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I was going through some old session notes and remembered the most creative I've ever seen my players be. It was a 13th Age game and the group was going up against a homebrewed version of a shadow dragon which, in this case, was made of actual, solidified shadow. I like making "puzzle bosses" in tabletop RPGs, so this one's big feature was that it's impossible to harm it unless it's in direct light, at which point it can be hurt like any other enemy. (I had "taught" the players this by now by having them fight smaller shadow minions that worked the same way.) Someone in the group had an idea. I don't remember who. It might have been our Ranger's player, she's pretty clever. Anyway, it had turned out that the group had recently worked with a farseer who could make scrying lenses. The rule was, if you had a piece of something, he could make a big lens using a ritual that would let you scry on that thing for a total of an hour. The player's idea: well, your table is made of wood. Wood comes from a plant. Plants drink the sun. Therefore, plants all contain pieces of the sun. You can use a piece of wood to make a lens to scry on the surface of the sun. How was I not going to allow that? So the group's ritual casters worked together with the farseer to make the lens, and everyone succeeded at their Int rolls, and it worked. They had a scrying lens that would show them a view just a few feet away from the surface of the sun. Because of how much light (and heat) would be coming through, I figured it would only last for a couple of rounds before it shattered. They tried it briefly and burnt a hole through the guy's roof. When they fought the shadow dragon, the Ranger climbed up a clock tower and was basically got to shoot at it with a solar laser cannon. It was a good time for everyone.
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Jun 9, 2016 15:00
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CobiWann posted:The druid in question, Swansea... Please, please, PLEASE tell me that she spoke with a Welsh accent. 
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Jun 9, 2016 15:56
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JustJeff88 posted:Please, please, PLEASE tell me that she spoke with a Welsh accent. ...huh. I guess she did. I was trying to place it but couldn't because of how spacey the GM was playing her.
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Jun 9, 2016 16:18
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In the game I run, today my party decided to make some money by taking a grave robbing job in a town who's cemetery has a weird death cult thing going on. They decided to in order to avoid the possible punishments for being caught grave robbing, they would hire a necromancer to create zombies and that the zombies would dig themselves up. I can't wait for them to attempt this next week 
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Jun 10, 2016 04:54
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Why New Players Are The Best I've been playing Beyond the Wall with a few friends for a couple sessions now, and it has been absolutely golden so far. The game is set in and around the trading town of Ettlesea, a town that grew from being at the meeting point between the docks of the eponymous sea, and the King's Way, a great road that cuts through, among other things, a very old, very magical forest. During the first session, the game is started by making characters together, essentially rolling the main points of your character on charts and connecting them into whatever shape appeals. It's a neat system, and at the end of it, not only did we have a setting ripe with adventure, we had our three intrepid youths. Hazel the Would-Be Knight, played by my best friend, who doesn't care much for fantasy, but was drawn in by the tone of BtW and the promise of character driven stories. Stubborn to a fault, Hazel's grown up reading hero stories and decided she wanted to be one, by slaying a dragon. Her first defining moment was calling the local bully Bran out on his bluff and then laying him out when he wouldn't back down. Most of what she knows, she learned from the innkeeper, a retired soldier and the only person for miles that's more stubborn than Hazel. Arelle the Self-Taught Mage, played by said best friend's SO, who's by far the least experienced of us at tabletop. Arelle is the daughter of the town's head watchman, and Hazel's partner in crime. While Hazel learned from a person, Arelle learned her magic from a book, and at one point accidentally summoned a very powerful demon. This probably would have doomed her, Hazel, and the whole drat town to being footnotes in a lesson on responsible magic using, but she held off the demon with a barrier until it couldn't persist without a host any longer, and had to depart. Gza (pronounced 'Zah') the Assistant Beast Keeper, played by a mutual friend of ours, and Arelle's player's housemate, with quite a lot of experience. The 'responsible friend' of the trio, Gza is a little less than popular with the townspeople, because their father is a strange man who spends all his money buying and writing hero stories. Gza got some measure of distance and recognition by getting a job helping the local witch tend to the watch's horses. Tending their wounds with plants from the enchanted forest, Gza slowly developed an almost encyclopediac knowledge of local flora, as well as a sense of the magic that binds the forest- for better or worse, Gza can now hear the voices of the trees. The game started when Kender, the 'official' stableboy, ran to Gza for aid. Something had spooked the horses, and they all stampeded south into the forest. All of them had gone together, and Gza, smelling something fishy, gathered his friends and searched the stables for clues while they waited for them to arrive. The clues weren't totally clear, but it definitely wasn't normal- something or someone from inside the stables had spooked them. Though they failed the roll to recognize it, the tracks would have also shown that the horses were being spurred in a certain direction, almost due south. Once everyone arrived, the group reluctantly followed the (thankfully obvious) trail into the forest, where Gza almost immediately noticed that the trees were VERY upset about something- trespassers of a sort they did not care for. Arelle lit the way and Hazel trailblazed while Gza coaxed the moss to grow into a thick trail that would ease their travel AND keep them from getting lost on the way back. Everyone rolled well, and was contributing to the scenario and the setting- so when they found the horses, I asked each of them a question regarding the setting. Goblins had taken the horses, and were doing terrible, cruel things with them. For Hazel, I asked What are the goblins doing? The answer came that they were intentionally scaring them, playing mean tricks, and generally making them scared and suffering. This worked out well, as a random table result had determined earlier in my notes that they were Goblins of Fear. For Gza, I asked Why horses? The answer for this was brilliant- horses are very sensitive to magic despite not being magical creatures themselves- essentially making them perfect playthings for the goblins. And for Arelle, the newest player, I asked a real golden question. How do the goblins look different than you expected from the stories? After some minutes of frantic sketching, she gave an answer that made the whole session for me. Goblins are child-sized creatures with black, fuzzy fur, and long, narrow anteater snouts. It was a design that was both far more animalistic, far more ugly-cute, and far more fae than anything I could have come up with, or that I could have expected from someone with more sedementary views on What Fantasy Is. I think that's the moment we all really knew that this was absolutely going to be a very good game. Next Time: Spooking the spookers, and a Kodak moment. girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 09:15 on Jun 11, 2016 |
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Jun 10, 2016 10:52
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Poison Mushroom posted:Once everyone arrived, the group reluctantly followed the (thankfully obvious) trail into the forest, where Gza almost immediately noticed that the trees were VERY upset about something- trespassers of a sort they did not care for. Arelle lit the way and Hazel trailblazed while Gza coaxed the moss to grow into a thick trail that would ease their travel AND keep them from getting lost on the way back. Everyone rolled well, and was contributing to the scenario and the setting- so when they found the horses, I asked each of them a question regarding the setting. I love this. I love the questions and the answers. I love this post. I look forward to hearing more about your game!
