What are y'all up to these days?

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Playing Requiem on Sunday and I've been doing some pondering for my Masquerade project, it's a bit of an AU (it doesn't follow the metaplot, it's more like 1e/early 2e, you know the drill) and at first, I was thinking of just doing a fictional Indiana town and reusing the Gary NPC's from 1E plus some OC's and if there's potential and players, allowing the chronicle to eventually lead into a slightly altered version of the Chicago 1E setting.

But I've been doing some reconsiderations. Currently torn between expanding the fictional city concept or a fully fleshed out setting for Roanoke, Virginia.
 
This of you who have run Extinction Circus, is it sort of supposed to be a sandbox? Like there are bits in a chapter and you are to string them together and maybe insert some of your own?

I ask because I strongly suspect our GM thinks the module has explicit encounters and it is a linear progression when it is not. We played a bit last night and we’re finding the next quest. We found it, and it promptly sent us into chapter 2. Not such a big deal, except we had half the experience necessary for level 2 and have received a total of 2 healing potions in magic items. We were one hit point away from TPK. Literally, 3 of us on the ground, sorcerer who had been at 1 hp most of the fight running away, and the monsters had to roll a 3 to hit him. GM has misses the part where we should be level 2 before we did this. GM has not mentioned much in equipment.

Needless to say, this was quite frustrating because we were playing tactically well.

Granted, we should have 6 in the group, but supposedly 4 is fine. We even have a holy quaternity (defensive monk, ranger with beast, bard with healing, sorcerer, and the monk has medicine). but our 5 and 6 are very irregular in attendance so I’m going to alter my monk a bit to be more useful. He’s defensive, but not enough for a mainline tank.
 
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Well my stupid little Gygax 75 project has turned into a game. I got 4 people asking me for a game and making dudes so I decided to oblige with a game set in Carcosa using a modified version of Into the Unknown. I am starting small. A quick 4 session tale of bloody revenge Carcosa-style. Each of them will make 2 characters and each character has one thing in common; all of them have been grievously wronged by a sorceress with aspirations of becoming an Old One. I have the dungeons and home base made but still don't know who this sorceress really is other than that she has to be ambitious, heartless, and amoral. Maybe literally heartless, the organ removed in a ritual that gives her immortality. I am open to ideas. All I know is that I have three dungeons that somehow lead to a bloody showdown with the sorceress.

I looked into the 5e lore of Juiblex for inspiration on the Slime God aka The Faceless King and found some cool and flavorful abilities. Perhaps the sorceress wants to transcend the limitations of the human form and become a slime as her first step to becoming as the Old Ones.

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So the artist working on some pieces for Smoke Wagon finally colored the generic cowboy image for me. Now I just need him to send this and the other one in png format, and I can get to work on finishing Smoke Wagon for release.
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urbwar said:
So the artist working on some pieces for Smoke Wagon finally colored the generic cowboy image for me. Now I just need him to send this and the other one in png format, and I can get to work on finishing Smoke Wagon for release.
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Most sarcastic-looking horse I've ever seen. "He cuddles his gun at night. The lame ranger here has issues."
 
My Traveller game has been back to English for the last few sessions and is also now online only, as the group isn't only a bunch of Swedish speaking people living in Stockholm.

The players are now fully aware that the old 290Td trader is actually an old warship, or blockade runner, camouflaged as a trader. The shipyard that refurbished the ship some 80 years ago seemed to have missed the hidden goodies, and just repaired the vital stuff and slapped on some paint; and just cut of cables that went to non-vital stuff. Non of the former owners were an archaeologist with TL15 scanning equipment. Getting the old weapon systems up and running again will be quite a money sink. The ship is also connected to a legend of a lost powerful battleship. They've been speculating a bit over if it is this ship, and the legends are exaggerated, or if there's something bigger out there.

However, their more immediate concerns are that they have arrived at an outpost for the Mega Corporation that have exclusive trading rights to the local planet they want to sneak in to and look for an archaeologic artifact. The planet can best be described as a combination of Rome and North Korea, with several areas infected with deadly pathogens.
 
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Lundgren said:
My Traveller game has been back to English for the last few sessions and is also now online only, as the group isn't only a bunch of Swedish speaking people living in Stockholm.

The players are now fully aware that the old 290Td trader is actually an old warship, or blockade runner, camouflaged as a trader. The shipyard that refurbished the ship some 80 years ago seemed to have missed the hidden goodies, and just repaired the vital stuff and slapped on some paint; and just cut of cables that went to non-vital stuff. Non of the former owners were an archaeologist with TL15 scanning equipment. Getting the old weapon systems up and running again will be quite a money sink. The ship is also connected to a legend of a lost powerful battleship. They've been speculating a bit over if it is this ship, and the legends are exaggerated, or if there's something bigger out there.

