What are y'all up to these days?

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Fenris-77 said:
An athletics check every 10ft is such a bad mechanic I don't even have words for it. I'm flipping tables and kicking asshats out of the temple at this point.
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As certain members of the Supreme Court might suggest, isn't this exactly why we need Athletics checks?
 
stonetoflesh said:
Last week, I watched a few videos on the American Library Association's Games & Gaming Roundtable's Youtube channel that were disappointingly "meh." The presentation on "print RPG collections in libraries" was the one that made me really say, "I could do better than this"... I had already been kicking around the idea of getting some sort of podcast or YT channel together to talk about RPGs in libraries (among other things), and this was the final catalyst... Since then, I've been prepping material for episodes and getting the technological side set up (which is a bit of a struggle for my decade-old laptop.) I even wrote an introductory post on the accompanying blog. Looking forward to the new challenge and opportunity!
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I look forward to seeing what you come up with! I gave up on ALA videos a while back.
 
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So the crew ladder rules dropped "a nemesis kills a loyalist" on me. I rolled a couple times to get the who. Then got a lucky break in the victim having a useful and unusual skill for the gelatinous cube breeding program and the culprit having two "I'm the one" clues (thanks random crew generator stuff I stole/wrote). A couple rolls in, they call up the crew member for assistance and we've got a missing person. The GMO baby gelatinous cube also escaped but those aren't dangerous if take care of it ASAP.

So they got a missing person, the inventory of the room, an over-fed pet miniature tiger shark. Ok so the shark's tummy is full of the owner's hair. And now we've found the headless corpse clogging sewage line 84-D. The autoposy reveals no head and point blank shotgun blasts in the back. Its weird how the GM just hands us a list of crew members with shotguns as soon as we ask? And go over the inventory of the room again.

A RL hour later after dredging the entire sewage system. Checking the drinking water tanks. Holding the laundry crew at gun point. Checking the mess & stores for ground up bone. Going over the inventory of the room again. Setting up the corpse back in its room with sentry gun traps. And running armed patrols up amd down the corridors... they get around to searching suspects rooms and noticing that one of the guys on the suspect list had a book titled How To Make A Lamp Out Of A Skull plus was wearing a pricy piece of the victim's gear.

At no point did they interrogate anyone.
 
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Telok said:
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So the crew ladder rules dropped "a nemesis kills a loyalist" on me. I rolled a couple times to get the who. Then got a lucky break in the victim having a useful and unusual skill for the gelatinous cube breeding program and the culprit having two "I'm the one" clues (thanks random crew generator stuff I stole/wrote). A couple rolls in, they call up the crew member for assistance and we've got a missing person. The GMO baby gelatinous cube also escaped but those aren't dangerous if take care of it ASAP.

So they got a missing person, the inventory of the room, an over-fed pet miniature tiger shark. Ok so the shark's tummy is full of the owner's hair. And now we've found the headless corpse clogging sewage line 84-D. The autoposy reveals no head and point blank shotgun blasts in the back. Its weird how the GM just hands us a list of crew members with shotguns as soon as we ask? And go over the inventory of the room again.

A RL hour later after dredging the entire sewage system. Checking the drinking water tanks. Holding the laundry crew at gun point. Checking the mess & stores for ground up bone. Going over the inventory of the room again. Setting up the corpse back in its room with sentry gun traps. And running armed patrols up amd down the corridors... they get around to searching suspects rooms and noticing that one of the guys on the suspect list had a book titled How To Make A Lamp Out Of A Skull plus was wearing a pricy piece of the victim's gear.

At no point did they interrogate anyone.
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I love your players. That game sounds like it has to be a blast to run, knowing they're going to blindly miss every single clue, and go on murder hobo rampages every game.
:gooselove:
 
Fenris-77 said:
I'm going back through Pathfinder 2E, for reasons, and I noticed something in the opening, what's roleplaying bit. The book describes the following conversation sequence:
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Now I don't know about you, but if my DM said to swim across make an athletics check and I succeeded, I would expect to swim across the fucking river not halfway. I hate this kind of bait and switch shit, never mind rolling multiple checks to buff the chances of failure at overcoming a routine, even mundane task.
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I think it might be clearer if they explained the width of the river and said what is your normal movement rate swimming. If the river was 30' wide and your movement is 30' but swimming is considered difficult terrain and cuts movement by half then I would make the check and reasonably expect to be half way across. Crit success would negate the difficult terrain modifier and I would be all the way across.

