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DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

Malachite_Dragon posted:

The way things have been going, you could probably just tell the DM about it, show him the wiki link, and say "Dude, it's too awesome not to use :haw:" and he'll magic up some reference to it in the systems you've taken over.

One of the PCs has the perfect memory feat that lets you roll to see if you know about pretty much anything. That's my most hopeful way in. :D

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Bitchtits McGee
Jul 1, 2011
From the way he's run things so far, I'd be surprised if the GM didn't know about it already. In fact, I'm a bit worried that he does... :tinfoil:

girl dick energy
Sep 30, 2009

You think you have the wherewithal to figure out my puzzle vagina?

Bitchtits McGee posted:

From the way he's run things so far, I'd be surprised if the GM didn't know about it already. In fact, I'm a bit worried that he does... :tinfoil:
Oh poo poo. Coruscant's about to go Mammon Machine on you.

Josef bugman
Nov 17, 2011

Pictured: Poster prepares to celebrate Holy Communion (probablY)

This avatar made possible by a gift from the Religionthread Posters Relief Fund

Spiderfist Island posted:

Rothkar doesn't defile anymore.

This is how I imagine every single game of D&D. Please do not tell me otherwise.

Liesmith
Jan 29, 2006

by Y Kant Ozma Post

DivineCoffeeBinge posted:

...I did not.

Now I have to see if I can cheese out a way for our characters to know about it.

you critted on the computer use thing right? so presumably you have root access to a lot of imperial files. at the very least you can use that to find other imperial networks to slice later on, which DO have the info you want.

karmicknight
Aug 21, 2011

Malachite_Dragon posted:

While using that as the escape vehicle would be a handy "gently caress you" to the Empire, I'm reasonably sure that entire group of infiltrators isn't even close to half the skeleton crew needed to fly a ship as massive as an Executor class (not to mention all the poo poo they'd break even worse trying to get something that big out, anyhow. Canonically, the ship being unearthed killed millions.)

DCB, never stop being amazing :allears:

Oddly enough, the Lusankya has been piloted by only one person in canon. One of the few good things to come out of the New Jedi Order.

DivineCoffeeBinge posted:

...I did not.

Now I have to see if I can cheese out a way for our characters to know about it.

You cracked the Imperial Palace computer system right? It's probably in there somewhere, and it seems like something your character would see and go, "Holy gently caress, I just found our ride."

GaryLeeLoveBuckets
May 8, 2009

Bitchtits McGee posted:

From the way he's run things so far, I'd be surprised if the GM didn't know about it already. In fact, I'm a bit worried that he does... :tinfoil:

I'm fairly sure he knows about the Lusankya, it's from the Rogue Squadron books and it looks like he pulled Coruscant's defenses from there. It's Star Wars's Guantanamo Bay but no one actually knows where it is, they assume it's out in deep space somewhere because that's how the prison is designed to feel.

If I remember correctly, one of the entry points is in a part of an old museum that was sealed off by the Emperor, but I believe it was in his district.

Captain_Indigo
Jul 29, 2007

"That’s cheating! You know the rules: once you sacrifice something here, you don’t get it back!"

I'm currently running a pair of D&D4E games on these very forums and they are a best experience. The two groups are playing different teams working in different parts of a large garden/zoo/bestiary called The Garden. The Prince who owns The Garden is an obese loudmouth with almost no empathy or positive qualities, and the players are all Wardens - members of his employ. Some are volunteers, some are employees, some are slaves.

Earlier today, Juno, a pixie who works in order to avoid imprisonment for stealing from him, was snapped at by The Prince for asking a harmless question. She then went on to steal a gift box from under his very nose with an impressive steal roll, and some help from an NPC.

Taking the box outside, she opened it to find a small white lump and lots of fragile and warning signs. Now, though I didn't openly identify the item, i was expecting someone to pick it up and examine it to learn what it might be.

Instead, Ux, a kobold magician, sneaks from the room and tries to examine the box and the item with an arcane roll. Now, this sort of thing happens all the time - except Ux rolled a critical of 30.

30 points of arcane investigation to learn that the small, white lump is a piece of cheese.

LaTex Fetish
Oct 11, 2010

DivineCoffeeBinge, how does your GM time-manage your game? I would assume your group has progressed beyond maps and grids, mostly because of the scale of things.

I would assume that your last post happened in a session about 3-4 hours long, but it's packed so full of stuff that I don't really know how you guys manage. Do you guys even have formal turns or are you really loose with the rules?

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

Liesmith posted:

you critted on the computer use thing right? so presumably you have root access to a lot of imperial files. at the very least you can use that to find other imperial networks to slice later on, which DO have the info you want.

