Notable Gaming Experiences: The Gospel According to CobiWann's DM

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Notable Gaming Experiences: The Gospel According to CobiWann's DM

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

Captain Bravo posted:

To try and actually post something positive, one of my newer players got an awesome scene in our last game that he really seemed to love. He plays a robot character, and one of the running jokes is that he doesn't have a soul. Also, as a ranger, he's got a robot puma that in one session killed an enemy I had dubbed the "King of Rats". So, another running joke that I played along with was that his puma was the new King of Rats. There was a whole running joke about Rat Nobility, the church of the Rat God, whether you can be the King of Rats if you don't have a soul, and what position of the nobility is accessible to one without a soul. So it was eventually decided on that the Puma had a soul, and was the King of Rats, and he didn't and was the Chancellor of the King of Rats.

So, fast forward a couple weeks, and they're in an underground temple. After killing the big bad evil guy, they explore around a bit. I had shaded over some areas behind big steel doors for them to find, break into, and loot. But in one of the rooms, he makes an offhand comment that the carving on the floor is indicative of the Rat Pope. I paused the game while we got food, and a quick job in GIMP gets me this:

They crack the door, and find a Rat Honor Guard leading to the Rat Pope. At this point, I'm fairly sure the party is going to follow the usual tactic of killing everything and looting the corpses. I've got some ideas about letting the Puma score the killing blow, and then becoming the God-Emperor of Rats, but in a surprising show of restraint they actually act on their best behavior. Robot dude even bows to him and kisses his tiny Rat Pope Ring. So I've got to pull out the big guns, I have the Rat Pope recoil from him, and announce that the Rat Pope can tell he doesn't have a soul. I'm already starting to get initiative rolls ready, when he busts off with a big speech about how he may not have a soul, but he still does the right thing, and a whole lot of other stuff I never would have expected from him.

I'm stunned, at this point. So I do the only thing I can think of. The Rat Pope kills one of the nearby rats, and grants his soul to the robot guy. Then makes him a Bishop of the Church of the Rat God. They let the rats leave, set up the mobile island base they won in combat as Rattican City, and the loving party paladin announces that he's considering either converting to the Church of the Rat God, or finding some ways to bring it together into his own church. Everyone levels up, session ends.

I've still got to come up with some nice boons/magic items for the robot character, but I was amazed at how well it all came together. I love my players.

The Robot King of Rats being granted a soul by the Rat Pope.

That's why I game.

That, right there.

# ¿ Aug 23, 2012 05:18

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 00:26

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

cheetah7071 posted:

I'm pretty sure the most Fun I've had in an RPG was a freeform one-shot with a single rule (which had a handwaved in-universe explanation that didn't make a ton of sense): if you (the player) laugh, your character instantly explodes, and a replacement character shows up once you've stopped laughing.

We had each character have a single magical power, with no repeats allowed on your future characters, so that your character actually felt like they died, instead of just saying they exploded and nothing else happened.

The game started out kind of tense as nobody wanted to "lose", but quickly ended up being great. I'd definitely recommend it, possibly with a variant where if the GM laughs, they become a player and the player to their left becomes GM.

Awwww hell I'm going to play that on Sunday.

# ¿ Oct 30, 2012 11:34

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

Volmarias posted:

Considering that your scientist guy is a murderer, and the detective isn't that much better, I'd say it's more that your big bad is out for justice.

Yeah. Horrible murdering psychopath, even. I demand you make your Carmichael character wear some kind of SFnal bat suit.

# ¿ Dec 17, 2012 05:02

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

Colon V posted:

Would have been even better if their leader actually WAS expecting some bigwig mercs.

Yeah, that's a perfect DM 'what-if' - because the bigwig mercs arriving 30 minutes later is gonna be hilarious.

# ¿ Feb 12, 2013 02:45

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

Kurieg posted:

From your descriptions I believe this was a 4e Game, right?
Level appropriate Magic Items are kind of vital to even hitting things as a part of the game's math. This guy sounds like a giant dick who just wanted an audience to inflict his neuroses on.

