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You could always just move the timeline back a little bit to the middle of the civil war and have your players fight the demon that is Nathan Bedford Forrest as their main villain. Or, you know, do so afterwards, when he's busy founding the KKK and generally being one of the most horrible men in American history. More 19th century American games need to have 'Nathan Bedford Forrest is a loving demon' as a plot point.
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Dec 1, 2014 08:42
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Kai Tave posted:Gygax was basically just making poo poo up on the spot though, he wasn't really sitting down and concerning himself with things like unified task resolution. Saving throws were basically "ugh fine, even though the medusa should totally just petrify you I'll let you roll a die and if you roll the right number then it won't," which then got codified as a standard thing probably because the other players present suddenly all wanted the same consideration. I thought part of it was also just the sort of psychological effect of transferring the feeling of responsibility to the player, originally. As in, 'Instead of me just rolling to see if you get wrecked, YOU roll to see if you're awesome enough or lucky enough not to get wrecked'. It doesn't functionally affect things, it's clunky, and it's become kind of a design tumor on D&D, but I can see the appeal of the illusion of control.
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Dec 2, 2014 07:04
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Alien Rope Burn posted:7th Sea just needed a mechanic where you randomly roll up a secret society and assign it to the players but they don't know. Five years into a campaign, you are finally allowed to inform your players they were *rolls* crab-men from *rolls* the moon and have a plan to *rolls* destroy all freedom through *rolls* a photonic virus. Isn't that actually the Metaplot, though? I have such a chip on my shoulder about 7th Sea's metaplot because I was in a 7th Sea campaign that was pretty awesome right up until the GM bought all the books, excited, and decided he would follow the goddamn metaplot to the letter and killed the game right quick by doing it.
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Dec 5, 2014 08:23
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All I wanted to do was continue turning into a seagull and then landing on ships to turn back into a Russian peasant hero with a magic sword, goddamnit, while going around with a drunken Irish marksman who never missed a shot (Seriously, he never missed a single attack all campaign), a froofy spanish fencer, and a Fate Witch. That's all we wanted. But no, horrible demon monsters and the Inquisition basically being right about everything and german shadow ninjas who are 'cooler' than you and eggghhhh.
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Dec 5, 2014 14:50
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Yawgmoth posted:This is every metaplot in every game. gently caress metaplots, I want a game book not a novel. Feng Shui's original metaplot is how you do it. Some poo poo went down, the 'old' heroes are all dead with your PCs expected to probably step in and become the main drivers of stuff, everyone's at a stalemate, and then the sourcebooks are just describing where specific factions and guys are at that exact point in time (or generally) and providing plot hooks instead of 'moving' things.
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Dec 5, 2014 20:16
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Davin Valkri posted:I'm kind of curious, actually--for those games that have established settings, at what points does the setting go from "establishing setting details" to "establishing a dumb metaplot"? Like, for the Legend of Five Rings thing, I'd imagine you'd need at least some setting details about clans and emperors and such, and for weirder settings like Shadowrun you'd probably need even more pre-existing detail, but is there some point where the detail just collapses into an obvious metaplot, or does it very from (good) writer to (bad) writer? What generally does it is movement. Specifically, movement done primarily by NPCs. Like, it's setting details if you have the history of the setting up to 'start'. Say you've got something where the Dragon Emperor is a super cool guy but he's old and sick and the conflict is around the Empire falling apart a little while he's ill and people fearing he may die. That's setting info. If the very next book to come out is all about how Sir Clovis the Bold saved the Dragon Emperor and Old Man Withers the wizard was behind it all along, please buy our next book to find out who his SHADOWY MASTER might be, that's metaplot.
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Dec 5, 2014 20:35
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I really liked the faction they killed off, and I think what they did sorta ruined the faction they had doing the killing, so I'm not all that on board to be honest.
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Dec 5, 2014 21:48
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Yeah, to clarify, it's not metaplot so much as it's just a setting update in a direction I didn't personally like.
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Dec 5, 2014 22:02
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Part of it is also that if you're being honest, a stat yourself game doesn't leave you with a lot of PCs with skills relevant to having crazy adventures, often. Like, I'd have terrible physical stats, arthritis, only the vaguest familiarity with weapons, etc and just be good at studying biblical texts and history, which really doesn't have much applicability in 'Let us fight the zombies'. Norms in AFMBE already do a good job of simulating a relatively believable, mostly average, but slightly above average/promising protagonist for a lower power zombie horror adventure as is.
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Dec 7, 2014 21:26
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At the same time Norms are a ton of fun to write because they have just enough points to have a chance and can grow well if they survive, but they're still easy to write as relatively plausible people. Sheriff's deputy, med student, research tech, petty thug, etc.
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Dec 7, 2014 21:45
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Don't forget it also got us Spycraft, which I still maintain was fun times.
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Dec 21, 2014 19:25
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