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Betrayal At H WORK! Betrayal At Hou NOROVIRUS! Betrayal At House On The H MORE WORK! Ugh. Shudder. Betrayal At House On The Hill, 8! A Friend For The Ages Trigger: Find the Crystal Ball, Dog, or Girl in the Gallery. Hey, we've screwed up Phantom of the Opera. How about we do The Picture of Dorian Grey? Whoever's in the gallery has just found a portrait of the player to their left. That player is the traitor, and has stored all their age and infirmities in the portrait - together with "[their] morality, for [they] are now supremely evil."  The traitor has just realized that the other heroes are planning to destroy the portrait, and now wants to stop them. The traitor immediately gets to remove all their damage accumulated so far, and then to gain 1 trait point for each hero in the game. And they then can't be further harmed, as long as the portrait survives. There's not a whole lot special for them to do apart from beat up on the heroes. They do, however, get to place a room of their choice at any legal space in the house at the end of their turn, which seems a neat mechanic that it's surprising isn't in more of the Haunts. Also, if the traitor goes into the Gallery and sees their own portrait, they take 1d of mental damage.As for the heroes, they're trying to ruin the portrait by throwing cans of paint over it (rather than just attacking it with any number of the bits of junk they're probably carrying by that point). These spawn in 7 fixed rooms; the Traitor doesn't get to know which they are, so they might end up just handing the heroes a can of paint if they place a room conveniently nearby. The heroes can take the paint can to the Gallery and make a Knowledge 4+ roll (?) to ruin the portrait. If they do this #heroes+2 times, they win. The traitor, as well as killing the heroes, can steal the paint cans as if they were regular objects and can destroy them during their turn. Oh, and the hero with the Amulet of the Ages can deal normal damage to the traitor, which the traitor doesn't get to know, and which is likely to result in an abrupt and frustrating end to the game if it happens. I'm not sure I have a lot of opinion about this one. It's kind of basic, and going to be determined a lot by the item loadouts people have as it starts. In particular, if the Traitor happens to be hit by Lights Out before becoming Traitor, they're liable to be wandering around aimlessly for most of the game. Ghost Bride Trigger: Find the Ring on the Balcony, in the Charred Room, Dining Room or Master Bedroom. A mysterious female ghost appears and picks someone in the party to be their groom. They pick the person with the Ring unless that's a woman, in which case she chooses the oldest man. If there are no male heroes, then a random unplayed male hero spawns as an NPC in the Entrance Hall, which isn't going to go well. The Bride has a Speed of 4-5 depending on the number of players, can go through walls, can't suffer physical damage, and makes Sanity attacks against everyone except the groom. The groom gets hit with sanity attacks too, but loses Might when damaged. The traitor? Well, they.. for some reason want to help the Bride. Again, there's no explanation. And the choice of traitor is fairly daft too: it states that the "default traitor is Vivien Lopez because she likes old movies" (!!). If she's not in play, the selection is based on the left of the player who found the Ring. They get to play the Bride on their turn, and their goal is to kill the groom (which makes them into a ghost, that they can also control), then move the Bride and groom into the chapel and have them remain there for 3 turns for the ceremony. Now, the heroes have an interesting role in this one. See, they know something that the traitor doesn't (and apparently can't be persuaded of); the ghost has got the wrong dude. The guy who was actually going to be her groom is buried in the house. So, they have quite a diary to do: go to one of three specific rooms and/or find the Book then make a Knowledge 5 roll to find out who the groom was; then go to the Crypt, make a Knowledge 4 roll to find him and a Might 4 roll to dig him up, then haul both the corpse and the Ring to the Chapel before the incorrect wedding finishes. The storytelling here is interesting, but the jobs for the heroes are rather heavily prescriptive. There's no penalty for the traitor getting killed and the Bride can't be killed, so there's not a whole lot of reason why they wouldn't charge in. Also, those special cases could easily be a real pain: if it happens that it's a male NPC who's picked as the groom, then the game is going to come heavily down to the dice when the Bride gets to sit in the entrance hall draining them over and over again. And if it's Vivien Lopez who finds the Ring, then the traitor now has the only item that can hurt the ghost and a critical one for the players, so she's probably just going to.. run away. House of the Living Dead Trigger: Find the Medallion in the Dining Room, Gymnasium or Servants' Quarters. The oldest explorer other than