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So, I just wrapped up a 12-week long campaign of Star Wars: Edge of the Empire. It started out with the party going through the Beginner Game module, trying to get away from a Hutt they'd wronged... and ended with them enacting an extinction event as revenge. First, the cast of horrible monsters: Kressk, Trandoshan Hired Gun - loved nothing more than to perform wrestling moves and beat things with his gaffi stick. Zor'vuza, Twi'lek Smuggler - pathologically insane, drove the ship and gunned down almost everyone they met. Jovie Colryn, Human Colonist - smooth talking rear end in a top hat, concocted most of the plans. Once killed a guy by throwing a glass bottle into his throat. X0-8V, Droid Bounty Hunter - moronic due to memory core corruption and alcoholic due to the fact he runs on it, went along with the party's misdemeanours blindly. Stole a suit with a giant burn hole in the centre of it from a dead guy. Michael Burns, Human Bounty Hunter - didn't do too much, mostly accidentally hit other players in the leg and caused problems for the party to deal with. Now, in the previous session, they had concocted a horrible plan - see, the Hutt that they wanted revenge on, was going to pull off a deal at a certain place and time on Nar Shaddaa. The person he was dealing with was a weapons dealer that operated out of a ship. So, the plan was, distract the weapons dealer, hijack their ship, unload the entire payload of that ship into Nar Shaddaa's upper surface so that they could dig through to where the Hutt was, and then ram him with the ship. Their solution to distracting the weapons dealer was to construct some form of noisemaker on their ship - basically, what it did was create the energy signature of A Whole Lot Of Big Guns, which would naturally attract weapons dealers like crazy. Unfortunately, due to their limited resources, it had to be created out of 80% of the ship. Which the party deemed was fine, as they weren't planning on living longer. So they built this thing, out of pieces of the engine, the hyperdrive, the chess table, the kettle, et cetera. I warned them that once on, they had 10 minutes to turn it off or else it will blow up taking them with it. So, they dock with the weapons dealer's ship (a DP20 Gunship, flanked with a pair of YT-series freighters), have a few guests over to talk about the weapons. X0-8V climbs out of the top of the ship and jumps out onto the DP20, barely managed to land, and climbs inside with a view to get to the environmental control systems and vent all the air out of the ship. Michael and Zor'vuza attempted to sneak on through the boarding tube, with Zor'vuza succeeding. A firefight breaks out as things go wrong, the DP20 undocks from the party's ship, things go sour. The noisemaker starts making error noises such as "Rook to A5". Now, there are still guys on board the ship, but they're dealt with by being dumped out of the still-open airlock and getting dumped into the Noisemaker through some fancy flying by Jovie, who has been educated over the commlink on the basics of ship flying. This is his first time flying. The guys that landed in the Noisemaker become processed into chess sets. At this point, we start joking about the Noisemaker being an eldritch abomination - some combination of the Reapers from Mass Effect, the Borg from Star Trek and a Daemon Engine from Warhammer 40k. At this point, I decide to pretty much make it canon. A short time later, 4/5ths of the party has killed their way into the environmental control systems room, with Kressk just jumping out of the ship into the open access hatch on the DP20 in midflight because he's mad. They start venting the air from the ship, but at this point a beast of a Twi'lek walks in, the doors shut, and familiar music starts playing. The party had previously run into Twi'lek Brock Lesnar (I considered being slightly less obvious about it, but then decided that no, it's straight up Brock Lesnar but a Twi'lek because they were on Ryloth at the time, and also 7 feet tall) during a bout of cage fighting they did to get some cash, and they had slightly left him unconscious inside a collapsing building. He was of course somewhat miffed about that. At this point, Jovie dumps the Noisemaker out of the ship's cargo lift and onto the DP20. At this point we ended that session because we had half an hour left in the public space we were using. So, start of yesterday's session, one of the players did some maths and mentioned to the others that if they drove the ship into Nar Shaddaa, it should theoretically remove the planet from existence. The plan was changed accordingly. They then engaged in combat with Brock Lesnar. Miraculously, nobody died due to Brock - probably because I just gave them a pile of experience because it was the last session and they were prepared. People got suplexed. They manage to kill him in a couple rounds. At this point, they start hearing over the PA of the DP20 things like "All safety features disengaged." and "Rook to Hyperdrive." Since the Noisemaker was privy to the plan and was a nascent intelligence, the only thing it had in mind was driving the ship into the planet-moon at light speed. The Noisemaker at this point has assimilated the room, and proceeds to rise up and fuse with Brock because I was mildy miffed with him dying in two rounds and didn't want the session to end in like 45 minutes. (I'll be the first to admit I'm not a great GM.) So, Round 2 starts, and Super Brock's first action is to just bust out some Force Lightning because I'm an rear end in a top hat. People get set on fire, some are forced to the ground, laughs are head. At this point, Jovie has joined them on the ship, and along with Zor'vuza, has decided "gently caress this I'm out" and proceed to run off to steal one of the docked freighters. Kressk fucks up a roll so bad (two Despairs!) that he actually starts fusing into Super Brock, but it soon shot free and flexes out its influence because it wanted to play chess for eternity. X0-8V gets F5ed by Super Brock, who by this point is missing a leg. Kressk then decides "gently caress Brock let's hit him with a Pedigree" and Pedigrees him so hard, Super Brock ends up going through the deck plating and into a vital fuel pipe for the ship, which immediately alights, the room following suit moments later. The combat continues on like this, with Brock getting repeatedly smashed back into the hole up until the point he gets the The End Is Nigh crit. Brock realises that he's about to die, and decides he isn't dying like a bitch and latches onto Kressk and self-destructs. I miscalculated the amount of damage and Kressk only takes two wounds. At this point, Xor'vuza and Jovie have escaped onto one of the freighters and have disengaged and started flying away from the DP20 and Nar Shaddaa. The oval office Shades are deployed at this point, as they proceed to systematically betray the rest of the party, by first sending out a distress call on all frequencies saying that they just escaped from a ship hijacking by a Human, a Droid and a Trandoshan, then shooting the freighter's docking port off causing to fall off, and finally knocking the party's old ship off of the DP20. X0-8V and Michael rush to find escape pods before the DP20 hits lightspeed. Kressk, however, has different plans. He runs off to the bridge and just slams the button for engaging the hyperdrive, screaming "WITNESS ME!" Michael's pod unfortunately shoots down into Nar Shadda, whilst X0-8V's pod shoots up and latches onto the stolen freighter. As the the surviving party members watch, a bright flash is seen, and suddenly Nar Shaddaa burns and vaporises away, as the equivalent of 3.2 million Tsar Bombas makes contact with the planet-moon. 85 billion sentient beings perish in an instant, sending out a galaxy-wide backlash in the Force. Even those who aren't Force Sensitive feel this. The fallout and debris soon make contact with Nal Hutta, causing untold further casualties. All they wanted to do was kill one guy. The loss of a moon and 85 billion people was deemed acceptable by these people. They are now being hunted by pretty much the entire galaxy.
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Mar 23, 2016 14:01
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Hummingbird James posted:All they wanted to do was kill one guy. The loss of a moon and 85 billion people was deemed acceptable by these people. Did they get their guy, or was he making deals through holograms? Doesn't sound like they scouted if their target was there, anyway...
