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A while back, I played a mage in a mixed nWoD game set in WW2. Our party's changeling reluctantly suggested going to a Fae Market to seek out information for one of our missions. He told the group before we entered: "The Fae are absolutely never to be trusted. We know what we want, and we know what we're trading to get it. Under no circumstances should you buy, sell, or trade anything else with Fae vendors. And absolutely never, ever try to cheat a vendor. This means you, Candle." Candle was my Polish communist techno-mage's shadow name. She was a bit of a rascal. Naturally, the first thing I did once in the goblin market was to use Matter and Prime to fabricate a relic and trade it to a goblin who was savvy about his own poo poo, but had never seen awakened magic before. The thing was going to dissolve into nothingness in like an hour. Having virtually stolen an item, I quickly fled the market.  "This is a problem for Future Candle," was what I told the group when they chided me. It became her catchphrase.
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Mar 4, 2023 21:41
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One of the players joked that the fake poo poo "fell of the back of a mana truck" or something to that effect. The whole scene was a comic mess. It was tons of fun.
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Mar 4, 2023 22:14
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Fivemarks posted:Man, it sounds like all these campaign settings made by creepy, horny, racist, or badly religious white dudes in the 70's and 80's all suck rear end. Hey now. Hey. That's uncalled for. It happened through the 90's too.
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Mar 11, 2023 02:07
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Reclaimer posted:There's that good ol' catpiss. We've been getting far too comfortable.  Thank you for sharing such a hilariously awful story. Thank you for your service 
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Mar 16, 2023 02:04
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I've read this whole thread and absorbed it enough that every once in a while I'll have a moment when I'm running a game and I psych myself out a bit, thinking, "this isn't weird, is it?" In hindsight, it never is, but in the moment I can sometimes feel the Fear of the WhizzardTM creep into my confidence as a GM. For example, at the conclusion of a 7th Sea campaign I ran recently, the final conflict was storming an Inquisition prison to rescue a key NPC from their clutches. Now, I didn't linger on any of this, but the inquisition was setting up to torture a confession out of the NPC and then put her to death before the PCs arrived. So this is what was about to happen when the PCs kicked in the door and rapidly perforated every red hood in sight. I didn't linger on any of the potentially salacious details. I even went out of my way to note how the NPC (a fire sorceress) torched the leader of the Inquisition before his men apparently got control of the situation, and even a bit after despite their best efforts. (Cardinal Verdugo now looks like Two Face in our current continuity.) The players wanted a thrilling conclusion, so they got to storm the castle against a ticking clock, but just the inherent creepiness of an inquisition made me question myself for just a minute. But when I read true cat piss stories like the one above, I can reassure myself that, no, just "having antagonist inquisitors in a game" does not sink to the level of "a pregnant female halfling that is going to give birth to *my character*" Again, thank you for your service.
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Mar 17, 2023 21:15
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Had a great couple of weekly games in our SAturday 7th Sea campaign: The cast: Kristjana: A Vesten/Ussuran (Scandinavian/Russian) huntress and rune sorceress. Laconic and private, her closest friend a steppes horse. (My character) Helgi: A Vesten whaler-turned-monster hunter. A soft-hearted gentile giant, rapidly becoming the party's moral core. Viktoria: A Ussuran shapeshifting noblewoman. Betrothed to a Vesten Jarl, a bit of a romantic to Kristjana's hard-nosed naturalism. Mandelos: An Aegean (Greek) demigod. A cocksure jock forever seeking opportunities for heroic escapades. An odd couple-type rival to Kristjana. Evelien: A Vendel (Danish) polymath, an anthropologist by trade. Circumspect widow to a Vesten, dedicated to stemming the Vendel/Vesten conflict. So we spent the last year getting to know a small community were are trying to develop in Vesten, and along with it three NPCs: Manuel, Aegil, and Lena. Manuel is a Vaticine (Catholic) priest who is trying to set up this settlement as a peaceful nexus between Vendel and Vesten cultures. Aegil and Lena are two of his comrades. They are monster hunters like us, but they go way back. Aegil is a Vesten berserker, and Lena is an Eisen (German) hunter. Lena and Helgi hit it off particularly well, and she begins mentoring the PC who has only recently quit hunting whales in order to hunt monsters. Aegil is very gregarious and gets along well with everyone. After a year of that (largely in downtime), Aegil and Lena go off on a mission and do not return. We are sent out to find them. We kill the giant serpent that supposedly ate them, but do not find their remains. The sailors they were with report seeing them eaten, but literally disappearing in the throat of the monster. We continue on to finish the investigation of an island they were on their way to, and we do not find them there either. In the meantime, Kristjana scries on Manuel, who acted dodgy, insisting on being left alone when Aegil and Lena were not found. She does this partly out of concern for him and partly out of curiosity. He is revealed to be doing his own bit of scrying into a mysterious artifact, and weeping about whatever he sees in there. Kristjana keeps it to herself and waits to ask him one-on-one. We finally meet up again with Manuel after completing a mission involving giant bees and a dinosaur-sized songbird. Aegil and Lena were not found there, either, so it's looking increasingly grim. When Kristjana confronts him about what is going on, he goes to the whole group and tells us we are now involved in a conspiracy. He says that Aegil and Lena have "suffered a fate worse than death," and that we will soon understand. Another man literally steps out of the shadows of the tent Manuel had been staying in alone for a week. Both of them claim to be part of a secret order of knights, Die Kreuzritter, tasked with fighting a secret war against monsters who take the shape of humans. They also claim that there is a shadow world parallel to our own, and the knights use it to travel swiftly and silently around Theah. Dying in his hostile shadow world is the fate that Aegil and Lena have suffered. Dying there turned them into mockeries of life, and they are trapped there for eternity. The group is told in no uncertain terms that we have seen enough of the order's secrets prior to this meeting that we must be inducted. A tacit threat of "or else..." is left unsaid, but my prickly libertarian huntress calls it out. She is already pressed into the service of the hated Vendel league, so while everyone bristles at this proposition, she particularly hates being told what to do in this way. The PCs confer with each other in private before we give them an answer. Mandelos is naively optimistic; he believes we can agree to the order's terms for now, and then ditch them as soon as we get back to Theah. Having already lost a dad and two brothers to similar ultimatums from the Vendel League (hence her begrudging cooperation), Kristjana drops her guard to tell Mandelos and the whole group that she would not like to see more people she cares about die in prideful attempts at resisting such an ultimatum, and that we should probably cooperate with this group of knights that can apparently travel rapidly through shadows, anywhere we hide from them. With calm cajoling from Evelien, the group agrees, at least for now. The knight who emerged from the shadows, Ingo, is going to bring us back to mainland Theah and to a stronghold held by Die Kreuzritter. He is going to use The Dark Paths of the shadow world to do this, coving hundreds of miles in a matter of minutes. We are told we must stay with him at all times. He has a cloak which will protect those near him from the baleful effects of the Dark Paths. (Mechanically, the Dark Paths use the game's drowning rules, except that if you "drown" you become an undead native to the plane for eternity. His cloak acts as a sort of "diving bell" for the whole group as long as we are within arm's reach of him.) He brings Manuel back separately, as he has to answer to Die Kreuzritter's Hochmiester ahead of our arrival. It seems like he really hosed up in letting us get too close to these secrets in order to get us to rescue his friends. The Dark Paths are cold, gray, and eerily silent. Things in the real world appear as negatives of themselves, although space is twisted and compressed. There is not a 1-to-1 correspondence to points in space there, and Ingo says it takes considerable skill to navigate. Halfway back to Theah, we encounter Aegil and Lena. They are trapped at the bottom of a chasm such that they cannot climb out unaided. Having succumbed to the Dark Paths in such a state, Aegil is forever in berserk mode and is raging away in the chasm. Lena is terrified and trying to escape. The GM tells us that we can get down there no problem, but getting out will require someone's help topside. It is also clear that we can just note the location and come back here down the road; they're not going anywhere, and this is an optional boss battle. We are all concerned with putting our friends to rest, but most of the players assume this is a thing for later. Mandelos, staking his place as our Leeroy Jenkins, bellows, "Into the fray, losers! Our friends need our help one last time. Who are we to pass them by?" He leaps into the chasm. Heroes in 7th Sea are made of Three Musketeers stuff. While it was questionable in the first place, we cannot just ditch Mandelos to fight this