Topics

76

Play by Post / You're on an Island (Pick-up Risus Game) - GRAMMAR RULES

« on: December 21, 2009, 02:56:22 PM »

Characters and Questions go here.

You open your eyes and see blue sky. You are on your back.

There is sand to your left and right. You feel water around your feet.

What do you do?

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Play by Post / You're on an Island (Characters Thread) PROPER GRAMMAR IS GREAT

« on: December 21, 2009, 02:52:02 PM »

Pick up game using Risus rules.

I will be using Risus, which is freely available here http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/downloads.htm

_{The above stolen from a post by Ross without his permission.}

Bullet point:

• This is not Lost.
• You get 10 Cliche points.
• No more than 4 in any one cliche.
• Only one cliche may be a 4.
• I swear this is not Lost.
• This is fantasy genre.
• Everybody starts alone.
• You have no equipment. You can have clothes or be naked, at your own choice.
• If you ask me if this is Lost, I'll kill you.
• You are human, unless one of your cliches would make you otherwise.
• Lost can be used as a cliche. It helps you discover weird shit that doesn't answer any of your questions.
• Post your character here, than start.

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RPGs / That one thing. You know the one I mean.

« on: December 18, 2009, 05:44:00 PM »

Quick thread for some collective angry ranting. I mostly want to vent my own rage but anyone with a problem is free to jump in at any time. If you share my specific source of rage, cool. If not, I'd love to hear about your's.



So this is, in general, about the thing that annoys me most in gaming.

I don't get to be a player most of the time. Normally I'm running the game and I try to keep the game moving. I do so with various GM tricks like counting down from ten, egg timers, and the eternal "you only have a few seconds: what do you do!?".

As a player, I don't have these same tools because I do not control the nature of reality within the game. So when my fellow players sit and ponder or fret or whatever people who act slowly do in their heads, I'm stuck like a goldfish in a bowl waiting for the thirty seconds that I need to complete my turn and get to the action. Like I said, I'm not a player too often so when I do get the chance, each moment is a precious gem for me and I can only watch as others steal my darling treasures, hording them like a diabetic dragon holds diamonds under its scally flab.

I, and by extension the rest of the group, spent thirty whole minutes waiting for one person to act. Rage boils in my stomach with enough heat to send acidic vapors up my throat and out my nose, turning my six sided dice into so much liquid plastic as I grind them together against my upperlip, my eye twitching stare centered on the subject of my loathing!

Thirty fucking minutes of thinking and worrying and asking what they should do and then not doing anything when we gave them advise! The endless, pointless worrying about the fate of their character, and above all making the right choice. Even the idea of a right choice in an RPG makes me mad! It's a god damned game. Play it.

My gentle nudging fails to get them to move faster. My aggressive nudging causes them to curl up tighter. My kitchen knife based nudging upsets the other players. There's no good solution.

Ahh... I feel better.

79

RPGs / In Game Locations

« on: December 17, 2009, 11:54:26 AM »

Though we could use a thread about places to set a game.

To start this thread off, I heard about this place on an NPR news cast. The story isn't the interesting part, it's the place.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121365854

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121454635

The government is looking to move Guantanamo Bay inmates to other locations. One of the places they might be using is a prison in Thompson, Illinois and that's the cool place.

Apparently this small town agreed to build a prison, got the money together, build the prison, and then didn't have enough money to run it so the place is mostly empty.

It's a maximum security prison with capacity to hold 1,600 criminals and its currently used to house 200 minimum security inmates and the only population center nearby is a town with 450 citizens.

http://media.npr.org/images/ap//AP_News_Wire:_US_News/4_Detainee_Prison.sff.jpg?t=1260981864

I'd love to run a Call of Cthulhu game with players using minimum security inmates from the prison when something goes wrong.

80

General Chaos / What I learned from Left 4 Dead

« on: December 15, 2009, 11:09:48 PM »

Exactly what the title says:

http://www.halolz.com/2009/12/13/what-i-learned-from-left-4-dead/

81

RPGs / Hong Kong

« on: December 08, 2009, 11:27:30 PM »

I've seen alot of cool period games in recent years, alot of them from Scott Glancy and his World War One anticates at GenCon but also Tom's CoC game and Ross's Yakuza game.

Today while I was browsing the used book store discounted game stuff section I found an Old World of Darkness suppliment for Hong Kong. It's intended for use with Kindred of the East and the other asian parallels to oWoD games but features information about Hong Kong, characters who populate it, and some great maps. The book is primarily contemporary for the time is was written, 1998, but the information is useful.

I'm now deeply interested in running a game in the city, probably set just a little way back to when the "coloney" was being returned from British control to Chinese control.

82

General Chaos / Gamer Tarot

« on: December 08, 2009, 11:07:02 PM »

I was wandering the used book store tonight and caught the sight of some of the tarot books. They had variant tarot decks, including one with characters from some manga series.

Got me thinking about what the gamer parrallels, literally and based on word/imagery, would be to traditional tarot. I had some ideas, but I wanted to see what everybody else throws out.

For those who don't know Tarot is a card game which is more popularly known for its uses as a fortune telling device. The game is divided into Major and Minor Arcana.

The Minor Arcana is most the same desk of cards that most Americans (and other recent "western" cultures would be familiar with). There are four suits with cards from one (ace) to ten listed by numbers and with the equivalent of face cards (prince, queen, king, you get the idea). The suits are typically sword, staves, coins, and cups but wands, circles, bowls, and other similar things are pretty common. Each suit is linked with a Greek element (earth, wind, water, and fire).

There are also an additional 23 (or 22 or 24 or 30 depending on who you ask and which stories you read) Major Arcana, which are number from 0 to whatever is the top card (normally 22 or 23). Each major arcana depicts an individual (0 to 12) or concept/thing (13 to whatever). Examples would include The Magician, The Emperor, The Moon, The Judgement, The Fool, The Star, and Death.