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Jun 10, 2016 20:01
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Poison Mushroom posted:Why New Players Are The Best Please post dat goblin pic please.
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Jun 10, 2016 21:16
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Poison Mushroom posted:Goblins had taken the horses, and were doing terrible, cruel things with them. Man, I wish I could get my players to respond more interestingly to questions like that. Every time I try, they always either default to a boring answer because they can't come up with something on the spot, or (for the same reason) they just say the zaniest thing they can think of. I've had so many "nah, man, we are totally in for a mostly-serious story" sessions go haywire because I asked a question like that and got the wackiest possible answer and nobody would let it go so, welp, guess that's canon now. At least the player who spent our whole Blades in the Dark campaign obsessed with stealing people's pants achieved his goal in a non-disruptive way (turns out they needed a disguise, so he drugged a dude and stole his clothes, and after the session he was so gleeful that he'd finally stolen some pants and I hadn't noticed--had to give him that one, slipped it right by me).
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Jun 10, 2016 22:04
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Had to suspend my Pathfinder game because my summer work schedule sucks.  In honor of it, a little story of one of the zanier recent sessions:The PCs in this game have control of a town they have named Prosperity. The PCs are as follows: A NG elf wizard (conjuration specialist) A TN human oracle (of undeath) A TN human rogue A CG human barbarian A NG half-elf bard A LG human monk (using Unchained Monk because goddamn regular Pathfinder monk. Goddamn.) I'm running the game fairly light in tone, and using a player-driven "quest system" not unlike Fallout's quests. Basically, as the PCs do things, I'll either have a quest card planned or make one up on the spot that will act as plot hooks for future games. The quest cards just describe the potential way(s) of resolving the quest, and any known reward for completing it, including XP. So a while back, the PCs had an ork war camp set up dangerously close to Prosperity. To make a long story short, the PCs wiped out the war camp and the nearby ork village, and orphaned four ork children when all was said and done. So those ork kids became a quest card, entitled "Three Orks and a Baby (Ork)." The objective with this quest, obviously, is to raise the ork kids. The PCs had been sitting on this quest for quite some time, basically cloistering the kids into an orphanage for six months of in-world time. But the group found themselves close to a level-up the other day, so they took up this quest to try to gain a level before they set out on a longer quest. I designed the quest fairly simply. There are four ork kids, each of different ages: 14, 10, 4, and 1. The goal is to shape the kids' development more toward the PCs (and civilization's) liking. The reward, in addition to XP, is that each kid that can be socialized well enough can be an asset to the party. The challenge is that the older ones are more useful, but are also more set toward a Chaotic Evil path. So, basically, more reward for more difficulty. The ork kids are:  Gn'rath is a firmly CE 14 year old angry teen. He is violent and despondent and lashes out any pretty much everyone and everything. He wants to be an ork warrior (and is just about a full-fledged warrior anyway), and considers this orphanage as pretty much bullshit and he's just waiting to kill the priestess that runs the place to flee in the night. So, not an ideal student. U'marr is a NE 10 year old boy that I described as, "like Gene from Bob's Burgers, but also probably a future serial killer." He is weird and gross like most 10 year old boys, but he's also mutilating animals and has a distressingly morbid sense of humor. but he is just young enough that his alignment isn't as set in stone as his older brother. Sp'elnik is a precocious, adorable, sociopathic 4 year old. I mean, more sociopathic than most 4 year olds. She was introduced in the prior quest by gleefully helping the PCs burn down her own village. Suffice it to say, she is CN on a good day, and CE on a bad one. B'uth is a baby. He is green and has tusks, but is otherwise an adorable baby. He is TN.So when the players decide to take up the quest to raise these kids, I drop the system on them. I explain what I did above: that the older kids will be more rewarding, but more challenging to reform. Then I ask the players to split up and claim a kid to raise. The rolls they're about to make are going to represent long-term progress (in the past and present) in how the characters are and were helping to raise the kids. But they have to focus on one. When they do that, I'll ask each PC for a series of skill rolls based on however they describe they are trying to raise the kid they chose. So here's how it broke down: The party's monk took on raising Gn'rath. He used the town's monastery as a sort of military school. He started out by trying to teach the kid mental discipline before they set him loose to spar with the other monks. So I asked for a Knowledge: Religion roll from the monk. He didn't do so hot, so I described that Gn'rath has a lot of pent up rage, even more than is obvious. The kid yells horrible obscenities at the monks, and even they start to lose their cool with him. It's clearly becoming a vicious cycle toward Gn'rath's anger. But I give him a hint that the kid isn't just angry about what happened to his village, or about being raised by humans. His anger was focused inward, and was preventing him from developing away from CE. So the monk decides to try a risk and give the kid a tangible challenge, to give him something goal-oriented to focus on. He sets up a brutal, pretty much impossible obstacle course and asks the kid to run it, knowing full well that it can't be completed. The idea, I gathered, was to burn out the kid's anger. I asked the monk to roll Acrobatics to represent the design of the course. He crushed the roll, and the kid got really angry at failing over and over. But he never gave up. So the kid was now showing his real value, and his real strength: his anger makes him indomitable. The monk decides to let the kid use his anger rather than try to train it out of him. Basically, he gives up on trying to make the kid a monk, and lets him be who he is. He asks to spar with the kid as his last roll, so I ask for an attack roll. He does very well (the combat