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Ratpick posted:Sort of related to vehicle chat, but I just started a B/X D&D campaign and the first thing my players decided to purchase with the spoils of their first adventure was a wagon and a pair of mules, whom they decided to name Betsy and Bessie (or, to be truthful, the Finnish equivalents thereof). Since they gave them names I now know that those two are here to stay and I'd better not mess with them. Sounds like a fantasy Tachanka, which was a horse drawn cart armed with a machine-gun that was a staple of the Russian Civil War. 
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Jan 11, 2017 10:13
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Kumo posted:Here's a fun one. I like it.
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Jan 11, 2017 18:48
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Polikarpov posted:Sounds like a fantasy Tachanka, which was a horse drawn cart armed with a machine-gun that was a staple of the Russian Civil War. Alternatively, some variation of an old Hussite war-wagon
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Jan 11, 2017 21:58
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CzarChasm posted:I like it. Thanks. I'm trying to think up more stories, but there exists a tendency to drink when you game. I seem to remember way back either in this thread or a previous one people got to talking about how a party of PCs playing as garbagemen would be fun. I ended up putting one together for Pathfinder. I'll see if I can find my notes.
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Jan 11, 2017 22:09
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Way back we were playing a Twilight:2000 campaign and after a particularly bloody firefight two players were introducing new characters. They decided to introduce the Al-Salama brothers who drove a hummer they dubbed the Meccamobile. They spent a good half of the evening rolling up the characters, outfitting the Meccamobile and drawing up artwork for the vehicle. Queue up their introduction to the party which randomly happened in conjunction with a marauder band skirmish. Marauder takes a potshot at the Meccamobile. Bullet strikes a jerrycan of fuel. Fuel ignites. Cases of ammo ignite. Ammo detonates. The Meccamobile and the poor Al-Salama brothers are vaporized. Total time in campaign: five minutes. These two characters are still talked about in our group as the worst prep vs playtime ratio in the history of gaming. The Meccamobile had a rad picture too.
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Jan 14, 2017 03:28
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Paranoia: Ultraviolet is a game where experience pays off. You bid for control of service groups in Alpha Complex; I ended up with 4. This gave me a total of 14 secret objectives for a three hour game. Many were contradictory, but by being a legalistic rear end in a top hat and blatantly corrupt (i.e. ordering truckloads of chemicals to random phonebooths, in front of the other PCs), I got 11 of 14.
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Jan 14, 2017 08:40
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Agrikk posted:Way back we were playing a Twilight:2000 campaign and after a particularly bloody firefight two players were introducing new characters. They decided to introduce the Al-Salama brothers who drove a hummer they dubbed the Meccamobile. Were I GMing that, I can't decide if I'd roll with it because it's hilarious, or rewind the scene and give it another go because it's total bullshit for people to spend hours making characters and then only get to play them for five minutes. Also, my players finishing decorating their ship  (it's not visible from this angle, but one of the engine pods has 'Saw Gerrera Did Nothing Wrong' painted on it in giant letters, and 'gently caress Sheev' is pretty seditious too, so the players are now officially never safe flying this thing into an Imperial-controlled port again. They are okay with this.) Mister Bates fucked around with this message at 20:46 on Jan 14, 2017 |
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Jan 14, 2017 20:43
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Mister Bates posted:Also, my players finishing decorating their ship I'm digging the sideburns slapped on over the shark mouth.
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Jan 15, 2017 02:57
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Dareon posted:I'm digging the sideburns slapped on over the shark mouth. I was just about to say "Are...are those.... sideburns!?" Haha, I love it.
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Jan 15, 2017 03:02
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Mister Bates posted:Were I GMing that, I can't decide if I'd roll with it because it's hilarious, or rewind the scene and give it another go because it's total bullshit for people to spend hours making characters and then only get to play them for five minutes. It was actually both: when we stopped laughing, we at the table, including the GM, said we should do a rewind because T2K can be pretty horrible, but the two players elected to let it stand, roll new characters and let the Al-Salama brothers go down in infamy.
