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What ROLE-PLAYING have you been doing?

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15 Jul 2017 00:52 - 15 Jul 2017 00:57 #251212 by Mr. White


The ol' TSR classic...FASERIP Marvel Heroes.
Last edit: 15 Jul 2017 00:57 by Mr. White.
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15 Jul 2017 09:05 #251214 by Shellhead
They have Marvel miniatures in that scale? Seems like a big expense when the base game with so many cardboard standees.

Next week, I will be playing in six six-hour sessions of diceless roleplaying at a tiny local convention. Everybody there except me knows each other from many years of playing at two larger diceless conventions in other cities. I just happen to live in the area, but randomly stumbled across this convention while researching my Amber board game. And now one of the other players lives just a few miles away from me.

Diceless rpgs are very big on stories and characters and role-playing. In an actual practice, this often means more prep work before a session by the players, as they often need to respond to lengthy character quizzes or write an essay, just to give the game master ways to better involve them in the upcoming adventure. This is also important because diceless players tend to have a lot more freedom to define their place in the setting.

During a game session, the game master needs to quickly adapt to whatever the players are trying to do, even moreso than in normal playing. The guiding principle of diceless, like improv, is Yes And. In a conventional rpg, a player tries to do something, and the game master makes him roll to see if he succeeds. In diceless, the player tries to do something and the game master almost always lets it happen, but throws in complications and consequences that lead to new challenges.

One more odd aspect of this convention is the ongoing campaigns. Imagine an rpg campaign where the group only met 2 or 3 times a years, and in a different city each time. That campaign might actually have multiple sessions in each city, such that you end up doing as much playing as a normal rpg group that met locally once per month.

So, in recent days, I have typed up about eight pages of backstory or updates on new or ongoing characters. And I have been doing some additional work involving a character that hasn't even been generated yet. One of the six sessions that I am playing in will start out with players bidding for attributes, then spending the rest of their points to buy powers, allies, artifacts, and creatures. We will probably only get to play these characters for about four hours, but if the game goes well, it may become a new ongoing campaign.
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15 Jul 2017 11:48 - 15 Jul 2017 14:40 #251215 by Mr. White

Shellhead wrote: They have Marvel miniatures in that scale? Seems like a big expense when the base game with so many cardboard standees.


Cheap heroclix minis. The gm bought the box game used with no standees, but he had a ton of heroclix already from heroscape customs. I think he may have bought one or two for this campaign, but I don't think thry cost that much.

The campaign is set in 1989 and somehow marvels Apocalypse has converted the 89 JLA (guy gardner, wonder woman, martian manhunter, captain atom) into his 4 horsemen. We're a suicide squad type band of marvel villians. Fun game, but my Shocker is in way over his head...
Last edit: 15 Jul 2017 14:40 by Mr. White.
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17 Jul 2017 00:00 #251236 by metalface13

Mr. White wrote:



The ol' TSR classic...FASERIP Marvel Heroes.


Man that brings back memories. Never actually played it mind you, but my brother had bought it. I used to spend a lot of time reading through the manual and rolling up my own super heroes. That pretty much sums up my experience with every RPG I've touched in a nutshell.

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17 Jul 2017 08:34 #251240 by drewcula
I just played a third session into the D&D Fifth edition starter scenario.
I also just played a first session of a Numenara scenario.

I did a LOT of RPGs when I was a teenager (CoC, Shadowrun, Rifts, Pandemic, too many GURPS, HERO). As an adult, I'm just not as interested. IDK if its the GMs, the settings, the scenarios, me, or a combination. I'd just rather play a board game.

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17 Jul 2017 17:18 #251281 by Erik Twice
For some reason I spent several hours reading about The Tomb of Horrors, the D&D module. There's a huge thread in Enworld in which they discuss it step by the step with this question in mind:

I'm interested in this: What does it take to survive the ToH? Does the module provide enough clues to allow the players to navigate the Tomb safely? How much guesswork, dumb luck or divination magic is necessary to get through the Tomb? How much can be accomplished with caution and reason alone?


