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Make him suddenly very important. Rumors, pictures, a major reward offered, anything. Then they can go back to grab him and just have the container be open. They know he's out without knowing anything else about it.
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Nov 18, 2013 15:42
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Go one better: the guy's family want him found. Have the guy's family offer a reward for their missing son/brother/husband. When the party goes back to rescue or kill the guy, he's gone. Now they need to deal with the loose thread, and it opens some morally questionable options.
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Nov 18, 2013 18:02
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Good story time! I've not played for about 20 years and recently got back in touch with my old buddies who I used to game with. as you do we all got reminiscing about how we used to have fun and now I have a fortnightly gaming group again! I chose 13th age because I wanted a nice, rules light, open ended game and it was a blast. we ended up with me GM'ing, a gnome hybrid illusion mage/thief, standard noble fighter and a half elf ranger. As I've not played in all that time it was a bit of a trope'd setting, all 3 working for a small lord, the mage was his employed spell caster doing his magical research, the fighter was a grunt in the small militia the lord keeps and the ranger was, well, employed as a ranger. They get called to the lord and he gives them poo poo about it being harvest time and he's annoyed that they have all had important stuff stolen in the last few weeks. Turns out the fighter has had 6 swords stolen, the gnome a small magic stone he had in a drawer and the ranger a pair of expensive swamp waders. The lord is pissed and he wants that stuff found ASAP, kicks them all out and we're off! They blunder round town, insult the captain of the guard and discover the barkeep has had a small empty barrel stolen and the fisherman his best hat. After this they ask about the power structure in the keep and I tell them that there are 2 underlings one who handles the lords purse and another who handles logistics and supplies so they split up. The fighter goes and bullies small children, narrowly avoiding a kicking The ranger goes to logistics dude who has nothing The Gnome goes to see the treasurer who is normally friendly but gets angry, shouts about how he doesn't have time for missing swords and hats and kicks the Gnome out Like a loving champ the gnome picks up on the fact that there is no way the treasurer could have know about the hat as it only went missing a few hours ago and he never told him, he only asked about the stone and swords. They have a lead. So having a few thief skills the gnome trails the bad into the evening and sees him break into the seamstress's house, leave and go get food in the communal place. They sit talking and I make a hidden roll for the treasurer overhearing them talking about him, natural loving 20 so now he knows 100% they are on to him. treasurer sneaks out and when the party come out 3 soldiers try to take the gnome in for questioning, they don't fight and end up getting locked in a room for 4 loving hours. I asked them how long they would wait and they were umming an ahhing (they thought the captain would be along to let them out) so I suggested I roll a D4 for hours and it landed on 4, unlucky. They bust out and decide to go confront the bad in the keep, finally get to the room (after arguing with the guards there about waking the lord up) they open the door to his room and see that he's made a quick exit, as they go in the room something comes to life and attacks!  motherfucker had built a harvest golem out of all the things he's stolen, cue combat. During combat a few things happen; The Gnome fails to cast any spells and at one point actually rolls a 1 casting his haste spell on the golem The ranger attempts to drop-kick the golem back and falls on his rear end spending about 3 rounds on the floor The fighter keeps missing all the time and manages to get his main weapon embedded in the door In the end the Gnome gets a fireball off which I allowed to cause DOT damage as it was made of straw and the ranger, still on the floor, hacks a leg off finishing it off Turns out after searching the room the golem was just a diversion that he was going to set loose in the village while he stole a magguffin from the lord and made his escape, however becuase he knew the party was on to him, and they got locked up for FOUR loving HOURS he managed this anyway. All in all a great game and really looking forward to the next one where, if they want they can go track this guy down and really get things going. The 13th Age really is a great book, I can't praise it enough, my guys picked some good unique things and the backgrounds are good apart from the fighter who had real trouble understanding that instead of putting "knows lots of fighting styles" as a background he needed to make it more the "why he knows this" than the "what he knows" (in the end I helped him out and he now spent a few years doing arena combat fighting and learning from the other fighters) The gnome guy also had way more fun being a sneaky rogue so we had a chat afterwards about tweaking his character more in that direction and focusing more on illusion spells for synergy It feels good to throw the dice again man!
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Nov 18, 2013 21:47
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So yeah, rather than recount a horror story, I think I'll just do a good encounter idea I had and then went off perfectly. Picture a gondola over a bottomless pit that leads from the basement of a castle to, thousands of feet down, a massive bee hive-like castle built by gnomes but now controlled by kobolds. This is in the middle of a multi-session classic dungeon crawl. The gondola overall is maybe eight squares wide and twelve squares long (I'm guesstimating based on memory). It has windows on every side, and a roof. On the roof, naturally, is the cable that connects the gondola to the wiring. About halfway down--well after the heroes can decide to turn back and stymie an encounter--kobolds with jet packs attack. There are 37 of them. This was designed for a level 3 group.   This isn't written in the stat block, but the minions use a "mook" designation that I heard about on this board and that is used in another RPG. Essentially, when you kill a mook, you get a free standard action with which you can only use another attack, up to once per turn. This makes the mooks count for half XP and allows heroes to set up combo maneuvers. Everyone who made it to the session that day was essentially a single-target guy--if I recall correctly, there was a dwarven shield fighter, a dragonborn cleric with the battle cleric class option, and a staff rogue. This meant that 36 mook kobolds were quite a challenge. Now, about the terrain. The kobolds had such a numerical advantage that they could both attack in waves and concentrate on two different objectives. One group attacked the heroes inside the gondola. Another group, headed by the solo, attacked the roof, with the intent of cutting the cable. At this point it became a two-tiered battlefield, with a rooftop map corresponding with the doorway map. The heroes had to deal with the kobolds on top and bottom--somehow. Only the rogue could get to the top easily without some kind of help. As things developed, it turned out that the heroes could use their extra standard mook-killing action to steal a jetpack--but the heroes are so heavy that the packs are more unreliable. But wait, there's more! The gondola is not structurally sound or rated for this kind of abuse. Every time a hero smooshed a mook, the mook would either go careening out the side of the gondola, blowing a giant hole in it, or be shot directly through the floor. So, as more mooks die, the terrain becomes ever more precarious. The kobolds have no real trouble with it because they can fly. At length, the cleric and the fighter are having to grab onto dead kobolds in midair so that they have a way to not fall into the abyss, leading to moments where one or more characters are outside the gondola in midair, trying to make Athletics or Acrobatics checks to steer back onto the gondola before the jetpack gives out, and at times getting into midair combat. The solo, who is less of a direct combat threat because he spends as many actions as he can attacking the cable rather than the heroes, is often responsible for this. He manages to disrupt the stability of the gondola, causing people to go prone or fall out of one of the many holes in the structure. Near the end of the battle, he successfully cuts the cable. Pretty much everyone goes airborne and begins sliding toward the back of the gondola, or off of it. Wielding a jetpack in one hand and a ranged weapon in the other, the rogue deals the killing blow to the kobolds' leader, who goes flying backward in front of the gondola as it crash lands into the landing area of the underground castle-city. Not a single kobold survives, and he is the last to go. I am told that this was the best fight in a long time for a lot of the players. This encounter was the basis for Ballad of the Wyrm Berets that I posted in the 4E thread.
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Nov 19, 2013 01:29
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:This encounter was the basis for Ballad of the Wyrm Berets that I posted in the 4E thread. I'm gonna need a link to this ASAP.
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Nov 19, 2013 02:16
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Beardless posted:I'm gonna need a link to this ASAP. Middle of this post: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3416578&pagenumber=318&perpage=40#post421794252 I really doubt we have anyone who is a bad enough dude (or dudette) to fulfill the achievement, but we'll see.
