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I experimented with fate, but it was still too cumbersome and rule heavy
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Aug 12, 2011 19:35
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Baronjutter posted:I experimented with fate, but it was still too cumbersome and rule heavy Have you tried Chronica Feudalis? That's really rules light.
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Aug 12, 2011 19:43
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I love checking out other systems for ideas but at the moment any rules beyond "give characters some descriptors and a few numerical bonuses, resolve everything through a simple difficulty vs roll+skill check, GM the poo poo out of everything else" would be too cumbersome for this game. How do some of you with any experience with this sort of situation transition in new characters when a character dies? I find it always results in a lost session, how to avoid this? Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Aug 12, 2011 |
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Aug 12, 2011 20:22
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Sounds like you want some PDQ, the lightest of the rules-light games.
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Aug 12, 2011 20:32
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Baronjutter posted:I love checking out other systems for ideas but at the moment any rules beyond "give characters some descriptors and a few numerical bonuses, resolve everything through a simple difficulty vs roll+skill check, GM the poo poo out of everything else" would be too cumbersome for this game. I did pretty much that when I GMd Paranoia games. Paranoia has the best system for dealing with PC death. PC dies, Domin-O's delivery guy comes with his new clone.
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Aug 12, 2011 21:00
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Baronjutter posted:How do some of you with any experience with this sort of situation transition in new characters when a character dies? I find it always results in a lost session, how to avoid this? You mean transition in new characters in an extremely rules-light system when a character dies? That's even easier than transitioning in a rules-heavy system like D&D! Just figure out what kind of character the guy wants to play, have him whip the mechanics up in 5-10 minutes, figure out where they might meet him and why they might let him tag along, and do it. Heck, you could explicitly have each player take on a squire/apprentice and let them RP out their characterization so that if the main PC dies the apprentice is a fully-realized character ready to step in just then.
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Aug 12, 2011 22:11
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You don't even need to fully create the mechanics if you're using something like you describe here:Baronjutter posted:All a character is is a short list of things that define them. Have the player fill in a couple which are related to the current situation, allow them to fill in more as needs demand, and then ask them to finish everything up by the next session if they don't all get set up during play. Essentially, everything you encounter through the rest of the session is a potential prompt for the player to define their character, which can help with ideas. And you avoid the player wasting time during a session coming up with traits that aren't relevant to that session; that can be done during downtime.
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Aug 12, 2011 22:25
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Mr. Maltose posted:Sounds like you want some PDQ, the lightest of the rules-light games. WUSHU might win that fight, but it'd be a close one.
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Aug 12, 2011 22:45
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Oh no I mean story wise, how to add a new character quickly without it just being someone teleporting in and everyone just accepting it. How do other people handle brand new characters showing up? Ret-con in some backstory that they knew this guy? Spend a whole session role playing them joining the party? That's why I'm wanting to have everyone have a backup character waiting in the wings with not just their character defined, but their reason for being in the party pre-defined. For example, the party leader and titled noble that owns the village central to the plot dies? Well here's his brother who inherited the title and the characters have met a few times as an npc so there's no need for introductions! I need to set up things like that, unique for each character. Some don't really need it as much as others, depending on their characters.