battle alone. Helgi leaps down and Viktoria assumes the form of a snow leopard and leaps in too. Kristjana has a bow and is pretty strong, so she stays up top with Ingo to pull people up. She helps Evelien down the chasm too, as Evelien's shield will be needed in the combat. Kristjana buffs two of the heroes, and Evelien buffs a third. We are ready for this. Despite Mandelos' impetuousness, we are feeling good about this. Aegil has already almost incapacitated Lena. As soon as we show up, she springs up from the corner she was hiding and beelines it for the spot under where Kristjana is perched to help people up. Before she can say anything, Mandelos swats her down, assuming she is going for Kristjana, the group's lifeline. She is incapacitated by this. She is conscious, but helpless. Berserk has a few effects: you get stronger, you ignore crippling effects, you have a fear effect, and you cannot tell friend from foe. That's all the relevant stuff, at least. All PCs are asked to resist the fear effect. Everyone passes except for Kristjana. I take this and run with the idea that between this place being so unnatural and Aegil's plight being like a reminder of Kristjana's father's fate (having died without the sacred spear of his ancestors), that the dead not being in the hallowed halls of the Old Gods is unnerving to her. Mechanically, it becomes very difficult to attack Aegil. That's ok though; Kristjana's most important task is to get people out of the chasm when the time comes. Being the meathead that got us into this mess, Mandelos moves to draw Aegil's aggro. He taunts the berserker. Mechanically, this is a check against Aegil's Resolve trait. Resolve usually runs from 1 to 5, with most characters at 2 or 3. Mandelos crushes this check, telling the GM, "well, unless he has eight Resolve, he's taunted." He means this in jest. Eight is an exagerration. The taunt fails. The GM makes it clear that it isn't an immunity inherent to berserk or undeath. He perceives the taunt, but shrugs it off. The resistance is on Resolve. This version of Aegil has at least eight Resolve in a system where humans cap out at 5. All the players begin to scramble, having gone from smug, self-assuredness to panic in one die roll. "John Doe has the upper hand," the GM says (quoting Seven). The uproar of laughter lightens things for a bit, but when we settle down we go back to work. This means that we have to deal 16 Dramatic Wounds to Aegil to kill him. And we have to do that before he kills one of us. The "future optional boss battle" idea comes back into my mind at this point. Kristjana swallows her anxiety long enough to put a couple arrows in him. Helgi impales him with a harpoon, making him easier to hit. Viktoria mauls him, calling shots to his arms and legs that further hinder him. We are doing everything we can to debuff him, knowing we are in a battle of attrition here. Mandelos slugs away and Evelien interposes with her shield woman abilities, keeping everyone healthy through the end of round 1. The GM asks for a drowning check for everyone in the chasm, as they are outside of Ingo's range. Everyone is fine for now. Round 2 begins much the same. Mandelos calls a shot to disarm Aegil of his shadow blade. He has yet to land a blow with it, but we want to keep it that way. This will, at the very least, eat an action for him to pick it up. But before he can, Helgi uses his kick-up ability from being a sailor to kick the fallen weapon into his off hand. Everything is coming up great. Then Aegil uses an action to manifest another shadow weapon from the Dark Paths. That makes sense, and is fine. At least it ate an action. He moves to attack Mandelos with his next action. The harpoon impaling him rips out from this, dealing him a Dramatic Wound. Between that, Mandelos, Viktoria, and Kristjana's attacks, he is carrying 4 Dramatic Wounds. 4 of 16. His attack would hit Mandelos, so Evelien moves to block for him again, per her abilities. Mechanically, she is the new recipient of the attack regardless, but if she beats his attack roll with her interpose check, she parries. Otherwise, she takes the damage in Mandelo's place (and gets a Drama Die for her trouble). This worked in round 1. This time, she rolls pretty drat well, but is still hit. The ensuing damage immediately cripples her. Aegil is about to act again, and Viktoria mauls him, trying to draw his fire. This isn't a taunt per se, but just trying to be too obvious a target for him not to hit. Because if he hits Evelien like that again, she's dead, or at least knocked out. This works, but he lays into Viktoria with his next attack. The only reason Viktoria is not crippled by this is because she is exceptionally hearty in this snow leopard form. Round 2 went as poorly as round 1 went well. We need to get the gently caress out of there. Kristjana sets her bow down and lies down to haul people out of the chasm. She yells for Helgi to help get Lena out. She spends her actions doing that and then gets Evelien out too. After passing another, increasingly difficult, drowning check, we go into round 3 in full retreat. By luck alone the relevant PCs beat Aegil to the punch. Kristjana helps Helgi out of the chasm. Mandelos leaps out using his superhuman, demigod strength. After taking another blow from Aegil, Viktoria also leaps out on her own. She is crippled now, as is Evelien. Lena is mechanically Knocked Out but conscious. She is cold to the touch, and an unearthly gray color. She is pleading with the group to bring her back to Eisen, back to her family. She is pleading not to be left in this hellscape. The GM asks for drowning check from everyone. It is then that we notice that Ingo has moved away from us, away from Lena. We all pass, but his actions put a fine point on what is about to happen. Having already lost her composure to the fear check and general bad vibes of the Dark Paths, Kristjana takes Lena's hand to run her toward Ingo. Evelien grabs her arm. "No, Kristjana. We cannot," she says in Ussuran which Lena cannot understand. Lena's hand is cold, ice cold. She is crying. Kristjana kneels with her and looks her in the eye. "Be at peace, Lena. We will never forget you." She traces the Wholeness rune on Lena's sternum. Lena is still pleading for us to take her home as Kristjana cuts her throat with a hunting knife. She turns to ash. The usually stoic Kristjana is bawling now. Everyone else runs to the safety of Ingo, and it is Mandelos who helps Kristjana to her feet. "You did the right thing. We'll come back for him too, another day," he says. Aegil is heard raging in the chasm as we flee the Dark Paths. It is one of the only sounds to accompany us in the otherwise eerily quiet place. Next time: the aftermath and the stronghold.
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Apr 2, 2023 17:17
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CobiWann posted:Man, when 7th Sea turns dark, it can turn DARK. See - every other bloody country's and society's mojo. Yeah. Die Kreuzritter is one of the more grim secret societies. So it seems like the whole group will be inducted. I should have known. The GM played a DK character in a long campaign a while back. He loves those wacky shadow knights. The only stipulations he had for character creation was: everyone has to at least not be hostile toward the Vaticine Church, and no one can have a secret society. The first one was obvious: the church, in the person of Manuel, was ostensibly setting up this settlement. Kristjana is pagan and Evelien is Objectionist (protestant), but neither of them have a problem working for the church. But the second stipulation is making a lot more sense now: mechanically, characters can only be members of one secret society. I think the plan always was to Shanghai us all into Die Kreuzritter, and I am here for it. 
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Apr 3, 2023 01:33
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A union steward looming behind your familiar at all times, just constantly writing down grievances to file. "You don't need to do that, Ry'lth'mborg. You're entitled to a break." (Glares at the PC)
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Apr 12, 2023 00:43
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Warlock makes a dollar, I make a dime That's why I scry on company time
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Apr 12, 2023 01:17
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Phone posting from a waiting room on my day off, so you get: The Aftermath To recap, our 7th Sea party have been recruited, first as monster hunters for a burgeoning Vesten settlement, and later by the secret society Die Kreuzritter whose operative runs the town. We had befriended two of this guy's pals, and went seeking them out when they did not return from a mission. As it turns out, they were killed on The Dark Paths that Die Kreuzritter use, and are both undead shadows of themselves. One of them we failed to put to rest, and the other was put to rest despite her pleading to return to the world of the living. Prior post here: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3460258&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=414#post530904812 Now we are in deep with Die Kreuzritter (I'M going to just say DK from here). The cast: Kristjana: A Vesten/Ussuran (Scandinavian/Russian) huntress and rune sorceress. Laconic and private, her closest friend a steppes horse. (My character) Helgi: A Vesten whaler-turned-monster hunter. A soft-hearted gentile giant, rapidly becoming the party's moral core. Viktoria: A Ussuran shapeshifting noblewoman. Betrothed to a Vesten Jarl, a bit of a romantic to Kristjana's hard-nosed naturalism. Mandelos: An Aegean (Greek) demigod. A cocksure jock forever seeking opportunities for heroic escapades. An odd couple-type rival to Kristjana. Evelien: A Vendel (Danish) polymath, an anthropologist by trade. Circumspect widow to a Vesten, dedicated to stemming the Vendel/Vesten conflict. So we get out of The Dark Paths and find ourselves in a DK stronghold. It is a castle somewhere in Eisen (Germany) but we are "strongly encouraged" not to leave. The Hochmiester of the order will arrive in three days to address our unique situation. In this time, we are free to roam