During my years-long isolation from the internet I've been doing some traditional gaming. For the younguns that've found their ways here, that's gaming that doesn't require any fancy electronics, and hardly costs you anything.

I've got a small gaming group in my hometown, and I've been doing some gaming with a guy from out of town. Well, out of state, even. We've been doing a pretty decent amount of 3.5, which I've been running, and we're thinking of trying out Pathfinder. I'm in a Shadowrun game, and waaaay too many card games and board games have been happening lately.

Actually, let's have some list:

RPGs:

-First, an Eberron campaign occured, then died. Tom sucks, and is now in jail.

-Then, some Faerun. Nope...only lasted 2 sessions.

-Another person in our group tried running some games, nothing really came of it.

-Legend of the Five Rings. That was sorta fun...the 3r book is just so unorganized, though...

-Back to Faerun. That's what's going on now, and it's been our group's longest game. We're taking a break over the holiday season, but we'll be coming right back to it. I'm having quite a bit of fun running this game, even if my plot is kinda weak and way too shonen-animu-y.

-Aces & 8s. This is being done over break, Derek is running it. I'm mostly enjoying that I actually get to play in a game. So far, this game is pretty good. The book is organized well enough and the game has some interesting mechanics. The 'shot clock' is pretty damned awesome.


Cards:

-Magic the Gathering, obviously. I've been sucked into that one for quite a while...not a whole lot to say there.

-Duel Masters. Decent game, not as entertaining as the anime, though.

-Anachronism. This game had the backing of the History channel, which is pretty cool. It's quick to learn, quicker to play. A game seriously rarely goes beyond two minutes, and the fact that all the characters actually existed (or at least most of them) is pretty neat.

-Pokemon TCG. Just got back into that. Got myself an Umbreon deck and I couldn't be happier. :D

-L5r. Fuuuu~~ This game is fun and all, and the story is pretty interesting but Christ. This game is complicated for the sake of being complicated, I swear the company is run by pedants or some people with some strange complexes. It hasn't seen much love in my group, lately. :/


Anyway, on to my point.

Pokemon: Tabletop Adventures.

I've recently acquired the books for it, and for being a game apparently developed by /tg/, it's surprisingly solid. I've got some friends interested in it, and we should be starting next week or so, so I'll be able to give an actual review of it sometime after we really get into it, but from what I've looked at it looks like it'll be a good time.

Currently we've got someone starting with a machop, someone with a staryu, someone with an aron, and one who hasn't set his stuff up yet.

So, discuss some tg. :D

Also, if anyone's interested I wouldn't mind getting in some play-by-post. :D

Willing to share that manual? It sounds interesting :o

About like 4 months ago we ran an eberron campaign. I was a war forged paladin (so cliche, right?) but we did not get too far sadly.

Stuffs

^That post has all three pdfs, and a link to the tokens for RPTools.

I frikkin' love warforged. :D

Thom played a warforged fighter in our Eberron campaign. X was big, quiet, and scary as hell. That campaign was good, I kinda miss it. :/

Practically the whole campaign took place in Sharn, so it was pretty damn crazy.

I lurk /tg/ and play with character generation in multiple systems, but don't actually play. There's a joke to be made there, probably.


Actually, I am literally at this moment reading some homebrew rules in the form of HENSHIN!, a Kamen Rider RPG.


L5R and 7th Sea have a pretty cool system. Roll x, but keep y, and you voluntarily make the roll harder to do cooler stuff. Plus the settings are awesome too.

My time-sense is five kinds of retarded, am I thinking about the same Eberron game as you nerk? I was a Halfling Bard that called stuff names so hard that they died. Sadly, I am not good at pretending to be charismatic and bardy, so it was still kind of retarded. Especially when I forgot twice that calling dudes names provokes AoO.

One thing I really dig about L5R is exploding dice. :D
Same kinda goes for Aces&8s, except in that all subsequent rolls are at -1. Of course, as little as like 6 damage to any part of the body can cripple someone.

Also HENSHIN! sounds like the best idea ever.

Oh, also there was this one-shot game of All Flesh Must Be Eaten on sup/tg/. The ZM asked me to fill in, since only running with 3 guys is lame, I guess.

I made myself a Black guy wearing a red shirt, expecting to die first. I ended up getting bit, but only after fucking heroing it up and saving some sorta ex-clown that tried to clock me with a coffee pot and leave me as bait while we ran from a horde.

Four players. My guy, who had pretty average scores. He was an average-student-guy, so nothing really impressive, though IIRC I threw excess points into athleticy stuff. Then there was the clown-I-guess, some crazy chick, and a fighty guy who typed terribly and I'm pretty sure didn't characterize at all. I didn't get to see their sheets or backstory or anything, so I'm not too sure about the details on them.

After the horde showed up, we apparently split up and fled to different stores 'cuz hurr. The chick and other guy went into a hardware store, where pretty much nothing happened for them and they looted/MacGuyvered weapons up. Meanwhile, I ran after the clown, who ran into a completely undefensible donut shop.

