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Rutibex
Sep 9, 2001

by Fluffdaddy

Baller Ina posted:

Also wizard and artificer are not roleplayers at all so if the fights are dull as well I don't know where I'm supposed to get MY fun.

My fun comes from rolling on random tables and improvising encounters on the fly. Just some basic monsters + reaction table can be a lot of fun and keep you on you toes. It's kind of boring to run a module straight from the book, let some random tables take it off the rails occasionally!

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Pickled Tink
Apr 28, 2012

Have you heard about First Dog? It's a very good comic I just love.

Also, wear your bike helmets kids. I copped several blows to the head but my helmet left me totally unscathed.



Finally you should check out First Dog as it's a good comic I like it very much.
Fun Shoe
Have the dragon usher the people out of the town, then level it entirely, and tell them what their "heroes" did and said. How when the going got tough, the "tough" got going.

Have the townsfolk, enraged by this, confront the players. If the players survive this encounter, have word of what they did spread like wildfire, including any killings in the town if the confrontation gets violent. In any future games, have bards singing about heroes who's bladders fill their shoes at the sight of danger referring to this event, even if they subsequently go back and kill the dragon.

Guildencrantz
May 1, 2012

IM ONE OF THE GOOD ONES
I mean, I think you've got it right that it's a "talk to your players" thing. Tell 'em that it's a game about fighty heroes and if they refuse to put themselves into any danger there is no game.

That said, if they got this far with that attitude and it's coming up at the final boss fight... I think you must have been really lenient with them before. It may have conditioned them to think fights are supposed to be easy and the boss playing for keeps is a surprise?

Rutibex
Sep 9, 2001

by Fluffdaddy
I honestly wish my players got scared of things. They have figured out im a paper tiger and just attack everything with reckless abandon :shrug:

Nash
Aug 1, 2003

Sign my 'Bring Goldberg Back' Petition
Just chiming in to say this is one of my favorite threads in SA. I like getting glimpses at everyone else’s campaigns and then the avalanche of outside ideas when someone needs help. It’s pretty fantastic.

Torquemada
Oct 21, 2010

Drei Gläser
I think there’s a reason so many fantasy stories have the young protagonist ‘accidentally’ win a fight at the beginning of the story.

Pickled Tink
Apr 28, 2012

Have you heard about First Dog? It's a very good comic I just love.

Also, wear your bike helmets kids. I copped several blows to the head but my helmet left me totally unscathed.



Finally you should check out First Dog as it's a good comic I like it very much.
Fun Shoe

Rutibex posted:

I honestly wish my players got scared of things. They have figured out im a paper tiger and just attack everything with reckless abandon :shrug:
If your players ever get to be like this, TPK them. Deliberately.

Have them wander into a Lich's hidden retreat and get killed, then let them continue to play, but update their characters so they are now skeletons instead of humans/elves/dwarves/etc and have to do tasks for the unimpressed lich. Include a *lot* of bone puns.

Edit: As it is a somewhat wacky Lich, feel free to insert said sanctum anywhere. Behind an "Employees Only" door in a shop is one option. Clearly labelled on the street, like some sort of shop, would be another ("Ye Olde Lich's Den - Abandon Flesh All Ye Who Enter Here!") or just a random closet somewhere that was bought at auction or a second hand shop that was once in the possession of the Lich.

Pickled Tink fucked around with this message at 18:09 on Mar 12, 2022

Squidster
Oct 7, 2008

✋😢Life's just better with Ominous Gloves🤗🧤
I feel like punishing players because they're playing wrong rarely makes a great story. Depending on the setting, maybe give a character visions of X villain totally wrecking the party, and build up the tension before they face them.

If the party still ignores the warning, wreck 'em a little, and maybe maim a PC a little. It doesn't even have to be mechnical; just a bum knee that flares up before serious combats.

Whybird
Aug 2, 2009

Phaiston have long avoided the tightly competetive defence sector, but the IRDA Act 2052 has given us the freedom we need to bring out something really special.

https://team-robostar.itch.io/robostar


Nap Ghost
It's always difficult to signal to players that a fight is one that they can't reasonably win, because many high-level enemies look like low-level enemies. A mummy is CR3 and a mummy lord is CR15 but both fundamentally look like a bandaged up person coming to gently caress you up. Sure, you can go "you can feel the power coming off of this thing in waves" and such, but it's hard to distinguish that from you wanting to big up a level-appropriate enemy to make it sound exciting.

