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Just played a short game of Strike! The Role & Class system works well. Our party was Soccer Captain Takagi, a Demon Hunter's younger brother (Isaac), and Lt. Colonel Yoriko, a teen with an abiding hatred of magical girls. We met up with a dope at a ramen shop, honed in on a demon planning to attack on Zero Day, and had a training montage featuring a large amount of soccer parkour. (It revealed the Soccer Captain was extremely oblivous to Yoriko's affection). On Zero Day, the team went to Tokyo Tower. The demon flew in through the murky red sky. But our team had a secret weapon: The ADIDAS. Or more formally, the Anti-Demon Impact Destroyer (Asymetric Soccerball). Yoriko threw it into the air, and Takagi hit it with a flying spirit kick! The beast CRASHED into the tower, vulnerable, and as demons filled the sky, the Lt. Colonel used her tactical eyepatch to call in a drone swarm. Our heroes almost died, until Yoriko called in a glue/napalm attack. The demon Vritra rushed toward Isaac...who backhanded him back into the firey glue. Takagi hit a bicycle kick as the demon roared in flames and destruction. Yup, our anime game ended in a completely unexpected magical trio attack.
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Jan 24, 2016 07:54
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PantsOptional posted:Fly in the ointment. I got the feeling like he very much wanted to be in charge and was unhappy that he wasn't. What's really sad is that one of the GM's was actually really cool and just wanted to play old west zombies. He had great costumes and seemed to adhere pretty religiously to the 'Yes, but' school of GMing. It's just that the other GMs either wanted invulnerable skeletons (the head GM) or invulnerable plots (Justin). You can see how this caused friction.
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Jan 24, 2016 09:19
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Railing Kill posted:I'm about to start playing in a game using this system. I'd be curious to hear people's opinions about it, or some more stories from the system. The custom dice intrigues me, but I haven't played it yet so I don't know if I'm going to love it or hate it. I'm optimistic, though. Brief EotE story time: For various reasons* our party had managed to acquire a future-bulldozer belonging to some jerks who were causing problems for the local miners. Local miners with a lot of metal and welding equipment lying around. Of course we made a killdozer out of it and drove it towards jerk central, flanked by a pair of previously looted speeders. A running gun battle started up as we slowly killdozered our way toward jerk central, with most of the threats generated being were spent on people falling off the killdozer/speeders, cumulative damage towards the killdozer, and at one point accidentally running the killdozer into an enemy speeder (good) that the Wookie had just jumped onto (very bad). *some of the jerks "accidentally" drove it into a house belonging to one of the miners. I'm not sure what the expected response was but "murdering them in cold blood and stealing their space bulldozer" was apparently a bit out of left field. Splicer fucked around with this message at 19:29 on Jan 24, 2016 |
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Jan 24, 2016 19:13
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I don't think you even have to be aware that the killdozer is a concept to know that anyone with even a hint of murderhobo in their system will happily create such a thing given free access to a bulldozer and an excuse to use it. E: Wait, actually, Shady Amish Terror posted:will happily create such a thing given free access to a bulldozer There we go
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Jan 24, 2016 23:08
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I have a pretty amusing mental image of hundreds of larpers all trying to fight an indestructible skeleton
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Jan 24, 2016 23:27
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Wurzag posted:I have a pretty amusing mental image of hundreds of larpers all trying to fight an indestructible skeleton I imagine the lead up to the fight would look something like this.
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Jan 24, 2016 23:38
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Splicer posted:I've only played EotE and WFRP3E so I can't comment much on the F&D specific stuff, but the custom dice are great. There's a bit of a learning curve for GMs/players who haven't played "You succeed/fail but..." systems, but the game gives you a bunch of generic failures/benefits to spend your advantages and threats on. Thanks! I'm looking forwarding to playing, partly because it's a new system to me, and partly because I love the idea of the "succeed/fail, but..." results. Luckily, I have one less thing to worry about since I won't ever have to worry about Force Dice.  It seems like the system asks a bit more than most games from the players' and GM's ability to improvise results, but I trust myself and the other players to handle it well. I probably wouldn't want to play Edge of the Empire with total strangers, but I could say that about pretty much any game. I'm too gatdam old to have to game with random people. (Thank god.)