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Jan 15, 2017 03:41
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Mister Bates posted:Were I GMing that, I can't decide if I'd roll with it because it's hilarious, or rewind the scene and give it another go because it's total bullshit for people to spend hours making characters and then only get to play them for five minutes. WHat ship is that and how big is it? I have an (ir)rational urge to kitbash it for x-wing.
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Jan 15, 2017 09:44
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It’s an AIAT/i. It’s about thirty meters by thirty meters, so a little smaller than a YT-1300.
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Jan 15, 2017 10:06
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This from back in the mid 90's when I played 40k(I'm clean and sober now) at the local shop outside the military base where I was stationed. I never was into gaming or CCGs, but one night in the barracks I came across a couple people playing a card game. It was MTG. I met Jack and he loved to talk about the game and taught me how to play. He also showed me his 40k stuff and I instantly liked it. Jack was a bit of loudmouth, but he was in the Army and a lot of guys are loud mouths. I started going to the shop on weekends and started playing 40k and Necromunda. The months go by and I started playing in the monthly tournaments for 40k and started to notice Jack's behavior towards his opponents. He would openly laugh at them and belittle them if he did not think their army way "optimal" (did a retard build this list?") He would make snide comments every time his army did well(you wasted your money buying those models, because you don't know what to do with them").He was a crappy loser too and would try to rules lawyer his way out of any loss. This was balanced out by the fact that he was an average player and you would end up hearing him whining more than anything. Finally came the day Jack made what in the end got called "The rear end in a top hat Army". It's been 20 years so I can't remember what exactly was in the army except it was something about chaos veteran setting up and hiding in woods and not ever being able to see them to shoot back. It was technically legal but, even the TO agreed it broke the spirit of the rules not the rule itself and unhappily let it stay. For two months this is all Jack played and it was the most frustrating unfun experience that everyone had playing the game. Time and time again he would just belittle people he played and most people just shrugged it off. About 75% playing there were in the military and we would just shrug it off since it wasn't worth getting in a argument. A few people just stopped playing when they knew he would be around. By this time I never hung out with Jack anymore and while I would always be friendly towards anyone I really wanted to build an army to gently caress with him. Evenif it meant I went out in the first round of a tournament. So the day of the tournament came around and I had an idea. During setup I placed my whole army behind cover I knew he could not destroy. He was in the wood just jerking off at the thought of killing my guys. Not joking that is what he said. So it went like this Turn 1. I don't move Jack: that's not going to save you Turn 2: I don't move Jack: What the gently caress are you doing This goes on for 3 more turns and he turns beet red. All the times he insulted people he did it quietly, but now he is screaming at me from across the table and I just have a slight grin even though I wanted to laugh out loud. People are watching the match and some of them can barley stop from pissing themselves. He calls the TO over and rants to him, but the TO says " Raged is not breaking the rules" Jack continues to rant and when he shuts up for a second I say "Now you know how everyone else feels playing you". Jack just loving loses it at this point and tries to dive across the table at me. I just took a step back and the TO who was a HUGE fucker just grabs him by then neck walks him to the door and tells him he is banned for life. I wasn't friends with the TO or anything and I pretty much thought I was going to get banned too. The TO walks back pats me on the back and takes Jack's stuff to him. As soon as Jack was gone he came up and thanked me along with a couple of other players. One guy did not like it at all and swore he would never come back, but he was a close friend of Jack's and about 1/3 as bad so no one cared. I ended up losing in the next round and did not care at all because I felt I had won already. Just writing this makes me smile. Raged fucked around with this message at 11:20 on Jan 15, 2017 |
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Jan 15, 2017 10:43
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Raged posted:He was a crappy loser too and would try to rules lawyer his way out of any loss. ... even the TO agreed it broke the spirit of the rules not the rule itself and unhappily let it stay. Yawgmoth fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Jan 15, 2017 |
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Jan 15, 2017 17:54
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Games Workshop is pretty shoddy about making sure things are actually balanced - they're more interested in selling their minis than making it playable, so you end up insanity like a unit being specced to be the best ranged combatant but having no range attacks and hills getting listed as units but there's no way to actually kill a hill.