the castle grounds. A few things happen: It is clear that two unprecedented things have just happened. Five people joining the order under duress is definitely not the normal plan, and losing two to The Dark Paths is unheard of. Apparently only a dozen members have fallen in such a way in 250 years altogether. The fact that we tried to put them both to rest earns us kudos from the regular DK knights. Evelien and Mandelos find different approaches to gathering information about DK. Evelien talks to the stronghold's librarian while recovering from her injuries, and Mandelos chats up the younger knights while easily rinsing them in athletic competitions in the courtyard. Evelien gets some good info and takes it to the group. Mandelos is too dense to know the value of what he has learned yet. More on that later. We are shown around a bit. Well, everyone but Kristjana is (see below). Helgi inquires about the order's ability to care for its knights. He is kindhearted and concerned for his pal Kristjana. The group is shown a special room. They see three knights: two playing chess and one reading a book in the corner. The knight showing off the stronghold explains that, "there is at least one knight in this room at all times. It is his duty. He keeps vigil over any knight who seeks solace and peace of mind from the horrors we face. Here we keep candles lit at all times. This is a place always free of darkness." Kristjana is absent for most of this. She hangs around at the stable with her horse for a day, but leaves before dawn on the second day. Just as her friends begin to worry she has truly ditched, she returns after sunset on the second day. She doesn't say anything about it, but seems to have resolved herself to dealing with DK despite her prickly libertarian nature. She wordlessly avails herself of the PTSD ward ahead of the Hochmiester's arrival on day three. Hochmiester Gunther Schmidl is your stock Grizzled VeteranTM. Before he gets to his pitch to the group, he leads us once more into The Dark Paths to see what we and the order are up against. This is where things get weird. See, 7th Sea by genre is a game of high fantasy, adventure, and melodrama. Its parents are The Princess Bride and Zorro and The Count of Monte Cristo. But there's a weird undercurrent to all of it that, frankly, some GMs choose to ignore. The game allows plenty of room for that, as there's more than enough swashbuckling to float the game. But what we're getting into here is--  See, there's these beings that DK calls Outsiders. They are literally inhuman, and there are several known types. What they all seem to have in common is that they have been supernaturally sealed out of the physical world, and they absolutely hate humans. The nature of The Dark Paths lays bare this barrier between... wherever the Outsiders are now, and Theah. Critically, some types of sorcery seems to be tearing holes in the barrier. And there is one titantic, draconic/demonic face pressing up against the barrier. There is a place in The Dark Paths where this face looms in the false sky like a sinister moon. This order of knights that were supposedly wiped out in a war 250 years ago have been in a secret war with the Outsiders this whole time. They have recontextualized Legion (Satan) on these grounds so much so that they seek aid from anyone of any nation or creed that will join them in this fight. We are introduced to followers of the Second Prophet (Muslims) and a pagan from the new world who are on board, for exxmple. This does quite a bit to assuage Helgi, Kristjana, and Victoria, all of whom are pagan in some way. This order was once (and secretly still is) the Hierophant's (Pope's) Praetorian Guard, so they are intimately tied to the church. But their real duty is fighting this weird poo poo, and they are open-minded about help. The Hochmiester explains, by way of apology, that this duress was not intentional and is unusual. Manuel, our pal back at the Vesten settlement, apparently panicked when he lost his two closest comrades and asked us, uninitiated, to find them despite the possibility we could stumble into this secret society. He has been punished and stripped of some (but not all) rank for all this. We discuss a few things with the Hochmiester before, one by one, we all take the oath of membership. Now this is a Die Kreuzritter campaign. Once we're finally turned loose from the stronghold, Mandelos has a plan. He approaches Kristjana for a walk-and-talk because he knows her best among the group. "We swore an oath to fight monsters and defend our fellow knights," he says. "That old Eisen never said anything about betraying anyone else besides the Hierophant." "So?" Kristjana says. "So we should ditch all this as soon as we're able. I know you hate being told what to do even more than I do," Mandelos says. Kristjana halts her horse to look down at Mandelos, to focus. "Listen. These people can go anywhere, anytime, at speed. We're not going to get away from them. And besides, you saw what we're up against. We might as well help. It's a worthy cause." "But don't you think it's possible that the needs of the order could make some of us have to sacrifice another? Loathe as I am to say it, Kristjana, I care more about you than any of these knights. I care more about the rest of the group too. We should be more loyal to each other than the order." "I agree in principle. But let's do the monster hunting until that comes up. We'll cross that bridge when we get to it," Kristjana says. "Ok old pal. You just say so and I'll just start punching every knight I see. I'll start with the Hochmiester. You just say the word." The word, as it turns out, is literal. The code word for the whole group to turn on DK if need be is "Baklava" (named after Mandelos' favorite food). We may never need to use it, but it's there. All for one, and one for all bay-bee!
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Apr 14, 2023 20:13
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JustJeff88 posted:How many 'nationalities' (not sure what to call them exactly) are there in 7 Seas? The game calls them nations, although the pedantic history nerd in me bristles at the term because only a couple of them are, politically speaking, post-Westphalian nation-states. Anyway, there's a bunch: Avalon = British Isles Montaigne = France Eisen = Germany Vendel = Netherlands and Denmark Vesten = Scandanavia Ussura = Russia Voddace = Italy Castille = Spain and Portugal Aegeus = Greece and the Balkans Aegeus isn't strictly canon but our group uses it. I added that in between first and second edition, in the middle of fixing the broken mechanics of first edition. It always annoyed me and a few of the folks I play with that there's a huge swath of eastern and southern Europe that they just left out of the setting in the first place. So I added on that smashes together Greece, Romania, Hungary, and the Balkans.
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Apr 14, 2023 23:57
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JustJeff88 posted:You could make a 10th nation(-state) called Pedanticus, and you could be the head of state! lol Yeah, it is my cross to bear. Although I mention it only because some of the nations are more unified than others. Eisen and Vodacce are really just a collection of smaller principalities, whereas Montaigne is unified under an absolute monarch with their Not-Louis XIV. JustJeff88 posted:I do. I care about all of them. I'm a French-language scholar - I care about Africa a great deal even if the rest of the world doesn't. First edition mentioned places like The Crescent Empire (Africa and the Middle East) and Cathay (Asia), but they were deliberately left vague. Early maps of Theah were drawn wrong on purpose, the idea being that ignorant Theans had no idea the shape or size of these places, and the game's lore was written from the Thean perspective. Later books published the whole map of the CE and it was like, "oops it isn't that little peninsula from the core book! ¯\ (ツ) /¯ "
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Apr 15, 2023 01:19
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CobiWann posted:Second Edition (the one that came out in 2017) added some new countries like the Polish-Lithuania Commonwealth and Greece, as well as books for the Far East, India, the Middle East, the Caribbean, and South America, along with a PDF for Vatican City. Yeah. I like the new setting stuff but I'm not wild about the mechanics. Our group has had this unofficial 2e for so long that we just stuck with that.
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Apr 15, 2023 01:55
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Kavak posted:I want to be my ancestors in fantasy New England, when is that book? Play an Avalonian and/or Vendel Objectionist. Take the Colonial background. Take a secret society like Rose and Cross or Invisible College. It can be done.
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Apr 15, 2023 02:34
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CobiWann posted:Our rule tended to be "First Edition Rules, Second Edition Setting." Yeah, we kind of backed into doing that five years before 2e came out. My rewrite of 1e is... comprehensive, but fundamentally 1e mechanics. It just took a lot to fix the many, many problems heaped atop it. I still prefer it to the published 2e rules, but part of that is probably inertia on the part of a group that has been using these rules for over a decade.
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Apr 15, 2023 02:38
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JustJeff88 posted:Do nationalities get any kind of mechanical advantages in this game, or is it just flavour? Each nation gets a bump to one of the game's five traits (1e gave a free dot; I changed it to a cost discount to make it less deterministic). Nations also offer discounts to certain abilities and exclusive abilities. For example, my character was able to buy Steppes Horse because she is Ussuran. But the vast majority of abilities aren't barred in this way. Nations also have a set of combat schools and one sorcery. You can buy schools out-of-nation at a slight penalty, but players almost never do that. The sorcery is exclusive to a nation, though.