That is what I suspect is happening here but I could be wrong.
 
bleys21 said:
I love your players. That game sounds like it has to be a blast to run, knowing they're going to blindly miss every single clue, and go on murder hobo rampages every game.
:gooselove:
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I honestly thought that the missing rare fancy armor, missing skull, plus a known kleptomaniac as a suspect suddenly wearing said rare fancy armor and having a book about skull lamps on a printed list...

Ah well. The turns-into-a-dragon guy could have cast his spell and gone all screamy intimidation rolls in front of the suspects and it would have worked. Nope. Prop the headless sewage bathed corpse in its room with sentry guns, and then wait for the murderer to return to the scene of the crime. Point guns at the people doing laundry and interrogate them because they're accomplices. These are their ideas.

Give them minimum credit though. They asked around if anyone had seen someone carrying a headless corpse through the ship and stuffing it in the sewage maintenance hatch.
 
bleys21 said:
I love your players. That game sounds like it has to be a blast to run, knowing they're going to blindly miss every single clue, and go on murder hobo rampages every game.
:gooselove:
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...there would be blasts IC if we played, that's for sure:gooseshades:!

Telok said:
I honestly thought that the missing rare fancy armor, missing skull, plus a known kleptomaniac as a suspect suddenly wearing said rare fancy armor and having a book about skull lamps on a printed list...
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You thought well:thumbsup:!


Out of curiosity, have you considered talking with the players:angel:?

Telok said:
Ah well. The turns-into-a-dragon guy could have cast his spell and gone all screamy intimidation rolls in front of the suspects and it would have worked. Nope. Prop the headless sewage bathed corpse in its room with sentry guns, and then wait for the murderer to return to the scene of the crime. Point guns at the people doing laundry and interrogate them because they're accomplices. These are their ideas.

Give them minimum credit though. They asked around if anyone had seen someone carrying a headless corpse through the ship and stuffing it in the sewage maintenance hatch.
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Well, that is something, I'd agree:grin:!
 
In a separate post, my Mythras campaign is getting interested players:gooselove:!

We have First Daughter, who made a character already. Well, she got assistance by the Referee...:tongue:
Her best friend might be joining, or not.
We have another player near her age (couple of years older), whose father posted in a D&D group that he's looking for a group that would accept her. We don't have a character yet, but I'm sure we'll be able to do something in due time.
At least four (or five?) older players also said they're making PCs already. Three have submitted character concepts. I am hoping at least two would actually manage to make them before the start:grin:!

So yeah, not looking like I need to do open recruitment...:angel:

We should start after Easter. BTW, Easter is this week for us Orthodox ones, so I'm probably going to skip all sessions this week. But if I don't, there's a WFRP calling to me:shade:!
 
tough choice for our crew - DCC or Destined (using the new Power Outage adventure). I've made a character for Destined, which is essentially Elric (charisma based blade, portals, precognition with the limit that can call the attention of other worldly entities, regeneration, passion - they can't find out about my dark secret, somewhat slack ethics) as a takes himself too seriously for this 90s comic character. Other player is making a Literal Talking Bear who goes invisible called Where Bear. I've suggested the bear is actually a movie star, has an agent who plays his trainer, and made good money off cocaine bear.
 
We finished two Jonstown Compendium supplements, Draconic Enlightenment and Holiday Dorastor: Bugswarm Swamp. I am working on Foulvale and Hahlgrim's War, and we have started Perilous Plains, three more Holiday Dorastor supplements.
 
Raleel said:
tough choice for our crew - DCC or Destined (using the new Power Outage adventure). I've made a character for Destined, which is essentially Elric (charisma based blade, portals, precognition with the limit that can call the attention of other worldly entities, regeneration, passion - they can't find out about my dark secret, somewhat slack ethics) as a takes himself too seriously for this 90s comic character. Other player is making a Literal Talking Bear who goes invisible called Where Bear. I've suggested the bear is actually a movie star, has an agent who plays his trainer, and made good money off cocaine bear.
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It shouldn't be a tough choice:thumbsup:.
"The Adventures of Elric and the Where Bear" are a mid-game win state for DCC, in Destined you can start like that:grin:!
 
Certified said:
Hope everything is alright.
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Thank you:thumbsup:!

For some definitions of alright, it's alright:shade:. At least I've taken some difficult decisions, let's see if I'd be able to stick with them...


On the bright side, I am preparing the first session of the Japan 2024 campaign!
 
