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SSNeoman posted:So hey guys! We're allowed third-party stories right? quote:Sorry, not the most exciting bad story, but that's kind of the point, no?
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Jun 30, 2012 23:56
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I'm putting away Fiasco for a few weeks. I don't want to get to the point where I don't like it anymore, so after 5-6 games this month, I'm all set. (I've nearly run out of ways to summarize them!) Last night was a 50's Noir, all set around a hotel. The alcoholic vet Fast Eddie tried to shake down his non-too-bright daughter Kate (who worked for the hotel owner). He also tried to blackmail the hotel owner, George, a fellow war vet. George agreed - and funneled the money through Kate's salary. Eddie tried to ask for more, though, so George hired an assassin, Eva - but he didn't know was she pregnant. The assassin was having an affair with an art collector, who wanted to buy stolen nazi paintings from the George. The turn was "an unexpected death" and "someone's who's innocent...isn't." When the assassin tried to kill Fast Eddie, the knife got caught in Kate's pocketbook (which Eddie'd stolen). He later tracked the assassin down to her hotel room, and during the struggle, she had a miscarriage. The hotel manager showed the collector his walk-in safe, covered in stolen paintings. The door closed with them both inside, and they both drew their guns. Kate had locked him in the room and used her excess salary to pay off George's staff. She wasn't so airheaded after all. *** Can anyone recommend similar games that are collaborative, not competitive? I find Everyone is John too "turn based" - people are sitting around when they don't have control. Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 23:06 on Mar 12, 2013 |
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Jul 1, 2012 03:28
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A few years ago, I was running a 3.5 game, and the PCs had just encountered the villain of the adventure along with his mooks. It was set up to be a big ol brawl, PCs on one side of the mat, bad guys on the other. As soon as we rolled initiative, cue my cat Mikey dive bombing the table, knocking the bad guys flying off the table while leaving the PCs untouched. We decided that this was the best ending to this adventure. Next week, one of the players brought in a filled out character sheet for Mikey, including his share of the xp from the bad guys.  He was from then on a full fledged member of the party (played by whichever player whose lap he'd curled up on.)
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Jul 1, 2012 03:53
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Yawgmoth posted:No. This is the opposite of notable. Fair enough, I can do better. I was actually a player in one of his campaigns. The problem was that there was no setting, no real characters and no particular story. But anyway, we somehow met up with a Paladin and he told us to head on over to the direction of an Evil Wizard's fortress which is currently occupied by his undead minions. Now some things I should note, my friends and I were the same level, but our equipment most certainly wasn't. Jack, a fighter, had a loving pet tiger that murdered faster and more efficiently than anyone in our party. My friend from the last story was a ranger with a pet goose. DM's sister was some cleric who didn't have anything of note. And I was a mage. The only thing I had were poison throwing knives and a single use magic missile spell (Note: This was like my second ever D&D session so I knew jack poo poo about the rules. Had I known about slots and how many times I could use the spells per day, I would certainly have told him about it) My poison throwing knives became regular throwing knives as poison was for "evil characters only". Okay. We were level 4 by the way. While we were resting were set upon by an army of gnolls. We rolled abysmally for waking up, and those who did wake up, had to roll to make sure the others woke up. So we spent like three turns getting ready while the army of gnolls kind of chilled in the background taking occasional potshots at our fighter. This was notable because you see, the ranger's goose tried to wake up the ranger, who smacked him away in response and continued sleeping, sound of battle be damned. When we woke up, Jack and his magic tiger emerged victorious and I needed to rest having blown the only spell I had on a gnoll. We got to the fortress, and the DM even drew us a map. So this was cool, a stealth raid on an undead fort. We quickly dispatched the several undead patrols and we we thought about cracking open the treasury, but it turned out to be guarded by these undead black knights dudes. Now, the Paladin was going to come help us, but our DM warned that he was going to take the treasure and give it to charity. I asked if there was any way we could convince him not to do that, seeing how we killed 3/4 of all the dudes in the fort, but nope. It was all or you're on your own son. Like most problems in his game, it was solved by Jack and his Murderbeast. Turns out 8 foot tall undead black knights are a bunch of chumps when up against a tiger. The game died before the next session rolled over, I never did get to see what was up with the wizard.
