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The Grammar Aryan posted:RE: Currency. I fail to see how any of this is a problem. The players have clearly indicated that they value "upgrading equipment for maximum combat efficiency" less than "being able to re-enact a heavy metal album's cover art," so give 'em what they want!
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Jul 21, 2015 12:18
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They should face off with the infamous pirate lord Two Skulls Roddrick, a man who steals skulls. (He wants to steal their skulls)
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Jul 21, 2015 12:28
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So, uh, are there any 'mass raise dead' spells in this setting that could lead to the PCs having to chase down their treasure hoard with butterfly nets?
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Jul 21, 2015 12:35
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The Grammar Aryan posted:1: A scrimshawed hammerhead shark skull (which doesn't make a ton of sense, unless you can petrify cartilage, or I'm just wrong about shark anatomy), worth around 500 gp. Shark skulls are pretty sollid stuff, actually. A shark "skeleton" looks kind of like a very mean snake, because its skull, jaw, and spine are heavily reinforced. You could definitely scrimshaw it.
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Jul 21, 2015 13:04
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Shadeoses posted:They should face off with the infamous pirate lord Two Skulls Roddrick, a man who steals skulls. An ettin pirate who collects skulls is an awesome idea. You can have him wear a skull on each shoulder, too, so nobody's sure which two skulls his name is talking about.
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Jul 21, 2015 13:34
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Ettin skeleton pirate with only one head. Raiding the seas and coastal towns in search of a worthy skull to mount upon his empty neck.
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Jul 21, 2015 13:36
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NinjaDebugger posted:An ettin pirate who collects skulls is an awesome idea. You can have him wear a skull on each shoulder, too, so nobody's sure which two skulls his name is talking about.
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Jul 21, 2015 13:39
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My Lovely Horse posted:Arthur "Two Skulls" Jackson. "Aww, now he's Arthur 'No Skulls' Jackson"
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Jul 21, 2015 15:07
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:I fail to see how any of this is a problem. The players have clearly indicated that they value "upgrading equipment for maximum combat efficiency" less than "being able to re-enact a heavy metal album's cover art," so give 'em what they want! Oh, I'm not complaining! I'm just noting how I need to give them kickass skulls in addition to traditional loot. I'm definitely toying with the idea of building out an ossuary for them to raid, just to see them try to pry all of the skull mosaics off the walls. Also, skeleton pirates. Are they skeletons who are pirates? Are they graverobbing pirates? I'll throw it to them as a quest rumor and let them figure it out.
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Jul 21, 2015 15:37
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The Grammar Aryan posted:Are they skeletons who are pirates? Are they graverobbing pirates?
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Jul 21, 2015 15:42
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"New objective: figure out some use for this jar of powdered donkey skull." (Why did we rob that witchdoctor in the first place?)
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Jul 21, 2015 15:46
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"I shall tell you the tale of a skull, a very fancy skull indeed. Plated in rare and mighty metal, embedded with bright jewels that spell out 'Hero+', it is widely rumoured to be a powerful artefact that boosts the luck of whoever possesses it. Unfortunately, it's currently being used as an athletic cup by the sweatiest orc who ever took up professional sport. Good hunting!"
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Jul 21, 2015 15:52
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And that's when you spring on them that next session is just a game of Blood Bowl. Need to CAS that Orc if you want the skull.
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Jul 21, 2015 15:55
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silentsnack posted:"New objective: figure out some use for this jar of powdered donkey skull." (Why did we rob that witchdoctor in the first place?) Unless it's performance enhancing power. For skull doping.
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Jul 21, 2015 17:03
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Sounds like you've got a bunch of closet Warhams. Gotta have more skulls!
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Jul 21, 2015 17:04
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silentsnack posted:"New objective: figure out some use for this jar of powdered donkey skull." (Why did we rob that witchdoctor in the first place?) The solution is "cast Mending, creating a complete and unpowdered donkey skull. Then paint some flames on it and poo poo."
