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Oh, I forgot to add the last thing I was going to say. Instead of stealing from Red Harvest, steal from The Warriors. Divide the city up into territorial units for each gang. Hope that the PCs travel through various gangs' territories to reach safety in the midst of a gang war, interacting a little with each gang along the way, and meanwhile interest them in solving the mystery of who is responsible for the initial attack that sparked the gang war. You can try to rope the PCs in with the mystery angle, and if they don't bite but they'd rather just gently caress poo poo up (I don't know your PCs) then they could very well hit on the Red Harvest scenario on their own.
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Feb 23, 2012 21:14
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some loving LIAR posted:Yojimbo, are a ripoff of Red Harvest. Point being, Red Harvest is now, whether they've read it or not, going to be exactly what everybody expects out of a "pacify the warring gangs" scenario. Blah blah blah Yojimbo, according to it's creator, was inspired by The Glass Key, (Kurasawa claims the film, although the film is based on the book, also by Hammett) not Red Harvest. The Glass Key, is a solid read and good source material to rip off if you want gang v. gang warfare with a shifty protagonist. EDIT: Django is a solid western with gang vs. gang warfare, and Cutthroats is great if you want them to get caught between two more mobile powers (especially if the PC's have a unique talent or ability that might unlock something each gang desires). TheAnomaly fucked around with this message at 04:48 on Feb 24, 2012 |
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Feb 24, 2012 04:46
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Can anyone recommend me some background material suited for RPGs on the American civil war ? I am thinking of running a Kerberos club game with the players being a supernatural special forces team, carrying out missions like rescuing people behind enemy lines, opposing enemy mages and summoned monsters, all sorts of crazy things. Of course if there already is a steam-punk/occult civil war setting that would make things much easier.
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Feb 24, 2012 17:55
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ORE Kerberos club? Try This Favored Land.
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Feb 24, 2012 19:57
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I was planning to use the Fate version of the Kerberos club. Is there any advantage to using the One Roll Engine ? Would it be difficult to convert between the systems ?
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Feb 24, 2012 22:38
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Fate Kerberos has a make-up-your-own-power thing, just like ORE, so really, "converting" to it from almost anything will probably be pretty easy. I haven't actually read This Favored Land, but I'm assuming it has at least some system-independent utility as a weird west civil war setting book.
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Feb 24, 2012 22:47
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I don't know if this is the right place, but I don't really see a general "hey does this game suck?" thread so I'll just ask it here since it moderately pertains to GMing. An old nerdfriend of mine hasn't played anything in ages, but he's heard there's apparently a Dragon Age RPG and a Song of Ice and Fire RPG out now and he'd really like me to run one of them for him -- he's offering to buy and everything, but he wants me to pick which one we go with. I've only seen the Game of Thrones TV show and I didn't even know what Dragon Age was until recently, so I'm not super familiar with either setting. Once I picked one or the other I figure I'll look into the setting a bit more outside of whatever's in the gaming book. I asked my player about his preferences and what he wants to get out of a game but he says that he just wants to roll with whatever I choose. Which would you guys recommend over the other? What are some pros and cons of their systems and settings?
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Feb 25, 2012 00:32
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I looked through This Favored Land and, while it does have a basic overview of the civil war, it doesn't do the weird west thing all that much, being very low-powered. Can you recommend me any other source books providing a more high-powered version of the American civil war ? It also doesn't have any rules for large-scale battles; the same goes for the included Wild Talents Essential edition. Are there any such rules for the One Roll Engine ?
