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Yeah, I think they already gave you the plot to the adventure. If you really like the overarching plot/ideas, make them fit into what they're doing instead, but what they're doing sounds awesome.
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Aug 8, 2013 23:21
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Kai Tave posted:Speaking personally what they're doing right now sounds hells of cool and I think you should let'em run with it as long as they and you are having fun with it. Fiend Computer posted:Yeah, I think they already gave you the plot to the adventure. If you really like the overarching plot/ideas, make them fit into what they're doing instead, but what they're doing sounds awesome. You raise good points. Everyone having fun? Check! Players engaged with new direction? Check! The issue I am debating is that I had a bunch of obscure modules that I'd pulled together and made a theme from culminating with the overthrow of the Overlord. What I think I might do instead is just collect all of the encounters that I thought were rad from the modules and just have them in a folder somewhere, so if there's an opportunity to work it in I can whip it out and level adjust on the fly. This way all set-piece encounters will be good ones (instead of the fifteen room grind to to get to the final encounter) and the rest is player driven content. Intersting...
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Aug 9, 2013 00:39
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I'm looking forward to the day where they overthrow the Overlord by campaigning and winning an election.
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Aug 9, 2013 00:48
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the_steve posted:I'm looking forward to the day where they overthrow the Overlord by campaigning and winning an election. Hah hah hah. It's entirely possible. Even though the two most driven players are excellent swordsmen and can mix it up, they seem hesitant to get into fights. They're always looking to out scheme the bad guy or do something other than kick in the front door and start slaughtering. It's funny how gaming changes from when you are 12 to when you are twentysomething to in your forties. At 12 it's all about the plusses and stats. I'm sure the concept of DPS was invented by a twelve year old. In my twenties it was all about overcomplicated backgrounds and characters being unique snowflakes. Mysterious! Dark! Complicated! At forty gaming is an excuse to chill with your friends away from family and bullshit and ohyeah, back to the plot!
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Aug 9, 2013 01:00
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You could just continue the evil villain's plot in the background. Have them take over a few places that refugees arrive from, interrupt the flow of [IMPORTANT TRADE PRODUCT] into/out of the city, have a few raiders infiltrate and try to steal [IMPORTANT ITEM], have the local guard strength increased as a result because of the "larger situation". Generally make life for them somewhat more annoying, but not hugely, just enough to remind them that there are some bad things happening out beyond "their" city As they get more powerful and their influence expands, the troubles of the wider world will naturally start to become their troubles. You never know, they might end up heading out to overthrow the Overlord because their accountant suggests his activities are costing them almost 18.5% in year-on-year growth.
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Aug 9, 2013 01:18
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goatface posted:As they get more powerful and their influence expands, the troubles of the wider world will naturally start to become their troubles. You never know, they might end up heading out to overthrow the Overlord because their accountant suggests his activities are costing them almost 18.5% in year-on-year growth. And hey, at that point they could hire a small band of elite mercenaries and pay them a small fee with the understanding that the mercenaries will make up the rest by looting the Overlord after they've killed him!
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Aug 9, 2013 01:27
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Due to scheduling conflicts our tabletop group got slashed from seven people to five, so until the other two people get out of their Sunday All-Day shifts we’ve started playing Dungeon World. The game was originally set up to be within a facist kingdom in an After-The-End doomsday scenario, but that changed a bit when I came late to the character-building session for that game. I usually like playing either mages or rogues, but as those two spots were taken and someone was working on a warrior, I found myself working on a bard instead. Which was fine, of course, until I reached instruments. Since Dungeon World encourages on-the-spot improvisation and plays fast with the rules, I decided that my character (being a half-orc) wouldn’t demean himself playing a flute or lute. No, considering his backstory involved exile from a different tyrannical regime, he was going to play a goddamned bass. While shouting bass vocals. Then the mage found out about this…and converted to a half-orc druid who sang the lead. Within about twenty minutes the entire party dynamic of the team changed, and the world became a heavy metal pastiche as our band (BLÜDMAJ, naturally) toured from city to city, raising hell with our music and getting shanghaied into RPG quests when their womanizing, drug-fueled egos attracted the wrong attention. The best example I have is the session we just finished today, where (after cheating a deal with a devil and getting the hell out of dodge) they caught the attention of a dwarf fixer. Thinking the rogue (the only member of the campaign who just