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ImpactVector posted:Gamma World owns bones so you have nothing to fear. Gamma World indeed owns bones. My wife and I had an amazingly awesome time, despite the fact that neither of us could apparently roll over an 8 the entire evening.
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Apr 28, 2012 06:55
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Dareon posted:Yes, but I've yet to see a single Pathfinder pun. Pathfucker. Poofinder Poofucker, Pooffucker Pooffinder, Gayzo, Gayzo pooffinder. It's easy if you stoop to homophobia and poo references. Verdugo posted:Gamma World indeed owns bones. My wife and I had an amazingly awesome time, despite the fact that neither of us could apparently roll over an 8 the entire evening. I just ordered Gamma World from bookdepository for $28au. I'm really really looking forward to playing.
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Apr 28, 2012 06:58
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So today my Star Wars GM told me he'd been following the thread and was tempted to register just to point out a few small mistakes in my retelling. I handed him ten bucks and told him to go for it. You've been warned. (He can buy his own fuckin' avatar, though) Anyways! We had a game today, a brief one., which was a little scattered to my point of view in that we're actually broken up into three different groups right now: two PCs up in space, two PCs planetside and looking to cause trouble, and one PC organizing the groundside troops from his bacta tank because Flint got messed up last game, yo. The space situation: Our fleet, while battered, is still pretty sizable. Only problem is, there are still a lot more Imperials than there are of us; the original Coruscant defense fleet, which we had chased off earlier, has returned. Along with them is a giant fuckin' ship, built along similar visual lines to a Star Destroyer... but designed specifically as a space superiority platform rather than the ground-pounding carrier that the ISD is. A prominent NPC that's with us, the Countess, used to be on the design board that tossed out the design, and it never - so far as she knew - made it to the prototype stage, so just what the gently caress that thing out there is is kind of a mystery. (The Countess was also in training as something called an "Emperor's Hand," which we don't particularly know what that is, but it sounds impressive enough that my character doesn't trust her any further than is strictly necessary; while distributing attack plans for the Battle of Coruscant I actually slipped in an additional set of contingency plans just in case she turns on us. I don't think they'll be needed, but hell, man, "Emperor's Hand.") The Imperial fleet is between our fleet and the planet, which sounds like a cool Carthage-esque encirclement situation except for the fact that the computers that pretty well run Coruscant were destroyed when the Emperor's Throne Room and the tower it was contained in was reduced to rubble. There is space battle stuff. It is pretty awesome but most details escape me, except for one thing: At the beginning of the whole attack on Coruscant, we were one of three groups that were not taking part in the Battle of the Second Death Star over in Endor. Two other groups were working on parallel attacks - Admiral Greenfield's fleet attacked Kuat Drive Yards, the place where they build Star Destroyers. He has managed to take the planet and a chunk of the shipyards, and the slave labor that the Empire had working at KDY are in full revolt; problem is, the Imperials have a fuckload of ships there. They can't close in on the planet or the yards, because Greenfield's men have control of the (massive) planetary defense system of Kuat... but they can't leave, either, as the Imperials have too God drat many ships out there. So they're at a stalemate. However... setting the table for the attacks on Coruscant and Kuat was Admiral Sun. Admiral Sun (a Sullustan, btw) ran a recon and light attack fleet, and his fleet was broken up into like a hundred little task forces to make hit-and-run raids on scattered worlds. They did - and met little or no resistance (because all the ships from those worlds were pulled in to defend worlds whose garrisons were being brought into KDY and Coruscant). So his orders were to collect all his ships - which he has more of now, as he stole a lot while he was out there, proving that this guy's pretty cool - and reinforce Greenfield, but Greenfield basically said "no, don't bother, we're at a stalemate and your ships can't break it." So he came to Coruscant instead. There is a lot of shooting and a little bit of planetary bombardment and finally our fleet has control of the space around Coruscant again while the Imperial fleet reforms. Now, planetside Miles - my character - is looking for comms systems that will allow him to tap into the data lines that the Master Computer in the Throne Room used; it's too great a tactical advantage not to. Local comms and data hubs are well-guarded, but the HoloNet station seems remarkably... empty. So we go and check it out. Long story short, there was a trip through some tunnels that involved demolitions charges drowning ambushing troops in a river of sewage, and then we found essentially a holocaust bunker; aaaaaaand it was a trap. of course it was. On orders from the Emperor this trap had been laid, because he knew the Rebels would bring - in the words of the goober who relayed this message - the best hacker in the galaxy along, and that this would be irresistible bait for him. (he was right) So now we're locked in a giant room with HUGE gently caress-OFF STARSHIP-SCALE DOORS and ray-shielding keeping us from just blowing them up, and all the computers have been disconnected, and we have been, on the Emperor's orders, left here to rot. The techies who set the place up were