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Jul 1, 2012 04:46
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Now, this is just wishful thinking here. Was the name of the Fighter Character Adam, and did anyone at anytime call the murderbeast tiger Battlecat? That game sounded lame, but if I pretend it was all building up to the evil wizard being Skeletor and you were all the useless sidekicks of He-Man the whole time, at least it would have had a punchline  Orko with knives, oh yes. Section Z fucked around with this message at 04:56 on Jul 1, 2012 |
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Jul 1, 2012 04:54
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Agrikk posted:That doesn't really sound notable. It's more like a bad series of sessions that your friend walked away from.
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Jul 1, 2012 15:12
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That Gamma World story that Plotac linked combined with a mention of a mutual friend trying it out yesterday has convinced me that I need to look into that game right the hell now. It sounds like it is exactly the sort of thing my gaming group needs to try. Also, I have to add that the friend who tried it out played the wafer wizard in my 4th Ed game, so all in all, it's a high recommendation... In the meantime, do have a quick story to share about a recent game of Eclipse Phase. Today or tomorrow, I'm also meeting up with my group for Mutants and Masterminds and will hopefully have another story after that. So, here's the digs: Earth's toast, everyone's all science-fiction-y. Our group consists of... -Adam, a psychotherapist and the group's Only Sane Man. He's the face, and his defining characteristic is that he's altruistic and giving. These fine and noble traits mean he's persistently a beacon for bad poo poo to happen. -Rhodes, machinist and professional troll. Also a bit of an idiot. In our first battle, he died terrified, blind, and alone. Not because of the enemy but because he didn't realize having a spacesuit in space might be a decent idea. -Duncan, ego-hunter/mercenary with an anger management problem. Racked up three counts of attempted murder on his own team-mates and discharged a weapon in a crowded restaurant because Rhodes made fun of him. He's shaped up a bit since Leo reduced him to goo and had Adam jiggle with his brainmeat. -Tarquin, a hacker with an addictive personality. Tarquin is actually fairly serious and straight-forward, which is why there's so little to say about him. A bit of an antagonistic relationship with Leo. -Leo, a designer of all things small and squirmy with serious self-integrity issues. Nominally the group leader. After Duncan's latest attempt to murder Rhodes nearly got Leo cut in two, he just straight-up murdered the guy and rebuilt him less stupid. Oh, and also there's a talking pie. Leo made it by accident and has since been testing whether serran wrap is an effective space suit for a pie. Being French, he has considered trying to find ways to upload the pie's mind from its edible biochips and download it into a fine croissant. So, the story. The long story short is, our group got hired to go find a missing woman who was investigating what turned out to be a piece of TITAN tech. Along the way, we got bullshitted by a woman, Zheng, who turned out to be the former leader of the White Khans, the gang who stole the aforementioned tech. At this point, she is terribly paranoid, Leo's rather pissed off, and so he sends Duncan to go and cut Zheng's head off in the most stealthy way possible. For the uninitiated, this isn't such a bad thing. We can download Zheng's mind from her cortical stack and interrogate her. Duncan has a stealth suit designed by Leo and is a combat beast. He sneaks into Zheng's place, puts a transmission muffler over her head, slice and dice, and all is well. And then, Duncan, the crowning moron that he is, decides that, as he is standing in the blood of this woman, at the heart of the crime scene, now is the time to call his comrades and leave an indelible record of where he was and what time, as well as implicating the rest of us in the crime. He then tries to set a plasma rifle she was working on to explode after a slow build-up, only for it to instantly detonate in his face. In the intervening period, Duncan manages to escape, Tarquin botches a hack-job, and Leo arranges transport off the station. He then kills Duncan because Duncan nearly killed him earlier and is refusing psychosurgery that would mask his movement patterns... And prevent him from killing team-mates. Other stuff happens shortly thereafter, including us meeting our new official pilot, a high-as-a-kite Russian octopus with armour-plated skin and a flamethrower. To be honest, I kind of feel like I should stop the story here, because a leathery octopus hurling flames and shouting "Comrade!" at the end or start of every sentence is pretty drat hard to top. Anyway, BOSS, the octopus, gets us off the station. A few days later, Duncan is revived and emerges from the nanovat he's been regrowing in. We introduce him back to the world and his new badass face (Leo gave him sharper teeth and a tongue to make Gene Simmons blush as a sort of "I'm sorry for breaking down your musculature and giving you an aneurysm" card). Leo, being Leo, immediately grabs the headbag, looks to Adam, and yells "CATCH!" Now, the nanotoxin injected into the vat to kill Duncan also affected the head, but it only went after fibrous connective tissues, muscles, etc. No nerve tissues or what have you. So when Leo throws open the headbag, out flies a metal skull, complete with eyes, mouth hanging open in a scream. Adam rolls to dodge. Critical success. Skull bounces off the wall. Adam's player rolls to see who the head flies towards next. Duncan. Roll. Critical fail. Everyone bursts out laughing as Duncan has a shrieking metal skull latch onto his exposed crotch and sink its teeth into his skin. Leo spins on his heel, pumps his arm, and shouts "TOUCHDOWN!" Also, the pie was there.