happens to be traveling with the band) was his contact, he handed over the plans to steal a variety of gemstones before they can be used by a necromancer to terrorize the countryside. The thief, realizing that these would be worth a fortune in themselves, naturally plays along so he can get all the details while the druid hotboxes our hotel room and the bard tries to catch the eye of every girl in the inn. The next day, as we play out the aftermath (involving shouting, compromising positions and mysterious bills on the bard’s tab for “magical weapons”) we stop infighting enough to hash out a plan – that the band will hold an impromptu performance in the necromancer’s front lawn while the thief sneaks into the estate to grab the gemstones in question. It starts off surprisingly well – after sneaking onto the necromancer’s front lawn, we set up the stage…and start belting songs out of nowhere.  “HELLO, STONEDINE! ARE YOU READY TO ROCK?!”(Did we mention we never set up a crowd?) “I CAN'T HEAR YOU, STONEDINE!"(Yeah, we didn't.)  “A single man in a guard’s uniform comes up running, shouting “Hey, HEY, what the gently caress do you guys think you’re doing?” “WE ARE BLÜDMAJ, AND THIS IS ELECTRIC EEL CHAAAAAAAIR  ” “And this is private property—” “ONE TWO THREE FOUR”At which point we started playing, with each of us pulling out everything from Primus to Iron Maiden to Mötorhead to Nekrogoblkon, deafening the guards and bringing in a crowd while our thief worked in the background trying to find the gems. This worked out pretty drat well – my ridiculous charisma quickly drew in a crowd, and every time the B&E started dragging out a bit, we switched back to the band and their hijinks. We’d use class abilities to drag all the attention to us, too. Distraction spells became “IT GOES TO ELEVEN,” the druid’s shape-shifting abilities became SFX, and when the thief was busted and jumped out a second-story window to escape supernatural law enforcement, I turned my bard’s Suggestion spell on the crowd and turned it into an instant mosh pit as we escaped on the druid (who’d shapeshifted into a HEAVY METAL STALLION). The warrior (drummer) tore up the stage and fled behind us, but as we ran off, the DM unleashed a final twist – based on the fact that our thief hadn’t quite bagged all the gems that were there. Right before you ride off into the night, an old man runs out of the house shouting "No, don't go! You don't know the power--" “WE GRAB HIM AND RUN” “Wait, what?”At that point, we were already committing trespassing, breaking and entering, theft, vandalism and assaulting the police, so we figured, well, why not add kidnapping to the mix? “Uh. Okay. You grab the man and run off. [Thief], the further you get away from the house, the heavier your sack of gems weighs.” “Oh poo poo.” “The man, struggling against [Warrior]’s grip, sees this and shouts ‘It’s still in the house!’ – just before the manor bursts into flames.” “…Uhhhhhhhh…” "The sack feels much lighter, now, though!  "And that’s the story of how a bass band is now wanted for trespassing, breaking and entering, theft, vandalism, assault, kidnapping and arson after having an illegal performance in Facist Heavy Metal Land.
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Aug 12, 2013 00:48
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Robindaybird posted:and realized quickly that dungeons and dragons brings out the Humorously Sociopath out in everyone. Role playing in general does this, because it guides you towards making clever solutions to freeform problems, and because "the man" won't punish you for antisocial behavior with his "rules" and "punishments" and "ethics." And if he does, you can generally just chop down the man and get even stronger in the bargain, like some bizarre kind of Highlander. And this is exactly what I'm talking about.
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Aug 12, 2013 05:53
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My PC's in an FR campaign just used this bag of gems they got from a dungeon to buy and free a huge chunk of slaves from Calimsham and they marched them to the Tethyr border to found a little settlement of freed slaves. I think it only happened because some of them had watched a recent episode of a famous fantasy TV show, but it was nice to see PCs who are usually more quiet do something big like that. I'm thinking of getting them caught up in a Tethyrian-Calimshan conflict over it so we can have some Diplomacy role-playing baby.
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Aug 12, 2013 18:10
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So, we just finished converting our Call of Cthulhu D20 game to 13th Age. Here's the result of the first short session: A half-demon Sorcerer/Mobster used his icon relationship success with Hastur to will a flying car permit into existence. He then proceeded to literally explode a thug with a sonic fist, and went insane in the process. Also, as it turns out, chaff grenades affect thunder magic. A disguised Frog-man Fighter used a conflicted success with Azathoth to burn down a thriving African metropolis, killing hundreds of people. Her motivation? Stealing a really nice shovel from one store. That shovel was then used by the ancient Descendant of Cthulhu Ranger to brutally murder an enraged shopkeeper. All in all, the system converts rather well, and I can't wait till next week.
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Aug 13, 2013 02:41
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OmniDesol posted:A disguised Frog-man Fighter used a conflicted success with Azathoth to burn down a thriving African metropolis, killing hundreds of people. Her motivation? Stealing a really nice shovel from one store. That shovel was then used by the ancient Descendant of Cthulhu Ranger to brutally murder an enraged shopkeeper. The same shopkeeper it was stolen from, or a different one? 
