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I couldn't really think of a good thread title so if anyone has a good one post it and we'll see about a name change. Everyone has created a character for a game that never got a single session in, or got invested in a character just for the campaign to end, or maybe you were the guy with the campaign and the players stopped coming or never showed up. This thread is to post about the characters and games you never got to play. I once had a bard who was an assassin. He had gotten every one of his instruments custom made to double as a weapon and he mained a lute that could double as a club. He also had a pan flute that was rigged to have one of the chambers shoot a small dart. The guy sadly didn't last very long before the campaign just kind of stopped but he played well off one of the other players who was an artificer who specialized in making "Stu Pickles inventions." As for campaigns I had an idea for a 4e game that would have been a long lasting one. It started with the players getting recruited by Baron Plot to stop bandits from attacking his trade caravans. Once they did that he would go on to hire them to go find the Macguffin before the forces of evil get their hands on it. At the Macguffin the players could choose to either kill the guardian or talk to it. Talking to the guardian would have revealed that the Baron was the real force of evil and they would have been able to choose to take it and try to find a new hiding place or take it to the Baron anyway for the sweet reward. If the Baron gets his hands on it he would activate the thing and then instigate combat with the players. If they win they would have been able to stop the thing from exploding but if they didn't then it would turn out the Macguffin didn't do what the bad guy thought it would, it didn't make him a god instead it broke the world. Then I would have pulled out the Dark Sun book and we would have played Dark Sun with the previous game being a history of sorts.
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Nov 26, 2015 05:13
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 07:02 |
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Every GM or potential GM has a dozen stillborn games they can name, either because they didn't have a reliable group on hand or, more likely, because it can often be a lot more fun to come up with the high points and potential twists of a campaign than it is to trudge through the bazaar visits and low-level hijinks that connect them. I once pulled together all the abandoned bits of design and lore from Black Isle's abandoned Fallout 3, and tried to patch up what I could with my own writing. I got through the intro with two different groups, one online and one in person, with about 2 years of playtime combined. It always had a lot of potential, but my own stuff wasn't that strong and we just ran out of steam. The last one ended when I got really ambitious with a combat sequence that didn't end in time. I always knew we wouldn't get through it - the amount of stuff in the game docs comprised at least a decade of play at the rate we were going. My players weren't that tight and I wasn't that good. Keeping a game going is all about keeping tempo and that's something I've always had trouble with. The players behind my two stalled-out World of Darkness games here can attest to that. Both were strong concepts, in my opinion - one about a group of strangers whose souls are trapped in a phylactery and race against the clock to determine how and why before they die, and the other about a few terminally ill friends who become unwilling bargaining chips in another dying friend's Faustian bargain. But then life happens, or you can't roll with the punches in a way that engages your group, and it just dissipates.
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Nov 27, 2015 04:13
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A Rogue character I made for a recently concluded D&D 5e game* was heavily based on the Harrier class from Iron Heroes. That class was all about mobility - it'd gain a bonus to base movement speed as it leveled up, it had a bonus to AC against opportunity attacks, had a bonus to Tumble checks for movement, earned bonuses to attack rolls based on how far it moved before attacking, earned bonuses to AC based on how far it moved before attacking, and so on and so forth. For the 5th Edition translation, I took Rogue levels so I could double-Dash for lots of movement speed and the Mobile feat so I had even more movement speed and could Disengage at will against any creature I had already hit. I also skipped the usual Rogue specialties of trapfinding/trap-disarming in favor of Athletics and Acrobatics. There was also a bit of inspiration from the Harpy unit from the Heroes of Might and Magic 3 game: it was a melee attacker, but it wouldn't take retaliatory attacks and would always fly back to its original hex after making the melee attack, so it was in-practice a pseudo-ranged attacker. The basic concept seemed to work well. I could jump in (from as far as 40 feet away!), make a quick strike, then hustle back out of range. * P.d0t, I really don't mind that the game ended, I'm just tellin' a story!
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Nov 27, 2015 06:52
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Literally every game and the characters within from page 3 of the Game Room forwards OP. Cheers!
