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[Roleplaying Games] Schrodinger's NPC

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Posts

  • Ken OKen O Registered User regular
    It's finished! I'm also including the original picture.
    I present the Legacy.
    kWeT50E.png
    ZS9WlMw.jpg

    Now I have to wait a month so I can surprise the party with it.

    http://www.fingmonkey.com/
    Comics, Games, Booze
  • ElvenshaeElvenshae Registered User regular
    “Man, this ship is cool!” “Yeah, we sell it to the highest bidder.”

    “... What?”

    “Yeah, we sell it to someone who’ll massively overpay for it based on looks, and buy something lower-profile with more guns.” “Great idea!”

  • Endless_SerpentsEndless_Serpents Registered User regular
    edited April 2020
    “Your auction is interrupted by gunfire! The three interested patrons collapse as they’re tagged in the ensuing combat! Their guards and several other people at the auction return fire but are quickly overwhelmed!”

    “The infiltrating group appear to be nothing less than Mandalorians! You’ve no option but to flee in your ship... it is your ship, right? Those guys seem really pissed!”

    During the escape the computer goes haywire due to getting hit, and shows an incomplete hologram with a figure that says: Only *crackle* the jewel of *crackle* Kessel *crackle* opens the way to the crown!

    And now they keep the ship because they’re greedy, or at least until they’re strong enough to take out the party of Mandos that either own the ship or want what’s on it.

    Sometimes you just want them to keep the thing, and that’s okay.

    Endless_Serpents on
  • Ken OKen O Registered User regular
    Haha I love the examples. I feel pretty safe that they won't want to sell it. They need a fast, armored ship to reach one of plot points of the campaign so they've already been looking for ways to procure one. So when the Hot Shot Pilot's father manages to send her the coordinates to a hanger and they find this waiting for her, I think she'll be pretty attached to it.

    http://www.fingmonkey.com/
    Comics, Games, Booze
  • Endless_SerpentsEndless_Serpents Registered User regular
    That’s going to be a really cool moment. I think you should figure out some trinket that connects to her family that’s sat in the co-pilot’s seat when they open it up.

  • Dizzy DDizzy D NetherlandsRegistered User regular
    If they try to sell it, have them blasted out of the sky in their new ship by the ship they just sold.

    Steam/Origin: davydizzy
  • VanguardVanguard But now the dream is over. And the insect is awake.Registered User, __BANNED USERS regular
    edited April 2020
    Megadungeon Update: I have finished sketches of all of the different areas with high level notes on each room, its denizens, and its purpose.

    I have created 3 custom races in doing so, which will be used in populating the wider world.

    I have now begun keying the rooms in detail, with 12 done.

    Goal is to do 11/day so that I can move to monster design and the overworld map which I think will have something 400 hexes.

    For that, am just going to do 1 feature/hex for setup because if I can't run a game with all of the above then something is seriously wrong.

    Vanguard on
  • Endless_SerpentsEndless_Serpents Registered User regular
    This is what it felt like looking at your post @Vanguard

    1cf16peraaty.jpeg

    One day I will be as high level as you.

  • VanguardVanguard But now the dream is over. And the insect is awake.Registered User, __BANNED USERS regular
    Haha, thanks! I’m only able to make this kind of progress because of the quarantine. I’m finally putting ideas I’ve had for years on paper since there’s not much else to do.

    Also, this is all the easy part - gotta play test all of this so I can share it in some way.

  • Endless_SerpentsEndless_Serpents Registered User regular
    edited April 2020
    I’ve got this sudden urge to run a Monster Hearts game where the characters are twenty somethings who had supernatural experiences in their teens but have suppressed or been made to believe it was something else.

    They’d live in a city, and somehow through some alleys is a tiny forest/park/overgrown square barely clinging on. It wants something. They find it together while they’re all on separate night’s out / getting wasted alone.

    That’s all I got really, but I’m keeping it in mind for when I can next visit a particular group of mine.

    I got all that from Hey Now by London Grammar.
    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nMEHJPuggHQ



    It might not be a thread you usually look at but in ‘Search your deck and draw [game design] into your hand!’ I’ve posted the bare bones of a roleplaying system I’ve made and literally any comment will help me a lot if you have time!

    Endless_Serpents on
  • KadokenKadoken Giving Ends to my Friends and it Feels Stupendous Registered User regular
    I'm thinking of making future adventures have combat as a fail state rather than an assumed thing that should happen. What I mean by that is that I often find combat (the mechanical throwing of dice and doing math part) the least engaging part of all RPGs and I want to try to make it truly a last resort rather than a thing you should assume will happen in a session. I have tried to make combat more engaging by incorporating roleplaying into it through speech and back and forth. It does not work 100% of the time. The last session's combat was really boring until we realized that GURPS 4E's version of Barbarian Rage forces the player to attack their fellows if no enemies are present without an easy out. It's a disadvantage based on character and not a class feature. So the players did stuff like trying to play dead when they got hit and tried to go for knee and leg shots which do less maximum damage and can knock out someone without putting them in so much damage to kill them. It made things dangerous and also forced the boss of the "dungeon" to show up early and do cool Yakuza game shit. Something that really engages me like that does not often happen. I often find my favorite parts of the game are usually when something closer to conversational combat (where rolls of social skills can occur but also just simply roleplaying the convo) occur or when the players are engaging and are engaged with their current mission like solving a mystery and needing to talk to folk and investigate and think out what they need to do. My three in-person Call fo Cthulhu one-shots I played in were like this and they were possibly my favorite sessions ever. But I also like the idea of combat which is why I don't just switch to another system that lacks tactical combat.