I think the easiest thing to do, if you want to have enemies who are level-inappropriate to PCs, is just to outright tell them when they make the appropriate knowledge check "you know this thing probably has about two hundred hit points and does 5d6 damage per attack", or "you see it attack your guide and brutally maim him, in game terms that attack did *rolls* 54 hit points of damage".

Captain Walker
Apr 7, 2009

Mother knows best
Listen to your mother
It's a scary world out there

Baller Ina posted:

Can't wait to have to tell my own father to take a chill pill when discussing proper nerdgame tactics.

I feel like this is being seriously overlooked. Any mildly serious conversation with a parent carries the baggage of a relationship that's lasted literally your entire life, and it sounds like you and dear old Dad have plenty. Your game is unsalvageable. Sorry.

My Lovely Horse
Aug 21, 2010

Yeah I was getting ready to dispense some advice but then I read "my own father" and went mmmmnope just cut your losses on that game.

Arrrthritis
May 31, 2007

I don't care if you're a star, the moon, or the whole damn sky, you need to come back down to earth and remember where you came from

My Lovely Horse posted:

Yeah I was getting ready to dispense some advice but then I read "my own father" and went mmmmnope just cut your losses on that game.

Yeah, I think with this game you're going to need to think about the reality of what your players are expecting from the game versus what you want to get out of it. It sounded like they don't enjoy doing strategic fights for their encounters. Do they enjoy fights that are challenging in other ways (overwhelming odds, civilians to protect, etc.) or do they seem to not enjoy combat at all? You might be better off finding a new group to play with if the experience they want is one you wouldn't have fun providing.

Squidster posted:

I feel like punishing players because they're playing wrong rarely makes a great story. Depending on the setting, maybe give a character visions of X villain totally wrecking the party, and build up the tension before they face them.

If the party still ignores the warning, wreck 'em a little, and maybe maim a PC a little. It doesn't even have to be mechnical; just a bum knee that flares up before serious combats.

Players are always going to do dumb poo poo that, no matter how much you telegraph is a bad idea, can end up paying off spectacularly or fall flat. The important thing is to not punish them for not being on the same mental wavelength as yourself, because that will just end up encouraging them to play defensively and take a lot less risks.

Tulip
Jun 3, 2008

yeah thats pretty good


Whybird posted:

It's always difficult to signal to players that a fight is one that they can't reasonably win, because many high-level enemies look like low-level enemies. A mummy is CR3 and a mummy lord is CR15 but both fundamentally look like a bandaged up person coming to gently caress you up. Sure, you can go "you can feel the power coming off of this thing in waves" and such, but it's hard to distinguish that from you wanting to big up a level-appropriate enemy to make it sound exciting.

I think the easiest thing to do, if you want to have enemies who are level-inappropriate to PCs, is just to outright tell them when they make the appropriate knowledge check "you know this thing probably has about two hundred hit points and does 5d6 damage per attack", or "you see it attack your guide and brutally maim him, in game terms that attack did *rolls* 54 hit points of damage".

it's particularly tricky from a design perspective that if you want players to have any sort of sense of how liable they are to win a fight, you need to have a way for them to figure that out before overcommittal. In principle this could be handled by fights having significant back and forth, but for RPGs this is generally bad - creating a space for significant back and forth requires a fair degree of mechanical complexity, but mechanical complexity means that each action takes longer and therefore the impetus to push the system toward higher-impact actions is in place. Nobody wants to spend 20 minutes per turn and then 20 turns per combat. Thus you get high complexity systems where the players instagib the boss or die themselves.

Now I kind of want a game inspired by old chanbara duels, where the actual moment of violence is like 2s but you can spend days or weeks sizing up your opponent. I think the basics of such a system would apply equally to other things (like baseball pitching, or courtroom arguments). Broken Spire kind of does this and the one-shot I played of it was pretty great.

Pickled Tink
Apr 28, 2012

Have you heard about First Dog? It's a very good comic I just love.

Also, wear your bike helmets kids. I copped several blows to the head but my helmet left me totally unscathed.



Finally you should check out First Dog as it's a good comic I like it very much.
Fun Shoe

Whybird posted:

It's always difficult to signal to players that a fight is one that they can't reasonably win, because many high-level enemies look like low-level enemies. A mummy is CR3 and a mummy lord is CR15 but both fundamentally look like a bandaged up person coming to gently caress you up. Sure, you can go "you can feel the power coming off of this thing in waves" and such, but it's hard to distinguish that from you wanting to big up a level-appropriate enemy to make it sound exciting.