thoughtful enough to leave us milk and cookies, though. And beer. (Dude The Emperor set a trap specifically for me I am flattered) Oh, and two other tidbits: One of our captains successfully disguised himself as Moff Jerjerrod - remember him from my last post? Dude who was in nominal command of the Death Star? The guy who says all orders need to go through him now? - and promoted a clearly inadequate Major General (described by our GM as a 'Steiner Major General,' for people who get Battletech references) to be in charge of all planetary defense; he's started micromanaging the guy a bit and also has given him the order to shoot local nobles on sight, on account of they're trying to run and all. And we also intercepted a message from an Admiral Piett, who insisted that the Executor and its attendant ships were reforming now, and that any and all messages or orders from anyone claiming to be the Emperor after X time (the same time Jerjerrod sent out his message) are to be ignored. Now, see... the Executor was Vader's ship. Piett was Vader's lackey. This means that A) not only did the Death Star not blow, it seems like the Executor didn't either (canonically the latter crashed into the former which made a big kaboom) and B) if something happened to Palpatine, and there's a new Emperor (which is a big if - they could conceivably just be trying to head off any trickery on our part), that Emperor isn't Vader, because Piett would never say to ignore orders from Vader. (I think it's Emperor Skywalker, myself. But the GM refuses to even drop hints - we've been at this for months now! It's only been 26 hours in game! Argh!)
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Apr 29, 2012 03:04
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:My god, I am going out and buying this system.
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Apr 29, 2012 15:57
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Divine, your games sound absolutely...well, divine!  It's great to see a committed team and DM to come up with such plotlines and changing the SW continuity in such an interesting way, fan-fiction at its best! My usual Pathfinder group is struggling to meet up and I've sorta become the group's DM, problem is my skills are more into playing and lack encounter design credibility.
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Apr 29, 2012 16:00
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Ichabod Sexbeast posted:My god, I am going out and buying this system. My god I am going to buy the book that DCB will publish based on this campaign.
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Apr 29, 2012 18:12
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Agrikk posted:My god I am going to buy the book that DCB will publish based on this campaign. My god, I am going to kidnap DCB's GM.
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Apr 29, 2012 18:29
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Agrikk posted:My god I am going to buy the book that DCB will publish based on this campaign. Now if only he had some way to actually get that license...
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Apr 29, 2012 18:37
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Adelheid Stark posted:Now if only he had some way to actually get that license... Kickstarter !
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Apr 30, 2012 01:20
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Adelheid Stark posted:Now if only he had some way to actually get that license... It'd be an EU book, they're practically giving them away.
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Apr 30, 2012 01:43
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quote:And we also intercepted a message from an Admiral Piett, who insisted that the Executor and its attendant ships were reforming now, and that any and all messages or orders from anyone claiming to be the Emperor after X time (the same time Jerjerrod sent out his message) are to be ignored. Bonus if it turns out Palpatine never died and the whole thing is a replay of Operation Valkyrie. And you're von Stauffenberg & Friends.
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Apr 30, 2012 14:03
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Riso posted:Bonus if it turns out Palpatine never died and the whole thing is a replay of Operation Valkyrie. Yeah, that one's occurred to us too. I'm... really hoping that's not the case. Heh.
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Apr 30, 2012 14:10
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:(The Countess was also in training as something called an "Emperor's Hand," which we don't particularly know what that is, but it sounds impressive enough that my character doesn't trust her any further than is strictly necessary; while distributing attack plans for the Battle of Coruscant I actually slipped in an additional set of contingency plans just in case she turns on us. I don't think they'll be needed, but hell, man, "Emperor's Hand.") Does the Countess have red hair?
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Apr 30, 2012 16:18
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GaryLeeLoveBuckets posted:Does the Countess have red hair? D'you know, I have no idea? I am fairly certain that the Countess is not Mara Jade, though. Very different personalities.
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Apr 30, 2012 16:21
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:D'you know, I have no idea? I am fairly certain that the Countess is not Mara Jade, though. Very different personalities. Hm, I got no idea then. Kind of scary that the Executor is still around, it was a huge morale boost at Endor when it went down because it had been the Rebellion's boogey man for years. I always like Star Wars alternate history, there are so many things that could have gone wrong for the good guys.