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Jul 1, 2012 16:26
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Nietzschean posted:Isn't that still the formula used in the current edition? I recall paging through the 4E Dungeon Master's Guide and being presented with a flowchart that shows you a couple of different linear pathways to incorporate those significant milestones. It basically boiled down to you either Fight the Monster! to Get the Treasure!, or you Get the Treasure! to Fight the Monster!.
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Jul 1, 2012 16:34
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Yawgmoth posted:It's the formula for every edition because TSR/WotC have dedicated maybe about $150 towards writing talent historically. It's also the formula because that's exactly what many people want and expect out of D&D.
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Jul 1, 2012 16:57
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Axelgear posted:Also, the pie was there. I imagine the pie didn't find the idea of someone being bitten as funny as everyone else did....
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Jul 1, 2012 23:23
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TOOT BOOT posted:I imagine the pie didn't find the idea of someone being bitten as funny as everyone else did....
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Jul 1, 2012 23:26
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Section Z posted:No, see, it's always funny when it happens to somebody else. Piedenfreude.
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Jul 2, 2012 05:45
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Here is another quick story from the same session from my previous post. Someone was playing a Drow Hexblade and we came upon a contigent of Drow. DM: What is your name young drow? Player: Err.. What is my name? Let me check my sheet. Ehhh... I'm from Clan Sheet. *Rolls ridiculously high bluff* DM: Clan sheet? Haven't they been dead for ages? Player: Errrr.... No. *Rolls ridiculously high bluff* MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 16:56 on Jul 2, 2012 |
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Jul 2, 2012 16:53
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I first played Magic the Gathering back in '94 or '95. After being roundly stomped by a friend, I didn't touch it again until 1998 when I was at the BSA national jamboree and one of the guys there made me a deck to use during the week and change we were there. I was again roundly stomped. Flash forward to 2005 when one of my college roommates brought along a big box o' MtG cards that he got for free because all the cards were too old to still be legal. We made decks based on what we thought were fun ideas. I got stomped more often than not. Now my girlfriend, who was apparently a DCI qualified judge back in the day, has gotten me into Magic. I play against her and her roommates, both of whom are into Magic. I went to my cousin's comic book store for Friday Night Magic and met some nice people, and one of them gave me a stack of cards because I was just starting out and he had too many from the current set to use them all. I still get stomped occasionally, but I learned the (or at least my) secret to really enjoying a game of Magic. Play for the socializing. I don't know if I got super lucky or what, but I have yet to meet any of the stereotypical Magic players that smell like Cheetos and failure and who base their worth off their win/loss record. Moral of the story: I'm enjoying playing Magic the Gathering and that's notable for me.
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Jul 2, 2012 17:33
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If you want to socialize lots, learn to really enjoy shuffling. In my experience the normal chatter dies down during a game, to the talk mostly being about the game, but when you're shuffling people talk about whatever the gently caress.
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Jul 2, 2012 23:15
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SpookyLizard posted:If you want to socialize lots, learn to really enjoy shuffling. In my experience the normal chatter dies down during a game, to the talk mostly being about the game, but when you're shuffling people talk about whatever the gently caress.
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Jul 2, 2012 23:33
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Yawgmoth posted:Most of the people I play with have figured out Magic Sign Language, which involves laying spells on their targets, pointing to things that get targeted by abilities, and the "your turn" point-after-setting-hand-down. That way we can bullshit about whatever while playing. That hasn't really picked up around here. We do it somewhat, but, most conversation inevitably falls back to game oriented discussion and some people seem totally averse to talking about anything other than the game right in front of 'em.