    I'm hosting a campaign that is spycraft espionage themed where the players are working for fantasy communists that want a theocrat nation to fall. They do this by empowering the local rebel groups and committing acts of subterfuge against the legalistic tyrannical government that have a very fundamentalist view of a god of law. I am going to try to design the missions to be completable without taking a gun or sword out.

    Maybe I'm letting personal bias color this because I definitely feel like I am bored with combat in situations that I do not care about the stakes, theming, or the situation in general. I really am unable to summon any form of engagement when my dnd group is sent to Strahd's castle because it was a thing to do. I have definitely felt higher stakes when we're pursuing one of the party's personal quests where we have stuff that matters to them. I also basically did the same thing GMing because the players don't have personal reasons to care that dragon-Lenin's babies were stolen by fantasy Rasputin, only that they're getting a paycheck. Maybe combat isn't the issue but properly incorporating story into it. I definitely would have given more of a shit about raiding Strahd's castle if I had to do it to know if my Kratos-esque tabaxi barbarian's family went to hell or not when she selfishly (but unknowingly) asked a being that talked to her through a rune glyph in a stone to give her power to destroy her enemies. Maybe I just need to talk to my GMs about how to incorporate my and the others' characters in and how I could do the same for them.

    What do you think about making combat a "fail state"? (As you can see from the last paragraph, I started thinking differently about it but I'd like to hear others on the idea.)

  • KadokenKadoken Giving Ends to my Friends and it Feels Stupendous Registered User regular
    Second question coming from thinking about this:
    What are the general ways you can engage your players as a group?

    I think you can be the type of character who wants money and cool stuff like a lot of DnD PCs, but they have to be building it up to spend on something really important to them to really get them in the zone where they're not watching stuff happen to them and then rolling dice against it but wanting to be protagonists in the core sense of the word of actively moving forward willingly.

  • KadokenKadoken Giving Ends to my Friends and it Feels Stupendous Registered User regular
    edited April 2020
    Talking to my players, one said there were big groupings you could put players in that are going to be motivated for different reasons. War players who want to just do the combat regardless of anything, actors who want to put character roleplay over other stuff, and murder hobos where the ends of getting to murder stuff and getting treasure decide the means. That is not an exhaustive list, of course, but I definitely feel like that I have seen those types and I would consider myself an actor out of the rare times I want to hit something. Actually, I think I often play out actor to the point that I'm satisfied and then I want to do wargamer stuff because I have justified and engaged myself in the thing enough to care about the combat where it actually becomes fun because it is motivated. So the labels aren't mutually exclusive and one role can lead to another.

    Kadoken on
  • Endless_SerpentsEndless_Serpents Registered User regular
    edited April 2020
    @Kadoken

    I’m gonna spitball what you do in a roleplaying game, and I guess maybe serialised stories in general.

    Take action violently
    You see the goblins guarding the chest, so you wade in and clobber them! This is aggressive physical action with harm as the consequence and treasure as the reward. You see the obstacles before you and deal with them.

    How do we make that fun?
    Making the environment have an effect that can be utilised by the heroes, and make the enemy have an ability that effects play; say by having the goblins be ranged combatants, forcing the heroes to chase them down as they move around.

    React to violence
    You’re sat in camp when goblins attack!
    This is defensive physical action with harm as a consequence and no reward but a return to peace. You’re on the back foot, at a disadvantage, and need to think fast. Put like that though, this is probably the least interesting thing to do.

    How do we make that fun?
    I guess the only fun time to ‘react to violence’ then must be when there’s more at stake than just the heroes out camping. Stuff like defending a town after a decent length of preparation (train the folk, set a trap) or if losing a vital item or location rather than the fight itself is at stake.

    React to the aftermath
    A forgotten pillar, I think. Rarely mentioned. So let’s say the goblins attack a town and the heroes do the business. Now what? The tavern is burnt down, the potion seller is dead. Now they roleplay. There’s stuff to fix, or even bridges to burn in an aftermath. Say, because the greedy guard let the goblins in the back gate because X.

    How do we make this fun?
    An aftermath pulls the rug out from the heroes. Even if they won, the world has been changed by the actions of others and their own, and now things are different. Give them space to think, but also hand them the means to alter the world again, this time by their vision alone.

    Change their mind
    Whether it’s an open roleplaying debate or a check to pass by a guard in a disguise, the heroes have an effect on people, leaving them changed by their passing. This is positive social action with their reaction as a consequence and varied rewards or lasting outcomes. Occasionally they might be changed in return, if the player wants an arc like that. It’s an understated part of the game, but every NPC, even just shop keepers, can drop lore and ideas, or be saved or tricked or double crossed by the heroes throughout a session.

    How can we make this fun?
    Keep a notepad on hand titled “They will remember that.”
    Constantly update it with :) and :( or note complex stuff as the players get to talking with folks. Try your best to link characters together, even if it gets silly—make a show, not a simulated life. Of course that’s her unknown half-sister, and she’s married to his sworn rival. Have their actions affect them, and have that come back to haunt or help them later on. Make social interaction mechanically worthwhile.
    The classic example is convincing the goblins to side with you against the villain.