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Nov 19, 2013 02:56
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I have so many terrible stories. So many stories of so much horror. Basically that whole thing about 'No game is better then Bad Game', I never took that to heart, ever. So I have just, a bunch of stories about games. I honestly have a little trouble figuring out where I even start. The Time I got to watch Cybersex It was nowhere as great as that sounds, and I don't even think it sounds that great. I was playing a Twilight Solar- I had originally been a Zenith, playing an Old Shaman style character, but I had to change into a Twilight after the Eclipse pushed me out of Social Combat, which is it's own story-. We were essentially all members of Halta, which is basically Fantasy Eco City. people live in the trees, close to nature, talking animals, all that poo poo. We had been dealing with the Alchemicals before, and it turned out they had cut down a significant amount of trees in order to get natural resources, which they don't have in Autocthonia. Now understand, Alchemicals live on Autocthonia, which is a Primordial. It is a world entirely made out of dark tubes and metal, with no plant life except for- as revealed in a setting book that didn't exist when the game came out- a single forest hidden way in the bowels of the Primordial that no one knows of. His Elemental Poles, for example, are Crystal, Smoke, Oil, Metal, Steam and Lightning. There is no 'Wood'. Trees do not exist in Autocthonia. But we went to Autocthonia, and it turned out that they had a lady who was an Essence 3 Green Jade Alchemical. And she had created flowers in Autocthonia. And had a potion to do the same! So she goes out and starts fixing the forests that had been cut down by the Autocthonians before they realized people lived in Creation. So they were cutting down trees, but they had an Alchemical that could create trees and plants even in completely metal Autocthonia. Okay. Well the one thing that this Alchemical has been saying while we know her is 'I wish Alchemicals could have children'. Alchemicals are infertile as created by Autocthon, and people in Autocthon generally worship him, because, as it turns out, you generally like to worship the living God-Being you live on. Saying stuff like 'I think Autocthon messed up the creation of the Alchemicals and we should be able to have children' is generally kind of frowned on. So she said it a lot. My Twilight, being an old, generally kind of nice dude, made a little artifact for her, as thanks for her help. It was intended that she could spend Essence into it, and it would take on what she looked like. Her Girlfriend, another PC playing an Orichalcum Alchemical, wanted to be a part of this scene. I said sure. So I go to their tent, and enter as the two are making out. I say I will come back later, IC the Alchemical goes 'no, it's fine', and OOC the ST says 'I don't know when we'll have time to do this scene other then right now.'-this is IRC, by the way, I only play IRC-. So I attempt to have this conversation with an NPC about the gift I made her, while at the exact same time, they are going into tremendous detail about how their characters are loving. So I am incredibly uncomfortable, at this, and just want it to be over. This is when the Alchemical goes 'Wait! You've just given me an idea of how to perfect Autocthon's designs!'. The next time we see the NPC, she's pregnant with the Orichalcum's Baby. I don't THINK I had to watch the Orichalcum impregnate the Jade Alchemical- though that wouldn't REALLY make it worse-, because Alchemicals have to return to special vats to get new charms, but who knows. ------------- I have a ton of these stories. I know that sounds loving insane, but it's absolutely true. I played under this lady for something like 3 or 4 games, and have horror stories for basically all of them. Then I moved onto other STs who were just as bad. The thing is, I don't know which one to bring up next, so I offer it to you goons to decide what I talk about next. How my Zenith was forced to turn into a Crafter by the Party Eclipse and the ST. How she tried to trick my PC into being an Akuma, including meeting the Scarlet Empress' secret daughter How she attempted to prevent me from using my actual charms or doing anything How she devalued any accomplishment of mine using any means necessary, including my actual Backstory This was all in just one game. I also have stories of her from Mage and a different Exalted game. And then I have 2 or 3 more STs past this one. I have stories forever, and we'll work through those as long as they're entertaining.
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Nov 20, 2013 05:02
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Just post.
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Nov 20, 2013 05:10
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In our last session of 4e, the party re-created the entire "HOLA, DEA" scene from Breaking Bad using the druid/shaman's tortoise spirit companion and the head of an orcish slave camp commander to scare off his minions and turn the tide of battle decisively in their favor. I felt justified in giving them each an XP reward for the solution.
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Nov 20, 2013 09:38
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Just post. Use chronological order if need be. But just post.
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Nov 20, 2013 10:28
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I'll try to do them in Chronological order then, but I might forget some. But I'll try at least. I'll try to post them when I can without spamming though. I don't want to post one a day or anything, so I'll just add them as I get around to it to avoid filling the entire thread. How the ST and another player convinced me my character was poo poo As I said, I originally planned for my character to essentially be a Shaman, who dealt with spirits and gods, leading their worship and things like that, stuff the Zenith Caste did. Little did I know that I was powerless before Lesbianism. I submitted a backstory that was my character had been the leader of a small village in the nation of Halta, and he kept them protected by spirits. He had an apprentice, because he was getting old, but the Apprentice essentially started abusing his power among the members of the tribe, so he killed him. It was supposed to be a major failure in his past that he was going to atone for or something, especially because there are Exalts that can come back from almost dying. You would have assumed the first thing the ST would be about would be talking about the backstory, but instead she ignored it. Everyone else had discussions about their backstory, while I kind of sat there and didn't really have anything discussed about it. The first sign of this was when we went to check on a group of Wyld Mutants who were causing problems in the nation. It turned out it was the Alchemicals pushing them towards cities, which resulted in them attacking. I was attempting to negotiate a peaceful solution with them, only for the ST to stop me and say 'no, they don't listen to men. Only women in their culture have a right to speak.' It was then resolved by the Eclipse's character saying something, which made the leader of the tribe look at them. Turns out they were their Essence 5 Lunar Mate, so the Essence 2, fresh out of Char-gen Solar got to meet their Essence 5 Mate and was declared Queen of the Tribe, because, it turns out, she had made the tribe in the past! They weren't Wyld Mutants at all, they were designed that way. So she got a Cult and followers too. The ST suggested splitting the Cult among the entire party, because 5 sets of Cult 1 is better then 1 set of Cult 3, but the Eclipse responded with basically 'No, it's mine.' and took the whole thing and gave us nothing. Awesome. This led into the next thing; After discussing with the Alchemicals, we found one of the a Void Tainted Alchemical exploded a forest we were fighting in with a laser beam- because it was aiming at a city full of people and it was parried away from them-, we summoned Halta's God, Caltia, to deal with it by replanting trees. She immediately blames all of the men for this horrendous disaster, and says we should have let the city get destroyed instead of the forest. Now I know this seems like it's just a God having an odd opinion, but let me explain why this makes no sense. Gods in Exalted get more power by being worshiped by mortals- that's what a Cult is-. And Halta worships Caltia above any other God. Those people she said we should have let die were all her fervent worshipers. The trees are just trees. They have small gods and such, but they 1; don't worship her, and 2; Small gods are not sentient. And even weirder part of this is they weren't her trees. Caltia is the God of Eastern Evergreens. Those are the only trees she is the God of. Her greatest enemy is Golden-Eyed Jorst, Patron God of the Linowan, who are at eternal war with the Haltians, and God of the Deciduous Forest Trees. We destroyed Deciduous trees, lucky, because we even specifically asked that before summoning her and confirmed it. By summoning her to replace the trees, we were increasing her power in the world by giving her more trees. But rather then doing anything else, she yelled at the male party members for being so stupid as to let this happen, then when the Eclipse went 'hey, give them a break, can you replant the trees', waved her hand and replanted the entire forest with her trees. So that didn't make much sense. Then Caltia decided she would take the Eclipse on as an apprentice, to teach her the ways of the Gods and her Charms. At this point I felt fairly useless, as I had been yelled down and upstaged constantly by the Eclipse, and it was becoming clear I would never get to actually be a Zenith. Every group we went to ignored me in favor of the Eclipse, either because 'it's their culture' or 'she spoke first', so I asked the ST to let me changed my backstory into a Crafter and change castes to a Twilight, so I could do something, at least. She at least allowed that, but first I had to argue against the other players for this privileged. I do mean literally argue, as I had to convince them to let me do this as a group. The hardest person to convince to let me do this was, surprise, the Eclipse, who felt it was cheap to let me remake a character just because I hadn't gotten to do anything over something like a dozen sessions. Eventually everyone else agreed with me that if I wasn't having fun I should probably get to attempt to fix it, and he?(I think it was a guy playing a girl) gave in, not without a bunch of whining though. So I trashed my backstory, wrote a new one, and kept playing the same basic character but with different powers. Of course that wasn't the end of that.
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Nov 20, 2013 20:03
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Stallion Cabana posted:game stories Hey Stallion, can you give us some information about the game this is being run in? I'm sorta-kinda following these stories, but I don't really understand them because I don't know the game system.
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Nov 20, 2013 21:17
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Agrikk posted:Hey Stallion, can you give us some information about the game this is being run in? Sorry. I attempted to explain in the actual posts but I also didn't want to cover the entire posts in explanations of the system rather then actually talking about the story. I'll make sure to explain further information in the future. If you have a specific question I can try to explain it better, I thought the most recent one I explained made sense, at the least.
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Nov 20, 2013 21:27
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Stallion Cabana posted:Sorry. I attempted to explain in the actual posts but I also didn't want to cover the entire posts in explanations of the system rather then actually talking about the story. I'll make sure to explain further information in the future. If you have a specific question I can try to explain it better, I thought the most recent one I explained made sense, at the least. Something like "this is being run in Exalted, let me explain the key concepts I will continuously talk about like Alchemical, Twilight, etc." That'd really help.
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Nov 20, 2013 21:32
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Giving names to players, even totally detached ones is great too.
