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Overconfidence and stupid decisions because of that always own. Being certain that the enemy you are facing isn't too tough usually results in corpses. More than the usual for a combat encounter I mean.
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Oct 31, 2013 11:10
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At some point in the near future, I'll be running the 2-hour 13th Age quickplay. Hopefully I'll have some interesting stories from that; one of the players I've grabbed is usually pretty inventive.
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Oct 31, 2013 11:35
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pawsplay posted:I've rarely, if ever, seen such naked incompetence, especially from a seasoned and normally clever group, turning a few mediocre rolls into a death pit. It was among my worst experiences in a lot of ways, as it was frustrating to watch, and my gaming group were not happy with me for some time after. But it was also kind of hilarious to watch their parade of utterly terrible decisions put two party members and a valuable staff in the grave from an encounter that wasn't even worth an "average" award for them. Well that's their own fault. It's not your responsibility to come up with their plan of action.
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Oct 31, 2013 16:05
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I dunno, unless you're playing an adversarial GM I'd have at least let them roll a spot check or something to give them a chance to spot that they weren't JUST ogres. Your game though, maybe that's what your players want.
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Oct 31, 2013 16:42
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How did the ogre barbarian know to smash the cleric's "100k gp healing stuff"?
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Oct 31, 2013 16:57
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PantsOptional posted:How did the ogre barbarian know to smash the cleric's "100k gp healing stuff"? 1. Enemy has a thing. 2. I can break things. 3. Break enemy's things. VanSandman posted:I dunno, unless you're playing an adversarial GM I'd have at least let them roll a spot check or something to give them a chance to spot that they weren't JUST ogres. Your game though, maybe that's what your players want. Moral of the story: never assume an encounter is won before you've won it.
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Oct 31, 2013 17:20
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Sundering's such an annoyance, he probably could have broken the PCs faster and easier. The kick de gras got an eyebrow raise, but meh. Not my game.
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Oct 31, 2013 17:31
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PantsOptional posted:How did the ogre barbarian know to smash the cleric's "100k gp healing stuff"? I think that was meant to say staff, which would make sense since the cleric was probably holding it at the time (and it's much easier to smash someone who isn't able to fight back). If you've got sundering feats, you might as well use 'em after all!
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Oct 31, 2013 20:00
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Sunder is one of those techniques that you often need a player's agreement on, much like Mordenkainen's Disjunction. Basically, for every use a player gets out of it, so does the DM.
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Oct 31, 2013 20:09
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Right, but how did he know it was anything meaningful? He's an ogre barbarian, he has an INT of 8. Unless the cleric in question was using it to shoot obvious magic out of the end (which he wasn't at least according to the story), I would think that the barbarian's best bet would be to smash the cleric directly. They don't even have anything to help them Sunder besides Power Attack anyway, so it's actually much less beneficial to try to Sunder.
PantsOptional fucked around with this message at 20:24 on Oct 31, 2013 |
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Oct 31, 2013 20:22
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Well apart from the specifics I wouldn't want my players to go into an encounter and learn the lesson that "if we don't take the time to cast Detect Magic, we have a better chance of getting stomped." That just leads straight down the path towards half-hour preparation routines before every little conflict that drain half their resources before one attack roll has been made.
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Oct 31, 2013 21:47
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My Lovely Horse posted:Well apart from the specifics I wouldn't want my players to go into an encounter and learn the lesson that "if we don't take the time to cast Detect Magic, we have a better chance of getting stomped." That just leads straight down the path towards half-hour preparation routines before every little conflict that drain half their resources before one attack roll has been made. Well, I think there's a midpoint somewhere between half-hour preparations times, versus not even eyeballing or considering their opponents' equipment, much less using Detect Magic. The wizard in question had permanent Arcane Sight. The scout volunteered to scout them out, but was actually talked out of it. The encounter was not designed to be taxing in resources at all. This was CR 8 versus an average party level between 10 and 11. Also, it was a gatehouse. I think it's reasonable to expect the PCs might approach it from the perspective of trying to get past it cleanly, versus pasting some ogres with absolute least effort possible.
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Oct 31, 2013 22:00
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CR is a notoriously unreliable metric for determining an encounter's strength to begin with, and it's not like 3.5 generally encourages tactical play or careful consideration. I mean, yeah, they were dumb to rush in, but when you have your ogre decide to coup de gras a downed cleric because 'bad mood' you can't say you share none of the blame. At least it wasn't a TPK though.