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Jan 25, 2016 03:40
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I was asked to create an addendum to the Deadlands Saga of Justin, by a lurker goon who was also involved in the game (let's call her Frank, because the idea of Danny Devito playing her part in this story amuses me). But it's not just one thing. It's two things, and they're both bad in their own separate ways. Addendum #1 This being the Old West, and a game entirely too fixated on poker for its own good, there was a gambling tournament. Come to think of it, this was probably around the time that Texas Hold'em started being a big thing on TV, so that was likely a factor too. Anyway, there was a special prize for the winner of the tournament, and this prize was very well secured. Another pseudo-NPC like myself was hired on to guard it, and that person spent a lot of resources making sure that no one could get to the prize without being some sort of master ninja. Justin walked up to the room in which the prize was being held, with the pseudo-NPC standing guard outside. Justin assured the guard that he was acting in capacity as a GM, and displayed whatever weird hand signal was meant to indicate such. The guard nodded. Justin dropped the hand sign, went into the room, and walked out with the item, putting the "out of game" sign back up when he left in a hurry. In effect, whatever NPC he was playing shimmered into existence for long enough to steal the item, at which point he shimmered back out of existence with the item, giving the PCs no chance to interact with it whatsoever or even to really piece together what just happened. I like to think that the TNG teleporter sound came into play there. Justin had told the rest of the staff that this character was going to try to steal the item that session, but not that he was going to bamboozle everyone that way. Addendum #1 This one's pretty drat bad. Frank (remember her?) had made a character that was one of those Old West classics: the Hooker with the Heart of Gold. This character was born out of two sources. First, Frank had found some insane monstrosity of a bridesmaid's dress at a thrift store. It was a majestically overwrought pink dress with a vast amount of white lace and it really did look like something you would never wear in the past 75 years or so. Second, the head GM had unthinkingly insulted her by asking if his character creation packet was "simple enough for (her) to understand." So she decided to break his homemade system over her knee by designing a character that literally could not fail any test to convince others to do her bidding. If Frank wanted someone to do something, she got results. Justin, after getting wind of this character, decided for some reason that one of his NPCs would make use of her services. Remember, money was tightly tracked in this game, so obtaining resources was fairly important. Justin's NPC said he needed to talk to her in private, and they went behind closed doors (not a particularly unusual thing). The conversation went as follows: Justin: Alright, so, I want to hire you. Frank: Okay, the usual rate is $50. Justin: Here you go. So what happens? Frank: What? Justin: I mean, in detail, what's the first thing we do, how far does this go? Frank:  He honestly thought that this was okay, that he could hand over imaginary game money and have her essentially talk him off. And this is the guy who thinks that throwing a schoolroom desk at his ex during an argument was fine. There is definitely a reason no one that I know ever talked to him again after all this poo poo. PantsOptional fucked around with this message at 04:49 on Jan 25, 2016 |
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Jan 25, 2016 04:46
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poo poo crackers, if I was one of the GMs, I'd kicked Justin out for abusing his GM status to pull off the theft, let alone the railroading and creepazoid. Is there any way to show that bridesmaid dress that wouldn't reveal personal info, because it sounds like a delightful monstrosity that has to be seen to be believed.
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Jan 25, 2016 05:06
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Golden Bee posted:Just played a short game of Strike! are the magical girls part of the game system or just your personal flavour?
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Jan 25, 2016 05:15
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Jintor posted:are the magical girls part of the game system or just your personal flavour? The system is FATE level flexible. We wanted to play an anime game and I thought "magical girl!" but I saw this picture and thought "wait, I got something cooler." Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 06:52 on Jan 25, 2016 |
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Jan 25, 2016 06:46
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you're right. that is cooler.
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Jan 25, 2016 06:56
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Golden Bee posted:The system is FATE level flexible. We wanted to play an anime game and I thought "magical girl!" but I saw this picture and thought "wait, I got something cooler." 
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Jan 25, 2016 06:57
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Golden Bee posted:(It revealed the Soccer Captain was extremely oblivous to Yoriko's affection). In fairness, Yoriko never tried to explain her affection in a way he could understand. No mentions of scoring, dribbling, shooting, or kicking of any kind. It wouldn't have helped, but still. It turns out that wildly passionate and mostly single-minded characters can be really fun in a one-shot situation.
