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That just makes me want to see a party consisting entirely of deaf PCs. They hunt banshees, sirens, trolls, etc.
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Apr 11, 2012 06:51
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Too cookie-cutter. Obviously, each would have a different disability and a unique fighting style to match.
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Apr 11, 2012 07:16
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ConfusedUs posted:BEES Thank you for posting this.  Hadn't heard it before.So, I'm pretty darn excited for the campaign I'm in that's starting up next week. The title of the campaign is Razor Strawberry Beatdown, and aims to emulate anime combined with all the bad Asian action movies of the 70's and 80's in the Fate system (GM apparently has his reasons for not using Feng Shui, most notably Fate's aspect system). The evil megacorporation Razor Strawberry led by the 19 year old genius Shinji Khan has taken control of the city Shokyo in the country of Supermanchuria, owning not only the companies, but also the land and people as well. All citizens of Shokyo have been implanted with brain chips called greyboxes that have turned them into docile, mindless corporate slaves, many against their will. Below the city of Shokyo lies the Steam Hell, home to everyone who opposes the rule of Razor Strawberry, including people afraid of Razor Strawberry's iron rule, disgruntled cops out of a job, and people with experimental greyboxes implanted in them that failed, leaving them considerably more talented than normal in a given area and considerably less sane. We play the lieutenants of the Red Ridin' Hoods gang, drug runners throughout the Steam Hell, led by a large man with multiple personalities of "Grandma" and "The Wolf". Player characters range from a macho disco dance-fighter to a yandere female assassin with a pet tentacle monster to a botched greybox similar to River Tam to the groups' own personal fanfiction writer who knows gun-fu. I play an insane busty female weapons engineer with a botched greybox (think the Sparks from Girl Genius). Rival gangs with turf in the Steam Hell include the Pink Panda Squad, an anarchist group of kindergarten girls led by a man in a pink panda suit; Rainbow Force Go!, a band of renegade cops turned sentai force led by Brian the brain in a jar; and the Baker's Dozen, a group of 12 cooks/drugmakers who compete with us for the drug trade and due to the fact that their 13th member recently defected to our gang. City and character creation to come up with all this were the last two Mondays, and the first of five sessions is next Monday.  Cannot wait to see how it all plays out, especially since our GM is very, very good.
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Apr 11, 2012 07:27
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Doc Hawkins posted:Too cookie-cutter. Obviously, each would have a different disability and a unique fighting style to match. Hackmaster, then? Or not. You could have Schizophrenia Man, who confounds enemies with rambling conspiracy theories. Paranoia Man, who cannot be surprised and knows what, like, everyone's up to, dude. Bipolar Girl, who works and fights in a manic frenzy for 6 hours and then sulks for a week afterward. Body Dysmorphic Woman, who replaces her arms and legs with monster limbs on a regular basis. Bulimia Boy, who is a hulking hurler in the worst way. And their mascot, Multiple Personality Disorder Girl, who is sometimes a girl warrior, and sometimes thinks she's a mascot dog. Together, they form the Institutionalised Inquisitors, fighting the evil Dr. Healthy Brain Guy, who doesn't actually have any actual powers at all but always wins because the Inquisitors can't actually get anything done ever.
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Apr 11, 2012 08:41
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AlphaDog posted:Hackmaster, then? Or perhaps it is Dr. Healthybrainguy who is the hero and the Inquisitors that are the villains. Cleaning up their messes as they hunt him down to pay for his imagined crimes. Oh, even better he's their psychologist too!
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Apr 11, 2012 09:10
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AgentF posted:Then you can instigate some inter-party drama by giving them a single prosthetic ear and watching them fight over it. The Ear of Vecna?
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Apr 11, 2012 10:01
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So a couple nights ago I had my best session yet. Backstory/context Since day 1 of the campaign about a year and a half ago, I (as almost all DMs I imagine) wanted my campaign to feel epic, where the players felt that their actions had world-sweeping consequences. I had no idea how to pull it off successfully, but with my players the secret definitely seems to be "roll with whatever happens." Which is good, because that's my DM style anyway. I also had a lot of help the entire way through. Thanks goons! My players agree that my game is "weird." Not in a bad way. But I'm down for whatever as long as it makes sense or there's a good justification. For example: Currently, none of the characters are ANY of the original party that started the game. The full cast is as follows (strikethroughs are gone for good): Original party: Cur(Jess) - Incan warrior (goliath barbarian) - Player moved in with fiancee' and kid, and has been extremely busy, so has bowed out indefinitely until he can come back (he definitely plans to come back, so no worries) Tochtli(Jason) - Aztec warlord (Tiefling warlord) - Player exchanged characters New members that came in partway through: Katja(Kelsey) - Tondoese/Filipina thief (halfling hunter) - Player basically replaced Thea, still using this character Magnus(Howard) - Irish priest (human cleric) - New player, still using this character Sebastian(Steve 2) - Italian agent retriever (I-forgot psion) - New player. Exchanged his character. Current party (including the above): Ewan(Steve 2) - Scottish agent retriever (human fighter skinned as human), replaced Sebastian Connell(Jason) - Scottish agent retriever (longtooth shifter warden skinned as human), replaced Tochtli Katja Magnus Also, if anyone's burdened with an overabundance of spare time, the link to the GM thread above has all my posts and you can see the formation and progression of the campaign, and the ebb and flow of cast members. ---------- Now, a few weeks ago, Steve and Jason asked if they could change their characters out. I asked in the GM thread about it, because I knew it was unusual, but mostly out of curiosity--I had no problems with it. Steve wanted to switch out Sebastian because he'd been derailing my game hilariously, but also badly at times. Due to his character's selfishness and blustering personality (think Foghorn Leghorn levels of pushiness), and propensity to just drop everything and leave if things weren't going his way, he thought it better to change his character out for one less game-breaking. The last straw (for him, but also for everyone else) was when I led them to Konstanz, which was meant to be a major hub of activity, quests, and plot development. After two sessions, Sebastian had the entire party