xkcd

by **Jessica** » Thu Oct 27, 2011 3:51 pm UTC

I'm an assistant ST in a mage larp right now. It works better in this larp situation, because it allows more things to happen at once. I've also run a game with an assistant ST, who helped people who wanted to do something else, and watched rolls, and helped out when I was getting overwhelmed. I've seen co-STs. It usually is in the world builder/rules manager way. Though, the problem is if one starts taking over...

Sharing the job can be very difficult, and you need a lot of communication outside of game to make it work.

Oh! I'm going to be playing 4e Eberron soon. We'll see how it goes. Good roleplayers, so it should be fun.

by **halbarad** » Thu Oct 27, 2011 4:11 pm UTC

The general idea I think we are going for is two seperate parties working in the same campaign towards their own goals which are effected by the other party.

by **Jessica** » Thu Oct 27, 2011 4:47 pm UTC

In that case, sure, it could work. The only problem is that you're not even guaranteed to meet the other group, or it isn't likely they will meet.

by **clockworkmonk** » Wed Nov 30, 2011 5:58 pm UTC

So I've been working on a one-shot adventure for a horror game, haven't decided on the system, but that isn't particularly important. anyways.

Clockworkmonk and his game wrote:the party is driving cross country to attend/investigate stuff. near the end of the trip, approaching their destination in Los Angeles. (perhaps route 66?)

In the Mojave, their car begins having troubles.the only thing in sight is a large sign [HOTEL] in the distance.

upon arriving at the hotel, the front manager looks to be very bored. allow players to ask for help, call a tow service, whatever. Nothing can be out till tomorrow.

art on the walls seems out of place, stuck decades long past. looking at it straight on it appears quite normal Norman Rockwell style stuff. But out of the corner of your eye, it appears to moving, and somewhat macabre.

See what the party does. Ideally they decide to sleep. when sleeping, have the party wake up before dawn, hearing murmurs and a unintelligable chanting from below.

as they decided to play, and are paranormal investigators anyways, They (hopefully) decide to investigate. back in the lobby things are different. The art is still in the same style, but now clearly shows scenes of violence. the sounds eminate from one bare wall.

Through this secret door lies a staircase. as it goes down, it stops being clearly manmade and shifts to rough hewn from the walls, and finally to caverns. as they move, the chants become ever louder, but no more intelligable.

Have fights, explore, listen in on the rites, whatever the party prefers on the the way to the central chamber, deep within the labyrinth of caverns.

In the central chamber, the ceremony takes place, where people dressed in robes and masks are butchering a thing (thinking of describing it as similar to something that might have been a deer once upon a time) that never seems to weaken or fall.

If the party is sensible, they probably try to escape, but they can't find their way out, lost under the desert, no finding their way home.

at this time, Start the song, if it hasn't been figured out yet.
Spoiler:
Hotel California

by **rrwoods** » Wed Nov 30, 2011 6:50 pm UTC

Oh man, you totally need song references everywhere too. Empty wine bottles, full champagne bottles, mirrored ceilings.

by **clockworkmonk** » Wed Nov 30, 2011 6:54 pm UTC

I plan to, but want to find the right balance. don't want it to be too obvious.

by **Xanthir** » Wed Nov 30, 2011 7:00 pm UTC

The general rule of DMing in this context is that players will miss 90% of your references anyway, so lay it on thick and have fun with it.

by **pseudoidiot** » Wed Nov 30, 2011 7:02 pm UTC

Dread is perfect for one-short horror games.

http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xca ... t=0&page=1

by **rrwoods** » Wed Nov 30, 2011 7:07 pm UTC

I think you mitigate (possibly eliminate) the risk of being too obvious by staying away from the song lyrics themselves, possibly to the point of deliberately avoiding the words used to describe the scene in the song. Don't say "mirror" or "ceiling", say "reflection" and "[look[ing]] up". Etc.

by **clockworkmonk** » Wed Nov 30, 2011 7:08 pm UTC

I was thinking Noctum, though Call of Cthulhu has a place in my heart. Nossibly nWoD Hunter.

though I still really wanna convert Don't Rest Your Head for the movie Ink.

Though I will definately look into Dread.

by **Jessica** » Wed Nov 30, 2011 7:13 pm UTC

Jenga based randomization. Such a great idea.
Always wanted to play that game.

by **pseudoidiot** » Wed Nov 30, 2011 7:30 pm UTC

I played an awesome Inception hack of Dread earlier this year (there were 3 Jenga towers of decreasing size BRRRMM), but I have yet to try it out non-hacked.

