Messages

46

RPGs / Re: Need Advice: trying new things

« on: December 06, 2011, 02:07:33 AM »

It would be good to know why they don't want to try something else ?
- Is it because they loved heroic-fantasy ? Then you can offer them other variant, going from GURPS medieval to Rolemaster, to Ars Magica to Legend of the 5-ring.

- Is it because they don't want to bother learning another system ? Then you have 2 options, try to introduce to a simple system (and Cthulhu is a good example) or try another setting using D20 system (unless they are hooked on 4ed).

- Is it because they like powerful and flashy power ? Then try a game with Superhero, GURPS Super, Mutants & Masterminds, Exalted ...

- Is it because they don't want to miss an opportunity to level their character so they want to keep playing again and again ?

As you see, there are many possible reasons why they don't want to change, and for each one a different way to tackle the problem.

If you are brave and you have time, you can try a "Full Reskining" of D&D set in a world which suits you.
Full Reskining is that you change the flavour and name of everything, but the core mechanics remain the same.
Example of Modern Reskining: a Ranger becomes a cop, with an ability to select a target (instead of a quarry), can shoot multiple bullet with accuracy, etc... Of course, you have to find either a techno-scientific gimmik for magical power, or take the form of Old religion (Voodoo, Wicka,...) or psychic.
It is a lot of work upfront to translate everything, but after that, it is smooth rolling since the system has been tested and validated.

47

Role Playing Public Radio Podcast / Re: What do you want the next RPPR campaign to be?

« on: November 10, 2011, 02:09:22 AM »

The "Gradual Apocalypse" has also something else for it: you don't know when it is over !
So if people believe it is still happening, they will be paranoid, will have strange behaviour or believes about what needs to be done to preserve them.
Of course, you will also have all the associated behaviours like finding scapegoat, blaming this religion/race/deviant behaviour for the apocalypse, religious zealots of all kind.

Also, having as background huge city with only a few hundred people living in can be quite creepy - for reference the first 20 minutes of "I am Legend", where almost no words is heard, except Will Smith talking to himself.

The cause of a accelerated death rate can be a new disease (classic), the Red Plague, can be huge swarms of insects (like cricket) flying apparently randomly and leaving behind them a desert, without any lifeform left, plant or animal, can be radiation or contamination of  air/water/some type of food.

Looking forward which spin you want to give.

48

Role Playing Public Radio Podcast / Re: What do you want the next RPPR campaign to be?

« on: November 09, 2011, 07:32:04 AM »

Let's do some apocalypse, shall we ?

How much of the population was wipped out ?
This will determine what kind of settlement you can find. The more apocalyptic it was, the more disperse the groups will be.

How global or pinpoint was the destruction ?
This will tell you what chance you have to find large, organised, possibly almost intact town/city.

Did the apocalypse affect only humans, only living beings or was it also a global destruction ?
The more "global" the destruction, the less likely it is that large infrastructures (like dams, nuclear plant, power station) remains untouched - hence reducing the probability of electricity being available.

A suggestion: the apocalypse was cause by a massive solar flare, which roasted a good chunk of the population, toasted everything which was high tech. However, as a side effect, earth is now constantly generating radio-wave of various level and intensity. The radio-wave soup allows to have wifi and radio communication with very rudimentary, mechanic based system: instead of having to emit something, you just tweak the ambiant waves.
Of course the more accurate you want the information, the more performant and high tech becomes the equipment. And because it is free flowing, you have to be careful to who could be listening.
That could be a fun way to have radio system without much electricity and the whole infrastructure required (servers, antennas & such).
And maybe there are some strange immaterial creatures living in these ocean of radio-wave.

What about some weirdos who decided to apply metal sheet straight on their brains so they can listen to the Signal...

Nothing can stop the Signal !

49

RPGs / Re: Roleplaying with consequences.

« on: August 03, 2011, 07:20:59 AM »

I ran many campaigns (lasting at least one year, more than 40 sessions each) where the PCs were living at the fringe of society, with fake idea, good hideout.
They were not crimal, but mages (in modern area), hence with ressources that only government operatives could hope to match. However, I made it clear from the beginning that they were fully responsible for their acts. If they were stealing some rare books, better be sure that they was no evidence left (or not enough at least), if they were killing somebody, even if it was an evil guy, it is still considered as murder by the law and so on.

To emphasize the point, they met once with an operative from the Vatican's Inquisition (super secret nun with big... guns).

So they were fully aware that there was some powerful players who could take interest in them and their actions if they were not careful enough.