leave because he wanted a piece of information that the Duke was rightly unwilling to give up, so all the poo poo I had in mind for the city went tits up. Which I rolled with, and worked around, but he realized how bad it was. Jason wanted to change his character out because after Jess(Cur) left the game AND Tochtli became a free man, there was little reason for his character to stick around in the story--he'd been created to pair with Cur and be his foil. So I let him exchange characters too, at which point we no longer had any of the original characters. We introduced the new characters in the middle of a rather large combat between a mind-controlled dragon and a lich. Once two of the PCs were bloodied, I had the new charas ride in to help finish the battle. The two new characters were senior agent retrievers for the Catholic church, and Sebastian's superiors. They told him he was under investigation for many flagrant abuses of his power (one of the things Steve did was constantly use Sebastian's status as an agent of the church for hideous amounts of personal gain). They deputized Tochtli as an agent retriever and sent the two of them to Rome, Sebastian to stand trial and Tochtli to escort him and make sure they made it there in a timely fashion. Exeunt Tochtli and Sebastian. Oh, one last thing you have to know: I use a Crit-Hit and Crit-Fumble deck. ---------- Last session This session was the end of the first act. My previous attempt at ending the first act ended very abruptly, but in retrospect I wouldn't have had it any other way. Luck was definitely on my side as a storyteller, because a huge dose of that, plus having the best goddamn players ever (I will loving fight you), resulted in the best goddamn session. The PCs are informed that the town is absolutely infested with the enemy, and that a ritual is being performed in the catacombs below the city that they need to stop. They rush down there to see in a very large underground atrium: Gottfried - German necromancer, Big Bad Otto - basically Frankenstein's monster (goliath revenant barbarian), unwilling right-hand of BBEG Matteo - Franciscan monk (human revenant monk/psion), whom the party had rescued from a cult ritual in the very first session of the game, and whom they had helped (and received help from) on numerous occasions as their paths crossed. As well as a dozen or so priests/cultists surrounding a dais holding a large chunk of a MacGuffin, Gottfried, and Matteo, with Otto standing between them all. At the back of the atrium is a large circular bone portal, which they've encountered before. They were surprised to see Matteo assisting Gottfried with whatever it was they were doing (which made me happy), and everyone rolled initiative. I rolled a check to see if anyone would fall under Matteo's psionic influence, and all but Kelsey failed their save. I passed notes: Connell was certain that Ewan was going to murder him in the battle and try to usurp him. Ewan was certain that Katja was going to murder him and escape. On the second round of combat, Ewan was toe-to-toe with the Big Bad, and Katja took aim... and fumbled. The card she drew? "Your shot misses and hits the nearest ally." So Ewan, already certain that Katja was trying to kill him, now has an arrow sticking out of his back. Ewan turns for a moment and points his sword at her, his eyes screaming "You're next!" The battle is intense and violent, and finally they manage to down Gottfried. For flavor (and plot purposes), Gottfried extends a hand to Matteo for help, and Matteo finishes him off. At this point, they start attacking Matteo, the real Big Bad... supposedly. Matteo doesn't seem to have any real interest in killing them and is mostly defending himself as he directs four cultists to lift the large boulder-chunk of MacGuffin and take it towards the portal. The stone begins moving one square per turn. Katja begins using rapid shot to down the cultists. In two turns, she manages to kill enough that the stone is now sitting RIGHT at the edge of the portal. It's a 2x2 object, so two more turns and it'll be gone. And then the session went from great to  Connell (slowed, too far from stone) attacks Matteo with a special attack and hits. Primary attack hits and does normal damage. Secondary effect--fumble. Card drawn: Target and target's allies become invisible for 1d4 rounds. He rolled a 2. I remove Matteo and Otto from the field (Technically Otto's now fighting WITH the PCs now that Gottfried's dead, but whatevs). They see a large, invisible force shove the MacGuffin halfway through the portal. It's almost through. They then see Matteo reappear between Ewan and Katja. It's only been one round. Another burst of invisible force shoves the MacGuffin through the portal, shortly followed by a man-sized silhouette whose outline can be seen as he passes through the portal. Steve: "Oh, there must be a third person." Me:  Ewan (immobilized) swings at Matteo and misses. Matteo swings at Katja and misses. Connell attacks Matteo and misses, while Ewan finds himself dodging another attack from Matteo. It's almost the top of the round again, and Katja's turn is up. Her player asks how long until the portal closes, and I say the end of this round. Katja, the only one who can currently move unhindered, uses a double move to sprint towards the portal. Ewan sees Matteo sprint towards the portal. Katja sees Matteo staying behind, stationary, but has no time to react as she dives through the portal and it flickers shut behind her. As I describe this, I see the on Steve's face as he realizes what happened.Pretty awesome end to an act and session, right? It gets better. Steve: "Welp, guess you'll be rolling a new ch--wait. Hey Thunderbeast, would it be possible that Sebastian and Tochtli would run into her?" Me:  "Actually... yes. Yes it would."Unbeknownst to them, I already knew where the portal would lead--an old, abandoned abbey that Matteo used to live in, in northern Italy. Sebastian and Tochtli were headed to Rome from what is now middle Germany. So now there are two groups of characters very much active and influencing the world: Tochtli, Sebastian, Katja, and (Howard's new character he has to roll up for this group), headed to Rome. And Ewan, Connell, Magnus, and (Kelsey's new character), embroiled in the heart of corruption and decay in the Holy Roman Empire. None of us ever expected to see Tochtli and Sebastian so soon. We knew we'd bring them back for maybe a few sessions in the future, but thanks to awesome loving roleplaying by my players and some crazy luck, we now have two interesting, established parties involved in their own awesome storylines.  I'm very interested to see how the situation with Sebastian develops, since he can no longer just "I am the moon" anything he comes across. I'll link my goon player here to fill in anything I may have missed. Son of Thunderbeast fucked around with this message at 10:46 on Apr 11, 2012 |
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Apr 11, 2012 10:34