I will say that in 15+ years of tabletop gaming nothing has evoked such a physical response (hands shaking, increased heart-rate, brow sweating) as trying to complete that one last mission-accomplishing thing by getting a tiny wooden block out of an unstable tower of wooden blocks. It was amazing.

by **SirBryghtside** » Wed Nov 30, 2011 8:04 pm UTC

Just had my second session. I'm starting to regret going with 'half-orc that smashes stuff', because that means I don't actually get to do anything interesting from a role-play perspective.

Still, it's fun

by **clockworkmonk** » Wed Nov 30, 2011 8:07 pm UTC

you can always re-characterize yourself. I mean, characters change as you play, I mean, why do you, as a Half-Orc, Smash Stuff? How do you feel about the other members of your party and how they feel about Smashing stuff?

by **Yakk** » Wed Nov 30, 2011 8:51 pm UTC

What kind of stuff do you smash? Do you have a preference? Is there a kind of smashing that is better than others?

Maybe you don't like to smash blue things on Tuesday.

Maybe you are actually acting as a half-orc who smashes stuff, to avoid the emotional attachments and inevitable rejection due to your half-orc nature? You are actually a fragile flower on the inside.

by **bigglesworth** » Wed Nov 30, 2011 9:26 pm UTC

Why does the half-ork smash stuff? Look into Freud, Jung, Foucault

by **pseudoidiot** » Wed Nov 30, 2011 10:33 pm UTC

Half-orc smash stuff because half-orc feel smashed inside.

by **Vaniver** » Wed Nov 30, 2011 11:37 pm UTC

I played a normal horror one-shot with Dread. (Sort of; we hadn't actually gotten the rules, and just used the idea of Jenga as a conflict resolution mechanism.) It was rather good, though things became somewhat less tense once we realized that one of the players was really good at Jenga. Time limits for pulls seem helpful at keeping things tense.

by **Decker** » Thu Dec 01, 2011 3:45 pm UTC

clockworkmonk wrote:you can always re-characterize yourself. I mean, characters change as you play, I mean, why do you, as a Half-Orc, Smash Stuff? How do you feel about the other members of your party and how they feel about Smashing stuff?

Yakk wrote:What kind of stuff do you smash? Do you have a preference? Is there a kind of smashing that is better than others?

Maybe you don't like to smash blue things on Tuesday.

Maybe you are actually acting as a half-orc who smashes stuff, to avoid the emotional attachments and inevitable rejection due to your half-orc nature? You are actually a fragile flower on the inside.

bigglesworth wrote:Why does the half-ork smash stuff? Look into Freud, Jung, Foucault

And this is why I love this forum.

by **SirBryghtside** » Thu Dec 01, 2011 4:50 pm UTC

I felt the same way.

by **Belial** » Fri Dec 02, 2011 1:19 pm UTC

clockworkmonk wrote:Nossibly nWoD Hunter.

It honestly sounds like it would be better suited to vanilla nWoD

though I still really wanna convert Don't Rest Your Head for the movie Ink.

And here I thought I was the only person who saw that movie.

by **clockworkmonk** » Fri Dec 02, 2011 1:53 pm UTC

looking back through it, yeah, vanilla nWoD would work just fine. might do it that way because the people I would be running it for are already familiar with nWoD.

by **Decker** » Fri Dec 02, 2011 2:08 pm UTC

I'm not sure this belongs in here, but friend is talking about putting together a game of Scion. Anyone have any experience with this game? I think it's White Wolf.

by **clockworkmonk** » Fri Dec 02, 2011 2:16 pm UTC

Yes. It is a White Wolf game where you play the children of Deities. I found it very enjoyable, though it can have problems when you are all running around as full-blown gods.

It uses a similar rule-set to Exalted, so mechanically it actually functions.

any specific questions?

by **Decker** » Fri Dec 02, 2011 2:20 pm UTC

clockworkmonk wrote:any specific questions?

...actually, no. I just wanted to know if people found it enjoyable or maybe some very general advice. Personal stories?
Edit: Actually have two of the books already.

by **clockworkmonk** » Fri Dec 02, 2011 2:40 pm UTC

Well, I was once playing a low-level game where I was a son of Baron Samedi. We needed to get into a place cordoned off by the police. So I drove my hearse up to the checkpoint, ordered zombies out the back, Screamed "Oh god, its happening again!" and drove off in a panic.

In a different game we focused on Arthurian myth, which ended with the going to Avalon and awaiting the awakening of King Arthur to deal with the end of the world.

good times.

by **halbarad** » Fri Dec 02, 2011 4:45 pm UTC

Played a lot of Scion myself and gone from Hero all the way up to God at the minute. It's pretty fun though we've developed a few house rules as we've gone along as some things are pretty silly even for this system.

by **bigglesworth** » Fri Dec 02, 2011 7:41 pm UTC

clockworkmonk wrote:It uses a similar rule-set to Exalted, so mechanically it actually functions.