the person who found the medallion hears a strange ticking. They bend down to a hole in the wall to investigate.. and are grabbed and dragged in by a rotted hand and arm. They're dead, but not quite. They're now a Zombie Lord. Speed 3, Might 7, Sanity 2, and can only be hurt by the person with the Medallion. They have 7 hit points that don't reduce their traits when damaged. Also, there's a bunch of other Zombies as well, their number rather oddly determined: the Lord has a number of Zombies equal to the number of players, and splits them out evenly between 8 predetermined rooms that have been discovered, then adds one Zombie to each room that has them. So in a 6 player game, there could be anywhere between 7 and 12 zombies based on which rooms have been discovered. The heroes? Easy. Kill the zombies. The regular zombies are dropped by Might attacks, and just stunned by any other type of attack. They get a bonus to finding items (whenever an Item icon comes up, the heroes can draw 3 cards and pick one instead of just taking the top one), and the Holy Symbol will reduce attacking zombies' stats, but not the Zombie Lord's. The Lord has to kill the heroes; the heroes have to either kill all the regular zombies or just the Zombie Lord. If any of the players gets killed by a zombie or Zombie Lord, they become a Zombie themselves. They can continue playing the zombie and they win if the Zombie Lord does, provided they killed one other hero during their time as a zombie. Bleaugh. It's Panic Station all over again. The "provided they killed another Hero" rule is presumably trying to prevent this, but it basically means that the last converted zombie loses, which gives the "let's all run and become zombies" option greater weight. Apart from that, it's.. well, meh again. Heavily dependent on weaponry and stat choices, but could become an interesting, if simple, tactical game for a bit.
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Dec 14, 2017 00:22
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So does Horient express have to start in London or can you start it from some other point? Either way it's gonna be good to hear about it, I had a very misinformed mental picture of what it could've been about (namely just Murder on the Orient Express being derailed by cultists and like a Byakhee and poo poo).
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Dec 14, 2017 01:59
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Five Eyes posted:So are we to understand that the Bohemian Club is an arm of the church of megasatan? Yeah, they're supposed to be the only public face of the group that's at all palatable to the general public and they try to use their fame & celebrity status to subtly make the Final Church's goals more widely accepted. I assume this is the case because SF is a city of librul queers and if there's anywhere that Robertson and Falwell would have pinpointed as the modern Sodom & Gomorrah it would have been SF. That unflattering inference is based on the observation that the published material treats the Final Church as saturday-morning-cartoon villians at best, and otherwise seems to agree with our conspicuous national Evangelist attitude towards the Satanic Panic.
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Dec 14, 2017 02:30
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Hostile V posted:So does Horient express have to start in London or can you start it from some other point? Either way it's gonna be good to hear about it, I had a very misinformed mental picture of what it could've been about (namely just Murder on the Orient Express being derailed by cultists and like a Byakhee and poo poo). You would have to change some things at the end but you don't have to start in London. You wouldn't want to start in Paris though or any of the other cities along the route though because it upsets some things. You have to go back to London at the end to undo the curse that's been put on the party but there are alternate rules in the 2014 box set to fix things in Constantinople. The statue you're putting together to destroy curses the members of the party who first touched the pieces and there's a necklace that also curses the wearer to devote themselves to Ithaqua. You have to get a ritual to dispel the curses and you don't get it until you go back to London since the bad guy has it stored at his apartment. The train itself has ritual importance to unlocking the statue, it's not that important story wise but makes sense, so you might want to keep the finale in London or move it to Paris or wherever they first got onto the train. When I ran this campaign, the investigators were a Prussian nobleman, an English machinist and toymaker, an English pickpocket/robber, a French surrealist painter, and not-Jack Johnson. Not-Jack Johnson at one point flipped out, punched a Lloigor, and didn't get hit once by it. No one died but we were using the optional luck spend rule and it saved several of the characters. They all almost went insane though because you lose a great deal of sanity throughout the whole campaign.
