Colon V posted:

I just imagined an adventuring party consisting of Redd Foxx (tank), George Carlin (melee DPS), Bob Saget (ranged DPS), Gilbert Gottfried (mezzer), and Rodney Dangerfield (healer) as an adventuring party, using different styles of insult fighting to humiliate and ruin monsters without ever lifting a finger.

Kosmonaut posted:

Shadowrun Gone Bad

AgentF posted:

Doctor: The Atonement

Golden Bee posted:

Jesters, your stories aren't really...stories. They're just a list of things that happened.

Chance II posted:

We finally had our first game of Eclipse Phase this weekend with the rookie power gamer DM I described earlier in this thread. It is off to a rocky start with the DM floundering on how to get us hooked into the scenario and trying to counter every party action behind the scenes. We have been cooling our heels for a month after being contracted by the Firewall organization. We have no information on what we are contracted to do and have had no contact for the past month. When we finally are contacted by the our handler, he plays coy and refuses to give us any details other than to get on the ship in the hanger that is programed to take use to our target destination. The ship is totally hack proof and the the handler is apparently a master hacker with no history to be dug up by our sentient AI program also master hacker PC.

In transit, we are contacted by another organization with a counter offer to our job that we don't realize is a counter offer because our employer hasn't actually told us what we are supposed to be doing. This organization's handler is also untracable and apparently capable of wiping out our Ego back ups, knows every detail possible about our characters, and can shut down the mesh in our area at whim.

After the session, I tried to explain about player agency and that we are here to play so we don't have to be tricked into accepting missions but I don't think it got through. Think I'm gonna have to bale on what could have been a fun game.

Doc Hawkins posted:

Honestly, one of the strikes I hold against EP is that it's possible to be misused like this.

Doc Hawkins posted:

Yeah. There's no scene, session, or campaign structure, no assurances for the characters' abilities, no thematic focus...like Shadowrun, it leaves how to actually, like, play the game an exercise for the reader.

Game design is pedagogic design, and most "bad gms" are just victims of poor designs, having learned the wrong things.

(some bad gms are of course, terrible people who happen to play roleplaying games)

MissMarple posted:

Doc Hawkins posted:

!!!

I suddenly understand so much more about it, and maybe even feel more understanding towards it.

SirPhoebos posted:

Counter-argument: Republic Commando led to Karen Traviss writing for Star Wars.

Axelgear posted:

:whatthechrist:

Axelgear posted:

I suppose so. The short version is that something of a con artist managed to find an idiot savant linguist and pass it off as his own. It was created as the fictional language for a VR show, for an alien species of what amounted to Klingons.

Except it turns out that this savant was a bit too good (largely due to his infection with the Exsurgent Virus). The language he created acted as a sort of mental programming. By itself, it doesn't affect you, but, if you use it, learn it, think in it regularly, it has a sinister effect: It taints memories.

According to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, language has an effect on memory. Humans compartmentalize memory based on the language they use and this has been experimentally proven with things like ability to differentiate colour/assign blame. This new language makes people generate negative associations with everything they interact with. The more they use it, the more their memory is increasingly aggressive and hateful. Bit by bit, they become argumentative jerks. Eventually, violence starts to break out, antisocial personalities come to the fore, and you have a group of angry, dangerous people.

It ended with them all modifying themselves into huge, muscular war-beasts, trading in their dull prop weapons for monomolecular blades. I got a recording of Maori Haka to play in the background when they started hunting these people.

It actually made me feel a little proud when Linguist Lady squealed with delight at this particular plot. Then, a few days later, someone introduced me to Snow Crash and I didn't feel so original.

Ichabod Sexbeast posted:

So how much do emoticons cost round these parts? Because you really need with a lightsabre.

Doc Hawkins posted:

That is brilliant. Let's try to reconstruct it.

You've given items 1-3 already.

4: a thick visor which switches the character's vision and hearing, making them see sound and hear light.
e:
5: An RPG book containing many powerful secrets and detailed instructions on how to obtain them, for an RPG system and setting the character is unconnected to.

Volmarias posted:

35. Ring of Spider Summoning (summons 1d6 non-magical, non-poisonous, average sized spiders)
36. The rules for playing solitare (how does this always end up shuffled in? sorry guys, just deal another card)
37. A delicious sandwich
38. A bland, slightly dry sandwich

Volmarias posted:

40. A sexy sandwich. A male and female (where applicable) of your species suddenly appear in front of and behind you and grind on you. Whether this is a good outcome is up to you.

Fuego Fish posted:

I'm surprised those bones didn't immediately assemble themselves into more skeletons that you had to fight.

Kurieg posted:

Not really much to it. I met him through a mutual friend and we basically had had all of one session. He got super into the whole Silver Fang Alpha thing. And getting into character is fine, I'm all for it. But I was out later with some of my friends and he saw me, and came over to talk, in character. Things got really uncomfortable real quick and I just kind of tried to play it off as a joke but mostly 'dude you're scaring the straights.' He responded with "I demand you obey the litany and show deference to your Alpha!" and my Tuesdays suddenly got extremely busy for the foreseeable future.

I think the dude may have legitimately believed I was a Glass Walker somehow.