Messages

31

RPGs / Re: What makes you scared, and How can you make a RPG game truly frightful???

« on: August 31, 2009, 06:52:59 PM »

Use notes to give secret messages to players.

Do this a couple of times, talk to each player beforehand and figure out what their unique goal. Fear of what the other players might do to your own character is terrible, but in a good way.

Horror makes it possible for each player to have their own goal and motives more than any other genre, use that and any mundane event from any other game will be magnified and powerful.

32

General Chaos / Re: Top 5 Sega Genesis Games

« on: August 31, 2009, 06:49:11 PM »

I see this thread has already seen the love every law-abiding man should have for Steets of Rage.

I don't have a top 5 list, but Golden Axe would also be included if I did.

33

RPGs / Good GM Habits

« on: August 30, 2009, 03:31:41 PM »

What makes a good GM? Is it hours and hours of prep time or is it good improvisation skills? What do you think for you personally and what has made games you've been a part of particularly great or interesting due to the GM?

This thread obviously comes from inspiration from Ross' Bad GM Habits thread, but I thought we could instead think of what makes GM's do well instead of frustrate and infuriate their players.

I'll start!

The other inspiration for this thread comes from my GM'ing experience from this past Friday night as I hosted a game (our group's first game) of 3:16: Carnage Amongst the Stars. The game is great because a notebook page's worth of notes and about 10 minutes of my time and I had the entire scenario, or at least enough to get us going, all prepared.

I didn't really know how I was going to end the story other than "big alien swarm attacks them in the end, OH NO!" The players were to land on the planet, make their way to Bunker 6 to reinforce Lt. Carlson's force and help him take out the alien queen. Carlson had gone kind of crazy and not much of his force was left (he was in fact taking one of them out at a time for "scouting missions" and going crazy, coming back alone).

They went off to hunt the queen taking the survivors with them, but leaving Carlson behind to "protect the bunker." They get to a cave and see some of the dead troopers armor with little sticks set around them spelling out "Carlson" and their first thought was "Oh SHIT, Carlson's been infected by the queen and is the host body for her, we gotta go kill her!"

Well, no, not really, he was just a crazy ass military dude, but I went with it, molded the details to fit the story they had all come up with, and they all got a very satisfying final fight of taking out the remaining aliens on the planet on the way to take out that bastard Carlson the queen.

It was excellent, and I've never had so much fun improvising. Basically, this thread is about good GM habits, or I guess good times had as a GM also. 

34

General Chaos / Re: The best article on Rob Liefield

« on: August 28, 2009, 05:54:58 PM »

The Thing is a Bear. Really. I'd believe it.

35

RPGs / Re: Geist: The Sin-Eaters review is in progress!

« on: August 25, 2009, 08:48:26 PM »

Part 3 of my Geist review is up here: http://thehopelessgamer.blogspot.com/2009/08/geist-sin-eaters-review-part-3_25.html

In this part, I review the character chapter by building my very own Sin-Eater, Damien Tucci, a Necromancer with a feudal-Japan warlord Geist!

36

RPGs / Re: Geist: The Sin-Eaters review is in progress!

« on: August 22, 2009, 06:57:58 PM »

Hey all, just finished the second part of my review series for Geist where I review chapter 1 in pretty great detail. You can find it on the Hopeless Gamer blog here: http://thehopelessgamer.blogspot.com/2009/08/geist-sin-eaters-chatper-1-at-cemetery.html

Hope that can help fill in some holes for some of you that still have questions. If you've read the first chapter and disagree with me on something, I'm more than happy to discuss it over there as well, just feel free to leave a comment.

37

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

« on: August 21, 2009, 05:27:25 PM »

First of all: wookie jedi make the best jedi. Furry Jedi = best.

Second of all, I really like ArtfulShrapnel's ideas. Should be fun and a nice challenge for your son to keep his communication real simple, which should be fun at 8 years old (heck fun at any age, but he's really developing language skills still at that age, so it seems especially cool as an idea).

But yeah, usually Wookies can have a little floating translator, sometimes a "smartass" type droid to help translate. Kind of like a pet, which your son might also enjoy.

38

General Chaos / Re: GEN CON loot

« on: August 20, 2009, 08:37:22 PM »

ooooh, Damnation City :jealous:

Also, Zombie Cinema Board Game? Explain yourself!

39

RPGs / Re: Geist: The Sin-Eaters review is in progress!

« on: August 20, 2009, 08:35:13 PM »

Two caveats to what I'm about to say: 1. I'm a recent convert to White Wolf and thus don't know much about Wraith as I've really only been looking into nWoD, that being said I can't speak to anything specifically to wraith and 2. I haven't finished the book yet.