And it was his failure to do the 4e math properly that suggested this to you, was it

# ¿ Mar 6, 2013 02:41

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

quote:

He had a chart of body parts (what the gently caress is it with bad DMs and attacking body parts?), and rolled to see which body part each attack hit (because he had a really tedious armor system where every body part had a different AC and armor had HP). To his credit, at least both players and monsters got to use that chart for their attacks, and I did manage to behead some monsters without losing a single limb.

That sounds just like 1e Runequest - you tracked hp and armour separately for each body part.

We found that almost invariably a combat would end when someone's left leg got lopped off, so we'd up-armour that leg with bronze plate and laugh, and laugh.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2013 04:27

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

Coward posted:

So the guards then ask to see his ownership papers, since Anthony decided to go right after me and no sentient organics were in front of him in the queue and it's a fair question. Anthony proceeds to derisively snort that no one owns him.

Some of us start pointing out that in the Star Wars universe (as it was then - haven't been keeping up at all) Droids are expected to be owned. They're intelligent, but they're property andwedonotwanttogetintoaslaverydiscussionhere. On high security planets like this, a non-owned Droid is going to be very suspicious. It's all cool, one of the Jedi players can pretend to be his owner and Jeff nods that all that can have been sorted out before docking at the station.

Anthony goes loving mental. He had to fight over the Assassin Droid thing, and now he has to pretend to be owned? We all begin calmly explaining that he won't actually be owned, we're just pretending, none of the non-Droid characters are going to treat his character any differently, I mean, hell, there are Jedi travelling with a loving Assassin Droid for gently caress's sake. Anthony will not listen to a single word of this and starts getting really pissed off by the entire idea, not once backing down from loudly proclaiming to everyone that he's a free Droid. Now things start becoming a bit more pointed as Mal starts trying to work out how Anthony's character can be a functioning Assassin Droid if he refuses to infiltrate anywhere, Anthony tells Mal to shut up, I ask if Anthony's Droid phones ahead to his target to ask them to pick him up at the airport, and Anthony tells me to shut the gently caress up, and Jeff just asks again if there's no way Anthony won't just pretend to be owned by one of the Jedi characters.

With Anthony's absolute refusal to back down on this, Jeff decides he'll go ahead and play the scene. The Assassin Droid refuses to acknowledge ownership, the security officers decide there's something very curious about that so just ask the Droid to submit to a search, the Droid busts out some incredible fighting moves, taking down four security guards before the alarm is pushed, the security overwhelms and he gets taken away. Anthony is very huffy about all of this, and then starts crying bullshit when they put a restraining bolt on him. We all ask what the gently caress he was expecting, and he doesn't answer.

I was reading this imagining an Assassin Droid Rosa Parks refusing to get out of its seat on the space bus.

# ¿ Mar 20, 2013 22:39

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

JAssassin posted:

So a guy who I played with in a campaign who stabbed a king in full view of the party and most of his allies because "Well, I'm chaotic evil and that's what my character would do" is running a Call of Cthulhu campaign. How terrible should I expect it to be?

Just make sure your character buys all the dynamite and gasoline they can afford and uses it liberally.

Do it and report back.

# ¿ Mar 31, 2013 10:06

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

Winson_Paine posted:

There is nothing really wrong with adversarial GMing as such if it is what all the players are into. Sometimes a game where you can get killed or whatever at any time if you don't watch out can be kind of fun. The thing is, everyone has to buy into that or somebody is not going to have fun and maybe most importantly the GM who is in the real position of trust there has to not loving cheat to get his drat way. If you are playing a game like that, everyone has to be playing the same game or it is just an exercise in dickish wankery.

I took my dudes through Tomb of Horrors the other night. Two characters each, from the list at the back. A smattering of backstory (I printed out mission scrolls to encourage a little backstabbing) and badges for 'first to die', 'first to fall in a pit', 'first treasure collected' and so on.

It was, no lie, hilariously good fun. It's actually a much cleverer piece of work than the relentless meat grinder it's normally depicted as. My favourite bit was the guy who jumped through the portal, came out in the oubliette, activated the trapdoor below him, fell down the 100' pit, survived, then died when the next person came through and fell on top of him 20 minutes later.

They made it through to the fake lich and retreated in disarray, having only lost three characters.

