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Asehujiko posted:I have this problem too with my Dark Heresy group, who, left to their own devices to come up with Rogue Trader characters presented me with the challenge of making a campaign for 5 near identical Arch Militants and a Senechal who only picked that class because of the Inferno Pistol and proceeded to act like he was an Arch Militant too. Any challenges I throw their way have to involve their starting skills because their spending pattern is Ballistic Skill -> Sound Constitution -> Rapid Reload/Quick Draw/etc. There's no reason they can't be dispatched to a warzone, of course. In the future there is yadda yadda
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Nov 25, 2012 23:08
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Asehujiko posted:I have this problem too with my Dark Heresy group, who, left to their own devices to come up with Rogue Trader characters presented me with the challenge of making a campaign for 5 near identical Arch Militants and a Senechal who only picked that class because of the Inferno Pistol and proceeded to act like he was an Arch Militant too. Any challenges I throw their way have to involve their starting skills because their spending pattern is Ballistic Skill -> Sound Constitution -> Rapid Reload/Quick Draw/etc. Easy solution: one class per player.
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Nov 25, 2012 23:20
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Volmarias posted:There's no reason they can't be dispatched to a warzone, of course. In the future there is yadda yadda If you're willing to endure the backlash of being labeled an adversarial GM, then you could always just throw regular, balanced challenges at them with the full knowledge that they're going to utterly fail anything that doesn't involve shooting something. Some will call you a dick for doing it, but it seems realistic to me that if this group of folks is only good at shooting things then they will not only fail those challenges that don't involve shooting things but also exacerbate bad situations which could have easily been resolved with social or technical skills.
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Nov 26, 2012 00:05
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Or you could, you know, accept that your group clearly wants a shooty-game, and play a shooty-game with them, rather than obsessing over what a party is "supposed" to be.
girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 00:33 on Nov 26, 2012 |
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Nov 26, 2012 00:31
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Nietzschean posted:If you're willing to endure the backlash of being labeled an adversarial GM, then you could always just throw regular, balanced challenges at them with the full knowledge that they're going to utterly fail anything that doesn't involve shooting something. Some will call you a dick for doing it, but it seems realistic to me that if this group of folks is only good at shooting things then they will not only fail those challenges that don't involve shooting things but also exacerbate bad situations which could have easily been resolved with social or technical skills. Ignore this man. Your group is telling you quite clearly that they want to gently caress some poo poo up. If you send them into a noncombat situation, you should be prepared for what happens when they take a swing with the bigass hammer that is their only tool. And if straight up asskicking isn't what you want to run, you should talk to them about it like a goddamn adult, not punish them passive-agressively until they acknowledge that you are their superior.
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Nov 26, 2012 00:32
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Well no, he's half-right. Give them a wide variety of situations, that require a precise composition of skills to successfully and peacefully resolve a number of different challenges. And let the goony motherfuckers blast their way through every tense situation, carelessly popping a large number of caps into an extensive variety of asses. Because a dude who trudges from one war to the next, endlessly mowing down motherfuckers might be content, but a guy who walks into the peace delegation and shoots the enemy leader in the face, before fighting his way to the spaceport and nuking the enemy's capital city is a certified loving badass.
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Nov 26, 2012 00:47
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Clearly they should all be playing Orks.
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Nov 26, 2012 00:49
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Captain Bravo posted:Well no, he's half-right. Give them a wide variety of situations, that require a precise composition of skills to successfully and peacefully resolve a number of different challenges. And let the goony motherfuckers blast their way through every tense situation, carelessly popping a large number of caps into an extensive variety of asses. Because a dude who trudges from one war to the next, endlessly mowing down motherfuckers might be content, but a guy who walks into the peace delegation and shoots the enemy leader in the face, before fighting his way to the spaceport and nuking the enemy's capital city is a certified loving badass. This is what I would do. Give them whatever you feel like is a "regular" amount of reasonably difficult-to-resolve encounters and obstacles and let them blast their way out of the inevitable trainwreck every such encounter will result in. Intersperse those with situations that are obviously meant to be resolved by blowing poo poo up. That way their limitations are clearly outlined but ideally everyone still has fun, even while that is happening. Vayra fucked around with this message at 00:58 on Nov 26, 2012 |
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Nov 26, 2012 00:54
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goatface posted:Clearly they should all be playing Orks. This. This is the correct path. Suggest this to your players.
