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CobiWann
Oct 21, 2009

Have fun!

A Single Sphink posted:

I think it's the Reaper version of an aboleth.

The model? Yes, it's an aboleth. The creature we fought? An uobilyth.

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Agrikk
Oct 17, 2003

Take care with that! We have not fully ascertained its function, and the ticking is accelerating.

CobiWann posted:

The model? Yes, it's an aboleth. The creature we fought? An uobilyth.

Sorry to be pedantic, but I think you misspelled OhFuckItsAFlyingAbolethLetsJustFuckingBail.

EthanSteele
Nov 18, 2007

I can hear you

Foolster41 posted:

Yeah, I think luchadore is probibly what I had in mind for my character. Think sort of the pokemon Hawluche, but as a costume, and more the color/markings maybe of a Aaracockra.

A Bird-Man Monk raised by Birdman Monks in a Birdman Monastery. Beautiful.

But you should leave because that idea is too good for this joker who is already on like 3 red flags.

YggiDee
Sep 12, 2007

WASP CREW
Make a bird man, but, like, a cassowary. Who cares about 'flying' when you can outrun the entire team and probably kick someone's lungs right out their rib cage?

CobiWann
Oct 21, 2009

Have fun!

Agrikk posted:

Sorry to be pedantic, but I think you misspelled OhFuckItsAFlyingAbolethLetsJustFuckingBail.

The aftermath of the fight did cause one of the players to switch PC's...

Doc Hawkins
Jun 15, 2010

Dashing? But I'm not even moving!


A team of bird-people monks, but all different kinds of birds, each with their own special abilities and kung-fu.

Phy
Jun 27, 2008



Fun Shoe

Doc Hawkins posted:

A team of bird-people monks, but all different kinds of birds, each with their own special abilities and kung-fu.

I would watch this tokusatsu

Tunicate
May 15, 2012

Doc Hawkins posted:

A team of bird-people monks, but all different kinds of birds, each with their own special abilities and kung-fu.

teenage mutant ninja turtledoves

Leraika
Jun 14, 2015

Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.

Doc Hawkins posted:

A team of bird-people monks, but all different kinds of birds, each with their own special abilities and kung-fu.

I was in a silly monster-of-the-week type Lancer playtest where the baddies were basically that + government experimentation. Among others we had Kendo Canary, Aikido Eagle, and the master of digital combat, Shoto Flamingo.

Agrikk
Oct 17, 2003

Take care with that! We have not fully ascertained its function, and the ticking is accelerating.

Tunicate posted:

teenage mutant ninja turtledoves

:golfclap:

Lucky Guy
Jan 24, 2013

TY for no bm

I ran a two-shot Iron Chef themed game recently where I allowed people to make characters from this book that converts every 5e Monstrous Manual creature into a PC race: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/230312/Monstrous-Races

I was expecting to get things like aaracokra and goblins, but instead I got:

1. A flumph wizard that was Mega Man,
2. An animated cauldron rogue with four knives and no speech,
3. A fabulous incubus, and
4. A hydra monk that severed the weakest of her three heads and served it as barbacoa

Splicer
Oct 16, 2006

from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸
I still want to play an animated book wizard that is his own spellbook

thespaceinvader
Mar 30, 2011

The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!
My favourite characters are still:

The Revenant Pixie Swarm Druid (4e Revenants are Medium sized, so he's effectively a swarm of dead pixies that transforms into a crow man)

And the Gnome in a mech suit (AKA Warforged Artificer). I am Iron Gnome. He was called GOLEM, which stood for Genius Operated Living Exoskeletal Mechanism, though he told people otherwise. He was also incredibly poor at any kind of social skills, so you could usually hear him giggling from inside the chest cavity when he did so.

Agrikk
Oct 17, 2003

Take care with that! We have not fully ascertained its function, and the ticking is accelerating.
The Department of Sanitation Department

quote:

We fashioned a litter from some old blankets and Severance and I carried the unconscious Algie out of the garbage skiff with Snakeeyes leading the way and Ospar stumbling along as best as he could. With his katana drawn Snakeeyes brooked no nonsense or discussion from the inhabitants of Barge End and we made our way back to the Ratcatchers guild where we were met with some fanfare by the off duty ‘catchers.

Weston was elated to see two of his ‘catchers returned alive but was devastated to hear the news about the death of Cabe. We were once again put up in some of the quarters in the guild and Algie and Ospar were fed broth, cleaned and bandaged, and put to bed.