    Build something that lasts
    This is my favourite part of any game, whether it’s rules light or has a deep impact. The consequence might be a unexpected snag in its construction or a caveat in its creation, but the reward is what they intend to make. The heroes open a tavern, forge a sword, buy a mule and put armour on it, make a shark tooth necklace.

    How can we make this fun?
    When a player ask to make something, anything, say “yes, but” and list what it’ll take to do it. It makes for a natural slow-burn quest with a satisfying outcome.

    Traverse the world
    The world itself becomes an obstacle, with varied obstacles like storms to avoid, mountains to climb and seas to sail. The consequences are classic man vs nature; hunger, injury, weather, distance and time taken, getting lost, snakes.

    How can we make this fun?
    An easy one to mess up, it’s best to mix your athletics checks with roleplayed navigation, maybe a little ration maths or race against the clock too. Make travelling involve a variety of activities, but don’t be afraid to also just montage it if it’s not important.
    I like to ask them what they find occasionally, giving them a dungeon crawl or shopping trip in the town that’s popped out of nowhere when they want it.
    Lastly, make it grand, make it beautiful. You’re not rolling dex to get to the other side of this hex, you’re fighting against the great storm ever witnessed, the waves are bigger than the boat! The moon is full and only you exist in this time and place, shining against the black devouring waves.

    The pirates who don’t do anything
    Not much to say here, but occasionally the heroes just exist in the place without trouble or consequences. Describe a local food, let them go shopping, have them find a stray dog and let them keep it.

    How do we make this fun?
    We don’t really. We throw a few things out there and let them dick around. You’re just playing an improv acting game, right?
    This is the beach volleyball episode, the flashback origin story, the Mushroom Samba (Cowboy Bebop, look it up).

    I think enough of each will keep the game fun for all, but ultimately fighting (physical, verbal or whatever your game is about) should be only 20% to 40% of a game. Too much and there’s nothing to hang it off.

    Edit: There’s a lot more now I think: chase sequences, passing on knowledge, dying etc.
    A big list, and each addition shrinks violent action down a percent.

    Endless_Serpents on
  • VanguardVanguard But now the dream is over. And the insect is awake.Registered User, __BANNED USERS regular
    Torchbearer 2nd Edition Kickstarter incoming at 11AM EST today

  • SteelhawkSteelhawk Registered User regular
    Good lord.... after using that starship designer for 30 seconds, I just texted my group for a side jaunt away from D&D into Star Wars for a bit.

  • Endless_SerpentsEndless_Serpents Registered User regular
    @Vanguard Please tell me about bears and their torches. Should I be excited for the second one? I’d assume so if you’re digging it!



    Building off my last post, here is my roleplaying proto-formula because game design is filling my brain lately:

    No matter what game you’re making or how you roll dice (or draw cards or spend tokens…) these are the moves players make. They can be explicit (Apocalypse World) or just guided (Dreams Askew). Games where these aren’t actively pursuited (Dungeons and Dragons) are as good as the group playing them.

    Overcome trouble (The Golden Move): Rocks fall, do you dodge or not? This is the first and most often used move, so it should be robust and fun.

    Discover the world (The Silvery Move): Ask questions, judge a character (rightly or not), access a situation (rightly or not), spot danger and clues. Likely the second most used move, so it should likewise be treated with respect. If it isn’t the second most used move in your game, ask yourself if it would be better as a wargame or other kind of game with less investment in discovery.

    Create a tangible thing (The Bronze Move): To exist, you must leave an impression. This is, in my opinion, the most fun move, and if it’s detailed up front can change how players approach the game completely. If your game has no rules for making things, again, is it better served with a less modular experience than actual roleplay?

    Traverse the world: Where are you going and how do you get there? Lots of games, especially ones I’ve run and those I’ve half-finished inventing, don’t touch on this nearly enough. Is an Athletics check really enough? That’s on my mind a lot now.

    Take action violently: Fight a goblin, have an argument, force your will on the world. How exactly this is done and what the consequences are is very important.

    React to violence: In the same ballpark as above, and can really change what a fight means. Are you always trading harm, or can you dodge it, or is it passively blocked by contested stats (Dungeons and Dragons)? Further, what does it mean to a character? Are there scars, debilities, insanity?

    Process the aftermath: Another one that I’m really thinking about. Just how does the game expect you to deal with the end result of a change? Can you do anything with or about the aftermath, is it just roleplaying? If you don’t have any rules for this, is change tangible?

    Change their mind: When you talk, who listens? Who do you manipulate, convince, inspire and how is that shown in the mechanics? If changing minds is limited to certain classes/playbooks, is that okay? I mean, everyone can do everything else, so should there just be one face?

    Exist together: Downtime, does it need rules, or just room to breath? I’ve no answer yet. Blades in the Dark has set downtime and prep phases, which makes every session a mission, unless you choose to expressly say no, game, today we just hang out—however it does keep the game moving, and in genre.

    If you get these down in a way that invokes the genre you’re after, or allows game hosts to ask the players what they want to play (if it’s a system for multiple settings) you’ve nailed it, regardless of if it becomes popular or whether the math is perfect. Like, if you can sit down and play the exact feel of Alien, magical circus performers in the 1900’s or The Southern Reach novels then you can close your document with pride.