Finally, after stepping once too many time on a big-bad corporation's toes (for the good cause, they were 100% morally in their right, but 100% illegal action: bombing of large facility), said corporation send a swat team to bomb their house with them. PCs manage to escape but lost all their precious belongings. I did not do that to "punish" them for being inconsequential, but because it was simply logical. In their last raid against the corp, they left enough evidences to be traced. They were aware of that, but decided that it was more important to stop the corp than to save their covers - a very "lawful good" choice, however, there is no "poetic justice" or divine help to protect them from the consequences.

In your case, I would stay there is various steps (some mentioned by other in this thread):
- First, out of game, make it clear to the players that there is consequence to their action - by repeating this warning, they cannot blame you for being a dick by swarming them and sending them to jail;

- Second, in game, make them have a run with some big guy from the side of the law. It is to make them realise that there are some people around looking for trouble makers like them and it does not matter if they are doing it for the greater good, there is the LAW (think of Judge Dread). No need to make them fight this guy, just met him and realise how tough life could become. And this guy might pretend to be friend with them, but he will always but the law or is organisation first;

- Finally, pull the trigger. Show them that you won't hold your punch, roll dice in front of them, set up an ambush with realistic resources: if they are wanted for several killings, and there is proof that they are often heavily armed, sent SWAT team, helicopter, snippers, gas, everything. If they manage to escape, they will be on the hunt, the bank account frozen, their friends/contacts under surveillance. It can be the beginning of the new chapter of the campaign. Think of the TV show Supernatural.

Now, reading what you wrote, you might have to jump to 3 directly... And you can decide if it is the end of the campaign with these characters and follow this campaign with new characters, in the same settings. The new PCs could have witnessed the arrest of the old PCs, they might interview them in their high security prison to take over were the story was.

Recently, I run a game where one of the player always putting himself in great danger, to be more heroic. I already made the comment once to him, and this time, his character was close of dying. I did not kill him, but I made sure that because of his action several NPCs died, one which was very important, hanging with them since the beginning of the campaign and a trusted, competent ally.
The next game, he told me that yes, he would be more cautious, espscially when he admitted that I could have killed him without "cheating".

By the way, I always roll my dice open, it helps keeping the player honest 

50

RPGs / Re: Cthulhu with lots of Combat

« on: July 26, 2011, 04:45:45 AM »

... and before the combat starts, to avoid behind called a bloody murderer, show them the stat of the creature you are throwing at them and roll open dice.
They will quickly understand that you don't fight in Cthulhu.
Oh, and don't forget to quote Steve Jackson: "What happen when you drop a nuclear bomb on Cthulhu ? It is vaporised, then reforms 10 minutes later and is now radioactive."

51

RPGs / Re: Best game for a gunfight

« on: April 11, 2011, 03:36:29 AM »

A good system develop for gunfighting with could easily be transfered to modern time is the one from Deadlands as it was designed to simulate duel at dawn (or noon or... whenever).

It is a bit heavy on the dice rolling to my taste and players should know what they have to do otherwise fights could slow to a crawl. But it is very efficient at killing stuff quickly.
It has rules for quickdraw, speed reloading, shooting from the hip, fanning, aiming, burst weapon, single-shot, etc. Well, every possible option you are expecting from gunfights.

A combat steps include:
"Speed", which determined how many actions per round you have (a round being 6 or 10 s - I don't remember), going from 1 to 5.
Each PC/NPCs draws one card from a 52-card deck for each of his action, the rank of card giving when he can take one of his action.
The GM calls action starting with Ace (highest) to deuce (last) and each character with the called card takes his action (when there is tie, there is a colour order).

There is some interesting strategy here where you might want to concentrate all your actions without being interrupted, so somebody with the risk skill (Leadership I believe) can allow people to swap cards so the one who is running can take two actions to run away before somebody throw the grenade and whatnot.

As I said, a bit heavy on the dice rolling, but every corner has been covered.

52

RPGs / Re: Are regular demons no longer having the impact we want?

« on: April 06, 2011, 05:34:17 AM »

The point of making something scary, is that it should have some degree of "inevitability": too strong to be fought, too weird to remain sane, incurable.

The point is not to cripple permanently the PCs to the point players don't have fun anymore in playing them, but to bring back a sense of danger.

In D&D, fights are normal events, so is getting wounded and healed, or possibly ressurected. If death is not permanent and any injury can be healed easily, no fight, no opponent is ever going to be scary unless there is something else at stake that cannot be undone.

Destruction of a friend/family/city/nation/continent/world
Loss of something dear: family items, rare artefact
Loss or damage of something personal: sanity, hands, foot, eye... which could be restore, but in a form that will be a constant reminder of the encounter.

