Awakening

[Jemal]

An ancient evil (me) has awoken from eons (or maybe 3-4 years) of slumber (Not posting).
Are there any among you who have the courage to face this threat head-on? (Anybody wanna play with me?)

.. OK, so kidding aside, I haven't been on here in several years, for many reasons. I've been posting to ENWorld off and on for nearly half my life, things get hectic, things get better.. life moves on. Finally came back again, and now I'm sad to see there seems to be a dearth of games happening here.. the first page has threads that haven't seen any action in months? I remember a time you had to go to the second page to see a different DAY.

.. damnit, I'm doing the 'back in my day' old man thing again aren't I? sigh

Alright, to the point : I Want to play something, and am willing to GM. If anybody's willing to play with me, feel free to fill out the poll, and if there's enough interest in a single setting, we'll figure something out. I've got years of old GM notepad files collecting virtual dust.. and a few even older notes collecting ACTUAL dust!

 

[JustinCase]

Always up for a new game! Although I only know the core rulebook for PF1 and I have only a tiny bit of experience with World of Darkness (nWoD, called Chronicles of Darkness I believe?).

So basic Pathfinder for me. If that is what others also want.

Oh, and welcome back!

 

[gargoyleking]

I'm always looking for more games to participate in. That said, I haven't played any PF1, and barely any M&M or WoD(Mainly mage, and for some reason I seem to make any GM's in that system not want to run it anymore.)

Games I do know: d&d 3.5 to 5th, PF2, Traveller, Call of Chthulu.

 

[KahlessNestor]

I'm always willing. PF1 I have the most experience with, out of the choices. I have M&M3, and a couple games of it have started here, but petered out. WOD isn't really my thing, and I don't have that.

 

[CharlotteOz]

Howdy!

Games I dig: D&D 5E, Pathfinder (both editions,) Aberrant, Starfinder, FATE Accelerated

Current stars-in-my-eyes darling is MASKS, which is about young adult superheroes dealing with feelings and explosions!

 

[Jemal]

Well, glad there's at least some life still around, though unfortunate it isn't a bit more lively.
Justincase: We'll see what happens, I'm going to leave the poll up for another week see if we can get some more attention.
Gargoyleking : I actually love mage, both playing and GMing.
Kahless: Yeah, M&M Used to be more of a roninarmy / atomicthinktank thing, but both of those started dieing off a few years ago and are pretty much defunct nowadays.
Charlotte: hello, of those options I'm afraid PF1 is the only thing available to me, but if you like FATE and MASKS, you may enjoy M&M.

For those who don't have access to rules, D20 system is open source, so both Pathfinder 1e and M&M 3e are available for free online at their various wikis : PFSRD.com, and d20herosrd.com
PREEEETY sure sharing that isn't a TOS violation or anything..

 

[JustinCase]

Hmm, the fact that there is an SRD for M&M makes that option possible for me. I'll add it to my vote, because even though I'd have to dig around a bit, I am interested in such a game.

 

[gargoyleking]

I think it's more that I apparently misunderstand the basis for the system and basically break it with the very concept of my characters.

For instance, my last character was supposed to be a shaolin monk who, as he learns new abilities shows them off and how 'scientifically' they are possible at the end of every episode of his tv show in order to basically change the status of the world to allow him to use his magic more freely without too much fear of Paradox.

 

[Jemal]

@Gargoyle : That doesn't break the system at all, though it will quickly break the character who tries it.

That kind of character concept is what GMs like to call 'self destructive'..
The Rogue who loves stealing but doesn't have any bluff/stealth/etc, The vampire surfer who wants to get a tan, The Mage who wants to reveal magic to the world are all classic examples.

All of these are concepts you can definitely TRY, but don't expect the character to thrive, unless it's a 1 on 1 campaign and you want to play the underdog who can't win. In the case of said mage for example, despite the fact that you're 'explaining' the magic, it's still magic from other realms that follows it's own rules, and whether YOU believe it to be science, and whether you explain it or not doesn't alter the fact that it will still cause Paradox by it's very existence.
Also, revealing magic to sleepers is a HUGE no-no among pretty much every mage faction, so you would be hunted down by other mages and assassins, besmirched as a charlatan by their political and media allies, your show shut down by government/police/etc as funding dries up, dirt on you suddenly appears, skeletons from your past arise, etc.
You'd need a very well thought out and thorough plan of how to avoid all of that Before ANYBODY knows what you're planning on doing.

AND, even if you could get past all of that, your mage would still have to contend with DISBELIEF, which is a system in mage by which sleepers tend to rationalize away any true magic they experience, regardless of how it was explained to them, until eventually they convince themselves it was just a trick, or a dream, or they just flat out forget it ever happened. This isn't a natural occurrence or trick of the human brain, it's a mystical property of Magic itself, and Mage scholars have been trying to figure out why and how this occurs for centuries.

TLDR:
if Magic is probable there's no need to explain it, and doing so doesn't change the chance of paradox. If it is NOT probable, then explaining it doesn't help anyway, and the Sleeper will eventually forget or rationalize it away regardless of whether you do or not. Whether/how your mage explains it in either case is utterly pointless, and if you try to do so publicly, the entire magic community as well as their vast and powerful array of mortal allies will do their best to shut you down. By any means necessary, whether that is shut down your show, kill you, or just make you look like another garden variety pseudo-scientist charlatan.

 

[gargoyleking]

Yeah, I think I was going for pre-explaining the 'probable' magic. It's been a long time now. And I was definitely not going High Chinese fantasy with jump-flying or anything of the like. More like... Meditating can actually send you into a heightened state of consciousness. (Someone actually did a brain scan of a Tibetan monk while they were meditating and their brain lit up like a christmas tree.) Or some of the wilder kung-fu moves, some of which traditionally need a bit of special choreography and maybe a few wires here and there.

I do agree though, that the concept wouldn't be good for a group game anyways as then you're basically either dominating they storyline or not playing into your concept to it's fullest.