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Dec 14, 2017 04:43
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Hostile V posted:So does Horient express have to start in London or can you start it from some other point? Either way it's gonna be good to hear about it, I had a very misinformed mental picture of what it could've been about (namely just Murder on the Orient Express being derailed by cultists and like a Byakhee and poo poo). Like RocknRollaAyatollah said, you could start somewhere other than London but you'd need to rewrite part of the campaign. You definitely couldn't start anywhere after Paris without significant rewrites. There's some alternative ways to start the campaign that I'll cover, but they also start things off in London.  DANCERS IN AN EVENING FOG – PART 2 The Truth Mehmet Makryat is a scary-rear end cultist from a scary-rear end cult called the Brotherhood of Skin. We'll learn more about them as the campaign runs on, but suffice to say for now that they want the Sedefkar Simulacrum and they are a scary-rear end cult. Mehmet's daddy Selim is actually the head of the cult, and once clashed with Professor Smith thirty-odd years ago. Makryat had been living in London and keeping tabs on Smith for some time before he struck on his plan to use the investigators to retrieve the Simulacrum.  The night of the attack, Makryat summoned a dimensional shambler to kidnap Professor Smith and haul his rear end over to Constantinople. With this hostage, he was easily able to conscript Beddows into helping him torch Smith's house. Meanwhile, he summoned the three false Makryats – actually Brothers of the Skin and his subordinates – before murdering them to keep his movements secret from the rest of the cult in Constantinople. Mehmet had already made them identical doppelgangers of himself via Control Skin, a nasty and versatile spell that Makryat later used on himself for his Professor Smith disguise. The spell on its own isn't enough to make a thirty-something fit Turk look like a sixty-something fat white man, hence the set-up Makryat used for the meeting with the investigators. One thing about the set-up that's kind of weird is why Makryat felt the need to kill his juniors in such an ostentatious fashion. Obviously, the MAN DIES THREE TIMES IN ONE NIGHT thing is a cool hook but if Makryat's supposed to be so smart he should have found a better way to dispose of the bodies. He could have gotten rid of their passports at the very least. But I digress. It's possible that the investigators are curious enough to launch a separate investigation into Makryat. On Mehmet's Trail By the time the investigators go to the Chelsea Arms, the bodies have been removed and they'll have to deal with the pigs in Scotland Yard. If they can somehow schmooze their way into getting more information about the case, they learn that each pseudo-Makryat had an identical telegram sent from Paris bidding them to meet in London (signed 'M'). Another detail that the cops didn't tell the press is that each corpse had been partially skinned; one the torso, one the arms and one the legs. The cops also searched Makryat's shop, the Crescent Treasury, but found nothing. The investigators might also think to visit the Turkish embassy. The clerk can be persuaded to hand over Makryat's address and DOB, but will get pissed if they press too closely on the passports, asserting that they must be forgeries and are therefore a British problem. The speculation that the evil Turks are somehow scheming with duplicate passports probably isn't helping international relations much. However, befriending the clerk will get him to admit that all files relating to Mehmet Makryat have disappeared from the embassy records.  Makryat's shop in Islington isn't hard to find. His neighbours haven't seen hide nor hair of him, but more importantly do not recognise the Makryats from the crime scene photographs as the Makryat they know, who was a taciturn old man. The Crescent Treasury is closed, but breaking in after-hours reveals an unremarkable showroom with a simple living space upstairs. With a Spot Hidden roll, the investigators will notice that a) the only books are ledgers and b) there's no luggage or much in the way of clothing either, as if Makryat's just cleared out and abandoned the shop. One entry in one of the ledgers notes something odd: a model train set. The rest of Makryat's records are full of goods imported from the Middle East or purchased in London auctions with not a single other toy or train-related item. This is a plot hook for The Doom Train scenario that I'll be covering in the next update. London Researches The book notes that the investigators may want to do some research before they set out. The best place for that is the Reading Room in the British Museum Library – that is, if the investigators can level the kind of academic guanxi they'd need to access it. Some Library Use rolls won't turn up much about either the Simulacrum or the Scrolls, but it'll point them in the right direction.  