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Pez
Feb 28, 2002

Thanks to CoX, my stairs will be protected forever!
My wife laminates a ton of stuff for her pre-k, we bought a Scotch brand laminator for like $29 at Walmart, works like a charm. I use it for anything I'll be referring to a lot when GMing.

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Megaman's Jockstrap
Jul 16, 2000

What a horrible thread to have a post.
Two of my players dropped out of the game tonight. Game cancelled until next week.

Robin D Laws put a curse on me

Megaman's Jockstrap
Jul 16, 2000

What a horrible thread to have a post.
Ok, I finally got to run this.

It went extremely well. One of the players said "this is the best time I ever had playing an RPG".

I had 3 players and I wanted to run a more straightforward "action movie" type game so I pulled all the Future, Ancient, and Past Archetypes except for a couple (Ninja and Old Master). I also got rid of Masked Avenger, which is just too goddamn goofy and comic-booky, sorry. My players picked: The Driver, The Big Bruiser, and the Ninja.

The Driver was played by a very good friend of mine who has RP'd with me for 20 years. He picked a great melodramatic hook: he had unknowingly been roped into human trafficking ("I don't ask questions"), but fell in love with one of his passengers. She had been kidnapped from him and he was trying to find her. We realized after talking about this that this "great hook" was just basically paraphrasing The Transporter and cracked up.

The Big Bruiser was a young but experienced RPG player. His character was an impeccably polite waiter at his mother's floating restaurant who owned money to a local gang and was trying to pay it through odd jobs, mostly using his strength as an enforcer, Rocky style. But his heart wasn't in it and he was always looking for a way to turn the tables on the gang.

The Ninja was a bit of a problem. He is a younger video game nerd (late 20s) and had never participated in a paper RPG before and never seen an HK action film and so couldn't think of a melodramatic hook. We finally just gave him a "wife is sick, you're trying to raise money for the treatments by ripping off a gang" default after 5 minutes of dithering because he wasn't going to be able to make a decision.

The "gang" in question impacted all 3 players and we decided it was the same gang (the Red Dragons - they're secretly an Ascended puppet group, of course) and that's why they knew each other and were working together. Except Ninja player decides that's not enough to get him involved with the other two players, so he's tailing them. This is one of my pet peeves, much like Robin D Laws I consider this nothing more than an emotional power grab and spotlight so I said "great but find a way to be friends by the end of the first fight scene" and he said "there's going to be a fight scene?!!?" and I realized, oh yeah, this guy has never played RPGs before. Take it easy MMJS.

I threw out the intro adventure from the back of the book, which I actually don't like very much as it's too quick to introduce the Chi War. I love to build the weirdness. The intro adventure immediately gives the players a bunch of info on the Chi War, a rogue AI, and a bunch of cybernetic apes running around. Way too much, way too quickly. Probably would be good for the third or fourth session but definitely not the first.

So I rolled up my own adventure. I decided to do a Rumble in the Bronx/Big Trouble in Little China mash up. Keep it strictly normal at the beginning and reveal Chinese Sorcery as it went on. The set up: Local businesses in Mongkok were being harassed by a gang of thugs called the Yellow Skulls and the players were going to a) beat up their goon squad and b) stop the gang, only to find out c) they were actually being puppeted by evil Eater of the Lotus Sorcerer called Mr. Sorcerer (didn't actually have a real name for him, so that's what everyone refers to him as) and his shape-changing supernatural assistant, Watcher of Sorrow. Mr. Sorcerer had killed the leader of the gang a year ago and set up shop at a historic cultural garden that he arranged to have closed to the public (using magic/hypnotism a la The Shadow) had shaped into a decent Feng Shui site. Watcher of Sorrow had taken the gang leader's place using shape-shifting and had turned them into a much more serious, mob-like force who was threatening one of the PC's friends livelihood. They would have to take them all down.

It sounds complicated but it really was just a framework to make things increasingly weird and get in fights and have a little bit of a mystery.