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Oct 31, 2013 23:41
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FRIENDSHIP or Turns Out Eldar Mooks Exist, And They Are Just Like All Mooks (Incompetent, Bribable And Easily Confused) Our Rogue Trader group had an amazing session. The start of it was a bit slow, we argued a bit with Eldars, saved the Explorator we'd been sent to save, heard a Navy fleet was coming into the system in the middle of nowhere and over all did pretty standard stuff, including activating a Yu'Vath portal device into uncharted space (we were not actually sure what it was until we activated it, but activating weird Xenos devices are the sort of bad decisions our group loves doing). The crew was the usual, Tau Loyalist Missionary, False Man Seneschal, Weirdboy, Tyranid-Hybrid Genetor and the Psyker Explorator. After the starting bits we had a 'board meeting'. The meeting had one item with one subsection on the agenda: "SECRETS: and how they suck". The general agreement was that we'd start with the Weirdboy's secrets since he did not really have any. His big secret: he has a cage in his room. That has "Sekrit cage" written on it. There's a thing inside. Deep stuff. Then we spent a few minutes getting the Seneschal to start revealing his secrets (which was hard since he was being his regular squirrely self). We eventually got bored of it and decided to move on to the Missionary while the Seneschal thought of the best way to reveal what's his deal. He was also a bit miffed that the Missionary called the two Explorators "Normal, logical humans" which was why the priest was more interested in the Seneschal's secrets. For some reason the Seneschal tried to argue about all three points in regards to the suspicious creepy mechanical woman sometimes having a glowing weapon for no reason and the big unnaturally strong woman with a weird-shaped helmet and odd manner. The Missionary was a bit squirrely as well and said in the vaguest possible way that he followed the Greater Good, at which point the Genetor bluntly called him a Tau Loyalist, which he sort of not really denied, defending it as an 'open viewpoint'. Seneschal was, again, miffed that he was always being accused of everything while everyone else seemed to know our Missionary is following a Xenos Creed. Issue of hypocrisy was raised, and promptly ignored. Both also told of their loyalties, Missionary to some high ranking priest who'd told him to not make any deals with Eldar while the Seneschal had the exact opposite, Ad Mech higher ups had told him to be diplomatic with the Eldar. Their issues mostly dealt with (Seneschal was still reluctant to reveal his False Man status) we moved on to the two Explorators. Genetor revealed her loyalty to the Inquisition, which somehow surprised the Missionary who I'd literally told that I have a friend in the Inquisition who asked me to recover Magos Noradi for the whole "secret Tyranid project", and I'd even asked his help in convincing Noradi. By telling him Inquisition needs her. Somehow he had not realized that I had probably been a part of an Inquisitor's retinue at one point or another. Loyalties revealed the Genetor casually removed her helmet and revealed her horrible, alienish head as well. Seneschal, again was pissed that he'd been the part of heavy scrutiny by everyone else when they'd had a horrible monster amongst them all along. Nobody particularily cared about the protests, even if the Missionary was a bit freaked out by the whole Tyranid-Hybrid-thing, even if he does not know what Tyranids are. Psyker Explorator realized why I'd been so good at understanding Genestealer tactics, known about the Genestealer cultists and other similar weird stuff - probably easier to know about that stuff if you are pretty close to a Tyranid, you know. "I doubt any of you have done anything stupider than I have done unless you've, I dunno, stuck Chaos artifacts in you", the Genetor stated, not noticing the other Explorator being a bit suspicious because of course she has a Chaos artifact inside of her. The Psyker reveals her secrets, although she doesn't mention the Chaos artifact, just stating that she's put psychic Xenostech inside of her. The Missionary is actually a bit enraged at the revelation as he hates psykers, enough so to forget his ire against the Seneschal for a moment even. Just for a moment though. Seneschal finally reveals that he is indeed a False Man, a revelation which is received with slight confusion as to why he even bothered hiding it since it is not necessarily heretical to be a False Man. Only the Missionary cares, more out of annoyance than anything else. Over all the revelations went well and it cleared the air nicely, we were suddenly able to trust everyone else! Of course the Missionary ended up suffering some insanity because it was shocking to find out that the Genetor was not really human anymore, the other Explorator was a hated Psyker and the Seneschal was a filthy False Man, not really a real human either in his mind. There was some travel through worm holes, arguing with Fel and general buffoonery for a bit (including hiring an Ork Speed Freak who'd been chasing our ship for twoish years by now - when driving really fast he has an amazing piloting skill, but when driving slow he gets minuses "coz dat's not orky"), but mostly it was inconsequential until we appeared back in real space and found a small planet circling a neutron star. Unfortunately the place was also crawling with Rak'Gol ships and we had to figure out a way past them, either through force or through sneakiness. We snuck through their blockade at which point the most hilarious thing happened. Now we'd got a pilot from the Navy to pilot our guncutter through the blockade, and the Speed Freak was assisting him in steering - the GM ruled that on a 90+ the Ork would take over the controls and try to ram the closest thing (which could be the planet). Psyker's player threw the roll and the GM ruled that he could use fates if it hosed up, multiple times even. First roll: 96. 2nd 81. 3rd 96. 4th 96 again. 