Messages

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RPGs / Re: Red Markets Inspiration

« on: February 23, 2016, 06:03:16 PM »

Also, Dominion, the follow up to Legion. Set in Vegas where the former elite have set up major Governing Houses and if you're not a member of a house, you're a secondary citizen. Interesting set up for an Enclave.

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RPGs / Re: Red Markets Inspiration

« on: February 23, 2016, 05:57:36 PM »

Might be cliche to set zombie apocalypse survivors in a mall but could be fun to set up an enclave for Mall of America

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RPGs / Re: Red Markets Inspiration

« on: February 23, 2016, 05:39:44 PM »

So I didn't notice it anywhere in the thread yet but Season 1 of Jericho might make for some good inspiration.


Warning Spoiler Heavy

So to go into the basic idea of it, twenty one major cities are destroyed and most of the US is left to fend for itself. Jericho is a mostly farming community that has to adapt and deal with various outsiders that are trying to take advantage of their ease of access to food. Eventually, they come into conflict with another nearby city that was pretty much just a factory town. Factory town needs Jericho's food so they turn their factories into munitions factories and start a war. Ignore season 2 for the most part.

It seems like it would be a good representation of conflict between two enclaves as well as other interested elements, like the local criminals trying to get a foothold, small-town politics coupled with the apocalypse, abundance of some resources and a lack of others, capitalist mentality when the US economy is gone. Definitely something to look into. Not the greatest show but interesting elements.

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RPGs / Re: Red Markets Inspiration

« on: January 23, 2016, 11:46:50 PM »

The school from Dead State



Also Discovery Channel's The Colony might be useful for inspiration

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RPGs / Re: Red Markets Inspiration

« on: January 23, 2016, 11:42:15 PM »

Not set as far in the future as Red Markets, but there might be some good inspiration from Dead State. A high school turned into a fortress. Have to fight off bandits and zombies. Maintain resources and social problems. Fun stuff all around.

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RPGs / Re: Need a system for my game...

« on: March 27, 2015, 07:41:04 PM »

If you're still looking for a system you might check out Big Eyes Small Mouth which is designed around allowing you to play anime like games. It's a point buy system somewhat like Mutants & Masterminds where you take effects and bonus features to those effects to create powers, weapons, vehicles, etc.

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RPGs / Re: THE QUEUE: Whacha got in YOUR gaming pipeline

« on: September 17, 2014, 01:38:58 PM »

The Anarchy.  One of my players really really REALLY wants to finally play a medieval-fantasy sort of game.  So I tossed out an idea I'd had for a campaign based on the period in England called the Anarchy.  (Heavy inspiration from Pillars of the Earth/World Without End.)  Haven't figured out what system I want to use, though.

You might check out the A Song of Ice and Fire rules. Leave out the House creation stuff and a few things like Green Sight, Warg, etc. and it should work fine. There's also the generic Cortex system. It works well when I want to do either low or no magic games.

And there's always Mouse Guard.

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Role Playing Public Radio Podcast / Re: Anyone else having trouble with the podcast on iTunes?

« on: August 19, 2014, 11:46:44 AM »

It's the podcast app on my iPhone which is part of iTunes

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Role Playing Public Radio Podcast / Anyone else having trouble with the podcast on iTunes?

« on: August 19, 2014, 12:57:45 AM »

For the last two weeks, every few hours the podcast disappears from my subscribed podcast. I have to resubscribe but it will disappear again in a few hours. My other podcasts stay, but both RPPR and the Actual Play are gone. Anyone have a similar problem? Anyone know how to fix it?

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RPGs / Re: THE QUEUE: Whacha got in YOUR gaming pipeline

« on: July 24, 2014, 11:04:12 PM »

An idea I'd been bouncing around in my head, ran past my group and they seem to like it so I might run it sooner or later.

World of Darkness: Tin Kickers

The game starts out as a fairly regular Mortals game. The players go through their daily lives, connected in some way or happening to simply be in the same place at the wrong time. Then Final Destination happens, a massive traumatic catastrophe that takes dozens of lives in a totally unexpected fashion. The players then receive their Geists and wake up again as Sin-Eaters.

I've only ever run one successful Geist game. By successful I mean that the players managed to complete the story and survived. A lot of other people died though, and they just decided to reap wholesale destruction on a gated community and a Highschool. We had played Scion just before that so I guess they hadn't transitioned from the "hit it until it dies" mentality.

It was a pretty fun scenario though. I was watching Desperate Housewives with my wife one day and I thought "I could turn this into something evil". I based a bunch of the NPCs around the characters from the show, and then added a book of black magic and demon summoning. I used the Inferno book as well, and the whole feature of ghosts getting infected when they have contact with demons and they can become demons themselves.

I can't believe I forgot these games that I wanted to run.

