Commentary thread for that “Describe your game in five words” thread.

[aramis erak]

Wed
Recon imperiallly reconned. Cybertroopers called.

Black clad, Cyber enhanced, formerly Clonetrooper, Stormtrooper commandos.
Gida (PC Twilek Survivalist) was doing a recon for Dartz (Trandoshan Skip Tracer)... but due to Cas' (Corellian Smuggler) Obligation, an impie is looking for Cas, but notes GIda's also wanted in connection with the same breakout... so follows Gida. Gida successfully hides, then sneaks up upon the Imperial Agent... and fails to pickpocket them... resulting in getting shot and stunned. (And, while out, force-fed a tracker).

the two wookies, taking npc IG-100-A1 with, set out to find Gida, and roll a despair... they arrive back to find Cas Stunned, the bridge locked from the inside, and the ship powering for takeoff... they take out the bridge controls after they triggered a failed slicing protocol that locks out the computer network. They try to force the doors. It takes them a while - the agent calls for backup - black clad cyberneticized storm troopers.... big fight,... PC's win, and the agent fled.

 

[glass]

This one probably warrants a little more explanation:

Thursday: Uncancelled due to illness. Mummies.

"Uncancelled" was hyperbole - I would have the only one missing and with the Thursday groups we go ahead with just one person missing. Anyway, the reason I was supposed to be absent was that I had a dance exam coming up, and there was an extra practice session on Thursday night. Due to my being ill* on and off for the last couple of weeks, I was unable to make either of the last two regular classes or the extra practice, and therefore had to withdraw from the exam (thankfully my partner will be able to dance with one of the teachers' husbands, so I am not letting her down to badly. On the bright side, it did mean I could show up (on Discord) for our regular Pathfinder game.

We fought a dozen ordinary mummies, who were a bit of a speedbump. And one souped up mummy cleric, who was a bit scarier but not too much to handle. This was in our PF1 Shattered Star campaign.

_
glass.

* Nothing too serious, but thoroughly unpleasant.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Spire:
The knight’s lost his mind.

Wanted to elaborate on this one. It’s kind of been a long time in the making.

Our first 8 or so sessions culminated in the PCs executing an assault on The Sisters, one of the three major crime factions in the district of Red Row. They killed two of the three eponymous sisters, effectively crippling their operation. In the process, the PC Knight (think more like a member of a biker gang rather than an honorable paladin type) had his optimistic and altruistic squire help out. Unfortunately, as a result of play, the squire was critically injured, and the knight incurred secere fallout to his Shadow resistance (this is his anonymity). I gave the player the choice: he could be arrested and the squire would get the medical attention he needed to live OR the knight could escape and would be wanted by the law but the squire would die. The player opted for the latter, so the poor optimistic squire died.

Being wanted means it’s difficult for the knight to even make his way about the city. So he has to make Stealth rolls to avoid being noticed. As a result, he’s incurred a good deal of Mind Stress. This led to a Mind Fallout of “Permanently Weird”. We determined that his dead squire appears to him and talks to him, and he responds. He can suppress this but it costs more Mind Stress to do so for a scene.

In our most recent session, the Knight again took Mind Fallout. This time we went with “Memory Holes” which means that the character now has significant blank stretches of which he has no recollection. It seems that the squire may actually be sliding into the driver’s seat from time to time. Or at least, the player thinks that may be the case.

So interesting to watch all of this happen to the character, and to have it all be the result of the play process. None of us expected this at the start of play. The player is absolutely loving it and is leaning into it with gusto, and the other players are, as well.

 

[glass]

Sunday: Finished first PF2 Exemplars playtest.

I have mentioned Examplars before in this thread, although possibly not by name. It is the set of rules we use for single- and two-player games (plus a GM). Originally written for PF1, and recently adapted for PF2. The idea is for groups with two or only one PC to take on adventures written for a full-sized group; a lesser examplar is roughly equivalent of two PCs, whereas a true exemplar is roughly equivalent of four.

We have been using the PF1 one version for a while, and (after a bit of evolution) it works pretty well. The PF2 version has only been used for one short adventure, and still needs a bit of tweaking, but so far things look OK....

_
glass.

 

[John Dallman]

This is the Pathfinder Adventure Path "Kingmaker", being run under GURPS Dungeon Fantasy.

Gnomes, Hermit, Puma, defective Dragon.

I have the impression we aren't doing the AP in the expected order. We met a cartographic expedition of nine gnomes, and helped them get a wagon out of a stream. They were looking for a troll lair we'd heard of, so we joined forces, on the grounds that a family of trolls would likely just eat them. The hermit was homicidal, until we subdued and exorcised him; his puma was put down as a man-eater. We'd had directions to the trolls from a fairly stupid giant, so it was no great surprise that they weren't there; instead we found something vaguely like a green dragon, but with no magic apart from its breath weapon. which we killed.

"Bringing vague plausibility to fantasyland!"

 

[Dr Magister]

Scavenging wire to buy promethium.

I'm running a Necromunda game using Everywhen. It's a sandbox game where the PCs are the founding members of a new gang (they chose to be House Escher). They've just taken over a homestead out in the wastes as their hideout, and they spent a chunk of last game scavenging through the area looking for stuff they can sell back in town to buy fuel for their generator. This included stripping the copper wire and pipes out of some ruined habs, and having a face-off with some Van Saar gangers doing much the same thing.

 

[glass]

Sunday: Started running first adventure path.

As in the one published at the start of 3.0, that did not have an official name (although it is commonly known as the Sunless Citadel AP or the Path of Ashardalon. There are arguably earlier publications that could be considered Adventure Paths (The Enemy Within springs to mind), but this was the first one called such at the time.

I am adapting it on the fly to PF1. So far, the party have Wild Empathied a bunch of dire rats, avoided falling in a pit trap, and negatiated with a kobold queen.

_
glass.

 

[overgeeked]

“One damage. Time to sleep.”

The daring and brave fighter took one damage in a fight and is now insisting on a long rest. He has hit dice to spend and can short rest, but nah. It’s long rest or nothing. This is 5E D&D.

 

[overgeeked]

"Noble isn't peasant mind control."

One of my West Marches players really seems to think that having the noble background is peasant mind control. In making it explicit that this isn't the case, the player got quite upset. I'm not sure this will result in a rage quit. But it might. He was so pissed. Even proper magical mind control will not allow suicide orders and the like. No king is going to be convinced to give you their crown and kingdom no matter how many natural 20s you roll on social skills. No one of lower status than your noble is going to just hand you their entire life. Come on.

 

[kenada]

“today’s session was mixed success”

The actual adventure stuff went really well. The barbarian was delighted to find a jewel-encrusted axe that she can use (even though hit anything with it will halve its value, it looks awesome, and that’s what matters). The part that was a mixed success is I tested out some mechanics for my homebrew system. They worked, but they worked a little too well. I wanted to explore whether I could leverage clocks and degrees of success in conflicts without drifting the system towards Story Now. No, not really. I suspected as much but wanted to see.

I still have a method I can use for skill checks (2d6+mods versus standard difficulty 8), but I’m going to need to work out another method to handle conflicts. I’m also willing to fall back on my reaction table, but I’d really like something to structure things a bit more that works as well for negotiations as it does for evasion and pursuit (since the core is based on B/X, and I want to keep is exploration and encounter play pretty similar).