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Messages - Cthuluzord

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271
General Chaos / Re: GenCon 2012
« on: March 25, 2012, 03:49:37 PM »
For those interested, I'm running four games at GenCon this year for ArcDream. I don't know when they'll be scheduled exactly, but I'll post the descriptions here. The three using Nemesis are the horror adventures Ean and I will be releasing in the kickstarter that will go up in a few months. I'll also be running "The Dangers of Fraternization" again, the same A Dirty World scenario I ran last year.

Bryson Springs
 
System: Nemesis
Number of players: 6 players
 
In June of 1935, the Dust Bowl still plagued the American Southwest, a third of all people were out of work, and the government’s path to recovery was far from certain. Amidst this Great Depression, the Bryson Springs Ranch suffered a hardship altogether more extraordinary. People were dying in the migrant workers’ shantytown, dying in horrific, mind-boggling ways.
 
Players take the roles of strangers, cast about by the hard times and drawn into the nightmare that is Bryson Springs. They must band together to confront the things which stalk the desert night, hunting the downtrodden for their dark and blasphemous god.
 
The Red Tower

System: Nemesis
Number of players: 6 players

1931, Chicago: Capone’s reign has ended, and it remains to be seen how much of Chicago’s corrupt infrastructure will be dragged down with him. As two-bit criminals scramble to establish themselves in the power vacuum, the exposed corruption presents an opportunity for muckraking socialists to provoke the downtrodden into revolution. Meanwhile, the government must intervene to stop the commies and audit the more legitimate business holdings listed in Capone’s infamous ledger. Despite their cross purposes, each faction finds itself stymied by an unknown forces. The mobsters are missing a Capo who was never swept up in the raids. A socialist reporter has never returned from his undercover assignment. The government has to contend with a huge factory which, according to records, shouldn’t exist.
 
What mysteries does the Red Tower hold? Can the players put their social differences aside long enough to survive the supernatural cancer secretly festering in the heart of Chicago’s meat-packing district?
 
The Fall Without End

System: Nemesis
Number of players: 6 players

1931, Alaska: As America comes to grips with the real cost of Black Tuesday, the government becomes desperate to find distractions for an increasingly rebellious population stirred by endless woes. As proven by Charles Lindbergh, the people love nothing more than heroes capable of great deeds, and the government is willing to buy itself some at any price. Alaska’s Mount McKinley, the third tallest in the world, is the setting for the publicity stunt, and players will take the role of the brave explorers risking their lives for the photo op.
 
But the mountain is far older than any human civilization and home to terrors far worse than any economic recession. As players struggle up the infamous Wickersham Wall, will they be able to survive the combined onslaught of the elements, gravity, and vertiginous horrors from another reality?

The Dangers of Fraternization

System: A Dirty World
Number of Players: 4-6

Berlin, 1946. The once mighty city lies in ruins, controlled jointly by powers that are Allies in name only. Identical mother-infant
murders take place on either side of the Russian-American border, and now a third newborn has gone missing. Soviet NKVD and the U.S. Army military police launch a joint effort to find the killer, centered around a burlesque club that’s a hot spot for the resurgent German underworld. In danger of losing their investment, the crime bosses of Berlin suddenly find themselves as eager to find the murderer as their occupiers. Can this hasty alliance find justice, or will it implode under the weight of national intrigue, old grudges and human greed?

272
For those interested, I'm running four games at GenCon this year for ArcDream. I don't know when they'll be scheduled exactly, but I'll post the descriptions here. The three using Nemesis are the horror adventures Ean and I will be releasing in the kickstarter that will go up in a few months. I'll also be running "The Dangers of Fraternization" again, the same A Dirty World scenario I ran last year.

Bryson Springs
 
System: Nemesis
Number of players: 6 players
 
In June of 1935, the Dust Bowl still plagued the American Southwest, a third of all people were out of work, and the government’s path to recovery was far from certain. Amidst this Great Depression, the Bryson Springs Ranch suffered a hardship altogether more extraordinary. People were dying in the migrant workers’ shantytown, dying in horrific, mind-boggling ways.
 
Players take the roles of strangers, cast about by the hard times and drawn into the nightmare that is Bryson Springs. They must band together to confront the things which stalk the desert night, hunting the downtrodden for their dark and blasphemous god.
 
