|
Robindaybird posted:there's a difference between interrupting a villain's monologue, and interrupting another player's attempt to do anything, the latter needs to addressed. I think doing it for a stupid reason is stupid, but that's also because using Chaotic Neutral as an excuse to do something wacky and unpredictable is bad in general and that kind of player should probably have sense knocked into them first. For a good example, I think of the "gently caress YOU STRAKE" story. lovely NPC that was intentionally holding back information just to seem suave gets shot in the face after pissing off the players one too many times.
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2017 22:07
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 21, 2024 13:32 |
|
|
chitoryu12 posted:I think doing it for a stupid reason is stupid, but that's also because using Chaotic Neutral as an excuse to do something wacky and unpredictable is bad in general and that kind of player should probably have sense knocked into them first. For those who don't know this story, copy and pasted from RPG.net via the GM themselves. quote:"gently caress you, Strake!" is from my game, so I can sum it up for you.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2017 12:55
|
|
|
CobiWann posted:For those who don't know this story, copy and pasted from RPG.net via the GM themselves. Right now I'm plotting with a couple of other players to diablerize the prince just to give the whole city a kick in the pants. 
Yawgmoth fucked around with this message at 15:52 on Dec 20, 2017 |
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2017 15:49
|
|
|
Yawgmoth posted:
How red is your face gonna be when the Prince reveals himself to have secretly been Cain all along?
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2017 19:07
|
|
|
the_steve posted:How red is your face gonna be when the Prince reveals himself to have secretly been Cain all along?  "
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2017 21:11
|
|
|
sounds like at this point, getting turned into a red snowflake on the far wall is still an improvement over current status quo.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2017 21:11
|
|
|
Pretty much. I'll probably just keep trying to gently caress things up for everyone until the character dies or I get kicked out for "causing problems" or the like (because as we all know, vampires never cause problems for anyone, especially not for fickle and petty reasons).
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2017 22:55
|
|
|
Yawgmoth posted:Pretty much. I'll probably just keep trying to gently caress things up for everyone until the character dies or I get kicked out for "causing problems" or the like (because as we all know, vampires never cause problems for anyone, especially not for fickle and petty reasons). Of course not. It's just a ton of brooding and sitting in corners surreptitiously/seductively/menacingly (depends on clan) eyeing everyone around you while looking edgy and wearing black. Followed by hours of OoC discussions on what discipline is more OP than Celerity or Vicissitude.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2017 23:25
|
|
|
i've been invited to a friends new werewolf game and am certainly concerned about those kind of red flags. i look forward to terrible stories, or having my expectations broken and having a great time. if you need a hand diablerizing people continue to keep us updated.
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2017 07:02
|
|
|
the_steve posted:How red is your face gonna be when the Prince reveals himself to have secretly been Cain all along? The rules for any contest with cain is 'you lose' So you face him off in an any% speedrun. The game? Life itself. There, you're gauranteed to outlive the guy, do whatever you want.
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2017 10:03
|
|
|
Tunicate posted:The rules for any contest with cain is 'you lose'
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2017 10:11
|
|
|
Tunicate posted:The rules for any contest with cain is 'you lose' He finished life Millenia before you even started, you can’t beat him
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2017 13:42
|
|
|
Aniodia posted:Third, is that new game set in Fallcrest you mentioned, is that the same group as well, or are there some changes to the party? Also, is it staying 5th Edition, or is it something else? (I only ask because it sounds like it may have already started). It is the same group, down to level 1 PC's, still 5th edition rules, set 150 years after Az's defeat. We have a War Wizard, an Artificer, a Cleric, a Barbarian, a Gunslinger patterned off of Critical Role, and I'm playing a Fighter. We're starting in January and the focus is MUCH more local as opposed to the world spanning campaign of the last one. The DM wrote a setting guide for the campaign and gave me permission to hand it out to people if they want to see it. Drop me an e-mail address in a PM and I'll e-mail back a copy.
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2017 17:01
|
|
|
I had my players beat the BBEG of an adventure with an iron chef contest where the secret ingredient was Nanomachines, but that was more because we were playing a pre-con adventure that was assuming the players were leveling up between combats that were literally one room apart.
