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Writer Cath posted:So far the theocracy's been cutting out peoples' tongues and then feeding them to a colossal Mimic.
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Sep 1, 2014 22:06
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Jackard posted:So when questioned it can mimic anything they've ever said?? Well after eating, then spitting out the Paladin, they shot it so hard it fell off a cliff and died.
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Sep 1, 2014 23:31
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The paladin it spit out is secretly a mimic.
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Sep 1, 2014 23:39
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Considering it's the 30th anniversary, it seems a good time to ask: What system would be good for running a Ghostbuster's game?
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Sep 2, 2014 01:12
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dragon_pamcake posted:Considering it's the 30th anniversary, it seems a good time to ask: What system would be good for running a Ghostbuster's game? You're going to want something light like Fate. I've run it in both d20 modern (using the Exorsystems book) and Gurps light(ish). Ghostbusters London in d20M/Exorsystems was ok, but it suffered from being d20 based so things got mechanically wonky at around level 6. Ghostbusters LA in Gurps Light (plus some extra things I came up with to simulate busting/trapping ghosts) always felt more clunky than it needed to be.
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Sep 2, 2014 01:23
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dragon_pamcake posted:Considering it's the 30th anniversary, it seems a good time to ask: What system would be good for running a Ghostbuster's game? I would use Fate Core, Fate Accelerated Edition, the GURPS conversion that some fan made, Savage Ghostbusters (Savage Worlds of course), or even the D6 system. The later versions run better than the original. Open D6 or even Mini Six would work well.
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Sep 2, 2014 02:29
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While we're recommending Fate games, the Atomic Robo RPG would probably work really well for a Ghostbusters game. It's already about doing science to things and having the occassional big action scenes and insulting government officials and junk. You just need to make the antagonist a returning death god or a spectral warlord instead of a government conspiracy or mad scientist.
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Sep 2, 2014 02:44
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Lurks With Wolves posted:While we're recommending Fate games, the Atomic Robo RPG would probably work really well for a Ghostbusters game. Ah yes. Atomic Robo. Such a wonderful fit. I would probably retool the modes a bit for a Ghostbusters game though.
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Sep 2, 2014 02:52
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dragon_pamcake posted:Considering it's the 30th anniversary, it seems a good time to ask: What system would be good for running a Ghostbuster's game? If you want an utter pileup of anarchy (and it's Ghostbusters - why wouldn't you?) you want to slightly hack MWP's Firefly. Failing that Atomic Robo comes second.
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Sep 2, 2014 02:58
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I've ran/played PBP games many times in the past, but they always run into this sort of momentum problem where the need for players and the GM to constantly respond to one another (and the failure to do so) ends up killing it. Anyone have some  on running PBP games?
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Sep 2, 2014 03:15
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Edit: Wrong Thread
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Sep 2, 2014 04:30
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Jon Joe posted:I've ran/played PBP games many times in the past, but they always run into this sort of momentum problem where the need for players and the GM to constantly respond to one another (and the failure to do so) ends up killing it. Anyone have some Well it depends what you mean by "constantly respond." I wouldn't necessarily try and have some sort of line-by-line conversation in a PbP, but yeah, a really big factor in PbPs is folks gotta post. I don't really know that there's an exact science to it, part of it is how well the group clicks with each other, but something I've noticed in my experience is that games where the GM doesn't keep things moving tend to falter and die. Always be moving poo poo forward. I don't mean that you have to breakneck pace rush through stuff but every reply you make to the game ought to contain some sort of springboard for everybody else to work off of. Some of the worst PbP GMing is when players are posting the equivalent of "we're looking for something to engage with, conflict or challenge or whatever, throw us a bone" and the GM replies with something that boils down to "Yep, nothing's changed. Nope, nothing new that you can see. Back to you guys." Here's a good recent example of how to do it right. Frajaq is running a Black Crusade PbP I'm taking part in, so far it's three groups of three bad people with spikes and skulls waking up marooned on a waterworld not knowing what the gently caress's going on. There's no real goal or plot or anything besides the usual Black Crusade goals of "gently caress poo poo up," but every post by frajaq keeps things moving in some way...calls for a skill test, ambushes and opportunities for mayhem, confronting players with obstacles that call for an immediate response. That he updates in a timely fashion helps too, but beyond frequency of updates is that every update he makes drives things forward. Always be doing that.
