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Story Hour
(10/07) A Dark and Restless Tide - (A D20 Dark*Matter Story Hour)
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<blockquote data-quote="HeapThaumaturgist" data-source="post: 1546106" data-attributes="member: 12332"><p>*cracks knuckles*</p><p></p><p>Sorry for the hiatus, folks, I've been on vacation. For me, "vacation" means stretched out on the couch with books Lots of books. My fiance was excited about the Honor Harrington RPG coming out (but for T20 ...) and I'd never read the books, so in the last two weeks I've read most of the series. And most of the rest of David Weber's stuff, as well.</p><p></p><p>((For those of you who don't know, <a href="http://www.baen.com/library/" target="_blank">www.baen.com/library/</a> is a free library of books from Baen publishers. You can find "On Basilisk Station" there. I'm a man who appreciates free books.))</p><p></p><p>ANYWAY ... I should be writing up another post as soon as I'm done with this.</p><p></p><p>To answer questions ...</p><p></p><p>Question The First: How long does it take for me to make an adventure? Quite a while, really. I'm not sure in definate hours, but I've got quite a bit of respect for adventure authors out there. </p><p></p><p>I've been to NC, and I like the area for adventures mostly because it's ruralized in some areas, populated in others, and I know just enough about the area to get me in trouble. <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" /> And the mountainous areas are very pretty ... and lonely at night.</p><p></p><p>First I got the kernel idea for the adventure ... then I decided what I'd need. Which, because of the 'company', was a populated area. Raleigh fit the bill. Then I needed a smaller city outside of it, to allow for a ruralized enough area that the cops and FBI wouldn't be all over any strange occurrances on their own, or put 2 and 2 together too quickly that I couldn't give the players a few days to figure things out without wondering where the hell the cops were during all of this. </p><p></p><p>I pulled Chapel Hill up on Yahoo, having never been there, and familiarized myself with the maps of the area ... I looked up car dealerships, etc ... and changed what I needed. For instance, the Toyota Prius was an important part of the storyline, but I couldn't find any Toyota dealers in Chapel Hill. So I replaced, on the map, a Saturn dealer (I think it was the Saturn dealer, anyway ... or Honda). I could then tell the players where it was, even point to it on the map. Part of the adventure takes place in a mall (haven't written to there yet) and I looked up the Chapel Hill mall online ... oddly, it has it's own website (alot of malls do these days). I downloaded a map of the mall ... but it doesn't have an Arcade or an Electronics Boutique ... each was important to my pre-arranged plotline, so I added them. I would say my research time was a good 3 hours, for the whole adventure (which lasted four game sessions) and my writing time was about twice that, if not more. Even then, parts of it were unfinished when the fit hit the shan.</p><p></p><p>Question The Second: Nanotecknolwedgies Inc. was purely my own making. It would have been better had I looked for something else and dressed. The company itself and Dr. Bauer were actually the least-researched parts of the "Adventure", on my end. That was a big mistake. I had made a few presumptions when I started writing the adventure and, in true form, the group blew those out of the water the first session, really. I ran out of time, really, and hadn't gotten to it yet. Anyway, Nanoteck I created as I wrote ... I placed it in an un-named "Industrial Park" the design of which I actually took from a 'Park up the street for the map. I designed the internals of the building itself as a scaled-down version of the office I used to work in and the "Lab" in the basement was purely out of my own imagination, and I'm sure was buggared to hell. Not that any of the readers have "seen" this stuff yet. For instance, I didn't expect one of my players, being an academic, to go looking through the scientific research journals to see what Bauer had published. Which was a very good idea, on his part, and something I'll plan for in the future if I have academic NPCs. </p><p></p><p>Question The Third: None of them have been planned as "one shots" ... by One Shot I imagine you mean the characters are pregenned/handed out or quickly made and the one adventure is the only time we see them. Nope. I have two previous "One Shot" adventures using Dark Matter, though, because time/place constraints meant the groups broke up about the same time the first adventure rounded out. This adventure ended the last week of classes, but the plan is to start up with the same PCs in August on another adventure. </p><p></p><p>Question the Fourth: This group was already part of the Hoffmann Institute, yes. We were going to start with them NOT, earlier in the semester, but things got wonky and we ended up never getting to play until the last month of classes so I skipped the initial adventure and went right to this one (thus the unfinished nature of it). </p><p></p><p>This isn't the same group as the Wendigo adventure ("Cabin Fever"), no. Those were my room-mates of last year and myself. I wasn't actually going to use The Hoffmann Institute for that campaign ... the two professors in that adventure were from the stateside campus of Weygandt-Ellis University (Maggie Valley) ... a pure creation of my own that made a short appearance this adventure. W-EU was going to be the organization for the first campaign, but I've helved it as being too much work on my own time. Summed up, it's the ultra-liberal side of Those In The Know about the Dark Tide. The kookier folks, and one of the few places in the world you can get a degree in Applied Non-Euclidian Geometry or Parahistory. I was aiming for even fewer guns and a little more Call Of Cthulhu "Investigator" style game. This group, I knew I'd need to have firearms around ... bleh.</p><p></p><p>The other group in Cabin Fever is MAJIC, my version of MJ-12 ... which is actually more modeled after COM-12 from the Dark*Matter setting book. I like the sound of "Majority Agency for Joint Information Control", myself. For that setting they're in opposition to the elements of the Dark Tide on the rise in the U.S.A. .. violent opposition. Where W-EU or The Hoffmann Institute would investigate and attempt to understand, MAJIC moves in and engages with extreme prejudice. (I'm sure one of my players would much rather be in a MAGIC-centered campaign. But bleh.) I fleshed out the organization because it was an angle I was thinking of exploring, but it too was backburnered.