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Aug 12, 2011 23:23
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Honestly I'm just trying to figure out Baronjutter. At first I thought he was a terrible circa-1979 Bad DM, but then I find out he considers FATE to be too rules-heavy. I mean what the heck? Barronjutter, you're a pretty rare bird; I think you're kinda out there carving your own path and there's not a lot of help we can give you. Just Do It. Edit: The reason I don't get what's going on here is because Baronjutter's approach to gaming seems so bizzaro. He has all these made-up rules for nations and charts and crap for what they are doing, but wants the bare minimum of definition for the PCs (which are the people that the actual game is based around) so as...not to railroad them I guess? I dunno. Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 23:29 on Aug 12, 2011 |
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Aug 12, 2011 23:26
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Baronjutter posted:Oh no I mean story wise, how to add a new character quickly without it just being someone teleporting in and everyone just accepting it. How do other people handle brand new characters showing up? Ret-con in some backstory that they knew this guy? Spend a whole session role playing them joining the party? I can't imagine doing this well without the answer being specific to the story and the specific context of the introduction. A major character dying and a new one joining is a significant event in the story, and is such an opportunity to do something interesting, that a one-size-fits-all solution should probably just be your backup. In the game I'm primarily running right now, I probably wouldn't do it. The PCs in that game are members of an extremely tight-knit conspiracy. Introducing a new member of the conspiracy is a big enough deal that I'd want the time between sessions to think and talk to the player about it, so that I could work into their next mission how they'd happen to meet someone they could trust enough to work with. On the other hand, I'm also running a short side-story about mentally-unbalanced mages who unintentionally change reality with their insanity, and when I needed to add another PC to that we just retconned that he'd always been part of the group, since that was the sort of thing which, in the fiction of the world, would actually happen to these characters. For your campaign, where it's all about building up this consistent world, each character having a pre-named replacement with an idea of how they could be brought in seems perfect. So, I guess, a long way of just telling you to do your idea. Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Edit: The reason I don't get what's going on here is because Baronjutter's approach to gaming seems so bizzaro. He has all these made-up rules for nations and charts and crap for what they are doing, but wants the bare minimum of definition for the PCs (which are the people that the actual game is based around) so as...not to railroad them I guess? I dunno. Seems to me like a GM who loves Civilization running for a bunch of players who love Minecraft. Everything they do is covered by mechanics and those mechanics are highly-general so that they can do anything. They're building their own little world.
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Aug 12, 2011 23:45
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Literally a game made up of players from a minecraft server who also enjoy paradox strategy games like Europa Universalis/Civ. So it's minecraft set in 1600's fantasy europe.
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Aug 13, 2011 00:09
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Baronjutter posted:Oh no I mean story wise, how to add a new character quickly without it just being someone teleporting in and everyone just accepting it. How do other people handle brand new characters showing up? Ret-con in some backstory that they knew this guy? Spend a whole session role playing them joining the party? Ask the group how the new character will fit in. It's really, really simple.
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Aug 13, 2011 03:00
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Chainsawdomy posted:Which incidentally, I've always kind of liked. To me it gives a thief the feeling of being a scrappy opportunist; sure he can't take many more sword blows at 5th level than he can at first, but since the rest of the party is still 2nd-3rd, his skills and saving throws are all higher, so he gets to be the problem-solver/survivalist. I usually "give" them shitloads of treasure and then take it off them again as quickly as I can, which seems to be what works best in the system. So yeah, I use the training rules pretty much as-written except that I'm fairly generous about roleplaying or adventuring for discount training (The girl you saved is Crazy Dave's daughter! That's Crazy Dave as in "Crazy Dave's Cheapass Fighter School"!) Yeah, they could go "gently caress training, I'm gonna hire 200 mercenaries and flatten the bad guy's tower that way", and that's fine too. But then they run out of money (or the character who's a chronic gambler bets all their funds on a lame horse or whatever) and there's 200 pissed off mercenaries who aren't quite prepared to accept "we'll pay you next week" and then you've got a whole adventure planned out... Resource management? I once had the players obtain a couple of million GPs worth of acid. At level one. That turned into a whole campaign (and was nothing like what I had sort-of-planned). Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 04:46 on Aug 13, 2011 |
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Aug 13, 2011 04:44
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For unexpected deaths, I generally hand a player a near PC level NPC thats in the neighbourhood for the rest of the session if possible(which at least keeps them from sitting there idle, theres 2 'abandoned' PCs who're still alive to plug into anyway), then we work out specifics. Sometimes you have to just use the "new guy showed up, bestest friend now!" method though, unless you have an NPC or companion you can promote to PC grade(which somewhat limits what the new character can be). EDIT: Also, regarding the Civ-style GMing, it has a lot of perks, since games and scenarios are easier to derive from when you have basically a dynamic setting in the background. PC level events naturally extend from these strategy level events as inspirations. I do some of that myself, though in a less measured manner. It just acts as a 'quick setting generation' method. My way: Lay down variety of terrain, natural and magical features. Drop in the wildlife based on those, theres a rough wildlife hazard gradient. Drop in the PC races, which gain cultures based on their locale and racial talents. Possibly some history. Build a meta-culture thing over these relations. Basically how all these groups relate. Take a ton of liberties at this point. Throw random event ideas at it, work out consequences of said events propagated across the region. Dump PCs in somewhere, and figure out events for them to play with at their power scale and capabilities. PCs act, as do people in the background. More consequences result. PCs may or may not find out the movers in the back, and take action to make sure they move as the PCs prefer. veekie fucked around with this message at 13:02 on Aug 13, 2011 |
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Aug 13, 2011 12:46
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Amidiri posted:What my group does to negate all of the fiddly number-touching of XP is we all just level up at a dramatically appropriate moment Yeah we've started using this approach now with "level" based character progression in games like D&D. But in games that have constant progression (like Dark Heresy and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay), the other way seems to work well (base amount of XP per session plus bonuses on top for good rp-ing and ideas etc...)
