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Time for another one with Fitzgarraldo and Abe. This actually takes place before my last story, on the fourth or fifth session of our Vampire campaign. It also explains somewhat why he had such an intense dislike towards me and Mark. Now, this was before our GM had introduced the NPC prince, and the small highland town was pretty much a sandbox for us to wreak havoc and gently caress around in. I had managed to secure the town church for myself along with the cemetary, and made some pretty sweet contacts with the religious leaders, while we were all together pulling one rope to make the town a nice place for us vampires, setting up an elysium and such. Well, except for Abe, of course. His first character was a psycho Gangrel we all feared like crazy, for the simple reason that he loved to eat other PC's, and he was strong as all gently caress, with aggro claws, and two ghoul bears as retainers. So, we all breathed a sigh of relief when one of the other PC's impaled the dreaded Gangrel with a huge wooden cross stolen from the town church. As his lifeless corpse fell into the river, and the bears were left in the woods near the city, we were reminded by our GM that they would one day return in search of vampire blood. Enter the next session, and Abe has a new character. Now, we didn't know much about this one, except for two things; 1: The GM and Abe were giddy as hell about the character. That was a bad sign. 2: The GM had given him an indeterminate amount of extra points for taking some big flaws, so it seemed like his character would be even more powerful than the gangrel. Suffice to say, we were anxious. So, me and Mark are chilling at the Elysium we had set up in the city. There's a knock on the door. My character, Fitzgarraldo, being paranoid as hell, obfuscates instantly and disappears into the shadows. Mark opens the door, and behind it, finds a 12-year old boy. Yes, he decided to play a kid. Named Count Dacula. Motherfucker. And not just any kid, but a very smug, overconfident one, with possibly enough power to wipe us all out. So, Mark remains courteous. Abe plays his Count Dacula like a snotty little brat, instantly insulting Mark with some snappy remarks and generally being arrogant as hell. But he doesn't see me. That's a good sign, he has no Auspex. I instantly start to work on a plan. Mark offers Abe a goblet of blood. Which Abe proceeds to pour on the elysium floor. Then he cuts his own hand, fills the goblet with his own blood and begins drinking it. That was my que. I slid next to him, still obfuscated, cut my hand and let a few drops of my own blood fall into the goblet, as Dacula was merrily drinking it. Strike one. Two more, and I he would be bound to me by blood. I leave the room, come out of obfuscation, and re-enter, to make my acquintance with the newcomer. GM: Abe, you feel fond of Count Fitzgarraldo, almost as if he had a certain fatherly figure. Abe: Yeah, whatever. Remarks of his fondness towards Count Fitzgarraldo rouse no suspicion in Abe, because, well, he's Abe. We make him an offer that he could stay at the elysium until we can properly discuss about territory with him. He gleefully takes upon the offer. When we leave, I tell Mark my plan. We are to blood bond him to me. Only that way could we be sure that he would cause us no complications. Now, some of the merits I had bought for Fitzgarraldo were Celestial attunement and Light sleeper. So, it was easy for me to sneak up on Dacula during daytime. We had a hidden escape tunnel at the elysium, which lead to a nearby river. I waited at the bottom of the river for the sunrise, then emerged in the Elysium. With Dacula fast asleep, It was easy to sneak up to him and drop a little blood in his mouth. He didn't even wake up, and I disappeared back into the hidden tunnel. By the time I was able to give the last drops of blood, Abe was starting to get suspicious that something was up. I had disappeared from his sight to avoid any more GM remarks of the brewing blood bond, and there were still no discussions about giving him his own territory. So he starts causing trouble at the Elysium. Mark tries to calm him down, then makes the mistake of offering him a Goblet of blood. This prompts Abe to attack Mark's character, by casting Dementation on him. Obfuscated in the next room, I witness as Mark's char becomes a quivering mess and hunches down into the corner of the room. Abe laughs. I begin to fill a goblet with my own blood. Me: So, do you laugh with your mouth open? Abe: What? Me: Like, are you quietly giggling or laughing your rear end off? GM: How hard are you laughing at Mark? Abe: I point my finger at him and laugh as loud as I can!  Me: Okay, I step in front of him and throw the goblet of blood at his face. Abe: What? Me: Then I deobfuscate myself. GM: Alright. Abe, you feel a splash of blood on your face and mouth. As you swallow the blood, you see Fitzgarraldo appear in front of you. Abe: What's going on? GM: You feel that he is your eternal leader, and you should obey his every order. Me: From now on, you will call me Master.  When it dawned to him what had happened, he looked like he was about to cry. Literally, like a child about to burst into tears. Me and Mark laughing our asses off certainly didn't help. This time he didn't call me a sociopath, just an rear end in a top hat. Anyway, it wasn't over. After he realized he couldn't use his character to backstab me, he decided to go full retard. Full retard in this case meaning killing people in the town square and feeding on them in front of multiple witnesses. Count Dacula had just gone from a liability to a liability and a huge nuisance. We had to get rid of him. So, I sent Abe to clean up his previous mess. That is, the ghoul bears. They of course ripped Count Dacula to shreds. A fitting end, I might say.