I'm not going to bore everyone with the specific plot beats of the adventures, just some highlights/lowlights:

1) The exploding dice got a lot of cheers and jeers. When the players would roll that negative exploding six, they would groan. When they rolled the positive exploding six, they would grin or pump their fist or say "alright!" I know this is controversial but I've always liked the amount of variance that can be rolled.

2) On the other hand, we had an insane round for the bad guys where one mook got a 23 Smackdown on the Big Bruiser and a featured foe got an incredible 25 Swerve (four exploding sixes! dude!) and nearly one-shotted the Ninja. The last thing I needed was for the new guy's character to get murdered in the very first fight, so I backed off from him. Luckily that particular Foe was never able to hit beyond a point or two again.

3) Feng Shui 2's Wound Point recovery rules suck. I just had to give them back some wound points after every fight because RAW they get one opportunity to get healed by each recovery skill (medicine, chi heal, sorcery heal) and none of the players had any of these so Medicine would have been a piddly amount and who the gently caress wants to play a support character in an HK action movie? So I was just like "reduce your Wound Points by 20 because Uncle Tsuang gives you first aid" or some other bullshit after every fight. In fact the fights are pretty well balanced to put the characters at, or near, 30 Wound Points, so this lack of recovery would have slowly killed the characters.

4) The Driver interrogated one of the gang's punks after a wild melee in a supermarket. After finishing up, as the gang member is carted away by the police, he says "...and don't use drugs." Say this in the most generic Clint Eastwood voice you can muster up.

5) The Ninja snuck into the same supermarket at the beginning of the scene for no reason that anyone could fathom (other than "he's a ninja, I guess that's what they do?") Once the fight started, however, the player proudly revealed that Ninjas get +2 martial arts when fighting in any area they've covertly infiltrated (which is why he made such a big fuss out of this). A good laugh was had.

The entire middle/early-end of the adventure was totally improvised, the players immediately went off the rails and tried some very smart, very action-movie stuff to get at Watcher of Sorrow (human name: Ou Jinhai) including entering an underground fighting tournament and baiting him into fighting the Big Bruiser. This is where Feng Shui 2's easy mechanics and tight math made it really easy to run, I was loving it. If you can come up with the narrative and have done a minor amount of prep work you can get this working inside 2 minutes. I threw in a completely gratuitous chase for the Driver, chasing Watcher of Sorrow through the empty streets of Kowloon on a motorcycle as the demon parkour'd off terraces and leaped off walls and threw fire blasts at him, and it worked great.

I'm going to run the final fight next week, and then actually collect my notes and release this adventure as a pdf maybe.

Oh, and also I got new books and the Archetype sheets should soon be refunded. A happy ending for all involved.

Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 18:15 on Aug 26, 2015

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib

Megaman's Jockstrap posted:

5) The Ninja snuck into the same supermarket at the beginning of the scene for no reason that anyone could fathom (other than "he's a ninja, I guess that's what they do?")

This is the objectively correct response to this line of questioning whenever you're playing a ninja.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

Kai Tave posted:

This is the objectively correct response to this line of questioning whenever you're playing a ninja.

It really is.

Megaman's Jockstrap
Jul 16, 2000

What a horrible thread to have a post.
Couple more things while I'm thinking of it:

Everyone loved the Archetypes. Just get in there and get going. 10 minute complete party generation including backstory. All the concern about this earlier in the thread was unfounded.

The fact that the math is so simple really aids in play. I can't stress this enough. It Just Works(tm). The dice, however, do not Just Work and this is going to be where your drama comes from. YMMV

The Archetypes have some brilliant stuff. The Ninja got so much mileage out of Infiltration, he's a Watcher-type player and had a great time just hanging around unseen. For example, at the door of the fight club:

quote:

Bouncer (to Big Bruiser character) : So why are you here?

Big Bruiser: I want to make some money fighting.

Bouncer (to Driver): And why are YOU here?

