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Community => Entertainment and Television => Topic started by: Random Gal on December 09, 2014, 02:47:47 pm

Title: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Random Gal on December 09, 2014, 02:47:47 pm
Because there are undoubtedly plenty of things to say about tabletop games, and plenty of stories to tell.

Also, I felt this story deserved to be shared due to the crazy-awesome yet heartwarming nature of it:

Shoggy the Seldom Dog (http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/32461889/)

EDIT: Fixed the link
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on December 09, 2014, 02:58:07 pm
The Runequest campaign I'm in is changing systems. Some of the players didn't like how slow the combat system is (I liked it but I admit that it is slow) so we are remaking our characters for a different system next thursday.

The other campaign I'm in is on saturday and we'll be having a christmas party with the players. That campaign is also in a rather interesting situation as most of the player characters have gotten married and there is a war going on. One fun thing: few sessions ago a loose ox charged at the king candidate of the tribe (VERY long story, there was about to be an election and another faction in the tribe was trying to kill our candidate, this animal attack was later discovered to be an assassination attempt disguised as an accident.) One PC happened to be in the way and rather than having her scream a warning or anything the player decided that she steps into the ox's path and wrestles it...

So we had a scene where a human woman supplexed a rampaging ox off a bridge into the river where it drowned.

And later there was the battle where my character spent half of our realtime session drowning...
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Beezlebub on December 11, 2014, 11:19:39 pm
I've wanted to get into one myself, but I never really found an opportunity.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on December 12, 2014, 03:55:41 am
Things that happened in the last session:

After remaking characters from Runequest to Praedor we had a quick duel between two characters.

Fun fact: Praedor has Character flaws and advantages, our "Bard's" (no character classes in the game) player was looking through the list: "Alcoholic, YES! ...Lecherous, I'll take it! ...Now, what are the disadvantages?" "These are it... There is also 'Coward' if you ta-" *Furiously writing coward onto his character sheet* He also took the advantages of being able to hold his liquor really well (which also allows him to identify drinks and notice if something has been mixed into it) and really keen sense of smell.

...Then again I was looking at the disadvantages of "honourable" and "vengeful" with a similar glee.

The duel:
My warrior and the bard had a fight over a woman. We had already planned this and we were doing things kinda like in Higland games.

1st round: Rock-Paper-Scissors, done with the use of "Gamble" skill (because this ain't no damn LARP.) Result: Bard wins.

2nd round: Insults, done with the use of "Intimidation" skill. Result: Bard wins.

3rd round: Fishing, done with the use of "survival" skill. Result: Draw, no winner.

4th round: DUEL to the first blood, using the combat system. Result: Warrior wins.

5th and final round: Climbing up a tree, using the "climbing and jumping" skill. Result: Oh, boy...

Well, the bard failed his every single climb check and repeatedly fell on his back (he was already at disadvantage from taking an axe to his arm in the duel) and occasionally fumbled critically which meant that he tore down branches and made it harder to find a way up. Eventually he was in a state where he was completely unable to get into the tree.

Meanwhile my warrior was luckier in his skill tests which meant that on the two occasions when he did fumble he fell from much higher and on his second fumble he dropped from 3 meters and broke his left arm. (His dominant arm...)

End result: The bard was declared winner and carried off to celebrate. Due to his flaws he also ended up bedding some random woman (not the one whom we had been fighting over...) and getting dead drunk and wasted.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: ironbite on December 12, 2014, 05:22:05 pm
You see my avatar?  That's Trublag, once a kobold druid of Sarenrae, he participated in a battle to stop the Unnamed Scourge Who Is Totally Not Cthullu from ending the world.  At the end of it, with a majority of the gods slain, he and his companions were chosen to take up the gods burden's and was granted godhood.  To that end he became the new god of the forest and finished the transformation that was bestowed upon him by Apsu, becoming Blue Wyrm.

Ironbite-I love Pathfinder so...so much.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on December 14, 2014, 04:29:50 am
Yesterdays gaming session...

It was the other campaign I'm in and the characters were knee deep in blood as they were part of an army attacking a fort. I'll try to cut out irrelevant stuff but there is one "saga" that needs to be told.

PC1 (my character) is an archer and had been taking arrow fire from the wall as he was giving covering fire to the infantry, after taking an arrow to the face and getting down to "severely injured" status he decided to hide behind a pavise and try to stay alive. (The penalties from his injuries made it pretty much impossible to use bow well enough to seriously injure the enemies as they had some well armoured warriors.) At least taking cover kept him alive long enough to get to "heroic phase."

(In this game, in mass battles there are two phases, phase one had the characters doing their things and facing off mostly common enemies with a rare chance for an opportunity to do something "heroic" and after either doing enough damage to enemies or having all PCs leave the battle wether due to injuries or running away comes the end phase. At the end phase those still in the fight automatically get a chance at trying something heroic. The outcome is affected by the armies, the commander's tactic rolls and by the damage the players cause in the battle, but the heroics depending on their success can change the outcome.)

PC2 as rolls "chance to strike at a high ranked opponent" and has a short duel with Aakko Jutikka (the second in line of succession of the enemy clan) and easily defeats him, giving him a nasty wound in his leg, but is unable to finish him off...

PC1 meanwhile has been driven out from behind the pavise because an allied clan leader wanted to take cover behind it and is out in the open and also rolls "chance to strike at a high ranked opponent..." Aakko Jutikka, bleeding and limping has climbed over the wall of the fort and is trying to flee. He recognises PC1 by name and shouts a challenge, declaring that even though he will die here he will at least take PC1 down with him... PC1 finds this to be a perfectly acceptable outcome and they fight. Both are already covered in blood and due to the penalties from injuries the fight is closer to slapstick as they flail, fail and fumble about. Unfortunately PC1 (still me) gets a catastrophic fumble and is stomped into the mud, unconscious and with nearly lethal wounds.

PC3 (also gravely wounded and limping towards the camp where the injured are being treated) rolls "chance to strike at a high ranked opponent" and sees Aakko Jutikka... This was becoming a theme. Aakko was sitting on a tree stump taking a breather after dragging himself across the battlefield and PC3 decides that rather than risking her life in a fight she can't win (also being one of the few characters without the flaw of being vengeful) she decides to get reinforcements and they easily finish off Aakko.

Few hours after the battle and after much searching the others finally found PC1 lying in the mud and just barely manage to stabilize him...

It is becoming a theme that PC1 takes the most damage in any battle and is always nearly dead.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Vypernight on December 14, 2014, 03:45:39 pm
Playing All Things Zombie, I used Googlemaps to create a game map of the area between my work and apartment.  I then ran a game with characters, based on me and my wife, trying to get home with zombies everywhere.

We tried to escape with a cop, but he got eaten and we couldn't get to our car.  We then decided to try building after building to hide, but they all had zombies even them.  Even the gun shop was invaded (and unfortunately empty of weapons).

We never made it home, but we did managed to hole up in the adult store (the only building with no zombies), which also had power and enough food to last us a couple of months.  We also ran into four strippers from the strip club across the street, and all four were armed.  I'm guessing that since the gun store is across from the strip club, they got there before it emptied). 

It seemed like a good place to stop for the night.  I mean there are worse places to hide during a zombie invasion than an adult store with 4 strippers who are all armed and plenty of food for everyone.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Svata on December 14, 2014, 09:59:37 pm
Was playing 5e D&D last Wednesday, and we're doing the pre published module. We were facing the over-chief of the lizardfolk, who we're kinda co-opting to take out the dragon cultists. They're uniting behind Snapjaw, whom we've befriended. The suncaller (over-chief) had just taken out half of our tank's HP in one round, and is up next after me. If he doesn't go down, he's totally murdering the shit out of snapjaw. I'm a lv 3 arcane trickster rogue, so I havetwo spells per day. In a desperate attempt to wij, I cast Hideous Laughter. He nat 1s his will save, then fails his new one at the end of his turn. Snapjaw is up, he attacks, and... Nat 1. Bu, as the suncaller is incapacitated, he has advantage. He hits, auto-critting, and manages tokill him. 
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: R. U. Sirius on December 15, 2014, 03:55:39 am
Playing All Things Zombie, I used Googlemaps to create a game map of the area between my work and apartment.  I then ran a game with characters, based on me and my wife, trying to get home with zombies everywhere.

We tried to escape with a cop, but he got eaten and we couldn't get to our car.  We then decided to try building after building to hide, but they all had zombies even them.  Even the gun shop was invaded (and unfortunately empty of weapons).

We never made it home, but we did managed to hole up in the adult store (the only building with no zombies), which also had power and enough food to last us a couple of months.  We also ran into four strippers from the strip club across the street, and all four were armed.  I'm guessing that since the gun store is across from the strip club, they got there before it emptied). 

It seemed like a good place to stop for the night.  I mean there are worse places to hide during a zombie invasion than an adult store with 4 strippers who are all armed and plenty of food for everyone.

...How does an adult store have any food at all, much less enough to last a group of six people for months?
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on December 15, 2014, 04:01:49 am
...How does an adult store have any food at all, much less enough to last a group of six people for months?
Dick shaped candies and foodstuff? Customers who pay with food? Or maybe the survivors simply looted some food (but I doubt it is enough for 6 months so they have to leave sooner or later) before boarding up the doors and windows?
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Vypernight on December 15, 2014, 05:26:30 am
Playing All Things Zombie, I used Googlemaps to create a game map of the area between my work and apartment.  I then ran a game with characters, based on me and my wife, trying to get home with zombies everywhere.

We tried to escape with a cop, but he got eaten and we couldn't get to our car.  We then decided to try building after building to hide, but they all had zombies even them.  Even the gun shop was invaded (and unfortunately empty of weapons).

We never made it home, but we did managed to hole up in the adult store (the only building with no zombies), which also had power and enough food to last us a couple of months.  We also ran into four strippers from the strip club across the street, and all four were armed.  I'm guessing that since the gun store is across from the strip club, they got there before it emptied). 

It seemed like a good place to stop for the night.  I mean there are worse places to hide during a zombie invasion than an adult store with 4 strippers who are all armed and plenty of food for everyone.

...How does an adult store have any food at all, much less enough to last a group of six people for months?

Good question.  There's a smaller building attached to the back of the building.  I just ruled that the smaller building is an apartment.  Also, the characters all had food on them as well, so combined it was quite a bit.

In the next game, we went to a nearby Walmart for supplies (I found a store map online and converted it to a game map).  Our group (now with armed strippers) ran into a group of bikers (judging by their stats and the fact that a number of bikers go into that Walmart).  We ended up with a neutral reaction and were about to go off on our ways when zombies attacked from all directions.  One of the strippers got hurt, as did the leader of the bikers.  The 3 remaining strippers stood over their friend and defended her until my character's wife could help her.  Meanwhile, the bikers took off out the back door.  In both cases, I rolled reactions for both groups when they saw their own get hurt.

So let me get this straight.  Strippers see one of their own go down . . . I mean, get hurt, and they hold their ground and fight.  Bikers see one of their own get hurt, and they turn tail and bolt?  Afterward, we found out the biker was infected so we shot him and left.  The stripper who was injured recovered completely. 

Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Ultimate Paragon on December 15, 2014, 10:14:28 am
Playing All Things Zombie, I used Googlemaps to create a game map of the area between my work and apartment.  I then ran a game with characters, based on me and my wife, trying to get home with zombies everywhere.

We tried to escape with a cop, but he got eaten and we couldn't get to our car.  We then decided to try building after building to hide, but they all had zombies even them.  Even the gun shop was invaded (and unfortunately empty of weapons).

We never made it home, but we did managed to hole up in the adult store (the only building with no zombies), which also had power and enough food to last us a couple of months.  We also ran into four strippers from the strip club across the street, and all four were armed.  I'm guessing that since the gun store is across from the strip club, they got there before it emptied). 

It seemed like a good place to stop for the night.  I mean there are worse places to hide during a zombie invasion than an adult store with 4 strippers who are all armed and plenty of food for everyone.

...How does an adult store have any food at all, much less enough to last a group of six people for months?

Good question.  There's a smaller building attached to the back of the building.  I just ruled that the smaller building is an apartment.  Also, the characters all had food on them as well, so combined it was quite a bit.

In the next game, we went to a nearby Walmart for supplies (I found a store map online and converted it to a game map).  Our group (now with armed strippers) ran into a group of bikers (judging by their stats and the fact that a number of bikers go into that Walmart).  We ended up with a neutral reaction and were about to go off on our ways when zombies attacked from all directions.  One of the strippers got hurt, as did the leader of the bikers.  The 3 remaining strippers stood over their friend and defended her until my character's wife could help her.  Meanwhile, the bikers took off out the back door.  In both cases, I rolled reactions for both groups when they saw their own get hurt.

So let me get this straight.  Strippers see one of their own go down . . . I mean, get hurt, and they hold their ground and fight.  Bikers see one of their own get hurt, and they turn tail and bolt?  Afterward, we found out the biker was infected so we shot him and left.  The stripper who was injured recovered completely.

That's a hilarious image, I gotta say.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Vypernight on December 15, 2014, 02:16:22 pm
Yeah, it's quite an experience when the dice play the part of GM.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: SCarpelan on December 15, 2014, 03:30:48 pm
Yeah, it's quite an experience when the dice play the part of GM.
That's a big part of why I enjoy being a Paranoia GM. The hidden rolls are more of a guideline and everything works on the rule of fun.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on December 16, 2014, 02:25:39 pm
Yeah, it's quite an experience when the dice play the part of GM.
That's a big part of why I enjoy being a Paranoia GM. The hidden rolls are more of a guideline and everything works on the rule of fun.
The groups I am with are dead set against the GM fumbling rolls. If the GM decides something with a roll then that stays no matter the consequences.

I would not mind the GM adjusting a few things if he/she felt that the rule of cool requires it or the "real" result would ruin the campaign but I am in the minority with this.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Vypernight on December 16, 2014, 02:44:50 pm
When I used to run games, I'd make some dice rolls behind my screen and some right in front of the players.  I'd also make it look seeingly random, but in actuality, for those rare times that things weren't going the players' way, I'd fudge things to help them.  Since I'd boucne back and forth in my dice rolls, they never noticed.  Also, the fact that I was a rather evil GM (not trying to kill PC's, just making them hate me at times), they never realized they were being helped those rare times.

Of course, playing solo or same-side, you're 100% at the mercy of the dice.  One of the first times playing All Things Zombies, my character ended up surrounded by zombies 30 seconds into the game.  He escaped into a building, only for zombies to come flying out of the closet.  He killed them all, but then ran into two people who began arguing at the top of their lungs, attracting more zombies.  He nearly made it to the edge of the board when a car alarm when off.  The poor guy just had one mishap after another and ended up losing every single person who joined his group. 
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: SCarpelan on December 16, 2014, 03:21:57 pm
Yeah, it's quite an experience when the dice play the part of GM.
That's a big part of why I enjoy being a Paranoia GM. The hidden rolls are more of a guideline and everything works on the rule of fun.
The groups I am with are dead set against the GM fumbling rolls. If the GM decides something with a roll then that stays no matter the consequences.

I would not mind the GM adjusting a few things if he/she felt that the rule of cool requires it or the "real" result would ruin the campaign but I am in the minority with this.
Well, if my players don't realize I'm fudging the rolls when I feel like it they haven't understood what Paranoia is about. Of course, this requires that the players trust the GM to keep the sadism in an entertaining level and treat everyone equally unfairly. For example, I never fudge anything PvP related. In more serious games I never fudge rolls but I feel the occasional fudge is a big part of the whole players vs unfair world (and vs each other) that Paranoia is about.

Damn, I think it's almost two years since I've last GM'd anything. I really need to get back to my old notes and plans when I get my work related stuff done.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on January 16, 2015, 08:17:09 am
I made a new character for a privateer mini-campaign we are going to do.

Before I rolled stats (Which I had to do twice because despite using 4d6 discard lowest my first attempt had stats so horrible that I would have not been able to keep up with the rest of the characters, the GM still does not believe my luck with the dice despite having played with my for 2 years.) I already had a plan for what I wanted to do but after trying to pick skills it became evident that it would not have worked out.

My plan had been to make Jonathan (last name dependent on what class of society I would have rolled for him. Potter or Baker for worker family Beuamont or Blackwood or something for a noble) a spry and keen 15 year old midshipman full of adventure spirit and eager to make his way up in the British navy. Just like the heroes in those cheap novels he reads all the time.

...Except that the disadvantages of making a teenager would have meant that his skills are too lacking and he would have either died soon or simply been a hindrance to the "team." Might work out in a long campaign where he can increase his stats and skills but in a short campaign like this he would not have had the time to "grow."

My next attempt was a 22 year old lieutenant. (Dice rolls made him into the 1st LT on the ship, which was lucky and gave the perfect reason for him to be placed in command of boarding parties or "away missions.") Again my stat rolls meant that one stat had to be really low and I chose strength as the dump stat. Other than being rather weak he was slightly better than average in all except agility(which was 18) and a high courage score. After a bit fumbling while trying to choose his skills and personality I made him into a pretty good swordsman and a decent commander and seaman. He was also really skilled at intimidation and was the guy who would put an end into mutinies just by shouting and with creative and extremely graphic swears and insults.

...But again this character was redone when while doing the advantages/disadvantages it turned out that he was otherwise such an average and "normal" person. I mean, the other players had things like horrible burn scars, massive traumas and constant nightmares or were just extremely racist (all disadvantages) while my LT was just a married man who sent most of his paycheck to his young wife and had to wear glasses. Oh, he was also a brave (advantage) and honourable (disadvantage) man with a sixth sense for danger and a scottish nemesis (but getting a lifetime enemy out of a scotsman is not that hard. It is kinda suprising actually that this is the first character against whom a scotsman has sworn a vendetta.) Really, the only distinguishing feature about him are the glasses.

So I took out the intimidate skill and instead made him into a calm and reassuring officer who leads by example. He went trough a couple iterations but I think I will enjoy playing the character.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on January 21, 2015, 11:32:17 am
Such a pity that this thread is so dead but I need to rant a bit...

A character I play and about which I have written here a few times already was mainly defined by being an archer and a hunter. He did his part for the clan by going on hunting trips and trapping and bringing in meat and fur. When the clan (mainly the player party) went to battle he was the scout and an archer. He also learned how to sail because the clan recently got a ship and we needed someone to be able to sail.

Pretty good archer in fact, apart from the two other archer characters in the group he had no match in the clan.

...In our last session he and a few other scouts were moving ahead of the main group and he lost an arm in an ambush. Arrow practically destroyed it, there was so much damage that non-magical means had no chance of making the arm functional ever again. Then our healers took turns in fucking up the healing process and after numerous failures to stop the blood flow they finally chopped off his arm and burnt the stump.

This saved his life just barely but now I am stuck with an one armed archer... Looking at his skills the only other thing he was good at was sailing but he isn't much good at that either with just one arm... And it is not like he has any social skills either since he was more of a hermit/loner when he wasn't called to do something important.

AND the arm got chopped off above the elbow so he can't even tie a shield onto it properly!

The problem is that I just don't have it in my heart to abandon the character because this is just ONE of the many occasions where he survives horrible injuries. The first one with permanent damage, but still, he is a tough guy and I want to think of a way to make him useful in the game.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Eiki-mun on January 21, 2015, 12:04:33 pm
Some sort of prosthetic contraption maybe?
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on January 21, 2015, 12:14:09 pm
Some sort of prosthetic contraption maybe?

The GM already said that there is no chance of finding a magical cure for a missing arm (another player had a disabled arm and through a journey into the magical realm and help from a troll [Finnish troll, not a D&D troll] he was able to reduce the penalties from the injury, but he still had the arm, this one was cut off completely) and there are no prostechics that would function. It is a game set somewhere in the 600-800AD era (We have been a bit unspecific with the exact date) and though there is magic it is rare and apart from the gods and magical beings the shamans are quite weak compared to typical High-Fantasy.

I am trying to argue that the character should learn magic from having the third traumatic near death experience within the same year... Which is quite possible in that setting.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Random Gal on February 16, 2015, 06:23:59 pm
I have been having a major problem with trying to run or play in an ongoing campaign.

My area supports a number of gaming groups. Problem is, each one is a very tight-knit circle of old friends with 7-9 players that inherently locks out new players due to cliqueism and overcrowding. I cannot join one of the established groups, and my only option for gaming is doing the public Pathfinder Society sessions, with which I have grown dissatisfied due to lack of consistency (a season 3 scenario one week might be followed by a season 1 scenario the next week and a season 6 one the week after that, with a completely random assortment of characters each time) and DM inflexibility under the excuse of "We must play the scenario and use the rules EXACTLY AS WRITTEN because this is Society!"

So I have been attempting to form my own by recruiting people at Pathfinder Society sessions. Unfortunately, that has not gone well. PFS in this area is composed entirely of players from the aforementioned overcrowded gaming cliques who apparently can't get enough of their home games and want a little extra occasionally, so all attempts at recruiting PFS players are rejected with "I'm already playing in Society and 2-3 different campaigns, so I have no time for yours. Oh, and you can't join any of the games I'm in because we have way too many players already."

I also will not do PbP games; I spend far too much time isolated at my computer already and don't want to become even more socially withdrawn than I already am.

I currently only have three players, one is my best friend and the other two are complete newcomers that happened to randomly show up at a PFS game once. I had a fourth but she bailed out when I didn't immediately cancel a game due to some bad weather. So here we are, less than the minimum number of players to run a game, nobody who is free games and nobody who games is free.

What should I do if I want a consistent campaign?
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: SCarpelan on February 16, 2015, 06:34:07 pm
What should I do if I want a consistent campaign?
Isn't three players enough for a campaign as long as they commit to playing regularly? A friend has run a homebrewed D&D3.5/Pathfinder hybrid campaign with three regular players (me and two others) for a while and it has worked out well. The campaing has been on a break for a fairly long time but that's due to scheduling and inspiration issues, not because it didn't work.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on February 17, 2015, 03:54:33 am
Three players is enough for a roleplay campaign. Some games and campaign types might be problematic, but in many games three is plenty.

For example, Deathwatch with three characters? Works well. You might lack specialists like Techmarine or Librarian but the GM can just decide missions that won't require them. (Besides, even if the team gets sent to difficult missions the commanding officer would be stupid to send them on a mission where they require a specialist that they don't have. OR at least an NPC specialist would be included.)
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Random Gal on February 17, 2015, 10:34:05 am
Except that I'm playing Pathfinder, which assumes a standard party size of four. We're lucky in that a cleric, fighter, and inquisitor have most of the bases covered, but the effective party level is still only 75% of what it should be. For example, when the players face the BBEG of the first half of the campaign, they're expected to be level 5 and handling 5th level encounters with the occasional 6-7th level encounter regularly. The BBEG and his minions were to be equivalent to a 7.5; challenging, but not overpowering. However, with three players instead of four, their effective party level will be 3.75 instead of 5. Fighting the BBEG and his minions at that level would be an overpowering, nigh-impossible encounter.

I suppose I could reduce the level of some of the encounters, but then the in-universe stuff wouldn't make sense anymore. Why would a powerful half-fiend antipaladin's elite guards only be level 1? Or why would a high-level wizard have left behind only small elementals to guard the sealed portal to Hell instead of the medium ones he was going to use?

I'm currently thinking of giving them an NPC sorcerer for them to run collectively until I can somehow find a fourth person. I really don't like DMPCs though and am hoping that having them run and roleplay the character wouldn't make it into one.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on February 17, 2015, 11:46:06 am
a)
(http://archive.4plebs.org/boards/tg/image/1377/36/1377367256601.jpg)

b) DMPC or NPC assistant is always an option.

c) Seriously, playing something other than DnD would solve this issue.

d) Change the enemies. If they can't match a powerful half-fiend then don't send them against a half-fiend and his elite guards. Make them start out against a bandit leader with a horde of goblins and other such easier enemies. If their fighting effectiveness is lower than a party of four then going against an easier BBEG (and other enemies) just seems sensible.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Random Gal on February 17, 2015, 12:24:34 pm
OK, I think I've got it figured out for now. I'll keep the existing stuff the same, but add more adventures in between what I've already designed to allow the characters a few extra level-ups. If I do find a fourth player I'll go back to the initial plans or make the remaining stuff tougher.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Tolpuddle Martyr on February 22, 2015, 06:41:37 am
Well, if my players don't realize I'm fudging the rolls when I feel like it they haven't understood what Paranoia is about. Of course, this requires that the players trust the GM to keep the sadism in an entertaining level and treat everyone equally unfairly. For example, I never fudge anything PvP related. In more serious games I never fudge rolls but I feel the occasional fudge is a big part of the whole players vs unfair world (and vs each other) that Paranoia is about.

Damn, I think it's almost two years since I've last GM'd anything. I really need to get back to my old notes and plans when I get my work related stuff done.

In the first edition of Paranoia I bought the GMs guide literally says "kill the bastards". The job of a Paranoia GM is not to be a fair arbitrator but the embodiment of The Computer arbitrary and batshit but entertaining and wanting you to be happy-and also kill you.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on February 22, 2015, 10:47:22 am
In my last session, of the other game in which my character isn't an one-narmed ex- archer, we managed to accomplish a lot despite having just half the players present.

One player's character was proposed to by a young knight. Seeing as he was completely unknown to us my character (Zoltan) decided to have a mock battle with him to see what kind of person he is.

...Zoltan broke his arm accidentally (technically the knight had a catastrophic fumble as he tried to block.) The other PC failed a following roll to see how she feels about the situation and the GM decided that she is madly in love with the poor knight who fought and suffered for her. (If her character had been a NPC she would have fallen in love with Zoltan instead, but doing that to a player's character ain't ok.) Another side effect is that everyone thinks that Zoltan is kind of a dick and won't play fair.

In other news, on character (the one getting married) is now a minor feudal lord and with it she gained a town under her control (with the other characters taking positions in the town hierarchy such as Zoltan as the chief of the militia.) We also went raiding outside the kingdom's border. And immediately after returning triumphantly we were told to go on a recon mission to the same place where we had just finished a short but brutal spree of robbery, vandalism and other related anti-social behaviour...

Also, much planning, logistics and other related matters to being in charge of a town.

Next session the Baron is gathering an army and going to war.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Second Coming of Madman on February 22, 2015, 11:21:38 am
Damn, Askold.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on February 22, 2015, 12:19:59 pm
Damn, Askold.
What? Isn't that how an average rpg session goes?

Oh, during our raid one of the players got to see how his character behaves in a real battle with the new system we are using.

"I picked the flaw 'coward' so does that mean that I can't fight at all?" "No, when faced with danger you just roll against your courage stat and if you fail, then you must flee if possible. If you succeed you can decide what the character does."

*One roll later the Bard is running away from the enemies, screaming like a little girl.*

Zoltan defeats his opponent with one blow (well, a thrust with spear against a charging rider) and our Noble lady has a long duel with her opponent but defeats him eventually. And the Bard later wrote an inspiring song about his heroic actions during the raid (and mentioned as a side note, that there were some lesser warriors who assisted him.)
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Second Coming of Madman on February 22, 2015, 12:27:37 pm
No, it's just that the sheer scale of your actions impressed me considering how short the session was.

On another note, ever consider Dragonmech?
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Second Coming of Madman on February 23, 2015, 06:29:30 pm
Double post, but the HYPE TRAIN was too strong.

So, there's rumors of the standard Space Marine power armour version (Mark VII Aquila) is to be replaced by a Mark IX version pretty soon. If it's true, I really hope it's a bit more sleeker than the massive PAULDRON fetish designs Games Workshop's done so, as it'd make a nice change of pace.

Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on February 24, 2015, 01:46:09 am
Double post, but the HYPE TRAIN was too strong.

So, there's rumors of the standard Space Marine power armour version (Mark VII Aquila) is to be replaced by a Mark IX version pretty soon. If it's true, I really hope it's a bit more sleeker than the massive PAULDRON fetish designs Games Workshop's done so, as it'd make a nice change of pace.



The massive pauldrons are part of their style. Apparently they also use it as a way to prove that some rivals are imitating them since the pauldrons are so xbox-huge (Then again, WoW also has the same damn huge pauldrons...)

Hadn't heard about Dragonmech before, I'm going to read about it.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Random Gal on February 24, 2015, 01:47:26 am
So my group has proven pretty good at creative thinking.

The party had to place four idols found within the dungeon on an altar to open the heavily fortified metal doors to the final treasure chamber. This area was guarded by a giant burning skeleton (extra damage to attacks, automatic damage to adjacent targets, explodes when killed) and I was hoping to beat the characters within an inch of their lives before it fell.

Instead, after seeing the skeleton, the inquisitor instantly removed one of the idols from the altar, sealing it back behind the door while the party devised a plan. When the inquisitor opened the door again, the fighter and cleric stood just beyond the door to lure the giant burning skeleton in, with the fighter hitting it with fairly significant damage along the way.

The inquisitor then removed the idol as soon as the skeleton entered the doorway. The heavily fortified metal doors closed, catching the skeleton between them and crushing it into bone dust.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: SCarpelan on February 24, 2015, 10:20:21 pm
Creativity is fine as long as it's grounded in common sense. In the hybrid campaign I mentioned my first character was an elf conman (an intelligent and charismatic rogue) with wisdom as a dump stat. The way I roleplayed this was that when planning I took the first clever sounding idea that came to my head and went with it even if I realized OOC the downsides when explaining it to others. Since he was the face of the party the others usually were satisfied with following the plan - the druid did grumble occasionally but usually just shrugged and agreed to try the idea.

Unfortunately, I ended up retiring that character after a couple of sessions just when I was learning to play him as I wanted so I never got to use the character's full potential. The reason was that the ranger's player realized she instinctively played her character more like a rogue than a ranger; when she had joined the game she had said that she has always played rogue and wanted to try another class but old habits die hard. Since we had problems with the party balance and needed a proper meat shield we decided that the most practical solution was that I retired my character allowing her to dual class into rogue. I created a new character whose concept I had already had in my mind as a backup. Ironically, thanks to her luck with dice, she has been a better ranger after taking two levels of rogue. She even keeps overshadowing the 3rd level druid in nature related tasks and has saved the party from his blundered rolls a couple of times. ("Next time you try to calm down an angry dire bear, perhaps you shouldn't stand between her and her cub.")

My new - and current - character? A human paladin, whom I made as a roleplaying challenge. The homebrewed world is a dark (but not grimdark) place and the DM doesn't use the alignment system at all. This gives interesting challenges for someone who truly tries to be a good person but is far from the stereotypical stick-in-the-ass paladin. The adapting of the paladin class in that world did take some minor tinkering and house rules but it has worked out fine. The character would be pretty badly nerfed in a high-optimization game but in the low-optimization game in a low level world I've really enjoyed playing her.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Second Coming of Madman on February 24, 2015, 10:56:05 pm
Turns out the sleeker model of Powered Armour isn't Post-Heresy at all. But in other news, we're finally getting us a Deathwatch codex.  You too, can play as the military arm of the Ordo Xenos RACISTS IN SPACE.

I assume that said Deathwatch army will cost a shitload of points to actually play, but hey!
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on February 26, 2015, 05:27:19 am
Talked with a GM about one of the campaigns. We have a nation of horsemen encroaching on our kingdom from the east. So far they haven't been named in the game (no one thought to ask for their name.)

I finally asked the GM if I can just start calling them Mongols or Rohirmm. He said the locals just call them "the horse-fuckers from the East." To which I mentioned that the correct term should be Equine-Romantics.

...And thus the tribes of Eqrom were born. (I missed a perfectly bad Bronies joke.)
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on March 03, 2015, 04:55:23 am
We had two games on last weekend and things changed a lot.

One character found some cursed skis that took over and force her to ski until she can defeat the curse with her willpower or she dies from exhaustion. Or as she explained it, she found awesome red skis that are wonderful and made her realize how fun skiing is. You know, skiing for 48hours without a pause? Or going for a little skiing trip just for fun that lasts FOUR DAYS in a row and not realizing that there is anything strange in this? Skiing is love. Skiing is life. Nothing else matters... (She has been so close to death due to the curse...)

In other news the melancholic saga of Erkki "the unlucky" Lahi, the one armed hunter has finally reached an end that was, if not happy, at least appropriate.

After recovering from his injuries (apart from the missing arm of course) he was brought back home (and got accidentally shot in the back by another hunter, but he survived and recovered from that wound as well) there was a major religious celebration at the fort/town. Like many of those celebrations it included getting completely wasted with booze and overeating. Also wild extramarital sex was part of the celebration. (Old Finnish rituals, fuck yeah.) But since Erkki was not in mood for partying he just put on his clothes (with some help) and went into the forest all alone to have some privacy.