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I thought I'd share my most bizarre RPG:ing session. We were going to play a modernday evil campaign, led by this guy we call Shroom. That's obviously not his real name, but that's what everyone calls him. Something to do with mushrooms, I'd imagine. Now, he was going to GM an evil campaign, set in an oppressive state with the players as secret government agents tasked with, uh "Internal security". Essentially, the setting was North Korea meets Mad Men. The premise was that we would be doing raids against a rebel force and other threats while trying to keep from getting hosed by the system ourselves. Kinda like a more serious Paranoia, without the infighting. I'd never played a campaign led by Shroom, and only played a few sessions of Vampire and Song of fire&ice with him previously. Rest of our party was more familiar with him. Before the first session the following conversation took place: Eric: Abe, it's going to be fun. Abe: No it's not, it's led by Shroom! Me: So? Abe: He's a sicko! Me: Like me?  Abe: I mean it, he's a loving pervert. Me: Whatever... I thought Abe just being Abe. I was wrong. Soon enough, Shroom arrives, and we begin playing. I played an old mercenary called Rolf De Heer (stolen directly from the director of Bad Boy Bubby, because I have no imagination with names), who was pretty much a fat John Mullins. Eric played an old drunkard mercenary, Abe was a young, physically fit but retarded ex-cop. Mark and Ed played more... Intelligence-oriented characters. In our first mission, we were tasked with silencing a diplomat from another nation, who was causing trouble and bad press with his vocal questions about the regime. The kicker? He must not be harmed. We had to come up with a scheme to make him loyal to us, or somehow extort him, instead of straight up making him disappear. So we came up with the classic movie bad guy plan; get the guy drunk, and have him wake up next to a dead prostitute. Then catch him in the act. We proceeded with the plan; my character went to pick up a suitably dingy hotel room and prepare it, while Eric began hanging out with our target, feeding him with a shot after shot of the finest alcoholic beverages. Mark and Ed went to pick a suitable corpse and some cow blood from the butcher shop, and did the necessary preparations on it. Abe was tasked with surveillance of the target and Eric, so that we could time our actions accordingly. Everything goes smoothly, and we get the target into the hotel room, passed out drunk, next to the dead corpse. We prepared for our next move. That's when things turned to poo poo. Literally. Shroom: You barge into the room, and right away an awful smell hits you. Me: Whatever, I enter. Shroom: You see that the diplomat has began making GBS threads himself uncontrollably from the shock of seeing the corpse, and from being drunk. Eric: Oh gently caress no. Mark: What the gently caress, Shroom? At this point the voice levels began to rise, as Shroom described the lovely details with a maniacal grin while everyone else was trying to drown out his voice with their screaming. Shroom: His pants are being filled with brown liquid poo poo and it's pouring all over the floor! It's flowing everywhere and sprays on the dead hooker! Abe: gently caress you! Shut up! Shut up!  Eric: Shroom, you oval office! Me:  Shroom: And the white sheets are now covered in brown liquid poo poo, and the diplomat begins to puke on top of the poo poo... (and he goes on, you get the picture) Abe: You loving freak! loving sick freak! Eric: Shut up with the poo poo already! Shroom: Roll stamina. If you fail, you puke. Ed failed, and joined in the puking. After that, Shroom mellowed, and we continued to wonder what the gently caress got into him. After recovering from the shock, we managed to play the session through without any more disgusting fetishes lurking in. Shroom gets poo poo about it constantly, nowadays. That comic about the golden shower forest and the piss fetish gm? Yeah, we wave it at his face every once in a while, too. The diarrhea diplomat has almost become as legendary at our RP group as the tale of the "Rapist shitdwarves", as I've heard them called. Though I was not involved in that one, so it's not really my RP:ing experince. loving luckily 
A smug sociopath fucked around with this message at 16:37 on Apr 11, 2012 |
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Apr 11, 2012 13:25
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Mikan posted:If a dude sent me a thing about how I got captured and lost an ear and it was that badly written and all that poo poo with no input I'd either be out the game (if I didn't know the dude that well) or call him on it. It's really not defensible. I'd be out of the game because he is unimaginative and terrible at description though, not because he ruined my character who I hadn't yet played.
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Apr 11, 2012 13:44
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Getting frustrated with my current Pathfinder game. We're travelling through the Underdark to get to Menzoberranzan to take down one of the houses that has been attacking the surface, because that seems like a totally good idea for 5th level characters. We were ambushed by some Drow and they used really annoying darkness spells that made combat slog and take forever. The priestess could cast Deeper Darkness at will, so every time we dispelled it or used Daylight to get rid of it, she'd just cast it again. The priestess escaped by DM fiat after I had laid down a lot of plans to prevent it, I ran in front of her Darkness and cast Web when it approached me with a readied action, then on my next turn I used Silent Image to make it look like the cave had collapsed so the only way to go was back towards the party. Doesn't matter, she escaped somehow. This would not have bothered me if the DM had said "you're not sure how, but she's escaped!" Instead we sat there for an hour and a half in real time trying to find her because we couldn't get a straight answer. At this point, I was completely against continuing to Menzoberranzan because the house would know that we were coming so I told the party the cave-in illusion was real and we headed back the way we came. They decided to take a fork in the road and we ended up at a Kuo-Toa temple that we could rest in. Between sessions, everyone decided they wanted me to craft magic items, so on our facebook group we talked about what we wanted and how long it would take. Last session I told the DM how long we were waiting (he explicitly said we could take as long as we wanted), he nodded and started handing out notes to people. We kept saying we wanted to continue on, but he just kind of ignored it and kept handing out these notes that caused party conflict. One guy got a note slipped under his door saying that someone in the party was plotting against him, so he spent like an hour arguing with the rogue about it and making preparations to defend his little hotel room. None of this mattered, we wanted to leave and go on the adventure. After seriously 3 hours of nothing happening, we're allowed to continue, we approach Menzoberranzan and have a brief encounter with the gate guards that we get by using Alter Self. Then we are gathering information for another hour and a half, deciding we want to go see this lich instead, and that's the end of the session. All of it seemed like a big stalling tactic. He's redoing the Keep on the Borderlands adventures for Pathfinder and says he has 30 pages or so prepared no matter where we go, but we can't go anywhere because he stalls us. It's quite annoying.