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2017 17:46
|
|
|
CobiWann posted:It is the same group, down to level 1 PC's, still 5th edition rules, set 150 years after Az's defeat. We have a War Wizard, an Artificer, a Cleric, a Barbarian, a Gunslinger patterned off of Critical Role, and I'm playing a Fighter. We're starting in January and the focus is MUCH more local as opposed to the world spanning campaign of the last one. Not got PMs, but if you see fit to throw one at adam underscore nawal AT hotmail.com I'd be grateful
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2017 18:08
|
|
|
Edit: Wrong Thread
Savidudeosoo fucked around with this message at 22:25 on Dec 21, 2017 |
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2017 21:28
|
|
|
This is a story of ignoring giant red flags and having fun despite a game, not because of it. Last Saturday night, I found myself sitting at a table, about to start playing a heavily homebrewed version of 3.X, despite a well-founded and growing expectation that it was going to be a painful experience. My fiance and I know a lot of good, weird folks, mostly through conventions and renaissance festivals and that kind of normal way of dorks meeting other dorks. The people we were going to be playing with were old friends, and generally very good people. We hadn't seen them in nearly a year, so we figured it'd be a good way to catch up. First red flag: when we asked what system they were planning to use, they said "Pathfinder or 3.5". We asked for clarification, and they just reiterated "use Pathfinder or 3.5, it doesn't matter, just no material outside the base game because the GM isn't familiar with anything but the base game". At least we started at level 4, so as to skip the most terrible parts of 3.X. Second red flag: for stats, we were instructed to roll 4d6 drop lowest, and do 10 of these stat arrays, and then choose one. Third, enormous red flag: the GM specified that we weren't allowed to communicate about our characters before the session. According to him, it was "unrealistic" that people would "change the course of their entire life and career" just because they needed to fit into a party. In accordance with these houserules, my fiance made a 3.5 Druid coachella attendee and I made a Pathfinder Paladin half-orc soccer mom who submitted a lot of complaints and talked to a lot of managers. We later found out that the only reason the group had a spare slot for tonight was because one of the regulars had gotten into an argument with the GM about this no-collaboration policy and bailed because he wouldn't budge on it. Apparently she just wanted to fill whatever role was left, and the GM wouldn't tell her the party composition and gave her the "unrealistic" spiel, so she opted out, which made him quite irritated by his own admission. If only we had her foresight. Despite all of this before we even agreed to attend, we decided to hell with it, lets see how bad it could be. When we arrived, the GM pulled us aside to go over our characters. He mentioned that he was glad that neither of us were using flails, because he didn't allow flails at his table. He made no mention of other trip or disarm weapons. We met the rest of the players. They were good folks, but three of them had never even played an RPG before. I felt sorry for them in advance. I had a feeling this was not going to be a good first experience. The GM also mentioned to us early in the evening that he wasn't running a pre-made adventure because he didn't like running games from modules, because he hates railroading. Five minutes later, the session starts with us being conscripted to keep natural disaster refugees out of a walled trade city. We get told by a guardsman to go find an officer who will give us our orders. We take stock of the party - a Half-Orc Paladin, a Half-Elf Druid, a Dwarf Paladin, a Half-Elf Rogue, a Gnome Sorcerer, and an Elf Ranger. Not a bad group, considering we weren't allowed any collaboration. He only now informed us that alignment-based magic doesn't function as written, because "the definition of evil varies from culture to culture, and nobody just does evil for the sake of evil". Also, because according to him, "D&D gods are all just cardboard cutouts", he has replaced the pantheon with a mishmash of Norse/Greek/other real-world gods as deities. He also wrote a bunch of mythology for his homebrew setting and he keeps mentioning things from it, but he says we can't read it because it's important GM secrets. Neither me nor the other paladin cared much about our deity, we were fine with just being relatively un-affiliated good-doers, but the alignment stuff bothered us because, well, our class kinda operates on that. We would've liked to know about any of this beforehand, so we could have made better-informed decisions about our characters. He conceded that the Detect Evil class feature would let us detect "malicious intent towards us or others we are allied with", turning it basically into a psychic ability instead of an alignment-based one, and would let us use Smite Evil on anyone that we detected as evil. Basically he reduced two of our core class features to GM-may-I, and over the course of the session, there just happened to be no non-construct, non-beast enemies. After detect evil didn't work the first couple times, we stopped bothering. This will be important later. With that "resolved", we got back to the session - we were instructed to go find an officer to get our official postings. We went to the guardhouse and waited for one, but as we waited, the peasants outside broke down the