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Jul 21, 2015 17:23
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:The solution is "cast Mending, creating a complete and unpowdered donkey skull. Then paint some flames on it and poo poo."
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Jul 21, 2015 17:24
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Menacing with spikes of donkey leather and bauxite?
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Jul 21, 2015 17:26
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Just ran the best WWWRPG session of the summer. Full multi-visual is HERE, with pictures, highlighting and footnotes. AMERIBASH is a tournament to grant the AmeriCup to Cape Cod’s greatest grappler. A great way to earn a couple bucks if you were wrestling in New England. We started out with Stache Wellington. A decent guy, he lived his Gimmick, which was ‘old-fashioned redcoat’. After trying to get a few people interested on the sidewalk near his apartment, he carpooled with the Silicon Valley Girl to the fairgrounds. At the Rodeway Inn, Freddy Flipout fought a hangover. The Canadian was picked up by Coach Werewolf, who used to be Pete Plumber until the scandal in Spoons Texlahoma. While the Coach was upset about Freddy’s lateness, coach showed him a cool gimmick for their match...a set of halloween werewolf teeth with a blood squirting switch! Freddy lied that he found it cool. The Colonel took the Megabus in from Burlington Vermont to Boston...then had to hitch a ride to Cape Cod, with a fan who had 500 boring questions. (The Colonel was from the south, which explained both his gimmick and his continual refusal to acknowledge Boston and Barnstable as separate places). Since the show was a shady local wrestling promotion, Wellington discovered that many of the people on the poster were not likely attending. For example, Tawni Townsend. And The Undertaker. Wellington had the bright idea of getting the town's undertaker to make an appearance. The idea floated over Promoter William Carter Wakefield’s head ("Wait, there's a WRESTLER the Undertaker!?") but gave Will an idea... Pair Wellington with Will Wakefield Junior! Company man Wellington agreed. The immediate priority, however was to discover people who were wrestling but weren't in the locker room. He set off to find Silicon Valley girl and, by seer coincidence, ran into Tawni... Who was out with her family. Stache began proclaiming to her, in character, that she might want to attend the show. Her family laughed, until she ripped the poster in half. Nobody had told her she was in the show. After some olde-fashioned pleading, Tawni agreed to appear, under two conditions: A) she could get her cash in advance B) she wouldn’t have to manage anyone stupid. Meanwhile, Fred had to find Wyld. He located Williams Jr toking, but the Drugs addict was nowhere to be found. Turns out he was at the petting zoo, trying to ride a goat. It was only his explanation that wrestling was real to HIM that got the Canadian any traction with security. Even before wrestling, Wyld had managed to piss everyone off with this bullshit. The first match was rebooked from Fred v wolfcoach to a handicap match. In a singles tournament. With both sides face. --- As the show prepared to start, Councilwoman McKenna Kennedy was is bloviating in the ring. An older woman, she was the reason the state outlawed filibusters. Her five minute How’s It Going? had turned into a filibuster on filibusters. The crowd, starting to leave, was excited to see Freddy Flipout arrive! He explained how people wanted to see wrestling, and how in CANADA… The crowd booed, hard. Fred retreated to the locker room. Thinking quickly, Stache came out, gave the senator a big hug, and carried her from the ring. He and Will Junior came out (to one of Will’s horrible rap tracks). Wyld came out to an unlicensed WK song. The “Match” was a disaster. It began sort of as a triple threat, but the Wasted Wyld was unable to do simple things in the ring. They got through one set of hip-tosses before Stache filled the script and dislocated Wyld’s shoulder. The crowd loved Wyld (for being beat up, presumably), and Stache got tons of positivity for abusing the addict rear end in a top hat. He tagged in Junior to capitalize, but the two (who were real life friends) got locked in an off-the-ropes, duck, off the ropes, duck loop. Stache tagged himself and went for a forceful pin, trying to end the drat thing; Wyld reversed and, in a moment of clarity,used the ropes for a reversal. Seeing no other option, the ref counted to three. The crowd booed. The match was over and the wrong person had lost. The boss’s son, who had been slated to win the whole