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Nov 26, 2012 04:52
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Are there any Warhammer Orc/k RPGs? Does WFRP do that?
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Nov 26, 2012 05:15
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The Good Professor posted:This is what I would do. Give them whatever you feel like is a "regular" amount of reasonably difficult-to-resolve encounters and obstacles and let them blast their way out of the inevitable trainwreck every such encounter will result in. Intersperse those with situations that are obviously meant to be resolved by blowing poo poo up. That way their limitations are clearly outlined but ideally everyone still has fun, even while that is happening. This, very much this - you let the players that want shooty fun have shooty fun, while also illustrating that it's possible for other means of solving problems - so if they decide that later they want to spend XP or whatever to get better at non-shooty things they'll know there's some benefit to doing so. I mean, a game based on the WH40K universe, I'd think "better make sure I can kill poo poo so I can survive the grim darkness of the future in which there is only war," too.
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Nov 26, 2012 07:52
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Are there any Warhammer Orc/k RPGs? Does WFRP do that? Rogue Trader with the Into the Storm suppliment gives you ork freebooters - which can spec into Mekboys or Kommandos - get the NAvis Primer and you get Weirdboys - with the added bonus of the "Perils of the WARRRGH" Table, which has one wonderful entry for "Squigs, Squigs everywhere" So yeah, an Ork pirate game is well within reason.
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Nov 26, 2012 08:31
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:This, very much this - you let the players that want shooty fun have shooty fun, while also illustrating that it's possible for other means of solving problems - so if they decide that later they want to spend XP or whatever to get better at non-shooty things they'll know there's some benefit to doing so. I mean, a game based on the WH40K universe, I'd think "better make sure I can kill poo poo so I can survive the grim darkness of the future in which there is only war," too. Hell yes. They're gonna shoot the poo poo out of situations that shouldn't involve shooting, then they're gonna shoot the poo poo out of whoever shows up to shoot them. Proceed to the next situation where the same thing happens. Every time they're sent to negotiate a peace treaty they end up shooting the ambassador, murdering his entourage, burning down the building while escaping the guards, then blowing up the spaceport while escaping the navy? That's why they were sent there in the first place - in the grim darkness of the far future et loving cetera. They'll end up being universally hated and feared, which sounds like it will provide them with lots of people to shoot at, and make them happy.
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Nov 26, 2012 10:57
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Hokay, Kender story time! That Does Not Go There! After I'd gotten a bit more comfortable in my GMing skills (but still young and foolish), I decided to run the original Dragonlance Chronicles adventures... in 3rd Ed. Suffice to say, this did not go well for several reasons, but the final event before we all agreed it was a bad idea was... memorable, to say the least. To set the scene, the party had recovered the Disks of Mishakhal via the time-honoured plot-bullshit device of breaking the staff on the black dragon, or some such. Having recovered their lost team-mate, the party decided to camp. It is at this point that I mention the two important players of this brief scene: Paul (playing a Solamnic Knight based on Baron Mandorallen, which was comedy gold in and of itself), and... Paul, who played "Just Dimble", a Kender. Now, as we all know, Kender are lying, thieving little shits who stain the universe with their very existence, and I had felt, as a GM, that Paul 2 was not keeping in said character. So I handed him a note, essentially mentioning that he hadn't "borrowed" anything in a while. He handed me a note back, and everyone knew something was up, because I immediately cracked up, and couldn't continue the game for a good few minutes. So, as the game continued, the following exchange occured. DIMBLE PAUL: I'm going to mince my way across the campsite, trying not to draw attention to myself. SOLAMNIC PAUL: I've been keeping an eye on Dimble, so I'd like a Spot check. ME: That's fair, you have indeed been keeping an eye on him! [Solamnic Paul makes the check] SOLAMNIC PAUL: [In Character] DIMMMMMBLLEEEE! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!? DIMBLE PAUL: [In squeaky voice] Nothing! [OOC] I continue mincing. SOLAMNIC PAUL: I grab the little snot and search him. [makes check] ME: Errr... how do I put this... he's not *carrying* anything, but... he is hiding something... SOLAMNIC PAUL: You don't mean... [Entire group goggles at Dimble Paul, who is grinning] I won't outright say what he'd done, but... it was perhaps the first time in Dragonlance gaming history that a party had to sandwash the Disks of Mishakhal... 
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Nov 28, 2012 21:05
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You encouraged a character to be a kender. Young you deserved every moment of discomfort.  (No, but really, ew.)