I think the easiest thing to do, if you want to have enemies who are level-inappropriate to PCs, is just to outright tell them when they make the appropriate knowledge check "you know this thing probably has about two hundred hit points and does 5d6 damage per attack", or "you see it attack your guide and brutally maim him, in game terms that attack did *rolls* 54 hit points of damage".
You don't even need to do that. Simply describing how they move and look can give you an idea of the threat level of a creature.

A Mummy: "The simple carved stone sarcophagus swings open and a bandage swathed creature stiffly climbs to its feet and begins to shamble towards you"

A Mummy Lord: "You hear a resonating bang as the gilded sarcophagus flies open, the lid clattering to the floor several feet away. A mummy emerges, though this one appears to be wrapped in fine linens that have easily fended off times advance and bears a simple but elegant golden crown. It smoothly rises to its feet and fixes your group with a baleful glare."

A Banana Peel: "The yellow fruit husk lays silently on the floor, splayed and immobile, radiating malicious intent"

Rutibex
Sep 9, 2001

by Fluffdaddy

Pickled Tink posted:

If your players ever get to be like this, TPK them. Deliberately.

Have them wander into a Lich's hidden retreat and get killed, then let them continue to play, but update their characters so they are now skeletons instead of humans/elves/dwarves/etc and have to do tasks for the unimpressed lich. Include a *lot* of bone puns.

Edit: As it is a somewhat wacky Lich, feel free to insert said sanctum anywhere. Behind an "Employees Only" door in a shop is one option. Clearly labelled on the street, like some sort of shop, would be another ("Ye Olde Lich's Den - Abandon Flesh All Ye Who Enter Here!") or just a random closet somewhere that was bought at auction or a second hand shop that was once in the possession of the Lich.

Oh I love this idea, I even have a lich in mind who is constantly poping into my campaigns. Thank you it will be fun to have them run head strong into danger and just kill them outright for it for once :twisted:

lightrook
Nov 7, 2016

Pin 188

Rutibex posted:

I honestly wish my players got scared of things. They have figured out im a paper tiger and just attack everything with reckless abandon :shrug:

I guess this speaks a lot of my own experiences as both DM and player, but is this really even a problem? It sounds to me like they want to play a game about kicking doors and taking names, and are happy to take any chance to do so. The only recommendation I'd have is to boil the frog in terms of encounter difficulty, until they're winning only just by the skin of their teeth. Besides that, I'd say that most editions of D&D spend a lot of mechanical real estate on how to solve problems with violence, so it's not hard to see why people not only default to solving problems with violence but also even see it as a game that's primarily about solving problems with violence, and I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to play a game like that.

Rutibex
Sep 9, 2001

by Fluffdaddy

lightrook posted:

I guess this speaks a lot of my own experiences as both DM and player, but is this really even a problem? It sounds to me like they want to play a game about kicking doors and taking names, and are happy to take any chance to do so. The only recommendation I'd have is to boil the frog in terms of encounter difficulty, until they're winning only just by the skin of their teeth. Besides that, I'd say that most editions of D&D spend a lot of mechanical real estate on how to solve problems with violence, so it's not hard to see why people not only default to solving problems with violence but also even see it as a game that's primarily about solving problems with violence, and I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to play a game like that.

Oh don't worry I'm still a paper tiger. I'm only gonna do that lich thing on session one of a new campaign. I know my friends are looking for a power fantasy :v:

DrSunshine
Mar 23, 2009

Did I just say that out loud~~?!!!

Rutibex posted:

I honestly wish my players got scared of things. They have figured out im a paper tiger and just attack everything with reckless abandon :shrug:

Agreed. It sounds like the OP's got a bunch of Call of Cthulhu investigators dressed up in fantasy gear, while I have a bunch of D&D adventurers in fedoras and trenchcoats...

Wangsucker 69
Feb 7, 2004

Shut up, you old bat.
There’s some bundles on sale on DMs Guild if that interests anyone

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









Bangfucker 69 posted:

There’s some bundles on sale on DMs Guild if that interests anyone

We need less detail could you just gesture dispiritedly in a direction, or something

Azhais
Feb 5, 2007
Switchblade Switcharoo

sebmojo posted:

We need less detail could you just gesture dispiritedly in a direction, or something

I don't know which one he's talking about, but there's also this one

https://itch.io/b/1308/ttrpgs-for-trans-rights-in-texas

e: I assume he means
https://www.dmsguild.com/browse.php?filters=0_0_45463_0_0_0_0_0&src=fid45463

Bunch of stuff supporting Doctors Without Borders

Guildencrantz
May 1, 2012

IM ONE OF THE GOOD ONES
On letting players lose fights, this is something that really depends on the tone and setting of the campaign, but one thing I've found helps is setting "not to the death" as default. This is an urban campaign in Eberron, so they're mostly fighting people and I don't want them racking up a huge body count, so I houseruled that all damage can be made nonlethal. Then I made it clear from the outset that 1) enemies who are, say, criminals or faction hirelings have their own goals and don't have a vested interest in killing the PCs until they really work to make mortal enemies, and 2) killing a person is a choice that matters.