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Feb 25, 2012 03:47
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illie posted:I don't know if this is the right place, but I don't really see a general "hey does this game suck?" thread so I'll just ask it here since it moderately pertains to GMing. I ran SIFRP for a few months and I really did not like it, if you're playing with people that are familiar with the books you can find yourself really shackled by the setting. The rules for social combat are a neat idea but end up taking a lot of time to resolve and unless you're intimately familiar with them, you'll end up spending a lot of game time looking up rules. The combat system is neat, but every combat we ran into seemed to end far too quickly for the players to have fun and it was immediately apparent that one side was completely overpowering the other. The game also places a lot of emphasis on specialization, so you end up with characters that are purely for fighting, other for intrigue and so on. This makes it so during combat the intrigue focused players feel useless, the same goes for combat focused players during intrigues. I'd recommend staying away from SIFRP unless everyone REALLY wants to play it.
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Feb 25, 2012 04:31
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Thanks, that's exactly the sort of info I was looking for. I don't really know of a place that gives good reviews on how a game actually plays, rather than how it operates in theory. Along the same lines, is anyone all that familiar with the Dragon Age game? From what I've seen, it has a few oddly archaic rules and features considering how recently it came out. Were it up to me, I would just as soon run whatever setting he wants in 4E but he seems to really want to try one of them. 
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Feb 25, 2012 17:52
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illie posted:Thanks, that's exactly the sort of info I was looking for. I don't really know of a place that gives good reviews on how a game actually plays, rather than how it operates in theory. Along the same lines, is anyone all that familiar with the Dragon Age game? From what I've seen, it has a few oddly archaic rules and features considering how recently it came out. The podcast Canon Puncture does a series called "game advocates" where they bring on a guest to talk about a game they like. One of these episodes (episode 112) is about the Dragon Age RPG. The whole premise is that it's not in any way an unbiased opinion; the guest is there to tell people why he likes the game. But check it out anyway if you have time to listen.
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Feb 26, 2012 02:50
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Not sure if this belongs here, but I got a question. Is there something like the LP sandcastle thread for PbP games ? I've got a couple of ideas I'd like to gauge interest for and maybe have someone look them over for problems. As an example I'll elaborate on my idea for a occult civil war game. Basically instead of being based in London persecution and human progress has driven the Kerberos club to what would later become the USA. This includes stuff like the fairy courts being dissolved and the remnants fleeing after losing a war, godlings and various outcasts hoping for a better life etc. Now, nearly a century later, a war threatens the nation that sheltered them. The players would work mainly against the supernatural on the other side, among them Unseelie and other more overtly evil creatures who are taking advantage of the prevalence of slavery and later in the war the losing side getting desperate and trying to summon monsters from beyond. Another possibility would be to get more tech-heavy and fighting against primitive mechs and crazy superweapons; this would depend on the style of characters I get. Changing the course of the war is a possibility but would require some effort. With this idea I'm mostly concerned about treating the war right, keeping it fairly apolitical instead of going with a good vs bad narrative because it seems to be a sensitive subject for a lot of people. Anything else I should watch out for ? Other ideas include a superhero game in the DC or Ultimate Marvel universe or maybe even a anime-inspired game; ideas where I'm not sure I will get enough players for them to be viable.
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Mar 3, 2012 13:40
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So in the latest Pathfinder encounter I ran my friends through, one of them discovered a magic item I kinda made up on the spot. They haven't been able to identify it yet, so I can change whatever its effect will be, but I need some help with it. Its a small glass-like orb, and I want it to only activate when the character holding it dies. It would break open and coat the player with dust and revive him, but permanently changing what he is made out of. The only reference that I could find that does something similar is the spell Iron Body, but I want something slightly more interesting. I was wondering if there was another spell or some sort of reference that could be useful for changing what a character is made out of, any ideas?
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Mar 5, 2012 12:54
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kannonfodder posted:So in the latest Pathfinder encounter I ran my friends through, one of them discovered a magic item I kinda made up on the spot. They haven't been able to identify it yet, so I can change whatever its effect will be, but I need some help with it. Save vs. Death trap springs on the character holding the orb. Nothing like a demonstration. 