However, their more immediate concerns are that they have arrived at an outpost for the Mega Corporation that have exclusive trading rights to the local planet they want to sneak in to and look for an archaeologic artifact. The planet can best be described as a combination of Rome and North Korea, with several areas infected with deadly pathogens.
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Sounds lovely, and I like your world-building approach:thumbsup:!

"Ave, Glorious Enlightened Leader! Morituri te salutant!"
 
A Tale of Two Cetis

Tau Ceti looked to carving out a little empire from the Terra República, they had built up their fleet, aligned their allies, and the apple looked ripe for the picking. Nevertheless Prime Minister Sato and Space Admiral Park were to show them a place where hopes are smashed, and dreams get crushed...

Full size map on the forum here: https://solisrpg.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=75

This map is adjunct to the earlier "Old Earth Main" map, as one can see looking at both there are systems in alignment. Of course the full story is on dtrpg/itch in my Solis People of the Sun and Andromeda Dragons PDF's.
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Starting Week 4 of the Gygax 75 Challenge: Town Features. I need to detail the town where characters will retire to heal and carouse

I am using The Keep from B2 as a base but looking like Castle Grayskull complete with "jawbridge" and laser cannon replacing the ballistae. It will still be a fortress at the edge of the Realm of Man but Neutral instead of Lawful. IMHO the shift from Law to Neutral gives it more of a Wild West, boom-town feel. This isn't a bastion of selfless duty, keeping civilization safe from the monster-haunted wilderness. This is an armed force profiting off the extraction of wealth from the wilderness and dungeons. Outliers who may not be welcome elsewhere like raiders, slavers, mutants and lizardmen are allowed to trade as long as they behave themselves.

I am thinking the opposing faction is an alliance of exploited mutants and slaves (there are no domesticated labor animals in Carcosa so civilization runs on slavery). Maybe there's a town out in the wasteland that offers freedom to escaped slaves.
  • A decadent pleasure dome for PCs to carouse and blow all their money. It might even be the same place they can find a hot meal and clean bed.
    • 4 or 5 characterful hirelings or specialists the PCs can recruit
  • A shrine to some weird god who isn't inimical to mankind.
  • Healing for a fee by a witch and her apprentices who are an NPC class of apothecaries, herbalists, alchemists and healers rolled up into one
  • I really don't know how to make mundane merchants interesting but am open to ideas.
Okay I thought of couple more things

  • The Keep harvests a great deal of its food from ancient alien technology scarcely understood (automats, meat vats, phototron machines, hydroponic farms, etc). This is supplemented by trade with hunter-gatherer tribes that somehow manage to live in the wastelands.
  • Dinosaur races and bloodsport are popular entertainments.
 
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EmperorNorton said:
I'm about to start up a Deadlands game, and one of the things I do every time I play Savage Worlds is find thematic wild dice for everyone at the table for the game.

I think I hit the mark on this one.

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I hope these work well for you & your group! The bullet dice that came with one of my tabletop wargames don't roll very well.
 
I don't know what I'm going to do for my Savage Worlds session tonight. I might just not plan anything.

Thing is, though, while I've done a handful of good zero-prep sessions, my last zero-prep session frankly kinda sucked. So hopefully I can think of some kind of hook/ location/ interesting NPC/ etc. in the next 6 hours.
 
E-Rocker said:
I don't know what I'm going to do for my Savage Worlds session tonight. I might just not plan anything.

Thing is, though, while I've done a handful of good zero-prep sessions, my last zero-prep session frankly kinda sucked. So hopefully I can think of some kind of hook/ location/ interesting NPC/ etc. in the next 6 hours.
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Is that part of an ongoing campaign or a stand-alone game? For the latter I recently discovered this site. https://burnafterrunningrpg.com/ready-to-run-one-shots/ which is focused on one-shots for various games.

Otherwise, on of those adventure generation tables from any game can help get over that blank page syndrome.
 
I mean, they're not mutually exclusive... you could have lesbian vampire thespian umpires with drums and guns! And that ridiculousness is exactly what I needed to kickstart my creativity, haha. Thank, pubbers!

It is for an ongoing campaign, but at the moment the party doesn't have any pressing business.
 
E-Rocker said:
I hope these work well for you & your group! The bullet dice that came with one of my tabletop wargames don't roll very well.
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Dice don't necessarilly need to actually roll on a surface to get a randomized result. Just shake them around in a dice cup or your hands and slap them down on the table. One of them fancy dice towers might also do the job.