Ultimately they come to the conclusion that it is not possible. Even with careful planning, unlimited time and abuse of "bomb-defusing" tricks like using henchmenn to active traps and flying instead of walking it seems there are too many points in which you can get killed or stuck through a lack of information.

But, personally, it seems to me that most of its issues are not rooted on it being a "thinking's man module" or not but on it being old. Most of its issues seem to come from a lack of playtesting and obvious rule patches (Anti-magic rooms, demons coming after you if you teleport and other arbitrary limitations). Stuff like the encounter with the Elephant Steamroller doesn't work and the stream of hidden doors is clearly a vice from the early age.

I thought about running it with my gaming group but after reading so much about it I've begun to think it won't go well. It's simply not explained well enough for me to run it.

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17 Jul 2017 18:15 #251287 by Shellhead
I ran Tomb of Horrors for three different groups back in the day (maybe '80 or '81). Nobody completed the adventure, but two groups survived intact. No spoilers here.

1. A couple of friends took in their favorite characters plus henchmen. One of them had a paladin with an artifact level weapon from another campaign that was overpowered for this adventure. Early on, they encountered a highly lethal trap disguised as an opening to another room. They sent in a henchman, who never came back. I refused to tell them what the henchman saw because he was an NPC. Then the paladin stuck his artifact weapon in, and it vanished. By now, they were convinced that it was a teleportation device, which it wasn't. The paladin climbed in after it, annoyed. I took him off into the next room and told him that his character was gone with no remains. He reacted loudly enough that the other player knew something was wrong, and retreated with the surviving henchmen.

2. My regular gaming group went in with a suitable party, and probed very carefully for traps after encountering one. They made it far into the adventure, but at a specific point, mistakenly decided that they had finished the dungeon and left.

3. On vacation, I ran the Tomb for three brothers (to each other) who were staying at the same hotel as my family. They each ran two characters, and had surprisingly good teamwork for siblings. They scouted the whole area very carefully and finally went in through an entryway, but only partway. Then using a wand of Rock to Mud, they created their own entrance to the place, only several rooms away from the final room of the dungeon. They got through a few rooms just fine, then found a powerful but cursed magic item. Things got very messy while they were messing with the item, and then they decided to retreat. We didn't get a chance to play again before their family headed home.
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19 Jul 2017 17:57 #251396 by Rliyen

Shellhead wrote: I ran Tomb of Horrors for three different groups back in the day (maybe '80 or '81). Nobody completed the adventure, but two groups survived intact. No spoilers here.

1. A couple of friends took in their favorite characters plus henchmen. One of them had a paladin with an artifact level weapon from another campaign that was overpowered for this adventure. Early on, they encountered a highly lethal trap disguised as an opening to another room. They sent in a henchman, who never came back. I refused to tell them what the henchman saw because he was an NPC. Then the paladin stuck his artifact weapon in, and it vanished. By now, they were convinced that it was a teleportation device, which it wasn't. The paladin climbed in after it, annoyed. I took him off into the next room and told him that his character was gone with no remains. He reacted loudly enough that the other player knew something was wrong, and retreated with the surviving henchmen.

2. My regular gaming group went in with a suitable party, and probed very carefully for traps after encountering one. They made it far into the adventure, but at a specific point, mistakenly decided that they had finished the dungeon and left.

3. On vacation, I ran the Tomb for three brothers (to each other) who were staying at the same hotel as my family. They each ran two characters, and had surprisingly good teamwork for siblings. They scouted the whole area very carefully and finally went in through an entryway, but only partway. Then using a wand of Rock to Mud, they created their own entrance to the place, only several rooms away from the final room of the dungeon. They got through a few rooms just fine, then found a powerful but cursed magic item. Things got very messy while they were messing with the item, and then they decided to retreat. We didn't get a chance to play again before their family headed home.


Click here for hilarious but spoilerific run of the ToH

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21 Jul 2017 14:25 #251489 by Da Bid Dabid
Role playing has been good to me lately.