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Aug 13, 2011 13:29
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I've got a 4e campaign starting soon (my last one fizzled out but the players still want to play so we're starting fresh with some new characters) and instead of the usual "YOU ALL MEET AT A TAVERN, GO DO STUFF!" opening, I'm opening with a gladiator tournament. Now this is fine for most of the players (Fighter, Sorceress, Wizard, Cleric) as they all have reasons to be there and in the tournament but the remaining player is an Assassin and neither me or his player can think of a logical reason for him to enter a tournament like this. So the solution is not to have him in the tournament and have him do something else, right? No problem. What I have worked out is that he would be there specifically to kill a member of the audience, and would undertake a skill challenge to do so while his mark was distracted by the fight, which would be what the other players would be playing through. Again, no problem there, I've made sure that he'd gain equal amounts of experience and money from this as the other players from their combat encounter. But my problem is this; a skill challenge is significantly easier and comes at less risk than combat. They're all 1st level so failing his encounter won't mean death or anything, just a bit of a hit to his reputation as a man for hire, and the other players losing their fight just mean they won't claim the grand prize. But I have a sneaking suspicion that the other players might think it's a little unfair that one player gets to do a skill challenge when they have no choice but to fight. I'm definitely not going to let him do it all at once, he'll get his shot at his rolls after all the combat turns have finished, to simulate the fact that it's all happening at the same time. My main issue really is with the exp/gold. The others will be fighting a single target worth 400exp and gaining 800 gold between them from making it to the tournament final, and again, they might think it unfair that one guy gets the same amount of exp and money from something that took less effort. Is there any way at all to balance it so that it's a) fair and b) makes sense? Or have I already managed it and am fretting for nothing?
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Aug 13, 2011 16:18
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Why not have his target be the regionally famous slave-champion of the arena who is locked away somewhere he cant escape (or be got to by the assassin more importantly), and the only way to get at him is to take him out in the arena?
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Aug 13, 2011 16:48
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Fellblade posted:Why not have his target be the regionally famous slave-champion of the arena who is locked away somewhere he cant escape (or be got to by the assassin more importantly), and the only way to get at him is to take him out in the arena? That, but the assassin character chases the champion, who he thinks is cowardly running away but is actually running for the arena to confront his assailant in honorable combat. (I guess the best result for hte PC is to murder the champion before he ever makes it to the arena, potentially via skill challenge, but he can "fail" while still completing his mission, it's just that he then has to escape unidentified from right out in the public eye).
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Aug 13, 2011 16:58
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Fellblade posted:Why not have his target be the regionally famous slave-champion of the arena who is locked away somewhere he cant escape (or be got to by the assassin more importantly), and the only way to get at him is to take him out in the arena? Better yet, the client is offering a significant bonus for tarnishing the champion's reputation, which means a terrible public loss.
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Aug 13, 2011 17:57
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The assassin has been hired to kill Teardrop, the fearsome pitfighter. Teardrop's erstwhile mistress wants to get even and hires the assassin. Now the player has a choice - he can try to enter the tournament and kill Teardrop 100% above-board, or he can try kill him outside the tourney and risk consequences from the law if he's caught. Either way he'll probably want to be in the vicinity during the tournament.
