A slightly different 31 day character challenge

The place for everything else.

Orkworld

Postby salamanca » Sun Jan 10, 2021 12:11 pm

It is a minor miracle i got to play this instead of GM. More that it lasted more than 2 sessions.

Zoonaba

Zoonaba was not a bold hunter/warrior like Brave Bashthraka. He was a thinky, small ork. Cunning maybe even sneaky. His tribe laughed at him and gave him a name they found funny. He was too small, too weak, too worthless in their eyes. His skills unappreciated. His tribe saw no value in Zoonaba at all. (We were actsully sitting at the table where you name the player to you left and despite the GM pushing for a serious game, the player named me because it sounded cartoonish. And then they continued to undermine what could have been a great serious game. That player/GM had a history of sticking me with bad names)

So there was Zoonaba, scorned by his tribe. But, like every ork, he had a special gift. Zoonaba could run, and he could run fast. Maybe not as fast as the ahlfzees but he was the fastest runner in the tribe. Nobody was faster than Zoonaba. The hunters taunted Zoonaba, they gave him the tribal talisman, a powerful spear, and told him to run out ahead and start fighting the great bear that was bothering the tribe. With the spear, even Zoonaba should be able to dispatch it.

The spear was powerful. In the hands of the tribe's greatest warrior, very little could threaten us. But the fool handed it to Zoonaba as a joke. So off I went. I found the bear. I poked it with the spear. Bears don't like that. The bear chased me but I was fast. I ran back to the tribe with the bear behind me.

When i got to the tribe, I kept running. I don't need to be faster than the bear, it is not hungry enough to eat that many orks. Zoonaba kept the spear because the survivors were slow.

Dhwarvzies came for us. With the spear in the hands of our greatest warrior, even they would have been beaten. But Zoonaba had the spear and was still slighted. Zoonaba stole something he didn't know how to describe from one of them using rhe spear to get it. Zoonaba got chased very far before he dropped it in a crevasse. Many orks died but Zoonaba survived...cunning and fast and still holding the spear.

What was left of the tribe was not happy. They did not understand how Zoonaba had saved the tribe again. They just saw him run away. They demanded the Spear. So i ran until we reached a.narrow chasm. Zoonaba was surrounded. So i threw the spear across the chasm. It was not that wide, even puny Zoonaba can throw a spear that far. An ork from the tribe tried to jump over and get it but it was too wide to do that. That ork screamed a long time falling.

The great warrior was the strongest and decided to throw an ork over to get the spear. Envy exploded in the tribe. Each claimed the other would keep the spear instead of sharing. Morw of the tribe died fighting. Finally, there were just 3. Zoonaba, and the two mightiest warriors. The greatest threw the other but he was too big and heavy. Another ork fell screaming. Now the great warrior had a choice. .Throw Zoonaba and have him throw the spear back or leap himself.

He was big and strong, he might make it. Zoonaba was sure to run away. He leapt, very far...far enough. And he found Zoonaba's spear on the other side. And large mountain cats. Zoonaba was a worse spear maker than he was a warrior. It did not go well.

Zoonaba climbed into a nearby tree and got the tribe's spear from where he hid it before the teibe caught up to him. He wandered off to find a new tribe. Because nobody was left from his old tribe.

why the GM loved him.

Jim had plans for a very serious struggle to survive game, pitched it that way and This was the only character that took it to heart. The others wanted to play screwball goofs and got punished for it. They all wanted to mess with the new GM.

why the GM hated him

and Zoonaba killed them all...

It took 4 or 5 sessions but I TPKed my own group. Mostly to prove my alpha status of "most dangerous player in the room".
I don't mind growing old... but I hate growing up.
salamanca
 
Posts: 5782
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2010 10:25 am
Location: in the back of your head

– Dangerous Journeys –

Postby Black Jack Rackham » Sun Jan 10, 2021 6:41 pm

The Character with No Name (TCwNN)
On summer break from college (between summer sessions and the next fall semester) I got to spend time with Larry (he just lived in the next town over, maybe 10 miles away). Anyway, he confessed to me that recently he’d gotten bored with all the various iterations of whatever the latest Palladium “Character type that can beat all the rest.” He heard through the grapevine that Gary Gygax had put out a new game. And as I have stated many, many times, I am a Gygax (You know what, I am gonna change this word) Addict. So we went all in and started making characters. Three and a half days (yes days, this took forever, I had to re-read this book a couple of times) later I was most of the way finished with my mage-type character. That’s when we finally got into the magic system.

It was so convoluted we gave up. I have since read it again (and again) and understand it better (I think). But it was really overly complicated for no reason other than, “If AD&D was too simple, we need to make something more complex.” Had I ever gotten finished making this character he would have been much akin to Gandalf (lots of wisdom and thinking light on the actual spellcasting, but hellacious if pushed). Not a clue if that would have happened in reality.

Physically and personality wise, TCwNN was real close to Gandalf. He carried a huge sword (though no staff, he preferred his magic come from within). And, he had a tendency to want to try to see if there wasn’t some smart way to solve the problem before hacking at it or blasting it with some spell. As such he had a lot of knowledge about old things, secrets of the fae races, the habits of old cultures, the histories of forgotten places, dark secrets best left alone, that kind of thing.

He was the kind of character who must have gotten into adventuring by accident. It was quite obvious he preferred to be in some musty library or temple reading an ancient scroll. But somehow he got stuck doing this adventuring thing. So he mitigated that with insisting on having every Plan “A” be “Let’s see if we can outsmart it!” Only when that didn’t work would he be willing to start in with the hack and slash method.

I had purchased the Necropolis adventure but neither of us had read it (because neither of us was sure we didn’t want to play).

Why the GM should have loved this character – I honestly can’t say if TCwNN would have been a good fit for Dangerous Journeys. It was all just too overwhelming, and the organization of the book could have been far better. BUT that said, TCwNN would certainly have been an interesting character. The kind of character GMs enjoy because they are eager for the railroad, pursuing knowledge for its own sake, even without a more tangible reward offered.

Why the GM should have hated this character – Given the complexity of Dangerous Journeys the fact that I chose probably the hardest (or at least most in need of detail) character type meant the GM couldn’t really just dip their toes into DJ. Often times with new GMs they’ll stick to the easy adventures. “Innkeeper needs those rats in his cellar taken care of,” you know that kind of thing. But TCwNN was familiar with the secrets of the world, and that would have meant the GM needed to be familiar, and that would have meant a LOT more reading…
smafdi wrote:STOP BEING SO DARN POPULAR GUYZ SRSLY I NEEDZ MEH GAMEZ TIHS YAER!!!

kenderleech wrote:If the cows were not meant to be ridden, why would they be so close to the chase scenes?
User avatar
Black Jack Rackham
Site Admin
 
Posts: 6938
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2010 9:37 am
Location: Massachusetts

Advanced Dungeons & Dargons 1st ed. (First is still the best

Postby salamanca » Mon Jan 11, 2021 9:47 am

There are so many options i. 1st ed. For me and some I love much more than this character.
Many I played more, but this one had the best stories.

Sleranne

Sleranne was not a character I created. She got handed to me at a local con in college on the same weekend I handed off GM duty in a campaign and needed a character that level.

She was a cliched half-elf fighter in a chainmail bikini with 18 74/00 strength listed at 5 foot even. She had a long sword and enough levels for multiple attacks and that was everything statistical you would ever need to know about her.

She was party loyal and a risk taking gambler preferring to wager her life over gold. She had a chip on her shoulder and was not about to take second place behind no man, human, ork, elf or dwarf.

And she could back that attitude up. Sleranne was a "first into the fray type but smart enough to fall back and swig a healing potion when needed. More than once Sleranne carried the party...literally hauling their unconscious bodies out of a dungeon and back to a cleric. Fortune favored the bold in the form of a new d20 i bought just before i got this character (literally minutes before) a brown koplow that is still my go to d20. I have test rolled it many times and it is balanced but when i really, really NEED one, a 20 will turn up.

Summer of 1991, we are gathered on campus and squatting in our own dorm between semesters for a week of gaming because one of our guys is working summer event staff and has access. It is 4 am amd we have been playing since noon. We have cleared a huge swath and are about to fortify a room in the dungeon to rest, heal amd recover spells. We turn the corner and run smack into a full.tribe of Bugbears returning from a raid. They are real healthy. Our mages are out of spells. I am the only player with more than 1 hit point because the last encounter went worse than planned. (I have 3 hp) we are about to either die or become slaves.

Sleranne challenges the Bugbear chief to personal combat. Calls his manliness into question about the 7 foot beast being afraid of the tiny girl. She sweetens the pot by letting him bring his champion along for a handicap match. The GM and party are both thinking this is a sacrifice to get them captured as slaves instead of killed. Sleranne has nothing but plans to win.

Annnnd... I lose initiative. Turns out both these Bugbears have magic weapons...he needs a 14 to hit me and any hit will knock me out at the minimum. Max damage will kill me. Cahmpion attacks and rolls... a 12. GM is grinning, his Chief has 2 attacks. First is a 13, i am still standing. Second is...a 1! Chief drops his weapon!

Time to get to work! Logic is to hit the one that is armed. 1st attack... natural 20 (have i mentioned i love that d20?) Max damage too. Second attack...another 20. Champion is down, GM is steamed. Round 2 he wins initiative again (and maynhave fudged that roll) we have been playing free weapon draws so he pulls a second magic weapon. Now needs a 15. First roll...14. Second roll...12. Dice get thrown. I hit with a 17 and ANOTHER 20! Chief goes down we get 3 magic weapons and a tribe of bugbear slaves. We tr7st them none and order them to regain their freedom by moving to a land owned by someone we hate. And then we adjourn to real life sleep.

why the GM loved Sleranne

No matter what he threw at the party, Sleeranne got them home. Battered, bruised and broken but home to adventure again.

why the GM hated Sleranne
Dive loved her. In later sessions, he tried rod of wounding where he could spend charges to lower his TN. He blew through charges and rolled natural 1's. When it was on the line, the dice always favored her.
I don't mind growing old... but I hate growing up.
salamanca
 
Posts: 5782
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2010 10:25 am
Location: in the back of your head

Re: Advanced Dungeons & Dargons 1st ed. (First is still the

Postby Black Jack Rackham » Mon Jan 11, 2021 12:02 pm

salamanca wrote:Sleranne challenges the Bugbear chief to personal combat. Calls his manliness into question about the 7 foot beast being afraid of the tiny girl. She sweetens the pot by letting him bring his champion along for a handicap match. The GM and party are both thinking this is a sacrifice to get them captured as slaves instead of killed. Sleranne has nothing but plans to win.

Stuff of legends right there...
smafdi wrote:STOP BEING SO DARN POPULAR GUYZ SRSLY I NEEDZ MEH GAMEZ TIHS YAER!!!

kenderleech wrote:If the cows were not meant to be ridden, why would they be so close to the chase scenes?
User avatar
Black Jack Rackham
Site Admin
 
Posts: 6938
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2010 9:37 am
Location: Massachusetts

– Champions RPG (3rd Ed.) –

Postby Black Jack Rackham » Mon Jan 11, 2021 12:23 pm

Snowblind
Another summer break character/campaign. This time my fellow players were Larry and Mike. Snowblind was a Psychologist who’d gotten into an accident which took his sight and gave him radar vision and some wicked awesome cold-based powers. Unfortunately he had absolutely no attack powers whatsoever. All he could do was encase the bad guys in a block of armored ice, build ice walls to protect him and his fellows, and fly (via iceman’s ice ramp kind of thing) at over mach 4.