</p><p></p><p>This campaign's going to deal with PCs from Hoffmann, though I'm already interweaving the others. Just because. <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite2" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=";)" /></p><p></p><p>--fje</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="HeapThaumaturgist, post: 1546106, member: 12332"] *cracks knuckles* Sorry for the hiatus, folks, I've been on vacation. For me, "vacation" means stretched out on the couch with books Lots of books. My fiance was excited about the Honor Harrington RPG coming out (but for T20 ...) and I'd never read the books, so in the last two weeks I've read most of the series. And most of the rest of David Weber's stuff, as well. ((For those of you who don't know, [url]www.baen.com/library/[/url] is a free library of books from Baen publishers. You can find "On Basilisk Station" there. I'm a man who appreciates free books.)) ANYWAY ... I should be writing up another post as soon as I'm done with this. To answer questions ... Question The First: How long does it take for me to make an adventure? Quite a while, really. I'm not sure in definate hours, but I've got quite a bit of respect for adventure authors out there. I've been to NC, and I like the area for adventures mostly because it's ruralized in some areas, populated in others, and I know just enough about the area to get me in trouble. :) And the mountainous areas are very pretty ... and lonely at night. First I got the kernel idea for the adventure ... then I decided what I'd need. Which, because of the 'company', was a populated area. Raleigh fit the bill. Then I needed a smaller city outside of it, to allow for a ruralized enough area that the cops and FBI wouldn't be all over any strange occurrances on their own, or put 2 and 2 together too quickly that I couldn't give the players a few days to figure things out without wondering where the hell the cops were during all of this. I pulled Chapel Hill up on Yahoo, having never been there, and familiarized myself with the maps of the area ... I looked up car dealerships, etc ... and changed what I needed. For instance, the Toyota Prius was an important part of the storyline, but I couldn't find any Toyota dealers in Chapel Hill. So I replaced, on the map, a Saturn dealer (I think it was the Saturn dealer, anyway ... or Honda). I could then tell the players where it was, even point to it on the map. Part of the adventure takes place in a mall (haven't written to there yet) and I looked up the Chapel Hill mall online ... oddly, it has it's own website (alot of malls do these days). I downloaded a map of the mall ... but it doesn't have an Arcade or an Electronics Boutique ... each was important to my pre-arranged plotline, so I added them. I would say my research time was a good 3 hours, for the whole adventure (which lasted four game sessions) and my writing time was about twice that, if not more. Even then, parts of it were unfinished when the fit hit the shan. Question The Second: Nanotecknolwedgies Inc. was purely my own making. It would have been better had I looked for something else and dressed. The company itself and Dr. Bauer were actually the least-researched parts of the "Adventure", on my end. That was a big mistake. I had made a few presumptions when I started writing the adventure and, in true form, the group blew those out of the water the first session, really. I ran out of time, really, and hadn't gotten to it yet. Anyway, Nanoteck I created as I wrote ... I placed it in an un-named "Industrial Park" the design of which I actually took from a 'Park up the street for the map. I designed the internals of the building itself as a scaled-down version of the office I used to work in and the "Lab" in the basement was purely out of my own imagination, and I'm sure was buggared to hell. Not that any of the readers have "seen" this stuff yet. For instance, I didn't expect one of my players, being an academic, to go looking through the scientific research journals to see what Bauer had published. Which was a very good idea, on his part, and something I'll plan for in the future if I have academic NPCs. Question The Third: None of them have been planned as "one shots" ... by One Shot I imagine you mean the characters are pregenned/handed out or quickly made and the one adventure is the only time we see them. Nope. I have two previous "One Shot" adventures using Dark Matter, though, because time/place constraints meant the groups broke up about the same time the first adventure rounded out. This adventure ended the last week of classes, but the plan is to start up with the same PCs in August on another adventure. Question the Fourth: This group was already part of the Hoffmann Institute, yes. We were going to start with them NOT, earlier in the semester, but things got wonky and we ended up never getting to play until the last month of classes so I skipped the initial adventure and went right to this one (thus the unfinished nature of it). This isn't the same group as the Wendigo adventure ("Cabin Fever"), no. Those were my room-mates of last year and myself. I wasn't actually going to use The Hoffmann Institute for that campaign ... the two professors in that adventure were from the stateside campus of Weygandt-Ellis University (Maggie Valley) ... a pure creation of my own that made a short appearance this adventure. W-EU was going to be the organization for the first campaign, but I've helved it as being too much work on my own time. Summed up, it's the ultra-liberal side of Those In The Know about the Dark Tide. The kookier folks, and one of the few places in the world you can get a degree in Applied Non-Euclidian Geometry or Parahistory. I was aiming for even fewer guns and a little more Call Of Cthulhu "Investigator" style game. This group, I knew I'd need to have firearms around ... bleh. The other group in Cabin Fever is MAJIC, my version of MJ-12 ... which is actually more modeled after COM-12 from the Dark*Matter setting book. I like the sound of "Majority Agency for Joint Information Control", myself. For that setting they're in opposition to the elements of the Dark Tide on the rise in the U.S.A. .. violent opposition. Where W-EU or The Hoffmann Institute would investigate and attempt to understand, MAJIC moves in and engages with extreme prejudice. (I'm sure one of my players would much rather be in a MAGIC-centered campaign. But bleh.) I fleshed out the organization because it was an angle I was thinking of exploring, but it too was backburnered. This campaign's going to deal with PCs from Hoffmann, though I'm already interweaving the others. Just because. ;) --fje [/QUOTE]
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