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Jan 25, 2016 09:31
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Jopoho posted:It turns out that wildly passionate and mostly single-minded characters can be really fun in a one-shot situation. that sure sounds like anime to me
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Jan 25, 2016 11:15
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After lurking in this thread for such a long time, I decided to offer up a Cat-Piss of my own to contribute. The story itself is all kinds of bizzare and might not paint me or some of me mates in a very flattering light, but goddarn, it needs to be told! So, without further ado: It all started many many years back, around 2007 or so? I think. I had taken over the spot of GM for the group from the previous GM after he kind-of burned-out on another multi-year campaign. We were playing DSA, or TDE as it´s known in the english language. At the time we were playing the Year-of-Fire Campaign for TDE, which promised High Fantasy, Adventure and Great Changes (most of which...well, didn´t really come to pass that way, but that is a topic for another time entirely). Anyway. The campaign was designed for a group of upstanding citizens and loyal folk for the Middlerealm but...that wasn´t exactly what our group had in mind. Our group consisted of me, as GM, Mr.T, the resident Necromancer and Black Magician who delights in controlling other people via magic (very bad!), Mr.H, the fighting magician who tries to equal parts be human flamethrower and kickass muscle mage, Mr.P, the noble with a heart of jelly that hides behind the biggest imaginable shield and flees from every noblewoman approaching him because he is heir to a ginormous estate, and Mr.D, the sneaky secret agent of the hidden and incredibly secret agency of secret spies of the Middlerealm, who is so incredibly secret that it´s an open secret among everyone. At the point that we enter the story, group cohesion is bad. Motivation is at an all-time low. Recently the group has been kicked out from the ducal palace after the duke found them trying to break into the ducal treasury and since he could not legally execute them (they had some time back become noblemen due to general rear end-kicking), fined them and threw them out, which meant that they could no longer influence the political shenanigans at that place. So now they were a bit money-short and were itching to blow something up. Coincidentally, the tower of an evil mage was known to be around in the vicinity of the duke´s city and despite entry being forbidden by the priests of the God of Laws, they just said "LOL" and entered anyway in the hopes of a good time and some great loot. Now, the evil mage that once had build the tower was already dead and they knew this because they had helped kill him aboard a flying dark city that he was symbiotically bound to made out of tainted elements which he tried to use to crush the "City of Light" with, a location within the capital of the Middlerealm and centre of the settings churches. Now, within the tower, long since abandoned by it´s previous owner, they entered and met with all sorts of silly or serious opposition, from the mages kitchen to his demonic summoning circle and utensils, among them some very strange artifacts which allowed them some freaky out-of-body experiences. Now demons in TDE are extremely dangerous even to experienced adventurers and they suffered accordingly, especially seeing as it was the tower of a great summoner. Now, almost dead and with several wounds on them, they decided to leave, despite not being sure that they had gotten all the loot needed. However, I thought, they are clever, the best loot is secured with deadly traps, should you not know how to disarm them. Which they didn´t. Now picture the following scene: Heavy Rainfall, we are directly in front of the Tower entrance, Mr.H has Mr.P on his shoulders, who is heavily wounded and needs assistance soon or he dies, Mr.D is currently running to town to sell most of the loot they have found, Mr.T keeps at the back of the group Mr.T: *fidgeting* Guys, I forgot something, I will need to go back and get it. Mr.H: I got Mr.P on my back. We are out of magical power and ammunition. Be quick about it. Mr.D: Have I reached town already? GM: Sure. So, Mr.T you re-enter the tower and before you, after wandering through the long entrance corridor, you stand in front of the great stairway. Where do you go? Mr.D, you are just now have the city gates in sight. Mr.D: Okay, I´ll stopp immediately and look for our secret passage. No way in Hell am I giving a cut to those bastards! Mr.H: *to the GM* Okay, it ours like hell. I´m looking somewhere to wait under until the rain subsides. Can´t have Mr.P get Pneumonia now. Mr.T: I go up to the second floor, where the mages bedroom is. The one with the great portrait. GM: Okay, Mr.D, you know where that entrance is and begin to slide through it. You get muddy as hell and some of those jewels might be lost. Mr.D: Sure, I can live with that. GM: Okay, Mr.H, you take shelter under the tower entrance and wait for the storm to end. GM: Mr.T, you enter the Mages Bedroom. Just as you left it, the dust has yet to settle, the bed is shredded to pieces and several destroyed pots and smaller furniture lie around the room. Only the great, foreboding portrait of EVIL MAGE stands on the side. It towers over you at room height of almost 3m and remains an extremely foreboding image of the most vile person imaginable. Now at this point I have to explain the following: As you might have figured out already, the giant painting is a trap. Some worthless trinkets of personal value are hidden behind the portrait which EVIL MAGE had setup for specifically the purpose of getting stupid people to trigger the trap, which will send out a lightning bolt directly into the idiot triggering it. Now the players had already encountered and thrashed the place and figured, it was a trap and left it alone. However, seeing as Mr.T was greedy and believed he had the right to get everything he wanted (he would often complain again and again until he got something ingame) and wanted to be clever. Now, being clever has often times killed someone as you are never as clever as you believe yourself to be. The trap triggers as soon as the portrait is moved and will focus on the closest living target. Mr.T: Okay, I take a piece of wood from the trashed room, preferably from the bed or something like that and wander to the side of the painting. Then I use the piece of wood and push it away from the wall. GM: Okay. You push it away. With a loud thoud the painting falls down, revealing a small hole in the wall where something glints at you in the light of the flame.... Mr.T: I GRAB EVERYTHING IN