thing, was eliminated from the tournament. The crowd booed like crazy. Backstage, everyone wanted to kick Wyld’s rear end. He was sent to a converted pig stall and stationed with a security guard. Stache convinced the boss that since HE had been pinned, Junior was still in the tournament! Boss said fine as long as Stache explained it to the crowd, which he did, with the help of McKenna Kennedy. Match 2 was Colonel vs. Freddy, with the explicit instructions to “GET THE CROWD TO FORGET ABOUT THAT LAST SHITFEST.” The two succeeded; Colonel came to the ring, explaining that he was a southerner, a colonel, and...AN AMERICAN! Freddy came down wearing his maple-leaf mask, but won the crowd’s affection with solid technical wrestling, a triple jump moonsault (“Do they even have gravity in Canada!?”) and a post-match handshake. Freddy traded in a tiny Canadian flag for a gigantic American one, and reversed his mask; on the other side, it was Red White and Blue! --- Tawni, working a high school greaser gimmick, and Coach Werewolf, being a werewolf coach, took on the Silicon Valley Girl. The “Fake Bite” gimmick was a tremendous hit. --- The boss explained he needed to fill time, and had lined up a Bewer Grill advertising spot. He needed two people out there to hype up the main event, and he’d give whoever did it $50; Wellington and Colonel agreed. The segment pitted Chicken-Fried Burgers vs Classic Wellington Beef. Before the flavor panel could get a taste, though, Wellington sprayed a liter of lighter fluid into the Colonel’s grill! The resulting explosion got Wellington a huge audience following, as well as cementing him as a bad guy. It got The Colonel a huge envelope full of a cash and a series of indemnity forms to fill out, right away. --- Backstage, the boss’s daughter Julia was flirting with Fred, or so he thought. When Fred tried to shut her down, the Colonel teased that “she was too young, even in Kentucky”. Jules stormed off, telling the pair that she was a lesbian and that wrestlers were assholes. She stuck a cell phone camera in the now-soberish Wyld’s face, and asked him if he was gonna be in the main event. He readily agreed (he hadn’t lost!), and Jules begged that he kick Freddy’s rear end. Night fell on the Cape Cod Fairgrounds. The ring was illuminated by a mix of floodlights and midway attractions, casting multiple shadows on each competitor. First out for the final match was Wyld, who came out to Eddie Murphy’s “Party all the Time”. Second out was the Colonel and the Canadian, and last was Will “Wakeup” Wakefield! He came down to the ring in an eagle hoodie with his sister escorting him dressed as the Statue of Liberty. He was tailed by his enforcer, The Redcoat Stache Wellington. The match was actually good! Freddy had gotten on the crowd’s good side, and things proceded thrillingly until Wakeup tried his martial arts poo poo. He managed to look fake and hurt his opponents for real, locking them into a double choke. Freddy flipped-out, reversing the hold into a for-real armbar, which caused Junior to tap out furiously. Luckily for the finish, Junior’s third tap hit the ropes, and the ref broke the hold. A revenge seeking Wyld charged at Freddy...and missed, colliding head first with a ringpost. He fell to the mat, unconscious. Freddy was left in the ring with an amateur who had a dislocated shoulder. But “Wakeup” Wakefield wasn’t done yet! He tried a vertical suplex...then couldn’t complete it. The crowd turned, which made the situation worse. The suddenly-heel Wakefield, after taking a few suplexes, rolled out of the ring, grabbed his sister, and dragged her toward the fireworks display. Freddy wasn’t having that. With a running dropkick, sent the pair flying in separate directions. Julia crashed to the mat, Will hit the barricades. The Colonel rolled the unconcious Wyld out of the ring. The Canadian High Flyer rolled Will back into the ring, where the rookie made a strange request: Freddy should win the tournament. The crowd loved him. It was the first sensible thing Freddy heard all day. He suplexed Junior, went to the top rope… And was interrupted by Stache. The Benedict Arnold rushed the ring, and started punching Junior. JUNIOR WON THE AMERICUP BY DQ! And the crowd started throwing garbage. Freddy and the Colonel hit their finishers (The Manitoba Moonsault and the Choice-of-Side-Slam) on the traitorous bad guys, and went over to the fireworks. Will’s father came out, ranting and raving. This was ludicrous. This was insane, nobody was getting paid for this travesty and all. The lights went OUT. The Undertaker appeared in the ring. Tipped off by the Colonel’s fan, he chokeslammed Bill Senior. The fireworks display started… and the Deadman was gone.