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Apr 15, 2023 10:52
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So our 7th Sea group managed to fumble the bag pretty hard the other day. Despite every player being veterans of the hobby for 20-30 years, we committed the cardinal sin of splitting up the party.  There are five characters in the party, all of whom have recently joined a secret society called Die Kreuzritter: Kristjana: A Vesten/Ussuran (Scandinavian/Russian) huntress and rune sorceress. Laconic and private, her closest friend a steppes horse. (My character) Helgi: A Vesten whaler-turned-monster hunter. A soft-hearted gentile giant, rapidly becoming the party's moral core. Viktoria: A Ussuran shapeshifting noblewoman. Mandelos: An Aegean (Greek) demigod. A cocksure jock forever seeking opportunities for heroic escapades. An odd couple-type rival to Kristjana. Evelien: A Vendel (Danish) polymath, an anthropologist by trade. Circumspect widow to a Vesten, dedicated to stemming the Vendel/Vesten conflict. Now let's talk about hubris. The rewrite of 7th Sea that we're using slightly alters the first edition hubris mechanic. Basically, they used to be optional, or you could take a virtue instead at a cost. Almost everyone took a hubris, though, for cost reasons, and they're more interesting anyway, so I made them mandatory in the rewrite. So all of these characters have a fatal flaw. The only two hubrises that are pertinent to this story are Mandelos (Reckless) and Kristjana (Proud). The group receives intel that something weird is going on out in the Ussuran tundra that might be Die Kreuzritter's concern. One traveler has returned from the tundra saying that several of his buddies fell into a chasm formed by a glacial runoff stream that ought not be there. He wants us to find his friends (or their things, if they are dead, because there were some valuables). Die Kreuzritter has taken up his plight because they suspect his group may have inadvertently found some spooky poo poo they ought not to know. So the order sends our party to investigate. The GM establishes a minigame using several of the game's skills. We are trying to go as quickly as we think we can afford, pushing the limits of our travel speed and the effects of the extreme cold of the Ussuran tundra. Helgi and Evelien are not suited to many of the rolls, so they set a reasonable pace. Viktoria promptly takes the form of a snow leopard to stave off the cold and sets a slightly faster pace. Kristjana is the most skilled in these rolls (Survival, Tracking, etc.) and she is mounted, so she sets a fast pace to act as a trailblazer and forward scout. She makes an effort to mark her trail for the others to follow, and Evelien is making an effort to cover the group's tracks in bringing up the rear. And then there is Mandelos.  Despite being poorly acclimated to the tundra, he leans on his sheer physical prowess to set a pace to match Kristjana. He is racing a loving steppes horse across a tundra over multiple days. He is reckless, so this makes sense. But Kristjana is both his rival and is herself proud. She cannot allow him to win this race that she now finds herself in. So she continues setting as rapid a pace as she can, expecting Mandelos to fall back at some point. She is also using rune magic to make their camp warmer during rests, so she can do this essentially forever. But failing survival checks or getting battered by the cold doesn't slow a character down (yet) in this minigame. You go at whatever pace you want, and that pace sets the difficulty of things like survival and tracking. The penalty for failure are things like damage and exhaustion penalties. Mandelos is failing these checks all over the place and getting worn down by everything, but his superhuman physique is still letting him keep pace, and that's all he cares about. After three days of this, both of the players begin to realize that we have left the rest of the group behind. Kristjana originally intended on setting a fast pace for a day and then just staying a bit ahead of the group before letting them catch up. But her idiotic race with Mandelos has continued to stretch that lead so far that it would take the rest of the group multiple days to catch up even if she stops right where she is. The players notice this but the characters are in a hubris-driven death drive and will not stop. I ask for checks to notice things that might snap Kristjana back to a more reasonable pace, but I fail. (For example, making a medicine check to notice that Mandelos is literally killing himself in slow motion). She does not notice, so on we go. Meanwhile, the rest of the group has failed a check or two to cover their tracks. They begin hearing hunting horns from a great distance. It is behind them, and it is getting closer hour by hour. Helgi makes a lore check to identify that these are the hunting calls of frost giants, who tend packs of wolves for their hunting expeditions. This group picks up their pace, but th8ey are basically choosing to do so at the cost of their health. They are not as skilled as Kristjana (and are not mounted), and they are not demigods like Mandelos. But they do not want any part of those frost giants before the group is reunited. So a new race begins. It has been five days. Finally, after the other group has been hearing the hunting horns for two days, they have gotten close enough that Kristjana hears them from a great distance. She and Mandelos have no idea what they might be, but it sounds bad. She assumes Cossacks or something of that ilk. It doesn't matter what it is: it is far behind them, and it will catch up to the slower group first. This finally, finally allows me an excuse for her to halt. "Mandelos," she says. "I... we have been foolish and deluded. We need to turn around." I deliberately paraphrased a Winnie the Pooh line that I had just read to my son before game. "So you give up, then?" Mandelos says. "No. This is over and it has nothing to do with either of us. Our friends may be in danger. We need to turn around." Mandelos grins smugly, but finally says, "Yeah. We can settle this later." We turn around and head backward in double time. At the end of day six we arrive just in time. The rest of the party has exhausted itself and is hunkered down, partly to rest and partly to form a defensive perimeter for what they now assume to be an inevitable attack. The horns are now virtually on top of us and cannot be more than a couple hours away. "Evelien, come here," Kristjana says during this brief rest. Despite being Vendel and not Vesten, Evelien has a runic shield. It was her dead husband's, himself a Vesten warrior. It has the Elska ("Love") rune on it. Kristjana has noticed this before but hasn't been a jerk about it. She herself is a rune sorceress and is kind of prickly but isn't a total rear end in a top hat. However, as a rune sorceress (and whose player knows the rules a bit better), she knows something Evelien does not. "What is it, Kristjana," Evelien says as she comes over for a sidebar. She is keeping her voice down, expecting the worst from this interaction. "Do you know what your shield can do," is all Kristjana asks. Evelien says in narrative terms what her player says in mechanical terms: that it can buff a character in a few different skills. "It can also affect the weather, Evelien. It can make it snow. Rain and snow are the love of the gods come to Theah. That is what we need right now." Mechanically, there are a number of runes that add buffs but can alternatively be used to affect the weather: wind, temperature, precipitation, etc. Kristjana had been using one for days to make it warmer at camp. Elska can increase precipitation, and Evelien's player didn't realize that, or forgot. "It may not be too late to lose the hunting party. If you can make it snow, I can cover our trail. We may have just enough of a lead to leave them behind." Evelien is stunned. The shield is her most precious item, the only keepsake she has of her dead husband. Finally, she steels herself and says, "Show me how." The Vendel and the Vesten get to work covering the trail and Kristjana begins barking orders to break camp. We will probably end up in a ptiched battle with some frost giants, but we might give them the slip. We're going to find out first thing next session. Never. Split. Up. The. Party.
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May 29, 2023 12:23
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No. The rune can be used once per day if attached to an item. Evelien had only ever used it for its buff effects, but not its precipitation effect. I chalked it up to the player genuinely not realizing there was an alternate use of it, and his character having made the same error. It was kind of an opportunity for me to use my character to show the mechanic for the other player. She "steeled herself" out of the shock of a Vesten calling attention to her runic shield. She has a fear of Vesten finding out a Vendel has this item and getting bent out of shape about it, or even attacking her. She normally keeps it wrapped for this reason. Granted, when Kristjana first noticed it a while back, she was a bit irked by it. But she has since learned part of its story, and besides the present situation calls for setting that petty poo poo aside.
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May 29, 2023 18:28
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JustJeff88 posted:How was she able to use the warming effect of the shield discretely before? Evelien didn't make camp warmer. My character did. Kristjana is the actual rune sorceress and has access to a bunch of runes, including one that can make the area warmer. Evelien isn't a sorceress but has an item with one rune on it which she can use once per day, to either buff some skills or make it precipitate. Up to this point, Evelien had been able to discreetly buff her own stats without too much fuss. Sorry if that was unclear. Lotta Viking stuff flying around this campaign.
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May 29, 2023 19:42
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Our 7th Sea game presently has us investigating the disappearance of some hunters on the Ussuran steppe. Die Kreuzritter received the tip and suspects Syrneth involvement, so they sent us to check it out. When we arrive at the site of the disappearances, we find a group of Explorer's Society researchers. ES and DK have an oppositional relationship in 7th Sea. ES are, at their best, like Indiana Jones. At their worst, they are like Indy's enemies. Basically, they are searching for Syrneth (alien) artifacts, and Die Krezritter is trying to keep them out of anyone's hands because of the danger they represent. So this is a problem. We're 7th Sea heroes, so we can't just kill all these clowns and still be PCs when we are done. We have to either cooperate with the Explorers, or circumvent them somehow. Our resident scholar, an older Vendel woman, was married to an ES guy before he died, so she kind of talks their talk. She introduces our group as a sort of off-brand explorer group. This is going to set them on edge a little bit, but much less so than if we're like, "we're from a cryptic order of knights hell-bent on keeping you out of this dig site. Roll initiative." My Vesten/Ussuran huntress is introduced as our group's hired local guide to match their own. Our Ussuran noble sorceress is introduced as the group's patron, and our Aegean meathead and Vesten whaler are introduced as the bodyguards. All fo these roles match someone within their group, so all of this is plausible to them. We get into interacting with them and the GM's challenge slowly reveals itself. Each member of the ES gang has a different motive, and are adverse to different things. After a lot of social interactions and skill checks, we learn: The ES patron does not care about danger but will be chased off if there is nothing of monetary value at the site. The ES lead researcher wants to do research but is the most adverse to danger. The ES assistant researcher isn't afraid of danger but wants to quit the site if the weather turns lovely. The two ES shield men actively want to face danger and want to leave if there isn't anything to stab. They do not care about artifacts or research. There's something like a logic puzzle here, where we have to feed these people the right information to chase them off, but without each of them learnign the wrong information to incentivize them to stay. The GM loves logic puzzles and this was was really well written and executed using the game's social mechanics. So my huntress used her Flora skill to cook up a laxative stew to share with both groups, and our Vendel used her Compounds skill to cook up a constipation agent to give to our group ahead of eating the stew. We simply walked into the ruins under the dig site in plain sight of the ES crew while they all shat their brains out. 