The three of us, Snakeeyes, Severance and I, pondered our next move and counted out our gold.

Snakeeyes took a big hit off of a bowl of krrf, held in the smoke and exhaled with a mighty sigh, blowing the heavy smoke towards the ceiling where it artfully descended to pool on the floor.

“What about this place?” he said at last.

“This place,” I said disbelievingly. “The ratcatchers guild.”

“Sure. We hold the deed and writ of ownership. We know the owner won’t be contesting our claim any time soon. We have the gold. Why not fix up this guild house and make it ours instead of paying rent to Thadjzi at the Red Axe?”

So that’s what we did. With the advice from some of the fellows at the Sage’s Guild, I paid a visit to the Litigation Tricksters Guild who managed the paperwork on our behalf while Severance and Snakeeyes oversaw the repair of the second floor and the addition of a third floor for us and Weston the Guildmaster. We outfitted each ‘catcher in sturdy leather and a tabard with DSD embroidered on front and back in bold script– the Department of Sanitation Department.

And when one of the ‘catchers was robbed of his clothes and left for dead, we put out a bounty for information and, with Mung the Meatpie Salesman's help, hunted down and killed all of the attackers. When I took one of the corpses to the taxidermist down the street and had the skeleton mounted in a gibbet hanging from a spar on the second floor the word got out: don’t mess with the Special Projects Branch of the Department of Sanitation Department.

Cartoon
Jun 20, 2008

poop

Agrikk posted:

Special Projects Branch of the Department of Sanitation Department
poo poo Force

the_steve
Nov 9, 2005

We're always hiring!

Agrikk posted:

The Department of Sanitation Department

:krad:

I always love when a player gets their base.

Mister Bates
Aug 4, 2010
About a year ago I posted in here about my Star Wars RPG group's raid on an Imperial prison, which ended in them stealing a cruise liner, loading it up with thousands of escaped convicts, and loving off into deep space.

They farted around the Outer Rim for a while, being chased by an ad hoc Imperial counterinsurgency task force hastily thrown together out of locally available forces and sent to hunt them down. The party successfully convinced hundreds of prisoners to join them in their fight against the Empire, declared their cell 'The Nameless' and themselves the 'Nameless War Council', and started building an army. All of this happened totally without prompting by me - they were at the prison to rescue specific people, and I had neither expected them to just free all 3000-odd prisoners nor had I expected them to go from 'cell with less than 50 operatives' to 'full-scale guerrilla army' overnight. It immediately changed the scale and focus of the entire campaign and threw all my plans as a GM for a loop. It was great, and I have many stories I keep meaning to post here, including such gems as 'what the hell they did with all the people who didn't want to join the army' (their 'solution' did nothing to help keep the sector crime rate down, that's for sure, but it sure gave the Empire a headache).

The specific one I'm going to tell right now is their first Big Op after the prison break. The flagship of the fleet hunting them, an Imperial I-class star destroyer, had blown out its primary hyperdrive chasing them, due to multiple rapid hyperspace jumps with inadequate cool-down time or maintenance. It limped to the nearest Imperial dockyard for an emergency overhaul - and because it's the Outer Rim, the dockyard in question was not designed to service a ship of that size or complexity. The yard was overwhelmed and progress on the repairs were slow. The Rebel Alliance passed this intelligence on to the Nameless (who were not, and still aren't, Rebel operatives, but the enemy of my enemy is my friend), and they just couldn't pass up the opportunity to strike back at their pursuers. Besides, a lovely backwater dockyard is still a dockyard - there would be ships there, and the Nameless needed ships badly. They made a deal with the local Rebel Alliance sector command to provide them with some support (a warship and a few squadrons of fighters, to augment the three motley squadrons of fighters the Nameless had managed to buy, salvage, or steal), and put together a plan.

The plan started with the objective 'destroy the drydock', but quickly evolved into 'rob the drydock'. The best and most trustworthy combatants in the cell (and, uh, several hundred people who were neither due to personnel shortages, along with a couple crates of concealed battle droids and half the PCs) would infiltrate, using the large influx of emergency resupplies and civilian temp labor being brought into the station as cover. Two boarding teams were assembled. Team One would attempt to subvert the station defenses, gain access to the station main reactor and the Star Destroyer's damaged hyperdrive, and rig large quantities of stolen mining explosives to them. Team Two would identify likely capture targets (prioritizing warships), and, when the signal was given, board and attempt to capture them.