The thing that made Snowblind awesome was the fact that he was designed such that, individually he could do almost nothing. Sure, he could put the bad guys in ice, but they weren’t defeated, just immobilized (although the ice was hard enough almost no bad guys could punch their way free, and anyone trying to free them from the outside would hurt the person inside trying to break them free). He could keep the bad guys from blowing up his fellow, less armored players but the walls of ice didn’t move, and the bad guys could use them as well. BUT when you combined his abilities with Wolf (Larry’s character) who was the strongest character ever, but who could barely move about at a speed higher than a lumbering walk, you begin to see how this works. Snowblind encases them, Wolf walks over and punches the ice until the villains inside are unconscious. Meanwhile Mike’s character Snap-Shot was the master of the indirect multi-shot blast (he would take cover behind my ice walls and take out the minions in rapid succession along with anyone smaller than 1 meter (whom Snowblind could not see because of his radar sense)). Snap-Shot’s downside was that, while he had a few more powerful blasts, his combination of disadvantages meant, if he used them, he’d be out of the fight for a long while.

This campaign was also the beginning of my twisting abilities to exploit things the GM had obviously not thought about too carefully. In addition to the insane amount of points I’d spent on “The Entangle from Hell,” I also upped Snowblind’s Presence (the force of his personality) well beyond the general table consensus of “average” into the realm of the ridiculous (to them it was all a dump stat). I very, very quickly disabused them of that notion. Snowblind could woo the crowd like nobody’s business. Do we have Heroes somewhere nearby with the “Berserk when normal’s get hurt” disadvantage? No problem. I just land in the middle of the normals, quick Presence Attack (“Attention Citizens, Snowblind here! [bad guy] is nearby! I need you all to leave in a calm, orderly fashion that way! [points]”). That also worked on the bad guys as I could wow them into delaying their attack at the beginning of nearly every fight. Heck I even used it on a rival group of heroes one time when their plan of attack would have made a mess of our “cover one another’s backs” plan. By the time they recovered enough to start their plan, our plan was already well on its way.

As for how Snowblind was as a person, he was a delightful mix of cocky self-assurance, and “aw shucks” self-depreciation. He knew he was good, but was self-aware enough to not let it go to his head. He was the unabashed leader of the team (by unspoken agreement between the players) though he never once referred to himself as the “leader.” In fact, the interviews he gave with the press always highlighted the exploits of his teammates. He ruled with a velvet glove, and never (I mean NEVER) gave anything less than total support to them.

His secret identity, Dr. Jonathan MacDonald was a typical psychologist. Quiet and thoughtful, a true devotee of the art of interpreting body language and meaningful silences. Early on in the campaign, I asked an innocuous question that had far-reaching consequences.

During Snowblind’s downtime, I was musing about how “Nathan” or “Nate” knew friends from enemies. Certainly he could hear their voices and knew that way, but he did have a radar sense. Problem was it couldn’t detect things smaller than a meter. So occasionally he’d bump into a chair or coffee table, that kind of thing. So I figured it was like blurry vision. The GM (obviously musing back) thought it more akin to some kind of basic shape. I could tell because, strip off the details (whether they were wearing a hat or different dress) I knew the basic shape of my friends. That got me to thinking about how most superheroes, are just the same people with disguises on, a “detail” that would be stripped away by my radar sense. That opened the floodgates as the discussion devolved into whether or not Nate knew the secret identities of all the other heroes in town.

And how did Nate use this newfound power? Without revealing he knew who they were, he began making suggestions to some of heroes. For example, suggesting to the secret identities of the two loner (and loneliest) heroes that it might be interesting to see the two heroes team up.

The successes he had lead him to a very interesting place. If he could reason with the heroes, why couldn’t he reason with the villains? It was an interesting prospect, but one Nate wouldn’t get very much time to explore, as you’ll see below.

Why the GM should have loved this character – On paper, Snowblind was really a terrific fit for the GM’s vision of the campaign. He was a truly heroic hero who really embodied the “larger than life” stereotype. He cared about the normals, his team members, and other heroes. But more than that, Snowblind brought his team together. Each of the heroes was designed to fight together as a team. Knew instinctively what their roles were and did them without question. Sure Snowblind was the face of that team, but together they were awe inspiring.

Why the GM should have hated this character – I think the new-ness of the team is really why the GM got so flustered. He was used to players just writing up individuals who would be put on a team, not team members who needed to work together to be effective. If he’d had more than a summer to get his bearings, I think he’d have had our number. BUT, that would have meant the ruination of his other team of heroes.

Just to explain a bit more. The GM actually ran two parallel campaigns. The first based in LA with his older, more sedate group of friends. And the second based in Seattle with Snowblind and Co. GM had a big bad who was threatening the entire west coast from the shadows and had planned for a yearly “team up” with the two groups. Unfortunately, the two teams had been built very differently. Our team was very much, work together or die. Their team was we have numbers, we don’t need to worry about teamwork. And how did that work out for them?

Despite being outnumbered by the LA team by nearly 3:1 the Seattle team destroyed the villain who’d brought the LA team to its knees. And Snowblind administered the coup-de-grace when he told an LA reporter (the one who’d been critical of the LA team for some time) “We’re just so glad we could help. But next time [LA team] finds themselves in over their heads; maybe they shouldn’t wait so long to call for rescue. Innocent people could have paid the price for their pride.”

(I should note, this only happened after three members of the other “hero” team attacked Wolf for doing what Snowblind had instructed. During that stand-off, Snowblind warned all three of the “heroes” that they were poking a bear, and if he let loose they would regret it greatly. The third warning was something to the effect, that if they hit Wolf again, he was free to hit back (Oh in all their attacks they did precisely 0 damage, not even a point of stun).

But the real reason the GM should have hated Snowblind is, once I figured out that radar sense could reveal the bad guys, I wanted to have the good Doctor start looking into their backgrounds, see if there wasn’t some non-violent way to resolve at least some of their crises. I didn’t mention this previously but our “team” worked for a large company ("Paralax: The Oil Company with a Heart!" they wanted their own private superhero group) so Snowblind had access to enough resources to help these people in a more meaningful way than just beating them up all the time. Plus with his presence, he might even be able to get them on board their own recovery.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t the kind of campaign the GM wanted to run (impromptu supervillain therapy/rehabilitation). But the GM was cool about it and thought it was quite creative of me to want to help in that way. But after hearing his reasons, we both decided to just let the matter drop and go back to beating up the bad guys…

Why MARK should have loved this GM - I should note here, the GM of this dual-running campaign was a friend of Mike's in the SCA (which is how I learned anything about them, he was formerly the king of whatever realm Corvallis, OR is part of. This would have been around 1990 if you SCA types are gonna try to find him. I also remember he made a secondary character so he could continue competing while still being the "King") The guy was just cool. He was in many ways what I envisioned the ideal life looking like. And his plots were really solid. I mean REALLY. Lots of classic action like you might expect from comics of the time, and enough behind-the-scenes stuff to get you hooked into this thing long term.

And that discussion I mentioned between him and I? Wow, he approached it in such a matter-of-fact way. Like "I think its awesome what you are doing, and in real life I am TOTALLY on board with your idea. It's just that it won't work for what I have planned (and I think it's something you will really like). So is there some way WE can have you do this behind the scenes or something like that?" No suggestion that I should stop, just need to take the focus off that as a solution. In that respect he was quite influential on my future GMing.

Why MARK should have hated the GM - No snark, I was real jealous of his GMing style.
smafdi wrote:STOP BEING SO DARN POPULAR GUYZ SRSLY I NEEDZ MEH GAMEZ TIHS YAER!!!

kenderleech wrote:If the cows were not meant to be ridden, why would they be so close to the chase scenes?
User avatar
Black Jack Rackham
Site Admin
 
Posts: 6938
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2010 9:37 am
Location: Massachusetts

Marvel Super Heroes (FASERIP) /Champions 3rd.

Postby salamanca » Tue Jan 12, 2021 9:20 am

I played this character in a couple systems.

Dusk

Oh, what a stereotype. Grey skin, shadow control powers, able to teleport through those shadows. Sppoky and mysterious with tendencies for growling intimidating sneak attacks. He wasn't a vampire but he had some dental appliances to make it look like he was just to.scare the bad guys.

In his Marvel version, he was a slightly better version of Cloak trying to be Batman. His team was a bunch of weak cliches and the kid that insisted on just playing wolverine because creating your own is lame.

It was when i got yanked over to a Champions game that he got interesting. The shadow powers got relegated to movement (a limited teleport to shadows in sight but could take someone along) defense (shunting the damage into the ethereal shadows inside his cape) and a mild for Champions distance attack.

Everything else went into Presence and a Presence attack to scare the bad guys into immobility. At the time, i didn't understand that the GM would hold hard on the rules for drawbacks and limitations. Plus, I had plenty of points to spend so I never thought about putting a drawback on it like... non-lethal.

Yeah, it happened. Dusk and his team got on the trail of some low level supercriminals. The others let me drop in first to knock them off balance. Dusk rose up out of the shadow of one of these guys in their "safehouse". He flashed his fake fangs, dropped a quip that the GM granted 3 extra dice for (and i wish i had written down because it was a really good line that i have never remembered) and a mass Presence attack was made.

Mark just talked about how to use Presence to awe people and get them to do what you need. This is the wrong side of that. I rolled well. I really only intended to scare them enough to lose their actions or surrender.

Instead, i scared them so bad they had heart attacks and died from fear. Yeah, died. Dead. 6 of them.

Now the rest of the team is about to bust in on the "vampire teammate" and their targets to find corpses. Their "hero" partner just killed a bunch of robbers. And now they gotta take me in or start covering things up before the press get wind of it.

And it was a very Boy Scout, good guy team. I spent the rest of the campaign not using my powers to avoid a repeat. And the team treated me like a total Pariah. But they didn't turn me in or kick me out.

why the GM should have loved him

Despite his scary looks and powers, Dusk was a character with a big friendly heart and a kind nature. Being spooky was just a routine for him. He was kind of goofy when he wasn't working.

why the GM hated him

The GM wasn't planning to deal with the fallout of what hapoened from that Presence attack. It wrecked his campaign plot and needed a lot of work to het us back on the trail. It changed the group dynamic at the table. It went from a Justice League safe hero game into a 90's shadow team full of moral choices that he didn't want to run.

And his good natured happy go lucky character turned into a surly emo brooder.

Poor Dusk, too powerful for his own good.
I don't mind growing old... but I hate growing up.
salamanca
 
Posts: 5782
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2010 10:25 am
Location: in the back of your head

– Shadowrun 3rd Ed. –

Postby Black Jack Rackham » Tue Jan 12, 2021 12:28 pm

For the record, the alternate, "90's shadow team with lots of moral choices." Sounds awesome. I would totally be on board for that.

Tunguud
Now we’re starting into my adult RPG experience. I should note that there is around a decade of no gaming between the previous character and this one. This was in the early days of my current gaming group (we have been doing this for over 20 years at this point).

