Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)

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RomanesEuntDomus said:
Nothing for Post-Apocalypse... :\

At least I read Roadside Picknick by the Strugatski brothers and "There will come soft rains" by Ray Bradbury.
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David Brin's The Postman and Richard Matheson's I Am Legend are noted there, but there definitely could be some more post apocalypse novels in there. Also, I'll definitely talk to my group to make a fair group in the next campaign, because we had a druid, a wizard, a cleric, and two bards in our party in the current campaign, which basically trivialized everything.
 
REGENDarySumanai said:
David Brin's The Postman and Richard Matheson's I Am Legend are noted there, but there definitely could be some more post apocalypse novels in there. Also, I'll definitely talk to my group to make a fair group in the next campaign, because we had a druid, a wizard, a cleric, and two bards in our party in the current campaign, which basically trivialized everything.
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I am surprise they don't have the Stormbringer novels on that list, guess the book that spawned the origins for The Ruinous Powers isn't that important *sigh*
 
So, I managed to actually run my Boot Hill one-shot yesterday with my uncle and it went surprisingly well although the game itself only ran for about an hour and a half, which is short compared to a typical RPG session.

The plot was a simple MacGuffin hunt set in Cochise County, Arizona circa 1880.

My uncle played a bounty hunter character named Roland (yes, that is a Dark Tower reference) and he was hired by a mining company to recover a lock box full of cash and company documents that was stolen by a gang of four outlaws whose hideout was in the desert near Indian lands.

There was a brief encounter with Mexican banditos that my uncle talked his way out of, which was followed by tracking the outlaws through the desert and getting into a gunfight with them.

The thing about combat in Boot Hill is that it is extremely lethal...provided you actually get hit. You can get a mild wound (minus three hit points), a severe wound (minus seven hit points), or a mortal wound (automatic character death)

So, to go easy on a first-time player, I made the gunfight with the outlaws a series of one-on-one duels like in the old 1950's Western movies.

Anyway, my uncle was really lucky on the dice rolls and he managed to avoid getting shot in the first two gunfights, and was only mildly wounded in the fourth one with the gang's leader. He managed to kill the third opponent with one shot in the third duel.

After recovering the lock box, he was able to make it back to Tombstone with help from the Arizona Rangers.

Next time I plan a game, I will actually write more material to help make the game last longer. This one-shot was short, but it went fairly well. Maybe I can actually run more games in the near future, though I will probably be sticking to one-shots for now.
 
Currently working on my Degenesis One-Shot for people who have never played the game. I am planning to send them off into the swamps of the Rhone valley and was thinking about whether or not a Pheromancer Expatriate would be a decent End Boss.
The idea is that the players (Hellveticans) have to go on a rescue mission to find a couple of Spitalians, but have to square off against said Expatriate, a couple of Leperos and 2 guys from the Spitalian group, that got enslaved by the Expatriate's pheromones.

I don't know if that's not a bit too much, though the Expatriate Variant of the Pheromancers isn't very strong and they rely on persuasion and their pheromones to make people obedient.

I figured if I play Degenesis with people who don't know the system, it might be neat to show them a spore-infested wasteland (aka: The Rhone delta swamps) and a Psychonaut - basically as a little introduction tour of the setting. But I fear that by throwing a Psychonaut at them that they will beat at a low level, it sort of undersells the threat that these creatures possess... Then again, Hellvetics are pretty strong and the Expatriate Variant is comparatively weak and if I manage to convey that and still make that showdown suspenseful, it might work.

Any experience with this?
 
RomanesEuntDomus said:
Currently working on my Degenesis One-Shot for people who have never played the game. I am planning to send them off into the swamps of the Rhone valley and was thinking about whether or not a Pheromancer Expatriate would be a decent End Boss.
The idea is that the players (Hellveticans) have to go on a rescue mission to find a couple of Spitalians, but have to square off against said Expatriate, a couple of Leperos and 2 guys from the Spitalian group, that got enslaved by the Expatriate's pheromones.

I don't know if that's not a bit too much, though the Expatriate Variant of the Pheromancers isn't very strong and they rely on persuasion and their pheromones to make people obedient.

I figured if I play Degenesis with people who don't know the system, it might be neat to show them a spore-infested wasteland (aka: The Rhone delta swamps) and a Psychonaut - basically as a little introduction tour of the setting. But I fear that by throwing a Psychonaut at them that they will beat at a low level, it sort of undersells the threat that these creatures possess... Then again, Hellvetics are pretty strong and the Expatriate Variant is comparatively weak and if I manage to convey that and still make that showdown suspenseful, it might work.

Any experience with this?
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The problem with one-shot Hellveticans is that they (mostly) don't have to think about their ammo restriction. So if four Hells can dump their whole mag into the psychonaut, your boss will be red mist in a few rounds.
I don't have the rulebook on hand right now, but you should check if the armour makes the Hells immune to the pheromones (respiration system for working in hazardous environments etc.).

Maybe make them a bit beat up equipment-wise and starved for ammo from a previous assignment.
 
Iä! Iä! said:
The problem with one-shot Hellveticans is that they (mostly) don't have to think about their ammo restriction. So if four Hells can dump their whole mag into the psychonaut, your boss will be red mist in a few rounds.
I don't have the rulebook on hand right now, but you should check if the armour makes the Hells immune to the pheromones (respiration system for working in hazardous environments etc.).