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Apr 30, 2012 17:13
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I honestly thought that when you said that Endor had gone very differently and a mysterious Dark Jedi showed up that you would be fighting Darth Luke.
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Apr 30, 2012 20:03
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Beardless posted:I honestly thought that when you said that Endor had gone very differently and a mysterious Dark Jedi showed up that you would be fighting Darth Luke. "Yeah okay, sounds like fun on a bun. *keeps hand*"
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Apr 30, 2012 20:18
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Let me tell you a story about Charles. Charles is a very interesting example of Gamer humanity. When he GMed, he GMed adventures with tons of undead and ghosts and dark wizards. When he played, he always played one of two types of character, no matter the system: The guy in black armor with a huge sword that's a murder-fiend, or the guy in black robes with an undead/demonic army that's a murder-fiend. The other important thing about Charles is that he is a fairly devout Mormon with a somewhat-sheltered upbringing. So, for this story, Charles was GMing a D&D 3.x game, with an adventure of his own design, and my brother was playing a Werewolf something-or-other, which was covered in fur. The adventure up to this point had consisted of fighting zombies for hours on end in pools of demon blood, and (to quote him,) "There was probably a pus golem or something in there." So when the party got back to town, two days later, the following line of conversation occurred: Bro: "So the first thing that happens when we get back to town is I find a bath-house and get cleaned up." Charles: "Those don't exist." Bro: "What, seriously?" Charles: "Yeah." Bro: "Okay, then I go to the inn and demand a bath." Charles: "Nope, they won't give you one." Bro: "WTF." What my bro thought Charles was saying: "You are covered in unspeakable viscera and you will like it."  What Charles thought my Bro was saying:   It quickly became apparent that Charles had never heard the word 'bath-house' in a context that did not include the word 'gay' or 'San Francisco' immediately preceding it. My bro then decided to try to hire a prostitute- "A female one, so it exists," and hires them for the full hour to go back to their place to use the bath-tub. After the game, a lecture about the basics of hygiene in pre-industrial societies occurred.
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Apr 30, 2012 21:05
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Yawgmoth posted:"Join me, and together we can rule the galaxy as father and son!" Hah, you wish. "Hold out your arm." "What, why- AAAAAGH" "The Skywalker Coming Of Age ritual. Now you are a man."
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Apr 30, 2012 23:14
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Malachite_Dragon posted:Hah, you wish. And thus, a much better scene was written.
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Apr 30, 2012 23:27
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Malachite_Dragon posted:Hah, you wish. It's the Sith Bris.
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May 1, 2012 00:22
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I really love this thread, but if I had to choose one reason, it's DCB, and his Star Wars stories. Man, I would do horrible things to get into a game like that.
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May 2, 2012 08:14
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I have a question for you "notable experience" guys. As a player, I'm trying to bring something unique to my group, that isn't special-snowflakey. Has anyone had players with a group that both ran the same character? As in, two people at the table, running one character together? I'm trying to think of a way I can fit it in fluff wise, as I want to play 4e with my wife on a social aspect, but I always seem to run both characters because she always looks to me for advice. If we could just play, and use one character between the both of us, it would free up space for another player, and make my wife feel like she's contributing more. I also have played with these guys a while and always seem to be brought forward as the party caller and what not and I just want to sit back and roll dice and bullshit sometimes. I was thinking of doing something along the lines of an "Adventure Coach" who tags along helping out. Like a reskinned 4e druid with her "pet" being the Coach model. Does that sound dumb? What would be your suggestions, and do you have any examples of players who have done something like that?
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May 2, 2012 18:13
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You could always play it as a character with split personalities or who is possessed by something.
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May 2, 2012 18:19
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In one of my games, we once had a rogue who was killed deep in the forest. There wasn't enough time to get him back to town for a proper resurrection, so they had him reincarnated by a group of druids. He became an owl. Almost immediately, the party fighter decided to take a level of wizard, and the player with the owl agreed to be his familiar. So we had an owl (massive natural bonuses to move silently), with levels of rogue, delivering sneak touch spells. It was a nasty combination. Maybe you could do something like that.
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May 2, 2012 18:21
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I would go for something reskinned as a two-headed ogre.