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Aug 13, 2013 08:19
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goatface posted:You could just continue the evil villain's plot in the background. Have them take over a few places that refugees arrive from, interrupt the flow of [IMPORTANT TRADE PRODUCT] into/out of the city, have a few raiders infiltrate and try to steal [IMPORTANT ITEM], have the local guard strength increased as a result because of the "larger situation". Generally make life for them somewhat more annoying, but not hugely, just enough to remind them that there are some bad things happening out beyond "their" city You could also hit them where they hurt - pollute the city in some way, have the Overlord something vile into the sewers that begins to spread a plague, then the Adventurers, who are now in charge of Sanitation, have to do something about it or face the wrath of the people.
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Aug 13, 2013 09:39
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Dareon posted:The same shopkeeper it was stolen from, or a different one? The very same! His last, noble effort was to try and set her on fire for her crimes. It didn't turn out well for him.
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Aug 15, 2013 05:08
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Our Rogue Trader group had a session today that might have saved the campaign from underlying issues that if left festering would have probably caused the campaign to explode in a later session. Our group had mostly been pretty shady so far, doing deals with entities we shouldn't and causing widespread havoc thanks to our generally lax safety precautions which was mostly okay still. Four of the five group members were pretty shady, my Bonetrader kroot was super shady and a bit of a sociopath, our Explorator was dealing with forbidden psychic tech, we had a Dark Eldar and to top it off our group leader was a super shady Cold Trader who had basically sealed our actual RT in a stasis chamber and took power, constantly claiming that the actual RT was 'resting' in her quarters. This would have been all well and good were it not for the fact that the group's fifth member was an Astropath supremely devoted to the Emperor. He ratted out our group to the Inquisition and these last two sessions he was mostly a hindrance to the party, the biggest moment being our battle against an Inquisitorial assassin. He did not participate in that fight, mostly because he got a psychic message from the Inquisitor telling him not to participate. That's an excellent reason, but the fact is his avoidance of the actual fight resulted in our Cold Trader having to burn a fate point, being at only 1 fate point after that. The player was not exactly happy about the fact that a fight that would've been easy went horribly for him thanks to a couple of really bad rolls, such as when my Scare grenade ended up hitting him too, resulting in him getting a -10 to all his rolls which directly resulted in him eating one more hit from the assassin than he should have, the hit that did him in. The player essentially suicided his character later in the session, not feeling like playing it anymore from a combination of really bad luck and some poorish skill choices, as well as a bit of over all frustration with the game. The session ended soon after the character's death and we had a long talk with our Rogue Trader's player just taking up all the issues he'd had with the campaign, most of which came from our Astropath, the worst of which were the two last sessions. What his character did was perfectly OK in-character, but OOC... It just shat on the rest of the group. The fact that the Inquisition came after us was just good and proper, but it should have happened because we hosed up and didn't hide what we did properly instead of it being just one character selling everyone else out, and the character was pretty bullshit anyway - mind control psykers tend to be that. There were three players that session, me with my new character (not really important knowledge, but it's a shady guy too, although not corrupt at least), the Cold Trader and the Astropath. As the session ended we just talked for a couple of hours the four of us, the player of the Cold Trader being the most vocal. We talked out all of our issues like adults instead of letting them fester and rot the campaign slowly from the inside, something that probably would have ended in more than a few ruined friendships. While Astropath's player might have been most at fault, at least he recognized it and is actually probably going to change his character soon, probably next session -and the faults with other people were brought up too, such as when my character was careless with grenades, something I'm going to stop doing from now on. If the Astropath changes his character too then most of the group has changed characters, the Explorator being the only one left out of the original group. It should be a clean slate start with the group dynamics at least with no major conflicts that cause one character betraying the others, even if there are going to be minor issues between characters without a doubt (such as our two Explorator's being both quite heretical but in different ways, one by dabbling in xeno tech and one by dabbling in xeno genes - the xeno gene dabbler is my new character and Explorator in name only essentially, if any member of Adeptus Mechanicus saw in detail what he's done to himself that would probably be a cause for indiscriminate disintergration, which is why he hasn't really been in contact with most members of it for a couple of decades). Maybe our group suddenly stops being a whole bunch of horrible people, or at least horrible people trying to do some good as well as evil. The talk cleared a lot of bad air and I'm glad we had it. Our group did not end up as a cautionary tale thanks to that.
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Aug 16, 2013 00:41
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Glad to hear your group got its grievances aired, even if it was at the cost of a few characters. I'll admit I winced when I got to the Astropath-- IC/OOC separation, metagaming and related concepts are important, and conflict drives plot, but I always scratch my head when someone ends up making a character that operates at really obvious cross-purposes like that.
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Aug 16, 2013 01:38
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Pfft, as soon as you noticed he wasn't joining in the fight you should have executed him. There's no point in keeping non-functional property around.