From the Godzilla franchise, the name "Orga".
From the Cthulhu mythos, the shining trapezohedron and the Crawling Chaos.
From the Dead Space game franchise... pretty much everything???

And lo, did three players not steeped in these lores, with characters not scholarly, anointed of greed and wealth, lured by pronises of easy money, they went unto a piss hole death-trap crystal sphere. Where one of the three suns has flares that lase towards spaceships, because it hates you. Where volcanos erupt when you land, because the world hates you. Where dead flesh turns into mutant horrors within seconds, because everything hates you. Unto this place they came in search of a chest rumored to contain the secret of unlimited powers of the ancients. And the NPC who knew all the important shit got sprayed to death with acid, run over by a living freight train, reanimated as a necromorph, chopped to bits, and the bits incinerated.

They made sure to get the ancient map thats encased in plastic before ensuring total destruction. The one that locates the site and has some meaningless doodles on it. But the notepad computer in the guy's pocket? With research notes, instructions, safety procedures... yeah, that's gone. And things have been woken up.

Squee! My evil little GM heart is so happy!
 
Telok said:
From the Godzilla franchise, the name "Orga".
From the Cthulhu mythos, the shining trapezohedron and the Crawling Chaos.
From the Dead Space game franchise... pretty much everything???

And lo, did three players not steeped in these lores, with characters not scholarly, anointed of greed and wealth, lured by pronises of easy money, they went unto a piss hole death-trap crystal sphere. Where one of the three suns has flares that lase towards spaceships, because it hates you. Where volcanos erupt when you land, because the world hates you. Where dead flesh turns into mutant horrors within seconds, because everything hates you. Unto this place they came in search of a chest rumored to contain the secret of unlimited powers of the ancients. And the NPC who knew all the important shit got sprayed to death with acid, run over by a living freight train, reanimated as a necromorph, chopped to bits, and the bits incinerated.

They made sure to get the ancient map thats encased in plastic before ensuring total destruction. The one that locates the site and has some meaningless doodles on it. But the notepad computer in the guy's pocket? With research notes, instructions, safety procedures... yeah, that's gone. And things have been woken up.

Squee! My evil little GM heart is so happy!
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AsenRG said:
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Nah. They're combat bad asses and physically quite tough. Failure to search the dungeon, mutation, insanity, getting their ship blown up or the crew killed, doing just enough that the next party through has it easy but giving up because they get confused by weirdness, success then ditching the reward because they don't want to deal with side effects, screwing themselves on live TV by showing off being an apostate psyker... that's all fairly likely. But not so much direct combat wipeouts.
 
Telok said:
Nah. They're combat bad asses and physically quite tough. Failure to search the dungeon, mutation, insanity, getting their ship blown up or the crew killed, doing just enough that the next party through has it easy but giving up because they get confused by weirdness, success then ditching the reward because they don't want to deal with side effects, screwing themselves on live TV by showing off being an apostate psyker... that's all fairly likely. But not so much direct combat wipeouts.
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In other words, "Nah, just another typical day in the life of Telok's players". Which we live vicariously from a distance of course. Just to be safe. ;)
 
Fenris-77 said:
Luka Rejec, author of Ultraviolet Grasslands, has a marvelous blog post about the roleplaying community. Worth a read.
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What’s marvelous about it, the captain obvious statement that there is no single unified RPG community? Tabletop RPGs have always been broken into camps around certain games. The OSR and perhaps the community that was around the Forge for a while are examples of slightly larger groupings than around a single game but this is how it has always been.
 
sharps54 said:
What’s marvelous about it, the captain obvious statement that there is no single unified RPG community? Tabletop RPGs have always been broken into camps around certain games. The OSR and perhaps the community that was around the Forge for a while are examples of slightly larger groupings than around a single game but this is how it has always been.
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But that's not exactly how a lot of people talk about it, is it? All sorts of people talk about the 'community'. Not so much on the Pub, but most certainly elsewhere on the internets. Rhetoric about the 'community' is the/a root fuel that powers TPB's nonsense, for example.
 
Fenris-77 said:
But that's not exactly how a lot of people talk about it, is it? All sorts of people talk about the 'community'. Not so much on the Pub, but most certainly elsewhere on the internets. Rhetoric about the 'community' is the/a root fuel that powers TPB's nonsense, for example.
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Yup, and it remains nonsense.

Of course, what is a community and what is a group of people is a matter of optics, largely:thumbsup:.
 
AsenRG said:
Yup, and it remains nonsense.