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May 2, 2012 19:08
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Two headed warforged with one head of a much higher quality than the other, unfortunately married in this unholy alliance of steel to preserve its mockery of life, but alas! The rogue techno wizard who performed the operation is dead, and the secrets of removing the head and reattaching it to a better body are lost forever. Basically have a really snooty pretentious head tacked on to a workmanlike head that gets poo poo done. Bonus points if you and your wife switch who's what head for different sessions, with any minor personality differences described away as a result of random misfirings due to the experimental nature of the surgery. Edit: Also I think "rogue techno wizard" is probably the greatest thing ever to envision, right up there with "cyborg dinosaur" and "surfer werewolf" Edit 2: "Surf Wolf: Her hunger rises with the waves." Benagain fucked around with this message at 20:24 on May 2, 2012 |
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May 2, 2012 20:20
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Benagain posted:Two headed warforged with one head of a much higher quality than the other, unfortunately married in this unholy alliance of steel to preserve its mockery of life, but alas! The rogue techno wizard who performed the operation is dead, and the secrets of removing the head and reattaching it to a better body are lost forever.
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May 2, 2012 20:26
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Here's a great gaming experience. Later, I'll come up with a bad/cat-piss one. The setting is GURPS 4e - the RPG system for people who think EVE Online doesn't have enough spreadsheets. Our GM decides that we're going to play a 2-3 session one-off (yes, I realize how contradictory that sounds) campaign about a traditional Romero zombie apocalypse. Correspondingly, as players we are only given 75 points to make a character. For those uninitiated in the arcane arts of GURPS, that essentially means that we are playing normal, everyday human beings. We were also restricted in our choices of advantages and disadvantages - we couldn't take anything supernatural without consulting the GM, for instance. The three players - whose names I will change for this purpose - Zed, Scully, and I each generate a wildly different character. And boy were they strange. Zed's character is a college student who also happens to be a gymnast. They decide that they are going to start inside the city, as their university is located there. Scully's character is a skilled doctor. They too decide to start within the city. My character is Gunther. Gunther is more than just the quintessential redneck - he defines the trope (though not on TV Tropes, thankfully). Starting outside the city in his hovel of a trailer, he cannot read or write, nor can he even read maps. He only knows where he's going because he's lived there his whole life, and his most prized possessions are his military surplus flak jacket, shotgun, chainsaw, steel pot helmet (which was actually a steel cooking pot he wore on his head fastened by a leather strap), and his little statue of the Baby Jesus. He tends to carry these items with him at all times, and being that his little village has gotten used to his... eccentricities, it's all OK. After consulting with the GM, I was allowed to take the True Faith advantage, which basically boiled down to the GM telling me "You believe very strongly in the Baby Jesus. I have no idea what this is going to do for you." Characters created, we were set to play. We decided to operate in turns, and Scully went first. Being an educated doctor, he was obviously going to be the first character to come across the zombie plague. Like any good doctor though, he tried to treat everyone in the hospital and NOT metagame the plot. His reward? Entirely predictable. One of his infected patients bit him, and in about one to two game days he would lose out to the infection. The singular objective of the zombie campaign - survive - had already been lost by one of the players within the first hour. Zed's turn came up next. His classes were immediately interrupted by his school's abrupt cancellation and threats of a city-wide quarantine after the results of Scully's first turn. As panic settled into campus with students grasping for whatever supplies were available, Zed managed to see the cops fighting off some of the zombies. He even - foolishly, I might add - got into melee combat with one of them, but thanks to his gymnastic ability Zed was able to escape the bite attempt with ease and tried to run off. Unfortunately, he lingered on campus too long - the city-wide quarantine was coming into effect and it threatened to trap him in a city where he was little more than difficult game for the zombie masses. Nevertheless, as his turn ended he started to make his way out of the city before the complete quarantine came smashing down. Hope was becoming a scarce commodity for the players in the face of this disaster. Finally, Gunther. Oh lordy. I had him in his little trailer house, being as stereotypical as possible by eating pork 'n beans. His neighbor knocks on his door. Being a good neighbor, he answers it only to find his neighbor Bill in front of him looking very panicked. Angrily, Bill tells Gunther that he caught his wife cheatin' on him, layin' in the bed of another man. The scant few neurons in Gunther's brain begin to rub together, and he remembers one of the Baby Jesus' teachings. "No cheatin' on yer wife or with anuvver man's wife, fer that matter" says the Baby Jesus to Gunther, and he heeds his