What are y'all up to these days?

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Can they perform the fabled Panthera Tigris Uppercut? Or the Alphabetically named storm at sea kick?

You'd need alpha mechanics for that kind of hyper fighting. Renaming some of the more particular moves might be difficult, but I intend to include all of the official maneuvers, to give my game second impact as more than just a knockoff. I just don't want Capcom or Onyx Path to report it to DriveThru and give me my third strike.

You want me to start a thread for this? I'm worried other posters might have zero interest in this, with only you and me showing any upper.
 
Start a thread if you like, I'd participate - perhaps in the design subforum. I suspect my enthusiasm for wordplay here won't be matched by my enthusiasm for the actual game though. I do like finding ways around IP infringement though....
 
You want me to start a thread for this? I'm worried other posters might have zero interest in this, with only you and me showing any upper.

I’m intrigued, but have always been more a KOF man, as well as Darkstalkers.
 
CJ had some deadlines that kept him from running Wednesday afternoon.
In Thursday's game, the party was sent to the country next door to perform a quick assassination. They found the vampire's house and fought his three bodyguards and a vampire. It took awhile after they had won for them to realize that it had been too easy. The vampire had not been as powerful as they had been told. But the first real clue they had was that the vampire had only one manna-storsge crystal when someone of so much power would have more of those or something even better.
Brother Ahmeet's first reaction was that they should go home and report failure to the Inquisition and the Bureau of State Security. The others argued that this would be very dangerous and they are discussing whether to try to find their target or go home and report success.

I am working on "Berserkergang, Fury-Driven Fighters in Glory Road Roleplay"
 
Had to run a solo adventure last night (wifey only) where it was her investigator against the forces of Mothman. Didn't work out too well for her, as a poltergeist that had been "haunting" a Mothman witness did some pretty severe damage to her and she couldn't convince the man to destroy his home to get rid of it (which probably makes sense). She had to flee the house and never did get around to saving the victims of Mothman's catastrophe. The adventure was in a sense a no-win situation, which she wasn't happy about. Lesson learned, won't do it again!
 
Steel Aces Intrude 2
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I've entered a game into this year's one-page game jam on itch.io. Look at some of the other entries, I can't believe it's 2021 and half these people still haven't discovered spellcheck.
Got a link? I have a one-pager just sitting around...
 
I'm probably going to have just two players for this Friday's session (For those who follow my session recaps, Zera and Pierre are the characters who will be there). My first thought was, "battle an evil sorcerer!" but then I remembered that last time it was just those two, they battled an evil sorcerer, so I will try to come up with something else. And I can run a longer session than usual, because these players are much more able to stay up late than the players who will be absent, so that will be cool. Does mean I should probably prep more than usual, though.
 
C.J. was able to run the Wednesday night game. We continued our quest to find someone in Wisconsin who wasn't either being eaten or enslaved by Faery. Green Bay is under the rule of a necromancer or a group of them, so we are bypassing and heading to Milwaukee. We are running low on fifty caliber ammunition and Ma Deuce is the only thing that will stop some of these monsters quickly.

In my game on Thursday, they caught the real big bad and had a tough fight. He was a thousand year old vampire mage. In the end, every player-character was injured but the vampire was destroyed. Resuming a different adventure with different characters next week. Running for Brother Ahmeet has been fun. A character who thinks the Inquisition is a little too easy-going is cool.
 
An hour or so until I run the duet session for Pierre and Zera. I'm going to run through the Tomb or Horrors knockoff for Savage Worlds, the Tomb of Terrors, except, since the PCs are currently Legendary, rather than Seasoned as recommended in the published adventure, I'm going to throw in a Death Weaver Spider Demon from Savage Rifts: Blood and Banes.
 
After a very protracted depressive episode I am rather suddenly feeling much better. And this has been going on for over two weeks now, so I'm pretty happy about it.

I have lined up a few friends to play a stand-alone adventure in my old SF setting Flat Black. Their characters are going to be a team of "effectives" working for the secretive College of Archivists, sent to a backward planet to investigate the disappearance of a Member of the College, and if necessary and possible to rescue her. I have just finished designing ForeSight characters for the players who did not wish to do that themselves. i think it's going to go well.

Unfortunately this adventure involves players in Australia (who will be playing after putting their kids to bed on Saturday night) and the UK and France (who will be playing in the late morning and noontide of Saturday). That is not going to be sustainable for an indefinite campaign, and scheduling even three sessions of it was a bit of a struggle. I'm going to have to scare up something else for a long-term supply. But for now things are looking good.

I have just wrapped that up. It suffered a bit from my being badly out of practice, and wasn't my best work. But each session was better than the last, and the twist at the end landed satisfactorily. On the whole I'm pleased, and keen to do even better next time.
 
I bit the bullet and agreed to start running my Hyperborea 5e on Roll20. During Session 0 there are already problems. One guy constantly drops from the call without warning. He claims it is a sound card issue and there isn't a fix. Perhaps more importantly, entertaining an invisible audience is disconcerting. Now to be clear I have ZERO problems speaking in public or to strangers or whatever, but somehow delivering information via Discord to an audience I cannot see is difficult. I am used to watching and gauging my player reactions- I can see them hanging on my every word and feel their excitement. If attention is waning I can see that as well. How do you VTT GMs deal with this?
 
