Messages

1

RPGs / Re: Suggestions for a 1 on 1 game.

« on: February 01, 2010, 10:19:43 PM »

In the last few months I've become a 1-on-1 exclusive gamer. It started with running a Necessary Evil campaign in Savage Worlds. The group broke up but one player, a good friend of mine who became attached to her character, wanted to keep playing, so we did. We found the new playstyle to be very personal (it helps to be very close friends). It allows her to hog the spotlight and do all the character development she wanted but was never able to do before because it would have stolen the spotlight from the other characters. It's great for ego because she gets to the be center of the game universe. Everything she does will have an effect on the world, and everything that happens in the world will in turn affect her in some way.

We had so much fun with developing her character's place in the world that she decided to be a GM for me in a one-on-one game of Savage World's Burroughs-inspired Mars setting. It's a pulp world full of larger-than-life characters. I can play a shirtless, Kirk-style captain without any other players complaining about having to play lesser roles in the story.

In any setting and with any rule set you can have a fun, personal adventure. They're far more common in fiction than stories about equally-powerful and important parties of adventurers.

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RPGs / Re: Recommended Actual play podcasts

« on: September 10, 2009, 06:22:46 PM »

20 Weeks of Hell is quite good. It's an actual play/review podcast that separates the play and review into 2 parts. The nature of their show means each podcast is a different game, which can be good if you like to hear a variety of genres and different play styles.

3

RPGs / Re: The coolest thing you've made?

« on: August 21, 2009, 05:48:52 PM »

Back in college, a musician was joining our D&D group, and it was his first roleplaying experience. To hook him into the game, I gave his gnome bard a bright pink flying v ukulele. It was an intelligent item (it's INT score was the highest in the party), and had a bunch of weird powers, which I figured was appropriate for the bard. I gave it a name, a (female) personality, and a history that was really a love story between her and the hardest rocking warrior in history. The player really dug the whole thing, acting the part of the ukulele as if it and the gnome were a double act. He would even play a few ballads on his guitar when the gnome was jamming in the game.

It was silly, but it was fun, and that's what mattered.

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RPGs / Re: Bad GM habits

« on: August 21, 2009, 05:20:58 PM »

Thanks for the tips, guys. Hopefully I can develop a solid process for developing NPCs. I've also been cramming AP podcasts to hear how GMs across the gameosphere handle NPC interactions. And of course, for my superhero game I'm reading comics like mad. I just have to put all these pieces together.

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RPGs / Re: SWRPG question - Wookies, Basic, and you

« on: August 21, 2009, 04:41:08 PM »

Back in the Young Jedi Knights books, Chewbacca's nephew had a little translator droid he could wear on his belt. It could only translate a handful of languages, but that was enough to allow Lowbacca to hang out with all his buddies at the Jedi Temple. The droid developed an amusing personality and functioned much like C-3PO did in the original trilogy.

Also consider that language is rarely a barrier in Star Wars. Everyone seems to understand a multitude of languages. If I remember correctly, the Clone Commandos featured in the game Republic Commando could understand the Wookiee language. As AF said, clone troopers are drilled from birth to fight effectively anywhere in the galaxy.

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RPGs / Re: Bad GM habits

« on: August 21, 2009, 12:43:26 AM »

I suck at making NPCs. My favorite types of adventures to DM and play are challenges: break into that building, steal that zeppelin, rob that bank, etc. When I DM, I try to craft these scenarios so that they can be approached in any way the players come up with. I prepare lots of details that I can plug into whatever solution the players come up.

Unfortunately, after figuring out all the conflicts the players could encounter, I forget about NPCs. I know what information NPCs could give and what roles they could play in the adventure, but details like their names or personalities are neglected. They're basically objects in my campaigns, generic and improvised. It doesn't help that I'm a pretty poor actor; every NPC acts and sounds like I do. There may as well be plot information kiosks on every street corner (which sometimes explode if you push the wrong buttons).

The upshot of all this is that NPC interactions are the low point in my games. The action grinds to a halt and we all sit around stuttering and stammering. Everyone besides the party's Faceman can use the time for snacks or the bathroom.

Currently, I'm gearing up run a superhero campaign. We started with a one-shot weeks ago, and it went well, aside from the scene in which I had to portray an over-the-top villainous NPC who fell completely flat. I'm worried that if I can't find a suitable voice for NPCs in this game, it's going to be a very awkward, short-lived campaign.

7

RPGs / Re: Worst PC death

« on: August 18, 2009, 01:50:31 PM »

Back in 3.5 they likely would insist on a solid gold sedan chair born upon the bronzen shoulders of barely clad amazons.

"Ho hum, you weak, ignorant plebs have not killed this dragon? Very well then..." *fireball* "Now someone fetch me some ice, for my vodka tonic grows warm."

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RPGs / Re: Worst PC death

« on: August 18, 2009, 01:00:41 AM »

But if it's permanent, the character has to be carried around in a wheelbarrow until the party can afford a Restoration spell. So the few DMs who've killed players with ability damage were in the wrong, but the practical effects of Ability Drain aren't much different from death in a low-level game.

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RPGs / Re: Worst PC death

« on: August 17, 2009, 03:04:41 AM »

Except the only problem is that a 0 in any stat other than CON doesn't kill you so those characters that died from STR loss or Cha loss shouldn't have died at all.