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Aug 14, 2011 22:12
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Does anyone have any suggestions for rotating DMs in a big story-driven, campaign? Our ongoing campaign of a year or so is about to start back up after a break. We changed DMs once during the past year, but because we're following a large story with the PCs gradually uncovering what is going on and who is behind it, the change was a little rough. The first DM necessarily had a lot of "secrets" that the PCs weren't aware of yet, and the second DM understandably didn't want to simply play out the first's ideas (and the first didn't want to play a game where he knew all the secrets). An idea we had was to have one main "story" DM, with the others who want to DM rotating in for episodic quests/adventures that are still related to the main story. If it makes a difference, I was thinking of doing something like the "Plot Grids" on Kassoon's page, with the rotating "sub-DMs" taking some of the mid-cells in the grid. Anyone have any thoughts on this, or done anything similar? (I know it was a few pages back, but thanks for the suggestions for naming an organization. Definitely helped a lot.)
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Aug 15, 2011 03:12
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In a D&D game I played years ago we had a "main" DM plus others that would take over if he left town or was otherwise unable to run the weekly session. When I had a chance to run things, I just ran the general plot and what was probably going to happen past him to make sure it didn't contradict any of his established stuff or would put the group in a situation he didn't want. He made a couple recommendations and it all worked out ok. Just a little 2 session dungeon stomp that he made integrated into the main plot and made quite a few call-backs to during the rest of the overall story.
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Aug 15, 2011 14:48
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Faerie Fortune posted:I've got a 4e campaign starting soon (my last one fizzled out but the players still want to play so we're starting fresh with some new characters) and instead of the usual "YOU ALL MEET AT A TAVERN, GO DO STUFF!" opening, I'm opening with a gladiator tournament. Now this is fine for most of the players (Fighter, Sorceress, Wizard, Cleric) as they all have reasons to be there and in the tournament but the remaining player is an Assassin and neither me or his player can think of a logical reason for him to enter a tournament like this. So the solution is not to have him in the tournament and have him do something else, right? No problem. Your players shouldn't really be thinking about it as an us vs them thing - there should be no "fair" - if it's cool then it's all good. Skill challenge could involve having to avoid guards, sneak about in the rafters etc. Failed rolls could involve falling and losing healing surges for instance. Just because it is a skill challenge doesn't mean it is easier. It would also run much better if you ran them both at the time, so that the assassin guy doesn't just get to watch the fight, then the fight guys all get to sit around watching the assassin. Think of skill challenges the same as fights, get the assassin to roll initiative and put him in the fight initiative order - run the skill challenge round by round, describing what is going on for that particular skill check, then moving onto the next character in the fight and so on. Best thing we ever did with 4th edition was to ditch exp as a resource that the players accumulated. We just level up when it fits the story. Likewise with money, they shouldn't be thinking about it as the cash we got for this is ours and the cash we got for that is his. Just put it all in a big pot and divide it evenly. Saves so much hassle and arguments. Mr Beens fucked around with this message at 17:27 on Aug 15, 2011 |
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Aug 15, 2011 17:20
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Mr Beens posted:
Definitely the best idea with cash. I find that time-appropriate levelling is convenient but I am dabbling with the idea of me personally keeping an XP track and using that as a very rough guide to when they should level rather than me just deciding the time is right. As an addition I started one of these silly tumblr things as my players wanted a place for me to collate information on my previous campaign + upcoming (September) one. https://nessus.tumblr.com It'll, in the coming days, contain character information and a description of all the previous adventures (posted tomorrow) if you GMs and DMs fancy a browse. Less of a shameless self-plug and more of sharing something you might be interested in if you need some ideas or have questions 
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Aug 18, 2011 23:30
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I got a question for you guys! How do you handle family in your games? It seems every game I've ever run is just full of single dudes with dead or far away parents/family. But really, in the general "fantasy" time period you were kinda weird if you were a dude without a wife and kids by your 20's or so. The problem is, I find the idea of GMing this sort of family stuff awkward for some reason. For the storyline and setting of the game the players really should be building families, but I don't want to run a "the sims" style game where I'm dealing with romance and such. I guess my best option is to just heavily abstract the character's family life behind the scenes? Am I weird for not really wanting to get into any sort of romance/domestic stuff role playing or is that pretty normal?