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Mar 23, 2016 15:07
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Golden Bee posted:Asylum Loco Wrestling is...weird. (It's also rebranded as AWE, Asylum Wresting Entertainment.) While Nate and Captain Justice chased the top spot, Daisy revealed that she'd been dating the AWE Champ. Nothing serious, only a few weeks; they'd grabbed coffee when he taught her to drive the car she'd "won". --- During the show, Daisy (now The Ace, a super-serious wrestler with a big entrance) won against El Toro (again). After the match, a video played: Nate and Derek were destroying her new car! (Nate the person didn't want to damage the car, so he was careful to only damage the windows, stalling til Captain Justice showed up.) --- Last session we had a plan to elevate "Timmy the Tweaker" from enhancement talent to a guy with a decent gimmick. He ended up apprenticing to Captain Justice as Liberty Lad. The promo they did to explain this was a Pro Wrestling version of Snowbirds Don't Fly. [My tag team partner is a JUNKIE!] The main event of the show was a parking lot brawl where Daisy, who had booked herself as guest ref, had two jobs: -Don't get anyone killed -Don't let anyone else get the top spot. It ended up with AWE champ Derek "running over" Liberty Lad with the car Daisy'd won. Instant blood feud between Derek/Nate and Justice/Liberty. --- After the show went off the air, Daisy made time for Derek. He didn't actually want her to win the championship, because she wasn't going to be in the game! (Women were too hard to animate.) She instead suggested they make the videogame the angle, with him winning it back in time for the game's PS4 release.
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Mar 23, 2016 17:22
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Hummingbird James posted:All they wanted to do was kill one guy. The loss of a moon and 85 billion people was deemed acceptable by these people. Awesome, gently caress Nar Shaddaa.
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Mar 24, 2016 17:21
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From the Fellowship thread: Setting generation in Fellowship is rad. Our world is an Archipelago with Hawaiian Kobolds and Germanic Barbarian Halflings. The Empire is a far flung London-expy, the mer-elves control the sea lanes, and the Dwarves were created by the God of Battle. Unfortunately, the God made them too well; they ate him and live on the island of his hollowed-out scorpion body. The gang is sailing in the HMSF Odium when they face THE KRAKEN! It uses its tentacles to try to tear the ship apart. Luckily, the kobold hero Big 'Zard is strong enough to rip them away. The party fights back, and Mikelos, the Merman-At-Arms, gets hurled into the far distance. The fight ends when 'Zard pulls the halfling Little Bear out of the water (he'd fallen overboard and grabbed the anchor.) Instead of pulling him aboard, he swung the small warrior at the Kraken's glowing yellow eye! The halfling stabbed its brains out of its head. --- The crew journeyed to rescue Mikelos, with the Admiral's knowledge of sea routes and maps being the difference maker. The detour (and Kraken) has thrown them off schedule, so Big Zard calls in a favor with the Wind Moa*, letting the group arrive at Port Roucault** the same time as the Overlord! There, they presumably met the Squire and a Harbringer of doom! Could our heroes beat the clock, and stop the Governor (Jonas Narquette***) from investing the Bank of Roucault's wealth into his schemes? *He'd attended the spirit's wedding. The Giant (my playbook) gets to, once per recovery, Do Something out of a Tall Tale, no roll. **Known Colloquially as Port Ruckus. ***He of the dead daughter. Golden Bee posted:Masks! The teen heroes game! Played with the creator today and we used the pre-gens. The final layouts look really good; I played a Beacon called Team Wrecking Crew (Wallhack, Luisa aka Toro the Bull, Hornet the Protege, and Fission the Nuclear Fire controller) had a definite...dynamic. Hornet was the team leader by virtue of her mentor giving the team a base. (And a supercar with robots and a sodastream!) But she was a fuddy duddy, who despite being a teen alternated between being a 12-year-old scold and a 60-year-old square. Her character arc completed when she dissed the main villain and everyone laughed. Fission was a teen genius whose PHD track was setback when he started to control universal forces. He was great at incapacitating enemies once Toro beat them senseless, forming totally-not-carcinogenic bonds of Nuclear Flame. He and Wallhack shared a moment when the latter delivered him his issue of Scientific American and opened up. Unfortunately, this was overheard by Toro, who had declared Fission her Rival-For-Life. Toro was emotionally disturbed; she solved her problems through punching. When that didn't work, she kicked. Since our team's HQ was under an abandoned zoo, her 'Gloom Place' was in the pilot house of the kiddy train. Her deeply oblivious "love", Wallhack, calmed her down and tried to kiss her, which led to much confusion^. Later, she stormed through the evil Rook Corporation's HQ, making it all the way to the test chamber where she was created. She had a panic attack, which 'Hack was able to pull her out of. Wallhack kicked rear end. Somehow, despite not having fantastic powers, his +2 Mundane led him to being the team's therapist. He was also great at sneaking around, which was less impressive when the place they were sneaking into was attacked by aliens. It's easy to sneak by the guards when they're running away. His incredible luck paid divends when they fought the alien. Despite using tactics that were "practically illegal!", Toro tackled the alien, which sent his energy orb flying. Fission knocked it over to Wallhack, who shouted quote:IT'S MORPHIN' TIME! --- During our "End of Game" moves, we discussed if we became closer or farther as a team. Toro explained she grew closer to Mantis. Hornet was pissed that Toro claimed to grow closer to her without bothering to learn her name. ^It also paid off his drives, "Tell Someone How You Really Feel" & "Kiss Someone Dangerous". 40% of a levelup for a smooch! Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 08:15 on Jun 19, 2016 |
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Mar 26, 2016 06:15
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Quick and simple story: I'm DMing a throwback D&D 3.5 game (on roll20) set inside The World's Largest Dungeon™. The party is currently in a chaotic region completely overgrown with some kind of fleshy substance, source unknown, and terrorized by two uncontrollable (and immortal) mutated experimental beasts. They recently found a creepy ritual that will let them unmake one of the beasts, but of course it's a creepy ritual that requires flesh from the beast being unmade and may draw dangerous attention, blah blah blah. Running the game on roll20 let me pull a very mean trick on them - the ritual was shared with the players by way of a handout, representing the last ten pages of a spellbook containing the ritual. At some point unknown to the players, the ritual was transformed into a rather nasty and chaotic taunting declaration from ??? - so I updated the handout with some impressive gibberish that included various hidden links to creepy pictures, music, and text puzzles (complete with a red herring that literally spelled out 'YOU FOOLS'). Of course, I didn't mention a single word of this to the players.  The players didn't notice the change for an entire session, until they accidentally brought up the ritual while having a tense discussion with some drow slaves staging a rebellion against their drider masters. The spellcaster carrying the ritual book nearly had a breakdown in and out of character, frantically flipping through the book and trying to figure out what happened while the player swore at me for a solid few minutes. It was great!
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Mar 28, 2016 16:36
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Hi, I am said spellcaster and bring word from the land of hangover. podi you gently caress Also more 13th Age stories incoming when work calms the gently caress down Galick fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Mar 28, 2016 |
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Mar 28, 2016 17:51
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WWWRPG, ladies and gentlemen. The Anti-Hero: Anime isn't real! I'm from Brooklyn.