...You see, we roll for random happenings to the town and inhabitants and Erkki had managed to roll a "magical adventure" for himself (bunch of other characters got them in later sessions as well. Basically miniquests that offer some rewards to the person in question.) and as he wandered in the dark and snowy forest he heard someone cry. Tracing the sounds he found a young and not-appropriately-dressed beautiful woman sitting on a rock. He asked what is ailing her and if he may be of assistance and was told that it is too cold. (Get your minds of the gutter.) The problem was that the boulder she was sitting on was covered in ice so she could not return to her home (the boulder.) Erkki decided to help the damsel in distress by chipping the ice away.

...

*Roll 3d6, roll under target number to succeed* *Erkki needs 14 and rolls three sixes. Autofail and critical failure*

Erkki strikes the frozen boulder with the knife and accidentally stabs the rock. The woman screams and falls off the boulder, having been struck dead and Erkki notices that his wrist is bleeding as if he had cut it open. *Erkki rolls for first aid, with an extra dice since he only has one arm. 4d6 target number 9. Erkki rolls 6, 6, 5 and 6. Autofail and critical failure.*

And so Erkki bled to death in the middle of the forest, all alone with no one to help him. When the end came he wasn't even angry or sad, just confused at all the suffering that he had faced already and how his simple attempt at kindness was the cause of his death. Mildly amused at how much bad luck one person can have. Two days later, after noticing that Erkki was gone they finally found his body. No sign of the woman of course.

[The woman was a Nymph and had he managed to scrape enough ice away she would have rewarded him by healing his missing arm. Since the character was basically unplayable without the arm the GM would have turned him into an NPC if he had failed, but since the odds of having two crit fails was so low he decided to just kill him there and then. I agreed that it was a fitting end and had already declared that even though I won't have him commit suicide I will try to do something heroic and stupid that will either fix him or kill him.]


The joke is that now everyone thinks he killed himself.

Then I made a new character who is almost the opposite of Erkki. The one last thing I could mention was a little "whodunnit" mystery at the town... You see, someone was hitting people in the head when they went to take a piss at night and since waking up in a pool of your own piss and with a head injury is not anyone's kind of fun there was an investigation going on. Unfortunately only one of the victims had even seen anything (when he got knocked out for the second time....) and had failed in his awareness roll he accused someone who is NOT the criminal. *roll on the town inhabitant list.* He accuses... ERKKI!

What? We deduced that he must have seen an onearmed man and since Erkki (who had already been buried at this point) was the only one armed person they know the victim believes that Erkki has returned from the dead and is acting like a dick.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Vypernight on March 03, 2015, 04:22:29 pm
http://shonsgamecorner.blogspot.com/2014_06_01_archive.html (http://shonsgamecorner.blogspot.com/2014_06_01_archive.html)

I use this blog to post my adventures in All Things Zombie, Nuts (WWII), and Larger than Life, as well as other games from Two Hour Wargames.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Second Coming of Madman on March 03, 2015, 06:03:02 pm
Damn, I must be really used to short-changed by Geedub's rapacious prices buying quality models for high prices, 'cause Dreamforge's miniatures are not only excellent in quality but not at all bad in price.

(http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0284/7086/files/Heavy_trooper_test_3_large.jpg?1625)
Brothers everywhere, raise your hands into the air!

Finally, I can get my threateningly Teutonic powered armor fix for cheap!
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on March 04, 2015, 05:07:04 am
That power armour does look nice. I like the massive gorget (and the much more sensible pauldrons that the GW marines have.)

...In the last night's session (not the campaign with the recently deceased Erkki) my character was standing at guard outside the camp as we were marching to war. There were something like 25 people total in the war party and we were the vanguard of baron's bigger army.

*things happen, a new town (really small one) is added to our province quite peacefully, sometime later Zoltan is standing at guard during the night*

[roll for awareness. Wow, that is a really bad roll.]
*Zoltan looks around for the other guard who seems to have gone missing.*
Zoltan: "Masa? Were you always a 2.5meters tall smelly creature that is completely covered in fur?"
Forest troll: "Murrr?"
Zoltan:"..."
Forest troll:"..."
Zoltan:"ALAAARM!"
Round 1, FIGHT!
Zoltan stabs the FOREST TROLL 1 with his SHARP, POINTY SPEAR, it is not very effective. The FOREST TROLL 1 swings his MASSIVE ARMS, the attack misses. Zoltan hits the FOREST TROLL 1 with his SHIELD, it is SUPER EFFECTIVE. The FOREST TROLL rolls on the ground and screams in pain having his toes on his RIGHT LEG smashed. The screams are REALLY loud and are answered by SEVERAL FOREST TROLLS. At this point everyone is awake and trying to find weapons and armour.

Solomon the Merchant equips sword, shield and chainmail. Juliisa the Knight has her page help her equip spear, sword (on belt), shield and chainmail. Mauri the Bard hides under his blanket.

Round 2, FIGHT!
Zoltan continues attacking the troll and keeps it on the ground. Unfortunately A NEW CHALLENGER HAS JOINED THE FIGHT: FOREST TROLL 2 ENTERS COMBAT. Since Zoltan (again) fails his awareness test a surprise attack nearly shatters his wrist and makes him drop his shield. FOREST TROLL 1 uses the opportunity to FLEE FROM COMBAT while Zoltan begins a more desperate battle against his new opponent (and by more challenging I mean that the troll does not get a second chance to strike as even with just one arm Zoltan utterly dominates the combat and eventually kills it all alone.)

Solomon gets out of his tent in full armour and sees three battles. Zoltan vs FOREST TROLLS 1 and 2. Two RANDOM MILITIAMEN vs FOREST TROLL 3 and FOREST TROLL 4 which is dragging Masa away from the camp. Deciding that Masa is the one who needs the help the most he charges the FOREST TROLL 4. Juliisa also joins the battle and decides to help her militiamen.

...Mauri finally manages to pass his courage check and runs out of his tent without weapons, armour and only clad in his shirt. (honestly, in a different setting he would have been wearing pink bunny slippers and pajamas.) He finds a spear and arms himself before remembering that he doesn't know how to use them (in real life he just didn't remember his skills but I like to think that the character was still panicking.) and after trading it for a dagger from another confused militiaman he joins battle.

In the meanwhile Zoltan has killed troll 2 and Juliisa is fighting troll 3 alone (militiamen got separated from her) so Zoltan charges it and together they finish it off (though Zoltan does get a crit fail and the troll injures him badly with a return blow.) Meanwhile Mauri helps Solomon defeat the last troll (Mauri manages to keep doing minimum damage and it takes a while before the troll even realizes that it is getting stabbed in the back.)
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Random Gal on March 24, 2015, 01:33:01 am
So I just killed my best friend's character because I was upset about my players being good at things.

My Pathfinder game is currently running with six players at level 4. With that many, the average encounter would be a CR 5, so I had put together a fairly well-balanced adventure for them. As it turned out, all my encounters turned into one-sided fights in the party's favor. The cloaker was pinned to the ceiling by the wizard's web spell while the others turned it into a pincushion, the dretches were dispatched in 1-2 hits each, the rival adventurers were easily incapacitated by the alchemist's bombs, and the intelligent hallucinogenic fungus was hit several times before it could launch its spore attack. The latter still proved useless due to the characters all passing their fortitude saves, and the wizard destroyed it with his spells. The only success I had was when my best friend's cleric triggered a magic trap that dealt him 21 damage from setting up a "terminal velocity" loop of getting repeatedly teleported to the ceiling. And he told me that he only set it off because he was roleplaying his character's 7 Intelligence.

In short, I had set up a challenge which the characters had curbstomped. And I was getting frustrated. The party was almost to the final boss encounter, and I had failed to put anyone under any real pressure.  With that, I dropped the bomb.

My adventures usually end with "boss" encounters equal to the party's level +2, and so the original plan was to have two CR 6 assassin demons (Babau) with the young template scaling them down to 5, which together would be a moderately challenging CR 7. I gave them full-powered assassin demons instead for an 8th-level fight.

The results were not pretty. The fighter got knocked into negative HP, everyone else was heavily damaged as well, and worst of all, my friend's cleric actually died due to a full attack that included a critical hit from the demon's bite. The party eventually won and nobody seems to have any hard feelings about it (they still had fun and enjoyed the game), but I'm still feeling a bit guilty for snapping at them like that. Especially since my best friend got the worst of it.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Second Coming of Madman on March 24, 2015, 02:35:41 am
*SNIP*

I guess you went with the challenge's intent here, though it definitely feels a bit extreme. However, I recognize that managing the murderous hobos may be a bit hard

As for those 40k fans among us, I'd like to bring some recent developments to your attention. Firstly, it seems that Ad-Mech are finally getting a proper army and codex. Let me repeat that, a proper army and codex. No side stepping in another army's codex, no 30k, no codex supplement. This is a true army for the Mechanicus.

Say hello to the forces of the Machine God.

(click to show/hide)

I particularly look the musket-like look of the Skitarii Ranger's Galvanic Rifles, it feels so Marsy to me.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Cloud3514 on March 24, 2015, 02:55:18 am
You know, these look neat and all, and I'm not opposed to the idea of a Mechanicum army, but do we seriously need ANOTHER Imperium force? I get that they want to keep churning out Codices even after fully updating the game, but can't we see things like Tau Auxiliaries (we are apparently getting Kroot Mercenaries, so I guess that's something?) or, hell, a PROPER update for the Sisters of Battle? I wouldn't even be opposed to just getting the other three Chaos god out of the way with Tzeentch, Nurgle and Slaanesh Daemonkin. Khorne Daemonkin kinda spills the beans on those already. We know they're coming. There's no use in pretending otherwise.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on March 24, 2015, 02:58:43 am
Random guy: Character death is just a risk you have to accept. Both for the players and the GM. Besides, you did say that you have trouble scaling the difficulty of the battles. I have played systems where a single hit can kill a character if the attacker is really lucky. No resurrection spells either.

Some people like those deadly systems because it adds real risk and makes challenging battles even without superpowered opponents.

Cloud3514: I suppose GW concentrates on the armies that sell the most. But I have  to admit that the Sisters have suffered, in model availability, rule books and even the fluff...
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: ironbite on March 24, 2015, 04:53:18 pm
You know Random you've done nothing wrong at all.  Like really.  I mean at least your not my GM who still hasn't figure out that the party he's running has 3 min/maxers and that'll cause a ton of problems when you don't set up your battlefield ahead of time.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Second Coming of Madman on March 24, 2015, 09:56:21 pm
You know, these look neat and all, and I'm not opposed to the idea of a Mechanicum army, but do we seriously need ANOTHER Imperium force? I get that they want to keep churning out Codices even after fully updating the game, but can't we see things like Tau Auxiliaries (we are apparently getting Kroot Mercenaries, so I guess that's something?) or, hell, a PROPER update for the Sisters of Battle? I wouldn't even be opposed to just getting the other three Chaos god out of the way with Tzeentch, Nurgle and Slaanesh Daemonkin. Khorne Daemonkin kinda spills the beans on those already. We know they're coming. There's no use in pretending otherwise.

Relax, brah. If Crimson Slaughter, a relatively new warband, can beat out all of the other legion-descended warbands for the spotlight, Sisters can get a new codex eventually.

I'd like to see more of Laserburn integrated into the current 'verse myself, honestly. The Red Redemption (See? Even their name's awesome) was pretty damn cool for a mildly racist and Islamophobic concept, even if I can't see any place for them as well, followers of a Old Terra religion.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: IanC on March 27, 2015, 12:34:33 pm
AdMech is going to get me back into 40k, after enjoying the hell out of The End Times for Warhammer Fantasy
Even if... (spoiler, duh!)
(click to show/hide)

7th 40k... not a big fan. It hasn't fixed the biggest problems with 6th ed (over powered fliers) while adding its own problems, (the whole psychic phase, super heavies getting legitimised in standard games, the whole Lords of War concept in itself). I do like the random mission objectives though...

Meanwhile in a game i had yesterday, two small units of Ungors made back their points 4 or 5 fold, taking down a dwarven war machine each, and one taking down the dwarf BSB. Hah! Oh I do love the Legions of Chaos list. Nurgle Beastmen? YES PLEASE!
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Second Coming of Madman on March 27, 2015, 08:12:23 pm
AdMech is going to get me back into 40k, after enjoying the hell out of The End Times for Warhammer Fantasy
Even if... (spoiler, duh!)
(click to show/hide)

Hell of a better way to go than wrestling with your arch-enemy while falling into the Warp, as all of existence disappears around you. *Cough* Sigmar-Franz-Deathclaw and Archaon*Cough*

Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: IanC on March 28, 2015, 12:30:14 pm
So looked at the rules for the Skitarii in this weeks White Dwarf... nice. Bit better than guard stat line wise, awesome new weapons, some kind of orders system (theres a special rule which is left unexplained and something about one of the special issue war gear for the Alpha of the unit giving plus 1 leadership for rolls for that thing), Alpha has 2 wounds and they are Relentless. Nice. Nice.

Also they are Troops, with the two versions of that walker acting as Fast Attack and Heavy Support. Also theres mentions of tanks when they show the new, huge mail order transfer sheet. Hope this means they can use any tank from the guard/space marines! (they should, really)

Preordered two boxes. Gonna make them as one each of the Skitarii troop choices, 1 Rangers 1 Vanguard.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Second Coming of Madman on March 28, 2015, 01:48:53 pm
So, Skitarii are a Militarum Tempestus type army from what I've read so far. Firstly, we get the Codex: Skitarii that details rules for the units that already been revealed. Then, there is supposedly a more complete Codex: Adeptus Mechanicus that I'd assume contain rules for stuff like Titans and Robots.

Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Random Gal on April 05, 2015, 01:17:59 am
In case you're interested, I have a campaign journal (http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2s1gz?Tale-of-the-Outcasts) chronicling my group's adventures.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on April 05, 2015, 01:26:29 am
I might be getting into a game of 2300 AD / Traveller.

My go to plan is to create an outrageous French man. Particularly a suave gentleman who would work as the "face" of the group.

...But because of the character creation rules the only certainties are the characters nationality, gender and name. Everything else, up to and including whether or not he survives the character creation, will be decided by my luck with the dice.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: ironbite on April 05, 2015, 04:06:03 pm
I have a youtube channel with my group's exploits.

Ironbite-so there.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Random Gal on April 07, 2015, 05:23:06 pm
I have a youtube channel with my group's exploits.

Ironbite-so there.

Was there supposed to be a link in there?
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: ironbite on April 07, 2015, 08:35:59 pm
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrogm6G-OckdNTSbpGZO1G6znNb0Qs9tp

Ironbite-ENJOY!
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on April 08, 2015, 01:19:41 am
I made that character for a 2300AD game yesterday.

Since making characters in 2300AD/Traveller is down to luck my character had mediocre stats and kept getting fired out of every job he took. He was also repeatedly injured on duty and as a result is in serious debt before the game has even started. His skills are also lacking because he kept losing jobs and therefore couldn't roll as many skills.

Meanwhile another player rolled 12 (on 2d6) for two of his stats and his worst stat was 9. He also got longevity/2 which meant that he could have a 40 year career before starting the game and still hasn't suffered from old age. (His character is a retired Marine Brigadier and a very high ranked diplomat. The only thing holding back the character is his ARROGANCE flaw which means a severe penalty to diplomatic skills. He is still much better in social skills than a normal human and incredibly good if dealing with people he respects. Also filthy rich and armed with gauss weapons because he had to do something with all that money.)
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: ironbite on April 08, 2015, 08:31:48 am
BTW the link I provided was just a link to the current game with that particular GM.  There's also a completed game of Curse of the Crimson Throne on there.  That took about a year to complete.

Ironbite-I kinda miss Jozan.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Second Coming of Madman on April 08, 2015, 08:49:27 am
*Snip*

Well, at least you didn't die in character generation- always hated whenever that happened.

As for the other guy, damn.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Vypernight on April 08, 2015, 12:55:44 pm
Okay, I'll bite.  How does a character die during character generation, and in what game? 

I mean, I've had characters slaughtered on the very first dungeon tile, but during generation?  I can't wait to hear (read) this!
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on April 08, 2015, 01:38:29 pm
In the Traveller and 2300AD rulesets (Twilight 2000/2013 as well) the character is created by first rolling their stats and then setting them to a career. Or several careers. And you can't just decide to become a Marine or Merchant, you have to roll against a stat to see if you are qualified to join. Similarly during the career (which you progress in 4 year "terms") you roll for survival in the career and failure in that will have your character lose his job and may injure him and have their stats reduced permanently (unless they pay a hefty medical bill) and aging past the prime also forces the characters to check if their stats degrade due to old age. You can end the character creation at any point you wish, before it is too late, but continuing it longer and playing an older character means more skills, money and gear.

Though the injuries are rare. Most results from failing the survival roll will only have you lose your job and may even raise a random skill or add a new rival.  Having a stat reduced to zero will end the characters life before the character creation is over. (Twilight is slightly different but choosing a military/police career can cause characters to lose limbs permanently even before the game starts. Which is an issue in a rather realistic game without magic or bionics. First time I played an RPG game had one of the characters lose a foot during character creation.)

And the main incentive for playing old characters is that the writers HATED characters learning new skills or improving their old ones during the game. Those are really hard to achieve and skills and stats are more likely to go down than up during the game. So, risking the character before the game starts is lesser risk than starting with a "weak" character and wasting time on them.


...And apparently the older Traveller system was even more brutal and death was quite common during character creation. With the latest system it is only an issue if you play by "Ironman mode" which means that failing any survival roll will kill the character rather than simply have him lose his job and face a random penalty.

Mainly the problems for failing the survival rolls (like I did repeatedly) is that the character will be deep in debt due to medical bills and has less skill points than the more successful characters despite being old.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Second Coming of Madman on April 08, 2015, 06:53:21 pm
Yes, that is a giant Plasma Cannon on a building. Your MEQs and vehicles can all start shitting red into orbit now.

(click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Cloud3514 on April 08, 2015, 07:24:43 pm
Eh, it's still S7. My infantry, on the other hand, is shitting themselves now.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Random Gal on April 08, 2015, 11:52:33 pm
Well, at least you didn't die in character generation- always hated whenever that happened.

Reminds me of that one gag RPG called "A Dragon Eats You," where all rolls are 1d6, and on every 1 a dragon eats you. Including the stat rolls during character creation.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Cloud3514 on April 09, 2015, 01:37:30 am
With my dice I'd be getting eaten a lot in that game.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Vypernight on April 09, 2015, 06:15:51 am
In the Traveller and 2300AD rulesets (Twilight 2000/2013 as well) the character is created by first rolling their stats and then setting them to a career. Or several careers. And you can't just decide to become a Marine or Merchant, you have to roll against a stat to see if you are qualified to join. Similarly during the career (which you progress in 4 year "terms") you roll for survival in the career and failure in that will have your character lose his job and may injure him and have their stats reduced permanently (unless they pay a hefty medical bill) and aging past the prime also forces the characters to check if their stats degrade due to old age. You can end the character creation at any point you wish, before it is too late, but continuing it longer and playing an older character means more skills, money and gear.

Though the injuries are rare. Most results from failing the survival roll will only have you lose your job and may even raise a random skill or add a new rival.  Having a stat reduced to zero will end the characters life before the character creation is over. (Twilight is slightly different but choosing a military/police career can cause characters to lose limbs permanently even before the game starts. Which is an issue in a rather realistic game without magic or bionics. First time I played an RPG game had one of the characters lose a foot during character creation.)

And the main incentive for playing old characters is that the writers HATED characters learning new skills or improving their old ones during the game. Those are really hard to achieve and skills and stats are more likely to go down than up during the game. So, risking the character before the game starts is lesser risk than starting with a "weak" character and wasting time on them.


...And apparently the older Traveller system was even more brutal and death was quite common during character creation. With the latest system it is only an issue if you play by "Ironman mode" which means that failing any survival roll will kill the character rather than simply have him lose his job and face a random penalty.

Mainly the problems for failing the survival rolls (like I did repeatedly) is that the character will be deep in debt due to medical bills and has less skill points than the more successful characters despite being old.

Wow, harsh.  "I just spent a half hour creating my character.  i'm ready to take on the galaxy!"  *Fails Survival roll before adventure even starts*  "$%%#%^&%^##%%!"

I used to pride myself as a DM/GM because, in all the years I've run games (and I'll admit I can be an evil DM/GM at times!), only 1 character has ever died, and he was killed post-adventure by another character.

Then I started playing Two Hour Dungeon Crawl and Nuts (WWII) and watched in shock as my characters were mauled left and right.  And the since games were played solo, I have no one to blame but myself, and the dice.  In fact, I'm blaming the dice more so.  That's the only explanation I have for a low-level goblin single-handedly slaughtering 3 of my teams.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on April 10, 2015, 03:14:32 pm
Honestly, I like games where characters can die. Even when I have grown attached to a character I would rather have him/her die in the RPG if that is where the rolls (and all associated mistakes) lead the character than have a game where the GM creates a deus ex machina just to prevent deaths.

And now for comparison... The stats of my character in 2300AD:
Strenght: 5 (Dice Modifier -1) Negative strength modifier means that he gets recoil penalties even from weapons that DO NOT HAVE recoil!
Dexterity: 10 (DM +1)
Endurance: 9 (DM +1)
Intellegence: 10 (DM +1)
Education: 8 (DM +0)
Social: 7 (DM +0) (The equivalent of Charisma and also the character's social standing. 12 or more makes them nobility.)
Three of his stats went up during the character creation as bonuses from careers.

Meanwhile my friends character:
Strenght: 6 (DM 0)
Dexterity: 12 (DM +2)
Endurance: 13 (DM +2)
Intellegence: 13 (DM +2)
Education: 12 (DM +2)
Social: 15 (DM +3)

Note that most of these stats have grown during the character creation as 12 was the highest you can get from rolling. Social, for example rises with every promotion from the "Noble" career.

If nothing else at least my character knows a lot about deception and has several contacts that he can call for assistance. I'm trying to make him the "Face guy" in the team.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Second Coming of Madman on April 15, 2015, 08:34:50 am
My god, the new Eldar codex. I'll just let this Dakkadakka thread title sum it up:

Quote
160 Str 6 shots for 1080 points.

And that's only on Jetbikes. Emperor preserve us, what can stop this scourge?
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Cloud3514 on April 15, 2015, 02:17:30 pm
So, on other words, more power creep.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: IanC on April 15, 2015, 02:26:34 pm
Well it sounds like my most hated unit ever, the Wrathknight is getting turned into a Lord of Ward? Hope so, it is becoming a gargantuan creature at last.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Cloud3514 on April 15, 2015, 06:02:16 pm
I still absolutely fucking hate the idea of Super Heavies, Gargantuan Creatures and D weapons in standard play. 40k is seriously starting to go back to 2nd edition when it was about putting together the right combination of obscure White Dwarf rules to blow up your opponent's force in two turns and I fucking hate that.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Second Coming of Madman on April 15, 2015, 08:37:20 pm
33 marines in one turn with a troop choice, goddamn. D-weapons everywhere, goddamn. Wavespam uncorrected, goddamn. STR D weapons fucking everywhere, goddamn!

Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: IanC on April 16, 2015, 03:13:27 pm
I only play casually, so ill just refuse to play against Eldar then. Oh well. Shame that I'm going to have to blacklist an army due to bullshit.

(also on the bullshit list, Imperial Knights, well anyone that uses a fucking Titan in a standard game really)
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Cloud3514 on April 16, 2015, 04:14:22 pm
Eldar isn't the first, nor do I think they'll be the last we'll see this from. Imperial Guard can bring a Baneblade, Orks have the Morka/Gorkanaut, Khorne Daemonkin have the Lord of Skulls, as well as the aforementioned Wraithknigt and Imperial Knights. We've already got Super Heavies in Codices. I fully expect Tau to get one of their Super Heavy flyers and I would expect Necrons to get their Super Heavies in their next Codex, even if that is likely a few years down the line.

Not to mention that rules are being printed in White Dwarf again, plus the numerous dataslates. It really isn't making me want to keep playing this game.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Second Coming of Madman on April 16, 2015, 07:29:52 pm
Of course, the Wraithknight/Lord of Skulls/any other superheavy is restricted by the bane of vehicles everywhere- actually buying, painting and fielding the damn things.

Seriously, try painting all those tiny skulls on the Lord of Skulls. You'll go mad before the damn thing's done.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Cloud3514 on April 17, 2015, 12:22:42 am
While that's definitely a good point, it doesn't keep me from finding the concept utterly terrible.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: IanC on April 18, 2015, 01:19:01 pm
I picked up the Skitarii Codex today. Its a really good book, lots of illustrations and fluff. FOC wise its another "special" one, though not as headache causing as some. You have no HQ, min 2 troops, optional 6 more troops, 4 each of elite and heavy support, and 2 fast attack.

Any Alpha can be a Warlord, though if its a Skitarii one you get a D6 roll on the traits table. The Sicarians only have a D3 roll. Also theres a relic that is Nikola Tesla's skull. Yep.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on April 18, 2015, 03:06:29 pm
I decided to leave one of the RPGs I am in due to scheduling problems as I am starting my work soon and the game is on weekdays, in a different city. I just can't make it there.

It was the only game that was regularly, the other ones are more random and infrequent. This is a shame because I really liked it but it would be too difficult to schedule it since the crew can't play on weekends. On the other hand, I am going to join a new game which would be on weekends. I may play an  intellegent-space-corgi. (Also known as the Vargr of Traveller.)

Also, a friend of mine decided to start programming something that would be a challenger to Roll20. Except it would be easier on the computers, work on Linux and Android and use Ascii graphics...

I got interviewed for the initial plans and in a week or two we shall see what he has cooked up and show it to some other players who might try the program.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Second Coming of Madman on April 25, 2015, 11:13:31 am
(http://ksr-ugc.imgix.net/assets/003/634/089/f4f1adae734f4504f67bffbf38739f54_original.jpg?v=1429334697&w=700&h=&fit=max&auto=format&q=92&s=213cf81beb19bfdd4021bc9d8f2e2b02)

Maelstrom's Edge, man , Maelstrom's Edge.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: IanC on April 26, 2015, 06:02:33 pm
Anyone here play Dropzone Commander? Picked up the 2 player starter set at Salute (they had a massive space ship at the Hawk Wargames stand.) and have just finished assembling the UCM half. Lovely minis, if a very different scale than what I'm used to. (I also got Archmagos Draykavac from Forgeworlds stand, The Penguin (Gotham TV Show variant) for the Batman Miniature Game and some samurai miniatures)

There was also a really awesome Space Marine Adeptus Astarte cosplayed walking around. He must have been on stilts since he was pretty damn tall.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on April 28, 2015, 01:20:11 am
If any of you want to have REALLY awkward time there is an rpg called Gang rape. It is a roleplay where three or more people play out a gang rape. It was made by some folks to highlight how horrible gang rapes are and how unlikely it is that the rapists are punished in Sweden.

The entire game is horrible, but this has been done on purpose. Really, they have all kinds of rules that have been put there simply to make certain that the game is really awkward for the players. Of course there is the chance that someone is turned on by rape-play they point out that it just means that everyone else is even more creeped out.

Anyway, you need at least three players. Two (or more) of them shall be rapists and one shall be the "woman." They specifically explain why they use the term woman rather than victim and although I disagree with their argument most of the rules are "cool" in the sense that they accomplish the desired effect. For example, no you can't play a scenario where the rape happens in a jail or during a war. That would mean distancing yourself from the scenario, it has to be some "normal" situation for you so that it feels more horrible and half the time the players are playing the other players characters. Meaning, that the "rapists" decide what they do to the "woman" physically and how the woman's body reacts (but not what she is feeling emotionally) and the "woman" decides how she and the "rapists" feel and think about the situation (but rules specifically forbid the woman from using this to make the rapists want to stop the rape.) ...Anyway, you can get the game free from rpgnet or other similar sites and it is awkward and bad time for everyone involved.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Second Coming of Madman on April 28, 2015, 07:59:40 am
(http://i.imgur.com/5O3hz0Y.jpg)

I need another fist.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Cloud3514 on April 28, 2015, 01:56:54 pm
I was going to complain about the fact that the Knights are already more than powerful enough and that their codex isn't close to outdated, but then I realized that 40k isn't going in a direction I like as a whole anyway.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Second Coming of Madman on April 30, 2015, 08:36:50 am
(click to show/hide)

Am I the only one who does like the Kastellan-class robot?
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: IanC on April 30, 2015, 12:14:36 pm
Well i won't need to buy a Magos since i picked up the Forgeworld Archmagos (http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/The_Horus_Heresy/HORUS_HERESY_CHARACTER_SERIES/ARCHMAGOS_DRAYKAVAC_MAGOS_PRIME.html) at Salute 2015. Think he will be useable, even if its with out the Abeyant.

Still hope FW put out some 40k rules for (some of?) the 30k Mechnicum stuff.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Second Coming of Madman on April 30, 2015, 11:13:57 pm
>Knight Gallant's Thunderstrike Gauntlet can hurl Tanks and Monstrous Creatures, forcing passengers to make a Emergency Disembarkation.

Aw yes.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Second Coming of Madman on May 26, 2015, 08:44:43 pm
Been working on a Pathfinder homebrew feat.  Inspired by *cough* Orcs Must Die *cough* nothing in particular.

(click to show/hide)

Change Log:

5/26- Amended entry based on following advice from a fellow fa/tg/uy.

Quote
Why the shit is there a dex prereq? It should be Int 16, if anything. Also, what the hell is with that out of place +1? If you want a shitty bonus like that, take a couple of levels in fighter, and use the feats for weapon focus.

The spells seem fine.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: BrandonL337 on May 26, 2015, 10:35:12 pm
Guess who's back, back again, yes I'm back, yes I'm back, back again. (is that how that song goes?)

So, does anyone here play X-Wing?  About to play a regional on Saturday, and I've only played a few games so far too.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Second Coming of Madman on May 26, 2015, 10:57:58 pm
Guess who's back, back again, yes I'm back, yes I'm back, back again. (is that how that song goes?)

So, does anyone here play X-Wing?  About to play a regional on Saturday, and I've only played a few games so far too.

Sounds interesting- a FFG-made skirmish-scale. Rebels use relatively few but durable ships with good pilots, and the Imperial swarm those motherfuckers with agile TIE fighters. You mess around with pilots and equipment, etc.

Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: BrandonL337 on May 27, 2015, 12:10:39 am
Guess who's back, back again, yes I'm back, yes I'm back, back again. (is that how that song goes?)

So, does anyone here play X-Wing?  About to play a regional on Saturday, and I've only played a few games so far too.

Sounds interesting- a FFG-made skirmish-scale. Rebels use relatively few but durable ships with good pilots, and the Imperial swarm those motherfuckers with agile TIE fighters. You mess around with pilots and equipment, etc.

mhmm, laely B-wing mini-swarms have gotten popular, I'm hoping the three E-wings I'm planning to run in the regionals(assuming #3 gets here in time, which is very up in the air) are able to counter that build
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Cloud3514 on May 27, 2015, 12:36:19 am
I've been meaning to get back into X-Wing. I try to get at least one or two of each Rebel ship (and will grab the Most Wanted pack... purely to boost my Rebels) and wouldn't mind getting at least one of everything else for the sake of getting all of the upgrades.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on May 27, 2015, 01:34:17 am
Do you know what is fun? Traveller. What else? The Vargr. Uplifted wolves. Specifically Uplifted Wolf-space-pirates. In space.

Once again a campaign died off before the first play session and once again I am in a new campaign...

This time it actually got somewhere and has been fun so far. The original idea was to play one of the official campaigns in Traveller as merchants, but after a quick look we switched to a privateer campaign because of the violence inherent in the system.

You see, the merchant campaign was basically: start -> combat -> combat -> combat -> occasional non-combat bit -> combat.

Really, almost every "encounter" was combat and there was usually no way around it. Meanwhile after two session the Pirates of Drinax (technically privateers) campaign has had a few battles but also diplomacy, detective work, trading and forming alliances.

Sandbox campaigns are of course possible (and the main thing about Traveller usually) but the GM wanted to go with a prepared campaign just to start things out so that we have a goal in the game.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Random Gal on May 30, 2015, 12:04:34 am
So after I moved to Canada, I managed to meet a couple of local gamers plus a couple of others who hadn't gamed before but were interested in playing anyway.

 At the same time, I'm still running my home Pathfinder campaign in the USA over Skype.

 For this home campaign, I had already gotten the 3.5 version of White Plume Mountain prepared to run in Pathfinder, so I decided to use it as the dungeon for the one-shot with the locals as well.

 Here is where things get really interesting. I have made the two groups aware of each other, and mentioned that if one group does something unexpected, hilarious, or otherwise memorable, the other will come across evidence of their zany scheme when they arrive.