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Aug 16, 2013 02:44
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Bieeardo posted:Glad to hear your group got its grievances aired, even if it was at the cost of a few characters. I'll admit I winced when I got to the Astropath-- IC/OOC separation, metagaming and related concepts are important, and conflict drives plot, but I always scratch my head when someone ends up making a character that operates at really obvious cross-purposes like that. In his defense it wasn't immediately obvious that the group would begin to do super shady and heretical stuff, but he still chose to keep his character extremely loyalist instead of letting him get corrupted with the rest of them. Or at least he could have let our group have more time than one session to convince him that things weren't that bad, instead of him running straight to the Inquisition immediately after learning about what he'd done. Oh well, what's done is done and hopefully with the fresh slate the group starts spending more time cooperating than infighting, with the probable exception of the two Explorators (neither one is going to rat the other one out to the Ad Mech at least when both have done questionable things to themselves). Plus hopefully we can make amends with the Inquistion and all that if most of the problems are gone with the Cold Trader dead and if we get rid of the deal with one particular entity (which is embodied by a daemonic tree growing on our ship). Especially since, you know, the main architecht of the deal is dead. At least the actual end of the last session before the talk was pretty funny in the after math of the Cold Trader's death when my Genetor started checking the personnel lists for the Trader's name since nobody had told him it and found out that our actual Rogue Trader wasn't the Cold Trader. Cue a confused vox conversation between me and our Astropath. G: "Uh, do you know who Nadeus is?" A: "Who?" G: "Uh, our actual Rogue Trader apparantely." A: "What. Then who was this other woman? The one that was dragged off by cannibals?" G: "Dunno" I do wonder how the Astropath is going to be written out now. Especially since right at the end the Genetor thanks to his knowledge of the Inquisition figured out that there's a mole, and there's pretty much only one possible culprit. Especially since none of our NPC crew have any initiative - they have stated that.
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Aug 16, 2013 13:52
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Earthbound, Fate Core Style One of the things I love is teaching people new systems. I had the opportunity to do it this week with some great players. We created an Earthboundy group of kid characters. We ended up with: Yup!, Saturn-Valley raised mystic, and adopted brother of Sharon Peebles, the Trust-fund archeologist, friend of Fox Scott, Amateur Ninja and Rollerskate master. (For the purposes of this post, Yup!'s name will be unpunctuated). The group started out in Bright Heights Nevala, in the Southwest of Eagleland. It was the annual Starfall festival, and everyone enjoyed playing games. That is, everyone except Sharon (who had an alligator clamber all over the Hit the Bar challenge) and Yup, who used his PSI powers to win at the balloon pop. Blatantly. In exchange, the owner of the balloon pop gave Yup a whole reel of tickets to move along. Unfortunately, those tickets were stolen by ALOUISA RAD and the SKATEBOARD FUN CLUB FOR GIRLS! Sharon decided she was Overprotective of Yup, and took on the skate gang by herself. (She did this with social combat, telling them that they only stole the tickets because they were poor). The group began shredding their way up over and above Sharon, which led Fox to join in...by ninja-stealing all the tickets. He also managed to knock a group of girls off their skateboards. Sharon's harsh words eventually sent the group off crying, and Yup went home to bed. They cashed in their tickets for a prize... exploration passes to Cactus Cave! The next morning, the trio made their way toward the cave. Unfortunately, the rope bridge was blocked by the cowboy Mayor, Judd Hemhaw. When his social threats and warnings broke down, he tried to destroy the bridge! Kid archeologist Sharon was able to swing across, while Fox jumped the bridge on his rollerskates! They prevailed against the mayor's boobytraps and abashed, he let them enter the cave. --- Inside the cave, Yup revealed he had been sleepwalking, but was now awake. The group snuck over a sound ahead, which was an auction! The animals were bidding on a variety of human junk, but came to a prized artifact: A Redblue gem that fell from the sky. (Here, we brought out the contest rules, where Yup created aspects like "staring at rich moles" to give Sharon the victory.) The moles warned the group that there was something DANGEROUS in the cave, and to be really careful. The moles were right; over the next few minutes, the players would encounter a creepy lake monster and a series of malicious psychic crystals. The group wisely slammed the problems into each other, ripping the crystals from the wall and throwing them at the lake monster. Soon, they reached a potential exit. Sunlight streamed through a hole to the outside world...and there was the outline of Mayor Hemhaw. The crazed mayor demanded they leave, even firing his pistol to deafen them! He then vanished into the gloom, promising to use force where reason failed. Luckily, the ninja was able to sense him in the darkness, and put the mayor into a brutal Ninja-lock! Once they knocked sense into him, he explained; something in the cave was controlling his mind and making him crazy. The group should tie him up and leave him near the sun. (They did.) Our heroes reached the center of the cave. Inside was a