THERE!!! GM: ....let me finish....as you see a ball of lightning form and race towards you. The dawning horror on his face. He rolls to dodge, but fails miserably. The lightning bolt all but fries him. As I roll for damage, he looks immediately downcast and I try to lower the damage from behind my GM screen before telling him the damage done. He just nods and jots it down. Then looks at Mr.H. GM: (to Mr.H) You wait and wait and somehow, you can hear nothing but the rain. Suddenly the soothing sound is pierced as if a thunder bolt pierced from the heavens and a scream from Mr.T can be heard from further inside the Tower. Mr.T: Okay, I set down Mr.P slowly and then run inside to look for the dumbass. He finds the smouldering body. As I explain to Mr.H how Mr.T looks, Mr.T looks at me and starts counting seconds. GM: What are you doing? Mr.T: I´m below 0 HP. I´m dying. GM: What? You had [enough] HP left? I counted! Mr.T: *smugface* Well you must have miscounted, because I´m now dying and have about 110 seconds left. We are looking at each other. He looks away. Seems miffed. Mr.H starts immediate rescue preparations and shoulders his friend to bring him to the closest academy to save him but it´s too late. Mr.T dies on the way to the healer. Sadface all around. Mr.T stops talking at all, leaves the room. We think he goes for a smoke, when Mr.D notes that he heard a car door slamming. And just like that, about 2 hours into the current session he just leaves. Now everyone else treats this appropriately and we hold a funeral for the character, but he doesn´t attend. Begins to complain how his death was BS and that he was only singled out because he was playing the most unfitting character concept for the game. The game begins to turn sour for everyone in the following session. He complains and complains. Finally I have enough. I tell him "Ok, you get a character to play, your old one is dead, but perhaps he might return, in the meantime, take this character I built after the end of the last session to get you into the game again". I give him a character that is a brother he never knew he had and add some background about his family and his characters history to connect it to the player. But he takes nothing of it. Continues complaining. After the second session, Mr.H comes to me and tells me, in confidence, that after leaving the session during which Mr.T died, he went home and raged on the company forum for TDE with a thread that had become infamous soon about "Killer GM and Character Death" in which he claims that I had it out for him. The thread went on to become infamous in it´s own right in that forum but that is another story. So, soon everyone becomes miserable, because even with his new character he ignores all hooks I throw his way, and the other player soon come ot me, talk to me, want to get me to give him his character back. They beg me to do so. So after about half a year of this I finally concede. I take a scene I had planned for some time later in the story and let them find out about a plot of evil priests stealing Mr.Ts ashes and soul and rebind them together which culminates in a rather lame sideshow where they rescue, competely out of order and whacked as hell, Mr.T, who is now in a new body. Mr.T is happy, but now everyone else is pissed. I am pissed because Mr.T learned nothing from the ordeal, basically shat on all attempts to help the situation along and threw away the character and history I offered him once he regained his old character and Mr.P, D and H are pissed because they feel that as soon has he got his character back, Mr.T suddenly didn´t care anymore. We continued on for another year but it became more and more miserable. Finally we rushed to the Campaigns´ End and finished it. Even looking back at it nowadays, it forever poisoned both TDE as well as that player for me. Man what a lovely situation. So there. My bowl of cat-piss, on offer for the collective Cat-Piss-Collection,
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Jan 25, 2016 16:17
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i never understand why people get upset when characters die. Its imaginary game and completes the story arc? Usually the most lasting and memorable characters are the ones that die. The risk of dying is what makes it a game, right?
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Jan 25, 2016 17:01
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People get upset because they've invested a lot of time in developing their character. There has to be a risk of death though or it's not fun. But when you're playing as imaginary superhero magic blasters dying in a dumb random encounter or in a hand-wavey fashion just sucks. I can see being bummed out about that. I want my character death to mean something or be memorable in some way. My favorite was Clink, a halfling rogue in a homebrew campaign who managed to get hit with a heavy pick for a critical hit in a random skirmish. Clink's death wouldn't have been that noteworthy except for the fact that the party's necromancer was like "Guys, I've got this. I can bring him back." You already know where this is going. I stood up as a mindless zombie and the party instantly turned on the necromancer. There was no bloodshed but the RP fallout was hilarious. We still talk about that scene.
deedee megadoodoo fucked around with this message at 17:35 on Jan 25, 2016 |
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Jan 25, 2016 17:33
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HatfulOfHollow posted:People get upset because they've invested a lot of time in developing their character. There has to be a risk of death though or it's not fun. But when you're playing as imaginary superhero magic blasters dying in a dumb random encounter or in a hand-wavey fashion just sucks. I can see being bummed out about that. I want my character death to mean something or be memorable in some way. My favorite was Clink, a halfling rogue in a homebrew campaign who managed to get hit with a heavy pick for a critical hit in a random skirmish. Clink's death wouldn't have been that noteworthy except for the fact that the party's necromancer was like "Guys, I've got this. I can bring him back." You already know where this is going. I stood up as a mindless zombie and the party instantly turned on the necromancer. There was no bloodshed but the RP fallout was hilarious. We still talk about that scene. thats what i am talking about though, that was just a random encounter and fate turned a cold shoulder on your rogue. what ended up happening is one of the most memorable experiences with your gaming group. Like I never recall the "epic battle with the big bad at the end" I remember when some lucky hits from some random peasants destroy a murderhobo player.
