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You just gotta call on people. It’s bullshit that anyone can’t figure out roll 20 with a tutorial video. It’s extremely intuitive. It sounds like the recurring problem with this thread is people putting up with passivity in their friends.
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# ? Oct 15, 2023 05:26 |
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# ? Jun 11, 2024 06:26 |
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Golden Bee posted:You just gotta call on people. It’s bullshit that anyone can’t figure out roll 20 with a tutorial video. It’s extremely intuitive. In the defense of my friends, who can be passive and never read the rules. They are my friends first and my players second. Running a nerd game was my idea and they aren't big into gaming. We just do it when we hang out. So asking them to read a rulebook is a big ask.
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# ? Oct 15, 2023 06:54 |
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Zoeb posted:In the defense of my friends, who can be passive and never read the rules. They are my friends first and my players second. Running a nerd game was my idea and they aren't big into gaming. We just do it when we hang out. So asking them to read a rulebook is a big ask. You should really try a rules-light game like Root. I think you and your players would like it better.
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# ? Oct 15, 2023 07:15 |
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I'm working on an fight in 5E where my players are fighting a god raised by Kuo-Toa. The god itself is incredibly though, but relies on its worshippers to exist. Are there any published encounters/monsters with similar mechanics I can look over for inspiration?
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# ? Oct 15, 2023 12:07 |
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Mederlock posted:You should really try a rules-light game like Root. I think you and your players would like it better. Yeah that is why I went with Knave by Ben Milton
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# ? Oct 15, 2023 12:10 |
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The Lobotomy Kid posted:I'm working on an fight in 5E where my players are fighting a god raised by Kuo-Toa. The god itself is incredibly though, but relies on its worshippers to exist. Are there any published encounters/monsters with similar mechanics I can look over for inspiration? Fill the area with worshippers of various ornate attire/rags. Kill a random little guy? Reduce the gods max hp. Kill a bishop? Remove an ability or bonus of the gods. Make sure the players start in a hopelessly outmatched position, let them see these things drop off with worshippers, wait to see how they react. Could weaken the god until they fight it head on, could murder everyone until they disappear, could get down to a point where they try to convince the believers their god is not as powerful as they thought, etc, etc.
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# ? Oct 15, 2023 14:26 |
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If they're not clueing in on that mechanic have the god do some nice aoe that has collateral damage and tip your hand heavily in the narrative description.
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# ? Oct 15, 2023 14:34 |
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The Lobotomy Kid posted:I'm working on an fight in 5E where my players are fighting a god raised by Kuo-Toa. The god itself is incredibly though, but relies on its worshippers to exist. Are there any published encounters/monsters with similar mechanics I can look over for inspiration? Actually there might be! In the 5e Ghosts of Saltmarsh campaign there’s a Chapter called The Final Enemy with weird fish monsters, maps & summoning stuff. Starts on page 110. Here’s a link to the anyflip, which I hope is okay to post here these days(?) If not I’ll take it down. https://online.anyflip.com/rbal/mmoe/mobile/index.html
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# ? Oct 15, 2023 19:06 |
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Golden Bee posted:You just gotta call on people. It’s bullshit that anyone can’t figure out roll 20 with a tutorial video. It’s extremely intuitive. We've been on roll 20 for twelve sessions and I still can't figure out how to get tokens into the built in initiative order correctly. Today somehow an Eldar boss and a star system ended up in the turn order for a fight with some demons on a derelict starship.
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# ? Oct 16, 2023 02:47 |
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Arglebargle III posted:We've been on roll 20 for twelve sessions and I still can't figure out how to get tokens into the built in initiative order correctly. Today somehow an Eldar boss and a star system ended up in the turn order for a fight with some demons on a derelict starship. Click on the token first, then rolling for initiative seems to mitigate some of it?
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# ? Oct 16, 2023 05:22 |
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Arglebargle III posted:We've been on roll 20 for twelve sessions and I still can't figure out how to get tokens into the built in initiative order correctly. Today somehow an Eldar boss and a star system ended up in the turn order for a fight with some demons on a derelict starship. Clear the initiative first (oftentimes DMs will see phantom tokens from older sessions there if they don't), right-click on a token to add it to initiative, and then sort by descending
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# ? Oct 16, 2023 13:11 |
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Wow that's helpful advice. At least everyone had a good laugh seeing a star system they discovered two sessions ago show up in the initiative order. Now... any advice on getting dynamic lightning to work? It doesn't help that half the party has thermals and light amplification implants.