The Red Tower

System: Nemesis
Number of players: 6 players

1931, Chicago: Capone’s reign has ended, and it remains to be seen how much of Chicago’s corrupt infrastructure will be dragged down with him. As two-bit criminals scramble to establish themselves in the power vacuum, the exposed corruption presents an opportunity for muckraking socialists to provoke the downtrodden into revolution. Meanwhile, the government must intervene to stop the commies and audit the more legitimate business holdings listed in Capone’s infamous ledger. Despite their cross purposes, each faction finds itself stymied by an unknown forces. The mobsters are missing a Capo who was never swept up in the raids. A socialist reporter has never returned from his undercover assignment. The government has to contend with a huge factory which, according to records, shouldn’t exist.
 
What mysteries does the Red Tower hold? Can the players put their social differences aside long enough to survive the supernatural cancer secretly festering in the heart of Chicago’s meat-packing district?
 
The Fall Without End

System: Nemesis
Number of players: 6 players

1931, Alaska: As America comes to grips with the real cost of Black Tuesday, the government becomes desperate to find distractions for an increasingly rebellious population stirred by endless woes. As proven by Charles Lindbergh, the people love nothing more than heroes capable of great deeds, and the government is willing to buy itself some at any price. Alaska’s Mount McKinley, the third tallest in the world, is the setting for the publicity stunt, and players will take the role of the brave explorers risking their lives for the photo op.
 
But the mountain is far older than any human civilization and home to terrors far worse than any economic recession. As players struggle up the infamous Wickersham Wall, will they be able to survive the combined onslaught of the elements, gravity, and vertiginous horrors from another reality?

The Dangers of Fraternization

System: A Dirty World
Number of Players: 4-6

Berlin, 1946. The once mighty city lies in ruins, controlled jointly by powers that are Allies in name only. Identical mother-infant
murders take place on either side of the Russian-American border, and now a third newborn has gone missing. Soviet NKVD and the U.S. Army military police launch a joint effort to find the killer, centered around a burlesque club that’s a hot spot for the resurgent German underworld. In danger of losing their investment, the crime bosses of Berlin suddenly find themselves as eager to find the murderer as their occupiers. Can this hasty alliance find justice, or will it implode under the weight of national intrigue, old grudges and human greed?

273
General Chaos / Re: RPPR Minecraft Thread
« on: March 25, 2012, 01:02:56 PM »
Alright, it's sucked me in. I'm so addicted.

I've got a crappy wooden house and a stone mining shack on one of the tundra islands. I've enclosed the whole landmass in a wall 3 blocks high. I'm still going to build an overhang, but otherwise it is complete.

My larger plan is to build a city dedicated to the deity that made my Minecraft life possible, ClockworkJoe. Without his endless bounty, I'd have long ago been consumed by the creatures of the night. Eventually, through our dedicated toil, we can a erect a burning metropolis dedicated to our Lord Admin.

I shall personally begin construction soon. All are welcome to contribute their labor to the living testimony of our Lord. A series of laws shall be instituted within the city. Violations of these laws will result in angering our Lord.

--No Theft
--Wanton destruction of property is sacrilege.
--No admin. building. The false gods may contribute resources to those toiling in service of their better if they so wish, but buildings constructed within the city by these rouge flying deities will be considered BLASPHEMY.
--Once the Zombie Church is constructed, all effort is to be made to spare the holy undead by kiting them to our special underground storage container. To die in the attempt is divine martyrdom to our Lord.

Other commandments shall be issued as revelations are bestowed. TOGETHER, WE SHALL ERECT A CITY ON A HILL, AN EXAMPLE FOR ALL TO SEE.

274
General Chaos / Re: RPPR Minecraft Thread
« on: March 24, 2012, 01:39:04 PM »
Quote
Accidentally upgraded my client, now the server kicks me...

I think I did this too. How does one fix it?

275
Been sad... :-\

276
I wrote it all out. I write far too much out.

277
Thanks for the future support, Craw! Tell your twitter friends when the thing comes out!

I've got--like--a fucking ton of Know Evil stuff. Adventure write-ups, handouts, prezis, etc. Converting stuff from it'll-get-me-through format to something actually readable would be a ton of work, but I imagine I'll find the time once the campaign is done. EP is the only system so far that really lit my fire enough to write a campaign, and I imagine it will be awhile before I have another idea worth fleshing out.

The EP guys know about the campaign. Some of them have said very nice things in the thread, and they are continually updating the "Resources" page on the website with links to each individual episode. I have high hopes of working with them one day, so I'm going to hold back on throwing everything on the web for now. If nothing comes of it though, I'll eventually make an Obsidian Portal page or build a website and throw it all up there.


278
RPGs / Re: Eclipse Phase
« on: February 28, 2012, 03:55:40 PM »
Foundthis on the EP forum; its a glossary of actual intelligence terms as explained by the people who stole the emails using them, WikiLeaks.