being really abstracted by the one roll), and the kid stands his ground. the monk beats him handily, but the young ork seems to understand his own potential by the end of the bout. In the epilogue, I described the monk being awakened in the middle of the night by a noise outside. It is Gn'rath, not escaping, but trying to run the impossible obstacle course. The monk watches from a distance as the ork fails over and over and over, until he finally completes it. A course that isn't supposed to be completed. (The monk's player and I both are big Bruce Lee fans and I was going for a sports drama/Kung Fu vibe with the way this one played out). Gn'rath did it out of sheer bloody-mindedness and self-determination. And that's the way he's going to end up doing everything from here on out. Gn'rath ended up a CN fighter due mostly to the monk's huge rolls in the last two checks. And since he is pretty much fully grown, he will be considered a "cohort character" that the PCs can take with them on quests. Cohorts are classed NPCs that are one level lower than the PCs at all times, and the PCs can take one with them on each quest.) the party's necro-oracle claimed raising U'marr as a helper in his horror lab. Luckily, the wizard also contributed some tutelage along the way. The oracle's shtick is necromancy, and he's starting to get into building constructs. So, basically, he's Dr. Frankenstein and owns a horror lab. He's not a bad guy, but he has weird, morally grey ideas about what life and death mean. So, naturally, the future serial killer is going to be his lab assistant. The oracle's idea is to give the kid something constructive, literally, to do, to focus his energies toward something that isn't killing things or people. the wizard, meanwhile, takes time to explain the actual differences between the living and the dead, because the jury is still out on that whole thing as far as the oracle is concerned. The oracle rolls Knowledge: Arcane, Knowledge: Religion, and Craft: Construct. The wizard rolls Knowledge: Arcane, Knowledge: Planes, and Spellcraft. They both do fairly well, but nowhere near the monk's last two rolls. I'm taking an average of both, so one of their really good rolls got nerfed by a dud. After each roll, I give them a narrative that gives hints at U'marr's progress. It's clear that he's not getting any less weird, so they decide to stay the course. I guess they gave up on trying to prevent him from being a serial killer, because they pivoted with their last rolls to using the rolls to talk to the kid about ethics, and teaching him ethics through a craft. I guess their thought was: if he's going to be a serial killer, let's try to make him more like Dexter and less like the Son of Sam. It worked, I suppose, but with their descriptions and their rolls, they couldn't have done much better than that. In the epilogue, I described U'marr as a thoroughly weird kid who found too much pleasure in his job as a lab assistant in a horror lab. But he also stopped killing frogs and stitching them together. His morbidity and perversions at least had a contained and supervised place now. He ended up CN and functions as a significant boost to the oracle and wizard's crafting and research efforts. U'marr's presence makes crafting constructs and arcane research cheaper, faster, and with a little skill boost. The party's rogue took lil' Sp'elnik to teach her to be a spy for his burgeoning crime empire. The party's bard tried (and often failed) to keep an eye out for her while she was getting into trouble. Sp'elnik is a four year old girl. Despite being an ork, the people in the town consider her just another little kid. A bratty, rambunctious kid, but a kid nonetheless. With that in mind, the rogue thought to use her like one of the corner kids in The Wire. No one notices a little kid running around, and even if they do they don't care. So the rogue started by asking her, "go around Prosperity and come back and tell me three things you thought were interesting." I ask for a Perception check, and he does alright. Meanwhile, the bard is trying to tail the kid, to keep her out to too much trouble. He fails his own Perception check miserably, so he loses her. So when she returns to report back to the rogue, she tells him the following three things she thought were interesting:1) "There is a weird looking guy that has been standing outside different parts of the inn for hours. He never talks to anyone else, and is looking up at the windows a lot." 2) "The blacksmith lost a wrestling match to his wife real bad. It took a while though, and I had to hide in their closet the whole time. I didn't even get to take anything." 3) "There's a rock down by the river that kind of looks like U'marr, but less fat. And less stupid looking. And less smelly. And--" (The player cut me off at that point. I was just going to ramble until he did.) One of these later led to another quest card, that the town had a spy in their midst. Being a sort of intelligence agency for the town was the rogue's Theives Guild's role, so that was right up his alley. But everything else is not great. The rogue scolds her for breaking into a house and peeping, but she doesn't understand the difference between that and what he asked. The rogue is walking a fine line, here. He wants to teach her to be sneaky, but not so much that she is a danger or a liability. He's a rogue that likes the kinds of laws he can use to his own ends. That's why he's kind of the town's de facto spy chief. Anyway, instead of taking his next roll to teach the kid some right and wrong, he asks her to try to get from one end of the town to the other without being seen. He rolls Stealth to teach her, and kills it. The Bard tries to keep up again, and fails. The kid comes back and seems to have succeeded, and even says she wasn't able to steal or burn the stuff that caught her eye along the way, because she was too worried about being seen. So the rogue decides that pushing her further into spy duties is a good way to keep the kid honest. Kind of like the concession that U'marr is going to be a serial killer, he concedes that she is going to be a rogue, but it might as well be his kind of rogue, and under his control. So his last roll is to teacher her pickpocketing. He rolls really well at Sleight of Hand and asks her to go get one thing from the strange man outside the inn. She does, and the bard finally catches up to her just afterward. He notices what she did, even if the spy didn't, and scolds her. "the rogue asked me to do this," she says. The bard stresses that she shouldn't steal from everyone, but to be sure to follow instructions. He does really well at his Diplomacy check, so his message sinks in, even