by shiva666

There's telepathy, hypnotize, brain hacking... so mental fight is default for me and my high powered games.

by rmjordan

An item RPG Item: Deify has been added to the geeklist 2026 RPGG Challenge: Play Five RPGs You Have Never Played Before (Each At Least Once)

by fiddly_bits

An item RPG Designer: Bill Taylor has been added to the geeklist Freeform Hex Games

by fiddly_bits

An item RPG Designer: Fred Horn has been added to the geeklist Freeform Hex Games

by pdzoch

I think the bigger challenge is with the players. Players generally are not skilled interrogators. Unless a subject is ready to roll over and pill everything, the process of wringing information out of a resistant subject is a tedious process. Players tend to focus questions about immediate threats and generally make assumptions about what they know. So, too often important information is simply never asked for. Additionally, players tend to come at the subject hard right away, often with the threat of death. A hardened subject tends not to be swayed by such conduct. Even when the outcome is to turn the subject over to the authorities, the subject feels no need to divulge any information.

I'm fine with role-playing the conversation, but it is rarely as fruitful as players intend it to be because they are not skilled at interrogations. It would probably be more effective to relay on a skill roll and let the dice determine the success of the outcome to avoid the "you did not ask THAT question" issue. I'm fine with players saying they want to interrogate a NPC and asked what to roll. The outcome will determine how much information is revealed, if any. I'm also fine with another player coming afterwards to interrogate differently to see if they could learn anything different.

In D&D terms, PCs typically use Intimidate and pursuasion, which I would assign some information to only be revealed by one skill or the other -- or change the tone for how the information is revealed. I would permit PCs to aid with insight, releigion (appeal to faith or moral code), deception ("hmm, where did my poison vial go? I wonder...), or even animal handling ("I'll sic my dog on you").

I love role-playing the interrogation because it give me an opportunity to bring the NPC to life and help define the NPC's relationship to the associated group and the characteristics of that group. Very recently, I group captured a smuggler in their hideout. The party had set off alarms, so the smugglers prepared for the group, making use of hidden passageways and traps. Three smugglers set an ambush for the party when they arrived essentially in a barracks/living space for the smuggler band. After a hard fought fight, they captured one to interrogate.
The questions the players asked:
"Who do you work for?" -- The defiant smuggler responded, "Who do you think we work for? It's all about the coin!"
"Did a girl come to this house last week? Were you the ones that killed her?" -- This smuggler did not encounter or know about the girl, but one of his band did encounter her and disposed of her to protect their hideout. His defiant response, "Aw, did you loose your girlfriend? Are you having a lover's spat? I never seen her and I don't know nutin about her."
"How many more of you are there. I see ten beds. Besides you three, are there seven more?" -- (it was a oddly worded question) to which the defiant smuggler said, "Congratulations, she can count. Does she know any other tricks?" After a punch in the mouth, he responded "Fine, you want a number. How about five? Does five work for you?" (lie)
"Where are they?" -- the smuggler refused to answer at first, but glanced over at a wall where there was a secret door to the smuggler's den. Once his tell was caught, he said "waiting for you, that's where they are. Waiting for you. he he. "

by shiva666

Vampire the requiem, gangrel clan role as survivalists was no good (every vampire is surviving), mine were shapeshifters.
Some complained about it diluting undead unchanging aspect of vampires in the game but to me protean is more an extension of undead mimicry. Their human form is the default shape but it is mimicry even in non shape shifting vampires...

by sdonohue

Evilution Unchained (HERO) is a 2014 release from Blessed Machine. It was designed by Pete Ruttman and is intended as an adventure for Champions (Hero System 6) and the related Champions Complete.

Presentation
This is available in both PDF and as a perfect-bound softcover book. The book is fairly standard with heavy stock covers in full color. It has color pages on matter paper inside the book. There are a lot of illustrations on the 144 pages in this book.

Content
This is an adventure for Champions. The book includes the adventure, map sheets, and standees for all the locations in the adventure. The net result is that the adventure itself occupies about 48 pages and the rest are intended to be cut out and assembled into location maps or standees for the included characters.

The adventure starts when the players learn that a number of prominent citizens have been kidnapped. They may get involved because an acquaintance of theirs is one of the victims or they've been asked to help by someone else or even the police. They can investigate a few of the places where the kidnappings and it will lead them to the university where they can become aware that animals were on the scene at each kidnapping. Clues will lead them to investigate other locations where they will start to understand the mystery. Investigating these clues will in turn lead them to the mastermind behind the whole plot, Dr EchiDNA. She's been working on creating a genetic mutant, some brainwashing techniques, and actually has a number of minions in place already. She's also created a few lesser minions, some from the kidnapping victims. In true mastermind fashion, Dr. EchiDNA will probably escape by sacrificing her minions.

The adventure is laid out mostly in two page scenes. These scenes have a similar format. One page generally provides a summary of what may happened at that location, the opposite page has a small map, there will be a legend for the map, and there may be a summary of the clues to be found at the location. There's usually an illustration of one character saying something, although it may be replaced by a GM Says box.

The book includes character sheets for a handful of villains, complete with illustrations, history, background, tactics, and complete character statistics. There's also an adventure checklist which identifies scenes and what the players should learn at those scenes.

The other nearly 100 pages are mostly intended to be cut out of the book. The maps are multiple sections and there are detailed instructions explaining which piece goes where and where to glue them to each other. The maps are visually appealing, but they don't have a grid of any sort, meaning there will be a lot of measuring unless you have a large transparent hex sheet to put over them.

Evaluation
This might be the first time I've ever suggested that the PDF of a product would be a better buy. Since there's so much cutting to use the maps, the book will be mostly destroyed if you actually cut them out. One could probably photo copy the pages, but it would be a lot of copying and the pages are in color.

The adventure itself is difficult to follow, even with the checklist provided. It's one of those things where the level of detail provided about something might not match with its actual importance in the adventure; there's too much focus on minutiae. There's very little actual read aloud, but there's also not much of a narrative. It's not a terrible adventure, but it's not one I'd buy again.

by pdahl

Excellent transactions with [user=skilly] and [user=chimbu]
(AND they removed the sold geeklist items!)

by brumcg

A couple of things that I noticed...

Seattle and RSL have a bye next week. I hadn't noticed that before.

Sofascore doesn't do double game weeks. The upcoming Wednesday/Saturday week is split into two Gameweeks 8 & 9.

by geobirder

Ευχαριστώ!

by latindog

I've never bothered too much about official lore in a setting. For well-known settings, I use the shared understandings of the available technology etc. but don't get into the specifics of the lore so this sort of thing hasn't been an issue.

by chuckdee68

No setting survives contact with my GMing.

Most recently, I played Swords of the Serpentine in an alternate Earth with Eversink being part of an island chain off the coast of Italy, with Sharn being integrated as part of the main European continent, i.e. the cities that are in Eberron replaced some of their contemporaries and the nations were replaced with their 7th Sea equivalents. This was all brought forward to the equivalent of the late 1700s/early 1800s.