  • VanguardVanguard But now the dream is over. And the insect is awake.Registered User, __BANNED USERS regular
    @Endless_Serpents I've only seen the preview of it since I backed the first one, but it looks like an improvement on the first in every way.

    First, all of the classes now include the full 10 levels vs. only 5 (previously, all 10 were available with a supplemental PDF).

    The books have been resized and split. Format is the digest-sized volumes that Burning Wheel are known for. With this, they are also splitting the books into 3: One Dedicated to Players, Another for Adventuring, and a third for Game Masters

    Tons of new spells (including the introduction of Schools of Magic), new classes, new rules for settlements, types of quests, and more.

    Torchbearer is a favorite, so I'm backing this immediately.

  • Endless_SerpentsEndless_Serpents Registered User regular
    I’m gonna keep an eye on it then, thank you.

    To move on from my Opinions on Imaginary Elf Games, I just need to tell y’all that I’m running a game again at last! First since the lockdown!

    I’ve grabbed a bundle of my crew onboard my ship at work and they’re going to test my home-made system (in a coherent but super simple form).

    After a session zero explaining what roleplaying is to those that didn’t exactly know, I’ve let them come up with the setting.

    We’re gonna play Nomadic Warriors on a Journey Across the Steppes Protect the Tribe and Eat Monsters.

    So far I’ve got a humongous berserker woman with a baby on her back, the youngest (bastard) son of the chief, a monk philosopher swept up into the tribe, a talking eagle and the blind oracle who leads them.

  • VanguardVanguard But now the dream is over. And the insect is awake.Registered User, __BANNED USERS regular
    edited April 2020
    So my megadungeon concept is that it is a prison for an ancient, powerful god whose thoughts and dreams were spells that unleashed cataclysmic destruction on the planes. In a bygone age, the god was imprisoned in a tower where they have slept ever since. Fast forward to the modern day and the prison has been breached by several different cultists, all of whom have agreed to do the god's bidding in exchange for power.

    One of the unique things about the dungeon is that the structure is random. Not in the way that the old AD&D books had you generate rooms in a painfully unsatisfying way but the order of the rooms themselves are unique to every game. The reason for this goes back to the core concept itself. In the prison, the dreaming god has gone on dreaming, sculpting these rooms and realities around the needs of the cultists but, like dreams, they're not linear which is why a door in a frozen great hall might open to a door in the clouds where the party paddles across the sky in canoes to other cloud islands (which then lead to underground caves or swamps or verdant graveyards).

    Having finished 1/3 of the rooms, decided to randomly roll up some samples this morning to get a feel of what this looks like. This is going to be a lot of fun but I did immediately identify two issues, which were good to catch early:

    Room Density: there is far too much packed close together as it stands. A fight in one room would immediately pull in from the others, which means the party will get steamrolled as cultists and monsters and other parties all run to the room the party is in.

    Bottlenecking: Each "area" was designed discretely to create tight internal logic, but when scattered, noticing things naturally bottleneck usually within 20 rooms. That's not very mega!

    So now I'm designing some procedural methods for generating connecting tunnels and passages to both space things out and create more forking paths. I've never loved the 1/3 of the rooms being empty idea from the before times, but I see the need for some where nothing happens to create breathing room and also impart a sense of scale. Good thing is that I have a very strong internal group of concepts to base them on so it won't just be stone tunnels and all that.

    Vanguard on
  • see317see317 Registered User regular
    That’s going to be a really cool moment. I think you should figure out some trinket that connects to her family that’s sat in the co-pilot’s seat when they open it up.

    Does HSP have any kind of family heirloom or trinket that may have been passed down that could act as the activation code for the ship?

  • Endless_SerpentsEndless_Serpents Registered User regular
    @Vanguard
    I don’t know enough about what system, if any, this is for, but maybe rather than considering them empty rooms they’re non-combat rooms. You could have vistas (magic waterfall, peaceful grave, windy high-up garden), puzzles that are optional to complete in an otherwise safe room, shop keepers or other NPC that has made the room their own, or a difficult to traverse obstacle.

    Also straight up teleportation pads that skip multiple rooms might help with how it’s laid out, and create a desire to back-track and circle around the dungeon.

    You could have rare keys, let’s call them elder keys, that open any one elder door, then dissolve. Each elder door would have a rough description via art or riddle that says what room is behind it. You could scatter the elder doors around, and have the players choose which one to open. This way they get some choice on what they want to face, and the dungeon opens up further by their choices, and is equally blocked off by them (at least until they circle around enough to get to that room via another regular door).

    Like, this is an ‘empty’ room from Monument Valley 2:
    lr2ap7kfd2ib.jpeg

  • VanguardVanguard But now the dream is over. And the insect is awake.Registered User, __BANNED USERS regular
    Vanguard
    I don’t know enough about what system, if any, this is for, but maybe rather than considering them empty rooms they’re non-combat rooms. You could have vistas (magic waterfall, peaceful grave, windy high-up garden), puzzles that are optional to complete in an otherwise safe room, shop keepers or other NPC that has made the room their own, or a difficult to traverse obstacle.

    Also straight up teleportation pads that skip multiple rooms might help with how it’s laid out, and create a desire to back-track and circle around the dungeon.