One really good practical effect of this is that I don't have to pull punches. If the party has bad tactics or gets really unlucky, well, the bad guys achieve their goals or the PCs fail theirs, they get the poo poo beat out of them, get robbed and maybe captured - but it's not the end of the campaign. The story goes on but the party has to see the consequences of their fuckups.

Wangsucker 69
Feb 7, 2004

Shut up, you old bat.
Yes the Doctors Without Borders bundles that don’t exactly pop up if you visit on mobile, which I did not think about.

Garvey
Jul 19, 2010
As part of a ghostbusters fan group, I'm planning to run short, 10-15 minute sessions of a ghostbusters rpg at local comic-cons, aimed mainly at kids.

We usually have a stall displaying our equipment and allowing people to get photographs and have a chat while we collect for charity, but I thought a brief, memorable experience "being" a ghostbuster would be fun, and something different from the usual offerings from stalls.

I've seen tabletop war games being ran in similar dumbed down, quick sessions, but never an rpg. Obviously character creation will be out the window, as will most of the more involved rules. I am planning to start stripping back the rules of the 1986 rpg, pre generating characters based on members of the fan group, and creating/tweaking scenarios to be based locally. I'll be playtesting with my friends, and speaking to local gaming groups, but has anyone any thoughts or advice on how this might run?

I've a feeling, depending on the age groups, it might be as light an experience as me telling a ghostbusters story to the group with occasional dice rolls to keep them involved.

Harold Fjord
Jan 3, 2004
Pre-rolled characters should all be based on members of the Burger King kids club, Scooby Doo, or other IP crossovers.

The Scooby-Doo team saving the real Ghostbusters would be pretty amazing has that been done before

Squidster
Oct 7, 2008

✋😢Life's just better with Ominous Gloves🤗🧤
Lasers and Feelings ( Protons and Empathy? ) or Fate Accelerated might be good systems to start from!

Fate Accelerated has the benefit of using familiar movie archetypes. Venkman's the Sneaky jerk, Ray is the Forceful klutz, Egon's the Clever nerd, Winston's the Careful everyman. Then they get an aspect or two to describe their relationships with each other, and bam you're done with your character sheet. Anyone who knows the movies can take it from there.

Torquemada
Oct 21, 2010

Drei Gläser
WHFRP 4e:

I’m having trouble writing a coherent ‘middle bit’ for a nobly-born barber-surgeon PC session zero.

Premise: One of the PC’s customer/friends is an initiate in the Cult of Shallya. I made it so the initiate NPC has to succeed at curing someone as part of their training, in order to advance in the priesthood (since there don’t appear to be any resources covering this in detail). She’s tried and failed a couple of times already, a third failure would mean consequences she wants to avoid. Although she can’t ask anyone in the Cult for help (which would be cheating), nothing prohibits her asking the PC for an opinion…

End Result: The PC needs to leave Altdorf and end up in Ubersreik.

Possibilities/Threads I’m Unable To Work Into A Coherent Narrative:

• The initiate NPC has (or might have) vanished.
• The sick person has gotten better (or worse, or is unchanged).
• One of the other initiates (or higher-up, even) is a Nurgle worshipper, and was keeping the sick person sick.
• That there might be a whole cell of Nurgle cultists in the temple spreading illness and despair where it can do the most damage.
• That there is a schism in the Cult hierarchy between those who see Shallya as their only duty, and a modernist faction who additionally seek to understand disease, hygiene and medicine on a mundane level to make them more effective healers.
• That the current High Priestess is a very old woman, likely to die soon (she’s a modernist).
• That one of the male NPC’s in the temple (an initiate, a priest, whoever) is a horrible incel fixated on the initiate NPC.
• The possibility of an Inquisitor or a Witch Hunter lurking around for some reason.

For the actual ending, I had in mind the PC escorting a shipment of rare medical books the Shallyans have been holding on to, possibly to a medical school or hospital library in Ubersreik, since I need her there and she wants to learn more about medicine.

Any help appreciated!

Admiralty Flag
Jun 7, 2007

to ride eternal, shiny and chrome

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2022

Torquemada posted:

WHFRP 4e:

I’m having trouble writing a coherent ‘middle bit’ for a nobly-born barber-surgeon PC session zero.