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Nov 28, 2012 22:17
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JamieTheD posted:I won't outright say what he'd done, but... it was perhaps the first time in Dragonlance gaming history that a party had to sandwash the Disks of Mishakhal...
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Nov 29, 2012 00:29
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I'm guessing he stuck them somewhere in his... Shadowrealms. Exactly where, I haven't the foggiest, but considering how young and foolish Jamie reminds us he was, I'm going to guess he stuck them in the Utterdark.
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Nov 29, 2012 00:31
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Captain Bravo posted:I'm guessing he stuck them somewhere in his... Shadowrealms. Exactly where, I haven't the foggiest, but considering how young and foolish Jamie reminds us he was, I'm going to guess he stuck them in the Utterdark. Give that man a coconut! Also, I would agree with Colon V: Please, in the interests of your sanity, don't encourage people to play Kender. Discourage it!
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Nov 29, 2012 00:39
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The disks are mountable on a spindle, right? I would have guessed he was pulling a " Honey, have you seen the hand towel?" moment.Don't pretend you haven't been there.
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Nov 29, 2012 05:58
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Sorry if this gets a bit wall-o-texty. When I first started gaming in high school--and still, to a lesser extent, today--I was the guy who made jokey characters. It wasn't really a problem since our campaigns were pretty loose and just us playing around rather than trying to have the Best Campaigns Ever, but even when I make a Serious Character For Roleplaying they still tend to have some goofy element come through eventually. That's just who I am: a (poor) attempt at humor is my first response to everything. For example, my longest-running Shadowrun character--probably longest-running, period--was a dwarf named Buddy Lee. Who was Buddy Lee? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiBIO-QBDT8 Buddy Lee was the Man of Action: a take-charge, unflappable, cold-blooded killing machine. Yeah, I based my character off of a jeans mascot. Goofy as poo poo, I know, but the group loved it. But as much as we all loved Buddy Lee, he wasn't the one they immortalized with a souvenir. A Few Bullets Short Of A Full Mag Remy was my troll shaman, a good-ol'-boy out of the swamps of Louisiana who had the spirit of Gator in his soul and wanted to share it with Seattle. Actually, Remy was a complete mundane, and an even-more-complete moron; he never seemed to realize that his Fireball spells were just grenades and that he wasn't bouncing bullets away with a Shield, he was just thick-skinned. He was just ignorant and raised on too much trideo and thought that if he just believed hard enough, it would become true, and Gator would Awaken him to magic. And when, during one session, it actually seemed to work, I was the only one more surprised than he was. Remy had a dream in which he was walking through a fog and a voice was calling to him. The voice spoke to him, telling Remy that he was a source of strength and inspiration, and would be an Avatar for his totem on Earth. Remy became more and more excited (while I got anxious, knowing my rock-stupid street sam wasn't properly statted to be any kind of effective magician) as he moved through the mist. His excitement turned to horror as the mist parted, though--and Remy realized that it wasn't a fog over the water of the bayou, but was instead snowdust drifting lazily over mountainous peaks. He wasn't being called by Gator; he was being called by Eagle. It took convincing, but Eagle finally got Remy to accept his gift. After all, Gator obviously wasn't coming. If the troll wanted to be a shaman, this was his only chance. So Remy came to: Awakened to a new life, and surly because of it. It was always a contentious relationship, with Remy ragging on his totem, and on at least one occasion Eagle would get fed up with his shaman and would abandon him--taking the magic away as well. And Remy would have to go on a vision quest and grovel before his totem to get it back. The campaign eventually ended--I believe the whole team died when their base was invaded, and then detonated, by Renraku. And I set Remy's sheet aside and forgot about him. Four years later, it's my birthday. The group is gathered around me as I open presents, and that campaign's GM handed me a small box. He looks mighty pleased with himself, and by the grins on most of the faces around me I know most of the other guys already know what's inside. I unwrap it and find myself looking into the eyes of a small plush eagle while they laugh. I still have him, of course; my son plays with him, and maybe someday I can use Eagle to tell the boy about how sometimes wishes come true--even if it's not exactly how you expect.