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Mar 4, 2012 16:26
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I kind of love Fitzgarraldo. I'm a few weeks into my first GM attempt ever, playing Dresden Files. The basic idea for my game was that all the players were magic Lawbreakers (basically they did some black magic) and the Wardens (the magic cops) have returned to town. If the Warden finds out they're Lawbreakers he will chop off their heads. I actually had said Wardens chop off the head of a black magic user at the end of the first major scene right in front of the party to emphasize this. So I'm expecting that the players are going to try to avoid or sabatoge, maybe even bump off the Warden to hide their crimes, right? NOPE. First thing they all do is suck up and get on his good side with the intention that if he likes them maybe he won't kill them later. So instead of being a big mean cop like they all prepared for I made the Warden the most decent guy ever who just wants to protect people from bad things (like black magic users, and monsters and crap.) So yeah, instead of a cat-and-mouse with an rear end in a top hat cop who is out to get them, the entire party just got deputized and they're all going to go take out a vampire nest together. It is hilarious and I am so glad it turned out this way. The most noteworthy thing so far was when the time-traveling cowboy and the magical assassin decided to go talk to a Black Court Vampire by themselves to get an evil magic book (it might have clues to solving the main plot murder mystery.) I flat out told them this was a Bad Idea but they wanted to do it anyway. So I ambushed them in the dark as soon as they got to the store where the vampires lived with a vampire that should have messed them up quite badly, in fact I was expecting them to lose and get taken prisoner and the rest of the party to have to go rescue them. The assassin uses his first turn to give the vampire a glowing aura so they can see her in the dark. The cowboy, who was caught flat footed, waited for his turn then shot her with his Holy Bullet and rolled pretty high, stacking a few bonuses on top. On her defense turn vampy rolled a ONE. The resulting damage left the vampire a smoking ruin with a basketball sized hole in her chest, laying on the floor making cruchy noises. Everyone including me: 
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Mar 4, 2012 17:09
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Had my first Pathfinder GM session. It was pretty good! Basically my team normally does slightly serious stuff mixed in with comedy, and I wrote this session to be all comedy as I'm not too confident in my abilities to pull off a more serious mission. So basically the team had no real missions from the Pathfinder society so they were ordered to relax and so visit one of the city districts at night and head into a bar. Inside the bar a gang of goblins challenge them to a drinking game, which ends up horribly for our heroes. And whilst drunk they take on a knife throwing challenge which ends up with one of the players getting stabbed in the foot. Then, our team plus knife go to a dance club, and fall flat on their asses multiple times and get thrown out. And then there is a horse race through obstacles including a water pit and a pit of LAVA. And then they take on a barbed wire course similar to the Saw Movies. And finally, they stop a bank robbery and utterly pulverise the enemy so I made sure to draw in loads of blood splatters. 