Premise: One of the PC’s customer/friends is an initiate in the Cult of Shallya. I made it so the initiate NPC has to succeed at curing someone as part of their training, in order to advance in the priesthood (since there don’t appear to be any resources covering this in detail). She’s tried and failed a couple of times already, a third failure would mean consequences she wants to avoid. Although she can’t ask anyone in the Cult for help (which would be cheating), nothing prohibits her asking the PC for an opinion…

End Result: The PC needs to leave Altdorf and end up in Ubersreik.

Possibilities/Threads I’m Unable To Work Into A Coherent Narrative:

• The initiate NPC has (or might have) vanished.
• The sick person has gotten better (or worse, or is unchanged).
• One of the other initiates (or higher-up, even) is a Nurgle worshipper, and was keeping the sick person sick.
• That there might be a whole cell of Nurgle cultists in the temple spreading illness and despair where it can do the most damage.
• That there is a schism in the Cult hierarchy between those who see Shallya as their only duty, and a modernist faction who additionally seek to understand disease, hygiene and medicine on a mundane level to make them more effective healers.
• That the current High Priestess is a very old woman, likely to die soon (she’s a modernist).
• That one of the male NPC’s in the temple (an initiate, a priest, whoever) is a horrible incel fixated on the initiate NPC.
• The possibility of an Inquisitor or a Witch Hunter lurking around for some reason.

For the actual ending, I had in mind the PC escorting a shipment of rare medical books the Shallyans have been holding on to, possibly to a medical school or hospital library in Ubersreik, since I need her there and she wants to learn more about medicine.

Any help appreciated!

All the stuff in the narrative has nothing to do with the PC, so I'm assuming that you want to weave it into a story where the PC finds out what's going on and helps the initiate, and is thus entrusted with the job of escorting the books.

Very simply (assuming this is only part of a session Zero and needs to be short), Incel Initiate is actually a low-ranking Nurgle cultist and, rebuffed by the PC's friend, has decided to make her look bad by infecting her patient with Something Nasty that makes the patient's condition worse. PC draws upon their medical knowledge to realize there are two different problems at play here, does some investigation, realizes that Something Nasty requires frequent exposure to Sinister Essence, does sleuthing, finds Sinister Essence in the Incel Initiate's cell along with a "So you've decided to praise Nurgle" pamphlet, exposes him, and gets the recognition and the job as a favor. That's probably enough for an hour or two of play.

Adding in the other threads you have: the traditionalist movement is heavily infiltrated by Nurgle cultists, because they recognize that medical science can be effective at spotting and ending contagion. Thus, they're engaged in behind-the-scenes political struggles as well as out-and-out sabotage. The High Priestess seems suspicious, however, because of her very open and honest admission that Shallya's power is not always enough -- or even needed. (What she actually says is that medical science is just Shallya's grace come in a different form, but the Nurgleites are good propagandists.) The PC's friend stumbled onto the plot and had to be kidnapped/eliminated/infected, depending on how you want to play it. The Witch Hunter or Inquisitor has followed some clues and is sniffing around the temple. The PC will get a chance to eke out clues and bring them to the attention of the authorities, but it'll be too late -- a desperate ritual and brawl will break out. Needless to say this will all devolve into chaos (little c), and the PC will get a chance to contribute by interrupting a ritual to summon some nurglings or the like -- I'm assuming the PC won't be able to stand up to the cultists in combat power; that's what the Witch Hunter/Inquisitor and their retinue are for. The PC might even get a chance to rescue their initiate friend. They are rewarded and get the job escorting the books as an additional reward, likely with a letter of introduction to someone important to his career.

Torquemada
Oct 21, 2010

Drei Gläser
Maybe I could hire you full time to translate my brain, which seems perfectly able to produce reams of material like this, but is almost incapable of stitching it together in a satisfying way. This is definitely what I was aiming for, thanks!

Phrosphor
Feb 25, 2007

Urbanisation

Thanks everyone for the suggestions of a reskinned aboleth for my parties big encounter. I ran it with the aboleth being able to spawn 15hp tentacles from very obvious worldpools (whirlpools in the fabric of the world) in the cathedral. I replaced the Phantasmal Force lair ability with a legendary action to spawn or move and attack with a tentacle. On a hit the player had to will save or get removed from the combat and be placed in an alternate outcome/memory.

