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

[Vi]

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

I might be underestimating your good taste, but come to think of it you might be the type to actually enjoy a game I run.

Since on occasion I like to rant incoherently and leave people wondering if I'm all right, I'll do that here.

Whatever kind of person I am otherwise, I turn hard CN in RPGs. Not in the "let's find an excuse to kill people and take their stuff" kind of way, but more along the lines of - I don't care if your character dies. I don't care if

my

character dies. If you want an exercise in frustration as a GM, ask me what I want my character to be or do, because my answer is pretty much always going to be "whatever works for you". You may as well explain in small words what the scenario is as a prologue to each session because I most likely didn't do the assigned reading on which of these Famous Cities from Name-Brand World we should be going toward or which Well-Known God from Name-Brand Pantheon my character needs to prostrate before or wonder if we've made an enemy of. If you want to have your character juggle their tragic backstory, narrative arc, waifu, and side goals, I'll let you have that time and whatever you need from me to check your boxes; but at the end of the day what's relevant to me is how all of that informs your decisions when Ursine Facepuncher (Fighter 2 / Dumbass 3) gets hammered at the bar and starts mistaking the cleric for his estranged mother-in-law. Action! Adventure! Comedy! Trolling! And a lot less of the drama and romance since that mostly turns into wish fulfillment that reveals really creepy sides of the players. Your characters may not be on rails, but the encounters sure are and their rails run right through you. If you don't like those rails, try jumping off and I'll lay new ones that go elsewhere. If the whole party dies an ignominious death, maybe we'll replay a slight variation of the scenario next week when you'll hopefully suck less.

I mean, the manner of speaking is exaggerated there but not really the content. My idea of an interesting game is heavily informed by a decade of playing video games where "roll playing" is the primary player interaction and the characters themselves are essentially predefined. I like the flexibility of melding multiple peoples' creative processes and playing with the consequences of the characters' actions, but I also understand that most people who sign up for role-playing games would much rather engage in

role-playing

(shock?) and treat encounters as pro-wrestling-style pageants where the outcome is generally assured rather than challenges where failure is what happens to parties that don't take them seriously. Because of that, I acknowledge that I should probably just go back to Fire Emblem, read the highlight quotes from other peoples' sessions, and politely decline any and all FATE games.

tl;dr vi is a bad rper who plays saturday morning cartoons

[Vi]

I would have thought you'd be the complete opposite, Vi. Damn.

Lawful Neutral?

well ya hafta understand

After five days of 11+ hours of

constantly checking this site on my phone

working and generally not doing what I'd rather be doing, I value my emaciated free time and RPGs cut deeeeep into it. Like, I update my character sheet right after the session or right before the next session because that's when I have the time to seamlessly fit it into my life, not because I'm trying to be disrespectful. So, if I'm going to hard-commit a five-hour block every week to RPing, I want it to be something that I'll actively enjoy. I'll be whichever character you need me to be but I'm a lot better at bit players and comic relief than Real Three-Dimensional Literary Icons, so etc.

On the modding side the time investment is several times more intense. Like, I can set up all the elaborate designs and trajectories I want, but if you choose to go bait bears in the woods instead of going to investigate that carriage disturbance in a way that I thought would be in your character, I have to engage in :effort: to get you to fit ANY of the future outcomes I planned for. The ROI is overall terrible because I have too much of a heart to railroad the players into something they don't want. If I can keep my plans to one session ahead and see how things go, the number of overall ideas I have to toss out every week goes way down. So, unless you

ask

for a plot arc, I'm not going to make one in hopes that you

might

follow it.

I realize that no one asked for any of what I'm posting and I'm really sorry for taking up this space but I kind of feel like I have to post this to atone for my previous roleplaying experiences.

I'd tell you about it but uhh...it's in FATE Accelerated so uhh! ^_^;

Come back here to report on the highlights though!

but like this is me reading the FATE rulebook

>FATE: In encounters you can tap Aspects to add to your roles! You can even make Aspects up wholesale as long as the GM thinks they're reasonable and nothing contradicts them.
>ME: Cool! (oh god lateral thinking)
>FATE: Your Traits add to your dice rolls. Generally they buff your rolls to 67-75% success rates.
>ME: Um. Nice hit rates?
>FATE: If you don't have Traits your chances of success are more like 33%.
>ME: Uhhhm. Well, hopefully I don't have to do any running or driving, but call me if you need *scans character sheet* handling toxic waste and speaking to animals.
>FATE: You can use a limited supply of FATE points to increase your chance of success at something by like 15%!
>ME: Oh well hopefully I don't burn those on my first three rolls. <__<
>FATE: When you fail rolls you take a Consequence. Either your character takes the equivalent of damage, or you get some penalty to future rolls.
>ME: can I roll to do the opposite of what I want? does it work that way
>FATE: The concepts of "winning" and "losing" encounters are abstract and purely up to the GM, as they will fit the results into the overall story.
>ME:

look GM just write fanfiction already

[Vi]

And Vi, I loved what you wrote. I like thinking about it. Thank you for taking the time to write it out for us.

o.o
Thank you.

