Oh, I hadn’t even heard that they were making a new game. I’ll have to look into the new one! The old game wasn’t spectacular, but it was interesting enough that I’d love to look into it.
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Yeah, it was Kickstarted.
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This must be posted any time Blue Rose is brought up, because it is basically bluerose.flv and I mean that in the best way possible.
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My group ended up having to institute a rule wherein character hurling effects like Super Strength and Move Object are limited to propelling people and objects to a distance no further than that allowed by the ‘Ranged’ range. Otherwise, you just have pretty much absolute power to remove most characters from most encounters instantaneously.
This came up when an ill-planned power usage relocated one PC from the middle of a forest to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, removing them from the fight.
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Yes!! Thank you for grasping and enumerating this simple, brutal, and effective truth about Vampire! The last Vampire game I tried to run ended on session 3 (about two sessions after the enVampirization, as we started as ‘mortals’ and had a few non-Vamp splats in there) after, adjusting to their new vampiric state, one of the characters frenzied and devoured a child to repair the massive damage they’d taken.
Gruesome, horrible scene that had everyone effected, got everybody into the scene…except for the player of the character at hand. He just stonefaced me while I tried to get him to roleplay his reaction (we offscreened the really horrible parts). He got VERY annoyed and declared, ‘You can’t scare me or make me feel anything in this game, so don’t even try.’ He just wanted to play a blood-drinking superhero and didn’t appreciate being put in a position where the idea of being a child-eating monster was, in some way, an inconvenience.
We went a few sessions more (finishing up the more ‘Vampion-y’ physical threat plotline), and then I was done. What’s the point of doing Vampire if someone isn’t willing to engage in personal horror?
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I don’t know, Vampire-themed superheroes isn’t an inherently bad thing, if everyone’s on board with that. The person in your story obviously wasn’t, and therefore not a good fit in your group (Never mind the aggressive tone he took which sounds not-okay for any group honestly and he should probably work on his people skills), but the style of gameplay itself isn’t a bad thing as long as it’s what everyone wants out of the system.
Agreed!
But what I and the other three people had gathered to do was a ‘Kolchak: The Night Stalker’/Felix Castor-inspired Vampire game about investigating monstrosity in an urban fantasy setting. It was definitely gonna have some violence, action, and danger…but that was supposed to be leavened with the old fashioned goth-punk ‘Man vs. Beast’ struggle inherent to Vampire. One player wasn’t down for that aspect, and it robbed myself and the rest of the group of the essential spark we’d been looking for, so the fire wasn’t lit and we moved on.
Coincidentally, to the aforementioned Mutants and Masterminds game!
Yeah, see, I ran a year long vampire game and while I absolutely had deep personal horror moments, I also had a break where one of the players dressed up in a white motorcycle helmet and jumpsuit and went out as a “Real World Superhero” type to beat the shit out of drug dealers in a bar in order to get information without actually tying his public image to the deed.
Well, he more just turned on Majesty 5 and hollered about JUSTICE and COMMUNITY VALUES while his buddy quietly shivved people and stole their wallets. He also dragged the coterie to a charity event to hand out to children in a hospital near Christmas. He was really intent on avoiding the slow slide down.
It’s absolutely about the tone you and your group want to go for, and what level of going back and forth between comedy and horror/grimness you’re okay with. I really enjoy being able to smoothly transition between the two, as the lighthearted goofy moments act as a very strong foil to the moments when you’re deep in the shit. The rarest and best moments are where it’s both ridiculous and horrifying. It’s why I love the Holy Engineers in Danse Macabre so much.
…ah to hell with it, I’m going to have to make the World of Darkness thread here today or tomorrow.
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And yet that kind of fits. The vampire who does grand “good deeds” to feel better about being a murderous bloodsucker.
Oh believe me I had fun with that. He was more at peace with “okay yeah my inherent existence is pretty inarguably a blight on mankind but I am in the position to do enough public good that I refuse to commit suicide because of that, and fuck letting the guys totally okay with being Gordon Gekko Dracula run this place” by the end.
Just throwing in to agree with folks that Dread is incredible. You can check it out here (Dread), by which I mean nab the book in print, pdf, or a free one-page summary that is pretty much all you need for the base mechanics.
Beyond being a @#$%in’ beautiful merger of theme and mechanics, the Dread rulebook is an invaluable resource for anyone who wants to run horror games in any system, featuring a fantastic discussion of genres, pacing, atmosphere, etcetera.
It’s also a fantastic game to introduce folks to RPGs with. Since the main rules are essentially Jenga and the game favors one-shots, you don’t have to confront new players with weighty rules textbooks or decisions affecting characters for campaigns—you can just dive into the game. (After a night of creepy storytelling Jenga you can load them down with the reading material and hard choices!)
Anyway, I can’t recommend it highly enough.
Now someone just needs to find a decent way to do Jenga on Tabletop Simulator so folks can effectively stream it!
Thanks, I could have sworn I had shared the Kickstarter link, but I guess I copy pasted the wrong one.
Even with VR I’m not seeing how to get the stress of Jenga through a digital medium. Maybe playing a round of KTANE everytime you need to do a move is the best option.
Silly question but are there any good character generators online for D&D 5th?
Depends, are you looking for one that does the math for you or just an fillable online sheet? I know off the bat Roll20 has built in sheets that the DM can set up.
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One that can do the math or something like quick add items.
Something easy for somebody new to the game to fill out at least the basics.
Check out Roll20’s sheet first then because it does some of the math but not all of it, and you have to write in items/gear along with weight in. If that doesn’t work DM me and I can see if I can find something closer to what you like.
Also I found this handy for spells because I hate the way the book list them. http://thebombzen.github.io/grimoire/
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Is this real or did someone make this up? I can’t tell anymore.
It’s a parody of a legendary post about katana.
That’s it. I’m sick of all this “Masterwork Bastard Sword” bullshit that’s going on in the d20 system right now. Katanas deserve much better than that. Much, much better than that.
I should know what I’m talking about. I myself commissioned a genuine katana in Japan for 2,400,000 Yen (that’s about $20,000) and have been practicing with it for almost 2 years now. I can even cut slabs of solid steel with my katana.
Japanese smiths spend years working on a single katana and fold it up to a million times to produce the finest blades known to mankind.
Katanas are thrice as sharp as European swords and thrice as hard for that matter too. Anything a longsword can cut through, a katana can cut through better. I’m pretty sure a katana could easily bisect a knight wearing full plate with a simple vertical slash.
Ever wonder why medieval Europe never bothered conquering Japan? That’s right, they were too scared to fight the disciplined Samurai and their katanas of destruction. Even in World War II, American soldiers targeted the men with the katanas first because their killing power was feared and respected.
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I think my favorite part of this is thinking that swords are ideally meant to be hard rather than flexible.