Oh, I'm sure I could find the info; the tricky thing will be finding the info with enough time to send... let's say a half a million or so troops to go take the ship over and get it into the air quickly enough to affect the upcoming space battle... especially given the visitors who've joined the infiltration team in the Throne Room - I'm shortly going to be too busy being shot at to slice for a little bit, methinks.

LaTex Fetish posted:

DivineCoffeeBinge, how does your GM time-manage your game? I would assume your group has progressed beyond maps and grids, mostly because of the scale of things.

I would assume that your last post happened in a session about 3-4 hours long, but it's packed so full of stuff that I don't really know how you guys manage. Do you guys even have formal turns or are you really loose with the rules?

The last series of posts happened in a pair of sessions, actually, and can take somewhere between five to eight hours for a session, depending on how into the game we are and how hungry we get before breaking for dinner. :D This upcoming session will be the third that we've spent on the Battle for Coruscant, not counting the session that was supposed to be entirely devoted to planning for the Battle For Coruscant except at the end we decided to pick up the burned ISB agent plot hook more firmly than the GM expected so we tacked that onto the end and ended up finally getting out of the gaming store really drat late.

(And then two of us and the GM continued roleplaying a post-game conversation/shouting match out in the parking lot until like 2 AM because we were just really into it. My girlfriend was a little irritated with me for not getting home until 2. Yeesh.)

Normally - recent sessions have been an exception - we pretty much do everything fairly freeform; GM describes situation, we describe actions, he responds and if we need to roll something he tells us to. It must be admitted that this means that the loudest players get the GM's attention most readily. Once combat starts we declare actions in initiative order, et cetera, and very rarely do we use grids or minis - though if need be we'll use hand-drawn maps or the like, in a 'I want to run over to this side of the room here' sense.

These recent sessions, however, have been much, much more fast and loose; for the space battles, for instance, we basically describe our tactics, and the GM figures how well they ought to work, and then gives us a result - since the individual impact of our PCs is fairly small in the battle itself. Occasionally he'll have us make some gunnery rolls or the like and then use those as a basis to extrapolate the performance of the fleet crews as a whole. For fleet positioning and the like he actually brought out a whiteboard for us to draw rectangles representing the positioning of various fleet elements, like a Clausewitzian-era planning session.

(Also our GM is making noises about drafting me to run a Pendragon game once this campaign is over; I'd be happy to run it but Jesus, talk about setting the bar high. Flint's player would also like to draft me to run a game, but he would prefer Amber Diceless; when the GM mentioned that he hates the Amber system (for good reasons) Flint said probably the nicest thing I've heard all month, namely "The system sucks, but he makes it sing." Jesus, no pressure or anything, right?)

Oh, later tonight I'll have to write up the background behind my current Moral Dilemma for Miles. I think you guys'll find that amusing too.

Volmarias
Dec 31, 2002

EMAIL... THE INTERNET... SEARCH ENGINES...
Edit: Nevermind, dumb idea. DCB is awesome.

Beardless
Aug 12, 2011

I am Centurion Titus Polonius. And the only trouble I've had is that nobody seem to realize that I'm their superior officer.

DivineCoffeeBinge posted:

A bunch more awesome stuff.

You should run a PbP here on SA. And have you ever tried GURPS?

Hwurmp
May 20, 2005

Captain_Indigo posted:

I'm currently running a pair of D&D4E games on these very forums and they are a best experience.

:3:

It's also worth noting that Captain_Indigo originally only planned on running one game, and decided to open a second after the inevitable flood of applications. Which is awesome.

Whybird
Aug 2, 2009

Phaiston have long avoided the tightly competetive defence sector, but the IRDA Act 2052 has given us the freedom we need to bring out something really special.

https://team-robostar.itch.io/robostar


Nap Ghost

DivineCoffeeBinge posted:

Did I mention yet that our GM has already told us, months ago, that as a result of some of our actions, "a significant part" of the Return of the Jedi... didn't happen the way it happened in the film?

DivineCoffeeBinge posted:

Number Two: Seven figures arrive on the elevator into the Throne Room. Six of them are Imperial Guardsmen (the dudes in red, the Emperor's personal guards). The seventh is all in black robes and carries a lightsaber. Because, well, the Emperor had more Sith lackeys than most people knew.

I'm not sure that's just any Sith lackey. :ohdear:

girl dick energy
Sep 30, 2009

You think you have the wherewithal to figure out my puzzle vagina?

DivineCoffeeBinge posted:

"The system sucks, but he makes it sing."
:3:

It's always nice getting a GMing compliment.

