head with the blunt side of her sword. Knocking the old man out.
Bayela gave them leave to exit and insisted they tell everyone on the surface the caves were a lost, corrupted cause.
Then the group (while dutifully searching the arch mage they had just knocked out) found Kullinan had a perfect memory ring.
Queue ten minutes of discussion over what to do:
1) Can't let him live because they'd be hung.
2) Break his neck and leave him at the bottom of the sink hole, say he died falling.
3) Drown him in the lake but risk Bayela's wrath.
4) The eventual winner: Feed him to the giant, blind albino cave lizards.
And so the heroes of our tale assaulted their employer and fed hundreds of years of knowledge and political influence to lizards.
Explore the lands of Eberron in this campaign sourcebook for the world’s greatest roleplaying game.
This book provides everything players and Dungeon Masters need to play Dungeons & Dragons in Eberron—a war-torn world filled with magic-fueled technology, airships and lightning trains, where noir-inspired mystery meets swashbuckling adventure. Will Eberron enter a prosperous new age or will the shadow of war descend once again?
• Dive straight into your pulp adventures with easy-to-use locations, complete with maps of floating castles, skyscrapers, and more.
• Explore Sharn, a city of skyscrapers, airships, and noirish intrigue and a crossroads for the world’s war-ravaged peoples.
• Include a campaign for characters venturing into the Mournland, a mist-cloaked, corpse-littered land twisted by magic.
• Meld magic and invention to craft objects of wonder as an artificer—the first official class to be released for fifth edition D&D since the Player’s Handbook.
• Flesh out your characters with a new D&D game element called a group patron—a background for your whole party.
• Explore 16 new race/subrace options including dragonmarks, which magically transform certain members of the races in the Player’s Handbook.
• Confront horrific monsters born from the world’s devastating wars.
I like the idea of a group background. It would probably help give the players a good theme.
Travelller has the idea of like a campaign skill pack. After character generation the group picks one that matches their campaign, whether it’s military, trading or what have you.
It then gives about five or six skills at a mediocre level that the group can distribute as they wish. Meaning that even if your characters a grade A stoic soldier they’ll still have a bit of trading knowledge so they can take part in the average day to day.
While sitting down to construct my next session I shifted away from a naval battle with the Merfolk.
Instead I am going to treat my players to the Championship of the Maelstrom, a martial arts tournament.
Damn my love of Dragonball has won out this time!
At the end of all of these chapters will your players just pick whichever character they had the most fun with and jam them all together for a full-length campaign, or are you just doing this episodic stuff as a kind of experiment?
I just spent like two hours prettying up a nice, organized PDF version of a playbook that I've rescued from a homebrew setting I stumbled across. Basically a reskinned Masks. The original version I found was missing an entire basic move and had tons of other mistakes. I fixed it up once, but this time I went back in with some nicer fonts and made it look extra special.
And then exporting it into a PDF ruined some of the formatting. I think I need a break before trying to figure out how to fix that.
Edit: I think complaining about it helped me fix it, as always.
Now that I've got that one as a base I was able to redo another two much faster. And doing them helped me fix a few mistakes on the first one as well. Only about a quarter done now, but I think the rest will go pretty fast now that I know exactly what to do.
I was wondering if I'd be able to post the finished versions here. As far as I can tell the Powered by the Apocalypse system seems to be open for people to use as they see fit, where you just need to credit them if you try to sell something based off of it. I'm working on finding the original creator of this particular hack right now, to see what they might have to say as well. It's about 50/50 their words to mine by now, after all the rewriting and proofreading I've done.
What's the protocol for something like this @Jacobkosh? Or whoever I should ask. I was considering dropping a link to a Drive with my files here, then trying to set up a game through this thread (or maybe over in ODAM/CF for record keeping purposes). I think I've got roll20 figured out by now, or I suppose I could try something PbP. A few test runs to get some input mostly, but maybe something more serious if people get interested and we have a good time.
Our GM is out of town next week. Anyone have any recommendations for one shot games for a group that has never tried anything outside of DnD and can be played over Roll20?