ADDENDUM: This also takes care of our supposed need for them fancy Gamepseudoscience Dice.
 
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3rik said:
Dice don't necessarilly need to actually roll on a surface to get a randomized result. Just shake them around in a dice cup or your hands and slap them down on the table. One of them fancy dice towers might also do the job.

ADDENDUM: This also takes care of our supposed need for them fancy Gamepseudoscience Dice.
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Yeah, I just shake them good and also toss them from high while spinning. They kind of just slide when they hit, but with them spinning in the air it doesn't matter much.

That said, I did have them land on the base and stay standing once. Just once though. I can't do it again.
 
EmperorNorton said:
Yeah, I just shake them good and also toss them from high while spinning. They kind of just slide when they hit, but with them spinning in the air it doesn't matter much.

That said, I did have them land on the base and stay standing once. Just once though. I can't do it again.
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So that's an interesting way to get a d7.
 
E-Rocker said:
I mean, they're not mutually exclusive... you could have lesbian vampire thespian umpires with drums and guns! And that ridiculousness is exactly what I needed to kickstart my creativity, haha. Thank, pubbers!

It is for an ongoing campaign, but at the moment the party doesn't have any pressing business.
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Well now your going to have to let us know how that worked out!
 
E-Rocker said:
I don't know what I'm going to do for my Savage Worlds session tonight. I might just not plan anything.

Thing is, though, while I've done a handful of good zero-prep sessions, my last zero-prep session frankly kinda sucked. So hopefully I can think of some kind of hook/ location/ interesting NPC/ etc. in the next 6 hours.
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How's the game system been for you? Are the cards clunky? I found running the Alien rpg with the 10 card initiative cards kinda a PITA. They're hard to shuffle and just feel lacking. The players felt the same way btw on that. It was their only real complaint about the Alien rpg.

I had a secondary complaint about book information layout and the GM screen being so dark it was hard to read, but that was the only other major issue I had with Alien.
 
Regarding the card based initiative, I guess depends what you are comparing it with. If you are used to informal or team-based initiative system then it is an overhead. If you are used to keeping track of initiative by individual, possibly rerolled each round, then it substantially streamlines things. The dealt card self-document the initiative order, plain for all to see, it even resolved that instant of hesitation when two or more players are meanta to act on the same initiative. This is based on my limited experience with Savage Worlds.
 
Itching to run a campaign for my local group. Thinking I’m wanting something to feel invested in. Perhaps something to obsess over ;) my pf2e game that I’m playing in isn’t going to be that. I’ve got an online one I play in that is good, but also slow.
 
Raleel said:
Itching to run a campaign for my local group. Thinking I’m wanting something to feel invested in. Perhaps something to obsess over ;) my pf2e game that I’m playing in isn’t going to be that. I’ve got an online one I play in that is good, but also slow.
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I'm right there with you. I haven't played or run anything since the atomic destruction of my last group killed whatever will to game I had left, and now its feeling like it has finally recharged. But with that, I too need to find the *right* game. I feel like the first game back has to be something that gets ahold of me, and won't let go. Not sure what that is yet... the new Deadlands is a possibility, or possibly resurrecting my Mutant Year Zero game, which was one of my favorites...
 
I found my copies of Day After Ragnarok and Dogs of WAR (original verison). I'd not seen them in a while, I'd assumed I'd got rid of those books. Day After Ragnarok might come handy now that I'm attempting to get into Savage Worlds, though still not quite sure what to do with the setting. It's an odd pastiche, I never quite wrapped my head around it.
 
bleys21 said:
I'm right there with you. I haven't played or run anything since the atomic destruction of my last group killed whatever will to game I had left, and now its feeling like it has finally recharged. But with that, I too need to find the *right* game. I feel like the first game back has to be something that gets ahold of me, and won't let go. Not sure what that is yet... the new Deadlands is a possibility, or possibly resurrecting my Mutant Year Zero game, which was one of my favorites...
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I started going through city seed generators and world seed generators. Some thought provoking things to help drive some ideas along. First one was a city run by an eternal being that was formerly run by an eternal being. They ban religion but embrace philosophy, and there are dark cults hidden. They make some arro fo artisanal goods, eat cereal grains primarily and have an archery tournament. They have invaders outside the city walls threatening to ruin their way of life.
 
bleys21 said:
I'm right there with you. I haven't played or run anything since the atomic destruction of my last group killed whatever will to game I had left, and now its feeling like it has finally recharged.
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Right there with you...except I'm still recharging. Still, there is hope, and the right game might as well turn out to be FKR:angel:!
 
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