After a day or so of research, the investigators will notice someone slumped over his books, 'hat still rudely on his head', apparently sleeping. At some point during their visit, he topples over; underneath the clothes is a totally flayed corpse (SAN 1/1D6). Written in Turkish on human skin and attached to the corpse is a note that reads: THE SKINLESS ONE WILL NOT BE DENIED Panic ensues. Police are eventually able to identify the body as belonging to one Richard Wentworth, but no one can figure out how someone was able to sneak him in there. Wentworth was killed and subsequently flayed by none other than Makryat, who did it purely to gently caress with the investigators. He chose Wentworth as his victim because he was one of Smith's students. What a joker! Unless the investigators follow up on the train set, there's nothing else for them in London. Paris is a short boat ride away. Mehmet's Movements Makryat needs the investigators alive and on their way to Constantinople. After they leave London, he shadows them for the rest of their journey at a distance, occasionally slipping a whole city behind them but always staying on track. In this, Mehmet serves a couple of different roles for the campaign. First, he can act as a kind of sweeper, picking up any Simulacrum parts that the investigators might have missed. Second, he will intervene if he feels the investigators are in serious danger. Stat-wise, he's a combat monster with sick knife skills, a fat stack of spells and absolutely no SAN whatsoever. He can summon several Mythos entities and do whatever hosed up things he wants with the Control Skin spell. This does beg the question: why does Makryat need the investigators at all? Even if he wants to stay as safe as possible, he knows roughly where the pieces are and anyone who gets within arms' reach of him is totally hosed. The campaign guide states that he wants to keep his actions secret from his father's agents but uh, isn't all the other poo poo he's doing going to raise an eyebrow back in Constantinople? Anyway, he'll keep up the ruse of being Professor Smith and send telegrams posing as Beddows speaking for Smith. These will generally be words of encouragement and maybe bits of information he thinks will help the investigators. Any pieces of the Simulacrum he finds will be sent ahead to Constantinople. Oh, and he'll kill Beddows. Sadly, that won't be the last the PCs see of him.  Every  application you can think of for this spell, the Brotherhood beat you to it.Alternatively… The book presents an alternative plot for a shorter, more straight-forward campaign. In this version, the Burned Man really is Professor Smith and everything he's saying is true. Makryat doesn't have any involvement until the end of the campaign, which otherwise plays out as usual until the climax. There'll be more on that when we eventually get to Constantinople. Next time: the Doom Train!
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Dec 14, 2017 05:01
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Ah, the Brotherhood of the Skin. I remember them from a couple spells in the core rulebook.
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Dec 14, 2017 05:09
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Down With People posted:
What about the  applications?
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Dec 14, 2017 05:37
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Kurieg posted:They never rolled hit dice for monsters in 3.5, They got max HP for their first HD and then the average for all the rest (2.5 on a d4, 3.5 on a d6, 4.5 on a d8, 5.5 on a d10, and 6.5 on a d12, rounding up I think) I believe only PC classes got max on their first HD, everything else was all average, round down.
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Dec 14, 2017 05:53
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Feinne posted:Kwakarian (Lesser Demon): The idea of the PCs getting stalked by one of these things because it became their new biggest fan is pretty amusing to me.
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Dec 14, 2017 06:07
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Kurieg posted:They never rolled hit dice for monsters in 3.5, They got max HP for their first HD and then the average for all the rest (2.5 on a d4, 3.5 on a d6, 4.5 on a d8, 5.5 on a d10, and 6.5 on a d12, rounding up I think) Monsters in 3.x still have hit dice values, with a precalculated average listed for convenience. You'd be right that most people probably didn't actually roll for monster HP, but it was still there.
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Dec 14, 2017 06:47
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Also they didn't max first hit die for monsters. That was just PCs.
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Dec 14, 2017 06:58
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3.x actually made monster HD even worse, because it introduced the idea that different kinds of monsters had different Hit Die sizes. When I said earlier that the individual steps taken for monster HD make sense on their own and only seem bizarre when you look at them from a broader perspective, that doesn't apply to 3.x. Why 3.x kept and expanded on that sacred cow is truly bizarre, because it actively made the concept less useful.
