Lets Talk Pen & Paper RPGs (All systems welcome!)

[hasdgfas]

Oh hey, how'd I miss this thread before? I may read through this one.

I'm currently in a couple games. I'm in a Dresden Files-themed FATE game in actual pen&paper, which is great. I play a freelancing sorceress and am basically a major antagonist to the rest of the PCs now.

I'm also in a Pathfinder game on Roll20, where I play a Barbarian half-orc who hates Magic, and his character arc is currently "getting increasingly obviously magical items", and he's on the path to becoming a Bard-barian shortly.

[hasdgfas]

So wait, the Barbarian hates magic and is collecting magic items....or is he just getting magic items and not realizing they are magic?

He's getting them and being given increasingly ridiculous reasons why they're not magic by the rest of the party

[hasdgfas]

Well, my bardbarian has now actually classed into Skald. Next session he should actually get to use his new powers and confuse the rest of the party, and we'll have to come up with even more increasingly ridiculous ways I'm not using magic.

[hasdgfas]

So yesterday, I finally got to play my first session after taking a level in Skald after all this time as Barbarian. I'd been working with the DM to prepare this, and we found a story reason for the Raging Song to work. This allowed for a great reveal of a sweet DM explanation the first time I used it. And the best thing about this new class is that I took only spells which I can have good explanations in-character for why it's not actually magic. After all, my character still hates magic.

So our party now includes:
A barbarian(now with levels in Skald) who hates magic who is unintentionally using magic
A cavalier who pretends to use magic, but is using scrolls in a way that hides them from the rest of the party
A summoner who knows that the cavalier is lying and knows that the barbarian is actually using magic

Our party dynamic is great. We had a very low-key session, where we leveled up and then fought a bunch of pterodactyls in a trap-filled room.

[hasdgfas]

We continued our Pathfinder campaign today. I haven't been consistently updating here, but we had a solid start to the session, with some great RP between members of the party starting with one of us trying to murder a lieutenant of the Kellid leader we were there to talk to because the lieutenant had killed one of her own men. Some fantastic RP to talk him down and then, once he was talked down, calm him down even more.

It stalled out a bit after that with a bunch of stuff more focused on another character who's played by someone who's not as into the RP as the others, but next time we should get back to everyone else .

[hasdgfas]

Does anyone have any experience with Paranoia?

I'll be running a short 1-2 session game of it soonish and want to try to learn a bit from others' experience. I'll be using the Playtest rules for the new Kickstarted version of the game, but my understanding is they borrowed heavily from the old version of the game, so while the mechanics may not be identical, I think the ideas are.

[hasdgfas]

I intend to be a bit fast and loose with the rules, since this is just a light palate cleanser while we try to determine our next long campaign.

I am mostly looking for good ways to make sure the setting and attitude is grokable for the players, because this is a bit of a departure from the normal fare for our group. Also good ways to give incentives for "Paranoia behavior" in a short session.

[hasdgfas]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWEDpT1gByI

This is a good thing to watch if you like Paranoia

I have actually watched that! It's what made me want to run something in the system. I may watch it again just to get more inspiration.

[hasdgfas]

The moment that the pet gets stats and the players use it to fight, it is no long a pet, is another character. Just keep that in mind.

I do not see a problem except that you think it's unfair to narrative-kill a character?

Players tend to expect their characters to survive unless they choose for the character to die. If a character is narrative-killed and it hasn't been discussed with the player beforehand, there's a very decent chance they'll be angry, and also a good chance they may quit.

[hasdgfas]

As far as I'm concerned that's a valid expectation for a PC, but not for a terrier. We did a lot of expectation management at the start, but yes it'd be something that I would discuss with the player that owned him, probably not the others though.

If it fits with expectations, cool. Just saying that may be some of what Claus was trying to say when he said the pet would become a character if it got statted out. The players start to give it PC expectations.

[hasdgfas]

JonTron did a video on the Dark Dungeons movie, which is the DnD Chick Tract. It's played completely straight and looks wonderful.

[hasdgfas]

The moment that the pet gets stats and the players use it to fight, it is no long a pet, is another character. Just keep that in mind.

I do not see a problem except that you think it's unfair to narrative-kill a character?

Players tend to expect their characters to survive unless they choose for the character to die. If a character is narrative-killed and it hasn't been discussed with the player beforehand, there's a very decent chance they'll be angry, and also a good chance they may quit.