I personally love sanity loss: developping a phobia or other mental troubles is usually never enough to make a PC unplayable, but it has a "weight", and players know/feel that the more of these phobia they have, the closer to permanent retirement their character is.

To make something scary, you need to instill a sense of doom, a threat of something which cannot easily be undone.

In my modern fantasy game, there is no ressurection possible, hence any fight is carefully weighted before being started - and I roll all my dice in front of the players, so there is no fudging of dice. They know I won't try to kill them, but I won't save them neither of a awful roll, even less from their own bad decision.

Also, rarity of a threat makes it scarier. If demons pops out every adventures, PCs & players will become seasoned demon fighters and it is normal that they won't be as scared or impressed by Belzeball III jr after a while. They might even look for a worthy opponent to enhance their demon hunter status.

On the other hand, if suddenly you toss in front of them a powerful undead, with ability that they are not used to counter, spells that they have never seen, they will wonder "how can I protect myself from that ?" "Can i dodge it ? Survive it ? Cure it ?". Or maybe they discover that it comes back each time more powerful, with a better knolwedge of the PCs' weakness. It can be even better if the undead (or whatever suitable monster) looks like a demon, or is mistaken for a demon and suddenly proven techniques against demon do not work - maybe kicking once the whole party ass.

53

RPGs / Re: Are regular demons no longer having the impact we want?

« on: April 04, 2011, 05:15:24 AM »

Demons presented as red, muscular, claw-and-horn are only scarry as powerful fighter with some level of magical abilities. And if it can bleed, I can kill it.

If you decribe a demon as tall (2.5m - 8 feet), hunchback, slender, his body covered with a robe made of loosely sew human skin, with a aura of decrepitude, rotting everything around it, it becomes scarier.
Plan a first encounter where PCs are in contact with it, fight him, and after a few round, the demon turns into liquid and ooze into the ground, out of reach of the PCs (or it turns into a cloud of yellowish disgusting miasma).
The next day, PCs discovered that people who entered in contact with him suffer from a plague/leper which will take a quarter of their life points (or whatever equivalent) every day and cannot be cured.
It can only be stopped and reversed by killing the demon.
Now it is a race to find where is the demon, how they can kill it and how they can prevent it from turning into ooze/mist before they killed him.

Having PCs fighting a almost incurable deadly disease is a very, very effective way to scare them. I used a similar scheme with my players and they told me it was the most stressful scenario I run, where they were considering giving up and running away (as in this case, the disease was link to the proximity of an artefact), which would have sentenced to death hundred of thousands of people...

54

RPGs / Re: Looking for Badass Presidents scenario hook

« on: March 10, 2011, 02:54:23 AM »

Managing a rally to grant citizenship to Shoggoths ?

Dreamscape invasion of San Francisco: the Golden Gate bridge is becoming at certain time of the day or year (depending on the stars) a gate to the Dreamscape. A group of evil real state agents are starting to offer prime land property with direct view on the Dreamscape, or are even selling Dreamscape real estate for filthy rich (and bored to the death) men.

Of course, there are leaks of unnatural stuffs: dangerous creatures, but also new foods appears in the fresh market, apparently harmless (for now...) and which makes people "feel good" (is it curing something, or simply naturally laced with psychotropes that current chemistry does not detect).

55

RPGs / Re: EXP Free is the way to be...

« on: February 16, 2011, 02:47:52 AM »

I guess, this whole discussion is specific to games with levels. Gaining a level gives you more hit points, better chance to hit, better resistance, better etc. So each level is a quantum leap that have a rather big impact: an encounter which was rather difficult becomes suddenly easier.

The game I am DMing does not have level, but XP are used to purchase characteristic, competencies level, spells and whatnot. So it is a constant improvement, and it is relatively easy to pace the progress and evolution of the player without giving them the feeling that they are stagnating.

56

Role Playing Public Radio Podcast / Re: Group Size and its Effect on Games

« on: February 15, 2011, 10:20:53 AM »

For those in a similar circumstance (if any) do you have any suggestions?

Yep, we had a similar problem in a game of Deadlands, with 10+ potential players.

We never played with the full group (thankfully !), the GM set the following rules:
- we were all part of the same posse (gang), hence knew each other and at least tolerate each other antics, so it was forbidden to make a complete antagonistic character;
- we had to admit that some characters would be phasing in and out, without in-game reason;
- there was a tacit "hive-mind" within the posse to allow characters to come in and out;
- when a scenario was lasting more than one session, half of the player of the next session should belong to the initial group;
- otherwise, we had an internet site, and first ones to register for the game where part of the next game (with the caveat of continuing game), and no, we did not accept "I am registering by default to every game", you had to do it each and every time;
- finally, the Gm was setting the number of player he was taking for each game, and no, no negotiation.