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Dec 14, 2017 14:32
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Approximately 90% of the questions fielded in the long-running “Sage Advice” column in Dragon Magazine had to do with The Deck of Encounters Set One Part 57: The Deck of Graveyards and Wizards’ Towers 330: Feeding Time So the party stops for the night at a local crossroads tavern, and the folks report that strange sounds have been coming from the graveyard at night, and TEAR UP ALL GRAVEYARDS, SMASH ALL THE BONES, AND NEVER BURY ANYONE AGAIN, YOU SUICIDAL MORONS Ahem. Sorry about that. Anyway, when the townspeople investigated in the daytime they found that many of the graves were ripped up an desecrated. It’s because nine ghasts have been feeding on the corpses. They’re not hard to find, since they don’t cover their tracks and are going to return to the scene of the time. The townspeople will reward them with 500 gp in silver and gems, and food and board. “In addition, the local priests begin the practice of blessing the dead, including any party members who fall in battle with the ghasts.” Oh hey, the graveyard problem is actually addressed. Nevertheless: Number of encounters mentioning graveyards that have involved deadly undead: 6 Number of encounters mentioning graveyards where it’s just a neutral local priest having fun with necromancy: 1 Your odds are not good, people. My pet peeves aside, this is a RETURN WHEN YOU HAVE KILLED 9 GHASTS quest straight out of an MMO. I don’t know if I really want to spend the time. Pass? 331: ...In a Handbasket In a wizard’s tower or some such. There’s a magical circle drawn onto the floor. Anyone who comes within 5 feet needs to save or find themselves drawn in, and teleported to “the first of the Nine Hells” (which would be Avernus). They’re in a shadowy cave made of hot, red rock, but nobody else is around, but actually all they need to do to get back is stand in the circle on the other side and say “home.” I like the idea of a random Hell portal, but the execution is a little weird and lopsided. There’s a magical compulsion on the circle on the Prime Material side, and there, all you need to do to be planeshifted is to have any body part “cross the plane of the circle” or touch the gold or silver inlay. The portal on the Hell side looks the same, but there’s no compulsion, and you need to stand in the circle and use a password. It’s very unintuitive, which could be frustrating to players. Keep, I guess. This card is “High” danger, so the PCs will probably he high enough level to find a way back or stage a rescue mission if they need to. I might still drop the magical compulsion, though. It would be a much more satisfying encounter is curiosity was their downfall. 332: Explosion You have my attention with that title, card! The titular explosion destroys the top of a wizard’s tower that’s rising from a swampy jungle area. It clearly rockets three pieces of tower in different directions, and leaves the top a “charred and slagged mess.” The pieces of tower start seeping magical chaos around an approximately 10-mile radius, creating random spell effects, summoning demons, and so on. They each need dispel magic cast on them twice to purify them. (A very boring solution.) “The DM should feel free to invent all sorts of nasty encounters; for example, one of the towers had a magical summoning circle inside it, containing three baatezu. With the explosion of the tower, the circle broke and the baatezu were freed. The fiends come to kill the PCs and claim their spirits.” Yes thank you that is clearly the most interesting direction you could have gone with this. The execution is uninspired, but it’s a really good hook - I like that the PCs are probably going to want to investigate the bottom section of the tower at the very least, but while they do so the jungle outside is going to get more and more infested with, I don’t know, elongated whistling crocodile men creating warring pocket civilizations in extra-dimensional spaces accessed by rope tricked vines or whatever. I just thought of that off the top of my head, and for the tower remains I would just grab whatever I had handy (bottom floor and basement of Tower of the Stargazer, done) so despite not being very fleshed out as written, I’ll keep this one.
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Dec 14, 2017 14:41
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I was reading through Abandon All Hope When I found thisnin the phrenology lab section:Abandon All Goons posted:There is no rule saying that removing the brain of the patient results in their death because this was written by people who cut their teeth on D&D 3.0. Isn't it a very rules-as-physics thing to actually read it that way? Like, if the game doesn't say they die, they don't, sense be damned? Would a Legit Good Game need to spell out that removing the brain kills the patient? Am I misunderstanding something?
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Dec 14, 2017 15:15
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Hey, when a mind flayer removes someone's brain it says they die, so now everyone has to specify!
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Dec 14, 2017 15:19
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JcDent posted:Isn't it a very rules-as-physics thing to actually read it that way? Like, if the game doesn't say they die, they don't, sense be damned? Would a Legit Good Game need to spell out that removing the brain kills the patient? Am I misunderstanding something? one of the fundamental design conceits for 3.X was that anything not explicitly stated as possible was likely impossible. further, specific rules only contradict general rules in the circumstance that the specific rule references and aren't applied in a general way to other similar, but not identical, situations. this is why, for example, in 3.0 you can die from suffocation (there's rules specifically saying the subdual damage you take bleeds into HP damage after enough time suffocating has passed) but you can't actually die from starvation; although the rules for starvation do include subdual damage, the general rule for subdual damage never indicates that it ever turns into HP damage. thus, since starving isn't the same condition as suffocating, you can't just infer that the subdual > HP damage clause for suffocating applies to starvation. would a reasonable person understand that having your brain removed kills you? sure. would it also be possible to infer that it doesn't kill you, based on 3.X's weird rule idiosyncrasies? also yes.