Driver: To bet on him! <points to Big Bruiser>

Bouncer (to Ninja): And why are YOU here?

Ninja: Uh, actually, I'm not. I'm already inside, drinking at the bar.

Also, after the mic dropped from the ceiling for the announcer's pre-fight fighter introduction, the Ninja jumped on the mic cord as it went back up into the ceiling and just hung around up there. Totally gratuitous Ninjaing.

Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Aug 26, 2015

Miles Vorkosigan
Mar 21, 2007

The stuff that dreams are made of.

Megaman's Jockstrap posted:


3) Feng Shui 2's Wound Point recovery rules suck. I just had to give them back some wound points after every fight because RAW they get one opportunity to get healed by each recovery skill (medicine, chi heal, sorcery heal) and none of the players had any of these so Medicine would have been a piddly amount and who the gently caress wants to play a support character in an HK action movie? So I was just like "reduce your Wound Points by 20 because Uncle Tsuang gives you first aid" or some other bullshit after every fight. In fact the fights are pretty well balanced to put the characters at, or near, 30 Wound Points, so this lack of recovery would have slowly killed the characters.


Have you looked at the Partial Recovery section on Page 107? It seems to work ok for between fight healing, though on the other hand I did just manage to kill off one of the characters (RIP totally-not-Inigo-Montoya).

Megaman's Jockstrap
Jul 16, 2000

What a horrible thread to have a post.

Miles Vorkosigan posted:

Have you looked at the Partial Recovery section on Page 107? It seems to work ok for between fight healing, though on the other hand I did just manage to kill off one of the characters (RIP totally-not-Inigo-Montoya).

Yeah, having to do this after every fight would kill your characters. Being down 2 to 3 toughness is pretty much a death sentence. That rule is not an appropriate substitute for dropping some Wound Points between fights.

Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 18:35 on Aug 27, 2015

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib
Gonna be honest, ninja dude for never having played an RPG before seems like he's got the right idea about how to play the hell out of a ninja.

dwarf74
Sep 2, 2012



Buglord
So I told Atlas I'd be down with a shot counter instead of a refund.

They sent me something today but I am still waiting on a prepaid postage label. Maybe that's what they are sending? I have no idea.

Megaman's Jockstrap
Jul 16, 2000

What a horrible thread to have a post.
You know it's really hard to find the setting info for Feng Shui 1996 online. I want to give the players some handouts for out-of-date info on the Chi War but I can't find any.

Edit: nevermind, I managed to cobble something together.

Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 17:11 on Sep 8, 2015

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

Have they announced when the hardcopy is going to be available for order yet?

Megaman's Jockstrap
Jul 16, 2000

What a horrible thread to have a post.
From the kickstarter updates:

quote:

Our distributors who've placed orders will have both the core rulebook and the GM Screen (including Fistful of Fight Scenes) on September 1st. When they finish their journey to your FLGS depends on who the store's distributor is, where they're located, how often they receive shipments, and so on. Want to know when your favorite store will have these two products? Pretty much every store in the country would be delighted to have you call them to ask how soon you can bring your business into their shop!

They really should have included the shot counter with the GM screen, it's great.

dwarf74
Sep 2, 2012



Buglord
I am super impressed with the shot counter in all the ways I am unimpressed with the archetype sheets.

Well, with the counters anyway. I think the board needs to be bigger, and needs to have places to note penalties to next sequence's initiatives.

Megaman's Jockstrap
Jul 16, 2000

What a horrible thread to have a post.

dwarf74 posted:

I am super impressed with the shot counter in all the ways I am unimpressed with the archetype sheets.

Well, with the counters anyway. I think the board needs to be bigger, and needs to have places to note penalties to next sequence's initiatives.

Dry-erase markers work great. Just write it directly on the player's chit (test this with the punch out sheet first to be safe)

There's also blank chits for notes. Shot counter works great. It's super effective!

Megaman's Jockstrap
Jul 16, 2000

What a horrible thread to have a post.
So I'll just keep journo'ing my campaign if nobody objects.