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Apr 1, 2016 04:08
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I just helped a friend of mine avoid some serious catpiss. He's trying to get back into the GM'ing scene, and is running an online Vampire: The Masquerade story via Google Hangouts. He actually has a pretty straightforward set of requirements for characters, has a few players lined up, and starts getting some sheets from players. He's also recruiting from people that he used to game with back in college, and a few newbies who showed interest. One of them immediately became a problem. He wanted to play a Tremere, which is fine, but he also wanted the Unbondable trait, which is explicitly forbidden since it bypasses the Tremere's clan weakness, and five dots in Hypnotism, which is some splat-book nonsense that wasn't on the list of "here are things you can use." My friend revises it, lets him know his options, and they agree on something else. A day later he comes back wanting to play a human who knows about vampires and is a psychic. My friend shoots this down, because it doesn't fall in the character creation guidelines. The guy then shoots out an e-mail to the whole group bitching about the fact that he can't have absolute control of his character, and refuses to play. A day after that, he sends another character to my friend: a human sorcerer/psychic who wants to hunt vampires. Clearly he wants to stir some poo poo, but the GM doesn't want to dismiss someone out of hand if he can salvage the situation, so he came to me, worrying about what to do, and I laid it flat- we're in our 30's and we don't have time for this high school BS, and this dude is just going to be a problem. He agreed, sent the guy packing, and had his first session last week. Apart from some hiccups getting the new guys settled in the game, it went great, and I got to feel good that a Vampire game didn't turn into the horrendous mess that it usually does.
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Apr 6, 2016 18:13
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Sounds like the guy just wanted to play Urban Shadows, where those are valid character concepts. Above: Rose Fari-Damba II. AKA “The Noble is the best class in Dungeon World.” Did a oneshot last week. Our three PCs were a princess of a neighboring territory, a thief, and a bounty hunter ranger who just wanted to get paid. We were arrayed in a dining room for an important “parlor game.” So the Noble starts with an Assistant of some sort. I decided I'd have an in-over-his-head Squire named Sir Throggle. The DM kept asking me about “her”, so we decided that Sir didn’t need to be a masculine title. It turns out Throggle was an in-over-her-head 16 year old, who was extremely helpful at some things (fetching magic mirrors from the royal carriage, blinding people with lights) and bad at others (keeping her mouth shut in polite company, keeping her mouth shut when someone pulled a sword on her...) I knew it’d be a special session when I announced “Sir” Throggle to the assembled guests. Someone burst out laughing, so my I stomped over, grabbed the offender with both hands, and hurled her onto the dessert cart which sent her rolling through the dining room doors. Shortly after that, we found out why we were assembled. It turns out the quest was that whoever either: 1) Survived the night 2) Found the Silver Chalice or 3) Was elected unanimously by the survivors Would be king of the realm for a year. We got off track when chasing down a murderous cowpoke to the kitchen. After Princess Rose stabbed it and a giant Viking immediately chopped off the cowpoke’s head, things went sideways. The thief, Rat, dashed across the kitchen, stabbing the Viking in the back repeatedly. He thought the fellow was backstabbing his meal ticket. This pissed off the Bounty Hunter, who tried to kill us all. In the end, despite having a trained owl, the bounty hunter couldn’t defeat the thief, the noble AND Sir Throggle, so she stole her payment’s worth of silverware and left. After some digging in the archives, it turns out Throggle was Rose’s half sister, part of the king’s dalliances! Rose burned the evidence. Shortly thereafter, the woman who’d been thrown onto the desserts announced she’d found the chalice! After some shrewd negotiation, violence, and bribery, all the nobles in attendance were thwarted, and Sir Throggle was appointed Queen of the Realm. Pretty good for an NPC!
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Apr 6, 2016 19:01
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The Grammar Aryan posted:I just helped a friend of mine avoid some serious catpiss.
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Apr 6, 2016 19:11
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At least a brick has the good grace to be useful for building houses.
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Apr 7, 2016 08:39
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As per this past weekend's session, according to my GM my Sorcerer's "Summon Monsters" spell may positively, absolutely, 100% beyond a shadow of a doubt NOT conjure up a kender.
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Apr 7, 2016 15:58
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CobiWann posted:As per this past weekend's session, according to my GM my Sorcerer's "Summon Monsters" spell may positively, absolutely, 100% beyond a shadow of a doubt NOT conjure up a kender. Summon Monster is supposed to be able to summon fiends, though.
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Apr 7, 2016 16:10
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The Grammar Aryan posted:A day after that, he sends another character to my friend: a human sorcerer/psychic who wants to hunt vampires. HI I'M A HUGE rear end in a top hat WHO WANTS TO RUIN YOUR GAME PLEASE LET ME RUIN YOUR GAME TO TEACH YOU A LESSON ABOUT HOW I SHOULD GET MY WAY
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Apr 7, 2016 17:05
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Actual response from that guy: "I just wanted to be able to serve as the core of some conflict to bring the players together and give them an interesting opponent!" I don't think he does subtlety.
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Apr 7, 2016 17:13
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The Grammar Aryan posted:Actual response from that guy: "I just wanted to be able to serve as the core of some conflict to bring the players together and give them an interesting opponent!" I don't think he does subtlety. That is literally the job of the npcs and GM, not the players.
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Apr 7, 2016 17:26
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The Grammar Aryan posted:Actual response from that guy: "I just wanted to be able to serve as the core of some conflict to bring the players together and give them an interesting opponent!" I don't think he does subtlety. Yeah no this has literally never worked in the history of ever. How would you ever run a game like that? Give Billy Badguy 10 minutes of screen time, then cut back over the PCs? How long would they have to put up with that poo poo? A whole campaign arc, leading to a final confrontation in which... what? The PC villain just dies, presumably. The irony is that guy was either being antagonist or creepy from the start with his whacky Tremere hypnotist.
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Apr 7, 2016 18:31
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So I've been running this weird homebrewed abominable mixture of plucked game mechanics with the core of it pretty much being d20 modern with torchbearer skill advancement, and the setting of it being an odd mixture of mecha + mechs + throwing them into a generic fantasy realm. The level the characters were at was effectively level six at character generation, though they are fighting things that are more appropriate for epic level campaigns. Earth had its cataclysmic world war three in which nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons were used en masse (with relatively disappointing results for those using them,) which resulted in two big power blocs- China and India as a resource starved, hostile empire that is actively stretching outward to gobble up more NATO + allies of opportunity who are essentially doing the same thing. World war four started up, which is where most of the characters have their backgrounds in, and has gone to a ceasefire. In an effort to get more resources NATO has torn open a dimensional portal to try to go full exploitation mode on whatever is on the other side, which happens to be a high fantasy setting. My character generation was a two parter: First, they were at the head of doctrinal decisions for their undecided country at the outbreak of world war three, so they had to decide things like "Our mechs are made out of high quality parts" or "We're going for logistical superiority," "Our military is made out of conscripts/volunteers/mercenaries," "We were the ones who made the newest prototype technology" or "We were on the trailing edge, but made specialized equipment according to doctrine." Finally, they