door with alien writing; they discovered that it was actually a series of dance moves. While Sharon and Fox weren't able to do the dance, Yup reluctantly helped (which worked). Inside the next room was the cause of the disturbance; the alien master GROKTHROK! The purple-armored demon summoned his 12 Starman minions, and the fight was on! The fight was brutal. Our heroes suffered physical, social, and psionic abuse and the Alien Egomaniac showed them visions of doom! Luckily, our heroes were able to work together. Sharon swung her scooter around. Yup used PSI telekinesis, and Fox used his variety of ninja weapons. The numbers game caught up with them, though; each hero was outnumbered and losing ground. In a desperate move, the amateur ninja, who was sweating and bleeding, threw one minion into another six, turning the tide. Soon, the alien overlord was embarrassed about his mother, had lost his helmet, and had Kunai in the Back. He fought to the bitter end, and instead of stopping the combat, he decided to COLLAPSE THE MOUNTAIN ON HIS FOES! Our heroes smashed the door, rescued the moles and, with fabulous aplomb, raced out of the mountain and dove with the mayor into a deep waterfall! The redblue gem started glowing, so Sharon stuck it under water. Her archeologist sense told her one thing: the crystal was broadcasting to space, and it was telling Grokthrok's people that Earth wasn't to be messed with. Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 02:46 on May 4, 2023 |
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Aug 19, 2013 08:43
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In the 4th Edition DnD session I'm playing at the moment, I just killed a replication of chaos magic by flinging myself with arcane sorcery forty feet while trapped inside a tuba.
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Aug 19, 2013 22:55
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Having recently transformed into a duck, the former cyborg dinosaur PC lay dying from an arrow to the head. Milk poured freely from his ears, the consequence of stuffing said ears with single-serving milk boxes in an attempt to block out the impending terrible singing of his ally, a vaguely Slavic vegetable barbarian. In a last-ditch effort to lend significance to his death, the dead duck's player reasoned that the cactus he had kicked across the lava temple to strike at the archer had traveled over 100 feet in the course of a round, meaning it should deliver enough force on collision to provide that the archer is "at least knocked prone or something". Gamma World is a pretty good game you guys.
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Aug 20, 2013 00:40
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So, we just finished a pretty major chapter of the Call of Cthulhu D20 game that we recently converted and hybridized with 13th Age. Our cast includes: Xena (secretly Xena Marsh) a time-traveling Deep One Queen from the distant future, sent back in time to 1953 so as to prevent a horrible tragedy from befalling her underground kingdom. Her class is Ranger. Dr. James Moriarty, the result of a crazy ritual designed to bring Sherlock Holmes to life. The ritual succeeded, but Holmes has lost his memory, and refers to himself as the one name he has burned into his brain: Moriarty. He is playing a Human Monk. Constance "Connie" Cooper, a journalist who moonlights as an occult romance novelist. She's also the avatar of an unknown Goddess, but darned if she knows that. She has the blood of pixies flowing through her veins, and somehow remains blissfully ignorant that she is the source of the odd magical feats that happen around her. She is playing a Bard. Mr. Mustachioed Manly, a Frog-woman, posing as a frog-man, posing as a large man with a walrus mustache. A master of disguise, Mr. Manly must keep the large and versatile frog-tongue well-hidden. She is playing a Fighter. Gertz Gentile (Gen-Teel), a member of the Demon mafia. He's a force to be reckoned with, and doesn't suffer fools lightly. The blood of demons runs through his veins, his car flies, and his fists have been known to explode heads. He's also destined to change the world, as told by demonic prophecy. He's playing a Sorcerer. and finally, we have Jerald Gugler, often refereed to as "The Gugler". A murderous sociopath who would have been better off in an asylum rather than an occupation. He is somehow involved in a prophecy involving the end of the world. He is a rogue. We began this encounter where we left off last week, which saw Gertz knocked out and tied up, Dr. Moriarty having a panic attack, Connie Cooper and the Gugler taken hostage, and a very large, prestigious African city set ablaze by Mr. Manly and Xena. The first two had successfully completed their contract, having been sent to Africa to locate Dr. Panther Wellington, famed television survivalist, from whatever mysterious cult had kidnapped him. The good news is, they found him. The bad news is, they had difficulties with that whole "cult" part. Xena attempted to leave town, but found her escape blocked by a mysterious green flames, that did not bear heat. She was, however, directed to a safe location by the town's guard, and escaped via underground tunnel. This tunnel, however, led her right into the enemy's clutches. Finding herself in a large temple, she was flagged down by a friendly man, who told her that he had located her friends. This proved to be a trap, however, and after being rather easily tricked by the offer of comfortable chairs and tea, Xena found herself chained to a comfortable chair, and locked in a cage with the similarly trapped Connie/Gugler duo. Meanwhile, across town, Mr. Manly had located Gertz and Moriarty, and sweet-talked her way into letting Gertz free from his binds. Gertz promptly