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Dec 14, 2017 15:31
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There's a different context with D20/3e, because it has a fandom that loves nitpicking this stuff with utter seriousness. For example, people claimed that a power that says "You can remove any status effect from yourself" means that you can turn off the sun and kill the planet.
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Dec 14, 2017 15:55
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Halloween Jack posted:There's a different context with D20/3e, because it has a fandom that loves nitpicking this stuff with utter seriousness. Sunlight Ends Immediately.
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Dec 14, 2017 15:57
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Freaking Crumbum posted:one thing that's a bummer is that the "race" of demons that get presented in the core book get a moderately sympathetic write-up, and the idea that maybe they're just misunderstood or unfairly put-upon by the Heavenly Host makes sense within the context of what the Heavenly Host has done throughout history. they look like how we've been taught demons "should" look, but they're no more or less inclined to Evil than your average human, and it's entirely likely that they're being exterminated by the Heavenly Host for less than objectively Good reasons. In their minds they probably think it's fine because they tried really hard to say that Luciferans, in spite of looking like demons and being considered demons by the Elohim, were not in fact demons and were pretty okay guys. I have to agree though it would have been a much cooler take if in fact demons were maybe not bad enough overall to justify the hardon the Elohim have for them. As I think about it, the Lesser Demons in Xenoforms are both things that feed on negative human things (violence and guilt respectively). I think a cool take would be if mostly demons were just sort of things that need strong emotion to survive and they're only as bad or good as the emotion they're associated with. Feinne fucked around with this message at 16:23 on Dec 14, 2017 |
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Dec 14, 2017 16:21
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I like the Blood Devil, he looks fun. Also, people taking rules super seriously can be fun as a thought experiment or 1d4chan fodder, but probably not in a game. Second place goes to smart rear end players who want show how cool they are by starting an industrial revolution in fantasy.
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Dec 14, 2017 16:52
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broke: starting an industrial revolution in fantasy  woke: starting an industrial workers' revolution in fantasy 
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Dec 14, 2017 17:07
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JcDent posted:I was reading through Abandon All Hope When I found thisnin the phrenology lab section:
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Dec 14, 2017 17:08
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To be fair, the creators of AAH are already existing without a brain, so... Also, is it me, or were the female portraits somehow better drawn? Did they trace pictures? That Xerxe's Orgy From 300 As Imagined By Super Straight 15-Year-Old Boy was kinda well done for the book, too. I think the Ragers on the cover is the single best illustration so far.
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Dec 14, 2017 17:25
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It was pretty obvious they were tracing photos and poser models, but are more competent at shading than Abby Soto of WGA fame so it's not quite as noticeable.
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Dec 14, 2017 17:43
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Most male faces are still just blobs of Rarkarth Flesh, tho.
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Dec 14, 2017 17:56
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Halloween Jack posted:broke: starting an industrial revolution in fantasy I have given this way too much thought over the past year. The long and short of it is that in Faerun as long as there are monsters existentially threatening peasants, massively powerful actors such as goddess dicking wizards, and a divinely enforced ban on higher technology, the people's revolution is extremely unlikely. The closest you might get is a socialist state along the lines of a more egalitarian Halruaa, or a divinely inspired nation created by Bane or Talos getting bored and trying out social engineering for a bit. 
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Dec 14, 2017 19:50
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Skellybones posted:I have given this way too much thought over the past year. The long and short of it is that in Faerun as long as there are monsters existentially threatening peasants, massively powerful actors such as goddess dicking wizards, and a divinely enforced ban on higher technology, the people's revolution is extremely unlikely. The closest you might get is a socialist state along the lines of a more egalitarian Halruaa, or a divinely inspired nation created by Bane or Talos getting bored and trying out social engineering for a bit. No war but class war, and unfortunately the wizards keep winning that one.