had a choice of controls for their mech that was either having crew members, having an AI unit, or having a nerve hookup to the mech. The second part I gave them seven situations that were their actual character generation with three choices per situation that gave them stats, skills, and feats according to what they picked. The various choices allowed characters to be patriotic war heroes, dudes who were out to cover their own skins, or sadistic war criminals. I ended up with: Commander Murikami, a Japanese conscript piloting an AI controlled melee mecha that was pretty much a Gundam rip off. This character is the moral compass of the group, and his past marks him as a linguist who was trying to better understand people and language so that he could do his idealist's best to reunite humanity. He became obsessed with AI, as he saw them as a very simple, basic thing that could be best thought of as an analogue to the human mind. He has extreme faith in the goodness of humanity, and lost two of his brothers to the war. Commander Phun, a Korean conscript that is neuro-wired up to a trench warfare mech, who was a steelworker in post-WWIII reunited Korea doing his part to rebuild the country. He was basically a refugee snatched up in a truck, sent to the frontlines, and then after surviving the frontlines got wired up to be put into their militarized industrial mechs. He and his brother were war orphans, and he failed to protect him on the onset of the war, but he has throughout the game shown a love for children and an extreme effort to protect any that they've encountered from the ravages of war. Major Kasparov, a Russian conscript in a piece of poo poo tank with a mech torso jammed on top of it. Russia in this has gone full facist and was one of the major players in reigniting world war four, and her background has her participating in organizations like "The Russian Youth Organization for Social Good," going to military school, and then going into the military. During the war she was a partisan and was considered a war hero, but quickly switched directions into complete hatred of the state after her parents were killed by the state's secret police for protesting the war. She is married to one of the members of the secret police (though separated,) and has a daughter, and was captured by the Chinese and kept in a deplorable POW camp when she failed to activate her mech-borne nuke. She was exchanged during the ceasefire, and was reintegrated back into the player's mech lance. Commander Johnston, a volunteer of the Southern United States military, who pilots a heavily armored, laser-toting hover-mech that has been nicknamed the Tollbooth. The character is a super genius sitting at 20 intelligence by dumpstatting completely, and has a sense of justice like the Punisher. She has a bad rap for burning down an entire city before it could be evacuated, and feels absolutely no remorse for it. Her career is marked with insubordination, friendly fire incidents, and blatant war crimes, but due to her intellect and lack of remorse for throwing other people under the bus or creating false evidence she managed to evade any consequences. Major Graver, a Swedish volunteer that pilots a stealthy quadrupedal laser sniper. The character was a ne'er-do-well smuggler that volunteered into the military so that he wouldn't be conscripted, and did his best to volunteer for everything that was a safe cake job. He managed to avoid almost all front-line combat, and the one situation he was involved in he was a buddy fucker and retreated, leaving the infantry he was supposed to support to die. The character is a cowardly power monger whose only moments of heroism are to impress the people around him so that he can leverage them better, and I love this dude for it. No one in the party trusts him and it is hilarious. Their very first mission was supposed to just be waiting in line to go through the dimensional rift, and were waiting in line as infantry and logistics were being shuffled through to the other side. After a few days of waiting in line they were, in a total panic, called to cut in immediately. They came through the portal and looked up to notice that an even larger, more terrifying rift had been opened above the camp and abominable eldritch angels were pouring through, joined with an assault on the ground by an estimated army of 300,000 troops that came out of nowhere. The characters had two tasks to attend to: Keeping the camp from being overrun by the army-out-of-nowhere, and protecting the anti-air drones that were shuffling around in the camp that were actively gunning down the astral divas that were pouring in from the heavens. The party split up on the battlefield with Phun, Murikami, and Kasparov going after the army while Johnston and Graver were busy shooting angels off of anti-air gatling drones. The trio beelined for a massive ivory palanquin that was deflecting small arms and artillery fire, and Murikami immediately crashed his jet powered melee mech into it, shattering it into pieces. What was inside, though, was the epic level archmage lich that had opened the rift and was controlling the army. The brawl that insued involved the invisible lich lightning bolting the melee mech's right leg off and blowing up Kasparov's tank mech's ammunition storage, while the players responded by shooting him with a gatling cannon and repeatedly running him over while trying to detect him via thermal vision. The lich was shredding their mechs apart with magic while his undead army was actively progressing through the artillery and small arms fire, though without the lich actively protecting them they were very quickly being whittled down in size. Meanwhile inside the camp, poo poo was going terribly because of bad rolls. Three of the four drones had taken a flaming sword through their ammo storage or CPUs, the infantry were in an all out withdrawal back through the portal, and to make matters worse a gigantic sword of the heavens was descending down on the camp and was going to make contact in just a few minutes. The objective shifted from protecting the drones to protecting "Operation Desperation" which was a nuke carrier that they were shuffling through the portal. Johnston, a character with one of the strongest senses of self preservation in the group along with Graver's, decided that she wasn't going to be nuked and the portal was better off being destroyed if it meant that she was going to live. She shot at the nuke carrier with her main laser, though glanced the hit and only managed to disable the elevation system that they needed to be able to shoot the nuke straight up, and then immediately spent the rest of her actions in the fight forging evidence that it was her mech's gunner that did it. She and Graver began immediately withdrawing from the impact site to cover their own asses. With two minutes remaining the crew in the nuke truck bailed out and started hand elevating the nuke by way of the crank. The lich's protection magic finally expired after it made the poor decision of trying to villain monologue, and the melee mech slammed it with an electropick, followed up by Kasparov shooting it in the face with a 120mm white phosphorus shell. The undead horde collapsed with the ignoble loss of their master. Murikami doubled back to the nuke truck that was still being hassled by the angel swarms. With one round remaining until the players hit a failure state in which the portal was going to be destroyed, he shot it with a magnetic limpet and forced it into a straight up position, and the truck crew fired it. The players watched as the nuke sailed upward into the heavens, exploded, and sent swarms of shrieking, burning angels raining down to the ground. The celestial sword began dissolving as the rift was destabilized and closed, and crumbled into sand and ash as it impacted with the portal. Kasparov kicked her way out of her mech's cockpit (with its 10 out of 200 hp remaining,) and commented, "It is good we have come to an understanding." The next session was Johnston's court martial, a tale of revenge, the other characters' first mission brief, and an adventure through the ancient elven forests (with predictable results.) Commoners fucked around with this message at 19:41 on Apr 7, 2016 |
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Apr 7, 2016 19:36
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Mendrian posted:Yeah no this has literally never worked in the history of ever. I think the only time that "psychic who knows about vampires and may be a hunter" or any flavor of "PC is secretly working for the enemy" would work is in a LARP.
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Apr 7, 2016 21:16
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PantsOptional posted:I think the only time that "psychic who knows about vampires and may be a hunter" or any flavor of "PC is secretly working for the enemy" would work is in a LARP. And even in a LARP that requires coordination and a maturity level most players simply don't have.
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Apr 7, 2016 22:40
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Mendrian posted:Yeah no this has literally never worked in the history of ever.