This was the first Shadowrun character I ever made. The GM I usually share duties with wanted to introduce us to a new game, one he’d played quite extensively back in college. (now I had seen this game because Larry was gaga over the old NES version of it, but I’d never actually played). The usual group of fellow players with us, and none of them thought to make a tank. Normally I’d take the face character (because, let’s face it, with my usual group of players I tend to be the one to lead things, and can you REALLY imagine me shutting up for five seconds?). But someone else decided on the face so I decided to make the big dumb hulking brute.

While making my character, the GM told me a story about a friend of his who’d made a similar character who wanted a gun so large it “shoots copper-jacketed toasters.” I thought it apt.

Since the stage is set, lets get straight to Tunguud. He was a Troll of few words and because of that none of the other players were ever really sure if Tunguud was his name or just his explanation of his favorite meal. But his light machine gun (complete with enough bells and whistles it could cut through a tank). That’s not just an exaggeration, his first time shooting it he took out an armored helicopter. So yea, Tunguud was loads of fun. Just not very subtle. Fortunately the GM was able to compensate and had us running a smash and grab campaign rather than secrets and stealth.

Because I was playing him, Tunguud did take a leadership role, but that was only when the shooting had started. Before that he just went along with whatever plan the other runners had come up with. But when the s*** hit the fan, they could all count on Tunguud to make sure we all got out in one (or at least a just a few) pieces.

Add to that, Tunguud had tons of hidden talents (which I would carefully and surreptitiously pay an exorbitant amount of Karma for, just to spring on the other players at just the wrong moment.) Like for example, the time they went on a kill mission high in the mountains and while up there started an avalanche which buried them in a cabin. They were all freaking out wondering if we were going to survive when Tunguud walked over to a nearby piano and just started playing. But not just playing, oh no. He began with Beethoven’s No. 29 Symphony in B flat major op. 106. Thought by many to be the hardest music to play on the piano ever. (and I doubt any of the players realized what I had done).

Or that time runners got a call to go to some really swanky restaurant for a meet with an uber rich Mr. Johnson. Tunguud didn’t show up until after the first course of soup was served. That was because, of course, he moonlighted as the potager at this restaurant (cause he had gotten bored during our downtime).

Personality wise, Tunguud reacted to everything as if he’d already seen it before, and bought the t-shirt. Mr. Johnson screwed us over? It happens. Protection target discovers what Deceleration Trauma (colloquially known as “CSE” or Chunky Salsa Effect) means? Oh well, them’s the breaks. But let just one goganger accidentally run over a rat? You better prepare for WAR son… Tunguud is coming for your whole gang if you don’t make this right.

And while we’re on the subject. Why rats you might ask? Well it’s a question NONE of the other players ever asked. They just new to walk gingerly around his apartment (which was really just whatever place he was squatting in this week.)

Why the GM should have loved this character – Tunguud is exactly the right kind of character to play if you want to do a “runnin’ –n– gunnin’” campaign. He follows the rules, listens to the other players and rains down Flaming Hot Copper-Jacketed Hell (which, by the way, were the words painted on the side of his LMG, he even paid extra to make sure the paint was visible on the astral plane) on their enemies. He can take a near infinite amount of bullets (not to mention knives, swords, and monofilament whips) to the chest and has no qualms about drawing all the fire (so the other players can do what they do best). BUT he was just as happy to be totally unnecessary. Unlike many over-the-top troll tanks, Tunguud just wanted to get paid and see the job done right. He didn’t necessarily want people to die in the process (unless they hurt a rat, then all bets were off). And he never took anything that happened personally (again, except the rats).

Why the GM should have hated this character – He would absolutely destroy any other type of campaign. Stealth or intelligence gathering involved? Oh, no. no. no. no. no. NO! I mean, he wouldn’t have messed up the run for anyone else, and he would have been ready to deal with matters if it all went to hell. But those campaigns are predicated on making sure that NEVER happens. So Tunguud would have been relegated to a useless character siphoning off a share of the payday (though he would have made excellent soups for everyone, and regaled them with tales of Hedy (NOT HEADLEY) Lamarr, you know, the co-inventor of a frequency-hopping spread spectrum communication for torpedo guidance (and I hear she was in those old 2D vids a bit too)).

The other, larger and more immediate problem was Tunguud’s build vs. the other characters. In order for the GM to have a chance at hurting him, he really needed to up the damage capability of his mobs. Problem was, doing so virtually guaranteed the other players would be turned into a fine red mist. And, unfortunately for him, there was simply no overlap. Either build someone tough enough to hurt Tunguud and kill everyone else, or let Tunguud run roughshod over the competition.

That more than anything was the reason I played a restrained version of Tunguud, and gave him so many other things to be interested in. If I went full Tunguud (and believe me I know you should never go FULL Tunguud) it would have just made a mess of everything.
smafdi wrote:STOP BEING SO DARN POPULAR GUYZ SRSLY I NEEDZ MEH GAMEZ TIHS YAER!!!

kenderleech wrote:If the cows were not meant to be ridden, why would they be so close to the chase scenes?
User avatar
Black Jack Rackham
Site Admin
 
Posts: 6938
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2010 9:37 am
Location: Massachusetts

– AD&D 3rd Ed. –

Postby Black Jack Rackham » Wed Jan 13, 2021 1:56 am

DON’T REMEMBER HIS NAME
For the record I can remember a lot about this character, but for the life of me I cannot remember his name (I even asked the other players who were at the table if any of them remembered him, and no luck). Maybe fortune smiles upon me and I have blocked it out for fear of replaying this campaign in my mind. Whatever the case, we shall refer to him as ½O. ½O was a huge (and I mean HUGE) half orc priest of some war god our DM created for his own world.

(A world which, I might add, he felt was well-developed enough to fill out the application to make it the secondary world for D&D (if you remember when they were planning that. I believe Ghostworld ended up with the nod). From what little I experienced of his world, I would not have been so cocky.)

This is a bit of a digression, but it’s necessary for later. The DM of this game, we’ll call him “D” always had big ideas (see above). When he would start a new campaign he would always begin by telling us a quite long (relatively well thought out) story about his world (there were at least three that I recall). The story always (and I mean ALWAYS) went something like this:

There’s this place, far away, where cool stuff happens and has tons of backstory. And here is at least an hour’s of exposition describing some of the backstory. However, to get to where all this backstory resides, you must travel since it is far, far away from you. And thus, for reasons, you have decided to go there.

And now the story begins…

So, as was D’s want, we were traveling to where stuff happened. What I didn’t tell you, and is crucial to understand is, we were never, ever, for any reason what so ever, going to get to the place where stuff happened. And in addition, we were never, ever, for any reason what so ever, allowed to turn back, stop or otherwise change directions from trying to get there.

If/when we tried to break those immutable rules of the universe the following would happen (and to be perfectly clear here, I am not making this up or exaggerating). Three orc armies, each thousands of orcs strong would show up (for reasons we were never told) they would block every direction but the one which led back to the railroad. EVERY TIME.

Where had these orc armies been prior to this? Were they following us? None of those questions would ever be answered (though they were asked countless times).

We did, in point of fact, try to fight them once. And while we put on a good show, after about half an hour the GM told us they were getting reinforcements. More weird was the fact that as soon as we stepped back toward the railroad, they stopped fighting…

Back to ½O, He was a very, very dark skinned half ork who was totally devoted to his god’s ways. Fight only when necessary but ALWAYS fight to win, win when you can, retreat to fight another day, that kind of thing. He made a deal with the other players that he would do all the healing and resurrection (should they get that far) duties, PROVIDED, they conducted themselves well in battle, and declared at least one enemy per battle as sacrifice to [Battle God]. You see [Battle God] didn’t care if you worshiped him, he just needed the souls of defeated enemies.

After a short while of clericdom ½O realized the best way he could worship [Battle God] was to become a barbarian (and also because fighting was pretty much the only thing we ever did, so Barbarian was quite a bit more useful). One time, when we were around fourth level, we fought a black dragon (adult, full complement of magic spells, not a monster we should have even had a chance with). But for reasons, we won. Somehow (I forget the details) one of his teeth became an intelligent evil sword. And, even though ½O was not evil, the “chaotic” part of the alignment was important, so he could wield it. It was at that point that the power curve got crazy and we began laying waste to everything all the time. I tried speaking with D about this and the worry this power creep was getting out of control, but he thought it was awesome and couldn’t understand the problem.

It was at that point that ½O decided to kill himself and the campaign. Foregoing his previous personality traits and ethos he began purposely attacking random NPCs or ones that were implied to him to be an important part of the plot (I am kidding myself here, there was no plot, just a monster of the week). But try as he might, he was never successful. He even stopped using the sword and at one point began biting his opponents to death. The highlight (or possibly low light) was a fight with a giant in which he ate clean through its leg. The one occasion where ½O accidentally died resulted in D saying the sword had developed a new ability and could resurrect him once a day.

In the end, the only way ½O could get out of his eternal torment was for me (Mark) to suggest switching days for gaming to a day that D could no longer make it. Rest in peace ½O my friend; you have been tortured long enough.

Why the DM should have loved this character – Didn’t you just read that? The DM loved ½O. Brought him back from the dead just to keep playing.

Why ½O should have loved the DM – Talk about a monty haul campaign. We had so much gold and stuff we started using it to line the roads we walked on just to show where we’d been. We never found towns, we never needed food, just eternal fighting (which must have thrilled [Battle God] something fierce!)

Why the DM should have hated this character – Sure, ½O may have seemed like he was a great fit for this campaign, but he really wasn’t. And he actively tried to sabotage the game (Though in my defense, I did tell him on several occasions there was a problem, he just couldn’t seem to hear me).

Why ½O should have hated the DM – In addition to actually having dreams. He could have grown as a character, seen new things, developed relationships, been SOMETHING! But the real reason ½O should have hated the DM was because, despite outward appearances the DM was just Peter Pan. He never grew up from playing the kind of games we’d been playing when we were 12. That’s all he had in his repertoire, and he had no desire to grow. Plus he had a habit of hitting on women FAR too young for him (oh yea and he was married).

In retrospect I should clarify something. You may be saying to yourself, Well maybe "D" was just young, we all go through that phase, maybe, Mark, you should have been more instrumental in guiding him away from this form of GMing. Normally I would agree, but for one thing, "D" is nearly a decade older than I. He should damn well know better. And according to other players who knew him, this had always been his M.O. They also had tried to speak with him, but to no avail.
smafdi wrote:STOP BEING SO DARN POPULAR GUYZ SRSLY I NEEDZ MEH GAMEZ TIHS YAER!!!

kenderleech wrote:If the cows were not meant to be ridden, why would they be so close to the chase scenes?
User avatar
Black Jack Rackham
Site Admin
 
Posts: 6938
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2010 9:37 am
Location: Massachusetts

Men in Black

Postby salamanca » Wed Jan 13, 2021 9:28 am

Agent D

Agent D was the sterotypical MiB agent. He had seen enough to know what the score was and was willing to handle the daily weirdness with efficiency, calm and no hysterics. His main partner, Agent J (not Jeremy) was right there with him. The rest of the team... not so much.

D and J spent most of their time covering the tracks of their own agency. An impetuous and reckless trigger happy junior team were a GM nightmare. Mr. 42 guns, the boy who kills plot devices, the irish loony, the distracted teen, and Mr. Doom and Gloom. It was a bad set of bad habits more interested in collateral damage. And they all had a quick flashy thing trigger finger.

