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Nietzschean posted:One of the best games I've ever played was a campaign where one of the players decided his human fighter needed to behave like Napa from DBZ Abridged. He even did the voice and mannerisms. It was briefly amusing in a nonsensical way, and then quickly became grating; but, in time the ongoing tribute to the trope, "Big Stupid Fighter," became a lot more hilarious for everyone involved than the initial bevy of (unfunny) catchphrases and references he initially thought would be so amusing. I've had a similar experience, a buddy of mine started running a Shadowrun campaign, and two of my friends did Vegeta and Nappa, somehow managing to figure out how to build saiyans in that game, while I did a "do all the drugs" gunbunny who was essentially Castor Troy from Face/Off, and another guy did a huge, dumb Minotaur. After an op we all went to a bar, and Nappa and the Minotaur got raging drunk and Nappa tried to catch him with pokeballs, which for those of us who could hold our liquor pretty much just saw him throwing wadded up paper towels at the Minotaur all night, and the minotaur himself would occasionally curl up into a ball on the floor when he was "caught" and it was the most hilarious thing ever.
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May 17, 2013 01:43
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In a game of Black Crusade that I was running, one of the players was a scheming, hubristic sorcerer named Vonatar who would never, ever admit he was wrong (and to his credit, was usually right). At one point, while trying to figure out how a possessed transit system worked, he rolled a 100 on a percentile check for his arcane knowledge, and we decided he'd drastically misinterpret what was necessary to control the system. He decided he needed to crush a couple of the dead enemies they fought into jelly and spread 'em on the thing to appease its spirit and get it working, it wasted some time they could ill afford, and they rode right into an ambush as a minor, amusing consequece of the critical failure. End of story, right? Wrong. He decided he'd failed so badly, and was so prideful, that he always assumed that was how any of these kinds of possessed systems worked, for the rest of the campaign. So every time they'd encounter possessed machines, he'd start making manpaste again, while the party's tech specialists made sure the systems actually worked and humored Vonatar's delusions that this was how things were, because he was easier to work with when his pride was appeased. The rest of the party even started believing he was right, after the sixth or seventh time, because goddamnit he was so certain that was how it worked and he was such a powerful space-wizard, it must be true. That pretty much set the tone for the entire game, which included such insanity as the party getting themselves swallowed by a giant cthulhu horror using a bunch of captured pirates as bait so that they could shoot it in the stomach from inside, or their constant insistence that the best solution for enemy officers was to just land their personal shuttle on them. It was a story of a group of zany murderhobo Chaos worshippers with no real objectives beyond going from planet to planet, waiting to see when being so goddamn crazy and prideful would catch up to them, and it never, ever did, through a combination of immensely lucky rolling and just being enormous badasses. It was probably the most light-hearted 40k game I've ever run and it was great fun.
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May 17, 2013 05:51
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I love how the most lighthearted 40K game still involves turning people into chum and spreading them on machines. I love how 40K when RPG'd is so dark you have to make fun of it - My Rogue Trader lot have staged several reverse alien abduction campaigns. and once forgot about a plane full of people they kidnapped.....
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May 17, 2013 07:20
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How hard would it be to reskin Paranoia into 40k? Because I can't help but feel a connection between paranoia and the various 40k roleplaying system stories.
Grand Prize Winner fucked around with this message at 08:19 on May 17, 2013 |
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May 17, 2013 08:07
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A bombed out, post-apocalyptic Hive-world where each hive has been taken over by a Tzeentchian artificial intelligence. There are so many wheels within wheels within wheels spinning that no one has any idea what's going on, but you'd best show your devotion to God-Emperor Computer. Or ELSE.
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May 17, 2013 14:24
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Grand Prize Winner posted:How hard would it be to reskin Paranoia into 40k? Because I can't help but feel a connection between paranoia and the various 40k roleplaying system stories. I can't remember who this is (I think it's a goon ...), but someone did a very good write-up of just that.
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May 17, 2013 15:25
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WINNERSH TRIANGLE posted:I can't remember who this is (I think it's a goon ...), but someone did a very good write-up of just that.  Well, that works remarkably well.