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Apr 7, 2016 23:22
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Recently joined up with a new group after my old one fell apart – no drama, just conflicting schedules – and boy howdy do these guys get up to some stuff. I hate to be the kinda guy who opens up with a story bragging about how I single-handedly saved the party but, well, in this case I kinda sorta did. Fortunately, that’s only half the story, the other half being the tale of a wizard who (figuratively) made intelligence his dump stat. Our group includes, among its other members, three magic users: a wizard, a sorcerer, and a cleric. The cleric is mine and I’m rather fond of him. He’s a crazy old man with a love of beautiful things who serves a trickster god and specializes in the disposal of cursed items – which the wizard and the sorcerer were both in possession of. Eschewing the traditional crossbow, I decided to make him a knife man with a dizzying array of cutlery at his disposal reserved for throwing when he wasn’t busy healing folks or banishing people to alternative planes of existence. He also carried a hatchet (and a mace, which I’ve never used). The sorcerer was the party leader, more or less; an ambitious young man with a keen mind and a fear of fire due to an experience in his youth he refused to elaborate upon. The wizard was our heavy, or used to be. Imagine the sort of kid who likes to fry ants with a magnifying glass, only one day someone strolled up to him and gave him phenomenal cosmic powers. That’s this guy. Or gal, I should say. The player was a guy but the character was a girl, but that was pretty much never important and none of us ever bothered to remember that he was playing a different gender, so I’m just going to refer to him as him for the sake of convenience. His personality was almost never anything beyond maniacal laughter as he decimated his foes. Prior to my cleric joining the party, there’d been a session where the sorcerer was out so the wizard, against the wishes of the rest of the group, solved a hostage situation by summoning fire from heaven to consume all the bandits. And the hostage. Nobody got paid for that one. The session before my cleric showed up, the group came across the two cursed items I mentioned a few paragraphs earlier. One was the severed hand of an ancient and powerful lich, sealed away by the gods. The sorcerer was the one to recover it from a wyvern’s den, but hadn’t yet identified it. The other was a cursed sword. Let me tell you about this sword. Having successfully defeated that wyvern I just mentioned, our intrepid heroes decided to celebrate their victory at a local tavern. Therein they met a tired old man clothed entirely in black with a black sword at his side. This man looked staggeringly ancient and spoke as though exhausted. “Please, someone, I am looking for someone worthy of taking my sword.” Someone in the party wisely thought to cast Detect Evil, to which both the old man and his sword began radiating pure, unadulterated malice. As they were about to share this information with the group, however, the wizard piped up. “I TAKE THE SWORD!” No sooner had he relieved the old man of his sword, the ancient warrior exhaled heavily, crying “At laaaaaaaaaaaaast,” and crumbled into dust before their eyes. The wizard looked to the sword he’d just been given, and heard a small voice echoing in the inner chambers of his mind. “You’re mine now.” When asked immediately afterwards what he did that for, the wizard responded he just wanted a cool sword. Yeah. Enter my cleric! Due to my character’s stated love of beautiful things (for occasionally odd values of “Beautiful”), the DM agreed to let him take an advantage on all appraisal roles provided what he was appraising was a material object of nebulous worth. My first two acts upon entering the party were to promptly identify both the severed hand and the sword as super-mega-ultra cursed. This didn’t bother the sorcerer. It bothered the wizard, but the wizard had no choice. The sword compelled him to use it, grew angry when he didn’t, and would actively punish him for trying to cast spells. Of course, as a wizard, he had the musculature of a wet noodle and was a total novice at swordplay, but both of those issues were things the sword filed under, and I quote, “Not my problem.” So while my cleric is trying to puzzle out what to do about these two very cursed, very dangerous artifact, the sorcerer goes and lops off his dominant hand to replace with the lich’s, which completely not-ominously knits itself cleanly to the bleeding stump without requiring any sort of surgery. Like the sword, it also starts to speak to its user, though it’s a lot more polite, merely suggesting he do terrible things rather than outright commanding them. My cleric was a little upset with the sorcerer after his foray into experimental plastic surgery, especially since we’d just learned the lich formerly attached to that hand was currently in the process of freeing himself from the gods’ seal. The sorcerer’s response was classic. “I can control it. We can use its power against him.” It begins. Well my cleric decided he was having none of that and started drawing up plans for dealing with both mages. Sources indicated we had only a month before the lich managed to thaw out his frozen prison, so time was off the essence. I wish I could tell you I pulled off some zany scheme here, but the truth is roll of the dice handed me a bit of a gimmie. Biding our time before tackling the lich – we couldn’t enter his lair until the seal was broken anyway – our party took to mopping up some barbarian hoards who’d been spotted in the area. During one such extermination, our sorcerer was killed and in need of revival. I offered to do it, but demanded his lich hand as payment for my services. The party was against it, but I got them to cave. I whipped out my hatchet, lopped off the cursed hand, and pickled it in a jar. The sorcerer awoke very grateful to be alive but rather irritated I’d deprived him of his trinket. He said he’d get it back in time. I believed him, so when he wasn’t looking I went off and hid it somewhere he’d never find it. Our wizard, meanwhile, had been having a pretty miserable time of it. The sword had officially stopped letting his use of magic fly, opting instead for a daddy’s belt-style of diplomacy. The wizard tried to sell the sword, tried to give it away, but pretty much nobody was that stupid, and the few who were found themselves unable to remove the sword from his grasp. The sword wanted blood, it wanted it from him, and it wasn’t about to let him off the hook that easily. (Part of me assumes this was our DM’s way of punishing the player for his prior “I CAST NUKE LOL” style of play which frequently interfered with the party’s ability to operate, socialize, or share in the fighting.) Depressed and possibly drunk in a dimly-lit tavern, the wizard threatened to kill himself. “Try me,” said the sword. So the wizard put his hand up to his temple, you know, finger-gun style, and cast Cone of Cold. This failed to kill him. It didn’t fail to kill every NPC sitting in the bar to his left, including presumably the owner. The wizard tried again by casting Fireball on himself (still seated at the bar, mind you, with everyone in the place shocked and horrified). He survived that too. Several other people didn’t. At the end of his rope, he shuffled out into the street, positioned his sword hilt-first into the ground, blade up, and fell onto it through the face, piercing his right eye. This at last was apparently enough to end his life. Until he woke up the next morning surrounded by the city guard, very much alive but sans one eye. Seems someone had reported a wizard going berserk and killing bar patrons. They were going to lock him up for a long time. (This all happened the same night I spent resurrecting the sorcerer.) We caught him on the way to prison and managed to use our fame to convince the guards to leave him in our charge. He then asked me to kill him because he couldn’t kill himself, knowing how big I was on the issue of curse disposal. Worried the sorcerer might interfere out of revenge, I used Dimension Door to teleport both of us to a remote location somewhere in the woods. He wanted me to kill him, but I presumed (at the time) that just meant he couldn’t injure himself, so I got him to extend the hand holding the sword and chopped it off. The sword began to fall, switched trajectories in mid-air, and wound up in his other hand. So I chopped that one off too. This time the sword fitted itself neatly into its sheath. Sensing no other option, I said a prayer for his soul and rolled to chop his head off in one clean stroke. I succeeded, and he toppled to the ground dead. He got better in a few minutes. Well, except that his hands weren’t coming back. The sword has been laughing this entire time, by the by, not that my guy can hear it. His head freshly reattached to his neck, the wizard suddenly looks up from the ground as though he’s had an epiphany. “Oh! I’ve got a magic lamp. It’s good for one wish.” It seems they’d recovered one during a previous dungeon run prior to my joining the party. I burst out laughing at this, all the trouble we could’ve saved, when the other players started wailing in horror. “STOP, NO, DON’T,” but of course none of them were there in-character (as the DM reminded them). Still, sensing something amiss, I had my cleric confirm the wizard wanted him to rub the lamp. The wizard couldn’t have been more sure. So I rubbed it. It turned out “It’s good for one wish” was the first half of a complete statement, the second half being “Should you best the genie in honorable combat.” The genie who popped out was actually an old god of war, and demanded we satiate his desire for a challenge. Apparently the group had blue-balled him once before. I claimed I couldn’t by myself, so he snapped his fingers to summon everyone I would consider an ally there to help me, which meant our whole party. Our ranger, who has gone without reference this entire story, won initiative and fired the first shot. He rolled over a 20 to hit. “You miss,” said the DM. “…I’m out,” said the sorcerer, who promptly cast Flight on himself and zipped on outta there. The one-eyed, hand-less wizard lying prone on the ground being the closest target, the genie set upon him. The remaining party members, not wanting to die over the wizard’s idiocy (nobody blamed me since I couldn’t have known), all went off in different directions. The genie chopped the wizard into little pieces of meat, looked about the forest, sighed, and returned to his lamp by what I can only assume was DM fiat to spare us a party wipe (otherwise I'd assume he'd just summon us all back). Hours later, the wizard pieced himself back together again and woke up. “Just let me die! I can’t even wield you! I’ve got no arms!” “Your suffering sustains me, child of man. I shall not let you die. If you refuse to use me to spread suffering unto others, I shall satisfy myself with yours. Your predecessor was my plaything for 400 years. How long do you imagine it shall be before I tire of you?” Having given up hope for the sweet release of death, our wizard struggled to his feet, shambled several miles south until he reached the ocean, and waded into the sea. After drowning, resurrecting, drowning, resurrecting several times, he was discovered and eaten by a kraken who, according to our DM, will spend an eternity trying to digest him. The wizard was officially retired as a character here. His only solstice was that his fate ensured the sword would never harm another living soul for the rest of time. (My cleric later learned all this by communing with his god. He has since resolved himself to find some way to end the wizard’s eternal torment – but not until after confirming the sword couldn’t curse the kraken.) Fast-forwarding a bit, the guy who played the wizard has since rolled up a half-orc fighter, and has been much better about being a team player since the incident. Even ended up saving my life during an episode where an elf witch sucked me into a magic vortex which deposited me into a dimension of infinite stabbing. In time, we were ready to face the fabled lich whose return to power had been foretold. Having reached his dark and dismal throne room, he greeted us cordially, and asked if we might not have his missing hand. Nobody answered him. It turned out, had any of us come into his presence with the hand, he would’ve dominated them immediately, no save, and turned them against the party as part of the boss fight against him. My cleric turned around to face the sorcerer, who up till that point had still been sore about the whole thing. “You’re welcome,” I said. The fight against the lich itself was pretty gnarly, but nothing was as sweet as that pristine moment of pure vindication. I probably don’t have to tell anybody that magic users are typically the most destructive members of the party, but our sorcerer was high enough level that, with his spell load-out, he and the lich could’ve easily wiped us had he turned.