It was like playing Paranoia. You couldn't get anything done before somebody on the team zapped you and switched your plans up.

J was working as a fast food manager at the time amd they had kids meal MiB toy flashy things. He calls me one night, a little fed up. Tells me to wear a suit and bring sunglasses to the next session. We show up, dressed to larp with actual MiB flashy things.

The GM loves it. Before anybody knows what is happening, we have zapped half the team and made them forget they have any MiB issued gear. The others take a shot at us but the GM points out we are onviously wearing our glasses because we ARE WEARING THEM AT THE TABLE. The others fall quickly enough. Game is now under control. We let them have enough leash to have fun.

The suits stayed home but the other props stayed.

And a few sessions later stuff went hard agsinst us. I whip out the neuralyzer and flashy thing the GM. I rewrite the plot as part of his reprogramming. Brilliant the first time. The rest of the team decides this is default Plan A. The campaign ends soon after.

why the GM should have loved D
He was Tommy Lee Jones efficient and found a way to get the team under control. He let his parrtner take the lead and was a strong wingman.

why the GM hated D

I neuralyzed him.
I don't mind growing old... but I hate growing up.
salamanca
 
Posts: 5782
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2010 10:25 am
Location: in the back of your head

Re: Men in Black

Postby Black Jack Rackham » Wed Jan 13, 2021 9:57 am

salamanca wrote:why the GM hated D

I neuralyzed him.

Sure, but did he KNOW he hated D?
smafdi wrote:STOP BEING SO DARN POPULAR GUYZ SRSLY I NEEDZ MEH GAMEZ TIHS YAER!!!

kenderleech wrote:If the cows were not meant to be ridden, why would they be so close to the chase scenes?
User avatar
Black Jack Rackham
Site Admin
 
Posts: 6938
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2010 9:37 am
Location: Massachusetts

Over the Edge

Postby salamanca » Thu Jan 14, 2021 9:45 am

Leon

Al Amarja is a weird place full of weird beings involved in weird conspiracies. If you have a syrange mindset, it is the greatest mediterranean playground ever.

Leon was sort of mundane compared to a lot of tge residents. He wasn't an alien, he wasn't in any cults, he was just a guy that weird stuff happened to with some interesting friends. (That's right, in a game where i could have gone weirdo gonzo crazy, i built the everyman)

In Over the Edge, everybody has ONE advantageous quirk. Leon's quirk on paper was something that sounded really simple and weak. Particulalry in a game where the Loony was playing a telepathic brine shrimp that spoke Yiddish. The GM glanced right over me without a thought.

Quirk: Everyone likes Leon and treats him like a trusted friend.

The GM had bought into the CCG that released alongside the RPG. He wasn't ready for the level of weird. He was planning to do mobster/shadowrun style espionage. The weirder they got, the more focus got pushed to me and that quirk broke the game.

We need to sneak into a restricted area and steal.something? Lemme talk to the guard. "Hey pal, need a favor..." mission accomplished. Nobody had much fun. Except Loony and his brine shrimp. But that guy had fun regardless of how the game went.

why the GM should love him
Everybody is Leon's friend.

why the GM hated him

Everybody is Leon's friend.
I don't mind growing old... but I hate growing up.
salamanca
 
Posts: 5782
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2010 10:25 am
Location: in the back of your head

– AD&D 3rd Ed. –

Postby Black Jack Rackham » Thu Jan 14, 2021 10:28 am

Thiefy McStealsalot
Several years ago, the (now) adult son of one of our (former) regulars got to talking with us old school gamers about his game. Specifically about how he’d maneuvered all his players into trying to kill one another and how long it’d taken. We all kind of chuckled as we knew we could destroy his campaign in a matter of hours. He was so unprepared for TRUE old school. He took that as a challenge and so we made up characters. No need for names, he told us, this was going to be the beatdown of the century. Young vs. Old…How little he knew.

We’ll call my character Thiefy McStealsalot because, unlike old school games where I have set percentages that go up by level, in 3rd Ed., I get to assign points, and I plan on taking everything. I mean E V E R Y T H I N G... So I split my points evenly between pickpocket and lockpick (Because, let’s be honest at 1st level the traps are not gonna kill us so why bother, plus, we have a plan :twisted: ).

We begin this massacre at the entrance to the dungeon. But none of us go in, we can’t of course, we need someone to carry our shit for us. So we go back to town and start talking to folks, looking for a laborer to come with us. Well we find two that are likely candidates, but rather than hire them both, we force them into a bidding war for the job. When they seem reluctant, the bard jumps in and starts convincing them, all friendly like. So they do. And we end up with servant 1, his services to us in perpetuity for 1 copper. And we already have a contract (which the party has all agreed to and which has a little read codicil on page 437 about what exactly defines “services”). Already the GM has lost, he let us dictate terms. He has no idea what’s coming.

Into the dungeon we go, but not before sending the servant in first. He balks of course, because he’s just there to carry stuff. But we point to the aforementioned page 437 which has defined “service” as anything we tell him to do. So with no other choice he goes in. And promptly dies because the GM thought he was gonna get us with the old “killer trap in the first hallway” ploy as punishment for abusing the NPC. So we take the 1 copper we paid him off his still-cooling body (and as a bonus we don’t bother wiping his blood off the copper) and we turn back to town, go grab the second guy (who was at 2 coppers, we pay him with the still bloody 1 copper from the previous guy) and head back once more (but not before servant 2 has signed his own version of the contract (in actuality it’s the exact same contract as the first one, I mean really we’re going to waste the paper?, we just erased servant 1’s name and wiped the blood off it, mostly.)).

(Oh I should note here, GM keeps trying to tell us servant 2's name, backstory, family relations, etc. all in some vague effort to get us to care about him. But we straight up refuse, calling him "2" right to his face.)

So for the next hour or so we wander around in the dungeon, killing monsters and using 2 as our trap-setter-offer. In between 2 has instructions to strip everything of value (gold, silver, old weapons, armor, shoes, socks, underwear, wall hangings, iron sconces, anything which is not structural or nailed in place and could conceivably be sold*) and put it into piles in the first room. When we’re out of spells we head back to town. But we don’t take everything. Just the gold, silver and weapons (all the rest we leave for later, 2 will get them when we’re farther down in the dungeon). Also our mage has taken a point of damage so we make 2 carry him back to town (and point to page 437 for good measure). When he complains, we remind him that we could instruct him to carry all of us...

*We'll send him back for the nailed down and structural stuff after we're safely out of the dungeon.

And at last we get to the point where we're finally going to break the GM. We head directly for the traders with all our ill-gotten booty. In the shop, the guy shows us all his wares, a couple of nice +1 weapons and surprise, surprise a huge bag of holding. So I ask a bunch of questions about the bag and all the other stuff. Trader tells us BoH just came in from a different adventuring group, but it’s a hot ticket so it’s probably not going to be here for long. Of course, BoH is WAY out of our price range but one of the +1 weapons isn’t. We buy the weapon.

(At this point it’s probably best to let you follow the conversation (generally) as it went down)
Then I say, I take the bag of holding.
GM looks confused. You don’t have enough money.
Of course not, that’s why I’m going to steal it.
YOU WHAT?!?! Ok, let’s see if he catches you (GM rolls, but FAR below my maxed out pickpocket roll.)
GM is incredulous, we just straight up stole that, and it’s obvious but game rules have hampered him and he can’t figure out how get us back.
Mage, fresh from his being carried all the way back to town says, Hey, I hear adventurers are sometimes lazy about searching their stuff for treasure. Let’s search of the bag of holding.
We’re hitting the GM fast and furious and he doesn’t have time to FULLY consider what he’s about to do. So he says there’s only a five percent chance there’s something in there. Pulls out a d20 and tells us if he rolls a 20 we find something.
Yup, you guessed it…
So he starts rolling on a random treasure chart and comes up with a Staff of Power.
Realizing what a disaster that will be, he figures out one way to deal with us, and simply says, NO. I’ll give you a wand of frost instead.
Unfortunately he’s already in too deep. We don’t care what we find, we just want to steal everything that isn’t nailed down (and everything that IS nailed down too).
IMMEDIATELY the fighter says, I wonder what ELSE is in there?
I mention something about going back into the traders to sell the wand of frost and steal the rest of the +1 weapons…
GM begins to visibly age before our eyes…
By the time the adventure is over (just 4 hours) we have 2-3 magic items apiece, the trader has committed suicide, his wife and kids packed up and left town, we’re 3rd level, and we’re now up to "4."
Now, the GM looks like a week old mylar balloon (the kind that are JUST BARELY holding themselves above floor level) and I’m relatively certain he would be willing to pay us real money to leave and never come back.
Every once in a while I see him shake his head and half-raise his hands in attempt to ask himself WTF just happened.

Finally we show him mercy and pack up.
A short time later, we’re all outside getting ready to head home for the night, when the GM’s other group shows up.
GM is still wondering how we put him through the ringer like that and says as much to other group.
They start extolling the virtues of their game, and soon it devolves into who hates who and how none of them trusts the others in even the slightest ways.
Then, at some point leader of the other party says something to the effect that us old timers may have been able to get one over on the GM but it would never work with their party, especially now that they know its coming.
We all smile, because we all know what’s coming.
Without dice we are about to kill an entire party of 20th level characters.
So I say, We could kill all of you right now, without even working up a sweat.
He and his oh-so-inexperienced compatriots chuckle as he asks how I could possibly do that?
(this is just too easy).
So I say, I’d walk right up to [Leader] and stab him.
He looks at me askance, I don’t understand, you’d just walk right up and stab me, You’re only 3rd level. You can’t do more than irritate me. What’s to stop me from killing you?
I smile slyly then I start sniffling and in a pathetic-sounding voice I say, I had no choice [pointing to the teammate he’d said he trusted the least, the mage of their group] He forced me to do it! Cast some kind of magic spell and made me attack you. PLEEEZZZEEE Don’t kill me, I had NO CHOICE! And for good measure I start making pathetic jabbing motions at [Leader] again while crying and saying He’s still making me do it!
Immediately the others on my team take up the attack, some of them even worked up real tears, crying as they let loose a pathetic (and largely ineffective) barrage of attacks
But while they attack various members of the other group they all make sure not to attack the poor fool I accused.
As we continue the kobayashi maru of attacks, the players of the 20th level characters start discussing the matter.
Then they start arguing whether or not the accused character would do something like this (soon enough, the consensus is that yes, he would. However some of them owe him for that thing he did and so would take up arms against others).
As this is occurring, we slowly stop making noise and stand by to listen to them
Sides are taken, challenges are issued, and VERY soon it’s come to (hypothetical) blows.
At long last, the GM finally understands.
We are O.G. Oldschool Gamers. We aren’t sitting at the table to squabble for scraps amongst ourselves.
We know who our real enemies are, and we fight to win.
All of us old-timers turn to GM nearly simultaneously, the din of the younger players still arguing with one another in the background, and say, how much XP do we get?
Then we start mentally divvying up their loot…

Why the GM should have loved this character – No GM in their right mind would ever love Thiefy (or any of his fellow party members). Only his fellow players and silent witnesses would love Thiefy. And even then, they’d only love him as long as he and his gang of OG Murderhobos didn’t try to destroy them and everything they ever loved.

