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I enjoy hearing about awesome, invincible Space Marines jamming their guns and loving it up. I haven't ever played a 40k RPG though, so I'd like to hear some more about how this poo poo happens and your story, even if the story is just 6 Marines throw themselves at a million random enemy monsters, I mean that is basically a 40k story right there.
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Feb 27, 2012 17:25
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Yawgmoth posted:I'm being sincere, you honestly sound like an amazing DM. I don't think I am, but if I am, it's due to having amazing players. That, and playing lots of stuff with them like De Profundis and Everyone Is John and Baron Munchausen, where you basically just improv everything. D&D isn't really my "thing", although I do enjoy it. Also, you need to lay out setting/genre/feel expectations before each game. Are we doing heroic fantasy, swords and sorcery, occult investigators, scifi, space opera, monkey cheese zombie killing, chinese martial arts, historical fiction, whatever. Everyone needs to be on the same page before you start (like, if you want grimdark conan, nobody can really be a wizard - if someone has their heart set on being a wizard, leave grimdark conan for another time). If your players won't work with you, you can't run a good game no matter what. Gaming with much the same group for nearly 20 years helps, too, since you know what everyone wants out of each game, and players (and GMs) are willing to compromise this time and get something closer to their ideal game next time. One of my guys likes super generic "kill orcs and accumulate gold pieces" D&D, so we play that a couple of times a year (we're running a D&D retrospective for him in the coming months, doing one hack'n'slash adventure in each of OD&D, 1e, 2e, 3e, and if we're still interested, Hackmaster, Pathfinder, and 4e - there will be 2 or 3 GMs running the games, so it should be pretty awesome. I've drawn 1e and 3e unfortunately, I would have loved to run OD&D again).
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Feb 27, 2012 17:44
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Kosmonaut posted:Nailed it. "Big and dangerous" are basically all the important attributes of a Trygon other than the fact that it burrows a lot and spits static bolts on its way into melee. Aren't "Big and dangerous" pretty much the important attributes of everything in Warhammer?
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Feb 27, 2012 19:45
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I recently discovered a gaming group that began with tabletop wargames but has since brought in the fragments of RPG groups from our town. A lot of new faces, some kids new to rpgs, and some pretty chill dudes. Its pretty exciting since I haven't had a chance to game much in awhile and I will be participating in an Eclypse Phase campaign stating this weekend. After looking through the rulebook and meeting the players, I have mixed feelings. While the game setting and rules look like a lot of fun and the other players (two wargamers and too complete newbies) seem cool, I know the gamemaster from a couple of very lackluster sessions of DnD 3.5. He is in love with power gaming and boasts about how if he isn't breaking the game the DM isn't doing it right. We are all at a table getting to know each other and discussing the rules since no one, including the gamemaster, has played before and he starts handing out houserules for being able too hack non robotic brains with technical skills (something characters with psi traits can already do) and tinkering with how other things work ingame without even knowing all the rules already in the game. No one even asked for the house rules and we had to persuade him that it messed up game balance and marginalized players that wanted to invest in psi talents. I'm willing to give him one play session in hopes that it'll turn out fun but I don't have high hopes.
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Feb 27, 2012 19:51
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Yeesh, that guy sounds like trouble. Eclipse phase is a first edition, so balance is pretty hard to get down, and is really more about flavour and setting anyway. It's Lovecraftian Horror in space, where no matter how competent you seem, the real threat is leagues grander, forcing you to think fast and try for a long-shot. Just remind the GM that the players have backups precisely so he doesn't feel guilty about killing them horribly, and whatever the enemy self-replicating nanoswarm pulls out of it's mass isn't cheating, it's supposed to be ludicrously tough. Oh, and if the GM is running the module in the quickstart rules, give him the following piece of advice, which is as spoiler-free as possible. "Replace the neotenic."
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Feb 27, 2012 20:50
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J Bjelke-Postersen posted:I enjoy hearing about awesome, invincible Space Marines jamming their guns and loving it up. I haven't ever played a 40k RPG though, so I'd like to hear some more about how this poo poo happens and your story, even if the story is just 6 Marines throw themselves at a million random enemy monsters, I mean that is basically a 40k story right there. I'm gonna cross-post this from the other thread here. This was the first two sessions of my Deathwatch game I'm running for friends. Maybe one day I can work up the chutzpah to run one that's play-by-post or over IRC, but I'd like to finish this one to be more familiar with the rules before I commit to that.