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Apr 7, 2016 23:52
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Mendrian posted:Yeah no this has literally never worked in the history of ever. It works really well in Smallville/Cortex Drama. My Gods game would not have been what it was without the God of the Wild's irresponsible teenage tantrums and the God of Manipulation's dickery. But then Cortex Drama is less about trying to kill the other players, and more about being a colossal melodramatic arseache about everything. The fact that the system means you can never make another PC do what they don't want to do really helps focus it on the collaborative melodrama and not PvP recrimination.
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Apr 8, 2016 02:25
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Coward posted:It works really well in Smallville/Cortex Drama. My Gods game would not have been what it was without the God of the Wild's irresponsible teenage tantrums and the God of Manipulation's dickery. That's basically it. It works very well in games that are deliberately built to accommodate that sort of thing and where the explicit goal is not "winning", but rather creating an interesting story together. Like, in some Powered by the Apocalypse games, setting yourself up as an antagonist who the other characters eventually team up to defeat or redeem works really well and creates great stories for everyone. But in RPGs with a more traditional setup, and assumptions like "you will be in a party, your party will be Doing Stuff Together", and where most PVP options involve just outright killing each other, it's almost always a bad idea and hugely disruptive to everyone else's fun.
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Apr 8, 2016 05:18
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Good PVP is usually when the PCs have a continuing goal but different aims. Golden Bee posted:Masks?! The heroes fought Superbia, the Better-than-Thou Bruja Teen. She mocked the party, trouncing them easily, until the speedster jumped off the roof of the Modern Art Museum and grabbed her wand. Then she plummeted to the ground, head first. She was only saved by her rival, Jesse the Doomed. The Delinquent, Nutcase, wanted to bash her head in with his Bob Hope-style golfclub. The speedster stood up for her; beating up defeated foes wasn't heroic. The Outsider cared most about the destroyed exhibits and botany experiments; she was from a radioactive, barren future. Anyway, the Doomed won the argument, sending her teammates back to base. She decided to talk to Superbia (aka the other person cursed by her connection to the Mexican God Tlaloc), who gave her mystic warnings and had a seizure, having forgotten to take her medication. Instead of taking her to the police or the hospital, Jesse took her friend (Superbia/Rene) to her parents house. Her blase mom offered to write Jesse a check for the service. Later, Tlaloc would capture Rene; her parents had abandoned her in the attack, fleeing the storm. --- A lot of the session was spent justifying their own actions, emotionally attacking (or defending, or comforting) other players, or dealing with the emotional fallout of a Doom God hating you. Combat is an emotional battlefield. It's a fascinating system for emotional drama.
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Apr 8, 2016 07:51
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A few weeks ago, I made an off-hand mention to my Star Wars group that West End Games had done a Ghostbusters RPG. One player’s response was “why the hell aren’t we playing THAT game?!?” A few days later my D&D DM catches me after church. His Thursday night Villains & Vigilantes game is about to wrap up and he is going to start a Ghostbusters game at the player’s request. He knew I was a huge fan of the movie and cartoon series and wanted to know I would pla… “Yes.” X X X X X The premise of the Ghostbusters RPG is that the original Ghostbusters in New York City are opening franchises around the world. This particular campaign takes place in Boston in the year 1985. To go one step further, the “style” of the game is like we’re a summer replacement television series on ABC. Each adventure takes place over one session like it’s a television episode, with colorful characters, act breaks, and commercials at dramatically appropriate moments. There’s also a limit on swearing and the like because “it’s a family show. Sort of” The first session starts with Louis Tully interviewing the four PC’s who end up getting hired (since we were the only four who interviewed). This adventure was “the pilot” to see if the show got picked up, which allowed us to feel out our characters, get used to the rules, and make any changes we wanted to make before the “official premiere.” The system is incredibly simple. Each PC has four stats - Brains, Muscle, Moves, Cool. You start with twelve points to divide between them, but you also pick one “talent” for each stats. For example, Brains could have the talent of Physics, or Chess, or Navigation, whatever you want to make up. You roll six-siders based on your stat, and if you can tie your talent into the roll somehow you add three extra dice. However, one of the dice is a Ghost Die (like the Wild Die from Star Wars RPG). 1-5, you add to your total. You roll a Ghost (six), you don’t get to add the number and something happens. Could be bad, could be good. If ghosts roll a Ghost on their die however, they get more powerful. The first session sees us hired to deal with a ghost at a pub called the Copper Hammersmith, which was haunted by the previous owner, a skinflint named McCashenkerry. There’s an appropriate amount of property damage, some good quips, the introduction of the Big Bad at the very end (where none of the PC’s could see her) and a good time was had by all. With the start of the second session, the team was… Nachmann Wittgenstein (me) – the Stantz of the group, good with all things mechanical and electrical. The driver of the group and the guy who sees the technical manuals that came with the proton accelerators as “guidelines.” Talents are Auto Repair, Shoving Things, Boston Traffic, and I Know A Guy. Also incredibly, incredibly Jewish. Mother dotes on him and brings the Ghostbusters dinner at their HQ (with is a decommissioned Catholic church in Cambridge that was once dedicated to St Julian the Hospitaller, aka the Patron Saint of Witch Hunters). Played in the show by Gilbert Gottfried. Doctor Hawkston – the Venkman of the group, his focus is on Cool and more on Parapsychology than anywhere else. Has degrees all over his office wall from various West Coast universities. Bragged about lecturing at Harvard once. The lady’s man. Played in the show by a young Rob Lowe. Doctor Rigby – the Spengler of the group, her focus is on Physics. The only one of us who has actually READ the manuals. Has three cats who live in the church (one of her talents is “Putting Sweaters on Cats”). The player has a long list with three columns of scientific-sounding words that she throws together when appropriate. Played in the show in her first major television role by Sandra Bullock (think Love Potion No. 9). Jack Wagner – the Zeddmore of the group, his focus is the heavy lifting side of things. A former Red Sox player who blew out his knee. Serves as a replacement for another character from the pilot who wasn’t quite working out for the producers (aka the player reworked him). Keeps getting phone calls from the Houston Astros to try out for them. Played by…well, imagine any former NFL/NBA/MLB star who tried to make the switch to acting in the late 70’s/early 80’s like Bubba Smith. Our equipment – four walkie-talkies, four protons packs, two traps, one AMC 1982 Matador, one pair of ecto-goggles, one bullhorn, and one beach kit, which “triples the fun of any trip to the shore!” X X X X X quote:Ghostbusters, Friday, 8 pm, ABC. “Pockman’s Arcade.” - The team must deal with a haunted video game machine. The team gets a call that takes them to Boston Common. But instead of the luxury apartment building or the high-end department store, the address is for a little one-story arcade squished between the two buildings. The owner of the place is one Mario Pockman, a short Italian man who dresses in a blue jumpsuit with red overalls with a thick mustache and outrageous Italian accent, played by 70’s and 80’s character actor Avery Schreiber. He has all the hottest new games – Tae Kwan Do Champ, Marble Mania, Galaxxon, Dig Doug – but every night at sundown, ghosts come out of some of the machines