Hmm, never noticed the exact rules. Though if someone had strength permanently reduced to 0, wouldn't they be helpless forever?

10

RPGs / Re: Anecdote Megathread

« on: August 06, 2009, 05:22:26 PM »

I went even further early in an Eberron campaign. At level 3, one of our allies turned against the party and tried to kill my girlfriend's character. He had secretly been leading us into the clutches of the setting's Big Bad for weeks. I "accidentally" killed him while negotiating for her release, which unfortunately meant we couldn't get any information from him. I wanted to cast Speak With Dead, but I wouldn't get the spell until 5th level. So naturally, I carried his head around with me for the next two levels (several weeks worth of game time).

Until now I hadn't considered the DM's reaction. It was probably a lot like yours. Something about D&D makes players casual about death and mutilation.

11

RPGs / Re: pee pee doo doo 4E is a bad game

« on: August 05, 2009, 11:58:04 PM »

The commonly discussed ones are skills like craft and profession, cantrips, other non-combat spells, and even the simplification of alignment. Game mechanics which help players define who their characters are and what they can do when the fighting is over. For some people, those mechanics help to flesh out a character and develop its personality.

12

RPGs / Re: Worst PC death

« on: August 05, 2009, 05:35:12 PM »

Dude, ouch. Ability damage is really a big middle finger from DM. He's saying, "Even if this doesn't kill you, you'll spend 10 minutes recalculating bonuses and saves." A friend's barbarian once took 16 CHA damage. His charisma was 6. He was dead, but we had no idea why. Seriously, how does charisma damage kill someone? What a bullshit mechanic.

My only character death came in the latest 3.5 campaign I played. The death wasn't hard because I had a lot invested in it, but it was representative of the death of that campaign. The DM was a huge Dragonlance fan and very proud of his knowledge of the world. He had clearly written a campaign that in his mind was as epic as any tale from the books, and was determined to keep us chugging along the rails. He was the sort of guy who take control of my friend's kender at times because he believed the personalities of that race would act compulsively in ways he didn't care to explain to the player. In fact that player didn't even start with a kender. The DM decided to morph him with some kind of BS spell.

I could have cared less for his stupid story, and I designed a cleric to knock out combat as fast as possible. I chose metamagic feats and spells to buff abilities to insane levels (at times I could buff strength up to 36) and debuff enemies. I was usually quite drunk during our sessions (my cleric didn't carry a shield; instead his second hand held a glass of gin on the rocks) and spent most of my time making jokes (you know, "all aboard" and "choo choo").

Anyway, one night I came back to the table after a fridge run with drinks in hand to find we were in the third fight of the day. Whatever, no big deal. There were some kind of magical ogre warriors that had come out of nowhere and they were starting their surprise round attacks (naturally we didn't have a chance to spot them or rest after the previous encounter). They each get two attacks. I hear from behind the screen "Oh, critical... confirmed. And another critical. Next guy, critical and critical. *damage dice rolling* Well, they hit you for 85 points of damage." I was pretty wasted, so my first reaction was "Wait, what? Someone's hitting me?" Then I looked down at my sheet. The math took a while, but I was at -30something HP. I told everyone I was dead then ripped the character sheet in half.

It's entirely possible he rolled four natural 20s in a round. I don't believe he did, of course. Hell, he had previously shown off his loaded d20s. Either way, the guy was a douche. I rolled up a new character with a background and abilities even harder to fit into his canon, but the campaign lasted just one more session before breaking up.

It was a lame PC death, but in my mind it sticks out as the rotten cherry on a big shit sundae.

13

RPGs / Re: pee pee doo doo 4E is a bad game

« on: August 05, 2009, 04:53:54 PM »

The adventures really do make the difference when comparing the systems. It's D&D, so naturally lots of DMs make up bad dungeon crawls, but a bad dungeon crawl in 4E can at least engage every member of the party because they all have useful combat abilities. Back in 3.5, bad dungeon crawls were unbearable. There was no variety to the action from round-to-round, room-to-room. Everyone sits around waiting for the thief to look for traps and the wizard to decide he can spare a fireball to deal with all the goblins and oozes. Yawn.

The difference was really highlighted for me when I moved away from my 4E group earlier this year and joined a group starting a 3.5 Dragonlance campaign. Warning bells were already going off in my head, so when creating my character I went through all the forums and books to create the most kick-ass cleric build imaginable. I synergized buff spells, metamagic feats, and gear. By level 7 I was the size of a giant, could uproot trees with my bare hands and wrestle trolls. But after hours of work, my cleric was still as boring to play as every other 3.5 cleric in a dungeon, and far less interesting than the 4E cleric I had chosen powers for at random in about 5 minutes.

Maybe 4E did lose some of the deeper roleplaying mechanics, but are those really important? Fourth Edition makes the dungeons and dragons of Dungeons & Dragons more fun. That's worth some praise.

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Role Playing Public Radio Podcast / Re: The World of Synnibarr

« on: August 05, 2009, 04:15:58 PM »

I've been trying to figure out how to sell this game to my tabletop group. Maybe "Hey guys, you know how we like to watch really bad movies together? Well Synnibarr is like Mega Shark Vs Giant Octopus, but interactive... and it will take us 4 times as long to get through."

Could still be a hard sell.