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Apr 11, 2012 14:50
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Apr 11, 2012 14:52
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That's the one. Tried googling it myself for reference, but GIS':ng "piss fetish gm" produced some rather unwanted results.
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Apr 11, 2012 15:01
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Our Scion group has a fun little rule going where we end every session with a "next episode preview". Each player, in turn, describes a short situation or says a line that's exciting, intriguing or mindboggling in some way or another. The next session, we can gain a bonus XP if we manage to make our own "preview moment" happen in a way that's judged natural and appropriate. My last one was the lolrandom line "The solution to this problem... lies in this chicken", which led to the following anecdote. Context: My character is a Scion of Loki with mannerisms inspired by TF2's Spy, built for epic manipulation and Illusion boons, but is often a bit of a pushover in fights. Another player's is a somewhat dimwitted Scion of Apollo whose solution to most problems is a thorough application of bullets. His own preview moment was to go ballistic, shout "gently caress YOU, (my character's name)" and empty a clip of his assault rifle for some reason. Our party has reached Demigod level fairly recently, and has started doing some really flashy stuff. After returning from infiltrating an enemy base, I delivered my report: Me: Several of them, I noticed, were stronger than me. Him: Well, that's not hard. Me: I don't mean physically, I mean the extent of their powers. Him: Yeah! Seriously, you're kind of a wimp. Me: (Pause) This sounds like a challenge. Name me one thing you cannot do, but wish you could. Him: What? Oh, huh... I don't know, shoot the moon? Me: Very well. Follow me to the roof. We then went out to see the full moon conveniently out. I drew my pistol and pointed at it, explaining that, no, shooting the moon was impossible. I went into a long diatribe explaining why, even if a bullet could somehow leave the atmosphere, its trajectory would be nearly impossible to calculate, and most important of all, it would completely burn up before hitting its target, along with some other made-up bullshit technobabble. I holstered my gun and told him to wait a few minutes while I went to fetch something. I returned with a raw chicken smuggled from the kitchen, said my preview line and then continued to explain that chickens have the interesting property of being perfect for space travel. They travel in a "predictable arc" when launched, the oils they're coated make them greatly aerodynamic, and most importantly, their skeletons are made of a sturdy substance "they make spaceship hulls out of". I then flung the chicken into the air. With a whistling sound, it flew until it became a tiny dot in sky and disappeared. A few seconds later, a tiny, hard-to-spot but visible crack appeared on the moon's surface. Behind the scenes, I revealed to the table that this was all an illusion (there was in fact no chicken at all), and "the best complete waste of Legend points I have ever spent". We didn't roll anything because the other player found this hilarious and is usually a great sport about these things. We cut back to the game, with his flabbergasted character staring at mine, then... drawing out his assault rifle. Him: gently caress you, (my character's name)! (Aims at... the moon. Empties his clip, naturally doesn't hit anything.) Me: It's as I said. Bullets won't work. Him: (Turns back to me, still completely bewildered.) Wow. I didn't know you were so strong! Me: It's all in the wrist. Now please never question my abilities again. One of our players wasn't around for the session and the plot couldn't progress much without him, so that evening there was noticeably more improvised, consequenceless loving around than usual, like this moment I just described. Next week he'll likely wonder why we keep saying that the solution to any problem is to throw a chicken at it really hard.