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Aug 22, 2011 16:37
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It's pretty normal, because every single time I've mentioned my family in a game, they get kidnapped, turn against me, or get killed, and once the GM didn't even stop to run the idea by me. So now you have two choices. You can either put the entire game on hold while you go to rescue said family member, or you can totally break character and say, "No, saving the world is more important." So that's why PCs are the best family.
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Aug 22, 2011 16:46
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Baronjutter posted:I got a question for you guys! Depends. Depends on what you as the GM want to do. Depends on what the players want to do. If you're doing "courtly intrigue", then family can be super important (who's related to who, who's being married off to who, who's great great grandfather humiliated another dude's great great grandfater 60 years ago and now there's a feud, etc). On the other hand, if you're doing "heroes save the world from evil" then there's no point even mentioning family unless someone finds that cool for some reason. Also, of course your GM kidnaps your characters' family members as a plot device. If it "puts the entire game on hold" then the GM is doing it wrong. It can be legitimately used to, for example, get the PCs from City A to Kingdom B in order to rescue sibling X, and then the local King says they should help him, and now they get an adventure in the desert kindgom instead of the mountain kingdom they're used to.
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Aug 22, 2011 16:56
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Odd question, but I've been trying to think of a way to make a system where damage is dealt to PC's in a general value, but PC's can choose to have specific injuries to reduce the overall HP damage and mitigate it. Something like "Instead of taking 10 hp, I'll take 1 but my arm is broken.
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Aug 22, 2011 17:03
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mugrim posted:Odd question, but I've been trying to think of a way to make a system where damage is dealt to PC's in a general value, but PC's can choose to have specific injuries to reduce the overall HP damage and mitigate it. Something like "Instead of taking 10 hp, I'll take 1 but my arm is broken. Ooooh, I like that. Possibly allowing the attacker to choose a specific injury on a crit or somesuch.
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Aug 22, 2011 18:44
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mugrim posted:Odd question, but I've been trying to think of a way to make a system where damage is dealt to PC's in a general value, but PC's can choose to have specific injuries to reduce the overall HP damage and mitigate it. Something like "Instead of taking 10 hp, I'll take 1 but my arm is broken. ASIFRP uses this exact system. When you're reduced to 0 hp, you're defeated in combat. You can take injuries (mitigates damage for a -1 to results) or wounds (reduces all damage taken for one less dice rolled on all skills). I wasn't a big fan of it.
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Aug 22, 2011 18:58
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mugrim posted:Odd question, but I've been trying to think of a way to make a system where damage is dealt to PC's in a general value, but PC's can choose to have specific injuries to reduce the overall HP damage and mitigate it. Something like "Instead of taking 10 hp, I'll take 1 but my arm is broken. Ow My Leg Immediate Reaction Trigger: You are hit with an attack. Effect: You take half damage and are Slowed until the end of the encounter. Ow My Arm Immediate Reaction Trigger: You are hit with an attack Effect: You take half damage; your critical hits are treated as regular hits and your weapon loses any properties that allow you to reroll for higher damage until the end of the encounter. Ow My Head Immediate Reaction: You are hit with an attack Effect: You take half damage and are Dazed (save ends).
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Aug 22, 2011 19:03
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AlphaDog posted:Depends. Run it by your player first before introducing stuff that plays off their family. The "I'm threatening your loved ones" card gets old real quick.
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Aug 22, 2011 19:36
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Arrrthritis posted:ASIFRP uses this exact system. When you're reduced to 0 hp, you're defeated in combat. You can take injuries (mitigates damage for a -1 to results) or wounds (reduces all damage taken for one less dice rolled on all skills). I've been meaning to check it out anyways, so that's basically the last reason I needed.