if she doesn't show it. She runs off and reports to the rogue. What she got form the spy proves that he's a spy, and I hand out the quest card for that on the spot. But that concludes her education. She ends up TN, owing mostly to the bard's insane final roll. She's going to be a good resource for the Thieves Guild, but she's still a brat. But as long as she's taking orders from the guild, she'll be less bratty and destructive. As just a four year old, she's not that useful. She's an informant that the party can use to gather information around town. Lastly, there is only one PC left to raise the baby. The barbarian raises the baby ork. The skill rolls are goofy as hell, partly because the barbarian isn't exactly a skill fiend, and partly because using D&D skill rolls to abstract interacting with a baby is a weird fit. The barbarian ends up strapping the baby to his back like Lone Wolf and Cub and going into the forest outside of the city. While everyone expects him to come back having eaten the poor thing, he rolls his few skill fortes. I'll list them with the player's description of how he is using them: "I'm going to figure out what this baby can and can't eat, by trial and error." (Survival) "I'm going to make sure the baby can grow up to be a resilient warrior by dropping him from higher and higher heights. But not too high at first. I'm not an rear end in a top hat." (Acrobatics) "I'm going to leave the baby on the forest floor and go a short ways away. Just around the corner. If he can find me, he deserves to grow up to be a warrior. If not, he deserves to be eaten by wolves." (Perception) And he absolutely killed every single roll. this is a player who has become a running joke with skill rolls because his character can't seem to roll anything besides attack rolls and damage when it really matters. It was like he was saving up all his skill roll mojo for this ork baby. At the end of it all, the baby having survived, essentially, several forms of child abuse (deprivation, physical abuse, and neglect), the barbarian declared loudly to the forest that "THIS BABY HAS THE SOUL OF A WARRIOR," and resolved to genuinely and permanently keep the baby with him. The barbarian now has a baby slung to his back at all time, just like Lone Wolf and Cub. B'uth ended up CG and has the soul of a warrior. But as a baby, he's not going to be directly useful anytime soon. But to give the barbarian something for his trouble, the baby will do random helpful things here and there. One of the examples I gave was that if the barbarian gets stunned, there is a chance each round that the baby will reach out and snap him out of it. All of this took about 30 minutes because it was basically the players describing things, me asking for skill rolls, and me describing things. But the players go really
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Jun 10, 2016 23:03
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B'uth's icon avatar made that story for me. It's a great story on its own, but from now on all orc babies will be cheerful unformed blobs of green to me.
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Jun 11, 2016 09:11
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A Kodak Moment This is actually in the same session as the last story, I was just on mobile at the time and tired of typing on a touch screen. So, the party of Hazel the so-stubborn-it's-a-virtue warrior, Arelle the creative-but-unfocused mage, and Gza the obligatory-responsible-one had tracked down the horses, and found them being tormented by black, fuzzy anteater goblins. There were definitely more goblins than there were the three of them, so I told them whatever they did, they'd need a plan. (I established early that this would be a "just about every encounter has noncombat solutions" kind of game.) Between the three of them, they first came up with the idea of having Arelle use magic to create a sound to scare the goblins away, but couldn't come up with one that wouldn't scare the horses, too. The session actually stalled a fair bit here, as everyone was looking to Arelle, but her player was struggling under the sudden spotlight. After a bit of nudging and reminding that goblins tend to avoid civilization and hate being outnumbered, they finally hit on the idea of using her magic to create the sounds of a trade caravan coming from near where they were. Arelle would have to roll with a pretty significant penalty, because that was both a louder and a much more complex sound than she was used to making with the spell. Momentary detour. By sheer coincidence, Arelle ended up with an Intelligence stat that would have been a 22, if the game did not hard-cap at 19. Beyond the Wall is a roll-under system, so from the word go, Arelle almost could not fail Intelligence checks (including spellcasting rolls) without a huge penalty. So, of course, even with a -6 penalty, she aces the roll, and the goblins scatter. It takes some time, but with Gza's experience with handling the horses, and Hazel taking back her own personal horse, Samson, they were able to get back on the moss trail and into town just a little before sunset. I could tell everyone was sort of flagging at this point, and one player even asked when we'd be done, so I pulled a question out of my rear end. Everyone was really on-point, so I'll just copy logs instead of trying to summarize. quote:GM: Cresting the last hill home, you get a beautiful view of Ettlesea and the surrounding area. Everyone, tell me your favorite part of the view. I've never seen a group so eager to schedule the next session. It made me feel pretty good. Next Time: Hazel gives Bran a hand, and the appearance of the Riddlewitch, Marnie.
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Jun 11, 2016 09:40
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Several players in our group didn't like 5e much, but our usual GM just announced he was running it again. I suggested it might be better to try something else, and he wrote back an angry post about "well, what RPG doesn't have those problems?" (Limited play options and reduced choice of optimal builds) I couldn't answer him - because our group does have a tendency to break systems and so I couldn't give a guarantee for anything we haven't tried. So now we are all gearing up for the 5e campaign. I believe he doesn't like cod because of the fishy taste. I should challenge him to name a fish that he can guarantee doesn't taste fishy and, if he can't, it obviously means he actually likes cod and so he has to eat a large cod supper....
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Jun 11, 2016 16:02
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Should have said 4e.