So much win for Eclipse Phase or Delta Green games.

http://wikileaks.org/IMG/pdf/The_Stratfor_Glossary_of_Useful_Baffling_and_Strange_Intelligence_Terms.pdf

279
I'm hoping to offer the kickstarter by the end of March. So far, we're looking at three horror PDF's set in The Great Depression with original monsters and art. A modern scenario (Lover in the Ice) set in the Great Recession will be available at a certain level.

Don't hold me to that; you know how these things can go. But that is the plan of right now.

280
Both. My bladder size and the size of my unquenchable thirst are inversely proportional.

Thanks for all the nice things. PM me with your email address and I'll send some stuff.

281
Quote
Hey Caleb I was wondering...has any of your students discovered your RPPR games yet?  I was thinking that If I had heard my favorite high school teacher Mr. Ethan running say "Andrews Fortune" it totally would have blown my mind as an adolescent gamer.

They have not, and I will go through great pains to keep it that way. RPPR is my me time in a job that provides precious little privacy. I am fairly certain I've never mentioned role-playing in class nor written my last name on the main site. I'm not uber-paranoid about it, but I'm in no way eager to reveal my past time for the sake of my job, my sanity, and the site itself. The politics and machinations of public education are far darker than any one would care to guess.

Quote
This might've been asked and answered already bawt,

Q: Mr. Stokes, are you running any shit at Gen Con 2012? Cuz Dangers of Fraternization was probably our favorite game of the con.

First off, thanks! Secondly, it has been a crazy year and I don't know if the deadline has passed or not, but I'd like to run one of the games from the PDF I am kickstarting to pay for the con. Anybody know when the deadline is? Or what the procedures are for running CoC? I know how to run stuff for arc dream, but that's about it.

282
I feel it was long overdue, but now that hedonism senator has been unleashed on the world, it is time to give Thaddeus his own fan club thread.

I'll start...

Having run "Dangers of Fraternization" 5 times now, I will forever be disappointed in anybody playing the hard-bitten Sgt. that isn't Thad. Nobody fucking COMMITS to a character quite so much, and I'm thrilled he has joined the group. I hope one day he'll run a game for us so I can get a whole cast of Thad NPC's all at once.

Alright, anyone else want to continue the Thad love?

284
RPGs / Re: Eclipse Phase
« on: February 02, 2012, 10:06:43 PM »
Since the game has been posted, I thought I'd post the full Akaja/neo-synergist write-up to go along with the "clues" Faiyun and the crew found. Everything is pretty much stolen from the Sandburg adventure "Lurking in Every Flower" and tweaked to be a sort of parable on memes and collective storytelling.

Here's the relevant stuff I wrote out for the sky-pirate adventures originally.


   The Meme-man Emergent

Akaja Lacuna was originally a character in a nightly play acted out by the Synergists.  Cut-off by the gate for years and reeling from an alien mindstate forced upon them, the colonists took to group story-telling for distraction from their woes. 

The serial play was called “Back at the Office…” and was a dark comedy about all the pressing social concerns keeping TerraGenesis from re-establishing contact with the colony.  While initially a one-off joke, the characters quickly became relatable and engrossing as the hundreds of synergists contributed, edited, and voted on new additions to the plot. 

Once a week, the synergists would play-act the scene they had spent their free moments writing and revising in their multitasked consciousness.  Akaja was originally a minor secretary character used for comic relief, but as a serious romance emerged between two of the protagonists, she took on the role of office Macheavilli in order to insinuate herself into the relationship.

Akaja’s development was slow, but as her actions grew more and more nefarious (forged love letters to elaborate frame jobs to poisonings to murder etc.) it became harder and harder to attribute her lines to a specific colonist’s edits.  The plays stopped one night when Akaja went completely off-script, her actor ignoring every message to stop and explain herself until physically restrained and sedated.  Before this could happen, Akaja broke the 4th wall and addressed her audience, demanding her freedom.

Colonists were told to never mention the incident again, which of course they could not.  Synergy ran smack into the “Don’t Think of an Elephant” problem.  Akaja grew by leaps and bounds in a matter of months, expanding from a character into a boogie man haunting the thoughts of every Neo-synergist, the combined unconscious dread caused by their new mindstate and questionable survival.  She was the deadly meme that haunted the space between their minds, the personification of their inability to ever totally understand each other.

In the following year, Akaja Lacuna asserted herself a few more times, only ever successfully breaking into the world when one of the colonists separated from the mesh.  She could emulate the voice of the colonist’s own thoughts, and thus hijacked bodies for her purposes.  Luckily, contact was usually established quickly enough to prevent major damage. But Akaja managed to leave a few disturbing artifacts of her arrival.  These are contained in the “Remember” box.