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Mar 6, 2012 05:33
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P.S. STILL COMPLETELY DEVOID OF MERIT
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While that does sound fun, I want his body to change and still have him playable. Get some new resistances and weaknesses etc
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Mar 6, 2012 09:59
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I'm using Insider for my group and i've made up some magic items on the spot that aren't in their databases. Is there anyway to add them? also I am really loving bad at giving my players loot. They're level 3 now and they have 1 or 2 magic items. Am I loving my players over? And on top of that whenever they kill enemies and want to loot them I go "Eh there's nothing magical on them" or "its a spear! +1. oh noone of you use spears well gently caress you" Well I don't actually say that. How do I get over my crippling anxiety of giving my players stuff so that they get happy? on another note; players just discovered an underground Emerald Claw base and now they want to loot everything and sell it. (like armory, food supplies, chairs, beds, statues)I hate them and can I make everything they touch into a mimic? Affi fucked around with this message at 11:04 on Mar 6, 2012 |
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Mar 6, 2012 11:01
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Have his body become more fluid. Cold damage can slow him (a round per dice rolled or something, give him a save though) but he can have sonic resistance and a bonus on opposed grapple checks / skill checks to squeeze through things. Or you know, made of DIAMOND. So now he's about twice as heavy, vulnerable to shatter/sonic effects, has a dex/speed penalty but gains DR and fire/acid resistance. That might be a little similar to Iron Body actually. I'm pretty sure one of the cold 3.5 splatbooks had some kind of diamond form spell. If you wanted to just make him a little bit elemental, you could just change his race to one of the gensai (elemental half breeds from FR)
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Mar 6, 2012 11:07
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Affi posted:How do I get over my crippling anxiety of giving my players stuff so that they get happy? Easiest way to handle it if you don't want to deal with the whole magic item business is enabling inherent bonuses, and then you can give out as many or as few magic items as you want. If you do want to give them magic items ask for wish lists, or go to the trouble of picking out good items for them every now and then and make sure to place them in loot piles. Build sidequests or enemies around getting a certain item, it can be good inspiration actually. Really don't do the "a magic item that, whoops, you can't use" thing, that's simply frustrating, although you could make it tolerable by also giving them a chance to use Transfer Enchantment. e: Affi posted:on another note; players just discovered an underground Emerald Claw base and now they want to loot everything and sell it. (like armory, food supplies, chairs, beds, statues) 
My Lovely Horse fucked around with this message at 11:15 on Mar 6, 2012 |
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Mar 6, 2012 11:12
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I have another question: How do you usually deal with collateral damage ? I'm preparing for a superhero game using Wild Talents/ORE and it doesn't seem to include collateral damage rules. Do other rulesets handle this somehow ?
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Mar 6, 2012 22:16
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kannonfodder posted:While that does sound fun, I want his body to change and still have him playable. Oh, woops. I misunderstood the question (I thought you wanted to know how to reveal this power to the players). Here are some effects in addition to Mojo's -Quarter of the size, twice the strength -Made of malleable glass (bonus to stealth checks, but don't get hit oh god) -Sticky skin -Now made of mist; who needs lockpicks? (Oh god a strong breeze nooooooo) -Body turns to pure magical energy (Totally not a ghost, guys)
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Mar 6, 2012 23:39
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quote:Do other rulesets handle this somehow ? Yeah. There's a chart in Weapons of the Gods (and maybe Legends of the Wulin) that you can optionally look at for inspiration of how hosed the scenery becomes when kung-fu dudes make an attack or defense roll of a certain level. You could replicate that for ORE fairly easily. Actually, you could almost copy it exactly, since both games use a match system. Or you could just make a cheat sheet of the PC's powers and their capacities, so you can say "You hit him with your acid jet and 800 cubit feet of pavement melt in a hiss like every cat in the world being lowered into a pit of fire."