The Rebel warship (a Marauder corvette), and the mixed Rebel and Nameless fighter group, would jump in-system at a predetermined time and launch an assault...on a completely different Imperial installation sharing the dockyard's orbital slot. The idea was to make this look like an attempt to exploit a weakness in the Imperial defenses (as most in-system assets had been redirected to defend the Star Destroyer, which was a sitting duck in drydock) to take out a vulnerable strategic asset. Hopefully, this would draw away the station's defenders, or at least some of them - and then the fireships would be released. See, the Nameless had acquired some ships. They were lovely, old, and extremely stolen tramp freighters, but they were technically operational - and stuffed with volatile fuel canisters, scrap metal to create shrapnel, and the remainder of the organization's stockpile of explosives. When the local defense fleet moved to intercept, the fireships would be jumped in, set on a collision course with the enemy at full burn, and then detonated when in range. The resulting chaos would hopefully help level the playing field as the space fleet - named the Diversion Team in the plan - engaged the enemy. Their real objective should be obvious now - draw away the defenders and tie them up for as long as possible.

The defenders drawn away, and the station by this point hopefully rigged to explode, the boarding commandos would identify a likely ship, board it, capture it, disconnect from the station, and jump away, at which point the Diversion Team would follow them out.

The plan was audacious bordering on suicidal, born out of desperation as much as anything. The party is, after all, tooling around in an unshielded, unarmed, and heavily damaged spacecraft, and their 'army' is disorganized, untrained, and mostly unarmed. Audacity is pretty much the only option they had. Taking out that Star Destroyer would give them some desperately needed breathing room and bolster their crew's flagging morale, which after the initial elation of the mass escape was beginning to nosedive into 'we're hosed' territory. There were arguments, some of them rather heated, but in the end, when it came down to a vote, the plan was greenlit.

There was a problem, though. See, the players had missed some key rolls a few times and long since forgotten about them. They'd thus forgotten about the Imperial infiltrator whose presence I had strongly hinted at and they had failed to discover. They didn't know they were walking into a carefully prepared ambush. They didn't know about the civilian transport full of ISB commandos that had docked with the station. They didn't know about the Interdictor.

Yawgmoth
Sep 10, 2003

This post is cursed!

the_steve posted:

:krad:

I always love when a player gets their base.
Then you'll love what happened in my last session. As with most of my stories, it begins with the Rod of Wonder. There's a few possibilities that, after being rolled, get subsumed into other options because rolling it a second time would be either too silly or too disruptive. Well, the "nat 1" of the rod is "roll again; replace all instances of wielder or target with 'all creatures in a 50ft burst'." So he rolls again, and what does he get? "wielder All creatures in a 50ft burst get an upscale loft in the major city of their choice." Which is one of those aforementioned few possibilities. So now every PC has their own fancy digs. They also leveled up in that fight, so part of their leveling choices is "so where's you new place at?"

Agrikk
Oct 17, 2003

Take care with that! We have not fully ascertained its function, and the ticking is accelerating.
Player bases and player gangs are the absolute best part of gaming.

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

Mister Bates posted:

The plan started with the objective 'destroy the drydock', but quickly evolved into 'rob the drydock'.

Your Star Wars group and my Star Wars group woulda gotten along juuuuuuuuust fine, methinks.

Agrikk
Oct 17, 2003

Take care with that! We have not fully ascertained its function, and the ticking is accelerating.

DivineCoffeeBinge posted:

Your Star Wars group and my Star Wars group woulda gotten along juuuuuuuuust fine, methinks.

I would read the poo poo out of this book / watch the poo poo out of this movie because yeah, both your stories are awesome.

the_steve
Nov 9, 2005

We're always hiring!

Agrikk posted:

Player bases and player gangs are the absolute best part of gaming.

The bard and warlock in the party (mostly the bard since it was her idea) are trying to sell the rest of the party and me on the idea of hiring orphans to clean the bar during the day, since the Ghost is weak to sunlight.

The bard thinks it'll be cheap labor (Me: "Look, y'all are paying 60g per tenday in payroll, guild fees and inventory no matter what you try to do."), and the warlock wants it to be an Apprenticeship program, acronymed to TAP, though I can't remember what he said the T stood for.

