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Bieeardo posted:I was going to ask what kind of stupid, fuckass, shithead thought process was involved in THAT, but then I remembered the tweet I saw earlier tonight. I've never gotten the Killer GM attitude. I like having a consistent-ish main cast and my players tend to get attached to their PCs.
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Aug 20, 2017 03:00
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Night10194 posted:I've never gotten the Killer GM attitude. I like having a consistent-ish main cast and my players tend to get attached to their PCs. But you can't Win if you don't kill their characters.
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Aug 20, 2017 03:08
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Last night running my 4e game, the PCs just totally nova'd the last encounter and had killed the demons in two rounds. I thought that was AWESOME and they did too because they got to do all sorts of insane poo poo.
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Aug 20, 2017 03:14
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Night10194 posted:I've never gotten the Killer GM attitude. I like having a consistent-ish main cast and my players tend to get attached to their PCs. Perhaps it's related to why GRR Martin says he kills certain characters: he doesn't want you to feel complacent and safe in your designated hero bubble. One of my friends asked if he could kill one of my characters in a game just to sort of shock and wake up the other players who had fallen into "he's too nice to actually hurt us so lets just gently caress around" once, but at least we worked it into my next character's arc. And it wasn't a targeted assassination of me as a "problem player" or anything; he was forthright about he had in mind for the story and my part to play in it. Only time I've dm'd a tpk was as horrifying to me as it was for all the players because I was not expecting the encounter to be half as lethal as it turned out to be. If I hadn't been so tired that night I might have thought of an out but as it was I just kind of gasped in horror right there with the players as the dice said "you're hosed" over and over. marshmallow creep fucked around with this message at 03:38 on Aug 20, 2017 |
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Aug 20, 2017 03:35
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No, I get being willing to kill off a PC, etc. It's the 'the game is designed to kill PCs' thing I hate. Or 'I win if I kill PCs' or 'I think I'm a better writer because I kill PCs'. It reminds me of the people who think putting excessive gore and making everyone an rear end in a top hat in their setting makes it 'mature'.
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Aug 20, 2017 03:55
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I wound up killing a friend's character in the last game I ran after I introduced a MacGuffin that basically said "well, it makes all your wishes come true, except, you die, so nobody's ever gotten to use it." At which point she started walking directly towards it and never stopped. I'm still not sure how I feel about that.
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Aug 20, 2017 04:17
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Rand Brittain posted:I wound up killing a friend's character in the last game I ran after I introduced a MacGuffin that basically said "well, it makes all your wishes come true, except, you die, so nobody's ever gotten to use it." At which point she started walking directly towards it and never stopped. Did it make her wish come true?
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Aug 20, 2017 04:18
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Night10194 posted:Did it make her wish come true? It made her deathwish come true.
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Aug 20, 2017 04:21
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Night10194 posted:Did it make her wish come true? Yeah, I ran it as "you realize you can accomplish your goal of protecting everybody's free will by giving up your own and becoming a disembodied spirit of chaos." I also gave the rest of the party the opportunity to pull her back, but they all decided not to since she obviously wanted whatever it was so badly.
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Aug 20, 2017 04:22
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That sounds fine, then. PC willingly walking into death/sacrifice for something they really care about is fine.
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Aug 20, 2017 04:26
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It's another instance of cargo cult gamer culture, like hating Monty Hall GMs. High PC mortality isn't inherently bad, but it requires a system and mindset designed to handle that. Playing dungeon Vietnam in Dungeons & Dragons from at least AD&D1e on is a terrible idea - character creation is an involved process that encourages you to invest in your character, so dying is a disappointment and tends to take you out of the game for long periods. But the earliest D&D stories were fun PC murderfests because it took a couple minutes to make a new character, and anyways Gygax and crew were totally okay with contriving a way to intro your new PC in the very next dungeon room (or even the current one). Hell just erasing the name at the top of the sheet and writing in a new one was kosher. If you build your game around high mortality and make sure it doesn't bar participation, it's a potentially interesting mode of play. It's when bad GMs shoehorn the attitude into games that actively make dying a huge pain in the rear end that it just becomes dickish behavior.