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Feb 27, 2012 20:59
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The problem is that I am pretty sure that he plans to just do his own thing and that he is going to be a combative DM. We were discussing our possible character ideas and I mentioned putting together a old guy in a Flat (normal human body without gene screening, etc.) that had been a cosmonaut on an old sleeper ship. His only trans human aspects were a cortical stack and access jacks to interface with his exoskeleton. This is where the mind hacking house rules came out with this big smug look on his face. If I knew the players better and it wasn't my first day meeting the group I would ask to take over since I usually like running games anyway. As it is, I suspect it will either fizzle and I'll try to pick up the pieces of what I think could be a fun game or we'll all have fun and I'll have a nice story for the tread.
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Feb 27, 2012 21:01
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Male Man posted:Aren't "Big and dangerous" pretty much the important attributes of everything in Warhammer? Close, but Warhammer things also come in "puny and numerous" to make the big dangerous things seem bigger and more dangerous by comparison. Though I guess they're collectively big and dangerous too.
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Feb 27, 2012 21:05
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I just played my first ever tabletop RPG with a group consisting of about 5 players. The character I played was a pre-generated Dwarf Cleric of Torag, this particular round only lasted for the night but it was a lot of fun. The other classes included an Elf Sorcerer, Halfling Rogue, Human Warrior and some sort of changeling-claw-warrior-wizard-dragonic thing played by someone who clearly has done a lot more of this then myself or the other newbies. We found ourselves scattered around a dark room, a few perception checks revealed an ominous glowing circle, a hole in the floor and a staircase. After the brief character introductions the Human Warrior, who seemed to have a thing for jumping down pits immediately announced that we should jump down the pit. However the rest of us decided it'd be a better idea to find out what's down there without risking an early death. So we tied some rope to a sunrod and threw it down, as it turns out the pit was actually another room that we could get to by following the staircase down. After descending the staircase and getting a better look at the room we notice a faint blue portal situated between two broken pillars, a table covered in books and a wolf corpse. Being a priest of Torag I decided the correct course of action was to attempt to repair the portal-pillars with my magical Torag-Repairy skills which was described to me as something like "You can hit things with your hammer to repair or unrepair them" Unfortunately, my attempt at repairing the portal was doomed to fail (rolled a 1) and all I accomplished was shattering it entirely. The resulting explosion scorched the entire party and caused the wolf (and four other wolves which we hadn't noticed yet around the corner) to rise as undead zombie wolves. A battle ensued and we eventually defeat the wolves utilizing the tried and tested method of smashing them in the face with a variety of weaponry and spells. At the end of the wolf encounter everyone is pretty damaged, as the only cleric I was attempting to work out if I was able to heal them. My pre-generated character sheet didn't seem to have any healing abilities on it, the sorcerer was on the lowest health as he was critically hit during the battle. In my infinite dwarvish wisdom I decided that the appropriate course of action would be to hit the sorcerer with my warhammer with the intent to "repair" him the exchange went something like this:  (me): Wait, wait I've got it. I hit the sorcerer with my hammer using my repairing abilities. (gm): You want to hit him with your hammer? (me): Yep *roll dice, perfect 20* (gm): Ok you hit him with your hammer... All of his equipment is returned to perfect condition, it's really amazing quality... and the sorcerer is reduced to a smear on the ground.Clearly I needed a bit more cleric training. That's where we ended the session, the party found it hilarious and the we're going to be continuing pathfinder in a few weeks but the next two weeks we're playing Paranoia. Inner City Leftist fucked around with this message at 14:47 on Feb 28, 2012 |
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Feb 28, 2012 02:07
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Vodurden posted:"You can hit things with your hammer to repair or unrepair them"
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Feb 28, 2012 02:19
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Hm, I have a potential story related to an ongoing game I'm in, but it's A. Not as dramatic or big as some of the things in this thread, and B. A play-by-post game on a different forum (yes, I know all the problems with PbP games, but I decided to try it anyway), and it probably wouldn't be very hard to figure out stuff and find it if I told the story, and so I'm not sure if it'd be a good idea to tell it here. No offense to you guys intended, just, you know.
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Feb 28, 2012 09:13
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Was it the best thing ever? Was it the worst thing ever? If the answer to either of these questions is yes, then you should definitely post it. If not, then you should heistate. Under no circumstances should you poll the thread to see if we want it enough.
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Feb 28, 2012 09:17
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Doc Hawkins posted:Was it the best thing ever? Only the highest quality cat piss stories for this thread, sirrah.