Of course, what is a community and what is a group of people is a matter of optics, largely:thumbsup:.
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That it remains nonsense doesn't stop many many people from speaking and arguing is if it weren't.
 
Fenris-77 said:
That it remains nonsense doesn't stop many many people from speaking and arguing is if it weren't.
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Yeah, my point is that they seem to genuinely believe it, and I suspect it's largely due to different optics.

It's when they start acting as if their understanding is the only possible one that they run into problems.
 
AsenRG said:
Yeah, my point is that they seem to genuinely believe it, and I suspect it's largely due to different optics.

It's when they start acting as if their understanding is the only possible one that they run into problems.
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I think some people have a desperate need to be seen as belonging to and more importantly representing a larger group (or community) of like-minded individuals.
 
Fenris-77 said:
I think some people have a desperate need to be seen as belonging to and more importantly representing a larger group (or community) of like-minded individuals.
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I have the same nagging feeling, albeit with just as little proof as you:thumbsup:.
 
Last week I*:
1) Failed to kill or panic a group of hardened spacers
2) Save my wizard-adventurer-master and helped his companions find love
3) Infiltrated a dance camp final show in a resort in the Catskills in the 1950s. As a goat.
4) Joined with the other women in my lady's mystery book club to solve a murder at a Bakeoff show!
5) Avenged my slain elven village against a treant madame
6) Used my undead sorcerous powers to help my young debutant sorceress charge overcome a god of salt
7) Sacrificed myself to overcome a Voltron made of obelisks devoted to dead gods
8) Lost my life to a bargain I made to temporarily imprison my childhood crush and delay his journey to becoming a great hero

You see, I have the good fortune to attend a nearby yearly gameday of incredible caliber. Alas, my LGS shut down killing one of my regular gaming events, and another regular game I had went on indefinite hiatus due to scheduling conflict. This is the most gaming I've done in months, and it's really put the hunger in me to get something going again locally soon.

* - if you want to know what games these were 1) Mothership 2) A Familiar Problem 3) Goat Crashers 4) Brindlewood Bay 5) Old School Hack 6) Sword of the Serpentine 7&8 ) Companion's Tale
 
Upon further review my players do have the option and... tendencies... to pull at least a double Henderson. But since we're skipping Mother's Day weekend I have time to meditate on this and decide if I need to start pushing something, set lures and "solve all the problems this way ->" signs, or if I should just zen out and watch the glorious trainwreck in progress.
 
Telok said:
Upon further review my players do have the option and... tendencies... to pull at least a double Henderson. But since we're skipping Mother's Day weekend I have time to meditate on this and decide if I need to start pushing something, set lures and "solve all the problems this way ->" signs, or if I should just zen out and watch the glorious trainwreck in progress.
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I say you should set lures and "solve all the problems this way" signs...:shade:

Then you can zen out while they're ignoring the big and obvious hints:grin:!
 
OK, so hear me out. A magic trechcoat folded around extra-dimensional space that can act as a disguise for up to three medium sized humanoids. The trenchcoat disguise can look like any medium humanoid, except wearing a trenchcoat. The only drawback in that it's a bit squishy to get in and out of and the PCs have to make DEX checks to not comically trip and fall over one another like they're getting out of a clown car.
 
AsenRG said:
I say you should set lures and "solve all the problems this way" signs...:shade:

Then you can zen out while they're ignoring the big and obvious hints:grin:!
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I probably have the signs up already. The 'news articles' they get already mention all the current mega-extinction-of-you-guys events. The players occasionally theorize, but never ask actual questions or ask to do any checking up. Which is funny because several threats can be dealt with by just punching stuff hard enough, which they're really good at.

It also turns out, now that I've statted more stuff, that although a D&D tarrasque is a reasonable matchup with at Battletech Atlas it is absolutely not a challenge for a small kaiju and gets stomped kinda hard. I guess that explains the spiked shell on the tarrasque.

Re: someone RL asked about the 'double Henderson' thing.
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Guys, I need ways to show (not "tell") that the spirits have been getting more and more numerous. Planning to turn the manifestations into a random table, but I need more options for it to be a d30 table...:shade:
 
Here is a google drive link to a html file that I wrote as a 40k~ish warpy crap roller. Download, open in a text editor, and scrape out whatever you want.
 
Telok said:
Here is a google drivr link to a html file that I wrote as a 40k~ish warpy crap roller. Download, open in a text editor, and scrape out whatever you want.
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Thank you, some of those would be quite useful:thumbsup:!
 
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