Why the GM should have hated this character – Thiefy viewed the GM as the enemy. All his actions were predicated screwing the GM over and getting stuff (by screwing the GM over). Thiefy’s main goal in life was to screw over the GM so completely, so thoroughly that the GM just straight up quit. And not just quit the game, but quit roleplaying. Forever. #Winning

And finally, I should note that this GM is currently living in TX where he has gone, presumably, to lick his wounds after having been so thoroughly humiliated by a bunch of geezers, safe in the knowledge that no one there will have heard of our names…Oh did I mention that three of our group members, (myself included) have all lived in TX?... Oh yes our memories are indeed long, and vengeance is almost at hand…
smafdi wrote:STOP BEING SO DARN POPULAR GUYZ SRSLY I NEEDZ MEH GAMEZ TIHS YAER!!!

kenderleech wrote:If the cows were not meant to be ridden, why would they be so close to the chase scenes?
User avatar
Black Jack Rackham
Site Admin
 
Posts: 6938
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2010 9:37 am
Location: Massachusetts

–Earthdawn 3rd Ed. –

Postby Black Jack Rackham » Fri Jan 15, 2021 9:49 am

Tyrnian
Another campaign by my home game co-GM. This time he was jonsing to do the earlier timeline for Shadowrun, show us who some of the movers and shakers of SR were back in the old times (if you are a devotee of SR, you know a couple of the more powerful NPCs went from one time to the other). Unfortunately the campaign didn’t go nearly as long as we thought it might. So we pretty much never got past the river of flame (which is the Volga for those of you who’ve never heard of the game before).

The basic idea behind all these shared worlds is that magic ebbs and flows from no magic to an overabundance of magic. Our world has none, SR has some, Earthdawn has a lot (but could have far more). Thus everyone in Earthdawn is at least an Adept (able to make use of magic to power their physical selves)

And that brings us to Tyrnian. Lithe and lanky, Tyrnian was as bright and shiny an elf as you could ever possibly want to meet, (or not as the case may be). He treated every interaction as some kind of duel (either words or blades, it didn’t matter to him), and he was just as happy to lose as win as long as his opponent was honorable. Once, long before Tyrnian’s birth, his family had been wealthy nobles but they had no souls. Fortunately they’d lost everything and been forced to become far more interesting. Without money to hire underlings to take care of their problems, they’d had to learn to fend for themselves and that meant learning how to fight. And without lands and power, they’d learned how to become the consummate moochers. It was the life Tyrnian grew up in, and it was the life he would have chosen had he been given a choice.

Tyrnian was a Swordsmaster, equal parts charismatic, swashbuckling rogue and historian. You see the one possession he’d been given by his parents was a gleaming blade of unsurpassed sharpness. Tyrnian had seen it hanging from his father’s hip for eons, but knew nothing about it. “You are asking the wrong person.” His father would always say when Tyrnian asked about the sword or it’s properties.

Then, when the sword came into his possession, he realized the truth of his father’s words. He gazed at the sword, running his hand up and down its length, but feeling the magic hidden within. Then, he heard something. Just one word, but it’s resonance stunned him to his core. “Razorclaw,” it had said, and blade and man started on their journey to become one.

Personality-wise, Tyrnian was about as charismatic as all the other characters I play. He loved to get one over on the bad guys, but was just as happy to have the wool pulled over his eyes if the joke was funny enough. He was all set for courtly intrigue and mystery should it happen, but was the damage dealer of the party (although not the tank, we had a giant obsidaman for that)

Why the GM should have loved this character – I’m gonna be honest here. That is about the most back story my group ever did (they are getting better nowadays). So to have that much to work with (even if it’s not all that much) should have been a godsend.

Why the GM should have hated this character – Well as I mentioned above, the character is about half set to be interacting with NPCs, he can give and take with the best of them, and had the skills to uncover all the dirty little secrets hidden behind bland smiles. AND the GM never made use of that. He just doesn’t like intrigue or social interactions and so the best I could hope for was for Tyrnian to smack talk the bad guys during their fights.

In addition, for whatever reason, I was obsessed with the "Swashbuckler" part of his description, and was trying to make him fit what I thought of a a swashbuckler. So lots of jumping off high things, swinging on ropes, sliding down sails, etc. However, while this game has some of that, it is definitely not on the level of, say, 7th Sea. So I ended up doing a lot of crazy stuff that got Tyrnian injured. But did that stop me? Heck no! I just figured I needed more points in those abilities! I started using my magic to boost those kind of things (which, while cool, didn't really add to the game.)
smafdi wrote:STOP BEING SO DARN POPULAR GUYZ SRSLY I NEEDZ MEH GAMEZ TIHS YAER!!!

kenderleech wrote:If the cows were not meant to be ridden, why would they be so close to the chase scenes?
User avatar
Black Jack Rackham
Site Admin
 
Posts: 6938
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2010 9:37 am
Location: Massachusetts

Advanced Dungeons and Dragons the 2nd edition

Postby salamanca » Fri Jan 15, 2021 2:08 pm

Sometimes you have a character that stays with you forever. This one has the added benefit of probably the most sessions played as a single character too.

Bytor Earthbreaker
Dwarf by birth. Gladiator by profession. Adventurer by circumstance. Asshole by choice.

A little background. Bytor's father was a hill fearf that won the hand of mountain dwarf lord's daughter by means of some epic quest. (Details were never revealed to Bytor) If you are at all versed in dwarf culture, you would realize that this outcome was not planned for and the wrong dwarf hero got the job done. There was an arranged marriage nobody really wanted. His father went along with it to thumb his nose a the Mountain Dwarf Lord. The Lord went along just to keep his honor. The Daughter...well nobody asked or cared what she thought.

Bytor grew up being scorned and hated. The Mountain Dwarves called him Earthbreaker as a slur about his "farmer" Hill Dwarf father. He learned to fight before he learned to walk but not proper Dwarven fighting, he learned brutal, savage fisticuffs. When he came of age, he was tossed out.

The Hill Dwarves had no use for a "haughty Mountain Dwarf" and called him Earthbreaker as a slur about his miner heritage. Bytor failed to raise a single potato, almost starved and was encouraged to find somewhere else to live.

Lacking any practical skills, Bytor found a career in a fighting pit as a gladiator. He got trained in short swords, nets, and bolos but made his mark with cestus gloves and barehands. He shaved his head and trimmed his beard down to a goatee to a oid getting grabbed by the hair. They called him Earthbreaker to promote his power. Eventually he got too good for the local arena. The owners lost money because he didn't lose. He had to move on.

That was the set up for Bytor. He was Chaotic Neutral but his actions were never random but driven by that information. That backstory was NOT shared with the players or the GM. This was the era of keep your info secret or it will be used against you.

Bytor wandered into a town needing heroes. Th pay was good. A human swashbuckler named Etienne seemed good enough company. Etienne complained a bit too much about the scars on his face from duels. (And bragged too much about the same) Kohl was a half elf that was really good at sneeaking around and taking advantage of the world which appealed to Bytor plus he never called him Earthbreaker. (Kohl was a rogue playing to the old assassin class as best he could) They would have been friends if Kohl could have been trusted at all but they did become solid allies. Vanyel was an elf. A snotty, arrogant elf who was the smartest, bravest, most talented elf ever born. Don't bother to ask Vanyel how good he is, he will tell you that in the next 7 minutes. Bytor hated Vanyel and would have even if he had been a tolerable race.

On their first adventure, Bytor made his best friend for life. They found a human skull that had been magically transformed into gold. Bytor surrendered all claim to the rest of the treasure to keep the skull. He named it Yurik and enjoyed his company. Yurik never talked back, bever insulted him, and never tried to swindle him. Yurik became the tiebreaker vote in the party and did not always take Bytor's side. (Because sometimes a stubborn dwarf knows he is wrong but pride prevents admitting it)

We ended up at sea for a span. It was a good thing Bytor lobbyed for possession of the helm of underwater action we had found. For, mid adventure, Bytor got knocked overboard. 5 days sail out to sea. Dwarves do not float amd Bytor had to walk back into shore. Punching sharks and squid all the way.

Later we got awarded a manor house...well a decrepit crumbling, haunted manor house. We cleared it, hired a crew to fix it up. Home repair was beneath Vanyel. Etienne had no interest. So Kohl and Bytor hired the masons and got to work. Nive suites. Expansion on the warrens below the house. Special private treasuries for each player (because sharing is stupid). Kohl had the bright idea to build secret doors into the treasury of Etienne and Vanyel. Bytor bribed the dwarf labor into doing the job. We mostly robbed Vanyel. Kohl probably robbed Bytor but was just stealing the money i overcharged them for the labor bills.

We got summoned to a Local Lord for a quest. Yeah we were making names for ourselves. Well, Etienne and Vanyel...Kohl had convinced Bytor of the benefits of anonymity.

The Lord was offering his Daughter's hand to find some item that would save his domain...blah, blah, blah. (Remember, nobody including the GM knows Bytor's background...) Bytor arrives for the initial meeting on edge. The Lord insists we bring no weapons into his presence. Etienne is honorable amd goes along with it. Vanyel has spells but still trues the Gandalf walking stick B.S. it does not work. But Vanyel can summon fireballs and chromatic orbs and all sorts of damage. Kohl agrees but I know Kohl has at least a dozen convealed weapons. The Guard Captain is being a jerk. Bytor is being a jerk. The party is pleading with Bytor to play nice. So the short swords get drawn and...handed over. Pointy end first. Bytor sheaths them in the Captain's chest and barges into the throne room. Kohl's player smirks at me. Etienne's shakes his head. I am pretty sure Vanyel's player wet himself a little bit. We enter to a ridiculous number of guards with bows and baldes drawn and Bytor refuses to fight, just stands there demanding to get this meeting over with. After the quest we march back in, nobody asks for my swords. We hand over the Macguffin, the Lord asks who will be taking his daughter's hand. She is present and the GM plays up her attractiveness. Vanyel will be passing because haughty elf is not lowering himself to a human bride. Kohl is not down with settling down and taking on an NPC potential hostage. Etienne is smoothing back his hair about to make his play. Bytor walks up, lops off her hand and tells her, "in the long run, you will thank me for this". Tosses Etienne the hand and walks out the door...into another fight with the guards.

We parted ways soon after that (the GM graduated) Bytor had some other adventures at bring your own convention events.

The best was a high level gladiator arena against magic monsters summoned by throwing stones. How high level? The GM was not going to let me in because a max level dwarf (remember those racist rules?) was less than half the level of anybody else at the table. Bytor persevered, took on the dragons, griffons, demons and tarrasque...yeah that terrasque. I saw players bail for fear of dying in a con game. But i had Sleranne's lucky d20 and attitude. At the end, Bytor was the sole survivor. And i earned some serious props from a GM for strategic play.

why the GM loved him
He was a bull headed brute combat machine in a stealth campaign. It should have gone terribly wrong but Bytor made an earnest effort to do the job the way the GM was trying to make it happen. On the job, he was totally reliable. It was down time and negotiations where he got unpredictable. But outside of that one Lord, he never crossed up the GM plot.

why the GM hated him
Chaotic Neutral, talked to an inanimate skull, never shared an awesome backstory that could have been built on.

how much does dave love this character?