5th 83. We got noticed, unsurprisingly. Apparantely it is hard to not get noticed when your Ork pilot and Navy pilot argue with each other and try to wrestle the controls for themselves. We scanned the planet and found it had an extensive tunnel system and that there's a power source somewhere inside the planet. We also discovered several entrances and landed near one, soon noticing some Eldar buildings nearby, right on top of the entrance. It was a small camp and we noticed from a distance that there were five Eldar warriors and a few Eldar civilians of all things there. They did not notice us, the Guardians kept their eyes on the sky and the civilians were basically building the camp. We just decided to gently caress it and just stroll down casually - hilariously the Guardians did not notice us at all before one of the Bonesingers (the civilians) shouted a warning, at which point the Guardians were freaked out and ashamed that they just got surprised by a bunch of Mon'keighs and Orks. They did the usual threats and assurances that they were just the advance guard. They did seem a bit more squeamish than Eldar usually are, probably because we were not acting like humans were supposed to when faced with the Eldar... We also realized these guys were essentially Eldar militia - in other words, Eldar mooks. And then the following exchange happened: Genetor: "Wait, the last Eldars we saw said the exact same thing... and no more Eldars actually arrived. Is it just standard procedure for you guys to tell that to any humans you meet?" Leading Guardian: "Uhhh..." *attempts to shoot the genetor after a failed willpower check, gun jams* G: "Did you try to shoot me?" LG: "What, uh, no, or, uh, none of your business dirty Mon'Keigh!" We really started taking the piss out of these Eldar after this since we found the whole Eldar mook-thing a novel and hilarious thing and the Eldar were pretty freaked out by us not immediately cowing or being careful with our words when speaking with them. We were very casual about the whole thing, discussed our plans in Low Gothic and not giving a gently caress that they understood it, not even the part where we were thinking about whether we should kill them or not (we decided not to). Then our Weirdboy got a bright idea about how to freak them out even more - he teleported everyone except the Seneschal right next to the Eldar Guardians. They were increasingly freaked out and their morale was in pieces, especially after we noted how "the farseer probably did not see this one coming, now did he? Or she?" Meanwhile, the Seneschal was just casually standing next to an activating webway portal which really freaked out the Eldar civilians who were really scared by this Mon'keigh acting so confident and "just standing there". The civilians activated the portal and tried to run away, but the Seneschal managed to stop one, which freaked out the Eldar in question by quite a lot. He tried to interrogate him/her but the Eldar just said "Me no speak mon'keigh". We eventually offered to give the leader of the Guardians a priceless Eldar artifact he could bring to his leader if they just let us pass, something they agreed to after a quick little huddle amongst themselves - after all it would bring great glory to bring a forgotten and lost relic back to the Eldar. They even graciously let us keep our hostage, something that confused the rest of us when we realized that the Seneschal had stopped one Bonesinger from leaving, and who was now our hostage by accident. We really didn't mean to take him/her as an hostage but since the Guardians decided to let us keep the hostage, whatever. SpiritOfLenin fucked around with this message at 07:37 on Nov 1, 2013 |
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Nov 1, 2013 00:27
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You realize you must enlist your new Eldar friend, right?
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Nov 1, 2013 01:30
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Magic the Gathering, EDH. I was at my local shop, and decided to watch a game between one of the regulars (and a pretty big dick) play against some guy that was pretty new to the game itself. So Jimmy (the regular) was playing a mono-blue control deck and with lots of draw and search, and the New-guy was playing what appeared to be mostly a mess of different cards, focused on blue (I don't remember either of the Generals). It pretty quickly got to a point where Jimmy had pretty much anything he could want, and whatever his win condition was, he could probably do it, but was screwing with the Newb: he had a Mindsculptor out, Venser's Journal, Leyline of Anticipation and a pretty decent chunk of his deck in hand, while the New-guy had a few weak creatures out and pretty much anything he tried to play that was good would get countered by some card or another. Then finally I guess Jimmy decided he was done and the next time the New-guy played something, it was Spell-crumpled, followed up with a Tunnel Vision... Then the New-guy played Redirect, which apparently Jimmy didn't have a response to, so he got all huffy packed up his stuff and left. I think my favorite part is that the regular was so upset, that he apparently forgot that Redirect doesn't quite work that way- and he would have still won. It was still satisfying to see one of the shops biggest dicks lose after being so smug the whole game. Edit: Added links to the format and cards DwarfWoot fucked around with this message at 18:43 on Nov 1, 2013 |
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Nov 1, 2013 09:40
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DwarfWoot posted:Magic the Gathering, EDH. Any chance you can explain what any of those cards do or mean within the game?
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Nov 1, 2013 15:00
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The smug regular had a deck that specialized in controlling the actions the other player could take, and utilized various combinations of cards to multiply its effectiveness. He toyed with the newbie, but lost his poo poo when he didn't have a counter for a particular card (or so he thought). Newbie wins, regular storms out like a giant baby. Edit: I haven't played magic in years, so I don't know what those cards are either.
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Nov 1, 2013 15:12
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The Spell Crumble + Tunnel Vision combo is basically a kill in EDH; in that format you're only allowed to have one of any given card. So Spell Crumple puts the countered card on the bottom of its owners library, Tunnel Vision naming that card removes their entire library except for that card. In Magic, you're not allowed to skip the draw at the beginning of your turn and if you try to draw a card off an empty library you lose. But since Spell Crumple puts itself on the bottom of its owner's library, the new guy was able to Redirect Tunnel Vision back to Jimmy... except that doesn't let the new guy change the card that was named when Jimmy cast it, so it probably wouldn't have decked him.