    You could have rare keys, let’s call them elder keys, that open any one elder door, then dissolve. Each elder door would have a rough description via art or riddle that says what room is behind it. You could scatter the elder doors around, and have the players choose which one to open. This way they get some choice on what they want to face, and the dungeon opens up further by their choices, and is equally blocked off by them (at least until they circle around enough to get to that room via another regular door).

    Like, this is an ‘empty’ room from Monument Valley 2:
    lr2ap7kfd2ib.jpeg

    thanks! planning dcc

    there are lots of ways to navigate the structure: there's a wizard elevator that will lead to each of the major hubs (i have a handful of rooms designated as such), another room which is just portals that each connect to every room, and then lots of rooms that connect into other, specific rooms regardless of how far apart they are to simulate the rapid jump that happens in dreams/teleporters

    was more just seeing the need to for these passageways based on the my first test run this morning so just another easy thing to solve for

  • Ken OKen O Registered User regular
    see317 wrote: »
    That’s going to be a really cool moment. I think you should figure out some trinket that connects to her family that’s sat in the co-pilot’s seat when they open it up.

    Does HSP have any kind of family heirloom or trinket that may have been passed down that could act as the activation code for the ship?

    Oh yeah, I'm stealing that one. Thanks!

    http://www.fingmonkey.com/
    Comics, Games, Booze
  • KadokenKadoken Giving Ends to my Friends and it Feels Stupendous Registered User regular
    edited April 2020
    I am trying out the Destiny point system from Edge of the Empire in GURPS. I like the dynamic back and forth the pool made. I was in a conversation about how GURPS is able to do any genre you want but not very well. I'm still going to use it but I wonder for my blender of DnD stuff (magic, monks, dragons, dwarves, elves, high fantasy etc) and 1800s to WW2 tech I should try their recommendation of just reskinning Shadowrun or my personal interest of Deadlands Reloaded which I would love to play or host one day based on the setting alone. Like I said, those sound like big endeavours but I do like the idea of taking or making game mechanics from other games in a system allowed to mix stuff versus something like Dark Heresy where trying to force those types of mechanics are a recipe for disaster.

    I feel like I could just go Fate (the system) or something like that but I really like the idea of tactical combat that GURPS has (and I know that's contradictory to an early post having combat be the least engaging for me). Also as someone who likes historical analogues I loooooove having pages upon pages of historical firearms, equipment, and rules for all of it even if I shrug off the more cumbersome ones (that GURPS even says you can shrug off).
    https://riddleofflame.blogspot.com/2020/04/fortune-and-calamity-rules.html

    Kadoken on
  • VanguardVanguard But now the dream is over. And the insect is awake.Registered User, __BANNED USERS regular
    vpa661wpoc71.jpeg

    Another productive day at WFH

    (My first world map in decades, and my first hex)

  • Endless_SerpentsEndless_Serpents Registered User regular
    edited April 2020
    Yesterday I made a game that isn't one yet, but will be once you’ve finished a session.
    Today I’m 40% done and moving briskly though the main chapter of my campaign setting:
    4yfnjlokjvo3.gif

    After that’s complete, I’ll move back over to the game system I’m creating, a very simple, derivative take via Apocalypse World, Blades in the Dark, Dreams Askew, Lady Blackbird and everything else I’ve ever seen plus potentially a few things I might have invented.

    And I’m doing it all on an empty beach. Not a bad day.

    Endless_Serpents on
  • Mostlyjoe13Mostlyjoe13 Evil, Evil, Jump for joy! Registered User regular
    The crazy number and uses of all the Lore skills in pathfinder 2e is allowing me to have half the party act as a University librarian council...and the other half are running a brewery. In the same campaign.

    It's hilarious.

    PSN ID - Mostlyjoe Steam ID -TheNotoriusRNG
  • VanguardVanguard But now the dream is over. And the insect is awake.Registered User, __BANNED USERS regular
    Work has gotten busy again but that hasn’t stopped me from knocking out a funnel (0 level adventure for DCC):

    t02gzzfxduv7.jpeg

    Gotta write a few notes but I know what is in every room

  • VanguardVanguard But now the dream is over. And the insect is awake.Registered User, __BANNED USERS regular
    edited May 2020
    I ran that dungeon last night and it was good

    The party did not successfully prevent the summoning of the Nag-Durga (custom monster with a snake-like body with patches of crustaceous armor and an eyeless head that opens into a mouth made of tentacles)

    Vanguard on
  • A Half Eaten OreoA Half Eaten Oreo Registered User regular
    Ran my first OSR game since playing AD&D back in middle school. It was a one shot for players who had mostly played 5e so we I ended up using Knave. Ran Tomb of the Serpent Kings. I really enjoyed it and I think my players also had a good time. A combination of bad rolls and over estimating their abilities led to a few early deaths. They eventually 'got it' and play went very smoothly, with the exception of splitting the party to avoid an encounter which ended in the demise of two more characters.

    My biggest issue with is I now want to run a main OSR game (recently got Castle Xyntillan and some LoFP modules), but I'm midway thru a 5e campaign and really only have time to run one game.