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Nov 20, 2013 21:34
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Alright, so what about this; An Exalt; a being given a divine shard of power by one of the great beings in the world. They were originally made to defeat the Primordials They include the Solars from the Unconquered Sun, Lunars, from Luna, and Alchemicals from Autocthon. There are Infernals from the fallen Primordials, who came out later. Essence is the Power Stat, like Gnosis in Mage. New Exalted started with 2. An Essence 5 character is at least, by the book guidelines, 500 Experience points more powerful then a chargen character. The average amount for a session is 4-8, so that's a long time. Each type of Exalt has Castes. for Solars, these are Dawn- warriors-, Zeniths- priests, kings, and leaders-, Nights- stealthy ninjas-, Twilights- crafters and investigators and doctors- and Eclipses- diplomats and travelers-. For names I'll just start using their Castes. Castes were never doubled so it should end up working okay. I think everything else was explained in one of the two posts. So for example, when I say the Green Jade was saying 'Autocthon's designs were flawed', it would be like if you personally communicated with God, knew he created you in his image, gave you tremendous personal power, you lived on his body and it provided for you how it could, then said 'God hosed up making me.' and no one would say 'hey, that's kind of offensive, and also holy poo poo that's super heretical.' The reason this is bad is because Autocthon needs prayer to live, the same as a God, if not worse. Alchemicals are basically Super Heroes, so what they say matters, a lot. perhaps it would be better to say if Superman existed, then spent his time going 'I am a flawed being and God should be ashamed of his mistakes in creating me'. Or something. While you're just normal you. Stallion Cabana fucked around with this message at 21:54 on Nov 20, 2013 |
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Nov 20, 2013 21:51
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Volmarias posted:You don't even need to have the character escape to become a recurring villain/theme. They surely have friends, family, associates, etc. And, even if they don't, someone running across the container and knowing who you were could cause your players to now be on the wrong side of the law, or to get a grisly reputation that colors some of their future encounters. Have it both ways. The grunt, with nothing left to do but fume and think, slowly crafts an intricate plan for revenge. Whatever natives exist in the backwoods of some butthole Star Wars planet stumble across the crate, and are quickly convinced that the mysterious talking box is a god. From their worship and a general knowledge of modern technology and soldiering he crafts a lethal and fanatically devoted shadow empire that reaches out to the stars to dog the players at every turn, following them to the ends of the universe and always showing up in the least-expected places. The grunt becomes an invisible mastermind, always one step ahead of the players, always growing in influence and ensnaring them ever deeper in his twisted revenge schemes... but he never quite figures out how to open that crate.
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Nov 20, 2013 22:29
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VanSandman posted:One guy pissed as hell and out for revenge though? That's the kind of thing that elevates games. Keep that dude around as an antagonist. This was a favorite plot device and GM hook for a friend of mine and was used to good effect time and time again: We once were spying on some evil guys and wanted to know what they were up to in an inn, so for various not-so-solid reasons we ended up kidnapping the lanky, greasy-looking stable hand and whisked him away to a cave. We strung him up over a large fissure in the rocky floor and tortured the information out of him and when we were done we cut the rope to let him fall into the fissure, thinking we were done with him. Little did we know that The Greasy Kid would be back to plague us time and time again. (When I saw Shakespeare In Love and that little mouse-loving street urchin made his first appearance, I blurted out "It's the Greasy Kid!" My wife didn't get it.) He also loved to mess with our characters a bit and those actions saved us a few times: One of my character concepts was to play a sorta quiet, retiring woodsman. Not really a ranger or a druid, just sort of a North Forty rogue type who carried a woodsman's axe wherever he went. A key point was that I really wanted a trusty sidekick for the character, a german shepherd or some other kind of working dog. Well, because our DM refused to ever acknowledge that our characters could ever be intimidating or cool, decided that this woodsman would actually be a farmer and my dog would be a basset hound named Duster. Well, for whatever reason, I don't remember how "Jeb Starkhouse" the farmer died, but die he did, but Duster stayed around. He became a sort of hanger-on for the group and would make cameo appearances in passing. "Oh, you see Duster has made it aboard ship" and "Duster pushes past you and enters the inn, blowing your Tough Guy entrance", etc. Well one time our group got ambushed by some nasties and got knocked out or slept or paralyzed or something - basically we were looking at a party wipe when one of us said, "Is Duster around?" Cut to all of us being tied up for hostages and Duster came and chewed some ropes, only to disappear into the foggy background again. I'm pretty sure Duster saved our asses several times. He was like a four-legged Fate point on steroids.
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Nov 20, 2013 23:10
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The day before yesterday I played a round of Our Last Best Hope with some friends. If you haven't played it (you should), it's based around running oneshots that emulate 'big journey to save the world' movies, like Sunshine, The Core, Armageddon, etc. It's basically guaranteed that most of your party will die along the way (and in fact you get mechanical benefits in the endgame from that happening), and success is elusive, at best. So naturally we decided to put together and run a scenario based on the Oregon Trail, or more specifically Super Amazing Wagon Adventure. Act 1 was pretty straightforward, the big choice was "should we go around the mountain range, which will take longer but be safer, or take the pass through the mountains, which will cut down travel time but be dangerous"? Ultimately, the party decided to head through the mountains, which turned out to be the right decision - after a few mishaps involving a lost wagon wheel, dysentery, and a Tyrannosaurus, we made it through with only one loss (what can I say, dysentery's a killer). After that, things got slightly rougher. At this point I need to mention Dr. Samuel Johnson, one of the party members. He was the Scientist (specializing in phrenology) and, during chargen, specified that he had taken along 'an Indian curse on his bloodline where all men were eventually eaten by coyotes'. It was never specified why his family was cursed by Native Americans, but it made for some serious tension with Crow Feather, the Engineer (who took along 'a deep-seated and inescapable grudge against the systematic exploitation of his people by the imperialist white man' and left behind 'any chance of having a conversation with another human being that didn't leave them exasperated'). Dr. Johnson's fear was, of course, 'being eaten by coyotes'. As the party got out of the mountain pass, we were confronted with a "A Deep River", which suggested it couldn't be forded. Crow Feather decided to take the threat, meaning he would steer the wagon as we tried to float it across, and I (playing Colonel Ridgewell Scrivener, the Soldier, whose "left behind" touchstone simply read "ENGLAND!!!!!  ") helped him, which meant he got a bonus on his rolls. This was all well and good except that the end result of his very first roll was a tie. In Our Last Best Hope, when resolving threats, a tie between your roll and the 'black dice of nebulous threatening stuff' roll means that a second threat appears and somebody has to take that. Since there were only four of us left, and two of them were dealing with the river, that meant Dr. Johnson would have to be one of those people.The sudden new threat, as determined by our Medic, was of course 'a pack of vicious coyotes.' When Dr. Johnson's player observed that we were in the middle of floating across a river, it was amended to 'a pack of vicious coyotes riding on the backs of sharks'. Each player has access to another player's fear. Bringing that fear up during a threat makes the threat more dangerous for the person taking it, but it also gives story points to the person who brings it up, so you have an incentive to kinda screw somebody else over for the benefit of the party. Naturally, the Medic immediately invoked 'fear of being eaten by coyotes', which made the river-swarm really dangerous for Dr. Johnson, and then declined to take the threat alongside him. So he was basically thrown to the wolves. Somehow, though, he got a really good string of rolls (including two sixes, which are good in the short term but also contribute to your endgame) and, despite having one arm bitten off by a shark, beat the horde of coyotes away from the wagon with an oar. It was awesome. He was right on the brink of getting completely wrecked, and somehow he just managed to clutch it out through incredible dice luck. Ironically, two scenes later, that same Medic (who was contrite because the rest of the party had yelled at him over the river incident) saved Dr. Johnson's life by pushing him out of the way of a falling meteor and getting pasted. So I guess it was a redemptive sacrifice. We didn't actually end up making it to Oregon, but that wasn't coyote-related at all and had to do with a stampede of buffalo and an erupting volcano.
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Nov 21, 2013 01:14
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Wow, someone mentioned last page about a gameshop that's in Downers Grove. That's my hometown, and I never knew it existed. Of course, it apparently was founded at the end of 2010, and that was about the time I joined the Navy. Still, when I come back for the holidays, I'm definitely visiting there, and looking for some 13th Age. As for seriously notable experiences, I suppose the most notable/bad experience I had was a half-assed 3.5 D&D campaign we played during last deployment. After solidly refusing to play with my campaign because, as they put it, "level 1 characters suck" (I had to make due with some... Colorful people), they instead chose to play this other guy's campaign. Admittedly, it was a fun campaign, simply because he allowed just about anything, including my homebrewed "Hot Blooded Anime Protagonist Who FIghts With Fists" class that I still loving love to death. But admittedly, it was a bad campaign because EVERY SINGLE GODDAMN EVENT WAS A REFERENCE TO SOME VIDEO GAME, and he oftentimes injected overpowered DMNPCs unnecessarily into events. Oh, and the people I were playing with were excessively brooding, while I was EXCESSIVELY ANGRY AND PUNCHING EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME.