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Jul 22, 2015 08:04
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WWWRPG really confuses me, since it's so meta. It's not just roleplaying wrestlers, it's roleplaying people playing wrestlers and doing both fake fights and narrative as well as the real backstage politics. It's loving sick but it kinda ties me in knots.
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Jul 22, 2015 08:16
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You're actually roleplaying wrestlers, not the characters wrestlers roleplay as. If you're new to the idea it can be difficult to keep things in line.
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Jul 22, 2015 08:31
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The stories are amusing, but can be hard to follow sometimes. It probably doesn't help that I don't follow 'real' wrestling (such that it is), so sometimes it's hard to keep straight the multiple levels of abstraction when I don't even always know what's supposed to be kayfabe or not. Also, I'm surprised I know that kayfabe exists and initially mis-spelled it. That said, I still usually enjoy the stories for the bits I understand, and I definitely still love the idea that the other players in a match should be roleplaying color commentary throughout the entire ridiculous series of events.
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Jul 22, 2015 08:47
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It really goes well with a "Oh poo poo, what if we..." mentality. You can almost ALWAYS interrupt, run in, or put over another player's ideas. For that session, there was a bit where Tawni's dad was a cop...and he was on commentary with a juggalo radio DJ. The DJ said "gently caress you, I don't care about your PG bullshit" and was immediately punched out. This happened within maybe 20 seconds of one person suggesting a cop as a commentator and the other suggesting DJ HachetKilla.
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Jul 22, 2015 08:51
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:The solution is "cast Mending, creating a complete and unpowdered donkey skull. Then paint some flames on it and poo poo." "We'll just say it's a talisman that allows you to perform skulduggery better. We'll just hype it up to some barbarian who thinks that means it makes him better at caving in skulls or protecting *his* skull and we'll make a tidy profit."
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Jul 22, 2015 16:56
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Yawgmoth posted:The best question to need answered. e: relevant story: playing in a pirate campaign we were attacked in a cave by evil skeletons with glowing eyes. We ended up chopping their skulls off and using them as torches. They were not happy. Splicer fucked around with this message at 17:11 on Jul 22, 2015 |
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Jul 22, 2015 17:08
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I remember a gaming session where my hyperactive ratman thief picked the lock on a chest, and saw a bunch of rounded objects under a piece of leather. He, thinking bags of coin, jumped in (very short). The referee, shrugging once again at my impulsiveness and luck with dice, promptly stated they were dwarf skulls. Animated dwarf skulls. He palled around with a very big and very dumb felinoid centaur fighter, who was just staring the whole time. My thief gets an idea... He ducks behind the edge of the chest and shoves his wrists through the spinal entry whole on two of the skulls. Then he makes them dance along the top of the chest. The fighter says (and the players all spoke on versions of what they imagined the characters sounded like) "Puuuuupetsss. Heeeee'sss makin' puuuupetsssss."
