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FactsAreUseless posted:Urban Eberron campaign that takes place entirely in Sharn. This. Eberrowns.
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# ? Jul 4, 2015 19:02 |
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# ? May 25, 2024 13:10 |
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FactsAreUseless posted:What's the most fun character everyone has played? Split between my sleep-deprived dream-shaman from an Unknown Armies game and my rich-kid hipster vampire from a Requiem game. Mostly because they both came up with schemes that ended up in glorious failure.
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# ? Jul 4, 2015 19:03 |
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SunAndSpring posted:Man, I have no idea what setting I wanna run next time I GM a d20 game. Dark Sun is cool because I like deserts and survivalist stuff, Ravenloft is nice because it's got some decent spooky stuff, and Glorantha is great because it's super detailed and has so much variety. I've got an itch to run a Ravenloft game based on the style of Hammer horror films, in tribute to Sir Christopher Lee.
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# ? Jul 4, 2015 19:05 |
FactsAreUseless posted:Urban Eberron campaign that takes place entirely in Sharn. Been there, done that.
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# ? Jul 4, 2015 19:09 |
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SunAndSpring posted:Been there, done that. Dark Sun with Eberron Lightning Rails and magical chariots so you can do a Fury Road game
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# ? Jul 4, 2015 19:13 |
TheLovablePlutonis posted:Dark Sun with Eberron Lightning Rails and magical chariots so you can do a Fury Road game holy moly
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# ? Jul 4, 2015 19:16 |
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Night10194 posted:I think the biggest thing they could do with is more special attacks that activate on odds and more that overlap. It should be 'what are my options and how do I react' instead of 'do I get to do a thing at all', but it's a decent concept and the player of mine who plays them legit loves the Fighter. Yeah, it sucks that when you get a decision to make about what power to use it's usually not a real decision, and that if you want to always activate a power you have to spend 4 slots on it. I"m not even sure my fighter player was as upset about it as I was. Evil Mastermind posted:Unfortunately. The boring general chat thread is now D&D Next hth.
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# ? Jul 4, 2015 19:26 |
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SunAndSpring posted:Man, I have no idea what setting I wanna run next time I GM a d20 game. Dark Sun is cool because I like deserts and survivalist stuff, Ravenloft is nice because it's got some decent spooky stuff, and Glorantha is great because it's super detailed and has so much variety. Dark Sun. Eberron bouncing between Sharn and Sarlona and that Giant inhabited island are good too. Or a noir detective story in Sharn. Featuring players as all part of the antiquities inspection service or whatever it was called.
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# ? Jul 4, 2015 20:12 |
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TheLovablePlutonis posted:Dark Sun with Eberron Lightning Rails and magical chariots so you can do a Fury Road game The Race Away from The Dragon
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# ? Jul 4, 2015 20:12 |
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So I am the recent owner of Sine Nomine's Silent Legions (). It is a great toolset for a game master or world builder. It brings up an interesting question though that I can't seem to figure out how to resolve. Can you run a sandbox horror game? Does the nature of a sandbox investigation/exploration game detract from horror? To me a horror game hinges on the mystery first and foremost to draw players in and then end with a revelation as the payoff in the climax of the story. The house really is haunted by an undead cultist in the Call of Cthulhu scenario the Haunting. The investigators discover the true nature of the March family in The Wives of March or the Innsmouth taint is revealed in any Innsmouth game. Mystery novels depend on a great deal of structure in their rising action to use foreshadowing and red herrings as clues or to keep you guessing to set up the emotional impact of the final revelation. The best Agatha Christie, Ellery Queen and Doyle novels have this structure in spades. Sandbox games by their nature are pretty unstructured. How can you reconcile the two?
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# ? Jul 4, 2015 21:20 |
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TheLovablePlutonis posted:Dark Sun with Eberron Lightning Rails and magical chariots so you can do a Fury Road game agreed but make sure everything is made of bones
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# ? Jul 4, 2015 21:22 |
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SunAndSpring posted:holy moly Just do it! ______/ _____/ ____/ ___/ __/
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# ? Jul 4, 2015 21:22 |
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Lightning Lord posted:agreed but make sure everything is made of bones Train made of sand. It starts degrading if you go slower than 50 miles an hour. What do you do, hotshot, what do you do?