  • Ken OKen O Registered User regular
    So my Star Wars group got their new ship Friday night. They were super excited even before they realized I had commissioned the art for it. We've gone 5 or 6 sessions where they have been using other people's ships or getting rides places, they are very happy now.

    http://www.fingmonkey.com/
    Comics, Games, Booze
  • Albino BunnyAlbino Bunny Jackie Registered User regular
    Kadoken wrote: »
    I'm thinking of making future adventures have combat as a fail state rather than an assumed thing that should happen. What I mean by that is that I often find combat (the mechanical throwing of dice and doing math part) the least engaging part of all RPGs and I want to try to make it truly a last resort rather than a thing you should assume will happen in a session. I have tried to make combat more engaging by incorporating roleplaying into it through speech and back and forth. It does not work 100% of the time. The last session's combat was really boring until we realized that GURPS 4E's version of Barbarian Rage forces the player to attack their fellows if no enemies are present without an easy out. It's a disadvantage based on character and not a class feature. So the players did stuff like trying to play dead when they got hit and tried to go for knee and leg shots which do less maximum damage and can knock out someone without putting them in so much damage to kill them. It made things dangerous and also forced the boss of the "dungeon" to show up early and do cool Yakuza game shit. Something that really engages me like that does not often happen. I often find my favorite parts of the game are usually when something closer to conversational combat (where rolls of social skills can occur but also just simply roleplaying the convo) occur or when the players are engaging and are engaged with their current mission like solving a mystery and needing to talk to folk and investigate and think out what they need to do. My three in-person Call fo Cthulhu one-shots I played in were like this and they were possibly my favorite sessions ever. But I also like the idea of combat which is why I don't just switch to another system that lacks tactical combat.

    I'm hosting a campaign that is spycraft espionage themed where the players are working for fantasy communists that want a theocrat nation to fall. They do this by empowering the local rebel groups and committing acts of subterfuge against the legalistic tyrannical government that have a very fundamentalist view of a god of law. I am going to try to design the missions to be completable without taking a gun or sword out.

    Maybe I'm letting personal bias color this because I definitely feel like I am bored with combat in situations that I do not care about the stakes, theming, or the situation in general. I really am unable to summon any form of engagement when my dnd group is sent to Strahd's castle because it was a thing to do. I have definitely felt higher stakes when we're pursuing one of the party's personal quests where we have stuff that matters to them. I also basically did the same thing GMing because the players don't have personal reasons to care that dragon-Lenin's babies were stolen by fantasy Rasputin, only that they're getting a paycheck. Maybe combat isn't the issue but properly incorporating story into it. I definitely would have given more of a shit about raiding Strahd's castle if I had to do it to know if my Kratos-esque tabaxi barbarian's family went to hell or not when she selfishly (but unknowingly) asked a being that talked to her through a rune glyph in a stone to give her power to destroy her enemies. Maybe I just need to talk to my GMs about how to incorporate my and the others' characters in and how I could do the same for them.

    What do you think about making combat a "fail state"? (As you can see from the last paragraph, I started thinking differently about it but I'd like to hear others on the idea.)

    As someone whose most recent campaigns include Symbaroum, a more lethal D&D alike, CP2020 and a dedicated mercenary campaign in Star Wars I think the answer is that most RPGs are really bad at combat.

    The issue with generic RPG combat is it takes a long time and often has little real risk or change to the situation. The players aren't expected to die and injury isn't a threat, so they just spend their resources and move on to whatever the next thing is.

    In terms of making it land better:

    1) Play a system that's raw meaner, in Symbaroum or CP2020 getting hit by an enemy if you're not a tanky sort can be near lethal immediately. Which makes combat both faster and prevents even generic fights against a few bandits from ever feeling fully rote.

    2) Remember the recovery mechanics for your system and use them intensely. This is less practical for D&D or other chunkier games but some systems can make you feel like shit if you're forced to keep chugging on.

    One of my Symbaroum sessions was helping a town defend against an onslaught of beastmen and it was literally endless, exhausting combat. By giving the players no break unless they actively agree to pull back and surrender narrative control to you over parts of the town they like suddenly all the little nicks and spells that are usually functionally limitless start to be scary and intense.

    It's also important that if you're using this to give an edge and consequences to fight play out the recovery. Don't just go "well it's the end of the adventure so I guess you're back to full next time," if it takes them a day to recover 1HP and they'll need two weeks to be back on their feet actually play that and talk about the downtime and how much being severely beaten sucks. At the end of the day you could have the most complex harm/recovery system in the world and it wouldn't effect players at all unless it actually takes time on the table.

    3) Respect the fiction and show players you respect it too: If the mobsters that caught the players tailing them just use fists and maybe a single knife then the players probably also won't pull out guns if they're trying to be spies. Similarly if you start showing that people in your setting surrender regularly it normalizes the players being able to agree that a fight isn't worth the cost (See Using the Recovery Mechanics)

  • KadokenKadoken Giving Ends to my Friends and it Feels Stupendous Registered User regular
    edited May 2020
    So I ran my Insurgency game where the players are spies helping a rebellion but not doing the fighting. It went really well even improvising most of it. I stuck by my words and combat was a failure state. One of them got captured and they hatched a plan to break the player and a target out of jail. I started noting the social bonds between them and other characters like the rebel leader they rescued and the false relationship one had to a theocratic judge. They all were creative and over the course of two months raised so much paranoia and agitation out of the local populace of a port town that they created the conditions to have it lower the gates for an NPC rebel army. It was a lot of fun!