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Jul 22, 2015 20:02
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Guildencrantz posted:Re: currency, I'm having a lot of fun with it in my post-apocalyptic campaign. There's a barter system, but nobody wants to get bogged down in the minutiae of that, so we just use an abstract barter value in "whatever random less-than-useful crap you carry around to trade with". This wouldn't happen to be using the Aftermath! system, would it? I hope it is, because then you would be the second person I know who runs any type of game using those rules. Edit: skullchat- In a harnmaster campaign I played in, we were exploring the ruins of Azadmere [a not-Moria set in the canon] and I plundered a tomb of dwarven kings and recovered a mithril played dwarven skull. Now in Harn, the prices were fairly reasonable and followed the silver standard, with copper pennies and silver bits being in play, with the occasional gold piece floating around from the Really Wealthy. So having a mithril skull was basically carrying around the price of a large thriving town in my backpack. Problem was, who has that kind of liquid wealth around? Who would be willing to literally trade a castle and its environs for a skull? I kept it because mithril skull and finally ended up using it to buy off the death sentence of myself and a bunch of friends from the Shek-Pvar [the all-powerful mages guild that pretty much pulled the strings of anything of note on the island of Harn]. That skull became the ultimate get out of jail free card, so that was cool. But I was always vaguely disappointed to have found the ultimate treasure and not be able to cash in on it for even 1% of its value. Agrikk fucked around with this message at 06:40 on Jul 23, 2015 |
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Jul 23, 2015 06:22
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Golden Bee posted:Just ran the best WWWRPG session of the summer. I find this summation of events was completely unfair to Freddy. He just assumed, like everything else that wasn't a wrestling match he was involved in, it was going to end terribly. Everything was terrible. He even had to switch out his usual finisher (the 630 splash) for the triple-jump moonsault because the boss' son used the 450 as a finisher and it'd make him look bad (which happened anyways).
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Jul 23, 2015 06:29
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That is a great idea for a cursed artifact. The Most Valuable Bauble In The World. Literally the single most valuable item in existence, everyone that lays eyes on it intrinsically understands it's value, but you can never do anything with it because anything you trade it for will be worthless in comparison. Also makes you an incredibly lucrative target for opportunists. The ultimate White Elephant.
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Jul 23, 2015 07:44
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Agrikk posted:This wouldn't happen to be using the Aftermath! system, would it? Sorry, no, it's Savage Worlds with the Broken Earth supplement. It's straight from the rules for that, and I heartily recommend it to anyone who likes SW - although I've modified it a lot, changing the setting and removing the more gonzo elements (like the Planet of the Apes race) to replace it with a more Fallout-esque post-apocalypse. Speaking of, here's a story from that campaign. It's a sweet piece of good roleplaying, intraparty conflict done well, and one of those "I love it when a plan comes together" things. Backstory: The players are a bunch of exiled vault-dwellers, and they're extremely ambitious, intending to run their own community and do their part rebuilding civilization. At present, they're serving a mutant tribal warlord who's invading one of the less pleasant "civilized" factions to take over their advanced tech and create a feudal kingdom. (Sidenote: the warlord is one of the NPC's I'm more proud of, initially they had that RPG player instinct of obsessive independence and intended to betray him first chance they got, but eventually I managed to build him up as a competent, reasonable leader and they've grown quite loyal to the dude, so obviously I'm going to put him in lethal danger soon) Along with leading a small tribe, they've specialized in providing services in technology and diplomacy, since their allies, while fierce warriors, are terrible at that. Although the horde excels at pillaging, raiding, lightning attacks on patrols and so on, a bunch of semi-reformed raiders with hand-to-hand weapons and makeshift firearms obviously have a lot of trouble engaging fortified positions guarded by a semblance of a regular, professional army. They need explosives, parts for siege weapons, proper guns, and a bunch of other expensive stuff. So the party visited the token "libertarian mercantile hub" settlement, run by Marianne W. - a ruthless and nepotistic businesswoman who primarily values her family name and legacy. Looking for a way to contact the leadership and convince them to