It was the first time I'd played 1e since 1985, and it's interesting how systemless the whole thing was. Stats were largely irrelevant, there was very little combat, it was all 'what do you do next?'

sebmojo fucked around with this message at 05:18 on Apr 29, 2013

# ¿ Apr 29, 2013 05:13

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

Agrikk posted:

Seconding this.

Content:

I've been running a Rolemaster campaign for two of my friends based on the City State of the Invicible Overlord and the City State of the World Emperor from Judge's Guild.

The sourcebooks are pretty hilarious and random with things like Trolls running gambling tables in taverns run by Lawful Good fighters, etc so we play it fast and loose and with tongue embedded firmly in cheek.

During one adventure the players are retrieving a MacGuffin for A Guy which takes them into the Seedy Underworld and they end up slaying the Wererat who had usurped control of the Sanitation Guild (the Urban Decay adventure from Dungeon Magazine) in an attempt to bring about a new age of vermin. Instead of finishing the adventure and moving on, the players glom onto the idea of taking over the now leaderless guild and running it.

So now that my fledgling high-sorcery campaign has taken a very curious tilt, I go with it and the players are now literally cleaning up the town. While their stated goal is to overthrow the Invincible Overlord, they plan to do it as members of a healthy and vibrant Department of Sanitation.

(So help me, they are looking for a tailor to outfit them all with orange vests with a Sanitation Logo embroidered on the back.)

Their next adventure takes them into a murderhobo spree in an old manor house that is the base of an upcoming thieves guild, and walking out of it at dawn, battered and cut, bearing two unconscious prisoners they are challenged by a passing patrol of city watch. Instead of trying to flee from them somehow, the players flag them down and turn over the prisoners.

"What are you people, some kind of vigilantes?" asks one of the guards.

"Nope," a player replies. "We're sanitation workers."

I about died laughing. What can you do? The archmage wants to be a streetsweeper.

This. This is why I roleplay.

In our early days playing Rolemaster we came back from some adventure or other and set up a pub, using the enchantment rules and the Mage's 'chill liquid' spell to invent a beer cooler.

Though our favourite scene has to be the bit where we turned someone to stone then talked our way into a castle pretending to be statue salesmen.

Edit: Hey, Rolemaster too! Way underrated game, particularly skills and combat.

# ¿ Apr 30, 2013 01:35

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

Asehujiko posted:

I give my players all the loot they want. Room full of guys with assault rifles? +8 assault rifles and +8 body armor. Heretek controlling a muderbot? Have a murderbot(assuming you don't blow it up). As seen above, my players are forgetful and occasionally downright stupid enough to provide their own plot by mishandling their piles of stuff without me having to come up with any "gotcha's" beyond "well what did you THINK would happen when you deployed the chaos tainted murderbot that keeps blasting "BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE" on it's loudspeakers in the middle of a busy city?".

I'm GMing the very wonderful Mongoose Traveller campaign Pirates of Drinax at the moment, and that starts the players out with their own blinged-out pirate ship (fast, sleek, big gun) and goes up from there. By the end of the first (long) mission the PCs can easily have a small armada, and a few million credits.

This concerned me for about five minutes until I realised that more resources just changes the problem space the party have to work in. They have to keep the murderous Vargr pirate they picked up from the haunted space station happy. They have to find crew, keep the ships in good repair, decide who to piss off and who to suck up to. And most important, they're now a power in the area of space they're in, and have to decide how to apply that power.

TLDR: Play Pirates of Drinax.

# ¿ May 19, 2013 23:42

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

Golden Bee posted:

I think before you play a Paladin, the GM should ask you a few questions. (Hopefully all GMs ask players about their characters, but these Qs should set off alarm bells that can be heard in space).

1. Who are your characters friends? What do they spend their downtime doing?
2. When was the last time you had to compromise to get what you wanted?
3. How does your character relate to non-believers?
4. Where do they go when they want to keep a low profile?

---
The same thing can be asked of stab-happy rogues.

These are smart questions.

I got in an argument in another TG thread over paladins falling (I personally don't mind the mechanic, though I've never used it), but I'm probably spoiled by having played with the same dudes for like 30 years and they're all p cool. So if they have a paladin do some nasty poo poo it's because they're happy to take that route and see where it leads.

# ¿ May 28, 2013 00:09

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

DivineCoffeeBinge posted:

This. THIS.