When the horde inevitably saw us through the windows that made up the entire upper half of the walls, and everything in the store was bolted down, so we couldn't barricade NOTHING, I devised a plan. We'd wait 'til they were almost in, throw a trash can through the furthest window and run like fuck. I'd noticed the clown had a good running score, so we probably would not die.

Instead, when I smashed the window, he hucked a coffee pot at my head, and when he FAILED COMPLETELY to knock me out, he freaked and ran into the dead-end backroom and jumped into a closet. Meanwhile I was fleeing, according to plan.

When I looked back and saw him, I decided to loot the next building for something to save his ass with. "It's a lawyer's office." "UHH WELL FUCK I GUESS I'LL TAKE THE BIGGEST POTTED PLANT HERE THEN"

So I ran back with a fucking bush, yelling to get the zambies away from the clown (whose hands were going numb from holding the doors shut butmycharacterdidntknowthat), who had just finished pissing himself, and had just started shitting himself. Literally.

So magically, the first couple zombies get their faces smashed in by me and my plant, but eventually it gives way and I'm unarmed, and then THREE MORE start running at us from the street. I guess fighty gets bored here, cuz' he runs out of the hardware store with his belt full of hammers and crowbars and shit. I take a crowbar, but we both fail at the same time and get bit while we're in there.

Anyway, we eventually kick the rest of the zombie's asses without further injury. Clown comes out of the closet, I'm too hopped up on adrenaline and pain-from-zombie-bite to notice he shat himself, and when I ask for one of the donuts he'd looted and had in a ziplock in his giant clownpockets, he was like "No way, getcher own".

then the other chick gets a zombie tossed at her. She sets it on fire with a molotov, and then the player gets pissy for a little bit because he didn't know setting zombies on fire only kills them after they eat you. She hucked a propane bomb/tank at it and fled, and then the noise from the explosion made me dive into the clown's closet.


All the while the game was running semi-real-time. Like, if I didn't say an action, I'd basically get skipped - kinda harrowing for a first-timer, but it was exciting.

bro, I've been playing D&D for the past 15 years, from 1st edition to 4e with some experience in exalted, vampire, werewolf, star wars SAGA, d20 modern, savage worlds and some more. :P

I played D&D 3.5 for most of the summer. it was fun. I was even looking into being a DM, learning the rules and all that jazz.


Then I got a job and married (literally started the job the day after marriage lol). The job has me working every other weekend, which is when we'd play, and Kry wouldn't much like me disappearing for two days straight, so in short i'd only be able to make maybe 1 in every 4 game sessions so I just havent been playin.


It's really crummy, cuz I liked playing and I have a lot more character ideas I really want to try. Being a blind, dex based, fencing evil cleric was fucking awesome :B

And no, i didnt have blind-sight or anything lame like that (at least, not until just near the end when i got a cloak with eyes all over it that gave me 70' vision in 360*). So i was truly blind through most of it. and i was FUCKING AWESOME. Never, ever got incapped and NEVER let my teammates die, no matter how much they INSISTED on dropping to -10HP. Disregarding this stupid Kobold, who got himself killed by a giant fucking fireball cuz he's retarded. couldnt save that. then i did resurrect him and then he got stepped on by a dragon. A giant red dragon. so yeah. stupid kobold. I did save him every OTHER time but there are just some things magic blind girls cant fix >:\




I also got back into Magic:TG during that time. Also plenty of fun, but god damn if a game with 6 players cant last a whole fucking day sometimes. But we made some cheap as fuck decks that were just hilarious to play. I made a Vampire deck that was ungodly horrific if you got the right cards. I had a legendary that's effect was that every time it was your turn EVERYONE discards 1 non-vampire creature if possible. Then i had another creature that turned every creature of mine into vampires (for the few that werent) and every time they dealt damage they got +1/+1. Then I had others that would restore my life, kill attacking enemies, damn near everything. It was horrific.

I'm a DnD junkie. I play with a group of friends at least once a month. I have the dual-class "DM's Girlfriend/Bestfriend" for zombie campaigns that we host.

My main guy is a noble djinn from the MM, slightly edited with some old ADnD stats from the Land of Fate campaign set. For the most part, I stick with 3.5, although 4e alright.

Pokemon: Tabletop Adventures is going to kill me.

Seriously, sooo much work on the GM for that game to function. D:

We had our first session of it last week, and it was beautiful.
I seriously love this game.

Potential text-wall incoming:

Dramatis Personae:

Derek's character - A kind and mellow person. He wants to travel the land to meet all the pokemon and to gain a better understanding of them. (He's going to eventually develop psychic powers, but I haven't found much of a way to work that in, yet.) Starter was a Staryu.

Dakota's character - Ash. He's going to be the best there ever was, and how dare anyone get in his way? Basically, Dakota didn't want to bother too much with coming up with his character. Starter is a Machop.

Bryant's character - The youngest in the group, he's a scrawny little nerd, and just generally a child. He wants to see all the technology in the world, and of course has a child-like interest in pokemon. Starter is an Aron.

Ethan's character - The obnoxious I-watch-too-much-moeshit type. She's adorable, but also a bitch, and...yeah. Started with a Swablu.