Opinion Haver fucked around with this message at 15:31 on Nov 1, 2013 |
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Nov 1, 2013 15:27
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Still a pretty satisfying story tho. Can't really stand when a veteran messes with a newbie in a card game when the newbie's trying to learn. Lord knows its happened to me often enough. So hey, fun story time. The game is 7th sea. I'm playing a Vesten swordswoman, using the Leegstra style, and the party is in a city that is about the get attacked by some Montaigne forces. Two things of note happened in that scenario. 1) Our own Castille player, a cardinal at that, manages to rally the town into an inproptu religious celebration, which included carrying a statue around and then OUT and around the city. This ends up confusing the pious soldiers on the enemy side, and a good chunk of them refuses to fight in what is clearly a religious holiday. This sends the would-be-siege into disarray. My role in this was to be the one that carried the statue... while dresses as a nun. A nun towering over everybody else in the city. 2) When the battle finally begins, My character tries to charge a cannon before they are ready to fire. She fails, and they fire... and she is in the way. GM: What do you do? Me: I dodg-- no, wait. I look at my sheet, and remember that Leegstra style is all about ignoring whatever the enemy does in favor of SQUASHING THEM. That, and the GM has mentioned that 7th sea is all about crazy action. Me: ... I will sword the cannonball. GM: Oookaaaay... roll it. I roll extremely well  The end result: Not only did I cut the cannonball, but this FREAKS the soldiers so bad they just run the hell away. We win the day shortly thereafter. We would later find wanted posters of our characters in a Montaigne-controlled town... which were thankfully hilariously wrong (except for one dude in our party). My character in particular was upset because they claimed "he" was an incubus. ... A later adventure would find us harpooning an enemy ship to shreds, with a character serving as a spotter, another one buffing the hell out of me (via Sorte, I believe), and me launching harpoons like a goddamn cannon. Another would see us defending our ghost ship (our Captain´s ship was inhabited by his dead wife... and they had the job of ferrying ghosts where they wanted to go). ... man, I miss that game. I mean, I'm not sure if everything works like that in the rules, but drat I miss that game.
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Nov 1, 2013 16:17
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Lorak posted:Any chance you can explain what any of those cards do or mean within the game? Sorry about that. I did mean to link to the cards, but completely forgot. Thanks Green Intern and Opinion Haver for explaining. Kerzoro posted:Me: ... I will sword the cannonball. That's beautiful. And the image of everyone freaking out upon seeing this nun chop a cannonball in half is just amazing. DwarfWoot fucked around with this message at 19:08 on Nov 1, 2013 |
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Nov 1, 2013 18:35
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Reminds me of this guy I used to play Magic with. His name was Keith. Nice enough guy, but he hated to lose. And when he did, he would punish his deck. When he lost, he would rip up a card. Not just any card, mind you, but every single card that he ripped had to meet 2 criteria: 1. It was one of his cards. Obviously. 2. The card could not cost less than $25 I have seen him rip up Swords from the Mirrodin Besieged block, Garruks from various Core sets, Titans back when they first got introduced, etc. etc. The guys at the shop would gather the ripped cards, and use them to make little signs around the place like "Buy Sodas", my brother would collect them and have Keith autograph them, which Keith would do. He never whined about it, he was clearly aware of how he looked doing it, he'd simply rip the card, then go buy a new copy of it and move on with his day.
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Nov 1, 2013 19:16
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I just hope he never plays Vintage.
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Nov 1, 2013 19:37
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Kerzoro posted:7th Sea! I love 7th Sea so dearly. I was once in a game that almost ended before it began. The three players were all siblings of the same Castille family. Alonso, the scholar, Romero, the black sheep, and Marisol the eldest daughter and swordsman. The first session was a celebration of the youngest daughter's wedding, and there was much merriment until the eldest son of an evil nobility showed up to proclaim he would ruin us, as he was obsessed with the bride. He got about halfway through the initial vow of revenge before Marisol challenged him to a duel. Romero -- quite drunk -- pushed aside Marisol, pulled out a pistol, and shot him. My meager dice exploded so many times that I ended up in the 50s for the roll and the GM declared him very, very dead. So, after an awkward pause, the game continued, and the nobleman's role in the story was replaced by his equally vengeful mother.
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Nov 1, 2013 19:48
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Kerzoro posted:7th Sea I love the 7th Sea setting and the craziness it produces. (Though I'm not so keen on the system) I ran an almost 2 year long campaign, highlights of which included the Pyeryem user discover the wonder of having both seagull and bear forms. Nothing dismays an infantry squadron like having a furious grizzly dive bomb them. There was also the time a player uttered the words "I can fix this! I'm going to roll to seduce the Sun King." There was also a wonderful friendship between the ship's captain - a 17 year old Vendel girl who'd run away from her merchant parents and ended up in charge of a ship, and her valet - a former street urchin who'd spent the last 250 years working for a Glamour mage whose house had that "No one here will ever age or be hungry" enchantment on it.