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Aug 20, 2017 04:53
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One of the weird things in Tome of Corruption is that it has suggestions like 'If the PC ascends to demonhood their next PC should get extra fate and a few more free starting advances and more options to take a low stat and give it an average roll' and it's like, are you legitimately suggesting you should put a 1st tier Basic PC into a party that probably has multiple Chaos Champions in it? Meanwhile over in SIgmar's Heirs a couple of the example NPCs for the regions are all 'This is a good 2nd career character in case a PC died and you need to replace them with someone who's already statted and has a backstory.'
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Aug 20, 2017 05:01
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Catching up with System Mastery, it seems to me as if The City from A|State is just a shittier NewCrobuzon. Or Paradigm City from Big O.
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Aug 20, 2017 05:14
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MonsieurChoc posted:Catching up with System Mastery, it seems to me as if The City from A|State is just a shittier NewCrobuzon. Or Paradigm City from Big O. I thought of The City from BLAME! from the whole "THE WHOLE GALAXY IS A CITY!" thing. I mean, before it became clear how absurdly loving boring The City was in A|State. The City in BLAME! will eat you alive and spit out the bones without noticing, because you're one level away from gravity turning off, or a planet sized megacorp, or just an infinite army of killbots. In A|State, you're going to just... get stabbed by an rear end in a top hat.
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Aug 20, 2017 05:31
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Rand Brittain posted:Yeah, I ran it as "you realize you can accomplish your goal of protecting everybody's free will by giving up your own and becoming a disembodied spirit of chaos." I think your player just wanted to become Madoka.
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Aug 20, 2017 06:35
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Inescapable Duck posted:I think your player just wanted to become Madoka. Wouldn't be the first time. I may have had a character turn into a Witch after a near-TPK campaign conclusion.
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Aug 20, 2017 06:39
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Bieeardo posted:I was going to ask what kind of stupid, fuckass, shithead thought process was involved in THAT, but then I remembered the tweet I saw earlier tonight. What was the 'Fight in spirit' rule again?
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Aug 20, 2017 07:16
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Some quick googling:quote:In other words, the ruling is that you can help your party by handing out bonuses if you are unconscious, simply not present (i.e split party), or paralyzed (like turned into stone or something). This helps you from twiddling your thumbs when you’re removed from the fight and helps keep you engaged in the game and story. Narratively, you would explain how your relationship with the character that’s taking action applies a bonus that you’re fishing for. As in traditional fashion, it’s all negotiated with the GM. So yeah. if you kill a PC, that's okay, they're still engaged and in the game by handing out bonuses.
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Aug 20, 2017 07:38
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Basically someone here is getting over-the-top mad about a rule in a single game that lets players contribute if they bite it, and trying to act like it applies to an entirely different game being reviewed.
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Aug 20, 2017 08:01
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I'm super mad about the cool Taken Out mechanic from Sentinels of the Multiverse!
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Aug 20, 2017 08:50
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So I see Thread favourite 'Blood in the Chocolate'. http://projects.inklesspen.com/fatal-and-friends/hyphz/blood-in-the-chocolate/ Won the Gold Ennie award for best adventure. http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2017/08/rpg-gen-con-ennie-goes.html
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Aug 20, 2017 10:07
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I've had the misfortune to play with a killer GM who actually enforced military discipline at the table with punishments for characters if players slipped up (and he wondered why everyone left rapidly). I can straight-up say it was entirely about power. He was In Charge so everyone played by his rules, and trying to kill everyone was how he proved that. That guy didn't get to be in charge very often in his life, and when the opportunity arose even via the fantasy medium of an RPG, years and years of suppressed resentment all spewed out onto his players. I've also played briefly with a killer GM of the "plays every monster to the absolute mechanical hilt" type, and he was just someone who thought killing everyone meant he won. You could tell, because he made sure to always read out in full the game's long text boxes describing what terrible things happened to the world after all his players died.
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Aug 20, 2017 11:34
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Loxbourne posted:I've had the misfortune to play with a killer GM who actually enforced military discipline at the table with punishments for characters if players slipped up (and he wondered why everyone left rapidly). I can straight-up say it was entirely about power. He was In Charge so everyone played by his rules, and trying to kill everyone was how he proved that. That guy didn't get to be in charge very often in his life, and when the opportunity arose even via the fantasy medium of an RPG, years and years of suppressed resentment all spewed out onto his players. I played in a Deadlands campaign like that (it was the one where I actually played in the Utopia module). The entire party peace-outed when we saw the GM was actually really happy to see us so hosed over and pissed off.