What is this carebear nonsense? Characters die when they die.

That depends on the group and the system. I also said "narrative-killed".

[hasdgfas]

I ran Honey Heist for a small group of friends tonight, and it went quite well!

HoneyCon was located in a lakeside wilderness retreat and run by a young teen girl, who promised all attendees a wonderful time and that they'd get to enjoy her daddy's special "Black Orchid Honey" at the end of the convention. Our bear party did some prep for their arrival by having their "Incompetent Grizzly Hacker" actually successfully hack the HoneyCon forums to spread some rumors of possible issues that may occur during the convention to put everyone on edge ahead of time.

Then they swam up in the lake to see the 5 cabins the convention was being held in, a couple docks, and a very bright pink boat. The "Slick Polar Muscle" bear carefully swam underneath it, lifted it a touch out of the water, and swam with it on its back to make it look like it was moving. As the armed guards checked on the boat, the "Retired Polar Face" convinced them that the convention organizer had asked him to move the boat to the other dock. This, however, was a distraction, as the grizzly swam up by the other dock and started looking in cabin windows to find honey. They found a group of people in bee suits spreading painted honey across their faces like face paint. The grizzly decided this was some great honey to try to run off with, and dove into the window. He was successful, but the entire room stopped and stared at him before screaming their heads off, attracting the guards from outside. The slowest guard was attacked by the Muscle, fainted, and the Face took over his uniform and his walkie-talkie.

A lot of shenanigans happened at this point in these two places, before the polar bears found a very bright pink cabin with what looked like a vault of some sort in the corner and a couple of guards. The Muscle linebacker'd the guards down and knocked them unconscious, but neither of them could open the vault. While this was happening, the Grizzly ran across the sleeping cabin, terrified the sleeping millenials by pounding on the door trying to get in, and then mauled the first one to leave the cabin. This got the attention of the father of the convention organizer, who left his cabin and found the nearest guard he could to determine what was going on. This guard, of course, was the Polar Bear wearing the guard outfit. The father saw through his disguise after lifting his hat off his head, slammed the door in the bear's face, and hit a panic room switch, causing the cabin to lower into the ground to safety. It's at this point that the rival gang of bears showed up, The Forebearers! Everyone descends on the pink cabin except the grizzly, who goes back to the bee suit cabin and just goes crazy, ripping off honey-covered faces and throwing them into a pot to devour the honey from later. Meanwhile, the muscle claws and claws at the vault, but can't open it, and this frustration eventually causes him to succumb to his feral nature right as The Forebearers enter the cabin, and he pounces on them, causing a huge fight outside the cabins, distracting The Forebearers from the cabin with the vault.

A large panda chewing on bamboo sneaks behind this into the cabin where the Face is still hiding, wearing his guard costume, which he realizes has a can of bear mace in it, but sadly it's empty. However, the panda doesn't know this! So he pretends to spray the mace and kicks some dirt in the panda's face, causing the panda to stumble around, bump into the wall, exposing a panel of several buttons behind a painting, and also knocking himself out as he falls. The Face yells for the Grizzly, who successfully hacks the panel to open the way down inside the vault. Inside the vault is the little girl who organized the convention, crying that everything's gone so wrong, and how the black honey was stupid anyway because her daddy didn't want her to have it, so she just gave it to the bears. The bears ascended the ladder out of the vault, meeting up with her father back in the cabin, who just wants to make sure that his girl is ok and hasn't eaten this black honey. The bears somehow convince him that she is, and he goes down into the vault. The bears, hearing sirens approaching up the main road, dive out of the cabin window and run over to the boat, which is back by the docks. They both climb in. The Face is exhausted, as he had retired once before, so he eats some of the Black Orchid honey for strength. At this same moment, the Grizzly starts the boat and realizes he wants all the honey for himself and he'll turn in his old friend to get it! So he boots the Face off the boat onto the docks and drives the boat off, leaving the Face, who is succumbing to the honey's magical effects and becoming a rebellious teenage goth as the police and animal control arrive at the camp.


It was

glorious

. Everyone had a great time, even those who were a bit nervous about a one-shot like this, since it's outside of their normal comfort zone. It ended about as well as a heist movie could end, and got everyone interested in doing more palate cleanser one-shots in the future(since this was an off week as our normal GM couldn't run this week). I would definitely recommend Honey Heist, and am probably going to back the writer on Patreon, since I definitely want to support things like this.