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Nov 29, 2012 09:08
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Everything Counts posted:I still have him, of course; my son plays with him, and maybe someday I can use Eagle to tell the boy about how sometimes wishes come true--even if it's not exactly how you expect. You can tell your son a heartwarming story about how wishes come true for the truly thick and bullheaded 
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Nov 29, 2012 13:32
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Everything Counts posted:Shadowrun Legend! That was a truly heartwarming story, and the stuff of Shadowrun legends! Ahhh... it seems kinda awkward to post a story after that one, but still... one heartwarming (to me) story, and maybe one or two funny ones. Having Your Stats And Roleplaying Too A while back, I used to run games in a now-sadly-gone gaming shop, and my regular group was... interesting, to say the least. One, in particular (let's call him John) was the "loon" of the group. He was constantly derailing things, breaking games (more often due to "Rule of Cool" than any actual malice), and it was pretty hard to keep a campaign going because, sooner or later, he'd run it off the rails. Good example: He killed a Mutants and Masterminds game in the first ten minutes, because nobody had quite realised the implications of his power set (Most points in Duplication, with independent clones, and Super-Speed... Game crashed with the words "gently caress you, I am not rolling 2048 initiative, attack, and damage rolls, and nor are you!") But this isn't about his silliness... this is about the time he "grew up". It was the unlikeliest of settings for such a tale: A Forgotten Realms campaign. As was usual at the time, I was winging it like nobody's business, and two of the characters had died the session before. So John, and his buddy Lee, got together and decided to create new characters together. Thus was born one of the most memorable campaigns in my life, and definitely among the most memorable characters... The Axenshield Brothers (Flail and Hammer). The basic concept was completely ridiculous (Dwarven Thunder-Twin Barbarians), but, from the moment they were first met, it was magical. How did the players find them? Escaping from the Underdark through a portal to the Anauroch Desert, the characters came across, in the middle of nowhere, two dwarves in spiked plate mail (yes, in the desert...in the day) arguing over a map that neither of them could actually read. They bickered like a married couple, or, more accurately, like two contentious brothers who still loved each other, and so, even though they would break most combat encounters over their knee (they knew the system, did John and Lee), it didn't matter because... they played excellent characters that made the game fun. But the real high point came later: Undersea, in a Sahuagin run dome, the party comes across a trap. They knew it was a trap, because a massive spherical room with two doors on opposite sides is sort of a big tell. This particular trap was one I'd wanted to see players experiment with for ages... Essentially, the walls of the spherical room, except for the doors, have a special variant of "Reverse Gravity" on them... you fall, and bounce off a wall, not losing any momentum, until you either fly through the door you came in, or smash through the stone door on the other side. Yes, that's right, it's a really dickish trap. Thing is, I knew the players were smart enough to get around it, and had all they needed (they even discussed ways of doing it easily). What nobody counted on, however, was the suicidal bravado of the Axenshield brothers. John's twin, Flail Axenshield, saw this room, and immediately decided he was going to smash through it. Literally... ...Round and round and round he went, until he hit the door... smashed through the door (wrecking many of his spikes in the process), went though about 7 of the 12 sahuagin that were waiting on the other side (ruining more Sahuagin than he did spikes), skidded along the ground, and embedded himself in the stone floor. You'd think, after all this, that he would be very, very dead. You'd also think that his brother, after taking the same leap, would be very, very dead. But Hammer Axenshield leapt through, and made three natural 20s on a Tumble check... I didn't ask for the third, and didn't need the second... he just rolled them to see how awesomely amazing his luck was. And so, Hammer Axenshield bounced and bounced and bounced, flew through the door, rolled, landed on his feet... and immediately decapitated one of the Sahuagin who'd recovered enough to attack his brother. With a Mace. This, however, wasn't the crowning moment of awesome. No, that happened when Hammer got his brother free, and, despite being at 3HP, needing armour repairs, and probably a bone-setter, leapt up, and loudly declaimed "LET'S DO THAT AGAIN!" And He Never Lived It Down Another time, the same group was being put through my version of the Eye of the Beholder campaign (modified for 3.5E from the original computer plot). There were many awesome moments in that campaign, but for hilarity, the first, from the moment they entered the sewers of Waterdeep and the way collapsed behind them, was the best. Most of the party is unimportant, but Jack's character, the fighter, was... impetuous. So, when the party soon spots a lone kobold, that, rather sensibly, sees them, squeaks in terror, and runs the hell away, Jack's character sprints after the kobold with a bloodcurdling cry, leaving the rest of the party looking at each other, shrugging, and sauntering forward. Then running, when they heard, in order, two massive "TWANG"s, loud swearing, and the delighted yipping of a large group of Kobolds. They round a corner, and what do they see? The fighter, suspended between two nets (one from the ceiling, one from the floor), while a group of about 9 kobolds are poking him with punji sticks. That's right... Jack had been outsmarted by Kobolds. And he never lived it down... even to this day, we occasionally remind him. EDIT: Yes, I am an evil GM, and I was grinning like a loon when this happened. So sue me! 