Eclipse Phase: Borderlands Something about the world of Pandora from Borderlands just screams an Eclipse Phase game to me. The Players are Hypercorp Gatecrashers that are the first team in on a newly discovered world. The Hypercorp is set to make bank because this world doesn't even need terraforming. Too bad the local fauna seems to think the team is food. If that wasn't bad enough, it seems like someone has beaten then here. Except none of these groups seem to be with any organizations known to transhumanity and they don't know about the Fall. Where did they come from, and what's in this Vault they keep talking about?

The Graveyard Shift I worked the graveyard shift at a convince store for a few years and shit can be weird or down right terrifying at times. Especially you're in a part of town that closes town for the night. I've been robbed at gun point, gotten creepy calls worthy of a slasher flick, and dealt with schizophrenics that are off their medication. I want to run a horror game set in a convenience store past midnight. The only thing keeping you safe from the horrors outside are the giant glass windows that line the store. Not sure what system yet. I'm thinking maybe World of Darkness, but Call of Cthulhu or Fear Itself might work.

I also want to do a Better Angels campaign like No Soul Left Behind, where the stakes are high for the players but not so much for the world. A school is a brilliant setting for that because people have built in connections there. I want something like that, but I seem to have writers block at the moment. Suggestions are welcome.

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RPGs / Re: THE QUEUE: Whacha got in YOUR gaming pipeline

« on: July 24, 2014, 07:28:40 PM »

So I had a little time to sit and Write down some ideas for games I want to run. Most of these are working titles.

Hunter the Vigil: Our Old Friend Inspired by one of my favorite stories "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?". It will be an intro level game for a Hunter cell. It will be a Cell tier game so no Compacts or Conspiracies available yet, though they'll have a chance to interact with some like the Maiden's Blood Sisterhood. The plot being that they're amateur hunters going after what the papers are calling a serial killer along a stretch of road called The Devil's Highway. At the center of it all is Arnold Friend. Can they beat someone that might just be Old Scratch himself?

World of Darkness Innocents: Welcome to the Neighborhood I wanted to run an Innocents game (playing children in the World Darkness) where the characters world starts to change dramatically.  First it's the neighborhood all around them that's becoming a lot nicer. It doesn't really seem all that bad other than it's a complete change from everything their used to. It wasn't Hell's Kitchen before, but definitely not you Leave It To Beaver Utopia. The neighbors barely acknowledged them before, now they wave and give that creepy smile everytime they see them. Next comes the parents. Maybe mom never cooked anything that couldn't be done in a microwave and suddenly she's a Stepford Wife. Dad hasn't touched the TV or Computer in days and he keeps wanting to "throw around the ol' pigskin", even though he's never liked sports a day in his life. It starts to take on a darker side though. The dog down the street that snaps at everyone gets shot by a cop and no one even blinks an eye. The neighborhood bully gets run over by a car and no ones even talking about it, not even his parents. At this point, the possible cause might be an experiment by the God-Machine. As I work on the story more, that might change.

Mouse Guard: Robert's Rebellion I figure I could have some fun crossing A Song of Ice and Fire with the Mouse Guard system. Not much on this one yet, other than I want to set it during the last days of the Targaryen's.

Mouse Guard: Postapocalyptia Wanted to try Mouse Guard in a few different settings, and since I love Post Apocalyptic stuff, I figured why the hell not. Not sure if I'll stick with something closer to Mad Max, or go full on Fallout.

Hunter the Vigil: Liquid Assests I figured this might be a follow-up to Our Old Friend. Hunting is expensive and time consuming, so it's nice when someone offers to pay you for your efforts in making the world a little bit safer. Only problem is, the new patrons have started requesting live captures, or as close as you can get with undead. It's hard enough to to kill some of these things. Trying to capture them is suicide. And what are they even doing with the things they capture? Maybe their new patron deserves a closer look.

Promethean the Created: Life Blood The Cheiron Group has the secret to perfect clones. The only problem is they need Promethean's Divine Fire to create them. So far none have survived the extraction process for very long. They're working on ways of extending the process, but until then they'll need more Promethean's and as luck would have it, the Player's group has just gotten into town.

A Song of Ice and Fire: The Watchers on the Wall A bit of a side story to a game I'm running right now. They've been playing as a House of the Westerlands who have managed to escalate events ahead of schedule. Renly has siezed the Iron Throne, Ned Stark is still alive for the moment, Stannis's army is closing in on King's Landing, and the Westerlands and the Reach are dealing with open rebellion. This story will deal with the Wall while all this is going on. There are some new members of the Night's Watch now, including Jaime Lannister, Sandor Clegane, Barriston Selmy, and former Grand Maester Pycelle. Can they handle the army of Wildlings and the undead that pursue them?

Savage Worlds: God Complex A low/medium level superhero game. A little like InFamous. Someone has found a way to give certain people superpowers. It's a pretty bad idea to give people super powers just because you can.