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Mar 4, 2012 21:12
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My first D&D game was an epic campaign, always the start of a great series of events. My girlfirend convinced me that it would be fun to try since she enjoys playing a great deal, so I figured I'd give it a shot. Having absolutely no idea just how playing was done, I figured I would pick a class with a little of everything to it, but majorly with hit-enemy-with-sword action. The choice for that was a paladin. However, this was an evil campaign, so I had to dig around for something playable. Our DM did not exactly have a firm grasp of how 3.5 worked, either. His idea of good design was an inescapable prison with an anti-magic field and prismatic walls surrounding, and then having our group of unarmed and unarmored mostly magic characters try to escape through the waves of level 10 fully armed constructs. He also didn't keep track of character creation very well, despite granting homebrew items for our class which were handy as hell for breaking everything. The end result was an evil Aasimar Paladin with Diplomacy unrivaled by any I've seen since. To give you an idea, the first scene was the party talking to a quest giver NPC, and our DM, who decided making things up on the spot was good planning, was kind enough to provide him with some arbitrary high stats. He was using it as a gigantic and utterly bland infodump when a friend leaned over and gave me an idea. Me: "I roll charisma to make him stop talking." DM: "Okay, but I don't think you have the stats to-" Me: *rolls natural 20 on my first roll ever* "And that's plus... 23 for my diplomacy skill, and another 15 in various bonuses from the custom equipment you made for me. Does 58 beat it?" DM: "...He closes his mouth and walks away. The quest is never given, and the world is saved. You all lose." The faces of the rest of the group: Priceless. That was, luckily, not the last time my charisma was misused during that session. It got so bad that suddenly all our enemies were special and unable to be convinced to abondon their current course of action and join our side. That rule was enacted after I started stealing people's pants by convincing the the wearers their combat prowess would improve without them. Still the best experience of my gaming career.
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Mar 5, 2012 08:05
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Fighting-Fefnir posted:That rule was enacted after I started stealing people's pants by convincing the the wearers their combat prowess would improve without them. 
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Mar 5, 2012 10:53
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Fighting-Fefnir posted:That rule was enacted after I started stealing people's pants by convincing the the wearers their combat prowess would improve without them.
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Mar 5, 2012 14:21
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I've come to the conclusion that the way to make things go right in tabletop RPGs is to actually make them go gloriously wrong.
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Mar 5, 2012 14:25
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Fighting-Fefnir posted:The end result was an evil Aasimar Paladin with Diplomacy unrivaled by any I've seen since. I'll be honest; I'd allow it.
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Mar 5, 2012 15:29
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We finally had our first game of Eclipse Phase this weekend with the rookie power gamer DM I described earlier in this thread. It is off to a rocky start with the DM floundering on how to get us hooked into the scenario and trying to counter every party action behind the scenes. We have been cooling our heels for a month after being contracted by the Firewall organization. We have no information on what we are contracted to do and have had no contact for the past month. When we finally are contacted by the our handler, he plays coy and refuses to give us any details other than to get on the ship in the hanger that is programed to take use to our target destination. The ship is totally hack proof and the the handler is apparently a master hacker with no history to be dug up by our sentient AI program also master hacker PC. In transit, we are contacted by another organization with a counter offer to our job that we don't realize is a counter offer because our employer hasn't actually told us what we are supposed to be doing. This organization's handler is also untracable and apparently capable of wiping out our Ego back ups, knows every detail possible about our characters, and can shut down the mesh in our area at whim. After the session, I tried to explain about player agency and that we are here to play so we don't have to be tricked into accepting missions but I don't think it got through. Think I'm gonna have to bale on what could have been a fun game.
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Mar 5, 2012 18:48
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Shadowrun causes brain damage.
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Mar 5, 2012 18:57
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Chance II posted:We finally had our first game of Eclipse Phase this weekend with the rookie power gamer DM I described earlier in this thread. It is off to a rocky start with the DM floundering on how to get us hooked into the scenario and trying to counter every party action behind the scenes. We have been cooling our heels for a month after being contracted by the Firewall organization. We have no information on what we are contracted to do and have had no contact for the past month. When we finally are contacted by the our handler, he plays coy and refuses to give us any details other than to get on the ship in the hanger that is programed to take use to our target destination. The ship is totally hack proof and the the handler is apparently a master hacker with no history to be dug up by our sentient AI program also master hacker PC. Good RPGs in the hands of bad bad DMs are the worst thing, I swear. 
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Mar 5, 2012 19:21
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InfiniteJesters posted:Good RPGs in the hands of bad bad DMs are the worst thing, I swear. He certainly wasn't the worst DM I've ever had and, honestly, He was there for the first game I ever DMed and it was a worst experience on both sides of the DM screen. I'm hoping he'll take the advice I've given him and it'll get better since we are playing with two players new to pen and paper games (the best kind of players)and I don't want them to get turned off.