As opposed to which games that mechanically do not function?

by **Jessica** » Fri Dec 02, 2011 7:50 pm UTC

I know he doesn't mean WoD (new or old), because mechanically it works perfectly.
>:

by **clockworkmonk** » Fri Dec 02, 2011 8:48 pm UTC

old world of darkness had a rather major problem. Chiefly that the more dice you had in your pool, the more likely you were to fail. had to do with how botches and rolling 1s worked. ideally, a dice pool of about 3 was as high as you would want to go.

by **Jessica** » Fri Dec 02, 2011 8:53 pm UTC

true. new world is much better for that.

by **clockworkmonk** » Fri Dec 02, 2011 8:54 pm UTC

I still use the old world setting though. Might be that I simply love the factions in Mage: The Ascension

by **Yakk** » Fri Dec 02, 2011 9:07 pm UTC

The more likely you where to botch, but not the more likely you where to fail?

(.1x^-1 + .5x^0 + .4x^1 + .1x^2)^3 gives me a 0.351 chance to fail.
...^4 gives 0.2912 chance to fail.
...^5 gives 0.24691 chance to fail.

Now, Botch|Fail definitely goes up, and possibly Botch chance goes up.

x^20 case gives

Spoiler:

where *^k I think means *10^k. (Wolfram alpha output)

The failure terms are thus:

Spoiler:

Which works out to about 4%.

by **Scallel** » Fri Dec 02, 2011 10:04 pm UTC

Recently a group of friends and myself have been Playing D&D (two months) and I was going to buy Player Handbook 3 so I could have a shardmind as a character race. However the DM said he would allow it, but only if I could justify my being a level two warlock. So I tried to look up information on the Living Gate and couldn't find a single useful thing past the informatiOn told by the handbook itself. Can anyone tell me about it or tell me where I could information on it. I really want this character. Yays and thank yous

by **Belial** » Sat Dec 03, 2011 6:59 am UTC

clockworkmonk wrote:I still use the old world setting though. Might be that I simply love the factions in Mage: The Ascension

I've come to the conclusion that nMage has better villains, it's just that their hero factions are so goddamn stupid and boring that I can't bring myself to care.

by **Yakk** » Sat Dec 03, 2011 3:26 pm UTC

What do you know about the living gate? What motivates (in general) shardminds?

What do you know about warlocks? What motivates the warlock to make a pact? What kind of beings do they make pacts with?

by **big boss** » Sat Dec 03, 2011 8:54 pm UTC

So me and my friends are thinking of playing our first game of DnD ever, but we have no clue where to begin. We have been looking around at rules and games but not sure what would be the best for 1st time player. Any suggestions?

by **Yakk** » Sat Dec 03, 2011 8:59 pm UTC

Wizards has a "first game kit", that includes pregen characters, a basic plot, and an adventure on their website.

It even includes an early encounter that will so kill the entire party unless they run away, play really well, or get lucky.

by **voicedotter** » Sat Dec 03, 2011 10:17 pm UTC

My group has started playing Iron Kingdoms. We have a mismatched party.
A former bounty hunter ranger with a hate for Goblins.
An Ios elf that is a cleptomaniac rogue.
A druid elf that only speaks druidic that was raised by wolves and hates everything unnatural.
And finally an alcoholic barbarian Trollkin that carries around a barrel of beer on his back.

We have not gotten far in the story and have caused shenanigans.

by **SecondTalon** » Sun Dec 04, 2011 7:41 am UTC

voicedotter wrote:My group has started playing Iron Kingdoms. We have a mismatched party.
A former bounty hunter ranger with a hate for Goblins.
An Ios elf that is a cleptomaniac rogue.
A druid elf that only speaks druidic that was raised by wolves and hates everything unnatural.
And finally an alcoholic barbarian Trollkin that carries around a barrel of beer on his back.

We have not gotten far in the story and have caused shenanigans.

...gah.

I mean, I've been in groups where there isn't a single party language, but everyone speaks at least a couple of languages and so can translate back and forth in a giant game of Telephone, but... gah. I've never been fond of players who make characters that, regardless of whether or not they can understand various languages, don't at least pick one relatively "normal" language to use as something to speak while chatting with the gang. I mean, fuck, do the stereotype "Fine, I'll speak Elven to you heathens, it's as low of a language as I'll go" shit if you have to, but damn.

Or, in Iron Kingdoms... Shyr or Rhulic. Something that needs that many skill points to speak and read can't be too terribly low.

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