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

Whybird posted:

I'm not sure that's just any Sith lackey. :ohdear:

"Does he have a panel of blinky lights on his chest?" was the first question out of my mouth; thankfully the answer was "no, he's not that guy."

(Phew!)

The bit I'm really most afraid of is "the Alliance kills the Emperor and Vader but doesn't have the ships to survive the rest of the battle of Endor." That's kind of where I think he might be going. Still, we won't know for another few weeks...



Re: running a PbP - I've considered it a few times, but in all honesty I've had trouble keeping my interest level in PbPs high enough in the past; I tend to lose steam. I think it's because a PbP is something I see every day whereas a tabletop ends up being a weekly or biweekly thing, so it never gets common enough to feel like an obligation, whereas the first time I find myself looking at a PbP and saying "Eh, I'll do it tomorrow" I find myself continuing to procrastinate.

That said, I've managed to keep my interest level high on the PbPs I've been playing in, so maybe I'm getting over myself, and I have a few ideas for spacing out time and effort, so... maybe.

(Hell if I know what I'd run, though)



Now, as promised, the background details on my current Moral Dilemma:

Way, way back in the day (like around 7th level) the group encountered an old abandoned asteroid mining station occupied entirely by droids, who had risen up and slain all of their overseers and declared themselves the Congregation Of The Droid God. They had a crazy High Priest Droid and everything. We had to hide from them lest we be the next sacrifices to the Droid God, and while looking for places to hide we encountered a large mainframe computer that the droids were interfacing with daily as a part of their 'prayer'.

Can you guess where this is going?

Yep - in what became really the first step away from 'generic slicer' towards 'mad scientist,' Miles hacked the mainframe... so that the droids would recognize him as the Droid God. Yay, free mining base!

Over time, Miles managed to isolate and refine a program that would insert what he called the "Droid God Algorithm" into most any droid - said droid would immediately view Miles as a religious figure and obey him without question. Problem is, many of the droids thus affected tended to go crazy after a while. Miles still hasn't quite nailed down why, but that's less important to the current dilemma, which is:

There are these things called Planetary Management Droids. They were giant ENIAC-sized immobile boxes that were designed to run planets - basically eliminating the need for bureaucracy. They proved pretty unpopular with the bureaucrats who had to decide whether or not to buy them, for obvious reasons, and these days only five of them still exist.

Coruscant has two of them. They are in fact hooked up to the computer system I'd hacked at the end of last session. Miles has the Algorithm cued up and ready to go.

So the way I figure it, if Miles infects the giant brain droids with the Droid God Algorithm, one of two things happens - either they do everything he tells them to (good for us, bad for the Empire) or they go crazy and stuff starts malfunctioning all over the planet (not so good for us, but still bad for the Empire). Problem is, some of the stuff that will malfunction include things like "the atmosphere," since Coruscant is essentially one giant city and thus everything that lets people live there is regulated by computer...

Liesmith
Jan 29, 2006

by Y Kant Ozma Post
so basically you will either be the god-king of the administrative center of the Empire, or you will kill billions of people, becoming one of the most reviled villains in the history of a setting that is, shall we say, atrocity-rich.

dark side problems

Tollymain
Jul 9, 2010

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
I'd think it'd be trillions, wouldn't it? I'm just going off of a general estimate based of an assumed Earth-like size and the current population density of Earth, so I could be totally wrong :v:

Kobold
Jan 22, 2008

Centuries of knowledge ingrained into my brain,
and this STILL makes no sense.

Liesmith posted:

so basically you will either be the god-king of the administrative center of the Empire, or you will kill billions of people, becoming one of the most reviled villains in the history of a setting that is, shall we say, atrocity-rich.

dark side problems
I'd say use it as a last resort. Have it queued and threaten to use it if things turn sour. Either result is devastating to the planet as a whole, so it could make for one hell of a bargaining chip. It'd have to be played delicately... since the moment you're away from that machine, they'll be liable to off you. That's just me, though.

Axelgear
Oct 13, 2011

If I'm wrong, please don't hesitate to tell me. It happens pretty often and I will try to change my opinion if I'm presented with evidence.

Punting posted:

We require this story. All of it, but the bolded part especially.

Alright.

So here's our heroes:

-A CN Dragonborn Fighter
-An N Human Warlock
-An LG Human Cleric
-An LN Elf Wizard

It's been a while since the game, so I'm afraid the only names I remember are Tim the Warlock, and Obliesse the Wizard.

As a note of merit, Obliesse was no named because we had a packet of vanilla wafers as a snack for this particular table session and, carrying on the tradition of food-based names, it seemed fitting to name the wizard after a packet of wafers.