They are utterly convinced that only good things can happen from this even as I tell them that no, it really won't.

Mister Bates
Aug 4, 2010
The initial infiltration went off without a hitch - this yard was normally used to support the Imperial logistical train rather than the Imperial military fleet, so civilian comings and goings had been common already, and with labor and supplies desperately needed, there were even more of them. The party bought this explanation for how they were able to sneak in such a large force so easily, not realizing that they were actually being allowed in. The ISB had a plan for them.

The party had learned through interrogations, conversations with locals, and some comm intercepts they'd managed to get their hands on that the Admiral in charge of the local naval forces was not exactly favored by High Command. He was an old Clone Wars veteran with an exemplary record which afforded him a high degree of job security, aided by the excellent reputation he developed among the men who served under him. He had also become increasingly disillusioned with Imperial government policy, and was beginning to say so more and more loudly. Openly moving against such a publicly popular figure, with such loyal troops under his command, would have been politically disadvantageous, so instead he was reassigned to this dead-end posting in the middle of nowhere to get him out of the way while a plan was developed. The Nameless bursting onto the local scene gave the ISB the perfect opportunity.

Due to the importance of the Star Destroyer Carronade to the local counterinsurgency operations, the Admiral was strongly advised by his superiors to take personal command of the dockyards until repairs were complete, so he was present there, along with a cadre of his most loyal officers. The ISB intended to allow the Nameless to infiltrate the yard and rig it to explode - and then jump in an Interdictor and its escorting flotilla, who were hiding in an asteroid belt in the outer system. With long-range comms jammed, and the ISB recording everything happening for later editing and rebroadcasting, the Nameless would be trapped there, and obliterated by their own bomb, along with a politically troublesome admiral, his seditious subordinates, and thousands of 'undesirable' Outer Rim fringers. The resulting 'Rebel atrocity' against defenseless civilians and a beloved, heroic officer of the Imperial Navy would then be used as propaganda throughout Imperial space.

The Nameless didn't know any of this, though, and as far as they knew they were about to blitz an unsuspecting Imperial base. Their 'flagship', the stolen cruise liner Joy Bringer (renamed 'Boy Bringer', after the party's elite sabotage squad, the Boys) hid out at a secret rendezvous nearby for the teams to make their escape to later. Infiltrators spread throughout the station, gathering intel about the layout, scouting likely ship targets (eventually settling on a Nebulon B frigate and a Gozanti armed transport), and preparing for zero hour. The party improvised a few things they had not mentioned to me in their original plan, which was a hinting of things to come. Their slicer (a Neimoidian reformed war criminal named Yis) managed to get some time alone with a computer terminal, and gained control of the elevators, intercoms, and several of the emergency blast doors. The Boys (led by a PC, the party saboteur Vhlhk, a three-foot-tall Gossam runaway slave with a huge chip on his shoulder) planted some of their precious explosives at various key locations around the station - power junctions, comms terminals, various auxiliary systems like lighting control units, locks for individual security doors, artificial gravity control units. They weren't able to set up enough charges in the right places to destroy anything truly critical, but they did lay the groundwork for a few minutes of complete and total chaos. They're rigged in a daisy-chain pattern and will go off one by one in sequence when the detonator is pressed, instead of all at once, entirely because it's more intimidating that way.

The teams waited until mealtime to make their move - when most of the Imperial personnel were in the station mess hall eating lunch, the go signal was given. The diversion fleet arrived and went weapons hot; the local defense fleet duly moved to engage. A message went out across the entire system: "Attention all Imperial citizens, a terrorist attack is in progress and local space is now a free fire zone. All civilian vessels will either land or break contact immediately. Any ships not complying with this order will be deemed enemy combatants and will be fired upon. Message will repeat." The fireships arrived, accelerated, prepared to detonate. As they detonated, the infiltration teams received their go signals. All hell broke loose. An incapacitating wave of screeching white noise rang out from every single intercom on the station, the elevators shut down in their tubes, blast doors throughout the station sealed. A series of explosions shook the station. Lights throughout much of the station flickered and died, various critical systems temporarily lost power, the gravity became erratic in much of the station. Across the dockyard, groups of seemingly unrelated fringers, work crews, merchants and cargo stevedores, and slaves produced blasters and slugthrowers and whatever other weapons they'd been able to acquire and began engaging the Imperials. Cargo crates supposedly full of shipyard supplies burst open to reveal dozens of battle droids, led by a PC, the reconfigured droideka known as 'Eka'. The station main concourse quickly devolved into a gigantic loving firefight.