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Nov 1, 2013 21:07
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When I played 7th Sea, I originally had a plot that would involve all kinds of the stupid metaplot stuff (because I was younger and more foolish), but my players, who were a rebellious Ussuran Noblewoman/Pyeryem user who had run off to become a PIRATE QUEEN and an amnesiac Eisen Hero, just pretty much threw it all out the window the second they got a boat. Instead of following the plot, they ran off to get a letter of mark and start hunting famed pirates and naval commanders in their vicious little Corvette, the Feral Vixen. The Eisen would duel them while the Ussuran would keep scampering past as a fox or seagull, turning into a human, and shooting bosses in the back while they weren't looking. It was the buddy cop privateering pirate hunting game. It was so much better than the crap I'd come up with.
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Nov 2, 2013 01:20
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DwarfWoot posted:That's beautiful. And the image of everyone freaking out upon seeing this nun chop a cannonball in half is just amazing. In all honestly, the only bad thing out of the outcome was that my sword, while it didn't SHATTER, was pretty much a loss from thereon after. I did get a cool zweihander from an Eisen ghost in the ghost ship afterwards tho. I like to play bruiser-type characters, so she did a lot of crazy stuff involving strength (I leg-locked a guy so hard his leg just tore off), but there was a lot of crazy stuff all around. Like, say, sneaking out a bunch of gold under the Montaigne's noses after we caked the ingots with red clay to make bricks. Or our Eisen player, who took... I believe its the Notorious flaw, at max rank, which meant that he looked like a criminal that was wanted EVERYWHERE, and that was always fun. Freeing a group of suspected witches from a public execution by the Inquisition (It involved the Avalon player distracting the guards, and a pretty angry Vesten picking up one of the slab of rocks they were using as torture and shattering it over the executioner's heads, grabbing one of the executioners and lobbing him to the cardinal and his elite guards... the guards dodged, the cardinal fumbled and thus ended up buried under the executioner... the guards stopped chasing us as they wondered who to blame). Exploring a cove that was partially underwater... and so on.
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Nov 2, 2013 07:08
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the_steve posted:Reminds me of this guy I used to play Magic with... Kerzoro posted:...our Eisen player, who took... I believe its the Notorious flaw, at max rank, which meant that he looked like a criminal that was wanted EVERYWHERE, and that was always fun.
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Nov 2, 2013 17:57
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Okay, so I don't mean to post another story right away, but this happened last night and was pretty great. The night can basically be summed up with this picture:  Note: I am the dark-grey. A group of my friends and I try and get together at least one a month to play Dread. If you have never played, I would highly recommend it. Anyway, we are told during character creation that we are part of a gang and after some discussing, come up with where in this gang we fit and what the gang does etc. We end up being essentially high-quality Cocaine dealers, with some other smaller projects, based out of a large warehouse that we control. As far as the story concerns, the only person's role that matter would be that I was the gang's chemist... The game starts with us deciding where we are in the warehouse, and then being told that our rival gang just showed up and started shooting up the place. So some chaos ensues, block pulls being made left and right during the fire fight. At one point a grenade goes off in the middle of some of our supply, resulting in cocaine filling the air. Through it, people start noticing some creature darting around, but no details other than it seemed to leave black feathers. So, I decide that the best thing I can do right now, is try to mess with anyone that might be entering the warehouse by filling their lungs and eyes with hazardous fumes, and I fill some small glass containers with bleach in some and ammonia in others, and start making my way towards one of the entrances. While walking, a nightmarish Crow-like reaper appears in front of me, and I decide to try to throw the containers from where I was instead of getting past this thing. At this point, the Jenga tower is quite an interesting mess, and I am asked to pull three blocks for it to be accurate. I manage one, and then choose to fail the second two, which is what resulted in me half-assed throwing them everywhere, including on top of one of the other players. Needless to say, people were not entirely thrilled with me. After this I feel a bit bad, and head back to my lab to hide for a bit and not half-kill my team. Time goes by, one guy decides to kill himself to take out a large chunk of the rival gang, so now were are mainly being harassed by a Crow-reaper. I'm still mostly hiding out in my lab area, and have turned on and lit some small butane tanks so as to hopefully light Mr. Crow-reaper on fire if I see him. I'm told that a figure is approaching. So I act fast, and turn up the gas to drench the figure in flames before it can react. Turns out, that figure was one of our back-up gang members that one of the others had called a few minutes ago for aid. The guy that called him for aid, was the same guy that earlier I had covered in chemicals. He was really not thrilled with me at that point. Some more time passes, and we've been mostly picked off by the Crow-reaper. Two of us left: Me, and the one who I keep ruining the day of. I decide to actually try getting out of the warehouse, maybe see what is outside. I'm on the second story, and get to a fire escape. Crow-reaper appears in front of me. At this point we've learned that the bird tends to just poof away when confronted, so I decide to run at full force through it... which after I confirm "Yes, that is definitely what I want to" I proceed to run through the Crow, and right off of the fire escape ledge... Upon trying to make a saving pull, I knock over the whole tower, leading to my demise. The surviving guy's only response: "Thank god he died before me."