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Nov 29, 2012 16:35
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quote:He killed a Mutants and Masterminds game in the first ten minutes, because nobody had quite realised the implications of his power set (Most points in Duplication, with independent clones, and Super-Speed... Game crashed with the words "gently caress you, I am not rolling 2048 initiative, attack, and damage rolls, and nor are you!")
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Nov 29, 2012 16:42
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JamieTheD posted:Jack's character sprints after the kobold with a bloodcurdling cry, leaving the rest of the party looking at each other, shrugging, and sauntering forward. As a DotA player this story owns especially hard because it sounds like he tried to attack a Meepo on his own. (Meepo is an rear end in a top hat kobold who throws nets and clones himself and is usually seen as a joke character).
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Nov 29, 2012 16:42
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MadScientistWorking posted:I'm pretty sure 2nd and 3rd edition actually have warnings about duplication powers due to how broken it can get if you don't watch out. Yeah, they do... which I found out after I'd found a 2E book. Zoness posted:As a DotA player this story owns especially hard because it sounds like he tried to attack a Meepo on his own. (Meepo is an rear end in a top hat kobold who throws nets and clones himself and is usually seen as a joke character). Yeah, it's kinda the same with Kobolds in DnD, no matter what edition you have... they have barely sentient intelligence, never more than 2 Hit Die (in fact, in 2E, they had 1/4 HD... so rarely more than 3 HP), so... it was quite hilarious, and teaches an object lesson: run properly, no monster is weaksauce!
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Nov 29, 2012 16:56
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^^^Unless you are playing 4th edition where the sneaky bastards have con as a primary.JamieTheD posted:Yeah, they do... which I found out after I'd found a 2E book. MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 17:29 on Nov 29, 2012 |
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Nov 29, 2012 17:02
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MadScientistWorking posted:Was that warning in the 1E book? Its the only edition I don't own. If it was, I didn't find it, sadly. Of course, it's been quite a few years, and I never really got on with M&M anyway (call me a freak, but I always preferred HERO for super-shenanigans)
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Nov 29, 2012 17:27
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LordZoric fucked around with this message at 23:56 on Mar 17, 2021 |
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Nov 29, 2012 17:29
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LordZoric posted:I kind of hate the d20 system, but M&M is pretty cool, especially 3rd. For me though, Wild Talents is where it's at. ORE is beautiful.
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Nov 29, 2012 17:35
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JamieTheD posted:So John, and his buddy Lee, got together and decided to create new characters together. I want to be like Buddy Lee. 
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Nov 29, 2012 19:51
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LordZoric posted:Tell me about it. M&M is hilariously easy to break in so many ways. My group's M&M GM actually builds completely broken characters as a hobby, just so he can spot it happening in his games. His latest monstrosity was a Hulk-based character who got more powerful the more damage he took and could only be taken down with will-based attacks.
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Nov 29, 2012 22:53
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I once ran a short lived but memorable campaign of All Flesh Must be Eaten  , using a homebrew setting in which some rare zombies can exhibit intelligence and have super powers. I do not consider myself to be an overly strict GM, as a rule, and I'm certainly not what you'd call adversarial. At the same time, through sheer dumb luck, this group of characters I had just refused to die no matter what got thrown at them. Our little survivor group at first consisted of four characters: - Marika: A foul-mouthed ex-firefighter with a rifle, a shotgun and a truly unfortunate fear of the dark. - Travis: A redneck badass with a troubled past and an abrasive disposition, who wants nothing more than to blast the head off of every dead thing he meets. - Neil: A former actor, wannabe ladies' man and general coward. The constantly put upon load of the group. - Kathy: A pragmatic medic who was just in general way too cool headed for this group. Of the close scrapes with death these characters encountered, I would say the most ridiculous one would be the story of the zombie soldiers, the rooftop, and the grenade. The characters had stopped in a survivor colony. They had been set up with food and board as a reward for their saving a supply convoy the previous session (an encounter during which Neil nearly set everyone on fire by casually hurling around the flamethrower I was silly enough to give them). After a short time of relative piece, I had them wake up to alarms blaring -- an NPC told them that this meant there was an outbreak in the immediate area. I expected one of a couple things to happen here. Either they were going to go outside and try to escape to a less zombilicious part of the colony, fighting their way through waves of shamblers on the way, or they were going to hole up and possibly enjoy a bit of siege gameplay. Instead, they did the obvious thing that had somehow never occurred to me: They climbed onto the roof. It was my own fault, really, for describing the place as a flat topped building. But the end result