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Sep 2, 2014 05:03
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For my PbP games, I tend to either throw the people a bone or (if they have something to respond to but haven't actually posted) GM their characters' actions to what seems to be their intended plan after about a week of no action. Leaving a game to fester any longer than a week and the momentum is really gone. For combat, I have an outright rule of "Post your turn within 24 hours or I take over." Since I usually play GURPS, that means that they either repeat their previous action or Do Nothing if not possible. It's a variant on a rule for face-to-face gaming where you need to respond in a certain number of seconds or your character acts without you; it's a way to not only speed things up, but also remove the player's advantage of being able to spend a whole minute planning and debating tactics with people during a 1 second time span in-game.
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Sep 2, 2014 05:18
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Eh, I mean PbPs don't necessarily need 24 hour turnaround...it's nice when that happens but not necessary, I've been in games where the GM updates once a week or so, sometimes longer, and it can work fine...but what you need to always be cognizant of is that PbP gaming isn't like face to face gaming. If you drop some exposition or description on a table game that doesn't have sufficient information for the players to work with they can immediately ask you for details, clarification, explain their plans and ask how feasible they are, etc. In a PbP you don't have that instant feedback so every time you post you need to make sure it's enough to keep the stone skipping until your next one. Coordinating things over IRC seems to help, admittedly. You get some of that instant feedback and roundtable discussion, so I'd also recommend that but it's also not strictly necessary.
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Sep 2, 2014 05:36
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I only do it for combat because I predominately play a game system where a single turn is 1 second. Letting it get bogged down can mean that one encounter can last a month or longer if it doesn't resolve quickly (like the most recent combat I had, where the fight ended with the first shot fired by a player and the fight was over within 2 days). As long as someone can fling out a sentence on their phone saying what they want to do, I can work with it. And having them repeat their previous action if possible (or performing a previously agreed-upon action) instead of being a mandatory Do Nothing action if they don't respond can even be beneficial to keeping things moving, such as if they continue pressing an attack.
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Sep 2, 2014 06:16
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To be honest if I were to ever take leave of my senses and try to PbP GURPS I would probably ask players to give me a rough outline of what they want to do then play out like five turns or something at a go because 1 second combat turns, even at the table, seems like the sort of thing a literal crazy person would design. edit; I say this having actually played in a GURPS XCOM game here so I'm speaking from personal experience, 1 second combat turns are kind of ridiculous.
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Sep 2, 2014 06:27
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dragon_pamcake posted:Considering it's the 30th anniversary, it seems a good time to ask: What system would be good for running a Ghostbuster's game? InSpectres
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Sep 3, 2014 01:42
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so a friend just sent me this link http://environment-other.ambient-mixer.com/ they have a ton of samples that you can mix to create ambient sounds, then download the song. It's pretty awesome. Also lots of examples of things people have made. they even have an RPG subcategory
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Sep 3, 2014 20:35
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treeboy posted:so a friend just sent me this link Oh, this will be quite useful.
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Sep 3, 2014 21:37
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treeboy posted:so a friend just sent me this link This is one of the best tools I've come across.
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Sep 4, 2014 12:40
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Me and a group of friends are trying out Paranoia in a couple of weeks, and I wanted to get some suggestions to get us started. I'll be GM, but none of us have any experience with Paranoia or really any experience with RPGs in general (a few of the players have played D&D once or twice before). We've decided on playing Paranoia XP Classic for *reasons*, but if anyone else thinks we should start somewhere else, I'm all ears. I'm really new to this, so I'd like it to go as smoothly as possible. What should I be reading / doing to prepare?
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Sep 8, 2014 16:00
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KillHour posted:Me and a group of friends are trying out Paranoia in a couple of weeks, and I wanted to get some suggestions to get us started. I'll be GM, but none of us have any experience with Paranoia or really any experience with RPGs in general (a few of the players have played D&D once or twice before). I would have a vague idea of what the actual "problem" is that the PCs get tasked to solve, but don't get too attached to it. Paranoia plays best when it's largely improvised. Don't be afraid to be the adversarial GM sometimes. Paranoia is one of the games where that's okay. Tell the players that the area they have been explicitly ordered to visit, upon their arrival, has recently been re-painted above their clearance level. Most of the fun in Paranoia is seeing how they decide to overcome poo poo like that. Some ideas from sessions I have played, that you may wish to mine: A malfunctioning doc-bot is surgically attaching the living, recently removed heads of involuntary passers-by to security droids, creating a small army of confused killer cyborgs. Friend Computer has recently added a new security feature to some sensitive areas: a chemical mist which causes existing Mutant Powers to activate involuntarily, and behave in unpredictable ways. Players stumble into an abandoned clone tube that hasn't been used in years. It's coated on the inside in a viscous green slime from the old clone vats. The slime is delicious. The slime is also a potent stem-cell based mutagen, which will cause organic tissues it comes into contact with to begin uncontrollably duplicating themselves into a gigantic, hideous flesh blob, like Tetsuo at the end of Akira.