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Jan 15, 2017 18:12
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I'm so glad I never got into miniature games, they are way beyond my ability to grasp. I mean, if you have a sniper hiding in the trees, couldn't you just torch the trees? You're in the middle of a giant robot vs. giant robot war zone, I wouldn't expect anyone to be concerned about preserving nature at this point.
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Jan 15, 2017 18:26
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Robindaybird posted:there's no way to actually kill a hill. Not with that attitude
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Jan 15, 2017 18:35
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Yawgmoth posted:If I were playing against someone in MTG and they complained about "going against the spirit of the rules" I'd probably involuntarily laugh at them because the letter and spirit of the rules are codified to hell and back; there's about a million potentially weird edge cases, but if I say "X happens because Y and Z" the response is going to be "oh okay, that's awkward but makes sense." It's probably more like the Yawgmoth's Will / Dark ritual 6e bug that people tried to exploit at 1999 French Nationals. Magic's real edge cases are usually harder to use in competitive play - there's the long non-loop things like Lim-Dul's Vault or Wheel of Sun and Moon / cephalid breakfast which used to cause endless arguments on the judge mailing lists.
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Jan 15, 2017 18:51
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Robindaybird posted:Games Workshop is pretty shoddy about making sure things are actually balanced - they're more interested in selling their minis than making it playable This is basically it. MTG has a very complex structure and it's been through its own share of rules changes, including a major revamp for 6e as mentioned above, but they make an effort to make sure things run smoothly and are usually pretty quick to squash unexpected broken interactions. GW on the other hand is total dogshit at balancing anything and every single thing they release is riddled with inconsistencies, vague wording, & blatant contradictions and no amount of faqs or rules updates ever fixes their bullshit.
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Jan 15, 2017 19:09
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Wasn't the latest warhammer fantasy literally unplayable on release? Like they forgot how to put in rules for how to make an army or some poo poo. Also there was a lot of dumb poo poo and a couple turn 1 instant wins?
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Jan 15, 2017 19:18
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Probably, I stopped paying attention halfway through high school when I realized what bullshit the game is, but to actually contribute: This is by far the best "idiotic GW rules" turn 1 win I've yet to see http://imgur.com/gallery/V0gND
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Jan 15, 2017 19:20
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I was thinking of that same story.
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Jan 15, 2017 20:06
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Holy poo poo, I actually found my notes! This is from a Pathfinder game where the PCs were Garbage men in a cosmopolitan magical city run by Guilds. As I remember it, I'd just finished reading "Perdido Street Station" by China Mieville, and consciously or unconsciously incorporated some of the ideas of a dark fantastic London into the campaign setting. The setting was a seaside city was called Anmarshah - a portmanteau of the words Bon (good) Mar (sea) and Shah (ruler). Gods, both great and small, walked the streets, craftsmen, merchants and alchemists plied their trades and enjoyed a robust commerce, and far darker things stirred in the forbidden quarter at the center of the city called the Black Blocks. The city was run by Guilds, and each Guildmaster sat on the Guild Council who ran the city. The Guilds were the Guilds of Coin (Taxes), Waters (Trade), Mouths (Food, Drugs) Steel (Security/Protection), Paper (Academics), Crafts (Worked Goods), and Balance (Magic, etc.). Some of these responsibilities over-lapped, and this was to ensure that no one Guild gained dominion over the others. Various sub-guilds also existed, including the Dustman's Guild - tasked with cleaning up the city's garbage and dead, assorted odd jobs, and overseeing the city orphanage. They were the lowest, meanest, most undignified Guild in the city; and the PCs were destined to be its saviors. I'll write more later, have to walk dogs.
