TG May Chat Thread: Retrovision Grog Contest

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Forums Terrorist: Dec 8, 2011

Davin Valkri posted:

The only way I could play myself with any sort of honesty would be a GURPS game with unlimited advantages and a million points because I'm great gently caress you.

# ? May 31, 2014 20:18

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# ? Apr 18, 2024 14:22

Plutonis: Mar 25, 2011

I'd survive any situation due to my great cunning and strength of will so I'll minmax the poo poo out of myself.

# ? May 31, 2014 20:20

ProfessorCirno: Feb 17, 2011; The strongest! The smartest!
The rightest!

Davin Valkri posted:

That'd have some...interesting implications for how the players stat themselves out. Or rather, how they choose to stat out everybody else.

Again, you wouldn't be statting out yourself, you'd be statting out the hero you become. So you, Davin, could stat yourself out as a super high charisma pretty boy bard, because that's what you chose to become when you entered ~*~THE D&D WORLD~*~. Personality wise you'd be yourself, but your actual skills and abilities would be of the hero.

# ? May 31, 2014 20:23

Tollymain: Jul 9, 2010; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

so i'd basically be a big literal troll with super bad teeth and worse manners okay

# ? May 31, 2014 20:25

Davin Valkri: Apr 8, 2011; Maybe you're weighing the moral pros and cons but let me assure you that OH MY GOD
SHOOT ME IN THE GODDAMNED FACE
WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?!

ProfessorCirno posted:

Again, you wouldn't be statting out yourself, you'd be statting out the hero you become. So you, Davin, could stat yourself out as a super high charisma pretty boy bard, because that's what you chose to become when you entered ~*~THE D&D WORLD~*~. Personality wise you'd be yourself, but your actual skills and abilities would be of the hero.

I meant more along the lines of that a big part of FFT:A is that it's not just a fantasy world, it's one particular character's fantasy world, and that's why his mommy's still alive and his daddy's the judge-master and those meanie bullies that picked on him are zombies now. It'd be really creepy if the FFT:A tabletop game went in that direction.

# ? May 31, 2014 20:32

ProfessorCirno: Feb 17, 2011; The strongest! The smartest!
The rightest!

Davin Valkri posted:

I meant more along the lines of that a big part of FFT:A is that it's not just a fantasy world, it's one particular character's fantasy world, and that's why his mommy's still alive and his daddy's the judge-master and those meanie bullies that picked on him are zombies now. It'd be really creepy if the FFT:A tabletop game went in that direction.

Ok so FFTA2.

Goddamn you guys. Not everything has to be horror and terrible.

# ? May 31, 2014 20:33

Dr. Quarex: Apr 18, 2003; I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

Please read my wall of text

Kai Tave posted:

I can see how it could get kind of awkward/vicariously embarrassing to watch people try to stat themselves in an RPG or have to do it yourself. The average RPG player, being remarkably similar to the average person, isn't really what most RPGs are designed with in mind. Add to that the fact that things which probably don't merit a second glance in a typical gaming session might acquire a drastically different context when you realize that the characters involved are, y'know, you and the other people at the table, and I can't honestly say I'd jump at the chance myself.

The first part makes sense--most of the times this has come up the origin story has been "and then you get superpowers [ala Yawgmoth's story]/spend years in prison with nothing to do but read and work out/et cetera" to handwave the obvious problem that we are likely not well-suited for adventuring ... the only other time was when we played a D20 crossover and the GM was like "look, each of you gets a 16, a 14, a 12, two 10s, and an 8, and we are moving on" and we all agreed that was fine given the potential for argument otherwise.

The second part though ... huh. That is specifically why our group loves these things so much. poo poo like "this is a risky plan" has so much more emotional weight if you are like "do we need to accomplish this goal enough that it is worth risking Our Actual Friend Gary's death?" It is basically an instant antidote to thoughtless murderhobo gaming, too; even our rightest-wing gunnest-nut player is very butchery-reserved when playing himself compared to his casual massacring of creatures in most games.

Evil Mastermind's story helps me understand how boring this could be if people were not willing to at least play, like, the most interesting parts of themselves, though.

stoutfish posted:

I'm a really lovely person and I have no interest in being myself.

This checks out though.

PublicOpinion posted:

Making up new characters is fun; I don't want to skip that. When I'm running the game, getting players to do the worldbuilding by embedding character hooks into the history is useful and I don't want to lose that.

The best way to circumvent this (not, you know, that I am all that interested in pushing this playstyle on people) is to give the crossover event enough weight and significance (and handwave some time in-game) that people's real histories become instantly relevant. I cannot tell you how many sessions we got in my ongoing Savage Worlds play-yourself game out of the single obvious plot point "I told my family to hide out with family in the Philippines if anything ever went wrong here ... how are we going to get to the post-apocalyptic Philippines?"

Doodmons posted:

Part of what helped as far as statting ourselves up went is that Nobilis doesn't distinguish between Skills and Passions, so everyone just statted up how much they liked their various interests and used those. At one point during the game someone had the bright idea of going down to the FLGS and getting a copy of the Nobilis rulebook in the game and he got mad use out of his "Roleplaying Games +4" passion for the rest of the session.

When my crossover campaign started I got a few funny looks from the fact that I had "Gaming" listed as a skill, but several people dutifully took it anyway just because it seemed like metagaming to pretend they had no knowledge of it. Then the first time they encountered the supernatural and realized Gaming could double for just about any otherwise relevant occult-style knowledge skill they were all excited.

GimpInBlack posted:

We did that once and it was fun, but mainly because it was a zombie apocalypse game that began with the premise "a bunch of nerds are playing D&D when the zombie apocalypse happens." The GM killed "himself" off in the first attack, then told us that our equipment list consisted of anything we had in our pockets, in our cars, or that we could find in his house. The rest of the game involved using Google Earth to track our escape from the suburbs of LA into the central valley.