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Feb 28, 2012 14:20
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Doc Hawkins posted:Was it the best thing ever? You can of course always crib someone else's story & start your own thread. 
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Feb 29, 2012 00:49
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Well this one game I played in with a friend definitely counts as the worst thing I've ever experienced. My friend's housemate was running a one of 3.5 game and his last one had apparently been decent if a little dungeon-crawl heavy (he's not a very imaginative person honestly) and the understanding was everyone was to make high level characters. Most of the group deliberately twinked out because they knew what to expect, I just rolled a Frenzied Berserker because the ability to Frenzy other people sounded hilarious. We had a Kobold that could obliterate a city with hammers, a Psionic worm attached to a girl with a floating teddy which could shoot death beams from its eyes (everyone loves Mr. Snuggles), a Paladin of some sort of Dragon-template persuasion and a Cleric who was even less memorable. The game got off to a good start when we were arrested in Thay, told they were too busy to deal with some problem and had slave collars enchanted with epic level magic put on us to compel us into obedience. The fact that they could not apparently solve their problem with their epic level magic and needed a level 15 party to solve it for them was not a good start. But we were unceremoniously kicked out and pointed in the direction of our investigation. We walked into a dark and spooky forest for a while until our road reached a crossroad. One of the paths lead to the sounds of a fight, the other one elsewhere. We chose to avoid the fight. Then we were told the slave collars we were all forced to wear and could not remove (and even if we could we would die) compelled us to walk towards the sounds of fighting. Combat ensued and we won. The next few times we were given a "choice" when we made the "wrong choice" we were told we were compelled to make the choice the DM wanted us to make. Eventually after about 4 or 5 combats we wanted to rest. Guess what? The slave collars said no to that as well. The Paladin who had been built by the GM for a friend and was very tanky, had good stats, high AC and high HP refused to actually get into combat until we were on top of the enemy. The result was that my berserker, who had good damage but was low AC ended up soaking all the hits and due to his relatively low AC for the level got hit infrequently. As a result at this point my character finally died. A few of us had been getting a little annoyed and started reading or playing games on a laptop in between our turns, but now I had nothing to do for an hour combat. I guess at least I was free now that my character was dead right? No such luck. After combat finished I revived on 1 HP. It suddenly dawned on me that we were playing a computer game with the GM. It was like Neverwinter Nights, the GM was the player and we were the characters who had no free will and the only point of the game was repeated mind-numbing combat. I even resurrected like in the games! At any rate we then went into the Plane of Fire and had to fight Fire Elementals, but we hadn't been allowed to rest so we were tapped out of healing and I died in the first round of combat again. Disgusted I actually walked away from the table at this point and most of the rest of the group already had. We ended up watching a movie in the end I think. The GM is a nice enough guy, just a terrible GM I fear. At least now I have a benchmark to judge how much railroading is going on in a game I guess? I've always tried to draw a positive from that game...difficult as it is.
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Feb 29, 2012 01:29
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Jesus christ. The epic-level folks making low power people do poo poo is kind of part and parcel of FR but seriously. The Slave collar is just utterly nuts and that the GM is stupid enough to keep throwing encounters when he wouldn't let you guys replenish spells. I'm sorry, but I say he's a dick, because even the most battle-happy player wouldn't enjoy that level of railroading.
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Feb 29, 2012 01:47
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HiKaizer posted:The game got off to a good start when we were arrested in Thay, told they were too busy to deal with some problem and had slave collars enchanted with epic level magic put on us to compel us into obedience. The fact that they could not apparently solve their problem with their epic level magic and needed a level 15 party to solve it for them was not a good start.
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Feb 29, 2012 01:47
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Now now, most GMs who use crap like that that don't want to literally run everything for everyone, they just have no idea how to GM without doing so.
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Feb 29, 2012 01:57
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In my defense I posted my adventures in bulletpoint/snippet form because I was worried that otherwise it be an uneven mix of awesome/silly crap happening and lulls in the fighting. And I hate filler, as I wouldn't want to bore anyone. But now I know! I'll be sure to explain the terminology next time though!
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Feb 29, 2012 02:50
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This thread actually helped me out. I recently refused to go two sessions with a lousy controlling GM. (Of course, I can't be more specific while being negative...a character I had fun with was described as Sarah Palin-esque in the last version of this thread, and the game died because of the drama).