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
Fiasco is one of the absolute best one shot games, but it can be difficult for people who are very used to D&D for a whole host of reasons. But I'd still throw the idea out there to the group and see if anyone bites.
If you want more traditional narrative stuff, Lady Blackbird is good and doesn't require any prep, or you could do something like Honey Heist (or one of the hundreds of other games in its ilk), which is super basic but tends to require a lot of improvisational ability from the GM.
Our GM is out of town next week. Anyone have any recommendations for one shot games for a group that has never tried anything outside of DnD and can be played over Roll20?
Our GM is out of town next week. Anyone have any recommendations for one shot games for a group that has never tried anything outside of DnD and can be played over Roll20?
This is like a very easy intro to softer games like Fiasco. You've got a deck of cards, the first 14 (?) or so are basically explaining the ground rules and expectations for players. Then the game consists of question prompts that you're meant to answer, in character. Through playing the game you learn about your character and the Queen you all love.
It is a little awkward to explain but folks grok it almost immediately when they sit down and do it.
While sitting down to construct my next session I shifted away from a naval battle with the Merfolk.
Instead I am going to treat my players to the Championship of the Maelstrom, a martial arts tournament.
Damn my love of Dragonball has won out this time!
At the end of all of these chapters will your players just pick whichever character they had the most fun with and jam them all together for a full-length campaign, or are you just doing this episodic stuff as a kind of experiment?
The former!
And then their other characters can be back-up characters should their primary be killed.
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
Our GM is out of town next week. Anyone have any recommendations for one shot games for a group that has never tried anything outside of DnD and can be played over Roll20?
Everyone is John is pretty fun. It's pretty much rpg being john malchovitch
DepressperadoI just wanted to see you laughingin the pizza rainRegistered Userregular
now that I'm not saddled with deadlines and the anxiety of actually performing as the DM
I'm making mad progress on this possibly never to be played Starfinder game
I got detailed maps and backstory and NPCs and loot and shit, and they're properly organized into Episodes, each of which has a theme song that I'll play while going over their mission briefings and stuff
Hmm, I could either get eight hours' sleep tonight, or I could work out how to introduce Baba O'Riley into my campaign as a witch with a walking house who rules over a wasteland populated by teenagers
Hmm, I could either get eight hours' sleep tonight, or I could work out how to introduce Baba O'Riley into my campaign as a witch with a walking house who rules over a wasteland populated by teenagers
Hmm, I could either get eight hours' sleep tonight, or I could work out how to introduce Baba O'Riley into my campaign as a witch with a walking house who rules over a wasteland populated by teenagers
"As you settle down for your long rest, you think you hear the faint strains of an organ playing on the wind... but you don't know of any settlements for miles and miles, never mind ones with the population and resources to have a church with such an instrument installed."
"It is difficult to sleep as the organ continues to play through the night. You feel at times that it may be getting closer, but it's difficult to say. The pattern is somehow repetitive and yet not monotonous, and you find it difficult to tune out."
I still don't understand what fiasco is, or how the game works.
The game is fairly simple to explain, actually. Fiasco is GM-less tabletop role-playing game, basically "what if a Coen Brothers film RPG?" You utilize scenario playbooks when playing it, so the setting for a game of Fiasco can vary from a modern-day Atlantic City to a far-flung space station about to be sucked into a black hole, to a badly-managed urban zoo on the brink of financial ruin, to a Gold Rush boom town... the sky's the limit, basically. There's literally dozens of free scenarios on DriveThruRPG, never mind all the other ones that can be gotten for a couple of dollars.
Dice are rolled to generate characters and their relationships together, but other than that it's all improv, essentially. During each player's scenes, they are awarded a positive or negative die by another player to represent if they feel that the scene being played is going to resolve in the character's favor or not. By the end of the game, you roll all the positive and negative dice you have in front of you and total them up to determine how horrible of a fate your character ultimately suffers.