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Mar 5, 2012 19:35
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InfiniteJesters posted:Good RPGs in the hands of bad bad DMs are the worst thing, I swear. Honestly, one of the strikes I hold against EP is that it's possible to be misused like this.
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Mar 5, 2012 19:37
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Eeh, that's true of all RPGs. It's like Rule thirty-whatever but for bad GMs instead of porn. If it exists, they can run it badly. Whereas when I played it, I had great fun disabling enemy robots and forking into them, gaining man-bot-power and momentum with every obstacle cleared. As for Chance II's GM, I'd talk through problems with him rather than just bailing. Every new GM risks these traps, I know I made a lot of mistakes when I was starting out. First sessions in particular are tricky, because if the players don't travel in the expected direction, suddenly any notes are useless. The result? A little railroading. What the GM was probably trying to do, was impress upon the players the severity of the situation. Alright, you can't trace your handler, but he doesn't want to be traced and may have a lot of people like you running interference. Likewise the mysterious counteroffer with their Super-NPC Powers over local electronics may actually be a VIP of some kind, who does have that sort of swing. Or, it could be bad GMing. To find out which, start thinking aloud, instead of simply stating actions. If the GM is a good one, he'll use your ideas, because they'll often be better than his own. For example: "I look at a list of local bigwigs." becomes "Shutting off the mesh is a significant act. This mysterious stranger either is, or works for, a big shot. Maybe we could look in to local personalities, and find out who could do this, and work backwards?" "I go to the mesh relays. What do I see?" becomes "Once we've finished this bit, we should investigate the mesh relays. To shut off the mesh, they'd probably need to do it through here. We may be able to find a clue." "I board up the vents" becomes "If I were a flesh-eating bio-engineered nightmare, I'd come in through the ventilation system, so I'm nailing them shut." And now, a slightly related discussion topic. What things did you do as a rookie GM, that looking back were danger areas. Myself, I remember writing up significant NPCs on character sheets, and having a GMPC fight a climactic battle while the PCs 'helped'. I feel pretty stupid these days, but it made sense at the time.
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Mar 5, 2012 23:07
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I'm waiting to see if he takes my advice next session before bailing, and even then I'll probably just offer to take over as DM if everyone is having a bad time. I don't plan to just hijack his game but then I don't plan to drive an hour for a bad game when I could be running my own or playing one of the wargames the next room over. As far as rookie GM mistakes I've made, I let a power gamer electrical engineer play a tinker qnome in the first game ever ran in DnD 3.5. I had never even played DnD before and was willing to put up with anything after writing up an entire low magic setting. Also, the players started with a prison break scenario (in this case, a chained together on a wagon). Yeah it went as bad as you might think it would.
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Mar 5, 2012 23:32
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Letting an engineer of any kind have free rein in D&D is a recipe for disaster, really.
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Mar 5, 2012 23:51
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Speaking as an engineer, this is absolutely true. I have to consciously suppress that part of my brain, same as when I watch action movies. When I played games with my cousins, one of whom was also an engineer, we would wreck entire sessions if we weren't careful. If either of us started metathinking the other had an obligation to call out "fudge factor!" (an engineering joke) to get the other back on track. Had a really fun session with my players last night, they took things in an entirely different direction than I was expecting. They spent most of the session roleplaying their preparations for a ball/audience with the king and coming up with contingency plans while fretting about being presentable. How to get the elf's Fullblade in without contrasting too harshly with her dress was a particularly big problem. Leave it to the players to take a ten minute tableau and blow it up into a two hour session. I ended up just running with it and making the whole thing much more important than I was planning, though there were a few growing pains. At the end, I had to say "You all begin to wonder why you were invited in the first place," to which they responded, "That's exactly what I was just wondering!  "It's all good though, they're approaching it as a mystery, which gives me time to fake a reason for next session 
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Mar 5, 2012 23:59
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Chance II posted:Yeah it went as bad as you might think it would. You can't say that and not elaborate.
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Mar 6, 2012 00:07
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Doc Hawkins posted:Honestly, one of the strikes I hold against EP is that it's possible to be misused like this. What, namely that it's possible to turn one's entire surroundings into a deathtrap and thus use it to railroad players, or...?
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Mar 6, 2012 00:15
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General Maximus posted:You can't say that and not elaborate. Peasant Railgun.