I made a separate A4 battle map for each of my players and put them into their worst memory or fear. The reactions to their paladin vanishing on the first turn of combat and being placed off the battlemap on a face down one was great. Then it flipped over and he was back reliving the time he locked his partner in a house and set it on fire with the rest of his men because back then he followed orders no matter what - it went down really well. He roleplayed it fantastically and it got everyone else terrified to find out what happened if they got hit and really feeling for his poor old pirate/paladin.

Each player bar one got trapped in their own scenario for a portion of the battle and they loved it.

Baller Ina
Oct 21, 2010

:whattheeucharist:

Discount Dracula posted:

I am a 1st time GM also running the Icespire campaign. Two of my players were so worried about getting their fictional characters hurt that the warrior fled when two orcs advanced at the end of the dwarven mine quest. My solution was to have them roll perception or history or nature or whatever checks to help them assess their relative strength against hostile creatures. For example, they were freaked out seeing twig blights for the first time. With a decent nature roll, the Druid remembered that twig blights were no more than a nuisance to farmers. Having the knowledge that they were likely to survive bolstered their confidence.

Another possibility for your campaign: The party flees the mountain fortress and a passing band of displaced orcs charges to reclaim their home. Cryovain slaughters them, but is weakened from the encounter (but it ends up having the same hit points as when the party disengaged).

Another scenario: the party comes across a traveling mercenary as they head back to wherever and the merc is extra damage or becomes bait.


The most fun I had was during the quest to escort Don Jon Raskin to his mine. I played “DJ” as an incompetent fighter with a massive case of braggadocio (think Harry Potter’s Gilderoy Lockhart). He had a belt filled with throwing daggers. The group loved it every time he botched a roll and threw a dagger into the floor. The wererats bit him and infected him with lycanthropy and the party nearly killed him to put him out of his misery. They agreed to let him live once they got a promise from the remaining dwarf miners that they would put DJ a cage during a full moon.

I think I'm going with a combination of these two things; there was a mercenary group squatting at the hold they convinced to take a hike, so Cryovain will pass them on his way out of the mountains and end up in combat with them. If the party pursues him immediately, they can run across the battle, otherwise the mercs beat Cryovain and get the glory...as well as the artifact, which is now in unknown hands.

I played Don Jon similarly, with a smaller ego but still coming off as experienced. The party barely talked to him, told him to stay out of the way, and when he somewhat saved their lives at the tail end of a massive fight(what the gently caress is with the balance in that location? This module is a shitshow, ugh), brushed him off and didn't thank him at all.

Sorry for not responding to everyone's thoughts on everything, I've just been trying to keep DnD out of my mind for a bit. We're having our session tonight and I hope to have our serious conversation at the end of it to find out what the future holds.

YOUR UNCOOL NIECE
May 6, 2007

Kanga-Rat Murder Society
I'm running a 1920s Urban Shadows, and the party and I lit a fuse at the end of the last session that I want some ideas for.

They've spent the last few sessions dealing with a mafia family that is controlled by vampires, and when they finally killed the vampire that they were after they searched around his safe house and asked me who was *really* pulling the strings of The Family -- this had been a tough few sessions so the answer couldn't just be "The Don" or whatever, so I checked our NPC rolodex and pulled out the Mayor's Aide.

We haven't met him yet, but rumors we've made up have him as having been under the thumb of just about every faction in the city. Obviously the rumors were misinformed, and this aide obviously is not who we thought he was.

Most of the power in City Government are secretly wizards, and it's been established that they all buy the "in over his head" image of the Aide. The werewolves that control the dockworkers union have been trying to muscle him around.

I'm thinking maybe he was a WW1 veteran that came back from Europe changed, but I want it to be something special. Or maybe he just sort of appeared in a trench claiming an identity no one could verify.

(Saying the Aide was the string-puller, by the way, landed *really* well with the players and was one of my most satisfying GM reveals, so I want to respect that and make this guy something good)

Any ideas? I want him to be a Bad Dude that no one will believe the party about -- old and legendary and outside of the Urban Shadows usual werewolf/vampire/fae/demon.

Admiralty Flag
Jun 7, 2007

to ride eternal, shiny and chrome

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2022

YOUR UNCOOL NIECE posted:

I'm running a 1920s Urban Shadows, and the party and I lit a fuse at the end of the last session that I want some ideas for.

They've spent the last few sessions dealing with a mafia family that is controlled by vampires, and when they finally killed the vampire that they were after they searched around his safe house and asked me who was *really* pulling the strings of The Family -- this had been a tough few sessions so the answer couldn't just be "The Don" or whatever, so I checked our NPC rolodex and pulled out the Mayor's Aide.