So, it starts with the party's characters getting their starting gear from the local professor, Willow. They all earned their licenses recently attending a school in a town south of their hometown. They embark on their journey after spending about an hour in-game buying supplies. It was actually sort of fun to do all that, but I do need to remember to get prices down before our next session. I had to wing it on a lot of things, which is fine except for items that I can definitely use the games for pricing, such as pokeballs and potions and whatnot.

Well, they discuss in the local general store where to go next. Bryant won't quit saying 'in the tall grass.' They eventually come to consensus that going straight for gyms or contest halls would be silly right off the bat, so they head to the north-east, toward a town called Shelland, so they might seek entrance to Rosewood, a personally owned forest often used for training and such. It'll take them a few days, so it's good they purchased a yurt.

On their way, they come to a bridge over a shallow river. (The area is a wetlands, so there are plenty of these shallow creeks and rivers dominating the countryside.) Derek decides to let his Staryu get some water, since it's been a bit since it's been in some, and Ethan decides to go check out the river to see if it'd be a good place to fish. Here comes their first wild encounter. As Derek approaches the river some of the reeds can be seen twitching and moving as if something is in them. Turns out it's a Buizel. Derek attempts to get it to like him by kneeling down and offering it some food. This sort of spooks the poor little thing, so it sprays him in the neck with watergun, knocking him backward. It then scurries over to Ethan's character who just giggles about it.

Long story short, no one catches it, and it escapes down the river.
They come across another shallow creek, but this one is slim enough to just hop over, and there is no bridge. Well, they come across another Buizel. This one is hiding in some reeds, poorly. It seems to think it's hidden, while it's actually in plain sight. Dakota decides to show Derek just how it's done. The battle between Buizel and Machop lasts all of two rounds, and it ends in an easy capture for Dakota.

Moving along, they then encounter a Shellos out in the wild, nomming some reeds. Ethan's character thinks it's frikkin' adorable, so she runs over to try to get it, right? Just runs right up to it, to adore it. Well, she breaks out her Swablu and has it use Sing. Everything in a 4-metre radius is put to sleep, including Ethan's character.
She falls right into the mud next to the Shellos while all the other characters are a good distance back, just watching this nonsense. She wakes up and manages to catch it, but now she's absolutely soaked in mud, which doesn't sit well at all.

Now, it's night time. They set up their yurt and get a fire going to keep warm, and to help the half of the party that ended up soaked dry up. Some casual conversation goes on for a bit, then everyone gets to sleep. Here's where I got to have some real fun, terrorizing Derek's character. See, he's already nearly been knocked out by a Buizel today so I decided a nightmare would be fitting, right? Well, his dream starts off normally enough. They're all at the beach, enjoying a nice summer's day when suddenly a massive tidal wave pulls him under. He's drowning and can't tell which way is up, which way is down. He begins to literally feel a pressure building on his chest. It gets harder and harder to ignore, and eventually wakes him from his sleep. He wakes in a cold sweat from this nightmare only to be greeted by a Wooper standing on his chest, staring him in the face. As soon as he opens his eyes "Wooop! Woopwooopwoop Wooop!" A couple of tries to get it in a pokeball, and he's now the proud owner of the most annoying pokemon the group has.

Day breaks, everyone has breakfast and they begin to pick their journey back up. Derek has to explain the wooper to everyone else, because they somehow managed to not wake up during that whole ordeal. We were getting to the point we wanted to wrap it up, because Dakota already had to leave, and it was getting late and on a school day (Ethan's still in HS), so we wanted to finish before they got to the town, which is now within reach. So, to wrap it all up I decide to give Bryant a shot at getting a second pokemon. (being that it's our first time using this system and everyone, including myself haven't really had a whole lot of time to OCD all over the rules I wanted to be nice and play Santa this first session.) So, I just look to him and yell "Bryant! You haven't pissed this whole time! Fuuuuck, your bladder's full!" So he heads off to the nearest tree to relieve his bladder, right? Well, the odor of his wizz annoys the spearow nesting in the tree and it swoops down to strike at him. D:
Well, his Aron makes short work of it.
Seriously, that thing's a beast, and its only offensive move is tackle.
So, he gets a spearow. Everyone seemed pretty pleased with how it went and I'm looking forward to not being sick for next week, so we can get it going again.

I've been reading this and dicking around with character generation today. It runs on Dark Heresy's system, which confuses me even when I'm not having to reference two different books to figure out chargen. I mean, like, do I get any exp to spend on shit besides what I get from drawbacks (I don't think I do)? And skills.

I've so far put together a nerdy, possibly-religious Prodigy (civilian-good-at-synching type, AKA Shinji) with a hueg sync ratio and good Willpower and Toughness. I got a good roll that pumps his AT Strength even higher than it is (based off my synch ratio), and another roll left it's jaw not bolted shut so can bite bitches.

I'd previously made an expendable-sorta Manufactured (Rei, except not a goddamn Angel) shock-trooper, that I wanted to dakka the crap out of stuff with a rifle, but when I scrolled down to the weapon list all the AR kinda weapons were either the useless default gun, or advanced tech.