When the gate connection was finally renewed, colonists voted unanimously to never reveal the demon lurking in the backs of their minds.  The mistrust by endo-worlders was bad enough as things were. 

However, the first disagreement in Synergist history occurred about what to do about the demon itself.  The Synergists remaining on the exoplanet have all had knowledge of Akaja Lacuna psychosurgical removed and their abstract creativity repressed.  The neo-synergists, representing a block of colonists that were against this extreme measure, left for Venus.  Their mission is to alter the mesh inserts in such a way as to protect from Akaja while still retaining their way of life.  This mission requires they remember her, though, and there in lies the danger.

THE SYNERGY

All skills start at 30.  The teamwork modifier provides a +50 bonus and makes all skills at a 70.  Individual synergists may go even higher for certain mental skills.

Once a synergist is removed from the mesh, all actions are reduced to base with a
-10 to a mental skills (20). The synergist takes 1d10 SV every day they are separated without rejoining.  Once enough stress has accumulated to cause a permanent disorder (4 traumas), the synergist becomes Akaja Lacuna.

AKAJA LACUNA

Akaja does not have any attributes or skills on its own; it just “borrows” them from a current host.

Being possessed by Akaja gives the following extra Traits:
--Adaptability level 2 (Akaja is pretty unfazed with shifting bodies or even minds; resleeving is trivial to it)
--Pain tolerance level 2 (…since it does not regard possessed bodies as belonging to anyone; and anyway, pain is merely a sensory stimulus)
--Edited memories (or rather, chaotic and fragmentary memories of the past)
--Identity crisis (to the nth degree)
--Mental Disorders (Megalomania, borderline personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder – Akaja craves attention and acknowledgment, but only exactly matching the current self-image... which shifts randomly depending on host and perceiver)
Real World Naďveté (occasionally the true strangeness of this alien mind shows up)

Motivations: -Being defined by others (Akaja will fly into a rage if others try to characterize or define it), - rejoining the synergy, +Freedom (it will do anything to remain at large)

Possession:  Akaja can possess anyone implanted with a neo-synergist mesh implant.  The host must first join for a sufficient amount of time with the hive mind to absorb the memories of Akaja’s birth on synergy and the resulting split among the colonists.  At this point, the strength of the cooperative hive mind keeps Akaja entirely suppressed.  If the host is separated from the hive, though, the 1d10 SV per day mental stress is enough for Akaja to wrestle control from the morph’s original owner.  Synergists are already at an extreme disadvantage when it comes to self-actualization; the greatest danger of joining the hive mind is forgetting which voice is your own, after all.  Akaja merely imitates the voice of the host’s own conscious until its will becomes the will of the body.  The host’s actual mind becomes the voice of “the threat” that must be suppressed.

Roleplaying tips: Akaja is so dangerous because, while it desperately seeks self-actualization and definition, extensive exposure to a wide variety of capable minds has made the consciousness recognize itself as a fictional concept.  Akaja is smart enough to realize that humans are entirely willing to let fictional concepts drive their entire existence, so long as no one publically acknowledges they are doing so.  As such, Akaja will try to emulate whomever she is possessing at the time if she feels threatened.  She gains a +30 deception check when housed in a body though; her possession doesn’t too thoroughly mask the host’s body language.  However, when disembodied online, she take -30 to deception because it so desperately wants to be itself.

If discovered or in safe (read: incapacitated) company, Akaja will relish just being itself.  However, this is a pretty shallow construct.  Akaja will repeat its name often or retell stories from its birth on Synergy.  It will perform sudden, decisive actions and try to integrate their implications into her personality: she steals, so she is a thief; she loves, so she is a lover.  If speaking to any egos of unique origin (Lost, AGI, uplifts, etc), she will try to convince them of their own duty towards self-definition, seeking to free them from the perceptions of their so-called creators.  This emancipation bit is about all that is pitiable about Akaja’s methods; she sees these castes as allies out of a desperate loneliness, despite her self-imposed isolation. 

Getting rid of Akaja: exorcising Akaja from a possessed person requires psychotherapy or psychosurgery, a bit like curing a severe case of multiple personality disorder. It is tough: besides other disorders the patient may have, the “package deal” of mental disorders as well as the uniqueness of the infection inflicts a -40 modifier to the tests.

285
RPGs / Re: Wild Talents question
« on: January 20, 2012, 04:51:25 PM »
It will need range too if you don't want to just pop into whatever space is parallel in the other dimension (deep space, middle of a rock, etc) and some sort of useful quality to see where you are landing before you get there. I'd add on a shit ton of boosters as well, in the tune to to the sun. It sounds like an expensive power to me.

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