We haven't met him yet, but rumors we've made up have him as having been under the thumb of just about every faction in the city. Obviously the rumors were misinformed, and this aide obviously is not who we thought he was.

Most of the power in City Government are secretly wizards, and it's been established that they all buy the "in over his head" image of the Aide. The werewolves that control the dockworkers union have been trying to muscle him around.

I'm thinking maybe he was a WW1 veteran that came back from Europe changed, but I want it to be something special. Or maybe he just sort of appeared in a trench claiming an identity no one could verify.

(Saying the Aide was the string-puller, by the way, landed *really* well with the players and was one of my most satisfying GM reveals, so I want to respect that and make this guy something good)

Any ideas? I want him to be a Bad Dude that no one will believe the party about -- old and legendary and outside of the Urban Shadows usual werewolf/vampire/fae/demon.

Not familiar with Urban Shadows, so I don't know if this is in its wheelhouse, but this guy came back from the slaughterhouse that was the Great War...perhaps in the fury of battle and the senseless loss of life (which did persist after the US entered the war, just not to the same degree as it had during years of stalemated trench warfare), what if this guy became a blood pact warlock of some sort? He found he had an innate talent to convert death and suffering into *things* happening, horrible things. To keep himself sane he's kept a lid on his power until he's pushed too far by the PCs, and then even if they blow him away, they have to deal with what he's already set in motion/called forth/etc.

Maybe he's not a warlock, just a psychic sensitive who passively absorbed all the negative energy from the suffering, despair, and death he saw/passed by/experienced in Europe, and he can let it out in small controlled exercises or large uncontrolled displays.

His reluctance to tap into the depths of his power (or more precisely, his darkest experiences and feelings) are what have kept him on a leash so far. But when the PCs (or the dockworker werewolves or whoever) lean too hard on him, he starts letting it out...and can't stop it.

Squidster
Oct 7, 2008

✋😢Life's just better with Ominous Gloves🤗🧤
What if vicious shelling in some forgotten battlefield woke up something ancient and nameless? It swam through the churned mud like a shark, devouring soldiers as they cowered in their trenches. Each dying soul fed it more information about the promised land that was America. It traveled home in the hollowed out shell of a man, eager to find a fresh hunting grounds away from its natural predators.

It had grown bloated with it's feast, and fell into a long slumber. Only part of it is awake, and even that part is a cunning hunter. As it sleeps, the countless young inside it grow in number and hunger. Sometimes an infant horror slips free, and gorges itself on an innocent, and the ancient hunter has to cover things up. A mob hit gone wrong, a tragic train accident that left ceilings caked in viscera. Soon the stars will be right, and the ancient hunter will wither and die. From it's corpse will slither out a nightmare brood, eager to taste every part of the American dream.

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









Make him this guy

Reveilled
Apr 19, 2007

Take up your rifles

YOUR UNCOOL NIECE posted:

I'm running a 1920s Urban Shadows, and the party and I lit a fuse at the end of the last session that I want some ideas for.

They've spent the last few sessions dealing with a mafia family that is controlled by vampires, and when they finally killed the vampire that they were after they searched around his safe house and asked me who was *really* pulling the strings of The Family -- this had been a tough few sessions so the answer couldn't just be "The Don" or whatever, so I checked our NPC rolodex and pulled out the Mayor's Aide.

We haven't met him yet, but rumors we've made up have him as having been under the thumb of just about every faction in the city. Obviously the rumors were misinformed, and this aide obviously is not who we thought he was.

Most of the power in City Government are secretly wizards, and it's been established that they all buy the "in over his head" image of the Aide. The werewolves that control the dockworkers union have been trying to muscle him around.

I'm thinking maybe he was a WW1 veteran that came back from Europe changed, but I want it to be something special. Or maybe he just sort of appeared in a trench claiming an identity no one could verify.

(Saying the Aide was the string-puller, by the way, landed *really* well with the players and was one of my most satisfying GM reveals, so I want to respect that and make this guy something good)

Any ideas? I want him to be a Bad Dude that no one will believe the party about -- old and legendary and outside of the Urban Shadows usual werewolf/vampire/fae/demon.