I finally sprung the Chi War on my players after 4 sessions. After my own created adventure, I started running Shadow of the Future of the Apes with some slight modifications.

One thing I've been doing is introducing new character archetypes as the series has progressed. I took out all the magic and non-Contemporary Juncture characters (except for fan-favs like The Old Master and The Ninja) and have been reintroducing them as the series progressed as being "unlocked" whenever the PCs defeat that Archetype in a fight. So the characters beat an Eaters of the Lotus bad guy, they got the Sorcerer, they beat a couple of SLA baddies and they get the Cyborg, etc. etc.

Anyway my Driver player finally gave up on the Archetype, he didn't like it and TBH I didn't particularly care for it either. It's a bad Archetype in a lot of ways, basically very hard to contribute, you have to be able to bring a tire iron or wrench to a fight RAW and there's lots of reasons that this doesn't work and it's also very difficult to keep stunting interesting ways to beat guys to death with a tire iron. Also he's really great in a car and not much else, and despite my best efforts I was only able to force Car Chases into the game for 2/4 sessions and he easily out-drove the bad guys while the other players did not a whole lot. And another problem, one of his shticks requires him to be the only character in the scene and coupled with the Ninja (who frequently goes off by himself but I have allowed him to pull a semi-Drifter and just appear in a scene with no explanation) that's just a lot of "ok you're off doing your own thing" for 2/3 characters which isn't interesting.

So he switched to Spy, and once again we just grabbed the easiest Melodramatic Hook possible: he got burned a la Burn Notice. He's really excited to play him although honestly I think this player would enjoy Transformed Dragon the most, I'm going to send an Ascended Hit Squad after them quickly in order to unlock it.

Anyway the Big Bruiser character switched to a Cyborg because the Big Bruiser is kinda a boring boss killer and he wanted to be able to style on some Mooks. I also think he wants something more mechanically interesting than "I attack".

The Ninja remains the Ninja and has been getting better at flavoring his character by leaps and bounds. I basically said that any character with a Chi stat can do real-life Wuxia and had him watch Iron Monkey and Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame, both of which he loved and is now way better at doing crazy poo poo during fights.

One fun thing I did was give the players the old 1996 setting stuff (suitable condensed) from the Dragon's archives and so they still think that the Buro is around and all that. They didn't even catch on that the info is old (despite calling 1996 "the modern day" and so forth) So that's fun. They've completely got the geography of the Chi War wrong while having the broad outlines correct and I can't wait to see their faces when they realize that that Architects of the Flesh (and the Future Juncture in general) have been nuked to powder. Hopefully they'll write off the Ascended as well and that would be...interesting.

This week is the big showdown at Genome Solutions, I hope they live! I have a feeling that their luck is about to run out...

Sionak
Dec 20, 2005

Mind flay the gap.

Megaman's Jockstrap posted:

So I'll just keep journo'ing my campaign if nobody objects.

I finally sprung the Chi War on my players after 4 sessions. After my own created adventure, I started running Shadow of the Future of the Apes with some slight modifications.

One thing I've been doing is introducing new character archetypes as the series has progressed. I took out all the magic and non-Contemporary Juncture characters (except for fan-favs like The Old Master and The Ninja) and have been reintroducing them as the series progressed as being "unlocked" whenever the PCs defeat that Archetype in a fight. So the characters beat an Eaters of the Lotus bad guy, they got the Sorcerer, they beat a couple of SLA baddies and they get the Cyborg, etc. etc.


I am enjoying the write-ups. Generally you don't see a ton for Feng Shui.

I also really like the "boss unlock" idea to introduce new or esoteric archetypes. I also feel that the Chi War is fun but that the Shadow of the Future of the Apes is just way too much for players new to the setting.

Effectronica
May 31, 2011
Fallen Rib

Sionak posted:

I am enjoying the write-ups. Generally you don't see a ton for Feng Shui.