It has a buncha rules for Eva/Angel combat, which is expected, and rules for pre-Eva deployment, where you maneuver a buncha tanks and aircraft to tie up the angel until the Evas are ready, and test the Eva out. What interested me most was the third phase: Damage Control, where you play a squad of dudes that deploy in like a VTOL plane or an APC and do shit during the battle, like stopping dumbasses not in shelters from looting and evacuating damaged shelters.

A lot of the game goes into infrastructure and support for the Evas. I think you can spend funding on stuff like building infrastructure in your base (turrets, Umbilical and deployment positions, those pop-out plates for cover), and there's even an specialized aircraft whose sole capability is to fly about picking shit up for the Evas, like guns and ammo and crap. There's also a Misato-class (Operations Director), who provides support during battle and spends funds on equipment and research. Without enough players it usually defaults to an NPC, though.

haha, wow. That actually sounds halfway interesting, and not just because of Evangelion.


@Necro- i will attempt to read that text wall some time that isnt 1am lol. but I DID see "So long story short" in the MIDDLE of the wall and i got a good lawl out of it ;)

Well, you see what happens when I just start typing, and don't bother to proofread. XP


EDIT:

So, D. Is Exalted good? I've seen bits here-and-there, but I haven't really looked into it at all. Looks nifty, buuuuuuut.

Also, anyone played Deadlands?
My group wants to do a post-apocalyptic game at some point, so I figure maybe Deadlands?

From what I've heard:

- I dunno how well supported it is with mechanics and shit, but a starting character (or was it a starting party?) is supposed to be capable of fucking up minor gods. Bigger gods are later. You don't develop into a major figure - you start as one. Less kindly, it might describe it as "Powertrip: The Game, where you play Mary Sues".
- Mechanically, you'll throw shittons of dice, and there's a couple dodge abilities that are called Perfect Defenses, where you defend perfectly. Like, you get nuked? Perfect Defense! you dodge the explosion/radiation! In short, it's kind of a clusterfuck, dicewise.
- IIRC, even though you're rapeman, fuckupper of gods, crap's still lethal - getting ripped in half can still kill you, like. As per usual in WoD games, you've got a small pool of wounds. Your godliness comes from your ability to do crazy shit. For example, one of the Perfect Defenses, IIRC, is you phasing out of reality for a second.
- I get an Asiany flavor from the setting. Scarlet Empress, martial arts, stuff like that. The various directions are not-so-asiany, though - the West is full of water and pirates and stuff, for example. You aren't on a planet, either - it's a flat plane of creation, and it's in the middle, where, through crazy shit and divine antics, Chaos was ordered to stop being mental. On the boundaries of ordered Creation is the Wyld, where shit is mental. Fae live there - the crazy, inhuman, alien kinda fae. Also mutants and stuff - like, beastmen and owlbear mutants, as opposed to Fallout mutants.
- Social Combat and court kinda stuff. No longer are you smelly dungeondiving schmucks all the time! I'm pretty sure there's a lot to the political/courtly game, but I can't expound on it, since of course am bad at social interacty shit. Normally, social combat is for convincing people, but you could probably do something like this, too.
- Webcomic. Best Abyssal.
- http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Exalted .

I haven't played Deadlands, but from what I gather of it I have formed the opinion that it's fucking awesome. Steampunk zombie cowboys.

My first screwing with chargen net me a huge fat translator/guide/rifleman (who I imagined to look like Wilford Brimley) who'd ride with stagecoaches, and (I'm not sure if this is correct) could climb faster than he could run. Death from above!

Also, thread.

Looks nifty.

At first, I saw 'ST' a whole lot and was a little turned off, but then I realized it's still a sit-in-your-damned-chair game, which is good. :D

Idunno, LARPing and I just don't seem to get along.

Hmmm...looks like it could be pretty snazzy, but I'm not sure if I want to introduce that to my group. One of our players, Bryant, is the most obnoxious fuck as is, I don't need him having a character that ridiculous.

For example, in our Faerun campaign, which I need to start writing up stuff for, his character "Grey" (I forget his first name, since we don't use it, anyway) is a rogue/swash who alternates between wielding a cutlass and a gun, right?

Well, he's keeping track of ~ahem..."Goblins pwnt" on his character sheet.
I'm seriously this >< close to not describing his kills, anymore.

Every. Frikkin. Time.

B: Well, I take my gun, and I shoot him in the face.
N: Alright, roll it up.
B: *rolls* *gets...let's say a 19* Well, I hit him.
B: *rolls before I acknowledge he's hit* *Let's say...16 damage*
N: Grey levels the gun with the goblin's head, takes aim, and releases a lead ball into the poor, unsespecting creature's skull. Blood splatters against the wall opposite Grey and the loud sound can be heard throughout the building.
B: Ah, he's so dead! God, etc, etc...

FOR THE NEXT TEN GODDAMN MINUTES

ALL I can hear is him going on about how he killed a fucking goblin.
A fucking 1 HD goblin.

Jesus.



Oh, here's a couple examples of why he sucks, and should never open his mouth again:

In our current Faerun campaign he wasn't always Grey.
There was the failure of a Cleric, Helm.