There's a bit more to it than that, obviously, but only a little bit. It's truly a one-shot game that can be explained and played fully in a single night, and something that people without any roleplaying experience can quickly grasp and enjoy.
gavindelThe reason all your softwareis brokenRegistered Userregular
More than 20 game sessions ago, I gave my rogue a sword that was proof of the true king. Quite unrelated, I also murdered his parents and left his brother missing in action.
Now the party broke into Mechanist Protocol Alpha, rescued the rogue's brother and all the other prisoners, had a mecha fight with tanks and a giant spidermech Metal Gear rip-off, and charged away from the mountain base as it exploded. They broke through enemy lines back into Monarchist territory, and they marched the stolen mecha right back to the Monarchist capital in a wave of triumph and heroism.
The Monarchists believe in the great man theory, and they pined for the heir to their lost king. To see the enemy's weapon commandeered to break the very back of the enemy forces? This was their dream.
The pilots? The rogue and his brother. (Luckily, they're drift compatible.)
On the way back to the capital, the dwarf fighter finally figured out that the rogue's sword was, in fact, the sword of the next king.
So does the rogue's brother.
On the day of the big triumph, the rogue's brother tries to fast talk the dwarf into handing over the sword of kings. She agrees on the condition he give it back to the rogue after. He agrees.
The two brothers walk into the Monarchist council. The brother plants the sword of kings into the table, turns, and declares himself the lost king.
The dwarf points out that the sword was found by the rogue.
So the brother turns to the rogue with a grin and says, "Yes, my sword, which he held for me. Didn't he?"
And the rogue has to choose: contradict his brother for the throne or declare his brother king.
I would describe Fiasco less as a roleplaying game and more as guided improv. All of the "gameplay" is really just a random generator for characters and scenes, which are then handled strictly by improv.
I don't think it's bad, I just don't think it's a "tabletop RPG".
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
I consider character generation a full half of the game of Fiasco, so the fact that it's the significantly more dice driven section doesn't really phase me that much - coming up with characters and how they connect and building that world is a part of the game, moreso than it is in many other tabletop RPGs.
One thing I've been a bit lax on in past D&D sessions is note-taking - ongoing quests, clues, suspicions, people's names etc. I've tended to just assume that other players are keeping track of that stuff (and usually they are, because I play with some extremely organised nerds) but I'd like to start doing better in that regard. Do folks have any systems or tricks they use for keeping their notes organised and easily referrable? Keep in mind that I prefer pen-and-paper when it comes to D&D, and with my dice tower, character sheet and spell cards already taking up a chunk of table-space, I don't want to go much larger than, say, a reporter-style notepad.
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
So the campaign I am playing in is a little irritating. Super on rails; not a lot of character stuff. I think a couple of players are getting frustrated.
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admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
One thing I've been a bit lax on in past D&D sessions is note-taking - ongoing quests, clues, suspicions, people's names etc. I've tended to just assume that other players are keeping track of that stuff (and usually they are, because I play with some extremely organised nerds) but I'd like to start doing better in that regard. Do folks have any systems or tricks they use for keeping their notes organised and easily referrable? Keep in mind that I prefer pen-and-paper when it comes to D&D, and with my dice tower, character sheet and spell cards already taking up a chunk of table-space, I don't want to go much larger than, say, a reporter-style notepad.
Almost all of my sessions end in at least twenty minutes of just general chatter. During that just have a note pad out so you can see what aspects of the game people are talking about and engaging with.
One thing I've been a bit lax on in past D&D sessions is note-taking - ongoing quests, clues, suspicions, people's names etc. I've tended to just assume that other players are keeping track of that stuff (and usually they are, because I play with some extremely organised nerds) but I'd like to start doing better in that regard. Do folks have any systems or tricks they use for keeping their notes organised and easily referrable? Keep in mind that I prefer pen-and-paper when it comes to D&D, and with my dice tower, character sheet and spell cards already taking up a chunk of table-space, I don't want to go much larger than, say, a reporter-style notepad.