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Mar 6, 2012 01:44
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Players in my game are awesome sometimes. Saturday I ran the finale of a short adventure where the PCs were hired to recover an ancient idol containing the essence of an evil god. The shrine it was in had a Djinn guardian who gave them all Zelda-style Hookshots before the boss fight, so they had fun swinging around fighting the boss. When that was over, they got the idol, and the genie also granted them a wish. They wished for two wishes, then used the first to find out who wanted the idol (a collector who had lots of evil idols for purposes unknown). They used the second to wish all the currently extant-evil idols teleported into the sun, which they then watched on the HD scrying pool from the first wish.
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Mar 6, 2012 07:57
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InfiniteJesters posted:What, namely that it's possible to turn one's entire surroundings into a deathtrap and thus use it to railroad players, or...? Yeah. There's no scene, session, or campaign structure, no assurances for the characters' abilities, no thematic focus...like Shadowrun, it leaves how to actually, like, play the game an exercise for the reader. Game design is pedagogic design, and most "bad gms" are just victims of poor designs, having learned the wrong things. (some bad gms are of course, terrible people who happen to play roleplaying games)
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Mar 6, 2012 08:25
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Doc Hawkins posted:Yeah. There's no scene, session, or campaign structure, no assurances for the characters' abilities, no thematic focus...like Shadowrun, it leaves how to actually, like, play the game an exercise for the reader. Ahhhh, okay. Yeah, that...Could be problematic. And the game was made by some of the designers of 4th-ed Shadowrun, so there you go. I feel a big rant about Eclipse Phase coming on and suddenly wonder if Transhuman Space/GURPS Ultra-Tech/something else might be less of an infuriating system for my BEEP BOOP CYBORG needs.
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Mar 6, 2012 11:56
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So, our group plays Deathwatch; the RPG for people who like being genetically engineered superhumans in the Warhammer 40k universe and generally splatting the hell out of a tonne of stuff. The background to our mission is that we were sent to some planet that had fractured from the Empire centuries ago because now we were trying to get them to rejoin but the early missionaries we had sent well, they'd ended up dead. And not just dead, but dead from horrible alien xeno filth. Which means we have to go and cleanse and purge the whole place, and as an aside persuade them how fricking badass the Empire is and they should totally join. So we've rocked up and they aren't being particularly helpful, because the planet is populated by huge warrior dudes who aren't particularly impressed by us as we are essentially mobile tanks when in full power armour and with gigantic guns. So they want us to do a back to basics "prove how badass you are" trial; stripping us of all our gear and sending us out to hunt some, essentially, dinosaurs with bone spears and such. It's a pretty neat set-up really, as it forces us to use our abilities in a more diverse way; tracking, setting traps and being a bit more measured than our usual approach, which has involved people entering buildings by running through walls more than once. The trial goes fine, and we have our hunting trophies and start heading back to the town. The last obstacle is a field full of, essentially, velociraptors. On the way in, we'd snuck around the outside, but on the way out we're carrying what is basically a dinosaur BBQ rack and there's no way we're going to make it past unnoticed. So our Psyker (grimdark future wizard) comes up with a great plan. He'll charge at the raptors and blast a ball of PSYCHIC FIRE at them. With any luck, it'll scare the bejesus out of them and they'll scatter, letting us cross easily. He runs in, makes the roll, and a beautiful blossom of psychic fire covers the field. Except, using psychic powers has a downside. See, it can cause undesirable effects. We've had a few before; including eldritch patches of darkness and unnerving cold winds and such. Nothing too bad. Not this time though. The first roll goes bad. This means he's going to be looking up the side-effects on the worst table for them. The one that has some really bad things that can happen. The second roll goes worse. And so there we are; clad only in loincloths and carrying bone spears rather than the system-usual power armour and gigantic weapons, when our Psyker manages to accidentally summon a Chaos Daemon Prince. 
MissMarple fucked around with this message at 13:11 on Mar 6, 2012 |
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Mar 6, 2012 13:09
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MissMarple posted:That is why I love Deathwatch. Even when things go horribly, horribly wrong, it's still metal as gently caress.