Big ass aasimar, right? Worshipped Tempus, god of fuckin' shit up for GLORY.
Alright, this is a sound concept and could easily be a great character.
There is no such thing with Bryant.
He plays the damned thing practically like a barbarian.

Alright, here's the setup:

Helm, Sefris (Derek's character in this campaign, a tiefling wizzud), and Nyrim (Dakota's character, a moon-elf dusklbade) are sent by the academy of Waterdeep to inspect some happenings in a nearby town, Gloomwell to the north by Kryptgarden forest. The locals are seeing crazy demon-lights and such.

Well, they eventually find out it's one of the local youths who turns out to be a sorcerer. The kid flees to Kryptgarden, thinking he's got some crazy devil-curse upon himself and that the townsfolk might just kill him. So, they head out to go find him, tell him that he's just a sorcerer (You're a sorcerer, Darvin!) and that's alright.

They get him calmed down and to accept what he is. When suddenly "WIIIIIIIIIIIIITCH!" From out of nowhere, Blackstag, the town's head wood-cutter guy comes swinging his handaxe, going for Darvin and everyone else just for being near him.

What's Bryant's solution as a cleric with a good alignment? If you thought anything along the lines of subdue Blackstag or calm him down you'd be hella wrong.
"I cast enlarge person on myself!"
Next round
"I wanna suplex him!"

Now, while I'll admit the idea of a giant aasimar suplexing a foe is alright, good aligned people just shouldn't try to break common folk like that.


Then there's the fiasco with him dragging a dead necromancer back to Goldenfields even though they were told to handle the matter discretely.

I had another, but I can't think of it at the moment, but I'm sure you get the picture. Guy sucks.

EDIT: Just remembered what it was.
He's a rogue, so what's on the top of his shopping list?
Climbing gear? No.
Easily concealed weapons? No.
Poisons? No.
Trap-making supplies? No.
Nifty wondrous items? No.
A blunderbuss. A freaking blunderbuss.


Alsoalso, Deadlands does sound pretty nifty.

This is too hilarious for me to take issue with.

In hindsight I sorta see it.

Sorta.

Ahh. Bryant. Still a retard, ehh? Lol. :D

I miss being around. I want to play!

Yeah.

I guess it doesn't come off like that so much through mere text.
If only I could type in his annoying voice. :ygrumpy:


Buuuut, when ya get back here, fool.
So much dnd.

So right now, at, uh, six in the morning, I am reading the DM supplement thing they put out for Adeptus Eva. It has, among other things, suggestions for a bunch of scenarios besides the basic "School interspersed with Eva Fights" thing. Reading the first right now, it talks about personal-scale raids of NERV. This apparently happens in End of Evangelion, which I have not watched (:\). It's interesting, cuz' your characters are just kids, probably unarmed, etc, whereas the SUPPORT ONLY FOREVER Operations Director is now the main man.

Right after that is Operation Thunderdome (THUNDERDOME!), where your pilots go into VR and beat the Eva-loving shit out of each other.

Saviors of humanity!


There're also "Comedy" scenarios. One of them is named "The World's Most Dangerous Game". I haven't read it yet but I take it to mean your Evas will put on giant pith helmets and stalk other Evas in the deepest reaches of Africa.

(EDIT:

Oh my God

I am finding a group to do this right fucking now

Also


This wasn't what I expected

but it is a thousand times better

Eva-scale Vuvuzelas yo)

Eva soccer?

Yes.

>Mekton Zeta (old mecha animu system, uses the Interlock system (also seen in Cyberpunk 2020)) chargen
>Roll really good for stats (Stats go from 2-10 ("normal" being 6), I have two 10s, two 9s, and everything else is 7 or above except a 5 and a 3)
>Brainiac build, gonna dump points into skill for doctoran and craftan and stuff afterwards
>"Oh, well okay, overpowered semi-Sue incoming I guess."
>Start rolling on the Lifepath charts (auto-backstory-framework thing)
>"Tragedy! Your parents defected to the other side!"
>"Tragedy! Your family was destroyed in an accident! Everyone who wasn't killed was crippled utterly!"
>"Tragedy! Your significant other (who you were totally into) died in a pointless accident!"
>"You've got five siblings! Two hate you, and two don't really care about you!" (one hero worships you, but it's not as funny if I mention him)
>This is only up to age 16
>Realize I put the 3 into Luck

Honk. To top it off, the personality charts got me a "sneaky/deceptive personality", and I value vengeance most. Less angsttown is the favorite object, which is a musical instrument. Dad's harmonica, maybe.

Anyway, I figure my character gets off "lightly" with just getting a leg smashed off. So now my supacool doctorengineermechanic gets to doctorengineermechanic up cyborg prosthetics for everyone!

(EDIT: Sadly, even at genius-tier, you don't get enough points to be awesome at everything. Baww. So now I'm just awesome at long-term treatment, first aid, and cybernetics, with minors in fixin' machines-n'-crap.)