Maybe make them a bit beat up equipment-wise and starved for ammo from a previous assignment.
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Yeah, that's my biggest fear. The Pheromancers aren't particularly strong in a fight, their main strength is to enslave people via pheromones and Hellveticans are mainly balanced via their ammo restrictions in prolonged campaigns.
Since it's only going to be a one-shot, I wanted to bend the rules concerning the equippement a little (also, since the game doesn't offer that much stuff, tbh.)
It's going to be 3 players and I planned to start them off as corporals (without min-maxing like crazy, it's unlikely to get above Rank 2 on the start) with different skillsets, so they would fill the roles of Medic, Scout and Grenadier, where the "Medic" and "Scout" have a lighter armor and possibly not their Trailblazers. If I went by the rules, everyone would carry a trailblazer and harness and I think that would be sort of boring for such an occassion. The Medic obviously has access to a Field Kit and a lighter version of the Harness (possibly with a built-in Gas mask / "Sealed" Quality, similar to the Spitalian suits), the scout has a Pathfinder (Basically a GPS thingy) and a Recon Harness with a Camo Suit over it and binoculars. I thought about giving the Medic a shotgun and the Scout that Stubbed Trailblazer Variant (half the range, same damage as the regular Trailblazer).
As far as I can see, the Hellvetican Harness does come with a face mask, but not with a gas mask or filter system, so adding that to the Medic's Harness might make the character feel a little more unique.

In terms of plot, the general idea is that the characters are from a fairly insignificant Outpost somewhat close to the Frankan border, which received an emergency call from a scouting group of Spitalians and Hellvetics (originally from Toulon) that were ambushed and had to hole up somewhere in the Rhone Swamps. Said Outpost has had a stretch of bad luck recently, making them starved for resources and just to top it all off: One of the (NPC) Corporals recently lost his Trailblazer, meaning that his Squad (the PCs) have to make up for that failure. This would not only explain why a low ranking group are send out (they are expandable when the Outpost has nothing better to spare) but also why they are short on ammo themselves. Travel hijinks ensue.

When the PCs finally get to the origin of the emergency call, all they find is one dead Hellvetican Radio Beam Unit soldier and a half-dead Spitalian. While the Medic patches up the Spitalian, the bad guys show up. I want to beef up that encounter by putting one Hellvetican Grenadier with his Trailblazer and Harness and a Spitalian with a Splayer (both of them a tad injured from when they were captured) under pheromone influence as well as a shock troop of 3 or 4 Leperos alongside the Pheromancer Expatriate against the players.
The Leperos will be dispatched fairly quickly, but while that happens, it should get the Spitalian close enough to be a threat while the Grenadier takes potshots. The Pheromancer will do some Pheromancing, as one should expect.
I want to give my players the option of defeating the Spitalian and Hellvetican without killing them, possibly via injection of narcotics or an improvised stun grenade or something, if possible. Though that depends on what the PCs will decide to do, obviously.
 
I think I might run another one-shot soon, see where it goes. Maybe if it goes well, I might be able to turn it into a mini-campaign.

I could go back to Boot Hill since it went well last time, although I am also thinking of getting back into Vampire: The Masquerade if I want to try something different.
 
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I had to quash two different campaign ideas given I'm running two games that alternate on Sundays as is and have no intention of wrapping them up for a good while. The two current are a colonial/exploration game on a lost continent, and the other takes place in a country that's essentially revolutionary France, both taking place in the Napoleonic period.

The two I've put into hypersleep? A Mordian Ironguard Only War campaign, and a Spelljammer campaign.
 
So, I just downloaded a bunch of PDF's for the game "Macho Women With Guns" and I think I have found a new system for my next one-shot game, I'll see what my uncle thinks of it.

Personally, I like the game. It's an obvious parody game but it works well enough and it does what it sets out to do fairly well.

Rules aren't too heavy either, so that's a plus. And combat will probably be less lethal and prone to missed shots than Boot Hill.

I think I will do a homebrew setting using the rules for Macho Women With Guns, either in the Vietnam War or in a Zombie Apocalypse setting.

The first idea would be Platoon re-imagined as a campy Girls With Guns movie.

The second idea would be Dawn of the Dead re-imagined s a campy Girls With Guns movie.
 
Syaoran Li said:
So, I just downloaded a bunch of PDF's for the game "Macho Women With Guns" and I think I have found a new system for my next one-shot game, I'll see what my uncle thinks of it.

Personally, I like the game. It's an obvious parody game but it works well enough and it does what it sets out to do fairly well.

Rules aren't too heavy either, so that's a plus. And combat will probably be less lethal and prone to missed shots than Boot Hill.

I think I will do a homebrew setting using the rules for Macho Women With Guns, either in the Vietnam War or in a Zombie Apocalypse setting.

The first idea would be Platoon re-imagined as a campy Girls With Guns movie.

The second idea would be Dawn of the Dead re-imagined s a campy Girls With Guns movie.
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Or how about zombies in a Platoon-like setting re-imagined as a campy Girls With Guns movie?
 
So one of the two games I'll be doing is the Call of Cthulhu game I tried to do here. Probably switching that to sixth edition (there are just more supplements for it for character options), and transfer that to RealmWorks so I can flesh out the questline better and have all of my handouts ready. The other game will be a Pathfinder game that I've been working on for a while and transfer that to RealmWorks too. Best days I have off that are semi-free are weekends. Weekdays are too hectic for me.
 
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