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# ? Oct 16, 2023 13:27 |
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Mind in ship combat an entire star system showing up on initiative as its ground based defenses and things try to fend you off is completely plausible.
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# ? Oct 16, 2023 13:28 |
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There's a forum where people post their rogue trader adventure ideas. One posted a lengthy description of a dead alien fortress system, thick with automated defenses and the broken hulls of human and alien explorers. They are all lured by the endless transmissions beaming into the void, mostly static, but occasionally spinning tales of alien dramas, dynastic feuds and vast treasure troves. The Imperial navy has left warning beacons at the edges of the system warning explorers not to believe the transmissions. The system is named Eta Beta Omicron. If you know the Greek alphabet there's a joke there. I wonder how many people got it.
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# ? Oct 16, 2023 13:34 |
Arglebargle III posted:There's a forum where people post their rogue trader adventure ideas. One posted a lengthy description of a dead alien fortress system, thick with automated defenses and the broken hulls of human and alien explorers. They are all lured by the endless transmissions beaming into the void, mostly static, but occasionally spinning tales of alien dramas, dynastic feuds and vast treasure troves. The Imperial navy has left warning beacons at the edges of the system warning explorers not to believe the transmissions. ...the HBO system? Seriously?
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# ? Oct 16, 2023 14:01 |
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Is the Cinemax system just a bunch of big ol’ planet-shaped venus flytraps?
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# ? Oct 16, 2023 14:49 |
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Night10194 posted:Mind in ship combat an entire star system showing up on initiative as its ground based defenses and things try to fend you off is completely plausible. Alternatively, the star system has become sentient.
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# ? Oct 16, 2023 18:06 |
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Defenestrategy posted:Alternatively, the star system has become sentient. but it just uses its turn to say "hey whatcha doin up there" because it doesn't understand the concept of violent conflict.
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# ? Oct 16, 2023 18:08 |
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This might be kind of a longshot, but I was watching Ghostbusters last night, and came up with the idea of doing a Ghostbuster-themed Call of Cthulhu one-off. The movie very briefly goes into some of the lore about Ivo Shandor, a Romanian that was the driving force behind the events in the movies - he was the architect of the Central Park building and the leader of the Gozer cult in the twenties (ie the time when most Lovecraft stories take place). My thought was to not have a game be blatantly Ghostbusters-themed but incorportate this mythology and see if anybody figures it out (they likely would by the time they heard about the cult of Gozer). Is there any kind of sourcebook for Ghostbusters? I can use the various fandom wikis online but if there's something more official I'd love to see it - or if anybody's done something like this (surely they have) I'd love to take notes. I don't know what my actual plot would be but it would end with Ivo being defeated and the world being saved from Gozer temporarily and Ivo somehow being interred in his mine.
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# ? Oct 16, 2023 18:42 |
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They made an entire ghostbusters RPG, you can find copies in all the usual places that you find such things.
Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 21:35 on Oct 16, 2023 |
# ? Oct 16, 2023 20:03 |
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Golden Bee posted:They made an entire ghostbusters RPG’s, you can find copies in all the usual places that you find such things. I swear I looked, maybe I was being too specific... I'll look again. edit: found it on Ebay. Yikes. Think I'll stick to wikis. CornHolio fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Oct 16, 2023 |
# ? Oct 16, 2023 20:43 |
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Golden Bee posted:Too many haters. The problem with troupe-style recruitment is that you trade sheer numbers in exchange for lower engagement, sketchier players, and more opportunity for mismatched preferences and gaming styles. Plus, you run the risk of alert fatigue if the pool is pinged too often, especially since people’s interest in playing TTRPGs wanes over time. I’ve been thinking about this, and I think that the way games and campaigns are run just doesn’t fit our modern society. Gaming needs to adjust in favor of less time commitment, shorter scopes, and low-overhead systems. Like, I’m writing down the different kinds of campaigns I’d enjoy running, and the common through-line is “no or few strings attached”. I straight up just don’t think modern players are capable of or interested in the kind of games people used to run up until the 2000s. Uninterested, overcommitted, and/or mismatched gaming is bad gaming, IMO.