 I don't know how the Americans are going to respond to this, but the Canadians were really excited upon hearing of their competitors and have asked about a PvP fight with the Americans over Skype.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on June 21, 2015, 04:39:46 am
Update on the SPACE-PIRATE campaign:

-We invested several million credits into a certain planet's economy, mainly money from our fleets funds but most of the crew also invested some their own shares. This was enough to get us noticed and improve our relations with the planet but we are not the biggest investors in the area.

-One of the PCs decided not to bother with investments and walked into the nearest casino where he spent the week. He practically crashed the bank and is not banned from that particular casino.

-Our NPC crewmembers went on a more traditional pirate route and wasted several hundred thousand credits in bars and brothels. When they finally got back they were also carrying an unconscious duded whom we then shanghaied into our crew.

We heard rumours of an Imperial "treasure ship" that had been stranded nearby after engine failure. It had been part of a larger caravan and was left behind with only minor escort protecting it until repairs are finished. Despite my insistence that this was a trap the rest of the crew wanted to take the obvious plot hook. So we went on our raider ship and an armed cargo ship (with NPC crew. We mainly use it for transporting stolen loot but it can fight other cargo ships.)

There was a minor delay on our trip as we attacked and hijacked a random cargo ship on our way to the treasure-ship. (In Traveller making a FTL jump usually drains all the fuel on the ship and they need to refuel before the next jump. Refueling at a station is possible but costs money... Refueling by taking matter from a gas giant is free but takes time. We usually refuel from gas giants and it offers a secluded place to attack other ships that do the same. Particularly cool as they have no way to escape as they are empty.) We left some of our crew on the brand new ship and sent them away as the rest of us continued our mission.

When we finally got to the treasure ship we were immediately scanned by the Imperial escort ship that was protecting it. Or at least it tried to scan us... Our Glorious Leader had us run ECM to protect us from scans and initiated what I like to call the "Sovereign Citizen tactic." Captain claimed that the Imperials have "no authority" to scan us, the Imperials explained that according to the laws of the Imperium they have the authority everywhere in space (apart from planets which are mainly controlled by local goverments. And even then the main spacestation is under Imperial law and control.) and things escalated until we were fighting for our lives.

I would like to make it clear that before that moment there were no bounties on us and they would have let us go as long as we would have let them scan us. The GM also explained that but the captain didn't want any of that. So we technically declared a war with the Imperium by firing on them. The fight took surprisingly long and could have gone either way. Even after we forced them to surrender there were still approximately 3 tons of smart-missiles coming for us and only luck and great gunnery skills managed to shoot most of them down before we were hit.

And because MURDERHOBO the entire crew of the ship was killed after they surrendered (I had left the game at that point because my wife needed help with the kids.)

Anyway, for our next session we are left with one captured damaged ship, another one that needs to be captured, one of our ships is damaged and another one is in the same system and undamaged (they didn't join the fight. Something to do with the fact that that ship is an armed cargo ship and would have been destroyed in minutes if it had fought.) Oh and the first ship we had stolen was 2 weeks away from us and there is no FTL communications so getting it here would take a month. AND we need spare parts to fix the "Treasure boat." AND it will take approximitely 5 weeks for the Imperials to hear about our attack and send a naval force to wipe us out.

So we have a race against time with high risk and high rewards. Others are already annoyed as I have suggested preparing for the worst, "let's just load up what we can and prepare to jump out if we run out of time."
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: IanC on June 22, 2015, 07:10:37 pm
Oh yeah I got the Imperial Knight codex and an Imperial Knight, which I built as a Warden. Dat Gatling Cannon.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Random Gal on June 23, 2015, 12:53:14 am
If you recall my previous posts, the American and Canadian groups I had exploring the same dungeon in Pathfinder have finally encountered each other. We'll be roleplaying the resulting situation over Skype this Friday.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Second Coming of Madman on July 02, 2015, 03:18:47 pm
GW really fucked up with Age of Sigmar.

Just- just, wow.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: IanC on July 02, 2015, 03:46:51 pm
Im not 100% on it, but how? Rules will be free (free? From GW? What?)

Also it is 1st edition of a new system its not 9th edition of WHFB.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Cloud3514 on July 02, 2015, 07:41:20 pm
It sounds to me like they're trying to take Fantasy and turn it into 40k... Which is a stupid idea.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Second Coming of Madman on July 02, 2015, 07:48:25 pm
Two words, kiddos: No points.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: IanC on July 03, 2015, 07:07:41 pm
A: I'm like nearly 30 so I'm not a kiddo. And B: yeah the lack of points makes no sense. How are they going to balance things? Hmm.

BTW, Imperial Guard are really good at taking down a Knight. Bloody Leman Russes. Still took 4 turns to take it down though. And if I didn't miss with so many shots (she's nearly finished paint wise, so I'm blaming the old first game painted will do poorly rule) I might have done more damage than I did. Oh and loosing my anti-tank unit of Skitarii Vanguard on the first turn didn't do many any favours.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Cloud3514 on July 05, 2015, 01:42:25 am
"Still took four turns to take down."

Exhibit A of why I hate the idea of super-heavies in standard play.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Second Coming of Madman on July 05, 2015, 10:24:59 pm
*Puts on Shill cap*

So, I've been doing playtesting for a new system (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/150506/Alien-Earth?term=alien+earth) called Alien Earth...while playing as Tyce. Works pretty well from what I've played. Combat's fun.

*Takes off Shill Cap*
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: IanC on July 06, 2015, 02:36:16 pm
"Still took four turns to take down."

Exhibit A of why I hate the idea of super-heavies in standard play.

Now tbf, that was one Leman Russ shooting at it for 3 of the turns. He had a Tank Commander and used the Split Fire Order on them to have one target the Knight and the others targeted my Skitarii. Oh and a Tech-Priest to give one of them Power of the Machine Spirit for more targeting different units fun. Only on the 4th turn did he fire all 3 at it (nothing left to shoot at that wasn't hiding in cover, and she was on her way to charging the tank squadron), and took down the rest of the HP pretty quickly, even with the 4++ save.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Random Gal on September 15, 2015, 10:47:15 pm
So this happened to me (http://shamethedice.tumblr.com/post/129025918152) on Saturday. I felt I had to subject the offending d20 to public humiliation.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Svata on September 15, 2015, 11:11:55 pm
I've shattered dice with a hammer for less. The next d4 killed a Troll on the damage roll from a cantrip.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on September 16, 2015, 01:50:03 am
I'm in 3 tabletop campaigns.

Mythic Finland / Praedor campaign which has been going on for two years.

Traveller campaign which has been going for a year at least.

And now a 2300AD campaign for which we made characters BEFORE the Traveller campaign, but we never got to play and the campaign should be starting next week.


Except that due to my new job my schedule is a mess and I'm not sure if I have the time to play AND for my other hobbies. I am already missing SCA fighting training because most of my days are on evening shift (which makes it really hard to have the time for any hobbies) and I am seriously wondering what RPG campaign(s) I am going to end. I like all of them (and the 2300AD one won't have enough players without me) but I simply don't have the time.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Random Gal on September 16, 2015, 02:27:15 am
I just recently started gaming again after work and time management issues forced a hiatus over the summer. After moving back to the USA and settling in Arizona, I discovered that there's a local chapter of the Pathfinder Society here. I managed to jump right in as I had a couple of active characters from back when I was playing in the Virginia chapter of it.

By the way, my ranger did survive Saturday's game, though he had to drop 380 gp on a Restoration spell to get his Wisdom back.

I also found a Meetup group that's trying to put together a D&D 3.5 campaign starting Thursday, which ought to be interesting.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Even Then on September 16, 2015, 06:45:53 pm
What's this Mythic Finland campaign? Sounds neat :3
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on September 17, 2015, 02:23:30 am
We are using the rules from Praedor but the setting is homebrew. The GM is a historian and we started with an extremely realistic campaign. We play a clan (well "suku" but clan is the best translation for this purpose) and the game has politics action and a surprising amount of "daily life" things as well. For example, we calculate things like how much our crops and hunting produce food and so on.

Then after the game had been going for over a year the clan was visited by an elf. And a troll. And then things started happening as more and more mythological things were included in the game. Now one of the characters is actually engaged to a local god...

Now that was a funny story, two characters were lost in the spirit world and couldn't find a way back so they had to bargain with a creature that they met there. Which turned out to be one of the lake gods. After missing several hints at a much better solution to their predicament one of them was offered to become the wife of that god. I actually had trouble keeping from metagaming as my character wasn't there but the players kept making things worse for themselves...
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Vypernight on September 17, 2015, 03:27:01 pm
Years ago, I started collecting Star Wars Miniatures, but I never played the game since it didn't seem to have rules for solitaire play.  Well, recently, I downloaded the updated Chain Reaction rules and used those to run some SW games.  Here's the first:

http://shonsgamecorner.blogspot.com/2015/08/cr3-and-star-wars.html (http://shonsgamecorner.blogspot.com/2015/08/cr3-and-star-wars.html)
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: guizonde on September 17, 2015, 07:00:50 pm
i have a group of friends, and between us five created a post-apocalyptic world. two years ago to the day, i started telling the story. 350-odd days later, it ended. one of my friends had a story to tell, so he became game-master, and i a player. our second campaign ended in a very shakespearean tragedy kind of ending. now, the two past game-masters are briefing the new (and third) game-master. once all five players will have told their story, we will begin the cycle anew.

and maybe, just maybe one day, i'll write down the stories, and what stories, my friends.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on October 25, 2015, 02:13:14 am
(https://borgdotcom.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/robocop-disassembled.jpg?w=640)

You thought this thread was practically dead, that it was just circling down the drain and we couldn't do a thing to save it...

But we here at OCP can fix it. We can make it better. New and improved, more horsepower, more weapons, internal cooling systems and ribbed for her pleasure with an external clit vibrator installed for free.

...Anyway, in a current campaign our team of Space pirates and venture capitalists were hired to clear out a space station. We had already gotten friendly with the port crew but since the job demanded that the station will be completely empty of life our captain decided to simply kill everyone...

The station itself was described to be massive, closer in scale to the Omega from Mass effect than ISS. The population on the station was divided. The harbour is controlled by a group that came in fairly recently but the station is thousands of years old, built by unknown alien species before humans got here. And humans also got here centuries ago but after a strange disease killed most of the occupants and turned the rest into madmen the station is in a rather strange state.

Harbour as I said is controlled by one group (few thousand strong), they have locked the doors outside the harbour and occasionally have to fight off the lunatics who try to drive them off the station. The lunatics are divided into several tribes that live far from each other and always react violently when they meet an outsider. The disease they suffer from has little physical effects but it means that they can not communicate with anyone who does not have the same strain of disease... This means that there are hundreds of thousands of people on the station living in a approx 20k person tribes that are seemingly cultured and peaceful but turn into violent maniacs who kill people on sight if they are not suffering from the exact same strain of disease...

Since we only have 20 or so people on our ship and didn't want to waste time getting an army here we move in small infiltration teams and move across the station sabotaging life support systems (The station is needed intact so we'll leave the parts to the new owners so that they can fix it) and this is forcing the tribes to fight each other and pretty soon they have to swarm and attack the harbour.

Naturally there is also a very high chance that we fuck up something and get caught in crossfire and killed. It was easy in the beginning when we were taking them by surprise and sent a surgical strike team to the life support system control room, now that the remaining groups are all fighting each other already and the harbour control is probably expecting something things are going to get really tough.

Also, our marines and my character are getting PTSD from this. It's not everyday that you have to personally shoot hundreds of frothing maniacs who charge at you fearlessly while screaming incomprehensibly. (Personally I would have gone for a more diplomatic solution but I'm not in charge of the team.)


...In lighter news, once this campaign is over I am going to run an Only War military campaign. After trying to figure out how I would do the maps I decided to use Google maps and some aerial pictures from the World wars.

"Here is your target and the map you get form Munitorium." *Hands the players a map of Dresden in 1940s.*

"It is slightly out of date..." *The players enter a city not completely unlike Dresden after the bombings*

I will also use Hiroshima at some point.

Then again I am a horrible person.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: guizonde on October 25, 2015, 08:56:17 am
...In lighter news, once this campaign is over I am going to run an Only War military campaign. After trying to figure out how I would do the maps I decided to use Google maps and some aerial pictures from the World wars.

"Here is your target and the map you get form Munitorium." *Hands the players a map of Dresden in 1940s.*

"It is slightly out of date..." *The players enter a city not completely unlike Dresden after the bombings*

I will also use Hiroshima at some point.

Then again I am a horrible person.

you're talking to someone who played a cross between the joker and bugs bunny. after 3 small-yield atom bombs went off because of her (as in, she rigged them herself), she was considered too dangerous to live for the sake of the roleplaying universe and we unanimously put her down. she was in the span of 3 in-game months responsible for over 3.500 deaths. serial killer doesn't begin to cut it.

the worst of it all? she was chaotic neutral, and quite affable (if completely unhinged and amoral). that's right. she did it all for shits and giggles. as a side note, i'm not allowed to play sociopaths anymore.

also, completely envious, i'd love to try out some only war at one point.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on October 25, 2015, 09:32:14 am
Didn't you live in France? IF the game is over roll 20, Skype or something we might even be able to play together.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: guizonde on October 25, 2015, 09:38:22 am
Didn't you live in France? IF the game is over roll 20, Skype or something we might even be able to play together.

only war is d100, like dark heresy, rogue trader, and black crusade. best case scenario would be i show you my dice rolls. i'd love to, but keep in mind when i role-play i tend to do it for the better (or funnier) story. i'm not a power-gamer unless it generates copious amounts of lulz, like for instance old man henderson. after that, i'm very well versed in warhammer 40k, i used to play guard too.  wouldn't it be tough for you guys to speak a whole session in english rather than finnish?

... confession: i'd love to play a drop-storm-trooper armed with an autocannon. death from above meets almost enough dakka. with an odd habit, like painting planets from above when in transit.

also, for the lulz, pretty relevant. (http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Only_War)
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on October 25, 2015, 10:03:17 am
Speaking English is not an issue to us and Roll20 can do 1d100 I think. Anyway, rolling the dice is the smallest problem, if nothing else works we could just count on you telling your dice results and not cheating since that is just stupid.

Still, if the campaign is happening it won't be until January. We'll end this current campaign by the end of the year even if it means dropping rocks on people. (Well, actually the Imperial navy and the Aslan "space lions" would wage a war and glass the planets in the region.)
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: guizonde on October 25, 2015, 10:31:38 am
Speaking English is not an issue to us and Roll20 can do 1d100 I think. Anyway, rolling the dice is the smallest problem, if nothing else works we could just count on you telling your dice results and not cheating since that is just stupid.

Still, if the campaign is happening it won't be until January. We'll end this current campaign by the end of the year even if it means dropping rocks on people. (Well, actually the Imperial navy and the Aslan "space lions" would wage a war and glass the planets in the region.)

how will you guys determine the regiment? as a group or appointed by the gm? do you guys already have an idea for the feel and the vibe of the campaign? beyond grimdark, i mean.

also, is it cheating to willingly botch your rolls for comic/story value? after much debate with my band of lunatics, we determined that technically it is cheating, even though we accept the new result when the scenario and the incident favor logically failing. for example, the first time my sociopath detonated a cold fusion generator, i aced my willpower check. i thought it would be funnier for her to get a few more screws loose, so i said i'd botched it. i got caught by my teammate, and we talked about it. at the end of the discussion, it made sense for her to laugh maniacally and lose grip with reality a bit more. it made for a better story, after all, and we don't play to win, but to tell a story. a classic case of roleplaying vs roll-playing.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on October 25, 2015, 10:58:11 am
a) Lying about your rolls is cheating even if you do it for the sake of humour.

b) If you succeed in your willpower check it means that your character can act based on what you want instead of having some primal fear reaction or something else that the GM declares. You can still have him/her/it decide to go crazy or at least pretend to do so. Panicking is also possible, I've seen more than one character succeed in fear tests and have the player still decided that they will RUN AWAY! rather than stand and fight against the dragon/whatever.

c) The first session will be regiment & character creation with input from all the players. I am going to veto some of the options right from the start, for example it won't be an artillery or tank regiment. Some of the "cheesy" options will also be vetoed if the players attempt them. (Like the Grenadier regiment where everyone is wearing light-carapace armour and carrying plasmaguns with underslung grenade launchers...)

I have a bunch of random ideas and scenes I would like to try but until I see what kind of regiment and squad the players make I can't make proper plans. I may end up running campaigns from the OW books either starting with one or moving into them after the first mission.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: guizonde on October 25, 2015, 11:36:28 am
a) Lying about your rolls is cheating even if you do it for the sake of humour.
fair enough, we just used it so the rolls were in accordance to the story, but sure, i won't do it with you.
Quote
b) If you succeed in your willpower check it means that your character can act based on what you want instead of having some primal fear reaction or something else that the GM declares. You can still have him/her/it decide to go crazy or at least pretend to do so. Panicking is also possible, I've seen more than one character succeed in fear tests and have the player still decided that they will RUN AWAY! rather than stand and fight against the dragon/whatever.
it was mostly to attribute insanity points that we said the roll was failed. most of the time, my friends and i are experienced enough not to go crazy when we ace rolls, but we were known to have some pretty radical adverse reactions to horror, including but not limited to nightmares, vomiting, paranoia, and in one case not even realizing that one looked at horror (that was more to instill a sense of horror towards the character by the other players).
Quote
c) The first session will be regiment & character creation with input from all the players. I am going to veto some of the options right from the start, for example it won't be an artillery or tank regiment. Some of the "cheesy" options will also be vetoed if the players attempt them. (Like the Grenadier regiment where everyone is wearing light-carapace armour and carrying plasmaguns with underslung grenade launchers...)
so no playing storm-troopers, then? i'd all be for playing harakoni warhawks or elysian drop-troops, but just playing only war would be great for me. (just don't let me stray too close to a melta-gun).
Quote
I have a bunch of random ideas and scenes I would like to try but until I see what kind of regiment and squad the players make I can't make proper plans. I may end up running campaigns from the OW books either starting with one or moving into them after the first mission.
thanks for warning me. i haven't spoiled those campaigns for me yet, so i'll hold off on reading them
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on October 25, 2015, 11:50:30 am
Drop-trooper regiment is one that I have thought about. The problem with the Cheese-Grenadiers is that EVERYONE in the regiment gets a plasmagun. Seriously, the rules allow you to create a regiment where every single trooper and support person has a plasmagun. ...But the rules also say that you need GM approval for the regiment you create.

But I have decided that the support specializations will be kept rare, perhaps only one in the team. Last time we had more support specializations than regular troopers and I want to run this campaign my way. (Besides, those aren't bad and from fluff reasons it is easier to explain a squad with mainly guardsmen than one with Psykers, Enginseers and Ratlings all working alongside.)
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: guizonde on October 25, 2015, 12:01:34 pm
Drop-trooper regiment is one that I have thought about. The problem with the Cheese-Grenadiers is that EVERYONE in the regiment gets a plasmagun. Seriously, the rules allow you to create a regiment where every single trooper and support person has a plasmagun. ...But the rules also say that you need GM approval for the regiment you create.

But I have decided that the support specializations will be kept rare, perhaps only one in the team. Last time we had more support specializations than regular troopers and I want to run this campaign my way. (Besides, those aren't bad and from fluff reasons it is easier to explain a squad with mainly guardsmen than one with Psykers, Enginseers and Ratlings all working alongside.)

no way! that's ludicrous, besides, plasma is expensive, rare, and finnicky. most regiments have maybe five plasmas, tops. (according to fluff). i thought grenadiers only had access to carapace and more explosives than ordinary. you can't spell grenadier without "grenade".

regarding fluff reasons, it could be explained if it was a command squad, but not if it is a spec-ops squad (like veterans, storm-troopers, drop-troops, infiltrators...). why not use standard guard squad restrictions? one special weapons trooper, one sargeant, one commissar, maybe a psyker, one heavy weapon team, perhaps a guardsman doubling as a comms-officer, and regular grunts for a total of twelve men (counting the commissar and psyker)? for example's sake, that'd mean that if we play sarge, psyker, commissar, meltagunner and autocannon, there's 7 grunts left for comrades (read: rerolls).

also, i just had the mental image of a commissar blam!-ing a psyker during a parachute drop. heresy has no place in mid-air.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on October 25, 2015, 12:07:42 pm
Cheese-Grenadiers are made by using some points to buy extra stuff to the standard regimental gear. Specifically you upgrade the armour to light-carapace and buy them a plasmagun. They all get underslung grenade launchers from the Grenadier doctrine, I think.

You have enough points to do it but it is really cheesy. I think someone found that out when he was trying to make a Stormtrooper regiment and realized that the points cost for Plasmaguns is the same as Hellguns.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: ironbite on October 25, 2015, 05:47:27 pm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bpsi9n_PEes

And here's the first session of my gaming group's first ever chance at Shadowrun.

Ironbite-enjoy!
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Vypernight on October 26, 2015, 05:02:26 am
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bpsi9n_PEes

And here's the first session of my gaming group's first ever chance at Shadowrun.

Ironbite-enjoy!

"Zohar Rey just got interior design whiplash."  Heh heh.

Looks like a fun game.  What did you use to make your maps?
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: ironbite on October 26, 2015, 05:52:08 am
It's just maptools.  simple program tobuse with a lot of customization for macros

Ironbite- which comes in handy at times
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Vypernight on October 26, 2015, 03:38:42 pm
I'll have to check it out.  I've been trying to find map-making programs, but my experience with computer programs outside of Word is pretty basic.

I've been playing High Moon, which is an RPG in the weird west.  I think the game is mainly set up where you're a cowboy, Indian, priest, etc. hunting different monsters.  I, however, decided to turn things around in my games and had a blast doing it.

Here's one game where I robbed a bank using all monsters:

http://shonsgamecorner.blogspot.com/2015_09_01_archive.html (http://shonsgamecorner.blogspot.com/2015_09_01_archive.html)
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: ironbite on October 26, 2015, 05:03:35 pm
Maptools is fairly easy to use though can get frustrating at times.  And of course it comes with an RNG so you can use it to roll dice.

Ironbite-which is how we do our rolls.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: guizonde on October 26, 2015, 05:23:52 pm
noooooo ibbles! you missed a great pun! here, let me do it for you:

Quote
ironbite - *glasses pull* 8) because that's how we roll

[exit, stage left]
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: IanC on November 14, 2015, 06:56:33 pm
Here's a link about the GW bringing back Epic etc.
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-11/13/games-workshop-specialist-games-blood-bowl

(I've played a round of the Horus Heresy boxed game. It's fun. And the minis are gorgeous. I want the terminators for my Khorne Daemonkin!)
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Cloud3514 on November 15, 2015, 12:19:59 am
You know, I'm actually liking some of the directions GW's going. Maybe they'll start dropping prices sometimes!

Stop laughing.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: guizonde on November 18, 2015, 10:51:56 pm
our third campaign took off to a very film noir comedy show start.

what happens when two over the hill ex-military (one a doctor, the other a merc) meet an aging charlatan and a thirteen year old girl?

they get drunk because they live in a crapsack world.

namely, the ex-mils got their barkeep shot and beheaded, the charlatan got his sled of random wares stolen by the killers, and the girl's father got kidnapped (probably by the killers).

so now, we've got a pub all to ourselves ("crime scene: do not cross" is on the door), and when we're not hunting leads, we're drinking whisky and eating fried rat.

simon pegg meets humphrey bogart. i'm gonna like this campaign. also, licorice flavored cigars being smoked by a pot-bellied jamie hyneman lookalike combat medic. because fuck subtlety.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on November 29, 2015, 02:47:50 pm
Was at a rpg/boardgame-con this weekend. I organized a panel that talked about historical weapons like swords, spears and so on and how they were used. Also about what kind of weapons "adventurers" would be likely to use and what can you actually carry if you are traveling alone or in a small group.

Then we complained about magic and how mithril is used all wrong and what kind of magical weapons would actually make sense.

Also, played a miniature wargame against a buddy. Can't remember the name of the game but it was some ruleset from the 90s and we were playing a battle at Ardennes. Part of the battle, it had started before we got there and we replaced some players who left and we in turn had to leave before the battle was over.

If I had the time, money, space etc. I would certainly like to play some miniature wargame.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: guizonde on November 29, 2015, 03:11:35 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzDMCVdPwnE

seriously relevant to the topic at hand. when specc'ing out adventurers, i tend to favor unsubtle weapons that can double as something else. i won't choose a sword, but an axe or a machete. i'll prefer maces and clubs as well, since you can use them to incapacitate opponents. i'm leery of magic-users, having only had one cleric (it was a dare). finally, none of my characters ever went out without a sling wrapped on their belt. for having tried it in real life (and using golf balls as ammo), sending ammo in the right direction is easy. sending it accurately, however, is a feat not represented in rpg's (looking at you 3.5e).
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on November 29, 2015, 03:40:19 pm
A Sling is also good in that you can use it both for hunting and for combat. Obviously if your opponent is wearing an armour he will be protected quite well but against unsuspecting opponents even a hunting sling will do serious damage and even kill.

Meanwhile hunting bows and crossbows are not the type that will work in combat any better than the sling and they are much heavier/cumbersome.

Spear can also be used as a walking staff, hunting weapon and in combat.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Vypernight on November 29, 2015, 03:41:42 pm
While waiting to see Creed, I ran a Rocky vs. Apollo match with Friday Night Fights, a tabletop boxing game:

http://shonsgamecorner.blogspot.com/ (http://shonsgamecorner.blogspot.com/)
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: guizonde on November 29, 2015, 04:48:22 pm
A Sling is also good in that you can use it both for hunting and for combat. Obviously if your opponent is wearing an armour he will be protected quite well but against unsuspecting opponents even a hunting sling will do serious damage and even kill.

Meanwhile hunting bows and crossbows are not the type that will work in combat any better than the sling and they are much heavier/cumbersome.

Spear can also be used as a walking staff, hunting weapon and in combat.

i've never felt comfortable walking in the forested foothills of the pyrénées with a walking stick, i need something at least 6ft long. and because i'm scared of boars, i make sure that it's sturdy and very pointy at one end. i also try and fire the tip if it's possible (usually is).

you forgot one thing about bows. they're hell to walk with in forests and bushes, and there's always that one bush to tip over your quiver. ugh. it's so annoying that my friends and i string our bows at the last minute once we're in the field that has become our shooting ground. only problem is the 200 odd metres of light forest heavy bush separating the field from everything else.

that ranger archetype of using a crazy long bow in the treetops? as fictionnal as vancian magic.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Cloud3514 on November 30, 2015, 12:37:39 am
If I had the time, money, space etc. I would certainly like to play some miniature wargame.

Do you like Star Wars? If so, try out X-Wing. Relatively low cost and a deceptively simple rule set. The starter kit runs for $40 and comes with two TIE Fighters and an X-Wing and enough stuff to run the game at around 40 points when you want to move away from the learning rules. Standard play is 100 points, which can be as few as two expensive ships and still be competitive.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on November 30, 2015, 03:40:38 am
But if I'm playing Star wars I can't shout random German words when my Volksturm troops get ripped apart by .50BMG tracer rounds or when my sniper shoots the silly "Amerikaner" flametrooper and his flamethrower explodes taking out 2/3 of his squad.

...Just like it happened on Saturday.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Cloud3514 on November 30, 2015, 04:22:48 pm
No, but you can fly a swarm of 8 TIE Fighters against Rebel terrorist scum that are hell bent on dismantling the galaxy's legitimate government.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on December 02, 2015, 01:15:50 pm
My Only War campaign idea is currently on hold because I got tricked into being the GM in a game of Mutant year zero.

Basically a post apocalyptic RPG where the players are mutants from a small dying community and try to rebuild their small haven, learn about their past and perhaps even cure their sterility and create a future for their kind... But mainly they are just trying to survive and that's not easy either.

Kinda like mixing themes from Metro 2033, Fallout and Dwarf fortress.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: guizonde on December 20, 2015, 10:09:47 pm
four more sessions of my current campaign. turns out that (according to the dice-rolls), my pot-bellied medic was a sniper with first-aid knowledge, seeing how he keeps acing headshots and crapping out on medic rolls. the thirteen year-old girl is slowly getting the hang of bar-crawling for clues and causing mayhem, the charlatan got his testicles hit so hard they scrunched into his torso, and the over-the-hill merc broke his arm, so out of expediency got it lopped off and swapped out for an augmetic job. we also managed to find a few clues, and the charlatan's dogs. and by a few clues, i mean, sufficiently to get blacklisted from the technology-cult that hired us and from the militia. oh, and then, we got an assassin thrown at us, that managed to survive all seven of us (one dmpc, 2 dogs, and the team) wailing on it like it owed us money (probably does), before sprinting away like.... well, like it owed us money, really.

so now, we're in a theocratic city under lockdown due to a terrorist threat (most likely our mainquest), and the only clue we've got is that we're on the right track and we know too much. unfortunately, we don't know what we know.

as players, we're in the dark, and we love it. we spend a good bit of time character-building, the team is knitting up well, and we actually managed to get some very cinematographic scenes in. like the merc, business-like clotheslining a fleeing pickpocket without looking, the medic standing on a street corner, cigar smoke wafting over him, shaking his head at the horrifically bloodthirsty sermon the town mayor is giving, the girl playing a kazoo and generating a brawl in a betting office to steal the gains of the person at the till, the charlatan using gunpowder and dyes to simulate demonic possession...

that's what i mean by cinematographic. all it takes is one sentence for you to imagine the scene. even though you were never there. we live for those moments as a roleplaying team. and the gm is very generous when it comes to giving opportunities for that. helps that he's a semi-professionnal cinematographer. but man oh man, my gm is so self-conscious, always worrying about doing a good job. doesn't help that since all the older characters are jaded and somewhat genre-savvy, their catchphrase is "what a crapsack day". but really, he is.

it's become less "simon pegg meets humphrey bogart", and more "leaning on the fourth wall to not go crazy from the horror we endure". cthulu meets oots, with a big helping of shadowrun and 40k.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on December 24, 2015, 10:34:07 am
The first session of my Post apocalyptic RPG went decently well.

Two people cancelled, one because he forgot and started to angst and complain that he won't join because he is so bad at scheduling things that we would be better off with another player. ...And the other got Migraine which is understandable excuse for missing a session.

Now their merry band of mutants has an angsty loner Stalker with lizard features, gang boss who can control other humanoids with his mind like puppets, "The Doge Man" who acts as the team medic and as the second in command in the previous character's gang and a Chronicler/entertainer called "Ozzi" with a dream of finding the legendary "leather mouse" and biting it's head off for fame an glory (As I was explaining all the things that he can do with his mutations and mentioned that he has a powerful bite attack this Ozzy Osbourne idea was born.)

...And they live in a mall with approx 200 other mutants but their food and clean water are running out so the team is on a recon mission to find a source of pure water. ...And the previous team that had a "perfectly reliable lead" of such a location but have not returned.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Cloud3514 on January 12, 2016, 11:44:50 pm
I picked up the new Tau starter box because I hadn't picked up any of the new Battlesuits or Fire Warriors. Games Workshop actually included the rules for the units (though not the drones) in the instructions. That is some of the most uncharacteristic kindness I've ever seen from Games Workshop.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Svata on January 13, 2016, 12:06:02 am
So, I just got a bunch of warhammer 40k stuff that a guy left here. not sure what all it is. If I post pics is there anyone who can tell me? I genuinely wanna get into the game.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Cloud3514 on January 13, 2016, 01:06:35 am
Post away. I'll identify to the best of my ability. I should at least be able to tell you what faction it is.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Svata on January 13, 2016, 01:27:04 am
Believe they are Space Wolves. Sorry of the pictures are a bit shit.  Also, note, I was not the one who painted the ones that did get painted.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Svata on January 13, 2016, 01:27:58 am
more, and a group shot. Okay, maybe not a bunch, but still, you know what I meant.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Cloud3514 on January 13, 2016, 01:43:31 am
Definitely Space Marines. The pictures are too blurry for me to tell if they're a specific type of Marines (though I can probably safely assume they're not Space Wolves or Chaos, they don't seem to have furs or spikes on them, respectively). The Land Raider (the big tank at the top of the group shot) and the Dreadnought (the giant robot) are pretty nice finds, though, seeing as they're a couple of the most expensive models in the Space Marines range (seriously, Land Raiders are $74), which is the entire reason my Space Wolves don't have a Land Raider themselves and their Dreadnought was cannibalized from the 5th Edition starter kit (which it appears you may have the Marines from that kit as the guy in the middle of the fourth pic looks like he might be the Assault on Black Reach captain).
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Svata on January 13, 2016, 01:52:08 am
Well, these three are Wolves, most certainly.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Cloud3514 on January 13, 2016, 02:01:23 am
Yeah, I recognize those bits. Looks like whoever had them before was trying to build a Wolves army, but based it on the Black Reach kit, hence the Terminators, Captain and Dreadnought that don't appear to have Wolf trappings.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Svata on January 13, 2016, 02:02:18 am
Probably.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: IanC on January 13, 2016, 11:44:16 am
I picked up the new Tau starter box because I hadn't picked up any of the new Battlesuits or Fire Warriors. Games Workshop actually included the rules for the units (though not the drones) in the instructions. That is some of the most uncharacteristic kindness I've ever seen from Games Workshop.

