by ctcharger

Related Item: The Fantasy Trip: Legacy Edition

It definitely has the old school vibe. More so if they drilled 3 ring binder holes. I found it through wizard and melee and I do like the character generation system. The bestiary section could use some improvement and do you need to me super super smart to <gasp> raise zombies? That seems off to me but I like that IQ is needed for various skills so smart opponents can be very powerful behind just their strength and Dex. I do like the armor effects on Dex as it makes being unarmored or lightly armored a little more interesting without special rules for "toughness" for some classes.

by shiva666

cosine wrote:

But why does there seem to be so little for players?

Habit from the original model (1 gm +players). Games that don't follow it are exceptional.

Right now I story game with my daughter. we take both roles in tandem.

The designs I make give players gm capacities and responsabilities.
-several characters per player
-character creation as action
-characters with goals and purpose beyond the quest
-open gaming players are aware of gm decisions and moves, creating a story together.
-every action requires a roll to bounce story from
-team work rules require attention to other players turn

by aramis

Related Item: Caution: May Contain Wargame Like Substance

On alien: There are 4 flavors of Xenomorph in core... not all are the Egg-Facehugger-chestburster cycle. But it's also a solid space opera game in and of itself, especially in Evolved Edition (aka 2e or EE).

There are a lot of us who would like to see official stats for the ALIEN: EARTH critters; the XX121 itself is pretty stock. But the other critters... Unfortunately, it doesn't seem very likely that FL has rights to do them.

I do like the way the lost boys are made... it's an interesting discussion of what it means to be someone.

by aramis

Related Item: Space 1889: Red Sands

I decided to use Guts. I want to have the horrific subtones of some of the more bizzare critters have impact.

by aramis

I've had several players for whom character gen was the least interesting part of play, period.

One of them found his favorite being the "No choices made until the last step" WFRP 1E in full random mode. Random race, random atts, random resulting class, random starting career, and then, just for good measure, he made the choice of which advance with a die roll. He even randomized the name.

His least favorite was the choice ridden WEG Star Wars.

by aramis

pdzoch wrote:

How do you make an unsuccessful dice roll change the situation instead of simply stopping the action?

Say a player fails to pick a lock, find a clue, or persuade an NPC. What happens next? How can a failure produce an interesting new problem rather than a dead end?

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Sometimes, the dead end on a given thread is the interesting result. It's not axiomatic that narrowing the range of actions left is inherently uninteresting.

It's only when there's only one way left that I worry about it.

I try not to gate clues behind rolls, but the roll gates the utility for other than solving the mystery. One of the greatest examples was players having figured out the murderous oni, but they had no usable-in-court evidence... so one of the players taunted them into attacking, and cut them down "in self defense"... they were quite relieved when the body proved them right... but officially, the murders were still "unsolved" as Rokugani justice only accepts eyewitness testimony and depositions...

A stuck door isn't always a stop - it's a change how you open it. Switch from skill to BF&I... Brute Force and Ignorance. Break it down. Burn it. Chop it free of the hinges. Use the crowbar or halligan to bend it open. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halligan_bar ) Until the party has exhausted the means to hand...

If the door is indeed a gate to the rest of the adventure, then a failure is break the tool used, but open the door. I try not to have single access points.

Then again, sometimes players avoid the obvious path because of the smell of Privvies....
... most of my dungeons have horrible smelly rooms with deep holes for disposing of bodily wastes. But in one case, they sent the fairy down the privvy's air vent to go open the dungeon door from inside...

It's seldom actually been an issue with my players. A few random groups at TSR Retail Play and WotC D&DAL have had brain lock before even going through the obvious options. This leads to, "OK, everyone make a raw Int roll," and the high roller being given a clue to one of the obvious–to–me ways forward.

I've always been willing to use attribute rolls to provide further clues when I don't see a blocked plot but the players do.

by aramis

Flyboy Connor wrote:

I am a GM because I am a storyteller. I think that someone who isn't interested in telling stories would not make for a good GM. Doesn't mean that you cannot do it, but it will lead to at best a mediocre experience for the players.

Someone too interested in telling THEIR stories is the worst kind of GM. It takes a balance.
Especially in play-to-find-out approaches.

I GM because I like pushing people's buttons and seeing what happens. I like seeing story emerge from situations that I've not written linkages for. The players generally come up with the linkage themselves; I just have to listen for it.

by aramis

Two beverages open, alternating: Tiger Spice Tea, and Pepsi Wild Cherry Zero Sugar. Given the hour, I should stick to the tea, but pepsi kills the aftertaste of one of my meds.

by aramis

An item RPG Item: Fields of Victory has been added to the geeklist 19 October 2026: How did your RPG session(s) go this week?

by aramis

ctimmins wrote:

When the character owns the spaceship, their priorities are party priorities.

That depends upon the willingness of the Doc to creatively medicate the owner-aboard and the general party willingness to maroon and/or murder the owner.

by aramis

pdzoch wrote:

What makes a character's personal goal interesting to the entire party?

A player creates a backstory and motivation for their character to seek revenge, political power, family reconciliation, or the recovery of a lost artifact. What turns this individual ambition into something other players want to help pursue? How does a party become motivated to contribute as a group towards a character's goal instead of each pursuing their own individual (and sometime conflicting) goals? What examples have worked in your campaigns?

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I genuinely haven't figured out which ones make for better party pickup. Various groups have been variously warm to others' goals. Some groups took no heed at all, others built to support the quests from session 0 on.

In a forced guess, I suspect it's down to the inherent empathy of the party members. Not every gamer has the levels of empathy of half my Sunday Night group.

by aramis

pdzoch wrote:

How do you communicate danger to players without telling them what to do?

Context for this question is more for horror, OSR, survival, and exploration campaigns where interpreting danger is an important player skill. Say the characters are approaching something far more dangerous than they realize. How do you warn them fairly while preserving mystery and their freedom to make bad decisions? What clues have actually worked?

Prompt 1: sufficiently genre-specific warnings. The glistening black or off-white carapace, the drool hitting the deck releasing smoke, and such for Xenomorph XX121- variants. Or the noises of emerging XX121-variant juveniles. Unless, of course, an X-card is played.
I'll note: playing the X-card pretty much means the player has sussed that something really bad is about to happen. Ironically, the one time it's been pulled for gore, the player didn't trigger it until after the description of the gore was already over. (They were expecting a chestburster, and it was a headburster...) The group took 5 minutes and then carried on.
Prompt 2, similarly to what Pandora notes, check for character abilies that would give them the bad feelings.
Prompt 3, relevant skill rolls.
Prompt 3a: if the system has fear mechanics, apply them.
If they haven't gotten the clue by then, let them have it.

For reference, the description that got X-carded: spoiler for gore. [o]The purser, still comatose, begins to convulse. (Team rushes in) his body stops flopping suddenly... his lower jaw drops open, the upper jaw and nose, with a hideous cracking, push forward, then the cheeks rip from mouth to ear, and the whole face folds back to reveal the baby xenomorph.. (This is the point the X card got played. After the break, we continued without them, with their permission) It bolts for the air vents. (cue much automatic fire)[/o]