    Edit:
    Map
    ldksx4etpsbc.png
    This is the first spark.
    8n0bjyowuxah.png
    This is the whole theocracy, though. It's going to be a long revolution

    Kadoken on
  • KadokenKadoken Giving Ends to my Friends and it Feels Stupendous Registered User regular
    edited May 2020
    I have been working on the map for my original setting, Riddle of Flame for a while. To the point that I had to remove and add a whole continent and expand and add stuff.

    With orcish kingdoms and elvish forest realms I have nations that usually start as historical analogues until I mess with them. This is along with weirder stuff like a nation of good necromancers that fight borg-like corrupting worms and bat people that use totems imbued with the same power that monks use to make giant holes and a nation of insect people whose icon of worship that prevented their races from extinction will one day be revealed to be just a magic drill left by precursors. Also a nation of essentially sanctioned undead that acts as a nationwide house arrest for compliant vampires, ghouls, liches, and the like but also is a popular tourist location (where sometimes tourists get a little lost and either are eaten by or become the attraction). A nation of gnolls that has historically been very matriarchical but have been transitioning to an egalitarian society that will one day produce misandrist female gnollish fascists that want a return to the old matriarchical kingdom (gnollzis).
    eil5vy63w3le.png

    53gb0wv53fvq.png

    I aim also to have a new strange continent that has hundreds of black spires on it that was named after the incomplete message of a telegram, "Shudder". The land outside of the spires have a sort of Wild West and STALKER mix of alien terrains, dangerous anomalies, magic radiation, and the like. The spires themselves are allow a mixture of a settlement building game and a dungeon crawler where there are dozens of levels, each having its own biome supported my magic stones and other means like for example a pink forest with sickle-appenedage'd man eating trees whose leaves can make a man go into a seizure but also can be used as a narcotic to support the settlement. Each tower has a charter associated with it that assures communication, trade, and possible assets like mercenaries and the like but the aeroship company associated with each changes in personality from dutiful to enthusiastic to criminal to extorting to apathetic which adds another layer to the game because they're also in charge of advertising and getting new colonists along with their other functions.

    Kadoken on
  • CalicaCalica Registered User regular
    Kadoken wrote: »
    I have been working on the map for my original setting, Riddle of Flame for a while. To the point that I had to remove and add a whole continent and expand and add stuff.

    With orcish kingdoms and elvish forest realms I have nations that usually start as historical analogues until I mess with them. This is along with weirder stuff like a nation of good necromancers that fight borg-like corrupting worms and bat people that use totems imbued with the same power that monks use to make giant holes and a nation of insect people whose icon of worship that prevented their races from extinction will one day be revealed to be just a magic drill left by precursors. Also a nation of essentially sanctioned undead that acts as a nationwide house arrest for compliant vampires, ghouls, liches, and the like but also is a popular tourist location (where sometimes tourists get a little lost and either are eaten by or become the attraction). A nation of gnolls that has historically been very matriarchical but have been transitioning to an egalitarian society that will one day produce misandrist female gnollish fascists that want a return to the old matriarchical kingdom (gnollzis).
    eil5vy63w3le.png

    53gb0wv53fvq.png

    I aim also to have a new strange continent that has hundreds of black spires on it that was named after the incomplete message of a telegram, "Shudder". The land outside of the spires have a sort of Wild West and STALKER mix of alien terrains, dangerous anomalies, magic radiation, and the like. The spires themselves are allow a mixture of a settlement building game and a dungeon crawler where there are dozens of levels, each having its own biome supported my magic stones and other means like for example a pink forest with sickle-appenedage'd man eating trees whose leaves can make a man go into a seizure but also can be used as a narcotic to support the settlement. Each tower has a charter associated with it that assures communication, trade, and possible assets like mercenaries and the like but the aeroship company associated with each changes in personality from dutiful to enthusiastic to criminal to extorting to apathetic which adds another layer to the game because they're also in charge of advertising and getting new colonists along with their other functions.

    I love all of this!

  • KadokenKadoken Giving Ends to my Friends and it Feels Stupendous Registered User regular
    edited May 2020
    If you want to read more, the blog in my sig has a lot of posts of me building the world, some getting overhauled massively, outright redone, or expanded upon in detail. I've kind of stopped posting new half-done posts I've promised myself to finish later and kept those in the draft stage until I was satisfied with them. Once satisfied with a foundation, I'll move them over to a wiki.

    Relatively recently, I did an expansion of the Devils with their Pactsworn powers and Cleric/Paladin powers they receive from their beliefs.
    https://riddleofflame.blogspot.com/2020/02/devil-worship.html
    https://riddleofflame.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-deities.html

    The devils take on a theme that gets represented in the powers they bequeath to their Sworn. The Crone Queen (who is a Baba Yaga ripoff) has magic-based stuff, the King of Lies has stuff that helps in persuasion to outright bonding willing people to one's service, and the Crossroad's King's imbuement is very luck based and essentially getting your way granted for a price.
    The Pactsworn's powers are powerful when you earn enough favor to mechanically show why someone would fall into getting power the easier way. That easier way also requires you to sacrifice the seventh son of a seventh son for a lot of favor accumulated, though, and while one can spend and lower their favor on certain effects (like not dying) it comes with costs when the devils find you unfavorable.