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Mar 7, 2012 09:51
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Thanks for the ideas, I can quickly hammer out some solid rules for when the time comes. I'm not terribly worried about him being over/underpowered because of this, since these are our first characters of our first roleplaying game, so chances are good they wouldn't even notice if he was terribly unbalanced. One more thing, now that his body is made of diamond/glass/ghost/jello, would it be appropriate for standard healing spells and healing potions to work? Or would the healer need to grab himself a "manipulate steel" style spell to bend his broken metal limbs back into place? No matter what I would allow him to heal with standard resting actions, but do you think it would be terribly frustrating to have him no longer healed by regular cure light wounds?
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Mar 7, 2012 12:38
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kannonfodder posted:Thanks for the ideas, I can quickly hammer out some solid rules for when the time comes. I'm not terribly worried about him being over/underpowered because of this, since these are our first characters of our first roleplaying game, so chances are good they wouldn't even notice if he was terribly unbalanced. Would Cause Light Wounds hurt him? In my games, Cure spells have always been a very abstract "normalizing the targets life force", so it would work for people, elves, elementals, warforged, and certain constructs. That said, the inability, or reduced ability, to heal someone could make your players fights more interesting. And if they hate it, you could always send them on a quest to locate The Lost Macguffin that will remove the effect, or allow some sort of healing to work normally, but maybe at reduced effectiveness (while presumably reducing any benefits gained)
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Mar 7, 2012 18:50
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HELP! I'm running a PbP Rogue Trader game on another site, and it's stalled because the PC's won't leave the little station they're on. One of their objectives was to get the station back under control, which, apart from some Warp Ghosts, they've done. But they won't leave, and I don't know why. I've given them a list of extra things they can do, some of which will cost them supplies from the ship, and they have a couple of options for dealing with the ghosts - a dangerous exorcism, just blowing the haunted section up or just leaving them for now (direct fighting isn't an option atm as they don't have weapons that can affect them) . But they won't do anything. The game was pitched as a sandbox, go forth and explore type thing, but they're clinging to this poxy rock for dear life. They've only been there for one day of gametime so I can't really have their boss (none of them are the RT; they're working for an off-screen one) send an astrogram asking for a status update. I'm tempted to just go, "Guys, you've done everything active you can do here unless you want to attempt Exorcism or Demolitions. Pick a new destination so that we can move on and get player who's sitting this section out back into the game" Would that be okay? edit: It's not like the game's stopped and they've all sodded off as often happens with PbP; they just won't leave their rock Angrymog fucked around with this message at 23:31 on Mar 7, 2012 |
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Mar 7, 2012 23:21
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Try threatening their station (and if they're hanging around like this they probably think of it s theirs in at least some way). Make them leave to solve the problem. Either A they leave and you can build from that, or B. you can make the station less tempting to stay in.
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Mar 7, 2012 23:59
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Mr. Maltose posted:Try threatening their station (and if they're hanging around like this they probably think of it s theirs in at least some way). Make them leave to solve the problem. Either A they leave and you can build from that, or B. you can make the station less tempting to stay in. Problem is that they've managed to sort out the current threat to the station (the 3 NPC factions who've been running it (Any one them would have happily blown the place up if they thought either of the others was going to be given sole control over it)) and the station is already a poo poo place to stay - there's not enough food, light, heating or air * - they're not gaining anything by staying there; they're not even getting to use the stations stockpiles of food rather than their own. I have been pondering a suprise external threat, but not sure what - they're in a newly re-opened sector of space and no-one knows they're there yet. * I have suggested that they do some close range surveying to find suitable agri or mining worlds that might even be in range of unguided warp ships instead of just waiting for the first supply vessels to come in once they phone home.