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Aug 3, 2023 12:33
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So we finished that 7th Sea adventure last night. The exploration of the ruins involves some underwater danger, hallucinations, puzzles, and some PCs clowning on each other. A good time is had by all. All the while, my huntress is periodically using rune magic to scry on the Explorer's Society team that we poisoned with the laxative stew. I am trying to make sure they don't recover too quickly and come into the ruin after us. Our goal, after all, is to neutralize the site and keep them out. After one hour, one of their shield men appears to be digging latrines. So far so good. After a few more hours and some hallucinatory shenanigans down in the ruins, something has changed in the scrying. Both shield men are up and about now, but the local guide is gone. And the shield men appear to be digging long, deep holes right near the entrance to the ruin. My character jokingly says, "They're either digging graves, or trenches." After a beat, I add, "Whatever happens in the ruin, we should be prepared to fight our way out of here." We wrap up neutralizing the site with minimal damage to the party and we have found the lost man that brought us here in the first place too. (He was hallucinating for like two weeks, no biggie.) As we go to leave, we plan out our tactics for brute-forcing the trench lines the Explorer's Society folks have dug at the end of the tunnel. My character has a spear on horseback and we have a shapeshifter who can easily flank them. Our Greek demigod can also get over/around them with a bit more trouble, so our plan is for the three of us to breach their lines, and for our DPS whaler Viking can pick them off while our own defensive specialist, the old Vendel, can shield him from musket fire. It's a good plan, even if a couple of us are going to get badly hurt in the process--- There are stones piled up at the edge of the trenches by the time we emerge. The trenches are actually graves. They were all along. The ES shield men have just finished burying their researchers and patron. Everyone stands down. My character quietly panics at this. She poisoned the stew, but then again there's no way just a laxative kills anyone in half a day, or at all. My character's mind is racing, and I am trying to remember if I botched a Flora skill roll three weeks ago and accidentally killed them. As we are discussing this out of character (because my character is floored at this and no one dares talk to her about it in the moment), one of the shield men hands our shapeshifter a note... ~FLASHBACK~ A day ago in game time, and three weeks ago in real time, we were trying to solve that logic puzzle. One of the things we got after was the local guide the Explorer's Society hired to get them across the Ussuran steppe. What we wanted and what he feared were the easiest to disentangle from the rest, so we figured we'd peel him off from their group, and maybe the rest of them will decide they can't remain at the site without a guide to get them safely home. It was a good plan. Viktoria, our shapeshifter, is a Ussuran noble. So she tried to scare off the guide by lying to him about how this whole area is the Giaus' (Czar's) own hunting ground, and we are here on his graces. The guide gave some push back, saying that he's heard of nobles but never met one, so why should he care? He and his pa have been hunting out on the steppe his whole life. Viktoria insisted that one could spend a lifetime hunting in a place as vast as the steppe and never encounter its owner, but this particular area has an owner nonetheless. And when the Giaus (and by the lie's extension, Viktoria) tells you to jump, you jump. The guide buys the lie, but is having a hard time caring because he genuinely has never interacted with a noble before. So Viktoria tells him, with a Menace skill check, "I am a kind mistress of the people of my lands, but the Giaus is not. He will find you, and he will kill. He will kill your whole family for your insolence. You must not allow any of these people to disturb anything here, and leave immediately. The lives of you and your family depend on this." Part of this isn't a lie, as the Giaus is indeed a murder monster in this setting. He doesn't give a poo poo about this particular area and probably only knows Viktoria in passing, but he's already bought the lie. She crushes the Menace check too. He does not eat the stew, and leaves camp shortly before we serve the stew and embark into the ruins... ~FLASHFORWARD~ One of the shield men hands Viktoria a note. It reads: The Ussuran Guide posted:I have done what you asked. My employers will stay out of the site. Please leave my pa alone. One of our ways to solve the logic puzzle appears to have radicalized the guide, and now Viktoria might have a new personal nemesis. Oops! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Aug 7, 2023 13:13
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Our 7th Sea GM loves minigames. The game already has a bunch of optional ones (naval combat, mass combat, chases, inventions, etc.) but this GM likes making up systems as much as he likes using them. So last night we had: EGG GET: THE GAMEThe situation is this: our group of Die Kreuzritter monster/relic hunters are presently trying to track down a rare poisonous mushroom for the order to use to loading the dice in an upcoming conclave of cardinals to elect the pope. (DIe Kreuzritter, in addition to being clandestine monster hunters, are also the pope's Praetorian Guard of sorts, so they have an interest in making sure a friendly pope is elected.) Anyway, the trail of these elusive mushrooms has led us to a remote island in Vesten (Scandanavia). We have a scholar with us that we're asking the community to put up for the season to do his research, so between that and needing information from these people, we agree to help them in midst of their harvest season. What they harvest as a delicacy they trade on the mainland of Theah: the eggs of a certain sea bird which roosts in the cliffs on one side of the island. Every year, around this time, the locals risk life and limb climbing down these cliffs to harvest eggs. Our PC action lad, Mandelos, volunteers before he even hears how dangerous the task is. Not to be outdone, my character, his odd couple-esque rival Kristjana, feels compelled to join in. My character and I both know that Mandelos is likely to win if we make this a competition. He is literally super-human, with a type of sorcery that makes him like Achilles or Herakles. Nonetheless, he is a rival, and this is 7th Sea. We can't not do this. The GM then goes over the rules: The Climb down is a Brawn + Climb roll at a low difficulty, because your roll will be penalized by the amount of damage you take from the sea birds in that round. The birds deal 2k1 damage prior to every climb roll, so you're likely to take, say, ~7 damage per roll. You can go down up to ten levels (each of which is ten feet), but the lower you go the more eggs you will find. If you ever fail one of these climb rolls, you fall into the sea and swim back in shame. Once you decide you want to stop climbing and get eggs, you roll Wits + Fauna, or Wits + Perception at a higher difficulty. You can take voluntary -5's ("raises" in 7th Sea's terminology) to get more eggs out of one roll. There is a hidden multiplier to the result for how far down this is done. The further down, the more eggs per roll. The climb up switches to Resolve + Climb. This is done otherwise exactly as the climb down, including damage, except that you can also take raises to scale multiple levels in one roll. Like the above climbing, if you ever fail one of these, you fall into the drink (and lose all your eggs). Hearing the rules, in and out of character, I and my character are both excited. Mandelos is The Dumbest Boy Alive and cannot do well at a Wits check of any kind. Kristjana is a well-balanced, athletic character, who is exceptionally skilled in climbing, fauna, and feats of resolve. She actually spec'd to be a tank, with 4 Resolve and a couple of extras that make her hard to kill. She is of above average Brawn and Wits. She thinks she can beat her rival, and I also drink the Kool Aid of this confidence. I go first. Right off the bat, in the first ten feet of climbing down, Kristjana takes 24 damage from a 2k1 roll. The GM rolled an exploding 10, which exploded again. Fine. I soak the damage because Kristjana is tough as nails. The next ten feet deals 27 more damage. I should reiterate here: this is from another 2k1 damage roll. That means the GM is rolling 2 d10s and keeping 1 of them, exploding 10's. He got another multiple explosion from the k1 roll. Now I'm rolling to soak a total of 51 damage. I take 1 Dramatic Wound from this, and they reset. Because Kristjana is a strong, skilled climber, she also doesn't fall at the -24 and -27 penalty to both of these climb checks. The rest of her climb is more pedestrian: mostly ~8 damage a pop, with two more exploding 10's along the way. She gets down to level 7 and she's got 3 Dramatic Wounds. A 7th Sea character is Crippled (and mechanically severely impeded) at a number of DW equal to their Resolve. Hers is 4, but she has an Advantage that pushes that back by 1, so she isn't crippled until 5 Dramatic Wounds. We have a couple other characters in our group that would be dead at that many DW. Anyway, I decide to push my luck and Kristjana goes down one more level. I have no frame of reference, as no one else has gone yet. I'm competing with Mandelos, but he hasn't gone yet. Kristjana stays at level 8 and searches for eggs there. I take a million raises and hit the check, completely filling the egg basket. I just got down so far and took so many raises at the check that I redlined the fucker. Kristjana got dinged pretty hard on the way back up. I was able to take raises to make the ascent in three checks instead of eight, but by the time she got back to the top of the cliff she was carrying 4 Dramatic Wounds. She's covered in blood and feathers and cursing like a sailor. Mandelos goes up to her and asks, genuinely innocently, "how did it go?" Mandelos' turn went more smoothly. He only suffered double-digit damage once, and emerged with a full basket as well. He was better at climbing down and took much less damage, so he took his time getting eggs. He ended up taking 3 Dramatic Wounds, and healed himself of one with his magic. One the very last climb check on the ascent, he had to blow both of his Drama Dice to not fail the check and fall into the water. So that was nice to see. Upon standing up atop the cliff with his own basket of eggs, Mandelos looks into the basket, picks one egg out, heaves it over his shoulder and says, "There. That one didn't look so good." I took it as kind of a sweet, if unstated, nod to Kristjana. Normally they fight like hell and never let each other win, but he saw how battered she got by the birds that he gave her the win by that one egg. In the aftermath, during OOC table talk, Mandelos' player reveals that the Rival background that Kristjana has for Mandelos isn't actually on his character sheet. It never was. Apparently Mandelos just considers her his close friend. He is just so self-assured and dumb and competitive that he only seems to be trying to compete with her. To her, he is a rival. To him, he wonders why his closest friend is such a Grumpy Gus.
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Sep 24, 2023 20:41
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the_steve posted:There is something so...pure and wholesome about this paragraph that I can't articulate into words. Yeah. Even the end of the narrative too speaks to the accidental compassion Mandelos has for his pal Kristjana. Throwing the egg over his shoulder was him just being callous and ditzy. But it also gave Kristjana the win, since they had matched the number of eggs before he threw one away for no reason. Mandelos is like this: he'll do you a solid, but just not in any way that he intends (in character; the player definitely knows what he is doing). It's important to remember that he is literally superhuman. He has a form of sorcery that makes him like a Greek demigod. Kristjana has rune sorcery (half-blooded, so at a minor level) but when they're competing she is always overmatched by his physical prowess. Feats of athleticism come naturally and easily to him. She's good at them too, but only by years of discipline and stalking around alone in the woods. It's a rivalry borne out of the resentment of someone who has to work their rear end off for what the other person does effortlessly.