gates and ran into the city. We didn't really care for being jackboots, and this was all a bit too lawful evil for our paladins' taste, so we just let the peasants in and hung out in the guardhouse for a bit longer. The GM sent over a shady-looking man to give us a tip about a bar where we could find work, being heavily armed people. The party went to the bar that the shady man had told us about to see if we could find something to do. This was the beginning of a twenty-five minute roleplaying scene involving heavily enforced in-character knowledge of what was said to who based on where we are sitting in the bar. Enforced as in "if you're not at the conversation that's happening right now, you have to leave the room". The fact that the Ranger and the Druid have animal companions is called attention to at some point during the bar scene, because, well, the ranger just brought a wolf into a bar. We make a joke about the gnome riding the ranger's wolf and the GM tells us that he bans Riding Dogs and any other unconventional mounts because "that's not how backbones work". After the bar scene, we spend a bit of time milling around the city doing nothing, eventually meeting up with our contact who directed us to a farm outside the city where we'd be given more details on the job. We set out in the evening and start the several-mile trek to the farm. Several times over the course of our incredibly inconsequential exploration and travel segment of the session, he had us all roll a d20 and wouldn't tell us what it was for. He told us that in addition to these rolls having no modifiers on them, higher numbers were not necessarily good and lower numbers were not necessarily bad. We spot something moving out in the darkness, and the druid asked if she could cast Hold Animal on it, until we figured out what it was. She wasn't in range, so she said she would like to approach until she was in range cast the spell. As soon as she finished that sentence, the GM instantly triggered combat. When we protested that we would like to retroactively follow her forwards he said "let this be a lesson, don't let your party members wander off, and interject if they do and you want to follow them." The spell failed to hold the monster, which we discovered was an animated rowboat construct walking on oar-legs. We hoped this was a turn, that the GM was reading the room and was ready to shift into something a bit more lighthearted. We were wrong. During the first round of the fight, the Dwarf Paladin got in a small argument with the GM about encumbrance rules and drawing weapons as part of a move action. Then, later on, the Druid tried to cast Flameblade and the GM said that because she was currently carrying her 60-lb snake animal companion, she would have to make a spell failure check, and she did, failing the spell. Note that by 3.X rules, not only does the encumbrance mechanic not apply any spell failure check, the Druid doesn't ever make arcane spell failure checks because they're not an arcane caster. Regardless, at this point in the evening all the players were now operating under the assumption that we would likely have to second-guess any given rule, because most of them were either slightly altered or just outright not applicable. During this combat, we find out a few more GM quirks. First, he wouldn't let the Druid and Ranger control their animal companions, which is technically fine by the rules, but its just more maintenance. Second, he had a habit of being stingy with the effects of spells - for instance, the Druid's Flameblade spell couldn't ignite the boats or cut through the nets they threw on top of us because the materials were too wet. When we started discussing alternate spells that might work to solve the Boat Problem, the GM said that we only had about ten seconds to take our turns and that too much discussion "would be metagaming and I don't allow that at my table" Despite this fight starting in the worst possible way and containing the small arguments, it was still a pretty fun and unconventional fight against animated rowboat constructs in total darkness. The combat sections were the best part because there was more structure, and with more structure came more consistency. After this fight, I decide to give in to his expectations a bit and set up a standard operating procedure and marching order, since he clearly wanted us to be playing that way but wasn't giving clear instructions to the party. He mentioned off-handedly after we'd established both that "it's good to see people learning to be scared". Once we arrived at the farm we were headed towards, and met up with the shopkeeper who we were told had details on the job we were supposed to do. Once we were all inside, the shopkeeper pulled a lever and dropped us into a pit to fight a huge beastly aberration. We were all surprised by this, but he said "none of you detected evil", implying that we should've been doing so constantly despite his discouraging re-write of how it worked earlier in the session. The shopkeeper threw down a vial of blood which immediately set the beast off into a rage. Based on this, we assumed it was a puzzle boss of some kind. It was not. We just had to kill it. A couple turns in, the fight was going very poorly. Our animal companions were a good distance away outside, so the druid tried to make creative use of the animal messenger to get them to come help. The GM let the player spend their turn casting the spell and then said "the animals can't communicate to each other, that spell doesn't help. Next person's turn." So, next turn, the druid tried to use Speak