Tensided SDN2 Campaign Discussion Thread

Gerard_Paloma · Post by **Gerard_Paloma** » 2004-07-24 01:56pm

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote:So no interest in the Forgotten Realms idea, huh? How about a superhero campaign in the Marvel universe? Or a Fallout campaign? Or somehting completely different? Or does no one want to have two different campaigns at all?

You know me, dude, I'm up for anything. All of those sound rad (although the superhero campaign sounds the raddest, never done one of those). But whatever gets the most votes, I'll play it.

Post by **Alyrium Denryle** » 2004-07-24 02:02pm

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote:So no interest in the Forgotten Realms idea, huh? How about a superhero campaign in the Marvel universe? Or a Fallout campaign? Or somehting completely different? Or does no one want to have two different campaigns at all?

I would be willing to do an FR or superhero game.

SO long as I can have both telekinesis, and telepathy

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2004-07-24 03:55pm

Alyrium Denryle wrote:
Arthur_Tuxedo wrote:So no interest in the Forgotten Realms idea, huh? How about a superhero campaign in the Marvel universe? Or a Fallout campaign? Or somehting completely different? Or does no one want to have two different campaigns at all?
I would be willing to do an FR or superhero game.

SO long as I can have both telekinesis, and telepathy

I thought you liked being a mage the best? Didn't know psionics were your first choice.

I used to GM in the Forgotten Realms back when I still played D&D, so it would be familiar ground for me. I'll be using the Forgotten Realms setting as per the boxed set that was released about 10 years ago (2nd edition), so it will probably be a lot different than the current one. And even though I think the setting is really cool, I also think a lot of things in the setting are dumb, so I change things on the fly. Basically, don't expect it to resemble the mainstream FR too closely.

Magic will work like this: you acquire a magnitude 3 "wizard" or "sorcerer" merit, then you have 8 major skills, 1 for each philosophy (or whatever they were called) ie. evocation, illusion, etc. 1 point in the skill means that you cast spells at that "level", but only in that philosophy. If you have 5 points in conjuration and nothing else, for instance, you can choose and cast conjuration as if you were a 5th level mage, but cannot cast any other spells. If you had 9 points in evocation and 2 in illusion, then you choose and cast evocation spells like a 9th level mage and illusion spells like a 2nd level mage. This is how it was run the last time and everyone seemed to really like it. Like with real D&D, magic is very powerful, unlike it, there will be no attempt to tone it down or make other things just as powerful, so the number of PC wizards will be limited to 1, and he can't be an accomplished wizard at the start. Spells can come from anywhere, I personally have the 2nd ed. Player's Handbook, (of which half the book seems to be spells), the Tome of Magic, Player's Option: Spells and Magic, and the Encyclopia of Spells, A through D, but spells can come from anywhere, even your or my own ass. But don't expect them to port right over, the level will often be changed and so will the philosophy school, and the effects will be based on the description, not the D&D effects, so a fireball spell will set people on fire like an incendiary grenade, not do direct damage. The fine folks at TSR made no attempt whatsoever to have any kind of streamlining to the spells, it seems, so you have the insanely powerful death spell at 6th level, and the much more limited Power Word, Kill is at 9th level.

As for psionics, I'm not really sure what to do. I've seen the systems outlined in both the Complete Psionics Handbook and Skill and Powers, and I'm not a fan of either of them. I don't know about 3rd ed. psionics, but I doubt it's any better. So I'll probably take something that outwardly resembles the cyperpunk one, but much more powerful (though not as powerful as magic), and fill it with D&D powers.

Divine powers will be represented by a single skill, but you can't spend XP on it to improve it. It improves at my discretion through play, based on service, potential value to the deity, and how well the character was role played as living the deity's values. Priests can be even more powerful than wizards, but one's who have more than a point or two in the skill are exceedingly rare, limited mostly to heads of temples and extraordinary individuals.

Then, there will be certain merits to represent various prestige classes and some regular ones, though not all classes will be represented, as I consider most of the one's I've come across to be stupid. Ones that will definitely be there are Paladin, Shifter, Blackguard, Pale Master, Shadowdancer, Dragon Disciple, Divine Champion, and some others I may cross paths with in the future. With the exception of Paladin, I don't see myself accepting players that start out as any of them, as they will be very powerful (some more than others).

The campaign will be uncharacteristicly (for me) high fantasy, and not the mundane low magic campaigns I used to run back when I ran D&D, so it will be both familiar and new territory for me.

So does that sound like a plan to anyone, or should we do something else?

Gerard_Paloma · Post by **Gerard_Paloma** » 2004-07-24 05:14pm

Sounds like the shit. I'm excited already. As most of my previous characters (in any setting) have been real assholes, I think I'm going to try the other side of the coin, and play a Paladin this time around. I'm thinking we should have an orientation next weekend (as it's too late to schedule one this weekend) to iron out character sheet issues, and then play a session the weekend after that.

That said, we need a new template, as the Cyberpunk one has some things missing, right?

Post by **Alyrium Denryle** » 2004-07-24 07:56pm

I could go with that style of mage(and they are my first choice)

I am very enthusiastic about this, and will gladly play.

Also, I have dibs on party mage

Marcao · Post by **Marcao** » 2004-07-24 09:08pm

I am very willing to try new things, so you can count me in. Sadly, this coming weekend I will be in Otakon and thus, will not participate. ~_~

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2004-07-24 09:27pm

I think I'll invite Eleas to join in on this one. He was in on the original Homecoming campaign, but I haven't talked to him in a long time, and I don't think anyone else from this board has, either, since he left after Mike said his dating preferences were racist.