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May 18, 2013 01:42
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Robindaybird posted:DMs should know by now characters will fixate on any little (or not so little thing) and it compliments the natural magpie tendencies to steal everything not nailed down, and bringing a crowbar for the things that are. I once ran a campaign where the first real dungeon didn't have much in the way of treasure, it was more a delve into the history and lore of the newly fashioned world I made, and a big clue to a major part of the plot. The players did notice, however, that all of the doors were made out of silver. They spent two days trying to get the doors down without damaging them (they didn't have standard hinges, they were set into a track and partially in the wall), three days collecting enough materials to make a wagon, which failed, but it worked as a sled, and three hours walking to town in order to melt them down.
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May 18, 2013 08:44
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SpaceYeti posted:I once ran a campaign where the first real dungeon didn't have much in the way of treasure, it was more a delve into the history and lore of the newly fashioned world I made, and a big clue to a major part of the plot. The players did notice, however, that all of the doors were made out of silver. They spent two days trying to get the doors down without damaging them (they didn't have standard hinges, they were set into a track and partially in the wall), three days collecting enough materials to make a wagon, which failed, but it worked as a sled, and three hours walking to town in order to melt them down. This is the point where you tell the players that after the smith starts working on them, they find out that the doors are actually gilded with silver, and are really mostly rock, and there's like a 0.1 cubic feet of silver if they really want to go at it but the smith is going to take half of it anyway as payment. And if you don't like that, feel free to take them elsewhere.
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May 18, 2013 14:56
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If they put that much effort into it, I'd probably let them have it. That looks like the kind of game they want to play, and all.
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May 18, 2013 16:24
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Send some angry priests after them demanding to know why they stole the doors to the sacred caverns.
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May 18, 2013 16:36
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Preechr posted:If they put that much effort into it, I'd probably let them have it. That looks like the kind of game they want to play, and all. ^ This exactly. No reason to punish players for being cleverly brutish. Brutishly clever... stubborn and greedy? At any rate, I had already told them the doors were made out of something after they investigated the doors, I'm not going to change my mind just because they figured out how to take advantage of it. They really didn't get enough out of it to make it worth being a liar anyhow.
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May 18, 2013 20:54
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Volmarias posted:This is the point where you tell the players that after the smith starts working on them, they find out that the doors are actually gilded with silver, and are really mostly rock, and there's like a 0.1 cubic feet of silver if they really want to go at it but the smith is going to take half of it anyway as payment. And if you don't like that, feel free to take them elsewhere. What? Why? This is what you might call a signalling moment. The players are telling you what kind of game they want to play, and it's going to involve becoming filthy stinking rich. It's not hard to make that interesting, but trying to punish your players for creative thinking after they'd worked that hard at it would be a complete dick move. If you wanted to do that, let them know it's just gilded with silver before they go through all that effort, don't change the rules after they put in that time just to gently caress with them.
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May 18, 2013 22:31
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It's a golden opportunity to take a note, punt it down the road, and move on. Whoever buys huge silver doors isn't in town, but they'll be able to put the stuff in escrow. A few sessions later, homeless people steal the doors off the player's HQ.
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May 18, 2013 23:09
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Golden Bee posted:It's a golden opportunity to take a note, punt it down the road, and move on. Why are people trying to ruin the players' fun? They got, like, 10,000 GP equivalent out of it. It's not like it broke the game, or anything. Nobody bought the doors, the PCs melted them down and traded in the silver for gold/used some to make weapons to kill werethingies with. Why prevent that? What would it prove, that I can throw wrenches in the PCs plans? Of course I can, I'm the DM. I don't want to, though.
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May 19, 2013 00:22
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Serious. It would be dickish to allow the players to spent the effort to remove the doors then yank the rug out from under them, if the DM really didn't want them to remove the doors, they would've come up with a good explanation why they can't ('when you examine the door closely, you noticed a very fine filigree script that swears foul curses upon any who dare vandalize the temple' for example, and hinting the curse is both nasty and beyond the party's ability to dispel) The DM of the paperweight game allowed the magpies of the party to plan an elaborate heist to steal the drat thing when the players won't shut up about it.