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Aug 22, 2011 22:03
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I'm a fairly new dm, I've just started running a game of FFRPG third edition. I was just wondering if you guys had any advice for how you handled naming all of the towns and NPCs. I feel like I spend a lot longer time then I should coming up with names that don't sound stupid or out of place to me (and for the system, I'm trying to avoid town names that sound more like they should be in a dnd game, rather than a final fantasy game.)
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Aug 22, 2011 23:57
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Gado posted:I'm a fairly new dm, I've just started running a game of FFRPG third edition. I was just wondering if you guys had any advice for how you handled naming all of the towns and NPCs. I feel like I spend a lot longer time then I should coming up with names that don't sound stupid or out of place to me (and for the system, I'm trying to avoid town names that sound more like they should be in a dnd game, rather than a final fantasy game.) For names, if you live in the US, get roadmaps of your state and neighboring ones. There are plenty of small towns out there with interesting names that sound right for fantasy. If not, then still find local or foreign roadmaps and crib from those. For NPC names, I would suggest taking a baby-names book or website and browsing it, especially a non-English one. Then you can crib some more from the less common names too. 90% of invention is actually creatively stealing.
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Aug 23, 2011 00:19
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mugrim posted:Odd question, but I've been trying to think of a way to make a system where damage is dealt to PC's in a general value, but PC's can choose to have specific injuries to reduce the overall HP damage and mitigate it. Something like "Instead of taking 10 hp, I'll take 1 but my arm is broken. If you're hacking d&d specifically, I don't know if it'll help, but Apocalypse World does something like this: whenever you take damage from an attack that would instantly kill you, you can choose to appear dead, take a permanently -1 to one of your stats, then have a scene later where you're just dying (but might be able to heal or be healed). Kinda gritty and cinematic at the same time. Gritematic.
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Aug 23, 2011 01:37
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So I'm currently running a Wild Talents game set in the Progenitor setting, I've GMed a very few sessions before this but this is pretty much the first campaign I've run that seems to be going to last. My players are playing amoral supervillains who are trying to seize power in Egypt, pretty much for the sake of "oh hey we got superpowers? Party!" We went through a few iterations of characters while we learned the system but we seemed to have settled on a party of: 1) The ex-superhero who can mind blast people and teleport herself and the team up to a range of 3 miles. She also happens to be one of the smartest people on the planet, so smart in fact that if somebody tries to mind-read her, they run the risk of her mind overriding theirs. 2) The hyper-agile, incredibly lethal genius with inhuman levels of endurance. No actual bona fide superpowers, but he's as smart as the teleporter and unstoppably dangerous in combat. A pure sociopath who cares only for his rise to power. 3) The artillery. This coming from a player whose first couple of characters I ended up 1-shotting by accident, the character he seems to be sticking with can fly at 160mph and has an attack I call the 'lava beam' - capable of reducing crowds of people to molten slag in an instant, it can only be used at full power. Far less smart than the others, he seems happy to follow orders as long as he gets to torch a few people every now and then. So far, they have robbed a De Beers diamond warehouse for hundreds of millions in jewellery, attacked a concert hosted by a hyper-persuasive mobster in order to kidnap him to try and use his resources for their plans (he tried to use hyperpersuade to escape, so the agile guy just shot him in the head, despite the other players' protests) attempted to kill the family of Egypt's resident high-tier superhero The Guardian, in order to cripple his Willpower and rob him of his powers - they failed, falling into a trap, but escaped and took revenge by butchering a police station where all of the Guardians friends worked. After that, they went after a do-gooder superhero team by using the artillery to burn down a skyscraper and ambushed the team when they showed up. The superheroes were killed to the last man. When this attracted national attention, they went to ground for 3 months while the hyper-agile genius cooked up a mind controlling TV advert convincing anyone who saw it to rise up against the government. During this time the teleporter and the artillery conducted random hit and run acts of terrorism to keep the country on its toes. During this time, the Guardian tracked them down and destroyed their safehouse, but they escaped. Where we're at now, the mind control worked, the revolution is kicking off and they have just joined