I also really like the "boss unlock" idea to introduce new or esoteric archetypes. I also feel that the Chi War is fun but that the Shadow of the Future of the Apes is just way too much for players new to the setting.

The future juncture has always been really out-of-place compared to the others.

Granted, 1850 with its Buddhist monks that espouse Daoism while calling themselves Confucians, and are associated with heterodox Christianity, isn't that much better as far as being true to Chinese culture goes.

Lemon-Lime
Aug 6, 2009
My FLGS now has the book up for preorder and due out some time this week (no bits and mortar this time, which is weird, not that I care in this case). My players have liked FS2 enough for me to drop the £40 on a physical copy.

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

Atlas games just released Crazy Packs 1 and 2 on DriveThru, if you want the 1st edition PDFs. It's $100 for everything, so it's not a huge savings. Still, if you want to be a completionist, here you go.

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/156715/Feng-Shui-Crazy-Pack-1-BUNDLE
http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/156716/Feng-Shui-Crazy-Pack-2-BUNDLE

e: Interestingly, the only old book that seems to be missing is Back for Seconds.

Evil Mastermind fucked around with this message at 15:31 on Sep 15, 2015

Megaman's Jockstrap
Jul 16, 2000

What a horrible thread to have a post.

Sionak posted:

I also feel that the Chi War is fun but that the Shadow of the Future of the Apes is just way too much for players new to the setting.

Absolutely. Shadow of the Future of the Apes is a really bad intro adventure. Oh let's just have a couple of fights (both at supremely boring locations, most likely) and now it's time to learn about the Chi War (with absolutely nothing cool to show for it so far except some cyborgs, yawn. At least have a couple of sorcerers blasting each other with green flames too.)

I had my players experience a critical shift (which I described as a miles-high insubstantial wall of water rushing in from east to west that subtly changed a few signs and the license plate on the car they were tailing) before they learned about the Chi War and their baffled reaction followed by their later "ah-ha!" moment made it all worth it.

Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 16:14 on Sep 15, 2015

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

That's a good topic, actually: what should the basic "intro game for complete setting newbies" include?

I mean, you definitely want a sorcerer or two, and a required Netherworld trip.

Megaman's Jockstrap
Jul 16, 2000

What a horrible thread to have a post.

Evil Mastermind posted:

That's a good topic, actually: what should the basic "intro game for complete setting newbies" include?

I mean, you definitely want a sorcerer or two, and a required Netherworld trip.

Well my philosophy is that every dork at the table has seen Big Trouble in Little China and can understand that paradigm. So start with the Eaters of the Lotus and work out from there.

The way I got the players into the Netherworld without making a big issue of it was having them go through a "Netherworld wormhole" which was just a short 50 foot corridor through the Netherworld that took them from Mongkok to Aberdeen (they were chasing a Supernatural creature who thought that it wasn't being followed, so used the wormhole as shortcut to quickly move from the mainland to the island).

So they became Innerwalkers (an experience I described as deja vu, vertigo, and someone walking over your grave all at once) without really knowing it, thinking that it was just an aspect of the sorcery/supernatural.

Galaga Galaxian
Apr 23, 2009

What a childish tactic!
Don't you think you should put more thought into your battleplan?!


I always liked the original adventure, Baptism of Fire. It had Sorcerers and Zombies (in proportion to the amount of thugs the crew wasted in the first fight). It also had an opportunity to rescue a damsel in distress and a real chance for her to actually get killed during the rescue (to drive home this is HK cinema). Then again, I got really attached to Ta Yu and he was the primary nemesis of the shortlived FS campaign I ran way back when. Loved that stupid fake flamethrower he had to try to disguise his powers (right up until he jumped out the window to continue hurling fireballs).

Honestly if I ever ran a new FS game set in modern day, I'd bring back Ta Yu, but now he's had 20 years to adjust to the real world. Maybe have him be more of a Lo Pan knockoff and make him a businessman, a real estate mogul who is using his business to try to "legitimately" (plenty of criminal underworld extortion, blackmail, and threats) buy Feng Shui sites.