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May 19, 2013 00:59
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Steal the PCs' doors anyway. Not the silver doors. Just, like, their bathroom door.
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May 19, 2013 01:25
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SpaceYeti posted:Why are people trying to ruin the players' fun? They got, like, 10,000 GP equivalent out of it. It's not like it broke the game, or anything. Nobody bought the doors, the PCs melted them down and traded in the silver for gold/used some to make weapons to kill werethingies with. Why prevent that? What would it prove, that I can throw wrenches in the PCs plans? Of course I can, I'm the DM. I don't want to, though. Oh there's no real joy in ruining their fun, unless you're one of those DMs. Using their silly obsessions as an entertaining pivot to hang half a campaign on is quite good fun though.
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May 19, 2013 01:37
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Tendales posted:Steal the PCs' doors anyway. Not the silver doors. Just, like, their bathroom door.
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May 19, 2013 01:40
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1. My Rogue Trader group got their hands on an intact Warp-Shard Crown. 2. Their security measure for it is to put it in their pocket and not leave it lying around unattended. 3. They are currently persuading a feudal world to hand over their stockpiles of human corpses they built up over ten thousand years of ancestor worship for a suppliers discount on servo skulls elsewhere. They had to blow up a Bone Conqueror to get it so they know, both in and out of character, what it does yet they see no potential issues arising from points 2 and 3 
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May 19, 2013 02:05
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RPZip posted:What? Why? Yeah, that's a good point. The problem is when the players become game breakingly rich, well beyond where they should be, in such a way that becomes difficult for you to plausibly explain and plausibly sustain. Your guide for encounter difficulty goes out the window because now your party of level 2 murder hoboes has more equipment than a much stronger party. You certainly get hooks for that, such as "a thief stole all your doors!" but it feels a little forced. At that point, it sounds like you might want to consider transitioning to a game type that's less about monsters and fighting and is more about wealth and greed.
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May 19, 2013 02:27
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Yawgmoth posted:Then paint another door silver. Not using actual silver, just silver colored. Leave a badly scrawled note in common stating "justice is served" Then your pcs have to poop without a door.
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May 19, 2013 03:07
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Asehujiko posted:1. My Rogue Trader group got their hands on an intact Warp-Shard Crown. Unfortunately I do not know what it does, which severely limits my ability to appreciate your story. Mind explaining?
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May 19, 2013 03:12
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Gazetteer posted:Unfortunately I do not know what it does, which severely limits my ability to appreciate your story. Mind explaining?
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May 19, 2013 03:28
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Robindaybird posted:Serious. It would be dickish to allow the players to spent the effort to remove the doors then yank the rug out from under them, if the DM really didn't want them to remove the doors, they would've come up with a good explanation why they can't ('when you examine the door closely, you noticed a very fine filigree script that swears foul curses upon any who dare vandalize the temple' for example, and hinting the curse is both nasty and beyond the party's ability to dispel) Or have them make some check (strength? intelligence? wisdom? idunnowhatthefuck) to realize the doors aren't pure silver.
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May 19, 2013 05:32
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Preechr posted:If they put that much effort into it, I'd probably let them have it. That looks like the kind of game they want to play, and all. If they put that much effort, it's a plot hook. After the sale, the party finds out that not only are the doors worth a lot more than they got from that dodgy merchant, but they're magical as all hell and vital to the BBG's plans to summon something terrible. But they're still heavy as poo poo so the 'merchant' and his heavily-armed party are going to take a lot of time to deliver the doors. Ample time for some adventurers to intervene.
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May 19, 2013 06:05
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Sometimes, a silver door is just a silver door.