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Feb 29, 2012 10:45
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Doc Hawkins posted:Now now, most GMs who use crap like that that don't want to literally run everything for everyone, they just have no idea how to GM without doing so. To be fair, as I said the GM is just really, really unimaginative. He was trying to get the party together and have some kind of plot when really all he wanted was to run a dungeon-crawl. He's running World's Largest Dungeon with some of my other friends and it's apparently not too bad, because he's not trying to tell a story at all. And I can sympathise a little, getting a group of different people together with at least a flimsy pretense of narrative integrity isn't always easy. He just botched it horribly.
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Mar 1, 2012 03:15
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HiKaizer posted:getting a group of different people together with at least a flimsy pretense of narrative integrity isn't always easy.
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Mar 1, 2012 03:20
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Today was the culmination of a big story arc in the Kingmaker campaign I play in. Basically, our kingdom is being threatened from the West by an army of hyper aggressive orcs lead by an Orc Antipaladin (who happens to be the father of my Half-Orc Level 10 Paladin). We've finally managed to rally an army and ride out to do battle with the orcish army, which is also full of giants, hydras, and skeletons. The herald of this army is a fallen angel who flies above the battle, shooting rays and summoning more skeletons. So while the rest of my party gets to work killing giants and raining fireballs on the orcs, I get fly cast on me and I head up to do battle with the Angel. My character is full buffed, stacked with everything we've got. (DM)  As you fly closer, the angel turns invisible(Paladin)  Hmmmm. Alright, first move is his. I wait for him to attack. You pause in the air, searching, when suddenly the angel appears right in front of you! He slams his morningstar into your chest for... 36 damage! Is that it? Uhh yeah that's it. This is about to get ugly.Full attack round. Smiting Evil, with an axiomatic and holy +2 falchion. Each attack hits. (Adding it all up in my head) Okay... yeah... that's 176 damage.  Holy poo poo. Uhhh wow. Okay, so the angel gets the jump on you and hits you in the chest. Your character batters the morningstar aside, then brings the sword down upon the angel. 'Yield!' you shout as you run him through. 'Yield!' you shout as you chop off a wing. 'YIELD BEFORE IOMEDAE'S MIGHT!' you shout as you hurl the fallen angel higher into the sky and chop him in half. The angel explodes in a burst of divine light, radiating the battlefield in a holy glow. Its twisted soul is sent back to the hell it came from. You raise above the battlefield, your sword shedding divine light that makes all the demons tremble in fear. Stay the gently caress out of my plane.
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Mar 1, 2012 03:22
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Sorry, thought I was in the Pathfinder thread.
LongDarkNight fucked around with this message at 15:17 on Mar 1, 2012 |
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Mar 1, 2012 03:46
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On Monday we had the second-to-last session of the game I've been in since the beginning of last summer: D20 Modern, with a custom setting that our GM has put a lot of effort into. Basically, the end of the world happened two years ago when normal humans found out that all manners of supernatural beasties were real (including vampires, goblins, werewolves, and fishmen as playable races) were real, and we're playing in the biggest city left standing, which resides in an uneasy truce between humans and the supernatural. Santa Alma is a major southern Californian coastal city complete with ghetto, factories, and million-dollar beach homes, not that anyone would have to pay that much for them now. In the first story arc, which lasted a week in-game and about 4-5 months in real life, we got in good with one of the major powers of the city (Rasputin, who'd like you to believe that yes, he IS that Rasputin), overthrew two others, and prevented a nuclear strike on the city by the US government, who were attempting to wipe out the entire supernatural threat in one strike. Only problem was, we didn't particularly want to relocate again or get incinerated ourselves, not to mention the fact that the city was also one of the last bastions of humanity as well. And, of course, what the PC's want, they fight for (and usually get, with enough effort :P). Now we're a few days into the second week, in which we captured and started talks with the Goblin King, gotten shared psychic visions from the Cthulu-esque fishman god, fought off a horde of demonic zombie hobos, and were officially hired and subsequently nearly executed by Rasputin (so we just killed his clones and everyone he sent after us, no big deal). We've learned that three aliens have come to earth in the form of gods and fought for control of it for millennia, and now is another of their clashes. In last night's campaign, we discovered that one of the gods was leading a battalion of vampires driving about 1000 tanks and 1000 trucks, plus two helicopters, towards the city with the intent to conquer it by force. Out on recon, our resident magical vampire child prodigy decided that he should try to use his mental magic to stun the helicopter pilots... they both failed their will saves, and with a little luck from dice rolls and points used from the FATE-esque aspect system our DM has in place, those two helicopters alone managed to destroy the entire fleet of tanks. So that was nice. Still left us with a bunch of vampires to deal with, though. Once we understood the scope of the threat coming at us, all of the major powers of the city (including the entire party) met at Rasputin's Taco Shack and Brothel (aka the Taco Shack and Taco Shack) to decide what to do. We were just about out of ideas, when my character, a sneaky/investigative fishman detective, decided that one of their only options left was to appeal to his god (who turned out to be the warden of the other three alien gods) for aid. He and the other fishman NPC waded out into the ocean to commune with the giant bottom-dwelling kraken, and as its contract to watch over the other powers had expired and it had grown bored of their petty scuffles. It took all his diplomacy skills, my diplomacy skills, and the rest of the fate points I had left to convince it to intervene. As my character crawled out of the water, tentacles erupted from his body, he grew a few feet and few hundred pounds in raw bulk, and erupted with light as he gained as-of-yet unexplored magical abilities. An uncounted army of fishmen emerged from the waves behind him, compelled by their god to help save the world. Immediately the party explodes in extolling "alien fish tentacle Jesus". XD And there's still one final session to go...