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Nov 2, 2013 21:36
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Not mine, but a friend of mine who runs Pathfinder basically just had the party play Legends of the Hidden Temple. Highlights include: 1) The party having to stop and take an OOC break to actually remember their history before the quiz section. 2) An attempt to attack the temple guard equivalent resulting in the temple guard dying and the offending player being tossed out of the temple by an angry temple spirit. They kept their 1.5 talismans though. 3) The Shrine of the Silver Monkey... Oh lord. The statue had an effect on touch that makes you in-character completely blank out on the solution unless you succeeded on an int or wis check for basic logic or common sense. It took them 20 minutes of bickering OOC (they have about an hour and a half real time to complete the temple run) about how to levitate the pieces or something before someone asked if they get a save or any kind of roll. 4) Said statue getting swiped on the return trip along with the treasure they were told to find. 5) Space camp and other jokes about weird/lame prizes abound following their success. The DM now wants to try to adapt other old game shows to tabletop form. I think Where in the World is Carmen San Diego was mentioned, as was Nick Arcade and Knightmare.
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Nov 3, 2013 00:41
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The most obvious choice for that would be Guts, I think. "Adventurers! We need a party brave enough to scale the Aggro Crag and earn themselves a glowing piece of that radical rock!"
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Nov 3, 2013 00:58
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We had a game once where one of the players almost started as a golem named "Aggro Crag", who had a greathammer with a head shaped like the award. 
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Nov 3, 2013 01:30
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So remember that FFVI-style After-The-End wasteland featured in one of my previous stories? The one that resulted in us raising an Ice Giant’s girlfriend, having it fight him, and later stapling a Lost and Found poster on her before sending her home? Well, we’ve returned. Staged 20-30 years after the last campaign (which ended shortly after accidentally turning the boss’ dragon steed to stone in midflight), we’ve landed in another continent on that world. The land is Teujiin, a Far East-flavored, fog-shrouded continent ruled by a God-Emperor dragon (  ) who defended the region from the ravages of chaos magic…shortly after slaughtering the emperor and royal family for their incompetence. New campaigns call for new characters, and as such we have switched to the following group:Izumi, a snake-like noblewoman, known for her ninja prowess, short temper and shorter HP bar Nobu, a goblin-like Oni who will just as happily bury a hatchet in your skull as he will say hello Takeshi, a Lawful Good Priest of Annu (as played by Hannibal Lecter) Myself as Naomi, a seemingly century-old tea-shop server (witch) who is equal parts Granny Rags and Kreia Kenzo, a cheerful, honorable wandering sword with an unfortunate Fire Demon infestation. and Hei Xiao, a literal magpie who delights in planting incriminating objects on other people. He is also Sir Not Appearing in This Story. The setting: Having descended into the gritty underworld of the Tea Trade, Our Adventurers have just finished relaying a massive partnership contract between two tea magnates, thus ensuring monopoly status and possibly the impending collapse of the Teujiin economy. Unfortunately, Things have Happened since we left the first magnate to talk to the second. As we arrive in the city to claim our reward, we find out that the first magnate’s son, Gai Kyeong has been imprisoned for the murder of Kwan Suo, the young son of a small (yet rising) clan in the city. As the tea magnate, Jin Kyeong, is not in a reward-giving mood at the moment, it thus falls to us to find the proof necessary to set him free before his execution in two days. The first phase of the session is fairly simple; we have several leads, including the local magistrate, his guards, the father of the victim, and, of course, finding the real culprit behind the murders. Our magic-users (Naomi and Takeshi) have also reached 3rd-level Spells and can speak with the dead, but we can’t just use that as a shortcut as (a) the body has already been cremated and (b) such an art is seen as a foul trespass and easily manipulated by the mage in question (thus being inadmissible in court). Still, it never hurts to get it straight from the horse’s mouth, so while Naomi and Nobu split off to confront the magistrate, Takeshi and Kenzo go to meet with the victim’s grieving father…while Izumi breaks into the Clan’s crypt and steals the victim’s ashes. With these clues, a brief battle at the crime scene and some batmanning of the Magistrate’s guards later (not to mention arming ourselves with the restored corpse’s screeches of “IT WAS XIANG WUUUUUU”) the group figures out the following details: * The magistrate’s guards were bribed by patrician Old Man Suo (the father of the victim) to arrest Jin Kyeong, ignoring all details of the actual crime scene. * A squad of thugs had been hired by the same man, with the intent to remove all evidence from said crime scene * This evidence included a set of muddy river tracks, along with a fish scaler with the Suo crest on it. This knife was never picked up, as the guards “figured” that the Kyeong-branded knife in the defendant’s hand was the murder weapon. * The mud at the crime scene only comes from one place in the city: a riverbank. However, the crime occurred outside Kwan Suo’s favorite gambling house, nowhere near one the riverbed. Somehow (“XIANG WUUUUUU”), we figured (“XIANG WUUUUUU”) that the real culprit was a fisherman (“XIANG WUUUUUU”) by the name of Xiang Wu. So, throwing the desecrated, restored and then re-desecrated remains of Kwan Suo into the defendant’s fireplace, we set to find out this fisherman and apprehend him. Unfortunately, by this point we were getting incredibly angry with our dice. Throughout the previous two sessions, many of us were rolling natural 1s on every attack, save and skill use, resulting in a series of missed information, near-death experiences and more than one sword embedded in