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May 19, 2013 07:06
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Volmarias posted:Yeah, that's a good point. The problem is when the players become game breakingly rich, well beyond where they should be, in such a way that becomes difficult for you to plausibly explain and plausibly sustain. Your guide for encounter difficulty goes out the window because now your party of level 2 murder hoboes has more equipment than a much stronger party. Your PCs "should" be as rich as they can manage to get away with. If your level 2 murderhobos have super-strong equipment, that just means that instead of attracting the attention of a bunch of level 2 thieves they attract the attention of level 5 thieves. If the PCs are putting serious effort into getting rich, this is a signal to the GM - they want to play a game where they get to be rich. So let 'em be rich, that's the game they want. The GM's job isn't to say "you have exceeded my arbitrary boundaries for your fiscal competence," the GM's job is to say "Okay, if that's the kind of game you want, that's the kind of game you get. Let's see what interesting stories and plots and adventure hooks grow out of this situation." Let the players play the kind of game they want to play.
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May 19, 2013 07:12
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:Let the players play the kind of game they want to play. ^BAM! Quoted fo' da trufe! (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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May 19, 2013 07:21
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Gazetteer posted:Unfortunately I do not know what it does, which severely limits my ability to appreciate your story. Mind explaining? They know exactly how it works and made plans on how to weaponize it by putting it in the fore end of a boarding torpedo and a big pile of bones in the back so that when it impacts the bones are launched forward, causing them to get absorbed and the enemy ship suddenly has a giant undead killing machine rampaging through their bridge. Despite this, they seem completely oblivious to the fact that trying to rob an ossuary while carrying it with them could result in them getting a surprise visit by an omnicidal corpse golem.
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May 19, 2013 12:00
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:Your PCs "should" be as rich as they can manage to get away with. If your level 2 murderhobos have super-strong equipment, that just means that instead of attracting the attention of a bunch of level 2 thieves they attract the attention of level 5 thieves. OK, OK, fair enough.
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May 19, 2013 13:16
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:Your PCs "should" be as rich as they can manage to get away with. If your level 2 murderhobos have super-strong equipment, that just means that instead of attracting the attention of a bunch of level 2 thieves they attract the attention of level 5 thieves. To be honest, in the 3.5e D&D game I've been running, the last half dozen or so encounters haven't even used stats. The enemies have an AC of 10+the fighter's bonus to hit, and have a bonus to hit of his AC+8 (because he's put resources into being harder to hit). For easier fights I subtract 2, for harder fights I add as much as 5. When I do run things straight from the book, I almost never look at the CR because (a) as a system it doesn't even function, and (b) the PCs know that sometimes things will attack them that vastly outclass or are outclassed by them. It's up to the players to decide when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em.
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May 19, 2013 13:42
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I give my players all the loot they want. Room full of guys with assault rifles? +8 assault rifles and +8 body armor. Heretek controlling a muderbot? Have a murderbot(assuming you don't blow it up). As seen above, my players are forgetful and occasionally downright stupid enough to provide their own plot by mishandling their piles of stuff without me having to come up with any "gotcha's" beyond "well what did you THINK would happen when you deployed the chaos tainted murderbot that keeps blasting "BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE" on it's loudspeakers in the middle of a busy city?".
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May 19, 2013 14:40
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:Your PCs "should" be as rich as they can manage to get away with. If your level 2 murderhobos have super-strong equipment, that just means that instead of attracting the attention of a bunch of level 2 thieves they attract the attention of level 5 thieves. Add to that the First Rule of Plot Advancement: if the plan is smart, it works. If the dice don't go the party's way, make the plan fail in a way that gets them what they want for more work, but never penalise the players for finding an unexpected way to be competent.
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May 19, 2013 15:41
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Asehujiko posted:I give my players all the loot they want. Room full of guys with assault rifles? +8 assault rifles and +8 body armor. Heretek controlling a muderbot? Have a murderbot(assuming you don't blow it up). As seen above, my players are forgetful and occasionally downright stupid enough to provide their own plot by mishandling their piles of stuff without me having to come up with any "gotcha's" beyond "well what did you THINK would happen when you deployed the chaos tainted murderbot that keeps blasting "BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE" on it's loudspeakers in the middle of a busy city?". I'm GMing the very wonderful Mongoose Traveller campaign Pirates of Drinax at the moment, and that starts the players out with their own blinged-out pirate ship (fast, sleek, big gun) and goes up from there. By the end of the first (long) mission the PCs can easily have a small armada, and a few million credits. This concerned me for about five minutes until I realised that more resources just changes the problem space the party have to work in. They have to keep the murderous Vargr pirate they picked up from the haunted space station happy. They have to find crew, keep the ships in good repair, decide who to piss off and who to suck up to. And most important, they're now a power in the area of space they're in, and have to decide how to apply that power. TLDR: Play Pirates of Drinax.