murdered the man, found a clue as to the temple's location (at this point, no one is aware that Xena, Gugler, and Connie are kidnapped and being held in said temple), and freed Dr. Wellington. They then flee with their flying car, and regroup at home base. At the base, Dr. Wellington insists that the group must go to the temple. He explains that the cult that owns the temple, the cult of Tele'tehai (the elephant headed) has within their possession a powerful item, the Golden Idol of Yigg, and that if this idol falls into the wrong hands, the world will fall into peril. The group sets off in the cover of night, and discusses their plan. Xena tries to use a conflicted success with Cthulhu to get the group to sneak in and help her via underground tunneling, and successfully summons a kraken to the group's location. However, Gertz refuses to use the Kraken because "I do not trust giants, fish, or giant fish." They successfully break-in via our game's first montage sequence, highlight of which include Gertz flying everyone over a death pit, and Moriarty punching a giant-blade trap with his bare hands. Having found their way to Xena, the Gugler, and Connie, the group proceeds to interrogate the guard in charge. After a lot of tomfoolery, they order the guard to enter the cage, and free their friends. The guard appears to comply, but instead triggers a lever to make the cage rise towards the ceiling. Moriarty uses an Improbable Stunt to Shoryuken his way through the cage, Mr. Manly uses her frog-woman leap to enter through the hole, and Gertz flies. The cage ended up in a tightly packed arena, the floor sealing beneath them. An impassioned announcer hyped the crowd by introducing the battle: the heretics (the players) versus the true devotees of Tele'tehai! Tele'tehai is revealed to be a green dragon, who has been given a stone mask resembling an elephant. The other combatants in the fight included Oobsoon, the Champion of Bramblepelt (a frenzy demon), Lady Dreamweaver (a Despoiler Mage), and 6 members of the audience (Dretches, one of which had a Dire Rat for a pet). Highlights of the combat: -Gertz just refusing to fight, spending a success with Hastur to say that he wasn't a heretic; just a member of the audience who got lost. He then used a teleport from his Elven Heritage talent to sit in a VIP box seat. He was quite upset when Oobsoon teleported after him. -Tele'tehai going down within one round, due to some nice focus fire. -Lady Dreamweaver casting Confusion on half the party, before Gertz unleashed some absolutely crazy sorcery. -Connie "accidentally" poisoning all of the audience members with a deadly sneeze. However, one moment really turned out to be the best highlight... picture this: Sherlock Holmes backhands a frenzied demon, releases an absurd flurry of punches, crits twice, and delivers a fatal crushing blow to the things ribs with his cane. His response "Well, when you think about it, demons are completely illogical; if it can't exist, then I should have no problem killing one." Mr. Manly spends a conflicted success with Cthulhu to cause the temple to start sinking into the ocean, which somehow formed in the middle of Africa. Gertz flies after the Golden Idol, steals it, and watches as the bolder-trap it triggered crushes a ton of other cultists. The Gugler trips an old lady, and rides her out of the temple like a surfboard (because "I need to go the extra mile to establish myself as this party's sociopath."), Moriarty simply finds the best path via reasoning, and Connie flies out, after wishing she could fly. Xena destroys the golden idol via her Success with Cthulhu, much to Gertz's dismay, the team reports back to base, and flies out of Africa, and back to dear sweet Arkham, MA, closing out the session, and making for a nice end to Adventurer tier. God only knows what these people will do to me now that they have access to champion abilities...
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Aug 20, 2013 05:25
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OmniDesol posted:So, we just finished a pretty major chapter of the Call of Cthulhu D20 game that we recently converted and hybridized with 13th Age. I assume the hybridization is the reason they were able to do half that stuff without dying or going insane?
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Aug 20, 2013 05:33
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I'm not sure about 'without going insane', because it seems to me that they're all totally bonkers already. 
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Aug 20, 2013 06:20
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The 3.5 D&D game I'm currently playing in has recently established just how brutal a stealthy party that plans ahead can be. We're all 5th level, and we just plowed through 4 combats in a row without letting our enemies have an action - between a surprise round and decent initiative rolls, nothing survived to see their first action in combat until we met up with 5 grimlocks, all with class levels. The DM said he might have to rework some thing he had planned so we don't continue destroying everything like a very sneaky hurricane.
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Aug 21, 2013 05:25
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Golden Bee posted:Earthbound, Fate Core Style You really captured the style of Earthbound here, well done. Your players must've loved it.
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Aug 21, 2013 19:56
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Carrasco posted:You really captured the style of Earthbound here, well done. Your players must've loved it. Thanks! They had a lot of fun. If you're jonesing for a pickup game of FATE, the Google+ group has 2-3 events a week. The times and genre vary widely.