faith. Following Bill to his house, sure enough Gunther sees Bill's wife laying with another man. Incensed at this violation of the Baby Jesus' words, Gunther revvs up the chainsaw and delivers divine justice. The GM looks up at me. Gunther has successfully killed the first two zombies in the entire campaign acting on his misguided faith alone. Bill thinks what Gunther did was a little drastic, but after some stern talkin' to about what the Baby Jesus expects out of us, Bill relents and agrees that Gunther did the right thing. Bill tells Gunther that there are some mighty strange goings on around town with people everywhere attacking each other, and Gunther decides that the only option left is to ask the Baby Jesus - and by extension God - for some help. On the way, Gunther manages to shotgun a few more zombies, his flak jacket providing him the protection he needs against their lucky strikes. Ultimately though, he makes it to the church. Naturally, as it always is in a zombie movie, it comes under siege from zombies. Left with a few options left, Gunther begins praying to the Baby Jesus. The GM looks up at me and give me a slight smile. "The True Faith Advantage..." he states "...gives you protection from the zombies so long as you maintain your prayer. They simply can't touch or bite you." With this, I begin reciting every prayer I know in Gunther's thick hick accent as I also state that Gunther scarpers off into the wilderness with Bill. At the end of the session, we have one zombie, one dangerously-close-to-becoming-a-zombie person, and one extremely pious redneck who is on track to survive this whole apocalypse by simply outlasting the zombies so they starve to death. Though we never did get to finish the story of Gunther and Zed's character, the campaign proved to us one thing. In a zombie apocalypse, rednecks are the unkillable cockroaches of the world.
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May 2, 2012 22:09
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"Dear Eight Pound, Six Ounce, Newborn Baby Jesus, don't even know a word yet, just a little infant, so cuddly, but still omnipotent. " I can just see a Ricky Bobby character whose only skill is divorce and NASCAR driving
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May 3, 2012 00:48
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More storygame fun times today as we did a session of the old ashcan version of Psi*Run. The setup is this: You've just survived some kind of crash, you have amnesia and strange powers, and someone is after you. Characters are defined by four questions they want answers to. Whenever you take an action you roll a pile of D6 and assign them to whether you succeed, whether you're harmed, if the pursuers catch up, whether you have a flashback, and whether your powers cause collateral damage. So in the party we had characters with the following questions: Me - What happened in Kosovo? Who is Leonard Goldstein? Why am I so fascinated by mirrors? Why are my legs horribly scarred? Andrew - Why am I clutching a dead cat? Why can I hear people's thoughts? What is the Grand Show? Why am I constantly numb? Helen - What is TWK? Why am I craving TWK? Why can I turn invisible? Who is the man in this polaroid? Natalie - Who is Elaine? Why am I in my pyjamas? What's this key around my neck? Where is 13 Greater Old Street? We start off stumbling out of a crashed train in a tunnel somewhere. The tunnel is filling up with smoke and we can't see an end, but there's a locked service door set into the wall. Natalie decides to make a power roll - she succeeds but the power goes wild. Instead of just busting the door's lock she blows a hole in the wall, injuring a bunch of people on the far side. Turns out we're below Charing Cross Station. There's a lot of running around panicking, people think some kind of terrorist incident has occurred, we merge with the crowd and get out of there. As we try to put some distance between us and the station Andrew ends up triggering his first flashback. The game has a nice mechanic were you don't answer your own question, you pick another player to do it. So flashback, he's in a lab somewhere, freaking out in a padded room, until a scientist gives him the cat. He clings to it and is calm for the first time. Back to the action, and since it's our only real lead we decide to look up 13 Greater Old Street and go there. The pursuers are hot on our heels the whole way there and we get cutscenes of a many-angled metal guy following a trail of bubbling pitch left where we walked. There's no number 13 on that street, Helen uses a power to see if it's there but invisible. Success, but with collateral damage. The house was out of phase with reality and in pulling it back in she accidentally sends the rest of the street... elsewhere. An entire street in North London vanishes into some nightmare dimension and we're left outside number 13. Things we've learnt through flashbacks at this point: TWK is a drug that gives weird powers, the man in the polaroid is Leonard Goldstein is the human disguise of the metal guy chasing us. He's the leader of a weird shadowy syndicate with a lab under this house. Me and Andrew were both test subjects here, TWK gave him the ability to hear thoughts and me the ability to see alternate worlds in mirrors. Helen is addicted to TWK because it lets her phase through realities but if she doesn't take it regularly she'll phase out entirely. Natalie worked here as some sort of lab tech. She administered a megadose of TWK to Andrew and let him briefly hear the whole world. When it wore off the silence inside drove him a bit mad, hence the numbness. Inside the house, we know from the flashbacks that there's a lab in the basement but