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Jan 16, 2017 00:05
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So in Tokyo Brain Pop, a Distinction is a lot like a Fate Aspect. It gives you a +1 to a 1d6 roll when it's relevant. Sometimes, they're things like I get good grades but have a bad reputation, Captain of the Kendo Squad, or Reads and writes trashy slashfic.. (These were all from today's game.) One of those stood out, though, in creating the top NPCs I've ever run. My unlucky sister Chiaki is always getting in trouble. In the opening scene, Suzuki's sister Chiaki dashed across a busy street to greet the slashfic artist. The latest Ranma/Quinn, Medicine Woman story had intrigued her, and she...she had... Chiaki immediately passed out from embarrassment. When they got her to the nurse's office, she vomited up a purple goop monster, which her kendo-master sister killed. --- The other PCs were dealing with personal issues (like reuniting with their fathers during an assembly, or dodging accusations of sex-for-grades), when Suzuki got a text. Cleared of her bad luck, Chiaki had won the boys' wrestling tournament, and won awards for both penmanship and cafeteria helpfulness. Unfortunately, she ran into the girl with a bad reputation, Midori. Midori had just developed psychic powers, which let her read the confused tween's thoughts. Not even knowing what sex was (except through fanfiction), it was... bad. Midori's look of disgust clued Chiaki in. Not knowing how to deal with psychics, Chiaki screamed, dropped her trophy, and regained her bad luck. Other ways Chiaki almost died: --Leaving a clothing store seconds before it was robbed; --Taking a shortcut through a construction site ('which only damaged like, AN apartment building') --Seeing a parade in Korea ('The hamburger was a disguised serial killer! Oddly the cereal was cool.") The climax of the game had Modiri chase a murderer to an old gym. Chiaki brought her dad's tranquilizer rifle to bring them in peacefully. Midori lost track of the villain, but ordered Chiaki to give chase. Chiaki stopped to tie her shoe, however, and the villain's car was hit by a train. During the victory celebration, Chiaki accidentally pricked herself with a tranquilizer dart.
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Jan 16, 2017 04:47
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Tunicate posted:Wasn't the latest warhammer fantasy literally unplayable on release? Like they forgot how to put in rules for how to make an army or some poo poo. It's not that they forgot. They deliberately did not put in any rules for building an army according to points. Just bring whatever. You sell more minis that way!
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Jan 16, 2017 05:42
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gradenko_2000 posted:It's not that they forgot. They deliberately did not put in any rules for building an army according to points. Just bring whatever. You sell more minis that way! It also meant that the most powerful army was "A Hill". Because so long as your opponent brought more than double your "army" size in models, you get to declare a sudden death condition. "You have 6 turns to kill this piece of terrain or I win the game".
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Jan 16, 2017 05:46
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Kumo posted:Holy poo poo, I actually found my notes! That sounds an awful lot like the Department of Sanitation Department from a campaign I ran. Cannot wait to read more!
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Jan 16, 2017 10:12
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Agrikk posted:That sounds an awful lot like the Department of Sanitation Department from a campaign I ran. Hell, after reading that and the post you linked I kind of want to run a D&D campaign with the characters as sanitation workers in a weird fantasy city.
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Jan 16, 2017 14:19
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"20 foot sewer gators? Nah, that's a myth. They only get to 10, 12 feet max before the krakens eat them."
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Jan 16, 2017 15:31
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That's what the otyugh is for!