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# ? Oct 17, 2023 16:34 |
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So over the course of the next few weeks my players are going to discover they've become embroiled in underworld politics by the rogue trader's ambitious and not too wise aunt. Their endeavors and profit factor are going to get goosed, the local mafia and merc groups are eager to facilitate purchases. The worst part is that if they bother to do the math on their smuggling and colonization efforts they'll find the help has arrived too fast to be credible -- Aunt Leonora's partners in the criminal underworld have hired the Cabal of the Crimson Woe to move arms, drugs and people across the borders of the Expanse for of course a percentage of the souls being moved. This has attracted the attention of the rival Cabal of the Splintered Talon, who don't appreciate the new revenue stream for their enemies. The thing is, the party is clueless about this. Aside from accepting their aunt's help and being sworn to secrecy about it they don't know about this. They're a pretty risk averse bunch and I expect their unwitting support from the dark Eldar will be something they see as a serious problem to solve. What would be some good clues to ease them into this plot development? I'm hoping to have them look into their mysterious support and the dark Eldar reveal will be worse than they suspected.
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# ? Oct 19, 2023 17:23 |
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Laughter, pointing, people who are sleazy approaching them in public to make deals.
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# ? Oct 19, 2023 17:32 |
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Mysterious serial killing at the end points of their routes. Contacts start offering to sell stuff with an expiration shorter than the usual route's transit time. The usual efforts to get in touch about business opportunities get turned up to eleven. Any old minor enemies make it out alive? Too bad for one of them. The inquisition has questions about it.
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# ? Oct 19, 2023 20:52 |
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Arglebargle III posted:There's a forum where people post their rogue trader adventure ideas. One posted a lengthy description of a dead alien fortress system, thick with automated defenses and the broken hulls of human and alien explorers. They are all lured by the endless transmissions beaming into the void, mostly static, but occasionally spinning tales of alien dramas, dynastic feuds and vast treasure troves. The Imperial navy has left warning beacons at the edges of the system warning explorers not to believe the transmissions. Where's the forum out of curiosity?
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# ? Oct 19, 2023 23:07 |
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I ran my first session of stars without number yesterday and I'm pleased to report that the adventure idea that y'all gave me was a huge success.
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# ? Oct 23, 2023 18:15 |
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CornHolio posted:I swear I looked, maybe I was being too specific... I'll look again. What do you view as "essential" for a Ghostbusters game? Comedy? Going from rags to riches (to possibly rags again)? Oddly, Ghostbusters has pretty little to do with what RPGs traditionally think of as "ghost hunting," as they usually just show up and wreck shop until they can get the very obviously real and disruptive ghost into a trap instead of doing Call of Cthulhu style investigations to figure out the dark secret that has this poor soul trapped in eternal torment, etc, etc.
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# ? Oct 23, 2023 22:12 |
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Capfalcon posted:What do you view as "essential" for a Ghostbusters game? Comedy? Going from rags to riches (to possibly rags again)? there's a bit of CoC style investigating, looking at old plans etc. finding out about ancient sumerian cult shrines or what have you.
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# ? Oct 23, 2023 23:27 |
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Ghostbusters is a mix of jobber missions where the ghost is real and present and wrecking things and big bag seasonal arc investigations that result in a set piece encounter.
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# ? Oct 25, 2023 01:11 |
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I bet you could make a pretty fun ghostbusters game if you lean hard into your party being just a random franchisee who was given a proton pack, the least amount of training, and shoved out the door while giving a significant cut to the Ghostbusters. Like you get no helpdesk support without paying for Egon or Rey's services and you better believe its coming out of your paycheck, also weave in some scoobydoo poo poo, so sometimes you accidentally a dude in a mask with a proton pack, instead of it being an actual ghost, because your party didn't research hard enough.
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# ? Oct 25, 2023 01:36 |
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Defenestrategy posted:I bet you could make a pretty fun ghostbusters game if you lean hard into your party being just a random franchisee who was given a proton pack, the least amount of training, and shoved out the door while giving a significant cut to the Ghostbusters. Like you get no helpdesk support without paying for Egon or Rey's services and you better believe its coming out of your paycheck, also weave in some scoobydoo poo poo, so sometimes you accidentally a dude in a mask with a proton pack, instead of it being an actual ghost, because your party didn't research hard enough. Yes, do this. All of it.