the door is locked. I try to break the door down and succeed but the metal man catches up with us. We're running for the basement and Andrew tries to read his thoughts. They're like a buzzing hive, a cacophany of hungry nightmares all calling for attention at once. And his power goes wild so we hear this too. Everyone in London hears it. It drives Natalie a little mad and she starts to go sinister. Helen buys us some time by phasing him out of reality temporarily, and we run into the lab looking for a solution. Well, we think we're looking for a solution. We're following Natalie's directions because she used to work here, we open a door that she tells us and find the cell Andrew had been in when he had the megadose of TWK. And she shoves us in and locks the door behind us. She gets the flashback to her final question - Who is Elaine? - and the metal man catches up with us again, appearing in the room. The rest of us step outside to decide the answer to the question and then go back in to narrate the flashback: Playing in a garden as a young child with her beloved younger sister, meeting the sister in a bar some years later when things have gone bad and the sister is mixed up in drugs. Getting involved with a company that offered "experimental" drug treatment programs to try and help her sister. Performing unethical experiments on people like me and Andrew, justifying it because some day it would save her sister. And now, the amnesia wearing off, locking her sister in a room to die at the hands of the metal man. Elaine was Helen was her beloved sister that she'd done all this to save, and now she'd inadvertantly killed her. All the dubious experiments, atrocities and Faustian bargains had been for nothing. It was admittedly a somewhat dark ending, three of us dying and the fourth realising what a monster she'd become. But it was really fun watching the story emerge as our flashbacks created the details of the world, and seeing the pieces naturally flow together to give a pretty satisfying ending that hadn't been planned at all.
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May 3, 2012 01:25
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EVIR Gibson posted:"Dear Eight Pound, Six Ounce, Newborn Baby Jesus, don't even know a word yet, just a little infant, so cuddly, but still omnipotent. " Welp, considering that Gunther helped Bill divorce his wife with a chainsaw he was about halfway there. Granted, he was a caricature (what one shot characters aren't in some way?) but the way he ended up playing out in the context of the whole adventure was simply amazing. At some point I'll put a story up about my amazing time roleplaying Call of Cthulhu. But then again, I think it's dang near impossible to NOT have a good story playing CoC. I do have another bad one for GURPS coming up as well.
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May 3, 2012 05:01
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LuiCypher posted:At some point I'll put a story up about my amazing time roleplaying Call of Cthulhu. But then again, I think it's dang near impossible to NOT have a good story playing CoC. I do have another bad one for GURPS coming up as well. CoC is awesome, but if you haven't tried using the Cthulhu Mythos with Dread mechanics, you're missing out completely. Actually, I haven't had a single bad experience with Dread, and every single time we play, something really memorable happens. I think I've posted it all before though.
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May 3, 2012 05:38
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my first game of Dark heresy ever I played a tribal Guardsman based off of a cossack or generic Belarusian. The whole game had a few red flags including a torture sequence I managed to avert by saying in character that no information gained from torture can be trusted and it's best to not bother. But one combat sequence in particular was amazing, we were defending a fortress (medieval, this is a feral world) and with the rest of the party basically doing what they can I climb into the enemy siege tower and start picking up and throwing enemy soldiers off the tower. I don't know, it probably isn't that special but I love it when a DM indulges my desire to do something less than optimal, not entirely supported mechanically, for the sake of something cool.
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May 3, 2012 22:44
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Dr_Amazing posted:You could always play it as a character with split personalities or who is possessed by something. One of my best characters was a variation on this idea. The character was actually two people forced into the same body and were basically sharing it. One of them (Janus) owned the body, and the other (Rene) was the soul of someone else bound to the body. They actively operated simultaneously on a mental level and were aware of everything the other did, giving the others heads ups and moral support, but only one of them controlled the body. Later in the game I introduced the idea that they could swap at will. The only reason they didn't before is because they were running a time share program. It got even better when it later transpired that their was a third personality inhabiting the body in the form of half of a demon sword which is responsible for their state of existence in the first place. They can't get rid of it without killing themselves, but thankfully it has no way of possessing them. Unfortunately it can possess those they touch with their skin. So hugs/handshakes/physical contact gets really awkward. I love that character, so much horrible poo poo happened to them. If anyone's interested I'd be happy to share.
