I was listening to another actual play podcast yesterday and they were playing a little indie game I didn't remember ever having heard of called Soth, where the players play small-town cultists trying to summon a dark god named Soth through a series of ritual sacrifices while the GM accumulates a Suspicion resource based on their actions and spends it behind the scenes on investigatorial efforts to stop them. Everyone has ties to regular people in the setting but also have Compulsions and Clarity that betray their increasing madness. It's kind of A Dirty World crossed with Fiasco and mirror-image Call of Cthulhu and it seems like it would be very much the sort of game that Ross or Caleb could get serious mileage from in one-shots. I'd love to see that happen.
Finished listening to the Soth AP. Really well roleplayed and really disturbing by the Jank Cast. Only a real mature group could handle something this heavy and dark.
The mechanics and spoilers of the Soth game are interesting. The GM's hidden turns where suspicion is upgraded and he can buy investigators (player foils) are interesting. These elements, along with the player's daily compulsions to act like crazy cultists, and then the spoiler mechanics that can quickly turn into PVP make Soth start off slow on the first two days but quickly the tension ratchets up to where things spiral out of control (often hilariously). This also rewards the careful cultist. All in all the mechanics do set up a compelling story and could be appropriated for other genres.
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With regards to RPPR one shots, I've been listening to a smattering of the Pateron backer games posted on youtube.
I really like the structure of Floating Arsenal and Subi Reef (not finished) as one shots, Ross. Writing up adventures takes a whole lot of time, but as an observer, I'm of the opinion these are good ones. Both of them have a very solid reason for the players to feel isolated from society (nautical, they on the ocean dude) and from each other at times during the investigation.
With regards to Floating Arsenal, the rat-infested ship
highly reminds me of the game Shadowrun : Hong Kong. There is a rat infested barge there with people living on it. In fact you have to take your resident rat-shaman to the location (as this is part of her companion quest). Real good writing in the game. Strong characters.
Also if you wanted to add another element of fake out to the story, have the mercenaries choose a background that gives them a bit of a mechanical bonus (ex Golden Gloves for +% to boxing, one of them has a background as an insurgent so they know how to make grenades/have bonus to throw). The players will be primed for violent conflict ... and yeah that will help a lot. Sure.
Loved the beginning with the description of The Latvian and the fight. Very thematic, wove the dreams and tension in there and immediately jumped the players into the action and established the hierarchy of being on a naval vessel (ie, the captain, not you has the big guns
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With regards to Subi Reef, I have been hearing that China has or are planning to fly commercial airlines into their artificial islands. Pretty much to establish "yeah we are here get over it" and raise tensions. Now, if you planned to run Subi Reef again, you could very easily make the player civilians (or add civilians to the mix for added chaos) by saying "you are all part of a commercial flight from Philippines or wherever to China and you've been diverted to Subi Reef." Civilians, particularly non Chinese civilians on a not legal man-made island in the South China Sea run by a hostile and stressed Chinese skeleton military crew, is rife with interesting possibilities.
http://www.reuters.com/article/southchinasea-china-idUSKBN0UI1ZX20160105China's first landing of a plane on one of its new island runways in the South China Sea shows Beijing's facilities in the disputed region are being completed on schedule and military flights will inevitably follow, foreign officials and analysts said.
China's increasing military presence in the disputed sea could effectively lead to a Beijing-controlled air defence zone, they said, ratcheting up tensions with other claimants and with the United States in one of the world's most volatile areas.
China has confirmed that a test flight by a civilian plane landed on an artificial island built in the Spratlys, the first time Beijing has used a runway in the area.
Vietnam said the plane landed on Jan 2 and launched a formal diplomatic protest, while Philippines Foreign Ministry spokesman Charles Jose said Manila was planning to do the same. Both have claims to the area that overlap with China.
"That's the fear, that China will be able take control of the South China Sea and it will affect the freedom of navigation and freedom of overflight," Jose told reporters.
In Washington, State Department spokesman John Kirby said China's landing of the plane "raises tensions and threatens regional stability."
Senator John McCain, the chairman of the influential U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, criticised the Obama administration for delaying further "freedom of navigation" patrols within 12 nautical miles of the islands built by China.
China has been building runways on the artificial islands for over a year, and the plane's landing was not a surprise.
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