Its not the full rules though.

The pricing on those starter sets are insane. Tau one your essentially paying a fiver for the Ethereal and getting the Fire Warriors free on top of the normal cost for the Battlesuits.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Cloud3514 on January 13, 2016, 04:25:58 pm
Its useful for me since i haven't picked up the 7th edition Tau vodex and its nice to see the point changes for Fire Warriors. And yeah, the way i saw ut was getting $10 Fire Warriors and a free Ethereal (for the record, I've never had an Ethereal before now). It's nice to see Games Workshop put some real value into a kit for once... well by their standards anyway.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on January 13, 2016, 04:31:12 pm
Getting hard to find time for the campaigns I'm in. Lots of overlap on the few available days. The fact that one guy is in all the same campaigns as I am does not help .
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Svata on January 13, 2016, 05:12:28 pm
Haven't even seen any 40k played in about a year, now. Jusr curious, is waveserpent spam still incredibly op?
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Cloud3514 on January 13, 2016, 06:40:45 pm
Haven't even seen any 40k played in about a year, now. Jusr curious, is waveserpent spam still incredibly op?

Its's not Wave Serpents anymore. Now it's Wraithhost because someone at Games Workshop decided that giving Wraithguard, Wraithlords and Wraithknights ranged D weapons (and making the Wraithknight a Gargantuan Creature) and the ability to make a fully playable army out of them was a good idea. Eldar are actually more broken now than they've ever been. I actually almost miss the days when Grey Knights Paladin spam and Necron Quantum Shielding was the worst the game got.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: guizonde on January 13, 2016, 07:35:08 pm
despite wearing an imperial aquila and being guard to the bone, i've always loved iiyanden and their wraithguard. so fluffily tragic. this oddly makes me happy that they finally get op. but then again, i used to have enough dakka to decimate an ork army on the first turn. by turn three they usually had over 60% casualties. so prissy sex-starved elves isn't a big problem.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Cloud3514 on January 13, 2016, 07:59:43 pm
I wouldn't hate Wraithhost being so popular if it weren't for it being as broken as it is. I've said it before and I will keep saying it, but super heavies and D weapons have no place outside of Escalation and Apocalypse. It's ridiculous that you can make an entire army armed with nothing but D weapons.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Cloud3514 on January 21, 2016, 01:09:22 am
So here's something that's completely pissed me off with 40k lately: The complete and total obsoleting of Wolf Scouts.

Wolf Scouts are one of my favorite Space Wolf units. Veteran Grey Hunters that find themselves ill-suited for the usual roles Grey Hunters play, instead being used for recon, sniping and other more subtle roles. Here's the rules for them:

Elites, 70 points.
5x Scouts with Bolt Pistol and Bolter. Up to 5 additional scouts for 14 points each and up to one Wolf Guard Pack Leader for 24 points.
Scouts: Infantry WS4 BS4 S4 T4 W1 I4 A1 Ld8 Save 4+
Pack Leader: Infantry (Character) WS4 BS4 S4 T4 W1 I4 A2 Ld9 Save 3+
Special Rules: Acute Senses, And They Shall Know No Fear, Counter-Attack, Infiltrate, Move Through Cover, Scout

Some of the options are a Missile Launcher for 15 points, sniper rifles for 1 point each, Camo Cloaks and almost all of the other usual Marine Scout options.

Up until now, Wolf Scouts were awesome. They cost the same as Grey Hunters, but the roles they play differ. They're not as great as they were in the 5th Edition codex as they lost their "Behind Enemy Lines" special rule that gave them a 2/3rd chance of the controlling player choosing the table edge they enter battle on, including the enemy's deployment edge. In 5th, it was legal to assault on the same turn a unit entered the game through outflank, so bringing Wolf Scouts meant that the opposing player had to deal with most likely having to deal with some Wolves trying to take down, or at least tie up, their ranged support.

Upon the release of 6th Edition, Games Workshop seems to have made it their mission to nerf Wolf Scouts into the ground. First, assaulting on the turn a unit entered from Reserves was no longer allowed. This meant that the above strategy was rendered completely useless. Then, out of fucking no where, rubbing some salt into the wound here, they ruled that a Wolf Scout Pack loses Behind Enemy Lines if they're accompanied by a Wolf Guard (who, in fairness, is wearing Power Armor or Terminator Armor), but by then, most people had already switched to using Wolf Scouts as snipers, so it was just an annoyance.

The 7th Edition Space Wolves codex is released and... it was not a great codex. If the climate of the game wasn't so poorly balanced right now, it would only be slightly underpowered. As is? Probably one of the worst books and filled with changes that took Wolves from possibly THE fluffiest codex to only slightly different than standard Marines besides their unique units.

Wolf Scout snipers were still a fantastic choice, despite the less than impressive codex. Getting a pack of snipers with a missile launcher for 89 points was actually pretty nice, purely because of their increased BS compared to standard Scouts. They've been a standard in my lists since 6th Edition kept me from taking advantage of Behind Enemy Lines.

But then the 7th Edition Space Marines and Dark Angels codexes were released. Here are the rules for 7th Edition Space Marine Scouts

Troops, 55 points.
4x Scouts with Bolters and Bolt Pistols, 1x Scout Sergeant with Bolter and Bolt Pistol. Up to five additional Scouts for 11 points each.
Scout: Infantry WS4 BS4 S4 T4 W1 I4 A1 Ld8 Save 4+
Scout Sergeant: Infantry (Character) WS4 BS4 S4 T4 W1 I4 A1 Ld8 Save 4+
Special Rules: And They Shall Know No Fear, Chapter Tactics, Combat Squads, Infiltrate, Move Through Cover, Scout
Options are extremely similar to Wolf Scouts.

So, let me get this straight, I am now paying 3 extra points per Marine for Acute Senses and Counter-Attack instead of Chapter Tactics and Combat Squads? And I still have to use up one of my Elites slots, while standard Marines and Dark Angels only have to use Troops slots?

This is fucking bullshit. You can cite fluff all you want to justify this, but it doesn't change that, despite being for the same edition of the game, Space Marines and Dark Angels get OBJECTIVELY better Scouts. I have to pay 3 extra points per model for inferior scouts. I am literally paying 3 extra points and an Elites slot to give up Chapter Tactics and Combat Squads in favor of Counter-Attack, which is only useful on melee-focused units and not even CLOSE to be as versatile as Chapter Tactics and Combat Squads. The ONLY advantage I have is being able to bring a Squad Leader wearing Power Armor for more points than it's worth.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on January 22, 2016, 03:54:53 pm
Not the first time something like this happens. GW changes the rules one army at a time and the ones with the older rule books often suffer from it.

...And occasionally they just make one army way too strong or weak even if it is the latest book.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Cloud3514 on January 22, 2016, 04:35:26 pm
It doesn't stop it from being extremely frustrating. Wolf Scouts were always one of the most thematic units in the Space Wolves list. Now? Even if they weren't rendered completely obsolete, now there's nothing separating them from standard Marine scouts. Wolf Scouts are supposed to be experienced veterans, but now Games Workshop is implying that not only are Codex compliant chapters have rookies that are just as skilled as Space Wolf veterans, but Space Wolf rookies, Blood Claws (Sky Claws and Swift Claws, as well by extension) are particularly unskilled.

So, yeah, I get that this is nothing new or even out of the ordinary, but it's still irritating.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on January 27, 2016, 05:27:05 am
New players are joining in the Traveller privateer campaign I'm in. Since our group had just captured a slave ship and was freeing the slaves from cryo-storage ("freedom" in this case meant that they would either be stranded on a strange planet with no funds for getting off it and making their way back home OR they could receive citizenship and a modest amount of land on which to live. We are trying to repopulate the planet.) and one of the other players insisted that any new characters can be whatever the hell the player wants but they will start the game by waking up from cryo.

Anyway, as the new character's history was being invented (he was basically, space lion Beast/Frasier... No really, a huge alien that looks a bit like a lion and has a degree in psychiatry as well as computer science. Traveller character creation is amazing.) and we decided that he had been captured by pirates I reminded others that my character was a pirate 14 years ago and could have been on the crew that kidnapped him...

This immediately lead to me roleplaying the scene and reminded everyone that "The BEST time to make fun of an Aslan is when you are about to put them in cold storage. They're being shipped to a lifetime of slavery and since aren't likely to ever see them again there is no way this would later bite you in the ass!"

*FOURTEEN YEARS LATER*

''I REMEMBER YOU!" "...Oh ohhh."

On Saturday we shall see if I need to make a new character to replace a dead one... :P

IN OTHER GAMING NEWS:
I've been nervous about the Mutant campaign I'm running but the latest session went rather well despite low player attendance. Among other things the mutants had a fight with a horribly mutated and human sized bat that lived in an abandoned mansion. One of the players mentioned that "the ancient myths spoke of some kind of bat creature that lived in a mansion and terrorized the city. ...They said it always came back 'same BAT-time, same BAT-channel' ...Whatever the hell that means."
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Svata on January 27, 2016, 05:32:29 am
Well, I finally found another D&D game. Maybe. I'm trying to get into a pbp on Myth-Weavers. If I make it, great! If not, oh well, I enjoy character creation just on its own anyway. But we're starting at level 2 in 3.5e, and I'm used to starting at 5, minimum. So this'll be fun.


Planning on (eventually) making him the most bufftacular bard to ever improve a party. The 20-level plan is Bard 8/Virtuoso 1/War Weaver 1/Sublime Chord 1/ War Weaver +4 (finishing the class, levelling the Sublime Chord's casting progression)/Virtuoso +4 (Taking the class to 5, also progressing Chord casting)/Bard +1
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Random Gal on January 27, 2016, 03:43:58 pm
I've started a new Pathfinder campaign. Currently, we have five characters starting at fifth level. I'm playing an elven hunter (see here for details (https://docs.google.com/document/d/18NXwgYGmLE_637W40DUbkDuV6cNhNEM9iLSKNCIeCfM/edit?usp=sharing)), and the other characters are a halfling rogue, human wizard, hobgoblin barbarian, and human warpriest.

We're apparently a team assigned to investigate what's on the other side of a system of mysterious portals recently discovered by the reigning empire in the campaign setting, a project from which only a handful of people have returned alive.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: SCarpelan on January 27, 2016, 04:05:18 pm
We'll be starting a Star Wars: Edge of the Empire -campaign on Saturday. It will be interesting to see how the group dynamics develop with the different characters this time specially since we have a newbie player joining the group.

My character is a sentient OOM-model combat droid who went AWOL during the Clone Wars and has lived as an outlaw since then. His passion/obsession is efficiency and he sees it also important to encourage the same approach in others. He is trying to figure out what the function and the properly efficient use of different biological intelligences actually is and at the same time he is building and reshaping his world view according to his observations. Unfortunately, being a combat droid he has no people skills at all so things might get interesting with the other characters.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Svata on January 27, 2016, 09:29:07 pm
So I find a guy to play some MTG with. He implies we're just playing casual, so I bust out my silly Myr deck. (seriously, one shatterstorm someone sideboards in fucks the deck completely.) This cocksucker busts out goddamned 8-rack.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on February 17, 2016, 02:16:14 pm
Does anyone know of a good program that would allow you to make edits onto a map online? On layers so that you can remove certain marks without wiping the entire map preferably.

We often use maps in a certain RPG and being able to mark our movement and such on the map would be really nice and although you can use a pencil and then erase the marks when you play live this is much harder for online games and editing a map and saving every individual version and then uploading them etc. etc. would get annoying soon.

I am aware that Roll 20 allows at least some of these things but we aren't using it for this particular game so if the program was independent from Roll20 and the likes it would be really bueno.

Also the ability to measure distances on the map would be cool and if there's a program that let's you put links onto an image that would be amazing... (Like the GM could write an article about a town or other important locations and when moving on the map we could just click that link to find the relevant article and see what notes we have about it.)
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: ironbite on February 18, 2016, 10:43:32 am
It ain't perfect but Maptools is what my group uses and it's worked fine for us.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on February 19, 2016, 02:30:11 am
Nice program but the scale is too small. We can handle movement of individual characters inside a building or something, what we need is a way to play with regional maps and the way to measure distances on said map to count travel time. (It's enough if the program can measure cm/inches or something on the map, we can convert that to the real scale.)
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: SCarpelan on February 27, 2016, 10:25:26 pm
Fuck Bang! Tonight I played it for the third time and I can't help but think it probably is the most overrated game I have played. A chaotic, straightforward, light game with a strong take that -element is precisely the kind of game I usually like to play with my friends while downing a few beers and taking the piss out of each other. The thing is, according to my experiences the game's mechanics are utterly broken and maybe beyond repair. Let's review why.

My first game: I was a deputy so on my first turn I wielded the Vulcan, attached a scope and fired away at the player that was tactically in the most dangerous position for the Sheriff. He had a hand full of Miss! cards so my rapid fire attack did no damage. This turn was the only turn I have ever played where I was able to something this constructive - I actually caused an opposing player to use all of his Miss! cards. Unsurprisingly, after this show I was targeted by several other players who thought I was too dangerous to leave alive. On my next turn I had 1 HP left, drew only useless cards and the next player finished me. The game lasted for maybe 30-40 minutes after I was eliminated.

The next game my character had the same ability that Vulcan gives: I could use as many Bang! cards as I wanted. Since I was sitting next to the Sheriff he deemed me too dangerous for himself so he stole half of my cards and then locked me to jail causing me to lose my first turn. When I finally got to play a turn I again had only 1 HP left and no useful cards and was killed immediately afterwards. Again, I sat out while the game went on for half an hour.

Tonight, I asked to play the game again since I wanted to see if it could actually be fun and third time the charm etc. This time I was an outlaw but I was again jailed for my first turn. On my second turn I had only one wound but due to a bad draw (again) the only thing I could do was to heal myself back to full health. The game ended before my third turn when the other outlaws killed the sheriff since they had drawn ridiculously well.

So, I have played the game three times and the total time is around 80-90 minutes. During this time I have had one fucking turn where I have had a chance to actually influence the game. My friends tell me this game is a blast and the first two games where I mostly spectated it did look like it was really fun when it got rolling.

Yes, I'm aware I've had really bad luck. The problem with the mechanics isn't that luck plays a big role - that's a part of the fun in this kind of games. The problem is that bad luck prevents you from actually playing the game. That - is - not - fun. Despite that I see more add-ons and hype for Bang! than its much better - but still flawed - successor Samurai Sword.

/rant
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Svata on March 27, 2016, 01:41:32 pm
So, just started a new campaign as a DM. The party thinks the villain is a hero for some reason...
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on March 27, 2016, 02:09:57 pm


I am currently playing a "Pirates of Drinax" campaign with the first edition Mongoose Traveller rules (I've talked about it in this thread occasionally) and we kinda maybe took the campaign slightly off the rails. One of the players decided early on that trying to rebuild Drinax with money from piracy or trying to make the other planets willingly ally with Drinax is simply not going to work. Instead we invested most of our filthy lucre into "Drinax Trading Company" which would be part of three different projects to MAKE DRINAX GREAT AGAIN!

Operation 1: Privateering. This would continue as usual and of course the pittance of money gained from it would be nice but the real benefit would be that it would give us a battle-trained fleet to serve as the core of the new Drinaxian fleet and the pirates could do some undercover work to gain allies to Drinax as well.

Operation 2: DTC. The company would aggressively expand to gain control of local markets and tie the neighbouring planets to Drinax financially. Let the planets have their independence for now as long as they are paying money to Drinax one way or another.

Operation 3: The Mob. A criminal organization spanning several planets would be formed to not only steal, smuggle and blackmail money for Drinax but to also influence the local governments from the shadows.


We were mainly playing as the pirates but every now and then there would be a board meeting and we would find out how much money DTC had earned for Drinax (and the characters who were board members.) Well... The second year of the company made 11 Billion credits for each of the four characters who were board members ...that's right: 11 BILLION CREDITS per person. I am even not going to mention how much king Oleb and the rest of the investors made in total. This is the point where the GM thanks everyone for completely breaking the campaign and asks if we could retire DTC and instead we would concentrate on the other aspects of the campaign. We agreed. (For comparison, the privateers have made perhaps a billion or a bit more during the same year by stealing ships.)

...King Oleb now has a nice fleet to defend Drinax star system, our characters built a massive ship building facility on the orbit of Tech world (which is one of our closest allies) and there is a new city being built on Asim where we are bringing in colonists. That last part is mainly because Drinax basically ran out of potential recruits and we need to hire crewmen for our ships and workers for our projects from somewhere.

So, how about you guys and gals? How badly have you broken Traveller campaigns in the past?
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: SCarpelan on April 02, 2016, 03:54:53 pm
So, we had our third session in the Star Wars -game I mentioned earlier. The GM uses a published adventure so I'll use the spoiler tags.

(click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: ironbite on April 28, 2016, 12:37:10 am
God I love Shadowrun.  Tonight I had my semi-weekly game session of Shadowrun and one of the other players had the perfect combat round.  Basically what happened is he rolled more then half of his dice pool as a success giving him a critical success.  The other guy rolled 1 of his dice as a success causing a critical glitch.  Now this means the player gets to describe where his shot landed.

Right in the balls with a stick and shock round.

Ironbite-and we got a job running for the Triads so all in all a win win.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on April 28, 2016, 12:41:46 am
Shadowrun is a interesting game and I certainly want to play it but so far I haven't had the chance.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Tolpuddle Martyr on April 28, 2016, 12:50:54 am
Cyberpunk with orcs, yeah it's a lot of fun. Anyone who has read their supplements knows that they delve right into politics and social issues in really interesting ways-all while being more swashbuckling than a moshpit filled with pirates and ninjas.

It's almost as if the pouting puppies was formed on the basis of a false dichotomy.

And did the guy who off handedly quipped that he couldn't be bothered following the drama that closely just start quizzing Askold if he'd read all the works in question?
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Svata on April 28, 2016, 01:09:21 am
Wrong thread Tol
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Tolpuddle Martyr on April 28, 2016, 01:51:29 am
Wrong thread Tol
Apologies to all and sundry. Shadowrun is still awesome.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Svata on April 28, 2016, 03:19:49 am
Oh, no doubt. Shadowrun is great.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Tolpuddle Martyr on April 28, 2016, 05:08:32 am
Question though Svata, is Shadowrun the future of Earthdawn? Because there's sort of a chat thread between anonymous posters in the Aztlan sourcebook which strongly suggests it but I'm not sure if it was ever canon.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: ironbite on April 28, 2016, 10:28:46 am
From what I've read of the various lores and such, yes.  It's supposed to be.  Of course I love it because it's a different system then say Pathfinder.  A lot of fun and a whole lot more character driven then say Pathfinder or DnD.  Players can drop in and drop out with very little loss of story or penalty.  Right now I'm running a rigger who's got a veritable army of surveillance and combat drones.  Though I'm thinking of running a bullet sponge troll from Russia.

Ironbite-cause...reasons.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on May 31, 2016, 10:38:28 am
Reading the Shadowrun 5th ed rules and pondering what type of characters I would like to play. So far I've come to like most of the magic/qi/resonance using characters. Riggers and regular deckers not so much and I'm undecided on the street samurai archetype. What I am saying is that I like the non-cybered characters. Although I am not sure if aspect magicians are any good even though in the fluff they are the most common kind of awakened person.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: ironbite on May 31, 2016, 04:52:52 pm
I do 4e and play a rigger.  Me and my drones have put up such a body count I'm technically considered a mass murderer.

Ironbite-and yet I will never run with Humanis Policlub.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on June 01, 2016, 01:24:32 am
Isn't killing people a bad thing for Shadowrunners? Gets you attention and the (hypocritical) shadow-community loathes killing and specifically dislikes people who take jobs to kill people. ...Although they usually are willing to kill for personal matters and nobody minds self-defense even if you are defending yourself from the guards at the mission site. ...But taking a job to specifically go in and kill a person? That's bad karma.


Seriously though, I think the kinds of characters I play rarely are bloodthirsty so going in all sneaky-beaky (or through the power of fast-talk and forgery) and getting out without shots fired would be the optimal result. Even non-lethal force is likely to be used if viable.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: ironbite on June 01, 2016, 09:47:55 am
We've never done wetwork jobs if that's what you're asking.  Mostly B&Es, kidnappings, and surveillance jobs.  And then there was one recovery job that kinda went tits up and caused 30 Yakuza mooks to show up and try and ruin our day.  There's 30 bodies we salvaged after that with the only real casualties were my drones.

Ironbite-which I just bought new ones with the money we got from the job.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on June 01, 2016, 09:58:18 am
That reminds me. There was talk on the net about how big the rewards should be for runs and it was pointed out that low rewards will hurt the non-awakened characters more. If the mage survives a mission, gets 5k nuyen and a huge pile of karma they can improve their character and even if they got hurt medical bills might not bankrupt them. If the rigger lost 50k worth drones and got the same 5k nuyen in return they have been set back a lot even if their rigger skills rise with the karma.

Meanwhile, if the characters make "too much" money that may cause different problems but unless the characters decide to retire it won't completely cripple any of them.

Also, a while ago I found a series called Roll4it with a Youtuber I subscribe to being a GM for a Shadowrun game. It was partially the reason why I reactivated this thread. They have had a few great shenanigans filled runs in the series so far and it is actually quite entertaining to watch them play. (OR to have the video running on my phone and listening to it on earplugs while I work.)
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: ironbite on June 01, 2016, 11:24:09 am
MY DM actually records most of our sessions if you wanna see how we run Shadowrun.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrogm6G-OckdAB_6QY0QEHKnnOLiR0Mqb

Ironbite-not everything as some files got corrupted but it's a pretty good show of how we do Shadowrun.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on June 02, 2016, 04:31:44 pm
BRAIN, why you do this thing?!

...So I was reminded that a few months ago I had been thinking about an RPG campaign where the players are in a SWAT-team. The game would be action oriented, possibly using cliches from action movies more than realism and tacticool weapon tinkering and combat tactics would play a big part of the game. Now I got to thinking how to run that in Shadowrun. Basically, Lone Star or Knight Errant HRT unit going about and fighting crime.

Naturally this would be a good excuse to let the players face the kind of bullshit that players usually do in Shadowrun campaigns... "Yeah, your mission is to protect the VIP as some runners are trying to kidnap him. Now they are throwing drones loaded with explosives at you as a distraction. I know that the VIP is in danger of dying from this, particularly now that the runners hacked a plane and will crash it into the building, but they seem to be having too much fun to worry about the minor details."

Then I naturally reasoned that the average Shadowrun player might want to work in the shadows and living under the rules of a corp and obeying the laws (well, at least most of the time. ...Or at least you only break the laws when your boss tells you to.) would get boring so if/when they get fired they could either do a "you have 48hrs to clear your name and get your job back" quest or simply turn the game into a regular Shadowrun campaign.

...In the first session I would explain to them what life as a wageslave is and how the spam-filter on their comms unit lets all the spam from Ares and affiliates through since they are Ares employees. And when one of them jokes about penis-extension ads in their mail I would note that the ad software is so good at studying what the potential customer does that they only get penis-extension ads if they have been looking into such things on purpose. ...And they would likely be heavily personalized stuff like "We know that you've been looking at PRODUCT X from EVO but did you know that Ares affiliate biotech company also has a similar product with much better warranty and if you buy it through us you will also get bonus store credits which you may use for further purchases from Ares corporation!"

...These are the kinds of things I think about while doing a brain-free job.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on June 07, 2016, 11:54:47 am
Bad news is that one of the games I'm in came to an end as the GM got bored. The good news is that I managed to get into a Shadowrun game instead.

The team needs another magician because the one they already had is not reliable due to the player missing sessions and the GM is afraid that even a single spirit will cause a TPK so my presence is to help prevent situations where the team has no magical support.

...I will also try to put some good tactics in use as the team is pretty much flailing about in combat.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: ironbite on June 07, 2016, 03:50:57 pm
....the GM is afraid of a TPK from a single source?  Hey I got an idea...don't use spirits against the team if the mage isn't around?

Ironbite-it's what I'd do.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on June 08, 2016, 12:32:12 am
But when he has designed a mission thinking that the mage is playing but gets a cancelation 5 minutes before the game is supposed to start it means he has to redesign the mission.

Also, not having any spirits or magical defenses in corp secret base is not how the game works. You'd need a different mission as well to justify the complete lack of mages on enemy side.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on June 08, 2016, 03:46:58 pm
This keeps getting better. GM had to think of a reason why my character, and the two others that missed the first session of this run, are joining the others mid-mission.

The fixers have been talking with the Johnson behind the scenes: "You sent WHO to do WHAT?! Without backup?! This mission is going to be a disaster and we will lose valuable assets unless we reinforce them immediately!"

Picture a dark night, at an undisclosed location near Seatlle three runners are planning to enter a secret corp facility. Their "sneaky beaky" approach has failed as the Decker was unable to get them access and the alarms are about to go off at any second. The team has quickly decided that plan B is: "Go in guns blazing and shoot anything that moves." Just as they are about to kick in the door a helicopter flies over the group. Three figures jump out of the copter and suddenly slow mid fall (my character burns a point of Edge to succeed in casting Levitate on three people at the same time) and all three land in front of the runners (making a dramatic "hero landing" by landing on both feet and punching the ground.) The new trio are the team face/leader, the original magician of the group and my support-shaman.

Now all I need is an appropriate CSI-Miami one-liner. So far all I've got is "Looks like this blacksite... Is about to go dark."

EDIT: For clarification, the characters can't jump out of the helicopter with parachutes or rappel down on ropes because they lack those skills and would probably break a leg or die from the fall. And they can't simply arrive in a car because it would not be dramatic enough.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Zygarde on June 12, 2016, 12:47:04 pm
So I've been interested in getting back into wargaming miniatures again. I've been looking around you guys have any suggestions? (don't say 40k cause I still have my set and I refuse to take them out again and repaint them.)
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: IanC on June 12, 2016, 01:40:23 pm
Age of Sigmar. What? Its fun.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on June 12, 2016, 02:04:38 pm
Warmachine?

As for the Shadowrun campaign... GM decided not to do the air-drop entrance and the 2 new characters + 2 originals joining the 3 already in the mission simply arrived in a car.

Things of note:
-The other new character was a sniper called Smith with 7 (yes, seven) points in Edge. He is now known as "Lucky" Smith.
-The rest of the team acted with understandable surprise and skepticism when some weird Sioux-shaman shows up and claims that he is now taking command of the team. Things went about well as expected. I messed up tactics rolls and the characters went about doing their things regardless of my orders.
-The Dwarf Street samurai in the team is a killing machine (technically he is more machine than flesh. 0.2 points of essence left I think.) and he uses throwing stars for long range combat instead of firearms because he does more damage that way.
-All but one member of the team (the exception being Lucky Smith of course) walk into a trap. There's a door at the end of a hallway and thanks to a detection spell from the other magician in the team we know that there are 4 enemies waiting behind it. As we make plans for how to get past this obvious choke point we finally make a hole into the door so that my shaman could cast stunball through it. Unfortunately all he can see through the hole is the Claymore-mine pointed at the door. ...And at this point another much sturdier door closes at the other end of the hallway.
-We defeat this trap by having the other mage conjure up a shield between us and the mine and then having my shaman levitate the mine turning it at the enemies and detonating it.
-At the end of the mission we left behind 10 dead guards and a lot of blood from my shaman (Walked into another ambush by a mage and three guys with assault rifles. He was lucky to be still alive. But the dwarf who was with him at the time simply danced around the bullets and cut up the enemies one by one. That's what you get when a psycho full of chrome inhales powerful combat drugs and even has a pain editor which makes him immune to the effects of stun damage.) though we did manage to destroy the evidence with help from some explosives. We took with us the objective and some additional paydata.

I am looking forwards to the next game.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Cloud3514 on June 12, 2016, 03:03:09 pm
X-Wing. Relatively low cost (a viable competitive list can be build for less than $100), pre-painted miniatures that still manage to be detailed and look good and a simple and stream lined rule set that makes games rarely last longer than 45 minutes.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Zygarde on June 12, 2016, 03:11:06 pm
Played X-Wing already, not my cup of tea.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on June 19, 2016, 04:19:16 am
Our last session was kinda short and we spent most of it planning the next run. Things are about to get interesting. The team wasn't even hired to do the job, one of the team's Face's contacts called him up to return a favour. You see, previously the Face had literally blown up the Contact's house and said Contact being a Shadowrunner himself decided that in return he demands Face to help him in a difficult mission. His team had been hired to steal a certain suitcase from a courier van and they have narrowed down the location of said suitcase to be in one of two vans but can't hijack them both at the same time meaning that we have to rob the other van. Also the security company that the van belongs to has a helicopter on patrol it is likely that one of the two team's will end up facing the copter...

Now the only reward that we are likely to get is from whatever else we steal from the van aside from the objective (assuming that our van even contains the suitcase) and not taking the job will mean a lot of trouble for the Face and a minor loss of reputation for the rest of the team. (For the record, when the Contact asked the Face for help his immediate reply was "Sure I can help, assuming that we come to an agreement over the price of my services..." The Face literally said this to the man who lost his home due to a sizeable fuck up by the Face himself...) So not only will this mission be difficult as we have to stop the van, crack it, take care of the security and leave with the loot before reinforcements arrive. AND we have only 24 hours of ingame time to prepare for the job.

I am also amused that the player who is most likely to backstab other PCs in every game he plays, insists that the team must operate on purely professional level with zero friendship involved, now assumes that everyone will take huge risks to help him just because we would get equal shares of the loot (if there is any loot.)
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on July 02, 2016, 02:33:37 am
In our latest session of Shadowrun we completed the armoured van robbery. Everything went surprisingly well considering how many times the heist nearly became a disaster.

In fact, there were no metahuman casualties in the entire heist which I consider to be a very good thing. We started out by having our decker follow the van in a car and then hack it to make it stop when it was at the ambush point where the rest of the team was waiting. Then the two spellcasters in the team made themselves and our dwarven street sammy invisible while the remaining two members were keeping watch, ready to provide fire support. Well, they did not actually wait. One of them opened fire at the van with an anti-material rifle taking out the rear axel, the other one tried to take out a tire but failed. Sammy used a plasmacutter to open the rear door and then he ran to a safe distance because my shaman had stunball and that thing does area damage. Inside the van where four briefly surprised armed guards (they thought that the door wouldn't open quite so quickly and when it did saw no hostiles) two of which were in heavy armour. One force 10 stunball with PUSH THE LIMIT edge ability used on it later and all four drop unconscious and my shaman takes 7 points of physical damage from the drain. That was nearly enough to kill him but I and the character still believe it was totally worth it.

Then things went pretty well for a while. The guards in the front of the car didn't want to get out and were attempting to call for help but our area jammer put a stop to that (the jammer was mainly there because the loot was certain to have tags and locators and we wanted to have some time to remove and disable them.) so they spent the rest of the heist hiding in the car and occasionally lifting a comms unit a bit higher to see if they could see anyone with the built in camera.

Our heavy-weapons/demolitions/sniper guy "Lucky Smith" (He has 7 points of Edge but also the "bad luck" negative trait.) also had the art skill so he cut open the containers in the car and quickly helped us sort out the valuables in the van. The actual Magguffin wasn't there which meant that it was in the OTHER van which was being targeted by the other runner team. We got two expensive paintings, some jewelry and a few suitcases. We didn't touch the cases with the Aztechnology logo because none of us want to be on their bad side. We also did not steal the suitcase belonging to Tamanous. Unfortunately there was also an ancient statue that seemed to contain some sort of enchantment. And Smith wanted it. He wanted to put it in his home. Which is actually his car since he didn't actually have an apartment and simply lived in his car at that point. But the problem is that making the character/player accept that we are NOT stealing the extremely valuable and easily trackable magical statue required threatening him with two guns and a warning shot from an anti-material rifle...

Then things went on pretty well for a while. The decker (who hadn't been spotted so far) drove off in his car, the rest of the team used to smoke grenades to cover their tracks and escaped through the sewers on a route that they had scouted the night before just as the helicopter with the HTR team was about to land.  There was a slight problem of a pack of rodents of unusual size blocking the way. They dodged sniper fire and the fireball from the other mage but Smith used a grenade launcher and HE ammo to take out the entire pack. ...He used a frakking grenade launcher in a sewer. In a very tight tunnel.