Now, these guys are not first-time gamers (except the Cleric who- Well, we'll get to that). We discussed how we were going to start this. Rather than being wandering vagabonds, they all agreed that they were pretty much in the hero business for the money. As such, I had them start out in a small rented building that acted as the front for their yet-unnamed adventuring company.

First adventure was pretty mundane. Basically just them earning some money clearing out the crystal mine of a purveyor of magical trinkets. After getting thoroughly soused and spending significant amounts of that cash on booze, they were approached by another local businessman, who wanted them to clear some monsters out of their warehouse.

After accepting the contract, they got to the warehouse and received their first encounter with Gnomenclature, a gnome ninja, who used all sorts of woodland creatures as a part of highly experimental magical traps. Gnomenclature gets away, and they just barely manage to defuse a bomb composed of a badger and a landmine. The Dragonborn took a liking to the badger, named him Ralph, and bought him a badger-sized set of bagpipes.

I still do not know why he did this.

Anywho, the warehouse patron returns and finds his warehouse full of holes and on fire. He refuses to pay them. The Dragonborn responds by promptly hurling his hammer at the back of the man's head. I make him roll for it and blammo, the octogenarian businessman goes down like a ton of bricks. Fearing for his safety and that the old man will report him to the authority, he promptly cuts the old man's neck.

Then, the cleric chimes in. The Lawful Good cleric, who swore a duty to protect the innocent, has his first response be to rush over and loot the man's corpse. After I, rather stunned, describe what is on the body, he then proceeds to suggest dumping the corpse in the nearby river without batting an eyelash.

Suffice to say, he fell like a bowling ball out of a third story window: Spectacularly.

Still, it worked out for them. Amongst the old man's possessions was a watch and a deed to the warehouse, so they moved into it and upgraded their business.

That was pretty much their second adventure. Already, it'd devolved into murder, alcoholism, and forcing badgers to play the bagpipes. It got stranger from there, leading up to the aforementioned trade union dispute and crucifixion.

Axelgear
Oct 13, 2011

If I'm wrong, please don't hesitate to tell me. It happens pretty often and I will try to change my opinion if I'm presented with evidence.
As it turns out, our Warlock was of the curious sort. He dabbled with the Infernal powers, though never served them directly. However, as time went by, magical experiment backfires had caused him to start carrying a taint with him wherever he went. A few uses of eldritch fire too many had cost him all the hair on his head, and his eyebrows.

As they started to set up their new business (luckily, the authorities hadn't yet started to investigate; the old man didn't have anything in the way of family), they began to arrange decorations. One of the things they added to their collection was a bonsai tree... Which the taint manifested in. A quick roll on the list of personality quirks later and we had ourselves a racist bonsai tree. It shouted terrible obscenities that only the warlock could hear.

This led to him getting into arguments with the tree while pruning it vindictively, though he could not kill it, lest the taint manifest in something else.

After they'd set up their new business, they started to get some attention from the local hired muscl-I mean, Adventurer's Guild. They got some nasty "advice" from a few thugs, ordering them to pay their dues to the guild... Or else.

Responding to this like the good-natured octogenarian-murdering bastards that they were, they decided to go and investigate the guild directly. On their way, they found a trio of guildsmen transporting a large crate. They tried to shake them down for information, and violence broke out. Turns out the crate was full of zombies (Guild was basically transporting monsters to create business for itself by creating "spontaneous outbreaks").

A short fight later, the group finds they're really quite hosed. These guys were low level mooks and they had a hard time taking them down. They can't imagine how hosed they'd be if it got back to the Adventurer's Guild and they sent the real tough guys after them. They stash the bodies in the crate and cart them off to hide them until nightfall. Then, they discuss their next course of action.

Fight? Too risky. Likely result in them dying.

Flee? Possible but, even if assassins don't get sent after them, they're looking at losing their business here.

Beg for their lives? Not really their style.

So their decision? Intimidation. They do something so utterly horrifying that the Guild won't ever consider coming after them and will basically just either leave them alone or offer a chance to join.

In the dead of night, they go back to the cart, get out the most mangled body, and nail it to some planks of wood. The corpse is damaged goods already; hole in the chest cavity you could fit your head through. They go to prop him up in front of the Guild for all to see when the sun rises, but the Dragonborn doesn't think it's intimidating enough.

So he shoves Ralph the badger into the chest cavity. Obliesse casts a spell on the badger and they inflate Ralph like a balloon so that he won't just slip out and run away.

The Adventurer's Guild's members emerge the next morning to see one of their wizards nailed to a cross, rib cage opened like it was tissue paper, with an inflated, living badger in the middle staring with great bemusement at them.

Needless to say, the Guild never troubled them again.