sign an alliance, they caught wind of Marianne's rebellious 19-year-old niece Susanne, who's less interested in business dealings and luxury and more in fighting, drinking, and the allure of the open road. She also greatly enjoys watching fighting sports. Enter "Butcher", the party's main melee combatant: a lumbering brute with a propensity for berserk rages and the intellect of a child. Butcher enthusiastically agreed to enter the local MMA-type contest, and promptly wiped the floor with his opponents, allowing an audience with Susanne. The party's face and leadership figure Thomas then regaled her with stories of their exploits, telling her what she wanted to hear: how they went around freeing slaves, fighting for freedom, doing what they wanted, living rough and valuing the loyalty of brothers and sisters in arms, all that stuff. This gave them an "in" with her aunt, and they worked out a deal: if their initial campaign was successful, the Family would give them a loan of military equipment and food, in exchange for interest and a favorable trade treaty with the future kingdom. After all, Marianne wants to get her hands on that huge repository of tech as well, and a bunch of tribals straight out of hunting and gathering are more likely to sell it for a good price than the isolationist, fascist statelet that currently controls it. Fast forward several sessions later, many weeks of ingame time. The invasion is going rather well and approaching its climactic battle. The players' community has gained and lost a great deal, growing stronger and building bonds. They've attracted a sizable following of various dispossessed people, mutants, freed slaves, etc. in the name of Thomas's communitarian ideology, although in his character arc he has also grown increasingly pragmatic and ruthless as a political leader. Butcher, despite beginning the campaign as little more than a ball of muscle attached to a helicopter blade used as a two-handed sword, also has gotten an arc: seeing a friend die, almost dying himself, and withstanding drug addiction and withdrawal, he's been looking for meaning in his life. So I had an NPC ally, a missionary priest from a faraway theocratic community, feed him religious propaganda and give him a gift: an illustrated manuscript about the story of St. George and the dragon. The player absolutely loved this, and so the infantile Butcher took it hook, line and sinker - he now calls himself Sir Butcher, wears heavy metal armor that he lovingly polishes, and has reinvented himself as a "knight errant", looking for heroic deeds to accomplish, typically with terrible results because he's far too stupid, violent and impulsive to predict the consequences of his actions. Finally, the merchant caravan arrives at the horde's campsite, accompanied by a unit of hardened mercenaries and loaded with all kinds of wonderful wares: bullets, grenades, anti-tank mines, bags of wheat, fuel for the community's "siege tower" (an armored forklift with thick metal plating on the elevator segment) and other cool stuff. Thomas, sent to negotiate and finalize the deal, receives a secret note saying to meet him on the outskirts of camp. There, he meets an unexpected stowaway: Susanne, the young niece from earlier. Having learned that her aunt intends to marry her off to a wealthy caravan owner, she decided instead to run away from home, enlisted the help of a lover among the mercenaries, got herself stuffed into a crate of wheat, and now wished to join that romantic band of wandering freedom fighters who had impressed her so much. The table loving erupted at this. It was, of course, a logical consequence of their actions from earlier, and it would be coherent with their ideals to take her on, but it would also be absolutely suicidal: the young lady's aunt would not only break the alliance, but also stop at nothing to recover her lost family member. I set this up as an important resolution moment to Thomas's arc: is he the idealistic leader he portrays himself as, wishing to free people from shackles and create a fair society in the wasteland, or were his sermons lies and he's actually willing to poo poo on the life of a naive young woman who believes in him in the name of political expediency? He was increasingly leaning towards the latter, and as three players argued in-character, he took the side of giving her back to her aunt to make sure the supplies keep coming. As they were near a consensus, "Sir" Butcher, who had learned of the event, barged into the tent, fully armored, foaming at the mouth and waving a gun. He loudly demanded to know where the "Princess" was, so that he could save her from her evil stepmother as his knightly code commands. When he found out the others were contemplating sending her back, he flew into a rage and alternately pleaded a moral case and threatened them with disembowelment. Ultimately, out of a mixture of guilt and immediate fear, the other party members agreed to come up with a fake-out, change the niece's appearance and somehow hide her among them, praying to every dead god out there that the caravaneers don't find out. And so, the semi-retarded murderous berserker saved his friends' souls because his only solace in the post-apocalyptic wasteland is believing in fairy tales. The entire conflict was in good fun, the characters argued themselves half to death and came close to blows, but the players were having a blast acting it out and roleplayed the everloving poo poo out of deciding the moral choice. It's slated to become one of the more memorable events in our long RPG career, and while I'm pretty proud of setting it up, the credit goes to them for making it such a defining moment. Of course, no good deed goes unpunished and their decision is going to come back and bite them in the rear end later on, but so would the other one 