EDIT: Check this out, HTML verison of the System Reference Document, complete with spells and everything. I'll definitely be using this.

Gerard_Paloma · Post by **Gerard_Paloma** » 2004-07-26 07:59pm

Ok, so back to the current campaign, we need to have a game this weekend. What day/time is good for everybody? I'm free anytime, either day, so I'm easy. I know other folks have schedules, though, so let us know when you're free.

Post by **Alyrium Denryle** » 2004-07-26 08:35pm

II am good to go around 8 pm PST on saturday, dont know about sunday

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2004-07-27 05:20am

Would ending at 11 PM PST on Sat. be too late for anyone?

Post by **Alyrium Denryle** » 2004-07-27 11:03am

no, not at all

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2004-07-28 04:14pm

So to everyone's present knowledge, 8 PM to 11 PM PST works, right?

Gerard_Paloma · Post by **Gerard_Paloma** » 2004-07-28 04:20pm

It does for me and Alyrium. Not sure about the others. Oh wait, didn't Marcao already say he was going to Otakon this weekend? So it looks like Ernesto becomes the community whore.

Post by **Alyrium Denryle** » 2004-07-28 04:35pm

Gerard_Paloma wrote:It does for me and Alyrium. Not sure about the others. Oh wait, didn't Marcao already say he was going to Otakon this weekend? So it looks like Ernesto becomes the community whore.

BWHAHAHAHAHA

Marcao · Post by **Marcao** » 2004-07-28 04:39pm

Shit, I won't make it you guys. I will be in Baltimore the entire weekend. Feel free to go without me and do another collaboration thingie. ^_^! try not to get Ernesto killed however.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2004-07-28 04:54pm

Marcao wrote:Shit, I won't make it you guys. I will be in Baltimore the entire weekend. Feel free to go without me and do another collaboration thingie. ^_^! try not to get Ernesto killed however.

OK, we'll try and take good care of him. No headlong charges at the wall to the corporate part of town, I guess

Marcao · Post by **Marcao** » 2004-07-28 05:24pm

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote: OK, we'll try and take good care of him. No headlong charges at the wall to the corporate part of town, I guess

Excellent, I appreciate it! ^_~

Oh, guys we need war funds and there seems to be a lot of weapons dropped about the area. IF we survive the whole crazy bastid in the basement and after we milk him for info (if possible) we all should do what we can to prevent "littering" in the streets. All those lovely rifles and machineguns should be confiscated by the group and taken with us (in the car, speaking of which the HMMVV crashed, but is it still capable of movement? if so, mayhaps we should appropriate it?) It is not as if we are getting paid for all of this, we need the funds. ^_~

Ciao!

Post by **Alyrium Denryle** » 2004-07-28 05:28pm

We dont need to milk anyone for info, you have the teep, the teep who, if given enough time, can alter the memories people have of their childhood

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2004-07-31 03:28pm

Okay so 8 to 11 PM PST, server "Better Games Public Server", Room "Tensided", password "cyber".

Gerard_Paloma · Post by **Gerard_Paloma** » 2004-07-31 06:42pm

Woot, I will, in fact, be there. For a while, I thought I wasn't going to make it, as my computer mysteriously stopped booting. Nothing a quick reseating of all cards and cables and clearing the CMOS didn't fix, though. See you guys tonight.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2004-07-31 10:44pm

Room's up. Come on in!

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2004-08-01 04:00pm

Yesterday's game was lots of fun. Chat log is here

CorSec said to me that he wouldn't mind if we had a game every weekend and someone else played as Jack those times. Which would be a change, given that CorSec is the only one to take over others' characters to date (and do a spot on brilliant job both times).

Something to think about, anyway.

EDIT: If that came to pass, we'd finish this campaign first, then do the Forgotten Realms campaign. I estimate it will take 5 - 15 more sessions to finish our current campaign. Broad range I know, but it's really hard to tell how much will happen in one session, and whether the next session will follow my plans, go off on a tangent, or necessitate revising of those plans.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2004-08-01 04:33pm

On a different note, the hand to hand damage system is broken. I've known this the last time we had a fantasy playtesting session (long time ago), but the focus was shifted to G&G shortly after that and I was able to ignore the problem. I'm working out the exact solution, but it will involve lowering the Base Damagese on the weapons.

EDIT: Something else that's broken is part of the skill system. It occured to me a while back that someone who wants to be a gun man only needs to put XP into one skill, same with a telepath, but a professional thief needs to put XP into 3 different skills, 4 for a charmer. I'll try and fix that over the next few days.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2004-08-01 07:29pm

I hope I'm not inundating you by talking all at once about different things, but this is just how my mind works.

I've resumed work on the Big Book of B&B, and have gotten through Chapter 2 (experience) so far. A Forgotten Realms supplement will follow.

If no one steps forward to take over Jack, then we should have a test session this weekend, just a really short, one-sitting micro campaign with characters that I'll provide, in order to playtest the B&B rules and see what needs fixing, if anything, and also to get everyone used to the fantasy setting.

Gerard_Paloma · Post by **Gerard_Paloma** » 2004-08-01 08:28pm

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote:CorSec said to me that he wouldn't mind if we had a game every weekend and someone else played as Jack those times. Which would be a change, given that CorSec is the only one to take over others' characters to date (and do a spot on brilliant job both times).

Well, I'm certainly tempted, but that's an intimidating task. Seeing as how CorSec has done such a great job taking over Ernesto and Xak, I'd hate to be the one who fucks up Jack. I wouldn't be comfortable taking control of Jack without CorSec's blessing. Even then, he'll have complete veto power at any time if he feels like I'm shitting on Jack's personality.

So whaddya say, CorSec?