with Animals to talk to the beast, to see if there was some way we could get out of this encounter without killing it. Very Druid-y. The GM said "it's in a blood rage, it won't talk to you". We eventually just beat up the beast enough to kill it and we dismembered it to keep it from regenerating. We tracked down the shopkeeper and killed him so he wouldn't kill anyone else. Because apparently that's the only way to get things done by this GM. After the fight was over, he allowed us to loot the building but forced us to tell him exactly what and where we are searching in a house instead of just letting us say "we loot the place" or even just having us make a perception check. Then, at the very end of the session, he asked us how we were going to secure the house so we can spend the night in it safely. A wet fart of an ending to a prolonged wet fart of a game. The fiance and I left shortly after we wrapped up. --- In the GM's defense, despite his uncharitable and adversarial GMing style, there's a decent GM in there, buried under layers of this weird obsession with realism and the "correct" way to play RPGs. He was a good improviser, gave us a decent amount of freedom to screw around, and he's certainly not a creep or a petty grudge-bearing type. And he didn't try to force us to play through some fantasy novel that lives in his head. Not a high bar to cross, yeah, but he's salvageable. For example, he does care about everyone's engagement at the table. At one point in the evening he gave the Rogue's player a mandolin. She was a relatively quiet person, and the rest of us were fairly boisterous so we all keep talking over her. The GM noticed she was having a hard time getting a word in, gave her the mandolin he told her to just strum it when she wants to say something. It was funny, lightened the mood, and it worked pretty well actually in terms of getting her heard. If we ever find ourselves invited to a pick-up game with this group again, I think I'm going to try to introduce the GM to Shadow of the Demon Lord. It would certainly better suit his shades-of-grey fluff/alignment preferences, and his more punishing, character-funnel type games.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2017 18:53
|
|
|
Rip_Van_Winkle posted:In the GM's defense, despite his uncharitable and adversarial GMing style, there's a decent GM in there, buried under layers of this weird obsession with realism and the "correct" way to play RPGs. I'm gonna have to take your word for it, because, good lord, no DM should be that frustrating to teamwork and communication. I'd recommend Fiasco just in case he's only like that when DM'ing, but it sounds like he'd snap playing that. I did kinda  at the mandolin part.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2017 19:27
|
|
|
Rip_Van_Winkle posted:In the GM's defense, despite his uncharitable and adversarial GMing style, there's a decent GM in there, buried under layers of this weird obsession with realism and the "correct" way to play RPGs. He was a good improviser, gave us a decent amount of freedom to screw around, and he's certainly not a creep or a petty grudge-bearing type. And he didn't try to force us to play through some fantasy novel that lives in his head. Not a high bar to cross, yeah, but he's salvageable. I wish you luck. While his storytelling and mechanics style seem to want, the mandolin idea and the improv (and not being a creep) does shine a ray of hope.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2017 21:18
|
|
|
Rip_Van_Winkle posted:He mentioned off-handedly after we'd established both that "it's good to see people learning to be scared". ...and... Rip_Van_Winkle posted:Not a high bar to cross, yeah, but he's salvageable. Do us all a favor: next time you see this guy, punch him directly in the junk and yell, "SomethingAwful dot com says don't be such a dick GM!"
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2017 21:33
|
|
|
Rip_Van_Winkle posted:In the GM's defense, despite his uncharitable and adversarial GMing style, there's a decent GM in there, buried under layers of this weird obsession with realism and the "correct" way to play RPGs.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2017 21:46
|
|
|
The mandolin was cute. As someone who is dead quiet at the table, I really appreciate that. The rest...
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2017 21:46
|
|
|
Thank you for suffering for my entertainment.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2017 23:06
|
|
|
Bieeardo posted:The mandolin was cute. As someone who is dead quiet at the table, I really appreciate that. The rest... The mandolin was pretty much the one brief and shining moment. I feel like even if they had been Detecting Evil at the one guy after the dozen or so prior shutdowns, it wouldn't have dinged because "Well he personally wasn't intending to attack you. He just pulled a lever.  "
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2017 00:55
|
|
|
In terms of good GMs and happy players: I ran a one shot of Henshin!, the sentai rpg. The Red, Yellow, and Black rangers, representing the Caribbean Falls High School class of ‘95, immediately formed a love quadrangle. Red neglected his girlfriend, Connie, who Black had a crush on. Yellow had a crush on Red but he perpetually ignored her. The team managed to save Billy Corgan from Madame Tussaud’s wax museum, pick a fight with Courtney Love, defeat and puncture the eye of the spirit of route 66, and knock a giant cowboy robot through the Hollywood sign with the remains of the Smashing Pumpkins limousine. Go CFHS Walruses!