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Mar 8, 2012 00:16
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Angrymog posted:Problem is that they've managed to sort out the current threat to the station (the 3 NPC factions who've been running it (Any one them would have happily blown the place up if they thought either of the others was going to be given sole control over it)) and the station is already a poo poo place to stay - there's not enough food, light, heating or air * - they're not gaining anything by staying there; they're not even getting to use the stations stockpiles of food rather than their own. Orks could show up, they are always showing up. and maybe they have to stop the orks, but this involves getting on their space hulk! and oh no, the space hulk just went into the warp, what a shame. now you've got to get to a fragment of a ship with a gellar field to survive in the warp, and ideally break off that ship to escape. This way you can give them a cool new ship, any kind you like, with the Space Hulk history, have it be infested with cool monsters and perhaps the holds are packed with exciting archaotech/xenotech/whatever! and they could be miles from the space station by the time they get out of the warp, so by the time they get back, it's just a stop on their rolling journey. you can do all this without any sort of railroading if you introduce it right. I mean a space hulk shows up, they are gonna want to get on that thing unless they hate fun.
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Mar 8, 2012 00:28
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Angrymog posted:Problem is that they've managed to sort out the current threat to the station (the 3 NPC factions who've been running it (Any one them would have happily blown the place up if they thought either of the others was going to be given sole control over it)) and the station is already a poo poo place to stay - there's not enough food, light, heating or air * - they're not gaining anything by staying there; they're not even getting to use the stations stockpiles of food rather than their own. It is more your job to be an enabler to the players than to shuffle them along on your prepared storyline. As much as you dislike it, you should not deny the players agency by forcing their hand. Give them options and try to make the option that they choose lead to interesting encounters. At the end of the day they are interested in relating to the game world and each other through their proxies. In this particular case, the players have fiercely elected to stay on the space station. Give them a slew of NPCs to relate to (with three factions it sounds like you have a start) and let them go hog wild if they want to play Babylon 5 / Deep Space 9 for a few sessions. If they have sorted through all the drama that you planned then remember that human beings are perennial soap operas and new dramas always crop up. Set up interesting NPC personality conflicts and emotionally charged scenes that give the players opportunities to take sides and choose how their characters relate to the NPCs and game world. It sounds like you are dropping breadcrumbs to the next big thing and that is good. You can up the ante by increasing the consequences for staying on the station (such as heat from their commanding officer about progress reports), but don't do a huge take-away event if you feel like the players are having fun at what they are doing.
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Mar 8, 2012 00:41
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Paolomania posted:It is more your job to be an enabler to the players than to shuffle them along on your prepared storyline. As much as you dislike it, you should not deny the players agency by forcing their hand. Give them options and try to make the option that they choose lead to interesting encounters. At the end of the day they are interested in relating to the game world and each other through their proxies. There isn't a prepared storyline - there's an objectives list, a list of locations, the records of a expedition from a few thousand years back and a random system generator for when they venture off into uncharted space. quote:In this particular case, the players have fiercely elected to stay on the space station. Give them a slew of NPCs to relate to (with three factions it sounds like you have a start) and let them go hog wild if they want to play Babylon 5 / Deep Space 9 for a few sessions. If they have sorted through all the drama that you planned then remember that human beings are perennial soap operas and new dramas always crop up. Set up interesting NPC personality conflicts and emotionally charged scenes that give the players opportunities to take sides and choose how their characters relate to the NPCs and game world. I would be happy for them to do stuff on the station if they'd just commit to doing something. They're just sitting in the OoC thread going, "There must be something more we can do" without commiting to the already outlined options or investigating any other possibilities. quote:It sounds like you are dropping breadcrumbs to the next big thing and that is good. You can up the ante by increasing the consequences for staying on the station (such as heat from their commanding officer about progress reports), but don't do a huge take-away event if you feel like the players are having fun at what they are doing. Thing is, any advancement along those lines me to say, "Right, you sit around docked to the station for a couple of weeks" As I said, it's literally been one game day - turning up the pressure right now without forcing a timeskip on them isn't really feasible. There's also the problem of the player who isn't really engaged with the station section.
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Mar 8, 2012 01:10
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Sounds like it's time to just straight-out ask "what kind of game do you guys actually want to play? Because it seems like this game is turning into something different from the space-hexcrawl we'd originally agreed on and I'm not sure where to go from here."