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Aug 21, 2013 21:43
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Yawgmoth posted:The 3.5 D&D game I'm currently playing in has recently established just how brutal a stealthy party that plans ahead can be. We're all 5th level, and we just plowed through 4 combats in a row without letting our enemies have an action - between a surprise round and decent initiative rolls, nothing survived to see their first action in combat until we met up with 5 grimlocks, all with class levels. The DM said he might have to rework some thing he had planned so we don't continue destroying everything like a very sneaky hurricane. Seriously this. The Special Project Group of the Department of Sanitation Department has just discovered the joys of maneuver combat and have been mopping up the floor with what should have been some very tough encounters. In Rolemaster, there are plenty of movement-based spells and adrenal-based skills that add bonuses to ordinary maneuvers like climb, jump and sneak that can turn a frontal assault into a sneaky/stealthy version of this Matrix Revolution fight. In our most recent session, the SPG/DSD were continuing their "neighborhood renovation" project when they were given the location of a temple of the Ebon Triad (basically a bunch of heretic worshipers of Erythnul, Hextor, and Vecna) and pointed at it like a shaped charge. So instead of kicking in the front door and trying to mow down folks in a frontal assault, they set off the alarm with a completely unplanned feint to get the enemy forces to assemble and react, then stealthily jumped/climbed/parkoured past the set defense and picked them off one at a time from behind in a really fun and one-sided battle of maneuver and ambush. When the last battle-priest fell, one of my players summed it up by saying, "Wow. We sorta kick rear end when we want to." In a different D&D campaign we went with a sneaky party of Rogue, Rogue/Wizard and Rogue/Cleric and it was amazing how effective that combo can be. We were very patient and Agrikk fucked around with this message at 00:09 on Aug 22, 2013 |
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Aug 22, 2013 00:06
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My GM/Housemate just spent the evening making these: To comemorate the end of the D&D reskin campaign we've just finished. Awesome idea, and pretty drat notable in my opinion!
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Aug 22, 2013 00:44
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petrol blue posted:My GM/Housemate just spent the evening making these: I am guessing those are music cds or is it like collections of the campaigns in audio book format.
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Aug 22, 2013 01:18
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Agrikk posted:In our most recent session, the SPG/DSD were continuing their "neighborhood renovation" project when they were given the location of a temple of the Ebon Triad (basically a bunch of heretic worshipers of Erythnul, Hextor, and Vecna)
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Aug 22, 2013 01:53
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Senior Scarybagels posted:I am guessing those are music cds or is it like collections of the campaigns in audio book format. Music CDs. We all came up with a 'theme song' for our characters, but most of it is 'suitable songs for X event'. Interested to see what the GM was thinking of as we [insert rampage here].
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Aug 22, 2013 02:16
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petrol blue posted:Music CDs. We all came up with a 'theme song' for our characters, but most of it is 'suitable songs for X event'. Interested to see what the GM was thinking of as we [insert rampage here].
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Aug 22, 2013 02:17
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From my experiences in GMing, if his mental soundtrack was anything but 'ohshitohshitohshit,they'll-realise-I-hadn't-planned-this' on loop, I'll be impressed.
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Aug 22, 2013 02:27
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E: Nvm
Captain Walker fucked around with this message at 03:43 on Aug 22, 2013 |
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Aug 22, 2013 03:16
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Yawgmoth posted:Oh hey, that's the same guys we're fighting! He's running a modified version (because it has to be with the way we're rolling)of the Age of Worms adventures. Erythnul's part of the temple was where the aforementioned steamrolling took place. 'Sup AoW buddy! Modified versions are the only versions. Looks like I'll need to be careful then of what I post, lest I give a spoiler for your campaign. Trust me, you are going to have a blast in that one! Actually, though, I'm taking the advice of folks in this thread and the campaign is now going to be less about the Age of Worms and more about overthrowing the Overlord. I'm still mining the modules for neat encounters and stuff, but depending on the actions of the players the actual AoW stuff might occur to another group of NPCs in parallel and in the background to the activities of the PCs. This way the two plots can intertwine, allowing the PCs to dip into that arc when it's suitable to do so. There's just too much cool poo poo in that arc to not play it, but I want the players to be able to do their thing too. petrol blue posted:From my experiences in GMing, if his mental soundtrack was anything but 'ohshitohshitohshit,they'll-realise-I-hadn't-planned-this' on loop, I'll be impressed. No game after the third grade goes the way you planned. The players know this (and experienced ones love to zig knowing you wanted them to zag), so relax and go with it! Agrikk fucked around with this message at 22:45 on Aug 22, 2013 |
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Aug 22, 2013 22:38
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Yeah, that's been my general plan, hence one PC surfing an exploding robot dog into a spaceship. Still, GMing is a kind of (very fun) constant low-level panic to me.