and scare off all the kids! As Nachmann joins in the line at Avenue Fighter to play against the teenagers and get some information from them, the doctors walk around with their PKE meters out – Rigby knows how to read it properly, Hawkston just knows that when the leads are at the top and it’s flashing there’s a ghost nearby – and determine that one of the machines, Galactic Conquerors, is emanating a lot of psychic energy. Plus, the screen is flickering at a steady pace with a “BZZT” sound. Wagner uses Nachmann’s screwdriver to open up the side…and gets slimed as the innards shoot ectoplasm all over him. Turns out the flickering was from a loose wire, but Dr. Rigby realizes that the ectoplasm (she scooped some off of Wagner) is more gritty and coarse than normal ectoplasm, which has the consistency of Gak. The scientists and Jack head back to the church to analyze the ectoplasm while Nachmann stays around to observe what happens at sundown…and keep kicking the butts of these punk teenagers at Avenue Fighter. Back at the lab…which consists of one microscope…it turns out that the gritty material in the ectoplasm are little glowing squares. They’re freely floating around until the sun goes down. As Rigby watches, the blocks begin to come together, and every time they touch they double in size. In a few seconds, they shoot out from the sample and come together in mid-air to form a big alien from Galactic Conquerers. Without their proton packs handy, the three are sent scrambling as the alien goes flying around the vestibule dropping slime everywhere. Back at the arcade, Nachmann is deep into a game of Avenue Fighter and getting the hell beat out of him by the computer. The shot is from the inside of the machine through the glass as he fails his Brains roll. Behind him, the Galactic Conquerors machine is glowing even though the power is turned off. It’s spitting out little blocks that are forming in the air, and after a few seconds there are four lines of eight aliens a piece, all marching towards me as Nachmann as he loses his fight to the fighter in the blue gi, Ron. “Ah, man,” he says as we cut to commercial, “I lost.” Once we’re back from commercial, the team at the church is dealing with the flying alien…which is mainly trying to avoid getting hit by the slime, to which Dr Rigby is unsuccessful, while trying to grab their proton packs. At the arcade, Nachmann manages to notice the aliens at the last minute and hit the decks. With all the kids running around due to the appearance of “some gnarly looking holograms” however, he can’t get to my proton wand (rolled a Ghost on my Moves roll). So he grabs a handful of quarters and starts chucking them at the aliens, hitting one. At that, a little sign appears over the armada that says “1-UP” as the armada doubles in size. After making a Brains check to realize they’re moving in pattern, Nachmann says “ah, forget this” and just starts shooting at them, but due to his dive the proton pack can only fire in little short and straight bursts, each one making a little “blip” noise. By now, the arcade is completely empty except for a kid playing the Jamaican knock-off of Pac-Man called Poc-Mon. The kid is played by that annoying red-haired friend of John Connor’s from the early part of Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Nachmann manages to cut down half the armada when they retreat…and a UFO comes out of nowhere, laying down a trail of slime that manages to catch him, leaving a perfect line of slime up the front of, across his head, and down his back. Frustrated, he turns towards the machine and blasts the hell out of it. It explodes in a shower of sparks, and the aliens all disappear including the one back at the church with Hawkston was just about to blast with his proton pack. After taking credit for driving it away, Hawkston and the others race back to the arcade just in time to see Nachmann and Mario come charging out of the front door with a yellow ghost right behind them. It stops at the edge of the doorway before turning around and heading back inside. Now there are a purple ghost, a green ghost, and a yellow ghost roaming the rows of the arcade. The kid is STILL playing Poc-Mon as he’s at level 23 and there’s no way he’s leaving. Hawkston spouts his catchphrase (“I have a plan,” complete with the half-body turn and finger pointed almost towards the viewers) and runs inside, with Jack following him. The yellow ghost turns back towards the door and actually makes it outside. It’s about to catch Nachmann and Rigby, but it suddenly disappears only to reappear at the back door to the arcade and slams into Jack. Who finds himself teleported to the change kiosk directly into the center of the arcade. And above his head, three little green Poc-Mon symbols appear before one of them disappears with a “wah wah wah wah wah doink doink.” Yep. We all have three lives. Hawkston decides that if he can get into the basement and cut the power, the ghosts will stop. However, every time he goes into the basement he finds himself in the back alley just outside the basement steps. The ghosts are getting faster, and he can’t make it back to the center of the arcade without getting got. Nachmann grabs the bullhorn and yells “ASK THE KID IF THE GHOSTS HAVE A PATTERN!” “What?!?” “HE’S PLAYING THE GAME, HE MUST BE GOOD AT IT!” “Um…alright. Hey, kid? How do these ghosts move?” “Shut up! I’m almost at level 26” “And I’m almost about to die!” “Ok…go up two rows and turn left. There should a power crystal in the corner!” “…got it?” Hawkston runs, while Wagner makes it to the corner office and finds three bundles of bananas floating in mid-air which turn out to be oddly filling. Hawkston isn’t as fast as the ghost however, and he finds himself cut-off by the green ghost. However, Hawkston is in the pinball section, there’s an air hockey table right in front of him, and his Muscles Talent is “Flipping Tables.” He flips the table, runs to the glowing white crystal hovering against the wall… “Now what?” “Eat it!” “What?!?” “OH JUST LISTEN TO THE KID AND EAT THE drat THING, HAWKSTON,” Rigby yelled from outside. He somehow eats the whole thing…and with a triumphant noise, the ghosts all turn red and run away. He sprints after them, catches them, eats them and sends them back to the center of the arcade. This allows the rest of the team to come inside. Realizing they can’t shoot the machine with the kid still playing it (“one more level and the game will flip over back to level 1, and it gets even HARDER”), so Wagner suggests the next best thing. All four of the Ghostbusters shoot the center column which all the machines in that section are plugged into. The machine sparks out…as do a whole bunch more…and the ghosts all disappear. The kid gets upset (“I was about to flip the game! You guys suck!”) and storms out. Before the team could follow him (thinking he might be the source of the haunting, and Hawkston realizes if he’s a punk kid he comes from a troubled home that might just have a single mom), they realized that there’s one machine still running even though there wasn’t any power to it. King of Kong. And the green ape’s face was on the screen, laughing at the team, pointing at them with a crooked finger. “Oh, you son of…” Punching the screen was a bad idea, as before Nachmann could hit the surface a blue spark flew out and sent him flying across the room right into the pinball machine for Crom the Conquerer. “drat it,” Nachmann says as Wagner pulled him out, “I wish I could crawl into that there machine and punch that monkeyed-up simian right in the face!” Pause. “Well, we could take the positronic neutrons caused by our proton accelerators and use them to alter our spatial-temporal rationales, accounting for the 8-bit factor and possible MIDI compression, to take the biological code that make up our component parts and digitize it, thus changing ourselves into virtual avatars that could enter the video game and travel along the electronic pathways to the processor at the core of the gaming cabinet. Once we’re inside, it should be a simple matter to confront this King of Kong and reduce him to nothing more than bits of fragmented code.” “…did anyone here understand that?” “Yeah, Mrs. Doctor is talking about souping up our proton wands and zapping ourselves into the machine there.” “Hold on a minute. I thought messing with the proton wands was a bad idea.” “Don’t worry. There’s a very slim chance I could get the calculations wrong.” “There’s a label on the bottom of the backpack that says ‘CAUTION – CONTAINS NUCLEAR WASTE!’” “So Nachmann and I will wear gloves.” X X X X X Quotes for the session… “I’m gonna go put my quarters down on that there machine, see if I can get in a game or two.” “Do you know anything about video games, Nachmann?” “…I’m a single Jewish guy in his mid-20’s who lives with his mother. Of course I know about video games.” “Ah! My Galatic Conquerers machine! It’s-a ruined!” “We’re sorry, but you did sign a waiver…” “Don’t worry, it’s-a insured.” “Ah! My floor! It’s-a covered in that ectoplasm stuff!” “Who could tell the difference with all the spilled soda and melted gumdrops?” “Ah! My power pillar! It’s all-a shorted-a out!” “We’re sorry, but you did sign a waiver…” “Don’t worry, it’s-a insured.” “Ah! My air hockey table! It’s all-a flipped over!” “We’re sorry, but you did sign a waiver…” “Don’t worry, it’s-a insured.” “Does anyone think it’s a good idea to leave an adult here with all these kids? That screams ‘Stranger Danger.’” “I’m sure all these kids know to be on the lookout, report anything they see, and help to…take a bite out of crime.” *another half turn and points towards the camera*