That sounds like our favorite crossover technique, slowly adapted from the first one we ran. My campaign started with me saying I had an idea for a one-shot, and when everyone gathered to play, I was like "OK you are all sitting around this table waiting for the game to start and Rich's phone rings. It's Chris; he sounds terrified, talking about people in his house, and the line suddenly goes dead. Go."

Basically any campaign played on a slightly fictionalized version of your home turf is guaranteed to be fun if the players are at all willing to run with it. And as long as the GM does not have some bizarre agenda.

Bieeardo posted:

I think there's a zombie apocalypse game that provides a pretty good mechanic for making a 'you' in the game. It might have been All Flesh Must Be Eaten, but I can't recall.

That is Outbreak: Undead, which my group got super-excited about for this very reason, and then when one of our buddies ran it as a one-shot to see how it went, playing rules-as-written, we were all dead in literally one minute of game-time (about 30 minutes of real-time). Which I guess could be awesome but when you are supposed to play yourself it is kind of hard to get excited about playing again, haha.

# ? May 31, 2014 20:34

Plutonis: Mar 25, 2011

ProfessorCirno posted:

Ok so FFTA2.

Goddamn you guys. Not everything has to be horror and terrible.

FFTA2 is superior to tactics advance in all ways so it's not that bad a compromise.

# ? May 31, 2014 20:42

Kaja Rainbow: Oct 17, 2012; ~Adorable horror~

My deafness alone would make any "play yourself in a game" endeavor difficult, but it's been interesting how people've found ways to make the premise work. As for me, I think I'll stick with playing fictional characters.

# ? May 31, 2014 21:24

grassy gnoll: Aug 27, 2006; The pawsting business is tough work.

TheLovablePlutonis posted:

I'd poo poo myself.

# ? May 31, 2014 21:30

stoutfish: Oct 8, 2012; by zen death robot

I want to roleplay myself falling into severe depression in a strange, hostile world and end up ending it all. You guys can decide to be murder-hobos or whatever.

# ? May 31, 2014 22:11

Dr. Quarex: Apr 18, 2003; I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

stoutfish posted:

I want to roleplay myself falling into severe depression in a strange, hostile world and end up ending it all. You guys can decide to be murder-hobos or whatever.

Sci-Fi Heartbreaker "Jumpers" is a fun Sliders-style game where you play yourself, and after playing it three consecutive Gen-Cons in a row I became increasingly convinced in-game that I had died and was in Hell, so I can totally dig the concept of falling into severe depression in a hostile world. Every time we jumped to a new reality I would immediately identify the reasons there was no point in going on and try to convince others to give up and wait for the sweet release of death. I think this was more fun than it sounds.

# ? May 31, 2014 23:38

Gau: Nov 18, 2003; I don't think you understand, Gau.

GURPS Infinite Worlds has a sidebar on Play Yourself campaigns (since they flow pretty naturally from dimension-jumping/time-travel adventure seeds). In it, they suggest that you set a point level and build to that, declaring that you're playing yourselves from one universe over - almost, but not quite identical to yourselves - in order to quash any arguments of how many skill ranks I have in Karate or if I really qualify for the Acute Senses advantage.

# ? Jun 1, 2014 00:44

Halloween Jack: Sep 12, 2003; I WILL CUT OFF BOTH OF MY ARMS BEFORE I VOTE FOR ANYONE THAT IS MORE POPULAR THAN BERNIE!!!!!

I think that you can also do this in the old Doctor Who RPG. But if my regular gaming group does it, none of the episodes will pass the Bechdel Test!

# ? Jun 1, 2014 00:53

SALT CURES HAM: Jan 4, 2011

Halloween Jack posted:

But if my regular gaming group does it, none of the episodes will pass the Bechdel Test!

Is this a thing you honestly care about in your RPG campaigns :psyduck:

# ? Jun 1, 2014 01:02

stoutfish: Oct 8, 2012; by zen death robot

Halloween Jack posted:

I think that you can also do this in the old Doctor Who RPG. But if my regular gaming group does it, none of the episodes will pass the Bechdel Test!

Are you implying your group is a sausage fest or is that a slight against the women in your group?

# ? Jun 1, 2014 01:13

gnome7: Oct 21, 2010; Who's this Little
Spaghetti?? ??

Halloween Jack posted:

I think that you can also do this in the old Doctor Who RPG. But if my regular gaming group does it, none of the episodes will pass the Bechdel Test!

I'm pretty sure none of the Moffat Who episodes pass that test anyway.

# ? Jun 1, 2014 01:17

Gau: Nov 18, 2003; I don't think you understand, Gau.

The solution is obviously to force half of your players to crossplay as women.

# ? Jun 1, 2014 01:24

Covok: May 27, 2013; Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

Halloween Jack posted:

I think that you can also do this in the old Doctor Who RPG. But if my regular gaming group does it, none of the episodes will pass the Bechdel Test!

I heard the one wasn't too good. Then again, that was, allegedly, from a dev on Doctor Who: Adventures in Time who I happened to be in an online game with. So, in other words, bias.

# ? Jun 1, 2014 01:27

neonchameleon: Nov 14, 2012

gnome7 posted:

I'm pretty sure none of the Moffat Who episodes pass that test anyway.

He's not quite that bad. I'm sure Blink (Sally Sparrow and her best friend that got Angelled), Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead (Donna/Evangelista), and most of the episodes featuring Amy and River do except the terrible A Good Man Goes To War (completely the wrong perspective there). And any involving Madame Vastra and Jenny. That's most of the episodes he himself wrote.

# ? Jun 1, 2014 01:55