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Sep 8, 2014 16:14
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Hey guys, so I have a potential game group forming of new and veteran RPG players, and I want to pitch a Sci-Fi game as an alternative to D&D. I recently came across an album of space shanties that I absolutely love, and I would like to run a game that evokes the same kind of pulpy sci-fi feelings. Is there a Traveler thread? Would that system work for what I would like to do? Any recommendations?
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Sep 10, 2014 00:53
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Super Waffle posted:Hey guys, so I have a potential game group forming of new and veteran RPG players, and I want to pitch a Sci-Fi game as an alternative to D&D. I recently came across an album of space shanties that I absolutely love, and I would like to run a game that evokes the same kind of pulpy sci-fi feelings. Is there a Traveler thread? Would that system work for what I would like to do? Any recommendations? Savage Worlds is made for that pulpy feel.
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Sep 10, 2014 02:31
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KillHour posted:I'm really new to this, so I'd like it to go as smoothly as possible. What should I be reading / doing to prepare? It looks like your a brand new high programmer, with a pretty new group. Here's what you want to do. Follow these important first mission steps. 1. Before the briefing. Threaten them on the way to the briefing. Obviously they're late and have no idea where the briefing room is which will lead to perfunctory fines, but that shouldn't stop you from adding physical danger to the situation. The goal of this scene is for everyone to run into the briefing room (or what they assume is the briefing room) terrified for their lives but unharmed. 2. The briefing. There's something wrong with the briefing officer, make a note of what it is. She's dead tired, or paranoid, or working for a secret society, or unable to make it and left a hastily scrawled note instead. The goal of this scene is to give the player's the basics of their mission while leaving out or completely misleading them about most of the important details. 3. PLC There's something wrong at PLC, make a note of what it is. They're 3 months behind on paperwork, the army just swept through and took 80% of their equipment without asking, they have to clean up a chemical spill before the Cleanliness Commissars drop by, or everyone in the entire divisionis on the take. Whatever it is is slowly (or quickly) driving the requisition agent crazy, and they take out their resentment on the troubleshooters. Make a list of all the equipment the troubleshooters will be given. Then write down what's wrong with about 50% of the items. It just doesn't work, it's been replaces with a visibly similar item with a completely different function, the dosage/voltage is totally wrong, or it's an inappropriate color. Make sure it's a nice variety of problems. Give out plenty of items to people based on their mandatory bonus duties. Print out a sheet of the items the party is supposedly receiving before the game and pull it out here. Make them all sign for the items they receive. The goal of this scene is to make sure the troubleshooters have the bear minimum they need to succeed + some items that will be fun for them to play with + some items that they have no idea will kill them. 4. R&D There's something wrong at R&D, make a note of what it is. The R&D Scientist cheerfully ignores the problem, and refuses to acknowledge that it exists. Draw a stupid looking picture of a gun. On your notepad list what buttons are on the gun and what dangerous or useful thing each does. Then make up an impossible super-science rationale for how the gun works. Tell the player's how the gun supposedly works and what shiny buttons are on it, but not what any of the buttons do. Then give the gun to the equipment officer or the loyalty officer. It is their responsibility to test it out. The goal of this scene is to give them something even more dangerous and fun then the PLC junk, except this one they legally have to play with. 5. A very dangerous vehicle. The troubleshooters have to get to the mission area and the best way to do that is by riding a very dangerous vehicle. The vehicle is either a little too small or far larger than it needs to be. There are not enough seat belts. Something will probably start on fire. The driver is either one of the troubleshooters or a misanthropic bot brain. The goal of this scene is to get the troubleshooters to fight over things that will not actually help save their lives and to kill them one by one until most of them are dead. If you want, leave one alive so they feel like they 'won'. But no one every wins in Paranoia. 6. The first half of the mission. Improvise. Try to give everyone a chance to complete their secret society mission before the mission get in full swing. It's important to make sure that if the antagonists are human (rather than robots or mutant monsters), they are just as incompetent as the troubleshooters. But they're also better armed. 