I do like the idea of dumping a 1996 era Dragon's information archive on the PCs though.

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

Yeah, Baptism of Fire was a good introduction. On top of all that, it gave the players a potential base of operations/Feng Shui site so the war has a reason to come to them.

I think you could work the first group Netherworld visit into a chase scene, with the PCs pursuing the bad guy's vehicle into a really weird tunnel or maybe down into an underground parking garage that seems to be a little twistier than normal.

fool of sound
Oct 10, 2012

Evil Mastermind posted:

I think you could work the first group Netherworld visit into a chase scene, with the PCs pursuing the bad guy's vehicle into a really weird tunnel or maybe down into an underground parking garage that seems to be a little twistier than normal.

This is more or less how I introduced it.

Galaga Galaxian
Apr 23, 2009

What a childish tactic!
Don't you think you should put more thought into your battleplan?!


Only if it ends up with the PCs losing their quarry just in time to find themselves driving their car through the ruins of a Buro city, only to be set upon by Road Bandits, or rolling up to the edge of a village in AD69, which is about to be set upon by bandits Or rather than another Juncture, you end up at some memorable location in the Netherworld, my vote being Pinballahla, which is about to be set upon by Huan Ken and some Thunderknights looking to have some fun and party (bonus points if a player decides to play his favorite arcade machine, beats the "pathetic" local high score, whose initials are KEN)

You might as well go big with your first trip to the Netherworld. :haw:

Megaman's Jockstrap
Jul 16, 2000

What a horrible thread to have a post.

Galaga Galaxian posted:

You might as well go big with your first trip to the Netherworld. :haw:

Yeah, I agree. Go big or go home (literally, send them back to their contemporary juncture), don't make it an actual operational setting until later.

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

I think the big Netherworld scene should probably be last. Like, start in the contemporary juncture as normal, then have the chase scene through "weird tunnels" that dumps everyone in 690 so they have to deal with that (different, but not too different), then things move to some Netherworld site so you can end on the gonzo-est note.

Megaman's Jockstrap
Jul 16, 2000

What a horrible thread to have a post.
Well yeah if you're running a one-shot. I would beware of going absolutely double-blasto over-the-top in the first couple adventures of your series, leaves you nowhere to go (note: this is Feng Shui, a fight on a haunted pagoda with a Eunuch Sorcerer and Supernatural demon fighting the crew while the ghosts of long-dead Chinese generals try to steal their souls is considered "moderately low-key")

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry
The first campaign I ran, they ended up chasing a bunch of gunrunners in San Francisco got stuck in their semi trailer and got free in the 1850's in a secret base under a hand laundry.

Lemon-Lime
Aug 6, 2009
My copy arrived:

Megaman's Jockstrap
Jul 16, 2000

What a horrible thread to have a post.
So, short campaign update: My players lost the last battle against the SLA, badly. Nobody died but two of the three players (the Ninja and the Spy) could have (they rolled Death Checks). They rolled mediocre but I rolled incredibly well, including one mook round where the spy took 27 points of damage...from 2 mooks. I took mercy on them but SLA managed to get away with the building. They felt appropriately terrible.

So here's a few long term things I'm noticing about the game:

1) If your weapon isn't doing at least 13 damage, fix that poo poo immediately. 10 is the absolute minimum damage your character should be doing to Named Foes (mooks, obviously, don't matter a bit). I'm gonna have to tell the Ninja to buy a Katana or something because he keeps using his little knife and doing jack poo poo to named foes. The difference that a 15 damage weapon and a 10 damage weapon does in a fight is tremendous.

2) When things go bad in this game, they go really bad, quickly. A lucky pair of shots can take a character into impairment and their effectiveness plummets. From there they quickly flip into wounded territory.

3) The Marks of Death are a fantastic mechanic, the players were pissing themselves after the fight when they rolled to see if they lived.

4) USE FORTUNE DICE. Remind your players that they exist and should be used.