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Nov 28, 2015 13:49
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In a Fate game meant to feature bizarre races, I made a crab with an anemone symbiont on its back. I played them as enthusiastic newbies wanting to see and experience the world beyond their small island; a tried and true archetype made fresh by the fact that one of them communicated by snapping its claws and the other via telepathy. I tried my best to make their dialogues entertaining, but I still vaguely suspect that I contributed to the death lf the game by being irritating.
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Nov 29, 2015 22:57
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I feel like this is every game I ever ran and ever character I ever played. A DnD 3.5 Campaign I once started to run: Players awaken to the sound of metal striking stone. Groggily they become aware of strange creatures mining the walls around them who begin shouting excited and fearful yips and groans. Players try to communicate, the miners attack and as the creatures are struck down the earth shakes and the cavern collapses. Through wit and grit the players work their way through an underground stream, manage to crudely arm themselves and escape into a badlands of orange stone, starless skies. Nearby, the entrance to the mine are more kolbolds, directed by elfin humanoids with solid black eyes. The kobolds clear the rubble and recover trapped miners. When the rogue pilfers a gem from an abandoned cart he hid behind while scouting, he is overwhelmed with the urge to swallow the gem then and there. Failing to resist, he swallows it and a memory crashes into his brain like a hundred foot rogue wave might consume a rowboat. The player answers questions about a home that he once had an uncertain time ago, and his choice of diningware and that he was buying it with someone else becomes the only facts he knows. Session 2 would have been the players rescuing the rogue from the kobolds and elves who had noticed the rogue when he cried out and collapsed on the ground (or abandoning him). Eventually they may have found a small shanty town whose residents are beginning to stir, knowing the nearby mine has dried up and their livelihood is gone. Perhaps they would have been informed of the valuable memory trade, and how the powerful beings of this world covet these crystal memories. They may have even begun to track down these snapshots of some other existence. This would have required a dogged pursuit across long rope bridges to dreamlands where memories hold power but slowly fade. Could they recover these histories before they expired? What of those others who sought these remembrances? What lay past memory and beyond dreams? I never found out. piL fucked around with this message at 13:53 on Dec 1, 2015 |
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Dec 1, 2015 13:39
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after taking a break from games for awhile a buddy asked me to join the new 3.5 group he was starting. the other four players' had made no backgrounds and barely had physical descriptions. we finished a short adventure and the dm asked me to go next. everyone said they wanted this to be a big deal, a full campaign up to level 20. I agreed and got to work, having been laid off a few weeks prior. i gave them all a common background which they embraced. they met npcs, went to amazing places, gained allies, made enemies, i gave them weapons and accessories and information which they used to define their characters' personalities and appearance. i split the party and gave the characters who weren't there other characters to play so they weren't left out. i set up a story in the past they were being told that they picked characters to play out. they all really started to consider how their actions affected the world around them and even started to seriously rp. they regularly told me how much they enjoyed this game and i was incredibly proud of it and i was writing more every day and was completely prepared to take this as far as they wanted and then 4th edition came out 
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Dec 1, 2015 16:31
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We got to around level ten in a dnd fifth edition game based heavily on the star-wars universe, basically we all had no idea we were going to be starwars characters or kinda railroaded into being rebel scum so of course I made the most oppositest to that as I possibly could character by accident in the form of Marie O'Nette a drow warlock of Hastur, I ended up playing as the high charisma practical foil and social infiltrator to a party that consisted of an airhead wizard of pure destruction, a fighter who claimed to be 'The Ultimate Warrior' and collected people's hands, a rogue who had literally the worst ideas all the time one hundred percent of the time and a ranged fighter who's personality ended up him being literally bitter about not having a personality.
