So. Tabletop RPGs.

[UristMcBunny]

Had our second Dark Heresy play session with the same group this weekend, and despite not getting drunk like we did the first time, it remained exactly as fun, manic and ridiculous as the last.  Our GM explained that, for the sake of fun storytelling and to make things more free-flowing and accessible to us newbies, he tweaked and removed a couple of things from the standard game, and it's turned out really well for us.  

Some favourite moments:

In an attempt to sneak weapons into the dinner meeting with a minor lord on the backwater planet we're checking out, I wrapped my shotgun in a bundle of twigs and tied a strip of fancy fabric around it and tried to pass it off as a fasces.  Not only did the guards buy it, but the guard who checked me over thought it looked pretty cool and wanted one for himself.  Keep in mind that the "robes" I made were of random, brightly coloured but "pretty" fabric, roughly sewn into something we could wrap around ourselves while I squatted in the dirt.  The Psyker's robes had flowers on.  He wore it anway, because the other robe he tried to buy to wear turned out to be more like a miniskirt when he finally tried it on.

After our "lord" failed to convince the lord we were visiting anything about our false story, he was finally completely convinced that we were who we claimed to be when, upon asking us the name of the land we hailed from, me and another feral worlder blurted out "SPOON!" in our native tongue (we were bickering away in the background because I was refusing to eat with cutlery and kept trying to steal things and flirt with the nobles at the table).  And thus, having convinced the lord that we hail from the distant and noble land of Spoon, we managed to completely circumvent the GM's planned massive ambush and forced him to take a smoke break to re-plan the rest of the evening.

During battle with a pair of large, wolf-like creatures.  I'm under one, pinned, being helped by another member of the party wielding a staff, and have the wolf held by the throat preventing it from moving as I try to stab it.  The feral-world guardsman has a wolf prone on the floor, where it fell after getting it's paw stuck in a hole, and is shooting at it from point-blank range while it flails ineffectually and fails to get up over and over again.  And then the saga of the terrible rolls began - both for us and the GM, resulting in about 15 minutes of the wolves failing to move or get up and us failing to hit them, which we could only picture as the poor beasts flailing about on the ground as we waved our weapons about the places in completely random directions.

So.  Anyone else play tabletop RPGs?  Any hilarious anecdotes?  Game reccs?

[nearly_takuan]

Some weekends one of my friends runs a Pathfinder game he's writing for just two players. I'm a melee-Magus, my roommate's a bow-Cleric, and we recruit GM-built NPCs that help us out during combat encounters.

Well, our second recruit is a glaive-wielding Fighter with a feat that gives her two extra chances to use an "Attack of Opportunity" against vulnerable enemies per round. Mechanically, what this means is that any enemy who has to move more than one square to attack her must necessarily move through an area where she can attack them first, and she is able to respond to up to three enemies per round this way. So while the rest of us are desperately trying to kite a random mook into a corner so we can all attack it at once and kill it, Beth the Fighter is slowly wading through the enemy forces drenched in their blood, and nobody can even touch her.

She was intended to be strong, but perhaps not quite this strong. Our GM might be a little too good at building powerful characters!

Of course, I can't give him all the credit; the Legend of Beth is also partly due to my own tactical choices—she practically soloed one encounter because I used some of my own minor magic tricks to help her get into position, and then directed her to essentially stand guard as a living trap that every enemy would eventually have to deal with, whether they were trying to escape or attack us. In another encounter, everyone almost got swarmed by zombies and we had to leave Beth behind because she couldn't run as fast as the rest of us—but thanks to her counterattacking skills (and just a bit of magical assistance), she escaped unscathed anyway because she'd walk twenty feet, and then turn around and slaughter three of the zombies running toward her, and then walk twenty feet, and then turn around....

[kleenestar]

Awwww yiss this is my jam!

I'm currently playing Nobilis (a sort of mashup of 2e and 3e) which is super fun. My PC is the Power of Time, which means she's in charge of, well, time itself. That in turn means I get lots of fun time travel plotlines! There's a big demonic plot to remove her from her post because she chose to serve Heaven; my current theory is that they're worried she'll travel back in time and stop the Fall, which she can maybe theoretically do? Or at least go back in time to see it, though I'm not convinced she could do much. They seem to think she's a lot more powerful than she is. Right now she's in the "OMG HOLY CRAP IS THAT A DRAGON" phase. (The answer is yes. He runs a used bookstore.)

[Enail]

I haven't played much, only a handful of one-shot things, but there's been a running theme of idiotic bravery and impressively terrible rolls, the most notable of which resulted in me failing at fetching donuts for a study session in the Buffy RPG. I think I landed up sticking my thumb in a jelly donut and getting so sticky I stuck to the table.

[Guest]

Oooh shit, yeah, I love table-top RPGs.