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Mar 1, 2012 08:45
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Yawgmoth posted:This is one reason I say "okay I am planning a <style> game, make <descriptor> characters. You'll be starting in <wherever>, so have a reason to be going/staying there and wanting to do <vague idea of opening plot>." Works well; I don't look like a jackass, players have a little bit of agency in how the game starts, everyone is happy. The other DM in my group handles this stuff very well. We usually don't start games at first level or whatever the system uses as the usual start point, but this works even then. Instead of "you're all sitting around in a bar and...", the start works like this: Pre 1st session, usually via email 1: Discussion of genre and system (Fantasy, D&D). 2: Discussion of plot-driven/sandboxy/dungeon-crawl/hybrid 3: Discussion of general gist of game (wilderness exploration) 4: Discussion of general setting (A town in the woods, near the Northen Frostlands) 5: Discussion of everyone's preferred roles/classes/background, mutual decisions on who's bringing what to the table. Usually, newer players are asked to pick their roles first, so they get to try what they like and the more experienced players pick complimentary roles. If they don't want to, then the experienced players will pick first and suggest (never require) roles for new players. 6: Discussion of relationships between character (old friend from wizard school, fought with him in the second legion, childhood buddy, whatever) Then everyone goes away and makes a character based on what's been discussed. New players are encouraged to ask for assistance and suggestions, but are never told "do this thing", only ever "one good way of doing it is like this". First session, 1: DM runs a series of encounter vignettes displaying "how things got to this point", if you die here you are knocked unconscious instead. This usually takes about 2 hours to get through, and is half the first session. Sometimes characters meet up here, sometimes they already knew each other but it's the first time they adventured together. Often, the DM will ask a player "what was the worst thing that happened when you fought the Evil X of Y?" and run the vignette about that, with everyone getting a shot at suggesting part of the backstory. 2: Adventure hook, sandbox information, or dungeon entrance is presented, adventure commences (second half of first session). I suspect that a lot of "worst experiences" are avoided by doing things like this. I played in a couple of games where the GM went "just show up with a character, use these splatbooks and this setting guide", and they were all clusterfucks. Edit: As an example of how good this system is, one vignette was fighting off bandits who'd destroyed a merchant caravan. The DM asked a (brand new!) player what she found in the wreckage that was really cool, and she said "the cargo manifest". Everyone's jaw kind of dropped, because usually people say "a magic sword!" or "an evil amulet!" or "the prisoners we were looking for!", but the DM ran with it, and the PC examined the manifest, which revealed discrepancies compared to the goods left on the carts, and a big part of the game ended up being busting up a smuggling ring. I don't think he planned that, but gently caress if it wasn't awesome. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 10:29 on Mar 1, 2012 |
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Mar 1, 2012 10:22
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Reading though the thread, I'm reminded of one of the quickest party deaths I've ever seen. We were playing the GM's homebrew setting: mostly hard cyberpunk but with a little of everything thrown in. For example, all of the characters had some form of magical or psychic talent, except for mine, who was heavily into genetic modification and was essentially turning himself into the Guyver. It worked because you could feasibly play any character you wanted without much fuss (or buying a hundred different splatbooks for additional rules). This one week, most of the regular players are absent, so it's just me, the GM, two regulars and a friend of one of the players. The GM usually keeps a few spare characters for drop-in players, so he takes a gunslinger/street samurai-style character, gets a crash course through the stats and rules (d10 for everything and add your stat/s) and we start the session. It's a quick one-shot game, where the party (a group of mercs forced to work together due to taking the fall for a megacorp for a mission gone bad) is hired to investigate a load of deaths at a digsite. In order to explain the absence of the others, it was decided they'd