With those in mind, I can say that it seems to offer some nice unique options for RP. There is the present of a "shadow" in the form of the Geist, but I think it'll be likely that people end up playing both their Sin-Eater and their Geist. Still provides its own kinds of fun, and who doesn't like to play a PC that hears voices telling them to do the craziest stuff?

One thing that seems to be fairly unique to the nWoD at least is that most Sin-Eaters are actually pretty happy fellows. They're celebrating life and have a job to do that they enjoy.

I haven't gotten to the Krewe building chapter yet, but from what little I know about Mage: The Awakening, Geist seems to be a much more fun version of a group of magic-users. For all intents and purposes, that's what Sin-Eaters are, they just all focus on undead activities.

I'm really enjoying what I've read so far, only about 40 pages in, and the flavor's really nice so far.

40

Play by Post / Re: Mouse Guard

« on: August 20, 2009, 08:19:39 PM »

I have no problem having Locke know Dalton since we were kids and maybe a little more. We should definitely have different allies though as they're there to help us and give the GM more NPC's to play around with.

41

Play by Post / Re: Mouse Guard

« on: August 19, 2009, 11:02:35 PM »

Gencon was fantastic (obviously), and hopefully I'll be able to start posting in the game. I used tonight's column on the Hopeless Gamer to actually create my character concept for the Mouse Guard game, just need to actually make up a character sheet for him now. You can check out the character from the link in my signature.

42

General Chaos / Re: GEN CON loot

« on: August 19, 2009, 10:58:42 PM »

From Da Blog - http://thehopelessgamer.blogspot.com/2009/08/gencon-loot-display-description-coming.html You're going to have to go to the actual post to see the picture, sorry!

"Here's what we got at Gencon (from left to right): Riddlemasters map for the Wife (not sure how this works, but it was only a buck), Vs. TCG starters (two starters for a buck = a night's worth of entertainment at least), 3:16: Carnage Amongst the Stars (signed with a little sketch from the creator!), Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born hardcover TPB (found in the auction store for $5.00 still in the shrink, excellent!), and Geist: The Sin-Eaters hardcover fatsplat, which I will be reviewing quite in depth in the next week or so, check back for my review of White Wolf's newest release.

In front of Geist we have the starter and merc figure for a new game THE BRO and I gave a shot on: Rusted Heroes. The game gave us the same vibe we got years ago now when Privateer Press released their very first starters for Cygnar and Menoth. Hopefully it can deliver on the awesome. To the right of Rusted Heroes is a pack of the D&D heroes set (one of the divine sets, the one with the invoker who looks completely badass).

Then we've got some cut-out terrain sheets for KG for his star wars game - another cheap find at the auction store. In front of that we have the wife's new paint dish picked up from Reaper's booth. She's extremely excited about painting after speed painting several times this weekend and I'm extremely excited to have more painted minis.

The last two games, all the way over to the right are the Empires of Dust boxset, a game that seems to combine Dune and the Dark Tower series, and then Sweet Agatha, a two-player mystery game that I can play with the wife as it can be pretty tough to find any two-player RPG's, so that should be neat.

Not pictured are two games we had to send home via UPS, both board games, both picked out by the wife. I'll probably make a new post once they come and explain a little bit more about the types of games my wife really prefers to play. I'll leave it at this for now: I have never beaten her in a game of Scrabble and likely never will.

More post-gencon coverage to come including, as mentioned above, the first part of my Geist review, hopefully up tomorrow reviewing the overall look of the product itself as well as the opening fiction and introduction.

I also will be going into more depth and do some mini reviews of the other items I picked up as I read about them and hopefully get some actual play under my belt."

43

RPGs / Geist: The Sin-Eaters review is complete!

« on: August 17, 2009, 09:43:35 PM »

Hey all, now sure if there's crazy big excitement for Geist here at the RPPR boards, but in case there's interest, I've started my Geist review at The Hopeless Gamer and you can check it out here: http://thehopelessgamer.blogspot.com/2009/08/geist-sin-eaters-first-glance-review.html

Feel free to post questions about the game, but realize that it may be a while before I get to the part of the book where I can answer them.

44

General Chaos / Re: NEW MOVIES!

« on: August 16, 2009, 09:57:45 PM »

That's really the only feedback I was hoping to get before being able to go see it. Excellent.

45

RPGs / Re: How goes Gen Con?

« on: August 15, 2009, 11:07:01 PM »

Excellent! A mud pie is made of mud. This is not based on a true story.

Instead, a mud pie is a towering ice cream... tower. It's covered in whip cream and should always be eaten by more than 2 people per tower. We did not follow this law and paid the price. A delicious, slightly painful price.

Anyway, thanks for following and I hope you continue to once our gencon coverage is over and hopefully continue to entertain you.