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Jan 25, 2016 18:20
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Mr.Misfit posted:Now at this point I have to explain the following: As you might have figured out already, the giant painting is a trap. Some worthless trinkets of personal value are hidden behind the portrait which EVIL MAGE had setup for specifically the purpose of getting stupid people to trigger the trap, which will send out a lightning bolt directly into the idiot triggering it. Now the players had already encountered and thrashed the place and figured, it was a trap and left it alone. However, seeing as Mr.T was greedy and believed he had the right to get everything he wanted (he would often complain again and again until he got something ingame) and wanted to be clever. Now, being clever has often times killed someone as you are never as clever as you believe yourself to be.The trap triggers as soon as the portrait is moved and will focus on the closest living target. Your player is almost certainly part of the problem but this is a garbage attitude for a GM to have and it's part of why your game fell apart. When you decide to "teach a player a lesson" in-game it usually blows up in your face. A trap that goes off if you touch "X" is always stupid, btw.
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Jan 25, 2016 18:24
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Your player is almost certainly part of the problem but this is a garbage attitude for a GM to have and it's part of why your game fell apart. When you decide to "teach a player a lesson" in-game it usually blows up in your face. True, and since then, it´s been..about 8 years, I think, and I have done my best to change my ways. Back then I tried really really hard to keep the module working according to the ideas of the adventure (pre-written and bought module) and funny thing, my players actually expected me to. We´ve ...learned since then =)
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Jan 25, 2016 18:43
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I also like traps that dont damage because 1. damage is easily recovered outside combat for the most part. 2. there is a fine line between trivial and devastating 3. its more fun to gently caress with players head. Recently a player was told the ghost at the top floor HATES music and told him whatever they do, dont do anything musical like humming or whistling. So, the player went upstairs and immediately started jamming on his lute. His punishment - aged 20 years. Now that vain bard is freaking out over his lost time.
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Jan 25, 2016 18:59
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Your player is almost certainly part of the problem but this is a garbage attitude for a GM to have and it's part of why your game fell apart. When you decide to "teach a player a lesson" in-game it usually blows up in your face. I disagree. Now, I'll fault him for letting Mr. T stick around as long as he did, that's not the best idea. But, in this instance you're referencing - The party assumed it was a trap and decided to leave it alone. Mr. T, weakened as is, made the choice to try and sneak back in to get the treasure behind it. And it's a friggin' Wizard's Tower, how else are you going to trigger a magical trap? Should there have been trip wires?
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Jan 25, 2016 18:59
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Your player is almost certainly part of the problem but this is a garbage attitude for a GM to have and it's part of why your game fell apart. When you decide to "teach a player a lesson" in-game it usually blows up in your face. That system he was playing, DSA or TDE, is based on that mentality and apart from lovely GM advice is also a terrible system. Basically the Cat-Piss of rpg systems. When I have more time I can tell a few stories about how broken it is.
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Jan 25, 2016 19:13
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I think the fact that the guy was damaged and pretty much knew it was a trap kind of excuses the lightning bolt. It's like when you find a chest in a room by itself surrounded by bones and dissolved clothing. Everybody laughs and says, "haha, that's a mimic". Then six combats later the rogue sneaks back in by himself thinking, "but what if it isnt?!"
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Jan 25, 2016 19:20
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I think you should have put your foot down on the death moment. "It's a non-lethal trap. You can't die from it, only be incapped or paralyzed." Is a better fix than "oh woe is me, the player prevented me from using my master control over all the game by him fudging numbers instead!"
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Jan 25, 2016 19:26
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I don't find character death particularly compelling, honestly. Even less so when it happens in a game with elaborate chargen and progression, or where PCs buying the farm will leave lots of loose ends. Particularly not when it's just a cluster of lovely rolls that brings the PCs down. I've resisted joining friends' Pathfinder game because the one anecdote I remember is from a player lamenting all of that effort lost when precisely that happened to several PCs in one easy encounter gone awry. Now, a Roguelike, or a tabletop game with shake and bake chargen? That's a totally different animal. I think Mr. T intentionally shorted himself HP to give himself an excuse to be an asshat and farm sympathy.
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Jan 25, 2016 19:27
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Yeah, "you should have a few HP left!" is as big an out as you can give without saying "Unless you don't feel like dying."
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Jan 25, 2016 19:29
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Mendrian posted:It's like when you find a chest in a room by itself surrounded by bones and dissolved clothing. Everybody laughs and says, "haha, that's a mimic". Then six combats later the rogue sneaks back in by himself thinking, "but what if it isnt?!" No, actually. This is really stupid and don't do this. You've created an interesting little tableau for the players and then said "don't interact with it". Bad GMing. There's a tiny band of time where players "deserve" to get hit by stupid "touch X and die" traps. When they are starting out, they don't deserve it because they don't know any better. Then, there's a tiny band of time where they would probably leave it alone. Then, they become seasoned vets and say "oh it's probably a double-bluff, I bet that's not a mimic at all!" and arrange to tickle the chest with a feather while using mage hand or throwing darts at it from across the room or whatever. Punishing players for being curious about the world they've built is actually something that a garbage GM does. Don't use "ding! you die!" traps. Hope this helps.