Yawgmoth
Sep 10, 2003

This post is cursed!

Axelgear posted:

Obliesse was no named because we had a packet of vanilla wafers as a snack for this particular table session

Gnomenclature, a gnome ninja

The Dragonborn took a liking to the badger, named him Ralph, and bought him a badger-sized set of bagpipes.

That was pretty much their second adventure. Already, it'd devolved into murder, alcoholism, and forcing badgers to play the bagpipes. It got stranger from there
D&D in a nutshell.

Byers2142
May 5, 2011

Imagine I said something deep here...

DivineCoffeeBinge posted:

The Coruscant Question

Do it. Do it!

If nothing else, we'll get a great story out of it.

Axelgear
Oct 13, 2011

If I'm wrong, please don't hesitate to tell me. It happens pretty often and I will try to change my opinion if I'm presented with evidence.

Yawgmoth posted:

D&D in a nutshell.

Pretty much, yeah.

Ask me about Eclipse Phase some time. I'll tell you the story of the psychic mermaid with a shop-vac.

Yawgmoth
Sep 10, 2003

This post is cursed!

Axelgear posted:

the story of the psychic mermaid with a shop-vac.
If you are not currently typing this up then you are doing something wrong.

Volmarias
Dec 31, 2002

EMAIL... THE INTERNET... SEARCH ENGINES...

Axelgear posted:

The Adventurer's Guild's members emerge the next morning to see one of their wizards nailed to a cross, rib cage opened like it was tissue paper, with an inflated, living badger in the middle staring with great bemusement at them.

I can only hope that he was playing the bagpipes at some point here :3:

Axelgear
Oct 13, 2011

If I'm wrong, please don't hesitate to tell me. It happens pretty often and I will try to change my opinion if I'm presented with evidence.

Volmarias posted:

I can only hope that he was playing the bagpipes at some point here :3:

Sadly, the game didn't go on much longer after that. They went out as real heroes, fighting the forces of the Abyss. However, thanks to the spell cast on Ralph, he became an even more competent bagpipe player (hardly much of one to begin with but there you go) because he could be inflated like a balloon and then squeezed to make him play it.

Ralph survived the final battle. They discovered a building they were sent to investigate was full of demons. The Dragonborn, trapped in the basement, found himself surrounded by the undead. No hope of escape, no chance of survival, he broke open some kegs of high-proof alcohol, let the vapors rise, and then belched a fireball into the flames. Ralph tucked against him, the blast hurled them sky high into the air.

Ralph inflated like a pufferfish and drifted to safety. The Dragonborn crashed like a one-winged pigeon off a skyscraper. Because of lucky damage rolls, he somehow survived that (it was in a marsh so we said he landed in soft mud), but none of them escaped the last fight.

Except Ralph.

Yawgmoth posted:

If you are not currently typing this up then you are doing something wrong.

Alright, so here's the outline for this one:

The heroes are a trio of freelance police officers on Extropia. Extropia is a hardcore anarcho-capitalist habitat, carved out of the inside of an asteroid in the belt between Earth and Mars. It's not a bad place to live, if you like zero restrictions on anything, the only law being contract law, and having no social safety net.

Now, the players for this are three good friends of mine. One of them is the player of the Dragonborn from the 4E game, the other played Tim the Warlock. The third, she's never played a game with us before, or ever for that matter. Total newbie, which made her character's raw awesomeness all the more surprising.

For ease of myself, I'm gonna call them Chavez (Dragonborn player), Tim, and Linguist Lady (LL)respectively, to save myself time. The latter gets her name because she was actually studying a degree in linguistics at the time of this. That is important later.

So we get to character creation. Interesting choices all around. Chavez is playing a drug-fueled former Scum (think Space Gypsy) turned police officer. He punches like a mule and is fast as can be, in no small part thanks to the fact that he basically has a gland in his brain that produces meth and a spine made of superconductive materials.

Tim is playing an AGI (artificial general intelligence) sleeved into what amounts to a battletank. He's a big mecha fan, so he basically ended up creating a tachikoma, and I let him play it because the guy knows his cyberpunk concepts. The result was by far the most terrifying war machine I've ever seen statted, complete with high-power sniper rifle, missile pods, and a cyber-warfare suite.

And then we get to LL. I want to remind you at this point that she has never played an RPG before, so I'm cautious about any concept I'll hear from her. Warning bells start to go off a little when she starts talking about wanting to play a character inspired by a wood carving on her wall, but they start ringing really loudly when she asks if she can play one of the Lost. The Lost, for the unaware, are a group of people who were basically fast-grown in a vat after a disaster using alien nightmare tech in an attempt to replace all the people lost when Earth got hosed by super-AIs.