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Aug 20, 2017 16:10
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I mean like everything in RPGs it's a matter of expectations and communication. And picking the right system. A tactical puzzle game where the DM is trying their damnedest to kill you (within the rules and a fair setup) and you're trying to use all your mechanical abilities to progress and avoid dying would be really fun if everyone showing up to it wants to play that game. Similarly, a game where you all agree that the trappings are going to be dark and awful but that none of you really want to go for high PC mortality is fun, too.
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Aug 20, 2017 16:25
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Deptfordx posted:So I see Thread favourite 'Blood in the Chocolate'. why why this
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Aug 20, 2017 19:53
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Why do people care about the ENnies?
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Aug 20, 2017 19:54
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My brain has a wonderful capacity for repressing awful poo poo so I went to Inkless to remember. THAT WAS A MISTAKE, AVOID!
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Aug 20, 2017 20:01
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theironjef posted:I'm super mad about the cool Taken Out mechanic from Sentinels of the Multiverse! Man, I know this is a joke, but there's people who are upset about that? I mean, I'm biased because first game I played of Sentinels I got the "Call Of Duty Modern Warfare" make-the-killshot-the-big-bad-while-critically-injured ending with ExPatriot's and it was the coolest thing ever.
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Aug 20, 2017 20:08
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Halloween Jack posted:Why do people care about the ENnies? It's small beer in the greater scheme of things because RPG's are such a relatively niche thing, but it's the biggest fish in RPG Awards and the closest the industry has to say the Hugo.
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Aug 20, 2017 20:58
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 CHAPTER FOUR: THE HEART OF DARKNESS Or He Thrusts His Fists Against The Plots But Still Insists He Changes Lots The forces of damnation aren’t just holed up in Oblivion. Most specifically they’ve made their home in one of the nuclear reactor facilities that help power the engines. It is incredibly radioactive and there is no mechanical threat. There’s no map to this area; you’re told to use your imagination and that it looks like “a dizzying web of deep, dark passages, suffocatingly-tight corridors, and rickety walkways that span huge chambers which resemble nothing short of enormous black gulfs.” It’s also much hotter than the Foundry thanks to all of that nuclear heat. So, in short, G-Unit is skittering around on the catwalks over nuclear cooling towers and Doc is (reasonably) afraid that they definitely shouldn’t stay here for too long. Every moment they’re here, they run the risk of radiation poisoning and god only knows what that’ll do to people while they’re in a Hell Dimension. They start trying to find an exit and over one of the nuclear cooling ponds they see this.  The army of the damned is clashing with the forces of the Warden who has mustered an initial strike force of Enforcers and other Custodians to take the fight to their home turf. The army here is enormous, but they’re busy with fighting the Custodians so G-Unit can sneak by as long as they don’t get involved (they won’t). The only downside is that Blade, Lucretia or Major Havoc (leader of the Embracers) aren’t here. They slip by without worry and come across the home of the leaders, starting with an empty room.  Blade, Lucretia and the Major were drawn here by the psychic siren call of the Demons. They were promised that a fourth would join them, but the fourth hasn’t come yet so they’ve just got this empty space. There are roughly 50,000 photos pinned up on the walls that the DOS have brought Lucretia to look at because their leader is hopeful that she’ll receive a sign from her dark masters. In contrast to the 50K photos, there’s like 100k photos discarded on the floor. However, if one was to back up and view the mosaic of the 50k photos from afar, the photographs actually make a face. A familiar face.  Yup, it’s Daniel, that teenager they exploded. G-Unit has inadvertently hobbled the forces of darkness for quite a while by beating him at a game of being psychic. Nobody knows that he’s dead besides G-Unit and it’s unknown how this affects the plan of the Demons. After taking a minute to catch up most of G-Unit with who Daniel is, the group hears sounds of FIGHTING!  