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Jun 11, 2016 16:46
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The Teen Pup and the Voodoo Witch So I've been in an awesome WWWRPG game. Penny Ante Wrestling (PAW) is run by retired wrestler and kayfabe (not real) owner, Jim "Diamond Dog" Davis. My character debuted recently as the Golden Boy archetype, Jim's real child Jesse "Diamond Pup" Davis. Now, there are a lot of reasons to dislike Jesse:
Jesse can't wrestle that well but can cut a mean promo. Jesse doesn't conform to a gender, declaring zherself at times "both, neither, [and] better than either". Jesse is INCREDIBLY over with the crowd, doing an entitled David Bowie act. Jesse won the tag team titles in zher first match, replacing an injured jobber. Meanwhile, Venus Galaxia is a newish wrestler who's been with PAW for a while. She's an evil witch with magic powers and a creepy cracked doll. So when Jesse fulfilled zher promise to the crowd to win the tag team titles, she called out Venus, promising to save her soul from witchcraft. The crowd was DYING TO SEE THIS. It ended up as the main event of the next show, with PAW spending its limited budget to set up a sombre ringside graveyard for its first ever Save Your Soul Match. The match was designed to hide their grappling weaknesses. Venus punched her way out of a coffin Jesse trapped her in; Jesse tried various Crucifix moves; they both hit each other with gravestones. While Jesse lost (after mostly running away from the demon witch), zhe managed to dunk Galaxia in a font of holy water! Venus's clothing expanded from a black two-piece to a flowing white dress. Jesse presented zher opponent with a repaired version of the doll, with the doll also dressed in white. Jesse shook Venus's hand and left the Evil One flabbergasted and fuming in the ring. Mechanics spoiler: Jesse ended the match with a levelup, so zhe took the move Pack Leader. That lets you, through force of will, recruit other wrestlers as Enforcers. If you fail the roll they kick your rear end, but it's +Look, a stat Jesse rules. --- The next week, Venus opened the show. She was wearing a cut up version of last week's dress, and fumed at the Insolent Diamond Pup. She didn't know what type of match she wanted, but she WOULD get revenge. [Afterward that was a celebrity sponsored segment where the violent, ex-MMA heel of our federation Erika Thanatos had to lose a match to Dev Chinook, Rapper/Cookie Cereal sponsor, and Strawberry, a wrestler somehow newer and more annoying than Jesse. It was a trainwreck and pissed Erika off in and out of kayfabe so much that she said she'd quit if she didn't win the tag belts at the pay per view.] So, the week prior I had secretly tipped off Creative to a match I wanted to book. It was simple: Jesse and Mr. Mad (zher evil clown partner and co-tag team champion) would take on Venus and a mystery partner. The mystery partner would be revealed to be Jesse, and the two would beat up Mr. Mad. This is what happened:
He asked what Jesse's thought about defending the title were. The Diamond Pup said zhe was a fighting champ. The interviewer said their opponent was Venus and a mystery partner.
--- So, Venus made a new, spooky, big budget entrance, putting her repaired doll on the turnbuckle. Jesse entered. Mr. Mad came out cackling and demanded to know why Jesse was betraying him; Jesse explained zhe didn't book the match! Jesse got the crowd to yell "I DIDN'T BOOK THE MATCH" rolling a 13 out of 10 and they went nuts. During the match, Jesse stood on one side of the ring or the other, being tagged in by whoever needed help. First she bailed out Mads. Then she helped break a hold for Venus. At one point, she argued with the referee ("WAIT! You can't lose this match, that's crazy!") while both of the heels cheated. While wrestling Mads, Jesse allowed Mads to tag Venus in...but reminded him that he and Venus weren't partners! Instead, Jesse tagged Venus in, and they hit a dazzling double witchplex. Eventually Jesse was fighting Venus and threw her into the doll. Seeing the witch scream and catort, Jesse tagged out. Mads was blindsided by a magic spell and was hit Venus's finisher, The Exorcism for the 1-2-3. He began coughing as an endless array of colored handkerchiefs came out of his mouth. And now, your new tag team champions of the world, The Witch and the Boss's kid! --- Of course, the show went on. At his suggestion, Erika Thanatos threw cookie rapper Dev Chinook through an actual table. She called out 98 pound weakling Strawberry (whose entrance music was so new that the first time she wrestled, it was a guy saying "Strawberry sample clip. Upload before show, this is a placeholder"). On guest commentary were Venus and Jesse! Erika and Strawberry put on a hell of a match, but after a while, the new tag champs went silent. Strawberry, exhausted, hit a superkick on Erika. Both of them collapsed, on the ropes, on opposite sides of the ring. Jesse began choking out Erika for cheating so often. Venus started hammering the too smiley Strawberry. As the match went to double DQ, the champions hit their finishers and stared across their rivals broken bodies. "How could you do that?" both of them yelled. "I don't get you at all!" Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 21:15 on Jun 11, 2016 |
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Jun 11, 2016 18:09
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hyphz posted:Several players in our group didn't like 5e much, but our usual GM just announced he was running it again. Nah. The people he's slighting by insisting on 5E should meditate on this simple mantra: "No gaming is better than bad gaming." Because a game you don't like to play, regardless of its actual merits or drawbacks, is bad gaming by definition. And because a GM who responds with 'gently caress you, that's why' is not going to get any cheerier when the players keep breaking the game over their knees while he's trying to squeeze his money's worth out of it.
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Jun 11, 2016 18:55
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hyphz posted:Several players in our group didn't like 5e much, but our usual GM just announced he was running it again.
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Jun 11, 2016 20:55
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This thread has sold me on WWWRPG. I plan on running a game soon.
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Jun 11, 2016 21:01
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Bieeardo posted:Nah. The people he's slighting by insisting on 5E should meditate on this simple mantra: Well, so far one of the players has had their PC attempt to murder the first NPC they met on the road, after which the PC paladin killed the murderous PC in one shot and the player went off to sit in the corner and play with an Overwatch soundboard on his phone. This is looking like a winner already.