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Dec 14, 2017 19:55
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Halruaa really is the best case Faerun scenario: a post-scarcity bubble kingdom, surrounded by hostile wastes that everyone thinks stretch all the way inward, where the vast majority of the populace is a member of the magical upper-class or is left alone by them.
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Dec 14, 2017 20:04
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Well yeah, I wouldn't expect a campaign based around freedom fighting to work in a garbage setting that assigns all agency to gods and godlike NPCs.
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Dec 14, 2017 20:06
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All you have to do is point out that the reason the Gods forbid technology is that they fear it, and that the planet has regular contact with other worlds and dimensions that could easily export to them.
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Dec 14, 2017 20:09
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Free Athas
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Dec 14, 2017 20:19
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Playing as interdimensional revolutionaries there to gently caress up Faerun's silly stasis would be the only way to get me to play a campaign in Forgotten Realms these days.
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Dec 14, 2017 20:33
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Mask would probably help kill the other gods as long as he got to be the sword again.
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Dec 14, 2017 20:41
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Kavak posted:What about the That'll be covered in my fanfiction. But for now: THE DOOM TRAIN – PART 1 Wherein persistence in investigation prompts our heroes to climb aboard a very different train. This is an optional scenario that, sadly, the investigators are probably going to miss. It's a red herring that has nothing to do with the main campaign and it can only be 'activated' by searching Makryat's ledgers and following up on the model train lead. If your investigators really liked Smith, his parting words might have riled them up enough that they go straight to Paris, no questions asked. The book notes that two of the playtest groups just breezed right past the plot hooks and if yours do the same you should let them. But it's a fun little adventure and it would be a shame for them to miss it. This dude who ran the campaign also did a review on his blog, and his extremely good idea for the scenario? Run it before the rest of the campaign as a prequel. There's ways to tie the adventure into Smith's research, perhaps prompting him meeting with the investigators and maybe even allowing them to take part in the Challenger Trust event as speakers. Background In 1897, mad occultist Randolph Alexis was pursued by his enemies on a train. He tried to create a Gate to escape but miscast, instead teleporting the entire front half of the train into another dimension. Twenty years later, Randolph's son Albert had been reading his father's grimoires and came to the conclusion that he was probably still alive somewhere. He altered a toy train set to be a scale model of the original train, but also charged with magic power. Using it activated a second Gate, but instead of bring back Randolph it brought the whole train through, sweeping Albert up with it. Much later, Alexis' widow began selling off her late son's belongings. Makryat saw the train set and immediately saw its potential, purchasing it along with some of Alexis' old books. When he had learned enough, he sold it to train enthusiast Henry Stanley, who unknowingly summoned the Doom Train one more time.  Man Disappears in Cloud of Smoke This headline appears the day after Makryat's murder/Smith's disappearance. Henry Stanley, goony bachelor and upstanding member of the Train Spotter's Association, vanished from his bed-sitting room literally in a puff of smoke. The article also links the model train purchase to Makryat's shop and raises the question of a connection, just to give the investigators that extra little kick up the arse. In addition, the entry in Makryat's ledger mentions 'the estate of Randolph Alexis'. A successful Occult recalls the name as belonging to a notorious occultist who was big in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, while a Library Use roll reveals that he died in a train derailment. If the investigators check out Stanley's bedsit, they'll find landlady Mrs. Atkins an enthusiastic source of info, especially if they can pay for it. She's been charging visitors sixpence apiece to see 'the Death Room'. She'll eagerly recount her side of the story: Stanley came home for tea with his new train set, went upstairs at 7, disappeared at 8. Atkins heard a cry and a rumbling, and when she opened the door it was full of smoke and empty of Stanley. The window was locked and bolted from the inside. Investigators who pony up 6p find the kind of sad-rear end room you'd imagine a 40+ single trainspotter to live in. Interestingly, there's dark sooty streaks across the ceiling running from north-west to south-east, and a Spot Hidden roll reveals black parallel smudges in the carpet that happen to be the same width apart as train tracks. The pigs have already confiscated the train set. If the investigators can schmooze past the dutyman and talk to the sergeant, he'll state that there were absolutely no signs of violent struggle in the room and that he's sure Stanley faked his own disappearance. The train set was the electric kind and the only thing that could have caused a fire in the room, but they found no faults in it whatsoever. Still, they've handed it over Arthur Butter, president of the Train Spotter's Association, to get an expert opinion.  