Luckily he lived up to his name and did not cause a cave in trapping us with no way to escape from the angry HTR team. Instead we ran past the gory tunnel section and blew it behind us stopping the pursuit. The it was simply a matter of removing all the tags and driving off the to meeting point with the fixer who promised to buy the loot.

He refused to accept the most valuable painting (1 million Nuyen would have been nice but the painting was too well known and hot to sell.) or the papers written in Mafia code but the rest of the loot made a nice profit to us (even though the Fixer gave us a really bad deal.) ...Then we opened the last suitcase and found the dragon claw inside it. Just a dragon claw, no notes or explanations or anything. The Fixer took this as the sign to pack up his stuff and drive away while shouting NOPE! After a brief panic and going through the options we decided to destroy the claw, never to talk about this again and hope that there won't be an angry dragon coming after us. This was actually a very well roleplayed in-character panicky moment for the entire team.

...Afterwards there was an even bigger freak out as the team finally decided to check who owned the statue and turned out that it was property of a certain Lowfyr and was being taken to the museum of Seattle. If we had stolen it the result would have either been a TPK or a job offer from Hans Brackhaus.

...And the Face of the team sold the mafia papers to his mafia contact (the papers belonged to another crime family) but as he tried to sell the painting it turned out that it in fact belonged to the family of that contact... Luckily he was able to get away with it as he did return it for free.

All in all the team did earn 30k Nuyen and 5 karma per character which is three times as much money as the previous reward we got. Next game is on next Wednesday and currently the team is planning to rent an auto-repair joint at the edge of Seattle so that they can use it as their HQ.

I would have liked some more karma but unfortunately we took out the guards before they could do anything and since no one actually rolled dice against the runners we didn't get bonus karma for facing strong enemies. ...Because that's how the SR reward table works: Getting attacked by skilled/strong enemies will give bonus karma and money but taking them out before they can do anything or avoiding them does not give you a bonus.

EDIT: Forgot to say that since most of the team was either hiding or invisible during the robber one of the players noted that as far as the guards know, this robbery was committed by two masked men and a floating blowtorch.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on July 06, 2016, 03:37:02 pm
The theme of today's game was "Askold's character fucks up and everyone suffers."

The owner of the dragon tooth from previous session tracked down my character because I didn't know that you can scrub astral signatures and hadn't done it after casting a Force 10 spell.

Then he got tracked by a spirit and because he lacked Banish skill (even though the reason the character was a magician was so that the team would have someone with that skill. I fucked up while making the character since I had to start all over again a few times and forgot a few important skills and took a couple useless ones.)  so the shaman got caught (the shaman tried burning his fake-SIN and actually setting his apartment on fire while fleeing multiple spirits but it wasn't enough) and because he couldn't resist a mind probe spell (again, bad character design) the entire team has been caught and forced to do a run pro-bono for a very nasty Johnson.

The mission is to kill a fellow Shadowrunner who is a former Aztechnology blood-mage.

So not only are they not getting paid for the job the job will ruin their reputation among Shadowrunners if anyone finds out that they killed one of their own.

Oh and I am saying "they" because I am missing the next session due to my vacation trip so I / my character got everyone into trouble and now the others will pay the price.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Svata on July 16, 2016, 12:03:21 am
Anyone else here play M:tG?
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Even Then on July 16, 2016, 12:03:57 am
I mostly play EDH, but I've got a crappy Madness Legacy deck.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on July 16, 2016, 12:47:12 am
I used to play Magic back when I was younger. I think I stopped sometime during the Ravnica(?) series. Or was that the one where the planet was one big city and the colours represented different guilds?
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Even Then on July 16, 2016, 02:04:40 am
Yeah, that's Ravnica.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Zygarde on July 27, 2016, 05:59:21 pm
So I'm thinking for my 21st birthday of getting all the core books for Pathfinder since from what I've heard D&D has gone to hell.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Cloud3514 on July 27, 2016, 06:30:54 pm
I've heard good thing a about D&D 5th Edition, but I've never played it. However, 4th edition is the worst tabletop RPG I've ever played.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Svata on July 27, 2016, 06:55:57 pm
5e is fine, but not spectacular.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: ironbite on July 27, 2016, 07:12:26 pm
5e goes back to the roots, somewhat, of DnD where 4th tried to grab hold of the WoW crowd for some...god awful reason.  Also Pathfinder is fun.

Ironbite-I think I've linked to my own games enough though.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on July 27, 2016, 10:40:45 pm
So far the only complaints I have heard of 5th edition DnD are "It's DnD" and "I can't exploit the rules like I could in 3.5"

It does actually seem like something I could try.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Zygarde on July 27, 2016, 10:58:51 pm
Well I like Pathfinder more (just from the small game that we played a long while ago.) plus I know all the books I need.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Svata on July 27, 2016, 11:16:22 pm
So far the only complaints I have heard of 5th edition DnD are "It's DnD" and "I can't exploit the rules like I could in 3.5"

It does actually seem like something I could try.

Also, less material, so customization is harder, you don't get to be a fraction as powerful, and the growth in power over time sometimes feels... lackluster.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: RavynousHunter on July 27, 2016, 11:25:53 pm
So far the only complaints I have heard of 5th edition DnD are "It's DnD" and "I can't exploit the rules like I could in 3.5"

It does actually seem like something I could try.

Also, less material, so customization is harder, you don't get to be a fraction as powerful, and the growth in power over time sometimes feels... lackluster.

So...you still end up feeling like a total rando even after you've passed what should've been the Whoopass Threshold?
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Svata on July 27, 2016, 11:31:19 pm
I mean, you're stronger, certainly, level 10 you could whip level 5 you's ass, but it would still be an actual fight. You don't just mop the floor with them. And don't go trying to Helm's Deep that shit, ever, you'll die. You'll just eventually get overrun.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on July 27, 2016, 11:43:40 pm
Is that really a problem?
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Svata on July 28, 2016, 01:21:28 am
Well, I don't play to NOT feel like an absolute badass...
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Cloud3514 on July 28, 2016, 02:27:59 am
In some settings, less powerful player characters work. If you're playing something that's meant to be darker, realistic or harder, there's no problem. But with D&D? Eventually I'd LIKE to be able to fight a dragon.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on July 28, 2016, 09:10:41 am
All alone against a dragon or with a group? Because there's a difference.

Anyway, isn't the lack of material mainly because 3.Pathfinder has been out for much longer and 5th Edition DnD simply hasn't had time to gain as much books and booklets?
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Svata on July 28, 2016, 09:13:17 am
That is 90% of it. They've also said that there just isn't going to be as much material, no splats, but like 1-2 things in each adventure path.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: ironbite on July 28, 2016, 10:35:04 am
Well 5e is getting a ton of different settings right now.  Forbidden Realms just came back, I know Raveloft is a thing, and they're even gonna be doing Middle Earth.  So you're getting options.  Pathfinder has just been out longer and keeps adding to its own lore.

Ironbite-though I can't wait for Starfinder coming out next year.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Vypernight on July 29, 2016, 04:41:54 am
I found pdf's of old AD&D modules back from the 80's and 90's.  After tweaking another fantasy game so I could play the games without a DM, I'm planning on running through some of them.  First, I found, 'Village of Hommlet,' which was the very first D&D game I played.  Next is, 'Castle Greyhawk,' which includes an annoying NPC that my DM wouldn't let us kill.  Well, my DM isn't around anymore so it's open season on the ****!
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on August 04, 2016, 04:49:32 pm
Askold's adventures in Shadowrun continue. Several sessions were canceled due to people generally being on holidays but now we finally finished the hit on the bloodmage.

We tracked him to a shadowrunner bar, because he was a fellow runner, or at least using such a cover story. We had planned to "hire" him for a job. We would have lured him to a secluded farm outside Seattle, claiming that we need him to interrogate someone and then we would shoot him in the head and bury his body there.

Unfortunately he was in the bar with three of his buddies and we had to hire the entire team. Technically the interrogation would be handled by "Bob" (a rather nice looking Mexican orc who had been trained to be a torturer by Aztechnology and who always had a friendly smile on his face. Particularly when he was torturing someone with sharp tools. We know this because my character was shown a video as a proof of his skills.) but by hiring the entire team we ensured that our target was also there.

Then everything went wrong. The other team arrived in a van and our Decker decided to hack the van almost as soon as it stopped. So they were alerted, the only one of them who had gotten out jumped back in and started to drive off, our Street samurai merely scratched the van's paintjob with his assault rifle and our sniper (who had been staked outside to give cover fire) got under fire from the other team's sniper (whom we had not known about. Luckily having a sniper provide over watch is quite normal precaution so our sniper making a huge noise setting up there AFTER the other sniper had gotten there did not tip them off. It just made them be slightly more cautious.) who missed. So did our sniper as he tried to stop the van.

Then I had a brief internal and external argument with myself as I wondered what the hell I could do as it was my character's turn to finally do something. (He had the lowest initiative.)

My shotgun wouldn't have even scratched the car. Same with the revolver. And the only spell that did physical damage was flamethrower. Eventually I settled down to once again casting a spell at full power.

"Bernie" forgot to shout "feel the Bern" as a stream of bright blue flames surged from his hands and a force 12 flamethrower (With PUSH THE LIMIT) pierced the side of the van and hit the battery. The battery was destroyed disabling the van, but that was the least of the problems for the people inside the car, Lithium-Ion batteries and fire are a horrible mix and the flames that erupted from the battery weren't even blue, they were blindingly bright and pure white. The car burst into a tiny purgatory killing all four shadowrunners inside and probably blowing up their ammo and explosives as well. The sniper gave up and asked if we let him live if he just walks away. We did, though our sniper stole his rifle (which the owner bricked remotely immediately.)

Oh, and Bernie took 7 points of physical damage from drain which floored him but luckily left him alive. Our other caster was able to scrub the astral traces from the spells before we drove off.

Mission accomplished. ...Not a 100% success because the job was supposed to be done quietly and without a trace. Shooting up at a farm and blowing up a car are not "quiet" but at least most of the evidence is gone. The fifth guy is a loose end but it's not like our team is perfect.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: ironbite on August 04, 2016, 06:54:26 pm
....and here I thought my Shadowrunner group were a bunch of blood thirsty monsters.

Ironbite-who butcher 35 Yakuza goons.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on August 04, 2016, 09:08:25 pm
Hey, we were tasked with killing a BLOOD MAGE and we couldn't get him alone. If that had been possible we would have done that. And it's not like we we getting paid, the Johnson found out that we hurt his operations in our last job and not doing this job would have meant that he comes after us. Though he might do that anyway because Johnsons are like that.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: ironbite on August 04, 2016, 09:30:52 pm
Hey man.  We should've been party wiped on that job but we weren't.  And I lost most of my combat drones.

Ironbite-made up for it with the money we got on the job but boy howdy that was tough.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on August 05, 2016, 12:18:27 am
One guy in the team actually suggested that we kidnap some random dude to pose as the person that needs to be tortured, strap a bomb on him and then when the torturer is about to go to work on him blow them up. The GM later laughed at us saying that that had been the best idea we had all night but we ignored it. Two of the characters voted against the idea of killing an innocent person and narrowly won the vote.

A player who wasn't taking part in the game also complained because his ideas are always death, torture and EXPLOSIONS! and he liked the idea, so if he had been in the game that idea might have been the one we used.

...But seeing as our ambush failed because of the decker being trigger happy it didn't even matter.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Vypernight on August 05, 2016, 04:52:52 am
Hey, I have a question for gamers here. 

I'm tweaking some fantasy RPG rules so I can play some old AD&D modules solo (I found a whole site of them in pdf form) and I was creating some character classes. 

However, I'm not sure what to call one class.  It's a healer/rogue mix, and I picture it to be someone who uses long-range attacks and stealth to get to and help allies in need.  Unlike the cleric or priest, who is packed with armor and blunt weapons, this person would have to sneak around and strike at a distance before administering aid.

Any ideas on what I can call this class?  I'd rather avoid using 'healer,' 'priest,' or shadow' in the name since I use those for other classes.

Thanks.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on August 05, 2016, 07:13:12 am
Well I was going to say Shadowhealer but if that isn't good enough for you...

Combat-medic? Mending-scout? Surgeon-ranger?

What were those ninja-medics called in Naruto?
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: ironbite on August 05, 2016, 08:58:23 am
Ninjas.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: RavynousHunter on August 05, 2016, 09:57:21 am
Medic-nin, if memory serves.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Tolpuddle Martyr on August 05, 2016, 09:57:39 am
Healer rouge mix. hmmm.

Oh heaps of hospitals have those, they're doctors and nurses who nick drugs to get high.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Zygarde on August 05, 2016, 12:10:48 pm
Shadow Priest? Could also call them something more awesome like Dark Acolyte or something.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Vypernight on August 05, 2016, 03:44:07 pm
Thanks everyone!

I forgot all about scouts.  I was thinking Mystic Scout, or just Mystic or Scout, I'm not sure.  The only reason I didn't want to use the word, 'Shadow,' is I already have Shadow Caster (rogue-mage mix), and i'm trying to avoid using the same name for multiple classes.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on August 05, 2016, 03:53:11 pm
I think that a rogue combined with a healer is more likely to be some kind of military scout or a ranger rather than a thief. Thieves would of course need bonesaws and other healers as well but they have no need to bring them into fights unlike a fighting unit that is likely to want "combat medics" even if they do the healing with magic rather than bandages and stitches.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Vypernight on August 05, 2016, 04:41:31 pm
That's what I was thinking; military scout; sneaking onto the battlefield and keeping enemies at bay to heal allies.

Thanks.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Cloud3514 on August 06, 2016, 01:16:16 am
(https://images-cdn.fantasyflightgames.com/filer_public/8e/62/8e62c0ea-05df-4026-a508-d25a2ff8158e/swx59_layout.png)

So this is a thing. I don't know who else cares about X-Wing, but here we have the TIE Fighter of all things becoming a cross-faction ship... to the Rebel side. I figured if if any TIE was going to be cross-faction, it would be with Scum and Villainy.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: ironbite on August 06, 2016, 03:34:20 am
Wait a second.  That TIE looks familiar
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on August 06, 2016, 04:10:07 am
Not really surprising honestly. At least in the old EU canon was that many of the Rebel ships were stolen from the Empire, usually the defecting crew brought them with them.

EDIT: I have recently been informed that DnD is a game that is actually about teaching the very principles of Jewish religion to people.

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/159632/dungeons-dragons
Quote
In the best tradition of rabbinic Judaism, we were studying in a small group, with an authoritative but by no means infallible scholar as our guide. We were being told a story—all good Dungeon Masters craft compelling ones, often based on existing campaigns but sometimes largely innovative—and the only way for us to follow that story, to be a part of it, was by following the rules. Or not following them: In the proud Jewish tradition of questioning and defiance, D&D allowed for, even encouraged, players to query one another, to cast doubt, to demand satisfaction. It provided a codex but acknowledged that the game only got interesting when players sought to interpret, adapt, or reject the rules, not follow them blindly. It offered clearly prescribed campaigns but allowed both human ingenuity and blind luck, represented by all those funky dice, to meddle with and reshape destiny. You don’t have to be a rabbi to realize that these are precisely the things religion does; in Avi’s room, strewn with pizza crusts and thoughts of monsters, we got the finest theological education.


...Assuming that the base of Jewish religion is arguing about rules and abusing them for your own benefit. The article has an example where a player tries to hit a monster but fails. The players complain and go through the rules finding out that the stats of the creature clearly prove that it should have been killed by the attack, the DM defends by explaining that the party is so powerful that he wanted to give them a bit of challenge by throwing a stronger variant of the creature against them. The players whine until the DM relents and everyone gains a level in "Jewish bickering and rules-lawyering."

I for one would have accepted that individual creatures may be tougher than what the standard stats say and besides reading the stats is metainformation and I don't think the players should abuse such knowledge (Meaning, knowing that a creature has armour and that my weapon usual might not penetrate it and therefore using something else is ok but comparing the exact stats and comparing them to make the 100% optimal choice for each situation is kinda cheating.)
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Cloud3514 on August 06, 2016, 05:16:52 pm
Not really surprising honestly. At least in the old EU canon was that many of the Rebel ships were stolen from the Empire, usually the defecting crew brought them with them.

This is true, but usually captured TIE Fighters are used for training purposes. Notice that all four pilot cards for this TIE have dots next to their names. This means that only one copy of each of these cards can be used in a list. The max amount of TIE Fighters the Rebels will be able to use is four. The only other ship without any generic pilots is the ARC-170, and the explanation for that one is that ARC-170s that are still combat ready are hard to find and, as such, the Rebels have access to only a small number of them.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on August 08, 2016, 01:09:40 pm
I am annoyed that in order to heal physical damage from Drain in Shadowrun 5th edition my character has to rest for the entire day. Or more likely the entire week because every mission ends with my character being nearly dead from physical drain damage. So that means one week doing nothing but lying on the couch watching trid shows or meditating. Some claim that I should not always throw spells at maximum force or that I should save the Edge point to resist drain roll but they fail to realize that the only thing more annoying than taking a massive amount of drain damage is taking the damage AFTER your spell was countered. By using a point of Edge to ensure that the spell will be successfully cast with max damage I am taking a calculated risk.

Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: niam2023 on August 10, 2016, 03:29:07 am
I play M:tg, currently working on a Bant colors +1 / +1 counter constructed deck, basically just what I use among friends, as well as a Dragon deck, which is shaping up to be fun, with an Emerge Deck currently shaping up pretty nicely.

Anyone interested in seeing the whole of my Bant Counters deck?
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Svata on August 10, 2016, 06:52:23 am
Sure, throw the list up on tappedout and post a link.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: ironbite on August 11, 2016, 11:59:30 am
Good session of Runelords last night.  Short so we got one combat session but I've found my wand of magic missile to be the most powerful weapon I've got right now.  Was only a short session due to one of the players getting home from a 12 hour day and having to get to bed early cause she's doing it again the next day.  Rough but the paycheck.

Here's a playlist of all we've done: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrogm6G-Ocke1o6M6YfTfaQivRGFOKVQ8

Ironbite-Brett should have session 4 uploaded soon.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on August 11, 2016, 04:42:56 pm
Today in Shadowrun:

The team was hired to sabotage/destroy an UCAS Blacksite. (By a Sioux intelligence officer who was known by my character.) They were offered 40k in NuYen each (the biggest reward so far) and given a duffel bag with 100 kilograms of C12 and a 10 minute timer (mechanical timer, no wireless or even electronics for Deckers to sabotage.) And also a comms that would signal the guard to open the doors for the team.

There was a brief argument over how to transport the massive bomb.

Mage: *raises hand*

Player A: *ignores the mage* HOW MUCH IS YOUR CARRY WEIGHT?!

Player B: Not enough.

Mage: I can cast levitate.

Player C: WHAT'S CARRY WEIGHT? WHERE IS IT?!

Player A: WHAT IS YOUR CARRY WEIGHT?!
Shaman: I can cast levitate on it, it'll be easy.

PLAYER A: WHAT IS YOUR CARRY WEIGHT!?! WHY ISN'T ANYONE LISTENING TO ME?!!

Player D: Not enough.

Players A through D: *Arguing about carry weight*

Mage and Shaman: WE CAN CAST LEVITATE ON IT! LOOK! *trying to show the relevant page on the book* WE CAN LEVITATE IT AND THERE IS NO NEED TO CARRY IT BY HAND!


The operation had to be done ASAP and specifically during the midnight when the correct guard was at the door. There was a brief scramble for additional equipment. The team face tried to find a grappling because the Blacksite was 20m UNDER an apartment building and the only way in or out was an elevator shaft and we had the feeling that sooner or later it would go out of order. Unfortunately he failed to find a grappling gun so plan B was having the mage and shaman levitate themselves and carry the others up the shaft.

The Face did manage to score some cheap masks that look like silly versions of famous genocidal dictators... One character went as Hitler, another as Stalin, third as Idi Amin and fourth as Van Gogh.

The remaining two characters (my shaman and the street sam) refused to have anything to do with those shenanigans and simply had a ballistic mask and a motorcycle helmet respectively.

The way in went quite easily, the guard was shown the comms through the slot in the (non-remarkable looking) door in the basement and it showed a video of his little girl who was kept as a hostage and she would be killed if he didn't comply (we didn't know about that in advance but it did guarantee his co-operation.) Downstairs we had a brief argument over how to handle things tactically and the moral implications of detonating a weapon of mass destruction beneath an apartment building with 200 civilians (the mage had "Detect life" spell and had a rough estimate of how many people were above us) and whether or not we could alert the people upstairs without blowing our cover which lead to us walking into an ambush and tough time with the elite-guards. Small special forces unit messed up our street sammy who only barely survived but while the shaman was treating his injuries the remaining two guards (Decker and a mage) started the REAL fight.

It was rather hectic and complicated. Partially because our main muscle and 50% of magical support were busy getting patched up and patching up someone while our heavy/sniper/demo-guy was trying to dodge and roll away from an angry spirit of fire. And this was the point where the player of the aforementioned character thought to bring up that he is carrying high-EX grenades and C4 on him... We thought he had only brought Neuro-stun grenades but, boy were we wrong. Anyway, spells were cast and countered, C4 was used to blow open a door and this was followed by more spells and hand grenades being thrown around and dispelled or in one case caught from air and thrown back with a levitate spell.

Then the two life-signs disappeared and everything went dark. The two remaining guards had triggered the self destruct and then taken cyanide because they realized that their situation is hopeless... This lead to some more frantic moments. We blew open the explosion resistant door to the actual lab, activated the timer and the shaman levitated/threw the bomb deep in there and then we just ran. The elevator was broken (of course) but after quickly making a few holes in the roof we managed to levitate our team up. Where we were met by fire alarms, panicking people in their underwear trying to get out of the building and lots and lots of firemen and KE teams surrounding the building. Invisibility spells on those who couldn't sneak and the remaining two guys sneaked out in the crowd and were just outside the building when something burst into flames upstairs. This was followed by a few muffled explosions and then a massive one deep underground that shook the neighbourhood. Luckily, at that point the team was already driving away and heading to our hideout.

7 Karma, 40k in cash and 1 point of public awareness were our rewards. A picture of the team was in the news, Alamos 20'000 took credit of the attack (despite the team clearly having a dwarf) and everyone was glad that the terrorists had been so incompetent that they caused a minor gas leak and explosion before their bigger bomb went off.

This also means that the team is going to take a month of vacation in-game and spend some time training and upgrading stuff while the heat goes down. (Except that the public awareness simply does not go down unless you drastically change something.)
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: chad sexington on August 12, 2016, 01:18:15 am

The Face did manage to score some cheap masks that look like silly versions of famous genocidal dictators... One character went as Hitler, another as Stalin, third as Idi Amin and fourth as Van Gogh.


Man, he didn't take criticism well, did he?
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on August 12, 2016, 02:07:39 am

The Face did manage to score some cheap masks that look like silly versions of famous genocidal dictators... One character went as Hitler, another as Stalin, third as Idi Amin and fourth as Van Gogh.


Man, he didn't take criticism well, did he?

Yeah, we had some minor, completely justified, criticism over him bringing several bricks of C4 without informing the rest of the team and then he threatened to cut off his ear. WHO DOES THAT? Seriously.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Zygarde on August 12, 2016, 12:35:01 pm
We're you playing with Mr.Welch? Cause that sounds like something he would do.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on August 12, 2016, 01:30:48 pm
Welch would do our craziest stunts on purpose. For us the funniest stuff happens either accidental or at least an unplanned reaction to our original plan going wrong.

Like the time I blew up a van that had four elite-Shadowrunners (or possibly Aztechnology hit team pretending to be Runners) inside. Our ambush failed, they were getting away and I wasn't sure that we could find them again before our deadline. ...And I assumed that the car would stop and possibly ignite but the explosion was a surprise. I thought that they would merely be hurt and angry but unable to escape and we could finish them off. Instead the entire van went up in flames and the team didn't even have time to get out.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Cloud3514 on August 13, 2016, 11:23:37 pm
As amusing as it would be to play with Mr. Welch, I don't think I would want to do it twice. It seems like he would get kinda irritating pretty quickly.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on August 14, 2016, 02:53:17 am
Much of the stuff on the Mr. Welch list are just LOL RANDUMBZ stuff which can be distracting to the game. And judging from those harmless things ending up on the list I would assume that the GM (and possibly other players as well) wanted a more serious game and one dude going on about how he wants to worship the "Gnomish god of heavy artillery" just does not fit into a game like that.

"234. My character does not get d34 HP a level." is just cheating.

Though: "452. Not allowed to convince the entire party to base the group only off Gary Oldman characters." would have the entire party joining in his antics and I would have allowed it UNLESS the game was specifically supposed to be more serious or something.

On the other hand, Old Man Henderson and his kind are specifically designed to ruin the campaign for the GM and that's just not cool. If you don't like the game you can leave but being a dick on purpose just because you wish to hurt the GM is unnecessary.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Svata on August 14, 2016, 03:41:23 am
Only once has it been justified. http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?275152-What-am-I-supposed-to-do
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Zygarde on August 14, 2016, 12:01:01 pm
I think Old Man Henderson types can fit in certain ways if the GM is a particularly big dick about things. (Or is me since I take grudges too seriously and have killed off all the PC's just to spite one person)
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Vypernight on August 15, 2016, 04:53:34 am
I remember reading Mr. Welsh's post a year ago.  Some of it was pretty funny ("These Are the droids you're looking for.").  However, I then accidentally found his political blogs and had a hard time reading anything he posted after that.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on August 19, 2016, 12:23:31 am
Yesterday's session actually allowed our Decker to do something. Previously he's been going up against rating 9 security and elite deckers (well we have been hitting things like UCAS blacksite or secret AAA corp research centers) with a rating 2 cyberdeck. Quite often he has had to give up on hacking because his gear is just so bad. Now that the rest of the team is aware of the problem we are trying to help him get a better deck. Even if it means forcing the player to accept money from others (and specifically stopping the Face from turning it into a loan with massive interests.)

This time we were looking up a cult that claims to have brought people back from the dead. My shaman rolled for magical threats once and has since been insisting that it's Shedim. The Johnson did admit that the details fit a Shedim incident but that doesn't make sense because the Shedim are disappearing but these "reborn" people are becoming far too numerous to be Shedim. After a brief Astral recon we sent the Decker to hack their systems and he added us into the cult as new members and the team is now infiltrating their compound.

Unfortunately while hacking the cult leaders personal home (through his refrigerator)  and trying to steal the one and only file we needed for evidence (we were hired to find out what the hell is going on there, we DON'T have to actually deal with the problem and if it isn't anything sinister we would just report back and say so.) he hit a databomb that bricked his deck... Now certain that their cover will be blown before morning the team is going to wait for him to jury rig the deck to barely functioning condition and then we'll poke around the site when everyone is supposed to be asleep. I am guessing that we'll be fighting at least 6 Shedim and one master Shedim before the night is over.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on August 25, 2016, 03:38:05 pm
Things went... Surprisingly well despite the "accidents."

Some players didn't make it and one who wasn't on the mission previously came in this time (Lucky Smith the Demolition/sniper-dude.) The team waited until everyone was asleep and then left to find incriminating evidence on the presence of Shedim. Smith snuck into the cult HQ to meet the others and followed the cult leader and his (probably) Shedim buddies into a secret room deep beneath the temple (the entrance was behind the altar because of course it was.) My character and the Decker tried to sneak into the rooms of the Elders but were seen by a random cultist and rather than trying any of the dozen solutions that do not include cutting the (presumably) innocent man into pieces with a monofilament whip the Decker decided to cut the man into pieces with a monofilament whip.

Unfortunately his (brief but high pitched) scream might have woken up someone so we instead went to meet the others at the temple. Few attempts were made to get the incriminating evidence from the cult leaders' Comms but the Decker repeatedly failed at disarming the databomb. After few calls to the Johnson to notify him (and finally a successful spell that revealed that the four human's in the inner sanctum were actually walking corpses) we got the permission to "deal" with the situation. ...We didn't have enough evidence to convince the Knight Errant but our word was good enough for Johnson so we started discussing possible methods to deal with space-vampire-demons from another dimension. One way or another all the plans seemed to involve the 2.5kg of C4 Smith was carrying on him because he was the kind of person who didn't go anywhere without explosives...

We did have some contingencies just in case the explosion and the ensuing burial deep underground wasn't enough to permanently kill the Shedim but based on what my character knew about them merely destroying the body could be enough and if it wasn't it would force them into the astral plane where they would die unless they found a new metahuman body soon enough ...Luckily getting trapped underground was also likely to slow them down long enough that they would starve and die. Also the cultists were trapped in their rooms (hopefully) sufficiently far from the site of destruction to not give fresh bodies to the Shedim.

Actually Smith made the bomb so well (Push the limit with 7 Edge!) that the explosion actually raised the background count for magic which would also help harming the Shedim if they survived that long.

The lone Lone star guard who was the only person up and about came running to the scene but he was quickly knocked unconscious.

Afterwards the emergency crew found a large supply of weapons and explosives from the site and after further investigations it turned out that the Master-Shemdim was planning to use the cult to do a suicide attack against a local satanist group, causing dozens if not hundreds of deaths and then open a portal to draw in Shedim to possess the bodies.

Another job well done. (Apart from one completely pointless and easily avoidable civilian casualty.)
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: ironbite on August 26, 2016, 10:03:37 am
Until Brett gets his hand 100% our Shadowrun games are kinda offline at the moment.  Though I think I might add an autocannon to my Steel Lynx drone just to have enemies shit their pants when that rolls up.

Ironbite-but for now it's Rise of the Runelords so that's fun.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on September 03, 2016, 03:45:19 pm
This time we captured a Vory soldier so that we could mind-probe him and find out details for our mission and then realized that we need to let him go, alive or dead and if we do this wrong it could jeopardize our mission.

...We wanted a armorer/gun-dealer contact and our Fixer did manage to find one but he wants us to do a job in return for his extended services. The Vory are bringing in guns to Seattle and he is afraid that they put him out of business so we need to make a weapon shipment disappear. Destroyed, stolen or confiscated by KE, all is fine as long as the cheap guns won't flood the market in Seattle. And our current plan of "let's just stick some explosives on it, look at the pretty fireball from distance and call it a day like we usually do" requires us to know exactly where and when the guns are coming in. Which we did find out from the Vory goon.

It remains to be seen how well the actual mission goes or if the Vory realize that their guy disappearing puts this smuggling operation to risk.

And I really need to explain how we kidnapped him:

We managed to buy info of a bar that Vory goons often use. Our Decker hacked into the comms of the Vory inside and though there wasn't enough incriminating evidence to make a case for the KE to get the shipment (which would be a boring option but I am in favour of doing things the smart way and it could have solved the problem with very little risk for us. Then again, who knows if the KE have been bribed to keep away from Vory operations?) So, plan B: Kidnap one of them and question him. Our Street samurai was outside waiting to grab a guy who comes out and the Decker looks for a suitable victim. Having found one he checks his comms for a wife/girlfriend and forges a text message from her demanding the dude to come back home.

Vory goon: "*BLEEB* you *BLEEB* I am drinking with the boys!"

Decker sent a few more messages with the GF threatening to dump the guy which resulted in angrier replies but no success.

Me:"Does his Comms have any pictures of a pet or favourite Balalaika or something?
GM:"He does have a cat."
Decker:"I send a message saying '...And I am taking the cat."
GM:*rolls dice* "He gets up roaring angrily in Russian and runs for the door."

Then we just ganged up on him at the parking lot and threw him in our van.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: ironbite on September 08, 2016, 08:42:26 am
God damn that was a satisfying fight.  Tight corridor, 8 enemies, no healer, not a single party member went down.  We mostly look like abused meat at the end of it but we did it.

Ironbite-and love Rise of the Runelords.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on September 09, 2016, 01:20:37 am
Likewise.

Our original plan of "destroy the shipment of guns" was relegated to "plan B" because my character has a contact in Sioux Nation intelligence service who was not only interested in getting a lot of illegal weapons but was also willing to pay for them AND able to find a way to smuggle them out of Seattle at a days notice.

We found out where the truck that was supposed to be used for transportation was kept at and decided to rig it with explosives (if we can't steal the cargo we could at least destroy it as was originally planned) and stealth tags so that we could track it, except that there were two of those trucks... In the end we rigged one with explosives and both with tags. We would hijack the truck that doesn't have a bomb and if it did not contain the guns the bomb would take care of the other one.

The actual hijacking was a fun fight. Special highlights:

-The fight was in poor light conditions during a terrible rainstorm meaning that everyone had huge penalties and were barely hitting anything.

-Our Street samurai insists on using javelings for ranged combat and nails the driver of the truck through the car with one throw.

-Our demolitions expert "Lucky" Smith finally triggered his "Bad Luck" trait as he tried to fire a grenade launcher at a car full of Vory goons. Instead of hitting the car he hit one of OUR cars that was in front of him (with three PCs inside it.) There was a lot of screams and panic until the GM realized that this meant that the grenade won't go off because it hit a target less than 5 meters after launch and the safety won't let it explode. ...Lucky bastard.