Almost all of my sessions end in at least twenty minutes of just general chatter. During that just have a note pad out so you can see what aspects of the game people are talking about and engaging with.
Oh I'm playing, not DMing. I'm thinking more: Is it better to keep chronological notes of key events each sessions and then highlight stuff, or have pre-divided sections for people, places, quests and so forth?
Posts
Honestly it's just another edition of Shadowrun. But it's another edition of Shadowrun in an era where "just another edition" isn't going to be treated very well.
The Ordo Magicka sent with them Kullinan, a centuries old master of the order. Whose a a pensive man who loves researching and seeing how stuff works.
After some exploring they came across the Black Crystal Isle: A corrupted, enchanted font of mystical power. Currently surrounded by 30 wraiths of the barbarian clan that attacked the city and occupied by the barbarian witch Bayela.
Bayela explained that her clan had attacked because they presumed the sink hole opening was the Ambrian's finally coming for the corrupted clan in exile. They then used the time brought by those warriors to retreat into the forest through a tunnel network. Bayela had stayed behind because she was old and just wished to die where she'd lived.
Kullinan wanted to test the strength of the island and the witch and so attacked. The wraith's started to swirl in and a big fight was about to happen... until our large warrior lady bashed Kullinan over the head with the blunt side of her sword. Knocking the old man out.
Bayela gave them leave to exit and insisted they tell everyone on the surface the caves were a lost, corrupted cause.
Then the group (while dutifully searching the arch mage they had just knocked out) found Kullinan had a perfect memory ring.
Queue ten minutes of discussion over what to do:
1) Can't let him live because they'd be hung.
2) Break his neck and leave him at the bottom of the sink hole, say he died falling.
3) Drown him in the lake but risk Bayela's wrath.
4) The eventual winner: Feed him to the giant, blind albino cave lizards.
And so the heroes of our tale assaulted their employer and fed hundreds of years of knowledge and political influence to lizards.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0786966890/
Product descripton:
DIESEL
Against the Fall of Night Playtest
Nasty, Brutish, and Short
Instead I am going to treat my players to the Championship of the Maelstrom, a martial arts tournament.
Damn my love of Dragonball has won out this time!
Yeah, I'd be down for that too
Satans..... hints.....
Travelller has the idea of like a campaign skill pack. After character generation the group picks one that matches their campaign, whether it’s military, trading or what have you.
It then gives about five or six skills at a mediocre level that the group can distribute as they wish. Meaning that even if your characters a grade A stoic soldier they’ll still have a bit of trading knowledge so they can take part in the average day to day.
At the end of all of these chapters will your players just pick whichever character they had the most fun with and jam them all together for a full-length campaign, or are you just doing this episodic stuff as a kind of experiment?
Now that I've got that one as a base I was able to redo another two much faster. And doing them helped me fix a few mistakes on the first one as well. Only about a quarter done now, but I think the rest will go pretty fast now that I know exactly what to do.
I was wondering if I'd be able to post the finished versions here. As far as I can tell the Powered by the Apocalypse system seems to be open for people to use as they see fit, where you just need to credit them if you try to sell something based off of it. I'm working on finding the original creator of this particular hack right now, to see what they might have to say as well. It's about 50/50 their words to mine by now, after all the rewriting and proofreading I've done.
What's the protocol for something like this @Jacobkosh? Or whoever I should ask. I was considering dropping a link to a Drive with my files here, then trying to set up a game through this thread (or maybe over in ODAM/CF for record keeping purposes). I think I've got roll20 figured out by now, or I suppose I could try something PbP. A few test runs to get some input mostly, but maybe something more serious if people get interested and we have a good time.
PSN: Robo_Wizard1
If you want more traditional narrative stuff, Lady Blackbird is good and doesn't require any prep, or you could do something like Honey Heist (or one of the hundreds of other games in its ilk), which is super basic but tends to require a lot of improvisational ability from the GM.
Fiasco, using the Dragon Slayers scenario book?
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
For the Queen.