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Apr 13, 2012 20:33
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I'm playing in a Pathfinder game with a group of unapologetic grognards. I rolled up a halfling barbarian just for the hell of it and it's been a ridiculous romp so far. We're trawling through a necromancer's tower searching for a kidnapped diplomat. In the last session, we came to a large, ornate hall with large doors at either end. Upon approaching one side, we were jumped by two wights. Half the group takes one and half the other. Right before killing mine we hear someone calling from the adjoining room, "Barry, are you fighting with the wights again?" Thinking quickly (and lacking any ranks in Bluff whatsoever) I yell back "No! Nothing to worry about!" I decapitate the wight I was fighting. "Barry! That sounded like a wight being decapitated. What are you doing out there?" "I uhh... I dropped something. Nothing to worry about." The voice replies, "I'm coming out there!" Welp, more combatants. With the other half fighting the last wight, I line up on the door, saying I'll kick it in as soon as I hear the handle turn. It does - BLAMMO - 1d6 damage to the spindly, nose-bleeding drow on the other side. He takes a step back and drops his darkness sphere on us. On my next turn, I bull rush out of the sphere, pushing him and myself back into what turns out to be his rather ornate office. He is surprised by this - a disheveled halfling with a greataxe bum rushing him. He tries to step away and cast something and fails. "I'm going to grapple and subdue him." (Thinking to myself, hey here's the first sentient creature we've encountered, let's talk to him) The DM did not see this coming - pretty much everything in this game (and I got the impression of previous games) has been a straight dungeon crawl. So I roll like an 18 and have this pansy drow mage held tight. What happened next through the whole table for a loop. I had leveled up from 1 to 2 at the end of the last session, and spent 5 minutes at the start of this one choosing a rage power, the barbarian class' special abilities. I chose Intimidating Glare, which allows me to impose a -2 to most checks against a single target as a move action after passing an Intimidate test. I'm no Pathfinder rules expert, but even I knew it would be largely useless. I hadn't mentioned this selection yet. So I've got this drow grappled, and instead of coup de gracing him or otherwise attacking him, I use Intimidating Glare, climbing up his spindly body, grabbing him by the collar, and in my best Bale Batman voice asking "WHERE IS HE?!" (the diplomat) The DM actually had to look up the rules for how intimidation checks actually work, but was really good at playing out this drow, held down and scared shitless of this tiny, frothing at the mouth barbarian who just broke his fingers. We pumped him for information (not that helpful), he gave us a key/wand of cure light wounds, then the party rogue slit his throat, much to the horror of the DMNPC paladin (also a halfling) and my own surprise. We rolled his body up in the room's rug, stuffed it into the conveniently oversized chest in the room, and I scrawled "I QUIT" in messy handwriting in crayon on a piece of paper and left it on his desk. We had a lot of fun with this one. I guess the moral of the story is that even awful games like Pathfinder can be fun if you don't take everything all serious-like.
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Apr 13, 2012 21:23
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Clanpot Shake posted:So I've got this drow grappled, and instead of coup de gracing him or otherwise attacking him, I use Intimidating Glare, climbing up his spindly body, grabbing him by the collar, and in my best Bale Batman voice asking "WHERE IS HE?!" (the diplomat) I assume it was something like this.
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Apr 14, 2012 12:37
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Volmarias posted:I assume it was something like this.
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Apr 14, 2012 22:32
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Doc Hawkins posted:Too cookie-cutter. Obviously, each would have a different disability and a unique fighting style to match. So basically Crippled Masters with dice? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYYbvzz4RsU
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Apr 14, 2012 23:12
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Okay. I'm tired, so I apologize for any lack of coherence, but I promised a report from our latest Star Wars game and by God you're getting it. The Conquest of Coruscant, Session Three: Everyone Gets hosed So. If you recall when last we left our 'heroes' there were three of us in the Emperor's Throne Room on Coruscant - Miles the slicer genius (me), Plan B The Invisible Ninja, and Flint the Jedi Who Survived An Orbital Bombardment. Also, forty Rebel mooks (16 techies with some minimal combat training, 24 troopers). In our stealth ship, the Storm Hawk, was another PC, Blake the Engineer In Powered Armor, as well as a crew and 6 droidekas. The enemy, who had just arrived, consisted of six Imperial Guardsmen (the dudes in the red armor) and one ominous-looking fellow in black holding a lightsaber, who turned out to be The Grand High Imperial Inquisitor Fuckhead (note: name may not be accurate). GHII Fuckhead, it should be noted, is 29th level. The Guardsmen have been scaled up to level 19. Our levels range from 24 (Flint) to 18 (me), as well as the 6th and 7th level mooks. The Inquisitor proceeds to demonstrate the cheese levels inherent in the Force Leap/Great Cleave combo, and starts killin' mooks despite getting hit twice by Flint's Blaster Cannon. Meanwhile I designate a spot for Blake to hit from the ship so that he and the droidekas can drop in through the ceiling, which would have been awesome except he hit the roof not with lasers but with ship-scale concussion missiles, which ruined the day of most everyone inside. But hey, they dropped in! Over the next several hours we played I believe six rounds of combat. Flint closed to lightsaber range and dueled with GHII Fuckhead; for 'dueled' read 'they hit each other several times and absorbed/dissipated the attacks' (and to forestall the inevitable complaint: GM ruled that A/D Energy can be used on lightsabers because the opening cinematic for KOTOR clearly showed a character doing just that, and it's canon enough for him). The guardsmen were left to the rest of us. Thermal detonators were tossed. Several of them. At once. Also, the droidekas didn't really give a poo poo about that whole 'firing into melee' bit and actually ended up almost killing as many of our dudes as the Guardsmen did. (also, somehow the techs proved impossible to kill. Lightsaber attack? Yeah, he made his Fort save. Stun effects from the Force Pike? Yeah, they'll save those. Several times. In a row. The soldiers had poo poo dice luck, but the techs proved nigh-unkillable; we ended this scene with four living techs (one stabilized at -4 HP) to three living troopers. Yeesh.) GHII Fuckhead finally gets in a lucky crit on Flint and drops him (it's hard to Absorb/Dissipate 62 points of damage). We start retreating. Miles actually covers the retreat by lobbing stun grenades, effectively stunlocking the GHII (who was finally out of Heroic Surges) and the three surviving Guardsmen (two of which were actually unconscious and coup de grace'd by techs - 6th level dudes! Yeah, they leveled). Oh, and there's a space battle, too. We are ordered to hold the line, because the ships've gotta leave for a bit; after a masterful Astrogation roll involving copious use of Force Points, the fleet hyperjumps out and then back in again behind the incoming Star Dreadnoughts (four Mandator-class ships and one Mandator II)and wreck their day something fierce. We'll get back to them. So we're on our way out - with Flint down there is no way the rest of us are combat-capable enough to face Fuckhead down, he's just too loving buff and besides we're not the combat-bunnies. We get aboard the Storm Hawk, leaving behind presents like 'still more thermal detonators' and 'a few more concussion missiles.' Yeah, the Emperor's Throne Room? That fall down go boom. I tried to hit Fuckhead as he dropped like a rock with a concussion missile. Alas! Then he vanished. I know how he vanished, OOCly, but haven't yet figured out ICly that he Force Pulled himself over to the one thing in the vicinity not dropping like a stone - namely, our ship. He clung to our hull until we landed. Fucker!  