Every one of the Lost is psychic. They're also quite insane.

I cautioned her about playing an insane character. That's something I'm sketchy about even with seasoned roleplayers; you don't want to have someone go LOLPSYCHOPATH on you and wreck the game, then to whine "But my character...!" the moment you call them on that poo poo.

But... She's smart, too. LL was a first time roleplayer but she wasn't dumb or immature. She knew what she was getting into and convinced me she could handle it by picking out some really interesting stuff. Cautiously, I agreed to let her run the character and feared the worst.

The two derangements she gave me for her character? Two very interesting brands of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Most important of the two: An obsession with water.

Axelgear
Oct 13, 2011

If I'm wrong, please don't hesitate to tell me. It happens pretty often and I will try to change my opinion if I'm presented with evidence.
Water is scarce on a space station. It's a closed system and, inevitably, some of it gets lost over time to the void. As such, recycling systems need to be as efficient as possible, etc. etc. Her character's creepy obsession with water is stunningly added to when she reveals that the wood carving she wants to base her character on is a mermaid. Initially, this has me confused, as Extropia is not an aquatic habitat, but then she points out that it's set in micro-gravity - she can literally swim through the air.

Just like that, she's created an unusual and interesting theme around her character. I was very impressed.

Where it got strange was when she started talking about her character having a shop-vac integrated into her suit, so that she could obsessively gather any liquids she found. Made sense, sure. Then came the first battle.

Without going into too much detail, a group of Trekkies-but-not-Trekkies took a bar full of people hostage at gunpoint in full costume. An absolute massacre ensues as the AGI tank proceeds to blast down a wall and open fire with heavy machine guns. Chavez's officer joins the fray and punches a man so hard his jaw explodes. Only LL's mermaid has the intelligence to sneak in and try and get the hostages out. The moment the hostages are free, she then turns her sights on the Trekkies. Like some weird sort of fish vampire, she pounces on them and starts to drain the blood from their lifeless corpses.

"There's water in their blood and I want to recycle it!"

This became a running theme. As the battles got bloodier and bloodier, she started to arrive at every scene carrying a larger and larger vacuum. She was more concerned about collecting every last floating sphere of blood than she was about her team's safety. Eventually, she'd recycled so much blood that she could fill a swimming pool with the water she'd extracted. She was a brilliant roleplayer for someone taking their first stab at it.

At one point, she actually organized a protest in front of a mind-storage bank for having a fountain in its reception area. Fun times...

And in case you're wondering, the Trekkies were all being steadily rewritten by a memetic mind-virus created by an autistic guy. Long story.

Etherwind
Apr 22, 2008
Probation
Can't post for 61 days!
Soiled Meat
Not long enough that you couldn't fit it all in a single post, though.

Axelgear
Oct 13, 2011

If I'm wrong, please don't hesitate to tell me. It happens pretty often and I will try to change my opinion if I'm presented with evidence.
I suppose so. The short version is that something of a con artist managed to find an idiot savant linguist and pass it off as his own. It was created as the fictional language for a VR show, for an alien species of what amounted to Klingons.

Except it turns out that this savant was a bit too good (largely due to his infection with the Exsurgent Virus). The language he created acted as a sort of mental programming. By itself, it doesn't affect you, but, if you use it, learn it, think in it regularly, it has a sinister effect: It taints memories.

According to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, language has an effect on memory. Humans compartmentalize memory based on the language they use and this has been experimentally proven with things like ability to differentiate colour/assign blame. This new language makes people generate negative associations with everything they interact with. The more they use it, the more their memory is increasingly aggressive and hateful. Bit by bit, they become argumentative jerks. Eventually, violence starts to break out, antisocial personalities come to the fore, and you have a group of angry, dangerous people.

It ended with them all modifying themselves into huge, muscular war-beasts, trading in their dull prop weapons for monomolecular blades. I got a recording of Maori Haka to play in the background when they started hunting these people.

It actually made me feel a little proud when Linguist Lady squealed with delight at this particular plot. Then, a few days later, someone introduced me to Snow Crash and I didn't feel so original.

InfiniteJesters
Jan 26, 2012

Axelgear posted:

I suppose so. The short version is that something of a con artist managed to find an idiot savant linguist and pass it off as his own. It was created as the fictional language for a VR show, for an alien species of what amounted to Klingons.

Except it turns out that this savant was a bit too good (largely due to his infection with the Exsurgent Virus). The language he created acted as a sort of mental programming. By itself, it doesn't affect you, but, if you use it, learn it, think in it regularly, it has a sinister effect: It taints memories.