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Nov 21, 2013 03:04
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So how about some actual contributions to this thread for once, eh wot? So I'm currently in a SW Saga edition game, where the party are a group of loosely associated bounty hunting types with a shared past (formerly serving together in the army) who start doing jobs for some shady type whom (we assume) want us to gently caress up their competition. Whatever, we don't ask too many questions so long as we get paid. So in one of our early missions, we get sent to hit this small warehouse type place. After clearing out the initial garrison, we start clearing and searching rooms. We eventually find some boxes, and sort of decide to stuff our squishiest dude (our Noble, whom I'll call Sam) into the box. The soldier (Chris) pushes the box in front of the door, while he takes up a position next to the door (to rush in and chop bodies), while myself (The scoundrel) and the Scout (Forums user CantRideABus), take up positions behind the box and on the other side of the door, respectively. Throughout the fight, Sam hides in the box, because he's squishy and kind of a pussy. While I'm happy to make Metal Gear jokes all night, no one else in the group has really played the games, so there's no real point. But after some joking, the box becomes colloquially known as "Sam's Box". On our next job dealing with this same group, we hit a warehouse they own. Initially Sam is to talk his way inside and do some recon, while the rest of us cover him, acting as body guards (Soldier and Scout), or hide in the trees with sniper rifles (Scoundrel). Sam blows it, and a stand off happens, with us eventually killing everyone after some silly fighting over guns. We end up searching the place, and after not finding much, we figure they threw everything in a speeder and fled the place while we were fighting the door guards. Some weird poo poo happens, increasing our suspicions of chemical weapons/warfare stuff. We end up finding only a single crate in the loading bay. It goes something like this: (  will be myself,  the GM, and  will be Sam): What size is the crate? Is the same size as the ones from the other place? : No, but they're similar. How big were the crates from the other location?: Uh, Sam by Sam size I think?: Oh well they're more like, Sam by half-sam by half-sam. (E: going off of his height, which is about six feet):Guys, i'm not a unit of measurement. : You are now. : Knowledge Galactic Lore... Twenty-six! Sam isn't a unit of measurement!: You want to roll dice? Twenty-two. It is a unit of measurement!: I rolled higher-: I rolled science. You lose.: It's not a well known unit, but, it is a standardized unit of measurement when it comes to crates. Group, as a whole: 
SpookyLizard fucked around with this message at 18:49 on Nov 21, 2013 |
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Nov 21, 2013 07:00
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SpookyLizard posted:
You actually have the right of it. Units of measurement are arbitrary by their nature, so "a Sam", as long as you define what PART of Sam (his height?) you are using is totally cromulent. The ambiguity comes in the other dimensions, because Sam himself is not a unit of length, but is a three dimensional object. When you say "Sam by half Sam by half Sam", you could mean "Sam's height by half Sam's width by half Sam's depth," or you could mean "Sam's height by half Sam's height by half Sam's height." This is an important distinction, because human width is about 1/4 their height, and depth is about 1/6 their height, so it's the difference between a 6x3x3 box, and a 6x0.75x0.5 box/tube.
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Nov 21, 2013 13:55
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That reminds me of the time I'd just read the wiki article on the thuggee and decided to center a short adventure around that. So my party met a succession of "harmless travellers" who claimed to be looking for safety in numbers, but were secretly in cahoots with each other and were planning to jump the party once they felt they could safely overwhelm them. The party got wise to the scheme and decided to wait and nab the whole gang in one strike, and hid the Warforged in a crate so they'd seem less dangerous and have an additional element of surprise. Dude spent two weeks in that crate. He insisted he wouldn't come out until the bandits made their move. That's dedication to a plan.
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Nov 21, 2013 14:04
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I encourage everyone discussing Sam-units to read up on MIT and their use of Smoots in the measuring of the Harvard Bridge (364.4 Smoots +/- 1 ear).
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Nov 21, 2013 15:25
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Green Intern posted:I encourage everyone discussing Sam-units to read up on MIT and their use of Smoots in the measuring of the Harvard Bridge (364.4 Smoots +/- 1 ear).
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Nov 21, 2013 15:28
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MadScientistWorking posted:You forget to add that the markings are actually still on the bridge. Well, aside from the plaque, the markings are repainted yearly by MIT students.
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Nov 21, 2013 15:36
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I updated the post. We were going off his height, since he's about six feet tall. It was given mostly in hand gestures at the time. You loving spergs. We actually spent a fair amount of time in the box. It made me feel oddly safe and comfortable.
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Nov 21, 2013 18:51
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The Violent Life of Jess Kimball, Motorcycle Queen Jess, of all the one shot characters I’ve ever played, had the fullest arc, despite some really grognardy play circumstances. Since Monsterhearts is labyrinthian, I’ve put the werewolf subplot into footnotes. In Monsterhearts, The Queen is a social manipulator. They start with a gang. Jess was originally going to be Joey, but the rest of the table decided to be male characters. Anyway, Jess’s gang was Bullet Street, high school motor hooligans. Lena was Jess’s best girl. Claude was her step-brother, and Jaq was the demi-femme enforcer. The other players were Roy, an Irish ghost, Lucien, the vampire who saw him die 60 years ago, and Tucker Moon (really), a werewolf who started play with the motivation “I want to rip Goldbee’s character’s throat out.” [1] During first period English, the girl next to Lena took Lucien’s anti-sun amulet. Jess told Lena to pass it over, then examined it…and it burnt her hand. An intrigued (and scalded) Jess invited Lucien to come riding with them after school. Cool recognizes cool. A few seats over, Roy passes a note to Jaq…who invites him to prom. But when he fumbles about shyly, she invites his best friend Carl instead. Before class ended, Jess took the opportunity to impress Lucien by asking the teacher, “If Jane Austen was so smart, why did she die?” [2] Skip to the end of the day. While Roy is frantically trying to get a date (without missing chess club), everyone is dropping things…an odd girl passed Jess in the hall, telling the Biker that she dropped her nail file. Jess hit the road, letting Lucien ride a stolen bike. Did she forget to mention that they were riding to a motorcycle rumble? And that Jaq had invited Carl to shore up Bullet Street’s numbers? Lucien managed to hang on well enough, and as she blasted Joan Jett (to see if the fight was going to go her way), she nearly crashed her bike…seeing an illusion of a huge, floating green spirit. [3] Shaking the cobwebs out, Jaq met the head of the Central High Zombies, her ex-boyfriend, Terry Slayer. She also saw that creepy hairy kid from English. She tried to turn Terry on with tales of their past antics, but he was bored…and she soon found out why, as Lena and Slayer started making out. Pissed, Jess rallied both biker gangs. Stealing her girl was one thing, but nobody gets to spy on them! Slayer and his goons took their chains, and started over toward Tucker. He responded to this by turning into a werewolf. A loving werewolf, in broad daylight. Jess turned her bike around, grabbed Lena, and fled the scene with her crew. Lucian tried to pull her off her bike, and she ran over his foot. No hard feelings, right, right? --- Meanwhile, Roy (who didn’t accept Jaq’s invite to the “School Spirit Event”) was at chess club, somehow successfully flirting with a new girl from out of town. He gets a call from a frantic Jess, who is convinced that there is a murderous werewolf, really, at the quarry. They agree to meet at Carl’s Junior. Tucker proceeds to kill three gang members, before stalking off toward his home. Lucien decides to help out his friend and throw the bodies into the quarry pond. At his house, crazed werewolf Tucker sees his mother making biscuits. He slams her against the wall, knocking her unconscious, then drives her to the hospital. He lies and says she had an alcoholic event, and they believe him, because his mom has a history. --- At this point, Jess is trying very, very hard to be diplomatic. Roy insists that they call the cops about the werewolf, that Lucien receive all this info in text, and that Jess pay for the meal. She reluctantly does… Tucker shows up. He starts talking all tough (“If you say another word, bitch, there won’t be enough left for the crows”) and Jess laughs. She laughs right in his punk face. Tucker decides to throw Jess across the room. He fails (rolled an 8, -1 as Jess spent a string, -1 as Jess invoked her gang’s presence)… And Tucker quit the game. He stood up, put his dice in the bag, and stormed off to get lunch. --- After that, the game preceded a lot quicker. Lucien and Jess forgave each other (sort of). Claude (who had up to then done nothing) took Tucker into the Carl’s Junior bathroom, and only Claude walked out. The dropped items were signs of being marked by the Coyote Man, a mystical spirit who approached three girl scouts…Lucien’s love interest, Lena, and Natalie (who flirted with Roy). Everyone marked by the Coyote would be dead by the end of the week. Jess took charge of her weird new gang. She did it by apologizing. (It sounded something like “C’mon…I know I wasn’t…I should’ve told you it was a gang fight. You know, like, f____ it, right?”) She corralled Roy’s mystic power, tried to initiate a disinterested Lucien, and told Lena that despite all this weird evil poo poo, that Lena should’ve told her, because she was there for her crew. To undo the Coyote Man’s magic, the gang needed a human sacrifice, and the source of the Coyote Man’s Powers to be put in a permanent tomb. She told Roy and Lucien to steal an earth-mover and take the Hanging Tree to the Quarry. Meanwhile, she dragged a screaming Tucker, near unconscious, to the place where he killed her ex-girlfriend. Right behind her motorcycle. And despite Bullet Street’s best efforts, he got away, going feral and loping off into the woods. Everyone was hosed. Everyone was going to die, because nobody had the balls to find a victim. Jess Kimball, leader Bullet Street, let herself be grabbed by the Coyote’s Cultists. As her gang fought the mob, she was carried over to the edge of the quarry, where Natalie raised a sacrificial dagger… Jess grabbed the dagger. And slit her own throat. --- As the spell reached completion, The dead Queen took a chain and beat the poo poo out of the astral form of the Coyote Man. Then, she entered her darkest self…and, all her damage healed, crawled back out of the quarry. She pushed past a sobbing Lena, and, armed with only a switchblade and her bike, roared off into the woods after that god drat werewolf. [1]If I were to guess, Tucker was mad about a deadly boring game of FATE he ran two months ago at the meetup, where he named one of the pre-generated black PCs Terell Owens. He did not seem aware that this was a real name. [2]Tucker tried to detect a howling from out the window. He opened another window, failed his gaze into the abyss check, and passed out. Roy stopped Jess and her gang from going through his wallet while he was out of it. [3]Tucker declared, without any rolls on his part, that he was going to be at the quarry ahead of time. Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 06:28 on Nov 19, 2014 |
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Nov 25, 2013 08:35
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Still trying to burn through this thread but I'd thought I'd go ahead and post one of my oldest RP stories. If I've learned anything over the years, it's to never join an RP group in a fan-forum and this is no exception. WAAAY back in middle school I picked up Battalion Wars from a bargain bin. It's an enjoyable Gamecube RTS title with some flaws but an infectious sense of glee that digs down to the core of the game and informs everything else. Each faction is a extreme parody of a real world nation, the tanks bounce around the terrain, and the rifle grunts yelp when entering a firefight. As a budding strategy fan I loved it, and looked for any additional information on the title online. What I found were the Gamespot forums and an ongoing roleplay based on the game. Not knowing any better (I was in highschool after all) I decided to join up. The rules for the "game" were simple enough: there weren't loving any. A GM would post an ASCII depiction of the map, list a cash limit and allow the two commanding officers to purchase units from an agreed upon pricelist. They then message their brilliant strategies to the GM, who has to take both of these into account and decide who would the winner is. And without any combat rules or dice rolls that basically distilled down to "who wrote up the most countermeasures" and "who do I like better". Because of course there are so few people participating everyone had to take turns as GM, myself included. Each player had their own faction with special units with strengths and weaknesses in combat, most likely based on whatever other game that player was playing at the time. For me that was Rise of Legends so my first army was composed of steampunk clockwork soldiers that "had double defense from the front, half defense from behind" and the threat of a massive artillery superweapon straight up called The Hammer because I was in middle school and could give two shits about stealing ideas. Before I could really cut my teeth with my army though somebody rolls into the forums and says "Hey, I've got a Forum dedicated to hosting this RP and you're all invited. But let's start over with all new factions, okay?" And migrate we did, and I shifted from the adorably earnest Inventor's Republic to the probably racist Turban Empire, based on the Ottomans circa WWI. Notable features were replacing jeeps and tanks with camels and elephants, claiming that the nation worships "Halla" and soldiers with spiked Kepis and neck-guards. Oh, and I decided to hang on to the Hammer as a plot point because the Ottomans once used a really big gun in real life and I wanted to keep the drat thing (Again, middle schooler) Not much came of all that though, I drifted away when half of my pixels on the world map were cut away for another Muslim faction that was more straight up terrorists, but I will tell you about a pretty hilarious game that I GMed. The two factions were the Norman Republic who were basically the French with a hard-on for accurate aiming, and the latest in a series of Killzone knockoffs by a user named Octopi8 (The Krotex). These two players had a history of rivalry, and I was called in to moderate. Octo had set up his army as technologically advanced and relied on overwhelming firepower to compensate for slow units, while the Norman player focused on range and accuracy. Not that there were any actual stats to back this up mind, just vague descriptions. Anyway, I posted the map and I received the strategies. Octo had decided on blowing most of his cash on helicopter gunships, while the bulk of the opposing Normans was comprised of artillery pieces which normally do dick against aircraft. But upon closer examination of the unit descriptions I noticed that the Krotex gunships were commanded to travel low and slow to clean up the ground forces. Considering the fact that techically troops and vehicles can fire on aircraft and the fact that the Normans hadn't really supplied the appropriate countermeasures, I came up with the reasoning that the Norman artillery were able to reliably hit the Krotex and knock them out of the sky. Bullshit? Probably, but I thought it was pretty drat clever at the time. Fake Edit: I found the old board if anyone had a perverse interest in seeing how bad it really was. I was "The SteamPunk" if you're wondering. Triskelli fucked around with this message at 00:53 on Nov 26, 2013 |
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Nov 25, 2013 10:34
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Might want to fix that image link, chief.
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Nov 26, 2013 00:50
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Agrikk posted:Well one time our group got ambushed by some nasties and got knocked out or slept or paralyzed or something - basically we were looking at a party wipe when one of us said, "Is Duster around?" Cut to all of us being tied up for hostages and Duster came and chewed some ropes, only to disappear into the foggy background again. Set this in Dark Heresy and play Space Lassie. 
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Nov 28, 2013 23:53
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Okay, hopefully this time the story will be a little better. How I was almost tricked into being an Akuma The new terms for this particular story are as follows; Akuma; An Exalt (Or mortal) who has sworn loyalty to the Yozi, through an Investiture of Infernal Glory. They are completely hollowed out mentally, and remade to be an instrument of the Yozi's will, with no Free Will. This can not be forced upon people, they must agree to it without being under duress. If your PC becomes an Akuma, it is generally accepted you do not get to be a PC anymore. You become so much more powerful then the other PCs, and because you're a hollowed out Shell you only care about completing your Task, and once you do you go into an insane rage and generally have to be killed. Yozi; The Fallen Primordials, who the Exalted were created to beat. They want to turn the World into Hell, because they believe that if they turn Creation into a mirror of Malfeas- both their King and where they live-, they'll be free of Hell. Infernals; Solars who were corrupted by Yozi Gunk. Generally they aren't supposed to be more powerful then Solars, just different (Supposed to be.) Dragon Blooded; Another race of Exalts. Individually weaker then the others, but much better at teamwork. Warstriders; Giant Robots. They're not usually Gundam Size, imagine more Power Loader from Aliens, but a full suit of armor. This is also the characters as they will be called; Dawn; Gay Warrior. I don't think he had a personality outside of this, literally. Night; Some kind of Spy/Assassin. They didn't talk much Eclipse; The one who commanded and bossed everyone around. There's more to her, but it's for other stories. Lunar; An actual friend of mine, playing a Full Moon Lunar who was my character's Mate- think Enkidu to Gilgamesh-. pretty awesome dude. Lilac; The ST, so the DM, or the GM, or any other acronym. The person who runs the game. Dragon King; a race of creatures. They are unrelated to the Dragonblooded, I know it's confusing. Scarlet Empress; Basically imagine the God-Emperor, but female. She runs the most powerful empire in Creation, and her Children or their decedents are supremely powerful and lead the houses of that empire. Using the state Religion, The Immaculate Order, her empire- The Realm- basically kills Solars and Lunars. This is for plot reasons from way in the past, but generally people in the Immaculate Order are going to not like Solars or Lunars. I don't think the Alchemicals were around at this point. I honestly have some trouble remembering the chronology of these things, as it's been something like four years. ---- The group was supposed to be investigating some strange circus that had set up on the outskirts of Halta. No one was really sure what it was, but apparently it was causing vaguely defined 'problems' so were were supposed to check it out. It was a massive circus, though it wasn't really described better then a huge black building on wheels. Apparently we weren't supposed to be investigating it, so we had to pretend we weren't actually ourselves. This didn't involve disguises or anything, someone just asked 'Are you those Exalts?' and we went "No." and that was it. It was never really clear why we wouldn't have been allowed in- only certain people were allowed in, which makes it confusing why it was there or why it could move-. But eventually we all get separated. Night and Eclipse find some people kidnapped in the basement who were being used as entertainment in a combat arena. The combat arena Lunar and Dawn ended up in, fighting a Dragon King. My Twilight ends up meeting with the boss of the circus, who basically goes 'oh yeah you're the most obvious person in teh world, idiot'. So while they're doing that, I'm having tea and watching them fight the Dragon King and a Dragonblooded. When I say that the circus is a marvel of Engineering, she hands me a stone. I take it, and I am told roughly this; 'You see beautiful structures that no one else could possibly build but the alien, but genius, smarter then you, intelligence. And it's offering those beautiful things to you.' Well that sounds ominous. I ask her if it's asking me to become an Akuma. She ignores my question and asks for my answer 'Yes or no?'