Guildencrantz fucked around with this message at 01:42 on Jul 27, 2015 |
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Jul 26, 2015 17:12
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Captain Bravo posted:That is a great idea for a cursed artifact. The Most Valuable Bauble In The World. Literally the single most valuable item in existence, everyone that lays eyes on it intrinsically understands it's value, but you can never do anything with it because anything you trade it for will be worthless in comparison. Also makes you an incredibly lucrative target for opportunists. The ultimate White Elephant. I'm going to use this in my upcoming Pathfinder game. My players
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Jul 27, 2015 15:39
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Railing Kill posted:I'm going to use this in my upcoming Pathfinder game. My players
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Jul 27, 2015 16:07
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Along those lines I've always wanted to give a lvl 1 party a Celestial Diamond as party of a larger treasure pile and not tell them what it was 
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Jul 27, 2015 16:10
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Super Waffle posted:Along those lines I've always wanted to give a lvl 1 party a Celestial Diamond as party of a larger treasure pile and not tell them what it was A little more information on this item? Googling is giving me no love.
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Jul 27, 2015 16:26
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IIRC Celestial Diamonds are the highest 'tier' of currency in 4th ed DnD. No properties except they're worth a fuckton of money.
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Jul 27, 2015 16:32
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I think Super Waffle means Astral Diamond, the highest currency in D&D 4e.
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Jul 27, 2015 16:33
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Super Waffle posted:Along those lines I've always wanted to give a lvl 1 party I did something like this once with a level 3 party - I had the Diamond set up as the power source for a dungeon guardian construct, and they ripped it out of his chest. When they got back to town, they couldn't figure out what it was and instead decided it'd be better to use the "Fluid Funds" ritual to turn it into coins. Turns out that the second floor of an inn is NOT designed to support the weight of a bajillion coins that have just been forced into existence.
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Jul 27, 2015 21:41
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I had a bittersweet RP experience over the weekend. As a going-away present for me before I leave for America, the guy who runs the Japanese TRPG club I go to decided to get a bunch of the guys together at my place to play a one-shot using Terra the Gunslinger, a system I've always been interested in but was too hard for me to just read through and learn by myself. Basically it's much easier for me to pick up a Japanese RPG system by playing it and seeing how it works than by trying to parse all the spergy Japanese text. So it was tons of fun playing a system set in the Japanese notion of a fantasy American Wild West, although it had the problem a lot of Japanese systems have with splitting the party a lot and spending half an hour per scene with one person doing a bunch of RPing for points while everyone else stares at the ceiling waiting for their turn to come around. But that was fine because it was fun seeing the story unfold with everyone acting their part really well. Then we got to the combat. In a 2-day (10 hours split between 2 days) game we had 2 combat scenes. One was a tutorial that was cut mercifully short because it only involved one character and took over an hour (with the rest of us lazing around waiting). One took up almost the entire 5 hour stretch of the second day, and it's the reason the whole experience went sour. See in Terra the Gunslinger, damage is not based around hit points or anything like that. Instead, when you hit someone the numeric damage you do corresponds to a damage chart with specific things that happen to the person at each number. Only by doing EXACTLY 13, 20, or 30 (or more than 