taken my character's van, our primary mode of transport, off on another mission, so we'd have to brave public transport. We hit the subway, and while waiting for the train, we see a gang of genehulks getting rowdy. In this setting, there's several ways of enhancing yourself: typically, you can go for cybernetic augmentation or genetic manipulation, as well as some straight out of the realms of Lovecraft or body horror (my own little addition to the setting). Genehulks were guys who'd gone waaaay too far down the path of genetic tinkering, becoming horrible caricatures of those extreme bodybuilders you see. They're slabs of hyper-aggressive muscle that feel virtually no pain and usually take additional drugs and chems to boost those attributes even further. My character is the most effective when it comes to straight melee combat (he once punched a sentient pissed-off semi-organic tank summoned from a plane of cybernetic life to death once) and the one time he ran into one, he had to collapse a warehouse on it to even stand a chance of running away. Standard police procedure for dealing with one involves combat mechs and air support. And there's three or four of them getting worked up about 30 feet away from us. Now, most of you probably see a couple of obvious ways out of this: sneaking out before they kick off, causing a distraction, dropping a sleep gas grenade and hoping for the best. Us regular players are working out the best angle to take here, when the FNG, who, for the purposes of this story, we will refer to as 'Donut' decides he'll go talk to them. We stop and think about this for a second. The way the system works, if you roll a natural 10, you get to roll again and add that to your total. If you keep rolling 10s, you could, in theory, con anyone out of anything. And he says his character has good ranks in his social skills to back this up, which the DM confirms, so we figure, what the hell. It's not like he could really gently caress up too badly, right? So, Donut saunters over to the genehulks who are pushing around a weedly little salaryman for giggles and clears his throat. The genehulks turn to him. He then announces his intention to intimidate them. All of them. At once. The silent disbelief at the abject stupidity on show is almost tangible. We all explain to him that, no, this is a really bad idea, seriously, you do not want to be doing this. Even the DM, who normally lets us do whatever we want, no matter how stupid, says to him that this isn't likely to work. No no, says Donut, he's got an angle on this. So the DM asks him what he wants to say, then makes him roll it. "Oh, you know, call them a bunch of tiny-cocked pussies, ask if all bodybuilders do the gay thing or if it's just them, that kind of thing." The DM - wisely - asks us what we're going to be doing while he does this. We all decide we're going to use stealth to mingle with the crowd on the platform and act like we're not with him, keeping one eye on the exits in case things go nuclear. Eventually, after pinning down exactly what he wants to say, Donut rolls.  I got a 1. Is that good?No, Donut. It is not good. In fact, it's the exact opposite of good. Rolling a 1 is, as you can guess, a fumble. When that happens, you roll again to confirm the extent of the fumble. If you roll low, it's not so bad - in social situations, you hiccup as you go to speak or whatnot, though you get to try again at a slightly harder diceroll - but if you roll high... I just got a 9. That's not good is it. The genehulks look at each other, confused for a second. Then one of them punches you. What armour are you wearing again? Riiight. *diceroll* *diceroll* *nervous laughter followed by another diceroll* So, you want to hear the good news or the bad news? The good news? Well, the good news is, the train's pulling up and it looks like the party's going to be able to get on it with little fuss. ...and the bad news? You're not going to be getting on it with them. See, the lead genehulk, he really didn't like you. So he took a swing at you. And succeeded. Succeeded quite highly, actually. Dramatically high, even. To the point where he punched you so hard, your head and about three quarters of your torso is now a horrible red mush. While everyone else is running on to the train, the hulks are taking great pleasure in stomping your corpse into the ground. So... yeah, well done. So, rest of the party, what do you do?Me: Did I get this on video? Because the rest of the party is going to want to see this when they get back. To be fair, the DM was entirely willing to go easy on him, just that the dice wanted to see him suffer. And it was the first action of the session too, so that was two for two. Impressive, in a horrible way.