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Mar 8, 2012 01:14
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Thuryl posted:Sounds like it's time to just straight-out ask "what kind of game do you guys actually want to play? Because it seems like this game is turning into something different from the space-hexcrawl we'd originally agreed on and I'm not sure where to go from here." I've gone for just saying I can't move the game on until they commit to doing something, mentioning that I'd like to get the other player's character back in and reassuring them that I'm not trying to catch them out.
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Mar 8, 2012 01:36
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Angrymog posted:I've gone for just saying I can't move the game on until they commit to doing something, mentioning that I'd like to get the other player's character back in and reassuring them that I'm not trying to catch them out. but you can move the game along, easily. Make a spacehulk show up. Or, if you don't like that, make a mysterious stranger show up. Maybe he's got info on a world lost in the warp since the dark age. Maybe an eldar shows up at the station, and your guys are curious why he is allowed and what he is up to! "somebody shows up" is a good system. Or maybe you could have them get an astropathic call from their RT's HQ world, seems that there is a pretender to the title, or they are being audited by the Administratum and can't seem to bribe their way out, or the Ad Mech/some other Adeptus has decided that your guys are heretics and can't get services/will be hunted down and killed unless you accomplish some goal for the Magos that orchestrated your excommunication. basically demanding that your players "do something" means that you have failed to interest them. Especially in a PbP. PbP is not even remotely a good medium for sandbox games. Give them a railroad, even a really gentle one, and everyone will be happier.
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Mar 8, 2012 01:44
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Angrymog posted:I've gone for just saying I can't move the game on until they commit to doing something, mentioning that I'd like to get the other player's character back in and reassuring them that I'm not trying to catch them out. Just set the stage that time is still passing while their characters are standing around the water cooler hemming and hawing. Start dropping signals that things are happening on the station and in other locations (rumors from NPCs walking by, distress beacons, weird sounds) keep piling stuff on until it is clear that big events are going down, preferably a few big events at once so they have some sense of tension and opportunity cost in making a decision about what to deal with. Keep slowly turning up the heat and they will make a move. It could get humorous with sirens blaring as techs run screaming through the station and machinery explodes around them while distress reports come in about exterminatus on nearby planets and they are still standing around the water cooler, but in the end let them make the move.
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Mar 8, 2012 05:14
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There's no reason you need to resolve every action of every day. They've only been there a day and they've made themselves a nice little pocket of safety for some downtime. So give them the downtime, but gloss over it, do a montage, whatever. Downtime ends when something happens - somebody shows up, the boss calls, whatever. You say that they don't want to do anything but it's too soon for them to get word from their boss. So just say "The next two weeks pass uneventfully. You get to know the others on the station better in that time and even begin to make some friends. If there are any side-projects or anything your characters were working on in the meantime, let me know. Anyway, at the end of the two weeks you receive word from your employer. He says..."