(ADEAT: >"Every two years you work, you save up 2d10 spess bux!"
>Six bullets for a magnum: $50. The magnum itself: $1,000. A school uniform: $40. The cheapest gun: $100
>"Surely this is incorrect. /look up errata"
>Errata mentions nothing
>"Oh dude, we left out like a fuckton of skills, despite them being referenced in other places and stuff."

Man seriously what.)

So...I suck at portraying dread and horror. :ygrumpy:

Idunno, maybe I'm just being overcritical of myself, because everyone seemed to enjoy it, but I just feel like I was throwing too much at them all at once, which just feels wrong to me, I try to introduce themes like that subtly, but last Sunday...ew.

Anyone have tips for pacing horror-themed adventures and such?


See, here's what happened:

They've been resting up in Waterdeep and doing some training and whatnot. Rict (Alex's character, the halfling cleric of Lathander) is trying to set up a festival in the coming months, Nyrim trained with Savelor (who has been the biggest plot developer so far, he's the party's benefactor, a harper even) and performed a ritual (eh has a weapon of legacy, his family's moonblade) to gain some power. Well this all took place within a tenday and was kind of handled mostly as catching back up with what's been going on during the break between sessions.

Well, while Rict was in the middle of a sermon, into his chapel comes a lad bearing a large case full of scrolls n' such. This lad has been sent from a town on the opposite side of Ardeep forest, Greenhill. The letter he brings to Rict was penned by another cleric of Lathander, one Rict knows. The letter speaks of a town that has suddenly changed...the people all seem very odd and the cleric who wrote the letter has become suspicious of some evil workings in the town and had decided to look into it, and has sent the letter to inform Rict of this to ask for his help in leaving the town, suspecting that he has been discovered.

So he gathers up the party and they hitch a ride with a merchant to a road that splits off from the trade way toward Greenhill. This is where shit starts to become fucked, which I feel I could have done better, but...
It takes them three days to reach Greenhill from where they are. During the first day Nyrim, being the one in the lead, sees a creature up ahead. It looks like some kind of man-beast, like a 7' tall man covered in a coat of long hair with batlike features in the face. As they approach Sefris gets a better look and recognizes it as an Alaghi, which tend to be neutral so they decide not to engage it. As they get closer they see that it is standing over the body of a deer that it has speared and it seems to be working on getting that ready to take back to wherever the hell it lives and eats. The party decides to attempt talking to it in Sylvan which only Nyrim knows. It can't communicate too well, but it seems to not mind their presence and it seems they'll have no issues with it. As they are about to leave, however Rict says something along the lines of "Lathander bless you." which causes it to freak out and it tears the deer in half and runs back into the forest screaming.

That night Sefris has a nightmare, and so does Nyrim, but that's normal.
Sefris's dream is nothing too horrid, he's sitting alone in the dark with nothing in sight when suddenly a pair of glowing red eyes appear in front of him in the distance and begin to approach. At the end of the dream he sees that these eyes belong to a giant skeletal face looming over him.

Oh, also the forest just has a feeling of foreboding to everyone while they're on watch.

After waking they continue on their way. Nothing of particular note happens during the day, it's what happens at night that messes with them. Sefris's nightmare continues, now it ends with a massive skeletal face looming over him and he can feel it reaching out around him, as if to consume him. Rict tries casting remove curse on Nyrim to see if it will end his nightmares, which it doesn't. This night Rict is painfully aware of his sleep. There are no dreams, and the passage of time does not feel accelerated like it normally would. He's essentially just lying there asleep but fully aware of it.

When they awake Grey finds that his tent has been rearranged. Everything has been moved from where he had put it and it is facing the exact opposite direction from what it had been. Again, nothing in particular happens during this day and it is what happens during the night that matters.

Sefris's dream continues yet again. Now he can clearly see that it is a Bone Devil that is approaching him in his dream and it speaks to him in some language he does not know. Rict dreams of being in a swarm of children all dressed in drab attire with skin greyed from apparent death. Their eyes have all been removed and the children surround him, their clammy flesh pressing against him. He awakes to find he was gripping his white-hot holy symbol so tight his hands were bleeding.

Upon waking, Grey finds himself at least 20 feet deep in the forest, completely naked. His tent seems to have been moved 20 feet in the opposite direction, set apart from everyone else's. He heads over there to clothe himself and finds his tent is filled with dust and cobwebs as though it had been there for years. Nyrim goes to inspect the area Grey had been moved to to find nothing particular until he kicks the dirt where Grey's head had been. When he does this a thick black liquid seems to come to life as it spills from the ground and attempts to go back in. He kicks it into submission and fetches Sefris who bottles some to inspect later.

Well, after all this buttfuckery they finally make it to Silent er--Greenhill. The town seems pretty vacant, only a few people can be seen in the town and most of the buildings look pretty abandoned. The buildings that seem to stand out are the temple of Lathander, a manor on the far side of the town, an abandoned storefront, a library, and a small inn. Sefris, being the bookworm that he is, heads to the library while the rest of the party go straight to the temple.

Sefris gets his ass kicked by a door. He struggles to open it and wears himself out slamming into it repeatedly, eventually opening it. Finding the place completely abandoned he begins looking for a book on local lore to see if there is something up with Ardeep as the party has come to believe. He eventually finds one, but not until after Nyrim joins him.