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May 6, 2012 23:09
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What system were you running that in?
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May 6, 2012 23:26
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Grand Prize Winner posted:What system were you running that in? Vampire the masquerade. God I love that system.
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May 6, 2012 23:46
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I think I'm ready to be done with my group. I need to blow off some steam so will be a little long. We've been playing 3.5 (the biggest mistake) through the Temple of Elemental Evil. I didn't want to play 3.5 but I DID want to take a break from DMing. This was a regrettable error on my part. We've been playing for a while, from lowly level 1 to our current level of 7. These people are all my friends but something about the system, adventure and group makeup brings out only the bad. Party Our DM does a fine job running combats and presenting the dungeon. His biggest problem is getting distracted. My party role is as a well optimized cloistered cleric based around providing good levels of utility to the party, healing when possible, and some offensive power. I'm not trying to break the game but I'm certainly more optimized than the rest of the crew in an effort to deliver needed healing and utility while still doing you know, fun stuff. Our resident surly grognard adventures as a terrible wizard who uses all the bad spells at only the worst times. Every time his turn comes up in combat, he begins to decide his course of action by deliberating, selecting a spell, looking up that spell (which he frequently misinterprets), and deliberating again. His idea of being as wizard is based around casting useless or inappropriate spells and then wading into the thick of things with his staff. At lower levels he spent a lot of time unconscious. Poor memory guy plays a psionic warrior. He's a smart guy in his field (allegedly) but he cannot remember anything about any aspect of the game. He's only recently begun using his spells. I don't think he's used a skill since maybe 2nd level. We had a lengthy discussion about how hit points work a few sessions ago (at level 6) when he revealed his current hitpoint total to be a ludicrous number and further stated that as he understood it, he ought to have even more. On the upside his race and class mechanics make him very durable even ignoring his spells. Weird guy plays as a sociopath barbarian. His character is effectively an extension of himself with all social inhibitions removed. He puts out good damage but makes very (very) poor decisions. He is obsessed with taming animals no matter how inappropriate the animal or situation. Examples include intelligent evil dragons, creatures that could turn the party to stone in their sleep, and creatures that could turn the party into puddles of acid in their sleep. Until today (again, 7th level, levels 1-7) was using the skill system incorrectly maxing 1 skill - animal handling, nearly exclusively. This is not to say he loves all animals. If another person has an animal pet, he feels he has a right to kill that pet for inexplicable reasons. If an NPC is present during combat but was entirely non-hostile towards us or even HELPED us he still feels he ought to attack that NPC. Its seriously loving bewildering. Weird guy is impossible to please. If an attack misses, that's terrible. If it hits but the dice roll was low, that's bad too because low means bad. If he crits and the monster dies then he just wasted damage! If it doesn't die he can't cleave and it's a real disaster. Even if everything on his turn goes perfectly, his target dies and he gets a cleave, that just makes it harder for the rogue to sneak attack! Anytime anything happens, the result is less than satisfying. He'll sulk during sessions if he can't tame an animal or if any combat happens. Finally we've got a rogue played by the competent one. He isn't trying to destroy the system, just do his job well. He reads the books, asks questions and knows that he wants his man to pick locks, find traps and sneak attack. He's made efforts to be effective in combat and overall his character is set up to progress in a reasonable manner. During sessions he remembers to make his rolls, plays by the rules and is thoughtful during combat. SO... Despite all the weird and frankly bad decision making that happens I was totally fine with it. We've got a couple respectable damage sources, I can cover with control and utility with healing on the side. With maybe a little something coming from the wizard or psionic warrior we can muddle through most encounters. But then I started to receive comments, particularly from the terrible wizard that I wasn't doing a good enough job healing. This is from the player who probably makes me waste the most time and spell slots JUST to keep him alive because he thinks hitting an ogre or fire elemental with his plain quarterstaff is a productive use of his time. He's done things like partially web the party or force other characters to take significant damage over frequent objections and discussion about how Maybe There's a Better Way? I seriously had a fight with him about taking mage armor, and maybe using the crossbow instead of constantly trying to loving melee are you goddamn serious dude you have like 20hp and 11 AC. I've tried to explain to the party that 3.5 healing is not something you focus on. You don't heal things to death. Full stop. You turn them into a toad or cut of their heads or suck them into a vortex. Healing is for keeping people alive, and its limited by the action economy of the game. I can't heal three people in three places at once. Even if I took the