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Jan 25, 2016 19:31
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Basically if your players are creative enough in their attempts to spring a trap that they know is a trap, Death should not be an option. Ask their Heath pool, roll the dice, if it goes above their health pool then leave them at 1/4 or 1/5 of max. Then they get the loot, put on the cursed ring of dogs, and gain +5 to CHA with all dogs and -5 to all cats. It's simple
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Jan 25, 2016 19:34
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My gaming Motto is ABS, always be springing
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Jan 25, 2016 19:43
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The surviving adventurer is one who has internalized the 'floor is lava' game.
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Jan 25, 2016 19:56
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Smash it Smash hit posted:i never understand why people get upset when characters die. Its imaginary game and completes the story arc? Usually the most lasting and memorable characters are the ones that die. The risk of dying is what makes it a game, right? Reminds me of the time I ran some D&D for a few friends-of-friends. They were familiar with RPGs, mostly in the WoD vein but one girl said she played D&D all the time. This is about that girl. See, she said "I play D&D" but what she meant was "my friends and I sit around and freeform with a D&D book open on the table." This made her a perfect storm of not really knowing anything about the rules, but acting like she had all of 3.5 memorized. This was annoying but it isn't the focus of the story. So because I had heard "we are all well versed in RPGs and want a challenge" I pulled out Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. We get characters made, she of course has no concept beyond "I wanna be a druid" but eventually manage to cobble together something akin to a personality for this character. He driving ambition from the outset is to get this relic armor. It's made of magic leaves and lets you turn into a pile of floating leaves (refluffed gaseous form spell) a couple times a day, and costs somewhere north of 27k. Not something you normally see a 4th level character picking up soon, but hey a goal's a goal. She will not shut up about this loving armor. Everything OOC is about how cool it is, and everything IC is half-assed "I like trees! Down with not-trees!" poo poo that would have been awkward in Fern Gully. So after a couple weeks of this (we all lived in the same apartment complex so it was really easy to say "hey we're bored let's D&D") I cave and let her find the damned armor. She is happy, and will still not shut up about how cool her new armor is.  And so they get to the water part of the temple, where there's a huge pool of water with a stone platform and rather ornate altar in the middle. Perfect opportunity to demonstrate just how cool this armor is, right? A chance for her to be the center of attention for reasons other than acute dendrophilia, right? Right? She takes the armor off and begins to swim for the platform. Let me repeat that fully: She takes off the armor that makes her immune to damage while also giving her a perfect maneuverability flight speed in order to swim across a lake of unknown qualities in a temple that has been repeatedly demonstrated to be hostile to them in a host of different ways. And so of course she's attacked by a bunch of sahaguin with spears along with their cleric leader, getting hurt pretty badly but making it back to the party. The sahaguin are hot on her heels but I say that she has enough time to don it hastily if she wants to, thinking she might don it and go gaseous or she might just use wild shape or she might cast some spells to buff up/heal/kill them. She does none of these, instead deciding to get her armor on, draw her scimitar, and fight them! The fight goes poorly for the fighter with less feats, hp, and attack bonus. I pull every punch I can reasonably pull without just saying flat-out "okay the fish people decide to not kill you for no raisin" especially because they wanted me to roll in the open all the time. So her druid died, we were a bit saddened, and she just took off, never to return. This killed the game because she took her boyfriend with her. She never spoke to me again, but he relayed to me that she apparently had this huge headcanon surrounding her character, backstory, personality, all this poo poo she wanted to accomplish in character... wish she had let me know any sliver of it.