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Mar 8, 2012 05:48
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For the next dungeon I want to try something new, which I adjusted from a story I read online, maybe even here. The party will go into a room about 12x16 squares with the exit at the end. Both sides have 3 balconies at about 15 feet high, each containing 2 Kobolds firing with slings. The party is L6 and these are L1 Kobolds with a +3 1D3-1 damage attack, so they are hardly a threat. However, when you climb up to a balcony you lose all Dex and are an easy target for the Kobolds on the wall across getting them a +4 bonus to hit you. Damage won't be high but it leads to a Concentration check of 10+damage to prevent falling down. Jumping from balcony to balcony is DC10 and will get you very close to the exit. This high route lets you escape the main floor. At the edge of the outermoest ones and in between the balconies are dragonheads cut from stone coming from the wall. These eight heads, four on each side, are all connected to a system of pipes, pumps and crazy engineering shooting a stream of 2D4+2 damage flames through each head in a random direction every turn. A stream is about 8 to 10 squares long and a single one cannot block the entire route. Two might cross and stop you dead in your tracks though. If in any turn the direction changes to a square you are on you get a DC13 Reflex save for half damage. The streams keep going for a full turn, so unless you want to run through it for full damage it will block your path randomly. There is one Stone Golem walking around here, slowing and slamming people. It is big enough to block flames, but that means getting close to him. The exit is a locked door that takes some time to smash or lockpick. On both sides of the door are two Stone Golems, stuck in the wall. They will grab and throw back 2D6 squares anyone at the door they can get their hands on. There are also 3 randomly placed spring traps that do the same. The main idea is to get them to think and cooperate. Not everyone has the skill to climb, but the person climbing is a sitting duck and will most likely fail the load of Concentration checks unless they take out the Kobolds first. However, that gives the Golem time to reach them and slow their route through the flames. Defeating him is nearly impossible and it would be in the midst of these flames. They can use the Shield of Arrow Attraction to keep the climber safe, but that means the already slow Dwarf Cleric stays behind. Disabling the heads is an option, but takes a full turn and they can randomly change direction and might hit you full on. Someone could block a head from closeby with a shield allowing others to pass, but the blocker still gets damage and possibly drops the suddenly hot shield. At the door you can only do some damage to it before being thrown back by the Golems and having to run through the flames again. My question is, do you think this is fun or frustrating?
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Mar 8, 2012 15:54
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BioTech posted:My question is, do you think this is fun or frustrating? Frustrating. The way to get out randomly kicks you back into the gauntlet? Sounds like a boss fight where the boss is invincible most of the time and you have to keep dodging the same old attacks and waiting.
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Mar 8, 2012 16:46
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BioTech posted:My question is, do you think this is fun or frustrating? Depends on your players. I know so people who'd enjoy the challenge, but it has a chance to turn horrible and aggravating quickly. Some things I'd recommend: 1) Don't have the blasts change direction completely random; random generally frustrates people. You could randomize the timing, or have them respond to player actions, but there should be some way for the party to anticipate, or at least have a good idea, of what the heads will do next. 2) I'd maybe replace the wandering Golem with some sort of environmental hazard. I get that the point is to make the ground assault unpleasant, but you might end up with folks wanting to fight the Golem. 3) Instead of using it as a connecting hall, use it a quest objective. Maybe at the far end (behind a grate), is a lever that opens another door elsewhere in the dungeon, or it contains a particularly attractive treasure (Money, Weapon, or just MacGuffin), so they have to get in and get out.
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Mar 8, 2012 18:28
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My players are about to come to the climax of their current quest, and so I've been asking them to tell me about the kind of quest they want to pursue next. And I've just been informed that they want a civilization (not wilderness) based quest with a mid-level devil who is secretly a Moriarty-type Xanatos-Gambit mastermind manipulating everything from behind the scenes. Oddly specific, but there you go. And all this in the Paragon tier. Well, they've been in the wilderness all Heroic Tier, and I've been wanting to get back into a civilization type quest, though I'm not as good at it. But I'm definitely not sure how to run a GOOD Xanatos Gambit. Let me clarify: I watched Death Note. I enjoyed the first half or so, with L and whatnot, and that seemed like a fun enough "thinking ahead" kind of puzzle, but the 2nd half lost me. I felt that the fight with Near was more a case of "the only reason I'm being asked to accept that you're a genius is that you happened to come to the right conclusion with 0 evidence." Back and