Galaga Galaxian
Apr 23, 2009

What a childish tactic!
Don't you think you should put more thought into your battleplan?!


Megaman's Jockstrap posted:

1) If your weapon isn't doing at least 13 damage, fix that poo poo immediately. 10 is the absolute minimum damage your character should be doing to Named Foes (mooks, obviously, don't matter a bit). I'm gonna have to tell the Ninja to buy a Katana or something because he keeps using his little knife and doing jack poo poo to named foes. The difference that a 15 damage weapon and a 10 damage weapon does in a fight is tremendous.

If the player wants to keep using a knife instead of a full Katana, let him grab Signature weapon or something. Maybe give* him a special Ninja Knife that does extra damage because magic/science/plot/whatever/

*well, don't give him it, make him earn it in some suitable dramatic fashion.

quote:

2) When things go bad in this game, they go really bad, quickly. A lucky pair of shots can take a character into impairment and their effectiveness plummets. From there they quickly flip into wounded territory.

3) The Marks of Death are a fantastic mechanic, the players were pissing themselves after the fight when they rolled to see if they lived.

Yup, one of the reasons the game is good IMO, pretty fitting to the source materials. Though I admit the swinginess can be annoying sometimes.

This setback is just an excuse to have a get stronger, have a montage, and go back and kick some cyberape rear end. :black101:

Lynx Winters
May 1, 2003

Borderlawns: The Treehouse of Pandora
I actually don't mind this game being as suddenly fatal as it can be since making a new dude takes 30 seconds.

Galaga Galaxian
Apr 23, 2009

What a childish tactic!
Don't you think you should put more thought into your battleplan?!


Plus back from the dead plot twists are a natural thing in Feng Shui. Especially the old "They never found the body" trick. Works on heroes just as well as villains.

dwarf74
Sep 2, 2012



Buglord
One of the characters in my FS2 game died after the first adventure. He'd just gotten done saving his son from a eunuch sorcerer (naturally).

He just penciled in the son's name on the sheet, changed his hook appropriately for his father's death, and went right back into action. :)

Megaman's Jockstrap
Jul 16, 2000

What a horrible thread to have a post.
Yeah if the characters had accomplished something meaningful I would have had them roll Cheese It checks and Strength checks to pick up their buds and get out of there and have a higher chance of dying. As it stood they basically just got pounded on, did nothing meaningful, and collapsed. So I had the SLA peeps ignore them and steal the building into the future with their Time Bomb (complete with screaming civilians cringing in terror as the SLA nutsos surrounded the building chanting "Apes forever, humans never!"). Then, as the characters sat at the local bar nursing their wounds, I had Old Yeun walk in, tell the Spy character "you handed me this note in 1937 Shanghai, and here I am as promised" as give them a map to a Netherwold portal that would take them to the future.

(but it actually led to the Fire King's Pagoda, heh)

So they're now being frog-marched to the Fire King, tee hee.

Also the Spy character is amazingly excited about going to 1937 Shanghai and sending himself a note.

Lemon-Lime
Aug 6, 2009
I had a character die after I misjudged how hard a fight would be and my NPCs rolled a few too many good attack rolls in a row, but it's fine, because her dramatic hook was that her family was cursed by an evil sorcerer, so her Bandit is just coming back as a Ghost (the curse being that her soul can never rest and she's cursed to eternal un-life).

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Miles Vorkosigan
Mar 21, 2007

The stuff that dreams are made of.

Megaman's Jockstrap posted:

Also the Spy character is amazingly excited about going to 1937 Shanghai and sending himself a note.

Thank you for posting, stealing the gently caress out of this plot hook.

Also, I had a character die a couple sessions back. FS2 is probably the only game I've GMed so far where I feel really comfortable killing of PCs thank to the melodramatic tone and the quick character creation. I'm just sort of sad we'll never get a chance to resolve his melodramatic hook.

Miles Vorkosigan fucked around with this message at 22:01 on Sep 19, 2015

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