Last night we finished Tales of the Loop introductory scenario. We had split it up over two sessions, games I run tend to go longer I think as I'm still likely learning to control pacing and I think its just my tendency to play a lot out in the scenes. We had Bookworm, Hick, Troublemaker, and Weirdo character types. They all had a good time despite rolling a total of 2 successes (sixes on a D6) on about 45 dice to fail badly at the climax of the story. The rules light aspect makes it super easy to run, 3 of my 4 players had never played an RPG. The system really excels at bringing out relationships between players, NPCs, and tying that into the overall story. I did miss rolling D20s and funky dice a bit. I think they all really enjoyed their characters and are interested to see what happens next. We will prolly play through the 4 seasons campaign over the next few months.

The week before I played my 2nd session as a player in my friend's Call of Cthulhu game. His first time as GM and its really fun to be on the other side of the screen. My character is an antiquity dealer, with a tendencies to gamble, lie, and pass off forgery as real work to make a quick buck. Highlights so far was rolling a 1/5 crit success to allow the group to steal something we had no business getting, blowing cigarette smoke in the face of a bitchy high society lady, winning some back alley low stakes gambling, seeing the birth of a Mythos creature in my hand before squashing and killing it (only lost two sanity), and then needing to dig up a corpse to dispose of the evidence. The adventure will wrap up next time and my only regret at this point was one too many gin and tonics last session, so the end was just a little bit fuzzy.

I also bought Blades in the Dark. Seems pretty interesting and I think I like this kinda evolution of the Powered by Apocalypse system. Though to be fair I have not played either so that is all theoretical. I will likely be taking some aspects of Blades and incorporating them into my DCC game, which likely picks back up after Call of Cthulhu ends.

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23 Jul 2017 22:13 #251548 by Shellhead
Just got back from the annual local diceless convention. The first four sessions were moderately fun, but the last two sessions were disappointing, and I didn't even select a game for the Sunday night slot because I wanted to rest up before resuming work on Monday morning.

Maybe I am biased after attending GenCon ten times, but I think that four hour game slots are ideal for role-playing. With four hours, there isn't time to fuck around with character generation, a slow start, or a meandering plot. No, a four-hour slot for an rpg game calls for pre-generated characters with built-in hooks to the adventure at hand. The GM needs to keep things moving, and when the players get off track, the GM should change things on the fly to adapt the story to respond to player actions. Or else force the players back on track if the story is linear.

Diceless games tend to demand even more GM flexibility, but in practical terms, this often meant throwing in additional complications to keep the players from finishing to quickly. Sometimes it became too obvious that the adventure was getting padded out to avoid an early end to game. I don't like that in a diceless game, because it denies giving players credit for clever deduction and skilled problem-solving.

The two worst games were made worse by multiple factors:
1. Slow and indecisive gamemasters.
2. Too many players, especially the game where we had ten players today.
3. Lack of flexibility to adapt the story.
4. GMs who had poor time management skills.

The adaptability is extremely important. When you are five hours into a six-hour game and your players are vigorously looking for clues or opponents in the wrong location, that's a potential problem. I would solve it by letting the players find a clue that redirects them to the right location. Or better yet, by adapting the adventure so that the final confrontation can now take place in the "wrong" location instead of some "right" location.

Instead, our GM today let us spin our wheels for hours in the wrong location, and then asked us if it would be okay to run the game in overtime. In this little convention, the first slot of the day runs from 10 AM to 4 PM, while the second slot is 7 PM to midnight. That gives players three hours to take a nap, eat dinner, maybe sit in the hot tub for a while, whatever. Because he is normally a better GM than this, 9 out of 10 players soldiered on until 5 PM. That hour was incredibly boring, so three other players and I bailed at 5 PM.

This may be a better comment for another thread, but the most fun that I had at this whole diceless rpg convention was playing the Dune boardgame yesterday. Thanks to that same GM running late yesterday, we had less than two hours to play Dune, and it took a while to teach the rules to two of our four players. We had every faction except the Fremen and the Bene Gesserit in the game. We were short on time, so we agreed that turn 8 would be the final turn. I made a desperate push for a Harkonnen win, attacking or defending in three different sietches. I lost and the Emperor and Guild tied for the win with two sietches each.