After a few months, natural trimming occured and we ended up with a core group of 5-6 players and we were taking turn, does playing 2-3 games in a row would make room for those who did not play in the previous game. Since we were playing every week, it means that possibly every three or four weeks, you had to pass your turn, which was hardly a problem since it was an opportunity to play in another game or watch a movie :-)

57

Role Playing Public Radio Podcast / Re: Group Size and its Effect on Games

« on: February 14, 2011, 05:22:18 AM »

On solo-game (one to one):
Overall, I find it difficult more difficult to play/master, because it is intense and requires a constant concentration from both the DM and the player. The player is constantly under the spot light and has to come with idea and decide the next action. And if he cannot, the MJ has to "save" the game by guiding the player to the next scene. When there is more players, there is more "brain power" to drive the game and as DM, you only have to deal with the consequence of the player's choice instead of having to find ways to guide them (ideally without making it look too much "rail road").
It is probably because most of the game I master are focussed on roleplaying and investigation that I have this feedback. If it is a dugeoncrawler, it good be quite fun as the player has to really optimise and think strategy when confronting several monsters at the same time.
Also, the player has to remember everything, as nobody else will be there to remind him the critical bit of information he needs to understand/complete whatever task/situation is at hands.

There is another issue with solo game: they have to be tailor-made to the character to be sure that he has the skill/competencies/spells to get through it.

Two to three people: that's good numbers to have a mixture of abilities, different opinions and fast-pace action, without the downside of the solo-game.

Four people: it is my usual group size, you have a good mixture of abilities, some being redundant, making sure that if there is a critical test/roll to make, on will likely succeed, ensuring smooth transition to the next scene. It is also very interesting in term of RP since you can have stand off of 2 vs 2, and players have to sort out themselves how to weight one way or the other.
You might start to see some drifting as two players might engage in a non-game-related discussion, but that's easy to catch and bring back on track.

Five people: occasionnaly, I run game with 5 players, and I don't enjoy it has much. Drifting becomes more common, having to repeat and describe several times the same element increases, overally slowing down the pace of the game.

Above: Never tried, nor want to.

58

General Chaos / Re: 100 Hat puzzle.

« on: February 08, 2011, 03:17:29 AM »

[spoiler]The strategy is the following: the first person to talk has to count the blue hats in front of him. He will say "blue" if the number is even or "red" if the number is odd. He has 50/50 chance of dying, no way to have a higher chance of saving him.
The second one will count the number of blue hats in front of him, if the number is even and the first one said "blue" - meaning "even", he knows he is wearing a red hat (since the number of blue hat did not change) so he just has to say red. If the number he is counting is odd and the first one said "blue", then he is wearing a blue hat (since the number change from even to odd, he must be wearing a blue hat).
Similar reasoning applies in case the first one said "red".
After that, every guy  has to keep track of the number or red/blue to be able to call the hat's colour he is wearing.
[/spoiler]

With this strategy, you will save 99 guys for sure and you have a 50/50 chance to save the first guy. This strategy works no matter the number of hats, no matter how many guys in row (as long as you can count them all ).

59

Role Playing Public Radio Podcast / Re: The "Bad Players" Letter

« on: February 02, 2011, 09:40:18 AM »

To come back to the initial problem, I can see several points:

- First, at the start of a new campaign, during character creation, I made sure to explain the limits I am setting. And no, I don't try to find a "in-game" justification why in this world these powers dont' work. Eg.: mental powers don't work, although according to the system we are using, it should be possible to read mind and control people actions. But I forbid it, since it would spoil most of my investigation and diplomatic stories; and if I allow something that really threaten the balance the campaign, I would apologise and simply take it away, without trying to find a way "in-game" to correct it as it might frustrate the players and it would become players vs GM instead of players with GM.

- Second, sometimes, you should listen to what your players want and see if you can "exceptionnally" accomodate, or maybe just to show them that what they want is not as enjoyable as they believe (look at one of the RPPR video, showing the various GM styles  ) and giving them a taste of their own medicine might be the right treatment;

- Finally, they might be your best friends, but I am concerned that if they get mad or meltdown simply because of you saying "No" to an in-game request, it might reveal a much deeper problem... Come one, let's face it, yes, everybody can have a bad day, and be a cry baby and spoil everybody's fun. But on a regular basis, it should send warning signals.

Anyway, give it another try, explaining why you are setting limits (I am not confortable in running epic level story; these powers will spoil the campaign and remove any challenge; and so on). RP should be about having fun, not being chores.