. I repeat the question, she ignores it again. After I ask the third time, she does things with the other PCs. Eclipse and Night free the people under the arena, which also frees a massive monster. This brings her back to me, and finally I manage to get her to say directly that it is offering to Akumize me. I refuse- considering I actually want to play the drat game-, and the scene shifts to Dawn, Lunar, the Dragon King, and the Dragonblooded all agree to team up to beat it. They roll, but no one is able to hurt it until the DB's turn comes up. She uses Soul Mastery and instantly kills the creature. This requires some explanation. The Immaculate Order is also a martial artist organization. The Five Dragon Styles are powerful martial arts used by the Immaculates to fight spirits and Solars. Soul Mastery is the capstone of one of those five styles. You have to be VERY experienced to use it, and it's generally considered a broken charm, because it was written that hitting with it instantly kills whatever it touches. This is bad design, so usually it's errata'd to be more reasonable. Lilac thinks it's fine, so the DB rips the soul out of the creature and wins the fight for everyone. This causes the entire circus to start shifting, so we have to escape. This isn't that hard, but as we escape, the Circus turns into a giant Warstrider, which then turns into a Dragon, which then flies away 'too fast for any of you to catch it', probably in response to the Lunar being quite fast when she wants to be. Then the Aerial Legion shows up. The Aerial Legion is the war machine of Heaven, the standing army. They are the loving big guns. They do not show up for just anything, and a bunch of newbie Exalts are probably not worth the Aerial Legion showing up. But giant Warstrider, so okay. This is where the session ends, so we get our rewards. Lunar gets a Celestial Manse- A manse is a powerful building that gives stones that have great power, a Celestial one is in Yu-shan, Heaven, which means you have a house in Heaven, which comes with a bunch of benefits- Eclipse gets to go to Yu-Shan to learn Spirit Charms- a power of the Caste-, as she pleases. Night gets Power Armor, which sounds lame, but is actually really good. Dawn meets a lover from his previous life, who it turns out is a commander in the Legion! I show one of the Aerial Legionaries the 'Akuma Stone', and they take it away. I don't get anything else. Afterwards, she explains the DB is a Grandmaster of the Immaculate Order and the Scarlet Empress' most loved and youngest Daughter. To explain in setting; a Grandmaster of the Immaculate Order means they have mastered all 5 Dragon Styles. This should take decades, easily. There are 3 in Creation at the time of the game. One is written up, and he is an absolute monster. He's also over a hundred years old, because Dragonbloods can live up to 300 years. For this character to be the youngest daughter of the Scarlet Empress, she has to be under 24, as the Scarlet Empress' youngest canon daughter is around 24. Immaculate Monks are also supposed to be Celibate, as they shouldn't technically be able to use the Dragon Styles, so they have to purify their bodies constantly and completely to use the styles. This is essentially not something the Scarlet Empress would allow, it would be more likely she would create a Great House. It's just a mass of contradictions. Also, as she adds afterwards, it was her first Exalted PC, so she decided to bring her back in the game she was running.
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Nov 29, 2013 00:10
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The impression I keep coming back to is a handful of teens who pretty much got started playing together, skipped the (meta)plotty bits of their chosen game in favour of what seemed awesome, invited someone with a totally different background in gaming to play, and horrifying degrees of awkwardness ensued. I'm still not quite sure if they really loving hated you, but couldn't figure out how to tell you to go away, or had some creepy, half-assed ideas for forcing you to become Awesome, like them.
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Nov 29, 2013 02:54
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Bieeardo posted:The impression I keep coming back to is a handful of teens who pretty much got started playing together, skipped the (meta)plotty bits of their chosen game in favour of what seemed awesome, invited someone with a totally different background in gaming to play, and horrifying degrees of awkwardness ensued. For me, it wasn't like that at all. Everyone except Lunar and the PC Alchemical were recruited from a forum at the same time to play, they hadn't played together before at all. It comes up and I will try to explain and give more examples about it later but as far as I can tell it was because Lilac hated men unless they were gay, and I didn't realize this and showed up with a straight guy- who was also old and thus not hot- and didn't get it. Like that sounds shallow or whatever but it's kind of all I've got to explain it looking back at how there were never any male NPCs unless they were evil and constant derision about how men were the cause of all the problems in whatever game universe we were playing in at the time. It wasn't that the NPC Men were the BIG bag guys either. The 'actual' villains, who had plans and stuff were always female. But anyone who just showed up and was a complete genocidal maniac was male, and they were always portrayed as only capable of violence, but also BAD at that violence and not near as strong as women or whatever. Because like I said I was really bad at learning lessons so this was probably two years of my life and spread across three or four different games. Also this was literally the first time I'd ever played a Pen and Paper RPG out side of a handful of really bad homebrew systems on MSN Groups in the late 1990s and early 2000's, so I was rather inexperienced in a lot of ways too. Stallion Cabana fucked around with this message at 03:25 on Nov 29, 2013 |
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Nov 29, 2013 03:15
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No, that was just the impression I was getting; I've been at (and a member of) weird tables with relatively straight new players, so that was the first thing that came to mind. And for a game about talking, there's often a lot of bad communication. Lilac's... attitudes have been pretty clear in a couple of spots so far, with the magically conceiving lesbian alchemicals and the cartoonishly matriarchal tribe in the toupee of Creation, and I've honestly been surprised that she hasn't sprung a magical sex-change on your character yet. At least you got away from 'em. Figuring out what's good game (or at least 'good for you' game) can be difficult without a fair bit of context.
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Nov 29, 2013 03:41
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Crypteks are assholes, arrogant and vulnerable to getting punched in the face. Stupid nerd. So our Rogue Trader group did something right for once in probably the best session of the campaign so far. The group was an Ork Kommando, Weirdboy and my Xenographer/Genetor/Tech-Priest/clusterfuck, Seneschal's player was a bit late and he arrived a bit later, but he missed the first third or so of the session. The session was not intended to be a combat heavy session, but when you get dealt a hand of violent maniacs, it kinda gets derailed that way. At the end of the last session we "cut to black" just after seeing a pair of giant doors behind which there was supposed to be some ancient evil opening. When we woke up we were strapped into steel tables with all our gear gone, and our restraints got harder when we struggled against them! And everything was made of some weird metal, something we know was called 'Necrodermis'. As we struggled for a bit we suddenly heard a metallic voice proclaiming that the test subjects had awoken, after which our tables tilted upwards and we could see the rest of the lab which had the two absent PCs unconscious as well as some sort of alien robot man. While IC we did not know what he was, he was a Necron Cryptek, an ancient caretaker of a Necron Tomb. Necrons are basically ancient alien race that traded their souls for immortal metal bodies, and they tend to think every other race are slaves at best and they are basically space undead partially themed after Egyptians. He proclaimed that we were interesting examples and then he begun to test things like whether we understood him, whether we could count how many fingers is three fingers, and then a second test whether we could count how many fingers he has up and he seemed to have only five fingers up. The rear end in a top hat also had two fingers up on his other hand which he kept out of sight and he proudly proclaimed that we had failed the test. All the tests were stupid, demeaning and hilarious. Then he sent us to a "problem solving test" - he wanted us to activate something called a solar sensor, with no ulterior motives whatsoever. We took the Missionary with us, since everyone thought his player was coming soon but IRL issues sprung up and he couldn't come, which was why he was a braindead zombie for the rest of the session due to Necron fuckery - which were a bunch of metallic scarabs inserted into our necks, which could apparantely mind control our Orks should they fail their willpower tests, as was demonstrated by the Weirdboy getting mobbed by his minders when he tried to use his psychic powers after the Cryptek unlocked our chains. Not my Genetor though, because her mind is too hosed up for anything to be possible to control it! (In game terms she has a Trait that grants immunity to fear, insanity, mind affecting psychic powers and some other stuff, the fluff text of which states anyone having it is beyond sanity) She is still not hosed up enough to do a "medikul eksperiment" the Kommando wanted to do to the Weirdboy's minders: take off the heads of two of 'em, taking the part of the neck with the scarab with one and just the head with the other - the plan was to change heads, so that one minder would have no scarabs and the other would have two. Theoretically this could have worked because Orks are super resilitent, but unfortunately the Kommando botched the operation pretty badly and the first minder's head died too quickly and the Kommando sorta ripped out the poor bugger's spine too when investigating how strong is the scarab's grib, so he decided that perhaps this was not going to work after all. After