Jonny
Member of the Order of the Quill
Host of The Magnus Archives
Turns out I was a ghost all along.
Posts: 114
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Post by Jonny on Apr 18, 2016 12:10:06 GMT
There's a lot of The Magnus Archives to come, and I have a whole deluge of #spooky content to unleash upon you all, but it recently came to my attention (through the unsettling tale of the ever-sinister samanthae), that some people on these very forums might have resources that would be harvestable for my own dark purposes. So I thought I'd start a thread where you can share any unsettling things that have happened to you. Give me your weird meetings, strange finds, or even just tell me what your fears are.
NB - if you would be uncomfortable with your experiences being used in the podcast in some way, please make it clear in the thread. Otherwise I may take the seed you give, plant it and see what horrors grow in the sinister soil of the Magnus Archives.
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Jonny
Member of the Order of the Quill
Host of The Magnus Archives
Turns out I was a ghost all along.
Posts: 114
|
Post by Jonny on Apr 13, 2016 19:39:54 GMT
It's a love story between Martin and all the spiders in the world
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Jonny
Member of the Order of the Quill
Host of The Magnus Archives
Turns out I was a ghost all along.
Posts: 114
|
Post by Jonny on Apr 13, 2016 14:01:14 GMT
To be fair, it's not a massive spoiler: the crest is one of the first pieces of art I was hoping to have done.
And I'm sure I have no idea what you're talking about.
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Jonny
Member of the Order of the Quill
Host of The Magnus Archives
Turns out I was a ghost all along.
Posts: 114
|
Post by Jonny on Apr 13, 2016 11:09:07 GMT
"Audio. Vigilo. Opperior." - The words on the crest of the Magnus Institute
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Jonny
Member of the Order of the Quill
Host of The Magnus Archives
Turns out I was a ghost all along.
Posts: 114
|
Post by Jonny on Apr 4, 2016 15:26:30 GMT
*Taking notes feverishly*
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Jonny
Member of the Order of the Quill
Host of The Magnus Archives
Turns out I was a ghost all along.
Posts: 114
|
Post by Jonny on Mar 26, 2016 19:42:37 GMT
It's spelled Breekon and Hope in the original statement. And you guys should probably just forget about them - they're probably entirely incidental and will never return. Probably. In fact, keeping track of any of these names, places or dates is just a waste of time. It's not like there's some elaborate meta-plot that's going to be gradually built up over the course of years*. They're just self-contained spooky stories - best not to overthink it.
*I lied, that's totally what it is
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Jonny
Member of the Order of the Quill
Host of The Magnus Archives
Turns out I was a ghost all along.
Posts: 114
|
Post by Jonny on Mar 21, 2016 14:12:05 GMT
When starting a new campaign I actually print out questionnaire and make players fill it out for their characters before the game begins - example below:
What is their name?
Describe them in one sentence
What do they look like?
How old are they?
What do they value?
Where are they from?
What were they doing 12 years ago?*
What were they doing 5 years ago? * What were they doing last year?
Who are they close to?
Who, or what, do they hate?
Do they have any surviving family? If so, where?
What do they struggle with?
What is the worst thing that ever happened to them?
What is the best thing that ever happened to them?
What is their worst nightmare? *
Some, in this case the ones in asterisks, are campaign specific (important stuff happened at those times, so I need to know their context), but most are generic. I always tell players to fill them all in, even if the answer is "don't know", because I find that just making them think about it helps them flesh out the character in their own mind. Also, one of these questionnaires is such a wonderful source of plot-hooks and ways to tie the characters into the world - I am very excited because in a few sessions the grizzled old soldier in my game is going to end up in an intense encounter with his ex-wife, who was mentioned offhand in one of these questions (and I'm pretty sure the player had forgotten about).
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Jonny
Member of the Order of the Quill
Host of The Magnus Archives
Turns out I was a ghost all along.
Posts: 114
|
Post by Jonny on Feb 26, 2016 13:14:51 GMT
What we need is some proper shipping. Then we can have ship names. I'm heavily invested in Zoltor
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Jonny
Member of the Order of the Quill
Host of The Magnus Archives
Turns out I was a ghost all along.
Posts: 114
|
Post by Jonny on Feb 26, 2016 7:30:15 GMT
Petition to start calling Hamid fans "Ham-heads"
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Jonny
Member of the Order of the Quill
Host of The Magnus Archives
Turns out I was a ghost all along.
Posts: 114
|
Post by Jonny on Feb 24, 2016 13:38:03 GMT
Given the quality of the natural 1 in the latest episode, I thought it might be fun to discuss our own best experiences of a critical failure.
Mine was when I was GMing a game set in the Pacific Northwest, and the characters were investigating a series of Wendigo attacks. Unbeknownst to them, their boss was secretly possessed by a Wendigo spirit. So they (accidentally) break up the Wendigo cult their boss was working with and one of the characters asks to look through the documents and see if he can figure out who any of the members are. He rolls snake eyes (it's the Savage Worlds system, so that's a critical failure), so I tell him that all the information makes sense - it's clear from cross-referencing the documents that "Mr. A" must be their boss! I told him the absolute truth, but because I told it to him as the result of a critical failure, no-one believed him and they rejected his theories as conspiracy nonsense. When the twist finally came, they were properly shocked!
I love a critical knowledge failure, as the information doesn't have to be wrong. It can be 100% right, but the player doesn't trust it because it came from a critical failure, thus making it an even greater failure
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Jonny
Member of the Order of the Quill
Host of The Magnus Archives
Turns out I was a ghost all along.
Posts: 114
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Post by Jonny on Feb 10, 2016 18:03:06 GMT
- Three words: Owlbear mating season.
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Jonny
Member of the Order of the Quill
Host of The Magnus Archives
Turns out I was a ghost all along.
Posts: 114
|
Post by Jonny on Jan 20, 2016 16:59:16 GMT
I love the Dark Souls (and even more so the Bloodborne) worlds, but I'm not convinced they'd actually work well as RPG settings in and off themselves, as the worlds they create are a) at the end of their lives in one way or another and b) actually quite restricted in physical scope. They hint at a lot of wider lore, but not actually a much wider world.
That said, I would really like to see RPG settings inspired by them - understated mythic apocalypses: the gods are dying and the world is slowly dying with them.
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Jonny
Member of the Order of the Quill
Host of The Magnus Archives
Turns out I was a ghost all along.
Posts: 114
|
Post by Jonny on Dec 3, 2015 15:59:42 GMT
This one isn't games, actually - it's going to be a horror fiction series, very much in the format of the teaser, with stand-alone episodes of 20-30 minutes gradually linking into an ongoing metanarrative major spookiness!
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Jonny
Member of the Order of the Quill
Host of The Magnus Archives
Turns out I was a ghost all along.
Posts: 114
|
Post by Jonny on Dec 3, 2015 8:58:20 GMT
And so it begins. Our intrepid archivist finally manages to successfully make a recording of one of the stranger files in the archive, and can begin with the others. What stories await in the forgotten depths of the Magnus Institute?
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Jonny
Member of the Order of the Quill
Host of The Magnus Archives
Turns out I was a ghost all along.
Posts: 114
|
Post by Jonny on Dec 2, 2015 13:47:52 GMT
Have the walking tree introduce them to his show-off fir tree friend who covers himself in lights and baubles! They're sent into the woods on a quest to find ingredients for a wizard to make magic mulled wine! Make them fight the Grinch!
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