But I think the more memorable moments for me happen outside the game IRL amongst players. One of my favoritests (I know it's not a word) is Jovian Chronicles, a sci-fi, anime/Gundam/Macross inspired RPG from the late 90's. I gotta say that their game mechanics/roll system still holds up pretty good.

The Silhouette system based entirely on the d6, like a lot of current RPGs. The short of it is, you roll your d6's and take the higher of the two rolls (any doubles of the highest rolls adds +1 to your roll, so if the highest roll you got is 5 and there's three extra 5's you add in +3 and so on), then you gotta rolll higher than your opponent or the given threshold rating. Depending on how much you beat the roll/threshold or how far under the roll/threshold you are, determines how well you succeed or how bad you fail. It's pretty cool because using that system in combat characters can die very easily.

[Gentleman Johnny]

Awwww yiss this is my jam!

I'm currently playing Nobilis (a sort of mashup of 2e and 3e) which is super fun. My PC is the Power of Time, which means she's in charge of, well, time itself. That in turn means I get lots of fun time travel plotlines! There's a big demonic plot to remove her from her post because she chose to serve Heaven; my current theory is that they're worried she'll travel back in time and stop the Fall, which she can maybe theoretically do? Or at least go back in time to see it, though I'm not convinced she could do much. They seem to think she's a lot more powerful than she is. Right now she's in the "OMG HOLY CRAP IS THAT A DRAGON" phase. (The answer is yes. He runs a used bookstore.)

I have that game in every edition but I've never played it. Count me jealous.

[kleenestar]

If we ever meet in person, I'll run a Nobilis one-shot for you! It's my absolute favorite game.

[Xexyz]

Oooo, Pathfinder. I have a Pathfinder game every Friday with my friends. My friend is running a published campaign while I'm running a homebrew campaign. We tend to play several months in one campaign and then switch to the other; currently we're playing the one he's running while I come up with material to continue mine.

In my campaign the player characters have just finished a quest to locate an ancestral crown that, according to legend, can only be worn by the true king of the country they're currently in - a false king who tries to wear the crown will be stricken with a terrible curse. They were hired to find this crown by a mercenary warlord who is in the employ of a group of nobles who have (who the claim) is the true king in their midst, while claiming a false king currently sits on the throne. They've been mostly uncomfortable about the whole matter because they agreed to essentially aid in facilitating a coup d'état whose only noble-seeming member is the young supposed true king who's infatuated with the warlord and thus pretty much does whatever she says. On the other side, the current king who sits on the throne oppresses the citizens and even revived a previously outlawed custom of debt-slavery.

On top of all that, the country itself has a racist streak, with the player characters often being referred to with the epithet javalice - which means 'dirty skin' in the local language - as several of the characters are from a southern country and have olive or darker skin. Needless to say, the player characters are pretty eager to get out of the country.

[Robjection]

I remember in one Pathfinder game I played a while back that I was playing a Mr. Hyde style alchemist (the kind that focuses on fighting in melee aided primarily by her mutagen). After a few sessions with the feral mutagen discovery, this alchemist developed a schtick where, after slaying an enemy, she would briefly pause to snack on the newlydead. On one occasion, we entered this temple to find out some vital information and locate a valuable artifact. The people in the temple didn't want us doing that, so they tried to fight us off, but we disposed of all of them and my alchemist ate quite a bit of human flesh that day. So much, in fact, that as we left the temple, my alchemist used her claws to engrave the following message on the wall:

"10/10, would dine again"

[Gentleman Johnny]

Kleenestar, I find the system a little bloated (I'm a real fan of streamlined systems lately) and I imagine you have to have the right sort of players to really make it work but its always stuck out to me as something special.

[Jolly]

Has anyone tried Roll20?
I think I'm going to be part of a game coming up and I'm pretty nervous. I only ever played tabletop RPGs with college buddies in my master's and half of our group were girls. Most of my anxiety is probably in my head though.

[Gentleman Johnny]

Oh, in case I haven't mentioned it elsewhere, everyone should check out Apocalype World. The character sheets are a free download and unlike many games, will give you a good feel for how the system works. The system itself creates a great blend of action and drama and I love it for that.

[Werel]

I'm in a Vampire game right now, despite it really not being my favorite game, because I only know one person here who does these things and it's what she wanted to run. I am starting to enjoy it, not least of which because it's always a treat to experience the World of Darkness version of your city:

-Vampires are tolerated so long as they stay squarely in Waikiki, where they belong, with the tourist vermin who are not under the protection of any supernatural faction. The Jimmy Buffett Experience is a favorite feeding ground. This rings very true in my mind every time I have to go to Waikiki IRL.

-Honolulu has no Prince, so the Masquerade is nearly nonexistent, and you can kill tourists publicly with relative impunity. You can also create new vampires with impunity, which is tightly regulated on the mainland. This leads to a lot of real shitty, clueless young vampires running around making messes. And then they are usually killed and sold for parts.