the Orks got bored of trying insane medical procedures we decided to randomly wander around and we stumbled into some rooms filled with flayed skins of Rak'Gols, humans and Eldar. We got some minor loot but nothing major, and soon we found what the Cryptek wanted us to find. We did want to blow it up, but we didn't really have anything capable of doing it so the Weirdboy pressed some random buttons and it apparantely activated. Mission succesful? An Eldar Farseer contacted us via psychic powers, asked where the hell are we, exclaimed she would have given up on us if it weren't for an Eldar Autarch we'd befriended earlier who kept insisting that she should look for us. We informed her where we where to the best of our knowledge and she basically went "welp, you guys are dead as hell. If you survive by some miracle, we'd appreciate if you'd bring back any Spirit stones you find - also we can take those scarabs off if you survive (not happening)". We didn't really care about the pessimistic opinion of the Farseer and we just shrugged and decided to try to gently caress up the Cryptek's plans at least. We wandered around for several hours and found this long hall filled with dormant Necron Warriors. That is, thousands upon thousands of them. We smartly walked right in, ran into some sort of flying sentry thing, blew it up when its light turned red and then everything went wrong. The Warriors started waking up. All of them. We sorta woke up the first Necron dynasty from their tens of millenia of sleep by accident. Uh, whoops? We ran for our lives for a bit after realizing that fighting against endless waves of Necrons was not a good idea. After a couple more hours of stumbling around blindly, now with added "avoid Necron patrols", we found our way back to the lab, where the Cryptek was waiting. The stupid rear end in a top hat robot man was behind a window now, and he congratulated on completing two tasks, activating the sensor-thing and waking up the tomb he intended to ask us to do later! We were less than amused and we asked him whether he was scared of us now that we had weapons. He claimed he had nothing to fear from primitives like us and asked us to go to the 'Faraoh' and ask him to give the Cryptek rights to leave his labs (because he had no rights to leave the lab why he'd set us on our tasks). So what do we do? Weirdboy instantly teleported us right next to him. Standard bossfight tactic, teleport to boss with everyone and kill him instantly, then leg it. We just utterly murderized him, even if the Cryptek managed to chop off the Weirdboy's right foot before going down (and we just stuck a sword there as a prosthetic and it worked decently enough). We found out Necron bosses do giant amounts of damage, which is really unfortunate - but mobbing them in bodies works, 3 Ork minders, Ork Kommando, Ork Weirdboy, a Genetor and a mutant minion can beat a target up pretty fast (especially with the smart tactic of grappling a target to take away its reactions - which is basically the only thing my mutant minion is good at these levels, it is basically a walking tanky disabler). Despite being a resilient alien robot, the Cryptek still found it difficult to survive when a huge Ork disintegrates it thanks to the hilarious critical damage tables of 40k rpgs. While we were satisfied for a second, we thought that this Faraoh-guy sounded like an rear end in a top hat and we decided to go find him and kill him. Now, I am fairly sure what the GM meant by Faraoh was a Phaeron, which is basically the most powerful (politically, but he is going to have the best weaponry as well) Necron in a star cluster (Sector in fluff, not sure if star cluster is the correct term for that), a leader of an entire Necron dynasty (several Tomb Worlds) and so on. So we were basically intending to kill one of the most dangerous beings in the Koronus Expanse, without really understanding how dangerous he or his bodyguards were going to be and we were headed to the hardest battle of the campaign so far. We took a small break before the fight to wait for our Seneschal's player who'd completed his exam and was coming soon. His character was sorta confused about everything when he finally arrived as he'd been unconscious for most of the time and the tale about killer robots would have sounded implausible were it not for the fact that there were killer robots walking around. We finally founded the throne room, and at the other end of it a sort of ziggurat like structure on top of which was a throne upon which sat a Necron Phaeron, surrounded by his three Lychguard bodyguards and several Necron warriors. Lychguard are huge Necrons with gigantic shields that have a ridiculously good Force Field on them, armed with powerful weapons and generally speaking utterly terrifying foes. For once a villain didn't posture at us and we did most of the posturing, which made us think that maybe we were about to have a very bad day... Kind of a refreshing change to have a villain that just silently stares at you and clearly thinks you are nothing but gnats to him, although Fel and Mambo with their major ham tendencies own as well. But we were still determined to kill him, even if Necrons actually just phase out to a resurrection chamber when they die, even when they take enough damage to be disintegrated. This is getting kinda long so I'll write the boss fight to end all boss fights and its aftermath later.
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Nov 29, 2013 11:17
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Had an absolutely awesome session last week. My current party is a boyfriend and girlfriend team, and I am the DM. Luke is playing an Elven Paladin Erica is playing a Dwarven Cleric Luke is an extremely experienced roleplayer, the kind of guy who can rattle off a statistic pretty quickly off the top of his head, but he's not a super intense rules lawyer. Erica is a new player and this is her first time playing a magic caster. Earlier in the session, she needed to be prompted to cast a spell that would solve the plot. (Detect magic to find that a local baker's products had been cursed.) Currently they're in a town where weird things are happening. An assassin poisoned half of the mages and half of the clerics, rendering them useless to the PCs as they are too busy tending their own. Then there the assassin with a Dimension Door ring, going around stabbing people. They stopped the assassin and cured the casters. They started investigating how the assassin could have traveled through town so quickly and in the process, have been meeting a lot of NPCs, both sources and (apparent) comic relief. While they're catching up The Magistrate on this, an explosion happens in the market. Two local shopkeepers are equipped with wands, throwing fireballs at each other. The wands that these two have seem to have unlimited charges. Erica casts Hold Person on one guy, while Luke tackles the other, knocking the wand from his hand. Somehow this instantly kills the man. So, they spend a good ten minutes detailing how they helped put the fires out and started helping the injured All of the sudden Erica says "Ohh, I can cast one third level spell. I'm gonna cast Speak with Dead on one of the shopkeepers, to see how he got the wand."loving. Brilliant. So they take the body of the shopkeeper aside and find out how he got this intensely powerful cursed object. with one single fantastic use of her spells, Erica advanced the plot by about three weeks, in a seriously clever, well thought out way. Her boyfriend was so proud. Writer Cath fucked around with this message at 18:08 on Nov 29, 2013 |
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Nov 29, 2013 16:04
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Bunch of horrible people save the galaxy, somehow Continuing from the last post, we'd just entered the throne room of the Necron Phaeron and we initiated combat. As stated earlier there was a ziggurat like structure at the other end of the room, and there were some stairs going upwards on each layer, however none of the stairs were next to each other (every other set of stairs was next to the back wall, for instance). Besides the throne the other notable thing about the room were two bottomless pits next to the entrance. It wasn't the biggest battlefield we've had, especially with large amounts of space being taken by the pits, but still a room that could only belong to a megalomaniac - so a perfect fit for a Necron Phaeron. The scarabs in our necks immediately activate, however the only ones getting controlled by them are two out of three of the Weirdboy's minders, everyone else either makes their saves or is just immune. We do pretty standard stuff to start with, I charge with my minion and kill a regular Necron Warrior standing on floor level, Seneschal takes pot shots at the Phaeron and finds out that the boss's bodyguard's can jump in front of bullets to take the hits instead - and that they have utter bullshit force fields with super high success rate that can deflect bullets (poorly aimed ones, but they can still hit). Almost every single bullet, bolt or other sort of ranged attack that gets deflected this way is aimed at the Seneschal (mostly because he stayed way the hell away from the general melee other characters were in). Still, things were going decently, our Weirdboy teleported himself and the Kommando to the top of the ziggurat next to the Lychguards with the usual plan of "kill boss instantly with teleporting action" in mind, his two mind controlled minders were being annoying but mostly ineffectual and the fight was just going decently enough for a bit, my minion even threw the dead Warrior's remains in to a bottomless pit on my turn, because being space undead Necrons tend to get up after being killed with alarming frequency if they don't just get vaporized or something. Then the Lychguards hit for the first time and things start going off the rails. One Lychguard attempts to hit the Kommando and is about to hit - the Kommando doesn't want to parry it since he wants to keep his reaction to dodge the Phaeron's weird anti-technology ranged weapon. DM throws just one dice for damage, gets a 2 and then DM says how much damage it does in total - 30 with enough armour penetration to go through the Kommando's armour and enough damage to take the commando to critical levels. DM lets the player roll the parry anyway because suddenly horrible amounts of damage. He parries, but then the NEXT Lychguard hits him and does more damage and he would have instantly died had he not had a talent that halves critical damage taken (it was a -10 on the crit table before halving, and -10 is always instant death), and he still fell prone from the effect. Do note that the Kommando is our tankiest character with most natural defences (he removes 12 points of damage from most sources), and he was at full hitpoints. Granted, some