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2017 07:35
|
|
|
Like yeah, D&D's entire Good/Evil cosmology is super whacked (the Baby Goblins problem and how nobody can agree on what each alignment is exactly), but given the GM seems to have a shaky grasp on the system, it's really bad idea to throw that out without warning, as it does really gently caress up several classes and abilities. Someone that really knows the system and isn't such a control freak probably would be able to make the system more nuanced (and Eberron largely succeeds in this), but this player doesn't get why they're not working. The extreme appeal for realism reminds me of that lovely pie in the sky MMO that was getting hawked on imgur that includes player avatar getting old and dying permanently and not disappearing when logging off - the strive for being 'real' ends up impeding fun.
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2017 08:01
|
|
|
Robindaybird posted:The extreme appeal for realism reminds me of that lovely pie in the sky MMO that was getting hawked on imgur that includes player avatar getting old and dying permanently and not disappearing when logging off - the strive for being 'real' ends up impeding fun. Unless you go full Age of Wushu in which case lol
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2017 08:05
|
|
|
Tunicate posted:Unless you go full Age of Wushu in which case lol They also went full Libertarian Idiocy with claiming there will be no Admins, players will self-regulate. Even if that MMO got off the ground, it's going to quickly implode.
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2017 08:09
|
|
|
Robindaybird posted:They also went full Libertarian Idiocy with claiming there will be no Admins, players will self-regulate. Even if that MMO got off the ground, it's going to quickly implode. Bitcoins are somehow a less reliable way to fund a MMO than Subway gift cards.
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2017 08:55
|
|
|
I hired some players to ruin a party in The Sprawl, a cyberpunk Apocalypse World variant. So they hack some robot fighters to create a distraction, spike the champagne toast with fast acting future PCP and send in a bunch of low class hookers. It worked.
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2017 22:45
|
|
|
We also had a sprawl game! Our job is to capture someone from their job at a Russian tectonics factory, in the interim we managed to: -have the team soldier lose an MMA fight, badly -Piss off Russian thugs, who we blew up with a hyper cannon on a back road outside St. Petersburg, putting two warning shots right into their engine block -Use EMP ammo, forgetting to shield the sniper’s electronic eye. Target vehicle was disabled and the sniper was wandering around in a daze until he reunited with the team infiltrator. After the heist, the driver and the soldier retreated to an airfield, produced passes and were able to forge documentation to drive the entire truck onto a cargo jet, extracting the target to Brazil. Meanwhile, the techie and infiltrator escaped with a local Mafiya, barely winning a gun battle that took out ANOTHER eye, leaving the pair two organic eyes between them. Because the extraction flight was so long, the driver, soldier and captive experienced Stockholm syndrome, becoming friends. A few days later, everyone rendezvoused at a beachside bar. Upset that the client would pay in paper money, and that he wanted to kill the captive/drinking buddy, the soldier picked her assault rifle up from the counter and fired 15 perfect shots into his center mass. The moral of the story is, if someone on your team has a neuro enhanced targeting computer, stick with'em. Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 17:53 on Apr 30, 2019 |
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2017 07:45
|
|
|
So yesterday I was reminded of someone I used to game with years ago. This guy was playing a Paladin and everything was going fine until he told us what he planned to do when he was done adventuring. He wanted to start an orphanage. Noble goal right? But then he said that next to the orphanage would be a brothel, and that any orphans not adopted before they became adults would be made to work in the brothel.
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2018 04:09
|
|
|
what the gently caress.
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2018 04:35
|
|
|
That was the reaction of literally everyone else at the table.
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2018 04:54
|
|
|
...Did he recently watch Black Dynamite the movie, or see the cartoon?
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2018 06:43
|
|
|
No idea, this was years ago.
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2018 12:06
|
|
|
senrath posted:So yesterday I was reminded of someone I used to game with years ago. This guy was playing a Paladin and everything was going fine until he told us what he planned to do when he was done adventuring. He wanted to start an orphanage. Noble goal right? But then he said that next to the orphanage would be a brothel I'm choosing to continue believing that.
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2018 12:40
|
|
|
Splicer posted:I got this far and assumed the orphanage would also house any "orphans" produced from the brothel like an Oliver Twist influenced Settlers expansion. Talk about seizing the means of production. 
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2018 15:12
|
|
|
Not sure if that's better or worse than the usual plan of raising orphans to be assassins. Paladin of what or who?
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2018 22:29
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 21, 2024 13:32 |
|
|
Rockopolis posted:Paladin of what or who? Commerce.
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2018 23:43
|
|