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Jul 3, 2012 01:05
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SpookyLizard posted:That hasn't really picked up around here. We do it somewhat, but, most conversation inevitably falls back to game oriented discussion and some people seem totally averse to talking about anything other than the game right in front of 'em. 
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Jul 3, 2012 07:15
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My two best friends and I are always coming up with more interesting terms and stuff for effects though. We've come up with a lot more colorful descriptions for kill spells and stuff.
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Jul 3, 2012 09:31
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Back when I played Magic, I could not loving resist ending every third or so turn by saying, with perfect gravity, "...and I play a trap card face-down." This obv. made me extremely popular.
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Jul 3, 2012 14:29
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Doc Hawkins posted:Back when I played Magic, I could not loving resist ending every third or so turn by saying, with perfect gravity, "...and I play a trap card face-down." This obv. made me extremely popular. Then they actually made trap cards.  (It actually wasn't all that bad a mechanic, but still.)
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Jul 3, 2012 17:30
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sc4rs posted:Then they actually made trap cards. (Say this right before you play a counterspell, it never gets old)
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Jul 3, 2012 18:03
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Yawgmoth posted:And it made saying "you've activated my trap card!" so satisfying.  moment thinking about how that works."Your trap has activated MY trap!"
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Jul 3, 2012 18:08
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Colon V posted:My favorite was Ricochet Trap, because you could then redirect the counterspell TO Ricochet Trap. I'm sure at least one newbie has had a No you couldn't, unless there was another Ricochet trap there. It's resolved, therefore untargettable by counterspell.
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Jul 3, 2012 21:28
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Golden Bee posted:Fiasco awesomeness.
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Jul 3, 2012 21:40
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berenzen posted:No you couldn't, unless there was another Ricochet trap there. It's resolved, therefore untargettable by counterspell. The targeting happens as it is resolving. Ricochet trap was almost entirely created to dispel blue counterspells. content: Trying to get back into playing with some friends and the character creation process almost entirely consisted of revising MM3 monsters and adjusting them to playable level. If we could get together more often, I'm sure we'd have some terrible stories. For a frame of reference, we have a Shardmind scout that enjoys mind-melding with doors and flashing her rocks at enemies. vumbles fucked around with this message at 22:27 on Jul 3, 2012 |
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Jul 3, 2012 22:23
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So I just finished a 'year-long' Hunter: The Vigil campaign (actually just two semesters long, but whatever), and it was a blast. I ran it, and all the players involved were friends of mine who I had invited from the local campus nerd society. It was a tier-one game, which meant all the PCs were just people who had found out about monsters one way or another, and it was them against the darkness. It was set in a city I made up, a Northwest Pacific port with major Russian influence (I did a bit of alt-history about Russian colonists setting up a decently sized port in Washington state back when they owned the area, which then became home to Russians fleeing the Civil War a century later. Mostly because I wanted everything to look like Eastern Europe). The story I'm gonna tell right now is notable for being an insane clusterfuck of a fight that somehow managed to go really well. The PC's had been tracking down a demonic cult that was operating as an Investment Firm. The firm had been using it's money to invest in several construction projects throughout the city, effectively transforming parts of it into a giant demonic ritual circle, with the ultimate goal of using a ritual to drain the city's supernaturals of their mystic energy and use that to plunge the city (and possibly the whole country) into a new dark age. The PC's had managed to figure all this out just in time to try to stop the ritual, which was to take place at the afterparty for the firm's recent big acquisition, which was taking place in a big nightclub on the waterfront, the theme of which was basically 'grunge hospital' because I like my WoD to be campy. So the PC's decide that they had to infiltrate the (invite-only) party and take down this threat with lots of bullets. A quick word on the PC make-up: - Jessie was a mentally unbalanced college student who had taken to secretly worshipping a great Kraken spirit in his spare time, because it whispered dread secrets about the identity of monsters to him in exchange for inscrutable favors. Investigation minded 'reveal the truth!' kinda guy. - Henry was a former mafioso turned gun store owner, easily the most twinked of the characters. Made up for it by constantly