was a sequence I had not planned for, from a vantage point that left them pretty much completely safe from most zombies until help arrived. The standard zombies I'd built for the campaign weren't nearly coordinated enough to be able to climb a roof access ladder, sadly. So, I was forced to improvise. I sent a squad of zombie soldiers at them, controlled by a super zombie with the ability to control regular zombies around it. This led to a firefight with the zombies and the PCs exchanging fire. And then, almost without really thinking, I had a zombie lob a grenade. Low and behold, I roll surprisingly high, and the thing lands right in the middle of the players. All Flesh Must Be Eaten is an RPG that runs off of Classic Unisystem. Now, there are certainly games that are less forgiving than this one, but it is still not really a system that fucks around where combat is concerned. A good hit from a gun can kill a PC. And explosives are particularly lethal. I knew, even as I described the grenade bouncing to a halt on the rooftop, that if they did not act very fast they were going to be in a lot of trouble. We're talking d6-multiplied-by-10 damage, here. That was enough to potentially wipe the whole party. They all rolled fear checks, and Neil failed so badly that he ended up running off screaming in a random direction. This being a small rooftop, I decided that this direction took him over the edge of the roof. To further emphasise that bailing off the roof would be a good idea, I had an NPC with them at the time dive back down the ladder well. Jumping off the roof after Neil would not only be the best way for everyone to get out alive, but I'd get to have my dangerous slog through zombie infested streets after all. My players decided they were not going to roll that way. Travis went first, and decided to use the one action standing between him and a face full of flying shrapnel to make a grab for Neil and keep him from leaping to the relative safety of the dumpster below. Kathy just curled up in a fetal position hoping to minimise the damage. Marika decided that it would be a good idea to literally pick up the grenade and throw it back. I asked for a pretty high roll for that one to work, and to her credit, Marika achieved some middling success. At the very least, she got the thing far enough out before it blew that they were now in the medium explosion radius as opposed to the considerably more lethal "ground zero." I still expected things to end badly, though, because even at medium range this thing was going to do enough damage to potentially kill some folk.  The thing explodes, and... miraculously, everyone gets off with light wounds (not even the crippled, injured engineer NPC they had been dragging along with them all campaign for some reason died). These people just had a grenade go off in their general vicinity, and some of them had taken less damage than the NPC who'd dived for safety. The encounter ended shortly afterwards, when a grenade was thrown back at the zombie horde in turn. As if to mock me, the damage roll on this one is drat high enough to reduce all of them to a pile of quivering undead gibs. The campaign petered out unceremoniously a few weeks later, but not before Marika managed to get fired upon with a submachine gun at nearly point blank range, and only take one minor bullet wound to the leg.
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Nov 30, 2012 02:46
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This reminds me of my most recent Only War (40K RPG) game. The PC portion of the party only consisted of a Storm Trooper, a Sergeant (and voxman), and a Ratling sniper (and spotter). There was also an NPC Medic and an Ogryn (named Molotov). Time after time, Molotov has been used as a meat shield for the rest of the party (which is fair, given the canon description of Ogryn.) The first time was when the party came across a village of survivalists in the jungle. The party dropped the rear hatch of their armored transport and decided they weren't willing to negotiate, so the survivalists tossed some grenades inside the transport. Molotov jumped on top of the cluster of grenades, taking twice the damage necessary to kill any other party member, and stood up with a bloody chest and a smile. The survivalists backed off after that. The second time was when the party was on patrol in the bush. They eliminated an Ork ambush, but the following Orks placed some traps, and the second patrol blundered right into them. They decided that Molotov was leading the way, and he walked into a mine that was literally capable of crippling a tank. He ran right through it, shrugged, and continued onward into an Ork machine gun nest. Anyone else in the party would have been rendered into a fine pink paste, but Molotov soldiered on. The third time was when the party was storming an Ork artillery position. The Orks had managed to salvage an Imperial macrobattery (capable of crippling or destroying a space ship) and convert it into ground artillery, and the PCs had infiltrated the position in a suicidal attempt to disable the guns. They were outnumbered 22 to 4, and any individual Ork was capable of killing them in one round of hand-to-hand combat. Analyzing their options, they decided to fire upon the Ork positions while Molotov (slowly) marched forward in the open. The Orks clearly could only fire upon the massive roaring beast advancing on their position. Unfortunately, a combination of equipment and toughness rendered Molotov invulnerable to standard Ork equipment. So, the party eliminated the Ork fire teams one by one as the Ogryn rushed from position to position, roaring in consternation. Molotov was finally felled by an unfortunate Athletics check and a waterfall, plummeting to his doom. The party left him to his fate (as he was only a filthy abhuman), and his final reward is unclear. I can't help but feel that Molotov could not be laid low by such mundane threats as tons of water, great heights, and round after round of Ork shootas.