-The mage and the shaman used a lot of fire spells. Almost exclusively because the fire spells (and one angry Fire spirit) were their only useful attack spells (mana and stun spells would do nothing when you can't see your targets.) They were still able to blow up one car with a fireball killing 5 goons, ignite the batteries of another torching 1 goon who couldn't get out fast enough and the Fire spirit caused severe pants wetting by engulfing one of the cars.

-Lucky Smith was now free to use Edge without restraint and blew up a third car and the goons that had just managed to get out of it.

-Most of the goons decide to get the hell out of there and the few remaining ones dropped their guns and ran after a few threats and one javeling thrown through a car appearing between the legs of the Vory handling the negotiations.

-Realizing that losing one shipment the Vory would probably do something with the bomb rigged truck. Our estimations were:
a) "Let's take it to our storage room beneath the Puppy store & Orphanage with all those kids and puppies who are not resistant to high explosives, no one will ever think of looking for it there."
b) "Let's take it to our most secure location, the drug lab with all those highly flammable drugs and chemicals, it'll be safe there."
c) "Let's take it to the warehouse with all our other valuable goods, it'll be safe there."

-Deciding that none of those sound good we grabbed a comms from a dead Vory and sent an sms to the others telling them about the bomb. We got a "FUCK YOU GUYS! WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?!!?!?!!!?!!?" back.

-The shipment was taken to a warehouse that had a huge tarp that blocks all signals and several armed Sioux in civilian clothing but acting like professional soldiers. The rest of the team does not know who the contact is so they are a bit worried that the guns may be going to some terrorist organization (knowing how intelligence services usually work, they might not be wrong.) The cargo was worth approx 2 million Nuyen and the team got 10% of that.

So, we got 40k each, some Karma and two happy contacts, one of which was brand new. And the only downside is that one of the meanest organizations in Seattle hates the team and is actively looking to have them killed. Yay!

EDIT: Forgot one thing, there was a point where a mage on the team said that he is going to summon his fire spirit into a car and have him manifest there and attack everyone. At first he planned to have it engulf the driver and I nearly choked with laughter.

When I was finally calm enough I managed to explain that the situation is basically the reverse of "Jesus take the wheel!" If a fiery being from another world suddenly appears inside a car and eats/possesses your driver then it is basically "Satan take the wheel!"
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on September 23, 2016, 04:14:54 am
I am seriously contemplating running a Dark Heresy 2nd edition campaign on Roll20. It would mainly happen on Necromunda because I want to avoid the constant planet hopping that usually happens in Scifi.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on October 08, 2016, 05:08:30 pm
I hate being the only poster here...

My shaman got a quest from his totem spirit. He was told that a fellow Bear shaman by the name of Whakan is in danger and he must keep Whakan alive.

But no details on what that threat is...

He managed to recruit some of his team members (with the promise that if nothing else is gained from his job he will pay them with whatever savings he has got.) Luckily turned out that Whakan Care-bear was a researcher for an A ranked corporation and after contacting him the corporation agreed to hire us as bodyguards... They did make a magical check to make sure that we weren't bullshitting them but apparently they had a reason to believe that this particular researcher might in fact be in a real danger. They were researching metaplanes and knew that every now and then something on those planes would not appreciate their work. They didn't tell the Shadowrunners anything of course, we had to lean on Whakan pretty hard to make him talk but after we managed to find out that his mysterious enemy had hired another team of runners Whakan finally told us what he knew.

We also found out that instead of coming in to kill Whakan personally they tricked the boss of a Go-Gang that Whakan had been sleeping with the bosses girl friend.

...And then our mage and Mr. "Lucky" Smith went and fucked up their recon mission. They were discovered while one of them was trying to climb to a roof across the street from a SHADOWRUNNER-BAR! Because of course the bar had security systems that would notice something like that. ...And of course Smith revealed that he was going there to spy on another team of runners.

Eventually my character (who is by now the main-Face of the team despite lacking social skills, but being the only player who bothers to attempt diplomacy and having a high charisma stat on the character he kinda had to take that spot from the main Face who hasn't been in the game for a while now) managed to negotiate a meeting with the other team in a neutral location. We would bring in Mr. Care-bear and the other team and their mysterious new runner "Joe" (who was from the metaplane but masquerading as a human) would settle his grudge with Care-Bear without killing him.

Fun facts: Smith was the only one who managed to realize that "Joe" is from the other plane. Because he got 8 successes on a Perception test while the Mage and the Shaman failed to see anything weird when astrally Assessing Joe. So during our first meeting we had one guy babbling about how there's something off about Joe because his sneakers have a picture of a lion instead of a puma... I mean, the rest of us were pretty sure that this was in fact true but as far as evidence goes counterfeit shoes are not particularly convincing. (The metaplane is much like the Shadowrun-Earth but it has different Megacorporations. So those sneakers were proof that they were from the shoe company that is their equivalent of Puma on Earth.)

Also, Smith was the only one who realized that the other team was lying when they claimed that they would not try to kill Whakan. But he is a pathological liar (it's a character flaw his character has) so no one believed him.

The meeting was at another Shadowrunner bar but while waiting outside my Shaman and our Decker got some machinegun fire from the other team who got a bit too trigger happy while preparing their ambush. So instead we just ducked inside, called off the meeting and snuck back to our safehouse to plan how to hunt down and kill Joe, since he was the main problem.

Instead we managed to fail yet again and the other team had been able to track us down to the safehouse...

First they sent in the Go-Gang and we gave them a full broadside. Through the wall of the building mainly. Automatic fire with APDS ammo goes through the wall pretty easily, our Street samurai got on the roof and nailed the lieutenants of the gang with his javelins (because guns are for wusses) and while patching up the lone survivor we were surprised by the other team that had been using the commotion as a distraction and came in from the back...

The sammy got hit by machinegun fire which he shrugged off. The airburst grenade on the other hand... That one hurt. Their mage threw a Force 12 fireball and I learned that counterspelling it means that my shaman has to resist PHYSICAL drain damage. The most severe injury so far came from him stopping that spell from destroying the safehouse. At that point he had had enough of this bullshit and he cast Force 12 ball lightning AND burnt a point of edge on that spell. It took out the entire opposing team. (I fear that my character is taking the spotlight too much in the game and will try to hold back from now on.)

Eventually I calculated that my character benefited from the run only barely because burning Edge is so damn expensive. He lost on Karma on that and the money from the run was less than what we get on average but at least he succeeded on a mission from his totem and got a new contact.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: ironbite on October 08, 2016, 05:15:39 pm
Well I haven't played in a few weeks and I don't want to post my Rise of the Runelords posts.

Rather show you the videos.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrogm6G-Ocke1o6M6YfTfaQivRGFOKVQ8

Ironbite-enjoy.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: IanC on October 09, 2016, 01:03:21 pm
Apparently I hate my wallet, because i've decided to start a Horus Heresy army. Thank goodness for the plastic MK4 Marines…
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Cloud3514 on October 09, 2016, 05:33:03 pm
Well, the good news is that those 30k models can be used in 40k with the exception of a few pieces of wargear. Depending on what legion you're building (Space Wolves, Blood Angels, you can make an argument for Ultramarines), it wouldn't even be that out of place to see marines in MK IV armor in a 40k setting. Same with the MK III plastics that are coming in the next boxed game (based on the Battle of Prospero, so Thousand Sons vs Space Wolves and Custodes).
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: SCarpelan on October 09, 2016, 07:23:04 pm
We played the Battlestar Galactica board game after a long break on the weekend. Not using the Cylon Fleet board this time really changed the game from what we have gotten used to. With the Cylon attacks coming with random intervals from the Crisis cards instead of the steady accumulation of ships on the Cylon Fleet board the game lost some tactical calculating while gained on the atmosphere, the aspect of surprise and "we're so fucked" panic. Just when we were on the height of the said panic President Baltar revealed himself as a Cylon sabotaging the jump calculations which left us trapped in the middle of a huge Cylon fleet.

I as Chief Tyrol had barely time to repair the damage Galactica had got from a nice hit it before Admiral Gaeta also revealed himself and sent me to the Brig. Luckily neither of our leaders had the chance to fuck the rest of us with their special powers before revealing their true nature. Unfortunately the reason for this was that the Crisis cards were already screwing us thoroughly and the Quorum Card the treacherous President Baltar had and which he left for his successor Ellen Tigh was useless so this was of little comfort.

Galactica took two more hits destroying the FTL control and the Flight Deck which meant we couldn't launch any more Vipers to defend the Battlestar and the civilian ships nor could we make a panic jump and had to wait for the automatic jump to kick in. To top this the other two human players lost almost all of their skill cards which meant we had no chance to make the skill check to release me from the brig. By the time the newly appointed Admiral Starbuck had fixed the Flight Deck herself and launched to the space in a Viper it was too late. The normal Raiders had damaged or destroyed all the other Vipers leaving her alone in the space and she couldn't stop the Heavy Raiders from reaching Galactica. I think for the first time ever we had the maximum of four Centurions boarding the Battlestar at the same time.

I did get myself out of the Brig with my second attempt but the situation had been hopeless for several turns. With the Crisis cards hating us and both Cylons having been aware of their nature from the beginning instead of being sleeper agents the game was hopeless for us humans. I remember only one game where the Humans were trounced worse. With two revealed Toasters making sure the Centurions kept advancing they had no difficulties making their way to the environmental controls and venting the atmosphere from the Battlestar.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on October 15, 2016, 03:00:09 am
Ha Ha!

We had a short mission now with just three players. The team owed a favour to a Fixer who got them a safe house (which then got shot full of holes during a gunfight, had the roof blown open by a grenade and eventually the entire building was blown up along with the 15 or so bodies of the enemies that tried to kill the team. Because fuck leaving any evidence behind for the pawns.) and were recruited for a mission that had to be done ASAP. My character tried to haggle for a higher pay cut from the Johnson but got a critical glitch instead, which set the mood for this particular mission.

So there they were, a human Decker with a severe addiction on cybernetics, a dwarven street samurai who likes to kill people with his katana (when he doesn't simply punch them to death) and a native American shaman. On a quest to an ARES blacksite that had gone dark to rescue one of the researchers there. (Note, the Johnson was most likely working for another corporation and the researcher had been their informant inside ARES. Or that might have been just another false lead for us to uncover.)

Most of the mission was basically that bit in Aliens just before the xenomorphs show up. Sneaking around in a facility, finding dead -partially eaten- bodies, guards that had committed suicide after shutting down everything in the facility, a lone dog with some kind of built in sonar (The dwarf kicked it to death as soon as he saw it. Believing that it might have been one of the creatures that had killed the crew.) and eventually a room full of corpses that had done a fighting retreat to a dead end and locked themselves into a room before bleeding to death. Early in the mission my shaman had loaded his shotgun with Flechette ammo so that he could shoot into melee without fear of accidentally harming the street sam (who would merely laugh at flechette) but soon he switched it for slug ammo for better armour penetration.

As soon as the trio had left that room they were attacked by some kind of invisible creature. The Deckers radar couldn't see a thing but he just managed to dodge a blow that could have torn off his head. The dwarf could just make out a large form with the sonar built into his helmet. The shaman's astral vision could clearly see the massive gorilla wearing a milspec armour and covered in Ruthenium or something. Also, it had very little Essence but no cyber visible in Astral. Meaning that it was full of bioware.

The Gorilla was faster than anyone else in the room and took the Decker into a grapple, the dwarf took a hit of Kamikaze to make himself stronger and the shaman -deciding that his shotgun wouldn't have enough penetration to pierce the armour on the gorilla- fired a Force 12 flamethrower at the gorilla. That went through the armour. It didn't kill the thing, but it sure made it angry. The gorilla proceeded to punch the shaman through a metal door. (One point of Edge had to be burnt for him to survive it.)

Luckily the spell had damaged the Ruthenium coating enough to make the gorilla visible for the other team. The dwarf-sammy took a hit that nearly killed him and during the rest of the fight had to burn 3 points of Edge. One for dodging an attack that would have killed him and 2 on his own attacks to make sure that the gorilla won't dodge them. The Decker didn't have anything strong enough to really harm the gorilla but luckily the Sammy's last point of Edge let him kill the gorilla with his katana. (Note, the sammy started the fight with one point of edge and always bought a new point after burning it. So it was "only" 10 points of Karma spent during the fight.)

I had to leave at this point but apparently the rest of the mission went well and they managed to evac the researcher. Also, they dragged the shaman out of the facility rather than leave him there and share the bounty just between the two of them.

All in all, the team got 80k reward plus 7 points of Karma each. Meaning that despite using up so much Karma it was still a net gain since we are using the Missions rule that lets you "buy" Karma with Nuyen or Nuyen with Karma.

That was fun.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: TheL on October 19, 2016, 01:25:43 pm
There was one of those big D&D events at the game story last Saturday.  We were trying to join a social club/monster-slaying organization called the Delvers.  It got weird.

I was a charlatan rogue named Alex Crow (lol so original).  There were murders; I sneak-attacked the fuck out of things; there was a guy whose animal companion was a pigeon that thought it was a phoenix.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: ironbite on October 20, 2016, 02:31:14 pm
Oh my god last night's Rise of the Runelords session was off the chart awesome.  Plenty of roleplaying and just some great stuff.

Ironbite-soon as it's uploaded, I'll throw it down here cause it's so great.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on October 20, 2016, 05:14:16 pm
Things got tricky.

Our Dwarf-street sam got knocked out and kidnapped and when he woke up he was face to face with HANS BRACKHAUS.

Brackhaus interrogated sammy and finally offered him a considerable reward for the return of a comms that belongs to Brackhaus (or his employers.) The comms was last seen in the hands of the VIP that was rescued in the previous mission.

Since making a deal with the dragon is slightly less dangerous than refusing the deal the team now has to find that damn gadget.

Finding the VIP was surprisingly quick. He hadn't even left the town. ...Granted this was because he had ended up dead in some motel room with a ladyfriend so this didn't really help the team. KE has the deaths written down as suicide but there were some shady stuff about it and it is likely to be an assassination. Which is actually understandable as they mainly have family reasons or jobs that require too much time.)
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on October 27, 2016, 04:30:18 am
Anyone come across the feminazi-RPG aka Bellum Maga?

It has a 90% discount for PDF right now: http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/165441/Bellum-Maga

TL;DR you play as a witch empowered by the goddess Gaia and fight against the evil patriarchy (this is not a joke or hyperbole) and the evil magical phallic symbol known as the Serpent.

There are a few example characters on the Deviant art made by the creators and those are a laugh.

One is a woman who for a long time used sex to get her way and only cared about money and easy life. Then she found out about Gaia and prayed for a huge sum of money. She got the money and later as the money was running out again decided to become a priestess of Gaia since that seemed to be so easy and profitable. She is a hero of women everywhere.

Another was a witch dating a "perfect boyfriend" but like all men he revealed his true form. He had the audacity to ask his GF if he could possibly go to a bachelor party of his friend. As a revenge the witch turned him into a mouse for the rest of his life. OUR HEROINE!
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: RavynousHunter on October 27, 2016, 08:54:58 am
So, basically, FATAL without the anal circumference checks.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Cloud3514 on October 27, 2016, 11:30:34 pm
So it's obviously meant to be satirical. The problem, however, is what is it supposed to be satirizing? Feminism in general? Or is it taking a piss at the alt-right strawman of feminism?
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on October 28, 2016, 12:40:58 am
The book has a disclaimer that nothing in it is real and that people shouldn't try to start witch coven's inspired by the book (though the writers think it would be hella cool.) And that the game is feminist, dedicated to all the women who were "burnt, shot, stabbed, beaten raped and murdered for their belief in equality and their rights as a member of the human race" and meant as a "fuck you" to the "ultra conservative luddite assholes trying to turn the world into white man's paradise."

Lots of spelling errors in the book, but no signs of it being a parody. A bit too edgy for my liking. Also, I hate the artwork, it looks amateurish.

A LOT of spelling errors.

There is a positive trait called "transgendered" that allows the maga to turn into a male for an hour per day, losing all of their magic (unless they are of the succubus class in which case they become an incubus and are able to keep draining people of their life and turning them into dust or inanimate objects while empowering themselves) for the duration. Otherwise they are "Totally female" but can at will change their genitalia to male of female whichever they prefer.

...Ok?

SO MUCH EDGE! OW!

I would like to quote more stuff from the PDF but because it is stupid I would have to manually type everything as copy pasting doesn't seem to work.

The artwork is either pictures of Witches or pictures of witches killing or shapeshifting men. Mainly killing men. Mainly police officers and US military though a few civilians are there as well. And some US supreme court members.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Cloud3514 on October 28, 2016, 02:00:07 am
...so it's a radfem RPG.

............I have no words.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: RavynousHunter on October 28, 2016, 08:10:02 am
Link to iiiiiiit!  I want to hurt!
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on October 28, 2016, 08:24:33 am
I gave the link to the store in the earlier post. I've got the copy I bought but don't know if there is a pirated version on the net.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: RavynousHunter on October 28, 2016, 09:16:49 am
Oh, herp.  lrn2read, dumbass.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on October 28, 2016, 04:45:26 pm
Meanwhile in a better game our Shadowrun campaign continued. There was a lot of arguing over what to do. Usually it's just me making the tactical decisions because no one else can be bothered, this time we did debate a lot but eventually we went with my original plan anyway because the other one simply would not have been possible. The original plan being "lets make our drugged up street sam invisible, throw him onto the boat with an Improved invisibility spell and then make some popcorn and watch him punch every enemy in the face."

We assaulted a 15Million Nuyen yacht at sea from a smugglers speedboat. My shaman cast a lot of spells, in fact I am not sure if he can do much else than keep up those spells during the mission. Mainly he made the samurai and our Face/gun-adept invisible and flung them onto the boat.

We had had a long debate over why the rest of the team wanted to do this with as little killing as possible. The ethical justifications as well as the practical ones. Namely we are attacking our previous employer and already making a lot of enemies. Not killing him and all his goons might make the difference between "bad rep" and "you won't be able to work in this town anymore." The Adept-player finally concluded "so basically, you guys are just being retards" and I am going to assume it was both in and out of character answer. His response was to load up with AP ammo on his sniper rifle (and prepare his monofilament combat chainsaw.)

As soon as the two were on the boat they split up, having no more any idea where the other one was. Also no means of communicating because they had all their electronics shut down to make sneaking easier. And yes, they did bump into each other a few times by accident while running around invisible...

Before we had to stop for the night the adept had started a bloodbath on the ship and got himself shot full of holes. He is currently on the outside of the yacht sitting in the rain in a pool of blood after walking into an ambush. Meanwhile the samurai is punching and choking people unconscious and has only taken stun damage so far. (The fact that they are both invisible is what has kept them alive. The enemy is forced to use cover fire over wide areas in an attempt to do any damage and although it does cause a lot of problems this is only a temporary solution and once they have to reload someone takes a punch to the face and is out of the fight.)

The other half of the team is still on the speedboat and trying to catch the yacht again. The Decker at least is in the fight trying to do damage in Matrix but the shaman is kinda wondering what the hell he could do. Apart from blasting the ship with magical lightning.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on November 03, 2016, 04:41:46 pm
...Aaand things did not go as planned.

The street sam beat up all enemies in his way, ran through a door to knock out the captain of the ship and threw a flashbang at the Johnson (not the one who hired us on this job. The one we were targeting this time.) and his bodyguards who promptly fled into a room. After a series of threats and negotiations the Johnson was willing to give up the MacGuffin in exchange of being allowed to keep the unconscious Face-Adept his men had managed to capture during the fight. Seeing as he was the dick who had started killing people despite being told to avoid it as much as possible and seeing as he had in fact messed up several times along the campaign we decided to make the exchange. Which was a dick move seeing as his player wasn't present but at that point every option was a bad one as we were running out of time. (Also, despite supposedly being the face the only times when he had tried any negotiation was before a few jobs when he was haggling over the price of the job. Mainly he was there as a sniper and always wanted to kill as many people as possible in the missions.)

This is going to lead to a lot of "fun" times in the future. And it did get some bad reputation for the team.

Highlights: The street sam is unstoppable by conventional weapons. It's like a hairier and 1/3 of the size Luke Cage walking around and either cutting people apart with a katana or pimp-slapping them with shock gloves depending on whether he wants them dead or alive.

"Lucky Smith" once again (for the last time) lived up to his name. The player FINALLY got a chance to use his diving skill as we retconned (since he wasn't present last time) that the character dove onto the boat and climbed aboard. He got into a gunfight with the chef (armed with a shotgun with flechette ammo.) Naturally Smith didn't have any kind of armour on, just his wetsuit. He proceeded to dodge two shotgun blasts with the use of Edge despite standing in a narrow corridor.
GM: "The chef rolls 8 hits with 10 dice, since the shotgun has Accuracy 5 it only counts as 5." Player: "10 hits to dodge roll." "GM: "Again, 4 hits." Player: "Again, 5 hits." Dude was just casually dodging shotgun blasts and firing back with his massive revolver.

EDIT: I'll just add the latest updates here just in case anyone is amused by my gaming stories.

2 sessions in one. The team got hired to steal a valuable painting (of Michael Jackson) from a mansion. One session was spend in pre-planning the heist but although the location of the painting is now known the team didn't have time to make a fully working plan. Half of the second session was spent by one player making a new character to replace the one that was lost earlier and me and the third one trying to finish the plan with no success. We have figured out several ways in, but have no proper escape plan. We also have an idea that we could fake a message from the owner to his secretary telling her that the painting must be taken to renovators. Then we could either hijack the vehicle moving the painting OR pretend to be the security team and drive away with the painting. But the first plan has too many unknowns and the second is either impossible or really expensive (all the numerous fake licenses, SINs and setting up a fake company or pretending to be a real company is going to take a lot of work and planning as well.)

So instead we decided to leave that job for later (the team has a month to finish it) and took a quick job delivering a package. The preparations for this plan were simple as we just added a few firing ports to the team van. Which were immediately needed during a shootout on the road. And then our Decker dropped a KE helicopter that tried to arrest the team. It was a quick little operation with a really low reward but it was fun and there are worse ways to spend an evening (both in and out of character.)
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: ironbite on November 22, 2016, 08:13:31 pm
Did I mention I'm running a game of Mutants and Masterminds?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DM7dvekZWo

Ironbite-should've mentioned that.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: ironbite on November 26, 2016, 07:20:10 pm
MORE!  MORE!  MORE!  HAHAHAHAHAH!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHWlgII6ti0


Ironbite-it's like herding cats at times.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Zygarde on December 03, 2016, 11:26:54 am
So I'm thinking of making a home-brew RPG game based off Call of Cthulhu, any ideas?
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on December 03, 2016, 07:07:42 pm
Whee!

After a complete disaster the SR team was able to succeed in the heist job. They got cheated by the Johnson but that's an occupational hazard. At least they survived and got half the money (they decided to share the money with a competing team rather than fight over it.

Also playing Praedor for the weekend after a long break in the campaign. So far my character got married, got a huge dowry (which will be spent to build a motte and bailey equivalent for him) and tomorrow they march for war. His wife is talkative but at least they get along like friends, the marriage sealed a trading contract and the sex is good.

EDIT:

Two days of RPGs in a row...

The second session was not as lucky as the first one. Sure, the clan won a battle and got a decent share of loot (which was shared with a near-hostile clan of the tribe who were suddenly suspiciously interested in joining the expedition. They were helpful but it is possible that they were spying on the PC clan on the orders of the king.) Two of the PCs also gave birth. While they were traveling with the warriors (the players insisted on tagging along and one of them took it as a personal insult when they were warned of potential dangers. Her character suffered miscarriage and went mad and wandered into the forest all alone... This is likely to kill the character and may cause OOC drama as well.)

...But the battle went well though. Few lives lost and the secret plan of creating a war between two tribes by going beyond the king's orders is going as planned.

Granted that the army needs to escape a hostile region with the loot before they can call it mission accomplished but that'll be the next session.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Zygarde on December 19, 2016, 06:44:38 pm
So I just finished my first session of a Call of Cthulhu campaign, and so far my character has gotten the short end of the stick. A list of the crap that has happend to me in the first session

1. I got charged for murder cause I went into a room, saw a figure fired my gun to intimidate them and it turned out to be an apparition.
2. I lost one sanity.
3. I'm gonna have to hope my character's contact (she's a spy) can not get me thrown in a Peruvian jail.

All in all, fun session can't wait for next Monday.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on December 22, 2016, 03:03:19 pm
Shadowrun... The team had been hired to find a stolen paracritter that does something horrible to nearby electronics. This took two sessions and I missed the first one which was all diplomacy and detective work thanks to a new player with a dedicated social character. ...Then I came along and subtlety and diplomacy went out the window.

We had a list of Vory safehouses but instead of scouting a Vory warehouse in astral like a proper magician I completely forgot about that option and the team stormed a well guarded Russian mob hideout. Explosions, gunfire, dead and nearly dead mobsters all over the place. But no macguffin. Instead we found a gun shipment.

Since we didn't have a better idea we gave the police an anonymous tip and moved on to the next location. ...this time I did remember that I can just walk through walls in the astral space and we found another gun shipment with a lot more guards in one location and the missin paracritter in another.

More violence followed  but we got the job done. Only problems are that now the Vory REALLY hate us and they already trashed one of our cars. Next session begins during the next day/night when our mistakes finally catch up to us.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on January 19, 2017, 05:01:25 pm
I'm kinda disappointed in the GM for not killing my character. I mean, he was fighting with a massive Force 12 spirit that looked like an octopus monster that was strangling him with tentacles but even though everyone had seen enough hentai to know how that should have ended the creature just waited until my character knocked himself out with spell Drain and then dropped it on the deck of the ship.

That would have been an easy kill. That should have been an easy kill but he just went soft.

Still, the job did pay well.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on January 24, 2017, 12:49:26 am
The schedule for the team:

"Adler's* job on monday, Mr. Drago's** job on wednesday, on friday we are going to brawl*** and if we have time, though we likely won't, we will go punch the Humanis in the face."

*Ms. Adler is a gunsmith who supplies and mods the team's weapons.

**Mr. Drago is either a dragon who doesn't bother with a good disguise or just a mage powerful (and stupid) enough to try to make people think he is a dragon. Either case, he pays well and/or threatens to kill the team and finds dangerous jobs for them.

***One of the team members got friendly with a gay go-gang of Orks and Trolls and they have some sort of gang war brewing up and wanted to know if the team wishes to join in on the "fun."

...And no one needs an excuse to punch the Humanis in the face.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: ironbite on January 24, 2017, 03:49:08 pm
But you're going to anyways because you should always punch Nazis in the face.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: ironbite on February 02, 2017, 09:09:06 am
Welp....did a bad ass thing in Rise of the Runelords last night.

Ok so picture this.  I play a wizard with a......well affinity to burning down things.  Like a lot.  Luthor had previously started a wildfire that....burned down all of the farms and a good chunk of Sandpoint which got him arrested and was going to be sentenced to death in Magnimar.  But, a certain justice took wind of such a talented wizard and decided to recruit him into the court system forcefully.  By putting a geas on Luthor.  So yeah.  Luthor is in a bit of a pickle.  Managed to get his friends up to Magnimar, the Justice was pleased then altered the geas so that Luthor now worked for him for all things.  Yeah you can see where this is going.

Well last night we were investigating a lumber mill that was connected to another guy we murdered beyond murdered and who's there?  Well spoilers.

(click to show/hide)

Ironbite-So yeah bad ass moment right there and I don't have to go with a new character
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on February 02, 2017, 09:25:46 am
Can he go up against geas like that? And doesn't this just mean that once he back up he will have to obey it and try to kill his friend?
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: ironbite on February 02, 2017, 10:21:59 am
You would think that but Hero Points make all things possible.  I'll post the video once Brett's done uploading it so you can see what happens afterwards.

Ironbite-it's....funny.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on February 02, 2017, 04:37:03 pm
Again with the complications in the game.

Last session, which I did not write about, had the team handling two missions at once, helping one contact take down a gun-running operation (kidnapped one person to get the necessary information out of him and then triggered a gas alarm at the syndicate warehouse, locked the doors so that the crew couldn't escape and let the authorities get the credit for taking down a massive criminal operation) AND helping the Vory by giving them the info on the smugglers working on that operation so that they could snatch them onto their team. This also means that the Vory no longer have a bounty on the team for the stuff they previously did to them...

This time they got another difficult job from their friendly neighbourhood Johnson who told them to hunt down an Ex-Nazi Nosferatu. ...And catch him alive AND as undamaged as possible so that the Johnson can have a chat with him as they apparently do every 20 years. (For the record, the Nosferatu was based on a real guy. A German who had been a guard in Auswitch and who later became a target of the Neo-Nazis because he keeps talking about the Holocaust and the nightmares he still sees even though the Neo-Nazis explain that all of that is just fake stories that the Jews made up and that he couldn't have possibly seen or done the things he talks about.)

...Not only does the team have a hard time tracking him they also have trouble thinking of a method that would catch him in combat. Because either they don't use enough force and he runs away or they use too much force and he dies. (GM seems to think that the latter possibility is not very high but we have a few ideas.) So the best we can think of is letting the Face talk to him and make him come peacefully. ...Unfortunately the Face wasn't in the game so we couldn't proceed with this plan.

Instead the team took another job offer from Ork Underground organizers because having four jobs in one week is clearly not enough. Now they have a job to prevent a Humanis protest from happening on Sunday AND make it look like it failed because of Humanis incompetence rather than Metahuman meddling AND most definitely it cannot be turned into "Evil metas attacked peaceful Humanis protest" story. But that's on Sunday, before that we still have the Nosferatu gig and Friday Night Rumble ...Which turns out to target Humanis as well. (We did ask if this fight would make the Ork Underground upset but luckily they were cool with it.)

I am going to assume that half the team will be hospitalized after the Friday night fight and the Sunday job will be done by the Decker all by himself by changing their schedules or something...
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: ironbite on February 05, 2017, 03:57:38 pm
You would think that but Hero Points make all things possible.  I'll post the video once Brett's done uploading it so you can see what happens afterwards.

Ironbite-it's....funny.

Pssssst.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrjDBwP2SUI

Ironbite-my proudest moment.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on February 09, 2017, 04:29:47 am
The Humanis has 3 main speakers for their event. Digging some dirt got us the info that one of them is a child molester, one a technomancer and the third one might have been a killer but I forget.

The first one was easy to handle, Decker got his info and comm number. Hacked his comm to a) discover that he had scheduled a "candytime" for thursday night (in-game we spent the thursday day in the last session) and b) plant fake CP on his comm. 8 hits on the forgery test made a rather convincing picture of the guy and his daughter. Yes, this is horrible. But our point was that fake evidence that gets an investigation started will at least make a scandal that hinders the Humanis event and rather than trying to dig for real evidence we could let the KE handle that. ...Besides, the forgery is so good that the cops got a warrant with that and unless they take bribes they will have a good case after few minutes of detective work. (Contacting the media with a tip about a huge scoop will also ensure that the KE want to take this case seriously.)

The technomancer outsmarted our team in a quick game of wits and will be a problem for a later day.