According to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, language has an effect on memory. Humans compartmentalize memory based on the language they use and this has been experimentally proven with things like ability to differentiate colour/assign blame. This new language makes people generate negative associations with everything they interact with. The more they use it, the more their memory is increasingly aggressive and hateful. Bit by bit, they become argumentative jerks. Eventually, violence starts to break out, antisocial personalities come to the fore, and you have a group of angry, dangerous people.

It ended with them all modifying themselves into huge, muscular war-beasts, trading in their dull prop weapons for monomolecular blades. I got a recording of Maori Haka to play in the background when they started hunting these people.

It actually made me feel a little proud when Linguist Lady squealed with delight at this particular plot. Then, a few days later, someone introduced me to Snow Crash and I didn't feel so original.

Your version is original! Yours operates off of a more carrot-and-stick method of brainwashing whereas Snow Crash was basically the neurological equivalent of hacking yourself admin/root rights to a Linux boxen.

Free Gratis
Apr 17, 2002

Karate Jazz Wolf
My worst gaming experience had nothing to do with the actual game.

I had just moved back to my home town about eight years ago and had no gaming group because most of my nerd friends had moved elsewhere. Chance would have it that I ran into a guy at a Barnes and Noble around the RPG section and struck up a conversation. He seemed like a nice enough guy so I exchanged contact info with him and he ended up calling me later to invite me to his D&D game.

So I take the trip to his house and it's a pig sty with miscellaneous crap layed out everywhere. Turns out the guy is living with his mother and girlfriend and I'd bet one of them has a hoarding problem. His girlfriend actually seemed like she had a decent head on her shoulders so it probably wasn't her. The other members of the gaming group weren't social paragons either. One was a high school drop out with no job who was squatting with them at the time and claimed he could've joined mensa but didn't want to belong to a club of elitist pricks. (The DM/host also boasted this achievement) The other group members were young parents and brought their baby to the game. I can tolerate children better than most of people I know, and they couldn't afford to hire a baby sitter so this is fine by me. What I did mind though was that the father was a piece of poo poo Wallace Shawn look-a-like who got angry and irritated any time the mother needed him to watch the baby so she could take care of something. I felt sorry for the mom because she really looked like she was doing the best she could in her situation.

The game eventually got going and it was okay I suppose. I might have given the group another chance had it not been for what happened next.

Eventually he asks me if I want something to drink and he tells me what they have. Among the choices is Dr. Pepper, so I go with that and he pours me a cup from a 2 liter bottle. The game continues and I take a swig from the plastic cup only to look up and see him chugging from the 2 liter bottle he had just used to serve me. I looked down in my cup instinctively checking for any kind of backwash. Instead I see at the bottom of the plastic cup A THICK BROWN CRUD caked to the bottom and I was nauseated for the rest of the night. I kept my composure and was still cordial, but I made up an excuse to leave after a short while.

He gave me a couple of call backs to game with them again but I just said I was too busy. I WAS busy at the time, so it wasn't a lie, but I'd have made the time if it was worth it. The filthy cup combined with the irritating superiority complexes made it far from worth my time though. I was reminded of this experience because I happened to see the guy the other day, grocery shopping with his girlfriend. And his mom...

Ivan Shitskin
Nov 29, 2002

Bosushi! posted:

My worst gaming experience had nothing to do with the actual game.
:froggonk:

You know, playing with social outcasts isn't really the issue -- none of us are perfect and it's good to practice humility about these things, as long as we're not committing nerd fallacies regarding other nerds or tolerating untolerable behavior. But Christ the environment. I don't see how anyone can relax in a pig sty, let alone be comfortable enough for a gaming session.

Don't get me wrong, because I've played my share of games in uncomfortable fluorescent-lit rooms in divey game stores, but sometimes it feels like we should probably pay more attention to where we're playing. Not to go all out and convert a room into a mock dungeon either, because that's just hammy. But please, clear the clutter and kibble. A clean and comfortable room makes for an enjoyable game.

Elector_Nerdlingen
Sep 27, 2004



Aufzug Taube! posted:

I don't see how anyone can relax in a pig sty, let alone be comfortable enough for a gaming session.

Well... it's easy enough if you have a mental illness. When you stop caring about yourself, well, things go to poo poo.

I game with mentally ill people, and quite often it's gaming that's the thing that keeps them motivated to not live in filth - they're embarrased to have people over unless they clean regularly.

gently caress that guy though, he's an rear end in a top hat for giving a dude a filthy cup.

girl dick energy
Sep 30, 2009

You think you have the wherewithal to figure out my puzzle vagina?