7. The end of the mission This should be a big setpiece fight or chase, the kind of scene that would be really cool, if only anyone involve had something resembling skill. The goal of this scene is to put the troubleshooters in more and more improbable levels of danger until they've all been killed off and re-spawned at least once. Then a catastrophic accident occurs which probably kills everyone again and brings the mission to some sort of conclusion (possibly because the antagonists get killed in the accident) as well. 8. Debriefing Suddenly everyone is in separate rooms getting quizzed about most of the treasonous things they did in the mission. I like my troubleshooters the way I hate my steak: grilled well Then when everyone is tearing their hair out all over again, voice over your judgements on who gets killed as a traitor and who gets promoted. Have everyone flip over their mutant power cards and secret societies and candidly talk about all the silly things they did in the game and why. Okay. I'm sure this is already a super  post, but here are a couple more things you should remember to do.Give the computer a voice (or hold up a picture of the computer when you are talking as it, if you are terrible at voices) distinct from your narrator voice. Print out individual cards that list their Mandatory Bonus Duty, mutant power, secret society, and secret mission and hand them out before the game starts. Choose the mutant powers to be loud and splashy. Choose the secret societies/missions to obviously conflict with each other and so that most of them need equipment that is requisitioned to a different troubleshooter. ALL HAIL THE COMPUTER!
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Sep 10, 2014 03:56
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Some more general Paranoia advice: Put together character sheets before the game. Paranoia doesn't gain much from having you design your own PC, and this lets you include secret society missions in the brief. Most of your effort as a GM should be on the SecSoc missions rather than the Troubleshooters' official mission. The SecSoc missions are the meat of what's going to happen -- the official mission is just the set-dressing. Ideally, the official mission should be dull enough that players don't feel tempted to cooperate to get it done, but important enough that players can use it as a means to get each other into trouble. Don't sweat the rules. There's a theory that the Paranoia rules are deliberately obfuscated in order to allow the GM to justify doing whatever they like. I personally don't buy this and think they're just poorly written. Either way, it's important to be willing to override them when it suits you. If you have any cap guns, then giving one to each player as a physrep for their laser improves the game immensely. Being able to point a prop gun at other players as you threaten then makes things much more fun. E: Water pistols work quite well for this too, though obviously don't actually fill them with water.
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Sep 10, 2014 08:57
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Super Waffle posted:I recently came across an album of space shanties that I absolutely love, I don't know about spaceelfgames, but this is the perfect soundtrack for space truckin' in Elite Dangerous.
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Sep 10, 2014 10:30
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DalaranJ posted:It looks like your a brand new high programmer, with a pretty new group. Here's what you want to do. Follow these important first mission steps. I remembered another good one from my experience: Due to a paperwork glitch, the Armory fails to requisition barrels for the PCs' laser pistols. Without the necessary focusing hardware, the PCs are now effectively equipped with high-intensity heat lamps.
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Sep 10, 2014 12:55
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Any recommendations for software/app to let you create customized character sheets? Even just something like the Roll20 window would do, but if I could create it as a template so I can quickly roll up multiple characters. I've mostly been doing it on excel but I'm sure there has to be a better way. It's just that I also want it to be system agnostic since I'm not really playing D&D or something RAW
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Sep 10, 2014 14:06
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Well if templates for already existing systems don't suit you and you don't like excel, then I think the only other option is LaTeX.
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Sep 10, 2014 14:10
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I feel like there's a careful balance to walk with Paranoia planning, between creating a cruel yet hilarious mess of an adventure that the players will love but their characters will hate, and a bunch of Paranoia GMs high fiving each other over the totally awesome ways they're going to kill all of their players for increasingly contrived reasons. See: The Paranoia conversations that veer in the "white is technically the color for Ultraviolet so anyone whose character sheet is on white paper gets executed for treason" direction.