This is like a very easy intro to softer games like Fiasco. You've got a deck of cards, the first 14 (?) or so are basically explaining the ground rules and expectations for players. Then the game consists of question prompts that you're meant to answer, in character. Through playing the game you learn about your character and the Queen you all love.
It is a little awkward to explain but folks grok it almost immediately when they sit down and do it.
The former!
And then their other characters can be back-up characters should their primary be killed.
Everyone is John is pretty fun. It's pretty much rpg being john malchovitch
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
I'm making mad progress on this possibly never to be played Starfinder game
I got detailed maps and backstory and NPCs and loot and shit, and they're properly organized into Episodes, each of which has a theme song that I'll play while going over their mission briefings and stuff
I'm very excited about it! lol
Don't raise your eye
It's only teenage wasteland
you know the right decision.
Maybe a Fey creature with conditions that you must meet to survive out there in the fields
The only way to keep yourself safe is to avert your eyes and keep your spirits up
"As you settle down for your long rest, you think you hear the faint strains of an organ playing on the wind... but you don't know of any settlements for miles and miles, never mind ones with the population and resources to have a church with such an instrument installed."
"It is difficult to sleep as the organ continues to play through the night. You feel at times that it may be getting closer, but it's difficult to say. The pattern is somehow repetitive and yet not monotonous, and you find it difficult to tune out."
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
The game is fairly simple to explain, actually. Fiasco is GM-less tabletop role-playing game, basically "what if a Coen Brothers film RPG?" You utilize scenario playbooks when playing it, so the setting for a game of Fiasco can vary from a modern-day Atlantic City to a far-flung space station about to be sucked into a black hole, to a badly-managed urban zoo on the brink of financial ruin, to a Gold Rush boom town... the sky's the limit, basically. There's literally dozens of free scenarios on DriveThruRPG, never mind all the other ones that can be gotten for a couple of dollars.
Dice are rolled to generate characters and their relationships together, but other than that it's all improv, essentially. During each player's scenes, they are awarded a positive or negative die by another player to represent if they feel that the scene being played is going to resolve in the character's favor or not. By the end of the game, you roll all the positive and negative dice you have in front of you and total them up to determine how horrible of a fate your character ultimately suffers.
There's a bit more to it than that, obviously, but only a little bit. It's truly a one-shot game that can be explained and played fully in a single night, and something that people without any roleplaying experience can quickly grasp and enjoy.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Now the party broke into Mechanist Protocol Alpha, rescued the rogue's brother and all the other prisoners, had a mecha fight with tanks and a giant spidermech Metal Gear rip-off, and charged away from the mountain base as it exploded. They broke through enemy lines back into Monarchist territory, and they marched the stolen mecha right back to the Monarchist capital in a wave of triumph and heroism.
The Monarchists believe in the great man theory, and they pined for the heir to their lost king. To see the enemy's weapon commandeered to break the very back of the enemy forces? This was their dream.
The pilots? The rogue and his brother. (Luckily, they're drift compatible.)
On the way back to the capital, the dwarf fighter finally figured out that the rogue's sword was, in fact, the sword of the next king.
So does the rogue's brother.
On the day of the big triumph, the rogue's brother tries to fast talk the dwarf into handing over the sword of kings. She agrees on the condition he give it back to the rogue after. He agrees.
The two brothers walk into the Monarchist council. The brother plants the sword of kings into the table, turns, and declares himself the lost king.
The dwarf points out that the sword was found by the rogue.
So the brother turns to the rogue with a grin and says, "Yes, my sword, which he held for me. Didn't he?"
And the rogue has to choose: contradict his brother for the throne or declare his brother king.
He declares his brother the king.
I don't think it's bad, I just don't think it's a "tabletop RPG".
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Almost all of my sessions end in at least twenty minutes of just general chatter. During that just have a note pad out so you can see what aspects of the game people are talking about and engaging with.
Oh I'm playing, not DMing. I'm thinking more: Is it better to keep chronological notes of key events each sessions and then highlight stuff, or have pre-divided sections for people, places, quests and so forth?
but now that character is dead so uh
hmmm