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Nov 30, 2012 03:53
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Did a one shot last night in Marvel's Heroic System. It's fun, modular, and while I don't get it completely, it seems to balance out a party that contains Thor and Black Widow, so it's amazing. We played a short sample adventure that game with the Young Justice/Runaways book. We only had three people, who played: Molly Hayes, Preteen Runaway, and 7th strongest person alive Amadeus Cho, Non-Runaway, and the 7th Smartest Man Alive and owner of a cute Coyote puppy, and me, as Nico Minoru, Runaway Leader, and #1 LA's Best-Dressed Goth Sorceress. We were all in a diner somewhere in the California Desert. Molly had runoff due to another team member (Chase) dating a girl who was totally gross, and stolen the group's ship, the Leapfrog. Nico had tracked her down, and Amadeus was on the trail of Hercules and The Hulk. Nico lectured Molly on running away from her problems and stealing ships. Amadeus attempted to flirt with Nico, analyzing all possible avenues of engagement...and throwing his puppy to Molly. It might have worked, except the cafe was shelled by A.I.M., the world's premiere group of evil sciencists. Purple knockout gas flooded the diner. Nico cast a spell to teleport the artillery back onto its origin point...which was, unbeknowst to her, where the Leapfrog was parked. Over the next several minutes, Cho would try flirting, begging, and harassment to get what he wanted from the Runaway pair. Nico would respond with magic and ordering Molly to do stuff*, including kicking Amadeus down the block over a radio communicator. Nico and Molly found out there was a gang leader in town by the name of "Moe Duck." Having had enough of the girls, Amadeus slinked off into the sewer, eluding the girls for a transition scene. During the transition, he rolled 4d8+1d10 and ended up with 37. It was a sea of 8s, which resulted in him completely compromising AIM's security network. A helicopter landed in the park, dissipating the gas. Nico had bet Molly $10 that Moe Duck was a bad guy, leading Molly to LOUDLY YELL assembled AIM forces, asking if Moe was actually evil. M.O.D.O.K. responded by firing a laser beam at Nico, which she deflected. The goth leader countered with a few blasts from the dimension of pure despair. Molly punched Modok really hard. Amadeus then blackmailed AIM, telling them that he'd hacked into their servers and was going to leak their secrets to the Pirates Bay if they didn't retreat. They retreated. Shortly after, THE HULK jumped into the middle of the group. Nico teleported herself back to the diner accidentally. Amadeus tried to talk the Hulk down, while Molly called the Hulk "gross". The Hulk then tried to grapple Molly, but she was able to BREAK HIS GRIP and earn his respect. She gave him a frog hat, which Nico enlarged so it would fit. That's about where the session ended. Can't wait to try the system again. *Fun fact of the system: Nico's milestone XP objectives were RELUCTANT LEADER and BAD ROMANCE. In a longer running game, her goals were to either fall for someone bad for the team and either let them stay or kick them to the curb, and/or order people around and take responsibility for her actions, or give up leadership entirely. It's a really solid system to force your players to RP, as well as giving you ideas of where their story arcs will go.