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Sep 27, 2023 00:55
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Phy posted:It's Finger-Lich-ing Good Hahaha holy poo poo
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Oct 4, 2023 23:39
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MelvinBison posted:Tonight at my Pathfinder game, our Summoner died. lol "My new new character is a summoner whose eidolon is her summoner aunt whose eidolon was her dead husband." "My new new new character is a summoner whose eidolon is his summoner cousin whose eidolon was her dead aunt whose eidolon...." So on, ad infinitum. Just build a matryoshka doll of dead summoners out of the plane's unluckiest family.
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Oct 19, 2023 11:49
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This is a great premise for an evil game. I always have a hard time with sustaining interest in this sort of game because I just don't like being wantonly evil. I have played New Vegas a bunch of times and I've never done more than a couple Legion quests because I just don't like being a heel. But the idea of saving lives for evil, even bureaucratic, reasons is funny. Also, one of my close family members is a retired cop, so the pathological aversion to doing paperwork above all other concerns, usually for the worse, is true to life, at least from that angle.
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Oct 23, 2023 12:36
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Golden Bee posted:Slaughter in the Sixth City / STUMBLE in the Bronx! lol I do love a group where no one can pull off stealth. It's one of those skills that the party can work around sometimes, but inevitably there will come a time when that is exactly what they need with no substitutions. 
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Nov 27, 2023 12:46
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Captain Walker posted:Never stop posting these, regardless of the appalling lack of kudos they receive. I love your diverse cast too! Unlikely pulp heroes from everywhere in the world except New England, but including a Black baseball star from before "Black" or "African-American" were terms in common use.  My 7th Sea GM and I stumbled into a hilarious retcon the other day. I have to work at 4 AM tomorrow so I'll write it up tomorrow after work. It blew my mind.
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Dec 7, 2023 03:12
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Let me just say: I am a big fan of Philip K. Dick, so maybe the retroactive, circular time-fuckery here uniquely appeals to me. But here goes: I've been playing in this 7th Sea campaign set in a continuity that myself and two other folks have now run campaigns in. In the last campaign that I ran, the PCs were tasked with delivering secret messages to NPCs all over Theah. The big reveal was that these messages pertained to the Vaticine (Catholic) Church about to hold a conclave of cardinals to elect a new Hierophant (pope). This has major implications up and down the setting, and the PCs spoiled the inquisition's power play by taking out the evil noble who was going to act as the inquisition cardinal's muscle at the conclave. I dropped an antagonist NPC into that campaign who was a character I meant to use as a PC but just never had a chance to. That's a typical story for serial GMs like myself, but this NPC worked well for this plot. Her background is that she is a Vesten (Viking) pressed into the service of the hated Vendel League. This character is a hunter by choice and a bounty hunter for the Vendel League by coercion. Her position with the Vendel put her in a good spot in this campaign: the Vendel have a vested interest in spoiling the election of a Hierophant, because as long as that seat is empty, it favors their Objectionist (Protestant) faction. So the Vendel League sends her after the group of PCs, and she is a constant threat to them as she chases them across Theah. In the end, though, she face-turns and betrays her hated employer when she realizes that what the PCs are doing is more important than moving money around up in Vendel. She helps the PCs escape the shitstorm that ensues when they assassinate a major NPC villain in his own castle. The PCs did all of the important stuff, but they did so in a way that necessitated a bit of a bailout. Luckily, the timing worked for her face-turn. Fast-forward to now: I am a player in the new campaign, and I decided to run that same character as a PC, finally. This campaign is unfolding over many years, with a year worth of downtime between each of the campaign's chapters. I had been chugging along, just assuming that this is like a retcon of my character, and her appearance in the previous campaign would be like Ensign Ro vs. Kira Nerys in DS9: conspicuously similar, so much so that they were probably meant to be the same at some point, but nonetheless divergent. Then the current campaign had every PC join Die Kreuzritter, the secret Praetorian Guard for the non-existent Hierophant. This clicks a piece into place because one of the PCs during the last game joined Die Kreuzritter during the game, kind of by accident. Then the GM narrates something that dates the current campaign:  it is before the last one, and always was. When this was revealed we were two years behind the last game. Then the whole current party joins Die Kreuzritter. This means that my character, as an NPC in the last game, was (retroactively) an agent for Die Kreuzritter all along. The whole time she was seemingly acting on orders from the Vendel League to hunt down the PCs and foil them, she was acting on orders from Die Kreuzritter to foil their plans to influence the election of the Hierophant.  Retroactively, the background I wrote for the character was turned into a front for Die Kreuzritter.We just got to the last campaign's year. So I took my downtime as "I'm just going to plug in the whole last campaign here." But here's the extra hosed up thing: I wrote an epilogue to the last game, which included the results of the resulting papal election. The PCs actions thwarted the inquisition's bid for the Hierophant's seat. But the most sane option, a kind and rational old man, also got sick during the conclave of cardinals and was taken out of contention. Insider information assumed that the inquisition poisoned him to take him off the board. The winner ended up being a little nod to that PC that joined Die Kreuzritter during that campaign. The new Hierophant is Erika Durkheim, a silent patron of Die Kreuzritter. In the present campaign, our last mission was to find some mushrooms that are untraceable, indistinguishable from common button mushrooms, and toxic but not lethal. Die Kreuzritter sent us to go get the tool to take a kind old man off the board during the conclave of cardinals, to get their girl to win the election. And do it in a way that the few people who knew would surely blame the inquisition. So we're in downtimes this week. My character is [doing the whole last campaign] and carrying a small pouch of mushrooms on her person, destined for a very specific, predetermined purpose. She is crossing Theah, ostensibly on a mission from the Vendel League, just as it always was. 
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Dec 8, 2023 03:14
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Evertar: the Lerst Erbendar (Part One) My Saturday group's GM is taking the whole month of December off due to holiday season schedule stuff, so I decided to run an Avatar: the Last Airbender game using Everway. For the uninitiated, Everway is a diceless system that uses 4 stats that fit concepts like logic, intuition, power, and action into four elements: air, water, earth, and fire. So it fits the IP like a glove, even if it was designed a decade prior. It also uses a deck not unlike the tarot's major arcana to settle anything that would require a die roll. This puts a lot on the GM (or the GM and the players if they are let into this decision) to interpret the cards to describe results. I know these players well and I know what I'm doing so this is no problem. The system is written for a world-hopping setting similar to Planescape, but I've scuttled that for this game's setting. I've also told everyone that if you want a Power, it's bending. If not, you can have some extra points at character creation as a trade-off. This being a short-run game meant to run over just three sessions, I expedited character creation a bit and did a trick I've used a couple times before. I asked the players "oracular" questions that, behind the screen, moves their position around a grid that has character concepts all over it. However they settle after their answers gives them their Nation, and an "adjective noun" barebones concept to go with it. We pull Fate Cards to guide the character's virtue, flaw, and fate, per normal Everway rules. Then it's up to the players to divvy out attribute points, choose a skill specialty for each of the four attributes, and decide whether or not they want to be benders. The story is taking place just prior to the first series, so: -The Avatar is missing -The Fire Nation has attacked the Earth Nation but has not yet attacked the Water Nation -The Air Nomads are scattered but not extinct (partly for balance, and partly because I always thought it was unrealistic to wipe out literally everyone of an ethnic group, especially given that they're nomads) We ended up with: An Air Bender "Prodigal Son." His player took that to mean, "I am the bad boy of my community because I am mad and taking violent action about the genocide of my people." His return to his people has meant going rogue and taking on terrorist missions on behalf of a people that functionally no longer exist. He is the saddest, angriest teen. A Fire Bender "Courageous Deserter." Her player got this concept, sat down to watch the series for the first time immediately afterward, and fell in love with the Kiyoshi Warriors. So she's a Kiyoshi Warrior with Fire Bending who got shanghaied into the Fire Lord's army because of the bending but deserted as soon as she was able because she's an ethnic minority in this imperial state. A Water Bender "Orphaned Sailor." His player decided that, based on the fate card pulls he would be a sailor-turned-agent for the Water Nation. His specialty is exfiltrating people away from the Fire Nation. A Water Nation Spirit Bender "Comical Guru." One of a couple unique easter eggs on the secret grid, this one's concept let the player opt into having Spirit Bending instead of Water Bending. The player took it, so they're an old Water Nation shaman version of that old guru from the end of the series, but also the comic relief guy. So that's where we ended up at the end of the first session, ready to hit the ground running in the second session. Oh, wait. I forgot about the other GM. See, The two other times I've run Everway, we used a rotating cast of GMs, so that everyone ran the game whenever the game was taking place in a plane of their design (or their PCs home plane). It was fun and became part of the game's fingerprint to this group. But Avatar isn't about world-hopping so I did something else: I asked my daughter to write some of the plot and NPCs. She's nine and has seen the show all the way through twice. So I had her answer the following questions (her answers are in italics): Describe a cool character who can help the players. An old bookkeeper who is secretly a warrior Describe a cool character who could help or hurt the players, depending on what happens. A thief that lives out in the wild Brainstorm a list of hybrid animals. Tiger monkeys, mosquito bees, snake dogs, beaver cats Where will the story take place? What nation? Any specific region, city, or terrain? Fire Nation, in a small coastal town Who is the antagonist? Describe him or her.  An evil platypus bear with an army of turtle ducksWhat is the antagonist doing that the players will have to deal with? Scaring the people of the town so much that they won't even talk but there's a secret that the good guys need  WELP.Next time: session two, the first half of the story.