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# ? Jul 4, 2015 21:32 |
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Helical Nightmares posted:So I am the recent owner of Sine Nomine's Silent Legions (). I'm not any kind of expert on sandbox play, but doesn't the book explain how it's expected to be run? Speaking of which, I know a lot of people around here enjoy Crawford's games; why aren't there any PbPs of them going on?
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# ? Jul 4, 2015 21:55 |
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Evil Mastermind posted:I'm not any kind of expert on sandbox play, but doesn't the book explain how it's expected to be run? Good question. I went to the PbP page and was pleasantly surprised to see a Beyond the Wall game. Maybe I should check the Game Room and the Recruitment Thread more often than never???
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# ? Jul 4, 2015 22:04 |
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Helical Nightmares posted:So I am the recent owner of Sine Nomine's Silent Legions (). This sounds amazing, and it may be my next purchase. I've been looking for a way to apply the sandbox model to Unknown Armies, and this may be right up my alley.
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# ? Jul 4, 2015 22:26 |
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It shouldn't be called Unknown Armies because they describe a lot of the armies.
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# ? Jul 4, 2015 22:28 |
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Well, the Silent Legions sure do talk a lot
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# ? Jul 4, 2015 22:31 |
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FactsAreUseless posted:It shouldn't be called Unknown Armies because they describe a lot of the armies. It's actually for yoU now known armies, hope that clears things up for ya.
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# ? Jul 4, 2015 23:06 |
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Thinking about it, the only "sandbox" horror game I've seen that appears to work is the Arkham Horror boardgame. And that is because you have a clear existential threat (counters until the Great Old One of choice appears). Even though all players are working towards a goal, really you can go anywhere and work on the goals with any priority you choose (ie gather equipment, persue Elder Signs, kill monsters, whatever).Evil Mastermind posted:I'm not any kind of expert on sandbox play, but doesn't the book explain how it's expected to be run? Haven't gotten to that chapter yet
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# ? Jul 4, 2015 23:15 |
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Just a guess, but it might be a setup like Stars Without Number where the space sector/city power structure skeleton is randomly generated (as well as plot hooks), but adding depth to the plot hooks to flesh out a full-fledged mystery is left up to the GM.
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# ? Jul 4, 2015 23:26 |
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Just want to point out that Eberron even has its own Mad Max area built right into the setting in the Demon Wastes. Just add cars to taste and a sorcerer-king or two and you're good to go.
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# ? Jul 4, 2015 23:27 |
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A modern sandbox is a cool idea. Just grab a slice of a state or something and go nuts.
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# ? Jul 4, 2015 23:41 |
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Helical Nightmares posted:Thinking about it, the only "sandbox" horror game I've seen that appears to work is the Arkham Horror board game.
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 00:32 |
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FactsAreUseless posted:For a limited definition of "work." The definition being "an 8-hour stretch of tedium".
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 00:34 |
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Evil Mastermind posted:The definition being "an 8-hour stretch of tedium".
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 00:40 |
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You manage to make Arkham Horror last 8 hours? We always end up loving up and losing in like an hour. We are not good at coop and it becomes every man for himself immediately.
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 00:44 |
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Why loving play Arkham Horror when actual Call of Cthulhu is easier to play and more sensical?
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 00:45 |
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Lightning Lord posted:Why loving play Arkham Horror when actual Call of Cthulhu is easier to play and more sensical? Plus eldritch horror now exists
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 00:54 |
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Helical Nightmares posted:Thinking about it, the only "sandbox" horror game I've seen that appears to work is the Arkham Horror boardgame.
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 01:06 |
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Hey, looking for advice on ending sessions when the players roll bad. I generally have no problem coming up with good Twists and fail-forward moments when the players roll bad and there's plenty of session left. But when it's time to call it quits and the players roll bad... then what? I generally come up with something, but it takes me twice as long as usual and I feel like I could be doing better. I'm basically posting because I just now thought of an amazing twist ending to the session I finished yesterday and I'm annoyed at how lame what I came up with was by comparison. And it's not the first time I've had trouble with end-of-session failures. Any tips?
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 01:21 |
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Bolivian Army comes out of nowhere and a TPK is implied but never shown.