The Imperial infiltrator had missed a few things, so the party had a couple assets the ISB had not planned for. In particular, the shielded droideka they had not anticipated - but more importantly was what was in the other crate. The party had gone shopping at an isolated merchant station before running this op, and as soon as they'd seen this thing in the shop (which I had included for flavor, not expecting them to buy it), they'd sold every drat thing they could to afford it. A single NR-N99 droid tank burst forth onto the station concourse. It's a 30-foot-long heavily armored tracked monster weighing 15 tons and covered in heavy guns. This was a desperation plan anyway, they either won here or probably collapsed as an organization, so the Nameless had elected to bring it along. It could pretty much only fit on the main station concourse and in a few of the larger workrooms and cargo bays, but in those areas it would be master of all it surveyed. The security troops were not equipped for antitank work, why the hell would they be?

With chaos breaking out, the Empire briefly tied up both on space and in the station, and time wasting, the main teams got to work. Boarding teams successfully penetrated one of the target ships, the Nebulon B-class frigate Battle of Felucia, and began double-timing it to the bridge and engine room. The sabotage team begins making tracks towards the main reactor as fast as they can move, cutting their way through the confused and disoriented guards along the way with ease (though they take some losses in the process). The civilians on the station are going every which way - running to cover, running to their ships, some of them joining in the uprising and firing at the Imperials, some of them fighting alongside the Imperials and firing at the party, some of them shooting at each other. Civilian ships attempting to leave are fired upon by the defense fleet and some of them fire back. The party's combination of surprise and overwhelming firepower begins to pay off on the station main deck; what was intended to be a diversion instead mostly clears the entire level of organized resistance, leaving the survivors scattered, demoralized, and pinned. There are dozens of friendly casualties, but the battle is going to the Nameless. The boarding team's PC leader made an extremely successful roll and gained control of the entire ship just as the sabotage team reached the main reactor. The boarding team finds their target ship uncrewed, barely fueled, minimally provisioned, and with no expendable munitions at all on board - that sure is weird.

This is where the party's improvisation really threw me for a loop. They rigged up the reactor with explosives, the party's slicer set the reactor to 150% rated power output to make it boom bigger, and then...they did something they had not mentioned to me. Vhlhk told Yis to give him intercom access again, and the station viewscreens and holoprojectors if possible, and set the volume as loud as possible. She did, with some tough but lucky rolls. Then Vhlhk said...well, I'm just going to quote directly from the recording:

quote:

"ATTENTION, HUMAN BASTARDS OF THE IMPERIUM! YOU DO NOT KNOW ME, BUT I REMEMBER EACH. AND EVERY. ONE OF YOU. KNOW THAT YOUR SINS HAVE FOUND YOU OUT. KNOW THAT THE GHOST OF ORPHREZ HAS FOUND YOU. YOUR HOUR OF JUSGEMENT IS AT HAND." He holds up the detonator. "YOUR STATION IS CRIPPLED. ALL HOPE IS LOST. AND NOW YOUR PRECIOUS REACTOR IS RIGGED TO BLOW. SURRENDER AND LAY DOWN YOUR ARMS. REMOVE YOUR VILE BASTARD HUMAN UNIFORMS AND KISS THE GROUND. IT IS YOUR ONLY CHANCE TO LIVE EVEN A FEW MOMENTS MORE. IF YOU THINK I AM BLUFFING, KNOW THIS: I REMEMBER THE DEATH MARCHES. I REMEMBER SPITTED GOSSAM YOUNG. I REMEMBER THE CITIES OF MY HUMBLE WORLD TURNED TO ASH FROM THE SKY. AND I WOULD DIE A THOUSAND TIMES IF IT MEANT THAT I COULD KILL JUST ONE OF YOU. YOU HAVE FIVE MINUTES."


He makes a very difficult Coercion roll, and, against all odds, makes it. The Admiral, hoping to save the lives of his men, sends out an order over commlinks from the bridge (where he is currently trapped by a sealed blast door). The firing stops. The ships outside disengage. The Imperials lay down arms. Everything is eerily calm.

They had originally planned to destroy the drydock. They instead decided to rob the drydock. And now they have captured the drydock. This was not the plan. This was not the plan at all.