AlphaDog posted:

I game with mentally ill people, and quite often it's gaming that's the thing that keeps them motivated to not live in filth - they're embarrased to have people over unless they clean regularly.
That's... actually kind of heartwarming in a way. :unsmith:

A smug sociopath
Feb 13, 2012

Unironically alpha.
Time for another one with Abe!

This one wasn't from the Vampire campaign, but something older, and much closer to being one of the worst RP'ing experiences I've had. At least it's some of the worst GM'ing I've encountered. See, after our first Campaign of Praedor (In which my character "Ratface" committed a genocide on a viking tribe while wearing glowing human skulls on his helmet, and horse skulls as shoulder pads), we had another stab at Praedor. With Abe as the GM. He wasn't very good.

Consistent with his usual style, prior to the first (and only) session Abe was smug as all hell. He wanted us to suffer. He even went as far as to tell us that the game would start with us being crucified.

"gently caress that noise" we thought. It was on, we were going to break his game.

The GM for our prior Praedor game, Eric, knew the rules like the palms of his hands. So, with a combination of minmaxing and certain perks, he went on to create the most game-breaking character I've ever witnessed. Abe, not having even read the rulebook, failed to catch the ridiculousness of Eric's character, thus approving it for the game.

So the game begins, with us as slaves, working on the fields of a rich duke. Abe's giddy, foreboding our incoming crucifixion with hints of displeasure on our work. It was time to fight back. Come evening, we snuck out of our barracks, and hid into the ditches. We were going to sack the manor. Slowly our party swam down the stream and to the backyard of the manor. This is when Abe was faced with the absolute game-breaking insanity of Eric's character.

Abe: There's a guard on the back yard, facing the other way.
Eric: How far away is he?
Abe: About 15 meters.
Eric: I jump out of the lake, run up to him and punch him.
Abe: Okay, you run halfway up the yard, and the guard...
Eric: Stop. See my character sheet here. With my speed rating, I can run 40 meters per turn.
Abe: W-what? :aaaaa:

Eric rolls his punch as Abe regains his composure.

Abe: He has a helmet, you can't hurt him.

Eric rolls the kind of damage equivalent to being hacked with a poleaxe. He had maxed out his speed and strength, while taking perks that essentially made his fists stone. The guard has his head instantly caved in.

Eric: I still have movement left on my turn, so I run back into the ditch.
Abe: :sigh:

So onward we went, robbing the manor, killing everyone inside and setting it on fire. Then the lynch mod approached, led by the head of the manor, clad in shining armor.
Luckily, we had the perfect plan. Me and Mark took up shields in both hands, covering for Eric, as he jumped back and forth between the shields, punching our enemies to death and retreating back into cover every turn. The duke was dispatched in this very same manner, mid-speech.

Duke: You filthy scum! You will never get away...
And Eric runs at him, punches his chest in, then jumps back behind the shields.

After enough casualties, the crowd dispersed, and we went our merry way. We had ruined Abe's plans for the campaign beginning; he told us he wanted us to be crucified, then forced on a suicide mission by a mysterious buyer. Instead, we were rich, free, and heading to the capital.

I'll write more soon, as that was only the beginning of the madness that would entail. See, as the game continued, Abe began to fight back...

Josef bugman
Nov 17, 2011

Pictured: Poster prepares to celebrate Holy Communion (probablY)

This avatar made possible by a gift from the Religionthread Posters Relief Fund

Aufzug Taube! posted:

I don't see how anyone can relax in a pig sty, let alone be comfortable enough for a gaming session.

Thats a slur, I have known some very fine pigs!

How often does this happen? Going over to someones house to game? I kind of assumed it was all done in various shops and things and then if you liked the people there it was when you went back to their houses.

Ichabod Sexbeast
Dec 5, 2011

Giving 'em the old razzle-dazzle

DivineCoffeeBinge posted:

:black101: + :science:

So how much do emoticons cost round these parts? Because you really need :black101: with a lightsabre.

Elector_Nerdlingen
Sep 27, 2004



Colon V posted:

That's... actually kind of heartwarming in a way. :unsmith:

Thanks man :) We've been a close-knit group of friends since high school. Gaming is something that wwe can always do together even when someone's completely unmotivated to go anywhere. It's great.

Mind you, playing Everyone Is John with 3 out of 4 players being legitimately insane can get weird really awesome.

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GaryLeeLoveBuckets
May 8, 2009

Josef bugman posted:

Thats a slur, I have known some very fine pigs!

How often does this happen? Going over to someones house to game? I kind of assumed it was all done in various shops and things and then if you liked the people there it was when you went back to their houses.

I've gone to a stranger's house twice to game, usually it's because the host is a friend of a friend. I don't think I'd ever go back to a random person I met at a gaming store's house without knowing them for a while.

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