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Sep 10, 2014 14:29
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Rexides posted:Well if templates for already existing systems don't suit you and you don't like excel, then I think the only other option is LaTeX. I've only really only looked at roll20, and as I said that by itself was fine if only I could quickly copy/create new characters with a predetermined set of fields. I've heard of master plan but I know that that's specific for 4e, so I'm asking if there's any other software or app there that's more generic Edit: to be clear I'm not looking to print out anything, just something I can quickly tab through on my laptop
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Sep 10, 2014 15:07
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I'm not looking for advice specifically, more just general discussion and sharing perspective on the times when the GM has to describe something, and is trying to set up a particular atmosphere for a fact that is meant to be jarring/surprising/upsetting. What narrative techniques do you use? Last night, the PCs were exploring a mining base that wasn't supposed to be deserted, but scorch marks and a pool of blood in an office that should have been occupied had them wary. They entered the canteen, and I stuck with describing the general impression of the place -- clean, well-lit, robot preparing food -- before mentioning the four corpses sitting at one of the tables, all shot to death where they sat. Two players (good-naturedly) immediately accused me of burying the lede. I can see how they would want to know that first; I can see how the PCs might even notice that before anything else. In a sense, though, the GM controls the PCs' "eyes" when they first enter a room before relinquishing his (or her) hold, and if HOLY COW GUYS, CORPSES! is the first thing I say, any other description I give will be half-heard, if I'm even allowed to finish my sentence before I am told what weapons they're readying or what specific item they want to analyze. Did I have other options for having it hit them harder? The goal is increasing suspicion and dread (without actually playing DREAD).
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Sep 11, 2014 18:52
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I do it pretty much the same way. If I mention the big important thing in a room first, the rest of the area might as well be a featureless white void. My players also tend to focus on whatever the last thing I said was, regardless of relevance to their objectives, so I've had to end on the most obvious things for a while.
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Sep 11, 2014 19:10
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homullus posted:I'm not looking for advice specifically, more just general discussion and sharing perspective on the times when the GM has to describe something, and is trying to set up a particular atmosphere for a fact that is meant to be jarring/surprising/upsetting. What narrative techniques do you use? Nah, that sounds like how it's supposed to go. It's basically the camera panning around the room, and then zooming in on four corpses with dramatic sting. The only time that sort of thing was an issue for my group was when the GM described a building's living room in nonchalant detail, and completely forget to mention the seven-foot-tall glowing humanoid standing in the middle of it. Corpses are not necessarily a thing that would stand out until you started looking around the room, which is what your description did. There's a difference between those and something that immediately draws all attention towards it. Just as long as you weren't like "Oh and there are four corpses" in the same tone and cadence that you described the rest of the room.
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Sep 11, 2014 19:14
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When my players are fully expecting something awful in the middle of the next room, which is always, I like to entertain myself by describing the rest of the room and its most mundane details at great length before tacking on "oh and there's a flayed corpse crucified upside down", and seeing how long of a description I can get away with before my players descend upon me. It's possible we're going for a different tone than most.
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Sep 14, 2014 09:31
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I like to act surprised when I'm describing it. It's a dumb thing that shouldn't work but it's pretty effective. Tease it out just like a horror film: "You open the door and Ugh!" Hold everybody's attention for a beat, "guys there's four bodies in here."
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Sep 14, 2014 20:55
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My group is pretty laconic and deadpan so my GM'ing is usually like: "Okay so you open the door, and there's a bloodied room, guts everywhere, four mangled corpses on the table. Anything else you wanna know?" "Is the floor still slippery from the blood?" "Extremely." "Huh." And then they start poking around. It kind of makes sense because the party is so jaded and cynical that even the characters learned to live with it by now.
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Sep 14, 2014 21:51
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I need help dealing with the problem of playing alongside evil PCs. Currently, I'm in a game where me and two friends are both neutral rogue types. It's Pathfinder and not Thieves World, but if I gave a quick explanation I'd say that's kind of the tone, and our motivations are 1) To make a ton of money through non-violent crimes and get rich schemes. And 2) Over throwing a shadowy vampire king, which makes me expect that the DM will soon drop the bomb and tell us we see the mists of Ravenloft. Now a new guy we met on Roll20 joined and he's wanting to do things like mugging NPCs for money, and he wants to start a slave-trading business. Both of these things, the other three players aren't down with. I don't want to ruin this guy's fun and step in the way of everything he wants to do, but then again, we don't want to cross certain lines as a party.
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Sep 15, 2014 00:33
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Talk to the person and explain the issues.
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Sep 15, 2014 00:38
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