Plan is, currently, to get Flint down on the ground to coordinate our ground forces - he's out of physical action but he can still give commands, his INT score is fine - and use the Storm Hawk to start supporting the ground troops by suppressing the Imperial counterattack. Now, in space, Victor - our other Force user and Admiral and starfighter jock and PR front - is chatting on a secure channel to the Moff in charge of the planetary defense when said Moff plays for him a message that was just received, over an open channel, unencrypted. I'll explain what the message was later. The Moff gloats a bit; Victor makes a fist and tells the GM, "Yeah, I'll take the Dark Side points." He doesn't choke the guy out with the Force; he squeezes his heart until it pops. And records this for later broadcast. Now with the local commander dead, Imperial command and control is just plain hosed. The local officers remain in place - and they're getting the shields and anti-air weaponry back online - but there's no one to tell them to charge, so they're not doing it. COMPNOR isn't waiting, though; they're sending in COMPFORCE. COMPFORCE is basically the SS crossed with the Boy Scouts - fanatically loyal to the Emperor, well-equipped, well-armored, well-regarded... and poorly-trained. "Here's your gun. Here's your body armor. When we tell you to kill the enemies of the Emperor, you go kill them. Welcome to COMPFORCE!" That's pretty much the extent of their training. Basically our troops are forming wonderful protective ramparts made from COMPFORCE troopers; every time a trooper climbs over the corpse of one of his deceased comrades he is shot and thus makes the pile higher. Between the troops we have in Imperial Center and the troops we've landed elsewhere which we were in the process of ferrying over to Imperial Center, the Imperials are pretty much in a Carthage situation - yes, they have us surrounded, but we have them surrounded as well and our two fronts and squeeze shut on 'em. The space situation is still a little dicey, but we might be able to handle the ground... except, maybe, for that message I mentioned earlier. There's a Moff on the screen; behind him, stuff is on fire. "This is Moff Tiaan Jerjerrod," he says. "The Rebel fleet has been destroyed, with... consequences. All orders, even those received from the Emperor or anyone claiming to be Emperor, are to be relayed through me. Further explanation will be made once we arrive at our destination." If you didn't recognize the name, don't feel bad, I didn't either. After all, Vader was there, and the Emperor; who cares about the Moff who was titularly in command of the Second Death Star? It looks like the Emperor was killed but the Death Star never got blowed up. And now it's coming to say hello. ...me, I say we steal it.
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Apr 15, 2012 05:07
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:It looks like the Emperor was killed but the Death Star never got blowed up. And now it's coming to say hello. So what's going on with the Annihilraper-class ship underneath the palace that I forget the name of? Weren't you gonna try to steal that too?
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Apr 15, 2012 05:21
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Yawgmoth posted:Probably gonna reiterate this every time you post about this game, but goddrat this is how the movies should have been. Tried to bring it up; was informed that there is no way for Miles to know about it. The fact that our GM knew about it already has me a trifle concerned.
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Apr 15, 2012 05:23
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:Tried to bring it up; was informed that there is no way for Miles to know about it. The fact that he blocked you from even mentioning it concerns me even more, he might have plans.
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Apr 15, 2012 05:45
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berenzen posted:The fact that he blocked you from even mentioning it concerns me even more, he might have plans.
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Apr 15, 2012 07:46
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The Time I Broke The Rules and Everyone Loved It I think most people on here are going to agree that there are two very important rules to DMing sucessfully in 4th or any other D&D-like: 1) Dont DM-fiat a PC's powers away 2) Don't let PCs kill each other. This story involves two players, one playing a dragonborn fighter and the other a cleric they had confided in me they were pretty underwhelmed with. In the campaign the party has been fighting kobolds for awhile and eventually makes it to a kobold village. These kobolds however are good-aligned and worship Bahamut instead of Tiamat like all the ones they've been killing. Bahamut-worshiping fighter who hates kobolds now like these kobolds. "They're one of the good 'uns" Kobold chief gives the party a quest which they run off to do. After fighting their way to the maguffin but before their short rest the sometimes antagonist/sometimes friend to the party appears. They demand the party kill the kobold village for their amusement and also there will be much better loot if they do it this way. The cleric of the good-aligned god of luck wants to kill the kobolds as they are just kobolds and the sometimes antagonist would be a harder fight, the fighter doesnt want to kill devout worshipers of his god And this ends in stalemate of neither wanting to budge. At this point the cleric suggests leaving it to her god and my friend actually pulls out a deck of cards at this point and challenges the other player to an actual game of poker. The cleric of the luck god gets a pair of aces, the fighter gets a flush. Noting the fighter is at pretty low hp the cleric announces they're using their daily power to force their way on this matter. At this point I look at the cleric quizzically and ask "What power? You want to murder a good village for profit and when you asked your god if they wanted this they said no and then you tried to murder ANOTHER good-aligned person" The cleric then got their skull caved in by the fighter's daily power. After the session both players actually said how much they had enjoyed the session, the former-cleric talking about their new ideas for a character and having "an awesome end" to their previous one and the fighter feeling like a badass for stopping a party betrayal and also poker king for a day. So I managed to do two terrible DM things and then have a whole group of people say how much they enjoyed it
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Apr 15, 2012 08:31
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Speaking of 4e, I'm peeking my head into DMing Essentials for the first time, with a party of goons, and although there will be more good stories soon, I feel like the composition of these characters is memorable in its own right. Skizz Firetrap, the Kobold Draconic Sorcerer who is a bit too into dragons. He's already met one, and set what I think is going to be a trend, by coming off as a creepy fanboy. Rib Rainyday, the Revenant Necromancer, torn between his patron deity's hatred of the undead, and his own personal desire to see the end of the 'lifeist' government policies. Has already on one occasion attempted to chide several mindless undead for playing to the stereotype. Marcus Corestone, the Sorien Bristlebottom, the Elf Rogue, great-grandchild of the Bristlebottom from Bobbin Threadbare's Tomb of Horrors run. Started off as a bit of an rear end in a top hat, but after the party very nearly fed him to the fore-mentioned dragon (and a bit of prodding OOC), has decided it's in his best interest to be nice... to these guys, at least. Woddax Helviep, the Drow Knight from the mean streets of Drizztroit. We play again tomorrow, and I can't wait to see what they do next.