Bytor got played from 1988 until 1991. He is one of the first that I built real backstory on and stuck to it in character. It was a campaign where the characters were bigger than just crawling in a dungeon. I habe at least 28 dwarf minis that I bought and painted to use for Bytor looking for one that best suited his character. (Nobody sculpts dwarves with short swords in gladiator armor...and certainly not with bald heads) in 2019, i was considering custom designing a 3D printed mini for Bytor and I have not played him in nearly 30 years. If he not my alltime favorite, he is number 2. (And he would take that as a slight worth scrapping over)
I don't mind growing old... but I hate growing up.
salamanca
 
Posts: 5782
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2010 10:25 am
Location: in the back of your head

Re: A slightly different 31 day character challenge

Postby Black Jack Rackham » Fri Jan 15, 2021 4:26 pm

salamanca wrote:That backstory was NOT shared with the players or the GM. This was the era of keep your info secret or it will be used against you.

(Somewhere in the background of this thread, Mark begins furiously searching for the emoticon where a light-bulb suddenly appears over the GMs head...)
smafdi wrote:STOP BEING SO DARN POPULAR GUYZ SRSLY I NEEDZ MEH GAMEZ TIHS YAER!!!

kenderleech wrote:If the cows were not meant to be ridden, why would they be so close to the chase scenes?
User avatar
Black Jack Rackham
Site Admin
 
Posts: 6938
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2010 9:37 am
Location: Massachusetts

Re: A slightly different 31 day character challenge

Postby Lady Grace » Fri Jan 15, 2021 5:43 pm

"Bytor"? :twisted:

As in...?
"You're still mad at me about that whole 'gun-pointing' thing, aren't you?" -- Fortunato Valeri

And here's where I try to be a writer...
User avatar
Lady Grace
 
Posts: 893
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2010 1:20 pm

Re: A slightly different 31 day character challenge

Postby salamanca » Fri Jan 15, 2021 7:44 pm

Yeah...no Snowdogs to be found. And the GM claimed to be a fan.

Comedic point on old Bytor, everytine stuff went way wrong for him, he would stew like yosemite sam. Grumble and stomp and mutter.
I don't mind growing old... but I hate growing up.
salamanca
 
Posts: 5782
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2010 10:25 am
Location: in the back of your head

Call of Cthulhu

Postby salamanca » Sat Jan 16, 2021 10:11 am

I have several CoC characters. A few even survived. One of them might still be mostly sane. But this one was a pregen from am Origins game around 20 years ago and it won me a best player prize.

Mitzy Price

Mitzy was a really lousy character if you were just looking at stats. Spoiled rich girl with a smattering of college, no combat skills, no real research stats. She was exactly what she was described as a spoiled rich girl with a camera and no job skills.

Reeading that background paragraph and looking at the stats, I suddenly realized that this character was a dead on description of my ex girlfriend. (Mitsy was probably a shade more competant.)

So I started channeling the ex. I was rude, I interrupted important conversations with nonsense. I compared everything to my favorite radio show. I failed to be helpful and insist the others were obligated to do things for me with no teason behind it. And i talked over everybody.

And the other players went nuts. Not in a good way. They were irritated, frustrated and baffled by my behavior. I am pretty sure a coupke of them swiped my character sheet to see if I was a plant by the GM to mess with them. They started asking the GM to voluntarily take sanity loss to research silence spells to cast on me.

A friend frrom home walked by, stopped to listen for 10 seconds and asked, "are you playing...?" He recognized it immediately and just told the table they were screwed.

We got done and the exasperated players ran throught their backgrounds as a sort of debriefing before we voted on best player...this was one of those years there were certificates and prizes for every session...it was petty. 4 of the players were a block of friends, i had spent the game being a hassle, i was expecting no votes and cast mine toward the guy outside the 4-some because he worked hard all session to stay on track. All 5 of them voted for me. The guy that was most bugged stated, "dude, you drove me nuts for 4 hours but you had a reason behind it and never broke character once".

why the GM should have loved her

1- he made her.
2-she was a useless, had no reason to be involved and was never going to be part of a solution. I made her the most memorable part of the session.

why the GM hated her
Mitsy turned out to be a 4 hour distraction from the plot. And a signal that somebody needed to learn to build useful characters of both genders.
I don't mind growing old... but I hate growing up.
salamanca
 
Posts: 5782
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2010 10:25 am
Location: in the back of your head

– 7th Sea (1st Ed.) –

Postby Black Jack Rackham » Sat Jan 16, 2021 12:11 pm

Don Miguel Orozco de Torrez y Reina del Mar del Castillo, Knight of the Rose and Cross
Nope, not doing it. Instead…

“Malysh” Lyosha Kozlov
Loyosha was the youngest (and smallest) child of a family of subsistence farmers in the northern wastes of Ussura. Not big and strong like his brothers, or tough and mean like his sisters. Loyosha was the delicate and fragile baby of the family. He was the one all the rest knew they’d need to take care of because he was totally helpless. His mother was the first to call him “Malysh” (which means “baby” a common term of endearment and one that would never normally be used for any adult.), but it is a sentiment that continues to this day.

As you may have surmised, Loyosha was a monster of a man. Nearly 7’ tall and weighing in at nearly 350 lbs., I took every “big tough guy” advantage I could for Loyosha. But despite his “tough guy” exterior, he is a big ol’ softie. Childlike in his outlook, he views every encounter as some version of “fun” For example, at one point he and his fellows got into a fight with the vicious Porté Wolves of legend. His recollection of the encounter is that he was disappointed the “cute puppies” didn’t want to stay around to play more. That made him sad because unlike most of the people he’d encountered (read: fought) previously, these puppies knew how to play rough! Every time he went into the woods (similar to where he’d encountered the Porté Wolves previously) he would call out to them, just to see if they’d come play again. He even gave them names, Mr. Fluffernutter and Commodore Snugglepants in the hopes they’d show up again. (and if Laura, our GM, is reading this, Loyosha is still sad they won’t come back.)

If Loyosha had a downside, it was the fact that, due to his mommy being so far away, he felt free to do some of the adult kind of things his mom wouldn’t approve of, like flirting with ladies and drinking. If I recall correctly, Loyosha never did figure out that those scantily clad women who’d flirt with him all the time did, in point of fact, wish for him to PAY them afterwards. He just thought his Ussuran accent was irresistible to Castillian women (who are, in point of fact, built ENTIRELY differently than the only Ussuran women he’d ever encountered, his mom and sisters*).

*NO you sickos, I wasn’t implying anything untoward in the family. I was just saying that Loyosha led a very sheltered life (he was the baby who needed to be protected, remember?). So, until he left home, the only women he’d ever met were his mother and sisters.

As for the drinking, Loyosha was a prodigious drinker. After all, his father, older brothers (and mother and older sisters when it came right down to it) consumed alcohol on a nearly constant basis. So, so did Loyosha. Unfortunately, unlike the rest of his family, he never developed the tolerance they did. From a story perspective, I made sure Loyosha drank like he had Able Drinker, but he most assuredly did not. Which meant that Laura was free to have him pass out and wake up wherever she wanted (which happened a lot).

As you might expect Loyosha was not the deep thinker of the party, and for once I refused to try and lead the party. Instead, I would wait quietly for any of the other players to pick up on the plot threads and then I would follow along. If they refused to do so, well, Loyosha certainly knew how to entertain himself…

And that’s where the campaign went off the rails. Laura had come up with a creative little plot and I and the other players just refused to play along. Not a shred of curiosity from any of us (well I was curious, but Loyosha saw pretty women and booze). Then, after seeing that none of the other players was going to tug on that plot string, Loyosha would wander off to get drunk and the other players would then follow his lead…

Poor Laura, I feel sorry for her, I really do.

One of the cutest things Loyosha did was, again because he was the baby of the family and his mother worried, he would write her letters (ok, truth, Loyosha couldn’t read or write anything. He just grabbed a nearby sailor and forced the sailor to write down what he said. I have no idea if the sailor actually followed through). But in any case, Loyosha would recite the day’s events, re-interpreting them to be something far less dangerous (and less bawdy) than what had actually happened. That way his mother wouldn’t worry so much.

Why the GM should have loved this character – Loyosha was always ready to fill the time with some shenanigans, and he never had a problem with wanting to follow the party (or the plotline). All that had to be done was to point which way to go, get any other player to be interested in the plot and Loyosha was happy to follow right along. He never tried to hog the spotlight or derail the adventure (even when he quite obviously did those very things).

Why the GM should have hated this character – Well in addition to refusing to be the first one to take up the plot, Loyosha also filled up the time with his shenanigans, hogged the spotlight and derailed the adventure, CONSTANTLY. Worst of all, he would frequently no-sell the danger he was in. On one particularly notable occasion, while their ship and the walled city they were hiding in were being bombarded by another ship, Loyosha jumped the wall and calmly walked out to the ship (with cannon balls whizzing past his head) so he could start firing back at them.
smafdi wrote:STOP BEING SO DARN POPULAR GUYZ SRSLY I NEEDZ MEH GAMEZ TIHS YAER!!!

kenderleech wrote:If the cows were not meant to be ridden, why would they be so close to the chase scenes?
User avatar
Black Jack Rackham
Site Admin
 
Posts: 6938
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2010 9:37 am
Location: Massachusetts

Warhmmer Fantasy Roleplay

Postby salamanca » Sun Jan 17, 2021 11:04 am

Mark, before I start this one, I misread a line in Loyosha as "Porte Woles of London" and now ideas are forming.

Fimbur Dimzadson

We had an issue in our group whe. This got played. We had one older player that spent every D&D session whining about 2nd ed. changes that were not even effecting his character. The guy was fun to play with but he would not let it drop. So...we took it off the table by switching to Warhammer's RPG (the GM had grown up running it because it was not labeled "satanic" like D&D.

So I showed up thinking I would play some sort of heavily armored Dwarf noble warrior knight. Turns out that Steve was married to the random generation charts.

I want to play a dwarf...fine. Make him a fighter...fine. I was thinking Nobel knight...gotta roll on a chart. What?

Chart says you are lowborn, can't be noble or a knight.

And you are making me adhere to that? Yep. Roll to see what your starting career is.

I don't get a choice? Nope, roll...ah, ratcatcher. That puts you on the path to become a slayer.

The berserker, low armor dwarves with orange mohawks? The outcasts? I don't want to play that. I already played that with Bytor.

That's what you rolled. Roll again...twice.

Why am I rolling? To determine your name.

I don't get to name myself? You didn't get to pick your real name, neither does your character. Here we go...Fimbur Dimzadson!

I hate it. Perfect! WFRP is all about misery.

It went downhill from there. The old man was out of his element so he just played character and pretended to be confused about every die roll. The rest of the group were either veteran warhammer people or too inexperienced to care. And I spent 8 months with a character I hated to keep my spot at the table.

Fimbur refused to answer to his own name. I figured if he was an outcast, why keep the name. Slayers have lost their honor...no reason to keep a promise or deal, so I broke all of those. The players knew how much i was hating this and being good friends dug in and only called me Fimbur for the entire span of the game (even away from the table).