-Vampires should really not go to Chinatown. Ever. That's central mage territory in what is largely a mage-run town, and the black market in vampire parts is booming (especially for export to China and the Philippines).

-Most of the more minor Hawaiian gods have an uneasy alliance with the lycanthropes, because they're the only ones with a vested interest in the protecting the island against development; they also form the primary resistance to attempts by the Prince of Las Vegas to create a protectorate Princedom in Honolulu (side note: why do real Hawaiians love Las Vegas so much?   ).

-The Nightmarchers are very serious business. Way more serious than any dumb old vampire, as an unfortunate ex-PC learned. When you hear those nose flutes, get down on the ground.

[TheRoux]

I'm DMing a D&D custom campaign where the players are caught between a feud between the main religious group of the continent and a character called... The Dark One (doum! doum! doum!) who's personality is based on Robert Carlyle's Rumplestilskin in Once Upon a Time.
(In my campaign, the guy is a Nephelem, half demon, half angel (yeah like in the Diablo series), but grew up in a goblin village, hence his name).

However, his name evolved during the Campaign. At some point, my players, after having misheard me talking about him, started calling him Dark Juan (use Spanish accent). Then, after some time, and I don't remember why, his name became Darth Heinz... and to his latest name: Lord Ketchup...

Also, the players eventually learn, through a vision that they are Lord Ketchup's descendants (he's over 1000 years old), and they share a bit of his power (they are resistant to his turning-people-into-zombies "farts"). At that moment, they decided that the party's Druid's Bear companion was also Ketchup's descendant (because of his "wild" personality) and renamed him Sir Bearington.


I would love to play a Pathdinder's campaign... I've got a character (that I consider to be my shadow persona as DNL would call it) (or my delusional chuunibyou side) that I've wanted to play for a long time... It's a sorceror with the Black Draconic Bloodline (as a class), but the character is really a Black Dragon sealed in a mortal's body (not like Naruto... it's closer to a polymorph curse). Eventually the seal weakens and he regains a bit of his power and memories...

[Gentleman Johnny]

You know, if anyone from the community wanted to run a play by post forum game on RPOL.net, I'd be down to join. Just sayin'. . .

[Guest]

Oh my god RPOL. I hadn't thought about that site in ages.

... I'm pretty sure I probably have a custom icon or two still floating in their database, unless they've purged them in the years since I've used it.

*cough* which is to say I might be down for something light and low-key. We don't necessarily even need a GM, if people are comfortable using the Mythic GM Emulator. I've wanted to try Lady Blackbird for a while, and I ran across Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures recently, which seems like it has a really good mix of quick prep and creating engaging characters with ties.

[Guest]

... I can't believe I haven't posted in this thread already, come to think.

I haven't played anything in a while, and I don't know if I'd have the time for a dedicated campaign these days, but I started with Exalted 1e (as far as actual play, though I was reading oWoD stuff in high school), did some D&D4e, some Scion, a brief Hunter: the Vigil campaign, a sadly-aborted Mage: the Awakening campaign (it had so much promise) and then the longest thing I've ever done, an extremely solipsistic solo Pendragon campaign/writeup. Was rereading that again recently and feeling the itch to break out Mythic and Pendragon and start getting my mind into Salisbury again.

[Gentleman Johnny]

Let me check out this GM emulator thing because Apocalypse World really lends itself to quick but vivid characters with ties to each other. Apocalypse Nerdlounge!

[trooper6]

Ah! RPOL! I still check it everyday, though I'm not currently running or playing in anything on it. I always found gladiator arenas worked really well there.

[Enail]

A play by post game with a GM emulator sounds like fun! Depending on the level of commitment required, I'd be up for it!

[reboot]

A play by post game with a GM emulator sounds like fun! Depending on the level of commitment required, I'd be up for it!

Same, same. I would not be able to devote too much time, but would like to do this.

[celette482]

That would be fun!

Mr Celette and I have been playing D&D encounters for two hours a week. We're on different teams. I am a halfling rogue, who describes herself as "Chaotic Neutral, not Chaotic stupid" after someone pointed out that I made some "discretion is the better part of valor" moves.

[Guest]

I keep forgetting I got Shadowrun 5th Ed this past November... still need to read up on it. D:

[Gentleman Johnny]

Oh I do love some SR5. The tech has advanced nicely, social adepts are finally a viable thing and wireless makes field deckers a special kind of fun.

[UristMcBunny]

Boo. Hiss. My GM has decided he finds being GM too pressuring so is stepping down, meaning abandoning the incredibly fun campaign we've been running.

But yay! One of the other group members, who is a more experienced GM, is stepping up to take over and is going to run a new game with us this evening!

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