building really weird and interesting anti-monster weapons, like the knife he basically attached the inside of a toaster to, to kill vampires. - Vera was a corrupt city homicide detective who covered up mob hits and the like. She was the most drama and relationship oriented character, especially with her partner. Provided official support, also did underground contacts and street stuff. - Taylor was a former street racer turned petty burglar, who's introduction to the supernatural was getting in a race with a haunted car for his soul, or something. He was the wheelman and was probably the cheeriest of the characters. Drove cars and yelled bad one-liner puns at monsters. - Sophie was a EMT who had gotten involved with vampires previously, she was probably the most normal character, spent most of her time trying to reign in the murderous and crazy plans of Henry or Jessie into something less deadly. Lez - Lez Zucker was a 7-foot-tall civil engineer who once made friends with the spirit of a building he was inspecting before wizards killed it. The team planner and general knowledge go-to guy, only Jessie knew more about the occult. These guys plan on getting into the party with Sophie, and Taylor disguised as wait-staff, carrying all their equipment (guns) into the party on covered serving carts. Lez, Vera, and Jessie were to hang out in the general public area of the nightclub and go in after Sophie or Taylor distracted the guards to the VIP room. Henry was outside looking over the club with an anti-material rifle in case something went horribly wrong. This was a decent plan, but there were two problems: In the last few sessions previously, the players had made enemies with a pack of werewolves AND a gang of lesser vampires that had been muscling in on local crime. They had subsequently ignored both of those groups when they threatened to get their revenge. The two groups had met and decided to get their hated enemies together, and had tracked them down to the nightclub. What came next was a bloodbath. The party recognized the werewolves in the club, panicked, and called up the infiltration team to come help and bust out the big guns they had smuggled in. The woofs noticed them, and one rages out at the sight of them, turns to crazy wolfman form and starts carving his way towards the PCs. The other two members of the pack follow suit, basically hunting the PCs through the crowd as the nighclub erupts into panic and destruction. As this happens, Henry spots the three vampires entering the front of the club with assault rifles and opens fire. The demonic security staff at the party also notice the situation, and thinking the werewolves are onto them, enter the general area and start shooting. The infiltration team bursts into the main room from behind the DJ table and start shooting as well. To compound the problem, the three PC's on the general floor take a mystic super drug they stole from the Cheiron Group (occult-minded Big Pharma) that enhanced their mental abilities and awareness to help in the fight. The drug (If you have ever read John Dies at the End, it's Soy Sauce basically) also reveals horrible trans-dimensional monsters that feed from people and basically controls them. When they take the drug, one of those monsters in the club notices them and also attacks, leading to a confusing bit where they start shooting wildly at what appears to be nothing. After about 10 rounds of furious combat, including a stint were a werewolf reduced everyone's rolls to chance die, Basically everything is dead: The vamps were taken out by Henry's sniping, the werewolves were shot to death by everything, the demon-possessed guards were all dead at the PC's hands, and the thing from dimension x had been beaten into a pool of goo. All the PC's were in critical condition, except poor Lez, who had taken a bullet to the heart from a demonic guard. Worse yet, the cult leaders were escaping via helicopter out the back. It came down to Henry, who had maybe two shots left in his rifle. His player tells me he wants to make a called shot on the helicopter's rotor. I think about it: He's got to be over 100 yards away from the very quickly moving helicopter, and he wants to target the smallest part of it, so I give him a -10 penalty. Now, he was built to shoot, but that's a ridiculous penalty to give anything. So he takes 1 aiming action and risks a willpower on the roll, which I think gave him like 3 dice to his roll. He gets an exceptional success to hit. The rotor explodes, and the helicopter drops like a stone back onto the nightclub, exploding and setting it on fire. Police, National Guard, and Homeland Security all arrive about a minute later, with Task Force Valkyrie (secret anti-monster government task force) apprehending all of the PCs and whisking them away for questioning, except Henry, who flees the scene basically right after the chopper goes down. The fight goes down in in-game history as a terror attack by a deranged right-wing terror cell angry at the moral degeneration of society. Over 100 people got killed in the crossfire and poor dead Lez was forever implicated as the worst American domestic terrorist since Timothy McVeigh. The PC's had to do some favors for TF:V before they could get back to action, which basically let me do a year-long time-skip that coincided with our Winter Break. Lez's player was graduating at the end of that semester and he had a pretty great dramatic death, charging a demonically empowered bodyguard with his empty shotgun, beating him with it for a few rounds until the guy got a shot off through Lez's chest. Whole thing only took like two hours, too.