So, what would you swap in for the Gamer Tarot?

Also feel free to make suggestions for individual games (D&D Tarot) or game systems (World of Darkness Tarot) or weird shit (Furniture Tarot).

If you need a full list of suits and Major Arcana than Wiki can provide:
Major: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_arcana
Minor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_Arcana

83

Play by Post / Rogue Trader game. Not play by post exactly.

« on: November 25, 2009, 01:45:25 PM »

I'm getting ready to try and run a game of Rogue Trader via Skype with some fellows over at Swing and a Miss.

The game will use the free download "quick start" rules from Fantasy Flight so owning the game is not required. If you do own the game, you can make a character. The download comes with three pregen characters.

I wanted to know if any RPPR listeners would like to play. I can't take everybody, three or four is nearly too large for a Skype game as it is. If you are interested I have two open spaces that can be fought for.

If the game goes well I'll certain run it again for another group.

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RPGs / Game Balance

« on: November 18, 2009, 01:09:28 PM »

I ran across an arguement regarding game balance just a little bit ago and felt like sharing part of it. I'll provide a link but to summarize: someone posted a long rant with poor grammar and special characters in place of normal punctuation. It stated that he/she felt that a game was unbalanced because it allowed a character wielding a gun capable of firing on automatic to do far more damage than another character wielding a sword.

There are various replies regarding the reality of ballistics and the reason why humans switch to guns and stopped using swords and so on but one reply fairly early on cut much more directly to the point of game balance and I felt like sharing it:

"Balance is typically far less a concern in pen-and-paper RPGs than in video games or CCGs - there is, afterall, no winner or loser, and the GM and players aren't pitted against one another, but rather cooperating in the name of crafting an exciting and interesting story. Even where it is considered, it's a different kind of balance - a matter of ensuring that no one character hogs the stage, so to speak. This isn't necessarily a matter of hard numbers, and even characters of wildly varying abilities can be given an appropriate share of the spotlight by a moderately skilled GM.

That all in mind, it often matters less how 'balanced' a given element is, both in regards to players against NPCs and in regards to players compared to other players."

The whole thread can be found here: http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=123&efcid=3&efidt=223551
It's on the Fantasy Flight forums and the game they are talking about is Rogue Trader.

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RPGs / If you want to try Mutants and Masterminds...

« on: November 09, 2009, 04:10:31 PM »

... than I have the chance for you.

http://www.rpol.net/game.cgi?gi=39003&date=1257800510

This is a play by post game that I've been part of for about a month. The GM heading the thing is new to the game and has players using the pre-made archtypes so there's little mechanical involvement in the character creation.

We're still taking new players. People get divided into hero groups (we currently have eight or nine of three to five heroes each) and all plotlines exist in the same world. The game has been running solid for a month and the GM is very active in keeping players posting. Any team member who faded out gets replaced by a new or more active player, so people are very seldom left waiting.

Things are laid out like a comic book using "issues" as chapters. Some teams (like mine) are just starting issue #2.

So, if you want to try M&M, this is an exceptional chance to do so.

Look me up if you join, I'm playing Gallium, Battlesuit Archtype in Primal Force.

86

RPGs / How many dice do you have?

« on: September 18, 2009, 07:24:13 PM »

The idea just struck me that I have three official bags of dice, in varying sizes. One of these bags actually holds other, smaller bags which are filled with dice.

I have three player sets of dice and one DM set, in addition to the mixed bag I keep around, the 10s for games based around d10s, and the little box of matching d6s I keep one hand as well.

In total I must have at least one hundred and fifty individual pieces of numbered plastic.

And I plan to buy more.

Am I alone, or just one of many?

87

RPGs / I ran CthulhuTech

« on: September 13, 2009, 08:25:53 PM »

I had a player out of town this week and managed to convince my normally D&D playing group to let me run them through CthulhuTech.

We played a Tager game, which is heavy combat, high action, with some investigation on the edges. I also used a variant rule where we used playing cards in place of dice for most "rolls", which worked out very well for me and the players.

After only one session I have to say that I love the game and I think it's a good system. All of my players asked, when it was over, when we could play this again.

88

Role Playing Public Radio Podcast / Fan Actual Plays

« on: September 03, 2009, 01:28:19 PM »

All the talk of new Actual Play sessions from the crew and GenCon got me excited and I had an idea: why not try and make a fan specific library of Actual Plays?

I mean, all of us are fans of the show. Most of us play games during the week. I'm sure a few people record their sessions. So, as a grass roots movement of community members, let's share our games.

I'm willing to host the recordings. I know there'd be some logistical problems, like moving the large sound files around, but we can at least discuss it.

89

RPGs / "Starting" Delta Green

« on: September 01, 2009, 03:24:32 PM »

I'm interesting to doing some Delta Green games for my group, but after looking around the website I'm unsure of the order everything goes in. Is there a Delta Green "core book"?

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RPGs / PAX 09 around the corner

« on: August 21, 2009, 07:37:24 PM »

Well my own plans for the Con have changed somewhat. My hotel booking didn't go through and now I'm trying to find a replacement at the last minute. I'll be traveling farther than I thought. Not a huge deal, of course, since I can literally take the bus down to the place if I want to but annoying.

So, I won't be running my Inferno new World of Darkness game but I will be ready to play my paragon level D&D adventure if I can find enough people to play in it.

Other than that it's just gonna be learning whatever I can about Cons, cutting my teeth and all. Looking forward to some game demos, maybe they'll run the Mass Effect 2 trailer and some of the other cool stuff that they showed off recently at the other game shows.

The panel selection looks decent, so those may take up alot of my time.