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Mar 6, 2012 13:18
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MissMarple posted:And so there we are; clad only in loincloths and carrying bone spears rather than the system-usual power armour and gigantic weapons, when our Psyker manages to accidentally summon a Chaos Daemon Prince. Well you brought him some BBQ so I don't see what the problem is 
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Mar 6, 2012 13:50
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InfiniteJesters posted:That is why I love Deathwatch. Even when things go horribly, horribly wrong, it's still metal as gently caress. I love the Psyker tables in Dark Heresy. Roll for your power, psyker! Oops, you rolled a 9, go to the "Not-so-bad-but-could-get-worse" side effects table. Oops, you rolled 75-100, time to go to the "it-gets-worse" table. Oops, you rolled a 100? Your character gets sucked into the maw of hell, no saves. Roll up a new character! Or even better, "oh, you rolled a 99. Your character turns into a hollow shell in which a demon now rests. Your friends all get murdered in front of you, by your own hand, while you get to watch from a prison inside your own brain!"
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Mar 6, 2012 20:55
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Even though I've got some great stories that resulted from bad Perils of the Warp rolls, I actually sort of hate the mechanic. It means that one player, while in the regular process of playing as the designer intended, has a constant chance of causing a tpk or campaign nuke. It's like a save or die spell from D&d, randomly inflicted for having the temerity to play your class. The tables in Black Crusade are the worst, with a flat 10% chance of being possessed by a demon and forced out of your body.
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Mar 6, 2012 21:08
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Squidster posted:Even though I've got some great stories that resulted from bad Perils of the Warp rolls, I actually sort of hate the mechanic. Agreed. Every group I've played in has used the House Rule of letting the Psyker use a Fate Point to re-roll Perils of the Warp, or even Burn one to negate the effects if they're really, really bad. But "rules as written", if you just happen to roll badly, no matter how thematically or practically relevant the psychic act was, you can literally ruin a campaign with just a bit of bad luck. It was pretty funny (by that I mean, loving RETARDED) when I rolled up the "Total Daemon Possession" when trying to use a minor power to remove Fatigue Points on a fellow player (at their request). EDIT: But the usual response to this, from Dark Heresy Players, is: "Well, THAT's the setting. If you don't like it, don't play it." I guess that they're right.
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Mar 6, 2012 21:26
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I guess for me the "that's the setting" is sort of a point, but I figure people's fun is more important. If everyone is on board with the player getting sucked into the warp, or a demon spawning, or whatever (which I think my players are, judging from their reactions to Perils rolls), then I figure it's cool when I throw poo poo like that at them. If the player is really attached to their character, however, then there's no reason not to house-rule or retcon or whatever. I've never had something truly spectacular occur, minus gravity reversing once. Beyond that, it's all been chills and memory loss or whatever.
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Mar 6, 2012 21:36
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InfiniteJesters posted:That is why I love Deathwatch. Even when things go horribly, horribly wrong, it's still metal as gently caress. This last session of Deathwatch for my group (session 4, actually) featured an assault on an Ork encampment. They made liberal use of my house-rule of "Fate Point for badass maneuvers or get out of holy-poo poo-pass-this-or-you're-now-a-steaming-pile/puddle/abscence-of-air tests". The first involved a guest player as their Dreadnaught, who charged through a Grot squad (stomping enough damage into them to kill the horde completely), then dual heavy-flamering a Stormboy squad in front of it, ending it's turn in close combat with two Big Meks, one of which took over 70 damage on the only attack that hit due to 10 consecutive righteous fury roles. All while the Gaurdsmen in the Predator behind them blared Motley Crue's, "Kickstart my Heart" over it's vox. The Killteam's Land Raider crashed through a watchtower and straight into this Ork fort so it's occupants can start the fight in close combat. Metal as gently caress, indeed  .
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Mar 6, 2012 23:32
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There's already a game mechanic where the player can automatically live through anything the GM throws at him so it's not really a big deal, all it does is create an interesting situation that might bring some new plot hooks into play.
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Mar 6, 2012 23:34
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Fellblade posted:There's already a game mechanic where the player can automatically live through anything the GM throws at him so it's not really a big deal, all it does is create an interesting situation that might bring some new plot hooks into play. This was the idea. They already know they are functionally invulnerable due to ridiculous rules on how damage is taken, and they have enough games under their belt where they are now thinking like the walking tanks they may as well be. Still needed a Fate Point to not have an Assault marines head taken off by Boss Zagstruk's power claw feet when he dive bombed him. The fate point kept him his head, albeit with a collapsed building on top of both of them.