The Interdictor is a few minutes out, but the Nameless don't know that yet.


DivineCoffeeBinge posted:

Your Star Wars group and my Star Wars group woulda gotten along juuuuuuuuust fine, methinks.

Reading your stories is actually what inspired me to start running this campaign in the first place!

Mister Bates fucked around with this message at 00:03 on Apr 18, 2019

Synthbuttrange
May 6, 2007

Go terrorists/freedom fighters!

Splicer
Oct 16, 2006

from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸

Mister Bates posted:

(which I had included for flavor, not expecting them to buy it),
Is this your first RPG or... :v:

I am enjoying your stories

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!
You tell yourself that you're prepared for everything the players could do in this situation. Violence at various stages of negotiations. Difficult questions. Refusing to engage at all. Fleeing. Simply not getting into the situation at all and what happens if someone else runs into the NPC first.

What it turns out that you're not entirely prepared for is the PC's going: "Sure, that sounds like a hell of a deal!" and unanimously voting to sell the lives and souls of their hirelings to a wounded star demon for a king's ransom in cursed gems. On the one hand you suddenly learn a lot more about the party that you're dealing with, on the other hand you also suddenly need to revise some plans.

Splicer
Oct 16, 2006

from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸

PurpleXVI posted:

What it turns out that you're not entirely prepared for is the PC's going: "Sure, that sounds like a hell of a deal!" and unanimously voting to sell the lives and souls of their hirelings to a wounded star demon for a king's ransom in cursed gems.
Please see my previous post

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

Splicer posted:

Please see my previous post

I think it's more that my players are psychic and contrarian, I've been GM'ing for like... 15 years or so. And every time I've gone: "Hah! They'll surely take this cursed bargain and it'll lead to- oh, wait, no, they saw right through it and also they're too good people for that." But this one time I go: "Well, they're unlikely to do something that sociopathic, so I probably shouldn't plan out that plot br- oh, wait, no, they did. Oh, they doubled down, too and gave him some of their own life essence on top for more rewards. Well then. [sound of shredding campaign notes]"

Preechr
May 19, 2009

Proud member of the Pony-Brony Alliance for Obama as President
My Rogue Trader group attended a shady auction. Our GM was convinced we were going to rob it- indeed, we had made preparations to do just that. However, once we arrived, we made some good contacts with the local nobility and manufacturing higher-ups, and decided to legitimately engage with the auction. We got most of the interesting things we bid on and came away with some friends in middling-to-high places that will help us leverage some of our other problems out in the Expanse.

ChaseSP
Mar 25, 2013



Rogue Traders being honest is the single most unlikely thing in 40k so I can't blame your gm for thinking you were planning something. I can only imagine everyone else invovled all tried to rob it and ended up ruining each other's efforts by happenstance.

EthanSteele
Nov 18, 2007

I can hear you
Who needs to lie when you have money?

Yawgmoth
Sep 10, 2003

This post is cursed!

PurpleXVI posted:

You tell yourself that you're prepared for everything the players could do in this situation. Violence at various stages of negotiations. Difficult questions. Refusing to engage at all. Fleeing. Simply not getting into the situation at all and what happens if someone else runs into the NPC first.

What it turns out that you're not entirely prepared for is the PC's going: "Sure, that sounds like a hell of a deal!" and unanimously voting to sell the lives and souls of their hirelings to a wounded star demon for a king's ransom in cursed gems. On the one hand you suddenly learn a lot more about the party that you're dealing with, on the other hand you also suddenly need to revise some plans.
Think of the dumbest/most derailing way your PCs could possibly act in a given situation and plan for that. You'll never be caught totally unprepared.

You won't predict what they do any better, but at least you'll have some kind of plans for it.

wiegieman
Apr 22, 2010

Royalty is a continuous cutting motion


If you're lying as a rouge trader it's because you decided it wasn't worth it to just take what you want at gunpoint.

Preechr
May 19, 2009

Proud member of the Pony-Brony Alliance for Obama as President
Well, our face had to bow out of the game, so I may end up having to handle face duties. Problem: I’m the navigator. My social skills consist entirely of lying and intimidating. As many of our social interactions are with pirates, this isn’t a complete loss, but yikes. The rest of the party are xenos, a heretek, and a veteran tuber peeler of the Imperial Guard. We just got back from boarding a Kill Krooza in our frigate and beheading the Kaptin in a nasty fight that cost us three left arms, so we are probably going to be able to use that rep to help with intimidation checks for a while.