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Dec 1, 2015 18:03
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So I have kind of a doozy. I've had campaigns that lasted a long time that we all just kind of stopped for some unknown reason (AD&D Ravenloft) and games that never really got off the ground (the new Marvel Superheroic Roleplaying game) but my long-time, original campaign for DnD 4E exploded so spectacularly that it actually estranged me from guys I'd been friends with for like ten years. I was DMing a game that was essentially Dragon Quest VII meets LOST meets The Matrix where the players were slowly discovering that they were trapped behind an illusory world that paralleled the concepts in Gnostic Christianity. We played the game for, I want to say around 2 years when one of the players dumped his girlfriend. Since I was friends with both of the guy and the girl, I tried to be there for them both. I'd always had feelings for her but I'd always kept them suppressed because it would have been lovely to do otherwise, and that's probably why when she made a move on me I reciprocated. Keep in mind, this was over a month or two after their relationship was dead and in the ground. In the meanwhile, gaming continued as usual and the players inched closer and closer to their inevitable escape from their illusory prison and were gearing up for a big dramatic battle with a red dragon. It was really going about the best of any game I'd ever played long term. So to keep a long story shorter, I told my player I was seeing his ex and he stole her cat (don't as me how). I told him, in the words of Christian Bale, he and I were "done professionally" and asked him to leave the group because I thought stealing someone's cat was beyond lovely. Everyone in the group took his side and said if he left they left. So I left, taking the story and resources with me. One of them actually had the nerve to demand I give them the stats for the red dragon encounter I was about to run. I did, but I didn't give them any more information about the plot. I never found out if they fought the dragon because I haven't talked to any of them since (outside the odd occasion where one of them would drunkenly Facebook message me and demand to know how I slept at night.) I wouldn't have done things any differently, though. I have a much better group of friends (less back-stabby and hypocritical) and the girl and I are married. Sometimes I do wish I could have finished my story, though.
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Dec 10, 2015 22:56
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You weren't kidding when you called that a doozy. What even was their reasoning for taking his side, if I may ask?
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Dec 11, 2015 14:28
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paradoxGentleman posted:What even was their reasoning for taking his side, if I may ask? Bros before hos I assume.
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Dec 11, 2015 17:10
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I'd love to get an ongoing Air Pirates game going. I've played in two, but they were both single adventures. There was still a lot of juice in my Talkie-Star/Sky Captain guy who solved his problems with his fists, his fame, and his fan club.
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Dec 11, 2015 18:04
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I've got plenty:
HobbitGrease fucked around with this message at 20:15 on Dec 11, 2015 |
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Dec 11, 2015 20:08
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paradoxGentleman posted:You weren't kidding when you called that a doozy. I didn't ask them to take my side. I made the mistake of assuming they'd know to stay out of it since it didn't concern them, the way they'd stayed out of it when he stole her cat. Honestly, though, I think it's because more than a few of them were jealous. Not to brag, but she's really drat cute. On more than one occasion one of our group confessed their feelings for her, while she was still with the cat-thief. I was just the one who ended up dating her so they were probably a little butthurt. It was just convenient for them to cut the two of us out so they didn't have to have any awkward parties. Hitlers Gay Secret posted:Bros before hos I assume. Also this.
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Dec 11, 2015 20:55
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How does one steal a cat.
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Dec 11, 2015 21:14
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Generic Octopus posted:How does one steal a cat. Are you ready for it to get weirder? He demanded joint-custody of the cat. Like it was a kid. She was an emotional wreck because he just left in the middle of the night with no warning, so she agreed to swapping the cat every month. One month he claimed he decided she was unfit to take care of a cat and so he registered it under his name with the vet, supposedly legitimating his claim of ownership should she decide to take legal action against him for not turning the cat over to her. I suggested she call his bluff, but she was a student at the time so she had no money and knew she wouldn't be able to hold up emotionally in court. So he got to keep the cat. Did I say 'weirder'? Sorry, I meant 'dumber.'
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Dec 11, 2015 21:21
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 07:02 |
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Had a pretty great idea for a game once: the setting was to be the newly discovered continent across the ocean, where strange creatures like "goblins" and "kobolds" dwelled; people would go there to find fame and fortune, or escape their past, or track down someone who escaped their past. Basically a full sandbox Western game by way of heroic fantasy. One player made a great backstory that was gonna tie in to a lot of stuff easily, but then we did the game in PbP, and you can probably guess the rest. I'm also still bummed out that my group didn't take to 13th Age because I wrote this whole conversion of the icons to a set of organizations governing a pseudo-victorian steampunk (or rather oilpunk) pirate age, and I built a voodoo priest cleric and managed to pick his features and powers so they pretty accurately mirrored existing voodoo lore with only minor refluffing.
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Dec 11, 2015 22:44
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