That's all I've got for now outside the concept stage. Might post more later.

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RPGs / Re: M&M 3e question

« on: July 24, 2014, 04:14:16 PM »

Never bought hero lab.  Might have to look into it, keep hearing rave reviews.  I do agree about the power profiles book though.  It's pretty invaluable for figuring out how to build some stuff that's not super intuitive.

I like it a lot for systems that a large amount of point buy or tons of options. It cuts down character creation time for things like Pathfinder, Shadowrun, and M&M. The only problem I have with it is that it's so damn expensive. You pay for the license to use it, licenses for the main book, and you pay anywhere from 10 to 20 dollars for extra material. It's not quite as bad with Pathfinder at times because you get 3 to 6 books for each additional content purchase, but shadowrun has each book bought separately for about 10 each. It's a better investment if you do a lot of it but I've gotten to where I mostly just use skype to play games so I usually only use it for creating NPCs, which is helpful because it makes that much faster and it allows you to track damage, status effects, and other things on your NPCs while playing.

So yeah, if you think you'll get a lot of use out of it, I definitely recommend it, but if you think you'll only use it sparingly, it's a pretty hefty investment.

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RPGs / Re: M&M 3e question

« on: July 24, 2014, 02:35:35 AM »

Biggest issues I see people having with M&M (and superhero games in general honestly) is character creation.  Doesn't surprise me that the first question from this thread from way back is on figuring out character creation.

Personally, my recommendation is to make liberal use of the example characters in the book and just reskin everything.  Don't try to build a character from scratch, start with one of the examples.  Once you've got an idea how to build powers, take one of the examples and just swap a power or two out. 

Been in a bunch of supers games that never got off the ground because folks couldn't figure out how to build their special snowflake character.  It's superheros, there's no shame in being derivative.  Don't bang your head against the wall trying to figure out how to build a quantum probability controller when there's a perfectly good psychic right there in the book that will work just fine.

I never had too much trouble with it, but I devour rpg books when I get them so after some trial and error I can usually get the idea of how character creation works. It helps that I also bought Hero Lab which simplifies character creation a lot.

Another thing I'd say check into if you're okay with spending a little more is the power profiles for 3rd Ed. They take various power ideas like Gravity, Fire, Magic, Alchemy, etc. and give examples of Feature, Utility, Defensive, and Offensive powers and give examples of little variations. They also did a weapons series for 3rd Ed. Probably one of the better things I've invested in that I let new people look at so they can get an idea of some of the powers they'd like to have.

Some of my favorites are the Teleport and Element (Periodic Table not Fire, Earth, Air, Water) profiles.

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RPGs / Re: M&M 3e question

« on: July 19, 2014, 03:56:57 PM »

I played a game where we were PL 10 but the GM gave us 250 points to play with. It didn't come out completely broken which surprised me. It helped that we were fighting stuff up to PL 14.

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RPGs / Re: THE QUEUE: Whacha got in YOUR gaming pipeline

« on: July 19, 2014, 03:33:45 PM »

Since I'm straight up insane I use a forum to keep track of the games I want to run so that I can post notes to things from virtually anywhere. You can see it here if you so desire.

I must hear the Song of Ice and Fire/Battletech game. Record that one soon and out it on the actual plays. I'd also be interested to listen to a God-Machine game. Was your idea for it actually Mortals dealing with the God-Machine or just a Mortal game? I rarely use the God-Machine aside from a few quick Demon games I ran, and when I do, the players don't actually know what it is if they hadn't already read a lot of the fluff material. Just so you know, the Hunter update for God-Machine Chronicles came out. It's called Mortal Remains.

Also, definitely more Better Angels. I'm about to tell at least one of my game groups we have to put a game on hold so that we can play Better Angels. Wish I had known about the playtest kickstarter for No Soul Left Behind.

A Song Of Ice And Fire - The Rise and Fall House Harrowmoor - Okay, I mostly want to run through the house creation system to see how it goes but other than that the idea is to set the story right at the start of the books and treat it as an alt history. Things play out differently, a few background details change and the titular house is in the center of the cannibalistic wolf-pit that is Westerosi politics.

I learned this week to beware of a combination of Medium Crossbows, the Deadly Shot quality, and the Critical Hit rules. It's really easy to get critical hit in this game and the damage gets multiplied to a pretty ridiculous amount at times. Had four assassins with crossbows almost wipe the party. Thank the dice gods for Destiny Points. Definitely encourage your party to keep one on hand in case of death. The ones that didn't have any to burn are rolling up new characters for next session. I didn't even think it would have been that bad of an encounter, but it turn bad real quick. We have some great new storyline from it though. The only surviving noble of the House is plotting a lot of revenge.

The book also suffers from bad editing. I ended up typing my own reference sheets so I could actually find rules when I needed them. I have no idea why you wouldn't include weapon damages in the same section as you have their equipment entries.