And the more i hated it and the harder i tried to balk at his destiny, the better he excelled at it. I kept failing up. I tried to get him killed off, no luck. Tried to get the party run from the lands, they got keys to the city. I hated it. I hated Fimbur. Still respected the GM because he had a good adventure plotted.

why the GM loved him
He made me, the player, miserable. In that way GMs gloat over. As a miserable Slayer who was full of self loathing, he was a poster child.

why the GM hated him
A few of you have seen what happens when I am stuck in a bad game i am not enjoying at a convention...imagine where that grows after 8 months. And Fimber was a character with no reason to ever behave.

I was never so happy as the week Magic the gathering dropped a new set that distracted the campaign long enough to not return to it.
I don't mind growing old... but I hate growing up.
salamanca
 
Posts: 5782
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2010 10:25 am
Location: in the back of your head

Re: A slightly different 31 day character challenge

Postby Lady Grace » Sun Jan 17, 2021 2:11 pm

Yeah, Warhammer is just...ick.
"You're still mad at me about that whole 'gun-pointing' thing, aren't you?" -- Fortunato Valeri

And here's where I try to be a writer...
User avatar
Lady Grace
 
Posts: 893
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2010 1:20 pm

DC Heroes

Postby salamanca » Mon Jan 18, 2021 9:22 am

Pellet

Pellet was a late 80's/early 90's "superhero"...well, he tried to be a hero. Well, his heart was in the right place even if his body was not.

Lester Flem didn't have powers but he got his hands on some super tech or magic items...Lester wasn't ever really sure he just knew they worked and he wanted to use them. So he applied to join the Justice League International. It was during one of their expansions so he got added to a waiting list. Ut Lester was persistent. He atarted camping on Max Lord's lawn holding a boombox over his head, desperate for a spot.

Max had already filled Justice League Antarctica but there was Pellet and a handful of others that needed to go somewhere they woul not hurt themselves. Justice League Madagascar was formed.

Pellet, a 99 year old man named Ben Dover who may have been the stubbornest man alive, the Pink Black Diamond, and WXYZ: a word wizard. The Black Diamonds were sort of like Green Lanterns but color coded. WXYZ insisted every word spoken vaused something to happen in the universe and he could do great or terrible things with the right combination. Mr. Dover was just a feisty, mean old man.

And we should talk about Pellet's powers... He had filled out an order in the back of a comic book. He bought everything. The Potato Gun, the Propeller Beanie, the X-ray Spex, the 10 in 1 Scope, etc. And the set he got ALL OF IT WORKED. Like so many of his comic book heroes of the era (guys like Cable, Praxis, and others) he selected a hero name that had no logical relation to his powers.

The crew agreed to team uniforms...to a point. They agreed to t-shirts then realized it would mess up Black Diamonds power focus on his chest. So Boxer shorts were agreed upon. Pellet wore his without pants. Pink Black Diamond wore his over his bodysuit. WXYZ claimed he had his on but decorum prevented his showing them. Mr. Dover put his on and yanked them to his armpits, tucking his shirt into them so they stuck out over his belt.

And the team had adventures...well they tried to have advebture and stop crime. But in Madagascar...not much happened. No super badguys around. Regular robbers tended to be gone from the scene by the time they were alerted. But eventually they found their arch enemies...the lemurs that swarmed the city park. Many battles were held. We actually even kicked up an actual supervillain...the ten eyed man on a sightseeing trip. It did not.go.well.for.us.

If you have not digured it out, this was a comedy campaign. WXYZ was the straight man. Pink Black Diamond was the put upon misfortunate one things happened to. Ben Dover was the old man complainer/fart joke. Pellet was the screw up who tried hard fell on his face a lot and said oops often.

why the GM loved him.
The GM was not planning a comedy game until we showed up with the characters. We all had a serious angle plotted as a potential. It went out the window when the words "team uniform" was made. Pellet's drive to be a real hero left him just enough ground to touch on the stuff he wanted to cover.

why the GM hated him
The boxers were Pellet's idea. The lemurs were Pellet's fault. Most of it was blamed on Pellet but it all hit Pink Black Diamond in the face.
I don't mind growing old... but I hate growing up.
salamanca
 
Posts: 5782
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2010 10:25 am
Location: in the back of your head

– Shadowrun “Missions” 3rd, 4th and 25th Anniversary Eds. –

Postby Black Jack Rackham » Mon Jan 18, 2021 11:41 am

Oh man, I somehow forgot to post yesterday. Well here's my homework, a little late...

Thomas “Blarney Stone” O’Rielly
I’m gonna be honest here. I love Blarney Stone. He was an absolute joy to play. 4 hours of me fast talking (and smack talking) anyone and everyone. I doubt Blarney Stone fired his gun more than a handful of times (well he did have combat paralysis, so most of the fights were over before he could draw his weapon). But during the run-up to any adventure, he was invaluable.

Blarney Stone’s claim to fame was his ability to talk (duh,) but not in putting one over on NPCs. I was referring to his storytelling ability. And believe me when I say, Blarney Stone had a lot of stories! No matter what the runners were doing, he had some story about back home in the old country (usually Boston), or his best friend growing up (His name was always some variant of Robert, but his street name was always different), or his “dear departed Ma” (who was quite obviously a completely different person every time). All of the stories were complete and utter “BS” but they were always relevant to the run. As in, something about the way he’d tell the story had something to do with what the players were about to do. It was like he was hinting to them the way they should make the run go without telling them that’s the way they should do it. And it ALWAYS worked like a charm. If he told a story, chances were, the rest of the players would use it to form the basis of some part of the run.

(Now I, Mark, know it probably had a lot to do with “priming” But it was still fun to see in action.)

And as my last little blurb about Blarney Stone, I would like to tell you a story…

The very last run Blarney Stone did was the very last Missions adventure for 25th Anniversary Ed., called “Elevator Ride to Hell” It hadn’t even come out officially yet, so the adventure was just a preliminary, just enough to get the GMs ready to do the run, but no specifics. And for reasons that aren’t important, rather than negotiating for payment at the beginning of the adventure (which is typical), in this adventure it happens only after you’ve already done the work. Now Blarney Stone has an incredible amount of luck (like eerily large, as might befit someone named after a magical stone that grants the gift of gab…) and he’s been holding off using it since this adventure started knowing it might be the only thing that saves these miserable wretches (we’d already fought off a small dragon and some mil-spec cyber assassins, so it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility). And at last we’d gotten to the negotiation portion. Now normally adventures have you deal with someone who knows how to make a deal. But again, for reasons, we are dealing with a 16 year old girl. Now she’s the daughter of someone very famous, so she’s rich and has had some training, but she’s worlds away from a professional shadowrunner who can literally talk his way out of getting killed.

So we get down to the negotiations, and with a combination of my unused Edge and some of the greatest re-roll luck I’ve ever had, I manage to get nearly twenty hits more than she does. Not as big a deal as you might think since Missions games hardcap the rewards you can get to around a max of five more hits. We’re expecting maximum return but nothing special (we were really a highly trained crew).

But then we notice something odd. The GM isn’t just telling us a number so we can move on. He’s quite obviously doing mental calculations. And after a couple of minutes of this, he gets his phone out so he can use the calculator. THEN he starts writing stuff down, and counting the number of players. Half way through that, he has an AH-HA! moment (but not the good kind. He looks frustrated) Then, he erases all the work he’s just done and starts the whole process once again.

FINALLY after about five real life minutes of waiting, he says, “After some thought about all of your arguments, she offers you 180,000 nuyen.” The other players are quite happy. That’s 36k a piece, a relatively solid payday. But the GM interrupts them. “No, not 180k for the table, 180k per runner.” They lose their minds! This is, by far, the largest single payday any of them have ever heard of. Several runners consider retirement right away.

But, before anyone starts packing things up, I interrupt. “Ok, [name of NPC] tha’s good fer our compensation, but wha’ about t’incidentals, bullets an’ th’like? Plus, [name of other Runner] got shot over a dozen times, he’s goin’ta need a new jacket.” While so saying, I dig the same pile of dice I JUST rolled out (as I said, Blarney Stone has a LOT of Edge)… The players just stare, like they can’t believe I just got a world record payout and I’m now going to ask for more. But you can see in their eyes they are not about to tell me not to try. The GM waves us off, saying that was for everything. And the whole table starts laughing.

Turns out, as I hinted above, the adventure wasn’t complete. So there were no hardcaps written in, few details other than monster stats. So he just used the amount per extra hit on negotiation tables as a guide and went from there. There was similar mention of per-diem and so he used my hits for that too. For like two years afterwards, the guys from the table would text me at Origins to see if Blarney Stone was going to make an appearance (and if so which adventures).

Why the GM should have loved this character – Blarney Stone was an expert in the one thing that doesn’t get much (mechanical) love in Shadowrun, interpersonal interactions. Mechanics for getting folks to do what you want them to do is noticeably missing in SR. So you have to wing it. And Blarney is adept at filling in the gaps, He never went overboard with requests that are open to interpretation (like, will bob the guard give me his passkey to his boss’s private office. What he might do instead is just get bob’s attention while the other runners broke into the office.), just the few that have actual numbers attached to them (like the fee negotiation above).

Why the GM should have hated this character – In this case, “Hated” is the wrong word. “Feared” is much better. Blarney Stone still had the potential to go overboard, like I said his rolls were outrageously high when dealing with other people. Trying to figure out just exactly how far a person is willing to go for someone who has rolled 5 hits more vs. 15 hits more is difficult, especially when the rules don’t ever explicitly explain the difference. Should I ever decide to push the matter, a GM would be hard pressed to tell me that, “No, I know you rolled 12 more hits in a game where 1 is the measure of success, but no, the security guard will not eat a bullet for you.”

And that’s just the short term problem. There’s also a sneakier long-term problem typified by my 180k payout. The idea for players is that they slowly build in power and capability so the GM has time to compensate. But, there is a secret shortcut for some, cyber/bioware. Blarney had the ability to consistently get very high paydays, and doing so means the other players have a shot at more expensive replacement equipment faster than they might normally. Again, you could put caps on it, but it’s hard to argue that 5 hits more is the same is 20 hits more (and is honestly not fair to the face characters, since no one complains that the troll WMD’s +20 hits ought to be the same as if they rolled +5 hits.
smafdi wrote:STOP BEING SO DARN POPULAR GUYZ SRSLY I NEEDZ MEH GAMEZ TIHS YAER!!!

kenderleech wrote:If the cows were not meant to be ridden, why would they be so close to the chase scenes?
User avatar
Black Jack Rackham
Site Admin
 
Posts: 6938
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2010 9:37 am
Location: Massachusetts

– Homebrew PbEM Game –

Postby Black Jack Rackham » Mon Jan 18, 2021 11:47 am

Victor Mikouski
Local-ish friend and fellow gamer decided to run a pbem to try out his new lowpower supervillain game. The game world was something along the lines of people with one superpower. Vic had the ability to steal another person’s good fortune. Vic was a total asshole who got in deep with the mob, and was working it off as a Cooler.

If you haven’t heard the term, old time mobsters were apparently a superstitious lot who believed that a person’s luck could be changed by unlucky people being in their vicinity so they got guys with unbelievably bad luck (who usually had lost enough money they were in danger of being killed) to sit near the guy with a hot streak hoping the bad luck would rub off. But in Vic’s case he was literally stealing it from them.

Character didn’t go very far (just under a month playing), but the following is what I wrote for his background. I think it does a pretty good job describing him.