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Jul 3, 2012 22:44
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berenzen posted:No you couldn't, unless there was another Ricochet trap there. It's resolved, therefore untargettable by counterspell. No, you're wrong. Counterspell will still be on the stack and it will be a valid target for Ricochet Trap. EDIT: gently caress beaten
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Jul 3, 2012 23:01
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SpookyLizard posted:No, you're wrong. Counterspell will still be on the stack and it will be a valid target for Ricochet Trap. I think the concern was whether Richochet Trap would be a valid target for Counterspell, not the other way around. (The whole sequence results in the Counterspell fizzling, right? Is that still the term? I haven't played since sixth edition.)
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Jul 4, 2012 00:01
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GrumpyDoctor posted:I think the concern was whether Richochet Trap would be a valid target for Counterspell, not the other way around. You play Richochet Trap and as part of playing it, declare it to target Counterspell. Richochet Trap then goes on the stack. When it resolves, you pick a new target for Counterspell and at that point, since Richochet Trap is already on the stack it is a valid new target for Counterspell. By the time Counterspell resolves, Ricochet Trap will be gone (it leaves the stack when it is finished resolving) and so Counterspell will fizzle due to no longer having a valid target. You can also make Counterspell target itself if you want to be cheeky, but the end result would be the same. Even more optimal would be if your opponent has another spell on the stack that you can make Counterspell counter instead. Edit: I haven't played in years but drat if I could have gotten a lot of use out of this card. A cheap redirect is awesome! BattleMaster fucked around with this message at 00:07 on Jul 4, 2012 |
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Jul 4, 2012 00:04
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BattleMaster posted:You can also make Counterspell target itself if you want to be cheeky, but the end result would be the same. Even more optimal would be if your opponent has another spell on the stack that you can make Counterspell counter instead. Pretty sure a spell can never target itself, largely because a spell countering itself goes bad places. vvvvvvvvvvvvvv Magic Comprehensive Rules posted:114.4. A spell or ability on the stack is an illegal target for itself. NinjaDebugger fucked around with this message at 00:57 on Jul 4, 2012 |
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Jul 4, 2012 00:43
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NinjaDebugger posted:Pretty sure a spell can never target itself, largely because a spell countering itself goes bad places. I've never actually been in a situation where this has come up, so I don't actually recall if there is a prohibition on a spell being altered to target itself. A spell can't target itself normally because at the time you declare it it is not on the stack and thus not a valid target. But if there is no specific prohibition, it would be a valid target for itself when altered with a redirect spell because at that time it is on the stack.
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Jul 4, 2012 00:46
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Augustin Iturbide posted:Hunter tales God I love Hunter.
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Jul 4, 2012 00:55
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BattleMaster posted:I've never actually been in a situation where this has come up, so I don't actually recall if there is a prohibition on a spell being altered to target itself. Looked this up out of curiosity: quote:114.4. A spell or ability on the stack is an illegal target for itself. So, uh, there you have it.
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Jul 4, 2012 00:57
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Chaos Triangle posted:Looked this up out of curiosity: That's pretty definitive then. So yeah, redirecting a Counterspell to the trap is the way to do it.
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Jul 4, 2012 01:07
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This thread activated my trap post.