a wall via critical fumble. The fact that we even managed to snag Kwan Suo’s ashes was largely due to him being unable to pay for more guards – and even when using a drat good distraction technique on Wu (shouting his name from a far-away crowd using ventriloquism) he still managed to spot us as we closed in on the kill. He also managed to throw a knife at us (thus killing a commoner standing too close), and nearly rabbited before we caught him with Command: Approach and Hold Person. Suffice to say, it was a pain, and some of us were starting to grumble as we reached the end. So what does our GM do after we march all the goons up to the Magistrate? He throws the dice aside and starts a goddamned game of Phoenix Wright on us. Using Izumi (the noblewoman) as our Feenie, with the rest of us suggesting angles of attack and some choice lines, we go through each witness’ testimony, systematically proving the guards’ corruption, establishing the fish scaler as the real murder weapon, and (with some impressive improvisation between both the GM and Izumi) establishing a criminal breakdown worthy of the franchise as we peg both Wu and Old Man Suo for the crime. Some choice bits of “testimony,” near as I can phrase it:  "There is but one reason that I have called for this court - we can prove the young master Kyeong is innocent." “Bold claim, considering he was found at the scene and we have the testimony of two guards against him. What is your evidence?" “Simple enough - the word of this mighty pair of guards themselves."______ “As anyone can see, this scaler is caked on dried blood. Not only that... Engraved is the Suo clan insignia!" “OBJECTION! That's hardly enough evidence! There are hundreds of such scalers on the docks! That could belong to anyone!" "How many that belong to the Suos?" [Interrupting as Old Man Suo] "Each member working for the Suos gets one when they join us. It can only belong to the Suo family!" “………” [Bugs eyes out, acting out Old Man Suo as he “realizes” what he just said]______ I think my favorite bit from the whole session came when Izumi pieced together some evidence on the fly, from descriptions of the Suo family home, and threw it out as a complete motive for the murder: ______ ”There is nothing here to tie this to my family. Why would the Suo family have their own flesh and blood murdered? It's ridiculous!" “Kwan Suo was well-known for his gambling, and better for how often he lost." [Face darkens, unable to reply] "Even so, a few paltry debts aren't enough to have my son killed." "It's not about debts, old man. It's a simple question - how did he afford it?" "I... I don't know what you mean." "Your estate is in shambles, old man. Cracked walls, few servants, no guards. You are a house brought low. And your son, who was he? A parasite, I'm sure you've considered him. He never worked a day in his life. The money he used to afford that life could have only come from one person: you." "It's not a crime for a father to give money to his son, is it?" "Oh, but it is a crime to kill their son for taking it."We’d been playing for three hours when this began, and we were having so much damned fun that we stayed at it for another four. Hell, one of us got a laptop out just to play Ace Attorney music. It was awesome, it was ridiculous. It was Turnabout Teapot, and we loved every minute of it. Rampant Dwickery fucked around with this message at 09:11 on Nov 3, 2013 |
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Nov 3, 2013 09:09
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Rampant Dwickery posted:Turnabout Teapot I love this story, especially because Phoenix Wright. I'm curious though, did the DM swap it over to Objection! format as a premeditated decision? Or was it because your dice were loving you and they wanted to keep the game fun? Either way, kudos.
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Nov 3, 2013 11:57
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Sorry about the wall of text, but I may have just engineered the greatest "holy poo poo moment" so far in our group's history. Goes to show just how far you can go simply by being in cahoots with a player. Sorry if this is hard to understand, but the plot got pretty convoluted at some points. The main thing to know here is that, a week before the session, I contacted one of the players and asked if she'd help me create something cool, in secret from the others. The campaign I'm running is in FATE Core, with a theme of paranormal investigation set in 1970's Poland. The players are a top secret unit of the communist secret police, tasked with discovering, defeating and then covering up threats to the social order that fail to fit with the Party's official materialist worldview. This means haunted high-rise apartments, possessed Party members, a werewolf out for revenge for wartime slights, and the constant suspicion of Western imperialist spies. And, of course, the group rides in a black Volga, because what else? Currently the group are hunting cells of an organization known as "the Institute", an apolitical, international covert group of rogue scientists and engineers who conduct unethical experiments on the populace. Think rejects from MKULTRA, holdover Lysenkoists, torchbearers of Nazi mad science, and whatever other bits of technocratic Cold War conspiracism I can cram into the science fiction-themed leg of the campaign. The previous session, they had captured an Institute psychologist who was mind-controlling people, and he promptly squealed on his source for the device he was using. With five players at the table, I split the game into two parallel investigations. Two players (group A) were tasked with retrieving the mind-control device, while the other three (group B) had to solve a series of mysterious crimes involving people acting completely out of character, showing super-strength and so on. I switched between the two regularly, and for the most part the events seemed to the players to be largely unconnected. Warsaw, January 2nd, 1976. As the nation returns to work from its great collective hangover, our intrepid defenders of socialist materialism grab their standard-issue ushankas and flimsy paper badges to plod through the capital's snowy streets in search of truth. Group A consisted of an intentionally mismatched duo: Janusz the highly skeptical, analytical scientist, partnered up with Alina the overly open-minded fortune-teller with a mysterious intuitive connection to the