Um, I guess if you want an encore, this is the scenario I'd run given time and the right player group. Pathfinder is the system I know so that's probably what it would show up in.

Money is power, and everyone has their price. With enough resources to trade, a government official can do more than what their job requires (or do it at all), a righteous person may agree to look the other way... a king may even consider abdicating their throne. But there are some things money cannot buy. You can purchase a dog, but not the wag of its tail. You can purchase a journey to a faraway land, but you cannot purchase good weather or good fortune along the way. You can make a contract to build a house of finest quality, but you cannot make it appear overnight. These are things that people simply cannot furnish, regardless of the offer.

So when the intangibles are really necessary, certain people who are "in the know" can contact a group that operates deep under the table. An organization that can, in fact, provide everything they want as they want it - for a premium, of course, but with a price point contingent on services rendered. As far as secret societies go, one of the most spoken-of is the Domicile Acquisition Mercenary Network. Their mission is simple - people who desire a place to live can have the home of their dreams prepared for them, made to order. In practice, the network rarely

builds

any new structures. Rather, their clients seek to live in buildings that already exist but are presently uninhabitable - most frequently because someone already lives there. And that's where the agents come in.

You, for whichever reason - being desperately short on funds, being indentured to a higher-up in the society, or being a person whose mental state should be of concern to those around you - have signed on to being one of the Network's field agents. The terms of your employment are long and not the sort of thing you can get out of; but the pay is attractive, travel on company business is taken care of for you, and they offer cookies at staff meetings. How bad could it be?

So the basic spine of the campaign is that the party goes on missions where they reach a dungeon (using the term VERY loosely), have to complete an objective related to making the place habitable, and usually wind up running like hell from someone who's not pleased about what they're doing. A plot can be generated from the sequence of these missions and their consequences, and from that side quests can etc. etc.

--

One other thing I want to try is lifted pretty much directly from FE: Fates - the concept that there's some special trait that defines each player character uniquely. The idea is that, in addition to whatever default character customization there is, I'd offer the player a set of Feats that is only available to them, and they can choose to go into them or not. I don't really care that much about balance on this as long as it's fun and not game-breaking.

For example, if a character was an ex-shopkeep or something, I could offer them the following Feat tree--

*

Merchants' Rapport

. Available at Level 1. When shopping by yourself, merchants are more likely to have an item of greater-than-usual rarity, and tend to offer it as a discount.

*

Merchants' Union

. Available at Level 5. The next session will be a side quest that, if sufficiently successful, will result in you receiving the following item.
**

Ring of Merchants' Union

. A minor artifact, strong whatever school teleportation is. A symbol of authority among shopkeeps everywhere. 1/day - When a command phrase is spoken, opens a two-way teleportal between directly in front of you and the nearest place that sells goods. Free movement is permitted for ten minutes, after which the portal closes and everything that's on the wrong side gets shunted back (taking damage proportional to distance traveled). Things can "switch sides" only if they are a part of an agreed-upon transaction. One side effect is that everything on the foreign side of the portal that isn't nailed down glows with a faint luminescence and appears to have a blank price tag attached.

*

Merchants' Visa

. Available at Level 9. Enchants the

Ring of Merchants' Union

such that the bearer has the authority to purchase goods at 50% off. As proof of the bearer's authority, these items are glamored to look gilded. Should anyone without the ring be seen using a gilded item by someone who knows what it means... well... have you ever tried stealing from a shop in a roguelike?

*

Extraplanar Merchants' Union

. Available at Level 13. Enchants the

Ring of Merchants' Union

such that the target shop can be specified by the user. This shop can either be one that the bearer has been inside previously, or it can be the nearest shop to their current position in the corresponding location in other planes (the user chooses the plane).

---

I mean, I say these things, but unless I hit the lottery I'm not going to be able to do any of this <.<

[Vi]

The Mistborn trilogy is Sanderson at his best. Do read it.