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Apr 15, 2012 10:43
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I'm new to GMing, with my current game being the first (Well second, but the other game literally lasted one session) I've ever taken the reigns for. I'm teaching two new players how to play Pathfinder, and as part of a local festival, they had to win a combat trial (Which the Wizard took home by pretending to box while using an energy attack) and a talent competition. I though our two spellcasters would use some spells to create some flashy effects and bring home the prize. Instead they held an impromptu rap battle with their high linguistics scores while the fighter and the to-be Shadowdancer Rogue danced in the background. I thought it was cool.
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Apr 15, 2012 16:46
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CAPSLOCKGIRL posted:I'm new to GMing, with my current game being the first (Well second, but the other game literally lasted one session) I've ever taken the reigns for. I'm teaching two new players how to play Pathfinder, and as part of a local festival, they had to win a combat trial (Which the Wizard took home by pretending to box while using an energy attack) and a talent competition. I though our two spellcasters would use some spells to create some flashy effects and bring home the prize. Instead they held an impromptu rap battle with their high linguistics scores while the fighter and the to-be Shadowdancer Rogue danced in the background. Congratulations, it is!
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Apr 15, 2012 17:44
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CAPSLOCKGIRL posted:I'm new to GMing, with my current game being the first (Well second, but the other game literally lasted one session) I've ever taken the reigns for. I'm teaching two new players how to play Pathfinder, and as part of a local festival, they had to win a combat trial (Which the Wizard took home by pretending to box while using an energy attack) and a talent competition. I though our two spellcasters would use some spells to create some flashy effects and bring home the prize. Instead they held an impromptu rap battle with their high linguistics scores while the fighter and the to-be Shadowdancer Rogue danced in the background. You were correct. It is very cool!
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Apr 15, 2012 17:49
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I've been playing in a fun little Lady Blackbird campaign (a free rules light sky pirates type thing, for those who haven't seen it), and the GM just tried an experiment that I think worked out in quite a cool way. We'd been getting close to finally meeting Uriah Flint the pirate king, the man we were on a mission to find. Rather than have the meeting the GM skipped us ahead to immediately afterwards, where some sort of drastic poo poo/fan collision had occurred. All the players had to give a one sentence summary of what was up with their characters after the disaster such as "Cyrus is on a mission" or "Kale is lost and confused." The player playing the pilot in our group chose "Has turned his coat." He started the game in our ship, The Owl, leaving most of the rest of the crew behind to be captured by Imperials. I was playing Cyrus Vance, owner of the Owl, notorious smuggler, and former Imperial Navy officer. I started off on an Imperial garrison world, on a mission to get The Owl back. You have no money, no ship, and you're stuck on a rock full of enemy soldiers, what do you do? Steal an Imperial ship obviously. Of course, they need a crew of hundreds to fly so you're going to have to steal a crew too. One back-alley murder later I had a Captain's uniform and a ship now lacking a Captain. I stride aboard full of pomp and bravado and manage to intimidate the rest of the crew into believing I'm from Imperial Intelligence and that they've just been assigned to for a special mission. Some other things happen with the rest of the players who are scattered around the place, there are some explosions and bold escapes, and we reach a confrontation. Snargle the pilot has just resupplied The Owl on the equivalent of Tortuga when my stolen warship arrives to demand his surrender. We get the following exchange:  = Cyrus = Snargle: Crew of the Owl, by authority of the Empire you are commanded to stand down. Cut your engines and prepare to be boarded. Failure to do so will result in your being fired upon.: Captain? I expected you to turn up but I didn't think you'd bring a warship with you. *revs engines*: This is your last warning, stand down now and no one needs be harmed. *fires a warning shot across his bow*: You may wish to brace yourself captain.: What? Oh crap, evasive maneuvers!Because at that point he accelerates to ramming speed and attempts to ram me with my own drat ship. We end up with the much smaller Owl embedded in the side of the warship and have to do an emergency landing on this pirate rock. The pirate rock where no Imperials have set foot for 200 years. So that's going to be a major diplomatic incident. Everyone survives the landing, Snargle is dragged out of the ship and clapped in irons. I have the ability to once per session teleport myself or something I'm touching anywhere in line of sight. I go up and pat Snargle on the shoulder and ask the GM "So, can we see the sky from here? Yeah? Okay, as I pat Snargle on the shoulder I'm teleporting him. 20,000ft. Straight up." So away he goes, but not before he manages to out my real identity. So now the rest of us are in a ship full of Imperial soldiers who might be about to kill us, on a rock full of pirates who are definitely about to kill us, and our own ship is embedded in the hull of the warship. Oh, and our pilot is dead. Next session we get to go back and see what the disaster was that led us here. I would feel bad killing another PC, but he agreed before hand and at least it was a cool death.