forth, the only way any of them could do anything was because the scriptwriters already knew the answers... there was often no way to get from point A to point B. So I don't want that kind of Xanatos Gambit. Because the easy thing to do would be just take whatever the players did, and make it part of the plan. I don't think that'd work, or be fun. Any suggestions? Tips? Ideas? EDIT: A potentially good hook/starting place would be the current climax, which is a bunch of forces fighting over a McGuffin-ish location that provides supernatural beings (gods, demons, devils, elder fae, and wizards sneaky enough to figure out the trick) massive amounts of extra power. It's actually a prison for Lovecraftian horrors, but the Lovecraftian horrors can be drained of energy indefinably if you're careful. Iunnrais fucked around with this message at 19:17 on Mar 8, 2012 |
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Mar 8, 2012 19:01
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One of the exiest gambits to pull, and yeah perhaps its also one of the cheapest, is the "ah, you finally beat me...JUST AS I INTENDED!" Done badly, it is really poor, but add a few complex steps in and you have something quite cool. My advice would be to give them several different villains - maybe someone in a position of political power, and three subjects. They hear rumors or see evidence that someone is planning to summon some huge demon beastie to the realm, and set about attempting to stop it. The kind/emperor/leader is a nasty piece of work, tyrannical and warmongering, and seems to be maybe TOO obvious a choice. Part way into the investigation (fighting cult members, finding mysterious treasures, stopping relics being imported) the party learn that he isn't necessarily evil in the 'cosmic' sense - and is more just a vicious, power-hungry bully. Suggest that he may be ignorant of the entire thing, or may not fully understand what is going to happen once the ritual is completed. Give the three subjects distinct personalities - a psychotic jester, a somber cleric and a bitter General or something. As they progress, have lots of ambiguous clues pointing to different people. Then they finally find out the ritual is goign ahead - they storm the palace and realise that it IS the leader doing the ritual, but he thinks it is for something else entirely - summoning a demon army to wage war on enemy lands or something. Party rushes in, kills him, kills his clerics, then BAM - Subject of choice turns up and reveals that the leader was the final sacrifice needed to start the ritual. It is not about summoning a new demon, it is about returning the subject to his true demonic form. Then he can fly away and become a target for later on, or be killed on the spot.
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Mar 8, 2012 19:12
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| # ? May 26, 2024 02:07 |
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In my experience, you cannot plan out a Xanatos Gambit. If you could, you'd be Xanatos. Us regular folk just can't anticipate the actions of others - especially people who will go out of their way to surprise you, like say, most players - that well. So don't try. Come up with a goal for your puppet master type to pursue. Then come up with a few more goals. Then figure out ways that those goals will interact, such that failing at one goal secretly achieves other goals. Example: Lord Evilicus would like to control the city of Civilizationopolis. Lord Evilicus would also like to achieve a position of leadership within the Guild of Badguys, and also ideally become very, very wealthy. So how do these goals intersect? Well, if Lord Evilicus is able to present his plans for controlling Civilizationopolis to his superiors in the Guild of Badguys, he can figure A) they'll succeed, in which case the odds are good that they'll install him as a figurehead ruler, or B) they'll fail and possibly get killed by adventurer-types, leaving vacancies above him in the leadership ranks. Either way, he has a good shot at getting something he wants... and if he does poo poo like take out insurance policies on all the buildings he secretly owns in the slums that are bound to get knocked down in the upcoming struggle for control, well, that's cash in pocket. The key here is to generate multiple "success" scenarios for the villain, such that when the heroes zero in on one scenario they're triggering the conditions for him to achieve the other scenarios... and then winging it until you have a better idea of which scenario the heroes are zeroing in on. And the OTHER key is to lay this all out in advance, so that after the PCs have achieved some victory you can explain to them, out of game, how they actually made the villain more powerful than he had been before, and point to all the clues you dropped to that effect (in the above example, slum-dwellers grousing about Lord Evilicus' men raising their rents - which the party didn't know was because he was taking out insurance policies. That kind of thing). The players will sneer at you if they think you pulled a "Hah, but you've actually done everything I wanted!" out of your rear end, but if you can show them that you actually laid groundwork you'll impress the poo poo out of them. So, basically, don't approach it from the perspective of "what's my end goal?" Approach it from the perspective of "what are my end goals, and how do they play off one another?" By keeping multiple goal-targets in mind you can Xanatos it up much more effectively.
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Mar 8, 2012 20:04
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