I bit the bullet and agreed to start running my Hyperborea 5e on Roll20. During Session 0 there are already problems. One guy constantly drops from the call without warning. He claims it is a sound card issue and there isn't a fix. Perhaps more importantly, entertaining an invisible audience is disconcerting. Now to be clear I have ZERO problems speaking in public or to strangers or whatever, but somehow delivering information via Discord to an audience I cannot see is difficult. I am used to watching and gauging my player reactions- I can see them hanging on my every word and feel their excitement. If attention is waning I can see that as well. How do you VTT GMs deal with this?
I finally made cameras a requirement for my online game. I lost a couple good players who just won't use webcams for whatever reason, but overall it has become a much better experience and I've got a really solid gaming group now.
 
I finally made cameras a requirement for my online game. I lost a couple good players who just won't use webcams for whatever reason, but overall it has become a much better experience and I've got a really solid gaming group now.
Dude you are a life saver! I think this is the way to go. I have a third monitor laying around so my on-screen real estate won't be an issue.
 
I bit the bullet and agreed to start running my Hyperborea 5e on Roll20. During Session 0 there are already problems. One guy constantly drops from the call without warning. He claims it is a sound card issue and there isn't a fix. Perhaps more importantly, entertaining an invisible audience is disconcerting. Now to be clear I have ZERO problems speaking in public or to strangers or whatever, but somehow delivering information via Discord to an audience I cannot see is difficult. I am used to watching and gauging my player reactions- I can see them hanging on my every word and feel their excitement. If attention is waning I can see that as well. How do you VTT GMs deal with this?
The Roll20 game I run only has players that I've known for years in real life so not being able to see their faces doesn't really affect me as I know from in person how they game and also know their voice tones pretty well.
 
The Roll20 game I run only has players that I've known for years in real life so not being able to see their faces doesn't really affect me as I know from in person how they game and also know their voice tones pretty well.
I have gamed with 2 of these guys for 4 years and known another person since 2003. That's not the issue. It's the lack of visual feedback and I am not going to ask them to start audibly acknowledging whatever I say. That said you are right, my two gamers (and the wife) are good dudes and if they are not engaged they will say something.

It's mostly the person I have known the longest. He has problems with his internet connection, problems with his sound card, niggling health issues, and dabs constantly.
 
I finally made cameras a requirement for my online game. I lost a couple good players who just won't use webcams for whatever reason, but overall it has become a much better experience and I've got a really solid gaming group now.
We've dropped video since being forced off Google Meet (moving to Meet after Google Hangouts video calls went away) due to it no longer being free for long sessions. We have switched to Discord and the audio is crap if we have video going, so no more video until we find a new video call solution.
 
I have gamed with 2 of these guys for 4 years and known another person since 2003. That's not the issue. It's the lack of visual feedback and I am not going to ask them to start audibly acknowledging whatever I say. That said you are right, my two gamers (and the wife) are good dudes and if they are not engaged they will say something.

It's mostly the person I have known the longest. He has problems with his internet connection, problems with his sound card, niggling health issues, and dabs constantly.
Let me guess, he also doesn't mute his mic while dabbing? I imagine the noise from that has got to be distracting. I'd need to see faces, you need body/face language to see how something is affecting the players.
 
We've dropped video since being forced off Google Meet (moving to Meet after Google Hangouts video calls went away) due to it no longer being free for long sessions. We have switched to Discord and the audio is crap if we have video going, so no more video until we find a new video call solution.
I had a recent success using Jitsi. There is a public site here: https://meet.jit.si, but one of my players has his own server and that is what we used.
 
I bit the bullet and agreed to start running my Hyperborea 5e on Roll20. During Session 0 there are already problems. One guy constantly drops from the call without warning. He claims it is a sound card issue and there isn't a fix. Perhaps more importantly, entertaining an invisible audience is disconcerting. Now to be clear I have ZERO problems speaking in public or to strangers or whatever, but somehow delivering information via Discord to an audience I cannot see is difficult. I am used to watching and gauging my player reactions- I can see them hanging on my every word and feel their excitement. If attention is waning I can see that as well. How do you VTT GMs deal with this?
Heh, you think it’s tough GMing that way, try teaching when you can’t see the class, man I hated that. There’s really nothing that’s going to replace the instant feedback you get from face and body language.

The guy who “constantly dabs” has mysterious problems with his computer that can’t be fixed and “niggling health problems”. What a strange and totally unexpected coincidence. :devil:
 
The guy who “constantly dabs” has mysterious problems with his computer that can’t be fixed and “niggling health problems”. What a strange and totally unexpected coincidence. :devil:
It's deep rabbit hole and if I explained more it would sound like I was talking trash. Suffice to say he's one of my closest friends but can also be exasperating at times.

On the plus side it looks like we have a rock star party which is going to be a lot of fun for me. The lowest CHA is 13 and that's my wife's PC.
 