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Jul 4, 2012 01:43
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Golden Bee posted:Can anyone recommend similar games that are collaborative, not competitive? I find Everyone is John too "turn based" - people are sitting around when they don't have control. I'll throw in my two cents for the Smallville RPG. I had a friend who was given a copy to review, and wasn't a fan or particularly interested in the show. Lo and behold he suddenly finds out while reading the book that the basic system has nothing really to do with the TV series. I'm not sure if this was a case of someone with an interesting system stapling it onto a license, or whether they designed a game around the license and it just so happens to work for lots of other things, but it is drat fun, if at times potentially clunky. It is essentially the RPG if you want to replicate the kinds of TV drama shows where all the plot elements come from the main characters bouncing off each other, either directly or via intrigue/extras (those HBO shows like Rome or Game of Thrones for example). It's probably the only game I've had the pleasure of playing where I've suddenly sat back during character creation and said, "Oh, wait, I am totally the bad guy in this show." Because character creation follows a relationship network kind of model, everyone ends up owning all the drama in the show, and having one guy be the obvious villain of the series is totally fine. Everyone ends up wanting to add just a little bit more to the madness, and in the system having yourself get screwed over is actually the only way to get XP and advance, so people are much happier to do it for the good of the "show." There's little reason to limit yourself to "Teen show were people have superpowers." I've had game where we were Romans running a "pleasure trireme" in a kind of Ancient Mediterranean Love Boat. We had a game where it was an alternate history Napoleonic war where a hidden alien threat annihilated both fleets at Trafalgar, and an English colony in the Caribbean was trying to rearm. Another game had us in a 50s Asylum in a McCarthyist nightmare, and some characters were staff, patients, and a deep-cover agent trying to uncover a sinister plot. The character creation system allows you to just develop an entire setting along with the characters, and is surprisingly fun to just do by itself (although you need all the players present for it). It's more structured than Fiasco and similar games, in that it has stats (although they're based around Values and Relationships rather than a physical description of the character) and requires a GM to run. But it's quite easy to run after you get your head around the idea of having dramatic contests and so on, and it really lends itself to campaign (season) play, because drat it you need to see the next episode to find out if Dr North will find out you browbeat his assistant and let the audience know what was in the TOP SECRET document folder he stole! If your group enjoys the thematic kind of play that Fiasco leads you to, Smallville is actually a pretty good alternative for longer play of that type. Just remember that all the examples and setup they have in the book has to do with the license they're supporting, but it's really easy to see how you can simply extrapolate it. There is a lot of sitting around waiting for your turn, but it isn't as bad as Everyone is John as you are watching two or more other players have a great scene with each other, and there's always plenty of opportunities to make suggestions. The TV show conventions make a really great hook, too. My current game is going amazingly well. I got my players to play Gods, and they, through the character creation process, not only developed awesome drama between each other, but also created an entire culture and mythological history of the world, just by the process of setting up characters. An entire and important element of the setting was kicked off by one player making his character's relationship with another "Stole a testicle from," and the fallout and development from that has been remarkable, as the player had to explain why he would do that and what it actually did for him. The God of the Wild wants to help humanity by making the wilderness as dangerous as possible, and once (while briefly powered up by ancient Chaotic energies) covered the world with killer beasts, all of which eventually after a lot of fighting by mortals and Gods got put into The Pit. In play, he's started becoming a really awesome petulant teenager character, made all the better by the fact that he has the powers of a God. In the second episode, he and his brother, the God of War, of whom he is jealous got into a massive argument about the War God's marriage to the Goddess of Love and Death. At the climax of the argument, the God of the Wild just turned around and went, "Well, gently caress you. I'm opening the loving Pit. Try and stop me." Great moment of high melodrama, as earthquakes rock through the mortal realm, the God of War wrestling with the God of the Wild above The Pit with the wild howling of the beasts below yearning to be free...  Of course it ended when the God of War clocked his brother in the face with his axe and carried his body off, only later to be confronted and told off by the Goddess of the Sky. The last episode had an experiment by the Goddess of Love and Death get spoiled by the Trickster God impersonating the mortal her High Priestess was supposed to bond with, the Goddess of the Sky getting annoyed with the God of Agriculture whose wife had left him, the God of War proving himself by becoming mortal, but then being forced to face his mortal Champion in combat and needing to choose whether to kill him or ignobly surrender, and the motherfucking God of the Wild deciding to save the also mortal Goddess of Love and Death from potentially being hurt by creating and sending a giant hideous flying monster to seize her in its claws and carry her away. I loving love my players.
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Jul 4, 2012 03:08
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Ah, okay. Misunderstood the question. Oh well! Learned something new.
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Jul 4, 2012 03:08
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Coward, I -love- Smallville. Unfortunately, I need something that's pick-up-and-play ASAP, often with non roleplayers, since I'd be using it in a waiting room situation (ahead of being needed on set). I read Smallville system and really want to run it soon; I feel it'd work better than Buffy for a Buffy style game.
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Jul 4, 2012 04:18
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berenzen posted:I am terrible at Magic and have no idea how the stack works Coward posted:Smallville
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Jul 4, 2012 17:54
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