characters have technically more hitpoints but still it was a wake up call that this fight was going to be horrifying. The Weirdboy realized that "oh crap, deze fingz hurt" and teleported him and the Kommando away from the big nasty buggers and next to some poor Warrior who they killed a bit later. While two of the Lychguard kept guarding their boss, one came slowly but inexorably towards the Ork duo with murderous intentions. We felt outclassed and I even tried to goad the Phaeron into a honour duel, but he just glared and stated something about us being insignificant and unworthy. I called him a coward and he tried to shoot me on his turn after getting offended at the accusation. At least we were clearing off most of the smaller minions the Necrons had, my minion took one of the mind controlled minders down and the Seneschal and his combat servitor dealt with the other, and most of the regular Warriors weren't that big of a threat (except to non-combat character Seneschal who has bad armour and bad toughness) and they just sort of slowly died off with most of our melee character being capable of killing them in a single turn. Still, there was the small problem of three giant Lychguards with Force Fields easily capable of deflecting most hits... Oh, and they had super high armour, toughness, regeneration and the chance to get up when they are killed (unless they get utterly overkilled) Now Force Fields in 40k rpgs aren't completely reliable, they have a set number below which you have to roll, and if you roll too low the Field overloads, and the stupid bullshit shields the Lychguard had also had this feature, even if they were of such high quality that the chance to overload was smaller than common quality Force Fields (5% vs. 10%). At the start of the fight the Fields blocked with a 75% chance, and the DM later stealth nerfed it by 10% when it became clear everyone was just super frustrated by all their hits being negated - he didn't mention that he nerfed it, but the target number dropped at one point. Really glad he noticed we were getting frustrated and reacted appropriately, shortened the fight by a decent amount probably. We let out a huge cheer when the first Lychguard's Field overloaded at one point, and the Kommando promptly beat the ever loving poo poo out of that bastard, stunned it and made it go prone, at which point my Genetor grabbed it with the help of her minion and threw the fucker into one of the bottomless pits. It didn't regenerate from that! For the first time I got to use my insane strength to be useful. It was a big morale booster, as was when the Kommando threw a squiq bomb at the Phaeron from prone, hit really well and got to throw the maximum amount of dice possible with it (Squiq bombs are accurate, which means that when aimed should the user throw well enough, they can get up to two extra damage dice), and the Phaeron's Force Field didn't protect him (his was a worse shield than what the Lychguards had, but still a problem). The damage was pretty high, but it didn't kill the Phaeron. Still, it was the first major damage the Phaeron had taken and we begun to have some hope by now. Unfortunately for our Seneschal, hope is not the same thing as victory - his servitor's heavy bolter shots were deflected at him and his Displacer Field and high dodge failed him and his foot was blown apart and he went unconscious for the rest of the fight - and his servitor just kept firing with the heavy bolter at the Phaeron for the rest of the combat. We slowly grinded our way through the Lychguards shields by hitting them a lot basically, and we threw a second squiq at the Phaeron which did a lot of damage again, but the Phaeron was a tough bugger and was still standing. We tried to throw my minion at one of the Lychguards, but the bastard smashed the poor little mutant monster with his shield and the amazing fastball special did not work. Oh well, at least almost immediately after that his shield overloaded, and the other Lychguard's shield overloaded on the same turn as well and we loving murdered them. We still had one loyal minder left and he used the tried and true "Grabba-Stikk 'em" tactic, which worked well after the Fields were down and the other tried and true tactic of grappling them with my minion worked as well and soon there was only the last one left and he finally left the Phaeron's side and descended from the highest platform of the ziggurat towards us. The Weirdboy immediately proclaimed "Hahaa! Youz fallen into me trap!" and teleported himself, the lone minder and the (still prone) Kommando to the highest platform. Naturally the moment the boss monster's bodyguard leaves him the best tactic is to teleport in and mob him. The minder attacks the Phaeron and gets parried and counter attacked, which the Weirdboy thinks is okay because now we get to see how dangerous this guy is. The Phaeron instagibs the minder. "Well dat's not nice." Me and the still prone Kommando executed a highly technical pincer move on the last remaining Lychguard and then it got vaporized by Power Klaw, and the next turn the Phaeron was surrounded by the remaining PCs and my minion (who of course grabbled him to take away his reactions), and we murderized him and emerged victorious after a massive and bloody battle. And the Kommando finally got up after having fought from a prone position starting from turn 2 because why waste actions to standing up when you could instead wail on enemies with a Power Klaw and a Chain-Axe? He got extra XP from that at the end of the session because fighting against horrible robot killing machines half dead from a prone position owns. Nobody had died or had to burn a fate point to survive even, and every PC on top of the ziggurat received a Fate point for their efforts and insane heroics. We grabbed the Resurrection Orb the Phaeron dropped when he got disintegrated by several Power Klaw blows, gave first aid to our wounded as much as we could and turned to leave - only to be greeted by endless hordes of Necron warriors. Thankfully the combat portion of the session was completely over and we just used skill challenges to get through, hiding from them, teleporting around and so on. We found one Eldar Spirit stone before we finally ended at the warp portal out of there and we managed to calibrate it so that it takes us to the Eldar ship nearby (who'd promised to help us earlier). We were greeted by a Farseer and an Eldar Autarch we'd sort of befriended earlier (as much as it is possible to befriend Eldars) and there was something odd about how they talked to us: they weren't belittling, arrogant assholes, they didn't even call the human(ish) members of the crew Mon'keighs! That's probably because we'd basically prevented a Necron dynasty from waking up by beating the everloving poo poo out of their leaders. Kinda hard to be an rear end in a top hat when you are actually impressed and relieved that a bunch of people you were certain were A) horrible B) dead somehow proved both wrong by not only escaping from a Necron Tomb but also beating up a Phaeron. They congratulated us on saving the galaxy and we got to choose something the Eldars were gonna give us. We thought about it a little bit and we ended up asking them for Xenos Habitats-ship component and suggested that maybe a few Eldar could travel us on our trip so that we could better ensure any Eldar stuff we find goes to their proper owners. The Eldars negotiated with each other for a few minutes, but in the end the Farseer agreed, but noted that they were not gonna force anyone - however the Autarch volunteered as well as his honour guard and one other Eldar... that one Eldar civilian we'd had as a hostage several sessions earlier. He/She seemed glad when he saw us again, and apparantely this particular Eldar was really looking forward to having adventures on a human space ship. He/she might be a bit stupid. We also returned the Eldar artifact I'd found to them and generally speaking we departed on good terms. Then we just had a little skill challenge regarding space combat and we helped some Imperial Navy ships take out Rak'Gol ships that were causing frenzied havoc near the planet inside of which the Necron Tomb was. Hadark Fel's ships were also present! We got a skill challenge and the DM stated that if we wanted to specifically help the Navy only, we could take -10 to our tests. We took the -10. We succeeded by a huge amount and so the Great Endeavour came to an end, we had beaten every foe, got phat loot, succeeded at two secret missions (Eldar diplomacy & Get a Genetor for a Radical Ordo Xenos Inquisitor) and as an added bonus broken Fel's spirit. We sent him a last cheery vox message and he sounded tired and lost. We saved the galaxy and got shitloads of profit out of it, even if no one except the Eldar actually know what the hell we did. Our Ork Kommando went to meet our NPC Rogue Trader just like nothing had happened and she just shrugged - she'd known the Kommando would return some day, so it wasn't a big surprise. My Genetor held a small purge amongst our senior Tech Priests by figuring out how many of them could potentially have been corrupted by the influence of our former second Explorator, after which the culprits were lynched. I wonder how the Missionary reacts to the new Eldar crew members in the next session, or to the fact that he would've died if the Eldar hadn't removed the scarab from his neck. Probably by having a nervous breakdown. Maybe the massive amounts of money we got from succesfully completing the grand scale endeavour soothes his mind a bit. Fun note about the session: it was supposed to be one with either little or no combat, but since we started with only the three most violent members of the crew present, WELP. We could have worked with the Cryptek but instead we smashed his face in and purely out of spite went after the Phaeron as well. Murderhoboism at its finest. In one day we accidentally woke up a Necron Tomb, beat up its leaders, forced it to return to dormancy because leaders kinda got their faces smashed in, cemented an alliance with the Eldar, crushed Hadark Fel's spirit and made mad stacks of money. A good day.
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Nov 29, 2013 21:40
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Holy poo poo. I've never played anything 40K related but it looks like I'm gonna have to start.
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Nov 29, 2013 22:56
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Everything Counts posted:Holy poo poo. I've never played anything 40K related but it looks like I'm gonna have to start. Those posts are why I'm trying to badger my group into playing Rogue Trader. I've sent along the posts to my GM and he is now thinking about it!
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Nov 30, 2013 00:10
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