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Jun 11, 2016 21:46
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The VTM game I was in before ended back in January, but we started a new one in February. I've been out of town for work the past every game until tonight, luckily, we're only 3 sessions in, so things are still getting established. It was a low attendance tonight since most of our regulars were at a Dystopia Rising event. I don't know names except for the other Gangrel, but, we had: - Myself and one other Gangrel. We're trying to convince people that I'm a City Gangrel, rather than another regular one. I think we have a reason for this? - Two Tremere - Two Ventrue - A Brujah - A Toreador The initial setup is that Pittsburgh is in deep poo poo. Camarilla higherups were beyond fed up, and made that known by destroying what used to be the Elysium (Altar Bar  ) The remaining Kindred were given the ultimatum of "Straighten poo poo up, or you're getting ashed." So, not only do we need to rebuild our power structure in the city, but, we need to get back on the Camarilla's good side. With the help of a lot of politicking and the cashing in of some Boons, the Gangrel manage to score territory for themselves that was initially contested between us, the Toreador and the Ventrue - This is good, because we came in at a serious handicap on account of Gangrel generally being the redheaded stepchildren, so at least now we can actually come in at full blood points instead of being half starved from lack of proper hunting. Kindred in Philadelphia requested aid in the form of arms in order to deal with Sabbat incursions and whatever else they would need guns for. The Ventrue, in their infinite wisdom, pool together their Influence for like a level 8 or 9 attempt, and pretty much clean the city out of guns for a shipment to Philly. As in, I wouldn't be surprised if the muskets from the museum were loving gone. That's how far they decided to go with this. They decide the best way to ship these is by caravan of armored cars. All but one of them got hijacked on the way there. We don't know by what or who, other than it was supernatural, and had access to weapons designed to punch through armored vehicles. One of them didn't even make it out of the city before getting wrecked. I was irritated because A) It was a stupid plan and now not only does Pittsburgh have approximately zero guns, but we're pretty sure that whoever does is not our friend. and more importantly B) Because my character is specced out for Transporter work exactly like this, and I didn't even know it happened until I got in tonight. I make it a point to let players know they can hit me up during our Downtimes, since I want to be involved even if I have to miss the actual game. So, tonight, we decide to investigate the Homestead area. It's been off-limits, since it was former Anarch territory before the Justicar rolled in to wreck the place, and the Prince had a travel ban on it. Since a large number of occult related disappearances were stemming from the area though, he grants us permission to check things out and see what's up. While investigating, we get attacked by a number of vampires from out of town. We kill most of them, managing to knock 2 into Torpor, rather than outright kill them. With them incapacitated, we continue our search, and find a small residential area just riddled with occult symbols and ritualistic murders. Even with 2 Tremere and a couple Occult junkies, the consensus is that there's no real rhyme or reason to the symbols, no ritual that we can discern, they're just there for the sake of being there. We check out a basement that leads to a disused section of the sewer, and in there, painted on the walls is a familiar portrait. OOC, someone mentioned that it was in VTM Bloodlines, a tree split by a lightning bolt with a bunch of dead bodies at the base? I can't remember if that's in the game or not. Anyways, those of us with Lore recognize it was generally being related to themes of vengeance and empowerment. One of the Tremere has some sort of power, I don't know what it is, but, he can talk to inanimate objects. He decides to chat up the portrait, his eyes roll in the back of his head, and he and the ST leave the room for awhile. A good, long while. He returns, and when we ask what the painting said, he was tight lipped about it. "Not much. Just that she's possessed of some vengeance. I think she just absorbed some of the anger of whoever painted her." I call bullshit, since that's more or less what the other Tremere and I knew just from a lore check, let alone whatever conversation he had with it, plus he keeps referring to it in the feminine despite the lack of clear figures outside of the corpses, but, he sticks to the story. Since my Feral Claws are still active from earlier (I never bothered sheathing them after the earlier vampire fight since we knew the area was abandoned), I decide to deface some poo poo. I scratch out a number of the occult symbols and carve a couple dicks into the wall next to the painting, because I am a mature adult and vague bullshit gets you dicks carved into the wall.  As we're leaving, the Tremere begs me to go un-dick the place. "You loving idiot. You're pissing her off, you're going to get us both killed. We're going to suffer for this. Go back and fix it." he hisses desperately into my ear. I refuse, partly because I'm an immature rear end in a top hat and I'm sticking to my immature rear end in a top hat guns, and partly because he waited until after we all said we were getting back into our cars and leaving to start trying to convince me. I'm almost entirely certain he's going to try to sacrifice me to this painting at some point in the future. Favorite part of the evening? Arguably, for me, it was during the fight scene. I'm on a rooftop against a Brujah with a baseball bat. We're about evenly matched, he's got potence, enough Celerity for a bonus action, and the bat, but I have Protean and body armor (My Fortitude is poo poo, so I can't soak damage yet.) I attack his bat directly, break it, and now we're staring each other down. He's waiting on me to make the next move, presumably because his Brawl isn't that great and he no longer has a weapon, I dunno. I telepathically summon the swarm of bats that I've had tailing me since the beginning of the evening to attack his face, then kick him off the rooftop while he's distracted. the_steve fucked around with this message at 08:43 on Jun 12, 2016 |
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Jun 12, 2016 08:32
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Thats the first time I managed to follow a WWWRPG write up at all.
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Jun 12, 2016 10:42
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I ran a game of Police Cops last night. Since one of my regular group's birthday the day before, I decided to start it off birthday themed. The game started with a clown, dead, killed by a mimed gun. Somehow, it ended with three motorcycles crashing into the St. Louis Cathedral, while a Mime-Clown wedding was in progress, then the squad car crashed through front doors and the cops had a gun fight with the three mime thugs on motorcycles. I love my group.