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Dec 17, 2023 05:06
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JustJeff88 posted:Given that I'm British and that I haven't any idea what Avatar: The Last Airbender is, this phrase took on a whole new meaning. "Bending" is the setting's word for sorcery. Each of the four elemental nations have a bending style that corresponds to their element: air, earth, fire, and water. Some of that will become clearer once I write up the second session, which was yesterday. When the players actually start playing and use the stuff, it becomes a lot clearer. I had just assumed that every nerd on these forums, especially in TG, had seen ATLA, but that's on me. I suppose it is 20 years old at this point, so that's not a great assumption to make. It's real good, and as a children's show it has no business being as good as it is. It's a bunch of tweens and teens running around having adventures and beating up imperial goons. It has more heart and brains than a pithy description can give it, though. Also, this is a children's show that starts with a genocide. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Dec 18, 2023 02:26
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Got a continuation to the Avatar: the Last Airbender Everway game. For those that missed it, the set up is right here, but to recap: My daughter has provided some of the key NPCs, a setting within the Avatar universe, and a problem facing the heroes: that being a sentient platypus bear commanding an army of turtle geese. (I changed the ducks to geese to make them suitably aggressive.) I'll put the results of her help in setting up the game in bold. I decided to run a prison break for this short-run game. We only had a few sessions from character creation to completion before our 7th Sea GM got back from Holiday Season Purgatory, so this called for a contained adventure. So how did my daughter's handiwork find its way into the story? Well... The heroes start in a Fire Nation town, all for their own reasons. Three out of four of them have different reasons to want to hit a nearby Fire Nation POW camp, so that's the order of the day. I established that a POW camp is out on an island just offshore of this little fishing town. The fourth PC, a Spirit Bender from the Water Nation, is in the same town at the request of a local bookseller who wants to pick his brain. Rumors around town say that this group of aggressive turtle geese keeps showing up and ransacking the town. They're causing injuries and damage, but they're inexplicably carrying off supplies too. Worse yet, the town has recently felt the pinch of the Fire Nation garrison on the island coming ashore and requisitioning food and supplies from them too. Until recently, the Fire Navy had been supplying the POW camp on the island itself, but that stopped suddenly and without discernable cause. This PCs learn all of this over tea at the local tea house from a local rapscallion, Bai Bai, who might be a thief. Otherwise, the tea house is full of regular villagers who are armed with kitchen implements like spatulas and colanders as makeshift weapons and armor. Everyone and their mom is seemingly ready for...something to attack the town. Then, the The other PCs meet up with the Spirit Bender and they all share what they have learned. They decide to follow the surviving turtle geese back to where they are retreating. This turns out to be a cave just outside of the town. There is a sentry of turtle geese outside, which the PCs foil and sneak inside. There are signs that the cave is a platypus bear den but there is no platypus bear present so the PCs venture further inside. There, deep in the cave's tunnels, is a makeshift office with a desk and a lamp and a map on the desk and a gatdang platypus bear standing upright, back to the group. The platypus bear immediately hears and smells the PCs and turns around to say: "Who are you, and what are you doing here?" (This is not normal, BTW. Animals cannot normally speak in this setting.) The PCs admit that they are there following an army of turtle geese. They ask who he is, and he bellows his reply: "My name is Admiral Yamamoto, Commander of His Majesty's First Fleet. I know one of you did this to me!" None of them has done this to him, but a couple of them have ideas about it. The sharper minds in the group recognize his name. Yamamoto is indeed the Admiral of the First Fleet, probably one of about a dozen men in the room with the Fire Lord planning the invasion of the Earth Nation. And now he is a platypus bear, and he attacks the group. Next time: a retreat, a negotiation, and the prison break itself.
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Jan 9, 2024 12:48
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Golden Bee posted:Semya, devout communist and nazi hater, went through the personnel files, and learned that the plant’s manager wasn’t in. She called his home number and demanded he get to work! Pissed to be yelled at by an anonymous woman, he said that he’d bring every factory worker that would pick up the phone. Less than ideal for a sneaking mission... lol There's a lot of funny moments in RPG stories that, out of context, are very silly. This is a good example, but it's what makes these stories in particular great. Imagining the checks and the effects the system is having on the narrative is the fun of reading between the lines. The above line just reminds me of a running gag in Behind the Bastards where the host has noticed that sometimes you can just, like, yell at bootlickers and they'll just do whatever, sometimes nonsensically. A big, loud, assertive rear end in a top hat can sometimes just... brute force social challenges that game systems like to think are more subtle and less stupid than they are sometimes in real life. I also love adventures where everyone in the party is ill-equipped, mechanically. Stealth missions with no stealthy characters is the typical one. We just had one in 7th Sea that I might write up because it was a well-composed whodunit, it was hilarious, and it ended with a banger of a cliffhanger. Railing Kill fucked around with this message at 12:47 on Feb 26, 2024 |
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Feb 26, 2024 12:42
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Ichabod Sexbeast posted:Ah, the Wallenberg gambit 
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Feb 26, 2024 15:01
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Mirage posted:The sleeping characters were supposed to need magic to awaken, but the last character was a fighter, so I just let him kick them awake. lol It's what they deserve.
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Mar 2, 2024 15:32
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So I promised a post about this earlier but the post got a bit out of hand. Let me shorten it (lol) and punctuate it with the cliffhanger we ended on last week: Some prior posts about this same 7th Sea campaign: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. None of those are necessary for understanding this story, but there they are in one place. We the PCs are all in a secret society called Die Kreuzritter: ostensibly the pope's secret praetorian guard but actually in a secret war with secret aliens, in secret. The cast: Kristjana: A Vesten/Ussuran (Scandinavian/Russian) huntress and rune sorceress. Laconic and private, her closest friend a steppes horse. (My character) Helgi: A Vesten whaler-turned-monster hunter. A soft-hearted gentile giant, rapidly becoming the party's moral core. Viktoria: A Ussuran shapeshifting noblewoman. Mandelos: An Aegean (Greek) demigod. A cocksure jock forever seeking opportunities for heroic escapades. An odd couple-type rival to Kristjana. Evelien: A Vendel (Danish) polymath, an anthropologist by trade. Circumspect widow to a Vesten, dedicated to stemming the Vendel/Vesten conflict. Our 7th Sea group is presently on an adventure ostensibly to help the Explorer's Society chart a constellation from a particular spot in the seas of Vesten. They have to do this in a particular place at a particular time, and doing so will give them more parity with the Montaigne in navigation. The Vendel ES employer in all of this says there may be a Montaigne ship sent to stop us for this reason. My character threatens her from the jump and goes full sovereign citizen because the ES lady tells us that we are honor-bound to help her in this because we are responsible for the deaths of several of her comrades in a previous adventure. (We aren't, at least not directly.) My character is a hermit libertarian Viking who was also coerced into working for the hated Vendel, so she is understandably chafed at this. The more rational members of the party negotiate with the ES and talk my character out of beating her senseless, so off we go. Our idea is to use this mission to spy on the ES on behalf of our actual secret society, Die Kreuzritter. We go on this mission as the muscle to protect all these nerds from the Montaigne if they show up. When we get to the spot, there is indeed a Montaigne ship on the horizon. And it is enormous. And there are three other ships: a Vodacce, a Castillian, and a Vendel. Every one of them outguns ours, and the Montaigne ship can outgun all of them at once. My character turns on our employer immediately, grabbing her by the collar and threatening to throw her overboard. "What have you done to us? Why are there so many ships here? You have damned us all!"The ES lady claims ignorance, that perhaps the other interests stole her intel, or the intel that led the Montaigne here. "This research is of utmost value," she says. Against my better judgment, my character does not throw her overboard. We decide to attempt to parley with the Montaigne ship. As it turns out, they are already doing this with the other ships. The Montaigne captain is... an interesting person. Alissande, the captain, is telling every other ship that she has them all over a barrel but that she wants to hold some sort of competition to see who gets to stay for the research. We propose an obstacle course rather than a dueling tournament, because no one in our group has a Swordsman's Guild sanctioned school. She agrees to a compromise along these lines, and the carpenters of all the ships get to work building a course on a nearby island. Meanwhile, we have some shenanigans. Mandelos, my character's frenemy, is held as a hostage on the Montaigne ship, but enjoys his time there with the beautiful first mate. My character also finds a friend while trying to act as a distraction for another PCs activities. Connecting with other people is a weird new experience for her, so she has a sort of "OMG are we friends?" moment and reverts to being a tittering teenager as she and her new pal play pranks on Mandelos all over the Montaigne ship. We start joking that we should win the competition and give the spoils to the Montaigne ship full of sexy pirates. The more responsible members of our party start noticing some suspicious activities and discover that there is a saboteur somewhere. We find evidence of the use of Montaigne magic to spy on people and sabotage every ship, including the Montaigne ship. We start trying to investigate, but we're also trying to hide that we are investigating because we don't know who it is yet. Mandelos, as more or less the Montaigne first mate's willing gigilo, attends several meals in the captain's quarters. There, with her officers, she hosts the officers of each of the other ships. Mandelos is 100% himbo so he has no idea what to