    Clerics have a smaller set of spells but the ones currently listed are given for free versus most magic (and most GURPS-based cleric spell lists) where you have to buy them. Also the clerics and paladins of this world are a lot less transactional than the devils. I probably need a larger set of spells that are empowered by investiture but I'll be keeping those freebies. Edit: Making proper clerical lists for four gods, I have removed the free spells thing. I can replace that stuff with better suited advantages that count as blessings.

    Kadoken on
  • DelduwathDelduwath Registered User regular
    Gonna quote myself from the SE++ RPG thread:
    Delduwath wrote: »
    This has been covered before, but the Date After Which You Can't Do Anything About It is almost here, so I just wanted to remind anyone who's interested: The One Ring roleplaying game, published by Cubicle 7, is about to disappear into the aether because Cubicle 7's license for that material is about to expire.

    I was reminded of this because earlier today I got an email from Cubicle 7 by way of DriveThruRPG, saying this:
    Hi all,

    This is an important announcement regarding The One Ring™ Roleplaying Game and Adventures in Middle-earth™, Cubicle 7 products you currently own.

    Wednesday 27 May 2020 marks the end date for Cubicle 7 to be able to sell PDF products of The One Ring™ Roleplaying Game and Adventures in Middle-earth™. We would encourage those who would like to complete their PDF collections to do so before this date. Currently, the easiest way to complete your collection is via the bundles linked below. We will also reduce the price of individual PDF products later on today for the final week of their availability. (Reflecting the same level of discount as the bundles.)

    ONE RING BUNDLE at 50% off

    AIME BUNDLE at 30% off

    What happens after Wednesday 27 May 2020?

    After this date we will mark all The One Ring™ Roleplaying Game and Adventures in Middle-earth™ products as inactive. This means they will no longer be available to purchase, but all previously purchased PDFs will remain in your Drive Thru RPG libraries.

    After Wednesday 27 May 2020: we will no longer have any say about what happens to these files – they may remain inactive forever or even be removed from Drive Thru RPG. This is up to the licence holder: Sophisticated Games.

    We strongly encourage you to download and create a backup of these files — just in case they are removed — as we wouldn’t want you to lose access to a product that you already purchased and own.

    As a final note, we’d like to take this opportunity to thank you, our loyal customers for your continued support over the years.

    Dom and the Cubicle 7 team.
    I got all these PDFs from a Bundle of Holding not long ago, but I thought "Oh, maybe I'll go grab a hard copy of the core rulebook, just to have, before it disappears". Well, I guess it's already too late for that, because it doesn't seem to be in stock everywhere, and copies are selling for like... hundreds of dollars. I guess it's been out of print for a while? Bummer.

  • CarnarvonCarnarvon Registered User regular
    Delduwath wrote: »
    Gonna quote myself from the SE++ RPG thread:
    Delduwath wrote: »
    This has been covered before, but the Date After Which You Can't Do Anything About It is almost here, so I just wanted to remind anyone who's interested: The One Ring roleplaying game, published by Cubicle 7, is about to disappear into the aether because Cubicle 7's license for that material is about to expire.

    I was reminded of this because earlier today I got an email from Cubicle 7 by way of DriveThruRPG, saying this:
    Hi all,

    This is an important announcement regarding The One Ring™ Roleplaying Game and Adventures in Middle-earth™, Cubicle 7 products you currently own.

    Wednesday 27 May 2020 marks the end date for Cubicle 7 to be able to sell PDF products of The One Ring™ Roleplaying Game and Adventures in Middle-earth™. We would encourage those who would like to complete their PDF collections to do so before this date. Currently, the easiest way to complete your collection is via the bundles linked below. We will also reduce the price of individual PDF products later on today for the final week of their availability. (Reflecting the same level of discount as the bundles.)

    ONE RING BUNDLE at 50% off

    AIME BUNDLE at 30% off

    What happens after Wednesday 27 May 2020?

    After this date we will mark all The One Ring™ Roleplaying Game and Adventures in Middle-earth™ products as inactive. This means they will no longer be available to purchase, but all previously purchased PDFs will remain in your Drive Thru RPG libraries.

    After Wednesday 27 May 2020: we will no longer have any say about what happens to these files – they may remain inactive forever or even be removed from Drive Thru RPG. This is up to the licence holder: Sophisticated Games.

    We strongly encourage you to download and create a backup of these files — just in case they are removed — as we wouldn’t want you to lose access to a product that you already purchased and own.

    As a final note, we’d like to take this opportunity to thank you, our loyal customers for your continued support over the years.

    Dom and the Cubicle 7 team.
    I got all these PDFs from a Bundle of Holding not long ago, but I thought "Oh, maybe I'll go grab a hard copy of the core rulebook, just to have, before it disappears". Well, I guess it's already too late for that, because it doesn't seem to be in stock everywhere, and copies are selling for like... hundreds of dollars. I guess it's been out of print for a while? Bummer.

    The good news is, only 24 years until LotR goes public domain!

  • XagarXagar Registered User regular
    The first half of my season had a bunch of investigation aspects in them that I liked, but looks like the players didn't really dig, they just kinda want to beat dudes up. It's also a lot harder to do remotely, I think.

    Not to worry, after one last side event this week they'll be back on the main decurse the party member while dealing with the stolen magic neutron bomb and the demonic invasion and the OTHER demonic invasion and the cyberdragon.

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