Next session will be a change of pace as it will probably have the big fight...
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on February 17, 2017, 02:22:02 pm
This time the team Face was playing and therefore we got more diplomatic things done.

a) Made certain through her KE contact that the arrest of the Humanis big-name was in the media. Surprisingly, he wasn't arrested while molesting a kid as the team and KE had assumed from the "coded" note on his calendar. Instead he was seeing an Ork Domina... Well, he still got arrested because of the forged photo our Decker got onto his Comms, this is most certainly even worse PR loss for Humanis and certain to cause an uproar among them and finally: We were worried that Humanis would hire a really good lawyer for him, no fear of that now.

b) The Face tried to seduce another Humanis big-wig (who is wanted for murder in a different UCAS state) and she was nearly killed by the team Street Sammy after she tried out a few racist jokes while putting on her disguise. Note that she is an elf but has taken the "human looking" quality. After GM mentioned the possible conflict rising from her comments and the player agreed that she had in fact let everyone on the team believe that she is a human she chose to "come out" officially. (Well, the shaman had known the truth thanks to his incredible assessing test but had chosen not to reveal her secret as it was not his business.) The actual seduction plan was made more difficult by the minor detail that the guy was gay. She did charm him and his friends and was regaled with many tales of heroism (they once beat up a lone dwarf and shaved him, considering this a major triumph for their cause) and invited to a later meeting in the Humanis HQ.

c) The GM had lied about the gang fight targeting Humanis and instead it was just another gang and a turf war. Face wanted to handle the talking so that she could avoid all this unnecessary bloodshed by making the other gang give up their turf willingly. She managed to make the friendly gang agree that she gets one chance to try diplomacy before the fighting starts. Instead once the two gangs met (friendly gang and the team driving up to the other's clubhouse with the other gang boss out in the open for the negotiations and the others hiding inside the armoured barrack armed to the teeth.) The negotiations hadn't even started when some NPC failed their composure roll and started shooting. The Shaman was the first to act on the friendly side and yelled a warning while taking out the moron who tried to shoot him. Face got taken as a hostage (with 0 dicepool to wrestling she was no match for the cybered up Ork) and most of the team was dodging fire while shooting back (apart from the street samurai who merely laughed at the bullets bouncing off from his SWAT-armour.) The friendly gang proceeded to do (I hope I got the right term) "fuck all" with their leader failing every check so badly that he just stood there like a troll shaped rock and took a few bullets as he couldn't even dodge. Decker's van was another prime target due to his minigun being visible and it took quite a beating, in response he had "Ernie" the minigun with a built in persona-soft open up on the gang house and suppressing one of the floors with his fire. Meanwhile the shaman (once again) got tired of rolling away from bullets and seeing the Face in mortal danger (by this time the Ork had pulled out a grenade and popped the pin threatening to kill himself and her unless everyone backs off) proceeded to blast the second floor of the clubhouse with a Force 12 ball lightning. Gunslinger adept made some time between rolling away from automatic fire to drop random shooters. And finally the Face... She couldn't exactly fight in any way but decided to do her thing and intimidate the gang boss into giving up. With her best mad grin, few comments about what the Kamikazed-up-Dwarf would do to the Ork (but sadly no "I double dog dare you") was able to make him order the entire gang to surrender unconditionally.

That's one gang war taken care of with absolutely no help from the friendly gang (+1 street cred) though they did offer to fix the van and now owe a few favours.

Next time the team will continue trying to dig up dirt on the Humanis and hopefully get one of their leaders arrested by the KE. Unfortunately they don't have much Edge left at this point and the next session continues just few hours of game-time later.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: SCarpelan on February 21, 2017, 09:43:40 pm
My group is planning a Discworld GURPS campaign. None of us has any experience about GURPS system and about half of the players are new to Discworld, too, so we'll see how the game goes. We are planning to have a two-GM campaign with me and the friend who came up with the idea of this game both GM'ing our own groups with parallel storylines. We'll also be players in each other's groups.

Of course, we'll plan the campaign together based on his ideas so we'll need to keep our OC and IC knowledge carefully separated. While everyone has created their characters and we have discussed about the basic concept behind the campaign we haven't yet had the chance to have an indepth discussion about how we'll share the workload and storyline. We'll have a brainstorming session probably some time next week and things should be more clear after that.

The basic idea is that the radio (magical) technology arrives to the Disc. The other GM is interested in how the music industry reacts with troll mafia and other factions scrambling to take advantage of the new situation. Of course, Vetinari will try to control the new technology that might or might not bring the creatures from the Dungeon Dimensions close to bursting to the Disc. With technology such as this he plans to have Moist von Lipwig involved somehow, too, and I might also throw William de Worde in to the soup.

I guess I'm going to plan things around the talk radio. I'm toying around an idea of a big bad based on Rush Limbaugh as an unscrupulous bigot who uses the new technology to get rich and causes political instability while doing so. My own character is an Igor; the Igor template from the rule book is too powerful for the campaign so I've built my own interpretation of the character type.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on February 25, 2017, 03:17:22 am
Alrighty then, the player of Face missed the session due to being sick and as the plan really relied on that character we had to improvise.

...So, the shaman is meditating to recover from the Drain of the spell he used in the battle. Sleeping "meditating" like a baby at the wheel of his car (Which the team currently uses as transport. Well, apart from the Dwarf street sam who uses his troll sized motorcycle.) and is woken up by a Docwagon guard hitting the window with a club and asking for an ID. The Decker helpfully provides the code needed to get into the building while the Shaman furiously interrogates the team to find out what the hell did they do this time.

Turns out that one of the Fixers called the Decker with an urgent request for a team, knowing that the shaman is a trained medic and a healer. They were told to get to location X, no need for special gear "just tell me what size of clothing you guys wear." A Docwagon Johnson is waiting for the team with a gear rack that has security armour with DW logos and a selection of weaponry and medical equipment. DW is down an HTR team or two and is hiring Runner teams for the evening to fill that hole.

The team basically gets armour that is better than anything they have currently, the weapons are not that good though. Shaman has to get a regular Ares Predator V instead of the tacticool one he had and the Sammy has to use a Katana instead of a combat axe.

The team gets into a T-bird and after a while of chatting to keep the boredom away they get their first call to save a Gold-level patient. The Rigger drops the team from air just above a carcrash scene where a team of Shadowrunners is trying to kidnap the VIP (four visible, two are dragging the VIP towards the team van with two more armed and waiting in the van.) The (NPC) Runners open fire at the T-bird (Rigger thinks it is adorable that they think a meager assault rifle would do more than scratch the paint) and the Sam, Gunslinger-Adept and Shaman jump out as the T-bird pulls back to provide cover if necessary. The Decker spends the entire combat trying to find something to hack but fails to do so before the fight is over. The Sam hits the ground like a superhero and cracks the pavement, the Adept floats to the ground like a feather, the Shaman bounces off of a car and gets up claiming that he is "ok." ...Guess who didn't have Free Fall or Gymnastics skill?

Adept nearly kills two of the Runners (after switching to live ammo despite orders from Shaman-team-leader to stick to gel unless it is absolutely necessary to use lethal force) with one burst, Shaman drops on Runner with gel rounds, Sam chops another into 4 pieces with his Katana and saves the VIP. The Rigger (after being told to provide suppressive fire at two remaining Runners who are firing at the team) hoses the van, turning two runners into minced meat and making the van drive off. The VIP is rescued, still alive and Shaman wastes company material by stabilizing a civilian who had been in the same car with the VIP (but who hasn't got a DW contract.)

The next mission is a call to a scene where one HTR team has already gone silent... 50 KE troopers are surrounding a building from which people are firing back at them. The Decker again goes looking for something to hack and goes NOPE the fuck out of Matrix after finding a Demi-GOD lurking in the area. The T-bird hovers over the building as rest of the team once again jump out and throw one Basic customer into the vehicle (who had been unconscious on the roof) before heading inside to look for a Gold-customer and a Super-Platinum-customer. They have to remove some monowire obstacles on the way but just as they are getting into the room with two VIPs they notice an Ares Firewatch team also heading upwards the same location... The team wins the running contest and the T-bird drops down to hover near the windows, the Shaman recruits a guy (runner?) who was trying to bandage the VIPs and manages to throw the customers into the T-bird with Decker strapping them to savior pods while the Sam and Adept block the door with furniture and junk to delay the Firewatch.

...It really isn't much of a delay as they simply blow the door open, killing the unknown helper but the team members all manage to jump into the T-bird and escape. Although... The Sam being the last one out has to burn a point of Edge not to get caught by a webgun.

This was the last job for the day because although DW appreciated the team's efforts the customers, the "HTR-team" and the T-bird are now way too hot and need to lay low for a while.

Meanwhile elsewhere the Face has infiltrated a Humanis meeting and may already be dead for all we know but that's something that the player and the GM will handle at a later time.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on February 28, 2017, 12:32:00 am
Because I don't have any time I decided to join a Coriolis campaign.

Think Firefly but Arabian.

Like really, the game has more than a few similarities to the Firefly in the feel of it but has a slightly highger tech level, instead of Chinese and American* influence the space travellers are descendants of middle eastern people who's culture greatly affects the region and there are some aliens and psychic/supernatural stuff as well.

Looks like I'll be making an engineer. Possibly a hyena-man engineer but another player has threatened to murder my character's immediately until I make a proper pureblood human. (He is playing a genetically engineered human, the type of which are considered impure and horribly demonized so of course he is also racist towards people who are worse off than him.)

*I note that most people were focused on how the people in Firefly speak a few words of Chinese and were all about how there is a HUGE Chinese influence but from my POV it was 60% American 40% Chinese.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on March 03, 2017, 06:06:32 am
The Humanis sabotage mission ended in a rather surprising way. The Face managed to do well in their meeting and after they found out that one of their leaders had been arrested she agreed to help them get drinks for the protest...

After several false starts as everyone suggested lacing the drinks with something like K10 or Kamikaze the team finally went with lacing some of the drinks (the ones that would be served first) with a party drug that makes people really horny. This resulted in an orgy in the streets that the Knight Errant quickly put down the same way they solve any other disturbances. By firing lots and lots of Gel ammo and rounding up everyone. As a bonus they did proper ID checks and more than one fake SIN got burned which put at least one other Humanis leader into jail.

Our GM was very impressed at how we solved this job without firing a single shot and how each and every time when one of the players got frustrated and suggested a violent solution some other player (always a different one) talked them out of that and suggested something else.

No money for this job but 8 Karma for everyone and a new Contact in the Ork Undergound.

Meanwhile the Coriolis campaign is starting up nicely with all the characters being finished and everyone involved debating what the hell the rules mean... It's a game made by four Swedish guys and only one of them is employed in the company, the others do it as a hobby. As a result the rulebooks have more than a few flaws and need to be rewritten. Unfortunately they also have the problem that the shipping company that sent the rulebooks fucked up and did not understand that books that are sent to places like AUSTRALIA need a bit more packacking than the ones being shipped within Sweden and everyone is now too busy to solve that mess to worry about making an errata. (Love the setting, love the basic rules mechanics but the book is a mess and needs to be heavily edited.)
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on April 20, 2017, 04:42:12 pm
A comedy of errors:

The team is hired to kill a powerful mage who is hiding somewhere and cannot be seen on digital anything. The team finds out that she is in LA and books a flight from a smuggler ASAP. (Mistake 1)

When they get to LA they find out that the target is in an arcology. They could have waited to get better fake-SINs, better cover stories and actually made a plan. Now they are in a foreign country with no plans and Rating 2 SINs for the country. They decide to smuggle themselves into the arcology to find the target. (Mistake 2)

When they manage to locate the office where the target is working and realize that there is no plan other than to see if she is there and then, I dunno... Kill her? The street sam is impatient and walks into the office alone with no social skills to see if he can bluff a meeting with the target. (Mistake 3) The Shaman and the Decker quickly move in but with three people trying to bluff with no success the Sam instead takes a dose of Kamikaze and knocks out the secretary. (Mistake 4)

They discover that the target is taking a flight to Seattle tomorrow morning. Further study of the office and poor Assessing (Mistake 5) triggers a trap that wakes up an angry earth spirit who scares off the entire team.

The terrified Sam tears off an elevator door and jumps into the shaft which is enough to wake up every guard nearby. The rest of the team sneaks out in the chaos but the Sam does not resist (Mistake 6) and is taken to some higher up who recognizes him (Mistake 7) and he lies (poorly) that he was hired to kidnap an Horizon employee. The Sam is out of the job as he is escorted out of the arcology and under surveillance until he gets back to Seattle.

The rest of the team decides to try one more time (Mistake 8) to ambush the target at the airport as they know when her originally booked flight is leaving. You know, just in case she is way too arrogant to make even slightest adjustment to her plans now that she knows that a team of Runners is after her.

The Gunslinger Adept had been waiting overnight on a hill hidden (not well enough) (Mistake 9) with an assault rifle ready to snipe the target. The Shaman and the Decker spent a night at a hotel and got back early in the morning. The Decker is waiting at the airport cafeteria. The Shaman is invisible (not well enough) (Mistake 10) on a different hill nearby ready to blast the target with a spell.

The target is extremely arrogant and shows up right on schedule. Shaman blasts her with a Force 14 flamethrower spell (single target spell to avoid collateral damage. This is mistake 11.) and burns a point of Edge. The target burns a point of Edge to survive it and because her bodyguards are unharmed they drag her to the plane. Adept takes a shot but a powerful barrier and a bodyguard stepping in front of the bullet save the target. (Mistake 12) Shaman goes unconscious due to spell Drain (Mistake 13.)

The Decker steps into the cafeteria toilet, goes hot-sim and hacks the plane destroying the electronics which drops the plane from the sky (or possibly it makes a controlled landing) mid takeoff.

Session ends.

Next time the team will find out if both the (unconscious) Shaman and the Adept get caught during their escape and can the team make it to the crash site to see if the target is finally dead or did she survive and escape. (If she is alive they have no way to get there in time to stop her from escaping.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: ironbite on April 27, 2017, 09:18:39 am
Finished up my Mutants and Masterminds game.  Was a lot of fun running it for my peeps.  Now I gotta figure out how to set up some individual adventures that'll be a lot of fun for everyone.

Ironbite-as well as make it a challenge for everyone.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on April 27, 2017, 03:00:38 pm
Assassination was successful but now the team is wanted for their second act of international terrorism. Luckily they escaped LA and are back in Seatlle where my shaman Bernie has successfully retired from Shadowrunning and is now going to buy an apartment and become a Street Doc. (I am retiring the character, he becomes an NPC and I've already made a new character. Face/Mage elven lass who is slightly better built as far as stats/skills go but is much less likeable as a person due to a really fun set of negative qualities.)
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Svata on April 27, 2017, 03:11:04 pm
Hoooo boy. So there's this guy on another forum... well, lemme just post the argument here. Svata is still me. Darth Ultron is the other guy.


(click to show/hide)



Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Vypernight on April 27, 2017, 03:48:20 pm
Having run OD&D, 2D&D and 3D&D games, my players seem to prefer 3 the most as almost all rolls are: x or higher, instead of higher for some and lower for others (saving throws).

When we got to a rule that people didn't like, we discussed it.  If I thought it didn't work and the group agreed, we nixed it. 

That being said, they had mixed feelings for d20 Star Wars.  They liked the options but thought skills And attributes got confusing.

As long as everyone agrees as to what to use and what not to use, I'd say any version of the games can work.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on April 27, 2017, 04:16:15 pm
Minmaxers and munchkins existed before 3X was written. Even the terms are older.

I have to admit though that based on everythingI have heard 3.X/Pathfinder are apparently popular with minmaxers as that system was quite exploitable. And the game balance was so horrible that the homebrew fixes go as far as either banning majority of the available player classes or making rankings of the classes and making sure that only classes of similar strenght are used at the same time.

As for the argument how much power the GM should have... Well, everyone is supposed to be having fun at the table and that is the bottom line. If people want rules light game with anything goes attitude or RAW rules only game make sure everyone agrees to the same plan before the game starts because arguing how to do it during the game can end badly.

And in my opinion the GM should be the final judge of what happens in the game, that's kinda in the job description, but angry people leaving the game is not exactly beneficial for having a fun game either. (In the end, if the players&GM can't come to an agreement of how they want to play then the game is simply not working.)
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: ironbite on May 18, 2017, 01:18:42 pm
Brett's back to GMing Pathfinder and we're gonna all go wear the Carrion Crown.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9DHXtPoKSE

First session is a bit....short but establishes us all.

Oh and I finished up Mutants and Masterminds as well

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaLJET6sWVs

Ironbite-gonna go back to this with some sort of individual adventures for the Knights.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on May 18, 2017, 02:47:27 pm
Team was hired to assassinate a horse.

...Well actually the team was hired because some alcoholic Mob middle-boss wanted to "send a message" to a mob-lawyer by having the head of his favourite horse delivered to his bed "just like in that old trid." Mind you that the target didn't own the horse (which was quite expensive one.)

So, the team (I am now playing an elven mage femme-fatale after retiring my previous character) spends more time planning and setting up this mission that they ever have before. Casing several locations, hiring smugglers to help the team get to the gated rich-community where the lawyer lives, investigating security devices, making a recon mission in Astral and hacking stuff in preparation...

Then the mage and the Street samurai wait in a car near the stables and once the right horse gets out in the open they magic one sammy dwarf invisible and have him charge at the horse, chop it's head off with a battle axe, dump the head in a signal-stopping bag and then run like hell to the car while dropping smoke grenades and drive off.

(https://media.giphy.com/media/xT9DPwKoIuCCHBdoeQ/giphy.gif)

Despite my repeated requests to have the head checked for tracking devices and disabling them the sammy and gunslinger Adept simply walk up to the house (Decker disables the security systems) and ring the doorbell. (Why they didn't wait until the target is asleep is unknown and I argued against this but this is the way they did it) The surprised owner comes to the door and then realizes that he can't see outside through his cameras and runs away thinking that someone is coming to kill him (his comms has also been hacked and disabled by this point.) Dwarf smashes the door, does a flying tackle to the target and drags his unconscious ass to his bed (remember that the job was specifically to have him wake up in the bed with the horse's head.) The head is dumbed to the bed from the bag and immediately distant sirens from a KE helicopter are heard. Adept takes a picture of the unconscious lawyer who has been posed to hug the blood covered head and the duo run away just in time.

Client is pleased with the job and gives an extra  10´000 Nuyen for the picture bringing the total to 20'100 Nuyen each (after all the fees and payments to the NPC assistants.)

(https://media.giphy.com/media/l3vR6aasfs0Ae3qdG/giphy.gif)

...And now the team is leaving on a job on a island to fight their way past insect spirits that have already killed an entire Ares Firewatch team to recover some paydata. Hopefully getting out before the entire island is nuked from the orbit.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: ironbite on June 01, 2017, 08:14:22 am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVHhBFj5nFA

We're back with Rise of the Runelords and oh my god.  3 hours of combat and 34 fucking orgres.  Holy fuck.  Also, THE RETURN OF TOM TO THE PARTY!  WOOO!

Ironbite-so happy he's back and I love his character.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on June 01, 2017, 04:06:48 pm
In Shadowrun there has been a slight pause due to the GM going through chemotherapy but we finally got one session done.

The team made their way to the island, luckily ARES let them use their armoury on the ship and everyone had fully enclosed chemical sealed armour on. The team also brought the Minigun-Turret with the artificial personality of Gunnery sergeant Hartmann from Full Metal Jacketa and loaded him up with EX-EX ammo. In fact, everyone got EX-EX ammo and insecticide grenades and regular grenades and all kinds of heavy stuff. Also, two types of flareguns. One will summon a helicopter to evac the team (10 minute delay) the other will call down armageddon to make sure that NOTHING on the island survives. To be exact: The team got one salvation flare and a bunch of armageddon flares because they want to play things safe and are more concerned with nothing escaping the island than getting the paydata.

Everything on the island is dark, no signs of any life, and there is a terrible (and possibly magical) rainstorm. My Elven-Mage summoned a Water spirit as a backup because she was designed to be a Face/support character and her combat spells are all about causing confusion and LTL damage. The team had only vague idea of where to go but the Macguffin/Paydata they are after seemed to be at the last known location of the ARES Firewatch team that was lost on the island... Their first meeting with a (possibly) human survivor was confused but the Assessing test made them out as a human and they agree to help the team. Mage gets paranoid and the second Assessing test on the person revealed them to be a bug fleshform. Couple rounds and monowhip took care of that but unfortunately the Termites (who have a hive-mind) now know where the team is going.

Another massive termite is seen going towards the Evac-zone but Ernie takes it (and another that the team hadn't seen) out with one burst. Lots of arguments on how to proceed have been going on and continue but as more and more termites move towards Ernie my character argues that this is the only distraction they have and they need to move fast now. With the paydata location known the team charges forwards and the session ends as they are outside the server room and radar has shown that there are approximately 300 termites (including what is probably the queen) inside the room. ...And they need to turn on the server inside to get the data.

Lots of planning and preparation for what might be a TPK before next session.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on June 08, 2017, 03:09:34 pm
SHA

DOW

RUUUUUN!

The guy who plays a Rigger joined the game after being away for 6 months. His character no longer has a massive debt to Sioux mafia. Instead they have a bounty on his head.

Also we had to slightly retcon so that his character was with the team. Which was nice because he brought several drones and a missile launcher. Did you know that an explosive missile fired into a tunnel filled with insect spirit warriors does a hell of a lot damage? One big-bada-boom solved a lot of problems.

The mission did cost the team several drones, including a 40'000 Nuyen minigun-turret-AI (modeled after R. Lee Ernie.) but they managed to fix the servers, get two very interesting files and get out alive.

One of the files was the paydata. The other file was "Project Lazarus" which was about fitting a dwarven male with very unusual bioware.

...The joke is that the test subject was one of the team members. His player had been burning Edge to get Deltaware bioware for the character, which was later explained by the GM as "someone or something takes Karma as payment for giving him bioware." But now the island got blown up to get rid of the insects, the lab is gone and ARES knows that the lab had been used without auctorization to modify a random Shadowrunner. This may have some repercussions later on. Anyway, no more Deltaware for our street samurai.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Svata on June 26, 2017, 12:40:29 am
Ever have an enemy that is absolutely ineffectual against you, but that could do damage to someone else in your party so they just kinda sit back while you slowly poke it to death? Happened to me the other day in a one-shot of Pathfinder I was playing. The party was fighting an Assassin Vine that we couldn't quite seem to hit most of the time, and everyone was focusing it, including me, playing an archer cleric. There was also a Giant Spider attacking me, but it could only hit on a natural 20. So once we killed the vine, everyone just kinda slunk back out of range of a single move and attack of the spider, and I poked it to death with my secondary weapon (which was a spear).
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on July 21, 2017, 02:32:26 am
Got dragged into an Empires in arms campaign.  A strategy game of Napoleonic era wars. We are running a longer campaign that adds more rules and misery to the game. This may take a year or two in real time...


Meanwhile in Shadowrun: the team got an easy job. Kill a crew that does snuff BTL. Team got the location and the time and tried to find more info on who the crew is working for to take out some "management" as well. Just to make sure the mafia gets the message.

Instead two of the team members decided that they haven't blown up anything in a while. Few days in advance they went to the squatter building  (film studio was in the basement) to srt up 80kg of explosives to the supports. ...They did the math to make sure that the building would collapse neatly (their math was wrong.)

They forgot about the squatters... When the hobos came to question them they obviously failed all con and negotiation checks because they were the least social team members and they hadn't told the rest of the team... Decker offered free housing for the hobos in a better home for 2 months. Hobos got suspicious and were about to leave. Decker cuts one of them in half with a monowhip because of course he did... Then he pays 3 months of housing elsewhere  (20000 nuyen) to the rest of them to keep quiet  (they wont.)

When the day comes the rest of the team finds out about the plan only when they giggle as my character tells the Adept to take position on the roof of the target building.

The team decided to stay a bit back and blow up the building when the enemies have gotten in. Instead Decker panics and blows it up too soon. This only kills a few mooks and 6 children in a nearby building because they had put twice as much explosives as was needed...

Public awareness goes up, the targets are now more cautious and the "easy job" is getting harder and harder...
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Cloud3514 on October 05, 2017, 03:27:18 am
Fantasy Flight has released beta rules for their edition of the Legend of the Five Rings RPG. It is, as far as I can tell from my skimming, very similar to previous editions, except it uses proprietary dice. Because of course it does.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on October 06, 2017, 12:21:35 am
Started a Dark Heresy 2 campaign set entirely on the planet of Necromunda. CSI: Necromunda is what I'm calling it.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Cloud3514 on October 06, 2017, 01:04:21 am
Man, I miss when I could rely on Fantasy Flight to make a really good RPG... without the stupid custom dice.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on October 06, 2017, 01:18:29 am
I have really liked the Warhammer 40k games they made.

Meanwhile others are complaining about how each faction has a separate game and you need to buy them separately. (Though in my opinion that wasn't so bad as most of them would not hang around with each other or at least are in so different powerlevels that mixing the groups does not work well in a game.)
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Cloud3514 on October 06, 2017, 01:31:18 am
The only 40k RPG where it would make sense to have different factions together is Rogue Trader, but even that would be MAYBE a Tau, Eldar or Freeboota Ork in an alliance of convenience with the crew. Otherwise, I can see someone bringing a Dark Heresy character to Rogue Trader or vice versa, a Deathwatch character to Black Crusade as a Chaos Marine or just a crossover session between any combination of the games (as they're all cross compatible for the most part), but 40k isn't a universe where you'd regularly see an Inquisitor's entourage hanging out with a Deathwatch kill team or a Rogue Trader crew regularly working with the Imperial Guard.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on October 06, 2017, 01:58:06 am
Rogue Trader already has rules for playing Ork Freebootas and other such xenos allies. Same for Inquisitors and Xenos allies.

And in theory you could have Imperial guard and Space marines work side by side but that difference in power level...
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Cloud3514 on October 06, 2017, 02:50:55 am
Which is why such encounters should be limited to crossover sessions. Sure, it makes sense for Deathwatch characters to work with Only War or Dark Heresy characters, but the difference in power is such that it would only be interesting for an occasional session or story arc. I wouldn't want to play them together for an entire campaign.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Cloud3514 on October 07, 2017, 10:38:44 pm
So Legend of the Five Rings has a new card game out. And it's good. Even if I keep losing due to only having one core set of cards to work with (you NEED two to make a tournament legal deck and three is recommended to be competitive. LCGs may have removed the random boosters, but they still get their money) and choosing a sub-optimal clan (Unicorn may be my second favorite clan in the lore and RPG, but their extreme military focus is their downfall in the LCG).
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on October 13, 2017, 01:59:20 am
Because I do not learn from my mistakes I am now a GM of a Dark Heresy 2nd edition campaign. It's called "CSI: Necromunda." So far the team has shown a remarkable amount of subtlety while investigating a treasonous cult.

Meanwhile in Shadowrun (where I'm a player) the team is showing complete lack of knowing how to do stealth or any kind of subtlety. They were tracking a hostile person or group who had been using a biodrone (a human being filled with cybernetics that make it possible to control him like a drone) to hire teams that were known to work for a specific Johnson and then lead them into traps. The fact that the guilty "person" was just a drone was discovered by the player characters who shot his head off.

Now the team found the factory where he was building more clones and turning them into biodrones. One of them was caught (the street sam tackled it to the ground which knocked out the rigger) and the Decker hacked the drone. At this point it was discovered that the "rigger" was in fact an AI. What followed was the GM furiously looking through the rules how can AIs be killed or if that's even possible. It was. The short hacking battle ended with the Decker using his 7 Edge points to push the limit on an attack and which got it nearly 20DV. After AI takes damage overflow it gets' to resist the extra damage and any that goes through will reduce the Essence it has. Losing any Essence will take it down for a long time and weaken it, losing all of it will "kill" it.

What with having taken damage from the Sam "gently" taking it down the second attack killed the AI completely.

Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: SCarpelan on October 16, 2017, 11:00:52 am
Thanks to the Humble Bundle book sale a while ago our group has gotten into Warhammer Fantasy RP again. I GM'd a short scenario and now have my hands full with planning a game to continue that story and a friend is finally starting a campaign he has planned for a long time. The campaign in question is an old D&D campaign Doomstones that was hastily translated for the WFRP 1st edition system. The friend then modified it for 2nd edition rules and fluff and now we have a group that is willing to test how this unholy mess is going to work. The issue here is that the campaign consists mostly out of combat heavy dungeon crawling and WFRP rules are not really intended for that. Playing dungeon crawl campaign with a system that is designed for brutal, deadly and relatively short combat encounters might be an interesting experience. My guess is that the main challenge will be the lack of efficient healing magic which means any proper healing must be done outside of combat. To balance this out we have 2000 XP to use in the character creation which means we will be able to start with characters that are already about halfway through of their second professions.

I had a few characters designed but now when I've heard what kind of characters the others are planning to have it seems I'm down to one practical choice. Unfortunately it's the least interesting of the ones I had made: an outrider/scout, i.e. a D&D ranger with an archer build and it just feels a bit generic compared to the other options. I just think that going to this campaign with no character capable of stealthy scouting is begging for a TPK.

Edit: Hah. Thank you Career Compendium. Horned Hunter / Scout. A much more interesting build. A primitive nature god worshipping berserker zealot. That feels much more like a Warhammer character.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Cloud3514 on November 02, 2017, 01:57:45 am
So I just got done running a sample game of Fantasy Flight's Legend of the Five Rings. My god this is an obtuse system. This game is way overly complicated and it's not helped by the custom dice you're supposed to use. I really wish Fantasy Flight would stop with the custom dice bullshit.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on November 02, 2017, 06:02:11 am
The Dark Heresy campaign is going well.

...Suspiciously well.

Shadowrun has progressed to a point where it may be time to end the campaign and pick up something new.

The characters have so much street cred that they get recognized when they go to a different continent...
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: SCarpelan on November 02, 2017, 06:57:25 am
So, I now have three WFRP (2nd edition) games I'm involved in. I'm GM'ing two of them - the same scenario for different groups - and am a player in the Doomstones one. We've had one session in each of these and things are going well for now.

Luckily all the players are aware about the lethality of the Doomstones campaign and are prepared to have their characters killed. This is specially important for me since from a combination of OOC and IC information I've understood that there is a good possibility that the others will do something that will force my character to turn against them. I discussed this with the GM and he confirmed that it is a possibility in the future. If that ever becomes the case, it won't be an unexpected backstab: it will be a simple statement from my character that if they pass this line he will resort to violence to stop them. If things go that far I'm planning to not use any of my Fortune or Fate points which should give enough of an edge to the rest of the group that I wouldn't be able to do too much damage unless the dice decide to royally fuck everyone else over. This would be a suitable end to the character's story so I'm not at all bothered about the possibility of it happening. There should also be enough in-game clues for the rest of the group that this wouldn't become as too big a surprise for anyone.

The two groups I'm GM'ing are also having a great time. From a GM's perspective I appreaciate how the groups have different approaches and have concentrated to different aspects of the scenario. The other group has gotten deep into the detective aspect and the other's decisions have brought the horror aspect more to the surface. Every failed perception check makes the players in the latter group gringe and at a one occasion the group was certain that a player was going to lose her character due to an in-character stupid decision despite the "danger" being a harmless red herring. This kind of tension is really rewarding for a GM.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Cloud3514 on November 02, 2017, 10:52:33 pm
Shadowrun has progressed to a point where it may be time to end the campaign and pick up something new.

The characters have so much street cred that they get recognized when they go to a different continent...

Does your group like samurai or 17th/18th century Europe? Or more political games? If so, might I suggest Legend of the Five Rings (specifically NOT the Fantasy Flight edition) or 7th Sea? AEG had a great system with their Roll X, Keep Y system. I'm not sure how the current edition of 7th Sea is and the Fantasy Flight beta edition of L5R is hot garbage, but I've played both of their last AEG editions and they're both great games.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on November 03, 2017, 03:10:59 am
We've had talk about playing 7th sea before. Currently there are plans to play Only War (since we already have one campaign with the same ruleset so there's not so much new stuff to learn) or possibly Twilight 2013 or some other really rules heavy game.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Cloud3514 on November 03, 2017, 03:26:28 am
7th Sea is actually pretty cinematic feeling. It uses a d10 roll and keep system where you roll X number of dice based on your skills and keep Y best dice based on... something I can't even remember right now. It's a pretty streamlined system and the GM is supposed to reward bonus dice for acting dynamically.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Cloud3514 on November 12, 2017, 10:45:22 pm
So what happens when you invite the eccentric artist you work with to play Legend of the Five Rings? You get him being impossible to get to take the game seriously... until you mention that the setting also has an equivalent to the Roman Empire. And then he decides that he wants to run around with a gladius. So, once this game gets going, because the rules for Legend of the Burning Sands were designed to be used as both a standalone game and an expansion to L5R, we're going to have a Roman legionnaire running around fantasy Japan with a bunch of samurai.

Is it bad that I'm actually really looking forward to seeing this because of the cultural implications of this character's mere presence in Rokugan?
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: ironbite on November 13, 2017, 03:33:31 pm
I hit level 6 in my Carrion Crown game with my kineticst.  Think Elemental Bender.  Mine's a gnome areokineticist that specializes in zappy zaps.  Now why is level 6 amazing and significant?

I get Fly.  For free.  And it doesn't ever expire.

Ironbite-bye ground.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Cloud3514 on November 14, 2017, 12:55:06 am
Ibbles' Gnome in 50 years: "I don't even remember how to walk!"
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on November 14, 2017, 11:11:14 am
We got the players for Only war. The Regiment has been planned by the GM with the players having a chance to make few minor adjustments. Light infantry on bicycles. It's going to be a really dark and miserable campaign with troops that lack heavy armour, vehicles and heavy weapons while going up against the horrors of the 41st millenium.

It's going to be fun.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Cloud3514 on December 21, 2017, 01:50:58 am
Tonight, the last of the players for Legend of the Five Rings has his character. So we have two members of the Mantis Clan, one an archer of the Tsuruchi family (me), the other a Moshi Shugenja who studied at the Yoritomo school due to the Moshi family's matriarchy not expecting much from their men. These two being the same Clan might make it seem like they'll get along, but I'm playing a rather loyal Mantis who has no love for the Phoenix Clan... and the Moshi were once the Phoenix born Centipede Clan. In fact, it is surprising how loyal the Moshi are to the Mantis considering how at odds they are with the rest of their Clan.