do with any of this information, but he reports all of this to the party: -The Castillian ship is full of Inquisitors, presumably here to prevent Thought CrimesTM. -The Vodacce and Vendel are here for the same reason as the Explorer's Society, but more in conflict with each other than anyone else at the scene. -The Montaigne don't actually care about the navigation research. Alissande and her crew are no longer being paid by l'Empereur (as his regime on the mainland is in the process of collapse), so she is shopping out her services as a privateer with a professional crew and a huge, state-of-the-art ship for hire. -All of them, independent of one another, were fed intel of this place and time by...someone After a couple days of that, the obstacle course is complete. Each ship fields a few teams, and we do pretty well. The compromise with Alissande was to use the obstacle course to winnow the field for an eventual 2-on-2 dueling tournament. Her first mate, with the help of Mandelos' persuasions, is a high-ranking official in the Swordsman's Guild and has agreed to look the other way about any of us not being sanctioned. It's a kind of "international waters" type situation. We do well enough that all three of our two person teams qualify for the duels the next day. But the very last obstacle course run is done by our Ussuran sorceress and her NPC partner. When she completes the run by lighting a torch at the end of the course, the torch explodes. We didn't catch the saboteur in time. Our sorceress is fine, and we start investigating who could have done this. Between the information we have about who could have tampered with the torch and the information we had form before, we start narrowing down suspects. Considering means, motive, and opportunity, we get things down to: -Two Castillian carpenters -One Vodacce carpenter -Our own ship's carpenter Some more intel comes in that rules out the Vodacce, but we keep him in detention to press him for information about the other three suspects. He helps us eliminate the Castillans. It was our own guy all along, and his motive is coercive. Someone put him up to it. We interrogate him for a third time and finally learn who gave him his orders. It was the Explorer's Society lady all along. Our own employer. The one that I wanted to put over the side all along (albeit, for different, personal reasons). We keep this close to the chest and two of us go ashore to where the Montaigne captain has all the crews camped for the competition and, now, for security during the investigation. Two PCs, Helgi and Viktoria, stay on our ship. Mandelos is still with the Montaigne first mate having a great time. But Evelien and Kristjana go ashore to find the ES lady. Kristjana is a bounty hunter by trade, so she is literally made for this. She tracks her quarry to the latrines built at the edge of the camp. They have wooden walls build around them. The tracks go in but not out, so I just...wait. All night. I pass a Resolve check to stave off sleep deprivation. Just before dawn, the ES lady comes out of the latrine like she didn't just spend five hours in the terlet. Which, of course, she didn't. She isn't Vendel. She was Montaigne all along, but she has nothing to do with the Montaigne ship's crew. She's something else. Maybe an alien simulacrum of a human, or maybe just another secret society. Dunno. "Feeling alright?" my character asks her. My character is bad at social interaction and isn't hiding her menace well at all. She is sitting astride her horse, looking down at the ES lady. "Yes. It is just difficult to sleep in these circumstances," she replies. She's better a lying than my character, but that poo poo doesn't matter anymore. We've done our homework. "Sure, sure. Sleeping in a latrine all night would be more like home for you, being Vendel," Kristjana says, being provocative on purpose. "I beg your par--" The ES lady does not finish her reply. Kristjana reaches down grabs her by the collar, and hauls her bodily up onto the horse. She snarls, "Enough of this. I know you did it and the only reason I didn't kill you the second you walked out of that latrine is because I promised Evelien I would give her a chance to ask you why. Now," throwing her to the ground, "Walk." I lead her back to Evelien's tent. I keep watch outside while Evelien interrogates her. At the end of this, the ES lady says: "The Explorer's Society has proved useful, but they, and you, have outlived your use." Then she teleports away. The portal's destination appears to be the gun deck of our ship. Evelien alerts Kristjana, and they charge off toward our ship. We get on the magic "walkie-talkie" stones we have as Die Kreuzritter operatives to alert Helgi, Viktoria, and Mandelos. What ensues is a combat in the sense that we rolled initiative and took turns in that order. But no one ever dealt any damage on any side. The spy spends the whole time teleporting around and trying to cause fires and explosions. We spend the entire combat trying to put out the fires, and chasing her around. Mandelos is a demigod and is leaping from ship to ship, as they are anchored side-to-side just offshore. He is also naked as a jaybird because he did not not stop to put his pants on. Unfortunately, the saboteur gets to our gun deck and fires a shot into the Montaigne ship before Mandelos catches up to her. He grapples her just before she teleports to an object she thinks is still hidden in the hold of the Montaigne ship but that we had thrown overboard during out investigation. Underwater suddenly, she teleports both of them again to yet another object, this time back on our ship. Evelien and Kristjana use some of the Montaigne navigator's own Porte magic to teleport to their ship from shore, leaving Kristjana's horse there. Helgi and Viktoria are rousing and now helping Mandelos chase the culprit around. She teleports to the Montaigne ship, to yet another item we had misplaced for her. This one isn't in the ocean, though, but isn't where she expects it to be. Mandelos catches up to her yet again just before she finally picks the right target and teleports back to her own quarters on our ship. Not to be outdone, Kristjana sees Mandelos leaping from ship to ship repeatedly, so she does the same. What he does with the effortless grace of a demigod, she does like a bull in a China shop. But she gets it done. Both of them corner the culprit in her own quarters, just as she has set another fire in the hallway outside. We move to attack, but both of us gently caress up our rolls and she gets a turn unimpeded. She teleports away one more time, this time to an unknown place, presumably nowhere near any of the ships. She is getting away for good this time. I pass a check at the last second though and Kristjana sees what the saboteur is looking at before she leaves. She seems to consider staying to get something in the drawers of her desk, but decides its too dangerous. Kristjana quickly loots the room, focusing on the desk, while Mandelos runs to the top deck to report what has happened. All this time, Evelien has been trying to get messages to and from other ships to keep them from shooting. Shots have been fired from our ship into the Montaigne ship, but we are in contact (and good terms) with that captain. It's the other ships we're worried about. The Castillian ship is moving around the other four, to "cross the T" and obtain a firing solution on us. Mandelos and Viktoria jump and fly, respectively, to the Vodacce and Vendel ships to tell them to stand down. All we have to worry about is the Castillans who might be looking for a pretext to sink a bunch of heathens and witches. We quickly examine the items we got from the saboteur's quarters and find one item to be a focus for Porte, so we heave that overboard. Everything else is information, but there's no time to look at it now. Kristjana goes belowdecks to finish putting out the fires down there, and Helgi joins her. Helgi suggests that she go to the Montaigne ship and help do the same there, since the saboteur set fires over there. All the ships are shorthanded, since most of the crews are still coming aboard from the camp ashore. I decide to do that, and that turns out to be extremely consequential. We're still worried that the saboteur will return. We are aware of only two focus items left that she can teleport to: one that Kristjana gives to Helgi, and one we haven't found but we know is in our ship's gun deck. All the other ones have been found and thrown into the sea. With everyone else busy doing critical tasks keeping all the ships from shooting at each other, Helgi is down in our ship's gun deck by himself. He places the known focus item in one place and waits. He watches it like a hawk. But he blows the perception check to notice a large bomb pushed through to the other, unknown focus. The GM asks him for initiative to try to beat the ticks left on the fuse. Before Helgi can react, the bomb detonates. The bomb is large enough to immediately deal 7k5 damage to Helgi. But it is also big enough to set off all of the ammunition on the gun deck. The ship's magazine goes off. This will deal him another 10k8, and probably 7k5 to everyone on the top deck. Then the ship will sink, rapidly. Kristjana will see this from the deck of the Montaigne ship, and Viktoria from the Vendel ship. Everyone else is aboard our ship. But none of that has happened yet. The session ended at the bomb going off. 
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Apr 5, 2024 03:45
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Chip McFuck posted:This is a cautionary tale that you really don't know someone until you roleplay with them. I like the idea of tabletop games as a sort of window into the inner soul of a creep. In ludo veritas, if you will.
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May 1, 2024 11:14
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Somehow no one got exploded in our 7th Sea game. Helgi, our gentle giant, tanked a small explosion from a hand bomb teleported right next to him, and then managed to leap out of the ship through the resulting hull breach before the ship's magazine detonated. The detonation caught him and about a dozen others with splash damage as they were all swimming away, but no one died or got KO'd. Helgi's leap into the sea silhouetted by explosion and flame was dope as hell, though.  In the aftermath, on the Montaigne (French) ship, the GM asked, "does anyone speak Montaigne?" No one besides my Vesten/Ussuran (Finnish?) huntress did, and she had just picked up "acquaintance" level of the language in her travels. (Language proficiency ranges from Acquaintance -> Poor -> Fluent -> Native). So I said that Kristjana knows Montaigne, but she has really just only seen that Muzzy commercial a million times, so she can only say, "Je suis la jeune fille" and "une, deux, trois!" When I failed the resulting Wits check to comprehend, the GM took that statement literally. So the Montaigne captain, in the middle of a major crisis, says things in a Very Serious ToneTM to my big, athletic, definitely grown-rear end adult huntress: [Translated from Montaigne]  "Where is the captain of your ship? The Castillians have a firing solution on us and we need to move now!" "I...am a little girl."Reference for anyone who wasn't a kid circa 1990 and doesn't have this grooved onto your brain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Prg_SVBfFWw "These children aren't Montaigne. They're Vesten."
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May 1, 2024 12:01
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