supernatural. They stalked the halls of the Warsaw Polytechnic, looking for the engineer who had built the mind-control device, and found him suspiciously pliant and willing to cooperate. He earnestly described the device to them, and when asked to hand it over, mimed giving them a suitcase. By searching his documents, they surmised that an irresponsible slacker of a student had stolen the device, mind-controlled the professor into fixing his grades, and absconded with it. Something like that in the wild was, of course, unacceptable. Through some solid detective work (bribing a secretary and blackmailing the perp's roommate with a joint they found in his dorm room), Janusz and Alina eventually tracked the student to an empty apartment, busted down the door and cuffed him to a chair. As Janusz grabbed the suitcase containing the device, I switched back to the upcoming climax of Group B's investigation. The makeup of Group B isn't super-important here. Suffice to say they were figuring out a series of improbable crimes committed on New Year's Eve. A skinny, sensitive literature student moonlighting as a bartender had tried to sexually assault his co-worker and impossibly beat the poo poo out of the tall, strong guy who stopped him. A recovering alcoholic cab driver had busted, roaring drunk, into his own apartment, beat his wife and stolen his own valuables - but when found later he was stone-cold sober. Neither had any memory of committing the crimes. At first, and entirely according to my diabolical plan, the group assumed the mind control device was somehow involved. Eventually evidence surfaced that both suspects had alibis, and had been seen in two places at once. The players came to the correct conclusion that some form of shapeshifting was involved. On the doppelganger's trail, they found a bracelet they knew belonged to Alina. The session's climax arrives. Group A has just recovered the device and Janusz is holding it. Group B busts down the door to a dingy commieblock apartment belonging to one of the shapeshifter's apparent victims. I hand the leading player a piece of paper describing what's inside - unconscious and handcuffed to the radiator is the victim, and beside him, beaten and bruised, is Alina. The player scratches his head, he hands the paper to the others to read, and I switch perspective to Group A. Janusz's player: Alright, I've got the suitcase. Let me just check if this machine is inside and we can be out of here... Alina's player: There's no time. J: What? We have plenty of time. A: Enough games. *mimes finger-gun at J* Hand it over and nobody gets hurt. J: What? Is this some kind of bluff? A: I said give me the loving suitcase or I blow your head off! Entire group: *realizes what just went down*  Alina's player and I:  The remainder of the session involved Group B rushing over to the apartment and finding Janusz holding the suitcase, with a second Janusz, pointing guns at each other's heads. Despite the advantage in numbers over the shapeshifter, the final scene was pretty tense since they had no idea who was the real one. I had actually hoped to cause at least one party death from friendly fire (hey, it's a horror game), but they went about it cleverly enough that they ended up successfully wasting the doppelganger with no casualties. Well, aside from a good portion of Janusz's sanity after I described how the creature he thought was his colleague looks into his eyes and grotesquely morphs into his form. Still, I don't think anything really beat that one moment when everyone at the table realized how hard they'd been played and that the villain of the session had been among them the whole time. "Monster of the week is a shapeshifter and it's one of the players" is a really simple concept, but it really makes jaws drop due to how much players always assume they're on the same team. I highly recommend it.
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Nov 3, 2013 12:14
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Captain Bravo posted:We had a game once where one of the players almost started as a golem named "Aggro Crag", who had a greathammer with a head shaped like the award. I assume they decided that they'd rather play as Olmec instead.
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Nov 3, 2013 12:51
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the_steve posted:I love this story, especially because Phoenix Wright. It was the latter. Originally we were going to just leave it as "we found the culprit and the guys involved the the cover-up, but then Dice happened and he tacked it on at the last second. ...Which then stretched on for four hours.
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Nov 3, 2013 19:47
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Four hour surprise fun times are why RPGs are such amazing things.
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Nov 3, 2013 19:55
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mmj posted:On that note I don't think I'm anywhere near ready to design my own missions, does anyone have a good resource for more ready made adventures until I'm prepared to make my own? I'll give you the piece of advice which is probably the most important one I've ever heard about Paranoia GMing. While putting people in a mission full of funny situations is good and all, it's really important to try to let the players carry the game. It'll be more fun for you and them. Give them excuses to want to betray/harm each other, and put them in a good place to vent that urge. It's all you really need to do.
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Nov 3, 2013 20:21
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Glagha posted:I'll give you the piece of advice which is probably the most important one I've ever heard about Paranoia GMing. While putting people in a mission full of funny situations is good and all, it's really important to try to let the players carry the game. It'll be more fun for you and them. Give them excuses to want to betray/harm each other, and put them in a good place to vent that urge. It's all you really need to do. If you don't mind, I'd like to get some advice about this sort of thing and how to balance secret societies, missions and all that. Since it would clutter up the thread is there another way to get in touch with you?
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Nov 3, 2013 21:10
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