I feel like here is what they want this scene to be:  Here is Blade now:  I really hate Blade’s earring? It immediately takes him from “mutant leader of the army of the damned” to “if you saw him at a bar he’d be wearing a tank top and regardless of your gender identity and sexual preferences he’d just slide up on you and deliver some douchey pick-up line and buy himself a drink but not you”. It’s a douchebag earring is what I’m saying, best paired with a sleeveless see-thru mesh tank top. Why does he have that. Anyway, this scene. Blade now has a teleporter that he’s taken from the dead scientists from Project: Lord of the Flies. The energy shield is officially down and all of their high-tech weapons can’t save them. The book never exactly says what P:LOTF really is but I can infer enough from Blade’s speech (which isn’t subtext so much as text) and from what I’ve seen so far. The project wasn’t just “let’s shoot people into a space oddity”. This was on top of “let’s rig this entire system to make everyone ultraviolent and see how they react to a societal breakdown” judging by poo poo like mislabeling PCP as sedatives/anti-depressants. And it’s incredibly hard to tell who exactly came up with this idea. The Gehenna was a colony ship turned into a prison ship but is still a colony ship and the scientists are there and which level of government came up with this whole thing? These are questions that will never be answered. So there are 100 Psychos and 25 DOS ripping apart the scientists. Attacking is suicide, even for G-Unit. Blade will just shrug off all attacks and chuckle as he commands his army to attack people. Stay hidden and the army will leave the battered bodies of the 5 scientists behind. For starters, despite there being 5 of them, 4 of their suits are destroyed beyond use and it pretends to have only 4 scientists. There are also five light rods, two stun guns, a broken motion detector that needs a repair, three hydrogen cells and a small satchel containing a new weapon: two frequency bombs.  These things are kind of decent. Sure am glad they showed up in the last 60% of this last book. G-Unit moves on to the next chamber.  Hey, so we never actually went over the Secret History of Lucretia. Let’s do that now because otherwise we’ll do it after the fight. Lucretia (#5048218)  Nothing says milky white dead eyes like...regular eyes.  Born Lucrezya Cherkezeshvili in Eastern Europe in the year of Yes, she was born into poverty and was orphaned at the age of 13 when her mother died. The last thing her mother left her was her newborn baby brother, who she immediately smothered to “relieve herself of the ‘burden’” and then ran off to join the Mafiya. Arrested in Poland and sent to juvie, she poisoned her caseworker and escaped. In adulthood she formed her own crime squad with blackjack and hookers and terrorist bombings, holding blackmail on regional governors to have her way. Ultimately she was brought down by the rise of the PTM during the Last War; all of the people in her pocket wanted a clean slate under the PTM, so they rolled on her and she went to jail. She managed to have a handful of them assassinated while she was behind bars but then she went to jail and then started a sex cult of ponygirls and spankings and giggle giggle tee hee bouncy titty murder. The woman she’s torturing is… Ilona Jocic (#???????)   I’m gonna quote this whole section verbatim because, uh. Yeah. “Ilona Jocic was just one of thousands of disenfranchised street punks in the third world when the New Regime threatened to sweep the globe with its promise of tumultuous change. Like many others in her country, Ilona took up arms to fight what they perceived to be a “hegemonic juggernaut” bent on erasing nation-states and national identities. And, like her cohorts at home and in other isolated countries worldwide, who fought a protracted guerilla campaigns against the rise of the PTM, Ilona got a mouthful of the bitter taste of defeat when the war ended with the PTM victorious.” I think she’s, legit, a Nazi. I seriously think she’s a Nazi. I don’t think Lucretia drew that swastika on her forehead, I think she’s an actual Nazi. And she’s the head of the Furies, to boot. She went to juvie and kept breaking the rules and got labeled irredeemable and got pushed around a lot in jail and formed the Furies because she couldn’t take it anymore. The leader of the Furies is a Nazi and they want her back to lead the fight against the forces of damnation, forces that include actual Skinheads last I checked. Like, let us not forget gently caress Berlin with a Levec in a Bisexual Holographic Sex Hitler hard light costume. It takes a woman to actually be a Nazi, albeit it with heavily coded dog whistle language. If you think she has any lines or any, like, display of personality, then you’re in the wrong place. It says her goal is redemption but that would require her to have writing. Lucretia has captured her and has been psychically manipulated the mercury pool to “conjure phantoms to ravage and torture Ilona”. Her plan is to emotionally and mentally break her until she’s her compliant slave so she can be sent back the Furies so she can betray them and bring them down. She’s here to be rescued from Manic Pixie Brain Murder so she can go back to the squad of The Good Women. Which I mean like good luck? Patch is a lady with a good head on her shoulders. If a woman with a swastika tattoo on her forehead shows up and is like “hello it is me, the baddest bitch in charge” I think Patch would be like “ha ha no gently caress off. Oh you’re serious? Really? Nah gently caress this I’m out, I know the forces of darkness are out here committing sexmurder but I’m not turning the reins over to a Nazi”. Ugh. So how about them clones of Blade, huh? Almost forgot about those fuckers. Let’s get into the fight proper.   Lucretia discovered the pool and immediately thought “hell yeah this is mine now”. An Awakened Psychic can sculpt and manipulate the mercury with their thoughts and can do more with it the more powerful their Psychic Strength. Clones can be made with some focus and have the following rules:
 So any Awakened Psychic can use the pool. And Lucretia literally has 0 Psychic Strength. You know who has 9 Psychic Strength? Our buddy Pincushion, who steps up to the shores of the mercury, reaches forward and feels the metal bend under his will. Everyone senses a weird tension in the air and steps the gently caress back. That’s right. For the third and final time, having a psychic Does A Dang Thing. An Awakened Psychic can influence the pool instead of attacking by making a Psy Strength test.
But this is G-Unit. And there are now five Pincushions. Lucretia is psychic’d to death with extreme prejudice, repeatedly exposed to Random Psychic Powers until one of them immolates her with psychic power and another one grabs her and throws her up into the air so she dies on impact like a shooting star. Everyone hustles over to Ilona, has a moment of concern over the swastika on her forehead and then Doc reluctantly heals her and stuffs her into the party conga line. The final chamber is home to Major Havoc and the Embracers.  Roll for atmosphere!  The chanting Embracers are actually shambling colonies of Guilt Worms that have completely consumed their hosts and turned into Worms What Jog. Touching them or nudging or attacking makes them collapse into a pile of worms that quickly disperse. In the darkness of the room, they see a familiar figure.   CHAPTER FIVE: A MOMENT IN TIME  Peacemaker, Doc and Beth immediately recognize where they are, the guns in their hands, the armor on their bodies, the grenades in their belts. They recognize the day this is.  Before anyone can stop them, the three members of G-Unit who actually saw combat unload their guns into the limping Major. Soapbox turns to the others and screams "what the gently caress?", the Major falls to the ground, blood pouring from his wounds and
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Aug 21, 2017 08:25
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...and? Is that a deliberate cutoff or did the post reach the character limit?
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Aug 21, 2017 08:46
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Aug 21, 2017 09:23
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...and now for something completely different?
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Aug 21, 2017 09:43
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Hostile V posted:and which level of government came up with this whole thing? Vault-Tech.
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Aug 21, 2017 09:51
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If that whole spaceship into hell premise turned out to be a vault that would be oddly fitting. The fallout world has all the technology required to create it. In several non dependent complete ways.
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Aug 21, 2017 09:56
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Weren't the Vaults all meant as test chambers for generation ships?
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Aug 21, 2017 10:26
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Inescapable Duck posted:Weren't the Vaults all meant as test chambers for generation ships? In Van Buren. Bethesda's Fallout 3 threw that out and now many vaults are billions of dollars worth of shits and giggles-level science experiments. Even really good Vaults in New Vegas like 19 don't make any sense in a larger context. 
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Aug 21, 2017 10:41
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No point in applying real world logic to fallout, like all good settings it works by the rule of cool. Which AAH severely lacks.
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Aug 21, 2017 11:39
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I do not understand the significance of the Major and This Day. Also this game is horseshit.
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Aug 21, 2017 12:49
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Green Intern posted:I do not understand the significance of the Major and This Day. Also this game is horseshit. It's probably one of the last battles of the last war that all the soldier characters fought in before getting 'betrayed'.
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Aug 21, 2017 13:12
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