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Jun 12, 2016 14:29
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the_steve posted:I scratch out a number of the occult symbols and carve a couple dicks into the wall next to the painting, because I am a mature adult and vague bullshit gets you dicks carved into the wall. 
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Jun 12, 2016 17:15
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Yawgmoth posted:A time-honored tradition amongst the Gangrel. As opposed to the Tremere in my Vampire/Wraith LARP, who recently when told to "make sure the spirits of the ancient Indian tribe that live on the mountain will not become a threat to us" decided that the best course of action was to LIGHT THE FOREST ON FIRE. My Southern redneck semi-racist Wraith is actually making progress with regards to negotiating with a 16th century tribe who was wiped out by smallpox to peacefully co-exist and direct their vengeance against the white man towards some evil cultists (Black Spiral Dancers, the player knows/the character doesn't) when the Tremere initiate drives up to the edge of the forest, gets out, drops a huge fire ritual on the place, gets back in the car, and leaves. Yeah, her sire/master was not happy with that. My character wasn't happy with that. The Tremere is "on assignment" to let her player handle a Wraith for a story arc. All of us however found it hilarious. It seems the solution in all of our White Wolf LARPs to most problems is the judicious use of Path of Flame/lightning/plastique/fire spirits/Forces.
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Jun 13, 2016 15:28
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CobiWann posted:As opposed to the Tremere in my Vampire/Wraith LARP, who recently when told to "make sure the spirits of the ancient Indian tribe that live on the mountain will not become a threat to us" decided that the best course of action was to LIGHT THE FOREST ON FIRE. I'm playing in a tabletop game of Hunter where we're all hobos in 1938, and, yeah, this checks out. We had a mission to investigate a racist little town in Tennessee. Turns out the mayor was a demon or something and was mind-controlling the town to use their lynchings as his human sacrifices. We burned the mayor's house down and killed him. We had a mission that had us checking out a government work camp that had workers going missing. Turns out werewolves were pissed at the work encroaching on their territory. We burned their forest to the ground. We had a mission to infiltrate a "cannibal cult" that turned out to be a vampire social club that was using a nearby prison as its pantry. We slyly pretended to get duped into getting invited as the "guests of honor," but then we just burned their mansion to the ground. We had a mission were we were investigating a possessed cult leader who was drowning whole families by the Mississippi River. We got into his place and found a gorgon or some poo poo that way out-classed us, so we retreated and blew up the building. Kill it all with fire.
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Jun 14, 2016 14:41
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Railing Kill posted:I'm playing in a tabletop game of Hunter where we're all hobos in 1938, and, yeah, this checks out. Also a strategy that can work well in many Call of Cthulhu problem situations.
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Jun 14, 2016 18:45
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Not so good in job interviews though
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Jun 15, 2016 22:48
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Ichabod Sexbeast posted:Not so good in job interviews though You've clearly never applied for a job at the Arson Factory.
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Jun 16, 2016 00:07
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the_steve posted:You've clearly never applied for a job at the Arson Factory. Sure, but the Arson Factory always wants five years experience on top of the practical demonstration.
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Jun 16, 2016 02:09
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Played Troublemakers, the Goonies/ET/Kid Adventure RPG. There was a really interesting playbook, The Twins. Unlike almost every other game, the Twins are mechanically unified but fictionally distinct. The other players were well drawn (the socially aware goth and his possibly telekinetic sister, and the twins' Elsa loving sis Amy), so bouncing between being Nate and being Lulu was a snap. The adventure was a field trip to the old, about to be shuttered Natural History Museum. Unfortunately, the group got lost from our classes and accidentally interrupted an art heist. The bad guys were armed, though, so we had to sneak around...after a lot of arguments, we got a bus driver to block the museum exit and got back in. The robbers were trying to carry a crate down a flight of stairs. Amy dropped some marbles on them and they lost control of the package, which was a sarcophagus... ...with a moving occupant. Though Lulu and Nate teamed up and hurled a spear through its chest (Thank god for the Early Hunting exhibit!), it was Amy who won the day. She used her regal charm to convince it she was a princess and it was a servant. The pharaoh quickly defeated the art thieves; the goth wished the mummy back to his own place and time; and my characters got massive plaudits for protecting their little sister from dangerous criminals.
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Jun 16, 2016 02:19
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Gazetteer posted:Sure, but the Arson Factory always wants five years experience on top of the practical demonstration.
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Jun 16, 2016 11:27
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Poison Mushroom posted:Pyromaniacs Inc. has an intern program, but their health insurance doesn't even cover accidental dismemberment. How about dental?
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Jun 17, 2016 20:38
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Samizdata posted:How about dental?