40) damage can you kill someone. Every other slot is survivable, though often with demerits. Not so bad, right? Just aim for one of those numbers and it shouldn't take too long. Except there's a system in the game called power chips. Players get them for RPing their characters well during their scenes. Enemies just have them. Also enemies have them in amounts that are both unknown to the player and usually stupidly high (like, say, near 20). They can be used in a variety of ways, but most importantly for this point, they can be used to soak a single point of damage per chip. This in a game where all you need to do is adjust the damage away from one of the 'death' numbers by even a single point to completely avoid dying for as long as you have chips in your pool. So we're fighting 3 guys, each with a pool of nearly 20 chips. We burnt a crapload just during the normal course of the game so we each had maybe 5 or so, and we ourselves had to hoarde them to avoid death whenever the GM decided his characters were going to aim for the lucky 13 (or 20 or 30). So combat looked like this: Player: I hit you for 13 damage DM: I pay a chip to make it 12 Player: I pay a chip to put it back up to 13 DM: I pay another chip Player: I pay... wait how many chips do you have left? DM: *shrug* Players aren't supposed to know how many the enemies have Player: Whatever, well even at 12 damage you take a handicap so every time you use cards from X suite there's a point penalty DM: 'k. I play a card from X suite, but then I use a chip to change it to Y suite where I don't have a handicap. Player: FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF Repeated for about 5 hours Finally the DM read the mood and wisely decided the next time we got to exactly the right number of damage to not spend any chips and just let the stupid boss die. Afterwards he commented that he thought the rules for how many chips bad guys get are pretty ridiculous which made me wonder why he didn't hand-wave it earlier when he saw how tedious the fight was getting. It didn't help that he had basically forced us to burn all our chips right before the fight in a stupid gambling contest where he had a throw-away character burn through all his chips, safe in the knowledge he would never need them for fighting, against our precious chips that we had actually earned over the long course of the game and didn't realize we would need so badly in the final confrontation. tl;dr Terra the Gunslinger is a cool game but it needs some heavy houseruling to be playable by sane people. Edit: I just realized the 'card/suite' bit doesn't make any sense unless I explain that Terra the Gunslinger uses playing cards instead of dice. Getsuya fucked around with this message at 11:03 on Jul 28, 2015 |
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Jul 28, 2015 07:51
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 There are several large cave spiders here. How large are we talking? Big as the last ones? These spiders are... 2.43 meters tall. Uh, what's that in real  units? EIGHT FEET!  A lot of dice were thrown that night.
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Jul 28, 2015 10:17
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Getsuya posted:See in Terra the Gunslinger, damage is not based around hit points or anything like that. Instead, when you hit someone the numeric damage you do corresponds to a damage chart with specific things that happen to the person at each number. Only by doing EXACTLY 13, 20, or 30 (or more than 40) damage can you kill someone. Every other slot is survivable, though often with demerits. Not so bad, right? Just aim for one of those numbers and it shouldn't take too long. It sounds like a fun alternative to the usual HP or damage boxes. An easy fix would be to tone down the sheer number of chips the GM gets, or to not let the GM (or the players) use their chips for just that specific use. I like games that give both sides an expendable resource that they get as a reward for good roleplaying, so the rest of it is probably good. Terra the Gunslinger sounds a bit like Deadlands, and that is a good thing. Evilreaver posted:
shadowrun.txt Back in middle school (or early in high school), when I first played Shadowrun, some kid just did not understand what a meter was. He had carefully cultivated an understand of a meter as about equal to a yard, and by "about" I mean "exactly, because he was dumb." He also bizarrely refused to let anything dispel any preconceptions he had about anything, ever. It was a great combination. So things went like this: Trolls are about 2 meters tall, so they need special armor made and need special accommodations in some vehicles. That's only six feet tall. That's tall, but not that tall. No, it's like... 7 1/2 or 8 feet, dude. No. Well, whatever. What's the difference? Two feet is the gatdamn difference, you dunce. Moral: never play tabletop games with people you don't know, especially when you're all fifteen year old idiots.
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Jul 28, 2015 11:58
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