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Animal Powered 13: Tiger
From Black Panther to White Tiger, there's a long history of great cats in comics. This week's creature future focuses on the biggest of the big cats, the tiger!
 
E-Rocker: "The giant spider-creature has a human face."

Player: "Who does it look like?"

E-Rocker: Rolls d12. "Missy Elliott."

Player: "You have a die for that?!?!"

E-Rocker: "I assigned a famous person to each die face. 7 was Missy Elliott."
 
E-Rocker: "The giant spider-creature has a human face."

Player: "Who does it look like?"

E-Rocker: Rolls d12. "Missy Elliott."

Player: "You have a die for that?!?!"

E-Rocker: "I assigned a famous person to each die face. 7 was Missy Elliott."
The giant spider creature then says..."Shh, hush your mouth. Silence when I spit it out,..." :smile:

What are on the other die faces? Inquiring minds want to know. Please say Steve Buscemi is one....
 
A player dropped out last minute so we played Mothership. It was alright. My heart wasn't in it but the players had fun. I was annoyed at the whiffiness of the system. I didn't care for the scenario we played. There was zero reason for the players to continue investigating without some kind of contrived "your hyperdrive is broken" monkeywrench. I heard "I'm a <job title> not a space marine" a lot. Bunny says, "We have jobs, we're not murder hobos. It's not worth it." Players got out alive and levelled so they were happy.
So, about par for the course for an OSR game:thumbsup:?
FWIW, though, I liked the part about the distress call and the contracts:grin:!
Thanks. Upon examination I don't think I based mine on an open source rules set. :sad:
How much work would be to re-write it:tongue:?

Heh, you think it’s tough GMing that way, try teaching when you can’t see the class, man I hated that. There’s really nothing that’s going to replace the instant feedback you get from face and body language.

The guy who “constantly dabs” has mysterious problems with his computer that can’t be fixed and “niggling health problems”. What a strange and totally unexpected coincidence. :devil:
Weird, I never thought you're a teacher:shock:!

It's deep rabbit hole and if I explained more it would sound like I was talking trash. Suffice to say he's one of my closest friends but can also be exasperating at times.

On the plus side it looks like we have a rock star party which is going to be a lot of fun for me. The lowest CHA is 13 and that's my wife's PC.
:devil:
 
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Another 5E attempt, another TPK.



I ran a solo adventure. It started out OK, even if one entry insisted you start your first combat by moving into melee, and then you had your choice of melee or ranged in the next entry. But as soon as the first combat with two bandits ended, another combat with two more bandits instantly began. And once you defeated them some bandit you couldn’t detect gets a free shot at you and you have to flee.



Having three HP left, my healing tapped, and the adventure seemingly making a point of no short or long rest, I moved on. I then met a bat swarm and died.



The funny thing is I took a melee weapon and a ranged weapon, in leu of a melee weapon and shield, after an adventure years ago where an enemy stayed out of melee range and picked us off. Naturally, the first encounter provided a ranged weapon if you didn’t have one, and if I’d had a shield it would have reduced the hits on me dramatically.
 
I don't need cameras to run/play, though I enjoy it when we can use them. Helps aid in my "attachment" of characters to people. Although sometimes it also detracts too. I've played strictly text online games since the '90s, so, not a new thing to me. But I love using voice if we can though, video some people have issues with but if we manage to have the bandwidth I'm not bothered.
 
Cameras are a must for my online games. I've done it with voice only, but it drove me nuts - it was even worse that for a while one of the players lost his webcam functionally and I felt I was talking to his Skype icon. Two of my group have laptops, one has a cheap tablet and the other uses his phone - we do get the occasional glitch, but I'm happy when I can see folks.
 
Another 5E attempt, another TPK.


I ran a solo adventure.
Where did you find this solo adventure? That seems like a lot for a solo level 1 character. You can try a 1st level Fighter with 16 STR, duelist fighting style, pole arm master feat, spear, chainmail, and shield. Make sure you have both athletics and perception as skills. It's tanky with AC 18, has a self heal, and gets two attacks per round at 1d6+5 and 1d4+5 damage. They can burn a reaction to take a whack at an enemy who enters an adjacent square. My wife has this build and it is solid without being gimmicky.
 
About cameras and online play: We play on Facebook Messenger, with sight and sound. I never worry about the honesty of player dice rolls at the table, so I have no problem with dice being rolled off-screen. It is a very close approximation of sitting around a table in West Haven except I can't share snacks with my fellow gamers, which means that I don't _have_ to.
 
Cameras are a must for my online games. I've done it with voice only, but it drove me nuts - it was even worse that for a while one of the players lost his webcam functionally and I felt I was talking to his Skype icon. Two of my group have laptops, one has a cheap tablet and the other uses his phone - we do get the occasional glitch, but I'm happy when I can see folks.
I do like being able to see my players, but in truth, much of the time we're looking at maps in Roll20, or looking at character sheets, so at least I rarely have the video window/tab visible.

I should add that work-wise, I often have conference calls with folks in India. They don't have good enough internet to do video, so they rarely have video on. And for many years, we weren't even using a video conferencing system, so I'm quite used to audio only conference calls.
 
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