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Mar 6, 2012 23:40
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Fellblade posted:There's already a game mechanic where the player can automatically live through anything the GM throws at him so it's not really a big deal, all it does is create an interesting situation that might bring some new plot hooks into play. You have a finite amount of fate points, after which death becomes permanent. And fate points can't undo everything - there are plenty of game situations where a greater demon surprise torpedoes the party permanently.
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Mar 7, 2012 00:21
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So do you have everybody just re-roll in an event like that? I know characters are supposed to be somewhat expendable, but in a TPK everyone just makes a new character?
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Mar 7, 2012 00:31
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Squidster posted:You have a finite amount of fate points, after which death becomes permanent. And fate points can't undo everything - there are plenty of game situations where a greater demon surprise torpedoes the party permanently. Deathwatch, Dark heresy and their ilk run off the same base rules right?
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Mar 7, 2012 01:26
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Rigged Death Trap posted:Deathwatch, Dark heresy and their ilk run off the same base rules right? Ish. Kind of. The original Dark Heresy was made by a different company whose name I have forgotten, who weren't as good at game design or layout as Fantasy Flight. Let that layout bit sink in for a moment. Everything from Rogue Trader on has a different skew and has a slightly different feel to it.
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Mar 7, 2012 01:32
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Squidster posted:You have a finite amount of fate points, after which death becomes permanent. And fate points can't undo everything - there are plenty of game situations where a greater demon surprise torpedoes the party permanently. No, they can't undo anything, but you are always alive and in a playable state regardless of what happened when you burn one. You have a finite amount of them sure, but you usually only lose them permanently upon death. In my opinion that means that the spirit of the rule set is that you aren't supposed to just TPK and welp, thats game over, you are supposed to pile up injuries, insanities and corruption until it all explodes into a big ball of heresy.
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Mar 7, 2012 01:33
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Today I had a game that was both a best and a worst. The worst part: I'm running a 7th Sea campaign with five players, four of whom are excellent, the fifth is Larry. Other than generally having a slightly irritating personality (it's like sitting in a room with 4chan incarnate), Larry appears to be one of those people who just can't make a character that fits the party/campaign. In a previous game that was centred around investigation and intrigue he built a combat monster, complained that he had nothing to do because there weren't many fights, and then didn't use his non-combat skills in situations where they were relevant. For this game, having been told that it's about a bunch of heroes and rogues with hearts of gold in a world of pretty black and white morality he turns up with... a morally ambiguous assassin working for a family with a reputation for being evil. I'm dubious, but he assures me he won't act like a dick with the character, and has a reason for the character to be associated with everyone else (they have a ship, he has a lot of money and wants to leave town fast, so signs on as a passenger and bankrolls the voyage). Three sessions later he has been consistently antagonistic to every other character and it's reached the point where the captain is struggling not to throw him overboard. They have a conversation where he insists he hasn't done anything wrong. At this point we actually break and have an OOC conversation to work out what is intentional character stuff and what's not. Turns out he really isn't aware that he's been constantly antagonistic towards everyone. What follows is a half hour derail in which everyone explains to him the issues that have been coming up. I tell him that I don't mind him having an unpleasant character as long as he's aware of it, and as a player is okay with the consequences of his character not being liked. If that's not a role he's comfortable in he is welcome to re-do his character to gel better. Hopefully the talk will have cleared things up, but if he doesn't improve I may end up asking him to leave after the next session. On a brighter note though, the bits of the session that weren't Larry based were some of the best I've had recently. All the other players have very well developed characters with a lot of interaction going on. The players are calling for scenes based on what will be dramatically interesting, I'm not having to do any prodding to get good roleplay out of them. This session I basically did nothing as a GM other than say "Okay, let's cut to a scene between you two now," or "Alright, you walk in at this point." I didn't have to throw a single outside event at them the whole session and they loved it. People were standing up, acting out the physical elements to go with their conversations, getting very intensely into it. I almost feel bad about how little work I'm having to do, but everyone says they're having a great time other than issues with Larry.
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Mar 7, 2012 01:54
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InfiniteJesters posted:And the game was made by some of the designers of 4th-ed Shadowrun, so there you go. !!! I suddenly understand so much more about it, and maybe even feel more understanding towards it.
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Mar 7, 2012 02:03
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