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Jan 25, 2016 20:17
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I mean I had a group in a dungeon full of gargoyles (pathfinder). Every statue looked like a gargoyle, and man wouldn’t you know is one. The most blatant thing ever. The rogue snuck off during a combat and came across a really big gargoyle statue holding a gem. So he took the gem and the boss gargoyle attacked him and he got mad when it killed him. It’s not like I forced him to fight it, these things are in a dungeon so flight isn’t doing anything for them, and he had made his character to be able to be super mobile so he could have ran back to the group, and yes he would have been trailing the boss, but then the whole group could have fought it? Nope tried to solo it and died. He was mad that I didn’t make it take a fall so he could get all the loot for himself. Some people are just greedy and stupid. But then the group killed it, picked up his dumb dead corpse, and went and used his share for a true res and there you go. He admited later he was dumb, but was still miffed he couldnt duel a monster I had made to challenge a 5 person group. Edit: You die surprise traps only work when players have an easy way to come back. They are super dick moves when resurrection is hard/impossible. That said, the GM did say he tried to make sure the guy getting hit would have enough hp to survive. To me it sounds like that player changed his hp to make the GM out as a "killer gm". TyrsHTML fucked around with this message at 20:48 on Jan 25, 2016 |
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Jan 25, 2016 20:33
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death .cab for qt posted:cursed ring of dogs, and gain +5 to CHA with all dogs and -5 to all cats. It's simple Haven't been doing much gaming recently, busy starting new job, but a short story from december for content; While making their way through the Southern Jungles, home to unknown ruins and magically mutated beasts from the fallout of the Rain of Colourless Fire, trying to find an ancient temple to a seemingly-forgotten demigod the party is interrupted by a dire boar bursting through the foliage! The party readies for a quick and easy battle, and perhaps a relief from the rations they've been on for the past few days, only to notice that this boar is already injured? Cue a roar from the bushes, and a Tyrannosaur bursts into their midst. Everyone flubs their Knowledge rolls spectacularly, and conclude that this is evidently some kind of giant carnivorous who gives a gently caress. Well, aside from the Ranger, who decides this is an ideal new pet (current pets; two 1200 lb owlbears) and tries to tame it via Wild Empathy. Sadly, her habit of producing 20s like they are going out of style fails her, and the T-rex lunges for this strange fox-lady that's roaring back at it. I should mention at this point that the most experienced of my players is testing out one of his latest homebrews, a Brawler-style martial class meant to play somewhat like a 4e Grapple Fighter (Shameless plug 'cause I think it's rad), with focus on Interrupts, Pins, and Throws. He uses his Intervene manouvre to tackle the T-rex, rolls phenomenally well on his Bull Rush and sends the 7-ton tyrant king skidding backwards, and then follows up by Critting on a dinosaur suplex and knocking it the gently caress out in one fell swoop. I had originally planned to flank the party with a second T-rex, for a more challenging fight, but extending the encounter from there would have felt cheap. Instead, the Ranger set about hogtieing it down and trying to tame it once it woke up, using the Stalwart as a giant muscular spritzer bottle. Also relevant to general discussion; I try my best to stay alive for this reason, and because I tend towards less lethal games whereas the other GMs in my friend groups tend towards realistic-lethal games where death from mundane stuff in the WoD is as common as dying in a gigantic hellbeast fight. The main character death I was disappointed with was in a mixed oWoD game, where I got the chance to play a Were-Tiger since we never played werewolf - the rest of the party were an Archer-built Werespider, a Mazatec Euthanatos (entropy/fate mage), an elder Ventrue (mind control/talky thing vampire), and an elder Assamite. I picked up the Healing Touch gift, and basically played San-Diego Banham, Tiger I got to do cool combat stuff, like split tech-zombies in half with a stop sign, or suplex a giant garbage monster, and also parleyed with the King of All Cats to find some magical artefacts. Similarly, the Ventrue puppeteered a tech-zombie into stealing a plane from O'Hare airport and crashing it into the tech-spirit-thing's skyscraper base, the Euthanatos got to tweak fate so that the plane actually hit since the Ventrue had no idea how to actually pilot it and got it off the ground through sheer dumb luck on the dice, the werespider got to be really creepy, and the assamite got to murder things with so many swords you have no idea. You may have had an inkling from "sheer dumb luck on the dice", that the problem with the game was we had to sortof fight the GM to actually do stuff. He's a good storyteller, and writer, but he usually has one idea of how its going to go down and you either figure it out somehow or you brute force it until he can't stonewall you any longer - see; throwing massive dice pools at our specialties so he had to let us actually do things. Bit of a stickler for the rules, but cutting both ways. So we make it to the final fight, with the Baali who reverse-possessed Jupiter, and it one where we literally can't do any damage to the guy. I figure this out after burning half my resources on an alpha strike once he can actually be hit, doing something like 60 aggravated damage in a system where things usually have 7 health. Predictably, he takes zero damage, and a trio of Abominations (vampire werewolves, he made them from werewolves because SuperBaali) come out to run interference. Down on resources and fighting two at once, I take one down with me, but otherwise go out with a whiff. The Ventrue runs over the Baali with a pickup truck, and the Assamite tries his plan to get rid of him; Diablerize him, drain him dry and eat his soul, or try and suck Jupiter out of him. A good plan, and he gets immediately incinerated by lightning because "no". The Werespider turns on the remaining two, in a bit to switch to the winning side, and the Euthanatos switches their attentions from trying to countermagic a god incarnate to blocking the poison arrows. Eventually the Ventrue hits on the GMs plan, after we do something to force Jupiter to disconnect from the Baali - the Ventrue convinces Jupiter, through a great IC speech, to join with him instead and see the world, rather than staying with this washed up wannabe, trapped inside his helldome'd domain. Jupiter agrees and they both disappear, the helldome breaks, etc etc. The Euthanatos mercy-kills the shattered Baali by burning him alive in petrol, better than he deserves as a demon-worshipping baali etc, and lays a curse on the Werespider that if she ever returns to Chicago, she'll die. Or at least suffer a massive pre-cast magical attack, and alert him that she's there. The werespider slinks off, not like she ever wanted to come back to this hellhole, w/e. That kindof ended up being two stories instead of one, ah well. The gist of it is gently caress stonewalling, letting your players actually do stuff = A++