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Apr 16, 2012 13:40
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I'm sort of worried I might be starting to be one of these bad experiences for one guy in our party. We're playing Pathfinder and right now we've inserted ourselves in a war between the Gnomes and Kobolds and my player, a goody good guy, is out to get a peaceful end, not just a fight to end this, using diplomacy all over the place. Problem is, there's one guy in the party who's sort of all bout rolling and combat. Pretty sure he's used to playing with a bunch of minmaxing player because, frankly, he's bad at the whole role-play part of role-play games and keeps bringing uncomfortably overpowered characters to the table. Much as I try and involve him, he doesn't seem interested. I'm trying to get him in to it because his sitting back looking bored all the time is making everyone worried he's having a bad time and it's sort of harshing things. It was really bad last night. Hours of play and we only got in one scuffle. Most of it was role play and information gathering. We tried throwing hooks his way, but he doesn't seem to want to bite on any that aren't combat. Anyone have any suggestions?
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Apr 16, 2012 14:30
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Ultimately this is something you're going to have to talk to the group about, what kind of game everyone wants etc. and if it turns out everyone except one guy is perfectly happy with a game that's low on combat then this just isn't the right group for that one guy. But if you still want to game and hang out with him maybe you can start a combat-heavy secondary game to run every now and then, too. For your current situation, though, I can easily see something like, there's a faction within the gnomes or the kobolds who can't be dissuaded from war no matter how good a diplomat there is, they're ready to start one themselves if they need to, and they're going to need to be dealt with violently.
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Apr 16, 2012 14:45
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My Lovely Horse posted:Ultimately this is something you're going to have to talk to the group about, what kind of game everyone wants etc. and if it turns out everyone except one guy is perfectly happy with a game that's low on combat then this just isn't the right group for that one guy. But if you still want to game and hang out with him maybe you can start a combat-heavy secondary game to run every now and then, too. That's a good solution for the current situation, I think. The end of the first bit is an excellent idea - people can compromise on one game and other people can compromise on another, and everyone gets what they like at least half the time. My group's interests range from Everyone Is John and Baron Munchausen to Dread to Hackmaster to 4th Ed D&D to literally playing 80s Red Box D&D or Tunnels And Trolls. We play various styles of 4th ed D&D, from rules-loose storygaming to "tactical battles with trips to a town for more equipment". Not every player shows up to every game. There are probably 10 people who we game with, and apart from 3 of us, nobody shows up to every single game. There's something for everyone, but very few people like everything. Some people loving hate Dread, and for other people the prospect of moving miniatures around a grid is loathsome. Some people enjoy both. Maybe the people in your group who aren't into combat in your current game will really have fun in a game that's based around "fight everything every day forever" if that's the entire premise of the game and there's no expectation whatsoever of diplomatic solutions. Trying to shoehorn everything into one campaign is usually difficult, but you should be able to make it work for a while - long enough to get a combat game started for the combat loving dude.
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Apr 16, 2012 15:01
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In my Pathfinder game we killed a few skeleton champions and were rewarded with a bag of holding. So I asked the obvious question: "What do skeletons keep in their bag of holding?" Bones. Lots and lots of bones. We turned the bag over and filled the room up to our ankles with bones pouring out of the bag. Spare bones. You know, in case the skeletons lose an arm or something.
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Apr 16, 2012 16:06
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:The enemy, who had just arrived, consisted of six Imperial Guardsmen (the dudes in the red armor) and one ominous-looking fellow in black holding a lightsaber, who turned out to be The Grand High Imperial Inquisitor Fuckhead (note: name may not be accurate). God drat, and I was convinced that your GM's line about ESB events running slightly differently was going to mean that the guy coming into your room was Luke Skywalker, having just recently turned dark-side.
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Apr 16, 2012 18:53
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Clanpot Shake posted:In my Pathfinder game we killed a few skeleton champions and were rewarded with a bag of holding. So I asked the obvious question: "What do skeletons keep in their bag of holding?"  That is both incredibly hilarious and surprisingly practical.
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Apr 16, 2012 19:32
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Exculpatrix posted:We'd been getting close to finally meeting Uriah Flint the pirate king, the man we were on a mission to find. Rather than have the meeting the GM skipped us ahead to immediately afterwards, where some sort of drastic poo poo/fan collision had occurred. All the players had to give a one sentence summary of what was up with their characters after the disaster such as "Cyrus is on a mission" or "Kale is lost and confused." That is a really interesting idea. A little bit of a "flash-forward" technique. Did everyone fill in the details of what happened during the meeting as you played? Also you should share this story on Story Games, John Harper loves reading about people having fun with Lady Blackbird in new and interesting ways.
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Apr 16, 2012 20:12
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So I just had a great experience in the Mistborn RPG where my character made himself into a living, 5 million pound meteor. I'm just trying to decide whether I'm a good enough storyteller to portray the awesomeness through the text.
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Apr 16, 2012 21:51
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Clanpot Shake posted:In my Pathfinder game we killed a few skeleton champions and were rewarded with a bag of holding. So I asked the obvious question: "What do skeletons keep in their bag of holding?" I'm surprised those bones didn't immediately assemble themselves into more skeletons that you had to fight.
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Apr 16, 2012 22:11
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Fuego Fish posted:I'm surprised those bones didn't immediately assemble themselves into more skeletons that you had to fight. Yeah, you'd think some undead champion fighters would have the sense to keep a skeleton crew on hand.  (I REGRET NOTHING!)
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Apr 16, 2012 22:15
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InfiniteJesters posted:Yeah, you'd think some undead champion fighters would have the sense to keep a skeleton crew on hand. You have nothing to regret.
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Apr 18, 2012 02:04
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berenzen posted:So I just had a great experience in the Mistborn RPG where my character made himself into a living, 5 million pound meteor. I'm just trying to decide whether I'm a good enough storyteller to portray the awesomeness through the text. You should definitely try!
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Apr 18, 2012 10:48
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