Though I have probably spent more time on rpgs than boardgames over the years, boardgames are a more reliable source of entertainment. An rpg needs so many things to be good: decent players, a strong GM, good adventures, and creativity. When a couple of those elements are missing, an rpg can become downright tedious. Many boardgames offer a more reliable level of entertainment.
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23 Jul 2017 23:22 #251554 by Gary Sax
Roleplaying games have higher variance good and bad, I'd say.

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24 Jul 2017 11:49 - 24 Jul 2017 11:50 #251577 by Mr. White
Yep.
Very risk/reward here.

The best RPG sessions easily eclipse the best boardgame sessions, but boardgames usually don't get as low as the worst RPG game nights.

That said....at this point in time...board games are feeling very bland to me. I'm not really interested in just getting together to see who can manage some bits/mechanics the best. I'd much rather take part in the world building of an RPG or minis game and play that out. I find myself far more invested...even at the risk of a serious low. Fortunately, being aware of those lows, I can tailor my RPG/minis games to avoid them and item number one on that control list is not to play these with randos.
Last edit: 24 Jul 2017 11:50 by Mr. White.

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24 Jul 2017 12:42 #251584 by san il defanso

Mr. White wrote: Yep.
Very risk/reward here.

The best RPG sessions easily eclipse the best boardgame sessions, but boardgames usually don't get as low as the worst RPG game nights.

That said....at this point in time...board games are feeling very bland to me. I'm not really interested in just getting together to see who can manage some bits/mechanics the best. I'd much rather take part in the world building of an RPG or minis game and play that out. I find myself far more invested...even at the risk of a serious low. Fortunately, being aware of those lows, I can tailor my RPG/minis games to avoid them and item number one on that control list is not to play these with randos.


This is pretty close to where I am too, although I am probably a bit higher on board gaming. That said there are days when I wish I could just pare the board game collection down to 25-30 games, invest more heavily in a couple of good RPGs, and transfer a chunk of my gaming time to roleplaying rather than board gaming. Paring down the games is the most doable part, but finding more people to roleplay is tougher.
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05 Aug 2017 21:00 #252168 by san il defanso
With family in town this week, my sister offered to DM a one-shot of 5e for us. She specifically wanted to know if my wife would be interested in playing. This is one of those things I've been trying to sell to her for a while, but she's a little too nerd-proof for it. Nevertheless, she agreed to do this game, which was rather low-commitment. The story was a lot of fun, though we unfortunately didn't finish. It involved lots of people transformed into animals, as well as a treehouse that is apparently grown out of the ground. My wife had a very funny sequence of skill checks where she attempted to scale the treehouse to sneak inside. She was trying to sneak into a window on the side 30 ft in the air, and slipped off the edge only to catch the opening of the window with her foot. Our barbarian was able to throw a rope attached to a javelin through the window to give her something to climb on. She heroically was able to grab the rope with some good rolls, but then the DM, rolling to test the rope strength, rolled a natural 1. The rope broke, and she fell 30 feet. It was a very entertaining session.

I had never really been tasked with teaching someone how to play D&D before this, but I'm impressed at how smoothly it went. You basically just need to explain how to do an ability check, and you can walk through most of the rest of it as you go. My wife did enjoy herself, though I think she got a little bored with the combat. (Combat has the potential to get me board too.) She's not a regular player now or anything, but it was fun to share that word with her a bit.
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19 Aug 2017 17:22 #252676 by repoman
Halloween season is not so far off so I thought I would try to run a D&D adventure that was if not outright scary was at least disturbing and creepy.

Days of Blight written by Matt Rauscher and available for next to nothing on the DMs Guild website is what I went with.

The first session, I thought, went really well. It has a heavy emphasis on RPing and atmosphere and not so much on combat. This was quite a challenge for me as a DM. Keeping up a level of tension and unease was essential especially without a lot of fighting. My players said in the post game debriefing that I did alright and I'm going to take them at their word.

The adventure is pretty well done for an indipendant design and the artwork and maps are cool. If you want a "horror" themed adventure for the fall, it's worth checking out.


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