At the temple...They let themselves in, there's a sense of urgency after all. They come in to see a man in robes preaching with a great fervor to noone. Aside from the man at the altar and the party there is noone to be seen in this place. Furthering the oddity, the preaching man, for all his obvious zeal speaks nothing. No words are actually leaving his mouth as he stands blind at the podium. Rict approaches him which seems to snap him out of this state and they discuss the town and the cleric who sent the letter. The preaching man seems to not be aware of anything odd going on in the town, and claims the cleric who sent the letter simply left town some time ago. As Rict continues to pry, the preaching man begins to have a massive seizure, slamming his head into the stone podium and vomiting up blood. He demands they leave, and one healing spell later they comply.

Nyrim heads to the library to find Sefris while the others go to check out the manor.
This is going on for a long while, isn't it? Fuck I have a bad habit of this it seems...Rict and Grey come to the gates of the manor to find two men clad in plate mail standing guard. The guards let them through for the price of 10 gold, which they do with little thought. A young lad dressed in rags greets them and heads inside to fetch 'the master.' After a short wait the lad comes back out soon followed by a man dressed in a breast plate, pauldrons, a close-faced helm, and white robes. He speaks to them in a very condescending manner and essentially reveals nothing. He quickly dismisses them and has the young lad see them off.

The session ended with them heading to the inn.
So, they'll probably be plagued with nightmares again.
Or would it feel more...off if they had a night of respite from this? :D

So, yeah...I suck at horror and that makes me sad. :ygrumpy:

I find most horror that works well is stuff that comes and goes, to the point where players get paranoid over whether something's about to happen or not.




man i REALLY freaking want to start D&Ding again but my local group cant do it on the only days i have off of work reliably. its pissing me ooooooff >:(

Horror you say?

Also also

Of what I can remember:

- It's all in the buildup. Finding nothing where there should be something, waiting for something that doesn't come. Subtlety, suspense, tension. Atmosphere. ...Personally, it sounds to me like you went too fast and too high-profile.
- Your players have to be willing to get scared.
- IIRC, I've heard that DnD doesn't really do horror well. Players are generally sturdy and spend all their time beating the shit out of freakish horrors and stuff, so they're usually significantly jaded and well-equipped, both emotionally and physically, for dealing with most terrors. Also, coming from the second bulletpoint, you don't really get "scared" in Dnd, since it's pretty much geared for a buncha dudes killing monsters. It's a radical shift in the tone of game from "badass who fucks up dragons and demons" to "completely helpless", 'n stuff. It's doable, of course, but your players are in a completely different mindset, so you have to do a lot of coaxing manipulating and careful dicking about to get them in the proper mood while keeping it both scary and fun.

Horror's probably my favorite genre, I think, but it requires srs finesse to pull off right.

Not linked (because I couldn't find it, for some odd reason) was a thread about some inspectors going to check out an excavation/mining site on Mars. There were pretty much NO encounters in the whole thing, and it was entirely about them walking down corridors and possibly splitting up while the GM did crap like make them wear gasmasks (to simulate the closed-in-ness), turn up the thermostat (underground and in spacesuits, so, warm), and play weird space sounds while they went down. People seemed to really freak out, and the readers all liked it too.

I got some experience with Deadlands, and its a pretty sweet system. Depending on which version you play.

There is the original deadland, which i never played

there is deadlands d20, which I think is not good at all

and there is deadlands reloaded, by Savage worlds. which is pretty damn awesome!

you still play D&D online, Dalis? cuz i may be willing to give it another shot since i cant go to any games with Coty and the gang here anymore @_@

i do, but I play in a solo game. Havent really found the time between work, love life and social life to play more often.

poopsicles. Real life has a way of getting in the way of fake ones doesnt it?

So, the internet is truly an awesome place.

See, I went to /tg/ to try to drum up some people to work on a TES campaign setting, because you know that needs to happen. Well, all I got there was a couple of people liked what I had written up, but noone seemed interested in helping. Slightly discouraged, but not stopped I took my happy ass to the official Elder Scrolls forums, thinking there might be some like-minded folks there, as well. All I got there was one guy who doesn't want to do it with the 3.5 rules, saying he'd rather write up a whole new system. So, that didn't pan out how I wanted.

At his point I was completely discouraged. Noone seemed all that interested in working on this, in the two places I most expected to find some people willing to work on this with me. So, I gave up. Simple as that, I was just done with it.

One night, Bryant was over and we were discussing what sort of game we should do after our Forgotten Realms campaign. I threw a couple ideas at him, and none really seemed to stick until I pulled this little gem out of my ass. "How about a Redwall themed game?" This he seemed to enjoy.

So, the other night I get a call at like 11 or 12. I answer to find it's Bryant. Still mostly asleep I can barely make out what he's getting at, but he apparently went to google to try to find a system or setting to use for Redwall, as all we could find before was some furry game. :/

Well, Bryant tells me that apparently the GitP forums has already done a Redwall setting. So, I go and look into this. Surely enough it's there, in it's near-completed glory. While browsing I also find FFd6, and a thread about a TES campaign setting.
The fire is lit once more. I message the thread's starter, and we begin discussing getting a team together to work on this. He says he'll ask a few people he knows there if they'd be interest, etc...