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Jan 16, 2017 15:37
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Ratpick posted:Hell, after reading that and the post you linked I kind of want to run a D&D campaign with the characters as sanitation workers in a weird fantasy city. I was retheming my Supernatural-inspired monster/ghost hunter campaign from modern day to D&D (the players interested would rather do traditional systems and settings than anything modern) and I decided to just file the serial numbers off and use fantasy equivalents to whatever the original modern settings were. One part of this is that I need to create a fantasy analogue to New York City that still maintains a lot of the things that make the city unique. One idea I hit on for the subway analogue was an adaptation of the Lightning Rail from Eberron, where the city has a network of underground tunnels and above-ground track where small trains (similar to late 19th century subway experiments, minus any windows) run on tracks of magical lodestones. That way you get all the aesthetic of grimy subways and hidden societies in the tunnels with a medieval flair. Another quest was based around the ghost of a deceased pilot haunting the Spirit of Delta airliner at the Delta Flight Museum, with the climax based around the ghost managing to supernaturally start the plane up and crash it out of the hangar in an attempt to take off (if the hunters can't find the ghost's focus and figure out how to break it out of a display case in time to destroy it, the plane smashes into another one on display outside and they technically lose but the ghost dispels itself). I retooled it so it was a museum of curiosities that happened to include a 1:2 scale model of the continent's first armored airship and the ghost of its captain has taken it over to try and fly away.
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Jan 16, 2017 16:06
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Mondian posted:Probably, I stopped paying attention halfway through high school when I realized what bullshit the game is, but to actually contribute: If anyone hasn't read this yet, this is pro-click as hell. I remember reading about this a long time ago, and it's probably the finest example of a min-maxer getting their just desserts that I have ever seen. This link does a better job summarizing the rules fuckery better than any recap I've seen before.
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Jan 16, 2017 16:39
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Yawgmoth posted:First off, stories about a douchebag getting comeuppance are always great and this one is no exception. But I have to ask: what is it about wh40k that I see this kind of sentiment so often? Isn't it a game in which you are competing to win against someone else? Aren't you supposed to use the rules in order to have a competition and succeed via those rules? It's arcane to me to see this in wh40k stories so much because it's such a D&D (or other TTRPG) complaint in a game that as far as I know is a competitive game with a clear winner. If I were playing against someone in MTG and they complained about "going against the spirit of the rules" I'd probably involuntarily laugh at them because the letter and spirit of the rules are codified to hell and back; there's about a million potentially weird edge cases, but if I say "X happens because Y and Z" the response is going to be "oh okay, that's awkward but makes sense." What's different in wh40k that makes this not the case? It's been covered but the short version is that MTG has no "spirit of the rules" because said rules have been refined and tightly codified so that the rules are always the rules. GW doesn't have rules so much as guidelines so they are open to all kinds of interpretation and the only way to have fun with its lovely games are gentleman's agreements.
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Jan 16, 2017 16:49
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frakeaing HAMSTER DANCE posted:It's been covered but the short version is that MTG has no "spirit of the rules" because said rules have been refined and tightly codified so that the rules are always the rules. GW doesn't have rules so much as guidelines so they are open to all kinds of interpretation and the only way to have fun with its lovely games are gentleman's agreements. 
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Jan 16, 2017 17:15
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Yawgmoth posted:That sounds like the exact opposite of what you'd want in a game like that. GW was the only game in town, no pun intended, for a long, long time and they just did whatever the gently caress because of that monopoly.
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Jan 16, 2017 17:48
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Kavak posted:GW was the only game in town, no pun intended, for a long, long time and they just did whatever the gently caress because of that monopoly. and the fans are loyal, whether out of genuine fanboyism or sunk cost fallacy, I can't say.
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Jan 16, 2017 18:10
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Robindaybird posted:and the fans are loyal, whether out of genuine fanboyism or sunk cost fallacy, I can't say. It's a bit of both, but mostly the latter. A friend of mine runs a game store, and I know a bunch of his regular GW players. When they're being totally honest, there's a pang of regret when they're griping about their games because they've sunk over a grand into just a single army, and most of them have at least three armies. When the investment to be competitive is over $1,000, I can see why they hang on as long as they do. I have seen a lot of them sell their GW stuff off and jump to Warmachines and the like.