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Mar 2, 2012 19:36
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Pretty sure I avoided a worst experience. Joined a PBP campaign of Vampire the Masquerade. Was kinda hoping for Mage, but, I heard about this first and just wanted to get some WoD playing done, since the last time I played was one of my best experiences. This board only had 8 members, and from what I could tell, only 3 of them were actually active. Ok, that could be good or bad. Probably bad, but, like I said, I want to play and I could be wrong. Each of those three people (including the storyteller), have roughly half a dozen characters to their name. The storyteller's main character is also apparently the Sheriff of the city, and the only gangrel, although his other favorite character is a Malkavian who thinks he's a Toreador. Again, I'm having my doubts, but dammit, I was still wanting to play. I sign up, chat with the two in charge (married couple, seemed nice enough at first. The husband is the storyteller), and I roll up a character. I'm not that familiar with Vampires or their masquerade, so I went with my comfort zone, a melee-centric character. In this case, a gangrel. Cocky, hired himself out as muscle, that sort of deal. High strength, low dex, fair stamina, most points spent in Brawl and Melee. Had a point in Contact that was going to be a nosferatu hacker, someone to help out with security. Access cards, building plans, stuff like that. That character got shot down. "Nosferatu aren't allowed in this city. Too combat-oriented, spread the skills out a little more." Alright. I keep the attributes the same, but spread out the points some more. Drop melee entirely. Put my 9 points into Knowledge instead of Skills. Focus on Occult so he can advertise his ability to deal with other supernaturals. Change the contact out for a Toreador, not influential on their own, but able to give me a heads up on what the political scene is looking like. That gets shot down too. Trying to amass dice pools they say. Don't really want me having anything above 3 dots they say. Maybe I just shouldn't play a gangrel they say. So, first I'm too specialized. Then I'm too spread out. Ultimately, they just don't want my character being better than any of their characters at anything, despite the fact that their characters are all high-ranking, filthy rich, influential members of the city's ruling power and mine is a new arrival whose only real marketable skills are fighting and paranormal investigation. A friend of mine who was thinking about joining, and was actually the one who told me about it summed it up this way: "I think this is their online fap fantasy. Like, they logoff, and pretend they're still their characters, they just need other people for their characters to be better than."
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Mar 3, 2012 08:02
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the_steve posted:"I think this is their online fap fantasy. Like, they logoff, and pretend they're still their characters, they just need other people for their characters to be better than."
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Mar 3, 2012 08:09
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the_steve posted:"I think this is their online fap fantasy. Like, they logoff, and pretend they're still their characters, they just need other people for their characters to be better than." It really is like that one story the reviewer Spoony told: joining an already established group is almost always a losing proposition, because nearly all the time they have their little insular circlejerk set up and all they want a newcomer for is for someone to jack off to and tell them how great their semen tastes. Avoid like the plague. (Note: Whether you like or dislike Noah Antwiler is irrelevant, just the story he tells about established gaming groups and the problems of joining one, especially in RP heavy games like Darkness)
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Mar 3, 2012 11:39
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When that poo poo happens it is almost always the fault of the person running it. It's also the single strongest argument for power parity among player characters. I just had someone join a Vampire: the Requiem game I'm running, and he jumped straight in at about the same XP as the other characters (he's holding back a little until he figures out where he wants the character to go). I can't imagine he'd be having half as much fun as a starting character, XP wise. Seriously, the LARP model of "Start at lower XP and earn your fun and right to participate in the plot in a meaningful way," is the single stupidest thing in the hobby, and it's almost always there to provide an ego boost to senior members. </rant>
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Mar 3, 2012 23:44
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Etherwind posted:It's also the single strongest argument for power parity among player characters. I just had someone join a Vampire: the Requiem game I'm running, and he jumped straight in at about the same XP as the other characters (he's holding back a little until he figures out where he wants the character to go). I can't imagine he'd be having half as much fun as a starting character, XP wise.
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Mar 4, 2012 00:31
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On the other hand, playing as a sidekick, young apprentice, or little brother can be awesome. If, that is, everyone agrees to it and the less-able character is maybe a level or two behind at most. I can see why it's usually a disaster.
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Mar 4, 2012 05:12
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AlphaDog posted:On the other hand, playing as a sidekick, young apprentice, or little brother can be awesome. If, that is, everyone agrees to it and the less-able character is maybe a level or two behind at most.
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Mar 4, 2012 05:44
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AlphaDog posted:On the other hand, playing as a sidekick, young apprentice, or little brother can be awesome. If, that is, everyone agrees to it and the less-able character is maybe a level or two behind at most. They could be of equal or higher "level," as long as their abilities are still in-theme for brash youth.