Then, tonight I come across yet another TES thread there. Apparently, it gets brought up every now-and-then, but no one has ever completed it. Well, wish me luck. :D

Well, there's the Mouse Guard RPG. Which I'm sure isn't the "furry RPG" that you blew off! Cuz' if it were, I'd be building you your own little house in the punch dimension right now! >:(

Well, mouseguard looks kinda nifty. :D

It was Ironclaw that we passed on.
Just wasn't what we were lookin' for, y'know?

EDIT: Here is the topic for the TES CS, if anyone's interested. Like to homebrew? Know someone who does? Spread that around if ya would, there's currently a whole two people active in that thread, and I'm one of them.

Of course, the thread did just start a day or so ago, but damn it I'm glad to have some support in this.

EDITEDIT: Looks like our Pokemon: Tabletop Adventures game is dead. :/
...and Dakota's not showing up for DnD.

:ypwned:

I AM WEAK

Anima's system is just TOO much of a clusterfuck for me. I just... I just can't work through it.

I mean... your stats? They're 1-10 (with higher being possible, and super-human-tier), but instead of adding them to your rolls or whatever, they give you modifiers. Not like easy to figure out modifiers like DnD, though, this game runs on fucking percentile dice.

The stats increase "geometrically", whatever that means, but apparently Olympians are only five points away from pushing around "small mountains".

The primary (crap like attack bonus, dodge, armor-use-skill... ki generation, martial arts ability, psychic power to-hit, power, points, magic to-hit, power, points, and ability with summoning/control/likefucktonsofothershit) and secondary abilities (skills) are a probably a clusterfuck.

Character generation and advancement is complicated. A level 1 character, after his stats and class and shit are picked, gets 600 customization points to buy primary and secondary shit with. They aren't spent all neat-like, easy one-to-one ratio, either, and there are limitations eeeverywhere. You can't spend above a certain percentage of your CPs on primaries. How many martial arts you know can is based on your attack bonus. If you want a skill, it's a lovely round number like 3 CP for one point - or maybe 2 CP, if it's one of your class skills.

There're Feats/Advantage Points, too. Three FP to start, with three more available via disadvantages. If you want to be a wizzerd or a psychic or probably a ki user, you'll have to buy that here - like, two points for each, I think - which maybe balances them or something, but it seems just overly complicating.

All of this is spread out fucking errywhere in the book. Refer to the martial arts chapter if you want to make a kungfuman! Refer to the class chapter to pick your class, and the race chapter to pick your race, and then flip back to the character creation chapter to figure out where you need to invest those CPs and FPs, and then cross-reference with the magic chapter so you can make that wizzad!


Asdf goddammit. The martial arts and psychic powers and crap all looked fun, but the system they're tied to is just... how do you even.

It's pretty to look at, though, I guess, though my scan sorta detracts from it. Lotsa color, in animu-style. Some of them wear armor. Some of them even wear clothes! Goddamn chainmail bikinis man


On the plus side, I found out there's a Samurai Pizza Cats RPG in the process of trying to look up something to make sense of this thing.

Going back to trying to figure out Artesia. At least it's consistent with it's complication.

Playing Mass Effect 2 has both subsided and strengthened my desire to play some D&Dtypestuffs.


If anyone here gets an online game going ever be sure to give me the heads up.

I used to have some D&D4th going on at my place every weekend, but with kids trying to disrupt it because they wanna play with the pieces was making the long game even longer. So we've stopped. Also I wanna play, but the other guy that would DM is a jackass that plays against us at every turn.

But I miss playing, Just wish Wizards could finish the damn dungeon maker software so you can have 3D pawn and 3D view of a dungeon.

Well, I definitely wouldn't be opposed to some pbp. :D

I'd rather not run it, though...I've got plenty of that going on right now, plus that campaign setting I'm working on. So, if someone's interested in running a game...:D

Played some PbP on MythWeaver, I wanted to learn how to play nWoD... in the end I've learned nothing.. never even tried to roll anything. The total opposite of that been one nWoD Hellsing game at an AnimeCon where the Dm was pretty much just launching hordes after hordes and you were to use attacks you had no idea of. They were just rolling dice over and over... and over... without really knowing what was happening.

I used to run games, but I was always changing story style once in a while depending on the kind of anime series I was watching. Players didn't like me to watch some romance animes.

What do you people say we play some Dawn of Worlds? We all take the place of gods and worldbuild up a setting.

Hell frikkin' YES!

I am all 31 flavors of ready for that.

Sounds like an awesome concept, but as a pitiful contestant in a PvP game I'll pass. But been looking at SG:Atlantis in a marathon streak I felt like playing RPG of it. Sadly it's a d20Sys, wanna try something else.

I'll try to get "All flesh must be Eaten" or "Etherscope. I wanted to try those ones. I have them in PDF, but I just can't read those on a computer.