It also doesn't help that Tsuruchi lands and Moshi lands are in completely different parts of Rokugan. The Tsuruchi are right in the middle of neutral land between the Lion (who see the Mantis as upstarts not deserving of their Great Clan status), the Scorpion (who manipulate everyone and see the Mantis are particularly manipulable) and the Crane (who see the Mantis as uncouth, but convenient allies). There's a reason why we're very quiet about the gold mine we're guarding. The Moshi are much further north, at the foot of the Mountains of Regret, west of the Phoenix's holdings.

The third party member is a Scorpion. No one trusts the Scorpion Clan. Well, the Dragon Clan trusts them to an extent, but other than them, no one trusts the Scorpion. Her player was clever to pick a member of the Bayushi family because she's a ninja. And, officially speaking, ninja don't exist. Obviously, this doesn't keep rumors from spreading and his character's school, the Shosuro Infiltrator School, is particularly distrusted. It's much easier for a Bayushi who studied with the Shosuro to pass off as a courtier than it would be for a Shosuro to.

The final party member, who derailed the GM's original idea (with something infinitely more interesting), is not a samurai. He's not even from Rokugan. He's a soldier of the Yodotai Empire, aka, a fantasy Roman. He is ostensibly allowed in the Empire on a temporary basis because he is allegedly there to find and arrest a Yodotai criminal that's dangerous enough that Rokugan needed his assistance to take him down on the condition that, as soon as the criminal is found and killed, he leaves (in reality, the Magistrate that gave him the writ to be there has assigned him a handler whose purpose is to execute the gaijin upon completion of his mission). Even if that IS, in fact, his primary mission, he still has a secondary objective of scouting out Rokugan for Yodotai conquest. The Scorpion will not be happy about his presence. Nor will the Moshi. Or the Tsuruchi. I'm almost disappointed that no one chose to play a Unicorn because, if the Unicorn finds out that he's Yodotai, the gaijin's death becomes priority #1.

I get a very strong feeling that this campaign is going to to largely involve hunting down this Yodotai fugitive... and that we may end up leaving the Empire altogether and taking a visit to The Burning Sands.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on December 21, 2017, 02:28:20 am
Dark Heresy campaign is doing better than I expected.

...Which wasn't much but still.

I've already got at least 5 more campaigns I'd like to run if I had the time. (I really, really don't have the time.)

Maybe once this and some other things are over.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on January 11, 2018, 02:45:10 pm
ONLY WAR!

So far 3 members of the squad are dead. All NPCs. 2 PCs had to burn a point of Fate to survive injuries. The Medic and the Sergeant (my character) who both lost their left arm (sarge also lost his left eye.)

The medic managed to get a poor quality cybernetic arm as a replacement, sarge has nothing. A patch over the spot where his uniform previously had a sleeve and bandages over his face. In fact, both sarge took enough damage to have died several times from the act of standing in front of 20 lasguns firing at him. Luckily he took almost all of the shots so the rest of the team got off easy. (Medic was injured in a previous fight where the team held a bridge from enemy while the rest of the battalion flanked and charged the approaching enemy. Sarge got hurt while making a bridgehead into a storage facility. The latter battle is shamelessly copied from history, mimicking a particular struggle during the battle of Stalingrad.)

Actually, all the dead from the squad were killed by friendlies. Heavy shot two folks in the back by accident and one person was executed by a Commissar after he ran away during a battle...

Fun campaign and not the least because of good roleplaying. Sarge is trying to be the hero (foolish and reckless), medic is properly paranoid and twitchy, heavy is oblivious and infuriatingly optimistic and so on. The team is currently thinking of fragging the sarge after he practically escaped from the medical tent and volunteered the team to a mission on the second floor of the storage building. WE ARE TAKING IT ONE ROOM AT A TIME IF WE HAVE TO! No matter how many lives are spent doing so! Such is the life in the Astra Militarum.

Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Cloud3514 on January 16, 2018, 03:25:38 am
Legend of the Five Rings: Session 1

It was a pleasant summer morning and the first day of the Festival of the Water Dragon in the Mantis held Dragon's Guard City, a port town favored by merchants (and the Mantis) for its proximity to both Phoenix and Crane lands, as well as an Imperial held village. Samurai and peasants alike have made their way here to partake in the festivities because, if I may boast for a moment as a member of the Mantis, we throw some good parties. Of course, this includes all eight of the Great Clans, as well as Imperial and minor clan representatives. And this is where we find our four heroes.

First, we have the Mantis Moshi Ki-Adi-Mundi (Out of character: don't ask), a son of the Moshi who was sent to study magic with the Yoritomo Shugenja. The Moshi don't expect much from their men and the closeness between the Moshi and Yoritomo families mean that many boys from the Moshi are sent to study with the Yoritomo. He seems to enjoy taking his days peacefully with the Kami. His day consisted of waking, divining how his day will go while smoking from a pipe and enjoying the festivities. Moshi was sent to the city to participate in a Shugenja demonstration on the third and final day of the festival.

Then we Bayushi Yukiko, a Scorpion "courtier" (as far as we know) who is ostensibly in Dragon's Guard City to procure some rare blackwood for use in a new shrine being built in the Scorpion capital. The Mantis hold the lion's share of blackwood in the Empire for a few reasons, some known to the Empire as a whole, others we prefer you not ask about. She is a pretty typical Scorpion, scheming, sure of herself and a particular disdain for the peasantry (she is also of the ruling family of the Scorpion, so her dislike of peasants is particularly pronounced).

Next we have Jonius of Appleseed, a Yodotai soldier. He has a special arrangement with the Emerald Magistrate in the Unicorn lands to be in the Empire for the express purpose of capturing a powerful Yodotai fugitive (who happened to have killed Jonius's dog). As far as he's aware, once this fugitive is captured or killed, he is to immediately leave Rokugan. In reality, he has a Unicorn handler, Moto Hiroyuki, who has secret orders that explicitly say to kill the gaijin upon completion of his mission.

And finally, we have myself; Tsuruchi Shigeru, a Tsuruchi Bounty Hunter (read: lawman) assigned to security during the festival. I am a rather loyal Mantis. I don't like the Phoenix, I won't be getting along with Bayushi when the group finally gets together and I have a strong pride about my skills as an archer (though, as a Bounty Hunter, my skillset is more focused on hunting criminals than combat archery like most other members of the Tsuruchi family). I also have a particularly strong respect towards minor clans, even compared to other Mantis.

The day was pretty much in three sections. I spent my morning working my guard shift. It was a pretty uneventful morning. The most excitement was a pickpocket who decided the best way to handle being approached by a Tsuruchi with a strung bow was to run. He got a broken shoulder, a free trip to a holding cell and probably nightmares from the scream of a humming bulb arrow for his trouble.

As I said, Moshi spent his morning divining how his day would be before making his way into the festivities. Bayushi took her time preparing for her day. Jonius decided that he needed a cowboy hat and went straight for the closest tailor.

Yes. A cowboy hat. To the GM's credit, he rolled with it (and considering the player, expected this kind of nonsense). While Jonius was describing what he wanted to the tailor and was being shown cloth patterns, his handler spent the approximately two hours spent in this shop hating his life, while a Crane woman (for the record, Jonius only saw her as a strange white haired woman in a blue kimono) carrying a daisho took notice of the strange man with absolute disgust, promptly finishing her business and moving on.

Bayushi spent the rest of her morning browsing local shops. She came across a set of decorative chopsticks with the mon of the Scorpion, as well as the crest of the Bayushi upon them. The shopkeeper wasn't very good at hiding his panic, made up some story about being the illegitimate descendant of a member of the Bayushi family and ended up accidentally insulting the samurai in his midst. Despite the claim that these chopsticks have been in the merchant's family for several generations, they happened to be made of the same wood Bayushi came to the city to find... and that wood has only been available in Rokugan for less than 30 years. It also doesn't help that these chopsticks are, in actuality, cleverly disguised assassin's needles. In a surprising show of mercy, Bayushi simply informed the merchant that she would be taking the chopsticks (after a quick demonstration of opening one of the needles) and that they would not speak again.

After commissioning his unusual hat, Jonius made his way to the sumai circle at the beach, with the full intention of using his large size to win a few wrestling matches. At the very least, his unusual size did impress the bookie. Upon arriving at the circle, he watched the end of a match between a large Mantis and an even larger (larger than Jonius, in fact) Crab. The Mantis ended up in the stands. Jonius ended up on top of the Mantis. Jonius also noticed Moto collecting some winnings out of the corner of his eye.

Eventually all four of us made our way to the center of town where a stage was being set up for a demonstration by local students of the Yoritomo Bushi school, followed by a sparring tournament that all samurai are welcome to enter. Jonius was the only PC to enter the tournament. Bayushi is a "courtier," so she has more important things to do with her day, Moshi is a Shugenja, so physical combat isn't his primary concern, while I didn't want to risk hurting myself when I still have a job to do. There was at least one representative of each Great Clan in the tournament, but the more noteworthy entrants were:

A swordsman of the Hare clan. I bet one koku on him (read: quite a bit of money).
Bayushi took notice of a disgraced Scorpion bushi who was accused of murdering his brother. She made a very strong point to actively avoid him.
The Unicorn wife of the Crab who defeated Jonius in the wrestling ring entered, prompting Jonius to join, prompting the Crab to join.
The Crane swordswoman at the tailor also entered.

The GM rolled for the results of each match and rolled a skirmish for Jonius, who was knocked out in the first round. Moto was again seen collecting some winnings.

The Hare was defeated by the Crane in the first round. So I was out some money. The Scorpion was also out in the first first round, Bayushi was happy to see this, plus she made some money on the match, having bet against him. Ultimately, it came down to the Unicorn and her husband in the final round. Jonius was not happy about this.

After the tournament, Jonius had to make his way to the guard headquarters for a meeting with the local headman. Bayushi found a very nice tea house, where she found the Crane (who is there as her father's second in the off chance his business in the city turns sour and he is challenged to a duel) and started making conversation. I approached the Hare to greet him, conveniently leaving out that he lost me a lot of money.

From there, I assume that something's going to happen that night that will force the group together.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on January 19, 2018, 04:14:09 pm
Several more deaths in OW...

The team was sent in to clear a building. Or more accurately, part of if. 50 meters of a corridor to be exact. It was tight spaces, traps, grenades and funtime for all. They got about 20 meters or so and cleared a few rooms on the way. Many lives were lost. But this time not all of them to friendly fire.

...I mean the Medic's (NPC) comrade burnt to death due to a slight miscalculation with a flamer but the sarge (one handed and all) was able to put out the medic while he was rolling on the floor and screaming in agony.

Other highlights include Heavy pushing a makeshift barricade forwards as the team advanced behind it and tossed grenades and Molotov's cocktails at the enemy. Totally bumbling a perfectly planned DYNAMIC ENTRY which resulted in enemies hearing the team's approach and a frag grenade killing a few (NPC) team members. The session ended in a barely won melee fight that saw a few more NPC deaths and the Heavy losing his right arm.

Three of the five PC's have now lost an arm and only one has received a cybernetic replacement.

Anyway, the GM did say that he is doing a meatgrinder game that is really grimdark but the characters are getting better gear as the regiment will be upgraded from Light to Line infantry. (Currently they have helmets and flak vests which mean that half the shots hit unarmoured spots. Proper Flak armour that covers all of the hit locations will make them much tougher.)
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Cloud3514 on January 19, 2018, 10:56:04 pm
You know, my suggestion would have been to just level the building from the outside. It's not exactly common for the Imperium to care about subtlety.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on January 20, 2018, 03:11:49 am
The battle is based on one of the iconic battles in Stalingrad. There is a tall grain silo complex outside the city and controlling it would mean controlling the tallest building within several kilometers. Also the regiment doesn't have the artillery to take down to building.

Historically the battle was fought for weeks and there were Russians and Germans controlling individual floors in the building with enemies both up and down from them... Like Russian/Russian/German/Russian/German/Russian or something like that.

So, yes... It was a meatgrinder of a fight and mostly unnecessary. Meanwhile rest of the Imperial regiments are still landing while the PC regiment's maverick commander took his unit on a foolish charge into enemy territory against direct orders. Chances are that once the regiment retreats (and has a ship blast the building from the orbit) they get a new commander as the survivors are put into another regiment.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: chad sexington on February 08, 2018, 11:41:48 pm
So, here's a thing.

Quote
Old Spice Creates New Playable Class for 'Dungeons and Dragons'
Christian Hoffer

02/08/2018

Old Spice (yes, that Old Spice) has entered the tabletop RPG world.

Old Spice is best known for its line of male grooming products like deodorant and cologne, but it appears that someone on their marketing team has a geeky side as well. Earlier this week, Old Spice announced via their Twitter that they had created a new playable class for Dungeons and Dragons....yes, THAT Dungeons and Dragons. The tweet included a link to a four page PDF that contained a surprisingly detailed set of rules for a new Gentlemen/Gentle-Lady class built around extreme over-the-top confidence in one's own abilities.


The Gentlemen class is basically a bard on steroids, with a few overpowered abilities mixed in. Not only does a Gentlemen get an increase in their Base Attack Bonus every level, something that's usually reserved for martial classes only, they also get to add their Charisma and Dexterity modifier to their Armor Class whenever they wear a fancy suit.

A Gentlemen's default abilities are the catchphrase and punchline - abilities that can either inspire allies or damage their opponents. As a Gentlemen levels up, they also gain abilities like turning into an intelligent dog, spontaneously summon a horse, or heal allies with their pleasing scent...which comes from a Gentlemen using Old Spice products, of course. Eventually, a Gentlemen also earns an MBA and has the opportunity to marry and can instantly level up his party by getting a new haircut. If a Gentlemen reaches Level 20, he becomes a being of pure energy and can make anything explode...but at the cost of ascending to a higher plane of existence.

Obviously, the Gentlemen class wasn't play-tested for balance issues and is likely to drive a Dungeon Master insane. Several of the Gentlemen's abilities involve either subverting the DM or undercutting his decisions, so it's unlikely no sane DM would ever allow this to actually be allowed in the game. We should also note that the new Gentlemen class is compatible with the "3.5" edition of D&D and not the current 5th edition. Still, we're very impressed that Old Spice actually tried to use tabletop gaming to market deodorant...which is an insane change from how D&D was seen a few years ago.
http://comicbook.com/gaming/amp/2018/02/08/dungeons-and-dragons-old-spice-/
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on March 24, 2018, 04:38:03 pm
Dark Heresy campaign has been going on for months, I've lost two players due to IRL issues and gotten replacements but everyone seems to be liking it and Only War is as fun as ever. Therefore the smart thing to do was to start a third Warhammer 40k campaign. It's just a minicampaign in Deathwatch since after more than 6 months of weekly boardgame of a Napoleonic wargame we wanted something different to do on Tuesdays. After the DW campaign we are going to start rotation of random boardgames and short RPGs.

Dark Heresy is closing in on the end of the "plot" I had planned and pretty soon one of the characters will become an Inquisitor (if he survives his current predicament of being tied up by a crazy cyberdoctor in a Slave-pit deep in the Underhive.)

Meanwhile in the OW we have not yet had a session without someone in the team dying. Highlights from the last session: The team was volunteered to clear a bunker and salvage any important documents the Traitor-Guard had not destroyed yet. The team blew/shot open any door they came across since nearly all of them were booby trapped anyway. Sarge had fun fighting against drugged up berzerkers (Not Chaos marines) and then charged through a door into 10 lasguns. Once again he was critically injured, this time most of his face was burnt off and he was completely blinded but he stayed conscious (thanks to using a Fate point) long enough to charge the enemies as a distraction (he got lucky since he didn't trip over anything while running blindly and swinging his power sword) for the rest of the team to blast the enemies away. Later when tracking the enemies to a dock the team went into a boat where they had not noticed the mine attached to the motor and the following explosion killed 40% of the team. (None of the PCs were killed but sarge lost his radio operator third time in a row.)
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on April 16, 2018, 01:11:16 pm
The Inquisitorial adventure is about to reach a climax of the story after 6 months of playing. The team is trying to find a missing Inquisitor, catch an Arch-Heretek and find out who is leaking info from within the Inquisition.

I try to set up a cool fight in the lair of the Arch-Heretek. The team has recruited Space marines to help them but they have some trouble with the rabble at first. Then they come up with an unholy mixture of flesh and metal that is the daemonhost of a daemon that the team has fought twice already. The marines panic ...And the little Sororitas gal charges in before the daemon can do anything and does in total 130 points of damage to it with one flurry of attacks. And that's AFTER reducing more than 40 points with armour and TB from the hits.

...I am just incapable of making any kinds of challenges that won't end up in an anticlimax.

We shall continue next week.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on April 23, 2018, 04:49:55 pm
Climax of a plot that had been going on for 6 months.

I'm exhausted.

Also, two of the team members were put in lockdown because they were exposed to the Obliterator virus that merges living flesh and tech (usually weapons and armour with a human) and since one of these was the Techpriest and the other was the Sororitas warrior nun who had previously been given surprise cybernetics then obviously the techpriest decided that this is the perfect time to put more cybernetics that he looted from the stores of the Heretek on himself and the nun...

While they were on lockdown...

On lockdown due to a Warp-virus that makes people grow cybernetics and weapons...

When it has been a on-going joke for the last 6 months that "growing additional tentacles" is the surest proof of corruption...

When most of those jokes were about the techpriest...

He decides to put an additional mechadendrite (mechanical tentacle) on himself.

The rest of the team immediately were OK with blowing up the lockdown facility with a Magna-Melta warhead that was there just for these situations and it was a perfectly logical decision. It took a while to explain to the player of the Techpriest why despite it being perfectly in-character for him to craft more cybernetics onto his character (and the Sororitas. Once again without asking permission from her.) it was also completely in-character for the others to nuke him just to be sure that the infection isn't spreading.

Because I'm a big softy I let them backtrack a bit and NOT do the surprise cyberware installation which let the characters survive.

End result: Everyone had a lot of fun, a massive story was finally finished, 4 out of 5 characters got a promotion of one type or another (Sororitas gal finally got to become a Sister of Battle, power armour and other impressive gear included, Techpriest got a promotion within the Mechanicus and the Nobleman-Adept got a sponsor who would make him an Inquisitor.) and the game will continue after a time-skip of few years.

Well see if the game dies out now that the team is loose and has no one pulling their strings.

But we also have like 5 other games we'd like to play. Aces and Eights (western RPG) that I got from Kickstarter is coming soon and I want to play AND GM it, one player has an idea for a 7th Sea campaign, another wants to run the Schlock Mercenary RPG or a homebrew game that he's had planned for a while and there are a few potential ideas for other 40k RPGs as well.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: SCarpelan on May 11, 2018, 06:48:26 pm
I'm continuing the WFRP scenarios I GM'd for two separate groups into the Thousand Thrones campaign. I had originally intended to have them play through another scenario I had planned myself as a continuation for the previous one. When I decided to use the published campaign I simplified the scenario into a prologue that would take them into the actual campaign.

This is the first time I'm GM'ing something that is completely my own design and for most of the players it's the first time that they are playing a non-published scenario. Even with published scenarios I'll always avoid railroading as much as I can and enjoy when the players force me to improvise so I'm throughly enjoying the freedom I have in this situation.

When the PCs went to meet their old employer they found him lying dead on his office floor and a woman casually burning all his notes and other paperwork in the fireplace. The woman in question was the waitress of the inn the PCs were staying in and as they would find out she had been recently hired to replace the previous one who had disappeared. She told them she had just bailed them out of something way above their heads and paid them to deliver her whatever information they had been told to deliver to the old employer.

She asked them if they were afraid to get their hands bloody and when the PCs seemed agreeable she hired them to take out a woman who would be supervising a transfer of goods in a warehouse at a certain night. She also assured that the target was no innocent victim and guaranteed that she would have less security with her than usual. After some debate between themselves and between their consciences and purses the PCs decided they would accept the offer.

While preparing for the job the PCs found out two pertinent details:

1) The warehouse she talked about is owned by an affiliate of the local Thieves' Guild and the target is a high ranking member of the Guild.

2) Their employer is not what she seems. Every player seemed to realize that she is a vampire but only a couple of the characters did. The PCs don't trust each other completely yet so in the other group the PCs who found out this decided not to share this information. This is an example of players deciding to split the party causing interesting narrative tension instead of gray hairs for the GM. In the other group the players decided to role play their characters so that they don't know enough about vampires to realize her precise nature.

This was the end of the first session. For the other group we had the second session yesterday.

The group ended up actually taking the target out and in the combat they noticed she kept buffing her companions which meant she was a priestess of some kind. When they searched her corpse they found evidence that she had indeed been a priestess and her patron was probably - and not surprisingly - Ranald (one of his aspects is Night Prowler worshipped by thieves). This is the group where only two of the four PCs are aware of their employer's nature but those two understood now why their employer had seen her as a particular danger. Their employer's plans aren't clear to them yet, they just know she wanted this priestess out of the way and that she had killed a group of criminals several decades ago in a bloody scene that had left the only eye witness badly traumatized.

When meeting their employer to get their reward one of them decided to start playing with fire. He casually called her by her real name that he was not supposed to know. Since they were in a public bar she didn't cause a scene but her body language made it clear she had noticed it and this apparently confirmed to the player that the clues they had gotten about her were trustworthy. And yes, the group will pay for this: you play with fire, you risk getting your fingers burned. She told them to come back to the bar in three days and she might have another job for them by then; for now she would need to concentrate on taking advantage of the success of their mission.

This is where the story is right now. For this group, the employer is now aware that they know more about her than she would like. The group will get some allies against her that will help them set a trap for her if the group is willing to co-operate with them (people who had hired their previous employer). The problem with this plan is that she is now intending to set her own trap for the PCs to interrogate them and find out what they know and how they know it. Neither the PCs nor their potential allies are aware that she is pulling the strings of another high ranking Thieves' Guild member and will be able to get a bunch of guild thugs help her set her trap (the players have been given hints about this relationship but they seem to have ignored them). This could lead into a situation where the next meeting with their employer is a trap for both parties. Fun should ensue.

Oh, and the people who are their possible allies? They are working for another, more powerful vampire. The PCs' employer has crossed the Lahmians and is now hiding from them while trying to build her own underground empire using Thieves' Guilds. She is herself a relatively young vampire and her plans and her problems with Lahmians are way over her head. These new allies will provide the main hook for the actual campaign but if the PCs refuse to co-operate or things otherwise go in an unexpected direction I have some other hooks waiting for them. If their employer survives she could make an interesting recurring character.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on May 13, 2018, 02:32:50 pm
GM of the longest campaign I've been playing has been living in Lapland for a few years now, due to his job. Usually we just play when he is visiting south but this time we got 5 of the players to do a road trip to Lapland and play there for a week. (It's a big campaign, there are 3 more players but not everyone could afford the trip or get enough vacation days for it.)

I also got more inspiration for the DH2 campaign and the players want to keep going so that's a thing as well still.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Cloud3514 on May 19, 2018, 03:21:02 am
So, methinks I've become a bit obsessed with Sentinels of the Multiverse lately. Local game shop had a blue moon sale (as in, they always have a sale when there's going to be a blue moon), so I got the core set for about 25% off. And since then, I've bought all of the boxed expansions (two "Mega Expansions" and four regular expansions in two "Double Expansion" boxes), save the one coming out this summer, as well as a handful of "mini-expansions" (read: clamshells with a single Hero, Villain or Environment). So, I've got 25 heroes, 22 regular villains, 15 villains balanced to be teamed together and 19 environments to fight the villains in.

The core set comes with 10 heroes, 4 villains and 4 environments.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Eiki-mun on May 19, 2018, 05:44:29 pm
In one of my chat groups on Discord, a guy is hosting an "at-will" D&D campaign. People are allowed to have multiple characters, even simultaneously, but they can't use more than one per session. We're all having a lot of fun with it, even if it plays little like any D&D campaign I've played before. Here's a sample screenshot of the DM's organization sheet (the one he lets us see, at any rate.)

(https://puu.sh/Aphrb/0b0893b5fb.png)

Anyway the point is it's a lot of fun and I'm exploring 5E much farther than I ever have before.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on June 07, 2018, 01:09:01 pm
Dark Heresy went on a hiatus for the summer, so did the Only war and I've finished the Deathwatch campaign so for a while I'm not roleplaying 40k... Weird.

I am in a new 7th Sea campaign which is not only different setting but also has wildly different rules so this should be fun.

...And a DnD 5e campaign because I guess I should try that game as well at some point.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Cloud3514 on June 14, 2018, 01:03:57 am
1st or 2nd edition 7th Sea? I haven't played 2nd edition, but I did enjoy 1st edition.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on June 14, 2018, 05:42:46 am
2nd Edition. Seems fun so far. So far the we haven't really dared to fail on purpose (you get a Hero Point if, instead of rolling to see if you succeed in a task, choose not to try at all and describe how the character fails.)

It really is a way different system from the ones I've used so far but I like it.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Cloud3514 on June 14, 2018, 08:43:21 pm
So it explicitly gives you the option fail intentionally. Interesting. 1st edition used the same roll and keep system as Legend of the Five Rings, which meant that it gave the option to fail intentionally as a side effect by giving the option to throw out high dice. This makes more sense with samurai, but is an interesting option no matter the setting.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on June 15, 2018, 12:54:59 am
Failing intentionally is the ONLY way to fail. BY default if a character attempts something they will succeed BUT there is an amount of bad things that will also occur and you need to use raises to avoid those. For example: "My character jumps off the roof onto the roof of the next building to escape the Villain's lackeys." *dice are rolled* "Your character is about to injure himself with the jump, your sword slips from your hand and slides down the roof and falls to the street. ...And the goon squad jumps to the same street and still chase you. You will need one Raise (dice or die which when counted together are 10 or more) to counter each of these."

If there aren't enough Raises then the player will have to decide which of these are most important and only choose those. If there are even more Raises then the GM may invent additional Opportunities, like one of the goons shouting to another and mentioning the name of their boss which the players hadn't known before. Or perhaps one of them drops his pistol while making the jump and another PC who is fighting on ground level sees it drop near him and can on his turn use a Raise to pickup the pistol and use it.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on September 18, 2018, 03:08:33 am
Back in Shadowrun. The team was guarding a private (magical) art collection from some fancy (magical) elf who owned a mansion in Seattle.

Most of the session was spent on describing guard routines and the team mage freaking out when she assessed each of the individual guests that were allowed into the art gallery. (Magic rating 20 was not uncommon. Also, one of the guests was the president of UCAS.)

Then just few minutes before the end of the job someone blew a man sized hole through the several meters thick wall and another Runner team charged in trying to steal one of the (magical) art pieces.

Gunshots! Teknomancer bullshittery! Magical fuckery all over the place from two fighting mages! Sword duel between a (magical) katana wielding enemy Adept and the (magical) viking-sword wielding adept in our team! A fire spirit basically ate someone! GM constantly frustrated by my Tekno/Face and the mage getting bullshit 5-7 hits on Dodge tests reliably with less than 10 dice 4 times in a row and doing Matrix dodges all over the room while getting hosed down with AK fire! GM frustrated when my Tekno/Face saw through a very powerful invisibility spell (and then did absolutely nothing to that enemy because his revolver isn't very powerful and he's using regular ammo.) but nonetheless being an annoyance by spoiling very clever tricks by enemies!

After exciting 10 seconds or so of battle the surviving enemies decide to give up just in time to avoid the (magical) wrath of the very angry Elven Lord who had hired the team.

Lots of money and Karma for everyone. (My character immediately used all of the money. 50% into getting a better fake-SIN and the rest into buying more Karma.)
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on November 11, 2018, 04:19:48 pm
You know what's fun? Undead enemies in Praedor. You gotta destroy their head or chest location to re-kill them. Because there are several hit locations unless you aim for the head (which makes it harder to hit the target) there's a chance you hit some other location. And unless you do enough damage in one hit they ignore all of that damage, it's destruction or nothing.

You know what makes the undead even more fun? Put some armour on them so that it becomes exponentially more difficult to get that one hit that kills it.

And did I mention that if they scratch or bite a living being that living being will have a magically spreading rot eat away their flesh unless all of the rot is cut off? Yay.

Anyway, picking a fight with an undead knight guarding the tomb of some ancient wizard wasn't as smart as our characters assumed.

By the time we had managed to chop off one of its arms it swung a zweihander and chopped one of the PCs in half. WITH ONE SWING. *Chop* *splat* "Aieee!" *failed resist fear rolls* My character was the only one that didn't run off because he has a bit of an hero syndrome.

And I was optimistic when I managed to take out the other arm from the creature. Like, what was it going to do now? Bite my character?

It tried to bite my character. Being the ever optimist I offered an alternative meal in the form of a metal shield.

Turned out that it didn't mind eating the shield as an appetizer. *chomp chomp chomp*

It also bit right through my characters leg. So that was fun because now the others had to cut off pieces of his leg until the magical-gangrene stopped spreading. And if someone is curious as to why didn't we just hit it in the head after it had been "disarmed" I'd like to point out that we did. Repeatedly. We just weren't able to roll enough damage to kill the damn thing despite using bows morning stars and swords.

And after a brief pause of first aid and realizing that the thing won't follow us out of the room we went back for a second round and started by affirming that arrows still did nothing to it and neither did our other weapons.

Eventually deciding "fuck this shit" my character grappled it. Managing to wrestle it to the ground (which wasn't as easy as it might sound because it was pretty damn strong and could still bite) we decided on a plan of having two characters (after an archer fired one more arrow into it's head, while it was being wrestled with, and saw that it did nothing they decided to join the wrassling as that was marginally more helpful) basically just keep it down while a third one repeatedly hit it in the head until he managed to chop it off.

And the most valuable treasures had powerful curses so the only reason that fight was worth the trouble was that we were down one tomb-raider so there was more loot for the others...

FUN!
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: ironbite on November 11, 2018, 06:18:55 pm
OH Warhammer.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Cloud3514 on November 12, 2018, 03:28:59 am
So I procured a copy of the Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica. I can't believe Wizards never put out books based on Magic planes before now. This was such a great idea.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Askold on January 15, 2019, 10:12:40 am
Praedor is still going on and is tons of fun. My character (the one I wrote about previously) was also eaten by a random monster in the post-magical-apocalyptic-hellscape but with new characters the "brave heroes" are still looting tombs and looking for treasures.

Meanwhile I'm back to a Shadowrun campaign and have lost a few characters there as well. Current highlight: Benedict Cumberbatch. I mean, the Frumious Bandersnatch was eating people and spreading HMMVV-2 virus. The team didn't originally know who is it that is killing people and turning some of them but were hired to make a stop to it by a gang that didn't want Knight Errant to "handle" the situation in the Barrens the way they usually would handle an outbreak like that. After a fight with a Fomorian (a troll infected by the virus) and a werewolf the team finally heard that a Sasquatch is looking for help because it is being chased by an "invisible monster." The team put 2 and 2 together and promised to protect the Sasquatch.

You see, the Sasquatch was being hunted by the Clapperhead Utterbunk, which is what happens to a Sasquatch that has been infected by HMMVV-2. The Bendystraw Crumpetsnack is also a creature that can turn invisible which makes it extra dangerous. And another curious thing about the Sherlock Holmes is that the only thing it can eat is Sasquatches which explained all those attacks. After being infected the creature had been trying to find something that it could eat and digest and after 2 weeks without food it was extremely desperate.

The team set up an ambush for the Wimbledon Tennismatch by hiding in an abandoned building with the Sasquatch (who was a manager at EVO but didn't think that his corp could help him because they might be too interested in infecting him with the virus as well, FOR SCIENCE!) and rigging it with traps. Traps of Gas grenades with Neurostun.

When the Britishname Cannotspell finally showed up it hit two of the grenades, weakening it considerable and after taking concentrated semi-blind fire from several Shadowrunners and two Drones it tried to run away but was finally knocked unconscious by a Flash-Bang thrown by my character. ...Then the third combat drone of the team crawled up to it (the Troll on the team was doing suppressive fire in the estimated area of the creature with a MMG that had EX ammo so no one was walking in that area) and chopped the thing to death with sword arms.

Another job well done and the team could add "killed the creature who played Doctor Strangelove" on their resume.

Also another AAA corp that some of the team got tangled with (by accident) paid a decent sum for the corpse and used it to design new and improved invisibility cloaks for the armies of the world.
Title: Re: Tabletop Game Thread
Post by: Kanzenkankaku on May 05, 2019, 04:56:18 am
I've been meaning to get into tabletop. I've been entrusted with some first edition d&d books for the time being and was also bought a current edition starter set this past easter.

Haven't gotten time to play it yet though.