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Aug 22, 2013 23:37
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Today's session of Rogue Trader proved that the issues within our group had finally been laid to rest, all players stopped loving around being fundamentally against each other even though there were clear cases of rivalry within the group. Now everyone in the group has some dark secret, even our Fire and Brimstone-Missionary is hiding dirty secrets. It did cause some problems that neither of our extra heretical Explorators were willing to trust him at first, preferring to speak in Techno-Lingua in his presence up until we managed to convince him to let out a dirty secret in exchange for both of the Explorators giving out one too. The Xeno-Genetor tech priest told a little about the fact that he'd been involved in a super secret Inquisition project that did some pretty interesting experiments, the Psyker tech priest told about the fact that there were some artefacts that could give psychic powers (heavily implying he'd stuffed some of them inside of him) and the Missionary told about him believing in 'The Greater Good', as in he serves the Tau. Even our Seneschal is a False Man, an artificially created human, and even though he seems to be the only one in the group with a conscience he knows his mere existence is heretical so he isn't going to rat out the rest if they do bad stuff. Or are bad stuff as is the case with the Genetor. He's just going to constantly feel really, really bad about what the rest are doing. Our whole group is also filled to the brim with absolute sociopaths, although at least we are sort-of-kind-of Imperial minded at least! We felled a demon tree and helped Adeptus Mechanicus deal with a project gone awry! (Of course that doesn't change the fact that we had a demon tree on our ship, mostly thanks to a now-dead Cold Trader, but PC-turned-NPC Kroot and our Psyker tech priest also had a hand in it). The Ad Mech project was heretical as all hell and we dealt with the problem with it in the most sociopathic way possible, enough so that our Seneschal got super depressed about it at the end of the session, especially since the project was essentially an attempt to create super soldiers, which ended with their rebellion - a similar project was behind Seneschal's birth. Surprisingly both of our Explorators ended up becoming the bestest of friends, mostly because they immediately agreed on a "If you don't ask, I don't either"-policy. Now of course both are wondering what the hell is the other one's deal, but so far neither one has completely realized what the other is doing or is. The Psyker tech priest has realized less about the Genetor than the Genetor has realized about him - mostly thanks to the fact that there's very little info about the Genetor in Ad Mech databases, most of it being extremely classified. Still, they feel pretty relaxed in each other's company and don't worry if the other one sees them committing tech heresy, both maybe raise their eyebrows a little when the other does something weird but generally neither one gives a poo poo. Of course technically speaking neither one has eyebrows any more, or probably any hair whatsoever, even if one is for biological and the other for mechanical reasons. Our group's spirits are high and we even got 100 bonus 'bad people' XP for this session in addition to 600 regular XP, although our Seneschal didn't take the bonus exp since his character felt bad about how we dealt with the rebellion of the experimental super soldiers. Which is by sticking their leader in stasis after nearly murdering him because our Seneschal's attempt at subduing him peacefully ended up going horribly, horribly wrong, convincing the rest that we'd help them take revenge on the Mechanicus for their mistreatment and then gassing them all with sleep gas and strapping them to beds for the duration of the trip to another secret Ad Mech facility, our Psyker tech priest also brutally murdered an unarmed relatively harmless nutcase heretek because he misunderstood the orders the Seneschal gave him and as the cherry on top of the horrible person-cake we stole from the facility some super soldier fetuses and some gene seed that probably came from a space marine. Ad Mech asked us that we A) take back the facility intact and B) get bonuses if we get most of the subjects and their leader too, both of which he succeeded in doing - and we got bonuses too in the form of 50 plasma guns and suits of carapace armour, which are probably eventually gonna help us get an elite shock troop for our ship. My Genetor is probably going to do some private experiments with the stolen genetic material, either that or use it later as a bargaining chip with the Inquisition or just give it to his 'friend' in the Ordo Xenos to score some good will. Or do both, do experiments first and give 'em forward later. I hope I didn't make too many weird typos, it's super late here and I'm pretty tired.
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Aug 23, 2013 00:12
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I'm DM a 4th ed DnD game. While discussing it with a number of my party, we somehow ended up with an impromptu RP for cutting through the red tape of Waterdeep. It was silly. 
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Aug 23, 2013 08:18
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Y'know, the more I hear about rogue trader (not just your game), the more I a) Think everyone playing it is very worrying, and b) Want to play it. It's like a bad-guy campaign, except you're playing the 'marginally-better-I-guess' guys. Anyone remember SLA Industries? It's like that, but with more Manowar/less Korn.
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Aug 23, 2013 11:03
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| # ? May 21, 2024 15:45 |
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Honestly, that sounds like a pitch-perfect Rogue Trader campaign to me.
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Aug 23, 2013 11:08
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