Prism
Dec 22, 2007

yospos

Preechr posted:

We just got back from boarding a Kill Krooza in our frigate and beheading the Kaptin in a nasty fight that cost us three left arms, so we are probably going to be able to use that rep to help with intimidation checks for a while.

I dont know. It sounds to me that the party is going to be... all right. :dadjoke:

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

Mister Bates posted:

They had originally planned to destroy the drydock. They instead decided to rob the drydock. And now they have captured the drydock. This was not the plan. This was not the plan at all.

Sorry, did I say our groups would have gotten along fine? I meant they would have gotten along splendidly.

(Accidentally capturing locations and/or sparking civilian uprisings when all we went in for was a simple smash-and-grab was a hallmark of our group, and is, I believe, a pretty good gauge for how awesome a Star Wars game is)

bbcisdabomb
Jan 15, 2008

SHEESH

Preechr posted:

Well, our face had to bow out of the game, so I may end up having to handle face duties. Problem: I’m the navigator. My social skills consist entirely of lying and intimidating. As many of our social interactions are with pirates, this isn’t a complete loss, but yikes.


Honestly IME "we don't have a face" is the way to go and makes for really entertaining negotiations. In the last Shadowrun game I played the face stopped showing up after session 2, so our negotiation team became a tag-team of my character, an aggressively in-your-face elf rigger with Distinctive Style: Go Big or Go Home* and one of the party's muscle, The Biggest loving Troll You Have Ever Seen.

I have no idea why the guy playing the Body 16/Strength 14 troll chose to dump a bunch of points in Etiquette, but we were certainly glad he did!


[sub]*This applied to everything. Loud colors, big hair, elaborate plans, buying $50,000 shots for the only guy to beat him at racing vidcons, a full-on extitential crisis when he realized he hadn't caused any maybe in three weeks, the works.

Foolster41
Aug 2, 2013

"It's a non-speaking role"
So the luchadore comment and seeing the "grappler" feat made me consider now indeed going full luchadore and doing a gappler style monk.

I remember grappling rules were terrible in 3.5 (lots of steps, not very strong IIRC). Am I putting myself in a big disadvantage focusing on a grapple monk?

I asked if I can do the human variant, and considering between grappler and the actor feats (Yeah, probibly not very useful as a monk, but I like the idea of him being a performer/actor, and the mimic voice thing could be fun/in character for a birdish person)

Agrikk
Oct 17, 2003

Take care with that! We have not fully ascertained its function, and the ticking is accelerating.
Interlude - Ospar

quote:

The orphan Ospar grew up on the streets of Barge End. He is a sinewy boy of maybe thirteen with scraggly brown hair that he keeps out of his face with a grubby bandanna. It turned out he was quick as a snake and would stab his rats though wielding only a pair of daggers. After his recovery, where Algie returned to Mung and the ‘catcher life, Ospar took to spending time with us rather than returning to his ratcatcher duties and we unofficially promoted him to the Special Projects Branch of the Department of Sanitation Department.

He would disappear every now and then for a day or two and then return and would always be a little cagey about where he was. One day during the construction of the Guildhouse, I noticed that Ospar was wearing a holy symbol of Hextor and asked him about it.

He pulled up a chair and straddled it backwards, facing me. “It was Hextor was who sent you to rescue me.”

“I don’t remember getting the notice.”

“Don’t blaspheme. I am too small to fight you in a stand up fight like Hextor would want, but I think he would want me to cut down blasphemers with a knife in the gut while they slept.”

I held up my hands in a placating gesture. “I’m just trying to figure you out.” I point to his holy symbol. “Have you joined the church, then?”

“Yes.” Almost defiant.

“Whatever brings you peace, my friend.” I sighed. “Hextor is the God of Battle. Will you become a great warrior?”

Ospar laughs. “Me? No, but I will learn how to protect myself so that I am never hurt, raped, or taken advantage of again.”

Agrikk fucked around with this message at 04:51 on Apr 18, 2019

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raminasi
Jan 25, 2005

a last drink with no ice

Yo, I just wanted to compliment you on having a hostile infiltrator in the party but not letting it completely gently caress up your players' plans. That's a tricky line to walk, and it sounds like you were doing it even before they started throwing you curveballs.

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