Jonny
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Post by Jonny on Nov 19, 2015 14:33:29 GMT
On a slightly serious note, the way RPGs describe fantasy and alien races has always made me ever so slightly uncomfortable. I mean, I know it's not actually racist because, crucially, elves and goblins and such don't exist, but lines like "Tall, noble, and often haughty, elves are long-lived and subtle masters of the wilderness" or "Often fierce and savage, sometimes noble and resolute, half-orcs can manifest the best and worst qualities of their parent races" sound like they could be written by some properly racist 18th century anthropologist. It just weirds me out a bit.
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Jonny
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Host of The Magnus Archives
Turns out I was a ghost all along.
Posts: 114
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Post by Jonny on Nov 18, 2015 10:29:22 GMT
What?! You never kill the dog! It's, like, the first rule of fiction - if you kill a dog you become an irredeemable villain, and that covers GMs as well. Bad form.
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Jonny
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Turns out I was a ghost all along.
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Post by Jonny on Nov 16, 2015 10:16:00 GMT
Rust monsters!
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Jonny
Member of the Order of the Quill
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Turns out I was a ghost all along.
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Post by Jonny on Nov 16, 2015 10:14:27 GMT
The old isometric CRPGs were a big thing for me a when I was growing up (Fallout 2 is still one of my all time favourite games) and had a shedload of time for them - not so much now. That said, I keep up better than a lot of people, since one of my housemates is a videogamer and has ALL the systems and buys pretty much every game. I've found the key to enjoying CPRGs in full adulthood (for me, at least) is to stop worrying about whether or not you actually get to the end, because you definitely won't.
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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 Nov 6, 2015 11:17:08 GMT
I guess to a dwarf, important financial discussions would constitute the right time and place. All times where alcohol can be brought is the right time and place for a dwarf, especially those that may involve some form of peril. Ok, now that's just racist. Not cool, guys, not cool.
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Jonny
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Turns out I was a ghost all along.
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Post by Jonny on Oct 28, 2015 8:10:19 GMT
I also find actually it helps if characters are significantly different from yourself. A lot of players instinctively shape their characters' personalities to be fictionalised versions of themselves, which means when the character gets into an argument, all too often the players feel like they're involved in the argument as well. The more separation between character and player in that sense the better - my players have occasionally had genuine in-character screaming matches, but no-one walks away sad, because if you're just role-playing an argument between a borderline-cannibalistic mad scientist and a bureaucracy obsessed old spy there's less emotional stake for you as a player.
That's not to say you shouldn't have an emotional stake in your character, but it definitely should not rest on that character being right. I always find the most fun can be had playing a character that you fundamentally disagree with - look at Bertie, for instance!
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Jonny
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Turns out I was a ghost all along.
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Post by Jonny on Oct 13, 2015 8:21:50 GMT
Speaking of Vin Diesel in the other thread (which I'm never not doing), who's excited for this? I know nothing about this movie except that this is Vin Diesel's face in it: It's easily the second most exciting movie to come out in October
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Jonny
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Merch
Oct 12, 2015 9:21:29 GMT
Post by Jonny on Oct 12, 2015 9:21:29 GMT
I doubt you get annoyed by the proliferation of the colour red amongst canal boats in no rerun England. Therefore, there is presumably a bound somewhere... Don't even get me started on boats! In less frothy feedback - patches are always good merch to have and relatively cost-effective to have produced (they've always been a solid mainstay of Mech's kickstarters) especially if you have some strong logo-fu. Also, it seems a shame to have so marvellous an artist as Sophie on board to do character portraits &tc and not to potentially offer some arty-merch. Individual prints, perhaps, or once all four have been done maybe single poster of them all, or something like that.
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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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Merch
Oct 9, 2015 16:36:35 GMT
Post by Jonny on Oct 9, 2015 16:36:35 GMT
Ooooohhh... You mean CARD sleeves. That does make sense, although there are games that use sleeves like that OTHER than Magic, you know! So now this whole conversation annoys me in a new and different way (the same way I get annoyed whenever anyone refers to polyhedral dice as "Dungeons and Dragons dice").
The vastness and variation of my grumpiness knows no bounds!
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Jonny
Member of the Order of the Quill
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Turns out I was a ghost all along.
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Post by Jonny on Oct 9, 2015 9:57:48 GMT
I generally run Savage Worlds, which doesn't have much in the way of superfluous skills or abilities to sink actual points into. Generally, I usually see my players really start to get their characters about about 3-4 sessions in, and from that point whatever weirdness they have in them tends to be channelled and amplified through whatever skills they do have. Also, if it's fun enough, the players always find a way to make it plot-relevant.