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# ? Oct 25, 2023 01:54 |
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Defenestrategy posted:I bet you could make a pretty fun ghostbusters game if you lean hard into your party being just a random franchisee who was given a proton pack, the least amount of training, and shoved out the door while giving a significant cut to the Ghostbusters. Like you get no helpdesk support without paying for Egon or Rey's services and you better believe its coming out of your paycheck, also weave in some scoobydoo poo poo, so sometimes you accidentally a dude in a mask with a proton pack, instead of it being an actual ghost, because your party didn't research hard enough. Yeah, that's a hell of a pitch. Give everyone bills to pay while taunting them with the new fancy equipment. "Sure you could get the Mark 3 proton pack, but that's ramen dinners for a month." A really mean trick would to let them start with some kind of collateral damage insurance and then yank it when they "abuse the privilege."
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# ? Oct 25, 2023 03:33 |
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"Oh sorry guys you havent met your 100,000$ collateral damage deductible, and unfortunately we dont cover accidents involving class two nuclear reactors."
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# ? Oct 25, 2023 03:39 |
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Defenestrategy posted:I bet you could make a pretty fun ghostbusters game if you lean hard into your party being just a random franchisee who was given a proton pack, the least amount of training, and shoved out the door while giving a significant cut to the Ghostbusters. Like you get no helpdesk support without paying for Egon or Rey's services and you better believe its coming out of your paycheck, also weave in some scoobydoo poo poo, so sometimes you accidentally a dude in a mask with a proton pack, instead of it being an actual ghost, because your party didn't research hard enough. That's the actual backstory of the Ghostbusters International RPG: the original GB created franchises during their upswing, then got sued out of existence and left the franchisees swinging in the wind. Only after they restored the good name of Ghostbusters with the Vigo incident did they begin offering help again, but even then it was desultory and incomplete. Sometimes an OG Buster would swing by, drop off a McGuffin or a clue or something, and disappear again.
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# ? Oct 25, 2023 03:48 |
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Dameius posted:Ghostbusters is a mix of jobber missions where the ghost is real and present and wrecking things and big bag seasonal arc investigations that result in a set piece encounter. Thinking about this had me consider how you'd handle health/etc - and that for the most ghouls and ghosts in the films/the "vibe", they're less murderous, more territorial in the way they act. For the most part it's the Big Ones that end up doing physical, lasting harm. So the obvious answer is to probably have some form of a sanity attribute, right? But then I thought of something better and possibly more in keeping with the tone. Instead of it being your "mental well-being", it's more your patience/temper being tested with most ghosts. Local ghost has flooded the building, and those shoes were brand new - spirit is having a laugh throwing books at you, etc. Enough poo poo goes wrong - screw this, I quit.
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# ? Oct 25, 2023 11:06 |
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I think you'd also have a wanted level with human authorities youd have to manage. Youre basically just a few dudes with a proton pack you'd have no chance if the human authorities send the cops, EPA, national guard, whatever after you. So while you can bust ghosts as thats not illegal, causing collateral damage on private property is also probably fine, eggregiously breaking traffic laws trying to get to a sumerian death cult shrine, causing a big explosion afterwards, and not paying bribes/fines after, might get you enough heat with the city to get you arrested or your franchise revoked.
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# ? Oct 25, 2023 15:26 |
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Jetamo posted:Instead of it being your "mental well-being", it's more your patience/temper being tested with most ghosts. Local ghost has flooded the building, and those shoes were brand new - spirit is having a laugh throwing books at you, etc. Enough poo poo goes wrong - screw this, I quit. Better than that: you don't quit, but the more poo poo that goes wrong, the more penalties you have on your social rolls with rear end in a top hat reporters and idiot civil servants and ghosts' rights activists when they show up immediately after the job.
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# ? Oct 25, 2023 16:36 |
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Whybird posted:Better than that: you don't quit, but the more poo poo that goes wrong, the more penalties you have on your social rolls with rear end in a top hat reporters and idiot civil servants and ghosts' rights activists when they show up immediately after the job. Yeah I like this idea. The more fuckups they make, the more Pecks start coming after them. First a reporter, who then publishes about them. Then code enforcement who wants to see their home base. Then permitting gets tipped off. Then they tip off the state agencies. Then they tip off the federal agencies. And so on and so on.
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# ? Oct 25, 2023 17:55 |
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# ? Jun 11, 2024 06:26 |
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Whybird posted:Better than that: you don't quit, but the more poo poo that goes wrong, the more penalties you have on your social rolls with rear end in a top hat reporters and idiot civil servants and ghosts' rights activists when they show up immediately after the job. Gods, now I want to be a ghosts' rights activist so badly.
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# ? Oct 25, 2023 20:19 |