Okay, so yeah, he just sort of appeared in a trench claiming an identity no one could verify...because he hadn't been born yet. The Aide isn't a WW1 vet, he's a WW2 vet. A loyal member of Mussolini's blackshirts, he was part of a secret group which engaged in parallel research to the various Nazi occult groups, seeking a magical superweapon or an eldritch power that could turn the tide of the war even as the Allies were carrying out their landings in Sicily. As things got desperate, and their various superweapons failed (or so they thought), their fortress was stormed by the allies and our man here, holding the final prototype device the group ever made was gunned down...only to wake up in an Italian trench 26 years in the past. Seeing the American entry into the war as the pivotal event that turned the tide against the Axis powers (yes I know, but the Russians weren't the ones invading Italy so this guy might be a tad biased), he decided to end that threat before it could begin, adopting a new identity and immigrating to the States. In its current broken state, his device can now send him back only a day, or even an hour. In his early days here in the city, he repeated days over and over and over again, worming his way into various groups and factions, always knowing what to say and where to be to manipulate people properly. He has endless amounts of information gained from surveilling multiple people all on the same day.

Ultimately, his plan is to (your choice):
1) use the magical energies here in the city to supercharge his device, allowing him to go back further. He's going to pull a Guns of the South and give the Confederacy information and supplies it needs to win the war
2) do some mind control shenanigans to move America in a more explicitly fascist direction, think Father Coughlin etc, so it does not aid the Allies in WW2.

But he has a problem. In order to get into this position, he's used his device too much, and it's almost fully depleted. This is why he hasn't been able to respond to the players actions with the device, even if he's aware of it. But it does have a failsafe, the same one that triggered in 1944--when he dies, he is immediately sent back some amount of time (a day? an hour?). So when this happens at the table, time does a full reset, send the players back to the moment of the reset, do some eliding narration to get to the moment things start getting different because now the villain knows exactly when and how the PCs are coming for him. Maybe that's halfway through the assault when they encounter stiffer resistance, or maybe you just cut to them walking in the door to his office and this time he's not there.

I don't know how reasonable this is in Urban Shadows, but I could imagine a bunch of magical entities scoffing at the idea of a machine that does magic, and even if such a thing were possible, everyone knows time travel is impossible.

Azathoth
Apr 3, 2001


his current incarnation is Kevin Pollak, if you want better pictures of what he'd look like.

Pickled Tink
Apr 28, 2012

Have you heard about First Dog? It's a very good comic I just love.

Also, wear your bike helmets kids. I copped several blows to the head but my helmet left me totally unscathed.



Finally you should check out First Dog as it's a good comic I like it very much.
Fun Shoe
An idea would just be to have him be a mortal human, but one who knows things and is owed lots and lots of favours and uses his access as mayors aide to obtain the valuable information and broker favourable deals with the different supernatural communities and has thus made himself indispensable to those communities.

An example scheme would be buying a favour from both Fae and Vampire factions by eliminating a mutual threat to them. Perhaps some Monster Hunters who hate Fae and Vampires holed up in a warehouse. Mister Aide uses his connections to obtain the local area sewer details, building blueprints, and arranges to have workmen disable power to the block under guise of routine maintenance, and calls in a favour from some werewolves to launch an attack in that window using the detailed knowledge his position affords him, while ensuring there is no police interference.

Feel free to give him a few magical tools, and maybe a supernatural bodyguard/assistant. After all, these are things he could have bargained for.

BlackIronHeart
Aug 2, 2004

The Oath Breaker's about to hit warphead nine Kaptain!

Squidster posted:

What if vicious shelling in some forgotten battlefield woke up something ancient and nameless? It swam through the churned mud like a shark, devouring soldiers as they cowered in their trenches. Each dying soul fed it more information about the promised land that was America. It traveled home in the hollowed out shell of a man, eager to find a fresh hunting grounds away from its natural predators.

It had grown bloated with it's feast, and fell into a long slumber. Only part of it is awake, and even that part is a cunning hunter. As it sleeps, the countless young inside it grow in number and hunger. Sometimes an infant horror slips free, and gorges itself on an innocent, and the ancient hunter has to cover things up. A mob hit gone wrong, a tragic train accident that left ceilings caked in viscera. Soon the stars will be right, and the ancient hunter will wither and die. From it's corpse will slither out a nightmare brood, eager to taste every part of the American dream.

This is the entire premise of Never Going Home if you ever want an entire game for this idea.

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Squidster
Oct 7, 2008

✋😢Life's just better with Ominous Gloves🤗🧤

BlackIronHeart posted:

This is the entire premise of Never Going Home if you ever want an entire game for this idea.
Huh, I'll have to check that out! My thinking was that it would be neat to have a mafia crime family ordered around by a one-person monster family.

Players would get to listen in on one-sided phone conversations where he talks to "the in-laws," followed by the reveal the phone isn't connected. Let the players think it's a magic phone and try to tap it.

Squidster fucked around with this message at 08:24 on Mar 28, 2022

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