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Apr 8, 2016 20:26
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Mendrian posted:How would you ever run a game like that? Give Billy Badguy 10 minutes of screen time, then cut back over the PCs? How long would they have to put up with that poo poo? A whole campaign arc, leading to a final confrontation in which... what? The PC villain just dies, presumably. I played in an Exalted game recently where all of the PCs were Dragon-Blooded soldiers fighting a losing war against a seemingly infinite undead army, except for the one mortal member of our squad, Mai. She was a strictly non-combat type, a doctor and technician, definitely able to contribute to the team but kinda easy to ignore in the most dangerous situations. However, a few sessions in, she exalted as a Solar, which for folks unfamiliar with the Exalted setting, means that the Dragon-Blooded basically see her as a terrifying mind-controlling demon that needs to get dropped NOW, and that may in fact be more dangerous than the undead army. The Dragon-Blooded are in fact known to start miniature holy wars called Wyld Hunts whenever they learn of the existence of a Solar. My character was Hokari, Mai's cousin and a very visible rising star in the military. Mai and Hokari got along very well and Hokari had a very friendly, easygoing, populist air to her, eschewing a lot of the uptight military culture and regulations. So it was no surprise to the rest of the PCs when Hokari, in her position as squad leader, made it clear that she wasn't going to report Mai to the command structure. That was a relief, since none of the other folks in the squad were particularly religious, so they weren't sure how much they valued following the "kill the Solar" protocol over protecting their good friend and retaining this huge new military asset in the desperate war against the undead. The problem, though, was that Hokari was in fact very religious, and the "single glorious shining hero" vibe of the Solars was particularly anathema to Hokari's populist take on the Dragon-Blooded state religion. So even though she wasn't going to turn Mai in, she tried to divert some of the squad's resources in secret to exploring the idea of a "cure" for Mai's "condition". When it became clear that the cure almost definitely didn't exist and that Mai didn't want it even if it did, tensions started to flare up. Eventually things got bad enough that Mai deserted with our airship in order to explore spooky Solar ruins in the desert that she believed were the key to winning the war, and the rest of the party was sent on a mission to recover the airship and the deserter. By that point, the rest of the party was pretty firmly on Mai's side, so they ended up deserting and leaving Hokari alone. Left with no other options, Hokari reached out for aid from a rival faction of Dragon-Blooded that we all pretty much considered decadent heretics, and called a Wyld Hunt on Mai with what limited resources she had on hand. The final session of the campaign was an extended aerial battle sequence between the party and Hokari's Wyld Hunt, ending with the party winning and resolving to help Mai discover the ancient secret that would win the war and protect her from any future Wyld Hunts. It definitely wasn't perfectly executed, and there were plenty of rough patches as far as confusion about whether the GM was treating me as a PC or an NPC at any given point once that final arc started in earnest, but overall I feel like it was a pretty good way to have one of the players act as the main antagonist without doing any of that kind of chicanery. It definitely required a lot of ground rules being consented to from the get-go by everyone involved, though - e.g. we all started the game knowing the loose framework of "Mai is going to become a Solar, all of you except one are going to realize she's still your pal and not a spooky demon, the remaining one is going to slowly transition into the villain role", but not necessarily what path the campaign would take to end up there.
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Apr 8, 2016 21:06
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Ken "Popehat" White posted:We geeks are just better at being good people. e: i hosed up the link Doc Hawkins fucked around with this message at 03:46 on Apr 9, 2016 |
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Apr 9, 2016 01:22
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"Hey audience, I'm just going to fellate you for a bit, ok? Buy my product, you perfect person, you!"
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Apr 9, 2016 02:07
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Unless you're somehow different then we are, then you're scum to be ostracized and harassed!
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Apr 9, 2016 02:53
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Socially mundane is exactly how I would describe a lot of nerds.
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Apr 9, 2016 03:00
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Since when did Ken White write for Beast?
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Apr 9, 2016 03:11
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I edited my post to have a working link to the full article, which I recommend. Not that it does too much to improve the first impression you get from that opening, but suffice it to say, I thought it belonged in the thread.
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Apr 9, 2016 03:48
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I remember seeing a quote from a stormfront poster about how just because Drizzt has black skin doesn't make him, you know, black, he's white on the inside.
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Apr 9, 2016 04:07
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Tunicate posted:I remember seeing a quote from a stormfront poster about how just because Drizzt has black skin doesn't make him, you know, black, he's white on the inside. That may be the saddest, most pathetic thing I have ever heard.
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Apr 9, 2016 05:07
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Doc Hawkins posted:I edited my post to have a working link to the full article, which I recommend. Not that it does too much to improve the first impression you get from that opening, but suffice it to say, I thought it belonged in the thread.
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Apr 9, 2016 10:39
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Tunicate posted:I remember seeing a quote from a stormfront poster about how just because Drizzt has black skin doesn't make him, you know, black, he's white on the inside.  Senor Chang is full of crazy.
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Apr 11, 2016 19:42
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Not a very in-depth story, but: that feeling when you pop all of your damage-boosting effects and get a critical hit? Pretty amazing. Especially when you drop your target to -130hp.
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Apr 11, 2016 19:54
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On a similar not in depth note, the feeling when you do that and then miss nine attacks in a row over the course of three rounds? Distinctly not amazing at all.
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Apr 12, 2016 03:35
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