Example springs to mind is I was running a Deadlands Noir game a year or so back - 1930s supernatural New Orleans setting, and one of my players decided he was going to play "Smilin'" Mike Malone - a comedian. It didn't take many bungled Perform rolls before it was established that he was a specifically a bad comedian. This became powerfully relevant during the finale of the campaign, when Smilin' Mike had been kidnapped as a ritual sacrifice, and kept rolling so good on his Taunt that he delayed the ritual for six hours with bad jokes, while the rest of the party searched for the ritual site. The cult gagged him, beat him, morphined him, but nothing could stop him disrupting their chanting with a long, rambling, drugged-up comedy set until the cavalry arrived. It was beautiful
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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 Oct 9, 2015 9:08:57 GMT
WHAT ARE MAGIC SLEEVES?!?!
I've been watching you guys talking about magic sleeves for like a week now and what are they? Are they something to do with t-shirts? Is it like you're able to swap out the sleeves on t-shirts? Because if so why would that be a thing? Is that a thing? I'm CONFUSED AND GRUMPY
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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 Oct 7, 2015 9:10:48 GMT
The thing is, if you actually take a moment to really look at Vin Diesel, it's obvious how much of a nerd he is. 'Cause he doesn't actually look like a tough guy - he looks like a nerd's idea of what a tough guy look like.
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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 Sept 28, 2015 13:30:13 GMT
To be honest, the whole fighter/wizard/cleric/thief four player party necessity has always been one of the things that puts me off D&D and its variants. I remember one of the best games I ever played was a one-shot with a whole bunch of pregens and only three players - two of us ended up playing Dwarven clerics (the third was a thief as I recall). The party was massively unbalanced, which made the game really fun because we had to do all sorts of lateral thinking to deal with the magic stuff.
Also, I cannot recommend highly enough having a party with two clerics of the same god - fighting direwolves is the best time to have in-depth theological discussions. If anyone's wondering, I was a priest of Orthodox Moradinism - which emphasised Moradin as the god of the hammer and forge, being best served through force and directness (and hitting monsters with a hammer). The other cleric was from the Reformed Church of Moradin - which was all about Moradin as the god of the hearth and clan, served through unity, understanding and church picnics. I hit a lot of things with a hammer and he leafleted a vampire to death.
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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 Sept 24, 2015 7:39:32 GMT
Very much disagree - I always want there to be a few revelations and inter-character flashpoints over the course of a campaign. I party that joins up and happily works together to fight a villain until the evil is defeated bores me to tears. I want to see them struggling to reconcile the fact that the warrior they've been fighting at the side of for six months used to be a criminal working for the very people who murdered their father. I want to see them betrayed, to see characters go beyond the pale and get challenged for it.
I always find they key is to make sure the party has worked together and saved each other for some time before any of this comes out - you're quite right that if there's no impetus to stay then it just destroys the party. I want betrayal to fight loyalty in the hearts of the characters. If the party does split, then as long as there's no actual violence I have no problem running a few sessions of the separated parties, before seeing if they can be written back together. And if the betrayal is truly unforgivable, then there's always a heroic sacrifice, or even the old friend being taken by the GM to become a new antagonist. Best example of this was a mad scientist character from one of my campaigns that got gradually more and more unhinged, until he had taken the zombie power, which was considered pretty damn evil by the rest of the party. There was a helluva lot of in-character conflict, which culminated in the final battle with the scientist, dying from his wounds, taking his own zombie potion in order to push through to deal the final blow. It was one of the best RPG moments I've ever GM'd, and you just don't get that sort of thing if you're afraid of in-character conflict.
My backstory creation is almost the exact opposite of yours - I'll talk through with each player what backstory they want, in as much detail as they care for, but with as few specific names and locations as possible. Then I'll go away and link them together, write them up and hand them back ("Hm, so Jeff reckons his thief was captured and tortured by an infantry unit during the war? What regiment did the warrior say they were from again..."). I always find the best way to prevent "selfish secrets" to to make sure everyone gets their fair share, or have non-secret backstory elements that you give just as much focus. You're the GM, how much focus stuff gets is up to you, and a story without drama isn't worth telling, as far as I'm concerned.
That said, I do have the luxury of players I can absolutely trust to handle this sort of thing. I've had a few over the years who have trouble separating character and player, or worse, whose first response to any sort of inter-character conflict is PvP, regardless of how unrealistic or boring that is. I've no inherent objection to PvP, but that stuff needs a significant build-up and properly dramatic confrontation.
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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 Sept 23, 2015 6:46:25 GMT
I love a hidden character concept, although if it has genuine game-destroying potential I'd probably discuss scaling it back with the player involved. "Dramatic mid-campaign revelation" is the sweet spot I always aim for. I also like to establish plenty of code phrases with the player, so that there doesn't need to be lots of suspicious note passing or obvious out-of-room discussions.
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