Tabletop Game Thread

[Askold]

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 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.

[ironbite]

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.

[Askold]

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.)

[Svata]

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)

Remember there were nowhere near as much ''mechanical effects'' in 2E. 






Good example of the mentality.  The ''we all must follow the rules'' vs ''Whatever the DM says''.






Nah, I like 3.5E and Pathfinder.






It is more accurate to say the DM was in charge and everyone agreed to this and played the game.  So a player could ask the DM to do or not do a thing, but they could only ask.  And keep in mind this is the classic way of asking were the person was a mature adult and just accepted the answer they got from the DM as final.


OD&D and AD&D were simple enough that you really did not have much chance for ''player vs DM'' as simply put there were few rules, and whatever the DM said was official.  So if a character shot a fireball at a monster and it just bounced off, they would shrug and keep playing the game...as there were no rules for them to make their ''rant, whiney argument'' from : the DM just said that happened. 


3X added a ton of rules to make everything much more exact and took away a lot of the DM's ''anything goes'' rulings.  Sadly, this came along right as the ''Me Generation'' folks were old enough to game.  And they brought the ideas to the front of ''the rules are almighty'' and the ''DM is just a player'' and ''The whole group votes'' and such things.  So now in 3X, when a fireball does not do exactly what it says on page 7 of the almighty rules the player will stop the game and demand a in game reason that follows the almighty rules.  And if the DM does not have a ''official rules explanation'' then the players will vote to ''ignore the dumb Player called DM fluff'' and the fireball will work ''as per the almighty rules''. 


3X really started the Arms Race, and the Rules Race....and the really bad ''gottca!'' stuff.  So you get players carefully trying to craft and build character ''in the rules'' or in the ''wacky interpretation of the rules'' and attempting to dominate, rule and ''win'' the game by out doing the DM, using the rules (mostly, with a couple ''interpretations'' and ''well all the optimizer player types think this says this or that..'').  DM's in turn have to ''armor'' everything they do in the ''rule interpretations'' of whatever their players believe.  So the DM can say ''well your player wacky rule interpretation is this, and I used it'' and the player would just hang their head and agree, as they had to and say ''all hail the all mighty rules''.






Worse is that a lot written in the books was not written by a savvy gamer person.  A Ton of problems could have been avoided by just adding a word or two to a lot of things.  Even more so a lot of ''legalese'' style writing of ''this ability does not stake with X'' or ''This does or does not do this''. 


And this is worse as tons of 3X players ''interpret'' rules in their favor.  So when a sentence somewhere says ''you may add a spell'', the ''interpreter players'' will leap up and say ''we can add ''a spell'' from Any spell list! 


And really a ton could have been avoided, if like AD&D, the simple line of ''the DM has the final say'' or ''pending the DM's approval'' or such.

Eh, the rules mentality makes it so that the DM can't (easily and without consequence) just arbitrarily screw the players over. "Whatever the DM says" is a more dangerous mentality, and one that leads to a worse overall gaming experience in my opinion.










I find the veracity of this statement... questionable.










Right. Just accepting whatever arbitrary, likely skewed against you response is the responsible and mature thing to do. Sure.








And you're saying this is not a "DM vs Players" mentality? Is that only because the DM can just say "Rocks fall, everyone dies" at any point if they feel the players are getting uppity and wanting to make choices and decisions that matter?






But the DM is just one of the players. He just plays all the NPCs and enemies. His job is to arbitrate the rules (fixing any obvious holes in them, like drown-healing) and create the world/campaign/enemies for the players to triumph over, not to say "no, sorry, I don't want your character doing that, so instead of doing 1d6/level damage in a 30' radius, fireball does 1 damage to a targeted creature.






TO is not meant for actual play. And of course the players build characters that are meant to survive and win the campaign. Its a cooperative story-telling game, and its hard to get attached to a story if the heroes are replaced every ten minutes.








A lot of the abilities that aren't meant to stack don't do so. Most of the ones that people do stack are explicitly called out as stacking with each other, and were obviously intended to do so.






Well, yes, of course people interpret it that way. I assume you're talking about the sorcerer ability, ( These new spells can be common spells chosen from the sorcerer/wizard spell list, or they can be unusual spells that the sorcerer has gained some understanding of by study. ) here. If it didn't mean you could learn off-list spells, the line would be entirely meaningless, and do absolutely nothing.


Also, as has been said, rule 0 still exists, players are just more likely to call you out on it if you overuse or abuse it. They've gathered to play D&D 3.X, after all, which comes with certain expectations. If you were to go to play shadowrun and it turn out you're playing Cyberpunk 2020, I think you'd be a little annoyed too, and call it out as not what you signed up for, even if the product is somewhat similar.

The mentality that players are perfect and always right is just so odd. 






In a good game, player shave no power. 






Wow...even you admit the DM's job is sure a lot more then ''just to play a single character'', um, even by your own admission sounds like ''DM'' and ''Player'' are very, very different. 






Sadly the 3x rules are full of bad editing, over sights, poor wording, mistakes and down right craziness. And the bad players try an exploit this by interpreting things in their favor, if not just bending or breaking the rules.   








A couple things give a character the ability to add a spell to a list or cast or spell or such...and some of them are poorly worded and the exploit player will say they can cast a spell off ''any spell list'', as it does not say a single spell list. 


So...in your homebrew rulings interpretation of the game, your one of the players that thinks a sorcerer can add a cleric spell to their spell list? 






The expatiations of the exploit players are not common, but like most fads it has faded away.  Plus as the exploit players must be ''cool and hip'' they have moved to 5E as they must play the newest edition to have ''street cred''.  And amazingly when they do came back to 3X, they have lost their crazy exploit insanity, maybe as they can't do it as much in 5E.

Never said that. Never even implied it.










WROOOOOOONG!!


If the player has no power, then they are not playing. They're watching you play with dolls they made.










Never said they "just play a single character". Their role is different, but they are just a player.






 


Not untrue. But I acknowledged this. "It is part of the dm's job to patch obvious holes in the rules, like drown-healing." 












As they can already add spells off of their list, what else could that line of text mean?








Then why are you still complaining about it?

[Vypernight]

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.

[Askold]

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.)

[ironbite]

Brett's back to GMing Pathfinder and we're gonna all go wear the Carrion Crown.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9DHXtPoKSE" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9DHXtPoKSE</a>

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

Oh and I finished up Mutants and Masterminds as well

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaLJET6sWVs" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaLJET6sWVs</a>

Ironbite-gonna go back to this with some sort of individual adventures for the Knights.

[Askold]

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.



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.)



...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.

[ironbite]

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVHhBFj5nFA" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVHhBFj5nFA</a>

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.

[Askold]

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.

[Askold]

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.

[Svata]

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).

[Askold]

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...

[Cloud3514]

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.

[Askold]

Started a Dark Heresy 2 campaign set entirely on the planet of Necromunda. CSI: Necromunda is what I'm calling it.