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Jan 16, 2017 18:28
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Railing Kill posted:It's a bit of both, but mostly the latter. A friend of mine runs a game store, and I know a bunch of his regular GW players. When they're being totally honest, there's a pang of regret when they're griping about their games because they've sunk over a grand into just a single army, and most of them have at least three armies. When the investment to be competitive is over $1,000, I can see why they hang on as long as they do. I have seen a lot of them sell their GW stuff off and jump to Warmachines and the like. Being someone who's literally never played 40K or any other miniatures-based game before, is there any way to play without spending a ton of money on official products for gaming outside of competitions? Like do places let you just use quarters or paper tokens or something so you can play without dropping the price of a motorcycle first?
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Jan 16, 2017 18:30
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chitoryu12 posted:Being someone who's literally never played 40K or any other miniatures-based game before, is there any way to play without spending a ton of money on official products for gaming outside of competitions? Like do places let you just use quarters or paper tokens or something so you can play without dropping the price of a motorcycle first? In casual play, sure. That would be like using proxies in a game of MTG. I did it from time to time when I was testing things out in Mordheim (a small-scale, platoon, street-fighting version of Warhammer). But if you show up to a sanctioned event or a tourney with that stuff, you'll get DQ'd wicked hard. Edit: part of it has to do with labeling. Specific figures do specific things, and some of them look similar. So you should have the right model to rep what your stats say. If they allowed for off-brand swap-outs, it wouldn't just gently caress over GW's overpriced mini market. It would confuse players. It's not insurmountable, but it would be a nuisance. Railing Kill fucked around with this message at 18:35 on Jan 16, 2017 |
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Jan 16, 2017 18:32
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Agrikk posted:That sounds an awful lot like the Department of Sanitation Department from a campaign I ran. Aha! Yeah, that's the one! I read that & people commented about what a neat idea it was so I decided to run with it. The characters were: Sagacious Moe - A Monk given to fits of authorship Roan - Drunk Magus w/ tragic backstory Schlomo - Semi-Charmed Golem Barbarian Mist - A Halfing Ninja who was bad at Stealth, and wrestling with telling his family he was gay Aniela - A Fat Druid of Water Domain A Bard named "Fresh," with a weird symbol for a name. Erudan - A Wizard, apparently I detailed Schlomo's brief career as a bird earlier in the thread here , and used a massive conflagration all over the city as a way to incite heroics (PCs saving people from burning buildings, helping put out fires, repairing water-truck leaks with tree sap, etc.) and also an impetus to get the PCs together. The morning after the fire, the Guilds announced that anyone who was not a citizen, nor a Guild member would be exiled from the city while the authorities searched for the perpetrators of the fire. By hook or crook, the PCs found their way to the Dustman's Guild, met some of the senior members and joined up. Their first order of business was cleaning up and clearing out the old Grey Tooth Tower so they could have a place to stay. Aside from a bat swarm in the ruined belfry, and a few dire rats, the tower was mostly uninhabited, until they discovered a Junk Golem in the basement. The Golem gave Schlomo tetanus before they managed to defeat it, and they discovered a Robe of Unusual Items amidst the debris. The Pathfinder Core Rulebook lists an item called the Robe of Useful Items, which contains a lot of useful items for dungeon-crawling, but not for base-building. So I altered it slightly to randomly generate some of the the following items: -A Chicken -A Skeleton Key (opens any door, then disappears)* -A jar of Peach Jam (1d6+2 hp recovered)* -A lit bomb -80 lbs. of hair -A Whale-tooth dagger of Spell-Storing (+1, Sound Burst)* -An awesome hat (seriously look at this hat it is awesome) -A blanket* -Iron cookware -A rabid wolverine -A dead horse* *'s by what they rolled. I think they ended up eating the horse.
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Jan 16, 2017 18:33
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