Vic was an inveterate gambler, liar, and conman; always seeking the next thrill. He gambled recklessly in all forms, whether at the card table, behind the wheel, or with the fairer sex. In that realm he has no shortage of takers. But anyone who spent any time around him soon discovered he was as superficial as he was handsome.

That was a far cry from Nolan Donahue, the man behind “Vic.” Nolan was a man used to being beaten down by life. Working construction was the family business and best he could hope for. Fortunately, he was born with a marginally sharper mind than the rest of the goons around him. That and desperation landed him an occasional position helping the boss cook his accounts. Nothing too illegal, just massaging the numbers enough the boss man wouldn’t go to jail for his mob connections.

Then there were Nolan’s ex-wives. Good women both whose only shortcoming was a firm belief that he’d make a good husband. He tried his best, he certainly did. But circumstances were not in their favor. The first separated from him after a vicious attack left her unable to tolerate sleeping in the same room.

The second urged him to take a year-long salvaging job in the middle-east, not realizing that the week after he left, her entire extended family would die in a tragic house fire. She told him they were through after three months.

Despite their difficulties, they remained cordial. With five kids between the three of them, they had to. But for Nolan, it all added up to alimony and lots of it. So he took extra jobs, gave what little extra he made from his boss and everything else to them. But he always seemed to come up just a bit short.

Neither of his exes really pressed the issue. He was doing all he could to make ends meet, even going without to give them what he could. But in the end, he always seemed to just keep slipping further behind. In the back of his mind, he knew there would come a day when even their patience would end.

That’s when he hit on a scheme to get even. The union’s pension fund came with benefits. Not many, but there was a good bit of life-insurance. Of course, they’d get none of it if he killed himself. But, if he were murdered? Well that was double the payoff. So after telling only a select few (the kind of folks who’d spread the word after he’d been missing for a while), he went to Las Vegas. The scheme was simple. Step 1: come up with a fake name. He picked “Victor Mikouski” after seeing it on some dime-store novel. Step 2: pretend like he was there trying to get rich quick (no one would question it, after all it wasn’t all that far from the truth). And Step 3: gamble at an O’Dell-owned casino. He knew about the O’Dell Crime Family from cooking the books for his boss all those years ago. They were vicious, the kind of folks who wouldn’t take kindly to the prospect of him not paying back what he owed.

But with the fake name, they wouldn’t come looking for his family. It’d only be later, when the insurance company started looking into it, that they’d discover who he really was. And by then, the O’Dells would be long gone. The wives would get his life insurance, and voila. Or so it would have been if his plan had worked out like he thought it would.

See, unlike Nolan, “Victor” was no loser. At first it just seemed like a lucky streak. But the streak just never seemed to end. Hell, even an old lady’s fatal heart attack at the slots nearby couldn’t keep him from winning. Heck, it was his best hand of the night. It seemed to Nolan like “Vic” was going to go all the way. Make a cool couple of million and just skate. And that’s when he remembered the two problems keeping his dream from happening. First was the Feds. They’d tax his winnings until he barely had enough to make up for the weeks he hadn’t been paying his exes. And that was if the other problem didn’t just up and kill him. The O’Dells weren’t going to let him just walk out with millions of their money. Heck they were probably already on their way.

That’s when he spotted Marcus O’Dell walking toward him. Smooth, cool, and confident, he glided toward “Vic” with an easy air that almost covered the murderous rage he was known for, almost. Well, he’d come to Vegas to die, and now it seemed like it would all work out just like he’d planned.

But Marcus didn’t seem in a mood to kill him. Instead, he congratulated Vic. After all, they’d seen all kinds of cheaters at The End of the Rainbow. And despite being under constant watch, they’d yet to catch him. But even so, he’d managed to keep everyone else at the table from winning, even once. Vic was so good, he’d actually made the house money even with his winnings. So Marcus had a proposal.

He wanted to hire Vic as the Cooler for The End of the Rainbow. They’d put him in all the high-stakes games (after suitable testing of course). After that, the casino would keep his winnings, but in exchange, Vic would get a salary. Completely under the table of course. The penny dropped. This wasn’t some lucky streak; the O’Dells had been giving him cards. Well, it wasn’t exactly an honest job, but it’d pay a heck of a lot better than anything else he’d ever done. So why not? It’d also let him get square with his exes. And as an added bonus, he’d get to live. He just needed to keep up the pretense of being “Vic”

Why the GM should have loved this character – As you can see from his background, “Vic’ wasn’t aware he had a superpower. He just thought the O'Dell Mob was giving him cards. A far cry from the other players whose superpowers (high strength, invulnerability and making weapons from everyday objects) were pretty obvious. I’d written him in such a way as to have the realization of his powers be part of the story.

Plus, given Vic’s power, the GM had a built in reason to fudge dice rolls.

But the real fun was hinted at in the background write-up. Vic steals luck indiscriminately, and it only ever works in HIS favor. So it’s just as likely as not that when hanging out with the other players, I would steal their luck, screwing them over in the process. In one notable example, he got caught in bed with the wife of the guy who’d lost all his money the night before (wife was paying off the debts). Dude decides to shoot Vic, so Vic’s power kicks in (stealing luck from the wife not the guy), which causes the guy to miss and shoot the wife right in the head (still in Vic’s bed). Now this poor schlub on the hook for murder AND he owes the mob, so somehow Vic has to clean up the mess without the mob finding out (cause they’ll just kill the guy and forget the debt and Vic doesn’t really want to see this guy killed). Etc., etc., etc.

Why the GM should have hated this character – Two reasons.

1 – mechanics. Vic’s power isn’t really well defined in terms of how much he can take or how much luck works in these kind of situations. And since it’s homebrew, GM hadn’t really considered how he was going to deal with this.

2 – PbEM. This was back prior to all this COVID business so we were out and about in life. Getting back to this was a pain since some folks were responding 2-3 times a day and some of us could only manage to eek out 1-2 a week. Soon enough it just became a chore (though I really liked the character).
smafdi wrote:STOP BEING SO DARN POPULAR GUYZ SRSLY I NEEDZ MEH GAMEZ TIHS YAER!!!

kenderleech wrote:If the cows were not meant to be ridden, why would they be so close to the chase scenes?
User avatar
Black Jack Rackham
Site Admin
 
Posts: 6938
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2010 9:37 am
Location: Massachusetts

– Homebrew Stuperpowers Clone –

Postby Black Jack Rackham » Tue Jan 19, 2021 2:33 am

And up late I get to post 3 in a row!

Melvin Smirtz
Yes, his name is shamelessly stolen from Anarchy above as you will see I wanted the secret identity and his general demeanor

The same friend who did the PbEM above wanted to test a different supervillain game he had come up with (the basic idea was, you’re all supervillains trying to take over the world, how would you do it, and it should be humorous). So I and a couple of other locals agreed to create characters to playtest. The idea was we were to try and break the system to show him where the cracks were. And in that respect Melvin was quite successful (a fact which he would take almost no pride in)

Melvin used to be someone, just ask him, he’ll tell you, in excruciating detail, for as long as you can stand to listen to him (and probably well afterward too). All the superheroes knew and feared him. Heck, in order to stop Melvin’s universe/reality-dominating plans, all the superheroes teamed up with all the supervillains of this reality and every other one they were in contact with to not only defeat him but destroy the timeline in which he conquered everyone and everything. And even then, they were only partly successful. Sure none of them remember it now, but Melvin does. It’s all terribly unfair. Just ask him, he’ll tell you…

Melvin had no discernable abilities as far as anyone could tell. He was an overweight, balding, end of the line women’s shoe salesman who was roundly hated by everyone. And within less than a minute of play, all the other players at the table hated him too. You see, Melvin was a whiner. Subject matter was irrelevant, no matter what, he had a complaint or reason to grouse. He was so adept at whining, he frequently did it when he wasn’t saying anything at all.

(I achieved this by sighing loudly, groaning constantly under my breath, and only speaking in THE most nasally tone I could muster for all four hours of the playtest. I would frequently interrupt all the other players or the GM with useless diatribes about how “back in the old days, when I ruled everything…” I actually kept up the background whine while they were making plans and forced them to work around me. In fact the only time I was quiet was when I was inhaling my next breath. It was so bad they got into the habit of constantly raising their voices to one another just in case I was going to start some shit (spoiler alert, I was, and I did!) At one point, I started whining about the fact that they weren’t including me in their evil plans, and when they tried to include me, I started whining about how back in the old days, when I ruled everything, I had better plans than anything they’d ever come up with. Not that they’d listen to me, no one ever does now. But back then, oh back then it would have been a different matter entirely…After the playtest was over, one of the other players actually said if he hadn’t known me prior to this he would have made a point to NEVER game with me again, and warn others if he saw me at a table.)

So did Melvin have a superpower? Well, I guess that depends. Do you consider the fact that he was so irritating to be around that others would do LITERALLY anything to make him go away to be a superpower? If so, then he is the undisputed master of that superpower. Melvin’s greatest (well, not according to him, of course) achievement was to kidnap Richard Dreyfus (long story) on live television.

The others’ plan hinged on having Dreyfus under our command. We found out he’d be attending the Oscars, so to get rid of me, they let me take care of it by myself (yes, I whined at them that they weren’t giving me the proper respect as the (now former) ruler of this and 14 ½* other realities). Once Melvin left, I had to stop whining because they couldn't hear me, so Melvin called them on the phone to say he was lost and could they get him directions?

Once, there, sans ticket or even a plan really, Melvin arrived in his 1986 Nissan Stanza at the Oscars and whined his way through security and the fact he didn’t have a ticket. I even managed to get one of those cool gift bags by whining directly to Mr. Dreyfus until he gave me his. Once he did, I whined about the fact that he’d already eaten all the good chocolates, leaving me only white chocolate, which isn’t really chocolate anyway... He almost refused to go with me, until, completely by accident, the cameras turned on me, and I was able to whine at all of America simultaneously. At that point, viewer attendance dropped precipitously and the network execs ordered him turned over to me in perpetuity.

Why the GM should have loved this character – Well, the GM did say he wanted me to help break his game…

Why the GM should have hated this character – I did break his game. Melvin had no appreciable abilities. I actually took points away from his stats to be worse at things. Things any basic character should be able to do, Melvin couldn’t. He would literally fail every skill except whining. That failure of course, gave him more stuff to whine about (which gave him bonuses to the whine roll) and you see a vicious cycle. And you have only to ask the players to know how much scene-chewing I did playing Melvin. I even whined while I was in the bathroom during breaks…

*This is probably my favorite moment of the whole playtest. I put the "and a half" in there as a trap for the other players. I wanted one of them to ask so I could go off on another useless tangent. BUT NO ONE TOOK THE BAIT! After the playtest they all said they KNEW that's what I had done and there was no way they were going to just open the door for me like that :D

I have never seen players more relieved to stop playing with me.
smafdi wrote:STOP BEING SO DARN POPULAR GUYZ SRSLY I NEEDZ MEH GAMEZ TIHS YAER!!!

kenderleech wrote:If the cows were not meant to be ridden, why would they be so close to the chase scenes?
User avatar
Black Jack Rackham
Site Admin
 
Posts: 6938
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2010 9:37 am
Location: Massachusetts

PreviousNext

Return to Mundane Matters

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 13 guests

cron