Trainspotting Butter is easy to find, running the Association out of his home in Camberwell. Goony interests aside, he's a friendly guy and genuinely upset about the possible death of Stanley. He's keeping the train set in his cellar; he ran one circuit for the cops but its relation to Stanley means he takes no pleasure in it. Besides that, he thinks it's in poor taste that someone made a scale model of an actual train that killed dozens back in '97. He'll hand it over with a successful Credit Rating roll but he'll let the investigators have a go at it in the cellar if it fails. If they happen to mention that they're going to be boarding the SOE, he'll totally geek out and not only hand them the train set but also enthusiastically invite them to that evening's Association dinner. 'There'll be lots of things to learn about trains,' he threatens. If the investigators go, the Association goonmeet is actually a pretty chill time with a hearty six-course meal followed by brandy and cigars. Obviously, the attendees almost exclusively talk about train minutiae, but this is a good place for the investigators to pick up some travel advice. If you're planning to run the Dreamlands Express scenario, which you are, one of the attendees mentions the transcendental, life-changing experience of riding the Express.  The Train Set As Butter's mentioned, the model train is an authentic replica of a real 1890s train with massive engine, coal tender and two coaches. The craftsmanship of the model demonstrates an extremely high attention to detail, and a thorough examination of any of the cars reveals strange symbols scratched on the undercarriage. The track is mounted on a hardwood board and maps out a twisted figure-eight. There's no scenery, but there are several ramps. A handkerchief monogrammed R.A. is pinned to the underside of the board. Running the train once does nothing, nor does changing the order of the coaches or the order of the train. Instead, the train must complete an arbitrary number of circuits before anything happens – either 1d50 or the keeper's choice. When it hits that number, the investigator who turned on the train (the 'summoner') loses 3 MAG as the Doom Train comes through. By the way, if the investigators destroy the set instead? Every investigator who participated in the destruction of the set has terrible nightmares of the people they trapped in another dimension. These nightmares cause the dreamer to lose 1 SAN and come every night until they succumb to madness or build a new train set. Don't break the set. Next time: Midnight train going anywhere!
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Dec 14, 2017 22:23
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Ain't no good coming of summoning The Doom Train, is there?
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Dec 14, 2017 22:34
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Huh. Yeah, interesting idea and would make for a good prologue but man does that just go absolutely nowhere and leave the players scratching their heads about what to so next/if it was relevant.
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Dec 14, 2017 22:51
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I admit I got a soft spot for Faerun due to Baldur's Gate, but as an tabletop setting, you have to have a complete Ragnarok to make it useful and at that point, you might as well use a homebrew.
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Dec 14, 2017 23:10
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Robindaybird posted:I admit I got a soft spot for Faerun due to Baldur's Gate, but as an tabletop setting, you have to have a complete Ragnarok to make it useful and at that point, you might as well use a homebrew. Baldur's Gate came out right as I first got into RPGs and I will forever cherish that silly game. That said, BG didn't have the Faerun gods get into stuff so much, despite being about being the child of a dead god who is trying to raise himself via his children. You were mostly just a young hero puzzling out what the hell was going on in a generic fantasy setting.
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Dec 14, 2017 23:26
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I actually like Forgotten Realms a lot, it's just what authors have done with it that's dumb and fanfictiony. It's meant to be a setting so big and varied that you can hop on a ship and go have any kind of adventure. You can go do Wizard Things in Halruaa, you can do Intrigue Things in Waterdeep (you can do anything in Waterdeep) and Cormyr and all sorts of other places, you can do Jungle Things in Chult, you can do Trade War Things in a gigantic inland sea, and you can do Barbarian Things in Rashemen. There's even a place for you to do Ninja and Samurai Things. It's just lashed to the two wheels of Ed Greenwood and 3.5e.
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Dec 15, 2017 00:01
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 05:13 |
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Baldur's Gate brilliantly united story and gameplay mechanics by having you be a person who got stronger by murdering things. e: Ed Greenwood is a creepy creep and I regret reading his things.
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Dec 15, 2017 00:08
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