in a riot in Cairo and experienced the new sonic weaponry the government have rolled out to deal with people who can dodge almost anything and shrug off what little does hit. Basically, I'm not 100% sure where to go from here, or how much direction to give my players. Thus far, just about everything has been from my players' initiative. From what they have said, they really enjoyed the latest session with the whole mind-control schtick, and would prefer more of the whole 'strategising and using our brains' thing rather than full-on combat. However, I do get the feeling they need at least a little murder every session. The way I'm trying to run the campaign is as a 'the world reacts to you' sandbox rather than a linear campaign and at the moment I'm trying to cook up what would happen in reaction to what they've done. The way I see it, the government would hire in as many dangerous superhumans as they can to combat the menace, as well as deploying their own mind control to counter the PCs and quell the rioting. They would pull in more conventional troops and utilise sonic weaponry more often. The other unexpected element I wanted to add in would either be them blaming the PCs actions (they've never actually listed any demands or anything) on a neighbouring country, or another country would take advantage of the chaos and invade. Either way, leading to a full on ground war on top of everything. Something I really am not sure about is how to get across the message that the players are being psychically observed. I feel I've been making it fairly obvious that somebody must know what they're doing, what with them being tracked down and traps being laid for them, but they don't seem to have got the message. I'm not sure how clear I can make this without either putting it way out in the open or continuing to dick them over. I want them to discover it themselves. The other major thing is I'm not entirely sure of the general direction of the campaign. I mean, I'm happy to keep throwing challenges at them and they seem quite content to wreak havoc and try to overthrow the Egyptian government for now, but if they succeed or the situation deteriorates into complete anarchy I'm not really sure what to do about it. I do actually have a copy of Reign and I think the Company rules would work nicely for running a political power grab game. If anyone has ideas for sidequests, interesting enemies, challenges they may face or whatever, I'd love to hear them. Some ideas I had were: Taking a leaf from the Mask slasher from the World of Darkness, throwing them against an enemy who no matter what, you can only do 1 point of Shock damage to, as well as being totally immune to mind control etc. This would give them an enemy they really wouldn't want to fight face to face, but is mindless and could be easily outsmarted, giving them an excuse to use their brains. A developing chronicle with the Guardian, tracking down things he cares out and destroying them in order to weaken him enough to fight him. A Bacillus Xombus outbreak (rage zombie virus) Government sanctioned assassins - the Ghost Stalker - a guy who can go invisible and insubstantial at will and specialises in melee combat. Someone who can force all teleporters within range to go where he wants them to go, or someone who automatically gets teleported along with them. Increasing intervention from Marks (slightly superpowered humans resistant to mind control and capable of using Willpower like superheroes) equipped with high technology like the sonic guns. Having them be contacted by a third party like a sinister corporation in order to provide them with some structured missions. Some kind of investigative assignment, like a plane crashed in the desert rumoured to contain some kind of experimental weaponry, and they have to dig some info and then navigate the desert to find it. Any input on any of this would be appreciated. Mostly I'd like people to tell me if my ideas suck or give me better ones, as well as general GMing feedback.
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Aug 23, 2011 03:11
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Xand_Man posted:Run it by your player first before introducing stuff that plays off their family. The "I'm threatening your loved ones" card gets old real quick. Just like any other plot device when the GM overuses it. "Bring me the X from Y" "Stop them from getting to X" "Interrupt the Evil Ritual" "Kill them all and take their stuff" If you do just one of those things over and over, it sucks. But there's nothing wrong with utilising a family connection if that's a thing that your players care about. I wouldn't bother asking permission, just as I wouldn't bother asking permission before stealing their Special Whatever or sending them to Rescue The Princess. You just shouldn't overuse it or make anyone uncomfortable about it.
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Aug 23, 2011 03:47
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I agree, but I prefer to air on the side of caution. It's usually as simple as "Hey, I'm gonna put someone close to you in trouble next week. Who should it be?" Short, sweet, and gets player buy-in.
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Aug 23, 2011 04:41
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