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Jun 18, 2016 16:40
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Got to run the Free RPG Day Feng Shui 2 module thing after reading it for 20 minutes. At first, I was nervous. After everyone introduces their characters, I relaxed because the only way this could not be fun would be if I tried to do too much to force things. After that, I used the booklet at most as a mechanical guide. The group was called Task Force Double Eight according to the book, but in character, 2/3rds of the cops referred to it as Project Badass. No points for guessing who after reading the descriptions. We had: Reinhart: A cop on the edge who was actually a Big Bruiser. He was basically Vin Diesel being played by Vin Diesel. His melodramatic hook was that his lucky d20 was stolen when he was younger, so he bulked up and was hunting down those responsible. We joked that this d20 may actually be magical in some way. Chip Stackman: An undercover cop who was so deep in cover that he didn't know his own real name. He did remember, every once in a while, that he was an undercover cop. As the Gambler archetype, he asked if he could turn his gun to throwing poker chips. I, by instinct, said "well, how will you explain reloading?" and someone else at the table said "Well, make it a poker chip gun". It switched between a gun and a slingshot. I didn't track it much. Old Master (who's name I sadly forgot): A local kung fu teacher who was trying to clean up the streets. His melodramatic hook was that he was trying to get drugs off the street, including the drug that was the focus of the game. Or, well, should of been the focus of the session at least. He knew the cops because he went there to complain about all the crime all the time. Sun Wu: The straight-man to keep things going forwards. A Magic Cop who was Reinhart's partner and was the only cop of the group who filled out any paperwork or really knew how to be a cop. He filled his shotgun with magic bullets with varying effects. We sadly only got a combat and change in, but there were some real memorable moments. I'd try to go into the blow-by-blow, but the one full combat was a bit of a blur. Some highlights: 1) Chip used a fanfare stunt near the beginning of the second combat to kung-fu walk up on doves (might have been pigeons). I said "eh, why not, game's nearly over". Later on, while the Old Master was fighting with the Guy With Knives (the actual name from the book), Chip used the Gambler's core shtick to reverse the swerve on the dice, claiming that he released the doves on purpose so that one would take a poo poo right underneath the Knife Guy's foot, causing him to fall to the ground instead of nearly murdering the Old Master. 2) Reinhart was hit by a spell that was supposed to be a psychic blast to make him feel lethargic. However, due to the Bruiser's toughness, it did no damage. I asked him how that would work, and he went into an in-character rant about zoo tranquilizers and how that's the only way he ever sleeps. On Reinhart's go, he rolled some ungodly string of 6s on the positive die, so I literally asked what he wanted. We ended up turning it to taking out 5 mooks (he was aiming for 3 trying to miss and get some Mounting Fury), and knock down the other two in a berzerker rage invoking Bigsby's series of spells from DnD. He also used the same exact phrase to intimidate recently-conscious mooks as he did to try to make a victim's brother calm down. "I'm the carrot, he's the stick", referring to the relatively mild-mannered Magic Cop. 3) The Old Master was good at pithy martial arts style comments. The best was "The bear may be mighty, but the wolf does not perform in the circus!" He got a ridiculous bad roll after saying that, but the gambler, looking to encourage such turning of phrases, again used his core schtick to turn it around by switching out the music in Reinhart's Delorean (because why not) from Night Ranger to some weird new-agey wolf-inspired music. The timing was of course perfect to distract the fighter in the bear stance, who may or may not have been drug-addled to begin with. He was definitely playing the character to a T, which makes me feel even worse for not remembering the character's name. After the combat, he reassumed his old man style, waiting on a nearby bench because there was too much excitement going on when backup showed up for the cops. 4) Sun Wu, not wanting to be left out of the fun, finished off one of the sorcerers in the combat with a calligraphy-covered slug which collided with the sorcerer's chest and made him disintegrate. He was also the main one who actually investigated the plot and definitely was a good linchpin character for the rest of the group. He also played the Magic Cop to a T, on top of playing the "I'm too sane for this" straight-man cop for all the other shenanigans. Other than that, it was just good stuff and lots of fun. I'm glad I had that combination of players, and am hoping I sold the game to at least one of the group. The adventure was decently written, but due to the gonzo level of the group, I jumped a bunch of parts and edited bits and pieces to better fit the mixed group. The booklet assumes you're going to run for the 3 cop archetypes, which is the main drawback for it.
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Jun 19, 2016 07:05
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thelazyblank posted:The booklet assumes you're going to run for the 3 cop archetypes, which is the main drawback for it. If you were to expand, the following also make sense as cops: --Bounty Hunter --Private Investigator --Gun Nut (as a firearms instructor). That's what we ran the first time I played Feng Shui; it created a great dynamic of "You're all fuckup cops about to be fired" but varied the level of "some of you actually know how to do your jobs." So only half of us got chewed out when a biker bar got set on fire.
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Jun 19, 2016 07:54
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Golden Bee posted:The goal is to replicate those "Cop Rivalry" style HK movies, so only using the Cop Archetypes makes sense. Yeah, but it's supposed to be something that promotes your game. The cop archetypes are good, no doubt, but they aren't the best examples of the range of neat things in Feng Shui. I added Big Bruiser, Everyday Hero and Spy to that list as ones that would be really easy to explain as cops or cop-adjacent. I let people play whatever, though, except for most of the heavily supernatural ones (Transformed animals, Sorcerer, Ghost, Supernatural Creature) and all the future or past-juncture focused ones.
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Jun 19, 2016 08:15
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thelazyblank posted:4) Sun Wu, not wanting to be left out of the fun, finished off one of the sorcerers in the combat with a calligraphy-covered slug which collided with the sorcerer's chest and made him disintegrate. He was also the main one who actually investigated the plot and definitely was a good linchpin character for the rest of the group. He also played the Magic Cop to a T, on top of playing the "I'm too sane for this" straight-man cop for all the other shenanigans. 
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Jun 19, 2016 08:39
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Poison Mushroom posted:I'm just imagining Harry Dresden deadpanning his way through a Quentin Tarantino movie, and it is amazing. A) Watch Dusk Till Dawn B) Don't read any spoilers for it, just watch.
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Jun 19, 2016 08:46
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Tunicate posted:A) Watch Dusk Till Dawn Seconding this. There's ALWAYS room for another showing of it.
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Jun 19, 2016 23:20
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Ex-Special Forces is another good 'Cop' archetype, because how many TV police procedurals have that one dude who was a sniper in the military? (A lot, if not literally "All of them")
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Jun 20, 2016 00:20
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unseenlibrarian posted:Ex-Special Forces is another good 'Cop' archetype, because how many TV police procedurals have that one dude who was a sniper in the military? (A lot, if not literally "All of them") Especially as you have the whole "Man, I have seen poo poo that would turn your hair WHITE! And I have done things I can't forgive myself for." sub themes to work with for character development.
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Jun 20, 2016 00:33
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