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May 19, 2013 23:42
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After several weeks absence, one of our players returned. I was both looking forward to and a bit anxious about his return because when last he played we ended the session just before he began a vivisection on a captive enemy. This was something he had asked to do in the game some time ago, and while that may seem creepy it's not as bad as you might think (it makes sense in game, he's playing a surgeon, & working on going to medical school). Generally, I try to stay away from graphic violence and sexual stuff in RPGs because I feel like it is usually unnecessary, and all too easily can go in a creepy direction. We roleplayed the vivisection and it went surprisingly well; (lord there's a thing to type) the player and I detailing the pathological and anatomical aspects of it all. In the end, he failed a roll and will have nightmares due to post-traumatic stress for the near future. I didn't want him to pass through the act unscathed, nor punish him unnecessarily. While I was relieved it was done, the horrors were only beginning. Perhaps emboldened and attempting some sort of one-up-manship the group's topics of conversation meandered down strange paths. My notes on the topic of conversation: - Vivisection - Twincest - Swinging - Horse loving - Gay horse loving - "The time Greg Scherer made me touch a fleshlight he had filled with fake blood." - Bronie Plushies - "What's that word where you tie people up?" "BONDAGE." - "Wait I forgot there are pictures of his dick." I love our group.
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May 20, 2013 05:22
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My group finally faced off with the people loving with them for the last 50 hours of gameplay. The players (only 2 of which have been in since the 1st adventure) traveled through simulations of old encounters, and discovered that there was a spy among them the entire time. (I was also able to retcon that various other one-time party members were spies). Of course, they confronted the CEO of the Pathmakers in his office, a solid mile above the empire's capital city. They tried to bribe the elevator-operating Giant to turn on his boss. The Giant took their bribe and tried to throw the ranger down the elevator shaft. The party turned the combat around, but the giant hurled them around like crazy. They killed the CEO, but the archer got bull-rushed into the glass window. Then the boss's desk was kicked at her. The artificer decided to prioritize saving the CEO's mystical trinkets; the giant tried to rush out the window, and was three steps away when the archer hurled a dagger into his neck. The session ended with the archer and artificer dangling out the window, the CEO's corpse flung to the city below, and a knocking on the office door from the chief of security.
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May 20, 2013 07:47
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My Star Wars Saga Edition Noble managed to lie to a Sith Lord well enough to lure him to a carbonite facility (by telling him I would betray the party and capture the force sensitive Mandalorian he was going to train in the Dark Side before she ended up killing his other apprentices, and also by managing to deduce from the fact that the Sith wanted another party member's daughter captured as a show of faith, that the party member's daughter was force sensitive, so I grabbed a random orphan who was rumored to have "strange powers" and made a hell of a disguise check to make her look right) I managed to find a poison that was nearly impossible to resist so I could incapacitate the Mandalorian party member for a few minutes, long enough to put her in the carbon freezing chamber, which I had rigged to do a fake burst first, and to also have an escape hatch. So she wakes up and escapes, and while the Sith Lord is dealing with the rest of the party, gets out, and I spend a Destiny Point to hurl the Sith Lord into the chamber and set of the actual carbon freezing process. After that I talked everyone down, it should be noted that this is the murderest of murderhobo parties aside from my own character, but I managed to cool everyone down and got our quarry alive to the Sith Emperor, all without firing a shot. Feels good man
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May 20, 2013 20:18
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Welp I've finally made it to the end of this thread. Thanks everyone for sharing and continuing to share your great stories. Tabletop RPG gaming has, for me, been an unattainable and lifelong goal. Literally no one I've ever known has shown the slightest interest, so I don't play. loving sucks. But I am watching you.
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May 20, 2013 22:20
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If you want to play, free up Sunday afternoon/evenings and send me an email, we can fit you into our online group.
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