One of the best times I ever had in a gaming group as a youngster was playing in an Evil PCs Campaign - we were all in our early teens, so marauding and pillaging and being EEEEEEVIL was, like, the coolest, man - when one of the older guys in the gaming store asked if he could join the game as a Paladin.

He didn't approve of our Evil. He didn't participate in it. He didn't get in our way, either - he just took every opportunity to tell us that there was a better way, a smarter way, a wiser way. He pushed the group into being 'the evil that fights a greater evil' - cajoling us into opposing the Big Bad Necromancer - first by getting us to realize that we would only be disposable pawns to the Big Bad, and later by showing us that we had, no matter our motivations, been doing good all along.

By the end of that (sadly brief) campaign half the party had shifted alignments, not because he forced anyone, but because he showed us that doing good could be kind of awesome. You don't have to slaughter a village to get their stuff, after all; if you save the village, not only will they give you stuff, but they will love you and you'll get loyalty out of it as well as gold. So we turned into good guys, because one paladin looked at us and said "their souls can be saved, and that is the most righteous struggle I can imagine."

It was fuckin' glorious.

I had a long-running Rolemaster game where this happened too, but my character (assassin/librarian) and his sort of rubbed off on each other so he got a bit more worldly and mine got a bit more moral. I found myself escaping scenes without murdering everyone in my path. He ended up leaving the church. It all ended up with a big fight and then the city fell into the sea :allears:

roleplaying.

sebmojo fucked around with this message at 03:31 on May 28, 2013

# ¿ May 28, 2013 03:24

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

Kurieg posted:

Wasn't one of the solutions to one of the "puzzles" in the original tomb of horrors to cast stone to flesh on a locked stone door and then hack through it?

No, that was one way to avoid being entombed forever by a trap in the second false entranceway.

I unironically love Tomb of Horrors, it's quite doable if you have the right attitude and a few (a lot of) spare characters.

# ¿ Jul 29, 2013 10:37

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

I'm running classic Cthulhu campaign Masks of Nyarlathotep and my guys just got to London and are poking around trying to discern the cult before it notices them. They go visit one of their leads and drop some subtly relevant information (a hieroglyphic they got off an artifact from new York). The lead, who is an incredibly evil lady who runs a spice shop, is like nope, no idea (lying, which she is extremely good at).

The players roll all their dice and get a great result! It's not quite good enough, but spending a couple of points of luck (a trivial amount) will put them over and reveal one of the villains! One of the other players suggest doing this and i carefully remove all expression.

Then they forget about it, decide she's fine, and go somewhere else :cthulhu:

# ¿ Mar 10, 2024 19:51

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

By popular demand posted:

There you go with your methodically illustrated spider's web of an adventure only for the players to completely fail to spot your cunning knots and threads.
Meanwhile imma running tomorrow's session with nothing beyond "send players on bullshit mission, let them gently caress with the world, throw something crazy into the mix when it gets boring"

Lol yep. This is very much part of the campaign though, they managed to extricate themselves from new York after kicking/dynamiting the hornets nest, so they are hyper alert with the next phase, it's basically cat and mouse.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2024 20:35

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

CzarChasm posted:

Christ. I mean, my wife and I decided that kids aren't the right choice for us, but I'm not some militant "NO ONE SHOULD EVER HAVE KIDS EVER! KILL THE BREEDERS! ONLY MORONS BREED!" kind of rear end in a top hat.

I think the worst I did was my friend was dating his then girlfriend and asked if the two of them could stop by for a quick visit. I said sure and invited them up. They came in and basically said "We're pregnant." and I said "On purpose?". I wasn't exactly joking, but I was really more confused than anything. In part because their relationship was (from the outside) not the foundation I would build my life on, and they were living in a cold, lovely, shoebox. But, I did what I could to support them in their choice.

that's kind of gauche but also a reasonable question, it's a bit like asking whether a relatives death was expected, it's asking for help in calibrating your response.

# ¿ May 3, 2024 04:02

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 00:26

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

MelvinBison posted:

I would think you'd have your answer by how enthusiastic they are when they say they're pregnant.

That's what it's gauche to ask, for sure

# ¿ May 3, 2024 04:49

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