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Nov 30, 2012 04:11
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Kharol posted:
Reminds me of my fighter in our last Hackmaster game. Hackmaster, in case you're unaware, is a ridiculously lethal system, especially at low levels. Sergeant Timms the Fighter could not be brought down. Arrows bounced off his rusty chainmail. He fell into a spiky pit with little more than scratches. He challenged a minotaur to unarmed single combat and ruined it's whole day. Acid melted the wizard and miraculously left him completely unscathed. A tilting stone lidded pit trap gave him minor amounts of difficulty while removing another PC's legs at the knee. He was finally killed at around level 8. We'd confronted the bad guy at his secret hideout, and Sergeant Timms boldly stepped up to challenge him to single combat (for complicated reasons involving honor score and stuff). The bad guy laughed at him. Sergeant Timms said if the bad guy was so drat nervous, he'd even let him take one free shot, and only start fighting back after the first blow had landed on him (pulling something like that off = massive bonus to honor). The bad guy swung his polearm and... Removed Seargeant Timms' axe arm at the shoulder with a ridiculously good crit. Sergeant Timms was not worried - he's got a lot of hit points left and reattaching arms is not a huge problem for a skilled cleric. The bleeding's going to be a problem, but he can sort that out after he kills this rear end in a top hat. He shifted his huge axe to his off hand and dealt a mighty blow to the bad guy, who responded by... removing his remaining arm at the shoulder with another crit. Sergeant Timms was abandoned by the party at that point. They ran away and let him bleed out while the bad guy (and GM) laughed and laughed and laughed. When they went back later, the bad guy wasn't actually very scary. Their honor scores were completely hosed though. I know it sounds like a dickish GM, but all rolls were out in the open for everyone to see and Hackmaster is supposed to play out like that.
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Nov 30, 2012 04:32
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Molotov
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AlphaDog posted:Removed Seargeant Timms' axe arm at the shoulder with a ridiculously good crit. Sergeant Timms was not worried - he's got a lot of hit points left and reattaching arms is not a huge problem for a skilled cleric. The bleeding's going to be a problem, but he can sort that out after he kills this rear end in a top hat. He shifted his huge axe to his off hand and dealt a mighty blow to the bad guy, who responded by... removing his remaining arm at the shoulder with another crit. How many Monty Python jokes did your group endure that night? e: \/\/ 
Volmarias fucked around with this message at 04:49 on Nov 30, 2012 |
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Nov 30, 2012 04:38
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Volmarias posted:How many Monty Python jokes did your group endure that night? All of them
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Nov 30, 2012 04:45
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They loving ran? Holy poo poo, your party was terrible. I would have stepped up at that point, and said "How dare you strike an unarmed opponent! Maybe in death you shall regain your honor!"
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Nov 30, 2012 05:10
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Golden Bee posted:(Marvel Heroic stuff) Man, I love this system. I've been running a six-person party for about four months now and, while it can be a bit cumbersome and unclear, if you have a group that can rationalize their specialties and powers to fit the situation and think laterally, you end up with some really memorable balls-to-the-wall-crazy moments. I'd really like to actually play it someday, but GMing is great too because my players just react to the situations I put them in with all kinds of creative insanity. Example: our last major event ended with some magic and Latverian tech going awry, resulting in Fin Fang Foom rampaging through Hell's Kitchen in classic Godzilla fashion. Seeing that the Avengers were slightly underequipped to fight a dragon, Doctor Strange decided to give Captain America a mystic asset to add to his dice pool: he summoned George Washington's cavalry saber and imbuing it with the power of the Vishanti. It helped (a lot, in fact), but what really finished the fight off was when Cap took advantage of a broken water tower that Spider-Man had webbed between too buildings (otherwise it would've squished some bystanders). He pointed it at the dragon and then had everybody jump on, and their combined momentum slingshotted the broken end of the tower through Fin Fang Foom's heart, God of War style. I really think it's a system that sinks or swims on your players' enthusiasm and creativity, both in using the tools available to them and following their milestones. If I get some free time over the next couple days, I'll see if I can tell a couple more stories for the thread about ridiculous Marvel Heroic exploits, like the time Agent Coulson became the God of Thunder.
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Nov 30, 2012 05:19
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Captain Bravo posted:They loving ran? Holy poo poo, your party was terrible. I would have stepped up at that point, and said "How dare you strike an unarmed opponent! Maybe in death you shall regain your honor!" Challenge was issued, terms were accepted. I have nobody to blame for that but myself. If the bad guy had come at them, they could have fought, but they were honor bound not to step in until the duel was over (to the death...) Not to mention that Mr. Unscathed had just lost both his arms without visibly hurting the guy. Stepping into an honor-duel to help your friend would gently caress your honor, his honor, and possibly the rest of the party's honor, not to mention that nobody who heard about it would agree to single combat with you ever again. Honor's serious business, it can end up loving with your attack rolls, amongst other nasty things. Again, Hackmaster's like that. If we didn't like it, we wouldn't play. I appreciate the "unarmed opponent" joke though.
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Nov 30, 2012 05:24
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