requisite feat chain + additional feats and magic items, I could at best heal 2 people for a moderate, variable amount twice a day. If I have to heal you I'm not casting haste, removing adverse affects or otherwise bringing the noise. This is setting aside things that simply bypass damage and kill us in other ways. Besides, maybe you guys to make better decisions? Everyone seems to eat a lot of unnecessary opportunity attacks, and couldn't we spend less time all bunched up getting hit by AoE stuff? Everyone in the group has a couple healing potions at their disposal. I've tried to talk people into getting healing belts (an item that provides healing charges each day, and which can burst heal you for a significant amount) so that if I can't reach you or don't have the actions to heal you, you still have an out. I have about 40% of my spells memorized as heals (I have an ACF that prevents spontaneous casting) and carry a healing wand for after combat. The barrier for my burst healing is simply based off of the quality of spells available and actions available and that's all there is to it. Unfortunately bad wizard has it in his mind that I ought to both be responsible for all healing at all times, and that I ought to 'do a better job' by I suppose circumventing the rules in some manner. When I point out that he plays real terrible by casting lovely spells and taking pointless damage he resists by saying 'It's my character I'll do what I want'. Funny how that doesn't seem to apply to me. What brought this about Today we had our first session in a while. The competent one had decided to re-roll as a healing oriented cleric to please terrible wizard. His rogue was discarded and Weird dude made a really loving awful rogue to play in addition to his barbarian so he would have things to do outside of combat. Weird dude's rogue used a single dagger, the whirlwind attack chain, and he tried to put all his points into 3 skills. After I talked him down from whirlwind attack, he tried to take light armor proficiency (rogues have this already) medium armor proficiency and heavy armor proficiency. I had to talk him into two weapon fighting and like improved initiative or something. Terrible wizard was absent because no one could get in touch which is fine. It makes things quicker and easier. I talked to competent one a little bit about what it was going to be like and I think he understood after the first combat in which he trudged around trying to catch hurt party members to administer his 4d8+7 points of healing. Things took a little longer but I shifted into a damage oriented role and it went ok. As the session was winding down terrible wizard arrived and he just hung out on the couch while we finished. We got some great items for poor memory guy although he seemed rather unimpressed. After the session ended we were cleaning up and hanging around chatting, and terrible wizard once again made a comment to the effect that I was a "bad healer" and didn't know how to play the cleric. I'm an assertive person and every time this has come up I've pushed back vigorously. Even 3.5 is not a loving MMO, I am not your bitch, it is not my job to follow you and enable your stupid decisions in game. Astoundingly he argued that yes it is my job to do that and that I was bad at it. Things pretty quickly escalated into a loud argument. I couldn't believe that an otherwise smart person would try to talk to me like that. He's always been argumentative but it was ridiculous. We're both stubborn people - he feels he has deeper knowledge of the game and that I was hurting the party by not being entirely healing dedicated. He argued I was min-maxing while not knowing how to play my class. I felt he didn't really understand healing, or even how the game works mechanically at all. Things eventually petered out because we weren't really getting anywhere. But I could tell he honestly had built up a resentment towards how I was playing and felt hostile towards the idea of my character doing anything besides heal. I want to play games to have fun and just the idea of spending an entire session, let alone an entire campaign trying to please one persons notions of what my character is and what he does is too much for me. Honestly, recapping it all like this makes me sure that I'm finished. There were plenty of fun moments, even today - but the hassle just isn't worth it.
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May 7, 2012 09:26
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Be sure to take the competent one with you when you go find a different, funhaving group.
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May 7, 2012 10:12
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| # ? May 14, 2024 09:29 |
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Its strange because when I DM'd the same group of people in 4e things actually went pretty well. Terrible wizard played a terrible bard (didn't take feats or powers as he leveled, character had no direction) that could still do some stuff. Funnily enough he complained about his damage output. I shut down weird guy's animal obsession. Competent guy was even better as an Avenger which he really enjoyed. The DM played a rogue build I'd shown him that ended up being pretty sick. Poor memory guy really liked his halfling sorcerer and could actually recall and use a lot of his powers. I expected the group dynamic to change somewhat with the system change, but not as drastically as it did. I think the big difference along with the change of DM and system is that both terrible wizard and I were players. I don't see myself every playing an PNP RPG with him in those roles again though.
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May 7, 2012 10:38
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