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Mar 4, 2012 06:09
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Doc Hawkins posted:They could be of equal or higher "level," as long as their abilities are still in-theme for brash youth. For sure! Some people just like the idea of a slightly underpowered hero who will catch up in a month or two. I guess they get a good feeling out of being the (not too far) underdog - I'm not trying to say that playing "brash young fighter following his hero around" is impossible if he's the same level as his hero, just that some people prefer it. Hackmaster did an interesting take on this. You don't get to start a new PC at party level if you die. What you do get is the ability to have proteges, characters who follow you around, hold the horses, help during ambushes, etc. Your protege must be a level below you or more, and you kind of funnel a little of your XP to them (the system accounts for this). When your main guy dies and can't/won't be resurrected, you "activate" one of your proteges as your new main guy. You want to keep your protege as highly levelled and equipped as you can, in case Regdaz The Mighty falls into a bottomless pit and all his stuff is unrecoverable. Guest players can even "activate" someone's protege to use for the session they attend, gaining full XP and everything (and even becoming a regular PC if the player decides to join the group). There are better ways of handling this stuff, but Hackmaster is the original grog-appeasing "gently caress the new edition" version of D&D, so it's great for those who enjoy that sort of thing. I'd never try to use a similar system in 3e or 4e, it would be dumb and people would hate it.
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Mar 4, 2012 07:57
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Not going to lie, every time I hear "Hackmaster does X this way..." I always feel like rolling my eyes. It's one of those games which seems to take the approach that everything must be modelled to be true for the game world; it ties role-play and settings considerations to hard mechanics, often unnecessarily. It's not the only game to do it, sure. I have a personal dislike for those sorts of games where players will be told "In order to be this in the setting, you must spend resources (XP or whatever) acquiring this character trait," regardless of whether that trait will actually be mechanically useful to the character. The recent L5R 4th Edition has started doing this sort of stuff in a loving terrible way (Ronin suck mechanically... because they have lovely lives in the setting. Want to play a badass Ronin? You're outshone by just about anyone from a Great Clan unless you're higher XP than them). At least Hackmaster has the excuse of being mostly one big joke. On that topic, here's a notable experience: a new group of players to my society got stuck with a new GM, and he ran an everything as written game of Hackmaster for them that went on for about a year. They had to roll for everything, ever. His rail-roading reached noteworthy heights when he actually narrated what each character was thinking as they approached a particular city, literally reading off a sheet. They stuck with it for a year until some of us in the other groups realised what they were subjected to and staged an intervention. Those poor, poor girls.
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Mar 4, 2012 08:46
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Remember, Hackmaster has a lot of ridiculous elements that are there because they needed the game to be a parody to get the license to use AD&D stuff. I wasn't holding it up as a paragon of design (it's not), and I certainly wasn't suggesting anyone try to play it with RAW, because it's downright terrible if you do that. My best ever campaign was Hackmaster's Little Keep On The Borderlands - I handwaved most of the stupid stuff and we played it as "better AD&D", which it's quite a good system for. Since every single player in the group was an avid 1e/2e player, it worked really well. I don't imagine it would work at all if you'd never experienced those editions though. -- From that campaign: Various limbs were removed in a fight, and when the party went to get them reattached at the Cathedral, the thief sleight-of-handed the limbs so that he got the warrior's brawny left arm instead of his own. The warrior (in character) didn't forgive the thief, and after much wrangling, the thief agreed to pay the warrior 5% of his earnings in perpetuity. I ruled that stats were unaffected, but even so, the thief then had the arm covered in offensive tattoos so that the fighter wouldn't want it back. The fighter spent the next few months lifting weights every night so he was symmetrical again. Edit: Oh, and the thief would buy any treasure-horde crowns, tiaras, chains, bracelets, anklets, etc from other party memebers, so that when he went out on the town in the evenings, he could, in his words, "roll pimp stylee".
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Mar 4, 2012 10:37
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Those stories sound respectively bad and good in ways that are independent of the use of Hackmaster.
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Mar 4, 2012 11:42
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Doc Hawkins posted:Those stories sound respectively bad and good in ways that are independent of the use of Hackmaster. Everyone enjoyed it, and that's the point, really. The first story would have sucked if we weren't playing a game that's absolutely set up for stuff like that, and which everyone knew the flavour of ahead of time. I truly, truly agree that if you played with a new group who did stuff like that and they didn't tell you, it would be awful.
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Mar 4, 2012 12:25
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