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 01:23 |
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Evil Mastermind posted:I'm not any kind of expert on sandbox play, but doesn't the book explain how it's expected to be run? There doesn't seem to be a lot of OSR PbPs in here in general, besides that one DCC game and that very long-running AD&D 1e game
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 01:26 |
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Jimbozig posted:Hey, looking for advice on ending sessions when the players roll bad. I generally have no problem coming up with good Twists and fail-forward moments when the players roll bad and there's plenty of session left. But when it's time to call it quits and the players roll bad... then what? I generally come up with something, but it takes me twice as long as usual and I feel like I could be doing better. Tack on a detail or a degree of urgency/severity to an existing one. No sense piling them on if characters have a lovely luck streak.
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 01:48 |
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ProfessorCirno posted:Icons are big setting-defining figures; each has an assumably large sphere of influence and a wide network that PCs can utilize. A PC with a positive relationship with the Emperor would be connected to the official government of the land; one with a negative relationship with the Lich King would be connected to various undead hunters and would probably know how to re-deadify things. At the start of each adventure the PCs roll their relationship dice; each 5 or 6 means that at some point in the adventure, that relationship is going to come up in a way beneficial to them (though each 5 also means there will be a cost or complication). Personally I've started just letting the PCs decide when they want to spend their points to announce or declare things. Can't get past a magic barrier but the wizard rolled a 6 on their Archmage? You can state that a group of arcanists are nearby, lead by Your Friend _______, and are happy to help! Gonna steal this. I've been having a lot of trouble with relationship dice with large PC groups and short sessions - it's nightmarish trying to get all the points used during a session.
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 03:04 |
You can also offer it to players when they're struggling in a fight. For example, if the angry drow swordmaiden lands a crit on the party's unlucky rogue that would render him dead, you can say that he instead uses one weird trick the Prince of Shadows discovered that drow hate that turns the crit into a standard hit, if he agrees to spend his 6 that he rolled on his Icon roll with the Prince.
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 03:13 |
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01011001 posted:Tack on a detail or a degree of urgency/severity to an existing one. No sense piling them on if characters have a lovely luck streak. Well, I think what I'm asking for is more ways to end on a failure without having it be a huge downer or having it be a lame getting let off the hook. I'm thinking back to a time a few weeks ago where the players were trying to shoot an alien disguised as a cop who came in guns blazing and they could. not. roll. a. success. I tried upping the stakes, and I tried hurting them, figuring that eventually after enough consequences they would put this guy down. Nope. It was like 6 or 8 failures in a row. And we were all grumpy because we just wanted it to be over and this stupid alien cop wouldn't die. In hindsight, I see some things I could have done. And giving them another kick at the can is not wrong, but it's not something I can do more than once. If their second try is also a failure, I have to follow through with something. Following through is hard when the danger is trying to kill them. I have to think laterally - like the alien cop grabs an item and runs. Now we've got new info and a mystery: the alien-cop wanted that item. Why? And we've got a cliffhanger for next time. That would have been a great solution if I had thought of it at the time. My problem is I don't think of it at the time. If I had some sort of guideline or structure I could look at on my DMing cheat sheet, that would help me. Jimbozig fucked around with this message at 03:27 on Jul 5, 2015 |
# ? Jul 5, 2015 03:24 |
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Honestly I would try just saying that you're not sure what to do and end the session with the results of the roll up in the air. Then open next session with the best idea you came up with and work from there. It's better to end on a cliffhanger than have a bad ending, I feel.
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 06:31 |
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Oh look voting for the Ennies is up. Kinda glad that Zak's up against something that will crush him in every category.
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 10:29 |
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# ? May 25, 2024 13:10 |
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Hi TG Chat, I've got a question that I ~think~ I've asked before, but now I'm in a position to where I can actually run a game (scheduling-wise): I'd like to ask y'alls opinions on WW2 settings and which systems work best; I've only really played D&D - various editions - and RIFTS like once in high school - I've heard of and read the GURPS WW2 supplement, heard of Savage Worlds Weird Wars as well as the update to FASA's old Behind Enemy Lines. Does anyone have experience and recommendations with these or other systems?
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 13:58 |