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Jan 25, 2016 20:57
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My group has been playing together for about 15 years and I joined them about 7 or 8 years ago. They were in the middle of a 3.5 DnD campaign at the time where the main party was the reincarnation of powerful people earlier in history. We were all a custom race that were native outsiders. Turns out the people we were reincarnations of had been part of some invasion force by a multiverse spanning empire and they had used our custom genetically engineered race as like shock troops. It was a very low magic world because it was originally used for a 2e campaign so what little magic power we had was rare and coveted. The party was a wizard, two fighter types, a rogue type, and maybe a soul knife? I can't really remember. We all had a number of special powers based on who we used to be in a past life and the wizard's past life was some powerful evil wizard. I was one of the fighter types and had powers that dealt with time. The party was in some small town far from our home breaking into the temple of some evil god. It was absolutely filled with undead of all kinds. We were in the mid levels around 13-14 by then and thought we were hot poo poo. This temple was proving us wrong. Things were going poorly and we were rapidly running out of resources and no where near an exit. We had given up on trying to complete our mission and were just trying to get out of there. There was a big fight and our best fighter (who wasn't me) had been level drained. Thing's were looking real bad like a TPK bad. Then the wizard had his turn to go and something important to note is he had his normal spells he memorized like any wizard. He also had a special supply of spells that the wizard he was a reincarnation of had memorized when he died. These were one time use only and once he casted them he could not use them again for the rest of the campaign. He burned one of this to cast limited wish and replicate a cleric spell, restoration. That alone was a huge deal because in this low magic world you could not just get a copy of wish or limited wish or time stop or any of those super powerful spells. You could also not select it on level up. So him busting that one out was a big time wow. He could never do it again but it might save our butts. Things were still dire however. We were fighting hard and things still looked grim. The wizard comes up again and casts a disintegrate which takes care of one of the undead. Then he does something no one expects. He casts a second disintegrate. A quickened spell uses up a spell slot 4 levels higher and the spell itself is 6th level. He burns a 10th level spell slot a god drat epic level spell he can never get back and it turns the tide of battle enough for the melee to finish off the undead and we avoid the TPK. The campaign lasted about 5 years total and after a few years break from epic campaigns we recently started a pathfinder game that will be a similar epic story going on for years hopefully. I made a wizard 
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Jan 25, 2016 21:36
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one of my favorite experiences was in 4e where I played a goliath barbarian. His name was Kreath and he was by far my favorite character ever because he was somehow the smartest in the party and also had a cell phone (the number was "7") The plot had led us to a town that was having a gladiatorial tournament that we were obligated to sign up for and in order to sign up we needed a mascot. We finally decided on borrowing a golden retriever puppy from an orphan we had helped earlier, naming the dog "Russell" (after Russell Wilson, short QB for the Seahawks) and our halfling thief would go into battle riding on the puppy. So we go through this tournament and dominate and were in the finals against some wights and I think a human fighter. This normally wouldn't be a problem but the fighter had specialized in tripping and was using that to his advantage. The fighter ends up tripping the halfling and the wights surround them, meaning everytime they stood up, there was an attack of opportunity and then the fighter would trip them again. Finally we had Russell, the puppy, move by himself and be subject to all the AoO, killing him instantly. With all the AoO's used up, the halfling tumbled away, and killed the fighter. We won the tournament but everyone in town hated us for sacrificing a puppy to do so
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Jan 27, 2016 08:12
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On the one hand, experienced fighters would've withheld their AoO and used them against the more dangerous target rather than his basically harmless mount. On the other hand, that's really funny and awful.
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Jan 28, 2016 03:49
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Arctic Baldwin posted:We won the tournament but everyone in town hated us for sacrificing a puppy to do so As they well should!
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Jan 28, 2016 03:51
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Arctic Baldwin posted:Finally we had Russell, the puppy, move by himself and be subject to all the AoO, killing him instantly. With all the AoO's used up, the halfling tumbled away, and killed the fighter. From an in-game perspective, wouldn't it be the case that the dog loyally sacrificed his life? Or shouldn't it be the fighter's fault for butchering an innocent dog? Or was this sequence of events described as someone picking up the dog and throwing it in the fighter's face, who just panicked and slashed at it out of reflex? Because then the audience reaction is more understandable.
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Jan 28, 2016 03:53
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